Northern Neil

I received a facebook message from Augusta some 6 months ago, saying that she was too busy to engage in the forum at present. Pertinax contacted me over a year ago, but I heard nothing since. My own 'dark' period, from which I have only recently emerged, was the result of a year and a half of instability, house moves ( 3 in all!!) and various personal hiccups. So,I hope we will see the pair of them again as and when life regains an even keel. I suppose all of us need a break from time to time.

Ahh, yes - on closer inspection of my 'Handbook to the Roman Wall' the round huts are clearly shown, although it seems that the North wall of the Severan fort is built over them. Funny - because I never associate round huts with Roman structures, I've overlooked these until now.

Hmm, I would like to see a plan of these buildings and their relationship with the rest of the remains at Vindolanda. Even academics ( with some help from journalists!) can sometimes make wild hypotheses about structures, some of which have persisted for decades! Are we really to believe that Romans built detention huts in the style of those of the people they captured? Maybe it is part of the civil settlement, and the house owners preferred the local building style? This would in itself be very interesting without the speculation.

I believe that Pax Romana was a concept invented by Gibbon in his Decline and Fall, rather than a concept the Romans themselves used. It could be said then, that if Gibbon says it ended in 180, then it did. However, the date could be more accurately given as 235, when the military anarchy leading to the end of the Principate began. Others could say it ended with the death of Severus, who IMHO was just as good and efficient an emperor as Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius etc.

Tell you what: Have it WAXED off, video it, put it on here and I'll sponsor you for a tenner!

Other factors are the slavic invasions and the continual cost of maintaining the obligations incurred by Justinian's reconquests. Although much diminished, these reconquered territories still consisted of a coastal strip in spain, sicily, much of Italy and the Maghreb. Heraclius had all this to think about, as well as the temporary loss of the Balkan provinces due to the Slavic invasions and the initial loss of Egypt, brought about largely by Phocas' mismanagement. By the time Heraclius had patched all this up, there wasn't really anything left with which to counter this new threat. The wrangle over Monophysitism, alluded to by Decimus, certainly didn't help. On looking up Monophysitism, it seems like a far less confusing view of Christianity than those proposed by Arius, or discussed at Chalcedon.I can see how people in Syria, Egypt and Tripolitania would have been swayed by a newer and simpler version of the 'truth'.

I think it is unlikely that Diocletian destroyed the Roman economy, and to speak of his reforms as a cause of the fall of the West is equally as unlikely given the relatively early date. He did however have a naive view of inflation, and what was needed to offset it, and unfortunately his financial policy brought to the attention of the masses the debasement of the denarius. Prior to this, despite steady debasement over the previous 150 years, the denarius continued to function as a denomination. By and large the government honoured its face value, despite its dropping silver content - in the same way as a British shilling was worth much the same in 1948 as it was in 1946, despite being minted in cupro - nickel from 1947 on. In this sense, the denarius was functioning very nicely as a token coinage, Diocletian's reforms having the effect of ending this satisfactory, although unintended outcome.

...and from me, old chap. Belated happy birthday!

'V

Jerash?

Hmm, I remember that thread - in my opinion, it doesn't matter what modern accents actors have, wether its American English, English English or ( as with Alexander) there are Irish accents. At the end of the day, unless the cast are speaking Celtic and Latin, its all unrealistic in terms of dialogue! I think I might wait until this film comes out cheap on DVD. The buildings look great, as do the stills from the movie generally. For me the spoilers are (yet again) major deviation from the original story, and of course the leather lorica and incorrect use of Pila - as in Centurion. Do these film companies not have historical consultants? I know, ultra picky! I cannot but feel sympathy for the many excellent re-enactment groups throughout Europe and the US who would probably do the extras-work for free, and provide fully authentic legionaries and auxillia whilst so doing.

Very interesting... I wonder if the tower was connected by a bridge to the main part of the fort? I cant imagine a cohort centurion placing some of his men in this tower without providing them with some means of retreat to the rest of the unit. EDIT: Also interesting is that the modern place name is not that far evolved from the Roman one.

That's an Interesting fact about the last functioning aqueduct. I wonder what it's name was. My re-gurgitation of things I read many years ago required some re-reading on my part - this has been done! Aparently Belisarius repaired all the aqueducts after the Siege of Rome; they subsequently fell into disuse again over the next few centuries. So, although the aqueducts were cut in the Gothic War, this may not have been the single reason for the depopulation of Rome. The bit I put in about the 'course of the remaining aqueduct' refers to the Aqua Virgo. By the ninth century, this was the one aqueduct which remained in working order, the others having fallen into disrepair, and it is in this period when the main population of Rome was strung out along its course, or around wells and the banks of the Tiber. The book you mention sounds fascinating, and I will order myself a copy straight away. Colin McEvedy mentions 'Villages surrounded by fields of rubble' in his Atlas of the Middle Ages, and my (very) old copy of 'Rome in the Dark Ages' paints this haunting picture of a linear population struggling to survive along the line of the one working aqueduct. The images these two books evoke are tantalising to say the least, and I look forward to learning about this part of Rome's history in more detail.

During the Gothic Wars I believe three of the four major aqueducts were cut by the Goths once the East Romans had re-occupied the City. These aqueducts were never repaired, and from that point on until the high middle ages the main population of Rome was strung out along the course of the remaining aqueduct and the Tiber. The Forum itself must have retained its function into the 7th century, as seen by the placing of the Column of Phocas in AD 608. This column, though, was not purpose built, it was salvaged from an earlier structure. Thus, it appears that even though Rome was still in the hands of a recognisably Roman state, already the buildings of its glorious past were either falling into ruin, or only maintained by the demolition and salvage of architectural ornaments from redundant buildings. A century later, anonymous accounts refer to the forum being used as a cattle market.

Well, the title and topic description say it all. When was the last dateable use of the Roman slogan SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS? Like many things, did this cease after the third century, once the primacy of Rome in the Empire had diminished?

This small but telling part of Ghost of Clayton's post more or less says it all. Cornwall was not conquered in, say, a 'Caesaresque' way because it was unneccessary. I believe that once the Dumnonii accepted Roman rule and settled into their nice new Roman style capital at Exeter, they continued to administer Cornwall, just as they ruled it before Romanisation. As far as the Governor of Britannia was concerned, I suspect he didn't care about natives living in round houses as long as the tin and copper production was kept up.

A belated many thanks to you all, my friends.

I've forgotten exactly where I read this, but it was quite a reputable book. When I find the precise reference I will let you know! I think this figure may have been arrived at on account of the garrison strength required to man the Rhine / Danubian frontier in earlier years, plus the average strength of a barbarbian 'horde' which Peter Heather (Fall of the Roman Empire) suggests to be around 20'000 individuals of fighting quality.

Happy birthday Doc - and happy new year!

Well volunteered, you two! Would you be interested in purely academic works, or popular titles (dare I say 'coffee table books!) as well? I have a fair amount of both if you want me to send in my lists, ISBN's etc.

www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.html The Origins of the British A Genetic Detective Story by Stephen Oppenheimer As a child, I sometimes wondered why people told jokes about Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen. Why should our origins and differences matter? Part of growing up was realizing that they do matter and trying to understand why. "This book challenges some of our longest held assumptions about the differences between Anglo-Saxons and Celts

What legal pretext, if any, did Octavian have for executing him, or was it a straight forward murder?

Commodus certainly spoilt the sequence of good, adoptive emperors. One wonders whether the film 'Gladiator' had a point when it suggested that Marcus Aurelius was not the successor of choice for Marcus Aurelius.

Yes, I believe it was the Scottish National side. Despite these efforts, they still failed to get through to round 2 of the World Cup...

Well, how about sharing your own views, and airing your opinions on what has already been said? I gather from your forum name that your main area of interest is the Celts - ancient and modern! Basically, what a lot of us seem to be saying is that what the ancients called Celtic, and what we now call Celtic, are not neccessarily the same thing, and that huge areas of Central Europe once thought to be 'Celtic' (because of association with the La Tene culture) might actually have been a mixture of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and Iranian speakers. What do you reckon? EDIT: Oppenheimer's 'Origins of the British' may be of interest to you. It is fairly recent, 2006, and he challenges the traditional view that all of the Britons were Celtic. Using primary sources such as Tacitus and Caesar, genetic and linguistic studies, he argues that the Lowland Britons of the South East and Midlands may in fact have been Germanic - or 'English' - all along, or at least since quite a while before the Roman invasions.