Pantagathus
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Posts posted by Pantagathus
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The thing that surprises me however in that most of the battles the Greeks defeated the Carthaginians soundly in instances the Romans had trouble with them.
That of course is a major oversimplification. Except for the tyrant Gelon, the Greeks had their troubles with them too. I wonder what our impression of the Sicilian Wars would be if we had Punic sources to consult?
For example I remember the war sparked up in Sicily and the Carthaginians planned for a full scale war with the Greeks. They raised a substantial force, the largest in Carthaginian history, yet the Greeks just mobilized their troops to a much lesser extend yet defeated the Carthaginians subsequently winning the war. Anyone heard of this, or can reference me to it?The big disaster you are thinking about here was the First Sicilian War in 480 BC. Gelon, tyrant of Gela & Syracuse wanted to unite all of Sicily and obviously the Carthaginians couldn
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If it's true that there are periods of Greek history as exciting as any Roman period, then it's also true that there's a tremendous opportunity for someone to write a fantastic new book or article.
There definitely is and I plan to tackle it at some point in earnest. It might just have to be a long article but I'd love to flesh out enough to approach book length. However, not much has changed since this was written in 1886 except for better archaeological understanding to support a hypothesis:
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Some answers are less obvious. The ram is associated with Hermes. Why? Because Hermes was to the Arcadians a god of flocks and fertility, and the ram was an animal indicative of pastoral fertility.
Funny how in astrology the sign Aries (the ram) is associated with the planet of Mars!
Well actually it's one of those answers that's once again less obvious... To quote Wikipedia (because it's easy here): "The word Mars has no Indo-European derivation, it is most likely the Latinized form of the agricultural Etruscan god Maris. Initially the Roman god of fertility and vegetation and a protector of cattle, fields and boundaries, Mars later became associated with battle as the growing Roman Empire began to expand."
One interesting explanation I've seen for Mars' evolution from fertility god to war god (aside from the obvious fields & boundaries part) as proposed by Georges Dum
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I think the caveat here is oldest discovered winery. Certainly not earliest winery or oldest 'known'. Massaliot vinters were shipping local wine into the heart of Gaul by the early 5th Century BC.
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But the main problem is that many peoples think they can find it all in the roman culture which adapted so much greek material that to the untrained eye it seems to be the same. Also their is the difficulty of accessing the sources, for reading greek is much harder than reading latin and also because much is written not in texts but in stone on stelae found all over the greek area.
Also the achievements of some later peoples, especially Alexander of Macedon, are like walls behind which the greek culture is hidden from view. And of course the fact that Rome came to dominate most of western Europe does also explain a greater interest in the city of the Caesars than in the cities of the pusillanimous Greeks.
So they are passionate peoples studying the Greek world, but they are like the subject they study hidden behind the others...
Bryaxis, that is an extremely thoughtful and well articulated reply and one that speaks for my personal opinion quite closely.
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I have already half given away my answer to MPC's last point -- about the purpose of telling the Quarrel story. I don't think it was ever meant to be a retelling of the Embassy-to-Achilles story, or of the Dispute-over-Briseis, because those stories are already told in the Iliad and the Odyssey doesn't duplicate the stories in the Iliad. No, I think it's meant to be a different story (one that we haven't heard of from any other source, but then, we aren't regular listeners to early Greek epic poets) and the main requirement was that it had to be one that would make Odysseus regret the past, and thus begin to betray his identity.
Thanks Andrew that was exactly the literary device I had in mind in my last post.
Also, I want to clarify (because I can't disagree with Andrew that the judgement of Paris was really the singular event that kicked the Trojan Cycle off) that when I said that the Odysseus - Achilles incident at Scyros was the event that set the events of the Iliad off, I meant that there would not have been a quarrel between Achilles & Agamemnon if Achilles wasn't there and it was Odyssues retrieving him from Scyros that made that happen.
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Right, they're two different quarrels. It seems like the author of the Iliad had one quarrel in mind as the source of the war, and the author of the Odyssey had another quarrel in mind as the source of the war.
I really do see where you are coming from. However, this could be more of literary device than a faux pas. Also, you/we are judging it based on a translation not the original Greek.
In Greek the line about the Odysseus - Achilles quarrel (which has some un-tranlated word fragments in it...) begins with what in my rudimentary understanding of Greek means something like, "Thus, at some unknown point in time" it goes on to mention the strife. (I would post the Greek word but the forum doesn't seem to want me to do it at the moment)
Could be that the original intention of the author of the Odyssey was to refer to when Odysseus went to get Achilles to stop acting like a girl (literally!) which was the real key to setting the events of the Iliad in motion and also what the oracle refered to (the Greeks not being able to win the war without Achilles). More than likely that key point was a casualty of centuries of copying and then millennia later to translation and it seems the author of the Odyssey has made a mistake about the quarrel over Briseis. This seems especially likely since one finds the Greek word in the text which refers to coming into manhood.
Andrew, your thoughts?
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People who took the Parry line were still left with difficult questions to answer: where and when were the poems written down, and where does Homer come in? There are several different answers to these questions, and it's probably now a large-ish minority, rather than a majority, who really honestly believe that one poet was responsible for both poems. I'm part of that minority, and I have tried in my book to give an explanation of why the Iliad and Odyssey have the differences that you observe ... but maybe that's enough for one post!
I
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One problem that I see is that the most exciting eras of the ancient Greeks is the Archaic (late 9th - 5th Centuries BC) which is not very accessible to the lay reader.
What are the primary literary sources for the history of this period?
That's just the trick it's mainly anecdotal via Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus Siculus & Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The majority of our current understanding of the age comes from archaeology which can be seen in the fact that most modern (commercial) scholarly treatments of the Archaic are written by archaeological specialists of the era like J.N. Coldstream, A.M Snodgrass, John Boardman, etc...
I personally have had to do serious digging in JSTOR to suppliment my understanding which is why I say it's not accesable to the lay reader. It's a shame because to me the Archaic Greeks derserve much admiration as they come across as a very spirited and venerable people (much like the Republican Era Romans!).
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One problem that I see is that the most exciting eras of the ancient Greeks is the Archaic (late 9th - 5th Centuries BC) which is not very accessible to the lay reader. It was a time when Corinth was a leader for a long time along with the Euboeans (Chalcis & Eretria) who were at the vangaurd of Greek exploration and colonization only to be forgotten about by the time of Athen's 'flash in the pan' glory during the Classical era.
The history surrounding the Greeks of Magna Graecia, especially the tyrannical conflicts of Sicily; both between each other and in regards to the conflicts with Carthage is also quite captivating in my opinion.
Different strokes for different folks I guess...
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Here is another article on the subject that gives a wee bit more detail: Viking Age Inca Indian Found in Norwegian Burial Ground?
"A particular bone at the back of the head was not fused. This is an inherited trait found almost exclusively among the Incas of Peru," Buckholm added. To this day, no other example of this trait has been found in Norway. "While it is tempting to speculate, seeing as St. Nicolas is the patron saint of sailors, it's hard to imagine a Peruvian making his way here at the time. This is quite puzzling."
Fluke if you ask me
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I love the reader comment on the page...
A violent Roman centurion? Infamy!
I just can't believe they didn't negotiate up front. I mean who doesn't know to beware of tourist scams in Rome???
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One little thing about walnuts that doesn't get much press is that they are right up there with flax seeds as being rich in Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Great for the brain... (don't know about the 'little' brain though)
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Was this only a Phoenician/Carthaginian practice or were their others in the region who did partake in these events?
I said in my post that it was a pan-semitic activity...
Baal (Northwest Semitic/Phoenician) = Bel (Eastern Semitic/Babylonian) = Bēlu (Akkadian) and it means "Lord" or "Master". Most likely 'he' was the sun or a solar deity. The Babylonian & Assyrian Marduk was also conflated with Bel/Baal.
As for a Greco-Roman source I would certainly say check Flavius Josephus first.
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I thought this was supposed to a party for people to relax?
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Having eluded British archaeologists for two decades, American excavators found the seat of the Isthmian Games - one of four ancient Greek athletic contests - practically erased.
Full story here: Spero News
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I like to drink beer cool to lukewarm because I think its much tastier and headier. Ice cold beer doesn't have as much taste. Budweiser would have to be quaffed ice cold because it tastes like urine.
To quote Michael Jackson (the Beer Hunter not the Freak):
"The worst two phrases in the English language are 1. 'Coldest Beer In Town' and 2. 'Last Beer Until Dry County'..."
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I've been eagerly awaiting this one as all DFH's other 'archaeobrews' have been truely a joy to sample!
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Gades (modern Cadiz) in Spain deserves mention; not for size per se but the for the amount of commercial wealth that flowed out of the city to Rome.
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RtG: The Tophet was the actual cemetery. The 'rights' of child sacrifice are what is referred to as the Molk Sacrifice as in the Semitic languages it was written and referred to as MLK.
There is plenty of evidence that the practice was common among Semitic people with the Jewish people being of course the main contingent to reject the practice.
The interpretation of the practice will probably always be open for rigorous debate. However, it seems as if 2 primary factors played a part:
- The children were perhaps those of important members of the community
- The children were perhaps already ill and their life expectancy was not expected to be long anyway (based on analysis of remains in the tophets of Carthage & Motya)
In Phoenicia proper Baal would indeed have been the primary deity honored in the sacrifice and in Carthage it would have been Baal or Tanit.
- The children were perhaps those of important members of the community
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I love pagasai.
LW, a necro response just for you...
After pouring through fascicule after fascicule in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum I have to add one to the list that may (according to some scholars) have a bearing on what (Archaic era) artistic depiction Pegasus may have evolved from:
The Hippalektryon! or the "Cock-Horse"
They were depicted on archaic Attic black figure ware often enough that they must have had some mythological importance but the ancient sources on mythology are mute. The only person who ever wrote about them was Aristophanes (5th-4th Century BC), but their significance to the by-gone Archaic was lost even to him...
"Aye, by the Powers, and full many a sleepless night have spent in anxious thought, because I'd find the tawny Hippalektryon out, what sort of bird it was!" - Frogs, 929
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The excelent point made by Pantaghatus brought another thing in my attention. That is the religious value of animal killing. In romanian traditional society the killing of pigs for Christmas was done on Ignat (22 december) and acompanied by diverse customs, rather prechristian, with obvious mystical connotations. Likewise about lamb killing before Easter.
I have no ideea if romans and greeks had similar habits but this could be the origins of animal sacrifice. First they give a religious meaning to the killing then religious meaning takes precedence but practical considerations are still important.
If instead of saying "I'm going to butcher the ox with the usual celebrations" I say "I'm going to offer an ox to Zeus and we are going to eat it" the only thing I do it's to place the accent on a different aspect of an activity that combines both religious and practical elements.
Thanks Kosmo,
This is pretty much the point I was about to make to bring the thread back around again to Cato
Not as excited about Ancient Greek history. Why?
in Historia in Universum
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It's a great example. Cumae (+ Pithekoussai) was the transmission point of orientalizing influences (alphabet, art, socio-religious institutions, etc...) into Etruria and Latinum in the Archaic causing a critical mass to be reached that laid the foundation of the greatest Empire ever known.
However, there is barely a single book in print on the history of the city by itself; usually it's only found worthy of footnotes or small chapters in compilations. Of the less than handful ever written or translated into english on the city, the newest was published almost 10 years ago and before that almost 40 years ago. The rest were either publish before the 1920's or are reprints of books written before the 1920's. (and there are only 1 or 2 of those that I've found)