Pantagathus
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Posts posted by Pantagathus
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Speaking of the first artifact shown in that article, interesting that a Christian Knight would use Phoenician scipt...
If it's genuine, the author gives a totaly wrong atribution to the creator. It's just a shame I'm not an epigrapher. I can recognize the incription as a variant of Phoenician script but cannot read the message. Which if I were to guess, would mostly give thanks to Baal and say nothing about Jesus, Jews, Templars etc... Even if they were to find 1000+ year old Phoenician documents in the cities they held during the Crusades, I doubt they would miraculously be able to read them...
Furthermore, if it's not a hoax, it's further proof of Phoenician contact with America. I've seen that hairstyle (of the 'Knight') before on Punic coins from Sicily ~ 5th Century BC...
I do believe in Pre-Columbian contact, but the assertions of that article are contrary to much of the true scholarly research out there.
I refer anyone to the works of Dr. Barry Fell if you're intrigued by this subject or the following the work of the following professor:
Cheers!
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The Empire recovered fine after folks like Nero & Caligula.
Commodus squandered the great work of all his immediate predecessors and it was all downhill from there.
With Valens, I don't think things would have ended up much differently if it had been someone else in there.
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I'll point to a quote from one of the best sources of this kind of stuff. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), William Smith (Editor):
The general similarity between their dialect and that of the Oscan was probably the cause that they adopted with facility in the more southern regions of Italy, which they had conquered, [p. 866] the language of their Oscan subjects; indeed all the extant inscriptions in that language may be considered as Sabello-Oscan, and have probably received some influence from the language of the conquerors, though we have no means of estimating its amount. The original Sabines appear to have early lost the use of their own language, and adopted the general use of Latin; which, considering the rugged and secluded character of their country, and their primitive habits of life, could hardly have been the case, had the two languages been radically distinct.So as Lacertus has said they were not Greek as that notion came from Roman poets who fancied the Sabines as being like the Spartans (in manners and institutions).
If you take the clue from William Smith and consider the evolution of their use of Latin from Sabello-Oscan that they were most probably indiginous Italians to the point of being one of the earliest Indo-European migration groups.
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Now that sounds interesting. Do have any more information on that?
And what about the 'Amazons' that the Greeks believed in? I saw a documentary not too long ago where some sekeletons were found in Asia which were thousands of years old but the DNA indicated that they had blonde hair and blue eyes. Is it possible that the 'Amazons' were a small tribe of Europeans that migrated to a part of Asia?
Ok, so I
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1000 years? Is there evidence about these Veneti being that much more advanced in naval technology?
I liberally use that figure primarily because the Veneti ships as discribed by Ceasar seem to have had a lot in common with Viking longships which roughly came along ~1000 later.
Primus Pilas brings up an excellent point beyond my statement of the Veneti. Especially in the case of the Phoenicians being subjugated by land lubbers then absorbed into Rome...
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I would definitely love to see what they can find and bring up. The story also reminds us of how much is not to be found anymore due to people like the guy who took the ram...
I also wonder how much there is to find? What comes to my mind is the fact that the Rostra (especially during the Republican period) was apparently lined with the beaks of defeated ships. What that infers to me is that unlike 'modern' warfare where the objective is to sink the enemies vessel, the ancients would first attempt to shear the oars off the enemy ship to make it easier to send marines aboard. The beaks & rams came into play if that objective could not be met... I think?
I mean even the warships carried an amount of valuable 'booty' that if you could keep it from ending up on the bottom wouldn't they? -
The Britain and Irish Celts had some boats too. But I cannot find any description of their boats.
Seems like all any other source gives them ('Celts' in general) credit for is coracles... Which, given the account of the Veneti ships and the archeological evidence pointing to massive Atlantic sea trade from as far back as the Bell-Beaker culture, I find this hard to believe.
However, to explore this in an effort to hit less dead ends, I would venture to say one needs to look more to the Q-Celtic peoples (Spain & Brittany) for evidence of nautical legacy & innovation. The P-Celts (from Gaul & central Europe) though they were second to 'invade' the Brittish Isles were for the most part landlubbers (& probably did only use coracles)
It seems to have been proven finally with DNA testing that there is a dense, Iberian (spanish) genetic heritage in the modern Irish population & I doubt they made that migration in coracles... It seems likely that most Iberians (Celts & non-Celts alike) would have picked up a decent bit of maritime know how from the Phoenicians who traded extensively with them.
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I was googling for info on Rome- can't remember the specific issue- and one of the returned links brought me here.
Ditto :pimp:
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Thanks Favonius!
I think the best sources for this kind of lore lay in the geographers. Strabo, Diodorus, an Pliny are chock full of these little hints, whispers & anecdotes. However, Herodotus contains tons of facinating clues as well.
I'll try and remember the details of more and post here. (Like the pale blond nordic babes that ended up being preistesses in Delphi(?) after travelling from near 'Ultima Thule' with a diplomatic mission)
In the meanwhile, please also visit my thread 'the Tartessian Puzzle' as it pertains to an aspect of what your asking for in this thread.
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For now I'll stick to the ancients:
1. Polybius (terse yes, but that man was extremely insightful)
2. Livy (becuase he did his research & for including interesting anecdotes on superstitious happenings of a given year...
) 3. Herodotus (I mean common!)
What, no Tacitus?
Favonius,
I think Tacitus was an excellent historian of course! However, since this was asking for favorites, I left him off because my interests lie more in pre-Imperial Rome. I don't reference him as much, that's all.
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Oh ya! I totally forgot about them. Didn't Caesar have to island hop almost to capture each of their cities? I thought I remember reading that. Has there been much archaeological work on the Veneti?
He had a tough time of it but he was determined to met out vengence on them for hacking up a few of his embassadors...
As to archeological work, I would first point you in the direction of Barry Cunliffe (Especially in his book 'Facing the Ocean')
Unfortunately, the minute they appeared in historical record is the same instant they disappeared. Ceasar completely obliterated them without any care for what they may have been able to offer in the way of naval engineering. Of those he left alive, ~60,000 were immediately sold into slavery.
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For now I'll stick to the ancients:
1. Polybius (terse yes, but that man was extremely insightful)
2. Livy (becuase he did his research & for including interesting anecdotes on superstitious happenings of a given year...
) 3. Herodotus (I mean common!)
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The Veneti had a considerable fleet in northern Gaul... ...Its described in De Bello Gallico, book 3, up to about chapter 20 or so.
It is an absolute shame that Ceasar's account is not more well known. I've read that even in the days where folks had to read De Bello Gallico in 'prep' school, Book 3 was skipped...
The account is absolutely compelling and will change all preconceptions of ancient mariners being scared of mighty Oceanus. In fact the mental picture that Ceasar paints evokes a sense of Viking longship (which came ~1000 years later) on steriods.
Alas, the Veneti ships were built to do battle with the ocean in the pursuit of trade and not to do battle with oared Triremes full of Roman marines. Once the romans clipped their rigging they couldn't manouver.
A tidbit:
"For their ships were built and equipped after this manner. The keels were somewhat flatter than those of our ships, whereby they could more easily encounter the shallows and the ebbing of the tide: the prows were raised very high, and, in like manner the sterns were adapted to the force of the waves and storms [which they were formed to sustain]. The ships were built wholly of oak, and designed to endure any force and violence whatever; the benches which were made of planks a foot in breadth, were fastened by iron spikes of the thickness of a man's thumb; the anchors were secured fast by iron chains instead of cables, and for sails they used skins and thin dressed leather. These [were used] either through their want of canvas and their ignorance of its application, or for this reason, which is more probable, that they thought that such storms of the ocean, and such violent gales of wind could not be resisted by sails, nor ships of such great burden be conveniently enough managed by them. The encounter of our fleet with these ships' was of such a nature that our fleet excelled in speed alone, and the plying of the oars; other things, considering the nature of the place [and] the violence of the storms, were more suitable and better adapted on their side; for neither could our ships injure theirs with their beaks (so great was their strength), nor on account of their height was a weapon easily cast up to them; and for the same reason they were less readily locked in by rocks. To this was added, that whenever a storm began to rage and they ran before the wind, they both could weather the storm more easily and heave to securely in the shallows, and when left by the tide feared nothing from rocks and shelves: the risk of all which things was much to be dreaded by our ships. -
I imagine that in a very broad sense the myth had/has it foundation in a bit of reality. The ancient world was a very fluid place with races moving around and colonizing quite a bit especially after the great upheaval that acurred around the time of Troy (the Sea Peoples, Doric invasion, etc...) It's pretty well accepted that the Etruscans came from around Asia Minor.
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Well, what does Gorilla mean?
"Leaving this place, we sailed along the burning coast for three days and came to the gulf named the Horn of the South. At the end of it was an island like the first one, with a lake in which was another island full of savages. The greater parts of these were women. They had hairy bodies and the interpreters called them 'Gorillas'. We pursued some of the males but we could not catch a single one because they were good climbers and they defended themselves fiercely. However, we managed to take three women. They bit and scratched their captors, whom they did not want to follow. We killed them and removed the skins to take back to Carthage. We sailed no further, being short of supplies"
Even though Hanno wanted to find Pygmies, this is what his local interpreters led him to as mentioned above.
So, the greek translation of the original Punic inscription that was hung on a metal plate in the Temple of Cronos in Carthage gave us the word gorilla. It appears that the word gorilla (meaning the same today as it did to Hanno's african guide) is simply a transliteration of the original, aboriginal root word passed through subsequent semitic & indo-european translations.
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I think the Romans thought that the Libyan desert was the end of the world, perhaps?
Generally, the ancients considered trans/sub-Saharan Africa as being made up of two types of people:
1. Ethiopians, which literally meant 'burnt faces' i.e any black Africans
2. Pygmies, which they considered as dwelling near the source of the Nile (but actually more like the Congo)
Depending on how educated they were I would say that many were aware of the continent beyond the Libyan desert, they just didn't know how far it went. For one, Herodotus mentioned a clockwise circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenicians which would have peaked their interests. Then, once Carthage was taken and their libraries were copied, the Romans became aware of the Hanno Periplus...
Hanno was a Carthaginian general from the mid 5th Century BC who explored the African coast down to about modern day Cameroon after dropping off some colonists. The funny thing about the story is he wanted to bring back pygmies to prove he did it but through a miscommunication with his african guides ended up killing Gorillas... In fact the word Gorilla is a legacy of that journey (so is said)
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According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman prisoners were used by the Parthians as guards on their eastern frontier in what is today Turkmenistan. From there, Dubs conjectured, some escaped and joined the Huns as mercenaries. In 36BC, Chinese troops on a punitive venture defeated the Hun ruler Zhizhi in today's Uzbekistan. Among their captives they found 145 Romans. Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu
This is what I remember reading. That 10,000 legionares were taken as slaves by the Parthians. Apparently they even taught those folks to build decent fortifications for a city only to be sacked by the Chinese who took the survivors prisoner...
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And Lucullus rarely gets enough credit for virtually stifling resistance before Pompey even showed up.
The 'luitenants' never get their fair shake do they... Lucullus owned Pontus as well
Kinda like Laelius with Scipio.
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Maybe a poll on who had the greater gall.... I think Sulla would give Caesar a run for his money....
Sulla > Pompey
It makes me so mad that Pompey gets all the credit for winning the Mithridatic Wars... Sulla owned that...
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I'm amazed that G.J.Ceasar has beaten P.C.Scipio Africanus Major by that much!
Rome became a world power because of P.C.Scipio's brilliance on the battlefield and contrary to propaganda he never let it get to his head. Furthermore, he introduced new tactics to the Roman Army (+ the use of the Gladius) that would be used for centuries...
Ceasar was no doubt a bad a$$ but he lacked the finesse that Scipio employed in getting the most strategic benefit out of a victory. I mean, it's my view that Ceasar single handedly put naval technology behind ~1000 years by completely obliterating the Veneti...
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It does seem to be a good rule of thumb that about 50 years has to pass before rational discussion can occur about an emotional event, or in this case an out and out horror in terms of eugenics.
See, because of the Holocost especially people equate 'eugenics' in contemporary society with genocide.
As a classical scholar I think about in the purely Spartan frame of mind, basic survival of the fittest + hastening the departure of the obviously weak (through passive means...) to the greater benefit of mankind. I.E Not wasting precious resources on lost causes in the benefit of entropy.
At present, I see the discussion of modern eugenics focussed in the dilema of gene therepy, stem cell research etc..
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I wonder what the psychology was being the creation of a god that was lame?
Very interesting that someone brought this up...
The reason Vulcan and Hephaestus (whom he was modeled after) were lame had to do with with a reality of the very early bronze smiths. (Who were viewed as gods ~2500 BC)
Early bronzes were not copper-tin alloy but copper-arsenic! After years of working the furnaces the early smiths would eventually feel the poisonous effects of the arsenic exposure and would suffer from considerable nerve damage.
Anyway, back to the question posed in the original post. Since there are so many to chose from I would have to say:
1. Minerva
2. Mater Matuta
3. Bacchus
4. Meditrina
5. Priapus
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From all the things I've read on the subject of Bronze vs. Iron (& early steel) it always seems to point to the fact that good bronze (with the right amount of tin ~11%) made better armor & weapons that it's iron counterparts. Primarily this was due to bronze's resistance to oxidation compaired to iron (which made it weapon material of choice to ancient marines well into the iron age.)
It seems that the primary reason for the general switch was purely due to economy and not performance. Iron & early steel could be produced in larger quantities at a much cheaper price without having to worry about securing precarious overland and oceanic routes which had been controlled by the Phoenicians & Massalian-Phocaeans since the very late Bronze Age (i.e. Tin from Gallaecia & Cornwall). By the time Julius Ceasar conquered Gaul and Augustus brought Gallaecial Spain finally under submission the Romans had proved that they really didn't 'need' tin bronze for making war.
However, one must remember the other very important use of bronze in the ancient world beyond weapons: Statues
Statues were of course mostly made to be dedicated to Gods... If you don't have the Gods' favor all the weapons available didn't mean squat...
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I have to agree that Christian doctrine changed these things. It comes down to the shunning of eugenic doctrine and embracing all of humanity & it's weaknesses...
Hopefully this is a phase that will pass in a few hundred+ years and humans will focus on the benefits of eugenics once again.
It's a shame that you can't even talk about eugenics these days without being considered a genocidal baby killer by most...
New Historical Fiction Novel
in Colosseum
Posted
Skarr,
If you don't mind me asking, who is your publisher? I'm in the process of writing one (a H-F novel) and it's always good to know who will invest in this genre...
Kind Regards,
Sean