sullafelix

How curious a post the above. Who copied and archived much of Latin literature while educational standards all but disappeared in the former Roman Empire? The Benedictines preserved much of Roman agricultural science as well. Not really. Just who was it who lowered the educational standards in the first place, and placed Biblical study in its place? The Christians. At least in the west. But even in the east many books were burned. I hardly think they are worthy of being congradulated for their destruction. I think we are rather missing the point here. However the Christians preserved the works of the previous age doesn't matter. They did so. Without them we do not know whether the works would have been saved. Education would have changed anyway because the empire was changing. Some aspects of Roman education survived a very long time. St Patrick and Gt Gildas were both educated by a Rhetor. I am not a Christian myself but there is altogether too much Christian bashing that goes on in the study of Roman history. You have to ask why Christianity spread and became so popular in the first place? It offered a way out what was for most people a terribly hard life. The monastic movement would have been a step up in living conditions for other people. So they burned a few books...what would there have been under another religion..no-one can ever know. The list of things preserved is enormous and most of it not by accident..Cicero, Caesar, Ammianus Marcellinus, Livy, Polybius, Cato, Columella, Varro, Pliny, Horace, Virgil, Catullus (surprisingly!!! maybe this is what monks read for fun)... the list is vast. There are no quick answers in history

It's a difficult question. You could say that the Vestal Virgins were monastic in their lifestyle and no doubt there were other cults which had some sort of closed order structure to them. However, it was really the ascetic aspects of some early christianity that started the monastic movement which had more to with a life of contemplation and self denial. The monastic movement started in the middle east with the Desert Fathers. That was in the early fourth century with the appearance of the radical zealot Anchorites and Hermits in the aftermath of Julian's reign in Syria and Egypt Hope that helps

Poor sods!

Wow cheers guys that's actually rather useful! I have some evidence that Pliny was talking about urban collection in that he talks of finding hair from the curriers shops (tanners) in the manure and also that the refuse from human banquets was good. These examples appear in the same sentence and so I guess he is referring to both as being urban activities, I think the waste of the city may have ended up in the immediately adjoining agricutlural land. The only question is how far afield did it go? Thanks for all your help guys

I think Pliny the Elder had one or two things to say about the greeks as well. He blamed them for every depravity that the Roman empire was by then suffereing. The list goes on, but one of them OI sem to remember was selling the oil that was scraped from the bodies of successful athletes or something like that. Generally what we are talking about is decadnec adn I am with Cato on this one. The only foil to the personal ambition set of the Roman Republic was the personal austerity of the Romans themselves. Take that away and they and blood thirsty and sexualy debauched as well as being debauched whille eating lark's tongues and otters noses. Worst thing that happened to 'em the hellenization..take my word for it!

Hullo I have some really appetising topics of conversation I know. But I was reading Pliny (Elder) and he talks about manuring the fields with human dung. I was wondering if anyone knows whether there were nightsoil collectors in urban areas. I know that the sewerage and everything was top notch (What have the romans ever done for us etc!) but I was wondering if you knew at all Another thing, what was done with the human waste from large households, did they have a midden or something? All help as usual gratefully received. :bag:

I think we are fiorgetting something here guys! Christians were persecuted for two main reasons, the lesser of which was an unfortunate misunderstanding about the communion leading to accusations of cannibalism and the second which is much more important here is that Christians could not swear their oath of loyalty to the emperor. Augustus claimed divine lineage the Christians would have had to beg to differ on that one. the problem is that Christianity is an exclusive religion, not polytheistic and therefore posed a threat to the stability of the empire. Augustus was, if I remember rightly on this one, none to fond of threats to the stability of the empire.

Blimey how did I miss the rest of that...I shall hang my head in shame...thanks for that...two heads are indeed better than one. In fact any addition to my own brain power is usually welcomed!!

Hey got it! For your information, I have just found something in Aulus Gellius (Iwas that desperate!) Book X.XXVIII the age classifications worked like this possibly.... pueri less than 17 iuniores 17-46 seniores 46 + Thanks for your help though. I realise that Gellius referring to the time of King Servius Tullius is not neccessarily reliable...buts its all we have!

Now that is truly a difficult question. We can assume there was a basic standard, not only as a matter of fitness, but possibly to deny giving benefits to the descendents of a man who was already too old to give quality lengthy service. (though this is not so much an issue in the Punic War era as the later imperial age) I am not aware of a defined upper limit though, especially when talking about the Polybian age where the legions still lacked some uniformity. Even Vegetius doesn't give an upper limit for legionary recruits in the later imperial army, but rather simply extolls the virtues of recruiting young men. Polybius gets fairly detailed in his book 6, but even regarding the recruitment of actual citizen soldiers as Hastatii, Principes and Triarii, etc. he doesn't give exact ages but describes them in relative terms such as youngest, next in seniority, etc. Cheers for that, I thought it might be abit of a thorny one. I am going with Morley's estimation of iuniores making up 30% of the population at the moment. Problem is I am getting a population figure of 600,000 give or take for Italy (not including Rome, Campania, Cures and Magna Graecia - I am working on getting figures for those). Bit of a B***ger though! I am currently carving holes in Brunt's Italian Manpower...which is a lot less fun than it sounds!

There is an interesting archaeological debate raging about this at the moment. Most of the archaeological evidence we have for Italy as a whole has come from the surveying that has been done in the post-war period. The are a few drawbacks to surveying though. One of the major ones is that it is very difficult to tell from the scatter of artifacts surveyed on the surface of sites if they are the buildings of a villa or perhaps some other kind of settlement like a village. Villages did exist and they grew up in the same places one would imagine them to be, crossroads, near rivers lakes etc. Village life was probably pretty much as you would imagine it, small, and a hard grind mainly consisting of subsistence level farming. After the advent of the latifundia there was either widespread depopulation or at least a period of great economic depression for these smaller farmers. I haven't yet looked through these in detail myself yet but it might be worth looking at Virgil's Georgics and Eclogues and the Odes of Horace. Both are to an extent idealised but on the other hand they are quite accurate too. I know they are a good source on farming in general but they may contain some gems on village life. Another thing to look at would be the Biferno River Valley Survey undertaken by Graeme Barker which I think is published under the title A Mediterranean Valley or some such. It goes right from the prehistoric through into Medieval. Its very good reading actually, especially if you have an interest in archaeology.

Little help here please I am currently using Polybius' figures at 2.24 to do some population calculations for Italy. I realise that this is in itself a risky business, however, my question is this. I have a set of figures that apparently represent allied manpower. Polybius talks of men of the correct age, so presumably iuniores. This being the case what I was wondering is what was the upper age limit for a man to be enlisted in the allied section of the Roman army...anyone know? Very gratefully

familia -- the family, including the slaves Many mothers would say to that - yeah? so what's the difference!

I know you are talking about the empire here, but was Oscan still around at all by the time of Augustus?

I saw a reconstruction of the Augustus Prima Porta statue based on traces of pigment, showing that it was originally colored, with red hair. I wonder if this was the case with other statues, but have seen(nor looked for) further evidence. I believe that in many cases they were painted, certainly the Greeks did and I think the Romans followed suit although don't quote me on that

Flamin trollop! How about Commodus!!?? Not a very nice man

Ave Pantagathus: Did you read my post with a jug of falerno at hand? Actually, I thought that the BBC was wrong, so I thought that I would go to the Oracles to get the right skinney. :notworthy: P.S. Where is that place that you are from? Flamin' Nora here is the roundel which is another reason why people think he was black, Julia Domna was Syrian I believe and according to this he is signifcantly darker and so quite aprt from his african origins have used this to say that he was black...no-one knows, he may well have been. http://faculty.cva.edu/Stout/Roman/Roundel1.jpg As this is a long way into the empire peoples ethnic origins may well have been quite difficult to trace, some people moved around after all.

I can't agree that most of the Delian league members saw litle point in keeping Athenian rule. Firstly most of the states saw the point exactly and they stayed in willingly. Secondly small states had little choice not only because they would have found it annoyed Athens but because the small island states that made up the Athenian empire needed to be part of something bigger for their protection. So there is not as much logic to the statement that Athenian hegemony was not so bad as might first appear. Essentially many stayed in out of choice but the smaller you were the less choice there was in every respect and that situation was the same secod time around.

So the Republican System as it was, always had the potential to produce just such a circimstance in your view ? I think this goes back to that earlier thread you started on Reforms that could have saved the Republic. I feel that yes, the period of the Triumvirate did bring to the fore some major problems, that had not been encountered in such a manner before, along with underlying issues that had been ignored for a long time. I also think that there was something essentially floored about a system that was open to such abuse. I feel that the Triumvirate was a symptom of this floored system. The fundamental flaw in the system was, in my opinion anyway, the relationship between the search for gloria which was a personal goal and the fact that the whole political system was a military one. This meant that essentially personal ambition was written into the constitution as an excusable but inevitable accident. The Triumvirate was a product of this, the system was riddled with other conflicts too, optimates V. populares rich v poor, old money versus new, tension between the equites and the senate...It is a gross simplification to try to point the finger of blame at one moment or three people, almost all of the original symptoms that started this thread were present long before the triumvirate. To suggest otherwise frankly shows a lack of awareness of the facts.

Why do you think Roman agriculture techniques advanced so little in so many hundred years of Empire ? Got another theory ? The Aurthor mentions that the Gauls invented a corn harvester - the Romans didn't even know the wheelbarrow. (Although he doesn't footnote his source on this, which is annoying) I tend to agree with the author, although agriculture is in some ways less dependant on technology than some aspects of production or industry. It is interesting that many of the technologies Rome used she stole from conquered nations. Often she used local expertise in areas like civil engineering and imported the skills with highly trained (and I suppose valuable) slaves. So while slavery probably did stunt creativity and innovation it was often the means by which technological ideas spread through the empire.

My dismissal of the Gracchan testimony is based on the fact that Gracchus could not have in fact determined from casual observation whether the spread of latifundia were responsible for poor conditions in the countryside. That's a claim that is simply outside the power of casual observation. How do we know how much support Tiberius had from the countryside? Most of Italy couldn't vote for Tiberius, so it's really impossible to know, isn't it? And what is the reason that Tiberius had any rural support? Because his economic analysis was correct (I think not); because his desire to extend the franchise to them was popular (I think so); both; or neither? The mere fact that Tiberius had some rural support in no way speaks definitively to his claims about land ownership--he could have been supported by Italians simply because they wanted real political rights. While I take your point on the difficulty of knowing about his support it is specifically attested in the sources that a great crowd gathered from the countryside, that graffitti demanding land was found in many places in Rome. "While these classes were thus lamenting and indulging in mutual accusations, a great number of others, composed of colonists, or inhabitants of the free towns, or persons otherwise interested in the lands and who were under like apprehensions, flocked in and took sides with their respective factions. Emboldened by numbers and exasperated against each other they kindled considerable disturbances, and waited eagerly for the voting on the new law, some intending to prevent its enactment by all means, and others to enact it at all costs" Appian BC.10 Also it was not just the Italians that supported Gracchus but the urban poor as well who wanted land either to improve their lot or because they had been dispossessed in some way. Also the Italians were not by any means unanimous in their support for Tiberius, the Gracchan land comissin was stymied by the Italians protesting over losing land that they had regarded as theirs. I wouldn't say that extending the franchise was by any means popular with the Italians. They had been offered it partly as a sop over losing land, and partly because I think Tiberius probably had quite a strongly held belief that this was the right thing to do. If the Italians wanted citizenship so badly at the time they had a very funny way of showing it.

I would disagree, Rosenstein writes well and the book is superb. [...] I agree that the case for the case of the latifundia taking over has not been proven as yet. Then I think we end up agreeing. To my mind, whether Italy was swallowed up by latifundia is an unproven claim. The Gracchan testimony is just that--hearsay evidence, nothing more. Rosenstein offers a compelling counter-explanation for the decline in Italian population, but (as he would be the first to admit) his case still needs more evidence. In general we may be in agreement, but the Gracchan testimony cannot be dismissed as hearsay unless you can explain the actions of of his predecessor. "These the rich men employed in cultivating their ground of which they dispossessed the citizens. Caius Laelius, the intimate friend of Scipio, undertook to reform this abuse; but meeting with opposition from men of authority, and fearing a disturbance, he soon desisted, and received the name of the Wise or the Prudent, both which meanings belong to the Latin word Sapiens. " Plut Tib.Grac.8 Or are you saying that all ancient source material can be dismissed when it doesn't suit us? This was more than propaganda, if we look at Tiberius support it was often rurally based. Something was happening in the countryside we just don't know what. In response to the orginal bit of this thread though it is an interesting question I would say that private land ownership certainly predates the mid 4th century BC because Roman property laws were well attested by then.

I would disagree, Rosenstein writes well and the book is superb. However, I think the question of Depopulation and the growth the latifundia is far from resolved. Firstly the most recent archaeological work is tending to back up claims of rural depopulation in the second century (Liverani Papers of the British School 1984 and Patterson et al ibid 2004 if you have access). There is a gap in the ceramic chronology that has until recently been interpreted as either conservatism in form or evidence of economic crisis. The conservatism in form theory has been pretty much dismissed now but the economic crisis one has not. I tend to think that economic crisis would lead to a certain amount of depopulation anyway, especially in the regions closer to Rome. The final and obvious interpretation is that a lack of pots tends to point to a lack of people. There was also significant population migration caused by the search for better rights (ie latin or citizenship). Etruria certainly was depopulated, this is well documented it was a foul and malaria riddled place. I agree that the case for the case of the latifundia taking over has not been proven as yet. However, I think we need to be careful with talking about archaeology as concrete evidence (no pun intended) it is as open to interpretation as literary source analysis and these interpretations change as our knowledge moves on. Twenty years ago everyone would have agreed that the Gracchan tradition was in danger of looking like nothing more than propaganda but these days the same archaeologists are talking in terms of crisis at this time. Personally I suspect that the lack of latifundia may in part be down to interpretation (everyone is looking for Cato's villa!), in part to regional differences in Italian farming that are not explored well enough as yet (guess what my current research is!) and in part (and this at the moment is an entirely unsubstantiated hypothesis..er a guess in other words!) I suspect that rural depopulation did come before the main thrust of the latifundia movement and we have been in wrong in ascribing a causal relationship. However, I think that the link was certainly there to some degree. It may be that we have compounded errors that the Romans themselves made about the causes of their problems. All shooting down in flames type replies welcome...I have to defend my position I guess

I voted for Septimius Severus, more out of affection than anything else. Much more sinned against than sinning

I think that the tetrarchy was less of an innovation than it looked at first sight. It only divided the empire along the lines in which it was already divided. In that much the system lasted quite well anyway. The problems lay with both the succession and with the complexity of the bureaucracy. As for the empire being divided in two it had been for quite a while anyway by language and culture.