Naked Women

Now my experts on history let get back once more to the subject of how likely it is that any group is going to be insane enough to attack a Roman shield wall naked waving swords in the manner of animals no less by one account.

Is this a at all likely event or is it likely to be a myth instead?

Hey guys use the ignor button it works.

Thanks, Sglass, I will look for it. Is it new because I havent bought a book in a long time...the Uni Library has been my main source lately.

Perhaps you should change the seat and/or location? However - pares cum paribus facillime congregantur, Cicero dixit.
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Perhaps you should change the seat and/or location? However - pares cum paribus facillime congregantur, Cicero dixit.
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Lord even a latin expert well in latin could you tell me how likely you think it is that anyone would attack a Roman shield wall naked waving swords fighting in the manner of animals?

You know guys the only one with an opinion lower then yours of me is my opinion of you fools.

It has been around for awhile. I would suggest AbeBooks online. Get a cheap copy.

Ooops ! Sorry, Sglass. Was that an sexist assumption on my part ? I really meant I should take more care when I click on reply and not do it if I have other things I should do first.

Hey guys use the ignor button it works.
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They are having far to must fun insulting me to do that my friend and if I did not think that a pile of earth worms are worth a great deal more then they are I would have my feelings hurt.

LOL

I dont know where you got that photo of me, but I was young and drunk. I have since gone on to marry women..at least two...and father 5 kids...that is to say I took the blame.

I dont know where you got that photo of me, but I was young and drunk. I have since gone on to marry women..at least two...and father 5 kids...that is to say I took the blame.
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And then you won a seat in congress as a family value candidate corect?

That is correct so of course I deny it.

It was, dipshit, something which happened when Hannibal invaded Italy in 218 BCE. The Gauls destroyed the center of Flaminius' army at Lake Trasimene after three hours of hard fighting in 217 BCE. There was no such thing as a Roman "shield wall," which was a tactic of northern European Germanic fighters a thousand years later. At Lake Trasimene the entire point was that Hannibal trapped the Romans between the lake and the high ground north of the lake. They were caught on the march, and were never able to go into formation.

That you don't believe it is immaterial to whether or not it did happen. This is no myth, it is a part of the historical record.



"The Dying Gaul," a Greek sculpture of the period immediately preceding Hannibal's invasion of Italy.

Writing of the battle of Telamon in 225 BCE, Polybius writes: "The Celts had drawn up the Gaesatae from the Alps to face their enemies on the rear ... and behind them the Insubres .... The Insubres and the Boii wore trousers and light cloaks, but the Gaesatae in their overconfidence had thrown these aside and stood in front of the whole army naked, with nothing but their arms; for they thought that thus they would be more efficient, since some of the ground was overgrown with thorns which would catch on their clothes and impede the use of their weapons." Polybius also describes naked Celts in Hannibal's army at the battle of Cannae.

Diodorus writes: "They (the Celts) wear bronze helmets with figures picked out on them, even horns, which made them look even taller than they already are...while others cover themselves with breast-armour made out of chains. But most content themselves with the weapons nature gave them: they go naked into battle . . . "

No wonder so many people here think you're an idiot, Bill . . .

On the subject of Germany, I know Augustus was having a great deal of financial difficulties, but I often wonder if the loss of three legions was more important then just money because there were genuine Romans in them.

I have never got around to researching this fully, but does anyone know if the Varus of Germany is the same Varus who was Governor of Syria ?

Alittle aside:
Augustus was visiting a rich land owner who had a pool under the house in which he bred eels for eating. If a slave irritated the owner enough, he would have them fed alive to the eels. During a dinner for Octavius, one of the slaves dropped a very valuable glass cup then froze in horror knowing that he had just ‘earned’ being fed to the eels as the glass was worth more than him. Octavius was made aware of what was intended but instead of supporting the owner as the owner thought he would, Octavius was horrified. He ordered all the glasses smashed in front of him, the pool filled in and every slave in the household to leave with him. The owner was lucky to live through the experience. Octavius was not a man you would want to anger.

The only one confused here, Bill, is you. Your English is appallingly bad. As it happens, the Romans had an empire while they were still a republic. The distinction which is made is between the republican empire and the principiate empire--not that anyone familiar with you would expect you to know that. The empire did not "break up" between east and west--that was an official policy to have an Augustus and a Caesar in each half of the empire, and to administer them individually--they were still a part of the same empire. The west did not "fall," Roman authority was simply gradually overwhelmed by the migrations of Germanic tribes. I recommend The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians, by J. B. Bury, although i don't really expect that you will actually read a reputable source.

The Turks took Constantinople in May of 1453, Bubba. That would be the 15th century, bright boy. Not all of us are confused about these matters.

What a wondrful story Ionus. Augustus is my kind of guy. I take a perverse pleasure in his action.

There is a great podcast website dealing with history that a Prof. Bob Packett and his wife produce that history fans might find interesting and worthwhile.

http://www.summahistorica.com/

Yes the two Varus was one and the same.

Second at that fairly early stage of the Empire the Legions was still mainly Romans in make up I do think.

People...
I know Bill fires you up, but look at him for who he is..someone so lonely for human contact they are prepared to accept abuse. That he has little or no human contact is what makes him annoying. Dont throw fuel on a fire. Employ Psycho-dodgical means..if you must reply to him, make it short and polite. He will learn what works, even if only by example. But at the moment he is stuck in a position where the only human contact he gets is by being annoying, so he is annoying to get the human contact. Anyway, I enjoy whacko theories because they take us momentarily away from accepted well established viewpoints whilst we have (or should have) a rethink, even if only for a second.

Do you have original sources because I am going to have to be able to quote them.

Yeah.... I like him too. Some days he wouldnt eat because he hated gluttony. His meals were of simple foods and he worked very long hours for the people. Compared to the sex life of Caesar, he was celebate. Most remember things like he executed enemies, but he seems genuinely to have been concerned about the care of the people of the empire, believed stability to be essential and himself to be the best person for the job. From what is known about him as a person, he seems to have been the Roman ideal of all that is noble which is where we get our so called Christian virtues from...Rome...not a breakaway Jewish sect.

Do you have original sources because I am going to have to be able to quote them.
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LOL sorry as far a the two Varus being one and the same I was at the time just taking the word of Harry Turtledove with his PHD in history in his new novel that I had refer to already!

Not something you can quote as a reference source even those I do not think that he would get such a fact/detail wrong even in a novel.

I check Wikipeda however and came up with the following for you with references and it look like Turtledove was not wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varus

Political career
Between 9 and 8 BC, following the consulship, Varus was governor of the province of Africa. After this, he went to govern Syria, with four legions under his command. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the swift action of Varus against a messianic revolt in Judaea after the death of Rome's client king Herod the Great in 4 BC. After occupying Jerusalem, he crucified 2000 Jewish rebels, and may have thus been one of the prime objects of popular anti-Roman sentiment in Judaea, for Josephus, who made every effort to reconcile the Jewish people to Roman rule, felt it necessary to point out how lenient this judicial massacre had been. Indeed, at precisely this moment, the Jews, nearly en masse, began a full-scale boycott of Roman pottery (Red Slip Ware). [1] Thus, the archaeological record seems to verify mass popular protest against Rome because of Varus' cruelty.

Following the governorship of Syria, Varus returned to Rome and remained there for the next few years. Following his first wife's death, he married Claudia Pulchra, daughter of Claudia Marcella Minor (daughter of consul Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor and Octavia Minor, elder sister of Augustus) and consul Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (nephew of Triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus). She was a great niece of Augustus, which shows that Varus still enjoyed political favour. They had a son, Quinctilius Varus.

In the first years of the 1st century, Tiberius, his brother Drusus, and Germanicus conducted a long campaign in Germania, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine, in an attempt at a further major expansion of the Empire's frontiers, and a shortening of its frontier line. They subdued several Germanic tribes, such as the Cherusci. In AD 7, the region was declared pacified and Varus was appointed to govern Germania. Tiberius, who would later succeed Augustus as Emperor, left the region to deal with a revolt in Pannonia and Dalmatia, in what is now the Balkans.

[edit] Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

References
^ 66 A.D. - The Last Revolt (DVD). History Channel.
^ Suetonius, Vita Divi Augusti 23.49, [1]
The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells, W. W. Norton & Company, October 2003, ISBN 0393020282, ISBN 978-0393020281
Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest (Hardcover) by Adrian Murdoch, Hardcover: 256 pages, Publisher: Sutton Publishing (June 14, 2006), ISBN 0750940158, ISBN 978-0750940153
The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves, 1957, Penguin Books; Also available from Project Gutenberg: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
A Roman Encyclopedia by Matthew Bunson, 1995 Oxford Paperback Reference
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Modern Library
Annals by Tacitus (various editions). Summarizes reports of later Romans who found the battlefield.
Compendium of Roman History (Res gestae divi Augusti) by Velleius Paterculus, Harvard University Press; 1924. Brief mention of the Varus Disaster by the author, who was serving as a staff officer with Tiberius in Pannonia at the time.
[edit] External links