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cruxlover said:
If I was on the Nile I would go ashore and hook up with one of Cleopatra's handmaidens. (Best not to get too cosy with the Queen it didn't do Mark Anthony any good).
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OTOH, Julius Caesar had a ball. ;)
 

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cruxlover said:
Them old Greeks and Eygyptians knew a thing or two.
But it does not compare with the artistry of Viking ships, for elegance of line and economy of construction. I know which vessel i would rather be aboard in the Atlantic Ocean or North Sea.
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So a cool music!
Björn Olsson - 1995
 
An new view of Nero -

"This book portrays Nero, not as the murderous tyrant of tradition, but as a young man ever-more reluctant to fulfil his responsibilities as emperor and ever-more anxious to demonstrate his genuine skills as a sportsman and artist. This reluctance caused him to allow others to rule, and rule surprisingly well, in his name. On its own terms, the Neronian empire was in fact remarkably successful. Nero's senior ministers were many and various, but notably they included a number of powerful women, such as his mother, Agrippina II, and his second and third wives, Poppaea Sabina and Statilia Messalina. Using the most recent archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and literary research, the book explores issues such as court-politics, banter and free speech; literary, technological and scientific advances; the Fire of 64, 'the persecution of Christians' and Nero's 'Golden House'; and the huge underlying strength, both constitutional and financial, of the Julio-Claudian empire."

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academ...mperor-and-court?format=HB&isbn=9781108472647
 
Eulalia said:
An new view of Nero -

"This book portrays Nero, not as the murderous tyrant of tradition, but as a young man ever-more reluctant to fulfil his responsibilities as emperor and ever-more anxious to demonstrate his genuine skills as a sportsman and artist. This reluctance caused him to allow others to rule, and rule surprisingly well, in his name. On its own terms, the Neronian empire was in fact remarkably successful. Nero's senior ministers were many and various, but notably they included a number of powerful women, such as his mother, Agrippina II, and his second and third wives, Poppaea Sabina and Statilia Messalina. Using the most recent archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and literary research, the book explores issues such as court-politics, banter and free speech; literary, technological and scientific advances; the Fire of 64, 'the persecution of Christians' and Nero's 'Golden House'; and the huge underlying strength, both constitutional and financial, of the Julio-Claudian empire."

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academ...mperor-and-court?format=HB&isbn=9781108472647
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I once read, somewhere, that upon securing the principate after the Year of the Four Emperors, Vespasian told his musicians to "Play some of the Master’s songs!"

He meant Nero. It would seem he wasn’t like Peter Ustinov singing off-key while Rome burned.

 
Apostate said:
I once read, somewhere, that upon securing the principate after the Year of the Four Emperors, Vespasian told his musicians to "Play some of the Master’s songs!"

He meant Nero. It would seem he wasn’t like Peter Ustinov singing off-key while Rome burned.

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Well I suppose it helps if you can advise anyone who doesn't like your singing
that they'd better run home and commit suicide! :devil:
 
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Eulalia said:
An new view of Nero -

"This book portrays Nero, not as the murderous tyrant of tradition, but as a young man ever-more reluctant to fulfil his responsibilities as emperor and ever-more anxious to demonstrate his genuine skills as a sportsman and artist. This reluctance caused him to allow others to rule, and rule surprisingly well, in his name. On its own terms, the Neronian empire was in fact remarkably successful. Nero's senior ministers were many and various, but notably they included a number of powerful women, such as his mother, Agrippina II, and his second and third wives, Poppaea Sabina and Statilia Messalina. Using the most recent archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and literary research, the book explores issues such as court-politics, banter and free speech; literary, technological and scientific advances; the Fire of 64, 'the persecution of Christians' and Nero's 'Golden House'; and the huge underlying strength, both constitutional and financial, of the Julio-Claudian empire."

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academ...mperor-and-court?format=HB&isbn=9781108472647
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It is well known that Nero was very popular with the common folk in the empire. It was rumored that he didn't die, but was in hiding and would return. Many looked forward to that.
It is speculated this is the reason the Book of Revelations seems to refer to threats from Nero (the number of the beast, 666, is code for Nero) twenty years after his death. Remember, he instituted the first systematic persecution of Christians after the great fire and for them he was very evil. But there is grafitti in Ephesus, near where Revelations was written, praising Nero and wishing for his return. Seems he had enemies in Rome but was loved in the rurals (like someone currently hated in blue states but beloved in Arkansas)
 
Not a Roman resource, but a good review of the archaeological evidence, such as it is,
for slave-raiding and trading by the Vikings:
 

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Eulalia said:
Not a Roman resource, but a good review of the archaeological evidence, such as it is,
for slave-raiding and trading by the Vikings:
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Thank you. What I find interesting is that horrendous as it was (and as large in scale as it was), the white European/American African slave trade was far from the only slave trading problem.
(1) Muslims did it. Swahili has a lot of Arabic words. The Sahel has many centers of the slave trade. It was organized, like the European operations.
(2) Present day Amerindians in the Amazon do it. They raid and carry off women.
(3) Sacajawea of Lewis and Clark fame was a Shoshone woman living in a Mandan village and married to a white trader. While guiding the expedition, she was able to reunite with her brother in the far northwest. The leader of the Comanches in the Red River War of 1874 was Quanta Parker, a "half breed". His mother had been kidnapped when she was around nine, and thoroughly Indianized. She was "rescued" as an adult (her husband was killed), but Quanta escaped leading his little brother's horse to a successful evasion as well. His mother and her baby daughter didn't get away, and she never reintegrated into white society. The Comanches drove the Apaches into the Arizona/New Mexico badlands. The Sioux /Cheyenne alliance was at constant war with the Shoshones and Crows (a good source of allies and scouts for the United States Army). The famed "mountain man" Bill Williams who has left his name all over Arizona was killed around 1846 by a "war" party of Utes--he always went into the mountains alone to trap for furs, and he was fluent in several aboriginal languages despite being illiterate.
(4) The Polynesians also carried off women and warred on each other.
The Atlantic slave trade may have been highly developed as a commercial enterprise, and that made it especially horrendous, but the idea that white Europeans brought violence and destruction to otherwise peaceful aboriginal peoples is just bunk. It was the scale and the technology, not the intent, that made the European conquests so repugnant. They didn't do anything the aborigines themselves didn't do.
 
Yes, slavery in some form or other has probably been the norm rather than an aberration in most societies throughout human history, and at many times for many people was it simply the only alternative to starvation. Slave-raiding and trading certainly weren't new in West Africa when European 'adventurers' seized the opportunity to exploit a pattern already well-established by indigenous kingdoms and Arab traders. But, as you say, the way the Europeans shipped slaves thousands of miles to colonial plantations was a new and especially brutal innovation.
 
Eulalia said:
But, as you say, the way the Europeans shipped slaves thousands of miles to colonial plantations was a new and especially brutal innovation.
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The Zanj rebels would like a word with people who think that. Given that latifundia were essentially the Roman version of plantation economics as a practice long range slave shipping is likely even older than that.
 
AnimaSinistra said:
Some more. I did not know that ancient Romans used spectacles already… :)

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In the US the big thing is Civil War re-enactments. I'm happy to see that other countries have folks as "eccentric" as we are.
(I once saw a book that listed every legion of the empire and its history. I don't know if it was comprehensive, but the fact that anyone could produce such a thing is a testament to the huge legacy both written and archeological the Romans left.)
 
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