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Number Six

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  1. Number Six

    xenarchus of selucia

    I cannot provide you with a bibliography for such a wide topic. Anyway, why are you dismissing Cicero so promptly? He's perhaps the most important intermediary between Greek philosophy and the political thought that led to the Principate. And indeed there is copious bibliography on Cicero's political thought. But not only on him
  2. Number Six

    xenarchus of selucia

    I can't help you with Xenarchus, but there is copious production on Octavian's political philosophy background: it's basicly covered by the studies on the age between the Scipios and Octavian himself, mostly being concerned with middle Stoa, Polybius and Cicero's political thought.
  3. Number Six

    Nero sent scouts into Sudan?

    I don't think I ever heard of it, but I'm not surprised either. There were trades between Egypt and India already under the Ptolemies, via Red Sea: those trades became meaningful under the Roman Empire and there is even a literary text from the 1st century that describes the routes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea. I'm not surprised that they explored the inland of routes which were sizable enough to burden the Roman finances. I don't think there is much more to know on the episode you reported, except putting it into the context which is given by the fact that ancient Romans were active out of the Mediterrean Sea more than we tend to believe.
  4. Learning Latin is a slow process, don't expect great results within one year. If I think of my progress after the first year of High School, hell, not much to be excited about. And you wanna be self-taught, even worse. Furthermore, you're never ever gonna learn proper Latin unless you use it, use it and use it again on a regular basis. On topic, I may have goals for 2014, but I haven't set them yet. Still completing 2013 ones
  5. I don't agree. Divine filiations are a wide theme in the Hellenistic ecumene. I don't see why should we reduce it to a relation between Jesus and Titus, while there's an obvious relation between Jesus, Titus, and much more. But I don't assume you're aware of this, since you think one can come up with an understanding of Christianity after reading just a few texts contemporary to the Gospels.
  6. Number Six

    Such thing as Labor Historians?

    There is such a thing as labour history. There is also a discipline called industrial relations, which is a shared field between history, sociology, law and economy. Theoretically there are many figures who'd be interested on your material, granted that it is a meaningful one.
  7. Anyway, I am still waiting for the Antonine Constitution rap that was advertised in the title.
  8. Number Six

    Why Latin died out

    English pronunciation is quite difficult for many non native speakers. On the other hand, I never thought of Latin as a difficult language to pronunce. Relativity.
  9. Of course you can. I'm just saying your statement isn't helping to think of it crirically either. If you wanna critically challenge that statement, you should try to answer the questions that I suggested: What were the rights, what the obligations of Roman citizens at that point? What the rights and obligations of non Roman citizens? How did their life change? Personally I am not scholarly interested on the Antonine Constitution and I cannot help you much. But a simple search on JSTOR gives me numerous entries, although many of them are in German.
  10. You can't just say 'it must have meant something and who ever said otherwise must be a moron'. What were the rights, what the obligations of Roman citizens at that point? What the rights and obligations of non Roman citizens? How did their life change? There is plenty of historians who analysed the issue. Anyway, some historians argued that the Antonine Constitution didn't give citinzenship just to every free man of the Empire.
  11. Number Six

    free Rome books for kindle?

    archive.org has some good stuff from early 20th century. But how is Kindle with PDF files? I mean, I tried to read some PDF on my Kobo Aura and I decided I'll just read PDF from my computer.
  12. Number Six

    Did Julius Caesar get raped like in Sparticus?

    He did not get raped as far as we know, but he was allegedly homosexual. Catulus sometimes mocks his homosexual behaviour, but the source of the rape idea is more likely to be the anecdota about Caesar's alleged relation with the king of Bithynia in Suet. Jul. 49: 'queen of Bithynia' was he named.
  13. Number Six


    Depends on what period are we talking about. The third century was still a learned era. Just think of personalities like Origen. A contemporary of Origen was Modestinus, the last of the great jurists of the late Roman Empire: when Gregorius flourished, before the end of the third century, law studies still meant something. On the other hand, if we consider the two following centuries, which is when legal knowledge went largely lost before the brief Iustinianian revival, we find that bishops were appointed for all kind of offices in the public administration, and held functions that dealt with trials: for example, according with CTh 16, 11, 1 (399 CE) trials de religione would have bishops as prosecutors.
  14. Number Six


    Rome had different kinds of priests. The pontifices were actually lawyers: they were experts of ius sacrum, which was a part of ius publicum (and originally, like before the Twelve Tables, they were experts of law altogether, since the whole of the law was not a secular matter). The ius sacrum continued to exist for long as a part of the ius publicum: still Constantine would found Constantinople by following the rites of consecratio which were regulated by the ius publicum / sacrum. But I would doubt that ius sacrum, at that point, was still prerogative of priests, for the simple reason that law was heavily secularized already since a while, so you would not need specialized priests for whatever rites still held in public law. Of course you'd still need priests to perform them (Constantine himself was pontifex maximus like any emperor up to Gratian), but that's nothing like the late republican age. On the other hand, I am not aware that the priests of the state cult needed any extensive legal training, and I don't see why they would. All in all, bishops inherited some of their functions from pagan priests, but I think that their education comes from another element of their role in the Christian empire. Like some scholars pointed out (I'm thinking particularly of Peter Brown), bishops replaced the (secular) urban elites in the management of local administration. Law must have been an appealing career for that kind of social class, whether they became bishops or not.
  15. Number Six

    How Britannicus really murdered?

    The kind of philosophers that usually are (or should be) ignored by historians are the philosophers who write historical or semi-historical works. Obviously I don't mean that philosophers are or should be ignored on other matters, for example on method. I mean, one thing is basing one's historical work on Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge, which any historian may indeed benefit from, another thing is basing one's historical work on Foucault's History of Insanity which, while having some good ideas, is sloppy and inaccurate on the level of scientific historiography. The result of historians going too much after historical ideas of philosophers is apparent in the bullshit produced by hegelian historians up to few decades ago. That's why I say that the historical ideas of any given philosopher may not be necessarily of concern for historians and history.