Discussing History: 3rd-5th Centuries & Dark Ages

[nannoh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus - which has Spartacus born in Thrace, so he could have been Bulgar or Slav.

Spartacus: leader of an army of runaway slaves that infested Italy in 73-71 BCE. He was defeated by the Roman general Crassus.

http://www.livius.org/so-st/spartacus/spartacus.html

Plutarch on Spartacus
http://www.livius.org/so-st/spartacus/spartacus_t01.html

http://www.unrv.com/roman-republic/spartacus.php

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/spartacus.html

http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/people_n2/ppersons2_n2/spartacus.html

I always wonder these days, which site has the original text, and which sites are copies.

Now this looks promising!

Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics
http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/papers/subject/subject/romanhist.html

Very nice! Thank you Astronuc. A wonderful Christmas present!

It'll be a while before I get through these links... many thanks again!

It must have been quite inspiring for those people oppressed by the Roman occupation of so many nations. I read once that Sparticus actually sent funds to the Hebrew liberation movement to help with their cause of sovereignty. This seems a bit impossible considering the dates.

 

[Astronuc]

Digressing back to the 3rd, 4th & 5th centuries - this is an interesting period.

I was reading Dahmus's book last night and it gives a summary of the 3rd century with the progression of Roman emperors - known as the Barracks Emperors - those who came up through the military and the majority who we killed, sometimes by their own troops. Here is Wikipedia's article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracks_Emperors and the article on the turmoil of the 3rd century - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century

The troubles began in 235, when the emperor Alexander Severus was murdered by soldiers at the age of 27 after Roman legions were defeated in a campaign against Sassanid Persia. As general after general squabbled over control of the empire, the frontiers were neglected and subjected to frequent raids by Carpians, Goths, Vandals and Alamanni, and outright attacks from aggressive Sassanids in the east.

Finally, by 258, the attacks were coming from within, when the Empire broke up into three separate competing states. The Roman provinces of Gaul, Britain and Hispania broke off to form the Gallic Empire, and two years later in 260, the eastern provinces of Syria, Palestine and Aegyptus became independent as the Palmyrene Empire (with Sassanid backing), leaving the remaining Italian centered Roman empire proper in the middle.

An invasion by a vast host of Goths was beaten back at the Battle of Naissus in 268. This victory was significant as the turning point of the crisis, when a series of tough energetic soldier emperors took power. Victories by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus over the next two years drove back the Alamanni and recovered Hispania from the Gallic Empire. When Claudius died in 270 of the plague, Aurelian, who had commanded the cavalry at Naissus, succeeded him as emperor and continued the restoration of the empire.

The Roman empire was faced with rebellions or attacks from all over - Britain, Gaul, Germania, Dacia, Syria, Palestine and Aegyptus, and Mesopotamia and Persia.

The Barracks Emperors were followed by the Illyrian Emperors, of whom Diocletian was the first and Constantine (I) the fourth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_Emperor

See also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concis...Rulers_during_the_Crisis_of_the_Third_Century

Jumping a bit ahead to the latter part of the 4th Century, the Gothic War (377–382) (which could be considered the second Gothic War) is considered the first of a series of events the would lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire. In particular, the second Battle of Adrianople (now Edirne) is often considered the start of the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.

Adrianople has been the site of several significant battles over the last 1700 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Adrianople_(disambiguation)

 

[Astronuc]

. . . Spartacus born in Thrace, so he could have been Bulgar or Slav.

Strike the Bulgar since they were not in the Balkans until 200 years after Spartacus's birth date.

I was wondering if Spartacus was Thracian (or Dacian), and if so from Hellenic Thrace (south of Rhodopian mountains) or from north of the Rhodopian mountains, e.g. around Plovdiv or Varna or . . . . or was he already a slave in Thrace, i.e. of some other ethnic group from the east or north.

 

[Evo]

Astronuc, can't wait to discuss these periods with you, I've just been so busy.

 

[Astronuc]

Two significant writers/historians of the period (4th cent) are Ausonius and Ammianus Marcellinus. Before that were Tacitus and Plutarch (1st-2nd cent), which makes me wonder about those of the latter second and third centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausonius (born at Burdigala (Bordeaux) and lived nearby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianus_Marcellinus (possibly born/lived in Antioch (now Syria))
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~drijvers/ammianus/biography.htm
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~drijvers/ammianus/

http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/ammianus_bio.html

Another version of the Battle of Adrianople (378)
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/378adrianople.html

Dahmus ponders - had Valens only waited for Gratian to arrive from the west. The motivation for the Goths to move south at this point was the Hun invasion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns#2nd-5th_centuries

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521846331/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Key Conflicts of Classical Antiquity) (Hardcover)
by Michael Kulikowski


http://www.roman-emperors.org/bd306.htm - Major Battles

http://www.roman-emperors.org/Index.htm - Maps

I think one has to look at internal and external sources of the decline of the Roman empire, which seems to apply to most large (overextended) societies. In short - internal decay undermines the ability to withstand external pressures.

As for the Goths - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/jordanes-goths20.html - rather disappointingly short.

Meanwhile in the east - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/vopiscus-aurelian1.html


Dahmus indicates that while the tribes (e.g. Goths) were "inferior in number, in terms of warriors they were not, since all able bodied men fought." In fact "they fought with devotion of fathers and husbands anxious over the fate of their families, as constrasted to the many halfhearted, self-serving soldiers who joined the Roman army for a means of livelihood." Elsewhere Dahmus address the fact that the Roman military, particularly on the frontiers, because increasingly reliant on non-Romans for military service, and this likely had the effect of undermining a commitment to Rome and the Empire.

Internally, as emphasized by the majority of scholars, there was a gradual decline in the 'public spirit' and 'morale' and a growing unwillingness of members of the citizenry to serve in the army (military). Public spiritness was replaced by corruption of the Senatorial aristocracy and imperial bureaucracy, and the 'love of country/empire' was replaced by apathy of the masses.

There were constant political struggles between the central authority (Emperor/Senate) and the outlying provinces, which would assume some level of autonomy depending on whomever ascended to governor of the local area.

Might as well add this to the discussion -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigoths#Kings_of_the_Visigoths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaric_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataulf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigeric (king for seven days in 415 CE) - seems Visigoth rulers were also assassinated - not just Roman Emperors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric_I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanes - Historian from 6th cent.

 

[Astronuc]

Also, add a discussion on the Juthungi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juthungi - an Alamannic tribe.

The meaning of their name is “descendants”, and refers to the ancient Suebian tribe of the Semnoni.

The Juthungi invaded Italy in 259–260, but on their way back they were defeated near Augsburg on 24–25 April 260 by Marcus Simplicinius Genialis (this is recorded on a Roman memorial stone found in 1992). At this time the Roman Empire lost the Limes area in this region. Between 356 and 358 the Juthungi and the Alamanni invaded the province of Raetia, and destroyed Castra Regina (the Roman capital of the province, and one of the biggest Roman military camps in south Germany, with massive stone walls and a village). A second invasion of Raetia in 383 was repelled by an army of Alans and Huns. Between 429 and 431 the Roman general Aëtius also fought against the Juthungi in Raetia.

There doesn't seem to much else about them.

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans - an Iranian or Persian people

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


There are lots of peoples/tribes/clans from the Iberian peninsula to the Central Asia/Steppes to Persia and Mesopotomia/Arabia and Egypt/Ethiopia - and it is complex to say the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png

 

[Astronuc]

More interesting references -

Chris Wickham, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199212961/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Paperback), Oxford University Press, USA, New edition (January 12, 2007)

Julia M. H. Smith, https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199244278/?tag=pfamazon01-20, Oxford University Press, USA (September 15, 2005)

Michael McCormick, https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521661021/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Hardcover), Cambridge University Press (February 11, 2002)

Thomas Noble, https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415327423/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Paperback), Routledge; 1 edition (April 12, 2006)

Walter Goffart, https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812239393/?tag=pfamazon01-20, University of Pennsylvania Press (June 30, 2006)

and

Peter Heather, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195159543/?tag=pfamazon01-20, Oxford University Press, USA (December 1, 2005)

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Rome generated its own nemesis. Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors it called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling the Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. Heather is a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians. In The Fall of the Roman Empire, he explores the extraordinary success story that was the Roman Empire and uses a new understanding of its continued strength and enduring limitations to show how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled it apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival. Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

The part I bolded doesn't really sound original, but simply seems to paraphrase Joseph Dahmus and others. Even Dahmus indicates that earlier historians pretty much reached the same or similar conclusions.

 

[Astronuc]

One more reference on the Battle of Adrianople (Hadrianopolis)
http://www.roman-empire.net/army/adrianople.html

The Battle of Adrianople on 9 August AD 378 was the beginning of the end for the Roman empire.

The Roman empire weakening, then the barbarians were on the rise. Rome was no longer in its prime, yet it still could muster a tremendous force.

The western empire at the time was ruled by Gratian, meanwhile in the east was ruled by his uncle Valens.

If it wasn't this battle, it could have been another. The Roman Empire was so big that it was subjected to pressure on many fronts.

Several Germanic Tribes from the north and west, actually many, were attracted to the warmer weather, the culture, the wealth, and the military conflict. Slavic and Turkic tribes from the east were migrating, especially once the Huns invaded from the far east. In the south and south east, there were pressures from Persia, and later Arabia and Turkic tribes.

Internally, emperors and generals plotted against one another. During the early Middle Ages, emperors and generals were are constant risk of assassination.

And another resource on the Middle Ages - http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/firsteuro/chapter.html

 

[Astronuc]

Putting the third century in perspective -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_century

 

[Francis M]

I love history. It was my favorite subject in HS, and still is. You folks are way over my head in the level of details and information on most of this stuff it would seem.

 

[Evo]

I love history. It was my favorite subject in HS, and still is. You folks are way over my head in the level of details and information on most of this stuff it would seem.

Not at all, an absolute novice at history can join, which is all we are, we're just citing online references for the most part. Most of my reading of history was before the internet, so mostly from books, some magazines. The internet really broadened my horizons because for the first time I could read about things that weren't in my local public library branch.

Feel free to join in or add references.

 

[Astronuc]

I love history. It was my favorite subject in HS, and still is. You folks are way over my head in the level of details and information on most of this stuff it would seem.

As Evo mentioned, jump in. This is the place to share resources and insights.

I just started reading Stephen Mitchell's, "A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-461," the period beginning with the ascension of Diocletian and ending with the death of Heraclius. I quite enjoy it because there is an introductory discussion on the process of reporting history and some commentary on sources. The second chapter is a discussion of the 'The Nature of the Evidence' in which Mitchell discusses the types of ancient writings and their perspectives. It's too bad the more of the pagan and secular writings were not preserved.

In Mitchell's book, there is a reference to the Cambridge Ancient History, a multivolume set. I looked on line and the entire set is about £1800 (~$3600US)! , but the individual volumes are £120 (~$240 US). Volumes 12-14 cover the late Roman Period.

Volume 12: The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337
2nd edition
Edited by Alan Bowman, Averil Cameron, Peter Garnsey

Volume 13: The Late Empire, AD 337–425
Edited by Averil Cameron, Peter Garnsey

The Cambridge Ancient History
Volume 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600
Edited by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Michael Whitby

http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/uk/browse/browse_all.asp?subjectid=1009088

But wait! At Amazon the full set is only: $2,835.00 (1/13/07) - get it while supplies last!

Meanwhile, I found this interesting discussion -
http://www.dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos/1999/rhodes.html

See also - http://www.dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos/
and
http://www.dur.ac.uk/classics/

I do find the internet very useful, but I still prefer books. :tongue2:

 

[Francis M]

Well Thanks you two. I haven't read up much on these periods, but I'm goign to try and find more inforamtion on them. I also find interesting the early period of Rome's rise and developement. In essence it's start (when it was a bunch of separate city states) when it was still developing into the ROme that everyone is familiar with.
The last book I read was "The Russo-German War 1941-1945" I rather enjoyed it because it detailed both the battles and the politics and policies within both the Russian and German military machine at the time. It practically laid out how the seeds for the destructuion of the Wermacht was planted before the war was ever opened on that front. But I've digressed. There's been plenty documented about WWII, on to other subjects!

 

[Astronuc]

The Dark Ages - History Channel

After the fall of Rome and before the rebirth of the Renaissance, Europe survived six centuries of continental revolution characterized by famine, plague and bloodshed—a time known as the Dark Ages. At its worst, life in the Dark Ages was miserable, brutish and—for the fortunate—short. But through the darkness shone scattered rays of light, men and women who tended the flame of progress while the world around them descended into chaos. Those points of light brought about the footprint of modern Europe both politically and culturally. The two-hour special THE DARK AGES explores the unprecedented period spanning the fall of Rome and Europe’s “medieval awakening.”

The Dark Ages on the History Channel - premieres Sunday, March 4, at 9 p.m. ET/PT
http://www.history.com/marquee.do?marquee_id=53127

Should be interesting.

It'll be interesting to see which persons are considered significant by the creator/author.

 

[light_bulb]

the problem is that the romans would invade gaul, kill whoever then when fighting with persia employ the tribes they sacked previously. this backfired more than once until they prefected the technique of getting everyone to do the killing and/or marrying into anyone who threatened the city. one thing that sticks out in my mind is the location of italy and that rome is quiet or complacent when a war breaks out.

thanks history channel

 

[Evo]

Ooooh, thanks Astronuc, I didn't know! I will definitely watch! My favorite book on the dark ages is by Michael Wood.

 

[Astronuc]

I will definitely watch! My favorite book on the dark ages is by Michael Wood.

Hmmm! Another book to add to my library. :uhh:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0816047022/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Paperback)
by Michael Wood

 

[Evo]

Hmmm! Another book to add to my library. :uhh:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0816047022/?tag=pfamazon01-20 (Paperback)
by Michael Wood

You won't regret it. Wood writes with so much genuine interest and excitement that his works are an absolute joy to read.

 

[Astronuc]

Video clips from http://www.history.com/marquee.do?content_type=Marquee_Video_Clips&content_type_id=53134&display_order=3&marquee_id=53127

Quite a good summary of the history.

 

[Evo]

Video clips from http://www.history.com/marquee.do?content_type=Marquee_Video_Clips&content_type_id=53134&display_order=3&marquee_id=53127

Quite a good summary of the history.

AARGGGH, I sent you a PM.

 

[Astronuc]

AARGGGH, I sent you a PM.

Not to worry, I've got it covered. Meanwhile, your PM inbox is full.

Ah, ha! The History Channel is selling the program on a DVD.
The Dark Ages DVD Collection
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=77335
It will be available May 1, 2007.

The Dark Ages collection is 5 DVD's - including the 2 hr Dark Ages, and 4 DVD's on the Barbarians. Apparently it is Barbarian Week on the History Channel with episodes devoted to specific barbarian tribes, like the Huns and Goths.

 

[Francis M]

What I saw of the show was very enjoyable. UNfortunately I didn't catch the complete run.

 

[Astronuc]

A dark day for Scotland - 300 years ago today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707

The Acts of Union were a pair of Acts of Parliament passed in 1706 and 1707 (taking effect on 1 May 1707) by, respectively, the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. The Acts were the implementation of the Treaty of Union negotiated between the two states.

The Acts created a new state, the Kingdom of Great Britain, by merging the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. The two countries had shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, but had retained sovereign parliaments.

The Acts of Union dissolved both parliaments and replaced them with a new Parliament of Great Britain, based at Westminster, the former home of the English Parliament. This is referred to as the Union of the Parliaments.

While there had been three attempts in 1606, 1667 and 1689 to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament, these were the first Acts that had the will of both political establishments behind them, albeit for rather different reasons. In the English case, the purpose was to establish the Royal succession along Protestant lines in the same manner as provided for by the English Act of Settlement 1701, rather than that of the Scottish Act of Security 1704. The two countries had shared a king for much of the previous century. The English were now concerned that an independent Scotland with a different king, even if he were a Protestant, might make alliances against England.

It is important to note that the Acts that had the will of both political establishments behind them, but not the will of the people of Scotland.

 

[Astronuc]

I just stumbled across this. The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages are a period of interest. Interesting parallel between Rome and Washington. It should make for an interesting read.

Excerpt: 'Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11074833

NPR.org, June 18, 2007 · THE CAPITALS: Where Republic Meets Empire

The empire of the Romans in the West, its origins tracing back more than a thousand years, drew its last breath in 476 A.D., when a barbarian army led by a warrior named Odoacer, half Hun and half Scirian, defeated an imperial army that his barbarians had only a few months earlier been a part of. Odoacer captured and killed the imperial commander. He entered the city of Ravenna, then serving as an imperial capital, and deposed a youngster named Romulus Augustus, who had reigned as emperor for little more than a year. Odoacer was scarcely less worthy of authority than many previous usurpers. He was in fact well schooled in the ways of Rome, and he was a Christian, as most Romans by then were. There was no social implosion after he seized power, no rape and pillage. Rome didn't "fall" the way Carthage had, six centuries earlier, when the Romans slaughtered the inhabitants and razed the city, or the way Berlin would, fifteen centuries later, blasted into rubble. Rome itself wasn't touched on this occasion, and throughout the former empire life went on, little different for most people in 477 from what it had been in 475. Many regions had been autonomous for years, under barbarian rulers who gave lip service to the titular emperor. In Italy the Roman bureaucracy continued to sputter along.

What changed was this: Odoacer was not recognized as legitimate by the eastern emperor, in Constantinople. There would never be another emperor of the West. The historical symmetry is almost too good to be true — that the last emperor's name, Romulus, should also be that of Rome's founder. (Imagine if the demise of America were to occur under a president named George.) But more than symbolism was at play. Odoacer understood full well that something had come to an end: he declared himself king of Italy, and sent the imperial regalia of the Western empire to Constantinople. The pretense of Western unity was abandoned. Europe would now become a continent of barbarian kingdoms — in embryo, the Europe of nation-states that exists today.

Thirteen centuries later, on a gloomy evening in 1764, gazing out from a perch on the Capitoline Hill, above the overgrown debris of central Rome, Edward Gibbon was seized with a sense of loss as he contemplated the collapse of a civilization. Monks sang vespers in a church nearby. Gibbon resolved at that moment to undertake the great project he would call The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. "I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first trod, with lofty step, the ruins of the Forum," he later wrote. A decade after this twilight epiphany Gibbon's restless pen evoked the collapse of the empire: "Odoacer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy, over a people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. . . . The least unfortunate were those who submitted without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist." Gibbon's life was in many ways a sad and lonely one, but The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was recognized at once as a masterwork, its sonorous cadences enlivened with a dry and biting wit. He observes gratuitously of a monk named Antiochus, for instance, that "one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant." Although his picture of the fall may be more cataclysmic than the immediate reality seems to have been, Gibbon established for people ever after that a page of history had been decisively turned. In the West, "decline and fall" has been a catchphrase and a source of anxiety ever since.

The city of Washington, of course, also has a Capitoline Hill — Capitol Hill, named explicitly for its Roman forebear. The view to the west takes in a vast expanse of classical porticoes and marble monuments; gilded chariots and curtained litters would not seem out of place against this backdrop. Washington rose out of a malarial marsh on a river upstream from the coast, as Rome did. Its people, like the Romans, flee the sweltering city in August. The Romans cherished their myth of origin, the story of Romulus and Remus, and on the Palatine Hill you could be shown a thatched hut said to be the hut of Romulus — yes, the very one. Washington doesn't have anything quite like the hut of Romulus, but on Capitol Hill you can find sacred national touchstones of other kinds, such as the contents of Lincoln's pockets when he was assassinated. (They're in the Library of Congress.) Washington resembles Rome in many ways. The physical similarities are visible to anyone. The similarities of spirit are more salient. Materialistic cultures easily forget that "mental outlook" is not some limp and passive construct, of interest chiefly to anthropologists. Mental outlook can drive events and change the world, as the rise of militant Islam makes plain. Washington, too, has been animated by a special outlook. Long ago it was a notion of republican virtue that Romans of an early era would immediately have recognized. Today it's a strutting sense of self and mission that Romans of a later era would have recognized just as readily. Foreigners are well aware of this outlook, friends and enemies alike. It's a pungent quality — an internal characteristic that gives rise to outside counterforces.

. . . . more at NPR.org

 

[Astronuc]

Is this the massacre that the movie Gladiator alludes to? (Romans go after Maximus's family to rape, murder and burn the entire village.) Remember, Maximus is a Spaniard -- a barbarian.

Maximus is a fictional character, and according to the movie Commodus kills Marcus Aurelius then tries to have his some of his guard kill Maximus and sent soldiers to kill Maximus's family (wife and son, as son would be heir and rival). It's historical fiction.

Apparently Commodus did participate in some gladiatorial sport -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus#Commodus_the_gladiator

Commodus was poisoned, which he survived, but then was strangled in his bath.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus#The_end_of_the_reign_.28192.29

Incidentally -

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in March 180 (in Vienna), and was succeeded by Commodus. The opening scene of the film Gladiator is based upon the last victory of Aurelius and the Roman armies over the Marcomanni ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcomanni ), one of the German tribes of south-central Europe during the third quarter of the second century CE ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcomannic_Wars ). The last battle of the 2nd Marcomanni war was fought 179-180. One of Roman commanders was Marcus Valerius Maximianus.

See also - http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/marcomanni/classical-sources.html

The History of Germany: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time

William George Kerr, A Chronological Study of the Marcomannic Wars of Marcus Aurelius, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, 295 p.

Abstract: Princeton University. The thesis is a reconsideration of several questions of chronology and interpretation concerning the Marcomannic wars of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is argued that, already before Verus' Parthian triumph in October 166, major Roman initiatives on the northern frontier were in train which indicate a planned offensive, not a defensive reaction. These plans were thwarted, partly by plague, but mainly by the abruptness of the attack whereby, in the summer of 167, the Marcomanni and Quadi pierced the limes and reached northern Italy. Dislocation in the coin supply, the effects on the careers of several Roman officials, and the creation of a special praetentura to guard the Alpine approaches to Italy in 168, supplement the meagre literary evidence to give a date of 167 for this invasion, rather than the commonly held 170. After a tour of the Danube lands in 168 and the death of Verus early in 169, Marcus made Carnuntum his headquarters for three years. A peace with the Quadi enabled him to focus a great Roman offensive on the Marcomanni in 170. This offensive was disastrously defeated; the praetentura held the Germans out of Italy, but the provinces were devastated, and the limes were breached at several other points. But by the end of 172 the Marcomanni had come to terms. Arguments purporting to date the 'weather miracles' to 172 or 173 are based on misinterpretations of evidence on the coins and the column of Marcus. In 173 the Iazyges were defeated in Pannonia, and again, in the winter of 173/174, in a battle fought on the frozen Danube. Beginning in 174, the evidence of the column comes into play; it helps date the 'rain miracle' against the Quadi to this year, followed shortly by the 'lightning miracle' against the Iazyges, with Marcus, now based at Sirmium, in attendance. By the opening of the campaign of 175, the Quadi and Marcomanni both had treaties; nothing here indicates an annexationist policy. As for the Iazyges, some sources mention extermination as a possible Roman objective, but not annexation. In any case, a successful offensive against the Iazyges was interrupted by news of Avidius Cassius' eastern rebellion. News of Cassius' assassination reached Marcus shortly after his peace with the Iazyges, but he contented himself with the exaction of large military levies from the Danubian tribes. By 177 the northern provinces were again insecure; Marcus sent tried commanders to the lower Danube. The attention of Marcus and Commodus was focused on the Marcomanni and Quadi when they left Rome in August 178. A hard-fought victory in 179 was followed by the physical occupation of the territory of the Marcomanni and Quadi; to judge by the column reliefs, the war was one of slaughter and intimidation, and annexation seems the inevitable aim. But any such plan lost impetus after the death of Marcus in March of 180. Even after a successful campaign, Commodus withdrew Roman forces south of the Danube; not even after his triumph did he affect GERMANICUS or SARMATICUS on his coinage. [Author]

Andras Mocsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia: A history of the middle Danube provinces of the Roman Empire (The Provinces of the Roman Empire)
Amazon -


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

For those interested in archeology -
http://www.carnuntum.co.at/content-en/from-the-world-of-archaeology-1

 

[Astronuc]

I caught some of Michael Wood's Story of India tonight on PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/

Wood's programs are always excellent.

 

[Evo]

Yes, I watched them. He's my favorite. I thought I mentioned his series on India in another thread. Ah yes, "men cannot enter with open heads".