Professor of Classical History, Classics, and Archaeology. Also American politics Supervisors: Tiberius Julius Caesar - Princeps Senatus - Pontifex Maximus - Cos V Phone: 510-642-xxxx Address: UC Berkeley History of Art (Rome, Greece) 431 Doe Library Berkeley, CA 94720
BOLLETTINO della SOCIETÀ PIEMONTESE DI ARCHEOLOGIA E BELLE ARTI 4 , 1918
This is a very curious article to include in the library of Ara Pacis scholarship. During and imm... more This is a very curious article to include in the library of Ara Pacis scholarship. During and immediately after WW I the notion spread to reunite the Ara Pacis in a museum on the Campodoglio as a symbol of the Italian victory in the Great War over Austria and Germany-think Arminius/Hermann-as if it should celebrate a pan-Italian monument. There was some thought of calling it the Ara Pacis Italiae instead of the Ara Pacis Augustae. Various archeological societies and government officials were recruited and correspondences launched to enlist the support of the king and prime ministers to push this project forth. Politicans sent letters of support, but the project did not execute. Despite the noble goals of the 1919 movement, the plan stalled until Mussolini used the 2000 th anniversary of Augustus' birth (1937) as a pretext to make it happen. Gaius Stern Seduta amministrativa del 3 febbraio 1918.
Atti del 1 Congresso nazionale di studi romani 1 , 1929
Löwy considers sections of two Horace poems directly relating the the message of the Ara Pacis in... more Löwy considers sections of two Horace poems directly relating the the message of the Ara Pacis in this 1929 short article. He also considers the identity of the goddess on the rear wall in the so-called Tellus Relief. I did not re-translate the Latin which I have translated elsewhere, as many other scholars quote the same passages.
Part 2 is devoted to Drusus but also includes the end notes.
See abstract for part 1 to see the r... more Part 2 is devoted to Drusus but also includes the end notes. See abstract for part 1 to see the rest.
THE LACK and, at best, the insufficiency of a contemporary coin iconography, the natural resembla... more THE LACK and, at best, the insufficiency of a contemporary coin iconography, the natural resemblance between the members of the gens Claudia of three generations,1 the aspiration of the members of the first generation to resemble Augustus, of the second and third generations to resemble to Tiberius, with the confusion that arises with the members of the house Julia 2 for the first generation and between the same members of the Claudian house with each other for the other two; the complication, which arose from the fact that individuals loved to adapt their image to that of the princeps in vogue and that the same portraits of the princes were replicated, increasingly generically, for at least 50 years, all this complexity of factors has confused and made extraordinarily difficult the iconographic investigation of the numerous characters, gravitating around or in the shadow of Augustus, and amply justifies the uncertainties, the wanderings, the palinodes of scholars particularly versed in the problems of portraiture. ... The Italian archaeologist Laura Fabbrini (1926-2014) pursued the study of the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus the Elder in the footsteps of Ludwig Curtius, “Ikonographische Beiträge zum Porträt der Römischen Republik und der Julisch-Claudischen Familie I,” Röm. Mitt. 1932-35. Curtius examined many other prominent Romans at the end of the Republic and into the principate. This study will be of some interest to Ara Pacis scholars, because, with good reason, she uses the figures on the Ara Pacis as standards for the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus. I have transcribed the Italian to appear on the proper page and as much English as I could on the same pages. Fabbrini wrote with end notes. I much prefer FNs, but I could not fit them on the same page, so I reluctantly retained end notes, which appear at the end of Part 2. The photos are hers (marked in the text), but I often replaced them with color images of my own or that I found online. As is my normal practice, I fill in the whole name of scholars whenever I can find them, since reading V. Poulsen is not helpful -- no American would guess his first name correctly. I had to divide the paper into two files because it was too large to upload for a single file.
Ennio Quirino Visconti wrote a guide to part of the Vatican Museum, then called Il Museo Pio Cle... more Ennio Quirino Visconti wrote a guide to part of the Vatican Museum, then called Il Museo Pio Clementino, where 5-6 panels of the Ara Pacis were on display together. Here he briefly describes these pieces, which would not be correctly identified as part of the Ara Pacis for another 150 years. I added in some photos. Gaius
Hans Dütschke wrote this book before Friedrich von Duhn published his idea that many bas reliefs ... more Hans Dütschke wrote this book before Friedrich von Duhn published his idea that many bas reliefs in many museums all came from the Ara Pacis. Dütschke did theorize that the four panels in the Uffizi in Florence came from the same monument. This book was written in complex German with many sentences that were challenging to render grammatically into English. But at least they were often short. I (Gaius Stern) have added photographs of the panels. It helped me to look at the photo to figure out what he was writing. In 1880, Dütschke followed this book with an article from a talk he had delivered (I trust) entitled “Über ein römisches Relief mit Darstellung der Familie des Augustus,” also on the Ara Pacis panels.
This article stared it all! Friedrich von Duhn (1851-1930) was fairly young (28) when he wrote t... more This article stared it all! Friedrich von Duhn (1851-1930) was fairly young (28) when he wrote this six page article that proposed a number of high quality Roman bas-reliefs compose a single (lost) monument, the Ara Pacis Augustae. I rightly called him the "Father of the Ara Pacis" in my dissertation, because he is the man who put it all together. The German is VERY clunky, with extremely long sentences that appear to be composed to discourage the non-native speaker. A second 1881 article (in Italian) followed which more thoroughly made the same case. I will go about translating it after I finish Reisch and Studniczka. I recently (2017) discovered von Duhn wrote in 1885 an addendum to the 1879 article that includes the Louvre panel. It is now up at Academia.edu also.
Hans Dütschke wrote this 1880 lecture right after von Duhn's 1879 proposal that the many disperse... more Hans Dütschke wrote this 1880 lecture right after von Duhn's 1879 proposal that the many dispersed pieces were the Ara Pacis. Dütschke understandably believed the intact man at the end of the South Frieze was Augustus, (Augustus had not yet been unearthed). He did correctly realize Drusus is the man not in a toga with the military cloak (paludamentum). But Dütschke fantasized that the monument shows the dead Drusus with his family in the year ~7 BC. In many places the German is extremely complex and difficult to understand for even a native speaker -- so almost impossible for us poor foreigners. I personally think this clumsy over-elaborate writing holds back scholarship, because people misunderstand or can not understand what the German writer was trying to say. This article completely lives up to that bad reputation. I have done my best to render it more clearly in English, often rendering passive into active to simplify.
Friedrich von Duhn, “Sopra alcuni Bassirilievi che Ornavano un Monumento Pubblico Romano dell’ Ep... more Friedrich von Duhn, “Sopra alcuni Bassirilievi che Ornavano un Monumento Pubblico Romano dell’ Epoca di Augusto,” Mon. dell’ Inst. 11 (1881/82). I am on a mission to render into English all of the first 25 major articles on the Ara Pacis (chronological). Now both Duhn articles, Dütsche, Milani, most of Petersen, Dissel, Sieveking, both Domaszewski articles, Gardthausen, Studniczka, and Wagenwoort are complete. Soon to come will be Avena, Amelung, Lanciani, and Monaco. Here von Duhn remakes the case of his 1879 article with greater depth and discusses certain individual figures (there he is less on target). -Gaius
The Vatican used to own the front panel of the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis. This is Helbig's B... more The Vatican used to own the front panel of the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis. This is Helbig's Baedeker entry from 1899 (updated 1912). Mostly of interest to those who want to know which panels used to be in which museums. All photos and half the translation by me. After a page break the 1912 edition follows.
For those interested in the Ara Pacis, Milani provides the opinion of the much respected German s... more For those interested in the Ara Pacis, Milani provides the opinion of the much respected German scholar August Mau from an 1890 lecture to the Academy of Naples within FN 5. Originally the notes were end notes, and FN 5 is so long I included it as an Addendum on pages 17-18. I added all of the pictures to this article. I am not certain that the head of Drusus I included (in Venice) is the one he describes. I cannot find the bearded head he mentions at all.
Milani studies the image of Drusus on the Ara Pacis and coins and verifies that Dütschke correctl... more Milani studies the image of Drusus on the Ara Pacis and coins and verifies that Dütschke correctly identified Drusus the Elder on the Firenze panels of the then unidentified Ara Pacis. I have added a few coin images courtesy of my friend David Freeman at Wildwinds.com.
Rudolfo Lanciani provides a very early entry on the Ara Pacis fragments and its purpose well befo... more Rudolfo Lanciani provides a very early entry on the Ara Pacis fragments and its purpose well before it reached popular attention. Somehow, he was able to read Petersen's 1894 upcoming article.
The most interesting part of this paper is the chart on page 193 that shows Petersen's original r... more The most interesting part of this paper is the chart on page 193 that shows Petersen's original reconstruction of the Ara Pacis including some pieces that do not belong and the erroneous Numa panel on the rear. This 57 page paper concerns the proposed reassembly of the Ara Pacis that did occur about 1903 with Petersen's input. Scholars today should marvel at how much P got right with so little to work on, but they should also remember that P is responsible for many terrible ideas that have misled scholars since 1894 (e.g. Lucius at the Troy Games, Lupercal scene, and timing of the celebration).
Arthur Lincoln Frothingham Jr. and Allan Marquand “Archeological News,” AJA 10 (1895), 429-33, pu... more Arthur Lincoln Frothingham Jr. and Allan Marquand “Archeological News,” AJA 10 (1895), 429-33, published the earliest article I could find in English on the Ara Pacis, briefly summarizing the opinions of Dütschke (1880), Lanciani (1892), and Petersen (1894). Scholars may be amused at how far off these opinions were - but we must remember that some of the Ara Pacis still lay underground in 1895. I added the photo and key on page 431.
Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts , 1896
Schreiber disagreed with the conclusions of Wickhoff, which is the purpose of this 23 page articl... more Schreiber disagreed with the conclusions of Wickhoff, which is the purpose of this 23 page article. For Ara Pacis scholars, the point is what he thinks of the so-called Tellus Relief (really PAX). Schreiber looked at the Carthage Relief found in Cherchel and the Florentine relief = PAX. He proposed they have a common original inspiration from Alexandrine Hellenistic art. He did not think either one is a copy of the other. This translation skips the first 10 and the last 4 pages. I have replaced the photos from the article with my own and Effie Petrie's photos from the Ara Pacis. I put in three small Grimini relief photos for the reader. -Gaius
Rodolfo Lanciani wrote this excellently detailed book on Roman monuments in 1897. I have here up... more Rodolfo Lanciani wrote this excellently detailed book on Roman monuments in 1897. I have here uploaded the section on the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus so readers can see what was known in 1897, before the 1903 excavation.
BOLLETTINO della SOCIETÀ PIEMONTESE DI ARCHEOLOGIA E BELLE ARTI 4 , 1918
This is a very curious article to include in the library of Ara Pacis scholarship. During and imm... more This is a very curious article to include in the library of Ara Pacis scholarship. During and immediately after WW I the notion spread to reunite the Ara Pacis in a museum on the Campodoglio as a symbol of the Italian victory in the Great War over Austria and Germany-think Arminius/Hermann-as if it should celebrate a pan-Italian monument. There was some thought of calling it the Ara Pacis Italiae instead of the Ara Pacis Augustae. Various archeological societies and government officials were recruited and correspondences launched to enlist the support of the king and prime ministers to push this project forth. Politicans sent letters of support, but the project did not execute. Despite the noble goals of the 1919 movement, the plan stalled until Mussolini used the 2000 th anniversary of Augustus' birth (1937) as a pretext to make it happen. Gaius Stern Seduta amministrativa del 3 febbraio 1918.
Atti del 1 Congresso nazionale di studi romani 1 , 1929
Löwy considers sections of two Horace poems directly relating the the message of the Ara Pacis in... more Löwy considers sections of two Horace poems directly relating the the message of the Ara Pacis in this 1929 short article. He also considers the identity of the goddess on the rear wall in the so-called Tellus Relief. I did not re-translate the Latin which I have translated elsewhere, as many other scholars quote the same passages.
Part 2 is devoted to Drusus but also includes the end notes.
See abstract for part 1 to see the r... more Part 2 is devoted to Drusus but also includes the end notes. See abstract for part 1 to see the rest.
THE LACK and, at best, the insufficiency of a contemporary coin iconography, the natural resembla... more THE LACK and, at best, the insufficiency of a contemporary coin iconography, the natural resemblance between the members of the gens Claudia of three generations,1 the aspiration of the members of the first generation to resemble Augustus, of the second and third generations to resemble to Tiberius, with the confusion that arises with the members of the house Julia 2 for the first generation and between the same members of the Claudian house with each other for the other two; the complication, which arose from the fact that individuals loved to adapt their image to that of the princeps in vogue and that the same portraits of the princes were replicated, increasingly generically, for at least 50 years, all this complexity of factors has confused and made extraordinarily difficult the iconographic investigation of the numerous characters, gravitating around or in the shadow of Augustus, and amply justifies the uncertainties, the wanderings, the palinodes of scholars particularly versed in the problems of portraiture. ... The Italian archaeologist Laura Fabbrini (1926-2014) pursued the study of the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus the Elder in the footsteps of Ludwig Curtius, “Ikonographische Beiträge zum Porträt der Römischen Republik und der Julisch-Claudischen Familie I,” Röm. Mitt. 1932-35. Curtius examined many other prominent Romans at the end of the Republic and into the principate. This study will be of some interest to Ara Pacis scholars, because, with good reason, she uses the figures on the Ara Pacis as standards for the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus. I have transcribed the Italian to appear on the proper page and as much English as I could on the same pages. Fabbrini wrote with end notes. I much prefer FNs, but I could not fit them on the same page, so I reluctantly retained end notes, which appear at the end of Part 2. The photos are hers (marked in the text), but I often replaced them with color images of my own or that I found online. As is my normal practice, I fill in the whole name of scholars whenever I can find them, since reading V. Poulsen is not helpful -- no American would guess his first name correctly. I had to divide the paper into two files because it was too large to upload for a single file.
Ennio Quirino Visconti wrote a guide to part of the Vatican Museum, then called Il Museo Pio Cle... more Ennio Quirino Visconti wrote a guide to part of the Vatican Museum, then called Il Museo Pio Clementino, where 5-6 panels of the Ara Pacis were on display together. Here he briefly describes these pieces, which would not be correctly identified as part of the Ara Pacis for another 150 years. I added in some photos. Gaius
Hans Dütschke wrote this book before Friedrich von Duhn published his idea that many bas reliefs ... more Hans Dütschke wrote this book before Friedrich von Duhn published his idea that many bas reliefs in many museums all came from the Ara Pacis. Dütschke did theorize that the four panels in the Uffizi in Florence came from the same monument. This book was written in complex German with many sentences that were challenging to render grammatically into English. But at least they were often short. I (Gaius Stern) have added photographs of the panels. It helped me to look at the photo to figure out what he was writing. In 1880, Dütschke followed this book with an article from a talk he had delivered (I trust) entitled “Über ein römisches Relief mit Darstellung der Familie des Augustus,” also on the Ara Pacis panels.
This article stared it all! Friedrich von Duhn (1851-1930) was fairly young (28) when he wrote t... more This article stared it all! Friedrich von Duhn (1851-1930) was fairly young (28) when he wrote this six page article that proposed a number of high quality Roman bas-reliefs compose a single (lost) monument, the Ara Pacis Augustae. I rightly called him the "Father of the Ara Pacis" in my dissertation, because he is the man who put it all together. The German is VERY clunky, with extremely long sentences that appear to be composed to discourage the non-native speaker. A second 1881 article (in Italian) followed which more thoroughly made the same case. I will go about translating it after I finish Reisch and Studniczka. I recently (2017) discovered von Duhn wrote in 1885 an addendum to the 1879 article that includes the Louvre panel. It is now up at Academia.edu also.
Hans Dütschke wrote this 1880 lecture right after von Duhn's 1879 proposal that the many disperse... more Hans Dütschke wrote this 1880 lecture right after von Duhn's 1879 proposal that the many dispersed pieces were the Ara Pacis. Dütschke understandably believed the intact man at the end of the South Frieze was Augustus, (Augustus had not yet been unearthed). He did correctly realize Drusus is the man not in a toga with the military cloak (paludamentum). But Dütschke fantasized that the monument shows the dead Drusus with his family in the year ~7 BC. In many places the German is extremely complex and difficult to understand for even a native speaker -- so almost impossible for us poor foreigners. I personally think this clumsy over-elaborate writing holds back scholarship, because people misunderstand or can not understand what the German writer was trying to say. This article completely lives up to that bad reputation. I have done my best to render it more clearly in English, often rendering passive into active to simplify.
Friedrich von Duhn, “Sopra alcuni Bassirilievi che Ornavano un Monumento Pubblico Romano dell’ Ep... more Friedrich von Duhn, “Sopra alcuni Bassirilievi che Ornavano un Monumento Pubblico Romano dell’ Epoca di Augusto,” Mon. dell’ Inst. 11 (1881/82). I am on a mission to render into English all of the first 25 major articles on the Ara Pacis (chronological). Now both Duhn articles, Dütsche, Milani, most of Petersen, Dissel, Sieveking, both Domaszewski articles, Gardthausen, Studniczka, and Wagenwoort are complete. Soon to come will be Avena, Amelung, Lanciani, and Monaco. Here von Duhn remakes the case of his 1879 article with greater depth and discusses certain individual figures (there he is less on target). -Gaius
The Vatican used to own the front panel of the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis. This is Helbig's B... more The Vatican used to own the front panel of the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis. This is Helbig's Baedeker entry from 1899 (updated 1912). Mostly of interest to those who want to know which panels used to be in which museums. All photos and half the translation by me. After a page break the 1912 edition follows.
For those interested in the Ara Pacis, Milani provides the opinion of the much respected German s... more For those interested in the Ara Pacis, Milani provides the opinion of the much respected German scholar August Mau from an 1890 lecture to the Academy of Naples within FN 5. Originally the notes were end notes, and FN 5 is so long I included it as an Addendum on pages 17-18. I added all of the pictures to this article. I am not certain that the head of Drusus I included (in Venice) is the one he describes. I cannot find the bearded head he mentions at all.
Milani studies the image of Drusus on the Ara Pacis and coins and verifies that Dütschke correctl... more Milani studies the image of Drusus on the Ara Pacis and coins and verifies that Dütschke correctly identified Drusus the Elder on the Firenze panels of the then unidentified Ara Pacis. I have added a few coin images courtesy of my friend David Freeman at Wildwinds.com.
Rudolfo Lanciani provides a very early entry on the Ara Pacis fragments and its purpose well befo... more Rudolfo Lanciani provides a very early entry on the Ara Pacis fragments and its purpose well before it reached popular attention. Somehow, he was able to read Petersen's 1894 upcoming article.
The most interesting part of this paper is the chart on page 193 that shows Petersen's original r... more The most interesting part of this paper is the chart on page 193 that shows Petersen's original reconstruction of the Ara Pacis including some pieces that do not belong and the erroneous Numa panel on the rear. This 57 page paper concerns the proposed reassembly of the Ara Pacis that did occur about 1903 with Petersen's input. Scholars today should marvel at how much P got right with so little to work on, but they should also remember that P is responsible for many terrible ideas that have misled scholars since 1894 (e.g. Lucius at the Troy Games, Lupercal scene, and timing of the celebration).
Arthur Lincoln Frothingham Jr. and Allan Marquand “Archeological News,” AJA 10 (1895), 429-33, pu... more Arthur Lincoln Frothingham Jr. and Allan Marquand “Archeological News,” AJA 10 (1895), 429-33, published the earliest article I could find in English on the Ara Pacis, briefly summarizing the opinions of Dütschke (1880), Lanciani (1892), and Petersen (1894). Scholars may be amused at how far off these opinions were - but we must remember that some of the Ara Pacis still lay underground in 1895. I added the photo and key on page 431.
Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts , 1896
Schreiber disagreed with the conclusions of Wickhoff, which is the purpose of this 23 page articl... more Schreiber disagreed with the conclusions of Wickhoff, which is the purpose of this 23 page article. For Ara Pacis scholars, the point is what he thinks of the so-called Tellus Relief (really PAX). Schreiber looked at the Carthage Relief found in Cherchel and the Florentine relief = PAX. He proposed they have a common original inspiration from Alexandrine Hellenistic art. He did not think either one is a copy of the other. This translation skips the first 10 and the last 4 pages. I have replaced the photos from the article with my own and Effie Petrie's photos from the Ara Pacis. I put in three small Grimini relief photos for the reader. -Gaius
Rodolfo Lanciani wrote this excellently detailed book on Roman monuments in 1897. I have here up... more Rodolfo Lanciani wrote this excellently detailed book on Roman monuments in 1897. I have here uploaded the section on the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus so readers can see what was known in 1897, before the 1903 excavation.
Aside from my Augustan Era and Ara Pacis work, my research on POWs in the Ancient World - - Rome ... more Aside from my Augustan Era and Ara Pacis work, my research on POWs in the Ancient World - - Rome and to a lesser extent Greece - is my second field of study, and it has received a lot more interest from audiences and readers. My premise in all my work is that the Greeks spared prisoners when there was a way to make profit from them and for the most part spared fellow Hellenes unless they were retaliating for previous acts of execution of prisoners. One can see several dark exceptions, but Greeks usually did not kill other Greeks except under special circumstances. Romans had a more complex set of considerations, especially as distances and costs were on a much larger scale, whereas the sale price of individual prisoners did not greatly jump over the centuries. So if it was possible to round up many prisoners and sell them, Romans would, but if it was impractical, those POWs would be executed. The far more interesting study is how Romans regarded Romans held POW by the enemy. This lecture explored that topic to a great extent. As a rule, before 216 BC, Romans ransomed and exchanged POWs just like any other nation. But after the Battle of Cannae, the Romans refused to discuss or consider their POWs until they had won the war; such men were of no value. The good Roman soldier fights his way to freedom or falls on his sword. How and why this abrupt change took place has everything to do with the desperation of the Second Punic War.
Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 2021
The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon heroes by deliberately g... more The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word “devotion” derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and even the traitors Coriolanus and Tarpeia. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high, noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. It is therefore quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state-sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally forget. The most famous enemy practiti...
Collecting Antiquities from the Middle Ages to the End of the Nineteenth Century: Proceedings of the International Conference Held on March 25-26, 2021 at the Wrocław University Institute of Art History, 2021
Workmen repairing the foundations of Palazzo Ottoboni Almagià (today Palazzo Fiano) in 1569 disco... more Workmen repairing the foundations of Palazzo Ottoboni Almagià (today Palazzo Fiano) in 1569 discovered nearly a dozen relief panels from Imperial Rome. The Cardinale di Montepulciano purchased most of them at auction for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, however a few pieces escaped his grasp and ended up in other hands. Three hundred years later, in 1879 and 1881 Friedrich von Duhn realized that these panels and other fragments then displayed in four different museums all belonged to the same lost monument, the Ara Pacis Augustae. He overcame the very steep challenge of associating the many scattered pieces (one of which was used as a tombstone!) without the aid of photographs by laboriously learning the origin of each panel. This paper traces where each piece was displayed, how pieces of another monument were accidentally mixed into the early efforts to reconstruct the Ara Pacis, and when each museum turned over its panels, mindful that to this day the Louvre keeps an original piece.
CACW 2011 Calgary: Peasants, Potters, and Prostitutes
UPDATED Nov 2015 with an additional page (page 11)
"Today we think we know well the process by wh... more UPDATED Nov 2015 with an additional page (page 11) "Today we think we know well the process by which Romans conducted consular elections in the comitia centuriata. The equites and first class, who were the wealthiest, voted first, then the second class, and only if the matter was not yet decided did the third, fourth and fifth classes in turn weigh in. This meant candidates saw considerable reason to cater to the interests only of the wealthiest voters, but not necessarily those of the third class, much less the fifth. Nevertheless, we read on several occasions that poorer Romans attended elections, even if they were unlikely to influence the result directly for several reasons: they enjoyed the competitive nature of elections, they accompanied their patrons to demonstrate loyalty, they held out the hope of breaking close elections, and they received free food as an incentive. Livy improperly assigns class warfare to early Roman history, but if one were to take him at his word one would expect many candidates from the poorest classes to rise and challenge the status quo in consular elections, pushing for social reform. Only during the Gracchan era do we see this happen, leading us to ask what obstacles prevented the rise of a “man of the people” from gaining power. The best known models, Terrentius Varro (cos. 216), Tiberius Gracchus (tr. 133), Gaius Marius (cos. 107 ff.), and even Cicero (cos. 63) do not at all fit the expected mold of an ambitious commoner rising to the top. Even Varro, whom Livy makes out to be another Cleon – a demagogue who rose to the top by raw populism – was in fact financially far above the average Roman who most needed social reform. "
Tu Maximus ille es, unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem. With these words Vergil Aen. 6.845... more Tu Maximus ille es, unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem. With these words Vergil Aen. 6.845-46 addresses the hero of the Second Punic War, Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator, whom Poseidonius apud Plut. Fab. 19.3 calls “the shield of Rome.” Vergil, Livy, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio all commend his famous “Fabian strategy” to engage Hannibal only in a war of attrition, refusing direct confrontation until the Roman state could recover from the heavy blows its impetuous commanders had suffered at Hannibal’s hands. Fabius also famously ignored the outcry his war of attrition provoked from his angry countrymen, who wished to fight Hannibal openly, commenting that he would not be “enslaved to the very men whom he should rule and control when they go astray and have foolish whims” (Plut. Fab. 5.6). With this determination, Fabius, who enjoyed the near unique distinction of membership in both the Pontifical and Augural colleges, resorted to whatever means lay at his disposal to enforce his will upon the Roman people claiming that he was advancing the war effort, even when he used his political or religious authority to overturn an election.
One of Fabius’ so-called defensive maneuvers to thwart Hannibal, absent in Plutarch but preserved by Livy 24.8-9, saved Rome – or so Fabius argued – when he interfered with the will of the voters in the election for the consulship of 214, and forced the “prerogative century” to vote again for more capable candidates to lead the state against Hannibal. Shockingly, Fabius himself was elected (along with Claudius Marcellus) in an episode that could at best be called “electoral irregularity,” but in truth amounted to stubbornness, willpower, force, and ambition, guised as patriotic endeavor to preserve the state from itself. Furthermore, the very next year Fabius presided over elections at which his son was elected to the consulship. Given that Fabius had disqualified the more experienced candidates of 214, “electoral chicanery” better describes his actions.
From 217 - 202 eight elections saw irregularities, some of which resemble our Bush-Gore 2000 debacle, and were equally controversial. These electoral irregularities include the unprecedented failure to reach a majority (217), the nullification of the consul-designate on religious grounds (216), an episode of candidate nullification (215), three failures by parties of interest (Fabius twice, Fulvius once) to recuse themselves (215, 214, 210) from the proceedings, the election of two legally unqualified candidates (212 and 206), and finally a season marked by such bad weather that the election for 202 could not be held until after the March 15 inauguration day.
Fabius claimed that the gravity of the war forced him to intervene. This might be true, but the years 216-206 witnessed the most tumultuous decade of elections in Roman history, unmatched even by the decade (58-49) preceding Julius’ civil war against the Senate, by which time electoral chicanery and bribery had became common place.
This is the paper I had intended to read at the July 2016 Torture Conference at Oxford, had illne... more This is the paper I had intended to read at the July 2016 Torture Conference at Oxford, had illness not intervened. I thank the conference organizers for including a better version (to be written) it in the upcoming publication for the conference. The story of how Regulus, when a prisoner of the Carthaginians, denounced to the Senate a prisoner exchange from which he personally would have benefited and then kept his word to his Carthaginian captors to return to Africa and face a certain death by torture has gripped the imagination of moderns and ancients alike. Historians like Livy and Florus used it to validate Rome’s path to Empire. Poets such as Horace and Silius Italicus saw in Regulus the old fashioned virtues which made Rome great. Philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca drew inspiration in their own moral crises from his integrity, despite much torture. However, the story is not at all historical, but an invention that over time changed in purpose from honoring the memory of an undeserving, arrogant fool to promoting Roman integrity. Quite unintentionally, the torture element at the climax ran away with the story until a new theme or purpose emerged from the Regulus tale: in a paraphrase of Cato the Elder, Carthage had to be destroyed, because the Carthaginian people were so monstrous they abused a man of great integrity and virtue. For early historians, the historical Regulus was an example of how the mighty have fallen. But to their descendants, Regulus rose to great heights as a martyr for integrity and honor because he broke one sacred promise to prevent his homeland from a terrible mistake and kept a second sacred promise rather than allow his homeland to suffer the displeasure of the gods, all the while knowing he would in turn suffer the cruelest of tortures a treacherous and vile enemy could devise.
When news reached Rome in late September AD 9 that three entire legions plus auxiliaries under P.... more When news reached Rome in late September AD 9 that three entire legions plus auxiliaries under P. Quinctilius Varus had been ambushed and lost in the Teutoburger Wald, so great was the panic in Rome fearing a German invasion that Augustus at once ordered patrols in Rome to prevent any uprising, sent many of the Germans in Rome off to remote islands, drafted troops from a most reluctant and terrified civilian population, prolonged the terms of experienced governors to protect the provinces, and sent Tiberius at once to Germany to salvage the situation. Augustus himself suffered a near breakdown, during which he banged his head on the wall several times, crying out Vare, redde meas legiones! Indeed, Varus’ defeat at Teutoburger Wald had profound and immediate consequences for Rome. Geopolitically, it permanently divided Europe into German and Roman zones. This fact has so dominated scholars’ interest that other parts of Varus’ legacy pass largely unnoticed, when they too deserve attention.
Varus’ legacy also includes his own unfair disgrace as a scapegoat for the ambush, the curtailing of his descendents’ careers, an aberration in Roman policy towards POWs, an end to Augustus’ conciliation of the old aristocratic houses, and most interestingly a terrible blow to Tiberius which should have stalled his political star, but ironically, intensified it -- though at a sacrifice - because no one else could reliably handle the situation.
Although the official version blamed Varus for the disaster of Teutoburger Wald (in Latin it is the clades Variana), this was very difficult for Tiberius, who regarded Varus as one of his few friends back when times were tough back in the days of exile on Rhodes. In AD 15 when the Roman army again invaded Germany, it very nearly suffered a second ambushed under similar circumstances, exposing the difficulty Varus had faced in Germany and his unfair vilification.
But Tiberius, like Augustus before him, preferred not to rock the boat too much. After three relatively successful years of fighting, Tiberius recalled the army. Germany was not conquered, but it was wounded. The Romans captured Arminius’ pregnant wife, but never caught him. Later under Claudius, some Roman POWs, rescued during a raid in German territory, brought home stories of their suffering and some closure to many Roman families, who now heard the final end of their lost relations. As for Varus, he was neither rehabilitated, nor was he erased in damnatio memoriae. He appears – or used to appear – on the Ara Pacis, completed in 9 BC when he shared the consulship with Tiberius. He surely participated in the procession and appeared on the monument. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius had Varus’ image removed after the fact. Varus’ family lived on, but never achieved greatness (the prosecution of his widow for treason by Sejanus was unrelated to Teutoburger Wald, and Tiberius intervened to save the son). The fact that someone else later damaged his image on the Ara Pacis beyond recognition today or repair is a coincidence.
The death of Senator John McCain reminded me that I had delivered a paper on the day of the impor... more The death of Senator John McCain reminded me that I had delivered a paper on the day of the important Oregon R primary in 2008 (McCain vs Huckabee) at Western Oregon Univ. at the invitation of Dr. Benedict Lowe on the common points of the careers of Senator McCain and Hostilius Mancinus, who was a POW of the Numantines. One could update this paper in light of the disagreements between McCain and President Trump. This is the original version. Comments are welcome. gaius@berkeley.edu
Proceedings of the Xvith Intrnational Congress of Classical Arachaeology Common Ground Archaeology Art Science and Humanities 2006 Isbn 1842171836 Pags 318 322, 2006
Greek historians, such as Polybius and Plutarch, found the Roman policy to forsake Roman POWs cru... more Greek historians, such as Polybius and Plutarch, found the Roman policy to forsake Roman POWs cruel, unusual, and very effective in disciplining soldiers. Unlike Greek soldiers, Roman soldiers would not consider surrender; they either fought their way out or killed themselves. Equally strictly, at the end of a war, the Romans would demand back deserters whom they would punish by thrashing them within an inch of their lives in the Forum and then beheading them as a lesson to others.
This paper was read for me in this original draft form at the Madrid Congress "Once upon a time…t... more This paper was read for me in this original draft form at the Madrid Congress "Once upon a time…the Antiquity” during a severe illness by Erase Antigüedad, whom I thank for her help. The improved version will be published in JAS Arqueología. ABSTRACT: A classic episode of The Simpsons from Season 14 (March 2002) spoofs the Odyssey in 7:39 minutes with limited accuracy, but what the writers get right or partly right is noteworthy, since this short episode provided many young viewers with their first exposure to Greek Mythology (some of the humor is above the understanding of young viewers). This adaptation features only a few scenes from The Odyssey, in which the writers cleverly assigned mythological roles to the citizens of Springfield, based on a key personality attribute. Viewers will instantly recognize the rational for many role assignments, for example, the Sirens, who sing to the tune of “Copacabana (At the Copa)” are actually Homer’s hideous sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma, the unpleasant sight of whom utterly repels Odysseus’s crew. The writers are modern Plutarchs for rendering a new Parallel Lives between The Odyssey and The Simpsons with few misses. Overall, this brief episode hilariously presents the epic and keeps straight most themes so that even young viewers will all the more easily retain the key incidents due to the familiar cast of characters. The episode could easily fill 22 minutes, and many wish it did. The audience is invited to watch the episode in advance. https://vimeo.com/53622238
In 13 BC, Augustus and Agrippa returned to Rome after three years in the Western and Eastern prov... more In 13 BC, Augustus and Agrippa returned to Rome after three years in the Western and Eastern provinces respectively and announced the arrival of the dawn of a New Golden Age, predicted by the leading poets of the day (Vergil, Horace, Propertius) and promised in an escalating set of government decrees, coin issues, and ceremonies – most notably the Ludi Saeculares in 17 BC. Their return also provided a good opportunity to present to the Roman world an escalation of Agrippa’s status as a legal equal to Augustus, thereby both elevating Agrippa above all others and publicly demonstrating that the Augustan regime was by definition not one man rule. The Senate very conveniently cooperated by voting on 4 July to build in honor of Augustus an altar of peace, the Ara Pacis. The exterior friezes of the Ara Pacis carry 95% life-size images of the thanksgiving ceremony of its consecration to thank the gods for Rome’s success, which advertise the merits and fruits of peace, and which illustrate Agrippa’s elevated status as a second princeps. In addition, the Ara Pacis shows many friends of Augustus, almost every close and distant relative still living, and one or two former enemies who have come to terms with the regime, whose presence proves that the new, stable restored republic is vastly preferable to the chaos of civil war.
Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra, 2014
I have translated into English for scholars who wish to compare to the Italian this very val... more I have translated into English for scholars who wish to compare to the Italian this very valuable article on the history and excavations on the Mausoleum of Augustus. I find it a thorough study of the ownership and archeological projects on the Mausoleum (mentioning its other names). I am not an author, merely an translator. The authors are Nadia Agnoli, Elisabetta Carnabuci, Giovanni Caruso, Ersila Maria Loretti. I have replaced four black and white photographs with color, two of them my own. An English-only version sits on my Academia page. The article was published in _Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra_ (Roma 2014), 214-29.
Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra, 2014
I have translated into English for scholars who do not read Italian this very valuable article on... more I have translated into English for scholars who do not read Italian this very valuable article on the history and excavations on the Mausoleum of Augustus. I am not an author, only an translator. The authors are Nadia Agnoli, Elisabetta Carnabuci, Giovanni Caruso, Ersila Maria Loretti (Academia would not allow me to add them all below). This is the English-only version, but you can find a bilingual version on my Academia page and the Italian original on Carnabuci's page. I have replaced four black and white photographs with color, two of them my own. I find it a thorough study of the ownership and archeological projects on the Mausoleum (mentioning its other names). The article was published in _Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra_ (Roma 2014), 214-29. (= Apotheosis from men to Gods. Hadrian’s Mausoleum_ Catalogue of the Exhibition.
This class is an introduction to Roman Art similar to the UC Berkeley class HA 145. Increased em... more This class is an introduction to Roman Art similar to the UC Berkeley class HA 145. Increased emphasis will focus on art from the Age of Augustus (44 BC – AD 14). Our class will consist of a lecture and questions to students. Students should interrupt a lecture with questions on the relevant topics. The textbook were this class can be purchased online if the UCBX bookstore does not carry it (the CAL bookstore may make have it, call). Our survey will run in predominantly chronological rather than thematic order. In order to understand Roman Art, it is necessary to understand the context of Roman civilization. This means mastering some Roman history, classical mythology, and archaeology. It is hoped at the end of this class that students will be able to recognize 75 great works of Roman Art with the ability to discuss their significance and function in the Ancient World. Many of the pictures in the textbook will be used in presentations in class.
This class intends to familiarize students with the plot of a number of Greek myths, but more i... more This class intends to familiarize students with the plot of a number of Greek myths, but more importantly, to analyze how many of these stories contain elements of human fear and hope and repeating recurring themes. This class will not cover in depth The Iliad and The Odyssey, but will pay attention to characters up to the generation before the Trojan War as a preamble to those classes taught sometimes at UCBX. The procedure of this class is a mix of lecture and discussion. Students are encouraged to ask questions and interrupt a lecture. Considerable focus on how characters are connected to one another will help explain repeated behavior and out of type, contradictory behavior in certain cases.
This class is the first in a sequence of four exploring ancient humanities and man’s search for h... more This class is the first in a sequence of four exploring ancient humanities and man’s search for his role in the world. Our journey begins in 1200 BC on the shores of Asia Minor where the Achaean Greeks lay siege to the high towers of Troy in an effort to get back the Queen of Sparta, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Her husband King Menelaus of Sparta happens to be the brother of the High King of Greece, Agamemnon of Mycenae. Agamemnon has assembled a fleet thousand ships to punish the Trojans for their perfidity in stealing Helen, and he has compelled all of Helen’s former suitors to keep their promise to protect her husband and help him should anyone steal his beautiful bride. Our class takes place in the form of the discussion with questions and answers with some leisure time devoted to the world of Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece. Students will find it highly enlightening require familiarity with the layout of ancient Greece. At this time Athens was a very small power and played almost no role in the Trojan War, however Mycenae and Argos were major powers, as were their kings, Agamemnon and Diomedes, respectively. Every week we will discuss approximately five books of the Iliad, looking at major themes and the contributions of major characters.
In 2014 Berkeley asked me to teach the ATDP Intense Summer Latin class for HS students. ATDP mad... more In 2014 Berkeley asked me to teach the ATDP Intense Summer Latin class for HS students. ATDP made a big deal about their tough admission standards, so they told me to teach this intense class rigorously. The class had 12 students, six finished 9th grader, three were rising juniors, two were rising seniors. One was entering 9th grade. Very strangely, two had severe learning disabilities but were allowed in. Both were struggling by the end of the first week. One dropped while the other finished the class but had difficulty. The other 10 were good or excellent. We used the Latin book I wrote for this class, designed for JHS students, which had worked very well at Making Waves Academy.
We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the World War I, a global conflict that had terrible... more We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the World War I, a global conflict that had terrible consequences completely unforeseen by its participants. When Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz-Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, none of the leaders of Europe had any expectation that a major war would ensue, rather many thought it would all blow over or at most quickly resolve after another, little war. Four years later, at the cost of 16 million deaths, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire had all collapsed, but the world was only a tiny bit safer for democracy. This class will examine the great rivalries of the European powers from 1900 forwards that created the Grand Alliance System, designed to prevent war, but doomed to make that war bigger when it finally came as well as the war aims of each power that secretly planned for the inevitable war. Propaganda then and many historians since have blamed Kaiser Wilhelm II for pushing the war that he should have avoided. We will examine how correct that analysis really is. Other themes in our class will include nationalism in the early 20th century, the rise of technology as it affected war, the dynastic politics of the Great and lesser Powers, democracy versus autocracy, and in particular the end of the Anglo-French rivalry, which was replaced by a near universal dread and/or fear of the new German Empire. We will make time to examine the outbreak of the war and the hostilities throughout 1914, complete with the von Schlieffen Plan, the Russian juggernaut in the East, the rape of Belgium, and also efforts to enlist neutrals, especially the Ottoman Turks. Students in this class will have a greater appreciation for Lord Edward Grey’s quote “the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” when the full mayhem of WW I is considered.
The Aeneid in English. Heavy focus on elements and characters Vergil expanded or borrowed from p... more The Aeneid in English. Heavy focus on elements and characters Vergil expanded or borrowed from prior traditions and works. I can not find the other page for this syllabus, but Vergil's Aeneid is part of a 4 class cycle: Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Viking Saga. I taught this cycle 3 times at UC Berk Ext. The first night as an intro explained Bronze Age Greece and Italy and focused on how we date the Trojan War and the founding of Rome.
The Greeks and Romans spent considerable effort discussing the afterlife and what it was like to ... more The Greeks and Romans spent considerable effort discussing the afterlife and what it was like to be dead. In this class you examine texts that explore the way of the underworld and what people thought they could expect. In classical literature, Heracles, Theseus and Orpheus all went to the underworld and back. More famously, Odysseus goes to the land of Hades to gain information about his future from the dead Teiresias in The Odyssey. In Aristophanes’ comedy, The Frogs, Dionysus goes to Hades to bring back a great poet. Delve into the darkness that was Greek and Roman afterlife, and come away with a new understanding of what it means to be human.
Thanks to Christine Perkell who spotted my typos for Dionysus, now fixed.
Back in what now seems like good old days, SJSU offered a single class of Greek and a single clas... more Back in what now seems like good old days, SJSU offered a single class of Greek and a single class of Roman History. I taught both as if SJSU had two semesters of each, so students could take 2 terms of each with me (like Berkeley, Stanford, SFSU, and every other quality school in CA). Now the two are lumped into a single class, just like freshman Intro to Western Civ. SJSU History Dept is doing its students a disservice. This makes it impossible for the students to get a good enough education in any field of Hist (except maybe USA) to continue on to grad school.
(from 2007) This course will try to cram two semesters of the history of the world’s Greatest Empire into one term. Our survey will hit as many high points as possible without losing a cohesive, chronological narrative of 1200 years from 753 BC to AD 476. In order to try to do this, the era after AD 180 will receive less attention in order to concentrate on our central theme: the roots and connections of our own American democracy with the experiences and crises that befell Rome. This is the very best reason to master Roman history. These topics include the positive and negative effects of imperialism, expansion of the vote, the threat of tyranny, the balance of civil rights, immigration, a cold war with a foreign superpower, the changing status of women, conspicuous consumption of goods to the deprivation of others, fixed elections, and civil war. At a certain point the Roman Republic collapsed under the divergent pressures pulling it. Was this a bad thing?
Using several primary sources in translation – Roman (or Greek) historians recounting contemporary history – and from discussion in class, students will be able to address the following “great questions” of Roman history: [see syllabus]
R1B was the freshman writing class at UC Berkeley. I taught it about 6 times. Along the way I t... more R1B was the freshman writing class at UC Berkeley. I taught it about 6 times. Along the way I taught as much Greek and Roman war art as possible, starting class with a grammar unit and then turning to archeology. Although scholars from the Victorian Era and again from the Cold War used to represent the Greeks (especially the Athenians) as peaceful, democratic, and liberal, this opinion proves just as inaccurate as the old view of the Mayans. Neither the Athenians nor the Mayans were peaceful; to the contrary, both were incessantly at war. Fortunately we enjoy a wealth of documentation of how Greeks and Romans depicted war, compared to the fragmentary evidence that survives of the Maya. Greeks set up trophies at battlefields, commemorated victories on temple friezes, and mass produced vases depicting real and mythological battles. The Romans went far further. To an unusual degree Romans celebrated and immortalized their victories over foreign powers, far beyond [see syllabus for the rest]
In 2012 I taught Roman coins both semesters (same class) Fall and Spring. We had a low enrollmen... more In 2012 I taught Roman coins both semesters (same class) Fall and Spring. We had a low enrollment in Spr and 10 in Fall, which was probably the biggest of the seminar classes that term (History of Art caps enrollment in undergraduate seminars at 12). Students had a chance to handle real Roman coins from my collection. In the eras before newspapers, Roman politicians spread information by using the tails of coins as newspaper headlines to share news of the latest conquest, important anniversary, new religious event, or to glorify the emperor with praise. Word could travel from hand to hand as quickly as word of mouth in some cases, although the medium of coinage as a vehicle of information only succeeded when the intended audience understood the coin messages. The ancient reader need not be literate by our definition to have understood the images on these coins, but as literate, modern scholars we sometimes have trouble reading the message on the coins of this ancient culture. This class addresses some of the better known coins whose imagery is intelligible and traces the progression of Roman coinage from mere currency to a form of newspaper worth much more than what it was printed on (sic). We will ask a number of questions about the transmission of these newspaper headlines, such as what are their limitations? How did illiterate Romans understand the messages? Was the message ever misconstrued? Did opposing mints conduct unfriendly dialogues during civil war? How involved was the emperor in cons design? [see syllabus for the rest]
In 2013-14 I twice taught a class on Augustus in History of Art at UC Berkeley. These seminars a... more In 2013-14 I twice taught a class on Augustus in History of Art at UC Berkeley. These seminars are capped at 12 (I had 11 students both times, the biggest of 5 seminar classes offered each term). This is one of those syllabi. We used my own coins so students could have hands on experience with Roman coins from 120 BC to AD 69. I am not sure if anyone else at Berkeley does this.
History 117 (Spring 09) follows the previous offering of History 117 (Fall) by continuing a study... more History 117 (Spring 09) follows the previous offering of History 117 (Fall) by continuing a study of Roman history with only a short review of earlier Roman history to the creation of the Empire at the end of the First Punic War in 241. The emphasis this term will be the Roman Principate, from its creation with special emphasis on the career of Augustus and his regime starting in 27 BC, when he became emperor. Other topics will include Roman literature, citizenship and national identity, the Pax Romana, Romans’ concept of history, the fall of the Republic, despotism, the creation of one-man rule, Christianity, and the crises that led to the Fall of Rome. We read many primary sources in this class, and the exams test the studnet's ability to identify the source and describe the significance of the events in the passages. Students are expected to read the assigned reading weekly. The instructor pretends all the enrolled students are majoring in ancient history and considering graduate school, so they come to class familiar with the reading, names, events.
This cross-listed course was SJSU's version of Intro to US History. SJSU has since abolished thi... more This cross-listed course was SJSU's version of Intro to US History. SJSU has since abolished this class and now teaches Intro to US History as a one semester class. In my opinion, credible universities, such as UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and others, teach US History in 1 year. I believe SJSU is making a big mistake by under-educating the students about US events. This was my best effort to teach it. The students enrolled on a 2 : 1 basis for history over Poli Sci.
This syllabus navigated a 15 hr class at UC Berkeley Extension in Spr 2015. Each week we met for... more This syllabus navigated a 15 hr class at UC Berkeley Extension in Spr 2015. Each week we met for 3 hours. The class had no paper or exam. It was a seminar / lecture. Students did the reading and came to class to answer preassigned weekly questions for weeks 2-5. Every student had to answer a pre-chosen question as their presentation weekly.
One of my Canadian friends said she found this syllabus for Greek History 321 very helpful when s... more One of my Canadian friends said she found this syllabus for Greek History 321 very helpful when she started teaching, so i am putting it up for anyone else to use also. My professors in grad school emphasized to me that students should work with primary authors as soon a possible, instead of Smith, Jones, or flavor of the decade. Also I find I have fewer problems with students quoting secondary sources in their term papers if they have no secondary sources besides lecture. I include the exam so others can see how I teach all my classes.
The South Frieze contains forty-two fragmentary or intact figures, of which about a dozen are rec... more The South Frieze contains forty-two fragmentary or intact figures, of which about a dozen are recognized as members of the imperial family. Accordingly, they have commanded the lion's share of attention from scholars. The identifications of half of them are secure and in nowise disputed, namely Augustus, Agrippa, Tiberius, Drusus the Elder, Antonia Tertia, and Germanicus. Domaszewski and Moretti are responsible for a great number of them, and other scholars have accepted their views without considering certain anachronisms or conflicts that cast other of their identifications into doubt. These will be considered one at a time.
This is a 2014 updated version of my Ph.D. thesis that explains the context of Augustus's rise to... more This is a 2014 updated version of my Ph.D. thesis that explains the context of Augustus's rise to power in the tumultuous era of the Second Triumvirate (a better update is saved for the book). After Actium, Augustus did not suddenly become the uncrowned king of Rome, but he was the leading member of the winning faction without a positive precedent to follow. He had to feel his way to success, spurning the examples of Sulla and Julius before him. This chapter examines the time from the Ides of March past Actium to 13 BC.
Chapter 2 discusses the survivors of the Civil Wars, many of whom actively or reluctantly joined ... more Chapter 2 discusses the survivors of the Civil Wars, many of whom actively or reluctantly joined the regime to seek honour and wealth under the new faction that controlled Rome (an oligarchy, not a monarchy). Eventually Agrippa's powers and honours rose so far above the rest that he became Augustus's partner in power, but only after he made a show by his conspicuous withdrawal to Miletus in 23. The regime nearly collapsed without him. Many other magnates rose to prominence and enjoyed favour in the 20s, although a few recalcitrants ostentatiously abstained from joining the regime, expecting it to collapse and their purity to win them popular acclaim in the post-Caesarian Republic. Statilius Taurus, Lucius Arruntius, Messalla Corvinus, and Sallust the Younger exercised great power and held distinction, among others.
Agrippa was elevated in 13 BC to a status of unofficial co-emperor with Augustus and enjoyed near... more Agrippa was elevated in 13 BC to a status of unofficial co-emperor with Augustus and enjoyed nearly all of the same legal rights (without the religious powers Augustus had to fill openings in the religious colleges). Agrippa was surely made a Pontifex and probably an Augur. We know from Dio 54 he was already a Quindecimvir back in 17 BC. Velleius says he and Statilius Taurus had multiple priesthoods. The elevation of Agrippa was necessary to make him the full partner in power, so that in case anything happened to Augustus, Agrippa could ensure the stability of the state. Chapter 3 documents Agrippa's rise, the reasons behind it, an the political and religious honors he received. Coinage is the biggest testimony to Agrippa's jump in status in 13. Had he lived longer to enjoy those honors, we might have seen much more redundant evidence of it in 12-10 BC.
Agrippa was elevated in 13 BC to a status of unofficial co-emperor with Augustus and enjoyed near... more Agrippa was elevated in 13 BC to a status of unofficial co-emperor with Augustus and enjoyed nearly all of the same legal rights (but lacking the religious powers Augustus had to fill openings in the religious colleges). Dio is almost the only authority we have for this, although Velleius also hints at Agrippa's escalation. Fortunately, surviving numismatic evidence very loudly corroborates Dio. The issues of 13 BC celebrate Agrippa in a way that no other friend or heir of Augustus enjoyed, certainly not Tiberius. We know from Velleius and Dio 54 that Agrippa Agrippa and Statilius Taurus held multiple priesthoods, a special honor usually reserved for the heir (Tiberius gave such honors to his sons and Sejanus, so did Claudius to Nero). The coinage reflects this. The elevation of Agrippa was necessary to make him the full partner in power, so that Agrippa could ensure the stability of the state, in case anything happened to Augustus. Chapter 3 documents the coinage and messages on it that document Agrippa's jump in status in 13.
Augustus claimed his regime was not a monarchy. He eventually chose and promoted Agrippa to stab... more Augustus claimed his regime was not a monarchy. He eventually chose and promoted Agrippa to stabilize the Empire. At the same time he proved Rome was not a monarchy because Agrippa had equal powers, so Rome had no single monarch. Augustus used political and religious status to demonstrate Agrippa's rise. Agrippa's rise was total, but he died suddenly in March 12 BC.
The History and Function of the Ara Pacis Augustae
This chapter regards the excavation hist... more The History and Function of the Ara Pacis Augustae
This chapter regards the excavation history and the story of how the Ara Pacis was reassembled. Note that the ancient location (piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina) is 1 km away from the current museum. A brief summary of Buchner's theory appears, but I do not accept it - and even if it was true, the build up of other structures on the Campus Martius would soon prevent the full effect of Buchner's sundial pointing to the Ara Pacis. Ancient precedents for the Ara Pacis are considered, leading to the question of what event does the Ara Pacis procession depict and when?
ADDED in OCT. 2023: This chapter formed the nucleus for paper "The Pieces of the Ara Pacis" for the Collecting Antiquities conference (Poland 2021) and then a chapter in the conference proceedings, _Collecting Antiquities from the Middle Ages to the End of the Nineteenth Century_ published in 2022. I benefited from the work of Simona Forresta, Of recent, Andrea d’Agostino sent me his article « VICENDE COLLEZIONISTICHE DI ALCUNI RELIEVI DELL’ ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE, » (2003, Bollettino dei musei comunali di Roma), [now online at academia.edu], which I am currently translating into English. I am certain I could have avoided some errors or lack of specificity in my thesis if I had known of Andrea's work in 2005, and I will incorporate his insights in my future book. GCS
This thesis explores with whom Augustus shared credit for "saving Rome." The Ara Pacis presents ... more This thesis explores with whom Augustus shared credit for "saving Rome." The Ara Pacis presents in stone the 80 magnates of Rome who ushered in a New Golden Age. Unlike most Roman monuments, this one includes women and children and shows triumph over the chaos and evils of civil war.
This was a tour book of Italy for the 2000 Jubilee. Gianfranco Moneta wrote close to 90% of the ... more This was a tour book of Italy for the 2000 Jubilee. Gianfranco Moneta wrote close to 90% of the 542 pages of it and I wrote maybe 50 of them. You can tell all the Classical History and archaeology came from me.
I created this D&D module as an 13 year old in 1981. It had a (lost) sequel involving more giant... more I created this D&D module as an 13 year old in 1981. It had a (lost) sequel involving more giants and there were two more home-made modules long since lost. I thank Tim Hutchings for discovering this (I think he told me on eBay), searching for me, and publishing it. I have put up only the first half of it here on-line so that anyone who wants to buy it can contact him and learn how to buy it (it is the first chapter of his book). Part of the story of how Tim found me is online at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9577-Graveyard-of-the-RPGs When we actually played it, probably in 1982, the party consisted of Peter Einaudi (dwarf fighter), Roger Sola-Sole (human reporter [special subclass]), Larry Tucker (Assassin), Greg Bennett (Healer [special subclass]), Harry Teplitz (human cleric), my younger brother Ben (hobbit thief), and maybe Geoffrey Silverton, Chris Goodridge, and/or David Dobkin. I can no longer remember who was where and when. The party crushed the giants pretty easily, even though I was always pretty stingy about giving out magic weapons and consistently gave the monsters 55% + of the possible hit points so they would keep on fighting longer (to the death pretty much always). The party also went on and beat up the giants in the next module. We often tape recorded the sessions and I may still have one or two of them somewhere. Larry, Peter, and Roger were the dominant personalities and the most devious.
I hope this is not a duplicate post. King Aspourgos was the son of Dynamis and Asander. This i... more I hope this is not a duplicate post. King Aspourgos was the son of Dynamis and Asander. This inscription came from the Bosporan kingdom: Menestratos, son of Menestratos, chief of the island, honored (with a statue) his savior and benefactor, the great king Aspurgos, friend of the Romans, descended from Asandrochos, friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, reigning over all Bosporus, Feodosia (a place in the Crimea], the Sindi, the Maiti, the Tarpiti, the Toreti, the Psesi and the Tanaiti, who subjugated the Scythians and the Taurians. It makes clear that Aspourgos, son of Dynamis, was descended from Asandrochos, perhaps a nobleman and grandfather (?) - most likely the father of Asander.
I took Dr. Ronald Stroud's excellent class Greek 120: Herodotus in Fall 1995 with about 35 other... more I took Dr. Ronald Stroud's excellent class Greek 120: Herodotus in Fall 1995 with about 35 other students (it was huge, the largest translation class I have had with its only close rival my Greek 100 in Fall 1992). We used the Amy Barbour (Univ Okla) textbook. I learned a great deal in this class. Those who look carefully will find that Barbour cut a great deal from the original text to keep the story more on message than is normal for Herodotus, who constantly inserts asides and digressions. I went back to add chapter numbers and was surprised how much was missing. Later I may find the time to produce an interlinear version of the same.
Thucydides is a VERY difficult Greek author. I took two courses in Thucydides with Dr. Leslie Th... more Thucydides is a VERY difficult Greek author. I took two courses in Thucydides with Dr. Leslie Threatte and Dr. Ronald Stroud, respectively in the 1990s. This interlinear (with help from several commentaries) will help other students work their way through. The fact is, not only are the language and grammar hard, the concepts are very deep, and almost every clause has some deeper meaning than its surface reading indicates.
This is my annotated translation of ODY 9. I took three semesters of Homeric Greek with the late... more This is my annotated translation of ODY 9. I took three semesters of Homeric Greek with the late Anthony Bolloch at Berkeley, ILIAD 1, 6 and ODY 1, 6, 9 (not all of each book). Mistakes are mine, not his, but we went over this translation pretty well.
This is my translation in dactyllic hexameter of ILIAD 1 with several illustrations. Normally I ... more This is my translation in dactyllic hexameter of ILIAD 1 with several illustrations. Normally I think poetry is inadequate to tell the story, but so that students see the difficulty of the task, I have rendered this book into poetic meter, but the others I just translated in prose (book 6, 9 and ODY. 1,2 6, 9). I now have all of the ODYSSEY translated line by line. If anyone needs help with a passage, just write me and tell me what you need me to post. I am going to return to the ILIAD soon and start Book 2.
Thucydides's account of the depths of civil war from Corcyra, an until recently aloof Greek po... more Thucydides's account of the depths of civil war from Corcyra, an until recently aloof Greek polis (declined to fight against Persians) with the 3rd largest fleet in Hellas. The Corcyrans had voted to become allies of the Athenians after trouble with their mother city Corinth, and that conflict led to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The democratic faction of Corcyra, trusting the Athenians would back them, fought a stasis (civil war) with the oligarchic faction that ended only when one side had eliminated the other at great cost to itself. Not long after this, the Mytilenean Debate further showed how desperate people had become in the 4th year of the war..
This is my translation of Thucydides 5.84-116, "The Melian Dialogue," from two Greek classes I ha... more This is my translation of Thucydides 5.84-116, "The Melian Dialogue," from two Greek classes I had at Berk with Profs. Leslie Threate (Spr. 1994) and Ron Stroud (Fall 1996). After 10 years of fighting, in 421 BC, Athens made peace and an alliance with the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) by the "Peace of Nicias" and turned on the small neutral powers and attacked them. Melos tried to persuade Athens to be decent and leave them alone, but Athens explains this is not about morals, it is because you have $ and we want it. Hand it over or suffer the consequences of futile resistance. The strong do whatever they want and the weak must accept that if they wish to survive. This section is a study in bullies and power politics in Greece, 421 BC.
Thucydides 5.84-116 " The Melian Dialogue." After 10 years of fighting, in 421 BC, Athens made p... more Thucydides 5.84-116 " The Melian Dialogue." After 10 years of fighting, in 421 BC, Athens made peace and an alliance with the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) by the "Peace of Nicias" and turned on the small neutral powers and attacked them. Melos tried to persuade Athens to be decent and leave them alone, but Athens explains this is not about morals, it is because you have $ and we want it. Hand it over or suffer the consequences of futile resistance. The strong do whatever they want and the weak must accept that if they wish to survive. This section is a study in bullies and power politics in Greece, 421 BC.
This is Gaius Stern's translation of the Roman Revolution of 509 BC when Brutus and Collatinus ov... more This is Gaius Stern's translation of the Roman Revolution of 509 BC when Brutus and Collatinus overthrew Tarquin II. Livy records the traditional story which historians today suspect is more legend than fact. The tradition that Rome also then defeated the Etruscans is refuted by a treaty signed by Lars Porsenna king of the Romans and a few other archeological details. But Romans believed the revolution under Brutus had ended the monarchy and established the Res Publica - the Commonwealth. I hope the font TNR is easy to read. My preview of it looked terrible.
This is my translation of Seneca from a class I had with the late Dr. Charles Murgia in 1994 or s... more This is my translation of Seneca from a class I had with the late Dr. Charles Murgia in 1994 or so. I hope that all the skipped bits have been restored and errors corrected. Let me know if you find anything that needs fixing. This is fun reading. As a note, its popularity eliminated the benefits Nero sought to gain as a divi filius because it makes Claudius out to be a fool, not a god.
Tacitus presents the theme that absolute monarchy corrupts everything and everyone it touches. N... more Tacitus presents the theme that absolute monarchy corrupts everything and everyone it touches. Nowhere is this more firmly expressed than in The ANNALS, which document the Julio-Claudian regimes from Tiberius to Nero (AD 14-68, although the end of the work is lost). My translation adds ample footnotes to make it easier for the reader to keep track of people and ideas that seem obvious to the author.
CIRB Corpus of Inscriptions of the Regnum Bospori, 1965
Much work about the Hellenistic Era Kingdom of the Bosporus is not available in the West. The CI... more Much work about the Hellenistic Era Kingdom of the Bosporus is not available in the West. The CIRB = Corpus of Inscriptions of the Regnum Bospori (V.V. Strube, M.N. Tichomirova, V.F. Gaidukevich, A.I. Dovatura, D.P. Kallistova, and T.N. Knipovich, 1965) with commentary in Russian can help fill some of the void. So Lola Nebez and I have started a translation of the more important inscriptions at the request of Altay Coskun (Univ. of Waterloo) after our conversation at Seleucid Study Days VI in North Bay, Ontario (2017). This partial collection of translations into English is an ongoing project for scholars of the Hellenistic kingdom of the Bosporus and the scholars of the Seleucid Empire.
The first Inscription is about a proxenos who had some privileges to trade in the Bosporan kingdo... more The first Inscription is about a proxenos who had some privileges to trade in the Bosporan kingdom. It is not that useful if you are looking for information about Dynamis and Asander. Like the Loebs, the Russian original appears first and then our English translation
This is the first inscription about queen Dynamis. Her gratitude to Augustus suggests that he ma... more This is the first inscription about queen Dynamis. Her gratitude to Augustus suggests that he may have approved of her restoration to power after a power struggle (perhaps with Scribonius). Like the Loebs, the Russian original appears first and then our English translation.
Queen Dynamis, friend of the Romans,
(set up this statue) of the emperor,
Caesar Augustus, a god, (and) son of a god,
her savior and benefactor.
Up front I wish 1. to thank Leonardo Saccho and Giorgio Ferri for sharing their work with me and ... more Up front I wish 1. to thank Leonardo Saccho and Giorgio Ferri for sharing their work with me and 2 to apologize that I have not yet gotten to it but will be starting this week. The article final version is due 8/31 w/ journal. The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon patriotic heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word "devotion" derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and in a completely backwards fashion, the traitors Coriolanus and Tarpeia. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high, noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. It is therefore quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state-sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally forget. The most famous enemy practitioners of human sacrifice were the Druids, whom the Romans massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night's Eve at the great Druid convention. But the Carthaginians, the Germans, the Celts, and the Thracians all did so as well. It turns out that Romans have a strong legacy of practicing human sacrifice that lasts into the historic era, despite their alleged opposition to it. Numerous sources relate one story each. Collecting them all makes it impossible to deny the longevity of human sacrifice in Rome, although most Romans under the emperors were probably unaware of it. The paradox of condemning but still practicing human sacrifice demonstrates the nature of Roman religion, where do ut des plays a crucial role in standard sacrifice as well as in unpleasant acts like human sacrifice. Devotio was an inverted form of sacrifice. Romans may have forsaken devotio, but they continued to practice human sacrifice far longer than most of us have suspected.
The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon patriotic he... more The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon patriotic heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word devotion derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and in a completely backwards fashion Coriolanus and Tarpeia the traitors. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. Therefore it is quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally ignore. The most famous practitioners of human sacrifice whom the Romans exterminated were the Druids, whom they massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night’s Eve at the great Druid convention. But others include the Carthaginians, small religious cults in the BC and AD world, and obviously the Germans, the Celts, and Thracians as nations. To Romans the act of human sacrifice falls just short of cannibalism in the spectrum of forbidden practices, and is the occasional accusation thrown upon an enemy to render them totally barbaric and not worth saving. On the other hand, Romans will sometimes recognize voluntary acts of self-sacrifice for the good of the society, even when that individual is fighting the Romans. The most famous example of this is probably the surrender of Vercingetorix, who elevates his doomed self to a sort of noble-savage. The crux of the matter for Romans divides over when is self-sacrifice voluntary and thus noble, and when it is compelled and thus horrible to behold. There is no gray zone, such acts of humans being sacrificed for society are either admirable or horrible with no middle ground. This question has a two more components, because the act of voluntary self-sacrifice to avert the future and alter destiny conflicts with the expected, fatalistic view that is inherent in believing in destiny. How can one change what has already been determined, unless the original supposition is other than commonly understood? And finally, why is it that gods of the Underworld, rather than Zeus/Jupiter or the Fates/Parcae are the ones who can interfere with destiny?
The 2014 Portugal version is an improved version of the 2013 CAMWS paper I gave to a small audien... more The 2014 Portugal version is an improved version of the 2013 CAMWS paper I gave to a small audience on the Sulla 2000 anniversary at Iowa CAMWS (with co-organizer David Hollander, Seth Kendall, and Ralph Covino). The proceedings of the Portugal conference were to be published, but I have lost track of when or where (or if). If someone finds them I would be glad to update my CV. Rome suffered a brief civil war in 87 BC between the consuls Cn. Octavius and Cornelius Cinna. Driven from Rome and deposed from office, Cinna recruited the exiled Marius to counter-attack and take revenge upon their common enemies, the party of Sulla, many of whom they proscribed in the purge of 87. Most spectacularly, the Flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter), L. Cornelius Merula, unable to escape, killed himself inside the Temple of Jupiter and uttered a death curse against the party of Marius, desecrating the temple with his blood. His dramatic death not only illustrates the intensity of this short civil war, which Merula did nothing to bring on, it also provided for certain historians the explanation that the party of Marius had angered the gods, who punished Rome with another generation of civil war. Marius died very soon after, but his party held power for five years, until the counter-revolution of Sulla, upon which they were purged and replaced in an even bloodier reversal of fortune.
The Romans suffered immense casualties during the First Punic War in their desperate struggle t... more The Romans suffered immense casualties during the First Punic War in their desperate struggle to wrest Sicily from Carthage, and the war provided many cliff-hanger moments oscillating between nearly total victory and total defeat. The Romans did not immortalize heroes from this war, such as C. Duilius (cos. 260) and Lutatius Catulus (cos. 242), in the way they honored Marcellus, Fabius and Scipio from the war with Hannibal. Following Polybius, the Romans regarded the First Punic War as their rise to Empire, although this rise was punctuated by the tides of war, which ebbed and flowed in a mix of mortal and divine obstacles, such as a formidable but treacherous opponent, the glorious victories followed by the shameful defeats – and even worse – captivity, and the ephemeral, capricious nature of Tyche, raising and crushing their hopes. ... Tyche herself set up victory only to pry it away from the Romans repeatedly, through a series of events such as the swift conquest of Sicily until the capture of Scipio Asina, Regulus’ invasion of Africa which suddenly turned into disaster, and the storms that destroyed two Roman fleets. Victory only came when both parties stood on the brink of exhaustion, and the Carthaginians lost the battle of Aegates Islands (241 BC). Polybius regarded the post-Alexander era – especially century from the battle of Ipsus (301) to the battle of Zama (202) - as one characterized by mercurial changes of fortune, not only in the Greek East but throughout the Mediterranean. For the Romans, the First Punic War verifies Polybius’ theory, as devastating defeats followed incredible victories, throwing into chaos all high hopes. However, the very different Roman attitude towards the role of the gods in human fortunes recasts their analysis of the First Punic War not as a struggle for survival like the Hannibalic War, but as a complex divinely fabricated route to Empire, which prepared them to rule and tested them for the greater challenge of the next Punic War, by exposing them to the unpredictable tides of war, both on land and sea.
I know this is not finalized or perfect, but this is close to our final version of the schedule o... more I know this is not finalized or perfect, but this is close to our final version of the schedule on the poster for the 2024 Symposium Peregrinum, 11-13 June. I will try to attach in the same upload all of the abstracts. If anyone wants to listen in to the symposium from afar, you can contact me for the zoom link.
Our 2020 Symposium Peregrimun was postponed due to covid, like so many other conferences. When w... more Our 2020 Symposium Peregrimun was postponed due to covid, like so many other conferences. When we realized that 2021 was not feasible, we initially delayed the conference until 2022. However, because we wanted to see each other and exchange personal and professional greetings, we changed out minds and decided to host a special Zoom event, different than our normal procedures. In 2020 we invited participants to share their work in progress, whether it be books or articles in some stage of completion. We hope next year we will meet in Messina, Sicily and resume a common theme for the conference. The presentations which drew the most commentary were Charles King, Gaius, Sandra Blakely, Harry Walker, Kresimir Vukovic, and Benjamin Scolnic. It was good to see old and many new faces at the Symposium.
Here is the poster for the upcoming Symposium Peregrinum 2022, I thank the hard work of the othe... more Here is the poster for the upcoming Symposium Peregrinum 2022, I thank the hard work of the other co-organizers who were our society's founders Pat Johnston, Attilio Mastrocinque, and László Takács and also our host, Elena Santagati. This will be a much larger Symposium than when we last met in person, 2019. We have many topics (see all the research interests). My paper will be at the end of the Symposium on why the Senate ended the ransom or exchange of prisoners of war (POWs), even if it meant fellow Romans would live a life of slavery.
With my colleagues Francesca Ceci, Patricia Johnston, Attilio Mastrocinque, and Elena Santagati, ... more With my colleagues Francesca Ceci, Patricia Johnston, Attilio Mastrocinque, and Elena Santagati, the Symposium Pergrinum X was held in Soriano nel Cimino (Vt) as a hybrid event for about 27 papers live and 14 more by Zoom. Several people zoomed in to present their papers during the live portion. Soriano was an excellent host for us, making delicious snacks for coffee breaks. The event was a big success. Many thanks to all who attended. I was unable to find the correct Pat Johnston below to add her to the co-author list, so I clarify and mention her again here.
We had to postpone the 2020 Symposium Peregrinum like so many other conferences due to covid. In... more We had to postpone the 2020 Symposium Peregrinum like so many other conferences due to covid. Initially we again postponed the 2021 meeting, but had a change of minds and decided to hold a Zoom event so that the Peregrines could meet on Zoom and talk with one another without a 2 year delay. However, so many more people wanted to participate then expected that we made it a 3 day event with a virtual happy hour(s) after. So at the 2020 the Symposium Peregrinum Zoom event, participants shared work in progress, instead of speaking about a common topic. We had several lively discussions that had to be halted to allow time for the next paper, notably those of Charles King, Gaius, Sandra Blakely, Ben Scolnic, and Harry Walker. We hope the 2020 Symposium planned for Messina, Sicily will be held in person or as a hybrid event.
The Symposium Peregrinum is an annual conference held in June at a different location each year i... more The Symposium Peregrinum is an annual conference held in June at a different location each year in Europe. The topic in 2022 was difficult journeys (exiles, fugitives, odysseys). The 2023 topic was The Origins of Peoples. The likely topic next year (this is not yet set) will be prophecies - especially those that would have changed history if they had come true -- including mythological or fictional settings. If anyone wants to participate in the 2024 Symposium, they can contact me to be sure to receive an invitation. The likely host will be the Universita Luigi Vanvitelli near Naples in Santa Maria Capua Vetere (for now contact me, not them). All topics must be Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Carthaginian, or Ancient Persian Empire if it relates to Greece. I cannot find Patricia Johnston in Academia so I list her here as a co-organizer and co-founder of the Symposium.
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Ara Pacis Augustae On-line Library by Gaius Stern
I did not re-translate the Latin which I have translated elsewhere, as many other scholars quote the same passages.
See abstract for part 1 to see the rest.
The Italian archaeologist Laura Fabbrini (1926-2014) pursued the study of the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus the Elder in the footsteps of Ludwig Curtius, “Ikonographische Beiträge zum Porträt der Römischen Republik und der Julisch-Claudischen Familie I,” Röm. Mitt. 1932-35. Curtius examined many other prominent Romans at the end of the Republic and into the principate. This study will be of some interest to Ara Pacis scholars, because, with good reason, she uses the figures on the Ara Pacis as standards for the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus.
I have transcribed the Italian to appear on the proper page and as much English as I could on the same pages. Fabbrini wrote with end notes. I much prefer FNs, but I could not fit them on the same page, so I reluctantly retained end notes, which appear at the end of Part 2. The photos are hers (marked in the text), but I often replaced them with color images of my own or that I found online. As is my normal practice, I fill in the whole name of scholars whenever I can find them, since reading V. Poulsen is not helpful -- no American would guess his first name correctly.
I had to divide the paper into two files because it was too large to upload for a single file.
In 1880, Dütschke followed this book with an article from a talk he had delivered (I trust) entitled “Über ein römisches Relief mit Darstellung der Familie des Augustus,” also on the Ara Pacis panels.
In many places the German is extremely complex and difficult to understand for even a native speaker -- so almost impossible for us poor foreigners. I personally think this clumsy over-elaborate writing holds back scholarship, because people misunderstand or can not understand what the German writer was trying to say. This article completely lives up to that bad reputation. I have done my best to render it more clearly in English, often rendering passive into active to simplify.
I am on a mission to render into English all of the first 25 major articles on the Ara Pacis (chronological). Now both Duhn articles, Dütsche, Milani, most of Petersen, Dissel, Sieveking, both Domaszewski articles, Gardthausen, Studniczka, and Wagenwoort are complete. Soon to come will be Avena, Amelung, Lanciani, and Monaco.
Here von Duhn remakes the case of his 1879 article with greater depth and discusses certain individual figures (there he is less on target). -Gaius
I did not re-translate the Latin which I have translated elsewhere, as many other scholars quote the same passages.
See abstract for part 1 to see the rest.
The Italian archaeologist Laura Fabbrini (1926-2014) pursued the study of the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus the Elder in the footsteps of Ludwig Curtius, “Ikonographische Beiträge zum Porträt der Römischen Republik und der Julisch-Claudischen Familie I,” Röm. Mitt. 1932-35. Curtius examined many other prominent Romans at the end of the Republic and into the principate. This study will be of some interest to Ara Pacis scholars, because, with good reason, she uses the figures on the Ara Pacis as standards for the iconography of Tiberius and Drusus.
I have transcribed the Italian to appear on the proper page and as much English as I could on the same pages. Fabbrini wrote with end notes. I much prefer FNs, but I could not fit them on the same page, so I reluctantly retained end notes, which appear at the end of Part 2. The photos are hers (marked in the text), but I often replaced them with color images of my own or that I found online. As is my normal practice, I fill in the whole name of scholars whenever I can find them, since reading V. Poulsen is not helpful -- no American would guess his first name correctly.
I had to divide the paper into two files because it was too large to upload for a single file.
In 1880, Dütschke followed this book with an article from a talk he had delivered (I trust) entitled “Über ein römisches Relief mit Darstellung der Familie des Augustus,” also on the Ara Pacis panels.
In many places the German is extremely complex and difficult to understand for even a native speaker -- so almost impossible for us poor foreigners. I personally think this clumsy over-elaborate writing holds back scholarship, because people misunderstand or can not understand what the German writer was trying to say. This article completely lives up to that bad reputation. I have done my best to render it more clearly in English, often rendering passive into active to simplify.
I am on a mission to render into English all of the first 25 major articles on the Ara Pacis (chronological). Now both Duhn articles, Dütsche, Milani, most of Petersen, Dissel, Sieveking, both Domaszewski articles, Gardthausen, Studniczka, and Wagenwoort are complete. Soon to come will be Avena, Amelung, Lanciani, and Monaco.
Here von Duhn remakes the case of his 1879 article with greater depth and discusses certain individual figures (there he is less on target). -Gaius
"Today we think we know well the process by which Romans conducted consular elections in the comitia centuriata. The equites and first class, who were the wealthiest, voted first, then the second class, and only if the matter was not yet decided did the third, fourth and fifth classes in turn weigh in. This meant candidates saw considerable reason to cater to the interests only of the wealthiest voters, but not necessarily those of the third class, much less the fifth. Nevertheless, we read on several occasions that poorer Romans attended elections, even if they were unlikely to influence the result directly for several reasons: they enjoyed the competitive nature of elections, they accompanied their patrons to demonstrate loyalty, they held out the hope of breaking close elections, and they received free food as an incentive.
Livy improperly assigns class warfare to early Roman history, but if one were to take him at his word one would expect many candidates from the poorest classes to rise and challenge the status quo in consular elections, pushing for social reform. Only during the Gracchan era do we see this happen, leading us to ask what obstacles prevented the rise of a “man of the people” from gaining power. The best known models, Terrentius Varro (cos. 216), Tiberius Gracchus (tr. 133), Gaius Marius (cos. 107 ff.), and even Cicero (cos. 63) do not at all fit the expected mold of an ambitious commoner rising to the top. Even Varro, whom Livy makes out to be another Cleon – a demagogue who rose to the top by raw populism – was in fact financially far above the average Roman who most needed social reform.
"
One of Fabius’ so-called defensive maneuvers to thwart Hannibal, absent in Plutarch but preserved by Livy 24.8-9, saved Rome – or so Fabius argued – when he interfered with the will of the voters in the election for the consulship of 214, and forced the “prerogative century” to vote again for more capable candidates to lead the state against Hannibal. Shockingly, Fabius himself was elected (along with Claudius Marcellus) in an episode that could at best be called “electoral irregularity,” but in truth amounted to stubbornness, willpower, force, and ambition, guised as patriotic endeavor to preserve the state from itself. Furthermore, the very next year Fabius presided over elections at which his son was elected to the consulship. Given that Fabius had disqualified the more experienced candidates of 214, “electoral chicanery” better describes his actions.
From 217 - 202 eight elections saw irregularities, some of which resemble our Bush-Gore 2000 debacle, and were equally controversial. These electoral irregularities include the unprecedented failure to reach a majority (217), the nullification of the consul-designate on religious grounds (216), an episode of candidate nullification (215), three failures by parties of interest (Fabius twice, Fulvius once) to recuse themselves (215, 214, 210) from the proceedings, the election of two legally unqualified candidates (212 and 206), and finally a season marked by such bad weather that the election for 202 could not be held until after the March 15 inauguration day.
Fabius claimed that the gravity of the war forced him to intervene. This might be true, but the years 216-206 witnessed the most tumultuous decade of elections in Roman history, unmatched even by the decade (58-49) preceding Julius’ civil war against the Senate, by which time electoral chicanery and bribery had became common place.
The story of how Regulus, when a prisoner of the Carthaginians, denounced to the Senate a prisoner exchange from which he personally would have benefited and then kept his word to his Carthaginian captors to return to Africa and face a certain death by torture has gripped the imagination of moderns and ancients alike. Historians like Livy and Florus used it to validate Rome’s path to Empire. Poets such as Horace and Silius Italicus saw in Regulus the old fashioned virtues which made Rome great. Philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca drew inspiration in their own moral crises from his integrity, despite much torture. However, the story is not at all historical, but an invention that over time changed in purpose from honoring the memory of an undeserving, arrogant fool to promoting Roman integrity. Quite unintentionally, the torture element at the climax ran away with the story until a new theme or purpose emerged from the Regulus tale: in a paraphrase of Cato the Elder, Carthage had to be destroyed, because the Carthaginian people were so monstrous they abused a man of great integrity and virtue. For early historians, the historical Regulus was an example of how the mighty have fallen. But to their descendants, Regulus rose to great heights as a martyr for integrity and honor because he broke one sacred promise to prevent his homeland from a terrible mistake and kept a second sacred promise rather than allow his homeland to suffer the displeasure of the gods, all the while knowing he would in turn suffer the cruelest of tortures a treacherous and vile enemy could devise.
Varus’ legacy also includes his own unfair disgrace as a scapegoat for the ambush, the curtailing of his descendents’ careers, an aberration in Roman policy towards POWs, an end to Augustus’ conciliation of the old aristocratic houses, and most interestingly a terrible blow to Tiberius which should have stalled his political star, but ironically, intensified it -- though at a sacrifice - because no one else could reliably handle the situation.
Although the official version blamed Varus for the disaster of Teutoburger Wald (in Latin it is the clades Variana), this was very difficult for Tiberius, who regarded Varus as one of his few friends back when times were tough back in the days of exile on Rhodes. In AD 15 when the Roman army again invaded Germany, it very nearly suffered a second ambushed under similar circumstances, exposing the difficulty Varus had faced in Germany and his unfair vilification.
But Tiberius, like Augustus before him, preferred not to rock the boat too much. After three relatively successful years of fighting, Tiberius recalled the army. Germany was not conquered, but it was wounded. The Romans captured Arminius’ pregnant wife, but never caught him. Later under Claudius, some Roman POWs, rescued during a raid in German territory, brought home stories of their suffering and some closure to many Roman families, who now heard the final end of their lost relations. As for Varus, he was neither rehabilitated, nor was he erased in damnatio memoriae. He appears – or used to appear – on the Ara Pacis, completed in 9 BC when he shared the consulship with Tiberius. He surely participated in the procession and appeared on the monument. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius had Varus’ image removed after the fact. Varus’ family lived on, but never achieved greatness (the prosecution of his widow for treason by Sejanus was unrelated to Teutoburger Wald, and Tiberius intervened to save the son). The fact that someone else later damaged his image on the Ara Pacis beyond recognition today or repair is a coincidence.
ABSTRACT: A classic episode of The Simpsons from Season 14 (March 2002) spoofs the Odyssey in 7:39 minutes with limited accuracy, but what the writers get right or partly right is noteworthy, since this short episode provided many young viewers with their first exposure to Greek Mythology (some of the humor is above the understanding of young viewers). This adaptation features only a few scenes from The Odyssey, in which the writers cleverly assigned mythological roles to the citizens of Springfield, based on a key personality attribute. Viewers will instantly recognize the rational for many role assignments, for example, the Sirens, who sing to the tune of “Copacabana (At the Copa)” are actually Homer’s hideous sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma, the unpleasant sight of whom utterly repels Odysseus’s crew. The writers are modern Plutarchs for rendering a new Parallel Lives between The Odyssey and The Simpsons with few misses. Overall, this brief episode hilariously presents the epic and keeps straight most themes so that even young viewers will all the more easily retain the key incidents due to the familiar cast of characters. The episode could easily fill 22 minutes, and many wish it did.
The audience is invited to watch the episode in advance.
https://vimeo.com/53622238
I am not an author, merely an translator. The authors are Nadia Agnoli, Elisabetta Carnabuci, Giovanni Caruso, Ersila Maria Loretti. I have replaced four black and white photographs with color, two of them my own. An English-only version sits on my Academia page.
The article was published in _Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra_ (Roma 2014), 214-29.
I have replaced four black and white photographs with color, two of them my own.
I find it a thorough study of the ownership and archeological projects on the Mausoleum (mentioning its other names).
The article was published in _Da uomini a dei. Il Mausoleo di Adriano. Catalogo della Mostra_ (Roma 2014), 214-29.
(= Apotheosis from men to Gods. Hadrian’s Mausoleum_ Catalogue of the Exhibition.
It is hoped at the end of this class that students will be able to recognize 75 great works of Roman Art with the ability to discuss their significance and function in the Ancient World. Many of the pictures in the textbook will be used in presentations in class.
The procedure of this class is a mix of lecture and discussion. Students are encouraged to ask questions and interrupt a lecture. Considerable focus on how characters are connected to one another will help explain repeated behavior and out of type, contradictory behavior in certain cases.
Our class takes place in the form of the discussion with questions and answers with some leisure time devoted to the world of Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece. Students will find it highly enlightening require familiarity with the layout of ancient Greece. At this time Athens was a very small power and played almost no role in the Trojan War, however Mycenae and Argos were major powers, as were their kings, Agamemnon and Diomedes, respectively.
Every week we will discuss approximately five books of the Iliad, looking at major themes and the contributions of major characters.
Thanks to Christine Perkell who spotted my typos for Dionysus, now fixed.
(from 2007) This course will try to cram two semesters of the history of the world’s Greatest Empire into one term. Our survey will hit as many high points as possible without losing a cohesive, chronological narrative of 1200 years from 753 BC to AD 476. In order to try to do this, the era after AD 180 will receive less attention in order to concentrate on our central theme: the roots and connections of our own American democracy with the experiences and crises that befell Rome. This is the very best reason to master Roman history. These topics include the positive and negative effects of imperialism, expansion of the vote, the threat of tyranny, the balance of civil rights, immigration, a cold war with a foreign superpower, the changing status of women, conspicuous consumption of goods to the deprivation of others, fixed elections, and civil war. At a certain point the Roman Republic collapsed under the divergent pressures pulling it. Was this a bad thing?
Using several primary sources in translation – Roman (or Greek) historians recounting contemporary history – and from discussion in class, students will be able to address the following “great questions” of Roman history: [see syllabus]
Although scholars from the Victorian Era and again from the Cold War used to represent the Greeks (especially the Athenians) as peaceful, democratic, and liberal, this opinion proves just as inaccurate as the old view of the Mayans. Neither the Athenians nor the Mayans were peaceful; to the contrary, both were incessantly at war. Fortunately we enjoy a wealth of documentation of how Greeks and Romans depicted war, compared to the fragmentary evidence that survives of the Maya.
Greeks set up trophies at battlefields, commemorated victories on temple friezes, and mass produced vases depicting real and mythological battles. The Romans went far further. To an unusual degree Romans celebrated and immortalized their victories over foreign powers, far beyond [see syllabus for the rest]
In the eras before newspapers, Roman politicians spread information by using the tails of coins as newspaper headlines to share news of the latest conquest, important anniversary, new religious event, or to glorify the emperor with praise. Word could travel from hand to hand as quickly as word of mouth in some cases, although the medium of coinage as a vehicle of information only succeeded when the intended audience understood the coin messages. The ancient reader need not be literate by our definition to have understood the images on these coins, but as literate, modern scholars we sometimes have trouble reading the message on the coins of this ancient culture. This class addresses some of the better known coins whose imagery is intelligible and traces the progression of Roman coinage from mere currency to a form of newspaper worth much more than what it was printed on (sic).
We will ask a number of questions about the transmission of these newspaper headlines, such as what are their limitations? How did illiterate Romans understand the messages? Was the message ever misconstrued? Did opposing mints conduct unfriendly dialogues during civil war? How involved was the emperor in cons design?
[see syllabus for the rest]
We read many primary sources in this class, and the exams test the studnet's ability to identify the source and describe the significance of the events in the passages. Students are expected to read the assigned reading weekly. The instructor pretends all the enrolled students are majoring in ancient history and considering graduate school, so they come to class familiar with the reading, names, events.
This chapter regards the excavation history and the story of how the Ara Pacis was reassembled. Note that the ancient location (piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina) is 1 km away from the current museum. A brief summary of Buchner's theory appears, but I do not accept it - and even if it was true, the build up of other structures on the Campus Martius would soon prevent the full effect of Buchner's sundial pointing to the Ara Pacis. Ancient precedents for the Ara Pacis are considered, leading to the question of what event does the Ara Pacis procession depict and when?
ADDED in OCT. 2023: This chapter formed the nucleus for paper "The Pieces of the Ara Pacis" for the Collecting Antiquities conference (Poland 2021) and then a chapter in the conference proceedings, _Collecting Antiquities from the Middle Ages to the End of the Nineteenth Century_ published in 2022. I benefited from the work of Simona Forresta, Of recent, Andrea d’Agostino sent me his article « VICENDE COLLEZIONISTICHE DI ALCUNI RELIEVI DELL’ ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE, » (2003, Bollettino dei musei comunali di Roma), [now online at academia.edu], which I am currently translating into English. I am certain I could have avoided some errors or lack of specificity in my thesis if I had known of Andrea's work in 2005, and I will incorporate his insights in my future book. GCS
When we actually played it, probably in 1982, the party consisted of Peter Einaudi (dwarf fighter), Roger Sola-Sole (human reporter [special subclass]), Larry Tucker (Assassin), Greg Bennett (Healer [special subclass]), Harry Teplitz (human cleric), my younger brother Ben (hobbit thief), and maybe Geoffrey Silverton, Chris Goodridge, and/or David Dobkin. I can no longer remember who was where and when. The party crushed the giants pretty easily, even though I was always pretty stingy about giving out magic weapons and consistently gave the monsters 55% + of the possible hit points so they would keep on fighting longer (to the death pretty much always). The party also went on and beat up the giants in the next module.
We often tape recorded the sessions and I may still have one or two of them somewhere. Larry, Peter, and Roger were the dominant personalities and the most devious.
Menestratos, son of Menestratos, chief of the island, honored (with a statue) his savior and benefactor, the great king Aspurgos, friend of the Romans, descended from Asandrochos, friend of Caesar and friend of the Romans, reigning over all Bosporus, Feodosia (a place in the Crimea], the Sindi, the Maiti, the Tarpiti, the Toreti, the Psesi and the Tanaiti, who subjugated the Scythians and the Taurians.
It makes clear that Aspourgos, son of Dynamis, was descended from Asandrochos, perhaps a nobleman and grandfather (?) - most likely the father of Asander.
Those who look carefully will find that Barbour cut a great deal from the original text to keep the story more on message than is normal for Herodotus, who constantly inserts asides and digressions. I went back to add chapter numbers and was surprised how much was missing.
Later I may find the time to produce an interlinear version of the same.
I hope the font TNR is easy to read. My preview of it looked terrible.
Queen Dynamis, friend of the Romans,
(set up this statue) of the emperor,
Caesar Augustus, a god, (and) son of a god,
her savior and benefactor.
The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon patriotic heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word "devotion" derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and in a completely backwards fashion, the traitors Coriolanus and Tarpeia. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high, noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. It is therefore quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state-sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally forget. The most famous enemy practitioners of human sacrifice were the Druids, whom the Romans massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night's Eve at the great Druid convention. But the Carthaginians, the Germans, the Celts, and the Thracians all did so as well.
It turns out that Romans have a strong legacy of practicing human sacrifice that lasts into the historic era, despite their alleged opposition to it. Numerous sources relate one story each. Collecting them all makes it impossible to deny the longevity of human sacrifice in Rome, although most Romans under the emperors were probably unaware of it. The paradox of condemning but still practicing human sacrifice demonstrates the nature of Roman religion, where do ut des plays a crucial role in standard sacrifice as well as in unpleasant acts like human sacrifice. Devotio was an inverted form of sacrifice. Romans may have forsaken devotio, but they continued to practice human sacrifice far longer than most of us have suspected.
Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. Therefore it is quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally ignore. The most famous practitioners of human sacrifice whom the Romans exterminated were the Druids, whom they massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night’s Eve at the great Druid convention. But others include the Carthaginians, small religious cults in the BC and AD world, and obviously the Germans, the Celts, and Thracians as nations. To Romans the act of human sacrifice falls just short of cannibalism in the spectrum of forbidden practices, and is the occasional accusation thrown upon an enemy to render them totally barbaric and not worth saving. On the other hand, Romans will sometimes recognize voluntary acts of self-sacrifice for the good of the society, even when that individual is fighting the Romans. The most famous example of this is probably the surrender of Vercingetorix, who elevates his doomed self to a sort of noble-savage.
The crux of the matter for Romans divides over when is self-sacrifice voluntary and thus noble, and when it is compelled and thus horrible to behold. There is no gray zone, such acts of humans being sacrificed for society are either admirable or horrible with no middle ground. This question has a two more components, because the act of voluntary self-sacrifice to avert the future and alter destiny conflicts with the expected, fatalistic view that is inherent in believing in destiny. How can one change what has already been determined, unless the original supposition is other than commonly understood? And finally, why is it that gods of the Underworld, rather than Zeus/Jupiter or the Fates/Parcae are the ones who can interfere with destiny?
Rome suffered a brief civil war in 87 BC between the consuls Cn. Octavius and Cornelius Cinna. Driven from Rome and deposed from office, Cinna recruited the exiled Marius to counter-attack and take revenge upon their common enemies, the party of Sulla, many of whom they proscribed in the purge of 87. Most spectacularly, the Flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter), L. Cornelius Merula, unable to escape, killed himself inside the Temple of Jupiter and uttered a death curse against the party of Marius, desecrating the temple with his blood. His dramatic death not only illustrates the intensity of this short civil war, which Merula did nothing to bring on, it also provided for certain historians the explanation that the party of Marius had angered the gods, who punished Rome with another generation of civil war. Marius died very soon after, but his party held power for five years, until the counter-revolution of Sulla, upon which they were purged and replaced in an even bloodier reversal of fortune.
...
Tyche herself set up victory only to pry it away from the Romans repeatedly, through a series of events such as the swift conquest of Sicily until the capture of Scipio Asina, Regulus’ invasion of Africa which suddenly turned into disaster, and the storms that destroyed two Roman fleets. Victory only came when both parties stood on the brink of exhaustion, and the Carthaginians lost the battle of Aegates Islands (241 BC). Polybius regarded the post-Alexander era – especially century from the battle of Ipsus (301) to the battle of Zama (202) - as one characterized by mercurial changes of fortune, not only in the Greek East but throughout the Mediterranean. For the Romans, the First Punic War verifies Polybius’ theory, as devastating defeats followed incredible victories, throwing into chaos all high hopes. However, the very different Roman attitude towards the role of the gods in human fortunes recasts their analysis of the First Punic War not as a struggle for survival like the Hannibalic War, but as a complex divinely fabricated route to Empire, which prepared them to rule and tested them for the greater challenge of the next Punic War, by exposing them to the unpredictable tides of war, both on land and sea.