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I see it as a gathering of the tribes, including, as you say the old, young, and women.....but that doesn't discount them from the figure of combatants......you should take a visit up this way some time!! :wink:
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
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Quote:The area could no more support an army like this (and its families) than it could support an occupying force, which is probably the real reason why the Romans did not occupy it. Lack of available food and supporting population ended the Roman conquest of Caledonia, not a fiendish, unbeatable, numerous and highly menacing foe.
Interesting. It could also explain why no Anglo-saxon kingdom ever occupied Scotland. I mean, Northumbria was able to defeat other British kingdoms, and Wessex dominated large parts of Wales, even though England was able to occupie it only much later. But Scotland was apparently so remote that occupation started only after the Middle Ages?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, not my period of expertise. :wink:
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Quote:I see it as a gathering of the tribes, including, as you say the old, young, and women.....
Wouldn't this mean the whole of their land had been left entirely depopulated? And fabulously easy to conquer even it would've been no use to Rome :?
I'd sooner think the numbers are drastically exaggerated.
(Btw, same seems to be the case with Germania, then sometimes numbers of warriors are stated, that never could've lived of the land.)
[size=85:2j3qgc52]- Carsten -[/size]
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Well, I suppose if the did a role call before the battle..... :wink:
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
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Quote:Jona, historians do that (for schoolbooks and simple bookss about ''the Romans' mind you!!) because they 9or the publicists) like to think in simple periods.
You have your beginnings, you have your rise to world domination (Caesar), you have your summit (Trajan), you have your crisis (Third century) and you have your End (Goths sack Rome in 410). ... People like to keep it simple. Trajan is part of that view.
I am not convinced. Saying that Severus was the summit is just as simple. If you look at how many old certainties were abandoned since the days of Montesquieu, I find it strange that this one -which anyone could easily have corrected- has intact for so long.
Jona Lendering
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Quote:Vortigern Studies:1z86zvty Wrote:Jona, historians do that (for schoolbooks and simple bookss about ''the Romans' mind you!!) because they 9or the publicists) like to think in simple periods.
You have your beginnings, you have your rise to world domination (Caesar), you have your summit (Trajan), you have your crisis (Third century) and you have your End (Goths sack Rome in 410). ... People like to keep it simple. Trajan is part of that view.
I am not convinced. Saying that Severus was the summit is just as simple. If you look at how many old certainties were abandoned since the days of Montesquieu, I find it strange that this one -which anyone could easily have corrected- has intact for so long. Maybe Severus was not well-known enough? And the Trajan-Hadrian combination was? I'm not saying that my explanation holds any truth, but just because Hadrian seems to be representing the 'end of expansion', his predecessor Trajan would logically be representing 'the height of expansion'.
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Well, I think that a case can be made for Trajan advancing farther than any other general, even if his "conquests" were illusionary. There is quite a bit of poetic glamour to this. Take a look at Gibbon:
Quote:[Trajan] enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals, who ever navigated that remote sea [the Persian Gulf.]... Every day the astonished senate received the intelligence of new names and new nations that acknowledged his sway.
Gibbon also perpetuates (or maybe invents!) the idea that Trajan had the highpoint, while Hadrian retracts:
Quote:It was an ancient tradition that, when the Capitol was founded... the god Terminus (who presided over boundaries...) alone... refused to yield his place to Jupiter. A favourable inference was drawn from his obstinacy, which was interpreted by the augurs as a sure presage that the boundaries of the Roman power would never recede... But though Terminus had resisted the majesty of Jupiter, he submitted ot the authority of the emperor Hadrian.
This is powerful imagry, and hard for any future historian to dispute.
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