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Ebusitanus · 01-20-2005, 06:08 PM

I found this text and would like to read about your opinions about the matter. 
 
Antonine Rome, 138-180 
 
"In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest portion of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind." So Gibbon begins his epic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describing the apogee of Rome under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. 
 
A Roman citizen lucky enough to be free and possessed of a little money lived a life that in many ways remains competitive with any to follow. If we wished to study history, he could read Thucydides, Herodotus, or Plutarch. If he wished to study philosophy, he had before him, in more complete form than we do, the works of Plato and Aristotle. If he wished for literature or drama, he had available to him The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Oreseia, the Oedipus plays, Antigone, Medea, Lysistrata, The Aeneid, and more. 
 
Our Roman citizne had easy access to these works. Rome under the Antonines boasted over 25 public libraries, with books that could be checked out for reading at home. The affluent bought rather than borrowed -- easy enough, since booksellers abounded -- and bought to profusion. No house of any pretensions, Seneca wrote, lacked "its library with shelves of rare cedar wood and ivory from floor to ceiling." 
 
The Roman connoisseur of painting and sculpture lived in a world that already possessed works that today are among the most prized items in Europe's greatest art musuems -- Nike of Samothrace, the Laocoon group, Venus de Milo, the Elgin marbles. As in the case of literature, the pieces that survive are only a fragment of the fine art that the Roman citizen of 2C could enjoy. Pausanias, a travel writer of that era, wrote a ten-volume tourist guide to Greece, which among other things contained the equivilant of today's "must see" lists of the best art. Of dozens of works he singles out, we have only a handful. Or consider the most famous Greek sculptor, Phidias. We have originals in the form of the Elgin marbles, copies of a few of his statues, and nothing at all of what the ancients considered to be his masterpiece, the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Greek statuary that we still find so compelling today consists largely of what the ancient world considered its second tier work. 
 
We know even less about the paintings of antiquity. The mural painter Polygnotus was widely considered to be Phidas's equal in genius, but nothing survives to our day. Pliny the Elder, writing in 1C, tells us that the Greek painter Zeuxis depicted some grapes with such success that the birds flew up to them, and that Zeuxis's contemporary Parrhasius depicted a linen curtain with such truth that Zeuxis asked for it to be drawn aside. We have none of their work. Petronius writes in the Satyricon that ". . . when I came upon the work of Apelles [Alexander's court painter] . . . I actually worshiped it. For the outlines of the figures gave a rendering of natural appearances with such subtlety that you might believe even their souls had been painted." For Pliny, Apelles "surpassed all those who were born before him and all those who came later." Nothing of his work survives. We can only guess at how may copies existed in the time of the Antonines. 
 
Rome had not only access to great literature and art but to advanced technology. Our Roman citizen traveled beyond Rome on highways built on raised causeways and packed in layers of stones, gravel, and concrete. They were self-draining, wide enough for two of the largest wagons to pass without difficulty, with smooth surfaces (sometimes stone, sometimes metalled). Like today's interstate highways, they tunneled through hills, spanned marshes on viaducts, maintained an easy grade, and typically stretched for miles between curves. Posthouses with fresh horses were maintained all along the roads, enabling military and administrative communications to cover more than 100 miles per day. These highways crisscrossed the empire -- a distance, from the far northwest corner of England to the far southeast corner in Jerusalem, of more than 3,700 miles. Or, if our Roman citizen traveled by sea, he could sail from Ostia, conveniently located a mere 16 miles from downtown Rome -- not because there was a natural harbor in Ostia, but because Roman engineers had built an artificial one. 
 
The Romans built structures on a colossal scale. The Coliseum, seating 50,000 people, the largest amphiteatre built anywhere in the world until 20C, is the most famous but not the most spectacular. A canddiate for that time might be the Baths of Caracalla, built a few decades after the death of Marcus Aurelius, covering 270,000 square feet, about half again as large as the ground area of the U.S. Capitol building. The main block was about as high as the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was built of marble and decorated with gold, ivory and rare woods, containing not only baths and a calidarium, much like our modern sauna, but also gardens, libraries, gymnasia, and recreation centers. These lavish facilities were open to all free citizens, including women and children, for a trivial fee.

Ebusitanus · 01-20-2005, 06:12 PM

Admist these evidences of advanced technology were strange lacunae. At the baths, for example, one followed a good sweat in the calidarium by having one's skin scraped with a strigil made of bone and wood. Why scrape? Why not a thorough soap and rinse? Because the Romans had neglected to invent soap. what maeks this omission so striking is the other ways in which the ancient Romans' lives were just like ours. In ancient Rome, people lived in apartment buildings, followed professional sports, went out for a drink at the local bars, picked up a quick bite to eat from a fast food restaurant, whistled popular songs. They hunched over board games in public parks, had household pets, went to the theatre, carried on extensive correspondence, ran complex business enterprises. Men went to barbershops and women went to hairdressers. The wealthy of Rome dressed for dinner, escaped from the noise of the city to their beach homes, and collected fine wine (the vintage of -121 was so famous that bottles of it were still being hoarded two centuries later). 
 
But Rome had no soap. And so it is with dozens of other aspects of Roman life which were nothing whatsoever like our own. Take medical care, for example. Some kinds of medical facilities were extensive. Every charted city maintained a corps of physicians who worked in complexes that were typically well-designed and spacious. Most slave-owning homes included a slave physician and an infirmary in which sick slaves could be tended. Rome's water supply was abundant and sanitary. An elaborate sewage system carried off waste water, and Rome maintained public latrines, with marble seats (some of them heated in winter), flushed by a stream of running water. Private physicians abounded, and the fashionable ones made a good living -- 600,000 sesterces in one instance that has come down to us, equivilant to a six-figure-dollar income today. Physicians made house calls, and hada vast array of medications. An able Roman surgeon had a set of instruments as good as any that would be available to the French Revolution (200 different kinds of surgical instruments have been found at Pompeii), and he was able to conduct a number of sophisticated operations with them -- repairs of hernia and fistula, removal of gall stones and abscesses, and plastic surgery for removing the brands of slaves who had become freedmen. The Roman physician could set fractures and amputate limbs as professionally as any physician until 20C. The obstetrics of the time included podalic version, turning the fetus in the uterus, a life-saving technique that was forgotten for a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell. 
 
However: The same Rome had no public hospitals and threw its garbage in the street. The pristine water from the mountains flowed through lead pipes, slowly poisoning the population. The surgeon had no anesthesia and no knowledge of antiseptic practice. The clinical descriptions of disease were reasonably accurate, but the etiology of those diseases was conjecture, almost always wrong. The understanding of human anatomy and physiology was fragmentary. So while Galen, whose work would be considered definitive until the Renaissance, understood that blood ebbed and flowed, he did not understand that it circulated. Erasistratus correctly noted the difference between sensory and motor nerves, but thought they were hollow tubes carrying liquid. And so it was with most knowledge of the human physiology: a few half-truths alongside a mountain of error. 
 
The inventory of medicines contained a few useful items -- the juice of mandroga and atropin, drugs for nulling pain, for example. But the rest of the Roman physician's vast materia medica consisted of varieties of snake oil. In the office of that physician I mentioned with an annual income of 600,000 sesterces were chests with titles such as "Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her": "Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous"; and "Remedy for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab epidemic." The ingredients in this ointments and medicines might be hyena skin, dried centipedes, or a variety of mammalian excretions. Thus one Roman was led to observe sourly that "Diaulus has been a surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he's begun to be useful to the sick in the only way that he's able." 
 
We cannot reconstruct life expectancy with precision, but the available data are grim. The experience of a few famous families, who presumably had access to state-of-the-art medical care, shows high infant mortality, and the fragmentary data about common folk are even worse -- of 164 surviving epitaphs of Jews in Rome, for example, 40 percent are of children below the age of 10. Nor was adulthood safe. Appendicitis, strep throat, or an infected scratch could easily be fatal in Antonine Rome.

Ebusitanus · 01-20-2005, 06:16 PM

Roman ignorance about human physiology and the nature of disease extended to the rest of the sciences. The Greeks had made some progress. Five centuries earlier, Parmenides had suggested that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, and Leucippus and Democritus had enunciated theories of atomism. Archimedes had understood the principles of the lever and of buoyancy. Strato had suggested that falling bodies accelerate and suggested that volcanos make mountains. Anaximander had proposed something resembling an evolutionary hypothesis. But these and other accomplishments in the hard sciences were the merest glimmerings of an understanding of the way the physical world works. And it is only hindsight that lets us select these truths, or half-truths, from among the host of things the Romans believed that were completely wrong. 
 
Even when the results looked right, Roman science was usually wrong. During the first decade after Antoninus Pius came to power, Claudius Ptolemy completed the Almagest and thereby brought ancient astronomy to its summit. His mathematical elaboration of a geocentric system predicted planetary motion with great accuracy, and it remained in use for more than a thousand years. But this elegant construction, in spite of its great predictive power, was wholly wrong about how the solar system actually works. 
Perhaps stranger to our sensibility than the Romans' lack of scientific knowledge was their lack of curiosity. The Roman code, widely honored from the Republic through the Antonines, demanded that the Roman gentleman engage in public service, that he embody vigor and industriousness, that he shun lexus (self-indulgence) and inertia (idleness). But Romans despised learning for learning's sake. A Roman gentleman might study philosophy so that he could learn how to live properly, die with dignity, and be stoically indifferent to the vagaries of forture. But to study philosophy merely for the sake of knowledge was unseemly -- a kind of inertia. 
 
Architecture was the one art to which a Roman gentleman might properly apply himself. It involved science and aesthetics, but to a clear and present purpose. Otherwise, Romans disdained artists as much as they disdained scholars. As some earlier quotations from Petronius and Pliny indicated, Romans of the upper class often loved the art itself. They shared with our own time the rites and sensibilities of connoisseurship. Ancient Rome had art critis, historians, and collectors who spent vast sums on their Great Masters. But Lucian, writing in the Antonine era, observes matter-of-factly that a sculptor was without prestige, "no more than a workman, doing hard physical labor . . . obscure, earning a small wage, a man of low esteem, classed as worthless by public opinion, neither courted by friends, feared by enemies, nor envied by fellow citizens. Even more startling are the words of Plutarch and Phidias, whose artistic works were regarded by the ancients with the awe that we accord Michelangelo's: "No gifted young man upon seeing the Zeus of Phidias at Olympia ever wanted to be Phidias. For it does not necessarily follow that, if a work is delightful because of its gracefulness, the man who made it is worthy of our serious regard." 
 
That the Romans could so reverently admire a work of art and so scorn the person who created it is perhaps part of the reason that the Romans left us so little of their own creation in the arts and sciences. There are the exceptions of Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Ovid, plus a sprinkling over other fine Roman writers, the Stoics in philosophy, and a few major scientific achievements across the Mediterranean in Alexandria. But taken as a whole, the Roman world throughout its history, whether republic or empire, was a near intellectual void when it came to the arts and sciences -- "peopled by a race of pygmies" in Gibbon's contemptuous words. Scientific, philosophic, and artistic progress did not come to an end when Rome fell, but, without much exaggeration, when Rome rose.

01-21-2005, 10:44 AM

Ebusitanus, 
 
I can agree to your statement, the Romans didn't have the curiosity our present culture has, but how can one say that progress ended with the rise of Rome? Would Renaissance ever have started when Rome had never existed? Your right when you say the Greeks had some better thinkers (or at the least more of them), but did they spread the word? Would people ever have profited of their inventions (which were mostly theoretical) if the Romans hadn't perfected them and made them suitable for practical use? The Romans gathered the knowledge of the ancient world, added their own ideas and made something usable out of it. All to the benefit of their citizens in the whole empire. It doesn't matter where you live in Europe, your always near a Roman creation. It is clear that our curiosity started at some point in the middle ages when people wondered about how the Romans could have done it all. It would be like discovering a planet with a civilization way, way ahead of ours. 
 
Jurgen/Quintilianus

01-21-2005, 05:00 PM

Greek science was well on its way until Plato came along. Whatever his other contributions, Plate strangled Greek science in its infancy. He declared that themanipulation of mere matter was beneath a philosopher's dignity. A philosopher could observe, but he could not lay his hands on matter and manipulate it. In other words, experimentation was forbidden. The most a philosopher could do without losing dignity was to draw geometrical figures in the sand with a stick. 
At the root of this was Plato's (and other philosophers') desire to be accepted as aristocrats. In the ancient world aristocrats were the landed gentry and the accepted values of society were those of the landed gentry. An aristocrat lived of the produce and rents from his land, therefore this was the only respectable way to live. Anyone who actually worked for a living could not have personal worth, even if his work was creating great works of art. An aristocrat's pursuits were agriculture (through stewards) politics, government and war. No other pursuits were truly honorable.

**Robert Vermaat** · 01-21-2005, 06:10 PM

Quote:<hr>what makes this omission so striking is the other ways in which the ancient Romans' lives were just like ours.<hr> 
Ebusitanus, 
before you start applauding them too much, their were several immensely striking differences. Take, for instance, that simple thing that nevertheless was the basis of Roman society. Yes, that social staus 9or complete lack of it) called slavery. 
With it, the possibility that a human could not own himself, something that I think is very different today. While some lives may seems cheap, I think it is a mondial concept that each person has rights. Valete, 
Valerius/Robert 
[url=http://www.fectio.org.uk/" target="top]fectienses seniores[/url]

Ebusitanus · 01-24-2005, 09:18 AM

Actually, what I was rather looking for here is some sort of rebutal of this notion that Rome was such a "burden" to advancement and that really up to the Middle ages not much was done. While I do see the merit of this article somehow I had hoped that one (or several) of the contributors here, which I would have guessed were more informed than myself about the matter, would have something to say.

Tarbicus · 01-24-2005, 09:46 AM

Well, slavery may have run the economy in Roman times, but slavery in the Western world only disappeared around 150 years ago. And, there is plenty of evidence for slavery to be not too uncommon in other parts of the world right now. 
 
I understand that areas that became Romanized did see a rise in their standard of living, and becoming a Roman citizen was quite sought after there, so there must have been something about it. Just like now, if you keep your nose clean and your head down then things can go relatively smoothly - a generalisation but not too far off the mark. If you lead an insurrection then the government will stamp down on you straight away. 
 
I had a brief email from someone telling me that it may just be possible that evidence has been found of Roman artefacts (armour) that may have been made of steel. I think this is being investigated so there's no general news, unless someone can expand on that? 
 
As for religion, well; I see plenty of evidence of religious intolerance in the world today, and I do believe that the Romans were extremely tolerant of other people's beliefs, even adopting some into their own faiths and practises. It was those that seemed harmful to society that were persecuted, Dionysios being one, as well as Christianity for a time, which may have honestly been seen as actually a violent and anti-social faith in the public perception (eating the flesh, drinking the blood - how many tabloids nowadays misinform and distort the truth if it's popular to do so). There's no difference today. 
 
The Western world seems to have seen a decline after Rome broke up, except in the East were advances in technology and civilisation thrived. However, much of that may have been due to major climate changes, something we struggle to cope with even today. Looking at the Bible (I've said this elsewhere, sorry the Romans actually seem to come out in a fairly positive light, Luke being extremely proud of his Roman citizenship. 
 
One of the main reasons for many of Rome's physical structures being delapidated or lost is through vandalism and 're-use' of their parts. Otherwise, natural conditions brought them down, which I don't believe is unreasonable, especially if they're not maintained. I talk mainly of buildings, etc. So, they must have had something? The aqueducts are a magnificence of engineering and, considering the tools and machinery available, they only instill amazement in me. 
 
Thanks for listening, and I'm sure there are plenty of opinions disagreeing with me out there 
 
Jim/Tarbicus.

Carlton Bach · 01-24-2005, 12:03 PM

very very skewed. 
 
Basically, the article appears to be saying "The Romans were not that great because they didn't think like us, didn't have modern medicine and didn't use soap." An odd concept to say the least. 
 
Now, taking soap first: There were until very recently entire civilisations in this world who had never heard of soap, yet when they encountered the soap-using Europeans they found them, not to put too fine a point on it, smelly. Olive oil and a strigil are perfectly good tools for getting clean in a Roman bath, certainly better than what the soap-using Germans had. Adding to which we need to keep in mind that Roman baths were about a lot more than getting clean. 
 
As to medicine, I think the record needs to be set straight in more ways than one. First off, we don't actually know how well the majority of Roman medicines performed because they haven't been tried, but ethnomedical studies have shown us that dismissing them out of hand is wrongheaded. Does anyone else remember the scorn modern (1920s) authors heaped upon the medieval Hospitaller knights because they scraped *mould* on open wounds? Penicillium family moulds, to be precise. I would not be surprised if similar misunderstandings clouded our view of Roman medicine today. 
 
Incidentally, I encourage all who can to read Dioscurides' Materia Medica (there's a new German translation out, unfortunately I don't know of an English one). A very methodical and careful collection of remedies, many of which continued in use in modern herbal medicine. This may not be modern medicine, but I challenge everyone to tell me what exactly the author could, realistically, be expected to do better. 
 
Then there is an interesting conflation of two common criticisms of Roman medicine (and science in general). First, the authoritative theory. This is one of the most terrible misunderstandings in history, but you can't blame it on the Romans. Of course Galen sets himself up as the ultimate authorities in health matters and denigrates his rivals - he was making a living in the shark tank of upper crust medicine. This was par for the course. Only later generations could misread the topoi of philosophical debate (and academic self-advertisement) as reputable claims to omniscience, and I think the thinking habits of scriptural religion and hierarchical doctrine are to blame here. What is really interesting, though, is the way the author quotes some truly interesting items of evidence to counter this charge: the inscriptions on medicine that was 'tried' on a certain person or 'proven' in the great scab epidemic. This is empiricism at work. Surely, if Roman medicine had been the ossified tradition it is seen as this would be anathema. 
 
As to the disdain for curiosity: that is indeed an attitude quite prevalent in the Roman upper class. Nonetheless, this is the same social class that brought forth Pliny and Seneca. I prefer not to read Cicero's magisterial pronunciations as an accurate guide to prevailing Roman attitudes (not to mention the fact that most science and engineering went on at a level below the governing classes anyway and the prevailing middle-class ethic seems to have been rather different). Taken in proper context I think the quip about 'admiring the work, but not emulating the creator' is about on par with a modern Republican saying things like "Businessmen contribute more to society than intellectuals". 
 
The artistic 'sterility' of Rome is another concept I would challenge. I mean, anyone can come up with an arbitrary canon. Does anyone recall the nineteenth century frequently considered itself lacking in artistic achievement? We may well be falling for the Romans' self-image here, in that we adopted their canonisation of the Greek classics and their Roman emulators while neglecting their contemporaries. I would submit for consideration of Rome's literary vibrancy: Apuleius, Lukian, Martialis, Ausonius, Juvenal, St. Augustine (great writer, he, whatever you think of his theology), Tacitus and the beautiful clarity of Paulus' Sententiae. You don't have to like what they created, but it certainly wasn't devoid of creative genius. 
 
Looking at Rome with a modern eye cannot but result in condemnation. Yet the same is true for any age before our own. Washington? A slaveholder! Churchill? A misogynist! Columbus? A greedy conqueror! St Bernard of Clairvaux? A Muslim-hating bigot! Surely, this is nonsense. Taking Rome on its own terms, its achievements are formidable. So are its shortcomings, but I would dread to find out what future generations (if any) will think of us. 
 
Vale 
 
Volker

Tarbicus · 01-25-2005, 04:09 AM

Well, we know they had medicine.We also know they were brilliant engineers. 
 
Crikey knows what was lost in terms of their knowledge, especially after the loss of the Alexandrian Library? It's all speculation. However, battle fatalities seem to have been far less than what would be expected from modern opinions based on modern medical science and practice. 
 
Maybe an agrarian culture has its benefits? Unfortunately, it seemed to involve slave labour, or bonded labour. But that's a different subject. 
 
When it comes to medicine, I think you are absolutely right. Most 'modern' cures and remedies are based around natural cures and remedies that have been around for thousands of years. Pretty much every medicine is based on a natural product. The synthesising seems to be the 'miracle, especially when it's patentable'. The British SAS know what to look for in the jungle when they're injured or ill, without the need for calling a pharmacy/chemist.

LCorneliusScaeva · 12-03-2008, 12:05 AM

Quote:Actually, what I was rather looking for here is some sort of rebutal of this notion that Rome was such a "burden" to advancement and that really up to the Middle ages not much was done. While I do see the merit of this article somehow I had hoped that one (or several) of the contributors here, which I would have guessed were more informed than myself about the matter, would have something to say.

I'm currently reading the book [amazon]The Forgotten Revolution[/amazon] which might interest you. Here's the official description of the book:

----
The third and second centuries BC witnessed, in the Greek world, a scientific and technological explosion. Greek culture had reached great heights in art, literature and philosophy already in the earlier classical era, but it was in the age of Archimedes and Euclid that science as we know it was born, and gave rise to sophisticated technology that would not be seen again until the 18th century. This scientific revolution was also accompanied by great changes and a new kind of awareness in many other fields, including art and medicine.

What were the landmarks in the meteoric rise of science 2300 years ago? Why are they so little known today, even among scientists, classicists and historians? How do they relate to the post-1500 science that we are familiar with from school? What led to the end of ancient science? These are the questions that this book discusses, in the belief that the answers bear on choices we face today.
----

The author feels that the 2nd century BCE conflicts between the Romans and the Helenistic states, the actions of Ptolemy VIII in Alexandria, and perhaps the rise of new (or resurgence of old) attitudes towards knowledge and science contributed to the decline of scientific progress.

Timotheus · 12-03-2008, 04:51 PM

Quote:Ebusitanus,
before you start applauding them too much, their were several immensely striking differences. Take, for instance, that simple thing that nevertheless was the basis of Roman society. Yes, that social staus 9or complete lack of it) called slavery
With it, the possibility that a human could not own himself, something that I think is very different today. While some lives may seems cheap, I think it is a mondial concept that each person has rights.

Valete,
Valerius/Robert

But remember that only 150 years ago in this very country there existed slavery. Even after the United States ended slavery it continued in Brazil until 1888 when it was finally outlawed.

So while we today do not legally have slavery it is still a very recent memory for us and illegal salvery is still a world-wide epidemic.

Paullus Scipio · 12-04-2008, 12:04 AM

When comparing the "lifestyle" of a reasonably well-off Roman - apartment or villa,'urban' and country lifestyles, baths, watching professional sports, bars, fast food etc; I am a little surprised that no-one has mentioned two distinct differences among so many similarities.....modern man has electricity, and the motor vehicle , both of which are at the heart of the modern Western lifestyle.......

As to 'slavery', this is an emotive word which conjures with it the slavery form which existed less than two hundred years ago- just a couple of generations.

Many 'moderns' bound to the drudgery of 9-5 work all their lives in order to exist, with no choice about it, or power to change it, might feel that 'feedom' is an illusion; they are not free, but mere 'wage-slaves'.

Equally, many ancient slaves in Rome might consider themselves blessed to have 'security of occupation' and the possible opportunity to prosper later as a 'freedman' under powerful patronage,,,, and doubly so at regular food and shelter, and access to medicine etc compared to the uncertain life, famines due to poor harvests etc, poor health etc which their 'wilder' barbarian cousins endured........

Everything is relative!! :wink: :wink: Smile

D

Tarbicus · 12-04-2008, 12:10 AM

Well said.

SigniferOne · 12-06-2008, 02:20 AM

Quote:A Roman citizen lucky enough to be free and possessed of a little money lived a life that in many ways remains competitive with any to follow. If we wished to study history, he could read Thucydides, Herodotus, or Plutarch. If he wished to study philosophy, he had before him, in more complete form than we do, the works of Plato and Aristotle. If he wished for literature or drama, he had available to him The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Oreseia, the Oedipus plays, Antigone, Medea, Lysistrata, The Aeneid, and more.

This is so perplexing, that the author likes to cite the Greek historians, or philosophers or playwrights. Did we suddenly forget Sallust, Livy, Trogus, and Tacitus?

Philosophers -- Musonius Rufus and Cornutus? Not to mention Epictetus?

Playwrights -- Accius, Pacuvius? Heck even the old Seneca singlehandedly inspired Shakespeare and the Elizabethan theater. I think the Romans would be rather reading Ovid's Medea, which according to ancient accounts blew everyone away.

On and on, I could go down the list with this article. The number of mistakes is simply too large.

By the way, is anyone else puzzled by the "no soap" reference? Isn't there a clear reference to soap in the 3rd century? Doesn't Galen recommend soap somewhere? Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Roman_history . I mean the very word, soap, comes from Latin sapo.

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