08-16-2019, 07:16 AM
Still no answer to the questions. Yes I gather, busy, busy, busy. Whenever I present Polybius' reconstruction of his numbers for Utica, it becomes all quiet on the western front. That tells me a lot. I also find it interesting that all those who are of the Polybius school, have never actually done an intense study of his military numbers, but will defend Polybius to the last breath. Too many historians, be it amateur or professional have a lot of invested emotion in Polybius. A good historian has to be objective. However, this is not the case. The fact that modern historians have created a list of reliable and unreliable ancient historians has been driven by nothing more than emotion. As I have said, where is the great study undertaken on Polybius that confirms for all time he was the most reliable and trustworthy. Where is it?
The only thing the Polybius school has going is that "there is safety in numbers." If everyone keeps saying Polybius is reliable then he must be reliable. So when you run with the crowd, you end up where the crowd goes. It is incomprehensible for the Polybius school that Polybius could be unreliable, this would mean they have been wrong, and that is impossible because their egos cannot accept it. You mean I have been wrong all this time, no never! That is what I mean by being emotional rather than objective. Being objective means removing the ego.
Why has there never been a real serious study into Polybius, especially his military numbers? It is because the Polybian school are too scared as to what they might find. Better to live the illusion and protect one's reputation than discover the truth. On RAT Facebook, an academic mentioned that he entered into his profession hoping to make a great discovery. He has also admitted that he has not made any great discovery. My personal belief is he elected to become an academic for all the wrong reasons. His story is so similar to many I have come across working in the Australian Film Industry for over 30 years. Many a budding young woman, wanting to be a star, decided to become an actress. Most of these never did, and a few I know of personally, became prostitutes. Now I have worked with many an unknown actress at the time who became stars, but they wanted to be an actor because they loved acting. For them, when they become stars, it was a by product that they found themselves in and not the main focus of their drive. So the academic that wanted to make the great discovery found the great discovery alluded him. He went about it the wrong way (ego first).
For me personally, I just wanted to know if it was possible to find out what the Roman legion was really about. In those days I was strongly entrenched in the Polybian school and looked down on poor Livy. I became a better amateur historian when I broke away from the mind set of modern academia, and started doing my own questioning. In the end, I worked out how a Roman tribe was constructed, and then because of this, I made a discovery, and that was the whole Roman social and military system had been designed by Pythagoras, and since that event in 2009, the evidence has been overwhelming. Even the early Catholics adopted the whole Pythagorean system. For those who do not like the fact the Romans tribes are a cosmic Pythagorean calendar and the organisation of the Roman legion is a replication of the Pythagorean cosmos, I do not care. My greatest and respected critics are not to be found on this forum, but outside of it. And these people are not sycophants, otherwise I would have nothing to do with them.
In my book, when published, which is starting to look realistic, I use the term "Polybius or his source." I give Polybius and any other ancient historian the benefit of the doubt. I am not anti Polybius, but I do have a lot of evidence (military numbers), that show his calculations are sloppy and riddled with error. He has a strong tendency to add subunits to the main total instead of deducting them. His description of the Roman legion he has confused the antesignani (the youngest hastati) with the velites (the same age bracket as the antesignani), thereby missing 600 infantry from his calculations.
Now I will state I am not paranoid, so don't try that one on me. But this childish little game of boosting someone's rating who disagrees with me is really pathetic. It's always the same usual suspects. So if you want to boost your reputation disagree with me and watch them rise. I guarantee it will be an easy debate, because a lot of the time I don't bother to fight hard enough or defend myself. And the reason for that is I am not interested in changing your views or that matter your religion. It is pointless. I know when someone has entrenched views.
My response to the usual suspects is this, I find your research methodologies or your analytical skills riddled with shortcomings. You approach any data in the most unimaginative way possible. In fact you look at the obvious and cannot go any further. If I was to present you with the Zosimus' claim that five tagmata amounting to 6,000 men were sent to Rome, your response would be to divide 6,000 by 5 and arrive at each tagma having 1,200 men. And then off you go trying to see how 1,200 could fit the other data. Someone told me this is "not even scratching the surface methodology."
Has anyone looked at Zosimus' point of view? He's a Greek, and could see everything in a Greek manner. Has anyone studied ancient Greek mathematics? Do the Greeks believe a century had 100 men? What if the Roman military century had less men? Maybe Zosimus did not know that.
As to my research, which seriously is nothing more than joining the right dots, well that is what I have been told, and I accept it, many a person who had scrutinised my work, and are free of ego, jealousy, and resentment, and are not small minded, have always sent me this quote from Einstein:
[center]"All new ideas go through three phases,
Firstly they are ridiculed,
Next they are violently opposed'
Lastly, they are accepted as obvious."[/center]
The only thing the Polybius school has going is that "there is safety in numbers." If everyone keeps saying Polybius is reliable then he must be reliable. So when you run with the crowd, you end up where the crowd goes. It is incomprehensible for the Polybius school that Polybius could be unreliable, this would mean they have been wrong, and that is impossible because their egos cannot accept it. You mean I have been wrong all this time, no never! That is what I mean by being emotional rather than objective. Being objective means removing the ego.
Why has there never been a real serious study into Polybius, especially his military numbers? It is because the Polybian school are too scared as to what they might find. Better to live the illusion and protect one's reputation than discover the truth. On RAT Facebook, an academic mentioned that he entered into his profession hoping to make a great discovery. He has also admitted that he has not made any great discovery. My personal belief is he elected to become an academic for all the wrong reasons. His story is so similar to many I have come across working in the Australian Film Industry for over 30 years. Many a budding young woman, wanting to be a star, decided to become an actress. Most of these never did, and a few I know of personally, became prostitutes. Now I have worked with many an unknown actress at the time who became stars, but they wanted to be an actor because they loved acting. For them, when they become stars, it was a by product that they found themselves in and not the main focus of their drive. So the academic that wanted to make the great discovery found the great discovery alluded him. He went about it the wrong way (ego first).
For me personally, I just wanted to know if it was possible to find out what the Roman legion was really about. In those days I was strongly entrenched in the Polybian school and looked down on poor Livy. I became a better amateur historian when I broke away from the mind set of modern academia, and started doing my own questioning. In the end, I worked out how a Roman tribe was constructed, and then because of this, I made a discovery, and that was the whole Roman social and military system had been designed by Pythagoras, and since that event in 2009, the evidence has been overwhelming. Even the early Catholics adopted the whole Pythagorean system. For those who do not like the fact the Romans tribes are a cosmic Pythagorean calendar and the organisation of the Roman legion is a replication of the Pythagorean cosmos, I do not care. My greatest and respected critics are not to be found on this forum, but outside of it. And these people are not sycophants, otherwise I would have nothing to do with them.
In my book, when published, which is starting to look realistic, I use the term "Polybius or his source." I give Polybius and any other ancient historian the benefit of the doubt. I am not anti Polybius, but I do have a lot of evidence (military numbers), that show his calculations are sloppy and riddled with error. He has a strong tendency to add subunits to the main total instead of deducting them. His description of the Roman legion he has confused the antesignani (the youngest hastati) with the velites (the same age bracket as the antesignani), thereby missing 600 infantry from his calculations.
Now I will state I am not paranoid, so don't try that one on me. But this childish little game of boosting someone's rating who disagrees with me is really pathetic. It's always the same usual suspects. So if you want to boost your reputation disagree with me and watch them rise. I guarantee it will be an easy debate, because a lot of the time I don't bother to fight hard enough or defend myself. And the reason for that is I am not interested in changing your views or that matter your religion. It is pointless. I know when someone has entrenched views.
My response to the usual suspects is this, I find your research methodologies or your analytical skills riddled with shortcomings. You approach any data in the most unimaginative way possible. In fact you look at the obvious and cannot go any further. If I was to present you with the Zosimus' claim that five tagmata amounting to 6,000 men were sent to Rome, your response would be to divide 6,000 by 5 and arrive at each tagma having 1,200 men. And then off you go trying to see how 1,200 could fit the other data. Someone told me this is "not even scratching the surface methodology."
Has anyone looked at Zosimus' point of view? He's a Greek, and could see everything in a Greek manner. Has anyone studied ancient Greek mathematics? Do the Greeks believe a century had 100 men? What if the Roman military century had less men? Maybe Zosimus did not know that.
As to my research, which seriously is nothing more than joining the right dots, well that is what I have been told, and I accept it, many a person who had scrutinised my work, and are free of ego, jealousy, and resentment, and are not small minded, have always sent me this quote from Einstein:
[center]"All new ideas go through three phases,
Firstly they are ridiculed,
Next they are violently opposed'
Lastly, they are accepted as obvious."[/center]
