mountainman

BARBARIANS (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Terry Jones & Alan Ereira

THESIS:
(Preface p.7)

"The thesis is that
we've all been told a false history of Rome
that has twisted our entire understanding
of our own history - glorifying (and glossing over)
a long era of ruthless imperial power,

celebrating it for the benefit of Renaissance tyrants
and more modern empires, and wildly distorting our view of the
so-called 'Middle Ages' and the peoples whom Rome have
crushed and who were then blamed for its fall."

Thanks for the constant hammering reminders about this book
Clivedurdle, I can recommend its value in the attempt at seeing
"outside the (military) square" of the Roman imperial agenda.

The discussion is noted liberally with references to original
sources in the back of the book, there is an index and a number
of sets of illustrations and pictures of archeological monuments,
sculptures, etc.

Considered are the Celts (of Britain and Gaul) and the reality of
warrior women, not just Boadicia, but many others. The Romans
killed almost half of the gallic celts in the 1st century, and of
course wiped out all the druids. The "barbarians" of Dacia
were also exterminated in the first century, an act today
which would be termed genocide. The Persians are discussed
at length, and the confrontations between the Romans and
Sassanians are non-stop. Both have full-time armies.

Even the greeks are to many of the Romans regarded as
"barbarians". Rome is nothing but an imperial machine of
conquest and taxation, a collective of warlords.

The real intelligence of antiquity actually resided in the
barbarians (Greeks and Indians, Celts, etc) whom the
Romans conquered, and ended up destroying.

p.196

"When they are hostile, the Latin and Greek sources
paint an extraordinary and vivid picture of horror.
Roman writers did, as we have seen, distort the truth
about those whom they regarded as 'barbarians'. But
by the 5th century this was being done in a new way
because the barbarians were seen in a new way."

Here are some other notes on the fourth century:

CENTURY: 4th
=============

309 Sassanian Emperor Hormizd II dies
Magi appoint unborn baby as successor (Shapur II)

DIOCLETION (305) Pound of Gold = 50,000 denari
c.307 = 100,000 denari
c.324 = 300,000 denari
c.350 = 2.1 billion denari

“Rich got richer and the poor got poorer”

DOMESDAY BOOK – 295 ? 305 CE:
The Emperor commissioned this book so that he could correctly tax everyone in the Empire, it was ordered that none could ever leave their farm or change their job”.

306 CE – Constantine accepted as “Saviour of Social Order”
in Gaul/Britiain; ruler of Celtic Lands.

“The distinction between Roman & Barbarian at the time
when Constantine assumed power was not at all clear”

312 "Thorough-going military conquest of Italy by a
Balkan-born military commander, Constantine." p.188

324 Huge war with the commander of the Eastern forces; 25,000 dead

325 "Having come to power he decided to move the whole focus of the empire to the East, replacing the palace-city of Byzantium with a great new capital, Constantinople, New Rome, on the very border of Asia.

The old latin Empire was doomed to a peripheral enterprise,
concerned with agriculture and the Germans."

In general, the book provides an interesting background for the
period from the first century BCE (and earlier influences) through
the first five centuries from the perspective of that were defined
during that period by the Romans, as "barbarians".

For those Romans who were enamored of their own ambition
and power, even the greeks (literature, science, medicine, etc)
were considered "barbarian".

Romans simply plundered the empire, professional "robbers"
who were self-justified by their principles of empire, and
at the end of their rule, left us the legacy of the fabrication
of the galilaeans.

Once again Clivedurdle, thanks for the reference.
I can recommend this book for a good background
on antiquity, and late antiquity, from a unique and
very valuable perspective.


Pete Brown

Clivedurdle

And please everyone, get it (with persian fire) with your booktokens you'll get for xmas!

mountainman

Further from the book ...

The DEATHBED ADVICE of ARDASHIR to SHAPUR I:

“Consider the Fire Altar and the Throne
as inseparable as to sustain each other."

ZOROASTRIANISM: “The Avesta” (17 Hymns)
ARDASHIR used it as a basis for his legal code *

The “Logic” was that religion provided justice,
the basis of an ordered society
that could sustain military expenditure”


The MANTRA was that …….

‘There can be no power without an Army’
‘There can be no Army without Money’
‘There can be no Money without Agriculture’
‘There can be no Agriculture without Justice’

The Persian state and the Roman state both
operated with armies, and this mantra would
probably have been common ground.

ARDASHIR used a monotheistic religion to unite
the Persians, and passed this to Shapur - "the
sacred Fire". The Sassanian's were described
as "courtly", and at the basis of the "Parthian
civilisation was education". It is notable that
ARDASHIR ordered a complete destruction of
all record of the Parthians. His rule was "the
will of God".

The one thing Constantine could thus have used
was an ancient monothesitic religion by which
he could unite and hold his taxees, in very much
the same way that Shapur I's father did to the
Parthians.

The Parthian/Persian/Sassanian empire vs Roman
empire wars prevailed from 55 BCE for 500 years.

SASSANIAN RELIGION:
Anahita, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Sacred Fire (Persian)
DIVINE LIGHT: Spirit, Goodness & Purity
"Ahura Mazda"

Clivedurdle

Strange how a little overview of what was going on then raises all sorts of interesting questions!

countjulian

Pure nonsense. You can blather on and on about "imperialism" and make ever more fauly comparisons to the current state of world affairs and America, but the fact is that the actual standard of living plummetted in the West and fell far down in the East with the victories of the Germanic and Arab barbarians over the Romans. See Ward-Perkins excellent work The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (or via: amazon.co.uk)

mountainman

Perhaps, but then again, try to put yourself perhaps in the shoes
of the Gallic Celts, circa 55 BCE, when one million of their six million
were killed, and another million deported elsewhere in the empire as
slaves. Would you not be inclined also to classify this act, with
respect to the indigenous Celtic peoples of France, as a "decline
in their standard of living"?

Do you have any idea what the actual academic consensus distribution
is for the DATE of the FALL of the ROMAN CIVILISATION?

Have you any idea how embarrassingly VAST this range is?
At all?

Clivedurdle

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/...577198,00.html

The Persians were Barbarians as well!

Rome did destroy Carthage, another load of Barbarians! (Someting about some elephants was there?)

And I thought the Roman Empire ended in the 1450's with te fall of Constantinople, so not sure how you can quote Byzantines as being anti Roman!

countjulian

If you were to literally believe Muslim chronicles about the conquest of India, the mujahideen killed inexcess of 60 million people over their various campaigns. There were not enough people in Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades to get the blood up to the crusader's knees. In less recent times, it was the "thing" to do, to claim to have killed more hated enemies than you actually had. Caesar's figure of 1 million dead Gaulic barbarians in De Bellico Gallo is almost certainly bragging. Anyway that happened 400 years prior to the events we are now describing, the Gauls at this time were proud to be Roman. As for "decline in living" standards once again I tell you, get real. Cities sprang up, public health systems and bathing systems were installed (previously the barbarians went their whole lives with nary a bath or two), an actual code of laws was brought to all of Gaul, the barbaric Gaulic practices of human sacrifice were put to an end, and the Gaulic people were given a written language. Archeology confirms the massive rise in manufactured wares produced and used in Gaul after the Roman liberation. BTW, what did the Gauls do to the Romans when the invaded them without cause hundreds of years before? How did it affect the Roman "standard of living?"

Not sure what you mean by "the FALL of the ROMAN CIVILISATION" (though your ingenious use of capslock has surely convinced me of something, of what I am not sure). If you mean the end of antiquity, the date if variously placed at Battle of Frigidus, the exile of the neo-Platonic scholl in Greece, the death of Justinian, etc. But as for the end of the Roman Empire in the West, the date is firmly known, 4 September 476 AD, the day the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was pitifully deposed from his throne and 1000 years of Roman rule came to an end. A book has recently been written about him, The Last Roman. You can read the first chapter here http://adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/bre...oman_intro.pdf

Clivedurdle

http://ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/cntnt67.htm

countjulian

They were. Why do you think when Justinian closed down the academy in Athens, the Persian king was all so eager to take the philosophers in, but in the end they went back to the Christian Empire anyway? Why do you think it was that the Persians copied Greek baths, Greek architecture, and looked for Greek philosophy, not the other way around? The Sassanian Empire was still an oriental despotism, a low the Roman Empire would eventually sink to but was not yet at. Roman law preserved liberties for her citizens, if not always honored, that the despotic Sassanians never did, most strikingly the fundamental right to parresia, free speech (again, often honored in the void, but still there). Surely the Persians were more civilized than the beastly Germans and Gauls, but barbarians still they were.

And again, they were. I suppose you'll be defending Carthaginian child sacrifice next. The Carthiginians, like the Sassanians, did not have the traditions of individual liberties and representative government that the Romans and especially Greeks possessed. If the Carthiginians had won the Punic Wars the West would be a much different, less free place.

Not sure what you're on about here.

Face it, the fall of Rome was a disaster to the people who experienced it, and in the East the decline of the Greek Roman Empire and the triumph of the Arabs was a cataclysm for those who experienced it. Trade fell, in the West public hygiene and literacy fell of the map, food became scarcer, right to life and property became extremelly precarious, architecture declined dramatically, manufacture of goods became almost completely local, and the intellectual pursuits and reading were confinded almost entirely to the narrow abbeys of the Catholic Church.