Hey, folks. Another Fireside this week! I had hoped to have the science fiction body armor post ready to go this week, but in addition to the continued work on the book project, I was asked to write a review of the now-out-in-the-USA Gladiator II and that consumed a fair bit of my time, pushing the science fiction body armor post into next week. Now the review itself will be coming out at some point in Foreign Policy. We are absolutely going to cover significant parts of this movie here as well because its history is bonkers but I’m going to leave most of that until later (probably waiting for the movie to hit streaming, so I can go through the battle scenes in detail) if for no other reason than that the nice people at Foreign Policy are paying me write this review for them and it would hardly be sporting to then post all my thoughts for free online before it even comes out.
That said, I did quip online that, “It has been 24 years since the first Gladiator film and in all that time, I see that Ridley Scott has still not learned how Roman names work.” Which is not something I had the words to get into in the FP review, so I suppose we can discuss that here!
So for this this week’s musing, let’s talk about how Roman names work.
Roman naming conventions for the period of the republic and the early empire are actually quite formulaic: there is for the most part a system for forming Roman names, both male and female and it is as a result generally pretty easy to spot situations where some writer is trying to make something that sounds like a Roman name, but doesn’t actually know how those names form. And the form of Roman names mattered in Roman society: a name formed in the Roman fashion was, for instance, a key market of Roman citizen identity, to the point that individuals who gained Roman citizenship generally took up a Roman-style name.
For males, the Roman name was formed in a structure called the tria nomina (‘the three names’) which often gets shortened into English into the word ‘trinomen.’1 The tria nomina consisted of three parts: the praenomen (‘before-name’), nomen (‘name’) and cognomen (‘after-name’), each of which has a standard form and purpose.
The praenomen was the ‘given’ or personal name of an individual, given to them by their parents on the occasion of their ritual purification, typically about a week after birth. Generally every Roman male in a family would have a different praenomen, but the Romans are not creative when it comes to first names. There are roughly 30 common Roman praenomena, of which only about a dozen or so are frequent at any given time, with the result that Roman personal names are drawn from a very narrow pool. Further compounding this, it was common and expected with both families and larger clans (what the Romans call a gens) to reuse frequent family praenomina. Thus for instance, Appius Claudius Caecus (cos. 307, 296; dict. 285; cens. 312) – his grandfather was also Appius Claudius and so was his eldest son (Appius Claudius Russus, cos. 268) and one of his grandsons (Appius Claudius Pulcher, cos. 212) and three of his great-grand-sons (Appius Claudius Nero, praet. 195; Appius Claudius Pulcher, cos. 185; and Appius Claudius Centho, praet. 175). Indeed, there are so many Appius Claudius Pulchers that Wikipedia has a disambiguation page for just the important ones.
This naming convention actually indicates something quite important to know about the Romans which is that this is not a strongly individualistic culture, at least by modern standards. Romans are defined, in their names, mostly by being one more iteration of a family tradition and even the most individualistic part of their name – the praenomen – is a cookie-cutter nod to family traditions. The ideal Roman family was, in effect, one Appius Claudius after the next, each one quite a lot like his father, on and on forever.
Because there were only a handful of common praenomina it was common in writing to abbreviate them, since everyone knew what name you were indicating. Those abbreviations were standard and Wikipedia actually has a really handy list of them. Appius was Ap. or App., Lucius was L., Titus was T. and Tiberius Ti. and so on. Gaius is C. because G and C were, initially, not distinct letters in Latin writing (likewise Gnaeus is Cn.). If you needed to indicate a specific Appius Claudius Pulcher in antiquity, the standard form was to give the name of his father and possibly grandfather, so App. Claudius C. f. App. n. Pulcher is short for “Appius Claudius Gaii filius Appii nepos Pulcher” and so in English, “Appius Claudius, son of Gaius [Claudius], grandson of Appius [Claudius], Pulcher.” Modern scholars tend to instead specify figures in the republic by the highest office held, so we’d instead write this guy as Ap. Claudius Pulcher (cos. 143), which has the added ease of making it easy to find the person in the standard prosopographical reference texts, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (1951; abbreviated as MRR)and the Prosopographia Imperii Romani (1897-2015, abbreviated PIR).2
The next name was the nomen, which was the masculine form of the name of a man’s gens or clan and you can tell by the fact that it’s just called the nomen (“name”) that this is a pretty core part of someone’s identity and marked an individual as a Roman citizen, but beyond that there’s not a lot to say. Its important, but not complicated.
The ‘last’ name(s) was the cognomen. Cognomina generally began as nicknames and usually self-effacing ones. However by the Middle Republic, we see that a lot of early cognomina have effectively frozen, marking instead significant branches of very large gentes. Thus for instance the gens Cornelia, the largest gens in Rome, had more than a dozen major branches, each marked by a standard cognomen: thus the Cornelii Scipiones, the Cornelii Sullae, the Cornelii Lentuli and so on. Thus Julius Caesar’s name (Gaius Julius Caesar) marks him as a member of the Julian gens and part of the Caesares branch of it.
That said, cognomina as nicknames also still occasionally happened, usually applied by the Senate based on major achievements. That can result in an individual with multiple cognomina, since they stack rather than replace each other. Thus the victor at Zama over Hannibal is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus: He’s of the Scipio branch of the Cornelian gens and has the nickname Africanus, ‘the African’ to mark his victory in Africa over Hannibal.
A final quirk to note is that men from lesser, plebeian families might not have all three names, but only two: the praenomen and the nomen because they come from a gens that isn’t significant enough to have wide-reaching branches. Generally if you see a Roman man with just two names, like Gaius Marius or Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), its safe to assume they’re a plebeian and from a relatively undistinguished family (in both cases these men are from wealthy families that were part of the Italian aristocracy but outsiders to the Roman aristocracy: the Marii were from Arpinum, the Pompeii from Picenum).3
Now that’s the system for Roman men. For Roman women, the system is both simpler and more frustrating. Early in the Republic, Roman women seem to have had regular praenomina, but were referred to in public by their nomen and by the Middle Republic female praenomina seem to have dropped away, leaving women with just their nomen as their entire name. Thus every woman of a given gens had the same name: the feminine form of the gens. Thus every woman born to a father of the Julian gens was just Julia. Now we know that these women often had nicknames and such to distinguish them (especially multiple sisters who would thus share a name), but one of Rome’s patriarchal attitudes is that it was generally impolite to talk about another man’s womenfolk in public and certainly to use their nicknames in public. So while we know that all of these women had more personalized names, they rarely come down to us.
When writers do have to distinguish, there are some standard forms. We tend to see two sisters distinguished as ‘Maior’ and ‘Minor’ (‘Elder’ and ‘Younger’); Julius Caesar’s sisters were thus Julia Maior and Julia Minor. We also see the use of diminutives to distinguish women, thus the wife of Augustus is often known as Livia Drusilla because her father was Marcus Livius Drusus. Chances are she had an elder sister who was just Livia and she was distinguished as “Livia-little-Drusus” (Drusilla being the feminine diminutive of Drusus). Roman women did not change their names when they married.
These rules remain very firm in the Middle and Late Republics, but begin to fuzz a bit in the imperial period, beginning with the names of emperors. Emperors had names, starting with Augustus (Imperator Caesar Augustus) which were more like titles, often taking ‘Imperator’ (‘victorious general’) as their praenomen. It also becomes common for emperors to take names connecting themselves to other, previous well-liked emperors, creating the friendly veneer of family continuity even when there was none. Thus, for instance, Domitian’s full regnal name was Imperator Caesar Domitianus Augustus, despite the fact that he is wholly unrelated to the Julio-Claudian family. As we get further into the empire, these names get increasingly baroque along with their references, generally reaching back to refer to popular, well-liked emperors. Thus the emperor Caracalla’s regnal name was Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, trying to draw a (fictive!) connection to Marcus Aurelius (Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) and Antoninus Pius (Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius).4 Such names were intended to give a sense of stability, even when politics were far from stable.
For people who weren’t emperor, the rules hold longer. The first major fuzz we start to see in the second century A.D. as Roman elites start to adopt both paternal and maternal names (to emphasize the dignity of their heritage), leading to ‘binary nomenclature’ and thus increasingly long and complex names. Such names are still composed of the standard set of names, but with multiple nomina and cognomina drawn from different families, in some cases to an absurd degree over multiple generations. The other slow change is that family praenomina become even more standard and often begin to be repeated (e.g. multiple brothers all named Gaius or Titus or what have you), reducing their value for identifying individuals. As a result we start to see cognomina somewhat usurp the specification role of praenomina.
What really throws the system out is the Constitutio Antoniniana (213), an edict of Caracalla extending citizenship to all free persons in the Empire. Whereas a Roman-style name had previously been a clear market of Roman citizen identity, now almost everyone was a citizen. Following Roman tradition, new citizens took the nomen of the person who granted them citizenship (in this case, Aurelius) but when so many people all have the same nomen, it stops being useful and then stops being used, except on official documents.
That said, this all began with my quip that Ridley Scott has still not learned how Roman names work and we can show that neatly with his most famous Roman character: Maximus Decimus Meridius. Maximus isn’t a praenomen, but rather a cognomen, while Decimus is a regular Roman praenomen and we can assume then that Meridius is his nomen (a fictive gens Meridia). So his name should read Decimus Meridius Maximus, although Maximus, “the greatest” would be an astoundingly arrogant and foolish cognomen for anyone not an emperor to take.
While we’re here, in that famous scene he also declares himself “General of the Felix Legions” which is also not a thing. The Romans don’t have formal ‘armies’ to be generals of, but as discussed have legati in charge of either a single legion or an imperial province. Given that he’s leading armies in a battle on the Danube in what is presumably the Marcomannic Wars, our Maximus would probably have been the legatus Augusti pro praetore (and thus a senator), perhaps of Pannonia Superior, somewhat ironically Septimius Severus’ province (he’s the father of Geta and Caracalla, the villains of Gladiator II) before he seized power. And also the ‘Felix Legions’ are not a thing, but that’s a whole separate discussion of how Roman legions are named.
In any case, I have seen Gladiator II (my editor got me into a press screening): look for my review in Foreign Policy likely sometime this weekend or next week (I’ve filed it, its in editing) and I’m also looking forward to making an appearance on the Historians at the Movies (HATM) podcast to talk about the movie with Jason Herbert and Sarah E. Bond; unsure when that podcast will come out (we’re recording next week).
On to recommendations!
Meanwhile, just because my views on Gladiator II aren’t yet published that doesn’t mean that no one else’s are. I particularly liked Alexandra Sills’ first impressions and also a longer set of second impressions which gets into both the impressive bombast of the film but also some of the thematic elements that end up feeling a bit less pleasant if one stops to think about them (the film especially indulges in a lot of gay-is-evil coding, for instance). Sills also shouts out the battle scene at the beginning for analysis by ancient military historians and – well, it’s functionally pure nonsense and I think we’ll come back to pick that nonsense apart in more detail when the movie hits streaming and I can go through shot by shot. Sills – a scholar of the arena working on a book on gladiators – also has a piece with Working Classicists on the gladiatorial elements of the film and their plausibility.
For some historical fashion, in this case from Medieval Nubia (spotted via the always interesting Pasts Imperfect newsletter), Medievalist.net features work by the “Costumes of Authority” project showing off some truly spectacular modern recreations of elite medieval fashion from Nubia (today southern Egypt and northern Sudan). I mean, just look at what they’ve done, it’s really impressive:
This sort of recreation work is always astoundingly impressive to me, as it requires mastery of both the representational evidence, but also the materials and methods used to produce them. In any case, I’m particularly happy to see this done for a region of the world (medieval Africa) which rarely gets this kind of attention.
For this week’s book recommendation, I’m going to recommend L. Keppie, Slingers and Sling Bullets in the Roman Civil Wars of the Late Republic, 90-31 BC (2023). The first thing to note is that the book’s remit is a bit broader than the title implies, in that Keppie5 both reaches to earlier evidence from the Middle Republic and later evidence form the imperial period to frame his discussion of slingers and sling bullets. However, the focus is broadly on the Late Republic because that is the period from which we have a large corpus of surviving sling bullets, mostly in lead but also some stone and ceramic.6 The resulting volume is slim at just about 100 pages, but the pages are well-used and much of the archaeological evidence is new or only recently collected.
To me, the great virtue of the book is that while Keppie could have simply written a study of archaeologically recovered sling bullets, he aims a bit broader. The opening chapter covers the place of slingers in Mediterranean armies, pulling together the scattered evidence for their use and equipment. Slingers, like many light infantry troops, have a tendency to recede into the background of both ancient sources and modern scholarship, overshadowed by the more prestigious heavy infantry and cavalry. And to be fair, slingers were not often the decisive arm of any army in battle, but they were a common sight on ancient battlefields and especially in ancient sieges. As Keppie notes, certain regions were in particular noted for producing high-quality slingers, particularly Aetolia in Greece and the Balearic Islands and slingers from both locales show up from time to time as auxiliaries in Roman armies. A later chapter covers the evidence for slingers from the imperial period; we can know the Romans continued to use slingers as they appear as a dedicated troop-type in Roman artwork, even though auxiliary cohorts of slingers (funditores) are unattested, unlike the cohortes sagittariae (archers). Keppie argues, persuasively, for a native sling tradition in Italy and that legionaries may also at times have doubled as slingers and that sling bullet production may have been supervised by centurions (thus the Latin inscriptions).
The core of the book, however are six chapters covering the archaeological evidence for slingers – almost entirely the presence of sling bullets – in Rome’s mostly civil wars in the first century (though the presence of hundreds of sling bullets from the Siege of Numantia (133) is also noted). Sling bullets, particularly those cast in lead, often have messages inscribed on them, which can serve as a fascinating glimpse into the culture of common soldiers. Most such inscriptions simply indicate the unit to which the sling bullet belonged or the commander of its army, but we also get humorous and even vulgar inscriptions: acc[ipe], “take this!” or “pet[o] Octav[i]a culum” “I’m aimed at Octavian’s ass.”
The book is really well-produced, with lots of images, including archaeological drawings of inscribed sling bullets and slingers in Roman artwork but also comparative evidence (for instance coins that pick up the same visual motifs as sling bullets). Slingers and Sling Bullets is a volume that I think will be quite useful for a range of readers: it is easy enough to read for the enthusiast who wants to learn about slingers on ancient battlefields, but detailed enough (with enough notes) that advanced students and even specialists will find it a useful handbook on a topic that simply doesn’t get much attention in the scholarship.
- A term which has a separate scientific meaning referring to the three-name classification of species.
- The standard abbreviations are cos. for consul, dict. for dictator, cens. for censor, and praet. for praetor. You generally only list praetor-years for someone who never rose to anything higher.
- Pompey’s father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo has one of those nickname cognomina, ‘Strabo’ meaning ‘cross-eyed,’ rather than being a family name. Pompey, of course, will somewhat arrogantly take magnus (‘the Great’) as his nickname cognomen.
- Who is himself playing this game, drawing a connection to both Hadrian and Titus in his own nomenclature.
- Yes, this is the author of Making of the Roman Army.
- It’s likely most sling bullets were always stone, but it is really hard to tell a stone sling bullet from, you know, a smooth rock. Because it’s a smooth rock.
The one area this didn’t cover is slaves’ names; am I right in thinking that a slave would generally have just one name (like “Spartacus”) while a freedman would have a praenomen plus the nomen of the person who manumitted him (so if I’m a slave called Eugenius belonging to Marcus Claudius Asper, and I get freed, I become Eugenius Claudius)?
The slave’s name would typically become the cognomen upon manumission — as was also the case with foreigners who acquired citizenship (otherwise the quite limited set of praenomina would soon balloon, and one/two-letter abbreviations would no longer suffice). So in your example, the typical form would be M. Claudius Eugenius. Thus the full citizen-names of some famous authors are Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Titus Flavius Josephus, and Gaius Julius Hyginus
Thank you! Makes sense…
Your comment on the new Gladiator’s history being bonkers reminds me of college. I took a Roman Life class, and as part of the class we had to assess some media for historical accuracy. I enjoy the movie “Gladiator”, so I decided to take the opportunity to assess it–if you have to write an essay, make it fun. The movie’s historical accuracy was…tenuous, to say the least, but that gave me plenty to talk about in my essay!
I will say that while I agree it’s important to assess these media from a historical context, I don’t find that I enjoy the movie any less for having systematically studied its historical failures. It’s like watching the A&E Hornblower series, or “Master and Commander”–I enjoy it as a story that touches on history, not as history itself (though O’Brian did a better job than either Forester or the “Gladiator” team in regards to history).
I think that’s the right attitude to have. Don’t watch a Hollywood blockbuster to get a history lesson. And don’t judge it based on what it’s not trying to do. Yes, I can spot the inaccuracies and yes, it does break my suspense of disbelief slightly. But if you go in expecting fiction and with the intention of enjoying it as (historically-flavoured) fiction, you’re going to have more fun than if you sit on your high horse and actively look for inaccuracies so that you can feel smug about how knowledgeable you are. I did find the film mediocre, despite some stunning visuals and action scenes, but that has more to do with the failure of the Paul Mescal (and his lines) to build a relatable emotional core than anything to do with historical accuracy.
That said, for a blog such as this, a film like Gladiator II that has the public attention is a good occasion to get a broader audience interested in actual Roman history. Pointing out the historical inaccuracies is a good segway into doing that – even if it’s barely relevant as actual cinematic criticism. I think Brett knows that, because that’s exactly what he does when talking about LotR or GoT or the like.
“That said, for a blog such as this, a film like Gladiator II that has the public attention is a good occasion to get a broader audience interested in actual Roman history.”
Oh, absolutely. And it’s a perfectly valid thing to do. I don’t believe that acknowledging the flaws in something means you can’t enjoy it. Exploring Gladiator from the perspective of “What does this get wrong?” was an enjoyable experience, and certainly didn’t rob the experience of pleasure on my part.
This is, as Bret once said, HOW one treats something as art. Art says something about us, about our society. Gladiator–and 300, and Hornblower, and the rest–can be experienced as an exploration of our views of the society portrayed, and that says something about our society. For example, Rome wasn’t as obsessed with gladiators as we make them out to be. Obviously they enjoyed the games! But for a Roman the chariot races were the big important sports event. It’s modern society that’s put gladiators at the top of the Roman entertainment food chain. And that has interesting implications, since we have modern equivalents (American football vs NASCAR, for example). These are important questions that deserve to be examined, and an artwork capable of bringing those questions to the public’s attention has significant value, even if it’s a cheap action flick.
One thing I enjoy about this blog is that it’s very obvious Bret (usually) enjoys the things he reviews. And it’s very enjoyable to see someone deeply passionate about something explore it from their area of expertise. Brings to light a lot of things I would otherwise not consider. And anyone who can’t tolerate someone pointing out the flaws in their favorite artworks is a humorless clod.
I did see Marcus Aurelius’s *Mediations* being sold as a *Gladiator* tie-in.
Just as he would have wished it! 😛
Actually, it was for his own personal use. You generally get warned in the foreword about repetition because he’s returning to something he has to work out.
Its quoted in the film (a single line, the famed 6.6) albeit, I think, in a translation that bends the sense of the original passage.
How — typical.
But its reviews often show signs of being read by people to whom philosophy is new.
In gaming it’s called Tangential Learning. And for my part, I don’t find it distasteful. How else do you want folks to find out about it? It’s not like schools are teaching it anymore.
I got my copy of Gibbon’s work on Rome (which, whatever its flaws, is a significant book in history and worth reading) thanks to Hornblower. He was said to have read it while sailing, and when I saw a copy I figured “I like Hornblower, I should read this.” Does that make the time I spent reading it any less entertaining? Or any less useful? (Granting, of course, that his interpretations are questionable.) Of course not. Once I started reading the book, how I came to it became completely irrelevant–of no more consequence than the store from which I purchased it.
People need to find this stuff somehow. If a cheap action flick can also introduce people to Stoic philosophy (which I have strong disagreements with, but still see the value in studying), I fail to see how that’s a bad thing.
It’s still amusing.
Also, it’s clear from the reviews that many readers had no clue what they were getting into.
“In gaming it’s called Tangential Learning. And for my part, I don’t find it distasteful. How else do you want folks to find out about it?”
Interesting – I wasn’t even aware that there is a term for this, although I was absolutely aware of the phenomenon! This is, in fact, exactly how I got more into history, and specifically into military history which was a completely new topic for me some 20 years ago: by playing Total War games.
Which is incidentally why I find OGH’s less-than-charitable attitude to these games somewhat annoying. Yes, they are horribly inaccurate most of the time – even, in fact, for a complete layperson like me – but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did much more to popularize the topic than any professional historian.
Even O’Brian’s prose style. Aubrey and Maturin feel like characters who have never seen a railway station, while Hornblower’s character could be placed on a WWII convoy escort with little change.
Style is important. It really helps if your prose doesn’t sound tied to your own time when you write of other times.
I read an article which commented that the Hornblower novels are fundamentally portrayals of a modern man transported to the Napoleonic era: how a man of modern sensibility would perceive, think, and act in that world. An interesting psychological exercise, but obviously not a portrait of the people of that time.
The writer can’t win. There are readers who will complain when the main character is a man of his times, those who will complain when he is not.
O’Brian does a masterful job of presenting two completely different worlds to the reader; turn of the 19th century British society, and the same era Royal Navy (of which “society” in the more class based world of Regency Britain had no more real clue than we do).
It’s an interesting thing to see how people react to that. I’m thinking of how Master and Commander, the film, utterly fails to have any sense of Aubrey, or Maturin, as creatures of their time; even going so far as to put a Darwinian speech into Maturin’s mouth.
My favorite is the utterly non-modern way in which Maturin practices medicine; and how O’Brian gives him a tic which would, inadvertently, reduce his patients’ secondary infections (rinsing his hand in high-proof alcohol; not to clean them, but to make them more senistive, because his surgical mentor did it), while also being utterly careless of what we would consider basic hygiene, much less surgical.
It’s those little touches which give a glimpse into how differently people in an other time saw the world, compared to how we see our own.
” I’m thinking of how Master and Commander, the film, utterly fails to have any sense of Aubrey, or Maturin, as creatures of their time; even going so far as to put a Darwinian speech into Maturin’s mouth.”
OK, couple of misconceptions here. First of all, Maturin doesn’t say anything particularly Darwinian. The conversation you took offence to is:
MATURIN: “And here’s an insect that’s taken on the shape
of a thorn to save itself from the birds.”
BLAKENEY: “Did God make them change?”
MATURIN: “Does God make them change? Yes, certainly. But do they also change themselves? Now that is a question, isn’t it?”
[at this point the conversation is interrupted]
He’s not talking about natural selection, which was Darwin’s particular contribution: he’s simply saying that, yes, species may change over time by themselves, without divine intervention.
Now, you seem to think that this is anachronous (or to be precise prochronous) – it isn’t. The idea that species might change by themselves goes back at least to Robert Hooke. Diderot was sure it happened. Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather wrote “Zoonomia” demonstrating that it happened. All these men lived decades, or centuries, before “Master and Commander” is set. Maturin’s a learned man, a liberal and a naturalist; he would certainly have read Erasmus Darwin and Diderot. It’s absolutely in character for him to believe that species change by themselves. That the next line is “Sir! We’ve raised the Galapagos!” is a piece of dramatic irony introduced by the film-makers; we know their significance to natural history, but Maturin of course doesn’t.
Which itself is a reflect of how modern “conservativism” has a very limited relation to the past it supposedly extols. One of the key assertions for conservative authority is that in “the past” everyone believed as they do, and that as such all these “new” ideas (and those who believe them especially!) should be treated with distrust and hatred.
But evolution isn’t *new*, and there has never actually been a universal consensus supporting the young earth creationism that is the preferred dogma of modern theocrats. Even as early as the American revolution there was a significant trend in the Intelligentsia towards questioning biblical literalism, see the Jefferson bible.
By the Napoleonic era geology had already progressed and been accepted to the point where the intellectuals and social elites generally understood the world to be millions of years old, and while there was considerable debate over how old it was or how species changed *there was debate* over this. Within the context of the scene it’s no surprise that two educated men are asking about *how* a species naturally changes over time, not *if* it naturally changes over time.
That was the big question, the one that Darwin managed to mostly answer by painstakingly categorizing different bird species and showing a common descent from an ancestor population with variations that arose due to (primarily) the need to access different types of food. Even then he didn’t have access to genetics to say where these variations arose from. Today we know they arise from mutations brought about primarily by either random damage to the DNA or various types of errors as part of the replication process, but Darwin didn’t have enough evidence to prove that.
And he was building off writings which were wildly published at the time of Master and Commander or shortly after-we see, in Maturin, the exact type of person who was trying to find answers to these questions, a type whom would eventually publish the works Darwin based his studies off of.
To actually get to any version of the supposed past where everyone believed as creationists do today you have to go back to well before America as a country was founded, not in the liberal traditions of the 18th or 19th century, but in the 17th century and the dynastic, religious, and social strife of the reformation. That, and in periods of the later 19th and 20th century where growing state power and the invention of mass media led to debates between various forms of progressives, liberals, conservatives, and the growing proto-fascist movements, all of whom at different times and places argued for creationism as a way to appeal to populism.
Over time all of this has been distilled, filtered, and isolated into the false-populism of the modern neo-fascist, whom needs to pretend that there is a history of complete consensus to draw on where everyone secretly believed as he does to justify dismissing and hating those who don’t today. The fact that the actual history *he* reveres predates all the principles and institutions of power *we* revere is irrelevant-he chooses to ignore and lie about the past instead. Either nuances of the 20th century debates don’t exist (a hard sell!), or all history prior to 1900 is smushed into “everyone believed as I do”.
And yet it’s all refuted by the simple banality and believability of two 19th century men *not* fitting our preconceived notions of the time, and instead casually and rationally refuting biblical literalism in their discussion over why different species exist.
I think I’m going to go by what conservatives say they believe rather than your dictates about what it is their duty to believe.
True, however, Forester handles it pretty well by Hornblower himself acknowledging that he is an utter weirdo and being very uncomfortable with himself.
I do think that Master and Commander or Hornblower get major props for being *set* in a time but not trying to *depict events*. There’s a distinction there; the master and commander series in particular is believable, everything in the plot could have happened, even if it never did. It’s clearly an exploration of a period, a setting, not a sequence of events.
Hence the smallest part of the issue with Gladiator is trying to depict events that actually happened and which are notable for happening, so it’s weaker for actually pretending that it has a connection to history as a sequence of events versus history as a setting. But only *slightly* weaker, and I understand that name recognition matters.
But the bigger part, and the one that actually bothers me, is that gladiator has also failed when it comes to depicting history as a setting, the *idea* of a period. Small details add up, things like armor, social interaction, cultural status, battle tactics, formations, the flynning of combat scenes, etc. could all have been done better. It’s made up for the spectacle, the bombast, and the exposure of many to ancient history, but it feels off, to the point where it feels like the people in universe are pretending to be Roman.
“the master and commander series in particular is believable, everything in the plot could have happened, even if it never did.”
O’Brien wrote in a foreword in one of the books about writing them. Apparently many of the voyages and battles were heavily based on real ones. Of course the characters are fictional. At one point he said something about how his year 1812 was about 3 years long; I guess due to all the events he picked to portray.
Interesting, I’ve seen other sling bullets outside of the Roman context with writing on them as well (Hasmonean era stuff). It makes me curious though; I assume soldiers armed with a cheap weapon and fighting at distance, thus making it less likely they wear body armor, are poorer soldiers. That’s how it usually seems to work. But clearly there was at least some degree of literacy in this population segment, enough to scratch short messages in their sling bullets.
How far did literacy permeate these ancient societies?
I would treat Latin inscriptions on these things as more in line with, oh, Greek phrases on pickup trucks or Chinese characters tattooed into White skin. There’s no reason to expect the owner will be able to read the inscription per se, just that they (believe) they know what it means and likely paid a person who did (…?) know.
Yes, I highly doubt that the typical driver displaying a Molon Labe bumper sticker (about the only popular Greek inscription I know of) thinks: Molon, aorist participle of blosko. A characteristic Greek construction, with only one finite verb and the others in participle form. The said driver probably does have a vague knowledge of Leonidas and Thermopylae, however.
(Just to be upfront, I mostly share the political sentiments of the aforesaid driver; I just happen to be better-educated.)
Has there been any research into the relation between literacy rates and the practice of ammunition inscriptions (e.g. WW2 bombs corresponding to classical sling bullets)? I would assume there to be something of a threshold, below which one wouldn’t bother using text (as opposed to imagery, to the extent producing the latter is feasible) because there is no point showing it to one’s comrades if most of them are illiterate and thus unable to appreciate it.
I think that might be tricky because, apart from lead sling bullets, what evidence would survive? Tricky to write anything on an arrow or quarrel because it’s long and thin, and arrows rot anyway (or are recovered from the battlefield.
I was wrong – there are such things as inscribed arrowheads, from around the 11th century BC. The inscriptions seem to be people’s names. (Makes sense. A good arrow is a valuable thing to re-use. And if you’re having a competition it’s handy to be able to prove which arrow is whose.)
They aren’t common though.
https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/sidebar/inscribed-arrowheads-the-missing-link-in-the-evolution-of-the-alphabet/
Twice you wrote “market” when you meant “marker.”
Are “acc[ipe]” and “pet[o]” common abbreviations? Those seem downright inscrutable. I guess those damn lazy kids with their texting instead of writing things out properly isn’t a new complaint. XD
I suppose they didn’t have enough space to spell everything out. And the final recipient wouldn’t read it anyway.
Wikipedia suggests that the earlier disappearance of the praenomina in women was due to their lack of presence in public life, which seems dubious as surely a praenomen is more useful in distinguishing between members of a household or gens (shouting “Hey, Gauis!” in the middle of the forum would not get the attention of anyone specific, would it?).
And you could call your daughters Julia Maior and Julia Minor, or Julia Secunda, Julia Tertia, but that breaks down when you want to refer to your sisters, aunts or female cousins.
Basically what would be the reason women would move from having praenomina to probably being known by private/unrecorded cognomina, when men, having a public life, would be more likely to need to be distinguished from their distant cousins who share their praenomina and nomina?
Part of the story is likely that most women get married as young adults, and move into a household where all the other women have a different nomen than they do.
True – although that does leave ambiguity if you have multiple young female descendants of the household, or when you’ve married off your daughters or sisters to other households within your social circle. As Bret points out, they probably resolved the ambiguity with private nicknames which weren’t generally recorded.
In fact, I wonder if nicknames could have been the cause of the loss of the praenomen. Even today, there is a tendency to give daughters more unusual or fashionable names than sons. If a Roman paterfamilias called his daughters foolish pet names like Little Sheep, Ginger or Baby into adulthood, well, that wouldn’t matter as women aren’t supposed to have a public life, but his adult sons need proper, traditional praenomina like Gaius or Marcus that wouldn’t embarrass them (didn’t Caligula dislike being called that?) Female praenomina could then become redundant and dropped out of use because they weren’t commonly in use.
Does anyone know how a Roman might get a specific person’s attention in a road, given that using names was less useful for this purpose?
Pointing? Calling out distinguishing characteristics, such as whatever items they happened to be visibly wearing or carrying that weren’t common to the rest of the crowd?
Same way we do today? “Hey Appius” might refer to several people, but if it’s your friend, they will recognise your voice, turn around and see you looking at them. The other people named Appius either will ignore you because they don’t recognise your voice, or turn around and see you looking at someone else.
Probably a combination of names (praenomen + nomen, nomen + cognomen) or a personal cognomen.
Always keep in mind that almost all of the writing we have is by and about relatively rich or high class Romans. It’s entirely possible that these conventions really only apply to them.
Rather like if a thousand years in the future, historians were trying to piece together what 21st century Americans were like, but all they had was The Art of the Deal, Pride and Prejudice, and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Yes, one of them (we know) is fiction, and only one is even close to the time period in question.
For naming conventions we also have inscriptions on graves and graffiti.
You wouldn’t happen to have a review on the original Gladiator, would you?
Not written down (that I know of) but there’s a podcast: https://podbay.fm/p/subject-to-change-2682/e/1661806800
>our Maximus would probably have been the legatus Augusti pro praetore (and thus a senator), perhaps of Pannonia Superior, somewhat ironically Septimius Severus’ province (he’s the father of Geta and Caracalla, the villains of Gladiator II) before he seized power.
If Maximus should have been a senator, does that make his backstory (never having actually visited Rome before being enslaved) implausible as well? Could one be of senatorial rank without spending any time in Rome?
Well for a start, you are actually enrolled in the senate by the Censors, who worked in Rome.
But assuming that “being enslaved” was by the Romans, the bigger issue is that freedmen were, IIRC, blocked from Senatorial rank anyway.
He becomes a slave *after* his military career. (He gets kidnapped by people who don’t know who he is.)
This is a standard trope in Hellenistic novels – the hero or heroine is kidnapped, sold, chased for around the Mediterranean and blissfully re-united with their true love at the end of the 14th scroll.
Frequently after being raised in a pastoral countryside only to be revealed in the last scroll as a foundling with birth tokens that prove you have rich parents.
It might have been possible (although not very likely) for a legati Augusti pro praetore to have never set foot in Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
A man working his way up the senatorial cursus honorum via the customary route would have needed to be in Rome. But there was an alternate route. The Emperor could raise distinguished equestrians officials directly to the Senate, or even the Consulate. Marcus Aurelius did this a lot during the Marcomannic Wars – probably because he needed experienced military commanders, and the Senate couldn’t provide them.*
Still, that required Imperial favour, and since the Emperor was in Rome, ordinarily your ambitious equestrian needed to spend time at court to earn that kind of promotion. However, Marcus Aurelius spent much of his reign away from Rome, campaigning with the army.
So, sketching a career here: our Maximus would have been a provincial equestrian, who began his career commanding Auxilia. He would have risen through the tres or quarta militiae – a series of three/four military posts with increasing authority (praefectus of an auxilia infantry cohort, tribunus angusticlavius in a legion, praefectus of a cavalry ala, then possibly praefectus of a double strength cavalry ala). Since the Marcommannic Wars are raging at this time, his military service presumably brings him to Marcus Aurelius’ attention
After this he might have become procurator Augusti of one of the Danubian provinces, before being granted a consulship in absentia so that he could become legati Augusti pro praetore of Pannonia Superior.
Still, it’s hard to believe such a man would have never visited Rome.
Interestingly though, that’s roughly the career of the future-Emperor Pertinax (albeit he governed Moesia, not Pannonia), who briefly succeed Commodus before being murdered by the Praetorian Guard.
*The typical senator spent 6-9 months as a tribunus laticlavius in their early 20s with no fixed responsibilities. Then their next military post would come about a decade later – as a full blown legati legionis commanding 5000 men. Not great preparation.
Ironically the alternative route sounds like it would actually have provided better preparation than the Senator route, albeit mostly for military command, not political command. (Part of the Cursus was training in politics, not just military command, after all)
How did a cognomen become standardized? Would a son of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus be named Titus Cornelius Scipio Africanus, Titus Cornelius Scipio, or Titus Cornelius Africanus?
What do we know of the names of children of uncertain paternity? Mother’s gens and cognomen?
What would a new roman citizen do for a praenomen assuming he didn’t already use on of the 30 standard ones? And I know it’s not part of the name, but what would his tribus be? Does everyone in a gens necessarily belong to the same tribus?
> a whole separate discussion of how Roman legions are named
Awww yeah, new lore’s about to drop!
Names care about legal paternity, not genetic paternity. Thus if the mother’s husband is willing to legitimate the child (possibly after a sho… a gladius marriage, not necessarily to the genetic father), it’s his kid. If he isn’t (or the mother-to-be cannot be married off) then, this being Rome, probably the answer is infanticide or something statistically equivalent to it (several myths, including Romulus and Remus, notwithstanding). Alternatively, if someone is willing to adopt the kid, then — once again, legality trumps biology — the kid gets his nomen and hereditary cognomen.
Given that e.g. her father would have manu over a never-married woman, I would be unsurprised if the evidence didn’t contain a single case of “strong independent unmarried single mother successfully raises child”, making the question unanswerable by the sheer distance it lies outside the mos maiorum.
I also get the feeling that, wherever the “overall” point balances, the upper classes would lean more toward unconditional infanticide while the lower classes, particularly for a boy, would be somewhat more tempted to say “eh who cares about paternity, most kids quickly die anyway, and if this one does not then at worst he’ll be a useful farmhand — which is at least half the point of having children”.
“If he isn’t (or the mother-to-be cannot be married off) then, this being Rome, probably the answer is infanticide or something statistically equivalent to it (several myths, including Romulus and Remus, notwithstanding).”
We have a high profile Roman bastard who was raised and made a career. C. Nymphidius Sabinus.
No recognized father. Two popular speculations:
*a gladiator named Martianus, who he was said to resemble;
*emperor Caligula
But apparently neither of them recognized officially.
His mother was called Nymphidia – so a bastard did inherit mother´s name.
“Nymphidia” was generally acknowledged as daughter of C. Julius Callistus, who died as a freedman. But note that “Nymphidia” was not “Julia” – she was not a legitimate daughter of a married freedman. Plutarchos specifies:
“Nymphidius, now advancing towards the consummation of his hopes, did not refuse to let it be said that he was the son of Caius Caesar, Tiberius’s successor; who, it is told, was well acquainted with his mother in his early youth, a woman indeed handsome enough, the off-spring of Callistus, one of Caesar’s freedmen, and a certain seamstress.”
Well, that “certain seamstress” apparently raised a bastard daughter, and did not marry Callistus. And Nymphidia in her turn raised a bastard, who made a brilliant career.
How did C Nyphidius Sabinus name himself in official documents? ” C. Nymphidius Sp. f Sabinus”?
Also we have a lot of Roman bastards attested in papyrology. There are suspicions that their mothers were in steady relationships which could not be formally acknowledged, for example because the mother was Roman citizen but the father was not.
I don’t think I was aware that historically there were female praenomina before they fell out of use. Do we know what they were – did they survive as names in other contexts?
I was under the impression that sisters would be distinguished with an ordinal – Julia Prima, Julia Secunda, etc. Is this something erroneous I absorbed from fiction (probably Colleen McCollough)?
And lastly, re: the arrogance of Pompey taking “Magnus” as a cognomen or the improbability of the character in Gladiator having “Maximus” as a praenomen … what of late imperial usurper Magnus Maximus? Had the norms just changed so much by the late 4th century, or were these names he gave himself?
Usurpers to the imperial throne get an exemption from rules about prudence. It is only right that they should have a name to match their massive ego.
If I remember correctly, during weddings the formulaic vow for the bride was “you are Gaius, I am Gaia”
Maximus did become a personal name at some point, leaving descendants as far afield as Russia (Maksim) and Wales (Macsen), while Magnus made it out to Iceland and Ireland. Magnus Maximus does seem like it has to be a self-bestowed name by the usurper – “The Greatest of the Great”!
Wikipedia has a list of female praenomina. They mostly correspond to the male set (Gauis/Gaia, Lucius/Lucia, etc).
IIRC the Nordic given name Magnus comes from King Magnus the Good, born illegitimately and not expected to survive long. His father being absent, he was hastily named after Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) by his godfather. (lest he die before his original sin was washed away by baptism or something)
“Whatever happens, we are lead by Maximus, and they are not” — result of successful performance of generalship. Surely it must have happened at least once?
(Obviously, it was Hiram Maxim’s surname, not personal name.)
Wikipedia has a list – they’re pretty much just the feminine forms of male praenomina.
Now I want to see a high-budget fantasy costume epic set in an alternate Earth where Nubia is *the* template Medieval/Renaissance society.
That Nubian clothing is fantastic looking. I wonder about the first image. The artwork is much higher waisted and broad-skirted than the reproduction. Is this an artistic convention?
I suspect that it’s partly artistic style, in that the artist doesn’t seem to have the proportions ‘correct’ (I’m aware that artistic styles have varied, and not all have considered this sort of thing important.
But I do wonder if there is a difference in interpretation. The art, at first glance, looks like a high-waist, possibly with skirt over the shirt. The costume looks like a low waist, possibly with shirt over the skirt.
With the woman’s costume, the art looks like a dress with an over-garment that is a single piece of fabric wrapped, with the upper edge either over the bust or just below it. The costume is weird – it may be a skirt at the waist, with a separate shoulder piece integrated with the top?
Obviously I’m just a very amateur dressmaker with a passing interest in historical costume. I’d hope that these were created by people with more expertise than me! But at first glance they do look a bit off. Very good looking, but maybe more in line with modern tastes than the original art.
This would probably be aided by someone’s writing an epic fantasy novel, or trilogy.
We look forward to reading yours.
On the one hand, the adaptation will make it “epic” even if the book is not — even if the book is pointedly not. Just look at what happened to the Witcher.
On the other hand, I regret to inform you that what you imagine is impossible. The multiplicity of languages (and resultant situation regarding writing systems), ethnicities, religions, subsistence systems, status layers within/across subsistence systems, and the interplay between all these would be defining features of the setting. Unfortunately, some of these are incomprehensible to typical members of the audience (or to movie directors) due to their sheer foreignness, while others are incomprehensible because they remind them of a superficially similar situation in contemporary western societies and would thus be forcibly interpreted through that schema even though the historical situation was different. All the details making up the historical structure would be sandblasted out of the adaptation, and no matter how well-crafted the Funj Sultanate of the book, the film would be set in magical-renaissance-America.
Writing the book epic would help.
And why would the multiplicity of languages be a roadblock when the multiplicity of languages in Europe was not? At the time of the French Revolution, most French did not speak French.
‘Most French did not speak French’ is a factoid. Most French spoke some version of French, just as most people in England spoke a dialect of English,in both cases mostly close enough to what the upper classes considered French or English that they could be understood with little difficulty.
Not true. Most spoke a patois that were not intelligible to a French speaker — or to a speaker of another patois. Well into the 19th century we have cases where someone was taken for a foreigner because he spoke only a patois and not French, or someone would comment that a witness was able to testify in French rather than her patois.
I don’t know about France.
My father was about 6 when WW2 started. He grew up in a mountain village in northern Italy. People in the village spoke a dialect. They learned Italian in school.
People across the valley “spoke funny”, i.e. they spoke a different dialect. You could walk there, but it wasn’t something you did every week.
Possibly Italy was more fragmented than France. But “At the time of the French Revolution, most French did not speak French.” is completely believable. Some of the fragmentation was political, but a lot of it would just have been that people just weren’t able to talk with others more than a half day’s walk, i.e. 10-15 miles, away from where they lived very often.
Despite the regional names, the patois would vary more than switch. You could speak with neighboring villages, but less and less well the further you went.
Who spoke French then? Someone from the Ile de France? Champagne? Picardy? Normandy? Burgundy? All areas relatively close to Paris, and from which it drew constantly in multiple ways. Novels of the period note regional dialects, but not usually as unintelligible except for a few (Henry IV’s Bearnais for instance). Same for England – broad Sussex or West Country is regarded as rural and low class but not foreign.
Are those novels accurate, though? It’s easier to write stories where everyone can understand each other, even if they logically shouldn’t. I remember in The Three Musketeers, d’Artagnan realizes that he doesn’t speak English while on his way to England, but is inexplicably able to ask for and receive directions once he’s there.
French language maps make a basic distinction between north and south, with north (langue d’oil) dialects having some different words, minor grammar changes and variant pronunciations. So much like say, London and Yorkshire (and broad Yorkshire takes a bit of effort). We would not say that speakers of English dialects do not speak English, and can even understand Scots with only a bit of effort (try here: https://www.scotslanguage.com/Poetry_uid15)
You keep on citing Britain as if things had to be the same elsewhere.
My father was about 6 when WW2 started. He grew up in a mountain village in northern Italy. People in the village spoke a dialect. They learned Italian in school.
As far as I know the traditional speech varieties of northern Italy are considered distinct languages, not dialects of Italian. This taxonomy of Romance languages groups Piedmontese, Lombard, Ligurian etc. as closer to French and Occitan than they are to Italian (Italian, i.e. the traditional language of Tuscany, groups together with Sicilian and other languages of Southern Italy rather than with the Northern Italian speech varieities). Though it does seem to be somewhat debated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo-Italic_languages
@Basil Marte, a “multiplicity of languages” etc nicely describes Middle Earth by Tolkien, and in “sheer foreignness” the Imperium of Dune.
Not saying it would be easy, but we have proof it can be done and become a (over time) best selling book series with successful movies too.
The original “Gladiator” lost me early on, when the German barbarians had soundtrack chanting from the movie “ZULU”. When did Zulu tribes migrate to Germania?
Well, the (East) Germanic Vandals DID migrate the other way to Africa… 🙂
(Which is one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” facts, to me.)
In company with the Alans, from the even more distant Sarmatian Steppe.
Are you trying to say Odius Asparagus or Nefarius Purpus aren’t true Romans?!
Nor is Nortius Maximus, thought Biggus Dickus is.
Married of course to Incontinentia Suma
My daughter’s ninth grade intro Latin textbook introduced the girls (it was an all girls’ school) to fictitious Roman children: Horatia and her brother whose name I forget. Of course, being ninth grade girls, they all referred to the female protagonist as “Hor,” which they thought was hysterically funny.
> although Maximus, “the greatest” would be an astoundingly arrogant and foolish cognomen for anyone not an emperor to take
How did Maximinus Thrax get away with it before ascending to the purple? Was it just that anyone eight feet tall who eats ten pounds of raw meat at every meal can take whatever name he wants? 😉
Good summary of the names!
I do like the oddities though, like how in the later Empire they started combining ancestor’s names with their own to make preposterously long combinations with duplicates. Which is why one of Marcus Aurelius’ consuls was Quintus Pompeius Senecio Roscius Murena Coelius Sextus Iulius Frontinus Silius Decianus Gaius Iulius Eurycles Herculaneus Lucius Vibullius Pius Augustanus Alpinus Bellicius Sollers Iulius Aper Ducenius Proculus Rutilianus Rufinus Silius Valens Valerius Niger Claudius Fuscus Saxa Amyntianus Sosius Priscus.
In the long term the Romans seem to have suffered from Name Inflation. At the start they sometimes just had one name: Romulus is just Romulus. Then you had two, then three, then many.
Also there is the Agnomen, a name you’re given as a title or reward like Coriolanus.
Slingers – can we just stop for a moment to imagine and admire the “rocks” of a slinger, walking onto a battlefield full of spearmen and cavalry? Those other guys are here to kill you. Yet there you are, armed with nothing but a leather thong and pouch of pebbles. And as often as not, there the slingers are celebrating their victory with the rest of the army.
I think a lot of that mentality is due to the lack of slings in modern perceptions of battles. Plus there’s an element of elitism here–slings were dirt cheap (you can literally make one from fibers you find along the way, though a bit of leather is helpful), and our sources tend to downplay the poor. The reality was quite different, and attitudes towards slings appear to be changing.
The reality is that slings had an effective range measured in the low hundreds of meters and can pierce armor and shields. They can kill an opponent as easily as a bow and arrow. These things are more like guns than nearly anything else on the battlefield. They were–and are–absolutely deadly weapons in the hands of skilled user.
It’s also worth remembering that people would probably start practicing with these pretty early in life as well. Certainly by ten an agrarian kid would be playing around with them–killing rats or small game for the family table, that sort of thing. By the time you join the army you’re an expert. I’ve read accounts of people hitting birds on the wing with these things; hitting literally just SOMEONE in an army would be nothing to someone who can do that.
Plus, there’s tactics to be considered. If I’m a slinger I’m probably not expected to hold the line the way the heavy infantry is going to. My job is to harass the enemy. These weapons are lethal, and that means that if I’m throwing bullets at you you’re going to need to do something to defend yourself. If you’re defending against me, you’re NOT defending against the guy with the pilum or sword. And that means that even if I don’t kill you directly, you’re still going to have a very, very bad day.
“The reality is that slings had an effective range measured in the low hundreds of meters and can pierce armor and shields. They can kill an opponent as easily as a bow and arrow. These things are more like guns than nearly anything else on the battlefield. They were–and are–absolutely deadly weapons in the hands of skilled user.”
Assuming he could actually hit anything with them. The reality is that slings require huge amounts of practice (dangerous practice; it’s quite easy to hit someone standing directly behind you by mistake, which obviously restricts your training) and even practised users are extremely inaccurate. The easiest way to compare accuracy is this:
A modern rifleman in competition fires at targets 300m away. A skilled amateur firing from the prone can expect to hit a target 50cm across at that range with pretty much every shot. An expert would expect to get all his shots within 10cm.
A smoothbore musket was considered accurate to 100m at which point a man-size target would be hit about 50-60% of the time (for a 19th century Brown Bess type).
A modern archer in competition shoots at targets 70m away. A skilled amateur at this range can expect to hit the 122cm target about a quarter of the time. Experts are aiming to hit the ten-ring, which is 12cm across.
A modern slinger in competition shoots at targets either 20m or 30m away. The target is 120cm across. Experts are aiming to hit the central circle, which is 50cm across.
If the best slingers in the world don’t see the point of having a target smaller than half a metre across, 30m away, that does suggest that we’re not dealing with a terribly accurate weapon, doesn’t it? (Compare that to, say, a cricket bowler, who is aiming for a target half that size from a range of 20m with a projectile launched by hand.)
As for effective range. Sling shot can carry hundreds of metres, just as a rifle bullet will travel over a mile, but that’s not the same as effective range.
“The reality is that slings require huge amounts of practice…”
You over-estimate how long it takes. Sure, to be able to hit a bird on the wing it takes a lot of practice, but you could learn to hit an army in a reasonably short time. I’ve only used one a few times and I could make it go forward pretty quickly. The biggest issues with the folks I’ve seen learning to use slings are getting the lengths of the strings rights. After that, “Let go of this string while the rock is at the top of the spin” is hardly PhD level stuff.
“If the best slingers in the world don’t see the point of having a target smaller than half a metre across, 30m away, that does suggest that we’re not dealing with a terribly accurate weapon, doesn’t it?”
There’s a world of difference between a sport and a battle. It’s why while we can use HEMA and the SCA and the like to discuss some aspects of ancient battles, we can’t use them for everything. These guys aren’t using slings to feed their families on a regular basis.
Further, an army has a front somewhat bigger than half a meter. And again, I don’t need to even kill you in a battle. I need to DISRUPT you. The sling doesn’t have to kill, it merely has to present a credible threat. Remember, actual kills in battle are pretty low regardless–NO weapon is as lethal as it could be. Again, if I throw a sling bullet at you, you need to react in some way or you’re going to be injured or killed. So you either need to take the damage or you need to react. Either way, you’re now distracted. Even if we’re not actually engaged, a distracted enemy is going to make mistakes. They’ll trip over rocks, they’ll be out of position, they’ll not see the flanking troops. Or you may have your spear arm broken before you even reach us–you still function as a shield, but you’re not an active threat, just an obstacle. Lots of options.
They’d probably be more effective as skirmishers. We know from one Spartan battle that the lack of armor made retreat much more feasible for light forces, because they knew they could run faster.
These weapons are lethal, and that means that if I’m throwing bullets at you you’re going to need to do something to defend yourself. If you’re defending against me, you’re NOT defending against the guy with the pilum or sword.
Dude, if I am the guy with the pilum or sword, in close combat with an enemy soldier, and if you are trying to help me by shooting lead sling shot into the middle of the melee, I am going to have a serious talk with you after the battle which you will not enjoy.
First, let’s keep this civil.
Second, the pilum was not a close-combat weapon. It was a missile weapon. And while slings can operate further away than a pilum, both are still viable when you’re within throwing distance. If you can throw a heavy spear with just your arm that distance I can also throw a rock via a simple machine giving me mechanical advantage that distance.
Further, there’s a LOT of an army that’s NOT directly engaged with you even if you’re shield-to-shield as well. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone distracting those people behind the first rank or two, so they’re not stabbing you in the face? The Romans apparently thought so. According to our good host (and his references) the Roman battle line had skirmishers in certain locations between the heavy infantry, and slingers were part of Roman armies. We also know from Roman writings that these included slingers. What in Mars’ name do you think those skirmishers were doing?
The issue here is angles. Yeah, if I’m throwing sling bullets over your shoulder I’m a moron and probably deserve to die by Roman logic. But if I’m throwing sling bullets into the enemy army from the side, the odds of me hitting you are pretty much nil. And if you know YOUR business, you don’t need much of a disruption in the enemy line to be able to punch through, or at least cause enough damage that they back up (which is REALLY tricky to do in good order).
Further, it’s unlikely that the armies spent much of the battle in direct contact. Again, this isn’t the SCA. There’s going to be room between you and the enemy. And again, the issue here is angles, plus depth. I’m standing a few yards to your right, looking at a mass of enemies, which presents a HUGE area for me to attack without putting you in any danger whatever. Even if I’m not hitting the ones you’re directly engaged with, I can hit the ones deeper in the formation than you can–again, with absolutely minimal risk to you. By reducing depth I reduce mass (making it easier for you to punch through) and disrupt the psychological security provided by depth.
Again, actual kills are likely to be pretty limited in battle–neither you nor I are likely to be able to kill someone in the middle of a formation in good order. The goal is to either pin that formation and not allow it to do other things, or to disrupt that good order. And being constantly pelted by sling bullets and javelins while facing off against spears and swords is not a condition conducive to mental well-being.
“According to our good host (and his references) the Roman battle line had skirmishers in certain locations between the heavy infantry, and slingers were part of Roman armies. We also know from Roman writings that these included slingers. What in Mars’ name do you think those skirmishers were doing?”
I think that if they were normally stationed BETWEEN the Roman heavy infantry and the enemy heavy infantry, then they were probably not doing what you suggest, which is shooting into the rear ranks of an enemy formation whose front ranks were already engaged in close combat. I mean, think about it. If two lots of heavy infantry are engaged in close combat, then there ain’t no between between them.
I think they were doing what skirmishers have always done, from Marathon to Waterloo; they were engaging enemy skirmishers and delivering harassing fire on unengaged enemy in order to slow and disrupt their advance.
Nor do I think that, as you also suggest, sling shot delivered from a flank would disrupt the front rank of troops engaged in close combat in order to allow my own heavy infantry to punch through. I just don’t see how that would work.
Think of a square block of heavy infantry. If I’m shooting from their left, I am going to hit their left file. (File = a line of men one behind the other. Rank = a line of men side by side.)
Maybe a few shots will hit the second or third file from the left. But it’s unlikely that many shots will reach most of the front rank because they’ll be shielded (unwillingly) by the men to their left! And if that block of enemy heavy infantry has its front rank in close combat with my own heavy infantry, then my flanking fire has almost as much chance of hitting my own heavy infantry as it does of hitting the two or three front ranks of the enemy, because slings are not a very accurate weapon* and you’re not in this scenario trying to hit the frontage of an entire army, you’re trying to hit a target that is the width of a standing man, seen side on.
*Yes, no doubt people feed their families with animals killed by sling shot. That doesn’t say anything about percentage accuracy. I’m sure that slingers have brought down birds in flight and all sorts of other impressive sounding stuff. What I don’t know is how often they’ve missed. If I’m a Balearic or Levantine shepherd with nothing to do all day but slinging at small birds, then a) I will get pretty good and b) I will probably hit something eventually. It’s not like I’m paying for my ammunition. But in battle time is a factor and I will have a limited number of goes to have an effect before the close combat starts.
” I mean, think about it. If two lots of heavy infantry are engaged in close combat, then there ain’t no between between them.”
Rome had staggered lines of heavy infantry with skirmishers in between, at least according to our host (the staggered lines are iconic of Roman battle tactics, the only viable question is what’s in the middle, and I see no reason to doubt Bret). And a culture that valued taking out targets of opportunity. The combination lends itself so much to slingers shooting people in various ranks that to suggest anything else happened is simply not tenable. That said, I should be clear: They would be hitting people in the rear ranks of the units engaged. You have units 6, 8, 12 guys deep (depending on where, when, and who’s still alive at the time); that’s a lot of targets. Standard battle lines in the SCA are three deep and that still leaves PLEANTY of opportunities to take out spearmen from the side; doubling to quadrupling the depth only increases this.
Further, remember what “close combat” meant–typically spear-length. Call it 6-10 feet. We’re not talking a Hollywood melee where everyone’s engaging in duals here; MOST of the battle will be spent with the armies facing each other but not really doing a lot of killing. This is evidenced by the low number of kills suffered in battles. If the whole battle was shield-to-shield combat deaths would be ASTRONOMICALLY higher, mostly because there’d be no other option–once you’re that closely engaged with the enemy there’s literally nowhere else to go. The scene in “Kingdom of Heaven” where the enemy breaches the walls of Jerusalem shows a great example of this. It’s a matter of physics; you can’t phase through human bodies. And this gives slingers (and archers, and javeliners, and pila throwers) room to work. The mere existence of these troop types demonstrates that battle conditions were amenable to slingers being able to toss rocks at the enemy.
“Nor do I think that, as you also suggest, sling shot delivered from a flank would disrupt the front rank of troops engaged in close combat in order to allow my own heavy infantry to punch through. I just don’t see how that would work.”
While SCA combat isn’t a perfect analogue, of course, having been the person to exploit sudden disruptions I assure you it does. And remember, Rome doesn’t need to necessarily punch through. They just need to wear your army away. A series of punch-and-retreat maneuvers is going to do that fairly effectively (and remember, Rome had this sort of thing BUILT INTO their standard battle doctrine, as ways to rotate between the Primus/Secondus/Triarius, so this was second-nature to them).
To accomplish this doesn’t require killing, either. You just need the guys to take their shields out of position. Do that, with your side ready to stab at the exposed lines (you can’t move your shield without creating an exposure), and you’d be astonished how much damage you can do.
You’re still taking an extremely limited and uncharitable interpretation of what I’m talking about. Those units coming in that you say the skirmishers are focused on have a front, flanks, and rear. What do you think happens when a unit in good formation hits a shield wall from the side? Again, having been in that position, I assure you it is not an enjoyable experience (shattered shoulder 2 mm from becoming a compound fracture, and that’s with people NOT intending to actually murder me). If skirmishers can disrupt those units–break an arm here, a leg there, put a guy down over there–they won’t hit NEARLY as hard. And you generally do that from the sides, and attacking everyone from the front to the rear of those units.
“That doesn’t say anything about percentage accuracy.”
This is simply not a serious argument. Armies are big. The enemy probably fills the entire space you can see in front of you–several miles at least. As long as you don’t throw the stone up, down, or behind you (and that’s a matter of timing you can learn in an afternoon), you’re going to annoy someone on the other side. (If you manage to throw the sling bullet left or right of where you aim, that’s impressively bad, on the order of cutting your own arm with your own sword.)
Put another way: If you can’t hit AN ARMY, you wouldn’t have a sling in the first place. You probably couldn’t survive Roman discipline in the first place if you were that stupid.
And even if you miss the first guy, where’s the bullet going to go? The only place for it TO go is into the next guy, or the guy behind him, or the guy behind him, or the guy behind him, or…. You get the picture. And the bullet won’t lose appreciable kinetic energy doing so. It’s not going to go from “lethal” to “ignorable” the space between 8 lines of people. Upward arcs dissipate more force, but that’s not really how I’ve ever seen anyone use a sling (it is how trebuchets are used, but they throw things a lot bigger).
Further, anyone training from childhood to use a thing is going to be really good at it. Particularly if it’s how you feed your family. Sure, like any skill, they probably miss a fair number of times at first, but by the time you’re using one in a war setting you’re probably reasonably adept at it. Further, the march itself provides opportunities to practice, either out of boredom (hitting branches is a good way to entertain yourself while marching) or to supply the unit with food (supplying the tent-group with small game to eat in addition to rations).
Regarding footnote 6: I once saw slingstones in a museum that clearly weren’t just smooth rocks picked up on the fly; somebody had taken the time to shape them so they were perfectly round.
Interesting about he titles becoming praenomen. When I was training as a computer operator at the Australian Department of Defence in the late ’70s We had someone talking about name data. Apparently they had to have a really large given name field because properly a persons title and rank all becomes part of their given name and old titled fogies could get very upset if this wasn’t done properly. I have never seen this handled this way anywhere else.
For formal situations like news reporting when you translate text from cultures where the family name comes before the personal name one generally leaves that ordering intact. But for entertainment the name order is frequently moved around to be more understandable to the target audience. I like to imagine it was Decimus Meridius Maximus in the “original Latin” and the revised order was just a translation choice.
Interestingly, while Sills complains about the whitewashing of Caracalla and Geta (of mixed Syrian and North African descent), North African audiences are apparently more upset that Macrinus is played by an African-American actor: https://www.tsa-algerie.com/gladiator-2-polemique-en-algerie-autour-de-macrinus-lempereur-berbere-de-rome/
Merely a small correction to your first footnote, the standard practice in biology is binomial, not trinomial nomenclature (designating genus, then species).
Trinomial nomenclature is only employed in specific circumstances where there ARE designated subspecies present and one NEEDS to distinguish them, in all other cases you merely use the scientific binomen.
To give an example: If i were to talk about reindeer in a work of biology, I’d limit myself to Rangifer tarandus, but if i were to distinguish the American arctic subspecies from the one in Finland, I’d use R. tarandus arcticus and R. tarandus fennicus respectively.
TL,DR: not only roman names are hard.
Thanks for the excellent post otherwise.
“a key market of Roman citizen identity” A key marker?
(Of course, you’re welcome to delete the comment if it’s wrong or if fixed.)
“sling bullet production may have been supervised by centurions (thus the Latin inscriptions).”
Huh. I’ve heard sling inscriptions and graffiti used to support a relatively high literacy rate. Centurions making sure a certain percentage of the bullets had inventive curses on them is new to me.
I figure that with lead sling bullets, they’re cast into a mold, and the molds are going to be reused a lot. So things would probably play out something like this:
Literate Centurion: “Hey, you know what’d be funny? If we cast “this is for the barbarian’s butt” on all our sling bullets.”
Everyone Around: [laughs, because they think it’s funny, also the boss just made a joke]
Centurion: “Okay, mold-maker guy, go for it.”
The mold, once made, lasts a while, until some thumb-fingered goofball drops it and it shatters, or until that particular army unit is ordered to move out and they decide it’s not worth packing the mold to take with them.
And that’s the story of how that particular Roman legion wound up with 5000 identical sling bullets made over a period of who knows how many months, all of which say “this is for the barbarian’s butt.”
It’s kind of difficult to generalize from a story like that what fraction of the legion is literate, because all you’re really sure of is that the centurion is literate (which he would be anyway, by necessity) and that the craftsman who made the mold is at least vaguely literate on the level of “this is how to shape letters.”
“Appius Claudius Caecus (cos. 307, 296; dict. 285; cens. 312)”
How was he censor before consul?
I assume those are BCE dates, so larger is earlier.
That’s exactly the question. 312 before 307.
From the Wikipedia article:
Appius Claudius Caecus was a Roman censor from 312 BC to 308 BC, He was not a consul beforehand which later became a prerequisite for the office.
So what’s the proper Roman name of the sleek citizen shown reclining at the top of the post, waiting for the gustatio to be brought out?