On Roman purity of manners

We saw what it took to be a Roman soldier.  Here is what it took (one of the things) to be an upper-class Roman [from Heather, pages 16-18]:

“Symmachus [a Roman Senator] and his peers were acutely conscious of the weight of history accumulated in themselves and in their institution, and this too is clearly registered in the letters.  In a couple of them, Symmachus refers to the Senate of Rome as ‘the better part of humankind], pars melior humani generis.  And by this he didn’t mean that he and his peers were richer than anyone else, rather that they were ‘better’ human beings in a moral sense as well: greater in virtue. . . . [Symmachus’] letters give us unique insight into the self-image of personal superiority with which the Romans of Rome justified their wealth.  About one quarter of the nine hundred letters are recommendations, introducing younger peers to Symmachus’ grander acquaintances.  Virtues of one kind or another are bandied about: ‘integrity’, ‘rectitude’, ‘honesty’ and ‘purity of manners’ all recur at regular intervals.  This is no random collection of attributes: for Symmachus and his peers, there possession was explicitly linked to a particular type of education.

“The bedrock of the system was the intense study of a small number of literary texts under the guidance of an expert in language and literary interpretation, the grammarian.  This occupied the individual for seven or more years from about the age of eight, and concentrated on just four authors: Vergil, Cicero, Sallust and Terence.  You the graduated to a rhetor, with whom a wider range of texts were studied, but the methods employed were broadly the same.  Texts were read line by line, and every twist of language dutifully identified and discussed.  A typical school exercise would consist of having to express some everyday happening in the style of one of the chosen authors (‘Chariot race as it might be told by Vergil: Go’).  Essentially these texts were held to contain within them a canon of ‘correct’ language, and children were to learn that language – both the particular vocabulary and a complex grammar within which to employ it.  One thing this did was to hold educated Latin in a kind of cultural vice, preventing or at least significantly slowing down the normal processes of linguistic change.  It also had the effect of allowing instant identification.  As soon as a member of the Roman elite opened his mouth, it was obvious that he had learned ‘correct’ Latin.  It is as though a modern education system concentrated on the works of Shakespeare with the object of distinguishing the educated by their ability to speak Shakespearean English to one another.  To indicate how different, by the fourth century, elite Latin may have been from popular speech, the graffiti found at Pompeii – buried in the eruption of AD 79 – suggest that in everyday usage Latin was already evolving into less grammatically structured Romance.”

On the nastiness of Rome

The reviews of Peter Heather’s book (The Fall of the Roman Empire, a new History of Rome and the Barbarians) that piqued my interest describe him as introducing a “new” idea about the cause of the fall of Rome.  It wasn’t the Christian’s fault (as Gibbon’s argues) or the corruption of its leaders, or over-indulgence.  It was the Barbarians.  They got better at fighting the Romans and since there were so many more of them, Rome could not hold them off indefinitely.  I wonder too whether Rome’s training of so many foreign auxiliaries hastened their demise. 

Here are some examples of Rome’s nastiness:

“After the Third Punic War, which finally humbled the power of Carthage, the Roman Senate decreed that the entire city should be eradicated from the map.  The site was ploughed symbolically with salt to prevent its future occupation.”

“Further east, Rome’s greatest enemy was Mithradates VI Eupator Dionysus, king of Pontus, who at one point ruled most of modern Turkey and the northern Black Sea coast.  He was responsible for the atrocity known as the Asian Vespers, when thousands of resident Romans and Italians were killed in the territories under his rule.  It took a while, but three separate campaigns – the Mithradatic Wars – finally, by 63 BC, saw the once proud king reduced to a last redoubt in the Crimea.  There he decided to take his own life: but since years of preventive practice had inured him to poison, he had to ask one of his guardsmen to run him through.”

“Caesar’s approach to the Gallic problem could be equally implacable.  Opposition leaders held responsible for fomenting trouble were flogged to death . . . Whole opposition groups who failed to surrender as the legions approached might be sold into slavery or even, on occasion, simply slaughtered.  In 52 BC, Caesar was held up for a while by a sustained defence of the hill-fort at Avaricum, an action following on from a massacre of Roman traders and their families.  When the defences were finally breached, the legions were set loose to massacre and pillage: reportedly only 800 people survived from a total population of 40,000 men, women and children. . . .”

“Also, they never forgave or forgot.  The same ruthlessness was duly deployed to avenge the deaths of Cotta and his men.  Later spotted leading some siege operations, Indutiomarus of the Treveri was singled out for a cavalry sortie, which cut him down.  As for the Eburones, they were forced to scatter in the face of a sustained assault on their homelands in the next campaigning season.  Rather than wasting the lives of his own troopers in flushing them out of the woods, Caesar magnanimously issued a general invitation to neighbouring tribes to come and join in the pillaging.  All of the villages were burned . . .”

I was tempted to see an implied criticism of Rome, i.e., they were nasty but we moderns are not.  We have better rules of engagement, but Heather intends no such implication, at least not at this point:  “Such stick-and-carrot policy combinations were hardly the work of genius, but they didn’t need to be.  When combined with the legions at this juncture in western Eurasian history, they were a sufficient tool for building an empire.” 

Therefore, it seems to me, Roman soldiers were merely carrying out the instructions of Rome and did not possess any more nastiness than any other soldiers of their age.  They were better trained and had better tactics, but they seem to have been just as ruthless as their less-well-trained enemies.  “Barbarian,” at least back then, didn’t mean “nastier than the civilized Romans.” 

Under Caesar’s orders 39,000 or so were slaughtered at Avaricum with the approval of Rome.    Now think of Think of the furor over Mai Lai where 26 villagers were killed.

Just like the Marines but much nastier

I ran across a JL sort of passage on page 6 of The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather:

“Recruits trained together, fought together and played together in groups of eight: a contubernium (literally, a group sharing a tent).  And they were taken young: all armies prefer young men with plenty of testosterone.  Legionaries were also denied regular sexual contact: wives and children might make them think twice about the risks of battle.  Basic training was grueling.  You had to learn to march 36 kilometres in five hours, weighed down with 25 kilos or more of armour and equipment.  All the time you were being told how special you were, how special your friends were, what an elite force you belonged to.  Just like the Marines, but much nastier.”

That last sentence puzzles me.  To begin with if the Roman legionaries were “just like the Marines” then they couldn’t be “much nastier.”  Secondly, why is this British historian writing about the American Marines?  Or is he?  Do the British Marines have a reputation like the Americans?  I hadn’t heard that.  Lastly, upon what does he base a conclusion that the Roman legionnaires were nastier than the American Marines?

Resistance against Rome and several other nations

We used to have someone from France on a forum I was on.  He ran a bookstore if memory serves me.  He once took offense at my suggesting that France was a “client” of the U.S. after WWII.   It is perhaps natural that we think “my country, right or wrong,” and try to make excuses for its weakness if we lived through Vichy France, and for its excesses if we were like Heidegger, living in Nazi Germany.   I was happy to be part of the U.S. which defended Western Europe against Nazi Germany, but the aforementioned Frenchman didn’t like my attitude, nor no doubt the attitude of the arrogant Americans who swept into France in 1945 like conquerors.  In the meantime (not quite but nearly) Heidegger bemoaned the fact that the Germans hadn’t relied upon “tradition” in quite the manner he had hoped. 

I’ve been reading David Mattingly’s An Imperial Possession, Britain in the Roman Empire.  I recall reading Tacitus not especially critically eons ago, but Mattingly is noticeably critical:  In regard to the “resistance” of 47 A.D.  he writes, “Tacitus says the Briton’s chosen field of battle was a defended enclave, which illustrates the character of this so-called revolt.  Far from being on the rampage, some part of the Iceni had refused to hand over arms, and retreated into a defended site.  They only ‘chose’ the field of battle in the sense that that was where the Roman army found them.”

But when the Icenian leader, Prasutagus died, “Roman centurions and imperial slaves plundered the kingdom. . .”  Prasutagus’ widow Boudica “was flogged, her daughters raped . . .”  Tacitus implied that responsibility for this rested with minor officials abusing their power.  Only at the end of this section of his account did he reveal the key information that these events had taken place in the context of the annexation of the kingdom and its incorporation into the province.”   The enraged Boudica caused a huge force to be fielded in retaliation against the Romans and Mattingly speculates about the “Total Roman and provincial dead” was around 40,000.

In regard to the war with the Silures, Tacitus notes that the loss of several senior officers and well over 1,000 casualties were major setbacks.  “Tacitus speculated that either Rome had reduced the vigour of its operations believing the war to be over, or the Britons had been moved by some strange passion to avenge Caratacus.  The more likely scenario is that Roman pacification measures in Silurian territory misjudged the preparedness of the Silures to lay down their arms. The construction of forts, the seizure of crops and animals by foraging parties, and the pillaging of Silurian settlements were provocative acts.  After these two major actions, the Silures mainly reverted to hit-and-run tactics, although two Roman auxiliary units, incautiously engaging in pillage, were cut off by a larger-scale attack.  Roman frustration with this obdurate resistance was such that they evidently declared their intent to exterminate the people or transport them – the extreme reaction of an imperial power to unremitting resistance.”

What happened to the Silures?  The governor fighting them died and it wasn’t until 57 that Quintus Veranius resumed Rome’s offensive against the Silures.  Tacitus wasn’t impressed with Veranius, but the “Silures disappeared from the pages of Tacitus at a stroke and the policy seems to have been continued against the Ordovices by his successor.  “Suetonius Paullinus, another military careerist . . . conquered Ordovician territory within two years and at the start of his third season of campaigning stood facing the island of Anglesey (Mona) across the Menai Straits.  The island’s population was swelled by a large number of refugees (or fugitives to use the Roman terminology).  Tacitus gave the Roman view of the enemy lined up on the opposing shore: armed men, fanatical women bearing torches and druids invoking terrible curses.  From a Roman perspective these were the remaining dregs of British resistance, further tainted by their barbaric religious practices such as human sacrifice.  They could expect no quarter now they had nowhere else to run.  In a well-planned amphibious assault, Suetonius Paullinus led his army across the Straits to ‘cut down all the men’.  There is little doubt that this was a massacre, followed up by the destruction of sacred groves.”

Comment:  Bryan Sykes in his The Seven Daughters of Eve argues that all Europeans (meaning if memory serves me “western Europeans” ) are descended from seven mitochondrial “Eves” whose descendants immigrated to Europe between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago.  Perhaps there are more Eves than seven, but my impression is the Sykes arguments are generally accepted.  The point being that the Romans, who in Mattingly’s interpretations seem every bit as ruthless as German Nazis, Imperial Japanese, or Stalinist Communist are all part of the same mitochondrial groupings that we belong to (if we are genetically European).  Perhaps Rome early on sought to preemptively defeat cities or peoples likely to present a threat later on, but they became so good at it that their soldiers committed atrocities almost casually. 

Sykes also wrote Saxons, Vikings and Celts, the Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.  Unlike Mattingly, Sykes merely wants to know who we are genetically.  The British Isles have only been inhabited this last time (since the most recent ice age) for about 8,000 years.  So whichever Eve or Eves we descended from they were some place in Western Europe before then.  Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial analyses did permit Sykes to distinguish between the Romans and those more “native” to the Islands (bearing in mind that invasions did occur prior to the Roman Invasion).  On page 287 Sykes writes “true Roman genes are very rare in the Isles.”   We might ask, if we could resurrect one of their British governors, “so what was the purpose?”  He would have his answer:  The glory of Rome, the protection of Rome against future incursions, the Roman need for food and supplies, etc.

“How would you like it if someone did that to you,” we might ask?  And he would answer, “that was done and many would have like to do it again.  That was why we became so martial in attitude.  We were forced into it.”

And as we know Hitler said something like that as did the Imperial Japanese and Stalin.  There are always reasons; which isn’t to say that none of them are legitimate, for who can determine that other than the leaders of the city state or nation in question.   It is difficult though not to sympathize with Queen Boudica after she was flogged and her daughters raped by representatives of Rome.  There seems a huge gap between the rationalizations of a British governor and the application of those rationalizations by the Roman soldiers.

On “unnecessary danger” and hiking at the river

One Ridgeback owner rather insistently asserted that what I was doing was “unnecessarily dangerous.”  I wrote back that I don’t know how much she understand about philosophy, linguistics, hermeneutics, etc.  but just about everyone makes the mistake of thinking that their words, the things they say, can be taken in one way and one way only.  It is now accepted in linguistics and hermeneutics that all language is ambiguous.  One cannot say anything, even the simplest thing without someone some place being able to misunderstand him or her.  I suspected that she meant something different than I did in regard to “unnecessary danger” and hiking on the river. 

Consider me talking to one of my granddaughters.  She asks me, “grandpa, what’s the best and safest thing I can do to get my Rhodesian Ridgebacks to hike off leash at the river”? 

I would answer, “First, granddaughter, you’ve got to make an assessment of who you are.  If you’re overly timid then forget about it.  But if you are fairly courageous then here is what you can do.  Walk your Ridgebacks on leash down there until they get used to the area.  You get used to it yourself.  Carry anything you might need, a cell-phone, water for you and the dogs, first-aid equipment and a sturdy hiking stick.  Carry a small pistol if you know how to use it.  There is nothing down there that is very dangerous but why take chances?  Be prudent and take anything you might need.  There is no good reason to go down there without knowing what to expect and being prudent in what you take; that would be exposing yourself and your dogs to “unnecessary danger.”  After they know where everything is and how to get back to your Jeep then let them run off leash.  Head out and they will follow you.

That’s the advice I would give and I believe it is sound.  I’ve been following it for a long time.  Ridgebacks weren’t developed to keep on leashes to avoid danger.  They were bred to get out there and figure danger out for themselves and they did a pretty good job of it.  There was no hunter to keep an eye on them when they treed a lion.  The hunters showed up later.  The Ridgebacks figured out how to do that all on their own, well, maybe learning from older Ridgebacks, but they would figure it out on their own if they had to.

In my opinion the little tiny coyotes we have at the river don’t bear comparison with the animals the early Ridgebacks had to contend with in Africa.  I can’t really take them serious as a danger.  Not only have I lived near them for 15 years, I’ve hiked in their territory off and on for the last 50 years. I am quite prepared to understand that most people would be somewhat afraid.  I’m not trying to tell them they shouldn’t be.  But not all people are the like them.  “Unnecessary danger” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. 

“Statistics” come into play as well.  During the time I was diving, most people who heard of it warned me against the “unnecessary danger” of sharks I looked up the statistics on shark deaths in the U.S.  I looked them up again just now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_attack  Between 1580 and 2013 there have been 36 fatal shark attacks in the U.S.  What would you think about that statistic if you were a diver?  If I go out there I have a good chance of being the 37^th?  Or, the chance of my being the 37^th is so remote that I’m not going to worry about it.  I’m obviously in the latter category, but all those who warned me are probably in the former. 

Applying statistics to coyotes isn’t as easy.  There have been countless cases of coyotes killing penned up dogs and cats.  I don’t have any cats at the present time, but I would recommend that dogs not be penned up in yards so that they have no means to escape hungry predators in almost any rural area.  There have been only two recorded fatalities of young children from coyotes, but many more from pit bulls and a few other breeds.  I didn’t check the number, but I think these statistics have more to do with parents being careless with their small children than coyotes including small children on their prey list.  And as to doing what is best to eliminate “unnecessary danger” regarding my dogs and coyotes, I believe it best to expose them to the coyote presence and let them get used to it.  All my Ridgebacks have gone through that process, and only Ginger, as I mentioned, received the slightest injury from one, and that was in her old age, long after she should have known better.  Ben is still in the process.  I’m not worried.  Heck, there are only two coyotes at the river where we hike.  Ben has been more systematic than any of my previous Ridgebacks in checking out the area.  By the present time (and I’ve had him just over 100 days) he knows more about the local coyotes than I do.  There is no point in letting him chase everyone he sees; so I will be working on getting him to stop that. But it wouldn’t be cataclysmic if he kept it up.  As I said, all my Ridgebacks chased coyotes when they were young but eventually gave it up.  I expect Ben to give it up as well, but we shall see. 

Rabbits are another story.  All my Ridgebacks have chased rabbits as long as they were able.  I still remember Trooper when he was 12 and having lost quite a bit of control of his hind-quarters, seeing a rabbit run by and making a start at chasing it, losing control of his hand legs and sitting there staring after the rabbit with fierce eyes.

Coyotes on a recent hike and other observations

Several knees have been jerking over my stories about Ben adjusting to the coyotes at the river.  Several responses have to do with stories about coyotes luring dogs into packs where they were presumably killed and devoured.  I’ve mentioned several times that there are no packs at the river where we hike.  Maybe someday there will be, but we’ve been hiking down there for 15 years and haven’t seen a pack yet.  Also, all my Ridgebacks have chased coyotes at one time or another and none of them have been lured into anything.  The mother coyote who has a litter every year wants the exact opposite.  She wants to be left alone.  The one unfortunate confrontation was when Ginger, an unusual Ridgeback who tried to make friends with every dog she met, tried to make friends with this female when she had a litter on the ground – and received a nip on the rump for her trouble.  I took her to the vet and had it cleaned.  That was a lesson well-learned.  Ginger troubled me with her friendliness more than once, but after the nip she left the coyotes alone.

Ben, now, for those who may not have been following this, was received as a three-year-old adult, and he won’t be four until November.  The river and its coyotes have been a new experience for him.  That he was going to chase them was no surprise to me.  I would have been surprised if he didn’t.  That he came back after a chase without his hackles up was a surprise, but after a bit more reflection, I don’t really recall checking my previous Ridgebacks for hackles after such occurrences so perhaps his response isn’t unusual. 

Some have gotten the idea that Ben is fraternizing with the coyotes.  That is a misunderstanding.  I intended to say that he and the coyotes are curious about each other rather than hostile.  I did say I couldn’t at this point rule out his trying something like Ginger did, but don’t really expect that to happen.  I also said that these two coyotes are probably the ones Ginger, Sage, Duffy and I encountered 2 ½ or 3 years ago; so they were used to seeing Ginger and Sage (whom I recently lost) and Duffy.  They were not used to seeing Ben (whom I received December 1^st, 2013).  One of the photos I took recetnly is a rather blurry thing showing Ben chasing a coyote.  I doubt that anyone can look at that photo and suspect fraternization.  I don’t yell at Ben when he chases a coyote, but when he checks the brush for their appearance later on, I tell him to “leave the coyotes alone.”  That’s what I have done with all my Ridgebacks and they all gave up chasing coyotes.  Hopefully Ben will give it up as well. 

[See photos for yesterday’s hike at www.lawrencehelm.smugmug.com – the last hike mentioned in the March 2014 gallery in the “River Photography” folder.]

Others have said they wouldn’t do what I do, but I’ve heard that all my life in a manner of speaking.  I enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 during a war.  My graduating class didn’t follow my example but instead wrote in my yearbook such compliments as “jarhead” and “bullet-stopper.”  My favorite sport for years and years was “free-diving” which consists of diving without tanks and spearing fish.  Almost no one could hear about what I did without asking, “Aren’t you afraid of sharks?”  After the movie “Jaws” I had the entire ocean to myself, which I appreciated.

After Susan and I were married she developed some ailments that made it tough for her to make it to work on time.  We both worked at McDonnell Douglas; so I got a motorcycle which allowed us to dash down between the lanes on the San Diego Freeway in order to make it to work on time.  She sometimes dozed off on the way to work.  I would feel her helmet hit mine and reach back for her, pulling over into the right lane until she was awake again before speeding up.  When we got to work she would take off her riding trousers, pull her skirt down, put on her high-heeled shoes and rush in to work.  I got reams of articles on my desk over the years describing every motorcycle accident anyone read about.   Many people assured me we were going to die.  Obviously we didn’t.  Not everyone should ride a motorcycle just as not everyone should own a gun, but for some of us these things aren’t especially dangerous.  Still, people who hear what I do can’t resist telling me how dangerous it is.  That has been going on for 63 years (I’ll be 80 in October of this year). 

I must admit, however, that I like the coyotes being down at the river.  I try to treat them with respect because their presence keeps virtually everyone else from hiking down there; which is the way I like it.  Some people will walk or ride bikes up on the levee, but I haven’t seen more than a couple of other hikers on the river in the 15 years I’ve been hiking down there.  Probably the few who have tried it have been spooked by something they have seen, possibly coyotes.  Some people ride off-road bikes or trucks down there from time to time, but not often.  These things invariably stall.   I’ve noticed a few of these guys working on their bikes, staring about at the brush apprehensively.  Notice Ben looking into the brush in some of the photos I took this month, but he isn’t being “spooked” by anything – rather the reverse.

From my standpoint I appreciate having a dog-breed which was bred to do the very thing I’m doing.  I know most Ridgeback owners keep their Ridgebacks as mere pets, but mine at least have a taste of what their forebears were developed to do.  Worried about coyotes?  Pshaw. 

Elephants and local coyotes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/10688992/Elephants-can-tell-if-humans-are-a-threat-by-listening-to-their-voice.html

The above article refers to the discovery that elephants can make useful judgments about people based on the sound of their voices and perhaps other indications.  The article suggests that perhaps other animals can probably make similar judgments.  While I’m not inclined to anthropomorphize coyotes, it does seem that my local coyotes treat me and my dogs in a non-hostile and non-threatening manner.  I should mention in this regard that on one occasion a coyote went on a hike with my kids and me. 

It occurred in the Angeles National Forest perhaps 30 years ago.  Susan, my kids and I parked our car at a trail head and started on a hike.   We saw a coyote hovering about and took a couple of photos of it.  It soon decided to join us.  It went on the entire hike with us.  When it was time to stop for a snack, it wanted its share, which we gave him.  At the end of the hike (which took most of a day) the coyote veered away from the parking lot and disappeared.  We later learned that one of the park rangers had rescued this pup after its mother had been killed.  That outing probably colored my attitude toward coyotes when we moved to San Jacinto.  I’ve never tried to befriend a local coyote but I’ve never expressed any hostility toward any of them; so the sound of my voice (per the article) might not have seemed threatening toward them.  Also, I have discouraged my dogs from chasing them when they gave me the chance.  They have all done it a few times but then gave it up, perhaps to some extent because I urged them to “leave them alone.”  Will Ben learn to “leave them alone”?  Perhaps, but the two coyotes I have seen with him don’t seem too worried about it.

As to those two coyotes, a while ago, I don’t recall the timing but I had Sage, Ginger and Duffy at the time and he will be four in a couple of months.  We were on hikes in the brush when two exuberant coyote pups dashed about near us.  One ran directly toward us. We all stopped in amazement.  It looked as though it was going to run right passed us, but it veered off at a right angle about 10 feet in front of us.  A few moments later the other coyote ran across our path.  They were chasing each other and our presence didn’t stop them from their game.   Are the two coyotes I’ve seen with Ben the same ones we encountered as pups?  This article says coyotes live 10 to 14 year:  http://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/coyote.php  I suspect that these two are the same ones, and if so have they drawn conclusions about us?  They would have seen Duffy and me fairly regularly and not needed to interrupt their morning naps to pay much attention to us, but Ben will be relatively new to them and may account for their curiosity about him. 

To the best of my recollection I’ve never expressed any hostility toward them with my voice or actions.  Ginger and Sage both chased coyotes as young dogs, but gave it up as they grew older.  Neither made any move toward chasing these current two coyotes and of course Duffy always allowed me to talk him out of chasing them.  So what do they think of Ben?  I don’t know.  He is not an aggressive dog.  He chases them but doesn’t seem to be doing it as a predator.  His hackles don’t go up so he doesn’t seem to consider them a threat.  They run from him but in a rather nonchalant fashion.   I’m going to try harder to get him to leave these coyotes alone.  They perform a service for me.  Their presence discourages the squeamish from hiking on the river bottom.   Also, they are purported to eat a variety of things including snakes.  I have never seen a snake in any of the areas we regularly hike.  Could it be that the coyotes have cleaned them out?  I don’t know.