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Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

theguardian.com

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Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#21

Picking a round number of 200MM people in the world at the time [1], this is 0.1% of the entire population killed in a single event, which is staggering. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates

All the more staggering because back in those times the majority of the world population resided in China and India. At around 0 A.D, there were 100M people in India and 58M people in China[1][2], leaving a few tens of millions in the rest of the world.

By the way, in the 202BC battle of Gaixia, 250,000 people died in a world of 150M people[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history#India

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaixia

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, actually, a long time ago. And you'll find a number of instances of Roman troops cutting civilians to pieces, either after being ordered to, or on their own initiative. Modern estimates of casualties are in hundreds of thousands, which, considering the size of the population at that time, is a significant chunk. That's not mentioning the ethics of invading a country to pay back your creditors. This doesn't mak…

Scipio was also fighting a different war. Carthage was an empire that fielded armies. The Germanic peoples, as in this case, were often migrating and invading, and had a certain culture and way of life that meant the women and children were much more involved politically and militarily. Children were generally not present in significant numbers in Carthagian armies, they often were in German armies. Given a few years…

That's a fair point.

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#23
Related: For curated list of the 100 largest atrocities, ranked by largest loss of life, check out Matthew White's The Great Big Book of Horrible Things [0]

It grew out of his website, Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, and while he is not an historian by profession (I believe he's a librarian), the book is very well researched (lots of footnotes, citations, etc.) and IMO, "fun" to read. (Only because of his style of writing, obviously not about the content)

Each event is a relatively short read, with decent background provided, though the book is quite long overall.

Spoiler: One of the items on the list is Caesar's Gallic Wars, and there are many dedicated to various events that transpired the Roman {Republic, Empire}

0. http://www.bookofhorriblethings.com/

1. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20centry.htm

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#25
One thing was rather amusing: the corrections below the article. One of them said that a photo of a bust of Octavian had been used in the original version of the article. The other was that Julius Caesar was called a Roman emperor in the earlier version. It would be unthinkable for a literate person of my generation to make either mistake. Today I suppose this would be like meeting somebody who thinks iPhones are made by Sony!

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, actually, a long time ago. And you'll find a number of instances of Roman troops cutting civilians to pieces, either after being ordered to, or on their own initiative. Modern estimates of casualties are in hundreds of thousands, which, considering the size of the population at that time, is a significant chunk. That's not mentioning the ethics of invading a country to pay back your creditors. This doesn't mak…

Scipio was also fighting a different war. Carthage was an empire that fielded armies. The Germanic peoples, as in this case, were often migrating and invading, and had a certain culture and way of life that meant the women and children were much more involved politically and militarily. Children were generally not present in significant numbers in Carthagian armies, they often were in German armies. Given a few years…

Nice casual justification of genocide Amezarak!

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#27
post #4

According to Caesar he made 430000 casualties, while historians now estimate it were about 160000. Among these were women an children. On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle.

> On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle. While it's certainly true that it meets the definition of a genocide, it's rather anachronistic to call it that. Ancient peoples did not possess our norms and values. To the Romans, the Germanic and Celtic peoples represented an existential threat. And they were correct in that analysis. Periodically, for hundreds of years, German…

    Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
And since when is that a credible work of historical scholarship, rather than a (not very subtle) apology of British imperialism (England the new Rome)?

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#28
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle. While it's certainly true that it meets the definition of a genocide, it's rather anachronistic to call it that. Ancient peoples did not possess our norms and values. To the Romans, the Germanic and Celtic peoples represented an existential threat. And they were correct in that analysis. Periodically, for hundreds of years, German…

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And since when is that a credible work of historical scholarship, rather than a (not very subtle) apology of British imperialism (England the new Rome)?

> And since when is that a credible work of historical scholarship, rather than a (not very subtle) apology of British imperialism (England the new Rome)?

Since always. I'm not sure where you're going with this since it's received innumerable accolades and been considered an exemplary classic for hundreds of years. You must be aware that criticism such as you just gave is a minority view, but you didn't present it as such.

D&F is very well sourced, cited, and footnoted from primary and secondary Roman sources. There are criticisms to be made of it, and there are a few things that modern discoveries have shed more light on, but by-and-large reading Decline and Fall gets you a decent grounding.

I'm afraid I did not read at all an apology of British imperialism; if anything, a criticism of it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that either. Historians still recommend reading Decline and Fall.

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#29
post #4

According to Caesar he made 430000 casualties, while historians now estimate it were about 160000. Among these were women an children. On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle.

> On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle. While it's certainly true that it meets the definition of a genocide, it's rather anachronistic to call it that. Ancient peoples did not possess our norms and values. To the Romans, the Germanic and Celtic peoples represented an existential threat. And they were correct in that analysis. Periodically, for hundreds of years, German…

That's very interesting. Would you recommend any other book?

Re: Julius Caesar battlefield unearthed in southern Netherlands

#30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the Roman side there were zero casualties so it was more a genocide than a battle. While it's certainly true that it meets the definition of a genocide, it's rather anachronistic to call it that. Ancient peoples did not possess our norms and values. To the Romans, the Germanic and Celtic peoples represented an existential threat. And they were correct in that analysis. Periodically, for hundreds of years, German…

That's very interesting. Would you recommend any other book?

For the period, or on the subject?

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a massive six volume beast that covers ~1400 years. The prose is very readable and narratively engaging, but the information is pretty dense, and it's easy to get sidetracked following a citation for the full version of a particular story or anecdote. It took me eight months to read, and I am a pretty quick reader. For the breadth and depth, I don't think there's a whole lot out there that can compare.

That said, you can very seldom go wrong with the classics. There's a lot of modern works out there, and textbook-type treatments, of course, but I personally find contemporary texts the most interesting and engaging. You get a firsthand account of how people long ago lived and thought.

Caesar, as referenced upthread with The Gallic Wars, wrote a lot about his campaigns. My personal favorites have been Plutarch's Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, which is nominally about comparing the characters of selected pairs of Greeks and Romans, but gives you windows into the historical times they lived in as well, and though not Roman, Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War.

For a lighter treatment, I listened to and would recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series after seeing it mentioned on Hacker News several times. There's two great series about Rome, Punic Nightmares and Death Throes of the Republic. Carlin does a good job of really bringing to the fore that same kind of thing, I think, that gives a real sense of how the people at the time were thinking and feeling, and he's clearly passionate about history.

What really stands out to me is how little has changed. We really are just another chapter or two. Technology has advanced, but people and culture has really changed very slowly and so clearly builds on what came before. The West in general is still very much a blend of Roman culture syncretized with the Germanic tribes. It's really fascinating to me how incredibly similar people were thousands of years ago. They had very different belief systems and values, but otherwise it's staggering how you have all these thousands of years of very, very smart people doing different things for different reasons, and seeing how that led to our times, and how we're doing the very similar things right now and laying out the future for those who will come after us and one day, hopefully, read about us.

(Little things that struck me and I thought of while writing those posts: the class warfare in Rome with e.g. the Gracchi brothers, compared to our economic problems in the past ~150 years; the political environment in Athens surrounding the Sicilian Expedition, compared to that of our Iraq War; and the incredible courage it must have taken for people to stand in an orderly line and watch people run towards them screaming with swords in hand.)

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