Ancient World Review

Book Review: The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant

The fall of Rome proves beyond doubt that one thing always leads to another, usually in unexpected ways. For example, when the Romans gave up the idea of conquering Germany and switched to a defensive strategy along the Rhine and Danube frontier, they succeeded in blocking the German advance into their territory, but they had no idea that they were starting a long chain of events which would eventually lead to the collapse of the western empire.

The Germanic tribes needed living space. Stymied in their attempts to spread west into Roman Gaul, the various tribes started to move to the east in the Second Century AD and ran into big trouble about a century later. In 372, according to The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, "the eastward expansion of the Ostrogoths provoked an explosive reaction from the Huns of the Volga Steppe." When the Ostrogoths intruded into their territory, the Huns drove all the German tribes back towards the Danube like a giant hammer, pounding them against the Roman frontier.

"...the Huns rolled forward to the Danube, crushing the Visigoths and enslaving the Gepids, who had the misfortune to occupy the Hungarian steppe. There the Huns settled down with their flocks, lords of a pasture that stretched back to the Caspian. In three years they had obliterated a century of German expansion." New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, page 10.

Over the next century, the Franks, Frisians, Suevi, Vandals, Alemanni and Visigoths crossed the frontier into Roman Gaul, but they didn't stop there. Driven by hunger, the need for land and their leader's private ambitions, the Visigoths sacked Rome and spread as far as Spain, establishing the Kingdom of the Visigoths in 418. Rome in the west, heart of the strongest and most successful empire the world has ever seen, no longer existed.

The story of the fall of the western empire is more complicated than this, of course, but the main question is why Rome couldn't defend its frontier. What had changed? One part of the answer is given by the famous classical historian Michael Grant in his short and relatively obscure book "The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire." Briefly, Rome had been so weakened by two centuries of political instability, corruption, civil wars, military disasters and financial problems that it was no longer able to defend itself. In fact, according to Grant, the western empire should have collapsed in the Third Century, but managed to recover thanks to the efforts of a series of strong emperors who instituted much needed reforms.

"The fact that the Roman empire did not collapse in the 260s or 270s AD is one of the miracles of history." Grant, Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, Introduction, xvii.

In my opinion, the origins of Rome's political instability can be traced all the way back to Julius Caesar, at least. When the legions figured out that they could make or break emperors at will, they became the ultimate power brokers and this eventually developed into a state of constant chaos and civil war as ambitious military leaders bribed and murdered their way into power, only to be murdered themselves, sometimes after a reign of only a few days. The turnover in the Roman government between 235 and 284 AD was mind-boggling:

"In the age of the soldier-emperors, between the assassination of Alexander Severus, the last of the Severans, in 235 A.D. and the beginning of Diocletian's reign in 284, at least sixteen men bore the title of emperor: Maximinus (r. 235–38 A.D.), Gordian I and II, Pupienus and Balbinus (r. 238 A.D.), Gordian III (r. 238–44 A.D.), Philip the Arab (r. 244–49 A.D.), the Illyrian Decius (r. 249–51 A.D.), Trebonianus Gallus (r. 251–53 A.D.), Aemilianus (r. 253 A.D.), Valerian (r. 253–60 A.D.), Gallienus (r. 253–68 A.D.), Claudius Gothicus (r. 268–70 A.D.), Aurelian (r. 270–75 A.D.), Tacitus (r. 275–76 A.D.), Probus (r. 276–82 A.D.), Carus (r. 282–83 A.D.), Carinus (r. 283–84 A.D.), and Numerianus (r. 283–84 A.D.). Most were fierce military men and none could hold the reins of power without the support of the army. Almost all, having taken power upon the murder of the preceding emperor, came to a premature and violent end. Social life declined in Roman towns and instead flourished among the country aristocracy, whose secure lifestyle in large fortified estates foreshadowed medieval feudalism." (Source: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)

Michael Grant's short book, actually a monograph of 68 pages with an appendix and notes, provides a good overview of the chaotic succession of emperors and the constantly changing state of Roman relations with the Germans and Persians at the time. In Part Two, he discusses the military, financial and religious reforms instituted by the "strong emperors" such as Diocletian and Constantine who emerged at just the right time and managed to pull the empire back from the brink--for a while. Grant's book gives one of the most coherent explanations available for why the western empire collapsed after the Ostrogoth's fatal encounter with the Huns on the Volga Steppe. The lesson is clear enough. A series of bad or ineffective leaders can destroy a civilization.

Sound familiar?

Conan The Barbarian Wouldn't Look Like Arnold Schwarzenegger (Updated)

I'm a huge fan of the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, one of the best American writers who ever lived. I like the movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as well, even the second one which is almost universally considered, with considerable justification, to be a piece of crap. The Conan of the movies is so radically different from the Conan of the Howard stories that they might as well be two different characters, but never mind that.

The scene in the clip above is from the first movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). It shows how Conan, enslaved as a child after his village was destroyed by the forces of the evil Thulsa Doom, was chained to a mill wheel (The Wheel of Pain) and grew into a heavily muscled giant after years of pushing the wheel around in circles.

This scene always bothered me because it seems unlikely that pushing a wheel around like that would give you the physique of a world-class bodybuilder. It's possible, I guess, at least to a certain extent. This kind of labor would definitely strengthen your thighs and calves, and I suppose the pushing action would have some effect on your chest, back and other muscles, but would it turn you into The Arnold? Very doubtful.

The Wheel of Pain from the Conan movie was actually reconstructed for use in Strongman competitions. The wheels here are filled with sand, making it even more difficult. Note that these are all Strongman competitors, not bodybuilders. Incredibly strong, these guys are usually huge and kind of stiff with large guts like most powerlifters.

Related: Joe Rogan interviews Rob Kearney about the Wheel of Pain event.

There's also the question of nutrition here. Bodybuilding, even accidental bodybuilding, requires a good diet and I find it hard to believe that the slaves pushing the Wheel of Pain were fed very well. I'm not sure how old the movie-Conan was supposed to be when he was first chained to the wheel, but he must have spent at least ten years pushing it around and around in all kinds of weather. In the real world I'm guessing all that exposure and repetitious slogging, combined with a lousy slave diet, would have left him extremely thin, wiry and prematurely aged when they finally released him. And he probably would have had all kinds of knee and back problems.

A kid pushing the Wheel of Pain would have had to eat really well to turn into the Conan in the movies.

Around the time Conan the Barbarian was made, Arnold Schwarzenegger was 6'2" with a 52" chest, a competition weight around 235 and an off-season weight around 260. (Source: Bodybuilding.com) The guy was flat-out monstrous and even though he had the genetics for size he didn't get that big on a slave's diet. Hard manual labor can give you mass and make you tough and strong (if it doesn't kill you) but the one thing it doesn't do is give you gigantic, well-defined muscles like a bodybuilder. That kind of physique requires a specific type of training and it's not the same thing as training for strength.

There's a big difference between bodybuilders like Arnold, who train for size and definition, and powerlifters or StrongMan competitors who train for strength. For example, the next video shows the Georgian powerlifter Lasha Talakhaze at the 2017 Weightlifting Championship in Anaheim, California. His build is a long, long way from Arnold's, but it's fairly typical of the powerlifters and StrongMan types I've seen. They always seem to be carrying a lot of body fat, a direct result of the high-calorie diets they follow to fuel their training.

Warriors in movies are usually shown as being extremely chiseled, but that kind of physique requires careful dieting and long sessions of targeted exercises in the gym. It's not the kind of body that a Viking farmer, for instance, or a Cimmerian like Conan would develop as a matter of course. In the stories, Howard describes Conan as being huge and muscular with amazing endurance and lightning reflexes. He can also move across a forest floor as "silently as a panther," a talent not usually associated with sheer mass. These qualities -- speed, size, stealth, fast reactions -- aren't usually found together. In and of themselves, they're not totally unrealistic, but even if Conan combined them all in one lethal package, he still wouldn't have looked like Arnold.

There's also the question of how good a fighter someone as big and muscular as Arnold would be. If you put a sword in his hand, he could do a lot of damage -- for a while -- but he would probably gas out pretty quickly because sustained fighting requires a lot of cardio conditioning and cardio tends to work against the bodybuilder's goal of size. Runners have a completely different kind of physique and a smaller, lighter opponent can usually run circles around a bigger, slower man. For example, the next video shows the notorious MMA fighter, Conor McGregor (around 155 pounds, depending), sparring around with Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (400+ pounds), the Icelandic strongman who played The Mountain in Game of Thrones.

They're just playing around here, but two things are immediately obvious: (1) McGregor's hardest punch probably wouldn't faze Björnsson, and (2) Björnsson could crush McGregor with his bare hands if he ever got hold of him in a real fight. It's also obvious that someone as big as Björnsson doesn't have the cardio to keep the conflict going for very long. If this was a sword fight, the lighter, faster McGregor could probably beat Björnsson if he could just stay out of his reach and wear him down long enough to strike a blow, something that probably wouldn't take very long. The heavier you are, the slower you are. It's the classic size-and-brute-strength vs speed-and-agility tradeoff. Smaller fighters have an advantage over bigger, heavier opponents if they know how to use it. This is how Bronn won the trial-by-combat against the heavily armored Sir Vardis Egan in Game of Thrones. It's also how the Viper almost beat the Mountain in GOT. Unfortunately for the Viper, he got cocky and that particular fight didn't end so well for him.

Back when GOT was still good. The Viper's habit of dancing around is BS, however.

Getting back to Conan, though, what would someone like him look like in real life? That's hard to say. He would be big, certainly, and muscular, but he wouldn't have the kind of physique that Arnold had in his prime. There were no bodybuilding gyms (or steroids) in the Hyborean Age. Conan was fast as well as strong, so he wouldn't look like the powerlifter Lasha Talakhaze, either. If he did, his stamina and fighting abilities would be limited. A real-life Conan would be big, but not too big, and he would also be lean due to his diet and the generally harsh conditions of his life. He might look something like a extremely fast UFC heavy-weight (206+ pounds) fighter, but considering his speed and agility it seems more probable that he would fit into the light heavy-weight (186-205 pounds) category. In other words, he would be big but he wouldn't be a giant.

All of this, of course, directly contradicts Howard's own descriptions of Conan. For example, in the classic novella Red Nails, Conan is said to be "almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his skin which the sun had burned brown." In Queen of the Black Coast, he's described as a "tall powerfully built figure in a black scale-mail hauberk, burnished greaves and a blue-steel helmet from which jutted bull's horns highly polished." In The Hour of the Dragon, he's a "mailed giant" and so on. He can move over a bed of dead leaves in complete silence and he's always bounding around, as "supple as a panther." In other words, Howard's Conan somehow manages to combine the muscularity and size of a heavyweight bodybuilder with the speed, reactions and endurance of a lightweight MMA fighter, not to mention the fact that he's highly intelligent, literate and a wise ruler with a strong sense of honor and chivalry towards the weak. All told, that's a fantastic collection of attributes not normally found in the real world; but he is, after all, a fantasy character, the greatest fantasy character ever created.

Scene from The Whole Wide World (2003), based on the life of Robert E. Howard.

Forgotten History Of The Ancient Picts

In his fantastic Conan stories, loosely based on actual history, Robert E. Howard described the Picts as a Hyborian race of savage, dark-skinned Caucasians similar in many ways to the American Indians. Their resemblance to Indians is particularly noticeable in stories like The Black Stranger and one of Howard's greatest works, Beyond the Black River.

In the real world, the Picts were a coalition of Celtic tribes who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, aka the Dark Ages. Legendary for tattooing and painting themselves blue -- and supposedly fighting naked -- when they went into battle, they were probably descended from the Caledonii and various other Iron Age Celts who lived in the same general area.

Note: "The word 'Pict' means 'painted people', probably referring to the Pictish custom of either tattooing their bodies or embellishing themselves with 'warpaint'." Source: OrkneyJar.

"However, their Irish term 'Cruithni', meaning 'the people of the designs', seems to parallel the Roman name, so it may be that 'Picti' was an adaptation of the name they called themselves."

The origins of the Picts are still kind of murky. Most of what we know about them before their recorded history began in the Dark Age comes down from Roman and Anglo-Saxon writers:

"A Pictish confederation was formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes, but how and why are not known. Some scholars have speculated that it was partly in response to the growth of the Roman Empire. The Pictish Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the early historiographers such as Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, etc. all present the Picts as conquerors of Alba from Scythia. However, no credence is now given to that view." (Wikipedia)

^"Pictland had previously been described by Roman writers and geographers as the home of the Caledonii. These Romans also used other names to refer to tribes living in that area, including Verturiones, Taexali and Venicones. But they may have heard these other names only second- or third-hand, from speakers of Brittonic or Gaulish languages, who may have used different names for the same group or groups."

More videos about the Picts from this channel can be found here.

Nobody really knows, but the early history of the Picts, like that of the Gauls and other Celtic tribes, probably involved a lot of periodic, small-scale warfare. Scholars believe that they lived in several different "kingdoms" that I'm guessing were more like tribal confederations held together by strong leaders. In Beyond the Black River, Robert E. Howard describes how a Pictish wizard named Zogar Sag manages to temporarily unite all the various tribes in order to wage war against foreign settlers encroaching on their territory. In the real world, the Picts may have formed their first confederation to resist the Romans, a plausible theory, though still speculative. One way or another, the Picts must have been formidable warriors because the Romans were never able to subdue their territory.

Iron Age Warriors Buried Lying On Feather Cushions Near A Headless Owl

Boat burials in Valsgarde, Sweden. Video from 2015.

"In an Iron Age cemetery in what is now Sweden, two warriors who died during the seventh century A.D. were lavishly buried in boats with an unexpectedly luxurious touch: soft bedding stuffed with feathers, to gently cradle the deceased on their journey into the realm of the dead." Source: Live Science.

"The burial site at Valsgärde, a farm in Uppsala, Sweden, near the country's southeastern coast, holds 15 boat burials dating from the third century B.C. — perhaps even earlier — to the 12th century A.D."

Various helmets discovered at Valsgarde.

"Researchers recently investigated the unusual feathery content in two of the graves, known as Valsgärde 7 and Valsgärde 8. Both burials contained 'richly equipped boats' that were positioned with their sterns pointing toward the Fyrisån river, as though poised for the occupants' journey to the afterlife. Pillows from the boats, dated to around 1,400 years ago, are the oldest bedding-related artifacts in Scandinavia, according to a new study."

The burials also included helmets, swords, knives, shields, cooking and hunting tools. "Horses and birds in the graves further hinted at the warriors' high-ranking status, though one of the animals - a Eurasian eagle owl -- was missing its head. Its decapitation may have had ritual significance for the burial and the feathers filling the cushions may have been selected for the symbolic meaning..."

The Immortal Publius Quinctilius Varus (Updated)

Publius Quinctilius Varus is a tragic figure remembered only because of his disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD), aka the Varian Disaster and "Rome's greatest defeat." I wonder what he would have thought if he'd known he would gain immortality by committing such a gigantic blunder that it would end up being named after him? There are many paths to fame and screwing up big time is one of them.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, Varus came from a "patrician family that had been of no importance for centuries. He owed his career to the favor of Augustus," who probably regretted his choice later on when Varus lost three legions in the forests of Germany. According to Tacitus, many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods. Not a good end to a legionary's career.

Varus has gone down in history for his monumental defeat in Germania, but he must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. Up until the debacle in the Teutoburg Forest, Varus had had a fairly distinguished career:

"Varus became proconsul of Africa (?7-6 BC), and then legate of Syria. When Judea revolted after the death of Herod the Great, he marched rapidly southwards and dealt firmly with the insurgents." (OCD)

"Next heard of as legate of the Rhine army [governor of Germania] in AD 9, Varus fell victim to geography and the German tribes' resistance to Roman rule:"

According to Livius, "Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries."

Filmed in 2015 at the supposed site of the disaster in Germany.

The terrain probably made it impossible for Varus to cover his flanks, but he seems to have assumed that he wouldn't have problems from the local Germanic tribes. As it turned out, this was a mistake:

"[He] was treacherously attacked in difficult country by Arminius [chief of the Cherusci], whom he had trusted. The Roman army was destroyed ... and Varus took his own life." (OCD)

Arminius apparently lured Varus into the trap by posing as a friend of Rome and informing him of the rebellion in the west. In a disgraceful act all too familiar from recent history, Augustus blamed Varus not only for the disaster, but for the failure of his entire policy in Germany:

"Varus was made the scapegoat for the signal failure of Augustus' whole German policy. He is alleged to have been grossly extortionate in Syria, torpid and incompetent in his German command." (OCD)

This just begs the question, of course. After all, if Varus was so incompetent and corrupt, why was he given command in Germania in the first place? In any case, the defeat had major repercussions for the Roman empire, which halted its attempts to conquer the Germans and limited its frontier to the Rhine, laying the foundations for many more calamities to come.

Conclusion: If you want to go down in history, you have to either achieve great things like Thomas Edison, kill someone important (like Lee Harvey Oswald), or, like Publius Quinctilius Varus, fail in such a spectacular fashion that your name lives on forever.

Tacitus' Germania: "A Most Dangerous Book"

The Germania by the great Roman historian Tacitus is "a most dangerous book," according to the thought police in the Lugenpresse. Tacitus' description of the history and culture of the ancient Germanic tribes living outside the control of the Roman empire has become a kind of ethnologic bible in Germany and everybody knows that the Germans can't be allowed to have a sense of national pride and identity. For instance, the Harvard Gazette (2008) said that Tacitus "helped to fuel Nazi propaganda" and the New York Times (2011) claimed that the book "was exactly what nationalists had been waiting for."  And many other "journalists" agree:

"Perhaps the most fateful decision in all of European history was made by Augustus Caesar, when he chose to fix the border of the Roman Empire at the Rhine. As a result, the region known to the Romans as Germania would go without the products of Roman civilization (1) —good roads and big cities and the Latin language and Christianity (2). But it would also remain vigorous and untamed enough to threaten Roman power, and finally destroy it in the fifth century A.D." Source: "Ideas Are Viruses - How Tacitus' Germania Became the Bible of German Nationalism," Slate.com (2011)

Comment: This is all crap, of course, not to mention the fact that it's obvious anti-German propaganda. The paranoia about Tacitus' history of Germania is the kind of stuff you would expect from these particular sources, however. (See the footnotes below for some of the problems with the arguments in the Slate article.)

Tacitus was the greatest historian ancient Rome ever produced. His primary concern in all of his writings was to analyze and expose the corruption of the Roman state under the emperors.

According to Moses Hadas, in his introduction to the 1942 Modern Library edition of the complete works of Tacitus (p. xii), "[i]t is a temptation to which many have succumbed to look upon the Germania as a sort of Utopia, a conscious idealization of a primitive and unspoiled people calculated to chasten and reform the decadent Romans. This view is justified in the degree that a strong moralizing strain runs through all Tacitus' work. It has been wittily remarked that no one in Tacitus is good except Agricola [his father-in-law] and the Germans."

Concerning the problems with the Slate article:

(1) The writer seems to think that the savage Germans would have become more civilized if they had been conquered by the Romans. It's hard to understand how the warlike Germans would have become less warlike by exposure to the warlike Roman culture, but it hardly matters because the author of this Slate article has his facts all wrong. In reality, the Germans were exposed to Roman civilization and learned Roman methods of warfare from them, among other things. 

Many Germans served in the legions. In one notable example, Arminius, the commander of the German tribes who wiped out three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD, had served in the Roman military and was apparently a Roman citizen. The Romans needed mercenary forces and, like modern Americans, they ended up providing weapons and training to some of their worst enemies.

(2) - The author of the Slate piece also got it wrong when he said that Germania wasn't exposed to Christianity. The Germans described by Tacitus were still pagans, but by the time of the invasions, many of the invading tribes were Christians, though of a "heretical" variety. The Visigoths who sacked Rome, for instance, were Arian Christians:

"Being Arian Christians, the Visigoths respected Christian sites and treasures. According to one story, a group of them refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels when told that they belonged to St Peter and on Alaric’s orders the sacred objects were carried safely through the streets to St Peter’s Church, respectfully accompanied by a throng of Christian citizens who were only too glad to find sanctuary there themselves. St Augustine told this story in City of God to help rebut allegations by pagans that the sack of Rome was the fault of the Christians, who had enraged the city’s pagan gods." Source: History Today (2010)

I have no idea how true these stories are, but I really doubt if Christians in Rome ever "respectfully" marched through the city with the invading Visigoths or that the invaders "refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels." St. Augustine is a suspect source, to say the least, and he obviously had an agenda in presenting the Visigoths as being respectful of Christian fetishes.

The "barbarians" were Christians, but their religion didn't have any effect on their warlike behavior. That's not too surprising, however. Even if they had been completely "orthodox," there is absolutely no evidence in history that Christianity has ever made people more gentle or nations more peaceful. 

Getting back to Tacitus, it's disingenuous for modern writers to blame him in any way for the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Ethnic nationalism - a sense of common tribal or racial identity - has been a common feature of all countries throughout history. Besides, even if Tacitus did idealize his pagan subjects to a certain extent in order to contrast them with the decadent Romans there's no evidence that I'm aware of that his information on the Germanic tribes is intentionally inaccurate.

According to Moses Hadas again, "More than six hundred items of information are recorded [in the Germania], of a credibility, to be sure, varying with that of Tacitus' sources. The sources were undoubtedly the best available, and included eye-witness accounts as well as written material, and Tacitus was a conscientious workman."

Modern Germans have every right to be proud of their ancestors.

The Tattoo Theory Of Social Collapse

"Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified preserved skin, ancient art, and the archaeological record. Both ancient art and archaeological finds of possible tattoo tools suggest tattooing was practiced by the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. However, direct evidence for tattooing on mummified human skin extends only to the 4th millennium BC." Source: Wikipedia.

"... tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines, and the Andes." In 2016, Nature reported the discovery of "[a] mummy from ancient Egypt ... heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago."

According to Smithsonian Magazine (2007), "... the earliest known examples [of tattoos] were for a long time Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 B.C. But following the more recent discovery of [Otzi the Iceman] from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200 years old."

Otzi had 61 tattoos, apparently. Whether these are still the oldest known tattoos remains to be seen:

"Although Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human ... this will likely change: Ötzi’s tattoos are indicative of social and/or therapeutic practices that predate him, and future archaeological finds and new techniques should someday lead to even older evidence of tattooed mummies." Source: Smithsonian (2015).

"Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin [next video] using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles." Source: Wikipedia.

Otzi the Iceman's tattoos may have been a form of acupuncture. According to the International Business Times (2015), "eighty per cent of [Otzi's] tattoos had been found along acupuncture meridians used to treat back pain and abdominal problems, which Otzi suffered from ... If correct, the tattoos would predate the first recorded use of acupuncture in China by 2,000 years."

"Pre-Christian Germanic, Celtic and other central and northern European tribes were often heavily tattooed, according to surviving accounts, but it may also have been normal paint. The Picts may have been tattooed (or scarified) with elaborate, war-inspired black or dark blue woad (or possibly copper for the blue tone) designs. Julius Caesar described these tattoos in Book V of his Gallic Wars (54 BC). Nevertheless, these may have been painted markings rather than tattoos." Source: Wikipedia.

Note: According to Caesar, "All the Britons dye their body with woad, which produces a blue color, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and upper lip." (The Conquest of Gaul, Book V.14)

In Greece and Rome, tattoos were mostly used for identification purposes -- much like brands on cattle -- but this changed over the centuries, at least among certain classes of society:

"... amongst the Greeks and Romans, the use of tattoos or 'stigmata' as they were then called, seems to have been largely used as a means to mark someone as 'belonging' either to a religious sect or to an owner in the case of slaves or even as a punitive measure to mark them as criminals. It is therefore quite intriguing that during Ptolemaic times when a dynasty of Macedonian Greek monarchs ruled Egypt, the pharaoh himself, Ptolemy IV (221-205 B.C.), was said to have been tattooed with ivy leaves to symbolize his devotion to Dionysus, Greek god of wine and the patron deity of the royal house at that time. The fashion was also adopted by Roman soldiers and spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity, when tattoos were felt to 'disfigure that made in God's image' and so were banned by the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-373)." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.

Closed-captions helpful.

Comment: Tattoos, piercings and scarification are usually associated with barbarian tribes and the lower orders of society. In the classical world, tattooing as a decorative art seems to have been practiced mostly by the more primitive cultures of Europe, Asia and the Orient. In a way, the popularity of tattoos in any given culture could be seen as an indicator of that culture's social development. The more barbaric the culture, the more tattoos. There also seems to have been an inverse relationship between tattoos and social status. In Greece and Rome, for instance, soldiers, slaves, criminals and some priests and acolytes were frequently tattooed, but I'd be amazed to find out that someone like Tacitus had a tramp stamp.

Tattooing seems to become more widespread in civilizations on their way down.  For instance, "the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty began under the reign of Ptolemy IV," the tattooed Egyptian pharaoh, according to Wikipedia. This is just a theory, but I'd say that the rising popularity of tattoos is a symptom of cultural decay. For example, I don't think it's an accident that the use of tattoos "spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity" or that tattoos are becoming a cultural norm in modern Europe and the United States. I guess you could call this the Tattoo Theory of Social Collapse. As a civilization declines into the Third World, more and more people start to cover themselves with body art. I have no idea why this would happen, but maybe the masses are responding in an unconscious way to the barbarism that is slowly engulfing them.

Or maybe it's just a form of masochism.

Scythians Weren't As Nomadic As Believed?

"Scythian-era people lived across Eurasia from about 700 BCE to 200 BCE, and have long been considered highly mobile warriors who ranged widely across the steppe grasslands. Herodotus describes Scythian populations as living in wagons and engaging in raiding and warfare, and this view has persisted throughout history -- supported by archeologists' observations of similar styles of horse harnesses, weapons, burial mounds and animal style motifs throughout what is now Ukraine." Source: Science Daily.

According to new research, the Scythians may not have been as nomadic as previously believed:

"'Our study demonstrates overall low levels of human mobility in the vicinity of key urban locales of the Scythian era, in contrast to previous stereotypes of highly nomadic populations,' said Alicia Ventresca Miller, lead author of the study... 'While long-distance mobility increased during the Scythian era relative to preceding periods, it was limited to a small percentage of individuals.'"

Note: I have no idea how conclusive any of this is, but the study was highly sophisticated, using techniques developed in the field of bioarchaeology. The researchers "took samples of bone and tooth enamel from 56 human skeletons at three burial sites ... in modern-day Ukraine. The team examined these samples using isotope analysis [next video]. This kind of analysis examines isotopes of elements -- in this study, strontium, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon -- deposited in human tissues through eating and drinking. This allows researchers to determine where an individual traveled and lived based on the unique isotope composition in their tissue."

The Thracian Tomb Of Kazanlak

"Discovered in 1944, this tomb dates from the Hellenistic period, around the end of the 4th century BC. It is located near Seutopolis, the capital city of the Thracian king Seutes III, and is part of a large Thracian necropolis." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.

Note: The tomb "comprises a narrow corridor and a round burial chamber, both decorated with murals representing a Thracian couple at a ritual funeral feast. The monument dates back to the 4th century BCE and has been on the UNESCO protected World Heritage Site list since 1979. The murals are memorable for the splendid horses and for a gesture of farewell, in which the seated couple grasp each other's wrists in a moment of tenderness and equality (according to Lyudmila Zhivkova—a view that is not shared by all specialists). The paintings are Bulgaria's best-preserved artistic masterpieces from the Hellenistic period." (Wikipedia)

The tomb itself is closed to the public, but a full-scale replica has been constructed nearby [next video].

Barbarians - The Cimmerians

Video may have some inaccuracies. Subtitles need proofreading.

"'Bosporus, the Cimmerian,' another name for the strait of Kerch which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, was the center of the major kingdom of Bosporus in what is now Ukraine. The kingdom was ruled by the Greek Spartocids from around 438 BC until it came under the control of the new Pontic Empire under Mithridates. The whole area later fell under the control of the Romans." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary, OCD, 3rd ed. revised.

The Greek/Cimmerian Bosporan Kingdom is deep barbarian territory and the ancient history of the region is suitably tumultuous and confusing. The Cimmerians themselves apparently lived in the region back in the 7th or 8th centuries BC, but their original homeland is still obscure and they were apparently defeated by the Scythians:

"...prevailing opinion among the ancients was that the Cimmerians had once inhabited the steppes on the northern shore of the Black Sea. The first surviving evidence of this view is found in the poem Arimaspaea by Aristeas of Proconnesus (ca. 550 b.c.e.), in which the Scythians are said to have driven the Cimmerians from their country in southern Russia..." Source: Encyclopedia Iranica.

Linguistically, the Cimmerians could have been Scythians themselves, or Iranians; it all seems to depend on which source you read.

"Some authorities identify [the Cimmerians] with 'Thraco-Cimmerian' remains of the 8th–7th century BC found in the southwestern Ukraine and in central Europe; these may perhaps be looked upon as traces of the western branch of the Cimmerians, who, under fresh Scythian pressure, eventually invaded the Hungarian plain and survived there until about 500 BC." Source: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Fittingly enough, Thraco-Cimmerian artefacts seem to consist mostly of "grave goods and hoards."

The most famous Cimmerian, of course, is Conan the Barbarian, but the Cimmerians as created by the great Robert E. Howard are a fictional race living in a mythological world of his own invention which was based very loosely on actual history:

"North of Aquilonia, the western-most Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages, untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact with them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans, now progressing more steadily than their old enemies the Picts, who dwell in the wilderness west of Aquilonia." -- The Hyborian Age, Robert E. Howard.

Part two can be found here.

"The Cimmerians are known from several Assyrian texts, which call them Ga-mir or Gi-mir-a-a. In the Assyrian language, the last name means something like 'people traveling back and forth' and seems to be the less adequate of the two renderings of the Cimmerians' Indo-European name, but it describes their way of life excellently, because they were nomads. The Cimmerians were closely related and are archaeologically almost identical to the Scythians, who may have expelled them from their home country." Source: Livius.

The Cimmerians appear to have been a warlike, aggressive people, but they weren't a force for very long. According to Wikipedia, their homeland, Gamirr, was first mentioned by the Assyrian king Sargon II around 721-715 BC. They destroyed the Anatolian kingdom of Phrygia in 695 and again in 676-674 and were eventually defeated in 637-626 by Alyattes II, the king of Lydia, after decades of battles, sacks, invasions, short-lived occupations and general mayhem.

The Cimmerians, aka the Cimmerri, had a meteoric rise and fall, but they made their mark on history. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, they were "an ancient people of the far north or west of Europe, first spoken of by Homer (Odyssey, xi. 12–19), who describes them as living in perpetual darkness. Herodotus (iv. 11–13), in his account of Scythia, regards them as the early inhabitants of South Russia (after whom the Bosporus Cimmerius [q.v.] and other places were named), driven by the Scyths along by the Caucasus into Asia Minor, where they maintained themselves for a century."

The Cimmerian's push for conquest and expansion only lasted for about a hundred years, but that's not a bad record considering the chaos and constant turmoil in the region back then.

Related: Bosporan coins of the Hellenic period and [Roman] imperial period.