"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.
"The name of the Vandals is synonymous today with wanton violence and destruction. But it seems to me that, just like the Vikings, the Vandals have suffered from a bad press. The surviving accounts of their sack of Rome in AD 455, of their further piratical raids around the Mediterranean, and of their persecution of the Catholic inhabitants of North Africa are all presented through the eyes of their enemies and opponents: the Roman and Byzantine Empire and the established Church. Clearly, the Vandals were regarded as the ‘bad guys’ of the day and we too have been led into thinking of them as wild barbarians, intent on the destruction of Rome and its civilization." Source: The British Museum Blog.
Comment: The Vandals weren't exactly choir boys, but as far as I can tell they weren't all that different from everyone else back then. They were looking for land and wanted to form their own kingdoms, just like every other tribe fighting over the remains of the western Roman empire, an empire which was itself originally formed by conquering its neighbors.
The Vandals were a Germanic people or confederation of peoples who may have originated in the Iron Age Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC - 5th century AD) in what is now modern Poland, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). By 200 AD "they were already divided into at least two groups: Hasdings and Silings." According to the OCD, they "seem to have played no major role in the 3rd cent. invasions [of Rome], although contact with the Roman empire was plentiful."
That changed on Dec. 31, 406 AD, when the Vandals crossed the Rhine with two other barbarian tribes, the Alans and Suebi. (OCD) "After three years of widespread devastation in Gaul, they moved over the Pyrenees, and in 411 the invaders divided the Spanish provinces between them." The history here is complex, but the Vandals eventually crossed into Africa, captured Roman Carthage and established their own Vandal kingdom which was eventually conquered by the Byzantines.
The Vandals' methods were brutal and destructive -- they didn't get their name for no reason -- but so were the methods used by the Byzantine Christians and it's easy to forget that the Vandals were Christians themselves: Arian Christians. They persecuted the Catholics in North Africa, but the Catholics persecuted Arianism as well, so I don't see what the church has to complain about.
The Catholic Church makes a big deal about the way their brand of Christianity has been persecuted over the years, but the modern church is at least aware enough to recognize that it can be accused of "inconsistency" in the matter. The church tries to defend its own history -- the Inquisition, religious wars, etc -- by saying that its past intolerance wasn't the same as persecution because it was acting under a "lawful" mandate from God. Apparently, it isn't persecution if it involves "lawful coercion" by an "infallible" authority like the Catholic church:
"Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [Emphasis added]
The legalistic handwaving on display here is truly mind-boggling, to say the least, but it's typical of the kind of propaganda states have always put out to justify their wars and violent suppression of "heresies" of one kind or another. Apparently, the Catholics regard the use of torture to force confessions, burning witches at the stake and massacring heretics to be coercion "within due limits." With this kind of record, you have to wonder what the church considers to be out of bounds when it comes to the use of force.
If the Vandals were notorious for their violence, it's because they were better at it than other groups. Unfortunately for them, they weren't good enough to consolidate their successes and hold their new African kingdom for very long. The winners write the history, so we remember the Vandals as brutal barbarians. That's the way it goes.
"The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region." Source: Science Daily (2018).
"...The vast area of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region has worked as a motor for demographic events throughout Eurasia, especially in the western part of the meta-continent. Crucial events in European history and prehistory can be traced back to people of the Steppe. Including the invention of horseback riding, chariots, a new type of warfare and the spread of Indo-European languages [1]."
"The Valley of the Thracian Rulers is a popular name which was made public by the archaeologist Georgi Kitov and describes the extremely high concentration and variety of monuments of the Thracian culture in the Kazanlak Valley [in modern Bulgaria]. It is believed that there are over 1500 funeral mounds in the region, with only 300 being researched so far." Source: Wikipedia.
One of the spectacular discoveries made in this area, the Kazanlak Tomb, was discovered in 1944. According to Wikipedia, the "vaulted-brickwork 'beehive' (tholos) tomb ... is part of a large royal Thracian necropolis in the Valley of the Thracian Rulers near their ancient capital of Seuthopolis in a region where more than a thousand tombs of kings and members of the Thracian aristocracy can be found."
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, I guess, 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. Many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods, according to Tacitus. Not a good end to a legionary's career.
Varus must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. "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."
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.
Notes: "Around a hundred bodies have been found in ... Irish bogs to date, some male, some female, and those of children too. Some were thought to be there by accident, perhaps as a result of falling into the bog and drowning. Others were considered to be formal (and some not so formal) burials, and others appear to be rather more sinister." Source: Irish Central.
The ritual sacrifice dramatized in this video shows the execution of Old Croghnan Man, a bog body currently on display in the National Museum of Ireland, which, among other things, has an exhibit called Kingship & Sacrifice. According to the museum's website, "The exhibition is centred on a new theory that connects human sacrifice with sovereignty and kingship rituals during the Iron Age. Research has indicated that other material connected with these rituals include: items of regalia; items associated with equestrian [horse] procession; weapons; feasting utensils; boundary markers; items associated with corn and milk production, such as quern stones and butter deposits known as ‘bog butter’."
One possible human sacrifice from this period is known as Tollund Man, "a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body, on the Jutland peninsula. The man's physical features were so well-preserved that he was mistaken at the time of discovery for a recent murder victim. Twelve years before Tollund Man's discovery, another bog body, Elling Woman, had been found in the same bog." (Wikipedia)
I think this describes Tollund Man, but I'm not sure.
"Scholars tend to agree that Tollund Man’s killing was some kind of ritual sacrifice to the gods—perhaps a fertility offering. To the people who put him there, a bog was a special place. While most of Northern Europe lay under a thick canopy of forest, bogs did not. Half earth, half water and open to the heavens, they were borderlands to the beyond. To these people, will-o’-the-wisps—flickering ghostly lights that recede when approached—weren’t the effects of swamp gas caused by rotting vegetation. They were fairies. The thinking goes that Tollund Man’s tomb may have been meant to ensure a kind of soggy immortality for the sacrificial object." Source: Smithsonian.
"'At an appointed time all tribes meet ….. in a forest consecrated by their ancestors, surrounded by fear, sacred from the dawn of time. There, on behalf of those assembled, they celebrate the commencement of their barbaric cult with a human sacrifice.'
"This is how the Roman historian Tacitus described the situation among the Semnones, a Germanic tribe, in the 1st century AD. This could provide the explanation of what happened to the woman from Huldremose, Tollund Man and Grauballe Man. More than a hundred bog bodies have been found in Denmark, which date from the period 800 BC to 200 AD. The cause of death has only been established in a small number of cases, where people have been strangled, hung or had their throats cut. Like the woman from Huldremose, the bodies were carefully placed in a bog afterwards, which points toward a sacrifice or another ritual act rather than an attack." Source: National Museum of Denmark.
Closed captions helpful.
"For Europeans dating as far back as the Neolithic period 6,000 years ago, bogs were both resources and possibly ominous supernatural portals, according to Ulla Mannering, an expert in ancient textiles at the National Museum of Denmark." Source: National Geographic (2014).
"The bogs' peat, which could be burned for heating homes, was valuable in tree-scarce Denmark, and an ore called bog iron was made into tools and weapons.
"Among prehistoric people, 'when you take things, you also offer things,' said Mannering.
"This may be why the Danish villagers would deposit 'gifts' of clothes, old shoes, slaughtered animals, battered weapons, and, for a period of 500 years, people into the black abyss of the bogs. (Related: 'Medieval Christian Book Discovered in Ireland Bog.')"
"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: "History of Tattooing," 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 across his body, including his left wrist, lower legs, lower back and torso." Smithsonian Insider (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 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.
Comment: Tattoos, piercings and scarification are usually associated with barbarian tribes and the lower orders of society. In the classical Mediterranean 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.
"Mexican experts say they have found the first temple of the Flayed Lord, a pre-Hispanic fertility god depicted as a skinned human corpse." Source: The Guardian.
"... The discovery marks the first time researchers have found a cult center devoted to Xipe Tótec, or the 'Flayed Lord,' according to the announcement from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)."
Note: "In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec ... ('Our Lord the Flayed One') was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, disease, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths, liberation and the seasons." (Wikipedia)
This temple complex was probably built by the indigenous Popoloca people sometime between 1000 and 1260 AD, centuries before the area was conquered by the Aztecs. (Live Science)
Comment: The Flayed Lord is a seriously barbarian fertility god. According to the Kimbell Art Museum, "[d]uring the corn-planting festival, Xipe Totec was worshiped by a priest who, dressed in the skin of a flayed victim, ritually enacted the death-and-renewal cycle of the earth. Xipe Totec was the divine embodiment of life emerging from the dead land and of the new plant sprouting from the seed. In this sculpture, the face of a living being is seen behind the mouth and eye openings of the sacrificial victim, whose skin is laced together by cords at the back of the wearer’s skull."
Christmas is a classic example of how the early church Christianized the pagan West by taking over its traditions.
"The Christian ecclesiastical calendar contains many remnants of pre-Christian festivals. Christmas includes elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra. The Chronography of 354 AD contains early evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6." Source: Wikipedia.
Christmas traditions have deep roots in the ancient pagan world. Take the Christmas tree, for instance. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the Devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime. It survived further in the custom, also observed in Germany, of placing a Yule (1) tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays."
(1) "... the word Yule has several suggested origins from the Old English word, geõla, the Old Norse word jõl, a pagan festival celebrated at the winter solstice, or the Anglo-Saxon word for the festival of the Winter Solstice, 'Iul' meaning 'wheel'. In old almanacs Yule was represented by the symbol of a wheel, conveying the idea of the year turning like a wheel, The Great Wheel of the Zodiac, The Wheel of Life. The spokes of the wheel, were the old festivals of the year, the solstices and equinoxes. " Source: The White Goddess
In Rome, the period of the winter solstice brought the seven days of the Saturnalia. "Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of Christmas and the Western world’s New Year." (Encyclopedia Britannica).
"The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year," according to the University of Chicago. Catullus describes it as 'the best of days' ... and Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" ... Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated ... It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles ... perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria."
Everything in Rome came to a stop during the Saturnalia, a festival of licentiousness and role reversals, among other things. According to History Extra, "We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. There were sometimes plots to overthrow the government, because people were distracted – the famous conspirator Cataline had planned to murder the Senate and set the city on fire during the holiday, but his plan was uncovered and stopped by Cicero in 63 BC."
Some Christians see the Saturnalia (and, by extension, Christmas itself) as satanic, which isn't too surprising since Christianity demonized all of the old pagan gods while simultaneously hijacking many of their traditions for their own purposes. In one case, that of Mithra (Mithras) -- the early church's main competitor -- the Christians may have appropriated a pagan god so completely that some have argued that Christ is Mithra in another form.
The identification of Mithra's birthday with Christmas is sketchy. While many sources claim that the god was born on Dec. 25, other sources say that this isn't true and the story seems to be a much later invention. For instance, according to Wikipedia, "It is often stated that Mithras was thought to have been born on December 25. But Beck states that this is not the case. In fact he calls this assertion 'that hoariest of 'facts'. He continues: 'In truth, the only evidence for it is the celebration of the birthday of Invictus on that date in the Calendar of Philocalus. Invictus is of course Sol Invictus, Aurelian's sun god. It does not follow that a different, earlier, and unofficial sun god, Sol Invictus Mithras, was necessarily or even probably, born on that day too.'"
Mithra was said to have been born from a rock (in one version of the story) According to The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont (p 131), "the tradition ran that the 'Generative Rock,' of which a standing image was worshiped in the temples, had given birth to Mithra on the banks of a river, under the shade of a sacred tree, and that shepherds alone, ensconced in a neighboring mountain, had witnessed the miracle of his entrance into the world." Like the story of Jesus's birth, the presence of shepherds in the fields suggests that Mithra was born in the spring or summer, not in the dead of winter. Whatever the case, however, the Jesus/Mithra connection is persistent in popular culture:
One interesting fact about Mithraism is that it appeared (in the Roman empire) around the same time that Christianity appeared and seems to have dropped out of sight around the same time that Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of Rome. "The Roman deity Mithras appears in the historical record in the late 1st century A.D., and disappears from it in the late 4th century A.D.," according to The Tertullian Project. It's tempting to see this as circumstantial evidence that Christianity evolved out of Mithraism, but the truth is that all forms of pagan religion began to fade out after the church consolidated its power in the 4th century. Besides, very little is actually known about the teachings of Mithraism, an "organization of cells," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), whose beliefs have to be reconstructed mostly from inscriptions.
None of this really matters, though. Mithras probably wasn't born on Dec. 25, but then neither was Jesus so what difference does it make? The connections between Christmas, ancient Yuletide celebrations and the Roman Saturnalia are clear, so if you're a pagan you might as well go ahead and celebrate Mithra's birthday today as well. Of course, this assumes that you see Christmas as a religious holiday in the first place. A lot of people don't:
"Most Americans celebrate Christmas, but its importance to people as a religious event continues to wane, according to a new survey by Pew Research." (News & Observer, 2017).
"The poll found that while 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, only 55 percent regard it as a religious holiday. Further, the survey found, a decreasing majority of Americans believe in the main elements of the Christmas story as told in the Bible: that Jesus was born of a virgin mother; that three magi came to visit, bearing gifts; that an angel announced the baby’s birth; and that the infant was cradled in a manger."
Christmas has become secularized and increasingly commercial, to say the least. The holiday has degenerated into a month-long orgy of rabid consumerism and mass insanity, a typical example of the decline of the modern world. (Video from 2018)
Personally I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I'm not a Christian, for one thing, and I can't stand what the holiday has become, but traditions are important, especially now that all of our western traditions are under relentless attack by the Cultural Marxists.
So Merry Christmas and if that offends you I couldn't care less.
"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. (See the footnotes below for some of the problems with the argument 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 was also wrong to say 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 identity - has been a common feature of all countries throughout history. Besides, there's no evidence that I'm aware of that Tacitus' information on the Germanic tribes is inaccurate or intentionally romanticized.
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.
Were The Vandals The Victims Of Bad Press?
"The name of the Vandals is synonymous today with wanton violence and destruction. But it seems to me that, just like the Vikings, the Vandals have suffered from a bad press. The surviving accounts of their sack of Rome in AD 455, of their further piratical raids around the Mediterranean, and of their persecution of the Catholic inhabitants of North Africa are all presented through the eyes of their enemies and opponents: the Roman and Byzantine Empire and the established Church. Clearly, the Vandals were regarded as the ‘bad guys’ of the day and we too have been led into thinking of them as wild barbarians, intent on the destruction of Rome and its civilization." Source: The British Museum Blog.
Comment: The Vandals weren't exactly choir boys, but as far as I can tell they weren't all that different from everyone else back then. They were looking for land and wanted to form their own kingdoms, just like every other tribe fighting over the remains of the western Roman empire, an empire which was itself originally formed by conquering its neighbors.
The Vandals were a Germanic people or confederation of peoples who may have originated in the Iron Age Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC - 5th century AD) in what is now modern Poland, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). By 200 AD "they were already divided into at least two groups: Hasdings and Silings." According to the OCD, they "seem to have played no major role in the 3rd cent. invasions [of Rome], although contact with the Roman empire was plentiful."
That changed on Dec. 31, 406 AD, when the Vandals crossed the Rhine with two other barbarian tribes, the Alans and Suebi. (OCD) "After three years of widespread devastation in Gaul, they moved over the Pyrenees, and in 411 the invaders divided the Spanish provinces between them." The history here is complex, but the Vandals eventually crossed into Africa, captured Roman Carthage and established their own Vandal kingdom which was eventually conquered by the Byzantines.
The Vandals' methods were brutal and destructive -- they didn't get their name for no reason -- but so were the methods used by the Byzantine Christians and it's easy to forget that the Vandals were Christians themselves: Arian Christians. They persecuted the Catholics in North Africa, but the Catholics persecuted Arianism as well, so I don't see what the church has to complain about.
The Catholic Church makes a big deal about the way their brand of Christianity has been persecuted over the years, but the modern church is at least aware enough to recognize that it can be accused of "inconsistency" in the matter. The church tries to defend its own history -- the Inquisition, religious wars, etc -- by saying that its past intolerance wasn't the same as persecution because it was acting under a "lawful" mandate from God. Apparently, it isn't persecution if it involves "lawful coercion" by an "infallible" authority like the Catholic church:
"Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means." Source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [Emphasis added]
The legalistic handwaving on display here is truly mind-boggling, to say the least, but it's typical of the kind of propaganda states have always put out to justify their wars and violent suppression of "heresies" of one kind or another. Apparently, the Catholics regard the use of torture to force confessions, burning witches at the stake and massacring heretics to be coercion "within due limits." With this kind of record, you have to wonder what the church considers to be out of bounds when it comes to the use of force.
If the Vandals were notorious for their violence, it's because they were better at it than other groups. Unfortunately for them, they weren't good enough to consolidate their successes and hold their new African kingdom for very long. The winners write the history, so we remember the Vandals as brutal barbarians. That's the way it goes.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Warfare, Barbarians, Catholic Church, Commentary, Religion, Videos | Permalink