Ancient World Review

The Satires Of Juvenal

"Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendor, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires, he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, aging flirts and downtrodden teachers." -- Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Penguin Classics, Third Edition.

Note: An excellent, unabridged reading of the Satires is available from Audible.com.

"[Juvenal was] known primarily for the angry tone of his early Satires, although in later poems he developed an ironical and detached superiority as his satiric strategy," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised). "...virtually nothing is known of his life...the absence of dedication to a patron in Juvenal's Satires may suggest that he was a member of the elite. The few datable references confirm Syme's assessment that the five books were written during the second and third decades of the 2nd cent. AD (or later), at about the same time as Tacitus was writing his Annals."

Comment: Juvenal is my favorite Roman poet. Earthy, cynical, outraged, comically obscene, his poetry seems strangely modern and I can sympathize with his disgust at the corruption, stupidity and perversity of the world he lived in. In that regard, human nature being what it is, very little has changed over the last 2000 years.

Juvenal coined the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe the political system of Rome in his day, a system which still exists in modern America, a country where at least half the population is receiving some form of government benefits and tens of millions of plebs work themselves into a lather over mass sports spectacles like the Super Bowl every year. And if you think we're all that different from the mobs who attended the gladiatorial fights and animal hunts at the Colosseum, it should be noted that gladiator-like mixed martial arts arena fighting has seen a surge in popularity. Juvenal attended the games in Rome and he could be particularly acerbic about the degeneracy, excess and status-seeking of some of the spectators:

"To go to the games, Ogulnia hires dresses, attendants, a carriage, cushions, a baby-sitter, companions, and a little blonde slave-girl to carry her messages. Yet what's left of the family plate, down to the last salver, she'll hand out as a present to some smooth athlete. Many such women lack substance [wealth] - yet poverty gives them no sense of restraint, they don't observe the limits." -- Satire VI.

Note: I've copied these passages in prose form in order to save space.

If Juvenal could see the crowds at a modern Super Bowl, he'd probably have a heart attack. An impoverished aristocrat -- at least when he was writing the early satires -- he was highly indignant about the way he was shoved aside to make way for wealthy low-lives at the games:

"The hardest thing that there is to bear about wretched poverty is the fact that it makes men ridiculous. 'You! Get out of those front-row seats,' we're told. 'You ought to be ashamed - your incomes are far too meager! The law's the law. Make way for some pander's son and heir, spawned in an unknown brothel; yield your place to the offspring of that natty auctioneer with the trainer's son and the ring-fighter's brat applauding beside him!'" -- Satire III.

Like so many other Romans, Juvenal's poverty reduced him to depending on a wealthy patron for the necessities of life. The second-class treatment he received at the hands of this patron didn't do much to improve his mood, especially when he considered the profligacy of his "betters:"

 "...when has there been so abundant a crop of vices? When has the purse of greed yawned wider? When was gambling more frantic? Today men face the table's hazards with not their purse but their strong-box open beside them...Isn't it crazy to lose ten thousand on a turn of the dice, yet grudge a shirt to your shivering slave? In the old days who'd have built all those country houses, or dined off seven courses, alone? Now citizens must scramble for a little basket of scraps on their patron's doorstep." -- Satire I.

Juvenal's Rome was a behavioral sink, a decadent and dangerous city where whores, criminals and morons rose to the top and lorded it over the ordinary citizens who probably counted themselves lucky if they could make it through the day without being robbed or stabbed to death. Most of the population lived in hazardous tenements run by greedy landlords who were only interested in swindling the tenants crammed together in fire-trap buildings that could collapse or burn to the ground at any minute:

"...here we inhabit a city largely shored up with gimcrack stays and props: that's how our landlords postpone slippage, and -- after masking great cracks in the ancient fabric -- assure the tenants they can sleep sound, when the house is tottering. Myself, I prefer life without fires, without nocturnal panics. By the time the smoke's reached the third floor -- and you're still asleep -- the heroic downstairs neighbor is roaring for water, shifting his stuff to safety. If the alarm's at ground-level, the last to fry is the wretch [on the upper floor] among the nesting pigeons with nothing but tiles between himself and the weather." - Satire III.

Juvenal was the Hunter Thompson of his day, ranting about everything from the mobs on the street and the degenerates in high office to the promiscuity of Roman women and the grotesque spectacles of the theater and games. Later in his life, he apparently came into some money and mellowed a little -- but not much. He was essentially a conservative, but unlike Tacitus, who focused on the moral decline of the Rome aristocracy, Juvenal describes in lurid detail the day-t0-day life of the average citizen. I don't have the space to give more than a few quotes from the Satires, but they're full of juicy details and your view of ancient Rome will never be quite the same again after you read them. Highly recommended.

The great Auberon Waugh. In this interview, he seems kind of dismissive of Juvenal's scorn for Roman society, which is pretty odd coming from somebody like him. To see what I mean, you should check out The Diaries Of Auberon Waugh, a collection of his Private Eye writings (1976-1985), aptly described on Amazon as the "venomous, abusive, irrational, fantastical, hugely bigoted diary of a ranting maniac." Highly recommended.

The Wild Beast Spectacles In Ancient Rome

"Venationes -- 'hunts' involving the slaughter of animals, especially fierce ones, by other animals or human bestiarii (fighters of wild beasts) -- and sometimes of criminals by animals -- were a major spectacle in Rome from 186 BC." Source: "Venationes," Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, revised.

These popular spectacles featured a wide variety of hunts and animals, and the difference between "hunters" and "fighters of wild beasts" basically revolved around whether they were there to be punished or to entertain:

"Although bestiarii (beast fighters) and venatores (hunters) both fought wild animals, there are distinctions. The bestiarii often were wretched creatures, condemned criminals or prisoners of war, who had little chance against the animals they fought [according to Seneca, who regarded the games in general as 'pure butchery.']. With no real training and often no defense, they were thrown to the beasts as punishment and spectacle." Source: University of Chicago. Basically, the hunters were there to slaughter animals and in many cases the bestiarii were there to be slaughtered for the entertainment and edification of the Mob.

News report from 2015.

The hunts weren't just for entertainment, though; they also had a political purpose. According to the OCD, the venationes "displayed the ingenuity and generosity of the governing politician and the reach of Rome, and its power over nature, in procuring exotic species (lions, panthers, bears, bulls, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, elephants); they admitted a privileged city-audience to the glories of traditional aristocratic hunting. Along with gladiatorial fights, they were a principal reason for building amphitheaters."

Ambitious Roman politicians were expected to sponsor games to win support from the plebs, who were admitted free of charge. The more exotic and expensive the games, the better. The costs of putting on these spectacles, not to mention the expenses involved in electoral bribery and maintaining their lifestyles, frequently drove the nobility into massive debt which could only be paid off through war and corruption (the governorships of rich provinces were especially sought after for this reason).

The emperors, being emperors, put on the best shows. For example, "5,000 wild and 4,000 tame animals died in the inauguration of Titus' Collosseum in 80 [AD], and 11,000 at Trajan's Dacian Triumph," according to the OCD. Trajan was celebrating his victories in the Dacian Wars and his triumph is said to have lasted 123 days.

Supplying the beasts for these hunts was an expensive, difficult and dangerous business which led, among other things, to the development of a wild-animal trade and the stockpiling of exotic animals in various locations around the empire. Transporting them for long distances across sea and land, sometimes under harsh conditions, would have been particularly difficult.

"Available ancient textual and artistic data point to a number of groups who presumably captured these wild beasts during Roman times. Representations in mosaics show a mix of soldiers and what appear to be professional hunters undertaking these tasks. Soldiers were probably utilized; in fact, capturing wild beasts could be regarded as a military exercise of sorts. Exotic goods, including items such as ivory, spices, precious gems, and so forth, were often demanded from subject states of the Roman Empire, sometimes procured as tribute, and Roman soldiers stationed in these areas could help in the capture and transport of any requisitioned animals. No doubt some civilians and "native" peoples were also recruited (or coerced) to assist as required..." Source: "Supplying Exotic Animals For The Roman Ampitheatre Games," Michael MacKinnon (2006) (PDF), The Alexandria Archive Institute.

Note: There's at least one glaring error in this clip. Trajan didn't build the Colosseum. Construction was started by Vespasian and finished by his son Titus in 80 AD, eighteen years before Trajan became emperor.

Everyone's familiar with the stories (many fictional) about criminals and Christians being fed to the beasts in the Colosseum, but the story of the soldiers and professional hunters who actually had to collect these animals, keep them alive and  ship them across the empire is much more obscure and interesting. The logistical problems they had to deal with must have been mind-boggling.

Related: Could You Stomach The Horrors Of "Half-time" In Ancient Rome?

The Roman Province Of Mauretania

"Mauretania ... was in ancient times a part of North Africa corresponding to the Mediterranean coast of what is today Morocco," according to Wikipedia. "Mauretania originally was an independent tribal Berber kingdom from around the 3rd century BC. It became a client state of the Roman empire in 33 BC, then a full Roman province after the death of its last king Ptolemy of Mauretania in AD 40."

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "[m]ost of the country is high and rocky, supporting sheep and producing a little wine; corn and olives grew on the coast, in the Mulucha valley, and on the plains of Volubilis and [Sala Colonia]. The chief exports were wine, ebony, precious woods, and purple dyes."

Next video shows the ruins of Chellah, a fortified medieval Muslim necropolis built on the site of Sala Colonia. Views of the Roman ruins begin at around 2:10.

Berber Mauretania was in touch with Spain "from early days, binding Europe and Africa by piracy and colonization," according to the OCD. "The bulk of the population belonged to the Moorish branch (1) of the Berber race, while a string of Phoenician trading stations was established on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts during the 8th and 7th cents. BC."

(1) Technically, "Moor" doesn't have any racial connotations. According to Wikipedia, "medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, Berber North Africans and Muslim Europeans." The Berbers were apparently a mixed Semitic and North African ethnic group and they don't appear to have been sub-Saharan in origin.

Mauretania had a complex and chaotic history which included the rise of various kingdoms which became involved in the Roman Jugurthine War (112-106 BC). An excellent account of this war can be found in The Jugurthine War by the Roman historian Sallust. In 25 BC, Octavian handed over the rule of Mauretania to the king of Numidia, Juba II, "whose capitals were at Iol (Caesarea) [modern Cherchell] and probably Volubius," according to the OCD.

The murder of Juba's son in Rome led to disturbances in Mauretania, which was then pacified by the Romans. "In or about 44 [AD], Claudius constituted two Mauretanian provinces, ruled by procurators, with capitals at Tingis and Caesarea." (OCD) The provinces were Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis.

The structures at Volubilis were built over a period of many years. The city walls -- 1.5 miles long with eight gates -- were added in the 160s (AD). According to the OCD,  "The forum is probably Neronian (AD 54-68), the two sets of baths are both Flavian in origin, and two street grids with different orientations in the north and north-eastern quarters are both now known to date from before the end of the 1st century." The city and surrounding farms were abandoned around 255 AD after a reorganization by Diocletian.

"The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome because of its remoteness and indefensibility on the south-western border of the Roman Empire. It continued to be inhabited for at least another 700 years, first as a Latinised Christian community, then as an early Islamic settlement. In the late 8th century it became the seat of Idris ibn Abdallah, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty and the state of Morocco."

The Battle On The Ice 1242 AD

Subject starts at app 0:40.

"The Battle on the Ice ... was fought between the Republic of Novgorod led by prince Alexander Nevsky and the forces of Livonian Order and Bishopric of Dorpat led by bishop Hermann of Dorpat on April 5, 1242, at Lake Peipus [see next video]. The battle is notable for having been fought largely on the frozen lake, and this gave the battle its name." Source: Wikipedia.

"The battle was a significant defeat sustained by the crusaders during the Northern Crusades, which were directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims in the Holy Land. The Crusaders' defeat in the battle marked the end of their campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Slavic territories for the next century."

It's easy to forget that the Crusades weren't just fought against Muslims in the so-called Holy Land, but against pagans and other Christians in Europe. Technically, a crusade was any church-sanctioned campaign and military/religious orders, i.e., organized gangs, like the Teutonic Knights were used to forcibly convert or slaughter unbelievers and suppress rivals to Rome's hegemony. And the "holy warriors" went rogue sometimes, operating like bandits or mercenaries in the pursuit of their own interests when they weren't massacring Jews and Saracens or attacking Christian kingdoms.

This is how "orthodox" Christianity took over the West. The Eastern Orthodox Church managed to stand up to the onslaught, however. It is now the second largest Christian church in the world, due in large part to its military victories over Catholic forces:

"In the Battle of the Ice, the Teutonic Knights [1], a Catholic group, attempted to invade Russia and convert the Eastern Orthodox population of the Republic of Novgorod. This military campaign was part of the so-called Northern Crusades. Teutonic Knights involved in the Battle of the Ice were mostly Estonian, German, and Danish." Source: National Geographic.

"Russians, led by legendary figure Alexander Nevsky, repelled the invaders. Today, Lake Peipus still forms the central border between Russia and Estonia. Russia remains overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox and Estonia remains Catholic and Protestant."

[1] "Throughout the 13th and 14th century CE the Catholic Teutonic knights crusaded in Prussia and the Baltic area mainly against pagan Lithuanians and Orthodox Russians, but as the order was bent on expansion for its own sake, many other nationalities were fought besides those." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)

From the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky directed by Eisenstein. Music by Prokofiev. Full movie can be found here.

Despite the fact that he agreed to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, Alexander Nevsky is a legendary figure in Russia, a major national hero. Churches and cathedrals have been named after him. "On 24 September 2008, St. Alexander Nevsky was declared the main hero of Russia's history by popular vote ... In December 2008, he was voted the greatest Russian in the Name of Russia television poll." (Wikipedia)

"Hail and take heed, this is the tale one of the most famous Russian Heroes in history, second only to perhaps Vladimir of Kiev, the Baptizer of All Rus’. Few leaders have captured the hearts and minds of the Russians like Alexander Nevsky, who was voted Russia’s greatest leader of all time in 2008." Source: Russia Insider (2018).

The Teutonic Knights - Founding, Organization, Differences With Other Medieval Military Orders

"The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem ...  commonly the Teutonic Order ... is a Catholic religious order founded as a military order c. 1190 in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem." (Wikipedia)

"The Teutonic Order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages."

Related: The Early Years of the Teutonic Order.

"The order was led by a Grand Master ... who was chosen by an electoral college and who was expected to consult his senior officers and commanders. In the 15th century CE, there was a second master in Livonia who became increasingly independent from the order based at its then headquarters in Prussia. It did sometimes happen that a master was ousted by his officers, indeed there was one case of murder of a particularly unpopular master. The order controlled many lands across Europe and the Middle East, the territories split into administrative provinces or balleien, each governed by a landmeister." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.

All videos from the excellent Real Crusades History channel.

Note: The Teutonic Order still exists, though it has been purely religious since the early 1900s, I think. They have a website (German only).

Related: Ten Interesting Things You Should Know About The Teutonic Order.

The Statutes Of The Teutonic Knights: A Study In Religious Chivalry (PDF).

The Old City Of Acre

The history of Acre (also known as Akko) goes back to the Bronze Age. It is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited settlements in the world and the full story of the city is too complex to get into in any detail here. Over the centuries, Acre fell under the control of the Phoenicians, Caananites, Persians, Macedonians, Ptolemies, Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Israelites, etc. etc. During the Crusader period, Acre was conquered by the forces of King Baldwin and became the main port of the First Kingdom of Jerusalem. In subsequent years, control of the city bounced back and forth between the Crusaders and Muslims until it was taken over by the Ottomans in 1517. The city's history since then has been just as turbulent.

Note: "Significant remains from the Crusader period were first uncovered in Akko during the 1950s and 1960s when portions of building complexes, below ground level but almost completely preserved, were cleared of debris. During the 1990s, within the framework of the development of Akko, excavations were undertaken both outside and inside the present-day Old City walls, bringing to light fascinating remains of Akko’s illustrious medieval history, previously known mainly from pilgrims’ accounts." Source: "Archaeology in Israel: Ancient City of Akko," Jewish Virtual Library.

Did Viking Shieldmaidens Actually Exist?

Vikings is a great show (until recently, at least), but like all historical dramas it has to play fast and loose with its own timeline, not to mention the actual history of the events it depicts. It's also inaccurate in various details such as its depiction of the armor that the Vikings wore in battle, but all of this is to be expected due to time and budget constraints as well as the fact that the series mixes mythology and real history for dramatic effect.

One of the show's most popular characters, Lagertha, a female warrior or shieldmaiden, is also a source of controversy since it's unclear whether shieldmaidens ever existed. Strictly speaking, of course, the question is irrelevant because Vikings is a fictional drama, not a documentary, but it would be interesting to know if characters like Lagertha actually fought alongside the men in real life.

Like her husband, Ragnar Lodbrok, the character of Lagertha is taken from Viking mythology. "Her tale, as recorded by the chronicler Saxo in the 12th century, may be a reflection of tales about Thorgerd .., a Norse deity," according to Wikipedia. Shieldmaidens in general appear in the Sagas and the female Valkyries may have been based on them.

"Few, if any, scholars nowadays believe that women warriors led war bands in Viking-age Scandinavia; they have either been relegated to the world of amazon myths or explained away in other ways," according to Medievalists.net (2015). On the other hand, there is some archaeological and documentary evidence that Viking women fought in battle, at least in certain situations:

"There are few historic attestations that Viking Age women took part in warfare, but the Byzantine historian John Skylitzes records that women fought in battle when Sviatoslav I of Kiev attacked the Byzantines in Bulgaria in 971. When the Varangians (not to be confused with the Byzantine Varangian Guard) had suffered a devastating defeat in the Siege of Dorostolon, the victors were stunned at discovering armed women among the fallen warriors." (Wikipedia)

Taken by itself, this Byzantine account doesn't prove that female warriors were a standard feature of Viking society. After all, the women killed in this battle could have been wives or daughters forced to fight by a desperate situation. If the story's accurate, however, it does show that Viking women -- some of them, at any rate -- were capable of taking part in battles. How often this happened is another matter.

Ultimately, the question boils down to the interpretation of burials. Recent findings suggest that women accompanied the Viking men (in England, at any rate) in greater numbers than previously assumed, but whether these women--or the men, for that matter--were raiders is another question. Many of the sources I've seen claim that "almost half" of the Viking burials discovered in England belonged to women, but calling them warriors may be a misinterpretation of the original study (see Related links below). As it turns out, these Vikings were probably colonists rather than raiders as such, so it would have been natural for them to take their families along with them. Some of the women were buried with weapons, though, and the question is why?

Here are two examples from the stories about the burial study:

"Viking women accompanied their male partners to Britain in far greater numbers than had been previously thought," according to the Daily Mail (2011). "Almost half of all bodies in burial grounds researchers examined were those of women - with some carrying swords and shields." (Emphasis added)

The women buried in these graves may have been under-counted in earlier studies. "A study has revealed that previous research examining the gender ratio of Vikings in Medieval England may have underestimated the number of Viking women because they assumed that graves showing individuals buried with a sword and shield were men.  According to USA Today (2011), the newer study, which determined sex by analyzing the skeletal remains, showed that nearly half the examined remains were female, including one of the ‘warrior’ skeletons buried with a sword and shield." Source: Ancient Origins. (Emphasis added)

Even if half of the bodies discovered were women, it sounds like only a few of them were buried with swords and shields. Whatever the case, these grave findings suggest that female warriors did exist. After all, if a male skeleton is found buried with weapons, it would be natural to assume that he was a warrior of some kind, so the same thing could be assumed about a female skeleton. I'm not sure why a woman would be buried with weapons otherwise (unless they had some kind of symbolic value). Even if there were female Viking warriors, however, this still wouldn't prove that shieldmaidens as such actually existed as a distinct warrior caste in Viking society.

Shieldmaidens are a classic example of what I would call hidden history. Maybe they were real. Maybe not. The question, as far as I can tell, is still up in the air and will probably never be resolved conclusively until more archaeological or documentary evidence is uncovered. If shieldmaidens did exist, I have my doubts that they were as gorgeous as Katheryn Winnick, the actress and martial artist who plays Lagertha in Vikings. Most likely, they were hard-bitten characters with nasty tempers when they were crossed. One way or another, it doesn't help that the whole issue has become so mixed up in contemporary identity politics.

Related: The Role Of Women In Viking Society

Better Identification Of Viking Corpses: Half Of The Warriors Were Female

Study Didn't Show That Half Of Viking Warriors Were Women

Historical Inaccuracies In The 1959 Ben Hur's Naval Battle Scenes

This is a classic sequence from Ben Hur, the 1959 movie starring Charlton Heston. It's obvious that the scenes on the deck of the galley were shot in a studio using matte paintings for backgrounds, but the lack of CGI is particularly refreshing and the effects look a lot more realistic than the computer-generated stuff in modern movies. The soundtrack is great, the galley miniatures (filmed in a tank at the MGM back lot) are well done, and the whole sequence has a dark, intense atmosphere that I've always liked, but almost everything about this scene and the naval battle in general is historically inaccurate.

The presence of a Roman consul on board Ben Hur's galley is questionable because this scene presumably took place during the early part of the 1st century AD. "During the Republic, command of a fleet was given to a serving magistrate or promagistrate, usually of consular or praetorian rank," according to Wikipedia, but the setting here is the early principate, when the Mediterranean was a Roman lake and the organization of the navy seems to have changed completely. By this time, individual triremes were commanded by a trierarch, squadrons of ships by a navarch, the rough equivalent of a modern admiral.

Be that as it may, however, the biggest problem with the naval battle scenario is that the Romans are supposedly fighting Macedonian pirates in the Mediterranean:

"The biggest fault with the battle scene from the movie, Ben Hur, was the battle itself. Since this is the time of Jesus, it would imply a date of between 0 and 30 AD, and at that time, Rome no longer had enemies with fleets and there were no pirates remaining who used large warships. The last major naval battle was fought in 31BC, and since that date, most naval battles were skirmishes between naval forces employing small ships." Source: Roman Seas.

There's another minor detail about this scene that always bothered me. Would Roman marines and naval officers wear armor and crested helmets on board their ships when they were just traveling from point A to point B? It doesn't seem very likely. After all, if you slipped and fell overboard, that armor would drag you straight to the bottom. But never mind that. The most serious problem with this entire sequence is the fact that the Romans didn't use slaves to row their galleys. This image is pure Hollywood.

"Naval craft were expensive to build and maintain," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "Most warships could not be used for trade and their crews were normally free men who required payment as well as provisioning."

According to Wikipedia, "The bulk of a galley's crew was formed by the rowers, the remiges (sing. remex) or eretai (sing. eretēs) in Greek. Despite popular perceptions, the Roman fleet, and ancient fleets in general, relied throughout their existence on rowers of free status, and not on galley slaves. Slaves were employed only in times of pressing manpower demands or extreme emergency, and even then, they were freed first."

Like the fight against Macedonian pirates, the movie's depiction of galley slaves is completely inaccurate. According to the Guardian, "When Ben-Hur is falsely accused of throwing a roof tile at Valerius Gratus, he is sentenced to slavery in the galleys. This is one of the film's (and the book's) biggest blunders. Galley slavery was hardly known in the Roman empire, and there are no records of it being used as a punishment. Not least, this was because most Roman galleys – including the triremes shown in the film – required skilled rowers. The only substantial Roman use of galley slaves was recorded in the second Punic war, more than 200 years before the period depicted in the movie."

Note: the heavily-edited French-language clip above was the only one I could find showing the battle from the 1959 version.

Putting aside the fact that it never would have happened during this time period, the naval battle itself is full of technical inaccuracies and anachronisms. For instance, "the Romans did not use catapults onboard their ships, they used ballistae," according to Roman Seas. "Ballistae fired projectiles at near flat trajectories (trying to hit a moving target from a moving platform using weapons that fired projectiles with high trajectories would be near impossible, and that does not even take into consideration the rocking motion of the ship firing the projectile)."

Ramming was also a bad idea in naval battles. According to Roman Seas, it was "a risky and unsure system of attack that required great skill, and a fair amount of luck, to be pulled off successfully. One miscalculation could mean that you would inflict more damage on your own ship than onto the ship you attempted to ram." Naval battles aren't like demolition derbies. The Romans would've focused on boarding the enemy ships:

"The Romans circumvented ramming altogether by using boarding as their main method of attack. Boarding combat was easier to control, quicker to resolve and safer than ramming, and the Romans had a ready stock of heavily armed, trained soldiers from their land armies. This was an easy solution for the Romans as well as also being a highly effective one since most other navies only used lightly armed and armored marines." (Roman Seas)

So the whole "ramming speed" bit in the galley scene is nonsense. In fact, almost everything about the battle is pure fiction.The 1959 Ben Hur is a classic, I suppose, if you can overlook glaring historical inaccuracies like this, something I'm finding more difficult to do these days. I haven't seen the 2016 remake, but from what I've read it isn't any better and apparently bombed at the box office.

They Didn't Have Flattops In Ancient Rome!

I've never seen a movie about ancient Rome that didn't suck (except for Centurion, which was passable, I guess). Some of these celluloid atrocities are marginally accurate, but most of them get everything wrong and the big budget Hollywood productions are the worst, especially the old "classics" which are incredibly cheesy. The modern movies usually do a better job with the costumes and sets -- usually -- but their scripts are laughable and they almost always mangle the actual history, something I've never been able to understand because the real history is always a thousand times more entertaining than the Hollywood version.

Take the "classic" Spartacus with Kirk Douglas, for instance. The movie's loosely based on real events, but it's a typical overblown Hollywood extravaganza with melodramatic dialog, stereotypically sadistic Romans and a truly moronic ending where Spartacus' wife shows him their baby while he's hanging from a cross. (Never mind the fact that he was actually killed in battle and his body was never found; this scene's so insipid that it makes me laugh just watching it again). The real story would make a fantastic movie if someone would take the time to research the period and actual events.

Spartacus may be world-class schlock, but it looks like a work of careful scholarship next to Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This movie is so ridiculous, its suck-factor so extreme, that it's almost impossible to describe. Cleopatra's grand entrance into Rome is so comically overblown that it has to be seen to be believed. The Hollywood of the period seemed to think that the ancient world was a gigantic Cecil B. DeMille spectacular and things haven't improved much since.

The massive amount of sensationalist gibberish and misinformation these movies squirt into the soft, quivering brains of their audiences is truly mind-boggling. Just to list a few minor examples, how many people think that the Romans used slaves to row their galleys because they saw it in Ben Hur or that the Egyptians used slaves to build the pyramids because they saw it in 10,000 BC, a movie so bad that its entire cast and crew should be scourged and crucified?

As for Gladiator with Russell Crowe, the less said the better. I liked it when it first came out, but I find it unwatchable now, partly because of its inane Shakespearean dialog which is supposed to make everything sound "classical" and partly because of its mega-extreme level of historical inaccuracy, but mostly because it has one of the most ludicrous endings I've ever seen in a movie, and I've seen a lot of crap movies. Read my review of Gladiator for more details.

Quo Vadis is another mind-blowing suckfest, but it's been decades since I watched it and I think I was drunk at the time, so I can't remember much about it except the loud slurping sound that came out of my TV while I lounged around chain-smoking and guzzling cheap beer. I do remember the scene where Nero feeds the Christians to the lions, however. It has to be one of my favorite bits of crap cinema.

I could go on about more of these big-screen atrocities, but why bother? I'm not even going to get into all the idiotic low-budget gladiator movies the Hollywood machine has spewed out over the decades like projectile vomit. HBO's great series Rome may have played fast and loose with the history (out of necessity), but the writers made some effort to get the details right, so why can't Hollywood do the same thing? As Ralphie said in The Sopranos, "They didn't have flattops in ancient Rome!!!"

Mass Child Sacrifice Discovered In Peru

"A mass sacrifice at a 15th century archaeological site in Peru saw the ritual killing of over 140 children and over 200 llamas, according to a new study. This is the largest known mass sacrifice of children -- and of llamas -- in the New World." Source: Science Daily. 

"...This study reports the findings of excavations between 2011 and 2016 that revealed hundreds of bodies buried in an area of approximately 700 square meters. The human remains were almost entirely children, and the animal remains, all juvenile, were identified as most likely llamas, but possibly alpacas. Anatomical and genetic evidence indicates the children included boys and girls between 5 and 14 years old. Cut marks transecting the sternums and displaced ribs suggest both the children and llamas may have had their chests cut open, possibly during ritual removal of the heart."

According to National Geographic, "[t]he investigators believe all of the human and animal victims were ritually killed in a single event, based on evidence from a dried mud layer found in the eastern, least disturbed part of the 7,500-square-foot site. They believe the mud layer once covered the entire sandy dune where the ritual took place, and it was disturbed during the preparation of the burial pits and the subsequent sacrifice event."

Researchers believe that this sacrifice, conducted by the pre-Inca Chimu people, may have been conducted in a response to an "El Nino event." (New York Times)

According to Live Science, "... heavy rainfall and flooding from that year's El Niño weather pattern may have prompted Chimú leaders to order the sacrifice, but without more evidence, we'll likely never know the real reason, said study co-researcher John Verano, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans."