Farmer Finds Roman Treasure Trove Scattered Across Field [Poland]

Science in Poland ^ | 1 April 2020 | Szymon Zdzieblowski

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

I found a 1929 buffalo nickel in my mother’s change when I was a kid.

It was still shiny, like it had never been in circulation over the years.

I still have it.

[poconopundit]

Nice to see ancient history discussed on FR. Thanks, SunkenCiv for sparking these discussions. In the months prior to Covid19, I was regularly listening to Bill O'Reilly's history series of book on CD.

Marvelous stuff. I'm generally not one to pick up a book of history. But I do love the way the O'Reilly series of "Killing" books renders history with a strong story that gives more detail on main figures in history and puts the material in the hands of a professional reader.

O'Reilly himself is a good but not first class reader of the books he publishes. But he was to smart enough to hire other guys to do that work.

I wonder if you have run across any worthy books or audios about the figures of ancient Rome you would recommend?

Cheers... And a meme to ponder. The Ancient Roman democracy fell into a dictatorship, so the word for government became basically Imperium -- or Empire.

poconopundit's FR vanities & memes

[CJ Wolf]

“Nice to see ancient history discussed on FR. Thanks, SunkenCiv for sparking these discussions.”

Ditto! thanks SC

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure.

[SunkenCiv]

The empire took its name from imperator, which was the title, at first informal, for great war leaders. The Roman Empire started during the so-called republic period, when Rome conquered neighboring Ostia. By the last BC century the Latin ruling class consisted of about three dozen extended families who basically owned Italy, held a significant fraction of the population as slaves, self-appointed family heads to the Senate, and weren't elected or accountable in any way.

There's an odd attitude out there that somehow the evolution of the Roman political system into having a quite necessary full-time chief executive was somehow the end of the Roman republic -- an institution that never actually existed, even by the lax standards some seem to have. Senators would foreclose on or otherwise bamboozle families of veterans who were on campaign, screwing them out of pay, pushing them off their land or out of homes, forcing them into slavery, yeah, they were a really charming bunch. One way in is to read about the brothers Gracchi.

Gibbon is too long and way out of date. Somewhere around here I've got an old (early 1970s if not earlier) bio of Pompey which is excellent, I was just doing some searches to try to narrow it down, so far, bupkis. Pompey added some big chunks to the Empire, mentored Julius Caesar, got screwed by the jealous greedy hidebound Senators, retired, then when the piracy problem exploded, negotiated with the Senate from the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" perspective, claiming he'd retired and just wasn't up to it any longer, finally extracting from the a-holes exactly his own terms. In short order he put together land and naval forces, destroyed the pirates, carried off booty and rewards, and reentered public life (he was a low-born ordinary but upwardly mobile Roman citizen).

Crassus, another successful Roman general, and Pompey formed the first triumvirate with Caesar, who was a kind of tiebreaker, younger, not as successful or powerful as the others. They banded together for their own safety against the machinations of the Senate. Pompey married Caesar's daughter. A few years later, Crassus died fighting the Parthians, about a year after Julia died in childbirth and Pompey's family tie with Caesar ended. Politically, in Rome, another figure (he sounds like a bit of a mobster) was establishing a power base in the city, wish I had that name in my head, first read about him in the Pompey bio, uh, the one I can't remember the author. [blush]

A couple years after Crassus' death, with Pompey still in Rome, Caesar finished up the conquest of Gaul, during which he crossed twice over to Britain, a reconnaissance in force. In Gaul he killed tens of thousands, enslaved 100s of 1000s, piled up immense wealth for himself and spoils for his entire army, and the Senate, angered by Caesar's failure to give them a cut of the loot, rather than grateful for the removal of the Gallic threat and large addition of worthwhile territory, decided to try to divide the two allies. Backing both Caesar and Pompey in turn and simultaneously, the Senate and Senators anticipated keeping them at each other's throats while whittling down each other's forces in a longterm stalemate (vaguely similar to what had taken place during Hannibal's 3rd c BC sixteen year long campaign in Italy).

The battle of Pharsalus was a sudden, large and decisive engagement in which Pompey's forces were defeated, Pompey fled to Egypt and his own murder at the hands of the last of the Ptolemies, and Caesar pursued with troops from Pompey's own defeated forces. Arriving in Alexandria, he got the lay of the land (in two ways ;^), dug in on the high city in Alexandria (the palaces, Great Library, other stuff), and sent most of his force back to Rome, keeping about a legion and a half. With the help of some allied forces brought into alliance with Rome by Pompey, that was all the force Caesar needed to conquer Egypt. He put the puppet Cleopatra back on the throne, and for the rest of her life she was kept there by the Romans. That's not the anachronistic and foolish popular modern view, but it happens to be true. She wasn't some sort of popular ruler, wasn't elected to office, she was a sovereign, last of a foreign dynasty. Egypt apparently welcomed Roman rule, the only peep out of them for centuries was the ethnic Greek massacre of Jews of Alexandria.

One of Pompey's sons (the Quintus character in HBO's "Rome" is a whole-cloth invention) continued to fight, holding Sicily and a good-sized navy. After a long period of attrition he was finally defeated and run off (not sure he was killed, I'm drawing a blank; he may have fled to Spain). The last of the renegade senators were defeated at Thapsus (near ancient Syracusa, in Africa), the last major battle in the Mediterranean which used elephants.

Caesar *should have* executed those senators who'd served in campaign against him. Instead, he let the bastards conspire and fester. He was murdered, which by the way was an illegal act, and his body was cremated in a huge outpouring of grief by Roman commoners. After some months, the heirs of Caesar were finally in a position to move against the murderers, drove them out of power and out of Rome, and eventually hunted avery last one of them down, with the mostly decisive Battle of Philippi. The third great battle of the early imperial period (that is, the time when there were fulltime emperors), like Pharsalus and Philippi, was Actium where Antony and Cleo were defeated largely by Octavian's right hand man Marcus Agrippa. All three of them took place in Greece.

It's actually possible to visit the spot where thousands of ancient Roman mourners cremated Julius Caesar. To this day visitors lay flowers and small gifts and things there. AFAIK, there's no sign of the burial sites (ancient monuments, modern historical markers) for any of his murderers. The people got it right.

[poconopundit]

SunkenCiv,

I am highly impressed by your analytical powers. This is excellent writing aimed at the “Deplorable” educated reader, the intellectuals who don’t wear a big “I” on their sleeves.

You, my FRiend have the capability of producing a winning book on the subject of Ancient Rome. And it looks like the way to go is to hook up with someone like Bill O’Reilly who has ability to publicize the book.

Thank you. Pocono.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the kind remarks!

[treetopsandroofs]

Yes, it is a 1939. Hadn’t dragged out my bin of coins in a long time. Heavier than I remembered, but am older now, haha.

My grandmother and I visited infrequently, but enjoyed collecting old coins a thousand miles apart when I was very little, and she left them all to me. The ‘39 was mine, but found a ‘35D that had been hers. Have a bunch of earlier quarters. Have all our old silver coins covered in those cardboard window things and ID’d.

Thanks for politely calling me on it, wouldn’t have sat down last night with my coins otherwise. Been thinking lately about who’s going to be earmarked for these later. None of the little ones share my interest, perhaps yet.

[hanamizu]

AFAIK, there’s no sign of the burial sites (ancient monuments, modern historical markers) for any of his murderers.

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When I taught Jr High history, my students and I participated in the Ancient Coins in Education program. The kids would each get a real Roman coin or two to clean and try to identify. The program also sent coins out as prizes and teaching tools. One was a reproduction of Brutus’s denarius with a dagger, Phrygian cap and the inscription ‘Eid Mar’. The school I taught at still has roughly 100 ancient coins and this one repro.