Posted on 01/12/2006 8:39:35 AM PST by dhls
LOL!
You got it, silly!
Congratulations!
Congrats on the 6000!
And get a good rest so you can feel better.
I'd almost kill to see Lenny Kravitz...he can put his shoes....never mind...
Hope you feel better soon, Guy!
I hope you feel better. I'm glad you had a good time at the concert!
I need to get some sleep now. Good night.
Thanks, have a good rest.
completely unrelated question, but it has been nagging at me lately:
what were assassins and assassination -the deliberate murder of prominent or important people for political motives- called in the days before the hashishim of Hassan I Sabbah gave the name of their cult to the actors and action? I would like to know what the Romans and early Byzantines called these people and murders.
In all languages, their name derived from their usage of Hashish. In Arabic, it was "ha ssasin" -- hashish users.
Evidently, they were unique. All cultures had killers, and names for them. But the combination of pleasure seeking in murder was another transcendently inimitable contribution of Muslim culture.
Interesting question, King. Political murder was quite common in Imperial Rome (among other situations), but since it's unlikely that Tacitus or Suetonius was familiar with Arabic (not to mention their predating Islam by many centuries), they must have used a word other than "assassination" for the concept.
Maybe they just used "kill," "murder," or synonyms, and perhaps "regicide" where applicable.
Looks like I missed you again!!
The distinction of the word "assassin" lies in the maniacal enthusiasm with which the killer functions.
One assumes that other killers operate on hate, or emotionless indifference, or even with a pride of expertise in their craft, but only in the assassin does one see a rapturous glee for the process. Chemically induced, originally. I don't know if the current crop of suicide bombers is given even that palliative.
One thing is abundantly clear; the epicenter of victimhood is a person inundated and awash in ignorance and false teachings. There is so much concentrated stupidity and weak-mindedness that it is surprising that explosives are needed at all. These pathetic creatures are the very antithesis of our technological "smart bombs."
They function as a new definition for the concept of "dumb bomb." Be careful not to get any of their ill-contained stupidity on ya.
Good point. You wouldn't find that, I suppose, in the murder of Julius Caesar, for example, and certainly not in the majority of the dynastic murders of Rome.
There's a passage in 2 Kings (I think) about the murder of one of the Assyrian rulers by his sons. I think the English word used for the killing is "slain" or "struck down." It would be interesting to know if the Hebrew term there carries any special meaning vs. any other killing of a human or animal.
Nnb,
I am aware of the nature of *some* of the killers from the mountain - stoned to the gills and religiously whipped up. Others, however, were quite sane and stable, and wormed their way into the inner circles of their targets as moles, lying low for years before striking.
I will note, in passing, that the Senators who swarmed and killed Gaius Iulius Caesar were certainly whipped up in a quasi-religious ferver at the time of knives, as the Republic was indeed considered a holy and sacred institution and high government positions were also religiously ordained positions. So, really, Hassan didn't contribute anything new to human lunacy.
Today, "assassination" is a term used only for the murders of prominent people and/or for a particular style of killing - close-in, controlled, deliberate, stealthy, unexpected, even skillful. As with much of colloquy, the usage is ill-defined and often contradictory...
We call the shinobi of Japan "assassins" in this light - highly skilled mercenary killers of specified targets.
We call the Project Phoenix and later similar SEAL operations "assassinations" of important political and military figures of the enemy - operations of highly skilled national operatives against specified enemies of the state.
We call the essentially mythical professional hitman of the mob "an assassin" in this light - supposedly highly skilled individual mercenaries or family retainers who kill efficiently, coldly, and leave no useful evidence.
We call modern drug turf-war killings "assassination-style murders" if they are executed in a particularly cold and efficient manner - the subject bound, kneeling, shot in the back of the head, as an example.
Yet, we also call lunatic "lone gunmen" assassins as well - despite the fact that they tend to be incredibly sloppy and tend to get caught almost immediately.
So, again, my question: what were such killers and killings called in Rome and Greece before the hashishim cult gave its name to the subject?
Danged if I know. Do you have available a side-by-side or interlineal Latin-English version of any of the Roman historians?
nope. most of my latin books are in storage
All cultures and languages had a distinction between killing and murder.
I don't believe there was a special class or category before the assassins gave us the new word.
But you'll have to forgive me. It's been such a long time, so many languages to assimilate, so many cultures to merge with, and I didn't hang much with that crowd anyway ... I really don't remember.
assassin: sicarius, percussor
assassinate: interficere, occidere, iugulare
assassination: caedes, parricidium
to kill: interficere, interimere
murder: parricidium, caedes
to murder: interficere, necare, iugulare
to slay in battle: occidere
killer: interfector
murderer: sicarius, homicida, parricida, percussor
I'm thinking that a professional killer might be called a "percussor" - literally "a hitter"
"Percussion caps" used by "hit men?"
I'll assume you were making a light stab at humor - rather than dumping upon you a large dissertation on why percussion caps are called percussion caps... ;)
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