Markdoc

Yeah, I'm not seeing a problem with the character - it's relatively powerful, but hardly game-breaking - in fact in a straight fight it'd be fairly fragile. cheers, Mark

Well, it was an epic derail, no question about that. But that's what we do around here And Roman trade is a fascinating subject. We mostly think of Rome as an empire restricted to the Mediterranean, but after the conquest of Egypt, Rome acquired ports on the Red Sea, and ships from here sailed out and down the coast of Africa and across the Indian ocean to India where there were Roman trading posts. A book written in the 1st century BCE called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, describes the trade routes and the trade goods to India and was almost certainly written by someone who had sailed those routes given the detailed descriptions. There were actually roman trade posts there with at least one temple to Jupiter The Romans also had trade routes (though not under Roman control) across the steppes and northern India all the way to China. In the second century BCE, the Romans recorded sending trade embassies to China and surviving Chinese court records actually mention the arrival of at least one of these. But - according to the Chinese these did not cross the steppes, but came into southern China via what's now Vietnam. Roman coins and glass trade goods from the 2nd century BCE have been found in Vietnam, supporting what was written. Not terribly relevant to longspear fighting, but just tell me that the idea of Roman legionaries sailing up the Mekong river, or building Roman temples in India, doesn't get your imaginative juices going! cheers, Mark

The hexblade is back in Pathfinder with the Magus Hexcrafter archetype - which is exactly what I am playing in our current game. So far it's been fun, if occasionally frustrating, since being a jack of all trades means being master of none. On the Hero side of the aisle you could simulate the misfortune hex multiple different ways, but some very simple approaches would be: Luck (only to frustrate opponent's rolls - I'd rate that at only -1/2, since unluck for an opponent is almost as good as luck for you). You could also go the route of Unluck, UaA - we did this in our games, but it's definitely GM approval territory, since unluck is not a power per se, Luck has the advantage that it is not purely combat related: your opponent could step in something nasty and slip during a chase, for example. Alternatively, you could simply buy levels plus damage negation and define the outcome as "luck/unluck" - but that's much more combat focused, and it also only affects the interaction between caster and target. It does not hinder him attacking, for example the caster's friends unless you expand the levels with UBO. Last of all, using transformation to add unluck to a target works very well with the concept of the evil eye - it's a curse that is attached to the target, not to the caster and will affect him regardless of who he interacts with. regards, Mark

Excellent post. We can sum up thusly. Animals taxed at the borders of the empire? Yes, good evidence for that. Animals penned and sold just outside Rome's city limits? Definitely. There's textual and archeological evidence. Taxed there? Actually, probably not, according to Palmer and others. At the very least there's no evidence for that, and some textual evidence against. The Forum Boarium likely served as a place to hold animals for slaughter, since we know that driving animals in the city and commercial slaughter inside city limits were both heavily restricted, for obvious reasons. Evidence for long distance droving inside Italy? So, far, zero. But this discussion has helped firm up the evidence! Cheers, Mark

People often think that economic history is dull - but it's not*. If you don't understand the economics of a culture or an era, odds are good you'll have a very skewed if not downright wrong understanding of why things happened, how things happened, and how the people actually viewed them. There's a lot more than direct economics behind most people's actions, but almost everyone's actions are affected by economics, even when the actions in question are apparently unrelated. Romeo and Juliet is a story about love, right? But according to the original story, the Montagues and Capulets are fighting over privileges (ie: status, and mostly - money). Without that money-driven conflict, you'd have a boring story about two people who meet at a party and get married. If we loop back to an earlier part of the thread, Pyrrhus hoped Cathage would aid him in his war against Rome. They didn't, (in fact they fought - more or less - on Rome's side) because they had their eyes set on gaining the trade routes and ports of Sicily and the Sicilian Greek cities called in Pyrrhus to help defend them. Pyrrhus broke off his Roman war to attack the Carthaginians and after defeating them proposed to invade and subdue Carthage. He didn't, because the Greek cities of Sicily felt it would be too expensive and refused to pay for an expedition. Bad move. When Pyrrhus went home to Greece, he predicted (accurately) that the Romans and Carthaginians would be at each other's throats over the trade rights and 12 years later, they were. Heck the whole war started as a dispute over trade rights between the Romans and the Greek colony of Tarentum in Italy. Pyrrhus was able to beat all-comers in his Italian/Sicilian war, even though he was usually outnumbered, in part because he was commanding a professional army made up (mostly) of full-time soldiers. It's also what made him unable to sustain the fight long-term: professional soldiers are expensive, and take time to replace. Once he realised that he was in for the long haul against Rome, with no immediate prospect of a big payoff, he started negotiating for peace. Epirus was not big enough economically to sustain a large army in foreign territory. As I commented earlier on about the phalanx, it withered away in the Hellenistic world because the fragmentation and turmoil of the post-Alexander successor states meant that fewer and fewer of the little Hellenistic kingdoms could actually afford to field a professional phalanx - and citizen soldiers just didn't cut it. As I noted, it then reappeared in Europe centuries later at precisely the time that professional mercenary companies and professional standing armies started to become prominent. In the end, it's all about the benjamins. cheers, Mark * one of my favourite populist history authors starts one chapter with "Now let's dive into the thrilling topic of Umayyid tax policy!"

Herpes treatment is a pretty big business, but that doesn't matter. Big pharma doesn't really lobby against treatments - that's a loser's business from the start, because no politician wants to be associated with denying treatment (even if the treatment is of dubious value) and the backlash if it was discovered would be severe. And it would be discovered: you can't keep a secret when it involves many people. So you're right - the idea that big pharma lobbies against or suppresses treatment is a tinfoil hat idea that really belongs on the fringe with the home treatment crowds and he people who believe big oil is suppressing the nuclear car that never needs refuelling. If they see an effective treatment, they're all over it, even if it cannibalizes earlier products: pharma products turn over very rapidly and cannibalizing your own sales is an accepted (actually, expected) part of the business. What big pharma does lobby for is the adoption of treatments - again, even if the cost/benefit is sometimes questionable. So if/when this treatment actually becomes a product expect a lot of effort being spent convincing people that they really, really need a vaccination against herpes. cheers, Mark

Of course - that was part of his shtick. cheers, Mark

Fortunately, I have a JSTOR account, so having read the piece, I can safely say it offers no support at all for your argument. It discusses the possible existence of toll gates around Rome, and mentions pens for cattle directly around Rome, which he suggests may have been used for tax purposes for import into the city or alternatively, for gathering animals for slaughter and distribution in Rome. Nothing at all in the article suggests long distance droving. Indeed, he blows your argument that we can look at the existence of toll gates as evidence of droving, completely apart by noting that live animals were not subject to the ansarium (ie: the tax of foodstuffs and drink). The other links discuss tax posts at provincial borders, all of which I think most people studying Roman culture would find noncontroversial. None of the links you posted offer the slightest support for the idea that Italy was host to long distance animal droving, still less a secret, but substantial droving culture that mysteriously vanished leaving behind neither literary nor physical evidence. Really, the Romans left us detailed instructions about home and commercial husbandry, they left us notes and comments about subjects as obscure as taxes on different grades of wine, discussions of different levies on goods imported to Italy and actually into the cities - but we are expected to believe that they were entirely silent about a commercial/ cultural aspect of the whole food supply system that would have had a dramatic and obvious effect on virtually every aspect of the economy ... and further, that they made extensive use of troops recruited from this secret, hidden culture in direct contradiction of every contemporary text describing the military. For some odd reason, I find this line of argument oddly unconvincing. I suspect the reason you can't find any evidence to support the idea is not because something something, but because it doesn't exist. Actually, to be honest, I don't suspect that, I know it. Had there been any evidence at all, it would have been discussed to death. I have (I kid you not) read discussions about Roman tax policy on urine! More links that offer no support for your argument are not going to move the dial on this. I do thank you for the Petrokovits article, though: I hadn't read that. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with trade, still less trade in animals, but it's a really nice summary of the change of late Roman fortifications toward sustained independant defence with some great illustrations (as an aside for those not up on the subject, Roman fortifications underwent a ground change in the late empire that laid the foundations for later European castle-building). cheers, Mark

I'm familiar with Scheidel - indeed, most of my argument upthread is drawn from his work. As he notes, neither the lowest estimate of 8 million or the high estimate of 20 million are remotely plausible and we are more or less forced to assume a figure in the middle: though exactly where it really lay, we don't know. 11-12 million seems to be the most popularly accepted figure today, but of course we're never going to be certain. More work probably is not going to make the figure more precise because mostly it's just speculation based on what we already know. Without new data or some new insight, this is probably as far as we go. cheers, Mark

I think we can sum this up by simply pointing out this bit: You write: "Because it is unquestionable that there were livestock drives bringing large numbers of animals long distances to Rome. Our literary evidence for the Roman economy is frustratingly sparse, because it was written by and for the senatorial elite, and they didn't care about that stuff." It's unquestionable ... because there's no evidence that it ever happened? I do not think that word means what you think it means. Yes, the texts we have left on the Roman pastural economy were mostly written by patricians ... but not only for other patricians. They survived because they were best-sellers in their day, being widely read outside the patrician class. And really, they discuss droving of sheep, goats, cattle pigs and horses in detail. They discuss the uses and importance of manure, where to place drinking troughs, different kinds of pasturage. They discuss beekeeping, how to preserve herbs, cures for colic, how to ensure good plowing, how to select the best working dogs, etc, etc. There are, in all about 70 books on the topic. And you somehow feel that all these books, written by different people over a period of several centuries discuss every aspect of farming ... except - inexplicably - long distance cattle droving. So they cared about everything else, except this one thing? Somehow I doubt it. Fortunately, though, we don't have to rely only on text: the Mediterranean world is still dotted with old cattle paths, some of them very clearly dating back to the classical era (and dubiously, dating much further back). In Spain, where I have already noted that long distance animal drives did occur (and were noted in Roman texts) the paths (called Canada, with a tilde over the n) still exist, though most of them are now built over. As an aside, I've hiked on the canada in Spain: there are still hundreds of kilometers of the old (much larger) network extant. Many of them ran for hundreds of kilometers (the longest I know of is over 800 km) and they have left rich traces on the countryside, in local laws and in the existence of folk stories and organisations such as the Meste. In Italy, none of these things exist. Oh, to be sure there are droving paths (called Tratturo) that date back to at least roman times. But they are short (typically 20-30 kilometers, though a few are longer) and (unlike in Spain) don't form networks. They usually run directly from old settlements in valleys and on the coast into the hills. None rival (or even resemble) the Spanish canada very much. For a start not only are they shorter, but much smaller, being built primarily to take sheep and goats, not cattle. Likewise all the other traces that drover culture left in the Spanish culture are entirely absent in Italy, where everything agricultural - including droving - appears to have been oriented about urban centres (villages or towns). Indeed, your own links argue against you - the one you linked to here, on archaeological food, remains specifically notes that cattle was a small minority of the meat eaten and that most of it appears to have come from older, well-used animals (ie: probably old draft animals no longer useful for work, or old dairy cattle no longer productive for milk). Most of it was sheep or goats, with pork preferred in the richer quarters. That matches with what I have already posted above and exactly contradicts the idea of cattle droving as a significant activity. So in this case "unquestionable" is probably best translated as "absolutely no evidence exists to support and quite a lot to contradict". cheers, Mark Edit - and on the topic of Roman census' ... With regard to Roman population, the argument has swirled because the numbers changed so dramatically. Note these numbers are for the census population (males eligible to vote and pay tax: not women, children, slaves or proletariat) Through the third and second centuries BCE, the numbers remained around 300,000 but move up or down, presumably due to military attrition and/or intermittent variation in registration quality or coverage. Reported numbers increased in the following century, to 463,000 in 86/5 BCE, 900,000 or 910,000 in 70/69 BCE, consistent with a growing population (and also consistent with archeological evidence showing a sudden increase in urban construction), but then took a sudden leap to 4,063,000 in 28 BCE, followed by a slightly rising trend of 4,233,000 in 8 BCE, 4,937,000 in 14 CE, and 5,984,072 in 47 CE. So the argument goes, that the increase from around 900,000 in 70 BCE to over 4 million in 28 BCE cannot be real. Biologically speaking it is possible … but it’s highly, highly, unlikely. So much so that nobody really believes it. Julis Beloch argued that the census must have changed from recording the census population (Voting males) to all citizens. The trouble with this interpretation is that there’s no evidence at all to support it and quite a lot to argue against it. So the “low estimate” of Roman population has fallen out of favour. Consensus these days is that the changes made by the early empire (for the first time it became possible to register by post, and for the first time local census takers were systematically deployed) probably led to a much more accurate count: we know from contemporary complaints that earlier censuses were plagued by the fact that many men did not turn up to register and the state lacked the resources to track them down. It’s hardly a surprise, given that registering made you subject to both conscription and taxation that people were loathe to do it voluntarily and that numbers increased once a system was put in place (backed by military force) to ensure compliance. Given all that, arguments these days tend to centre on whether the population was as low as 11-12 million (in total) or as high as 18-22 million. We’re unlikely to ever know, but the odds are good that it lies somewhere at the lower end of those estimate: the consensus estimate of 112-12 million is probably reasonable given that population in medieval Italy reached about that level pre-Black Death and that was the point where the larger Italian cities (with the notable exception of Rome itself) started to fill up or exceed their old roman boundary walls. Cheers, Mark

I think this is one of the keys - you could more simply say that in most S&S magic happens "off stage". It happens, but it's not the protagonists doing it. The various characters in classic S&S generally live in worlds with plenty of magic – if it’s not wizards, it’s elder horrors or eldritch creatures – but they are not themselves generally magical or magicians. Conan’s the prototype, of course, but there were plenty of others in the same vein. It’s not all sandals and loincloths, either: Conan (and plenty of others) spent as much time leading knights in plate armour as he did careering about as a mercenary in a mail shirt. But things have changed since the classic days. Fafhrd and the Mouser are mid-period S&S, but even though the Mouser started as an apprentice wizard, in the few stories where he uses magic, it inevitably goes wrong, and he does most of his problem solving with his brain (not his best part, actually) or his sword. It’s still classic S&S fantasy. Elric, on the other hand, was a deliberate attempt to move away from the classic S&S genre. Where Conan is manly, and brawny and decisive, Elric is sensitive, feeble and pensive. Where Conan triumphs by force of arms and things - no matter how dark – resolve themselves in the end, they almost inevitably go pear-shaped as soon as Elric draws a blade. Where Conan – though a barbarian – is innately decent and honest, Elric – though an educated nobleman - is conniving (also petulant, vindictive and petty). Conan starts from nothing and ends up a ruler. Elric starts as a ruler and ends up (quite literally) with nothing. And most of all, Elric is a sorcerer. Unlike Conan, he’s a swordman entirely by accident and necessity. I think that’s where things started to diverge. For me at least, Elric was a break from the tropes of S&S – certainly Moorcock has said explicitly that was his intention - and represents a new genre (I call it Epic Fantasy, for want of a better word). Like any genre definition, the edges are a bit fuzzy, but the whole Conan/Kull/Brak/Fafhrd and Mouser genre is mostly about the main character and their particular trials and tribulations. If Kull dies, he loses the throne. But Elric and the whole Eternal Champions team/Corwin of Amber and their ilk, in contrast are typically fighting for the survival of the world and/or universe as we know it. If they fail, everybody dies. And I don't think it's a coincidence that in Epic Fantasy, some or all protagonists do have magic powers. So while both types of stories involve plenty of sorcery and plenty of people getting stabbed with bits of pointy metal, the whole atmosphere and style is very different. cheers, Mark

Well, oxen are uncomfortably broad, and slower than horses. But people have (and still do) ride cattle. Google "riding steer" and you'll get a ton of hits. I'm guessing that it is mostly to do with tradition. People have been riding horses for millennia, so ... People wanting a riding animal ride horses. Never underestimate the power of the illogical

The Romans started out as hill dwellers! And shepherds, for what that's worth so, yeah. But shepherds in the Italian style, based in a specific town, not peripatic horsemen like Gauchos. By the beginning of the Roman republic, most of Italy outside the South was covered in a patchwork of tiny protostates, pretty much all of which were based around fortified hilltop or island towns. There were cultural differences, but these were ones of degree rather absolute. The Romans were lucky in that they managed to occupy and defend an area which had plenty of good cropland, enough to support a burgeoning population, and probably one reason they turned into such a military-focused society is that from the start they were almost continually at war with some of their neighbours (and allied and trading with others) defending that fortunate patch of land, and expanding it where they could. As far as we can tell, Rome (and several of the surrounding tribes) were originally dominated by the loose Etruscan federation of tribes to their north, and that when they broke free of that, the Etruscan political elite in the area gradually evolved into the Roman political class. But you are right - by the time Rome as we know it came to be a distinct political entity, it had already absorbed many of the neighbouring tribes and spread its political power into the surrounding mountains. These were not just pasture for shepherds, though. The land was already settled, and we know that crops and wine were grown in the Appenines from the earliest time. The via Flamina that Lawnmower Boy mentions was not built for long distance cattle drives (which never seemed to be a significant feature in Roman agriculture) but specifically by Gaius Flaminius to ship cheap grain and corn to Rome. Only later was it expanded to the east coast to facilitate trade from the Adriatic. Cheers, Mark Edit: and in a loop back to the original topic, the Romans conquered those mountainous areas using their original, greek-style army built mostly around close order foot who fought with long spear and shield. this was long before the days of the legion.

Aaaand ... according to the people who were, you know, actually there at the time, these equites provided the Roman army with its cavalry. Ah, yes, of course! The "mounted proletariat associated with long-distance livestock drives"! How could I have forgotten .... wait a minute. There's no such evidence - written, painted or sculpted - that such a thing ever existed in Roman times (or medieval times, for that matter). There are also no traditions, no folk remnants in Italy suggesting such people ever existed. I should also note in in Roman times the proletariat were exempt from military service making the idea not only completely without any support, but also in direct contradiction to everything we know about the Roman military. So ... who mobilised the shepherds? Nobody. As contemporary writers noted, shepherds - like the rest of the proletariat and other slaves - were exempt from military service. There's also no need to invent a mythical class of wandering horsemen to roam Roman Italy, since the Romans left a great deal of writing on the subject of agriculture. Shepherds (without scare quotes) are discussed a great deal and we know as much about them as we know about anybody of the time - they were typically slaves or very small private graziers, they grazed their flocks on public lands and also in the uplands (summer in the hills, the rest of the year on the croplands and pastures around the cities), they were poor and prone to joining in public uprisings. There is, in all this vast body of description nary a word about itinerant, mounted graziers . Or horse-riding shepherds, for that matter- all the depictions of rural rustics I know of, show them on foot or occasionally on donkey. We also know (just as in Italy of the medieval period, or even, for that matter, today) that the wooded hills were not desert - they were used, and owned. Pigs were fattened there (sheep and cattle actually do relatively poorly in wooded terrain) -archeo-ostology indicates that pork was the Romans' favoured meat - wood was cut, charcoal made, acorns harvested (very important for feeding cattle) etc. Sheep and cattle were grazed in pasturage in the hills and the frequent references in roman texts to conflict between itinerant graziers and landowners makes it very plain that the hills were also settled and the pasturage was owned. Not only is there no evidence for a horse-riding herding proletariat roaming Roman Italy, there is actually not much space for them to roam either. Remember, by our best estimates (and given Augustus' censuses, our best estimates are more solid than for most of antiquity) the population of Roman Imperial Italy was not equalled again until about the mid-1700's. So given the total lack of evidence for their presence, and the fact that you still haven't actually suggested so far a single reason why we should entertain the notion of their existence, I think we can be pretty certain that they didn't exist. Interestingly, outside of Italy (in Iberia, for example), such people did apparently exist and the Romans made note of their peculiar ways - and also hired them as mercenary cavalry But that was long after the initial Roman expansion, and these people were most emphatically not Roman. You mentioned Marius upthread - one of his innovations in the reform of the Roman military was the abolition of the Roman cavalry drawn from the equites, who thereafter served with the legions on foot, and were replaced with mercenary cavalry recruited from outside Italy. cheers, Mark Edit: actually on thinking about it, I should note that one type of shepherd did actually ride horses, according to roman sources - the ones who herd horses. Varro wrote "Two men are needed for a herd of fifty mares, and each of these should certainly have for his use a mare which has been broken to the saddle, in those districts where it is customary for the mares to be rounded up and driven to stalls, as is frequently true in Apulia and Lucania" I'd suggest actually reading the contemporary literature rather than just making stuff up out of whole cloth. Varro, Cato, Columella and Palladius were not writing ideological texts but instructions for their fellow farmers and herders. Far from scorning or fearing shepherds, Varro makes the point that the ancient romans and the founders of the city were shepherds. But the texts also make very, very plain indeed that shepherds were minor cogs in the the whole business of farming - often slaves, but always tightly linked to the specific farms and landowners who owned their service. I can in particular recommend Columella, who devotes the whole of book 7 of De Re Rustica to shepherds, sheep-herding and sheep. There's no mention of mythical horse riding nomad shepherds, of course, but a great deal of information on how Roman shepherds actually lived and worked, and the Roman system for sheep herding, breeding and use. Interestingly, the Roman shepherd described by Columella with his broad straw hat and his dogs and his little stone hut in the hills for summer, is recognisably the same (near identical, in fact) to the shepherds of medieval and early modern Italy, suggesting that not very much changed in this area for over 1500 years.

Oh and as a specific point, I should note that your romantic ideas of roman shepherds actually have little to nothing to do with the rather grungy details of actual shepherds in the Roman era: far from being "rootless, unsettled folk who do not own proper arable land on neatly centuriated fields near cities in which they can participate in the public political life which defines the patrician" the vast majority were slaves, who looked after other men's animals on private land (ager occupatorius) with a small (and shrinking, even during the republic) population who herded animals on publicly owned land (ager publicus). Indeed Cato details pasturing for sheep - not in the mountains of romantic imagination, but on manured and irrigated pasture - viz: "Manure the pastures at the beginning of spring at new moon, or, if they are not irrigated, when the Favonius begins to blow. While the animals are out of the pastures, clear them and root out all invasive weeds ..." He comments later in the same section on the benefits of letting sheep graze the stubble after the crops are harvested. In other words, we have practical agricultural advice by a contemporary farm-owner describing the actual sort of practice that you are saying didn't happen. At any rate, neither kind of shepherd was likely to own horses - shepherds were among the poorest of the rural poor. By Julius Caesar's time, the imbalance between slave and free shepherd was so great that laws were passed to try and force landowners to hire at least one free herder for every two slave herders - principally to try and boost employment, though without much success. At the same time the laws on how many animals could be grazed by free herders on public land was subject to severe regulation - Livy goes into this in detail. Through the Gracchan period the ager publicus gradually vanished, snapped up by greedy private landowners, and with it the last of the free shepherds. And that's why shepherds were considered a danger to public order. Shepherds were part of the vast population of unfree or semifree agricultural workers, who were all considered a danger to public order - there were 6 uprisings by agricultural workers in the second century BC, one of which (in 186) specifically mentions shepherds as being involved. Livy wrote of it: "There was a wide-spread movement amongst the slaves in Apulia this year. The herdsmen had entered into a conspiracy and were making the highroads and public pastures insecure through acts of brigandage." He notes that a ) the shepherds were making trouble and b ) the shepherds were slaves. In this regard it is worth noting that Varro stated that shepherds were hardier than most slaves since their work required them to live on the land and they were often armed to protect their flocks. So troublesome, yes. Romantic horse-riding masters of their own destiny (and flocks) no. cheers, Mark

To be fair, there are precious few warriors in there as well - most of the "heroes" are either tricksters or lucky fools. It's certainly not traditional S&S - it's more fairy-story like: the heroes in the stories are usually underdogs who win through by luck and their wits than through a strong right arm. Even the more active heroes like Sinbad are more like Jack of Jack in the Beanstalk than like Conan. You could - if you want that sort of flavour - get it by starting PCs with relatively low points totals and by making many of the opponents they face powerful enough that a simple sword to the face is not a reasonable approach. This will essentially force them to fall back on their wits - for good or ill. cheers, Mark

Anecdotal, of course, but among my online gaming group, the female players have expressed strong disappointment that they can't choose the gender of their character in some games, while the males (myself included) really don't seem to care. Frankly, it bothers me more that I have to use a skin to give my Templar some frickin' pants! cheers, Mark

We know from contemporary texts and artifacts that both Greek and Roman cavalry started as proto-feudal troops (around 450 BC, for what it's worth in Greece, somewhat later in Rome) - indeed the origins, equipment and duties of the Hippes of Athens are described in detail, as are the details of their peacetime drilling, and the city offices established to ensure the fitness and care of cavalry horses. To say that can't be the case because (like pretty much all other historical evidence) it conflicts with an idea you've come up with is .... not convincing. To be honest the entire post is, to use your own word, meandering. If there's a point in there (apart from the suggestion that the cavalry were drawn from shepherds, which all evidence we have states flatly is wrong) I'm not sure that I caught it. I'm not trying to be mean - it's just that there really doesn't seem to be any coherent argument. It's like your comment about the Billy the kid - it might make more sense (to you) if he was Hispanic, but according to his birth records, he was born William Henry McCarty, Jr, to two Irish parents in New York. Contemporaries describe him as a blue-eyed, blond with pale skin - which matches pretty well with the few photos of him that exist. To everyone else, it makes more sense if we just assume that he was Irish-American, just as everything indicates that he was. cheers, Mark

Yes - but pretty much always in the form of artifacts made by other people. I don't think there is a single good-guy protagonist magician - there are a few well-intentioned NPC magicians. cheers, Mark

I'll agree that your thinking is not at all developed Roman cavalry were initially drawn from the upper classes, not from shepherds (who were, by definition poor, and who would have rarely, if ever owned horses - or for that matter, shoes ). The italian allies referred to as auxilliary cavalry were also drawn from the upper classes and were culturally, geographically, ethnically and tactically distinct from the gallic mercenaries who were later recruited. I appreciate that it doesn't fit with the idea of deconstructing ethnicity as a dividing factor, but it has the advantage of being consistent with concrete facts such as physical artifacts (equipment, depictions, etc) and less concrete ones such as contemporary texts. It's important to realise that yes, ethnicity is constructed, but still - like many constructed things - it's also quite real. Cheers, Mark

We had a very-well trained cat (now very sadly, recently deceased) who would come at a call and respond to simple hand signals (sit here, don't sit there, don't touch that, etc). Our D&D GM has a similarly well-trained cat. There are also plenty of well-trained cats on TV and film. Cats are not at all difficult to train, maybe not as easy as pigeons or dogs, but certainly not difficult. It's more that there's this myth that cats are hard to train, so most cat owners don't even try. Cheers, Mark

Actually, thanks to Tacitus, we have a detailed description of Roman infantry training, so we know that they did in fact physically condition their recruits - actually almost all of their training fell into three categories: Physical conditioning (the largest part), formation drill and building. Actual combat training was by far the smallest part of legionary training. You're right though, that the Romans initially recruited their cavalry mostly from among the wealthy classes (mostly the Equites, or second-class citizens, but also Patricians , or 1st class citizens) who already knew how to ride and owned horses. But these were also the classes from which senior officers were drawn, and there were never enough of them to supply all of Rome's cavalry needs to start with. So we know by Livy's time that plebeians were being recruited to serve as cavalry, and since plebeians did not own horses, yes, the Roman state had a public horse buying and breeding program. Livy actually comments that some of the equites chose to use state-provided horses instead of providing their own, as had been traditional. But patrician or plebeian, being a cavalryman was expensive (cavalry were traditionally not paid - just given a grant to cover the cost of their horse), so the Romans started to rely on allied cavalry long before they became an empire (originally mostly Italian, not Gallic: that came later). And as noted, the equites may have been horse-owning and horse-riding, but they were not a military caste the way feudal knights were, which is probably why everyone (including the Romans themselves) thought their cavalry was a bit rubbish. cheers, Mark

Actually lots of people are saying that Putin is behind it - and ultimately he probably is: people who challenge him publicly tend to end up murdered or in prison - but proving it is going to be virtually impossible. The Russian media is saying that it was probably islamist radicals or "gangsters" ... but odds are, we will never know who is responsible. Cheers, Mark

Yeah. Two-weapon fighting was a specific style, developed for very niche cases, not something that was ever common on the battlefield. European rapier and main-gauche was developed not as a battlefield style, but as a civilian fencing style, to provide extra protection in a situation where carrying a shield was no longer socially unacceptable. Likewise, the use of two swords by samurai was also a niche style that evolved long after the samurai had lost most of their military function and the focus had shifted to dueling. I might be missing something, but I cannot think of any situations off hand, where two weapon usage was widespread in actual combat, or where it was considered a viable alternative to single weapon plus shield. As for Roman cavalry, even roman propagandists conceded that they were not best. Dionysius specifically contrasted Roman cavalry to that of the Greeks and stated that the Romans as much as possible halted their horses and “fought like infantry” whereas the Greeks excelled at fast movement and maneuver. There’s been a lot of debate about what he actually meant – whether he meant that Roman cavalry fought in close order, or whether he meant that they dismounted to fight. Either way, he stated that the Greeks would skirmish with the Roman cavalry, and hated to face them when they were drawn up to fight, but were their superior in the open field. This probably reflects paradoxically what was one of the Roman’s army’s strengths: from Republican times, they did not have a dedicated military caste from which they could draw expert horsemen – but they did have a burgeoning martial population from which they could draw large numbers of new recruits. So they could much more easily replace their losses, even if the new recruit were not of the same standard as their opponents. This is why the Romans made so much use of allied cavalry – even the Romans admitted their own cavalry was not up to much. cheers, Mark

I actually thought about Kangaroos, but the idea of riding one leads to thoughts of seasickness Some of the other paleolithic Australian megafauna could be worth looking at though. cheers, Mark