I'm on fire

I move
Originally uploaded by Dark Hunter.

See how I move beyond the register of the visual spectrum. I wish I knew how I did that...

Go your own way

Loving you isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things that I feel
If I could, maybe I'd give you my world
How can I, when you won't take it from me

You can go your own way, go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way, go your own way

Tell me why everything turned around
Packing up shacking up is all you wanna do
If I could, baby I'd give you my world
Open up, everything's waiting for you

You can go your own way, go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
Another lonely day
You can go your own way, go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
You can call it another lonely day

You think you're smart - that's stupid

Carthage vs Rome as USA vs USSR respectively.

You may scoff - obviously the Romans won. But there are a number of strange similarities, some of which I probably ought not to be airing. But hey, it's my blog.

Carthage / USA
Oligarchic, Capitalist, trade-based, leading in (naval) technology, range of unreliable satellites and allies, fights wars through coalitions and allied troops, factionally divided

Rome / USSR
Centralised, state-controlled economy, agriculturally-based, massive investment in (naval) technology to catch up, simple mass production along template lines (corvus and quinquereme), reliance on inexhaustible manpower, dogged resilience in defeat, unified politically

It's probably pushing the envelope somewhat but interestingly juxtaposes with Kagan's characterisation of Rome as GB and Athens as the US (if I remember the email right). I suspect there are many such parallels, and also many spurious arguments in this area.

The really interesting thing for me is the response of societies and structures to the pressures of war. Do you tighten up under threat and restrict the franchise, denying access to power and reducing support, resources and manpower, or does the threat of war make you look for new sources of power and strength? I suppose an excellent example of this would be the use of women in factories by the British in WW1 and 2 - unlike the Germans who refused to do so.

An more ancient parallel would be the failure of the Spartan system to generate the manpower it needed to defend the empire it had won with the defeat of the last Athenian fleet at Aegospotami. The Spartans had given some limited access to some helots during the war to create extra forces, but had failed to make the leap to change their restricted and restrictive system which may have made Sparta a world class power. Cartledge thinks in the Spartans that the size of the actual Spartiate military population was down to a few thousand by the fourth century - owing to the harsh qualification factors for citizenship, deaths, low birth rates and the consolidation of large estates. This shrinking franchise spelt the end for Sparta.

Both Boeotian Thebes and Attic Athens saw dramatic upturns in their fortunes when democracy first took hold - the Athenian land empire ended by the early Peloponnesian conflicts; and the brilliant Theban renaissance under the military reforms of Epaminondas which led to the eventual defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra.

Right on the target but wide of the mark

http://www.spurs.co.uk/article.asp?hlid=294148

Spurs win Peace Cup in Korea!

Wouldn't mean much but we did beat Lyon in the final and qualified from our group ahead of Boca Juniors and Real Sociedad.

Not bad at all

Classic

Is there a link between our word 'Classics' and the Latin word 'Classis', meaning fleet? And also our word 'Class'? I think there probably is. This would be an excellent starting point for any discussion of the relationship of political structures, war, society and language.

I would assume that the derivation would be from the socio-political divisions in Roman society - that a certain part of the Roman people were 'classified' for service with the fleet. I also assume that these would be likely to be the urban poor, much as in democratic Athens - freemen paid to row - a backbreaking demonstration of their commitment to the state.

I think I may have solved part of the riddle about Carthaginian naval inferiority in the first and second Punic wars - their own 'class' system. Given the structure of oligarchic, mercantile and capitalist (the last may be going too far) Carthage and its empire, shipowners would have likely been the mercantile elite, or even the state. Given this, the owners would be unwilling to risk loading the potentially treacherous Carthaginian mercenary footsoldiers on board - especially given the frequency of desertion and treachery.

The Roman advantage at sea was to do with their use of the simpler massed boarding tactics which suited their heavier, inexperienced craft overloaded with Marines. This tactic was possible because of the greater degree of centralisation and central command that Rome possessed beyond that of its Carthaginian enemies. If the Carthaginians had been able to draft Punic citizens for service or rely on its allies not to sail off in the ship, they would have countered Rome's implausible naval advantage and perhaps may have even been victorius.

So it's (still) about the franchise and its effect on war-making.

And the memory's all that's left for you now

I've started on Livy with Book XXI - the War with Hannibal - and Hannibal and Scipio are facing each other down at Trebbia. It's all very familiar after Goldsworthy and I'll have to try and work out how much he relies on Polybius as well as Livy when I get round to the former.

Livy is like the historical novels I used to read when I was a kid. Big heroic speeches, lots of anacronism (he talks about the outcome and the future quite a lot) and from what I've read so far he seems to be pretty focused on the 'main' characters. You could pretty much use it as the script. What's grabbed me the most is probably the attempt to be even handed. Livy's Hannibal criticises Rome and tells his soldiers why they have to fight - admittedly the Roman reasons are given far more time and justification, and they cast the Carthaginians as treacherous - which is not what you'd expect.

I suppose this is all part of the heroic genre - the building up of a worthy foe to make victory all the sweeter - Hector and Turnus are probably the best examples. But what is strange is that you are left questioning the 'rightness' of Rome, even by a Roman writer. Sagnutum is clearly south of the Ebro - so what was the Roman justification for war? Given their interventions in Sardinia and originally in Sicily itself (the cause of the First Punic War), their moral high ground looks somewhat unstable.

More later

In the glade

So - no blog for a while. Much to catch up on.

Most critical of all is my attendance at the Glade Festival near Aldermarston outside Reading. Here are some pictures http://www.accessallareas.org/main.html which you may find entertaining.

Best things -

1. Incessant bass thumping of the psy trance in the open air
2. Lying down in the chill out tent with my head on a cushion, floor dancing
3. Dreadzone live - much better than Aphex Twin and a lot of other big names
4. Hybrid - liquid bass and much more
5. Dance, Colin, dance!

Went with Dunc, Nicky D and Marek. Loads of Nicky D's mates were there so we had a huge circle of tents which included some people who'd brought chairs and even a little gazebo. Oh yes. For my! it was hot. Everyone got burnt and everyone seemed to be wasted as well. You do need to be messed up to dance to the beat of the Psy in the sun - but there seemed to be no shortage of volunteers.

"No evil doers will be there
No backstabbers will be there
Your private plane won't take you
And your fast car just won't do
Inna the city
The holy city

And you'll never get to Zion
Without Jah love"

Probably the best thing of all was the amazing weather. I'd totally forgotten to take any heavy clothes with me at all - being a bit obsessed with taking as many vests as possible. This proved to be the right decision, apart from the 2 hours in the morning before the sun came up. The entire rest of the time there was scorching. The decorations, including masses of flags and luminous mushrooms, were also pretty fantastic.

Much jaw chewing, dozing, ranting, chanting, dancing and chilling later, we staggered home in Marek's car. I was very glad that I'd taken the Monday off!

...spawned from the evil... seed

So in my last post I argued about Carthage's restricted political franchise and its effect on its ability to wage war on the Romans.

Rome's enormous manpower reserves (look at the losses suffered in both First and Second Punic wars) were a critical factor in her success. The fact that she had the political will to put armies in the field at all after Lake Trasimene and Cannae attests to the remarkable commitment of the people and politicians to the Roman cause. The number of defections, by Romans or her Italian allies during Hannibal's successful campaigns in Italy, remained remarkably low.

I believe this was due to the political system in Rome. The patronage system meant that even the lowest pleb had some tie into the political system, and the complex structure of checks and balances meant that public anger against the state, despite the burning of fields, the horrific losses in battle and the immediate threat of Carthaginian attack, the structure remained firm.

In contrast, with two defeats in North Africa the whole Carthaginian state collapsed, as did their estate in Spain after Scipio's victory at New Carthage. This was because the subject peoples in the Carthaginian 'empire' were not afforded the same opportunity to 'buy in' to the Roman system, but were rather tied by personal bonds (note the re-defection of Syphax the Numidian to Carthage after marriage into Hannibal's family). This admittedly may have been a function of the political or social setup in Africa and Spain as opposed to the more 'advanced' structures in Greek-settled southern Italy.

Hannibal and Carthage's failure in the second Punic war was due to this fundamental disparity in the structures of the two polities. This problem of the lack of commitment of the Carthaginian mercantile oligarchy could not be remedied by Hannibal's amazing victories, although I will admit that the utter failure of the Carthaginian navy probably didn't help much.

The determination of Rome and the Romans meant that Hannibal probably needed to take Rome in order to force the Senate to peace on Carthage's terms. Lacking such a drastic outcome the Romans were on to a winner from the start.

Suffer in the Empire

My internal dialogue seems to be inescapably hurtling towards a discussion about empires, and their political franchises.

Through the mass of text I've plowed through in the last 4-5 months, I've had a pretty good look at several ancient 'empires' - Athens, Sparta and Persia - and a shorter look at two others - Carthage and Rome. My next target after the Spartans will be Livy and Polybius, and I reckon my Roman and Carthaginian knowledge should increase as a result. If I survive, that is.

Hypothesis:
The success of empires is largely due to two factors - 1) their success in dealing with other empires and political units; 2) the extent and flexibility of their political franchise. 1) is also largely predicated by 2).

The major struggles I've been fascinated by (Athens/Sparta vs Persia; Athens vs Sparta and Rome vs Carthage) all seem to show substantial differences in the structures of political representation between the empires or states, and I would argue that these differences are the key factor in the outcome of the struggles, not generalship, weather, luck or even access to resources.

In Rome vs Carthage this lesson is the clearest, although of course we have to accept the overwhelming pro-Roman bias of all the primary sources. Carthage faced three major problems, all caused by the limited nature of her political set-up:
1) Lack of reliable, cheap manpower - forced to use mercenaries
2) Lack of commitment by the commercial aristocracy to winning the war
3) Desertion of cities, armies and individual leaders (including, critically, Masinissa)

All these problems, I argue, were due to the narrowness of the political structure. There was no over-arching concept of loyalty when compared to Rome. The interests of the ruling class seem to have been mostly financial (hence their failure to pay the revolting mercenaries) and this meant they were not prepared to fight to the end as the Romans were.

When Rome attacked a crippled Carthage in the Third Punic war, the citizens held out for years. If they had displayed this kind of endurance and solidarity in the second war, then the outcome may have been different. Carthaginian treatment of its African allies/subjects was also less successful than Roman. Despite the victories of Hannibal on Italian soil, many cities stayed loyal to Rome and the city's resolve never failed. Carthage surrendered almost straight away after Zama.

I'll return to this later...

Ram vs Board - Classic

I was thinking about ancient naval tactics, and the interesting progression of the use of the trireme and its larger descendants in the two major mediterranean super-wars: Athens v Sparta and Carthage v Rome. In both cases you have a classic land v sea conflict, with the land power winning in the long run despite amazing runs of success by the naval power. I'm surprised more hasn't been made of this in the literature I've read recently.

But both the strategy and tactics of the Spartans and the Romans in adapting to naval warfare was very very different. Rome built and paid her own huge fleets, whereas Sparta relied on Persian talents (most notably from the Lysander-Cyrus alliance) to fund her own. Sparta seems to have tried to copy the successful Athenian tactics of frontal ramming but Rome seems to have switched to a boarding-based strategy that negated much of the Carthaginian superiority in manoeuvering. Rome's navy was far more successful than Sparta's.

In some ways the Carthaginian tactics seem to be developments from the Athenian - manoeuvre round the flank of the enemy and ram his exposed side, either on an individual or whole fleet basis. The problem was that the Romans had more and better marines, so that any boarding action would be won by their superior numbers. The 'corvus' or grappling raven also seems to have given the Romans a colossal advantage in frontal ramming and pinning.

I think the answer as to why this difference in approach was taken, and what this reveals about the two societies, is all about the socio-political structure of the Roman and Spartan societies. Sparta was neither set up nor inclined to create professional navies of poor sailors. The poor were utterly disenfranchised in Sparta, but had some political influence in Rome through the Plebian tribune. And Roman societal unity seems to have been much stronger.

This will take me back to my thinking about empires and power...

Onward goes the banner of historical debate

So I've got through the first salvo of primary source material and I'm on to the secondary. And I'm expanding a bit.

Just finished Goldsworthy's The Fall of Carthage and now on The Spartans. Also finished Anabasis which was brilliant - the Xenophonic speeches are brilliant constructions. No wonder the public school system taught it for so long. In fact I'm pretty sure we got Xenophon as an unseen in our GCSE Greek exam.

It has now been suggested to me that I read Livy. If I'm serious about the Carthage angle then I ought to, and probably Polybius as well. And a whole bunch of other s*it. And I think it would be foolish to stop now. However I am thinking increasingly about doing a WOTR style game on the Ionian revolt, with expansion packs to take in the Persian wars proper and the Peloponnesian war and so on. I think it lends itself more to a game than pre Punic wars Carthage.

Had a flash of inspiration whilst reading about Sparta today - Pindar was Theban. Maybe I can get something out of him...

The Nicias-Alcibiades debate also goes on in my head. Who was more responsible for the fall of the Athenian Empire? The debate is odd - things that A did were more indirect than those that N did, but may have had wider implications. Either way it the Athenian view of their leaders seems to have been pretty damn odd.

Another interesting area is one that has come up in various e-conversations with Yale. The comparison of Empires. What is an Empire? How can we identify, measure and contrast different systems and structures? And aren't (or weren't) there a lot more empires than we usually assume? A good example would be the Leges Inter Brettos et Scottos from late C11 or early C12 Scotland. This was an empire - the Gaelic speaking Scots were ruling over subject Welsh peoples who preserved some of their own structures in Strathclyde - but is not considered so because of the presence of the more powerful emerging English empire. 'Empire' is not a relative term.

...A mighty empire will be lost

So

Last week's horror seems to have mostly dissapated. London is working again. So the terrorists have failed.

The sunshine's return seems to find everyone in a remarkably good mood. I'm obviously upbeat as I'm off to the Glade festival this weekend, and this will be my first holiday since February. I just hope the rain stays away, especially as our tent may not turn up.

Sadly I have been almost zombie-tired in the afternoons so far, much like last week. I think I need to strike a better balance at the weekends, to be honest. The frequency of late nights is far too high.

Had various folks round for lunch on Saturday. Was really nice, but I did have to go back to bed in the late afternoon and that messed everything else up. This was after a late night in Camden on Friday and was followed by a fantastic afternoon in the Lock on Sunday and then a phat roast dinner in the gin palace in the evening. I was disgracefully wasted by the time I got upstairs to eat, but that's not surprising as I'd been sitting with Shell and the multiply-pierced multitudes in the sun. There was a Finnish guy who had 8 metal spikes on his head and some subcutaneous magnetic implants. Oof.

London Explosions

Fortunately I wasn't at home last night or I would have been caught up in the madness this morning. I feel sickened about it - and I hope that no-one I know has been hurt. Even then I know that lots of people have been hurt and some killed - this was a disgusting and cowardly act.

The BBC has located an Islamist website that has published a 200-word statement issued by an organisation saying it carried out the London bombings.
The organisation calls itself the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda [literally the base] of Jihad Organisation in Europe. The group not previously been heard of. The website has previously carried statements purporting to be from al-Qaeda. It is not possible to verify such claims published on the web. This is the full text of the statement:

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him. Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters. We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid. We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused. God says: "You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly."

I hope the terrorists know that London is not 'burning with terror', just with disgust and anger at the barbarity of their actions. May anyone who took part in this savage attack rot in hell.

The Golden Gate

Started Call of Cthulu Delta Green last night. Mukul, John, Dave and I at James' house.

I'm not sure how much James has made up and how much he has taken from the modules etc but it's great fun so far. It's set in the British sector of Berlin in 1953 and we are all involved with the Golden Gate club, which provides 'entertainment' for officers, diplomats and policemen. It's a high class establishment, obviously.

George - British MD, owner of the Golden Gate club (John)
Marian - Polish photographer (Dave)
Vernon or Otis - US GI 'ducker and diver' (Mukul)
John - Ulsterman, bouncer at the Golden Gate club (me)

So far we managed to survive, and we're all still sane, at least I think we are. Which is something. I think this is roughly what happened:

1) Agreed a deal for some penicillin
2) Took some diverting photographs - they came out very well
3) Found one of the girls from the club 'well gutted' outside, naked - took some photos (as evidence)
4) Stopped the panic and called the police
5) Dealt with the police
6) Decided to have a wake for Uncle Stalin with cheap vodka and with the girls dressed in Russian army uniforms
7) Had a visit from an ex-Wehrmacht officer who wanted to sell us some Benzedrine in return for some real Champagne and some action for his men

I'm sure it's going to get even weirder

"Drain you of your sanity, face the Thing that should not be"

Obsession

I've noticed my posts have become increasingly narrow in the last while. I think there are three possible responses to this:

1) Enough with the Greek nonsense already
2) Write a game rather than talk about writing a game
3) Do a degree so I can legitimately force other people into conversations about it

But I want to read St. Croix - I've been told it's a decent Marxist account. Now there's something to look forward to.

Order of reading so far:

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War
Xenophon's continuation of Thucydides
Oxford History of the Classical World
Herodotus' Histories
Xenophon's The Persian Expedition (or Anabasis) - stalled after Cunaxa
Kagan's The Peloponnesian War: Athens and Sparta in savage conflict

In fact I've just ended up talking about it even more...

Arginusae

Reaching the end of Kagan now. The war has shifted to the Aegean as Sparta and its allies, including the angry Syracusans, try to get money out of Tissaphernes and other satraps in the Persian empire. The Athenians scrape together a last ditch fleet to protect the critical grain route through the Hellespont, partly by melting down the golden statues and conscripting farmers to row the ships.

This fleet manages to defeat the Spartan fleet at Arginusae, by a combination of audacious flanking tactics and stunning bravery by the inexperienced crews. Sadly the newly restored democracy at Athens votes to execute the generals for failing to pick up the dead bodies in the ocean.

But sadly the dice are stacked against Athens, despite a brilliant run of naval victories against the odds, the most brilliant probably being at Czicus in the Propontis, and the 'miracle' of Arginusae where for the first time the Spartans had more experienced crews (partly due to Cyrus' subsidies bringing up pay to 4 obols a day, more than the Athenian wages). Athens' inability to reimpose her tributary empire on much of the Ionian mainland and the north shore of the Aegean, coupled with the revolts in Euboea and the civil war in Corcyra, meant that she was unable to meet the costs of maintaining a fleet and mounting operations that the Spartans could afford thanks to the support of the Persians.

With her last reserves of manpower and money committed, Athens' next major setback would leave them with no defences save their own walls, and, more critically, no fleet to protect the supply routes. Without control of the sea, the Periclean strategy of holding out would fail. Strangely, after Arginusae the Spartans offered peace, but the Athenians rejected it. This was their last chance - total defeat would soon follow.