Dr. Michael J. Taylor
@DrMichaelJTayl1
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Associate Professor, University at Albany, SUNY Greek and Roman History PhD: UC Berkeley ille/ipse/hic
Albany NY
Joined August 2020
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Like having your favorite movies ruined?
If you value Roman infantry tactics over cinematography, here is a video for you.
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I suspect the Roman "war machine" really developed as an accident. The Romans are trying to solve social problems in the fourth century and the reforms had the mostly unintended byproduct of making them really good at war. 🧵1/
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The persistence of the "Spartan Mirage" points to something important about the real Sparta.
The Spartans had formidable *soft power*
This soft power made up in part for the fact that the Spartans really sucked at war. 1/
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The Greeks hate the Persian Empire like Ivy League students hate Goldman Sachs.
They complain its a terrible, opulent, soulless place, but inevitably sell out and go work there.
Themistocles, Alcibiades, Iphicrates, Chares, Xenophon, etc. ect.
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Interestingly, the Roman Republic's vision of *soft power* is much more in line with Athens, emphasizing entertainments and amenities enjoyed by common Roman citizens.
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The the Spartans basically suck at war, in no small part because they try too hard to be good at it.
There is simply not that much you can do with only a couple thousand guys, no matter how committed they are to hoplite cosplay. 3/
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Sparta as a polis was basically the Greek version of an bougie lifestyle blog.
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At any rate, if we see the Spartan Mirage as "soft power", then the fact that people still fall for this stuff suggests that the Spartans were pretty good at it. Ironically the Spartans were good at being...soft.
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Rather, the Spartiate lifestyle, with the brutal and sexualized right of passage in the agoge, the homosocial messes, and the austere habitus rooted in abject domination of the helots, appealed greatly to other Greek aristocrats.
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Greek aristocrats everywhere, including democratic Athens, wished they could dominate their societies with the same intensity as the Spartiates exploited theirs.
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This had certain advantages. Sparta sucked at war, but Greek aristocrats everywhere bought into the hype that they were good, actually.
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The fatal flaw was that the Spartan polis was essentially an interlocking set of elite supper clubs (syssitia). Great for producing content for the bougie lifestyle blog: black broth! Laconic wit! But impossible to scale up into the manpower needed to have hard power.
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This *soft power* was not like the soft power of Athens, with its extraordinary cultural output in the 5th century.
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I say mostly unintended because most *intentional* attempts to forge a war-like society seldom result in effective war-making. Perhaps the most salient example in the ancient world is Sparta, which had a narrow, self-curated elite militarized in the most bespoke way. 2/
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This hype meant that Sparta was able to position itself at the center of Greek coalitions, going back to the Persian wars. Soft power really paid dividends, providing allies to supplement limited Spartan resources.
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Cards on the table: this thread is un-reformed Millarism. Rome democratized from the fifth to the early third century, as a means of maintaining civic peace. In doing so it created essential conditions for mass mobilization and aggressive hegemony during the Middle Republic. 14/
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The aggregate reforms: admission of plebeians to the consulship, curtailment of debt bondage contracts, land distribution and colonization, empowerment of the concilium plebis, each modest in its own right together reconfigure a citizen body and its relationship to the state.5/
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Soft power is really terrific at leveraging hard power. But that leverage can only go so far. One reason why Sparta is basically an overhyped regional power, and why a single battle (Leuktra in 371) managed to end Sparta's under-resourced imperial pretensions.
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In doing so, they create the latent potential for mass infantry mobilization from a large pool of economically prosperous and politically empowered peasants. 6/
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But the Romans in the fourth century are trying to solve serious social problems, albeit in a pressure cooker of significant external threats: Volscians, Etruscans and Gauls. These threats serve as catalysts to force the patricians to the bargaining table again and again. 4/
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And so the Spartan paradox: Spartans had soft power, at least of the sort that appealed to other Greek aristocrats, but this by default ensured a real hard power deficit.
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When someone else wished to know why Sparta was without walls, he pointed to the citizens in full armour and said, "These are the Spartans' walls."
(Plutarch Moralia 210 E, trans. Perrin)
By 371 BC, there were fewer than 1000 adult male Spartan citizens (Aristotle Pol. 2.1270a)
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Only ~10% of History/Classics PhDs get tenure track academic jobs. What does it take to get a job in this hyper competitive market? The optimal profile seems to be:
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This is one reason why Rome goes from a non-expansionary state in the fifth century to a relentless conquest state by the late fourth. It is doubtful any single Roman has visions of Italian or Mediterranean empire. But the new system brings a new set of incentives. 9/
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The spread of these forms of entertainments and amenities is controversially called "Romanization." But we can see it as soft power at work (e.g. famously Tac. Agricola 21), but soft power that further leveraged a massive superiority of hard power.
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The incentives are electoral success. Roman elites act the way they do because they want to win completive elections. 9A/
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It is only around the 340s that the Roman political class realizes the offensive potential and seeks to exploit and intensify it (the Samnite Wars and Latin annexations). 7/
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But even this elite has been reshaped by the concessions: ambitious plebeian candidates running competitive elections are far more bellicose. And patrician politicians now need to up their game. 8/
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As the elites discover, to their pleasant surprise, that those political and economic concessions allow them to tap a new manpower pool; they prove willing to make new concessions to maintain access (nexum abolition in 326; provocatio in 300, the lex Hortensia in 287). 10/
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Tapping the sign...
In my continuing bid to push up those Sparta unfavorables, here is my seven (and a half) part series on why a lot of what you know about Sparta wasn't so (and what there is to know is not very flattering):
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The Roman army remains a citizen militia, manned by once and future voters and led by elected magistrates and officers. These features are maintained even as the army scaled up from a small urban muster of perhaps 3000 troops in the fifth century to a hegemonic force. 13/
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Our field still treats adjuncts like 1950s divorcees: permanently damaged goods because they didn't get hired as ABDs. Which is a very dumb way to treat experienced teachers and researchers. 4/
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All worth making for ambitious aristocrats who suddenly have hopes of commanding a two-legion consular army for one ultraviolent year 11/
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Imagine you went to a pricy restaurant and paid hundreds of dollars for a meal cooked by celebrity chefs.
Then you learn that the restaurant fired its chefs and replaced them with short-order cooks paid minimum wage. But still charged you hundreds of dollars
This week on the blog: We explain academic job titles and how what you imagine the job of a 'professor' to be is in fact a rare and quickly vanishing thing, replaced by an academic gig economy that is bad for students, teachers and the public:
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By the time militarization is more of a conscious policy in the late 4th century, it is now mediated by the popular mechanisms (tribunes, assemblies): for example the people achieve the right to elect 24 military tribunes for the consular legions and duoviri navales in 311. 12/
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A question posed by Nicholas Purcell is one we may be able to approach for the Middle Republic, especially 200-167 BC.
How many Roman soldiers had killed another person in the course of military service?
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This translation of the first line of the Odyssey is so bad that I don’t even know where to start I almost wonder if I’m contributing to the crime by even commenting on it.
This is it, but in order to see how bad it is you need to look at a few normal translations: 1/351
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Two different views on how a Achaemenid kings makes a decision:🧵
Firstly, the king himself, describing his decision to dig a canal to the Red Sea (Suez Inscription, via wikipedia):
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Why do search committees even ask for evidence of teaching, research and service when they end up hiring someone who has done none of these things? Why waste everyone's time, and instead just call the chair of Harvard and ask if they have any fine young ABDs? 5/
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This is just an insanely stupid way to alot the precious and ever-shrining number of tenure track jobs in the field.
Meanwhile, there are contingent faculty who have books, articles, and years of teaching. Many are living in poverty. 2/
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One does not expect to find authentic Carthaginian military equipment on a beer ad...but the 1977 *Hannibal*, by Charles Lilly, part of Budweiser's "Kings of Africa" series is surprisingly good...with one major exception.
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This is probably accurate:
1) Spartan men have all slept with each other (Plut. Lys. 17.1)
2)Spartan women also all sleep with each other (Plut. Lys. 18.4).
3) Married Spartans swing (Plut. Lys. 15.7).
And this is before Alcibiades parachutes in and sleeps with everyone.
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Also, the fact that we hire ABD Golden Children from a shrinking number of programs really hurts the intellectual diversity of our field. We risk becoming an intellectual echo chamber like the UK, where the entire academic class is squeezed through the Oxbridge bottleneck.
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One advantage of studying Classics is when pseudo-intellectuals very close to Trump pine for a "Red Caesar" you know immediately they are planning to destroy the United States republic and replace the constitution with a dictatorship.
Lot of important stuff here. Right wing “intellectuals” at places like Hillsdale college, Claremont institute et al are building the case for overthrowing the American republic. But DC elite press remains committed to bothsides doctrine.
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A curious thing about the sources for Achaemenid history: they are basically a post-colonialist dream. Only tiny fragments of the imperial narrative survives (e.g. Behistun). But subaltern voices flourish. 1/
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Just finished some final drafts of Magnesia maps. I've posted these before, but a short thread on how we should graphically reconstruct ancient battles.🧵
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A twitter rant (my first): stop translating the centurion rank primus pilus as "First Spear." This is a false etymology and makes a bad translation. Its seeped into popular culture (HBO's Rome, and elsewhere), but can also be found in academic press books. 1/
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The abject failure of
@AHAhistorians
to address the collapse--indeed the destruction-- of our field on its watch, duly called out:
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The neoliberal shills and right-wing authoritarians killing off tenure are not going to like the alternative: an assertive academic workforce unionized from top to bottom. 1/
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Inevitable caveat: many people hired as ABDs have had splendid careers and many ABDs now hired will too. Its not personal.
It just is a very stupid way to hire under current conditions when a lot of experienced people are perpetually passed over. 3/
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Weekend rant/🧵 on my old hobbyhorse: stop using the term Marian reforms, even as a short hands. It is misleading, and not only misunderstands the history of the Roman army, but of the Late Republic itself. 1/
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Universities spend too much on useless VPs and idiot McKinsey consultants, but not enough on the key departmental staff that actually make the university run.
I sitting at my desk crying this morning. I need to prep a lecture for my first class (new prep) and finish work on a research paper for a major conference, but I can't do any of these things right now because as chair I have to do basic secretarial work... (1)
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Just arrived. Very happy to see this in translation-everyone working on ancient warfare should be paying close attention to Spanish scholarship, especially Prof. Quesada-Sanz.
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Let's start with Emily Wilson in the 21st century.
Unlike this version, she doesn't rename the Muse. Just calls her the Muse, instead of a totally random Italic goddess.
Also, she doesn't try to force Homer's hexameters into moribund Saturnian verse. 2/351
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Summer Pool Read No.
#1
:
Peter Brown's *Through the Eye of the Needle*. A valedictory masterpiece, with all the verdant prose and sweeping insight that one would expect.
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Pliny the Elder is a rich but frustrating source.
Me: I'm looking for evidence of Gallic craftsmen working in Rome during the early and middle Republic.
Pliny the Elder: Filed under *trees* (NH 12.2.5).
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The way that soldiers manipulate their weapons is historical contingent.
Some thoughts on Roman sword "guards." 🧵
The imperial-era guard, beloved by reenactors, is with the sword held parallel to the ground, ready to thrust forward with.
Here on the Mainz reliefs (c. 50AD)
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Contingency sucks, but it is so common it should be a burden broadly shared. Build it into the career path, rather than having divergent tracks for golden children ABDs and an adjunct caste.
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@BretDevereaux
@Roelkonijn
@devoretext
@ForeignPolicy
The Florida state curriculum mandates that helots were well treated, got job training, and were just honored to live under Spartan dominion.
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A new social media trend prompting women to ask the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome reveals that it crosses the minds of many men on a weekly basis. Even daily. Or more — to the surprise and confusion of their loved ones.
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We as a field need to move to where the physical sciences have been for a while: 1-3 years of post-doctoral positions: post docs, VAPS, etc., should be expected before landing your first TT job.
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This First of April, a shirt of scale armor (lorica squamata), recovered from Lake Trasimene, where Hannibal ambushed and defeated the Roman consul Gaius Flaminius and annihilated his army in 217 BC.....
April Fools!
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Also hiring ABDs reinforces the "powerful advisor" paradigm. Since ABDs haven't done anything, they need a super powerful, respected advisor to go to bat for them and say they are indeed the chosen one who is the future of the field.
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Since we're doing this again, re-upping the article
@ProfPaul_J
and I wrote on the Battle of Pydna (168 BC).
Turns out a couple of legions can annihilate one of these in about 45 minutes.
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That gives a ton of power to advisors, and we know great power is often shockingly abused. But if you hire 1-3 years out, you will be hiring candidates whose CVs increasingly speak for themselves.
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AND TOTALLY FAKE. Italian forgers managed to fool the Met Museum curators, who purchased the fragments of the statues, which the forgers had deliberately busted up, in 1921. Despite early suspicions, they remained on display at the Met until 1960!
#AprilFoolsDay
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To celebrate the start of April, fantastic over-sized statues of Etruscan warriors, wearing Corinthian helmets and bell cuirasses. You can see the porpax, the elbow band of the shield still on the arm. Masterpieces of Etruscan art at the Met Museum
#Archaeology
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The subaltern story, like the official vision, need not be accurate. But the value of subaltern history is how it nuances and complicates the hegemonic discourses of empire. 5/
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Since it will likely be banned in Florida soon (and probably Texas too), get your copy of *Gendering Roman Imperialism* while you still can.
This is the book Ron DeSantis does not want you to read.
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But if you delay hiring, and you give people a chance to get articles out, win teaching awards and contract monographs, you allow candidates from outside the posh inner sanctum to prove their mettle.
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The biggest threat to higher education from the right isn’t gutting DEI or killing Gender Studies, although these are not great.
The biggest threat is straight up fiscal pillage.
In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.
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Many adjuncts are amazing teachers, worthy of tenured employment. But they can't do their best work on starvation wages & professional instability. Its bad for the adjuncts, bad for the students, bad for everyone.
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So this tweet got a lot of traction. One thing I could not help notice from the responses: many well-meaning tenured folks still have their heads in the sand, despite strong SJ commitments, who nonetheless find themselves on the exploitative end of a profession in crisis. 1/
Only ~10% of History/Classics PhDs get tenure track academic jobs. What does it take to get a job in this hyper competitive market? The optimal profile seems to be:
0 publications
Unfinished dissertation
Have not yet graduated from a top-five graduate program (HYPS/Cal) 1/
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In the subaltern vision, the king does not have all the information. His deficiencies in geographic knowledge need to be filled in (who are the Athenians?).
More interestingly, once he makes a decision, he lacks the bandwidth to follow through unless constantly prompted.4/
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The the Spartans basically suck at war, in no small part because they try too hard to be good at it.
There is simply not that much you can do with only a couple thousand guys, no matter how committed they are to hoplite cosplay. 3/
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Almost all the real work of elite education: the drudgery of grading papers and problem sets, leading small discussions and dealing with undergrads about mundane issues, is done by very poorly paid grad students.
have they thought about getting real jobs rather than cosplaying as the working class
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Now, a subaltern view written by a Carian subject from Halicarnassus (Hdt. 5.105, LCL):3/
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@ProfPaul_J
No one on the internet seems content with the obvious answer that the origins or Christianity lie deep within an ancient religion called Judaism.
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The first African citizen of Rome, so far as I can tell, was Marcus Valerius Muttines.
He was born in Hippo, of Libyo-Phoenician (or Numidian) ancestry and achieved high rank in the Carthaginian army.
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In this vision of royal, imperial power, the idea springs fully formed from the mind of the king. His decisions are followed to the letter and works according to his plan. No one else is involved in making the decision, only in executing it. 2/
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Just published *Spoils in the Roman Republic.*
My own contribution deals with the war-tax, tributum, and the paradox that the Romans had to pay a tax to allow them to go out and loot everything.
Honored to be a part of this excellent volume!
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Obviously, we need to do this as a field. Otherwise the temptation to cheat and snatch up the next shiny thing will continue to overwhelm search committees. But the sciences did it, it makes sense, and we in the humanities should do it too.
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To riff off the "men are always thinking about the Roman Empire" discourse--there is *considerable* interest in the pre-modern world among students of all genders.
And it's insane that our supposedly market-oriented universities aren't bothering to cater to this interest.
The breakdown by period is striking, with modern history TT jobs outnumbering pre-modern more than 7-to-1.
Meanwhile, the total job numbers confirm that there's no alteration in long-term trajectory; we're still hiring at a rate which will see us lose 30-40% of the discipline.
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Also Demartus, king of Sparta, Conon of Athens, the physician Ctesias, etc. etc.
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Does geographic determinism explain why the Second Temple is built under an empire based in Iran and destroyed by an empire based in Italy?
Half the Old Testament is about Iran fighting Israel. Geographic determinism is real, folks.
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If they need military advisors I work for a mere 400 an hour.
Denzel Washington will star as Hannibal, the man who attacked Rome atop of an elephant in a film by Antoine Fuqua for Netflix.
(Source: Deadline)
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June 22nd: OTD in 168 BC; the Battle of Pydna. A skirmish erupted between the encamped Macedonian and Roman armies, over an escaped horse or mule. Both the consul Aemilius Paullus and king Perseus hastily deploy their heavy infantry; the flexible Roman legion carried the day.
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Thats academia right now. Universities are gutting their tenured faculty and replacing them with poorly paid adjuncts. But still charging parents and students tens of thousands of dollars.
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Pyrrhus of Epirus is without question the most overrated general in the ancient world. I remain puzzled why ancient authors thought so highly of him.
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Announcing our spring sale! 📚:
In case you needed an excuse to purchase your copy of Soldiers and Silver.....
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Wow, another gladius hispaniensis found from beyond Roman frontiers, this time in the Caucasus.
Possibly related to the Mithridatic Wars.
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Officially published! Many thanks to the team at
@UTexasPress
for the fantastic production work and cover design, and special thanks to
@carlosfnorena
, who as my PhD advisor provided an incredible mix of sage advice and infinite forbearance.
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A good blog post here on these forgeries. April Fools!
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Just published, "Conquest and Continence: Roman Sexual Politics at the Dawn of Empire" in *Gendering Roman Imperialism* edited by
@Woolf_Greg
and
@cornwell_hannah
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