Michael J. Taylor

@drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social

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Associate Professor, University at Albany SUNY Greek and Roman History PhD UC Berkeley

Mykonos vase, c. 700 BC, featuring the Trojan horse.
The Thuggans who carved an indigenous script to celebrate the foundation of an enduring indigenous dynasty did not see Carthage’s final defeat and violent destruction as a brutal milestone in the inexorable rise of Rome, or as a melancholy harbinger of Africa’s eventual domination by European powers. From the Thuggan perspective, they had resisted the Carthaginian masters, successfully triangulated in a great-power conflict, and now, in a proud act of linguistic self-definition, they savored the postcolonial moment.
Settler colonial praxis and the racecraft it engendered profoundly shaped the Carthaginian state, its society, and imperial trajectory. Perched against the geographic span of the Maghreb and the demographic heft of native Libyan and Numidian populations, Carthage exerted a tenuous dominance over its African hinterland. Peculiar aspects of Carthage’s mythic self-definition and constitutional system owed less to the city’s supposed commercial orientation than to its settler colonial legacy. Pathologies inherent to the settler colonial project manifested themselves in moments of crisis, contributing to Carthage’s defeat and the creation of an indigenous Numidian state.
Academic painting of Roman soldiers working a not terribly plausible catapult against Carthage during the Third Punic War (149-146). Edward Poynter, 1868.
Free citizens protest a brutal, murderous regime.
Citizen legionaries carrying heavy throwing javelins (pilum), in the reign of Trajan. Adamklissi, Romania.
Roman soldiers in a sado-masochistic snuff film portrayed as citizen legionaries with leather lorica segmentata and a leather helmet evocative of the Imperial model.
They brought up against me after thirty years something I had already confessed before I was a deacon. What happened was that, one day when I was feeling anxious and low, with a very dear friend of mine I referred to some things I had done one day – rather, in one hour – when I was young, before I overcame my weakness. I don’t know – God knows – whether I was then fifteen years old at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, not even when I was a child. In fact, I remained in death and unbelief until I was reproved strongly, and actually brought low by hunger and nakedness daily.
Celtic Cross on Iona, near the famous monastery founded by St. Columba.
A Frankish warrior. If captured by one of these, your Bishop might be able to ransom you, unlike those poor souls captured by Coroticus
Gothic Bible of Wulfias, manuscript
Coin of Philip the Arab, County Cork. National Museum of Ireland
Medieval manuscript of Ptolemy's Geography, showing Ireland.
Abandoned Roman fort at Inchtuthil, Scotland
Article 11 of the Treaty with Tripoli, signed in 1796, in which the United States proclaims itself not to be in any way founded as a Christian nation.
On triresmos: Prima facie, triresmos seems a genuinely archaic form and it has been eagerly exploited by morphologists. For all that, the form is probably a veritable howler.
Big dog: Carthage fighting Rome, 264-201 Little whimpy dog: Carthage fighting Syracuse, 415-264
In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, combatants in central Italy predominantly fought with an imported Hellenic panoply, centred upon the round, rimmed hoplite shield (aspis). In addition to its effectiveness in combat, hoplite gear marked the elite status and cosmopolitan horizons of its wearer. The famous Chigi olpe explicitly linked hoplite weapons and tactics to aristocratic sociability and long-distance commercial contacts with the Aegean
Close order shield wall from an Oscan tomb. The shields are round, and the soldiers seem to be kneeling and resting the lower rim on the ground. One dumbass pokes his head out form above the shield wall. Some scholars speculate he is the tombs occupant, killed in the battle, probably because he stuck his head up too high.