Competitive outrage is one of the most enthusiastically pursued pastimes du jour and no more than among academics seeking prominence. Being offended seems to be exciting, even intoxicating, not least because it comes with the warm glow of moral righteousness. There’s no point in being outraged without flaunting it, and also remembering that you’re only as good as your last outraged rant.
Outraged academics, especially woke ones, are also a gift to journalists desperate to fill their pages and give them free publicity.
The stories follow a familiar and tired track. They start with a rant on something like X by an outraged academic, which is picked up by some commentator or another academic who is outraged by the outrage, or equally outraged and keen to join. The next thing you know there’s yet another utterly pointless spat of screaming irrelevance to any normal person being laboured through in what passes for a news item.
The latest (in the Express, for whom woke outrage leads the field for top flight copy) comes from Dr. Claire Millington, “a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London”, who trotted along to the British Museum’s new exhibition on the Roman army called Legion: life in the Roman army.
Dr. Millington was appalled to discover the exhibition has a great deal of material in it belonging to the Roman army, which of course was the military force of the imperial Roman state used both for conquest and for the defence of frontiers. Like a lot of armies those days, they recruited men. Dr. Millington condemned the exhibition for its “unrelenting fascist imagery and sexism dolloped on top”, directing “girlies” (her word, not mine) to the Museum’s Instagram account so they can share her horror.
Another historian, Dr. Robin Douglas, decided to weigh in too, and is similarly concerned at an exhibition about the Roman army having militaristic content. “One can debate whether retweeting the BM’s post is wise, but the militaristic framing of this exhibition does seem quite problematic.” Problematic? What on earth does that mean? He adds that the knee-jerk responses are by “all men, from what I’ve seen”.
Not everyone agrees. The Express has sought out those who are outraged by the outrage:
Commentator Benedict Spence was unconvinced, writing: “An archaeologist has complained the Roman legionary exhibition at the British Museum contains ‘unrelenting fascist imagery’ and once again I am proposing we just close half the universities, the experiment has clearly failed.”
It’s undoubtedly true that the actual fascists of the 1930s found inspiration in Roman imperial and military imagery. Mussolini was especially keen. But it seems a bit of a stretch to condemn the British Museum for having the temerity to display items and material from an era that was what it was. The Roman Empire was a despotic militarised state whose wealth had come from conquest. It wasn’t a fascist state though it’s legitimate to argue that it had characteristics which resembled those of a modern fascist state.
That’s worth discussing, but what’s the point of condemning an exhibition for exhibiting the evidence from the period?
In any case, the Roman Empire was little different from any other ancient state except that it was better at the job, hence its success. It was also the case that the Roman army was actually quite small, given the vast territory it covered. Estimates vary over time, but the standing army of the Emperors probably approximated to about 400,000 distributed from northern Britain to Egypt and Spain to Syria.
The vast majority of people within the Roman Empire acquiesced in Roman rule, not because they were always being beaten up by soldiers (though there undoubtedly were episodes of spectacular brutality and oppression, as there have been at all times and places in history – and often reciprocated by Rome’s enemies). Why? Perhaps because for some of them, life in the Roman world was less slightly undesirable than many other ways of life available at the time. The proof is in the pudding. Vast numbers of provincials lined up to join the army.
Roman soldiers were also much more likely to be literate than other ordinary Roman people. They have left a vast archive of written material referring to their activities and lives, which included women and children. In Britain, a militarised province with an unusually large garrison of three permanent legions (about 15,000 men) and a similar number of provincial auxiliaries, the overwhelming majority of inscriptions come from the military zone, predominantly recording the soldiers and their families. These form a large part of the British Museum’s exhibition.
The Roman Empire was not a sophisticated modern state. It lacked a vast Empire-wide bureaucracy. Soldiers were utilised by the state as the main way in which the state interacted with the population, huge numbers of whom would have had a relative or father who had served at some point. Soldiers were used to collect taxes, to act as policemen and local justices and provide engineering and architectural services, which is another way of saying they were ubiquitous and highly visible in every walk of life. Once retired, they took money and experience into civilian communities, providing investment and trades as well as serving in local government. Hence the vast quantity of evidence for their lives and activities.
I have to confess I’m particularly puzzled by this story. Or am I? On Thursday March 7th I’m leading an online promotional event for the British Museum, at its invitation, for this exhibition. It’s called Vindolanda: a window on life in the Roman army. The PowerPoint I’ve prepared is about the wives, children, leisure pursuits, literacy and education and religion of the Roman army’s frontier in Britain, utilising a small selection of the evidence that has survived. I do hope that doesn’t seem unduly militaristic, fascist and sexist.
Let’s leave the last word to:
Tom Jones, a Tory councillor on North Yorkshire Council, [who] was similarly unimpressed in his reply to Dr. Millington’s post, commenting: “The majority of the population, who are normal, will enjoy this exhibition, because they are normal.”
Worth reading in full unless you have something better to do.
Guy de la Bédoyère is the author of Eagles over Britannia. The Roman Army in Britain (Tempus 2001), Hadrian’s Wall. A History and Guide (Amberley 2010), Praetorian. The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Imperial Bodyguard (Yale 2017), and Gladius. Living, Fighting, and Dying in the Roman Army (Little, Brown 2020). Just for the record, he is also author of Domina: The Women who made Imperial Rome (Yale 2018). He would not like to apologise for being male in advance to any offended readers or outraged academics and for featuring militaristic material in his books about the Roman army.
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“SLIT THROAT of JK Rowling,”
So, Jeremy Clarkson gets lambasted for a joke inferring a fictional walk of shame for Megan markle, but this person gets to make a direct threat against someone’s life and nothing is said!! Arrest her and make her pay the full price of the law.
It also speaks volumes that Twitter would ban the likes of any doctor or highly credentialed expert who shared actual facts and data that inconveniently contradicts the Official Narrative but a POS like this human car crash with their death threats is totally acceptable. Could Clown World be any more f*cked up??
Morning All!
A good Thread from Dr Clare Craig about the Marburg Virus…essentially pointing out it’s neither new or novel….
https://twitter.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1626880386734104580
1998-2000 Democratic Republic of Congo 128 deaths from 154 cases in gold miners
2004-2005 Angola 150 deaths from 163 cases
2007 Uganda 2 miners died
2008 one death caught from bat in Ugandan by Dutch tourist
2009 one case caught from bat in Ugandan cave by US tourist
2008 one death caught from bat in Ugandan by Dutch tourist
2010 nothing
2011 nothing
2013 nothing
2014 Hospital worker died but no cases among their 197 contacts – Uganda
2015 nothing
2016 nothing
2017 Three deaths from three cases after man visited bat cave in Uganda and Kenya
2018 nothing
2019 nothing
2020 noting
2021 One death Guinea
2022 Two deaths three cases Ghana
2023 9 deaths, 16 suspected cases, 1 positive PCR test Equatorial Guinea
2 false positives in Cameroon
The 2023 outbreak is on a par with 2012.
Because it is spread via bodily fluids in the sick interventions to contain its spread work.
The first thing I noticed was…DONT go into bat caves!! LOL!
Second thing is this re-tweet to Clare from Robin Monotti…
Join the dots..
#Marburg #MarburgVirus #MarburgScam twitter.com/DrTedros/statu…
“NIH January 30th 2023…Marburg vaccine shows promising results in first-in-
human study.”
double LOL!
https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/the-tte-data-snapshot-week-5?r=zi22l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson with a TTE weekly update….what is astonishing this week is their info/graphs about NHS absenteeism….
NHS staff absences might interest you: on 14 Nov 2022, there were 50,067 staff absent from work through sickness or self-isolation in English acute hospitals. By 5 Feb 2023, this increased by 11,362 absences a day to 61,429, a 23 per cent increase compared with three months ago.
The locum agencies will be having a field day. Add to the current absences the number of vacancies, and you’re looking at over 100,000 hospital folks missing from action. If this trend continues, they’ll be no one left to go on strike.
You have just got to love Babylon Bee….
https://babylonbee.com/news/corporation-celebrates-lgbtq-pride-by-making-ohio-river-rainbow-colored
Corporation Celebrates LGBTQ Pride With Rainbow-Colored River
EAST PALESTINE, OH — In a powerful display of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, Norfolk Southern dumped thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals into the Ohio River to create beautiful rainbow-colored water.
“Wow! So pretty! Look at all those colors!” said CEO Alan H. Shaw. “We hope our valued members of the LGBTQQIP2SAA+++ community feel seen and valued by our loving gesture of support.
Don’t drink it though,” he warned.
Activists and allies around the country celebrated the beautiful shimmering display at a time when many believe corporations are just going through the motions with their LGBTQ+ support. “While other multi-billion-dollar companies simply change their logos for a month, Norfolk Southern went the extra mile,” said local queer activist and preschool teacher Xen Minxie. “So inspiring. Now can someone please look at this strange growth on my neck?”
Norfolk Southern confirmed there are more pride-themed surprises on the way, starting with rainbow-colored acid rain next week.
‘They tried to buy me…What do you want? You can have anything you want”’ Andrew Bridgen details the alleged bribery he has endured from Number 10 to get him to stop speaking about the COVID-19 vaccines.
https://twitter.com/Dominiquetaegon/status/1627315949777846274?cxt=HHwWhICwvYDPsZUtAAAA
https://twitter.com/juneslater17/status/1627105498427162624?s=20