[meteorite-list] In search of a hammer

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 17:58:21 -0500
Message-ID: <021201c77ee8$67ccdca0$862e4842_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Ed, List,

    Where was Pompeius Strabo when he died?
    Pretty sure it was in the immediate vicinity of
Rome itself.
    Encyclopedia Brit., 11th Ed., says Gnaeus Pompeius
Strabo died of the "plague," and that "a mob dragged his
body through the streets until a tribune interceded."
    The legion Strabo raised were from and were based
at Picenum, and his son took them back there after the
old man's death.
    I found this: "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, often referred
to as Strabo or Pompey Strabo in English, was a Roman
from the rural province of Picenum. He became the first
of the Pompeii to achieve senatorial status in Rome, despite
the anti-rural prejudice of the Roman Senate. After proving
his military talent, Strabo climbed the cursus honorum and
became consul in the year 89 BC, in the midst of the Social
War. Strabo commanded Roman forces against the Italian
Allies in the northern part of Italy. His three Roman legions
were instrumental in Rome's victory. After his consulship
and the war, Strabo retired to Picenum with all of his
veteran soldiers.
    He remained there until 87 BC, when he responded to
Lucius Cornelius Sulla's request for help against Gaius
Marius. Strabo besieged Rome, but died before a battle
was fought. Strabo's son, the famous Gnaeus Pompeius
Magnus (Pompey the Great), took the legions back to
Picenum once again."
    Says the Wiki: "Strabo had the habit of playing both
ends against the middle in the intense politics of the period.
Sulla arranged to remove Strabo from the command and
replace him with a handpicked confederate. Strabo left
camp on "personal business" while his soldiers killed
the replacement."
    This was apparently outside of Rome (if beseiging it).
Sulla's replacement, who murdered by his troops, was
the consul Q. Pompeius Rufus. There seems no doubt
that he was at Rome: "Strabo, whose duty [to Sulla] it
was to defend Rome against Cinna and Marius, negotiates
with Cinna, but dies during the general epidemic [which
was in 88-87 BC]."
    So, there was at Rome at one and the same time, a civil
war, an epidemic of type unknown, and an army-killing
lightning, blast, impact, or airburst event.
    I'd say the omens at that moment were NOT good.

    As for Augustus consolidating power slowly: "In 22 BC,
Augustus resigns his eleventh consulship, probably because
of illness. He is awarded for life full tribunician powers,
and extended imperium which gives him authority over
any provincial governor and over the army (renewed for
five years in 18 and 13, and for ten years in 8, and
AD 3 and 13.)
    In 22, there's famine and plague. Augustus declines
the dictatorship and censorship for life, but accepts
the post of "corn supremo." He leaves for the East
for three years. In 21, Agrippa is forced by Augustis
to divorce his existing wife and marry Augustus's
daughter Julia, whose husband Marcellus died after
being married to her for two years.
    In 18, the Senate is reduced to a mere 600 senators.
(You think 100 is bad?) Agrippa is granted special powers.
    In 17, Augustus adopts Agrippa's and Julia's two sons,
Gaius and Lucius, as his own sons.
    In 15, Tiberius and Drusus, Augustus's Claudian
stepsons, defeat the Raeti and Vindelici, whose territory
becomes a Roman province.
    In 13, Tiberius's first consulship. Augustus returns
to Rome after three years in Gaul, and Agrippa after
three years in the east. Agrippa's special powers are
extended for five years. Lepidus dies. Augustus is
elected pontifex maximus. In 12, Agrippa dies. Tiberius
is forced to marry his widow, Augustus' daughter Julia.
    Augustus' power is pretty much complete at this point.
It is not just that his rivals for power are dead, but that
all the potential heirs to power are also firmly under his
control; there is no child out there with a claim to
similar honors being raised by some other family to
someday threaten Augustus and the family he controls
for power. Of course, most of them will die before
they are in a position to be a threat. Most convenient.


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 2:16 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] In search of a hammer


Well, Sterling,

There was a difference between haruspicy and
astromancy. How and when they became "secret" is the
issue at hand. Were they already "mysterious" at the
time of the founding of the Empire? Or did they
become "secret" with the founding of the college?

For the problem at hand, the important information is
where that army was when it was hit. Any ideas on
that?

good hunting,
Ed


--- "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Ed,
>
> Because of the way topic thread titles are
> re-cycled by email, THIS was the chief response
> to your post, but the secondary chatty one is
> what everybody read, assuming duplicate posts.
>
> I think you'll find this more interesting.
>
>
> Sterling
>
--------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sterling K. Webb"
> <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Cc: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 12:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] In search of a hammer
>
>
> Hi, E.P., List
>
> E. P. wrote:
> > to put it mildly, this was a hot political topic.
> > The suppression of Etruscan astromancy... actually
>
> > began with... Cicero... Julius's work represents
> > the last real vestige of Etruscan astromancy...
>
> I agree that it was a hot, very hot, topic, but
> I disagree
> utterly that Imperial Rome dumped haruspicy and all
> the
> other divinatory arts, or forgot them, or ignored
> them,
> and here's why...
>
> Haruspicy and traditional Eutruscan Auspices
> continued
> in practice. Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus
> Germanicus,
> the emperor Claudius, of "I, Claudius" fame, was a
> student
> of Etruscan language and arts and opened a college
> to preserve
> and improve the auspicial arts, which institution
> lasted until
> well into the reign of Theodosius I, almost five
> centuries later.
> Claudius wrote a 20-scroll book about Eutruscan
> language,
> history and religion, entitled "Tyrrenike," only one
> of his
> several works on the Eutruscans.
>
> Here's where things start to sound fishy. One
> encounters
> statements in professional historians' work (who are
> these
> guys?) that go like this: "Only a few educated
> Romans with
> antiquarian interests, such as Varro, could read
> Etruscan.
> The last person known to have been able to read
> Etruscan
> was Claudius and his books were quickly forgotten
> and lost."
>
> Let me get this straight. There's The Roman
> Imperial College
> of Haruspicy and the Eutruscan Arts of Divination,
> in business
> and thriving for four to five centuries, turning out
> thousands of
> graduates over those centuries, AND YET, they lose
> all the
> books that teach the language, forget their
> knowledge of the
> language, the language that the Libri Haruspicini
> were written in?!
>
> Does this seem likely? Logical? Expected? Or
> does it offend
> reason? And, more importantly, is it true?
>
> OK, this is where I insert the 317 long boring
> paragraphs
> detailing that haruspicy flourished and was
> widespread and
> was taken very seriously for many centuries after
> the point
> where you say it was forgotten.
>
> Well, you can heave a big sigh of relief because
> I'm going
> to skip them (hooray!) and fast forward to 408 AD
> when the
> Goths under Alaric beseiged Rome and starved it in
> an
> attempt to blackmail the Emperor into paying up what
> he
> owed the Goths. The haruspices stepped forward and
> offered
> their services to help save the City, even in a
> Christian Empire.
> And, surprise, Pope Innocent I welcomed their aid
> (welcomed
> pagan priests?!), so long as their rituals were kept
> secret. I
> repeat, so long as their rituals were kept secret.
> It would appear
> that the Pope believed in the Auspices, too...
>
> And at long last, we reach the KEY word: SECRET.
> We
> modern enlightened types just can't take Greek or
> Roman
> religious concepts, beliefs and practices seriously.
> We teach
> mythology to our children like it was fairie tales,
> entertainment.
> THE ROMANS BELIEVED THEIR RELIGION AS MUCH AS
> ANYBODY. The Greeks and Romans believed their
> religion
> as much as martyrs believe the faith they die for,
> as much as
> Usamah bin Laden believes God wants him to kill us,
> as much
> as the Pope believes in Catholicism.
>
> What is Divination? It is a secret and certain
> knowledge
> of the future. It reveals to The Rulers what is
> going to happen,
> where, when, and how, what is the right policy, the
> right war,
> how to fight it, who your enemies are... all the
> stuff worth
> knowing.
>
> What does that sound like to you? What, in our
> own modern
> "scientific" society, do we call that? When we write
> the Auspices
> down for the Emperor, what do we call it? Good
> Guess! It's
> called the National Intelligence Estimate!
>
> We have many Colleges of Haruspectelligence,
> many Guilds,
> many Priesthoods and varieties, the CIApex, the
> NSApex, more
> than a dozen (that we know about), and the one thing
> that we all
> agree on is that their Augeries MUST be kept SECRET,
> and that
> the Rulers must be in Control of them. Just ask Mr.
> Bush. Are
> leaks bad? Can I browse the CIA files for 2001? When
> are you
> publishing these in book form?
>
> How does the Ruler accomplish this? He must
> control the
> Haruspex in all their multitudes. For the Roman
> Emperor, it
> is to combine in his person all the offices
> including the most
> important of all: Pontifex Maximus, the Priest In
> Charge. The
> Haruspex all work for him now. To keep the Auspices
> Secret,
> you must Control them absolutely. The secrecy and
> your control
> of it guarantees that they can never be used against
> you politically.
>
> You might want to ask Mr. Bush about that also.
> (Or Mr.
> Nixon, Kennedy, Reagan, Carter; they all seem to
> have agreed
> identically on this point of procedure: secrecy and
> control.)
>
> So it is today that the Chiefs of all the
> Haruspectelligence
> Agencies are commanded by The Ruler. He even has a
> Director
> of National Haruspectelligence who function is to
> command the
> lesser Haruspectelligence Agencies for The Ruler. So
> it was that
> the Emperor controlled all public knowledge of the
> Augeries, or
> when necessary, concealed it, contrived it, or even
> destroyed it.
> It was just like National Intelligence is today.
>
> And as to why Augustus refused to strip Lepidus
> of his
> office of Pontifex Maximus (until he died, of
> course), he only
> did so to show his piety and respect for the office,
> to gain
> time to get control of all the auspicial functions,
> and to avoid
> the appearance of grabbing ALL power at once. But
> when
> Lepidus did die, Augustus assumed those powers,
> becoming
> Pontifex Maximus For Life, and so did EVERY Roman
> Emperor that followed him, even the Christian ones.
>
> To understand this political dynamic, just look
> forward to
> the time when the first President that achieves the
> goal of making
> himself Emperor comes along, will he not allow the
> sitting Chief
> Justice of the Supreme Court to die in office before
> appointing
> himself to that life-time position? I hope so.
>
> So, all those records you think were lost and
> disregarded
> because the Romans no longer believed in auspices,
> well, my
> guess is that they were preserved and understood for
> a very
> long time. This is no comfort, however, when we hope
> for
> their ultimate survival to our day. We all know what
> the
> haruspectelligence agents do when the end comes and
> the
> enemy is breaking down the doors, when the nation is
> finally
> collapsing forever and all hope is gone: BURN THE
> FILES.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
>
-------------------------------------------------------------
> PS: What I want to see is the actual, unretouched
> photos of
> the liver of the goat that Donald Rumsfeld sacrified
> before
> the start of the Iraq War...
>
--------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 7:25 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] In search of a hammer
>
>
> Hi Mike -
>
> My own notes on Julius work. I'm sure I have copies
> of
> the exact translation from which I worked somewhere
> in
> my papers, but I seem to have ommitted it from my
> note.
> I suppose it was the initial onset of the stroke in
> 2003.
>
> good hunting,
> Ed
>
> A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE ROLES OF POLITICAL AND
> RELIGIOUS
> FACTORS IN THE SUPPRESSION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF
> IMPACTS
>
> DURING THE YEARS OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE ROMAN
> REPUBLIC
>
>
> While it is true that the Church's Platonic
> orthodoxy
> was rather strictly enforced for 1600 years or so,
> in point of fact that suppression of impact
> knowledge
> began long before the Church ever gained power.
>
> >From Julius (IULII: OBSEQUENTIS AB ANNO URBIS
> CONDITAE
> DV PRODIGIORUM LIBER)
>
> "Consulship of Gnaeus Octavius and Licius Cinna (87
> BCE)
>
> "56a. While Cinna and Marius were displaying a cruel
> rage in their conduct of the civil war, at Rome in
> the
> camp of Gnaeus Pompeius [Strabo] the sky seems to
> fall, weapons and standards were hit, and soldiers
> struck dead. Pompeius [Strabo] himself was struck
> dead by the
> blast of a heavenly body."
>
> and to put it mildly, this was a hot political
> topic.
> The suppression of Etruscan astromancy and knowledge
> of impact lore actually thus actually began with
> Senate loyalist Cicero's deprecations of it in De
> Divinatione (70 BCE) and De haruspicum Responsis (56
> BCE), works which he wrote in support of Pompeius
> Magnus, Pompeius Strabo's son, and against Caesar,
> who
> held the office of Pontifex Maximus, head of the
> haruspex. But events will take yet a stranger turn.
>
> As Julius's work represents the last real vestige of
> Etruscan astromancy and impact lore, establishing
> its
> date is essential. Now it is widely held that
> Julius
> himself extracted his haruspex's records from the
> history of Rome which was written by Titus Livy, who
> lived 59 BCE - 17 CE; Livy is thought to have begun
> writing his history around 29 BCE, and it is
> commonly
> held that Julius's wrote his work much, much later
> than 17 CE.
>
> But a problem with this dating scenario is that the
> poet and astronomer Manilius appears to paraphrase
> part of Julius's work in his Astonomica at IV.45-62,
> and Manilius is known to have written this
> particular
> work spanning the time of the Emperor Augustus's
> death
> in 14
> CE. (For the date of the composition of the
> Astronomica definitively established by J.P. Good,
> see
> Manilius, Astronomica, J.P. Good translation, Loeb
> Classical Library, page xiii). Therefore Julius's
> work
> or a part of it was must have been written before 14
> CE.
>
> Were Julius's own personal name "Julius" not enough,
> his conspicuous use of the name "Caesar" for
> Octavian,
> a usage which Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian (later
> known as Augustus, the first Roman Emperor) himself
> ferociously advocated, marks the work as having been
> written for the most part early in Octavian's
> campaign
> for absolute power, if not indeed even earlier.
> Julius's anti-Pompey bias is clearly demonstrated by
> his reminder again of Pompey Strabo's death by
> fulmine
> in his entry for Strabo's son Pompey Magnus's death
> in
> 46 BCE.
>
> All of this brings us to a possible reason why
> Julius
> wrote the work in the first place - as a piece of
> political propaganda first for Julius Caesar, and
> then
> for Octavian. Seen in another light, as the office
> of
> Emperor was entirely of Octavian's (Augustus's) own
> making, and without precedent in Roman politics,
> there
> must have been a strong concern among the haruspex
> as
> to what role they would play in the new political
> order. Quid pro quo, the influence of the haruspex
> over the traditional republicans who normally would
> abhor an emperor with the deepest of passions must
> have been considerable. In short, at this point in
> time, Etruscan astromancy and its knowledge of
> impact
> events was again being promoted, for the same reason
> Cicero had for be-littling it.
>
> While the anti-Pompey bias of Julius's work is
> datable
> to sometime around Pompei's defeat by Julius Caesar,
> say 49-46 BCE, there are yet other political
> considerations which allow us to further refine the
> date of the composition. Following Caesar's murder
> by
> the Senate, his nephew and heir Octavian (Augustus)
> marched on Rome; in the meantime, Caesar's supporter
> Marcus Antonius (Anthony) moved to take on a general
> supported by the Senate, one Decimus Junius Brutus
> Albinus.
>
> After Antony's defeat of the consuls sent against
> him
> by the Senate, Octavian gained authority from that
> same Senate to move against Anthony. The first thing
> which Octavian did with his new authority was to
> shore
> up his position in Rome; and then through the
> offices
> of Antonius's supporter, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus,
> Octavian promptly entered into a new coalition with
> Lepidus and Anthony, yet another triumvirate, to
> take
> on those generals supporting the very same Senate
> which had appointed him in the first place.
>
> Here we come to the detailed events bearing more
> directly on the problem at hand, the suppression of
> Etruscan astromancy and impact knowledge. Through
> these agreements with Octavian and Anthony, Lepidus
> gained control of the North African grain supplies.
>
> In the meatime, the general Sextus Pompeius, the
> youngest son of Pompey Magnus (and thus the grandson
> of the man killed by the "fulmine", if you
> remember),
> who was loyal to the Senate, gained control of
> Rome's
> Navy and Sicily. To further his own personal power,
> Sextus Pompeius instituted a blockade on Rome's
> grain
> supplies, and Octavian, Anthony, and Lepidus were
> forced to recognize this final Pompey's authority.
> When the three generals denied Sextus Pompeius
> control
> of the Peloponese following their victories in the
> east, Sextus Pompeius agqain put a blockade on
> Rome's
> grain supplies.
>
> Octavian and Lepidus now moved against Sextus
> Pompeius, but after they defeated Pompey III,
> Lepidus
> decided to make a play for the control of Sicily and
> Rome's grain supplies. But then Lepidus's troops
> deserted him for Octavian.
>
> And here we come to the point: in his victory,
> Octavian did not murder Lepidus, but instead
> "Octavian
> spared his former triumviral colleague but stripped
> him of his powers and confined him to house arrest
> at
> the pleasant seaside town of Circeii. There he lived
> out his life unmolested until he died, of natural
> causes, in 12 BC." (Garrett G. Fagan, Pennsylvania
> State University, entry for Augustus, De Imperii
> Romani, An Online Encyclopedia of the Roman
> Emperors).
>
>
> Further,(continuing with Fagan's summary), "When
> Octavian returned to Rome in triumph following the
> defeat of Sextus, the senate naturally moved to
> honor
> him extravagantly. AMONG THE PROPOSED HONORS WAS THE
> SUGGESTION THAT OCTAVIAN BE NAMED PONTIFEX MAXIMUS,
> PAGAN ROME'S CHIEF PRIEST. OCTAVIAN REFUSED.
> LEPIDUS,
> THOUGH DISGRACED, WAS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS; AND IT WOULD
> BE AGAINST ESTABLISHED PRACTICE FOR AN INCUMBENT TO
> BE
> STRIPPED OF THIS AUGUST PRIESTHOOD WHILE STILL
> ALIVE."
>
> This is when the suppression of Etruscan astromancy
> and its knowledge of impact events began in full,
> when
> Octavian's (Augustus's) rival Lepidus was the
> Pontifex
> Maximus. It did not happen several hundred years
> later , after the Church gained power. Seen in
> another
> way, Etruscan astromancy was tied closely with the
> Republican form of government, and as such it had
> little place in the Empire.
>
> As far as the Obsequentis goes, it could not have
> been
> publicly published after Lepidus returned to Rome in
> 36 BCE. As Julius understated it in his later entry
> for 44 BCE, "The howling of dogs was heard by night
> before the residence of the Pontifex Maximus, and
> the
> fact that the largest dog was torn apart by the
> others
> foretold unseemly disgrace to Lepidus."
>
> Therefore we can date Julius's first draft with some
> certainty to 49-46 BCE, with a later extension into
> Octavian's time to 44-36 BCE. Ultimately, following
> Lepidus' death, the original work was again
> extended,
> and with two isolated and dangling later final
> additional entries, and it was brought through to
> the
> time of Octavian's death and the succession of the
> next Emperor.
>
> As for Manilius, as the details of Sextus Pompey's
> activities in Sicily were personally embarrassing to
> Lepidus, no religious/astronomical work could be
> written mentioning them while Lepidus was Pontifex
> Maximus. It could only have been following the death
> of Lepidus in 14 CE that Manilius added his mention
> of
> Sextus Pompey's blockades to his original draft.
>
> All of this brings us yet again to another reason
> for
> Octavian's (Augustus's) suppression of Etruscan
> astromancy and impact knowledge. Livy, though an
> acquaintance of Octavian (the first Emperor
> Augustus),
> is reported to have been considered by Augustus to
> be
> of republican sympathies - and Livy included the
> extracts from the Julius's work simply to show the
> omens in a republican light.
>
> This provided Octavian and his successors with yet
> another reason for suppressing Etruscan astromancy.
>
> EP
>
>
> ______________________________________________
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Received on Sat 14 Apr 2007 06:58:21 PM PDT