Eagle in the Snow, by Wallace Breem
Marko Amnell
I read Breem's other novel about ancient Rome, THE LEGATE'S
DAUGHTER, and liked it so much I ordered EAGLE IN THE SNOW.
Both have been recently reissued in paperback. There seems to
be renewed interest in ancient military history, with books like
Soldiers and Ghosts : A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity
by J. E. Lendon published this year. Victor Davis Hanson has
a new book out about the Peloponnesian War, and so on.
Anyway, while THE LEGATE'S DAUGHTER is set in Rome in
24 BC, and is mainly a novel of political intrigue, EAGLE IN
THE SNOW is a classic novel of the Roman military. Indeed, it
is perhaps *the* classic novel of this subject. First published
in 1970, it is the story of Maximus, a general assigned to the
Rhine frontier in 406 AD to hold back the invasion of the
Germanic barbarians. Maximus only has one division, or
6000 men, to attempt to prevent the tribes from crossing
the river to ravage Gaul. Unluckily for him, the Rhine unexpectedly
freezes over that year, allowing the Barbarian hordes to cross
the river more easily... The second half of the book details the
amazing lengths Maximus goes to in a desperate attempt to
try to stem the onslaught. The book is somewhat gloomy,
a story of the civilization in decline, as Maximus sees the
old Roman pagan ways being replaced by Christianity. He
fights honourably for the ideal of Rome, a city he has never
seen. The novel achieves a rare pathos in telling the story of
this man who knows he will lose, and the Roman empire will
crumble, but he nevertheless stays the course. It's clear
the subject was close to Breem's heart, as he served in the
British army in India. This novel was one of the inspirations
for the movie Gladiator, and if you've seen it, you will recall
the battle between the Romans and the Germans on the
Rhine frontier in the opening sequence. That part is apparently
taken from EAGLE IN THE SNOW, although the date has
been changed from 406 AD to the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Marko Amnell
Marko Amnell wrote:
> I read Breem's other novel about ancient Rome, THE LEGATE'S
> DAUGHTER, and liked it so much I ordered EAGLE IN THE SNOW.
> Both have been recently reissued in paperback. There seems to
> be renewed interest in ancient military history, with books like
> Soldiers and Ghosts : A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity
> by J. E. Lendon published this year. Victor Davis Hanson has
> a new book out about the Peloponnesian War, and so on.
> Anyway, while THE LEGATE'S DAUGHTER is set in Rome in
> 24 BC, and is mainly a novel of political intrigue, EAGLE IN
> THE SNOW is a classic novel of the Roman military. Indeed, it
> is perhaps *the* classic novel of this subject. First published
> in 1970, it is the story of Maximus, a general assigned to the
> Rhine frontier in 406 AD to hold back the invasion of the
> Germanic barbarians. Maximus only has one division,
Oops, I meant to say "legion" not "division". Maximus commands
Legio XX, a legion he recruited and trained. Stilicho cannot give
him any more men to hold the Rhine frontier.
Arindam Banerjee
I found Colleen McCollough's "The Grass Crown" well-written and highly
interesting. It dealt with the Social Wars in the final years of the
Roman Republic.
Marko Amnell
by my local bookstore to check if they have that.
Marko Amnell
I couldn't find a copy of this novel, but the bookstore had
several other novels about ancient Rome by her. I bought
one just to get a feel for her as a novelist. The one I got
was CAESAR, about Julius Caesar.
Arindam Banerjee
"The Grass Crown" should be the one in the series before this. From
the book it appears that "The Grass Crown" was the highest honour a
soldier could get. That was given by other soldiers, just after the
recipient had done something incredibly spectacular in battle. Sulla
got it, unlike his rival Marius. However, Marius was not jealous of
Sulla for that.
>From the cover, it looks like CM did a lot of research for this book;
so I suppose that when one strips the fleshing from the novel, possible
facts such as the one above start to stand out. I know this is a very
lazy way to understand history, but when one is not a serious
historian, there does not seem to be other easy ways.
Marko Amnell
> Marko Amnell wrote:
> > Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > > I found Colleen McCollough's "The Grass Crown" well-written and highly
> > > interesting. It dealt with the Social Wars in the final years of the
> > > Roman Republic.
> >
> > I couldn't find a copy of this novel, but the bookstore had
> > several other novels about ancient Rome by her. I bought
> > one just to get a feel for her as a novelist. The one I got
> > was CAESAR, about Julius Caesar.
>
> "The Grass Crown" should be the one in the series before this.
I may order THE GRASS CROWN if I like her novel CAESAR enough.
I can't tell yet, it's not near the top of my "to read" pile. First up
right now is a math book by Mandelbrot FRACTALS AND CHAOS.
This is really a nice find, since Mandelbrot tells a lot about the
early history of his discoverey of fractals. He has found the original
low resolution print outs of the first images of the Mandelbrot set,
made at Harvard in 1980 and the first better quality images made at
the IBM research center later that year. Also, a lot of interesting
things about the history of math in Paris going back to the late
19th century and how this led to his discoveries. The theme is
Mandelbrot and his uncle who see math as a collection of
special cases vs the evil totalitarian Bourbakists who would
do away with these special cases and reduce everything to
one abstract system. Well, I won't ramble about this book here...
> From the book it appears that "The Grass Crown" was the highest honour a
> soldier could get. That was given by other soldiers, just after the
> recipient had done something incredibly spectacular in battle. Sulla
> got it, unlike his rival Marius. However, Marius was not jealous of
> Sulla for that.
That's interesting. I believe it was Marius who, in his military
reforms, introduced the eagle as the legionary standard, replacing
the older unit symbols. Sulla was one of the rare dictators in history
who surrendered power voluntarily (unlike Saddam, Milosevic and co).
Once a private citizen again, he would openly defend his record
as a dictator to all comers in the Roman Forum.
> From the cover, it looks like CM did a lot of research for this book;
> so I suppose that when one strips the fleshing from the novel, possible
> facts such as the one above start to stand out. I know this is a very
> lazy way to understand history, but when one is not a serious
> historian, there does not seem to be other easy ways.
Sure. My own reading of ancient and medieval military history, while
pretty extensive over the past few years, remains at the level of a
history buff, not a historian. It's nice, however, to read historical
novels set in the same time period as the historians you read.
With EAGLE IN THE SNOW Gibbon remains a good source.
Not very historically accurate in all places, I guess, but nice
stories. Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 AD, and Gaiseric's sack in
455 AD, and so on. In EAGLE IN THE SNOW Maximus fights
the Vandals on the Rhine frontier. This was the early part of their
great migration, which took them to Spain and then to North Africa
where they carved out a kingdom. Gibbon is good on this, Gaiseric's
African campaign and later sack of Rome in 455, carrying away the
treasures of Rome even Alaric was too modest to tear away from the
buildings. And Gibbon later describes Belisarius's campaign a century
later against the Vandal kingdom, now grown soft so the Byzantines
were easily able to conquer it. The details are great, with
Gibbon telling the story, for example, of the Jewish holy relics
carried away from Palestine to Rome, then robbed by Gaiseric
and carried to Africa, stored there for a century, and then seized
by Belisarius and carried away to Constantinople, from where
they eventually were returned to Jerusalem.
I think we talked about ancient Indian warfare a few months ago.
This came back in my mind recently because I downloaded a fan
add on to my favourite video game, Rome Total War. In this add on,
Rome Total Realism, a group of dedicated history buffs corrected
many historical inaccuracies in the game, and also expanded the
world map to the East, to include part of India. The Punjab and
Sind are there, with the Hydaspes river and the site of Alexander's
battle against Porus. I've been playing the game as the Bactrian
kingdom, and really the details the fan add on to the game has
added are very nice. The Roman legionaries now talk in Latin!
My Bactrian army is campaigning in Punjab, recruiting Indian
mercenaries with their long cane bows etc. There is an expansion
of this game out too, Barbarian Invasion, which moves the time
period from around 280 BC-14 AD to the migration period,
365 AD- c. 600 AD and allows you to play the German
barbarian nations.
Okay, this post is getting too long, I will stop here.
Arindam Banerjee
Way back in 1986 in India I got one of my research students to use
Fractals to model clouds in our ECCM computer simulations. In those
days computing power was very limited, you see. What we now do with
vast data storage, had to be done with mathematical functionality.
> > From the book it appears that "The Grass Crown" was the highest honour a
> > soldier could get. That was given by other soldiers, just after the
> > recipient had done something incredibly spectacular in battle. Sulla
> > got it, unlike his rival Marius. However, Marius was not jealous of
> > Sulla for that.
>
> That's interesting. I believe it was Marius who, in his military
> reforms, introduced the eagle as the legionary standard, replacing
> the older unit symbols. Sulla was one of the rare dictators in history
> who surrendered power voluntarily (unlike Saddam, Milosevic and co).
> Once a private citizen again, he would openly defend his record
> as a dictator to all comers in the Roman Forum.
It looks like he was the third greatest Roman after Julius Ceasar and
Scipio Africanus. He never lost a battle. He not only defeated
outsiders, but other Italians and even Romans!
Porus with his elephants kicked the shit out of Alex. He had to divide
his troops, send half of them back, give up his Northern conquests to
Porus, and return wiht half his troops the hard way back to Egypt,
after being let go by Porus. On the arduous return journey he was
attacked by the Mallahs (boatmen, the ancestors of Phoolan Devi) and
sorely wounded. Evidently he was in highly reduced circumstances, to
be laid low by Mallahs, whose lot those days could not be much better
than today. So much is obvious from a reading between the lines of
Alex's failed invasion of India, as given in the Ency. Brit. A shabby
story of his success was created, to cover up the failure, and that is
being desperately followed by the Eurocentrics to this day. What you
write above, is yet another propaganda ploy!
Later on, Alex's generals tried to take revenge, and with all the might
of the West behind them, attacked India. However, they were defeated
by the Mauryas and forced to make peace.
Their ultimate revenge was in pushing Buddhism, to supplant Brahminism.
See Gandhara art, that was a fusion of Western and Indian influences,
in the form of the Buddha. Buddhism (a cross between Islam and
Communism) with its emphasis on non-violence and socialism degraded
Indians in the moral and military sense, and thus paved the way for
foreign invasions.
Great kings like Chandragupta and Vikramaditya and Bappa Rawal did
throw out invaders, in future centuries, and thus continue Hindu
prestige; but the debilitating influence of Buddhism, initiated by the
Greeks upon India, was all-too pervasive. Its counter, the even more
peaceful Vaishnavism, sought to contain the masses in the Sanatan
Dharmic fold, but the net effect was double debilitation. So in 1192
India fell to barbaric hordes from Turkey and Afghanistan, and since
then, has not been a fit place to live in, for the most part.
What I found interesting was a reference in the Holy Koran about the
use of elephants in battle. It is explicitly mentioned, and forbidden.
So, the impact the Western world in the past received from Indian war
elephants is clear!
Arindam Banerjee
Sorry, it was not 1986, it was more like 1988-89.
Mason Barge
Mason Barge
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea. If this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Marko Amnell
Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > Way back in 1986 in India I got one of my research students to use
> > Fractals to model clouds in our ECCM computer simulations. In those
> > days computing power was very limited, you see. What we now do with
> > vast data storage, had to be done with mathematical functionality.
>
> Sorry, it was not 1986, it was more like 1988-89.
Makes more sense. Fractals were not really popular until after the
publication of _The Beauty of Fractals: images of complex dynamical
systems_ by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter in 1986.
Here is my favourite quote from Mandelbrot's book _Fractals and Chaos_.
It's from 1891 by Edouard Lucas, who is comparing mathematics and
chemistry in a funny way. Here is the actual page from Mandelbrot's
book, via Google print (you may have to log into see it, I'm not sure):
the last few lines of the quote are on the next page:
I hope this works. If it does, we could quote whole pages from our
favourite books on rec.arts.books this way.
Arindam Banerjee
Marko Amnell wrote:
> Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > > Way back in 1986 in India I got one of my research students to use
> > > Fractals to model clouds in our ECCM computer simulations. In those
> > > days computing power was very limited, you see. What we now do with
> > > vast data storage, had to be done with mathematical functionality.
> >
> > Sorry, it was not 1986, it was more like 1988-89.
>
> Makes more sense. Fractals were not really popular until after the
> publication of _The Beauty of Fractals: images of complex dynamical
> systems_ by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter in 1986.
It was around 1986-87 that I read about them in the Scientific
American. It was a beautiful article. I had made a copy of that
paper, and that came in handy.
> Here is my favourite quote from Mandelbrot's book _Fractals and Chaos_.
Around 1990 I was interested to hear how fractals had been extended to
chaos theory. Absorbing ying-yang stuff. A colleague of mine, Dr
Richard Taylor, gave a talk on that around that time - how
mathematically there is order in chaos, and chaos in order.
Arindam Banerjee
Marko Amnell wrote:
> Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > Arindam Banerjee wrote:
> > > Way back in 1986 in India I got one of my research students to use
> > > Fractals to model clouds in our ECCM computer simulations. In those
> > > days computing power was very limited, you see. What we now do with
> > > vast data storage, had to be done with mathematical functionality.
> >
> > Sorry, it was not 1986, it was more like 1988-89.
>
> Makes more sense. Fractals were not really popular until after the
> publication of _The Beauty of Fractals: images of complex dynamical
> systems_ by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter in 1986.
>
> Here is my favourite quote from Mandelbrot's book _Fractals and Chaos_.
> It's from 1891 by Edouard Lucas, who is comparing mathematics and
> chemistry in a funny way. Here is the actual page from Mandelbrot's
> book, via Google print (you may have to log into see it, I'm not sure):
>
> http://tinyurl.com/dzt6r
Thanks Marko, I logged into it, and read the matter with interest.
My feeling is that mathematicians are getting a bit too much out of
sync. with the real world, with undue emphasis on the abstract issues.
There are many very important practical issues in the world that can be
analysed with tailored supercomputing solutions, by modelling and
simulation of the most complex systems. I have had the privilege of
working on them, in my entire professional career. New theoretical
insights can only arise from such pursuits, as there will be some solid
absolute bases. Unfortunately, such industrial research is being
increasingly shut down due to business pressure on the one hand, and on
the other hand is looked down upon by the academic "purists". The net
result is that hand-waving bordering on bullshitting prevails in the
inevitably relativistic award-winning circles, so that the very concept
of research - trying to see what is truth - will grow increasingly
irrelevant with time; and thus, humanity will take on the forms and
aspects of its current political leaders; that is, become small, mean,
stupid, superstitious and cowardly.
ok.pre...@gmail.com
"Here is my favourite quote from Mandelbrot's book _Fractals and
Chaos_.
It's from 1891 by Edouard Lucas, who is comparing mathematics and
chemistry in a funny way. "
Marko,
Since you're interested in complexity theory, fractals, etc, I am
wondering if you're familiar with the work of Walter Fontana. He's a
chemist at the Santa Fe Institute who is building a conception of
chemistry based on the lambda-calculus, and he has tried to establish
relationships between autocatalytic sets (which seem to have been very
fundamental to the origin of life on earth) and the mathematics of the
lambda-calculus (on which, as you know, Lisp -- the programming
language that rabber John McCarthy invented -- is based).
-Sayan.
Marko Amnell
Yes, I have heard to Fontana, but No I'm not at all familiar with the
details of his work. His attempt to connect chemistry and math is
much more concrete than that of Edouard Lucas, who was really
just elaborating a fanciful conceit in that quote (square, cubic
numbers etc being somehow similar to the study of crystals and
so on). And in fact, I'm not primarily interested in complexity theory
and fractals at all. I took one course at the Computer Science
Department of my local University and it happened to be on the
theory of computation (using the now classic COMPUTERS AND
INTRACTIBILITY by Garey & Johnson as the textbook). This was
mainly to get some understanding of the P vs NP problem. My
interest in math started out with mathematical physics (already
in high school and the first few years of university), moved on to
logic and set theory (and I came across the lambda calculus at
that time) for a few years, and is now focused on number theory
and geometry. I do try to read widely in the subject, however
(maybe too widely?) as I think a wide mathematical culture is
a good thing. Recently e.g. I've been struggling to understand
things like REPRESENTATIONS OF FINITE-DIMENSIONAL
ALGEBRAS by Peter Gabriel and Andrei Roiter (two pioneers in
this field) because I think it's a fascinating subject (and makes
use of highly elaborate systems of diagrams in proofs) but I'm
having trouble because of my limited understanding of
algebraic geometry.
P.S. I wonder if the first name "Sayan" signed above indicates that
the great Sayan Bhattacharya has returned to RAB?
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>ok.pre...@gmail.com wrote:
>My
>interest in math started out with mathematical physics (already
>in high school and the first few years of university), moved on to
>logic and set theory (and I came across the lambda calculus at
>that time) for a few years, and is now focused on number theory
>and geometry. I do try to read widely in the subject, however
>(maybe too widely?) as I think a wide mathematical culture is
>a good thing.
Yes, absolutely. I now regret very much that I never paid sufficient
attention in my mathematics classes when I was an undergraduate, although
I had to take a whopping eight of them at university on account of
being in electrical engineering. An opportunity missed.
I recently read a few (more or less popular) books on complexity
and fractals, etc. and was very fascinated, especially by Gary Flake's
_The Computational Beauty of Nature_, which gives a good overview of
the field and also goes slightly deeper into the mathematics than
the usual popular science books.
By the way, Douglas Hofstadter has a new book coming out in March 2006
called _I am a Strange Loop_. I heard him give a talk a few months ago
about some things in the book and it seems the book will be quite
fascinating (as I find all his books to be).
>P.S. I wonder if the first name "Sayan" signed above indicates that
>the great Sayan Bhattacharya has returned to RAB?
I am indeed the Sayan Bhattacharyya of yore, though I cannot lay claim to
any greatness. Your posts, Marko, were and always are a pleasure to read
and always a source of suggestions of books I'd like to read some day. I
have many of your old rab postings clipped away, actually, as part of my
books-to-read-some-day list.
Best,
-Sayan.
Marko Amnell
Sayan Bhattacharyya wrote:
> I recently read a few (more or less popular) books on complexity
> and fractals, etc. and was very fascinated, especially by Gary Flake's
> _The Computational Beauty of Nature_, which gives a good overview of
> the field and also goes slightly deeper into the mathematics than
> the usual popular science books.
If you like fractals, you might want to check out:
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/java/attract/attract.htm
"If your browser supports Java, you will see above an endless
succession of fractal images produced by the iterated map
xnew = a + bx + cx2 + dxy + ey + fy2, ynew = x, znew = y,
with a through f chosen randomly over the range -3 to 3. Only
those cases that are bounded and exhibit sensitive dependence
on initial conditions (chaos) are exhibited. The other 99.7% are
discarded. Each iterate is plotted at (x, y) in a hue proportional
to z. Like snowflakes, these strange attractors come in infinite
variety with no two the same. Each one you see is new and
almost certainly has never been seen before."