Roman Empire in the UK and DNA of the Roman Legions

[Rena]

Some great puns appearing today 

I shall be watching the Channel 4 programme tonight and hope it's as interesting as one I watched last night where a group of men built a basic boat from bent willow branches, animal hides and grease to see if it was feasible that islanders, including Vikings, could cross the turbulent narrow channel which is extremely dangerous considering it's the place where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Success after five hours of solid rowing, poor things.

[Skoosh]

Rena, you might think they would have put a wee sail up & saved all that rowing, a coo's hide would be the very thing with one hand on the rudder & the other on the coos tail, so a "tail-wind" was invented! 

The Viking slavery prog was good but Oliver still a scunner!

Skoosh.

[Rena]

Rena, you might think they would have put a wee sail up & saved all that rowing, a coo's hide would be the very thing with one hand on the rudder & the other on the coos tail, so a "tail-wind" was invented! 

The Viking slavery prog was good but Oliver still a scunner!

Skoosh.

 

lol - if you'd seen the image of the viking boat they "copied" and the eventual rowing boat they put together you'd have had a bit more to say 

Aye, Oliver's hair is showing its age, but how do you break into TV unless you have something unique to offer - such as a main of long wavy hair?  Bet it keeps his head warm in winter 

[JACK GEE]

Hi Skoos, i am loving this thread.
But my Aussie translation has trouble with SCUNNER.

cHEERS
JACK

[CarolA3]

Quick tip for meanings of UK dialect/regional/archaic words: https://www.google.co.uk

Save it to your favourites list, and you'll never be baffled again!  Try it with 'scunner' - I just did

Carol

[Rena]

Good evening,

Back tracking a little to Rena's mention of slaves who owned slaves. She mentions that the girl was owned by Vegetus who was owned by Montanus in turn owned by the emporer.

That short piece says a lot, it tells me that Montanus was an important person. The fact that the emporer owned him is a crucial fact, why would a slave owned by him be in Britain. Quite simply, he was most likely Frumantaria, (the emporers private spy network). He  would have had immediate access to the communication line back to Rome and would keep the emporer informed of what people were doing to whom, with what and when.

Owning his own slaves was a perk of the job and helped keep his cover from being blown. Whatever job he supposedly had in Britain would have been a cover for his other activities.

John915

Spies?  You whet my appetite.  After copying and pasting "Frumantaria"into my search engine, I was met with pages of gobbledegook (Latin?), but was rewarded when searching using the root of the word and bingo - up popped "Frumentarii".

For those who enjoy peeping into a veritable viper's nest it's a blood thirsty experience.  Thank goodness I didn't live in those eras!!

[John915]

Good afternoon,

They were indeed a nasty lot. Originally uniformed officials charged with the purchase of grain and other supplies. It was quickly realised that they were ideally placed to gather info about the countries they were in.

From there it was a short step to spying on there own countrymen, the Romans were a nasty, suspicious lot all round and as we know, there was more infighting amongst the Romans than there was against others.

Several of the emperors had their own private spy networks and some of the nastiest were slaves. One or two were more powerful than the Roman hierachy with the direct ear of the emperor for whom they also carried out assassinations as a result of their spying.

Perhaps DNA tests on some of the last centuries famous spies would show it runs in the family, for centuries past.

John915

[Skoosh]

"Fair scunnered at this weather!" 

Skoosh.

[ke]

I have 6% autosomal DNA from Southern Europe (Italy and Greece), I think it might be from the Roman period but there's no definitive way of prooving that.

Other than that I seem to match Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch people, not really a surprise for East Anglia.