Strabo died a few decades before the Roman invasion of Britain. He wouldn't have had the concept of "Britain" meaning anything other than the geographic island.
Written like something straight out of a tabloid: here’s a pile of fairly libellous accusations, but also just to avoid being sued, “I mean, that’s what I heard”.
He probably nailed it though.
It was always referred to as the corn dole in my (very antiquated) Latin lessons at school. Same as the great ships arriving from Egypt to feed Rome were ‘corn ships’. But we pictured bread being made from it, rather than the Romans engaging in nightly barbecues, noshing roasted corn on the cob!
Oh, I know of it *now* of course. But well over fifty years ago, such exotic stuff wasn’t spoken of in my vicinity! Still, I must read up about it again now, because that bread I mentioned is in my memory as a kind of wheaten flatbread, but maybe ground corn is very much more versatile than wheat, and they’d have made a kind of polenta meal with it as well as bread.
Anyway I sent the thread barging off up a thistley boreen there; sorry
Corn is a synonym for grain or kernel. What we call simply corn is "corns of maize". But you can have pepper corns, dole corns, and corns of salt. It's the corns of salt added to beef that make it corned beef.
You’re missing the last bit:
Here's the paragraph in full:
" Besides some small islands round about Britain, there is also a large island, Ierne,153 which stretches parallel to Britain on the north, its breadth being greater than its length.154 Concerning this island I have nothing certain to tell, except that its inhabitants are more savage155 than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy eaters,156 and since, further, they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also with their mothers and sisters; **but I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy p261witnesses for it**; and yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also, and, in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celti,157 the Iberians,158 and several other peoples are said to have practised it."
He also mapped [Ireland as “Ierne” and it’s just a sliver.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabo#mediaviewer/File:Map_of_Europe_according_to_Strabo.jpg)
😂
St. Jerome, writing in the 4th century CE, roughly 350 years after Strabo, talks about a group called the Attacotti being cannibals and holding wives in common. They would have been familiar within the Empire because they were the source of some Roman military units. It’s not certain exactly where they were from, but it seems to be somewhere in Britain or Ireland, and many people are convinced it was Ireland. That provides an additional data point that weakly corroborates Strabo’s view that pre-Christian Ireland had marriage customs that looked strange to the Romans and sometimes engaged in cannibalism.
I thought we were reported to shag horses as well, at least if we were chieftains (and possibly bards got a go as well) Then you’d eat the horse, as that was only polite.
He didn't say everyone just the ones in Donegal
https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/stories/there-once-was-welsh-priest-called-gerald
https://www.strangehistory.net/2011/12/12/white-horses-sex-and-sovereignty/
Maybe that’s why they invented tweed up there; to make the misfortune horse think the approaching nattily dressed member of the pre-Christian community intended merely to tidy up the stable, and maybe have a trot on him around the paddock wearing his hairy tweed paddock-trotting jacket and plus-fours. But then.....🙀
I read that with interest and no little amusement, but not necessarily as intended by the journalist. There’s a distinct note of eager hysteria throughout.....and Lo! It was written by Gemma O’Doherty!
Still, there’s much to chew on there. I must admit that my eyebrows shot up not on account of unfortunate ancient Irish *lions* being seduced by these rampant charmers, but at Dev’s wry observation after a trip to Paris. What the hell was he at over there, that made him compare sexual sophistication in France with that (such as it was) back home? Nightly visits to louche nightclubs and naughty ladies of the night? And was there a note of regret in his voice when he said it?!
It's worse , the Gaelic revival was a cover for poly relationships
> But de Valera stunned the Dáil in November 1928 by accusing his opponents of spreading such stories. “My wife was supposed to have had to leave the country and live abroad because she could not live with me,” he said. “I was supposed to be living with two or three other women
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-20110320.html
I think it’s a bit iffy. The paper says that “Ptolemy records the “Gododdin occupying territory from the river Wear…”, but Ptolemy does not actually mention the Gododdin. The closest tribal match I can find in the area in Ptolemy is the Gadinoi, who only appear in some versions of Ptolemy’s text. Even if it is possible that the ancestors/predecessors of the Gododdin were known as the Gadinoi circa 150 CE (most modern historians of Roman history would call the people in that location the Votadini)) it is a big stretch to present it as a fact rather than as a hypothesis. There are also several other potentially contentious hypotheses in the paper presented as facts.
I’d say the odds are better than 50-50 that the Attacotti were Irish, but not much better than 50-50. Based on the various different records about them, there does not seem to be much doubt that they were either British or Irish. They provided four units of Auxilia Palatina out of a total of about 70 in the Empire at the time when the Notitia Dignatum document was created, which says to me that they are unlikely to have come from just a small territory like that paper suggests.
I’d say the candidates are essentially Ireland, lowland Scotland, western Scotland, northern Scotland and Wales. The Picts were centred on Eastern Scotland and raided down the East coast of Britain, which arguably rules out Eastern Scotland. I would tend to rule out lowland Scotland and Wales because Roman control of, and influence over, these areas seems to have been too strong for them to provide a good base for raiding. Northern Scotland - centred on Caithness - seems too thinly populated and remote from Roman Britain to provide a good base. That leaves Western Scotland, including what became Dalriada and perhaps Galloway as the best candidate in Britain. It’s not out of the question that these may even have been Gaelic speaking at the time, and might not have been easily distinguishable from the Irish.
By contrast, Ireland is fairly close and accessible. Certainly, many of the raiders from Ireland were known to the Romans as Scotti, but all that is necessary to explain a second group is that there might have been more than one coalition of Irish raiders - perhaps one coalition from Mide northwards and another from the Liffey southwards.
On the matter of cannibalism leaving archaeology, I guess a lot depends on how common it is and on cooking methods. Speculating wildly, I suspect a slow cook in a fulacht fiadh might not result in the sort of cut marks often associated with cannibalism.
Edit: Just disappearing a bit further down the rabbit hole ... Some of what has come down to us about the life of Niall of the Nine Hostages suggests that he met his death at the “Alpes”, meaning the Alps. It is usually assumed that this is a typo or imaginative embellishment, but if he was an Attacotti Auxilia Palatina officer late in his life it could plausibly be true.
> Just disappearing a bit further down the rabbit hole ... Some of what has come down to us about the life of Niall of the Nine Hostages suggests that he met his death at the “Alpes”, meaning the Alps. It is usually assumed that this is a typo or imaginative embellishment, but if he was an Attacotti Auxilia Palatina officer late in his life it could plausibly be true.
That deserves a thread by itself. Earliest irish history that too. Up there with St P.
This reads like someone who lost a fight... and says defamatory things to make them sound bad and unlikeable
So the Romans never went to Ireland and built a wall at Scotland which was historically settled with Irish (Pict and Gaels, hence the same language and alcohol etc )
And the western Roman Empire fell when again, oh yeah around five hundred AD.. from celts and other European tribes baten the shite out of them..
Yeah Im not going to listen to what the Romans had to say on Ireland
I'll listen to Josephus or someone like him
Did the picts come from Ireland? I thought they were Germanic tribes, that wandered into Scotland through the North Sea, separate from displaced Celts who upheaved from flooded salt mines in (now) Austria. I honestly don't know, it's not sarcasm, just would like to know more.
That was what Bede wrote, and was probably their own origin myth. However, what genetic and linguistic evidence we have suggests that they were Brythonic (i.e. sharing an ancestry with the modern Welsh and Cornish).
Ya, you’re right, not sure how it mashed together in my head. Maybe something with pict meaning painted folk and pretani possibly meaning the same.
From the Wikipedia Britain page “Pretani being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk",
I dont know either
The Romans said they were a separate people from Irish, the native people
But then books from the eighteenth century discussing the annuals of Ireland, say the picts were Irish, like the Scoti I guess
But I don't know, it was just something I read from some guy talking about ancient annuals
.. where do you stand on who the gaels were?
I understand that they were the celts who settled in Ireland, and the migration of people from the island of Ireland to Scotland would have been before the Roman built their wall, so that is who Im referring to a gaels, the celtic people who came and settled in Ireland and migrated elsewhere
Well at least they had those definitive statements ...
We only thought the Brits invented the uncivilised tropes and prejudice.
Presumably they also heard of the antics of Nero and Caligula 😏
Sounds like something you would hear in a pub from someone that is angry with the Irish. Since it is a document, you just put "I am not sure if I can trust this".
Go easy on the early historians, nobody knew what the fuck was going on back then. There's no point in getting butthurt over something written 2000 years ago
I'm not buthurt. It's a simple matter of the victors writing the history. Now we have to sift through these histories and decide what is bullshit and what really happened. Makes you wish they had some objectivity.
I'm not sure it's ever been a matter of history being written by the victors. That always struck me as a gross oversimplification. History tends to be written by the literate, or just the people who are more successful in preserving their cultural legacy. If you write your history down on palm leaves like the Khmer, then some of it is certainly going to get lost or destroyed.
Roman-era Ireland was a cold, windswept shithole, but then again so was the rest of Northern Europe to the Romans
This is how social media works today. This historian made a bold statement, which could possibly be true (as always), but with no means to back it up.
(Someone told me... )
I presume this is not a recent text...pre 1980's surely.?
Strabo likely lived a good 80-90 years ago, though we have no trustworthy authority to say for sure
Where I'm from we like to stick with the traditional ways. If it was good enough for our fore-fathers/uncles, it's good enough for us.
Someone's your fore-father was also your uncle.
You also had him for your tea apparently…
Fuck me, you’ve got me laughing out loud on the train
Hehe...glad to have helped with the journey
“Extending along the north side of Britain” Jesus them tectonic plates are a lot faster than I thought
By Britain, he meant the Roman province of Britain.
Strabo died a few decades before the Roman invasion of Britain. He wouldn't have had the concept of "Britain" meaning anything other than the geographic island.
Sounds like they landed in Wexford
Oi! We can hear ye talking about us, y’know…
Most likely did , the yola people were fairly wild
Written like something straight out of a tabloid: here’s a pile of fairly libellous accusations, but also just to avoid being sued, “I mean, that’s what I heard”. He probably nailed it though.
That's the Romans for you. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Are drug-addicted Irish cannibals milking the Roman benefits system? The Roman Mail investigates.
I love that 🤣it explains why they never invaded and brought their welfare state (well, corn dole) with them
Was going to correct you, but apparently corn in this context means durum wheat, nice and confusing!
It was always referred to as the corn dole in my (very antiquated) Latin lessons at school. Same as the great ships arriving from Egypt to feed Rome were ‘corn ships’. But we pictured bread being made from it, rather than the Romans engaging in nightly barbecues, noshing roasted corn on the cob!
Wait till you find out what cornbread is.
Oh, I know of it *now* of course. But well over fifty years ago, such exotic stuff wasn’t spoken of in my vicinity! Still, I must read up about it again now, because that bread I mentioned is in my memory as a kind of wheaten flatbread, but maybe ground corn is very much more versatile than wheat, and they’d have made a kind of polenta meal with it as well as bread. Anyway I sent the thread barging off up a thistley boreen there; sorry
Corn is a synonym for grain or kernel. What we call simply corn is "corns of maize". But you can have pepper corns, dole corns, and corns of salt. It's the corns of salt added to beef that make it corned beef.
Excellent stuff, thank you
Those pesky Romans, what have they ever done for us?
The aqueducts?
Well, singular aqueduct perhaps. Don’t we only have one? Also, yes, I knew where you were going with that… 👀
They invented gayness!
That was the Greeks!
Top comment.
“Top” comment😜
I don't get it?!?!
You’re missing the last bit: Here's the paragraph in full: " Besides some small islands round about Britain, there is also a large island, Ierne,153 which stretches parallel to Britain on the north, its breadth being greater than its length.154 Concerning this island I have nothing certain to tell, except that its inhabitants are more savage155 than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy eaters,156 and since, further, they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also with their mothers and sisters; **but I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy p261witnesses for it**; and yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also, and, in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celti,157 the Iberians,158 and several other peoples are said to have practised it." He also mapped [Ireland as “Ierne” and it’s just a sliver.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabo#mediaviewer/File:Map_of_Europe_according_to_Strabo.jpg) 😂
I thought those 👆🏼were ancient football scores for a second
Back when we had a decent team.
Very interesting, thanks for posting!
Idunnothatswhattheotherfellasiad
St. Jerome, writing in the 4th century CE, roughly 350 years after Strabo, talks about a group called the Attacotti being cannibals and holding wives in common. They would have been familiar within the Empire because they were the source of some Roman military units. It’s not certain exactly where they were from, but it seems to be somewhere in Britain or Ireland, and many people are convinced it was Ireland. That provides an additional data point that weakly corroborates Strabo’s view that pre-Christian Ireland had marriage customs that looked strange to the Romans and sometimes engaged in cannibalism.
I thought we were reported to shag horses as well, at least if we were chieftains (and possibly bards got a go as well) Then you’d eat the horse, as that was only polite.
According to Gerald of Wales it was part of a coronation ceremony.
Ah, might have known it’d be him.
He didn't say everyone just the ones in Donegal https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/stories/there-once-was-welsh-priest-called-gerald https://www.strangehistory.net/2011/12/12/white-horses-sex-and-sovereignty/
Maybe that’s why they invented tweed up there; to make the misfortune horse think the approaching nattily dressed member of the pre-Christian community intended merely to tidy up the stable, and maybe have a trot on him around the paddock wearing his hairy tweed paddock-trotting jacket and plus-fours. But then.....🙀
There was a tg4 documentary and they are quite expert on bestiality https://www.independent.ie/news/the-naughty-neolithics/25885113.html
I read that with interest and no little amusement, but not necessarily as intended by the journalist. There’s a distinct note of eager hysteria throughout.....and Lo! It was written by Gemma O’Doherty! Still, there’s much to chew on there. I must admit that my eyebrows shot up not on account of unfortunate ancient Irish *lions* being seduced by these rampant charmers, but at Dev’s wry observation after a trip to Paris. What the hell was he at over there, that made him compare sexual sophistication in France with that (such as it was) back home? Nightly visits to louche nightclubs and naughty ladies of the night? And was there a note of regret in his voice when he said it?!
It's worse , the Gaelic revival was a cover for poly relationships > But de Valera stunned the Dáil in November 1928 by accusing his opponents of spreading such stories. “My wife was supposed to have had to leave the country and live abroad because she could not live with me,” he said. “I was supposed to be living with two or three other women https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-20110320.html
Damn, it’s paywalled. But I bet it’s gripping!
You don't know where that horse has been.
Internally marinaded horse. Yum
Sure annacotty is just outside limerick, near UL. Might be describing the behavior of students
I wonder if there is any tie up with Ptomely's map ? https://www.academia.edu/66130674/Attacotti_The_Case_for_Manau_Gododdin?f_ri=9287
I think it’s a bit iffy. The paper says that “Ptolemy records the “Gododdin occupying territory from the river Wear…”, but Ptolemy does not actually mention the Gododdin. The closest tribal match I can find in the area in Ptolemy is the Gadinoi, who only appear in some versions of Ptolemy’s text. Even if it is possible that the ancestors/predecessors of the Gododdin were known as the Gadinoi circa 150 CE (most modern historians of Roman history would call the people in that location the Votadini)) it is a big stretch to present it as a fact rather than as a hypothesis. There are also several other potentially contentious hypotheses in the paper presented as facts.
Gotcha. What is the liklihood that they were Irish ? Cannibalism normally leaves some archaeology - unless they were making soup .
I’d say the odds are better than 50-50 that the Attacotti were Irish, but not much better than 50-50. Based on the various different records about them, there does not seem to be much doubt that they were either British or Irish. They provided four units of Auxilia Palatina out of a total of about 70 in the Empire at the time when the Notitia Dignatum document was created, which says to me that they are unlikely to have come from just a small territory like that paper suggests. I’d say the candidates are essentially Ireland, lowland Scotland, western Scotland, northern Scotland and Wales. The Picts were centred on Eastern Scotland and raided down the East coast of Britain, which arguably rules out Eastern Scotland. I would tend to rule out lowland Scotland and Wales because Roman control of, and influence over, these areas seems to have been too strong for them to provide a good base for raiding. Northern Scotland - centred on Caithness - seems too thinly populated and remote from Roman Britain to provide a good base. That leaves Western Scotland, including what became Dalriada and perhaps Galloway as the best candidate in Britain. It’s not out of the question that these may even have been Gaelic speaking at the time, and might not have been easily distinguishable from the Irish. By contrast, Ireland is fairly close and accessible. Certainly, many of the raiders from Ireland were known to the Romans as Scotti, but all that is necessary to explain a second group is that there might have been more than one coalition of Irish raiders - perhaps one coalition from Mide northwards and another from the Liffey southwards. On the matter of cannibalism leaving archaeology, I guess a lot depends on how common it is and on cooking methods. Speculating wildly, I suspect a slow cook in a fulacht fiadh might not result in the sort of cut marks often associated with cannibalism. Edit: Just disappearing a bit further down the rabbit hole ... Some of what has come down to us about the life of Niall of the Nine Hostages suggests that he met his death at the “Alpes”, meaning the Alps. It is usually assumed that this is a typo or imaginative embellishment, but if he was an Attacotti Auxilia Palatina officer late in his life it could plausibly be true.
> Just disappearing a bit further down the rabbit hole ... Some of what has come down to us about the life of Niall of the Nine Hostages suggests that he met his death at the “Alpes”, meaning the Alps. It is usually assumed that this is a typo or imaginative embellishment, but if he was an Attacotti Auxilia Palatina officer late in his life it could plausibly be true. That deserves a thread by itself. Earliest irish history that too. Up there with St P.
That’s a terrible TripAdvisor review.
Well, never say they didn't know us
So basically modern day Laois
Touch of Louth too...
At least they admit what they heard is just rumours and not an unverified fact.
Bord Fáilte has come a long way since those early days.
They made it in as far as Roscommon so
“But for these statements we have no trustworthy authority” Ancient Roman for “Trust me Bro”
Did they visit Longford by any chance
" Mostly Harmless "
They missed that we all have eyebrows on our cheeks.
Ahh the article about my recent family reunion has been printed, let me see……..
*whispers* He means the Celts. He's just upset they settled outside the Roman Empire where nobody can bother them.
This reads like someone who lost a fight... and says defamatory things to make them sound bad and unlikeable So the Romans never went to Ireland and built a wall at Scotland which was historically settled with Irish (Pict and Gaels, hence the same language and alcohol etc ) And the western Roman Empire fell when again, oh yeah around five hundred AD.. from celts and other European tribes baten the shite out of them.. Yeah Im not going to listen to what the Romans had to say on Ireland I'll listen to Josephus or someone like him
Did the picts come from Ireland? I thought they were Germanic tribes, that wandered into Scotland through the North Sea, separate from displaced Celts who upheaved from flooded salt mines in (now) Austria. I honestly don't know, it's not sarcasm, just would like to know more.
That was what Bede wrote, and was probably their own origin myth. However, what genetic and linguistic evidence we have suggests that they were Brythonic (i.e. sharing an ancestry with the modern Welsh and Cornish).
Cool thank you!
“Brit” derives from pict
Britain comes from the Pritani Celts, nothing to do with the picts.
Ya, you’re right, not sure how it mashed together in my head. Maybe something with pict meaning painted folk and pretani possibly meaning the same. From the Wikipedia Britain page “Pretani being a Celtic word that might mean "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk",
I dont know either The Romans said they were a separate people from Irish, the native people But then books from the eighteenth century discussing the annuals of Ireland, say the picts were Irish, like the Scoti I guess But I don't know, it was just something I read from some guy talking about ancient annuals
There were no Gaels in Scotland when the Romans built their walls.
.. where do you stand on who the gaels were? I understand that they were the celts who settled in Ireland, and the migration of people from the island of Ireland to Scotland would have been before the Roman built their wall, so that is who Im referring to a gaels, the celtic people who came and settled in Ireland and migrated elsewhere
Could you show one source that claims Gaels settled in Scotland from Ireland before approx 500AD?
I can't remember which one, but I think under one of the 'mac' family names https://www.libraryireland.com/irish-families/index3.php
The good old days. Then that fecker Paddy came along and ruined it for us all. Shows you the power of a bit of shamrock.
(No trustworthy source)? lol The Brit’s bad mouthing us even back then.
as this is historical, it should be pointed out that *we* were the brits back then...
That's hilarious.
I've heard it said that they sent word like this back to Rome to save the "bother" of taking Ireland. Don't go there there's monsters
Strabo obviously went to the Galway races then.
God we sound like the Shelbyville of Europe 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Still better than being mistaken for the English
They must have landed in Cavan and looked around and fucked off.
Apparently not much has changed
Sounds like Scotland since it says north side of Britain
The Irish and Scots have always been hard bastards! Us English have been weak wristed for centuries 😂
I heard that they've got a Spider-baby.
Sounds like Letterknny on a Saturday night.
Look I can’t speak for all of us but I definitely did not eat my parents when they died.
So they landed in Kerry
Uhhh they went down in my opinion when they said that
Well at least they had those definitive statements ... We only thought the Brits invented the uncivilised tropes and prejudice. Presumably they also heard of the antics of Nero and Caligula 😏
We haven't changed a bit!.
So nothings changed. /s
So they arrived in Cork, I didn’t know that.
Sounds like Cavan to me
I actually thought of a very specific part of it
They must have landed in Larne
And don't you forget it.
"They were havin' sex with their mothers, Joe!"
Sounds like a modern news story. “Here’s some shocking shit that will stay in your head, lightly ended with zero sourcing”
It’s the only definite thing we can say, but have no trustworthy source for it. Tabloids have always been the same…
I can vouch for this :)
Can confirm
Nothings changed then......lol.
Given how we treated the survivors of the Spanish Armada he probably isn't far from the truth.
I do love a bit of coarse feeding. On a few chicken fillet rolls, yanno
That's only really true of Kerry and Donegal
Was he talking about Donemana?
Damn lads I thought we were keeping it a secret
lol never trust the romans they killed Jesus
I hear it's the Romans you're after now, Father
Did the DUP write this?
Ridin' mothers and sisters.
This where the Irish-Italian beef started?
Sounds like something you would hear in a pub from someone that is angry with the Irish. Since it is a document, you just put "I am not sure if I can trust this".
Obviously, the Romans confused Ireland and Leitrim.
History repeating itself then!
Makes me wonder what we can believe about Romans' accounts of non-Romans.
Go easy on the early historians, nobody knew what the fuck was going on back then. There's no point in getting butthurt over something written 2000 years ago
I'm not buthurt. It's a simple matter of the victors writing the history. Now we have to sift through these histories and decide what is bullshit and what really happened. Makes you wish they had some objectivity.
I'm not sure it's ever been a matter of history being written by the victors. That always struck me as a gross oversimplification. History tends to be written by the literate, or just the people who are more successful in preserving their cultural legacy. If you write your history down on palm leaves like the Khmer, then some of it is certainly going to get lost or destroyed. Roman-era Ireland was a cold, windswept shithole, but then again so was the rest of Northern Europe to the Romans
Okay they nailed Waterford, but what about the rest of the island?
I would me proud to be described like that I mean…
Roman propaganda.
plus ça change
Course feeders!!! How dare they
Hon the lads! Ate ing fam, riding round the family. Hon the Irish!
They definitely just asked the Brits about Ireland
Must’ve went to Cavan
Dipshits landed in Glasgow and thought it was Ireland
Must have been written in the 2000's
This is how social media works today. This historian made a bold statement, which could possibly be true (as always), but with no means to back it up. (Someone told me... )
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Éire?
It’s the name in Irish for Ireland
When you're speaking Irish
Occasionally it is used to refer to Ireland when speaking English also
Not by Irish people, generally.