I’m in the middle of preparing for a paper on Brutus in Julius Caesar, wherein I plan to talk about how his character matches up to Roman Republican Ideals. In these preparations I have found – once again in Robin Lane Fox’s excellent survey history – that in the First Punic War the Romans lit pigs on fire and sent them amongst enemy elephants in order to panic them.
Another point of interest, between 91-89 BC, Rome’s Italian allies revolted and declared themselves “Italy” with their own Senate. They had their own coinage. On the coins? A sexually aroused bull goring a Roman she-wolf. How charming.
[...] reporting on his experiences studying at University College in London this semester. He reports here that he has learned that “in the First Punic War the Romans lit pigs on fire and sent them [...]
By: Pater Familias » FLAMING PIGS. on 30 January, 2008
at 7:37 pm
Wow! One of my favorite young adult books (actually one of my favorite books ever) has a part where one of the villagers has a chicken that catches on fire and runs around setting the cottage on fire. The narrator of the book (Catherine, Called Birdy) jokes that the English king should be told of this, for it would be an excellent tactic in the war with the Scots. I wonder if the author was inspired by this true story. She did a great deal of research for her book so I wouldn’t really be surprised.
By: Annalisa on 30 January, 2008
at 9:45 pm
I remember reading somewhere that part of medieval sieges involved catapulting dead animals into the besieged castle, to create a pestilence problem. People are so creative in these matters.
By: Mary Jane Schaefer on 31 January, 2008
at 4:49 pm
Tom Sharpe has a novel with exploding giraffes running through a town. Nick, you might read some Tom Sharpe if you want something funny and in bad taste, sort of a cross between Evelyn Waugh and a traveling-salesman story. The one I laughed the hardest at is his first, which is dedicated to the South African police. The blurb stated that Sharpe had been deported from South Africa after one year operating a photographic supplies business. I felt about the novel at first that it must be fantasy that those police were such monsters of depravity, but I later realized that this was simple gritty realism. It was like my initial reaction that Raymond Chandler must be part fantasy: movie starlets don’t hang out with gangsters; there aren’t hospitals where “doctors” keep inconvenient people drugged. All, it turns out. simple realism, at least at that time.
By: Elmer on 1 February, 2008
at 5:58 pm