How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most beloved intellectual

Re:How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most ... by foldr on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @07:31AM (#16273350)

I'm not sure why you assume he would have been a conscript.

There is no reason to think that a few interracial marriages in Roman times would have left much of a trace in the modern genetic record. Surely no-one would get so up in arms about a cartoon that showed a Saxon married to a Norman, but we have no modern "genetic record" of this either. We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that interracial marriages existed in Roman Britain, often involving soldiers.

Talk about the "genetic record" might seem sciency sounding, but its really the historical evidence that's much more informative in this instance.

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Re:How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most ... by patrickg_zill on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @12:06PM (#16275370)

I think we are not far from each other in what we understand... the issue raised between Beard and Taleb seems to revolve around the meaning of "typical" .

Beard seems to say, "it was possible that it could have happened, here are a few Ethiopians for instance that we know were in Roman Britain, for example".

Taleb seems to say "typical means what is likely to have happened 50% or more of the time; since there was no chance that Roman Britain had 50% of marriages with children that involved Ethiopians/Berbers/etc. thus Beard is very wrong"

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Re:How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most ... by foldr on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @12:25PM (#16275527)

Beard's point is that we really have no idea what "typical" ethnic backgrounds were for Roman families in Britain. There's just no reliable data, and it most likely would have varied enormously between different parts of the country.

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