thinkquest.org
This week we are leading up to a special kind of climax. An epic moment in theavantguardian’s history will unveil itself properly next Monday the First of March. We will have a logo. Righteous. We are moving on up. But in order to get a logo we have decided to hold a logo competition. Thus moving on up facilitated by our readership. The artistic (wo)man we love thee. Link here:
http://theavantguardian.org/2010/02/20/the-avant-guardian-logo-competition/
In honor of the logo competition we will focus our thoughts on branding. We hope to be branded. I am sure some of my fellow compatriots will have lots of interesting angles on what that means, or whether it is a good thing or not, so without bogging you down with my thoughts, I will leave you with a story from Ancient Rome. It tells of a slave revolution around the year 135 B.C. in Sicily. The slaves rose up because of cruel treatment. One of the things that was unjustly done to them was skin branding. Keep in mind that the Romans typically branded their slaves ON THEIR FACES, and the contemporary reader would understand this. The whole thing is super METAL. Nothing like a primary source badassery to start your week:
From Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historika (The History of the World) written in the first century B.C:
“The slave war in Sicily began for the following reasons. The Sicilians who had done well and accumulated large reserves of wealth bought huge numbers of slaves. They brought herds of them to Sicily from the places where they had been raised and immediately branded them and put identifying marks on their bodies. They used very young boys as shepards; the others they used as needs arose. They treated them harshly, worked them too hard, and were little concerned about their food and clothing… Crushed by their physical hardships and mistreated, almost beyond reason, with frequent beatings, the slaves could no longer patiently endure. When they had the opportunity to do so, they met and talked about a revolt, until finally they put their plan in action…
historyrockscom.wordpress.com
“The revolt actually began in this way. There was a man in Enna name Damophilus, very wealthy but also very arrogant. He was excessively cruel to his slaves, and his wife, Megallis was every bit his rival in torture and other inhumane treatment of the slaves. Having been so savagely abused, the slaves turned into wild animals and plotted an uprising and the murder of the master and their mistress…They quickly collected 400 of their fellow slaves and when the opportunity arouse, they armed themselves and attacked the city of Enna…. They entered the houses and wrought great slaughter. They did not even spare suckling babies, but tore them from the breast and hurled them to the ground. It is no possible to express in wors how they brutalized and degraded the women, and right before the eyes of their husbands. They added to their numbers a multitude of city slaves who first murdered their own masters and then turned to the slaughter of others.
The chose, as their king, Eunus, a slave from Syria not because he was so strong or because he was a military genius, but only because he could foretell the future and because his his name seemed to be a good omen predicting a benevolent ruler. When he had been established by the rebels as king over all of them, he summoned an assembly and executed all the people of Enna who had been taken prisoner, except those who were skilled in making weapons… In three days he armed over 6000 men as best he could, and mustered others who were using axes with single and double blades, slings, sickles, stakes, and even kitchen skewers. He led them on a pillaging spree through the whole countryside. When he had collected countless more slaves he dared to do battle even with Roman generals, and he defeated them in battle many times by the sheer force of numbers since he had over 10,000 “soldiers”…
When news of this success spread, there sprang up slave revolts in Rome, involving 150 slaves who conspired together; in Athens, involving over 1000 slaves; in Delos; and in many other places. However, in each of these places the local magistrates quickly suppressed the revolts by speedy action and by severe torture as punishment, thus quelling those who were on the verge of joining the revolt. But in Sicily the evil only increased, and cities were captured, their inhabitants were enslaved, and many armies were cut down by the rebels, until the Roman general Rupilius recaptured Tauromenium after besieging it so that it was completely sealed off, and bringing the rebels to such an indescribable state of suffering and hunger that they ate human flesh, first eating the children, then the women, and finally eating one another…. Eventually a Syrian slave named Sarapion betrayed the citadel, and Rupilius overpowered all the fugitive slaves in the city. He first tortured them and then killed them. From there he marched to Enna and besieged that city in a similar manner, reducing the rebels to the most extreme suffering and dashing their hopes… And this city, too, fell because of betrayal, for it could not otherwise be captured since it was very secure against any human attack. Eunus summoned his 1000 bodyguards and fled like a coward to a steep precipice. His bodyguards, who realized they could not escape death since the general Rupilius was marching toward them, cut off one another’s heads. Eunus, on the other hand, the quack prophet and king, cravenly fled to a hiding place among the rocks, but was dragged from there…and put in prison, where his body was ravaged and eaten away by live, a fitting fate considering his penchant for fraud. Thus he died.”
It’s on.
