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Oh, tell me about all the literate and latin-speaking people available for enslavement by Roman soldiers garrisoned to stop cattle-thieving at the literal end o

Oh, tell me about all the literate and latin-speaking people available for enslavement by Roman soldiers garrisoned to stop cattle-thieving at the literal end of empire! Take a step back and look at the claim and counter-claim: guy must have been mad to carve that in stone; nu-uh, could have been delegated. I've given many reasons to doubt this is likely. Now you've got "priests" in the mix (this is suddenly a state function, I guess) to hold up this house of cards? The chain of contingencies your "remarkably obvious inference" depends upon is remarkable. And you are inferring all this from a single piece of epigraphic evidence? Good grief.

ncmncm 4y ago
You really could read up on some historical facts. They are not jealously guarded anymore, and can in fact be found via simple automated search services. You might even know of one such. Ignorance, today, is a choice. You may dispense with it anytime you like. Or not; "nescio id quod sciam," as it were.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  What you are calling their ignorance is their careful rebuttal. And what is so obvious and true to you is just an unbelievably liberal interpretation of history, and then going, for little to no reason, “I think it happened this way.” Why is it so unlikely that the aggrieved person carved this himself?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It is not unlikely at all. Carving it himself -- or herself, we don't have any indication who, or that it was even a soldier who was aggrieved -- is one of many possibilities. What is ignorant is to insist only the one alternative, among many, is possible, and that slaves were never ordered to do tedious chores, and that a soldier (or whoever) could not have had a slave, and that said slave could not be literate. All officious BS: what we have is a rock. What we know is, exactly, that somebody carved it.

ncmncm 4y ago

You really could read up on some historical facts. They are not jealously guarded anymore, and can in fact be found via simple automated search services. You might even know of one such. Ignorance, today, is a choice. You may dispense with it anytime you like. Or not; "nescio id quod sciam," as it were.

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
What you are calling their ignorance is their careful rebuttal. And what is so obvious and true to you is just an unbelievably liberal interpretation of history, and then going, for little to no reason, “I think it happened this way.” Why is it so unlikely that the aggrieved person carved this himself?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It is not unlikely at all. Carving it himself -- or herself, we don't have any indication who, or that it was even a soldier who was aggrieved -- is one of many possibilities. What is ignorant is to insist only the one alternative, among many, is possible, and that slaves were never ordered to do tedious chores, and that a soldier (or whoever) could not have had a slave, and that said slave could not be literate. All officious BS: what we have is a rock. What we know is, exactly, that somebody carved it.