Are people looking more and more like the ancient Picts?

[rockytopva]

The Latin word Picti first occurs in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean "painted or tattooed people" (from Latin pingere "to paint"; pictus, "painted", cf. Greek "πυκτίς" pyktis, "picture"). And the name Pict was given by the Romans to the people of Northern Scotland, who would do battle covered head to toe with tattoos, with many battling totally naked.

I went out to town today and marveled as some of the young people were scantly dressed and absolutely covered with tattoos. All I would have had to do is give them a shield and a sword and they would have looked exactly like the old Scottish Picts.

 

[Korean-American Christian]

The Latin word Picti first occurs in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean "painted or tattooed people" (from Latin pingere "to paint"; pictus, "painted", cf. Greek "πυκτίς" pyktis, "picture"). And the name Pict was given by the Romans to the people of Northern Scotland, who would do battle covered head to toe with tattoos, with many battling totally naked.

I went out to town today and marveled as some of the young people were scantly dressed and absolutely covered with tattoos. All I would have had to do is give them a shield and a sword and they would have looked exactly like the old Scottish Picts.

 

[rocknanchor]

Yes and on a sharp rise of use. Self-gratification of the kind is wrong on a numbr of fronts.

 

[JackRT]

In AD 108 the ninth legion marched north to put down the Picts. Nothing was ever heard from the legion again. It is an historical mystery, the stuff of speculation and novels.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

In AD 108 the ninth legion marched north to put down the Picts. Nothing was ever heard from the legion again. It is an historical mystery, the stuff of speculation and novels.

I loved the Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Suttcliffe as a child.

There is some debate about what happened to Legio IX Hispana. The last datable inscription for many years was in 108 AD, but new inscriptions were subsequently found in the Netherlands from 120 AD. This might have just been a cohort or detachment shifted there, not the whole legion.

As to the 108 AD inscription, it is mundane. It is speculated by Mommsen that they marched north and were massacred in an unknown engagement or perhaps in a revolt by the Brigantes, but we really don't know.

Sufficed to say, somewhere between 108/120 AD and 197 AD, when two lists of legions were compiled under Septimius Severus, the Legion disappeared. It could have been destroyed in Britain, but it could just as likely have been transferred and eradicated during the Bar Kohba revolt or Marcus Aurelius' Armenian or Germanic campaigns - for these were particularly fierce conflicts.