Viggen

We soon going to give away one of those beaker, any idea to what great lenghts one should go to get it? more info on the beker one can find here http://www.caliximpe...ix_imperium.htm

Awesome movie, Ursus made a wonderful review of it http://www.unrv.com/book-review/agora-dvd.php (one of my favourite reviews of his many) Personally i just started watching Mad Men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men I dont know what it is about this series, nothing much happend in a time period and setting I dont really care about (60s in New York), but somehow each episode catches my full attention and I cant wait for the next one, just awesome...

The most celebrated and supposedly one of the oldest symbols of the Eternal City may not be a product of the ancient world after all. The Capitoline Museums' statue of the legendary she-wolf, which was said to have nourished Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus on the banks of the River Tiber, was not crafted by the city's ancestors, the Etruscans, but was made at least 1,000 years later in the Middle Ages, some experts now insist... ...read the full article at the Independent

Happy Birthday!

...we just had very good book review on that topic... http://www.unrv.com/book-review/if-rome.php

Interesting article about world currencies and that they shine much longer than the actual empire, I thought especially the bit about Rome and India is worth posting here, any thoughts on that? In ancient times, India ran a large trade surplus with the Roman empire. As Pliny wrote in the first century:

One of the largest questions in European history has always been: "Why did Rome fall?" But surely right behind that question is another one: "What if Rome hadn't fallen?" Usually the second question is explored only in fiction (there was, for instance, a Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk visited an alternate earth where Rome survived into the 20th century, complete with institutionalized slavery and televised gladiatorial games). Timothy Venning attempts to view this question from the standpoint of academic plausibility, tracing the root of the Western Empire's collapse and how, if some things had gone differently, it might have continued... ...read the full review of If Rome Hadn't Fallen by Timothy Venning

If you can spare 30k you can get now hold of the original first edition from 1776 of Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire... hows that for a christmas present... ;-) http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=5637158225&searchurl=kn%3Ddecline%26sortby%3D1%26x%3D47%26y%3D17

...not only stole my heart, but will soon give me a little daughter... how cool is that!

that shall be revealed soon...

I was in town today at the opening of the Krampus season, and the mask is called in austrian (bavarian) dialect Perchtan which i found out is directly related to the germanic godess Perchta. Wikipedia has quite a big article on it in english so i tought i share this probably not so well known germanic godess here Her name means "the bright one" (Old High German beraht, bereht, from a Common Germanic *berhto-, ultimately root-cognate to Latin flagrare "blaze", flamma "flame") and is probably related to the name Berchtentag, meaning the feast of the Epiphany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchta those are some of the Krampus i had to put up with today, scary beasts....

I WANT! Swiss luxury watch company Hublot has announced a version of the Antikythera mechanism , an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, that is incorporated into a wristwatch. The mechanism is to be displayed at the 2012 Baselworld expo before moving to a permanent exhibit at Mus

I have the privilege of reviewing this short but delightfully informative book, The Frome Hoard. The Frome coin hoard was found by detectorist Dave Crisp in a field near Frome in Somerset, England in April 2010. Two days before finding the Frome Hoard, Crisp had discovered some scattered fourth century silver coins (silaquae) in the same field. Returning to the field two days later, Crisp received an unusual signal on his metal detector only 100 meters from the site of the earlier scattered hoard and he began digging... ...read the full review of The Frome Hoard by R. Bland, A. Booth and S. Moorhead

pretty niffty tool, enter your current location and than where you want to go and the route is calculated.... http://www.omnesviae.org/de/

Yup, very possible, as she is a registered member!

update; As noted before here on Aard, last winter a man handed in a 2nd century Roman cavalry parade mask to the authorities on Gotland, an island province of Sweden in the Baltic Sea. He says it was found illicitly in the 1980s by a recently deceased metal detectorist. The old man in question was a known nighthawk, and seems to have stuck a spade right through the mask when digging it out. Yet the mask has an excellent find context. The owner pointed to a Late Roman / Migration Period house foundation, my Visby colleagues excavated part of it this past summer, and they found a mixed metalwork hoard including missing bits of the mask The mask is funny because someone with non-Roman ideas has blocked its eye holes with home-made metal eyes and irises. I imagine the mask re-purposed in the 4th or 5th century as the face of a wooden pagan idol, that is, the opposite of what has been suggested by Thomas Fischer for the Thorsbjerg mask. http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2011/10/roman_mask_find_causes_legal_c.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2FlgtN+%28Aardvarchaeology%29

...it was on UNRV.com....

Under a former Native American village in Georgia, deep inside what's now the U.S., archaeologists say they've found 16th-century jewelry and other Spanish artifacts. The discovery suggests an expedition led by conquistador Hernando de Soto ventured far off its presumed course

...no Elves, Santa Claus, Rock-Band or Chihuahuas...

Soon there will be no more silent nights for me....

Archaeologists have uncovered the legendary grotto in which Rome's founders were said to have been nursed by a "she-wolf." Video ---> http://news.discovery.com/videos/history-mythical-roman-she-wolf-cave-discovered.html

Now you know why when top level guys look down they see only shitheads, and when bottom level guys look up, they only see assholes...