Ludovicus

Quite controversial...I would say that the list at that link describes both languages and recognized dialects of the languages. 47 is quite a large number, too big for my taste, and I would imagine the same would be true for the colleagues I research with. The number for us would probably be closer to 20. The basic definition for a 'language' in the linguistic sense is that there is little-to-zero mutual intelligibility between the two linguistic groups. If there is some, then they are dialects. It's a slippery definition, to be sure, one which leads to various interpretations and lists, like the one you posted. There's another aspect of the dialect vs language controversy. My parents' generation spoke a dialect inherited from their Abruzzi parents. What I could see growing up was that this dialect had a very small vocabulary. I'm sure that you couldn't have described open heart surgery using their words. Others say that the definition of a language is a dialect with an army. So political power, never an option in my grandparents' region (a least not in the past 1000 years), is an important factor. Perhaps here is where the dialect of Castille, Spain, became a language and triumphed over Leonese and the other stillborn tongues.

You're welcome. Every so often they add more illustrations and maps. I can see that they added four updates in May. One of my favorites is the reconstruction of the Golden Milestone (Milion). You can feel that cold marble. http://www.byzantium1200.com/milion.html

This compendium of lost books is on my wish list at Amazon. Thought I'd share it. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read (Hardcover) by Stuart Kelly From Publishers Weekly Homer's first work, alluded to by Aristotle, was supposedly a comic epic poem. Byron's memoirs were posthumously destroyed, and Ben Jonson didn't live to complete his final play, a pastoral tragicomedy. Flaubert, who suffered seizures that were probably epileptic, kept the text of a scientifically accurate novel about insanity locked up inside his head. At 15, Scottish freelance critic Kelly began compiling a List of Lost Books when he was shocked to learn that there are no extant plays of Agathon, a celebrated fifth century B.C. tragedian and friend of Euripides. "From Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, Homer to Hemingway, Dante to Ezra Pound, great writers had written works I could not possess," Kelly laments. "The entire history of literature was also the history of the loss of literature." At their best, Kelly's short essays whet the appetite for great works of literature, and serious readers will enjoy scanning these pages looking for curiosities and pondering lost volumes from the oeuvres of Austen, Chaucer and St. Paul. Inevitably, the thesis is more charming than the lengthy execution, and one suspects this would have been much more effective in condensed form as a whimsical article in Harper's or the Atlantic. Illus. (Apr. 25) Copyright

L. you cited four cases of apparent gross overpayment and excessive pay-offs (golden parachutes) by American corporations to their seemingly less than stellar CEOs, and doubtless you could come up with more, but so what? Of course abuse of pay and privilege, and lack of proper oversight by the company boards do take place. We don

Here's an interesting post from National Geographic online about Egypt's most famous contemporary archaeologist. "He is responsible for many recent discoveries, including the tombs of the pyramid builders at Giza and the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya. At Giza, he also uncovered the satellite pyramid of Khufu. In 2005, as part of the National Geographic Society-sponsored Egyptian Mummy Project to learn more about patterns of disease, health, and mortality in ancient Egypt, he led a team that CT scanned the mummy of King Tutankhamun. His team is continuing to CT scan mummies, both royal and private, and hopes to solve some of the mysteries surrounding the lives and deaths of such important figures as Hatshepsut and Nefertiti." http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/ex...ahi-hawass.html

When it comes to the US worker-CEO pay differential it's instructive to see how many top executives have secured a golden parachute* upon termination, thereby further ballooning the gap between top boss and nonsalaried employee. Here are just four from http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-com.../threadid:25303 : Stanley O'Neal, Merril Lynch: $160 million, including more than $129 million in stock and options. O'Neal takes the fall for failing to adequately control the firm's credit and market risks, which resulted in a stunning $8 billion-plus write down in the third quarter. Hank McKinnell, Pfizer: $198 million, including $78 million in deferred compensation he built up in 35 years at the pharmaceutical company. Pfizer shares sank 40% on his watch, which ended last year. The company had to cut billions in costs and fire thousands of employees, and said it wouldn't see revenue growth until 2009. Stephen Hilbert, Conseco: Took an estimated $72 million. Hilbert bought GreenTree Financial in 1998, just as the subprime lending business was about to go topsy turvy. The purchase left Conseco, an insurance company, with big write downs and ultimately contributed to its 2001 bankruptcy. The company has since reemerged from reorganization. Douglas Ivester, Coca-Cola: Took $120 million when he stepped down in 2000 in his mid-50s. The departure was deemed a "retirement," but Ivester had presided over a period of stagnant growth, declining earnings and bad publicity. *golden parachute-A clause in an executive employment contract that provides the executive with a lucrative severance package in the event of their termination. May include a continuation of salary, bonus and/or certain benefits and perquisites, as well as accelerated vesting of stock options.

Yes, India Napolitana! Wonder what they've done with Arkansas?

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-gener...esar.Bust/PARIS

Here's an interesting resource on the survival of all Latin texts that have come down to us. From Amazon.com's webpage: Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Hardcover) by Leighton D. Reynolds (Editor), N.G. Wilson (Editor) Here's a reviewer's comment: A companion volume to the marvelous "Scribes and Scholars", this book lists every piece of Latin literature that exists from antiquity, by author, and details on what exactly our knowledge of that text is based. I.e. what manuscripts exist, when did it become known after the fall of the Western empire, to what extent was the work known in the middle ages, and when was it rediscovered in the renaissance. L.D.Reynolds as editor has assembled a team of scholars second to none, each a recognised authority in the world of manuscripts, such as M.D. Reeve, Michael Winterbottom, R.J. Tarrant, etc. Inevitably the treatment varies. 15th century Italian copies are mentioned in passing, unless they are the main witness. The footnotes are very limited, but usually enough to take the reader further, and will repay careful reading. The great value of the book is that it makes it possible to gain an overview, in detail, of *all* the transmission. Many will be shocked at how thin the thread is by which most of these works have survived. It also allows the reader, who perhaps is familiar with only a few texts, to learn about others. My own interest is the transmission of the text of the Latin Father Tertullian, rediscovered by Rhenanus and Gelenius in the 16th century; but I learned interesting things about other work by these humanists on the Notitia Digitatum, and a study of Gelenius' methods on the De Rebus Bellicis. In the normal course of events, I would never have come across these links. The book is a substantial reference work, and covers only the Latin classics. The Greek classics are not included - a companion volume would seem highly desirable, so how about it OUP? - nor the works of the Christian Fathers in either language. Anyone mad about manuscripts will find this book of interest. The only problem is the price ... $316

Whatever your view of the Roman Catholic Church may be, history shows that the Church gave Latin at least a thousand more years of life. That Latin was the most important language in Western Europe through the Dark Ages and until quite recently has had many important consequences for the development of Latin's offspring: Spanish, French, Italian, etc. and for many non-Latin languages such as English. After the last Caesar abandoned the imperial throne, hundreds of Roman Catholic monks were busy in dozens of scriptoria in barbarian kingdoms. Thanks to their centuries old project of rescuing and preserving Latin literature and language we are able to read and discuss many of the important writings of the Roman civilization. Let's give credit where credit is due! I'm not making an argument here in favor of the Tridentine Mass (Latin Mass) as opposed to the Mass in the vernacular tongues, by the way.

"The Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation. Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language. "You have to say something and move on," he says. "It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' " I think these last quotes from the BBC article show some bias on the part of the speaker. It's entirely possible to "write a whole page" in any language without saying anything. I posted the link to the article because I thought some of our members would be interested in reading Latin online, esp. newly coined terms from the Internet age.

The Roman Catholic Church, for centuries a bastion of Latin usage, has given the ancient tongue a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin." For more, click here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7393548.stm

Interesting Viggen, the seafaring nature of all the places suggested like Portugal, Northern Spain, Brittany, Atlantic Coast of France, Western part of British Isles (Wales); (but particularly Portugal) when you consider the "sea locked" aspect and the "seafaring nature" or strain suggested of all these populations. Portugal has always roused my curiosity. Now this geographical pattern combines with the mystery of the origin of the Celts, of whom it seems there is always more to come. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...ame_etymologies Portugal: From medieval Romance Portucale, from Latin portus, "port" and Cale, the name of the Roman Portus Cale, or Port of Cale (modern Porto and Gaia). The origin of the name "Cale" is debated. It may have been related to the Gallaeci, a Celtic people who lived north of the Douro River in pre-Roman times. * Lusitania (ancient predecessor and literary variant): after the Lusitanians, probably of Celtic origin, as Lus and Tanus, "tribe of Lusus".

The faboulous loot of 1204 also brought countless manuscripts to Western Europe. The main point is that after Carlomagne the West had very developed libraries (for their time) in the monasteries and also many educated people. After 1200 his universities were far better then what anybody else had. Besides byzantines a source for classical textes was, surprisingly, Ireland. The ideea that the West lost somehow his roman heritage and recomposed it from various sources in Renaissance should be dismissed. Please reference these ideas with some evidence, some citations other than your own. That would help the discussion a lot.

Yes, Byzantine refugees from the fall of Constantinople did arrive in Europe with classical heritage contributions. Aristotle's works and other classical translations had arrived in Europe much earlier, thanks to Arab scholars. St. Thomas Aquinas was one many European scholars who employed the recently discovered Aristotelean concepts to remake Roman Catholic theology. "After the Roman period, Aristotle's works were by and large lost to the West for a second time. They were, however, preserved in the East by various Muslim scholars and philosophers, many of whom wrote extensive commentaries on his works. Aristotle lay at the foundation of the falsafa movement in Islamic philosophy, stimulating the thought of Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and others. As the influence of the falsafa grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for Aristotle's works grew. William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin. When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe, and ultimately revitalizing European thought through Muslim influence in Spain to fan the embers of the Renaissance." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#The_loss_of_his_works One of the most famous centers cultural sharing was Toledo, where Jewish, Arabic, and Christians worked to produce translations of the Greeks and Romans into several languages. Another part of this multicultural project was the translation of Arab scientific writings on optics, mathematics, philosophy, and religion. Here are some details from Wikipedia on the subject on Toledo: "Toledo, however, was a center of multilingual culture, with a large population of Arabic speaking Christians (Mozarabs) and had prior importance as a center of learning. This tradition of scholarship, and the books that embodied it, survived the conquest of the city by King Alfonso VI in 1085. A further factor was that Toledo's early bishops and clergy came from France, where Arabic was not widely known. Consequently the cathedral became a center of translations, which were on a scale and importance that "has no match in the history of western culture".[22] King Alfonso X (the Wise) King Alfonso X (the Wise) Among the early translators at Toledo were an Avendauth (who some have identified with Abraham ibn Daud), who translated Avicenna's encyclopedia, the Kitāb al-Shifa (The Book of Healing), in cooperation with Domingo Gundisalvo, Archdeacon of Cu

Arab contributions to European identity: Let's start with about 7,000 Arabic loan words in the Spanish language. http://spanish.about.com/b/2006/07/12/arab...-in-spanish.htm "Of course, most Spanish words came originally from Latin. But many of them, 7,000 by one count, came originally from Arabic as a legacy of the Moorish invasion of 711 CE. "

Interesting comment. Spanish is more like Latin in its sentence order. It has an object case maker for nouns denoting people, the prepositon "a", from Late Latin "ad." El hombre ama a la mujer. A la mujer el hombre ama. Ama el hombre a la mujer.

Here is National Public Radio's Rome correspondent commenting on her recent visit to the newly restored apartments of Rome's first emperor. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...ft=1&f=1001

Great news item! Can anyone find a link to a photo of the statue fragment? Look here for images of the Colosseum in antiquity from one of the best websites on the subject. Click on "Architecture": http://www.the-colosseum.net/idx-en.htm

Benissimo! Tante grazie.

It's common knowledge that in the late Empire and continuing through the 17th century ancient columns from the Forum, the baths, temples, etc. ended up in new buildings. If you've ever been inside the Ara Coelis Church on the Campidoglio you've probably noticed most of the columns don't match. It's because they were taken from older constructions, probably from the Forum, just a few meters away. Architectural elements plundered from older buildings is known as "spolia." Are there any easy to access resources that identify the sources of the spolia in Rome's great churches? I believe the doors of St. John's Lateran were taken from the Curia (Senate House).

"The Milion was the Golden Milestone in the centre of the city, close to the Basilica, the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia, on which the distances to the important cities of the empire were inscribed. Built shortly after the foundation, it was restored in the time of Justinian and is last mentioned in 1268. According to the texts it was a tetrapylon, i. e. a square of four pillars connected by arches and covered by a domical vault." http://www.byzantium1200.com/milion.html

I agree with you. Yes, the Draft Riots in New York City were exactly that, anti-black pogroms. And the Civil War didn't end racism. It's found throughout the country. In fact, in some cases the South has made better progress in dealing with it than other parts of the country.