Ludovicus

A destructive tidal wave is recorded here, posted on Bread and Circus: Adventures in the Later Roman Empire http://adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/tsunami-in-late-antiquity.html I like the idea that my favorite period of Roman history, late antiquity, has an online presence, which is still rather new for me. In any case, let's wish the Japanese well in the long struggle to rebuild. The best-known classical account of an earthquake and tsunami is that of 21 July 365. Ammianus Marcellinus writes about it (26.10.16-19): Slightly after daybreak, and heralded by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder, and the sea was driven away, its waves were rolled back, and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered and many-shaped varieties of sea-creatures were seen stuck in the slime; the great wastes of those valleys and mountains, which the very creation had dismissed beneath the vast whirlpools, at that moment, as it was given to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the waters to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea as if insulted by its repulse rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed itself violently on islands and extensive tracts of the mainland, and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found. Thus in the raging conflict of the elements, the face of the earth was changed to reveal wondrous sights. For the mass of waters returning when least expected killed many thousands by drowning, and with the tides whipped up to a height as they rushed back, some ships, after the anger of the watery element had grown old, were seen to have sunk, and the bodies of people killed in shipwrecks lay there, faces up or down. Other huge ships, thrust out by the mad blasts, perched on the roofs of houses, as happened at Alexandria, and others were hurled nearly two miles from the shore, like the Laconian vessel near the town of Methone which I saw when I passed by, yawning apart from long decay. The translation is Gavin Kelly's in "Ammianus and the Great Tsunami," JRS 94 (2004), pp. 141-167. See also Rogueclassicism today (or rather from three years ago - click and it will make sense).

Viggen, the best to you on your special day and many happy returns.

That there were two countries at war with each other, an aggressive North Vietnam and unjustly attacked South Vietnam, was a fiction promoted by US war hawks during the 1960's. It's purpose was to gin up support for the Vietnam War.

This is a touching story of a married couple's long separated tombstone finally reassembled: A married couple from Pompeii have been reunited with the recovery of a missing piece of a 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments. After spending nearly 2,000 years apart, Lucius Catilius Pamphilus and Servilia were finally reunited. http://news.discover...307.html#mkcpgn

Thanks for the link to the beautiful website.

Don't miss the Riace Bronzes at the museum in Reggio, Calabria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riace_bronzes Absolutely stunning bronzes!

What varieties of Latin do they speak when they're not conversing in "German" ? By that period, spoken Latin would have begun to differentiate into various dialects with some of them full of non Latin words. Italian has a lot of vocabulary derived from "barbarized" Latin of that period.

Very striking. Here's another recycling of an ancient inscription in the pavement of St. Paul's Outside the Walls. http://www.flickr.co...eon/4068697111/ I can't see them either. By the way, you should take a look at Kolonna at Aegina if you're interested in Spolia - there's an amazing wall built up almost exclusively by reused inscriptions and architectural members. Here is just a small example where you can see two inscriptions and one triglyph.

Yes, the illustrations do not appear in my download either. Sorry. I thought the text was fascinating, gave me new info.

Roman Architectural Spolia DALE KINNEY Professor of History of Art Bryn Mawr College Ever visit a church in Rome and notice that the columns were not exactly of the same size? This is an exhaustive work on the subject of spolia, the re-use of earlier building material or decorative sculpture on new monuments. The subject of spolia has figured in some of the posts made here at UNRV. So I think that this study, available as a free pdf. download, will interest at least a few of you. One often thinks of the practice during the Middle Ages and Renaissance when builders plundered the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus for marbles and other materials. From Dale Kinney's study I learned that the robbing of older structures was a practice that dated from at least the 4th Century. By 301, whole column shafts were virtually unobtainable on the market, and were priceless. ... [the] first great spolia structures were Constantine's: his arch dated 313?15... Along with the discussion of salvaged materials destined for new uses, you learn which marbles and column styles were the most prized, and what the use of Greek columns meant for Roman tastes. You can find the link to the download here: http://www.amphilsoc...iles/Kinney.pdf

Will do. I do have that app, but apparently I need to upgrade. Thanks!

On my iPod Touch, the UNRV has lost color and the link to the latest posts.

The work of von Luschan notwithstanding, it's amazing how money, perceived social status, and location can whiten skin color. A person judged "white" in Brazil could easily be seen as "black" in the US, and "colored" in South Africa. In some Latin American countries, people of the same skin color are received as white or nonwhite according to their wealth and class. Cleopatra was certainly African, as are all people born on that continent. No matter how little "black" blood coursed through her veins, in the US just a few years ago, "one drop" of sub-Saharan blood would have legally tagged the queen "black" in many legal settings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Trajan's Forum in the Middle Ages from Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide: By the [ 9th Century] C 9 AD all the paving had gone, and for lack of suitable drainage, the concrete platform became a swamp... http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Archaeological-Guides-Amanda-Claridge/dp/0199546835/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298332511&sr=8-1

Here's an interactive site based on the Nolli Map of Rome, University of Oregon: http://nolli.uoregon.edu/ The Nolli Web Site presents the 1748 Nolli map of Rome as a dynamic, interactive, hands-on tool. The public now has access to cataloged information about the map in both written and graphical form. The map not only provides rich information, but it has the ability to be updated with new data over time to embrace expanding knowledge. http://nolli.uoregon.edu/disabitato.html As a casual glance at the Nolli map shows, even as late as the 18th century the vast area between the urbanized center and the ancient Aurelian wall circuit was an area dominated by ancient ruins and open space. Historically this zone has been called the uninhabited place or disabitato. The impression this name gives is that of dusty fields with occasional ancient ruins picturesquely placed among a boundless no-man

That's an Interesting fact about the last functioning aqueduct. I wonder what its name was. Richard Krautheimer's, Rome: A Profile of a City: 312-1308, is one of the best resources I know of, if you're interested in how the City survived Late Antiquity and beyond. Like most shrunken cities, a new pattern emerges. The once vast expanse enclosed by the Aurelian Walls becomes separate villages, islands, amidst the disabitato. Krautheimer's work is loaded with medieval and Renaissance maps that illustrate this. I recommend it highly. If you're interested in early medieval churches in Rome, this is the resource. http://www.amazon.co...98210311&sr=8-1

There is some documentation for the long distance use of spolia (recycled building materials from earlier periods). For example, at Charlemagne's palace in Aachen: from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Aachen Charlemagne wanted his chapel to be magnificently decorated, so he had massive bronze doors made in a foundry near Aachen. The walls were covered with marble and polychrome stone.[25] The columns, still visible today, were taken on buildings in Ravenna and Rome, with the Pope's permission. Eginhard provides a description of the inside in his Life of Charlemagne (c. 825

I imagine that many a ship left post 6th century Rome bound for Constantinople laden with pilfered lead, columns, bronze, and iron.

Looters stealing the iron clamps in the facade of the Colosseum left holes that are still apparent today. Let's imagine what other valuables might have fueled a strong economy based on recycling the ancient city. OK, iron building clamps and surely marble columns. What other materials could have been removed and sold? And where could they have gone?

I believe there is a battle account from one of the histories of the mid-6th century Gothic Wars during which warriors hurled statues from the roof of the Pantheon down onto enemy troops below. The earthquake of 847 C.E. is often cited as the last blow to the ancient structures such as Trajan's Forum, the Basilica of Maxentius, and the Colosseum.

My interests, besides Roman history and archaeology, include Italian American history. I'm one of the creators of Steel Valley Voices: An Ethnic Community Archive, an online collection housed at Youngstown State University. It boasts the largest Internet accessible collection of Italian immigrant correspondence, 1894-2002, in addition to documents and papers from many of the city's multi-ethnic population. If you'd like to visit the collection, feel free: http://steelvalleyvoices.ysu.edu/about/

Just as "my father, my friend" has been pointed out as foreign to Roman thinking, I'd like to submit that "Life is beautiful" is similarly unRoman. Life, a struggle or duty or curse or an enigma perhaps. But not "beautiful." Additionally, I grew up with native born Italians and don't ever remember anyone voicing such a notion. What do others think of the slogan?

Seems the situation has changed for the worse with the Egyptian Museum reportedly now on fire. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/egyptian-museum-on-fire-f_n_817532.html

Feb 2, The New York Times: A vast majority of Egypt

In the Little Ice Age that hit Greenland in the late medieval period, the Norse settlements perished to a man and woman. On the other hand, the Greenland Eskimos have survived to the present day. According to Jared Diamond, the inability to make cultural changes sank the Norse colony. He sites the refusal of the colonists to switch from an agricultural to a hunter/gatherer society as the reason their colony disappeared during the abrupt change from warmer to colder. I agree that climate change alone can't account for the end of the Roman Empire in the West. Here's his book on the disappearance of the Norse Greenland colony, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail http://www.amazon.co...96014419&sr=1-1