Ursus

One of these days I'm going to have to get my CD rom drive fixed so I can start playing games again. I'd be interested in a Rome Total War 2 - hopefully they can correct some of the more asanine aspects of the first one.

inverting a bias doesn't correct the previous bias.

Well, I just sat through 4 hours of this. While I don't see any overtly negative allusions to modern foreign policy as has been alleged by some critics, I do see a horribly one sided revisionist agenda against Rome ...

I really wasn't in that big of a hurry to watch it. It was like #725 on my list of things to do, and i finally got around to checking amazon for it. Cheers.

It took me 6 years, because I was waiting to find the DVD dirt cheap from used vendors on Amazon.com But I finally watched King Arthur. Meh. It's not even a good action film.

I think the main fault of logic displayed by this line of reasoning is that same-sex inclination among males automatically leads to effeminate behavior, and therefore a loss of martial valor. It doesn't. Ancient Greece, and in particular Sparta, suggests otherwise.

Star Wars fans crash a Civil War reenactment party. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/04/11/135318484/odd-photo-of-the-day-star-wars-fans-and-civil-war-reenactors

Thanks, guy. Watched the first episode and loved it!

Another sexy soap opera masquerading as a semi-historical costume drama. Just my kind of show. I am looking forward to this and "Camelot" when they come out on DVD .

The DVD fairy got me a copy, so I was finally able to watch it without having to spend my own money on it,. I want to watch it again, this time with the director's commentary, then you can expect to hear more from me. There is no record of anyone coming to her aid when the Christian militants came for her.

Yeah, I saw that, too. Amazing he survived 3 weeks at sea. PS - he was successfully reunited with his owner. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/04/tsunami-dog-who-survived-3-weeks-at-sea-reunited-with-owner/1

Ok .... most of the objections to "Dark Age" seem to be because it allegedly conveys a negative connotation on the cultural level of the times. I thought "Dark Age" was not necessarily a reflection of the quality of life during those times, but a commentary on the relative lack of historical knowledge. As in, the period between Rome's Fall and the Rise of Charlamagne is poorly documented compared to what came before and what came after.

I am not sure how to answer this. "Books that can be read in a sitting or two" are not always "best books for beginners." As to the former, in addition to many books Maty has released recently, you might want to try : http://www.unrv.com/book-review/a-cabinet-of-roman-curiosities.php . Chock full of fun and useless information! Very easy read. If you want an honest intro to Roman history which is easy to read, but which might take more than two sittings, I recommend http://www.unrv.com/book-review/ancient-rome.php And if you want a visual survey of Roman engineering, no reading required, try this DVD: http://www.unrv.com/book-review/engineering-an-empire.php

For whatever it's worth ... my high school history book taught the Dark Ages as between the fall of Western Rome and the rise of Charles The Great (with the Middle Ages then being from Charles the Great to the Renaissance).

Indeed. Would really cut down on tomb raiders.

Have this preordered from Amazon. Got a message the other day that they don't know when the release date will be. Grrrrr.

All roads lead to UNRV. (This is my new motto.) Welcome.

There seem to be a lot of books out lately on the Roman Navy, some of which have been or will be reviewed for this site.

To what degree do you see Greco-Roman mythology as embodying certain truths about culture, such as the collective psychology of biochemical weapons, or a misunderstood analysis of prehistoric fossils?

Camelot I received an advanced copy of the first episode through my company (I work for cable television). James Purefoy is back. He is essentially playing the same exact character, except that Marc Antony is now a Dark Age warlord. And the series is basically the same as HBO:Rome, with sex and violence and political intrigue. But now you get some stunning Irish scenery thrown in. (Although, amusingly, Camelot castle is said to be a fortress built by the Romans, another Rome link). This looks likes another sexy, costume drama piece that adults can enjoy as long as they don't analyze the historical background too seriously. And even if James is playing basically the same character, I admit he is pretty damn good at it.

Congratulations. I'd chose the first one.

Ok. It's a deal.

I can suffer through comparisons of the Roman legion to Hellenistic phalanxes or Celtic warbands, because that sort of thing is actually historical. But this kind of ahistorical comparison is useless. Our military folder was once so plagued by them, we had to outlaw them : http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2591

Goldsworthy writes fiction? News to me.

I doubt Seneca or any Roman philosopher would outright declare religion to be false. That would earn them a charge of atheism, of betraying the state gods of Rome, etc. Besides which, the philosophers seemed to feel that the cults of the common people were, rather than being false, simply a degraded form of higher truth that uneducated people could understand.