Ursus

Thanks to the admins and active members for making this place my favorite internet haunt. May the New Year favor everyone with good fortune.

Thank you. I discovered some other games here I always wanted but was too cheap to buy. A nice way to ring in the new year. :-)

Thanks for the praise, fellows, but I'm indebted to Rosalie Davis for her very user friendly introduction to Egyptian history. I was merely summarizing it in my own language. As far as the nose of the Sphinx, I've heard the story before that French troops used it for target practice. I can't find a source that confirms it. I think perhaps over 2000 years of exposure to sands may be the more probable explanation.

Then you should have told His Eminence to lighten up and feign some professional ettiquette. If he "bit your head off" for something so trivial, he needs to get out of his cloistered world and find something really worthy of offense.

Archaic Period The incredibly fertile plains of the Nile river encouraged settlement of Neolithic communities. From these communities arose (circa 5000 BCE) the villages and towns that would form the regional districts of Egyptian history. These districts were later called

It would have been extremely interesting. The Gallo-British Empire was more interested in fighting the Germans than the other parts of the Empire (for obvious reasons). Left to their own devices and with their own resources under their control, could they have halted the German advance? If they could, how tremendously different would the political history of Europe have been if France and and Span and Britain evolved under the same yoke. The Palmyran (or however you spell it) Empire would have carried on much the like the real Eastern Empire, but I think Christianity would have taken on a very Egyptian or Gnostic feel to it. If the Gallo-British empire were successful in containing the Germans, then the Italian-African Empire would have endured. And since Africa and North Italy were relatively prosperous, there was potential. Imagine today if North Africa were still part of the Western sphere of influence, untouched by Islamic or Arabic influence. Yep, things would be different. It would make for a great alternate history novel.

I've been interested in Rome since grade school, when my elementary school teacher showed an educational film on them. I think the rest of the class was bored silly, but I was hooked. Strangely enough, about this same time, I fist saw the original Star Trek episode entitled "Balance of Terror." The Romulans were an enemy race that were supposedly based on what the Roman Empire would have been like if it had survived long enough to build interplanetary vessels. Science fiction is not history, but I still thought it was cool. And I think the Romulans of that episode really did capture the feel of "Romans in Space." As Cato mentioned, "Gladiator" had great production values, and also had the virtue of not being Biblical. However, I thought it was otherwise nothing but a badly written action story. I'm still waiting for Hollywood to make a truly good Roman epic for the modern era.

I spent my day off watching sci-fi/action movies. It was enjoyable. Here are my reviews. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Volumes 1 and 2. Here were the cartoon shorts that aired on the Cartoon channel and were intended to tell the story between Episode II and Episode III. I liked it! In fact, I liked it better than the actual prequel movies themselves. There was near constant action, unlike Episode II which was one insufferable bore. The cartoon violence of the prequel movies also works a lot better when it is actually moved to a cartoon format. The cartoon characters and their voice over artists also seemed to be able to act better than the real live actors in the movies. If the movies had been this good I wouldn

Well, the Dionysian cults were noted for excesses of all kinds. Even other pagans maligned them (such as the Roman Senate of the Middle Republic). Futher reading materials are: The Gods of Ancient Rome. Robert Turcan. The Cults of the Roman Empire. Robert Turcan. A Dictionary of Roman Gods and Goddesses. Adkins and Adkins. "Isis." The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Hornblower and Spawforth. Hellenistic Religions. Martin Luther.

As the Roman Empire grew and became more complex and more troubled, the traditional gods of the State began falling out of favor. Ancient gods like Jupiter were rendered lip service and perfunctory State honors, but they had for some time lost their power to inspire the population. The Romans, who had always been open to the gods of their neighbors, found that deities from the Near East and North Africa offered an exotic flair that the older Olympian gods did not. Among the religious trends of the late Roman Empire was a growing penchant for solar worship. Emperor Aurelian

Wesir = the original Kemetic (Egyptian) name for the Brother-Husband of Aset (Greek:Isis) Osiris = the Greek translation of Wesir Serapis = Ptolemy's new god, a blending of Osiris with another Egyptian god Apis, along with some Hellenic gods like Hades or Dionysus. On one level this was a cynical ploy to create a new deity that both Greeks and Egyptians could worship. However, there was much in Egyptian theology to suggest such hybrid gods could be taken seriously with a straight face. Ra, for instance, had been blended with many gods over the course of the centuries by the Egyptian priests.

I liked the Cyclopes from the Odyssey. He was such a cut up.

Well, I spent the day with some extended family and had some good eats. It wasn't terrible. Though I have to say I'm glad it's over. Looking forward to Monday which is a paid holiday for me.

Genesis in the Land of the Pharaohs Isis ("Aset" in the native language) had her start as a comparatively minor deity of Egypt. She was a protector of the throne of Egypt, perhaps in some ways the personification of Royal Power. But she had been subordinate in the official Egyptian pantheon to deities more intimately connected with the great king, like Ra and Horus.... This is a fantastic post, and it deserves its own page on the main site The whole article can now be read on the very new Cult of Isis page

"I come not to praise Caesar, but to name a salad after him." Marc Antony, at Caesar's funeral speech. At least according to some bizarre '90's cartoon I once watched.

Germanicus, that belief is common enough among the New Age crowd, whether New Age Christians or New Age Pagans. They basically subscribe to a belief in mystical psychology. They believe that the various deities honored by mankind are "archetypes" that reside within a collective conscious. They believe the act of prayer or worship is really designed to focus the human psyche and allow humans to get in touch with their deeper selves and sort out their problems. This is not my own understanding of religion, but if this is what you have come to believe, you may wish to research the various New Age religions. You will find plenty of people who think as you do.

Exactly how does one add to it?

I will buy whatever product is the best balance of cost and quality. I don't care about nationality. Profit and quality are not two virtues restricted to nationality or ethnicity. From what I've seen of the American work ethic in the modern world, its deplorable. I believe "screw it!" has become the unofficial motto of much of American industry. No wonder they are losing sales to the Germans or the Japanese who have a better work ethic. As far as "free" medical care, no way no how. Not in this country. 75% of my co-workers are overweight slobs who smoke like chimneys, drink like fish, and order fast food every day. And they wonder why they are fat and sick. Paying for all those triple bypass surgeries would bankrupt the country. I'm responsible for my health and no one else's. And I actually take care of myself, and am sick not very often. If someone wants to slowly kill themself, they can do it on their own money, not the state's.

Oh, boy. This is a powder keg of a thread. Could we have at least waited until after Xmass to start this?

From what I can garner from _Oxford Classical Dictionary_, the Greeks and Etruscans exerted a certain technical influence on the Romans in their formative years as they did on most other areas of life. But the Romans took these influences and fashioned them to new heights as they evolved. The Roman penchant for engineering was simply part of their practical mentality as a society. In other words, unless someone can offer damning proof otherwise, the Roman gift for engineering was a largely indigenous phenomenon, though one spurred within the context of a greater Mediterranean society. Multiculturalism aside, we need not attribute every triumph of Westerners as theft from non-Western sources. Unless one wants to count Etruscan as non-Western.

The only thing I know of is that there was a festival in May where Romans performed certain rites in their households to ward off malicious spirits. But demonic possession and excorcism is a different venue which doesn't seem to exist in their religion.

I've grown bored with my little commonwealth. The game is a bit limited, and I still detect a left-of-center bias in how things are computed.

Not living in NYC, I really don't care that much.

I don't believe the Romans needed the benefit of Sinic instruction in their engineering arts. If the Romans were taught engineering by anyone, it would have been the Etruscans early in Roman history.

I'm not exactly the person to ask for military affairs, sorry.