Kosmo

I read mostly books related with social sciences and some young adult fiction as well, I listen to gothic metal and other genres of rock and I play computer games. I don't have a TV but I still watch some science fiction or fantasy series. I'm an aging adolescent. And I enjoy drinks and junk food but I'm trying to quit both (again) since 2 days ago. I hate exercise and vegetables but I should lose some weight.

The biggest problem for a slave owner was control. The state could afford to send convicts to mines in the mountains and keep them under the guard of soldiers but this was not possible for a private person, especially for those not very wealthy (I don't consider convicts really slaves because they were not freed or sold). The city of Rome was too big and too cosmopolitan to be effectively policed for runaway slaves that blended in the general populations (unlike blacks in Americas) so the owners were forced to treat better their slaves. In Rome only the super wealthy had houses, the rest lived in rented apartment buildings where space was limited and expensive, so an owner was more likely to house his slaves in cheap top-floor housing rather then in his own first-floor rooms. Some slaves worked directly for their master as servants and was shameful not to have at least one personal slave. Others worked together with the master and his family in farms, shops etc., while others just payed a regular amount of money and lived largely independent lives. Often slaves and freedman of powerful people became rich and powerful themselves. Sometimes slaves were trusted to manage businesses and properties (including slaves) or were sent with tasks in a different corner of the empire. The emperors did not had a civil service in the beginning (especially because the fiction of the Republic was still maintained) so a lot of the administration of the empire was done by the slaves of the imperial household. The percentage of slaves is unknown and varied greatly across regions and periods.

"Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces." http://www.googleartproject.com/ This project offers mostly the feeling of the museums involved but some works of art are detailed or very detailed and some are ancient artifacts like this temple http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/met/the-temple-of-dendur

So the government need a bit of public hysteria to blame the protesters for damaging the country and now needs everything to be in good order to return to business. Nice!

Interesting! The conclusions are not really surprising, in a static economy population increases push the lowest strata to the minimum level of survivability (and below). The author notes that the biggest problem of the study is how real the wages and prices in the Edict of Diocletian are and I think that they are not very realistic. Other problem is that the comparison with wages in modern periods is made also for silver and is very likely that silver was more expensive for romans (especially in the Late Empire that has lost Dacia and access to Armenia while Spain and Greece were partially depleted) then for early modern people (after Peru and Mexico started mass production but also had the Fugger mines in Austria and other areas in Central Europe) The study is made about unskilled males and it is very possible that the social position of this category will be different in widely different societies especially because in the case of romans existed a massive group below them, the slaves, that probably pushed the price for unskilled labor very low. I also doubt that unskilled wage earning laborers were a numerically significant group in roman society so their fate does not tell us much about the economic level of the empire.

The episode in Ammianus about the visit of Constantius in Rome in 357 (he was so full of admiration for Trajan

Historical comparisons can be useful if you compare similar things and you have a good knowledge of the subject. One example is Moore's Law about the trend in computing hardware. The industrial revolution (or the Enlightenment or the birth of the First Modernity etc) created a rapid change (still continuing) of all aspects of society that makes impossible comparisons of things before and after it. For example a comparison of Soviet and NATO counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan is useful while comparing either with the campaign in the same area by Alexander the Great is nonsensical.

I expected that I will have to give clues because this place is not a classical monument but you nailed immediately this impressive construction. Good job!

As you can see this not exactly in a city so you can guess either the specific name of the place or the name of the nearby city. A better quality pic. PS I love how much easier is to upload a picture.

I don't see why the use of euro would be a problem, in Romania at least there are banks and exchanges at every corner and most shops, hotels etc take international credit cards. When you decide about your plans please let me know maybe I can help with suggestions (I've been several times in Bulgaria) and we could meet if you come to Bucharest.

I just finished reading about Tunisia and I'm cooking couscous, so it makes sense for the picture to be from North Africa, if lower on the ocean then it is Morocco. Looking (again) into your (amazing) picasa gallery I try Lixus.

I actually like GotA more because B&S used an historic character, Spartacus, and was moving towards historical events and that made me more critical of historical inaccuracies while providing no suspense, after all we all know that he survived his gladiatorial fights and rebelled. This new series I'm able to enjoy without this problems and I feel that the creators know by now what made the series successful including fights and nudity but also intrigue in the lanista business and drama among the people in the house, and so far handle them better without excessive gore and with less "300" imagery. The fact is that even in B&S the lanista, his wife and other characters had stolen the lime light from Spartacus, who was just a typical film hero. This other characters are more life-like, more multidimensional and, for me, better played so they deserve a show for themselves. I never mustered the curiosity to watch the final episodes of B&S, but I can't wait to see the third episode of GotA.

I don't think there are many fans of Hawass or of returning artifacts on this forum. Dali was catalan not basque and the museum he built in his home town is at the french border, widely exposed to the hordes of marauding tourists that pillage Catalonia every summer. Egypt was a police state that struggled to maintain safe access for tourists to important historical sites and collections despite ferocious attacks on tourists like the massacre in Luxor or the bombings in Sharm. Largely the same situation was in Tunisia. If instability and anti-western attitudes are given a boost not only artifacts are in danger but our access to them. The days of Egypt and Tunisia as tourist destinations are maybe over.

Looks like the Rape of Persephone.

The last two articles in Disunion show that significant numbers of Southerners did not want to secede especially in the Upper South and the mountains of Georgia. Most rabid seccesionist was South Carolina but even there one can ask about how legitimate was the decision of the majority of voters when the black majority was not allowed to vote. The Deep South and the UK had close economic ties but the UK started and promoted abolitionism and would have been displeased by the Confederate plans of Caribbean expansion. After all they could get their cotton from elsewhere, preferably from within their huge colonial empire. France had imperial dreams but was on path to a rude awakening from Bismarck. Secession would have been a very complicated process and Lincoln was not conciliating towards the South (and he was a moderate Republican) so the war was very likely.

"One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/" This series is by far the best historical series that I ever seen in a newspaper combining very good information, in-depth commentary and quality writing. I'm interested by this topic, especially by the chain of events that led to this unnecessary war.

Try again, Kosmo. I got at it without the need to pay. They would not dare ask money from the Lord of Clayton Towers but they tell me "The content you requested is not included in your personal subscription" after I joined the site for the free content.

The article is available on pay-per-view basis. I was curious to see if this is genuine or propaganda, but not curious enough to pay for it, especially because the last phrase of the abstract seems to point to an agenda.

Nice. I've read parts of it and found it interesting. The fact that the romans were never interested in the fortification of civilian settlements even if they were placed right on a dangerous border is surprising but even more surprising is that only one of those vici described here was destroyed by war.

I do almost all of my reading from a computer screen. Since I started this habit years ago I read much more then I did before and unlike other people I have no problem with it and I prefer it to paper. That is why the Kindle did not had much impact on my habits. When I'm home I prefer the large beck-lit computer screen and I don't read much when I'm away, the strong point of Kindle. I don't see the advantage of needing a light source when reading from Kindle. Beck lit screens damage the eyes? I like the long battery life of Kindle, that it does not heat up and it has free wireless access to Amazon from any country. For this reasons Kindle beats the laptop and the netbook as a reading device. I also like that the USB cable doubles as charger. I have lots of paper books in my apartment and I rarely touch them...

I like their effectiveness. I mean they didn't just talk about big things, they did big things like insuring peace, prosperity and dignity for a huge part of humanity for several centuries. Hard to beat that.

It is an interesting theory that makes me think of the way we, with all kinds of video means, can see what really war is about and don't feel heroic about it. I

Happy birthday NN! Have fun!

The evidence for decline is not very convincing. The empire collapsed because it was defeated first by goths then by vandals&co and these defeats sparked the usual infighting among the roman elite. Alaric was a problem because romans have been forced to accept the goths in the empire in the first place and because they were not able to defeat or stop him and from that moment on they were not able to stop anybody. The East came pretty close at some point to a gothic coup in the stile of what delivered the last blow in the West and had to rely on isaurian bandits as the only force that could balance the germans in the army.

I posted some (long) time ago about an alliance between Justinian and Axum for a campaign against Yemen http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5991&st=0&p=56682&hl=axum&fromsearch=1entry56682