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Daniel Wood Thu, 11 August 2022 at 3:29 pm Wanborough Road will stay shut until November The full closure of a road serving one of Swindon's major villages has been extended a further two months. Wanborough Road - which connects Covingham and Wanborough - was closed to vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians on June 6 and was expected to reopen on September 9. Contractor Conlon Ltd has been digging up the busy route as part of the Redlands Grove housing development, but the discovery of an ancient Roman road directly underneath it has caused problems. Swindon Borough Council issued an update on Facebook, even though the local authority is not behind this particular project. Swindon Advertiser: The roman tracks found under Wanborough Road The roman tracks found under Wanborough Road The post said: "As you can see from the pictures, Conlon has found significant Roman remains, such as an extended Roman trackway, on various areas of the site. Archaeologists are currently working with the contractor to document the extent of the finds. "This means that Conlon is now looking to reopen the road in early November, but this may be extended depending on what the archaeologists find." This means that Wanborough residents and people using businesses - including many pubs - in the village will have to go an extra two months without being able to use one of the major roads in or out of the village. The council added: "Conlon and other contractors have a legal right to do this work and we appreciate residents are facing disruption as it happens. "We’d like to remind people that businesses in the area are still open, and a signed diversion is in place." Swindon Advertiser: Wanborough residents have had to travel the long way round to Poplar's Nursery Wanborough residents have had to travel the long way round to Poplar's Nursery The work includes the installation of new highway drainage, street lights and a footpath for the Redlands Grove development which will form part of the New Eastern Villages. This news comes after the revelation that the New Eastern Villages project, which will bring 8,000 new homes to the east of the A419 is already £12m over budget due to delays in the council's road infrastructure work to get the area ready for the new homes. A report to Swindon Borough Council’s cabinet says officers predicted a £12.278m overspend on the programme’s £74m budget, taking the current projected expenditure to £87m. Of that, £1.4m is overspending from Nythe Road junction and Piccadilly roundabout, £550,000 from Gablecross and £10.3m from the new Southern Connector Road which will go from South Marston to the Commonhead Roundabout.

The closest to a self portrait was the habit of blowing paint around a hand pressed against the cave wall, a sort of 'I was here' motif.

The Romans complained about the noise of urban life, not the smell of it.

Probably, except for reasons I can't go into right now, public awareness is a better plan.

The heat wave in the UK goes on and I certainly felt it in the early morning sunshine as I visited the local park returning from the shops. One of the resident swans was busy trying to stay cool pulling feathers out. The lake is covered with duckweed, and the birds are almost static because swimming around through that green gunge is clearly harder. We're even hotter than parts of Africa. Ah yes, Africa. Can I just point out that before I discuss that part of the world, I'm not racist, despite some accusations from some websites. Some of my friends and the people I deal with every day have african ethnicity. Skin colour is irrelevant. But Africa? Well I bring this up because of my recent experience on Facebook. Somebody is suggesting all sorts of pro-african pages. In theory that wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Pointing out that a single negro in America was actually an inventor is suprising given American history, but quite illuminating. That is at least positive. But an American page claiming that Native Americans are actually black? Well, no, they're more closely related to Asians. Oh I see. Everybody comes from Africa. That was bad enough but an important insight to African culture comes not from America, whose population seem hell bent on claiming they're from somewhere else, but from the Africans themselves and it involves religion. I'm not a Christian. I rejected Christianity many years ago because the whole exercise is nothing but manipulation of congregations and always had been. Christianity Inc was of course a child of the ruthlessly mercantile Roman Empire. So I received a page from some African who wanted someone to be the first Christian billionaire and all you had to do was pray to Jesus. Excuse me? Since when did Jesus run a lottery? The same guy who overturned the tables of the moneylenders? Worldly wealth wasn't part of the deal. Christianity was always about putting up with the suffering in life because you reserve a place in paradise, not in Heaven, but eternal life on Earth after the Resurrection. The idea of ending up in Heaven is more of a medieval concept. Then today I got an African Facebook page showing a wallet full of cash lying on the ground. Wow! Jesus sends a gift! It's the same problem. Worldly wealth and hoping Jesus will offer a reward for faithful observance. That wallet was of course placed there for the photo. But then if the photo had shown a real circumstance, the wallet wasn't there because of supernatural intervention, it was dropped by someone. The money belongs to someone else. Morally, taking the money knowing full well it was someone else's is theft. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that something mentioned in the Commandments? It is now politically correct to blame imperialist European countries for the failures of modern Africa. No, that's nonsense. It's the Africans themselves, who have this corrupt tribal system underlying their democratic, socialist, or militaristic governments. Their take on Christianity is exploitative, not moral, spiritual, or philosophical. It stinks.

Yes there was. Not least Messalina, the third wife of Claudius. She is reputed to have challenged a leading prostitute to see who could have sex with the most men in one night, and apparently she won.

Not at all. Take gladiators for instance. Professional lanistas weren't the only owners, military officers used them as bodyguards and trainers, even private citizens sometimes had a troupe among their possessions for rent. Cicero, in one of his letters, praises his friend Atticus for the splendid troupe he owns. But then I suppose the association with virile masculinity more than compensated for official infamy. Prostitutes might be a little different. Wealthy men could of course have any slave they wanted on demand. Wives would suffer of course, that was not the correct behaviour of a Roman matron. I do note however that some of the urban villas in Pompeii have alcoves in the back wall which they could rent to prostitutes quietly. Let's not speak about that eh?

They adopt the name, and likely remain a client of him. Infamy is only attached to the individual, and if raised to a situation that doesn't impose infamy, they are nonetheless forever stained with having been so, though this has much less restriction than actual infamy. The patron/former owner is not affected.

it's not unusual for archeology. In Britain finds like mosaics are often reburied partly because they're on productive farm land, partly because there's little chance of alternative protection, partly because no-one has the money to do anything else. Evidence and positions are painstakingly recorded and the field goes back into agriculture.

Two reasons for that. One is a quality pickup, the other is a lot of compression in the signal chain.

It's a custom Squier Strat. One of the Indonesian made models I upgraded with a hot humbucker. Lovely neck, I really get on with it.

I've still got some way to go LOL

The laurel wreath has a cultural significance. The Roman imagery would seem to be associating good sex with victory and success. I get spurious emails from weirdos claiming the same today.

Firstly the imagery is hugely misleading, showing us a wide freeway through the forest that looks dry and well prepared. In reality, it was a forest trail, so nothing like as wide, and Florus tells us it was 'Fearful forest and stinking bog' - it was temperate rainforest after all, and I'm not convinced that area was so well settled. In any case, the Romans suffered an overnight storm. It caused the legions to stumble, their shields to soak and become way too heavy, and reduced morale considerably because the storm was seen as a sign of divine disapproval. Proper cavalry patrols weren't quite as practical, but then, he was operating on information supplied by Arminius. Varus thought he knew where the rebels were. Secondly, his logic is not as objective as it might seem. There's a clear agenda to revise the narrative and some of the thinking is preconceived. Varus was by trade a juror rather than a military man. We learn that the Germans had appeared to settle and accept the Roman presence. But more importantly, the video makes no mention whatsoever of the context for Varus' presence as military administrator - he was not a governor - there was no province to govern or advise, and Augustus knew he was a greedy man having left Syria much the poorer for his governorship there. Augustus needed cash to continue his civic bribery. He sent Varus to collect it. And there perhaps we have a much more realistic reason for the success of Arminius in getting the tribes to cooperate and ambush the Roman legions.

Yeah that too (hic)

Let it be known to you Guyus that Britannia has long seceded from the Empire, and that I instead shall patronise community bakers using good, wholesome, British bread! (belch). It's cheaper than that imported stuff anyway.

I remember one where the boss pokes his head out of an officer door and asks Dilbert to remind him how he refreshes the screen display on his laptop. "Hold it upside down and shake" Dilbert replies, adding after the Boss goes back inside "I wonder how long it's going to be before he realises we gave him an Etch-a-Sketch?"

What strikes me is the inspiration of Augustus in all of this. Not because of a job title, the much misunderstood imperator, but his auctoritas, the authority of which Augustus himself claimed was his trump card (Augustus states in his Res Gestae that he wielded no more actual power than anyone else because all his privileges were still based on the same republican titles and themes). It's rather like if Henry Tudor had claimed to be the restorer of an Arthurian Age rather than simply defeating Richard III in battle.

LOL! It can't be, German troops never had such comprehensive winter gear!

Assuming the Vandals weren't carrying lots of gear, then for a one way journey en masse around 2400 Roman ships were required. Clearly that was not the case. If we allow two waves over a week, 1200 ships. Two weeks, 600 ships. Four weeks, or a month roughly speaking, 300 ships. Two months, a more realistic 150 ships. Four months, 75 ships. This is of course mathematical speculation and assumes a great deal, but you get the point? Over the course of a good weather summer period the entire 80,000 (which might be an exaggeration anyway, Romans were pretty bad at large numbers!) gets across in style, though the ship crews might be getting tired by then and the rate of travel would in fact slow down as the operation progressed, so by six or seven months even in such sweeping terms the operation is feasible.

It would depend on how many ships were available. My guess is that there were plenty, many travelling to assist in the hope of a suitable profit.

With all due respect, Hollywood films are not evidence of Augustus' behaviour nor is the context historical. We already know Roman political debate was a theatrical exercise, but bear in mind Augustus was reported as using scripts to read from, and Roman writers do not report emotive behaviour of the sort you wish to assert.

I wouldn't place too much faith on 'realistic' sculpture. More often they were idealistic in their portrayals or used as propaganda. The famous scowl of Caracalla for instance is deliberate, it was meant to convey the subject was a hard man who took no nonsense from anyone. Did Caracalla never laugh? Also, we know that Roman politicians did not have the same demeanour that the modern breed tend to have. They wee much more theatrical and demonstrative in debates and oratory, this was expected in Roman society to demonstrate emotion behind the speech, like ripping open a toga to reveal wounds and reminding the audience that he too has fought for Rome! In some cases, statues of previous elite Romans had new heads installed or merely re-shaped the old one to suggest the new subject.

WW2 revisited as I take the helm of Bulgaria in a computer simulation. Not many options, staying out of fascist control seemed a good idea. I decided Greece would fall to my mighty legions of which I had none, just seventeen various divisions of infantry, cavalry, and light armour. By March 1940 I was able to declare war, somewhat desperate to stay ahead of Italy. Fighting on the frontier was fierce but those Greeks gave no ground. Worse still, I lost air superiority! How did that happen? No, stupid question.... Anyway, by May we had started to break the Greek defence and the war went to a terrible battle for Thessalonika in June. My forces were waning due to attrition though for some daft reason the British Raj in India was sending supplies. Jolly nice of him. In July the proverbial donkey poo hit the fan. Italy struck south from Albania, and Vichy France made an amphibious landing in the Peloponnese. Thessalonika fell as Greece went into chaos trying to defend so I struck south for Athens. By September I was in control of eastern Greece and fighting subsided with Greek government in Crete. Italy and Vichy France between them have secured a huge swathe of Africa, ousted the British from Egypt, and the Suez Canal is in Axis hands, and despite Germany wanting us to sign up, for the moment I think Bulgaria will lick its wounds and be satisfied in thwarted Italian ambition... well... Almost. But the war goes on, as wars do until defeat or agreement.