Gaius Octavius

Assume that your name were 'Sean Bean'. Would you be called Seen Been or Shawn Bhawn?

My Lord: :notworthy: 1. Louche? Where do you dig or make them up from? 2. My four votes were going to go for Pertimaxus; and a tribunician veto, if necessary, had the Domina not taken over this Devil's machine. I am thrilled that you left it as it was. Perfect is perfect, no need to fool around. Too many syllables for the Colonists, especially when inebriated. :1eye: 3. Now, Your Grace, let us do a little work on the concoction. Along with the other junk, let us assume that you throw in some Planter's Punch. 4. The scenario: A pert Malibu Barby in a super mini skirt, that if it were any shorter would be a bow tie, enters a Pacific watering hole and orders: "A Perfect Patented Pertimaxus' Planter's Punch and a piece of Paulie's pungent pineapple pepperoni pizza on a paper plate." 5. Of course, I expect my usual 10% of the take. Don Tomasso - of where?

My Lord Master Pantagathus: :notworthy: The ontological meaning of the entry escapes you?! Never! I must assume that you are presently 'testing' some mash.

^_^

His reputation in the courts was well appreciated and he was sought after.

My Lord: :notworthy: Remember what bison do on the bison grass. In addition to the solution of all perplexities, it may very easily lead to a condition known as intra cranial feculosis. May I take leave to make so bold as to suggest to Your Grace that you substitute Pure Pennsyltucky White Lightening for that other rotgut. If you must dilute and pollute said libation - one, only one, (mind you), ice cube is called for. One tumbler of these corn squeezings will bring about desired result or oblivion or a grand brawl. In proper establishments here in the Colonies, the mere association of the word 'Martini' with those other ingredients you make reference to would have you hauled before the high magistrates and ultimately flogged. Pertimaxus! It does have a certain cache about it. Original. The beings in Kali4kneeya will take to it as soon as DOLL spreads the good news. Patent it. One can hear the unruly masses calling for: "A Pertimaxus and pineapple pepperoni pizza". I remain Your Grace's most unworthy servant, :notworthy: Basil :bag:

So much of what you both say is true. But take it from an old jerk, you can't keep punching and kicking the world. There have to be and there are rules. If you want to play in the game of life, you have to play by the rules of your elders who often are your betters. Whether you like it or not, 'spinach' is good for you. I joke about being drunk in school yesteryear but I cry in my beer today.

Keep punching. Never give up at anything. Congratulations on becoming a Patrician!

MPC, I believe that you are on target. Yet Augustus did not love Cicero. He used him. In your last paragraph, you seem to imply that Augustus had the Cicero-Cato intercourse maliciously destroyed on Caesar's account. If I am correct, is there any evidence for this implication?

P.P., although Lon Gisland is trying to get into the wine racket with some expensive sand cultured grapes, the Finger Lakes region remains the wine growing capital of NY. Their viticulture produces such important wines as Manichevitz and Cold Duck. It has also come to my attention that CA puts a fine aged Two Buck Chuck into the mix. How could I forget the inimitable, long lamented Virginia Dare favored by the down trodden. Produced from the back yard vines of Brookfordshiresexinton in the Heart of America.

LOL, notice that I actually began the split from my own off-topic post so as not to lay blame elsewhere for the direction of the original thread. Of course you guys did take up the off-topic escapade with a amplified zealousness P.P., pray tell, what in the blue balzes is the topic now?

Thank Jove that P.P. is taking part in this major digression, else he might split it off - again. Doll, all your eruidition to the contrary not withstanding, you could never defend your amusing musings in a Sicilian or Neapolitan court. And you can take that to the bank! With the weather you are having out there in la-la land, I understand all yet I'll bet that you would spring for a bucket of bucks for a NEAPOLITAN GELATO! Get a map; get an A/C; get a Neapolitan sfoigliatelle and a Sicilian canoli. Wash them down with Lachryma Christi and then sit back and watch the grass grow with a beaker of Cynar on ice. Now, as to the 'female' problem. It stems from a mutant gene shared by all women. This results in unintelligible babble; illogic and the female of the species is more deadly than the male! I commend silence and obedience to them. :bag: :wub: :notworthy: Hah?

If we didn't have surviving works, Scipio and Hannibal might also be blips. In my opinion, Cicero pushed himself a bit much. "Father of His Country." Rhetoric, in addition to oration, was his strong point in the courts. Again, in my opinion, he tried to sit in both houses before and after Caesar's murder. I think that Augustus tolerated rather than loved him.

CM, one could say the very same of G. Washington and Peter the Great. Q.E. II, of Saxe-Coburgh-Hesse, isn't as 'British' as Richard? Better not let Prince Charles get an earful of that! During the so-called Dark Ages, western Europeans considered themselves Christians first and then French, German, etc. The meaning of being a Roman did change, from perhaps strictly a noun to an adjective. Elagabulus, Aetius. Cicero was from an "Italian" family; still a Roman. Perhaps, being a Roman became and was and is a state of mind. Romanus sum!

IMPERIAL ROMAN NEWS SERVICE Florida's famous fearsome 455th Fighting Friggin Fusiliers, has been activated for duty on the Israel-Lebanon border. Provision will be made for wheel chairs, crutches, canes and seeing eye dogs. The new commander will be Brigadier Busche of Bar Harbor and Boston's Bedlam. With his brass and bugle, he will buck up the braves and be billeted behind a barricade of bushes. Southhampton's slumbering 666th Swimming Zouaves have been posted to Portsmouth for port protection. Delaware's daring doting Division of Dragoons has been detailed for duty in Dubai. Peace, Basil

Komrades (You too DoL): Errol Flynn was a Tasmanian. The Tasmanian cricket team is called the Tigers, ergo, A live Tasmanian Tiger has been sighted! (Really.) It has come about that two former NYC cops were convicted of 'conspiracy to murder'. Were convicted in Federal Court. Conviction overturned because of Statute of Limitations on conspiracy. Convicts want to be set loose amongst citizenry. Feds want to charge convicted with 'murder' in state court now. What's this double jeopardy thing all about? Option B: Didn't those schiesters know the law? Germanicus and Genevra seem to be on French Leave. An electricity outrage has been going on for nearly a fortnight for some of the polloi here in NYC. The CEO of Con-Ed is much too busy 'solving the problem' to deal with criticism. Another 'problem solver'!!!, that Censored . Yet, the masses and particularly the aged and infirm, who live in high rises, and need electricty to operate their water pumps and elevators are in a pickle when it comes to taking a CENSORED or a CENSORED . Down into the kings highway or out the window? Watch out below! Will they be protected from the ever present geeks with their picture phones? In the most unlikely event that a citizen will ever need a sip of water, mayhaps to pop a pill, he will have to walk down only God knows how many flights (Oh! yes, and back up.), to tap a johnny-pump. If the CEO wasn't so busy figuring out how to commit ledger-demain to fill his vaults with gold, that SAINTS, PRESERVE US! would have known that there is something called MAINTAINANCE. The komrades are paying through the beak for it. Some practitioner of the arcane arts wants to clone a Neanderthal. Why go through all that bother when a specimen is available in the White House? With regard to Medicareless Part D. Some of our 'valued' Senior Citizens in their Rusty Years, many of whom have lost their pensions due to the impostures of CPA's, fat catz and the SEC, have entered the 'dough nut hole', more aptly called the Black Hole. Those few sheckels that they saved at first are turning into a bankruptcy now. Where are the billions turned over to the poor pharmaceutical and insurance companies going? Certainly not into the purses of top management. One of the neopaths, in the administration, has informed the rabble that if they will call Medicareless, they will be enlightened about generic drugs for what ails them. YOU ARE PRACTICING MEDICINE WITHOUT A LICENSE!, you bustard. There are generics for CANCER, CHOLESTEROL, STROKE??? Hah??? You miserable, moronic, mangy, mongrelate, mutant, no account ninny twit and WHERE DOES HE GET THIS? Time for me to take a pill; take a drink; take a nap, Caius

To add to MPC's post. Discipline is a part of morale. Morale is 'espirit de corps'. If troopers are aware that they can count on their fellows at all times and that they are competant to handle all situations in the field; if justice is meted out equably, then the corps will be 'happy'. If the reverse is the case, the corps will be demoralized. The members of special corps, today, are trained, as above, to be able to handle all the tasks of the corps. This creates a comraderie amongst the troopers (and sailors). Hopefully, a post on Corbolo will soon follow.

I guess it is what you mean by morale. If you were going to be thrashed and trashed by your fellows, you would think twice about laying down on the job - so long as duty and punishment were equal and just. Relate this to the 'good' and 'bad' generals above.

From: "The Roman Soldier"; G.R. Watson; Cornel University Press, 1969; pp 68-69. "How severe field training could be we learn from Appian and Tacitus. Both describe the measures taken by an energetic commander and a keen disciplinarian to restore the morale of undisciplined troops. Appian is concerned with the action of Scipio Africanus the Younger against the Numantines in 134 BC. "On his arrival he drove out all the merchants, the camp followers, the soothsayers and fortune tellers, for the soldiers had been demoralized by their lack of success and were continually resorting to these people. He ordered that in future nothing except what was essential should be brought in, not even a sacrificial animal for the purposes of divination. He also gave orders for the sale of all wagons, and all their unnecessary contents, and of all pack animals, apart from a few exceptions which he made himself. No one was to have any cooking equipment apart from a spit, a bronze cooking pot, and a single drinking vessel. He had their food confined by regulation to plain boiled and roasted meats. He forbade them beds, and he himself set an example by sleeping on straw. He did not allow them to ride on mules when on the march. 'For what can you expect in wartime', he said, 'from men who cannot even walk?' He made them bathe and oil themselves by themselves, for, as he said in scorn, only mules which had no hands, needed others to rub them down. In this way he quickly restored their morale, and made them respect and fear him, by being hard to approach and grudging with his favors, espeially those favors which were against regulations. He often said that generals who were strict and conscientious about regulations are good for their own side, but generals who were easy going and free with privileges were a great help to the other side. For these latter generals, he said, had followers who were contented but contemptuous, whereas the former had men who were sullen but obedient, and ready for any emergency. "He did not, however, dare to open his campaign before he had made his men fit by hard training. He went over all the low-lying ground nearby, and every day he had one camp after another first fortified and then razed, deep trenches dug and then filled in, high walls built up and then pulled down, while he himself watched over the work from dawn till dusk. On route marches he always had his men march in block formations to prevent them from straggling as they had done before, and nobody was permitted to leave the position assigned to him. He used to go up and down the column of march, and often visit the rear. If any men were sick, he would have them mounted in place of the cavalrymen, if any loads were too heavy for the mules, he had them shared out amongst the infantrymen. Whenever he pitched camp he made those who formed the vanguard during the day take up position after the march around the circuit of the camp, and a different squardron ride around on patrol. The rest were assigned their duties; some dug the ditch, others built up the rampart, others pitched the tents. He had the time required for these tasks measured and determined."

The original I Claudius was most excellently casted and directed. Congrats Brits!

Oh, OK, I agree with you! Now how about Neapolitan, the language of the inimitable people who made glorious macaroni what it is today? Have you ever had a sfloigliatelle, that ultimate of desserts DEFINITELY invented by the glorious Neapolitans, the people who delight your palate with Lachryma Christi? What new SLANDER will Pantagathus (and you) aggravate me with? GRRRRRAH Just can't wait for Pertinax to put his two farthings in.

Moonlapse, my purpose and my pleasure.

I have read Pantagathus citation carefully. This doesn't mean that I know what I am talking about. Nonetheless, it is basically a list of words and their etymologies. It is larded with 'maybe', 'perhaps' and 'could be'. At no point does the author emphatically state that macaroni was invented here or there. One would hate to go to court prosecuting a case on this type of 'evidence'. In his final paragraph, the author states: "So much of the early history of macaroni focuses on Sicily. We don't know if that is where it was invented, but we do know that it was a food mostly eaten by the privileged aristocracy and by the Jewish population." If one doesn't know that is where it was invented, then one doesn't know where it was invented. Or one would say so. The differences between, and the uses of soft and hard wheat are well examined. Various recipies for cooking various shapes in various 'sauces' by various authors of various nationalities are cited, but this has nothing to do with where it was invented. The author does state that the Arabs and others used 'macaroni' or a macaroni like substance in their armies because of its shelf life. And that macaroni like substances were/are eaten by Arabs. Again, this has nothing to do with where it was invented. Pantagathus also uses the word apparently in his earlier post. An interesting point did crop up. A Latin-Sicilian dictionary. If Sicilian weren't a 'language', then there would be no need for a dictionary. I refer this bit back to another thread on languages and dialects.

Is Molto Mario somebody? Hah? "...temper tantrum." Alliteration! How droll! -_-

Go easy on P. Clodius. He's from Great Britain.