Klingan

The over night buses weren't half bad actually. There was a near disaster incident (HUGE turkish man fell asleep next to me, started to lean towards my shoulder almost dropping his half eaten kebab on me) but I was saved by some company official. Other than that, I slept like a baby. Even better than flights in many ways. Now I don't know where you'll start from but I bought my tickets near Taksim square in Istanbul (and I can provide you with a map if you need one) and just rolled on after that, buying tickets as I needed one. No online messing around what so ever. Over night buses between Izmir and Istanbul normally leaves at between 10 and 11 pm. One warning though! Finding buses is no problem what so ever as soon as you get to a big central bus hub, but getting to and from that hub can be tricky. I ended up taking a cab.

I took a buss (45 turkish lira, so ca 20

Twilight of the Hellenistic world. Review coming up soon!

Damn that's why I have no clue what it is - anything post 235 and I'm lost

I was thinking about keeping you in the dark about my trip to Pergamon but then again, I'm sure that: 1: it would be so damn obvious which site is anyways 2: it would be much nicer to show you more than just one picture. I will update the album as I find the spare time. Under the temple of Asclepius! The sacred road to the sanctuary of Asclepius. And looking back towards the acropolis. You can actually see the theater and temple of Trajan up there! My link Sanctuary of Asclepius. Behind the temple of Trajan. Under the temple of Trajan. And the theater of course! I apologize for the fact that some of the pictures are slightly unsharp here, it has to do with how the site is compressing the files. :hammer:/>

I agree with the two posts above, Oplontis is a must see! And a word of advice to that. A lot of people want to visit Stabia, which I did 2011. It is a (number of) site(s) but you have really seen everything it has to offer just by visiting Oplontis. Not to mention that it is exceedingly difficult to get to Stabia so you'll probably end up just looking for it a whole day.

Hmmm the Bulgarian one is tricky, and I've never even been to the country. But the masonry style is quite different from what you would normally expect to find in a Roman context, that should be able to help us on our way.

This is just getting better and better, eh? Anyways, I'm thinking about copying your concept here, I just need to find something suitable to talk about.

Yep, that was exactly what they were talking about! Thanks!

I happened to read an article today by a German scholar who had actually tried shooting arrows at both a segmentata and Chain mails. The result was that the kinds of arrows we think about (flat shaped like a V, sort of) were useless - they couldn't penetrate neither chain mail nor segmentata (1,5 mm thick). Thin "needle" arrows weren't much more efficient, a few of them got through the chain mail but just barley and could not cause any real harm to the (doll) legionary. The Segmentata was just dented. What rally surprised me was that a thicker type of needle arrow head (and I don't remember the name of it), almost pyramidal in shape, did penetrate the chain mail completely and would have killed the user, while just denting or very barely penetrating the segmentata.

You are kidding, right?! Not sure if he's joking or not, but you wouldn't believe how much assessing if your a native speaker or not depends on if people think that you are a native speaker or not; I've been hanging out with people for hours only to get asked about what we eat for Halloween in Australia (I'm from Sweden). At other times, someone who knows that I'm not a native speaker will complain loudly about my poor pronunciation.

Puh, really gave me a scare there, thought I had lost my mind for a bit as I read that it really was a cryptoportico. Last line saved me This structure might perhaps be compared to the cellar space under the Baths of Neptune in Ostia?

It can't be a cryptoportic, at least not of the classical kind. Looks all wrong :/

Donno what it is but I sure like it! Gonna see if I can find out later

This is great, I really enjoyed it! Thanks you very very much!

Haha, I would definitively fear a battle line drawn up by those guys! Damn they're fast.

A great proofreader!

Ah! It's actually better like that, I don't want anyone to hit them links by mistake! I hope it's not too much. Then again, this kind of stuff is hidden on purpose by modern Greece. it may be though to see, even disturbing, but it was a very important part of the ancient culture in the area. The Greeks were not all philosophers.

Very much so! But even though there are some similarities between the modern and ancient symposia, I'm not so sure if Sokrates (or Xenophon) would even realize that they were attending one if they could come to one today! Ancient symposia were much more, ehm, drinking heavy. I sort of imagine a frat party. But worse. Much worse. THIS LINK CONTAINS MATERIAL NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS. BE WARNED A symposium in the ancient world could end up like this. THIS LINK CONTAINS MATERIAL NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS. BE WARNED Or this. Or why not by urinating from your while still lying on your cline? Or this. (Puking) Another one puking.

I tried it out quite a number of times but it was empty most of the time.

Real cool news! I was almost sure that they would never find another one

Caldril is making a great point here, cavalry is as much about psychological warfare as physical strength. I mean, how fun is it, standing there with a pike, even when trained to do so, if you know that the horse will run straight into it, die, roll over and crush you, no matter what happens...

Has more posts on this forum than 99.6% of our members!

I believe that Viggen would be able to answer a lot of your questions, but he might become terribly nostalgic at the same time