Klingan

Pain! So much pain.

Probably not. Climatic changes in the Bronze Age had resulted in extensive deforestation, I've been looking into the ancient weather patterns/how it differed from today lately and I'm trying to gather up different statements on the matter. Do you know where you've read this?

Haha, that would be a nice way to let everyone know, now wouldn't it? Damn I could really use that.

A book, The Oxford Classical Dictionary(I've got a fourth edition one). I would warmly recommend it as a reference work!

My OCD claims that it was dedicated in June 80 AD.

Haha, lovely!

The fall of the republic was a long and complicated process which, I believe, cannot be traced to one specific event. Sure, the reforms of Marius change a lot, but they would not have been possible without a number of other events that either happened or were prevented. I mean, you could also argue that the failure of the Gracci could be blamed, or later, Pompey as he refused to compromise with Caesar and Sulla for his use of the misuse of the dictatorship. There are, of course, a great number of other events that could be mentioned. In relation to this, I believe that we had a short discussion a while ago on the destruction of the Roman economy and that is yet another question where you can follow several events further and further back in time, without finding one specific point here it all went wrong.

Quintus of Smyrna - Posthomerica at Gutenberg and Google books (Loeb).

I am wondering if the name of this mountain is somehow connected (one way or the other) to the Macedonian king Argaeus?

Happy birthday mate!

Very interesting news (it should perhaps be moved?) but something is seriously wrong with that article: Rome didn't really have a fleet before the Punic war did they? I reckon that there is some sort of story about how the Romans found a Carthaginian shipwreck and based their own fleet on that ship (as they had neither a fleet, nor knowledge about how to build warships).

Damn, I live only one street from the Acropolis and I completely missed this.

Thank you very much Ursus, this lifts the mists of Serapis a little bit! And nice coins Gaius, always appreciated.

I haven't seen this before, consider it very much appreciated!

Here's a picture of how it looks today.

WASHINGTON

Well, to put this simple, I've always been quite sure that Serapis was a Egyptian-Hellenistic mix of Zeus/Apis/Osiris(or perhaps some other Egyptian divinity) but the (rather old) Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology doesn't agree and now even wikipedia (even thou I don't really trust that site) turn against me. From the Dictionary:

Happy birthday!

Yes, of course, but most field directors won't care about that because they want you to dig as much as possible, not to spend time typing in notes directly - digitalizing is normally to be done later in the day when you are "off duty" and they don't really care if you have to spend it rewriting stuff.

Very much appreciated! Invaluable to me actually. Thank you!

I could see a use for this piece of technology however, as a communication central for middle bosses on larger excavations, to keep track of levels, strata number, find numbers etc. (if the iPads can communicate in real time).

This seems rather convenient, but does anyone know how fast you can write on an iPad? Can it really match handwriting, especially if you need really quick, not necessarily correctly spelled notes? My point is that the instant digital data input isn't as good as it sounds if it doesn't save you time on the field itself - you can't really (at least in the Mediterranean) dig for more than 8 hours per day (which more or less all projects do) and the digitalization of the material is done on the trench masters/supervisors "spare time". This means that you would actually loose field time (which is the important part) unless it's faster when it comes to writing (and most project leaders won't care enough about how much of your evening you spend on digitalizing material). And by the way, how detailed drawings can you do at an iPad? Anyway, this became much more negative then I initially intended. I'd love to try one, but I very much doubt that it can replace pen and paper at this point.

The pictures are very much appreciated, I always enjoy your albums.

Ah, I've heard of this mythical plant before, but never really thought much about it. You're getting me very curious here.