Klingan

Well the 24th is here (yep, we celebrate Christmas on the 24th in Sweden) and I'd like to say marry Christmas everyone! Enjoy some very local Christmas trees. (Christmas avatar activated!)

That seems to go for a lot of things these days, lots of stuff like this popping up lately.

They mentioned Jesus 21 times, Christmas 4 and Christian 9 times. Gotta be some kind of a record.

It is? I thought it was pretty much a given. There doesn't seem to have been any other important event on Dec 25 other than the commemoration of the grand temple to Aurelian's last patron god. Remember that the 24th was the last day of The Saturnalia - the 25th would thus become important date. I would be instead interested in why Sol Invictus was celebrated on the 25th (the winter solstice should be the 21st or 22nd of December).

Hey! I almost missed this, not acceptable. Happy birthday mate !

Neater than reindeer! That plane has a red nose so it must be Rudolf... Merry Christmas, Happy Saturnalia and Great Holidays! Don't forget that Rudolf is know as "Ragnagord, The evil reindeer overlord" nowadays! Happy holidays everyone!

Diani I would like to recommend, no mater why you are interested in the subject, that you take a look in the Oxford classical dictionary. You'll find good information and plenty of references to secondary literature there.

Glad to hear that your computer work again. I reckon that I had a bad case of withdrawal symptoms the last time the one I use died - such a pain.

I'm sure that Google street view is great but they're going to have a hard time competing with pompeiiinpictures.com

It seems like Venice is being flooded as we speak. Here's an article on the matter (in German)

It's not that I do not trust you, but do you have a source on that? I would love to have something to fall back on next time I get this question.

Happy birthday!

Really?? If that's true, I feel even better about spitting on the flowers strewn there! But how do you know that neo-fascists are involved? I was in Rome last year (scholarship) and had the luck to accompany a member of the staff at the Swedish Institute on a tour of the Forum. He knew a lot of stuff that the guide books won't tell you - and I do trust his word on this one.

Do you mean across the Little Ice Age? Can you quote your source(s)? I have also seen examples of this kind of behavior in Venice, but I believe that was cased by the buildings sinking, not the water level rising?

You might want to know, if you're going there, that the "memorial" under the temple is mainly used by neo-fascists.

Well, it seems like I'm going to be in Athens for the first three months next year.

What's the Scholarship you've gone for? Same one as last year but for Athens. I should have a fair chance to get it - we'll know next week or so.

Thanks for the image JG. I must however express my doubt - not only concerning how the text has been interpreted but also how it is written. Who in the world would write a death certificate/note in that manner, letters in all possible directions?

How's it going with the second book? When can we expect to find it in the book stores? (I'll come back with my goals for -10 as soon as I get to know if I get my scholarship)

Oh I wish that I could see that!

Some insulae had a multi seated toilet, but it was rather uncommon. It's actually striking how few toilets we find in Roman cities overall. One reason might be that a public/multi seated toilet wasn't to healthy - the Romans used a (shared!) sponge on a stick instead of toilet paper. It's interesting to see that many such toilets were equipped with altars, allowing the visitors to pray before they using the facilities. On open sewers: Some cities were equipped with extensive underground sewers but it's a fair guess that most used the "street sewer" system where the high walkways allowed the waste to be gathered and flushed out. We also know that small watercourses were used as sewers (one example can be found in Plin. t.y. epist. X.98). However, the sewer system is highly complex and I would not like to say too much about it right now, as I have no time to do such in a proper manner. This should apply to upper class people, I can't imagine that the plebs such luxuries as silver pots, feet washing and daily bathing. On the matter of bathing, I am, and have been for some time, of the opinion that we over estimate how often the common romans bathed (based on number of baths in the cities, how large the baths are and how much time a poor person could spend on leisure. (Rome itself may of course be an exception) There are actually examples of both these phenomena in Ostia, the first ones that come to mind are the so called garden houses and the Serapis Insula. It is also clear that, even as it is true that most insulae didn't have running water, they commonly had build in drains (you can see this is in almost any roman ruin). A very valid point Sylla! This is something that people tend to forget when they're talking about roman bathing.

I did unfortunately forget to take a photo of it but there is, as I though, a very strange scrips on tombstones in Africa around 130 ad. I have absolutely no idea what it might be, it looks more like modern Arabic than any other writing system I am aware of (it is however, far far away from my own subjects).

I can't give you any specific title to look for, but try to find something about the so called Grande tour. Most of the direct influence come from this tradition, while I believe that the more subtle parts come from ancient literature.

As far as I know in the west the local languages has no alphabet so the only inscription are in Latin. In the east the common language was Greek and so most the inscriptions are in this language, the only exception I know of is Judea where there were tomb inscription in Hebrew and Aramic (like the tomb of Caiaphas). I'm quite sure that there were local scripts in the west (I believe my Latin professor once told me that, but I'm not quite sure). I also believe that I've seen some native scripts from Africa at Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, I'll try to confirm that tomorrow.

Damn, I want one of those cameras.