Moonlapse

I'd like to see that conversation...

Thanks for the encouraging reactions!

Happy Birthday, you old Randroid!

I agree. Locked.

I don't whether to laugh or get angry. Before this continues... PARTHICOS, go to the library and come back to debate when you have some solid facts, references and grammar - otherwise I might turn into the bad guy. lol

Poll has been fixed, re-submit your vote if you like!

Happy Birthday to you also, Dude!

Yes, the era is important. My answer was based around the Republic era.

I know that if I had been a member of the lower classes, I wouldn't have to think twice about joining the legions. It may have been a gruelling and potentially deadly course of action, but for even high born individuals the legions were a primary avenue to success. One would be supplied not only with food, shelter, clothes, equipment and tools; one would learn technical skills, discipline and management. It would also be the place where ability and intelligence could earn their due rewards.

I consider their rise to be a result of mainly two things. The first being their political and administrative methods, which were very accomodating to the locality and provided incentive to cooperate. In return, they were able to levy considerable armies which brings me to the second point. If the Romans were not so incredibly persistent and unwilling to forfeit in their early military campaigns and did not have support from their confederacy and thus the ability to levy new armies and build new fleets even after crushing defeats, they would have surely lost the Punic Wars - and their first major expansion outside of Italia. Of course, its much more complex than that, but thats my best summary.

If you want the very basic root of the word, the Roman citizens of the regal period were divided into three voting groups called Tribes. They were the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres if you'd like to seach for more info on that. Now, the word is used for a group that shares a common culture and ancestry. I think those two aspects are the most definitive. A nation is a group under a common government, regardless of cultural/ancestral ties.

Like many people, I found the first few books in the Camulod Chronicles to be exceptional but I lost a little bit of interest in the latter books of the series. Not that any of the books were less than great, they were worth every penny in my opinion. It's just that the first books were so remotely distant from anything 'Arthurian' and so intimate with the lives of the Romans that the story was centered on. Although the stories in subsequent volumes are intriguing and well written, it seems that it was almost unavoidable to subconsciously label them as the transition or stage-setting from the exciting newness of the accounts of Publius Varus and Caius Britannicus to the anticipated culmination of the Arthur's tale set in the gritty and violent realism of post-Roman Britain. The Lance Thrower, to me, is the start of the anticipated culmination. Before reading the book, I was expecting that it would necessarily remind me somehow of the traditional story of Arthur. After all, the main character is the well known 'Lancelot', right? To my enjoyment, this was not the case at all. This is the story of Clothar of Ganis, raised in the Frankish kingdom of Benwick in southern Gaul. I'll abstain from explaining the discrepancy between the names and leave that to the book itself. The book, in fact, harkens back to the freshness of the first books and for the most part is quite remote from the scenarios of the recent books. Only in the last pages does the story tie into ongoing struggles of Arthur and Merlyn in Camulod. I was deeply drawn into the story of Clothar, which sets the stage for an unresolved personal quest for revenge in Gaul in addition to creating and defining the personality that will be so intimately involved in the eventual dissolution of everything built upon in the series so far. The only thing that I can really criticize in the book is Whyte's erroneous geographical references. In describing the location of the kingdom of Benwick, he refers to Lake Genava which would have been Lacus Lemanus or Lacus Lausonius in the given time period. The lake took the name of Genava/Geneva later in the Middle Ages. Whether or not this was intentional for the purpose of clarity is unknown to me. However, he also refers to Benwick as being in Gallia Cisalpina which is an obvious error since Gallia Cisalpina is essentially the valley of the Padus in northern Italia and Genava was located in Gallia Narbonensis (Transalpina). Regarless of any minor technical errors, I enjoyed the book considerably and urge anyone who may have been put off by the recent books in the series to get this book since it introduces some needed freshness and provides more of Jack Whyte's excellent realism-based storytelling.

Happy Birthday Dude!

So in a gladiator match of Honorius vs Philhellene, with Honorius being Thracian and Philhellene being Samnite, who would win and why? Seriously, I'd recommend you guys take it to private messages, unless of course you can stay cool.

Uploads should be good now. Apparently, the upload directory setting in the configuration file means nil, I had to set it in the forum control panel.

Hello Dr. Heather, I'm curious to know how you keep up with the latest developments in in your field. Are there any specific publications or journals that you find essential to your continued studies? Thanks

The most this really indicates is some trading between the areas of Britain and France that are closest to each other, which is to be assumed if any trading was going on at all. lol

I think that interrupting American/Iraqi progress was the intention.

Hey, when the government takes earnings away from the productive element of society and accommodates the irresponsible... why not? They're the victims, right?

I've actually thought about this. The thing is, if can be made known to dissidents, the government could also discover it and take corresponding measures. You have to assume that it would be able to work, even with the Chinese government's full knowledge..

Crazy isn't it? Fortunately, I gave up Yahoo a while ago. I do however use a personalized Google homepage, which is very similar.

I'll second that. In fact, we would capitalize on the situation and create a 'Babes of UNRV' calendar.

I nearly did at one point.

China Defends Internet Controls How transparent is this guy? I'm amazed that the people who witnessed this briefing did not laugh in his face at the contradictory stupidity that he spewed forth. While I agree that the U.S. government is over-stepping its power wrongly in some cases for the sake of its citizen's protection, you cannot correlate the freedom of private enterprises to censor their own productive work to the act of forcing them against their will to censor certain topics. "Harmful information" HAHHAHA Harmful to their method of pulling the wool over the eyes of their citizens.

I recall seeing an exceptional documentary on the Spartans as well, though I can't think of a specific title.