Bryaxis Hecatee

And Kosmo knows his cosmos as he has found the right place ! I especially choose a picture I had not taken, but it seems it was not enough to fool you (and thanks for the comment, it's my pleasure to share my travels with other, I'm currently thinking about going to Bulgary this year, and maybe Albania too if the political situation in the country allows it, else it might be Romania or Hungary. But I'm not sure yet due to the fact that those countries don't use Euro, I might go to Germany instead (but closer to France than my previous trip, or going directly for Berlin, it will depend on how much time and money I will have availlable)

I'm happy to have mislead you toward this area of the ancient world that is far from the place we are looking for, Melvadius !

You may continue going down this ocean but Gallia shall not provide you with an answer !

yes indeed fair Britain shall not be the object of our quest !

Saqqarah, Luxor, Abusir, Port Said museums, archeological sites and Supreme Council of Antiquities depots all looted in the last few hours, reports of mass illegal digging in some areas, of attack by peoples with guns and trucks against archeological depots near Port Said,... It seems that amidst the global chaos some people are looking for money to make without regard for the scientific and cultural value of what they loot, and I must say that I wonder wether at least some of those activities are not orchestrated by international criminal associations or rich collectors looking for specific items. There are reports of specific sections of wall painting being stolen, of designated crates being opened, and many other similar attacks. Paul Barford, the famous anti-collectors archeologists, has compiled some reports (http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/01/tomb-robbing-in-luxor.html) and the blog mentionned by Viggen is also one of the most up to date. International researchers are currently in relationnship with colleagues in Egypt to attempt a full diagnosis of the situation.

I think it's all of northern Africa which is currently exploding, due to political and especially food issue (and we are very early for food revolts, they usually come around in march or april, not january...). We have to hope that archeological remains won't be damaged in Algeria (which is also in turmoil even if not as important as those in Egypt or Tunisia) or in Yemen, also being troubled by protests against the corrupt governements.

I'd agree with Kosmo : women taken forcefully by a bearded man on a chariot, with a rooster (often associated with death) under the chariot, a torch and fruits (associated with Demeter, see the Eleusis mysteries) between the two female characters, Hermes leading the way under the gaze of a man who might well be Zeus.

I did not think I might have won so easily Well then, here is my new defy to you :

I obviously think of Dougga, but I might very well be wrong !

Could this be Tunisia ?

Rome also had large scale burnings (including the fires started during the barbarian sacks), the museum of the Crypta Balbi gives us an idea of the process : http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Hgfqj5G9sg_nkeCddVDemQ?feat=directlink http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/b4TebDh6qII0GiZzJBM1Lg?feat=directlink http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/StZ4MTIQtz0-tUrZdqpWLw?feat=directlink http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/_VP5aqcSGVCW4sIt5wCDqg?feat=directlink

if you like those you may also check : hundreds of pics of Detroit's decay : http://fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi?method=GET&sorting=Interestingness&photo_type=250&page=3&noform=t&search_domain=Tags&photo_number=50&sort=Interestingness&tag_mode=all&textinput=detroit,ruins&search_type=Tags Pictures from other places around the world : http://www.forbidden-places.net

well it might surprise you but many of those inscriptions giving the status of town or other administrative units might not have been considered usefull to translate because they migth use some kind of standardized text (and eventually abreviation) that, to anyone trained in epigraphy, is quite straightforward and thus does not require a translation to be provided. Let's imagine a text from Paris, France, about someone who would have been a duumvir in Lutece and whose tombstone is being read by you. The fact he's a duumvir gives us the status of the city but the inscription might simply say "D.M. Q. Julius Q. f. Fab IIvir Lutecia LDD SPVF" and this is all the trained epigraphist would need. For an untrained man of course it has to be expanded and explained as : "Dis Manibus Quintus Julius Quintus Filius Fabia Tribus Duumvir of Lutecia In Loco Decurionem Dedit De Suo Pecunia Et Vivit Fecit" (i know my latin is very bad, too late to check on the exact abreviations and correct latin spelling, sorry) which you'd then have to translate as : "To the Gods of the Ancesters Quintus Julius son of Quintus, from the voting tribe Fabia, Duumvir of the colonia of Lutecia, in a place given by the decuriones, had this erected while living with his own money" His name and the fact he's member of a voting tribu would tell us he's got roman citizenship, the rank he held in life give us the fact he was rich and that the city had the statut of a colony because only them had duumvir at their head. The fact the D.M. abreviation is used tells us it's a first century AD tomb because before that D.M. is not used and the formula changes in the 2nd century (but in northern Italy D.M. is more 1st century BC) But in scientific article you'll only find "Lutece, a colony since sometime in the 1st century AD and certainly no later than the 2nd century AD (see CIL xxxx) ..." : no one translate the inscription in the publication, for everyone can go and check it since it's part of basic training...

On the noticia see, for exemple : http://www.jstor.org/pss/299625 : the noticia is a 4th century AD document and as such gives a view which comes after 4 centuries of evolution, cities rise and fall and provinces' reorganisation. As for the rest, the article you took the map from does provide more informations for each civitate and capital town, so maybe you should either read it if you understand french or download it in pdf and translate it in google translate to see if anything understandable gets out of the machine

well those papyrii you're talking about come from the villa of the papyrii next to herculanum where two librairies were found. we do also have some public librairies which have been found but without any content (think about the one in ephesus for exemple). the papyrii from the villa come in fact not from one but from two librairies, one greek and one roman and contain mainly philosophical works.

I did not mean to say that there was a direct continuation between the two senates, sorry if I've been unclear. So if there was a period during which SPQR might have fallen into disuse it would have been between 580 and 1144... A period during which there was little building activity outside of churches and private houses, and a lot of re-use of previous building material.

well S.P.Q.R. is still being used today by the city council of Rome, as it was during the Middle Ages in order to mark the Senate's difference from the pontifical administration. In fact I'm not sure it ever really stopped being in use, except maybe during tthe Gothic, Byzantine and/or Lombardian periods.

gray : civitates dissolved before the Notitia Galliarum black : civitates dissolved after the Notitia Galliarum ---- : civitates with change of capital before the Notitia Galliarum - - - : civitates with change of capital after the Notitia Galliarum name : temporary capital NAME : civitates which has had a temporary capital Note that this map only shows late empire situation in the area and is based upon the work of Beaujard and Pr

It had already been suggested about two years ago if I remember well, but came to nothing at the time. Still the ideas's still great

Well the Economics from Xenophon does indeed describe a house, but it's a larger oikos, closer to a roman villa than to a domus. In order to learn about ancient greek house design one might look for the papers on the excavations of the Agora in Athens. There are also a few other houses excavated in various other places (but surprisingly few) and one might also look at Delos's excavation rapports because it does also contain a lot of information (although it is not so much from the classical period as it is from the late hellenistic and roman period).

The thing is that we do have a lot of holes in our records for those areas because we don't have sources on the topics or have huge difficulties understanding them when we get them. Even for Belgium, which I obviously know a bit better thanks to my studies, I know we have a lot of issues and can't say how many civitates were on the territories, and even less the amount of pagi, despite the fact that we now know most roads. Hell, for a long time we also dated as roman a wooden road which was finally shown in the 70's or 80's to be carolingian (we had no artifacts and it was finally C14 which settled the issue). We also have place where we have a small town around a little temple but no epigraphy outside of I.O.M. and other similary short dedictions... The U.K., with it's large military presence, is thus an unusal case when compared to many other places.

What's more the Vindolanda tablets were transcribed using an early version of the EpiDoc convention, so you can download each tablet and annotate it in xml in order to mark up contents which match your interest in order to make it findable in a search, and eventually submit your improved markup to the team for inclusion in the main database

I know of a tool for digs in italy and part of the Balkans (http://www.fastionline.org/index.php) but I know of no global, mediteranean wide, database publicly available

A very nice poster could also be a reproduction of... various views of the city of Rome, for exemple some middle-ages, renaissance and modern time reconstitution of ancient Rome as imagined in those various periods (it could of course border the main map showing the city's evolutions)

Have you read Goldsworthy's biography of the man ? Or Caesar's own books ? Because both can be great starting point to learn to know the roman general, both by following in his steps and and by having the information put in a perspective by a man who did long researches about him.