Bryaxis Hecatee

I do also whish a very pleasant Saturnalia to you all, especially as I don't do Christmass

One must say that the Herculanum pier squeletons do make for a visual shock, and their setting at the Napoli National Museum (or, to be more precise, the cast of them) is damn impressive ! But yes, most documentaries play on the same few items, both because they expect readers not to know some elements and because, well, why work hard when there is enough material lying around ?

It would depend of when they run (season), using what ways (land -horse or foot-, sea ?) and how rich they are. Where they will stay at night is also important : should they use the inns regularly built along the roads they might be caught rather fast, especially if their pursuers had any idea where they might be going. How intense the chase is is also an important element : do they have a full preatorian cohort looking after them or are they simply low-life criminals for whom no one really cares once they fled ? As for travelling with a group, they could travel alone, the citizen might hire himself out as a guard for a merchant going north or as a sailor on a ship leaving Ostia,... About the UK part, other members are much more knowledgeable than I, but you might want to take a look at http://www.roman-britain.org/ which is a very good source of information. Look for where the roads start and you'll find your ports.

It would at that, along with the northern turkish coast flood (which is about the same period if I remember well). Only thing is that the place is a bit too far from mount Ararat (for Noah's Ark), which might make the Turkish hyptohesis as origin for the Flood story a bit more credible. Or we have in fact two stories merging into one as the time goes on (and that would not be a first in the area and the timeframe)

I'd suggest a classical greek world (5th/4th century BC) map going in quite some details (using ressources like those of the Pleiades project and the corrected versions of the Barrington Atlas)

If I remember well all the Perseus texts are availlable for download in XML format, although not in batch.

Hum as far as I'm aware this would be the roman objects (including a beautifull portrait of Augustus) found in Sudan, the objects having been pillaged in the 1st century A.D. by the sudanese kingdom. Other than that, the southermost roman implantation would either be some roman trading station on the Red Sea or Elephantine island's roman remains. The remains in south Algeria are more to the north I think.

You might be able to find Vitruvius' text on the Perseus website (look for it in google, it's hosted by Tufts university). About the all wood, it will probably not be possible for they were quite a few metallic parts to strenghten the wood and prevent it from splitting, amongst other.

Your best bet would probably to go to your closest public library/university library and look at all the materials they have in-house (probably not much) and ask them to get you copies of the books and/or articles that interest you. You can indeed begin with the book Melvadius indicated, identify the relevant passages, take note of all the books and articles mentionned in the book, and start your search from there. Do also a search on Google Books, which is very usefull especially if you live in the US or the UK, and see what it brings. You'll discover what scientist think about the balistae. Then you'll be able to settle on a model (full metal one, wood and metal one, ... ?), define a size, see what you need in order to prepare for the construction, and so on. Also look on youtube for videos of balistae and contact the peoples who put thoses videos online, they might be able to help, as well as your nearest reconstitution teams. But know that it will ne be cheap nor easy. I can only promise you sweat and costs in your project, yet I do hope you'll be able to succeed.

I presume you've checked articles like W. Soedel and V. Foley, Scientific American, March 1979, pp. 150 - 160 ?

yet Germany was also known to provide some rare ressources (especially in metals) and to be on the road to amber, so their was some economic incentive.

I don't know if he's been translated in the English, but Edouard Will's books "Histoire politique du monde hell

many projects are currently giving a lot of thought and investement in digitizing and getting the data there, usability and look and feel come a bit second in their projects. Also they don't have that many ressources to go on (they work mainly on projects specifics grants). The fact that Perseus tries to give the user a virtual library experiance (when you have all the books around you and go from book to book in order to understand the few words in front of you) with open access data (either out of copyright or with an open licence) is great and, personnally, I find this interface (which is the 2007 or 2008 version if I remember well) much better than the previous one (not speaking of some other projects, try the EAGLE project once ;( ). But, as shown by the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias project (especially the 2004 sub-project), better is always possible. Possibly they could also learn from the papyrological navigator (www.papyri.info whose evolution in the last few months has been quite interesting (and also the new possibilities to suggest emendations and changes to the data is quite fine, but of course the SoSOLproject will take that to a new level, especially when coptic and arabic papyrii will be included)

I got the french version of the book (which is now a few years old) but haven't had the time to read it yet :'

Hi don't know where they took their information from (maybe the Sinoue story ?), Wikipedia mentions Stanton, Sarah; Banham, Martin (1996). "Middle East and North Africa". Cambridge paperback guide to theatre. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 241, but I've never seen any reference to theater as we understand it in Egypt in pre-greek times. We do have mentions of junglers, dancers, musicians, but from what I've seen no play has been kept and certainly no purpose built place we can recognize as a theater has ever been found. Spectacles seems to have been mainly staged for religious events or the pleasure of the court, and one could say that the religious processions might be likened to performances... Especially when taking place in a monumentalized area like the Sphynxs alley between Luxor and Karnak. Stanton and Banham speak of a representation of the Osirian myth that would have been the first play and would have taken place at the yearly celebration, but I have not been able to read the book and thus I don't know if it was a spoken or silent representation, which might also influence the answer to your question depending on what you characterise as theater...

I don't know how I'd missed this article when first published, "bravo" as we say in french. You've looked into details into this rebellion from the early empire, but seem to extend it at least to the rest of the imperial period. But are they not other factors ? I seem to remember cases when the suggested cause for rebellion was the fact that the soldiers did not want to leave their "quasi-wifes", wives in all but truth, and their children who lived around the permanent bases. If I remember well it is one of the official causes of the gallic soldiers rebellion against Constantine II and their elevation of Julian II to the purple (even if they did finally go to the east). A cause that, if indeed exact, could be put in parrallel with the troubles the romans had to guarrison Spain in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, with soldiers not wanting to go there because they would be too long far from home. It would also be interesting to study in as much depth as is possible the difference between republican and imperial mutinies, to see if the factors between the two are much different. Also, but this is truly adding a new scope to your study, it could be interesting to see the kind of responses the autorities have in the different cases, to see if they answered differently to different types of mutinies.

It certainly was different and underwent changes during the period under consideration. As we know, we had climate changes between the middle-ages and now, a period about as long as the one between Athens' glory and the fall of Rome. We also have indications of those climatic changes in references to events that could not have taken place in the conditions we currently know : for exemple the North African area was probably much more green than now, and the desert no so dry, especially in southern Algeria and in Tunisia for exemples. As to where I'd look for informations as recorded by the ancients, for the classical period, I think I'd look first in Pliny to see what he had dug in the authors that came before him. I'd also look into Pliny's description of Germany to see if he gives us clues. But other than that I wonder if the Suda might not be one of the best sources because it would comment references with later comparisons, and could thus provide us with an idea of the changes. Yet the best source would probably not be in the texts but in the ice cores dug in Sweden, Greenland and the Poles. (If you'd want some earlier informations, it could be interesting to look into the chronicles of the ancient middle-eastern empires and what information we can gather from the study of the nilometers in Egypt, which migth even extend to the Ptolemaic period (and the roman period at Philae ?). Manethon might hold some informations for Egypt, and we have many chronicles from Assyrian and Persian sources which could help us with those issues until at least the 4th or 5th century BC)

I recently found an article by Roger Pearse saying later books of the serie did not live up to his expectations, to the point he's decided not to buy them anymore : http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=5178 What do you enthousiast readers think ?

FROM : Adrian Murdoch's blog "Bread and Circus" (http://adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/10/more-on-roman-perthshire.html) A passionate letter in yesterday's Courier about Roman remains in Perthshire from Professor JJ Robertson, best known for his work on the Gask Ridge: My students have always been impressed by the wealth of Roman material which lies around us. Within a 30-mile radius of Dundee, there are at least 30 Roman sites ranging from legionary fortresses through a spectrum of fort camps to small signal stations... It is now imperative that steps be taken immediately to give as much publicity as possible to the archaeology and history of the Romans in Perthshire and Tayside, especially since the Antonine Wall has been scheduled as a World Heritage Site. Much Roman material still lies hidden in our museums. There should be permanent, or changing, displays in museums such as Perth, Abernethy, Meigle, Dundee and Forfar. Full letter here. His note was in answer to a long op-ed piece in the same paper earlier in the week which has a good list of the Roman remains in Perthshire: ► Ardunie

I went yesterday to Amsterdam, an unplanned day trip to visit the Alexander the Great exibit going on at the Hermitage Museum (a branch of the one in St Petersburg (Ru)) and used the opportunity to visit the Rijksmuseum (with amongst others about a dozen Rembrandt and half a dozen Vermeer) and the Allard-Pierson Archeology museum (the University's classical archeology museum) and found myself in front of some truly magnificient pieces of ancient art from various part of the Empire and beyhond. While the Hermitage's Alexander exibit offers fine art in bad museography and without a true coherence but at a huge (15

Let's not forget that, by this time, the Senate had lost a lot of power and prestige, since the 3rd century emperors had made it clear that the Senate would not access large military commands anymore. The Senate of Rome would stay a place where the old pagan culture would be kept the longest, so they were indeed a natural, traditionnal, ally for someone like Julien except that Julien's view of paganism was also quite new in it's own right. Also remember that not many senators knew Julian, who had spend precious little (if any) time in Rome.

Yes, even if what remains is still, a bit empty : where are the incense, the songs, the tapestries, the rich clothes asks the mind while looking at those magnificient buildings and seeing bored tourists taking the picture where they are told to take them, looking just at what is shown by guides who often say things... that no historians wants to ear, etc. I think I also need to do a Byzantine Greece tour one day...

Yes I've seen the press release, that's a first in what, 20 years ? Now they just have to finish on the Parthenon itself (and yes I'd count the Acropolis as roman, seing that there is the temple of August and Rome...

It would be Ravena's roman remains that would get the title, with some early empire villa's mosaics underground and of course all the Byzantine remains. I'm currently planning for a visit to Rome in mid-november and use it as a pretext for 2 weeks in Etruria and/or Tuscany and Rome though...