Bryaxis Hecatee

My teacher told us about that fact in april 2007 and it was quite recent news then. The research was done by a team of italian archeologists I think, but since she told us at a time we were looking on the forum I had nothing to write with me

If I'm not mistaken the book had the misfortune of being outdated days after it was published when a international team of archeologists showed there was no temple at the end of the forum complex ( behind the colum ) as Packer believed and tried to defend in the following months. But my teacher also said the book was lavishly illustrated and was a beautifull edition. Just not up to date anymore...

well you know I doubt very much the claims that this was one of the earliest use of chemical warfare in history. I'm not a great fan of Iran but the articles seems to me to be a "look at the bad iranian who are the first to use chemical weapons" when the chapter 35 and 37 of Aeneas the tactician show it was a method already in use in the 4th century B.C. Of cours Aeneas does not recommand the use of bodies to fuel the fire, but he talks of pitch and sulfur to maintain a burning fire ( and his recipe is even more potent by the way ). Yet despite my view on the "show" part of the announcement I must confess the information is interesting.

Hum Strasbourg in 357 with Julien II the apostate would be a nice place to be, a crushing victory with few losses and an opportunity to see post-classic roman legions in action... Or maybe the battle of Nemea in 394BC, one of the largest ( and of the last ) classical hoplite battle, during the war of Corinth. As to which side, i'm not sure : on the the 19 000 lacedemonian hoplite ( one of the 6000 spartans ? ), of whom 1100 died, or one 24 000 allied hoplites ( athenians, argians, corinthians, thebans, and other from minor cities ), who lost 2400 men ?

yes it has been on the news for quite some time in Germany now ( 4 or 5 weeks ), a lot of blogs have spoken about it. The discovery is exceptionnal, the CNN news report is far from giving the details : the remains of the battle are so neat that on can see how the roman made an artillery and archery preparation of the terrain, with the arrows all pointing in the same direction ( thus giving the roman position at the start of the battle, in the north ( ! ) of the hill ). Hundreds of arrows heads have been found, dozens of scorpio bolts being also found. Which to me is a bit surprising by the way, because it means that the romans did not try to collect all those precious ammo back from the field : maybe they were somewhat in a hurry with a larger barbarian force in their back ?

I'd say that your best source on the subject would probably be Vitruvius, you should take a look in it ( it's availlable in many traductions including english ones on the web ). As for dates the practice is probably greek, but more marble built than marble faced. Roman use of the technique could go as far back as the third century bc but i'd say that 1st century BC is more probable for regular use, with a massive increase in such buildings during the 1st century AD with the many imperial built buildings in the empire.

And I dare say you're not alone ! Indeed it would be my pleasure to come on the wrong side of the Channel to see how you britons perverted the poor romans who came to bring you civilisation. After all you had them wear socks, so what else could you have done ? To answer that questions I'll thus be more than happy to meet you all at any interesting place you can find, provided that you do it during a week-end and in a place which can be accessed without a car from an airport or a trans-channel ferry port city.

be carefull since Brunt's numbers are debated by scholars who do not always agree with his views on manpower at the time... And this is important since it has such an impact on any debate on the Gracchian programm..

yes, thanks, I should have written "I know of no no mention of military crossbow in the roman period before this specific text".

The earlier mention of a crossbow in military context of which I know in the Roman World is from the time of Julian the Apostate ( in his gallic campaign around 360 AD ) : i don't have the exact passage but it comes in his early carreer when, going to Gaul, he his escorted by "balistarii" and cavalery. Those balistarii are usually thought to be crossbows operators instead of siege engineers. Other than that I know of no mention of military crossbow in the roman period. On the other hand the use of crossbows for hunting is better knows and more informations about those is known ( I suppose the Daremberg and Saglio could be of use here )

also one has to take into account the period at which the sea travel is done : at times it is near impossible to travel in some directions...

Yes the "centurionem-gate" was clever but I think a "vigiles-gate" or something less military and more civil guardian of order might have been better, even il less understood by common folks. Any way a funny initiative I'd like to see in my own country's press !

Hollywood is in no small part democrat and greece is their model while rome is more of a republican model, also in a period of fight with the east the greek model has more appeal than the roman one which has so many defeats against the east ( except for trajan of course )

latin would not have had any comma, they are a modern addition to the text but are not always well placed. so your analysis should not take them into account. if you want I can send the sentance to a friend doing a phd in classical philology...

well the shield on the third soldier from right, upper line, seems to be round : it thus could be a greek hoplon shield. The helmets are a variety of corinthian ( center horseman ) and attic ( see right horseman ). So yes those could be greek soldiers fighting barbarians. But this in itself does not give any indication on the dating and I have not the expertise to provide more details

It has not started yet unfortunately for I'm currently in London and they closed parts of the roman section to make way for the exhibition... And the worst is that I leave end of this week, one week too early for the exhibition...

I'm begining "Julien dit l'apostat' by Lucien Jerphagnon before going to the "Pericles" of Kagan, "La romanisation de la Germanie" by W. Eck and "L'historia : commencements grecs" by C. Dabro- Peschansky. That is, when i don't read novels, which i tend to do quite a lot these days

You could try a flickr or a Picasa gallery, the last's client has an automatic feature for putting all pictures online from your hardrive while resising them. I used it for my hundreds of pictures and have been very happy with it

I'm not american and had no courses on american history but made 75% on the quizz... I'm astounded to discover the results of the common american students on theses matters which they did have to study !

Indeed epigraphy is a very good source of information, both british and german one since when the legions left the Rhine area they stopped dedicating altars to the gods, tombstones and all such buildings as well as producing tiles and other ceramic products which wore the legion's stamp

in fact no, it is near Sicily, and the author develops why he thinks so but I'll let you find out Let's just say that he doubt a lot that a grain supply ship would go toward Malta and also that the short time span between the wreckage and the arrival in a big sicilian city is too short.

Thanks Yet despite all this this is still not a complete view on the datation system in use in Rome and the Empire, one of the things lacking is the explanation of how the roman counted the years based upon imperial date ( because it is also a bit complicated, using the tribunician power to date everything even if it was held before acceding the throne or if it was bestowed at a certain date not coinciding with the beginning of the legal year and so on ). And if we go into the details of local chronology in the Empire ( mostly in Greece and in the East ) we find so many particularities that we can become crazy : whole books have been written on the subject. but it could be a good idea for an article for the UNRV, i'll see if I got a bit of time left during or after my current exam session...

Also the romans historians were mostly annalists, meaning they wrote annals, yearly accounts of the event which had taken place. But sometimes they had to rely on other historians not using the same system to date events : so did Diodorus Siculus, a roman historian from Sicily living in the first century BC who wanted to tell everyone of the history of Sicily by reconciling various chronologies to get a world compatible system. Yet it was not easy and he made mistakes, as did others before him : we have evidences of dating mistakes by Aristotle or his student(s) in the Constitution of Athens, written in the 4th century BC using data from Herodotus' 5th century BC Historiae, because the ancient counted in both exclusive and inclusive ways, which was hard to distinguish ( exemple : in the year 0 of the reign of augustus is the same as the first year of augustus' reign, but in latin or greek you might not find any linguistic difference between in the year 1 of the reign of augustus and the first year of augustus' reign even if that is two different things : it's the kind of mistake done by Aristotle regarding Herodote ). The roman AUC system was based on a principle common to many chronologies : a fixed point in the past, as far back as possible, served as basis for dating. Herodotus choose to use the capture of Sardis as his starting point. But it must be stressed that dating in this way was never negative : they did not say "before AUC" or "before the fall of Sardis", rather defining another earlier pivot event like the trojan war. The olympic system was an evolution of that kind of dating since historians defined when the first olympiad had taken place, using victor's lists in order to do so and going back to the well known date. Yet in fact this date is a fiction because it seems that early on the games might have been yearly, thus throwing off the chronology of at least 50 years ! Also they were others ways to tell the time, by eras : we have for exemple a greek decree from the roman era ( in the case i'm thinking of it was early first century BC ) which counted the years as "the year X from the era" without telling which era ( in this case paleography gave the first chronological indication and allowed us to define the era's founding date as the year the roman created the province of Achaia ). Other kind of eras could be used in the roman empire : in Syria you could still find in the second century AD dates given in the seleucid era system : they could be used by local historians to record the events ( we do indeed have such exemples in minor writters or fragments ). They were also historical texts using the indiction cycle to fix the date, indiction being a 40 year tax cycle. It is well known in roman egypt for exemple. Last but not least were the christian chronologies which did not immediately use the BC/AD system : we got exemples based on the calculated date of the Flood or the date of the Creation. Thus the question of dating is not so easy to answer

In fact the Iulii were not the only clan to have made such claim of divine ancestry, and the process began quite early. Yet indeed Caesar brought a novelty to the concept, that of having a cult done about it. Novelty I say, but not so much in fact : the main difference between Caesar and the other was that he had that cult spread inside the city of Rome itself, which indeed was quite shocking as a rupture with roman tradition. But in the east roman rulers had been divinised and honored by cults since at least Flamininus, the liberator of Greece, who had even received a splendid statue showing him as a god, a famous piece now displayed at Rome's national museum. When Flamininus brought this statue back from Greece, a statue showing him in the heroic nude form which the roman never used then for living humans he provoqued quite a stir, with some wanting him to melt the damn statue. For the Greeks on the other hand the gift had nothing unusual about it : after all they did such divinisation quite regularly since the 4th century and had even done so earlier ( but for dead men ) in the 7th and 6th centuries when they made heroes ( = half gods ) from the founders of the colonial cities. In the case of Caesar it seems he got his cult started much earlier than his great victorie, during the wars in the east of his youth : that's when he got his own first cult statue, sometime in the 80's or 70's. But at first he did not care much other than for the fact it might do him enemies in Rome, for which he did not trouble himself very much. The big cult we know about, the one which went on in Rome itself, is much later, probably dating from the late 50's at the earliest, and was simply bringing in Rome a practice rather widespread in the greek part of the Republic. But one of the big problems he faced was that the deification process was mostly confined to eastern kings, leading some to think he might want that kind of power. But the main propagator and organisator of Caesar's cult was Octavian/Augustus, and not Caesar himself...

Some news from my teacher : "J