Bryaxis Hecatee

Indeed I agree with you MPC. The tv show showed scientists from the discovery team and others from the local ( and quite rich ) museum of Arles and they all agreed, but I'm going to send an e-mail to one of my former teacher who's an expert on ancient roman sculpture and conservator of roman antiquities at Brussels' Royal Art and History Museum.

French state television produced a show yesterday of which about one third was dedicated to the Arles finds and the portrait of Caesar. In fact the discovery happened in an area of the Rhone river where almost no find had been done before, be it on land or under water yet archaeologists knew there must be something because of a quote by Ausonius who said the city had been built on the two sides of the river. The portrait was found all by itself but near other pieces of stone which appears to come from building devastated by an invasion around 240 AD known from literary sources. The Neptune statue ( which to me could also have been the river Rhone deified ) was made around 210 if we believe the dedicatory indication which praise the three simultaneous Augustus, something which only happened once in roman history. As for the bust of Caesar itself once you see it under all aspects it is indeed a bit more believable that it is Caesar. Most pictures given in the newspapers distort it quite a lot and thus make it harder to recognize. In any case it is a republican verist portrait which in itself is enough to interest us

One of the best examples of legionary digging is the canal Marius had his men dig in southern France to build a canal between the Rhone and the sea at a point he found more convenient than the natural estuary of the river. This in turn led Caesar to found the city of Arles, where the recent discovery of a verist portrait of Caesar has been announced, and which was an important port at the time.

Those caracteristics were already in place in the hellenistic period, even if the coming of the romans did change some things in the administration.

In 2005 french writer Max Gallo published a new book titled "Cesar Imperator". Gallo, since then elected to the Academie Fran

Here is a picture I took from the sculpture in the byzantine museum of Athens I spoke of in my previous post. You'll find a bigger version of the picture in the dedicated picasa gallery ( cf. my signature ) under gallery title "Ath

Orpheus does appear rather frequently on early christian art, as is shown by a splendid sculpture shown at Athen's byzantine museum. The myth was thought as a good illustration of the union of all things under god ( animals coming to listen to Orpheus ) as well as a good representation of the possibility to come back from the after life...

Looks like many here are releasing a lot of pressure...

my pleasure. I'm currently working on a database on ressources about antiquity on the web, already got around one hundred links even if they mostly concern ( greek ) warfare and digitalisation of data on the classical world

About PHI : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Humanities_Institute, I don't have any other link currently available but information should not be too hard to find. I don't know if their latin database has been put online though, the only version I know is the cd-rom version. About Perseus : http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

a book giving the exact number I don't know, maybe in the oxford classical dictionnary, otherwise you may simply want to take a look at the site of the PHI project since they've put many ancient texts on digitalised support... Or maybe you could find the information on Perseus

for my part I read the novel "The last gospel" by David Gibbins, a novel in which archeologist discover the shipwreck of St Paul, a new section of the villa of the papyrii where the Emperor Claudius lived after his faked death until the eruption of the Vesuvius, the tomb of Boudicca, the grave of St Paul, the true grave of Jesus, a manuscript written by Claudius with the direct word of Jesus and thus his true gospel... I might do a review of this novel and the two previous novels by Gibbins just for the fun, because they're not bad even if after three novel the writing scheme of the author is now quite clear and repetitive... ( his previous novels were about the discovery of Atlantis north of Turkey and the discovery of the jewish Menorah in Yucatan... )

It's the least I could do in this day and age of instant communications, when one is lucky enough to go to places such as these he has to give access to his pictures to everyone. Anyway I'm pleased you like them.

Just to tell you that after I put online my Athens pictures some weeks ago I decided to go back to my archives and took out my 2001 pictures of Lebanon : Beyrouth, Saida ( Sidon ), Tyr, Byblos, sanctuary of Eshnoun ( near Saida ), you will see them all at http://picasaweb.google.be/bryaxis/LibanMars2001 even if i might re-organize them to make them easier to see.

A quick read ( without looking into my dictionnary ) tells me it's a book called "critical forests" by Herder, on fine art and litterature, 4th edition, published with permission of the Great-Duke reigning Baden at the time and supported by the association for the knowledge and the art of the beautifull. The first edition was printed in 1767 and contains among other various recomandations by the author to Goethe, to whom he was a teacher.

Well they let you touch it... no in fact they don't. But you can come very close to it and indeed can come inside, they haven't put any glasses in front of the sculptures and when I visited they were restoring one of the sides, for which the access is less easy. What was nice about that visit was the fact we were led by our teacher of ancient roman art, a specialist of roman scultpture : we thus had a very good presentation of the monuments, with presentation of the small tools marks and the like.

a very good source is an old book ( dating from around 1900 ) on roman fortifications in gaul, with plans of all city walls known then and also some engraving of walls still standing at the time or little before. It is mainly imperial walls since in Gaul was conquered in the 50's BC but there are some earlier walls and also comparisons with other places.

Indeed a very nice trip, my only regrets was the museum closing at 15h and the rain during half of the time I was in Greece. And of course the stupid idea of renting a bike to get to the Aphaia temple which is on top of a very very high hill ! PLeased you enjoyed the pics.

for my part my latest snack was two eggs, one small can of concentrated tomato paste, one slice of ham and 50gr of cheese put in a pan and beat until nothing could be recognized anymore. Perfect for having no further need of a snack, at least for the day... But for the drink since I don't drink beer and that Porto isn't the right thing to drink with such a snack I simply had a glass of water... With such a snack I should have fulfilled my week's obligations, do I not ?

They were, they were, especially in Crete into which the Romans are drawn during the second half of the second century BC, for the island was torn by wars and competiting alliances under the influence of the Ptolemies and of the Rhodians. Read Van Effentere ( a bit dated but he still gives good informations on the fact and published various treaties between cities during that period )

Hello everyone. I just came back three hours ago from 10 days in Athens where I took some hundreds pictures ( something between 900 and 1000 in fact ) of various monuments and museums : Athens : - Acropolis ( southern side and main site ) - Roman Agora - Greek Agora - Pnyx hill - Hadrian's library - Olympeion and Hardian's gate - Acharnanian Gate and road - Kerameikos archeological site - National Archeological Museum - National Epigraphical Museum - Museum of Cycladic Art - Museum of Byzantine and Christian Art Attica : - Piraeus - Zea Theater - Piraeus Archeological Museum - Amphiarion of Oropos - Sounion's cape temple Ouside Attica : - Ancient Corinth - Egina island ( both the Kolonna site and the Aphaia temple ) and some non antiquity related pics too. You can find those pictures on http://picasaweb.google.be/bryaxis and a complete account of the trip ( in french ) at www.bryaxis.be Enjoy and ask any question you like.

from what I read there is no clear answer in the ancient texts. The two visions are defended in the modern literature, between those that said the horses where given from state funds to the equites and those who say that the equites paid for them and presented them at census where it was "given" to them along with equites status. Personally I see the existance of mass donkey and horse breeding farms as a proof that at some time and certainly from the second half of the first century BC there were mass state acquisition of horses. Some elements in the biographies of Marius and Sylla make me think the horses might have been given by the state. But I have no firm bases to prove it.

well you might want to take a look at what the roman were doing at that time, and Livius will tell it to you best, that is getting a large force ready for transport to Spain by... sea.

I'd go for the greek global translation module and go meet Alcibiades in his Thracian fortress to have a long nice chat about his uncle, about Athens, about his vision of history, of the war still being fought, of the art of war in his time, about philosophy too. For who better than a pupil of Socrates and Pericles, leader of men in victory and defeat, great traveler and friend of many powerfull men could speak about all those subjects as well as he could ?