Bryaxis Hecatee

My last readings were : - A. Goldsworthy's In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire - P. Ducrey's Guerre et guerriers dans la Gr

I've got no idea about that story's thruth but you might find data on it in the introduction of a translation of Livy's work, a Bude for exemple. Still I got reservations on the story because in the closing days of the Ottoman means in the 1910's and Livy's work had been known for quite a long time before that.

Goldsworthy's "In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire" (Orion,2003) is good too because it will provide you with analysis of generals and tactics of various periods that will show you the roman tactics evolved a lot due to differences in the army's composition, attitude, equipement and the like. It goes from the second punic war to Belissarius and includes Scipio, Caesar, Corbulo, Julian II, and many others.

One can find exemples of classical architecture quite late, at least up to the time of Charlemagne (8th A.D. : a basilica in the classical style on the forum of Nerva in Rome ) but I'd say that the 4th century A.D. is the turning point, mainly because construction technics changed with a more important use of brickwork ( think basilica of Maxentius in Rome, Constantine's works in Trier, ... ).

As I was speaking with one of my teachers this morning he told me an exceptional 6th century BC painting had been found near Corinth in a tomb. This is probably the most ancient greek painting ever found for the archaic/classical Greece. I've got no other details as of now but I'm sure we'll soon hear more of it

While a movie on Julian II the apostate would be great I'd also like a movie on Sertorius very much. Or a movie following very closely Caesar's own words on the gallic campaign... As long as the long version of the Lord of the Ring, with as nice territories but even much better battles !

they did not give me more details and i haven't seen any pictures of this year's campaign, but from what they said it was indeed wall frescoes but they did not have much more than fragments since what they found was traces more than complete walls

One thing I noticed that docoflove made me remember is the fact that in many schools the teachers have gone down to using standard books published by whatever comercial of governemental entity, instead of building their own lessons : each time I've seen teachers prepare their own lessons, write their own exercices, choose their own texts from other books, write their own theory guide I've seen better results among the students, even if the students where bad in overall grades. Why ? Because those teachers are doing their work as they should all do and that when a child see that you've worked in order to provide them with a good lesson then they respec you ( a bit ) more and learn better, and the teacher is better because he knows better the reasons he teaches what he is teaching. But still I maintain the main problem is lack of parental education and involvement.

Well you know schools are the same everywhere in the world. I'm from Belgium and frankly we see students get more and more stupid every year. I felt that when I was in high school, and my view is that the phenomenon grew in the last years as is shown by worse and worse results at the university for the students in first year. But the main problem is not the schools but the society at large and more importantly the parents. They are the one who should provide discipline and basic education, the schools are there mainly for learning and experimenting life in society, but the parents do less and less basic education, they do not teach the basic rules of politeness anymore, they don't interact with their children, they don't do what being a parent is all about. And that is the main problem. If parents don't give books to children, do not check that they do their homeworks every evening before getting on the videogames or tv, do not tell them not to drink alcool, have sex and take drugs then the children will do all these things and trash themselve. So if you want to improve the students then organize a system where parents needs to get a licence to become parents with controls afterward ! Or else have all students live in common in an agoge like system !

I got a master in Classical History and am now working on getting a second master in sciences and technologies of information and communications. Better chances to get a good job than with my history degree, but still I combine my two passions with work on IT applied to classical studies. One of my main projects at the current time being realization of a website for the exploitation of a database on coptic texts that a researcher of my university has been creating for quite some years. 7089 records are already online, but only metadata : i'm currently working on how to proceede to put the coptic texts onlines along with pictures of the papyri and ostraca and grafitti.

Don Camillo was also made into hugely succesfull movies in the late 50's/early 60's, they're hilarious ! I'll look a bit like a broken record but I too am a huge fan of Tolkien and F. Herbert, but I also like Tom Clancy a lot. Other than that i must say a good Walter Scott or a R.L. Stevenson please me a lot, like a Jules Verne or a Alexandre Dumas. Victor Hugo i'm a bit more reserved while I must confess I can't stand Stendhal nor Balzac. Arthur Conan Doyle is also an author I like to read, as is R. Feist ( a Fantasy author who created the world of Krondor ).

I'm sorry but I find your paper on colonization lacking in many ways. But maybe it is because I spent a lot of time on the subject, mainly on the greek colonization. Also I recognize the fact that your paper had to stay inside some boundaries set upon you by your teachers and that you were also limited by your sources and time yet I'd like to give you some more elements. But before I go any further I must ask you forgiveness if my words seems too harsh to you for they are not intended to be so, they might look like it because my command of the english language is like yours the one of a non-native english speaker and I thus have some troubles with nuances. So don't think I'm attacking you or denigrating you for it is absolutely not my purpose, I only want to give you more informations. I wont speak here of mycenaean colonization ( of which traces were found in Italy on Pythecusa for example ) for it is outside the timescope of your work. But about the phoenicians I note you did not mention a patern that appears quite often in the phoenician colonies which is the principle of founding a colony on an island just next to the coast, like the city of Tyr was in their homeland. when they could not find such a configuration of land they also used promontaries. These served as trading post and secure bases from which to go further inland to trade. A good port was also essential of course and one must indeed say that they did choose well. At first the Greeks of the archaic period seems to have done the same, Syracuse being one good example ( with the island Orthigia serving as first base for the colony ). They could also build colonies on the continent itself : Cyrene being one early example. The Greeks of the archaic wave did indeed spread wide and far but they did so in two parts : the first was the one mainly motivated by demographic pressure and the economic opportunities. They were often the colonies established the furthest from Greece itself : in Italy the first colony was the most northernmost, Emporium and Massalia were also from this period. We can see that while Delphi played an important role on were the settlers went ( as examplified by the story of Bathos of Cyrene, the only colony founder to become a king, all the others colonies adopting at first a larger directing comitee, often oligarchic at first, later more democratic ) we see areas of influence get drawn on the map. Ionian greeks were those who went the further, Corinth was an important player that often worked closer to home, the doric populations concentrated in Sicily and southern Italy, Athens will later play a great role in the Black Sea area. The second motivation of the colonization movement of the archaic period was the persian pressure on the cities of Asia Minor and more generaly the pressure of (civil) war. The story of the Phoceans is the best known ( founding emporion and massalia early on, then founding alalia in corsica, fleeing there when the persians comes, becoming real pirates, winning a pyrric battle against an etrusco-carthaginian fleet, re-interpreting an oracle and founding Velia, cf. Herodotus. note that Velia could not be an agricultural fondation due to a lack of good farming land ) but we know that other migrations and foundations took place at that time. Other groups of oikists included peoples defeated in war, eventually given as slave to Delphi who then sent them to found a city ( but this matter is currently debated ) or looser in civic conflicts. But Alalia is a clear marker after which their is no more colonization in the west. Athens during this period is not very active because she had large lands to cultivate in Greece proper, an enormous amount of cultivable lands by greek standards. Yet late in the archaic period and early in the classical period they do found colonies of a specific kind : the clerouchia. That is citizens keeping their rights but living inside a foreign community on a permanent basis on State's instructions. Miltiades used them in the 6th century according to Herodotus. The in the 5th century we see other city sponsored attempts at colonies and also an oddity, the colony of Thourioi, an athenian sponsored pan-hellenic attempt whose objective was to give athens a base in Sicily, even if it did not happen. Athens also create more colonies in the north, especially on the road to the black sea, in order to control the grain trade vital for it's population but also to gain control of mines and, more importantly, wood for it's fleet. A topic you do not look a lot into is the relationship between a colony and it's mother city. Yet they are interesting to look at for they show many realities and foundation myths and their variations provide a good insight on those relations. After the more economic foundations of the 4th century will come a whole new generation of colonies, those of the hellenistic period. They are done in many ways, are sometime the giving of a greek cloak to an indigenous city, a mass population migration ordered by hellenistic kings, merging of cities, renaming of cities, military colonies to guarison an area, ... and I think they are worth a mention in your essay. Just a note on the relations with indigenous populations : they could vary a lot and we have various foundations tales that sound quite pacific : Cyrene and Massalia comes to mind, Carthage is also a good example. About the roman colonization now, you are right to point to it's military function and later to it's civilisating function. Yet I can't follow you on some points on which you seems mistaken. For example they are colonies founded outside of Italy before Caesar : beside the roman towns of southern Gaul ( transalpine gaul ) you had attempts at colonies in Africa at the time of Marius, and earlier the Gracchi wanted to use african land too. It's late ( more than 2h30 in the morning ) and I'm tired, I also don't have all my books under hand but I think I gave you here some indications that might be worth checking. I'd suggest you to find Descoeuvre ( ? ) book as well as Boardman's "the greek overseas" to get a bit more insight of some aspects to make your essay better. Hope I helped a bit !

Well I had not much troubles expanding my Bactria first east and then north before turning against the Seleucid : right now I'm somewhere near Babylon and keep going despite some bugs that make the game crash back to windows. Yet it is indeed a most excellent mod.

We are better informed about the Greek reality on this grim matter, check Hanson's book on Hopplite Warfare : crushing the enemy under foot, bitting him hard, banging him with one's broken spear, ...

If you can read french a new edition of the Res Gestae has just ( less than two years ) been published by John Scheid with extensive comments in the BUDE text edition collection and I've seen some other quite recent publications on the subject.

Not especially too ambitious in fact. It is even rather easy to do technically, especially if the way to introduce a battle is a file entry through a specific interface : the battle index would simply become a php page where the various battles self organize on the basis of the dates encoded. If need be I'm available for this technical part. Another advantage of this solution would be that such a solutions allows a fully searchable table in which someone might look for all entries by date, location name ( in ancient greek, ancient latine, french, english, other modern language or whatever we want ), leaders, sources, ... One might even imagine a interactive map for it would not be very hard technically and would please many users I think.

well the youth and older men usually trained outside the pomerium of Rome on the campus martius where they did gymnastics, exercises, learned to ride a horse ( if they hadn't at their family's farm or villa ), and so on. Then they would also learn a lot in their late teens when they went to the army for the first time. Their fathers might also give them some informations on fighting. Later as the city of Rome grew and the methods for recruiting roman soldiers changed the training was mainly done in the legion alone.

Indeed they were literate men since they had to be able to read passwords and orders. We also know that many liked to take Martial's epigrams and Juvenal's Satyra with them on campaign ( if I remember well we learn it through Martial's own writings and some account on Claudius's british campaign ). About how they learned it... Probably like any other roman youngster through public teachers who teached on forums, in basilica, under porticoes and in other public areas or in private rooms, with each children giving some money to the teacher everyday, learning when they could.

Well the black sea fleets were mainly the Mediterranean fleets because the black sea was considered an extension of the Mediterranean, but their were not many war fleets operating in the black sea, those I can remember from the top of my head are the Athenian fleet of the 5th and 4th century and Mithridates's fleet in the 1st century B.C. . Piracy was not developped in the black sea and fighting occurred mainly in the Bosphorus area, before ships came to the black sea. One of the main reasons was that the fleets could thus find each other more easily than in open sea. In the north sea we don't have much data but we know that Caesar and later Claude used Mediterranean designs for their ships as is best illustrated by the battle with the Venetian who used a different kind of ships, with higher flanks and big sails ( cf. Caesar's B.G. ). Other than that we don't have much informations but it seems that the imperial period navy in the area was mainly made of the larger river craft of the Rhine fleet which might sail along the coast, but no dedicated ships that I know. For the Red Sea all I've ever heard points toward classical Mediterranean designs too but that fleet was very small.

Yes indeed the Persians gave a huge amount of ressources to Sparta in order for her to build a huge fleet. The persian support to Sparta was in two periods : before Cyrus the younger ( future rebel of the Anabasis ) and after his arrival. During the first period the persians provided 8 payments for at least 100 talents ( most conservative figure, but more probably between 200 and 500 talents ). When in 408 Cyrus came to the stage he provided at least 100 talents between 408 and 406 ( more probably between 200 and 500 talents ) and in 405 he gives the full taxes of the western parts of the Persian Empire to Sparta. When Lysander came back to Sparta the following year he still had 470 talents in his purse, that is almost a full year of payments for a 120 ships fleet. That is 13 tons of gold and must be compared to the 600 yearly talents that Athens got from her taxes and revenues. Keep in mind that Sparta also got money for her allies and the captured cities ( for example Rhodes paid 32 talents in 412/11, a month's payment for a 60 ships fleet ) whereas the Athenian figure I gave was what was available after the allies had paid their taxes.

Good question. The Osiris myth is very old, dating back to at least 3000 BC, probably at least as old as the most primitive versions of the Persephone myth, fully in the period of the fertility godess but also at the period of the birth of the male dominance and kingship ( do not forget the role of Osiris in the royal ideology of ancient egypt ). A king ( man ) lacking his manhood is interesting. Yet this is neither my period nor my domain of interest and I would'nt want to introduce anyone in error so i'll refrain my answer.

In fact a central part of Osiris was thrown into the Nile by the evil Seth and fish ate it, thus becoming sacred to ancient Egyptian. Thus even when "rebuilt" he was incomplete, reason why even when back from the dead he became their god. If I remember well the lacking piece was the penis and a fake wooden one was built to replace it. Thus was Osiris able to give his sperm to Isis who could then give birth to Horus.

From all informations I found the use of naval supply convoys is spoken of three times in the classical greek period but there is also at least one other instance where it is certain : Egyptian Expedition, Corinth's expedition against Corcyrea ( Th. I,31 ; I 46-8 ), Sicilian Expedition, the Syracusan proposed counter expedition against the Athenian expedition ( Th. VI 34,4 ) Eteonikos' expedition ( Xen. Hell. I,6,7 ), but also a Sicilian expedition against the Carthaginian had an important number of supply ships with it. About the night it must be stressed that night at sea was almost impossible on board a trireme because she was too small to allow sleeping on board and did not carry enough food and water for much time at sea : a trireme must have drunk some 500l of water a day. We know that an athenian sailor had to take a 3 days ration with him ( Th. I 48 is a proof ), a period which is the same for land expeditions by the way. A day ration is about three chenice of wheat or barley a day, that is 1,5 or 1,2kg of grain a day. Three day means some 4kg ( especially if we add some vegetables and onions ) of food for each sailor which, at around 200 men per ships means 800kg a ship of food. Add some 200 liters of water and you got a 1000kg to which you must add the weight of the men... Also their is the question of volume. Thus capacity of a warship of the time is very limited and landing every day becomes necessary. It means that it was an integral part of naval warfare to use the time at which the enemy landed to strike him : two of the biggest athenian disasters happened this way, including Aigos Potamos, because the sailors had to go to the nearest market to get food and drink. About weapons... In some expeditions the rowers were used as light infantry but usually they were not, the ship on board force including a specialized group of half a dozen archers and a dozen specially trained naval hoplites. One may also think that part of the rowers were slaves or servants to the fighting men and of the ship's officers ( but the use of rowing slave was never a big winner in the ancient time, it is mainly later including at the time of the famous Louis XIV galley that slaves were used ).

Well we don't have much date. I can remember informations about Salamine ( with also a signal given from land with a polished shield ), and for the flags I think Plinius speaks of them. About shouted orders to give a message to the ship right next to the one on which the shouting man is possible but my understanding from naval battles of the time is that once the fight is engaged according to pre-battle plans the situation goes its own way without much human control. Shouted orders might be two captains deciding which target they will each fight. Don't forget that among the shouted orders were also those carried by small boats going amidst the warships with a man who'd shout an order from ship to ship.

Two systems were used from what I've seen : shouted orders and flags. Yet in fact few communications took place during battle up to the hellenistic period and it is mainly the romans who put such a system in place.