Ingsoc

I know what you mean, I once found myself in a convention and the people were extremly odd: they wear ST uniform and in every word drop quotes from the various shows.

* Geography - I just find almost all discussion about borders and administrative division to be extremly boring and in my view not that important.

Zweden, yez that iz where I come from! Great quote! But does your name is Olaf?

For the name of Cupid its interesting to note that in Hebrew we call him "Cupidon" which is the Latin name with a Greek suffix. This is like how classical Latin use the word "Cupido" both in the meaning of desire and as a name of a god.

My guess is that at a certain time some German literature work(s) used the name "Amor" and not "Cupido" and from that time it's just stick as the common name for the little winged guy. in a similar way to that "Antonius" became "Antony" in the English language become of the early translation to Plutarchus.

Here are a site with audio files demonstrating how to pronunciation correctly. http://wheelockslatin.com/chapters/introdu...troduction.html

Yes it's indeed a problem, Antiochus is best known for his actions in Judea that brought about the Macabees Revolt however if we want to get the "big picture" of his reign we should remember that Judea was just a very small part of the Seleucid Empire and in order to get a balanced view of Antiochus we need to give much more weight to his policy on other parts of the empire and his foreign relations with the Parthians, Rome and Egypt.

The funny thing is that the two references to Jesus in the movie are in accord with the New Testament narrative. it's most of it's critics didn't bother to watch the film. On a another weird matter, when I read the review a Scientology ad appear next to it.

Those books do look interesting. Unfortunately, they also look pricey. Yes it's a big problem. I've solved it by lending them from the library.

There is a excellent biography of Cato the Elder by A.S Astin ("Cato the Censor") that I've read last year. if you interesting in the Roman political theory I currently reading Chaim Wirszubski "Libertas as a political idea at Rome during the late republic and early principate" which examine the concept of freedom in Rome.

Thanks Kosmo! I would check Bennet book myself.

Could anyone know a good source which list all the known units (Legions and Vexillas) which took part in Trajan Dacian Wars and his invasion to the Parthian Empire?

Plus in this movie the main Romulan villain is called Nero

I would suggest divide the years to four eras: * Early Republic from 509 BC to 287 BC * Middle Republic from 287 to 133 BC * Late Republic from 133 BC to 49 BC * Civil Wars and the Augustan Age from 49 BC to 14 AD I think it's important not only to examine the foreign challenge faced by Rome but also the social condition inside the Roman society and how they influence foreign policy. If I were you I would have chosen a more narrow subject, your current one is just too big.

The new translation of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti look interesting, at least as far as pages goes it's look like it's be much more extensive than the translation and commentary made by PA Brunt and M Moore in the 60es.

What about "Caesar"? could it be consider a Caludii cognimen? emperor Claudius adopted the old Iulii cognomen even thought he was never adopted into the Iulii family and never consider himself as member of this gens.

You do have a point, argumentum ex silentio is a problematic argument, however I think we need to see the big picture of evidences in his time: in the time Valerianus was operating there is no trace of the old republican families - so it's make it's extremely unlikely that he was descended of such family unless we had a pretty good evidence to that. And if there were any trace of any one of such families, how would we indentify them? As stated here, the argument is circular; P. Licinius Valerius can't be from the original Licinia gens just because he lived too late; then, his name is no trace of the old republican families; then, such families didn't survive. (Just for the sake of clarity, what we have here is an example of argumentum ad ignorantiam, not of argumentum ex silentio; the latter means that you can't infer you're right simply because your oppponent didn't answer). ANYTHING is possible however with the lack of sources indicating it we need to ask is it REASONABLE that Valerianus was a descendant to republican family? You can identify the old republican families by there names. the Roman oligarchy was a close one and thought it's wasn't official sons tend to inherit there father position (if your father was a senator it's likely that you be as well and so on) in the time that Valerianus lived we simply doesn't find members of the republican families mentioned in the sources and while we certainly don't know the name of every Roman official at the time the lack of mention in the sources did indicated that they stop to play a prominent role in politics (whatever they were extinct or simply vanished to obscurity). Now if we will return to my original question, does it reasonable that Valerianus was a descendant to republican family? in light of the evidence about the republican families in his time and without any source which mention it I would have to say the answer is NO. BTW argumentum ex silentio is used to indicate that something couldn't happened because the sources doesn't mention it (or in another words they are silence about it).

You do have a point, argumentum ex silentio is a problematic argument, however I think we need to see the big picture of evidences in his time: in the time Valerianus was operating there is no trace of the old republican families - so it's make it's extremely unlikely that he was descended of such family unless we had a pretty good evidence to that.

Thanks but the inscription is pretty simple so I manage to read it in Latin. I will try to find more information about it in one of Marius biographies.

Could someone give me more details about this inscription?

I have a different way on looking on the subject, unlike the western provinces (Hispania, Gaul, etc.) who didn't have a common culture and were ready to absorb the Latin and Roman one the eastern provinces were radically different - they had the common culture of the Greek Hellenism, which was consider equal if not superior to the Roman Latin culture (even by the Roman themselves), hence the east never receive the Latin Roman culture and instead view itself as Roman but this was a different kind of Romans than the west. so in fact there were two Roman nations: The Latin Romans in the west and the Greco-Hellenistic in the east. As the empire was split and the western empire eventually collapse, the eastern empire (while still viewed itself as "Romans") began to be more and more Greek.

I think it does. coins were also used as a propaganda mean and in the imperial period their main function was as payment to the soldiers, hence most of the imperial coins present the emperor as a military commander (Imperator and so on) to me it's suggest that a large portion of the Roman soldiers could recognize at least some basic words.

Sallust, Histories (unfortunately the full text wasn't preserved however several hundreds fragments survived)

The original Latin passage is "SEPTEM ME NAATAM ANNORVM GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT". According to the The Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary Germium could be translated as lap, bosom; female genital parts; interior (btw the female genital parts doesn't appear in The Cassell's Latin Dictionary so it's probably wasn't common meaning) and Ipse is masculine it's has to refer to her husband hence the translation of "lap, bosom" would be the only logical translation (I also find it hard to believe that someone would choose to put such as explicit sexual references on their tomb stone...). My impression is the he took her under his wing when she was seven years old since she had no relatives or they couldn't look after her (see also the passage which say he was like a father to her) and only later this "father-daughter" relationship changed to one of husband-wife.

Congratulations NN! You'll do a great job.