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ASCLEPIADES

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Everything posted by ASCLEPIADES

  1. Here comes the acme of the legendary Patrick Henry's "Treason's Speech" at the Virginia Colony's House of Burgesses on May 30, 1765: "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third
  2. It seems George Washington often quoted Joseph Addison's play Cato, a Tragedy on the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticencis at 46 bc, where Caesar's enemy is depicted as a romantic Republican martyr against tyranny. Probably the best known is that from Act I, Scene 2: "'Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." It is directly quoted in Washington's letter praising Gral. Benedict Arnold's remarkable march through the northern wilderness in the fall of 1775: "It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more
  3. Salve, LW. Caius Plinius Secundus Maior's Naturalis Historia has a lot on myrrh and related issues. I think I would begin with Liber XII, cp. II, all ten sections.
  4. Three links on the subject of Icy Meteors or Small Comets Small Comets ~ http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/ The Original Discovery ~ http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/blackspot.html New Optical Search; Different Telescope, Same Small Comets ~ http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/iro/iro2.html Gratiam habeo for those links, F. You have done a great research. I agree dirt ice objects do impact the Earth and other celestial bodies, even if I don't know how often they do. What I think has been reported only once is, again, the Tunguskan Event discrepancy; any impact with so much evidence of so big collateral energy release without actually leaving any crater or equivalent finding. As I'm no expert, I can't be totally sure that the momentum of a dirt ice object of the proper size to be vaporized just some hundreds of metres away from hitting the Siberian surface would be enough to replicate all the described findings (and non-findings too). Replicability is one of the main bases for scientific knowledge (ie, if we replicate the critical conditions, the resultant phenomenon predictably happens). Conversely, its absence must be considered a caveat for any scientific hypothesis.
  5. Salve, Amici. I couldn't agree more with Maty, Lintott and Livius; there had always been violence within the Roman Republic, even if it was contained for long periods. In fact, we can't find any massive popular uprisings at the late Republic analogous to the Secession of the Plebeians at CCLX AUC / 494 bc.
  6. Salve, M. That can be true only if you consider those citizens as entirely passive objects from their political environment.
  7. Comments on this thread debate some possible explanations: http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8546 however, Scientific theories need not cancel each other out. It is highly likely that, even if a population of Europeans did make it across the ice sheet of the North Atlantic, Siberians were making the journey from their side of the continent too. Salve NN et gratiam habeo for reminding us that previous thread. Anyhow, I think we're here trying to compare quite different works. I think Beringias's existence is accepted as a proven fact by now. The question shouldn't be IF humans migrate across Beringia, but WHEN and HOW. There have been many reports on stratigraphical and radiocarbon dating of human presence long before the Clovis period (circa 11,000 years ago) all across the American Continent, but most of them lack direct human skeletons dating, like the Monteverde site at Chile (14,500 years) and some skulls from the National Museum of Anthropology collection in Mexico (13,000 years). At 28,000 years, Dr. Jacques Cinq-Mars doubles those figures, even if his dating comes from a SIC: " chipped mammoth bone that appeared to have been fashioned into a small harpoon point". Pretty hard evidence from where I am, but I still think Clovis arrowheads and related findings point to a considerable expansion of the Continent's human populations 11,000 years ago, probably including one or many migrations, even if not the first one (?). Of course, alternative theories didn't cancel each other; but I don't think Dr. Ron Janke has yet any structured theory at all. What his field findings suggest is that nowadays north-eastern United States (Kankakee Sand Islands in Lake Michigan) may have been not so frozen after all 14,500-15,000 years ago. Not a word about any possible mechanism for crossing the Ocean. Even if there were any similarities between arrowheads found on both sides of the Atlantic that are not better explained by simple convergent evolution, a longer Eurasia/Beringia connection would seem far more plausible to me.
  8. Salve A. All for the sake of argument (from a non-scientist) Except for the R-5 quake, which is only conjecture, (as are all my remarks) all of the conditions can be met by a tenuously agglomerated snowball interlaced with space dust serving to weld ancient collision aggregates into one large cometary object. Faustus Salve, F. We agree. You miss my point. As I stated previously, I also still find the old Carl Sagan's theory of the "comet's core" impact as the most likely explanation (I'm not sure he was the author, but he surely promoted it). The findings of the Tunguska's Event can't be explained by the impact of any "regular" meteorite (ie, rocky and/or metallic last time I checked). I think even the earthquake can be explained by the "comet's core" impact theory. BTW, that earthquake was no conjecture, as it was detected by multiple seismic stations across Eurasia at the time. As the Richter Scale wasn't used at 1908, the retrospective attrribution of a "5.0" value is an indirect estimation, not a "conjecture". From where I am, the main problem for the "comet's core" explanation is that such phenomena hasn't been observed twice, as far as I'm aware.
  9. Salve C. Good tip. If you check Wikipedia carefully, you will see why the Tunguska event was highly, (HIGHLY) unusual and why it has engaged the brain of so many people. A regular airburst from the upper atmosphere wouldn't explain: - The destruction of such big area of Siberian forest. - An earthquake equivalent to (estimated) Richter 5.0 - Fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. - An observed decrease in atmospheric transparency in the United States from the suspended dust that lasted for several months. At the risk of overstating the obvious, any regular meteorite of enough volume to explain such massive release of energy MUST have left a huge crater. Continents haven't moved beyond centimetres for the last century and the famous Kulik's expedition was there at 1927. It seems quite unlikely Lake Cheko can be such crater (as Longo proposed) among other reasons because there are trees on its shore actually older than the impact itself (as Collins and Bland rightly stated).
  10. Salve, G aka G. Happy 4th July 2U2! From The Founding Fathers & the Classics. by Dr. Joe Wolverton II Ancient history provided the Founders with examples of behavior and circumstances that they could apply to their own circumstances. Their heroes were Roman and Greek republicans and defenders of liberty. All of the Founders
  11. That's because Swedish is not a Romance language. As Docta explained, "the Romance languages would naturally utilize the phonological changes on the proper Latin names just as they were applied to the rest of the lexicon". The Cornelian cognomen Sulla poses some particular problems, explained by a couple of historical-linguistic oddities. Even if all contemporary Latin authors wrote Sulla , the main primary sources on the famous Happy Dictator, Appianus and Plutarchus, wrote both in Greek. Then, the first Latin vowel "u" was transliterated by the Hellenic upsilon ("Y"). There you get the Sylla used by some late Latin authors, like Orosius and Jordanes. Now, when you re-transliterate "Y" back to Latin, you have two main alternatives; "i" and "u". Spanish and related languages have the additional phonological circumstance that their double consonant "ll" is quite different from the original Latin usage. Actually, original latin "ll" sounds closer to their simple consonant "l". Those are the reasons why, depending on the language, you may find "Sulla", "Sylla", "Silla", "Sula" or even "Sila".
  12. And on Greece, the Lacedemonian and Cretan constitutions, according to Aristotle's Politics. BTW, suffetes is a close congnate of the Hebrew word used in the biblical book between Joshua and Samuel, commonly translated as "Judges".
  13. Salve, Amici. Wow; after a couple of never-ending historical arguments over Latin gossip, nothing like a cosmic ephemeron to remind us our true place within the universal scheme. The most unusual fact of the Tunguska event was the obvious discrepancy between its known physical effects and the absence of any impact crater. I think Collins and Bland are right in dismissing Longo's Lake Cheko as the crater; after so many years, it seems old Carl Sagan's explanation (a "dirty ice" object, ie a comet's head) is still the best one. One cannot help but wonder how many historical facts would we be able to explain with such a destructive event leaving so little physical evidence at any other place and time. All that said, I find irresponsible (to say the least) Dr Richard Crowther's quoted assertions (sic: "The surveys suggest that objects of this size are numerous enough to anticipate similar events in the relatively near future"). I must assume Dr. Crowther would like more money for his NEO (United Nations Near Earth Object) programme, and/or that he enjoys to see his face and name on the news. Dr. Crowther can't ignore that Humankind has nicely survived so far without any additional protection than that given by simple probability, and that current research (including his own team) has not found anything that can even remotely suggest that will change in the foreseeable future (For example, check out the Earth Impact Database).
  14. Salve, Amici. There is an article by Dr. Diem at al in the New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 334: pg 1578-1582 June 13, 1996) where the researchers analyzed how three popular television programs of the time (Rescue 911, ER and Chicago Hope) depicted cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They concluded that their survival rates were significantly higher than the most optimistic in the current medical literature, and that the portrayal of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on television may lead the viewing public to have an unrealistic impression of its chances for success. The affected TV networks defended themselves by arguing their primary mission was entertainment, not medical information. I must agree, and I would think we're here in an analogous situation. The public pay their tickets to watch an entertaining story, not for a History course. Besides, we are always walking over that border so well described by Emil Ludwig in his wonderful biographies: where does "historical reconstruction" ends and "historical fiction" begins? After all, we are talking about events two thousand years away from us. No one was more aware about historian's relativity than Titus Livius Patavinus himself, writing on events happening mere two centuries ago (ie, Ab Urbe Condita, Liber XXII, cp. LXI): Mirari magis adeo discrepare inter auctores quam quid ueri sit discernere queas. "It is easier to feel astonishment at such discrepancies amongst our authorities than to determine what is the truth". Another nice example would be that recent thread discussing about How Victorian restorers faked the clothes that seemed to show Hadrian. Those "Victorians" tried to do what they believed was the closest to "historical reality", according to the edge of their knowledge. Haircuts, class behaviour, colour use; how sure can we be now of how all of these and more will be depicted in the future, after additional archaeological and historical research appears? If we really try to depict any major ancient battle the closest we can to our known facts, we will get a perpetual gore carnage; Gibson's The Passion of Christ and Apocalypto come to my mind. I guess that wouldn't be the best for everybody's filmic taste.
  15. Salve, Amici. A free sample.
  16. Salve, DD HERE is a comprehensive list of sources on the Eastern Empire and HERE is a local specialist Primary sources on Justinian basically means Procopius of Caesarea, History of Wars (eight books) and Anekdota ("secret history").
  17. Thanks! sorry but which was the same experience loving the site or being stuck for resources? Both (ie, the first sentence of your initial statement)
  18. Prof. Jona Lendering has some nice material on: The constitution of Carthage, the sonsul-like suffetes and where did the idea of dual leadership come from.
  19. Salve, Amici. Clearly most of the statements made on the previous 39 posts of this long thread are accurate and based on well-established facts about Rome and Romania (the Roman state in all its varieties). Maty
  20. Salve, I Excellent question, it has been implied previouly here at UNRV. The expected answer from a lot of Romanophiles would be obvious. From where I am, there's just not enough evidence to determine which was the first one. On one hand, Aristotle at the IV century BC had a thorough knoeledege of the carthaginian constitution, while he said not a wordabout Rome. On the other, we have virtually zero first hand information of any kind about Carthage, thanks to the Genocide of DCVIII AUC / 146 bc. Melvadius expertise would be urgently required.
  21. Salve, Amici. This has caused some confusion before. Here comes the American Heritage Dictionary: CORN: n(oun) 1. a. Any of numerous cultivated forms of a widely grown, usually tall annual cereal grass (Zea mays) bearing grains or kernels on large ears. 3. Chiefly British Any of various cereal plants or grains, especially the principal crop cultivated in a particular region, such as wheat in England or oats in Scotland.
  22. Salve, Amici. Highlighting some interesting differences between Roman and Greek private houses, here comes Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, Liber VI, cp. VII: "The Greeks using no atrium, and not building as we do, make a passage, of no great breadth, from the entrance gate, on one side whereof the stable is placed, and on the other the porter's rooms, which immediately adjoin the inner gates. The space between the two gates, is, by the Greeks, called θυρωρεῖον. From this you enter into the peristylium, which has a portico on three sides. On that side facing the south are two ant
  23. Salve, C Lake Toba is in Sumatra, Indonesia and a brief review on Ambrose's Toba catasrophe theory.
  24. Salve et Gratiam habeo, NN Wow! I wasn't aware of your amazing building job at HOMUNCULUM; very impressive indeed.
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