ASCLEPIADES

First of all, I totally agree with you. That said, I think the EU will never willingly accept Turkey. Then, you could consider the genocide issue simply as an excuse for US to stop pressing the EU and for both of them to get more concessions from Turkey.

As far as I know, Octavius had minimal contact with Caesar for any possible "tutelage" (C. Suetonius, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Augustus, Cp. VIII, sec. I-II): "Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar's African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth. When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of Pompey, although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with which he had made the journey. When Caesar, after recovering the Spanish provinces, planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against the Parthians, Augustus, who had been sent on in advance to Apollonia, devoted his leisure to study." Please remember that Caesar's adoption was posthumous; previously, Octavius was the stepson of Lucius Marcius Philippus.

Nope, strictly speaking, it wasn't him, but his generals;firstly and mostly Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa among them, but also Quintus Salvidienus Rufus, Marcus Antonius (vg, at Philippi), Menas (against Sextus Pompeius) and others. And more than any other factor, his political mastership over all of them.

I think there are many different arguments at stake here. The first one is if the killing of Turkish ethnic minorities during WWI was really a Genocide or not. The core of the UN definition of genocide would be "...acts committed with intent to destroy... a national, ethnical, racial or religious group..." Hardly surprising, the position of Ankara is "No" and that of the Armenians is "Yes". Personally, I would concur with the latter. But that would certainly also be the case for a lot of native populations from the New World and other regions conquered by western Europeans after the Renaissance, or the central Asian populations after the Russian conquest. Historically, Genocide has not been uncommon. The second one is for how long can you hold accountable for such a crime a whole nation, or at least its government; we are talking here about some ninety years for the case of the Armenian genocide. This is the really hard question.

Salve. I see no actual contradiction between both positions. Not only the Roman Catholic Church, but also the Eastern Orthodox Churches are remanent institutions from the ancient Roman state. But the countries where those churches have thrived are not Rome anymore. By any standard, Rome and Romania "fell" centuries ago. It would be analogous to the case of the Islam in Indonesia; Islam was born as an Arabic institution, but Indonesia is not an Arab country.

The case against Phoenician/Punic practice of child sacrifice: The Tophet was the final resting place for the still- born and for children who died in early infancy. (see letter below in support of this view) M'hamed Hassine Fantar Were it not for a few classical accounts, scholars would probably not attribute the burials in the Carthage Tophet to child sacrifice. Some of the more sensational stories, such as those related by the first-century B.C. historian Diodorus Siculus, have been picked up in modern times and passed off as the entire truth. In the 19th century, for instance, Gustave Flaubert described Punic child sacrifices in his novel Salammb

Salve. The case for Phoenician/Punic practice of child sacrifice: The thousands of individual burials, the several mass burials and the animal burials all demonstrate that these were sacrifical offerings to the gods. Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene The evidence that Phoenicians ritually sacrificed their children comes from four sources. Classical authors and biblical prophets charge the Phoenicians with the practice. Stelae associated with burial urns found at Carthage bear decorations alluding to sacrifice and inscriptions expressing vows to Phoenician deities. Urns buried beneath these stelae contain remains of children (and sometimes of animals) who were cremated as described in the sources or implied by the inscriptions. Still, some scholars like Dr. Fantar deny that the Phoenicians sacrificed their children. They dismiss the texts as tendentious or misinformed, and they ignore the sacrificial implications of the inscribed stelae. The archaeological evidence, however, especially the bones found inside the burial urns, cannot be so easily explained away. Evidence from classical authors. Ancient authors, both Greco-Roman historians like Kleitarchos, Diodorus and Plutarch and Church fathers like Tertullian, condemn the Carthaginians for the practice of child sacrifice. Some add lurid but unverifiable details

Salve, GO. Something like Mamucium Maius, for example?

Nope. Living languages are always evolving, that's inevitably. Only dead Languages stay the same. English, Dutch and Afrikaans are all of them western Germanic Languages. As such, they all share a high degree of mutual intelligibility. The main problem for native English-speakers to understand Dutch is the latter's grammar. Afrikaans is arguably the most analytic of the Germanic Languages, thus its grammar might be not so difficult for English-speakers. An example (English - Afrikaans - Dutch) from Wikipedia: E: "Snow falls regularly in the winter, while rains and mists can occur year-round". A: "Sneeuval kom gereeld voor in die winter, terwyl mis en re

Salve, Amici. The following link goes to theThe Speech Accent Archive: 815 audio samples of people with various accents reading the same paragraph. (In English and also in another Languages, of course) I hope this stuff may be useful. Vale.

Basically, Literature is artistic writing, being art itself the conscious production of beauty; it's a universal feature of any Language, written or not, and we can reasonably infer its existance, either being it known or not by us. On the other hand, a "Rosetta stone" (ie, the parallel multiple translation of a representative text that includes at least one version in a well known language) is totally another story. Its existence cannot be simply inferred, even less its preservation. Anuyway, I wouldn't be surprised if such text were eventually found for the Punic language, given the long relationship of Carthage witn both Hellenic and Latin populations.

Salve, GM. Findings at such location, under most of the "roman period", would be almost inevitably Roman by definitio. Then, I think your post is quite well placed.

I think what the Romans wanted to erradicate was the Cartaginian people, not specifically their language. It presumably survived at least until the VII Century, when it probably got mixed with the Arabic, another semitic language. The following comes from en.wikipedia: "The significantly divergent later-form of the language that was spoken in the Tyrian Phoenician colony of Carthage is known as Punic; it remained in use there for considerably longer than Phoenician did in Phoenicia itself, arguably surviving into Augustine's time. It may have even survived the Arabic conquest of North Africa: the geographer al-Bakri describes a people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in the city of Sirt in northern Libya, a region where spoken Punic survived well past written use. However it is likely that Arabization of the Punics was facilitated by their language belonging to the same group (the Semitic languages group) as that of the conquerors, and thus having many grammatical and vocabulary similarities. The ancient Lybico-Berber alphabet derived from the Punic script still in irregular use by modern Berber groups such as the Touareg is known by the native name tifinaġ, possibly a declined form of the borrowed word Pūnic. Direct borrowings from Punic appear in modern Berber dialects: one interesting example is agadir "wall" from Punic gader. This term also served as the origin of the name of the Spanish city of C

GM has just get at it. After GPM acknowledges so, it will be his turn.

Salve, GPM. You're right, of course. Your turn.

Nope.

Salve. It was indeed considered a Dutch's dialect until 1925. The linguistic differentiation probably happened at the late XIX Century. The Dutch settlement in South Africa began circa 1652. A couple of UNRV's members are from South Africa.

Be careful, Lady A is going to blow the whistle. No, no, nope, nein, non, not, nyet...

No. Hint: a big colony of former auxilia was established here. Salve iterum. Another clue ... it's Iudea. Hint: Place of a Byzantine defeat at 634 AD.

Salve, Amici! This link goes to a related thread about Corn.

Salve iterum!

Nice find, GO

Salve, amici. An excellent narrative of all the late Roman Republican period, indeed. (And a nice bibliography section, BTW).

Salve, CL. I'm not sure why do you consider "the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign". It would be helpful if you could explain your thesis a little more. Thanks in advance.

Salve, amici. Excuse me: I still think he is Agrippa.