GhostOfClayton

Hello Minh. I understood your requirement perfectly. In fact, you've now taught me a new word (I'd never heard of 'Latifundium'), so I look forward to seeing replies to this post. I do remember a lecture about a religious practice of matching and outlining areas of the night sky on the land, but it doesn't sound like the two are the same.

Yikes! I thought it would go on for a couple of days at least. Well done, Melvadius. It was indeed Milecastle 38, as can be deduced by the presence of the distinctive lake

Peut-

OK - I thought that would be quick. Now you have the overall context, the next question you need to ask yourself is - "what type of structure might lay beneath the earthwork?"

Wow! I'm quite stunned by that. I vaguely remember hearing someone say "The Cave of the Sybille" many years ago. I assumed it was Cybelle, rather than Sybille. The only clue was that it looked a bit like a cave entrance, so I thought "cave . . . cave . . . cave . . . . there was that Cave of the Cybelle thingie". I really don't deserve that one (but I'll take it anyway.) This one is a little different. I need you to identify the actual structure (not the type of structure) represented by the earthworks in the foreground. I know that some of you have visited this structure, but I doubt that would put you at a greater advantage. All the clues are in the photo, once you've established the general location, which I think someone will provide early on. I suspect a bit of research on the the World Wide Interweb will help. My advice is to narrow it down bit by bit, and I will state whether you're right or not. Off you go, and best of luck on your quest.

. . . and we must acknowledge that the love may well have been going only one way. Cleopatra was fully aware of the advantage that could be gained for her and her people if she were to ensure Caesar was in love with her. The fact that she repeated the behaviour with Mark Antony is (to a degree) evidence of that.

Here's hoping for a quick win: The Cave of the Cybelle?

This is a bit shameless, but here goes. I've been getting very much into a game on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch and also android called Draw Something. Give it a go; it's delightful. If you'd like a game with me, my user name is (believe it or not) 'GhostOfClayton'.

I seem to be back at the point where these are twice fortnightly. I wonder how long that'll last! Man v. Food Have you seen �Man vs. Food�? It has been playing almost non-stop on Dave (the UK�s favourite TV channel amongst viewers who have already tried BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel 4 and don�t really like what�s on them) at the moment. The format of the show is pretty basic. A man who (inexplicably) is not hugely overweight moves from US city to US city, taking on the various �challenge� dishes put forward by restaurants. These dishes invariably contain their weight somewhere in the name, involve deep frying somewhere in the recipe, and have been successfully eaten by only a handful of people. For example, your man may have an hour to consume Tastebud Irene�s 72oz Southern Fried Chili Chicken Donut Challenge (with a bucket of fries). Invariably, Tastebud Irene�s will be a restaurant founded in the 70s by the titular Irene following the death of her husband (or man she had corresponded with whilst he was awaiting execution on death row, and subsequently married via CCTV). The recipe will be something like: flash-fry a chicken carcass and stuff with chili. Wrap in bacon, and marinate in chili sauce. Mince the whole lot and cook into a donut. Serve on a bed of a T-Bone steaks, and lightly dust with Irene�s �Secret blend� of spices (chili powder). Now the guy sits down in the crowded restaurant and, egged on by a large crowd of drunken locals, has to push half his own body weight in something akin to napalm down his gullet without it touching his lips, or indeed any part of him where there are intact nerve endings. This includes his hands, mind, because when his eyes inevitably start watering, he will need to rub them. If he has touched anything that has come out of Irene�s kitchen before rubbing them, he will go blind. And I dread to think what happens when he needs to take a pee! Of course, if he succeeds, he gets a certificate, his photo on the Wall of Insane Diners, his meal for free, and triple heart bypass surgery. Watching him doing this week after week, I can�t help thinking there must be very few major blood vessels left in his body that haven�t been robbed out to bypass those leading to his heart. I�ve made �Man vs Food� sound a little tacky . . . I know. Even for someone as highbrow and intellectual as I am, it still makes for very good 'guilty pleasure' telly, even if you only watch it to see the world�s first on-screen fatal myocardial infarction. It�s bound to happen. Going for an English I�m reminded of a �Man vs Food� incident in my favourite Indian restaurant some years back. On the next table to us were a couple of guys, one of whom was sober (probably driving), and had eaten Indian food before � let�s call him Ernie. The other was happily drunk, and had taken the opportunity to join his mate for a curry purely to keep the night going and drink more. He had never been to an Indian before � let�s call him Eric. Drunk enough to be feeling a little macho, Eric pestered Ernie to tell him �what�s the hottest thing they do?� Sensibly, Ernie replied, �it�s a Phal, but you won�t eat it. Have a Madras if you want something hot�. But Eric is having none of this, and insists he can handle the Phal. Ernie tries in vain to talk him out of it, saying he won�t be able to eat it, until Eric says �I bet you a fiver I can.� To quote AJ Rimmer:- I think it was Saint Francis of Assisi that once said, �never give a sucker an even break�, and so Ernie, sensing repayment of his petrol money, accepts the bet. The Phal arrives (looking a colour that could be described as �fluorescent�), and Eric makes an enthusiastic start. The first oversized forkful goes in, and a little grin plays imperceptibly at the corner of his lips. �This isn�t so bad�, he�s no doubt thinking. The second and third go in, and the imperceptible grin is becoming perceptible. By about the sixth, the grin is fading. Breathing in is beginning to be a process not only of getting oxygen into the lungs, but of cooling the mouth. The pace hasn�t slowed yet, though. The next stage is sweat appearing on the brow. Doubts are starting to creep in. This is going to be tough. �Go to your happy place,� he�s thinking. �Just keep shovelling it in.� By the time he�s finished, I�d say about a third of the curry, Eric is struggling, and this is evident to Ernie. �You�re not going to eat that, are you?� �I am, yes.� �are you hell.� And so on until, out of nowhere the ante is upped to a tenner. Eric eats the next third with renewed vigour, forcing it in and stoically ignoring the pain. Ernie never once looks worried though and, sure enough, about two-thirds of the way through the curry, Eric bows to the inevitable, and hurries away to the gents to be sick. Food one � Eric nil. By the way, the topic of this section is the title of a very famous sketch from the BBC show �Goodness Gracious Me�. It can be seen .

Kabile?

Arbeia: Discover the Fort in a whole new light Saturday 1 December and Saturday 8 December, 4pm & 4.30pm This winter, discover Arbeia Roman Fort in a whole new light on a special candlelit tour exploring the history of this working archaeological site. Suitable for ages 12+. Adults

Looking at it unemotionally, this makes huge (but unnerving) sense, and remains interesting to this day. Allow me to explain why I think it's unnerving. If you've invested money into a slave, it would be in your financial interest to invest in his/her health to prolong the return you get on investment. Much as you would regularly service and maintain a car you'd spent thousands on. If you're the owner of a sweatshop in the back streets of some third world city, there is no financial incentive to invest in the health of your work force. If one falls ill, you just get another. If they become so weak, their work falls below accepted quality levels - get another.

You have to take into account that, to a degree, the new, flexible, mobile legions were a cheaper compromise to having the vast, more permanently-based heavy infantry based legions. The need to cut numbers meant they had to move to where they were needed, and so needed to be more nimble. If money wasn't an issue, I doubt this step-change would have happend, though there would almost certainly have been a steady evolution in techniques to counter the increased use of heavy cavalry by the 'enemy'.

HP Sauce � turns a sandwich into a manwich Now, I�m not one to do celebrity product endorsements (you have to be a celebrity to do that, for starters), and I�m certainly not in favour of the creeping product placement we seem to be experiencing nowadays. But I do like HP Sauce. Those who don�t know what HP Sauce is (this equates to no-one in the UK, and probably practically everyone anywhere else), are now asking �what is HP Sauce?� Basically, it�s the proprietary brand among a collection of products collectively called (very unimaginatively) brown sauce. I destroyed my last remaining tastebud back in 80s by eating too many hot curries, so I can�t tell the difference between them, but Mrs OfClayton says she prefers HP, so it is the HP bottle that adorns the breakfast table at OfClayton Towers. It has quite a strong and very savoury flavour that complements bacon butties (sandwiches), fried breakfasts, chips (fries, not crisps), etc. You pour a small amount straight from the bottle onto your food (or in a blob at the side), in the same way you would with ketchup. Culturally, it�s much more popular in the north of the country than the south � I don�t know why. �Why are you telling us this now?� is the next question you�ll surely be asking. I suppose it�s all to do with my new Mo. It�s coming along nicely now � in fact, it�s reached the stage where a small part of each meal can be �saved for later� in it (usually involuntarily). HP sauce are currently running an ad where the narrator says that any effort to grow facial hair MUST be applauded. I�ll be honest, I don�t feel like applauding mine. Far from it. It�s irritating me no end and, come the 1st December, it will be shaved off with great glee, never to return. The fact remains, that HP feel it should be applauded, hence the timing of my endorsement. HP Sauce . . . I love it! A footnote to is by way of a final question: Why don�t they have this in the US? Ever since I�ve been a more frequent visitor the good old US of A in recent years, I�ve had a good look around for it, without success. I can see why it wouldn�t suite European tastes, but I can�t help thinking it would suit the American palate right down to the ground. Someone�s missing a trick there, I reckon.

You're very fortunate to live in/close to Colchester. Would that we had that much Roman archaeology near us.

I must slow down. I'm ticking these off the list pretty quickly now, having just (and I mean just) completed The Accusers This is a book of two halves, style-wise. The first concentrates (too hard if you ask me) on the ins, outs, quirks, and complications of the Roman legal system. It smacks of very thorough research (which is a good thing) shoe-horning its way onto the page as if to prove it was done (which is a bad thing). You really have to be keeping up to ensure you take the relevant detail on board, and so much of it adds little to the plot. Don't get me wrong, it's well written, and it's all good stuff, but it seems a little in-depth for the genre, and out of keeping with the style so far. However, the second half returns to form. Classic Falco to please the classic Falcophile. The ultimate acolade to any work of detective fiction is that the reader should kick themselves at the end, seeing that the clues were staring them in the face all along, but they hadn't put two and two together. The Accusers is such a novel. In summary: All's well that ends well.

From the 13th Century, it was law that every Englishman between ages 17 and 69 was required to keep and practice with a longbow. That law was not abolished until the introduction of the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960. . . . Yes 19 60. That's how good we are.

No Falco novels on that list, BH?

How were the overnight buses? Could you sleep on them? Did you use any particular websites for bus timetables or accomodation? I'm sort of planning a trip to Ephesus, so this is all useful info. Thanks.

That first frost of Winter As I write this, it�s November 19th; a date that is etched into my memory as the anniversary of my only significant car accident. It was back in 1986 or 87, I think. I was very young, very poor, and (if I�m honest) very stupid. I was also a typical Yorkshireman - tight-fistedly eking out the last traces of tread from my tires, getting that last few hundred miles, until you could all but see your reflection in them It was a long time ago, but I still remember it well. It was the first real frost of that winter, and it was a particularly sharp one. I remember the long straight road bordered by Christmas-tree decoration grass. I remember the GhostMobile Mk II�s inexplicable urge to slew sideways and mount the verge, and then the sudden drop of the bonnet as it dipped into a ditch. Here, the slow-motion stuff began. Silver grass, cloudless sky, silver grass, cloudless sky, silver grass. Ah, a cloud this time. Just a tiny one, no bigger than a man�s hand, and in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle. I had all the time in the world to consider the cloud as the GhostMobile continued its graceful, end-over-end ballet. The subsequent ambulance ride took place in a haphazard, dream-like blur. The sirens wailed like tormented demons, the blue lights flashed, reflecting back from every window, and the rush hour traffic parted in front of us like the waters of the Red Sea before Moses. �I�ve only pulled a muscle in my neck,� I told the paramedic, tapping where the stiffness was worst. The risk of whiplash clearly played on his mind, and so he secured a spongy brace beneath my chin. �That first frost of winter gets �em all,� he said, nodding wisely. He�d seen it all before. The pace barely eased as we turned into the hospital grounds. My memory is of squealing tires complaining bitterly at the blatant disregard for their health, but in reality I�m pretty sure ambulances don�t do that. We jerked to a full stop and the rear doors were flung open by a waiting nurse. Whereupon a flurry of urgent activity found me removed from the ambulance, and wheeled hurriedly through into the building proper. Here, my trolley was taken by two porters who hurried with it down a short corridor and into a long white room with green curtains on either side. �Quick! Put him in number three,� the nurse urged the porters (she may not have said �Quick!�), and I was wheeled through a pair of green curtains into a small anteroom. In contrast to the urgency of the ambulance journey, I was left here alone for almost twenty minutes. Eventually, a weary looking young man with a white coat and clipboard pushed in through the curtains and took my personal details. I told him that I�d probably just pulled a muscle in my neck, and he left me alone for a further ten minutes, before I was visited by another weary looking young man with a clipboard and a stethoscope. �Right then. Mr. . ,� he examined the clipboard and stifled a yawn. �Mr. OfClayton.� For a reason known only to himself, the man, who I took to be a doctor, prodded me in the leg with a pencil thoughtfully, and wrote something on the clipboard. �Right then. Your neck. You say you�ve pulled a muscle?� I nodded . . . quite gingerly. The doctor prodded the other leg, wrote something else, and then started sliding his fingers into my hair, parting it here and there. �Right then. Did you bang your head at all?� I shrugged vaguely, no memory of whether I had or not. Had it all happened so quickly after all? �Right then,� the doctor said shining a light into my eye. �We�ll not worry about that for the moment. Let�s get you down to X-ray.� A porter wheeled my trolley upstairs to Radiography where I was pushed into a random crush of other trolleys. More waiting. The featureless, off-white ceiling was all I was able to look at as I lay there. I tried in vain to ease my aching neck around, attempting to catch a glimpse of the motley collection of unfortunates patiently waiting their turns. One of them sighed. I didn�t know which. With nothing else to occupy itself, my mind�s eye projected the morning�s events onto the ceiling for the nth time. The ceiling projection caught up with reality just as the porters wheeled me back to be X-rayed a second time, and then I was wheeled back into the random crush, and at last back through the endless corridors which returned me to what might have been the place I started out in. The hospital was busy now, buzzing and throbbing with the injured and the overworked. How fortunate I was that the first frost of winter had claimed me as its victim before the rush hour took hold in earnest. The early bird with a stiff neck catches the hospital trolley, while the later and more seriously injured birds, caught only chairs and benches. All of a sudden, I was a high priority case. �Get him treated and get him off that trolley�. The doctor met me behind the green curtains, hurriedly thrusting an X-ray in front of my face, and withdrawing before I could get a curiosity-sating look at my own bones. �Right then, nothing serious here, you�ve probably just pulled a muscle in your neck. Here you are. Keep this on your person until tomorrow, and you can go now if you like.� He handed me a typed and much photocopied letter, and was gone. I thrust the letter into my pocket, and then went in search of my jacket, which I hadn�t seen since I was admitted. I eventually found it screwed into a tight ball beneath a trolley in the adjoining cubicle, where the unfortunate victim of a nasty road accident groaned helplessly at me as I retrieved it, and then I searched the labyrinthine building for an exit. As I walked down the hospital steps, I read the note. The bearer, it explained, had received a blow to the head and under no circumstances should that person be left alone during the next twenty-four hours. Hmmm. . . Anyway, I lived to see another day, though my neck has been intermittently dodgy ever since. Coincidentally, there was ice on the windscreen of the GhostMobile this morning.

Stunning. Would love to know more about the logistics of how you got there, where you stopped, could it be combined with a trip to Ephesus, etc.

I can only echo that sentiment. Oplonits,and especially the Villa Poppaea, have some stunning levels of preservation (sadly, on a much, much smaller site).

I've now read the next book in the series: The Jupiter Myth To borrow a quote from Doctor Johnson, this was a giant rollercoaster of a novel (though to quote Abraham Lincoln, you should never trust quotes you read on the internet!) Seriously, it was a rollercoaster of a novel. This (in my humble but honest opinion) was the best Falco yet by some distance. The action, the intrigue, the suspense, the humour . . . everything. It was like climbing a hill with a series of false summits, with each plot climax being suppassed by another, and another. There are unanswered questions at the end, but you just know it's just a sign of something special coming further down the line. In short . . nice one, Ms Davis. I can't wait for the next thrilling instalment. Wow!

Is the mystery city in Bulgaria?

Quote right - it is the Arles Cryptoporticus (well done Bryaxis Hecatee). It is an unusually large space below the forum. Structurally it was almost certainly built to give a level surface to the forum on otherwise sloping ground, and so may have been at least partly above ground when first built (mainly depending on what else was built around it, I suppose). No-one knows to what purpose it was put. If you're in Arles, search it out - it's a huge, eery space that you can wander in for quite some time. Plenty of little offshoots and so on you could easily miss. To find it, locate the Place de la Republic, and the Cleopatra's needle that once graced one end of the nearby Roman Circus. Walk north and enter the Mairie/Hotel de Ville. The entrance to the Cryptoporticus is a fairly anonymous looking desk immediately on the left. It closes at lunchtime. Over to Bryaxis Hecatee for the next thrilling instalment.