Melvadius

Thank you, this site is a lot older than this photograph may otherwise indicate:

Apparently Amazon are only showing the older Greenhill Books edition in their preview but will be sending out the 'New Edition' from Frontline Books. The only obvious difference from the cover shot is a new introduction by Adrian Goldsworthy. I see that metal worker David Sim is involved in another book concerning recreating Roman Equipment 'Roman Imperial Armour: The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour' so it might be worth a look.

I suppose it could be worse the scenes in the old TV series MASH with some rare blood group members of the unit being drained while they slept was all too real for my comfort. Apparently during WW2 you could give blood every few weeks which may explain why some of my family had multiples of those little gold and platinum pins given out by the blood service BTW I do give blood but normally only 2 or 3 times a year so I may never get the platinum one myself

Topic merged with earlier discussion on Museum Photographic policies

GoH that wasn't nice but the clue is a bit obvious since it looks like you have been to the Archeological Museum of Nice-Cimiez which is located on the outskirts of the ancient city of Cemenelum (Cimiez).

Old news but if you haven

Are they dislexic , have they accidently misspelled something and missed correcting it before posting, is English a 2nd or 3rd language, did they not get taught proper English usage whether UK or USA, are they still at primary/ elementary school? There are a lot of reasons for bad grammar and/ or spelling some of which can be corrected by the author being more careful or having a better education but many of which cannot or else the 'moving finger has written' rightly or wrongly on the Internet and moved on. We don't always have the chance to proof read what we have written and/or correct it if we spot a mistake Clipping items from something like Facebook can seem funny (especially) if taken out of context but how happy would one of us be about an accidental mistake here being picked up especially with (additional) adverse comments broadcast in the same way?

Unfortunately I find those examples more sad than funny.

The Daily Mail amongst several other media are covering this story the recent discovery of a 1st centruy AD wall mosaic depicting the God Apollo discovered in Rome.

Well I set my VCR to record the series when it was first on as I wasn't around when it was being shown so managed to collect a bit more before trying to watch it. I must admit that I didn't take to the 'star' since he looked if anything like any other young wannabe, all looks and no obvious acting talent, which didn't endear him to me. Mind you I also saw a review around about the time of the 2nd or 3rd episode to the effect that 'Arthur' "wandered through the programme looking like a petulant teenager who had lost his i-pod".

The chronology states that in 80 BC Pompeii became a Roman colony and Herculaneum remained a Municipium.

On several occasions I've seen the equipment made by members of the White Company who are generally reckoned on being just about the most 'authentic' group around for period detail and could well believe it was possible. The main issue, which people often forget or are unaware of, is that the best armour was tailored for an individual so even if you wear 'authentic' period armour if it hasn't been tailored for you then it will not function correctly.

IIRC the 'stepping stones' in Pompeii (I don't remember any in Herculaneum but its been a few years now) are all on roads which slope uphill and it appears that several of the public fountains had the facility or were designed to over-flow I believe intentionally to help keep the streets clean. Possibly rather than being intended to close off parts of the town these stone steps were a purely functional aspect of 'street furniture' allowing people to cross the deep roads when there was a lot of water filling them up. I suspect similarly it was mainly carts drawn by two animals which were used and if so then they probably could get through the 'stepping stones' using the same spaces as the wheels.

I don't understand what you find suprising about this fact. It is well attested that we only have limited written sources for the entire period of the Roman empire with the third century particularly patchy and irrespective of the period even major battles sometimes are only mentioned in outline. You just have to consider, despite the long term interest among scholars, how limited our sources are on military actions in somewhere like Britain and the battles fought there. Trying to find out about what were probably minor skirmishes, so much less likely to be recorded therefore seems a project likely to be without much success.

The BBC is carrying this article about the discovery of a coin hoard in Mid-Wales last June which after the intial find was responsibly reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme so the remaining coins and the container they were in could be properly excavated by archaeologists.

An off-licence is a shop licensed to sell intoxicating beers and spirits etc. They tend to sell nothing else except for a few chocolates and sweets, in case parents take their kids into the shop when buying alcohol. Unlike supermarkets and general off-licences, who sell only big-name brands plus a few minor labels, specialist off-licences import lesser-known beers from the continent. Traditionally in the UK you had 'licenced' premises which were allowed to sell alchohol for consumption on the premises and 'off-licences' where you could buy but not consume alchohol until you were off the premises. A few years back, before the licencing laws were changed relaxing a lot of the previous restrictions on opening hours (actually a hold-over from WWI & WW2), you could find them combined in a few public houses where there were separate doors from the street to go into either the licenced or 'off-licenced' side of the premises.

AS far as I can see the Polybius text talks about 'tents of units' rather than 'tent of ...' so the idea of one large marquee seems highly unlikely. What size the tents were however is unclear but centurions are listed as having separate tents. Even if there was some personal variation in how big the tents were rather than a set size I would tend to the view of smaller 8-10 man unit tents rather than larger 'marquees' being much more likely as the norm. From a practical point of view; imagine the confusion of trying to get over a hundred men to sleep inside one long tent and then what would happen if there was an alert called in the middle of the night with only a limited space to exit. We know from archaeological evidence, including an example I saw excavated at Vindolanda, that tents were made up of sewn together goat/ sheep skins. These would take some cutting through to get out of in an emergency if you were stuck in the middle of the tent whereas a smaller tent would allow men to get out quickly and start arming themselves from their equipment stacked outside.

The section I posted before is by Pseudo-Hyginus so probably covers the 2nd centuries AD rather than the preceeding Republican period text which is drawn from Polybius. In my view the Polybius account is somewhat less helpful talking about the location of the Consuls and Tribunes tents then talking about the tents of maniples and where the centurions tents are located. He doesn't go into the same specifics as Pseudo-Hyginus about how many men were billeted in each tent only where different units would have ben located on the march and how much space was needed for their tents. However having seen recreated tents made out of goat skins I would have said that making one much larger than could accomodate 8 men, as described by Pseudo-Hyginus, would make for an extremely unweildy load. On this basis probably only officers would have had the 'clout' to have larger tents made and erected for them. It is worth comparing the tents on Trajan's column where the senior officers tent's are obviously built on a different pattern to the rank and file troops. OK this is early Imperial but given re-enactment experience and the unweildiness of larger tents there is the possibility that the contubernium idea predated the reforms enacted around the time of Marius. Purely on the basis of how large a tent can be relatively easily transported and erected against the optimum number of men the same tent could contain.

Having just read this article correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that the main French attack at Agincourt was initially mounted? I've also spent some time in full armour and would agree that for most purposes the weight distribution is quite good and with practice not that much of a burden - especially if fighting from horseback. The other thing to consider is that mounted armour of the period tended to differ somewhat from that intended to be used mainly on foot. They specifically mention Agincourt in the article and although their volunteers are regular re-enactors that particular battle with the impact of the longbowmen was probably atypical of warfare in the period. In the reported conditions of boggy ground anyone who came off their horse suddenly due to it being 'shot' out beneath them is liable to have suffered significantly from landing on the ground and then trying to reach their enemy no matter what armour they were wearing.

Just a few thought from the sidelines of what could be a very nasty and long-runnign saga: From a Classicists point of view some very good points have been made but looked at from what is possibly a more humanist angle I can well understand the desire of the RoM to align themselves with anything but the Slavic heritage bequeathed to them by Yugoslavia and its precedecessors. IIRC there is an argument that due to population movements, notably under the Ottoman's, there may well actually be a 'Macedonian' heritage amongst some of the population. However possibly of more moment to the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonaia (FYROM) and now claimed Republic of Macedonia, there were a series of late 19th and early 20th century revolts against their erstwhile rulers. These brought together a combined 'Macedonian' resistance irrespective of ethnicity or religion and this 'shared' heritage will have strongly influenced their choice of name. At this stage in their existence irrespective of the rights or wrongs of their name choice, complaints by thousands of classicists and/or the entirity of Greece I don't think that the FYROM is going to give up on continuing to claim a Macedonian heritage for themselves in the way they have. Melvadius exits quickly to the nearest foxhole...

Personally I would have thought that not wearing armour would have had a greater negative impact on the chances of Medieval knights surviving battle than wearing it. As Sonic has already pointed out they were trained to do so.

Although it dates from probably around 200AD rather than BC I suspect some of the information in Polybius and Pseudo-Hyginus 'Fortifications of the Roman Camp' by Ares Publishers, Inc. may be relevant since this goes into just about every aspect of how a military camp in the Imperial period was laid out. The Republican period may have been a little less formalised in how camps were laid out but so far as tent size is probably fairly accurate. Tents were made from goat skins which when cleaned and prepared do tend to be a fairly standard size (thus the mention below of extending the tent by 2 feet). Pseudo-Hyginus section, starting on page 67, although probably incomplete opens with the lines: BTW The earl;ier section on Polybius provides a more generic description of how Republican period military camps were organised.

Borders basically folded in the UK last year even though they tried to keep an online srvice operating this doesn't greatly interest me as Amazoon keep finding out. I personally still prefer to get my hands on real copies of books so tend to browse almost at random across several shelves in stores looking at different types of books before I purchase. The tasters amazon provide don't really cut it especially if it is a technical nook I wish to check out. So I find any 'real' bookstore loss, even of a 'branded' store, somewhat distressing.

I have just checked and pages 67-68 are still visible to me. Google books tend to have several breaks in the excerts they make available but I believe these do not change so you may need to scroll further down the page to read this particular section.

Past Horizons is carrying the report of the discovery of 21 silver denarii here. Lucky archaeologists - if only we all were