Melvadius

Another hint seems overdue - I was succeeded by my son.

Close enough - Cyrrhus (Kyrrhos), ancient town in northern Syria, base of the Tenth legion Fretensis for a short period and (according to Wikipedia) about 70 km northwest of Aleppo, Syria and 24 km west of Kilis, Turkey. Over to you Ghost

Aleppo isn't that close to this site but you are fairly near to the border.

Correct; now where - it has a military connection?

The site is close to Turkey but not in it.

Not always 100% but thanks for the compliment and the more detailed response

Others may be able to confirm this but I am uncertain that such information has survived in any of our available written sources. Given this was in the second century BC, in the period when consular armies were normally raised each year and assigned to a particular theatre of war under one or other of that years consuls, I am not sure that there will be any record of which numbers/ names would have been assigned to which units. Confusion about legion classifications are particularly a problem where some units seem to have been kept in the field for longer than their 'obligatory' single year so there could conceivably have been multiple legions operating with the same numerical designation. From a quick search on the web there is a lot of talk about numbers of troops of different types, the fact that Scipio Amelianus obtained several thousand volunteers for his army but no indications of any individual unit classifications.

I think what the others need to help rather than the name of individuals mentioned is a formal reference for the inscription. Somethiing like CIL (for Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum) or CIG (for Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum used with Greek script) and a number. With that information or one of a few other possible letter and number combinations used in other publications it is possible to track down the full printed version of the original Latin or Greek scripts and obtain clues to possible dates as well as locations where found and other information to help answer your original question.

Thanks folks but it was all down to pure bl**dy mindedness and all too many searches. Here's next:

In that case it must be the "recently set up temple "Herkulaneum" at the archaeological site Gurina in the community Dellach (Gailtal), district Hermagor, Carinthia, Austria"

Should we be looking at the French side of the Alps or possibly NW Italy then?

The habit of reconstructing Gallo-Roman temples strikes me as more Germanic than most other parts of Europe. I am not sure of the camera angle and although the image looks totally wrong for it how about somewhere in Germany like Martberg?

I would agree with Virgil61 here but there were also several pro-Punic and possibly even 'uncommited' historians writing about the wars; notably including Silenus of Caleate who accompanied Hannibal for much of his campaign. Even if now lost, these and similar sources could have provided the basis for the Roman writings which have survived. As a non-expert in my view the issue is not to get too fixated on a 'name' for particular sources. Linguistic experts have been know to spend several volumes dissecting which particular lost writing may have been the source for an obscure reference, in fact the book I am reading at present by Miles makes numerous references to who may have been the source for particular variants of myths and legends that were used in what was effectively a propoganda war occuring throughout the period from before the first rise of Carthage to increasing accrimony with the Greeks and ultimately Rome. For example all sides seem to have spread variants of the Hercules legend as they contended for Sicily and Magna Greaca trying to use such associations to support their claims by implying Divine support or guidance when they raised claims for particular towns or areas as really 'belonging' to one side or the other. Couple that with the histiographic tradition of creating long speeches as a way of explaining motivations of historical figures or more likely putting forward their own 'political agenda' and you are probably onto a loser deciding which element is or is not 'true'. They all portray a 'kind of truth' but how much there is and whether it is what you or I would consider 'truth' is usually extremely difficult to prove or disprove.

I think several of us have already agreed on this basic point (see posts 4-6 above).

I should point out that this has been discussed on several other threads (notablyCarthaginian Sacrifices and Carthaginian Child Sacrifice theories debunked again) where it has been extensively discussed and shown that although this is a widely held belief there is increasing evidence calling it into question as a rare let alone common practice amongst the Carthaginians.

This comes back to my original statement that before you can decide on what constitutes a 'professional' army of a given culture you have to decide what you mean by the term. Lots of cultures had individual units or even large proportions of their men under arms for extended periods of time but I am not sure that necessarily constitutes them having their 'own' professional army in the same way that the Roman's did where for at least the first two centuries the vast majority of recruits were volunteers and paid fixed rates. On the other hand if a large proportion of an army are conscripts or mercenaries bought for a single campaign even if extended I think that culture can probably be discounted from being completely 'professional'. On that basis Han Chines and Macedonians (probably along with the Persians and Egyptians) have already been discounted from the equation - any more possible contenders for beating the Romans to the first completely professional army?

Nesactium (Vizace) near Pula in Croatia it is. Unfortunately the only part of Croatia I have been to so far was a short visit to Dubrovnik.

You are very close now it is in Istria/ Istrien although it's not Brijuni National Park

ascaules there is no need to apologise for asking for help, although I cannot help with your query hopefully one of the other members with more knowledge of Latin will be able to do so. In meantime let me welcome you to the forum.

The other points to consider, such as Miles suggests in Carthage Must Be Destroyed, is that Rome still had two urban legions as well as marines and other troops based in Rome - the walls had also been rebuilt in 378 so were 7km long interspersed with towers. All of this meant that Rome was not an 'open' city it would require serious siege equipment and would take a lot of time and effort plus as Maty says she still had the spring levy due to gather while Hannibal was primarily reliant on his existing troops and needed time to recover. Miles makes the point that Hannibals whole strategy had been aimed at marginalising Rome in his attempts to remove the Italic and Latin cities from under her power to the extent of treating 'Italic' prisoners differently from Roman and even sending them home - 'Carthage is your friend' we will return your land and your people to you unlike Rome. There also was the issue that Hannibal's army was primarily composed of mercenaries and he could not rely on reinforcements from Spain due to the Roman legions blocking access. The Punic fleet was effectively non-existent or at least nowhere near the force they had previously been following their forfeiture at the end of the First Punic War so the Med had become a Roman 'boating lake' cl;osing off major support from that direction. His whole strategy was therefore aimed at removing both Latin and Italic support for Rome and bringing her to terms whereby Carthage could regain the territory she had previously lost in Sicily and Sardinia. From his viewpoint seperating Rome from her allies probably seemed the best way of achieving this. Hannibal although militarily experienced this was mainly amongst non-Roman opponents so did not realise how ruthlessly they would oppose his offers of terms. He also did not have 20/20 hindsight particularly that gained in an armchair looking partway down the barrel of 2000+ years of history.

The Euro weekly article mentions the fact that most of 71 manuscripts are 'codices and fragments' of his best known work Metamorphoses and are 'versions or interpretations of the work which date from ancient times to the modern age'. They effectively bring the known total of fragments or codices to 538 although I suspect by no means are all of them complete. Wikipedia does provide some context to this discovery: The real test will be how clear and how old the 'oldest' fragments are and if by being older versions they will provide any alternative readings to some of the 'standardised' versions of the poem which may have been based on more recent but uncertain readings or mistranslations of the previously 'oldest' versions.

Correct country but not Solin

Closer than Spain or Portugal but not Macedonia.

If anyone has a buring desire to learn some of the basic techniques of archaeological field surveying techniques but are unable or unwilling to take formal instruction then a series of short video's which have just been produced may be for you. More details are available at the Past Horizons website here

I don't have a full copy of Cicero and with a quick browse through the Lacius Curtis site relevant to Cicero I couldn't see anything there however (although this may be wrong) the earliest dateable citation for this quote is listed on another site suggested as being by "Florida Supreme Court Justice Millard F. Caldwell, purported to have been published in 1965". I did find the 'purported' article here where it is cited as: Cicero's Prognosis -- by -- THE HONORABLE MILLARD F. CALDWELL Justice - Supreme Court Tallahassee, Florida Presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. October 7-9, 1965, Columbus, Ohio Reprinted March, 1996 This may well be another case of a 'quotation' being falsely attributed to an ancient source for a particular purpose or an accidental misquotation but in either case the attribution to Cicero appears to have outrun the 'original' on the Web.