Melvadius

Point of order the Romans and Greeks before them simply referred to Tropaeums as can be seen from the Lacus Curtius extract of Willima Smiths' Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities here. As to what I assume you actually want to know if a specific type of tree was used for Tropaeums and the answer has to be whatever was growing locally and suitable to make a trophy out of to hang armour from and prop the various spoils of war against. BTW nowhere in ancient writings or in articles by reputable scholars have I seen it referred to as necessarily 'cruciform'.

I like the thought of Margaret Thatcher being without issue or better yet her parents I suppose however that you have to look to the matriarchs of political families for a suitable comparison such as remaining married in the face of external pressures - infidelity always seems to crop up in moden politics. On that basis Rose Kennedy would seem a suitable matriarchal figure with a lot of politicians in succeeding generations but if we discount succeeding generations being a requirement then Hillary Clinton would seem to tick several 'parallel lives' boxes. In her case active political/ external contacts especially having her own career and becoming both a senator and senior politician in her own right.

Of course as usual only the first line of your question, to which GOH has already provided an answer, is verifiably correct. Christmas trees seem to have developed in the mid/ late 15th Century long after the Roman period with no evidence trail taking them back to any Roman tradition. Julius Casear had no link with the preceding tradition of honouring Sol. In fact Sol Invictus was a much later development and actually derived out of the the provincial Syrian god Elagabalus whose name was taken by the Severan heir.

While I remember Not sure why they should be seen as parallel lives since SJ wasn't in the military or a renowned politician Why? GBJ fails on all counts except lack of political nouse on the World stage. A better choice may be someone like Prince Rupert the Royalist cavalry commander in the English Civil War a man with undoubted military prowess BUT fairly erratic. Alternatively someone like General Alexander from WW2 was a better general than many claimed but who failed in the political arena when dealing with his masters. Actually quite a good choice since Churchill did have a parallel political career apart from being assassinated and Hitler tried that several times. Looking back at Plutarch's work it is noticable how many of the examples cited were men whose lives included both a military and political element in their careers which in the modern world cuts down on how many examples you can put forward. Possibly a few candidates in each couple of decades from the American Civil War onward but the choices from WWI and WW2 are actually surprisingly limited.

The major problem is that Hitler, while a renowned 'messianic orator', does not appear to have been a tactical genius (he had a staff for that and really fouled up when he over ruled them) while the three alternatives offered to date all could make some claim towards - sometimes strongly.

There are quite a few of the Vindolanda Tablets which include shorthand marks which could be considered a form of cipher however the Lacus Curtius site has a good article on Nota, from that mine of useful information, William Smith' 1875 work Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. This starts:

It doesn't seem to have the distinctive Opus Africanus building style so I would suggest that it is not in North Africa.

Actually he may well have paired Hitler with Julius Caesar or more likely Alexander.

I did feel that it was very staged in places e.g. LiDAR as a totally 'new' technique when it has been increasingly used for specialist aerial archaeological research, especially over over woodlands, since November 2000! Several times I got the feeling of set-ups but despite that would agree that there were some interesting results presented which should produce 'hard' evidence rather than the currrent informed speculation after further ground based research is completed.

In archaeology Marxist theory is accepted as part of the post-processual school which developed from the late 50s into the 60's 70's and even 80s. It basically helped develop models that consider methods of production and how societies react to and use such production. Although different archaeologists will accept or reject different aspects of them depending on the societies they are looking at in this context Marxism is just a name which describes some of the ways of looking at the past. So is nothing to be afraid of.

Fafinette, Welcome to the site and sorry to hear you are having problems ordering. Just to confirm that we have passed on your request to Viggen but as Klingan said he is currently busy elsewhere so may not come back immediately.

Well done Auris Arrectibus. As Ghost says you have identified the mystery city (second in Roman Britain only to Londinium)- even if the site you found seems to have misplaced Chichester AND Bath! BTW I did try to keep it relatively easy this time so sorry if anyone felt it was a hard one.

Klingan is on the right track

There have been several discussion threads on this site that at least mention latifundia you can find these by clicking the search box at the top right of this screen and putting latifundia into the search criteria. Some of the discussions include links to other books or sites with more specific information which you may find useful unfortunbately I do not have the time at present to go through the threads to extract the relevant links myself.

Nope and not Gaulish.

Definately north of the Alps and it was a fairly important Roman 'city'

There is a useful extract from the Oxford Classical Dictionary here. The section whihc has been grayed out is slightly less than double what is available free of charge. Ther key sections in it however cite the work by Columella Rust 1.3.12 and 1.7.6. A Version of Columella is available here on the Lacius Curtis site free of charge. (Columella Rust 1.7.6 means the relevant passage is in Columella De Re Rustica book 1, chapter 7 section 6). THe OCD also cites K Greene The Archaeology of the Roman Economy and R.P. Duncan-Jones The Economy of the Roman Empire amongst other books as good sources.

oops in the correct place this time, I'm glad you were asleep since it took me a while to track down the milecastle name - for some reason it isn't on Wikipedia Ghost - I thought you were including that on your updating? Anyway and the next contender is...

Milecastle 38?

More specifically, if it was needed, the Roman quarry/ mine working beneath the temples on the hill claimed as the Sybil's Cave at Cumae - I think Ghost has it

The BBC is carrying this report (with associated video) of a unique find of a helmet dateable material from a sealed archaeological context in Britian which on present evidence appears to date from the first Romano-British period around 55 BC.

Possibly the fact that at least ome of these when excavated in 1983/84 was described as a fortlet (Burlafingen with only 6 or at most 8 conterburia housed in the barrack building) rather than a fort may also explain some of them being missing from maps of 'forts'.

The fact that Caesar acknowledge Cleopatra's son Caesarion as his may well indicate that there was a 'loving' relationship over and above the obvious political elements of the relationship - two powerful people working in conjunction to the horror of politicians cut out of the power 'loop'. There was definately concern in Rome at the extent to which Casear had become enamoured of Cleopatra particularly when she followed him to Rome in 46BC along with her son and Caesar set her up in one of his properties as her local 'palace'.

Although not as pronounced (no pun intended) differences in dialect are a feature of most countries not just Italy. A good few years back my parents had good friends who happened to be native Gaelic speakers from different islands in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. The wife turned to her husband and asked him to do something when they were round for a 'formal' meal. She asked the question in Gaelic so not being Gaelic speakers they didn't understand but apparently neither did the husband since when he got out another table cloth the wife changed back into English and said why he had got that out instead of a napkin like she asked. It was only in the ensuing discussion that they realised that the same word meant different things on the islands they came from in their local Gaelic dialects - despite actually being only a few miles apart. In English there are still some regional differences in dialect which have not been removed by the ubiquitus presence of TV's but they are tending to smooth out despite the continuing adolesent desire to have a new 'language' format using slang words. All that tends to mean is that there is a faster turnover in words and phrases in 'common' usage but many of the older words and phrases keep coming back.

Possibly you should consider this review which promulgates the view that one of the strongest influences on the Chivalric period was actually Vegetius whose work formed the basis for much of medieval thoughts on chivalry, warfare, tactics in general and in the construction of early siege weapons. While Vegetius may not have been a military man himself and possibly concatenated ideas he came across the major caveat to this was that he was not trying to write a history of Roman military tactics which Oman was (or at least their development into the Medieval military tradition). Vegetius was more trying to find a means out of the problem that the Romans found themselves in in the late fourth century of not enough man power, or at least not enough willing to fight, and severe constraints on military and other resources. On the plus side Vegetius does seem to have had access to a lot of Roman military reference works which were not available after the late Roman period or at least were not found until after the medieval period. As to Oman, when taking the long view, as new information becomes available he has some of the same faults as Vegetius in that his writing can be open to re-interpretation and may occasionally be simply wrong. No one is perfect 100% of the time and it is probably instinctive in every writer to emphasise different aspects to make a point even ignoring obvious errors in their interpretation if it does not suit the story they are trying to tell. This is an aspect of all writers not just those writing in antiquity or about historic topics.