Melvadius

I suppose we all have different perceptions of risk and how to manage them, a lot of people I know wouldn't consider going to the States because of the number of 'lunatics' running round with some form of weapon or other (including bombs) that always seem to be presented on TV shows or the various media reports about crime rates there. Personally having been in London and other parts of the UK during numerous bombings or bomb threats unless something is actively going bang in an area I don't allow the very remote prospect of a random attack prevent me going where I want to go especially if it involves seeing Roman remains. That said until the current demonstrations are over I probably wouldn't choose to go to Tunisia as a first choice - however once things calm down it will be back up near the top of my list of places to go back to when I get the chance. For the vast majority of people there is more to worry about than terrorist timescales; earthquakes, volcanoes, fire or flood (not to forget tsunami's) all can happen or you can have a finacial crisis leaving no money to travel. I suppose that my policy (and advice) boils down to life is too short and there is too much to see to let the remote prospect of a terrorist attack or natural disasters get in the way of going about daily life or for the Romanophile enjoying visiting historic sites.

Going back to the question as stated "Using a Pompeian example and making specific reference to domestic practices and rituals, discuss how the ordering of a Roman house can be considered a

Gilius, Given that in total we are dealing with someting in the order of a million inscriptions across the Roamn Empire then yes of course 'important' inscriptions have been translated and are available in numerous books and online. The point you need to bear in mind is that authors in any media will pick and choose which inscriptions they use for their own purposes, some will be used extensively while others only appearing in a relatively small number of locations. This obviously means that a definition of 'important' can be a very relative term, I have attended several lectures where the speakers have had to make referrence to their own translations. On this basis I doubt if anyone can give you a definitive list of where to find every 'important text' in translated format or even how accurately they may have been translated/ interpolated. This is particularly so for those inscriptions which although 'obviously' important have only been found in very fragmentary formats as collation of all the parts may take years and/or never be completed.

Much of the library excavated to date seems to relate to Epicurean philosophy which is written in Greek. There are suspicions that there is also a Latin library - possibly on an unexcavated lower level of the villa but AFAIK this has not yet been confirmed. Even if it does exist there is always the possibility that only the Greek texts may have survived where they could be found as the villa was being evacuated when it was overwhelmed. I was told that the papyrii were found scattered through several parts of the villa some in carrying boxes and others apparently individually or still on shelves. Because of being carbonised and how the scrolls were originally opened most are to some extent or other only in a fragmentary condition however these do provide snippets of several works which are otherwise unknown or only known from commentaries in other surviving works. The Herculaneum Society's magazine carries a short article about the Philodemus Project and the scrolls in general here and mentions the collaboration project with Brigham Young University, on digitally imaging the papyri from Herculaneum. Examples of before and after images are on the BYU site here while a more detailed explanation of their work from 2001 is in the BYU spring 2001 magazine here. I believe they are now vastly improved the techniques for opening the scrolls for imaging but it is still a long, time consuming and expensive process.

It really depends what your lecturer is getting at. I suppose it is conceivable that if he was talking about the villa of the Papyrii at Herculaneum there may be a case for raising Epicurean philosophy that (from Wikipedia) 'man is mortal, that the cosmos is the result of accident, that there is no providential god, and that the criterion of a good life is pleasure'. Personally I would only include that as a side comment, if at all, because I don't think it was by any means a universal influence on villa construction and may not be what he was getting at.

You need to look up Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) which is the most comprehensive listing and now online. It supplements and effectively rerplaces the Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (ILS) while in some instances Inscriptiones Graecae may also provide information. Along with the Roman Inscriptions of Britain (RIB), these are the standard reference points for any inscription although IIRC in some instances you may not necessarily get translations of the text in some sources just the surviving inscriptions and there is some overlap between the different listings.

BBC Scotland is carrying a report about the completion of the major restoration of the

The obvious ones are from the late 3rd century split of Britain into four provinces: Flavia Caesariensis Britannia Secunda Maxima Caesariensis Britannia Prima Plus the rarely mentioned: Velantia added beyond Hadrian's Wall from the second half of the fourth century http://www.roman-britain.org/history/province.htm

Just to clarify I take it that, ignoring Mussolini resurrecting its use by printing it on numerous Italian manhole covers and several buildings, you are trying to find the last verifiable use of the term by either Imperial Rome or in the Eastern (Byzantium) successor empire?

This is an article which probably fits best in Academia rather than Roman archaeology although it mentions the Roman period the BBC have picked up on a recent article in the journal Science which outlines the impact that changes in climate appear to have had on several ancient societies including the Roman empire with an article here

Does that mean you will be writing a review of it? Seriously I had a quick browse and there does appear to be a lot of information in it so it is now on my list to find some time to read more fully.

ArchNews is carrying an intersting report about some of the iniital discoveies resulting from conservation work by the British Museum on this cavalry parade helmet found at Hallaton in close association with a hoard fo Iron Age period coins apparently back in 2000 (although the first article quotes 2002 as the find date). One intriguing aspect of the work is that more than one cheekpiece has been found in association with the helmet leading to some interesting speculation about why.

Some good points by Caldrail but regarding point 6 of the original query; the Roman Britain site also notes the discovery of at least 5 milestones in Cornwall at widely separated locations under their entry for Ictis Insula. This separation would seem to argue for a fair degree of control throughout the area and possibly also support the view that the Roman's felt there was no need to construct formal (ie military) roads.

This BBC report from June 2010 suggests that a much longer lived fort was in use near St Austell from AD60 up to about AD250 much more than the other two forts which are generally dated AD50 to AD80. Given the paucity of specific information in the report it is probable that it is the Restmorel Castle, Lostwithiel site already mentioned and this seems confirmed by this article in the Conrwall Arcaeological Society site. I would also agree that Romano-British is a term which can lead to confusion but in this case simply means a site occupied during the period of Roman control in Britain. Iron Age 'style' farmhouses continued throughout most of the Romano-British period and in some cases are found almost side-by-side with forts used for similarly extensive periods.

Regarding item 1 of your query the issue is that according to Cornwall Council's archive the report 'The Roman Villa at Magor Farm, near Camborne, Cornwall' was printed By B H St J O'Neil, in Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, volume twenty-four, points one and two (1933-34), journal numbers 80 and 81. I doubt if it is available on the net although I am certain that a copy will reside in the British Library as well as some of the specialist University Libraries - the Sackler in Oxford for one. Regarding GoC's posting of the 'Cornweall' Map I would only point out one item of caution that as I understand it the British element of the larger maproll was badly damaged and incomplete. What is shown now is a reproduction made several decades ago but I am uncertain precisely how close a relationship it bears to the effectively now lost original. Edit - on a general point you may find the intertactive Roman Britain map instructive as you can see a lot of the known archaeological sites and finds for Cornwall on it

The BBC is carrying an announcement made by National Geographic that the worlds oldest complete wine making facility has been discovered in Armenia: Further details on National Geographic site article here

Definately an occasion to raise a glass or two Here's hoping that you have a great day NN.

I suppose at least part of what your lecturer is getting at is interpreting how people lived in and used one of the larger villa's within Pompeii. Several of these have been excavated but whichever one you chose to 'document' you have to realise and make clear that most of the better known 'villas' in Pompeii (eg House od the Menander) are actually several different buildings which are co-joined into a single 'insula' (in this case a city block rather than a single apartment block as the term can also be used). A couple of books you may find useful as references: John R Clarke (1991) The Houses of Roman Italy 100BC - AD250: Ritual Space and Decoration Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (1994) Houses and society in Pompeii and Herculaneum But possibly best as a main reference would be: Ray Laurence (1994) Roman Pompeii: Space and Society A simple overview needs to take acount of the different areas within the villas which in larger ones will include formal, private and working areas as well gardens and slave quarters and with the religious aspects covered by the location of the Household gods/ ancestral images. Many of these aspects would have parallels in a larger town but equally are indicative of Roman 'attitudes' and general view of the cosmos. Depending on how your course is structured wall decorations may also be a key aspect to cover as many villas contained representations of mythological and/or 'religous' stories as well as some aspects of everyday life.

Just to confuse things slightly I am currently reading Michael Pitassi's The Navies of Rome in which on page 279 he makes a 'throwaway' comment that in AD 266 the Ethiopians closed the Red Sea to Roman trade. Because he doesn't reference this particular statement I don't know if he means Ethiopia as a separate entity to the Askanite Kingdom, who apparently did control Northern Ethiopa around this period, or if he has accidently conflated the two. BTW GPM's comment about Rome not venturing that far into Africa is only partially correct as Pitassi states earlier in his book that Rome was previously able to make use of a canal (originally cut by the Egyptians) between the Nile and the Red Sea to send naval fleets into the Red Sea. These fleets were apparently sent on a couple of occasions to take punative action against pirates interferring with Rome's then thriving long distance marine trade with India, the Middle East and Africa.

I don't have the time to carry out the necessary research - especially as I suspect you do not wish to wait another three years for an answer however have you considered the wealth of possibly related detail in the Tabula Peutingeriana? I do wonder if the towns indicated by more complex designs on the various leaves of the map may provide a visual clue as to how large or at least how important the ancient cartographers considered them to be even if their possible use as an indication of 'status' may be more problematical.

I agree that the whole passage may well be worth reading if you are considering making a model although I do wonder at the reference to counting the hides to see how big the sails were. That would seem to indicate that they were using leather sails which I would have thought would have made working them extremely difficult due to the weight involved. Possibly this was just being used as a convenient indication of size as I understand that the Egyptians used linen (a possible alterantive sail material) weaving frames of a specific width while goat/ sheep hides used in leather tents found to date although a natural material also seem to have a standard size. I suppose one could be used as a convenient extrapolation factor for the other.

Agreed that there is quite a bit of information about the status of Roman towns in Britain - thanks in large part to the early eforts of Wacher and those who followed him. However even in Britain there is still a lot of debate about precisely when certain towns status changed, as we know many did throughout the four centuries of Roman occupation, due to the very limited epigraphic records in most of the country. London as you have already indicated is the worst example of our limited knowledge of it's precise status at just about any point in time from when it was established until the Roman army left Britain. If you try and extrapolate from Britain to Continental Europe I suspect you will find that the picture is similarly confused with many towns either not excavated or with no epigraphic evidence from the area's excavated to date. That may be the 'real' explanation for whny you have not had much luck in obtaining a 'simple' map giving the information you are seeking.

In which case you know that offering

Not necessarily; both France and Germany have a long and at least as illustrious pedigree for Roman studies as Britain while Spanish, Italian and Dutch archaeologists and historians also have had a strong presence at several specialist conferences I have attended in Britain with other European countries usually also represented. The specialist Roman research libraries such as the Classics Library of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, currently based at Senate House in London, usually carry numerous reference books which are not written in English. Every year the list of reviews of foreign Roman related books published in the Roman Societies annual Journal of Roman Studies runs to at least 50% of the 'English language' works listed and I'm sure that many more are not even reviewed. It is probably a truer statement to say that most of this research has only a limited history of translation into English, making it generally unavailable to those of us who are not fluent in any other language.

Well as you have now listed the towns/ settlements on what you seem to believe is the quickest route that's the