Melvadius

Bill Thayer's Lacus Curtius site has an extract from William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875. dictionary which cites the Lex Gabinia as follows: Bill has been known to post on this site so I will bow to him or anyone else who knows more about this topic but suspect that because the sources cite a number of different sources that we do not have a complete copy of the various constituent parts of the Lex, instead what is known of it has come from compiling elements of, or at least interpretations of, those elements quoted in the various sources listed.

The [url="http://www.heraldseries.co.uk/news/hswallingfordnews/8149764.Pot_luck_clue_to_town_history/

Good morning yourself and welcome

Discovery reports on the probable discovery of an individual of north African descent on English soil at a medieval friary - although stangely enough the article doesn't say which friary or what part of the country it was located in. For this information you have to go to the University of Dundee's press release which makes clear that the discovery was in Ipswich in East Anglia. Opening lines from Discovery: University of Dundee press release opening lines:

The traditional story, which I was told in Venice a few years back, is that refugees from a number of Roman towns initially moved onto the island of Torcello and possibly a few nearby islands but this was felt to be too close to the mainland so later on most of the refugees moved on and eventually the main islands which now form Venice were colonised. This story is not inconsistent with the discovery of the abandoned town of Altinum which as far as I can tell from these articles appears to have been on what is now, even if not then, on the mainland rather than in the lagoon area itself.

Hoist a few and enjoy yourself

The Cumberland News have announced the publication of the long awaited report into the excavations 10 years ago in Carlisle (although I haven't found a link to the report itself as yet). N.B. The excavations were notable for amongst other things the discovery of horse equipement and very rare if not unique examples of Roman military armour.

There is no need to apologise, your info gave me a starting point to hunt out further details and being able to use a trowel is a really useful skill and using a laptop can improve with practice. BTW as far as posting links is concerned it took me a long time to figure out how to do that here, in fact, I only figured out how it could be done after I tried to reply to someone who had already posted a link and saw the relevant code, likewise with splitting up quotes to address different points. It can becomes easier with practice but even so if you look back over some of my previous messages you may well see 'edit' references where I've either had to correct the code or felt that something needed further expalnation

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I cannot give a specific answer to this question myself but can point you at a couple of resources/ further areas to research which may help. As far as individual routes are concerned within the Roman Empire the best source that we have available is probably what are lumped together as the Antonine Itineraries the earliest of which probably date from the early 3rd century. The Itineraries depict a wide range of routes throughout most of the Roman Empire. Some have speculated that the routes were intended for the use of tax collectors but used in conjunction they do give indications of how people could travel across much of the empire. The routes list way stations along the routes between major towns and also give an indication of how far the Roman

Personally if I'd felt any real need to post this item I would have placed it firmly into ' Hora Postilla Thermae'. [Edit - I have never the less done some poking around and the Christian Science Monitor. has an interesting take on this 'discovery'.. I would also add that the [timber in the] photograph looks suprisingly regularly sawn for 4,800BC

The BBC report on recent evidence from the ongoing excavations at Silchester (Calleva) for an extensive area of the town being destroyed including wells that were filled in at this time and burned buildings sometime between 60AD and 80AD. This was followed by rebuilding after 70AD, Professor Mike Fulford who is leading the excavations, has postulated that this may be evidence for a lost battle from the period of the Boudiccan Revolt. In my view ,burnt buildings could easily have been accidental but the filling in of wells does support the arguement for at least a retreat in the face of an oncoming army and a decison by the locals to create a little bit of scorched earth behind them. Unfortunately I've only just found this item so have missed the opportunity yo hear his talk on the subject, which was held on Tuesday 27th April. [Edit - BTW I should have mentioned one of the features of silchester which the arcaheologists ahve been trying to unravel is why there appear to have been two main phases of construction with many of the older building plots being on a different alignment (NW/SE to the later town which is built more east/west). One argument is that the older buildings were aligned towards nearby Iron Age period religous sites which were less important to the lattter inhabitants of the town. The first of the BBC's slideshow images seems to show up this difference.]

BBC has an audio slideshow: History on the web describing a major digitisation project of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts which has just been completed Link to Parker Library portal into the online database although some options are for subscribers only it does provide a full list of the manuscripts which have been digitised.

Possibly luckily my PC refuses to load this....particular video, although I am told that some of the other imagery in it is questionable to say the least if not the usual BNP downright offensive - e.g. I never heard of 'Auld' Nick (Griffiths) ever serving in the armed forces which may just about have entitled him to the set of military medals which were apparently used as props on his desk.

It will be interesting to see how, or even if, any inscriptions which may be identified on these altar stone compare with the previously known material from the area which has been listed on the Roman Britain site:

In case anyone is interested in reading the preliminary archaeological report from the 2010 season at Amheida in Egypt about the 4th century AD Roman town of Trimithis and a bit about Reconstructing the Villa of Serenus it has just been posted online in pdf format. As can be expected, it is a fairly academic report but it does have some good plans, illustrations and a few photographs relating to the site starting from page 12 onwards.

Technically this is correct, but it is a little bit like saying that Napoleon was responsible for finally conquering the Roman Empire because the Holy Roman Empire can be seen as a resurgency of the Western Roman empire (while the Eastern Roman Empire was still in existence), and the last person to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor was Francis II, who abdicated following military defeat by Napolean. I look forward to hearing views on whether or not Napoleon 'did for' the Roman Empire. PS Yes, I was a little contentious purely to invite debate about the Napoleon thing. Tortuous link, I know. A bit tortuous yes, especially when you consider that Voltaire stated the view that the Holy Roman Empire, as a loose federation of relatively weak duchies and princedoms under a nominal 'King' which just about at the end of it's existence straggled into Italy was 'An agglomeartion that was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.'

I'm not sure that he is justifying murder but I do question his concluding remarks that I'm not sure that I would necessarily classify any of our modern cultures as being completely 'sane and peaceful' and feel that a lot (although not all) of that is down to the competing influences of various religious authorities over the millenia.

We find ourselves in agreement on this point as I did originally make my comments on basis of the the ability of someone with fully functioning instinctive 'trained' reactions being able of overcome an inferior group who were uncertain and needed time to think how to react. The list I gave above are 'considerations' which would probably have passed so quickly through a trained warriors mind he wouldn't have conciously been aware of them. Against a group of 'trained' spearman the outcome would probably be much more likely to end in his defeat. I can sympathise with your own 'combat' defeat, I don't like to remember how many times one 'expert' axeman took out two or three of us together until we finaly managed to work effectively together and one of us even slightly 'wounded' him - although we did get better with training. With this experience in mind I would expect that even then an axeman could, at worst, have a reasonable chance of disabling at least one of his opponents no matter how skilled they were.

Beneath the lurid title the Times provides a decent overview of recent Italian research which has identified a series of mason's marks on a 6th century BC, Greek-style temple in Magna Graecia.

The Scotsman reports on recent research which has moved the site of the Battle of Prestonpans from its traditional location 500m further east

Glad to help, I just trust that if it is for homework it will be suitably credited