Melvadius

If you can get access to it I would suggest reading at least the author's section of Brian Campbell's The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors. This work brings together much of what is know about Roman surveying from well know authors like Julius Frontinus who obviously did have a classical education with possibly lesser know authors like Siculius Flaccus who in this context is possibly a better example. Campbell describes Siculius Flaccus as an author, writing in the second century, who described the history and practice of surveying and refered to His attention to detail included This attention to detail could well argue for a surveyor with a good education. I would not argue from this that all surveyors would necessarily have had as good an education as a Patrician may have done. As in all professions there would have been varying levels of skill and similarly varying degrees of interest in the 'finer' things in life. However there would usually have been at least a few senior (and probvbly not so senior) men in each unit who would have had access to some such educaton and wider classical knowledge to discuss such concepts just consider the lines of Virgil found at Vindolanda which probably were a test piece set for one of the officers children to copy out.

Neater than reindeer! That plane has a red nose so it must be Rudolf... Merry Christmas, Happy Saturnalia and Great Holidays! Unless I missed them, when I could see the image, it didn't have antlers either so it must also represent a 'male' reindeer As this is a multi-cutural and faiths fora, please take the seasonal greeting appropriate to your personal beliefs as said.

No I haven't posted this in the wrong fora. This is the heading from an article in a local newspaper Largs and Millport weekly News which shows how misleading an eyecatching heading can sometimes be, in this instance the article is actually a hark-back to a story originally written in 1958 reporting on a local history talk. The Roman reference was really only a 'hook' on which to spin tales of how long Largs may have been a holiday destination.

As Sylla has mentioned in Athens the ruling body was the Ekklesia which was made up of citizens enrolled in the deme and over 18 meet outdoors on Pnyx hill to the south-west of the agora you could make comparisons with the Roman senate or the more local town administrations which tended to meet in smaller numbers and indoors. You may also want to consider the place the hermai had in Greek (or at least Athenain society) and the place of other statuary - I've been told that it seems to have been a fairly common Greek practice to place statues of benefactors of the city in the theatres (actually amongst the seating) as well as near temples while the Romans tended to placed their commemorative statues in or near the fora as well as some at temples. BTW on the point of Greek road building or rather lack of it as much as anything that can probably be put down to how difficult the terrain was compared to Italy - it was usually much easier to send a ship around the coast than to put in the effort of road building.

This is strange...the second article I reference above was written just two days ago. I searched for related stories and obviously didn't read the timestamp carefully on the first one. The only other items I found seemed to wire-releases of the older story. So I wonder if the Heritage piece is actually new or a retread from the 2001 story. Sorry about that. I'll make sure to read a little more closely. Neil - no, I wasn't able to find anything else of interest. I was kind of figuring a few more stories would show up. J Searching for the names of the team members involved I did turn up a couple of potentially interesting related stories; one that the (now) husband and wife team involved in the original discovery in 2002 and possibly as lat as 2004 seemed to have been seeking over a million dollars to 'complete' their research with no apparent takers. The second was that the wife has apparently just been released by the Mexicans after a 'claimed' fraud case against her (for IIRC) a security related firm she also owned had just collapsed. Now OK maybe as was suggested, by a Canadian paper reporting the story, her involvement in the other company was totally legitimate and her prospective partners in Mexico (politically related and general fixers) may not exactly be seen as trustworthy but it does seem to indicate that the people involved in the original story sail fairly close to the wind in some of their business arrangements.

Glad you clarified that The use of transhipment points for goods (and probable exchanges between traders) such as Berenike and Alexandria is now generally accepted as a working thesis amongst archaeologists and historians I have spoken to about this. Regarding your question on the contents eastwards as has already been indicated it will probably take laboratory analysis of the sherds to provide some indication of what was being transported to India - however if it was dry goods then there may be nothing to find by such analysis.

Be careful; this old story seems to be absolutely nonsense and may well be entirely bogus. I would tend to agree with Sylla here. IIRC this story also appeared on a very overblown 'search for Atlantis' type TV programme a few years back. After almost an hour of padding when you finally got to see the filmed 'evidence' it was a simple matter for most halfway competent geologists to quickly identify that the 'ancient cty' was probably the result of natural rock formations.

Possibly a link to this article in Antiquity may be of interest to anyone who hasn't come across their research before.

Something which doesn't fit in too well in any of the fora but which may interest anyone who can fit in a visit to Edinburgh in the next 3 months is the rare opportunity to see some of Scotlands rarest and most precious books including the Cetlic Psalter going on display for the first time together.

This story from India Today really falls between two stools and could equally well have gone into the 'World Archaeology' thread. However as it relates to the discovery of Roman period pottery sherds so giving further evidence for the extent of Roman trade I decided to post it here:

Science News report of the contested signs of mass cannibalism with a research team arguing that:

If anyone has the time and wishes to look at some of the more notable frauds and hoaxes which have appeareed over the years then this article hoaxes in Archaeology may be for you. Of course there are numerous others which could or probably should have been included so it may be interesting to post links to a few more.

Oy vey. I agree that it does sound a bit out of kilter - my initial thought is could the reviewer have made their own interpolations out of what has actually been written and managed to get 5 out of 2+2. I suppose I will now have to find time to read the book to find out if there is 'any'mention of either ObL or JC in the book and IF so in what context. So many books - so little time

BBC News along with a few other websites are reporting the addition of Pompeii to Google Street View - BBC quote below - a few images at BBC site: I did find one website with this link to the google maps of Pompeii but cannot currently check if the 'Street view' element works: Pompeii Map.

Unless your the Canadian behind the internet scam from a few years back [Edit] one thing I should however correct it may not be considered politically correct however the originator of that particular quotation is actually an Italian (at least a Roman connection): by Count Galeazzo Ciano which comes from his diary (1946) vol 2, 9 September 1942 Although admittedly he only claimed a '100' fathers - Kennedy always did tend to make errors in his quotations having apparently actually said that he was a 'Berlin cake' (rather than his intent of indicting that everyone was a 'resident' of Berlin, which everyone tends to accept he 'did' say) BTW Ciano was an Italian facist politician, son in law of Mussolini (1903-44) Oxford Dictonary of Quotations (2004) 6th edition [End edit] Although I suspect we are drifting a bit too far so to return to the topic.... As we have already discussed (and basically agreed) I fully expect the arguments about the 'significance' of the 'army' remains to continue for months if not years yet at least not until after a proper archaeological report is completed - and possibly not even then with the power of the internet to keep spawning false rumours running forever.

The British generally still have pride in the success of the Dunkirk evacuation but we shouldn't forget that others were involved as well: Operation Dynamo

Technically I could probably argue the case for the 'glorious' defeat at Dunkirk being a possible exception to this rule given that those who escaped basically formed the core of the later victorious British and Commmonwealth armies but agree that otherwise it is an exceedingly rare, if not invisible, occurance in the historical record

Article from Chester Chronicle relates how repairs of a collapsed section of the cities medieval wall have revealed the remains of a Roman interval tower long suspected to be in the area beneath the collapse.

I'm glad you pointed this out. I didn't quite follow the logic on the Darius "conclusion", but it seemed a bit circumstantial. I can't speak Persian either ancient or modern but I did wonder if the precise meaning of the 'Archer' reference has been lost either in the editing process of the article or else somewhere in translation. Is it possible that originally it was both a title as well as a technical term or at least a close analogy of the original Persian words were if that is the case then the title of commander-in-chief (possibly 'first or lead archer'?) could have been translated into English as simply 'archer' so leading to the confusion. Irrespective of that; the Iranian archaeologists seem to be of the opinion that the lose of a significant proportion of their army was something that 'would' have been recorded by the Persians in the way described. It may simply be wishful thinking on their part then again maybe it isn't, with the monumental and other evidence available to them they are probably best placed to make such speculations. Not knowing enough about the cultural habits of the period or indeed much about modern Iranian archeology I wouldn't like to speculate further.

Full article from 'The Press' suggesting that after the Battle of Fulford the Viking's were carrying out some battlefield repairs/ adjustments to equipment before the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The X-ray fluorescence discussed in the article is a technique used to identify the chemical/ mineral composition of objects as the different proportions can provide clues about the possible origin of the raw materials based on the various minerals and other elements e.g. sulphur the objects being investigated contain.

There is also an item from the Tehran times which possibly takes a more balanced stance (rebuttal even) to the reported finds: After a resume of the ancient stories it continues:

Physician, heal thyself! Only actually annoying when you stray off topic into subjects you only apparently know by google ... sorry, but I was not talking to you (but if it fits you, go ahead). No I think the last time on this thread you were probably talking to me but a quick check on several of the other discussion threads will quickly assure any reader of how many threads are ended by yourself. Sylla do not take this the wrong way but we are both Patricians now so how about taking things a little lighter. Not every posting, which doesn't agree with your views, needs to be taken as a personal affront which your subsequent postings have all too often given the impression of it having done. You also don't have to beat every topic to death until no one can be bothered posting on it any further. A quicker agreement to disagree or even, as I have sometimes been known to do, admitting when an error has occured in a posting will probably make life a lot less stressful for all of us. Chill out a bit mate you have made a lot of good postings but try for a bit less aggro in future please.

- You can only find hoards that have not been recovered; recovered hoards are not available for being studied, so the "non-recovery rates" are not measurable. - The pointed research relates to hoards from periods of either political stability or instability; the research confirmed the hypothesis that the hoard's incidence correlates with periods of political instability. I think Sylla is probably right in thinking we all may have got lost somewhere in that sentence, what I meant to indicate was that the 'research Sylla has pointed to relates to an apparent increase in the incidence non-recovered hoards during periods of political instability.' It is implicit [from what we have said] that hoarding was a normal practice in antiquity. Even if we cannot determine precisely how many hoards would have been in operation at any one time - the research provides 'proof' that statistically many fewer hoards have been found from periods of relative stability compared to periods of apparent instability.

Does the Italian government still run the financial incentives for young families to move back into Venice which was running a few years back?