Melvadius

I finally found a way into Sofia's petition site and can now see the issues with erosion she has described - Diokos Gallery: For Sofia: If you wish to post a link in a message then while you are composing your message you need to click on the first icon from the left with a small green plus sign (+) marked on it and then you will be given the option of putting in the link url followed by the name you wish to use to describe it. I have used this method above and it seems to work.

And if it always tastes the same it probably means they use the same chemicals to make it everytime. Variation for good and bad harvests is what makes drinking wine exciting and in my view one (if not the main) thing that makes it both enjoyable and worthwhile. So on that basis - traditional old world wine for me and hold the modern chemicals.

Some interesting images but you haven't included those from the Adamklisi (AdamKlissi?) monument, which as it was constructed in Dacia probably show's a fairly accurate image of the weapons used by the Dacian's. This site has an interesting article on the Falx but also includes line drawings of some of the Dacian Weapons shown on Trajan's Column as well as other sources: http://www.gk.ro/sarmizegetusa/ranistorum/site_eng/arma.html I think the key point, as the article indicates, is that some of the best images of the Falx appear not to be on the spiral of the column but at the base which I believe may not have been included in the Rumanian museum copy. Alternatively several of the images of the individual Meotopes from the monument (of special note are XVII & XVIII) are here: http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/archive/arma/cont...klis/metope.htm

That is the problem with most of the New World wines and why we generally won't touch them. Luckily it is usually possible to smell the vile stuff as soon as the bottle is opened but that doesn't help if you only realise after you have bought the bottle.

I would also add the systematic destruction of the Fatah police force and government along with the assassination of anyone with power and influence over significant portions of the Palestinians. Let us not forget, even if done by a 'religious fanatic', the assassination of the first Israeli Prime Minister prepared to negotiate a peaceful settlement with a Palestinian leader who at that time was accepted by all Palestinians.

It is worthwhile buying New World wines only if you are not allergic to the additives they tend to put in them to speed up the process. As we prefer a wine of distinction and smooth to the palate without that risk then we will continue to buy quality wines from France , Italy and Germany with the occasional break out for one of the new English or New World wines that we know are made in the same way

The question of who the last ancient source is one I couldn't try to answer but as to the point of them I can think of a few of answers. Advances in technology are beginning to make it possible to read ancient documents that previously were illegible or impossible to reform into a readable format. Here I am thinking of writing tablets like those from Vindolanda where the ink has faded but can now be at least partially deciphered with infra-red photographs. A similar technology being used with the carbonized papyrii from the Villa of the Papyrii but also the papyrus sheets that have been formed into masks for mummies and been over painted that scientists believe they may be able to read using electronic scanning technology. As to what can be done with existing texts one of my old tutors has been rereading some texts written in Greek about one of the major battles between the Romans and the Parthians. He beleives that he has found a mistranslation as several words in Greek cn have more than one meaning. He has re-interpreted the text on the basis of the possible different meanings and comparing those to the actual landscape they describe and is currently preparing an expedition to confirm his findings. If he is correct he will have identified not just the battlefield but a whole series of defencive structures in the area which up to now have been unknown.

The similarity is totally superficial and concrete-bound. Arabs aren't being walled into ghettos--they're being kept out of Israel, a nation that has been under constant siege from its Arab neighbors from the moment of its inception. The purpose of the wall is to defend Israel from racist Arab supremacists who want to wipe Israel off the map. For the parallel to be exact, Poland would have to have been surrounded by Jewish states that had recently declared war on Poland, and the local Jewish population would have to have participated or been complicit in terrorist actions against Polish civilians, including the bombing of discotheques, murder of Polish Olympic athletes, and part of political movements that failed to recognize the right of Poland to exist. The only similarity between the two walls is that they're both made of concrete--rather like the analogy between the two walls. Well let us see - you wish to draw on parallels for 'terrorist' activity we have the Irgun carrying out the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv under the leadership of Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister of Israel. Then there was the assassination of a British Minister in 1944 and in 1948 the UN peace negotiator both by the 'Stern Gang'. At least the last of these with the knowledge, if not complicity, of Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion and under the command of Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Prime Minister himself. http://www.spectacle.org/495/deir.html Can we stop throwing stones - there are more than enough to go round on all sides. As I've already said the only way out of this is for both sides to negotiate and if that means giving both Hamas and Fatah a fair hearing and for them to strike a bargain they don't fully like with Israel that is the only way it can succeed.

I rather suspect curtailing the US$ 2.5 to 3billion assorted aid (mainly military) given every year to Israel by the US government would go a long way to concentrating the minds of the Knesset on finding a long-term peaceful settlement. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsourc...to_Israel1.html

I would disagree with this. Our sense of right and wrong, or "conscience," doesn't develop on its own, it is instilled by others. We have to be taught right from wrong. A fairly universal example would be slavery: to paraphrase Carl Sagan talking about the Great Library, so far as is known no author of the ancient world protested the institution. That slavery is on its face wrong is a fairly modern idea, and there are still plenty of people in the world who think it is (or should be) part of the natural human order. Yes, we recognize outsiders fairly easily, but merely because something about them is unfamiliar. ... I didn't say that our perception was not due to what we absorbed from our surroundings/ learnt from those around us only that it occurs at a much earlier age than most people realize. Again, I disagree. Virtually all societies welcome (friendly) visitors, and virtually all have mechanisms for acquiring members from outside. There are individual exceptions, of course, but I believe that any perception of hostility, unwelcome or strangeness is mostly false and more akin to paranoia and bias (however innocent) on the part of the visitor. Possibly most societies do perceive visitors as generally non-threatening but I can assure you that on our trip to North America, until we spoke, we were perceived as something totally different to what we were. How else do you explain hotel staff ignoring polite requests for accomodation in a language they spoke and in other cases hotel guests either trying to hide in the corners of lifts or else leave them as soon as we got in after they had? Until the relatively recent US and media led attacks on all things Islamic I have never had a similar experience with immigrant &/or Muslim communities in Britain. Even now I find that if you treat them fairly and respect their rights to freedom of speech and religion they will respond in kind.

The BBC have a photstrip of six images showing the recovery conditions and the remains found so far at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7128553.stm

Not really much more than you found out last time when you asked about him in July as part of the Advisors of Claudius question.

A couple of posts on RomanArmyTalk (part of RomanArmy.com) provide links to the presumably original German articles along with a very strange computer generated translation: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0...,521395,00.html http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/forschak/706368/ http://www.worldlingo.com/S1790.5/translat...,521395,00.html http://www.worldlingo.com/S1790.5/translat...orschak/706368/ Stangely enough as far as I can tell neither of the translated versions make any mention of seven legions and it seems to be talking about an Auxiliary helmet worn by one of the Batavian auxilliaries - as GO suggested go figure The interesting point from the translations for anyone intending being in Bonn over the next couple of months is the fact that the helmet appears to be part of an exhibiiton which has just opened and will be on until 16 February: Starting from Tuesday, 4. December, to 16. February are to be seen the helmets in the exhibition

I suppose a case may be actually be made for the accuracy of that statement. Quick thought without checking my references - would 'four of the seven legions of Rome operating along the Rhine at the time' be more accurate and if so was that what they meant to say?

This story seems to have broken on the Web in 'The Scotsman' first although 'The Age' has now picked it up as well. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1896952007 - The Scotsman http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/roman-...6812825662.html - The Age

Not having a full copy of Barrington I could only go with what was available on the site I posted links to. It had an example (admittedly from around Rome) which showed road names so I, possibly mistakenly, assumed that there would be other close-up maps elsewhere in the book showing the same detail - on that basis I stand corrected.

To GO the answer is liable to be that only the major roads were named. We have any records of some major road names and these seem to often have either after the consul(s) responsible for their construction or else in power when the road was completed. In one case a consul put his own name on a road that he had jointly commissioned with his co-consul whom he had persuaded to resign early. On the original topic the Barrington Atlas is probably the reference book you need to access. Although at $600 a set I wouldn't recommend any struggling new author buying it. See if you can get into a decent Classics Reference Library at a local university and they may have one. The following website relates to this book and has links to some additional resources: http://www.unc.edu/depts/cl_atlas/

The bibliography on the last site looks useful for further research doing a further search I found a link to another fairly extensive bibliography on what I think may be a different site. The following site lists reference books (published up to 2004) on the Roman road network sorted by groups of provinces: http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/viaeromanae.html

I tried a province based search 'Roman roads Gaul' and can see the problem as only a few individual named roads came up. So I don't know if there is anywhere near a full list on the net but I also come across a pdf file that contains several images on Roman construction techniques. This include some maps of road systems in 3 or 4 other provinces which normally named at least one or two that might give you a starting point inf you want to try your own province based search: http://web.eng.fiu.edu/~prieto/bridges/Lec...man%20Roads.pdf

I cannot claim to have thought it up but I must admit that while it is somewhat quirkier than the usual run it is factually correct - which must be some sort of record for the media .

QED So, what was the setting? I'm guessing there was something physical that made you stand out, which seems to indicate you had wandered into an ethnic neighborhood. QED - that our sense of what is right and wrong is develops at an early age and sits lurking in the hind brain irrespective of what cultural group we belong to. As to the setting you have some of the truth about it but the point is still valid as above that you don't have to go to recent immigrant communities to feel out of place we didn't. The sense of non-welcome can prevade pretty much all stratas of every society - as some of the postings on this thread have already indicated. However that doesn't mean that all or even many of a particular group is out to get anyone else - just that in our modern culture the press claim they are. While all too many miguided 'people' believe everything they read in the press or see on the latest news broadcast. In this respect Rome probably had the right attitude asking that everyone of conform to a few basic rules applicable to everyone while allowing religious freedom and tolerance or we will smash anyone who starts trouble.

Ouch that means you need to know how the law stood under the Twelve Tables, which I have a lot less information on, rather than the Augustan Laws talked about previously. The following is something I prepared on the basis that it was the later Principate period. I agree that usus, of the three forms of marriage used in the period up to the early Principate, did not have the same restrictions on the wife as confarreatio (patrician level and extremely hard to get a divorce from) or coemptio. The last two of these forms of marriage, passed the wife into the manus of her husband so liable to summary justice for adultery. However from what I have read usus had fallen out of favour by the end of the Republic so is highly unlikely to have been in use by 110AD, if that is the date the story is set in. If it was the case that she was in a usus marriage during the Republican period then it would have been down to her father to carry out any family punishment for being an adulteress, that would ahve been done under the guidance of the family concillium (council), rather than her husband. In either case a quiet divorce for cause (not declared as adultery) may have allowed her and any putative child to live BUT in either case her lover would have been less likely to formally adopt a girl child. About the only way that he may have been willing to is if in the Principate period he did not have any child or less than the three children which may have granted him a small political advantage. There would however have been strong familial and political/ social pressure on him to adopt a male heir rather than (another) female. Only if all the problems already identified about the social stigma of adulterous relationships had been avoided is it possible that a child may have been adopted. For a patrician in particular to adopt there must have been no suspicion of illegitimacy. Following a legal adoption the child would then have been in a position to claim part of any inheritance from their adopted parent under the normal laws of inheritance - c/f the books previously mentioned. However, if I understand things correctly, in most periods under Roman law the legitimate children of his original marriage would have been entitled to a major portion of any estate. Consequently they would also be entitled to claim a larger portion of their patrimony if they appeared to have been short changed. When it came to inheritances, like now, the Romans could spend a lot of time litigating for their inheritance rights - often the strongest claims being made by family members our modern society would consider not entitled to anything. BTW there are several places on the web you can look up the various rights and benefits attached to each form of marriage including the Lacus Curtis site which has a copy of some out of copyright articles relating to the three forms of marriage: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roma...atrimonium.html IIRC Lacus Curtis also has some information on the Twelve Tables and other Republican period laws.

Actually the Roman's had three kinds of legal marriage with increasing degrees of rigour and differences in the rights of both partners but especailly the women and who she belonged to - for Patricians there was even one type which did not allow divorce. The concubinage style of relationship you are probably thinking of was that practiced by legionarries and auxiliaries, who did not have the right of contracting a legal marriage until the early third century, so could only contract informal arrangements. BTW re the date that this story is intended to be set, the Republican period ended when Augustus became emperor in 23 BC and if anything was probably even more restrictive on the rights of women and either their father's or husbands control of any children than in the Principate. Personally I wouldn't advise setting any such story then. I would strongly suggest looking in detail at some of the books and laws mentioned in my previous postings as they will give you a lot more detail as well as indicating precisely when the laws changed.

Addenda to previous response: Going through my library I have found a couple more books that provide further evidence of the difficulties of the proposed scenarios: Rawson, B (1991) Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome Rawson has stated the view that

Possibly to swing it slightly back in the right (or should that be left direction?) On the subject of feeling out of place I am told by someone who studied psychology that under test conditions children as young as two have been known to identify people who are not members of their own community and/or do not operate under the 'normal' rules for their community. On a personal note myself and a group of friends on a visit to America some years back found ourselves in an area where there was definite resentment to our presence, which was only mitigated when the locals found out we really were foreign tourists so not a threat to them. As I said in my earlier posting it often comes down to individual experiences and the attitudes of people around them how people will perceive thier individual situation. Constant carping about Muslim threats by a large proportion of the press can easily lead to people only noticing negative rather than constructive stories. The abortive bomb attack in Scotand could easily have led to a series of 'revenge' attacks on the Muslim community but well publicised quick joint action against the attacks by both local community and political leaders stopped most of that resentment before it had a chance to get entrenched.