caesar novus

Not long ago I doubled my historic collection by getting a free Roman coin with a (multiyear?) subscription to Minerva magazine, kind of a posh museum magazine that seemed unlikely to promote a scam. On another forum we identified it's likely emperor and provenance (shady ex officials from Yugoslavia?). My other old coin is Czarist. I used to have a mounted collection of coins from most countries of the world. Also I had a lot of loose coins from long ago travels that I wish I saved, like Chinese coins from their stone age period 45 years ago. They all turn funny colors with sort of a shellac of aging hand grease, but probably easily cleaned. I innocently tried to spend legacy coins in countries that switched to Euro, and was warned that was a crime. So I half buried a hoard in a bank deposit case near a homeless camp; maybe they will be savvy enough to benefit.

55 years after release and performance, this song came out with a new official video. Maybe I find it strangely enticing because nothing like that was heard on the radio where I grew up, just bubblegum pop and cornball country:

I really like this UC Davis AHI 173 Roman Art and Architecture course by a young, unusually non-Romanphobic California professor. I suppose it went to video due to wu-flu. Here is a sample (playlist above):

Caesarea ruins seem to have a weather-beaten look as if the salty/sandy onshore winds have done their worst. Most of the remains are sawed off quite low, as if the area was dug out somewhat recently and the originally exposed part was ground completely off by the elements. On the other hand Israel's Beit Shean ruins way to the east looks spectacular, and further east just over Jordan's border is another dazzling Roman ruins of Jerash. And there is even an east-west road connection, one of the few over the border and appears to include winding hill scenery thru Jordan. I'm sure the logistics would be hard, but I was told to make plans when there is bad news because the way things cycle it will be the opposite by the time you arrive.

Holy moley, check out the channel content of The British School at Rome https://www.youtube.com/@BritishSchoolatRome/videos . Endless hours of lectures on ancient Rome, and considerable racy and eye popping nuggets that you will miss by shunning it's dry appearance. Find the panels of Romans getting tortured by enemy women, and Romans torturing enemy assassins in their Trajan column video:

That channel rebrand from hole digging to surface delights is going great and proves worthy of subscribing to. Latest subject is climbing the spiral staircase carved INSIDE length of Trajan's column https://youtu.be/iSVvEA4al5U Instead of video thumbnails of things you may already be subscribed to, I will include a reconstructed picture and note another video interviewing Darya about the column with various flaws but fairly unique content: https://youtu.be/vWe4CWwFJNU

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Just to close that issue, I call this as an apparent wild success too. I never have been a sunscreen user, so tried using retinol on some blemished sun-fatigued areas. At first it makes the blemishes look a lot worse, then they mostly crumble off. Instead of the widespread pricey tiny containers, I used a cheap giant pump-tub from sams club about twice a week for a month. I guess the mechanism is vit A promoting growth of healthy skin; I hope the effect is lasting.

Photos of Rome almost 200 years ago! I advise you to double the playback speed and mute the distracting audio, instead reading it's youtube description page for info:

That dryout may explain why the only video for this place seems to be 2 to 8 years old. The interior of Turkey is not somewhere I would go lightly, as I already used up my 9 lives in fringes of Africa, Asia, and S. America. Transport tends to be by long busrides with language problems. Travelers gush about the friendly reception, but there are safety reasons for this (dated) chart showing dropoff of European tourists (leaving mostly Russians at the time): I yearn to visit various coastal spots like Ephesus, and had mainly thought about Pamukkale pools below for the interior. But Sankaya baths are a long way from there. I suppose you could combine the Baths with visit of the Cappadocia region which is an (inconvenient - see bottom) tourist magnet for reasons I don't really get.

I have done some climatic research myself comparing Sept to Oct in that region. Nowadays Oct can not only be off and on cold but especially rainy. I wonder what Romans wore in the rain. I was on the lookout for that tiny window after tourist hordes before weather turns bad. It seemed to be only about the first week of October when there was sort of an uncrowded Indian summer before off and on cold downpours. It was so pleasant, with casual nudity at our Capri hotel pool being a symptom of a carefree break. Fall seemed to have too brief and sharp shoulder season for visiting so I switched to the more gradual and consistant spring ramp up (even their May 1 labor day is manageable). But fall changes so quick that it may offer clues to decoding Pompeii. P.S. this site is improving in capability with less restrictions. Thanks to whoever is doing this.

Wow; but it's a shame they will rebury it rather than making it a feature of the hotel basement, maybe with partial reconstruction, like in some other displays nearby.

Just a reminder that slight glass asymmetries don't come from time and pressure, but are original. A glass museum expert told me that, and also why centuries old windows that are much thicker near the bottom were installed that way. BTW I am looking for a brief paragraph on why recreational divers in the med and red sea shouldn't disturb found ancient objects like amphora. I could write pages about how simply their position tells a story, but need it concentrated for those with short attention spans and skeptical but well meaning. I guess it is off Egypt where this activity is blatant, yet there are Roman activities to be discovered.

OK, for the last one I will embed a playlist I created for Club des Belugas. Since sometimes the list (now 7) loses it's identity in embed process, it can also be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK1qF4IwoDE&list=PLNFncZ83olhCS3Tp2w2kFH_G0TnxH4zQU&index=2 On a laptop, you can advance to the next song with capital N or to previous cap P. I forget how without keyboard.

The lesser followed channel of "Darius Arya Digs" seems to be getting a polish and rebrand (it used to tend toward somewhat dry scholarship): So that is a kind of a raw dirt version of his more accessible channel AncientRomeLive. These seem essential Roman channels to subscribe to as well as toldinstone, but it occurs to me that some may not have even a free youtube account for that. Blessed are they who can resist big tech, so I will list direct ways to check for their latest videos from time to time: https://www.youtube.com/@AncientRomeLive/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DariusArya/videos https://www.youtube.com/@toldinstone/videos I think I listed more in some earlier dead topic too, but it is important to be selective with one's limited viewing time. BTW I think getting a premium paid account is justified only for youtube because you skip both the ads and the unwanted content. The latter is true only if you regularly flag the crap they try to "recommend" to you as "not interested" (under 3 dot menu). Spend about 5% of you time doing that and you can maintain quality video recommendations such as Herculaneum water supply graffiti I ran across below . To bad big TV media has no "disinterest" flag for turning back their river of garbage.

That isn't a tour of the vast baths complex and museum, but rather a peek at an exhibit closing this month held in a previously inaccessible corner of baths. The items range from amazing to things that are just there because they are newly found. Arya has done several better videos of the actual complex, and I will repost one so good it was the only one I posted in both my playlists 50 Roman Ruins and 20 Ancient Rome Museums. I recently stopped posting Arya videos here since after posting countless I was afraid those that liked them probably already subscribed to his several channels. I have interacted with Arya both on twitter and youtube; such access seems strange after seeing him on so many TV documentaries. Those that followed someone on this forum who attended the Swedish Rome Institute may remember that his special tour of Diocletian bath inscriptions were cancelled due to sickness of his professor. That was a shame because this is the one museum where reading captions in depth are super rewarding, which I have done there up to a point.