Trethiwr

Is that "Caesar the life of a colossus" ? I've seen that recommended elsewhere on UNRV. Looks promising.

I think I need to read more about Julius Caesar. More that is than I can get from wikipedia and other internet sources. I am not an academic so nothing too weighty but at the same time not just a kids picture book. Can anyone recommend the book that gives me detailed info, and good "bang for buck" I just did a search on Amazon and there are loads!! I bet most of them duplicate the same stuff and some have less than I can get online. I need as much detail as possible from, at least, the death of his father in 85 onwards. So not just the Gallic Wars bit. More info follows in case it helps make a better recommendation. I have been writing a book now for over two years. (Actually I think I started it four years ago but I haven't been active all that time) It is a novel set in real history in which the life of my main character is relentlessly intertwined with the life of Caesar. I have to keep the historical facts correct. (I HATE fiction that tries to change recorded history) The trouble is I was planning to focus on the conquest of Gaul and the almost conquest of Britannia but I realise that the first part of the story must focus on earlier events and I didn't do any of that in my school history. I'm at the last few chapters of the first book and I have somehow to engineer a close encounter of the third kind with the High Priest of Jupiter in 84 BC even if it is only fleeting. One last thing is that whilst I am going to be very strict with recorded history I am going to play fast and loose with the laws of physics, and biology. There will be a certain amount of magic, and shape shifting, and one or two dragons involved.

I spent quite a while walking round Pompeii (all day actually, I was exhausted at the end) and loved the baths there. I also had a good long look around some baths in a Roman museum town in North West France (Mayenne if I remember rightly) The whole process fascinates me, and we simply don't have anything to touch it in the modern world, unless Turkish baths are similar but I've never been to one. Like a lot of historical things the only way to understand it properly is to do the whole thing. Like, iron age round houses didn't have holes in the roof to let the smoke out, but until archaeologists actually built the houses and used them they never found that out. The process of Roman bathing was much more elaborate than ours. As I understand it you went into a series of rooms at different temperatures, ranging from a sauna type room through steamy rooms right through the scale to a cold plunge. I'm sure most people know how the dirt can just run off you in a sauna your pores open up and wash your skin from the inside. You've got bath slaves rubbing you down and doing massages, hair styling, manicures etc its the full works. Rubbing oil onto skin and scraping it off after a sauna is going to exfoliate incredibly well, but I reckon most dirt will already have been sweated off by then anyway. Also the baths were a place to discuss business just as the golf course is today. They spent WAY more time bathing than any modern westerner does, visiting the public baths daily and meeting clients and patrons etc or socialising in a convivial environment. We shower as a purely functional thing and then get on with the rest of the day, they networked while they bathed. What I wonder is whether the slaves got a chance afterwards. I can't quite believe the Roman's would have wanted their house slaves stinking around the place so they must have had their opportunity at some point as well. As for the Britons, yeah sure they had soap, its not nearly that hard to make functional soap as some people would have you believe. The Romans probably knew how to make soap but didn't need it as their baths were so advanced. Evidence of what the Britons did or didn't do is scarce, but I bet the average Celt would have washed in a stream once a year whether they needed it or not!

Yep I'm certain that salicylic acid was well known to the ancients. I'm pretty sure the druids knew all about it so unless the Roman aversion to magic was an obstacle then surely they had it in their medicine chest. Although obviously other, less effective, disgusting, or even downright dangerous, cures were in use as well.

I am more a pedant than a geek. (Geeks are more intelligent than pedants. ) As a pedant I couldn't stop myself saying this. Mathematically, you pretty much HAVE to be descended from the Julii. Not Caesar of course but from some of the family. 2000 years and sixty generations since Caesar! If you are of European descent then I practically guarantee that you have the blood of emperors and kings running through your veins. Even if you're not European there is a reasonable chance of finding a bit of Roman DNA in your cells. Genealogists estimat that 50% of Western Europeans are descended from Charlemagne.

Not sure. Sometimes I think, some gym equipment is just a solution searching for a problem. A treadmill is one of the silliest wastes of space I have ever seen, ditto cycle machines. Why run and stay in one place? Duh! As for sporting events, I think the lack of bloodshed might leave them asking for their money back.

That list is very interesting Melvadius. I like the units of measurement, especially. And thanks GhostOfClayton as well. You mention Londinium being an interesting case, I read somewhere on another site that London was unique in a number of ways. It wasn't a colonia, nor was it a civitas. It lacked villas apparently the large fort was an anomaly as well. The article HERE doesn't draw any absolute conclusions but does suggest that perhaps Londinium (at least partly) belonged directly to the Emperor. I must admit I was really surprised to learn that there is no consensus on the date or the reason for the building of London Wall. I honestly thought that the Romans wrote so much that we would know what Caesar had for breakfast on the Ides of March or what colour subligaculum Titus wore.

When I was a kid I envisaged the Emperor Hadrian staggering along with great big blocks of stone, and eventually building this great big wall which was named after him. I held that view for a few seconds until I was told that Hadrian had nothing to do with building it of course. I was YOUNG OK? So who did build walls? Slaves for unskilled labour? Skilled labour? Soldiers built roads didn't they, so did they also build walls? Design and management? Were there dedicated architects and designers? Did they draw plans?? Was there someone walking round in a toga with a parchment on a clipboard? (alright not a clipboard then) Must he necessarily have been in the army. I get the impression that the army was pretty much compulsory for all no matter what their other skills were. Is that true? I'd have been a rubbish Roman.

Phew! I just read the first two words and thought it was a review of my story. Ha ha. I forgot what the thread was supposed to be about. As a matter of fact another post suggested that toilet paper might have seemed like a retrograde step. A sponge on a stick keeps everything at arms length so to speak and could be deemed more hygienic. Its a question of what you are used to I suppose. Back on topic I think a Roman arriving in the 21st century would be blown away by much of what he sees but might wonder why our homes lack under floor heating. Its quite cold in my living room right now because the radiators have furniture in front of them making them very inefficient. If the heating ran under the floors (with suitable insulation below) it would be all nice and toasty underfoot right now. I'm glad however that we don't have fabulous detailed wall murals, as my bloody kids would have drawn all over them by now!

I've redrafted my story. Got rid of the Londinium wall, changed a bit of Latin, added a bit more of a twist to the ending, changed the font, and got rid of as much bad punctuation and silly mistakes as I can spot. I've also added pictures and turned it into a PDF file at Time Tunnel to Londinium PDF I haven't had it proof read yet so there will probably still be some silly mistakes.

That's the very book. I know its in the house somewhere but I might not find it until we move.

Cool stationed at the BACK! Damned sight safer than an imaginifer! sorry off topic.

Oooh, I'm an Optio now. I'll just go and look that up.

Still laughing as I write this reply!

Yep spot on http://latindiscussion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9995 that point was picked up as well. "new new" oh dear did I? lol I just found out the stupid wall wasn't even built at the time I set this story. I thought they knocked up some kind of defences not long after Boudicca's little escapade.

That's an interesting article, it describes the forum as being larger than Trafalgar Square. That is huge I don't think there is nay market in Europe that is so big. I remember in Pompeii the little shops along one wall, they were just cubicles all in a row, where goods could be stored and then brought out and displayed to sell when the shop was open. I've got a little picture book from there but I can't remember where it is. It had pictures of the town now, overlaid with reconstructions painted onto clear plastic. The article also raises a new problem for me. It says the wall was built around 200 ad which means that my story is factually incorrect as it is set about the middle of the century and the wall is there. Damn!

I should perhaps add that the credits page already includes a thank you to the members of this forum for all the help I have got here, and the URL of the website. Not that very many people will ever see it though.

Well in case anyone is interested here is a link to a word document which is the story I have been writing. Time Tunnel to Londinium I am reasonably confident that the events are JUST possible. (Not including the time travel aspect of course) Obviously the possibility exists that my hero might be immediately arrested and swiftly killed since he doesn't speak Latin, Greek or even any Celtic language, and he is not conventionally dressed, but that would make it a very short and sad story. I am perfectly prepared to tweak it if anyone has a compelling argument. My main objective is to keep it interesting for primary school aged children whilst maintaining a rigorous factual element and keeping as much education in it as the story can bear. There is less than a million to one chance of me making any money from this, but I do intend to get it printed in small numbers for my own personal satisfaction.

I love Yes Prime Minister, but the key referred to was a key for an adjoining door from the Cabinet office to Number 10. (The two are actually part of separate buildings which were interconnected post construction.) Sir Humphrey then attempts to get in from the garden but since all the windows are alarmed he ends up being grabbed by the fuzz! (Special branch to be specific) Group of musicians?? The Pogs perhaps? famous for their songs Wild Thing and Love is all Around?

I'm a bit confused, I was under the impression that the Forum of any large city was a huge open square surrounded by colonnades and certain public buildings. In the central area it would have (eek there's those two words "would have" which mean "I'm making this up now") been bustling with people and stalls selling everything that a modern Roman might need, from fruit and veg to household items, clothes jewellery and mobile phon... no sorry, not mobile phones, but everything else, oil lamps, folding cutlery sets, candles, fabrics, etc etc etc. (Edit, oh yes and beards of course, but you've gotta haggle!) I read that the Forum Magnum in Rome started out as a market but outgrew that use and there were other markets some specialising in certain things, just as happened in London centuries later, with places like Leather Lane, Cornhill, Poultry, and Threadneedle Street, getting their names. Yet when I search for "Roman forum artist's reconstruction" I get pictures of completely empty space surrounded by columns. Am I missing something or are they?

I just spent over a minute trying to remember if FORA was animals or plants!! I love an ordnance survey map. There's something the Romans would have gone crazy for, a decent relief map. And a modern theodolite!!

If we could do that, it would make 'Time Team' a really interesting programme. "Its day three here at Wallsend and up until now we haven't found anything, but just now Phil has made an extraordinary find, tell us about it Phil." "Well its a Roman amphora from the second century and it was still sealed. We've opened it to see what's in there and there is a Silva compass, Ordinance Survey map EX043 of Hadrian's Wall , a Swiss Army knife, and a bar of Kendal Mint Cake!" "So its a high status object then?" "Oh yes, probably a religious artefact." "What do you think Carenza?" "I think its April the first and someone is taking the p***."

That's pretty amazing. If the Greeks didn't think of it then the Romans pretty much covered the rest. I made the mistake of following that bad fads links and surfing a bit there. Found myself looking at Op-Yops a toy from 1968 that I remember playing with as a child. They are selling them again but $6 EACH. Ridiculous. In my story I had my main character trade some marbles in Londinium then, later, back in our own time an archaeologist finds a necklace made to a Roman design but using what are clearly modern marbles. The archaeologist is accused of a fraud and gets very annoyed. Maybe someone made a multi tool implement to look like it was Roman, then went back in time and left it where he knew it would be well preserved.

I read on the utterly reliable wikipedia that "A girl child did not wear a bulla,[2] but other kind of amulet, (sic) like lunula until the eve of her marriage, when it was removed and burned along with her childhood toys and other things." [2] J.L. Sebesta, L. Bonfante, The World of Roman Costume, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001, p. 47 Although in the Roman mysteries, Flavia is often referred to as having a bulla with no difference to a boy's being implied. I often find myself wondering about the vast expanse of time encompassed by the Roman civilisation almost 1000 years and comparing that with the last thousand years. Would anyone discuss the English civilisation and say that the rich lived in mott and bailey castles, wore huge powdered wigs, and everyone had a mobile phone? (Alright changes have been a bit faster lately I know but even so.)

Story? Do tell. I have been writing a story for my eight year old son. His class are doing Romans in Britain. Since we live in London they are focussing on Londinium and are currently concentrating their research around the 2nd century when as I understand it Londinium took over from Camulodunum as the main city. This would be around the time of Antoninus or thereabouts. So my main character is David about ten years old who lives in East London and is a bit bored with history except when it deals with weapons and warfare when he perks up. There is an earthquake (apparently London is overdue an earthquake) and a big crack appears in the school wall. While everyone else's attention is diverted David crawls through the crack and finds himself, not in the neighbouring garden but, in a field ancient walled city to the west. He then meets another boy his own age and they have some adventures. My main objective was to create a story which entertains a primary school aged child but at the same time includes as much genuine historical fact as I could shoehorn in. The hardest part was getting around his total lack of Latin. I hope I have got the balance right. Interestingly I worte them making a school visit to the Museum of London and guess what? My son came home with a letter of consent, for... a school trip to the Museum of London!