Hamilcar Barca

I wouldn't say History forgot about it, it was just that Italy didn't stay with the Byzantines for very long. It is however a fascinating period to study.

I belive the Hungarian cannon maker was named Master Urban... sounds like a rap group.

1204 - 1276? Sure, why not. As long as it's a Byzantine, no Venetians.

I'm not sure if this should go in the Byzantine forum or this one. One of the mods can always move it. Basicly this is just an extension of the last poll, but for the Byzantium's greatest general. I don't know ho to pick personally, its a toss up between Belisarus and Basil for me. But Constantine IV and Leo III are firm favourites too.

Constantine wasn't really a fantastic christian. The man had his son (Crispinus) poisoned and his wife (Fauna) boiled alive for conspiracies that didn't exist. Thats just the tip of the iceberg... Don't get me wrong though, he was a pretty damn good emperor compared to most.

Thats alot of reading...

I found it a while back whilst googling for info on Caesar's Gallic wars. I read the whole site but was unaware of the forum for about 5 months. Then I noticed it and went in...

By Roman I meant western Rome i.e. till 476AD, thats why Belisarus and Narses are left out. I would have listed more generals but the polls only allows 10 max, thats why I put in "other". Others which I would like to have represented would have been: Marcus Claudius Marcellus Pompeius Magnus Trajan Claudius Gothicus Theodosius Stilicho (part Roman) Aetis ... Others will hit me soon...

Caracella though he was Alexanders reincarnation, and tryed to imitate him in many ways. The reality was that he was a mass-murderous lunatic. His belief that he was Alexander led to his assasinataion when he went to Africa to try and confirm it.

Yes, that was fantastic. After we left Ephesus we went into the Greek islands. Mykonos, Ios, Santorini, Samos, Crete and Rhodes. I'll have photos in about a week (hopefully).

It is illegal to sell them in Greece but not in Turkey. I didn't get them from archeological sites either, the Constantine and Caracella coins were both from antiquities dealers. I'll stick photos up as soon as I can.

If anyones wondering where I've been for the last 5 weeks, I was on holiday in Greece and Turkey with three friends. I'll try to keep this breif because I could ramble on for hours. We started in Athens where we stayed for a week and did three days tours, one to Delphi, one to Mycenae/Epidavros/Nafplion and a day cruise around Aegina/Poros/Hydra. The rest of the time was spent hanging around the plaka and looking around the cityu. Because I was with three girls, there was lots of shopping as well. Oh and of course we saw teh Acrolpois, a site to beold. Next we flew to Istanbul/Constantinople. This was alot cooler than expected. Staying in the old city, one of the first things we did was go to a 300 year old turkish bath (featured in the book "1000 places to see before you die"), this been more or less the same thing that the Romans handed to the Byzantines which were then handed to the Otomans. It involves first of all a 30 minute sauna in the hot room (which remains the same as it was 300 years ago), followed by a exfoliatiation massage and a wash down. You come out feeling suberb and ULTRA clean. We then talked to the owner of the baths who recommended us to one of the best (and most unknown) leather specialists in the old city - I got a tailor made premium tanned leather jacket for only 150 Euro at a leather specialist store. The next day I found in a similar area of town, an old antiquities store where I picked up a 22 carrot gold ring with a perfectly preserved coin from the reign of Constantine embedded on the front (with cert of authenticty). My first Roman coin ('ll stick a photo of uit on here latter). While in the old Eastern capital we also visited the Hippodrome, teh blue mosk and many of the basilicas created during the reign of Justinian. Next we travelled down the coast line to Gallipoli, this place of course been the site of the doomed ANZAC expedition fought in WWI in which my Great Grandfather fought in. Next was to Kusadai and then to Pergamum where we visited the Acroplolis, I also found here a silver coin of the emperor Caracella. I'll continue with this latter and post up some pictures , theres to much to document in one post.

Those are huge questions with answers differing depending on the time period. Read "The Complete Roman Army" by Adrian Goldswothy; all your questions are answered there in outstanding detail.

*double post*

I'm not to well read on the founding of Rome, need to look into it.

Interesting, I was always curious to find out who your namesake was Scanderberg.

Thats shocking but I'm becoming used to hearing about twsted justice systems. I'm not sure if you guys have been following some recent rials in bali, indonesia which have convinced me to boycot ever visiting that corrupt country. An Australian tourist, one Schapelle Corby, has been sentenced to 20 years in an indonesian jail after she was stopped at airport security with marajana that somebody had planted in her surf board bag. The woman was clearly inocent with no history of drugs but the nazi indonesians didn't care and gave her a long sentence anyway. On the other hand, the indonesian mastermind behind the bali bombing terrorist attacks in 2002 which killed 260 people got 2.5 years. The judges were the same for both cases. Terrible, utterly sick.

Each province had a capital city but that didn't mean that this was the only large city in the entire province. Just take a look at any map of the Roman empire at its height . For more information on any paticular province have a look here: http://www.unrv.com/provinces/provincetable.php

How did they do this? Asides from the three Servile wars which occured in the closing years of the rebublic, slavery was hardly an issue. Corrupt emperors, badly thought out policies, civil wars, foreign invaders and barbarianisation were what caused the downfall of the western empire.

If Mithdridates could name all the men in his 110,000+ man armies than I'd take my hat off too him.

Way to difficult to tell who would win. The two forces would probaby slog it out in a prolonged, horribly bloody draw.

Nice work Germanicus, always fun to learn new quirky facts about the Romans.

Thanks for explaining more indepth Fatboy

The ancient sources don't always comment on what the Romans did with enemy bodies but when it is mentioned it seems to have been a number of things. When great numbers of the enemy were killed - such as at Chaeronea or Alesia - they were usually left there to rot or to be eaten by animals, this wasn't as bigger problem as it seemed as most large Roman battles following the second Punic war took place outside of Italy, so leaving a bunch of rotten barbarian corpses out in the middle of nowhere wasn't really an issue. However after the Romans left the region, enemy survivors would often return to bury their dead. More often still were unofficial truces where both sides would take the day after battle to collect and bury their own dead. Other times slaves were ordered to bury the enemy dead. But they were also burned, or buried if the number of enemy slain wasn't to large. During some of the civil wars there are also occassional tails of dead Romans been stacked up on boats, taken out into nearby water bodies, weighted, and tossed overboard (there are plenty of stories of this happening to prisoners as well).