Turb0!

I just finished reading De Bello Lemures, Or the Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica by Thomas Brookside. It's a very entertaining alternate history in the clothes of a translated document. Pretty short but still highly recommended. One of the most entertaining fiction novels I've read in a while. Also a must if you're a fan of books like World War Z.

Sounds great! I would definitely like to be included.

Thanks, Ursus. Great info as always. What confuses me about the original pantheon of the state religion is whether or not gods like Jupiter and Mars were derived from purely Roman sources, or if they were always modeled after their Greek counterparts from the very beginning. While it seems pretty clear that Quirinus and Vesta were Roman in origin, I have read that others came from either Greek or Etruscan influences even as far back as the founding of the Republic.

From what I have researched, the Romans were very religious long before instituting the it as a function of the state. Cato the censor writes about how the Romans used to have their own gods which permeated even the minute aspects of everyday life. Does anyone know what kind of role the old gods played as Rome evolved to incorporate more Greek and Eastern religious practices? I've been reading the The Religion of Numa by Jesse Benedict Carter and he (or she) says that even during the time of Augustus, people in the country were still honoring the old gods which were worshiped before the Republic, despite that their presence had disappeared in Rome itself. However, it isn't an up to date source, so I am hoping someone can shed some more light on this issue.

Has anyone else seen the TV series "I, Claudius" based on Robert Graves' book of the same name? I just got the series, and I've only watched the first episode but I'm a bit put off by it. While everything else is very well done, the actor who plays Augustus has a persona which seems the exact opposite of the actual Augustus. Plump and gregarious are probably the last words which come to mind when I think of Rome's first emperor. I'm wondering, is the show just going off of how Augustus is portrayed by Graves, or did they just feel that Augustus' real personality didn't make for good television?

WOW... for the amount of money they must have put into that third one, it should have ended with wild beasts coming into the colosseum and ripping Britney, Beyonce, and Pink to shreds for not fighting. For that, I would go buy a Pepsi right now.

Okay Macro, using my handy-dandy, fancy-shmancy kindle, I found the passage from Herodotus that I was referring to: "The allies then who were dismissed departed and went away, obeying the word of Leonidas, and only the Thespians and the Thebans remained behind with the Lacedemonians. Of these the Thebans remained behind against their will and not because they desired it, for Leonidas kept them, counting them as hostages; but the Thespians very willingly, for they said that they would not depart and leave Leonidas and those with him, but they stayed behind and died with them." However, I cannot find whatever passage made me think that the Thespians were also mentioned on a monument to Thermopylae but there you have it. The Thespians were also brave enough to stay with Leonidas and fight the rhinos and the giant fat guy with sword arms.

I believe so, but I am recalling the name entirely by memory. In any case I remember reading a portion of Herodotus having to do with Thermopylae when I took a Greek history course, and it mentioned another group which stayed and fought to the death with the Spartans after it became clear they would lose and soldiers from all the other poleis had fled. I will look this up too, since now I'm wondering if my memory has played a trick on me or not, haha.

No worries from me, Viggen - I just wanted to give ya heads up in case the gremlins were out and about :-) Cheers Russ Ha, indeed that was a tad confusing since the last time I came on was this morning!

Thanks barca. I'll check that out. I just finished reading Legionary and thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm sure I'll like Matyszak's work on this subject as well. Lanista, that is a very good point and one that I think alot of people who have an interest in ancient history take for granted. When dealing with such a huge swath of human history, it is easy to look at events which are hundreds of years apart and place them next to each other as if they occurred in direct succession. But for the people who lived through it things were entirely different. I'm sure that when news reached Rome that Octavian had won the Battle of Actium people didn't throw up their hands and say, "Well there goes the Republic, looks like we're now an Empire."

psychological damage, like

That would be fascinating, if true. I know that the Spartans founded a colony (their only colony, I believe) on the Italian Peninsula when Rome was still in its infancy. Could there have been any influence on Roman culture there? It seems unlikely since I also recall that that colony did not carry on the most well-known aspects of Spartan culture and were more into the arts. I want to say that the colony was Tarentum, but I am probably wrong.

No problemo! The language is a bit stuffy on some of the free books, since most are 19th or 18th century publications, and usually the free ones will lack an interactive table of contents. On the plus side however, the electronic version of these classic publications have taken out that annoying thing where they would use an 'f' in place of an 's.' I could never stand that because it always made the narration have a lisp in my head!

Haha, that would definitely be a parallel. Or if the president tried to get the country out of debt by whoring away all the male senator's wives. Though I'm not sure a move like that would bring in much cash now that Obama is no longer in the senate. What's left may be a bit old and flabby for most men's tastes.

Thanks Lanista. I'll be sure to check out that book. Do you recall if the author ever addresses how the Romans regarded Spartans, like did they admire them? Hate them? Or were they indifferent? It's an interesting question that not many people seem to address.

[so far so good, but it looks like we need to delete that extra "by" -- "remembered by, by stoic romans." Change to "remembered by many stoic Romans"?] -- Nephele Unofficial Three Word Story Editor. Nephele, don't correct our story's narrator. The story can't help that it has a stutter, haha.

Ha, tough titty! That's a good one!

Can anyone tell me what happened to the Spartans after the Hellenistic Era? I've read that, by the time Alexander the Great came into play their society was in decline, but wasn't Sparta still on the map well into the time of the Roman Empire? Did they retain any of the aspects of their martial culture which they were known for or did they become something entirely different than the Sparta most people know? Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on these questions.

There was an interesting episode of the Colbert Report last week in which Stephen was ripping on Glenn Beck for his announcement of his coming announcement of his plan to "re-found" America, which is set to take place at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Colbert wrapped up the satirical stabs by implying that Beck wants to be a king (through the cunning use of Disney sing-along lyrics). Whatever your political stance is, it's an interesting occurrence, since in modern politics you don't hear the accusation that someone wants to be a king very often (socialist/fascist dictator, yes, but rarely is kingship alluded to). Of course, in the days of the Republic, such talk was common enough. Perhaps it indicates what will become a parallel trend between the Roman Republic and our own. An interesting incident, either way.

wistfully remembered by... by stoic romans and by corrupt Emperors, such as

I am also more of a Romanophile, but I do know that at the Battle of Thermopylae, which the Spartans are most remembered for, the 300 Spartans were accompanied by an additional contingent of Thesbian soldiers who also fought to the death. In fact I recall that the monument which the Greeks set up in honor of Thermopylae after the Persian War mentions the bravery of both the Spartans and the Thesbians. Side Note: my spelling may be incorrect for the Thesbians and I believe that the source I read this from was Herodotus, but anyone who knows better, by all means, feel free to correct me on this.

It seems like a worthwhile buy. I've been playing around with it for the past few days and found out that it also works well as a research tool. When looking through books it allows you to bookmark certain pages for quick access, highlight text, and make notations on the side while you read which also get saved. The system they use in place of page numbers is a bit hard to get used to but the benefits seem to far outweigh the negatives. Also, if you don't want to buy the actual device, you can download the program to your PC for free from Amazon and proceed to collect free classics to your heart's content for no cost whatsoever.

Has anyone read Rosemary Sutcliff's Frontier Wolf? It sounds like an interesting fiction on the collapse of Roman Britain and I was thinking of getting it.

So I just got my new Kindle 2 in the mail today and, I have to say, it comes highly recommended for anyone interested in amassing a decent collection of classical works for little to no cost. I originally didn't pay this device much heed but after finding out that any books published before 1923 were free to download I changed my mind. Thus far these are some of the books I have come by, most of which were free and a few of which cost only 0.99 cents, U.S. History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus The Apologia, Florida, and The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius The Acharnians, Peace, The Birds, The Frogs, and Lysistrata by Aristophanes Politics, and Ethics by Aristotle Julius Caesar's Gallic and Civil War Commentaries Meditations by Marcus Aurelius The Religion of Ancient Rome by Cyril Bailey The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla Epochs of Ancient History by A.H. Beesley The Consolation of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Cato the Elder's Treatise on Roman Farm Management The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus The Roman and The Tueton by Charles Kingsley Letters, Treatises on Friendship and Old Age, History of Famous Orators, Scipio's Dream, and Orations by Cicero Public Orations of Demosthenes Cassius Dio's History of Rome Two Orations of Julian the Apostate The Golden Sayings of Epictetus The Bacchae, Hippolytus, and The Trojan Women by Euripedes Letters of Constantine the Great The Attic Nights by Aulus Gellius Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon Histories by Herodotus The Illiad, and The Odyssey by Homer The Odes, Carmen Saeculare, The Satires, and Epistles by Horace Against Apion, Antiquities of the Jews, and Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades by Flavius Josephus Livy's History of Rome Pharsalia by Lucan On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus The Art of Love, and Metamorphoses by Ovid The Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter The Republic, Meno, Cratylus, Timaeus, Charmides, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedrus, and Parmenides by Plato Aulularia by Titus Maccius Plautus Letters of Pliny the Younger Plutarch's Lives The Secret History of the Court of Justinian by Procopius The Fall of Troy by Quintus Smyrnaeus The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius The Conspiracy of Catiline, and The Jugurthine War by Sallust Apocolocyntosis by Seneca Tacitus' Histories History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides The Aenid by Vigil Agesilaus by Xenophon I've uploaded more than that, but the fact that most of them were free more than makes up for the $250 in my mind. And being able to carry them all around in a thin, little, container is pretty nifty! Highly recommended!

Happy Birthday from new to old!