Novosedoff

Season greetings to you, folks! Merry Xmas and with best wishes for the coming year as well! 🎄🍸🎅 PS Sorry, I forgot to mention to you earlier that in Russia we celebrate Xmas on 7th of January by Orthodox calendar, that's why on the 24th of December we can enjoy the vicious Satanic music 🙂

As you are about to roll your joints to celebrate the Xmas, here is another inspirational piece of art from Jamaica which may be familiar to those of you who used to fall for Prodigy

And finally to make you all exalt in wild satanic dance (as we usually do in Russia) here is a little bit of Russian heavier stuff of 90s (the album is called The songs of Volos after the Slavic pagan deity) 😎

I thought another Lucifer song would be most appropriate for the Xmas eve 😊

Oops. My apologies. I think an extra bracket got attached at the end. Here is the correct link: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/martial_epigrams_book01.htm

Very interesting indeed. Thank you. It is very natural to assume that the place where the majority of senatorial houses reside would be well guarded, so the proximity of Castra praetoria and its famous elite Praetorian Guards seems to fit in the picture neatly. The Roman poet Martial wrote an epigram dedicated to a person called Pudens who is commonly identified as senator's son Aulus Pudens (check out XXXI. TO APOLLO, OF ENCOLPUS from the below link https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/martial_epigrams_book01.htm Martial mentions Pudens' plans to become the chief centurion or Primus Pilus as it used to be called back then. We know from history that So this actually explains why Pudens would be most comfortable at his work duties if his work place was just next to his father's house. Here is a post about Pudens in someone's blog which readers from Britain may find particularly interesting https://kennethharperfinton.me/2017/09/28/of-claudia-and-pudens/ Claudia and Pudens son called Linus is actually mentioned in St Pauls' letter to Timothy between the names of his parents (though some'd say Linus could have been adopted by Pudens). Linus was to become effectively the first Roman Pope after St. Peter.

Thanks. That's interesting, but I've got the feeling that we need a construction engineer here to provide some insight about the use of steel in Brazilian fevalas vs ancient Rome to make multi-storey buildings possible 🙂 Also, what were the crime rates for Rome to match it against similar urban and social organization of modern-day Brazilian favelas? The comparative numbers for police force, trials and executions will be relevant too. I assume there could be many citizens who lived outside Rome at the time of Augustus and who either traveled to Rome from the outskirts or were granted a pile of grain the other way As far I as remember the publication claiming 400,000 dwellers of Rome assumed the number to be the maximum 🙂 Perhaps I shall spare some time to find the paper again, because I read it a few years ago.

Elisa, May I ask you here in this thread about something unrelated to Aventine hill of Rome, but which is not so far away from it and which should be familiar to you as a native of the city with interests in history and good knowledge of it? If nobody minds.. 🙂 We've had a short discussion here about the roots of Roman Christianity I mentioned the famous St Pudenziana church of Rome in the above thread. The church is built in the place which used to be called Alta Semita. There is a paper by well-known German historian Werner Eck, according to which the majority of senatorial houses would be built on Alta Semita (see attached). As far as I remember in today's Rome the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Statistical Committee are situated just next to St Pudenziana. Am I right assuming that the tradition of such neighborhood may have taken its roots from older times? What administrative buildings of political significance used to be built in that area, where the church resides, in the past? I mean if you know anything about that particular area of Rome ..

The other song called "Rope dancer" by Belgian band Machiavel may sound a bit more familiar because of its similarity to "Last Christmas" by Wham! (although the latter one came out a few years later). To me the Fifth season song is somehow remindful of the ancient myth about the northern region of Hyperborea, especially when one sees the paintings used for the cover of the album. But I don't know why if you ask me 😊 The prog-rock of 70s has a number of masterpieces, which I really enjoy re-listening, including the Relayer by British band Yes, Pink Floyd albums, Lament by British band Gryphon (cant remember the title of the labum), etc. Out of Soviet prog-rock albums of 70s I'd recommend the album Mess by Estonian composer Sven Grunberg. I dont think that Western listeners are accustomed to Russian music, that's why I use the opportunity to advertise something Russian-made that is worth sharing, in my view. Because there is a lot of Russian-made stuff that one shall avoid at any costs 😁

This is likely to match your tastes too https://youtu.be/YfQkIsYjEAc

By the way, the same theory also explains why Roman empire couldn't keep up its integrity and had to introduce tetrarchy in order to deal with constant challenges along its borders. The speed of information transmission was very low back then, so in order to respond quickly to new threats it became necessary to have a few individuals with extraordinary powers placed in different corners of the empire

There is an interesting theory that dictatorship as a form of social control emerges purely as a result of the territorial expansion of small states. The logic behind it is as follows: the larger the territory of a state gets, the more likely the state to face a new threat from its neighbours. Neighbors would certainly become more cautious and suspicious of any movements and therefore more likely to challenge. Such threats would be dealt with by giving extraordinary powers to individuals who seem capable of ensuring protection for everyone. This explains why Roman republic couldn't get out of the vicious circle of dictatorships and return to republican governorship once it reached a certain territorial size: it was just unable to sacrifice anything from what was considered to constitute a part of its imperial pride and history. The limit to such expansions is pre-determined by the lack of material, demographic resources as well as technological breakthroughs i.e. innovations (ability to adapt quickly to changing environment) Certainly the theory seems to be derived from a rather simplistic world view, but nonetheless it often arises in discussions 🙂

According to the below video, Rome's population never exceeded 0.4 mln in the 1st century CE (check out the very bottom row with numbers)

A little bit of Russian culture to share. The video shows some picturesque episodes of pre-revolution Russia with landowners and nobility so bored of their life in the countryside that they stage a hunt and one of them plays its prey. The song's called The pink flamingo

Kinda reminded me an episode from an old Russian comedy sketch show similar to Little Britain. It's about a guy who lives in god-forgotten Taganrog and likes commenting anything he watches on TV. One day Belyakov (that's his name) watches Putin delivering his speech on TV while he enjoys his meal at the same time. Suddenly Putin's speech goes off the rails and Putin addresses directly to Belyakov from the screen by saying that since Belyakov has so many brilliant valuable ideas to share, then perhaps he should come to Moscow to work with Putin side by side. When Belyakov's wife comes home later, she finds Belyakov dressed up in his suit in anticipation of "helicopter that Putin must have sent for him to be brought to Moscow". At first she thinks he's drunk, but then discovers that her sweet heart has eaten mushrooms. The mushrooms turn out to be poisonous fungi she put aside to throw away later 😂 Back to the subj, my personal consumer item recently purchased is brand new Lenovo tablet, the old one with outdated Android 4.1 just stopped working 🤪 I read a lot, but hate printed books because of their exorbitant size, especially given the fact that anything can be found on the internet for free these days, so..

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m5SSB88uSU8

This is the best tune for long journeys

I like to travel long-distances on my car while listening to this tune 🙂

I find this topic very interesting too. I tried to raise it before (see below), but noone seemed to be willing to participate in the discussion at that time. I've seen quite a few publications on this subject, the lowest estimate I bumped into was 400,000 inhabitants of Rome in the 1st century AD. Rodney Stark gave the figure of 650,000 inhabitants. Andrey Movchan (financial professional, amateur historian) claimed 1.5 mln inhabitants. So the high variance of the estimates seems rather perplexing. My personal view is that multi-storey buildings capable of providing shelter to so many people were highly unlikely to be present in Rome of those early ages. I reckon, double-storied private houses was the maximum one could find. Perhaps there was the daily high turnover of visitors from other places, given Rome's special place as the leading center of trade and exchange of its time, this could boost Rome's total population to very high numbers at certain hours of day, but as far as permanent residents are concerned I find it hard to believe that the number could be that high and comparable with todays' Europe largest cities. This is not only about the difficulty of providing staples or utilities (like water, kindling or food) to support so many inhabitants. Cicero is known to have purchased his luxury house on the Palatine hill for 3.5 mln sestertii, and that was even before emperor Augustus introduced his entry requirements for Roman Senators to hold at least 1 mln sestertii of wealth. So this all hints that the land in Rome was rather expensive to support the construction of affordable housing to shelter millions of inhabitants.

The interesting thing is that the event of asteroid collision 66 mln years ago is often related to the anomaly of iridium contained within the earth layer of that age. This seems to be mistakenly accepted by everyone as evidence to support the claim of collision. However the attached page from a Russian book of 2017 by Marov titled From the Solar system deeper towards the Universe seems to give a slightly different perspective. On the horizontal x-axis of the above plot it shows the timeline from today-0 to 540 mln years ago. On the y-axis it shows the percentage of the extinct marine species. The cross and asterisk signs denote the collision/shock events of different kind, while 0 denotes the iridium anomalies. As can be seen, none of the iridium anomalies is actually related to the time point of 66 mln years ago.

Ok, 6 years before conversion were d*mn sure enough to have turned Constantine into a kind and benevolent person, playing bones with his visitors, petting his German shepherd, sniffing at flowers and making flower crowns for himself and his Mr doggy to make it all look even more crazy While lying on his deathbed struck with paralysis he was d*mn sure thinking of nothing else but Jesus and his conversion to Christianity, so when he saw a bishop performing his water ritual magic instead of "Get off my sight, you freaking idiot" Constantine was surely thinking something like "At last happy to become a part of your community! Please give me that f cross to kiss"

Yeah, that's why in addition they proclaimed Constantine saint, so he is still venerated as such at least in Eastern tradition (the Catholic church has proven to be more prudent in relation to Constantine) A bunch of locos worshipping another loco - that's so like humans, I mean the superstitious part of them, i.e. the majority..

But we still beat Brits, if not by the size of the territory then by the number of victims of serial killers 😆 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims?wprov=sfla1 By the way an interesting thought I encountered the other day: the voting rights for women were only possible because of the WW1. Can anybody suggest an explanation for HOW the development could possibly come about because of the war?)

I seem to have read only the one by Niccolo Machiavelli out of the whole list, though I luv books a lot 🙂