guidoLaMoto

Amazing accomplishment restoring that...As the film says, it was no doubt part of a "dress uniform" to distinguish an officer from an ordinary legionnaire. Brass would never stand up to a heavy iron sword in combat....The French swordsmen used to call the thick bicipital tendon that crosses the crook of the elbow, protecting the large brachial artery as it goes from the upper arm to the forearm, "The Grace of God Tendon." As nice as it would be to have God on your side, a little extra protection from an arm guard would be well worth the investment when battling barbarians.

Exactly... Here in The States, for instance, the homes of the well to do are still often built in the Ante Bellum style- cf- Tara in Gone With The Wind. That doesn't mean all those homeowners are direct descendants of Scarlet O'Hara...It merely shows that people become accustomed to the style of the wealthy and the desirability & symbolism of that can persist. ...Here, the Ante Bellum period was only 70 years long. Imagine the affect of centuries of Roman influence on style & taste.

^^^ Most plausible explanation. Very good.

OK, lack of erosion from foot traffic may speak against a floor display, or it could just mean it was placed in an area of sparse traffic, or for a short time...Note that it's now on display on the floor, so tourists can actually see it-. Displayed on a wall, it would have required a room with at least a five story high ceiling, 6 if displayed as in the artist's rendition.... What makes sense?

How certain are they that this is a wall hanging?... It's one thing to have a large map of streets or geographical features hanging on a wall-- Cf-- all the movies we've seen with police headquarters or war command central plotting out movements of criminals or armies-- but it's quite another to have a very large (60 x 48 ft) map with architectural details as small as placement of pillars, doorways and even stair cases, and then place it on a wall where it would be difficult to see those details... ...In the artist's rendition, the map is drawn to scale matched to the height of the two men in the center of the picture--- the bottom of the map would be 10 ft or more off the floor. Details smaller than about a golf ball would be virtually invisible to a naked eye....Why do it?...Maybe the original was actually placed on the floor?

This complex is found built right up to the water's edge-- Pliny's villa or the world's first Sandals Resort? Minor point- the article states that Pliny died of "asphyxiation", but more likely it was from status asthmaticus induced by breathing the powdery pumice filling the air. Others around him would have died too had it really been from breathing 'poisonous air."...Pliny the Younger says his uncle was prone to frequent episodes of "closure of the windpipe" (sounds like asthma), that he was already suffering, asking for cold water supplied by others who were not suffering, and that before dying suddenly, he was being supported by two slaves as they tried to escape along the beach.... "...semel atque iterum frigidam aquam poposcit hausitque. Deinde flammae flammarumque praenuntius odor sulpuris alios in fugam vertunt, excitant illum. [19] Innitens servolis duobus assurrexit et statim concidit, ut ego colligo, crassiore caligine spiritu obstructo, clausoque stomacho qui illi natura invalidus et angustus et frequenter aestuans erat." https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Ep.+6.16&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0139 "...he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink. Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed." https://www.u.arizona.edu/~afutrell/404b/web rdgs/pliny on vesuvius.htm Here's a fairly good summary of Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus, the primary source describing the Vesuvius eruption & The Elder's death at Misenum. https://www.thecollector.com/pliny-the-elder-death/

If you look up the derivation of the word "triumph," you get a series of similar words in the romance languages, eventually referring back to the Latin "triumphus," itself derived supposedly from the Greek "thriambos" (ode to Dionysius). https://www.etymonline.com/word/triumph But once again, from The Dept of Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, isn't it more likely that a tri-umph is just the ancient form of "Three Cheers?" We see the same thing with the word Tribunus-- isn't it really just the compounding of the word tribus (tribe or clan) + unus (one)-- the head guy of the clan who casts the single vote of the tribe in the elections-- the forerunner of the American Electoral College? We often joke about impossibly long German compound words, but that's really how compound Latin words are formed too. Eg- cedo + ad --> accedo or sequor + pro --> prosequor etc etc

...Interesting , Informative interview with Luke Ranieri, teacher & You-tuber of ancient Latin & Greek Here's a wide selection of videos in Latin by Luke and others https://duckduckgo.com/?t=avast&q=spoken+latin&iax=videos&ia=videos They give us an idea of what the Romans must have sounded like. And then there's this video to learn Latin while you sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFN2a30_Bmo Let us know (In Latin) if it works for you....Bona fortuna.

You gotta wonder how they fashioned the arrowhead from the ferrous raw material-- their bronze tools were too soft. They must have figured out how to melt it and cast it in a mold...Why would they think ahead of time that that would work? (I also wonder what the first guy to figure it would be a good idea to jump on the back of wild horse was thinking?) Speaking of rare materials and trade routes-- It has been suggested that there wasn't enough copper in the known mines of Europe/Near East to account for all the bronze put to use in The Bronze Age...Meanwhile, there are known copper mines dating back 8000 yrs in Michigan & Wisconsin, yet the Native Americans had little use for it after an initial "Copper Culture abruptly stopped ~3000 y/a...??? https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-native-americans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths

What!? A Carl Sagan bit with no "Billions and billions and billions...." Must be an AI forgery. One of the two or three most amazing things in science history to me is that those genius Greeks figured out all that geometry without the use of paper to draw on (not to mention the concept of "zero."). They scribbled in the sand with sticks. Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic Natural History in the first centry AD https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137, knew the world was round. As long as we're on the subject shadows, time and such-- The ancient Sumerians used a base 12 & 60 system in arithmentic, still in use on our time mesurements-- They came to use this, no doubt, because they calculated on their fingers as a form of an abacus-- excepting the thumb, each of our four other fingers have three phalangeal bones. 12 in all.

Interesting video. It sounds a lot like my personal philosophy--I'm of whatever religion happens to be celebrating a holiday so I have an excuse to take a day off work. Question: Constantine's mother, Helen (to become St Helen), was a big influence in finding and establishing several sites as holy places in Christianity-- did she become a Christain before or after her son's famous "In hoc signum.." dream?

I'm a fan of Sherlock too. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the first regularly scheduled radio show (starting in 1930) that wasn't news/weather/sports or music. You can listen to them here https://archive.org/details/sherlockholmes_otr Many where written based on the Conan Doyle works, some were novel, written in his style. Some of those were published as The Forgotten Adventures of SH https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Adventures-Sherlock-Holmes-Original/dp/0786715871 ..and then there's Laurie King's The Beekeepers Apprentice, a mystery novel written with a retired Sherlock as a character. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=beekeeper's+apprentice&language=en_US&adgrpid=1229254326708420&hvadid=76828561035275&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=106632&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-76828646058603%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=18624_13575921&tag=txtstdbgdt-20&ref=pd_sl_2yl6m6tk9d_p In Conan Doyle's SH works, there are frequent references to cases never published by Watson. Later authors have used their imaginations to fill in details. https://www.bestofsherlock.com/ref/untlist.htm Like our dear poet Vergil, Sherlock retired to a rustic life keeping bees.

"The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was shortened to Rasna or Raśna (Neo-Etruscan), with both etymologies unknown.[26][27][28] In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians (Τυρρηνοί, Tyrrhēnoi, earlier Τυρσηνοί Tyrsēnoi),[29] from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia (Etruria),[30] and Mare Tyrrhēnum (Tyrrhenian Sea),[31][full citation needed] prompting some to associate them with the Teresh (one of the Sea Peoples named by the Egyptians)." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization referencing Dionysius of Hallicarnassus

Isn't it cool how modern technology is helping us find ancient things that would otherwise remain hidden. (I'm trying to invent a plastics detector so future archeologists will be able to find our buried artificts, nothing being made out of metal anymore.) Interesting how they seemd to have blended older superstitions with the newer Christianity-- reminscent of how South American natives adapted Catholicism to their traditional customs. In regards "worship"-- maybe that's too strong a term...The politheistic pagans had gods for every little thing-- a practice continued in Catholicism under the disguise of "saints." They didn't 'worship" these minor gods ( or more modern saints) as much as use them when needed for help or support....I'm reminded of the movie The Godfather--- Don Corleone chastises the guy who comes to him for a favor- "You give me no respect, but only come to me when you need something.." ...We erect statues to honored citizens, but don't "worship" them. (BTW- when I need something, I pray to the lesssr known saints. I figure they're not busy and appreciate the attention.)

BTW-- was the town Doliche named after the god, or the god after the town?

"...And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." --Groucho Marx There was Jupiter Optimus Maximus, J. Victor, J. Stator, etc etc....By analogy, in the Judeo-Christian tradition we have God the Almighty, G. the Father, G. the Merciful, etc etc. It's all one guy, not separate gods. Certainly different groups emphasized one aspect of Jupiter over another for various reasons, and the one statue depicted in the articles of the god standing on a bull suggests a blending of Jupiter- worship with the Cult of Mithras-- itself awfully similar to Christianity....It's all a figment of human imagination, so how rigid can the rules be? "If you talk to God, you're praying...If He talks to you, you're schizophrenic."-- Lily Tomlin

Old thread, but FWIW: Bifrons (literally two-foreheads, ie- two faced) is often used to describe Janus, but it can also simply mean two-faced... I, the perceptive (sagax),Two-faced Prudentia (goddess of wisdom), on things of the past, draw out and weigh with a cautious mind. I think it points out that you have to be careful in interpreting past events. Captalization & punctuation is provided by more modern researchers/translators. I'm not sure the commas are placed correctly in this case....and I still can;t figure out why ancient literature is written in such a disjointed fashion-- adjective and nouns, verbs and subjects separated in such a criss-cross, pattern-less way..Who talks like that in any language?

^^^ Good point.....The Italian penninsula has preciuous little land with good soil. Rustics could grow enough for themselves, but had little excess to ship to Rome for inhabitants who were not in a postion to grow their own, so importing grain from foreign sources was critical. Those authors seem to forget that tree rings reflect mostly the availability of water, with temps being irregularly & innaccurately correlated with ring diameter....Also, crop yeid is influenced by water availability. In most regions, that means amount of precipitation, but for Egypt where irrigation using the endless supply of water from the Nile is to be considered, wet & dry yrs had little impact. Years of food scarcity had more to do with pestilence than weather. On close examination of the data by those who have no political agenda to support, "climate' ( really just weather) is seen to vary complexly & cycllcly with major periods of 11, 60, 500 and 1000 yrs.....If we can believe the proxy data over the last 2000 yrs, at no time have temps been more than +/- 2 SDs from the mean, ie- all falling in the "average" range). OTOH, it's documented by Polybius & Livy that Hannibal and his entourage suffered miserably crossing The Alps ~200 yrs before Caesar's time. Caesar doesn't even mention snow or ice in his Commentaries, althoug he spends partcular attention to observations on natural history in those excursions....Lately, we see the Alpine glaciers receding, revealing fallen trees carbon dated to Caesar's time. They didn't sprout thru glaciers, but obviously grew on open soil....The story of Hansel & Gretl is based on the all too frequent problem faced by families starving during the Dark Ages when Europe was at the cold end of it's cycle and crop yields were down. Things get hotter. Things get colder, but the average is maintained.

Height/body wieght is a classic example of the interaction of "Nurture & Nature."...With "short genes," no matter how well you eat, you'll still be relatively short. With "tall genes" a high protein/hi calorie diet will result in a taller individual compared to the same genes and a protein/calorie deprived diet. Caesar needed to give a Knute Rockne-style pep talk to his legions, scared to death of the upcoming encounter with the larger Germans...Caesar describes the German diet as being one of meat and cheese, the land rarely being cultivatrd by them...as opposed to the Roman diet of wheat supplemented by whatever they could forage when not digging ditches or fighting....We see the same thing comparing American cavalry vs Sioux who stood 6ft tall and ate mostly bison vs 5'7" soldiers eating much more grain/less meat. Natural selction should favor larger, stronger idividuals when hunting (or combat) was the major considerartion in obtaining food, while smaller stature woulf be favored in a farming culture where strength offers no advantage...."Un-natural' selction, ie- conscious preferences in mate selction, may come into play where abilty to survive is less important.

I'm not familiar with the episode about Galen and the squealing pig, but in Latin "nervus" is usually translated as "sinew" in English. Medical students doing their dissections soon discover that a nerve can be distinguished from an artery or vein (they all look alike on a cadaver) because nerves don;t stretch and break when you pull on them. Maybe the most obvious contribution to Rome from Greece was the establishment of The Twelve Tables of Law after a Roman legation brought back the concepts forThe Decemvirs to promulgate as the basic laws.... The Romans may well have felt a little inferior to and jealous of The Greeks. They decided to establish the year of the overthrow of the Etruscan kings and establishment of their democratic republic as 509 BC-- two years before the traditonal date of 507 for the establishment of the Greek democracy. Their imitation of Greek art is obvious.

The articles don;t state how many individuals were analyzed. Sampling probems can lead us to false conclusions-- although I wouldn't be surprised at all if their conclusions are in fact correct. The Romans didn't maintain control over their vast empire by sending Italian born legions to maintain order. Roman colonists probably were a small portion of the total population in the provinces.....Pagan Romans cremated their dead, so not too many left to do DNA analysis on. How many Romans were Christians at that point in history? The 16 y/o's skull depicted, BTW, shows a large hole obviously caused by a blow. No healing of the edges obvious, so it was caused either at the time of death , or after death. If after death, probably decomposition hadn't occurred yet to any great extent-- A blow to a bare skull at that point would have caused the bones to separate along the suture lines-- lines of least rsistance-- not as a punched out hole including parts of the three bones coming together at that point....Time for a Cold Case murder investigation?

I check out this site https://www.archaeology.org/news every week or two, and it seems each update lately has included another report of more artifacts being "repatriated" from some museum in another land to their land of origin.... ...At what point should artifacts become part of the "domain of civilization" or "the human domain," comparable to a work of literature becoming part of the public domain? All of humanity should have been incensed, for instance, a few yrs ago when Isis went about destroying antiquities in Iraq. These thing belong to all of us.

I'm not saying the Romans used slaves to row. I'm saying that for large vessels, the seated position is far superior physiologically and geometrically to the standing rowing positon. For a tri-reme, you'd need a vessel at least twice as high (deep) to have rowers standing....While your gondolier racing film is impressive, note that a gondola is essentially a canoe, barely drawing any depth in the water, skimming over the surface. A war vessel is bulky, riding very low in the water....We could also bring up the wider range of motion allowing more error in the path traced by an oar used by a standing rower compared to the relatively narrow trajectory possible when seated-- loss of efficiency.... There's a reason naval vessels were moved using seated oarsemen rather than standiing----> efficiency-- as in all things undergoing an evolution. Survival of the fittest.That's why "real" racing involves sculls with seated rowers.

??? Isn't that kinda like standing with your back against the Coliseum and taking movies of traffic driving by?

The biggest problem of many guys rowing a large vessel would be the co-oridinated effort required to synchronize the multiple oars. It's not rocket surgery or brain science-- it wouldn't take many minutes for untrained slaves to become professional rowers. The seated backwards position is far superior to the gondolier method. Seated, one would use a combination of quads, glutes, lats & traps- the four largest muscles in the body, as opposed to doing a push-up with your arms against the oar as you fall onto it....and you gotta stand back up from the awkward forward position to take that next stroke. ...The standing gondolier method, however, has the advantage when one guy has to row and navigate (not to mention sing) in rush hour traffic on the Grand Canal.