guidoLaMoto

Part of the problem in making an accurate diagnosis after centuries have elapsed is that the descriptions of the signs & symptoms are lacking.....Livy uses the word pestilentia and its effect on the course of things once in each of his first ten books of Ab Urbis Condita without mentioning even one symptom, so we have no way of guessing what the disease(s) actually was (were). There's a difference between a plague and The Plague. I don't think anyone described the black, necrotic skin lesion (bubo) of The Black Death prior to the episodes in 1347 in Messina & Kaffa (the famous catapulting of corpses over the walls of the besieged city), so this new genetic confirmation of Y.pestis in Europe as early as the 7th century is an indisputable revelation. I remember reading that one Al Gore of his day noticed that the towns in his area with the most stray dogs & cats also had the biggest problem with Bubonic Plague, so he talked the town elders into killing off all the dogs & cats... Bubonic Plague then got even worse there, the dogs & cats no longer available to keep the rat populations in check...A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Hadrian's Wall may have provided some mild psychological deterrence to those nasty barbarians, as a statement of "we don't want you on our side" but not much of a physical deterrent . It's not so high or wide in most places to be more than a mild amusement to anyone accustomed to living outside 24 hrs day, sleeping on rocks or doing without a nearby KwikTrip for an afternoon snack of a strawberry slushy & order of fries...But it did provide a good line of sight for sentries posted in camps or guard towers very 2 miles along its route (one mile of visibility in either direction) to serve as an early warning system for the Romans.

How wonderful it is that we have those Vindolanda tablets to give us insight into the life of common folk. That's a great site you've given us. Thanks for posting. I have it on good authority that Hadrian didn't really have anything against the Scotts. He ordered the wall to be built just to keep those @#$% bag pipes out of The Empire.

Is it just my imagination, or is that really the theme from Twilight Zone (do-do-doo-do, do-do-doo-do) playing as I scan this thread? My only recollection about studying philosophy was from my first year of college. We all took a required History of Western Civilization course. A neighbor in the dorm came into my room and asked if I had a copy of that Sophocles book (he pronounced it Sof-o-kulz, rhymes with popsicles) we were supposed to read? "Yea," I replied, "On the shelf there next to the copy of Testicles (I pronounced it "Test-i-kleez)......He didn't catch on.

Crucifixion is, of course, mentioned on multiple occasions in the ancient literature, but nowhere is it described in any detail nor pictured in contemporary works of art. There are some anatomical and physical objections to crucifixion having been performed as we are accustomed to seeing it pictured in Christian art. IIRC, there are two other ankle bones, found in Israel, with nails thru them-- one traversing the calcaneus from outside to inside, and the other the opposite. The one pictured above from Britain has the nail coursing from front to back (top to bottom) as in the religious depictions. (The picture is "upside down"-- that bulge near the top margin of the picture is the weight bearing surface of the heel bone. Irritation there is the classic "heel spur." Hangmen in those days were apparently not held to strict federal guidelines for crucifixions and were free to improvise.....Probably the easiest way to crucify a victim would have been to attach him to an X shaped cross, spread eagle like we always see the troopers being tortured tied to a wagon wheel in cowboy movies....no need to dig a deep hole to plant an upright T shaped rig. "Crucify" is from "Crux"- which is really translated as "gallows." English "cross" is really an incorrect derivation in that sense. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=crux&la=la&can=crux0

I like the multiple hypotheses suggested in the video. As he said, they've found several of these so it must have been something in common usage. The rounded protrusions caught my eye immediately and reminded me of the "jacks" kids use to play Ball & Jacks. Maybe some high-end variation of "Knucklebones" commonly played by the ancients?

Thank you for posting on all these interesting topics... My question was rhetorical. Of course they didn't design the vessels with fluid circulation patterns in mind. They designed them for ease of construction and durability. The hemispherical bottom was sturdier than a vessel with straight sides and a right angle at a flat bottom....The amphora was designed to stack snuggly in such a way as to form stable piles in the hold of a bobbing sailing ship....and in later days, the wooden barrel was designed to lay on its side to roll in loading and unloading-- the wider middle section allowed a rolled barrel to turn around corners easily.

On viniculture, wine making and wines: Pliny The Natural History Ch 14, 17 & 23 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137 --also on wine & drinking styles (Chapter 8-- Johnston's The Private Lives of the Romans http://www.forumromanum.org/life/johnston_8.html I like the technical detail in your second reference in regards clay vessel design and circulation patterns as the wine ferments. Do you really think they put any thought into designing things this way, or is just a fortuitous accident that it worked out so well?

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?