Onasander

It matters to me, I do a lot of research of colonial to 1812 frontier warfare. A big issue that Canadians point out is that they resisted largely alone, just using militias to invade the US. I'm obviously not talking about the southern campaigns. Now I know they had well experienced troops from South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Napoleonic backgrounds. The US had to defend potentially from every front, whereas Canada only had to push south. I fully expect every troop.... be it Canada or US, to be roughly similarly trained with similar stock men in it, so never cared to judge the esprite of nations here. But now it makes more sense, they had these foreign units who hung around, training up the militias prior to the invasion. Something every Canadian historian I've ever chatted with omitted. But they still lost this campaign. The lost to the Cotton Bailers (3rd Infantry Division) in Louisiana, and God totally stomped the British Army with his awesome assault with 3 Tornadoes in Washington, DC. God's the best ally, he has all the best toys. http://www.afweather.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123042444

Romans did very similar things to ISIS, they did impale people, burn people, placed people in metal statues and cook them alive inside, hang people (I can only recall one reference to a hanging of a live person, but not as punishment but as suggested suicide). Just, I don't think they had gasoline then, so it be hard for them to do this exact version of burning the Jordanian pilot alive. But they would of immediately of grasped this new tech I suppose in regards to grewsome ways to kill someone. Honestly, why no Wickermen in Cisalpine Gaul? You think someone would of observed this before Caesar. http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/the-wicker-man-poster.jpg

I just did a Google search, it's really hard to die of an eye disease. The eye is largely isolated from the rest of the body, and can easily be removed. You can have eye herpes, but I see this in cats (Humans have it too, different variety).... blindness might kill a cat out of starvation, but not the herpes itself. It just makes them red eyed, leaky, and helps develop cataracts. You can also get dirt in the eye, but again, really hard to die from it. People do often lose their eyesight. It's by the US military mandates clear ballistic goggles, to keep the dirt out. This isn't making sense to me. I won't say no one ever died from a eye disease, but we're talking about a well nourished individual, in an era that well understood worst comes to worst, you can just pop an eye out. Secondly, the litter he is being carried in, be it by hand or in wagon, makes little sense that no one would notice for days, even if absolute privacy was demanded. Water, food, and bowel movements. You can go a day at most before someone notices you haven't demanded water, or requested your chamber pot to be changed out. Secondly, it's a hot climate, the rate of decomposition would be faster. And the flies would very quickly tip it off before the small ever reached anyone's nose. Have you noticed roadkill gets maggots in it rather fast? I'm tired of coming across people claiming historians are unreliable due to academic laziness. He wrote a massive work, I was just reading his Egyptian history earlier. The greatest shame and burden historians of the 21st carry is the legacy of the historians of the 20th century. They were lazy and demented, and never read beyond their small area of expertise, inevitably wounding themselves. We need to learn, or at least relearn the approach to reading between the lines of texts by historians from different eras. His history in general looks very similar in structure and method to other later histories. It's disturbing to cut him off as reliable just because some historian sucked and/or was ideologically biased.

Christian agenda? He reports just fine on the other Pagan Emperors, you'll wanna reconsider that statement. He has a grudge. It's the why of that that matters here. The church was destroyed and rebuilt, and he offers up a tradition not found in current lives of saints. Yet he makes systematic use of several kinds of sources, not all Christian. We run the risk of unfairly closing him off as a source due to unfounded biases. If I was to offer a parallel from the modern world, it would be like automatically disregarding a Sunni Historian if your a Shia, or vice versa. Yes, biases exist, or at least likely to exist, but we can't beforehand categorically press them out of the range of acceptability without looking and weighing what they actually contribute. Malalas had books on Antioch in a era when it was under foreign occupation. This obviously matters ALOT. I found a rather sparce, methodological yet wonderful history in Malalas. It gives you a real feel for what sources actually existed at the time. Given the City of Antioch was occupied then by the Persians, his worth in regards to the history of Antioch is obviously very important. Besides, the pagan and christians regularly rubbed shoulders at this time in the philosophy schools. I doubt any educated man could be pagan or Christian and long avoid friendly interaction if living in the same city. Not all philosophy schools were closed, some continued on just fine in their new home. It's quite easy to uproot and move your school. Classical philosophers, especially Athenians, put too much emphasis on local and not bona fide transmission. It's why we can say Sulla or Mithradities destroyed the academy, even though in modern terms it's continuation went on unimpeded via dominant philosophers still present carrying on the tradition. Paganism died off eventually, but not yet. And certainly not the Roman identity. Or History Craft. We gotta hold in mind the possibility that the well educated then were every bit as complex and intellectual as people now.... Not the same sciences or ideas, but still civilized and deep. I doubt he was black and white as Pagan-Christian conflicts today are painted.

http://ccv.northwestcompany.com/hmd2.html Turns out Canada used Swiss mercenaries in their invasion. Shameful.

I wouldn't call it a mood, as the underlining it's ontological categories I list places calculation prior to emotion, emotion is a effect, not a cause of the investigation. Mood comes after. Hence my Enthemene can be broken down into premises stated or unstated, and be engaged in, either by acceptance or refutation. A time delay doesn't change logic. If it was irrational (emotion before reason, not from direct observation and investigation, but rather from second hand sources (hearsay and word of mouth) the tangents wouldn't be traceable or easily refutable. This is where Pisces Axxxxx is stuck. His statement's don't always have traceable premises, so were left confronting a emotion stemming from a picture that doesn't quite sit right to him, a irrational bias he has yet figured out yet to properly express. Anger is a valid tool in debate, in expression, but isn't worth very much in and of itself if we let it lead without knowing our sense of self, and sense of other, in a balancing act in relation to supporting premises. If your other is say, a tree, that your son hits with His car, killing him..... Blaming the tree seems silly. You have rooted premises, but the anthromorphoication makes no sense, as a tree can take blame or have vice ridden character traits. Simmering down here won't work either, as it's only partially irrational. Simmering down works best in arguments that are wholly irrational, like a madman in fear of invisible penguins assaulting him.

Not really.... There was a migratory tribe of Indians here 6000 years ago that would cremate their dead, bone fragments even then would survive in the ash. You would think we would of found one of these sites by now, especially given the skeletons (yes, skeletons) of a pile of charred human bodies would be quickly picked up upon, as well as dating charcoal via carbon and tree ring analysis. Where are the Celtic place names for these wickerman sites? You'd think there be some rumor of a story locals would recall. H I think it's bull. What's the procedure for getting them all inside? You would have to either maim or bound and tie everyone. Where is the surviving Celtic myths? The temples to this God in later Roman times once the local and foreign religions began to merge? Why literally no trace? You think something would survive. That people smart enough to build a giant wickerman could build a seigetower of sorts and crush caesar, or light his wooden walls on fire. They early would of grasped how to build weight supporting large wood structures and how to burn them quick..... Yet didn't know how to apply that technical knowledge when it mattered in breaking a siege. Makes you wonder why the Gauls in Cisalpine Guam never did this either. That no former Romans noticed this.... Hmmmmm.....

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/05/newfound-gospel-lots-mary-discovered-in-ancient-text/ You use this, it's all fire and brimstone for you. There was a period of Judaism where chest tablets were used for divination, but I think it was limited to two two options. I know there was precursors in mesopotamia from pagan times using divinatory tablets. Honest, you'll burn.

I just read the account you linked. It's obvious he took a second hand approach to structuring his work. He used Theophrastus' character traits to a degree in expressing each emperors physical, emotional, and social alliegance from the start.... but it's the bare bone minimum. He barely covers each reign. Then he says this: In his reign, he ornamented the so-called Museium in Antioch as well as the in it the sigma shaped Nymphaeum, writing it in lettering(?) Oceanus. The emperor also ordered that the food-supplies of Antioch should be from the treasury as a gift by his orders so they could teach. I know the Library in Alexandria was known as the museum. He is obviously backing one philosophical school in bias over the other. The question we should ask is why. I know much later on, the university of Antioch would pull inland with the Assyrian Church of the East, towards Nisiblis.... it's still sorta around, but was converted into a church seminary of sorts, but was very powerful during it's Antiochian era. The fact this text mentions the emperor funding it with imperial oversight sits squarely within imperial tradition. I'm afraid this text looks legitimate. Not saying accurate, just.... He used his sources systematically, and appear to of been using church traditions.... such as The Lives of the Saints as he would of known them, and gives evidence to community rivalries. He also gives the impression to me the Stoic Institution of Mimes was still in existence.... at least written, if not actually acted like in Publius Syrus' day. He had to of taken the descriptions from somewhere. I come off with the impression books, if not actors, were exesstant playing the roles of such character traits of such emperors to give everyone a pist-humorous impression of what they were like in a era that portrait painting distribution was very small scale. It reads off like a blue print. Notice he fills in details current historians are at a lost as to what Emperor Probus did during his abortive invasion of Persia? Everything I read shows their a bunch of confused, lost ducklings stumped on this part. I see nothing that indicates he is untrustworthy here. Now, to your specific claim/question.... Knowing he appears to of made use of church as well as civil history, was philosophically educated but at odds with the Antiochian Philosophy School in the city, we have to ask ourselves, do we have information he lacked in being able to pinpoint the truth of this story better than he could discern with his sources? Yes, it appears. I simply assumed a Bishop murdered by a Emperor would be made a saint, and googled his name. I got this from Wikipedia: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylas_of_Antioch He was the successor of Zebinus as Bishop of Antioch in the reign of the Emperor Gordianus (238-244), being the twelfth bishop of the see. During the Decian persecution (250) he made an unwavering confession of faith and was thrown into prison where he died from his sufferings. He was, therefore, venerated as a martyr.[3] John Chrysostom's homily upon Saint Babylas and the Acts of the Martyrs report the following story, that Babylas once refused the visiting pagan emperor, on account of his sinful ways, permission to enter the church and had ordered him to take his place among the penitents. John does not give the name of the emperor; the Acts mention Numerian. It is more likely the contemporary Philip the Arab of whom Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica, VI, 34) reports that a bishop would not let him enter the gathering of Christians at the Easter vigil.[3] Later legend elaborates on this, stating that Babylas demanded that he do penance for his part in the murder of the young Gordian III before he would allow Philip to celebrate Easter. ---- We can see there was confusion over just which emperor did what. I take this from another article: Death in captivity Eutropius, writing between 364-378, stated that Valerianus "was overthrown by Sapor king of Persia, and being soon after made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians.".[8] An early Christian source, Lactantius, thought to be virulently anti-Persian, thanks to the occasional persecution of Christians by some Sasanian monarchs,[9] maintained that for some time prior to his death Valerian was subjected to the greatest insults by his captors, such as being used as a human footstool by Shapur when mounting his horse. According to this version of events, after a long period of such treatment Valerian offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, according to one version, Shapur was said to have forced Valerian to swallow molten gold (the other version of his death is almost the same but it says that Valerian was killed by being flayed alive) and then had the unfortunate Valerian skinned and his skin stuffed with straw and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple. It was further alleged that it was only after a later Persian defeat against Rome that his skin was given a cremation and burial.[10] The captivity and death of Valerian has been frequently debated by historians without any definitive conclusion.[9] The Humiliation of Emperor Valerian by Shapur I, pen and ink, Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1521 One modern scholar[9] claims that, contrary to the account of Lactantius, Shapur I sent Valerian and some of his army to the city of Bishapur or Gundishapur where they lived in relatively good condition. Shapur used the remaining soldiers in engineering and development plans. Band-e Kaisar (Caesar's dam) is one of the remnants of Roman engineering located near the ancient city of Susa.[11] In all the stone carvings on Naghshe-Rostam, in Iran, Valerian is represented holding hands with Shapur I, a sign of submission. It has been alleged that the account of Lactantius is colored by his desire to establish that persecutors of the Christians died fitting deaths;[12] the story was repeated then and later by authors in the Roman Near East fiercely hostile to Persia. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_%28emperor%29 ---- The article points out he did persecute Christians (see link) even in his own imperial household, and this was stopped afterwards (Compare Japanese persecutions of Christians leading up to WW2, and half the Japanese household being Quakers). It's quite possible he did indeed kill someone of high standing, perhaps even this saint, or another. It's quite possible that the emperor and his men did work projects prior to his execution. Did he drink molten gold, or have his shin flayed, or both? I dunno. I haven't come across a Persian work claiming something similar. So to answer your question if there is a consensus, the answer is definitely NO. However, do I think this historian is reliable? He seems to of been methodological, and worked well within the sources that he transmitted. Therefore he is valuable. But because his account contradicts other accounts, it causes doubts for the whole spectrum of histories in this era, which makes perfect sense given 1) The Christians were persecuted, so their primary sources likely became secondary oral sources once the original works were burnt, 2) Julian the Apostate screwed around with the Antiochian Cathedral, and the Church dedicated to this saint had to be rebuilt across the River. That sort of interference is going to mess with classical record keeping. Not every liturgy is going to be memorized, feast and fast days will get jumbled pre-monastic period, and a lot of community animosity would get intermixed. I think someone likely was flayed. I give my community's remembrance of the death of Chief Logan as a example: Our story went, out of revenge for him killing so many curing the war, we cut out a section of his small intestine, nailed it to a tree, and whipped him as he ran around it, till it fell out and he died. When a Chief Logan impersonator came here from the modern successor to the Mingo tribe, many of us respectfully came to the meeting to hear him speak. To our shock, he thought Logan wandered off into the East (drunk and depressed). He attributed the death to another Indian. Upon research, I found him to be correct in many details. What happened is during the centuries, the emotional response to history was remembered, but the number of personalities at play in history continuous decreased, until only Chief Logan was remembered. If you can't remember the name of any Indian other than Logan, Logan becomes every Indian. The emotion was correct (even if politically incorrect, see Lord Dunmore's War), but factually incorrect. We would in this case be dealing with a division between Fact and Emotion. I believe in Sociology, it was the philosopher Comte who first tackled the difference between desires and opinions. I would note that for a historian, we must realize no fact is independent in and of itself, existing in a cognitive void.... When we apprehend, a "thing" unfolds into other facts, a schema develops, or it's adopted a priori into a schema.... effectively it's ideological, and ideology is desire driven. I would caution against a full acceptance of Comte's position, but to encourage a overview. During that time Comte published his first essays in the various publications headed by Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, Le Politique, and L'Organisateur (Charles Dunoyer and Charles Comte's Le Censeur Européen), although he would not publish under his own name until 1819's "La séparation générale entre les opinions et les désirs" ("The general separation of opinions and desires"). http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4622505,00.html Didn't seem that bad of an exile....

Ummm... Epicurian Philosophy is Smut. He attracted a lot of prostitutes. Leontion was the most famous, she used to lounge around in his Garden and talk smack about Theophrastus and other local dignitaries, I recall her sayings were well recounted in the larger movement years after. A lot of what was recovered so far was from the early members of the Epicurian movement, and the later thinker Philodemus. Like I said, prepare for the smut. The Epicurians attracted hedonistic prostitutes, the Stoics and Peripatetics were bisexual child molesters (and they were outright advocates of this lifestyle), and the Cynics literally screwed everywhere, alone or with each other. There was also the beginning strains in these movements a sort of asceticism that moved away from this, but I gotta say, I don't think the readers here quite grasp just how.... perverted they could get. We are going to get a lot of smut.

No, they only burned Nicholas Cage. Honestly, has anyone found any evidence if that? I severely doubt a wickerman could hold very many people, and if it did, the wood would have to be tension bound (bound by ropes, ropes burn, it falls apart), or thick sturdy hard to burn wood. It takes alot.... I do mean a lot of wood to burn a single person near the flames inquisition style. You put me in a wicker, with others, more than likely you'll just get us to cough and piss on the flames below, and we'll pry the burnt wood.... If the flames even rise, off.... leaping out and stabbing. Honestly, may be the dumbest hypothetical method of torture ever devised. Maybe a single person in a small wicker man.... who happened to be standing in a wood pile. Think of the trojan horse. If you set that on fire at the feet, how long do you think it would take to burn the whole thing? A long time, and before that, it would break apart with instant burnt tipped spear like beams all around the pissed off survivors falling out from inside.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/03/former-obama-adviser-should-tax-fat-people-by-body-weight/ I recall, it was either a tax or a fine maliciously charged to fat people in Celtic society. I always considered it as evidence of how demenred and hate driven the Celts were. It's a very childish position to take in ordering society. Yet, it's resurfaced in the modern world. It's a shame civilization is degrading itself so quickly, so willingly, on the short sighted roar of euphoria and dreams of a dysutopia I pray may never come. You also have the case of the Jordanian Pilot.... ISIS burned him alive Roman Style, despite willingness to reach ransom demands. Ancient psychology is starting to reassert itself. Kiss the world goodbye. But as everything around us collapses, we have a chance to study the reemergence and psychological motives and experiences of these sickos, and the idiots who glorify such acts. If you never could grasp why the celts could accept such practices, ask people who get fined today for insight. Why Romans would execute people in such absurd fashion, and it's social impact, study those societies. Why Carthage was so accepting of child sacrifice, ask a British feminist abort abortion. It doesn't always exactly equate in terms of how the formula was structured, but the underlining design of the human brain was the same then as now. Most elements of the formula would still sit and be processed psychologically in the same way, even if a nuanced aspect of thought leads the ultimate conclusion elsewhere. It's a great time to study barbaric acts, but not necessarily a great time to live.

http://m.timesofindia.com/world/us/Homeless-reaches-record-60000-in-New-York/articleshow/46115138.cms These people have to freeze to death or starve so the democrats can blow trillions and continue to NOT help them. They're a useful political tool. If they were serious, they would just help them, but they never do. It's pure politics and mind games. But guess who does get the work they need to stand back up again? Illegals. Guess why the illegals have to come here? Because their homeland is a socialist warzone run by mafias and cartels who sell drugs to rich white Americans. Democrats managed to get every angle of this sick triangle trade going. Here, in the Ohio Valley, it's Chicago Gangs. In every region, it's the same criminal organization manipulating and segregating the population. It angers me a lot. I want a end to racism, a end to political parties. I support John Adams fear of political parties, but this one in particular scares me. Nothing positive ever seems to come of it anymore. It's just out to self perpetuate via memes, divide and conquer. No one in the party has apparently studied the long term effects of their actions. I have, thousands of homeless drug users everywhere. Slave labor. And they point at imaginary, or far away people as their scapegoats. It's always obviously the ones benefiting right there, in that locality from the system. In the worst parts of the country, it's always a Democratic monopoly. They have the money, they have the connections, it's them laying down the iron heel. The people in that link were ignorant, but it has to be remembered, they are a natural by product of this system. The knee jerk resort to a politically correct answer needs to be studied as to why it's 'politically correct' in the first place. It's usually these very people who mandated it in the first place. It sets up the debate for failure, ensures their monopoly, and instead of growing closer or stronger, we're set against one another over race or class, for their furtherance of interests. How many more people have to end up homeless, on the street before we realise this economic uptick isn't effecting Americans? It is getting worst for us. That's why everyone is frustrated. There is no solutions of a viable, self sustaining or rational nature being put out by these people. Just a Hugh section of the US has to go off and die, cause the Dems don't deem them worthy of life and employment. They have new consistuents, from another country, who will vote for them. Everyone else should just die.

You have a specific auxiliary unit? The Romans usually didn't station their units where they were raised. I know in Gual, the cults paralleled what was worshipped back home. I checked, a few legions were stationed there (no mention of auxiliary, but wasn't a in depth search). Mithra was never that active of a cult in Guam, I was given the false impression it was years back, but didn't pan out. They worshipped underground in tiny false caverns, you really can't fit that many men, and their rank structure was too small and would of conflicted too much with a large unit's command structure if people were differently initiated into the cult than they held in real life. I know Isis was generally active, and a Celtic branch of the Zeus cult was. Also Dei Syria, as well as Seraphis. Just.... Obviously I need more details. The home region of the Auxiliary. The profession of your so called average Gual. Its not hard to develop a generic composite from this. Basic rule is, look at their home region. That is the religion they will carry forth. This is from wiki: Despite the gravity of this rebellion, the Illyrians went on, alongside their neighbours the Thracians, to become the backbone of the Roman army. By the 2nd century, with roughly half the Roman army deployed on the Danube frontier, the auxilia and legions alike were dominated by Illyrian recruits. In the 3rd century, Illyrians largely replaced Italians in the senior officer echelons of praefecti of auxiliary regiments and tribuni militum of legions. Finally, from AD 268 to 379, virtually all emperors, including Diocletian and Constantine the Great were Romanised Illyrians from the provinces of Dalmatia, Moesia Superior and Pannonia. These were members of a military aristocracy, outstanding soldiers who saved the empire from collapse in the turbulent late 3rd century.[39] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxilia

I don't recall that thread, but Aetius would of been restricted to the equipment he could get. I suppose he could of used them, shock tactics did start coming into existence towards the end of the Roman Empire, but it wasn't nearly as advanced as the medieval era. I'll give you an example. I'm the one who first used a camera attached to a helicopter in Iraq, but that war isn't going to ever be listed as using that kind of surveillance device. Hard core historians will list regulations, will list the seeming lack of info on Google searches (and oddly enough it used to be there on Google). Stuff pops up and dissapears in warfare all the time. I recentally saw someone use my mirror idea (45 degree angle) that I used as a tactical mount ONTOP a scope (mine was behind it), and for a while the at, via JROTC in Louisiana, taught how to make my pluck goggles I made from Rubberbands, Paper Clips, and Duct Tape.... Though admittedly I haven't seen it used in a while. Technology pops up and dies off quick, just depends on how willing command is to tolerate it, and more important, adjusting tactics to adjust to it. Even with the emphasis on innovation, the US Army had TRADOC as a hurdle to innovation, as well as mass equipping of soldiers. Some of my ideas works, some failed, but none really seem to of taken off. Doesn't mean however that pockets of lower level innovation didn't exist. I'm a INTJ, it's expected I'll do that. Aetius isn't too far off from that personality. But he seems of of used ENTJ functions over INTJ in approach to intrigue and alliance building. Just the impression I get. He never really took off. But this being said, it's easy to step in and out of this functional divide for either type. He likely had a pretty awesome bodyguard. But since everyone gets butthurt on stirrups, I'd back off too. I really don't know how often they popped into existence until their systematic adoption.

Our emphasis on Latin was a tradition that had deep meaning during the years leading up to the revolution, because our concepts of republicanism and democracy, due to censorship and needing to stay below the legal radar, had to appear to be as non threatening to contemporary crown representatives. Obviously, this harmless look back into history didn't work to well for the imperial cause, as the Roman Republic had some untapped potent potential to it once the process of realization began. This being said.... The American Revolution was a success. We obviously deeply imprinted the superficial aspects like mottos and architecture everywhere, as well as resurrected.... with great attention to hindsight, a modified revival of the republic at it's best. What matters more I think, is the crux, not the superficial aspects. I can care less if Vermont has just a English Motto, or Hawaii rejected the classic capital design for it's legislative building. As to the Latin mistaken as Latino issue, yes, it's expressed ignorantly here, but it's expressed disastrously by the left. My religion is Catholic, god father was Mexican, born in California, moved for a while back there in San Francisco. Studied philosophy there. I think it's absolutely sick in how the democratic party maintains a White Democratic Party, and a Black, keeps the Gay population segregated (Castro) from the tensioned driven blacks in Oakland. They won't employ them for menial labor, instead let them shoot Oakland and Hunters Point up in drug wars for the gays and whites. Meanwhile the Mexicans work for slave labor prices. A portion of the population in that group are even farther south. They get used and abused. Tossed aside. The Democrats say change, but benefit from the status quo. I'm sick of them. Everything is rigged for political exploitation there. I'm okay obviously with latins, but how to integrate a foreign language group, and work them towards citizenship under plantation politics isn't easy.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/03/650-year-drought-triggered-ancient-city-abandonment/

Better add a third level to that Caldrail: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frumentarii I knew there was something inherently wobbly about this.... how you allocate and select who wins and loses in such a confined system of expedited trade. The emperors had a monopoly on the distribution of grain. I knew they would get their hands around this as soon as I heard it, just didn't know. This institution, this canal, was the hub of the emperors spy network. It's evolution is what intrigues me now, it grew directly out of the grain collectors. They would be in a place to make or break merchants. Control ultimately the aristocracy. Its why I brought up Boethius, his family controlled, at least on paper, the grain supplybforvthe ostrogoths.... I figured they wouldn't be nearlybas savvy in maintaining the system as the Romans did at it's height. This canal has taught me more about Rome than every history book I've ever read put together.

http://m.livescience.com/49564-photos-blackbeard-pirate-medical-instruments.html Hmmmm.... They tried to pass it off as medical equipment for the whole crew, but I don't think I'd be too keen to share my syphilius probe and butt rehydration pump with others. I think BlackBeard had some issues here. How much of this equipment matches up with Ancient ships medical stocks?

Naw, he would just add the forum with two subforums. People like you can start topics on how to write a book, research it, best software for ebooks, marketing, grammar and cover design. Caldrail, as he made it to professor of history status, would be the ideal leader/authority for writing a nonfiction history book. There are a lot of authors where I'm from, we have writer groups. This website has a tendency to attract authors. I thought it would arise naturally, but hasn't yet. Been pondering asking him. Just, I don't know much about Viggen, other than he is really, really old, is a Austrian, and started this site as part of a role playing game, and for selling maps. So he might only be doing this to recruit new players for all I know. It just makes a lot of sense to do this, it give the site a lot of credibility, and as a hub of potential and actual authors, would be a magnet for publishers and even movie producers looking for the next big book or script. Too many sites pretend to be academic in orientation, like their a history journal. I don't know of any that actively seeks to support authors as real people with real gaps or need for select, specific knowledge. We're increasingly like a reference librarian here, which is fine. Just libraries have writer groups too. It seems a natural evolution of a aspect of what we're already doing. We just would systematise and dedicate a section to it. By we, I mean Viggen. I would just watch.

http://omnesviae.org This is exactly what you requested, found it just now by accident, it's like a Roman Mapquest. I'm amazed someone went out their way to make this. I've been thinking of getting (pestering) Viggen to make a section dedicated as a "how to" section for writing history books and historical fiction, with resources like this to help out authors. If I ever convince him, I hope this link gets permanently pegged at the top of the forum. It's amazing.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazdegerd_I Rome had a ally in a era when we would least expect it in the middle east. I'll be contacting the Patriarch's Diocese in Chicago in a few months when I visit to find out more information, their church is the only one of the ancient churches I know of to move it's holy see in full to north america.

Adharbadigan = Azeribajian http://www.avesta.org/mp/jamaspi.htm This Zoroastrian text of course predates the events discussed in this thread, but adds a important cultural element to any historian writing on this subject in the future. I wasn't even trying to look for it, just decided to explore this text on it's own merits. I was of the impression that the Vedic/Zoroastrian Religions, after they 'diverged' adopted each others Gods as their Demons, to this day. I know vedic(ish) temples pop all the way west to Antioch and Ugarite and Hurrian lands, so it may be profitable to investigate this possibility that Atropatene may of been not so much Zoroastrian but heretical from their perspective. A big time gap however to consider.

These early maritime raiders were at the same time the first true pirates, attacking anyone of any nationality, owing loyalty to no one, but also quite unique. Because of their roots in land raiding, they were known not only to attack ships and coastal towns but also to venture further inland. This caused even the earliest large cities to relocate anywhere from 2 to 10 miles away from shore.[8] Pirates tended not to go any farther inland due to difficulties escaping. Speed was one of the most important elements of piracy. This relocation gave a relatively effective cushion of safety to major cities such as Athens, Tiryns, Mycenae and others. It protected them from the sea’s dangers, although it also cut them off from it benefits. The sea was still the primary, and practically only, area of major commerce. This caused twin cities to be built, one inland city paired with a coastal port, such as Rome and Ostia, Athens and Piraeus, etc. To protect their connection they built “‘long walls’ like those that enclosed the thoroughfare between Athens and Piraeus.”[8] The maritime historian Henry Ormerod said, “If we remember that piracy was, for centuries, a normal feature of Mediterranean life, it will be realized how great has been the influence which it exercised on the life of the ancient world.”[9] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mediterranean_piracy I'm having difficulty with this wikipedia page focusing on bronze age piracy. So the Romans then, after the collapse of the bronze age, in the face of the sea peoples and pirates.... intentionally built inland, with a port city, in the same pattern as Athens? I know Romans had issues with pirates at a later stage, largely of their own doing in smashing Carthage and it's international networks. I thought Rome started off (disregarding the Trojan story) as a inland power, between Etruscan and Greek Powers. The only sea people it ever had to deal with would of been migratory celts during the days before Rome was founded. I just dislike this page in general. It's great to have opinions, express them on a forum.... but I can't find much in the way of facts here. Rome didn't develop in parallel like Athens. Rome grew in lurches, and was periphial to both the ocean world, and hellanism until arriving relatively late. Rome was land oriented in it's developments, and thus army oriented, not Navy in a embryonic form in the beginning centuries.