DecimusCaesar

Here's some very short mouth watering gameplay footage. It all looks very impressive:

A bit of a generalization there. Welsh women up to the English conquest were given legal rights unheard of by the Anglo-Normans. It probably is true that women's rights improved somewhat after the Roman era. Take Sonic's example about Medieval Wales for example, and the same could be said about Ireland. Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman conquest gave women much more rights than usual too. The story of women's rights isn't a simple tale of women gaining more and more with each passing century. The reality in Europe is far more bumpy. Women of the fourteenth century had much more freedom than in earlier centuries, but by the 17th century those rights had largely disappeared, and by the early 18th century women's rights had actually regressed up until Mary Wollstonecraft began writing on the subject.

I think the idea of prostitutes wearing special clothing for identification comes from Renaissance Italy. During the Renaissance certain classes of people, or those belonging to certain occupations, had to wear standard clothing that denoted their class/occupation. These restrictions on what people could or could not wear were often held by the law of the land. There doesn't seem to be anything of the sort in Ancient Rome though. While we are on the subject of Roman clothes, is there any truth to the claim that Roman marines wore blue tunics, centurions/optiones wore red tunics, while Roman legionaries wore white, terracotta coloured, and/or brown tunics? I think Graham Sumner wrote a book on the subject which did support the idea of Roman Marines wearing blue tunics, but I can't find evidence to support the other two ideas. I personally thought that Roman soldiers would have had a 'rag tag' appearance, with legionaries wearing many different coloured tunics and several different styles of helmets and armour.

This aspect saddens me too, it looks like you need a supercomputer to be able to run this game on the highest settings. Developers at the Creative Assembly claim that the game will run on lower end machines. One developer even said that if you can run Total War: Shogun 2, you can run Total War: Rome II. whether this is true remains to be seen, but I don't have high hopes. I actually have an old magazine from around 2003, when the original Rome was in development, which contains an interview the game's developers. Back then the Creative Assembly assured readers that Rome would feature battles with up to 80,000 men on screen that would run fine on your computer if you could play Medieval: Total War. That turned out to be a big lie in then end.

I believe that there is a small group of Roman enthusiasts called Nova Roma who would like to recreate some aspects of Roman civilisation in the modern world. They meet up in groups where they speak latin, take part in Roman religious ceremonies, and also dress in traditional Roman clothes. The emphasis is on the Republic though, rather than the Principate/Dominate eras. They have a website here: Nova Roma

Apparently this one will be far more historically accurate. I don't know if they are going with several Roman factions like last time, but one of the lead developers has stated that the Ptolemaic Egyptians will now have armies of Greek mercenaries and native auxillia rather than the New Kingdom 'King Tut' Style Egyptians of the original game. The Graphics on the other hand look fantastic, as this in-game screenshot demonstrates: I think this image is supposed to demonstrate the siege of Carthage, although I could be mistaken. Cities in the new game will also appear differently, instead of being carbon copies of each other like in the original Rome. Also historical cities like Carthage, Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Babylon etc will feature historically accurate topography. For instance, Alexandria will feature the great library and the Pharos lighthouse, while Athens will have the Parthenon on the the Acropolis and so on.

I'm certainly interested in Late Roman re-enactment, although I've never seen performances by late Roman re-enactors. These groups tend to be much smaller than the Principate era groups like the Ermine Street Guard, partly because the era is not well known, partly because late Roman arms & armour are not as well researched (in comparison to the Principate) and partly because the the actual equipment is so expensive! I'd love to be able to reconstruct a late Roman infantryman, but the helmets, armour, clothing and equipment are very expensive, and quite hard to get a hold of outside of specialists. Try getting hold of some Late Roman Braccae and tunic (that's reasonably priced) and you'll see what I mean.

Even though it's sort of sad that an old work of art has been vandalised, I can't help but laugh at the picture! This has already turned into an internet meme, with all sorts of parodies from The Last Supper to Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe been given "the elderly lady" treatment.

The Romans returned to Mona again, this time under the command of Julius Agricola, to suppress the Ordovicians. According to Tacitus they made such a slaughter of them that the entire people were almost wiped out. Suetonius Paulinus had succesfully defeated the Druids at the strait in AD 60, but the conquest of Anglesey was not completed as Paulinus was recalled to fight against the Boudiccan rebels. The Romans stayed on Anglesey afterwards, but their prescence was small. Archaeologists have discovered a small part of a Roman road on the island, while in the third century a small fort and watchtower was built in Holyhead as a lookout point for Irish pirates - this fort had connections with the Segontium auxilliary fortress on the mainland, from which it was probably supplied.

Excellent news! This has been one of my most anticipated releases for the last few years. Let's hope it lives up to the hype. And please,please,please don't add Roman Ninja, Chariot-Ballistae or superhuman barbarians into it this time. Here's the live action trailer:

Isn't this image more of a battlefield trophy, usually erected after a major battle had taken place? Greeks as well as Romans would take a plank of wood and bury it in the ground where they nailed armour and placed a helmet on top. The Greeks sometimes called it a Tropaion. It was placed on the spot where the tide of battle changed, and was therefore used to represent the spot where the victors had won.

I remember reading about a small Romanesque stauette head discovered by archaeologists in Mexico a few years back. The design was similar to that attributed to the Romans, and it dated back to before the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica. Whether this stauette was brought over by the Romans, washed up after a shipwreck or was made by native artists remains to be seen. Personally I don't think that Roman triremes and Quinqueremes were designed for transatlantic travel, so it's unlikely that the Romans would have gotten to Mexico about 70 years before the Claudian invasion of Britain.

I was very sad to hear the news today that the great Peter Connolly has died. I was a bit late coming to this news as he passed away over a month ago. Mr. Connolly's books were some of the things that helped spark my interest in the Romans. He wrote many books on the subject, some of which were academic such as Greece & Rome at War, while others were aimed at children such as The Roman Army, The Legionary and Pompeii. His illustrations and reconstructions are some of the most vivid depicitions of the ancient world ever made. In a way, it was his books that rescued the Romans from the unrealistic and idealised 16-19th century paintings to the realistic and life-like depictions that we've become used to today. It's such a shame we'll never get another book from him. Here's the eulogy that was read out in his funeral: Peter Connolly Eulogy

I've seen an example of an Ancient Greek doll with movable arms and legs. The doll is made from terra-cotta and has joints made of cord at the shoulders and knees to give it some limited movement. It must have been very fragile to have been made from such substance, so I'm not surprised that some examples have not survived. Even though the doll itself is Greek, it wouldn't suprise me at all if the Roman children had similar toys.

It's difficult to really know how many dyed in the wool Christians there were during Julian's reign. Perhaps some people made token gestures towards Julian's paganism, in the sameway that you had the quasi-religious Cult of the Supreme Being during the French revolution, something that quickly withered away after its main proponent, Robespierre, died. I can imagine some members of the Roman aristocracy or the senate showing low level support for Julian's revived paganism (which was actually quite different from the older paganism of Republican/Principate Rome), but after Julian's death (or assassination if you believe some of the conspiracies of the time)they reverted to showing support for Christianity.

My attempts at finding out if there's going to be a DVD for this series have turned out fruitless. It doesn't really bode well that Mary Beard's other series on Pompeii has never been released, and that came out quite a while ago. We can still hope, though.

This is true - being able to hear orders was importnat for the Legion in combat. As far as musical instruments go in battle, the Romans did have a cornicen and a tubicen (essentially a hornblower and a trumpeter) on the battlefield.

I caught about half an episode on BBc one night. A really good series, from the brief clip that I saw; I just hope that the BBC release a DVD as I'm hopeless at catching programs when they are being aired, although I could always try to get it on BBC iPlayer.

The last Roman themed program I watched was Mary Beard's 'Meet the Romans'. I haven't seen a single full episode yet, but from what I saw the program was very good. I'm personally quite interested in the various inscriptions left on Roman graves, and this documentary emphasised this quite heavily. Unfortunately I've lost track of the rest of the series, so I really hope that the BBC releases this series on DVD. Any other UK residents been tuning into the program?

I've often thought about this myself, and I always tend to think of the Ottoman Empire and the various Chinese Empires that, like Rome, brought a reasonable amount of stability and peace to a region for a long period of time, but stagnated in many other ways. If you compare that with the fracticious states in late medieval/early renaissance Europe you see a different picture. Medieval Europeans supposedly fought against each other all the time, which lead to increased technological development as different factions attempted to outwit each other. I'm reminded somewhat of Renaissance Italy, where men like Leonardo Da Vinci were paid to develop war machines (many of which were useless or impractical). Supposedly war fuelled scientific and technological development in Europe, while political stability, long peace, and a isolationist policy led to the stagnation of Asian empires. Perhaps this applies to Rome too, but I can't help but think that this is a very simplistic view. What's to say that Rome might not have had a social, intellectual and political revolution on the scale of the 18th century Enlightenment? Who knows, perhaps without the dark ages that might have occured much earlier in Western history. Then again Rome could very well have died a long slow death like the Ottoman Empire, which entered into decline in the mid 17th century but didn't fall until the 1920's.

Excellent Work, it's colourful and well illustrated - just the sort of thing you might find in a Penguin Atlas of Ancient Rome or a similar book. Very good job!

Ancient art depicts the Praetorians in archaic Greek style Attic helmets and muscled cuirasses. Peter Connolly mentions that it is entirely possible for the Praetorians to have worn such parade armour but there is no archaeological evidence for it beyond the artistic depictions on sculpture. As others have mentioned, Dr. Boris Rankov believed that Praetorian armour differed very little from standard equipment given to the legionaries (except its quality was much higher, of course).

Flaming Pigs are mentioned in the ancient accounts (which has already been mentioned) so they may well have been used in war, even if it was only once. The Ancient and Medieval Chinese supposedly used Oxen with flaming torches attached to their backs for attack, such as the siege of De'An in AD 1132, so it certainly isn't the first time that someone has though up a similar idea.

This film has been a Box Office smash though, I'd read about it but I haven't seen it so I was unfamiliar with the Roman themes. Apparently Disney's recent flop John Carter also had several Roman themes as well inclduing the ever famous Gladiatorial fights.

It failed to guess Pompey for me, but oddly enough it did suggest Falvius Aetius at one point. I would have thought that Aetius was a much much more obscure figure than Pompey.