DecimusCaesar

I had read that Caratacus (Caradog in Welsh) made his last stand in Llanymynech near the Vrynwy lake in North Wales, so its apparent that this theory is by now obsolete. Nice pic Longbow.

Unfortunately I cannot find the image on the internet seeing as I saw the picture in the book 'Chronicle of the Roman Emperors' by Chris Scarre. The picture is of a bust of the Emperor Pertinax in his armour and just like you pointed out it has a engraving of Medusa on it. I had no idea that Medusa was portrayed in this more human form with a head of hair instead of snakes. Thanks for the info.

The weather has been really terrible this summer (especially where I live) but despite this the really hot few days we had around July led to the discovery through aerial archaeology numerous sites around Wales, including the outlines of never before known Roman auxillary forts.

An interesting article. I had read in one book a while ago that the Mayan civilisation had collapsed centuries later towards the 16th century and the coming of the Spanish Conquistadores. Although the mayans had no unified government they did still retain their language and culture and their lack of unity was actually what protected them from being annihilated by the Spanish as there was no central figure or city for them to attack like they had with the Aztecs (Emperor Montezuma and the city of Tenochtitlan). the Mayan culture still exists to today. I wonder if Mel Gibson's new Maya movie, Apocalypto, will make any mention of this 'No God' theory seeing as it centers on the fall of the Mayan empire.

I don't know if this has already been mentioned in the Colosseum forum , but a new movie based on the life of the Emperor Hadrian is due for release next year called 'Memoirs of Hadrian' which is set to be directed by John Boorman and written by Ron Base (based on the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar). Antonio Banderas will be playing Hadrian and Juliette Binoche will play Faustina. Although their roles are still in talks, so it might be due to change. More info is on IMDB....

thanks for the answers everyone! It makes sense that Generals did this for protection, so if they did it then the richer citizens who lived in villas probably painted the Medusa image on their walls as a way to protect their domus from evil spirits or from crooks. The Medusa as a protection amulet makes a lot of sense and it makes it similar to the evil eye amulet (to ward off jealousy and greed) which was also very popular in Roman and Byzantine eras. On closer inspection of some of the busts of the Emperors i've noticed that what I originally thought was a depiction of Medusa on the armour (in the case of Pertinax, although other emperors have Medusa) is actually a man with long curly hair...from afar it looks like a gorgon. The man also has wings extending from his head and a cord tied under his chin. Could this be a depiction of Alexander or is it something from Mythology?

I've chosen Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, although I also like the numerous roman cities like Leptis Magna, Palmyra and Aphrodisias.

Did anyone else used to watch the Byzantium: Lost Empire series that used to show on the Discovery channel (especially Discovery Civilisation) about 4 or 5 years ago? the one presented by John Romer (the famous archaeologist and Egyptologist). It turns out that the series has fallen out of copyright (that is why they stopped showing it) and it can now be viewed for free on Google vidoes or any other site that hosts domain videos. You can watch it for free by just going to google videos and typing in Byzantium and selecting the video called Lost Civilisations-Byzantium (don't know why they called it that on the site). The program runs for about an hour and forty minutes and gives a brief overview of early Byzantine history, with a lot of emphasis on its art history. Unfortunately, there is only the first to shows to be seen, and the last two epsidoes of the series are missing. It would be great if they eventually put the whole series up on the site.

Phil25, I agree that Tiberius' era went rather smoothly...ignoring the so called 'Reign of terror' but I think that when it comes to study this era people usually put Tiberius's personality before the fact that he brought much stability to the empire. He might have been rather cruel and depraved in some ways but at least he managed to keep the Empire stable and not create too much damage.

I have read that despite having a larger military than ever before (300,000 according to one ancient source, although that is how it might have looked on paper, the reality was different) the Roman's could still only field rather small armies( 1000-1200) , probably much smaller than that of the early Imperial era (5,000-6,000). These armies would have no doubt consisted of large numbers of pseudocomiatenses, these were Limitanei (frontier troops) that had become attached to the Comitatenses (the Field armies) and would have lacked the training and equipment of more professional troops. Even so, the Limitanei/Pseudocomitatenses were still good quality soldiers although they were simply not up to the standards of the Comitatus and the Emperor's Palatini.

The Eastern Roman Empire did make many attempts to save the Western Roman Empire. As has been already pointed out the Eastern Roman Empire sent a naval expedition to retake North Africa from the Vandals and recapture Carthage in 468. The Failure of the expedition and the sack of Rome by Gaiseric (which had occured earlier) put a big strain on the Western Roman Empire and seeing as a massive amount of the wealth needed to maintain the Western Empire came from its North African provinces the Western Empire was doomed to collapse. I think that the control of north Africa was incredibly important to the west, as it was in effect the equivlant of Egypt to the Eastern Empire, it was the Western Empire's bread basket and the source of its wealth. When Rome failed to retake Carthage I think that very little amount of help from the Eastern empire would have saved Rome.

I seem to skip from one era to the next but for the last two years I have developed a stronger intrest in the Dominate period and the early Byzantine Empire, technically from the reign of Diocletian in 284 to the death of Justinian in 565. I have been reading a lot lately on the social and religious changes that to took place in the Later Roman Empire and how much society had changed since the era of the High Empire at the beginning of the Second Century AD, as well as the development of the army from the Imperial Legion to the Comitatenses and the Limitanei.

I've been looking through a lot of books recently and I've began to notice that Medusa or the gorgon (from Greek mythology) are constantly portrayed, whether it is on the front of the armour of the Roman Emperors or generals, on mosaic floors from Britain to Egypt or on the walls of Pompeii. I even open the DVD boxset to HBO's Rome and there is a picture of Medusa inside. I've began to wonder why it is that the Gorgon is portrayed so frequently in Roman art compared to other Mythological creatures and what significance does it have. I've also noticed that Alexander the Great had a medusa on his cuirass (from the Issus mosaic). Are the Romans imitating Alexander or does the Gorgon/Medusa motif exist for another reason? Does anyone know of any other frequent depictions of mythological creatures in Roman art? (Note: I'm not sure if this thread is in the appropriate forum, if the modertators believe it should be moved to a more appropriate forum like the Religious forum then I think it should be moved).

I've read the graphic novel and it is rather entertaining but not in the least bit accurate eg. Spartans fighting in loincloths against War Elephants and Camel Archers, Ephialtes the Greek traitor is portrayed as a deformed hunch-backed monster with one huge eye bulging out of his head while Xerxes and the persians look more like black africans than Persians (Xerxes himself is covered with rings and chains). I see that the director of the film has kept to the comic book adaption pretty well, It actually does look like what i've seen in the comic book (in terms of costumes and sets) so it certainly looks like something to look forward to.

Glad to hear you enjoy it. I have contenplated buying this game for sometime bt I've been put off by reviews I have read on the internet, with a lot saying that you need a super computer for the game to run smoothly as well as complaining about the bugs and glitches and the frustrating gameplay on some levels. Supposedly you had to singlehandedly wipe out 200 persian guards as Alexander in a ten minute span with only your war bow. Don't know if that is true though. Either way people say (Wotwotius among them) that the single player game is not very good.

South Park made a modern version of the Titus Andronicus tale which had Cartman feeding a boy's parents to him as revenge, I think it was voted one of the best episodes. Either way it probably goes to show that it's a story that would work well under pretty much any era...Roman...feudal Japan or modern day comedy cartoon. I would have liked to see a Kurosawa version as well, just watched a lot of his Samurai movies recently.

Isn't Mel Gibson already spear-heading a Boudicca film called 'Warrior' set for release next year? I don't think he's actually going to direct it though. Perhaps the movie won't be made at all seeing as Gibson has ran into a little trouble with the cops recently.

Is it Just me or does Jerome Carcopino come off as rather old fashioned in the book? I know it was published over 60 years ago but I thought his attitudes towards the rights of women were very Victorian and it made the book seem much older than it was. Still a really good book though

I don't know about any blessings but didn't a lot of characters in 'Rome' say "I swear on Jupiter's stone" quite often. Did they really say this? You can't trust TV shows or films on historical accuracy though.

I wasn't even born when this play was released, although I did see a program recently about Mary Whitehouse trying to get the play banned when it was first released. She was a campaigner for decency in the arts who objected to a rape scene in the play. I wonder what she would have thought of the Roman Arena.

I read that the Roman coinage began to lose its value in the Later Empire, with silver coins containing virtually no silver what so ever. This lead to coins losing all value and the people turned back to bartering. But as Caldrail has pointed out, one of the failures of Roman economics is that they depended largely on conquest in order to fill the coffers, and in order to do that they had to pay the army, so a large percentage of Rome's Economy was spent on maintaing the army (especially in the Later era, when the army swelled up to 600,000 recruits). So basically it was a vicious circle of needing conquest to prop up the economy and having the vast majority of tax going to pay for the military. (This applies to the Later era rather than the Republican and early Imperial Era). But the Later Empire couldn't afford to pay for wars of conquest as the soldiers had enough trouble defending the frontier, so the economy went into collapse. It comes as no surprise to see that it was the poorer classes who had to pay for this, and it was in effect they who financed the Empire.

Got the book, but unfortunately I haven't seen the TV series, although I would have liked to seen it. Anyone else think that his interpretation of British Chariots as being slightly odd? or am I just incorrect about this? I always believed that when Caesar first landed in Britain he was surprised to see the Britons till using chariots on the battlefield as they had become rather obsolete as a weapon of war. In the book Terry Jones has interpreatted it in a diffrent way, claiming that the Celts had a higher level of technological sophistication because they did use chariots in battle and the Romans never did. So were they smarter to use chariots, or were they just using a primative battle tactic?

One of my biggest problems is the lack of libraries for about 15 miles and also my lack of money, so the big academic books are almost always out of my reach.(except for The Oxford Classical Dictionary which I bought off of Amazon). The Libraries I have visited on the other hand lack many books on the Classical World, seeing as they only have some of the penguin translations (Plutarch, Cicero etc) and not much else.

I remember reading some of these off a list from Kathryn Welch's book 'The Romans' about seven or eight years ago. She used them to display how the beliefs and prejudices of some historians can distort our understanding of the past and how (in some cases) it's impossible to write about the Classical World without putting some of our modern views and ideas into it. Personally a lot on that list seems to be utterly crazy and I hope that many of these aren't genuine ideas from historians.

Does this mean I've been breathing Caesar for many years? Someone ought to make a song about this. I have no reasonwhy.