Sextus Roscius

I'm with you there Flavius. If I was gonna rule, I'd do it in class. Other wise I'd have to say a combination of the battle hardened troops and skillful tactics of the late republic-early empire combined with the arms and armor of the middle empire where they had reached the perfection in how to use everything in a battle field.

Perhaps putting your next post into a format that is readable may help. I have trouble understanding what or who you are responding to. Basicaly I'm echoing Flavius on this, you might be easier to understand if they were in a clearly English format. I was meaning that I couldn't make sense of it. "can't make heads nor tails of it" is a very old and commonly used expression. I didn't mean you literaly had tails inserted in your text.

I've got TiVo auto-recording anything mentioning Roman history and let me tell you--Roman history documentaries are on ALL THE TIME. If I see Secrets of the Colisseum again, I think I'm going to do an Oedipus (the eye thing, not the mom thing). Agreed, everytime I flip on the T.V. I see another Roman documentary. I carefully select the ones I watch becuase some are loads of (sorry to put it bluntly but) crap and so I don't watch them. Others were organized by religious groups to show how evil Rome was. I typiacly stick to the history channel and the military channel becuase they do a good job of giving you unopinionated facts and you decide what you think of it for yourself. BTW, Flavius, have you lost your ada wong obsession?

Yes, it pretty much was, but after being flayed alive and tied in a sack, you were generaly already dead. The chucking in the river was pretty much part of the "undo birth" idea of the tourture/execution. Nero would take breaks, but the audience would just have to sit there and wait till he came back.

I've seen the entire thing twice over since history channel so benevolently replayed it. Its an eccelent show, I highly recomend it. Its indepth, and along with studying the architecture. It give you information on why it was built and while walking you throught the buildings, it also gives you a general overlay of Roman Imperial history. By showing you these buildings, it also brings up aspects of Roman life and daily culture through telling just how the buildings were applied to the Average Roman citizen. My favorite one of the buildings is the first one about caesar's bridge across the rhine. Its amazing how they did that.

I beleive he eventually has is tutor killed becuase he got mad at Nero. Also, Lost Warrior, it wasn't so much the quality of the music that drove people to death, but the fact that some concerts went on for days. Thought the historians tell us he was only a decent musician rather than a great one, which may have contributed to it. To sum it up, imagine listening to almost constant roman equivilent to elevator music for a couple of days and you can easily see why they commited suicide.

Agree, I have trouble making heads or tails of some of these. Hopefully wargamer will come back and suprise us all. Or not, we'll just keep walking.

Personaly, I think that i can't vote on any one becuase every culture mentioned had at one point or another a impact of Roman civilization. Personaly, I think that Greece, while incredibly interesting, has very clear and non-discussable influences on Roman culture, while other cultures, such as the arabics and egyptians have clear influences as well as controversal and indepth. But certainly there is no way to tell becuase Rome is situated in the middle of all these and was influenced by all of them, so no single civilization deserves more discussion than the other P.S I beleive it might be refering to Castration, but I'll need clarification.

Indeed, the man behind most of the miracles was Heran of Alexandria who made great discoveries but used them only to support the temples.

I agree. The myth dates back way before Agustus. I regard it purely as myth. But, if the Aneid is true then that might provide proof for why he chose the to settle in Italy. Likely hood though is that the Aneid is just an epic and the Romans used it.

Thank you for the quick and speedy translation Flavius

I think that they if any one is capable of acurately patraying it without romanticizing it, they should do a movie about the fall of the republic, and it should end with julius caesar being stabed to death in the senate. The beginning would be about the battles in gual and julius caesar returning The middle would be the turmuoil of the civil war and political unrest in Rome The first major moment should be the deciding battle in greece and Pompey fleeing The movie should then have a little bit of stuff showing the beginning of the empire and at the very end, Julius Caesar is Stabed.

I would like you to translate "Before the chosen"

I must agree with Favonius, Energy fussion would be a great thing, it will take a lot of work though and I beleive most of the world will be distracted with what is to come.

I must agree with you, a film about Marius & Sulla would certainly be interesting if done well unlike the recent burst of historical fiction films about thigns that took place in antiquity and then "jazzed up" for the general piblic to apreciate. So yes, perhaps we should get into that.

I was wondering why of late flood control has stoped me from posting to topics several times. I didn't beleive we had a flooding problem with too many posts, we never have. Honestly, can some one give me a good explaination for the flood control? Perhaps we could lower the time inbetween posts.

Perhaps if the expedition was funded by a private person rather than a government or religious group than if they went down with the ship along with their family, the people left related to them would assume them to have died some where in the mediteranian rather than some where in the atlantic and they simply would've been documented as drowned some where in the mediteranian and that wouldn't be the type of thing to stand out. However, I don't beleive that any of the european people up until the norsemen could've gotten to the americas. But I beleive it would be possible for people in asia to get their by island hoping if they could find the islands they needed to go to.

So often are humans foucused on emotion, that they forget why they feel a certain emotion when a certain thing happens, and instead relate that thing to the emotion with out thought. When some one insults you, you get angry, why would you not instead become happy? There is more explaination for the latter than their is for the common answer. One might become happy becuase they realize that the person insulting them has stooped a level below where they are becuase the agressor took a pre-emtive assualt without immediate provocation. Wheras the general case of when some one is insulted they imediatly become angery and take the offensive when words have no affect on them at all, but the instinctial reaction takes over and causes that person to make a rebuttal instead of thinking to themselves that they are the superior without justification becuase the agressor has proved his inferiority. Such is common occurence.

thank you for providing the latin word flavius. A very interesting question Platus. I would assume that they drove on the left side of the rode for the same reason that the people of france and britian did, which is that when a horse is pulling a cart of some sort, it is generaly whiped on the right side causing it to move slightly to the right when it walks. When the horse drove on the right side of the road, the horse would go off the road and onto the side walk, wheras when drive on the left side, it is forced to stay in alighnment rather than shift becuase their is carts bypassing on the opisite side keeping it from moving that way too far.

Sextus, Except for the Oracle at Delphi (which seems to have had some geo-chemical assistance) I would say that in general, they were giving answers & advice based on their sagacious opinions. Does that mean they were lying & cheating? Not necessarily. More than likely they were confident (through their training) that they were in fact acting on behalf of the Gods. Though I agree that they usally used gimicks to wow their 'customers'... I've read in a few places that even the Druid priests made use of what we would consider parlor tricks. Particularly, one priest would find out what the problem was from the 'customer' and then non-verbally communicate to the 'Oracle' priest (or what have you) via Ogahm signs using their shin as the writing stem line (kind of like how catchers & pitchers communicate). That way, the Oracle priest knew the problem and the solution before the customer even told them. Point well maid Pantagathus. Perhaps it was a mixture rather than a majority and minority. The Idea that they were a speaking voice for the gods would allow them to tell their decision to the person while still beleiving that the gods were deciding it.

I was watching the news a few days ago and saw the rage of black friday. I even went shoping in it for a bit. After the experiance, I relized how insane some people will go over a game console, more specificaly, the XBox 360. Such insanity I've seen before, like when a ice storm hit my town, or when the great black out of 2003 hit and everyone went into a panic. Those were all more major events and everyone freaked becuase of the sudden change. But, such hussle over a game console is simply unreasonable. Reports of Gun-Point Robberys, Muggings, Black market selling, and even people betting on them for more than 5 times the whole-sale price. I laughed at it for a second, then thought. "that is really sad, that so many people would waste so much money and effort for a video game, america..." Since then I've wondered just how bad are we.

Obviously not, but I'm specifying that it happens in a certain area, and the inhabitants of that place have people that can use that bias to their advantage, not calling it particular only to that region. Sorry, we've digressed. This has got me more pessimistic than I already was.

In hindsight, my statement was very poorly worded, perhaps I can clarify my thoughts. Here is a better and more detailed explaination. The fact that, not nessacarily a bad life is given to children, but one that is not identifying all views, so the ability of those youth is limited becuase they can't see every side to the story, and this makes them easier to be swayed one way. There is also much ignorance, steriotypes, and hate exhibited from western countries towards middle eastern countries created by the view of Islam as a trouble causing religion that has few, if any, good beleifs and this creates, in people in the middle east, a negative attitude towards western culture, even if they don't particularly hate westerners. This creates for a person that isn't nessacarily dumb, bad, nor had a bad life in the sense of how they lived and worked, but one that has a negative opinion towards the west, that can easily be exaggerated by people who believe a more extreme form, aka Islamist terrorist groups and radicals. Also, to add to the problem, becuase of the long standing tradition, many Muslims of the poorer classes (the type generaly that becomes terrorists) have many offsprings. Terrorists have realized this, and its best noted in a quote by Osama bin Ladin "The destruction of Isreal lies in the wombs of the Palestine women." This refers to Isreal, but it can be adapted to the rest of the world. Perhaps that helps clarify.

I saw the season finaly over my vacation, honestly I was disapointed.

"Being and Augur is easy work. Lightning on the left, good, lightning on the right, bad. All you have to do is turn around and you give the required answer." I can't remember where I read this, but it brought a thought to my mind, were the Augurs and other preists/preistess just lieing in order to have the person do what was best, rather than what the gods dictated. After all, a common person seeking an answer would have no idea what certain things mean, how to figure out what they mean, or even what something was often times and they wouldn't know if the priest was lieing or telling what they thought their god wanted them to do. A prime example of this, is the omen boc created by Heran of Alexandria. It looked like a small temple with a gold or copper bird sitting on top and a turnable wheel on one side. The answer-seeker would ask his question, turn the wheel, and if the bird sang the gods replyed positively, if not, it was a negative response. The Omen box was designed so that when some one asked a question to the priest, he would ready the omen box for the answer to the question he though apropriate by removing or inserting a cog into a slot, then would allow the answer-seeker to turn the wheel. So I ask you if you beleive the Augurs and other priests told the answer-seeker what was best in their opinion, or did they honestly consult the gods?