Pertinax

Fratres! Lovage-Ligusticum levisticum , native to the med but cultivated in Britain and the americas.The plant is used for root and rhizome, though the leaves were always used as a salad (with lettuce) , we know that phthalides are present and some coumarins. As a medicine it is a sedative, anti spasmodic and antimicrobial. Its 'everyday" use would be asa good mouthwash when suffering a throat infection ,ulceration or infected gums.Fortunately not an anaphrodisiac like Lettuce.In the past the stalks were eaten like celery. Ill have a look at Pliny and see what the great man tells us-and by the way Lovage was often used to flavour beer ( like cowslip herb-"Freya's key"). Though Yarrow displaced it in later Medieval times as a flavouring. There are several sub species-the American variety is used more as a cough medicine. Pantagathus do you have any American beers with these flavourings?

Asafetida (also called Devil's Dung) is Ferula rubicaulis-what happened is that Silphium was lost in antiquity and Asafetida was "slotted in " to its position in the medieval herbal materia medica, but ( importantly) they have no actual relationship save they both (appear ) to be Umbillifers .Well done for spotting the connection , very few people even know of it! Please do post a Carthaginian recipe ,that would be a great excitement to our jaded Roman palates, and if you have any knowledge of dining manners and customs better still. Tamrapanni is a fragrant wood from Sri Lanka (Ceylon as was) Force fed animals of any type usually require a diet of quality ( poly/mono -unsaturated fat as opposed to saturates and the modern evil trans -fatty acids) fats and some bulk grain so this doesnt look inaccurate to me. Ahh! the herdsmen of Brutium , just like the Gauls! Meat all over their jowls nice link

have you noticed that these icons re-create Brian's Mum and the Centurion? "oh hello centurion " (in a shreiky voice). "myrrh ? thats a type of dangerous animal!" weirdly we had the film on at work today-in a back room , and were unable to to actually function normally after watching the "Bigus Dicus " excerpt

Yes very interesting stuff-my remark about the "wasteland" is qualified by this observation, the writers description was a social commentary- not one suggesting actual reduced numbers of persons on the land.Though if we have slave centred estates perhaps we will have the destuction of small villages and markets no longer required as distributive infrastructure.The concept of economy( as a full blown theoretical system of thought) was not extant-this is very true,I suggest that the concept of citizenship was paramount.

I had to trim all pics to 800 by 600 to get the server to respond-thats abig shrink if you are using anything over 5mega pix.

Towns and Power in Roman Britain looks like it will require purchasing

yes-dignified, full of grace, but slowed by infirmity, a subtle, sad but accurate evocation of the Republic

Museums are very strange-things should be available to everyone-in every sense.

Caesarion just screened-Titus Pullo really is a good man in a scrap and Caesars eunuch insults were excellent.

What Western liberals find offensive is quite weird -my Kendo teacher ( from Kawaguchi in Japan, a person of the most austere habit and moral rectitude ) thought the funniest thing he and his family had ever seen was the utterly non-pc comedian Benny Hill performing as Mr Yuu Ficky ( you thicky if not obvious) a sort of Chinese Les Patterson (sorry Sir Les!) with similar teeth and a very bad way with Ingwish Ranguige.He returned to Japan with an armful of video tapes.

Perhaps Australian female academics dont get out much.

Carl Jung wrote some useful observations about Mithras ( I think its in 'Aion" from his collected works), mainly about the seriousness of the initiation process and "death and re-birth" as an acted ceremony.

We have various travellers descriptions of the heart of a prosperous Empire as a "wasteland", meaning the abscence of true free farming citizens,just " factories" .The comfortable Roman had a strikingly similar bucolic ideal to an English Gent of the late Victorian/Edwardian period ( and a lot of contemporary Upper Middle Class Britons) ie: a cosmopolitan home in town but a country seat or retreat ideally feeding yourself with the produce.In many ways this illustrates the divorce of the wealthy citizen from the land , but shows a superficial desire to return to the "Republican" sentiment. Andrew Dalby's "Empire of Pleasures" is very good on this subject The fashion for holding dinner parties in the fruit store of ones country estate was a notable "back to rusticity" posing of the Imperial fast set-even to the point of buying the fruit in for display! (Pliny) I would personally suggest that the latifundia was the real seismic shift away from Republicanism toward the mindset of Imperium. Pliny discourses at great length as to how noble the husbandry of land is and what a central moral item it is to justly rewarded soldiery.(excerpts from The Natural History). Favonius Cornelius is, I think, most apposite in his remarks

I enjoy anything so painfully and viciously un-pc. "Your whiskers are very beautiful no?"