Pertinax

For a "plain" dish I was able to find a lentil potage recipe from Grainger (but no reference to barley as a side dish): 250g red lentils 3 medium leeks 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp white wine vinegar 1 tbsp defrutum 20g coriander pinch asafoetida resin 3 tsp fresh mint chopped bunch of fresh coriander (nice) 1 tsp (!) take care , of rue pepper to taste soak the lentils overnight, drain cover with water or white wine . Boil and simmer till just softening.Add sliced leeks, continue to boil. Add oil, vinegar, honey and defrutum.Dry roast the coriander seed and asafoetida, grind up and add to mix.Add the mint next.When fully cooked add the fish sauce and coriander leaf , rue and fresh mint. So a basic foodstuff with lots of spicey additives.

Alchemilla vulgaris and Vitex agnus castus for you Madame. Possibly also Angelica siniensis and lots of cabbage.

Caldrail , now you know why garum was so popular. Quite a lot of people find barley a taxing food, certainly it can "clean" the kidneys .It does have the very beneficial effect of keeping the gut wall free of mucoid plaque, somewhat like eating plenty of linseed. The digestion should therefore proceed "steadily" one might say, nutrients readily absorbed ,exhausted matter excreted .So ulcerative colitis would be minimised , and general levels of alkalinity enhanced (again general digestive wellness).Barley is also vitamin rich , the protein content being roughly 15 times greater than milk. So we can at least suggest that a man fed on barley has decent digestion and is more likely to ingest and retain other nutrients from his food.Ironically its one food that obese westerners should try and use as a substitute for all the corn starch syrup filled trash they swallow. btw, I sampled a dish by Sally Grainger (Cooking Apicius) and I will post on this and give gallery illustrations, there was nothing bland about it! The care given to mixing and adding strong spices was most illuminating.

Ninjas?

I seem to have minus 5 messages. Having cleared my message inboxes the situation still obtains. I have never seen this before so I thought i would post in case some weird glitch was occurring.

Ah , you are heavy with years and learning!

Exuberantly fertile (clad in vineyards) and rustic. Regrettably with a solidifed magma plug firmly emplaced.

My remark sounds more trite than intended, we have a similar soil ecosystem here despite the distance. Indeed we have similar topography and weather systems also.

No, No this is exactly what I thought might be the issue..the question is do we have anaerobic ground conditions (where organic objects will survive) or do we have strong sub soil acidity which tears apart the apatite bone matrix.If the sub soil is deep black and foetid then it hints at boglike conditions which would preserve material. The problem is although the decay of human remains is reasonably predictable , the inclusive matrix is the key variable. I will seek out any available info on Batavian funerary customs, LEG GEM XIII might be able to tell us. This is gruesome stuff,, but I do know that the thigh bones are the likeliest survival in any situation indeed in modern cremation they are the remains which require heavy mechanical maceration . The only suggestion I have at present is that with sufficently high temperature any organic matter will be consumed, if charcoal were used as a funerary fuel such a temperature would be achieved..As charcoal was the fuel of choice for quality smelting is this a possibility? Post Scriptum: the soil at Vindolanda is similar to the ground here (i'm about 100 miles from the site) , did Birley make any comment to you regarding the subsoil acidity?

MPC quote "For historical perspective, this mini-series should be packaged with Life of Brian". Gross libel, "Brian" is far more accurate! "Mockery of the Jews and their One God should be kept to an polite minimum" quoth the newsreader in HBO Rome II.

Here is Fiona Petchey on bone degradation : "Little attention has been given to the environmental conditions of bone preservation (Sobel and Berger 1994), however, the quantities and composition of surviving organic materials in a specimen are dependent on their burial environment Environmental factors which have been suggested as influencing the rate at which collagen degrades include the composition, pH and hydrology of the matrix; oxygenation; temperature; and changes brought about by soil flora and fauna (Henderson 1987; Shiffer 1987). In a generalised view of bone degradation the protein component undergoes relatively slow hydrolysis to peptides, which then break down into amino acids. At the same time there is spontaneous rearrangement of the inorganic crystalline matrix which weakens the protein-mineral bond and leaves the bone susceptible to dissolution by the action of internal and external agents (Henderson 1987:44). Alterations during diagenesis are believed to include random cross-linking, humification of parts of the molecule, attachment of exogenous humic materials, and hydrolysis with preferential loss of some amino acids ." which can mean that very variable rates of breakdown occur betwixt a very wet and acidic place like Vindolanda and (say) a dry dessicating desert environment where partial mummification may take place naturally.That is of course if bodies were deposited near the various reincarnations of the Fort , but of course immolation rather than inhumation might account for a lack of evidence . Longshot do you have any plans of the burial sites surviving (or a link to same)? Water is omnipresent at Vindolanda and deep burials decompose fast in such soggy environments with high acidity .Burial without benefit of a coffin will speed decomposition, a shrouded corpse will decompose quickly.I feel queasy now.

Salve Correvs! You are most welcome and will find threads on food, Roman Britain, stinging political debate and all things to your hearts desire.

Good to see you back AC. All UK members please be attentive to AC and The Augusta's excellent efforts in this matter.Any new or newish UK members who are interested please scroll back through the thread to check on the meet and modus operandi. PM myself if in doubt.

Adolescence? Il n'existe pas. A false construct indeed, any who have perused Moonlapse's blog entries over the last year or so will have plenty of food for thought. Alongside this I have to give some credit to Jung's comment about adults (in 20th C Western Society) , never achieving adulthood and "going to their graves as children". Senility not being a "final state" but a return to infancy after avoidance of maturity.

What has impressed me about seeing even a few re-enactment cavalry is the flexibility of these men, individually in terms of weapons use and accuracy (with bow, spear or sword) and collectively in the speed and fluidity of movement. The potential that they must have had to change either the focus of an attack or to help as a diversion. I must emphasise how small and cobby all the mounts are , these small animals can turn on a pin and are happy on tussocky ground .Im well aware of their inability to break open a formation of heavy infantry , but the threat of their movement about the battlefield suggests itself as a considerable psychological advantadge.

A footnote: inhalation is a particularly effective way to poison or be poisoned (over and above ingestion which is the method most people consider as "poisoning"). Skin ingestion and direct conduction via the ear are also very potent . Interestingly as temperature rises the potential of inhalation to poison also increases, those who have visited the Valley of the Kings will be well aware of the suffocating dead heat that accumulates in the shallow tombs, (the deeper ones like Merneptah and Tutmosis III arent exactly cool , but are coolish if airless). Given that inhaled parasites are still very tricky to find (Borrelia is a good modern example causing lymes disease, the number of parasitic vectors is actually unknown and the disease may be far more widespread than generally acknowledged). So what better place to send your probationary gang members than a suffocatingly hot tomb full of spores? Anyone exposed to the fruiting bodies of dry rot (Serpula lacrymans) will know how nasty the bronchial effects of such a "normal " spore are.

Regarding "portable altars " , Caldrail is on the money as usual . I suggest that if you have the Standard , then you have " a sacred totem" with you, perhaps its reasonable that an HQ unit with mules and slaves to spare could lug a small altar about. However given the number of skilled craftsmen in any Legion and the fact that stone was abundant (in Britain at least) then I dont think it would take too long for devotees of a given cult (Mithras springs readily to mind in this context) to produce an altar suitable to their use in the "field".

Certainly you should, after seeing your "Earth and Fire" work I dont doubt what a good job you would make of it. BTW the belt is that of the author Sally Grainger http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooking-Apicius-Ro...7087&sr=8-1

VTC if you look here , I have cropped a shot of an auxilliary saddling his horse: http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1885 If you then scroll back through this album you will be able to see various horsemen. Best to say that the riders seat is rather lower than we would consider normal today , but a skilled man can control a horse quite easily by leg and thigh pressure and the seat is safe and firm. If you log onto my msn space and find the "LEG VIII AVG and Deva Victrix " gallery ,scroll to image 14 -a portable altar.Image 46 shows a late era cavalryman using a kontos double handed btw , so that gives an idea about saddle stability.

Here is the humble walnut in its role as a belt charm for fertility: http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1884 just the sort of "charming" thing I can see Lost Warrior making. This link is for the bon vivants: http://french-windows.blogspot.com/2007/02/just-nuts.html

Which once again, tells us that the history of recreational hallucogenics is not so young , or that in more calvinistic terms " the young have not invented as much sin as they thought". Personally I think ergotism is one of the most underrated factors in general (medical/demographic ) history , and that parasitism is one of the most commonplace yet fundamental disease parameters in all of mammalian history.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was an occult writer in the Middle Ages, is that who you mean? If so, I still find him to be a later source than I look for to base my rituals on, but I would still like to see the reference. Yes indeed , but the critical passage I am looking for is a cross reference to Pliny (The Elder).I am sorry to be so slow in obliging.

As presented in the live links these are the later period accreditations, hence my impatience with the Perseus server for the Cornelius Agrippa commentary which is more "of the period".

Glad to be of service: firstly here is a good ,small essay on Comfrey (Symhytum) explaining Saturnine properties, "deeply rooted in a shady place" is a particularly apt summary: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/comfrey.html Though oddly enough as the "travellers herb" Mercurius is also an influence, nevertheless the essay gives an idea of the influence of Saturn. Scroll down to Hemlock and Henbane here: http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/culpeper/g.htm for an annotated commentary on Culpepper. Grieve regarding Henbane alone: http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/h/henban23.html Perseus Tufts is playing up again so I will give a text link when the Berlin server decides to co-operate. A piece on the "Doctrine of Signatures" , which gives some Saturnian notes: http://www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0081.htm