Turb0!

I just finished reading De Bello Lemures, Or the Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica by Thomas Brookside. It's a very entertaining alternate history in the clothes of a translated document. Pretty short but still highly recommended. One of the most entertaining fiction novels I've read in a while. Also a must if you're a fan of books like World War Z.

Sounds great! I would definitely like to be included.

Thanks, Ursus. Great info as always. What confuses me about the original pantheon of the state religion is whether or not gods like Jupiter and Mars were derived from purely Roman sources, or if they were always modeled after their Greek counterparts from the very beginning. While it seems pretty clear that Quirinus and Vesta were Roman in origin, I have read that others came from either Greek or Etruscan influences even as far back as the founding of the Republic.

From what I have researched, the Romans were very religious long before instituting the it as a function of the state. Cato the censor writes about how the Romans used to have their own gods which permeated even the minute aspects of everyday life. Does anyone know what kind of role the old gods played as Rome evolved to incorporate more Greek and Eastern religious practices? I've been reading the The Religion of Numa by Jesse Benedict Carter and he (or she) says that even during the time of Augustus, people in the country were still honoring the old gods which were worshiped before the Republic, despite that their presence had disappeared in Rome itself. However, it isn't an up to date source, so I am hoping someone can shed some more light on this issue.

Has anyone else seen the TV series "I, Claudius" based on Robert Graves' book of the same name? I just got the series, and I've only watched the first episode but I'm a bit put off by it. While everything else is very well done, the actor who plays Augustus has a persona which seems the exact opposite of the actual Augustus. Plump and gregarious are probably the last words which come to mind when I think of Rome's first emperor. I'm wondering, is the show just going off of how Augustus is portrayed by Graves, or did they just feel that Augustus' real personality didn't make for good television?

WOW... for the amount of money they must have put into that third one, it should have ended with wild beasts coming into the colosseum and ripping Britney, Beyonce, and Pink to shreds for not fighting. For that, I would go buy a Pepsi right now.

Okay Macro, using my handy-dandy, fancy-shmancy kindle, I found the passage from Herodotus that I was referring to: "The allies then who were dismissed departed and went away, obeying the word of Leonidas, and only the Thespians and the Thebans remained behind with the Lacedemonians. Of these the Thebans remained behind against their will and not because they desired it, for Leonidas kept them, counting them as hostages; but the Thespians very willingly, for they said that they would not depart and leave Leonidas and those with him, but they stayed behind and died with them." However, I cannot find whatever passage made me think that the Thespians were also mentioned on a monument to Thermopylae but there you have it. The Thespians were also brave enough to stay with Leonidas and fight the rhinos and the giant fat guy with sword arms.

I believe so, but I am recalling the name entirely by memory. In any case I remember reading a portion of Herodotus having to do with Thermopylae when I took a Greek history course, and it mentioned another group which stayed and fought to the death with the Spartans after it became clear they would lose and soldiers from all the other poleis had fled. I will look this up too, since now I'm wondering if my memory has played a trick on me or not, haha.

No worries from me, Viggen - I just wanted to give ya heads up in case the gremlins were out and about :-) Cheers Russ Ha, indeed that was a tad confusing since the last time I came on was this morning!

Thanks barca. I'll check that out. I just finished reading Legionary and thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm sure I'll like Matyszak's work on this subject as well. Lanista, that is a very good point and one that I think alot of people who have an interest in ancient history take for granted. When dealing with such a huge swath of human history, it is easy to look at events which are hundreds of years apart and place them next to each other as if they occurred in direct succession. But for the people who lived through it things were entirely different. I'm sure that when news reached Rome that Octavian had won the Battle of Actium people didn't throw up their hands and say, "Well there goes the Republic, looks like we're now an Empire."

psychological damage, like

That would be fascinating, if true. I know that the Spartans founded a colony (their only colony, I believe) on the Italian Peninsula when Rome was still in its infancy. Could there have been any influence on Roman culture there? It seems unlikely since I also recall that that colony did not carry on the most well-known aspects of Spartan culture and were more into the arts. I want to say that the colony was Tarentum, but I am probably wrong.

No problemo! The language is a bit stuffy on some of the free books, since most are 19th or 18th century publications, and usually the free ones will lack an interactive table of contents. On the plus side however, the electronic version of these classic publications have taken out that annoying thing where they would use an 'f' in place of an 's.' I could never stand that because it always made the narration have a lisp in my head!

Haha, that would definitely be a parallel. Or if the president tried to get the country out of debt by whoring away all the male senator's wives. Though I'm not sure a move like that would bring in much cash now that Obama is no longer in the senate. What's left may be a bit old and flabby for most men's tastes.

Thanks Lanista. I'll be sure to check out that book. Do you recall if the author ever addresses how the Romans regarded Spartans, like did they admire them? Hate them? Or were they indifferent? It's an interesting question that not many people seem to address.