guidoLaMoto

...Interesting , Informative interview with Luke Ranieri, teacher & You-tuber of ancient Latin & Greek Here's a wide selection of videos in Latin by Luke and others https://duckduckgo.com/?t=avast&q=spoken+latin&iax=videos&ia=videos They give us an idea of what the Romans must have sounded like. And then there's this video to learn Latin while you sleep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFN2a30_Bmo Let us know (In Latin) if it works for you....Bona fortuna.

You gotta wonder how they fashioned the arrowhead from the ferrous raw material-- their bronze tools were too soft. They must have figured out how to melt it and cast it in a mold...Why would they think ahead of time that that would work? (I also wonder what the first guy to figure it would be a good idea to jump on the back of wild horse was thinking?) Speaking of rare materials and trade routes-- It has been suggested that there wasn't enough copper in the known mines of Europe/Near East to account for all the bronze put to use in The Bronze Age...Meanwhile, there are known copper mines dating back 8000 yrs in Michigan & Wisconsin, yet the Native Americans had little use for it after an initial "Copper Culture abruptly stopped ~3000 y/a...??? https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-native-americans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths

What!? A Carl Sagan bit with no "Billions and billions and billions...." Must be an AI forgery. One of the two or three most amazing things in science history to me is that those genius Greeks figured out all that geometry without the use of paper to draw on (not to mention the concept of "zero."). They scribbled in the sand with sticks. Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic Natural History in the first centry AD https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137, knew the world was round. As long as we're on the subject shadows, time and such-- The ancient Sumerians used a base 12 & 60 system in arithmentic, still in use on our time mesurements-- They came to use this, no doubt, because they calculated on their fingers as a form of an abacus-- excepting the thumb, each of our four other fingers have three phalangeal bones. 12 in all.

Interesting video. It sounds a lot like my personal philosophy--I'm of whatever religion happens to be celebrating a holiday so I have an excuse to take a day off work. Question: Constantine's mother, Helen (to become St Helen), was a big influence in finding and establishing several sites as holy places in Christianity-- did she become a Christain before or after her son's famous "In hoc signum.." dream?

I'm a fan of Sherlock too. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the first regularly scheduled radio show (starting in 1930) that wasn't news/weather/sports or music. You can listen to them here https://archive.org/details/sherlockholmes_otr Many where written based on the Conan Doyle works, some were novel, written in his style. Some of those were published as The Forgotten Adventures of SH https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Adventures-Sherlock-Holmes-Original/dp/0786715871 ..and then there's Laurie King's The Beekeepers Apprentice, a mystery novel written with a retired Sherlock as a character. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=beekeeper's+apprentice&language=en_US&adgrpid=1229254326708420&hvadid=76828561035275&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=106632&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-76828646058603%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=18624_13575921&tag=txtstdbgdt-20&ref=pd_sl_2yl6m6tk9d_p In Conan Doyle's SH works, there are frequent references to cases never published by Watson. Later authors have used their imaginations to fill in details. https://www.bestofsherlock.com/ref/untlist.htm Like our dear poet Vergil, Sherlock retired to a rustic life keeping bees.

"The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was shortened to Rasna or Raśna (Neo-Etruscan), with both etymologies unknown.[26][27][28] In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians (Τυρρηνοί, Tyrrhēnoi, earlier Τυρσηνοί Tyrsēnoi),[29] from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia (Etruria),[30] and Mare Tyrrhēnum (Tyrrhenian Sea),[31][full citation needed] prompting some to associate them with the Teresh (one of the Sea Peoples named by the Egyptians)." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization referencing Dionysius of Hallicarnassus

Isn't it cool how modern technology is helping us find ancient things that would otherwise remain hidden. (I'm trying to invent a plastics detector so future archeologists will be able to find our buried artificts, nothing being made out of metal anymore.) Interesting how they seemd to have blended older superstitions with the newer Christianity-- reminscent of how South American natives adapted Catholicism to their traditional customs. In regards "worship"-- maybe that's too strong a term...The politheistic pagans had gods for every little thing-- a practice continued in Catholicism under the disguise of "saints." They didn't 'worship" these minor gods ( or more modern saints) as much as use them when needed for help or support....I'm reminded of the movie The Godfather--- Don Corleone chastises the guy who comes to him for a favor- "You give me no respect, but only come to me when you need something.." ...We erect statues to honored citizens, but don't "worship" them. (BTW- when I need something, I pray to the lesssr known saints. I figure they're not busy and appreciate the attention.)

BTW-- was the town Doliche named after the god, or the god after the town?

"...And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." --Groucho Marx There was Jupiter Optimus Maximus, J. Victor, J. Stator, etc etc....By analogy, in the Judeo-Christian tradition we have God the Almighty, G. the Father, G. the Merciful, etc etc. It's all one guy, not separate gods. Certainly different groups emphasized one aspect of Jupiter over another for various reasons, and the one statue depicted in the articles of the god standing on a bull suggests a blending of Jupiter- worship with the Cult of Mithras-- itself awfully similar to Christianity....It's all a figment of human imagination, so how rigid can the rules be? "If you talk to God, you're praying...If He talks to you, you're schizophrenic."-- Lily Tomlin

Old thread, but FWIW: Bifrons (literally two-foreheads, ie- two faced) is often used to describe Janus, but it can also simply mean two-faced... I, the perceptive (sagax),Two-faced Prudentia (goddess of wisdom), on things of the past, draw out and weigh with a cautious mind. I think it points out that you have to be careful in interpreting past events. Captalization & punctuation is provided by more modern researchers/translators. I'm not sure the commas are placed correctly in this case....and I still can;t figure out why ancient literature is written in such a disjointed fashion-- adjective and nouns, verbs and subjects separated in such a criss-cross, pattern-less way..Who talks like that in any language?

^^^ Good point.....The Italian penninsula has preciuous little land with good soil. Rustics could grow enough for themselves, but had little excess to ship to Rome for inhabitants who were not in a postion to grow their own, so importing grain from foreign sources was critical. Those authors seem to forget that tree rings reflect mostly the availability of water, with temps being irregularly & innaccurately correlated with ring diameter....Also, crop yeid is influenced by water availability. In most regions, that means amount of precipitation, but for Egypt where irrigation using the endless supply of water from the Nile is to be considered, wet & dry yrs had little impact. Years of food scarcity had more to do with pestilence than weather. On close examination of the data by those who have no political agenda to support, "climate' ( really just weather) is seen to vary complexly & cycllcly with major periods of 11, 60, 500 and 1000 yrs.....If we can believe the proxy data over the last 2000 yrs, at no time have temps been more than +/- 2 SDs from the mean, ie- all falling in the "average" range). OTOH, it's documented by Polybius & Livy that Hannibal and his entourage suffered miserably crossing The Alps ~200 yrs before Caesar's time. Caesar doesn't even mention snow or ice in his Commentaries, althoug he spends partcular attention to observations on natural history in those excursions....Lately, we see the Alpine glaciers receding, revealing fallen trees carbon dated to Caesar's time. They didn't sprout thru glaciers, but obviously grew on open soil....The story of Hansel & Gretl is based on the all too frequent problem faced by families starving during the Dark Ages when Europe was at the cold end of it's cycle and crop yields were down. Things get hotter. Things get colder, but the average is maintained.

Height/body wieght is a classic example of the interaction of "Nurture & Nature."...With "short genes," no matter how well you eat, you'll still be relatively short. With "tall genes" a high protein/hi calorie diet will result in a taller individual compared to the same genes and a protein/calorie deprived diet. Caesar needed to give a Knute Rockne-style pep talk to his legions, scared to death of the upcoming encounter with the larger Germans...Caesar describes the German diet as being one of meat and cheese, the land rarely being cultivatrd by them...as opposed to the Roman diet of wheat supplemented by whatever they could forage when not digging ditches or fighting....We see the same thing comparing American cavalry vs Sioux who stood 6ft tall and ate mostly bison vs 5'7" soldiers eating much more grain/less meat. Natural selction should favor larger, stronger idividuals when hunting (or combat) was the major considerartion in obtaining food, while smaller stature woulf be favored in a farming culture where strength offers no advantage...."Un-natural' selction, ie- conscious preferences in mate selction, may come into play where abilty to survive is less important.

I'm not familiar with the episode about Galen and the squealing pig, but in Latin "nervus" is usually translated as "sinew" in English. Medical students doing their dissections soon discover that a nerve can be distinguished from an artery or vein (they all look alike on a cadaver) because nerves don;t stretch and break when you pull on them. Maybe the most obvious contribution to Rome from Greece was the establishment of The Twelve Tables of Law after a Roman legation brought back the concepts forThe Decemvirs to promulgate as the basic laws.... The Romans may well have felt a little inferior to and jealous of The Greeks. They decided to establish the year of the overthrow of the Etruscan kings and establishment of their democratic republic as 509 BC-- two years before the traditonal date of 507 for the establishment of the Greek democracy. Their imitation of Greek art is obvious.

The articles don;t state how many individuals were analyzed. Sampling probems can lead us to false conclusions-- although I wouldn't be surprised at all if their conclusions are in fact correct. The Romans didn't maintain control over their vast empire by sending Italian born legions to maintain order. Roman colonists probably were a small portion of the total population in the provinces.....Pagan Romans cremated their dead, so not too many left to do DNA analysis on. How many Romans were Christians at that point in history? The 16 y/o's skull depicted, BTW, shows a large hole obviously caused by a blow. No healing of the edges obvious, so it was caused either at the time of death , or after death. If after death, probably decomposition hadn't occurred yet to any great extent-- A blow to a bare skull at that point would have caused the bones to separate along the suture lines-- lines of least rsistance-- not as a punched out hole including parts of the three bones coming together at that point....Time for a Cold Case murder investigation?

I check out this site https://www.archaeology.org/news every week or two, and it seems each update lately has included another report of more artifacts being "repatriated" from some museum in another land to their land of origin.... ...At what point should artifacts become part of the "domain of civilization" or "the human domain," comparable to a work of literature becoming part of the public domain? All of humanity should have been incensed, for instance, a few yrs ago when Isis went about destroying antiquities in Iraq. These thing belong to all of us.

I'm not saying the Romans used slaves to row. I'm saying that for large vessels, the seated position is far superior physiologically and geometrically to the standing rowing positon. For a tri-reme, you'd need a vessel at least twice as high (deep) to have rowers standing....While your gondolier racing film is impressive, note that a gondola is essentially a canoe, barely drawing any depth in the water, skimming over the surface. A war vessel is bulky, riding very low in the water....We could also bring up the wider range of motion allowing more error in the path traced by an oar used by a standing rower compared to the relatively narrow trajectory possible when seated-- loss of efficiency.... There's a reason naval vessels were moved using seated oarsemen rather than standiing----> efficiency-- as in all things undergoing an evolution. Survival of the fittest.That's why "real" racing involves sculls with seated rowers.

??? Isn't that kinda like standing with your back against the Coliseum and taking movies of traffic driving by?

The biggest problem of many guys rowing a large vessel would be the co-oridinated effort required to synchronize the multiple oars. It's not rocket surgery or brain science-- it wouldn't take many minutes for untrained slaves to become professional rowers. The seated backwards position is far superior to the gondolier method. Seated, one would use a combination of quads, glutes, lats & traps- the four largest muscles in the body, as opposed to doing a push-up with your arms against the oar as you fall onto it....and you gotta stand back up from the awkward forward position to take that next stroke. ...The standing gondolier method, however, has the advantage when one guy has to row and navigate (not to mention sing) in rush hour traffic on the Grand Canal.

I suspected the clock on column was photo-shopped- the clock itself being identical to the one in question. If it was mounted on some kid of column, it would have had to have been no more than shoulder high...The accuracy of a sun-dial would be good enough for Italian society, where even today punctuality is cavalierly regarded...There is nothing new under the sun.

According to the video, this town's founding has been dated to the end of the 3rd/beginning of the 2nd century BC-- no doubt founded as, or at least encouraged to grow as a Roman colony. The grid pattern of streets suggests it was a planned development. Located not only on a trade route, but more importantly on one of the few open plains of Italy. It would have been a prefered ag location--> the importance of N. Africa to the Romans was as a source of grain. The topography/geology of the Italian penninsula does not lend itself well to production of yields large enough to feed a large, growing population. The Roman govt provided organization and a certain amount of protection across the empire. Once that protection was gone, towns situated out in the open were poorly defensible. The feudal states with castles on a hill became the survivors. It should be no mystery why this town fell. Only the details of which band of maurauders were the cause remains to be determined. That particular sun dial was of very clever construction-- with shadow cast on the inside of a cone, it was "self-regulating," adjusting itself to the hours changing with the season....They showed a sun dial up on a tall column...Where did you have to stand to read it? I was a little confused on the part about the inscription "...Caesari...patrono..."..Were they claiming Caesar, patron of the town, dedicated something here, or that something was dedicated to him?...Caesari is dative ("to him") but there is the Dative of Possession. ?? Roof on the theater? Very sunny and little rain. A roofed theater must have gotten very hot, and not much need for gutters... and no mention of the tiles that would have covered a large roof-- certainy a least a few tile shards should have been found.

Does this upend our established theory or just show that, as Sherlock always said, it's a mistake to form a theory before all the data is in?

Thanks for your enlightening dissertation (as opposed to my grafittus). I exaggerated the point for the sake of illustration.... The Romans of two millennia ago probably had more litterate among them than say, the peasants of the middle ages did-- Cf: all the graffitti in Pompeii, or the many letters, etc found at Vindolanda. Probably it wasn;t the senatorial class scribbling on the walls....The ancients didn't have People Magazine or The National Enquirer to read while sitting in the dentist's waiting room...:Like American frontier families who only had The Bible to read, the ancients mostly had works that today we consider the classics and more "high brow." Maybe we over-think the entertainment value of works of art & lit from the distant past. One can take advanced courses intellectually analyzing Verdi's operas or the silent films of Hal Roach- which, in their day merely held the place in society that rap videos on MTV hold today. Someday the nerds in Academia will intellectualize those too and take the fun out of it. I do have to wonder how many Romans recognized the acronyms of Vergil's lines on the coins? Maybe it's comparable to something like the pyramid and all-seeing-eye on the dollar bill-- deeper symbolic meaning to the cognoscenti, but lost on the proletariate?

You're certainly right about the effect of radio & TV homogenizing language across large nations. It's certainly true in the US and Italy....Italy still has remnants of the feudal age in its poitical organization, cuisine, and certainly language. Linguists actually consider Napolitan and Sicilian as separate languages from Italian. Both are now used mostly within the family at home, although they can be understood with some difficulty by speakers of Italian- kinda like following the speech of someone from the deep rural South, for instance. ...Ever notice how Oprah and Barack, both excellent public speakers of standard American, can slide so easily into "Ebonics" when addressing black audiences? My father, born in the US to his immigrant Volga Deutsch parents, didn't learn English until he started grammar school. His English was impeccable Chicago American vernacular, but he was subjected to a short special investigation when inducted into the Army in '43, after being "turned in" by a fellow inductee in basic training after he absent mindedly said "make the light out"- the way it would be said in German, rather than "put the light out" or "turn off the light," the usual form in English. As Oscar Wilde said- Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language. The Roman conquest of such a large area- from the Semitic speaking east thru Egypt and Greece, up thru the Germanic & Celtic areas brought that homogenizing aspect of a common language to unify the empire.

How 'bout this Latin quote from an unknown special ed teacher dealing with kids with ADD? "Tempus fidgets."

Excellent reply by Caldrail. When a levy of the troops was called, those inscripted swoar an oath (ius urandi) that apparently was taken with more sollemnity than we would have today...after all, the gods themselves were being invoked. There was also a big difference between the army of the republican days and that of the empire. I agree that our impressions of the Roman army are more influenced by Holywood than by the historical record. I don't recall Caesar in The Commentaires mentioning anything other than Primus Pilus, tribunus and Legatus. Imperator was a titled bestowed on a victorious leader (dux) by his troops, then later ratified by the Senate. Whether more fantasy or not, you may find this interesting-- The movie Imperator flimed in Latin & Teutonic (English subtitles) Whether fantasy or not, you may find this interesting