Welcome and Introduce Yourself Here

2 hours ago, Decimus Gordianus Magnus said:

Hello. Another newbie here.  I live in Indiana in the US but hope to relocate somewhere one day when I retire.

I developed an interest in ancient Rome after watching the old Rome series on HBO, then all 3 seasons of Brittania, and Barbarians I and II on Netflix.  I have also watched and read up on the Vikings and Saxons etc.

I am currently reading novels about ancient Rome by Vincent B Davis II on Kindle.

I am 64 and have always been interested in history.  Lately I find myself more interested in the ancient world. I look forward to being here and studying the different topics.

Welcome! 

I've been interested in Roman history since watching I, Claudius back in the '70s. Rome was entertaining, but they omitted a very important character (Scribonia, who was Octavian's wife before he married Livia, and who was the mother of Octavian's daughter, Julia). Omitting her would have made it impossible to continue the series in any meaningful way (can't have Emperors Caligula or Nero if you omit the ancestor who made their existence possible).

If you like murder mysteries, I can't recommend Lindsay Davis' novels enough. Marcus Didius Falco is an 'informer' (we'd call him a private investigator) who stumbles into some of the most bizarre murder mysteries, and sometimes this means the guilty party is closely connected to the Emperor (Vespasian) and/or some prominent senators.

7 hours ago, Decimus Gordianus Magnus said:

hope to relocate somewhere one day when I retire

You might want to open a topic to brainstorm retirement locations under "Hora Postilla Thermae Arena The after hours baths... where almost anything can be discussed". Then I can grumble about my own missed opportunities or bad choices... or about how most every nice place goes to crap given a decade or two anyway. Or why those one dollar derelict homes in Italy won't work.

That sounds like a great idea! Oh, when I mentioned tv shows, I forgot to mention Domina! I hope there is another season.

Hiya, Folks...Searching for something about Rome, your excellent site popped up...I've been interested in Roman history since studying Latin in school, fascinated that our modern western society is not so much based on Roman, but really a direct extension of it. Being of Italian ancestry, I take a certain pride in that.

About 50 y/a, I had the opprotunity to spend some time in Italy. Many of my friends back in Chicago were recent Italian Immigrants, and while over there, I met up with one of them visitng his family in Genzano- about 25 km SE of Rome on the Appian Way. I wanted him to take me in to see The Forum...Observing the ruins in silent amazement, we stopped about half way down the Sacra Via. "Sandro," I said, "Your ancestors built this place over two thousand years ago. We're walking on the very stones that Julius Caesar walked on...The oldest thing we have in Chicago is The Water Tower, and it's barely 100 years old."...Sandro  looked around pensively, soaking it up as if he'd never seen it before...."Yea," he replied. "We work slow here, but we work good."

Welcome.

This may sound odd, but I envy the people here who had the opportunity to take Latin. It wasn't offered in any of the schools or the college I attended. I've met people who tell me I'm lucky I never had to take it, but in my experience learning a language is a different experience if you do it for fun, rather than because you have to (French, in my case).

7 hours ago, Valka D'Ur said:

opportunity to take Latin. It wasn't offered in any of the schools or the college I attended

That seems strange; isn't Latin something that those on a medical or biology career track want to take for the terminology? I had naively imagined it was offered at my school for catholics, and maybe your school was on a secular kick, like when revolutionary mobs bashed statues in French cathedrals.

French would have been so useful, but the spelling seemed so unphonetic. Now I hear that the spelling comes from the very old ways of pronouncing, sort of like English used to pronounce the k in knife. Blessed are the spelling simplifiers, like the removal of u from "colour".

So in HS, surrounded on 3 sides by French Canada and a zillion miles from Mexico, I took Spanish - because it was "easy". I think our Euro dialect was highly opposite to latin america's which sounds alien and incomprehensible to me. Kind of like they are chewing a dozen pieces of gum while talking, and I honestly get by easier in portuguese Brazil.

In college I took Russian as a survival move, since the focus would be on learning the alphabet (easy) more than learning the language which is inherently hard for me. It has some use because I can read if not hear some stuff in the news including Ukrainian. It's funny that Russia is trying to purge english words, when it is packed with phonetic english - like restauran for restaurant. Once you can sound the letters, half of signs you see in a city make sense http://www.russianforeveryone.com/RufeA/Lessons/Introduction/Alphabet/Alphabet.htm

It's a shame I didn't take Italian. Our humble college offered numerous languages, but all I knew of Italy was mafia, awful Italian-American comfort food, and well.. beautiful Venice. If I was aware of sublime real Italian food and Roman and other monuments, I would probably be living in Italy today. There are some cushy civilian jobs attached to US military bases in Italy that would have suited me fine.

Sorry to run on so long, but I am avoiding a grim chore...

3 hours ago, caesar novus said:

That seems strange; isn't Latin something that those on a medical or biology career track want to take for the terminology? I had naively imagined it was offered at my school for catholics, and maybe your school was on a secular kick, like when revolutionary mobs bashed statues in French cathedrals.

French would have been so useful, but the spelling seemed so unphonetic. Now I hear that the spelling comes from the very old ways of pronouncing, sort of like English used to pronounce the k in knife. Blessed are the spelling simplifiers, like the removal of u from "colour".

So in HS, surrounded on 3 sides by French Canada and a zillion miles from Mexico, I took Spanish - because it was "easy". I think our Euro dialect was highly opposite to latin america's which sounds alien and incomprehensible to me. Kind of like they are chewing a dozen pieces of gum while talking, and I honestly get by easier in portuguese Brazil.

 

I'm in Western Canada, in a mid-sized city. I went to a public college (not faith-based). The only languages offered at my high school and college were French and German. To this day I cannot fathom what practical use anyone ever made of German. 

It's my understanding that more languages are offered now (Japanese and Mandarin). Latin still isn't on the list, though, at least not that I'm aware.

French is useful for a variety of reasons, the first one being that we have bilingual packaging on nearly everything that's sold here. Chances are that if you pick something up to read the label, you'll accidentally turn the French side out, and it's less stressful if it doesn't matter because you can read it anyway.

Studying Latin gives a benefit to not only making the Romance languages somewhat easier, but also for the general knowledge of history, politics, sociology, geography, etc it provides.....I'm a retired physician. Knowing Latin maybe helped a  little in learning anatomy- but not much...Was it Marlowe or Johnson who insulted Shakespeare by claiming "He knows little Latin and less Greek?"

While knowing Latin has made it easy to decipher the Romance laguages, the way we were taught Latin is deleterious_- we never spoke Latin. Now when I read Latin, my eyes see Latin workds but then they are automatically translated to English in my brain...a bad habit when it comes to dealing with spoken languages. I stayed with that habit when learning Italian and German. I read both well, but was once accused of being "a retarded Sicilian" by a caribinieri in Italy trying to settle an argument with a shop keeper.

I find it amazing that we can read the very words written by Livy, Caesar, Cicero, etc...It reminds me of my uncle objecting to the changes made by Vatican II--"I don't like the English mass..We should still be using the very Latin words spoken by Christ."  😏

1 hour ago, guidoLaMoto said:

Studying Latin gives a benefit to not only making the Romance languages somewhat easier, but also for the general knowledge of history, politics, sociology, geography, etc it provides.....I'm a retired physician. Knowing Latin maybe helped a  little in learning anatomy- but not much...Was it Marlowe or Johnson who insulted Shakespeare by claiming "He knows little Latin and less Greek?"

While knowing Latin has made it easy to decipher the Romance laguages, the way we were taught Latin is deleterious_- we never spoke Latin. Now when I read Latin, my eyes see Latin workds but then they are automatically translated to English in my brain...a bad habit when it comes to dealing with spoken languages. I stayed with that habit when learning Italian and German. I read both well, but was once accused of being "a retarded Sicilian" by a caribinieri in Italy trying to settle an argument with a shop keeper.

I find it amazing that we can read the very words written by Livy, Caesar, Cicero, etc...It reminds me of my uncle objecting to the changes made by Vatican II--"I don't like the English mass..We should still be using the very Latin words spoken by Christ."  😏

 

My grandfather's first language was Swedish, and he said that to really be fluent in a language, you have to be able to think in it. I can read French, but I can't think fast enough in it to be able to carry on a decent conversation (not to mention my accent isn't great, either).

Hello!

Just wanted to spread the word that History by the Pint podcast has now launched and we've got lots of Roman episodes planned. 

Online now is an episode on the amazing Colchester Gladiator Vase and another on the latest archaeological news from Rome. Please do give them a listen! Any feedback would be great.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/history-by-the-pint/id1718954403

It's also on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@historybythepint/featured

Your links don't appear to work.

2 hours ago, Valka D'Ur said:

 

Your links don't appear to work

 

Thank you.

Hi there, I've just joined the forum, it looks great!  Ive begun reading Part I of Gibbon's Decline & Fall - a marathon not a sprint!  I learned Latin at school in Australia (Caecilius, Grumio et al, plus some Virgil at the end) ... but forgot most of it unfort.   I wonder if someone in the forum could help me with expertise please? Gibbon cites the Augustan History a fair bit. I can see a Penguin edition - Lives of the Later Caesars, the First Part of the Augustan History, with Lives of Nerva and Trajan (Classics) ....  and I'm wondering, is there a translation in print of what i guess is 'the second part of the Augustan History'. After I've finished all of Decline & Fall (i.e. in about 2026) I'd love to read the full Augustan History. Expertise v much appreciated here, if possible?  With thanks , David in Australia