Ludovicus
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Posts posted by Ludovicus
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That there were two countries at war with each other, an aggressive North Vietnam and unjustly attacked South Vietnam, was a fiction promoted by US war hawks during the 1960's. It's purpose was to gin up support for the Vietnam War.
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This is a touching story of a married couple's long separated tombstone finally reassembled:
A married couple from Pompeii have been reunited with the recovery of a missing piece of a 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments.
After spending nearly 2,000 years apart, Lucius Catilius Pamphilus and Servilia were finally reunited.
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The Acropolis Museum in Athens
You would perhaps expect the Parthenon, towering over the city from the top of its cliff, to be the first thing you notice when you get up from the Athenian metro station called Acropolis. But it probably isn't. I am willing to bet almost anything that your eyes will fall on the (New) Acropolis Museum instead. The background to why the new museum was built is complicated and cannot be discussed in detail here, but it is safe to say that the old museum had been insufficient for a long time. It is also quite obvious that the Greek authorities wanted to prove to the UK that they could provide a safe environment for the Elgin marbles, thus rendering that argument against repatriation invalid....
...read the full review of the Acropolis Museum in Athens
Thanks for the link to the beautiful website.
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Taranto has a part of the temple preserved and a good museum, if it's not still being renovated.
Lecce should be on the list, and for non-Roman purposes so should Bari and Matera.
The archaeological sites away from the cities can be frustrating to get to if you don't have a car.
Nevertheless, Egnazia, Monte Sannace, Metaponto and Sibari are not to be missed.
I believe Crotone and Locri are worth the trip as well, but I've never been there.
Finally, there's the museum at Reggio.
Don't miss the Riace Bronzes at the museum in Reggio, Calabria:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riace_bronzes
Absolutely stunning bronzes!
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What varieties of Latin do they speak when they're not conversing in "German" ? By that period, spoken Latin would have begun to differentiate into various dialects with some of them full of non Latin words. Italian has a lot of vocabulary derived from "barbarized" Latin of that period.
Hello all:
I'm writing a story with Frank characters. It is 450 CE. When they switch from Latin to their language, I've been using the word German. My research tells me that they spoke a western German dialect or language, but I'm wondering if I should use the term Frankish? I believe this reference may apply to later in time but I'm not sure. Any knowledgeable advice or opinions.
Thanks,
Cinzia
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Very striking. Here's another recycling of an ancient inscription in the pavement of St. Paul's Outside the Walls.
http://www.flickr.co...eon/4068697111/
Mmm, green marble. The figures at the end are all apparently missing, though... maybe it is because I only have Acrobat 7; not sure.
I can't see them either.
By the way, you should take a look at Kolonna at Aegina if you're interested in Spolia - there's an amazing wall built up almost exclusively by reused inscriptions and architectural members.
Here is just a small example where you can see two inscriptions and one triglyph.
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Yes, the illustrations do not appear in my download either. Sorry. I thought the text was fascinating, gave me new info.
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Roman Architectural
Spolia
DALE KINNEY
Professor of History of Art
Bryn Mawr College
Ever visit a church in Rome and notice that the columns were not exactly of the same size? This is an exhaustive work on the subject of spolia, the re-use of earlier building material or decorative sculpture on new monuments. The subject of spolia has figured in some of the posts made here at UNRV. So I think that this study, available as a free pdf. download, will interest at least a few of you.
One often thinks of the practice during the Middle Ages and Renaissance when builders plundered the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus for marbles and other materials. From Dale Kinney's study I learned that the robbing of older structures was a practice that dated from at least the 4th Century. By 301, whole column shafts were virtually unobtainable on the market, and were priceless. ... [the] first great spolia structures were Constantine's: his arch dated 313?15...
Along with the discussion of salvaged materials destined for new uses, you learn which marbles and column styles were the most prized, and what the use of Greek columns meant for Roman tastes.
You can find the link to the download here:
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Will do. I do have that app, but apparently I need to upgrade. Thanks!
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On my iPod Touch, the UNRV has lost color and the link to the latest posts.
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The work of von Luschan notwithstanding, it's amazing how money, perceived social status, and location can whiten skin color. A person judged "white" in Brazil could easily be seen as "black" in the US, and "colored" in South Africa. In some Latin American countries, people of the same skin color are received as white or nonwhite according to their wealth and class. Cleopatra was certainly African, as are all people born on that continent. No matter how little "black" blood coursed through her veins, in the US just a few years ago, "one drop" of sub-Saharan blood would have legally tagged the queen "black" in many legal settings.
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Trajan's Forum in the Middle Ages from Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide:
By the [ 9th Century] C 9 AD all the paving had gone, and for lack of suitable drainage, the concrete platform became a swamp...
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Here's an interactive site based on the Nolli Map of Rome, University of Oregon:
The Nolli Web Site presents the 1748 Nolli map of Rome as a dynamic, interactive, hands-on tool. The public now has access to cataloged information about the map in both written and graphical form. The map not only provides rich information, but it has the ability to be updated with new data over time to embrace expanding knowledge.
http://nolli.uoregon.edu/disabitato.html
As a casual glance at the Nolli map shows, even as late as the 18th century the vast area between the urbanized center and the ancient Aurelian wall circuit was an area dominated by ancient ruins and open space. Historically this zone has been called the uninhabited place or disabitato.
The impression this name gives is that of dusty fields with occasional ancient ruins picturesquely placed among a boundless no-man
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During the Gothic Wars I believe three of the four major aqueducts were cut by the Goths once the East Romans had re-occupied the City. These aqueducts were never repaired, and from that point on until the high middle ages the main population of Rome was strung out along the course of the remaining aqueduct and the Tiber.
That's an Interesting fact about the last functioning aqueduct. I wonder what its name was.
Richard Krautheimer's, Rome: A Profile of a City: 312-1308, is one of the best resources I know of, if you're interested in how the City survived Late Antiquity and beyond. Like most shrunken cities, a new pattern emerges. The once vast expanse enclosed by the Aurelian Walls becomes separate villages, islands, amidst the disabitato. Krautheimer's work is loaded with medieval and Renaissance maps that illustrate this. I recommend it highly. If you're interested in early medieval churches in Rome, this is the resource.
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There is some documentation for the long distance use of spolia (recycled building materials from earlier periods). For example, at Charlemagne's palace in Aachen:
from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Aachen
Charlemagne wanted his chapel to be magnificently decorated, so he had massive bronze doors made in a foundry near Aachen. The walls were covered with marble and polychrome stone.[25] The columns, still visible today, were taken on buildings in Ravenna and Rome, with the Pope's permission.
Eginhard provides a description of the inside in his Life of Charlemagne (c. 825
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I imagine that many a ship left post 6th century Rome bound for Constantinople laden with pilfered lead, columns, bronze, and iron.
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Looters stealing the iron clamps in the facade of the Colosseum left holes that are still apparent today. Let's imagine what other valuables might have fueled a strong economy based on recycling the ancient city. OK, iron building clamps and surely marble columns.
What other materials could have been removed and sold? And where could they have gone?
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I believe there is a battle account from one of the histories of the mid-6th century Gothic Wars during which warriors hurled statues from the roof of the Pantheon down onto enemy troops below. The earthquake of 847 C.E. is often cited as the last blow to the ancient structures such as Trajan's Forum, the Basilica of Maxentius, and the Colosseum.
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My interests, besides Roman history and archaeology, include Italian American history. I'm one of the creators of Steel Valley Voices: An Ethnic Community Archive, an online collection housed at Youngstown State University. It boasts the largest Internet accessible collection of Italian immigrant correspondence, 1894-2002, in addition to documents and papers from many of the city's multi-ethnic population. If you'd like to visit the collection, feel free:
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Just as "my father, my friend" has been pointed out as foreign to Roman thinking, I'd like to submit that "Life is beautiful" is similarly unRoman. Life, a struggle or duty or curse or an enigma perhaps. But not "beautiful."
Additionally, I grew up with native born Italians and don't ever remember anyone voicing such a notion.
What do others think of the slogan?
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Seems the situation has changed for the worse with the Egyptian Museum reportedly now on fire.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/egyptian-museum-on-fire-f_n_817532.html
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Feb 2, The New York Times:
A vast majority of Egypt
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In the Little Ice Age that hit Greenland in the late medieval period, the Norse settlements perished to a man and woman. On the other hand, the Greenland Eskimos have survived to the present day. According to Jared Diamond, the inability to make cultural changes sank the Norse colony. He sites the refusal of the colonists to switch from an agricultural to a hunter/gatherer society as the reason their colony disappeared during the abrupt change from warmer to colder. I agree that climate change alone can't account for the end of the Roman Empire in the West.
Here's his book on the disappearance of the Norse Greenland colony, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail
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Was the North justified in forcefully bringing the secessionist states back in line, to prevent a hostile power, possibly aligned with France and and the UK, arising on its southern border? I can see a geopolitical argument for it. On the whole though, I think if the Southerners wanted to leave the Union, they should have been left to do so.
The last two articles in Disunion show that significant numbers of Southerners did not want to secede especially in the Upper South and the mountains of Georgia. Most rabid seccesionist was South Carolina but even there one can ask about how legitimate was the decision of the majority of voters when the black majority was not allowed to vote.
The Deep South and the UK had close economic ties but the UK started and promoted abolitionism and would have been displeased by the Confederate plans of Caribbean expansion. After all they could get their cotton from elsewhere, preferably from within their huge colonial empire. France had imperial dreams but was on path to a rude awakening from Bismarck.
Secession would have been a very complicated process and Lincoln was not conciliating towards the South (and he was a moderate Republican) so the war was very likely.
Just what "Southerners" presumably wanted to do before the onset of the Civil War should always take into account the fact that slaves, poor whites, and freed blacks did not enjoy the right to vote.
On the subject on the anti-secessionist feeling in the South there's an interesting book, The State of Jones. From the Amazon.com review:
Make room in your understanding of the Civil War for Jones County, Mississippi, where a maverick small farmer named Newton Knight made a local legend of himself by leading a civil war of his own against the Confederate authorities. Anti-planter, anti-slavery, and anti-conscription, Knight and thousands of fellow poor whites, army deserters, and runaway slaves waged a guerrilla insurrection against the secession that at its peak could claim the lower third of Mississippi as pro-Union territory. Knight, who survived well beyond the war (and fathered more than a dozen children by two mothers who lived alongside each other, one white and one black), has long been a notorious, half-forgotten figure, and in The State of Jones journalist Sally Jenkins and Harvard historian John Stauffer combine to tell his story with grace and passion. Using court transcripts, family memories, and other sources--and filling the remaining gaps with stylish evocations of crucial moments in the wider war--Jenkins and Stauffer connect Knight's unruly crusade to a South that, at its moment of crisis, was anything but solid. --Tom Nissley
Happy birthday Viggen!
in Hora Postilla Thermae
Posted
Viggen, the best to you on your special day and many happy returns.