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Bryaxis Hecatee

Patricii
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Everything posted by Bryaxis Hecatee

  1. As I had both a wedding in Venice and a conference in Tel Aviv, I've been travelling a bit those last few weeks. This mean I got plenty of pictures of Milano, Torino, and many places all over Israƫl and Jordan which only await your curious gaze Don't hesitate, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/bryaxis for the tour !
  2. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Bryaxis' latest trip : northern Italy and the Near East

    Thanks I do love Art Nouveau, it's my favourite "modern" art form, at least for the art that finds it's way to museum, in part because it was the last massively artisanal form of art, and one of the few total forms of arts (architecture, painting, sculpture, ...)
  3. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Name for Roman villa

    "Ad Gallinas Albas" I'd translate as "at the place of the white chicken", but I'm not 100% sure there is not another meaning to the word (I'm too far from my dictionnary right now)...
  4. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Name for Roman villa

    "Ad Gallinas Albas" like Livia's Prima Porta house ?
  5. Bryaxis Hecatee

    New: Reputation System

    Ok, it seems I can at least do one such "like"
  6. Bryaxis Hecatee

    New: Reputation System

    I think their might still be a glitch for I attempted to like this post and it says that my patrician self has reached it's limit... Something to check ?
  7. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Ancient Archers Reassessed

    Many different points come into play here : - cultural vision of archery : it is well known that the Greeks had an ambivalent view of archery (Paris, master archer, is both despised and admired; Greek battlefield seem almost bereft of archers in the classical period, but we hear of Cretan archers hired as mercenaries and recognised for their skill, etc...) - type of bow : no two bows are the same, and you have many ways to build them which require different and specific skill sets : medieval british long bows are not the straight short bow and even less the doubly curved bow, and composite bows whatever the shape avec different characteristics from single piece-body bows - type of use : mobile fight (then on horse), set battles (think Agincourt), defense of a fortified position, ... - type of arrow head : not every head is efficient in every situation So the lethality of archery can vary a lot between cultures. I would say, based on what I've read and seen, that ancient mediterannean civilisations did not have especially efficient bow-technologies, to the countrary of the steppe and oriental cultures. A study of the causes of that fact would be interesting.
  8. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Imperial Post Warrants

    As I understand it, the warrant was a kind of badge given to an individual thus allowed to use the imperial post system for a determined amount of time (at the most the length of the holding of office of the delivering magistrate). Reasons for setting such a limit were limited availlability of remounts and the cost of the system.
  9. Bryaxis Hecatee

    BBC-Scotland: Rome's Final Frontier

    Great and interesting show ! Just as a note : the piece from the Rabat museum is bronze, I took a picture of it in 2008 : https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ww5tJRkGcf0/TB-m5pj5jyI/AAAAAAAAhUw/JcbWF6lrdOg/w649-h865-no/P1020155.JPG
  10. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Draft Animals in Roman Army

    http://books.google.be/books/about/The_Logistics_of_the_Roman_Army_at_War.html?id=LfRiXN5hhCUC&redir_esc=y would probably be your best source for information, as well as the books published by my former teacher Georges Raepsaet, a bibliography of whom you may find at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Raepsaet
  11. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Barbarian citizens

    The best way for him would be to be a mercenary or, eventually, bodyguard to a powerfull roman who'd then ask that the citizenship may be granted to him, or simply be the heir to such a man that would thus give him the citizenship by heredity.
  12. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Trajan's Early Career

    Have you looked in Pliny the younger's letters ? Their might be mentions. Otherwise maybe in Tacitus ?
  13. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Barbarian citizens

    You had various ways, and it would also depend on the period. 1) Individual citizenship : - Exemple of Varus : his family was powerfull and the Senate granted him equestrian rank as a token of recognition of his importance in the Germanic tribes, and also in order to give him a rank with which to command german auxiliaries in the Roman army. Of course he did not feel much obligations toward Rome... A similar path to citizenship was followed by many other germanic warlords (look at the leaders of the Batavian rebellion under Nero). - You could also get it as slave freed by it's master 2) Group citizenship Actually I'm not sure it was granted to the migrating tribes, I'd have to check my sources. But from the 3rd century onward we see a trend to accept the installation of barbarian tribes inside the borders. And while at first they had to follow roman law, they later got the right to keep both their leaders and their structures, giving them a wider sense of freedow toward the roman power, ultimately leading them to hold the only power in the areas where they settled.
  14. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Site down

    I'm on W7 and Chrome 27, and I currently don't see any issue in the forum.
  15. My answer will be three fold, and only valid (if valid indeed) for the classical world, not the later periods. 1) tradition : fighting in the west was, for a long time, a single line of fighters with the best men on the right side of each line in order to break the weaker side of the ennemy formation. In such a fight, line depth was more important than line width. Flanking was not considered because the risks of breaking the unit cohesion and weaken the line was too great. Non-western tradition tradition cultures did not choose this way to fight, and that includes the Gauls (more northern tradition, center attack, individual based instead of unit based) and the eastern armies whose infantery (the main forces) was usually the weakest force and where the cavalry would try to fall on the ennemies flanks. In the western tradition the cavalry was deemed less important, more usefull for reconaissance and preventing ennemy cavalry's attacks on the flanks. . 2) command and control : often generals would fight with the men, loosing strategic overview on the fighting. Beside dust and the lack of suitable eminence close enough to the battle (mostly happening in a plain) did prevent them from gaining a view. The macedonian military structure under Philip and Alexander was exceptional on the quality of it's command and control structure. Basicaly other armies had units commanders following a main plan but being autonomous and having knowledge only of their limited sector, including the senior general which, at this point, was not much more than a local unit commander. 3) once ennemy lines began retreating, soldiers will simply walk further to get to break the ennemy formation and cause the root which will cause the final victory. Thus the commander may well be unable to order the stop or the retreat. An exemple of such a situation is Caesar's defeat at Gergovia's siege. So both cultural and practical aspects prevented commanders from detecting an envelloppement and take countermesures.
  16. Bryaxis Hecatee

    House Decorations - Bathroom Sets ?

    Why don't you go for a pompey look on plaster ? Put a good hydrophobic plaster on your walls and then play with some paint to give it a bit of an ancient look : a dark-red shade for most of the room, with a black strip about 1m from the ground and two small white strips around the black one will give your bathroom a nice style for little costs. Then eventually you get someone to take a roman picture and to print it on some transparant adhesive to place on your wall at points where light falls directly, highlighting the painting. So it won't be as luxurious as the Villa Farnese frescoes (https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-frDd_LEONmU/UJd3UqLD5NI/AAAAAAABZ0A/BrCT37Zcl4w/s1095/P1010180.JPG) or the Villa dei Bacchanales (https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-MA15hAp1PTg/TM_hxOBjRcI/AAAAAAAA6OY/HOG3vHOXE-Q/s1024/P1030696.JPG), but still worth it
  17. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Bust of Flavius Josephus

    You may find informations on that identification in Plagnieux, P. 'Les sculptures Romanes' Dossiers d'Arch
  18. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Richard III

    Look also http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2013/02/richard-of-york-gave-battle-in-vain.html for some reflexions on the discovery
  19. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Guess the ancient city!

    It's splendid ! To start things up I'll launch a first guess : Greece ? (at first I tought "Morgantina, Sicily" but it does not match, I've never seen pics of this place but it looks great and something I shall have to visit one day !)
  20. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Guess the ancient city!

    It makes me think of Nicopolis ad Istrum, but maybe taken a few years ago...
  21. I'm not surprised, indeed the standard size will have been rather small... My thinking goes along the lines of : 1) lot of trade was coastal, point to point, rather than through the middle of the seas 2) capital investment was needed to load a ship, capital which may not have been readily availlable or, more importantly, not risqued in a single ship 3) large ship building techniques were geared more toward trireme size (about 35m), and little military incentive were provided to build bigger ships, especially after the 2nd century BC when the Diadoch had disapeared and with them the ability to muster the special ressources, with the exception of Egypt. In the imperial period warship size was also rather smaller due to the fact their were no rivals in the Med' 4) scaling up from small boat construction to large monsters might have been beyhond the skill of most shipbuilders 5) port infrastructure was probably not developped enough to accomodate large ships, leaving only a few cities as availlable destinations (Ostia, Alexandria,...) 6) issues with ports sedimentating meant that it might have been decided not to use big ships to reduce the need to dreg them
  22. Not much seems to be really recent in Grainger's bibliography, here I place a copy of the whole bibliography section (don't be surprised by the size, it's a Pen&Swords book, see my review here on UNRV)
  23. If we are to believe ancient sources, the prestige ship Leontophoros, built by Lysimachos at the time of the Diadochoi, might well have been a double-hulled catamaran of a lenght of some 110m and a crew of 1200 (John D. Grainger Helleistic and Roman naval wars 336-31BC, 2011, page 52) : it was used in battle in 280 BC. Demetrios had ships of similar lenght, although single-hulled. Ptolemy Philadelphos might have had up to about 111 warships of more than 50m in his fleet, according to Athenaios' Deipnosophists (op cit, page 54, considering a quinquereme to be at least that size, although John F. Coates speaks of only 45m). So a 60m long ship is by no element unbelievable, but there must not have been many more than 100-250 built in all the ancient period. The find at Nemi were thus exceptional, and the confirmed discovery of another one in the form of the Antikithera ship would be trully amazing.
  24. What makes me rather sad is the fact this web site does not seems to give proveniance, recent history, and gives a single publication (although a rather good one) for the object. So it does not allow one to see if it's been illegaly dug, for how long it's been known, or anything else of the sort, things that anyone should check before spending even a pfenig on an ancient piece.
  25. Bryaxis Hecatee

    Roman Infantry Face Masks

    Like Caldrail I would not rule it out but when I look at the evidences as presented, for exemple, in Michel Feug
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