Bryaxis Hecatee

Salve Augustus. Allow me to present myself : P. Laelius Macer, veteran of the X legion. After my tour of duty during which I rose up to the rank of primipilus I retired to the estate your general L. Valerius Pulcher gave me in gratitude for the time I saved his life during a battle. Since them I've been living from the revenues of the place and I long to take once more the military cloak and the gladius. I'm yours to command.

That's indeed what I was told when in Rome with my teacher of Roman archeology four month ago. What remains ( and has been excavated ) is the back of the porticus, a public toilet. It is not very visible from the street because it is a bit under the road and is thus very dark.

Well we know it was still the practice at the time of Marius, some 50 years before Caesar, and we know the romans were very conservative when it came to religion. But I see no source right now describing a late republic triumph

One must remember that the way the Greek fought during olympiads and other competition was also a way to prepare for the hoplitic battles which could ( and did not so rarely ) degenerate into a fistfight : the books by Hanson ( inspired by Keegan's "Face of Battle" give a clear view of that fact ). Also the great athlets were from at least the hellenistic time costly and highly trained individuals so that, like the gladiatorial champions of late republican and imperial time, one took care of them with a legislation and a "world league" which oversaw the great championship tour of the Empire.

Good link, thank you a lot for the information !

One name which according to me should be at least in tier 2 if not even in the top 10 is Perikles son of Xanthipos, athenian leader who gave his name to a century, master politician and good general who directed his country for some 20 years through his office of Strategos, general. As a politician he achieved a clear dominance over his city without ever being ostracised, comforted the democratic system, made many alliances, reinforced the delian league. But his military achievements are not small either since at the strategical level he devised a whole new strategy for his city that allowed it to face the strongest land power of his time for years without ever being in danger of being taken, he personally led armies in many campaigns without suffering much defeats, made sure his armies had a logistic vastly superior to the one of all the armies of the time.

From the name of the file ( which does not want to load ) I'd say it is the Aula Palatina in Trier, Germany ? ( What are you jalous of, 4h of train to give a cd to a colleague, a good meal with an old teacher and her daughter, a tour of the town of Bouillon were I spent 3 years, the visit of a pitoresque small village and the visit of a museum on the celtic finds in the Ardennes ? )

Yes indeed it is Bosra, sorry for the delay I was in the countryside today without any internet access.

Yes indeed it is Bosra, sorry for the delay I was in the countryside today without any internet access.

No it is not Palmyra, I choose another oriental city

Then here you are with something I think you'll like :

Well isn't it Palmyra's great columnade ? Either that or Apamea's one

Eh I don't know much about those emperors but what I do know is that I played them in my latest game of Crusader King and crushed the muslim turks which had invaded my Empire, retaking all the lands up to the Caspian Sea and converting them back to the true faith. But I'd say that in order for one to understand the bad reputations those emperors had it might be good to look at their relations with the orthodox church for often bad reputations comes from bad relation with the priests...

Well about the apoikia when you want something which is Italy related you don't have much choice and have to look for the Congresso sulla Magna Graecia, yearly congress held at Tarento since at least 20 to 30 years, on a different thematic each year + the latest archeological discoveries italian province by italian province. Italian is the main language but there are fore most volume a brief synopsis of each article in english or even full articles in this language ( as well as german and french ). Otherwise I don't have the title of the book or article in mind but not five years ago was a paper published on the very first euboeans colonies which have been founded in mainland Greece just opposite the island, I had a conference on the subject and this is why I remember it. Otherwise it is a pity that this site ( http://www.apoikia.org.uk/index.aspx ) has no more informations. But if you want I can look a bit at my university library to find the books I used when I worked on the subject and publish it at hellenica-logos.org

I've read Boardman's book too, but it was a bit limited I though ( I was working on the Apoikia at the time ). Also if I remember well it did lack some data relating to the first euboeian colonies. Snodgrass is also old even if still usefull especially for military historians ( which is Snodgrass' main field of research ). As for Finley's well it's at least 25 years old even if their is no doubt the man was a great historian, one also has to remember that a specific ideology did guide his work ( as it did for most of the authors of that time )

Indeed traval agents did exist as did organized tours for rich peoples. One frequent destination for rich romans was Ilion, aka Troy, and the city in the roman time seems to have derived it's prosperity in no small part from tourism. Also we have kept the oldest travel guide known in the work of Pausanias, which is truly the ancient version of the "Guide Michelin" or any such guide

Well that would not be so surprising, it could be the result of secondary transfer ( that is inter-barbarian exchanges, be it commercial or social gifts ) or pillages or the roman areas.

Good question. Due to the period considered and his life I'd rather say he is a roman. A roman from the east, for sure, but still a roman because his attitudes and comportement are more in line with roman that purely greek ways.

Well many reunions of the Senate were held inside temples, Roman temples were not closed like the Greek temples were. Also one must remember that peoples could also get inside to put themselves under the protection of the gods ( an ancient rule which was kept in the middle ages with the Christian churches ) : this is what Saturninus did ( and yet he was killed when the roof was thrown upon him by angry young nobiles ).

Bryaxis, that is an extremely thoughtful and well articulated reply and one that speaks for my personal opinion quite closely. Thank you for your kind words. By the way do you know of any UNRV like for the greek world ?

It's a great example. Cumae (+ Pithekoussai) was the transmission point of orientalizing influences (alphabet, art, socio-religious institutions, etc...) into Etruria and Latinum in the Archaic causing a critical mass to be reached that laid the foundation of the greatest Empire ever known. However, there is barely a single book in print on the history of the city by itself; usually it's only found worthy of footnotes or small chapters in compilations. Of the less than handful ever written or translated into english on the city, the newest was published almost 10 years ago and before that almost 40 years ago. The rest were either publish before the 1920's or are reprints of books written before the 1920's. (and there are only 1 or 2 of those that I've found) It is a fact that not much as been written in books on the town ( or greek cities in the west ) in English, and even in other languages it is not always much. But it is due to the fact that the english speaking world as not taken as much interest in this as in other topics, the italians doing a good part of the work themselve. Thus you have to learn to read in other languages than english in order to access the sources and go to your local universitary libraries to get access to the specialized reviews ( the yearly congress "Magna Graecia" held at Tarento and regularily published comes to my mind, the volumes are mainly but not exclusively in italian ). Also for those who want to learn more about the cities of southern italy the topographical bibliography collection is a good way to find quickly all the references to a town in both ancient and modern literature.

Another way to remember him in a roman way, and probably less costly than a bust, would be a mask of his face made in wax, which you would keep in a place of honor, eventually next to an inscription in his memory as suggested by the others. In any case know that you will have no better place to keep the memories of him than your own heart and I'm sure that's also the place he'd have wanted to be most honored and would thus be proud of you at the present time.

Evidence do exist for many things that are not reported in the texts of the great writers that make greek history less obscure and sometime it can in fact be studied more in dept than it's roman counterpart. Last year our main seminar on greek history was about the history of eastern Crete from the archaic to the roman period and while we had less than 25 useful classical texts on the towns of the area we were able to study the details of the negotiations between the cities and the shifts in trading roads and power during at least 500 years. True we had to translate the dorian dialect ourselve and work directly in the Inscriptiones Creticae of Guarducci in order to access the epigraphic source but it was a rewarding work. So the excuse that greek history is less attiring due to our lack of knowledge is rather a false argument. The trouble is that this work is often disseminated in small publications or german books which were never translated ( be it in French or in English ) and that the knowledge is thus not well disseminated, but it does exist.

While my presence on this board for some months now shows that I do indeed like roman history very much I have chosen to become a specialist of the Greek world. Why ? Because Greece is an area which was ( and still is ) very poor agriculturally, did not support a very large population ( for example Athens never reached the million inhabitants before the 19th or even the 20th century ) and yet it produced so many innovations in the real of the art, of the mind, of the actions too. The Greeks were exceptional painters from the minoan time onward, marvelous sculptors since at least the archaic period if not before, wonderful metal workers be it during the mycenian period or later, incomparable thinkers exploring ways which had never been contemplated before in politics, ethics, general philosophy, theology or sciences. They built structures which survived for centuries, even millenniums, without loosing the power of their original design despite earthquakes, explosions, and the general degradations caused by the passing time. Names stand out of their history, be they Pisistrate or Pericl

I must say that I smile reading some posts by our American friends especially when some of you say the research labs of US universities are better than those found in "Old Europe"'s ones. American seems to think that in order for something to be good it has to be big and cost a lot of money : be it the Hummer car of the JSF plane, they cost two to four time what any vehicle designed in the world cost and are twice as big, using twice as much fuel to go at the same speed and the same distance as a British Land Rover car or a French Rafale plane. Even at more basic level the Europeans scientists make as much discoveries as their American counterparts with less computer power, less material and much smaller budgets. Yet the US do not have anything that can compare to the latest CERN particle accelerator, have much less success with NASA than the Europeans with the Ariane space rockets program, and if the Europeans publish less they usually publish bigger papers and do not segment their publication in numerous small articles. This is due to differences in the teaching methods between the two continents and both systems have their advantages but finally they are as much Europeans universities in the world's top 50 of the best universities than American one's. For example the budget of my university ( ULB, some 20 000 students ) is about one quarter to one half of the budget of the smaller ( 15 000 students ) Georgetown university in Washington DC ( and I dare not speak of the budget of Harvard, which is of a similar size to the ULB ) and yet we are recognized as a very good research center, leader in some reals of physics and electronics as well as in cancerology and medical machines design. Thus if the quality of the education given and of the research produced is the same for a lesser cost and with a much better accessibility for poorer peoples then I think the European model is probably a better system which could produce much more knowledge if it had the same money poured into it as has the US model.