Bryaxis Hecatee

Hum it would be too easy were it british... I shall say it might be German !

I did not have to see everything, but the first few minutes gave me enough to laugh

A pity the roman shields and armor, for one thing, are about 50 to 100 years off

Yes it's quite noticeable when you stay for a bit of time outside of the main touristic areas. In Sicily last month I had a guide on the punic island of Motya who did recite sicilian poetri in the dialect, I'm not bad in Italian (at least for understanding it, and I'am understood by most peoples there) but it was really quite different. I was with a couple from the Genova area and they told us they could hardly understand it, in fact I was almost understanding it better than they did ! Beside the pronunciation there are also sentences which are rather different, expressions in greeting, in daily politeness, etc... which are quite different, it was really noticeable when I made the gap from Sicily to Rome in one night !

Actually I made sure to use a picture not from me and taken from another angle so as to make it more difficult, Klingan

Perfect Auris ! The hand is now yours ! For more pictures you may visit my gallery : https://picasaweb.google.com/115229891211658247956/Bulgarie20Mai2012AbritusVelikePreslavShumenPriskaMadara

yes, that's one of the reasons I went to visit Bulgaria last summer in fact. Since I saw some of the roman sculpture in Volubilis (Marocco) and saw the very regional style of it I took notice of how our vision of the ancient greek and romans largely depends from the stereotype taken from the core of the empire, never from the full experience delivered on the fringes of it. For me it's a bit like greek ceramic, everyone knows of the black-figure and of the red-figure attic styles, sometimes also of the older corinthian black-on-white/yellow, but what is actually seen in many museums and strikes us as strange (and, to me, as ugly...) in comparison is the 4th century apuleian and more generally Magna-Graecia types.

no, this is not the place (yeah, for once a place really does prove challenging to this great assembly !)

Inderdaad, twee euwe vroeger word deze stad verbrand en afgeschaft van de map... t'is maar later dat de moderne stad word gebouwd en de oude plaats is nu dicht bij een antaal industries... (for the english speaking peoples : "indeed, the city was burned and erased from the map two centuries earlier... It's only later that the modern city was build and the ancient site is now close to it in an industrial area)

Good attempt Auris, but unfortunately it is not the palace, you're looking too far in the barbarian times, at the time of Omurtag the city we're looking for had been destroyed for a bit more than two centuries...

Nope, none (yet) After all this is only a small part of my personnal library (which is now around 1000 books). But I may one day come to this serie too...

It's been more than one year since I last updated my list of novels of the ancient world, so here's the 2012 version of what I do own and have read : - Richard Blake "Aelric" serie : "Conspiracies of Rome", "The Terror of Constantinople", "The blood of Alexandria", "Sword of Damascus", "Ghosts of Athens" : A young british barbarian is sent to Rome for both education and security but finds himself hurled into the politics of the late 6th century AD... Then sent to Constantinople, he works his way to imperial favor and receives some of the most difficult tasks needed to keep the Empire secure. Writing from the safety of old age and a distant british monastry, he shall sometime see his retreat disturbed by global players trying to learn his secrets... - Christian Cameron "Tyrant" serie : "Tyrant", "Storm of Arrow", "Funeral Games", "King of the Bosphorus" : greek mercenaries in the black sea area at the time of Alexander the Great, then the adventures of his children in the time of the Diadochoi while they try te get back their kingdom with the help of Ptolemy - Christian Cameron : "Killer of men" and "Marathon" : the first greco-mede war - Christian Cameron : "God of War" : a life of Alexander from the point of view of an elder Ptolemy - David Anthony Durham : "Hannibal Pride of Carthage" : The second punic war seen from the carthaginian point of view - Robert Fabri : "Vespasian : Tribune of Rome", "Vespasian : Rome's Executioner" : the youth of future emperor Vespasian during the reign of Tiberius (futures volumes to keep folowing his rise toward power under Caligula, Claudius and Nero) - Robert Harris "Cicero's life" serie : "Imperium", Lustrum : Cicero and his time - Robert Harris : Pompe

Well the city were this building was (in the 4th century according to what informations I could gather) built was standing during your period, on a site our bulgarian friend on this forum may mention (or have mentionned...) on his celtic bulgaria blog. Also the place was rather famous around the end of the period you know for some event that took place next to it...

It's tricky but it's roman... This specific building seems to have been in use until the 6th century AD and the time of the Avars invasion.

Lucky you ! Pergamon is a great place I whish I could visit in the near future

Actually it is, indeed, a bulgarian place which is here shown, and not a sicilian from my last trip

I did visit it about twenty years ago... But I'm afraid it did not really mark me up at the time. Now, for you to find is this place :

Arles' cryptoportic ?

Once more an interesting article. By the way, did you get some informations on the discovery made while building the highway to Serbia ? Talks of a golden set of armour were reported, but I'm curious because it was not explicitely said to be from a funerary context (or at least I don't seem to remember such a notion).

The roman bath of Catane ?

Even in a city (thus not a castel) the breaching of a wall could be countered by the defender, who could build a second wall behind the first (if I remember well it did happen at Gaza or Tyr during the siege by Alexander the Great). And indeed remember that Pyrrhus died from a tile launched from a roof by an elderly lady, during the fighting that took place in the capture of a city.

Obsidian has long allowed ancient peoples to carve very utilitarian but also very nice looking objects. Even around the mediterranean you can find such beautifull objects, although we stopped much earlier to use stone for our utilitarian tools, and we never needed so huge tools as what can be found in the precolumbian world.

And I do recommand the reading, well worth it, much better than a Iggulden or even a Ben Kane in my opinion. Should you read french you could find my opinion on each book on http://notesdeumene.wordpress.com/la-bibliotheque-deumene/

So, I finally decided on my itinerary : I just have to finish deciding on what I'll do when in Rome : i did indeed decide to go there directly from Messine, in the night train, and to spend 4 days in the city to visit mostly places which are outside of Rome : Tivoli and Ostia for sure, and possibly Praeneste or Cerveteri and Tarquinia. Does anyone have other recomendations, or any counsel for how to go there from Rome ? (and in Sicily I know I'll miss Palermo, it shall be for a later city trip, but I have to be at Gela of friday morning, where I'll meet my driver for 3 days in the center and south-east of the island). Date Activit

so here the exercise is about trying to understand what a text from the studied civilisation (or from a contemporaneous civilisation) says on said civilisation. So you first have to ask yourself questions like "is it truly something from the civilisation from which it is said it is" (for exemple the fake Constantine Donation which the papacy allege gave them Vatican and Rome, which is a proven fake from around 400 years later), then "how far in time is it from the described events" (for exemple using Livy for the roman royal period), and so determine if it's legit to use it for your study. Then you may go further and ask yourself "ok, this text is from 200 years later than the event, but could he be in fact using some more ancient source, and thus preserve a lost thruth" (think Livy writing on the punic war). Then ask yourself : "does the author, from what we know, try to manipulate the events in order to make himself or his opinion look better" (think Xenophon in the Anabasis"). When you've done all that (and, in fact, much more internal and external checking I won't go into detail here) you can begin to do the same kind of questioning for the content of the text itself. Ok, say that an author speak of Caesar landing in Britain with an elephant, is that right or is it, in fact, a mistake due to a confusion with Claudius bringing one when he came in the area ? So start her along this course, and indeed she can use encyclopedias and secondary/tertiary sources to check the answers to those basic questions.