Bryaxis Hecatee

For the price of the entrance they might as well, also after such a long neglect period... Still it's good news they're getting their act together !

About Greece, I'd first say : there is no single united entity in Greece before the Roman Empire came and invaded it ! Thus one should not speak of Greece but of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, etc. On statehood, most cities were probably low : administration was much less developped than in the roman empire (although not that far away from what did exist during the roman republican period). On accountability, Athens should probably get a rather good rating, at least from the time of Pericles to the time of Philipp II of Macedonia. Every elected/nominated official had to give official accounts of his actions when he came out of office and could be prosecuted for those actions. In Sparta, the rating would probably be medium since the Kings were always controled by the Ephors, but the Ephors were close to immune. On rule of law, I'd say that Athens would rate medium for while justice was easy to access (even for non-citizens), we have many cases of political abuse of the tribunals and justice worked also mainly for citizens and non-citizens of subject from the athenian empire's other cities had more difficulties to be heard. In Sparta I'd probably rate the rule of law as rather medium too. Thus : Athens : low - high - medium Sparta : low - medium - medium

Wonderfull city ! But I hesitate between Ummidia Quadratilla's Palmyra and the other syrian beauty, Apamea. Since the first has already been suggested I will say Apamea (although I believe Ummidia won this round )

Let your hat rest then, for it is indeed the site of Heraklea Lynkestis, with it's two roman basilicas, it's hadrianic theater, it's thermae and it's episcopal palace, visibles in the modern macedonian city of Bitola, a place to visit when you go along the Via Egnatia.

The logical process of identification of the country was the right one, and we're indeed in the FYROM, also know as Macedonia. But the city is not Ohrid

No. Albania does not share the geographical characteristic of Serbia and our mystery country, thus Appolonia is not the place we're looking for.

Serbia is not the country we are looking for, although it shares an important geographical characteristic with Serbia

Bulgaria is not the country we are looking for, although the Balkans are definitively the part of Europe we want to zoom in

European it is indeed, although not flying the european colors.

So, no idea after more than 24h ? Gosh I'm pleased So, who shall be the first to hasard a guess ?

Well the place is quite intersting indeed, although badly in needs of repairs to it's leaky roof and of a renewal of it's desplay... Now I hope the place I choose will be harder to find

That's the museum on top of the theater of Verona, Italay

I'm not really surprised by what we see in the UK, which is still much less than what has happened in France in the past but seems more shocking because it's done in "normal looking" streets instead of HLM. I remember that every time I went to the UK and came a bit late to my hotel, be it in Southampton, Oxford or London, I saw lots of youths completely drunk lying in the streets as early as 6PM : a country that let's it's children go so low is a country in which parents don't educate anymore. And uneducated children are worse than anything one may expect, and unoccupied children (schools are currently closed, holliday time...) means bigger crowd of firebrands availlables for trouble and even bigger crowd of followers... Allow me to finish this by a citation of French S-F writter Bernard Lenteric, whose "Nuit des enfants rois" was recently adapted betrayed into a very bad movie called "prodigies".

Maybe sell reconstruction bricks with the name of the benefactor : there is a roman tradition (I remember some aqueduc in northern africa had every stone/brick stamped...) and modern exemples like Saddam's printing his name on every new brick for his rebuilding of Babylone's walls... It would be one of those "eternity" actions that seems so popular, like sending one's name into deep space, and could make people feel part of both past and future...

Well the fact is that the link with the "false religion" of Akhenaton, the first recorded form of monotheism, has often been touted as a possible explaination for the rise of the hebraic faith : exiled practitionners of the forbidden cult intermixing with the peoples of a land on the border of the empire, mixing their beliefs with those of the locals (cult of a thunder god and his wife) and leading to what would become the basis of the hebraic faith, a faith that would be simplified and radicalized during the Exode in Babylon, the place where the sacred book(s) would be written.

If I remember well evidence has been found in the Delta, especially around Pi-Ramses, that may lead one to believe that some thruth did indeed lead to the biblical story, but nothing in the scale of the movies

If Viggen manages to get a copy of Lazenby's Spartan army I'm game for a review ! The book on republican centurions may also be intersting !

For special exhibits I must confess I hate the practice but can still live with it for it is a way to keep things "exclusive" and thus generate much needed revenues. For permanent collections on the other hand I think open access is to be fully granted and photography permited WHITOUT FLASH in any museums (although I hate taking pictures in painting museums). If they want to restrict photography they must then offer full, high resolution, multi-aspects pictures of each and every artifact in the collection for free use. They often live thanks to tax money and have a mission of both conservation and public education that they must fulfill, including granting to each the possibility to access the pieces from wherever they are, if possible with as much open metadata about them, in order to allow date re-utilization (for exemple : if all museums in the world put in common their roman imperial portraits we could create a fine database that would speed up research and allow faster pre-identification of roman portraits by facial recognition software)

I've almost no clue on how the sport is played so I'd be far from giving you comments on who may win For me it's just a bunch of guys punching a ball far from them then running after it with the ultimate goal of putting the ball between two (or well three) bars, with a lot of mostly drunk and often prone to riot peoples watching them, with obscenes salaries paid to the so called "athlets"... I was just surprised to see only european (taken large...) countries in the list for a world cup

is that world or euro cup machin bidule ? for if that's world then it's a pretty small world... where are Northern America, Southern America, Africa, eastern Asia and the like ?

Gosh ! 300 naval style ? It's gona be huge if it ever goes to screen !

I just came back from Berlin where indeed war did huges damages too : at the end of the Altes Museum (Old Museum, one of the three antiquity museum on Museuminsel, Museum Island, the museum district in the center of the town) they list some of the damage that museum alone did suffer : 500+ destroyed ancient potery, 250+ marble and bronze statues, hundreds of other objects... Same was true in the Neue Museum (New Museum) which held amongst other Schlieman's trojan artifacts : an allied bomb blew of in the middle of 300 crates of ancient artifacts... And I don't speak of what the Russian took and still exhibit in Moscow !

I had a true Antiquity orgy today with the Alte Museum and the Pergamon museum, some 600 pictures are availlables (although not yet commented obviously...) on https://picasaweb.google.com/bryaxis

good idea. I'm currently in Berlin on a small Eeepc so if someone else could set up things that could be best. I'd suggest that we either give a meeting hour in Tongeren or start from Brussels and take a group transport from there (either car sharing or train or renting a bus if we're truly numerous). We could also see who in Belgium has room for one or two peoples too...

We might want to organize a small UNRV meeting for the visit then for, knowing Damien, he'll certainly want to go too, as shall I... Other members might also be interested. And, who knows, if enough are interested we could try to get a special guide (even if I think Marc Waelkens would be a bit too much to ask )