Faustus

This is a sensitive issue and I respond only in an attempt to put it in perspective: This is only an issue in the Black (underdog) Democrat community, especially among the race baiters where money is to be made. The other side cares not a whit, except as regards the sensitivity in the opponent

Salve Friends, Countrymen, and interested observers from Beyond the Tide (and our borders) This, from a political Conservative, who is also a republican because that party is the best vehicle of his political philosophy; one who first time out voted for Goldwater in 1964, and was standing in a

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) Wayside Shrines, Temples It may well be asked what general notion prompted the late establishment of sanctuaries in the old deserted high places? There are other examples, as at Lydney, Chanctonbury Ring (Sussex), and Harlow Hill (Essex), and it can hardly be doubted that more existed. Was it the final flicker of paganism, or a turning to the old gods in centres of ancient valiance as times grew more uncertain? Or were the ancient gods taking refuge in the wilderness as Christianity spread in the towns? In some places, indeed, the old gods remained firmly in possession of their pre-Roman shrines. This state of affairs, already noted at Gosbecks, is exemplified by Frilford, north-west of Abingdon, where two Romanized shrines lie on top of an earlier wooden building. The pre-existing building had taken the form of a circular ditched enclosure containing an open covered shed, like a presepio, where holy images, cult objects, or offerings had been exposed to view. In the Roman period this earlier shrine was razed to the ground and replaced by a circular enclosure of which the contents are not now evident, while a new temple of the native box-like form was built alongside and later received an extension. Occupation or this site continued into the fifth century A.D. and there can be no doubt either of the antiquity or the popularity of this country shrine or group of shrines. As a group, of which other members perhaps remain to be discovered, it resembles the forest sanctuaries of Roman Gaul, where numerous godlings attracted long and late to a single holy spot their several groups or categories of worshippers. Wayside shrines form another common class. Such are the Surrey temples at Titsey on the Downs, adjacent to the Roman road between London and the Ouse valley, and again at Farley Heath, Aldbury. Of different type are shrines and pavilions, which yielded a relief of Diana and a hound and an altar to Apollo Cunomaglus, situated on the Fosse Way at Nettleton Shrub, ten miles north-east of Bath. The Watling Street shrines at Barkway (Hertfordshire), sacred to Mars Alator, and at Stony Stratford Buckinghamshire), dedicated to Toutates, produced the beautiful silver plaques now in the British Museum, but no building which has been recorded. North of Lancaster, the shrine of Ialonus, god of the meadow-land, which again is known from an altar and not from buildings, lay close to the Roman road heading for the fort at Watercrook, near Kendal. Watling Street shrines at Barkway (Hertfordshire), sacred to Mars Alator Spring and river-gods also had their sacred dwellings. At Chester-le-Street, Condatis, god of the watersmeet, had an altar at the confluence of the River Wear and the Cong Burn. Verbeia, goddess of the River Wharfe, was worshipped at Ilkley. No temple at the source of a great river is known in Britain, but it can hardly be doubted that they existed, particularly when rivers frequently bore divine names, such as Belisama (the Ribble), Deva (the Dee), or Brigantia (the Brent). A hunter

I have to second that in spades. When I first got the cd I cued it to repeat in my player until I felt a little obsessive, "excavating" every ounce of meaning from it. Then I got my fill and gave it up. Thanks for the heads up, now I have to find the video for another go round as a detour from some of the "noise" of life, like talking heads, yakking heads, yukking heads, etc. When I mentioned "country" JC was my first thought. Fifty years ago (1957) I would ride my bike down to the "Dog and Suds" root-beer-stand and drop nickels in the Juke-box, and only on JC.

Salve Omnes, This is a lot tougher poll to respond to than you may have thought. As for my-self I like best, music that inspires emotion, especially emotions of passion, if there be any other kind. (Taken in order of your poll). Rock can do it but there is so much (the file is so deep) that it

DDickey, Look for a PM on your topic.

Salve DD Some where back there in time did you read some of the earlier Asimov? For instance The Stars Like Dust and The Currents of Space. These are good set-ups for the foundation series. And how about Foundations Fear (Gregory Benford? (authorized by the estate of Asimov) Also Phillip K. Dick. . . .I still have a large collection of ancient stuff; SF I mean, and many of the old paper-back Ace Doubles. I.E/a novel on each side with reverse covers; these seemed to pick up where the old E.C. Science Fiction/Science Fantasy books fell out of the market. One more: Humanoids (With Folded Hands) by Jack Williamson (probably his best book ever). Some of those you may want to add to your 2009 reading list while there

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) Pilgrim Sanctuaries, Shrines, and Temples In the north no such sites connected with commerce religion are know to archeology. But literature mentions the Locus Maponi or meeting-place of Maponus, the Celtic god who was equated with the classical Apollo in his double aspect of youth and harper. This place may reasonably be identified with Clochmabenstane on the north shore of the Solway, where in later days the medieval English and Scottish wardens of the Marches met to settle common affairs. But the name is composite, half Brythonic and half English, stane having been added by Anglians who did not understand the Brythonic cloch. So the stone of Maponus was a traditional meeting-place, and in Roman frontier politics played its part as one of those permitted places of assembly for markets and public business which enabled Rome to control tribal gatherings. It is significant, too that the god under whose auspices the assemblage took place was not a war-god, but a bardic god whose function was the peaceful entertainment of music. Other loca there were, but their names, where intelligible, are connected with tribes and not with deities, unless indeed the tribes, like the Brigantes, with their deity Brigans or Brigantia , had a guardian god or goddess whose name was identical with the adjectival form of their own. Not all sanctuaries were connected with fairs and markets and the number of shrines scattered through the countryside must have been very large indeed. To describe them individually is quite outside the scope of this [essay], though some of the cults associated with them are considered by themselves [elsewhere]. Here, however, certain classes may be mentioned since they must have formed one of the most characteristic features in the rural landscape, quite apart from the cult of which they formed the centre. The most important is the pilgrim-sanctuary, of which the shrine of Nodens at Lydney, on the north side of the Severn estuary, provides a striking example. Lydney Pilgrim Sanctuary ~ Site Plan With Scale Lydney Late-Fourth-Century Pilgrim Shrine of Nodens Nodens, who was sometimes equated by his worshippers with Silvanus, was certainly a god of hunting. But the bronze applied decoration on one of the ritual crowns of his ministrants shows that he was also a water-god, who journeyed majestically over the waves in a car drawn by four sea-horses: one thinks of the Severn bore, which begins near Lydney its formidable sweep at every tide. His temple, which belongs to after A.D. 364, occupies a prominent spur overlooking the estuary. It was a large building divided into nave and ambulatory, the later equipped in due course with side-chapels. It was lavishly furnished with mosaic pavements, the most important of which, in the sanctuary, carried an inscribed dedication by the chief of a naval repair-yard (prefectus reliquationis) and a staff-interpreter. The plan of the building belongs to neither the Celtic nor the purely classical world, but is a form borrowed from the East; and the suggestion has been made, without definite proof, that it owes something to Christian inspirations. The most interesting buildings, however, so far as the social side of the Lydney establishment is concerned, are those which surround the temple court, which occupies the whole of the hill-top. There is a long portico, rather like one side of a cloister, divided into open-fronted cells. This is a type of structure well-known in classical sanctuaries of healing, where the sick slept in hope of divine counsel through dreams or even of personal curative action by the god or his priests. On an adjacent site to that occupied by the portico lay a courtyard building with numerous rooms and a large and imposing front reception-hall. A commodious set of baths associated with this inn or guest-house add the essential hall-mark of Roman civilization. It is obvious that the establishment was planned for well-to-do visitors, who could pay good fees for attentions or benefits received. But not all the functions of Nodens were related to healing. As a god of hunting, he was expected by some of his worshippers to seek out and restore lost property, so that he was a god whose functions were hardly less diverse than his nature. Historically, the most interesting side of this cult is its late date, in an Empire slowly becoming Christian; and no less remarkable than this survival of paganism is the fact that in the last quarter of the fourth century A.D. a site of this kind, overlooking the Bristol Channel could be considered a safe and even lucrative proposition. The status of this one, of its important patrons as a naval officer is a pointed reminder of the fleet to which the district owed its peace and safety. This temple of Nodens lies on a hill-top and within the lines of an ancient hill-fort. It was thus with another late-Roman sanctuary, which was established, again after A.D. 364, in the long-deserted but gloriously imposing hill-fort of Maiden Castle, the ancient Dunum, which had been superseded by the Romanized town of Durnonovaria in the seventies of the first century A.D. The shrine built here was a simple edifice of the box-like Celtic plan, though the deity worshipped therein combined with a human nature the wisdom and the strength respectively of an owl and a bull. Side by side with the shrine lay a small priest

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) Lake Dwellings, Markets, Fairs, and Sanctuaries Lake-dwellings are another specialized form of settlement which owe their existence to human adaptation of a natural feature. These are little known in Britain south of Hadrian

It is believed by the poster that the posting of this text conforms to copyright law as it pertains to brevity (not more than a chapter), and use (educational) as well as any affect as a result of its posting would tend to increase interest in the full text rather than diminish it, and would likewise not devalue the book itself, but would add to its value. Faustus

Salve G.H. For a possible explanation on how the vases might have been "hollowed" out go HERE part of which I've quoted as follows: "At the same time as the pyramids were being constructed, another intriguing development occurred. Fine alabaster vases with delicate, narrow throats and other artifacts were created in the same meticulous precision as the casing stones. How could the Egyptians hollow out the bottom of the vases through the narrow throat without a highly advanced technology, which has disappeared in the mist of time? Little if any indication of their manufacture remains."

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) Opportunities Based on Some Geographical Conditions If in southern Britain there is some evidence of expansion of pastoralism at the expense of agriculture, in northern Britain the process was probably reversed. There is little evidence for agriculture on any scale but the smallest in the north in pre-Roman days. Indeed, it is noteworthy how the decorators of prized artistic objects choose either horses or cattle as their theme, both in pre-Roman and Roman days, and how cauldrons, for seething meat, continue to be one of the principal manufactures of the area. These facts imply a Homeric type of society or, if this be thought too sophisticated, a state of civilization akin to that of the Irish Celtic sagas, in which wealth is reckoned not in broad acres but in heads of cattle. Many of the upland native farms of Cumberland and Westmorland plainly continued to reflect these conditions. If they have any field-system, it comprises a limited number of tiny paddocs or crofts, unequal to supporting a family through the year. Their wealth and support lay in the adjacent hill-pastures, with valley feeding for winter. But most of the cattle, as in medieval times, must have been killed off when the winter came, the most valuable risings then being their hides and horns, convertible to leather and a variety of horn objects. The Roman tax-collector had a first interest in the herds, which were counted and taxed by heads: but his second and no less important interest lay in the hides. The consumption of hides by the Roman army must have been enormous. The jerkins and breeches of the soldiery, their shield-coverings and their tents, not to mention their massive boots, were all made of leather, and a tribute of hides will have been an obvious alternative to a tribute of corn. Excavation has suggested that leather was officially collected and tanned or tawed at Catterick. Thirdly, there was an interest in the carcass: for lard was part of the staple diet provided by the Roman government for its troops: and this too could be extracted from pastoral communities, whether cattle or pigs provided it. One of the effects of the pax Romana, which stopped cattle-raiding between the different local groups, was to encourage an increase of population among the upland herdsmen of Westmorland and doubtless elsewhere. There came a time when the main settlements swarmed and minor farms grew up not far away, so that all the available land in the neighborhood must have been pastured to the full. This is particularly evident in such a valley as that of the Lyvennet, south of Penrith, and other areas tell the same story. The increase did not necessarily spell prosperity for the individual: it may in fact have meant the reverse. But it did mean a rise in the amount of taxable property, when it came to counting animals, not to mention the possibilities of army recruitment. There were, however, areas amid the fells and forests which show undeniable traces of a spreading agriculture. An outstanding example is Upper Wharfedale, where many miles of native field systems exist, studded with native farms yielding Roman pottery and coins down to the close of the fourth century A.D. The Air Gap was even opened to the villa system, though it must be significant that the single known example, at Gargrave in Craven, lies on the margin of an old glacial lake-bed, whose especially fertile land must have caught the eye of a wealthy man bent upon profitable farm development. Similarly the sole villa yet known in County Durham, at Old Durham, lies upon the magnesium limestone belt, which still carries the biggest farming land in the area. Whether these establishments belonged to native landowners or to Roman ex-soldier settlers must remain uncertain. Cameo British Bear ~ County Durham But veteran settlers are known elsewhere in the north and it would be wrong to suppose that all the land-development was due to native enterprise. The fort of Bremetennacum Veteranorum (Ribchester, Lancashire) was the administrative center of an enclave of veterans important enough to figure in a Roman geographical list. The Calder basin, from above Huddersfield to Castleford, has yielded altars dedicated to the tutelary deity of the Brigantes by roman citizens whose names strongly suggest that they too were veteran settlers. Nothing, however, is known of what form their settlements took or what kind of production was connected with them. If they were veterans then a land-settlement is most likely; and it should be observed that the Middle Gritstone, which the river Calder here cuts, supports good and comparatively light agricultural land. Tombstone of Thracian Cavalry Man from Gloucester Riding Down a Western Briton ~ An episode of the early days of conquest Wharfedale and its upper basin are intimately related to an exceptional form of habitation, namely, the limestone cave-dwellings which are a feature of the Pennines and Peak District wherever geological conditions permit their existence. These dwellings have in the past been variously interpreted, but nearly always through the eyes of a civilized mentality which could conceive of them only as a refuge and not as a permanent dwelling. This, however, is not the view taken of such accommodation by peasant communities, to whom they offer a residence drier and more permanent than a hut, much warmer in winter and cooler in summer. It is therefore not surprising that many of the caves, villages, and field-systems are intimately connected and that there is no real distinction to be drawn between the one and the other. They certainly do not represent the habitations of refugees from Roman rule, for most of them show a long continuity of habitation and they are not difficult either to find or to smoke out, as was the practice in Roman Africa when they were used by outlaws in this way. They represent rather the readied adaptation by man of advantages provided by Nature: an extra possibility in housing as opposed to an emergency measure. (continued in next posting) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Should this list be arranged in alphabetical order? Chronologically? In order of occurence in the consciousness of the population at UNRV? My own list, had it been without prior influence, would've had Christ at the top because of all that emanated out of his life in the past 2,000 years, even to including Mohammad. But my own list would've had Caesar right up there next to Christ, as I believe he (generic) produced the need for a Christ. These would've represented my own bias of Western Civilization, which would've been no more preferable. I presume?

One of mine, is in part a response to Nephele

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) Field Drainage Canals as a Transport System The foundations of the system has been shown by excavation to belong to the later years of Nero; a date which has an important bearing upon the original design of the scheme and upon the origin of the labour force required both for the canals or drains and for the subsequent farming. At the time the Roman northern frontier was based upon Lincoln, and there was no reason for basic military supplies to proceed further. The construction of the Fossdyke canal to the Trent may well be an addition to the scheme, after the advance of the legionary base from Lindum (Lincoln) to Eburacum (York) in A.D. 71. As for the labour required to make them, the works are situated in land immediately adjacent to the territory of the Iceni, and their construction belongs to the period just after the revolt of A.D. 61, which the Iceni had led. There can be little doubt that the conquered rebels were condemned to labor at the new works and were thereafter drafted to the new agricultural reserve thus created, working it upon terms much more favourable to Rome than to themselves. It might, then, be thought that the Romans would have imposed here their own system of field-planning. But when the new fields and farms made possible by the drainage are scrutinized upon the vast mosaic of air-photographs by which the late Major Allen, the Fenland Research Committee, and Dr. St. Joseph have revealed them, it becomes clear that, while the canals and the main roads across the area bear the systematic imprint of the Roman engineer, the farms, fields, and lanes are no less characteristically native. The conclusion is inevitable that the native

This makes for interesting reading, and it would make a good model for future regulations of this type. I'm speaking theoretically here. Not really knowing the way these cases were handled across the board, it would make sense that they be done in this way for some if not all of the twenty eight new colonies in Italy; and other similar units in outlying provinces as well, if the costs couldn't be ascribed in some way to the province overall. The capital expenditures are being appropriately amortized, charged off, or allocated, in some proportional way to those citizens who are enjoying the benefits of the services provided from the expenditure, pro-rata. Rome (the city) would be another case entirely because it is the hub of government. There, the doles for food or corn need be provided to the citizens of the capital and to the place of the voting citizen. That would be for the benefit of good public order (and to secure votes if those votes be important) Two other side issue observations if I may: There was a similar "model" document posted (perhaps by you also GPM) that pertained to boundaries of Colonies and/or other population centers or units which made for equally interesting reading and looked a great deal like the ones that cover similar boundary protection laws here in the USA. I'd like to find that again. Another thing interesting to me is the difference in the amount of text there is between the English translation and the original text in Latin. That can only likely be attributed to the efficiency of Latin with its word endings for conjugating verbs and declining nouns (and perhaps idioms) versus the English method of accomplishing the same things with additional words and forms etc. I note though, that instruction sheets in English are almost always much shorter than those in Spanish and French. This switch seems curious to me.

I personally go for the Epic Moments, and those are better left to the actors themselves. I wouldn't pretend to know what should be said to someone like a Caesar or a Constantine which leads me to my own second most interesting location; York in Britannia with the proclamation of Constantine (the Great) as Augustus, in 306 by his troops. I tend to visualize things from the eyes of an enlisted man (as I once was) in a military setting, and visualize the mud, dirt, the gear, and military formations, and marches. Being an individual trooper among the ranks in a battalion or company formation, calling for the elevation of your commander to a higher office would be very exciting. To know what was happening from the vantage point of "pre-cognition" would make it even more so. But the reality would be the endless marches, the cadence calls of the centurions (or the "Corporals), the crashing of boots, when called to "order", or marching on the Roman roads, are the real scenes. Only the trooper knows the thrill of the well organized machine of a platoon when every thing is in synchronicity. I would accept that as part of the price of "being there" This has always seemed to me to be a second Rubicon moment (after Gallienus & to the Tetrarchy), which led to a permanent shift of Roman power to the east. It compares with the other earlier moment by setting the stage for a whole new cycle of struggle through military clashes, civil war, and intrigues that seemed to give a new name to the empire with which it was about to be branded until recently as the Byzantine Empire. Constantine the Great came to be as much a man of action, energy, and genius as was Caesar, and he seemed to be equally favored by his troops. He though, at 34 had 31 years following his

This a very interesting find. One reason is the preserving medium, water. If certain things can remain immersed in water, and secondly if silt from outside is not suspended in the water to do its damage, then they can remain pretty much the same for very long periods of time. Wood won't last very long at all if soaked in water and dried out repeatedly. It will ablate away in just a few years. We see that all the time in construction, and I 'm not talking about insect action. There is an estuary near the gulf of Mexico and New Orleans where tree stumps have remained below the surface of the water and have been there, scientists report, for 20,000 years, a very long time. That accounts for the wood door. Metal objects may be preserved too, we see. The one bucket looked very familiar, the shape, the bale, and the flanges on which the bail (handle) was attached looked like something from the early 20th century. "Nineteen metal vessels emerged from the bottom of a wood-lined well. Although they look like fine household objects, it is possible that the hoard may have had religious uses. It is also possible that the objects were hidden by Roman Londoners fleeing tribes from Scotland, Ireland and Germany who were converging on Londinium. They may have planned to return to retrieve them. Until the 1960s the land had remained largely undeveloped. The site

G.O., It's nice to see you back here doing what you do so well!! Now GO for it!

Salve - It

A very thought provoking question AC, This one I needed to sleep on; having done that, I choose the 6 months from October 45 to April 44 BC, to be there in the environs of Rome, and for the most fateful days of the Western world. But of course I

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) The Equipment The equipment of this kind of farm in corn-growing country is worth specification. The farm-house and accessory buildings form a group of huts either round or rectangular in plan. They are never large: an average cross-dimension of twenty feet would err on the high side. It has often been stated in the past that some were furnished with rude hypocausts do not occur in huts and are in fact corn-drying ovens; for the British farmer, as Pytheas had noted in the fourth century B.C., often gathered his corn green and threshed it under cover. This demands parching of the grain to make it keep. The plan of these kilns and their flues varied considerable, now bowl-shaped, now T-shaped, now H-shaped, and now forked. But the principle of construction was always the same, to create a fire whose hot gases passed through flues and heated gently a floor never itself in direct contact with the flames. Comparable installations, of much greater size and more complicated construction, are found in the Romanized villas. Once dried, the grain was stored in basket-lined pits. Both the pits and corn-drying ovens needed frequent renewal, and a site occupied over a long period therefore yields them in bewildering multiplicity. The area of the farm us usually enclosed by a ditch and bank, and its comparative spaciousness, demanded in part at least by the room required for the various installations and their renewal, is again deceptive as an indication of either the peopling of the establishment or its capacity in output. If the general social relationship of villas to small-holdings is clear, there are, however, many points upon which information is wholly lacking. It is known that in the southern area of Roman Britain the great plough, with massive coulter, was widely distributed, from Essex to Hampshire and Gloucestershire. These implements, first introduced in the Belgic area of pre-Roman Britain, are of uncertain form, but it is clear that while primitive methods of traction would enable them to be used in the smallest size of Celtic fields, 100 feet square, convenience would choose the larger sizes of field, up to 400 feet. The villas which were associated with this newer kind of agriculture may therefore be expected to have had a field system of somewhat larger scale. This however, has not yet been identified in detail, although the air-photographs of certain Oxfordshire villas, like Ditchley and Little Milton, show clear traces of a new lay-out of field boundaries to a generous scale in the immediate vicinity of the farmhouse. On the other hand, it may be regarded as equally certain that not a few conservative villa owners will have derived their wealth from customary tenants engaged in farming in the old style, and will therefore be in close touch, as are certain villas north of Winchester, with unchanged field-systems of the old type. How much there was of a new style in agriculture, and in what relationship it stood to the old, are thus questions which can be asked but which must for the time being remain unanswered. Still less has there been detected any trace of the Roman fashion of centuriated fields, systematically laid out in large standard rectangles enclosed by a grid of accommodation roads. Such systems might be expected to occur in the vicinity of the coloniae at Lindum (Lincoln) or Glevum (Gloucester), and Haverfield went so far as to indicated a parallel but non-rectangular system of roads west of Camulodunum (Colchester). But no unimpeachable example of centuriation has yet rewarded either the field-student or the air-photographer. It seems evident that in the British province Roman fields of the regular agrimensorial patterns were, to say the least, extremely rare, though their identification has proved a will o

Contratulations Gaius, I'll get that charge for you, and it's actually in better condition than I may have let on. The pages are only the slightest bit off-white. Valete - Faustus --------------------- If elegancy still proceedeth and English pens maintain that stream [of new words] we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall within few years be fain to learn Latin to understand English. -- Sir Thomas Browne, 1646

Salve Omnes, Whether or not this is the best place to put this, I

THE COUNTRYSIDE (From: Roman Britain- ch. three) A Manorial Precursor Excavation at such villas as Park Street and Lockleys has revealed that Romanized buildings succeeded native farms of a primitive kind, composed of groups of rectangular or circular huts. But it is also a well-known fact that throughout the province many farms of this poorer sort retained their form little altered through the centuries and in general hardly affected by the Roman world around them. Evidence for this continuity of native habit abounds in large areas throughout the island: Salisbury Plain, the Dorset chalk-lands, parts of the North and South Downs, the Fenland, the Long Mynd, and Upper Wharfedale may be cited as typical regions of the kind. It would, however, be wrong to suppose that this ubiquity of native farms represents the existence of an anti-Roman movement or the presence of a populace reluctant to avail itself of better conditions: for excavation reveals that the inhabitants of such places were as Romanized as their means permitted them to be. Some Other explanation of the state of affairs is therefore required, and the way thereto is cleared if it can be accepted that the Romanized villa and the native farm started from the same cultural level; for it then becomes necessary to suppose that the difference must lie in the social relationship of their occupants. The social framework of the Celtic tribe was explained by the Romans in terms of their own institution of patroni and clientes. This was a relationship based upon social duty: in return for the protection and personal support of a wealthy patronus Roman clientes bound themselves solemnly to further his interests and perform his requests. The expression was accordingly used by Roman writers to convey Celtic clan relationship. But clan relationship also had an economic foundation, expressed in tenancy and rent. The chieftain and his principal followers lived upon their tenants