caesar novus

The above narrator seems to have a rare gift of very pleasing delivery - just click on one of the 128Kbps mp3 files. For more examples of free readings of Roman material of much more variable quality, check the beginning of http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=ro...dio_bookspoetry and towards the end of http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=ro...etry&page=2 Maybe the less good ones are worthwhile for listening during distracting environments like commuting. I think an ideal player for audio books is the Sansa Clip which has a tiny screen just big enough to navigate among books (and music, etc) yet is as little as a matchbook. I found a 8 gig (=20 books?!) one on sale for almost no more then the most entry level Apple ipod.

Pretty good one on Roman Civil War, huh? http://www.archive.org/details/Pharsalia . And check out various resource links from that page... wow.

Oh boy, some more pictures could soothe the ache of my May itinerary falling apart... Some ideas: - If admission fees are an issue, remember the third week of April being culture week with state museums free. I used to hit 5 smaller museums a day, commando style. They have disproportionately high fees, and some are only worth a brief walk thru anyway. But others would be worth skipping lunch for, and I remember encountering a 5 euro wine festival at the end of such a day with no food in my stomach - ouch! - Maybe download somewhat confusing directions and maps ahead of time for getting to Hadrian's Villa by public bus (looking forward to more of anyone's pictures of that place). - Career in flux? Maybe schmooze with various archeo groups in order to become a known quantity for hiring consideration. If not those Swedish societies in Rome and Anacapri, then how about some rich EU bureaucracy that prevents it's construction projects from damaging artifacts? At a book talk today I was once more reminded of the importance of showing up as opposed to applying thru channels for a job. The Army ordered the author to go home, but he sneakily went AWOL and hitchhiked to Nuremberg to join the prosecution team of WW2 Nazis (and go on to enough glory to rate a biography). BTW, he said what do you mean justice of the victors... Stalin and Churchill were telling them to drop the trials and shoot them all, although they did acquit 2 Nazi's he thought were among the worst. - Modest proposal: Isn't tiny Malta providing the head of the EU in June? Hop on over for a visit to, say, the bar frequented by the prospective president. Or find him on the beach or where ever and propose a role for you and archeology in the new regime. Like a plan for Turkey (and it's Roman sites)... bring them into the EEA rather than EU like Norway and Iceland. Not a marriage, just good friends, but I think with juicy subsidies for Turkey. I hear they have umpteen Roman sites that are threatened by construction or more often unauthorized visits or plunder. Map them out, protect them, plan their future on an EU budget?

I had also wondered about that, but think it may be the case of "Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can't, Teach." Think of the folks who are fascinated by (or employed in) psychology or marital therapy... aren't they the ones a tiny bit unstable or with 4 ex spouses? If I look at my own talents, which are only about twofold but not too bad... almost all the success comes at a non-verbal, subconcious level. I don't mean artsy intuitive stuff; it is absolutely based on logic but the tactics transcend what can be itemized and organized into narrative. Contrasted to my vast shortcomings, where I can easily reflect and think of more logical ways to cope, partly because I keep falling short. Sort of like sports where at one time you may get in the groove and dominate effortlessly and mindlessly, or at another time mess up everything and rack your brains for explanations and ways out. P.S. I bought the new Hicks translation of Meditations and then heard it was a bit eccentric... anyone prefer another version?

Not exactly history, but it is a pretty regular demonstration on TV documentaries of recreating them and showing how they can bend after hitting shields, at least a shield being moved around in battle. A breakaway approach must have more to do with preventing the pila from being thrown back. Of course a victim can straighten out bends and rethrow, but unless hitting flesh it would probably just bounce off any obstruction. Anyone who has spent time trying to pound in a restraightened nail knows how severely weakened it can be.

True, even the historical geneology records should remain open to challenge since there may have been ulterior motives for pretending a certain ancestory. But based on measurements of a now vanished skull, and would one eighth ancestory or whatever have such a great effect on the skull? I've recently stopped following Egyptian archeology, but seem to recall various mummies with funny skull shapes being reasoned away by distortion pressures over the passage of time (I'm not just talking about that Akenaten-sp? oddball). Cleo's sister skull was measured a century ago when they probably didn't recognize when or where plasticity was possible in ancient skulls. I wonder what skull types they consider local for that time period. Maybe not the Egyptian arab kind, but Egyptian nubian (like in current Aswan) which may be more distinctive than arab compared to Greek? Well, anyway this is based on a chain of assumptions like this is really her full sister. I wish such key assumptions in social sciences could be flagged with explicit certainty factors. Too often we hear xyz is the most likely, not knowing whether the speaker means something like 5%, 50% or 95% likely... that is whether there are strong alternatives. When computers were young, there was a lot of excitement in modelling artificial intelligence by assigning certainty factors and doing the math when chaining them together. I think it came up with surprising and good results.

I hope they get more precise about the evidence. Nowdays it's the scientists that operate on faith rather than reason, and skim over the facts and veil the degree of certainty if it can prop up the sacred cause of victimology (human or ecological). For example, the case of Thomas Jefferson fathering a slave child was mainly thru "winking" innuendo which could not be supported by DNA theory (the child DNA being related to any male Jefferson, not any particular one, and the family living context not limiting things to Tommy). Edit: victimhood in the Cleo case being a bit different in the sense of wanting to boost the esteem of present day perceived victims by delivering them a heroine (or well known or notorious personage?). If it looks true, fine... if it looks plausible, disclose; just don't play games with half truths.

Sometimes you can work an audio book into your schedule easier than a physical one. Here are some of my initial attempts to pursue that, in case it might inspire others to do so or to tell us how to do so. Free audio books online: There are a surprising number, expecially old ones in the public domain. Most are in indecipherable synthetic speech, and some narrated by a mixture of painfully amaturish volunteers. There is supposed to be a new on-demand synthetic speech project released in near future. Public library DRM downloads: Holy moley... my threadbare local library has gone online with umpteen audio books and CD's available under the watchful eye of Digit Rights Management software. Requires a library card, and makes me wonder if I might be eligible for any other library card with similar privileges. Issues: Most of what I see seems to be in Windows Media Audio format, which can't even be played on an Apple Ipod, at least with DRM. Even if you have a compatible WMA player, we can't load it via a Mac because it's DRM only works with mp3 (here). Anyway, an unexpected resource. Thinking of downloading "Caesar's Legion; Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome" but will have to wait til I find time to both sort out download issues and actually listen. They still enforce check out timeframes, and the bits presumably vanish on a schedule.

http://www.beyondspaceandtime.org/FCBSTWeb...html#link=index This downloadable simulator of Ye Olde Peking is great, although it overheats my laptop and I may literally have to precool it in a freezer before short periods of use. Where is a Roman version?!

Well, thank you all for being so honest. Some might have sensed that I had blown my travel budget on a big TV, and patronized me with white lies. Actually it's worse, as I probably have to skip a month long trip to Italy with painful cancellation fees. Arrgh... hope you all will continue to post nice Roman photos online. Anyway, just a reminder of some computer simulated experiences. Besides the free http://earth.google.com/rome/index.html , the very expensive http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=3430 (Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity's Greatest Empire) sometimes goes on sale for 75% off, esp with coupons you can google up. I can't get the latter to show terribly clear simulations, (maybe it is my equipment) but the audio is clear, if that professor can be believed.

Hmm, it's sounding as if I fell in love with the Roman Republic but then accidentally got married to her evil lookalike sister, the Roman Empire! I don't know where I would have seen so many busts from the Republic, and I clearly recall seeing more than one notorious emperor being depicted like a kindly uncle trying to think up less painful ways to execute Christians. But maybe we all take captions of busts too seriously. I visited Rome's Palazzo Altemps when they had temporary(?) cardboard signs with lengthy english writeups on the changes the busts had gone thru. For example, it might have originally been a historical figure that was changed to some god for a Cardinal who was looking for that. Then fashions changed, and it was changed to some other historical figure. I don't see these signs in slideshows I will post at the bottom. If I turn on the "show info" flag on flicker I only see one discussion of a faked sculpture, and googled text just talks about repairs and minor enhancements. But a physical guidebook agrees with the "cardboard" that such sculpture changes to Roman originals were widespread, not only in that Cardinals massive and now dispersed collection, but throughout the Renaissance. Most permanent museum captioning has not been edifying to me. In Italy it may be absent (Naples?) or be in a confusing format. Not only Roman numerals, but some puzzling initials which I couldn't relate to BC or BCE etc. And outside Italy it has become fashionable to use those annoying spotlights which inevitably become misaligned to throw captions into perma-gloom shadows. The following don't seem to show my poised emperors (I'm sure they somewhere exist?!) and don't seem to show edifying signs (I'm sure this wasn't from a dream?!) but might ring a bell for someone who has visited, or entice others to visit. Best to turn on the "show info" flag on for flicker, and for that matter turn them to slow and hook it up to your TV with a digital HDMI cable for a nice background show for Roman nerds... http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=Palazzo+Altemps http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=alte...ter=1#slideshow

I thought they were more widespread, but I must admit that while trying to find some online pictorial examples to illustrate my point... MOST do not show that quality. I do seem to remember a cluster of good life size ones in the British museum, and frequently in central Italy (often hard to identify date). So to restate my point with more tedious precision, this wonderful and surprising quality is by far most frequently found in Roman sculpture compared to other traditions, even if it is in the minority. It is especially striking in powerful figureheads which almost always tend to the vainglory elsewhere. And I can't prove it, but when seeing Roman sculptures tagged as a copy from the Greek... they seem more natural and nonaffected compared to what I see in Athens Museum.

One thing that "hooked" me on Roman culture besides the architecture was a hard to describe unaffected, matter-of-fact composure of sculpted faces, especially of powerful men. Usually there seems none of the vain-glory theatricality or affectations of other ages, just an even tempered, centered, solid person. The gaze is neither distant nor blank, reactive nor imposing, but somehow just right. Even when the subject was a deranged psycho Sorry, I don't see Roman sculpture as a me-too of Greek sculpture; I don't groove on the Greek stuff at all. And the florid Renaissance stuff can just be moved off to Disneyland where it goes along with the cartoon themes, for all I care. I wonder why this understated gravitas; I suppose I might find the key in Roman philosophical writings. But I don't see such qualities in Roman paintings (bleh) or mosaics (passable). P.S. my avatar isn't a positive example but chosen as kind of an amusing exception...

An intnl war crimes arrest warrant has just been issued against the president of Sudan re Darfur http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/04...arfur.html?_r=1

Looks like the geneticists have failed to disprove the artifact-based theory that the Clovis people migrated from France to the US. To oversimplify, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis agrees today's Amer-indians have some Euro-origin genes, but they "appear" to have gone thru the same wringer (gene evolution) as all of those migrating eastwards (cross-Pacific rather than some of them cross-Atlantic). Well,I just want to stay vigilant since so many scientists seem to have abandoned science for new age looneyness. Some rejoice to have any ancient remains immediately reburied by their supposed tribal descendants, eliminating the chance to study whether they have another origin. Others have decried how melting pack ice will raise sea levels, while it is an elementary scientific fact that floating ice displaces the same volume whether it is floating or melted (eg. water greatly expands when frozen... and also minutely expands when warmer than +4, so it actually lowers sea level when going from freezing to +4).

Oh, that's nice once I got my browser to cope with the picassa kind of slideshow. I'm really surprised how satisfying this kind of virtual tourism is, once you get it on full screen with quick succession to the next slide. Maybe because my visits to such sites have been quite crowded ones, so I was continually being distracted rather than absorbing. Like I hear a noisy group approaching, so start to rush to stay ahead, or maybe dance around to avoid blocking someone's view.

That's pretty interesting. I'm sure they have their hands full for a hundred years already, but wanted to suggest some sites for future searching. I'm thinking of Italian military zones. They may be strategic now for the same reasons as for the Romans, but would I be right to guess many are currently falling into disuse? Also some may be relatively undeveloped/undisturbed compared to privately held land. For example there is a large forested conical hill in SE Capri that is fenced off for the military (maybe radar or transmitters?). I don't know the name, but its directly in from the Faraglioni rocks where boats zoom thru a natural arch. It just feels like a site for one of the supposed 6 imperial villas on Capri, being a prominent spot between the Villa Jovis and the other one now supposedly replaced by the current Certosa. You can circle it on one of the most beautiful walking trails on earth, branching off Via Tragera. Also it looks possibly free of historical dwellings.... the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe reported in his 1880's book "The History of San Michele" that Capri residents working on their home foundations would find and systematically destroy many Roman artifacts (erotic mosaics, etc) due to the bad reputation of Tiberious with respect to Christianity. Well, if not there maybe other coastal military sites...

Villa Jovis of Augustus and the actual headquarters of Tiberius is on a promontory on the island of Capri, Italy with one of the most outrageously beautiful settings on earth (and sublime food, nowdays): http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=villa+jovis Hadrians Villa near Tivoli, Italy is almost a city of palaces. To get a different set of photos, overtype "hadrians" with "adriana" (or whatever you like; it's just a dynamic sampling from a universe of tourist's photos): http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=hadrians+villa Diocletians Palace on the waterfront of Split, Croatia was actually his incomprehensibly vast retirement home. Apply a little imagination to filter out it's later updates and busy commercialism. http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=diocletians+palace

Yes, for example the most charismatic John Kennedy seems to have been a pretty bad president. Some say even his main accomplishment in winning the Cuban missile crises was a actually a loss because his concession to USSR that the US would forever work to prevent Castro's overthrow by any third party, which would have likely been attempted umpteen times by now. Touching on the religious issues raised by your dictionary, some of the charismatic US presidents may have been chosen for their perceived religiosity as much as for charm. Put aside those on the right, which tend to be religious and charmless. On the left, the candidate pool tends more towards charm and agnosticism. The strange thing is that successful candidates on the left seem to be favored for their plausible religious connections. Even if it is not one favored by the majority, like JFK's catholicism, and Obama's loony church of racism. Bill Clinton was another standout from the candidate pool of the left in having Baptist associations (don't ask then why not Hillary, having the charm of fingernails scraping a blackboard).

I've been knocked out by the visual quality of high def TV documentaries on a big screen for covering Roman Empire sites and monuments. I have thought to myself that it can seem better than when I have actually visited in person, and recently have even heard others mention that. Maybe because in person you have glare and noisy people pushing in the way, etc... let alone the fact you may be mentally and financially exhausted getting to Ephesus or where ever. It's remarkable that even documentaries that are mostly junk can have bewitching moments in HD, and now with a digital signal you can often back up and freeze on bits and pieces still in the decode buffer where they caught the coolest thing in just half a second of broadcast. Examples are History channel shows (caution, just their mention may induce projectile vomiting) Cities of the Underworld or Naked Archeologist. At least they have a sense of humor about exaggeration and innuendo so you know it is with a wink to bring in the bill paying demographic. If not content to mine the channels of TV documentaries over years, you can sometimes target big pools of photos with appropriate keywords, and start a machine gun slideshow. Try it on someplace you have been - sometimes they do justice to a place that took pretty miserable logistics for you to experience in person. Like flicker.com or google image search or ? Is it crazy to switch one's focus to new media rather than personal experience for Roman sites and monuments? I would never consider this for older (ntsc) TV, even with big screens, which just show a cartoon-like image that can't really spring to life. Maybe makes more sense for someone who has initial experience, especially of the more convenient sites. Then they can sort of "translate" media to reality for the harder to get to places (will save wear and tear on the sites also).

I have a question that maybe belongs in another thread (these forum categories have names that leave me eternally confused). What really is Fascism? Is it just an extreme on the left-right spectrum? Can Roman Republic or Empire be placed there (or maybe on a 2D spectrum?). Some (Yale or Princeton) professor wrote a book defining fascism in the most complicated way that seemed to fail Occam's razor - something about a consensus that democracy cannot work and heads have to be whacked (democraticly deciding against democracy?). Hitler put the Z into nazi party by adding national SOCIALIST workers party. He hated communists, but maybe as a family squabble because they were competing for the same anti-establishment demographic. Yes, he had his socialist brownshirts slaughtered at one point, but he was very reluctant to do so (delaying execution of the top guy for long) and apparently activated operation longknives only after false reports of an uprising planted by Goering and Himmler. So he was Fascist, but somehow aspired to be a national socialist rather than internationalist? I guess it's hard to tell how he would have organized the economy absent the special cases needed during war.

I heard a recognized expert of Roman-era Jewish archeology speak about some of the misconceptions common in TV documentaries. Some comments tread on sensitive ground and won't likely be so blatantly stated in normal channels of print or other media. I'll attempt to pass some on here, while not being specific about the source because I'll probably mangle the points (so judge for yourself). Claims of Christ family tombs and ossuaries (eg James): These were for the rich; in the very unlikely event the Christ family had one, it would not be in Jerusalem but more likely Nazareth. James was poor and hated pretentions of the rich anyway. Ossuaries were used in several regions of the world, but for wealthy Jews it was a fashion specifically borrowed from the Roman crematory urns which were identical in form (although used differently - for non crematory reburial). Similarly, the Jewish rock cut tombs were earlier borrowed from the Greeks, not for reasons of ideology, but as a form of upwardly mobile fashion items. (OK, archeologists can really only guess about "why", but they have suggestive evidence) Jesus resurrection: If Jesus had not risen from divine causes, the body would anyway be very likely to disappear from the tomb in a couple days. The tomb was just provided to solve a temporary catch22 of Jewish law where bodies have to be buried within 24 hours of death, but not during a sabbath. Jesus died a few hours before a 24 hour sabbath, so was was hurriedly lent a tomb by a nonfamily member who had to ask the Romans permission to intervene. These tombs were normally strictly for one family and already had capacity problems that required assembly-line reburial of older remains. So it would be expected that the rich owners of the tomb might rebury a "visitor" in a middle class trench type grave after having done the favor for compliance with those 2 laws.

Yeah, but keep the blame on managerialism before capitalism. Capitalism would have the owners rejecting excessive deals for management through their own financial interest, and it is puzzling why their wishes fail to get transmitted via the board of directors that they vote in. In the US, some say it is rigged because companies almost exclusively claim the shareholder-unfriendly state of Delaware as a regulatory home, sort of a flag of convenience like Liberia is for ships. Also too few vote their shares; in the US almost everybody is a shareholder but often through intermediaries such as with pensions. Management culture used to err in the opposite extreme. Instead of being hyper-responsive to financial opportunities, they were stagnant and refused to unleash the power of their capital and employees. When this was kicked loose by the so-called takeover raiders (1980's?), the press reviled them as greedy and layoff creators. But that was the stick that brought better health to business and actually to workers as well. Later (1990's) it was turbocharged by a carrot approach to attract and bait managers to even further achievement. Every such experiment that works will be pushed to test it's limits, and it was unfortunate this limit wasn't detected in more normal times. But unfortunately the aftermath of Asia's 1997 crash led to huge global distortions that enabled the western world to defy gravity for the next decade. Overreacting in a defensive way, China was a "pusher" of funds and the US (plus UK etc) was the "junkie" debtor: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12972083 I'm suggesting it was an unfortunate collision of 2 cycles of excess that could have been expected to sort themselves out in the normal way capitalism turns colliding self interests into solutions bearable to each side. But the confluence of cycles let things go way overboard. Over regulation of capitalism may be the worst response. It's crazy to think similar bonus system would go on, when it's very structure offers zero to folks in the rest of the cycle (eg. "underwater" options). Regulation has been among root causes of some of this, like Clinton-era restrictive terms for Asian bailouts and government mandates pushing mortgage money to sketchy borrowers. Allow flexibility and unclog the channels of counterbalancing self interest that keep things in line. There used to be famous "turnaround" CEO's who would go from one dying company to another and revive them, but the current populist outrage wouldn't allow enticing those experts with enough compensation.

Boo hoo, I'm gonna miss this years "Culture Week" in Italy the third week in April. I can't read the language in http://www.beniculturali.it/sala/dettaglio...,cs&Id=2958 but I assume it is the usual case where all state run museums and archeology sites are free. Can be useful to "mop up" some of the places lower on your priority list. For example maybe you didn't visit the remote vilas outside of Pompei that are included in the same ticket, but never get around to them due to the large package admission. Not sure what it covers, but has been useful for me in sampling a bunch of museums that were in general unlikely to justify admission, but had a few rewarding surprises. I guess all Euro and especially Pound denominated prices are in freefall to those exchanging from US$ anyway.