guidoLaMoto

Welcome back, Neil. I can't remember you because I've only been amember here for a short time. I'm looking forward to what will probably be interesting contributions from you. That's quite an eclectic little curriculum (would that make it a curriculum-ulum?) vitae you've outlined. (Have you considered seeking counseling?) I see we share an Interest in 2-wheeling. My screen name is a play on words in Italian.

More amazing to me is how technology can allow us to read the carbonized scrolls, and the episode about slavery adds significantly to the richness of the history. Pin-pointing Plato's grave brings to mind the story of how they finally located the exact position of Mozart's grave. He was buried in a mass grave for paupers....It seems one day not long ago a groundskeeper heard music coming up out of the ground. Experts realized it was Eine Kleine Nachtmusik being played backwards.....They figured it was Mozart de-composing.

65% for worms!! Wow....and these mummies were presumably the well to do class. Imagine the rates among the poor with more crowded living conditions. Malnutrition both from lack of adequate meat intake as well as nearly universal parasitic disease is probably a problem under appreciated by modern historians. It's been suggested that Caesar's "falling sickness" was anything from primary epilepsy or CVAs (both unlikely in a non-diabetic, non-smoker in his 50s) to cystocicersis from eating pork in Egypt (also less likely given the intermittency of his attacks). Tertiary syphylis may be the best fit of his symptoms.

Interesting etymologies you've presented. Thanks... In regards transiliterations & changes in pronunciation as words evolve from one language to another, consider, for example, how the word Yankee derives from the way the American Indians pronounced the word English. One small detail-- Carthago is the nominative case for Carthage; Carthaginis is the genitive and the root for the other case declensions. And a caveat-- translations of ancient poetry put into rhyming jingle in English are often not very true to the original but just give a general idea of what's going on.

I was referrkng to D of Halacanarssus. His Roman Antiquities was published in 7 BC.

In regards the Pillars, did not Plato claim they were mountains at Gibraltar, and did he not pre-date the other authors cited above? In regards religion, don't forget we're not talking verifiable science/history but figments of human imagination (When you talk to God, you're praying. When He talks to you, you're schizophrenic.)...Notice how St Nick morphed over the years from a nice old priest leaving apples on doorsteps to the fat guy in red velvet invented by a Cocoa Cola advertising guy, eventually flying thru the air with reindeer, acquiring elves and a North Pole toy shop. Dionysus emphasized the Greek origins of the Italians. They no doubt evolved different details in the religion originally carried to Italy. Cf-- an early 20th century prayer meeting in Appalachia to High Mass by The Pope in Rome.

It looks like modern biker chicks descended from Scythian women....Tattoos were of course a customary practice from the earliest times. Otzti the Bolzano Ice Man had them 5000 yrs ago....Internalizing a vanquished foe by drinking his blood or eating his heart also is more ancient than the Scythians. It was a practice still in vogue among the Amerindians when first encountered by Europeans. We moderns should avoid judging the ancients by our own standards of morals and conduct.

I thought the common wisdom was that the Carthaginians were Phoenicians (poenus or punicus in Latin, hence Punic Wars). I should think that Dido was a poetic invention of Vergil. That whole dalliance was not mentioned by Dionysus of Halicanarssus in his history of the origins of Rome. Vergil meant the story to be a romantic explanation of the continued competition between the two cities.... He was probably looking forward to selling the movie rights to The Aeneid and figured it needed a love interest to spice it up for improved box office appeal. You know how that goes. Carthago delenda est!

Decimation was far more brutal than that. Started by Appius Claudius Sabinus in 471 BC in the Volscian War when troops exhibited cowardice, a cohort was selected and every tenth man, selected by casting lots, was condemned to being beaten to death with clubs wielded by his nine comrades....I guess old Appius never heard of the phrase "verbum sapienti sufficit." Indivuals found to exhibit cowardice were scouraged in front of their comrades and then beheaded. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0160%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D59

It's a bit of a stretch to equate charcoal found against a wall as proof that the Roman culture persisted for a long time. That sounds more like squatters seeking refuge in an abandoned building....Maybe if the fire was in a fireplace? OTOH-- logical deduction can bring us to the outline of plausible scenarios in the second half of the film. After all, when the govt fell, there was no "last helicopter out of Saigon." The Romans were left behind to fend for themselves. There is strength in numbers, so they would have organized themselves in smaller, local groups. They would not have immediately abandoned walled, better protected towns (where would they go?)...Outlying villas were selfsustaining, so lack of central govt would not effect their day to day functioning-- better for the peons to stay on with steady room &board than to venture out on their own to what?

You re on the right track, Guy, but you forget Agenda 21 and 2030 Agenda.......Why do you think they want to take away the private ownership of guns? Even the Americans, once so proud and jealous of their freedom, have fallen victim to the "frog in luke warm water" phenomenon. It irritates me when the news readers refer to the American president as "the leader of the free world."...I have to wonder what free world they are referring to? Culturally, America has a Roman Empire effect on the whole world. English has become, thanks originally to The Brits, the universal tongue, as was Latin, and Hollywood and Rock & Roll have had the same effect as CJ Caesar in spreading and homogenizing our world culture.

Welcome! In case you hadn't noticed, Aeneas' rejection of Dido in Africa sets the stage for the eventual animosity between Rome and Carthage, poetically speaking. I too would ike to see more discussion of the Latin language here myself.

Allele frequencies are subject to the "use it or lose it" phenomenon, so persistence of the HbS trait in high numbers suggests endemicity of SSD in subSaharan populations, and it's much lower frequency in Egyptians suggests any malaria seen there was more sporatic, maybe epidemic in certain years under more favorable but unusual conditions. Egypt was a major source of grain because the annual spring floods were so consistent & dependable. While the strip of fertile Nile farmland was quite narrow, it was also quite long providing more arable acres than any other region around the Mare Nostrum. Malaria was quite common in the LA Bayou area, I didn't realize it posed such a problem during The Rebellion. Thanks for that info.

Malaria = mala aria = bad air The ancients were very close to a germ theory of disease. Pliny wrote in some detail about it. The classic example of genetic adaptation to disease is the malaria/sickle cell trait so very common in the sub-Saharan population. HbS (sickle cell trait) is not very common in modern Egyptians, so it's a stretch to claim it was common among their ancients forefathers. Malaria is spread only by the Anopheles mosquito which is adapted to life in the rain forests of central Africa, not temporary wet land seen only during the seasonal floods of the Nile Valley. The Roman forum was a swampy area at The Founding. The Lacus Curtius was big & deep enough to get a horse and rider (Curtius) bogged down in the first Sabine war. It no longer exists having been drained by the Cloaca maxima. The conditions were ripe, no doubt, for any number of mosquito borne infections to be prevalent-- yellow fever, the equine encephalopathies, West Nile Virus etc etc....but viral illnesses, as we saw with the 1918 influenza and 2020 CoViD epidemics, are prone to pop up suddenly and then rapidly mutate/evolve to less devastating forms rapidly, so again, it-s a stretch to claim our modern viral diseases were common in ancient times.,. Malaria and TB are not viral. Tuberculous bone lesions are not rare among Neandertal fossils, and the prevalence of the HbS allele suggests an ancient origin. It's also a stretch to equate a club foot, usually seen as a congenital problem, with polio. Other forms of acquired neuropathy that allow for long term survival in order for bony aabnormalities to mature would be more likely than polio.

A) Correlation does not prove cause & effect. 2) Romanization, including both linguistic and social/political tendencies, exhibited a dilution/diffusion effect with distance from the center. Catholicism came relatively late to outlying areas, so, less ingrained/more easily lost. c) The obviously very successful organization of the Roman govt (emperor-senate-govenors-legionaires) translated readily to Pope/king-college of cardinals/privy council-bishops/dukes etc-priests/army. It's easier to modify/adapt an existing engine to a new application than it is to design a whole new engine from scratch. 4) The European countries that went on to build colonial empires were the ones that were organized and consolidated earlier. Italy and Germany were still fragmented along feudal lines until late in the 19th century.