guidoLaMoto

Funny how history repeats itself....Makes me wonder if Trump is channeling Maximus and Honorius in regards his warnings to NATO?....We could already draw a parallel between Trump, elected, dismissed and then re-elected to Marcus Furius Camillus, made dictator, exiled, then summoned again to save Rome from Brennus and the Gauls. Everything reminds me of something else.

The energy efficiency POV is one way of looking at it, but there's two problems with the logic: Hannibal had little advanced scouting intelligence for him to decide on a "most energy efficient" route, and the intelligence he did rely on from the indigenous tribesmen may have been deceitful disinformation advanced by those who weren't happy with his intrusion into their territory-- Note that they seemed to have deliberately led him into a very tight passage and ambushed his entourage. What do you get when you cross a parrot with a gorilla? ...I dunno, but when it talks, you better listen....What did Hannibal get when he crossed The Alps with his elephants?...Anyone?..Buehler?

Well, if you're going to be a copo (proprietor of a caupona or deversorium) maybe you ought to hang on to that "Fugas carcerem liber" card.--> I never came across the concept of "hotel" in reading Latin texts before. We have mentioned here a few months ago about way stations along the roads-- "stations" (from stare- to stand), temporary stop to change horses and to eat vs "mansion" (from manere- to remain) for an over night stop. Here's an interesting treatment of accomodations in the ancient world https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0062:entry=caupona-harpers&highlight=deversorium

They draw a false conclusion....The only thing they can correctly say is that they were infected with Plasmodium sp when they died. The fact that they found two or more sp points toward chronic &/or recurrent infections, very common in that region at that time. A fulminant course of malaria leading to rapid death within days of exposure is less common than a more indolent course resulting in anemia and eventual organ failure. (Cf- Quartan Fever) https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/hcp/clinical-features/index.html

It does sound a lot like checkers....but then, how do they explain the little tablet they found with it that reads "I recte Carcerem...Non passare Ire...Non colligere CC Sisterces"..??

Roman legionnaires whiled away their free time after all that marching, digging and tree felling each day after the day's new castra was built by playing what seems to be a form of rugby. The ball (harpastrum) was made of leather filled with feathers or wool. No details of rules or scoring is known, but it apparently was a violent process of advancing the ball across a goal line, probably much like modern rugby. (I recently saw a bumper sticker that read "Be kind to animals-- Take a hockey player to lunch." https://youtu.be/j-YK-SPsUe4?si=xPF4f8vHmsk7edGi. Roberto Trizio calls it "Roman Soccer."

Magister Craft's take on the baths M

Microbes don't grow on and spoil honey for the same reason that old bag of sugar in your pantry doesn't go bad-- no protein or vitamins and an osmotically unfavorable environment for microbial growth. Vergil advocated for beekeeping in his Georgics. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilGeorgicsIV.php https://www.apiaristsadvocate.com/post/keeping-bees-in-ancient-rome-a-glimpse-from-virgil-the-poet ...and even Sherlock Holmes retired to the relaxing, rustic life of bee keeping. Partially educated American Treehuggers have had their shorts in a bunch for the past thirty years over Colony Collapse Disease, not realizing that honey bee populations follow the usual, natural cyclic changes in numbers, in dynamic equilibrium with their environment, and they completely ignore the fact that honey bees are non-native invasives in N Am that squeeze out their native pollinator competition.

There's several examples in the lit. of observations of those "wild boys" supposedly raised by wolves in 19th century France (why is it always France?) Presented with various substances, they would inquisitively sniff them and not react with aversion as a "civilized" person would be expected to.....Apparently we are taught in childhood that certain odors are to be considered repulsive. Note that dogs & cats will sniff at droppings and not exhibit any emotional response. Before storm sewers and plumbing, particularly in the larger towns & cities, the air must have been ripe with aromas, and probably no one thought much about it. As George Burns once said about his lousy Vaudeville act- "if I didn't hear booing. I thought something was wrong." https://youtu.be/R3RRk-a0wLM?si=IfzsAWCWTLstM5fV. Roma Sordida-- Filthy Rome

You'd think the Isle de la Cite' would be loaded with ancient artifacts, being the site of the original encampment that was to become Paris. A natural island, the river formed a moat that would be most easily defended. It was the location of the Roman governor's home in late antiquity. Rome's Tiberina island was man made- sediment building up around Tarquinius Superbus' crop angrily thrown into the shoals (vadum) of the river by the Romans after devastating his fields as they deposed him in 509BC.

Caesar, as a member of the Julian clan, claimed descent from Aeneas and thus Venus. Modern genetic analysis does indicate that inhabitants of central Italy trace ancestry back to Anatolia (although evidence of a genetic connection to Mt Olympus remains unsubstantiated). The Greeks called the famous city Ilion (hence the name of the epic poem - the Iliad), while the Hittites, neighbors to the east, apparently called it "Wilusia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy Both names are dominated by the "L" sound. Neither have a "T or Tr" component. OTOH- While Livy refers to the home of Aeneas as Troia, he also states that after escaping Troy, his entourage first landed at the northern most bay of the Adriatic and established camp in the land between the sea and the Alps- "Troia vocatur" (Troy it is called.) https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0169%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D1 From there, as the story goes. Aeneas eventually wandered to Macedonia, then Sicily, eventually to Carthage before settling in Latium..... ...So- was the city defeated in the Iliad really also called Troy and Aeneas' first colony should have been called New Troy, or was Ilion referred to by later authors exercising poetic license as Troy?

https://youtu.be/tecP_O1qQoM?si=6gxG-TNVcBQJTPIP Magister Craft on The House of the Surgeon in Pompeii

Two additional points to your excellent post-- Vit K is a cofactor in the manufacturing of clotting factors, mostly in the liver, so any present in an applied spiderweb would be of no consequence at the wound site. Clotting at a wound is enhanced by anything that increases surface area for fibrin to adhere too. Native Americans & woodsmen used moss By coincidence, I just watched a video today about the advantages the Roman legionnaires had in wearing their traditional tunic rather than pants. Among them was easier access for care of lower body wounds....I wonder where they found enough spider webs after a major battle?

It's no secret that reflection or refraction can change the wavelength of light rays. Newton explained how a prism works four centuries ago. Mother Nature has exploited the phenomenon to provide color without using pigments in various birds, butterflies and lizards for eons. Eg- the throat of a Ruby Throated Hummingbird only looks red from certain angles-- no feathers with red pigment. The article states that the color changes have to do with gold & silver impurities in the glass, but that the "authorities" think it's more likely that that was accidental rather than planned...????...I don't know about their neighborhood, but around here there's not too much stray gold or silver dust flying around. I think it's way more likely that they knew what they were doing. They probably weren't as dumb as our "authorities." Re: 3D printed objects-- note that the pattern is made by varying the thickness of the cup, providing differential refraction, a prism effect, to change colors. They did not make a printed image of the original Lycurgus Cup.

There are dozens of articles and YouTube presentations about aqueducts and "inverted siphons," all authored by people who apparently weren't paying attention in grammar school science class....Water seeks it's own level. It flows down hill, and given a pathway, will flow back up to the level from whence it came...No need for amazing engineering tricks to build an aqueduct. They just had to make sure the destination was lower than the source and no point along the way was higher than the source.....Roller coasters are designed with the same science in mind. (Lagrangian Mechanics)) BTW-- plumbers need only know three things to be successful in their trade: (1) Water flows downhill. (2) Payday is Friday, and (3) Don't chew your fingernails.

How does this stuff get published? They analyzed data from 258 individuals who lived over a span of 250+ years and expect us to believe those detailed demographic characterizations. ???? The only thing they should credibly conclude is that people in the small sample buried there tended to be older if they lived after 476 AD.....and we don't know anything about those who didn't wind up in these graveyards (which was probably the majority of the population).

"stolen?"...Where did King Ludwig get it? ID-- sometimes a bust has an inscription, but more usually identified by its location and associated objects/context. Busts (Imago or effigies in Latin) were a status symbol in Rome, displayed in homes to show prominent, powerful family associations. Wax death masks & busts were an important part of the funeral procession tradition.

April 21-- the traditional birthday of Rome. Originally a community of shepherds, the day corresponds to the traditional holiday celebrating the god of shepherds, Pales, hence, the celebration was called the Parilia. https://youtu.be/rSxGLtN1ClE?si=oalm_kqCS1L2ZJhf (click the cc for English subtitles)

Classic Vaudeville routine: Patron ordering at a restaurant-- "I'll have a piece of burnt toast and a rotten egg...I've got a tapeworm and that's good enough for him." Worms, Giardia, Cryptosporidium and many others were common infections among humans everywhere prior to the advent of flush toilets. While Pliny alludes to the concept of contagious diseases spread by bad air (mal' aria) and foul water, without the benefit of the microscope, the ancients couldn't possibly know that the agents of infectious disease were microbes. The study posted above is not amazing in that these diseases were present, but that they have actually been documented for the technical reasons outlined. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Now we have the proof. Latin for chamber pot is matella, and the word appears in several of the graffiti in Pompeii.

I let that comment about fat as a protection against sword slashes slide....Another good example of speculation unsupported by fact (or even logic) based on a line or two of comment by an ancient author.... Contact sports usually confer an advantage to the larger competitor simply by virtue of physics-- inertia/transfer of momentum. The skinny guy bounces farther back than the big guy every time. I like Vince Lombardi's (very successful American football coach) take on it-- "Ballroom dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport."

A couple points-- The various grains are all pretty close to each other in content of amino acids & carb calories per unit weight, so there is no nutritional magic in preferring one over another. ....Growing barley was a little more productive than growing wheat in the Mediterranean climate, but wheat gave a more delicate, palatable bread than berley. https://everything.explained.today/Agriculture_in_ancient_Rome/#Ref-5 After burning off the C, H, O & N in biomass as co2, h2o & NOx to the atmosphere, what's left (ash) is mostly the inorganic minerals-- high in K, Ca, & Mg....Dissolve it in water, and it makes a great fertilizer for your veggie garden or primitive Gatorade for your gladiator--- but be careful to dilute it well because that's also the recipe for making lye. ..but those gladiators were tough. I wonder if they chewed nails for their Iron?

That immediately popped into my head too on reading the OP.....(In reading Livy's account of "wars" in the days of the Roman kingdom, I always got the impression these were more like Am Indian villages vexing each other periodically with small raiding parties, as opposed to Hollywood style, large, pitched battles among fully armored soldiers.) While we moderns have funeral processions displaying a closed casket, the Etruscan/Roman tradition involved posing the corpus dilecti in a reclining position on one elbow, like dining on a triclinium, on a litter and proceeding to the funeral pyre for cremation.

Note that Caesar was very self conscious of his baldness and wore the hair of the temporal area long in order to comb it forward to cover the receding hairline, as well as frequently wearing a laurel wreath (they didn't have MAGA baseball caps in those days).... The modern cinematic images don't seem true to the historical accounts in this respect. https://www.lexundria.com/suet_jul/45-53/r Suetonius' description.

--brings to mind our recent discussion of mail service in the empire.....A "station" (from Latin stare-- to stand) was a short stop place to grab a sandwich and switch to fresh horses, while a "mansion" (from Latin manere-- to remain) was for a longer, over night stay.