guidoLaMoto

I'd save my money-- No evidence supplements help with cataracts, no evidence they help prevent MD, only 4 in every 1000 pts with early MD benefit from taking them, but 78 in 1000 (1 in 12) with intermediate MD benefit. https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD000254_do-antioxidant-vitamin-and-mineral-supplements-slow-down-progression-age-related-macular https://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420(20)30120-2/abstract

Weather probably wasn't quite as nasty as the film shows-- Toady's winters in Scotland (farther north than The Wall) averages 36°F min & 45°F max in winter and rarely snows except in the highlands-- and back then the world was in the Roman Warm Period with average temps several degrees warmer than now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Scotland But it still had to be lonely for the unmarried/unattached legionnaire...Higher pay? To spend where and on what? It might be interesting to discuss who became a legionnaire and why?

Thanks. Guy....You're right-- the correct term is senatores pedarii (I read a note somewhere calling them "walking senators" which I then translated literally but incorrectly as senatores ambulantes). There's at least two theories on the term-- curile senators (those who held high office) who arrived by cart (carrus) and sat in curile chairs vs the pedarii who arrived on foot...or from the fact that pedarii never got to speak but merely expressed support of the speaker by walking to his side. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2007.01.0072:book=3:chapter=18&highlight=pedarii Another interesting treatment of the Senate during the Republic https://youtu.be/QcWqu0Ifxjc?si=bT4glKAbINhePaGa

The Roman Senate conducted business in a hierarchical way, with senators speaking in order determined by their importance & influence by virtue of elected office, seniority etc. They then voted in order by walking to one side of the room or the other....Those less important members rarely got to speak, but merely voted.... They were referred to somewhat demeamingly as "walking senators." I read this recently, maybe in Cicero's speeches against Cataline or one his more famous trials. A search on Perseus for "senatores ambulantes" came up blank...and a search on Duck-- said the term referred to lesser senators who walked about town making themselves available to the public (???) but could give no specific references. Can anybody enlighten me?

Couching--- with heavy emphasis on the "-ouching" part.

Interesting question. Here's a review of the history https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7729313/ It seems The Code of Hammurabi (~1750 BC) established an allowable charge of 10 shekels of silver for an opthalmalogical procedure that sounds a lot like "couching" (pushing the cloudy lens back out of the way) to treat cataracts. Pliny the Elder writes about couching in his Natural History. Good luck with yours.

...or maybe the guy was just a big fan....It's not unusual today for a fanatic to get buried in the jersey of his favorite team.

With no means of refrigeration and salting or smoking to preserve meat a time consuming process, in Roman times, eating meat was a rare treat. Animals were only harvested when the whole thing was to be consumed immediately, like at banquets following sacrifices at religious rites....therefore plant material that could be easily stored, like grains, legumes, nuts & olives provided most of the Roman diet.... ...the problem with that is that plant sources are not very nutrient dense. Eg- it takes ~3000 calories worth of beans, rice & corn (maize) to provide a normal 60 gm of complete protein each day, while just 500 cal of beef provides the same protein. The average Roman was only about 5'6" tall and Caesar famously had to give his troops a Rockne-style pep talk before their first encounter with the Germans who stood 6 ft tall. He prescribed their diet as consisting of nothing but meat, fish & cheese, and they did almost no cultivated of crops. Hollywood depicts gladiators as muscle bound body builders, but in fact, they probably were pretty scrawny by today's standards.

We've been blaming the drier for all those missing socks for all these years.....I wonder if it's really the washer's fault? The recent fad is to blame the Neandertals for various genetic traits in Humans, but we had a common ancestor, so maybe that was the source?...and these experts always seem to forget that gene A has the same chance of occurring in species 1 as it does in species 2....it doesn't have to be passed between the species. An ulnar nerve palsy in St Peter or another early Pope has been blamed as the source of Benediction Hand - the hand held up with thumb and first two fingers extended but the third & fourth curled-- but maybe it's really due to Dupuytren's Contracture? https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=132993 .... ...or maybe Peter was just shouting down the stairs to the innkeeper to send up three more beers to the Upper Room?

Yes, that info confirms scientifically what we should have deduced about migration & breeding patterns and slave trade within the empire.... Given the hygiene and role of poor nutrition & infectious disease in the days prior to the late 19th century, living longer than 60 years was unusual the world over...Life expectancy in the US in 1966 when Medicare went into effect was only 67 years (!!!).

AI has a ways to go.... That limestone "game board" appears to be ~ 3 ft x2.5ft x 9 in in size and weighs in the range of 1000 lb....hardly something you'd fold up to hide in a drawer when not in use... The very straight lines etched onto the "playing surface" don't fit very well...You'd think they'd have kept the playing edges away from the edges of the large stone. The "wear patterns" supposedly made by repeatedly moving stone playing pieces are evaluated at only a few, scattered spots...not a very good sample for statistical analysis....My old Monopoly board has seen decades of use of metal pieces (I always liked the top hat) on a paper/cardboard surface, and there's still minimal wear showing. The academic paper only briefly mentions alternative interpretations... It seems more likely to me that it was a building block meant to serve as a decorative piece but was discarded when the intended pattern etched on surface didn't quite fit.

Gotta get that "African" (with Woke implication of "African" must = "black") in there to ensure future funding.....There's still the bunch that insist Hannibal and Shakespeare's Othello were "black.".... African merely means pertaining to Africa...and that's a big place with the wastelands of the Sahel & Sahara imposing a gigantic barrier to migration and therefore to interbreeding among sub- Saharan populations with Mediterranean populations. Ancient Egyptians, Numidians (Nomads) Carthaginians (migrants originally from Phoenicia) and Mauritanians (pronounced in Latin as moor-ee-tah'-nee-ah) have DNA analysis showing minimal sub- Saharan input....Napolean's hair was recently analysed and found to have a large component of African/Middle Eastern origin. With the Mare Nostrum being a heavily trafficked area and Roman legions continually marching about, and soldiers and sailors being soldiers and sailors, it's no big surprise that the genetic pool of the lands of the Roman Empire should be highly mixed..... Is the discovery that a man from S.Carolina married a woman from Oregon news-worthy?

I agree that personal observation of the topography can influence our speculations about probable routes of ancient travelers, but my point is that they are just speculations. We've developed these elaborate details based only on a couple words contained in the most ancient histories, all written decades or centuries after the fact.....It reminds me of the detailed picture we now have of a jovial, fat man dressed in red velvet, living at the North Pole with a wife with granny glasses and a troop of elves making toys, flying a sleigh drawn by reindeer who slides down every chimney in the world to deliver presents once a year....all having evolved out of one old report of a simple parish priest who once left nuts & apples on doorsteps of children on Christmas Eve. BTW- did you have to actually walk a mile to get that camel? ...nice anecdote...I bet that was quite an experience.

Detailed???...Our most ancient sources are Livy and Polybius....both devote exactly one short phrase to the concept of "crossing the Pyrenees." All subsequent sources can only refer back to them.... They both only give clues to the route from south Iberia to the foot of the Pyrenees by mentioning the Iberian tribes that needed to be subjugated or coerced into letting them pass. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0144%3Abook%3D21%3Achapter%3D24 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb. 3.35 As I said earlier, in English, when we say "he crossed the Pyrenees," it is implied that he climbed up one side of the mountains and down the other, but in Latin, the word "transgredior" merely means "to go to the other side" -- the route not necessarily being defined. Note that in the next line, Livy mentions the "Spaniards who live beyond the Pyrenees"---" trans Pyrenaeum hispanos," OTOH- the battle at Baecula in 207 certainly employed elephants, and the new found bone was among other debris like ballista probably remnants of that battle....Was that bone evidence of an elephant lost in battle, a handy bone used as a ballistum, or a souvenir purposely saved? https://dnyuz.com/2026/02/13/elephant-bone-in-spain-may-be-proof-of-hannibals-tanks-with-trunks/

In the map above, Hannibal's route looks like it follows the coastal plain, but Livy & Polybius both claim "he crossed" The Pyrenees and then camped at Iliberri. Livy uses the phrase "Pryenaeum transgraditur"-- but does that translate as "crossed over the Pyrenees" or merely as "proceeded past the Pyrenees?"... The town of Iliberri is back in south Iberia https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria-Oliva-Rodriguez-Ariza/publication/279092921/figure/fig1/AS:421820022169600@1477581138209/berian-Peninsula-with-the-locations-of-Ttugi-Iliberri-and-Basti-cities-of-Bastenati.png The Latin text may be in error, and maybe should read "Inlberri" a different unverified town? https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0144%3Abook%3D21%3Achapter%3D24 (click on "Latin by Foster" to the right and check footnote #3.)....edit- oh, wait. I just found this reference which says Iliberris was a town in Aquitania https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=illiberis-geo02 ...and good point about finding only one bone.

Plebs flooded into Rome for the same reasons that Americans moved from the rural south to large industrial northern cities in The Great Migration-- not enough land for each farmer to earn a living in the South and good jobs in the North.... The episode of the Gracchus brothers and land reform was the biggest of several such conflicts of the classes in ancient Rome dating all the way back to the Kingdom. https://ancientwarhistory.com/the-gracchi-brothers-and-the-agrarian-crisis-of-the-roman-republic/

I recently saw a YouTube film claiming they were used to map the stars by viewing thru the holes on the flat faces (reminiscent of the Roman augur's use of the lituus?)....clearly incorrect given that many of the discovered items don't have those holes. You gotta admire the skills involved in the casting and artwork on those things. I wonder what future archaeologists will speculate about the purpose of the Lava Lamps they discover?

It's unclear how many elephants Hannibal started out with- 37 is a commonly quoted number- and even less clear how many survived the crossing of the Alps. Some sources say only one-- but Livy uses the plural "elephantes" when talking about subsequent battles....and he clearly states that it was the Roman cavalry horses that panicked "not only at the sight but at the unaccustomed smell of the elephants." He says that the Roman soldiers stood up well to them and quickly learned to "shoot darts at the animals' sides and stab them under the tails where the flesh is soft." (Livy Ab Urbe Condita https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0144%3Abook%3D21%3Achapter%3D55 ) Livy also says that his sources give conflicting numbers about the size of the Punic army and number of animals involved.

The office of Aedile (aedes = temple or building) included responsibility for maintenance of Rome's streets, markets and public buildings, so maybe periodic touch ups of the paintings were too common and mundane to mention in the histories?....and while the summer sun can be brutal in Rome, humidity was also a bigger problem back then. The forum was a wetland that needed to be drained by the Cloaca Maxima, and the Campus Martius was essentially a flood plain inundated every spring and fall....Hot & humid even harder on paint? Seeing the difference in the usual depiction of the white arch vs the painted one above reminds me of the beginning of The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up and black & white Kansas has turned into the colorful Land of Oz....I used to get the same feeling as a kid in Chicago when we'd take a streetcar to Wrigley Field. We' d enter the park and climb the steps to enter the grandstand and suddenly the drab browns & grays of the city streets turned into the vibrant green of all that grass & ivy covered walls.

When called on the carpet by the Abbott, did the monk use a variation of "The dog age my homework" excuse?

Splashing around in a Roman hot tub was probably still cleaner than sharing a xylospongium at the public toilet. https://www.unrv.com/articles/xylospongium.php

The point of this research is not obvious....We already know from the historical record that they switched from well water to aqueductal water during Augustus' reign. There's going to be a difference in mineral content of ground (well) water from mountain stream (aqueduct) water. The sluggish nature of pumping well water vs the higher flow rate of aqueductal water may cause a difference in total daily "exchanges"of the total volume in the baths, but those probably aren't true exchanges-- it is unlikely they completely emptied the baths and then refilled them completely. They most likely had a continuous flow- one gallon in., one gallon out. ...As hi school chemistry students learn early in the lab-- rinsing glassware works best when you completely drain each dilution. That residual volume of water remains contaminated to some degree....In a continuous flow system, the total volume of water and it's solutes remains constant. The problem they didn't address in the study is that of fecal contamination. Hi mineral content may have been less favorable to bacterial overgrowth. The well water baths may actually have been cleaner from the hygienic point of view than the modernized, higher flow system.

I've always admired the artwork on interior Roman walls. They must have had hundreds of talented interior decorators...but I also wonder if Romans ever suffered from claustrophobia?

Good luck charmes are still a common style among Italians. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=common+italian+good+luck+charms&ia=images&iax=images