guidoLaMoto

Slaked lime is basically plaster and "hot mixing" is concrete. The main dif between Roman concrete and modern concrete is the volcanic ash. You don't use concrete to finish your interior walls and you don't use plaster to build columns to hold up your aqueducts. Lime is Calcium hydroxate, while cement is a combination of Calcium silicates, aluminates and ferrites. Add sand & gravel and you get concrete. It was no great feat of genius to see the different uses for the two materials. Mixing lime and water releases only the small amount of heat of solution, while setting concrete is a chemical reaction that releases quite a bit of heat as things crystalize. It can burn skin. Modern concrete can take months to years to completely cure. Once cured, it's fairly inert. Roman concrete has more of a tendency to re-dissolve when moisture gets into cracks and then re-set, hence the "self healing" attribute.

In reading The Aeneid again recently, in particular the end of Book IV where Dido kills herself with Aeneas' sword. Vergil doesn't use the word "gladius."...and as I thought about it, it was apparent he rarely uses the word gladius in the whole work..... The Perseus site has a tool showing word frequencies among the common Latin works of lit.... https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/wordfreq?lookup=Ensis&lang=la Vergil usually uses words like "ensis," "ferrum" (cf- our "steel") or "arms" (arms). More rare words like pugio (dagger), sica (knife as a murder weapon) or culter (cutting edge, as in our cultivate) occur only once or twice in every 10-20,000 words. According to the Perseus tool, Vergil uses gladius only 9 times in the whole Aeneid. Livy uses it 96x in Ab Urbe Condita (Books 1-10) while Caesar uses it 24x in his Gallic Wars, a shorter work. For the word ferrum-- Livy 169x....Vergil 174x....Caesar 43x Arma-- Livy 750x ...Livy 554....Caesar 182 and Ensis-- Livy only once...Caesar not at all....and Vergil 63 times....so I guess we're justified in calling "ensis" a poetic word for sword.

Certainly an impressive curriculum vitae.....but we could turn this into a discussion like the classic one in American baseball history-- who was the best center fielder, Mickey, Willy or The Duke? If you were chosing up sides for a stick ball game in the street, you couldn't go wrong no matter who you chose. Other Roman soldiers of notable bravery mentioned by Livy-- Horatio Cocles, Gaius Mucous Scaevola, Marcus Furious Camillus, and even a woman, Cloelia, who bravely led other women & children hostages to freedom back across the Tiber. Eg- https://pjmedia.com/spencer-klavan/2014/08/11/the-10-most-badass-roman-war-heroes-n154853#google_vignette In the account given by Guy above, Livy at least has the honesty to state that the speech is reproduced "as handed down to us" (a more direct translation from the Latin "fertur" in the original)....Livy says in his introductory remarks to Ab Urbe... that perhaps we should regard the stories coming from ancient authors as works of poetry rather than factual documents. Pretty smart cookie. Dionysius of Halicanarssus, OTOH, reproduces speeches on a regular basis that are pages long as if a stenographer were always present to record things in a Congressional Record. His work reads more like an historical novel than a credible history.

The Rosetta Stone is probably viewed by and impresses more tourists in a week at the British Museum than would see it in Egypt in a year. Artifacts from the origins of human civilization belong to the world, not just the local govt of the week club. "Vae victis."-- Brennus

Impressive, but then I'm from Chicago where the oldest building is that grotesque Water Tower, only about 150 years old. I wonder if they'll try to restore it/save it? ...Actually, most of the ruins we see in and about the forum are the remains of late Empire restorations, not the originals of the early Empire. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/760783 ....kinda reminds me of seeing George Washington's original hatchet with which he chopped down the cherry tree. Of course, after 300 years, the head had been replaced twice and the handle three times. Thanks for posting.

We also have to question the method and precision of their measurements-- while a football pitch is a standard size, the dimensions of the arena in the stadium in which it sits is variable. Are they measuring wall to wall, moat to moat (the Maximus arena was surrounded by a most to protect the spectators from the wild beasts) or arena plus cavea, etc? As an aside-- a two horse chariot was a biriga, four horse a quadrariga. Although I've never seen the word "riga" used independently, I think it must be the source of our word "rig" used commonly in cowboy movies for a horse and wagon. Addendum:

I wanted to hold off commenting here until I had seen the video, but I've been pretty busy (for instance, my wife is due home shortly with some packages and I'll have to hold the screen door open for her) but It should be pointed out that there's a difference between propaganda and celebration. Propaganda is the Latin word for "things to be propagated." The construction in Latin usually implies the imperative- cf. Cato's famous "Carthago delenda est"- Carthage MUST be destroyed...In English, the word is usually used in the context of deceitful advertising to advance an agenda.... ...as opposed to celebration. For example, the Romans erected an equestrian statue to celebrate the heroics of Cloelia in 508 BC when Rome was little more than a village of shepards & farmers- hardly an act of propaganda. Who would see it but a few hundred Romans? Rome spread her culture throughout the conquered lands, building theaters, temples, baths and arenas, etc- all part of that culture. If those things impressed the vanquished, it was secondary gain, not primary intention. The one episode that does come to mind is Caesar building a bridge to cross the Rhine- certainly intended first to be impressive and secondly to be utilitarian.

I like that that book gives copious references to the sources of their info. Following up on several that go back to Livy, it's remarkable how much they extrapolate from what are actually very scant references in the original sources. Eg- They give us the impression that Tarquinus Priscus built an elaborate stadium when Livy merely says in effect that he assigned places to the senators and equities and some built platforms 12 ft tall from which to view the games.

I had to smile looking at the pic you posted above-- that tan area to the right of the circus is Mons Palatinus (Mons = mountain). Looks pretty flat. Probably an ambitious, ancient real estate agent's idea for good advertising. Maybe "collis" (hill) or even "collinus" would be more accurate. That's an interesting site....it was footnote ref on the Wiki article about the circ var....It has an aerial shot of The Vatican with the superimposed plan of Vatican circus, which looks to be about 500m long. http://www.circusmaximus.us/vatican.html I thought the Vatican was built on an old cemetery. It was the site of St Peter's execution-- apparently a spectator attraction at the circus? In regards the Aurelian wall cutting thru the circus-- you know how quickly new emperors often disregarded their predecessors. Maybe Elagabulus, already gone for a half century, was just old news and had to move over to make room for progress. Was the circus still in use by then of had the domus & track been abandoned?

http://www.circusmaximus.us/varianus.html If we assume the width of the modern streets, from building to building, is 10m, then it looks like the length of the superimposed circus varianus in the aerial photo paces out to be ~ 600m...just about the length of the C Max. ...judging by the size of the cars in the photo, that's probably a good estimate. For comparison, the Stadium Domitianum (now Piazza Navona) was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_of_Domitian 275m x 105m, and the Circus Flaminius (3rd cent BC) was 300m. https://books.google.com/books?id=couetXBQO9AC&pg=PA543#v=onepage&q&f=false Another comparison for perspective-- the Piazza Del Popolo, sight of Sienna's famous biennial horse race is about 150m x 250m.

Writing "Ab Urbis Condita" in the 1st century BC, Livy says "the Circus, now called Maximus...." and goes on to describe seating platforms 12 ft high. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0151%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D35

It must have been a real PITA for Roman schoolboys taking history class, having to memorize long lists of consuls' names for the years, particularly when a consul often served multiple terms, sometimes paired with the same guy as before, sometimes not....It was probably tough enough figuring out the day of the month, what with the Kalends and the Ides falling on different days in different months, and they had no names for days of the week.....and then there's that problem of Roman numerals.....Many people don't realize it, but the reason Michaelangelo took four whole years to paint that one lousy ceiling was because it was actually a Paint by Numbers Kit but it was in Roman numerals and he kept getting confused: "Let's see now. IX. Is that 11, burnt sienna, or 9, cerulian blue?" As long as we're at it about confusing things in ancient Rome- Latin is one of many languages for which there is no word for yes or no. They had to say "Ita est" (So it is) or "Non est verus" (It is not true)

It's all a metter of inductive reasoning. Given an outcome, assign reasonable weights to the possible explanations. (Deductive reasoning is rarely possible in real life situations because rarely is only one explanation possible). Because a computer has perfect, almost instantaneous recall, it can quickly search the memory bank and assign those weights to all pertinent material. I have one of those pornographic memories. I remember everything I:ve ever heard or read....How quickly & completely I retrieve that material is another matter...A couple years ago, I was discussing ol time movies with my uncle. At one point, I just couldn't remember a certain star's name and we just let it drop....Two days later the name suddenly popped into my head. I dialed my uncle's number. He picked up. I blurted out "Hedy Lamar!" And hung up... He call back and said "Oh, right." and hung up.

A pryroclastc flow is a high velocity thrust of hot, noxious gases (up to 1000⁰C). Citizens of Herc didn't have time to escape once the flow approached. It killed them on the spot by frying their lungs. They weren't buried immediately, hence had time to decompose slowly,thus leaving behind skeletons....BUT..the flash point of wood is in the 250-400⁰C range, so it must have been a so-called "cold pryroclastc flow" (gas temp "only" 250⁰C). As we've discussed here before, most Pompeians had some warning and were able to escape. Those that stayed were eventually inundated by the heavy rain of volcanic dust, probably suffocating as they were buried alive. Those bodies decayed more slowly and left hollows in the ash probably harded by eventual rainfall. The chart in Guy's first post is a little misleading. It implies there were no skeletons at Pompeii. There were, but they're inside the hollows/casts.

Ancient Rome had a remarkably dense population.- 1 M people with less than 14 km² within the Aurelian Wall- compare to modern Boston with 600,000 on 41 km². Most apartments had no kitchens or comodes. Bed pans (matellio) were in common usage and often emptied by indiscriminate pouring out the window. Urine could also be donated at the many laundries (fullones). There were many public toilets with constantly flowing water, and the public baths were open to all. Like modern apartment buildings on main streets, the first floor of the insulae often contained shop spaces (taberna), many of which were occupied by restaurants (thermopolium), where, having no kitchens in most apartments, most Romans ate all their meals.

Put the Flavian Amph. (Colosseum) on the list of public edifices that had secondary uses, shall we say. The Latin word for arch is fornix, fornicis m...Use your imagination to see what English word is derived to describe what regularly took place under those arches

There were many circi in Rome. The Maximus was first built by Tarquinius Priscus, fifth king of Rome. It was originally used as a venue for the ludi (funeral games) and later for gladiatorial matches (no funerals needed), races & religious rites. Triumphal parades wound thru there too. Today's stylish Piazza Navonna is built on the foundation of the Circus Agonalis, also called the circus of Domitian. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/49192 This is a nice synopsis. Ahttps://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/49192

I must be descended from the Romans ..I freely transfer from religion to religion depending on who has a holiday going on today....And when I have a special request, I pray to the lesser known saints. I figure they're not busy and would appreciate the business. It's also my understanding that, at least in the 1st century AD, Rome didn't differentiate the Chrisitians from the rest of the Jews, considering them merely a small sect of Judaism. The religion of choice among the Legionaries was the Cult of Mithras, which involved sacrificial death and re-birth, predating the concept in Christianity.

Contrary to that summary, I was always under the impression that the Romans were remarkably tolerant of exotic religions. There was, for instance, a large temple complex dedicated to Isis in Rome itself. The Romans only took exception when the religion took on political positions. Eg- John the Baptist & Christ preaching about The Kingdom of Heaven. By coincidence, my attention has recently been drawn to the Pilate Cycle, the apochryphal letters supposedly written by Pontius Pilatus to Tiberius Caesar and Suetonius. With the earliest known copies dating to the 6th century AD, most experts today hold them to be forgeries & fictitious. Reading the English translations (I can't seem to find the original Greek online), I find the one thing the letters to Suetonius have going for them is that they are fairly voluminous and only mention John & Christ in a couple paragraphs as potential trouble makers preaching about The K of G. Most of the chit chat is about more pressing matters of governing Judea- raising money for aquaducts & such, convincing the Sadducees & Phagocytes to co-operate with the Romans, etc....Very clever for a forger to go to such lengths to distract us.

I wonder if Cheech- arrow had flood insurance? Is this another case of a false conclusion being drawn by researchers hungry for fame?....Cicero had a villa there, and this is a luxurious villa, ergo- it must be Cicero's.

Ancients, the Egyptians and Sumerians, for example, knew about the cyclic nature of weather, and they planned for it, the general rule was to store seven yr's worth of grain for the inevitable dry yrs. When a society is accustomed to a certain level of ag yield each year, it's population grows to match that food supply (it reaches its carrying capacity)...If that yield suddenly falls &/or it remains lower for an extended stretch, the population will fall to match the new carrying capacity.....That population collapse can get ugly. Remember the bjg, round Aztec calendar that predicted the End of the World in 2012?....There was a cartoon that pictured that calender sitting before the king on his throne and a guy with a hammer & chisel behind the stone saying "It only goes up to 2012 because I ran out of stone."

So true about activity (or rather, lack thereof) around here.... .The word "propaganda" is Latin for "things to be propagated." We usually use the term when we want to emphasize it's negative connotation.......Did we build the Boulder Dam because we wanted to gloify President Hoover, or was it built to conserve water and provide power to the SW states, and naming it Hoover Dam was an afterthought to honor the contributions of the president to the project? I submit that most Roman building projects were accomplished for utilitarian purposes- with the possible exception of Caesar's bridge across the Rhine--and not to glorify the Romans or their leaders. The projects did have psychological effects on viewers, but how many ancients ever got to Rome to see them?....As I said, coins & statues are ubiquitous honorifics across all times & places. Etc etc.

https://www.verycoolfacts.com/facts/the-vatican's-unique-atms- The ATMs in Vatican City can be accessed multilingually including Latin. Here's a discussion of the Latin Instructions. https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/15786/atm-in-vatican-city-inserito-scidulam-quaeso-ut-faciundam-cognoscas- ..rationem#15789. In classical Latin, that "faciunda" would be "facienda." Maybe Ecclesiastical Latin is different?