guidoLaMoto

^^^ Good point.....The Italian penninsula has preciuous little land with good soil. Rustics could grow enough for themselves, but had little excess to ship to Rome for inhabitants who were not in a postion to grow their own, so importing grain from foreign sources was critical. Those authors seem to forget that tree rings reflect mostly the availability of water, with temps being irregularly & innaccurately correlated with ring diameter....Also, crop yeid is influenced by water availability. In most regions, that means amount of precipitation, but for Egypt where irrigation using the endless supply of water from the Nile is to be considered, wet & dry yrs had little impact. Years of food scarcity had more to do with pestilence than weather. On close examination of the data by those who have no political agenda to support, "climate' ( really just weather) is seen to vary complexly & cycllcly with major periods of 11, 60, 500 and 1000 yrs.....If we can believe the proxy data over the last 2000 yrs, at no time have temps been more than +/- 2 SDs from the mean, ie- all falling in the "average" range). OTOH, it's documented by Polybius & Livy that Hannibal and his entourage suffered miserably crossing The Alps ~200 yrs before Caesar's time. Caesar doesn't even mention snow or ice in his Commentaries, althoug he spends partcular attention to observations on natural history in those excursions....Lately, we see the Alpine glaciers receding, revealing fallen trees carbon dated to Caesar's time. They didn't sprout thru glaciers, but obviously grew on open soil....The story of Hansel & Gretl is based on the all too frequent problem faced by families starving during the Dark Ages when Europe was at the cold end of it's cycle and crop yields were down. Things get hotter. Things get colder, but the average is maintained.

Height/body wieght is a classic example of the interaction of "Nurture & Nature."...With "short genes," no matter how well you eat, you'll still be relatively short. With "tall genes" a high protein/hi calorie diet will result in a taller individual compared to the same genes and a protein/calorie deprived diet. Caesar needed to give a Knute Rockne-style pep talk to his legions, scared to death of the upcoming encounter with the larger Germans...Caesar describes the German diet as being one of meat and cheese, the land rarely being cultivatrd by them...as opposed to the Roman diet of wheat supplemented by whatever they could forage when not digging ditches or fighting....We see the same thing comparing American cavalry vs Sioux who stood 6ft tall and ate mostly bison vs 5'7" soldiers eating much more grain/less meat. Natural selction should favor larger, stronger idividuals when hunting (or combat) was the major considerartion in obtaining food, while smaller stature woulf be favored in a farming culture where strength offers no advantage...."Un-natural' selction, ie- conscious preferences in mate selction, may come into play where abilty to survive is less important.

I'm not familiar with the episode about Galen and the squealing pig, but in Latin "nervus" is usually translated as "sinew" in English. Medical students doing their dissections soon discover that a nerve can be distinguished from an artery or vein (they all look alike on a cadaver) because nerves don;t stretch and break when you pull on them. Maybe the most obvious contribution to Rome from Greece was the establishment of The Twelve Tables of Law after a Roman legation brought back the concepts forThe Decemvirs to promulgate as the basic laws.... The Romans may well have felt a little inferior to and jealous of The Greeks. They decided to establish the year of the overthrow of the Etruscan kings and establishment of their democratic republic as 509 BC-- two years before the traditonal date of 507 for the establishment of the Greek democracy. Their imitation of Greek art is obvious.

The articles don;t state how many individuals were analyzed. Sampling probems can lead us to false conclusions-- although I wouldn't be surprised at all if their conclusions are in fact correct. The Romans didn't maintain control over their vast empire by sending Italian born legions to maintain order. Roman colonists probably were a small portion of the total population in the provinces.....Pagan Romans cremated their dead, so not too many left to do DNA analysis on. How many Romans were Christians at that point in history? The 16 y/o's skull depicted, BTW, shows a large hole obviously caused by a blow. No healing of the edges obvious, so it was caused either at the time of death , or after death. If after death, probably decomposition hadn't occurred yet to any great extent-- A blow to a bare skull at that point would have caused the bones to separate along the suture lines-- lines of least rsistance-- not as a punched out hole including parts of the three bones coming together at that point....Time for a Cold Case murder investigation?

I check out this site https://www.archaeology.org/news every week or two, and it seems each update lately has included another report of more artifacts being "repatriated" from some museum in another land to their land of origin.... ...At what point should artifacts become part of the "domain of civilization" or "the human domain," comparable to a work of literature becoming part of the public domain? All of humanity should have been incensed, for instance, a few yrs ago when Isis went about destroying antiquities in Iraq. These thing belong to all of us.

I'm not saying the Romans used slaves to row. I'm saying that for large vessels, the seated position is far superior physiologically and geometrically to the standing rowing positon. For a tri-reme, you'd need a vessel at least twice as high (deep) to have rowers standing....While your gondolier racing film is impressive, note that a gondola is essentially a canoe, barely drawing any depth in the water, skimming over the surface. A war vessel is bulky, riding very low in the water....We could also bring up the wider range of motion allowing more error in the path traced by an oar used by a standing rower compared to the relatively narrow trajectory possible when seated-- loss of efficiency.... There's a reason naval vessels were moved using seated oarsemen rather than standiing----> efficiency-- as in all things undergoing an evolution. Survival of the fittest.That's why "real" racing involves sculls with seated rowers.

??? Isn't that kinda like standing with your back against the Coliseum and taking movies of traffic driving by?

The biggest problem of many guys rowing a large vessel would be the co-oridinated effort required to synchronize the multiple oars. It's not rocket surgery or brain science-- it wouldn't take many minutes for untrained slaves to become professional rowers. The seated backwards position is far superior to the gondolier method. Seated, one would use a combination of quads, glutes, lats & traps- the four largest muscles in the body, as opposed to doing a push-up with your arms against the oar as you fall onto it....and you gotta stand back up from the awkward forward position to take that next stroke. ...The standing gondolier method, however, has the advantage when one guy has to row and navigate (not to mention sing) in rush hour traffic on the Grand Canal.

I suspected the clock on column was photo-shopped- the clock itself being identical to the one in question. If it was mounted on some kid of column, it would have had to have been no more than shoulder high...The accuracy of a sun-dial would be good enough for Italian society, where even today punctuality is cavalierly regarded...There is nothing new under the sun.

According to the video, this town's founding has been dated to the end of the 3rd/beginning of the 2nd century BC-- no doubt founded as, or at least encouraged to grow as a Roman colony. The grid pattern of streets suggests it was a planned development. Located not only on a trade route, but more importantly on one of the few open plains of Italy. It would have been a prefered ag location--> the importance of N. Africa to the Romans was as a source of grain. The topography/geology of the Italian penninsula does not lend itself well to production of yields large enough to feed a large, growing population. The Roman govt provided organization and a certain amount of protection across the empire. Once that protection was gone, towns situated out in the open were poorly defensible. The feudal states with castles on a hill became the survivors. It should be no mystery why this town fell. Only the details of which band of maurauders were the cause remains to be determined. That particular sun dial was of very clever construction-- with shadow cast on the inside of a cone, it was "self-regulating," adjusting itself to the hours changing with the season....They showed a sun dial up on a tall column...Where did you have to stand to read it? I was a little confused on the part about the inscription "...Caesari...patrono..."..Were they claiming Caesar, patron of the town, dedicated something here, or that something was dedicated to him?...Caesari is dative ("to him") but there is the Dative of Possession. ?? Roof on the theater? Very sunny and little rain. A roofed theater must have gotten very hot, and not much need for gutters... and no mention of the tiles that would have covered a large roof-- certainy a least a few tile shards should have been found.

Does this upend our established theory or just show that, as Sherlock always said, it's a mistake to form a theory before all the data is in?

Thanks for your enlightening dissertation (as opposed to my grafittus). I exaggerated the point for the sake of illustration.... The Romans of two millennia ago probably had more litterate among them than say, the peasants of the middle ages did-- Cf: all the graffitti in Pompeii, or the many letters, etc found at Vindolanda. Probably it wasn;t the senatorial class scribbling on the walls....The ancients didn't have People Magazine or The National Enquirer to read while sitting in the dentist's waiting room...:Like American frontier families who only had The Bible to read, the ancients mostly had works that today we consider the classics and more "high brow." Maybe we over-think the entertainment value of works of art & lit from the distant past. One can take advanced courses intellectually analyzing Verdi's operas or the silent films of Hal Roach- which, in their day merely held the place in society that rap videos on MTV hold today. Someday the nerds in Academia will intellectualize those too and take the fun out of it. I do have to wonder how many Romans recognized the acronyms of Vergil's lines on the coins? Maybe it's comparable to something like the pyramid and all-seeing-eye on the dollar bill-- deeper symbolic meaning to the cognoscenti, but lost on the proletariate?

You're certainly right about the effect of radio & TV homogenizing language across large nations. It's certainly true in the US and Italy....Italy still has remnants of the feudal age in its poitical organization, cuisine, and certainly language. Linguists actually consider Napolitan and Sicilian as separate languages from Italian. Both are now used mostly within the family at home, although they can be understood with some difficulty by speakers of Italian- kinda like following the speech of someone from the deep rural South, for instance. ...Ever notice how Oprah and Barack, both excellent public speakers of standard American, can slide so easily into "Ebonics" when addressing black audiences? My father, born in the US to his immigrant Volga Deutsch parents, didn't learn English until he started grammar school. His English was impeccable Chicago American vernacular, but he was subjected to a short special investigation when inducted into the Army in '43, after being "turned in" by a fellow inductee in basic training after he absent mindedly said "make the light out"- the way it would be said in German, rather than "put the light out" or "turn off the light," the usual form in English. As Oscar Wilde said- Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language. The Roman conquest of such a large area- from the Semitic speaking east thru Egypt and Greece, up thru the Germanic & Celtic areas brought that homogenizing aspect of a common language to unify the empire.

How 'bout this Latin quote from an unknown special ed teacher dealing with kids with ADD? "Tempus fidgets."

Excellent reply by Caldrail. When a levy of the troops was called, those inscripted swoar an oath (ius urandi) that apparently was taken with more sollemnity than we would have today...after all, the gods themselves were being invoked. There was also a big difference between the army of the republican days and that of the empire. I agree that our impressions of the Roman army are more influenced by Holywood than by the historical record. I don't recall Caesar in The Commentaires mentioning anything other than Primus Pilus, tribunus and Legatus. Imperator was a titled bestowed on a victorious leader (dux) by his troops, then later ratified by the Senate. Whether more fantasy or not, you may find this interesting-- The movie Imperator flimed in Latin & Teutonic (English subtitles) Whether fantasy or not, you may find this interesting

It was true then as now, a regional accent can bring on stereotypical images. I often joke that if Einstein had been from Alabama, there'd be no atom bomb today. Nobody in Academia would have taken him seriously. "...redire mulierem in patriam praecepit"...The use of "praecepit" instead of a simple "iussit" implies an urgency. Cf- praeceps-- head-long.

Languages are livng and evolve. They tend to dissapate from more highly rigorous, complicated grammar & pronunciation to simpler forms. Italian is to Latin as Ebonics is to English. The joke is that in black neighborhoods, "Toys R Us" becomes "We B Toys"... "Ap" is an abrieviation for "application" and now part of the vocabulary...etc etc. In biological evolution, a migrant group may retain as a common trait one that is more rare in the origiinal population if it was represetned in a high proportion of the original migrants-- Cf- retained epicanthal fold ("slanted eyes")- very common in orientals, but still observable in some members of modern central/east African populations...So it is with "Kaiser" (Caesar) in German while most members of the original population in Italy have dissiapated it to "Chez-ar-ay."....The more often a word/term is used, the more likely it will evolve to mutated forms-- That's the reason verbs like "to be" or "to have'' are usually irregular-- the "rules" have given way to dissapation.

-- brings to mind the movie "Idiocracy." Are we getting stupider? This vase was produced in the 2nd century AD, when few people could read, quoting fancy poetry written a century earlier.....Will a future archeologist dig up a coffee can made today with verses from Shelley or Whitman scribbled on the bottom? Translating ancient text is difficult. Besides often being fragmentary, vocabulary is often different than that learned in classical forms of the language-- loaded with slang and regional dialect. Abbreviations well known and commonly used by the authors but maybe obscure to us appear often. Cf- will a distant future reader know what "OTOH" or "IIRC" means to us?

Studying Latin gives a benefit to not only making the Romance languages somewhat easier, but also for the general knowledge of history, politics, sociology, geography, etc it provides.....I'm a retired physician. Knowing Latin maybe helped a little in learning anatomy- but not much...Was it Marlowe or Johnson who insulted Shakespeare by claiming "He knows little Latin and less Greek?" While knowing Latin has made it easy to decipher the Romance laguages, the way we were taught Latin is deleterious_- we never spoke Latin. Now when I read Latin, my eyes see Latin workds but then they are automatically translated to English in my brain...a bad habit when it comes to dealing with spoken languages. I stayed with that habit when learning Italian and German. I read both well, but was once accused of being "a retarded Sicilian" by a caribinieri in Italy trying to settle an argument with a shop keeper. I find it amazing that we can read the very words written by Livy, Caesar, Cicero, etc...It reminds me of my uncle objecting to the changes made by Vatican II--"I don't like the English mass..We should still be using the very Latin words spoken by Christ." 😏

Hiya, Folks...Searching for something about Rome, your excellent site popped up...I've been interested in Roman history since studying Latin in school, fascinated that our modern western society is not so much based on Roman, but really a direct extension of it. Being of Italian ancestry, I take a certain pride in that. About 50 y/a, I had the opprotunity to spend some time in Italy. Many of my friends back in Chicago were recent Italian Immigrants, and while over there, I met up with one of them visitng his family in Genzano- about 25 km SE of Rome on the Appian Way. I wanted him to take me in to see The Forum...Observing the ruins in silent amazement, we stopped about half way down the Sacra Via. "Sandro," I said, "Your ancestors built this place over two thousand years ago. We're walking on the very stones that Julius Caesar walked on...The oldest thing we have in Chicago is The Water Tower, and it's barely 100 years old."...Sandro looked around pensively, soaking it up as if he'd never seen it before...."Yea," he replied. "We work slow here, but we work good."

Sensationalism sells. "locked in?"- they don't mention a collapsed roof. Maybe they just haven't uncovered a door yet. There must have been a way to bring in food, fodder and to evacuate manure, not to mention the finished bread. How did they get the men & animals in there in the first place? How many modern bakeries have windows to provide a view for workers?... Did the skeletons have chains on the limbs? Were donkey skeltons found? Blindfolds or just blinders like modern working equines use? Hollywood has given us a false impression of the life of ancient slaves. Slaves were in all likelihood treated more like we today treat our working animals- horses, hunting or sled dogs, etc--- We may not let them sleep in our beds like Zza Zza and her lap dog, but we feed them well and don't mistreat them either. But the excavations at Pompeii give us such a fortuitous opportunity to gain insight into the daily life two millennia ago. With the exception of powered machinery, practically everything we have and do today had its counterpart in ancient Rome.

"Epilepsy" or Grand Mal Seizures, sometimes referred to as the falling sickness, are either primary (idiopathic) or secondary to some cerebral injury or disease (strokes, tumors, trauma, abcesses, etc)....Caesar appently never suffered generalized seizures until after visiting Egypt where pork was a more common food source than in Rome...He probably picked up cycsticercosis from the pork (tapeworms that can encyst in the brain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysticercosis "Mini-strokes" (TIAs) are most often caused by severe carotid arteriosclerosis and CAD- very unusual in non-smokers, non-diabetics under the age of 70 or so and show only temporary, transitory neurological deficits. There is no mention of Caesar having any symptoms of paresis or aphasia, so seizures secondary to full strokes are unlikely. Primary seizure disorders usually appear early in life-- childhood- early adulthood. In regards the original question about Caesar- hero or villian?-- the only obviously correct answer is "maybe." We should never make the mistake of judging aother society by our own modern standards-- that might lead us to think Indigneous Americans were bad people because they ate their own pet dogs when the occasion arose. ....Whether you liked Caesar's influence in bringing "civilization" to western Europe would depend on whether you liked living dressed scantilly in animal furs, bathing in icy cold rivers and starving when game was scarce or not....One cannot read the Commentaries without seeing the obvious parallels in the way of life of the Germanic tribes and the indigenous Americans....If you want to make an omellette, you've got to break a few eggs