RomanArmyTalk

An article on the constellation of Orion, and knowing Bill, he must have been thinking of this Orion. :wink:

No I wasn't, despite my long-standing interest in spaceflight (when I was in my twenties I ran a small magazine on space policy, called Orion).

The parallel between our exploration of the Moon and the Roman conquest of Britain has struck me for many years now. A first not very useful exploration (the Apollo program, Julius Caesar); followed a coupla generations later by a longer, more productive, better thought-out occupation.

The parallel even extends to... well, since Jona is on a Plutarch kick, read it in Plutarch's Life of Caesar, 23.2 and my note.

Bill

Hey, what happened to my post? I had made a reference to a curious article Bill has put online on "Spontaneous Generation in Antiquity".

I sometimes have that too, one of mine went missing yesterday. :?

Or does that mean we're actually spending far too much time on this forum? 8) Got your envelope and your message Jona.

Quote:Got your envelope and your message Jona.

That's pretty swift - who would have thought that ten years after privatizing the Post Service, they actually start to deliver things again within 24 hours?

Meanwhile, here's Bill's contribution for today: brief articles on the Pamboeotia and Byzantine mosaics, another speech from the Sallustian corpus (To Caesar), Plutarch's Agesilaus and the Comparison of Agesilaus and Pompey.

Aw, Bill, if only you'd put pseudo-Sallust up earlier - my students have their late Republic exam in a few hours!!!
:wink:

Seriously - you're an absolute star putting up this stuff, it's a real god-send and I just wished more of my students followed the link from the 'study resources' section of our web pages.

Thank you Kate; yes, now with the Web making so many things so much more efficient than just ten years ago, there's no excuse for getting expensive airfares, or not learning well.

That latest bit of ps-Sallust, by the way, after the usual banalities of such ancient admonitions and flatteries, in midstream suddenly becomes an astonishing little piece. The advice the writer gives for the salvation of the res publica is: get rid of bankers and the means for the middle class to live on credit, which can only damage everybody; and get rid of welfare -- after all those people are freeloaders, and again, it does no good to the fabric of society -- using some of the money instead to treat veterans better because they deserve it. And though it's almost surely not Sallust, conversely, it was clearly written centuries before the fall of Rome: and explains clearly how it will pass. I can't remember reading in so brief a compass of a single ancient Roman work so many original ideas, including an awareness of the transience of their own world and its eventual fall (at least not from a rational standpoint, nothing like the 12 centuries of Etruscan superstition).

Bill

... and here are the Pelopidas and the Comparison of Pelopidas and Marcellus. Bill adds several Greek festivals: the Oschophoria (Athens), the Theophania (Delphi), the Theseia (Athens), and the Thesmophoria, which were celebrated in many Greek cities.

Restlessly, Bill continues to put online articles: to his digital version of Smith's Dictionary, the Lampadephoria (a torch race) and the Laphria (for Artemis) have now been added. There's also a piece on the constallation of Aries.

... and here are the Demosthenes and the Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero. Only Agis & Cleomenes, Demetrius, Eumenes, and Phocion left...

How about making this thread a sticky?

Quote:How about making this thread a sticky?

Unnecessary, I think, especially because there are already (in my opinion, humble or not) too many sticky threads. Besides, if Bill and I put something online, this thread will be on top of the list anyhow.

Ditto, though on different grounds; I was a bit surprised to see this thread when it first appeared, since much of what I put online is not worth any particular notice on a Roman army board: obscure churches in Umbria, Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes, etc.; and, I say it of course without any invidiousness, some of Jona's forays into Babylonian seals and so on seem a bit of a reach here as well....

But while not in my estimation meriting top-stickiness, the thread is useful, and despite my own long vacation from strictly Roman stuff, however, the occasional reader of this thread shouldn't despair altogether: there are endless mines of things still on their way, and some of them — promise! — will have a bearing on the Roman army. I continue to be very surprised, in fact, by what is not yet online; and only slightly less surprised how few people are working to fill these great gaping holes.

Bill

Well, the Eumenes is certainly of interest to the RATs; and the Comparison of Eumenes and Sertorius is not without relevance either, if only to understand what the Chaeronean Sage is actually doing.

And here is Phocion, the Athenian general.