Archaeologica.org

The main point still remains: can you *imagine* any male leader having the moral authority to make such an offer?

Muslim preachers routinely promise 72 virgins. Are we going to quibble over 28 virgins?

Please enlighten me, Morgana, what does Livy have to offer on the subject? From page 3 of this discussion, Livy's telling of the tale. The reference to "some writers" would have been Livy's way of footnoting earlier writers of Roman history who had first told the tale. The locality was th...

for one, Minimalist never said that the script on the little picture was Greek... he compared the letters on the mosaic to the Etruscan script in the little picture Truthfully, Linguist, not that much thought went into it. It was obvious that it wasn't Cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or Phoenician and th...

"They gave him 100 virgins. " One gets 72 Virgins from the muslims just for blowing oneself up on a bus. 100 virgins for liberating an entire country seems pretty cheap. Anyway, more to the point: SEVERIANUS, P. ALEIUS (fl. late 2nd century A.D.) Roman legate in charge of the defense of Ar...

Well surely you woudn't call someone that gathers a bunch guys to go steal a valuable natural resource a president would you?

Is that a trick question, Chuck?

It is perhaps Kharma that this whole idea of the divine as female gets men so upset

Where is Jean Marie when we need her?

Orthodox Jews throw rocks at archaeologists who dig up a tomb. Fundamentalist Muslims refuse to allow archaeological digs at probable Islamic sites. American Indians think that every old bone should be turned over to them. The Catholic Church barred Champollion from publishing any findings which con...

That's 800 years between sackings, R/S. Not a bad record.

Realist wrote:The Romans were obviously quick learners; an army of Celts from north of the Alps hammered a Roman army and sacked Rome in the late Fourth century BC (c.330?).

Brennus in 390 BC.

the heavy infantry pike phalanx was used by just about every army up until the 18th century. But not by the Romans during their period of expansion...and they found out, probably by accident, that their manipular formations were the perfect tactic for defeating phalanx using enemies. The Romans had...

gunny wrote:Be a cool atlatl dart---------20' with a Clovis tip.

One could launch it out of a ballista, I suppose. The Romans fired lots of stuff from those.

Those cohorts with 2-javelins-per-legionair were a form of light infantry. Um....no. In the early Republican period the Romans light troops, the velites, were still armed with a couple of pila but wore no armor giving them mobility at the expense of defense. The first and second lines, the hastati ...

Those cohorts with 2-javelins-per-legionair were a form of light infantry. Um....no. In the early Republican period the Romans light troops, the velites, were still armed with a couple of pila but wore no armor giving them mobility at the expense of defense. The first and second lines, the hastati ...

"Defense" in the sense that the Romans were not expanding by the 4th century AD and were most certainly on the defensive. Moreover, they were also reacting to their adversaries by being forced to abandon their traditional infantry-based military formations.