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Has anyone read Peter Heather's The Restoration of Rome? I picked it up on a whim today, although I vaguely recognised Heather's name. I like Late Antiquity and I researched certain aspects of Theoderic's kingdom for my thesis, but I'm fairly clueless about most events after 500 so it'll be interesting reading, I hope.
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Dec 6, 2014 02:57
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Arglebargle III posted:Yeah it's not like I'm taking a million pictures so what's the big deal? By the time a million people have photographed the picture it'll have degraded from room lighting anyway.
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Dec 7, 2014 01:53
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:By the time a million people have photographed the picture it'll have degraded from room lighting anyway. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the paint in Pompeii and Ostia have been at least partially exposed to normal day light for decades if not centuries, not sure when Ostia was first excavated or how much of it was actually underground. I'm back from Italy and just went through my 500+ photos and I have about 55 or so that I'm going to post tomorrow, is there any kind of image limit for posts?
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Dec 7, 2014 02:04
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Mustang posted:Not to mention the fact that a lot of the paint in Pompeii and Ostia have been at least partially exposed to normal day light for decades if not centuries, not sure when Ostia was first excavated or how much of it was actually underground. Link to an imgur gallery, it works a lot better.
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Dec 7, 2014 12:35
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Yesterday I was discussing Roman/Greek religions with a friend and we didn't agree on some things. I remember some people mentioned a while back there's a great post somewhere explaining the similarities and differences fo greek and roman religion, does someone still has the link?
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Dec 7, 2014 14:31
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Here's a link to my imgur gallery of pictures from Rome, Pompeii and Ostia http://imgur.com/a/G65oF?gallery Since it's not the prime tourism season I guess that's when they do a lot of restoration work. I went to the Mausoleum of Augustus but it was all fenced off and it looked like they had a work crew there but they weren't there when I went. It's in fairly poor condition.
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Dec 8, 2014 00:15
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Mustang posted:Here's a link to my imgur gallery of pictures from Rome, Pompeii and Ostia Those are beautiful pictures! Very interesting. Wish I could afford to go myself. I was looking at the pictures for the Palatine Hill and it made me realize just how much of a lack of imagination I have. I am completely unable to imagine what it must have looked like before. Do we have any paintings, drawings or anything from history that would allow me to visualise it?
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Dec 8, 2014 01:26
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Thanks! Here's a photo of what I think is a diorama in a museum somewhere  That section in the bottom left is the Circus Maximus so the section of building directly behind it and in the center of the picture is the Domus Augustana seen in my photos. When you're actually on the Palatine Hill it's equally hard to imagine, few if any roofs remain and most of the walls are greatly reduced though there are still quite a few 20+ feet tall. The tunnels connecting the various buildings on the hill are mostly still in good condition. Here's one of them  Who knows how deep you have to dig to get the original hill, all the way around it it seems like the hill is made of nothing but brick.
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Dec 8, 2014 01:44
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Those are magnificent photos, thanks for including descriptions of what everything is.
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Dec 8, 2014 03:38
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It looks like Ostia was just as deserted as it was when I went, which was about the same time of year. I spent almost the whole day there and only bumped into the occasional person, but I frequently had at least half hour periods without seeing a single soul.
Octy fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 04:11
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My visit to Ostia mostly involved lazy Italian security trying to make me leave about an hour before things were meant to close up, because they wanted to get off work early.
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Dec 8, 2014 05:37
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I added more pictures and updated some descriptions with more detail. I added two photos of what Trajan's Forum and Marketplace originally looked like in both the Roman era and the Medieval era. but yeah when I went to Ostia there was barely anyone there and I never saw any security there. It was actually kind of creepy being in the ruins of a fairly large empty ancient city on a rainy day. It rained really hard for a bit and I ended up taking shelter in one of the larger buildings that still has a roof. The photos don't really do it justice, Ostia is a seriously huge place and may even be larger than Pompeii. You can wonder around a lot more in Ostia too.
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Dec 8, 2014 06:11
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The British Museum loaned one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage in Russia, causing Greece to become outraged, what with the museum not only claiming that the marbles were to fragile too move, but also because they hid the loan until after the artifacts were already in Russia. 
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Dec 8, 2014 13:17
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If I understand things right, there were Alans based out of Orleans in the 440s/450s, right? They were the ones who got involved in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. They apparently left such an impact on the area that there's still towns around there named Allainville, Les Allains, Allaines, and so forth. Was all that just because of the 450s, or did the Alans stick around for a while? Were there still Alans in Gaul at the advent of the 6th century? 7th century?
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Dec 8, 2014 16:30
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  lol (I assume he was given this name by Lord Suffolk as a substitute for his incomprehensible African name )
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Dec 9, 2014 11:27
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Ofaloaf posted:If I understand things right, there were Alans based out of Orleans in the 440s/450s, right? They were the ones who got involved in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. They apparently left such an impact on the area that there's still towns around there named Allainville, Les Allains, Allaines, and so forth. Was all that just because of the 450s, or did the Alans stick around for a while? Were there still Alans in Gaul at the advent of the 6th century? 7th century? The only western Alans that didn't quickly integrate into the majority culture are in Hungary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasz_people
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Dec 9, 2014 12:35
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Oberleutnant posted:
Probably. Plus there was a huge boner for classical names in that era, through the 1800s. All those southern US aristocratic types named Augustus and whatnot.
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Dec 9, 2014 13:13
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I know the British Admiralty had a huge boner for classical names but the common jack tar didn't like it. Agammemnon was "renamed" Eggs and Bacon by her crew, and Polyphemus was informally known as Polly Infamous.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 14:46
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Has anyone listened to the Emperors of Rome podcast and can tell me what it is like? It is produced by La Trobe University and has apparently topped the charts in England and is sitting at second in Australia. https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/emperors-of-rome/id850148806
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Dec 9, 2014 20:04
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Charlie Mopps posted:The British Museum loaned one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage in Russia, causing Greece to become outraged, what with the museum not only claiming that the marbles were to fragile too move, but also because they hid the loan until after the artifacts were already in Russia. Greece is pretty much the only country the things won't ever be loaned to I'm waiting for them to go on a tour through Turkey 
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Dec 10, 2014 12:05
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blowfish posted:Greece is pretty much the only country the things won't ever be loaned to That would be brilliant, though people will get murdered over it.
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Dec 10, 2014 12:40
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blowfish posted:Greece is pretty much the only country the things won't ever be loaned to They sort of shot themselves in the foot over that, by announcing they wouldn't return any of the Marbles that got loaned. You say that after you've got them, guys, not before.
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Dec 10, 2014 13:48
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What are people's opinions on the Didius Falco books by Lindsey Davis? I re-read Silver Pigs for the first time in ten years and really enjoyed it and am now on to the second book.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:48
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Mustang posted:Here's a link to my imgur gallery of pictures from Rome, Pompeii and Ostia What were the three squares in the roads at Pompeii? My guess was a place for people to walk, like a crosswalk? Is that the correct assumption? The reason I ask is because it must have been difficult for wheels to go over the squares.
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Dec 18, 2014 16:00
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Yep, that's it. The street would have been dirty as hell because of horse poo poo and people throwing their refuse in it, so you walked on those stones to cross without ruining your shoes.
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Dec 18, 2014 16:18
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That's really weird because I would've thought the Romans would have had their poo poo together enough to arrange street cleaners.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:15
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bean_shadow posted:What were the three squares in the roads at Pompeii? My guess was a place for people to walk, like a crosswalk? Is that the correct assumption? The reason I ask is because it must have been difficult for wheels to go over the squares. They go in between.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:16
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Exioce posted:That's really weird because I would've thought the Romans would have had their poo poo together enough to arrange street cleaners. Transportation by animal is messy. You could sweep the city every night or something but you can't follow around every donkey, dog, goat, horse, ox, whatever with a pooper scooper.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:19
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Exioce posted:That's really weird because I would've thought the Romans would have had their poo poo together enough to arrange street cleaners. That's really hard to do in a pre-industrial city of 1 million people. It's a lot easier to just let people shove the dead bodies and garbage into the sewers until they get blocked up and force you to do something about it.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:21
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You only need to see what 100 horses can produce walking a quarter of a mile from a barracks to Buckingham Palace to know what kind of volumes we're talking about. Hint: it's a lot.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:26
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There is a part in the worst jobs in history tv show that talks about being a poop street clearer. It's interesting as far as in London at the time 18th century the road was covered in poop by the time you got from one side to the other.
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Dec 18, 2014 18:28
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I didn't take any pictures of it but in places in both Pompeii and Ostia you could see where the wheels of wagons wore down the road. In Pompeii they just hadn't had a chance to repair the road before Vesuvius erupted and in Ostia iirc St Augustine wrote about how Ostia was no longer being properly maintained by the end of the Western Empire when he visited it. It was actually pretty annoying to walk on some sections of road that weren't maintained, the stones weren't quite level which made your ankles sore after a while.
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Dec 18, 2014 18:50
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Exioce posted:That's really weird because I would've thought the Romans would have had their poo poo together enough to arrange street cleaners. Dude, early modern cities had it just as bad. And they had street cleaners.
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Dec 18, 2014 19:00
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Here's a fun little article for you all:Washington Post posted:The secret ingredient behind Rome’s lasting monuments
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Dec 18, 2014 19:56
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Kaal posted:Here's a fun little article for you all: I saw a small documentary very recently on the subject. It was pretty interesting. One of the thing explained was that the passage of time made the concrete solidify even more (they used a specific term that I can't remember) basically saying that the older it gets, the better it gets. They also explained that it is less porous(sp?) and water did not damage this type of concrete as much as modern concrete. What the guy was basically saying, was that roman concrete was better in almost every way.
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Dec 18, 2014 22:51
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Exioce posted:That's really weird because I would've thought the Romans would have had their poo poo together enough to arrange street cleaners. There's not much you can do to keep streets clean when you have draft animals moving through them and making GBS threads everywhere. They're just going to be dirty, period
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Dec 19, 2014 02:23
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icantfindaname posted:There's not much you can do to keep streets clean when you have draft animals moving through them and making GBS threads everywhere. They're just going to be dirty, period Probably still cleaner than Montreal's roads
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Dec 19, 2014 02:25
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The fact that Romans figured out concrete that would harden underwater is still mindblowing to me. The idea of figuring that out without any scientific understanding of chemistry or physics.
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Dec 19, 2014 12:24
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Grand Fromage posted:The fact that Romans figured out concrete that would harden underwater is still mindblowing to me. The idea of figuring that out without any scientific understanding of chemistry or physics. Which brings up an interesting question, was there ever something like a Department for Scientific Discovery? Like specialists employed by the state whose sole job was to conduct experiments and come up with new stuff?
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Dec 19, 2014 12:37
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As far as I'm aware there was never any sort of organized thing like that. The closest I can think of is when the Romans who stormed Syracuse were ordered to capture Archimedes alive so he could be used to create technology for the Romans. The classical Operation Paperclip I suppose.
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Dec 19, 2014 13:08
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