twoday posted:

shout out to all the forensics experts out there who are diligently working to create reconstructions of ancient people that don't look like they could possibly be accurate

Julius Caesar:

twoday posted:

Tree Bucket posted:

It's interesting; this one lacks the lines around the mouth that appear in the other busts (I'm sure there's a proper name for them.) Are they certain this is a Caesar portrait?

Tree Bucket posted:

It's interesting; this one lacks the lines around the mouth that appear in the other busts (I'm sure there's a proper name for them.) Are they certain this is a Caesar portrait?

DrPop posted:

I saw this last night for the first time and am still fuckin laffin

I dreamt about it overnight

Agean90 posted:

that neckbeard is luscious

KiteAuraan posted:

He also believes Augustus Caesar ushered in an era of prosperity, good governence and stability in the empire, so he's kind of an idiot.

And he looks like Nero.

twoday posted:

KiteAuraan posted:

He also believes Augustus Caesar ushered in an era of prosperity, good governence and stability in the empire, so he's kind of an idiot.

And he looks like Nero.

WoodrowSkillson posted:

Was stable as long as he was alive I guess.

Real hurthling! posted:

he killed or owned everyone else and launched histories biggest propaganda campaign at that time

Gringostar posted:

missing the neckbeard imo

Tree Bucket posted:

It's interesting; this one lacks the lines around the mouth that appear in the other busts (I'm sure there's a proper name for them.) Are they certain this is a Caesar portrait?

Squalid posted:

Elagabalus: the Rome's queerest Emperor. Murdered for being too much of a fuckboi

Squalid posted:

No, nobody's really certain of any of the bust reputed to represent Julius Caesar. That one with the weirdly shaped head is the most likely contemporary depiction but even that's disputed.

Everyone post the bust of your favorite emperor:



Elagabalus: the Rome's queerest Emperor. Murdered for being too much of a fuckboi

mycomancy posted:

I fought a dude in a trailer park that looked exactly like this.

Ghostlight posted:

nasolabial folds, bane of incels

Tree Bucket posted:

That's the thing about Roman sculpture, you feel like you know these people and what their favourite movie book and food would be. It's amazing.

mycomancy posted:

I fought a dude in a trailer park that looked exactly like this.

Mantis42 posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-5RZBKBl_A

twoday posted:

This is a cool channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XdPodNwSGU

twoday posted:

yes, the greeks

ikanreed posted:

I thought it was called Greek fire because it was used against the Greeks

quote:

In naval warfare, the Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I (r. 491–518) is recorded by chronicler John Malalas to have been advised by a philosopher from Athens called Proclus to use sulfur to burn the ships of Vitalianus. Greek fire proper, however, was developed in c. 672 and is ascribed by the chronicler Theophanes to Kallinikos (Latinized Callinicus), an architect from Heliopolis in the former province of Phoenice, by then overrun by the Muslim conquests:

"At that time Kallinikos, an artificer from Heliopolis, fled to the Romans. He had devised a sea fire which ignited the Arab ships and burned them with all hands. Thus it was that the Romans returned with victory and discovered the sea fire."

twoday posted:

yes, the greeks

quote:

The Claw (Ancient Greek: Ἁρπάγη, romanized: harpágē, lit. 'snatcher') of Archimedes (also known as the "iron hand") was an ancient weapon devised by Archimedes to defend the seaward portion of Syracuse's city wall against amphibious assault. Although its exact nature is unclear, the accounts of ancient historians seem to describe it as a sort of crane equipped with a grappling hook that was able to lift an attacking ship partly out of the water, then either cause the ship to capsize or suddenly drop it. It was dropped onto enemy ships, which would then swing itself and destroy the ship.

These machines featured prominently during the Second Punic War in 214 BC, when the Roman Republic attacked Syracuse with a fleet of 60 quinqueremes under Marcus Claudius Marcellus. When the Roman fleet approached the city walls under cover of darkness, the machines were deployed, sinking many ships and throwing the attack into confusion. Historians such as Livy attributed heavy Roman losses to these machines, together with catapults also devised by Archimedes.

Polybius (c. 200-118 BC), Universal History, Book VIII.6:

Other machines invented by Archimedes were directed against the assault parties as they advanced under the shelter of screens which protected them against the missiles shot through the walls. Against these attackers the machines could discharge stones heavy enough to drive back the marines from the bows of the ships; at the same time a grappling-iron attached to a chain would be let down, and with this the man controlling the beam would clutch at the ship. As soon as the prow was securely gripped, the lever of the machine inside the wall would be pressed down. When the operator had lifted up the ship's prow in this way and made her stand on her stern, he made fast the lower parts of the machine, so that they would not move, and finally by means of a rope and pulley suddenly slackened the grappling-iron and the chain. The result was that some of the vessels heeled over and fell on the sides, and others capsized, while the majority when their bows were let fall from a height plunged under water and filled, and thus threw all into confusion.

Livy (59 BC-AD 17), History of Rome from its Foundation, Book XXIV.34:

Some of the enemy ships came close in-shore, too close for the artillery to touch them; and these he dealt with by using a swing-beam and grapnel. The method was this: the swing-beam projected over the wall and an iron grapnel was attached to it on a heavy chain; the grapnel was lowered on to a vessel's bows, and the beam was then swung up, the other arm being brought to the ground by the shifting of a leaden weight; the result was to stand the ship, so to speak, on her tail, bows in air. Then the whole contraption was suddenly let go, and the ship, falling smash as it were from the wall into the water (to the great alarm of the crew), was more or less swamped even if it happened to come down on an even keel.

Plutarch (AD 45-120), Parallel Lives: Marcellus
At the same time huge beams were run out from the walls so as to project over the Roman ships: some of them were then sunk by great weights dropped from above, while others were seized at the bows by iron claws or by beaks like those of cranes, hauled into the air by means of counterweights until they stood upright upon their sterns, and then allowed to plunge to the bottom, or else they were spun round by means of windlasses situated inside the city and dashed against the steep cliffs and rocks which jutted out under the walls, with great loss of life to the crews. Often there would be seen the terrifying spectacle of a ship being lifted clean out of the water into the air and whirled about as it hung there, until every man had been shaken out of the hull and thrown in different direction, after which it would be dashed down empty upon the walls.

quote:

Lucian (Hippias, or The Bath):
The former [Archimedes] burned the ships of the enemy by means of his science.

Galen (De Temperamentis 3.2.:

In some such way, I think, Archimedes too is said to have set on fire the enemy’s triremes by means of pyreia. (The meaning of the Greek word pyreia (πυρεία) is not clear.)

The earliest source that unequivocally states that Archimedes employed burning mirrors was written by Anthemius of Tralles (Greek, c. AD 500) some 700 years after the fact. In his treatise entitled On Burning-Glasses he mentions offhandedly that Archimedes may have used a parabolic mirror to focus the sun’s rays on the invading Roman ships. He also gives a description of what Archimedes’ burning mirrors might have looked like, but, as he states, his description is strictly his own creation.

John Tzetzes , Book of Histories, Book II, Lines 118-128

When Marcellus withdrew them [his ships] a bow-shot, the old man [Archimedes] constructed a kind of hexagonal mirror, and at an interval proportionate to the size of the mirror he set similar small mirrors with four edges, moved by links and by a form of hinge, and made it the centre of the sun's beams--its noon-tide beam, whether in summer or in mid-winter. Afterwards, when the beams were reflected in the mirror, a fearful kindling of fire was raised in the ships, and at the distance of a bow-shot he turned them into ashes. In this way did the old man prevail over Marcellus with his weapons.

John Zonaras, EPITOME TON ISTORION, 9.4:

At last in an incredible manner he [Archimedes] burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all.

Ghostlight posted:

That's because the majority of those sorts of alternative ideas still trace back to theosophical cosmology rooted in Victorian ideas of race science, or to medieval translations of Islamic translations of Greek writings on the function of the pyramids or the history of Egypt.

I've not seen any pictures of tombs with poorly-cut hieroglyphics, but cutting specific irregular shapes into rock would be considerably more difficult than taking the uneven peaks off of it. Sir John Gardner Wilkinson postulated that the Egyptians favoured the use of copper and bronze tools because the soft metal held emery powder more readily, allowing them to use mechanical assistance such as a wheel and drill like an engraver rather than simply chiseling into the stone. Egypt also preferentially sourced the stronger arsenical copper from its mines in Sinai.

Vodos posted:

I guess I should have posted pictures, there's some in this post if you scroll down a little: http://www.pukajay.com/pukajaypress/?p=110
The whole video about the boxes is also at the top, but it's almost an hour long. They get to walk around sections closed to the public though.