N.S.Gill's Ancient History Blog November 2006 Archive

Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar - Life of a ColossusIrene Hahn reviews Adrian Goldsworthy's biography of Julius Caessar. She comments: The question, "do we really need another book on Caesar?," can be answered ... Read More

Irene Hahn, Ancient/Classical History forum cohost and Roman History Books and More blogger, responded in depth to an inquiry on the forum about The Parthenon Code: Mankind's History in Marble, ... Read More

Ancient Greek Computer's Inner Workings Deciphered, from National Geographic News, says that the workings of an ancient Antikythera mechanism, first found in 1901, have been figured out. Antikythera is ... Read More

The Roman family was called familia, from which Latin word 'family' is derived. The familia could include the triad with which we are familiar, two parents and children (biological or ... Read More

Roman Forum from James Martin http://goeurope.about.com The Roman Forum (Forum Romanum) was originally a market place but became a place for politics, and public and private business. It is believed that ... Read More

Romans Crossing the Tigris Image © Clipart.com Through its military operations, Republican Rome came to dominate all of Italy. The Roman Empire, created by the conquering army, extended through most of Europe, ... Read More

Aphrodite's Head From Botticelli's Birth of Venus© Clipart.com I received the following question in email: "Which story do you find most intriguing in Greek Mythology?" The word 'intriguing' ... Read More

Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar - Life of a Colossus is a long, thorough, readable biography of Julius Caesar written by a military historian who includes great detail on the times and ... Read More

Einstein© clipart.com "But I have never gone away from them. How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than ... Read More

"The HBO series "Rome" depicts a Julius Caesar afflicted with "Morbus Comitialis". I've heard this was the roman name for epilepsy. Can you tell me more about this?"-from ... Read More

I received a question about Greek mythology that I have interpreted in order to answer. Here is the original question: To you, what source (poet or writer) ... Read More

Nemesis© Clipart.com I received the following email question about Greek mythology: Which God or Goddess do you find most important in our everyday life? Read Which Gods Were ... Read More

Ovid Author of the mythological Metamorphoses or Transformations© Clipart.com I received the following question: "Which book would you recommend to an experienced person of Greek Mythology for a better understanding?" I ... Read More

Romulus and Remus with the She-WolfImage © Clipart.com Discovery News, in Rome's She-Wolf Younger Than Its City, by Rossella Lorenzi, reports that Rome's iconic she-wolf, is not an ancient Etruscan artifact, as ... Read More

Mt. Vesuvius Picture by Paul Resh Flickr Creative Commons License The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79 may have been devastating to the Campanians, but as a result ... Read More

Dionysus image © Clipart.com Another in the ongoing saga of "nothing new under the sun" [see Blind Men Hunting] also involves deer and hunting. According to Boy Killed in Hunting Accident, a boy ... Read More

Colosseum image © James Martin - About.com Guide to Europe for Visitors Earlier this week was the anniversary of the birth of the first of the Flavian emperors, Vespasian. Vespasian ... Read More

Cinnabar sounds like a cinnamon-flavored treat, but it's not. It's a mineral that creates a cinnamon to red color that was used as pigment on Pompeiian frescos. European researchers combating discolouration ... Read More

Poseidon after Polybates with Gaia to the left. Image © Clipart.com. Poseidon is a complex, sometimes puzzling figure among the Greek gods. It is not entirely clear why he swaggers and ... Read More

A forum poster is curious about the connection between Dionysus and Jesus: I was reading the book by Edith Hamilton Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes and I came across ... Read More

In his Germania Tacitus tells what he knows about the ancient people living in Europe north of Italy. His descriptions include a people known to him as the Suiones who ... Read More

An NCTimes.com health article, Body parts: Venting our spleen, whatever it does, explains that people can live without the spleen, which has multiple functions. Because of these facts, it is ... Read More

One advantage of having guest reviewers is that you, the readers of this site, have the opportunity to read viewpoints other than mine. Particularly in a work like Robert ... Read More

There were various events in the Roman Republic that led to its fall and the rise of the new system of government dominated by a single man, the emperor. One ... Read More

With the help of the European History Guide, Robert Wilde, I've filled the top 10 list of Myths About Ancient History. As Rob notes in his article 4300 - The ... Read More

If you were to read an inscription about the Roman Emperor Trajan you might find that it contains the following words, numbers, and abbreviations, from which you could determine approximately ... Read More

"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name." Aldous Huxley English critic & novelist (1894 - 1963)Source: The Quotations PageOn this Ancient/Classical ... Read More

Adrian Murdoch sees traces of Harry Potter's Severus Snape in the area of epigraphy. While I don't quite get that, finding the venerable Albus Dumbledore a more appropriate JK Rowling ... Read More

According to the Naples News' article Let's Talk Food: The humble carrot's roots trace back to a romantic reputation, the carrot can be traced back 3000 years to ancient Afghanistan, from ... Read More

Have you ever struggled to figure out the ultra-correct plural form of an English word taken directly from Latin? The Rogue Classicist found a blog called "audio, video, disco" with ... Read More

I received the following question from email: I was under the distinct impression that an artist named Epsuis was the mastermind behind the horse. It was his idea and he drew ... Read More

A recent blog mentioned the Norse giant god Loki who, like the Titan Prometheus, was chained to a rock for punishment by the head of the gods. Although Loki sometimes ... Read More

Theodor Mommsen, who died on November 1, 1903, was a 19th century German scholar who started the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), a collection of ancient inscriptions written in ... Read More