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Archaeologists have unearthed a sprawling ancient Roman cemetery in southern France containing 1,430 graves and evidence of funerary banquets held in honor of deceased family members.Excavations of the cemetery, called the Robine necropolis due to its proximity to a canal of the same name, began in 2017 ahead of construction work in the city of Narbonne. The funerary complex was "remarkably well-preserved," having been buried beneath a 10-foot (3 meters) blanket of silt during flooding of the nearby Aude River, according to a translated statement.The graves and artifacts date to between the end of the first century B.C. and the...

Overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, a French port city stands on the grounds of Roman history.The site of the first Roman colony outside of Italy, Narbonne holds the secrets to the empire's past — and what it did with its stuff.During an excavation along the outskirts of the city, archaeologists discovered stone walls more than 2,000 years old, likely part of an ancient warehouse district, according to a March 22 news release from INRAP, the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research.The city, called Colonia Narbo Martius, was founded in 118 B.C. during the early expansion of the Roman Empire, the...

Archaeologists in northwest France have unearthed what may have been a temple to the Roman war god Mars, dating to the first century B.C....was part of a Roman complex spread over more than 17 acres (7 hectares) that was discovered last year at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz, Brittany...La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz has been recognized for its wealth of archaeological remains since the 1970s, and it was first excavated in the 1990s, Labaune-Jean said. The latest excavations started in 2022.The site is slightly elevated, with a commanding view of the Rennes basin...Archaeologists believe the site was dedicated to Mars after discovering a bronze statuette of...

...in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the French capital's precursor Lutetia nearly 2,000 years ago.Somehow the buried necropolis was never stumbled upon during multiple road works over the years, as well as the construction of the Port-Royal station on the historic Left Bank in the 1970s.However, plans for a new exit for the train station prompted an archaeological excavation...The "Saint Jacques" necropolis, the largest burial site in the Gallo–Roman town of Lutetia, was previously partially excavated in the 1800s.However, only objects considered precious were...

Albert Uderzo, co-creator and illustrator of the "Asterix" comic book series, has died at the age of 92, a spokesman for his publisher Editions Albert Rene said. The hugely popular comic, read worldwide, follows the adventures of Gaulish warriors and their antics against Roman adversaries. They were published for the first time in francophone Pilote magazine in 1959. Uderzo, who was born in France in April 1927, produced the cartoons alongside author René Goscinny, until Goscinny's death in 1977. The cartoons, which feature blond moustachioed Asterix and his friend Obelix, have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects.

France’s biggest trove of Gaulish coins has been unearthed in Brittany. Archeologists found them while searching along the route of a bypass under construction in the Côtes d’Armor. The coins are in the hands of specialist restorers and will go on display in the département. The trove consists of 545 gold-silver-copper coins: 58 staters and 487 quarterstaters. ‘Stater’ is the generic term for antique coins. They lay a foot beneath the earth’s surface near Laniscat, 64km south of Saint-Brieuc, at a known Iron Age manor house or farm site, and date to 75- 50BC. They are very well preserved. Inrap,...

On August 18, in anno Domini 472, the powerful generalissimo of the Western Roman Empire, Ricimer, passed from this life. A barbarian of noble birth, half Visigothic and half Suevian, Ricimer first appears in history as a soldier in the Western Roman army under the command of Flavius Aetius. It is in this capacity that he became allied with Majorian, another follower of Aetius. Both men, it seems, participated in the campaigns of Aetius against the Franks, though Majorian later had a falling out with the great commander prior to his famous victory over Attila. After the assassination of Aetius...

TALE OF ARTHUR POINTS TO COMET CATASTROPHE From The Times, 9 September 2000 http://www.the-times.co.uk BY NICK NUTTALL Arthur: myth links him to fire from the sky THE story of the death of King Arthur and its references to a wasteland may have been inspired by the apocalyptic effects of a giant comet bombarding the Earth in AD540, leading to the Dark Ages, a British scientist said yesterday. The impacts filled the atmosphere with dust and debris; a long winter began. Crops failed, and there was famine, Dr Mike Baillie of Queen's University, Belfast, told the British Association for the Advancement...

May 9 is one of several possible dates given for the death of the last Western Roman emperor, Julius Nepos, in the year AD 480. “Wait,” you say. “I thought the last Western Emperor was Romulus Augustulus who was deposed by Odoacer the Scirian in AD 476.” Well, about that... Julius Nepos was named Western Emperor by the ailing Eastern Roman emperor Leo in AD 473. Leo did this because he opposed the puppet emperor Glycerius who had been raised by the Burgundian general Gundobad. According to the Chronicle of John of Antioch, this Gundobad had personally beheaded the Western...

Most people are aware of the famous vision seen by Constantine the Great of a cross in the sky with the words, "In hoc signo, vinces" — by this sign you will conquer. Having seen this miraculous vision, Constantine would cause his soldiers to march under Christian symbols, be victorious in his wars, and eventually convert to Christianity. Many citizens of the Roman Empire would follow him. But not all. During the reign of Constantine's sons, paganism continued to be practiced throughout the empire. Indeed, thanks to the weak rule and the rumored personal scandals of Constans, a pagan usurper...

An ancient tavern believed to be more then 2,100 years old has been found in the town of Lattes, southern France, making it the oldest Roman restaurant found in the Mediterranean. They also found evidence that while Romanization changed the locals' dining habits, it didn't do much for the cuisine. Evidently some things never change, though. The excavators in the town of Lattes found indoor gristmills and ovens for baking pita, each about one meter across. This oven, called a tabouna or taboon, is still used throughout the Middle East and Israel. In another room, across the courtyard from the...

The earliest known examples of wine-making as we know it are in the regions of modern-day Iran, Georgia, and Armenia -- and researchers believe that modern winemaking slowly spread westward from there to Europe... The Etruscans, a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy, are thought to have gained wine culture from the Phoenicians -- who spread throughout the Mediterranean from the early Iron Age onward -- because they used similarly shaped amphoras... Dr McGovern's team focused on the coastal site of Lattara, near the town of Lattes south of Montpellier, where the importation of amphoras continued up until the period 525-475 BC....

Dietler discovers statue in France that reflects an Etruscan influence By William Harms News Office This image depicts the reconstruction of the statue Michael Dietler found at Lattes in southern France. An image of the statue is positioned in the torso area of the figure of the warrior." A life-sized statue of a warrior discovered in southern France reflects a stronger cultural influence for the Etruscan civilization throughout the western Mediterranean region than previously appreciated. Michael Dietler, Associate Professor in Anthropology, and his French colleague Michel Py have published a paper in the British journal Antiquity on the Iron Age...

LONDON: For decades it has been a man's privilege to scoff at the lengths to which women will go to make themselves look beautiful. But go back a few thousand years, and the male of the species went to extraordinary lengths to look good. Scientists examining prehistoric bodies found in the peat bogs of Ireland have discovered evidence of careful grooming on male corpses. One of the bodies, dug up in 2003 at Clonycavan, near Dublin, had mohawk-style hair, held in place with a gel substance. The other, unearthed three months later 40km away in Oldcroghan, had carefully manicured fingernails....

During the 230s B.C., Attalos I of Pergamon in Asia Minor decisively defeated marauding tribes of Gauls. Known for their muscular physique and the feral appearance imparted by the thick, manelike locks of hair they washed with water and lime, these Celtic warriors were at various times a terror to Greeks and Romans alike. In 387 B.C. they had plundered Rome itself. "The Dying Gaul," on loan to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, from Rome's Capitoline Museum through March 16, is a superb antique copy of a sculptural masterpiece originally intended to commemorate the Pergamene triumph. Attalos I...

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes... "They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC. "It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain...

Exihibition in Bonn concerning loot plundered from Gaul by the Alemanni found in the Rhine (more than 1000 objects). This event is dated fairly exactly to the mid-third century by Roman records of a great defeat of Germans trying to get back to Germany after plundering Gaul. Apparently the Roman Army caught them in mid-stream, burdened with plunder. Bet it sucked to be them that day.Story in German.

Catholic Review File Photo There were countless angles a journalist could have taken in writing a preview story about Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Baltimore in 1995. Christopher Gaul, then the senior writer at the Catholic Review who later became the newspaper’s managing editor, decided to examine what others ignored: the source of the 80,000 Communion hosts that would be consecrated during the Oct. 8 papal Mass at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Gaul traced the story all the way back to a Kansas wheat field, where grains were harvested and shipped by railcar to New Jersey to...

Is anyone else struck by the sheer effrontery of this buffoon?

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