An Imperial Possession:
Britain in the Roman Empire
by David Mattingly
Posted on 07/08/2006 12:49:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Marching down Marylebone Road I counted 26 neoclassical columns, then my mobile phone rang: a TV researcher was asking why film fetishises the Roman experience. Past the reconstructed remains of a Temple of Mithras in Queen Victoria Street, a billboard announced that new Romano- British artefacts had been unearthed by London developers, adding to those recently turned up by the Jubilee Line extension. One favourite was a lamp in the shape of a soldier’s foot, the wick lit on the big toe. It was a 40-minute journey that sang out Vivat Londinium! Romanis Victoria! In truth I had also travelled through Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic, and across both prehistoric Tamesa and the Viking battlefields near the Bank of England. Yet we seem less enthused by these tuftier DNA strands in our genetic make-up than by the 400-year span that is Roman Britain... Mattingly is transparently troubled by imperial ambition -- "For the majority of Britons, it is clear that, in the short term, the Romans were very bad news" -- and has written his 622-page book to encourage us to think outside the Roman box; to give that box a contemporary dimension... at one point a tenth of Rome’s armed forces occupied the province of Britannia. The natives put up a more tenacious fight than official sources imply... The book encourages readers not to feel nostalgia for a land filled with bath houses, villas, strigils, apples, cherries and straight, empty roads... I do not entirely share Mattingly’s testy disapproval of the Roman occupation, of Britannia perdomita. There are drawbacks as well as benefits to insularity.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
An Imperial Possession:
Britain in the Roman Empire
by David Mattingly
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My mother was a BIG Van Loon fan and since I inherited her books, I have several of his books in my library; including this one. I haven't read them in many decades, but do have fond memories of treading "VAN LOON'S LIVES", a bio of many famous people, all in one volume.
I believe that more better is incorrect English. You ought to use the term "Betterest".
The van Loon book is available online. I've got a copy (picked up at a library sale) and have never read it. But I'll go out on a limb right now and say he's much better than Sitchin.
Head of Roman Statue Unearthed Near BaalbekThe head of a statue dating back to the Roman period was discovered in an ancient well in the town of Eaat near Baalbek on Tuesday. An Nahar newspaper, in an article Friday about the discovery, quoted an official at the antiquities department as saying that the head is 35 cm long and weighs over 18 kg.
Beirut, 07 Jul 06, 11:02
Archeologists told the newspaper they are still trying to determine if it belongs to Alexander the Great or to Heliopolis, the Sun God. Other possibilities are also being examined.
Alexander the Great, or Helios?
Unique ancient statue of Artemis unearthedA unique ancient statue of the goddess Artemis, considered one of the most exquisite artifacts found in the Thessaly province of central Greece, was unearthed on Thursday by archaeologists at the site of an ancient theater near the modern city of Larissa, where restoration works are underway, it was announced on Friday.
ANA-MPA
7/09/2006
The 80cm-tall statue -- only the torso was found -- depicts Artemis, in Greek mythology (Diana in Roman mythology) the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon, and the twin sister of Apollo. The artifact is tentatively dated back to the mid 1st Century BC.
The head-less statue depicting Artemis. ANA-MPA / V. Paschali
The Spartans
with Bettany Hughes
Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.
Loretta: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.
Reg: Yeah.
Loretta: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.
Reg: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
Xerxes: The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Xerxes: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
Commando 3: And the sanitation.
Loretta: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
Reg: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
Matthias: And the roads.
Reg: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--
Commando: Irrigation.
Xerxes: Medicine.
Commandos: Huh? Heh? Huh...
Commando 2: Education.
Commandos: Ohh...
Reg: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
Commando 1: And the wine.
Commandos: Oh, yes. Yeah...
Francis: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
Commando: Public baths.
Loretta: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
Francis: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
Commandos: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
Reg: But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Xerxes: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace? Shut up!
;') "You think that's funny do you? Biggus..."
Bumpus maximus!
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I read Van Loon fifty years ago, got me interested in history, dated.
:’)
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