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On March 5 in AD 493, Theodoric the Ostrogoth entered Ravenna, having forced Odoacar the Scirian, who had ruled Italy as rex for 17 years, to agree to joint rule. This agreement ended the war between them which had been ongoing for nearly four years. Odoacar had deposed the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in AD 476 and had ruled Italy himself since then. Attempts by the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno to get Odoacar to recognize even the appearance of Roman suzerainty over Italy were continually rebuffed. In 489, when faced with a dangerous Ostrogothic horde outside the walls...

Mar 02, 2010 14:30:03 A black woman who lived in Britannia in Roman times "a lady of ivory bracelet" (This article was originally posted in Japanese on 14:30 Mar 02, 2010) Roman EmpireSpeaking of ancient Roman civilizationLatinAnd CaesarGaara's war historyRecord remains inGaulians·GermanicAlthough it tends to embrace the image of a society centered on white people, such as white, the vast empire with the whole region of the Mediterranean coast as a version,Aeeguptus(Now Egypt) toMauretania(Now Morocco) to include the northern African region, there are also many African populations, and it seems that there were many people who moved out of Africa...

Boudicca's warpaint puts farmer on the woad to recovery By Sarah Lonsdale (Filed: 28/09/2003) Woad, the plant whose deep blue pigment was used as a warpaint by the ancient Britons to frighten their enemies, is to be farmed commercially in Britain for the first time in 500 years. Large-scale production of woad, which was most famously used by the warrior queen Boudicca, finally died out in the 16th century when cheaper dyes imported from India made it uneconomic. Now, however, farming of the spinach-like plant, which produces colours ranging from pale blue to indigo, is to be resumed by a...

A fault in the Apennine Mountains wreaked damage on structures including the Colosseum. The geological fault responsible for a series of Italian earthquakes in 2016 might also have caused a quake mentioned in ancient accounts of fifth-century Rome. Until 2016, scientists had considered the 30-kilometre-long Mount Vettore fault in the central Apennine Mountains to be dormant. But between August and October that year, it generated three big earthquakes; the first killed nearly 300 people. To explore the fault’s history, a team led by Paolo Galli at the Department of Civil Protection in Rome dug trenches across it to look for...

The most stunning artifact recovered beneath Gosposvetska Street was a transparent blue glass bowl found next to the woman’s body... This exquisite drinking bowl could have been used in both regular daily life as well as for burial ceremonies, and an analysis of its chemical composition points to its manufacture somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region. The grapevine decorations have their role in the Christian Eucharist and Communion, but have their origins in motifs associated with Dionysus, the pagan god of wine and ecstasy. Archaeologists are also interested in how the woman’s tomb developed over time. It seems that possibly...

In our information age, we’re bombarded with statistics on every danger the number crunchers can conjure — people struck by lightning, airplane vs. automotive deaths, and even drownings in bathtubs. But one statistic is curiously missing from the list. Even though President Obama and other global-warming alarmists warn of a looming climate apocalypse, they avoid giving a metric to prove their claims. They blame man-made climate change for a vast array of ills, including floods, droughts, wildfires, and tornados. But they never quantify what they say is the driving force behind it all: temperature.They have a very good reason. Actual...

Public infrastructure projects that sprung up about this time, likely to accommodate the sudden influx of refugees, also provided clues about resettlement, Tuck said. That's because between 15,000 and 20,000 people lived in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the majority of them survived Vesuvius' catastrophic eruption. One of the survivors, a man named Cornelius Fuscus later died in what the Romans called Asia (what is now Romania) on a military campaign. "They put up an inscription to him there," Tuck told Live Science. "They said he was from the colony of Pompeii, then he lived in Naples and then he joined...

At a banquet of the gods on Mount Olympus, the emperors of Rome were called to account to find which of them was the greatest. When Constantine’s turn came and he recounted his long string of triumphs, Silenus, the drunken companion of Dionysus, stood and rebuked him: “Constantine,” he said, “are you not offering us mere gardens of Adonis as exploits?” “What do you mean,” Constantine asked, “by gardens of Adonis?” “I mean,” said Silenus, “those that women plant in pots by scraping together a little earth for a garden bed. They bloom for a little space and fade forthwith.”...

An ancient quarry near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England offers a smutty glimpse into the lives of the Roman soldiers who built the famous fortification. Archaeologists from the U.K.’s Newcastle University and Historic England are working to record the unique inscriptions carved into the walls of the quarry, which provided stone for Hadrian’s Wall. The sandstone inscriptions include a caricature of an officer and a phallus, which denoted good luck in Roman culture. Other carvings at the quarry in Gelt Forest have helped experts date the rare inscriptions. One inscription, for example, describes ‘APRO ET MAXIMO CONSVLIBVS OFICINA MERCATI,’ a...

In AD 303 on February 23, the Christian church of Nicomedia in Roman Bithynia was utterly destroyed. In this case, by “church” I am referring to the physical building as opposed to the human beings of Nicomedia who professed the Christian faith. Their destruction would come later. The pulling down of the church of Nicomedia marked the beginning of a violent, Roman Empire-wide repression of Christianity known to future generations as the Great Persecution. This state-sponsored attack would be the most violent, wide-ranging, and longest-lasting effort of the Roman government to wipe out the hated Christian sect. It would also...

Full headline: Are America and the West headed toward collapse? New study finds startling similarities to fall of past civilizationsPredictions of America’s doom and gloom ahead are nothing new, as it’s always easier for us to see the glass as half-empty rather than half-full. So it’s not surprising that a new study has made a similar ‘prediction.’ But unlike many past analyses, a new look at an old study by historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus “A Study of History” examined his findings and identified key elements within each past great civilization that explained why they collapsed. In...

An Etruscan hypogeum which is 'considered exceptional within the western Mediterranean' has just been discovered within this ancient cemetery on Corsica... which is believed to date all the way back to between the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. According to Forbes, this burial ground in southern Aléria was first spotted after a new home was slated to be built. However, it was swiftly discovered that this was already the enormous home to the many people who had been buried here thousands of years ago. ...at one point in time it was much larger, with a history that stretches straight back...

The ancient square, the site where Julius Caesar was murdered, is to get a make-over courtesy of fashion house Bulgari, which plans to spend some €800,000 restoring the ruins to an accessible state. Currently visitors can only admire the square from above. It is closed to all except a colony of stray cats and the human volunteers who operate a sanctuary for them in the south-west corner... Off-limits and overgrown, its archaeological remains stacked into piles, the area needs considerable work to make it accessible to the public, including securing the ruins, installing walkways and building public bathrooms... There have...

Excavations carried out by an Egyptian mission at the Tel Abu Seify archaeological site in Northern Sinai uncovered the remains of a limestone building that was once a workshop for the construction and repair of boats and vessels during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The site is said to have been the location of the Roman fortress of Silla. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the workshop includes two dry dockyards where ships were built or repaired. But regretfully, along the span of time as the workshop lost its function, after the Nile branch...

Cultivated fields with bounds, farms, buildings and even roads - archaeologists discovered a completely preserved layout of an ancient settlement from nearly 2,000 years ago in the Tuchola Forest. It is a unique site in Europe, emphasize the authors of the discovery. The area of the Tuchola Forest on the border of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian province and the Pomeranian province is overgrown with a thick forest. It is one of the least-explored areas in terms of archaeology in Poland... According to the researchers, the relics come from the first centuries of our era... Archaeologists remind that after hundreds of years, old...

Archaeologists working in a richly decorated house in ancient Pompeii have discovered a stunningly preserved fresco depicting the mythological hunter Narcissus enraptured by his own reflection in a pool of water. The figure of Narcissus, who according to the myth fell in love with his own image to the point that he melted from the fire of passion burning inside him, was a fairly common theme in the first-century Roman city. The discovery, announced on Thursday, is in the atrium of a house where, back in November, excavations brought to light another fresco that portrays an erotic scene from the...

Did the Roman Empire help to spread Christianity, and if so, in what ways? Pax Romana During the times of Christ and the Apostles, the Roman Empire was the dominant world power and they subjugated all nations which they conquered, but they also allowed them certain freedoms, like the freedom to worship in their own way. The mighty empire brought a domineering power to the world, but it also brought a peace that the world had not known for some time. It was called “Pax Romana,” which is Latin for Roman Peace and so the Romans brought a state of...

Archaeologists working in Sicily's Valley of the Temples have found traces of a settlement thought to pre-date the famous Greek temples built there in around 600 BC... The discovery of a structure possibly built before the Greeks arrived came during preparatory work ahead of a project to shore up the ground near the Temple of Hera. Archaeologists uncovered a mysterious walled structure on top of which ancient Greeks had apparently built a shrine and a burial ground. Until now it has been thought that Agrigento was settled by the Greeks soon after they began starting colonies in much of the...

Alexander Hardcastle spent a decade searching for the fabled theatre, which is said to be buried beneath the remains of Akragas, a city established by Greek colonists six centuries before Christ on the southern coast of Sicily... Hardcastle, a former soldier who had served with the Royal Engineers in the Boer War, believed that remains of the stone-built theatre had survived, despite Akragas being shaken by earthquakes, sacked by the Carthaginians and plundered for its stone. The Harrow-educated gentleman scholar, who was born in Belgravia, spent a fortune on the quest between 1920 and 1930, but lost all his money...

[snip] I'm in Syracuse on Sicily's east coast, founded by the Greeks 27 centuries ago. In the city's ancient heart is the Duomo, the Cathedral of Syracuse. Today, this is a Christian church, but to walk through its doors is to take a trip back in time to 500 years before Christ was even born. The Duomo began life in 480 BC as the building project of a Greek tyrant, who having beaten the Carthaginians in battle, used the loot to build this. And these are the columns from that temple, soaring up into the sky. It was topped by...