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Much of our detailed knowledge of Attila and the Huns comes from one relatively obscure source, the late 5th century History of Priscus. It’s probable that you’ve never heard of Priscus because his history was considered lost after about the 10th century AD. All that survives of it are fragments that later historians have recovered from other ancient and medieval sources that incorporated or paraphrased certain passages of interest. Excerpts from Priscus may be found embedded within works such as the Gothic History of Jordanes, the Histories of Procopius, the works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Suda, the History of John...

Taken from The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine by Eusebius Pamphilus: Chapter XXX.—That he marked out before a Covetous Man the Measure of a Grave, and so put him to Shame. On one occasion he thus personally addressed one of his courtiers: “How far, my friend, are we to carry our inordinate desires?” Then drawing the dimensions of a human figure with a lance which he happened to have in his hand, he continued: “Though thou couldst obtain the whole wealth of this world, yea, the whole world itself, thou wilt carry with thee at last no more than...

Many comparisons have been made between the Roman Empire and the United States.  The Roman Empire was the most powerful civilization on Earth.  Similarly, the United States, for now, is the sole remaining superpower.  However, with the good comes the bad and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire has been compared to the decline and pending fall of the United States. We often forget the fact that the Roman Empire was preceded for 450 years by the Roman Republic, which arose in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy.  Of course, there's an interesting correlation with...

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there. The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius. The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August...

Archaeologists in the Spanish city of Cordoba have uncovered beneath the university's old veterinary faculty Europe's biggest Roman amphitheatre after the Coliseum.The find, considered to be "of transcendental importance", dates from the first century AD, when Corduba, as it was then known, was the provincial capital of Betica, today's Andalusia, in imperial Hispania. "We initially thought it was a circus, the circular arena the Romans used for horse races and chariot rides," says Desiderio Vaquerizo, professor of architecture at Cordoba University. "But we discovered it was an immense oval amphitheatre - 178m by 145m and up to 20m high -...

British and American archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum said yesterday they had uncovered evidence to suggest that the emperor Caligula really was a self-deifying megalomaniac, and not the misunderstood, if eccentric, ruler that modern scholars have striven to create. For several decades historians have been lifting their eyebrows at the Latin authors' portrait of Caligula as a madman who came to believe he was a god. But Darius Arya of the American Institute for Roman Culture said a 35-day dig by young archaeologists from Oxford and Stanford universities had reinstated a key element in the traditional account. "We have...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ANCIENT WARFARE ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY(continuation)   PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )Youth to Consulate Descended from an impoverished patrician family which had long been attached to the senatorial clique, Caesar's immediate forbears had fallen from prominence in the decades before his birth and there had been no Consuls in his immediate family for generations. The office of Consul - one of...