Free Republic

The polybolos has long been a legendary weapon of Roman military might, both in the sense that it could inflict tremendous damage and that it may never have existed. But archaeologists and engineers from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli and the University of Bologna have identified ancient artillery holes that they believe correspond to shots from the device, according to a Diario AS report.The polybolos, literally "multiple thrower," was a chain-driven freestanding catapult that fired metal-tipped bolts from a magazine in quick-repeating succession, automatically, according to a description by Philo of Byzantium, a Greek engineer living in the third...

A hoard of 175 silver coins unearthed in a forest in Italy may have been buried for safe keeping during a Roman civil war.The coins seem to date from 82 B.C., the year the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla fought a bloody war across Italy against his enemies among the leaders of the Roman Republic, which resulted in Sulla's victory and his ascension as dictator of the Roman state.But historian Federico Santangelo, a professor who heads Classics and Ancient History at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said it also could have been buried by a businessman who wanted to...

Thomas Jefferson famously adapted key passages of John Locke’s Second Treatise in his draft Declaration of Independence. An 18th century gentleman could hardly regard himself as learned without the ability to quote a few Lockean passages from memory. Yet, what of the average colonial? Books were expensive imports. How were the yeomanry educated well enough in Lockean concepts to readily understand and accept this radical document, the Declaration of Independence? Through newspapers. Like modern Americans, our colonial forebears were also political junkies. Freewheeling editorials, letters to the editor that criticized parliamentary and colonial governments were standing features of public life....