Those are the questions our newspaper wants to answer. In addition to the many fine historical articles our staff writers have prepared for your interest and pleasure, we, as always before, have tried to gather all news from all sectors of the City and AncientSites. Our Families reporter is on a vacation, but we have a new Foreign Correspondant from Athens. She has written an interesting highlight on festivities in our neighbor city.
As it is vacations time, things are a bit slower than usually. We will continue to publish this paper on a monthly basis, though the idea of bi-weekly publishing seems intriguing to us and some of you readers. I will keep you all posted on our progress!
- Editor
Announcements
by Tiziana Fabius
Friends, Romans, Countrymen (and wimmin!)....salvete, omnes! How are you all these hot days of summer? (And for my Roman Friends in the Southern Hemisphere - does Santa wear a bikini on your Christmas cards? - often wondered that...and, as we know, the bikini was invented in Ancient Rome, as depicted in those famous wall paintings in Sicily!)
Now, I have to apologise a tutti for having been absent for the last one or two Acta Diurnas (um... Acta Diurnae? Actae Diurnibus?? damnation... I always told Miss Fecit - my Latin teacher - that I'd do the homework, but, ya know how it is!)
Well, I'm pleased to announce that we HAVE one or two EXCITING announcements this month, which I KNOW you are ALL awaiting with baited breath! *fingers crossed*
Births, Deaths, Marriages and Engagements
Brittanicus Cornelius and Clio Aristocratos actually went ahead and tied the knot - yep, I may not have been able to attend (twas at the unsociable hour of 3am, and I was having my legs waxed, doncha know).. BUT.. I have in my possession the FULL transcript! He he! To save the bride's blushes naturally I erased the post-wedding party from my hard drive - JUST KIDDING CLIO! It was a beeeaaauuutiful ceremony - congratulations, and a fine couple they make too!
Lydia Servilius and pompei Cassius dear me.....hang on a minute... this can't be right..... but I think Pomp actually made it up the altar this time! No last minute tantrums or Mysteriously Calling It Off! Well what can I say except congratulations and good luck to the old man on crutches and our gracious Lady of the HTML!
Rome is proud to announce that Caesar Hostilius and Dia Flavius have made their betrothal official to everyone on July 26. The wedding will be held at alternative domus, folks, and say hi... *bg*
And finally...
Well it seems that everyone is on their hols or something, but things seem decidedly quiet on the gossip front in Roma... course, I have been privy to one or two BIG secrets lately but....I was sworn to secrecy!!! But let's just say that something big is about to hit, and it will have all the impact of that nuclear bomb that struck Paradise Cove a coupla years ago, for it to rise mystifyingly from the ashes with a New Management and the New Name of Mystic Beach.... not familiar with that story?? Well, your good columnist was the leader of a Protest Thread at the time....I may not be a frequenter of MB but THAT'S because it's not a patch on the old PC *sigh*...anyway, I'm rambling again. More next time - be good, and may the Gods watch over us all!
Tiz
Group Spotlight: Etruria
by Camiltnas Tullius
Unlike many groups in AS, the Etruria Group is NOT involved in roleplay. Instead we discuss that most fascinating of peoples, The Etruscans.
Many people who have completed a classical education would not appreciate that it was the Etruscans who founded Rome. For the period before the first Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome was not a city, but a collection of shepherds huts strewn over several hillsides and divided by mosquito infested swampland. Indeed as recent evidence shows, many of the very symbols of Rome itself come to us from the Etruscans.
Recently at Etruria, we have formed an Italian language topic "Scrivere in Italiano" which gives a chance of participation to those people who don't have the confidence to write in English.
One of our regular contributers, Velthur Valerius lives within a stones throw of the ruins of Tarquinia, and has promised to contribute some photographs for the benefit of the group. Infortunately his first attempt was thwarted by the presence of deadly vipers which infest the ruins at this time of year. He tells us that he will try again in October.
Interest in the Etruscans has been revived of late by recent finds such as the Tavola Cortinensis which throws new light on the Etruscan language. Nowadays we can translate certain Etruscan inscriptions, although the full grammar is still cryptic. Depending on who you talk to, we now know between 500 and 1600 words of Etruscan.
Anyone with an interest in the Etruscan people is welcome to apply to join Etruria or read more about The Mysterious Rasenna
News from Abroad
Athens
The Lesser Panathenaia
by Hera Pericles
July 20 through the 26th the Demes of Athens held a festival called the The Lesser Panathenaia.On the first day the deme of Skambonidai held a debate which can be found here. It carried on throught the whole festival and continued afterwards. At first the discussion started out slowly but picked up on the second day of the festival and kept on going.
Also on the first day the deme of Daedalidai started the Torch Race. In the Torch Race the rules were pretty simple, find the torches (posted at Daedalidai residents homes),document them, and unscramble the word. After you had all that done you were supposed to leave a message at Atheena Harmodios. It was quite fun searching for them with torches being posted at peoples homes over the days of the festival. This also continued on for a few days with the winner in first place MAUVE ISOCRATES WITH 17 POINTS, in second place ZOE XANTHIPPOS WITH 14 POINTS, and in third place CYTHERA ARISTON WITH 12 POINTS.Congratulations everybody!
The deme of Thorikos hosted daily trivia questions on their deme thread.On the 26th you were to post your answers on their thread. There were three questions a day and day one was here. This continued on through the Lesser Panathenaia with day two being here, day 3 being here,day four being here,and day five being here. At the end of the festival the winner was Zoe Xanthippos. The participants were Mauve Isocrates, Ioannis Nestor (for the second year),Daphne Leonidas, Ademus Aristides, and Hypatia Mnesicles. Lycurgus Aristides helped enormously with questions and without him, the contest would have been much shorter and easier or so that was what Clio Aristocratos told me! You can find the answers here.Congratulations on all the winner of the trivia game.
The deme of Marathon hosted the Panathenaia Athletic Games on the 23rd and 24th. You can find the Games here. Among some of the events were the sailing regatta,Pentathalon,and the mixed stade race.Of Course if you didn't want to compete you could also cheer your friends to victory. I'm sure every one had fun watching or participating in the games.Congratulations to all the winners in the games.
The Museum of fine art hosted a game called Mystery Masterpieces in which Cythera Ariston posted on several boards with pictures of Art work. I was then your job to figure out the name of the art work and the name of the artist. Although I didn't have any luck in it other did and it was fun guessing anyway. You can find that here. The winners are in first place AkenAnubis Thutmose, in second place Zoe Xanthippos , and in third place Pallas Nestor. Congratulations to all the winners.
Before the procession, we had a pannychis. Literally an "all night" celebration, we celebrated the night away starting from 7:00 PM AS time, also on the procession thread with dancing, food and fun.
Eleusis and Brauron hosted the procession in which it went like this 1. Four little girls carrying a peplos for the statue of Athene Polias 2. Priestesses of Athene and Athenian women carrying gifts 3. Sacrificial animals (cows and sheep) 4. Metics (resident aliens), wearing purple robes 5. Musicians 6. A large peplos (for Athene Parthenos) hung on the mast of a ship on wheels 7. Old men carrying olive branches 8. Four-horse chariots with a charioteer and fully armed man (apobatês) 9. Craftswomen (ergastinai - weavers of peplos) 10. Infantry and Cavalry 11. Victors in the games 12. Ordinary Athenians arranged by deme Afterwards, all the cows brought by the demes are sacrificed on the Great Altar to Athene Polias - except for one, which is chosen from the best cows and offered up to Athene Nike. This occured after most of the activities ended on the 26th. I was one of the craftswomen on number 9.You can of course find the procession here. All in all the whole festival was fun.
The Banquet was hosted by the deme of daedalidai. Which also was on the procession thread. All through the night everybody had fun. I certainly did. We had wine, food and had fun.
I would personally like to thank all the people who helped and participated in the festival. Thats what made this years festival great. I would also like to thank Pallas Nestor for creating the beautiful plaque for the festival which is shown at the top of this article.
The Acta Diurna needs Correspondants from the AncientSites city-states of Egypt and New York. If you are interested, please contact the Editor!
The Throne of Caesar
by Nate Romulus
The Imperial Succession always fascinates people. Not only the men who wore the Imperial Purple and their exploits, but how they managed to become Emperor (Imperator), especially considering the sorry performance after they reached the ultimate pinnacle of Roman politics. To modern peoples living in Western Europe and North America, the Roman methods of succession seem quite bizzarre. Used to to orderly transitions of power from one leader to the next, modern man can not quite grasp the idea that Rome had no set mode of transition; rather, Romans all had different ideas on how one man became Emperor and what the determining factor should be. At different times in the history of the Empire after Augustus, each different ideology got its chance to create a workable system.
Perhaps the main reason it was so hard to decide how to handle the succession was because their was no exact definition of what the Imperial office actually was. The position held by the men we now call Emperor was for the most part extra-constitutional, mainly a combination of offices and titles. At various times, the Emperor was officially, the "Princeps"(which translates into "First Citizen" and is rough antecedent of the medieval title of "Prince"), Imperator (which was a title that was traditionally granted to Consuls or dictators to show that they had "Imperium," military command), Pontifex Maximus (which was the first important political title held by Gaius Julius Caesar). Augustus even went as far as to assume several offices, Princeps, Tribune, and the Imperium; for a time he was Consul, but he relinquished that office in the traditional manner. Throught the span of the Empire, the Senate was still technically in charge, which brought even further confusion as the Senate would often attempt to reassert its authority. Eventually, the man called "Caesar" was simply the man whom all recongnized as having the supreme authority; after the middle of the second century, the title of "Imperator" became the favored one (hence the modern translation of "Emperor").
At first, the prevailing thoght was that the Imperator should be succeeded by a member of his family. The immediate heirs to Augustus were all members of the Julio-Claudian family, and nearly all related to each other. By the end of the first century, though, this had been shown as perhaps not the best method, especially after some of the men who swam out of that gene pool (read: Caligula, Nero). The "Five Good Emperors" began a practice of adoptive heirs, which continued through most of the second century, until Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his biological son, Commodus. After that point, the whole concept of familial succession seems to have been abandoned. However, nearly all Emperors continued to claim the names of Caesar and Augustus, and often claimed direct descent from Julius Caesar or Augustus. Throughout the whole of the Imperial period, however, whenever a vacancy appeared on the throne, sons and other family members could make strong claims, especially if they had been well positioned by their fathers.
Perhaps the least effective idea was that of senatorial election. Many patricians, at least early on in the imperial period, believed that since all the offices of the state recieved authority through the Senate and its Consuls, then it logically followed that the Imperial office was no exception. Though Augustus was politically adept at having all his titles and authorities confirmed by the Senate, he left a sticky political precedent and made it seem, at least to many legal scholars, that the Senate still had the supreme sovereingty. This may have been a viable method of electing suitable leaders for Rome. However, because the Senate did not have the loyalty of most of the Legions, it was highly uncommon for a candidate from the Senate to become Emperor.
The most used method of choosing an Emperor was simple selection by the Legions. Whoever could control the Legions or bribe enough Praetorians often enough found himself with the Imperial purple. Unforunately, this method also was the cause of many civil wars when different general each had ambitions; indeed this was the cause of the civil wars as early as Julius Caesar and Pompey as well as the way Augustus came to power, defeating Marc Antony and Cleopatra in the process. By the end of the second century, through the third and into the fourth centuries, it simply became whoever commanded most of the army and could establish himself. Most of the generals would accept another general as commander as long as he kept their coffers filled and did not look to intimately into sources of corruption and so forth. By the mid-fourth century, the army was merely the part of muc larger beaucracy, albeit an important part, that would accept the Emperors pretty much without complaint unless either gross negligence, overly ambitious generals, or both managed to get a huge influence.
That is of course, a much condensed version, and the unabridged version includes many more stories and so forth. The main idea is that the military remained, from the Augustan triumph at Actium until the collapse of the Roman order in the West, the main control on who was Emperor. Indeed, the collapse of the western Roman world came about as a result of the ambitions of Odacer and other Germanic mercenaries that had replaced the old Legions.
Religion & the ranks
(Religious life & the faithful)
by Commodus Atrebas
The Romans always claimed to be the most pious nation on the earth. They claimed that this pietas was the reason that they conquered everyone with ease and also used it as the reason to conquer. War can not be separated from religion, Roman military law was totally imbued with religion through the ideas of discipline and oath-swearing.
The history of Roman religion has far too often neglected the human element, the faithful. So the first question to ask is: Who were they?
Soldier's actions were controlled by their lifestyle. They respected the military hierarchy and acted as a body. Individuals rarely made dedications. The ordinary legionary didn't act as an individual but as part of a unit, especially in the early days of empire.
The inscription stated here shows perfectly an example of collective piety. It was found in the camp at Lambaesis, Numidia and was instigated by an ordinary legionary. "The pious men who whish to make a payment to Aesculapius should place it in this collection bowl and we will make an offering to Aesculapius with it". His comrades no doubt put in a coin or two and probably scratched their name some where nearby. When the bowl was full the legionary bought either an alter, statue or some other icon and had the names of the god and those who donated to it engraved on it.
It was through official channels that the army was best at expressing it's self religiously. Each Legion had it's own clergy. Comprising of a Haruspex and sacrificer, etc. The Primus Pilus also had an important role in the religious activity of a Legion, it was he who was responsible for the standards. The standards themselves were sacred. It fell to the Primus to also have official dedications engraved. Moreover, it is the commanders of the units that appear the most on religious inscriptions, however this was less frequent during the third century than in the days of early empire.
Next article: Perceiving the divine
Colosseum Opens Again
by Javius Flavius
July the 19th, the Colosseum of Rome was opened again as the scene of a Classic Theater. Constructed by the emperor Vespasianus and open to the public in times of Titus, the last show that harbored this magnificent amphitheatre was a fight between a tiger and an elephant in the year 523 A.D. Colosseum has been little more than an archaeological jewel. Now its old splendor has been recovered and its tiers feel the public's heat in their millennial seats again.
The National Theatre of Greece is in charge of to resuscitate to the colossal Colosseum and to rescue it of the powder of the History. The night of July 19th of the year 2000 A.D. its sand was - par excellence - the site of the representation of the classic work.
Edipo King, the great Sophocles's tragedy, resonated again in the Roman night. Hundred of operatives, advised by the archaeologists installing the scenario were protecting the tiers for the thousands of spectators that were expected to come to this great representation.
The last great show known to have take place in the Colosseum of Rome was carried out in the year 246 A.D. because of the celebration of the millennium of Rome. That time two thousand gladiators fought to death and 32 elephants, 60 lions, 10 tigers, 6 hippopotami and 40 wild horses were sacrificed.
Earthquakes, rays, fires, lootings and the desidia of hundred of years have not been able to put an end to the Colossum of Rome that 15 centuries later it returns to life - thanks to the theater.
An unique opportunity to revive History to those who could not attend the Colosseum theatre, is another great festival. The Festival of Classic Theater of August Emerita (Hispania) that will take place from July 30th to August 8th and. Read the Acta Diurna to know about its development!
History of AncientSites - Part II
by Heraklia Aelius
Part I of this series reviewed the predecessor site to our current AncientSites: the Pathfinder
Rostra which was devoted, initially, to game hints and spoilers for the virtual-reality online
game, S.P.Q.R., developed by Rory and Eden based on the real architecture of Imperial
Rome. But as the S.P.Q.R. game was the guiding lamp for all that followed in the
development of the Seven Cities, it's worth a moment to go into the game itself, both in its
online version (four chapters, appearing from July, 1995, to December, 1996) and the CD-Rom
game which was also launched in late 1996.
All four episodes of the online game are still available here at A.S., at (give link), and the CD-
ROM is available at the AncientSites Market. Noted citizen and A.S. historian FeAudrey
Pinguinus recalls that she was told that there were plans for twelve chapters, but in the event,
only four made it online before the development of AncientSites and the ROM-version led to
other projects! The first chapter, from which so much else would later flow, was launched online
on July 11, 1995. This is how it came to be, in Eden's words:
"[The article] brought back a few wonderful memories of my apartment up there on 120th street
across from Columbia's campus, and how we managed to get Silicon Graphics to donate a high-
powered 3D workstation (which we named Jupiter--all our machines were gods!) to our cause for
a few weeks. And of course every time the sales reps demanded it back, we said we needed it for
just a few more weeks so that we could demo to Time Warner, or whoever was coming by. And
in fact we never gave the machine back, and SGI just wrote it off on their PR budget eventually!
... In late Fall '94, we "built" Ancient Rome, temple by temple. Rory did most of the 3D
modeling on one end of my living room, while I was doing most of the research and story writing
on the other. I was constantly taking long trips across the avenue to the famous Avery Library,
probably the best architectural library in the world, which has huge folio drawings of every major
archaeological excavation. But as we developed Chapter I, we realized that HTML was still
incapable of providing the game play that we needed. There was no way to include artifacts, for
example, or if-then statements for game logic, or variables for customizing the user's experience.
Early HTML was an impoverished programming environment--there was no way to easily do the
simple image-mapping that gamers were enjoying in Myst at that time--clicking on the
right to turn in that direction, etc. I was also teaching Computer-aided design at the engineering
school at Columbia. There I located a particularly brilliant com sci kid, Ben [who would later
become "Gordian"]...who was a freshman, 17 years old, I believe. He was our first employee.
We said, Ben, we have to be able to walk around Rome, clicking intuitively to navigate. We need
to be able to pick up and store artifacts. We need game logic so that we can have puzzles, secret
chambers, locks to pick,, etc. Ben said, "No problem," and proceeded to create a new language
that we dubbed RAGE (Real Action Gaming Environment). Within days we were testing it on
the big SGI, while we created little artifacts in Photoshop on the Mac, as well as titles and
labels... It was an amazing time of concentrated creativity and productivity. Gordian, of course, is
still with us 5 years later. Then we quickly hired a few more people and soon the apartment was
like Grand Central Station! We started with Rory's early-morning schedule at 7 AM, and ended
with my usual late-night 3-AM hours. Finally I had to rent a small studio in the same building
because I wasn't getting any sleep!
Things began heating up when we got a positive response from one of our business initiatives.
We'd attempted to contact Time-Warner, which had the big Pathfinder content site. The
President of Time Warner Electronic Publishing said that he would drop by in a few days to see
our product, which we had named SPQR. After a few frantic all-nighters in early 1995
we were ready for the big visit. We had a short demo prepared, with the ideal "walk" taking us
down the path from the Arch of Septimus Severus to the Temple of Saturn, where we hid Sybil's
scroll (it's still there!). It was during one of these late sessions that we finally, after much
experimentation and hesitation, drew our grid of nodal positions over the archaeological map of
the Forum. This was casting the user experience in stone, since unlike Virtual Reality (where you
can go anywhere, shift left or right etc.), we were really just giving the users a series of linked
static views. We knew we'd have to live with them for a long time - but of course we never
imagined that SPQR would live on 5 years later! So in the door came the president of
TWEP with an associate, glancing around at my humble pre-war apartment. They were
drawn first to the bookcases where they perused the history books, and he said wistfully "you
know, I was a history major..." Then he sat down at the big color terminal and started clicking.
Of course he went the wrong way, through the Arch of Severus, down into the Forum past the
Basilica Aemilia, and veered off toward the Temple of Julius Caesar. Then he ran up against a
wall so to speak - a missing node - and was stalled! But he had a big grin on his face. He was
hooked! "When can we put it on Pathfinder?" he said. We agreed we needed a few months to fill
out the story and develop the RAGE engine, and work on the game play. So we decided on July
11, 1995. And the rest was history... Things actually speeded up after that frantic race to launch
the game by the deadline. One day that fall we got a call from GTI - a major CD-ROM game
publisher (Doom, Quake, etc). They had seen the web game and wondered if we could do a CD-
ROM version. Sure we said, and the race was on. But that's, as they say, a whole 'nother story!"
Part III will appear in the next edition.
Acta Diurna Logos and Banners
If you wish to have the logo below placed to Your Entrance, copy the HTML code in the text box beneath the logo to your Welcome Statement. (First highlight the whole code by holding your left mouse button down and moving the mouse cursor through the text, then click your right button on the highlighted area and choose "copy" from the menu appearing. After that, just click "edit" at your welcome statement, click the right mouse button at the location where you wish to place the ad in the statement and choose "paste" from the menu.) Editorial note: these ads work again, if you paste them to your domus, and will lead to this old Acta index
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