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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The project appears to raise as many, if not more, questions than it answers. Archaeologists have long known or suspected that Roman engineers inherited, and majorly improved, the pre-existing nationwide transport network, still in use today though mostly superseded by modern roads...
| A major challenge is the absence of chronological evidence of the creation and change of roads, that is comparable at an Empire-wide scale. This means the current dataset cannot show the growth and change over time of Roman roads and the degree to which they built on and reused previously existing roads. Historical and archaeological sources teach us that transport networks grow organically, new roads are constructed on top of old ones, they change function and physical characteristics, and become disused. Detailed temporal evidence for road construction, use and change is only available for a handful of cases, making an evidence-based reconstruction of how the road system changed throughout the Roman period at an Empire-wide scale currently impossible. This should be the subject of dedicated large-scale efforts in future research. |
'More research needed' seems to be the generally agreed conclusion..
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Ah, I suspected as much. We know from our own detailed--if unsystematic- study of Roman roads in Britain, that there simply isn't sufficient evidence, historical or archaeological, to decide what is a Roman road and what isn't.
At a few places you can examine the underpinnings and declare, "The Romans built this," but you can't use this to reconstruct an actual road going from x to y. Much less a network of roads. We can all relax because one thing we can safely predict is that 'more research is needed' won't translate into 'more thought is needed'.
Roman history, unlike Roman roads, runs strictly on straight lines.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Military roads are straighter, must be all year round, they connect/detour to forts, barracks, you also need ideally to connect to any existing network. Military roads do not wind like civilian roads as you want speed of travel.
It's unfortunately not quite as simple as all Roman roads are straight, lead to Rome, and so on.
There is nothing really distinct about the construction of Roman military roads, you start with bigger stone, then use smaller and ideally end with compacted gravel, you have banks and draining ditches to the sides.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | Military roads are straighter |
Why? This would mean going uphill and downdale rather than sticking on the level. It might be a shorter march, A to B, but you'll be worn out when you get there.
Then surely not uphill and downdale in winter.
| they connect/detour to forts, barracks, you also need ideally to connect to any existing network. |
A bogus list if ever I saw one.
| Military roads do not wind like civilian roads as you want speed of travel. |
Civilians don't want to get there as soon as poss?
| It's unfortunately not quite as simple as all Roman roads are straight, lead to Rome, and so on. |
Didn't follow this one.
| There is nothing really distinct about the construction of Roman military roads, you start with bigger stone, then use smaller and ideally end with compacted gravel, you have banks and draining ditches to the sides. |
A notably distinct way of building roads at the time.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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My attention has been drawn (by Pete Jones) to a major new Roman find in Wales. It's all laid out in this Smithsonian article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-say-theyve-detected-the-largest-stand-alone-ancient-roman-villa-ever-unearthed-in-wales-180988032/
Apart from the authors thinking Neath/Port Talbot is a county, it all looks quite kosher. As to its importance, it isn't particularly so, there are other similar 'complete villa' sites that have been fully excavated in England and in Roman times there was no distinction between the two.
But for our purposes it is reasonably mega because, being just down the road from Caerleon, site of the earliest claimed evidence of Christianity in Britain, it will surely have evidence of the alleged state religion. But, just like Caerleon, I'm betting it will turn out to have nary a trace.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Archaeologists have unearthed the stone remains of a 2,000-year-old basilica designed by Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer. |
Wow. Its great news its everywhere.
| Located in the Italian city of Fano, the basilica is the first physical evidence of a building attributed to the architect. |
The ancient basilica was built at Fanum Fortunae, a settlement on the Adriatic Sea named after a local temple to the Roman goddess of fortune. Vitruvius only claimed to have designed one building, so I doubt there will be others......
| Vitruvius is known as the author of De Architectura, an influential ten-book treatise from the first century B.C.E.—and the only surviving architectural text from classical antiquity. |
So thats pretty miraculous we have found the sole Vitruvius designed basilica, mentioned in the sole surviving text.
| For centuries, archaeologists have searched for the structure, |
| The rectangular structure was built with ten columns on its longer sides and four columns on each of its shorter sides. The columns were about five feet in diameter, and they once stood nearly 50 feet tall. |
Thats higher than the columns of St Pauls which was started in the great City of London. St Pauls was started in 1675 and completed in 1710.
| Officials are confident that the basilica is indeed the work of Vitruvius, whose ideas on proportionality inspired Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. |
Yes, Vitruvian was all the rage after his long lost text was rediscovered, by the Florentine humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini. Poggio found a 9th-century manuscript copy of the text in the library of the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland.
Bracciolini is suspected by scholars of fabricating, interpolating, or faking certain manuscripts to boost his reputation and wealth.
But heyho the academic consensus is that he must have found some genuine ones as well. Surely......
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Vitruvius has long been a source of merriment for us but there must be some reason why they have decided this particular edifice is part of his oeuvre.
Though, if you think about it, him being so influential and all, there ought to be loads and loads of edifices all over the shop built 'in the Vitruvian style'. How exactly would you be able to distinguish between the two?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Vitruvius (as a style) may have been invented in the 16th century. Protestant architects and designers deliberately adopted a "Vitruvius" style of Renaissance architecture, different from the Gothic style used by the Catholic church.
Giving it a "classical" origin may have helped as a cover story when promoting any other kind of Christian Franchise could be deadly dangerous.
The "Vitruvius" discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of Vitruvian Man (”The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius”).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This would be roughly my opinion except I wouldn't have used the word 'Protestant'. There's a difference between 'vernacular' and 'Vitruvian'.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Boreades wrote: | Vitruvius (as a style) may have been invented in the 16th century. Protestant architects and designers deliberately adopted a "Vitruvius" style of Renaissance architecture, different from the Gothic style used by the Catholic church.
Giving it a "classical" origin may have helped as a cover story when promoting any other kind of Christian Franchise could be deadly dangerous.
The "Vitruvius" discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of Vitruvian Man (”The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius”). |
There was a widespread proliferation of renaisance basilicas, Wiley beleives the two most famous are St. Peter’s Basilica (Vatican City) and the Basilica of San Lorenzo (Florence). The proliferation occurred (according to Wiley) less due to a long lost rediscovered Vitruvius but to Leon Battista Alberti...........
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Leon Battista Alberti (Italian: [leombat?tista al?b??ti]; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. He is considered the founder of European cryptography, a claim he shares with Johannes Trithemius.[1][2] |
Leon was an incredibly gifted polymath, aged 20 he came up with a remarkably neat idea, he wrote a Latin comedy titled Philodoxeos (Lover of Glory) and passed it off as a recently discovered work by the ancient Roman writer Lepidus......
It was a sucess and accepted as genuine.......by the experts of the day.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The Basilica of Saint-Quentin in France and Canterbury Cathedral in England are connected by being on a famous pilgrims route
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Francigena
Both buildings contain a striking architectural feature, the double transept design. Although a number of English cathedrals have double transepts eg Wells, Lincoln, Salisbury as well as Canterbury, the double transept or double cross are in fact rare.
Most medieval cathedrals are arranged on a cruciform plan with a single cross.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/transept
Cant and Quent eh?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | | The proliferation occurred (according to Wiley) less due to a long lost rediscovered Vitruvius but to Leon Battista Alberti... Leon was an incredibly gifted polymath, aged 20 he came up with a remarkably neat idea, he wrote a Latin comedy titled Philodoxeos (Lover of Glory) and passed it off as a recently discovered work by the ancient Roman writer Lepidus...... |
I was just about to say that being both a famous dramatist and a famous architect breaks so many AE rules that the 'fake' story must itself be fake. But then I remembered our own contribution to the genre:
| Sir John Vanbrugh 1664 - 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. Wiki |
Unless there's fakery going on there too.
| It was a sucess and accepted as genuine.......by the experts of the day. |
I'd loved to know how he was exposed. Unless he exposed himself as an extra coup de théâtre.
| The Basilica of Saint-Quentin in France and Canterbury Cathedral in England are connected by being on a famous pilgrims route |
I still think my own 'cathedral comedy' in Meetings remains the last word on Canterbury, Queen of the Pilgrim Routes.
| Both buildings contain a striking architectural feature, the double transept design. Although a number of English cathedrals have double transepts eg Wells, Lincoln, Salisbury as well as Canterbury, the double transept or double cross are in fact rare. |
Taking that last bit literally, we should look for the real purpose of this layout when it comes to parting pilgrims from their money.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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We owe are knowledge of the Via Francigena to Sigeric of Ramsbury, who, as a newly consecrated archbishop in 990, undertook a journey from Canterbury to Rome to receive his pallium, the liturgical garment (woolen band) which the pope gives to newly appointed Metropolitan Archbishops. This band symbolizes the archbishops authority and direct spiritual communion with the Holy See.
Sigegerics travel chronicle (his return from Rome to Caterbury) remains stored in the Cotton Library.
Ortho historians uses it to help them understand the travel routes between Anglo Saxon England and the continent. Religious folks set off to see the sites, and visit Rome......
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You have uncovered a rich seam. This screams of a number of contests through the ages:
1. The Church versus pilgrims
2. Church versus king (Thomas a Becket-style)
3. English Church versus Church of Rome (Henry VIII-style)
4. English Protestantism versus Continental Protestantism (Elizabethan-style)
5. The Cotton Library versus other forgery establishments
6. Anglo-Saxon versus English
7. English historians versus the English.
I'm sure there are ten if I gave it some more thought.
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