I took this at the Foro Romano (Roman Forum) in Rome, near the Temple of Divus Julius. The Roman Forum is situated between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. I was here in 2022.
CFP: Letter writing in the Roman empire (from Serena Connolly, Rutgers):
The Roman Epistulae Project invites abstracts for the conference 'Empire of Correspondence: Roman Imperial Letters as Literature and State Messaging, 31 BCE–534 CE' to be held in Boulder, Colorado, 4-5 October 2024.
Papers should examine the role of imperial correspondence in Roman society and governance.
There's a story about Ben Franklin emerging from the Constitutional Convention & telling a woman who asked what type of government they’d created, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” The #2024election is the moment where we find out if we can.
If #Trump wins in 2024, we lose the Republic. That’s not drama, and that’s not overstatement. That’s what Trump is promising. It's what he's been working on since at least October of 2020.
We're right in time for a repeat of the end of the Roman Republic, more that two hundred years and you're at risk of a tyrant. Who were our Gracci brothers, probably the prosecutors. The thing is we can avoid Augustus by actually beating Caesar in the courts so let's just do that.
And avoid Augustus please. #RomanHistory
It's #October the rain is pouring down on the apple trees outside, and I'm back to bring a few pictures and stories of my recent travels in some magical spots outside my usual northern haunts.
Old Sarum was an Iron Age fort at the junction of several trade routes, then a Roman settlement, then an important early medieval town. The Normans built a castle and a cathedral there, and it was probably the site at which William I was presented with the Domesday Book.
Lack of water on the top of the hill and bad relationships with the soldiers who garrisoned the fort led to the relocation of the Cathedral in the 13th Century, to New Sarum, now Salisbury. Old Sarum was gradually abandoned, and is now left to the grass and the rabbits.
Legend says that the site for the new cathedral was chosen when an arrow was shot down into the valley, landing where the building now stands.