Vol. X, no. i, January 2000
OMISSIONS AND FABRICA
I completely neglected to mention the party last
month! Saturnalia was a
great success, and the Legion and I would like to thank the Moskeys
very
much for hosting it. Roger has suggested holding regular drill
practice at
his place, since he has plenty of space in his yard.
He has also volunteered to host a workshop session
on January 29, from 10
AM to 5 PM. Contact Roger at 703- .
The place is 304 Terrie Drive, Sterling, VA 20165,
directions:
From
I-495 Capital Beltway, take Exit 12 B Route 267 Toll Road West towards
Dulles Airport. After paying toll (50 cents), take the first
exit--Exit 16
Route 7 Leesburg Pike West for about 11 miles. Take a right at
Palisades
Parkway, then an immediate left onto "Triple 7" (Route 777), past
Calvary
Temple on right. Take the next right onto Regina Drive, follow
it to the
end and take a right onto Markwood Drive. At stop sign
take a left onto
Terrie Drive (culdesac). #304 is in the middle.
SURF'S UP
The Legion's website is finally being
rebuilt!
(http://legioxx.webjump.com)
Many pictures have been added, plus patterns
for caligae and the lorica segmentata, and back issues of this famous
newsletter. Word of warning: construction is not quite
complete, so not
everything is working perfectly yet. If something doesn't come
up after a
couple tries, go to a different page with access to the one that you
want
and try from there. Some of it is slow to load, but we might
be able to
improve that in the future . If you have even bigger problems,
let us know,
please! Special thanks to Mark Graef for his work in getting
the new
material up and running, and for showing me how to make the pictures
smaller!
By the way, I have built my own little website
on the Greek Hoplite, at
http://www.larp.com/hoplite/index.html.
Check it out!
From Richard Saulpaugh comes a tip on a
website
dedicated to ancient
mythology, http://www.pantheon.org
David Mitchell alerted me to a site with a
somewhat lighter theme,
http://www.wiseacre-gardens.com/buttons/roman/roman.html. Note
the white
tunics!
Kevin MacGregor of Legio V Macedonica found
some wonderful coin photos at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6193/legion2.html.
If you want to see a teaser for the upcoming
movie "Gladiator", go to
http://www.gladiator-themovie.com
. I will very generously withhold
judgement on the movie until it hits the theaters, but let's just say
that
I'm not hopeful...
ALBION UPDATE
More helmets! The first of the
long-awaited
Imperial Gallic G's and Italic
D's have arrived, and they are Good. Oh, there are still some
of the usual
errors: neckguard too wide on the Gallic G, some brasswork on the
Italic
D
brazed instead of soldered, but pretty much anything that can't be
fixed can
be overlooked. And as usual, future batches of these helmets
should be
better. Check out Albion's website for all the new stuff,
http://www.albionarmorers.com/home.htm.
Be sure to click on the helmet
photos for more views.
ITER by M.S.
As promised here is a report of
two museums that I have visited. The
first was the history museum in Nurnburg. It took me some time
to locate
the collection since it was quite small. The collection contained
three
helmets. One was a legionary helmet, one was a cavalry helmet
and the third
was a parade/officer helmet. The legionary helmet was the one in Arms
and
Armour of Imperial Rome. [Editor's note: probably Gallic type
I.] It is
very out of shape at the top and looks as if it was crushed and
reshaped.
It also had one of the brass ear guards intact as well as a very well
preserved handle. It has a very curious brass rivet on the rear
left of the
tail. The cavalry helmet has a intricate facial design.
The officer helm
had an eagle that was very out of shape as well. There were also
some
daggers that showed the layers in the handles very well. The
one that had a
solid handle and pomel was much smaller. There were also small
fibulae, to
include simple rings and pins to larger crossbow types. They
had some Roman
type fibulae in with the Germanic tribe section. All in all the
collection
is good to see if you are in the area but not worth a trip from
stateside.
Unless you're loaded with cash! Also there was an artist that
was selling
remakes of some of the fibulas and other artifacts, made out of silver
or
brass but kinda pricey and small.
Next on to Heildelburg.
This museum is well worth seeing. The
collection includes 2 full mail armored Romans, one horse one medium
infantry. Both were in mail. There are two models in
different
rooms of
the bridge and port that the Romans built. There are also timbers
along a
wall from the actual bridge. Lots of pottery and roof tiles that
have dog
and human prints as well as a legion number. (Sorry, I don't
remember the
number.) There were also weapons and other smaller personal
items.
There
was a room that you could sit in that was neat. Also a display
on Roman
sewer pipes. There were also some models of the roman camps and
a stone
altar.
Now to the best part. I guess
the Germans found a Minerva temple in
town. They not only have the original altar, they recreated in
life size,
with pillows,
the Minerva temple. It is very neat and the description of the
diffrent
parts is very helpful even in German. There are about 10-12 good
size rooms
in all not to mention the rest of the museum that has other exhibits
on
German history and art. Even a room with local animals.
Anyhow not bad for
5 DM or about $2.50. Expect to be in it for about 3-4 hours and
still
wanting to go back. (PS: The Irish Pub Sean' Og is a great place
to stay.)
--Marcus Servius Germanicus
ITER II by Derek Forrest, Ermine Street Guard
A carefully arranged court case and a late
return train left the writer
with a spare two hours in London.
The London Museum was closed on Monday so
the second choice took me to the
British Museum, which is in the course of extensive renovations.
Once inside after paying a £2 voluntary
contribution it was not the virgin
white Elgin marbles or the Rosetta stone, which provided the attraction
but
the room devoted to Roman Britain.
Passing by the vast arrays of 4th century
silver hoards, which, if they
belonged to a legionary, would only be loot, I came upon humbler bronze
pots
and pans. There were two familiar Patera cast in bronze.
The remarkable
fact about them was their thin walls bearing in mind the difficulty
our
local founder has in keeping the metal hot enough to fill the moulds
when
the walls are left thin. (Editor's note: I believe paterae were
spun to
shape on a lathe after a flat blank was cast, but I don't have enough
information!) There was also a fragment of an iron frying pan
with a
folding handle. I have seen several replicas of this filled with
sausages
cooking in a display.
On to tools and there are some quite good
axes and picks but the surprise
is the dolabra. This was very small, more reminiscent of an
entrenching
tool than the axe which could be used to hang equipment from.
There were
also some good spades made in one piece from ash with very corroded
metal
edges.
A great deal of imagination was necessary
to visualise the legionaries in
plate and mail. They had opted to hang finds on cutout figures rather
than
reconstructions. This was fine for such as me but not very
exciting
for the
children. The segmentata (Type A) had much smaller hinges than I am
used to
and the brass loops on the girdle plates were of very slight
construction.
Maybe they were putting weight before strength. The belts on
the mailed
figures were the familiar neillo covered ones but interestingly the
terminals were made of bone/ivory. The Coolus helmet had the
extra interest
of bearing the names of 4 of its owners punched on the neckguard.
The
weapons were very corroded and whilst the familiar shapes were apparent
to
me the general public deserved a reconstruction or two. Some
nice beaten
brass scabbard plates showing Romulus and Remus were worthy of
reproduction
but the Pugios would take a lot of imagination.
Coins next with quite a useful display showing
one gold aureus = 25 silver
denarii=100 bronze sestertii. Hadrianic legionaries would earn
300 denarii
pa.
There was very little in the way of organic
finds on display; a bit of shoe
and some nice wax tablets but the most interesting were amulets with
a
pudenda at one end and outstretched fingers at the other. These
should
spark some interesting questions to off duty milites.
Time was pressing by this time and there was
just time to confirm that the
Celtic displays would be worth another visit and of course the
obligatory
visit to the shop. This produced a rather nice silver snake ring
which
would just be the job to replace my anachronistic gold wedding ring
without
giving the wife wrong ideas of my fidelity!
SITE-SEEING from Bob Garbisch
By the way, if ever your travels take you
up around the Boston, Mass. area,
please provide yourself some spare time to visit Brandeis University,
in
Waltham, for a unique view of a detailed model of the Forum Romanum,
circa
179 A.D./931 AUC, on display in the Goldfarb Library. You won't
be
disappointed. And if possible, try to contact Prof. Ann
Koloski-Ostrow,
of
the Latin Department. If her schedule permits, she can provide
you with a
personal tour of the Forum.
It will truly be worthwhile. I know,
because I constructed the 8' x 12'
model, in 4mm to 1 ft. scale, with 722 Roman citizens running around
doing
their normal business (it even includes myself overlooking the
Forum).
I
donated the model to Brandeis.
MITHRACON CORRECTION
The Third New England Conference on Mithraic
Studies in New Haven,
familiarly known as "MithrCon III"
> Dates: Friday, May
5 - Sunday, May 7, 2000.
***DATE CHANGE*** It's now the weekend before!!! All other
details
good.
Please make a special note that there are many *interesting* Roman
artifacts in the
Museum, and the Yale Library presents a research opportunity that
should
make you drool!
LOST IN SPACE
It seems I have misplaced a couple of my
references,
and I'm getting
frantic to have them back. One is Volume 3 of the Journal
of Roman Military
Equipment Studies; the other is a photocopied excerpt from
Manning's
Catalog
of the Romano-British Iron Tools, Implements and Weapons in the
British
Museum, in a brown folder. Help! Has anyone borrowed
one or both of these?
Could I have left them at your home inadvertently? Please
double-check
your shelves. Thank you!
CALENDAR
Feb 12? --Lupercalia. If someone wants to host a party,
I'll spread the
word.
April 15-16 --Marching Through Time, Marietta Mansion, MD.
April 29-30 --"Universal Soldier" encampment, Fort Washington,
MD.
May 13-14 --Tentative. Armor display at Jamestown
Settlement.
The Park
wants us to camp by the museum with a couple other "armored" groups
as part
of this exhibit. Feedback, please?
June --Roman Days, Marietta Mansion, MD.
----------------------------
Out of time! ADLOCVTIO is the official newsletter of the
Twentieth
Legion,
and those of you who have not faithfully preserved your copies can
now read
a couple years' worth on the website. As always, the Editor and
Commander
is Matthew R. Amt, aka Quintus.
Valete!