How often does your OH think about the Roman Empire?

[Ozarkz]

Just for fun

saw on Facebook a post saying that men think about the Roman Empire every day. The woman asked her husband and he said this was true and that he thinks about it daily. The comments was people asking their husbands how often they think about the Roman Empire with some very funny responses 😂

So, I’ll start .., I’ve just asked DH and he said “at least twice a week, why?”

would love to hear other Responses to this random question

“how often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

@belinda789 - in what way?

👀 but by whom?

Historic England for Mumsnet?

Well women used to be told to lay back and think of England!

Or maybe it's "lay back and think of the Roman Empire

I can't stop chuckling at this thread, it's so random. My DH assures me he doesn't think about the Roman Empire at all (despite being quite a historian), it just isn't something that would occur to either of us, but it does bring to mind the Monty Python sketch "what have the Romans ever done for us?" "Yeah, nothing apart from sanitation, underfloor heating, roads, medicine, wine, education, public order ..."

Not thought about the Roman empire ever I don't think.

Except at school in 1962 I thought why do they have those silly letters on their clocks?

Strange people.

It was on the Zoe Ball radio show this morning
Songs inspired by the Roman Empire !

@the80sweregreat.. yes, I heard that. I think radio 2 got it via DM…. from us, of course. Ha ha, at the thought of them, having to research their own stories. They’d go bust.😆

But isn’t this whole topic a TikTok trend and Mumsnet has just jumped on the bandwagon a little?

It's been literally everywhere on all forms of social media. The OP got it from Facebook, it originated on Instagram and took off on TikTok.

I hope it's acceptable to re-animate this otherwise zombie thread but I thought those of you (and your OHs) interested in the Roman Empire might enjoy this lovely story about the science and ingenuity that's gone in to trying to read the Herculaneum papyrus scrolls.

Briefly, 2,000 years ago Vesuvius ka-boomed and covered Herculaneum (and Pompeii) in ash, in doing so it burnt to a crisp several hundred scrolls which were discovered in Herculaneum in the 1700s - so badly damaged that they cannot be opened (or at least not very survivably), so cannot be easily read.

Instead very powerful X-rays have been used in the last few years to scan them while they're still coiled up (zooming in and out and changing focus lets different bits be recorded). The end result is flat but still pretty unreadable but machine learning is now being used to help figure out where the bits with ink are, and so where the letters and words are. It's going rather well :)

The Vesuvius Challenge announced a few hours ago that they've now managed to read more of the first scroll, which is written in Greek, after having announced last year that they could read one or two words, it's pretty cool https://scrollprize.org/grandprize

This Bloomberg article is interesting, clearly written and good fun, though the link is a bit unbeautiful (because it has an access token attached) https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-ai-unlock-ancient-world-secrets/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcwNzE0MTc1MCwiZXhwIjoxNzA3NzQ2NTUwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTOERZV0lUMEFGQjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI0Q0RGQzk1QkQ5NjI0RjAyOEYwREMxOTNDRDM2RDBGMiJ9.1FLLhYSi9d9XWAt6vzeuo9zV0hxAsheISAImpNGdfLA

Jo

@JoBrodie ohhh thanks for that - very interesting! I'd love to be someone who found something like that - being the first person to read something written 2000 years ago.

Nice one! I like the concept of an army of IT nerds working on something as ancient as this and bringing joy to an army of classicists

Is this like one of those centre parc type euphemisms?

That said, I did think about it a few days ago, whilst watching a documentary about the ancient Egyptians. And then again, obviously now!

Honestly I thought this was a lot of rubbish BUT I asked DH how often he thought about the Roman Empire and he said at least twice a week. My mind is blown!!!

I read Roman history so I think about it a lot - more likely to be Livia rather than the army though. DH is far more likely to be thinking about space exploration craft or which chemicals would make the best fireworks.

@JoBrodie thank you I will read this later. Thank you for your contribution. I never thought about it before until this moment.

For those who can access the British Museum in London (Bloomsbury) they have an exhibition on until 23 June - Legion: life in the Roman army

"Expansive yet deeply personal, this exhibition transports you across the empire, as well as through the life and service of a real Roman soldier, Claudius Terentianus, from enlistment and campaigns to enforcing occupation then finally, in Terentianus' case, retirement. Objects include letters written on papyri by soldiers from Roman Egypt and the Vindolanda tablets – some of the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. The tablets, from the fort near Hadrian's wall, reveal first-hand what daily life was like for soldiers and the women, children and enslaved people who accompanied them.

What did life in the Roman army look like from a soldier's perspective? What did their families make of life in the fort? How did the newly-conquered react? Legion explores life in settled military communities from Scotland to the Red Sea through the people who lived it.

Visitors are advised that this exhibition contains human remains. The British Museum is committed to curating human remains with care, respect and dignity. Find out more about human remains at the British Museum."

It's in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery (Room 30) and costs from £22 (members and under 16s free).

Jo

Channel 5 right now (Sun 12 May, since 9pm) has "The Lost Scrolls of Pompeii: New Revelations" about the Herculaneum papyrus scrolls and the computer science behind trying out how to read them.

Jo

Thanks for these tips; the kids will love them

I am still around x2 a week. But near Hadrians wall. And read a favoured lift the flap usborne last night to my youngest.

Looong discussion about Hadrians wall and Scotland then and now.

I mentioned this to my Dad and he said that's ridiculous. Then he texted me the other day to say he was just thinking about the Roman Empire when he was laying the patio 😂

It’s very interesting how AI is being used in this context. It’s also been used to analyse the Dead Sea Scrolls.

im sure I remember something about is being used with fragments of ancient texts to try and fill on missing blanks too

I thought that some of you might like to increase the chances of your own filii (sons) and filiae (daughters) thinking about the Roman Empire :)

Here are three Roman craft books from the Internet Archive's library. It's free to read them but you will need to create an account (that's free too) and then borrow the books for an hour at a time (you can easily keep re-borrowing). You can zoom in to the page, search the book and read them full-screen, or view by thumbnail to scan the pages quickly.

Roman-themed craft activities for kids
• Crafts from the Past: The Romans, by Gillian Chapman (1998)
• Craft box, Ancient Romans: 12 projects to make and do, by Jillian Powell (2014)
• History Crafts, Ancient Rome, by Fiona Macdonald (2013)

They also have copies of Asterix comics - this is an English language collection but if your kids speak French (or want to practise) just search for Asterix here https://archive.org/ (see pic 1) and browse as there are a few in French (the Asterix comics are originally French-language!)

I work on an EPSRC-funded computer science project at QMUL and one of the things we do is expand on the links between computing and everything else (see 'Computing and...' ). An example that's pleasingly relevant to this thread is the simple 'colour by numbers' Roman Mosaic my colleague Paul created (see Pic 2), free to download.

Kids can colour it in (one colour per 'pixel') but, if interested, can also use the idea to explore how digital numbers can represent images, how you can send a pattern or image across long distances just by sending the numbers (this is how all images are transmitted electronically, including your posts on Facebook and photographs of distant planets transmitted back to Earth).

A classic example is the Arecibo Message image which was transmitted from Earth to the stars in 1974. The message contained 1,679 bits (1s & 0s) which, when put into a grid of 23 columns by 73 rows, forms a picture. Back in Roman times if you sent your pal Flavius in Lutetia* (what the Romans called Paris) a carved tablet with a string of 100 (or 256) 1s and 0s^ and he could have split that into a 10 x 10 (or 16 x 16) grid to uncover your mosaic picture.

Jo
*I actually learned this from Asterix
^maybe the scribe would have preferred to carve 1s and Xs!

I actually learned this from Asterix

Oh yes, Latin to A-level, but I can't ignore the influence of Goscinny & Uderzo.

Yes I vaguely remember this too. I used Google to fill in my own missing blanks on this, and found the below - which wasn't the one I remember seeing initially, or maybe it's just a more recent update on the same thing. I'm sure there are other examples of this tech being used for that purpose, seems like a clever thing to try.

AI trained on Classics helps historians fill in the blanks (27 June 2024) European Commission - about the 'EU-funded PythiaPlus project (which) developed an AI-based tool that historians can use to restore missing text, and establish an inscription’s original date and place of writing'.

Jo