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Edward Hutton - "England of My Heart Spring"

John Maurice Miller - "Philippine Folklore Stories"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "The Cinema Murder"

Thomas Mitchell - "Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

Character of Etruscan Art

The general character of Etruscan works of art is, on the one hand, a
sort of barbaric extravagance in material as well as in style; on the
other hand, an utter absence of original development. Where the Greek
master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's
diligence; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of
the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress
laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of
the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste
in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible
hideous, and the voluptuous obscene; and these features become more
prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background
and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources. Still more
surprising is the adherence to traditional forms and a traditional
style. Whether it was that a more friendly contact with Etruria at the
outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and
that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria
of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more
probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation
was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained
substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied
on its first entrance. This, as is well known, forms the reason why
Etruscan art, the stunted daughter, was so long regarded as the
mother, of Hellenic art. Still more even than the rigid adherence to
the style traditionally transmitted in the older branches of art,
the sadly inferior handling of those branches that came into vogue
afterwards, particularly of sculpture in stone and of copper-casting
as applied to coins, shows how quickly the spirit of Etruscan art
evaporated. Equally instructive are the painted vases, which are found
in so enormous numbers in the later Etruscan tombs. Had these come
into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates
decorated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt
they would have learned to manufacture them at home in considerable
quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period
at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction
wholly failed--as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan
inscriptions show--and they contented themselves with buying
instead of making them.

North Etruscan and South Etruscan Art

But even within Etruria there appears a further remarkable distinction
in artistic development between the southern and northern districts.
It is South Etruria, particularly in the districts of Caere,
Tarquinii, and Volci, that has preserved the great treasures of art
which the nation boasted, especially in frescoes, temple decorations,
gold ornaments, and painted vases. Northern Etruria is far inferior;
no painted tomb, for example, has been found to the north of Chiusi.
The most southern Etruscan cities, Veii, Caere, and Tarquinii, were
accounted in Roman tradition the primitive and chief seats of Etruscan
art; the most northerly town, Volaterrae, with the largest territory
of all the Etruscan communities, stood most of all aloof from art
While a Greek semi-culture prevailed in South Etruria, Northern
Etruria was much more marked by an absence of all culture. The causes
of this remarkable contrast may be sought partly in differences of
nationality--South Etruria being largely peopled in all probability by
non-Etruscan elements(42)--partly in the varying intensity of Hellenic
influence, which must have made itself very decidedly felt at Caere in
particular. The fact itself admits of no doubt. The more injurious on
that account must have been the early subjugation of the southern half
of Etruria by the Romans, and the Romanizing--which there began very
early--of Etruscan art. What Northern Etruria, confined to its own
efforts, was able to produce in the way of art, is shown by the copper
coins which essentially belong to it.

Character of Latin Art

Let us now turn from Etruria to glance at Latium. The latter, it is
true, created no new art; it was reserved for a far later epoch of
culture to develop on the basis of the arch a new architecture
different from the Hellenic, and then to unfold in harmony with that
architecture a new style of sculpture and painting. Latin art is
nowhere original and often insignificant; but the fresh sensibility
and the discriminating tact, which appropriate what is good in others,
constitute a high artistic merit. Latin art seldom became barbarous,
and in its best products it comes quite up to the level of Greek
technical execution. We do not mean to deny that the art of Latium,
at least in its earlier stages, had a certain dependence on the
undoubtedly earlier Etruscan;(43) Varro may be quite right in
supposing that, previous to the execution by Greek artists of the clay
figures in the temple of Ceres,(44) only "Tuscanic" figures adorned
the Roman temples; but that, at all events, it was mainly the direct
influence of the Greeks that led Latin art into its proper channel,
is self-evident, and is very obviously shown by these very statues as
well as by the Latin and Roman coins. Even the application of graving
on metal in Etruria solely to the toilet mirror, and in Latium solely
to the toilet casket, indicates the diversity of the art-impulses that
affected the two lands. It does not appear, however, to have been
exactly at Rome that Latin art put forth its freshest vigour; the
Roman -asses- and Roman -denarii- are far surpassed in fineness and
taste of workmanship by the Latin copper, and the rare Latin silver,
coins, and the masterpieces of painting and design belong chiefly to
Praeneste, Lanuvium, and Ardea. This accords completely with the
realistic and sober spirit of the Roman republic which we have already
described--a spirit which can hardly have asserted itself with equal
intensity in other parts of Latium. But in the course of the fifth
century, and especially in the second half of it, there was a mighty
activity in Roman art. This was the epoch, in which the construction
of the Roman arches and Roman roads began; in which works of art like
the she-wolf of the Capitol originated; and in which a distinguished
man of an old Roman patrician clan took up his pencil to embellish a
newly constructed temple and thence received the honorary surname of
the "Painter." This was not accident. Every great age lays grasp on
all the powers of man; and, rigid as were Roman manners, strict as was
Roman police, the impulse received by the Roman burgesses as masters
of the peninsula or, to speak more correctly, by Italy united for the
first time as one state, became as evident in the stimulus given to
Latin and especially to Roman art, as the moral and political decay of
the Etruscan nation was evident in the decline of art in Etruria.
As the mighty national vigour of Latium subdued the weaker nations,
it impressed its imperishable stamp also on bronze and on marble.




Notes for Book II Chapter IX


1. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

2. The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95; comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and
by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage
in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply
rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, is strikingly
evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 42 (Ritschl,
Parerg. i. p. 313). Dionysius has--and, according to his wont when in
error, persistently--misunderstood the expression -ludi maximi-.

There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the
national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of
the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins
at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. i. 26, 55; Dionys. vii. 71).
That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from
Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to
any special votive solemnity, is evident from the express allusion to
the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement
of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius
(p. 142 Or.).

3. II. III. Curule Aedileship

4. I. II. Art

5. I. XV. Metre

6. I. XV. Masks

7. II. VIII. Police f.

8. I. XV. Melody

9. A fragment has been preserved:

-Hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra
Camille metes-

We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the
oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20; Festus, Ep. v. Flaminius,
p. 93, M.; Serv. on Virg. Georg, i. 101; Plin. xvii. 2. 14).

10. II. VIII. Appius Claudius

11. II. VIII. Rome and the Romans of This Epoch

12. The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have
been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years
between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.

13. I. VI. Time and the Occasion of the Reform, II. VII. System of
Government

14. II. VIII Rome and the Romans of This Epoch. According to the
annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and
Lucania is during this year in league with Rome; according to the
epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.

15. I. XI. Jurisdiction, second note.

16. They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years
and to have rounded off the figures 233 1/3 to 240, just as the epoch
between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off
to 120 years (II. IX. Registers of Magistrates, note). The reason why
these precise numbers suggested themselves, is apparent from the
similar adjustment (above explained, I. XIV. The Duodecimal System)
of the measures of surface.

17. I. XII. Spirits

18. I. X. Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks

19. The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the
pseudo-Scylax, and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a
Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus
and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with
the Trojans.

20. According to his account Rome, a woman who had fled from Ilion
to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos,
king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos,
and Telegonos. The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder
of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend
of Odysseus.

21. II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

22. II. VII. Relations between the East and West

23. II. VII. The Roman Fleet

24. II. II. Political Value of the Tribunates, II. II.
The Valerio-Horatian Laws

25. I. XIV. Corruption of Language and Writing

26. In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the
consul of the same name in 495, -m and -d are ordinarily wanting in
the termination of cases, yet -Luciom- and -Gnaivod- respectively
occur once; there occur alongside of one another in the nominative
-Cornelio- and -filios-; -cosol-, -cesor-, alongside of -consol-,
-censor-; -aidiles-, -dedet-, -ploirume- (= -plurimi-) -hec- (nom.
sing.) alongside of -aidilis-, -cepit-, -quei-, -hic-. Rhotacism is
already carried out completely; we find -duonoro-(= -bonorum-),
-ploirume-, not as in the chant of the Salii -foedesum-, -plusima-.
Our surviving inscriptions do not in general precede the age of
rhotacism; of the older -s only isolated traces occur, such as
afterwards -honos-, -labos- alongside of -honor-, -labor-; and the
similar feminine -praenomina-, -Maio- (= -maios- -maior-) and -Mino-
in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.

27. -Litterator- and -grammaticus- are related nearly as elementary
teacher and teacher of languages with us; the latter designation
belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a
teacher of the mother-tongue. -Litteratus- is more recent, and
denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.

28. It is at any rate a true Roman picture, which Plautus (Bacch. 431)
produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children:--

... -ubi revenisses domum,
Cincticulo praecinctus in sella apud magistrum adsideres;
Si, librum cum legeres, unam peccavisses syllabam,
Fieret corium tam maculosum, quam est nutricis pallium-.

29. I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

30. I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

31. I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

32. II. VIII. Building

33. II. VIII. Building

34. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

35. I. VII. Servian Wall

36. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

37. The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an
imitation of the oldest form of the house; on the contrary, house
architecture uniformly starts from the square form. The later Roman
theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial
sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun
(Fest. v. -rutundam-, p. 282; Plutarch, Num. 11; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267,
seq.). In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the
circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient
and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody.
That was the rationale of the round --thesauroi-- of the Greeks as
well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of
the Penates. It was natural, also, that the fireplace--that is, the
altar of Vesta--and the fire-chamber--that is, the temple of Vesta
--should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the
cistern and the well-enclosure (-puteal-). The round style of building
in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former
was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house;
but the architectural and religious development of the simple -tholos-
into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.

38. I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

39. II. V. Complete Submission of the Campanian and Volscian Provinces

40. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

41. Novius Plautius (II. VIII. Capital in Rome) cast perhaps only the
feet and the group on the lid; the casket itself may have proceeded
from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine,
for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.

42. I. IX. Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy

43. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

44. I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform



End of Book II



* * * * *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK III

From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States




Preparer's Note

This work contains many literal citations of and references to
foreign words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many
languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and
Greek. This English Gutenberg edition, constrained to the characters
of 7-bit ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:

1) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do
not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the
source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single
preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

2) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic
equivalents, are rendered with a preceding and a following double-
dash; thus, --xxxx--. Note that in some cases the root word itself
is a compound form such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--

3) Simple unideographic references to vocalic sounds, single
letters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic
references are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x,
or -xxx.

4) Ideographic references, referring to signs of representation rather
than to content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picture based
on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, a word, or an
attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters. For example,
--"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form followed
by the form in lowercase. Some such exotic parsing as this is
necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol
may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages,
or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different
times. Thus, "-id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician
construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually
stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to one of
lowercase. Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase "E", but,
in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

5) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be
753 B. C. The preparer of this document, has appended to the end
of each volume a table of conversion between the two systems.




CONTENTS

BOOK III: From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage
and the Greek States

CHAPTER

I. Carthage

II. The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

III. The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries

IV. Hamilcar and Hannibal

V. The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae

VI. The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama

VII. The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close
of the Third Period

VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

IX. The War with Antiochus of Asia

X. The Third Macedonian War

XI. The Government and the Governed

XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

XIII. Faith and Manners

XIV. Literature and Art




BOOK THIRD

From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States




Arduum res gestas scribere.

--Sallust.




CHAPTER I

Carthage

The Phoenicians

The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof from, the
nations of the ancient classical world. The true centre of the
former lay in the east, that of the latter in the region of the
Mediterranean; and, however wars and migrations may have altered the
line of demarcation and thrown the races across each other, a deep
sense of diversity has always severed, and still severs, the Indo-
Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations.
This diversity was no less marked in the case of that Semitic people
which spread more than any other in the direction of the west--the
Phoenicians. Their native seat was the narrow border of coast bounded
by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, and called Canaan,
that is, the "plain." This was the only name which the nation itself
made use of; even in Christian times the African farmer called himself
a Canaanite. But Canaan received from the Hellenes the name of
Phoenike, the "land of purple," or "land of the red men," and the
Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites Punians, as we
are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician or Punic race.

Their Commerce

The land was well adapted for agriculture; but its excellent harbours
and the abundant supply of timber and of metals favoured above all
things the growth of commerce; and it was there perhaps, where the
opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean
so rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all
its greatness upon man. The Phoenicians directed all the resources of
courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of commerce
and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and colonization,
and thus connected the east and the west. At an incredibly early
period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in
Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall
in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands
passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves,
ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa,
frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine
wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from
England, and iron from Elba. The Phoenician mariners brought to
every nation whatever it could need or was likely to purchase; and
they roamed everywhere, yet always returned to the narrow home to
which their affections clung.

Their Intellectual Endowments

The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the
side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a
fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the
development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided
character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of
intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong
primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith and knowledge in a certain
sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first
reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician
religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can
see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.
The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth,
and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to
restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in times
of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their
religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician
architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy,
to say nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient
seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical
purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It
was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it
was there that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the
sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time
and space and on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces
of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and
measures, point to that region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed
themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of
Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for
their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of
measures for their commerce, and distributed many an important germ
of civilization along with their wares; but it cannot be demonstrated
that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the
human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and
scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes
were scattered by them more after the fashion of a bird dropping
grains than of the husbandman sowing his seed. The power which
the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and
assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with
whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.
In the field of Roman conquest the Iberian and the Celtic languages
have disappeared before the Romanic tongue; the Berbers of Africa
speak at the present day the same language as they spoke in the times
of the Hannos and the Barcides.

Their Political Qualities

Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as
compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life
--the noble idea of self-governing freedom. During the most
flourishing times of Sidon and Tyre the land of the Phoenicians was
a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the
Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians,
sometimes to the Egyptians. With half its power Hellenic cities
would have made themselves independent; but the prudent men of Sidon
calculated that the closing of the caravan-routes to the east or of
the ports of Egypt would cost them more than the heaviest tribute, and
so they punctually paid their taxes, as it might happen, to Nineveh or
to Memphis, and even, if they could not avoid it, helped with their
ships to fight the battles of the kings. And, as at home the
Phoenicians patiently bore the oppression of their masters, so also
abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful career
of commerce for a policy of conquest. Their settlements were
factories. It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and
selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in
distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult work of
colonization. They avoided war even with their rivals; they allowed
themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of
Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles,
which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western
Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), it was the
Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the
struggle with the Greeks. If rivalry could not be avoided, they
compromised the matter as best they could; no attempt was ever made
by the Phoenicians to conquer Caere or Massilia. Still less, of
course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war.
On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on the
offensive--in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians
which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (274)--it
was simply as dutiful subjects of the great-king and in order to avoid
taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that
they entered the lists against the Hellenes of the west; just as their
Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share the
defeat of the Persians at Salamis(1).