I think Duncan was the first to realize it. But here's a new one, and I hope Duncan can win it. Caracalla has been building something. Partly illegible, fortunately, because otherwise you would be able to read the place name.
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Jona Lendering Relevance is the enemy of history My website
I suppose the short answer must be "a road", although -- being unfamiliar with the locale -- I do not know whether, in building it, Caracalla could really be said to have "threatened the mountains" (montibus inminentibus) and "vanquished the River Lycus" (caesis fluminis Lyco) ... if I have read it correctly. (It is late, and it wouldn't be the first time that a glass of wine has interfered with my Latin translation skills. :wink: )
Quote:it wouldn't be the first time that a glass of wine has interfered with my Latin translation skills.
It doesn't seem to have interfered with your ability to read extremely small and blurred text though. I doubt I could have deciphered that if it'd been written in plain English!
The inscription calls it flumen Lycus, the River Lycus ("wolf river"). Dessau (ILS 5865) places it prope Berytum, Byblum versus, ad ostia fluvii Nahr-el-Kelb, in rupe ad viam, "near Beirut, opposite Byblus, at the mouth of the River Nahr-el-Kelb, on the cliff by the road". I shall have to take his word for it!
Quote:It doesn't seem to have interfered with your ability to read extremely small and blurred text
Sometimes wine helps with small and blurred text! :wink:
Indeed it's Hypnos. Very few have been found in bronze that are almost life-size. This one is almost complete and comes from Hispania. I dug part of that site some decades ago, I left because of other commitments at University... and the sculpture was found in a rescue excavation the following year... pity!