sunday drive: bad vilbel or designer bath

 Since indulging in Roman history, I have become quite keen on exploring what legacies there are to be discovered in these far reaches of the empire and I had the chance to explore Bad Vilbel, built over the foundations of a Roman settlement. The hidden past of this spa town, source of the Hassia label of water and home to its bottling-works, was only revealed in the mid-1800s during excavations to expand the regional railway network when a villa and spectacularly the floor of a Roman bathhouse was uncovered.
 Though the major extant portions of the detailed mosaic tile-work is conserved in museums around the world, artists and archeologists have reconstructed the floor exactly as it was found in situ, under a shallow pool contained within a pavilion and accompanied with artefacts and original tiles as part of the puzzle.
The design is similar to what H and I saw preserved in the Baths of Caracalla on the outskirts of Rome and features some equally fantastic creatures from Neptune's domain, including a Quinotaur, a bull bearing a trident and hence the five horns. The place was pretty interesting besides, too. Bad Vilbel is a town of wells and fountains and also features exhibitions on that subject and a rocky conic that illustrates to scale the geological strata above ground-water.
There was also a very fine ruined Wasserburg on a bayou of the River Nidda (the tributary of the Main named after the nearby Roman town of Nida, in today's suburb of Frankfurt-Heddernheim—heathens' home, remembering vaguely those old occupiers, like the Heathen Wall in Wiesbaden that is a remnant of a complex Roman aqueduct system) that serves as an open-air venue for concerts and theatrical productions.

overheard or something's rotten in the state of denmark

During the weekend's NATO summit in Wales, at least one member state publicly reserved her judgment, wanting to defer any driven decision-making so that better informed heads might prevail. It was the subject of much derision for the Czech government to demand further, independent investigation into the predominate characterisation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It may not be so straightforward as the media portrayal that's the confirmation of consuming fears and consummate heroism, the president demurred, citing self-surety of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction destruction proving not so incontrovertible in the end. Another representative went so far as to ridicule that the Czech Republic might want to consult its intelligence apparatchik, if it had one. I do not think the protest of the Czech government was lost on its audience, since the presiding secretary-general was eleven years ago, as the prime-minister of Denmark, a vocal supporter of Iraqi-Attacky II, exclaiming that there were WMDs—it's true. In all fairness, a lot of people were likewise duped and even more vehement about it.  Vikings are the progenitors of the people of Denmark, although the term never referred to a tribe or ethnogenesis but was rather the infinite form of a verb—vikíng, to go on (overseas) expeditions. I certainly hope that such exchanges do not prevision the return of Cold War tensions and that NATO could be a power for good—however, it is rather an uncomfortable fact that had NATO not tried to push its envelop eastward and court Ukraine, Russia probably would not have responded apparently in-kind.

mrs. beasley oder schaufenster

I really appreciate how shop windows all around Germany, no matter how well patronised, whether private or part of a chain (usually, though more and more often, this creative nook is surrendered to advertising space, though I think a sense of being house-proud will keep this tradition going, even among the franchise pharmacies and cellular phone shops that quickly becoming the mainstay of downtown retailers) and in- and out-of-season decorate their displays.
In a relatively sleepy little bakery outside of our village, H and I saw this little diorama. The scene is not too far-removed from something nightmarish, depending on one's mood I guess, but the more I thought about it, it made me think of that doll that belonged to Buffy or Jody (I forget whose or which one was which, and the only scary thing about the doll was for me that one never saw it clearly, even though it was enough for toy companies to prodice spin-offs) from that mid-sixties series Family Affair. When the actor that played Mr. French was debiltated by a temporary illness, and the show brought in another actor as a stand-in (unlike the two Darrens of Bewitched or “fake” Jan of the Brady Bunch legacy), he was introduced as the valet and nanny's brother, who had come to help take care of the children, as Mr. French was said to be off to London to visit the Queen.

urbane legend or listserv

The brilliant blog Kottke has been lately delving into memory holes of Wikipedia, the stubs and the recursive list of lists, and shares an interesting and compact catalog of common misconceptions, including their origins and less romantic or panicky truths.

There are a lot of myths to dispel, but some of my favourites (and facts I was not disabused of) include how the vomitorium was not a Roman powder-room to extend a lavish feast but rather was the name for the broad entrance and egress of an arena or similar public structures for spewing out large crowds quickly, black holes only have the gravitational influence that they inherit from their former solar body—in other words, posing no threat to nearby objects in orbit unless they were on a collision course with the star already, and the notion that humans only use ten percent of their brains was meant metaphorically, when causally used by first by American philosopher and psychologist William James, son of writer Henry James, but was hence taken as a science-fact, since neurologically, we only observe a fraction of the synapses firing at any one given moment. What's your favourite popular myth here or what would you nominate?

temperance league

Authorities in Wuppertal are charging a gang of eleven who style themselves the Sharia Police with impersonating an officer of the law—with uniforms that consist of orange warning-vests—and the potential for intimidation, which, as the commissioner curiously puts forward in an interview with The Local, is the exclusive domain of the state. The group operates to discourage young people from drinking and gambling and other behaviours against the tenants of Islam—and the local government pledges to stop their intrusion before it becomes a menace to society. What do you think of this? The cloak of religious purity is unsettling and the police, I think, are right to stop this encroachment before it spreads. No formal complaints have been levied against the gang though intimidation cannot be ruled out, but that the State enjoys a monopoly on social engineering and have backed much more vicious thugs for the sake of the public good has an equally unsettling ring.

it happened on the way to the forum: vox populi or render unto caesar

Julius Caesar came from an ancient though impoverished and marginalised patrician family but distinguished himself by rising through the ranks of various municipal posts, civil and religious, and holding those offices for just the requisite amount of time before advancing to the next rung. Undertaking popular causes, the charismatic Caesar found much support among the disenfranchised citizens, made redundant by slave-labour and disaffected veterans, who'd earned honour and treasure for a moribund Senate who cared little for the affairs of the city beyond their own self-interests.
Once attaining the high office of counsel, the old guard began to see this upstart as a threat to their power, and the Senate installed a conservative foil as Caesar's co-counsel in order to veto those dangerous social reforms—which included again the matter of welfare (a grain dole), debt forgiveness and land re-distribution, those usual matters of business which would never pass if put to a vote—and ride out their personal annus horribilis until Caesar's term of a year came to an end. Caesar had already garnered enough enemies in the governing body who would like to see him disposed of by any means, however, there were quite a few legal-fictions at work, and for the remainder of his year-long term, Caesar was untouchable by tradition, as the holder of the office of counsel was immune from legal process—so long as he was a counsel and not just an ordinary citizen. Caesar was safe for now but knew that he faced their collected, stewing wrath at the end of his term. Finding all his political efforts blocked by the vetoes of his co-counsel, Caesar simply moved to bypass the powers of the Senate and introduced legislation to the lower houses—a plebiscite or direct-democracy. Aghast at seeing the Senate undermined, the co-counsel took another tact to lame Caesar: the office of counsel was also vested with the power of declaring the holy days for the year—that is, days on which no work is to be conducted, and as was his wont declared that the rest of the calendar year was a holiday and put the government in recess. Though a grave sacrilegious act, Caesar pressed forward with his reforms and concocted his exit-strategy to escape from prosecution. Caesar stood for the office of pro-counsel of Roman-Gaul, which the Senate gladly endorsed—probably because they believed Caesar would not survive on this savage frontier and in any case he'd be out of the city for the five year term and in lands where he could do little harm.

Not only surviving but eventually thriving in the barbaric lands to the north, the excuse to raise an army and enter into military excursions and Roman occupation of unaligned Gaul quickly presented itself—another legal-fiction, as Romans did not attack unprovoked. A Celtic tribe called the Helvetii were living in the area around Lake Geneva, and penned in by Germanic tribes on three sides were growing weary of their raids and were seeking to migrate to better territory. Rather than moving directly through hostile lands, a Helvetic delegation came to the province of Trans-Alpine Gaul, thinking surely this man that they call Kaiser will grant them safe-passage through his land. Caesar said that he would take the Helvetii's request into consider and asked them to return later, however, no sooner than they had left, Caesar had a wall built to block the mountain pass and warned other tribes of free Gaul along the Helvetii's likely path that a marauding horde would soon be coming. Caesar then magnanimously offered to protect the locals from this coming threat, which formerly Free Gaul graciously accepted. This scheme (which makes Caesar's platform of social reform in Rome seem less than altruistic and more expedient), this casus belli, did result in actual fighting, enraging the Helvetii and many of the Gallic tribes once they realised that once invited in, the Romans were here to stay, but allowed Rome to establish permanent settlements in Gaul, expanding the empire, and justified the existence of Caesar's loyal legion. We have all these details today because Caesar was also a master propagandist for his own cause and sent to Rome regular missives, reports from the front, and this is just how the Great Caesar began, with much more to follow.