Kidding about the sacrifice bit. But how would they have sacrificed to the deified Augustus?

Edit: God damn it. August 19th. August 19th is the anniversary.

My dad fled his country for France when he was young because of the civil war. When I ask him what happened, he doesn't really answer me, which I can understand (bad shit happened : he loses a brother...). Anyways his explanation sound like :

" They where bad guys on both sides, they did some "pew pew" and then bad stuff took place with the syrians. End of story.

as you can see my dad is not an historian and he obviously didn't want to talk about it, that's why I'm here =) .

Did they have some sort of back up, did they just retreat?

Things like:

• was the story of Odysseus ever mentioned in any other contemporary texts besides Homer?

• do any of the islands actually exist?

• are any of the stories in the Odyssey consistent with the landscape/geography/politics of what we know about Greece at the time?

etc

I came across some old bias tape and can't find out how old it is. If this is not the right place, please let me know! It's Wright's flexicloth, single fold bias tape. No clue where to start and I thought this may be a good start. Thank you in advance to anyone that can help or point me in the right direction.

Did Imperial China, ca. 800, not view itself as more advanced than its neighbors to the North? Did the Aztec Empire, ca. 1300, not view itself as more advanced than the "dog people" to the north?

Can progress be defined in a culturally indifferent way?

There's a lot of history timelines all over the internet but most of them just list a bunch of dates without any attempts to explain broader patterns of change. Does anyone know of some online timelines attempting to do this? Bringing up population growth, economic and cultural change etc?

I'm am looking for an accessible reference source for the writings of the early church fathers (pre-Nicene, Nicene, and post-Nicene).

I would prefer the source to be translated into an English idiom that would be easily understood for modern audiences.

Are there recommendations in regards to Alexander Roberts', Phillip Schaff's, and A. Cleveland Coxe's works?

I prefer a reference set that contains most of the early theological disputes. I can go without having every extant writing, as long as I have access to the more influential writings.

Thanks.

I'm trying to do research for writing a historical fiction about pirates in the East Indies (1600-1700), but I have a lot of questions and am having trouble finding the information I need. Who did the pirates sell their plundered goods to? I mean, they couldn't exactly sell it to some honest merchant, right? Also, was the British Royal Navy present in the East Indies and if so what was there purpose there? Were there a lot of hostilities between the English East India Company and Dutch East India Company? How did the Dutch monopoly in the Spice Islands work? Did they trade with any English merchants or just Dutch merchants? If anyone has any answers or information concerning my questions please respond/comment! Thanks!

I've often read that an "uneducated random peasant" in Medieval Europe would mainly identify him/herself as "christian", then as what his ethnicity (or similar) was. I wonder how much this would have been true, since there were several situations where ethnicity or place of birth mattered more than the common faith (e.g. the different legal systems for Germanic overlords and latinized subjects). To what degree commoners would see themselves as part of a greater entity rather than christians because everybody was supposed to be a christian?

A portrait from around 1900 on the family farm has a cabin in the background that my relative will quaintly affirm to be servants' quarters. However, even though we know that slaves existed, family lore is not forthcoming on any details.

I just watched "12 Years a Slave" yesterday, and other than making me unable to sleep last night, it also made masters sleeping with their prettier female slaves seem very common. So I wonder how likely it is that any of my esteemed Southern ancestors did that.

Also, how the eff did slaves cope with having families that could be torn apart at a master's whim? (I'm thinking of Eliza here) Seriously, WTF?!