In addition to the podcast with issue IV.1, Ross Cowan posted some self-confessed rambling (yet interesting) notes on the Roman phalanx before the introduction of the maniple on his personal blog.

Until yesterday, my experience with Ancient reenactors had been pretty much limited to Early and Late Imperial Romans (luckily Republican Rome seems to slowly gain in interest). Granted, there were two or three Celts or Germans at the Xanten events I visited, but at least they belong in the era.

'Greeks' are still fairly rare on the ground and at present I only know of one group who do anything Hellenistic, the German group Hetairoi (please prove me wrong if there are more out there!). When I saw on their website they were having a practice weekend in sort-of-nearby Cologne, I contacted them to ask if I could come over and have a look. The Hetairoi were kind enough to answer positively and provided us with a map to a quiet field in between two halves of an enormous cemetary.

Having made it over there, the assembled Hetairoi were kind enough to don their kit despite the blazing sun (this 'northener' came home with a proper red neck, of course) and pose for us.

Say what you want about reenactors, but I can't think of anything better to get the look and feel of weapons and equipment. And I can tell you, the look and feel of a sarissa is huuuuge.

As I , I have taken up an interest in wargame figures (and likely the game too, though finding opponents in NL may not be easy). I'd bought some Foundry Macedonians on Ebay and planned to paint those before carrying on and buying more.

Two weeks ago on an early Sunday morning I had a Skype conference call with Murray Dahm in Australia and Stephen English and Nick Barley in the UK. Angus Wallace of the History Network recorded it all.

One of the items in the regular display at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn was a Roman discharge certificate. Although very interesting, those normally don't catch my attention like this one did.