On 23-Sep-05 Bob Dove wrote:

Hi Folks,

Greetings from Colonia Claudius.

I know that the Wallsend = World's End is a funny - the 'real' World's End is in Chelsea, part of Londinium! I know you all know too that Wallsend is where Hadrian's wall ended! We all learnt at school that Hadrian built the wall to keep the Scots out, the truth of the matter is that there were probably as many gates through the wall as there were watch towers on it. To come through the gate (to trade) you had to pay a tax on your sale goods. Customs and Excise - good idea eh? Julius Caesar 'Veni, Vedi, Veci'? Nah, Veni and Vedi perhaps but he went home with the 'flu! Claudius' army came and found of course already Romanised Celtic tribes and Roman trading posts so the battles were probably not as extensive as the post Roman propaganda would have us believe!!! Alas, the Romans didn't have Linux...

Cheers,

Bob Dove.

Well, that's disputable and a matter of intetrpretation.

Here are are a couple of documents from the period, in the run-up to Y0K, whose discovery I was privileged to participate in.

================================================================= Papyrus I. ----------

I thought some of you might be interested in this translation of a recently discovered piece of papyrus....

Dear Cassius,

Are you still working on the Y0K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort it all out at the last minute.

I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty. We called in Consultus but he simply said that continuing downwards, using minus BC, won't work and as usual charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. Surely, we will not have to throw out all our hardware and start again? Macrohardius will make another fortune out of this I suppose.

The money lenders are paranoid, of course! They have been told that all usury rates will invert and they will have to pay their clients to take out loans. It's an ill wind...

As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards. We have heard that there are three wise men in the East working on the problem but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over.

I have also heard that there are plans to stable all horses at the turn of the year as there are fears that they will stop and try and run backwards, causing immense damage to chariots and possible loss of life. Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway, we are still continuing to work on the blasted Y0K problem. I will send a parchment to you if anything further develops.

If you have any ideas let me know.

Plutonius