Sunday, December 26, 2010

State of the Nation - December 2010

Greetings all,

December has been another good month for Byzantium Novum! We are in our 10th month, and currently have reached a total of 135 Citizens, a gain of 11 for the month.

As of this morning Byzantium Novum has 1,633 Facebook contacts on our page located at:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/ByzantiumNovum . We'll be doing more announcements there after the holidays as this has continued to be a good resource for us.

This month our lists have been active and we've had some wonderful new folks join the public forums! The Senate has continued to do business and is currently voting on some minor changes to the Byzantium Novum flag, and the appointment of new Eparchs for the various Provinces. Updates have also been made to the main website. It has been great to see our community busy even during the holiday season.

We are already working to make 2011 an even better year - with more growth and more local opportunities for participation in "things Byzantine!"

The only sad news this month comes from a situation beyond our control - the Turkish government has continued with its plans to flood the Roman archaeological site at Allianoi. The entire site has been covered with sand in an effort to "preserve" it. The archaeological community believes this will not only be no protection, but due to mineral conditions will actually hasten the complete obliteration of the site while it is under water. Last minute efforts to halt the flooding continue.

I would like to remind everyone that it is still NOT TOO LATE to email the Turkish embassy and protest this action. It seems unlikely that the Turkish government will halt this project and that is a tragedy. This is a huge loss to Roman/Byzantine history but hopefully we will be able to act for the preservation of other Byzantine Heritage sites in the future.

May everyone have a great holiday as we look forward to continuing to restore Byzantium in 2011!


-Marcus Cassius Julianus
Senator, Byzantium Novum

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