Category: Ancient Rome
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part IV- Or at the Theatre
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD But hunt for them, especially, at the tiered theatre: that place is the most fruitful for your needs. There you’ll find one to love, or one you can play with, one to be with just once, or one you might wish to…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) – Book I Part III – Search while you’re out Walking
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Just walk slowly under Pompey’s shady colonnade, when the sun’s in Leo, on the back of Hercules’s lion: or where Octavia added to her dead son Marcellus’s gifts, with those rich works of foreign marble. Don’t miss the Portico that takes its…
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Arausio: Rome’s single bloodiest day
Of the military defeats inflicted upon the Roman Army, none brought such sudden destruction as the Battle of Arausio in early October 105 BC. Arausio was a local Celtic water god who gave his name to the town where Rome was to suffer one of their greatest ever military defeats in a single day Two Roman armies…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part II: How to Find Her
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD While you’re still free, and can roam on a loose rein, pick one to whom you could say: ‘You alone please me.’ She won’t come falling for you out of thin air: the right girl has to be searched for: use your…
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The Argonautica
The Argo, by Constantine Volanakis, c. 1800 One of the oldest sources for the story of Jason and the Argonauts is the Argonautica, an epic poem in the same vein as Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, written by Apollonius of Rhodes. Apollonius was an inspiration to the Latin poets Virgil and Flaccus when they wrote their own epic poems, and he was both innovative and…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part I: His Task
Illustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Should anyone here not know the art of love, read this, and learn by reading how to love. By art the boat’s set gliding, with oar and sail, by art the chariot’s swift: love’s ruled by art. Automedon was skilled with Achilles’s chariot…
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Roman-Era Cemetery unearthed in UK
By Lianne Kolirin, CNN, March 13th 2023 The remains of a Roman aristocrat have been unearthed by archaeologists in northern England. The skeleton of the unidentified woman, believed to be more than 1,000 years old, was found in a lead coffin in a hidden cemetery in the city of Leeds last year. The remains of 62 people were dug up…
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Octavian
”Better a cautious commander, and not a rash one” When Julius Caesar and his his legions had finished their conquest of Gaul, a million Gauls and Germans were dead, and a million more were enslaved. In his decade-long conquest of what is today France, Belguim, North-West Italy and a small part of the Rhineland, Caesar…
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The Dramatic Funeral Procession of Julius Caesar
This article was posted on June 18, 2021 by Ron Current stillcurrent.blog/2021/06/18/the-roman-forum-searching-for-caesar I thought it was really interesting read and it is something that isn’t common knowledge for a lot of people. Peter Stothard’s book The Last Assassin details a part of the story behind Current’s article, it’s a great read and was published by Weidenfeld &…
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Mass grave discovered from forgotten Roman defeat
By Jordan Joseph Earth.com staff writer 8th August 2025 Workers leveling a worn soccer field in Vienna’s Simmering district paused when their backhoe claw scraped Roman bones instead of gravel. By the time the dust settled, archaeologists counted the mixed remains of about 150 young men, each scarred by combat and hurriedly covered by soil…