Category: Everything Latin
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part VI: Triumphs are good too!
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Behold, now Caesar’s planning to add to our rule what’s left of earth: now the far East will be ours. Parthia , we’ll have vengeance: Crassus’s bust will cheer, and those standards wickedly laid low by barbarians. The avenger’s here, the leader, proclaimed,…
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Drought responsible for British rebellion against Romans
The following article was published in The Guardian online by Harriet Sherwood on Thursday 17th April 2025 The pivotal ‘barbarian conspiracy’ of AD 367 saw Picts, Scotti and Saxons inflicting crushing blows on Roman defences. A series of exceptionally dry summers that caused famine and social breakdown were behind one of the most severe threats…
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Ovid: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) Book I Part V- Or at the Races, or the Circus
llustration by Frederico Righi Publius Ovidius Naso 43 BC – c. 17 AD Don’t forget the races, those noble stallions: the Circus holds room for a vast obliging crowd. No need here for fingers to give secret messages, nor a nod of the head to tell you she accepts: You can sit by your lady:…
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Constantine the Great
Constantine the Great – York Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man – Constantine the Great In comparison to the third century, Constantine’s reign (306 -337 AD) was a period of radical change…
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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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Girls and Dolls in the Roman Empire
Published in JSTOR, the nonprofit library for the intellectually curious, by Nora McGreevy on March 28, 2021 Analysing the dolls of elite girls shows that playthings reinforced gendered expectations but also allowed for imaginative play. Barbie dolls tend to get a bad rap. Critics rebuke them for promoting harmful body standards and other sexist tropes in the minds of young…
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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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