Category: Roman Empire
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Raunchy, Rowdy, and Rotten: Provocative Poetry in Ancient Rome
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Please be warned, the content of this post is (very) adult in nature. ”In around A.D. 64, Marcus Valerius Martialis (A.D. 31-41 to 103), better known as Martial, arrived in Rome aged 26 from his Spanish hometown of Bilbilis, famous then for its iron mines and for the manufacture of steel, and a center of Roman…
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Roman fort discovered – complete with wooden spikes
By Leman Altuntaş 23rd February 2023 Archaeologists have discovered wooden defenses surrounding an ancient Roman military base for the first time in Bad Ems, western Germany. The fence, which is topped with sharpened wooden stakes similar to barbed wire, is the type of fortification mentioned in ancient writings, including by Caesar, but no surviving examples had…
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Ovid
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Ancient Italy — Ovid Banished From RomeExhibited 1838 Oil on canvas © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY This work treats the ancient poet Ovid’s purported exile from Rome, reconstructed here as a panoply of temples, triumphal arches, and statuary from different periods of the city’s…
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Roman Basilica discovered beneath London
Reported by Jill Lawless – published in The Independent newspaper on the 13th February 2025 Developers have agreed to incorporate the remains into its plans and put them on display Beneath the foundations of a planned 32-story skyscraper in London, archaeologists have unearthed a remarkable vestige of the city’s Roman past: the remains of a…
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A Walk With The Dead
In ancient Rome, especially during the Republic, it was of great importance to show the fame and greatness of one’s ancestors, which served to strengthen the family’s standing in society, and serve as a prompt to its younger members that they must strive for a similar renown. One way of expressing the distinguished ancestral line…
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Antony and Cleopatra
O Cleopatra, I am not distressed to have lost you, for I shall straightaway join you; but I am grieved that a commander as great as I should be found to be inferior to a woman in courage – as recorded by Plutarch, when Antony was told of Cleopatra’s (supposed) death The Roman politician and…
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2,000 year old book about Roman Emperors enters bestseller charts
by Ella Creamer published on Monday 24 February 2025 in The Guardian The Lives of the Caesars, translated from the Latin by Tom Holland, details everything from ancient policy failures to sex scandals, and is a gossipy account of the lives of Roman emperors that has entered the bestseller charts – 2,000 years after it…
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Actaeon
Praise for Tales from Ovid: ‘A breathtaking book…To compare his versions with the Latin is to be awestruck again and again by the range and ingenuity of his poetic intelligence…He rescues the old gods and goddesses from the classical dictionaries and gives them back their terror. There should be a copy of his book in…
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Lost Biblical tree grown from 1,000-year-old seed found in Judaean Desert
The following article isn’t really about the Romans, but it’s quite probable they knew about this plant, due to their long occupation of Judaea, and it’s a very interesting piece so I decided to share – I hope you enjoy reading it! Researchers planted the ancient seed in 2010, more than 20 years after it…
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1,700-year-old Roman gold coins discovered
Some of the 1,700-year-old gold coins, which feature portraits of eight Roman emperors and the illegitimate emperor Eugenius. (Image credit: C. Nosbusch/INRA) By Marjanko Pilekić Published 10th January 2025 in Live Science “Secret” excavations in Luxembourg reveal 141 Roman gold coins from eight Roman emperors and one usurper. Archaeologists in Luxembourg have discovered a lavish 1,700-year-old hoard of…
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