Category: Roman Empire
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Cleopatra VII – Power, Romance & Rome
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Bust of Cleopatra VII in the Altes Museum, Berlin Her full name was Kleopatra VII Thea Philopator, the title Kleopatra, is Greek for ‘Glory of her Father’, and she was the seventh female in the royal dynasty of Egypt to be called a Kleopatra. Although she was born in Egypt, she could trace her family…
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The Roman Custom
”It is much better to overcome the enemy by famine, surprise or terror than by general actions…” – Flavius Vegetius Renatus, writer Livy, writing during the reign of Augustus after thirteen years of civil war and the possibility of moral collapse in the Roman people, highlighted the wisdom of Romes’ ancestors, for they had built…
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Roman Road built by Agricola discovered in Scotland
The following is an article printed in The Independent newpaper in November 2023 by Laura Paterson An ancient Roman Road said to be used by key historical figures including William the Conqueror, Oliver Cromwell and every King and Queen of Scotland, has been found in a garden near Stirling. The road dates back almost 2,000…
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Volcanic Ash Concrete: The Marvel of Roman Engineering
Herod the Great’s Roman-built harbour at Caesarea Maritima, present-day Israel We’ve known about it for centuries, but now it seeems we are willing to study the properties and chemical mixture of Roman concrete in a little more depth, because it is particularly well suited to marine structures, and could help us out of what is now a global…
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Rome
urbs Roma manet semperque manebit (the city of Rome remains, and will always remain) Photograph: Temple of Faustina Palatine Hill You search in Rome for Rome? Oh traveller! In Rome itself there is no room for Rome, a corpse is all its churches put on show, the Aventine is its own mound and tomb. There,…
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This Bloody Road
The Appian Way is named so after its founder, Appius Claudius Caecus. In 312 BC, Caecus, a Roman censor and engineer, started the road to improve military supply issues to and from Rome. Statius, a 1st century AD Greek-Roman poet, said the road was often referred to as the “Queen of the Long Roads”( Appia…
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Hadrian & Antinous: The Roman Empire’s LGBTQ+ Heritage
Publius Aelius Hadrianus assumed control over the vast Roman Empire in AD 117 following the death of his adoptive father, Trajan. He was born in AD 76 in Rome, his family coming from ltalica in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica (near Seville in modern-day Spain). Hadrian’s father having died when he was ten, he and…
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Roman Wall Blues
W.H. Auden Over the heather the wet wind blows,I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose. The rain comes pattering out of the sky,I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why. The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone. Aulus goes hanging around her place,I don’t…
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Beware the Ides of March
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it – Gaius Iulius Caesar The Ides of March (15th) 44 BC, was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome by a group of disgruntled Senators, and is one of the most consequential dates in history, an event that…
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Midas in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Greed and Redemption
Ted Hughes 1930 -1998. Tales from Ovid, 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses, published by Faber and Faber Ltd 1997. Copyright Ted Hughes 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…
everythinglatin.co.uk 