Tag: roman-empire
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A Happy Roman New Year
The Romans celebrated the New Year as a time of new beginnings and fresh starts, and New Year celebrations in ancient Rome were full of symbolism and held huge significance. Janus, the god who the month of January is named after, was often depicted with one face looking backward and another face looking forward, representing…
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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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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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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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The Short Reign of Pertinax: Corruption and Assassination
Image Credit: Egisto Sani-Flickr Publius Helvius Pertinax was born of a fairly low status on the 1st August 126 AD. The son of a freed slave, he joined the legions, and after commanding in Syria, Britain, and earning distinction on the Danube and the Rhine during the invasion by German tribes in 169 AD, he found…
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Verism: Portraying Power and Ancestry
Heavily wrinkled, with sagging jowls and a thrusting jaw, the face of a Roman aristocrat stares back at us from the time of the late Republic, his countenance meaning to convey his seriousness of mind (gravitas) and the battle scars earned through a life of public and military service. The Veristic style (from the Latin verus meaning true)…
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