Julian 
Metius Carus asked Fannia whether she had commissioned a biography of her husband, Helvidius Priscus. She answered, “I did.” He asked whether she had supplied the writer with materials. Again: “I did.” Did her mother know? “She did not.” Pliny gives the exchange without a speech of defiance, as if its danger can be measured … Read more
Titus sits among secretaries with a wax tablet and stylus. Suetonius says the future emperor could write shorthand with remarkable speed, and that he turned the skill into a game: show him a hand, and he would imitate it. The competition ended with a joke. Titus often said he was admirably equipped to become a … Read more
Calvisius Sabinus wanted a learned man’s reputation without a learned man’s memory. Seneca says this rich Roman could forget Ulysses, Achilles or Priam—names his audience was expected to know as readily as the people in its own households. Sabinus did not answer embarrassment with study. He answered it with a shopping list. One enslaved specialist … Read more
Roman builders stand in seawater beside two lines of oak piles. Chain pieces hold the timbers together while workers excavate and level the bed between them. Above, other hands combine lime with a pale powder brought from the volcanic country around the Bay of Naples. Stones descend into the enclosure, and mortar begins to occupy … Read more
A death message reaches Pliny in Bithynia, far from the Roman household that needs his wife. Calpurnia wants to hurry to her aunt after the death of her grandfather, Calpurnius Fabatus. Ordinary travel will consume precious time. Pliny possesses something faster: a permit intended for official use of the imperial transport system. He also knows … Read more
On a moonlit night, men climb the rock below Rome’s Capitol without waking the guards. They pass weapons upward, brace one another over difficult ground and reach the summit in near silence. The watchdogs do not stir. Inside the sacred enclosure, however, hungry geese begin to cackle and beat their wings. Livy makes the noise … Read more
A word lies between two men in an imperial room. Favorinus has used it; Hadrian objects. The philosopher can point to reputable authors who used the same expression, yet the exchange does not end with citations weighed on equal terms. Favorinus yields. Only afterward, when friends accuse him of surrendering a sound position, does he … Read more
Cold still hangs over a garden when a grower opens the earth around a rose bush. The cut is broad enough to measure: one foot across around the root. As the first buds begin to push, warm water goes into the exposed ring. Pliny the Elder records the intervention in a single practical sentence. Its … Read more
A heavy load presses a wooden beam, and the expected picture is simple: the middle sags. Aulus Gellius gives palm wood a different response. Stack on weights until the burden seems too great, he says, and the timber does not hollow downward. It rises against the pressure and takes a convex form. Gellius calls the … Read more
At noon on the shortest day, an immense shadow was supposed to reach one exact limit in the Campus Martius. The object casting it was an Egyptian obelisk, but its point was not left alone against the Roman sky. The mathematician Novius Facundus placed a gilt ball at the summit so that the shadow ended … Read more
