Julian 
On the Ides of September, an official was supposed to hammer a nail into a wall of Jupiter’s great Capitoline temple. Livy says an old instruction, written in archaic words and letters, ordered the praetor maximus to do it. The nail stood beside Minerva’s chapel, where counting and divine protection met in one small mark … Read more
The tribune did not deliver the killing blow. According to Polybius, he touched the condemned soldier with a cudgel. The rest of the camp then closed in with clubs and stones. A small official gesture transferred a judicial decision into collective violence. This punishment, usually called the fustuarium, appears in Book 6 of Polybius’s Histories … Read more
The dolphin did not die because it attacked the boy. In Pliny the Younger’s story, it died after carrying him safely, returning on later days, accepting human touch and attracting so many officials that a small town could no longer afford the attention. Kindness made the animal famous. Fame made it expensive. Pliny sent the … Read more
The schoolmaster began at dawn. Corn mills carried on through the night. Somewhere between them, bronze workers hammered, a money-changer rattled coins, a gold-beater struck stone, religious devotees shouted, sellers called and a passing crowd laughed close enough to wake the man in bed. Martial’s Rome did not need an alarm clock. It entered the … Read more
Before an army crossed a frontier, a sentence had to cross it. In Livy’s account, a wool-covered envoy stood at another people’s boundary and called Jupiter, the boundary itself and righteousness to hear him. He repeated his demand to the first person he met, at the gate and in the forum. Only after waiting, returning … Read more
The condemned man had every reason to watch the lion’s mouth. Instead, the story asks us to watch the animal stop. In Aulus Gellius’s telling, the largest lion in a Roman beast show halted at the sight of one enslaved prisoner, approached quietly, and licked his hands and feet. The expected killing became a problem … Read more
The mule stopped pulling the boat and wandered off to graze. Passengers had already endured frogs, midges and competing songs in the dark. At another stop, bad water made Horace skip supper. Farther south, an innkeeper nearly burned down his own kitchen while roasting lean thrushes. Rome’s road network may have connected the peninsula, but … Read more
Five people could still meet. Six could not. Even among the permitted five, no more than two could be men and no more than three women. A priest, a presiding officer, a common treasury or a mutual oath could turn the gathering from tolerated worship into a capital case. The surviving order is so exact … Read more
At first glance, the glass seems to be doing something impossible. A clear hemispherical bowl sits inside an open lattice of circles, hearts and rings. The outer network appears to float away from the vessel wall, yet it does not fall. Slender bridges, placed where the pattern hides them, hold the cage to the cup. … Read more
Closed, it is only a small bar of silver hardware. Open it, and a table setting seems to unfold from a traveller’s hand. A three-pronged fork swings away from the body. So do a spoon, a spatula, a narrow pick and a spike. An iron knife once completed the set, but its blade has largely … Read more
