An Adriatic fisherman caught a turbot so large that selling it was dangerous. Juvenal imagines informers waiting to claim any remarkable creature for Domitian. The safest market was therefore the emperor himself. The fish reached the imperial villa, but the kitchen had no dish large enough to hold it. A ruler with armies, courts and … Read more
Rome entered 46 BC with a problem that could not be solved by declaring the next festival a little earlier. The civic calendar had slipped so badly against the solar year that dates no longer reliably named the seasons they were supposed to govern. Magistrates, courts, contracts, religious observances and military commands all depended on … Read more
Berenice had crossed the eastern Mediterranean to Rome and entered the household of the man expected to become emperor. She was a client queen, older than Titus, politically experienced, and already bound to the Flavian family by war and patronage. Ancient writers also say she was his lover. The relationship did not end because either … Read more
Roman soldiers formed on the shore facing the Channel. Artillery and siege engines were positioned as though an enemy waited beyond the water. Emperor Caligula boarded a warship, moved a short distance from land, returned, and took his place on a tribunal. Then came the order that made the scene infamous. The troops were to … Read more
A ship built to carry an Egyptian obelisk ended its working life beneath masonry. Claudius had the enormous carrier sunk in deep water outside Ostia, fixed with piles and incorporated into the foundation of a harbour mole. Above it rose a tower whose night light guided ships toward Rome. The transformation joined two imperial projects. … Read more
First came the ponies: some trained to harness, others still unbroken. Then the dogs, large and small. Nightingales, parrots and blackbirds followed. According to Pliny the Younger, Marcus Aquilius Regulus had every one of these animals killed at the funeral pyre of his only son. Pliny did not offer the inventory to prove that Regulus … Read more
The road should have stopped the flames. It separated Nicomedia’s almshouse from the temple of Isis, yet both public buildings burned. Private houses went with them. Pliny the Younger, governing Bithynia for Trajan, listed the failures with the severity of someone writing after a preventable disaster: violent wind, citizens who stood watching, and a city … Read more
A silver Triton rose from the middle of Lake Fucinus and sounded a horn. Around it, two fleets prepared to collide while spectators packed the shores, hills and mountain crests. Emperor Claudius had not gathered them merely for a naval show. The performance was supposed to mark the opening of a tunnel that had taken … Read more
Claudius did not step forward when Caligula was killed. He was pushed out with the crowd, withdrew into an apartment called the Hermaeum and then hid among curtains hanging before a balcony door. Suetonius says he was terrified. The man who would rule Rome had arranged himself as someone trying not to be seen. One … Read more
A plentiful wine harvest should have looked like good news. For Domitian, it became evidence of a dangerous imbalance. Suetonius says an abundant crop of wine arrived alongside a shortage of grain. The emperor concluded that farmers were giving vineyards too much attention and arable fields too little. His answer was an edict with two … Read more
