The letters could be gold and still lose to the parchment. Gaius says that writing placed on another person’s paper or parchment became the material owner’s property. The letters were accessory to the sheet beneath them. A painted image, however, could produce the opposite result: the support was treated as accessory to the painting. The … Read more
The crowd closed around her as the games emptied into the street. The daughter of Appius Caecus had rank, family memory and no room to move. After she fought clear of the press, she complained that she had been roughly handled. Then irritation became something Rome’s magistrates could punish. She wished that her brother might … Read more
The visitor did not come for a statue. The attraction moved beneath the water. At a villa in Baculo, near Baiae, Antonia kept a favorite lamprey and decorated it with earrings. Pliny says the fish acquired such a reputation that people became eager to visit. A creature normally counted among pond stock had become an … Read more
The defendant was already there. The prosecutor was not. Before a Roman accusation could move into its main trial, more than one person might seek the right to conduct it. A separate inquiry then asked which candidate should receive the prosecution, or a share in it. Jurors rendered judgment on that preliminary question. Aulus Gellius … Read more
There was one chair and two claims to it. The governor of Crete had come to Athens with his father to meet the philosopher Taurus. The son held senatorial rank and Roman magistracy. The father held no office in the scene, but he was still the father and the older man. Taurus offered him the … Read more
The centurion arrived before the game had produced a winner. Julius Kanus was sitting over a draughts board when the officer summoned a group of prisoners for execution. Kanus did not sweep the pieces aside. According to Seneca, he counted them. Then he gave his opponent an instruction: after Kanus was dead, the other man … Read more
The retreat began at night. After a succession of defeats outside Numantia, the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus tried to abandon his camp and pull the Roman force away in darkness. The Numantines detected the movement, seized the camp and struck the men at the rear. What remained of the army was crowded into difficult country … Read more
When fire ran through Nicomedia, the provincial governor was not there to direct the response. Pliny was visiting a distant part of his province. By the time he described the disaster to Trajan, private houses had been lost along with two public buildings: a facility associated with the city’s elders and a temple of Isis. … Read more
Cineas arrived in Rome as the representative of King Pyrrhus, entering a political community crowded with unfamiliar faces, inherited names and visible ranks. By the day after his arrival, Pliny says, the ambassador knew by name every member of the Senate and the equestrian order. The claim is only one sentence in the Natural History, … Read more
The meal had ended, and Claudius was asleep on the couch. Olive stones and date stones struck him where he lay. Sometimes jesters supplied a whip or cane. Then came the trick that needed patience: slippers were placed on his hands while he snored. The joke completed itself when he woke. Claudius raised his covered … Read more
