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
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
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
A freedom claim reached Pliny with an account attached to it. In Bithynia, children who had been exposed by their parents had survived because other people took them in and raised them. Some had then grown up in a condition of servitude despite having been born free. If they claimed their original status, could the … Read more
The room did not need a written charge. A Roman citizen stood before the censors with a friend beside him as advocate. Then, clearly and loudly, he yawned. In Aulus Gellius’s account, the officials almost converted that instant into a judgment on the whole man. They read the open mouth and broken attention as signs … Read more
Thirty days of the Roman legal year had been consumed by honorary games. Suetonius says Augustus returned them to the courts so claims for damages and disputed property would not collapse or drift into another delay. More days alone could not decide more cases without people to hear them. Augustus added a fourth jury division … Read more
Caecina Paetus lay dangerously ill and kept asking about his son. Arria answered that the boy had slept well, eaten well and seemed stronger. The boy was already dead. Pliny the Younger says Arria arranged the funeral without allowing the news to enter her husband’s room. When grief became impossible to contain, she stepped outside, … Read more
A courier could carry Caesar’s words in plain sight while their meaning remained displaced. Suetonius gives the key in a single example: when Caesar wanted to communicate secretly, he wrote the fourth letter after the one he meant. A appeared as D. No special ink or concealed compartment was required. The protection lay in an … Read more
A carriage wheel struck a rut, the cabin shifted, and the game continued. Suetonius says the emperor Claudius had his gaming board fitted to the vehicle so that movement would not disturb play. The sentence is brief, but the object it describes is unusually revealing. Dice and counters are small. A road is rough. A … Read more
A Roman court could impose a penalty on a woman and still be forbidden to carry it out. In one compact passage, the jurist Ulpian says enforcement must wait if the condemned woman is pregnant. The delay lasted until she gave birth. He adds a second boundary: torture was not to be inflicted during the … Read more
