A king offered Cornelia marriage and a share of his crown. She refused. Plutarch places that choice after the death of her husband, when she had taken charge of twelve children and the family estate, and before the education of the two sons who would become the Gracchi. The offer from Ptolemy makes a dramatic … Read more
At seventeen, a Roman male crossed a line drawn by the state. Below it, the scheme preserved by Aulus Gellius called him a puer, a boy. From the seventeenth year, he was considered fit to be enrolled as a soldier and entered the group called iuniores, the younger men. That label lasted through forty-six. Beyond … Read more
Gaius Gracchus was speaking before a Roman assembly when a note came from somewhere near the crowd. It was not applause, interruption or a signal to the listeners. The sound was meant for the orator. A concealed musician had judged that his delivery needed correction. Aulus Gellius preserves the story in Attic Nights 1.11, but … Read more
A small boy from Picenum entered Rome in his mother’s arms, not as a visitor but as part of a victory display. Pompeius Strabo had taken them captive during the Social War. When the general celebrated his triumph, mother and child moved before the chariot among the defeated. Years later, that child crossed the ritual … Read more
Rome had been recovered, but its gold could not simply be poured into one heap. Livy says that metal taken from temples had to return to sacred use. When the precise destination of some recovered pieces could no longer be traced, the Romans treated all of it as sacred and ordered it placed beneath Jupiter’s … Read more
Rome’s Senate announced a benefit before the commons or their tribunes had demanded it: soldiers would receive pay from the public treasury. Until then, Livy says, each man had performed military service at his own expense. The news sent crowds toward the Senate house to seize the hands of departing senators and call them true … Read more
A broad road separated two public buildings in Nicomedia, but it did not save either of them. Fire consumed private houses, the city’s Gerusia and a temple of Isis. Pliny the Younger, governing Bithynia-Pontus for Emperor Trajan, blamed a violent wind. He also blamed the people who watched without helping and a city that possessed … Read more
The dog did not search a road or lead anyone to a hidden body. Its decisive act happened in a gathering in Epirus, where the suspected killer stood among other people. Pliny the Elder says the animal recognized the man who had murdered its master. It barked, snapped and kept the accusation fixed on him … Read more
The Rhodian envoys had finished their plea and left the senate chamber. Behind them remained the consequences of words spoken at home: during Rome’s war with King Perses, men in Rhodian assemblies had urged support for Macedonia if peace could not be secured. Rhodes had taken no official action, but after Perses was defeated and … Read more
When Pliny the Younger recited his work, his wife Calpurnia sat nearby but out of sight. A curtain screened her from the audience while allowing her to hear what listeners said in her husband’s praise. The arrangement placed her at the edge of a public literary room: hidden from its gaze, close to its judgments. … Read more
