The grain landed on the deck, but the chickens would not eat. For a Roman commander preparing a fleet for battle, this was not a minor problem in animal handling. The birds had been brought aboard precisely because their appetite could be watched, interpreted and reported before thousands of men were committed to an irreversible … Read more
The first surprise was everything he did not carry. No helmet hid the retiarius’s face. No broad shield covered his chest. Heavy greaves did not close around both legs. In an arena where other fighters entered as moving surfaces of bronze, leather and painted wood, the net fighter looked exposed before anyone struck a blow. … Read more
The man approaching Nero was already a king in every sense that mattered east of the Euphrates. Tiridates belonged to the Arsacid house, had the backing of his brother Vologases I of Parthia and had survived a contest in which Roman armies could destroy Armenian capitals but could not dictate a durable settlement. In Rome, … Read more
The advertisement did not wait inside an office. It occupied a wall beside an entrance in Pompeii, painted in red letters large enough to catch people moving along the street. Behind it stood a property that could offer much more than one room: baths, commercial spaces and accommodation above ground level. The name attached to … Read more
A pair of red wool socks in the Victoria and Albert Museum ends in four points, not two. Each foot has one pocket for the big toe and another for the remaining toes. The division looks odd only until a sandal enters the picture. A thong could pass through the gap while wool still covered … Read more
Nothing in the Roman crowd’s ordinary catalogue of animals prepared it for the neck. The creature entered Caesar’s games with the spotted hide of a great cat, the body of a browsing hoofed animal and a head lifted above the people around it. Cassius Dio paused his political narrative to describe the proportions. Rome had … Read more
Peter Whatling had lost a hammer in a Suffolk field. On 16 November 1992, his friend Eric Lawes brought a metal detector to help find it. The signal that changed the search did not lead first to the tool. Lawes lifted silver spoons, gold jewellery and Roman coins from the soil—and then did the most … Read more
Near the end of Rome’s Secular Games in 17 BC, a carefully selected chorus climbed into the public memory of the city. Twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls stood on the Palatine after the sacrifices. Each had both parents still living. Together they sang a new hymn by Quintus Horatius Flaccus—Horace—then carried it to the Capitoline … Read more
The Rhine did not need to be held forever to serve Julius Caesar. In 55 BC, it needed to be crossed in a way that everyone on both banks would remember. Boats could carry soldiers. Caesar rejected that solution and ordered his army to put a timber road across one of Europe’s great rivers. His … Read more
A Roman orchard keeper could change a tree without uprooting it. The operation began with removal: a saw took off the stock, a knife smoothed the wound, and a wedge opened living wood. Then came the more delicate act. A young shoot from another tree had to be pared, fitted and bound so closely that … Read more
