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
Before a Roman library received its first scroll, Vitruvius wanted its windows facing east. Morning light served the room’s use, he wrote, and books kept in that aspect would not decay. He described the alternative in physical terms. Libraries exposed toward the south and west suffered from damp winds. Moisture spread, books grew mouldy, and … Read more
Inside the private cabinet of a defeated king, Pompey found a recipe. Pliny says it was written in Mithridates’s own hand: two dried walnuts, two figs, twenty leaves of rue and one grain of salt. The ingredients were to be pounded together and swallowed fasting. The promise was immense but carefully bounded. The person who … 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
Cato’s recipe begins with an instruction that would tire the cook before the baking starts. Put two pounds of cheese in a mortar and pound it thoroughly. Only when the cheese is fully broken down should flour enter the bowl. The ingredient list for libum is short: cheese, wheat flour and one egg. The process … Read more
On the Ides of March, Romans carried wine cups to the grass beside the Tiber and began counting. Each cup represented a year they wanted to live. Ovid imagines one man drinking toward the fabulous lifespan of Nestor and one woman trying to reach the age of the Sibyl. The arithmetic belonged to a feast, … 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
Cicero paid half a million sesterces for one table. Pliny the Elder finds the purchase surprising both for its date and for the statesman’s limited resources. Yet price is only the first clue in his account of Roman citrus wood. The polished circle on which cups rested began as an abnormal growth around a tree’s … Read more
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
Salapia did not repair its way out of an unhealthy site. It moved. Vitruvius says the inhabitants of the old Apulian city were continually unwell beside a stagnant marsh, so they petitioned Marcus Hostilius for permission to seek a healthier place. What followed was more than an evacuation. Hostilius bought an estate near the sea, … Read more
