A cargo of grain reaches Rhodes while food is scarce and prices are extreme. Its merchant has come from Alexandria, but his advantage is not merely that he arrived first. During the crossing he saw several other grain ships following the same route. The buyers on the quay do not yet know that relief is … Read more
A Roman builder choosing stone near the capital faced an awkward bargain. Fresh red stone from nearby quarries was easy to cut. Under cover, it could serve well. Put the same material where frost, rain or salt reached it, however, and Vitruvius warned that it could become friable and crumble. His answer was neither blind … 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
Roman soldiers had crossed into Africa to fight Carthage. On the bank of the Bagradas, however, their weapons turned toward something the campaign plan could not have listed. Pliny the Elder says a serpent blocked them, and he describes the response in the language of siege warfare. General Marcus Atilius Regulus used ordnance and catapults, … Read more
A single green stalk travelled from Cyrenaica toward Nero’s court. Pliny the Elder does not describe a ceremonial garden or a scientific expedition around it. He presents the plant as the last one found there within living memory, an object exceptional enough to be sent to the emperor. The stalk was silphium, the North African … Read more
Apelles did not stand beside his finished picture waiting for praise. He placed it in a gallery where ordinary passersby could inspect it, then moved out of sight behind the panel. From there, the most celebrated painter associated with Alexander the Great listened for faults. One observer had exact knowledge. A shoemaker counted the painted … Read more
The ship had taken water through most of the night. A fierce wind struck from the side as it crossed the Ionian Sea, and passengers worked the pumps while the deck, ropes and hull answered the weather. Dawn brought no simple release. Gellius remembered a black sky, fog, whirlwinds and cloud forms that seemed ready … Read more
Pliny was already running when the second message found him. Corellius Rufus had refused food through a second, third and fourth day. His wife Hispulla had sent a mutual friend to say that family pleas had failed and that Pliny might be the one person still able to call him back to life. Pliny set … Read more
The king thought he had designed a question with no safe answer. Tarquinius Priscus asked the celebrated diviner Attus Navius whether the thing in his mind could be done. Attus consulted the signs and said it could. Only then did Tarquin reveal the trap: he had been thinking of cutting a whetstone in two with … Read more
