A Roman house wall could lose value even while it remained standing. Vitruvius describes assessors who examined shared walls when property was valued. For brickwork, they did not simply ask what construction had cost. They deducted one eightieth of that cost for each year the wall had existed. Once it was more than eighty years … Read more
Pliny the Elder knew of wine that had outlived dynasties. It came from the consulship of Lucius Opimius, the year in which Gaius Gracchus was killed: Rome’s year 633, or 121 BCE. Nearly two centuries later, some of that vintage still survived. It did not survive as a perfectly improved version of the young drink. … Read more
The betrayal began as a school routine. Livy says a tutor at Falerii regularly took the sons of leading families beyond the city for play and exercise. He had done it in peace, so the gate opened for him during war. Short walks became longer ones. Conversation and games carried the boys farther than usual … Read more
Pliny the Elder chose an ordinary dinner to make wealth look extraordinary. He remembered seeing Lollia Paulina, once the wife of Emperor Caius, arrive covered in alternating layers of pearls and emeralds. They appeared on her head and in her hair, among her wreaths, at her ears and neck, around her wrists, and on her … Read more
Rome did not discover bread when it discovered the baker. Pliny the Elder draws a distinction that is easy to miss: the food was ancient, but the specialist trade was not. He says there were no bakers at Rome until the war with King Perseus, more than five hundred and eighty years after the city’s … Read more
The scene Pliny records begins far from the arena. A Roman of equestrian rank travelled north from the Pannonian frontier, crossed markets along the coast, and returned with enough amber to alter the look of a day at Nero’s gladiatorial games. The distance Pliny gives between Carnuntum and the supplying coast is about six hundred … Read more
Lucullus could have kept his books as another form of captured wealth. Plutarch says he collected many fine volumes, but the biographer praises their use more than their acquisition. The libraries were open. Greek visitors in Rome could enter the surrounding cloisters and study rooms without restriction, spend the day together, and encounter the owner … Read more
Marcellus had the money, the victory spoils and the office. He still did not control the dedication. In Plutarch’s account, the Roman commander wanted one temple built from his Sicilian spoils to honour two divine recipients: Honour and Virtue. The priests refused. They would not agree that two deities should occupy one temple. The solution … Read more
The sacks had reached Rome, but relief still had to pass through the Senate. Plutarch describes a city in which scarcity had sharpened an older argument over who could speak for the plebs. Grain bought in Italy arrived beside an equal quantity sent as a gift from Syracuse by Gelo. Outside the senate-house, people waited … Read more
Cato the Elder had an accomplished schoolteacher in his household. He still chose to teach his son himself. The decision required more than hearing a reading lesson. Cato became instructor in letters, law and athletics. He taught riding, boxing, weapons, heat, cold and swimming through the Tiber’s current. Then he copied out a history of … Read more
