A promised Roman marriage could fail before the wedding couch was prepared. In the Latin custom described by Servius Sulpicius, that failure did not always end with embarrassed families and returned gifts. One side had formally promised to give the woman in marriage. The other had promised to receive her. If either side refused without … Read more
Cato did not need to win a vote if he could prevent the vote from arriving. Asked for his opinion in the Senate, he ranged beyond the motion and kept talking, aiming to consume the whole day. Caesar, presiding as consul, answered with an attendant and an arrest order. Cato was to be taken to … Read more
Rome had survived the Gauls, but survival left a practical question spread across scorched ground. Should the population rebuild the damaged city or move into captured Veii, where walls and houses already stood? Livy resolves the argument with an omen, then turns immediately to materials and deadlines. Roof tiles came at public expense. Stone and … Read more
In an old Roman prayer list, Mars did not stand alone. Moles and Nerio appeared beside him, just as Salacia appeared with Neptune and Maia with Vulcan. Aulus Gellius tried to explain what one of those pairings meant. His answer split in two directions. Nerio could be the strength and power of Mars. She could … Read more
The schoolmaster arrived in the Roman camp with what he believed was the key to Falerii. Around him stood the sons of the city’s leading families, children he had guided beyond the walls and through the enemy lines. Camillus could have kept them. Instead, he bound the teacher and placed rods in the boys’ hands. … Read more
A host could serve the same dishes in the same dining room and face a different legal limit because the date had changed. One ceiling applied at named games, another on selected days each month, and a much smaller one on ordinary days. Aulus Gellius preserves this moving schedule in a chapter on Roman frugality. … Read more
Fabricius did not trust Publius Cornelius Rufinus. He considered him greedy, thievish and personally hateful. Then a consular election arrived during a military crisis, and Fabricius worked to put Rufinus in command. Years later, the same Fabricius expelled the same man from the Senate because Rufinus owned ten pounds of silver plate. Aulus Gellius preserves … Read more
Two old panel paintings stood where the crowds of Augustus’s forum could see them. Alexander the Great appeared in both. Under Claudius, the Macedonian king lost his painted face, and Augustus acquired it. Pliny the Elder reports the intervention without describing the hands that carried it out. The faces of Alexander were cut from both … Read more
A painter warmed wax over fire until a brush could carry it. Beyond the workshop waited a battleship: timber, salt spray, hard sun and rigging pulled by wind. Pliny the Elder treated this as a distinct technical step. Early encaustic painting had two forms, he said. Decorating ships added a third, and the new combination … Read more
Zosimus could perform comedy, play the lyre and read speeches, history and poetry. The range made one trained voice useful across much of Pliny’s literary household. It also made illness impossible to separate from work. Zosimus once coughed blood during an intense recitation, recovered after travel to Egypt, then relapsed after straining his voice for … Read more
