The envoys found Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus working land across the Tiber. In Livy’s telling, the farm was only four iugera, and the former consul was either digging a ditch or ploughing when Rome’s messengers asked him to put on his toga and hear instructions from the Senate. Dust and sweat were replaced by formal dress … Read more
The man did not knock the Portland Vase from its case by accident. On 7 February 1845, William Lloyd entered the British Museum, picked up a nearby carved object and struck one of the most famous Roman glass vessels in the world. The vase collapsed into 189 recorded fragments. A museum attendant had been close … Read more
The edict did more than ask Rome’s richest women for money. It ordered 1,400 of them to declare their property, threatened penalties for concealment or false valuation, and promised rewards to informers whether free or enslaved. The Second Triumvirate needed cash for another Roman civil war. Its shortage was being converted into an inspection of … Read more
A bronze right hand in the Vatican Museums rises only 9.9 centimetres, yet its surface is crowded like an entire sanctuary. A snake climbs it. A pinecone, ram’s head, loaf, scales, tortoise, frog, winged caduceus and lizard occupy the palm and fingers. A tiny bust of Hermes watches from among them. The object is not … Read more
The gift was iron, about 132 millimetres long, and cheap enough for its own inscription to make fun of the buyer. Scratched around the slim sides was a Latin message from someone who claimed to have come from Rome. The traveller brought a pointed present, asked to be remembered and apologized that an empty purse … Read more
Lake Nemi is small enough to see across, yet Caligula placed two vessels on it longer than many modern houses are deep. One hull measured about 71 metres, the other 73. They carried marble, bronze roof fittings, pumps, anchors and elaborate architecture on water that offered no practical route to anywhere else. Among the mechanical … Read more
Four silver cups begin at Gades, the Atlantic port now called Cádiz, and end at Rome. Between those names, narrow columns of letters give station after station and the distance to the next one. The road does not appear as a line. It circles the vessels, making a journey of 1,840 Roman miles small enough … Read more
In 63 BCE, Cato the Younger rose in the Roman senate during the crisis surrounding Catiline. His words moved faster than an ordinary copyist could write them. Yet one version of the speech survived, and Plutarch explains why: Cicero had stationed skilled writers around the chamber who could compress many words into a few short … Read more
A late Roman neck ring survives with a voice attached to it. The voice is not the wearer’s. A small bronze plate orders whoever reads it to seize a fugitive, return him to a man called Zoninus and collect a solidus. The person inside the iron is never named. The object now called the Zoninus … Read more
On 12 January 1889, a Roman name came back into public view with an object small enough to hold in two hands. Excavators working near the Tiber had reached a sealed marble sarcophagus. Inside lay the remains of a young woman identified by its inscription as Crepereia Tryphaena, accompanied by gold, gemstones, grooming tools, an … Read more
