Alexander Meddings
The Romans are often lauded for their ingenious engineering: the graceful arches of their aqueducts, the grandeur of their bathhouses, and even the grim efficiency of their sewers. The remains of these monuments are proof – we like to think – that the Romans were at the cutting edge of public...
Alexander Meddings
Few voices from antiquity capture the sinister spectacle of the Roman amphitheatre quite like Tertullian. A North African Christian writing at the turn of the third century CE, Tertullian was a lawyer by training and a rhetorician by instinct, and when inveighing against pagan Rome’s moral decay,...
Alexander Meddings
Given the famous deeds associated with Julius Caesar — his crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE, his assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BCE, and even his salacious sex life — it might surprise you to learn that we know next to nothing about his childhood. What little we do know comes mainly...
Alexander Meddings
Imagine unearthing a newspaper front page about Donald Trump two thousand years from now, amidst the ashes of a nuclear wasteland. “Trump dances to ‘YMCA’ with Village People at pre-inaugural victory rally”, reads the faded title. As you brush away the radioactive dust to reveal a photograph...
Alexander Meddings
“There is a place called the Tullianum, about twelve feet below the earth. It is enclosed on all sides by walls, and above it is a chamber with a vaulted roof of stone. Neglect, darkness, and stench make it hideous and fearsome to behold.” Sallust, The War against Catiline 55 Few sites embody the...
Alexander Meddings
“The life of Elagabalus, I should never have put into writing – hoping that nobody should know that he was emperor of Rome.” The Augustan History So starts Elagabalus’ imperial biographer, Aelius Lampridius, and his scathing review becomes only more scornful from there. As emperor, Elagabalus...
Alexander Meddings
Just north of London’s Westminster Bridge stands a nineteenth-century sculpture of Boudica and Her Daughters. The warrior queen rides in the rear of a scythed chariot, her arms aloft, a spear pointing to the sky. Her daughters crouch down on either side, bare-breasted and exposed, shielding...
Alexander Meddings
In 2009 Germany commemorated the bimillennial anniversary of a momentous event from its ancient history, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This terrible Roman defeat saw the complete annihilation of the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions, ranking amongst Rome’s worst military disasters. Some sixteen to...
Alexander Meddings
Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, used to boast that he had inherited a city of brick and left a city of marble. Modesty was never one of his strong points. This was, after all, the emperor who wrote an autobiography called the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (literally “Things the Divine Augustus Got...