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Grand Designs: Interior Décor the Republican way
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- Category: Features
- Written by Shelley Hales
The history of the late republic is full of daring generals, duelling orators and scheming politicians spending their days outsmarting each other in the quest for power. But where did they go at the end of the day? If we think of today’s politicians We might be tempted to think of the senate spilling out at closing time and heading out to the suburbs, like modern MPs, for a relaxing evening away from it all. Far from it. When Cicero climbed down off the rostra he’d be heading a matter of feet away, shuffling home to his house up on the Palatine, the hill that rises immediately above the forum. Cicero was very proud of his house, to pay for which he took out the Roman equivalent of a huge mortgage.
Sex Games: Power and the Birth of a Genre in Rome
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- Category: Features
- Written by Efi Spentzou
Verona, Northern Italy, 84BCE saw the birth of the poet who was to give life to one of the most controversial genres of Latin poetry, erotic elegy, the genre more standardly associated with Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid. Catullus was born into a wealthy provincial family with connections to the aristocratic circles of Rome, not least to Julius Caesar himself. The family had enough money for this young Roman not to have to worry about petty things like earn a living and to be able to devote himself to poetry: passionate, provocative, derisive, sad, angry, political, and erotic in equal measure.
Read more: Sex Games: Power and the Birth of a Genre in Rome
Catullus: the most loved of love poets
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- Category: Features
- Written by David Butterfield
Before the poet Catullus took up his stylus and poured his heart out onto wax and papyrus, men and women of the world fell in love with one another just as they do now and just as they will do until there cease to be men and women. But Catullus’ choice – for whatever reason – to write poetry and to write it as he did – proved to be a revolutionary event: this young man, writing in his twenties, effectively invented love poetry in Roman literature and thereby left his indelible mark on the poetry of his contemporaries and successors, not only in Ancient Rome but throughout the course of western – and even global – literature up to the present day. A single person can scarcely have a greater effect upon the world of poetry.
What Baron Pierre de Coubertin really thought about the Olympic Games
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- Category: Features
- Written by Prof Barbara Goff
You are probably aware that the revival of the ancient Greek Olympic Games in 1896 is attributed to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat. If you didn’t know that, by the end of 2012 you definitely will! You may also know that there are alternative stories about this enterprise.
Read more: What Baron Pierre de Coubertin really thought about the Olympic Games
Giving Poison to the Asp: Girls’ Education in Greece and Rome
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- Category: Features
- Written by Dr Richard Hawley
It is now taken for granted in this country that girls and boys should receive the same kind of educational opportunities. Education in schools, and later in universities, is designed to broaden boys and girls’ minds, to equip them with skills they’ll need in later life, and to open doors to future intellectual development and employment. When we look back in history, even only a century or so, the situation couldn’t have been more different.
Read more: Giving Poison to the Asp: Girls’ Education in Greece and Rome
Diana at Nottingham, or: how modern technology can breathe new life into ancient body parts
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- Category: Features
- Written by Dr Katharina Lorenz
Ever wondered how it felt for a Roman to be in a sanctuary at a time when it was still fully operational? To attend a religious ritual? Or to place an object there, to dedicate it, and to ask the gods for something good to happen to you, or say your thanks for something good you had received?
Earthworms and Honey
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- Category: Features
- Written by Prof Helen King
One of the most interesting questions for anyone who studies the ancient world is, I think, this one: to what extent were the Greeks and Romans much like us, and how far were they really different? If they were completely unlike us in the way they thought and reacted, then it’s difficult to claim that we can ever understand the ancient world. But if they were just like us, then where is the fun in studying them?
