SPQR

From time to time in the first two centuries CE, Roman authorities punished the Christians. There was at this period no general or systematic persecution; there was no sign of that until the mid third century CE. In practice, most of the early generations of Christians lived untroubled by the intervention of the state. Yet they were occasionally sc

They create desolation and call it peace

The management of empire

For bars were not just drinking dens but an essential part of everyday life for those who had, at best, limited cooking facilities in their lodgings. As with the arrangement of apartment blocks, the Roman pattern is precisely the reverse of our own: the Roman rich, with their kitchens and multiple dining rooms, ate at home; the poor, if they wanted

grandfather was a hero of the war against Hannibal, with the extra claim to fame of being the first man known to have entered combat with a prosthetic hand – probably just a metal hook that replaced his right hand, lost in an earlier battle.

In the senate

Equally revealing is an anecdote about another member of the Scipio family in the second century BCE, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica. He was out canvassing one day in a bid to be elected to the office of aedile and was busy shaking the hands of voters (standard procedure, then as now) when he came across one whose hands were hardened by work in th

Caesar launched, for example, a large number of new overseas colonies to resettle the poor from the city of Rome, following up Gaius Gracchus’ initiative with a successful foundation at Carthage. It was this, presumably, that allowed him to get away with reducing the number of recipients of free grain by about half, to 150,000 in all.

The Ides of March

Romans almost universally blamed the woman for a couple’s failure to have children, and this was one standard reason for divorce.