We might not realize it, but the Christian culture of today carries with it a footprint of the spiritual universe of the Ancient Mediterranean world. Although modern scientific models overlay most of our ideas about what the universe looks like, the pagan, Christian, and Jewish religions of Ancient Rome had undergone a sort of revolution […]
The Ancient Universe in Religion Read More »
Featured here is an evening sky shot of Faiyum, which for millennia was an important oasis in Egypt and definitely a place on my bucket list to see one day. The region preserves an unusual amount of evidence from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Two recurring themes emerge from these sources — the concern with
Oasis of Faiyum in Ancient Egypt and Rome Read More »
The deep red color you see here decorated the wall of an Ancient Roman aristocratic villa in the first century BCE. The color was known as vermilion, and it was made of the mineral cinnabar, precious to Ancient and Medieval peoples. They loved the hue they could get by mixing it with various bases. But
Cinnibar and Dragons in the Ancient World Read More »
This second-century BCE Etruscan urn shows the death of Actaeon. The myth was popular in the Ancient Mediterranean world and tells a story about a fated hunter, Actaeon, who gazed at the virginal Goddess Artemis/Diana. This forbidden act caused the Goddess to transform the man into a stag, and he was then devoured by his
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How we treat the dead reflects much about what the living believe. In the Ancient Mediterranean, pagan cultures considered the proper burial of the deceased to be of critical importance: otherwise, the dead person’s spirit would have a restless afterlife. On the other hand, the world of the living was to be kept separate from
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Chariot-racing was one of the most popular sporting events in Ancient Rome. Throngs of people (up to 250,000 in Rome’s Circus Maximus) would crowd the stands, supporting their favorite teams (marked by the colors blue, green, red, and white) with fervorous shouting and cheers. The charioteers were much admired, and although some drivers could make
In the United States today is the Thanksgiving holiday, and a common symbol (besides a turkey cross-dressing as a Pilgrim) is the cornucopia, or “Horn of Plenty”. This sounds like a magical item from the modern gaming world, but it goes back to Ancient Greek and Roman times. Here, for instance, is a fourth-century
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Take a moment to ingest the various components of this Late Roman artistic scene, because they’re really weird. This is just one small part of an enormous (36’x23′) floor mosaic discovered just last year during the COVID lockdowns on an English farm in Rutland. The discovery is quite the find: first, the enormous room
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Yup, you are seeing what you think you are seeing: it’s a sex scene, and it comes from the Lupanar of Pompeii, the largest brothel discovered in the famous Ancient Roman city. “Lupanar” translates both as “brothel” and “wolf-den,” and another name for a prostitute is “lupa”. Calling a sex worker a wolf is
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This is the skeleton of 4926, who is the star subject of a recent excavation by Albion Archaeology in in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire, UK. You see him here, laid out as he was in his burial, a man between 25-35 years old. He was part of a small village in Late Roman Britain, and
Roman Crucifixion in Britain Read More »
The Pantheon of Ancient Rome is one of my favorite buildings because its architecture is so distinct. The late second-century historian Cassius Dio attributed the dedication of the temple to “all the Gods,” but he was speculating — ‘pantheus” might have referred to one deity (albeit a superlative one). Why is that important? Well,
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No, this isn’t what you think it is, readers: I know it *looks* like a penis, but really it’s not. Rather, what you see is a 16th-century woodcut illustration of the dissected genitals of a woman. Er, if that’s not obvious to you, don’t worry. Commissioned for Andreus Vesalius’s famous _De humani corporis fabrica_
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I know this rock doesn’t look like much, but it’s actually really cool. It’s an Ancient Roman _pomerium_ stone, unearthed this past July of 2021, and is only the eleventh to be found. The pomerium was a religious boundary marker for the city of Rome, and inside its borders certain activities were completely taboo.
This is a Late Roman mosaic of a peacock, probably from north Africa. When the Roman state withdrew its armies and state apparatus from Britain in the late fourth century, the peacocks that had dotted the wealthy estates of the Roman aristocracy went away as well. But we would be grossly mislead to imagine that
Based on the following description, whom do you think I might be describing?:. This man lived during the first century of the Roman Empire. According to ancient sources, he was born to a woman who was visited by a supernatural being who told her that she would conceive a divine son. As the child
The way Ancient Romans treated their dogs mirrored the social relationships among Roman people, and this was at times horrific, and at times truly creepy. As Robin Fleming presents in her recent lecture “Dogsbodies and Dogs’ Bodies: A Social and Cultural History of Roman Britain’s Dogs and People,” Ancient Roman elites kept pet dogs,
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Ancient Romans were so used to human brutality and violence that they took its existence for granted. Whether the violence was directed by slave owners to their human property, on display at the regular games and gladiator matches, or observed at the very public slaughtering of animals for religious sacrificial purposes, it was normalized.
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You are looking at one of the most puzzled over artistic products of Early Medieval Britain — it is one panel of a rectangular container known as the Franks Casket. Made in 7th-century Northumbria in northern England, it has a fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic/Celtic/Ancient Roman influences, and scholars still debate the exact meanings of the
Malaria is, like COVID, a largely preventable death: so long as the patient gets the right treatment at the right time. Many still do not have access to good medical care. For instance, in 2019, 409,000 people in Africa — mostly babies and toddlers — died of this disease. But malaria is not a
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Let’s talk about apotheoses in domes in art, shall we? This term comes from Ancient Greek and means “to make into a God.” Some heroes of Classical myths ended up ascending into the heavens to be with the other Olympians, such as Hercules. In Ancient Rome, emperors beloved by the Senate could be given the
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