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Topic: I'm going to post one interesting fact about the Romans in this thread every day for a year

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE started this discussion 1 month ago #132,749

Hello, plebs! Minichan is quiet these days and I am overflowing with useless trivia about a dead civilization. So, just for fun, let's have another mega thread.

Some ground rules: The facts can be about about any period in Roman history, from the Roman Kingdom right up until Constantine XI. I'll also throw in a few facts about the "historical afterlife" of the Romans, interesting ways in which people remembered the Romans after they were gone. Also, the "facts" might be anything from neat self-contained facts, to short posts about broader topics, or specific people or artefacts, etc.

Most importantly- "Interesting" means interesting to I, Killer Lettuce. I will try to make the facts accessible and of interest to anyone, but no guarantees!

Overall, the aim is for 365 posts, one per day. Yes I have too much time on my hands. No, I've never been diagnosed.

Oh, and if you have any ideas or something you want to know about, feel free to suggest stuff and I'll try to look into it.

Edit: that transparecy did not work, but it's funny so I'll leave it in.

(Edited 9 minutes later.)

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 2 minutes later[^] [v] #1,416,457

(#1) Okay, let's start with a good one.

In the early Roman Empire, during trials, the prosecution would sometimes commission and bring in a painting of the defendant committing the crime they were being accused of. It was meant as an emotional appeal to try and influence the judge.

We know this happened because we have a surviving text where a Roman rhetorician, named Quintilian, complains about it:

Still I would not for this reason go so far as to approve a practice of which I have read, and which indeed I have occasionally witnessed, of bringing into court a picture of the crime painted on wood or canvas, that the judge might be stirred to fury by the horror of the sight. For the pleader who prefers a voiceless picture to speak for him in place of his own eloquence must be singularly incompetent. 

Quintilian, Oratoria, Book VI, circa 95 AD
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/6A*.html

This one makes me laugh. It's like an ancient version of the "I've already depicted you as the soyjak!" meme, except it's taking place in a serious law court and could well contribute to someone being seriously punished.

Just for fun, here's also a silly AI mock-up of this happening.

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Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 12 hours later, 12 hours after the original post[^] [v] #1,416,565

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 4 hours later, 17 hours after the original post[^] [v] #1,416,597

(#2) Just for fun, I'm going to go from Quintilian to... Taylor Swift.

Did you know that Taylor Swift has, on a few occasions, worn Roman coins as jewellery?

Two jewelry pieces of particular note are a replica silver denarius of Roman Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117–138) and another described as a bronze coin of Philip I (224–249) mounted in a necklace.

[...]

According to Page Six, Swift was to wear a Steven Battelle-designed silver pendant featuring the goddess Roma during the American Football Conference Championship game that preceded the Super Bowl game.
Battelle explained, “She was believed to watch over the city’s citizens and protect them from harm, as well as being a fierce defender of Rome in war.”

Battelle said this is a genuine Roman Republican coin, struck in 109 to 108 B.C. The reverse features Victoria, the winged Roman goddess of victory. Battelle added, “There is something almost talismanic about the messages that we try to interpret from those coins. To me, someone wearing an ancient coin piece has not only an appreciation of the beauty of the ancient images, but an appreciation of the continuity of history and our place within it.”

https://www.numismaticnews.net/can-taylor-swifts-ancient-coins-bring-new-eyes-to-collecting

Now, putting genuine coins into jewellery mounts is generally frowned upon in the ancient coin community, as it can damage them. It is possible to do it without damaging them, no idea if that's the case here.

Of course, this is far from a modern thing. This goes all the way back to the Romans themselves. Archaeologists often find Roman coins which were, back in ancient times, repurposed as jewellery. This could be highly elaborate pieces of jewellery incorporating coins, or just common bronze coins with holes made in them to be worn as necklaces.

During Late Antiquity, gold coins, in particular, often received ornate framing devices, such as this fourth-century pendant from North Africa. Here, a medallion (double solidus) of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) is set within a large frame that comprises elaborate gold openwork—a specialty of late antique goldsmiths—interspersed with gold busts sculpted in high-relief frames.

There were certainly less elaborate ways of adorning oneself with coins: humble bronze coins were simply pierced and strung, showing that wearing coins remained popular regardless of class.

https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/gold-pectoral-with-coins

As I said, it's frowned upon to damage coins to make them into wearable jewellery... But it does look very cool.

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Anonymous C joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 5 hours later, 23 hours after the original post[^] [v] #1,416,646

Fuck yeh it's kewl

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 18 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #1,416,830

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 4 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #1,416,833

(#3) Okay, watches. Wristwatches. That's a good jumping-off point for a fact.

Surely having the time in a small and portable way mist be a fairly modern thing, right? Not so! The Romans had small and portable sundails they could use for much the same purpose.

It’s the four or fifth century and you’re a wealthy, cosmopolitan Roman sightseeing across the empire, or perhaps an armchair traveler entertaining other well-educated friends for dinner. What could you pull out to impress your companions? One good option would be a geographical portable sundial, the closest Romans got to an iPhone.

These sundials were designed to tell time on the go—but it turns out they really excelled at being a snazzy gadget. Many were made of shiny bronze, they sat comfortably in a hand, and it took real technical knowledge to use them properly. There are about a dozen examples known today, each with a cheat sheet of coordinates for using the device in specific places.

It’s a powerful tool more than a millennium before GPS, atomic clocks, or even a practical way to determine longitude. “If the sun is shining, you are carrying with you one portable gadget or instrument that is your own, a very personal thing, and you can supposedly rely on it to tell you what the time is,” says Richard Talbert, a historian at the University of North Carolina who has written a new book about the devices, called Roman Portable Sundials.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/early-tech-adopters-ancient-rome-had-portable-sundials-180962225/

The most impressive example I've heard of myself is this cute little one that was found in Heraclium. It's shaped like some ham. Pic related, a 3D printed recreation of it.

Using this recreation, academics found it works really well, in terms of measuring hours. You just need to adjust the "tail" to the current month and it works great.
https://www.bordersundials.co.uk/ham-roman-sundial-heraclium-bay-of-naples/


For context, here's a bit about Roman timekeeping, and why sundials were perfect for them.

An hour was defined as one twelfth of the daytime, or the time elapsed between sunset and sunrise. Since the duration varied with the seasons, this also meant that the length of the hour changed. Winter days being shorter, the hours were correspondingly shorter and longer in summer.[1] At Mediterranean latitude, one hour was about 45 minutes at the winter solstice, and 75 minutes at summer solstice.[4]

The Romans understood that as well as varying by season, the length of daytime depended on latitude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_timekeeping

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 1 month ago, 23 hours later, 2 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,017

Anonymous C replied with this 1 month ago, 4 hours later, 2 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,058

I bet some ancient Romans had a phobia of miniature creatures

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 5 hours later, 3 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,075

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 17 hours later, 3 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,259

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 5 minutes later, 3 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,260

(#5) Speaking of games, check out this Roman dice tower!

It's pretty cool. You drop the dice in at the top, they'd fall down, and hit some little bells on the way out.

There's two inscriptions on it, which translate to "The Picts are defeated, the enemies destroyed, play with confidence" and "Have a happy life".

I love artefacts like this, as they give an insight into ordinary Romans. They loved games, just like lots of modern people do, and loved fancy custom gear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vettweiss-Froitzheim_Dice_Tower

(Edited 58 seconds later.)

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Anonymous E joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 18 hours later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,387

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 8 hours later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,589

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 39 minutes later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,594

(#6) Anyway, Microbiology! Good segue.

Throughout human history, we've always had pathogens, bacteria and viruses and such that can make us sick and kill us. And of course, as human populations grew, and roads and trade networks facilitated more people moving around, pathogens could spread far more rapdily- leading to pandemics.

The Roman Empire, in its history, faced it's share of pandemics. But, for a long time, all we had to get off of were the accounts from Roman historians describing the symptoms. And, sure, a modern-day scientist could look at those symptoms and make an educated guess about what the disease might have been, but it didn't necessarily line up neatly with modern diagnoses, and there was ultimately no way to know for sure what exactly a given plague was.

One of the biggest of these was the Plague of Justinian, which struck from 541AD to 549AD. It's named after the then Roman Emperor, Justinian, who was himself infected but survived. While exact numbers of deaths can't be obtained, it's estimated to have killed millions. But, as significant an event as it was, we just couldn't be sure exactly what pathogen was responsible.

...Until recently, when it became possible to use modern science to get an exact answer!

For the first time, researchers have uncovered direct genomic evidence of the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian—the world's first recorded pandemic—in the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak was first described nearly 1,500 years ago.

The discovery, led by an interdisciplinary team at the University of South Florida and Florida Atlantic University, with collaborators in India and Australia, identified Yersinia pestis, the microbe that causes plague, in a mass grave at the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan, near the pandemic's epicenter. The find definitively links the pathogen to the Justinian Plague marking the first pandemic (AD 541–750), resolving one of history's long-standing mysteries.

For centuries, historians have deliberated on what caused the devastating outbreak that killed tens of millions, reshaped the Byzantine Empire and altered the course of Western civilization. Despite circumstantial evidence, direct proof of the responsible microbe had remained elusive—a missing link in the story of pandemics.

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ancient-dna-plague-justinian-mystery.html

For context, Yersinia pestis is the bacteria behind Bubonic Plague, which also ravaged vast swathes of the world in the later Black Death. That's a picture of it, by the way. Quite a looker, huh?

(Edited 22 minutes later.)

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Anonymous F joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 4 minutes later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,597

@previous (Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE)

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 month ago, 36 minutes later, 5 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,603

Anonymous G joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 1 hour later, 5 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,604

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 1 day later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,831

Okay, genomics! People find this interesting, let's stick with this for a bit.

It's very cool how we can use this science to get hard data in otherwise shadowy time periods or geographical areas. Of course, for the Roman Empire, lots of DNA studies tell us that people moved around a lot. You might find a Syrian guy who got buried in Britain. Cool.

But that's not much of a fact, probably everyone already knows that the Romans moved around a lot. But what genomics can also tell us is when... This didn't happen.

Fact #7- DNA testing suggests that rural Britain wasn't affected that much, genetically, by being in the Roman Empire.

Low Genetic Impact of the Roman Occupation of Britain in Rural Communities

Abstract
Abstract The Roman period saw the empire expand across Europe and the Mediterranean, including much of what is today Great Britain. While there is written evidence of high mobility into and out of Britain for administrators, traders, and the military, the impact of imperialism on local, rural population structure, kinship, and mobility is invisible in the textual record. The extent of genetic change that occurred in Britain during the Roman military occupation remains underexplored. Here, using genome-wide data from 52 ancient individuals from eight sites in Cambridgeshire covering the period of Roman occupation, we show low levels of genetic ancestry differentiation between Romano-British sites and indications of larger populations than in the Bronze Age and Neolithic. We find no evidence of long-distance migration from elsewhere in the Empire, though we do find one case of possible temporary mobility within a family unit during the Late Romano-British period. We also show that the present-day patterns of genetic ancestry composition in Britain emerged after the Roman period.

The discussion section also summarises the findings, and has other interesting bits:

The Roman period in East Anglia was not one of great genetic change: the major sweeps of allele frequency change occurred before or after this period. Whether it was one of great cultural change, we cannot say from our data. While polyandry is described in the early period by Caesar, by the time period studied here we find no evidence for this practice in this region. We do find support for mobility, potentially even within a family, though not nearly at such high levels as previously indicated by other isotope studies.

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/81d6fa70-1c44-4f24-9c23-e01564e8a3f4
You can read the full PDF there, if you'd like. A lot of it went over my head, haha, but it's interesting stuff!

I'll try to keep this brief but, in short, this is super interesting because it backs up a stereotype about Roman Britain being something of a backwater that didn't get completely as Romanised as other provinces.

To be clear, it wasn't irrelevant. Lots of Romans went there, Roman officials wanted to go here to advance their careers, and a large number of usurpers popped up here. The Emperor Claudius invaded it in the first place because it was considered a valuable prize he could use to boost his own prestige.

But, on the other hand, we never hear about any Roman Senators who were born in Britain (doesn't mean there weren't any, but their absence is noteworthy). The Romans also never completly got the island under control, and the Picts up in modern-day Scotland were always a problem. And, perhaps most tellingly, the island doesn't go on to develop a Romance language- the dominant language here is a Germanic one.

So, pretty interesting study, and I guess it's not so different to the modern world- rich countries have big cities that lots of people want to go to, so they become more diverse, but countryside backwater towns that are isolated enough generally avoid most of that.

(Edited 57 seconds later.)

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Septimius Severus replied with this 1 month ago, 2 hours later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,839

Green !!bO/s3MBcD joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 5 hours later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,878

Green !!bO/s3MBcD double-posted this 1 month ago, 19 seconds later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,879

Anonymous I joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 22 minutes later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,880

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 4 hours later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,980

@1,417,839 (Septimius Severus)
What's that? You want a fact about Septimius Severus? Well, okay, he was a pretty interesting Emperor.

Fact #8: Septimius Severus has the dubious distinction of being the Emperor who fought the largest ever civil war battle during the Roman Empire. The Battle of Lugdunum, which was fought in 197 AD. Cassius Dio, a Roman historian who was alive at the time, put the total numbers at 150,000 Legionaries total.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lugdunum

It was fought between Severus and a rival Emperor, Clodius Albinus. It put an end to the wider civil war, the Year of the Five Emperors (which had begun four years earlier but nevermind that).

This was immediately after the period which modern historians call the Pax Romana, so the Empire was arguably at the height of it's prosperity, facilitating a power struggle of this size.

This would, I argue, have disastrous consequences down the line, as Severus massively accelerated the trend of debasing the currency in order to buy the loyalty of his troops to win this war. But, in the shorter-term, him winning in Lugdunum would bring in a period of reasonable stability under him and the Severan Dynasty he founded.

Here's a picture of a bust of his that I took.

(Edited 3 minutes later.)

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 2 minutes later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,981

Anonymous F replied with this 1 month ago, 22 minutes later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,417,990

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 1 hour later, 6 days after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,011

Anonymous J joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 20 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,131

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 12 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,206

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 month ago, 19 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,207

Let's pivot to something easier I can do off the top of my head.

Fact #9: Verism was a Roman art style that emphasised age and experience. It was most popular in the Roman Republic, before the rise of Augustus and the Roman Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verism

This picture is an example of a bust showing Verism. What's super interesting here is how, while on first impression you might just want to say "Oh wow, this is super realistic" it... Might not be. Generally, this art style wants to make the subject look old and experienced, so it's carrying an implicit message- this person is experienced, he's fit to lead The Senate/his family/whatever. The real men could have been less wrinkly and weathered than some of these busts imply.

But when Augustus first becomes a prominent political figure in the tumult of the Republic's civil wars that will ultimately turn it into the Empire, he's only 20. He can't do Verism, or he doesn't want to. So... He abandons it. All of his portraits show him as a young man. Interestingly, they all actually keep doing this until he dies, he's always portrayed as youthful even when he's actually quite old. His Julio-Claudian successors relax this a bit, you can see statues where Tiberius and Claudius look visibly older, but they don't go back to Verism, their age is portrayed more subtly.

Verism got a brief revival under the next dynasty, the Flavians, as Vespasian does come to power as a older man and probably wants to project experience. But this ultimately doesn't last and, as I recall, all subsequent dynasties go back to younger-leaning portraiture, until you get into the third century and you get into the more simple, stylised portraiture.

Pretty interesting, IMO. In an age well before photography, statues were such an important way for people to promote themselves, and we can visibly see how the way they wanted to do this could suddenly change based on politics. Again, not so different to today, probably.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 1 month ago, 1 day later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,383

One of my favourite Roman items is inscriptions. Not only do they let us hear from ordinary Romans who otherwise wouldn't be in the historical record, but they're one of the best ways to make the Romans relatable to modern people. Anyone can relate to someone mourning a relative.

Fact #10: Inscriptions commemorating a Roman girl, Geminia Agathe.

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 month ago, 5 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,402

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 month ago, 17 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,484

It's Valentine's Day! So let's have a fact about love. ❤️

Fact #11: Under the Empire, Roman soldiers were legally unable to marry... But many of them had de facto wives anyway. Septimius Severus may have abolished this by 197 AD.

Legal provisions only exacerbated this problem. From the early principate, and most likely since the reign of Augustus, Roman soldiers were legally incapable of entering recognized marriages. At the very end of the second century AD, Septimius Severus was said to have granted them the right to “live with” (i.e. marry) their wives. Bythe fourth century ad, in any case, wives and children had come to be considered typical features of soldiers’ lives, although the earliest surviving explicit reference to their formal marital capacity dates from as late as ad 426. We do not know if officers such as centuriones were also subject to the ban while it was in effect. Equestrian and senatorial commanders were exempt, yet barred from marrying women from provinces in which they performed their duties.

However, soldiers were not physically prevented from cohabiting with women or raising children: the state merely denied them and their conjugal families the legal entitlements that conventionally accrued from marital unions. Moreover, we do not know of any penalties for soldiers who established such relationships. Thus, “non- recognition” of marriage might be a more precise term than the traditional label “ban.”

Source

So, even when their marriages weren't legally recognised, Roman Legionaries out serving in the Legions still wanted female companionship. And, on the ground, this seems to have been widely tolerated. How do we know? Funerary inscriptions, as inscriptions are neither cheap nor very secret. Like this one:

To Cocceia Irene, his most chaste and pure wife, (who) lived 30 years and a month, Gaius Valerius Justus, actarius of the Twentieth Legion, set this up.

https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/507

Awwwww. It just goes to show that, even if a Roman Legionary was out in a distant place, he could still fall in love with a woman and marry her unofficially.

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Green !!bO/s3MBcD replied with this 1 month ago, 5 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,509

chill dog !!81dzJNNYL joined in and replied with this 1 month ago, 33 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,513

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 4 weeks ago, 18 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,667

Okay, Valentine's Day is FUCKING OVER! No more love, only heartbreak now!

Fact #12: The future Emperor Tiberius happened to find love in his arranged marriage... And then it was taken away from him.

Near the end of the 1st Century BC, The Emperor Augustus was busy consolidating power now that he, basically, had complete control. A big part of this was managing political marriages within his family. Like in many ancient and medieval societies, it was quite normal for the elite in Roman society to marry not out of love, but for political alliances.

His stepson, Tiberius, was a part of this. He was initially involved in an arranged marriage to Vipsania Agrippina, daughter of Augustus's close ally Agrippa. Tiberius was a notoriously socially awkward man, I could post loads of anecdotes about him rubbing people the wrong way. He was a talented general and was liked by his troops, he just seemed to be bad at social interactions when he was off the battlefield, and regularly put his foot in his mouth with his elite peers and with commoners.

But despite this, he found love in this arranged marriage, fathering one son with Vipsania and seeming to genuinely love her.

...And then it got taken away from him.

...Although she (Vipsania) was thoroughly congenial and was a second time with child, he (Tiberius) was forced to divorce her and to contract a hurried marriage with Julia, daughter of Augustus. This caused him no little distress of mind, for he was living happily with Agrippina, and disapproved of Julia's character, having perceived that she had a passion for him even during the lifetime of her former husband, as was in fact the general opinion. But even after the divorce he regretted his separation from Agrippina, and the only time that he chanced to see her, he followed her with such an intent and tearful gaze that care was taken that she should never again come before his eyes.

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, The Life of Tiberius, 121 AD

☹️

Suffice to say, his marriage to Julia was unhappy. To cut the story short, Tiberius and Julia didn't seem to like each other. Although he did get Julia pregnant, the child she had died in infancy and no more followed. The marriage was eventually anulled when an infidelity scandal erupted around Julia, and she was subsequently exiled by Augustus.

Vipsania, meanwhile, had been married off in 11 BC to a Senator called Gaius Asinius Gallus. Unfortunately, we don't get much information from our sources on what Vipsania made of all of this- it's a rule of thumb in ancient sources that, in general, important elite men are paid more attention than women. For his part, Gallus pops up a few times in the historical record where he's noted to be critical of Tuberius.

In 33 AD when Tiberius was Emperor, shortly after Vipasania died, he had Gallus imprisoned and he died of starvation. Tiberius did purge quite a few Senators in his various treason trials, but it's pretty easy to assume that this one was very personal.

Tiberius, generally, didn't seem to like being Emperor, with a famous quote attributed to him saying that being Emperor was like “holding a wolf by the ears." And although it's always important not to assume too much about people we did not know, and to not project our own assumptions onto historical figures, it is a safe assumption that being forced from a happy marriage into an unhappy one purely because his stepfather wanted to tweak the dynasty dynamics did not help make Tiberius any happier.

If you love someone, be grateful. It's one of the best things in life, and not everyone in human history got to have love.

(The picture is one I took, a statue of Tiberius. Chad alert.)

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 4 weeks ago, 2 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,668

Island Boy replied with this 4 weeks ago, 7 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,711

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 4 weeks ago, 6 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #1,418,801

Okay! Let's have a bit of a fact series on... Identity.

Let's have a little think about identity in the modern world. If I want to prove my identity, I could produce my driving licence. If I want to prove my citizenship, I can use my passport. If I had doubts about a policeman, I could ask him to produce an identity document proving he is one. Along with the identity itself, various information is tied to you, like taxes: if I try to evade my taxes, the government has records which show whether or not I've paid all the taxes I should. And of course, all of this is backed up by electronic databases and the internet, so anyone who has the appropriate authority and needs to be able access and verify this sort of information can.

Obviously, the Romans didn't have photo ID cards or electronic communication. Yet, identity was still vitally important for them. Whether you were a citizen, Freedman/woman, or a slave gave you distinct legal rights and limitations. And sure, if you're just in your local community, you'll be known by your community, but what if you go further afield? How did the Romans manage identity?

Fact #13: the Romans could prove identity by the testimony of others (written or verbal), or just by "acting the part". Types of documents proving legal status also existed.

Here's a great example from Roman Egypt, preserved on a papyrus document, that pretty neatly shows us how identity verification worked in the Roman Empire. A Roman veteran needs to prove his status to get legal recognition.

Valerius Clemens, who wishes to reside for the time being in the Arsinoite nome, aged . . years. The above-mentioned, a veteran, declared that he had served in the 2nd cohort of the Itureans and exhibited a Latin letter from Pactumeius Magnus the former praefect showing that after serving in the above-mentioned cohort he had received his official discharge on the 31st of December in the consulship of Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus Pius and Quintillus. He also presented as warrantors Marcus Aurelius Petesouchus, Serenus Petronius, and Julius Gemellus, all three veterans, who wrote a sworn declaration along with him that he had used no fictitious evidence. And the signature of Allius Hermolaus, tribune of legion II Trajana Fortis, attached to the aforesaid name, Valerius Clemens, aged 52, with a scar above the ankle of the right foot

Epikeisis of a Roman Veteran, Roman Egypt, 188 AD
https://www.attalus.org/docs/select2/p315.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Super interesting. So, there's a few things going on here. Firstly, Valerius is able to get one of his former commanding officers to write a letter affirming his identity and status, and that he indeed served in the specific cohort that Valerius claimed to have been in. Another important man, the Tribune of Legio II Trajana Fortis, also sends a signature, and there's mention of Valerius being distinguishable by a scar on his ankle. Lastly, Valerius is also able to call on three other veterans to also confirm his identity and also vouch for the evidence he has provided. Pretty solid, when you think about it.

This sort of thing wasn't just for soldiers and veterans, though. People travelling, even those of a lower social status, could carry letters affirming their identity. These are letters of recommendation, which were very common in the Roman world.

Ulpius Celer to Hermeros, greeting. Allow me, sir, to commend to your notice … on, a slave of our lord the Emperor, a member of my household and esteemed by me. He is most deserving of advancement and of your favour, and I do not disguise that any service you can render him in his career will be most welcome to me. Farewell.

An Official Letter of Introduction on a papyrus
https://papyri.info/ddbdp/c.ep.lat;;81

So, this time we've got a slave (whose name is lost) being recommended by his master to a man called Hermeros. Again, we've got a name vouching for somebody.

Military diplomas attesting Roman citizenship were also issued to Roman Auxiliaries (non-citizens) who completed their time in the Roman army, doing which granted them Roman citizenship.

Okay, that's all very interesting, but what if you don't have any documents on you or witnesses around to vouch for you? For that, we have a very famous example- Paul the Apostle!

The commander brought Paul inside and ordered him lashed with whips to make him confess his crime. He wanted to find out why the crowd had become so furious.

When they tied Paul down to lash him, Paul said to the officer standing there, “Is it legal for you to whip a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been tried?”

When the officer heard this, he went to the commander and asked, “What are you doing? This man is a Roman citizen!”

So the commander went over and asked Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I certainly am,” Paul replied.
“I am, too,” the commander muttered, “and it cost me plenty!”
Paul answered, “But I am a citizen by birth!”

The soldiers who were about to interrogate Paul quickly withdrew when they heard he was a Roman citizen, and the commander was frightened because he had ordered him bound and whipped.
[...]
As the conflict grew more violent, the commander was afraid they would tear Paul apart. So he ordered his soldiers to go and rescue him by force and take him back to the fortress.

Acts 22:24-23:10

To cut the rest of it short, Paul's case here gets bumped up the Roman chain of command a few times, until eventually Paul is sent off to Rome to appeal directly to the Emperor.

What's important here is that Paul claims he's a Roman citizen, and the Romans who were imprisoning him immediately get nervous and start treating him better, to the point that they're willing to send soldiers to protect him. That legal status did matter a lot. And, reading against the grain a bit here, we can infer that A) Paul was convincing enough that the Romans believed his world. B) A person could just claim to be a citizen in a pinch if needed, and their claim could be taken seriously. It's pretty understandable that Paul, in his situation, wouldn't necessarily have documents or witnesses to hand to prove his identity or status.

(Edited 2 hours later.)

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Right so that's how to be a good Roman and obey the law and genuinely prove your identity, but screw that! These next few are gonna be about how you can LIE about your identity for fun and profit!

Fact #14: There are multiple examples in Roman history of people using disguises to get what they want.

So, this is really of no surprise, and it's not some special, unique Roman thing. This works today, even- there's lots of psychology experiments showing that if someone wears a high-vis jacket and carries a clipboard, people will just assume they're some kind of authority figure and be more inclined to obey them or at least let them pass. The clothes we wear can greatly influence how others see us. You don't even necesarrily have to do or say much, the clothes themselves can make people just assume you are something... And the Roman Empire had a lot of uniforms you could put on.

This first incident happened in the 1st century.

He had disgraced himself in his first military service under the legate Calvisius Sabinus, whose wife, prompted by a shameful desire to see the camp, entered it at night disguised as a soldier. After she had interfered with the guard and the other soldiers on duty with unfailing effrontery, she had the hardihood to commit adultery in the general's headquarters.
Tacitus, The Histories, 1.1‑49

Thus, Calvisius Sabinus, one of the foremost men in the senate, who had just returned from governing Pannonia, was indicted together with his wife Cornelia. The charge against her was that she had made the rounds of the sentries and watched the soldiers at drill. These two did not stand trial but despatched themselves before the time fixed.
Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 59

...under Calvisius Sabinus, he brought his commander's wife, an unchaste woman, by night into the camp in the garb of a soldier, and had commerce with her in the general's quarters...
Plutarch, The Parallel Lives , Life of Galba

In case it wasn't clear, this is three Roman historians describing the same event. Anyway, a woman named Cornelia gets into a Roman army camp, and may have had some interaction with the soldiers and went about fairly openly. Pretty brave, considering she was a woman. Plutarch's version describes her with less agency, but keeps the disguise elements and says that she was accompanied by an officer who would have presumably made her less scrutinised. Also, Plutarch and Tacitus note it happened at night, which would have helped.

Later, a bandit leader called Bulla, who operated in the 2nd Century in the reign of Septimius Severus, also used a disguise to great effect.

At this period one Bulla, an Italian, got together a robber band of about six hundred men, and for two years continued to plunder Italy under the very p259 noses of the emperors and of a multitude of soldiers. 2 For though he was pursued by many men, and though Severus eagerly followed his trail, he was never really seen when seen, never found when found, never caught when caught, thanks to his great bribes and cleverness.
[...]
Later, he assumed the dress of a magistrate, ascended the tribunal, and having summoned the centurion, caused part of his head to be shaved, and then said: "Carry this message to your masters: 'Feed your slaves, so that they may not turn to brigandage.'
Cassius Dio, The Roman History, Epitome of Book 77

Pretty shocking he was able to do this, really. Dio doesn't go into much detail, but we can infer that Bulla somehow got ahold of a Magistrate's outfit, or a decent enough copy, and was able to just walk into a Roman settlement and be accepted.

Going back in time a bit, during the reign of the Emperor Commodus, a bandit leader contemplated using a disguise during a Roman festival to actually kill Commodus.

Every year, on a set day at the beginning of spring, the Romans celebrate a festival in honor of the mother of the gods [Cybele]. All the valuable trappings of each deity, the imperial treasures, and marvelous objects of all kinds, both natural and man-made, are carried in procession before this goddess. Free license for every kind of revelry is granted, and each man assumes the disguise of his choice. No office is so important or so sacrosanct that permission is refused anyone to put on its distinctive uniform and join in the revelry, concealing his true identity; consequently, it is not easy to distinguish the true from the false.

This seemed to Maternus an ideal time to launch his plot undetected. By donning the uniform of a praetorian soldier and outfitting his companions in the same way, he hoped to mingle with the true praetorians and, after watching part of the parade, to attack Commodus and kill him while no one was on guard.

But the plan was betrayed when some of those who had accompanied him into the city revealed the plot. (Jealousy led them to disclose it, since they preferred to be ruled by the emperor rather than by a bandit chief.) Before he arrived at the scene of the festivities, Maternus was seized and beheaded, and his companions suffered the punishment they deserved.
Herodian, Herodian's Roman History, 1.10

Okay I am running out of time and I can't find a direct quote for this one, but suffice to say that Maternus was not the last person to have this idea, and later on there's a case of this actually working.

All the way in the 9th Century, 820 AD to be precise, the Roman Emperor Leo V the Armenian was assassinated on Christmas Eve. He had imprisoned his Imperial rival, Michael the Amorian, but had held off on killing him. He was attending a service at a palace chapel, when supporters of Michael entered disguised as choir singers, which allowed them to get close enough to stab Leo to death, allowing Michael to be freed and to take power. The picture is of Leo V at the chapel, as drawn in the Madrid Skylitzes.

So, closing thoughts, if you had access to the right uniform in Roman society, it could be almost trivial to move around restricted areas, or even to kill people or at least shave their heads. The Romans were just us, and could be just as easily fooled by someone wearing an outfit that their society placed importance upon.

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We've seen people impersonating Senators and soldiers, but what if you wanted to go much further? Could you impersonate... The Emperor?

Fact #16: People impersonated the Emperor or one of his heirs. Multiple times.

For this, I'm looking at cases specifically where an impersonator popped up and said they literally were a dead or deposed Emperor or a pre-existing heir. Obviously this worked best when the person you're trying to impersonate is already dead, or at least deposed and in obscurity. An adjacent but different tactic was to claim some family link to a previous Emperor, but I'm interested specifically in cases of wholesale identity theft.

This one is fascinating to me because you just couldn't do this in the modern world, at least I don't think so. There's basically no way you could pretend to be a deposed head of state or an heir, even in countries that still are a dynastic monarchy. You can do a small-scale impersonation, wear a disguise or maybe pull off something like Numerianus, but you can't just pretend you're a pre-existing world leader and try to take over.

I was intrigued to see that this actually might be something that first became a big problem under the Romans. The Persian Achaemenid Empire has the infamous case of a Zoroastrian Magus named Gaumata pretending to be the King Bardiya, but in short the legitimacy of this story is debated by historians, and the guy who overthrew him (Darius) would have benefitted a lot by labelling him an impersonator.

For the Romans, the first case of this happened early in the Empire, with a slave named Clemens claiming to be Postumus Agrippa, a grandson of the Emperor Augustus, during the reign of Tiberius.

The same year a certain Clemens, who had been a slave of Agrippa and resembled him to a certain extent, pretended to be Agrippa himself. He went to Gaul and won many to his cause there and many later in Italy, and finally he marched upon Rome with the avowed intention of recovering the dominion of his grandfather. The population of the city became excited at this, and not a few joined his cause; but Tiberius got him into his hands by a ruse with the aid of some persons who pretended to sympathize with this upstart. He thereupon tortured him, in order to learn something about his fellow-conspirators. Then, when the other would not utter a word, he asked him: "How did you come to be Agrippa?" And he replied: "In the same way as you came to be Caesar."
Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book LVII

Unfortunately for Tiberius, this also happened again when somebody impersonating his own dead son popped up.

While affairs at Rome were in this state, the subject territory was not quiet either. The very moment a youth who claimed to be Drusus appeared in the regions of Greece and Ionia, the cities received him gladly and espoused his cause. He would have gone on to Syria and taken over the legions, had not someone recognized him, arrested him, and taken him to Tiberius.
Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.25

Poor Tiberius. ☹️

This whole thing really reaches it's absurd peak, though, when Nero dies and fucking three impersonators pop up.

After the emperor Nero committed suicide near the villa of his freedman Phaon in June of 68 AD, various Nero impostors appeared between the autumn of 69 AD and the reign of the emperor Domitian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Nero

I'm not gonna post the whole historical quotes, but to summarise, none of them achieved much. The first guy got a small army around him, but was killed without accomplishing much. The second and third ones both fled to Parthia, the second guy got himself killed. Pretty telling that at least three of these guys popped up, whatever you think of him, Nero obviously had some kind of popularity.

For a while, the phenomenon of straight impersonators stops. But it came back in a big way in 605... Maybe. A gigantic war broke out between the Roman Empire and the Persian Sasanian Empire. We won't go into detail but, in short, the Shahanshah Khosrow II had previously been restored to power by the Roman Emperor Maurice. Maurice was subsequently deposed, and Khosrow II used this as an excuse to declare war himself.

A major asset Khosrow had was a man claiming to be Theodosius, the son of Maurice.

The general Narses, who rose against Phocas in Mesopotamia, exploited the rumours about Theodosius. He produced a man claiming to be Theodosius and then presented him to Khosrau II. The Persian ruler, in turn, used him as a pretext for his own invasion of Byzantium, claiming that it was done in order to avenge the murder of Maurice and his family and place the "rightful" heir Theodosius on the throne. According to the Khuzistan Chronicle, he even had Theodosius re-crowned as Roman emperor by the Nestorian patriarch Sabrisho I in a ceremony in Ctesiphon. In the Armenian campaign of 606–7, the pretender accompanied the commander Ashtat Yeztayar. His presence convinced the garrison of Theodosiopolis (Erzurum) to surrender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_(son_of_Maurice)

Historians debate whether or not this man was really Theodosius or an impersonator. It was obviously in the Roman Empire's interest to dismiss him as one, but also in Khosrow's to say he was genuine. Regardless, the alleged Theodosius just vanishes from the historical record at this point, seeming to play no further part in the war. Just another little historical mystery.

A few more impersonators pop up further into Roman history, but I'll just do one more. A particularly egregious case when the impersonator was pretending to be a deposed Emperor who was still alive.


This was happening in 1081. The impersonator, Raiktor, was much like the previous impersonator: an excuse for war. This time, the attacker was a Norman adventurer named Robert Guiscard. Raiktor was claiming to be the deposed Michael VII... Who was still alive and living in Constantinople.

Anna Komnene, Roman historian and God's Favourite Princess, describes the incident.

Robert, who from a most undignified condition had attained great distinction, having gathered about him powerful forces, was aiming to become Roman emperor. Consequently he was devising plausible excuses for his hatred and warlike attitude to the Romans.
At this point there are two different versions of the story. According to one, which is widespread and reached our ears too, a monk called Raiktor impersonated the Emperor Michael and fled to Robert, the father of his (supposed) daughter-in-law.
[...]
But my ears are also assailed by another version of the affair and this is more convincing. According to the second authority there was no monk who impersonated Michael. nor were there any such actions which prompted Robert to make war on the Romans; rather the barbarian himself with great versatility willingly invented the whole story.
[...]
When they discovered the aforementioned Raiktor. who was a clever fellow, a criminal bevond compare, they contacted Robert, who was at Salerno at the time, via a letter. It read: Your kinsman Michael, deposed from his throne, has arrived and asks for your assistance.' This was the secret code which Robert had asked them to use.
Anna Komnene, The Alexiad

Anna then describes particularly silly incident where Guiscard sent an associate to Constantinople to help make a pretext for the war... And the man saw the real Michael.

While he was at Salerno, he had sent an ambassador called Raoul, a noble and one of his retinue, to the Emperor Botaneiates, who had by now seized power in succession to the Emperor Doukas. Robert was keenly awaiting the reply. Raoul was charged to make certain complaints and to put forward some apparently reasonable excuses for the impending war.
[...]
Before all the contingents had been collected or most of the ships launched, Raoul came back from Byzantion, bringing no reply to Robert's communications - which enraged the barbarian more than ever. What made matters worse was the fact that Raoul pleaded vigorously against undertaking war with the Romans. First, he argued that the monk in Robert's army impersonating the Emperor was an impostor and a cheat, about him was an invention Michael. and the whole story He said that he had seen Michael, after his dethronement In Constantinople, wearing a miserable garment of some dark colour and living in a monastery. He had taken special care to see with his own eves the deposed emperor.

Much like the maybe-Theodosius, Raiktor also abruptly disappears from the historical record after a point and his fate is unclear.

So, summing up- this wasn't a constant problem for the Romans, but it was a recurring one. None of these guys achieved much on their own, and were at their most "useful" (though not to themselves) if they could get a stronger power to back them and they just acted as a convenient excuse casus belli. So, by themselves they were never an existential threat, but it's also sort of scary that basic nobodies could pretend to be somebody else and instantly get political and sometimes military influence.

(Edited 38 minutes later.)

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Woo! Busy day today, no time for the mini-essay I planned. So, super quick one.

Fact #17: Emperor Elagabalus has a strange "horn" protrusion on his head in some of his coins. Nobody knows for sure what it is.

You can see it here in this image.

It only shows up in the second half of his reign, from 221 AD onwards, which is when his coinage in general becomes far more unusual and starts incorporating more of his own religious iconography.

One rather amusing theory is that it was a dried bull's penis, which was suggested by German numismatist Elke Krengel in a paper she wrote in 1997. Though I'm unconvinced, as it was pointed out by a later historian that the Romans did not do this, and if he was going around with a bull penis attached to his head, one of the sources would have surely mentioned it.

So... What could it be? Unfortunately, that's probably lost to history. As it doesn't show up anywhere else, we can infer it was probably part of his own religious beliefs as the High Priest of the cult of Elagabal, but beyond that all we can do is speculate.

(Edited 15 seconds later.)

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@1,419,620 (Blackest man ever)
I shall see you Caligula's party boat mosaic, and raise you... Nero's bathtub! ...Well, maybe it wasn't his, and it isn't actually a bathtub but it's still cool. This fact is gonna be some mythbusting, a cool artefact, and gushing over stone all in one.

Fact #20: The Romans were able to make a massive basin out of porphyry, a very rare and expensive igneous rock.

In the Vatican Museum, you can see a a beautiful basin made of porphyry. Pic related. Now, it's commonly referred to in pop history circles as "Nero's bathtub"... But is actually isn't a bathtub, and may have no connection to Nero at all! First, let's go to the Vatican Museum's own page on this artefact: https://catalogo.museivaticani.va/index.php/Detail/objects/MV.261.0.0

It's in Italian, but here's the important part in English: "Provenance: According to Pirro Ligorio, it was discovered near the Curia in the Roman Forum under Julius II; according to another, less reliable tradition, it comes from the Domus Aurea (Nero's palace)".

Secondly, the Vatican museum page also refers to it as a "labrum". What's that? This academic paper talks a bit about labra:

Used to supply cold or warm water in the caldarium of Roman baths, these labra were generally placed on concrete bases, raising them to a level such that water could easily be scooped up by users. Water ran in them continuously, brought in by canals linked to the baths’ furnace. A large number of such labra have been found in bath complexes across the Roman territories.

https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ars/article/id/4981/print/

So, not a bathtub, but a water basin that had water pumped into it, and allowed bathgoers to easily scoop up hot water. Just another very impressive example of how advanced the Romans were.

But one thing that pop history does get right about this thing is the material it's made of: porphyry. You can look this up on Wikipedia if you want to, but for the purposes of our topic, I'll quote a website about Roman usage of this stone to get across how much of a flex this was in ancient times. It's a bit gushing, maybe, but gets the point across:

Imperial Porphyry is arguably the rarest and most historically important stone in the world. It comes from only one source; a single mountain in Egypt that the Romans called Mons Porphyry. It is a purple, volcanic stone, very dense and fine-grained, with small white inclusions.

According to Pliny’s Natural History, Imperial Porphyry was discovered in 14 AD by Caius Cominius Leugas, a Roman legionary. Seeing that this hard stone was the purple color which symbolized Imperial power, he had samples brought to the Emperor Tiberius in Rome. When Tiberius saw that this royal-colored stone was solid enough for building and carving, he decreed that “Imperial Porphyry” would be for the use of the Imperial family only.

Tiberius quickly established a quarry on Mons Porphyry and began to use the stone for the decoration of Imperial palaces and other buildings. Later emperors continued the tradition. Imperial Porphyry was used for panels, floor tiles, statues, sarcophagi, and for the pillars of official buildings throughout the Roman world.

Perhaps most significant was the large circle of Imperial Porphyry in the center of the floor of the Pantheon in Rome. New Emperors stood in this symbolic circle to be crowned for the next 300 years.

This use to convey royalty made Imperial Porphyry truly the stone of Empire, causing it to be more significant and powerful to the Empire than gold.

https://www.imperialporphyry.com/history-of-imperial-porphyry/

One imagines that, whoever owned this labrum, they were a very powerful figure, perhaps certainly an Emperor displaying their Empire's vast wealth and reach. Why have a marble basin when you can have the rock equivalent of gold to wash with?

(Edited 5 minutes later.)

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@previous (Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE)
''I Will add to this thread as I was curious about Sex in Ancient Rome - So to start.

https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub369/entry-6316.html#chapter-6
SEX POSITIONS IN ANCIENT ROME

Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton wrote in the notes of “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus”: “In Alosiae Toletanae Satyra Sotadica examples of” the seven sex positions listed below” are given, and the reader who wishes to go further into the subject is referred to Forberg and Aretin, the former of whom enumerates ninety erotic postures (including spinthriae, from spinther (a bracelet), a group of copulators, forming a chain or bracelet by their connection with each other) whilst the latter in his Sonnetti lussotiosi describes twenty-six varieties of congress, each one accompanied by an illustrative design from the hand of Giulio Romano. [Source: “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus” translation by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton, 1890, sacred-texts.com]

Gaius Valerius Catullus (85-54 B.C.) was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic. He speaks of Novem continuas fututiones:
Sweet Hypsithilla, passion's delight,
My gleeful soul, bid me to come;
Noontide is nearing, bar not the gate--
Hence roam ye not, stay close at home.
Prepare our pleasures in nine fresh ways,
Thighs joined with thighs, nine bouts we'll try:
Instant the summons, dinner is past,
Heated with love, supine I lie,
Bursting my tunic, swollen with longing:
Leave me not thus, dear, your lover wronging.

(Edited 1 minute later.)

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BONUS SASANIAN FACT!

Speaking of disguises, there is a story about a Sasanian (Persian) Shahanshah disguising himself as his own wife to escape imprisonment. This was the Shahanshah Kavad I, and this happened around 496 to 498 AD. Kavad had been deposed and was imprisoned in the "Castle of Oblivion", showing that the modern Iranian fondness for terrifying prisons actually carries on a grand ancient tradition.

in the prison he was cared for by his wife, who went in to him constantly and xarried him supplies of food. Now the keeper of the prison began to make advances to her,for she was exceedingly beautiful to look upon. And when Cabades learned this from his wife, he bade her give herself over to the man to treat as he wished. In this way the keeper of the prison came to be familiar with the woman, and he conceived: for her an extraordinary love, and as a result permitted her to go in to her husband just as she wished, and to depart from there, again without interference from anyone. Now there was a Persian notable, Seoses by name, a devoted friend of Cabades, who was constantly in the neighbourhood of this prison, watching his opportunity, in the hope that he might in some way be able to effect his deliverance. And he sent word to Cabades through his wife that he was keeping horses and men in readiness not far from the prison, and he indicated to him a certain spot. Then one day as night drew near Cabades persuaded his wife to give him her own garment, and, dressing herself in his clothes, to sit instead of him in the - prison where he usually sat... In this way, therefore, Cabades made his. escape from the prison... For although the guards who were on duty saw him, they supposed that it was the woman, and therefore decided not to hinder or otherwise annoy him. At daybreak they saw in the cell the woman in her husband’s clothes, and were so completely deceived as to think that Cabades was there, and this belief prevailed during several days, until Cabades had advanced, well on his way.

Procopius, Wars.

This isn't the only version of events, and a later Persian historian named Tabari instead relays a story where Kavad's sister rolls him up in a carpet, tells the guard that it is soaked in her menstrual blood, and then he was too grossed out to inspect it.

Suffice to say, I'm not sure any Roman Emperor I know of had a prison break as ballsy as this one may have been.

(Edited 1 minute later.)

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Okay, let's have a fact series on... Women! This is a feminist BBS, after all. Futurum est femina!

Fact #21: Roman Emperor and Empresses influenced the fashions and styles of their days, and this could even extend to children's toys, as seen by this beautiful little doll which imitates the Empress Julia Domna.

Julia Domna was from Roman Syria, and came from a powerful local family in the city of Emesa (modern-day Homs in Syria). She married the future Emperor Septimius Severus in 187 AD, and when he went on to declare himself Emperor, she got to be the Empress in 193. She would go on to outlive Severus, and become a key part of her son Caracalla's own government. Noted for her intelligence and political skill, Domna also introduced a distinctive haircut (which is probably best explored in a fact of its own). As with the dynasties before the Severans, you see busts of other Roman women imitating the hairstyle of the Empress of the time, but Domna also clearly inspired this lovely little doll.

Called the Tivoli Doll, this little lady was found in 1929. It was found in Tivoli, a town in central Italy, buried with a young woman. It's made of ivory, stands at 30cm tall, and has articulated joints. Not a million miles from a modern Barbie doll, right?

I love this little doll because, not only is it just nice to see that Roman girls played with toys similar to modern girls, but it also shows us how the image of the Imperial family was disseminated far and wide across the Empire, and raises interesting thoughts about the dissemination of the Imperial family and their image. Clearly, even children in this pre-information age could know who the leading family of their state was.

(Edited 17 minutes later.)

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Woman-on-Top Sex Position in Ancient Rome

Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton wrote in the notes of “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus”: In Martial’s Epigram 18, “reference is made to that posture 'in congress in which the man lies supine, whilst the woman mounts on him, and procures the orgasm by her movements; vulgarly called 'St George' and 'le postillon', this appears to have been a favourite position amongst the Romans, Judging from the frequent references to it in their writings. Juvenal, in speaking of the debauchery of women, says of Saufeia: ‘She challenges them, and bears off the prize of her hanging thigh; but she herself adores the undulating wriggling of Medullina's haunches.’ “The 'hanging thigh' means Saufeia's thigh, which hung over the girl who lay underneath her, the reference being to tribadism. In the same Satire, 'Inque vices equitant, ac luna teste moventur' — They [the women] ride each other in turns, with the moon witnessing their movements. [Source: “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus” translation by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton, 1890, sacred-texts.com]

“In Lucilius: 'The one grinds, the other winnows corn as it were . . and: 'Crissatura, ut si frumentum vannat clunibus' — Her motion was as though she were winnowing corn with her buttocks. Martial, speaking of a Gaditanian dancing girl, says: ‘She wriggles herself so tremulously, and excites such lubricious passions, that she would have made Hippolytus himself a masturbator.’

“Arnobius calls this posture, inequitatio — a riding upon. Lucretius says, 'For the woman prevents and resists conception if wantonly she continues coition with a man with her buttocks heaving, and fluctuates her whole bosom as if it were boneless.' (That is, whilst the woman bends over the man and continually curves herself as if she had no spine or bone in her back.) 'For she thrusts out the ploughshare from the right direction and path of her furrow and turns aside the stroke of the semen from her parts. And the harlots think to move in this manner for their own sake, lest they should be in continual pregnancy and at the same time that the coition might be more pleasing for their men.'

Apuleius (A.D. 125-170) has several passages bearing upon this posture. In his Metamorphoses we read, 'As she spoke thus, having leapt on my bed, she repeatedly sank down upon me and sprang upwards, bending inwards; and, wriggling her flexible spine with lubricious movements, glutted me with the enjoyment of a pendant coition, until fatigued, with our passions enervated and our limbs languid, together we sank panting in a mutual entwinement.' This passage refers to the posture practised by the man lying on his back, with the woman upon him, her back turned towards him; but from the words pygisaca sacra the meaning may be that Eumolpus did not swive, but sodomised the young girl.

“In the Errones Venerii appears this fragment by the same author: ‘Gladsome now do I return to amorous sportings, and the furtive delights of love-liesse. My Muse delights to toy, so fare thee well, Melpomene. Now will I tell of the fullness of Arethusa's hair, one while restrained, anon loosely streaming. And but now at night time, with signal tap at my threshold, a fair one is skilled to tread with fearless step in the darkness. Now with her soft arms wound round my neck, and lying half-upturned, let her curve her snowy side. And, having imitated in their every mode the joyous tablets, let her change posture and herself hang o'er me on the couch. Let naught shame her, but e'en more abandoned than myself, let her, unsated, gambol o'er the whole couch. There will ne'er be wanting a poet to bewail Priam or to narrate the deeds of Hector. My Muse delights to toy, so fare thee well, Melpomene.’”

(Edited 1 minute later.)

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Not had much free time today, so just a quick one I can mostly do off the top of my head.

Fact #22: Female gladiators existed in Ancient Rome, though they were likely quite uncommon.

The attached picture shows a famous marble relief which is our best historical evidence for women working as gladiators in the Roman Empire. Found in Halicarnassus, which is now modern Bodrum in Turkey, it shows two women fighting in typical gladiator armour. The inscription gives their "names", almost certainly stage names, as Amazon and Achilia.

The inscription also mentions that either they won their freedom from slavery, or that they were "discharged" after fighting to a draw.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1847-0424-19

Women fighting as gladiators is also explicitly mentioned a few times in the historical record.

Besides he (the Emperor Domitian) gave hunts of wild beasts, gladiatorial shows at night by the light of torches, and not only combats between men but between women as well.

Seutonius, Life of Domition

In the same year, the Caesar (Nero) placed the tribes of the Maritime Alps⁠53 in possession of Latin privileges.⁠ To the Roman knights he assigned a place in the Circus in front of the popular seats — up to that date, the orders entered indiscriminately as the provisions of the Roscian law applied only to the "fourteen rows." The same year witnessed a number of gladiatorial shows, equal in magnificence to their predecessors, though more women of rank and senators disgraced themselves in the arena.

Tacitus, Annals, Book XV.

A preserved law from 19 AD mentions female gladiators.

We have a law from 19 CE, called the Senatus Consultum from Larinum; Larinum (modern Larino) was a town in the South of Italy. It says, among other things, that the daughters, grand-daughters, and great-grand-daughters of senators cannot appear on stage or in the arena – nor can the wives, daughters. and grand-daughters of equestrians. This law mentions an earlier one of 11 CE that forbid freeborn girls under 20 from entering the arena.

Source

Finally, Cassius Dio seems to imply that women fighting in the arena was altogether banned under Septimius Severus. This would have happened sometime from 194 onwards, after Severus had won the civil war.

There took place also during those days a gymnastic contest, at which so great a multitude of athletes assembled, under compulsion, that we wondered how the course could contain them all. And in this contest women took part, vying with one another most fiercely, with the result that jokes were made about other very distinguished women as well. Therefore it was henceforth forbidden for any woman, no matter what her origin, to fight in single combat.

Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book LXXVI

To my knowledge, I don't think that we really hear about women fighting as gladiators anymore after the moment that Dio describes.

Pretty interesting. While female gladiators aren't directly mentioned much in the written sources, what we do have seems to imply that this was a major concern for the Roman elite, and there was partiuclar unease around especailly elite women fighting as gladiators. And while it's possible that some of this was the Roman equivalent of a moral panic that blew a problem out of proportion, we do have solid archaelogical evidence of women fighting (albeit, Amazon and Achilia were possibly slaves), and one assumes that female gladiators weren't entirely nonexistant either if laws were being made against them.

Overall, I think it's difficult to know how common this was, but I think that the sources treated women fighting as an unusual and bad thing, but I would say it pops up enough across the historical record to have not been a one-off.

Amazon and Achilia, meanwhile, would have been lost to the histrical record if not for that inscription. So, while it is purely guesswork from one datapoint, I find it quite plausible that female gladiators could have, additionally, existed here and there around the Empire too. After all, if it's considered shocking, then maybe it was a good way to draw a crowd?

(Edited 1 hour later.)

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Fact #23: The most extravagant hairstyle trend for Roman women occurred under the Flavian dynasty (69 AD - 96 AD).

I mean, look at this thing. Wow. The busts of women from this period definitely stick out in museums.

One thing that's surprised me is that, in terms of historical investigation, a lot of work has gone into studying and recreating the more elaborate hairstyles of Roman women. Like this Flavian hairstyle, for example.
https://x.com/i/status/1398279175019143172

Or this video recreating Julia Domna's hairstyle.
https://youtu.be/68LEUXw2QJU?si=EeSAoJtOP99coy2_

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 2 weeks ago, 1 day later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,420,800

Women? Ruling the Roman Empire? Yes! Well, three of them did, anyway.

Fact #24: Across all of Roman history, three women ruled the Roman Empire

The picture is a mosaic of the Empress Zoe, found to this day in the Hagia Sophia. We'll get to her in a bit.

It goes without saying, Roman society was generally patriarchal throughout it's history, and male rulers were preferred. But there were circumstances where a woman could get power and be accepted as legitimate. Three women did so.

To to clear, here I'm only interested in Empresses who ruled completely in their own right- not female regents or women who exerted power via an Emperor. There were a lot of Imperial women who were extremely influential and pivotal to history who did not directly rule, but they can be discussed later.

But before the three women, some mythbusting. Ulpia Severina, wife of the Emperor Aurelian, is sometimes said to have ruled the Roman Empire in 275, during an interregnum after her husband died, during the Crisis of the Third Century. The Senate and the army took some time to select a new Emperor. I'll truncate the situation a lot, but essentially the written sources mention a months-long interregnum, but modern historians think it's much more likely that it was actually quite short. The main evidence for her being the ruler comes from her getting grand titles on her coins, but this isn't direct evidence and similar titles had been given to other Empresses in the past. Overall, even if we do assume she was "in charge" for a time, she was only a stop-gap figure until a new Emperor was chosen, and did not seem to assert herself as the ruler.

It takes until the Eastern Roman Empire, when a true ruling Empress emerged in 797.

Irene of Athens. There's a whole load of interesting trivia about her, but I'll try to slim it down to the basic story of how she attained power.

We don't know exactly when Irene was born, but she was a member of the powerful Sarantapechos noble family. This, pedigree was, presumably, helpful in allowing Irene to enter the Imperial family in 775, when she married the Emperor Leo IV the Khazar. A major political and theological issue of the time was Iconoclasm, with the Eastern Romans debating heavily on the use of holy icons, with some feeling that they broke the second commandment, while others resisted the attempts to remove icons. Irene was an iconodule, while Leo was an iconoclast.

Long story short, Leo died, Irene became a Regent for their son, Constantine VI, and right away exerted more power than was usual for a Regent. She proved to be a skilled politician, and cultivated her own power base.

A fascinating look at Irene comes from the Second Council of Nicaea, a Council which turned official church policy against the Iconoclasts, a major win for the Iconodule Irene. The text is preserved, and look at how it refers to Irene:

"Constantine and Irene — Sovereigns of the Romans in the Faith..."

"...at the bidding of our pious and most faithful Emperors, Irene a new Helena, and a new Constantine, her God-protected offspring..."

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm

A fascinating look into how powerful Irene was, it was probably unusual for a female regent to be fawned over this much.

When Constantine VI reached the age of majority he tried to resist his mother's control and get rid of her but, again long story short, he rapidly wasted the immense goodwill he had, so he brought Irene back as co-ruler because she was popular.

And then, uh... Irene had her own son blinded and he died.

Yes, the first female Roman Empress, essentially, had her own son killed to get sole power. Wow. Anyway, she reigned from 797 to 802, not doing particularly badly at all but not endearing herself to the nobility. She was eventually deposed and exiled to Lesbos.

Lastly, Empresses 2 and 3 were sisters, Zoe and Theodora Porphyrogenita!

In 1025, the extremely popular and successful Emperor of the Macedonian Dynasty, Basil II, died. He was succeeded by his brother, Constantine VIII. For whatever reason, perhaps out of a fear of heirs becoming rival claimants, Basil II had tightly controlled the marriages of his relatives, and, as a result, there were not many male heirs in the dynasty at this point. But Constantine VIII had had two daughters, Zoe and Theodora. Basil had not allowed either woman to have children. Zoe was known for her beauty, and Theodora for he intelligence.

When Constantine was dying, he chose Michael V to be his successor. But Michael was widely disliked, and he fucked it all up when he banished Zoe, who was still massively popular, to a monastary to try and get rid of her.

Incredibly, two independant revolts against Michael were launched, one trying to enthrone Zoe and the other group Theodora. Pretty incredible to see a revolt in the Roman Empire deposing a man for a woman, but what was important that the sisters came from a very popular dynasty.

Things almost went bad when the two revolutions met, but they eventually agreed to rule together.

In short, while Zoe was officially the senior Empress, the historical record suggests that Theodora was the more competent of the two. Two more men were brought into the Imperial family by marrying Zoe who, much to her sorrow, was by now too old to have children of her own.

Zoe died in 1050, and her widow Constantine IX ruled while Theodora retired to a monastary. When he died in 1055, Theodora came out of retirement, easily suppressed her rivals, and was again elevated to power. One very cool anecdote here is that, while new Emperors was expected to pay a donative (read: bribe) to the Roman army, Theodora said this was not necessary as she was technically not a new ruler, and she got away with this. Theodora went on to reign ably for the last year of her life, dying in 1056.

Overall, a pretty interesting group of women. One got the throne by politicking and killing her own son, the other two got there by being from a very popular family and being against an unpopular Emperor. Personally, I find it telling that Zoe and Theodora were more acccepted than Irene.

So, the later Eastern Romans, at least, could indeed accept and even fight for a female ruler in the right circumstances. Very interesting!

(Edited 2 minutes later.)

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Bonus fact- no securely identified mosaics or paintings or anything like that of Irene are known.

Unfortunately, by this time, Roman coins were far more stylised and simplistic, so the best depicions we have of Irene are her coins.

Quite a LOOKER, huh? You can tell she has her EYES on the prize. A real SIGHT for sore eyes. But careful, no matter how good you are at politics, if you BLIND AND KILL YOUR OWN SON, you will go down in history with a mixed reputation.

(Edited 12 seconds later.)

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Fact #25: Irene of Athens coins had a unique portrait which combined regalia of Emperors and Empresses

An examination of the numismatic iconography of her gold coins demonstrates how the public imagery of this female ruler was crafted by carefully joining together a wide network of associations that draw extensively on both male and female imperial predecessors and figures of religious authority. It is suggested that while remaining within the narrow confines of eighth century numismatic style and iconography, Irene's coinage presents her both as a reigning monarch and a personification of her most important imperial accomplishment, religious peace. Furthermore, the imagery also conveys a novel iconophile message and casts the empress as an orthodox and philanthropic ruler.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236699375_Defining_Female_Authority_in_Eighth-Century_Byzantium_The_Numismatic_Images_of_the_Empress_Irene_797-802

Pretty interesting. I believe that Zoe and Theodora did something similar when they were in power, but Irene was the trailblazer on this.

This fact was originally that Irene supposedly was unique in having a portrait of herself on both sides of a coin, but two later Romans actually did this briefly. Still, it's interesting. Pic related.

Her coins regularly hammer at auctions for thousands, I guess because of her uniqueness.

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@previous (Green !!bO/s3MBcD)
Meat included animals like dormice (an expensive delicacy), hare, snails and boar. Smaller birds like thrushes were eaten as well as chickens and pheasants. Beef was not popular with the Romans and any farmed meat was a luxury, game was much more common. Meat was usually boiled or fried – ovens were rare.

A type of clam called telline that is still popular in Italy today was a common part of a rich seafood mix that included oysters (often farmed), octopus and most sea fish.

The Romans grew beans, olives, peas, salads, onions, and brassicas (cabbage was considered particularly healthy, good for digestion and curing hangovers) for the table. Dried peas were a mainstay of poorer diets. As the empire expanded new fruits and vegetables were added to the menu. The Romans had no aubergines, peppers, courgettes, green beans, or tomatoes, staples of modern Italian cooking.

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Fact 26: In the earlier Roman Empire, there was a strong taboo (at least amongst elite men) in women entering Senate meetings... Some women did so anyway.

This one is always really fascinating to me, as it's revealing of Roman attitudes to gender and power- it's a men-only game, officially, to the point that women aren't allowed in. But also is extremely telling of how politically powerful a woman had gotten if she was able to challenge this taboo.

There are two outright examples of women doing this:

The latter point, though opposed by Agrippina as a subversion of the acts of Claudius, was carried by the Fathers (Senators), whose meetings were specially convened in the Palatium,⁠ so that she could station herself at a newly-added door in their rear, shut off by a curtain thick enough to conceal her from view but not to debar her from hearing. In fact, when an Armenian deputation was pleading the national cause before Nero, she was preparing to ascend the emperor's tribunal and to share his presidency, had not Seneca, while others stood aghast, admonished the sovereign to step down and meet his mother: an assumption of filial piety which averted a scandal.

Tacitus, Annals, Book XIII

So, Agrippina the Younger was by this point relevant and influential enough to listen in to meetings, a special curtain being put up to enable her to listen in. This was a comprimise, of course, but she was still able to do it.

The next two Roman women who were able to do this was Julia Maesa and her daughter Julia Soeamias, in about 220, under the Emperor Elagabalus.

He brought his cousin Bassianus before the senate, and having caused Maesa and Soaemis to take their places on either side of him, formally adopted him as his son

Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book LXXX

Now the important thing with Dio is that he's writing under Julia Maesa and her "successor" regent Julia Mamaea, so he obviously isn't going to say anything too negative about this. Notice how he just sort of mentions it in passing. The later Historia Augusta does mention this in more detail and treats it as far more shocking, though it is generally much less trustworthy than Tacitus or Dio.

When he went to the Camp or the Senate-house he took with him his grandmother, Varia (Julia Maesa) by name, whom I have previously mentioned,⁠ in order that through her prestige he might get greater respect — for by himself he got none. And never before his time, as I have already said, did a woman come into the Senate-chamber or receive an invitation to take part in the drafting of a decree and express her opinion in the debate.

Historia Augusta, The Life of Elagabalus

So, overall, Maesa and Soeamias seemed to push things much further than Agrippina the Younger had, seemingly openly going into the Senate at least once. The Historia Augusta takes this further, having Maesa regularly going to the Senate and actually participating. This speaks to just how unusual the Elagabalus situation is, but also how powerful and politically involved Maesa was. It was, I think, pretty brazen of her to do this, but she not only does it but she goes on to survive Elagabalus and die in good standing. The fact that the later writer of the Historia Augusta expected his readers to find this shocking is quite telling.

Anyway, this matter then seems to go quiet after this- the next regent after Maesa, her daughter Mamaea, does pick out a council of Senatorial advisors for her son and Empeoror Alexander, but there's not mention of her entering the Senate herself, the sources don't mention it anyway. And indeed, I don't think it really comes up again.

The Roman Senate did survive well into the Eastern Roman Empire, sort of, but it was no longer as politically important or as influential as it once was. Indeed, when we get to Irene when she is just co-ruler and not sole ruler, she is able to summon the Senate to her with no issues.

She (Irene) summoned the patricians and the chief men of the Senate and sent them to hear his words.

Theophanes, Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor

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Fact #27: Roman popina, or taverns, served food to the Roman lower classes! Common meats included duck, pigs, goat, and fish, and snails.

This picture comes from Pompeii, and has been studied by scientists and archaeologists:

The first analyses confirm that the paintings on the counter depict, at least in part, the foodstuffs and drinks which were actually sold inside the Thermopolium. The paintings on the counter include two mallard ducks, and indeed a fragment of duck bone was in fact found inside one of the containers, alongside swine, goats, fish and land snails, indicating the great variety of products of animal origin used in the preparation of the dishes.

https://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-ancient-snack-bar-of-regio-v-resurfaces-in-its-entirety-with-scenes-of-still-life-food-residues-animal-bones-and-victims-of-the-eruption/

Super interesting. And, I guess it makes sense that when your population is largely illiterate, pictures would be a major part of an establishment serving food and drink.

Now, I was going to go into greater detail on counters like these but, sufficed to say, the situation is more complex than I expected:

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the function of many counters has been misinterpreted. There are vague references in the ancient sources to the type of furniture that could be found in taverns, for example Martial (V.70) mentions stools and chairs, but it is interesting that none of the sources mention a shop counter. This paper will briefly discuss the form and decoration of the shop counters of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The paper will also examine the interpretation of a specific counter type, those that contained dolia, to evaluate if these counters can so easily be associated with taverns, and to discover if the selling-platforms that enclosed dolia have become imbued with a meaning that they may not have possessed in antiquity.

https://www.academia.edu/26834723/The_taberna_counters_of_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum_2005_in_Mac_Mahon_A_and_Price_J_eds_Roman_Working_Lives_and_Urban_Living_Oxbow_Oxford_70_87

Anyway, one other point I found in my resarch here is that, when we do hear about establishments like this in the written record, the elite writers are often sneering at them. So it's very cool that we have archaeology like this that can, to some extent, let us hear from the "other side" on the eating habits of ordinary Romans.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 1 week ago, 16 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,494

Fact #28: By at least the Empire, Roman women could own large and profitable businesses!

Some ways for Romans to leave a mark on the historical record: be mentioned in a historical text, maybe their gravestone survived, maybe their corpse was preserved... Or how about... A brick?

This picture shows two bricks, inscribed with the name of Domitia Lucilla Minor, a Roman noblewoman most famous for being the mother of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Her family, the Domitii, had had a long-standing operation selling bricks, and she even seems to have inherited it from her mother, whose name shows up in earlier bricks. Domitia's bricks subsequently showed up in many archeological sites and in great quantities, all of them being stamped with her name, alongside the slave of hers who was actually running the manufacturing.

The cool thing is that we can date these pretty securely- as well as the name of the owner of the land the clay for the bricks came from, bricks like this also recorded the two Consuls for the year, which was one way that the Romans tracked the years.

Now, it's important to note here that Domitia was born with some nice blue blood, which would only get bluer when her son became the heir apparent. She was not some working-class Roman lady who worked her way up, she was born into inheriting some land. But, nonetheless, it's a very interesting look into Roman law that this was allowed at all. Women could, basically, own something like this and even put their name on it. While on paper Roman law in this time did have male guardianship laws of a kind, they weren't as all-encompassing as you might think, and could be ignored or even removed in some circumstances.

It fascinates me how, in some ways, Roman law could be quite inclusive for it's time, and this is something to explore further later on.

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Informer replied with this 1 week ago, 1 minute later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,495

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 1 day later, 4 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,645

Fact #29: Around 20BC, an Italian woman named Musa was sent by Augustus as a gift to the Parthian King Phraates IV. She was seemingly then able to become co-ruler with the son she had with him, Phraates V.

The Jewish historian Josephus describes the incident:

About this time died Phraates, King of the Parthians, by the treachery of Phraataces his son: upon the occasion following. When Phraates had had legitimate sons of his own, he had also an Italian maid servant, whose name was Thermusa; who had been formerly sent to him by Julius Cesar (he's referring to Augustus), among other presents. He first made her his concubine: but he being a great admirer of her beauty, in process of time having a son by her, whose name was Phraataces, he made her his legitimate wife, and had a great respect for her. Now, she was able to persuade him to do any thing that she said; and was earnest in procuring the government of Parthia for her son. But still she saw that her endeavours would not succeed, unless she could contrive how to remove Phraates’s legitimate sons [out of the Kingdom.] So she persuaded him to send those his sons, as pledges of his fidelity to Rome. And they were sent to Rome accordingly: because it was not easy for him to contradict her commands. Now while Phraataces was alone brought up in order to succeed in the government, he thought it very tedious to expect that government by his father’s donation [as his successor.] He therefore formed a treacherous design against his father, by his mother’s assistance: with whom, as the report went, he had criminal conversation also. So he was hated for both these vices: while his subjects esteemed this [wicked] love of his mother, to be no way inferior to his parricide: and he was by them in a sedition expelled out of the country, before he grew too great, and died. [About A.D. 4.] But as the best sort of Parthians agreed together, that it was impossible they should be governed without a King; while also it was their constant practice to choose one of the family of Arsaces: (nor did their law allow of any others: and they thought this Kingdom had been sufficiently injured already by the marriage with an Italian concubine, and by her issue:)

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews - Book XVIII

In case you couldn't follow what's happening there, basically Augustus sends Musa to Phraates IV as a gift, she had a son with him and got made his legitimate wife, she had the rival heirs sent away and then got control of the Parthian government for a bit with her son Phraates V until they were themselves usurped.

Numismatic evidence backs up the story, with coins like this showing Musa on coins, and being given iconography and titles seemingly showing that she had a lot of power and was not just the King's mother.

Some historians have speculated that Musa was a deliberate ploy by Augustus to infiltrate and mess up the Parthian government, but I'm not so sure about that. There was no way for Augustus to know, in my opinion, that Musa could both charm Phraates IV and outplay the other factions in the Parthian court. I suspect it's more likely that she was just a slave woman who was being used as a diplomatic token, but had the luck and nerve to turn the situation to her advantage, and who became the first and only female ruler in Parthian history.

(Edited 20 seconds later.)

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 week ago, 30 minutes later, 4 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,647

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 22 hours later, 4 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,712

Fact #30: One of the first know instances of a Roman woman writing something comes from 97 AD - 103 AD. It's a birthday invitation to her friend.

To start with, let's hear from Claudia herself:

(1st hand)Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On the third day before the Ides of September (11 September), sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send their greetings.

(Signature) I shall expect you sister. Farewell, sister my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.

(Address) To Sulpicia Lepedina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1986-1001-64

Notice that the bulk of that was written by one person, but somebody else wrote the short message at the end. Essentially, rich Romans like Claudia would usually dictate their letters to a scribe. But the signature, which I've heard is written in a noticeably messier hand than the rest of it, was probably Claudia herself writing.

Also, small side note, the two women probably weren't related as they have different family names, so the use of "sister" might be more a term of affection than proof of family relations.

This letter was found in Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern Britain in which many written materials like this survived. It's a rich insight into how Romans out in the frontier lived, but also how they stayed looped into the trade network of the wider Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets

Good source of future facts!

Oh, also, I didn't know this, but Claudia has her own Wikipedia article! She is only known to history from this letter, but the article does drill into it a little more to make more inferences about her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Severa

@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
Hey now, that fact was about a Roman immigrant making it big in a strange new land!

(Edited 34 seconds later.)

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 week ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,782

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 2 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,802

Okay, that is enough of the women series for now! Next I'll post some facts about... Money.

Fact #31: The earliest known form of Roman and Italian currency was small lumps of bronze. Archaeologists call them "aes rude".

They were in least since at least the 8th century BC. They sometimes had small markings on them to show value. This was currency at its most basic, just a lump of valuable metal, no designs or hammering or any of that.

In the 3rd century BC, as the Roman Republic began to expand and become stronger, the aes rude eventually became the aes grave, which are recognisable to modern eyes as coins.

Interestingly, the aes rude has regularly been found in graves of the time, showing the value placed on them.

The other major thing to note is the regular use of aes rude in Funerary Contexts. This was already observed in the 1907 excavations (see AJA 1908 summary below), but is now reconfirmed by the 2007 finds.

https://livyarrow.org/2019/10/26/aes-rude-and-aes-grave-praeneste-finds/

@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
Woah woah woah, that's just how the board counts time! It's gotta be that way for our intentional audience, you know? It's been 24 hours, but it's still the next day.

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 week ago, 5 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,804

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 25 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,811

@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
> It is interesting people just traded random scraps of metal. I wonder how they stopped forgery or clipping.
Well, yeah, I'd imagine that that was a large incentive for them to develop more sophisticated currency. Forgery was a perennial problem for the Romans, lots of people did it, and I imagine it's far, far easier if you just need to forge a convincing lump of metal rather a coin with a design and writing on it.

They did try to show these pieces as legitimate currency while they used them, though. Some, like this one, have simple countermarks stamped into them.

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 week ago, 3 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,812

Green !!bO/s3MBcD replied with this 1 week ago, 28 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,819

Corrector replied with this 1 week ago, 28 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,825

Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 1 week ago, 13 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,902

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 6 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,937

@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
Well sure. I don't know much about Majorian, so it's a pleasure to learn about him.

Fact #32: The Roman Emperor Majorian was an early voice for heritage conservation, and attempted to protect old buildings and monuments.

Come the 5th Century the Western Roman Empire was, of course, struggling. Barbarian attacks were rampant. Emperors had a very difficult job balancing it all and, often strapped for cash, had to go to great lengths to generate funds. Majorian's immediate predecessor, Avitus, gives us an example of how dire the situation had gotten:

When Avitus reigned at Rome there was famine in the city, and the people blaming Avitus compelled him to remove from the city of the Romans the allies from Gaul who had entered it along with him (that so there might be fewer mouths to feed). He also dismissed the Goths whom he had brought for the protection of Rome, having distributed among them money which he obtained by selling to merchants bronze stripped from public works, for there was no gold in the imperial treasury.

John of Antioch, Historia Chronike

This is, by the way, the only mention of Avitus doing this in the historical record but not unbelievable given the times. But it's particularly interesting context for a law Majorian passed, and the law itself is a good indication that Emperors before Majorian did this:

Majorian’s edict:
In an attempt to restore and consolidate Rome’s past glory, Majorian forbade any kind of destruction of older monuments: “While we rule the State, it is Our will to correct the practice whose commission We have long detested, whereby the appearance of the venerable City is marred. Indeed, it is manifest that the public buildings, in which the adornment of the entire City of Rome consists are being destroyed everywhere by the punishable recommendation of the office of the prefect of the City. While it is pretended that the stones are necessary for public works, the beautiful structures of the ancient buildings are being scattered, and in order that something small may be repaired, great things are being destroyed.” What follows is a very general prescript that older structures should not be affected in any possible way.

What Majorian affirmed with his novella is nothing else than rhetoric. But by doing so, Majorian presents himself as solicitous for the cityscape of late-antique Rome and thus legitimized himself as a ruler who is in a position to adopt a law, but not in a position to turn it into reality.

https://www.academia.edu/31101117/City_without_Emperor_Imperial_Patronage_in_Late_Antique_Rome

If nothing else, I think this speaks very well of Majorian's character, and is yet more indication of why he's so praised. He COULD have just kept on stripping old monuments for easy money, but decided not to do that, and took a longer view.

Majorian presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honor of the human species.

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 week ago, 8 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,938

Anonymous S joined in and replied with this 1 week ago, 8 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,421,940

@previous (Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE)

And born on the year 420, not surprised he has fans

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 1 week ago, 23 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,144

Fact #33: From Nero onwards, Roman Emperors (mostly) debased the silver coinage in response to military and political pressures

Roman coins are awesome. As well as being affordable ways to own a piece of Roman history, they can also give us multitudes of insights into Roman society that the written sources do not.

One of the ways we can do this is to analyse the very metal content of the coins. The Romans, of course, did not have a fiat currency like we do, their coins had intrinsic value- people cared about the metal content of the coins. Yes, to a point, the Roman state did have laws saying what a given denomination was worth, but the intrinsic worth of the metals were the underlying engine in it. This is why we see "clipping" in coins that have come down to us, where people had cut off little bits of the coins to try and stockpile silver themselves but still be able to spend the coin. People accepted this currency not just because society said it was legal tender, but because of it's metal content.

The attached chart shows how this debasement proceeded. As you can see, things started off fairly stable, but already under the so-called Pax Romana of the Five Good Emperors there's a tendancy for debasement, and things take a sharp drop when Septimius Severus takes power, and things continue to be bad come the Crisis of the Third Century.

It's not shown on the chart but, come the later years of the third century, the "silver" coinage was just 2% silver, the silver being a sort of thin wash over predominantly bronze coins.

Now, I think it's pretty straightforward to understand why they did this- you have a limited amount of silver at any one time, which you can mint into a limited number of coins. But, if you put in just a tiny bit less silver into each coin, you can mint far more coins so you'll have more money to spend. Ideally, the citizens won't notice you doing this, so your silver coinage can hopefully have the same amount of purchasing power.

Septimius Severus is super interesting here. As I've said, he fought in the biggest ever Roman civil war, so he had a very large number of soldiers he needed to buy the loyalty of (and, indeed, written source say that he explicitly tried to govern by focusing on having the loyalty of the military). This problem only got worse during the constant civil wars of the Crisis, where new Emperors were basically forced to throw large amounts of money at the army to try and buy loyalty. It was a pretty horrible death spiral, really. An Emperor is in a tough spot, he debases the coinage, this keeps going on, there's more civil ways, until eventually there's rampant inflation and the silver coinage has become basically worthless in terms of intrinsic value.

While the Romans were ahead of their time in many ways, sometimes studying them does also make me appreciate modern society in some ways. Fiat currency may not always work perfectly, but I think it is better than having a currency based on precious metals, where there is always a temptation to try and stretch the metal further.

(Edited 37 seconds later.)

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 week ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,380

Fact #34: In the late third century, Roman mints applied an outer layer of silver to their "silver" denomination, to make the coins look like they had a higher silver content. And they had advanced methods of doing this.

This is, again, a super cool example of hard science being able to show us excellent insights into Roman governance and policy, that the written sources never could.

By the late 200s, the Denarius was gone, having been displaced by the so-called Antoninianus (this is a name given by historians, we don't know what the Romans called it). That's one in the picture there. So this was the silver denomination they went into this time with. As mentioned, by this time debasement of the silver coinage was rampant, and the coins were mostly copper, along with other metals.

This study, analysed a series of Antoninianii using serval methods, and found that the Romans used advanced techniques to enrich the silver content of the coin's surface!

The FIB-FESEM-EDX data reveal the presence of Hg on the surface of this coin, confirming the use of Hg-Ag amalgam for silvering. The occurrence of Hg supports the hypothesis that in the studied period the silvering process was carried out by amalgamation.

However, the aspect of silver coins had to be similar to that of high quality and a surface enrichment in Ag was strictly necessary. Silvering is a very open question as it is not still clear when it became a common practice. In ancient times, there were available several processes for plating silver coins such as mechanical attachment of the foil by hammering, soldering by using tin, lead or Cu-Ag eutectic (low melting point metals) and Hg-Ag amalgam. At first, it was presumed that amalgam silvering wasn’t adopted in Europe before the Medieval Age but actually this technique was used by Romans even if there are a very few evidences in Roman coinage and in particular for Antoninianus denomination.

Cu = Copper, Ag = Silver, Hg = Mercury

Absolutely incredible, I think. It really shows Roman ingenuity in metalworking. Now, granted, the reason they did this was to deceive people, basically, but from a purely technical perspective it is very impressive.

Of course, it wasn't a perfect deception, Roman people could and did scratch or damage the coin to see the copper core underneath. The Emperor who ended the Third Century Crisis, Diocletian, would reform the currency and reintroduce high-purity silver coins for a time.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 1 week ago, 21 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,383

BONUS SASANIAN FACT!

Here's a Sasanian Drachm from my own personal collection, side-on. Look at how thin it is, way thinner than any Roman coins and probably any coins you might have on you now.

For a while I thought this was purely a stylistic choice, but if you think about it, it's actually a really clever way to show that your coins are high-purity silver. Unlike with Roman coins, you couldn't hide base metals inside the silver exterior here, it's all silver. The Sasanian Drachm, as far as I know, stayed very high-purity throughout it's life, as did the Islamic coins that descended from it when the Muslims took over the Sasanian Empire.

Now, granted, it's far easier to be honest like this when the Sasanian Empire was much smaller than the Roman Empire and was still very wealthy, their silver didn't have to stretch as far, relatively speaking.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) quadruple-posted this 1 week ago, 1 minute later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,384

Same coin front-on. I do love these Sasanian Drachms, they're such a different style to Roman ones. Shame I can't read Middle Persian script, though.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) quintuple-posted this 6 days ago, 23 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,590

Found this fact by accident today, but it ties neatly into the previous fact.

Fact #35: Ice core analysis showing lead pollution can tell us about Roman mining of lead and emissions from smelting it. This activity dips after major plagues and, fascinatingly, the nadir of the readings in the Roman period coincides with when the Denarius had its absolute lowest silver content.

I'll just paste relevant sections from the study here, and link the full thing below. It's a fascinating read.

Lead pollution in Arctic ice reflects midlatitude emissions from ancient lead–silver mining and smelting. The few reported measurements have been extrapolated to infer the performance of ancient economies, including comparisons of economic productivity and growth during the Roman Republican and Imperial periods. [...] Emissions fluctuated synchronously with wars and political instability particularly during the Roman Republic, and plunged coincident with two major plagues in the second and third centuries, remaining low for >500 years. Bullion in silver coinage declined in parallel, reflecting the importance of lead–silver mining in ancient economies. Our results indicate sustained economic growth during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, terminated by the second-century Antonine plague.

A peace dividend after the Civil Wars reversed the late second- to mid–first-century BCE decline, with the highest lead emissions in antiquity occurring in the first-century CE, rather than the first-century BCE, as suggested by the few GRIP samples. Following a rapid rise in emissions starting in 17 BCE, emissions remained high until the 160s, again with short-term fluctuations. This period of high emissions coincided with the apogee of the Roman Empire under the Pax Romana, marked at its start by the consolidation of imperial rule over the provinces, and at its end by the devastating Antonine plague, probably smallpox, from 165 to 193 CE.

Much of the imperial period rise in emissions may be attributed to exploitation of mines in northern Spain following the conquest of Asturia and Cantabria, completed by 16 BCE, and in Germany on both sides of the Rhine from 8 BCE onwards. Although there were fewer Roman mines here than in southern Spain, FLEXPART simulations indicated NGRIP2 emissions sensitivities in these regions were greater than in Cartagena and the Sierra Morena: by a factor of two to three at sites in the very north of Spain, two at sites in Germany west of the Rhine, and as high as five in the Sauerland east of the Rhine. The decline from the highest first-century CE peak occurred in 9CE, coincident with Roman abandonment of territory to the east of the Rhine, including the Sauerland mines, after three legions were annihilated in the Teutoburg forest. After the mid–first-century CE, the sustained Roman imperial peak probably resulted from emissions from mines throughout Spain and in south-central Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Variations within the imperial period reflected the rise and decline of mining areas in some of these regions, especially those where NGRIP2 emissions sensitivities were particularly high.
The Antonine plague marked the turning point between high levels of lead–silver production during the Roman Empire period and much lower levels observed from the mid-second century until the mid-eighth century. The plague disrupted mining through high mortality in, and flight from, mining regions, and reduced demand through population loss. The period of lowest emissions at any time after 900 BCE coincided with the third-century Imperial Crisis from 235 to 284 CE, and in particular with the severe pandemic known as the Plague of Cyprian (249-270 CE). The first major recovery in lead emissions after the Antonine plague occurred ∼750 CE, with resumption of early medieval mining in France, notably the Merovingian mine and mint at Melle, and in Britain around Wirksworth in Derbyshire.

The fluctuations in lead–silver mining and smelting indicated by the Greenland lead pollution record and estimated lead emissions were directly reflected in the fineness and metallurgy of Rome’s silver coinage, the denarius. A sharp drop in lead emissions coincided with debasement of the denarius silver content in 64 CE and a switch in denarii production from new metal to recycling coinage. Similarly, a short-lived peak in the early second-century CE coincided with a brief period of new metal use again (103–107 CE). The final debasement of the denarius in the third-century CE to a silver content of under 4% coincided with the absolute nadir in lead emissions in our record after 900 BCE; from the late-third to the mid–fourth-century CE, the Roman monetary system shifted to essentially a bimetallic currency in gold and copper alloy, with only brief exceptions when silver coin was issued.

Lead pollution recorded in Greenland ice indicates European emissions tracked plagues, wars, and imperial expansion during antiquity
https://archaia.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/McConnell%20Lead%202018.pdf

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) sextuple-posted this 5 days ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,759

A quick one tonight.

Fact #36: This is a coin of Constantine XI, the last Emperor of the Romans. It is, therefore, the last series of coins ever minted by the Roman Empire as an entity.

We have covered the very first kind of Roman currency, so why not the very last?

They were minted from 1449 AD to 1453 AD, at which point Constantinople was captured by the Ottomans under Mehmed II, bringing the Roman Empire to an end. It is, as you can see from the picture, much degraded in artistic quality from the Roman Empire's heyday. A comparison to the detailed, lifelike coin of Elagabalus here @1,419,623 (Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE) is quite astounding.

I'm not sure how the Greek inscriptions on these was legible enough to read and translate, but perhaps it was a matter of having a lot of them together, and just knowing the typical formula for inscriptions of this time. It reads: "Despot Constantine Palaiologos, by the Grace of God, Emperor of the Romans.”

A sad fact about these is that the historical sources mention that, during the Ottoman siege of Constantinople, Constantine XI ordered items from churches to be removed and melted down into coins, to pay the city's defenders. It goes to show just how desperate the Romans were, but Constantine still tried to hold on.

Today, these coins are very highly prized, and command high prices as auctions. This is both because they are numerically scarce, not many survived, but also because these being the last ever Byzantine/Roman coins is a huge deal in itself. So you usually have to be fairly wealthy to get ahold of one of these.

(Edited 2 minutes later.)

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AVeryBlackGuy replied with this 4 days ago, 16 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,843

AVeryBlackGuy double-posted this 4 days ago, 43 seconds later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,844

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 4 days ago, 7 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,925

Fact #37: IN 301 AD, the Emperor Diocletian issued his famous Edict on Maximum Prices, which set maximum prices and wages for all major good and services.

This was an attempt to stabilise the Roman economy, after it had taken a battering due to the various hardships of the Crisis of the Third Century. However, it failed to achieve much and seems to have been largely ignored and possibly given up on.

It has come down to us thanks to the fact that Diocletian had it inscribed on stone throughout, at least, his part of the Empire. From combining lots of these damaged but intact copies, we can reconstruct most of it. Here is a part of it, which was re-used as part of a doorframe.

Here is the whole thing translated into English, if you're interested:
https://kark.uib.no/antikk/dias/priceedict.pdf

Theere is also an introduction where Diocletian, or at least the people who wrote his laws, justify the Edict, saying that greed was running rampant, and that the edict was an attempt by the four Emperors to intervene and bring order and fairness back. Interestingly, at the end there is a tacit admission that the law requires the co-operation of the people for it to work, which I suppose speaks to how the law worked in the Roman Empire, to some extent, or at least on this broad.

What kinds of things were on the list? Everything from wheat to wine to beer, wages for stonemasons, prices for blacksmithing, or for slaves. A male aged 16-40 was the most expensive kind of slave, by the way, coming to 30,000 denarii.

Lactantius, a Christian author who wrote a text critical of Diocletian, is explicitly critical of Diocletian's economic policies and says that they caused confusion and violence. Granted, he had an obvious bias as he was writing an invective against Diocletian, but we don't exactly have counter-evidence that the edict was success.

It would eventually be ignored and seemingly was no longer attempted by the last part of Diocletian's reign, and it ultimately failed to really fix the Roman economy.

I don't want to criticise Diocletian too much for this. As far as I understand, Roman economic theory was not as developed as in modern times. And, if nothing else, you can probably argue it was a well-meaning piece of legislation aimed at improving the common good, even if it failed.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 4 days ago, 52 seconds later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,926

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 4 days ago, 9 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,928

Oh and bonus KL fact, I keep coins of each of the Tetrarchs under my computer monitor.

What is a Tetrarch? Well maybe we will get into that in a later fact.

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Anonymous S replied with this 4 days ago, 30 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,930

The Tetrarchy sounds like a cult

Pic is old founding fathers

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AVeryBlackGuy replied with this 4 days ago, 3 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,422,937

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 3 days ago, 20 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,131

@previous (AVeryBlackGuy)
Wait until you see these.

Fact #38: The most unusual Roman coin ever minted was the trachy, a thin coin with a concave shape.

These are fascinating. They were introduced in 1092 by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, as part of a currency reform, and lasted until near the end of the Empire.

They have a strange, concave shape, being very thin and curved like a bowl. They have Greek inscriptions on but, like with that Constantine XI coin above, it is very rare that one coin will have the complete inscriptions visible or even a complete image. It's not known why the Romans started minting coins in this new shape, radically departing from previous coinage, but some have theorised it helped with stacking coins or with their structural integrity.

They usually depict the reigning Emperor on the inner side, and Jesus Christ on the outer, higher side. While this does put Jesus physically higher than the Emperor, so to speak, it does also mean that the Emperor is more protected from surface wear and damage. Once again, Jesus takes the fall.

Here's three from my collection, held so you can hopefully see the art style on them and their unique shape.

Identifying these is an utter bastard, as there is much less to go off of then previous coins, surface wear and damage can often decrease the number of clues you have to work with, but it is possible.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 3 days ago, 1 minute later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,132

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 2 days ago, 23 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,230

Fact #39: Roman coins were produced using hand-striking, also called hammered coinage

Here's a picture showing how it worked. Basically, you have one die underneath the metal, you place the other die on top, then hammer it so the dies are pushed into the metal.

This is a bit mundane as the facts in here have gone, but I think that not everybody knows this, so it's worth pointing out.

A big advantage of this was, of course, that it allowed for rapid production of coins. A well-practiced and well-staffed mint could, potentially, put out thousands of coins a day doing this, which was quite necessary as the Roman Empire was vast and large amounts of cash were needed to facilitate it's vast economy.

The Romans were not unique in this, the Greeks before them did this, and indeed many civilizations after them did it until the invention of milled coins in the 17th century, in which coins could be made with machines.

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) quadruple-posted this 2 days ago, 4 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,231

This is also why even the very best quality Roman coins are almost always just a little off-centre. Total precision isn't possible with this method, and you're dealing with very small prices of metal.

That said, the quality of the dies is insanely impressive. This is my most life-like coin, of the Emperor Alexander Severus. It's incredible, like you're looking at a little picture of him. 🤩

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Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU replied with this 2 days ago, 6 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,233

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 2 days ago, 8 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,234

@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
Oh yes, of course, you had to hit it hard. I suppose the diagram doesn't convey the force of it, but they were smashing the fuck out of that metal. The guys actually doing the hammering would've been strong dudes.

I've actually minted a Roman coin myself! At a Roman fair in Colchester. So I can speak from experience, you've gotta hit hard. I didn't hit it hard enough, so poor Vespasian here is a bit shallow. ☹️

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) double-posted this 1 day ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,521

Fact #40: The most expensive Roman coin to ever sell at auction was a EID MAR Aureus coin, which sold for £3,240,000 (which was about $4.188 million USD at the time of writing)
https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/8667/eid-mar-breaks-record

The EID MAR is one of the most famous ever Roman coins, being minted by Brutus in 42 BC, after he participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar. EID MAR is an abbreviation of Eidibus Martiis- the Ides of March, when Caesar was killed. Brutus, the way he told it, claimed he was acting to restore the Republic from the rule of a tyrant.

The reverse side shows a pileus cap, a felt cap that had originated in Ancient Greece, but in Roman society it became a symbol of freedom as it was given to slaves upon their manumission to show their freedom. The daggers, uh, represent how the assassins stabbed Caesar many times. But anyway, to Roman eyes, it would have been clear visual shorthand that the Liberators, as they called themselves, felt that they had freed the very Republic from slavery by killing a tyrant.

The obverse shows the face of Brutus himself. Roman rulers and powerful men putting their own faces on the coins had just not been done before Caesar became dictator. So while, to modern eyes this may seem like Brutus being hypocritical for replicating Caesar's monarchical approach to coinage, the surviving Roman sources don't really act scandalised about it. Cassius Dio does mention it briefly, though he's fairly neutral and was writing far later during the Roman Empire when it was normal for rulers to put their one faces on coins. In my own personal opinion, I do think it was mildly hypocritical, and that after the assassination Brutus can be accused of acting like yet another Roman warlord did whatever he wanted, but that's a larger debate.

In any case, the coin commemorates one of the most famous historical events ever, and it is both gold and highly scarce. Not many of these coins have survived, possibly because Brutus and the Liberators ultimately lost to pro-Caesar forces, and suddenly carrying around coins celebrating Caesar's death was not such a good idea. So, with a coin this famous and this scarce, it is little wonder that it would be the most expensive Roman coin ever sold today.

(Edited 4 minutes later.)

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Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) triple-posted this 1 day ago, 7 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,588

Wait, shit, Caesar was actually assassinated on the 15th of March! Damn, completely unintentionally, I made a post about his assassination on the anniversary of it. Spooky.

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Shef replied with this 23 hours ago, 1 hour later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,608

Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE (OP) replied with this 8 hours ago, 15 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,755

Okay so we have made fun of Caesar for being stabbed, and have discussed the coinage of one of his murderers. So it is only fair we show the other side, and talk about Caesar's own coins.

Fact #41: During the civil war, Caesar, most likely, minted coins using a mobile military mint that moved with his forces, so he could pay his troops.

Usually, of course, Roman mints were stationary buildings, so a mobile mint is somewhat unusual. Coins of Caesar, if you look at modern listings for them, will very often give the mint as something like "mint travelling with Caesar" or "mobile military mint". But... How do we know he did this? The ancient sources don't explicitly mention it.

Modern historians and numismatists have inferred it from the coins themselves, and the timeframe in which they were produced, deducing that Caesar must have had something like a mobile mint or mints with him as he was moving around. There is quibbling over exactly which coins were produced exactly where, but sufficed to say he was moving them around.

Here is one of his famous coins, with a cool diagram explaining the imagery on it.

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Anonymous T joined in and replied with this 6 hours ago, 1 hour later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #1,423,779

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