SPQR

To put it another way, Gaius may have been assassinated because he was a monster, but it is equally possible that he was made into a monster because he was assassinated.

They were killed by many of the disasters of childbirth that modern Western medicine has almost prevented, from haemorrhage to obstruction or infection – though the lack of hospitals, where infections in early modern Europe easily passed from one woman to another,

More widely, the package of honours offered to the imperial family in the Greek world were known as isotheoi timai: that is, honours equivalent (iso-) to those of the gods (theoi), but not identical. It was always transgressive to ignore the difference between the gods and the living emperor, however godlike he might be.

Then as now, the rich with their guard dogs and the equivalent of security systems (in the shape of slaves) complained most loudly about house crime and street robbery. The poor were the main victims.

Citizens and allies at war

So Romulus declared Rome an ‘asylum’ and encouraged the rabble and dispossessed of the rest of Italy to join him: runaway slaves, convicted criminals, exiles and refugees. This produced plenty of men. But in order to get women, so Livy’s story goes, Romulus had to resort to a ruse – and to rape. He invited the neighbouring peoples, the Sabines and

Our modern image of the ancient city as an extravaganza of gleaming marble on a vast scale is not entirely wrong. But that is a later development in the history of Rome, beginning with the advent of one-man rule under the emperors and with the first systematic exploitation of the marble quarries in Carrara in North Italy, more than thirty years aft

Cicero and most of the elite professed to despise wage labour. But for the majority of the urban inhabitants of the Roman world, as now, their job was the key to their identity. It was usually tough. Most people who needed a regular income to survive (and that was most people) worked, if they could, until they died; the army was an exception in hav

A first marriage at around fourteen or fifteen was not remarkable for a Roman girl.