Roman Empire Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Did Julius Caesar Really Say “The Die Is Cast”?

One of the most famous anecdotes in all of ancient history holds that, when the Roman general and politician Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon stream, which marked the boundary of Italy, in January 49 BCE during his march on Rome, he declared “Iacta alea est!” (which means “The die is cast!” in Latin). A version of this story does occur in the ancient historical sources, but those sources indicate that, instead of the Latin phrase I have quoted here, Caesar actually used a Greek phrase with a subtly different meaning, which holds different implications for his understanding of the significance of his famous Rubicon crossing.

Why Were Elaborate Floor Mosaics More Common in Antiquity Than Today?

Ancient Greek and Roman wealthy homes often bore elaborate and beautiful floor mosaics, many of which depicted gods, heroes, and mythic and historical scenes in exquisite detail. Many such mosaics have survived to the present day, are displayed in museums and art collections all over the world, and are justly admired as great works of art.

Some people have recently wondered why floor mosaics were so popular in antiquity and why they are no longer as popular today as they were back then. In this post, I will attempt to answer this question. Along the way, we will take a deep dive into the ancient and modern economics of art and artistic labor.

Don’t Blame “Paganism” for the United States’ Problems

On December 25th, 2023, The Atlantic published an op-ed by David Wolpe, a prominent American rabbi, titled “The Return of the Pagans.” In the op-ed, Wolpe asserts that both the political left and right in the United States have embraced fundamentally “pagan” ideas about the world (by which he means ideas derived from and characteristic of the traditional non-monotheistic religions of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly Greece and Rome) and that this supposed “pagan” influence is the cause of many of the problems that the United States faces today.

For those who don’t know, I’m a graduate student in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and my main research focus is ancient Greek religion. Given this interest, I was quite intrigued to see an article published in a major news outlet with a title proclaiming that “paganism” has returned. Sadly, I soon found that Wolpe’s idea of “paganism” is a wildly inaccurate caricature that has more to do with nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophies than with the non-monotheistic religions of the ancient Mediterranean world. The op-ed got under my skin, so I decided to let it furnish an opportunity to educate interested readers about what ancient polytheistic religions were like—and, just as importantly, what they weren’t like.

No, the Roman Emperor Hadrian Didn’t Invent Palestine

At this point, I’m sure that all my readers are well aware of the recent events in Israel-Palestine. I don’t intend to talk about those events on this blog, in part because I am not an expert on the present-day geopolitics of the region and, right now, a lot of public information about what is happening there is incomplete or unreliable. The first and foremost purpose of this blog is to inform and educate my readers; the last thing I want to do is misinform or misdirect them. The danger of misinformation is especially great when it comes to present-day political situations that hold serious, far-reaching impacts for a large number of people.

I do, however, wish to address a factually incorrect claim that, for years, I have seen and heard various people make in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which pertains directly to my own expertise in ancient Greece and Rome. Namely, a lot of people have claimed that the Roman emperor Hadrian, who ruled for twenty-one years from his accession in 117 until his death in 138 CE, was the first to apply the name Palestine to the entire land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River when he renamed the land that was previously known as Judaea “Syria Palaestina,” supposedly specifically in order to punish the Jewish people for the Bar Kokhba revolt (lasted 132 – 136 CE).

In reality, the name Palestine etymologically derives from the Greek name Παλαιστίνη (Palaistínē), which Greek-language authors were already regularly using as a name for the geographic region of the southern Levant that lies between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River as far back as the fifth century BCE—over six hundred years before Hadrian. Roman authors writing in Latin and Jewish authors writing in Greek were likewise already using this name long before Hadrian was born. Furthermore, although Hadrian did combine Judaea into a province which bore the official name Syria Palaestina sometime around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt, his precise motives for doing so are far from clear.

Why Do Men Spend So Much Time Thinking about the Roman Empire?

I’m a woman and I think about ancient Rome every day—but that’s not surprising, since I’m a graduate student in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. Thinking about ancient Rome is an intrinsic part of what I do. What is rather surprising, though, is the fact that a viral trend has arisen on TikTok for women to ask their male partners and relatives how much they think about the Roman Empire. Invariably, the men respond that they think about it frequently and the women to act shocked to learn this.

Those who have been reading my blog for a while know that I am not on TikTok, so they may be surprised to find me writing about a trend that originated there. The trend, however, has gone so viral that it has spilled over onto Twitter—a platform which I do occasionally check up on, even though it is generally a cesspit and has only grown even more toxic since Elon took over. Additionally, a whole host of media outlets, including The Washington Post, Insider, The Independent, The New York Post, The National Review, and Wired, have all published articles about it.

Since everyone is apparently talking about this trend, in this post, I intend to explore and answer two closely related, but distinct, questions. First, what about the Roman Empire makes it seem (at least on a purely anecdotal basis) to be especially interesting to men? Second, why, in this particular historical moment, is a viral social media trend constructing interest in ancient Rome as specifically a masculine trait?

The Most Twisted Scene in Any Ancient Greek Novel

It’s no secret that ancient Greek literature is full of all kinds of twisted and disturbing stories. I even previously wrote a post on this blog about some such stories in classical myth back in September 2019. There are, however, some truly messed-up incidents in ancient Greek literature that are not well known. In this post, I want to discuss an obscure episode of this nature that I think more people should hear.

Sometime around the second century CE or thereabouts, the Greek writer Xenophon of Ephesos (who is not to be confused with Xenophon of Athens, the much more famous Athenian writer of the fourth century BCE) wrote a novel known as the Ephesiaka or Ephesian Tale. The novel is, for the most part, not especially interesting. In fact, I think it’s probably the least interesting overall of all the surviving Greek novels; it mostly consists of a monotonous repetition of the same tropes that other ancient novelists do better. In book five, chapter one, however, Xenophon unexpectedly drops what is perhaps the freakiest moment in any surviving ancient Greek novel. It involves a man, a mummy, and some casual necrophilia.

What Do Angels Really Look Like According to the Bible?

There is a popular meme that has been going around on the internet for several years now claiming that “Biblically accurate angels” are actually terrifying, Lovecraftian, otherworldly beings who have all kinds of body parts from different animals and are covered all over in eyes. It’s a fun meme. Unfortunately, as an ancient historian, I’m the sort of person who ruins everything fun, so I’m here to tell you that the “Biblically accurate angel” meme isn’t really “Biblically accurate.”

In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, beings who are described as angels are always either expressly described as looking like male humans or assumed to look like male humans. Although some texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament do indeed describe a variety of heavenly beings with bizarre and frightening appearances, these beings are only described in a few places, were not originally viewed as angels, and are never described as angels in any canonical Biblical text.

“The Man, the Myth, the Pumpkin” Podcast

Hello folks! My good friend Sophia Sarro is a fellow grad student in the Ancient Greek and Roman Studies program at Brandeis University. They are strongly committed to promoting scholarly engagement with the public and, for their master’s project, they decided to do something a little different; they’ve created a podcast about the history of fictional portrayals of the Roman emperor Claudius (ruled 41 – 54 CE), spanning all the way from his death to the present day, examining how portrayals of him have been shaped by their cultural and historical contexts, how they interpret him in different ways and convey radically different messages, and how they deal with major aspects of his life, including his disability.

Their podcast is titled “The Man, the Myth, the Pumpkin” and you can listen to it here. The first episode, which just came out yesterday, is about how the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) portrays Claudius in his famous satire Apocolocyntosis Claudii or The Pumpkinification of Claudius, which he wrote not long after the emperor’s death. Sophia will be dropping more episodes of the podcast over the course of the coming weeks.

I’ve just listened to the first episode and I cannot recommend their work highly enough! Sophia has put an enormous amount of time and labor into making this podcast and it really shows. Their writing is excellent and witty, their research is thorough, and their dramatic reading is spot-on. The podcast is both educational and entertaining and I’m sure that those who enjoy my blog will enjoy it as well. I personally loved listening to every second of the first episode and I eagerly await the next one.

The Decline of Cursive Isn’t Historically as Big of a Deal as Most People Think

On 16 September 2022, Drew Gilpin Faust, a scholar of nineteenth-century U.S. history who specializes in the Antebellum South and who served as the president of Harvard University from 2007 until 2018, published an essay in The Atlantic titled “Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive,” in which she conveys her shock, consternation, and sorrow at having recently discovered that the majority of undergraduate students nowadays cannot read cursive and that, of those few who can read it, even fewer can write it. She expresses worry that, as a result of not being able to read cursive, students will not be able to read historical documents written in it and will be cut off from the historical past. This piece set off many conversations about cursive instruction in the U.S.

I am currently a twenty-three-year-old first-semester master’s student who just received my bachelor’s degree in May of this year, so I am very close in age to present-day undergraduates. Contrary to the sweeping declaration in the title of Faust’s article, I did receive full instruction in how to read and write cursive from third through fifth grades. Nonetheless, I think that the ongoing decline of cursive instruction in the U.S. is both less of a tragedy and less historically significant than many people (including Faust) are making it out to be. In this post, I intend to clear up a few popular misconceptions about the history of cursive writing.

No, Athena Didn’t Turn Medusa into a Monster to Protect Her

One of the most famous stories in all of ancient Greek and Roman mythology and literature is the tale of the origin of the Gorgon Medusa that the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (lived 43 BCE – c. 17 CE), who is better known in English simply as “Ovid,” tells in his long narrative poem Metamorphoses, which he composed in the Latin language in dactylic hexameter verse in around the year 8 CE or thereabouts.

According to Ovid, Medusa was originally an extraordinarily beautiful mortal woman who was known for her gorgeous hair. Then, however, the god Neptunus (whom the Romans equated with the Greek god Poseidon) raped her in the temple of the goddess Minerva (whom the Romans equated with the Greek goddess Athena) and Minerva punished her by turning her into a hideous monster with snakes entwined in her hair and making it so that any mortal who saw her would instantly turn to stone.

A claim has circulated online for years now claiming that modern people have misunderstood this myth and that, actually, Minerva turned Medusa into a monster and made it so that anyone who saw her would instantly turn to stone in order to protect her so that men would never prey on her again. This claim, however, is not supported by any evidence in any ancient source and, in fact, Ovid’s account expressly says that Minerva cursed Medusa in order to punish her for her involvement in desecrating her temple, even though her involvement was totally nonconsensual. Furthermore, the context in which Ovid tells the story strongly suggests that he intended his readers to sympathize with Medusa and question the justice of Minerva’s punishment.