The Roman Arena ..... on the wireless today

This is another bit of history I enjoyed today.

It comes from that excellent series In Our Time and is free to listen to long after the first broadcast. 

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. 

The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. 

Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. 

There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.

With Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, John Pearce, Reader in Archaeology at King’s College London and, Matthew Nicholls, Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson"*

Picture; mosaic depicting a gladiatorial fight  from the villa Nennig,** dating from the first century AD, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/168399512@N02/51134391753/ Author TimeTravelRome, Licensing w:en:Creative Commons attribution This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.***

*The Roman Arena BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj85

**Nennig is a village in the Saarland, Germany, part of the municipality of Perl. It is situated on the river Moselle, opposite Remich, Luxembourg.

***Roman Villa Nennig, https://www.visitsaarland.co.uk/poi/detail/roman-villa-nennig-c859e1607c

One Roman poet …… a heap of poems and ...... a story

 Today I am renewing my friendship with Catullus.

2016

To be more accurate I am reading the biography of my favourite Roman poet.

I first came across him in 1966 along with the 16th century poet John Donne and they have stayed with me ever since.

Both appealed to a sixteen-year-old with their mix of funny, irreverent and love poetry, and anyone who has fallen in love, only to lose that love will remember just how bitterly intense the feelings are when you are a teenager.

1966 edition

All of which brings me back to Poem 8 with its angry response to an ended affair

“Break off 

                    Fallen Catallus

     time to cut losses,

bright days shone once

               you followed a girl

               here and there

............................................

now a woman is unwilling

Follow suit

a clean break

hard against the past”*

So that’s it.

Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016

"A biography of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome’s first great poet, a dandy who fell in love with another man’s wife and made it known to the world through his verse.

2004 edition

This superb book gives a rare portrait of life during one of the most critical moments in world history through the eyes of one of Rome’s greatest writers.

Living through the debauchery, decadence and spectacle of the crumbling Roman Republic, Catullus remains famous for the sharp, immediate poetry with which he skewered Rome’s sparring titans – Pompey, Crassus and his father’s friend, Julius Caesar. But it was for his erotic, scandalous but often tender love elegies that he became best known, inspired above all by his own lasting affair with a married woman whom he immortalised in his verse as ‘Lesbia’. A monumental figure for poets from Ovid and Virgil onwards, his journey across youth and experience, from Verona to Rome, Bithynia to Lake Garda, is traced in Daisy Dunn’s brilliant portrait of life during one of the most critical moments in world history”.**

Pictures; cover Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, 2016, cover of The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, cover shows a portrait of Arteidorus from Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum 1974, reprint, and Catullus The Poems Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 2004, cover shows a detail from a Roman mosiac 3rd-4th century AD in the Piazza Armenia villa of Maximinorous. Sicily, photoo AKGO/Eric Lessing

*Poem Eight, The Poems of Catullus Penguin Books, 1966

** Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016

Enlist in the Roman Army ....

I missed the event last weekend when Leicester did all things Roman.

Enlist today .... 2025

Spread across a number of historic sites over two days you had a pick of Roman things to do. 

So you could experience a "Livig Roman Camp", watch a Roman Soldier Muster and roll call as well as a march past, and for non military there were hands on activities, and the joys and benefits of being  Roman trader with the mysteries of Roman religion

Two days of fun packed history under the sun.

It is the sort of retelling  the past that I enjoy and judging by the turn out was popular.

All of which was mixed with medieval stuff.

And l missed it .... still l have pictures courtesy of our Josh and Arlo and souvenir brochure.*

Location; Leicester

Following the Roman Army, 2025

Pictures; of Romans from the collection of Joshua Michael

*Old Town Festival Roman Edition, April 26-April 27th, https://www.visitleicester.info/dbimgs/Old%20Town%20Brochure%202025.pdf

Mr. Virgil .... his epic poem ....and heaps on Roman farming .... on the wireless ... today

I wasn't going to listen to Virgil's Georgics on Radio 4.  

It is the latest programme from In Our Time, but I am glad I did, because it not only made me want to read Mr. Vergil's poem but shed light on heaps to do with how Roman agriculture, from small time farmers to the big "for profit" landed estates.

Grassland, 2023

And along the way offered up bit on Roman religion, culture and politics.  

Definitely one to listen to.

"In the year 29 BC the great Roman poet Virgil published these lines:

'Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death. But happy too is he who knows the rural gods…'

They’re from his poem the Georgics, a detailed account of farming life in the Italy of the time. ‘Georgics’ means ‘agricultural things’, and it’s often been read as a farming manual. 

But it was written at a moment when the Roman world was emerging from a period of civil war, and questions of land ownership and management were heavily contested. 

It’s also a philosophical reflection on humanity’s relationship with the natural world, the ravages of time, and the politics of Virgil’s day.

Fruits of the land, circa 63-79 AD

It’s exerted a profound influence on European writing about agriculture and rural life, and has much to offer environmental thinking today.

With, Katharine Earnshaw, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter; Neville Morley, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, and Diana Spencer, Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham

Producer: Luke Mulhall"

Picture; Grassland, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Still life with glass bowl of fruit and vases, circa 63-79 AD,Naples National Archaeological Museum. The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

*Virgil's Georgics, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lyt4

Boudica ...... Boudicea? ..... the story with a dash of fun

Now I grew up with stories of Boudica "the warrior Queen" who trashed the Romans in 61 AD.

Although to be exactly accurate she trashed three Roman towns, a Roman legion and assorted Celts who had sided with the Romans, after which she, her daughters and lots of the Iceni and Trinovantes were seen off by Suetonious Paulinus the Governor of Britain and two of his legions.

All of which is a lead in to yesterday programme on the Queen and the events of that year from Boudica, in the series Your Dead to Me on Radio 4.

"Greg Jenner and his guests discuss the important questions surrounding Queen Boudica including: Is she a feminist icon? How do you pronounce her name? And was she really ginger?

Get ready to forget everything you thought you knew about Boudica and learn what it was really like when the Romans invaded.

Featuring comedian, author and actress Sara Pascoe, known for QI, Have I Got News For You, and W1A among many other shows, and historian Dr Emma Southon, specialist in Roman history and co-host of the History is Sexy podcast.

Script and Research: Greg Jenner

Producer: Dan Morelle

A Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4"

Pictures; Boudica, drawing  by J.C.B. Knight, from People in History, R.J. Unstead, Volume one, 1955,  Boudicca about to set off on the rampage, 2020, from the collection of Stephen Hale

Boudica, Your Dead to Me, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07n8nrg

Marcus Aurelius one of the "good Emperors" .... today on the wireless

Now I have tried over the years to read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and never got far.

But that I suspect is down to me.  I have friends who regularly read them , a few a night, so maybe I shall try again.

In the meantime I will be listening to this weeks In Our Time, in which "Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors. 

Marcus Aurelius, 121 to 180 AD, has long been known as a model of the philosopher king, a Stoic who, while on military campaigns, compiled ideas on how best to live his life, and how best to rule. 

These ideas became known as his Meditations, and they have been treasured by many as an insight into the mind of a Roman emperor, and an example of how to avoid the corruption of power in turbulent times.

With Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, Angie Hobbs, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and Catharine Edwards, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Cuirassed Statue of Marcus Aurelius, 150 AD, Altes Museum, Berlin, Author, Anagoria, this file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

*Marcus Aurelius, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sjxt

Walk Roman London …… and discover the Billingsgate house and baths ….. tomorrow on Zoom

I have become a great fan of the Guildhall Library’s afternoon talks.

So far since January the topics have included Dan Dare, Medieval St Paul’s and a host of others.

They are held on zoom and you have to prebook.

Tomorrows will be on the “Billingsgate Roman House and Baths,  a 2nd-5th century house in the city of London, which will be a virtual tour around a Roman domestic house and bathhouse that is under 101 Lower Thames Street in the City of London. 

Find out about the development of the house from the 2nd century when it was first constructed through to its eventual abandonment in the early 5th century AD. 

Later that century someone visited the ruins of the house and dropped a brooch of Germanic design, which gives us a small insight into the events that would lead to the transformation of Britannia into England”.

Book through EVENTBRITE: WWW.GHLEVENTBRITE.CO.UK

Picture, courtesy of Guildhall Library 

*Guildhall Library Events and Exhibitions The Library of London, Aldermanbury, London, EC2V 7HH

guildhall.library@citypflondon.gov.uk

cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/libraries/guildhall-library