Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century, didn’t mince his words: for him, curdled milk was a barbarian affair. One can picture it: nomadic horsemen traversing the steppes with sheepskin bags of sheep’s milk attached to their saddles, fermenting under the jolting… He marvelled: “It is surprising […]
A spicy history of pepper
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) With wine and garum, pepper is the star ingredient in Apicius. The Roman cook used it in all his sauces. He did not hesitate to prescribe it for cooking, then recommend sprinkling it over the dish again before serving. Of the 500 recipes in the De re […]
For the dough to rise
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Framing the entrance to Modestus’s bakery in Pompeii[1], two plaques set into the wall greeted arriving customers. The first, on the right, is relatively discreet. It depicts a phallus arranged horizontally, without exuberance. The other, on the left, is quite different: the organ is completely disproportionate to […]
From amphora to barrel…
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) It is one of the iconic objects of Antiquity. The amphora still covers part of the Mediterranean seabed today, serves as a tourist trap in souvenir shops and carries with it a whole mythology specific to these ancient objects now vanished. Well, not quite! The amphora has […]
Sentia Amarantis, tabernaria at Emerita Augusta
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) At the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano in Merida, a marble stele of modest dimensions attracts attention through its originality. Dated to the late 2nd or 3rd century CE, it commemorates Sentia Amarantis, who died at the age of 45 in ancient Emerita Augusta, capital of the […]
Feasting and Playing: An Etruscan Art of Living
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Two passions dear to Nunc est bibendum –feasting and playing–meet upon a stone twenty-five centuries old: the Peruzzi stele, now kept at Villa Corsini a Castello, near Florence. Dated to the late sixth or early fifth century BC, this grey-arkose funerary stele from Varlungo, east of Florence, belongs […]
How relegation transformed Ovid’s view of games
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) There are virtually identical verses in Ovid’s Art of Love and his Sorrows. Yet everything has changed. Between these two works, relegation far from Rome radically transformed the Roman poet’s vision of games and their place in society. “A small board contains three pebbles on each side, […]
Black henbane: Trouble in the bone
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Discovery of a drug stash in the Netherlands! In 2017, archaeologists excavating the Roman site of Houten‑Castellum uncovered something unusual. In a well dating to the late 1st century CE, they found a sheep or goat femur carefully hollowed out to form a 72 mm‑long cylinder. Sealed with […]
Baths, Wine and Sex
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In this 13-hectare complex, equipped with swimming pools, gymnasiums, libraries and food stalls, three thousand people thronged daily. No, we are not in a contemporary spa resort, but in the Baths of Diocletian, at the heart of imperial Rome. In the 4th century, the capital boasted no […]
Famous women of Antiquity
Translated from french with Deepl (please notify us of errors) Ancient societies were resolutely patriarchal, leaving little room for women outside the domestic sphere. Yet some of them were able to break out of this mould and make their mark in a wide variety of fields, including science, philosophy, poetry, sport, politics and strategy. They […]