Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Its name is Mandragora, but the Ancients also knew it as kirkaia (κιρκαία) or Circaeon – the plant of Circe the sorceress.[1] The mandrake is one of the rare plants to have crossed the centuries with its reputation intact: mysterious, formidable, and stubbornly resistant to any who […]
Rooted in the cosmos, magical plants in antiquity
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Nourish, heal, protect, bewitch, kill: in Greek and Roman antiquity, plants do all of this at once. The boundary between cookery, medicine, religion and magic does not exist — or at least not where we would draw it today. A single plant may appear in a recipe, […]
Olive-growing in Italy before Rome
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) It is tempting to assume that Italian olive cultivation began with the Romans – or at least with the Greeks, who supposedly handed down the press, the amphora, and the know-how. A study published in January 2026 in the American Journal of Archaeology by archaeologist Emlyn Dodd[1] […]
Gallo-Roman dodecahedron: twelve faces, zero answers?
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) There exists, in the museums of north-western Europe, an object whose purpose no one knows. Cast in hollow bronze, ranging in size from a fig to an apple depending on the specimen, it presents twelve pentagonal faces each pierced by a circular opening — all of different […]
How the ancient laganon became lasagne
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In Greece today, Lagana (Λαγάνα) is a light, crispy bread, generously topped with sesame seeds, prepared specially for Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα), which marks the beginning of the Orthodox Lenten fast. It is certainly a descendant of the laganon (λάγανον) of the ancient Greeks. Having become laganum […]
Ostrich on the menu
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) For the Greeks, and later the Romans, ostriches belonged to the world of fantastical creatures inhabiting mysterious Africa, alongside crocodiles, camels and elephants. Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE, is the first to mention the bird in a list of Libyan creatures. He calls it the «bird […]
In Apicius’ garden: aromatic plants
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) The vast majority of aromatic plants used in ancient cooking had already been known for millennia and remain indispensable to Mediterranean cuisine today. With a few exceptions, of course! The Romans used many herbs and spices to flavour their dishes. Many of these plants are familiar to […]
AI reconstructs the rules of a forgotten Roman game
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) A piece of engraved limestone, found in the Netherlands at the turn of the 20th century, has kept its secret until today. The object, from the Roman site of Coriovallum (present-day Heerlen), bore a geometric pattern that did not match any known game. By combining the analysis […]
Abracadabra! Or how to cure a fever in Rome
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) In the 3rd century AD, had you been suffering from a fever in Rome, a physician might have prescribed a surprising treatment: wearing around your neck an amulet inscribed with the word ABRACADABRA, repeated eleven times with one letter removed at each line until only a solitary […]
Drink and love today… for tomorrow is uncertain
Translated from french (please notify us of errors) Two drinking cups found in a tomb at the Penna necropolis, in Falerii Veteres, bear a message of disarming simplicity. The inscription, over 2,300 years old, is written neither in Latin nor in Etruscan, but in another ancient language, far less well known: Faliscan. The Faliscan people […]