concepts
entries
the greatest lie of the roman empire
rome did not tell its own story as a daughter of italy, but of troy. how the most powerful empire of antiquity anchored its legitimacy in the myth of prince aeneas, and how augustus and virgil's aeneid turned that genealogy into state propaganda.
the great lie of the she-wolf of rome
the myth of romulus, remus and the capitoline she-wolf may conceal a far more earthly origin. the double meaning of the word lupa in latin, and the fratricide that, according to tradition, stained the foundation of rome in 753 bce.
the first monopoly of rome
before conquering the world with legions, tradition has it that rome learned to grow rich by controlling salt. king ancus marcius, the foundation of ostia and the white gold of antiquity that turned a band of shepherds into a commercial power.
the corruption of the roman calendar
why october is the tenth month if its name means the eighth. how superstition about numbers and the corruption of the roman pontiffs came to break, literally, the measure of time in antiquity.
the dictator of the roman household
before governing the world the romans were governed by their own fathers. the terrifying power of the paterfamilias and the legal right to pass the capital sentence on his children.
patricians and plebeians
the beginning of a five-hundred-year cold war. how the elite closed ranks by inventing the patricians and raising a barrier of blood to leave the plebs without political rights.
the first war machine
forget the legion of the films. the first roman soldiers fought like greek hoplites forming an impenetrable phalanx. the army that wrenched political voice at spearpoint.
the mafia network of rome
the system of clientela. how the wealthy patricians controlled the votes and the streets of rome by buying the loyalty of the impoverished plebs through favours and loans.
the monopoly of the auguries
how patrician priests turned augury and the reading of birds in flight into a bureaucratic weapon to suspend elections and block the laws of the people.
the punishment of decimation
the decimatio was rome's most brutal military punishment: a deadly lottery in which the price of mutiny or collective cowardice was being clubbed to death by your own tent-mates.
the end of the phalanx
in the mid-fourth century bce, in the mountains of southern italy, rome abandons the rigid spear-wall of the hoplite phalanx and reorganises its legions into maniples, articulated blocks laid out like a chessboard. the dating of that change, however, is far more schematic than it is usually told.