in february, ancient rome left 7 dated events: the 3 last orders of the emperor before dying · the most dangerous roman title in history: father · how to outwit the emperor's poison taster. here is what happened, day by day.
dying in britannia, septimius severus left his two sons a testament of three lines, brutal and cynical: be united, fill the soldiers with gold and despise everyone else. caracalla learned the money part. of the unity, nothing.
read the full entry →how do you get an entire empire to thank you while taking away its voice: by having them call you papa. when augustus accepted the title of father of the fatherland he was not receiving flattery, he was redefining what it meant to be father in terms that evoke the absolute authority of a paterfamilias.
read the full entry →killing a rival in rome was hard; killing him when a taster samples everything he ingests demands criminal ingenuity. nero solved the problem with an undetectable trick and erased his half-brother britannicus in front of the entire court, without losing his composure.
read the full entry →every 15 february, priests naked and ritually marked with blood ran through rome whipping women with goatskin thongs. the purification rite that gave the month its name and survived nearly a thousand years.
read the full entry →every 21 february the romans carried bread, salt and violets to the tombs to feed their dead. the feralia closed nine days of mourning and, in a story ovid records, was born of the terror that the deceased might return hungry.
read the full entry →shifting a boundary stone was, for rome, a sacrilege so grave that archaic law authorised killing the culprit without punishment. every 23 february the terminalia consecrated those markers to the god terminus.
read the full entry →constantine the great converted to christianity between faith and strategy: he staked his power on a persecuted and well organised minority. one man's military calculation redrew the religious map of europe.
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