methodus · how this site is made

there is no university behind this site, and no department that vouches for it. there is a method, and the method can be read in full. this is the back room: where the sources come from, how what gets published is checked, what a machine does here, what happens with money, why everything is lowercase, and what has been corrected after publication.

the sources

every entry starts at the ancient source, not at a summary of the ancient source. every claim, quotation, name, date and figure is checked against the primary text and cited by book and section: livy, suetonius, plutarch, ovid, tacitus, appian, dionysius of halicarnassus, polybius, macrobius.

the floor is double: at least one classical source and at least one modern work per entry. when a rite or an episode rests on a single ancient author, either a second citation goes in or the text itself says the source stands alone. since august 2026 the build checks that floor, so a new entry that misses it does not ship. one entry that predates the check is still held up by ancient authors alone, and is deliberately left that way: it belongs to the frozen control group used to measure whether any of this work does anything. it is recorded as debt and gets fixed in 2027, not hidden.

the sources are not an ornament at the end: they live in the file header, with the exact reference, and print at the foot of the entry. if something in the script cannot be anchored to a citable source, the source gets found, the claim gets hedged, or it goes.

the checking

before the web version is written, every script goes through a pass that hunts five specific failures, because those five keep coming back: pinning a quotation on the wrong author; placing a term or an institution before it existed; merging two distinct episodes or two distinct punishments into one; taking as settled what only one source reports; and asserting as fact what is contested, legendary or hypothetical.

that is where the hedge comes from. every entry carries at least one explicit qualification, spelled out inside the body of the text rather than buried in a note. "according to tradition" is necessary, but on its own it is not enough.

video scripts are written around platform moderation, with euphemisms that are not needed here. moving them to the web restores the proper word.

and the published corpus is re-audited from time to time. whatever turns up gets corrected, and the correction is logged below.

the machine

plainly: the starting scripts are drafted with machine assistance, and part of the verification — the citation-by-citation check, the hunt for anachronisms — leans on it too.

what the machine does not do is decide. no entry ships without my reading it end to end, and what is asserted here carries my name, not the tool’s. when something is wrong, the mistake is mine and it ends up in the table below.

the english, catalan and german translations come out of the spanish with the same assistance and are reviewed afterwards. spanish is the original and the reference version; catalan and german are still awaiting a full native review, and i would rather say so here than wait for it to show.

the masthead images are not generated: they are public-domain or openly licensed works, or book covers reproduced as citation (art. 32 lpi) on the ficha that reviews them, credited one by one on the entry that uses them.

the money

this site does not pay for itself, and i would rather say how the money works than wait to be asked. the rule is not that outside money will never come in: the rule is that money does not buy what is said here. three concrete commitments, and all three can be checked by reading.

nobody pays to influence what is claimed or which sources are used. no money is taken in exchange for covering a subject, for dropping it, for telling it a particular way, or for citing — or not citing — anyone. the choice of sources, and of what is asserted on them, is mine and is not for sale.

there are no paid mentions inside an entry or inside a script: not in the body of the text, not in the video’s voice-over, not woven into the story and not dressed up as a recommendation.

and any sponsorship is labelled and kept outside the body: named, in a block of its own, apart from the text and from the source apparatus, so that at a glance you can tell what is content and what is paid for. as of the date on this page there has been none.

the ko-fi sportula that appears in the footer, in the author line and on "de me" runs on the same rule: it is a voluntary contribution made after the fact, it buys no subject, no sentence and no mention, and it lives outside the body of the entry.

the lowercase

every visible word on this site is lowercase: headings, proper names, the start of each sentence. it is not sloppy typesetting and not a broken stylesheet; it is the house voice, and it applies equally in all four languages.

that has to be spelled out for german, because there it is not the same thing. in spanish, english and catalan the initial capital is a spelling convention; in german the capital on a noun is grammar. writing "die quellen" and not "die Quellen" is not a stylistic liberty: it is wrong. it is done on purpose, for the sake of the brand, and a reader who takes it for a mistake is grammatically right — they are simply looking at a decision and not at carelessness.

the lowercase belongs to this site’s voice, not to anybody else’s material. a verbatim quotation, a latin inscription or an epigraphic colophon is transcribed as it stands, capitals and all, because there the upper case is a fact of the document and not a typographic choice: the "qvod · scripsi · scripsi" at the foot of this very page is the exception in plain sight. the same goes for code, web addresses and technical names.

the corrections

correcting in silence is a way of lying. when a published entry carries a real error, it is fixed, and the correction shows up here in full.

the log starts on 1 june 2026, the date of the first systematic review of the already-published corpus. the table records corrections of fact: a wrong date, a wrong attribution, two different things merged into one, a claim with no source behind it. it does not record typos, style edits or citation-format tidying, and it does not claim to be the site’s complete diary: that is the repository history, which is public.

date	page	what was wrong	what changed
2026-06-01	the only untouchable women	the entry dated the founding of the vestal order to the 7th c. bce.	re-dated to the 8th c. bce, the traditional reign of numa.
2026-06-01	the only untouchable women	letting the sacred fire go out was shown as carrying the same punishment as breaking the vow of chastity: live burial.	separated. letting the flame die was a grave but reparable fault, punished by flogging; only incestum carried burial.
2026-06-01	the monopoly of the auguries	"religions of rome" was attributed to mary beard alone.	attributed to beard, north and price.
2026-06-01	the millionaire who bought rome	the cloaca maxima was described as already vaulted under tarquin the proud.	corrected: an open channel in origin, stone-lined in the regal period and vaulted only centuries later.
2026-06-01	the battle of lake regillus	livy was said to place the battle in the consulship of a. postumius.	corrected to his dictatorship, adding livy’s own admission that his sources disagreed.
2026-06-01	the first general strike	the variant placing the secession on the aventine was credited to dionysius of halicarnassus.	credited to piso, whom livy cites and rejects.
2026-06-01	the punishment of decimation	the entry stated that the law obliged the other nine men of the group to kill the condemned man.	corrected to what polybius says: he was beaten to death before the whole camp; that his tentmates were the executioners is later tradition. no witness to that "later tradition" has been found: it was removed on 2026-10-05 (below).
2026-06-01	the sound of bronze that terrified all of europe	the quinquatria was presented as a festival in honour of mars.	corrected: the festival belongs to minerva.
2026-06-01	the 3 last orders of the emperor before dying	septimius severus was said to have taken the throne thirteen years before his death in 211.	corrected to eighteen: he took it in 193.
2026-06-01	the most dangerous roman title in history: father	the wife was listed among those under the paterfamilias’s patria potestas.	removed: a roman wife was not, as a rule, under her husband’s potestas.
2026-06-01	the exact moment the roman republic collapsed	plutarch was credited with identifying "alea iacta est" as a quotation from menander.	corrected: plutarch reports that caesar spoke in greek; tracing the line to menander is modern philology.
2026-06-01	whips and chaos: the real roman festival of fertility	the lupercalia passage was cited to plutarch’s "life of romulus".	corrected to "life of caesar" 61.
2026-06-01	the disturbing straw tribute of the roman priestesses	ovid was shown endorsing the human-sacrifice origin of the rite.	corrected: ovid distrusts that explanation. varro (de lingua latina v.45) and dionysius (i.38), who do transmit it, were added.
2026-06-10	the invention of the consulship	lucius junius brutus was named as the first man to hold the consulship.	corrected: the first pair was brutus and tarquinius collatinus.
2026-06-10	the untouchable politician of rome	whoever killed a man declared sacer was said to confiscate his goods.	corrected: his property was consecrated to the gods — to ceres, in the tradition — not confiscated.
2026-06-10	divide and conquer, the network of allies	conquered land was said to be shared out per soldier on terms close to a citizen’s.	corrected: it became ager publicus, and formal distributions — colonies and viritane assignments — were reserved to roman and latin citizens.
2026-06-10	the first monopoly of rome	the pons sublicius was described as charging a toll.	the toll had no source behind it and was removed.
2026-06-10	the consul and the ultimate penalty	the plot was told as tarquin bribing discontented young aristocrats.	corrected to livy: envoys sent on the pretext of recovering his property, who committed the vitellii and the aquilii.
2026-06-10	the millionaire who bought rome	tarquinius priscus was said to win the old king’s trust by lending him money.	corrected: the sources credit generosity, hospitality and counsel.
2026-06-10	the farmer who saved rome	cincinnatus’s sixteen-day campaign was told as a total victory.	added: the aequi attacked again in 457 and 455 bce, and modern historians doubt the annihilation the tradition describes.
2026-06-10	the darkest day of rome	the senators who stayed to await the gauls were narrated as plain reporting.	attributed and flagged: livy’s devotio scene is single-source, dramatised and of disputed reliability. "single-source" was not true: it was removed on 2026-10-05 (below).
2026-06-10	the gallic sack and humiliation	the total burning of the city was stated as fact.	qualified: archaeology confirms only localised destruction, and the loss of the archives is a disputed reading rather than a settled consequence.
2026-06-17	the hill and the sacred birds	the cognomen capitolinus was presented as earned by manlius’s deed.	qualified: many historians read it the other way round — the name, tied to where his family lived, came first, and the deed was embroidered to explain it.
2026-06-17	how the roman empire decreed the dogma to crush dissent	bishops who signed at nicaea were said to receive support and privileges.	the claim had no source behind it and was removed; the exile of those who refused, which is attested, stayed.
2026-06-17	the truth behind julius caesar's 23 stab wounds	the word "forensic" was derived from antistius reading his report in the forum.	removed and named as a folk etymology: forensis long predates the case.
2026-06-18	the punishment of decimation	decimation was described as dividing the unit into groups of ten and drawing lots inside each one.	corrected against polybius vi.38: roughly a tenth of the guilty were drawn — "sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes twenty".
2026-09-25	the real estate chaos in ancient rome	the top floor, the cenaculum, was called the poorest of all and the first to burn, under a rule that the higher you lived the poorer you were.	corrected: cenacula meant any upper floor (varro, de lingua latina v.162) and the word was mostly used of the good ones; the sources only point to higher being cheaper; and juvenal’s umbricius (sat. iii) puts the man under the tiles as the last to burn.
2026-09-25	the real estate chaos in ancient rome	the fourth-century regionary catalogues were presented as a count — some 46,000 insulae against "barely" 1,700 "stately" domus.	qualified: what each word counted is disputed, and the catalogues are probably not a census. domus is glossed as a single-family house.
2026-09-25	the real estate chaos in ancient rome	augustus was said to have limited the height of the buildings to seventy feet.	corrected to what strabo (v.3.7) says: the limit applied to frontages on the public streets.
2026-09-25	the real estate chaos in ancient rome	the 1 july date was sourced to "the juridical texts" (labeo, the only legal text adduced, does not give it), and three statements had no source: half the city moving on the same day (also in the excerpt), the landlord’s "new price", and landlords raising the rent "every summer". "nobody disputes" an "overwhelming" majority of renters. the lead, the closing and the excerpt ("gridlocked streets") still stated the moving-day gridlock as fact.	the date is sourced to suetonius (tib. 35.2), a pompeian rental notice and petronius; the three unsourced statements were removed or recast as reconstruction; the renter majority is attributed to the most-cited modern model (frier), for the early empire. suetonius and varro added to the sources. the lead, the closing and the excerpt now present the moving-day scene as the reconstruction the body already says it is.
2026-09-26	the only untouchable women	the english and german versions gave "barely a dozen" and "kaum ein dutzend" cases of live burial attested over the centuries. the sources give eight explicit cases and one implied: about ten, which the spanish and catalan versions already said.	aligned with the spanish: "only ten or so" and "kaum zehn". all four versions now add that the figure counts burials, not accusations: the sources name more than twice as many vestals accused.
2026-10-05	the corruption of the roman calendar	the displaced names of september to december were presented as the trace of a calendar the romans broke "half from superstition, half from political corruption".	separated: they are the trace of an older calendar, the ten-month year that began in march (ovid, fasti i.27-44; plutarch, numa 19.1). the superstition and the corruption that would end up breaking it came later and are not what displaced the names.
2026-10-05	the mafia network of rome	the closing said the corruption of the clientela came to revolt one of rome’s finest generals so deeply that it convinced him to turn against her. it was the hand-over to coriolanus, the subject of the next entry.	removed. livy (ii.35), plutarch (coriolanus 21) and dionysius (viii.1) tell of an exile and a march out of anger and revenge, and none of the three gives that motive; plutarch (coriolanus 14) dates the buying of votes long after his time.
2026-10-05	the second founder of rome	the closing presented the punishment of the next entry, decimation, as a legacy of the trauma of the gallic sack.	removed. livy already tells of a decimation in 471 bce (ii.59), some eighty years before the sack.
2026-10-05	the great coalition against rome	after sentinum (295 bce) the republic was said to have become "the effective mistress of the peninsula" — "rome was no longer a city: it was italy" — and "a power that dominates a whole peninsula".	toned down: the republic becomes the first among the powers, and one "on its way to dominating a whole peninsula". livy has no peace that year in samnium or in etruria (x.31), and polybius places the mastery of italy after the expulsion of pyrrhus (i.6).
2026-10-05	the mafia shakedown of messana	the excerpt and the opening sentence called the first punic war "the longest war of the ancient world".	toned down to "one of the longest wars of the ancient world". polybius calls it the longest of the wars he knew of (i.63.4), and thucydides gives the peloponnesian war twenty-seven years (v.26.1).
2026-10-05	the fury of poseidon and the shattered fleet	after some three hundred and fifty warships and more than a hundred captured, the entry said that three hundred and sixty-four "were now sailing" for italy, as if that figure followed from the other two. it does not: they add up to more.	the figure is now attributed to polybius (i.37.2), and the entry says it is lower than his own figures add up to: three hundred and fifty ships launched and a hundred and fourteen captured (i.36.10-11). the course is the one he gives: sicily (i.37.1), not italy.
2026-10-05	the slave who became king	the entry glossed its title with a denial: "he was not a slave himself, but the son of one".	the denial was removed. livy (i.39) does not believe he was a slave, but does not believe the mother was one either; cicero (de re publica ii.37) and dionysius (iv.1) have him born of a slave woman. what stays is "the son of a slave woman, raised between servitude and royalty".
2026-10-05	the slave who became king	the closing gave the chariot to servius’s murderer, the future tarquin the proud: "the man who climbed to the throne by driving a chariot over him".	corrected to "by hurling him down the steps" (livy i.48.3). the chariot is tullia’s (livy i.48.7; dionysius iv.39), as the entry itself already told.
2026-10-05	the slave who became king	ancus marcius was called "the deposed king".	corrected to "the previous king": ancus died on the throne (cicero, de re publica ii.33; dionysius iii.46). the ones kept from it were his sons (livy i.40.2).
2026-10-05	the slave who became king	tullia’s brother-in-law was called the son of the king "whom servius had displaced".	corrected to "whom servius had succeeded": servius did not displace tarquinius priscus; he took the throne when priscus was murdered (livy i.41; dionysius iv.1).
2026-10-05	the slave who became king	servius’s rise was placed "around the middle of the sixth century bce".	corrected to "around 578 bce", the date of the tradition (dionysius iv.1) and the one the page itself already gave.
2026-10-05	the gallic sack and humiliation	the name brennus was said to appear only in livy.	removed "only": plutarch names him too ("life of camillus" 22).
2026-10-05	the darkest day of rome	the scene of the senators awaiting the gauls was described as coming "from a single source".	removed "from a single source": plutarch tells it too ("life of camillus" 21-22). the attribution to livy and the warning that it is dramatised stayed.
2026-10-05	the punishment of decimation	polybius was made to say that the condemned man was beaten to death "under the eyes" of the whole camp, and the excerpt and the end of the paragraph named his "tent-mates" as the executioners, whom polybius does not mention. "under the eyes" had been attributed to polybius by the correction of 2026-06-01 listed above.	corrected against polybius vi.37.3: it is the whole camp that beats him to death, with clubs and stones. the excerpt and the end of the paragraph now say "comrades-in-arms".
2026-10-05	the oath of the linen legion	papirius was said to have been granted seven days of thanksgiving.	corrected against livy x.45.1: there were four, and not for papirius alone: livy gives them for the dispatches of both consuls.
2026-10-05	the oath of the linen legion	livy was made to say that the gold and silver captured were enough to adorn the public buildings of rome, and papirius was said to have handed "all that gold" to the treasury.	corrected against livy x.46: what adorned the public buildings was the enemy spoils, and what papirius handed to the treasury was the bronze and the silver.
2026-10-05	the fury of poseidon and the shattered fleet	the naval victory off cape hermaeum was placed on the way back.	corrected against polybius i.36.10-12: the fleet ran into the carthaginian squadron on the way out, sailing for africa, and picked up the survivors afterwards.
2026-10-05	the siege of acragas and the lesson of the sea	the forty thousand men of the two consular armies were attributed to polybius.	attribution removed: polybius gives no such figure in his account of the siege (i.17-19).
2026-10-05	the silver empire of the barcas	the video’s "vengeful slave" was presented as a blend of livy’s and diodorus’s versions.	removed: it is not a blend. appian tells it that way: hasdrubal is killed by a slave whose master he had killed (iber. 8).
2026-10-05	the crossing of the strait and the first punic blood	the excerpt called the first punic war "the longest war of antiquity".	toned down to "one of the longest wars of antiquity". polybius calls it the longest of the wars he knew of (i.63.4), and thucydides gives the peloponnesian war twenty-seven years (v.26.1).
2026-10-05	the oath of the linen legion	papirius’s legionaries were said to have gone "home empty-handed".	sentence removed. livy gives those troops the sack of aquilonia and the plunder of saepinum (x.44.1, x.45.14), and after the triumph papirius leads them to winter in vescian territory (x.46.9).
2026-10-05	the siege of acragas and the lesson of the sea	goldsworthy was credited with the remark that the figure of twenty-five thousand enslaved comes from a tradition that tended to inflate the numbers of punishment.	sentence removed: in his account of the siege goldsworthy neither gives that figure nor discusses it; he says only that the city was plundered and its inhabitants sold into slavery.
2026-10-05	the punishment of decimation	the entry said that "the later tradition specified" that it was the condemned man’s own comrades who carried out the execution.	removed: the one who says who does the beating is polybius himself, and it is the whole camp (vi.37.3, vi.38.3). of the later authors who tell of a decimation, in none of those read (livy, dionysius, frontinus, plutarch, appian, tacitus, suetonius, cassius dio) is the condemned man executed by his comrades.
2026-10-05	the punishment of decimation	the image of dividing the troop into groups of ten and drawing lots within each was called a later, "popular" elaboration. the word had been put there by the correction of 2026-06-18 listed above.	removed "popular": dionysius (ix.50) and plutarch (crassus 10; antony 39) tell it that way. it is still not what polybius describes (vi.38).
2026-10-05	the oath of the linen legion	the closing spoke of the resentment of the soldier "who bleeds and is not paid".	removed "and is not paid". livy x.46.6: the troops’ pay came out of a levy, as the entry itself already said. what they did not get was a share of the bronze and silver (x.46.5).
2026-10-05	the monument to peace built on war	the title ("the monument to peace funded with war booty"), the excerpt and the opening sentence said that rome paid for the ara pacis with war booty; the excerpt and the opening sentence put it down to "legend".	removed from all three. where he tells of the altar, augustus says that the senate voted to consecrate it for his return from hispania and gaul (res gestae 12.2); of who paid for it he says nothing. the title is now "the monument to peace built on war". the address of the page has not changed and keeps the old wording.
2026-10-05	how the worst war machine in history woke up	winning the race at the equirria was said to have "functioned as a public omen": a good result was read as a sign that the campaigns would end with the enemy destroyed.	removed, with its echo in the last sentence. varro says that on that day there are horse races on the campus martius (de lingua latina vi.13), and ovid that they move to the caelian if the tiber floods the field (fasti iii.519-522); neither speaks of an omen.
2026-10-05	the day masters served dinner to their slaves	of the scene of the matrons serving dinner to their slaves, macrobius was called "the only source that describes it".	removed "the only source that describes it": solinus tells it too (i.35). the attribution to macrobius (saturnalia i.12.7) stayed.
2026-10-05	the cruel fire ritual in the arena of the circus maximus	the opening sentence said that in mid-april, at the circus maximus, "you would not have seen the swift chariot races you expect", but foxes with torches tied to their backs.	corrected to "you would not have seen only the swift chariot races". ovid, who tells of the foxes, puts the horses in the circus that same day, in the line before (fasti iv.679-682).
2026-10-05	the murder that cemented the walls of the roman empire	the entry said that tradition insists the death of remus was not a fit of family rage.	removed. livy, from whom the entry takes romulus’s words about the walls, says in that same sentence that he killed him in anger (ab irato romulo, i.7.2).
2026-10-05	the sack of the eternal city	the opening said that a foreign army "broke through the gates of rome", and procopius was made to say that the salarian gate was opened "during the night".	corrected to "passed through the gates of rome", and "during the night" removed. procopius says that alaric could not take the city by force and gives two versions, both with the gates opened from inside (wars iii.2.14-27): in the one that names the salarian gate it happens about midday, and the night belongs to the other, the matron’s.
2026-10-05	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	varro’s remark that the day is jupiter’s, not venus’s, was given as said of 19 august; the opening of the grape harvest by the flamen of jupiter was taken as a fact of that day, and the auspicatio vindemiae was attributed to pliny the elder.	corrected against varro, de lingua latina vi.16 and vi.20. the remark belongs to the april vinalia, and in that same passage, without giving it a day, varro tells the flamen’s rite, the auspicatio included: it is not in the passages of pliny the entry cites (naturalis historia xviii.284 and 289). of 19 august varro gives the temple and the gardens of venus; that the day is a festival of jupiter is festus’s note (s. v. rustica vinalia), and that is what the entry now says.
2026-10-05	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the closing took it as a fact of 19 august that, outside the walls, rome’s courtesans "prayed to a goddess imported from sicily".	hedged: it now says "perhaps prayed". ovid places the courtesans before the venus of the porta collina at the vinalia of 23 april (fasti iv.863-872), as the entry itself already noted.
2026-10-05	the siege of acragas and the lesson of the sea	polybius was made to say that the carthaginian fleet resupplied the besieged city by ship and harried the italian supply lines of the besiegers, and that the sea gave carthage the final word on how long acragas could hold out.	removed: polybius tells none of this in his account of the siege (i.17-19). the city goes hungry (i.18.7, i.19.7), and the besiegers’ supplies, which their allies gathered at herbessus, are cut off when hanno seizes the town (i.18.5, i.18.9). what the ships carry to sicily is soldiers and elephants (i.18.8), and that is what the entry now says. that carthage held the sea unopposed stays: polybius says so (i.20.5).
2026-10-05	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the temple of venus erycina on the capitol was said to have been "vowed in 215 bce".	corrected to "dedicated in 215 bce": that is the year of the dedication (livy xxiii.30.13-14, xxiii.31.9). the vow was fabius maximus’s as dictator, after trasimene (xxii.9.7-10, xxii.10.10).
2026-10-05	the siege of acragas and the lesson of the sea	the closing said that rome had crossed the strait in borrowed ships "barely a year earlier".	removed "barely a year earlier": between appius claudius, who made the crossing (polybius i.11.9), and the consuls of the siege (i.17.6), polybius has another pair of consuls (i.16.1).
2026-10-05	the day masters served dinner to their slaves	the entry split the two feasts by sex: at the matronalia the matrons served their "female slaves", and at the saturnalia the masters waited on "male slaves". it also had the matrons "cooking" the dinner.	corrected against macrobius (saturnalia i.12.7) and solinus (i.35): both say slaves, without distinguishing sex, at both feasts, and that the matrons served the dinner, not that they cooked it.
2026-10-06	the day masters served dinner to their slaves	the entry had macrobius say that the ladies of the house "relieved the household staff of their tasks".	removed: it is not in macrobius (saturnalia i.12.7), nor in solinus (i.35). both say that the matrons served dinner to their slaves, and that is what stays.
2026-10-06	how the worst war machine in history woke up	the excerpt, the pull quote and the body made the races of the equirria a test of the horses: pushed "to the brink of exhaustion", they "also served as a brutal examination" to check which animals had come through the winter. the excerpt also gave the lustration of the horses as a fact.	removed from all three. varro (de lingua latina vi.13) and ovid (fasti iii.519-522), the two ancient authors the entry cites, tell of horse races on the campus martius; neither speaks of testing the animals or of running them to exhaustion. the lustration now stands, in the excerpt as in the body, as one modern reading.
2026-10-06	the oath of the linen legion	livy was called "our only source for the scene", and further down the whole episode was said to rest on a single witness.	corrected to "the only one to tell the scene at length" and to "almost the whole episode rests on a single account, that of livy". festus, in paul’s epitome, explains the name by the scene, in one sentence: the samnites, going in one by one to an altar hung round with linen cloths, had sworn not to give way to the roman soldier (s. v. legio samnitum linteata, p. 102 lindsay). cassius dio has the oath: each man swore not to flee the battle and to kill whoever tried to (fr. 36.29).
2026-10-06	the truth behind julius caesar's 23 stab wounds	nicolaus of damascus, whom the entry follows for cassius wounding brutus in the hand and another conspirator’s cut to the thigh, was called "the sole source for the detail, which neither suetonius nor appian records".	those words removed. appian too has brutus with his hand bloodied, he and cassius having struck at caesar together (civil wars ii.122), and in plutarch the conspirators wound one another and brutus takes a wound in the hand ("life of brutus" 17). the attribution to nicolaus of damascus ("life of augustus" 24) stayed.
2026-10-06	the truth behind julius caesar's 23 stab wounds	the paragraph on how far the sources can be trusted closed by giving the count of the wounds as certain: "what is certain is this: the twenty-three wounds and the chaos".	qualified: it now reads "what is firm is the chaos, and twenty-three wounds is the figure nearly everyone repeats — nicolaus of damascus counts thirty-five". suetonius (iul. 82.2), plutarch ("life of caesar" 66) and appian (civil wars ii.117) give twenty-three; nicolaus of damascus, whom the entry already cites for other details, gives thirty-five ("life of augustus" 24); cassius dio, in his account of the murder, gives no figure (xliv.19.5).
2026-10-06	the crossing of the alps	the excerpt said that the rock split with fire and vinegar "is told only by livy", and the pull quote that the fire and the vinegar "are only in livy".	removed "only" from both: appian (hann. 4) and ammianus marcellinus (xv.10.11) tell it too, and juvenal alludes to the vinegar (sat. x.153). the excerpt now says that livy tells it (xxi.37.2), not polybius, and the pull quote that the fire and the vinegar are not in polybius’s account (iii.54-55), as the body of the entry already said.
2026-10-06	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the page title (the one in the browser tab and in search results) still called the day "the roman grape-harvest festival".	it is now "vinalia rustica: the roman wine festival, 19 august": "the wine festival" is what the body of the entry already called the day. varro tells the rite of the flamen of jupiter, the opening of the grape harvest, without giving it a day (de lingua latina vi.16), as the correction of 2026-10-05 on the grape harvest, listed above, already recorded.
2026-10-06	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the opening, the excerpt and the paragraph on the temple still took as a fact of 19 august what the correction of 2026-10-05 listed above had hedged in the closing: the opening said the courtesans’ day "fell on a day like today, a 19 august"; the excerpt, that venus "came in through two side doors", one of them outside the sacred boundary; and the paragraph on the temple, that "there was a second door".	hedged, like the closing: "it may have been a day like today", "through a side door, and perhaps through another" and "there may have been a second door". ovid places the courtesans before the venus of the porta collina at the vinalia of 23 april (fasti iv.863-872).
2026-10-06	the murder that cemented the walls of the roman empire	the first sentence still had the city founded by killing "in cold blood" whoever dared to cross the furrow.	removed "in cold blood". it was the echo of the denial of romulus’s anger withdrawn by the correction of 2026-10-05 listed above: in the version livy calls the more common, romulus kills remus in anger (ab irato romulo, i.7.2), and in ovid, as the entry itself already told, the one who strikes the blow is celer (fasti iv.837-844).
2026-10-07	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the excerpt said that, "despite the cliché", 19 august "was not a day of venus", and the body said the same; venus was said to come into the date "through a side door". scullard was said to keep jupiter as "the undisputed holder of the date" and to treat the link with venus as "the secondary addition varro describes".	the denial is withdrawn: the entry now gives festus for jupiter and varro for venus. of 19 august varro names venus: a temple dedicated to her on that day, the gardens consecrated to her and the gardeners’ holiday (de lingua latina vi.20); in another treatise he invokes her as the goddess who has the care of gardens and says the vinalia rustica were instituted on that account (de re rustica i.1.6). "it is jupiter’s day, not venus’" stays as what varro writes under the april vinalia (vi.16). festus, in the same note that gives the day as a festival of jupiter, adds that two temples of venus were consecrated on it (s. v. rustica vinalia). "undisputed holder" and "the secondary addition varro describes" were the entry’s own words, and are gone from its sentence on scullard. this completes the correction of 2026-10-05 on varro’s remark, listed above, and what that one says of festus still stands; the excerpt quoted by the one of 2026-10-06 ("through a side door, and perhaps through another") has changed again.
2026-10-07	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the title ("the courtesans of venus and the grape harvest") put on 19 august the courtesans, whom ovid places on 23 april, and the grape harvest, to which varro gives no day. so did the pull quote: "three altars and a single bunch of grapes: for rome, wine and desire came off the same vine".	the title is now "jupiter, venus and the august wine festival", and the pull quote is removed. the three altars were those of the entry’s closing: jupiter, the venus of the gardens and the venus erycina of the courtesans, whom ovid places at the vinalia of 23 april (fasti iv.863-872); the bunch is the one the flamen cuts in a rite to which varro gives no day (de lingua latina vi.16). the address of the spanish page never carried the title; those of the english, catalan and german versions have not changed and keep the old one. this continues the corrections of 2026-10-05 and 2026-10-06 on the grape harvest and on the courtesans, listed above.
2026-10-07	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the cult of venus erycina was said to have a reputation "tied to sacred prostitution". of the temple by the porta collina the entry said, with livy as its witness, that it was dedicated "deliberately outside the walls, beyond the sacred boundary of the city, precisely because it was a foreign cult", and that "the location is no minor detail"; of the temple on the capitol, that it stood "inside the pomerium". the closing called it "a cult the city was not willing to let all the way in", and the excerpt put it "outside the sacred boundary of the city".	all removed. in place of "sacred prostitution" the entry gives what strabo says of the sanctuary on mount eryx: that it was once full of slave women consecrated to the goddess (vi.2.6); he says it of eryx, not of rome, and as a thing of the past. livy has the temple of 215 on the capitol (in capitolio, xxiii.31.9) and the one dedicated in 181 at the porta collina (ad portam collinam, xl.34.4), and where he mentions it, in his account of the year 202, he puts it outside that gate (extra portam collinam, xxx.38.10): that is why "outside the walls" stays. in none of the three passages does he name the pomerium or give a reason for the site, and the goddess is the same in both temples. the closing now reads "perhaps to a sicilian goddess with her temple outside the gate", and the excerpt "outside the gates of the city". this continues the correction of 2026-10-05 on the temple on the capitol, listed above.
2026-10-07	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the paragraph on the evidence said that whether the "day of the courtesans" fell on 19 august or at the other vinalia "is something historians are still arguing over". the paragraph on the temple said, in the indicative and naming no author, that "there the meretrices came to offer myrtle and mint and to ask for prosperity in their trade". and the opening still said of that day that "it may have been a day like today, a 19 august".	"historians are still arguing" removed: the entry named no one who argued it, and in what was opened for this review no one was found who puts that day in august. the entry now says that ovid puts the day of the courtesans at the vinalia of 23 april, and that "bringing it to august is this page’s own inference, because the two vinalia share a name and a goddess; none of its ancient sources says so". the offerings now carry their author and his date: ovid bids the courtesans (volgares puellae, he calls them) offer incense, myrtle and mint and ask for beauty and the favour of the people, on 23 april (fasti iv.863-872). the opening now reads "ovid puts it on 23 april, at the first of the two wine festivals. the second fell on a day like today, a 19 august"; it is the one the correction of 2026-10-06, listed above, quotes as "it may have been a day like today". "perhaps prayed" and "there may have been a second door" stay as the corrections of 2026-10-05 and 2026-10-06 left them.
2026-10-07	jupiter, venus and the august wine festival	the paragraph on the flamen of jupiter said that the rite "had a practical function before a devotional one", called the order to harvest "the auspicatio vindemiae", had him cut "the first bunch with his own hands" and added that "until that gesture, nobody could touch the vines"; the excerpt had him open the grape harvest "by cutting the first bunch". scullard was introduced as the one "who has done more than anyone to put the republican festival calendar in order", and cited without a page. the excerpt said that "venus perhaps had another cult on that date as well", naming no one. the temple on the capitol was "dedicated in 215 bce after the disaster at trasimene".	the paragraph now follows varro (de lingua latina vi.16): in several places in latium the priests began the grape harvest, and at rome still in his day; the flamen opens it (auspicatur vindemiam), and when he has given the order to gather the grapes he sacrifices a ewe lamb and gathers grapes himself between the cutting out of the entrails and their offering. varro names no hands and no bunch, and gives no rule that kept anyone from the vines; that the flamen was "the first" rests on an emendation of a corrupt word in the manuscripts, and the entry no longer says it. "a practical function" was the entry’s own judgement and is removed. the sentence on scullard keeps what he says and loses the praise; the source list now gives his pages (106-107 and 177). the excerpt now says that making 19 august the day of the courtesans as well is this page’s inference, and that ovid puts it on 23 april. the temple on the capitol is now "vowed in 217 bce after the disaster at trasimene and dedicated in 215 bce": the vow is what livy ties to the defeat (xxii.9.7-10, xxii.10.10), and those chapters are added to the source list. this refines the correction of 2026-10-05 on varro’s remark and the one of this same day on the title, listed above, which spoke of "the auspicatio" and of the bunch as "the one the flamen cuts", and continues the one of 2026-10-05 on the temple on the capitol and the one of this same day on the day of the courtesans.
2026-10-07	the truth behind julius caesar's 23 stab wounds	the entry had a physician named antistius examine the body at home and count the wounds ("twenty-three stab wounds"), called his finding "his report", and added that the rest of the wounds "were superficial or secondary".	rewritten on what suetonius says. the count of twenty-three is his own (iul. 82.2); of antistius he gives only the judgement that among so many wounds none was found fatal but the second, in the chest (82.3). he does not say that antistius counted the wounds, where he saw the body or that he left a report, and of the other wounds he says only that none was found fatal. the entry now says so, and the myth it debunks is quoted as antistius reading "a report", no longer "his report". this row continues row 73.
2026-10-07	the corvus and the slaughter at mylae	the entry said that the boarding device "was called the corvus", and that "the corvus vanishes from the narrative a few years later without any source saying why", as a consequence ("hence") of the storms in which roman squadrons were later lost. its latin head-word read "corvus navalis".	the name now goes with its witness: it is polybius’s greek, "korax", "raven", which he says the device was given afterwards (i.22.3); the latin authors who tell of duilius speak of "iron hands" (frontinus, stratagems ii.3.24; florus i.18), and "corvus" is the latin translation under which it has gone into the books. "hence" removed: polybius, who tells the wreck off camarina, blames the commanders for ignoring their pilots and does not mention the device (i.37.3-6); after ecnomus (i.27.12; i.28.11) he does not name it again, and he does not say that it was given up or why. the head-word is now "corvus": for "corvus navalis" no ancient witness was found in what was searched, while "corvus" alone is attested as a grappling engine (curtius iv.2.12; iv.3.26). frontinus added to the sources.
2026-10-07	the great coalition against rome	livy’s figures for sentinum were said to "come from a single annalistic source that tended to round its glorious slaughters upward", and the roman losses were given as "some seven or eight thousand".	removed. the entry now says that the figures are livy’s, who writes nearly three centuries later and himself warns that other authors exaggerated the armies of that day (x.30.5). nothing says which source they come from, and they are not the only ancient ones: orosius gives forty thousand enemy dead (iii.21.5) and a fragment of diodorus, citing duris of samos, a hundred thousand (xxi.6). the roman dead are now the eight thousand seven hundred livy gives: seven thousand of decius’s army and one thousand seven hundred of fabius’s (x.29.18).
2026-10-07	the great fire and the first scapegoat	of the repression of the christians after the fire, the entry said that "no other author of his century tells it" but tacitus.	removed. suetonius, a contemporary of tacitus, notes in one line, among other measures of the reign, that the christians were punished (nero 16.2), and does not tie it to the fire, which he tells in ch. 38 with no christians in it. what rests on tacitus alone (annals xv.44) is the link with the fire and the scene, and the entry still says so: "a single witness, writing fifty years later, sustains on his own one of the most famous scenes of ancient history".

if you find an error, write to me at hola@yodidac.com and it will end up in this table.