Roman History Books and More

senatus consultum de bacchanalibus, 186 bce

The same Kaeso as the one in the post below is an adherent of Bacchus (Dionysus) and perishes in the persecution in Rome of 186 BCE.

Livy, History of Rome, Book XXXIX

Decree of the Senate Concerning the Rites of Bacchus
The original bronze tablet, found in Tiriolo, Italy, in 1640, is currently located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Dionysus at Smith's Dictionary
Dionysus (Greek mythology) at Britannica

Image at right courtesy Wikimedia Commons:  Seated Dionysos holding out a kantharos. Interior from an Attic black-figured plate, ca. 520-500 BC. From Vulci.

titus maccius plautus and quintus ennius – playwright and poet

In Steven Saylor's novel Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome, our current read, one of the Kaesos is a patron of Plautus, and his friend Scipio Africanus is a fan of the poet Ennius.  (Wikipedia links, as usual handle with care)

N.S. Gill has an excellent write-up about Plautus at About.com, as well as links to Ennius.

Plautus at Britannica
Quintus Ennius at Britannica

Plautus at Smith's Dictionary
Ennius at Smith's Dictionary

scipio africanus, hannibal, and 'matters arising' on the punic wars

Update 1:  N.S. Gill just blogged this chapter too:  Scipio's Shadow

The next Kaeso Fabius Dorso in our current read, Roma, The Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor, is a friend of Scipio Africanus and we experience the Hannibalic War second hand, Kaeso being unable to soldier himself.

In 2006 I did some related blogging in connection with David Anthony Durham's Pride of Carthage which were then reading:

• scipio africanus, conqueror of carthage
• the hannibalic war in Plutarch's lives (including Fabius, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, dictator and famous cunctator, who too is featured in the novel.)
• appian on the hannibalic war
• the aftermath of Cannae: why did Hannibal not go for Rome?

Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama
Young Folks' History of Rome, by Charlotte Mary Yonge

And Matters Arising has just been blogging The Punic Wars.

n.s.gill: faber est suae quisque fortunae ('roma' novel)

More on this Kaeso:  Faber est suae quisque fortunae

[...]  I enjoyed the way the reader saw double entendres in the acclaim Kaeso received for being a great man killer, but I did expect him to get caught, especially when his cousin, who had read and wanted the documents back, didn't seem to get them back.

I had the same reaction.

Here is another photo of the Via Appia, at Minturno

steven saylor fans on facebook

Steven Saylor Fans

Steven is hard at work on a follow-up novel to Roma.

appius claudius caecus redux

Appius Claudius Caecus is featured – mostly in a positive way – in the chapter "The Architect Of His Own Fortune" in  Steven Saylor's novel Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome, our current read.

Turns out I blogged him last year:

appius claudius caecus, "the first living personality in roman history"

update 2 on the potitii and pinarii (saylor's 'roma')

Correction 2/23:  The Pinarii can be found under "Pinaria Gens" (Page 365)

Now that the Ancient Library website is up again, we have more on the Potitii (Page 513).

The Pinarii do not show up as "Pinarii" but can be found individually by searching for Pinarius.

kaeso fabius dorso (fabii dorsi)

In Steven Saylor's Roma, The Novel of Ancient Rome we encounter several Fabii with the name Kaeso Fabius Dorso.  While most are fictional, some where not (Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, page 1069) – although they are listed by Smith as "C. Fabius Dorso" – and there was our Kaeso Fabius who stayed on the Capitol during the siege by the Gauls and performed sacred rites in the occupied section of the city, as reported by Dio Cassius – Fragments Book VII:

5 The Romans who were on the Capitol under siege had no hope of safety, unless through the aid of Heaven. For so scrupulously did they observe the mandates of religion, although in every extremity of evil, that when one of the sacred rites needed to be performed by the pontifices in another part of the city, Kaeso Fabius, who was then exercising the office of priest, descended for the purpose from the Capitol after arraying himself as was his wont, and passing through the enemy, performed the customary ceremony and returned the same day.

6 I marvel at the barbarians, on the one hand, because, either on account of the gods or his bravery, they spared him; yet still more do I marvel at the man himself, for two reasons: first, that he dared to descend alone among the enemy, and again, that when he might have withdrawn to some place of safety, he refused, and instead voluntarily returned up to the Capitol again into manifest danger. For he understood that they hesitated to abandon the spot which was the only part of their country they still held, but saw at the same time that no matter how much they desired to escape it was impossible to do by reason of the multitude of the besiegers.

(Hat tip N.S. Gill)

A linguist's look at fasces and more

Mark Lieberman of the Language Log (who is also a bit of a political junkie) yesterday posted Fasces and humanitas and also something on Terence.

Hat tip to Bingley.

(For JSTOR users:  Log in to JSTOR to link to the article Symbols and Showmanship in Roman Public Life: The Fasces by Anthony J. Marshall.)

update 1 on the potitii and pinarii (saylor's 'roma')

Another group member points my to a Steven Saylor interview at Historical Boys, where Saylor refers to Livy.

Here is Livy, Vol. 1, Section 1.7

[…]  Hercules grasped Evander's right hand and said that he took the omen to himself and would fulfil the prophecy by building and consecrating the altar. Then a heifer of conspicuous beauty was taken from the herd, and the first sacrifice was offered;  the Potitii and Pinarii, the two principal families in those parts, were invited by Hercules to assist in the sacrifice and at the feast which followed. It so happened that the Potitii were present at the appointed time, and the entrails were placed before them; the Pinarii arrived after these were consumed and came in for the rest of the banquet. It became a permanent institution from that time, that as long as the family of the Pinarii survived they should not eat of the entrails of the victims. The Potitii, after being instructed by Evander, presided over that rite for many ages, until they handed over this ministerial office to public servants after which the whole race of the Potitii perished. This out of all foreign rites, was the only one which Romulus adopted, as though he felt that an immortality won through courage, of which this was the memorial, would one day be his own reward.

(Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library)

honorable mention

I'm happy to report that the reading group is mentioned here:

Roman history reading group

(hat tip to Robert Greaves)

the potitii in saylor's 'roma'

The question came up in tonight's chat about Roma, The Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor:

Were the Potitii an actual Roman family?

We know about the Pinarii, one was a brother-in-law of Julius Caesar, his son an adherent of Marcus Antonius.

A participant told us that she had found a mention in The Beginnings of Rome: Italy From the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars by T.J. Cornell.  According to this (page 385), Appius Claudius Caecus "transformed the worship of Hercules at the Ara Maxima from a private concern of the Potitian clan into a public administered cult."  Saylor, in his Author's Notes, writes that he began his research by "reading and reading" T.J. Cornell.

At the met: 'beyond babylon' closes soon – and something for postcard afficionados

Dont' miss
Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.
through March 15, 2009

This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary art created as a result of a sophisticated network of interaction that developed among kings, diplomats, merchants, and others in the Near East during the second millennium B.C.  View images from this exhibition.

 And for postcard aficionados there is

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard
February 3, 2009–May 25, 2009

This exhibition [focuses] on a collection of 9,000 picture postcards amassed and classified by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975), now part of the Metropolitan’s Walker Evans Archive. The picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’s artistic development.  View images from this exhibition.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

the sabine women in arts

(Roma cont'd)

from Bingley: The Rape of the Sabine Women

did you know that …

… Pompeii had one-way streets, and a pedestrian zone around the forum?  This and much more you can discover in Mary Beard's new book, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found.

A similar photo to the one below, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, is one of the many illustrations in the book.  Streets were constructed with raised sidewalks and stepping stones to handle over-flow water.  Space between the stepping stones allowed carts to go through.  In the distance one can see a water tower.

 

Wikimedia Commons has quite a few images of ancient Pompeii, which can be found here, organized by subject.

the view from my window

9:30 AM

on garum

Courtesy Gary Carbo:

The Great Garos, Garum, Worcestershire Debate

Wikipedia (as usual handle with care) has more on Romans and garum, including the image at the right.

romulus and remus illustrations on 'matters arising'

Bingley's found a lot of pictures:

Romulus and Remus

steven saylor has a little image gallery related to his novel 'roma'

Bingley pointed me to a link on Steven Saylor's home page, called The Roma Image Gallery.

There is also a booklist, most of which I've mentioned below already.

a look back to the foundation legend

In September of 2008 I posted t.p. wiseman's "remus: a roman myth".

It's now relevant again, to our current read Roma, the Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor.  In another context, there was the post lemuria, lemuralia – feast of the lemures.

And here is another nice Wikimedia Commons image:

Anonymous (Rome). Circa 269-266 BC. Silver didrachm (6.44 g). Reverse: Wolf & twins, ROMANO in exergue. Crawford 20/1. (Obverse not available)