Turning the corner

Sometimes there's no telling what's around the corner without having a look. Some will go charging around it, not worried what will happen. Others will hold up a mirror and consider their options. And I suppose there's some who won't even bother and just turn away. But there will always be corners, and no matter what you do, one day you'll be waiting at one.

Find out how Calvus turns corners

Chained to the wheel

Our modern day perceptions of slavery have mostly been shaped by the African slave trade to the Americas, where bondage was based on race as some sort of moral diminishment. However, if there's one thing that can be said about the Romans, they were very much about equal opportunity. In fact racism, as we know it, was unheard of in this multicultural ancient world. Anybody could become a slave, for any reason. In fact Roman citizens frequently sold themselves into slavery to pay debts. And while it was no doubt an uncomfortable proposition to be the goods and chattels of another household, it was by no means the end of the world. Slaves could earn and save money, and many bought their own freedom after only a few years - some even became incredibly wealthy. Many were educated by their masters and most of those brought from beyond the 'barbarian' lands chose to stay in this 'civilisation' when freed...to become slave owners too.

The thing is, while we can turn our noses up at an ancient world built upon a slave-based economy and say how terrible it was, take a moment to think about things. Yes, perhaps we don't have an owner with the power of life and death over us...but how many of us are truly free? How many of us have the freedom to stop paying the mortgage? How many of us are chained to jobs we could not possibly leave? Credit cards, bills, cars, responsibility, and the darker sides of addiction - they can make slaves of all of us. And now our personal debt is even bought and sold by banks...wealthy corporations haggling over us like the slave traders of old. So are we really free? Or are we just in denial...

Find out if Calvus was free  

Don't wait for tomorrow

There is never a right day to start something so there's no point waiting for it. Want to read that book? Want to change your life? Want to catch that fish? If you keep saying today is not the day, soon enough you'll find it was yesterday.

Find out if Calvus took the bull by the horns

Diamonds are a Roman's best friend

If you think diamond edged cutting tools are something we thought of in the 1950s, then Pliny the Elder can tell you the Romans knew all about 'Industrial Diamonds'. In 78AD he describes how the shards left over from 'breaking' a diamond were used by engravers - who inserted the slivers into their iron cutting tools because, "they cut into the hardest surfaces with little effort." Waste not want not. Even at that time diamonds were considered the world's most valuable gemstone, so this would have been a brave decision to turn such a rare stone into a stone cutter.


Find out if Calvus can ever afford a diamond

A Concrete Post

Since the invention (or should we say the reinvention) of 'Portland Cement' in the 1830s, we bastions of the industrial and computer ages have made monumental buildings a matter of poured concrete. Most structures we drive on or live and work in would not be possible without the wonders of 'modern concrete'. It can be pumped hundreds of metres into the air and set hundreds of metres under the sea. It has made the twentieth and twenty-first centuries possible. No small thing for a mortar invented for canal construction.

But in essence, all we've done is reinvigorate a construction material discovered even before the Romans conquered most of the 'known' world. The Carthaginians were building multi-storey concrete buildings prior to 146BC, and the Romans almost certainly adopted this Punic technology to build eight storey city tower blocks in Rome and other major cities...and some of these are still standing. Meanwhile the Pantheon, the world's largest uninterrupted enclosed space for 1900-years, offers a salute to the engineering we have only just rekindled. However cities were just the beginning. Concrete built the roads and the aquaducts that fed an empire, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Roman concrete was poured into the sea. The sea you ask? Yes, perhaps the greatest acheivement of all. Vast artificial harbours designed in a time before modern diving equipment, let alone mixing machines. King Herrod built the artificial Caesarea Harbour in 20BC, contructing it entirely from concrete bulwarks sunk in place...and still in place. North of Naples, Pliny the Elder's naval base used a similar technique, although in this case, parts of the harbour wall sink over one hundred feet below the sea's surface. How this was achieved and the how the sea floor was prepared raises a lot of questions, many of which we will have to look at in the future - such as - could any of this have been done without the use of stored or piped air for divers? The fact the Romans used concrete so freely must mean they used other accompanying technologies we take for granted but have not yet credited to them. Perhaps there's no concrete answer...


Find out if Calvus has the answer     

It's a matter of Coffee

Every morning is different, you just need enough coffee to tell. So enjoy your favourite beverage and remember tomorrow is just another day away...that's when your grinder might not grind, your espresso comes to a stop or your steamer gets frosty. In other words...don't mistake a normal, average start for a bad one.

Find out how Calvus starts his day

Controversy time : Gladiators

Gladiator was on TV again last night - and while I don't want to knock this Sword and Sandal Blockbuster and its historical shortcomings - like Commodus dying about twelve years too early; or using the wrong artillery pieces in the opening battle scene - this movie remains a prime example of how the Gladiator myth has been perpetuated. Sure, this was sport and spectacle at its most gruesome - men and women most certainly fought to the death or were maimed terribly in the process. The question is, was this the daily fair served to the hoards with hot nuts, as poor, hapless slaves died at the drop of a thumb? The answer is no. This was a highly organised and professional sport, with millions invested by individuals or consortiums and millions more passing between punters and bookmakers. The similarities between Roman weekend sport and our modern forms is stark. Yes, some of the gladiators were slaves. But many were volunteers - slaves, freedmen and citizens seeking the same glory and money as today's footballers, boxers or racing car drivers. And slave or not, the financial rewards for entering the arena were probably justification enough for the risk. Gladiators usually retired multi-millionaires and the toast of their respective cities.

Retired, you say? How did they survive long enough for that? Well, put quite simply, most fights were not to the death. In fact, I suspect gladiators often performed more like American pro-wrestlers rather than in the cut and thrust action we see in the movies. Think about it...the owner of a gladiator team would have spent the modern day equivalent of $1.25-million on each fighter to buy and train. Like a prized race horse or racing car driver, the team owner would know there was a certain danger in each bout, but he wouldn't be in the business if he lost a fortune everyday...or even every year. The simple fact is that the sheer cost of each gladiator would have made the business unworkable if the expectation of death was the primary focus. And as if to enforce this fact, a gladiator cemetery recently found in Turkey - beside an arena that remained in use for two hundred years - had only thirty bodies interred in it. Hardly indicative of mass killings every public holiday. So the next time you watch Gladiator or Spartacus, just remember these heroic victims of circumstance were worth far more to their promoters and owners alive than we give this terrible sport credit. 

Did you know that Calvus was the son of a sports promoter