Going up...getting cheaper

In this day and age of high-rise penthouses and glassed urban panoramas we're pretty used to the idea of paying more for the loftiest floors in an apartment block - of course, we can thank elevators for that. But in the days when shoe-leather was the only thing to keep you upwardly mobile, the higher floors in multi-storey buildings were almost always the cheapest. Case in point was Rome, probably the world's second high-rise city after Carthage. Eight-storey apartment blocks were common, and they weren't class exclusive - anyone who couldn't afford a villa ended up in them - one such tenant was the future 1st-century BC Dictator, L.C.Sulla, who was just another face in the crowd in his younger years. And this is where a story comes to us from Plutarch, painting a picture of inner city expense for the middle income earners. Having come to power after a bloody partisan conflict, Sulla was in the throws of having many of his political enemies and adherents (the Marian Populists) executed, when one marked man, a former slave, complained to the Dictator that not so many years before they'd rented in the same apartments. Sulla, the young aristocrat could afford the 3000-sesterces (that's about $1440/week) to live downstairs, while the slave was living on the floor above for 2000-sesterces ($961/week). The man's point was that once only 1000-sesterces had separated them so how about a bit of leniency. Whether the point was taken or not, we don't know...Sulla was the kind of autocrat who dealt out cruelty and kindness in equal measures, and usually only on a whim. It's a fifty-fifty whether the unfortunate ex-neighbour's fast talking got him off the hook.

Find out what floor Calvus lived on
    

The other great mind of the late Republic

Julius Caesar, Marcus Tullius Cicero and Cleopatra get just about all the glory when it comes to acknowledging the great minds of the 1st-century BC. But there was at least one other chap who deserves an  honourable mention, even though he slots into the stereotypical role as that century's 'evil genius'. His name was Mithridates the Sixth, the last king of Pontus. Born in 134BC, he claimed to be a direct descendent of the Persian king Darius I as well as some of Alexander the Great's generals. In 113BC he did the normal kinds of things most eastern potentates made when coming to power - like murdering his siblings, his mother and anyone else who might have tried to claim his throne. After this he settled down to various conquests around the rim of the Black Sea and Greece which eventually brought him into the line of fire of Rome. Once this happened he would spend the last thirty-years of his life trying to bring down the Roman Republic - through the kind of direct and indirect methods that would make Dr No and Professor Moriarty proud.

But enough of the humdrum...what made this guy such a stand out in intellect?

Well, for starters, Pliny claims Mithridates could speak twenty-two languages (that's right, 22), a record our Roman historian believed unequalled. Through-out his 56-year reign, it is said that Mithridates never once used an interpreter. So the guy was a linguist, what else? For one thing, he was very interested in chemistry - poisons in particular - since he considered this the most likely method for his ultimate doom. Self-guided he began drinking small doses of various poisons to increase his resistance, but he also set out to find as many antidotes as he could - in fact, he was a pioneer in this field. He continued research into more mundane medicines as well, gathering a vast collection of chemicals and medicinal specimens from across the known world, a collection so large that when it was captured by Pompey it became an important resource for Roman pharmacists.

Mithridates VI - 134BC-63BC,
you've got to dig those sideburns

So how did it all end for Mithridates? Well, with Pompey's invading army close at hand, he decided to poison himself so as to avoid being paraded in a Roman Triumph. Unfortunately, his anti-poison regime worked a treat and he remained unaffected by the same draught that had quickly killed his wife and youngest daughters. Depending on which story you believe he died by a sword blow he had ordered from his body-guard, or by the first Roman soldiers to get to him.

Find out if Calvus got into the pharmacy business    

Putting the Colosseum out to tender

You might find this surprising, but the Flavian Amphitheatre - more commonly referred to as the Colosseum -  wasn't something the Emperor Vespasian just dreamt up one day and ordered constructed forthwith. This was a complicated structure built to the most modern standards of the time - and it was, above all, being built in a commercial Roman world. This was a state-funded project, but it wasn't a state-built project. That's right, this was something for the lowest bidder to build. Planning began in 71AD, tenders were written, and to speed up the construction process, four successful bidders were each given a quarter of the 50,000-seat concrete stadium to build. Work began in 73AD and was completed seven years later...a time line we still often see for structures on this scale. Many of the design elements were standardised so much of the work was done in workshops off-site, with the completed sections being brought together in an ordered fashion. Ever the canny businessman, Vespasian made sure each of the bidders had to buy their work force from the state auctions, which at the time were overflowing with war captives from the Jewish revolt in Judea...and brought to Rome by...guess who, yep, Vespasian. He probably even made money on the deal.

Find out if Calvus ever got to be the lowest bidder

Birthday Revelations - Rewind

Here's another rewind from the vault...just for all those conspiracy theorists out there...

Julius Caesar was born on July 13th, 100BC (or the year 653 if you were Roman). The month July is named after him - if he hadn't been around we'd be calling it Quinember, and we'd probably be using a calendar that alternated between twelve and thirteen months...just like it was before he became Dictator for Life. Yes, this was a man who left a big mark on his time - he was declared a god by his people and a century after his death he was still a divisive world figure. So much so that in 69AD he became one of the most recognised characters from the Book of Revelations and a symbol for all things evil still used today.

Say what? Yep...Julius Caesar is the Second Beast John of Patmos described with the number 666. I know this is a big call, but John admits '666' is a code for a man's name, and well here it is. Julius Caesar was born 653 years after the foundation of Rome. He was born on the 13th. Add the two together...and well, I don't think John - an exiled Roman citizen living in an island cave - was trying to be too tricky. There are other clues in Revelation's Chapter 13 too - namely the grotesque First Beast John says the man '666' controlled. This was a creature with ten horns, seven heads - one of which was mortally wounded - and appeared as a leopard, a bear and a lion. Very bizarre stuff, but let's break it down from the perspective of 69AD. The seven heads represents the seven Caesars to have ruled since Julius (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba and Otho) - the mortally wounded head was Nero, who had committed suicide the year before and had begun the Christian persecutions. The leopard, bear and lion were all furs worn by the various standard bearers who marched at the head of each legion. And the ten horns? This could mean the ten legions Julius Caesar crushed Gaul with...but most likely means the Tenth Legion - Julius Caesar's favourite and also known as Caesar's Legion. In 69AD the Tenth Legion was in Judea putting down the Jewish Revolt, and was most famously involved in the siege of Masada three years later.

So why did John of Patmos include all this in his book? Julius Caesar had been dead for more than one hundred years, right? The best I can tell, John saw all of the legions and subsequent Caesars as a creation of just one man. And this meant every terrible deed committed in the name of Rome was a deed committed in the name of Julius Caesar - a false god to boot. I get the impression John of Patmos didn't like him - but then sitting in a remote cave for two years could leave anyone a little upset. Needless to say he wouldn't be wishing Julius Caesar 'Happy Birthday' today.

Find out what Calvus thought of Julius Caesar

Ancient Italy - it's not that simple

This may be a surprise to a lot of people, but prior to the Roman conquest of Italy, this peninsular was a hodge-podge of languages and cultures from throughout the Mediterranean - there was no common language and there was no 'Italian' people as we would recognise them today. In 400BC the Latin speaking Celts living around the small city of Rome made up a tiny part of the Italian population - they had migrated from the Danube region during the 1st-millennium BC. To their north in modern Tuscany was the Etrurian homeland. Like the Latins, the Etrurians arrived around the beginning of the 1st-millennium BC, but unlike the Latins they spoke an eastern language with Lidian origins - historicaly and ethnographically the Etrurians were or were closely related to the Trojans and that part of modern Turkey. North of Etruria along the modern day Po valley, the towns that would become Milan and Turin were populated by Celtic Gauls - similar in language and culture to their Latin cousins around Rome. East of Etruria and south of Rome were the Umbrians, Samnites and Lucanians who spoke the Osco-Umbrian language that is considered the origin for modern Italian. Culturally and linguistically distinct from the Latins and Gauls, these guys began building cities in the 9th-century BC, but are believed to be the descendants of Italy's bronze and iron age inhabitants prior to the 1st-millennium BC. But, hey, that's not all, most of the coastal cities south of Rome - and all the way to Sicily - were Greek colonies founded during the 8th and 7th-centuries BC - and many of these were still speaking Greek even after the fall of the Roman Empire. As for Sicily - it's western side was filled with Punic speaking Carthaginians, the east was Greek and in the middle were relatives of the Lucanians. So if you're thinking of Italians before all of Italy became 'Roman', then it's important you know exactly what part of Italy you're thinking about.

Find out if Calvus knew any Italian    

Milling about

We tend to imagine ancient households - if we imagine them at all - with the lady of the house spending her day by the millstone making flour for the day's bread. It was backbreaking work - it takes a lot of grain to make a loaf of bread. Roman soldiers on the march carried portable millstones as part of their tent kit - shared between ten men - bread was just too important to go without, even while you were marching twenty-five miles a day. But Pliny gives a snippet that the urbane 'daily grind' was not as tough as we might like to dreamily pretend. In 78AD he writes "...most of Italy uses a bare pestle and a millstone driven by a waterwheel." Not a whole lot to go on, but basically what he's saying is that most grain milled in Italy was done so in flour mills and factories. Just like today, flour milling was an industrial process - and most housewives weren't crouched around their grindstone making gritty flour - instead they were walking down to the shop to buy white or wholemeal, or even better, going to the bakery.

Find out if Calvus ever put his nose to the grindstone 

The 6th Legion...who were they?

The Sixth Legion is one of those bits of history that typically take one and one to get three. The whole story of the Sixth gets very confusing between the late Gallic wars and the subsequent Civil Wars (52BC-46BC) - where it famously became the legion Caesar took to Alexandria and then later Pontus. However a lot of the confusion appears to extend to the fact that at certain points in time the Sixth seemed to be fighting on both sides. While the obvious answer implies there were two Sixth legions at the same time - one being a Gallic legion raised by Julius Caesar and the other, one of Pompey's - some quite elaborate alternatives have been created that often almost need time travel to explain. However I'm a keen proponent of the obvious answer. Let's go to the beginning.

Pompey began numbering his legions in 65BC when he had seven legions established in Spain - 1 to 7 - as logic would have it. Obviously a Spanish 6th was one of these. The 8th and 9th were drafted the following year and in 61BC Julius Caesar raised the 10th while he was a Spanish Governor. As Caesar's Gallic campaign began in April 59BC, the 7th, 8th, 9th & 10th were moved to Gaul, leaving the Legions 1 to 6 still in Spain. Then Caesar has a major set back losing almost two legions in 54BC resulting in him 'borrowing' the 1st from Spain. And this is where things get interesting...I promise. At the end of 53BC - having already raised six Gallic legions (the 14th twice) - Caesar began recruiting for a seventh while he was wintering in his eastern Gallic province of Cisapline Gaul. However the Great Rebellion of Vercingetorix began before this legion was fully formed and it departed with Caesar known only as the 'Italian Draft'. After joining with a provincial garrison in southern Gaul this 'draft' dug its way through snowdrifts to reach the majority of the wintering legions and then it disappears from Caesar's writings. What happened to the Italian Draft? As far as most historians seem to think, nothing...it just up and disappeared. The thing is, it didn't of course.

A Roman legion was formed at one moment in time...the new recruits signed up and retired on the same day sixteen years later...there were no new recruits added later on, which meant a fighting legion could start off with 4800-men but only a few hundred might be left at the end. So the Italian Draft had to become their own legion at some point during 52BC - and after the battle of Gergovia where Caesar lost the best part of another two legions, it certainly did. Filling out the rest of its numbers with Roman refugees or local Roman militia from central or southern Gaul, the 'Draft' legion was most likely named at Agendencum during August 52BC - prior to the Caesar's planned evacuatation of the province. Failing that he named it and the end of the year before winter quartering - and, yes, it was named the '6th'. The fact this was his newest Gallic legion from the Gallic wars and he knew what they had achieved single-handedly during winter of January 52BC probably explains why Caesar used this legion for the Alexandrian and Pontic campaigns. And quite frankly, suggestions of him using Pompey's 6th Legion captured after the battle of Pharsulus instead of one his own trusted legions bends credibility a little too much.

Yep, you read it right...there were two 6th Legions in the Greek campaign - on different sides. So why did Caesar create this clash in numbers? It was probably unintentional, the 'Spanish 6th' was due to retire in 50BC and Caesar's intention appears to have been filling in the lower numbered legions as they
retired - he was going to have to do the same with the 7th as well. It may even have been a bit of insurance to force the retirement of the older legion on time. Pompey probably did retire this legion in early 50BC, reforming it again at the beginning of 49BC when the Senate decreed some 170,000 Italian men were to drafted for the civil war against Caesar, and as the numbered legions were his idea, Pompey probably didn't care if Caesar had already used the number 6, as only a Pompeian 6th would be the real 6th. Chances are Pompey's enormous Greek army had several legions with the same numbers as Caesar's.

   

Find out if Calvus could keep count