Fascinating History

Links: 1) Porn & Sexuality in Ancient Rome 2) Marriage in Ancient Rome 3) The History of Sex website has something to say on Rome .

The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant passage has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this unhappy queen. When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette as having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary portrait. She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small, pig-like eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and with a somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be bandaged tightly ...

All of my female readers will know what I mean when I say that tampons are perhaps the best invention for women ever! (Male readers with sisters, live-in girlfriends and wives will also have a good understanding too of why I say this...). Apparently the ancient Egyptians first invented the disposable tampon - theirs was made out of papyrus, ouch! I did some research on the history of tampons and came up with the following interesting links: Tampons through history http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltampons.htm An essay on tampons in American history The all-American tampon . The Museum of Menstruation (and it's not only open for 4 days a month!) Fascinating! http://www.mum.org/obger50s.htm And an interesting review of the aforementioned museum... http://www.publichistory.org/reviews/View_Review.asp?DBID=21

Priapus To be the agressor during sexual activity was to be the one in charge, the honourable one. Thus the sex of the partner or the type of experience was not so much the issue as was the person who was doing the actual thrusting. This was an issue set in stone for the Romans, so much so that they had two different verbs to descibe vaginal, anal or oral sex; one verb to indicate the active and another the passive role in the act. This meant that the agressor would be the futuere, pedicare or irrumare, whereas the recipient of all this action was the crisare, cevere or fellare and could risk becoming an outcast of society. The most humiliating punishment possible for an adult Roman male, was to be sexually assaulted. Statues of the god Priapus got this message across very clearly as they were painted bright red and possesed a huge and menacing erection. According to the Songs of Priapus the god would threaten anyone who stole crops or meddled with gardens (he was the protector of gar...

Casanova - not the most handsome guy in the world... Giacomo Casanova (1725-98) was more than just a man of the world. His manipulative charm enabled him to get round almost anyone. He even convinced the Pope to give him a dispensation to read pornographic books, which were forbidden by the Church. He managed to move around the highest aristocratic circles. Due to his extravagant lifestyle he was often in debt, and running away from angry creditors. He developed quite a reputation for seducing the ladies and so in 1755, at the age of 30, he was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition, charged with contempt for religion and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Of course, being Casanova, he could not stand for this and escaped from prison, and went on to travel throughout Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, England, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Russia and Asia Minor, having numerous affairs on the way. Casanova was said to know how to manipulate women's minds as well as their bodies. He would...

Lady Caroline Lamb & Lord Byron (from two separate paintings) Life for the rich and fashionable in London during the Regency period (1788 to 1830), was extravagant and decadent. Marriage was mostly seen as a business arrangement, with fidelity being very low on the priority list for both sexes. The idea was that a woman's duty was to provide her husband with at least one male heir. That objective having been achieved, the happy wife was free to amuse herself with as many lovers as she sought fit to. Lady Caroline Lamb was a typical example of the time. She was brought up in an environment in which all the adults were having affairs and many of her playmates were their illegitimate children. In her early teens she was married off to William Lamb, an ambitious politician and son of Lady Melbourne, ex mistress of the Prince of Wales. Two out of five of Lady Melbourne's children were rumoured to have been fathered by her lovers. Not long after her marriage Caroline embarked on ...

Benedict - the founder of the Benedictines In around 500 AD a Roman noble called Benedict, decided he'd had enough of food, sex, drink and everything the good life in the city had to offer, took one of his servants with him and settled in the countryside. There he started to develop a reputation for mending broken pottery, which inevitable attracted many visitors to him and forced him to seek his solitude in a remote cave, up a cliff face. Every day someone would lower a basket a food to him. Benedict believed it was pretty much a sin to enjoy yourself, so he made sure his meal was very plain. Too much enjoyment he thought, was distracting us from thanking god for the gift of life. Soon, Benedict's views started to appeal to others who sought to follow his example. He therefore set up his own monastery where he wrote the famous Rule , his set of regulations for monastic life. The Benedictines had arrived in the world! Benedict's community consisted of men who worked hard an...

These women were the stuff of legend. http://virginiarounding.com/horizontales.html http://www.curledup.com/courtesa.htm

Interesting link below http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/burnett5.html And the roles of each servant in the house http://www.mpmbooks.com/amelia/SERVANTS.HTM

Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) Life for the poor has always been difficult. In Victorian London, Henry Mayhew, a journalist and 'social investigator' delved deeply into the plight of the poor. He interviewed them and kept detailed trancripts of their accounts, thus giving us a first-hand insight into their world in hiw work London Labour and the London Poor . Below is a needle-woman's account: "I cannot earn more than 4s. 6d. to 5s. per week - let me sit from eight in the morning till ten every night...and my clear earnings [after paying for coal and other supplies] are a little but more than 2s...I consider trowsers the best work...Shirt work is the worst, the very worst, that can be got...A mother has got two or three daughters, and she don't wish them to go to service, and she puts them to this poor needlework; and that, in my opinion, is the cause of the destitution and the prostitution about the streets in these parts...Most of the workers are young girls who have n...

See link below (there are 3 pages to this one apparently...) http://www.dl.ket.org/latin2/mores/baths/history/page01.htm

"When another's fault offends you, turn to yourself and consider what similar shortcomings are found in you. do you, too, find your good in riches, pleasure, reputation, or such like? Think of this, and your anger will soon be forgotten in the reflection that he is only acting under pressure..." "Let no one have the right to say truthfully of you that you are without integrity or goodness; should any think such thoughts, see that they are without foundation. This all depends upon yourself, for who else can hinder you from attaining goodness and integrity? " "At every action, no matter by whom performed, make it a practice to ask yourself, 'What is his object in doing this?' But begin with yourself; put this question to yourself first of all."

Folks, don't try this at home! The ancient Romans used urine to get their white tunics clean and bleached. Of course, the ammonia contained in urine was what did the trick. Fullers collected urine for this purpose. Clothing was immersed in the repugnant liquid and bleached white. Needless to say, the smell of urine didn't just leave the clothes once washed out with water and one can only imagine how even the most wealthy and notable Romans smelt truly 'pissy'. Combine that with the charming smell of fish sauce (a favourite with the Romans) and the stench would be unbearable to the contemporary nose.

Alchemists believed that one substance could be canged into another. The Greek god Hermes was supposed to have started alchemy so it was called the Hermetic art and practised widely by the Greeks and Romans of the 3d century AD. When the Arabs conquered much of the East they developed the principles of alchemy even further and passed on to the medieval West via Spain. According to Roger Bacon, alchemy is "...a Science teaching how to transform any kind of metal in to another...". It is not surprising therefore to find out that the main focus for the alchemist was to transform any metal in to gold. Because alchemists believed that everything in the world can be perfected they were attracted to the idea of making everything as perfect as it was in the Garden of Eden. Clearly their beliefs were strongly influenced by Christian thinking. Because they saw gold as being the perfect metal, they felt that all metals must be slowly changing into gold. Their intervention was see...

In Tudor times widows were allowed to run their husbands' businesses and even train apprentices. Not all widows ran the business permanently - some only doing so for a year or so, while others remained in charge for several years. Within the period 1553 - 1640 seventy widows were left with the running of their late husbands' print shops and only twenty of them held on to them after 4 years, the rest having sold the shops. At that time widows represented one tenth of the publishing business. Dionisia Holme from Beverley in Yorkshire, sustained her late husband's wool trading business for fifteen years and made a large profit out of it. Another, called Mrs Baynham, ran a business trading wool, wine and herrings as well as running a boarding house in Calais and acres of farmland.

Oscar Wilde as a young man Oscar Wilde's liberal / anarchical views shocked Victorian society. This was sadly to be his downfall. Here is what he had to say about marriage and love: "One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry." "In married life three is company and two none." "Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead." See link below for more quotes from Oscar. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/oscarwilde121811.html

"Captain Smith and Pocahontas, they had a very mad affair..." Most people know this famous line from the song "Fever". How many though know the true story of Pocahontas? Click on link below to find out. http://www.apva.org/history/pocahont.html

Elizabethan ladies underwear You can dress an Elizabethan lady with your mouse here http://www.historyonthenet.com/Tudors/dress_the_elizabethan.htm And details of her outfit, right down to her underclothes... http://costume.dm.net/

The very complicated hairstyles for women in ancient Rome, didn't really arrive until the era of the Flavian emperors, after AD 69. Until then the hairstyles were pretty simple, with the hair being parted in the middle, then pulled back and tied up into a bun. Small ornaments were sometimes placed in the hair, depending on the occasion. As most Roman women had dark Mediterranean looks, fair hair was widely admired and coveted and therefore substances to lighten the hair were extremely popular. The most commonly used of these were Batavian foam and soap tablets from Wiesbaden or Mainz - made of goat fat and beechwood ash. They also used henna.

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer became one of the greatest figures in English medieval literature. He lived towards the end of the 14th Century and was Richard II's court poet. Satire was very much encouraged in Richard's court, so Chaucer was able to use his talent in order to talk of the corruption within the Church. He most famously wrote of a friar, who having been accompanied down to hell by an angel, commented with pleasure that he could not see any other friars there, assuming they were obviously all in heaven. The angel was very quick to correct him on that assumption and so he got hold of Satan and... 'Hold up thy tail thy Satanas' said he 'Show forth thine arse and let the friar see Where is the nest of friars in this place!' And ere that half a furlong way of space Right so as bees come swarming from the hive, Out of the devil's arse began to drive Twenty thousand friars in a route. And throughout hell they swarmed all about And came again as fast as the...

Senatorial tunic In ancient Rome, your clothes not only showed your status in society but also pinpointed exactly which layer of it you were positioned in. An eques (knight) would be a man who was basicaly able to provide 400,000 sesterces to buy his way into this rank. To be an equastrian was to be next to the senatorial class, but not quite there, if you see what I mean. This man would wear a thick gold ring to indicate his status and his white tunic had a narrow garnet-coloured stripe on it, what the Romans called purple. This stripe was called the augustus clavus . The top rank was of course the senatorial one. The senator's tunic, also white, had a broad Roman purple stripe on it, the latus clavus. His shoes had a crescent on them. The magistrate, although also a senator, even though he too wore a crescent, had slighlty higher soles in order to be distinguished from the others. Another important indicator of status was the length of a man's tunic. The longer the tunic, th...

Copper cooking pans Victorian food was notoriously adulterated. Probably the most widespread of these adulterations was the addition of chalk to bread, used to whiten it. As flour was expensive, many times the bread would have a fair amount of potato flour in it, as this was cheap. Alum would also be added. This enabled cheaper, inferior quality flour to be used in the process of breadmaking. Of course bakers were known for kneading the bread with their bare feet and considering the fact that in Victorian times people were said to have washed their feet only every two or even three weeks, I would say this qualifies as adulteration of food. In 1860 the Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Articles of Food and Drink was passed. However, this act was optional and it was up to the local authority to decide whether they wanted to comply with it or not. One can imagine this was not very effective. A contemporary account informs us that by 1869 nothing had come of it. Cooking wa...

Seneca Seneca had a lot to say about life and in a letter to his friend Paulinus, he goes on to talk of those who are overcome by fear and therefore make their lives appear very short. “But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present and fear the future. When they come to the end of it, the poor wretches realize too late that for all this time they have been preoccupied in doing nothing. And the fact that they sometimes invoke death is no proof that their lives seem long. Their own folly afflicts them with restless emotions which hurl themselves upon the very things they fear…They lose the day waiting for the night and the night in fearing the dawn. Even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing the worrying thought steals over them: ‘How long will this last?’ This feeling has caused kings to bewail their power…”

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece Here is a link to ancient Greek recipes, eating habits, etc: http://www.greek-recipe.com/static/ancient/

If you have ever thought you have the job from hell think again. Here's an interesting article on working conditions in late 18th and early 19th century Britain. Working Conditions in Late 18th, and early 19th Century Britain. And of course, althought not history (yet), I can totally relate to this one! :-) http://thinkinglola.blogspot.com/2005/08/why-recruitment-agencies-suck.html

Cato the Younger Servilia Caepionis was the half sister of Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger. She married a fairly insignificant man and her son, Brutus grw up to become one of Julius Caeasar's assassins. What she is most famous for however, is for being Julius Caesar's mistress. She was several years older than him but apparently he was very much taken with her and even bought her a priceless black pearl upon his return from the Gallic Wars. Servilia was a very bold woman and did not behave like a typical Roman mistress. She did not wait around for him. If she wanted to see Caesar she would make this known to him. Actually, this led to their affair becoming public. One day when Caesar was at the Senate a messenger came up to him with an urgent letter. It ws of course a love letter from Servilia, but of course Cato the Younger (her hafl brother) did not know this. As Caesar attempted to read Servilia's letter discreetly, Cato saw him acting in a secretive manner and accused h...

Most middle class women during the Victorian era, married by the time they were 25, the ideal age to commit oneself to matrimony being 20. If they had not managed to attract a husband by the age of 30, they well and truly on the way to being left on the shelf, so to speak. Marriage in the Victorian era, was usually very much a case of giving up the little independence a woman had in order to become her husband's servant. It was also a means of securing financial security. A writer The Magazine of Domestic Economy in 1843, writes : "...to sell one's independence for gold is repugnant to all correct feeling. It is too often done, notwithstanding that unhappiness is the secret or evident result. We are no advocates for improvident marriages. Love in a cottage is very delightful, but it must be a cottage ornee and if with a double coach house the love will be the more enduring." However, the husband to be did not simply go into a marriage offering all material good...

Menage a trois - Fersen on the top, Louis on the bottom and Marie Antoinette centre of attraction... King Louis the XVI was not one of the most fascinating men in history. In fact he was rather boring, as the entries below from a section of his diary show. Sunday, 13—­Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the house of M. de Saint-Florentin. Monday, 14—­Interview with Mme. la Dauphine. Tuesday, 15—­Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles. Wednesday, 16—­My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet in the Salle d’Opera. Thursday, 17—­Opera of “Perseus.” Friday, 18—­Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one. Saturday, 19—­Dress-ball in the Salle d’Opera. Fireworks. Thursday, 31—­I had an indigestion. Not only was Louis incredibly boring but he also had little or no interest in sex. It is not surprising therefore, that his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette soon saught to be fulfilled elsewhere. It is said that after four years of marriage ...

Tiberius The Emperor Tiberius is not known for his support of democratic values. However, Suetonius has an interesting, if not amusing account of his attitude to people who said bad things about him or his family. He was, moreover, quite unperturbed by abuse, slander, or lampoons on himself and his family and would often say that liberty to speak and think as one pleases is the test of a free country. When the Senate asked that those who had offended in this way should be brought to book, he replied: 'We cannot spare the time to undertake any such new enterprise. Open that window and you will let in such a rush of denunciations as to waste your whole working day; everyone will take this opportunity of airing some private feud.' A remarkably modest statement of his is recorded in the 'Proceedings of the Senate': 'If So-and-so challenges me, I shall lay before you a careful account of what I have said and done; if that does not satisfy him, I shall reciprocate his dis...

The Elizabethans liked to give secret meanings to their salads. Therefore, each vegetable / ingredient, was used to convey a specific message. Here is a list of the most common meanings associated with some of the most widely used ingredients: Asparagus: Renewing of love Borage: You make me glad Bugloss: I am pleased with you Scallion: I love you not Cabbage lettuce: Your love feedeth me Bitter lettuce: I love you not Olives: Your love annoyeth me Rosemary flowers: I accept your love Winter savory: I offer you my love Radish: Pardon me Strawberries: I am altogether yous Raspberries: Come again

"Withdraw into yourself. Our master-reason asks no more than to act justly and thereby to achieve calm." "Do away with all fancies. Cease to be passion's puppet. Limit time to the present. Learn to recognize every experienec for what it is, whether it be your own or another's. Divide and classify the objects of sense into cause and matter. Meditate upon your last hour. Leave your neighbour's wrong-doing to rest with him who initiated it." "Fix your thought closely on what is being said and let your mind enter fully into what is being done and into what is doing it." "Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; They heed not thy vexation."

Friedrich Engels To live in Victorian London was very grim indeed, but to die there was a pretty nasty business too. Friedrich Engels, in his The Condition of the Working Class in England wrote about this in horrific detail, based on his experiences between November 1842 and August 1844. "The corpses of the poor have no better fate than the carcases of animals. The pauper burial ground at St. Bride's is a piece of open marshland which has been used since Charles II's day and there are heaps of bones all over the place. Every Wednesday the remains of dead paupers are thrown into a hole which is 14 feet deep. A clergyman gabbles through the burial service and then the grave is filled with loose soil. On the following Wednesday the ground is opened again and this goes on until it is completely full. The whole neighbourhood is infected by the dreadful stench from this burial ground."

Alexandre Dumas fils On February 5th 1847 Marie Duplessis, the notorious Parisian courtesan, inspiration for Dumas’s Camille and Verdi’s La Traviata, died of tuberculosis. She was only 23 years old. Most of fashionable Paris showed up at her funeral. Charles Dickens was amongst the crowd who attended the funeral. He commented: “One could have believed that Marie was Jeanne d’Arc or some other national heroine, so profound was the general sadness.” A year later, Alexandre Dumas the younger, wrote La Dame aux Camelias. Dumas had had an affair with Marie, between 1844 and 1845 and much of the story is based on this experience, so when the novel was published people read it as fact and not fiction. Their affair had been a subject of gossip amongst Parisian high society. The novel of course became extremely successful . Of course the novel was rather far way from the truth. Marie Duplessis (borne Alphonsine Plessis) had a very unpleasant life. She did not die in the arms of her lover but al...

As I have been asked about the invention of the seven-day week and when that was (the Assyrian's invented it by the way), please see link below, which provides lots of information on that and related issues. http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/planets_y_powers.html

The followng links offer a rich variety of original, Medieval recipes. http://members.tripod.com/BlackTauna/recipes.html http://www.bitwise.net/~ken-bill/med-p1.htm (these have been 'adapted for the modern cook'.) Enjoy!

In 45 BC Julius Caesar decreed a new calendar, based on the 365-da year as calculated by Sosigenes of Alexandria. However, Sosigenes's year had an extra quarter of a day to it so he cleverly added an extra day in the end of February for every fourth year, which was called bis-secto-kalendae . Caesar, via the Senate, also changed the name of the month of Quintilis to 'July' (in later years the month of Sextilis was renamed 'August' in order to honour Augustus). In the 4th century AD Constantine the Great added the seven-day week to the calendar (he was inspired by the book of Genesis), while in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII adjusted the calendar, so it was from then on known as the Gregorian calendar.

A Dickensian Life - Oliver Twist epitomizes the life of an abandoned child in Victorian London A wealth of information on the lives of London's poor during the Victorian era, can be found in Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. Contraception was not really understood or practiced in those days, so inevitably the poor would have children which many times they were not able to look after. Some were so poor they could not let their children out to play because they had no clothes for them. Thus we have the story of one mother, whose kids got out onto the street wearing nothing but some bits from an old sack. Parents were many times in prison, in the workhouse or dead. The 'baby-farmer' was sort of like a baby-sitter but with a more sinister twist. While the parents or single mother worked, the children would be entrusted to the 'baby-farmer' to be looked after, for a fee of course. One tragic story tells of a mother who earning 6s and 3s a week making paper...

The Victorian City of London 9s a week was a milk-woman's wage 10s 6d was what a dentist charged for 2 fillings 16s was the top wage of a woman operating a sewing machine £1 per week was what the average coffee-stall keeper, general labourer or female copy clerk in the City earned With £4 being the minimum cost of a funeral, life cannot have been easy for the above. A live-in maid would earn £6 a year while a general servant would make £16 annually. A full set of false teeth cost £21, which probably meant that all the above went about toothless... A buttler would make £42 per annum while a clerk at the Post Office took home £90 a year. Now, an Anglican parson could probably get his false teeth as he got £140 a year, whereas teh Governor of the Bank of England, with an annual income of £400 could afford a twelve coffin vault in Highgate Cemetary for £136 10s, if he saved enough. A box in the The Royal Opera House was out of reach for most people as it cost £8,000, except for people ...

Clementine and Winston after many years of marriage Winston Churchill's letter to his wife Clementine below, really sums up the mature love which succeeds romantic love and passion in a long marriage. January 23, 1935 My darling Clemmie, In your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me, about my having enriched your life. I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me, because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt, if there can be accounts in love.... What it has been to me to live all these years in your heart and companionship no phrases can convey.Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years? Your loving husband (Winston Churchill)

In the last decade the English have developed a taste for wine and are now said to consume more wine than the French. In Tudor times however, wine was a favourite drink, especially a type of very sweet wine made in the Mediterranean, most notably in the Greek town of Monemvasia and certain parts of Cyprus. The secret was in the fact that the grapes, although ripe in the end of July, were not picked until September. They would then dry them out a bit for 3 days, after which they would squeeze the juice out of them, put it in jars, which were then buried. The contents would ferment and the end product would be an extremely sweet wine, which was very expensive. The Tudors often liked their wine to be spiced, an example of which was Hippocras which had been drunk since the Middle Ages. The spices used were usually a mixture of ginger, cloves and to nutmeg, to which they would also add 4lb of sugar per gallon of wine.

"When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it." "To see the things of the present moment is to see all that is now, all that has been since time began and all that shall be unto the world's end; for all things are of one kind and one form." "No one can stop you living according to the laws of your own personal nature, and nothing can happen to you against the laws of the World-Nature."

Lady Hamilton Lady Hamilton was born Emma Lyon, in Cheshire, England on the 26th April 1765. As the daughter of a blacksmith she didn't have the necessary background to mix with polite society. However, she was determined to do so and so she polished up her act, changed her name to Emma Hart and went off to London. By 1782 she had already become notorious as the mistress to several influential men. A rumour even went round that she had had an illegitimate child with Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh. The girl was apparently named Emma Carew and sent off to live in Wales for the rest of her life. She was living with Charles Francis Greville when he sent her to Italy to be the mistress of his uncle, Sir Wiliam Hamilton, in exchange for a cancellation of his debts. Hamilton was a diplomat. He fell for Emma and they were married in 1791. After having become a close friend of Queen Marie Caroline of Naples, she met Nelson in 1793. Now Nelson was no handsome young guy. In fact he had lost his ...

A variety of Roman recipes on this website. (Please click on link below) http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl_roman_recipes_upper_classes.htm

On the 15th March 44 B.C (Ides of March), Julius Caesar was assassinated. Suetonius, not surprisingly, gives us a detailed account of those events. "As soon as Caesar took his seat the conspirators crowded around him as if to pay their respects. Tillius Cimber, who had taken the lead, came up close, pretending to ask a question. Caesar made a gesture of postponment, but Cimber caught hold of his shoulders. 'This is violence!' Caesar cried, and at that moment, as he turned away, one of the Casca brothers with a sweep of his dagger stabbed him just below the throat. Caesar grasped Casca's arm and ran it through with his stylus; he was leaping away when another dagger blow stopped him. Confronted by a ring of drawn daggers, he drew the top of his gown over his face and at the same time ungirded the lower part, letting it fall to his feet so that he would die with both legs decently covered. Twenty-three dagger thrusts went home as he stood there. Caesar did not utter a so...

And some more from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations : "Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet: when an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice; when an impression forms, assure yourself first of its certainty." "Do not copy the opinions of the arrogant, or let them dictate your own, but look at things in their true light." " Observe how all things are continually being born of change; teach yourself to see that Nature's highest happiness lies in changing the things that are, and forming new things after their kind. Whatever is, is in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it. Nothing can become a philosopher less than to imagine that seed can only be something that is planted in the earth or the womb." "Observe carefully what guides the actions of the wise and what they shun or seek."

The following love letter was written in 108 AD by Pliny the Younger to his third wife Calpurnia, when he was 47. "You cannot believe how much I miss you. I love you so much and we are not used to separations. So I stay awake most of the night thinking of you, and by day I find my feet carrying me (a true word, carrying) to your room at the times I usually visited you; then finding it empty I depart, as sick and sorrowful as a lover locked out."

Mycobacterium tuberculosis We know that TB has been present since ancient times and has been one of the main causes of death throughout the ages. Examinations of parts of the spinal columm of Egyptian mummies from 2400 BC, show certain signs of the disease. The official name for the cause of the disease is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Throughout the centuries it has had many names. The Ancient Greeks called it phthisis (consumption). Around 460 BC Hippocrates identified the disease as the most widespread one of his time, noting that almost every case was fatal. He even advised his fellow doctors not to visit patients at the late stages of the disease as their death would be inevitable. During the 17th century the first pathological and anatomical decriptions of the disease appeared. Sylvius in 1679, was the first to identify the tubercles as a characteristic change occuring in the lungs and other areas of the patients' body. The earliest references to the infectiousness of the dise...

Love letters always fascinate me. Here's one from Beethoven: "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at ...

Christine de Pisan, was one of the most important figures in medieval literature. Most notably, she was the first woman to make a living from writing and is considered by many to be the first feminist in history as she was the first to denounce women’s inferior position in society. Christine was born in Venice in 1364. Her father was an astrologer and when she was five years old he took her to live in France, where he became astrologer to King Charles V. Christine spent the rest of her life in France. Due to her father’s privileged position at court, she was able to be socialise in court circles and was educated. At the age of fifteen she was married off to Estienne de Castel, a man who subsequently became the court secretary. Ten years later, at the age of 25 she was widowed and having no other means to support herself and her three children she turned to writing. It was a long shot but unlike any other woman of her time she became successful. Christine wrote poetry and prose. She foc...

http://www.classicsunveiled.com/romel/html/intdecor.html

A bucket of scrolls Printing did not exist in the ancient world so books were all hadwritten. There was no such thing as paper made of wood pulp either, so papyrus was used, a sheet made of processed papyrus reeds which grew in the Nile region of Egypt. Papyrus was indeed one of Egypt's most important exports. Papyrus was expensive and it came in several gradings according to quality. A encyclopaedia from around 70 A.D. lists these as: Grade 1: the Emperor Augustus's own, the finest of all, favoured above all for letter-writing (these were 13-inch sheets) Grade 2: His wife Livia's own (also 13 inches) Grade 3: priestly, reserved for Egyptian sacred texts (10-inch sheets) Grade 4: amphitheatre papyrus, amde at Rome in Fannius' workshop under the amphitheatre and extremely thin (9-inch sheets) Grade 5: Saite, named after an Egyptian town with low quality papyrus beds (less than 9 inches) Grade 6: Taeneotic, named after another Egyptian town, sold by weight, not quality Gr...

"Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbours, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming...means a loss of opportunity for some other task."

Augustus (aka Octavian) Suetonius describes what Augustus looked like: "Augustus was remarkably handsome and of very graceful gait even as an old man;but negligent of his personal appearance...body and limbs so beautifully proportioned..." And he always had bad hair days? "He cared so little about his hair that, to save time, he would have two or three barbers working hurriedly on it together and meanwhile read or write something..." His countenance apparently had mysterious powers... "He always wore so serene an expression, whether talking or in repose, that a Gallic chief once confessed to his compatriots: 'When granted an audience with the Emperor during his passage across the Alps I would have carried out my plan of hurling him over a cliff had not the sight of that tranquil face softened my heart; so I desisted.' " And his eyes.. "Augustus's eyes were clear and bright and he liked to believe that they shone with a sort of divine radia...

Jane Austen It is probably surprising to hear that career women existed in 18th century London. In fact, they dominated the business of clothes (the rag trade, as we would call it), they ran schools, they were dentists and silversmiths, wrote novels (think of Jane Austen) and books on being a good housewife. There were also some women who took to highway robbery. An account from 1763 tells of how a gentleman and his wife were ambushed on Harrow Road. One of them "insisted the gentleman should do her a favour under a thick hedge" . The highway-woman's partner apparently got jealous and took the gentleman's wife under the other hedge for similar purposes. While the highway-woman was being 'entertained' by her captive, she heard the ticking of his watch and demanded that he surrender that to her as well, which he did "with some reluctance" .

Beef was the preferred meat in Restoration London - at least if you could afford it. The French Henri Misson, visiting England at the time, wrote: "I always heard they were great fresh eaters and I found it true. I have known several people in England that never eat any bread and universally they eat very little: they nibble a few crumbs, while they chew the meat by whole mouthfuls. Generally speaking, the English tables are not delicately served... [they will have] a piece of roast beef; another time they will have a piece of boiled beef and then they salt it some days beforehand and besiege it with five or six heaps of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or some other herbs or roots, well peppered and salted and swimming in butter." Sunday was of course the day when it was "...common practice to have a huge piece of roast beef of which they stuff till they can swallow no more and eat the rest cold, without any other victuals, the other six days of the week." Of course buc...

Henry VIII - excessive masticator No, before you even think of it, this has nothing to do with spitting. Meat was the main part of an aristocrat's diet in Tudor times. In Henry VIII's time, at Hampton Court Palace, there were about 1,000 servants or more, depending on the times of year (there were more in the winter). There was a strict hierarchy amongst the servants and so even kitchen staff were divided into ranks. Around two-hundred or so people worked in the palace kitchen. At the very bottom of the kitchen staff hierarchy were the so called 'Spit Boys'. Their job was to turn the enormous iron spits used to roast the large quantities of meat. Their job was arduous and painful as they had to do this for hours on end. The spits were over big open fires which emanated alot of heat. These guys were not boys though, as the sheer size and weight of the loaded spits meant that no mere 'boy' could do this. The term 'boy' was used in a derogatory way. The spi...

Samuel Pepys There was no abundance of pornography in Samuel Pepys' London. If you wanted a porno book you had a long search to look forward to and when you eventually found it the likelihood would be that it was in French. Worse still, nine times out of ten it would not be illustrated. Only Aretino's Postures (the title says it all really) was equiped with explicit illustrations, although the British Library copy has had these omitted... One of the most famous books of this kind was the L'Ecole des Filles which described all kinds of situations, whereas the Dialogue Betwwen Tullia and Octavia took the reader further, into the world of s&m, group sex and other such practices. Rare Verities even went so far as to describe acts of bestiality. Samuel Pepys, not a man to shy away from the pleasures of the flesh, one day went into his bookseller's shop, where he saw a copy of L'Ecole des Filles : "...I saw the French book which I did think to have had for my w...

Abelard and Heloise Most have heard of the tragic love story of Heloise and Abelard - (if not then please see my post in the May archives, dated May 6th). Heloise was unusually educated for a seventeen-year-old girl in the 12th century AD. Her favourite topic was philosophy. After she and Abelard had falled in love, she exchanged numerous letters with him on the nature of love, lost and the meaning of marriage (he wanted to marry her but she did not). Heloise was strongly opposed to the institution of marriage, arguing of "...the basic impossibility of combining marriage and scholarship..." . Heloise was greatly influenced by her Classical studies and she often expressed her disdain for the idea of a woman giving up her independence in order to enter into a profitable marriage. She wrote: "God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and mor...

Tiberius Suetonius has alot to tell us of Tiberius's sexual appetites. (The faint-hearted and sensitive should not read on). "On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri's woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this "the old goat's garden," punning on the island's name. He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to cr...

I think the following website pretty much says it all on the subject. :-) http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-dress.html

Tiberius Claudius Nero was nothing like his suspicious, tyrannical son. Born in 85 B.C. he was a member of the Claudian family. He was a supporter of Julius Caesar and after he had served as quaestor, Caesar sent him to command his fleet in the Alexandrian War. Tiberius did very well and the battle was won so when he came back home to Rome, Caesar made him a priest (do not think of Christian-style priests, this is more of a political position) and then sent him off to set up colonies in the Roman provinces, mainly Gaul. After Julius Caesar was assassinated, Tiberius called an amnesty in order to stop senators quarelling with each other and was later made praetor. As a supporter of Julius Caesar, he was on Mark Anthony's side and not Octavian's. His dislike for Octavian was about to get worse though. In either 43 or 42 B.C. Tiberius married Livia who was also his cousin (this may explain why Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero were all rather unhinged, so to speak, as the...

1963 was a year of scandal for British politics. The Profumo case nearly brought the government down and as if that wasn't enough, Duncan Sandys, the son-in-law of Winston Churchill announced that he was going to resign because of some nasty rumours that had been spread about him. What where these rumours about? Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, was the daughter of a Scottish millionaire. She was brought up in lavish surroundings and had all that she asked for. In the inter-war years she married a wealthy American stockbroker and several years later, during the war, she stepped into an empty lift shaft and suffered horrible injuries. Amazingly she recovered and was able to walk again. However, it was said that her personality had acquired a new trait; she had become utterly promiscuous. Her appetite was said to be insatiable. In 1947 she got a divorce. Shortly afterwars, she met Ian Campbell, the future Duke of Argyll. Margaret wanted a title and Ian needed her cash. The result was thei...

Claudius "Most people think that Claudius was poisoned; but when and by whom is disputed. Some say that the eunuch Halotus, his official taster, administered the drug while he was dining with the priests in the Citadel; others that Agrippina did so herself at a family banquet, poisoning a dish of mushrooms, his favourite food. An equal dicrepancy exists between teh accounts of what happened next. According to many, he lost his power of speech, suffered frightful pain all night long, and died shortly before dawn. A variant version is that he fell into a coma but vomited up the entire contents of his overloaded stomach and was then poisoned a second time, either by a gruel - the excuse being that he needed food to revive him - or by means of an enema, the excuse being that his bowels required relief and must be emptied too."

Claudius "Most people think that Claudius was poisoned; but when and by whom is disputed. Some say that the eunuch Halotus, his official taster, administered the drug while he was dining with the priests in the Citadel; others that Agrippina did so herself at a family banquet, poisoning a dish of mushrooms, his favourite food. An equal dicrepancy exists between teh accounts of what happened next. According to many, he lost his power of speech, suffered frightful pain all night long, and died shortly before dawn. A variant version is that he fell into a coma but vomited up the entire contents of his overloaded stomach and was then poisoned a second time, either by a gruel - the excuse being that he needed food to revive him - or by means of an enema, the excuse being that his bowels required relief and must be emptied too."

A decree issued by Queen Elizabeth I in 1597 details what people should and should not wear. The decree is very elaborate. For men: "Her Majesty doth straightly charge and command that none shall wear in his apparel cloth of gold or silver tissued, silk of colour purple, under the decree of an Earl, except Knights of the Garter in their purple robes only. None shall wear cloth of gold or silver, tinselled satin, silk or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver, woollen cloth made out of the realm under the degree of a baron, except Knights of the Garter, Privy Counsellors to the Queen's Majesty." As for women, Elizabeth felt that only countesses could wear cloth of gold or silver tissued, or purple silk, except viscountesses who were allowed to wear cloth of gold or silver tissued in their kirtles only . Every rank had its own particular way of dressing, textiles that only they could wear. The poor wore coarse woollen garments...