Fascinating History

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...

To all London readers, I hope you, your family, friends and colleagues are all ok on this terrible day. Please take care! A.

George IV was the son of the notorious King George III. Instead of developing a reputation for being well and truly mad like his father, George junior became known as a great ladies man and bon viveur. George loved to indulge and he did so often. Throughout his life he had a series of mistresses, the first of which was Mary Robinson when he was 18 years-old in 1780. She was an actress and said to be extremely witty with very long dark hair. He saw her in a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre and started sending her expensive gifts. As the affair progressed he decided to write her a bond for 20,000 guineas, which was a lot of money in those days. However, when the affair was over the Prince took the bond back and instead gave her an annuity of 500 pounds per annum. Next on his list was Mrs Grace Dalrymple Eliot. She had married a man 20 years her senior, a doctor for the aristocracy. This gave her entry to London's high society circles where she met the Prince as well as other men...

Josephine The story of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais has got to be one of the most passionate and stormy love affairs in history. Josephine's husband had been executed at the guillotine during the Terror in Paris in 1794. As a widow however, she did not remain idle for long and became mistress to several prominent politicians of the time. In 1795 she started a relationship with Napoleon, who was 6 years younger than her and married him in March of the following year after an intense an all-consuming love affair. In 1810, after years of failing ot produce an heir for him they both agreed to divorce. The intensity of their relationship comes across very strongly in Napoleon's letters to her, an example of which is the below: "Dec. 29, 1795 I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart. Are you angry with me? Are you unhappy? A...

The Roman Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117 - 138) loved to travel. In fact he spent most of his reign travelling through his provinces and has the honour of being the only ruler to have ruled over most of the European mainland, North Africa until the end of the Sahara, the Middle East and Britain and to have actually been to these places. Wherever Hadrian travelled to, as well as having a huge entourage to go with him (his wife, familly, friends, staff, slaves, etc.), he was followed by a large number of petitioners, hoping to present him with their issue. There is a tale of a woman who comfronted Hardian while he was on horseback and asked him to listen to her plight. When he told her he had no time, she replied that he might as well not be the emperor, at which point Hardian decided to listen to her and got off his horse. In Cassius Dio's words: 'Once, when a woman made a request of him as he passed by on a journey, he at first said to her, "I haven't time," but afterw...

Elizabethan food had little if any resemblance to contemporary English dishes. Recipes of the day added sugar, honey and fruit like oranges, prunes and dates to meat. A rabbit for example was stuffed with pepper and currants and then boiled in mutton broth. A recipe for capon (castrated rooster) included sugar, nutmeg and almonds and was served with prunes. One could also boil a capon in a broth of eight oranges, sugar, cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg. The brains of capons were also utilised to make brain pies. Sheep’s head was a delicacy. Instead of a baking tin, Elizabethan cooks used a tray made of hard pastry, which was unnervingly called a ‘coffin’. Coffins were not made to be eaten of course. Fish was either poached or fried in butter, while the poor ate dried salted cod. Salmon, turbot and eel were all poached in ale. Strawberries were soaked in red wine with sugar, cinnamon and ginger and cherries would be served with mustard. A recipe for pie goes like this: “To make a pie o...

Everyone has probably heard of Lady Godiva riding naked through the streets of Coventry 900 years ago. Godiva was married to Leofric, Earl of Mercer and Lord of Coventry. The notorious ride has been lost between myth and reality and we do not have any concrete evidence that it really too place at all. Roger of Wendover in 1057 writes of Godiva begging her husband to lessen the tax burden he had imposed on the people of Coventry. After having been nagged for some time about this, Leofric told her he would do as she wanted but under one condition: She would have to ride through town completely naked. The story goes that she accepted this and after ordering the people to stay indoors and shut their windows and doors (windows in Anglo-Saxon England were not made of glass and were more similar to shutters), she loowened her extremely long hair, had it cover her as a cloak and mounted her horse. The people apparently obeyed her orders and did not peep as she rode through the streets, except ...