All Roads Lead to Rome

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Rome is the ultimate city, the defining metropolis, that same civis from which the fundamental concept of civilisation derives. The place enshrines extremes of human grandeur and baseness like no other, reminding us of the enduring paradox of our species – that transcendent resources of imagination, faith and creativity can exist alongside barbarism, arrogance and […]

Plebs on Parade

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

A Roman in Africa once made a curse, calling on the daemon to ‘torture and kill the horses of the Green and the White teams, kill and smash the charioteers Clarus, Felix, Primulus, Romanus’, and ‘not leave a breath in them’. Fragments of these curse tablets have been found all over the Roman world, and […]

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