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Might Jesus and his 12 apostles have something to do with it? Discover the medieval history behind triskaidekaphobia – the fear of the number 13 – and why it is considered an unlucky number
Forget the Ides of March and Halloween – for some, a Friday that also happens to be the 13th of the month is scariest and unluckiest day of the year. The fear of Friday 13th is very real. It's even been given a scientific name, paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek words Paraskeví, meaning Friday, and dekatreís, meaning 13. But what is it about this day and date combo that has given millions the heebie jeebies. Here's what we know of we know about Friday 13th's hazy history. When did people start believing Friday 13th was unlucky? It's believed that this superstition began in the Middle Ages. Some think it's related to the Last Supper, when 13 people were present at the meal before Jesus's crucifixion on Good Friday. Others think it's related to the Knights Templar, who were arrested for heresy on Friday 13 October 1307. But fear of 13 predates Christianity. The number 13 has been considered unlucky for millenia, and by many different cultures around the world. Why is the 13th unlucky? The ancient Romans believed that the number 13 was a bad omen, foretelling ill-fortune and death. The Vikings also hated 13, because in Norse mythology a banquet was held for 12 of the Norse gods during which the trickster god, Loki, appeared uninvited, like the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, and as a result the beloved god Balder died. The Mayans thought that the 13th 'baktun' (a period equivalent to almost 400 years) would spell the end of the world – however, this came and went in 2012. For centuries, hosts avoided having 13 people seated around a dining table, convinced that the first person to leave would die within the year. Indeed, 16th-century witch-hunters often tried to claim there had been 13 people at a gathering – proof that the accused were witches in league with the devil. Why is Friday the 13th unlucky? Why Friday the 13th is considered especially unlucky isn't entirely clear. The first written record we have of the number 13 and Friday being unlucky in conjunction only dates to the 19th century, in a biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini: "He was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away." Friday the 13th remains one of the most prevalent historical superstitions that we carry on today (alongside that of kissing under the mistletoe). Many people still choose to stay in bed to reduce the likelihood of accidents, and it's estimated that in the US, as much as $900 million is lost in business each time as a result.
How are popes elected? Here's what happens after a pope dies
What comes after a pope dies? Step through the doors of Vatican into the conclave – the secretive, ritualistic and sometimes scandalous process that turns a cardinal into the next pontiff
From the death (or more rarely, resignation) of a pope to the famous white smoke drifting out of a Sistine Chapel chimney, the centuries-old process of electing a new pope is defined by ritual and ceremony, but also secrecy. Taking place behind closed doors, it falls to an assembly of cardinals – a conclave – to vote for the new head of the Catholic Church. What happens when a pope dies? The death of a pope has to be confirmed by a medic, but it is only official once a particular action is taken by the camerlengo – the cardinal who oversees the running of the Vatican’s property and revenue. The camerlengo calls out the pope’s baptismal name three times and only when he receives no response can he declare the death. Traditionally, the camerlengo have also tapped the pontiff’s head with a silver hammer. He then notifies both senior church officials and the general public. The pope’s apartment will be locked – according to a historic practice that prevented looting – and preparations are made for the symbolic destruction of the pope’s ring and seal, signalling the end of his authority. The pope must be buried between four and six days after the death, while the official period of mourning is observed for nine days. Not long after that, the cardinals gather for the conclave. How is a new pope chosen? The conclave explained A conclave is the gathering of cardinals summoned to the Vatican to elect a new pope. Not all members of the College of Cardinals, the most senior clergy of the Catholic Church below the papacy itself, are eligible to participate due to age restrictions. The word derives from the Latin for ‘with a key’, referring to how the cardinals are literally shut away from the wider world while they vote. Conclaves nearly always take place in the event of a pope’s death. Since Gregory XII in 1415, there has only been one papal resignation: Benedict XVI, who, in 2013, left the Holy See citing his advanced age. Read more | Holy smoke, antipopes and power struggles: a guide to popes and the papacy Why are the cardinals shut off from the world? The conclave is held in the highest secrecy, well away from public glare and with the cardinals isolated from any potential external influence. Even the two non-cardinal masters of ceremonies must leave before voting commences. For the entire duration of the conclave, the assembled cardinals must remain in a sealed-off section of the Vatican. They have no access to televisions, radios, newspapers or mobile phones, and must take – along with members of Vatican staff – an oath of secrecy, on threat of excommunication. The process was brought to life in the 2024 film Conclave, helmed by All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger and starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, and based on the bestselling novel by Robert Harris. It follows the workings of a fictional conclave – one filled with scandal and even-deeper secrets – but still helps us to see behind the doors of this peculiar and sometimes controversial procedure. Who votes for a new pope? Not all cardinals are permitted to participate in a conclave. In November 2024, there were more than 230 members of the College of Cardinals around the world, but the maximum number of who can vote is 120. This goes back to 1975, when Paul VI changed the rules so that no cardinal over the age of 80 could be in a conclave. The College of Cardinals have held the responsibility of electing a new pope since 1059, when the process was reformed by Nicholas II. Prior to that, the pope, officially known as the Bishop of Rome, was most likely elected by local clergy and churchgoers, and often under the influence of the Roman emperors and then Holy Roman emperors. Who can be elected as pope? In theory, any baptised male Catholic can become pope. In practice, however, the College of Cardinals always makes their choice from within their own number. The last head of the Catholic Church who was not previously a cardinal was Urban VI, who was elected in 1378. Read more | Has there ever been a married pope? Where are most popes from? Of the 266 popes there have been to date, 217 were born in Italy. The remaining pontiffs have come from 14 other countries, mostly France (16). The only Englishman to head the Catholic Church was Adrian IV, who held the office from 1154-1159. How do cardinals elect a pope? Once gathered from all around the world, the cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel. This is the venue for the conclave. Nine cardinals are randomly selected for particular roles during the election: three ‘scrutineers’ count, check and announce the votes; three ‘infirmarii’ deliver the ballots of any cardinals whose ill health prevents them attending a round of voting; and three ‘revisers’ double-check the work of the scrutineers. A round of voting, or scrutiny, consists of two masters of ceremony distributing paper ballots. They and the other handful of non-cardinals permitted in the Sistine Chapel must then exit. Each cardinal writes the name of their preferred candidate on their ballot, disguising their handwriting, and folds the paper twice, before walking to the chapel’s altar, placing it on a paten (a plate used during the Mass) and sliding it into a chalice. As they do so, they declare, “I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one before God I think should be elected”. The collated ballots are examined one by one by the scrutineers, one whom reads the name on each ballot out loud and another pierces them with a needle to attach them onto a single thread. They are counted to see if any candidate has received the required two-thirds share of the vote. If no one achieves this majority, further rounds of voting will continue until there is a new pope. After a single vote on the first day, there can be four ballots per day. It is forbidden for a cardinal to openly campaign, but discussions in between rounds can assist particular candidates in building support. Finally, the ballots from a failed scrutiny are burned, giving off black smoke to let those outside the Sistine Chapel know that the conclave continues. How long does a conclave take? A conclave will last as long as necessary to secure the election of a new pope. During the last century, the quickest came in 1939 when Pius XII was elected in the third ballot (although the fact that the College of Cardinals only consisted of 62 eligible voters presumably helped the swiftness of the process). The longest conclave in history was held in 1268; or, at least, it began in 1268. Political infighting meant there was no result for nearly three years. During that time, three cardinals died and frustrations reached such a level that the local magistrate removed the roof where the conclave was being held and limited the cardinals to bread and water to force them to agree on a decision. How is a new pope announced? Smoke emanating from the Sistine Chapel chimney is still the first way that announcements from the conclave are made. While black smoke means a failed vote, white smoke means there is a new pope. The different colours are achieved by burning certain chemical mixtures. This is followed by the ringing of the bells of St Peter’s Basilica. Meanwhile, the candidate with the two-thirds majority must formally accept the result of the election. They will then select their papal name, before preparations are made for them to appear on the St Peter’s Basilica balcony for his first blessing. When conclaves go wrong The 13th-century conclave that lasted nearly three years was far from the only time that a papal election did not go to plan. The election of 1378 was accompanied by rioting in Rome from those calling for the new pope to be Italian. They were concerned that most of the cardinals were French. Although Urban VI was elected, there was a split in the Church – the Western Schism – which saw two popes: one in Rome and the other in Avignon. Further civil discord erupted during the conclave of 1559, with protests against one of the strongest candidates after it was revealed he had fathered a son. The election took almost four months before Pius IV became the new pope. That was despite the fact that he had children of his own; he successfully kept their existence a secret.
Monsters of Rome: do emperors such as Nero and Caligula deserve their reputations?
Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars, a key source for the early Roman emperors, has just been translated anew by historian Tom Holland. He reveals what insights it yields into these titans of ancient history
Rob Attar: Could you please begin by introducing Suetonius and his best-known work, The Lives of the Caesars? Tom Holland: Suetonius is probably the most famous of all the ancient biographers. He was secretary to the emperor Hadrian, so was right at the heart of imperial power. He’d also worked as an archivist and librarian in the imperial palace, and therefore had access to all kinds of historical documents. He drew on these to write [in around AD 121] the biographies of the rulers who had come to be known as the 12 Caesars: the 11 emperors from Augustus to Domitian and, before them all, Julius Caesar – the adoptive father of Augustus. The Lives has had a massive influence on how people understand the Roman empire. Read more | Everything you wanted to know about the Roman emperors Of all ancient classical texts, this is probably also the most influential on modern culture. It inspired Robert Graves, who would later translate the Lives for Penguin Classics, to write I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), which were then adapted into the celebrated 1976 BBC drama series [starring Derek Jacobi]. And that series inspired all kinds of US dramas, ranging from Dynasty in the 1980s, to The Sopranos in the nineties and noughties, and Game of Thrones in the 2010s. You could say that Suetonius is the godfather of the murderous dynastic drama. As a historian yourself, do you consider that Suetonius was doing something similar to what you do today? It’s important to say that Suetonius wasn’t actually a historian – he was a biographer. He was not aiming to do what Tacitus, his great contemporary, was doing – creating a record of the whole sweep of Roman history. But of course, because the emperors are so important to our understanding of how the Roman world operated, his work does offer a sense of the Roman empire in the first century BC and the first century AD. That was a period of convulsive change: the Republic collapsed, Augustus established an autocracy, and then there was a process of evolution over the first century AD. After Augustus died in AD 14, Rome was ruled by his family – the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero – after which that family went extinct. There was then a murderous bout of civil war in AD 69, notorious as the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ – Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian – whose lives were among the 12 related by Suetonius. Vespasian, who established his own dynasty, was succeeded by his eldest son, Titus, who was then followed by his younger brother, Domitian. The lives of those three emperors are covered by Suetonius as well. What approach did Suetonius take to writing these biographies? His range seems to have been very extensive. From surviving fragments of his other works, we get a sense that he was interested in what today we might call social anthropology: customs, habits, the things that people do. Aside from his biographies of the Caesars, he wrote a collection of the lives of the great courtesans – and sex is also an obvious theme that runs throughout The Lives of the Caesars. But he also wrote about children’s games, and about the insults that people give one another. He wrote about clothing, and about all kinds of aspects of social life – and these in turn informed his portraits of the emperors. He wrote about what they did as children, their appearance, their sexual habits. For Suetonius, this provided windows onto their characters and the way that their reigns were shaped. It enabled him to situate the emperors more clearly in the social, political and cultural context of the world that they ruled. Listen | An episode of BBC Radio 4’s Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics on Suetonius Why and how did you go about translating The Lives of the Caesars? I was asked to do it because it was felt that the translation done by Robert Graves many decades ago was a bit old fashioned. There are certain problems, I think, with his work. One strange choice he made was that, instead of using Roman military terms such as centurion or tribune, he gave characters titles such as ‘sergeant major’ or ‘colonel’ or whatever. That’s perhaps unsurprising, because Graves fought in the First World War, but it gives his text a slightly postwar, 1930s flavour. I’m sure that in maybe 60 or 70 years, my translation will seem very 2020s, but I hope that I’ve been truer to the Latin text than Graves was. One other stylistic quirk of Suetonius’s I noticed was that, when writing about an individual emperor, he almost never mentioned them by name – it’s always “he” did this, “he” did that. Suetonius might introduce, say, Augustus by name at the beginning of that Life, but, from that point on, it is assumed that any third person verb will be referring to Augustus. And the effect is very powerful. By not drawing attention to the emperor’s name, it becomes kind of omnipresent: this emperor is so significant that you don’t even need to name him – everything is revolving around him. I hope that, even in English, the reader will find this stylistic effect striking. Did you have to make any difficult decisions when translating the text? Purely in terms of how to render Latin – and, indeed, Greek, because there’s quite a lot of Greek in the Lives, too – the huge problem is always puns. Meaningfully translating Suetonius’s linguistic puns is always a challenge. One of them revolves around oral sex, and that touches on another, slightly more moral problem: there are passages within Suetonius that are shocking. And these passages have always been shocking. There’s a tradition that, in the 15th century, Gilles de Rais – a Frenchman fighting the English during the Hundred Years’ War – was seduced into becoming a child killer by reading Suetonius. The Marquis de Sade reputedly owned a copy of the Lives. Then, in the Victorian period, school copies featured large chunks that were just replaced with asterisks. Even though today, in the 21st century, we might pride ourselves on being more permissive and less easily shocked, the fact remains that there are repellent passages. The question of what to do with them was a moral consideration, but in the end I decided that I wanted to give as accurate and complete a rendering of Suetonius’s language as I could. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/03/gr0027387H-e0d0d6b.jpg" width="3240" height="2158" alt="Smooth operator Augustus is glorified on an ancient onyx cameo. “He was probably the most remarkable political operator in western history,” says Tom Holland. (Photo by Topfoto)" title="Smooth operator Augustus is glorified on an ancient onyx cameo. “He was probably the most remarkable political operator in western history,” says Tom Holland. (Photo by Topfoto)" /> On that point, the Lives features some truly remarkable stories about some of the emperors’ debauched behaviour. How seriously can we take these? I would like to focus on two of those emperors, because in some ways their reputations for debauchery reflect very different Roman cultural traditions. The first of these was Tiberius. Near the end of his life, when he was about 70, he retired to the island of Capri. Suetonius gives us completely shocking details of what Tiberius is supposed to have got up to there: child sex, brothels, all kinds of things. Tiberius was then succeeded by Caligula – perhaps the most notorious of all of the Caesars. Rather than retiring to a private island, Caligula staged his sexual depravities on the most public of stages, according to Suetonius. Listen | Rome's most scandalous emperors: hear more from Tom Holland's interview about Suetonius The temptation is to take these accounts absolutely at face value: to assume that Tiberius was a hideous pervert, and that Caligula was such a sexual terrorist that he was in fact insane. But I think there are different layers in how you can respond to these stories. One of these is to recognise that the Roman understanding of what was shocking and scandalous about sexual behaviour is not the same as ours. Let’s think about Tiberius. He was the emperor – and an emperor should not retire. The only conceivable reason, in a Roman’s opinion, for doing that was because the person doing it was an absolute pervert. So you can see why Tiberius’s retirement was framed by people hostile to him as reflecting his desire to do disgusting things that he couldn’t do while he was in Rome leading a public life. The fact that Tiberius was a very old man, and that statesmen who had attained a certain age were entitled to a dignified retirement, was ignored – because Tiberius was emperor, and shouldn’t have done it. As for Caligula, he was taking to the public stage and rubbing the noses of his enemies in the Senate in the fact of their impotence. Both Augustus and Tiberius had shown the Senate respect, but Caligula had a different strategy. He wanted to demonstrate that he was the master, and that the senators were a bunch of lickspittles, nobodies. I think that the sexual abuse to which he submitted senators – and, notably, their wives – was a way of making that point. That was very brutal and shocking, and why Caligula became such a notorious figure, but there was perhaps an element of strategic thinking that Suetonius didn’t acknowledge. Caligula clearly wasn’t a liberal – he wasn’t Justin Trudeau – but there was probably method behind the seeming madness. This is part of the fascination of studying the lives of these emperors. There’s the shock appeal of the stories, and there’s the fascination of working out exactly how and why Roman attitudes to sexuality were different from ours. And then there’s the possible political context that was unspoken and unacknowledged by Suetonius, but which might nevertheless explain what is going on. Was something similar happening with Nero, who was another really notorious figure of this time? Did he get an unfairly bad press from Suetonius? No, because Nero brought it on himself. And, as with Caligula, I think it was a deliberate political strategy. There were really two traditions in Roman politics that the emperors inherited from the age of the Republic. There was the traditionalist approach, showing respect for the traditions of the state and traditional elites. And then there were populares – leaders who looked over the heads of the traditional elites to appeal to the masses of the people. Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius were all essentially traditionalist in their approach, whereas Caligula and Nero were both populares. They scorned the Senate and wanted to make themselves the darlings of the people. Because they were emperors, they had opportunities to do that in ways that, in the Republic, not even the most flamboyant nobleman would have had. And I think that’s what Nero was doing. He was clearly the most tremendous showman in a way that was calculated to be shocking to his senators. Emperors were not meant to tread the boards on stage. They were not meant to play musical instruments. They were not meant to compete in the Olympics. But Nero did all that – and he did it sufficiently well that people quite admired it. It’s as though a US president were to star in an Oscar-winning film, headline Glastonbury, or win a race in Formula 1. And even with the most shocking crime of his reign, the murder of his own mother, Nero very pointedly didn’t try to disguise it. Instead, he drew attention to it – and I think that’s because murdering your mother was the kind of thing that a hero would do in a Greek tragedy. Nero was casting himself as literally being ‘Augustus’, someone midway between heaven and earth. He was essentially presenting himself to the Roman people, and the world beyond, as a figure from myth – as a throwback to the ancient days of someone like the notorious matricide Orestes. Read more | The worst Roman emperors: 8 of the bloodiest from ancient Rome's history This policy undoubtedly caused collateral damage, and explains why Nero’s reputation was so bad in the wake of his death. And Suetonius was clearly drawing on those traditions. After all, Suetonius was working for an imperial system founded on the ruins of Nero’s reputation and career, so there was nothing for him in trying to redeem Nero’s reputation. Again, I think – as with Caligula and Tiberius – Suetonius’s portrait of Nero gives the historian enough clues to enable them to work out what Nero was doing, what he was up to. But you’ve got to read between the lines. In your introduction, you suggest that these rulers are both familiar and strange to us at the same time. Could you elaborate on that point? I think they’re familiar to us because Suetonius’s biographies give us details about these individual emperors to a degree that we simply do not have for comparable imperial figures from Near Eastern and Mediterranean ancient history. Think of the pharaohs, or the kings of Assyria or Babylon or Persia: these were autocrats ruling empires and civilisations that were just as sophisticated as the Roman empire. Compared with the portraits we have of Augustus or Nero, however, they seem anonymous. The whole point of royal iconography in Egypt or Persia was to anonymise the pharaoh or the great king. Thanks to Suetonius, though, we know how the emperors had sex, how they went to the toilet, what they looked like, the hairstyles they wore, their bodily blemishes, and so on. We know the most intimate details about them – and that makes them seem vivid and alive and familiar to us in a way that is fairly unique in ancient history. It explains, I think, why imperial Rome tends to fascinate the general public in a way that other civilisations don’t. At the same time, I hope you will get a sense from what I’ve been saying that ancient Rome was a very alien civilisation. The codes of behaviour that governed not just the emperors but also Romans generally were very remote from ours. And it’s that strange blend of the familiar and the weird that I think explains why Rome is so fascinating. There’s a kind of science-fiction quality to it. If you think of science fiction as being a mixture of what is familiar to us with worlds that are utterly alien, then that is what ancient Rome gives us. Of all of the weird and wonderful stories within this book, are there any that particularly stood out for you? One of the things that becomes very evident when you read the biographies in their entirety is that, even as Suetonius was clearly getting stuck into archives, he was also situating the stories in a dimension in which the supernatural was very vivid. One of the most dramatic and celebrated moments in Suetonius’s Lives is Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon [the river that marked the boundary of the area controlled directly by Rome]. Caesar sent his legions ahead of him, then travelled in secret through the night from Ravenna up to the frontier. He stood on the bank. He hesitated. And then, Suetonius tells us, a great ghostly figure snatched a trumpet and blew it. This served as the signal to Caesar that he should cross the river. The dice were thrown. The Rubicon was crossed. History changed – and the fact that there is this weird supernatural element, and it’s introduced exactly as though Suetonius is describing something completely everyday, is often written out of the story. For instance, I did not include that in my earlier account of the crossing of the Rubicon, but looking back at it now, perhaps I should have done. Throughout all of these stories, there is a sense that what was happening was being governed by fate – that the gods were always watching down, and that it was possible for mortals who could read these signs correctly to intuit what was going to happen. This is a really important part of the universe that Suetonius has bequeathed us. If, through some miracle of technology, you could interview one of the 12 Caesars on your podcast The Rest Is History, who would you choose? Julius Caesar – simply because his combination of an extraordinary life and piercing, ruthless intelligence would make him incomparably the most interesting guest to interview. I think, though, for my own selfish purposes – for wanting to understand how the Roman world ticked and how the course of Roman history was changed – I would choose Augustus. He was probably the most remarkable political operator, not just in Rome but in the whole of western history – maybe even world history. Read more | Who are the most underrated Roman emperors? Tom Holland is a historian, author and broadcaster who co-hosts The Rest Is History podcast with Dominic Sandbrook. His new translation of The Lives of the Caesars has just been published by Penguin Classics. This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The 15th of March – known as the Ides of March – was just another day in the Roman calendar. In 44 BC however, the date took on a sinister new meaning...
In 44 BC, the Ides of March took on a new meaning. Julius Caesar, who had seized power from the Roman Republic and made himself a dictator, was murdered by a group of 60 dagger-wielding Senators led by his friends, Brutus and Cassius. What does the 'Ides of March' mean? The term ‘Ides’ had a perfectly practical – and in no way sinister – meaning to the Romans. Their calendar, in connection with the phases of the Moon, used three terms to mark the passage of a month. A ‘Kalend’ was the first day of the month; a ‘None’ signified the first quarter of the Moon (the fifth or seventh day) and an ‘Ide’ was the full Moon (the 13th or 15th day). Therefore the Ides of March simply meant: 15 March. On this day in history | More events that happened on 15 March Why should we beware the Ides of March? Caesar had known that many wished him dead and a soothsayer allegedly warned him that harm would come to him before the Ides of March. On 15 March, Caesar reportedly passed the soothsayer joking, “The Ides of March have come,” but was met with the ominous reply, “Aye, Caesar, but not gone.” This moment has been immortalised by William Shakespeare in his play, Julius Caesar, first performed in 1599. It is from Shakespeare that we have the famous warning given by the soothsayer: “Beware the Ides of March.” Caesar’s murder failed to bring back the Republic, but triggered the start of the Roman empire under his adopted heir, Octavian (known as Augustus). Before the assassination, the Ides of March was best known as a festival. The popular time for feasting and drinking marked the festival of Roman deity Anna Perenna. It was also traditionally the time to settle debts – Julius Caesar certainly paid his. Read next | What if Julius Caesar hadn't been assassinated? This Q&A was taken from a 2014 issue of BBC History Revealed
Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art
Sculptor, painter, architect: Michelangelo was the archetypal Renaissance man who found immense fame in his lifetime and is still remembered as one of the most influential artists in world history. Matt Elton explores the creator of such iconic works as David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni – better known simply as Michelangelo – was an Italian Renaissance polymath whose iconic sculptures, paintings, architecture and poetry had a profound influence on Western art. Works like the marble statue of David or his awe-inspiring ceiling for the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican, cemented his status as one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Arguably, the only names that can come close are those of his rivals, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. So revered was he in his lifetime that he became known as ‘Il Divino’ (The Divine One). What was Michelangelo’s early life like? Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in the small town of Caprese, Italy, not too far from Florence. He had quite a turbulent childhood. “His mother died when he was six,” says Renaissance historian Catherine Fletcher, who was speaking to HistoryExtra on this episode of our Life of the Week podcast series. “He spent some of his early life in the care of a nanny living near a marble quarry that his father owned.” Far from setting the young boy back, however, Fletcher suggests this upbringing in the town of Settignano may have been one of the factors that contributed to his later success. “Michelangelo went on to become a great sculptor in marble, having grown up seeing stone being cut and dug every day. It was a great start to his future life.” What are Michelangelo’s most famous works? Pietà, a marble sculpture of the grieving Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus Christ, now in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. It is the only piece that Michelangelo ever signed The statue of David, sculpted between 1501 and 1504 and depicting the Biblical figure of David. More than five metres tall, it is the centrepiece of the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence The Sistine Chapel ceiling, a monumental artwork of scenes from the Book of Genesis – most famously, The Creation of Adam – created in the Vatican chapel between 1508 and 1512 The Laurentian Library in Florence, commissioned in 1523 to hold the Medici family’s private collection. Construction began two years later, but the library would not be opened until 1571, after Michelangelo’s death The Last Judgment, an enormous fresco covering the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. The scenes of the Second Coming of Christ and God’s eternal judgement were added to accompany the ceiling between 1536 and 1541 The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, created in the pope’s official residence in Vatican City in the late 1540s. Showing the saint and first bishop of Rome being raised on to the cross, it is Michelangelo’s final fresco How did Michelangelo become an artist? As a boy, Michelangelo had the fortune of being sent to live in Florence, the heart of the Italian Renaissance. At 13, he was apprenticed to the leading Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was already involved in painting the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. “Michelangelo came to prominence very quickly within Ghirlandaio's workshop,” says Fletcher. “In fact, unusually for an apprentice, he started getting paid.” By the age of 15, a clearly gifted Michelangelo had been selected to attend an academy run by the city’s ruling Medici family. A prominent member was Lorenzo de' Medici, known as ‘the Magnificent’. This gave him access to the enviable Medici art collection, as well as a powerful patron. Read more | “They were on a level with today’s billionaires” – your guide to the Medici: bankers to the Pope, rulers of Florence, patrons of the Renaissance “Lorenzo wasn't officially the lord or the duke of the city,” Fletcher notes. “This is an important detail, because the relationship with the Medici became a matter of contention later on in Michelangelo's career. But the Medici were massive patrons of art, and really important in creating Florence’s cultural environment.” While studying philosophy and the humanities at the Platonic Academy, Michelangelo also began sculpting. It was there that he created two stunning marble panels that demonstrated his skill even at an early age. Shortly afterwards, however, Lorenzo’s death in 1492 signalled a turning point in Michelangelo’s life. Amid the political upheavals of the coming years, he headed first to Venice and then Bologna, intermittently returning to Florence. In June 1496, he travelled to Rome and took a commission from a cardinal for a statue of the ancient Roman god of wine, Bacchus. This was followed by his Pietà, which he had finished by the age of 24. Hailed as a masterpiece, but Michelangelo supposedly heard someone credit another artist with the piece, and so added his name to the sash running across Mary’s chest. How did Michelangelo create the statue of David? Having relocated to Florence in 1499 now a famous artist, Michelangelo was approached to complete a huge statue of the Biblical figure David. It had originally been commissioned 40 years earlier as part of a series of statues intended for the Florence Cathedral, but had gone through a number of sculptors without much progress. “At this point, a huge block of marble had been lying around and worked on a bit, but [was mostly] sitting there… trying to find somebody to do something with it,” says Fletcher. “Michelangelo had made his reputation with the incredible Pietà statue, so he got the job.” Created between 1501 and 1504. Michelangelo’s David is considered a Renaissance masterpiece. He did a huge amount of preparation to sculpt the statue out of the colossal block of marble, known as ‘the giant’, and the work required an enormous scaffold. “The way he worked was very precise,” Fletcher says. “This wasn’t something you could just dive in and sculpt directly: there was a lot of drawing and planning with models in advance. Eventually, Michelangelo was so keen to get it right that he [began] making his own tools. He wasn’t going to go into a shop and buy a chisel; he was going to sort out his own tools to do the sculpting.” The finished David stood at 5.18 metres (17ft) tall. “Of course, it was too heavy to go on the roof where it was meant to go, so there was then an argument about where they were going to put it.” It was eventually decided that David should stand in Florence’s main square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria (now known as Palazzo Vecchio), which was the headquarters of the ruling body of the Republic of Florence. Did Michelangelo’s David suggest dislike of the Medici family? The subject of Michelangelo’s marble statue was the Biblical figure of David, who as a young Israelite shepherd defeated a giant named Goliath in single combat, using nothing but a sling and a stone. “The statue was very important in the iconography of Florence at the time: it represented the city’s liberty,” says Fletcher. “In the political context, you can see that it was actually a critique of the Medici and their foreign backers, because they were the tyrants who wanted to come and take over the city.” From the beginning, David was a symbol of freedom and liberty, and for the Florentine Republic. “And, as lots of other countries around the world fought for freedom and liberty and for their own republics against the monarchy, this example of Florence and its fight against the Medici had real political importance,” Fletcher adds. Were Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci rivals? The two great artists first encountered each other in 1504, when Leonardo da Vinci was asked to join the committee tasked with deciding where Michelangelo’s David should be placed. Despite being from different generations, a rivalry flourished between them. Over the years, Michelangelo and Leonard continued to be aware of each other’s work. When Michelangelo was asked in 1549 about the long-standing debate about the ranking of the various arts, he wrote: “As to that man [Leonardo] who wrote saying that painting was more noble than sculpture, if he had known as much about the other subjects on which he has written, why my serving maid could have written better!”. Read more | Leonardo & Michelangelo: rivalry and inspiration Yet beyond the rivalry, the two men had a more complex relationship, and they would influence and push each other throughout their careers. What did Michelangelo paint in the Sistine Chapel? Following the success of David, Michelangelo was increasingly called upon to work on large-scale projects. Pope Julius II invited the artist to Rome to create 40 life-sized statues for his elaborate tomb. Commissioned in 1505, the project dragged on for four decades as Michelangelo regularly turned his attention to other works. The most significant of these would undoubtedly be the two frescoes created for the Sistine Chapel: on the ceiling, between 1508 and 1512, and The Last Judgment, from 1536 to 1541. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, especially, is one of the most iconic works of Renaissance art. It includes the instantly recognisable image of God reaching out to touch Adam, which is in the centre of eight other scenes from the Book of Genesis and figures from classical mythology. It was a mammoth undertaking. “It does seem to have been a very, very tough piece of work to do,” says Fletcher. “Michelangelo himself describes coming out of it being bent like a bow.” Fletcher addresses the debate about the degree to which Michelangelo had assistance. “In one of the documents [from the period], we get the sense that he did hire 12 assistants. But then there's a question of what he actually allowed [them to do], because he was a bit of a micromanager.” What do we know about Michelangelo’s sexuality and personal life? Since Michelangelo’s life was largely solitary, it remains difficult to confirm his sexuality, admits Fletcher. “He didn't have anyone with whom he was at all romantically connected until quite a lot later in his life.” It was then that we know he wrote an extensive sequence of sonnets to a much younger man, an Italian noble named Tommaso dei Cavalieri. “As with any historic same-sex relationship, people always ask whether they were actually a couple or just friends,” says Fletcher. “In this case you have to decide whether the sense of attraction in the sonnets was enough to outweigh the religious belief that sodomy was a sin.” But Fletcher does argue that the erotic nature of the sonnets that Michelangelo wrote does suggest that he was sexually attracted to men. How did Michelangelo die? Michelangelo died following a brief illness in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. He had been working on a sculpture, the Rondanini Pietà, just six days earlier. In his last two decades, he had focussed more on architecture, most notably working to complete St Peter’s Basilica. Where is Michelangelo buried? Rather than being buried in Rome, Michelangelo was laid to rest in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence. This holds a pantheon of famous Florentine and Italian people, big monuments for Machiavelli and, later, Galileo Galilei. “And there was Michelangelo, back in his home city of Florence,” says Fletcher. “I think this says something about his attachment to it, even though he didn’t live there for much of his later life.”
A hill to die on: why the Allies almost failed in the battle of Monte Cassino in WW2
In early 1944, the Allied advance in Italy was brought to a halt at a rocky outcrop called Monte Cassino. And at the heart of the bloodbath that followed, writes James Holland, was flawed leadership
For the men of the US 34th ‘Red Bulls’ Infantry Division, just getting up onto the Monte Cassino massif was an achievement. To reach this rocky outcrop, in late January 1944 those troops had crossed a two-mile-wide flooded valley, an area laced with enemy mines and overlooked by German troops in the mountains above. The weather was cold, wet and miserable, and the Americans’ route had taken them across a badly smashed causeway that offered an easy target for enemy artillery. Those troops had then traversed the bed of the Rapido river, which was impossible for tanks to cross, and clambered up into the hills and gulleys that comprise the lower reaches of the towering massif. Finally, they had slipped and scrambled their way up onto two of the ridges that cross Monte Cassino. By 6 February, the Second Battalion of the 135th Infantry, one of the three regiments of the Red Bulls, was within a stone’s throw of Point 593, the rocky outcrop at the end of one of these long ridges dubbed ‘Snakeshead Ridge’ by the Americans. The Germans launched a frenzied assault to displace them, only for the Red Bulls to counter-attack. Read more | Hell in Italy: the Allies' hardest fight of WW2? Bayonets fixed, shooting from the hip, they moved from rock to rock, picking their way through the increasingly loose and stony terrain along the narrow ridge. Bullets were zipping and pinging all around, mortars and grenades were exploding, and shrapnel and lethal shards of razor-sharp rock were fizzing through the air. “There was a lot of screaming and cursing,” recalled 23-year-old Sergeant Ralph Schaps from Minnesota. “We were not going to let the goddam krauts push us off the hill.” So close was the fighting that a rifle butt smashed into Schaps’ jaw but, somehow, he survived. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/12/GettyImages-1193060764-bf5e784.jpg" width="4516" height="3009" alt="The Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino, established in the sixth century and destroyed by Allied bombing. Unreliable intelligence had suggested that the monastery was a key German observation post." title="The Benedictine abbey on Monte Cassino, established in the sixth century and destroyed by Allied bombing. Unreliable intelligence had suggested that the monastery was a key German observation post. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The Red Bulls prevailed, though Point 593 itself remained tantalisingly in enemy hands. Schaps found an abandoned bottle of brandy, which he swilled around his mouth. After spitting out some blood and fragments of teeth, he took a couple more swigs and started to feel better. A costly campaign The Americans were now looking down over the far side of the Monte Cassino massif, directly onto the Liri Valley and, more importantly, onto Highway 6, the ancient Via Casilina – the main road north. If they could reach it, the entire German Gustav Line – the system of defences constructed across Italy from the mouth of the Garigliano river on the Tyrrhenian Sea to the mouth of the Sangro on the Adriatic, south-east of Pescara – would be unlocked and the route to Rome, around 75 miles to the north-west as the crow flies, laid wide open. All of which raises the question: if things were going so well at this point, why did the battle result in such a waste of lives, with the Allies suffering at least 55,000 casualties? It can be partly explained by difficult terrain and awful weather conditions; heavy rain fell almost continuously through much of the previous winter. Yet, though this was clearly a terrible place and time to fight, there were sound reasons to do so – and, were it not for lamentable failures of leadership, casualties might have been far fewer. The Allied invasion of mainland Italy in September 1943 had four key aims: to ensure that Italy was knocked out of the war for good; to draw German troops away from the eastern front and soon-to-be-opened western fronts; to capture Rome; and, perhaps most importantly, to take control of the airfield complex around Foggia, in Puglia near the spur on Italy’s heel, from where heavy bombers could further tighten the noose around Nazi Germany by bombing the southern Reich. Three of these four aims had been achieved swiftly after the initial landings at Salerno, south-east of Naples, on 9 September. However, by early 1944 Rome still eluded the Allies. In addition, having captured Foggia in September 1943, they needed to ensure that it wasn’t retaken by the Germans, who had more divisions in Italy than the Allies did. Establishing a buffer of at least 50 miles north of Rome was, therefore, a priority. That’s why, in early 1944, the Allies were desperately trying to break through mountain defences to clear a route to the capital. Read more | How Italian dictator Benito Mussolini became the first face of fascism By the time the Red Bulls approached Point 593, the German forces had already suffered a battering at the hands of a polyglot international force led by General Mark Clark, commander of the US Fifth Army. The ferocity of the onslaught had so depleted the troops of the German 44th Hoch und Deutschmeister Division, which was defending the Monte Cassino massif, that its numbers were down to about 800 men from a full-strength complement of 15,000. That high level of casualties explains why, all things considered and despite the privations their troops had endured, the Americans had enjoyed a comparatively easy time getting up onto the massif. Though they’d mounted a highly effective defence up to that point, almost every senior German commander in Italy now believed that the time had come to pull back. In the north of the country, mountains stretched almost continuously across the peninsula between Pisa and Rimini, forming a natural barrier. Defences were already being built along this new front, where supply lines were shorter and positions easier to maintain.With German forces in retreat on the eastern front, and with an Allied assault imminent west of the Reich, it made sense to cut losses and withdraw to this defensive line far north of Rome. The führer’s folly Hitler, though, refused to cede ground – and his supremo in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, was determined to do the führer’s bidding. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/12/GettyImages-3293961-801febb.jpg" width="2200" height="1466" alt="Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (centre), commander of German forces in Italy, in March 1944. His decision to stubbornly hold Monte Cassino, following Hitler’s refusal to cede ground, led to the battle. (Photo by Getty Images)" title="Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (centre), commander of German forces in Italy, in March 1944. His decision to stubbornly hold Monte Cassino, following Hitler’s refusal to cede ground, led to the battle. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> On the podcast | Keith Lowe tells the story of the liberation of Naples, the first major European city to be freed by the Allies during the Second World War The result was an appalling misuse of infantry divisions: units were pulled apart, sent hither and thither, filling holes and gaps, and being butchered as a result. The replacements that arrived were largely older men and teenagers with little training. So worried was General der Panzertruppe Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, the German XIV Corps commander, that he decided to risk the wrath of Kesselring and Hitler, and made one more personal appeal to withdraw. “This proposal,” von Senger noted tersely in his diary, “was not approved.” By doggedly defending the Gustav Line, Kesselring was committing his troops to ever more sacrifice – and for no tangible long-term benefit. Whatever the shortcomings of the overall German approach, the situation at Monte Cassino was being bolstered. Reinforcements were hurriedly sent forward, including the 90 Panzergrenadier Division and First Fallschirmjäger (Airborne) Division. Sent to take command was General Ernst-Günther Baade, a highly intelligent, experienced and skilful leader. Baade immediately organised the defence of Monte Cassino far more effectively. He created two linked rings of defence, rather like a figure of eight, with Point 593 where the two circles met. This meant that, should it be overrun, heavy fire could be directed on the attackers from each side, allowing the defenders to quickly retake it. Manning machine guns and mortars effectively required some skill and training, but the key was to avoid giving up ground and to keep firing. The newly arrived Fallschirmjäger, though hideously understrength, were ideally placed to do this, with enough experienced warriors to ensure that the under-trained teenage replacements could provide stout defence. Among those now defending Point 593 were Major Rudolf Kratzert and his Third Battalion of the Third Fallschirmjäger Regiment, which reached Monte Cassino with just 236 troops rather than the 1,000 he should have been commanding. (It was one of his men who walloped Ralph Schaps.) Time and again, the Red Bulls tried to take Point 593 and the parallel Phantom Ridge and Colle d’Angelo. Every time, they were pushed back. Down in the valley, US commanders reckoned that one more push would do it – but they had no idea of Baade’s defensive system, and could not see how these narrow ridgelines were canalising the attackers. Rather than attacking on a broad front and overwhelming the enemy, the Americans were forced to inch forward companies of 100 or fewer men across bare rock, while being mown down by mortars, grenades and machine guns. The Red Bulls were rapidly running out of steam. So General Sir Harold Alexander, the Allied Army Group Commander, created the New Zealand Corps comprising men from the New Zealand Second Division, Fourth Indian Division and British 78th Division. Leading that new force was New Zealand Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg VC, the most senior divisional commander, who had already briefly led a corps in Tunisia. He’d won his Victoria Cross on the western front during the First World War, but he was no great intellect – and, compounding this deficiency, he’d been given no corps staff. Read more | Operation Mincemeat: how a corpse duped Hitler and got the Allies onto Sicily Political sensitivities As General Clark quickly discovered, Freyberg had been horribly over-promoted. Yet the Fifth Army commander’s hands were tied because of political sensitivities. The New Zealanders represented a British dominion, and were punching significantly above their weight in the war. There were also morale problems. Some 6,000 Kiwi veterans of the North Africa campaign had been sent home on furlough – only to discover that large numbers of their compatriots had avoided the draft. Most of these experienced soldiers refused to return for a second stint until those exempted had done their first. News of this mutiny spread to New Zealanders in Italy, and Clark had been warned to tread carefully. Freyberg’s shortcoming shouldn’t have been an issue, because commanding the Fourth Indian Division was the extremely able Major-General Francis Tuker, a soldier who could provide the strategic thinking that Freyberg lacked. Having arrived at the front ahead of Freyberg, Tuker soon realised that the only rational option was to abandon the Monte Cassino massif and to instead attack farther north. There the ground was higher but wider and less scored with gulleys, fissures and narrow ridges. It was also significantly less well defended. Tuker additionally suggested mounting a crossing of the Rapido where the Texans had earlier attempted, but this time with properly planned fire support (which the Texans had, inexplicably, not used). Freyberg readily supported these suggestions – then disaster struck: Tuker was hit by a crippling bout of rheumatoid arthritis, and had to be taken to hospital. Left without Tuker’s strategic vision, the easily swayed Freyberg was influenced by the views of the US II Corps commander General Geoffrey Keyes and General Charles ‘Doc’ Ryder, commanding the Red Bulls, who both questioned Tuker’s plans. Neither had been on the mountain, and were unaware of the situation on the ground. Freyberg was persuaded to continue the assault on the Monte Cassino massif. When Tuker learned of this change of tack, he forced himself from his hospital bed to plead with Freyberg – but found the New Zealander deaf to his arguments. Tuker pointed out the problems of troops attacking along narrow ridges, and suggested that the only way to break the German defences was with an overwhelming bombardment of the entire massif using high-capacity 2,000lb and 4,000lb ‘bunker buster’ bombs. Among other things, this would be necessary to destroy the tall, thick stone walls of the ancient Benedictine abbey perched at the end of the massif, which the Allies believed housed a German observation post. “The 1,000lb bomb,” Tuker told Freyberg in a follow-up note, “would be next to useless to effect this.” Heavy four-engine bombers were needed, not fighter-bombers, and the bombing should be carefully co-ordinated with an immediate infantry attack to follow. “The essence of the bombardment,” Tuker added, “should be its obliterating weight, suddenness and duration and the immediate continuance of the bombing by artillery bombardment and infantry attack early in the night under the artillery bombardment.” Read more | Mussolini's willing followers? The Italians devoted to Fascism and the duce Fatal misunderstanding Tuker’s intention had been to shock Freyberg into readopting his original plan. Instead, the New Zealander headed to Clark’s command post, where he demanded an air assault using single-prop ‘Kittybombers’ and 1,000- pounders to destroy the abbey. How Freyberg could have so badly misunderstood Tuker’s suggestions is hard to fathom: the latter had followed up his personal visit, conducted in acute pain, with written instructions so that there was no chance of mistaking his very specific plans. Clark was, understandably, opposed to destroying the abbey for what seemed to him to be no good reason. The way Freyberg presented it, there was no co-ordinated plan involving the infantry or the destruction of other German positions on the massif. Moreover, the historic site was originally founded in the sixth century, and the Allies aimed to portray themselves as liberators, not cultural vandals. Clark appealed to Alexander, who backed Freyberg. Had Freyberg been American, it’s clear, Clark would have kicked this plan into the long grass. The bombing itself was a catastrophe. The Fourth Indian Division was delayed in getting onto the mountain, because so many of the surviving Red Bulls had to be carried back down, and because different ammunition had to be brought up. In addition, in Tuker’s absence his command had passed to Brigadier Dimoline, the division’s artillery commander, who had neither the experience nor the strength of character to impose himself. Having finally ascended onto the massif, the Fifth Indian Brigade discovered that – despite being told otherwise – Point 593 was still in German hands, and hatched plans to capture it first in a preliminary assault on the night of 15 February. That morning, however, without any warning from Freyberg or anyone else, they learned that the bombers would arrive to unleash their loads at any moment. There was to be no co-ordination between air and ground forces. The strategic air forces had a weather window and a gap in action elsewhere, so flew over quickly, dropping a handful of 1,000-pounders but mostly 500-pounders – far less powerful than the bombs that Tuker had insisted would be necessary. True, the abbey was destroyed, leaving a shattered wreck of tumbling debris and killing hundreds of civilians sheltering there – though not, it seems, a single German. But when the First Royal Sussex tried to take Point 593 that night, they failed. So did a subsequent attack the following night and, with it, the chance of swiftly clearing Monte Cassino. The Germans held firm in their figure-of-eight positions, with the Fourth Indian Division, supported by the Texans on their right flank, holding the Allied half of the massif. A subsequent German counter-attack in Italy – Operation Fischfang, launched on 16 February at Anzio on the coast between Cassino and Rome – was thwarted by the Allies. This only served to re-emphasise the challenges of launching a successful offensive in this inhospitable terrain during a savage winter. Alexander thus decided to wait for better weather before the next push, and to bring both the Eighth Army – mainly on the Adriatic flank of Italy – and Fifth Army side by side, to hammer German supply lines with air power and then to strike along a broad front once he had built up overwhelming strength. Read more | The thorns in Mussolini’s side: the anti-Fascists who opposed the Italian regime Alexander was, though, persuaded to make one more attempt on Monte Cassino and at capturing the town below. Rain fell solidly for more than three weeks, so the attack was not launched until 15 March. Freyberg was still in place – a situation that Clark, much to his frustration, was unable to change, such were Allied politics. This time, Freyberg insisted on obliterating Cassino town with the same weight of bombs and shells Tuker had suggested for the mountain above. The town was destroyed but, instead of sending in overwhelming numbers of tanks and infantry immediately after, as Clark had instructed, a couple of battalions carefully inched into the town from one direction only. Overnight, the Germans reinforced – and the chance to sweep through the town was lost. What followed was a brutal attritional battle amid the ruins. After this debacle, the New Zealand Corps was finally dissolved and Freyberg posted away from the immediate firing line. With the arrival of spring, the ground hardened. Alexander was able to bring his two armies side by side and, with the advantages in men and materials he had always wanted, on the night of 11 May he launched Operation Diadem. Monte Cassino fell on 18 May to the Polish II Corps in what was their first battle. It was the Poles, after their initial assault had failed, who finally discovered the secret of the figure-of-eight defences. Once Monte Cassino was taken, the entrance to the strategically vital Liri Valley – and the route to the capital – was secured, and the Allies pushed rapidly north. Rome fell on 4 June. Diadem was a great Allied victory – an operation that showed what could be achieved when skies were cleared, the ground was dry, and commanders had time to plan and prepare properly. Yet it is the earlier setbacks, and especially the images of the shattered abbey and the utterly obliterated town below, that continue to define the campaign in Italy, rather than the enormity of the victory two days before D-Day. The tragedy is that these dark stains on the campaign were so very avoidable. This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Roman gods and goddesses: 17 of the most important deities of ancient Rome
With every aspect of Roman life having a specific deity to call upon, it can be tricky to make sense of the ancient pantheon – and that’s before you even take the Greek gods and goddesses into account. Here is a guide to the key divine figures and their importance to those who worshipped them
Looking at the ancient Roman religion, you’ll find a rich and diverse collection of gods and goddesses. Peer a little closer and you’ll realise that the pantheon has more than a glancing resemblance to those worshipped in Greece. As the Romans expanded their territory into the Hellenistic world, they took many things they liked and made them their own – whether it was art and culture, or their religious beliefs. As a result, the Greek gods and goddesses went through a rebranding. Suddenly, the Twelve Olympians were Dii Consentes. Worshipping these gods was a multi-faceted business in Roman society, from attending temples, shrines and sanctuaries to making offerings or paying private reverence to individual deities within the household. Every need was catered for and, while some held more sway than others, all had their place. Here are some of the most important names in the Roman religion. Who are the most famous Roman gods and goddesses? Jupiter – King of the gods, and god of the sky and thunder Juno – Queen of the gods, goddess of marriage and childbirth Mars – God of war Venus – Goddess of love, sex and beauty Neptune – God of the sea Pluto – God of the dead and the underworld Saturn – God of time, agriculture and seed-sowing Janus – God of beginnings, transition and doorways Vesta – Goddess of the hearth, home and family Mercury – God of commerce, merchants and travellers Ceres – Goddess of agriculture and harvest Apollo – God of the Sun, music, archery, healing and prophecy Diana – Goddess of the hunt and wild animals Minerva – Goddess of craftsmanship, wisdom, justice and war Vulcan – God of fire and forges Bacchus – God of wine, vines, fertility and revelry Sol Invictus – God of the Sun Jupiter: king of the Roman gods Known as: Ruler of the Roman pantheon, and god of the sky and thunder Family: Son of Saturn and Ops, husband (and brother) of Juno, father of Mars, Minerva, Vulcan and more Greek equivalent: Zeus When the Romans came across Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, they were so impressed that they appropriated his image, iconography and mythology for their own deific ruler. A muscular, bearded man wearing a crown, holding a thunderbolt and sceptre, and often associated with an eagle and sacred oak tree, the Romans worshipped him as Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Best and Greatest). As he was god of the sky and thunder too, the worship of Jupiter was the most important across the Roman world. The fifteen principal deities were overseen by priests called flamines, while the priest that looked after Jupiter was called a flamen Dialis. The heart of his cult was a mighty temple inaugurated in 509 BC on the Capitoline, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. It was dedicated not only to Jupiter but his queen, Juno, and daughter, Minerva. Together, they formed the Capitoline Triad at the top of the pantheon. Read more | Emperors, popes and Renaissance glory: exploring Rome’s history Under both the Roman republic and later the Roman empire, Jupiter was revered as the great protector of the Roman state. His festival took place in September, when officials had to sacrifice a white ox in his honour, while many emperors copied his look to assert their power. Such was his status that the Romans named the largest planet in the Solar System after him. According to the mythology, Jupiter earned his place as king of the gods by surviving his father’s wrath, and then overthrowing him. Saturn, god of time and agriculture, had been told that his children posed a threat to this throne and so devoured each one – Neptune, Pluto, Vesta, Juno and Ceres – as they were born. Only Jupiter was saved: his mother Ops tricked Saturn into eating a rock instead, causing him to vomit up the other children. Sure enough, they banded together to overthrow him, and divided the universe between themselves. Juno: queen of the gods, goddess of marriage and childbirth <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-1691895682-2629fbb-e1733392929424.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Juno, in an 18th-century painting by Georg Engelhard Schröder (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" title="Juno, in an 18th-century painting by Georg Engelhard Schröder (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman queen of the gods and protector of the Roman state Family: Daughter of Saturn and Ops, wife (and sister) of Jupiter and mother of Mars, Vulcan and others Greek equivalent: Hera The most important of the goddesses, Juno was queen of the Roman pantheon, goddess of marriage and childbirth, and the maternal protector of Rome as a whole. During her festivals in March and July, a procession of married women made its way to her temple, shared with the other two of the Capitoline Triad, to make offerings. Her own temple was built on the Esquiline Hill in the fourth century BC. When entering her sanctuaries, pregnant women had to wear their hair loose, as hair tied in knots were thought to run the risk of problems in childbirth. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans tried to hide More than a mother, Juno looked after the warriors too, and was often portrayed in a goatskin and holding instruments of war like a spear and shield. Usually, she wore a diadem and held a sceptre, and was associated with the peacock, cuckoo and cow. Her origins may have been Etruscan – bearing a strong resemblance to the goddess Uni – or the Sabine people, but once adopted by the Romans she became nearly indistinguishable from the Greek queen of the gods, Hera. As Jupiter’s wife, Juno had to endure her husband’s numerous affairs, and the children they produced, and occasionally the legends had her jealously boiling over. She had Latona, mother of Diana, pursued by a giant serpent, and saw to it that the mortal Semele was killed by looking upon the true divine form of Jupiter before she could give birth to Jupiter’s son, Bacchus (who was ultimately saved by Jupiter, and born from his father’s thigh). Mars: god of war Known as: The Roman war god Family: Son of Jupiter and Juno, father of Romulus and Remus Greek equivalent: Ares War was a way of life for the Romans, and so it is unsurprising that the god just below Jupiter in importance was Mars, the Roman war god. The month of March would be named after him, as was the Red Planet. But unlike his Greek counterpart, Ares, who was disliked for his associations with the bloodlust and chaos of war, Mars was widely worshipped as the harbinger of Rome’s military might, a defender of the people, and the bringer of peace. Read more | A hidden Roman villa? A pair of "remarkable" swords might have just unlocked its ancient secrets He was often depicted wielding a spear, which could be wreathed with laurel as a sign of peace, and accompanied by a wolf and a woodpecker, animals revered by the Romans. According to tradition, sacred spears of Mars were kept at a shrine in Rome, and would be shaken by the temple’s consuls at times of impending conflict to ‘wake’ the god. Beyond his conduct in war, he became notorious for his sexual deeds. It was said that he fathered Romulus and Remus, the legendary brothers at the centre of the founding of Rome, after raping the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia. Also included in his legends, he made an enemy of his brother Vulcan by bedding his wife Venus, and in his bid to woo the virgin goddess Minerva, he was tricked into marrying Anna Perenna, goddess of renewal and new year. Festivals in Mars’s honour took place in the spring and autumn, at the beginning and end of the military campaigning season. As these times were also linked with the growing of crops, he also held the role of an agricultural guardian. Read more | Fierce and furious: who are the most powerful gods of war throughout world history? Venus: goddess of love, sex and beauty Known as: The Roman goddess of love and desire, beauty and fertility, victory and prostitution Family: Wife of Vulcan, mother of Aeneas of Troy Greek equivalent: Aphrodite Since Venus was not initially worshipped in Rome, she had no myths, temples or cults of her own, and so almost completely became identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Yet she grew to be one of the most vital in the Roman pantheon. The Romans named one of the known planets after her, and celebrated her main festival, Veneralia, in April, the beginning of spring and a time of new life. Others took place throughout the year. Even Julius Caesar claimed to be her descendent. Traditionally, her rise began around the Second Punic War in the third century BC when she was convinced to switch sides from Carthage to Rome in return for a temple on the Capitoline. As such, she was associated with victory as well as love, sex, beauty, desire, fertility and prostitution. Like Aphrodite, Venus had an unusual birth. When Saturn castrated the primordial god Caelus and threw his genitals into the sea, she emerged fully grown from the foam – a scene recreated in the Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli’s famous piece, the Birth of Venus. In the mythology, she is perhaps most associated with her affair with Mars, which ended in her husband Vulcan crafting a net to trap the pair while naked in bed, so that he could mock them before the other gods. She was certainly desired by all, including the mortal Adonis, and had several children, including Aeneas of Troy (the ancestor of Romulus and Remus). Neptune: god of the sea <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-463909963-cb221f7-e1733393340614.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Neptune riding in a chariot pulled by horses with dolphin tails, in a mosaic found in Tunisia (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="Neptune riding in a chariot pulled by horses with dolphin tails, in a mosaic found in Tunisia (Photo by Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman god of the sea and freshwater Family: Son of Saturn and Ops, brother of Jupiter and Pluto Greek equivalent: Poseidon While his brother Jupiter became god of the sky, Neptune took command of the sea, much like his Greek counterpart Poseidon (that was an upgrade from his original role as god of freshwater). Though the Romans were not as reliant on seafaring as their neighbours to the east, the worship of Neptune was still significant. Neptune was often heralded as one of the three most important Roman gods – though the Greeks endowed their sea god with the creation of horses, a connection never carried over by the Romans. His importance increased as the Romans extended their power over the Mediterranean, but Neptune only had one temple in Rome, near the Circus Flaminius, while the timing of his festival in July at the height of summer when water shortages were more likely, and so seemingly more a nod to his freshwater origins. Neptune’s iconography was highly distinctive, though. Married to Salacia, goddess of saltwater, he resided in a palace at the seabed, from which he used his mighty trident to control the waves and storms, and rode a chariot pulled by seahorses or dolphins. When the eighth planet of the Solar System was discovered in 1846, the decision was made to continue the tradition of using Roman names and, given its blue colour, Neptune was deemed a suitable choice. Read more | Water gods and sea goddesses: 17 water deities from world history Pluto: god of the dead and the underworld Known as: The Roman god of the underworld Family: Son of Saturn and Ops, brother of Jupiter and Neptune, husband of Proserpina Greek equivalent: Hades Given his association with death and what comes afterwards, it should be no surprise that Pluto was one of the gods that the Romans feared most. He had no temples, although there were altars where sacrifices could be made by priests clad in black robes. Ruling over the underworld, Pluto was the analogue of the Greek god Hades. That said, the mythology became tangled, so that Hades was also used as the name of the Roman underworld itself. For the Romans, he was also referred to by another name, Dis Pater, which means ‘rich father’, giving rise to the idea that the god was responsible for the mineral wealth underground. The son of Saturn and Ops, Pluto was one of the children to be devoured, and saved, before dividing responsibility of the world with his brothers Jupiter and Neptune. His most famous myth, however, relates to how he came to be married to the renowned beauty Proserpina. Longing for a wife and struck by one of Cupid’s arrows, he saw Proserpina in a field and immediately rode up in his chariot, seized her and took her to the underworld. Proserpina’s mother, the goddess Ceres, searched the world in vain for her, leaving Pluto’s reluctant bride to live in his underworld palace, only to return to the surface for a few months a year. Saturn: god of agriculture and seed-sowing <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/12/GettyImages-1941766247-31b72b6-e1733395890251.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An 18th-century statue of Saturn - or Cronus in ancient Greece - by Lazar Widmann (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" title="An 18th-century statue of Saturn - or Cronus in ancient Greece - by Lazar Widmann (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman god of time and sowing seeds Family: Father of Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, Juno, Ceres and Vesta Greek equivalent: Cronus In Rome today, the ruins of the Forum are dominated by eight columns still standing, which once belonged to a massive temple dedicated to Saturn from the early fifth century BC. He was honoured as the god of agriculture, particularly the sowing of seeds, and was associated with time. The Romans saw him as an old man with a long beard and holding a scythe. The Greeks knew him as Cronus. The son of the primordial deities of the sky and earth, Saturn fathered the gods Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, Ceres and Vesta. As he had overthrown his father Caelus, he feared his children would do the same and so devoured them. It was only thanks to his wife Ops that Jupiter was saved from the fate, and she tricked Saturn into vomiting the others back up so that the pantheon was salvaged. Saturn was exiled from Greece. And yet he then went through an extraordinary revival of his reputation. Settling in Latium, he oversaw a golden age that saw the land become Rome. The Romans named both a day of the week and the furthest planet they knew after him, and marked his worship with their most popular festival of the year. For the week of Saturnalia every December, the Romans enjoyed a time of eating, drinking, games, gift-giving and breaking from societal norms (for instance, masters would wait on their slaves). We now recognise Saturnalia as a forerunner of Christmas. Janus: god of beginnings, transition and doorways Known as: The Roman household spirit of doorways and beginnings Family: Inconclusive Greek equivalent: None While the Romans have the Hellenistic world to thank for nearly all of their gods and goddesses, Janus was different. His worship had no Greek counterpart, going back before the adoption of their pantheon right to the founding of Rome by Romulus. He was one of the spirits of the household, namely doorways. Representing every entrance and exit, he symbolised both beginning and end; both transition and time. His place in Roman religion was ubiquitous. They invoked his name in prayers before Jupiter and honoured him at the start of each new month. January, the beginning of the new year, was named after him. Janus’s origins were murky, at best. It was said that he may have been a mortal king of the land of Latium – which would become Rome – who welcomed the fallen god Saturn after he was overthrown by his children and deified after death. He was most often depicted as literally two-faced so that he could look ahead and back at the same time. The Romans celebrated Janus by building ceremonial gateways in Rome. The Janus Geminus, for example, was near an entrance to the Forum and, according to tradition, the doors were closed in times of peace and open in war so that the god could always be free to assist Rome’s armies. Vesta: goddess of the hearth, home and family <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-487536948-2993980-e1733393673374.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Vesta, a 19th-century marble statue by Pietro Tenerani (Photo by Alessandro Vasari/Archivio Vasari/MONDADORI PORTFOLIO via Getty Images)" title="Vesta, a 19th-century marble statue by Pietro Tenerani (Photo by Alessandro Vasari/Archivio Vasari/MONDADORI PORTFOLIO via Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman goddess of the hearth Family: Daughter of Saturn and Ops Greek equivalent: Hestia The worship of Vesta was as old as Rome itself and outlasted many of the cults that disappeared when Christianity came along. Her importance as goddess of the hearth was borne from the vital need to keep a fire going to make food and water, and also from the hearth’s role in Roman society as a gathering place for the family. At the Temple of Vesta in the Forum, a perpetual fire was maintained throughout the year, only to be officially extinguished and then relit every first day of March. If it went out at any other time, it would be seen as a portent of disaster. Keeping the fire was the task of the Vestal Virgins: six priestesses chosen as between the ages of six and ten and committed to a service of 30 years. During that time, they could not marry or – as their name suggests – have any sexual partners, to emulate the virginal Vesta (or Hestia in Greece). If the priestesses did break their chastity, they would be buried alive. But serving as a Vestal Virgin did come with notable advantages, including greater freedoms and privileges than many other women of Rome. At the festival of Vestalia in June, only matrons could enter the shrine, which they did barefoot. Afterwards, the shrine had to be swept and until the debris was thrown into the Tiber River, bad luck could befall Rome. Mercury: god of commerce, merchants and travellers Known as: The Roman god of shopkeepers, merchants, travellers, thieves and tricksters Family: Son of Jupiter and Maia (one of the nymphs known as the Pleiades) Greek equivalent: Hermes In his winged sandals and cap, and carrying a caduceus (a staff intertwined with two snakes), Mercury is one of the more instantly recognisable of the ancient gods. He was also one of the most popular given his role as an intermediary between deity and mortal. To the Greeks, he was Hermes, the messenger of the gods. The Romans regarded Mercury, however, as the protector of shopkeepers, merchants and travellers, since he controlled the movement of all things and represented commerce. Depictions often show him grasping a money bag. The son of Jupiter and Maia (daughter of the Titan, Atlas), he had a mischievous side too, earning him the reverence of thieves and tricksters. In one story, Mercury stole a herd of cattle, but was witnessed by a man named Battus. Having made the man vow not to tell anyone, the god then came to Battus in disguise and convinced him to tell the whole story; Mercury punished Battus by turning him into stone. His temple on the Aventine Hill may have gone back as far as 495 BC, and his festival, Mercuralia, was held every May. Swift and agile, the smallest planet in the night sky was named after him; the element, also known as quicksilver, similarly shares his name. Ceres: goddess of agriculture and harvest Known as: The Roman goddess of agriculture and harvest, and associated with motherhood Family: Daughter of Saturn and Ops, mother of Proserpina Greek equivalent: Demeter Today, we honour this goddess with the word that came from her name: cereal. According to tradition, the cult of Ceres first entered Rome around the early fifth century BC to stop a famine. Like her Greek parallel, Demeter, she was a goddess of agriculture and preserver of the natural cycle of things. Her primary festival of Cerialia lasted for seven days in April and featured games at the Circus Maximus, while other celebrations followed at key times for crop cultivation. Worship, from a temple on the Aventine Hill, then expanded so that Ceres came to protect women, motherhood and the plebians of Rome. Seen with the bounty of the fields, she carried either a sickle or cornucopia with sheaves of wheat. Ceres wore a crown of corn and poppies were her flower. But another important icon was the torch, referring to her most enduring myth. Despite Ceres’ attempts to protect Proserpina from unwanted attention, her daughter was abducted by Pluto and taken to the underworld. Ceres frantically searched the world for her, neglecting her duties until crops began to fail. When Proserpina was finally found, a deal was struck with Pluto so that she would only live in the underworld for six months of the year, allowing Ceres to focus on her care of the Earth again. Ceres’ sadness during Proserpina’s months away, however, led to the seasons of autumn and winter. Apollo: god of the Sun, music, archery, healing and prophecy <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-590663071-9b50c23-e1733394206541.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An ancient Greek bronze disc depicting Apollo, who the Romans appropriated without changing (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="An ancient Greek bronze disc depicting Apollo, who the Romans appropriated without changing (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman and Greek god of many aspects of life Family: Son of Jupiter and Latona, twin brother of Diana Greek equivalent: Apollo Apollo holds a distinct honour: he has the same name in both Rome and Greece. So revered was he that the Romans took him wholesale and instead of giving him a Roman flavour, as they did with the other gods and goddesses, he remained a foreign part of the pantheon with his mythology unchanged. Tall, athletic, youthful and beautiful, Apollo was one of the most loved of deities. He had myriad functions and associations, including the Sun and light, archery and music, healing and prophecy, and, as a bringer of law and reason, the harbinger of divine retribution. Riding a chariot drawn by swans, he wielded both a bow (his archery skills were legendary) and a lyre, referring to his position as a patron of the arts. The Romans first called upon Apollo around the fifth century BC, in particular for healing at a time of plague, and he remained a mainstay in the religion since then. He was especially beloved by the future emperor Augustus, whose naval victory at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, over the fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, took place near a sanctuary of Apollo. This led him to erect a new temple on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Nearly two millennia later, when NASA needed a name for their ambitious program to launch astronauts into space and land them on the Moon, they chose Apollo. Diana: goddess of the hunt and wild animals Known as: The Roman goddess of the hunt, childbirth, the Moon and more Family: Daughter of Latona, twin sister of Apollo Greek equivalent: Artemis When the goddess Latona became pregnant with twins by Jupiter, his jealous wife Juno banished her and set a giant serpent to pursue her across the world. She only found refuge on the island of Delos, where she gave birth to her children: Apollo and Diana. Like her twin brother, Diana was worshipped for numerous functions, including chastity and childbirth; the Romans saw her as a triple goddess, connected to the underworld and the Moon, too. They preferred to worship her in a natural setting, choosing the grove of Diana Nemorensis on the shores of Lake Nemi. To this day, Diana is worshipped by neopagan religions, like Wicca. But she is probably still best known as the goddess of the hunt and wild animals, like Artemis in Greece. She never married, preferring the company of animals and nymphs to gods and mortals. Accompanied by a stag or hunting dog, she wore a shorter dress than the other goddesses to help her run more easily. Some depictions also shows her in a cloak, boots and bejewelled belt. In the mythology, Diana was once spotted while bathing by a hunter named Actaeon. She grew angry for him looking upon her naked form and transformed him into a deer. He was killed by his own dogs. Minerva: goddess of craftsmanship, wisdom, justice and war <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-464440657-2e131f1-e1733394472825.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Minerva Victorious over Ignorance, c1591, by Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Minerva Victorious over Ignorance, c1591, by Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman goddess of crafts, wisdom, justice and war Family: Daughter of Jupiter and Metis Greek equivalent: Athena Of all the gods and goddess with unconventional births, the daughter of Jupiter deserves special mention. The story goes that the king of the gods had an affair with a Titan named Metis, but upon hearing that she may be carrying the child that could overthrow him, he swallowed her. Metis gave birth inside Jupiter and set about forging armour for her daughter, Minerva. This caused Jupiter such bad headaches that he had his head split open, and Minerva sprang out fully grown. This story was taken from the Greek mythology of Athena (after whom the city of Athens was named). Minerva, as one of the Capitoline Triad, was worshipped as goddess of craftsmanship, wisdom and justice, but was also beloved for her virginal purity. Beginning with a shrine on the Aventine Hill in the third century BC, Minerva grew in stature until she was more associated with war. Particularly, she represented the strategy of battle and victory, often depicted wearing a breastplate, helmet and carrying a spear. Her other symbols included the owl, for wisdom, and olive branch, for victory. Minerva even began to overshadow Mars, becoming the focus of the Quinquatras, a festival held every March. Then Emperor Domitian escalated the status of her cult further by claiming that she was his personal protector. He built a new temple and named a new legion after her, Legio I Minervia. Today, her image appears at many universities, especially in the US. Vulcan: god of fire and forges <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-450085425-20190b1-e1733394681261.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Vulcan in an 18th-century painting by Italian artist Pompeo Batoni (Photo by Sergio Anelli / Electa / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)" title="Vulcan in an 18th-century painting by Italian artist Pompeo Batoni (Photo by Sergio Anelli / Electa / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)" /> Known as: The Roman god of fire, the forge and metalworking Family: Son of Jupiter and Juno, husband of Venus Greek equivalent: Hephaestus Most members of the Roman pantheon tended to be shown as stunningly beautiful or handsome, so it is worth sparing a thought for Vulcan. Despite possessing such strength to be the master blacksmith of the gods – who made magical tools and weapons, like Jupiter’s lightning bolts and Mercury’s winged helmet – he was said to be so ugly, and lame in one leg, that his mother Juno was disgusted and threw him from the realm of the gods. Growing up in a cave on Earth, he learned his unparalleled skills as a smith, so much so that he could take his revenge on his mother. Vulcan designed a magnificent throne for Juno, but when she sat in it, a trap mechanism was released that would not let her go. Vulcan only agreed to free her if Venus married him. It was not a loving relationship: when Venus betrayed him by sleeping with Mars, Vulcan made a special net to catch them in bed. As god of fire and forges, the symbols of Vulcan – the equivalent of Hephaestus in Greece – were the hammer and anvil. The Romans celebrated his chief festival in August, which involved throwing small fish into a fire as a sacrifice, but his association with the destructive power of conflagrations meant that his temples were built a little outside of the city. Volcanoes, after all, were named after him. After the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, an altar was erected in Vulcan’s honour at Quirinal Hill in the hopes of placating his wrath and preventing another blaze of such devastation. Read more | Fire gods and goddesses: 14 fire deities from world history Bacchus: god of wine, vines, fertility and revelry Known as: The Roman god of wine, revelry and ecstasy Family: Son of Jupiter and Semele (a mortal daughter of a king) Greek equivalent: Dionysus Wine, revelry and festivals of such unrestrained celebration that they were for a time banned in Rome: it is clear why Bacchus was one of the more popular gods. His Greek equivalent was Dionysus, a name that is thought to have first appeared in the 13th century BC, suggesting he was worshipped in the Mycenaean period. It was Dionysus who gave King Midas his golden touch. In Roman mythology – which was combined with another god, Liber – Bacchus was the son of Jupiter and a mortal woman, Semele. While still pregnant, Semele was killed after a jealous Juno contrived to have her look upon Jupiter’s true divine form. Bacchus was only saved by Mercury sewing him into Jupiter’s thigh until the child was ready to be born. Raised by a satyr named Silenus, Bacchus was portrayed as a young, effeminate man in an ivy crown. He held a bunch of grapes and a thyrsus (a stalk of fennel wrapped in ivy and topped with a pine cone) and would be accompanied by big cats like lions, tigers, panthers and leopards. He travelled the world, as far as India, spreading knowledge of viticulture, the cultivation of grapes and building a following of women called maenads. His importance to wine, vines and having a good time was marked in lively festivals, called Bacchanalia. Sol Invictus: god of the Sun Known as: The ‘unconquered Sun’ or ‘invincible Sun’ Family: Unknown Greek equivalent: Helios Meaning ‘unconquered Sun’, Sol Invictus would ride a four-horse chariot across the sky as he wears a shining solar crown. It was his responsibility to bring each new day and protect Rome from darkness, which the Romans prayed for at temples on the Quirinal Hill and Circus Maximus. Sol Invictus had been adapted, with influences from a Syrian deity, from an earlier Sun god, Sol, which had in turn come from the Greek deity Helios. In the third century AD, emperors Elagabalus and Aurelian both tried to make Sol Invictus the primary god of the Roman pantheon, with the former building a new temple on the Palatine Hill and the latter erecting a shrine in the Campus Agrippae. His festival was marked on 25 December, the Roman celebration of the winter solstice. Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history
SAS Rogue Heroes season 2 preview: "They’re very much thumbing their noses at authority"
With SAS Rogue Heroes making a big, brash and brilliant return to our screens, Jonathan Wright sat down with the show’s director Stephen Woolfenden and producer Stephen Smallwood to get a sneak preview of what’s to come…
Fans of the hit Second World War military drama, SAS Rogue Heroes, which aired on the BBC in 2022, may be asking: how do you have a second series when the hero, David Stirling (Connor Swindells) has been captured and is now a prisoner of war? Show creator Steven Knight (the man also behind Peaky Blinders) has an elegantly straightforward answer for its imminent return. Without losing any of the espionage and political machinations that made the first series so compelling, the focus has shifted to another founder member of the Special Air Service, Paddy Mayne (Jack O’Connell). The narrative action – with the emphasis very much on action – opens in 1943, at a time with the future of the SAS in doubt. After it gets reorganised into two separate parts, it would be Mayne, a former British and Irish Lions international rugby player with a wholly justified reputation for insubordination, who took command of the newly formed Special Raiding Squadron. Read more | The original rogue heroes of the SAS Previously, the SAS had operated behind enemy lines in the vast emptiness of the desert, but the second series of SAS Rogue Heroes sees Mayne and his motley crew of hard-as-nails misfits face new challenges in the invasion of Sicily, which would then be followed with Italy. Director Stephen Woolfenden and producer Stephen Smallwood talk to HistoryExtra about how they went about bringing this story to life… The new series of SAS Rogue Heroes begins with David Stirling having been captured. But his brother, Bill Stirling (Gwilym Lee), emerges as a key character. Who was he? Stephen Woolfenden: Bill was the older brother of the two siblings and we learn that he has been in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for the last couple of years. He’s supportive of his brother’s endeavours in the desert, and breaks out of the SOE to come and sort out the SAS. Stephen Smallwood: I think Ben Macintyre [the author of the book on which the series is based] stated that Bill was a more considered person and less impulsive than David. Bill is a much straighter character and he is the man who inherits the estate, because the Stirlings were lairds in Scotland. The SAS had been tasked by their creator to operate behind enemy lines only. They were “poachers” and Bill Stirling comes in with instructions that they are no longer going to work from behind military lines. Instead, they’re going to be the shock troops that undertake the invasion of the European mainland via Sicily. They’re going to lead the charge – but that’s not what they were set up to do. Read more | “They changed the way war is run”: Ben Macintyre on the early SAS How real was the threat to the SAS from the British military establishment at this point? Stephen Smallwood: The British military didn’t really like them because they were uncontrollable; their raison d’être was to operate in areas where headquarters had no control. Hierarchies never like that. I know that as a producer, you want to keep an eye on what everyone’s up to! Stephen Woolfenden: I think it’s really interesting. It suggests from general headquarters a loss of vision and not really understanding the potential of what they had. The SAS had really poked the bear in North Africa, but nobody had a creative thought about how they could be used in Europe. So they fell back on a pretty conservative idea: to put them into landing craft as part of the first feet on the beach. Our story is to say how they get out of that problem, and how they show themselves to be experts in the field of working beyond enemy lines. What did the men of the Special Raiding Squadron experience during the invasion of Sicily? Stephen Woolfenden: It was the biggest land, sea and air invasion by any combined force before D-Day. The SAS were there ahead of everybody, taking out huge guns that were protecting the coastline. We were as true as we possibly could be to the events that happened before they got to the beaches. On 10 July 1943 [when Paddy Mayne led his men ashore], there was a horrific storm. More than 60 gliders – carrying airborne troops as part of Operation Ladbroke – landed in the water. We listened to accounts by SAS veteran Pat Riley, who was in a landing craft and said, “We were passing people in the water and we couldn’t do anything about it.” As you show these events, how do you go about getting the tone right? There’s a lot of humour in SAS Rogue Heroes, yet these are men seeing the very worst of war. Stephen Woolfenden: We’ve tried very hard to get the balance right in terms of showing what they experienced, but understanding that they are human. Central to that is Steven Knight’s writing, which clearly shows that these characters are going through traumatic experiences. They can find things funny and, even in crisis moments, see the beauty in things. The big new part is that they’re not bombing aircraft and carrying out raids on airfields anymore. They’re in amongst a civilian population. In the show, we have a liberation scene and most of our characters don’t quite know how to react to it. They can feel the warmth, but don’t know how to return it. But receiving that warmth is a really positive thing. Read more | How the early SAS became heroes of the Second World War Stephen Smallwood: I think part of the series’ appeal for a young audience is the tone of the writing from Steven Knight. He has portrayed these characters as anarchic. They’re very much thumbing their noses at authority, and so to some extent are like a representation of teenagers. They may be wearing uniforms and be capable of marching and saluting, but none of those things they want to do – and they don’t do, because they loathe authority. Paddy Mayne emerges as a key character in series two. Historical accounts suggest he really was a kind of a warrior poet, is that how you see him? Stephen Woolfenden: ‘Warrior poet’ is a lovely way to describe him. Everything we know about him suggests men would follow him wherever he wanted to go. He was brilliant in battle: in his preparation, as a tactician and in the heat of the moment. He had this energy that could ignite at any moment. But we know that he cared deeply about his team. There’s a thread throughout the second series where we see Paddy asking his team, “Are you okay? How can I help you? I would advise reading some poetry, or staying here a while and making sure you’re okay.” He tells Sergeant Reg Seekings at one point that he too has nightmares and can’t sleep. He was an enigma. I feel very close to Paddy after working with Jack O’Connell through this series. SAS Rogue Heroes season 2 release date: when will the hit drama return? SAS Rogue Heroes season two began on BBC One at 9pm on New Year’s Day, and all episodes are be available on BBC iPlayer. You can also catch up on season one on BBC iPlayer now For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Caracalla and Geta: the real lives of the mad emperors of Gladiator II
The first Gladiator movie had a despicably deranged and dangerous antagonist in Commodus, but the upcoming sequel has a pair of emperors more than fit to take up that mantle. Jonny Wilkes explores the stories of Caracalla and Geta, brothers who rose up to the throne, but refused to share it
The sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator II promises a triumphant return to the half-historical, half-fictionalised ancient Rome of Ridley Scott’s original blockbuster. There is a new gladiator (Lucius, played by Paul Mescal), new thrilling battles in the Colosseum (featuring Pedro Pascal’s Marcus Acacius) and new behind-the-scenes plotting (headed by Macrinus, played by Denzel Washington). But stealing the show are not one, but two new megalomaniacal Roman emperors, Caracalla and Geta (Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn respectively). Framing the action around their shared reign means that it is possible to pinpoint exactly when the sequel takes place: AD 211. Caracalla and Geta – who did not get on as well as Gladiator II’s trailers suggest – ruled together for just 10 months, before their fractious relationship ended in fratricide. After having his brother murdered, Caracalla then ruled alone for another six years and earned a reputation as one of Rome’s more cruel, callous and changeable emperors. View Green Video on the source website The early lives of Caracalla and Geta As the sons of Septimius Severus, a rising statesman from North Africa serving as a provincial governor in Upper Pannonia (in modern-day Austria and Hungary), and his wife, Julia Domna, they were never meant for the imperial throne. Caracalla was born in AD 188 and named Septimius Bassianus. The name Caracalla was actually a pejorative nickname that came later, referring to a type of heavy, hooded cloak that he used to wear, which was used in the far reaches of the empire. The following year, Geta was born. Their paths changed in AD 193, the so-called ‘Year of the Five Emperors’ following the assassination of the much-despised Commodus. Out of that bitter period of rival claimants and fighting across the Roman empire, Severus – who had widespread support within the army – came out on top. Caracalla and Geta’s rise to power An imperative of Severus’s rule was to establish his own Severan dynasty. To that end, he renamed his eldest son as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, thus linking his bloodline to the successful and beloved Antonine rulers of the second century, which included Marcus Aurelius. Severus then appointed Caracalla as augustus, or co-emperor, in AD 198, around the time he turned 10. A relatively common practice in ancient Rome, this would smooth the issue of the succession. Read more | The real Lucilla Aged 14, Caracalla was married to the daughter of Severus’s influential and powerful second-in-command, Plautianus. It proved a deeply unhappy and tragic match, as well as an early sign of Caracalla’s cruelty. Within a couple of years of the marriage, he had Plautianus killed on a charge of treason and exiled his wife. Later, he ordered her death, too. Meanwhile, despite being only a year younger than his brother, Geta clearly remained a junior figure in their father’s rule. While both boys were showered with honours and titles, Geta had to wait more than a decade before his elevation to augustus. From AD 209, there were three emperors while the father and sons ruled, but any hopes Severus had for his sons to rule together became increasingly bleak. They disliked each other immensely. Typically, Geta has been presented as the intellectual interested in civil administration, while Caracalla’s wish was for glory in battle. Caracalla equally seemed impatient to be emperor. Accompanying Severus on his military campaign to northern Roman Britain, he supposedly tried to have his ailing father poisoned to hasten his accession. While that assassination attempt failed, Severus did succumb to illness in February AD 211, while in Eboracum (York). The brief joint rule of Caracalla and Geta Now co-emperors, Caracalla and Geta hastily ended the campaign in Britain and returned to Rome. As feared, however, it immediately became evident that the brothers’ shared rule would be a disaster. The next few months were defined by animosity, suspicion and constant conspiring. Caracalla and Geta would not even be in the same room without their mother and own guards present; they divided the imperial palace in two, and built their own factions of support with the aim of ousting the other. There were even talks of splitting the entire empire. The joint rule only lasted as long as it did due to the mediation of their mother, Julia Domna. For years, she had proven herself a canny operator as an advisor in Severus’s reign. Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Roman women Caracalla kills Geta Both Caracalla and Geta feared assassination by the other, and justifiably so. In December AD 211, Caracalla arranged a meeting with Geta in the neutral territory of their mother’s apartments, ostensibly to seek a reconciliation. Instead, soldiers stabbed Geta and he died in his mother’s arms. As sole emperor, one of Caracalla’s first acts was to commit damnatio memoriae: the damnation of memory, or the complete destruction of all record of his brother in an attempt to erase him from history. Across the empire, it became an offence just to say his name, while his image was removed from all coins, statues and art. Most famously, the Severan Tondo, a family portrait of Severus, Julia Domna and the two sons as young boys, has survived with the utterly obliterated face of Geta. Caracalla was not done, though. He purged the empire of anyone linked to his brother, from senators to servants. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, as many as 20,000 men and women were put to death. Caracalla as emperor Caracalla ruled for another six years after Geta’s death. There would be more bloodshed – during a visit to Alexandria in Egypt, he ordered a massacre, supposedly in retaliation to the jokes being made at his expense – and he was despised by the elite of Rome, notably the Senate. The legacy of his reign, however, hinges on two achievements. The former is the Antonine Constitution, also known as the Edict of Caracalla. Issued in AD 212, it granted Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire. While it sounds like a great egalitarian reform, the purpose may have been simply to add to the tax-paying population or secure the frontiers with a gesture of bringing everyone into the Roman fold. Regardless, it had far-reaching implications in the empire as the meaning of citizenship shifted. The latter achievement was the Baths of Caracalla, a magnificent complex in Rome. The largest of its kind at the time, able to fit 1,600 people, it included vast baths and pools, vaulted ceilings, libraries, gyms, halls and gardens, and decorated with exquisite marbles, mosaics and statues. The baths remained in use until the sixth century. Yet while Caracalla got the credit, the baths’ commission and construction actually originated in Severus’s reign. What Caracalla truly cared about was military glory. Following his father’s last piece of advice to “enrich the army”, he was beloved by the soldiers for raising their pay 50 per cent and he wanted to be seen ‘mucking in’ with the men. On the other side, he longed to be the new Alexander the Great. Obsessed with the Macedonian empire builder, Caracalla tried to mimic him in every way, including his clothing, military strategy and – contradicting his image as a normal soldier – depictions as a great god king. Caracalla personally went on campaign against the German tribes, achieving reputation and ego-boosting victories, and was preparing for a second campaign against the Parthian empire. He would not live to see it through. How did Caracalla die? In AD 217, Caracalla, not yet 30 years old, was stabbed and killed while on his way through modern-day Turkey. The killer was a soldier named Justin Martialis. He had been recruited by Macrinus, a skilled lawyer and bureaucrat serving as praetorian prefect, a high office in the Roman empire. Having begun to conspire against the emperor, Macrinus knew that if he did not strike first then Caracalla would almost certainly come for him. It was said that Caracalla had stepped to the side of the road to urinate when the knife was plunged into his back. There is a certain irony that, given that his primary concern was military matters, it was a disgruntled solider – Martialis had reportedly been upset not to have been made a centurion – who ended his life. Gladiator II is in cinemas now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV and film to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators
How did gladiators supercharge the rise of Julius Caesar? And why were they seen as sex symbols? As Gladiator II arrives in cinemas, Guy de la Bédoyère tells the story of this brutal form of mass entertainment through six of its most significant (and surprising) moments
Julius Caesar turns death into mass entertainment Of all Roman pastimes, gladiators excite the most fascination and horror to this day – not least because of the sneaking suspicion that, if revived, they would rapidly pick up a fervent following. Yet, ironically, this most Roman of entertainments wasn’t the brainchild of the Romans. That dubious honour goes to the Etruscans, an ancient Italian people that emerged near the beginning of the first millennium BC. Gladiators used to fight in bouts to the death at Etruscan funerals – in short, they served as a form of human sacrifice. The Romans derived many of their customs from the Etruscans. And so it was perhaps inevitable that, as they grew into the dominant force on the Italian peninsula, they would adopt gladiatorial combat with gusto. Decimus Junius Brutus, later a consul, was said to have been the first to lay on a gladiatorial show – in honour of his deceased father, in c264–262 BC. Yet, as was the case with so many aspects of ancient Roman history, the concept of fighting to the death as mass entertainment was profoundly shaped by one Julius Caesar. In 65 BC, Caesar used his position as aedile (junior magistrate) to initiate a programme of public shows to secure, in the words of the historian Suetonius, “the good will of the masses”. He laid on 320 gladiatorial bouts and animal fights – and did so both in his name and in association with the other aedile, Marcus Bibulus, but in a way that ensured it was widely assumed the occasions were all his work. That, of course, was precisely his intention. Curiously, the 320 gladiatorial bouts represented a reduction of Caesar’s intentions. He had organised such a large number that his political opponents in the senate were terrified by the thought of so many armed men in Rome on Caesar’s payroll. And so they passed a law putting a cap on the numbers. The fears were well-grounded. Gladiators supplied muscle for thug politicians in the late Republic. By the 50s BC, when Roman politics was becoming increasingly polarised during the age of the imperators Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, violence was routinely used to further political agendas. In 57 BC, the notorious senator Publius Clodius Pulcher rounded up a gang of gladiators to rush those assembled to vote on a measure. They attacked and killed some of the crowd. In Rome, gladiatorial events later became the preserve of the emperors. The first, Augustus (Caesar’s heir and great-nephew), set the trend with multiple gladiatorial events, involving around 10,000 combatants. It was a sign of things to come. Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since. Listen to all episodes now Spartacus gives his captors the fright of their lives As bizarre as it may appear today, some gladiators were drawn to the profession by the violent glamour, and actually volunteered to lay their lives on the line. The vast majority, however, were there under duress, drawn mainly from the ranks of criminals and prisoners-of-war. That’s not to say that they were thrown into the arena without a second’s preparation. Gladiators often spent long hours honing their martial expertise. Top-notch training may have made for better entertainment but, for the Roman authorities, it involved a huge element of risk. The most famous of all slave revolts was, of course, led by Spartacus, a former soldier in the Roman army who had been enslaved and sold for gladiatorial training at a school in Capua. That training, allied with their leader’s natural intelligence, made Spartacus’s army of professional gladiators a formidable fighting force. It took two years (73–71 BC) and two armies to crush the rebellion, the Third Servile War, followed by the crucifixion of the rebels along the Appian Way (the road from Rome to Brundisium, now Brindisi). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/HM9AW7-170574a-e1731580516558.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A net-bearing retiarius captures a secutor (‘pursuer’), as depicted in a third-century mosaic. Gladiators’ martial skills were used to devastating effect during Spartacus’s uprising of 73–71 BC (Photo by Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A net-bearing retiarius captures a secutor (‘pursuer’), as depicted in a third-century mosaic. Gladiators’ martial skills were used to devastating effect during Spartacus’s uprising of 73–71 BC (Photo by Lanmas/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Part of the reason that Spartacus’s army proved such an effective fighting force was that gladiators were skilled in the use of numerous weapons, such as swords, tridents and nets. They were also taught to employ a range of defensive equipment, including helmets, shields and guards. There were many different types of gladiator who fought in the arena. One was the retiarius (from rete = ‘net’), who had no helmet and darted about the arena equipped with a net, dagger and trident. The murmillo, armed with a sword and small shield, was named after the Greek saltwater fish mormylos because of the long, high crest on his helmet. The secutor (‘pursuer’) had a plain helmet with two eyeholes and no crest, protecting him from being snagged by the net of a retiarius, and was armed with a sword and large shield. Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome? Gladiator specialisation was based on physical attributes. The most heavily armed had to be strong, while the retiarii needed to be agile and swift. Ethnicity was probably also a factor, because part of the entertainment was role-playing. Gladiatorial bouts were as much about theatrics as violence. That brew of brutality and performance could earn gladiators fame – and the admiration of the opposite sex. “Celadus the Thracian, the gasp of all the girls!” shrieked one piece of graffiti from Pompeii. “Crescens is the lord of the dolly birds!” boasted another. Not only could gladiators win hearts, they could also win their freedom. Some even went on to run their own gladiatorial schools, picking slaves and prisoners for their physique, educating them in the art of combat, and renting them out for shows. As the case of Spartacus proves, it was that education that made gladiators so potentially dangerous. Take the quiz | What type of Gladiator would you be? Mob violence rages through Pompeii over a gladiatorial show In the early decades AD, Emperor Tiberius had to send in two cohorts of soldiers to place Pollentia (now Pollenzo) in northern Italy under martial law. Just for good measure, his troops imprisoned many people, including the town councillors. The reason for these extreme measures was a gladiator show – or lack of it. The people of Pollentia wanted a prominent centurion to stump up the funds to put on a show at the arena. He failed to oblige so the mob killed him and then refused to give up his body until, reported Suetonius, “Their violence had extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-122213209-c1a28a3-e1731580735100.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A fresco from Pompeii depicts a riot in the town’s amphitheatre. Gladiator bouts were banned for 10 years following the unrest (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="A fresco from Pompeii depicts a riot in the town’s amphitheatre. Gladiator bouts were banned for 10 years following the unrest (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> Things got even worse in Pompeii later in the first century AD. The town was home to one of the Roman world’s oldest stone amphitheatres, built around 80–70 BC. Generations of Pompeian magistrates had lined up to compete with one another as impresarios, ingratiating themselves with the population by putting on gladiatorial combat. All that came to an ugly end in AD 59. The problems started when a troublemaker called Livineius Regulus – who had been expelled from the senate – decided to put on a gladiatorial show. Supporters gathered at the arena in Pompeii and so did rival supporters from neighbouring Nuceria. They started hurling insults at each other in a way the Roman historian Tacitus described as being “typical of the petulance of country towns”. Read more | What was Pompeii like before the eruption of AD 79? Unfortunately, the supporters started throwing stones at each other, and then blades were pulled. There being more Pompeians than Nucerians, the Pompeians soon overwhelmed their enemies. “As a result,” said Tacitus, “many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the capital, while a large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents.” Pompeii was severely punished for the outrage. Gladiatorial bouts were banned there for 10 years. As for the troublesome Livineius and his cronies, they were all sent into exile. Nero delights the public by forcing his senators to fight One of the problems with gladiatorial bouts was that there were only so many ways the Romans could be treated to the sight of human beings hacking each other to death. Boredom was inevitable. During the reign of Nero (AD 54–68), the blood and gore had descended into repetitive tedium. Weary audiences watched the brutality barely half-awake. Impresarios trotted out the same old shows. Part of the problem was trying to please fussy audiences. Petronius, Nero’s style guru, had one character in his Satyricon novel moaning about a lousy show in which only old and worn-out gladiators “who would have fallen over flat if you’d breathed on them” were sent out to battle. So bad were they that they were all flogged at the end to punish them for a lack of enthusiasm to fight. Nero’s tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, wrote a letter to a friend recounting how disappointed he’d been by a midday event: “I happened to stop off at a lunchtime show, hoping to enjoy myself with some wit and relaxation, where a man’s eyes can rest at the sight of the death of their fellow men.” Yet it was just the opposite, he lamented. “The fights that used to take place were merciful by comparison. Now any mucking about is set aside and this is just plain murder. The fighters wear no armour, and their entire bodies are exposed to blows – and none of these are wasted.” Read more | Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad? So how could Nero liven up the action? According to Suetonius, one solution was to force “400 senators and 600 equestrians, some of who were affluent and of excellent repute, to compete in the arena. Even those who battled with wild animals and carried out the various service duties were senators and equestrians.” That was one of the reasons many in the Roman crowd loved Nero. He had the common touch. Humiliating the aristocracy was perfect entertainment. Nero wasn’t the only emperor to employ a little creativity when it came to putting on gladiator shows. Domitian (reigned AD 81–96) introduced an extra frisson with bouts between female gladiators, known as Amazons, while in AD 107 Trajan organised 123 days of games. Eleven thousand animals died this time, and 10,000 gladiators fought one another. Excess was becoming an end in itself. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-108547949-1234d24-e1731580838149.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A relief from c40 BC shows men battling animals. As the quest for spectacle grew ever more grotesque, 11,000 animals died in one season staged by the emperor Trajan in AD 107 (Photo by Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" title="A relief from c40 BC shows men battling animals. As the quest for spectacle grew ever more grotesque, 11,000 animals died in one season staged by the emperor Trajan in AD 107 (Photo by Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)" /> Around 80 years later, the Roman mob was treated to a new type of spectacle: a gladiator-emperor. Commodus, whom you might remember was the emperor in the movie Gladiator, was in love with the glamour of the arena. He acquired special chariot horses and dressed as a charioteer (as well as living with gladiators). According to the historian Cassius Dio, who witnessed Commodus’s antics, “He would enter the arena in the garb of Mercury, and casting aside all his other garments, would begin his exhibition wearing only a tunic and unshod.” Another historian of the time called Herodian said: “It was easy for him to defeat his opponents in gladiatorial bouts, just by wounding them, because they regarded him as emperor instead of a gladiator, and allowed him to win.” Britannia catches the bug for bloodsports Gladiatorial bouts may have begun life as a niche activity at Etruscan funerals, yet, over the following centuries, they were to spread to all corners of the mighty Roman empire – and that includes to the north-western outpost of Britannia. We know this because the physical remains of amphitheatres have been found in places such as London, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester and Caerleon. The famous Colchester vase depicts two gladiators, Memnon and Valentinus, in action. They were probably notable local gladiators in their day (the late second century). Meanwhile, the Roman villa at Rudston in Yorkshire had a mosaic featuring scenes from the arena, and gladiators are depicted on another at Bignor in Sussex. Read more | Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire? For the most part, amphitheatres of Roman Britain were built by creating turf embankments and digging out the arena. At Cirencester the amphitheatre was formed by digging out and adapting a quarry on the south-west side of the town (by the early second century). Stone walls were used to create revetments, entrance passageways and the arena wall. Despite natural erosion, the earthen embankments still rise to a height of about 8 metres. At Dorchester the amphitheatre was built by adapting a Neolithic henge monument that conveniently supplied ready-made earth embankments around an arena-shaped and sized enclosure. London’s amphitheatre lay close to the fort of the governor’s garrison, and is open to the public today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-501578349-9710fdb-e1731581117800.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The Colchester Vase shows a retarius raising a forefinger in submission to a secutor. An inscription reads: “Memnon Valentinus of Legion XXX” (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="The Colchester Vase shows a retarius raising a forefinger in submission to a secutor. An inscription reads: “Memnon Valentinus of Legion XXX” (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> At the VI legion’s fortress and military colony at York a man called Victor was buried with a small bone label laid on his chest. It said: “Lord Victor, may you have a lucky win!”, an exhortation normally applied either to gladiators or charioteers. The glory of the remains of the II legion Augusta’s base at Caerleon in south Wales is its amphitheatre. Today visitors can wander around the arena where gladiators fought and among the stone-revetted earthen embankments for the wooden seats that have long since rotted away. It had seats for around 5,000 or 6,000 spectators – enough for the legion – and probably doubled up as a venue for speeches to the troops and formal military displays. A doctor embarks on an eye-catching change of career Gladiators needed some looking after, despite the fact that they might end their lives mutilated and bloody on the arena floor. One man employed to offer medical care to fighters was Gaius Futius Philargyrus, a freedman doctor of Rome’s gladiators in the first century AD. (His name was appropriately descriptive. It means ‘lover of the horse-training circuit’, but was probably used here in a more general sense to refer to a training arena.) We also know that the Greek doctor Claudius Galen’s first professional appointment was as a surgeon to gladiators. Read more | Roman medicine: 6 ways people stayed healthy in ancient Rome Of course, often there was nothing a doctor could do to save gladiators from the injuries they sustained in the arena – a fact that is made grimly apparent by the contents of a cemetery at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Here, the graves were accompanied by inscriptions and tombstones that name and depict the dead as gladiators. The skeletons featured major bone injuries, some even demonstrably from blows made by a trident. Another Roman-period cemetery – this time in Driffield Terrace in York – contains 80 or so skeletons, many of which may have been gladiators. Crucially, about 75 were adult men, which of course couldn’t possibly be representative of the population. A little taller than average and well-built, many of them bore the signs of injuries, some healed and some unhealed. It’s possible that before they were buried, some of the corpses were studied by doctors in post-mortems that could also be used for anatomical lessons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-935427404-14c91db-e1731581036984.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Galen treats a stricken gladiator in the city of Pergamon, as depicted in an illustration from the 19th century (Photo by DEA / BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA /Getty Images)" title="Galen treats a stricken gladiator in the city of Pergamon, as depicted in an illustration from the 19th century (Photo by DEA / BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA /Getty Images)" /> The scientific writer Celsus thought gladiators provided useful evidence for anatomists. “Occasionally,” he wrote, “a gladiator in the arena, a soldier in battle, or a traveller attacked by highwaymen, is wounded so that some part of his insides is exposed.” Interestingly, we know of at least one man whose life straddled the worlds of both medicine and fighting, earning a living as an eye doctor before, following a dramatic change of career, entering the arena as a gladiator. Unfortunately, it seems that this anonymous individual wasn’t a very good doctor – and that made him the target of one of the Roman poet Martial’s jokes. “You are now a hoplomachus [a type of gladiator],” quipped Martial. “Before you were an opthalmicus [an eye doctor]. You did as a doctor what you now do as a gladiator.” In other words, the offending individual’s career had consisted of poking out people’s eyes. Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian, broadcaster and author of Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine