Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
During the Second Punic War, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal led his forces to numerous victories. But did he really take war elephants across the Alps?
The Punic Wars – and the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) specifically – were a definitive chapter in the history of the ancient world. Fought between the formidable Mediterranean power of Carthage and the upstart Roman Republic, the conflict ultimately saw the balance of power shift decisively away from the Carthaginians and towards the Romans. Had Rome fallen, Carthage would have retained its influence, and Roman civilisation may never have grown out of its infancy. Instead, the Romans won. Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, at the end of the Third Punic War, eliminated its greatest rival. In victory, they took hold of the ancient Mediterranean, using it as a springboard for imperial expansion across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It wasn’t until the invasions associated with Attila the Hun centuries later that Rome would again face such an existential threat. But that’s not to say that Roman victory was inevitable. During the apogee of the war, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca inflicted a series of devastating defeats on Roman armies. At Cannae in 216 BC, perhaps 50,000 Roman soldiers died in a single day – one of the worst military disasters in Roman history – while earlier victories at Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC) had already demonstrated Hannibal’s military genius. Read more | Long before the ancient Roman empire, a rival superpower looked set for supremacy His most audacious, move, however, was none of these. Marching from Carthaginian territories in Iberia – modern-day Spain – Hannibal led an expeditionary force through southern Gaul and across the Alps, where he traversed the imposing mountainous slopes with a vast army that included war elephants. It was a force that arrived at the gates of Rome, pushing for a Roman surrender. It’s an astonishing story that underlines Hannibal’s determination, and most of all, his astounding logistical capabilities. But for all its fame, did it really happen? While many historians and archaeologists accept its plausibility, no physical evidence has ever been found for Hannibal’s elephantine, Alpine crossing. Ancient texts recount the elephants in detail, but physical evidence has remained conspicuous in its absence. At least, until now. New evidence for Hannibal’s ancient elephants? Archaeologists – led by Professor Rafael M Martínez Sánchez – excavating at Colina de los Quemados, near Córdoba in southern Spain, have uncovered a small elephant foot bone dating to the late third century BC – the period of Hannibal’s campaign. The discovery may represent the first tangible archaeological evidence connected to the elephants used during the Punic Wars. The roughly 10-centimetre cube-shaped bone was found beneath a collapsed wall within an Iron Age settlement. Radiocarbon dating places it firmly within the timeframe of the Second Punic War. Additional finds from the 2020 excavation (including coins, ceramics and military material) suggest the site was associated with armed conflict. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/elephant-bone-60cdac0-e1772187879548.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Comparative figure of elephant third carpal (wrist) bones showing an Iron Age archaeological specimen from Colina de los Quemados, Córdoba (top row) alongside modern Asian elephant and Steppe Mammoth examples, with numbered articular facets used for anatomical comparison." title="elephant-bone" /> Comparisons with modern elephant skeletons and even prehistoric steppe mammoths confirmed the identification. Because elephants weren’t native to Iberia, the researchers argue the animal must have been transported there, most likely by ship as part of a military operation. Carthage had long experience using the animals, likely North African forest elephants (now extinct), as part of its military. Read more | How did a crow help Rome defeat Carthage? Does the age and location of the find, and its surrounding context, point to the possibility of the bone being the remains of an elephant that was part of Hannibal’s war band, perhaps dying before the general began his famous Alpine crossing? As the paper states, the bone “could potentially embody the first known relic … of the animals used in the Punic Roman wars for the control of the Mediterranean.” So, is the bone proof of Hannibal’s elephants? For Emeritus Professor Kevin Walsh, an archaeologist at the University of York, the discovery is significant less for what it proves, than for how it fits into a long-standing historical puzzle. “The new bone evidence supports the argument that elephants were present in Hannibal’s world,” he says, speaking to HistoryExtra. But, he notes, the bone isn’t proof that this elephant belonged to Hannibal. “This does not constitute definitive physical evidence for war elephants in Hannibal’s army, and consequently, certainly not definitive evidence for elephants that would have gone on to cross France and then traverse the Alps.” Read more | Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures” Proof, Walsh says, would ideally be “a site – or sites – that comprise artefacts directly linked to a Carthaginian army at an alpine site, along with elephant bones; a site that comprises several types of evidence supporting the presence of an army in this area in the Alps during the late third century BC.” But, as Walsh explains, preservation itself poses a problem: acidic alpine soils rarely allow bone to survive over long periods. High-altitude environments also shift over time due to erosion, glacial movement and landslides, further complicating the archaeological record. In an ideal scenario, he suggests, researchers might one day detect elephant DNA preserved within lake sediments near a plausible crossing route. In this context, the Spanish discovery serves mainly as confirmation that elephants were indeed present within the military world of late third-century BC Carthage. As Walsh says, it’s “another tantalising piece of evidence for a puzzle that is missing numerous pieces.” What was the point of Hannibal’s war elephants? Even if the bone was firm evidence for Hannibal’s war elephants, Professor Philip Freeman – a classicist at Pepperdine University and specialist in the ancient Mediterranean – says that the broader historical implications would be limited, simply because elephants weren’t always the most effective weapons. “I think the evidence of elephant bones in Spain is intriguing, but it doesn't really change our view of Hannibal or the Punic War,” he says. “No one ever seriously doubted that the Carthaginians used them in battle or that Hannibal took them to Italy, as the ancient texts say.” Read more | The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist “The problem with elephants in ancient warfare was that they never made much difference. They were large and imposing but tactically offered little help. They were hard to control and might just as easily turn on their own side as the enemy. They were good for show, but not much else.” As Freeman notes, according to ancient sources, “Hannibal only had one elephant who survived the crossing of the Alps into Italy, so it made little difference to the war.” Whether the bone belongs to one of Hannibal’s elephants or simply proves the presence of elephants within the Carthaginian context, both Freeman and Walsh argue that the animals themselves were not especially important. Freeman concludes, “it was Hannibal's military brilliance that enabled him to defeat the Romans again and again, not elephants.” Hannibal’s journey across the Alps with elephants, navigating winding passes and narrow mountain ledges, may therefore be more significant as an audacious logistical achievement than as a moment of true military importance. “It is perhaps the enigma itself, and faith in the idea that such an exploit was possible, that makes any new piece of research on the topic interesting,” concludes Walsh. “Hannibal's achievement and his army's remarkable struggle contribute to a timeless story of human resilience in the face of an apparently impossible task.” Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University. Explore the course now
How do civilisations collapse? That was the question at the heart of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two hundred and fifty years after it was published, Guy de la Bédoyère argues that Gibbon’s magnum opus remains a landmark in the writing of history
Sometimes, a single narrative comes to dominate how we remember a year. So it is with 1776. This, as every history lover knows, was the date that the American colonies declared their independence, beginning the history of the United States. But back in the old world, another, rather more modest event would have a profound influence on cultural history. For 1776 was also the year that the first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in London. And though it may not have spawned a nation, there’s little doubt that the book’s release was a landmark moment in the writing of history. Authored by Edward Gibbon, an essayist and, at this time, Whig MP for Liskeard, this epic work eventually grew to encompass the story of the Roman empire from the accession of the emperor Trajan in AD 98 through to 1453, when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and the rump of the Eastern empire fell. The last of its six volumes appeared in 1788 just before another tumultuous year in global history, 1789, when the opening salvos were fired in the French Revolution. What, in the year of its 250th anniversary, are we to make of Decline and Fall? Is it coincidental that a book written at a time of rebellion, and where so much of the narrative is about political intrigues and the loss of power, connected with 18th-century readers? And how did a history based on limited resources that few scholars would refer to today escape its time to become a classic? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-122219029webready-2206e03-e1771851490986.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A life‑sized marble statue of a Roman leader stands upright against a carved stone wall. The figure wears ornate armor decorated with reliefs, including a central face and small mythological scenes. A heavy cloak drapes over the left shoulder and arm, adding a sense of movement to the otherwise rigid pose. The right arm is raised, holding a scroll that suggests authority or command. The statue’s expression is calm and formal, and the smooth, pale marble contrasts with the textured architectural backdrop" title="Trajan’s reign marked the beginning of a time when, wrote Gibbon, the Roman empire presided over the “most civilised portion of mankind” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Young and lonely To begin to answer these questions, it helps to know a little about Decline and Fall’s author. Gibbon was born in Putney in 1737 to a family of considerable means. But for all his privilege, there’s more than a suggestion of loneliness in his early life. His relationship with his mother was troubled. None of his six siblings survived to adulthood. He attended Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, but is better understood as someone who was largely self-educated as a result of his extensive reading. His decision to convert to Catholicism in 1753 brought his time at Oxford to an abrupt end, but under threat of being disinherited by his father, he swiftly returned to Protestantism. There’s a sense at this stage of Gibbon failing to find a purpose in life. Or perhaps, bearing in mind his bookish creativity, a failure to find the right project. This would not arrive until 1764 when, travelling around Europe on a Grand Tour, Gibbon reached “the great object of [my] pilgrimage”, Rome. In Decline and Fall, he would famously note, “It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near 20 years of my life”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1649172Gibbonwebready-365c81c-e1771851649321.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of six books standing side by side, with their spines facing the viewer. Each book is brown, red and green in colour with gold lettering" title="The six volumes of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall were published in the 12 years between the American and French revolutions. The author declared that the book itself documented “a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the Earth” (Image by Peter Harrington)" /> Gibbon had found his calling. By the end of the 1760s, he had begun the work that would define him. His preface suggested he knew exactly what he was doing as he explained how he intended to cover the 13 and a half centuries from AD 98 to 1453 by dividing his subject into different periods. He began by explaining: “The first of these periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the subversion of the Western empire, by the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe. This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power of a Gothic conqueror, was completed about the beginning of the sixth century.” From there, Gibbon planned to move on to a second period starting with Justinian (reigned 527–65), who was emperor for close to four decades, and lasting to the reign of Charlemagne, who founded the Carolingian empire in AD 800. A third period would take the story from this Frankish revival of the Western empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Read more | Meet the “grossly underappreciated” Roman emperor who became the enemy of the ancient world Blind faith Gibbon baulked at the prospect of completing the massive task he had set himself. “I dare not presume to give any assurances,” he warned his readers. Yet for all his modesty, there was a sense of purpose about his writing. From the off, he wanted to argue that the Roman empire fell due to a combination of Christianity’s corrosive influence, which eroded civic ambition and responsibilities, and barbarian invasions, which acted as the final blow to an already weakened state. He believed that Christianity redirected the focus of citizens from worldly concerns to the afterlife, diminishing their commitment to the state. He also suggested that other internal factors – like despotism, corruption and military weakness – contributed to the empire’s internal decay before the external pressures became overwhelming. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/BAL206171webready-bdcce3f-e1771852336666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="“A painted portrait of an 18th‑century man wearing a red coat with gold buttons, a white cravat, and a powdered wig. He faces slightly to the side against a dark background, which highlights his pale face, formal clothing, and the refined style typical of the period" title="Edward Gibbon shown in a portrait from c1779. “He deserves to be admired for as long as there is anyone around to read him,” writes Guy de la Bédoyère (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Gibbon didn’t think he was writing about a remote and arcane subject. He believed that, “In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the Earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind”, neatly brushing over the total dependence of the Roman empire on slavery. The empire’s decline and fall was, Gibbon said, “a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the Earth”. Here lay his central point. The collapse of the Roman empire, however long it had taken, had a decisive effect on the world that followed. It was, therefore, a lesson for all time in how civilisations can fall to pieces and what this might mean for those who follow. Although there are countless observations that could be made about Gibbon’s use of ancient sources, and the limitations both of his technique and the evidence he had to hand, it would be difficult to quarrel with his interest in trying to understand why and how a state could fail. This shouldn’t blind us to Decline and Fall’s limitations. One of those limitations emerges during Gibbon’s discussions of the invasion of Britain in the first century AD (in which the author looked back to see how the Roman empire grew to become the dominant force of the second century). Of the British tribes, he noted that “while they fought singly, they were successively subdued”. This is an instantly identifiable line borrowed and translated from Agricola – written by the Roman historian Tacitus and named after the general who helped mastermind the conquest of northern Britain. Read more | Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them? Unattributed borrowings like this were commonplace at the time. In one sense, they were homages, but they also served to showcase the author’s learning and easy familiarity with classical texts. Gibbon may have expected, even wanted, his readers to notice this kind of copying and pasting, but it also illustrates an uncritical approach to his source material. A few lines on, Gibbon discussed the recall of Agricola, despite “his superior merit”, from his post as governor of Britain in the AD 80s. Agricola was Tacitus’s father-in-law, and the biography Tacitus wrote was an unashamed hagiography. Gibbon simply copied Tacitus’s very evident bias and accepted the criticisms of the last Flavian emperor, Domitian (ruled 81–96). Happy days? Gibbon was prone to making sweeping judgments. Among the most famous lines in the entire book is his assertion that, “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus”. This statement may be well known but that doesn’t mean it was correct. As I alluded to earlier, we now have a far more graphic understanding of the reality of Roman slavery. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-2181025710webready-7b1c152-e1771851899984.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble statue of a man with curly hair and a beard, looking down towards the left with a serious expression on his face" title="Gibbon saw in the second-century emperor Commodus a man unable to cope with the colossal responsibilities of imperial power (Image by Getty Images)" /> Yet Gibbon could also be astute. His stance on Commodus – the much-maligned emperor assassinated in a palace coup on the last day of 192 – showed an understanding of the vulnerability of the imperial system when the emperor lacked the personal resources to cope with the enormous demands of the job. “Commodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the most inhuman actions,” observed Gibbon. “Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked disposition.” Gibbon’s descriptions of Commodus also reveal a pithiness and a joy in the use of language that helps explain Decline’s and Fall’s initial success. There are many examples of Gibbon’s meticulous turns of phrase but only room here to highlight a small number. Commodus’s downfall was precipitated by him having “discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace” since childhood. When Emperor Septimius Severus died at York on campaign in 211, Gibbon described the moment thus: “The declining health and last illness of Severus inflamed the wild ambition and black passions of [his son] Caracalla’s soul.” We might choose different words today, but Gibbon’s meaning remains obvious. He was foreshadowing what came next. Caracalla, “the common enemy of mankind”, now embarked on a tyrannical rule that lasted until his own murder in 217. The only historical figure whom Caracalla admired, Gibbon tells us, was Alexander the Great. But “in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance of the Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a great number of his own and of his father’s friends”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-464435571webready-2521f5e-e1771851785523.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble bust of a bearded man with thick, curly hair, shown from the chest up. His expression is intense, with furrowed brows and a slightly turned head that gives a sense of movement. The sculpted curls, textured beard, and draped garment are finely detailed, highlighting the craftsmanship of the classical style" title="Gibbon reserved some of his most stinging criticisms for the emperor Caracalla, whom he labelled “the common enemy of mankind” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Maxims of persecution Gibbon also had sharp words for Constantine I, who famously converted to Christianity and issued an edict banning the persecution of Christians in 313. What this shift meant in practice, Gibbon contended, was that Christians themselves became oppressors: “The emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the Catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity.” Like so many passages of Decline and Fall, Gibbon’s writings on the impact of Christianity on Rome were phrased beautifully. But that didn’t stop them triggering a firestorm of criticism. Leading the charge was the theologian George Travis, who outlined his grave objections to the book in a series of letters published in 1785. Travis’s condemnation centred on a specific passage in the Bible known as the Johannine Comma. This was a phrase affirming the unity of the Holy Trinity that appeared in the Epistles of John, but was absent from ancient Greek manuscripts. Travis defended the Comma as authentic scripture. Yet, in his discussion of the conversion of “barbarians” to Christianity in Decline and Fall, Gibbon labelled it a “pious fraud”. Travis wrote to Gibbon to say: “It will become one who wishes to live to posterity as a historian, to consider well how he can justify himself either in literary candor [sic] or Christian charity, for accusing men so evidently conscientious… of the complicated crime of the falsification of Scripture!” Travis went on to accuse Gibbon of “bigotry” because of his “perverse adherence to any opinion of any kind, without giving to the evidence on the contrary part, an open hearing”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1336622679webready-094aff8-e1771852165870.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A circular mosaic showing the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. At the centre, John the Baptist pours water over Jesus, who stands waist‑deep in the river. A white dove descends above them, symbolizing the Holy Spirit. The scene is surrounded by brightly colored, gold‑accented figures of angels with halos arranged in a radial pattern, creating a sense of sacred ceremony and ornate Byzantine style" title="A fifth-century mosaic shows Jesus Christ being baptised in the river Jordan, which is depicted as a pagan god. Edward Gibbon noted the ease with which early Christians made the transition from the oppressed to the oppressors (Image by Getty Images)" /> Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Travis story is how the affair might have inspired Jane Austen. As he dashed off his pen to slate Gibbon, Travis included the phrases “partiality and prejudiced” and “certain truths which you affirm to be now universally acknowledged”. In her History of England (1791), a piece of juvenilia poking fun at school history books, the 15-year-old Austen referred to herself as a “partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian”. In addition, Austen’s celebrated words “pride and prejudice” can be found in Decline and Fall when Gibbon refers to them as a cause of slavery. Read more | Divided they fell: how war, revolution and sectarianism led to the end of the Ottoman empire In the knives-out scholarly argument that followed the clash between Gibbon and Travis, Gibbon’s view prevailed with the support of an ancient Greek scholar called Richard Porson, who produced evidence suggesting that the Comma was a later insertion. But the episode demonstrates how, in its time, Decline and Fall was hugely controversial. Gibbon was believed by many, especially the clergy, to be attacking the very institution of the church. Resentment of Gibbon’s perceived criticism of Christianity proved enduring. The Rev HH Milman edited an 1845 edition of Decline and Fall and contributed a foreword in which he warned the reader: “We may deplore the bias of his mind; we may ourselves be on our guard against the danger of being misled, and be anxious to warn less wary readers against the same perils.” While he was gracious enough to acknowledge that Gibbon “leaves us the materials for forming a fairer judgment”, Milman insisted “that great misrepresentation which pervades his history” was a “false estimate” of the influence of Christianity. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-566460025webready-1a85702-e1771852243572.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A pencil sketch depicting a woman dressed in a white dress and cap, with her arms crossed. She has dark curly hair escaping out the front of the cap and is looking towards the left" title="A c1810 portrait of Jane Austen. Was the title of her bestselling novel inspired by Edward Gibbon’s prose? (Image by Getty Images)" /> Churchillian praise If conservative religious voices criticised Gibbon, Conservative politicians have often expressed their admiration. Winston Churchill, who was inspired by Gibbon’s self-education, said he had “devoured Gibbon”. He praised Decline and Fall and “was immediately dominated by both the story and the style”. In more recent times, Gibbon appeared at the centre of another controversy. In a 2021 interview, Boris Johnson claimed the fall of Rome was “largely the result of uncontrolled immigration”, an argument derived ultimately from Gibbon. Johnson’s warning that Europe was itself not immune to a similar fate was widely criticised for being over-simplistic, outdated and provocative. Where, then, does all this leave Edward Gibbon? If he did wish “to live to posterity as a historian”, he succeeded. Does it matter that he is now regarded as being out of date? Of course not. Decline and Fall is a valuable artefact of its own time, as is every history book. Glibly criticising works for such a failing is the last refuge of idle academics indulging the conceit that they have themselves pulled off the impossible feat of eternal and indisputable objectivity. If there was no subjectivity or bias in history there would be no history, and instead merely a series of statements of fact. Decline and Fall is also a magnificent monument to a pre-digital era when assembling a book of such epic complexity and range had all to be done by hand and in person. That Gibbon both managed this – and to do so with a memorable use of his native language – means he deserves to be admired for as long as there is anyone around to read him. As so often with the creators of great works, Gibbon’s life after Decline and Fall was an anti-climax compounded by serious ill-health and loneliness. He had never married, his father obstructing the one union – with the salon host and writer Suzanne Curchord – Gibbon had wished to pursue. Gibbon died in 1794, aged only 56 and afflicted with gout and several other ailments. He is buried in Fletching, East Sussex. When he laid down his pen in 1787, Gibbon said in his final paragraph that he hoped his readers would be excited by “a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind”. He acknowledged his own imperfections, and the inadequacy of the book compared to his own wishes but delivered it “to the curiosity and candour of the public”. And there it has remained ever since. Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer with numerous books to his credit, many about the Roman world. His latest book is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations (Abacus, 2025) This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Nero's doomed love affair: did a failed romance trigger his descent into madness?
He’s reviled as a cruel tyrant who killed his own mother and fiddled while Rome burned. But was Nero’s descent into madness triggered by his failed romance with a former slave? Edward J Watts tells a story of murder, incest and political intrigue
It is difficult to feel empathy for the emperor Nero, a man who did such unquestionably terrible things that he has become a prototype for the monstrous Roman ruler. During his lifetime he was labelled a matricide, an arsonist and a persecutor of Christians who also killed his pregnant wife by kicking her in the stomach. After his death, these stories grew into terrifying legends about his cruel madness. By the Middle Ages, chroniclers even detailed a tale in which Nero commanded doctors to make him give birth. Fearing for their lives, the terrified doctors “made up a potion in which they put a frog and gave it to the emperor to drink”, while prescribing him a special diet that would cause his stomach to expand. When Nero vomited the animal out, he “commanded that the foetus be fed and kept in a domed chamber” as his imperial heir. Some manuscripts even featured an image of Nero on a birthing chair beside his frog-child to illustrate his “evil madness”. And yet it is not hard to imagine a different life for Nero. This is because, before Nero became a monster, he was a heartbroken boy prohibited from marrying Acte – his one true love. Family trauma The tragic history of Nero’s family made it all the more surprising that he found such a romantic partner. His mother, Agrippina, was the daughter of Germanicus – the man whom Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius, hoped would assume imperial power following his planned retirement. When Germanicus predeceased Tiberius, however, his wife and children became potential rivals and were ultimately arrested. Agrippina’s mother starved to death in captivity, while her brother took his own life by eating the mattress in his cell. Their fates taught the princess that real financial and political security came only from a strong connection to some devoted, powerful male figure. She married thrice, each time to a rich and powerful suitor. Her first marriage, which was celebrated in AD 28 when she was just 13 years old, joined Agrippina to her 30-year-old cousin, Domitius Ahenobarbus. Nero was born to the couple in AD 37, and the child not only inherited his father’s fortune when Ahenobarbus died in AD 41, but also that of Agrippina’s second husband, Passienus Crispus, who died six years later. In AD 49, Agrippina wed her uncle, the elderly emperor Claudius. She persuaded Claudius to name Nero as his heir and to marry his natural-born daughter Octavia to Nero in AD 53. Between her husband and her son, Agrippina finally seemed to have the security she had long craved. Read more | Monsters of Rome: do emperors such as Nero and Caligula deserve their reputations? As Claudius’s natural-born son Britannicus entered adolescence, however, the emperor began to reconsider Nero’s appointment as successor designate. But Claudius suddenly died on 13 October AD 54, poisoned by a mushroom that Agrippina may or may not have arranged for him to eat. The 16-year-old Nero was now Roman emperor. Britannicus would be dead within a year. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/7-NeronyAgripina-6f8fc45-e1766490879177.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A marble statue showing a woman crowning a man. Both are dressed in Roman clothes" title="A relief shows Agrippina crowning Nero with a laurel wreath. The 16-year-old boy became emperor following the death of his mother's third husband (and uncle), Claudius (Image by Wiki Commons)" /> Acte enters the scene Everyone in Rome, except perhaps for Nero himself, understood that Nero’s status as Claudius’s legitimate heir derived in large part from his marriage to Octavia. It was then essential for the young couple to remain together. Nero, however, found his wife physically repulsive, and began searching for more attractive and interesting sexual partners. This is how Acte entered his life. The girl, who had been bought as a slave in the Roman province of Asia, was seen by the men around Nero as someone who “could fulfil his desires without harm to anyone” since, as the historian wrote, “it was feared that he might rush into scandalous behaviour with noble ladies, if he were not permitted this indulgence”. Tacitus’s words reflect the Roman idea that enslaved people like Acte were, in a sense, disposable commodities whose bodies could be used by noble men to fulfil the urges their wives could not. When the men tired of “the debaucheries… that vice made overwhelmingly attractive”, they were supposed to dispose of the slaves who had serviced them. This is how elite men often behaved, but no one anticipated that, instead of using and dismissing the girl, Nero would fall in love with Acte. Not only had she quickly won Nero’s affections, but their intense connection would lead to her emancipation and talk of Nero’s desire to marry her. Agrippina was incensed when she learned that this sexual dalliance had evolved into a genuine romance. Tacitus says that she “raved with a woman’s fury about having… a slave girl for a daughter-in-law”, but that “the fouler her reproaches, the fiercer the passion Nero felt”. Read more | One of ancient Rome’s most notorious emperors murdered his own mother, and there's a dark reason why Finally, Agrippina snapped and yelled at her son: “It was I who made you emperor!” This entirely true but extremely unwise outburst was too much for the headstrong teenage emperor to bear. It was at that point, writes Tacitus, that Nero “threw off all respect for his mother”. Rise of the sycophants Sensing an opportunity, men like the future emperor Otho and the senator Seneca stepped forward to exploit the emperor’s hurt feelings and growing estrangement from Agrippina. Otho, a fashionable party boy from an aristocratic family, offered emotional support to Nero during wild drinking sessions, in which the emperor confessed to Otho far more than was wise. Meanwhile, Seneca offered more practical aid by enlisting an associate who was willing to pretend to be in love with Acte, so he could “serve as the ostensible giver of the presents secretly sent by the emperor to the girl”. The appreciative emperor was too naïve to realise that these men encouraged his love affair precisely because it weakened his bond with Agrippina and made him more likely to reward them in the future. Agrippina was not so foolish. “Changing her tactics,” Tacitus writes, she went to her son and “pleaded guilty to an ill-timed strictness”. She even “offered the seclusion of her chamber” for Nero and Acte to use so that their activities did not further embarrass Octavia. This shift in Agrippina’s attitude was sensible politics and good parenting, but Nero’s “most intimate friends… begged him to beware of the arts of a woman” who, they claimed, “was always daring and was now lying”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/8-gettyimages-1157131481-594x594-528e6a8-e1766491080872.jpg" width="579" height="413" alt="A painting showing a group of Roman" title="An 1881 book illustration imagines Nero participating in a bacchanal. The young emperor indulged in marathon drinking sessions, in which he told acquaintances of his desires for Acte (Image by Getty Images)" /> As Agrippina’s views softened, Nero’s sycophants became even more strident in their support of Nero’s relationship with Acte. According to the historian Suetonius, one group of senators even “perjured themselves by swearing that she [Acte] was of royal birth”, so she would quickly become a suitable imperial spouse. The senators were rewarded by Nero, even though it is not clear if anyone besides Nero expected their claim to be persuasive. Murder, intrigue and incest Not long after the predictable failure of this gambit, Nero realised that despite his love for Acte, the gulf between their social statuses was too great for them to ever wed. The affair then ended and both people moved on. Inscriptions from Italy reveal that Acte had a good, productive life, in which she used the profits from some of Nero’s gifts to become a wealthy patron of several towns. Nero’s story, of course, has a much sadder ending. As the years passed, the emperor grew ever more estranged from his mother and became enmeshed in the intrigues of sycophants like Otho, who enticed the emperor into a scandalous love affair with his wife, Poppaea. Tacitus reports that Otho embarked on the scheme “to inflame Nero's passion, in the hope of adding to his own influence by the further tie which would arise out of possession of the same woman”. The affair led Nero to divorce Octavia and force the dissolution of Otho’s marriage so that he could marry Poppaea – the wife he is later rumoured to have killed while she was pregnant with his child. This chapter in the emperor’s romantic life was, of course, much more shocking and tragic than his relationship with Acte. Meanwhile, the senator and Neronian associate Cluvius Rufus reports an even more appalling sexual incident that Nero only just escaped. He tells of how Agrippina tried seducing Nero “in her eagerness to retain her influence”. Seneca then hurried in Acte, who told Nero that the incest was “notorious” and that the soldiers would never endure the rule of an “impious sovereign”. While Rufus’s unreliability as a narrator ought to make one suspect whether Agrippina’s seduction really happened, his description of Acte as the one person who could be counted on to restrain Nero’s worst impulses rings true. She seemed capable of getting Nero to accept uncomfortable truths, because the emperor knew that she alone was genuinely concerned about his best interests. Read more | Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise Descent into madness Despite Nero’s increasingly poor decisions and unrestrained behaviour over the last decade of his life, it seems that Acte was never again summoned to the palace to check his worst impulses. She was not there when Nero arranged for Agrippina to be killed in AD 59, or when he burned Christians alive following a fire that devastated Rome in AD 64. She was not consulted before he went to Greece in AD 67 to compete in rigged Olympic competitions while popular anger boiled over at home. She seems not to have been involved as Nero bungled his response to the rebellion of the future emperor Galba, when he spent more time figuring out how to transport his water organ to the front than he did planning military strategy. Most heartbreaking of all, she was absent when Nero took his own life, virtually alone, after the senate stripped him of his imperial power in AD 68. And yet Acte clearly still loved Nero until the very end of his short life. After his death and public condemnation, Acte joined with the two nursemaids who had raised Nero as a baby to ensure that he had a proper burial. According to Suetonius, the ceremony cost “two hundred thousand sesterces”, an immense sum equal to the annual salary of more than 220 Roman soldiers. Nero was “laid out in white robes embroidered with gold” and, after his cremation, Acte and the two other women “deposited his ashes… in the family tomb of [his father’s family] the Domitii” in a “sarcophagus of porphyry, with an altar of Luna marble standing above it, and enclosed by a balustrade of Thasian stone.” We cannot know whether Acte’s affection, forthrightness and intelligence would have been enough to save Nero from infamy had the pair been permitted to marry. The emperor is fully deserving of the cruel reputation for which he is now remembered. What is certain, though, is that Nero’s descent into madness began when his relationship with Acte ended: the first woman he ever loved, and perhaps the only woman who ever loved him back. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the book The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?
Ancient accounts of Julius Caesar’s early life depict an all-action hero who outwitted tyrants and terrorised bandits. But can they be trusted? David S Potter investigates
The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome – sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia. There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune – the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next. Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed. He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge – softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses. Origin stories Caesar’s pirate-slaying escapades represent a truly extraordinary tale. But what are we to make of it? We know a great deal about Julius Caesar in the ‘colossus’ phase of his career – that period stretching from his mid-thirties to his assassination in his mid-fifties when he was an established political and military powerhouse. But for the earlier part of his life – before his every act was performed in the full glare of the ancient world’s attention – it’s a different story. Caesar’s youth and young manhood is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The tales of his formative years are subject to exaggeration, even outright invention. Yet that doesn’t make examining that early life any less worthwhile. Doing so gives us rich insights into not only the rise of one of the ancient world’s towering figures but also of the political motivations of those who wrote that history in the chaos that followed his death. Much of what we know about Caesar’s early life has come to us through his two biographers, Suetonius and the aforementioned Plutarch, both writing towards the beginning of the second century AD, around 150 years after his death. Their accounts of those early years are quite similar, which suggests that they drew on a common source. Based on quotations in Suetonius’s writings, that source can be identified as Gaius Oppius, one of Caesar’s most powerful lieutenants. When it came to setting the record straight, Oppius was more interested in a good story than the truth. The same was true of his colleague Aulus Hirtius, who was at work in the same months editing and updating notes that Caesar himself had left behind. Both men were working under the overall guidance of Cornelius Balbus, who had been Caesar’s chief of staff. Read more | Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise Oppius got to work soon after Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March 44 BC. He needed to set the record straight at a time when Caesar’s legacy was being challenged by two very different forces. First, and most predictably, there were the assassins, who presented the slain leader as a tyrant whose character was shaped by uncontrolled arrogance and ambition. The second was aspiring ruler Mark Antony – leading general and one of Caesar’s most powerful supporters – who was also shaping the dead dictator’s legacy to suppress the interests of his chosen heir, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. So what do Oppius’s writings, communicated to us via Suetonius and Plutarch, tell us about Caesar’s earlier years? And do they contain any clues about how this product of a moderately successful patrician family rose to such dizzying heights of power? Classical education Caesar certainly seems to have benefited from a good eduction. His mother, Aurelia – whom Plutarch describes as “a woman of discretion” – saw to that. She found him an excellent tutor for his early teens, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who went on to run his own well-regarded school. Gnipho had strong views on the Latin language, arguing that a word should only have a single meaning. This made quite an impression on his pupil: Caesar later wrote a book about this very subject, endorsing his tutor’s opinions. Another influence was an uncle, Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who was famous for his wry sense of humour, which perhaps inspired the wit in Caesar’s writings. One person missing from any story of Caesar’s youth is his father, Gaius Julius Caesar. The biographies emphasise Caesar junior’s devotion to his mother, Aurelia, and make a great deal of his link to another uncle, Gaius Marius, who was renowned as the saviour of Rome from a barbarian invasion around the time of Caesar’s birth. His father, however, is nowhere to be seen. Was Caesar senior an absent dad? Or did he just not care? The marriages arranged for his offspring – to people who, while socially acceptable, lacked the drive to support the young Caesar – suggests the latter. The young Caesar’s first marriage, in his early teens, was to a girl named Cossutia, whose family hailed from well outside the political elite. Young Caesar’s status changed after his uncle Marius had himself installed as consul of Rome – the highest elected public official in the Republic – alongside Cornelius Cinna, following a civil war in 87 BC. To bolster this alliance, Marius had Caesar’s marriage to Cossutia dissolved so that the teenager could marry Cinna’s daughter, Cornelia. Caesar, we’re told, loved Cornelia deeply. If his father had any influence on the new match, the sources don’t mention it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/J0A9PJwebready-7d9568a-e1764601866245.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a large crowd surrounding soldiers, with people bowing down and others reaching out to the crowd" title="This 1789 painting, Marius Returning to Rome, imagines the homecoming of Caesar’s uncle, who rose to become consul – then became embroiled in a bitter civil war with a rival, Sulla (Image by Alamy)" /> Thanks to his family connections, the young Caesar was increasingly pulled into the orbit of political power. For his later biographers, though, that wasn’t enough: what was needed at this stage in his life were adventures providing context for the great events that came later. If these episodes included triumph over loss and oppression, all the better. And in Caesar’s interactions with the Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, that’s exactly what they got. Sulla’s dramatic arrival on the scene – seizing Rome, establishing a dictatorship and ruthlessly hunting down his enemies – shaped the politics of a generation. It also shaped the politics of Caesar himself. Sulla had become a major figure on the political stage when he was elected to one of Rome’s two consulships, in 88 BC. He was then awarded a campaign against Mithridates, ruler of the kingdom of Pontus, who had invaded Rome’s provinces in western Anatolia and encouraged the slaughter of Roman citizens. But then the command against Mithridates was taken from Sulla and awarded to Caesar’s uncle Marius. That’s when things turned ugly. Outraged, Sulla marched on Rome, stormed the city and declared that he had restored the rightful constitution. Marius was forced into hiding, but then returned with Cinna a year later, in 87 BC, winning the civil war mentioned earlier. Sulla then turned the tables on his enemies once again, launching a huge invasion of Italy in 83 BC. His military victory was complete by the end of the following year, at which point he posted up the names of his enemies – his notorious ‘proscription lists’ – around Rome. Read more | Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death Where did this leave Caesar? We can’t know for sure. Yet, as the nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, he may well have been at the top of those lists. Sulla certainly seems to have made life pretty uncomfortable for him. The sources claim that the dictator deprived Caesar of the post of flamen dialis (high priest of Jupiter) to which he had been – or was about to be – appointed. They also tell us of Sulla’s demand that Caesar divorce Cornelia – and that, when the young man refused, he was forced to flee. Marked man For Caesar’s biographers, there was no lack of drama in this period of their subject’s life. He was, they tell us, pursued into hiding by one of Sulla’s assassins, who soon caught up with the fugitive – and spared him only after he agreed to pay a large bribe. When Caesar did eventually appear before Sulla, accompanied by his mother’s brothers and the Vestal Virgins, Sulla reluctantly granted him a pardon. “Have your way and take him,” he reportedly declared, “only bear in mind that the man you are so eager to save will one day deal the death blow to the cause of the aristocracy, which you have joined with me in upholding; for in this Caesar there is more than one Marius.” At this point we must proceed with caution. Did Sulla really utter these portentous words? To many historians, they bear all the hallmarks of a dramatic device, injected into the story to add an extra layer of jeopardy. As for the claim that Sulla denied Caesar the priesthood, that appears to be even more unlikely – because the latter never would have held the position. Cornelius Tacitus, Rome’s greatest historian, states that the post of flamen dialis remained unoccupied for 75 years after the death of a priest called Merula in 87 BC. What’s more, a requirement for the post was that both of the priest’s parents be patricians – members of Rome’s archaic aristocracy. Aurelia was from a wealthy family, but she was no patrician. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-150338287webready-c05f822-e1764602100354.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large stone relief shows a line of people doing different activities, including holding a child and riding on a horse-drawn carriage" title="depict events in a child’s life. Caesar’s youth was shaped by his mother, while his father seems to have been largely absent – or disinterested – during the boy’s early years (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some historians have also speculated that Sulla’s antipathy towards Caesar has been overstated. Light is shed on this point by Caesar’s first post, an appointment to the Roman province of Asia, where he served under one of Sulla’s most trusted lieutenants. Would this man really have taken on a youth whom his boss hated? It seems unlikely. Caesar’s service in Asia was notable for two events. One was the award he won for valour, having saved the life of a fellow soldier in combat. The other was his dispatch to the kingdom of Bithynia in the north-west corner of Anatolia, where he convinced the ruler, Nicomedes IV, to lend Rome naval reinforcements. A story that has swirled for 2,000 years – that Caesar had a sexual relationship with Nicomedes (Suetonius writes that “he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of improper relations with the king”) – appears to be baseless. What does seem certain is that Caesar’s experience of persecution by Sulla – deprived of office and property, pursued by homicidal thugs – moulded his later career. After his rise to power in the 60s BC, Caesar repeatedly drew contrasts between the mercy he showed his defeated foes and Sulla’s mass murder of political rivals. And though he came from a noble family – descended, so the story goes, from Rome’s founder, Aeneas – he took the ‘popular’ path to the political summit in a bid to undo Sulla’s conservative constitution, which was designed to keep wealth in the hands of Sulla’s friends and prevent ambitious people from challenging the status quo. Sulla died in 78 BC, and Caesar returned to Rome soon afterwards. A year later he embarked on a career in law, prosecuting two of Sulla’s most prominent lieutenants for corruption in provincial offices. That wasn’t an act of anti-regime revenge: young men routinely drew attention to themselves by serving as prosecutors. Caesar’s speech in one of these cases, prosecuting a man named Antonius, was so effective that the officials in charge of maintaining the citizen roll quoted it when they banished the convicted man. Caesar’s eloquence was soon attracting more attention among the ranks of Rome’s elite. In the words of Plutarch: “It is said that Caesar had the greatest natural talent for political oratory, and cultivated his talent most ambitiously.” Even Cicero, who opposed Caesar, later stated that the latter could have become the greatest orator of his generation. But that wasn’t good enough for Oppius. He needed to burnish Caesar’s story with one more escapade showcasing his subject’s courage, resilience and resourcefulness. The tale of his capture by pirates did just that. Read more | The shockingly simple question historian Tom Holland would ask Julius Caesar Unlikely anecdotes So, to return to an earlier question, what are we to make of this tale? Caesar may well have been captured by pirates, but details in the story ring alarm bells. A ransom of 50 talents appears extremely high in a region that was largely bankrupt. And at the time, Caesar held no public office and, therefore, no authority to kill anyone, even a pirate. Perhaps, then, we should reassess this episode by considering what Oppius was trying to say about his former boss. The story was, perhaps, an attempt to contrast the ‘mercy’ of Caesar with the brutality of Crassus, who crucified thousands of Spartacus’s followers a few years later – and didn’t cut their throats to spare them protracted suffering. It also establishes Caesar as a foe of piracy years before Pompey – his one-time ally, later bitter enemy – took on a command to purge pirates from the seas. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-122316356webready-1ab06c2-e1764602006327.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large mosaic depicting two ships with groups of men on them, fighting each other" title="A Roman mosaic depicts the god Bacchus fighting pirates. Julius Caesar’s encounter with sea-going bandits may have been embellished to emphasise his courage and resilience, writes David S Potter (Image by Getty Images)" /> No matter how extravagantly the stories of Caesar’s dealings with Sulla and his capture by pirates were embellished, it’s not hard to join the dots between the young Caesar and the icon. He was a brilliant student of literature, shaped by excellent role models. His relationship with Aurelia, a strong character in her own right, may have influenced his own attraction to smart, powerful women, including his long-term mistress Servilia and later, Cleopatra. And he was courageous. The man who stood in the front line during crises in Gaul and the civil war against Pompey was the same person who had saved a fellow soldier’s life in Asia. Caesar the politician, however, was more the product of the dysfunctional Rome of his adulthood than of any event in his youth. When all’s said and done, it was his meticulous attention to detail and supreme ability to think on his feet that powered his incredible rise. And it seems that these were talents with which he was born, rather than ones honed through the adventures of youth. David S Potter is a professor of Greek and Roman history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar (OUP, 2025) This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum territorial extent in the early second century AD, during the reign of the emperor Trajan. The empire would rank as the fifth-largest country in the world if it existed today (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries. 5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg. Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3GettyImages-639158628-7d65967-e1764242013260.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" title="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century. Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire 7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older. Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills. WATCH | Dr David Musgrove finds out what the Romans really got up to on the loo View Green Video on the source website 8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable). Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1211436528-b8e4a0d-e1764242052537.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An aerial photograph of the Pantheon in Rome. It has a large dome roof with a hole in the top and is surrounded by several other red roofed buildings" title="Despite being nearly 2,000 years old, the Pantheon boasts the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian. As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/5GettyImages-1925908763-d918fdc-e1764242087895.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of large white stone fragments with inscriptions on them" title="More than a thousand fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae (‘The Shape of the City of Rome’) have been discovered, giving researchers a remarkable window into early third-century AD Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification. 11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6Termini-McDonalds5-c5a8b6d-e1764242135272.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a McDonald's ordering screen and behind it there is a large, old brick wall" title="Burger, fries… and a fourth-century BC wall? Visitors to the Roma Termini station branch of McDonald’s can marvel at a feat of ancient engineering while they get their fast food fix (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since. 13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year. 14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1451938726-d5b4185-e1764246957408.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A computer generated image of the Colosseum, a large circular building with several arches" title="A computer-generated image depicting the Colosseum during its ancient heyday. The amphitheatre is now a World Heritage Site and a symbol of both modern Italy and ancient Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed. Read more | Sharks in the arena? Gladiator II's real history and historical accuracy explained 16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”. Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent. WATCH | Historian Alison Futrell discusses the real history behind Gladiator II View Green Video on the source website 17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century. 18. Chariot racing was the football of its day Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour. Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-520726031-6041b74-e1764247102231.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" title="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" /> 19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’. The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms. 20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals. At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin. 21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD. 22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water. The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Greekfire-madridskylitzes1-760acd4-e1764242423636.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two boats with men in them. The boat on the left are blowing fire over the one of the right" title="A 12th-century AD depiction of Greek fire being used against the rebel Thomas the Slav in AD 821. The exact composition of this devastating incendiary substance has been lost" /> 23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history. Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence 24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus. As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10Gordian-II-238-ADEdward-Watts--Author-1d53219-e1764242478419.jpeg" width="850" height="413" alt="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" title="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
The wealthy civilisation that dominated the Italian peninsula before the Romans left a legacy that’s full of surprises. Lucy Shipley explains why we have the Etruscans to thank for the way we write, the shape of our towns, Renaissance art – and even horror movies
They taught us to read and write (well, kind of) Long before the Romans came to dominate the ancient world – before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Claudius invaded Britain and Vesuvius buried Pompeii – another civilisation dominated the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans. You may have heard of them, or that name may mean nothing to you. Either way, there’s little doubting their influence, continuing through the long hegemony of the Romans (who occupied Etruscan settlements) and the medieval period all the way to the modern age. The Etruscans, whose name is echoed in the modern region of Tuscany, emerged in central Italy around 900 BC. Their heartland, Etruria, lay between the rivers Tiber and Arno, and their cities were often perched on imposing plateaus with views across the fertile fields and metal-bearing soils that made their fortune. Their ports sent vessels out into the Tyrrhenian Sea (which bears their Greek name), trading as far afield as Spain and the near east. If you know the Etruscans at all, you might identify them as the villains of many a Roman tale or Greek myth. But who were these people? How did they live? And what impact do they have on our lives today? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-webready150617775-378ec5d.jpg" width="3602" height="2401" alt="A pale green and cream tablet with white letters inscribed across the top" title="An ivory writing tablet discovered in Marsiliana d'Albegna. The characters of the Etruscan alphabet inscribed along the top clearly influenced modern Latin letters (Image by Getty Images)" /> Well, a good place to start is with the words you’re reading on this page. Without the Etruscan alphabet, the Latin characters we use in modern English writing could have developed totally differently. Etruscan letters are clearly influenced by Greek and Phoenician scripts, but you’ll find you can read them with relative ease because the letter forms are so familiar. Read more | The history of Florence: Italy's Renaissance powerhouse Helpfully, a miniature ivory writing tablet dating from the seventh century BC has been discovered in a burial site at Marsiliana d’Albegna in southern Tuscany. Running along the top edge is the Etruscan alphabet, its letters inscribed in order from right to left – the Etruscan way of doing things. Some of the letter forms had not yet reached the shapes with which we’re familiar today – H, I and M look quite different, for example – but the origins of our modern Latin alphabet are plain to see. There is, though, a catch: linguists are still working to fully understand Etruscan. Though it’s easy to read many of the words, we aren’t always sure what all of them mean. We do know, though, that Etruscan wasn’t an Indo-European language – so it wasn’t related to Latin, Umbrian or most other tongues spoken in ancient Italy. There’s another problem: Etruscan texts are in short supply. We know that Etruscan people commonly wrote and read texts – from initials on weaving tools to detailed legal contracts – but, because the majority of their written works were on linen, few have survived. There are extraordinary exceptions – an incredible Etruscan religious book that was slashed to make mummy bandages, for example, and golden plaques boasting about a local politician’s gifts to a temple – but, as yet, no Etruscan poetry or history. Perhaps the Etruscan version of Herodotus is out there, waiting to be discovered. In the meantime, we have views of this people only from its enemies – all to be taken with a hearty pinch of salt. They were innovative pioneers of urban design The Etruscans were exceptional town planners – and that very success is one reason why our knowledge of their culture is so limited. Archaeological research has shown that some Etruscan settlements occupied the same sites for centuries, stretching back into the early Iron Age. Many of these places were so popular that they remained continually occupied through the Middle Ages and into the modern day. As a result, much evidence of Etruscan life lies buried beneath the winding streets of photogenic Italian towns and cities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-475602207webready-14f01f4.jpg" width="1500" height="989" alt="The Etruscan site now known as Marzabotto, near Bologna, was constructed on a neat grid pattern in the sixth century BC – a fine example of early town planning that influenced the Romans (Image by Getty Images)" title="The Etruscan site now known as Marzabotto, near Bologna, was constructed on a neat grid pattern in the sixth century BC – a fine example of early town planning that influenced the Romans (Image by Getty Images)" /> Fortunately, thanks to some extraordinary surviving remains, we know a great deal about how Etruscan people organised their lives in towns. The site now called Marzabotto, near Bologna, seems to have been constructed as a new town in the sixth century BC. It’s built on a neat grid pattern or orthogonal plan, with a careful designation of what looks like public spaces as well as domestic buildings. There’s written evidence for a zilath, or magistrate, responsible for maintaining roads, and for another role responsible for managing weights and measures. Destroyed by invading Gauls in the fourth century AD, the site epitomises the peak of Etruscan expansion. Read more | Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators The Etruscans’ complex urban communities influenced those who came after. The neat patterns of Roman forts and the iconic insulae (apartment blocks) at Pompeii and elsewhere have much in common with Etruscan town-planning ideals. In fact, we know that the Etruscans occupied Pompeii, and it was during their rule that the first forum and the Temple of Apollo were built. From Marzabotto to Milton Keynes, the orthogonal or grid plan continues to influence town planning today. They created the concept of combat as entertainment It’s arguably the most iconic scene at the climax of surely the most iconic film of 2000, Ridley Scott’s multi-Oscar-winning Gladiator. Maximus (played so memorably by Russell Crowe) wanders through a wheat field into the afterlife. That episode was filmed in the Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, at the heart of the Etruscans’ ancient homeland. Coincidence? Probably. Yet, given the Etruscans’ role in the inception of gladiatorial combat, it’s rather fitting. Though gladiators will forever be synonymous with ancient Rome – thanks in no small part to Spartacus and Maximus himself – we have the Etruscans to thank for the rise of this brutal form of entertainment. There’s plenty of evidence for this – notably in a network of painted tombs at Tarquinia, about 45 miles north-west of Rome. This amazing necropolis contains numerous burial chambers decorated with images of Etruscan life and imaginings of the afterlife. Some are inspiring, drawn from sharply poignant observations of the natural world. Others are disturbing, showing the extent of human cruelty. Take the late sixth-century BC Tomb of the Augurs. This features depictions of funerary games – exhibitions of strength and athleticism in honour of the dead. You can see two nude wrestlers grappling in front of a series of three piled bowls (clearly the prizes). There’s also a referee holding the lituus, or ceremonial staff. So far, so jovial. But on another wall is a more disturbing image. A masked man holds a long leash restraining a creature who is viciously biting the legs of another man, armed with a club but hopelessly entangled. The creature may be a dog or, perhaps, a black leopard – its long tail and raking claws suggest the latter. This cruel contest between man and beast is a clear predecessor of the celebrated Roman games, for which thousands of animals were imported. The Roman names for some of the officials at these contests were derived from Etruscan, and the dreaded figure of Charon, who finished off wounded gladiators with his massive hammer, was derived from the Etruscan death demon Charun. The Romans may have refined and supercharged the concept of armed combat as entertainment. Yet they clearly didn’t invent it. They've scared us witless In 1972, horror fans immersed themselves in a ghoulish tale of intrigue and death set in central Italy, L’etrusco uccide ancora (The Etruscan Kills Again). The film tells the story of a spate of murders by a killer who gets his (or her) kicks out of dispatching young couples and leaving their corpses posed in recreations of Etruscan art. A strange conceit, you may think – but that didn’t stop The Etruscan Kills Again becoming something of a cult classic. The Etruscans and their homeland have proved to be a rich source of inspiration for modern writers and film-makers. Scenes in the astronomically successful book/film saga Twilight were set in the Etruscan hill town of Volterra. And the award-winning 2023 film La Chimera follows grave-robbers led by a down-at-heel British archaeologist attempting to steal artefacts from an Etruscan dig. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/BAL4642126webready-26b39dd.jpg" width="835" height="1240" alt="The Etruscan god of the underworld, Aita, represented in a tomb painting in Tarquinia by a man wearing a wolfskin (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="The Etruscan god of the underworld, Aita, represented in a tomb painting in Tarquinia by a man wearing a wolfskin (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> The terrifying figures on the tomb paintings at Tarquinia have had a particularly long cultural afterlife, perhaps influencing modern depictions of werewolves. One fearsome character among them is a man wearing a wolfskin over his head, representing Aita, Etruscan god of the underworld. There are also more menacing werewolf-type Etruscan demons, including Calu who is depicted on reliefs from urns at Perugia and Volterra, often popping out of a sunken container or well and taking on a group of gathered heroes. This myth is very old: one eighth-century BC bronze situla (container) from Bisenzio seems to show a group of armed men battling a monstrous canine. This scary figure survived in Etruscan culture for 500 years, and its descendant still terrifies us today. Read more | Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan Also at Tarquinia, the late fifth-century BC Tomb of the Blue Demons features terrifying figures with blue skin who are shown wielding snakes. And on a wall in the Tomb of the Infernal Chariot at Sarteano rears a three-headed serpent that will haunt your nightmares. They inspired the Renaissance What’s the connection between the Etruscans and Michelangelo, Raphael and Botticelli? This may appear to be an odd question, given that the more-ancient civilisation had been absorbed into Roman society at least a millennium before those Renaissance greats were in their pomp. But visit the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and it might not appear quite such a preposterous proposition after all. This chapel is home to one of the great masterpieces of western art: a fresco cycle painted by the Florentine artist Giotto between 1303 and 1305. These frescoes depict scenes from the lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. But it is the artist’s portrayal of the Last Judgment – and particularly the horrendous figure of Satan – that features suspicious hints of Etruscan influence. Giotto’s prince of darkness is azure-skinned – the same colour as the eponymous entities in Tarquinia’s Tomb of the Blue Demons, created by Etruscan artists 1,700 years earlier. The infernal figure is also flanked by adders in a pose almost identical to that depicted in the Etruscan tomb. Could Giotto have been aware of his ancient predecessors’ work? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/ALAMY-2C81WHJwebready-eb195c5.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting of showing a large blue Satanic figure, surrounded by several naked people in hell" title="Giotto’s Last Judgment fresco in Padua’s 14th-century Scrovegni Chapel, with an azure Satan – perhaps influenced by figures like those in the Etruscan Tomb of the Blue Demons (Image by Alamy)" /> Etruscan art may also have influenced Renaissance culture in less hellish forms. In his Comedy of the Nymphs of Florence, penned c1341–42, the writer Giovanni Boccaccio called his Tuscan arcadia “Etruria”. Meanwhile, the philosopher Leonardo Bruni proudly recounts the Etruscan history of Florence in his History of the Florentine People, begun in 1415. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that the first reported discovery of Etruscan pottery comes from Bruni’s hometown of Arezzo, describing artefacts found during building work on the city wall and diligently recorded by the monk Ristoro d’Arezzo in 1282. The Renaissance was clearly inspired by medieval Europeans’ engagements with the entire span of classical art. Yet we can speculate with some confidence that the Florentine Renaissance was influenced more specifically by that city’s own Etruscan heritage. They helped kindle our love affair with the ancient Greeks Nothing says ancient Greece quite like the Attic black and red-figure vase. In fact, it’s safe to say that such pieces – decorated with depictions of everything from ancient battles to erotic scenes – have become icons of the Greek world. But why are we talking about them in an article about the Etruscans? The answer is that the vast majority of the complete examples of Attic vases that survive today were excavated from Etruscan tombs in the late 18th and early 19th centuries – in fact, they were known then as ‘Etruscan vases’. Collectors in northern Europe, fresh from their Grand Tour shopping trips, displayed these vessels in dedicated Etruscan rooms. The potter Josiah Wedgwood was so inspired that he named his factory Etruria, and produced a range of pots imitating these ‘Etruscan’ vessels. When art historians finally recognised that the vases were Greek, their Etruscan connection was unceremoniously pushed to one side. But why did the Etruscans so value Greek vases that they chose to be buried with them? This can’t be explained simply by notions of Greek cultural superiority – especially now evidence shows that certain pottery shapes developed in Etruria were later produced in Athens. In fact, we still don’t have a comprehensive explanation for the Etruscans’ Greek addiction. All we can be certain of is that, without Etruscan collectors, thousands of these vessels would have been lost forever, along with their enduring influence on 19th and 20th-century pottery. Lucy Shipley is an archaeologist and researcher. She is the author of The Etruscans: Lost Civilisations (Reaktion, 2017) This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
One of ancient Rome’s most notorious emperors murdered his own mother, and there's a dark reason why
Historian Tom Holland uncovers how politics, myth and maternal ambition collided in the scandalous reign of the Roman emperor Nero
Few Roman emperors are as synonymous with scandal as Nero. From stories of arson and artistic vanity to theatrical cruelty and imperial excess, his name has long conjured images of a decadent tyrant – the archetype of Roman madness and badness. But was Nero truly deranged? Or was there a brutal, even calculated, logic to his most shocking acts? Nero’s villainy was a “deliberate political strategy” says historian Tom Holland, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. According to Holland, even Nero’s infamous crimes as leader of the Roman Empire – including the murder of his own mother – were calculated acts of political theatre, designed to project a new, populist vision of imperial power. A mother’s ambition and a son’s ascendancy To understand Nero, you also have to understand his mother. Agrippina the Younger was born into the ruling Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the great-granddaughter of Augustus and the sister of the erratic emperor Caligula. Her third marriage – to her uncle, the emperor Claudius – scandalised ancient Roman society, but it was ruthlessly strategic. Once married to Claudius, Agrippina ensured that her son Nero was adopted as heir, pushing aside Claudius’s biological son, Britannicus. Read more | 6 women who changed the course of Roman history When Claudius died suddenly in AD 54 (possibly even poisoned by Agrippina herself) Nero was just 16 years old. His mother moved quickly, orchestrating a smooth transition and assuming the role of regent. For a brief period, coins and imperial artwork depicted mother and son as ruling partners, their profiles facing each other in a rare display of maternal power. Agrippina’s public prominence was extraordinary and deeply unsettled Rome’s male elite. She donned imperial colours, appeared in state ceremonies and walked alongside her son in public. But as Nero aged and sought independence, the partnership began to fracture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-152207984-be33e96-e1753357676539.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This coin, minted in Rome in December AD 54, shows the busts of Nero and his mother, Agrippina the Younger. Notably, Agrippina’s name and titles appear on the obverse while Nero’s appear on the reverse, reflecting her dominant role early in his reign." title="A coin minted in Rome showing busts of Nero and Agrippina facing" /> “It’s a deliberate political strategy” Nero’s deteriorating relationship with Agrippina extended far beyond family drama and became a clash of competing political identities. According to Holland, Nero deliberately crafted his image as a shocking alternative to Rome’s conservative expectations: and in doing so, helped shape his own infamy. “Political careers in Rome are less about policy and more about vibe,” Holland says. Nero, with his flair for the dramatic, played the role of a rebellious populist to perfection. There had always been two currents in Roman politics: the traditionalists, who upheld senatorial dignity and elite control, and the populares, who appealed directly to the people. While earlier emperors had maintained the illusion of republican values, Nero smashed through it. “Caligula and Nero are both populares,” Holland notes. “They're people who scorn the Senate and who want to make themselves the darlings of the people.” Read more | Sporus: the boy that emperor Nero made his ‘wife’ Nero embraced the power of spectacle. He starred in the arts, singing, acting and playing the lyre, as well as racing chariots in public. Though this likely horrified his critics, it would have captivated the Roman public. “He is clearly the most tremendous showman in a way that is calculated to be shocking to his fellow senators,” Holland says. “Emperors are not meant to tread the stage … but Nero does all that.” To put it in modern terms, Holland says, “It’s as though a US president were to star in an Oscar-winning film, headline Glastonbury or win a race in Formula 1.” The struggle for power – and independence As Nero grew older and bolder, his mother’s influence became an intolerable burden. He wanted to govern on his own terms and assert his masculinity and authority in traditional Roman fashion. In Roman culture, any ruler seen as overly submissive to a woman risked being viewed as weak, effeminate and even illegitimate. Agrippina, however, was not easily sidelined. When Nero attempted to strip her of public visibility and authority, she continued to assert her presence. She had clawed her way to the centre of Roman power and had no intention of fading into the background. The result was a slow-motion collision between two towering figures of Roman politics. Tensions escalated further when Nero fell in love with Poppaea Sabina, a woman Agrippina despised and deemed unworthy. Agrippina’s interference in Nero’s personal life reinforced his sense of being trapped by her influence. By AD 59, the rift was irreparable. What followed was one of the most notorious crimes in Roman imperial history: the murder of Agrippina. The theatre of matricide First, Nero allegedly attempted subterfuge, inviting his mother aboard a specially designed boat rigged to collapse and sink while at sea. But Agrippina survived the ordeal and swam to safety. Humiliated and panicked, Nero resorted to brute force. He sent assassins to her villa, where they murdered her. But remarkably, Nero didn’t conceal the crime. In fact, he flaunted it. Read more | The worst Roman emperors “I think the reason he's doing that is because murdering your mother is the kind of thing that a hero would do in Greek tragedy,” says Holland. By aligning himself with mythic figures like Orestes (the Greek mythic son who avenges his father by killing his mother) Nero cast himself as more than a man. “Nero is essentially presenting himself as a figure from myth, as a figure who is a throwback to the ancient days.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1485460839-789dffd-e1753358067936.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustrated portrait of Emperor Nero from the 17th century, reflecting early modern fascination with the notorious Roman ruler’s legacy." title="Portrait of Emperor Nero, Johann Friedrich Leonard, after Abraham Janssens, 1643 - 1680, print maker: Johann Friedrich Leonard, (mentioned on object), Abraham Janssens, (mentioned on object), 1643 - 1680, paper, engraving, h 167 mm × w 125 mm" /> The price of Nero’s performance Nero had successfully removed the most powerful check on his authority. But the long-term cost was his reputation. After his death in AD 68, rival claimants and new emperors quickly denounced Nero as a tyrant. The historian Suetonius, writing under a new regime, amplified the horror stories, with little incentive to offer a balanced account. He described how Nero would go on to murder his pregnant wife Poppaea, and would execute wealthy Roman citizens in order to claim their wealth. “Suetonius is working for an imperial system that’s founded on the ruins of Nero's reputation and career,” Holland explains. “So there's nothing for Suetonius in trying to redeem Nero's reputation.” Read more | Did Nero really play the fiddle while Rome burned? Yet, Holland believes that even within the hostile sources, hints to Nero’s motives remain. “As with Caligula, as with Tiberius, his portrait of Nero gives the historian enough clues to enable the historian to kind of work out probably why Nero was doing what he was doing … but you've got to read between the lines.” Nero’s use of symbolism as power Holland posits that Nero can’t be dismissed simply as ‘mad’, as is the common conception – at least not in the sense of being irrational. He was an emperor who understood that power in Rome required performance, and he acted that out. His actions – including the murder of Agrippina – were appalling and shocking. But they were also calculated, and intentional, designed to cement his status as a figure bigger than Rome itself. Journey through the heart of ancient Rome with historians Tom Holland and Mary Beard at In Conversation at Kew Gardens on 5 September 2025. Presented by HistoryExtra and hosted by Ellie Cawthorne, dive into the captivating story of how Rome transformed from republic to mighty empire – from gripping tales of Caesar's power plays to imperial scandals, uncover politics, battles and betrayals that shaped history. Find out more and book now. This article is based on an interview with Tom Holland, speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. 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
Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death
The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC drove tensions sky-high in ancient Rome. As Jessica Clarke reveals, plays staged at his funeral were carefully chosen to inflame anger and incite revenge on his killers
On 20 March 44 BC, a violent death in Rome was about to send assembled masses into uproar – sparking pandemonium that threatened to engulf the city. The incident described by the ancient biographer Suetonius wasn’t a real murder but, rather, the climax of a theatre show. If we reconstruct the performance, using both Suetonius’s writing and fragments of the scripts that survive from the time, we can picture the leading actor standing in the centre of the stage before a packed auditorium. He would have raised his sword over his head and declaimed boldly, his voice ringing out across the stands: “What, did I save these men so that they might murder me?” With these words, he would have plunged the blade into his chest. Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ slowly and dramatically in front of his enthralled audience. Cries of sorrow broke out from the audience, Suetonius tells us, and shouts of indignation were raised against the characters who had instigated his suicide. Like so many other theatre shows at the time, which are recorded for us by the ancient writer, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, this performance – staged in the last years of the collapsing Roman Republic – caused a volcanic reaction among the crowd. The performance was part of the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. Five days earlier, the Roman general and dictator had been stabbed to death at a senate meeting by a group of conspirators. The city had gone into mourning, and a huge celebration had been organised to commemorate Caesar’s military and political achievements. It would include the usual eulogy and burning of the funeral pyre – but the centrepiece of the event would comprise two magnificent theatre shows. Incendiary shows First came the Contest for the Arms of Achilles, set during the legendary Trojan War. In it, Greek heroes Ajax and Odysseus argue over who should keep the sword and shield of their deceased comrade. Odysseus wins the debate and is proclaimed the victor. Unable to bear his defeat, Ajax takes his own life. According to Suetonius, this staging of the mythical story was designed to provoke a visceral reaction in the crowd – one of intense “pity and indignation” for the wrongful death of the great hero. He also informs us that the tumult continued into the performance of a second play, Electra, which also retells a Greek mythological story. Set a few years after the events of the Trojan War, it follows the story of the eponymous young heroine, who seeks revenge on her father’s assassins. With the help of her brother, Orestes, she exacts her retribution and returns the throne to its rightful heir. Read more | The shockingly simple question historian Tom Holland would ask Julius Caesar Suetonius recounts that this performance, like the first, was greeted with “shouts of indignation” from the crowd. Rome, already a tinderbox of intrigue and rival factions, threatened to erupt into chaos. Events in the city had progressed at a dizzying pace. At the beginning of the year, Julius Caesar had been at the height of his powers. Yet by the middle of March he was dead – and, just days later, his funeral seemed poised to descend into violent mayhem. How had popular feeling in Rome reached such a climactic fervour? And what could have ignited such violent reactions in the audience at the great leader’s funeral? Assassination plot Born in Rome in 100 BC, Julius Caesar had advanced swiftly through the ranks of the senate. Aged around 42, he had launched the lengthy campaign that led to the conquest of Gaul. On his return in 49 BC, he had come into conflict with his one-time ally, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – now known as Pompey the Great – defeating him at the battle of Pharsalus the following year. And in January 44 BC he had been elected dictator perpetuo: dictator for life. This had caused panic among many in the Roman senate. Within the established Republican system, the office of dictator had been traditionally a temporary position held during a period of political or military crisis, with the incumbent expected to relinquish the role once the danger had passed. Now Caesar had, to all intents and purposes, been made the sole and permanent ruler of Rome. A plot was hatched by those opposed to this new state of affairs, led chiefly by Marcus Junius Brutus – the son of Caesar’s long-term mistress – and Gaius Cassius Longinus, Brutus’s brother-in-law. On the appointed day, Caesar would come to a senate meeting – and there he would be set upon with daggers. The now-familiar story goes that Caesar, waking early on the morning of the Ides (15th) of March, was warned by his worried wife, Calpurnia, not to go to the senate that day. As she told her husband, she had seen omens that foretold calamity if he left the safety of their home. But Caesar did not heed his wife’s advice, and attended the meeting as planned. As he took his seat of honour, the plotters gathered around him; suddenly, one tugged at his toga to reveal his chest – a signal to the others to act. Caesar was felled by 23 stab wounds, or so the story goes, uttering not a word until he saw the young Brutus among the assassins – when, as he lay dying, he murmured in Greek: “And you, child?” The conspirators had planned to drag his corpse to the river Tiber and to confiscate Caesar’s property. Instead, fearful of the dictator’s loyal friend Mark Antony – who’d been kept from the senate meeting that day – they fled, abandoning the lifeless body. According to Suetonius, three slaves eventually came and carried Caesar’s body home, with one arm hanging down from the litter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-587490474cmyk-b0fa33d.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A crowd of people stand around a raised platform. On the platform, a man dressed in white stands, holding up a bloodied piece of cloth" title="Mark Antony displays Caesar’s bloodied toga while delivering an impassioned eulogy at his comrade’s funeral, shown in a 19th-century painting (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Alternate history: what if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated? The assassins were right to fear Mark Antony’s reaction, which was both cunning and effective. Rather than seeking direct violent retribution against those who had plotted against his friend, Antony set about planning a spectacular funeral, orchestrating an event designed to stir up popular goodwill towards Caesar and fan the flames of hatred against the conspirators. And he began with a clever selection of plays. Show of strength Theatre performances had long comprised a traditional element of Roman funerals. The practice seems to have originated in the Etruscan civilisation who may have introduced wrestling and gladiatorial combats in the eighth century BC. In Rome, the earliest evidence of such shows relates to the funeral of Junius Brutus Pera in 264 BC, at which his sons seem to have organised gladiatorial shows on a temporary wooden stage. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-122321047-WL-3c001f7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A stone carving shows 6 men dancing and playing games, wearing helmets and holding spears" title="Games and dances are depicted on an Etruscan tomb monument from the fifth century BC. This ancient Italic civilisation seems to have started the practice of staging funeral performances (Image by Getty Images)" /> Over time, such events became increasingly lavish; indeed, sumptuary laws were passed to curtail the greatest excesses of the wealthy elite. These upper-class funerals might include not only stage shows but also a procession of actors dressed up in costumes and masks to resemble deceased members of a great Roman family. Parading through the city’s streets, the procession celebrated the passage of the deceased from death to life, and reminded the crowds of that aristocratic family’s eminent lineage. Why did Antony select The Contest for the Arms of Achilles and Electra to be performed at Caesar’s funeral? What was he hoping to convey to his Roman audiences? On the surface, these seem rather odd choices, particularly Electra; that play (possibly a Latin translation of Sophocles’s earlier work, written in Greek in the fifth century BC) was by Atilius, whose work does not seem to have been well regarded in Rome. One late Republican commentator described his writing style as “iron” and “very harsh”, and Cicero decries Atilius’s Electra as being rather a bad play. However, exploring the two plays’ thematic content might reveal Antony’s motivation for his production choices. Written by Pacuvius, the Arms of Achilles begins just after the eponymous hero has been killed by an arrow shot from the Trojan ramparts. In the verbal contest for Achilles’ sword and shield that follows his death, Odysseus outsmarts Ajax, securing victory through cunning and subtle arguments. It might be seen as an apt metaphor for the situation in Rome in March 44 BC: two sides struggle for control of a powerful weapon, with the loyal Ajax ultimately losing to the duplicity of his comrades. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-122216797-WL-b9687ed.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A stone relief shows two people bent over in mourning, while a horse stands to the side" title="Electra and Orestes mourn their murdered father, King Agamemnon, in a fifth-century BC relief. A play of this story, chosen for Caesar’s funeral, highlighted the virtue of vengeance (Image by Getty Images)" /> If this was the message Antony intended to convey, he seems to have been successful. Suetonius recounts that the audience expressed furious outrage as they watched Ajax take his own life on stage. Did they draw a parallel between the death of the legendary Greek hero and the murder of Julius Caesar? Electra’s story of revenge, too, features themes that may have been deliberately intended to evoke the contemporary political situation: a wrongful murder and the righteousness of seeking retribution. Little wonder, then, that emotions were running high by the time Mark Antony took to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum later that day. Inflammatory eulogy The exact words spoken by Antony during that famous eulogy are now lost. However, according to Suetonius, the central part of his speech was the recitation of a senatorial decree honouring Julius Caesar. As Antony read, he lingered over the passage of the decree in which every senator swore to protect Caesar – highlighting the contrast between these faithful promises and the events that had unfolded on 15 March. As a final flourish, Antony is said to have displayed Caesar’s bloodied toga to the crowd, pointing out each of the stab wounds. It was clearly a powerful performance, much like those that had just taken place in the theatre – and one that had a powerful effect. Read more | Who are the most underrated Roman emperors? As the funeral bier bearing Caesar’s body was carried into the Forum, the crowd rushed forward and set it alight before it reached the official site of the cremation. Bystanders heaped dry branches on top of the body, smashing up the seats and benches on which they had been sitting and adding them to the flames. Musicians and actors reportedly tore off their robes and threw them into the fire, while women tossed in their jewellery and their children’s amulets. As the mass outpouring of grief reached a climax, the fired-up masses turned from the flaming pyre and rampaged through the streets of Rome. Bent on destruction, they surged towards the houses of Brutus and Cassius – but were prevented from attacking by sentinels posted outside. Turning away, the crowd came across the unsuspecting poet Helvius Cinna – and, mistaking him for his near-namesake Cornelius Cinna, who had supported the conspiracy, killed him. They cut off his head and, mounting it on a spear, paraded it through the streets of Rome. Although Brutus and Cassius survived the night, they soon had to flee the city with their fellow conspirators. It would take Antony more than two years to track them down, finally facing them in October 42 BC at the battle of Philippi. And it was Antony who emerged victorious from this clash – as from the battle for popular approval in Rome. Caesar’s funeral began with theatre shows and ended with a bloody riot. With their themes of duplicity, murder and righteous revenge, the plays seem to have been selected very deliberately to provoke and nurture hysteria in the massed crowds. It is surprising, therefore, that very little about them is mentioned in accounts of the funeral, which tend to focus much more on the eulogy given by Mark Antony. When we think of theatre today, we think perhaps of Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway – of decorous, darkly lit auditoria filled with well-dressed spectators. But in the ancient world, the theatre could be as riotous and politically impactful as any rhetoric declaimed from the speaker’s platform. Jessica Clarke’s new book, A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, will be published by Liverpool University Press in December This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant
From seasonal intimacy schedules to open-air nudity, ancient Greco-Roman thinkers had no shortage of theories on how to stay healthy. Some might still feel surprisingly useful today
Think of the Roman empire or ancient Greece, and your first thoughts might be of political scheming, cultural innovation and incredibly violent warfare, rather than the world of wellness. But even in the ancient world, questions on how to preserve good health commanded the attention of the era’s deepest thinkers. Among the Greeks and Romans, physicians like Hippocrates, Galen and Diocles were fixated on health, how to build it and how to maintain it. They viewed good health as a constantly shifting balance between internal forces and external conditions: food, temperature, movement and even your clothing choices (or lack thereof) played a part. And the wrong choice – at the wrong time of year – could tip that balance in a very unwelcome direction. Read more | What did people eat in Ancient Rome? Professor Claire Bubb, an expert in ancient science and literature, joined the HistoryExtra podcast to explain some of the measures that Greco-Roman doctors advised for a healthy life. Here, we share five tips for maximising your health and longevity, from those ancient Greeks and Romans, as told by Professor Bubb. Tailor your health to your goals, not someone else’s Even before the rise of modern wellness programmes, ancient doctors were pushing personalisation. A healthy regime wasn’t a fixed rulebook. It was a flexible set of principles, adjusted to suit your specific body, lifestyle and ambitions. Want to build strength? There was a plan for that. Want to slim down? A completely different routine applied. “The Hippocratic approach here is very individualised,” explains Bubb, “and this to me is the thing that ancient medicine can still really help us think through and help us be more aware of.” “If you, as an individual, feel that you are overweight and you want to lose weight, you're going to do one thing. If you're underweight and you really want to bulk up and you'd rather be stronger and you want more mass, you have to do these other things, so everyone has their own goals.” Read more | Key Roman dates you need to know An example of this comes from Hippocrates. Bubb explains he believed that anyone looking to lose weight ought to: “Do all exercise in a state of fasting, and eat while you’re still panting and all sweaty and hot… you want to be exercising when there’s no [food] because then you have to use up bits of your body that are already there.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-463927469-085ae5e-e1751389739623.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This Roman mosaic from Saarbrücken, Germany, depicts gladiators in the arena — elite fighters whose intense physical training and brutal contests reflected both spectacle and strength in Roman society. (Photo by Getty images)" title="This Roman mosaic from Saarbrücken, Germany, depicts gladiators in the arena — elite fighters whose intense physical training and brutal contests reflected both spectacle and strength in Roman society." /> However, his advice was completely different for someone with contrasting goals: there was no single ‘one size fits all’ approach to health. What it meant to live a healthy life was relative to you, your situation and your personal goals. “This intentionality about thinking about, ‘How am I exercising, how am I eating, what am I eating, how are my daily choices keeping my healthy and happy?’ I think that’s a huge takeaway that’s equally [relevant] now as it was 2,000 years ago,” she adds. Control your intimacy like it’s medicine In Greco-Roman medical theory, bodily fluids were potent forces that shaped your vitality, and they were to be carefully managed. That made sex, and the loss of semen in particular, something to be taken very seriously. Doctors worried that too much sex could drain a person’s strength, while too little might cause harmful build-up. Read more | Meet the most influential ancient Greeks “Sex is a very specific thing that humans do, that exerts a lot of energy and also does magical things, right?” Bubb says. “Some people, it turns out, actually are healthier if they have sex more frequently… whereas some people are weaker [if they have sex] and too much sex is going to lead to all sorts of problems.” Doctors even recommended adjusting sexual activity seasonally, just as they did with exercise. “When it's really hot in the summer … you're already losing a lot of [energy],” Bubb explains. Summer sex, in the minds of the ancients, would probably make that worse. Their advice? “You should avoid it if you can.” If you want perfect health, you’ll need a lot of free time (and money) Some ancient wellness advice was aimed at people with immense privilege. The medical writer Diocles laid out what Bubb describes as an “almost minute-by-minute” daily regime for maximally optimising health – from morning stretches and facial cleansing to precisely timed meals and midday naps. But this level of detail came with a catch. Read more | Why did the ancient Romans think these foods were disgusting poison? The only person who could have possibly done this is “someone who doesn't have or need a job,” Bubb notes. “That is just rich enough that they can devote all of their resources to maximising health.” Even then, you weren’t supposed to focus on anything else. “Diocles actually says, ‘If you have to go to work, you could maybe do an hour of work now’, but ideally, you wouldn't even do that.” The regime also shifted across the seasons – your lunch portion, nap schedule and even evening walk varied depending on the time of year. While most people didn’t have the luxury to follow such a plan, it reflected a wider ideal: that maintaining health was a full-time pursuit, and deserved your attention. Don’t spend too much time in the gym Modern fitness culture can often feel like it promotes physical extremes, something that Greco-Roman medicine warned strongly against. Some prominent ancient physicians instead thought that athletes and bodybuilders were pushing themselves into unnatural shapes, and in doing so, risking the balance of their health. “Contrary to the modern way of thinking about exercise, and very surprisingly, you read some of these authors and they are so down on athletes,” Bubb says. Read more | The Antonine Plague: the killer disease that devastated the Roman empire “[They think] they've moved themselves way too far to the extreme; that people shouldn't have muscles like that.” Instead, doctors recommended light, full-body movement. They valued the simplicity of walking, or moderate exercise with equipment like a ball. Over-exertion, particularly if not medically supervised, was believed to disturb the body’s inner harmony. In their view, says Bubb, “your normal person should absolutely not be doing a sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger weightlifting regime – that’s unhealthy”, Bubb adds. While doctors competed with gymnastic trainers over control of the body, both agreed: exercise was vital. It just needed to be balanced, purposeful and aligned with individual needs. Sometimes, it’s healthier to be naked Some health theories in antiquity sound bizarre to modern ears – but even these had internal logic. Some thinkers, for instance, argued that walking around naked could help with weight loss by encouraging evaporation from the skin. “Why would it be that walking around naked helps you lose weight?” Bubb reflects. “I think probably it has to do with evaporation.” They had the idea that “more stuff can get out of your body more easily if you’re naked.” Read more | A hidden Roman villa? A pair of "remarkable" swords might have just unlocked its ancient secrets Culturally, this wasn’t considered anything extraordinary. In ancient Greece especially, nudity in public spaces like bathhouses and gymnasia was entirely normal, particularly among men. “This is a culture where they did a lot of naked exercise. They were more down with nudity than we are as a culture.” A wellness legacy with modern echoes From the vantage point of today’s intricate nutrition plans and wearable sleep trackers, modern wellness might feel like it’s a world apart from the ancient rules and advice of the Greco-Roman cultures. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide However, there are many echoes of ancient themes in what we value today. While the Greco-Roman world certainly didn’t have vitamin supplements or dumbbells, its physicians and doctors did have a firm belief that good health was proactive, holistic and in your power to manage and control. And while most of us can’t follow Diocles’s daily plan or take long naked walks before lunch, we can certainly still consider the same question that fixated ancient thinkers: what does it mean to live healthily, and be well? Claire Bubb was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University. Explore the course now
Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus
When the Spartacus revolt erupted in 73 BC, it exposed a terrifying truth: that the cocksure Roman Republic was nowhere near as invincible as it liked to believe. Guy de la Bédoyère takes up the story
It’s a measure of the enduring appeal of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 swords-and-sandals epic that, when most of us hear the name Spartacus, a dimple-chinned Kirk Douglas springs immediately to mind. Heroic. Noble. Doomed. Roman citizens, it’s safe to say, saw Spartacus rather differently – as a rebellious slave who threatened the future of the Roman Republic. Violent. Disobedient. Dangerous. Though writing in the imperial Roman era long after the defeat of Spartacus, the words of the author Plutarch (AD 46–c120) capture something of the dread the warrior inspired. “It is said that, when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept,” noted Plutarch, “and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would end in misfortune.” So what’s the truth behind these very different legends? Why did Spartacus take up arms outside the gladiatorial arena? And why was the uprising he led – the third of the so-called Servile Wars, following rebellions in 135–132 BC and 104–c100 BC – perceived as being so threatening to Rome? Brutal degradations To answer these questions, it first helps to remember just how reliant upon slaves Rome had become by 73 BC, when the renegade band of trainee gladiators led by Spartacus burst out of their barracks in southern Italy. Their rebellion exposed the terrifying truth: that every city, every village and every villa estate was at risk from the slaves on whom every aspect of Roman life depended. Paradoxically, this reliance on slave labour had grown from Rome’s success. Having seen off the naval trading power of Carthage in three Punic Wars (264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and 149–146 BC), and having seized Greece in 146 BC, Rome had vastly increased its reach and territory. The Romans had also defeated Macedon and, in 133 BC, been granted the kingdom of Attalus III of Pergamon (spanning much of western Anatolia, now in Turkey) by the terms of his will. Booty poured into Rome. In an era when slavery was ubiquitous, this included the trafficking of human beings – a practice Rome industrialised on an unimaginably vast scale. Its generals brought back hundreds of thousands of slaves – people who were sold in its markets and put to work on tasks that ranged from looking after wealthy men and women in fine homes to labouring on plantations. For some of the least fortunate, the brutal degradations of the mines awaited. The streets of Rome heaved with slaves scuttling about on the business of their masters and mistresses. Then there were the gladiators. This profession had grown out of a funerary custom of the Etruscans (the people of central Italy from whom the Romans borrowed many traditions) to evolve into a central component of crowd-pleasing Roman entertainment, funded by the elite as part of their political competitiveness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-170979965-CMYK-f7cdcdf.jpg" width="3898" height="2597" alt="Two men wrestle each other over a fountain. Around them, three other men stand in military stances" title="Wrestlers in a sixth-century BC Etruscan tomb fresco near Tarquinia, central Italy. Roman gladiatorial games evolved from Etruscan funerary customs" /> Among those gladiators was Spartacus. Born in Thrace, an area in the south-eastern Balkans spanning parts of modern Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, Spartacus had, according to one translation of the historian Appian (c95–c165 AD), “once served as a soldier with the Romans”. Not unlike the fictional Maximus Decimus Meridius in Ridley Scott’s 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, he had somehow been enslaved and eventually sold to a school run by the lanista (gladiator trainer) Lentulus Batiatus in Capua, southern Italy. It seems that Spartacus’s military training stood him in good stead when, outraged by Batiatus’s treatment of his fighters, mostly Gauls and Thracians, he took part in a rebellion to overpower the training-school guards. Surviving accounts of the revolt written by Plutarch and Appian some 200 years later unsurprisingly don’t quite tally – an all too common problem with ancient sources. Nevertheless, it seems that around 200 gladiators planned a breakout, and that 78 did manage to escape. Only then did they elect Spartacus as leader. He had a reputation for being unusually wise and cultured for someone of his background. He was also exceptionally courageous and strong. Whatever the precise details of those events, the Third Servile (or Spartacus) War had begun. Spartacus and his rebels made for the nearby slopes of Vesuvius, and were joined by runaway slaves and even some free peasants. Any loot gathered along the way was shared out equally – an egalitarian gesture that attracted others. They defeated soldiers sent from Capua and helped themselves to their equipment, discarding their own less-effective gladiatorial weapons. Around 140 years later, Pliny the Elder (c23-79 AD) recorded how Spartacus had allegedly forbidden any of his followers to possess gold or silver. Pliny interpreted this rule as showing that slaves in Rome’s recent past had more moral fibre than Romans themselves. Opportunity missed At the start of the rebellion, few took Spartacus and his followers too seriously. Initially, the praetor (commander) Clodius was sent from Rome with 3,000 troops to trap the rebels on the volcano. The renegades, though, made ladders from vines and shinned down sheer cliffs to make their escape. Even then, arrogance and complacency prevailed in Rome, where no one appreciated quite how dangerous the revolt was becoming. Once more, only a scratch force was sent against Spartacus, who repeatedly beat off attacks. His army grew larger, stronger and better equipped day by day: with his military experience, Spartacus was able to oversee training and the manufacture of weapons. Appian estimated the number of rebels at 70,000; however, such rounded figures are meaningless, especially when they involve Rome’s enemies. Not only was there no way of accurately measuring the strength of armies but, by exaggerating the strength of opponents, Roman victories were given additional sheen – a powerful incentive to tell tall tales after the event. Only belatedly was a proper consular army of two legions sent out by the Senate. In 72 BC, they defeated a force of ‘30,000’ rebels led by another gladiator, the Gallic Crixus, killing “20,000” including Crixus himself. Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome? According to Plutarch, this defeat made Spartacus more cautious. “Spartacus was soon great and formidable,” he wrote, “but he took a proper view of the situation. Since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, he began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes – some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.” Determined to pursue his escape plan, Spartacus persevered with his march north – but was cut off by one of the consuls (Rome’s highest elected officials), while the other blocked his retreat. However, the consular army amounted to only about 10,000–12,000 men, so splitting them up was a mistake. Spartacus attacked each half of the Roman army in separate engagements: his force having now grown to (supposedly) 120,000, he defeated both, sending the consuls fleeing in separate directions. Buoyed up, Spartacus headed towards Gaul, defeating the 10,000-strong army of the governor of Gallia Cisalpina (in the north of what’s now Italy). Spartacus executed 300 Roman prisoners as a sacrifice in honour of Crixus. He then marched on Rome and – acting as brutally as his former Roman masters – killed all of his remaining prisoners and his pack animals so that he could move as quickly as possible. By now, the consuls had regrouped and together tried to block Spartacus. He defeated them again. Terrifying humiliation That highly trained Roman troops were being repeatedly overcome by an army led by an ex-slave was a devastating and terrifying humiliation for the Roman military. Spartacus, though, understood that his force, for all its size, lacked the equipment and training to take Rome. Instead, he captured the city of Thurii (on the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy) and traded with merchants for iron and brass to manufacture more arms. Another victory over a Roman army followed. The Spartacus War was now in its third year, and the revolt represented an unmatched opportunity for any Roman general who could crush it. Rome had two great military leaders at the time. One was the fabulously wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (c115–53 BC), who had fought on the side of the dictator Sulla in the civil war of the 80s BC. The other was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106–48 BC), commonly known as Pompey, who had recently crushed the rebellion of the senator Sertorius in Spain. The Senate placed Crassus in charge of the war. Determined to win at all costs, and desperate to do so before Pompey was called upon to help, he raised an army of six legions and added the consular army of two legions – except those men he executed as punishment for their failure to defeat Spartacus previously. In one ancient account of what followed, Crassus sent Mummius, one of his legates, with two of the legions to fight Spartacus. Mummius was defeated, and some of the survivors fled. Crassus regrouped them, but took the 500 most cowardly and decimated them – executing one in 10. Though brutal, his methods worked: facing 10,000 of Spartacus’s men, who were encamped some way from the main force, Crassus’s force killed two-thirds. With that victory under his belt, he led his men to rout the rest. Spartacus’s army fled south to the sea, hoping to cross to Sicily, but was thwarted when Cilician pirates, who had agreed to help him with sea transport, double-crossed the rebels. He and his men were now trapped in what’s now Calabria, on the far south-western tip of Italy’s toe. Plutarch described how any chance of the rebels escaping from southern Italy was thwarted: “[Crassus] determined to build a wall across the isthmus, thereby at once keeping his soldiers from idleness, and his enemies from provisions. The task was a huge one and difficult, but he accomplished and finished it, contrary to all expectations, in a short time, running a ditch from sea to sea through the neck of land 300 furlongs [about 37 miles] in length and 15 [Roman] feet [about 4.4 metres] in width and depth alike. Above the ditch he also built a wall of astonishing height and strength.” Read more | Was Maximus Decimus Meridius real? These five historical figures inspired Gladiator’s hero Whatever the justice of his cause, we should be under no illusions about Spartacus’s capacity for brutality. According to Appian, “He crucified a Roman prisoner in the space between the two armies to show his own men what fate awaited them if they did not conquer.” Spartacus ignored the fortifications for a while but, as his food supplies dwindled, he was forced to break out with some of his men – and Crassus became worried that Spartacus might now decide to march on Rome. The events that followed are confused in the accounts, and difficult to follow. However, it seems that, though Spartacus suffered the defection of some of his army, he enjoyed some success, too. The last battle Back in Rome, concern that the siege might drag on even longer drove the Senate to invite Pompey and his army, recently returned from Spain, to head south and help defeat Spartacus. This infuriated Crassus, who believed that Pompey would take all the glory from such a victory, and was desperate to fight Spartacus before his rival arrived. So when the rebel leader tried to negotiate terms with Crassus, the Roman bluntly refused. Nevertheless, Crassus seemed to have lost his chance of glory when Spartacus escaped and headed for Brundisium (now Brindisi) on the Adriatic coast in another attempt to flee by sea. The rebel leader, though, abandoned that plan when he heard that Lucullus, proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, had arrived back in Brundisium after defeating supporters of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Crucially, at that point Spartacus defeated a force sent against him under the command of Quintus, one of Crassus’s officers. Until then, Spartacus had kept his head – but now “this success turned out to be the undoing of Spartacus, because it filled his slaves with overconfidence”, said Plutarch. Those rebels attacked the Roman soldiers as they were digging fortifications, and that confrontation forced Spartacus into preparing for a full-blown showdown with Crassus. The story goes that Spartacus was brought his horse, ready to carry him into battle – but instead he pulled out his sword and killed it, saying that if he won this day, he would have many fine horses from the enemy – but if he lost, he would want none. The Roman and rebel armies finally met in open conflict in the clash that became known as the battle of the Silarius River – where, Plutarch and Appian affirm, Spartacus died on the field. Appian wrote that the renegade’s body was never found, but that he “was wounded in the knee, holding his shield in front of him and contending this way against his assailants until he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/HIP2630637-2-CMYK-1184840.jpg" width="4331" height="2886" alt="A black and white depiction of Roman soldiers in hand to hand combat, with spears" title="Spartacus’s death, imagined in a 19th-century engraving. The Roman historian Appian wrote that the rebel leader “was wounded in the knee... he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”" /> Revenge and recrimination The Romans fell on the remainder of Spartacus’s men, who were now floundering around in leaderless confusion. Crassus had won, but Pompey rolled up in time for his men to cut down the surviving rebels as they tried to escape. Some fled into the mountains, and Crassus pursued them. According to Appian, the last 6,000 fugitives were captured and crucified by Crassus along the Via Appia between Capua and Rome. Pompey, though, claimed that it was he who, by mopping up the vestiges of the rebel forces, had brought the war to an end. The following year, 70 BC, the two men were joint consuls – but disagreed on almost everything. Even worse for Crassus, Pompey was able to hold a magnificent triumph in Rome to celebrate his defeat of Sertorius in Spain, while Crassus was too ashamed to hold one for merely winning a slave war. The Third Servile War had put Rome in a precarious position. Spartacus had dented the military prestige won by Rome over several centuries of expansion, and made a mockery of the military system that the Greek historian Polybius, writing in his Histories, had so feted only 80 years earlier. The Roman historian Florus, writing almost two centuries later, summed up Roman disgust at what had happened: “I know not what name to give to the war which was stirred up at the instigation of Spartacus, for the common soldiers being slaves and their leaders being gladiators … added insult to injury which they inflicted upon Rome.” Read more | “She returned smelling of smoke and sex:” why powerful Roman women were branded nymphomaniacs Never again? Considering the damage to Rome’s prestige, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Spartacus War is that there was no repeat in later years. This certainly wasn’t because Rome changed its stance on slaves: untold numbers continued to be acquired in, for example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars. This reliance on slaves had a profound impact on Roman society. Under the emperors from Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) onwards, historians habitually bemoaned how wealth and power were turning the Romans into feeble, luxury-loving layabouts. With slaves on hand to do almost everything for them – carrying them in litters, cooking, labouring, flapping away flies and even telling them the time – Romans who could afford these unpaid servants were, it was said, no equals of their ancestors, hardy farmers and soldiers. Perhaps one of the reasons nothing like the Spartacus rebellion happened again was because the Romans, once the bloodshed and retribution were over, managed to find a way to give slaves a form of hope. The Romans were as barbaric as any other ancient civilisation – more so, in terms of the sheer scale of their dominance – but there was one crucial difference: they were endlessly pragmatic and adaptable. Not only did the Romans develop a system of manumission, giving slaves the opportunity to gain their liberty, but freedmen and freedwomen were able to run businesses, accumulate savings and see their children grow up not just free but eligible to vote and hold office. That did nothing to overturn the cruelty and injustice of slavery, but the tombstones of freedmen and freedwomen in the cemeteries of Rome, the port at Ostia and at Pompeii bear witness to the lives that some of the more successful built for themselves. It was certainly better than risking crucifixion along the Appian Way by rebelling. Despite the risks they faced in the arena, gladiators, too, could become popular heroes and celebrated heartthrobs – they might even be freed, some becoming wealthy along the way. The truth, of course, was that most of them ended up dead or disabled long before that happened, but the fact is that there was no second Spartacus, nor anyone like him. No gladiator-led slave rebellion ever threatened Rome’s existence again. A slave to the truth? How accurate is Kubrick's 1960 blockbuster, Spartacus? It’s one of the most famous films of the 20th century. When the Stanley Kubrick-directed Spartacus was released in 1960, its scale and ambition caught the imagination of cinema-goers everywhere. But how true to real events is it? The answer is: more than you might think. The central narrative in the film is the conflict between Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) and Crassus (Laurence Olivier), reflecting historical accounts. In the movie, Crassus encounters Spartacus while watching a private bout at Batiatus’s gladiator training school, though is unaware of his identity. In fact, it seems that Crassus never knowingly saw Spartacus in real life. Pompey does not appear in the film, though is mentioned. The success of the rebels’ breakout and defeat of Roman armies is essentially accurate, as is Spartacus being wrong-footed by the duplicity of the Cilician pirates. The brilliant Peter Ustinov played the real lanista Batiatus, shamelessly stealing every scene in which he appeared. Who could forget his pompous arrival with his entourage in search of new gladiators, spying a bedraggled Spartacus being punished for hamstringing a guard? “Hamstrung? How marvellous,” he says, “I wish I’d been here! I’ll take him.” Some key characters in the film are fictitious, including Spartacus’s ex-slave wife from the gladiator barracks, Varinia (Jean Simmons), and Crassus’s slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis), who joins the revolt. In fact, Spartacus’s wife, name unknown, was said to have been Thracian. The screenplay did capture vividly the notion of Rome as a living force beyond the insignificance of human beings. As Crassus, Olivier proclaims that Rome, “that bestrides the known world like a colossus”, cannot be withstood by any man. The city must be served, and all must abase themselves and grovel before Rome, he declares: “You must love her.” The final, celebrated “I’m Spartacus” scene, in which every one of the surviving rebels stands up to claim to be the eponymous hero, is of course pure movie make-believe. The mass execution along the Appian Way was not – this was Rome’s way of deterring any slaves from attempting such a venture in future. In the movie, Varinia shows the dying Spartacus his son, promising that the boy would grow up in liberty: “He is free Spartacus, free.” Yet slavery lasted as long as the Roman empire and beyond. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2GD63MB-CMYK-10a7c48.jpg" width="2916" height="1942" alt="Kirk Douglas (centre) portrays the rebel gladiator Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 movie – which was more historically accurate than you might expect" title="Kirk Douglas (centre) portrays the rebel gladiator Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 movie – which was more historically accurate than you might expect" /> Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book is Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)