The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found
January 27, 2010
In 79 CE, Vulcan pounded his forge beneath Vesuvius a little too harshly, and fiery destruction was rained down on several communities in its wake. Bad for the people living there, but good for us: Towns like Pompeii have yielded innumerable archaeological treasures about life in Roman towns in the first century. In Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard lends the latest voice of classical inquiry into this subject, furnishing a cautionary and skeptical account of the material remains of Pompeii and what we can conclude from them...
...read the full review of The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard
The Day of the Barbarians
January 14, 2010
Historians love to identify “notably rare moments” in history – symbolic dates that mark the end of one era and the beginning of another, states author Alessandro Barbero. World War II had its D-Day. Napoleon had his Waterloo. Was the Battle of Adrianople that notably rare moment in Roman history? “The Day of the Barbarians – The Battle that Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire” is a tightly written, 146-page review of a key moment in ancient Roman history, but Barbero argues that it’s not that “rare moment” that lends itself to such dramatic interpretations...
...read the full review of The Day of the Barbarians by Alessandro Barbero
Surnames of the Aemilii
January 04, 2010
The Aemilia gens (originally "Aimilia") was one of the most prominent of the gentes in producing the greatest number of magistrates for the Roman Republic. Plutarch, in his Life of Numa (VIII.9-10, Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by Bernadotte Perrin) offered this origin of the gens name: "Another proof is that one of the four sons born to king Numa was named Mamercus, after the son of Pythagoras. And from him they say that the patrician family of the Aemilii took its name, Aemilius being the endearing name which the king gave him for the grace and winsomeness of his speech..."
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