[Roman equivalent of tons?]

On what little information you've given there would seem to be a parallel with the very, very excellent "Pompeii" by Robert Harris. Just making sure that you're aware of this work and that there's no uncomfortable overlap. Best of luck with it.

 

If there's no Roman equivalent, how about "...they were gone, all of them, buried with the city under an ocean of ash." ?

 

I suspect that even if there was some large measure of weight, it wasn't something people used in common conversation or we'd find it more easily. I was leaning toward "... they were gone, all of them, the whole city entombed forever under a mountain of ash by the hand of Vulcan" or something like that instead. That thought is actually interesting because it fits nicely with Roman superstition, and the Pompeiians did have regular sacrifices to the god Vulcan.

 

And yes, I've read Robert Harris's Pompeii, and there are no overlaps between it and what I'm writing other than the historical facts they have in common. My story only uses the destruction of Pompeii as background, where the events began that lead into what follows. But honestly, you could write a thousand stories, all of them set in Pompeii, without overlapping with Harris's work.

[Roman equivalent of tons?]

I have been writing a story set in first century AD Rome, and I had one of my characters talking about her escape from Pompeii: "...they were gone, all of them, buried with the city under tons of ash." After I wrote that, I realized that a Roman would not have said "tons," but I can't seem to find any other commonly-used name from that period for a large unit of weight. I can simply reword the line to express the idea differently, but I wonder if anyone knows of any such term? The largest I can think of is a talent, but that doesn't convey the idea of massive weight.

[Working IX to V]

I agree with your assessment. The writing style does wear pretty thin by the end of the book. In addition, the Kindle electronic version that I read had a lot of misspellings, which were distracting.

[What's the last book you read?]

Reading Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vicki Leon on my Kindle reader right now. I'm interested in writing something of my own in a first-century AD Roman setting, and I'm looking for details of everyday life for background. As its title implies, this book covers a whole range of professions, many of which would seem very odd from today's perspective. I like it so far; it presents enough information to at least acquaint you with these various professions, although the tone is very casual.

 

I also have Pagan Holidays: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists by Tony Perrottet on Kindle for when I can get to it, and a whole host of other printed books I recently bought online and had sent to my home in the US - I work overseas and won't be back until next January to see those.

[Spectacle in the Roman World]

Count me in.

[How did they clean themselves?]

I've always read that the Romans simply rubbed olive oil all over themselves and then scraped it off with a bronze scraper called a strigil. There are quite a lot of hits on Google if you search for this. This is a photo from the Legio XX site showing a strigil and oil bottle, along with other implements such as tweezers, medicine vials, pick, marbles, etc.: The strigil is the sort of sicle-shaped instrument lying between the right and left corners of the basket.

 

My understanding is that in the thermae they would have done the oiling and scraping out of the water, and only afterward, when they only had a light coating of oil on them, would they have entered the water. If the water was circulating through the baths continuously and running off from a drain somewhere along a top edge of the pool, then the floating oil residue would mostly have been carried off too and emptied into whatever drainage was available at the site. My recollection of the layout at Bath in England is that there was a continuous flow of water from the hot springs through the baths and into underground drainage there. This is a picture of the brick-lined Roman sewer from which the water exits those baths into an open stream nearby:

 

I have never tried cleaning my skin with olive oil, but I did not find that idea particularly surprising since I have seen mechanics back in the 60s use clean motor oil to dissolve the dirt and grease from their hands. Afterwards, they would wipe off most of the dirty oil, then use soap and water to clean off the rest. Oil pretty much dissolves oil and grease, in my experience. Of course, you couldn't afford to do that at 2010 oil prices!

[How did the Romans remove the nails from the dead body]

HI;

My name is Eugene Keller, I have been trying to find info on "HOW THE ROMANS REMOVED THE NAILS FROM THE DEAD BODY, WHEN THEY WERE CRUCIFIED". Are there any publications on this subject. I have never seen nor read anything about this.

 

 

 

 

 

There is precious little detail as to how crucifixions were performed in Roman times, and I've never seen anything about HOW the nails were removed from dead bodies. I have read references to the use of crucifixion nails as healing amulets, so someone had to be collecting them, but at the same time, we read that bodies were left on the cross to rot as a further humiliation of the victim even after he or she was dead. Some of the characters in Plautus' plays talk about crucified victims as being food for crows, which may confirm that. They also tend to curse each other by saying "abi in malem crucem," literally "go to the bad cross," which may indicate that crucifixions were all too common and familiar.

 

And although the common wisdom today is that victims could have been tied, rather than nailed, to the cross, there is absolutely no evidence in any classical sources that I've seen that anything other than nails were used. Josephus relates that up to 500 Jews per day were crucified during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and that the Roman soldiers would nail them up in various ways "by way of jest." Plautus mentions that "four nails were used" to crucify victims. But nowhere is there mention of tying victims to crosses. So crucifixion must have been common and four nails were generally used, so there must have been quite a few of them around.

 

Someone asked me a similar question a few years ago. He was writing a story, and in one scene some of his characters were removing a loved one's body from a cross. With nails the size the Romans would have used, nothing less than a crowbar, and a big one, would have served to give enough leverage to extract them from a timber. The problem then is having a solid fulcrum point to lever against - the victim's feet and hands would have been in the way. So you'd need a wood block or something similar to rest the crowbar on while pulling. If you did that, I believe that the nails would pull out of the wood but remain embedded in the victim, so extracting them from flesh and bone would be another, maybe more difficult challenge.

 

There is the example of the heelbone with a nail through it that was found at Giv'at Ha-Mivtar in Israel in the 60s, which has been popularized as part of the remains of a crucifixion victim, although I disagree - it's just a heelbone with a nail through it. We can't say with certainty how it came to be that way. If the person were crucified, then this is an example of one of those nails that was too difficult to remove. See this link for more information on that: Crucifixion in Antiquity - Zias

 

Josephus does mention that three of his acquaintances were crucified at Thecoa, near Jerusalem, in 70 AD, and he prevailed on Titus to have them taken down. One of them survived. So we do have a case of victims being taken down from the cross, just not dead ones.

 

 

Gromit

[Swords and Shields]

Even when it is white-hot, pounding on it will cause it to shatter. This is because cast iron is very high in carbon content; as iron is heated towards its melting point, it combines with carbon from the air and especially with available carbon from the fuels used to heat it. Making steel required not just mixing carbon with iron, but limiting and controlling the carbon content, and that was technology the Romans did not possess.

Gromit

 

Are you saying that cast iron has more carbon than carbon steel?

 

If the Gladius was made of this relatively soft iron, what made it superior to other swords of its age?

 

Cast iron typically contains around 2.1% carbon, while most steels have a carbon content of around 0.35%. You can read more details about this at Carbon Content of Steels.

 

I doubt that the Romans had any idea about carbon contents of iron and steel, but they probably learned that if you got iron so hot that it melted, it became unworkable and brittle, while if you smelted it in a bloomery at lower temperatures it could be worked by a blacksmith. The difference is that molten iron, particularly in a high-carbon atmosphere, will take up a lot of carbon in an uncontrolled way, while it does not do this at the lower temperatures required for smelting.

 

I don't know that the gladius was an intrinsically better weapon than other swords of the period. It was the organization, discipline and fighting techniques of the Roman army that made them a force to be reckoned with. For their fighting style, using the large scutum shield in close combat, the short gladius was the optimum weapon. However, I doubt that anyone else the Romans met in combat had weapons of better material, i.e. steel vs. iron, either.

[Swords and Shields]

The bent nail is a very good example for your opinion, and the links, illustrate quite nicely. Thank you. My engineer friend, would agree with you. He believes the Romans didn't have the technology etc. to make a "steel" product, but there has been some basis for arguing this view on this thread.

 

The notion that steel weapons and armor existed in this time seems to be bandied about in fiction and non-fiction. In this month's Military History an article about Trajan's Column refers to one of its details, "Into the Camp" with a description of the legionnaires wearing "steel lorica segmentata body armor..."

 

So, as a writer, if I use the term "steel" I have a feeling the accurate history police won't fine or discredit me.<g>

 

I am curious about what you said of the pilum, that they were intended to bend. Was this so a warrior could disengage the shaft from a shield, etc. so as not to become a victim?

 

I've had a lot of discussions about Roman "steel", and it all tends to stem from the idea that steel is just iron plus carbon, so what's the big deal? But even up into the 19th century a lot of wrought iron was used for constructing bridges, buildings, etc. Today, typical carpenter's nails, known as "common" nails, are soft iron as are railroad spikes, for example. It appears that the Chinese and Indians developed processes for steel making long before the West, but the technology was considered a military secret, not something that was freely shared with the rest of the world. There are pretty strong opinions I've read that "Damascus steel" was actually "Wootz steel" from India that was imported and sold through Damascus.

 

So if you use the word "steel" in writing about Roman armor, I'm among those who will detect that as most likely incorrect.

 

Now a Roman pilum was designed so that once it was thrown by a Roman legionary, it wouldn't be thrown back by the other side. There's some pretty good description of its design, along with pictures at this link: Roman Pilum. They were, in fact, designed to bend to render them useless as a weapon once thrown. In addition, they could penetrate an enemy's shield and then bend over, rendering his shield useless as well. One feature that is not mentioned in this article is the way the iron shaft was joined to the wooden portion - at least in some designs - using one metal pin and one wooden dowel to hold it in place. When the pilum struck, or perhaps when an enemy was fumbling around trying to disengage himself from it, the wooden dowel would break, leaving the iron shaft to swivel freely on the remaining metal pin. This design was instituted by Gaius Marius as part of his reforms when he created the professional Roman army around 107 BC.

[Swords and Shields]

I have to disagree with the statement that iron is brittle. CAST iron is hard, brittle and unworkable by blacksmith techniques. Even when it is white-hot, pounding on it will cause it to shatter. This is because cast iron is very high in carbon content; as iron is heated towards its melting point, it combines with carbon from the air and especially with available carbon from the fuels used to heat it. Making steel required not just mixing carbon with iron, but limiting and controlling the carbon content, and that was technology the Romans did not possess.

 

The Romans produced their iron through a "bloomery" smelting process that involved mixing iron ore in the form of hematite or bog iron nodules with charcoal. They introduced enough air into the burning charcoal to keep its temperature up, but part of its combustion air came from the oxygen driven off from the iron oxide, which left behind metalic iron. This process takes advantage of the fact that the impurities lower the melting point of the iron they are mixed with to a "eutectic point" that is less than the melting point of pure iron, and it thereby reduces its tendency to take up free carbon and become unworkable. The product from this was iron "blooms" consisting of a spongelike mass of metalic iron with bits of charcoal and other impurities embedded in it. This picture shows an iron bloom that has been sectioned to show these voids:

 

Roman - and later - blacksmiths had to re-heat and work these blooms in a process called "fettling", hammering the blooms and gradually working out the large impurities and voids to produce a wrought-iron billet. This was the basis for all of their iron implements, from swords to nails. This iron still contained impurities, mainly silicon, and this led to worked pieces having a characteristic grain-like internal structure. This picture illustrates this, showing a bent and broken piece of wrought iron with its grain structure: Roman-era swords would likely have bent this same way rather than breaking as steel would.

 

We have some examples of Roman-era wrought-iron from the first century AD in the cache of over 800,000 Roman nails that were recovered at Inchtuthil, in Scotland. You can read more about that at this link: Inchtuthil Roman nails.

 

Wrought iron is not brittle, but like other soft irons it is not flexible, either. It bends and stays bent. An example of this that everyone is familiar with are common nails, which are generally made of soft iron. They are easily bent and do not spring back - you have to straighten them, and I expect that Roman armorers had to straighten gladii frequently. We know that pilum shafts were intended to bend and stay bent; flexibility would have defeated their purpose. It also meant that an iron sword would require frequent sharpening and was more susceptible to rusting than a steel one would have been.

 

The Romans may have used a method known as carburizing to case-harden iron blades. This involved heating the piece to a high temperature in the presence of carbon, so that the surface layer would take up carbon and become similar to cast iron, very hard and wear-resistant. But the internal structure of the piece would remain ordinary wrought iron.

 

Bottom line is that making steel is not as simple as one might believe, and I do not believe that the Romans made it other than accidentally. They were very adept at producing wrought-iron and working it into blades, armor, and many other kinds of implements.

 

 

Gromit