Free Republic

Sometimes history is history, sometimes history is a harbinger and sometimes history is current events. The story of Roman Emperor Aurelian is all three… Aurelian took power in 270 AD. The previous 35 years had been nothing short of a disaster for the Empire on a variety of fronts. The trouble began with the (well deserved) assassination of Commodus in 192 AD. Always a force to be reckoned with, from that point forward the army required ever increasing bribes to remain loyal. Not surprisingly, the power of the army increased accordingly. At the same time, the treasury had been reducing...

Tunisia's Zaghouan Aqueduct, built to serve Carthage in the second century, is among the longest and most impressive of all Roman aqueducts. This video follows the aqueduct from the monumental fountain at its source to the grandiose baths at its terminus. Following the Longest Roman Aqueduct | 3:20Scenic Routes to the Past | 28K subscribers | 11,537 views | July 19, 2024

Rome's Monte Testaccio, the ancient world's largest garbage dump, is estimated to contain 53 million broken amphorae.Rome's Mountain of Ancient Garbage | 13:11toldinstone | 511K subscribers | 157,252 views | June 25, 2024Chapters:0:00 Introduction1:17 Spanish olive groves2:03 From olives to oil3:47 The voyage to Portus5:15 The emperor's oil6:15 Up the Tiber7:09 Romanis Magicae8:02 The warehouse district9:30 Monte Testaccio11:12 Significance of a dump11:46 Visiting Monte Testaccio

This is the story of a disaster like no other. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it rained 7 million tonnes of debris onto Pompeii it sealed the fate of more than a thousand people. But it also sealed the city form the world: preserved it, protected it, like nowhere else on earth, the rediscovered Pompeii gives us access to the ancient world. And now, with new findings and new insights, we can tell the story of the ordinary people caught up in this disaster. These are the forgotten men and women who lived when Rome ruled and were buried when the...

A tourist in Florence, Italy has sparked outrage and criticism recently after she was filmed simulating an insulting sexual act with a Roman statue. The statue was that of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and excess, the equivalent to the Greek god Dionysus. This incident, totally insulting to the Italians and to everyone who admires the Roman world, took place near the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge of the beautiful Italian metropolis. Florence statue incident condemned as insulting act of tourist Images of the woman who allegedly committed the insulting act on the statue in Florence have been circulating on...

After eight years of scouring databases of tens of thousands of Roman inscriptions on places ranging from walls to tombstones, I found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities... It seems as though... They preferred to settle with other survivors, and they relied on social and economic networks from their original cities as they resettled. Some of the families that escaped apparently went on to thrive in their new communities.Fabia Secundina from Pompeii – apparently named for her grandfather, a wealthy wine merchant – also ended up in Puteoli. There, she married a gladiator, Aquarius the retiarius, who died...

Bulgarian archaeologists stumbled upon unexpected treasure this week during a dig in an ancient Roman sewer - a well-preserved, marble statue depicting the Greek god Hermes.The discovery of the 6.8-foot (2-metre) tall statue was made during excavation work at the site of the ancient city of Heraclea Sintica in southwestern Bulgaria, which lies close to the Greek border.Archaeologists leading the work said that after an earthquake devastated the sprawling city in about A.D. 388, the statue had been carefully placed in the sewers and covered with soil, explaining its good condition."Its head is preserved. (It's in a) very good condition....

[Fosse Way] This is a theory that I have seen numerous times now, so why not delve deeper. I really try to avoid presenting theories that are my own, I am no academic and absolutely don't want to fly in the face of archaeology or scientific process in any way. What I try to do is question theories presented that seem long held and have no scientific or academic basis, in this case the website rural-roads (link below), wiki and Tacitus himself, that all suggested this was some kind of border, or ditch or wall. The Forgotten Roman Wall |...

A stone wall built by the Roman army as a defense against slave revolt leader and gladiator Spartacus and his men has been identified by archaeologists in an Italian forest. Local environmentalists who found the wall alerted archaeologists, who have now been able to provide greater insight using advanced radar and laser scanning methods, as well as soil sample analysis. The ditch and mound (or fossa and agger, respectively) was a common Roman defense system. This stone wall and earthwork, for instance, stretches nearly two miles through the Dossone della Melia forest in Italy’s Calabria region. A deep ditch once...

Antioch (Antakya), one of the most important cities for the early Christian Church, lays in ruin. Block after block, buildings are now little more than piles of rubble, entombing their occupants as rescuers search for signs of life in the bitter cold. Home to Syriacs, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, and Jews, the diverse community of Antioch find themselves homeless, together. The Saint Peter and Saint Paul Parish Church in Antioch is taking in people displaced from their homes. Lower to the ground and stronger than surrounding buildings, it was spared much of the damage others suffered. “There is no electricity,...

The modern search for the Star of Bethlehem began with Johannes Kepler (imperial astronomer for Rudolph II of Germany), who shortly before Christmas in 1603 observed a conjunction (pairing) of Jupiter with Saturn from his observatory in Prague. That this occurred in the constellation of Pisces he thought was important as well – perhaps recalling Rabbi Isaac Abarvanel's belief, noted in his 15th-century commentary on Daniel, that not only does a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn foretell important events, but in Pisces this holds a special significance for Israel; and such an event might even foretell the coming of the...

Halley's comet portrayed on ancient coin Heather Catchpole ABC Science Online Wednesday, 19 May 2004 Could the star shape on the king's crown be Halley's comet? A rare ancient coin may feature an early record of Halley's comet, researchers say. The coin features the head of the Armenian king Tigranes II the Great, who reigned from 95 to 55 BC. A symbol on his crown that features a star with a curved tail may represent the passage of Halley's comet in 87 BC, say the Armenian and Italian researchers. Their research will be published in Astronomy & Geophysics, a journal...

When life gives you a giant mosaic, build a museum-hotel. Digging in the soil of Antakya, a small city near Turkey's Syrian border known to the Greeks as Antioch, Nehmi Asfuroglu discovered one of the world's largest and best-preserved ancient mosaics. It was an archaeologist's dream, but Asfuroglu is a developer, and he was hoping to build a hotel on the site. He could have abandoned the project or concealed the discovery, but instead, he funded a seven-month excavation, abandoning the power tools of hotel construction for the manpower of historians from the local university. He hired architect Emre Arolat...

While working at the Anglo-Saxon site of Sutton Hoo in England, archaeologists found the missing pieces of a 1,500-year-old copper bucket imported from Turkey. The bucket, which is at least a century older than the famed ship burial, may provide a window into how people lived in early medieval times.A team of archaeologists, conservators and volunteers from Time Team, the U.K.'s National Trust and FAS Heritage discovered the metal fragments in late June during excavation and metal-detecting work at Sutton Hoo.Sutton Hoo is best known for its magnificent seventh-century ship burial, whose 1939 discovery was featured in the 2021 movie...

Just like in modern times, many people in antiquity enjoyed visiting the tombs of famous historical figures. One of the most famous historical figures in the Greco-Roman world was Alexander the Great. According to ancient records, one of the Roman emperors visited his tomb. However, while doing so, this Roman emperor ended up breaking off Alexander the Great’s nose. Did this really happen, though? The tomb of Alexander the Great Alexander the Great died in the fourth century BCE in the year 323. He was buried in a magnificent tomb, which was just as famous in antiquity as it is...

Sejanus' Fall...Tiberius soon grew suspicious of his minister's ambitions... he acted slyly: he began promising Sejanus even greater honours, and probably also allowed him to marry Livilla; in the meantime, he began showing indirectly that the praefect had lost his favour. For example, he left the consulship in May and forced Sejanus to do the same; he began criticizing some of Sejanus' friends while praising others; and in his letters to the Senate, he stopped including Sejanus' titles. He began showing affection for his nephews Gaius (better known as Caligula), the last surviving son of Germanicus, and Tiberius Gemellus, Drusus'...

A hoard of 1,700-year-old coins has been discovered in central Israel by researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), according to a Live Science report. The 94 silver and bronze coins, which date to between A.D. 221 and 354, had been hidden in a public building in Lod, a city known to the Romans as Diospolis. The building is thought to have been destroyed during the last known Jewish revolt against Roman rule, known as the Gallus Revolt, for Flavius Claudius Constantius Gallus, who ruled the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire at the time. The cities of Tiberias and...

New insights into the function of the world's oldest analog computer, the famous Antikythera mechanism, have been made with help from an unlikely source: technology developed for the study of gravitational waves...Roughly the size of a shoebox, the device features an array of intricately tooled gears that are surprisingly complex for any innovation from the second century BCE. Over the decades, studies of the device have revealed that it likely functioned as a hand-operated computer that would have allowed its operator to predict the arrival of eclipses, as well as calculate the positions of planets over time.Fast forward to 2020,...

Experts have found a rare bronze bust depicting one of the most colourful characters in Roman history – the mad, sexually-depraved Emperor Caligula.Considered lost for nearly 200 years, the 5-inch-tall bust was originally excavated at Herculaneum, a Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79...After a determined decade-long search, the bust has been found by Dr Silvia Davoli, curator of Strawberry Hill and historian at the University of Oxford...At some point in the 18th century, the bust was gifted to renowned English writer and politician Horace Walpole (1717-1797) by Sir Horace Mann, a distant relative who...

The 2000-year-old tipple was found in a burial urn mixed with cremated human remains. Discovered in Carmona in the southern region of Andalusia, the wine is believed to be the oldest ever found and was preserved in liquid form. Analysis of the liquid inside the urn concluded that it was white wine despite its dark colour, as it did not contain the polyphenols found in grape skins used to produce red wine. In a report published about the discovery, scientists added that the liquid was similar to the Fino wines produced in the same region today.