Vestal v: Did you mean...?

To the ancient Romans, everything was imbued with a divine spirit (numen, plural: numina) which gave it life. Even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks and trees possessed a numen, a belief which no doubt grew out of the early religious...

Ancient Roman culture affected vast numbers of people across the known world of its time, beginning with the rise of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) and throughout the duration of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - c. 476 CE in the West and 1453...

Propaganda played an important role in Octavian (l. 63 BCE - 14 CE) and Mark Antony's (l. 83 – 30 BCE) civil war, and once victorious at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), Octavian returned home to become the first Roman emperor. The decade preceding...

Aware of the power of appearances, Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE) carefully controlled her image throughout her reign and through costume, hair, jewellery, and art, she presented herself as the great Virgin Queen. Like a goddess...

The battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE concluded the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE) and consolidated Rome's power in the Mediterranean, finally resulting in Greece becoming a province of Rome in 146 BCE. This engagement is sometimes...

Narcissus is a figure from Greek mythology who was so impossibly handsome that he fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Even the lovely nymph Echo could not manage to tempt him from his self-absorption. Narcissus'...

Livia Drusilla was the third wife of Augustus Caesar, and the first Empress of the Roman Empire. She lived with Augustus in a house on Palatine Hill, and she was known as Romana princips, kind of like the first lady of Rome. She was supportive...

Caligula. Gladiator. Spartacus. HBO's series Rome. If you've seen any on-screen adaptation of life in the Roman Empire, you've seen some depiction of gossip worthy or taboo sex. Cleopatra seduced Caesar; Caligula held infamous orgies; Nero...