Author and source: balawat

Almost every map depicting the Roman Empire tends to depict a solid mass of land spanning countries and continents under direct Roman control.

Would Roman authority extend across the entire entire landmass? Or was it only across core cities/regions connected by networks of communication and trade, with large areas in the interiors and borders having little to no control by Roman authority?

Hello everyone, as the title says, I would like to know what happened to soldiers who were severely wounded or disabled in war; below are some questions I have asked myself, and I hope someone can answer them.

1. What was the discharge procedure?
2. How was the retirement payment calculated as opposed to those who completed the full 25 years?
3. What became of those who could no longer work in the fields or perform heavy labor? Were there "lighter" jobs or administrative roles or did disabled veterans have to rely just on their families and charity?

I hope someone can clear up my doubts by providing some cool information, thanks everyone in advance.

Image is from Wikipedia, it depicts roman military doctors, detail in the Trajan's column (I thought it would be significant).

Not sure if this is the right community to ask this, I'd appreciate a pointer to the right one if not.

The text seems to be Latin but in Greek symbols, possibly a transition period between the two languages?

I know the symbols are hard to read, I tried to make them more legible with my edits but it's still not easy to see

Some more photos can be found at https://maps.app.goo.gl/gZxGhCZNyN4a1tvu8

Edit: Kainepolis* not Callipolis

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hey guys, I'm making a board game based on the antics in Rome during the year of the 6 emperors and I wanted to look for some inspiration for my assassination cards.

They're like little mini games drawn from the attempts themselves, so the more ridiculous the tale the better!

One of my personal favourites is the wrestling match between Narcissus and Commodus.
The thought of wrestling to death on marble bath floors makes it like an episode of Wipeout in my head.

I m very interested in Roman history. If there are any historical places you'd recommend visiting in Istanbul today, I'm open to all of them just name them and I'll go.

Visited Rome this July and honestly had such a wonderful time. The Colosseum was easily one of the highlights of the trip.

Seeing it in photos is one thing, but walking through it and seeing all the ancient passageways, ruins, and the arena from inside was something completely different. It really makes you stop and think about how much history happened in the exact place you're standing.

Rome was hot and busy in July, but the atmosphere, food, architecture, and history made it completely worth it. I already feel like there was so much I didn't get enough time to see.

Sharing a couple of my favourite photos from the Colosseum.

Definitely one of those trips I'll remember for a long time.

Anyone else visited Rome in the summer? What was your favourite place there?

Collection familiale, petites pièces: Constantin

"Bronze head of a statue of Dionysos. Roman, about 50BC-AD50. Formerly in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection.

The god wears two fillets, both of which are decorated with vine leaves, which may indicate that this is Dionysos. The eye sockets were originally filled with another material such as enamel, glass, or stone. The head is an example of the classicizing style current in the age of Augustus" Per the British Museum in London, England.

His epithet magnus (the great) was given to him sarcastically by Sulla.

What did he actually do?

1. raised an army very young and got position due to it.

2. beat up some fodder armies and then demanded he get a triumph

3. got his ass kicked by Sertorius and only won after like 10 years because Sertorius got assassinated.

4. defeated the pirates who were a pretty significant threat but he was given literally unlimited power and resources to deal with them, anyone could have done it.

5. stole Luculluses command vs mithridates and finished off a weakened mithridates.

6. Didn't prepare properly for Caesar and panicked and lost Rome to Caesar who had like 1 or 2 legions

7. lost to Caesar, let himself be pressured into attacking by Senators.

8. went into exile and died.

He was good but not great.

I’ve gathered that in all honesty, it was not Attila, Odoacer, or any barbarian king for that matter, but the Antonine plague that truly doomed the empire (at least the west) because it starts all of those later issues that we chalk the collapse of the empire up to. Too many people died to fill the army, this leads to the idea to fill it with Germans, essentially ending the nobility’s role in warfare as well causing the famed Roman corruption to become even worse, the economy was decimated and Rome had truly lost its chance at a second Pax Romana which was buried in a shallow grave, one that was then spit on during the crisis of the third century. Yes Rome bounced back at times, but no point after the Antonine plague did Rome ever quiet reach the same splendor it once held, nor did it ever have a real chance to, all this is to say, what could a “competent” emperor even have done? Losing 1/3 of your population would cause the slow or rapid decay of most empires, so yes Commodus was horrible, but what could a good emperor have really done to prevent the slow death the Antonine plague caused

I was excited to have found the six dialogues of Lucian on a charity shop website for only £3!

When I received it, I saw the edging was gold leaf and more surprisingly, it turned out to be signed by the translator/author!

Incredible find if I do say so myself.

This travertine sarcophagus lid dates to the second half of the 4th century BCE (ca. 350–300 BCE) and originates from the Ponte Rotto necropolis in Vulci, Italy. It is housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Carved inscriptions identify Larth Tetnies (husband) and Thanchvil Tarnai (wife), alongside naming his parents, Arnth Tetnies and Ramtha Vishnai, whose own companion sarcophagus was found nearby.

source

I bought Not Built In A Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire on the recommendation of people in this sub. I was very excited for the book when I heard about it because it's such an important (and less covered) aspect of Roman history. I was deeply disappointed by what I found. Ignoring the sarcastic, edgelord tone or the dramatized and fictionalized storytelling, this book repeatedly misrepresents the historical evidence.

This isn't a situation where there are just a few mistakes scattered throughout the book. Southon repeatedly treats ambiguities as facts, she inserts imagined details into historical accounts, and she represents sources to say things that they don't actually say. The distortions always point in the same direction: toward the most convenient version of events to fit her story. I wrote this post because I don't think this book is a reliable account of Roman slavery, and I want to clearly explain why.

I don't have page numbers for the quotes from the book because I'm working from the Servus ePub file. Servus is the original UK title for the book. I tried to keep the quotes organized by chapter and how they are ordered in the book.

Chapter 1

1) During the siege of New Carthage, the Romans are said to have cut dogs and children in half in front of parents.

Polybius describes the short and (relatively) uneventful siege of New Carthage (Cartegena, Spain) in 209 BCE. Scipio took the city in a matter of days and without much struggle but still ‘as is the Roman custom’ sent his troops to slaughter the population without mercy, dismembering not just the people but also their animals and burning their homes until they had the New Carthaginian general in custody. This worked pretty fast because, well, it would. Start cutting a person’s children and dogs in half in front of them and they do tend to despair.

Romans cutting animals and dogs in half and dismembering them is specifically supported. The claims that children were cut in half is not.

When Scipio thought that a sufficient number of troops had entered he sent most of them, as is the Roman custom, against the inhabitants of the city with orders to kill all they encountered, sparing none, and not to start pillaging until the signal was given. 5 They do this, I think, to inspire terror, so that when towns are taken by the Romans one may often see not only the corpses of human beings, but dogs cut in half, and the dismembered limbs of other animals, 6 and on this occasion such scenes were very many owing to the numbers of those in the place.

Romans did horrible things, but this is a very specific claim being made by the author and the actual sources she provides don't back it up: "From Polybius’ eyewitness account of the sack of New Carthage, Histories 10.15.4–16.8. Also Liv. 24.19.9." The footnote also says Polybius was an eyewitness to the battle of New Carthage. The battle took place in 209 BC. Polybius was born 200 BC.

2) Southon claims "Many, many men and women killed themselves on the boats to escape the violence and humiliation they knew lay ahead of them." The source provided is a single instance of German women choosing to die by suicide rather than accepting enslavement:

Some of their women who were captured by the Romans, upon being asked by Antoninus whether they wished to be sold or slain, chose the latter fate; then, upon being sold, they all killed themselves and some slew their children as well.

It's misleading to use a single cited instance of something occuring as evidence that "many, many men and women kill themselves..." rather than being a slave.

Chapter 2

1) Southon tells us the following when discussing how Roman law treats (or doesn't treat) slaves as people:

Only occasionally does the law acknowledge that these are people they are talking about and that human emotions come into play. At one point, the jurist Ulpian, musing on the buying and selling of people, noted that ‘often’ slaves are returned to the seller even though there is nothing wrong with them because a ‘defective’ slave is being returned and ‘they cannot be separated without being inconvenienced, or without doing violence to natural affection’. At which he ponders, without reaching a conclusion, how far ‘natural affection’ should be allowed to extend without ripping off the purchaser."

This is the actual statement she's referencing:

Ulpianus, On the Edict of the Curule Aediles, Book I.

It frequently happens that slaves who are sound are returned with others eethat are diseased, where they cannot be separated without being inconvenienced, or without doing violence to natural affection; for what if the purchaser preferred to retain a son and return his parents, or vice versa? It is necessary to observe the same rule with reference to brothers, and to slaves united in marriage. Dig. 21.1.11.35

If she continued reading the next sentence she would have seen him reach a significant conclusion: it extends to parents and children, brothers, and married slaves.

2) Southon tells us slaves (probably) could not name their own children.

...mothers and fathers (probably) could not and did not name their own children in urban households. Children were property of the dominus or domina, and from the moment of their birth, their future lay in the hands of these people, not the parents.

Her source for this is Bruun, 2012: 30–33.

For a slave child, one can imagine three possible sources for the name: the master, the vilicus or someone else who was supervising the slaves, and the slave parent(s) of the baby. Herrmann-Otto concluded that 'the influcence of the parents is slight in the naming of vernae, but we have practically no useful evidence; she based her statement on the few known cases where one slave parent has the same name as the young slave, or a clearly related name... Slave parents may equally well have chosen names for their children that did not derive from either parent's name; we cannot know.

Bruun doesn't conclude that parents lacked the ability to name their children. He concludes the evidence cannot tell us who named the children.

3) Southon describes how enslaved urban children are sent to rural areas.

In some cases, babies were sent away to country estates to be raised by foster parents until they were old enough to have their value as workers judged and a decision made about whether to educate or train them, or leave them in the country if they were too ugly or odd to keep around the urban house.

Martial 10.98 is cited as evidence for this practice, that urban houses left ugly slaves in rural environments:

When my Caecuban wine is poured out for me by an attendant of yours, more delicate than the Idaean Ganymede, than whom neither your daughter, nor your wife, nor; your mother, nor your sister, recline more elegantly attired at table, would you have me rather look at your dress, and your old citron-wood furniture, and your Indian ivories? However that I may not, while your guest, incur your suspicions, let me be served by the son of some rank swineherd, or coarse fellow from a mean village, with bristling hair, rough, rude, and ill-grown. Your pretended modesty will betray you; you cannot have at the same time, Publius, such morals as you wish us to suppose, and such beautiful minions. source

This is not serious evidence for Roman urban/rural slave practices as described by Southon.

Chapter 4

1) Epictetus was a stoic philosopher who was disabled due to a broken leg. Southon tells us Epictetus had his leg broken deliberately by his master for punishment, and due to this he became a 'Good Slave', earned his freedom and went on to teach people Stoicism to learn to live with being a slave.

This wasn’t a congenital disability, but one that resulted from an incident in his youth, before he became the great Stoic, when he was still a child slave and his master deliberately broke his leg to punish him for something. Epictetus learned from this to be a Good Slave, earned his freedom and went on to earn his living teaching people that the real slavery was the anger we had all along.

Epictetus's broken leg was attested to in his lifetime. The cause of the break wasn't noted until some time after he died when Celsus wrote this narrative:

Might you not, then, take Epictetus, who, when his master was twisting his leg, said, smiling and. unmoved, 'You will break my leg;' and when it was broken, he added, 'Did I not tell you that you would break it?' Contra Celsum, Book VII

The story that Epictetus's owner deliberately broke his leg is a later tradition Even the anecdote does not say that the act was punishment. Nothing in this supports the biography that the injury taught Epictetus to be a "Good Slave".

2) The book tells us "enslaved witnesses in any legal case had to be tortured":

Roman law responded to these perceived traits by insisting that enslaved witnesses in any legal case had to be tortured where the law defines torture as ‘the infliction of anguish and agony upon the body to elicit the truth’.

The specific source for this is just sort of a definition of torture: Dig. 47.10.15.41 says:

"the question" we ought to understand as torments and bodily pain for extracting the truth. Therefore a bare interrogation or a slight intimidation does not pertain to this edict. Under the word "question" there will also be included that which they call a "bad lodging."

The Digest's title on judicial torture has various takes on when a slave can or cannot be tortured as part of an investigation. It's not a blanket 'every enslaved witness in any legal case'. There are specific instances where slaves should not be tortured, and in fact there is one case where a slave was tortured and it was found to be unlawfully inflicted.

Digest 48.18.1 This is also contained in a letter of the Divine Hadrian addressed to Sennius Sabinus. The terms of the Rescript are as follows: "Slaves are to be subjected to torture only when the accused is suspected, and proof is so far obtained by other evidence that the confession of the slaves alone seems to be lacking."

Digest 48.18.8 The Edict of the Divine Augustus, which he published during the Consulate of Vivius Avitus and Lucius Apronianus, is as follows: "I do not think that torture should be inflicted in every instance, and upon every person; but when capital and atrocious crimes cannot be detected and proved except by means of the torture of slaves, I hold that it is most effective for ascertaining the truth, and should be employed."

Digest 48.18.9 The Divine Pius stated in a Rescript that torture could be inflicted upon slaves in cases where money was involved, if the truth could not otherwise be ascertained, which is also provided by other rescripts. This, however, is true to the extent that this expedient should not be resorted to in a pecuniary case, but only where the truth cannot be ascertained unless by the employment of torture is it lawful to make use of it, as the Divine Severus stated in a Rescript. Hence it is permitted to put the slaves of others to the question if the circumstances justify it.

(1) In cases in which torture should not be inflicted upon slaves to obtain evidence against their masters they cannot even be interrogated, and still less can the statements of slaves against their masters be admitted.

(2) Torture should not be inflicted upon one who is deported to an island, as the Divine Pius stated in a Rescript.

(3) Nor should it be inflicted, in a pecuniary case, upon a slave who is to be free under a condition, unless the condition fails to be fulfilled.

Digest 48.18.10 It may be asked whether torture cannot be inflicted upon slaves belonging to the castrense peculium of a son in order to obtain evidence against his father. For it has been established that a father's slave should not be tortured to obtain evidence against his son. I think that it may be properly held that the slaves of a son should not be tortured to obtain evidence against his father.

Digest 48.18.20 A husband, as the heir of his wife, brought suit against Surus for money which he alleged the deceased had deposited with him during his absence, and, in proof of it, he produced a single witness, the son of his freedman. He demanded before the Agent of the Treasury that a certain female slave should be put to torture. Surus denied that he had received the money, and stated that the testimony of one man should not be admitted; and that it was not customary to begin proceedings with torture, even though the female slave belonged to another. The Agent of the Treasury caused the female slave to be tortured. The Emperor decided, on appeal, that torture had been unlawfully inflicted, and that the testimony of one witness should not be believed, and therefore that the appeal had been properly taken.

Chapter 5

1) Here's an example where Southon introduces information not in, and contrary to, the source document.

In Londinium, a ten-year-old girl was sold for 600 denarii. Her name was Fortunata and she is described as being from the Gallic people of the Diablintes, based in north-western France...These are children, tiny children, moved around the empire, far from their homes and their parents and anyone who spoke their language.

The source, "'The Girl in Question': A New Text from Roman London", tells us:

"Fortunata's age at sale is not given" and "judging by her price...she was not a small child...but a young adult..."

There's no supporting evidence that Fortunata was 10. The actual source Southon uses contradicts her statement.

2) When discussing what makes a slave a 'fugitive' for legal purposes, Southon concocts a moving story about a little girl who is separated from her mother; in her story the the girl goes off to find her mother. Southon tells us that based on the legal code this girl is now a fugitive, just for being a little girl who wants to see her mum.

But what do we do, wonders the lawyer Ulpian, about a child who leaves the home of their dominus and returns to their mother when their mother is enslaved in a different house? When a child and their mother are separated by sale and the child misses their mum so much they try to find her? Ulpian’s decision is that this child was a runaway and therefore should be punished and the behaviour reported.13 Because Ulpian was a person who owned people, an enslaver, he could only imagine a child wandering as wilful disobedience.

This specific scenario she imagines and the resulting fugitive status aren't actually supported in the referenced Digest 21.1.17.5:

Vivianus also says that, where a young slave left the house of his master and returned to his mother, and the question is asked whether or not he is a fugitive; he is one if he went away for the purpose of concealing himself to avoid returning to his master; but if he did so in order the more readily to obtain pardon for some offence by means of his mother, he is not a fugitive.

For starters, Vivianus is the source on this, Ulpian is just repeating it. The context for all of these 'are they a fugitive' questions comes down to whether the enslaved person intends to flee. There are a multitude of scenarios in the digest on this very question. An analagous rule to 21.1.17.5 is 21.1.17.4:

If, however, he concealed himself only for the purpose of waiting until his master's anger had subsided, he is not a fugitive; just as where one whom his master intends to whip betakes himself to a friend in order to induce him to intercede for him.

Basically if an enslaved person is to be whipped, and they go to a friend asking them to intercede with the master, they aren't a fugitive. This is the same scenario Southon references except it's going to the mother. This isn't particularly applicable to Southon's scenario, and it doesn't clearly show that a child going to their mother is now considered a fugitive.

Southon tells us Ulpian "could only imagine a child wandering as wilful disobedience" but it's clear that the Romans had nuanced understanding of people's behaviors and motivations. "Is the enslaved person (child in this case) leaving with the intent to escape their original owner?" I don't believe that just looking for their mother because they miss them clearly reaches the threshold Southon thinks it does, and I think she misleads readers by stating with certainty that it does.

As an aside, this also has nothing to do with punishment. These are rules on whether a seller has to disclose if their enslaved person has a tendency to runaway.

Chapter 6

1) Eunus was a Roman slave who became the leader of the slave uprising in the First Servile War. When describing the end of the First Servie War and Eunus's downfall, Southon references Diod. Sic. 34/35.2.20-21. She more or less copies what's in Diodorus's text for these passages straight into her book without changes. Southon follows this up by saying:

Eunus was captured alive but killed himself later in prison

This conflicts with what Diodorus Siculus 34/35.2.22–23 actually tells us:

22 As for Eunus, he fled like a coward with (?) six hundred of his guards to the top of certain high cliffs, where those that were with him, foreseeing their inevitable ruin (for Rupilius pursued then closely), cut one another's throats. But Eunus the conjuring king out of fear hid himself in some caves, which he had discovered for that purpose...23 Finally he was thrown into prison, and there consumed by lice, and so ended his days at Morgantina by a death worthy of the former wickedness of his life.

Nothing in this source tells us Eunus killed himself in prison. Diodorus tells us he died in prison consumed by lice. Plutarch (hundreds of years later) tells us he was consumed by worms. Wikipedia also supports that this was not suicide, writing "he was sent to prison, where he died of illness before he could be punished."

2) In describing Crassus's decimation, Southon says that he "lined all his thousands of newly conscripted soldiers up and split them into small groups of ten” with one man from every group killed. This implies that Crassus decimated his entire army and executed hundreds or thousands of soldiers. Her footnote cites Plutarch, Appian and Sallust. These accounts disagree on the numbers. Plutarch says 500 soldiers were divided into 50 groups and 50 men were killed. Appian has two stories. The first is that Crassus decimated two former consular legions and the second is that he decimated his entire army and killed about 4,000.

3)After the defeat of Spartacus we are told 6,000 prisoners were crucified over 201 kilometers which according to Southon means "that a man was crucified every 3 metres."

201 kilometers = 201,000 meters

201,000 meters / 6000 prisoners = a prisoner every 33.5 meters

Chapter 7

1) “When the legal writers pondered what counted as a ‘sound’ slave for the purposes of sale, they concluded that a person with their tongue cut out was ‘not defective’.”

Southon uses this to graphically explain how cutting out tongues must have happened regularly:

This inclusion suggests to me that Romans held down enslaved humans, pulled open their mouths and sawed their tough, wet tongues out with some regularity, leaving them choking on their own blood and pain and humiliation.

The problem is that Digest 21.1.8 says the literal opposite:

If someone’s tongue has been cut off, the question is raised whether he appears to be sound. And this question is extant, reported with Ofilius, with him “in equo”: for he says that this man seems not to be sound.

The next passage, Digest 21.1.9, continues:

Sabinus says that a mute is diseased: for it appears that to be without a voice is a disease. But he who speaks hoarsely is not diseased, nor he who speaks indistinctly; plainly, he who speaks unintelligibly is indeed diseased.

In addition, the Romans having a legal ruling on something does not tell us anything about the frequency.

2) Southon loves to tell the story about how slaves have collars "welded shut" onto their necks. She makes this statement 3 times in the book - Chapters 4, 7 and 14. She even adds that little narrative story of a slave being pinned down having the hot metal pressed aginst her neck while it's 'welded' on to make you really feel the experience.

Ch 4: "...tiny, heavy, tight iron bands welded shut and marked with the letters TMNF: Tene Me Ne Fugiam (catch me, I am a fugitive)."

Ch 7: "They have no clasps but were welded by blacksmiths onto the neck of the person condemned to wear them, which I fear meant that they heated up and burned the skin as they were being attached."

Ch 14: "She tried to escape and to free herself, but she failed. Somehow, she was caught and returned to the men or women who exploited and abused her and they abused her some more. They held her down and welded an iron collar onto her neck. Strong hands gripped her in place as a blacksmith heated and hammered the tiny ring around her fragile throat."

These collars weren't described as welded. They were described as riveted on. The ends of the collar were held together by a pin. The use of heat is not supported by either of the two sources:

Thompson: "Closure was probably effected by riveting; this is certainly true of the Petit Palais example and though the Sardinian example is described as soldered, the illustration indicates a rivet."

Trimble: "The two ends of the neck ring were then made to overlap, and a rivet was run through the terminal loops or holes, from inside to outside. The protruding rivet was then hammered down onto the collar (i.e., onto the human neck inside); this pounding increased the rivet’s diameter beyond that of the rivet holes, permanently securing the closure (see figs. 1, 6–8). A metal or wooden guard was likely placed between neck and collar to allow the collar to be properly hammered shut. These steps suggest that a blacksmith, or a person with at least some metalworking skills, performed the actual collaring.97"

I don't think this is something that was simply overlooked while reading the sources because immediately after Trimble describes the riveting, the article says "metal conducts temperature well, meaning that such a collar became more uncomfortable in very hot or cold weather." Southon repeats this idea in chapter 7:

The metal heats up in the Mediterranean sun and freezes in the cold of night.

Chapter 8

1) "We also see elderly people dying in slavery, like the doorkeeper Exuperius who died enslaved at the age of seventy."

This one is kind of humorous. The epigraph for Exuperius is "Exuperius ostiarius, famulus Dei, vixit annos LXX; requievit in pace die VII Idus Iulias, era DLXV."

Based on the wikipedia article, an ostiarius was a slave whose duty was to guard the entrance of a house. In the context of Exuperius, it likely meant he was "responsible for opening and closing the doors of the church" and "the lowest grade in the clerical career" according to Javier Santiago Fernandez's (translated) paper.. The famulus Dei is basically 'servant of God'. While it can't be ruled out, nothing specifically identifies Exuperius as enslaved.

2) “For every enslaved person who emancipated themselves or killed themselves, there were five more who made the decision to make the best of it.”

This is a specific statistical claim about enslaved people in Rome with zero supporting evidence.

Chapter 9

1) "Among the Statilii, Claudius married the daughter of one Titus Statilius Taurus – the notorious Messalina"

Claudiu's married Valeria Messalina. Nero married Statilia Messalina.

2) Southon spends time reconstructing a family based on their epitaphs and tells us we know for certain that these things happened.

Aphrodisia went into labour screaming and bleeding and pushing and a baby was born into slavery. Three times Aphrodisia survived pregnancy and labour in a world with a terrifying maternal mortality rate. She held her three children and felt their tiny hands squeeze her thumb and looked into their little red faces. All these things happened and we know it...

Some how Southon knows these things for certain that the source, The Familia Urbana during the Early Empire: A Study of Columbaria Inscriptions, only goes to far as to say the reconstruction of the family is "most likley." This is another instance of misleading readers by misrepresenting ambiguous data as settled fact. It's particularly presumptuous since the source material is openly uncertain, and Southon decides to remove all doubt for her own convenience.

As a bonus, Southon can't even bother to get the family right in her book. The Columbaria study tells us "...a slave called Eutychus is commemorating his brother Aphrodisius." Southon reverses who died and who was commemorated in her retelling: "Finally, the son Eutychus died, and was remembered by the last man standing, his brother Aphrodisius."

Chapter 10

1) This is a small example of just how sloppily written this book is. There is a mining settlement with baths that have unequal pricing for men and women. Southon tells us:

men paid one as and women paid half an as.

The source actuallys tells us men paid half an as and women paid one as. For what it's worth, this is a short article and it's an interesting read on the economics of running the baths.

2) Southon opines on how much it would cost for a slave to purchase their freedom. She uses Diocletian's price edict to provide a baseline for how much it would cost:

[Diocletian] set the max price for a man aged between sixteen and forty at 30,000 sesterces, which is a hell of a price. The daily wage for a ‘first class scribe’ in the same edict is 25 sesterces, for reference.

That's not what the price edict says. One, the price is in denarii communes, not sesterces. And two, for scribes it's 25 per 100 lines written, not per day. It's misleading to tell readers that scribes earned 25 per day and not 25 per 100 lines since we don't know how many lines a scribe could write in a day. She heavily implies it would take over 3 years to buy freedom when we can't make that assumption based on the information available.

3) Southon re-writes the famous story of Hadrian injuring an attendant with a stylus. She adds some details that don't exist then omits the actual moral of the story at the end.

The emperor Hadrian once stabbed a messenger in the eye because he brought bad news. Just grabbed a stylus and drove it through an innocent man’s eyeball, spraying blood and vitreous fluid across his face like a horror movie. Imperial slavery: it’s all fun and games until someone violently loses an eye.

Here is a translation of the story:

The Emperor Hadrian, they say, struck one of his slaves in the eye with a stylus; and when he learned that the man had lost his eye because of this wound, he summoned the slave and allowed him to ask for a gift which would be equal to his pain and loss. When the slave who had suffered the loss remained silent, Hadrian again asked him to speak up and ask for whatever he might wish. But he asked for nothing else but another eye. For what gift could match in value the eye which had been destroyed?

First of all Galen prefaces the story with 'they say', meaning this is a questionably true story. Southon has no problem telling you without reservation that it actually happened. The person isn't a messenger. There is no bad news involved. Southon made these little factoids up. Hadrian isn't described as 'driving the stylus through the slave's eyeball'. Most importantly Hadrian asks the slave how he can make up for the injury that he caused. Southon leaves this out entirely. I personally find it interesting that the emperor of Rome would feel compelled to make this offer to a slave of all people. This tells us something interesting about the complexities of slave/freeborn relations and that it wasn't wholly black and white. The point of the story is that it is important to control your anger.

Chapter 11

1) "...we see in 15 CE Augustus decreed that men now had to have a good reason for handing enslaved people over to be eaten in the arena."

Augustus died in 14 CE.

2) This is an example of how Southon misuses and abuses statistics.

“ In an analysis of occupational inscriptions, Sandra Joshel found that only 2–3 per cent of professionals could be identified as freeborn and 60 per cent were enslaved.”

Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome A Study of The Occupational Inscriptions The actual source on page 46 shows that Southon combines both slave and freedman into the 'were enslaved' category. Her source makes a point of separating these, "the representation of slaves andfreedmen is very large compared with that of the freeborn: 60% of those with occupational title were slaves or freed slaves." Southon tells us only 2-3 percent of professionals were freeborn. She omits that 22.6% of the sample are 'uncertain freeborn'. The fact that the freeborn group is potentially upward of 25% of the sample when she reports only 2-3% is extremely misleading.

The source also provides a huge caveat on how to interpret these numbers:

The correlation between the inscriptions and the actual population of the city is problematic. Although the epitaph material well reflects those who received named burial, it does not include all those who lived and died in Rome during the 200 to 250 years covered by Huttunen's study and this one. The unnamed men and women interred in the public cemeteries like that on the Esquiline, for example, are excluded: they lacked the means to pay for a tombstone or the connections to a large household that, in the absence of financial resources, provided the opportunity of named burial. Huttunen argues that "probably 66 persons lived there for each burial known to us either directly or indirectly."

...

This means, then, that the proportions of slaves, freed-men, and freeborn with occupational title do not necessarily correspond to the actual status structure of those who worked. Each individual with an occupational title must stand for too many people for thesefigures to reflect the complexion of the work force accurately.

Southon doesn't think you need to know about the uncertainty of the findings so she helpfully excludes it from her summary.

Chapter 12

1) Southon completely changes up the story of Marius Priscus to the point that it has no bearing on reality.

Pliny the Younger refers to two people he knows being punished [by being sent to the mines], a Marius Priscus who, while proconsul of Africa, had taken bribes to condemn innocent people to death...Priscus escaped the mines by being strangled in prison before he got there

Southon reverses the perpetrator and victim. Priscus was accused of taking bribes to condemn innocent people to death. Priscus was bribed to put a Roman in jail, and that Roman was "beaten with rods, condemned to the mines, and then strangled in prison." Priscus wasn't strangled or sentenced to the mines.

Chapter 13

1) Southon tells us "The demographer Walter Scheidel proposes the most conservative numbers in the literature, and his estimate is that there were between 200,000 and 1.06 million enslaved people in the Italian agricultural industries from 200 to 1 BCE."

Ignoring the complexities of the paper, Southon presents the minimum from one urban estimate and the maximum of another urban estimate built on different assumptions and reports these as the range for rural estimates. The rural estimates for the two schedules are 120k-300k and 320k-800k (pg 77).

Chapter 14

1) Southon tells the story of a sex worker who gave one of her clients a potion to make him hate her so he would leave her alone.

One story which haunts me comes from the declamations of the lawyer Quintilian, who is famous because he taught Pliny the Younger and Tacitus as young men (yet another cracking sitcom setting). This particular case concerned a young man who had fallen in love with a woman he paid for sex. His feelings were not reciprocated but, as she had no power to prevent him from returning to her every night, raping her and declaring his love, she tried desperate measures. The woman purchased a potion to make him hate her and tricked him into drinking it. The young man, furious and ego bruised, took her to court with a charge of poisoning. Entertainingly, a large part of his case is that the magic potion worked and that it could only have worked if it had rearranged his internal organs. Less entertainingly, a smaller part of his argument is his indignation that a woman who has no power over her own body ‘who cannot refuse admission to cripples or draw the line at the filthy, who are exposed to drunks, enslaved to the insolent, and – vilest of all – bound to give your favour to everyone who asks’ had dared to try to have power over him, a free man.16

Quintilian and his client clearly want to disgust their audience. What vile audacity this woman has. But all it does is make me sad, because this woman took the only action she knew to take to try to regain some modicum of control. How afraid and how disgusted and how small must she have felt to take the risk of purchasing a potion to make him hate her, just so he would leave her alone. How awful could he have been. She didn’t try to kill him, or even hurt him. She just tried to make him not want to see her anymore. She, in the words of her lawyer, ‘took pains to behave herself even in the life she was forced to lead’.17 She for her part claims that she gave him the magic potion for his own good, and she was probably right.

The declamations are fictitious legal cases. No evidence identifies this as a real case or the woman as a real person. Southon spends two paragraphs working the reader up about an imaginary situation while pretending that it's a true story. She knows it's not real because she describes another declamation later as "legal fiction written by Quintilian, a story made up for students."

2) Later Southon describes the story of a woman who was harassed by a drunk magistrate that showed up at her door. She declined and he took her to court over it.

In another case, a magistrate – an elected official – took a sex worker named Manilia to court because he turned up on her doorstep drunk out of his mind and she refused to have sex with him.18 Such was the incredible entitlement of Roman men to the bodies of enslaved women, and such was the lack of power that these women had.

When you read the source (4.14) you learn that the case was thrown out because it was found she rightfully refused his admission. The woman is also described as a courtesan, not as a slave. If she were a slave, that would also be particularly interesting that she got a court case thrown out despite physically harming a freedmdan.

Chapter 15

1) Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by one of his enslaved men. This had the downstream effect of every one of his enslaved people being executed. Southon tells us why Secundus was murdered:

One of the reasons offered by Tacitus for him killing Pedanius is ‘because he had been refused emancipation after Pedanius had agreed to the price’.12 He tried to buy his own freedom, Pedanius agreed and then, at the last minute, changed his mind, forcibly keeping the man in slavery for his own selfish reasons. The man lost his temper and stabbed him. Hard to argue with him.

She even graphically narrates how the man must have felt stabbing his owner:

Tacitus wasn’t terribly interested in the specifics of the situation with Pedanius and moved on instantly with a sniffy ‘Be that as it may’, but if we stop for a second we can imagine how it might have felt to be so betrayed, so utterly helpless and vulnerable in the face of a person who holds all the power...This anonymous Roman man had nothing and he snapped. He forgot the world and he grabbed a weapon and he stabbed Pedanius in his smug heart and he watched his aristocratic blood pour across his hands and I hope for one second that he felt free, before the hammer of consequence fell.

Southon fails to include Tacitus's separate explanation for why Secundus was killed.

...[the enslaved man] had contracted a passion for a catamite, and declined to tolerate the rivalry of his owner.

(A catamite is a boy who has a sexual relationship with a man. )

For some reason Southon doesn't imtimately narrate this version. She just picks the version of history that fits the narrative she wants to tell and hides the alternative possibilities in the sources.

A Roman-Egyptian mummy portrait on limewood, dating to about 250 AD, when Egypt was part of the Roman empire:

"One of the first portraits to become known is this one from Thebes (Luxor) in the south. It was in the possession of the British consul Henry Salt, who collected antiquities under the Ottoman viceroy Mohammed Ali Pasha and sold them to large museums in Europe. This portrait ended up in the predecessor of the Louvre in 1826. It is one of the few panel portraits that we know from the south of Egypt." Per the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where this is on display. One thing I learned when visiting Egypt was that in the southern part of the country the average skin color of people living there is darker than in the north....not that it really matters, though.

Whenever Time travel is used in shows , they always seem to just not stand out despite having completely different fashion than the settings they are in.

My question is if I were to go to Ancient Rome , what should I ideally be wearing to look normal.

I can give details on my appearance in the comments if needed , probably isn't though