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Boudicca was such a hardass! I love her.

BASIC BIO: (c. 30 - 60 AD) Boudicca was queen of the Celtic Iceni when Britain was still a far-flung territory of the Roman empire. After her husband, the king, died, the Iceni found themselves battered by the Romans; Boudicca herself was beaten and her daughters raped. The Iceni and other groups planned an uprising, with Boudicca at the helm. The rebels managed to raze several major settlements to the ground, including London. Though the details of her defeat are spotty, it is a known fact that Boudicca and her army eventually fell to the Roman imperial forces. Her exact fate is unknown.

HER IMPACT: Boudicca was largely forgotten until the Renaissance came to Britain. From there, her popularity soared, and Queen Victoria, in an ironic misunderstanding of Boudicca’s fight against imperialism, took her on as a symbol for herself and the British empire. Boudicca remains a folk hero in Britain, and has inspired a number of films and books. She also lends her name one of the best Enya songs, which is exactly the legacy the rest of us daydream about.

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Roman History: The Gracchi brothers

Tiberius and Gaius attempts to pass a land reform legislation that would redistribute aristocratic landholdings established a series of precedents that changed Roman politics forever.

The Roman army was formed by levy recruits, mainly farmers. Land was not private property, it was given by the republic in usufruct. As Roman expansion grew farmers spent more time away from home, which allowed the concentration of farmland in a few aristocratic hands

Tiberius was elected tribune of the plebs in 133 BC and using the exceptional power of his magistracy he tried to pass the Lex Sempronia Agraria, a land reform that would reduce the economical power of the senatorial class. He and his supporters were murdered by advocates of the Optimate faction.

His brother Gaius held the same office ten years later and his reforms were more radical, changing the judicial and military system and even attempting to alter the notion of Roman citizenship. The benefits of his reforms to the equestrian class and Italian allies caused a response from the senate, that took on a mission to discredit Gaius and to win the favour of the plebs. The mission succeeded and he died on 121 BC.

The creation of new political forces constantly using Roman institutions for their own personal benefit, and the shifting of the centre of policy making from the senate to the plebs betrayed the core of the Roman republic and reinforced the arise of individual leaders in the 1st century BC. The violence that ended the Gracchan period provided a brutal precedent that was followed by Roman rulers for centuries.

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~ Medallion with Portrait of Augustus. Place of origin: Roman Empire, possibly Italy Date: A.D. 1-25

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Synaulia is a musical group that recreates Ancient Roman music, since none survives. This beautiful piece recreates the sounds of a cithara, a stringed instrument from the lyre family. The cithara usually accompanied poem recitals and dances, and was often played at drinking parties, banquets and gatherings.

“Sappho is closely associated with music, especially string instruments like the kithara and the barbitos. She was a woman of high social standing and composed songs that focused on the emotions. A Greek mythology story goes that she ascended the steep slopes of Mount Parnassus where she was welcomed by the Muses. She wandered through the laurel grove and came upon the cave of Apollo, where she bathed in the Castalian Spring and took Phoebus’ plectrum to play skillful music. The sacred nymphs danced while she stroked the strings with much talent to bring forth sweet musical melodies from the resonant kithara “ - (x)

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Wondeful

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Fulvia With the Head of Cicero by Pavel Svedomsky, 1849

The orator Marcus Tullius Cicero was a rival of Mark Antony and his wife Fulvia, and often trash talked the two and accused them of multiple forms of lechery, once accusing Antony of leaving his positions in the battlefield to sneak back to Rome to engage in intercourse with Fulvia. When Antony came to power, he had Cicero killed and brought his decapitated head to his Fulvia, who laughed at it and stuck hairpins into Cicero’s tongue.

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Ancient Roman mosaic, depicting a skeleton (perhaps a memento mori) above the Greek maxim from Delphi γνῶθι σεαυτόν (”know thyself”). Artist unknown; 1st cent. CE (?) Found during excavations at the convent of San Gregorio on the Via Appia, Rome; now in the National Museum, Rome. Photo credit: Lessing Photo Archive.

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~ Roman “Swiss Army Knife”. Place of origin: Date: ca. A.D. 201 — 300 Period: Roman

From the source: As well as a knife, spoon, and fork, this implement provides a spike, spatula and small pick. The spike might have helped in extracting the meat from snails, and the spatula in poking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles: the pick could have served as a tooth-pick. While many less elaborate folding knives survive in bronze, this one’s complexity and the fact that it is made of silver suggest it is a luxury item, perhaps a useful gadget for a wealthy traveller.

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Music in ancient Rome: some facts

It is safe to say that Roman music was mostly monophonic (that is, single melodies with no harmony) and that the melodies were based on an elaborate system of scales (called ‘modes’)

The Romans may have borrowed the Greek method of ’enchiriadic notation’ to record their music, if they used any notation at all. Four letters (in English notation 'A’, 'G’, 'F’ and 'C’) indicated a series of four succeeding tones.

There were also other, non-Greek, influences on Roman culture - from the Etruscans, for example, and, with imperial expansion, from the Middle Eastern and African sections of the empire.

Some roman wind instruments included: the askaules, a bagpipe; the Roman tuba, a long, straight bronze trumpet; the cornu (Latin “horn”) was a long tubular metal wind instrument that curved around the musician’s body; versions of the modern flute and panpipes.

Music contests were quite common and attracted a wide range of competition, including Nero himself, who performed widely as an amateur and once traveled to Greece to compete.

Mosaics depict instruments that look like a cross between the bagpipe and the organ. The pipes were sized so as to produce many of the modes (scales) known from the Greeks. It is unclear whether they were blown by the lungs or by some mechanical bellows.

There are numerous references to hundreds of trumpeters and pipers playing together at massive games and festivals.

Percussion instruments included drums, tambourines, cymbals, and castanets.

The majority of music for which we have surviving notation was vocal, and singing was probably the most common form of musical activity.

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Emperor Hadrian's Villa Yields Posh, Arty Apartment

A 1,900-year-old building that would have served as an apartment within the estate of Roman Emperor Hadrian has been discovered in Tivoli, Italy. The building is full of lavish artwork, archaeologists said.

“The exceptionally well-preserved decoration of the rooms includes mosaic floors with both vegetal and abstract patterns, marble revetments [panels], wall paintings, and an almost entire ceiling fresco,” the archaeologists wrote in the summary of a paper recently presented at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Much of the art is now in pieces, and the process of excavating and conserving it is a difficult one, said Francesco de Angelis, a professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University in New York, who is directing the team’s work. Read more.