cannotttttt get over this depiction of peleus bringing achilles to chiron to raise him that's taken from a 6th century BC oinochoe. why is he holding him like that
"Here’s what we know about Julia Felix: she lived in Pompeii from at least 62 CE. She was possibly illegitimate but was definitely not a member of the social and cultural elite. She worked for a living setting up and running a very interesting business and, by 79 CE, she had planned to shift her focus from managing a business to owning property. We know all these things because twentieth-century excavations at her business uncovered an advert, carved in stone and attached to the external wall of her huge building. It reads:
"To rent for the period of five years from the thirteenth day of next August to the thirteenth day of the sixth August, the Venus Bath fitted for the nogentium, shops with living quarters over the shops, apartments on the second floor located in the building of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius. At the end of five years, the agreement is terminated."
This find illuminated the building it was attached to, bringing what otherwise looked like a very large anonymous domestic house into dazzling focus. With this description of the purpose of each room written by the owner herself, archaeologists and historians could see the site through a whole new lens and they realised that they had discovered a Roman entertainment space for the working middle classes. It is, so far, a completely unique find and it is magnificent. It offers us, as modern viewers, two amazing things: a little glimpse into the lives of the commercial classes of the Roman Empire who are so often completely and utterly invisible, and a brutal reminder that so much of what we ‘know’ about Roman women in the Roman world comes from rules concerning only the most elite.
We’ll do that second part first, because it’s the least fun. Roman written and legal sources are pretty universal in their agreement that although women could own property, they could not control it; they had no legal rights, could not make contracts and were to be treated as minors by the legal system for their entire lives. In order to buy or sell property women required a male guardian to oversee and sign off on any transactions. This is a basic truism of women in the Roman Empire, repeated ad nauseum by sources both ancient and modern including me, and it is undermined by Julia Felix’s rental notice.
The rental ad makes it pretty clear that Julia Felix is the owner-operator of a business complex including public baths, shops and apartments (there’s more too, as we’ll see), and she doesn’t seem to require anyone else to help her rent it out. She names her father – sort of; ‘Spurius’ might just mean that she is illegitimate – but this is effectively a surname, a personal identifier to differentiate her from other Julia Felixes in the area. It doesn’t mean her father was involved. Furthermore, the use of her father’s name as an identifier suggests that Julia didn’t have a husband and was either unmarried or widowed in 79 CE. The strong implication of her advert is that Julia Felix was an independent lady, a honey making money and a momma profiting dollars who could truthfully throw her hands up to Destiny’s Child.
We will never know if Julia escaped the flames and choking ash of 79 CE, fleeing as it swallowed her business and her home, but one discovery, made on 28 January 1952, suggests that she didn’t. The archaeologists, led by Amedeo Maiuri, uncovered on that day the skeleton of a woman who had fallen while running across the garden during the disaster. It’s clear this fallen woman was well off, because she was wearing a lot of gold jewellery. She carried four gold half-hoop earrings and wore four gold rings. Two of these rings were particularly expensive; both contained a red carnelian gem, one carved with a figure of Mercury, the other with an eagle. Around her neck she wore a necklace of gold filigree, dotted with ten pearls and hung with a green pendant. Someone stole both the necklace and earrings from the Pompeii Antiquarium in 1975 and no one, somehow, had ever bothered to photograph them so all we have are descriptions but the rings that survive are fine and expensive. The woman who wore them – was wearing them when she died – had real money to buy these objects and the woman who wore them did'nt leave Pompei in time.
Moreover, when she was found it was clear that at the moment of her death she was heading not towards the street or towards safety, but towards the shrine to Isis in the garden where all the most valuable possessions were kept. The valuable possessions that Julia Felix grafted for and maybe couldn’t bear to leave behind. There’s no way to tell whether this skeleton is Julia Felix, whether these bones once stood and looked at the plots of land Julia bought and made plans, or whether they belong to a looter or a chancer or someone just caught out. But it’s nice to pretend that Julia Felix, who shaped the city’s roads around her dream and offered respite and luxury to workers and made a tonne of money doing it, died and was buried with the place that still bears her name."
A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire, Emma Southon
Having a historical figure as a special interest is rather embarrassing. Yes, that's my person. Yes, they've been dead for over a hundred years and I still have emotions about them. Seeing things that they owned or that were related to them makes me happy. I have Spotify playlists for them. I can tell you so much about their life that it would be very weird for a living person. Seeing historians get them wrong can and will make me frustrated for the rest of the day. I'd love to see them portrayed in a historical drama! Oh...wait, no, not like that. Definitely not like that. Forget I asked.
And this is all emotions for a long dead person. Humiliating.
here’s the picture of her face so theres no reason to reblog the terf version, esp since it talks about her lack of beauty being tied to her curly hair and hooked nose, yikes
A more accurate complaint would be “modern amateur historians want so badly for Cleopatra to be conventionally beautiful by western European standards, and they want this to be the only thing about her that is remembered, and not her sharp wit and general academic prowess”
I mean yes but also “Cleopatra was a beautiful eastern temptress who used her bewitching looks to sway the minds of upstanding Roman citizens” was a cornerstone of Augustan propoganda. Justifying a war against Mark Antony, upstanding Roman general was hard. But war against this bewitching foreign queen who’s effectively hypnotised him? That’s a flimsy pretext a senate could get behind.
Basically she’s remembered as beautiful because Augustus, #1 propoganda man of the ancient world, wanted everyone to consider her beautiful and evil and that’s it. The beauty stuck harder than the evil
Could I ask if you have any books that focus on the Julio Claudian era that you’d recommend? I’m just starting to learn about it for fun!
Okay there's the classic Twelve Caesars by Suetonius if you want an ancient source. Based off of that you can read/watch the adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius which covers Caesar Octavianus to the ascension of Nero
For an overview of the waning Republic through the Julio Claudians there's Sculliard's 'From the Gracchi to Nero'. I'm mostly a late Republic girly so I always have to recommend Tom Holland's Rubicon but I believe he has a book titled Pax about the Julio Claudians and I think going into the Flavians as well. I haven't read it yet but Tom Holland is up there with Mary Beard for historians whose books I will blindly recommend because they're my heroes.
And if you want a bonus niche deep dive book I would absolutely recommend The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus by Zanker
Feel free to add recommendations to this post to help anon out
You are telported back in time and you meet any of this on your way. Rank you chances of survival and safety on road among :
Agrippa, Julius, octavian, sulla, Aurelius , antony , Gnaeus Pompeius, brutus and cicero
If I meet
Agrippa - I'm dead. I like him well enough but I'm always gonna be on the enemy's side in a battle against him. If he meets me on the road it's probably as a fugitive in exile from Rome because Octavian will want me dead.
Julius - I feel I would survive this one. Even if he knew I was allied with his enemies Julius usually gives you one chance before he whacks you so like I'm surviving the initial encounter on the road
Octavian - if I see him. He's dead. I will rip him apart with my bare hands if I have to. And given he's a sickly little rat bastard I absolutely will have the ability to beat him in combat so long as Agrippa's "Octavian is in trouble sensor" doesn't go off and he comes and rescues Octavian and kills me. But if it's just me and Octavian he's so dead
Sulla - I'll sweet talk my way out of him killing me by playing to his inner theater nerd. I'll tell him about Broadway musicals and he'll be so entranced by the idea that he won't notice we're walking towards a cliff and then I'll yeet him before he can match on Rome
Aurelius - I don't know a ton about him but I feel he definitely asks questions before stabbing and seeing as we don't have beef (well he might be suspicious of me for being a Christian) I think he'd probably be open to having a philosophical conversation and probably let me stay with his procession for dinner and the safety of numbers before parting in the morning. Plus he'll be so pleased to know he's most famous for his writing and probably the most talked about emperor because of it
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus - I meet him on the road drop to my knee and pledge him my service as advisor and while he may show some hesitation because I'm a woman I'll give him enough info that he'll have to believe me...or I just end up as another Cassandra in history. But either way I'm sure I'd survive. Pompeius was lenient and magnanimous and at worst he'd just think I was a little nuts. He'd probably hand me a few sesterces and send me on my way if he doesn't retain me as an advisor
Brutus - basically a repeat of Pompeius but with increased chances of being believed in spite of my sex
Cicero - would probably like to fight me but I'm stronger than him and I'd kick his butt and then he'd be so humiliated he'd deliver a series of scathing orations against me in the Forum
A bronze wolf which would have decorated the lengthwise beams on a Roman ship. The wolf was made using the lost-wax technique and dates to between 37 and 41 CE. The ring had no function other than decorative, used on occasions to hang garlands. (Palazzo Massimo, Rome)
Pumpkinified Emperors and Pirate Kings @duxfemina - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
yousharknotpass
germansingergirl
2087
jacobvanloon
titsay
dailybridgerton
