Alexander Meddings | Rome-Based Historian & Travel Writer

The Romans are often lauded for their ingenious engineering: the graceful arches of their aqueducts, the grandeur of their bathhouses, and even the grim efficiency of their sewers.

Few voices from antiquity capture the sinister spectacle of the Roman amphitheatre quite like Tertullian.

Given the famous deeds associated with Julius Caesar — his crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE, his assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BCE, and even his salacious sex life — it might surprise you to learn that we know next to nothing about his childhood.

Imagine unearthing a newspaper front page about Donald Trump two thousand years from now, amidst the ashes of a nuclear wasteland.

“There is a place called the Tullianum, about twelve feet below the earth.

“The life of Elagabalus, I should never have put into writing – hoping that nobody should know that he was emperor of Rome.”

Just north of London’s Westminster Bridge stands a nineteenth-century sculpture of Boudica and Her Daughters.

In 2009 Germany commemorated the bimillennial anniversary of a momentous event from its ancient history, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

“Wherever they go they leave destruction, and call it peace”.

Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, used to boast that he had inherited a city of brick and left a city of marble.