The land of barbarians and myth
Britain didn’t hold much appeal to the ancient Romans. Their people were of no immediate threat to them like the Gauls, and their lands were not overflowing with wealth and food like Egypt (that the land is mineral-rich was likely not known to the Romans). While the Britons had assisted the Gauls in attempting to repel Caesar’s conquest of the province, that had been over nearly a hundred years prior. To figure out why they attacked and colonised the land in the 40s AD and decades after we need to take a look at an unlikely emperor.
Not so Emperor Claudius
Tiberius Claudius Caesar…
A march that changed history
Power-hungry dictator or just a man willing to destroy the republic to save it, the consensus on Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix is still not out. Born in 138 BC to a poor aristocratic family, he of all people would be the first to expose the festering gangrene rotting away the core of the Republic. …
A house designed for the moon
Barratt London, a British company that specialises in the design and construction of standardised homes has teamed up with former BIS(British Interplanetary Society) president and experienced spacecraft systems engineer, Mark Hempsell, to design a possible house for astronauts on the moon. Looking at the pictures, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little jealous.
Made From What?
The entire exterior of the house would be made from Basalt, an igneous rock abundant on the Moon because it is formed by the vast underground lava flows beneath its surface — though it does not reach the surface via volcanoes like…
The battle that set the course of European History
After their third invasion into the area, the Umayyad Caliphate had finally taken the region of Maghreb — the North-Western part of the African continent. Not satisfied, the Muslim kingdom fought the Visigoths at the Battle of Guadalete, resulting in a decisive victory for them and opening the door to the Iberian Peninsula. Over the course of approximately fifteen years (with most of it done in the first seven) they took control of modern Spain, except for the small Christian Kingdom of Asturias that hidden in the Northern mountains. The Muslim kingdom stretched from North-Eastern Spain to modern-day Kazakhstan.
Stop trying to be intelligent.
A study conducted in 2018 found that 65% of Americans consider themselves of above-average intelligence. This is probably not a surprise to a lot of people. It takes a lot of courage to admit that one might not be as smart as those around them. A lot of this fear is unfounded though. …
Setting the scene for years of Civil War
In my opinion, the Marian reforms are the point of no return for the Roman Republic. The damage dealt by the deaths of the Gracchi brothers would have been forgotten in time and the Roman peoples could have found plenty of other enemies to unite against or other things to occupy their time. Instead of looking out, the Senate may have chosen to look inwards and unite the Roman peoples under the banner of forming a more pleasant state to live under — this is arguably the direction Augustus chose.
All of this becomes naught after the Marian reforms. No…
Why it did not exist
It is no secret that same-sex relations were a common thing in the city of ancient Rome. This, in my mind at least, is a little bit surprising to learn. We associate intolerance to others as a hallmark trait to prior or ‘less civilised’ societies (a label the Romans would have taken great offence to), this is an assumption we have to be very careful in making. …
An enemy till death
Barbarians inhabited the lands of Germania. They bred like rabbits, and, like hungry mutts, they were forever seeking to wreak destruction on the lands of the Romans, lands favoured by the gods. For hundreds of years with the assistance from the gods themselves, the Romans kept the Germanic hordes at bay. Emperors such as Marcus Aurelius would spend years at a time on the Rhine, gutting and beheading any filth that dared step foot onto the earth of civilisation.
Still, this was often not enough. Occasionally, when their favour with the gods faltered, barbarians would flood across the Roman border…
Carrying the torch
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was the younger brother of the martyred Tiberius Gracchus. He was a part of the committee in charge of redistributing land to the poor and shared the revolutionary ideals that Tiberius preached to the people, and like the people, he was forced to mourn his brother’s death at the hands of the senators. Firey and furious where his brother was cool and levelled, there was no way that Gaius was going to stand by and let the hard work his brother had put in slip by, undone by the evil Senate that had killed him.
Pre-Tribune
Much like…
How a little land caused a shockwave
In the last story, I wrote about how the fall of Carthage started a long and winding decline in Roman behaviour and traditions that eventually culminated in the utter collapse of the entire republican system. In this story, we will take a look at the next step in that collapse, and in doing so will focus on a man that many might not have heard of but who raised questions still pertinent to today’s political system.
Loved by the People
Tiberius was a military tribune — a military officer who would be in charge of a 3,000 large contingent of men — at the…
Jordan Fearn
Currently pursing my Masters Degree in Physics, I have a keen interest in history and science of all kinds, and the figures that made it all possible.
