In 2012, archaeologists in Southern Turkey discovered a well-preserved mosaic featuring a skeleton with bread and a pitcher of wine. The inscription reads in Greek “Be cheerful and live your life.” Dating to the 3rd century BCE, the mosaic adorned the dining room of a wealthy villa in the ancient city of Antioch. The mosaic was excavated during construction in Hatay Province and is now housed at the Hatay Archaeology Museum in Turkey. While scholars argued about the translation, a common theme, some pointed to the mosaic beside the skeleton.
TRECHEDEIPNOS with AKAIROS below it. The first word is used referring to human parasites. AKAIROS is something like ‘ill-timed’ or ‘pesky’. Staring at a sundial (he is late) he's rushing so much that he lost a shoe.
Sadly the third mosaic was damaged beyond recognition. The sentiment being expressed is not as obvious as it's made out to be. It seems the true message is more akin to Solon’s warning to Croesus to count no man happy until they’re dead.
The Year of the Four Emperors, 69 AD, was a year of the Roman Empire in which four emperors ruled in succession: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. On June 9, 68 AD, Nero was tried in absentia and condemned to death. He met death at his servant's hand, thereby attaining the distinction of being the first Roman Emperor to nearly commit suicide. The four most influential generals in the Empire successively vied for imperial power. Galba was unable to establish his authority. Otho murdered Galba on 15 January with the help of the Praetorian Guard.
Galba - US$64,400
Otho US$191,500 (2005)
Otho faced Vitellius, who had been acclaimed by the legions of the Rhine on 1 January 69. Vitellius won the First Battle of Bedriacum on 14 April. Otho committed suicide the next day. Vespasian was legate of Syria. Vespasian's legions were victorious at the Second Battle of Bedriacum on 24 October. Vitellius was subsequently killed by a mob on 20 December.
Vitellius - Very rare, 10 known. US$43,800
Vespasian US$13,600
Vespasian brought stability to the empire. After his death in 79, he was succeeded by his eldest son Titus, thus becoming the first Roman emperor to be directly succeeded by his own natural son.
Titus (79-81) - Aureus (7,35 g), Rome Mint, 79. $22,000 EUR in 2020.
Titus, born December 30, 39, was the eldest son of Vespasian. He followed his father to Judea, where he was legate of the XV Apollinaris legion. After the proclamation of Alexandria, Vespasian left the pacification of Judea to Titus. After the capture of Jerusalem in the summer of 70, he celebrated the triumph with his father in January 71 in Rome. He succeeded him on his death June 24, 79. The reign of Titus is a series of disasters: the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, then the fire of Rome in 80.
Titus died in 81, perhaps assassinated at the instigation of his brother, Domitian (Suetonius).
After a 5 day war with Pharnacles II of Pontus, Caesar wrote a report to Rome detailing his conquest. The commander didn't go into much detail, writing: "I came, I saw, I conquered." The sound bite proved so catchy that we still remember it to this day.
Crossing the Rubicon River with an army was tantamount to a declaration of war. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legion on Jan 10, 49 BC, he risked all. Suetonius writes that Caesar quoted an Athenian playwright as he crossed the river, declaring "the die is cast."
Caesar wrote that "in war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes."
In his chronicle of the Gallic Wars, Caesar concludes that: "in most cases men willingly believe what they wish" describing a tactical mistake of his Gallic enemies.
Caesar writes: "The immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely from a reverse of circumstances."
As a young man, Julius Caesar was abducted by pirates. When the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty.
Caesar went on to promise the pirates that he'd personally kill them once he was free. After he was ransomed, he raised a fleet, hunted them down, and did exactly what he had promised.
Sanxingdui is the ruins of the capital of the ancient Shu Kingdom. Sanxingdui is 15 km from the Sichuan Province capital of Chengdu. In the 1980s, construction workers found two pits full of strange relics: piles of elephant tusks, gold masks, and bronze figures.
The objects were 3,000 years old, and unlike anything seen in China.
Sanxingdui was once the capital of a powerful and technologically advanced civilization, which flourished in the region around the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.
The prize find was a huge bronze statue known as the Large Standing Figure — a giant, intricately detailed rendering of a man standing 2.6 meters tall and weighing nearly 200 kg.
China's lost civilization is acknowledged as one of the greatest archaeological finds ever.
Bronze figure with a gold mask from Sanxingdui, Sichuan province, China, ca. 1200–1050 BCE.
Leaden sling-bullets were widely used in the ancient world.
For a given mass, lead, being relatively heavy offers the minimum size and minimum air resistance. In addition, leaden sling-bullets are difficult to see in flight and avoid. Worse, the projectiles had messages ... "Take This", "Here's a Sugar Plum For You", "This is a Hard Nut to Crack."
On a fortified hill called Burnswark in the Dumfries region of southwest Scotland some 1,900 years ago, a Roman army attacked local warriors by hurling lead bullets from slings that had nearly the stopping power of a modern .44 magnum handgun, according to experts. The assault must have been deadly, but Burnswark was just the opening salvo in a war against the tribes living north of Hadrian’s Wall. Despite their superior weaponry, Roman soldiers fought a tough and resourceful enemy that melted away into the hills and marshes. Less than 20 years after the Roman's attack at Burnswark, they retreated south to Hadrian’s Wall.
The excavations at Burnswark Hill unearthed the largest cache of Roman lead sling bullets ever discovered — part of the huge arsenal of missile ammunition used by the attacking legions to subdue the hilltop fort. Roman lead sling bullets were known in Latin as glandes. (or 'lead acorns') So many sling bullets and other Roman missiles have been found at Burnswark Hill that archaeologists think the raid was staged as a warning to anyone who resisted Roman rule.
Researchers estimate that up to 5,000 Roman soldiers took part in the attack, based on the size of two Roman army camps that were built to the north and south of the hilltop fort.
Roman soldiers armed with slings used lead bullets to mow down foes.
Archaeologists also discovered ballista balls
Hadrian’s wall
The Romans also employed psychological warfare against the Scots. About 10% of the bullets had holes in them. Researchers cast replicas, and asked an experienced slinger to test them. The bullets with the holes made “a weird banshee-like wail” Isotopic studies of bullets from Burnswark and from other well-dated sites suggests that the bloody battle took place around A.D.140, early in the reign of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius.
Rome terminated the rule of its Jewish client dynasty, the Herodians, in 6 CE, establishing Judaea as a province governed by an appointed praefectus (until 41 CE) or procurator (44 – 132 CE). The most famous of these was Pontius Pilate (26 – 36 CE)
Gessius Florus (64 – 66), appointed by Nero and one of the worst procuratores, did much to provoke the revolt known as the first Jewish War. In the Autumn of 66, Florus seized 17 talents from the Temple treasury in Jerusalem, claiming it was due for back taxes. That would be 969 pounds of nearly pure silver. This provoked a riot in the city, which was suppressed with Roman brutality.
$1.1m in 2017.
Florus fled to the coast, and the rebels besieged his troops in the Antonia fortress, the citadel of the city. One of the first acts of the rebels was to assert their independence by issuing silver coins. The “prototype” shekel issued at the start of the revolt is one of the great rarities of Jewish coinage – 4 are known
Year 5 shekel.
Year 1 shekels are scarce; Years 2 and 3 are more common; Year 4 is very rare; and Year 5 is extremely rare, with only about 25 examples known. The supply of silver for fractional coinage may have run short during the long siege of Jerusalem. Bronze emergency coinage was issued in denominations of half, quarter and eighth shekel.
Year 3 shekel $7,500
Vespasian. Æ Sestertius, AD 69-79. 'Judaea Capta'
On August 3, 70 CE, the Romans breached the last defenses of Jerusalem, massacred the starving rebels and destroyed the Temple. Defeat of the Jewish revolt gave Rome an opportunity for massive looting and enormous profits from the sale of slaves. The spoils of Jerusalem funded construction of the Roman Colosseum. The Romans commemorated their victory with extensive coin issues proclaiming IUDAEA CAPTA ('Judaea Captured').
Coins of the Jewish War have been in high demand with collectors for centuries and there are many fakes, ranging from cheap trinkets to highly deceptive professional forgeries.
In 2018, while sifting through debris taken from the City of David, workers discovered an ancient coin minted by Jewish Rebellion forces in the year 69 AD.
It was originally found in the sewers beneath ancient Jerusalem. The few coins that the Jews minted in the year 69 all bear the words “For the Redemption of Zion”; this one depicts a wine cup, while the obverse shows the “four species” (symbolic fruits and branches used in the celebration of the Jewish feast of Sukkot) and the words “Year Four.”
There is a subtle difference between the coins of 67 and 69 AD; they changed the phrase “Freedom of Zion” to “Redemption of Zion.” The writing on the coins may be an indicator of the fading hopes of Jewish forces.
The Herculaneum loaf is a carbonized, stamped sourdough loaf of bread that was baked when Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 AD. It came from a villa owned by Quintus Granius Verus. The small stamp on the bread reads “Celer, Slave of Quintus Granius Verrus”. Celer survived the eruption as he was listed in a later document of freed slaves.
Researchers found a list of purchases and prices made over eight days, near the brick oven. On the list, bread was bought every day. Three varieties are listed: 'bread', 'coarse bread' and 'bread for the slave'. Panis Quadratus was standard white wheat bread. Coarse bread was cheaper flour for the poor; and slave bread was low-quality, bran-heavy, or animal-grade.
Panis quadratus was a staple sourdough loaf often made from whole wheat or spelt, commonly prepared in commercial bakeries and stamped with a baker’s mark. It was distinctive for being round, tied with string to carry, and scored into eight shareable sections.
Bakeries, or Corpus Pistorum, served a heavily taxed and controlled commodity.
The bread has been analyzed and is a sourdough type whose recipe has been recreated.
A painting from Pompeii showing the sale of bread.
Pliny the Elder was a prolific writer and military commander who died attempting to rescue people in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption. His work Naturalis Historia (Natural History) presents a detailed picture of daily life, culinary habits, and baking technology in the 1st century AD. The carbonized loaves found in Pompeii and Herculaneum directly correlate with frescos and his texts. His statements on bread and fermentation still resonate 2000 years later:
“The excellence of the finest kinds of bread depends principally on the goodness of the wheat,” and “Those persons who are dieted upon fermented bread are stronger in body.” The Natural History
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria, was a lighthouse built by the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 280 and 247 BC. It was between 120m and 137m (394 and 449 ft) tall.
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for many centuries it was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world. Badly damaged by 3 earthquakes between AD 956 and 1323, it became an abandoned ruin.
Pharos was a small island located on the western edge of the Nile Delta. In 332 BC Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria on an isthmus opposite Pharos. Alexandria and Pharos were later connected by a mole. The lighthouse was constructed in the 3rd century BC. After Alexander the Great died the first Ptolemy announced himself king in 305 BC, and commissioned its construction shortly thereafter. The building was finished during the reign of his son, the second Ptolemy (Ptolemy II Philadelphus). It took twelve years to complete, at a total cost of 800 talents. The light was produced by a furnace at the top, and the tower was said to have been built mostly with solid blocks of limestone.
A fire burned constantly inside to serve as a beacon, while a colossal bronze mirror reflected sunlight during the day. The lighthouse was badly damaged in the earthquake of 956, and then again in 1303 and 1323. Finally the stubby remnant disappeared in 1480.
Archaeologists re-discovered the physical remains of the lighthouse in late 1994 on the floor of Alexandria's Eastern Harbor.
A hemidrachm struck in Alexandria under Hadrian depicting the Pharos lighthouse sold for €1200 despite its condition. Architectural representations on Roman coins is intensely studied. Scholars frequently use them as evidence. Collectors seek the coins out.
