Ancient Rome

Steel in Ancient Greece and Rome

The melting point of pure iron is 1540°C. Landels points that even by Roman times European furnaces were not producing heat much over 1100°C[9]. Smelting of iron, unlike the smelting of the lower melting point metals, copper, zinc and tin, did not involve the iron turning to the liquid state. Instead, it was a solid state conversion requiring che...

Read More

SLAVE-MISTRESS RELATIONSHIPS

"Marriage more shameful than adultery": slave-mistress relationships, "mixed marriages," and late roman law. JUDITH EVANS-GRUBBS...

Read More

Roman Boys becoming Men

Did young people in ancient times with their responsible public functions mature earlier, or were they fickle, sometimes idealistic, adolescents? In the book Jeugd in het Romeinse Rijk (Young People in the Roman Empire), Leiden historian Johan Strubbe and his colleague from Leuven, Christian Laes, analyse a current debate. Do literary sources and i...

Read More

The Roman Navy

The Roman navy was very much inferior, both in prestige and capability, to the Roman army. Before the First Punic War in 264 BC there was no Roman navy to speak of as all previous Roman war had been fought in Italy. But the war in Sicily against Carthage, a great naval power, forced Rome to quickly build a fleet and train sailors. The first few nav...

Read More

Family Rule frm Tiberius to Nero

TIBERIUS, AN UNPOPULAR BUT ABLE RULER. Frank E. Smitha...

Read More