During the building of St. Petersburg (1703 – 16) laborers were paid only half a ruble per month. They died by the thousands of disease, starvation, and exhaustion. No wheelbarrows were available, so they transported construction materials in their uplifted caftans.
When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, his body was said to have been preserved in a coffin filled with honey for the long trip back. (He was buried not in Macedonia but in Alexandria.)
Alaric, King of the Visigoths, sacked Rome in 410, and then died shortly afterward, near the river Busento, in southern Italy. His soldiers had his slaves divert the flow of the river in order to bury him, along with his gold and jewels. Then they restored the river to its original course. The slaves who had buried him were then killed. His body has never been found.
Note to teachers/kids under ten: this post contains some images of nudity.
We don’t know a lot about the life of the poet Sappho, but we know that she was one of the most admired poets of ancient Greece. Plato called her the Tenth Muse.
Born on the island of Lesbos to a wealthy family, she married, had a daughter, and then, when her husband died, opened a school for girls.
According to other writers of the time, Sappho wrote a lot, to the tune of twelve thousand lines of verse that filled nine books. She wrote her poems to be accompanied by the music of a lyre—hence the origin of “lyric poetry.”
Sadly, only six hundred fragmented lines have survived. In 1073 (1600 years after her death), church authorities in Constantinople and Rome burned her poetry because it portrayed love for other women.
The lines that survive were discovered in Cairo in 1897. Scraps of old papyrus rolls, many of which contained fragments of Sappho’s poems, had been torn into strips and used for lining coffins as a kind of papier-mâché, or used as stuffing for mummies and for crocodile carcasses.
Sappho as a subject seems to have been an endless source of fascination for artists, for centuries. There are endless paintings that show her in thoughtful poses, hair flowing, her very un-Greek-like dress tumbling off one shoulder and exposing her snow-white bosom. As if. Greek men did a lot of parading around naked, but “respectable” Greek women were expected to remain demurely wrapped in their chitons. Here are a few examples:
Artists especially love to portray the legend of her death. According to this legend (which seems highly unlikely), Sappho fell in love with the young Phaon, a boatman. When he spurned her love, she flung herself into the sea from the Leucadian cliff. There are many renditions of Sappho about to hurl herself and her lyre into the sea. Here are just a few:
And then there are those that combine the bare bosom and the edge of the cliff motif. Poor Sappho. I wish she were better known for her poetry than for her ignominious–and most likely fictionalized–end.
Renaissance painter Baccio della Porta ( d. 1517) changed his name to Fra Bartolommeo (Brother Bartholomew) when he became a friar. When the fiery sermons of Savonarola demanded burning of “vanities,” Bartolommeo tossed all his paintings of nudes into the flames.
In 1642, during the Thirty Years War, when soldiers attacked a village in Prussia the nuns from the town’s convent overturned the convent’s beehives. The angry bees drove back the attackers. The grateful townsfolk renamed their village Beyenburg (Bee town).
The ancient Romans’ favorite condiment was called garum. Earlier, the Greeks had used it, and later, the Byzantines, but garum was most popular during ancient Roman times.
They dumped garum onto everything—the way Americans do ketchup, the Chinese soy sauce, and Egyptians tahini. Should you be curious to try garum yourself, I’ve written out the recipe for you. You’re welcome.
First, collect the heads, tails, intestines and other guts of whatever fish you have on hand, and salt them heavily. You can use anchovies, mackerel, sardines, or combinations of fish.
Layer the salted fish guts in a large amphora and then leave it out in the sun until the fish rot, ferment, putrefy, and liquefy. This process might take a few months. Stir occasionally.
Pour off the liquid that forms at the top—that’s the garum.
Garum is actually quite nutritious—full of amino acids, proteins, and vitamin D from all that time in the sun. But the rotten sludge left at the bottom is also highly nutritious, so save for another use, as recipes so often (and rather unhelpfully) suggest.
Women from ancient Judea had slightly better status than their counterparts in Greece. A woman could divorce her husband if he had bad breath or if he practiced a trade that was too smelly, like tanning (turning animal hides into leather).
In 1850, the population in the US was 23 million. 3.2 million were black slaves.
Did banqueting Romans really make themselves vomit so they could go on eating?
It’s true that sumptuous banquets might begin at four in the afternoon and last until the next morning. It’s also true that many people ate and drank way more than was prudent. Banqueters reclined on couches. The tables were strewn with flowers and parsley, and slaves stood by, at the ready to serve and clear course upon exotic course.
Diners did sometimes accept an emetic to help them throw up if they’d eaten too much, and the famous gluttons did barf between courses, but those tended to be the exception rather than the norm. And the so-called “vomitorium” wasn’t a special room in which to go hurl. The vomitorium referred to the opening of an amphitheater that allowed large crowds to stream quickly out into the street.