Vestal v: Did you mean...?

Rome began as a small city on the banks of the Tiber River in Italy. The Latin tribes (also known as the Latini or Latians) inhabited the region c. 1000 BCE but the founding of the city is dated to 753 BCE. The family was the center and foundation...

Ancient Roman culture affected vast numbers of people across the known world of its time, beginning with the rise of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) and throughout the duration of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - c. 476 CE in the West and 1453...

To the ancient Romans, everything was imbued with a divine spirit (numen, plural: numina) which gave it life. Even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks and trees possessed a numen, a belief which no doubt grew out of the early religious...

Propaganda played an important role in Octavian (l. 63 BCE - 14 CE) and Mark Antony's (l. 83 – 30 BCE) civil war, and once victorious at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), Octavian returned home to become the first Roman emperor. The decade preceding...

Aware of the power of appearances, Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE) carefully controlled her image throughout her reign and through costume, hair, jewellery, and art, she presented herself as the great Virgin Queen. Like a goddess...

Roman women faced legal, ideological, and cultural limitations in several areas of their lives; deep-rooted traditions regarding the role of women in the Roman world resulted in pre-conceived views which saw women characterised by weakness...

The battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE concluded the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE) and consolidated Rome's power in the Mediterranean, finally resulting in Greece becoming a province of Rome in 146 BCE. This engagement is sometimes...

A 1579-83 CE portrait by Quentin Metsys the Younger of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1588-1603 CE). It is known as the 'Sieve Portrait' because the queen holds a large sieve in her left hand which is a traditional symbol of chastity. The queen...

Narcissus is a figure from Greek mythology who was so impossibly handsome that he fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Even the lovely nymph Echo could not manage to tempt him from his self-absorption. Narcissus'...

Livia Drusilla was the third wife of Augustus Caesar, and the first Empress of the Roman Empire. She lived with Augustus in a house on Palatine Hill, and she was known as Romana princips, kind of like the first lady of Rome. She was supportive...