Isca Dumnoniorum, or Exeter to you and me

Isca Dumnoniorum c. AD 350

I’ve been over in Devon staying with my writing friend Helen Hollick for a week and yesterday we visited Exeter, including the museum. Of course, I went for the Roman stuff!

The Romans established a large castrum (fortified camp) named Isca around AD 55 at the southwest end […]

Obiter dicta, or something to say in Latin

Homo sapiens consulting a vademecum

Latin isn’t dead; it’s everywhere, perhaps more than we realise – alibi, agenda, consensus, versus, homo sapiens, veto, alias, via, affidavit, vademecum, an item carried around, especially a handbook, and those indispensables i.e. (id est) ‘that is’, and etc. (et cetera) ‘and the rest’.

Maths lovers and problem […]

Cursing the Roman way

Roman curse tablet from Bath (Photo by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net))

The wish to curse a rival, a rip-off merchant, or somebody who cuts us up on the motorway or pushes in front of us in the queue for the first life-saving coffee of the day, is an age old instinct. Nowadays, when we […]