Roman forearm handshake - true gesture or Hollywood codswallop?

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When two people meet formally for the first time, it’s customary to shake hands. Similarly, it’s something you do on parting, offering congratulations, expressing gratitude, or completing an agreement. In sports or other competitive activities, it’s also done as […]

Governing Britain the Roman way

Ever since Julius Caesar had a pop at the northern isles in 55/54BC as part of his Gallic Wars campaign (and didn’t get very far), Britain has been difficult to govern. Whether wars of succession or civil wars, barons or peasants v. kings, Saxons v. post-Romans, constitutional government v. chartists, Fenians, suffragists, unions or agitators, […]

Lupercalia – Not an ancestor of Valentine's Day

Lupercales, Andrea Camassei (1602-1649), Prado Museum

In AD 495, Christian bishop of Rome, Gelasius, finally managed to suppress the more than thousand year old Roman festival of Lupercalia. Gelasius’ letter to senator Andromachus taunted the nominally Christian senators who were intent on preserving the Roman tradition: “If you assert that this rite has […]