Roma Novan heroines and gender pressure on men

The Roma Nova heroines – Carina and Aurelia Mitela – are ‘tough gals’; dedicated, strong-willed, physically and mentally resilient and tied into their sense of history and duty. Underlying all this, their driving force is their self-belief.

Carina, despite her disrupted childhood and separation from Roma Nova until she was twenty-four, has embraced Roma Novan […]

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 […]

Women in combat roles?

I don’t want to sound specious, but I could say, ’They’ll be making them bishops next.’ Oh, they just did that.

UK defence secretary, Michael Fallon, announced on 19 December that he wanted to end the army’s ban on women serving in frontline infantry roles in the British Army by 2016. He pointed out that […]