What were the Greeks and Romans like? Their letters suggest they weren’t so different from us
Reading time: 5 minutes
When we read about the Greco-Roman world, we often hear the stories of famous and wealthy men and women. But the letters of ordinary people, preserved on papyri in Egypt, show us what they were thinking and doing. Human nature, their contents suggest, hasn’t changed much.
Skyrocketing prices are an age-old problem. Here’s how Roman emperors battled runaway inflation
Reading time: 5 minutes
For much of the third century, the Roman Empire faced unprecedented crises, including foreign invasions by the Persian Sasanians and conflict with various Germanic tribes, such as the Goths. There were also civil wars, plagues, disease outbreaks and food shortages. This period is now known as the Crisis of the Third Century. Political stability was a distant memory; dozens of short-reigning emperors were installed and deposed as these problems grew worse.
Some recipes date back to ancient Rome: French toast, foie gras … and braised flamingo
Reading time: 8 minutes
It may come as no surprise, therefore, that one of the world’s oldest surviving cookbooks, De Re Coquinaria (“On the Topic of Cooking”) is ancient Roman. But while many recipes within this collection may seem strange or extravagant to a modern palate, (flamingo braised in vinegar, peacock in a rich, peppery wine sauce, roast parrot …) the work offers more than just glimpses into elite Roman tastes.
Rome’s First Great Test: The Punic Wars
Reading time: 8 minutes
From its mythical founding in 753 BCE, early Rome was no stranger to warfare.
In fact, it was forged in the flames of war and expansion. Minor feuds led to the incorporation of the Etruscans, the Latin Wars grew Rome’s territory across central Italy, and the Samnite Wars expanded Rome into a serious regional power.
80 years after Benito Mussolini’s death, what can democracies today learn from his fascist rise?
Reading time: 9 minutes
Fascist “strongmen” like Mussolini accumulate power thanks to people’s inabilities to believe that the barbarisation of political life – including open violence against opponents – could happen in their societies. And there is a final, unsettling lesson of Mussolini’s career. Il Duce was a skilled propagandist who portrayed himself as leading a popular revolt to restore respectable values. He was able to win widespread popular support, including among the elites, even as he destroyed Italian democracy. Yet, if the monarchy, military, other political parties and the church had attempted a principled, united opposition to fascism early enough, most of Mussolini’s crimes would likely have been avoided.
‘The great mass of waters killed many thousands’: how earthquakes and tsunamis shook ancient Greece and Rome
Reading time: 5 minutes
Like us, ancient people had many things to say about natural disasters. So, what information did they leave behind for us, and what can we learn from them?
Rome’s Greatest Technological Developments
Reading time: 7 minutes
Rome.
The capital city of modern day Italy, and one of the most famous, successful and longest-lasting empires to ever exist on planet Earth.
The Romans, both in the eras of the Roman Republic and the Empire, had a knack for stealing, adapting, and improving upon technologies, tactics, and ideas they encountered from other cultures – often those they fought, ranging from the Etruscans to the Greeks and Persians.
Talking heads: what toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation
Reading time: 9 minutes
Focusing on life in ancient Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia, I’m deeply impressed by the brilliant engineers who designed these underground marvels and the magnificent architecture that masks their functional purpose. Sewer galleries didn’t run under every street, nor service every area. But in some cities, including Rome itself, the length and breadth of the main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, rivals the extent of the main sewer lines in many of today’s cities. We shouldn’t assume, though, that Roman toilets, sewers and water systems were constructed with our same modern sanitary goals in mind.
Does the Roman road network influence European prosperity even today?
Reading time: 5 minutes
If there’s one thing the ancient Romans are famous for, its their roads. The empire was criss-crossed with them, mainly to quickly shuttle the legions about, but they also facilitated trade. We know this network survived the collapse of the empire, but could it influence the European economy to this day?
Menace at Home – Australia Under Attack 1939-1945 Conference – Melbourne 10th May
10th May 2025, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. This one-day conference will explore the numerous ways Australia was attacked during the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, over 1,800 enemy air raids targeted northern Australia, while the nation’s coastal waters were patrolled by raiders, sea mines, and submarines. People of various backgrounds—friends, foes, […]
How plague helped make Rome a superpower
Reading time: 7 minutes
That Rome prevailed and would go on to conqueror the Mediterranean world was perhaps in no small way due to the tiny bacteria or virus that destroyed Himilco’s army outside Syracuse in the autumn of 212.
The Myth of the Fall of the Roman Republic: A Misconception You (Probably) Share with Ridley Scott
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Roman Republic had an empire long before it had an emperor, and even after it gained an emperor, it did not cease to be a republic. The changes that occurred in the Roman state and the roles of its institutions over the centuries were not the result of sudden political upheaval. Instead, they reflected a gradual process of adjustment and evolution – sometimes influenced by the needs of the elites, sometimes by the demands of the people, and often by external factors.
Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Roman Empire continues to fascinate the world and dominate many cultural aspects of modern Western life. From language to law, the Romans left quite the legacy.
But one thing they didn’t leave was a clear successor to the Roman Empire.
If the Roman Empire still existed today, how could we determine who its ruler should be?
Why the Romans weren’t quite as clean as you might have thought
Reading time: 5 minutes
Prior to the Romans, Greece was the only part of Europe to have had toilets. But by the peak of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, the Romans had introduced sanitation to much of their domain, stretching across western and southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Their impressive technologies included large multi-seat public latrines, sewers, clean water in aqueducts, elegant public baths for washing, and laws that required towns to remove waste from the streets. But how effective were these measures in improving the health of the population?
HISTORICALLY SKEWED AND MUSICALLY SUBLIME: AMADEUS AT 40
Reading time: 9 minutes
In the pantheon of Western classical music an esteemed list of names has captured the admiration and attention of the public for centuries. From the Baroque masters of Bach and Handel, the classical giants of Beethoven and Haydn, and the romantic poets of Chopin and Liszt, much of society’s collective fascination with these composers has extended far beyond just their musical creations. Who were they and how did they write such exquisite melodies? In attempting to learn more about the lives of these men who continue to move so many around the world, personal portraits emerge of seemingly ordinary beings. An ordinariness that vanished when pen was put to paper, and a musical sublimeness was born.
Smoking Snakes: Brazil’s Forgotten WW2 Fighting Men
Reading time: 12 minutes
One of the most unusual forces ever to join the fighting in Europe: the 25,000 Brazilian soldiers and pilots of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. An idea born out of political necessity, the “Smoking Snakes” played a brief, important, and fascinating role in the fighting in Europe.
THE FORGOTTEN WAR CRIMES OF FASCIST ITALY
Reading time: 14 minutes
In just five short years, the combined forces of the Axis powers managed to commit atrocities and war crimes on a scale never equalled before or after. But while Axis war crimes came into sudden shocking clarity with the Allied victory in 1945, one Axis power is still overlooked to this day: Italy.
History’s Greatest Nicknames
Reading time: 7 minutes
A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, often bearing unusual, surprising, or sometimes downright hilarious nicknames. In many cases, it’s clear where the sobriquet originated, while other examples hold a less-obvious significance.
ALL RIVERS LEAD TO ROME
Reading time: 7 minutes
Never mind the roads, rivers were the arteries of the Roman Empire, carrying food, fuel and livestock along important ancient trade routes. The expression “All roads lead to Rome” encapsulates the might of the Roman Empire, but the arteries which carried its lifeblood – food, fuel, livestock and luxuries – were not roads, but rivers.
Remember El Alamein
Reading time: 5 minutes
Exactly 75 years ago, Australians dressed in steel helmets and khaki shorts, and often not much else, sat in weapon pits in the Egyptian sun about 120 kilometres west of Alexandria. They were preparing for what history would call the second battle of El Alamein, the great offensive planned by Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery. In the summer heat of July 1942, his predecessor, Archibald Wavell, had held the German–Italian drive towards Egypt, a battle in which the 9th Australian Division had played a notable part. Now, after gathering more troops, tanks and guns, Montgomery was ready to launch his Eighth Army against General Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Armée Afrika, a commander and a force admired and respected even by their adversaries.
How a third-century Roman soldier named Carausius was behind the first ‘Brexit’
Reading time: 5 minutes
From the first to the fifth centuries AD, Britain – though not officially Scotland, which lay beyond the frontier at Hadrian’s Wall – was part of the Roman Empire. It was situated at the empire’s westernmost periphery, which was probably a contributing factor in a number of attempted power grabs. During one of these events, in the late third century AD, Britain exited the Roman Empire for a period of around ten years. The Roman Empire was, of course, very different from today’s European Union – but it is tempting to ask whether this could be described as the first Brexit.
Rediscovering a ‘lost’ Roman frontier from the air
Reading time: 5 minutes
Frontiers like Hadrian’s Wall are central to the study of the Roman Empire. By now we might expect to have discovered most such major landmarks. However, by scrutinising archives of aerial photography, we have been able to identify as Roman two more walls that will transform our understanding of the frontier of the Roman Empire in Eastern Europe.
The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD
Reading time: 5 minutes
Leaving a major political body is nothing new for mainland Britain. In 409AD, more than 350 years after the Roman conquest of 43AD, the island slipped from the control of the Roman Empire. Much like the present Brexit, the process of this secession and its practical impacts on Britain’s population in the early years of the 5th century remain ill-defined.
What we’re finding as we excavate Halmyris, a frontier fort of the Roman Empire
Reading time: 5 minutes
Nationalism is resurging across Europe, and with it has come increasing attention on the vulnerable outer edges of nations: borders, frontiers, and other marginal zones. Today, some of the frontiers of the Roman Empire are now national boundaries, but in antiquity these spaces functioned very differently from how we understand borders today.