London's Mithraeum Liturgy

On the evening of Thursday 17 May 2018, just over a week from the date of this post I, Caroline Lawrence, will be meeting with children aged 8-12 (and their guardians) at an ancient Roman underground temple: London’s Mithraeum. This will be the first #MuseumsAtNight hosted by the Mithraeum at Bloomberg Space, which only opened to the public last year. 

I will be doing some fun interactive activities with the children to prepare them for the Immersive Experience on the site of London’s Mithraeum, now back in its original place. (If you want to see what I’ll be doing with the kids, check out my blog post: Interactive Mithras.) 

Mithraism was a mystery cult that arose in Rome (or possibly the coast of Turkey) in the middle of the first century AD, around the same time as Christianity. Unlike Christianity, Mithraism was a mystery cult and by definition kept its rites and rituals secret. There were no scriptures so almost everything we know about it is guesswork based on archaeological evidence and a few peripheral literary sources, some of them hostile. 

The god Mithras seems to have had elements of the Indo-Iranian god Mithra (without an S), but with added qualities from other deities. Like Serapis and Sulis Minerva, he was syncretistic, i.e. a hybrid god, one to be added to hundreds of others.

If the symbol of Christianity is the cross, the symbol of Mithras was a very complicated scene of the god stabbing a bull while surrounded by signs of the Zodiac and other heavenly figures, including two torchbearers called Cautes and Cautopates, possible threshold guardians to the Gates of Heaven. Also crowded into the scene were creatures such as a dog, a snake, a raven and a scorpion. 

Trying to reconstruct the rites, rituals and beliefs of Mithras based on this mysterious image would be like someone trying to reconstruct Christianity based on the image of a crucified man along with accounts of a few of his miracles. 

One theory is that Mithras was a god who created the world by slaying a cosmic bull. (However the word ‘tauroctony’, i.e. ‘bull-slaying’, does not appear anywhere in antiquity.)

Another theory is that the bull represents evil which cannot be destroyed, only disabled, and that the stabbing is an apotropaic attempt to weaken its power and bring some good out of it. 

The definitive book on Mithras

However there are also scenes of Mithras and the sun-god Sol enjoying a banquet on a bull’s skin, so it seems the first theory is more plausible, though the bull-stabbing did also seem to have apotropaic powers. 

Unlike almost every other religion known to us, Mithraism was only open to men. The small, exclusively male congregations met not in a temple but in an underground space designed to partly resemble a cave. In fact the use of the word ‘mithraeum’ is nowhere attested. Instead we find references to ‘Caves of Mithras’. 

Another of the aspects we can be fairly sure of is that there was a hierarchy of different grades in this Mystery Cult. The idea of rising by promotion would have been a familiar one to soldiers and male citizens of the Roman Empire.

We believe there were seven grades of initiation ranging from Raven to Father. Each grade had its own name, ruling planet, colour, attributes and possibly even noises. The aim of moving from grade to grade was possibly to achieve immortality of the soul by ascending through the seven heavenly spheres of purification or knowledge. 

A fascinating mosaic showing the grades by attributes can be seen on one of Ostia’s seventeen Mithraea, named after Felicissimus, who dedicated the mosaic. 

The seven grades, from lowest to highest, were these: 
(Latin name – English – governing planet – colour – attributes)
Corax – Raven – Mercury – Black – raven, beaker, caduceus
Nymphus – Bridegroom – Venus – Yellow? – lamp, diadem
Miles – Soldier – Mars – Orange? – sling, helmet, spear
Leo – Lion – Jupiter – Red – thunderbolt, sistrum, fire spade
Perses – Persian – Moon – White? – crescent moon, dagger
Heliodromus – Sun-Runner – Sun – Gold – torch, crown, whip
Pater – Father – Saturn – Purple – Persian cap, staff, sickle

Pictoral evidence hints that each grade could only be achieved by enduring a humiliating and frightening initiation. This often involved the initiate being stripped, blindfolded and threatened with death. Following the initiation of a new member the followers of Mithras would celebrate a banquet, an important part of the brotherhood as the layout of over four hundred Caves of Mithras show. 

The Mithraic feast by Judith Dobie, snapped at the Museum of London

A tantalising find concerning Mithras is a possible liturgy written on the walls of the Santa Prisca Mithraeum at Rome. 

For those of you who have studied Latin, (children included), I thought it would be fun to publish the Latin liturgy created especially for London’s Mithraeum by Roger Tomlin, the brilliant scholar who has translated many of the Vindolanda and Bloomberg tablets, ancient Roman documents that have defeated mere mortals.

Roger has replicated a possible liturgy based on the graffiti from the Santa Prisca Mithraeum. 

What follows are Latin phrases that sharp-eared visitors to London’s Mithraeum might ‘overhear’ when they descend to the ancient temple for the Immersive Experience. The one word you might not recognise is Nama. This is the Persian word for ‘Hail!’ and the Sanskrit word for ‘I bow’, still used today by everyone who takes a yoga class when they say, Namaste: ‘I bow to you’ or ‘I thank you’.  

London’s Mithraeum Liturgy 

(spoiler alert: don’t read this if you want the immersive experience to be a surprise)

[The lights in the Mithraeum go down and there is silence for a moment. Then the sound of a door creaking open and footsteps. Men greet one another. The splash and trickle of water. Footsteps on gravel. The haunting sound of a horn blares out.] 

[PATER] Nama Coracibus, tutela Mercurii 
Hail to the Ravens, under the protection of Mercury  

[RAVENS] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni  
Hail to the Father, under the protection of Saturn

[sistrum joins the horn]

[PATER] Nama nymphis, tutela Veneris
Hail to the Bridegrooms, under the protection of Venus

[drums join the horn]

[BRIDEGROOMS] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni   
Hail to the Father, etc. 

[drum, horn, rattles]

[PATER] Nama Militibus, tutela Martis
Hail to the Soldiers, under the protection of Mars

[RESPONSE] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni

[PATER]  Nama Leonibus , tutela Iovis   
Hail to the Lions, under the protection of Jove

[drum, horn, rattles]

[RESPONSE] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni

[PATER] Nama Persis, tutela Lune  
Hail to the Persians, under the protection of the Moon  

[RESPONSE] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni

[the men’s voices are getting louder and louder]

[PATER] Nama Heliodromis, tutela Solis  
Hail to Helios’ couriers, under the protection of the Sun  

[RESPONSE] Nama Patri, tutela Saturni

[PATER] Nama Patribus ab oriente ad occidentem, tutela Saturni 
Hail to the Fathers, from east to west [lit. from rising to setting sun], under the protection of Saturn.

[RESPONSE] Nama Patribus! Et patri nostro 
Hail to the Fathers and to Our Father
Silvano et Pontifici, tutela Saturni
and priest Silvanus, under the protection of Saturn

Nama Patribus, Nama Patribus!

[drumming and rattling reaches a crescendo then the trill of a single flute. Sound of men eating, laughing, clink of cutlery, glugging of wine… The sound of a spoon tapping a glass beaker for attention]

Honesti, socii, propinemus!
Gentlemen, companions, a toast! 

Mithras quoque miles, robora nos ad diem,
Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!
Roma regit populos, rex tu tamen omnium.
Rome is above the Nations, but Thou art over all!

Nama Mithras! Nama Mithras! 

[Everyone cheers]

[Partly muffled by banter, the Father utters final prayers]

Mithras, salva nos... orare… nocturnos… 
placatos… vias multas fecisti (?)

[We hear solitary footsteps receding…then the creak of hinges, the slamming of a door and…
… the wind, the universal sign of abandonment and desolation.]

And when the lights come on again you are in for a surprise!

Roman Mysteries author Caroline Lawrence is currently working on a book involving a 12-year-old Londoner named Alex Papas, a time portal in London’s Mithraeum and the bones of a 14-year-old girl from Africa who died in 3rd century Londinium. The working title is Ways to Die in Londinium. Caroline will be brainstorming ideas and doing a reading from this work in progress at London’s Mithraeum on the evening of Thursday 17 May 2018. Book your FREE place HERE. 

50 Bizarre Claims About Domitian

Caroline Lawrence & the 'Emperor Domitian'

In screenwriting classes they often urge authors to give their hero the most powerful opponent possible. 

So when it came time for me to write a long-planned spinoff to my Roman Mysteries books I looked at my timeline in the late first century AD and realised I had the perfect opponent, a fascinating tyrant who was the most powerful man in the world at that time: the Emperor Domitian. 

Domitian was the eleventh emperor if you start counting from Augustus. He was the third Flavian and ruled for fifteen years, longer than his father Vespasian or his brother Titus. By all accounts he was a corrupt monster. Recently some scholars have tried to argue that his reputation was the result of a smear campaign by a few disgruntled senators.

For the first three books in my Roman Quests series, he is the unseen opponent sending soldiers, guards and torturers to pursue my protagonists. In the final book, Return to Rome, we finally meet him and witness his assassination. Of course I am writing for children so some of the action happens offstage and other events are seen through the eyes of my young protagonists.  

When you write about someone you can’t help but empathise. I feel Domitian was probably somewhere on the spectrum and socially dysfunctional. As one of my characters says near the end of Return to Rome, ‘If Domitian had been merely a butcher or a sailor he only would have made life miserable for his small circle of family and slaves. A man like that should not be given the power to rule an empire.’

Domitian’s assassination in AD 96 was documented in gory detail by Suetonius Tranquillus, the great biographer of the Caesars who was about 27 years old at the time of Domitian’s death. You can read a vivid account in all its gruesome detail here. Other ancient authors who write bitterly about the eleventh emperor include Aelius Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Dio Cassius, Eusebius, Martial, Pliny the Younger, Statius and Tacitus. 

Here are fifty bizarre claims about Domitian  – all made by ancient sources – that make him an irresistible opponent in a historical novel set at the end of the first century.

He was born on 24 Oct AD 51 in a house on Pomegranate Street in Rome.
This is one of the few ancient addresses that has come down to us.
He later turned the house into a temple dedicated to the Flavians, his family.
He grew up in poverty, although his father Vespasian later became emperor.
Once, before his father became emperor, he was forced to flee for his life.
He survived by dressing like a woman and hiding in the house of a friend.
He always plotted against his older brother Titus, who succeeded their father.
He was a skilled archer and often fired arrows through slaves’ spread fingers.
He often amused himself by spearing heat-drugged flies with a stylus. 
A steward once quipped that nobody was with him, ‘not even a fly’.
He became emperor in AD 81 after the mysterious death of his brother Titus.
An officer named Saturninus conspired against him in late 80s.
Domitian’s resultant paranoia led to a ‘reign of terror’ in the AD 90s.
He covered some walls with reflective stone so that nobody could sneak up on him.
He put the freedman who assisted Nero’s suicide to death.
Unlike Nero, he did not avert his eyes from torture.
He liked to watch people and terrify them with his gaze
He often pretended to befriend people just before he executed them.
He encouraged slaves to denounce their rich masters as traitors
He then confiscated the property and split the proceeds with the delator.
He accused a pantomime actor named Paris of having an affair with his wife.
He spared his wife Domitia but murdered Paris in the middle of a street.
He executed people caught leaving flowers at spot where Paris had died.
He was a notorious womaniser and called his lustful activity ‘bed wrestling’.
He seduced his niece Julia, daughter of his brother Titus, and got her pregnant.
He caused Julia’s death by demanding she have an abortion that went wrong. 
He terrified guests by inviting them to death-themed dinner parties
The dinner parties were held in pitch-black rooms draped in black cloth.
Guests’ name-tags resembled grave slabs and were lit by grave lamps.
He gave them food commonly served at banquets for the dead.
Guest were served by naked boys painted black to resemble ghosts
He liked to watch female gladiators and pygmies battle in the arena.
He collected freaks and was especially fond of a boy with a tiny head.
Late in his reign, he demanded to be addressed as ‘master and god’.
He erected a gigantic bronze equestrian statue of himself in Caesar’s forum
He changed the name of his birth-month October to Domitianus.
(This change of month name did not catch on.)
He added gold and purple to the chariot factions of red, white, green and blue.
(The new chariot factions did not catch on.)
He put a high podium in his palaces to lift himself above others.
He was obsessed with his hair loss and wore an expensive wig.
He wrote a book about curing baldness.
He revered Minerva above all other gods and considered her his protector.
Shortly before his assassination he dreamt that Minerva abandoned him.
From an early age he knew the exact day and hour of his foretold assassination.
He had several astrologers put to death in order to stop their prophecies.
On the fated day lying slaves told him the deadly hour had passed and he relaxed.
After the first assassin stabbed him, several others piled in, too.
His wife was out of town but reputedly knew of the planned assassination.
Rome’s initial reaction to his death was fairly low-key.
The Senate proclaimed Nerva emperor with suspicious rapidity.
The Senate also decreed that his name and image be destroyed.
Domitian’s body was removed and cremated by his childhood nurse Phyllis.
She mixed his ashes with those of his niece Julia, whose death he had caused. 

Domitian (erased) with his wife Domitia on a coin

These are only a few fascinating claims about the life and death of Domitian. You can read lots more of them along with a fictionalised account of his assassination in my fourth and final Roman Quests book, Return to Rome. He also appears in my Roman Mysteries, especially final book in the series, The Man from Pomegranate Street. 

Saturnalia Chickens by Caroline Lawrence

Saturnalia chickens by Dr Helen Forte

My first post for this blog was back in July 2011, over five years ago. It was called History Chickens because one of my obsessions is trying to visualise the ancient world and not leave out any detail. I maintain there would have been far more chickens in Ancient Rome than historians usually allow for. 

Although I have never kept chickens, I will always remember something the late A.A. Gill once wrote: ‘It is virtually impossible to hold a hen and not smile.’ 

A white 'Silkie' hen via Wikimedia Commons

Recently at the Roman Society’s conference celebrating 50 years of the journal Britannia, I heard a couple of scholarly talks including one by Dr Naomi Sykes, claiming that in Roman Britain, chickens were so rare that they were cherished as pets rather than used as food (although the eggs were eaten). I didn't understand all the technical stuff, but it seemed plausible. That’s why we find some early and exotic chicken remains at Fishbourne Roman palace near Chichester, the opulent Roman villa that first brought fallow deer to Britain.  

Westbourne House School, Chichester

Yesterday I came out of ‘wribernation’ to speak to children in years 3 & 4 at Westbourne House School in Chichester, near where the first chickens landed, as it were. Year 3 are reading my book The Sewer Demon, for their Romans topic. Year 4 studied Romans last year.

Sewer Demon display at Westbourne House School

The Sewer Demon is the first of my four Roman Mysteries spinoffs, The Roman Mystery Scrolls.  This short series features a beggar boy by the name of Threptus who lives in the Roman port of Ostia. I told the children how I came up with the characters and their world. I explained how, after writing The Roman Mysteries, I thought it would be fun to write a spin off series with ‘less blood and more poo’ for younger kids. Artefacts like my famous sponge-on-a-stick would feature heavily. And of course the famous multi-seater toilets at Ostia. 

Roman tombstone of 13-year-old Threptus

The hero would be a beggar boy with a heart of honey. I got the idea for his name from a Roman tombstone at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The tombstone was erected for a boy named Tiberius Claudius Threptus who sadly lived only 13 years, 6 months and 22 days. 

I was also inspired by a fan of Italian ancestry with a sweet face named Marco. 

Mark Benton as Floridius in The Roman Mysteries

The beggar boy’s mentor and sidekick would be the soothsayer, created for the Roman Mysteries TV series by screenwriter Dom Shaw and actor Mark Benton. Floridius is a character I never even thought of, but immediately loved. Because Floridius has a fondness for spiced wine and gambling on the chariot races he is not a particularly good mentor. Luckily, Threptus will help Floridius as much as Floridius helps Threptus. 

One of the best things about Floridius is that he keeps sacred chickens, which gave me an excuse to put lots of history chickens in these books. 

Not knowing the least thing about domestic fowl, I read some books, watched some YouTube clips and called on the services of one of my former pupils, a boy named Ben Udy who kept exotic hens. Working with Ben, we came up with a lexicon of chicken-speak. It would make them fun for parents, kids and teachers to read aloud.

1. BROODY PURRING/VERY CONTENT
a) Brk-brk, brrrrk (very soft)
b) Wrr, wrrk, brrr (very soft)
c) Wrrroooww (very soft)

2. CONTENT/FEEDING/EXPLORING
a) Buuuuurk! (frog-like croak)
b) Buuurk, buurk-buurk (whiny)

Body language: loosely feathered, ambling inquisitively but not purposefully, stop to preen, cluck gently. 

3. INQUISITIVE
a) Brp, brp! (when not moving)
b) Bweerp, bweerp, bweerp (when moving)
c) Beweerp!

4. MEDIUM/COMMON ALARM
Bk-bk-bk... (varying repetitions)

5. HIGH STRESS, POST-DANGER
a) Bk-bk-bk, B’KAK!  
b) Bk-bk-bk, b’kak!  
c) Bk-bk-bk, bkaaaah! [sometimes forget final K]
d) Bock-bock-bock-bock-bock, begowwwwk! [big ]

6. HIGH STRESS, ‘DANGER’ STILL PRESENT
a) Bk-bk-bk, B’KAK!
nb) BK-BK-BK, B’KAK! [small hens]
c) BOCK-BOCK-BOCK, BEGOWWWK! [big hens]

Ben also told me about Silkie chickens, which have feathers that are as silky as hair. Thus was Aphrodite born, the hen who is like a pet for Threptus along with Felix the kitten. 

Threptus first meets Floridius and his  sacred chickens in the final story in my volume of Mini-Mysteries, The Legionary from Londinium. 

The sacred chickens go on to feature in all four Threptus books, which we’ve called The Roman Mystery Scrolls, but they really come into their own in the third book of the series, The Thunder Omen, set during Saturnalia. It starts out like this: 

It was early morning on the first day of the Saturnalia, the Roman mid-winter festival of gift-giving, feasting and dancing. It was a topsy-turvy holiday when anything could happen. In the port of Ostia, in a one-room shack behind a temple, eight sacred chickens were dancing on a table. 

Threptus has made each chicken a small conical hat called a pileus. Minimus illustrator and Latin teacher Dr Helen Forte made me a special colour plate showing seven of the sacred chickens plus Felix the kitten. They are all wearing the pileus, the freedman’s cap, to show that normal rules don’t apply.

Dancing sacred chickens by Dr Helen Forte

Long live the sacred chickens... 

... and Yo, Saturnalia! 

Tony Soprano's Naples by Caroline Lawrence

A few years ago, my husband and I visited Naples properly for the first time. 

On previous visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum everybody warned us to avoid Naples like the plague. They spoke of gangs of street-urchin pickpockets who would descend on us like locusts, fleets of Vespa-riding handbag-snatchers, piles of garbage and walls covered with rude graffiti. And then there were the suicidal drivers. In Milan, goes the saying, traffic lights are the law; in Rome they are a suggestion; in Naples they are Christmas decoration!

So whenever we found ourselves in Naples we hardly dared pop our heads above ground. Instead, we would hurry from the airport to the train station and only breathe a sigh of relief when we were safely on the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento. Once we went so far as to stay at Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi. We had to use ferries, buses and taxis to visit Misenum, Baia, Ischia and Piscina Mirabilis. It was fun but cumbersome and not entirely successful. The Piscina Mirabilis was closed and we couldn’t manage to fit in Solfatara or Cumae. How much easier if we had made Naples our base. But we didn’t realise that then.

In January 2013 we went on our first Andante Travels Tour to Pompeii and Herculaneum. It was fabulous. Our brilliant and learned lecturer, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, proceeded to explode one myth after another: ‘Vesuvius’s first eruption wasn’t on 24 August; don’t call it a lararium; don’t call it the Decumanus Maximus; we don’t know if this is the Villa Poppaea; we don’t even know if this place is called Oplontis.’ (Read more about his myth-busting HERE.)

Another myth he busted was the Avoid Naples Myth: ‘Don’t be afraid of Naples,’ said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. ‘It’s a vibrant, exciting city. Be sensible and keep your money and valuables out of reach, but enjoy it!’ So, we took his advice and booked another Andante Tour based in Naples. It promised us access to sites we had tried and failed to visit before: the Piscina Mirabilis, Solfatara and Cumae (home of the Sibyl). Also, I was cooking up some books based on Virgil’s Aeneid and wanted to see the place he loved so much so that I could somehow connect with the Bard of Mantua. 

The excitement started for me when Andante told us we would be staying at the Grand Hotel Santa Lucia right down on the waterfront. Googling the hotel, I thought a nearby fountain arch looked familiar. Then I remembered where I had seen it: in an episode of the ground-breaking, award-winning TV series The Sopranos. In season 2, aired in the year 2000, Tony (a mafia don from New Jersey) and two of his men go to Naples. I looked up Commendatori, and sure enough, it was the same arch: the Fountain Santa Lucia. Tony stayed at the Hotel Excelsior right next door to the Santa Lucia.

From that moment on, Virgil was overshadowed by the don from New Jersey. Played by the late great James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano is not likeable, but he is compelling.

The first full day after our arrival I coerced some of my fellow travellers to venture inside the Hotel Excelsior. We walked through the plush lobby where Tony is first addressed as commendatore, “commander”. Up on the 8th floor we discovered a gem of a bar with stunning views of Vesuvius. Sipping Campari sodas and nibbling typical Neapolitan tidbits, we watched the setting sun gild the famous volcano. 

A few days later our tour took us into the centre of Naples. It is a vibrant noisy city full of colour and life. The ancient road called Spaccanapoli is supposed to be the charming one, but I preferred Via dei Tribunale with its vegetable stalls, cafés, graffiti and a wonderful bulldog. This is where Paulie from The Sopranos goes to have an espresso and greets some Italians at a nearby table with a cheerful ‘Commendatori!’ The three Italians ignore him. One of them is series creator David Chase in a cameo role. In real life, Neapolitans are very friendly.

One day we made a pilgrimage to Virgil’s tomb just a short distance from our hotel. Virgil is my favourite Latin poet and I was hoping to find some inspiration for two retellings of stories from his Aeneid. In the gardens surrounding the tomb was a marble bust of the poet along with shrubs and trees mentioned in Virgil’s three works, next to signs with relevant excerpts. It is a beautiful spot but I didn’t feel any sense of the bard, despite a tripod and garland of flowers left by another Virgil fan in the lofty tomb. 

Opposite our hotel was a delightful castle called Castel dell’Ovo AKA the Castle of the Egg. Medieval Neapolitans believed Virgil was a magician and thought he had built this castle on a magic egg. As long as the egg was safe, it was believed, Naples would prosper. The little cobbled village at its foot was pretty enough to be a film set and they were in fact filming the remake of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. the week we were there. A helicopter was constantly buzzing around, filming establishing shots.

In Commendatori, Tony meets Annalisa, the beautiful acting head of the local Mafia, (which in Naples is called the Camorra). Tony and Annalisa have a seafood lunch in front of another castle and the OMLIN shipyard, and then go walking on a beach. I kept my eyes open for this location and found it on the day we visited Baia. Baiae as it was known 2000 years ago, was the St Tropez of the Roman World; it was a place of decadence and immorality where men bathed with women. I used it as the setting for my 11th Roman Mystery, The Sirens of Surrentum.

After visiting the so called Temple of Mercury, with its flooded floor and atmospheric dome, and saluting the upside down fig tree in a vault nearby, my husband and I had lunch down at the seafront in Bacoli at a pretty beige building called Locanda dei Re. After lunch, I skipped dessert to see if I could find the exact location of Tony’s meal with Annalisa. It turned out to be a seafood restaurant called Lucullo. 

Appropriately, Lucullus was an ancient Roman famous for his banquets. In fact, the Castel dell’Ovo is built on the foundations of his once opulent villa. 

On our final day of the Andante tour we went to Cumae, home of the Sibyl, the wise prophetess who tells Aeneas how to get to the underworld. But once again Virgil was eclipsed by Tony and friends. Cumae is where Annalisa ‘prophesies’ Tony’s future and also propositions him. He is tempted by her, but wisely demurs. I was glad to see they’ve cleaned up the garbage since they filmed that episode. In fact Naples was remarkable free of garbage and the graffiti can be quite charming. 

My husband and I supplemented our excellent Andante tour with one of the open top tourist buses. This turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. We also listened to Rick Steve’s excellent podcasts and read Naples ’44, the harrowing and hilarious wartime diaries of Norman Lewis. 

When Tony Soprano arrives back in New Jersey, you can see the regret on his face. He has obviously fallen in love with Naples and already misses it. We fell in love with Naples, too. So if you are tempted to go, don’t be afraid. Wear a money belt, or just take small notes spread about your person. Be sensible and you will have a great time.

Caroline’s two retellings of stories from Virgil’s Aeneid are The Night Raid, about Nisus and Euryalus from book 9, and Queen of the Silver Arrow, about Camilla from books 7 and 11. The reading level is easy but the content is dark. 

A version of this post was originally published on the now-defunct Wonders and Marvels blog. 

Bad Dogs by Caroline Lawrence

In nearly twenty years of trying to be a writer, I notice that authors tend to return to the same themes again and again. It’s as if certain incidents or impressions from childhood have branded our creative impulses. 

One of my recurring themes is scary dogs. I’m not sure where this obsession came from because I hardly think about dogs in my waking hours and have not had one as a pet since childhood, but there they are, popping up in all my books. 

My first Roman Mystery features running dogs on all three versions of the cover. I often say it has ‘good dogs, bad dogs and dead dogs’ because someone is killing the watchdogs of Rome’s ancient seaport. I thought canicide was more suitable for a children’s detective novel than homicide. 

I thought wrong. After outraged complaints from British readers, I vowed never to kill another dog. And in thirty subsequent books I’ve hardly ever broken that vow. 

So where does my primal obsession with dogs come from?

I vaguely remember being scared by a barking dog behind a fence when I was a little girl. And I remember having nightmares of being chased by dogs. When I was about eight or nine my family acquired a delightful black and white Boston Terrier named Duchess. She had an adorably ugly little face and loved to play with us. Her favourite game was Tug Towel. One of us kids would hold one end, she would clamp jaws on the other and then pull, with ecstatic growls and bulging eyes. 

But I also remember my distaste at finding red spots of her menstrual blood dotted around the house. One day she was seduced by Sandy, a big golden laborador who belonged to a neighbour. They got stuck together mid-coitus and the entire neighbourhood came out to witness them waddling about in the middle of the road like the proverbial two-backed beast. Duchess rolled her eyes with embarrassment, or so it seemed to me. The ultimate humiliation came when someone trained a hose on the ignominious pair, drenching them with water as well as mocking laughter. 

Duchess died of old age and after a suitable period of mourning we went to the animal shelter to find a replacement. There were no Boston terriers so we settled for a pretty Sheltie mix cowering in a corner. I was going through an African phase and insisted on naming her Simba – Swahili for ‘lion’ – on account of her white mane. Far from being lion-like she was neurotic and cringing, with a tendency to snap at men who made sudden moves to stroke her. When I went to college I was relieved to leave her at home, in the care of my long-suffering parents. 

I only spent a year studying at U.C. Santa Barbara before I transferred to another campus, but I still remember the packs of dogs that roamed the streets and beaches. Abandoned by their feckless student owners, these once-beloved pets had become feral. There was a story, no doubt apocryphal, that a band of them had once cornered an undergraduate in a vacant lot and forced him to throw a stick for hours. Readers of The Thieves of Ostia now know where I got the idea for the cover scene. 

In our affluent culture saturated by images of cute animals, it is hard to think of dogs as sinister, but as I read ancient texts I am often reminded of the deeply unpleasant aspects of canine behaviour. Throughout most of human history, dogs have been considered unclean scavengers and dangerous killers. 

Dogs appear in the very first line of Homer’s Iliad, where they vie with carrion birds to feed on the bodies of dead warriors. They’re in the Odyssey, too, where a savage pack of them strike terror into the heart of our hero: 

Suddenly the baying dogs caught sight of Odysseus and flew at him, barking loudly. He had the sense to sit down and drop his staff. Even so he would have suffered ignominious injuries there and then, at his own farm, had not the swineherd dashed through the gateway, shouted at the dogs and sent them scurrying off in all directions with a shower of stones. 
(Homer Odyssey 14.28)

In fifth century Greece, the poet Euripides died after being torn apart by a pack of his host’s watchdogs as he returned late from a banquet. ‘Such a great genius did not deserve this cruel fate,’ laments the Roman who tells this story. 
(Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 9.12.4)

In the Jewish scriptures, dogs are presented as consistently negative. They lick human blood, devour corpses and return to their vomit. (e.g. 1 Kings 22.38, 2 Kings 9:10 & Proverbs 26:11) To be called a ‘dog’ was the most degrading epithet imaginable. 
(e.g. 1 Samuel 17:43 & 2 Samuel 16:9 )

In the New Testament even Jesus refers to dogs as unclean, showing how deeply engrained this attitude was in the ancient Middle East. (Matthew 7:6 & Matthew 15:26) 

We know from naturalists like Pliny the Elder and doctors like Galen that rabid dog bites were common enough to be genuine concerns. Today, this problem has been all but eradicated in the prosperous first world, where dogs have to get their shots, but in poorer parts of the third world dog bites account for a horrifying number of child deaths.  

In Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass (a mid-second century fable sometimes called ‘the first Latin novel’) our hero meets many dogs, none of them pleasant. At one point a bandit recounts the death of his fellow robber, who was wearing the ill-judged disguise of a bearskin.

Guards called long-eared, bristling hunting dogs and commanded them to attack Thrasyleon. Hiding behind a door, I clearly saw my friend bravely fighting off the dogs… Finally he slipped out of the house and sought safety in flight. But as he ran along the streets of the town, all the dogs from neighbouring alleys poured out, just as fierce and numerous as the hunting dogs who were still in pursuit… I witnessed a pathetic and ghastly sight: that of my friend surrounded by the seething pack of dogs and ripped to pieces by their jaws. 
(Apuleius, Metamorphoses IV.19 ff)

Similarly, the myth of Actaeon has the eponymous hero torn apart by his own hunting dogs after Artemis has turned him into a deer. This adds a horrible new layer to our primal fear of being devoured by predators: that of being eaten by our own faithful pets. 

For Greeks and Romans did not keep dogs solely for hunting, herding and guarding. Some of them, especially women and children, had small lapdogs purely for companionship and play. 

From the Roman world we have Helena, a dog beloved enough to receive an expensive tombstone praising her as her ‘matchless’ and ‘well-deserving’. Even the poet Martial, who can be very rude about certain women and their lapdogs, penned a charming poem about a pet dog called Issa. Unlike my family’s childhood pet Duchess, she never soiled the bedcovers with a single drop but put an imploring paw on her master’s neck whenever nature called. 
(Martial Epigrams 1.109 )

Perhaps the most famous dog from ancient sources is Argos from Homer’s Odyssey. Tick-ridden and lying on a heap of manure, the old hound recognises his returning master after twenty years and, with a feeble wag of his tail, he dies of happiness. 
(Homer, Odyssey 17.290ff)

I suppose not all ancient dogs are bad. 

Caroline Lawrence’s latest book, Death in the Arena, has a good dog on the cover. Set in Roman Britain, it is suitable for kids 9+

A Latin Library on Your Phone

by Caroline Lawrence

We live in an extraordinary age of access to research and resources. Every day more and more photo galleries, manuscripts and scholarly articles come online. 

As an author of historical fiction set in Ancient Rome I have at my fingertips all the primary sources, commentaries and maps any scholar could ask for. 

But one of my favourite tools is an app I bought a few years ago for less than a fiver. Paul Hudson devised the SPQR app as a resource for teachers and students of Latin. 

It has tons of useful features but the ones I use most are the Latin dictionary, the Latin parser and a select library of Latin authors, most with translation included. These are all available offline, so you don't need access to the internet once you've got the app. 

You can find the works of Apuleius, Augustine, Augustus (Res Gestae), Bede, Caesar, Cato, Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Jerome, Juvenal, Livy, Martial, Ovid, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Propertius, Sallust, Suetonius, Tacitus, Tibullus, Virgil and Vitruvius just to name a few. 

Those that come with the English translation include St Augustine, Caesar, Catullus, some of the Cicero, Horace, Jerome, Juvenal, Livy, Martial, Ovid, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, most of Suetonius, Tacitus, Virgil and Vitruvius. 

In my Roman Quests books for kids, I use a Latin word for each chapter header and invite my young readers to guess the meaning and then check if they are right at the back. 

To make sure I’m using the best word, I type in the word and do an author search both in English and Latin. 

Because Hudson has used translations out of copyright, they are sometimes outdated. So the ruder Catullus poems are left blank as they were in some earlier translations. But some of the out-of-copyright translations are a revelation. Dryden’s translation of Virgil's Aeneid, for example. 

The wound pours out a stream of wine and blood;
The purple soul comes floating in the flood.

Or this translation of Aeneid 9.571ff

His shield thrown by, to mitigate the smart,
He clapped his hand upon the wounded part:
The second shaft came swift and unespied,
And pierced his hand and nailed it to his side,
Transfixed his breathing lungs and beating heart:
The soul cam issuing out, and hissed against the dart. 

It was thanks to this app I discovered Dryden. For that alone it was worth the money. 

But I use it every day.  

For a full list of features go HERE.

The producers of the SPQR app also offer an utterly addictive version of Latin hangman. So next time you want to play a game, forget about angry birds and candy jewels... 

...go revive your Latin!

Caroline Lawrence has written the million-selling Roman Mysteries and is now writing books for kids aged 8+ set in Roman Britain, The Roman Quests. The third one, Death in the Arena, is out 13 July 2017.