A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Greatest Empire

Here is a whimsical and captivating collection of odd facts, strange beliefs, outlandish opinions, and other highly amusing trivia of the ancient Romans. We tend to think of the Romans as a pragmatic people with a ruthlessly efficient army, an exemplary legal system, and a precise and elegant language. A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities shows that the Romans were equally capable of bizarre superstitions, logic-defying customs, and often hilariously derisive views of their fellow Romans and non-Romans.
Classicist J. C. McKeown has organized the entries in this entertaining volume around major themes--The Army, Women, Religion and Superstition, Family Life, Medicine, Slaves, Spectacles--allowing for quick browsing or more deliberate consumption. Among the book's many gems are:

- Romans on urban living:
The satirist Juvenal lists fires, falling buildings, and poets reciting in August as hazards to life in Rome.

- On enhanced interrogation:
If we are obliged to take evidence from an arena-fighter or some other such person, his testimony is not to be believed unless given under torture. (Justinian)

- On dreams:
Dreaming of eating books foretells advantage to teachers, lecturers, and anyone who earns his livelihood from books, but for everyone else it means sudden death

- On food:
When people unwittingly eat human flesh, served by unscrupulous restaurant owners and other such people, the similarity to pork is often noted. (Galen)

- On marriage:
In ancient Rome a marriage could be arranged even when the parties were absent, so long as they knew of the arrangement, or agreed to it subsequently.

- On health care:
Pliny caustically described medical bills as a down payment on death, and Martial quipped that Diaulus used to be a doctor, now he's a mortician. He does as a mortician what he did as a doctor.

For anyone seeking an inglorious glimpse at the underside of the greatest empire in history, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities offers endless delights.


Author: J. C. McKeown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 06/01/2010
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780195393750

About the Author

J. C. McKeown is Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of Ovid's Amores.