MaryAnn Bernal's Blog, page 80

7 surprising Ancient Rome facts

History Extra

The Intervention of the Sabine Women, painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, 1799. Musee Du Louvre, Paris, France. (Photo by Exotica.im/UIG via Getty Images)
 1) The Roman’s couldn’t decide on their originsThe legend of Romulus and Remus tells the story of twin brothers raised by wolves who become the founding fathers of Rome.

The boys’ mother, Rhea Silvia, had been forced into becoming a Vestal Virgin (priestesses who attended to the sacred fire of Vesta) by the usurper Amulius. Rhea Silvia then had a miraculous conception, either by the god Mars or by Hercules (there are variations on the myth). When Amulius heard of this, he ordered the infant twins to be taken to the river Tiber where they were left to die.

In the event they were saved and nourished by a she-wolf and later taken in by a shepherd and his family until they grew to manhood, unaware of their origins. Eventually they heard the story of the treachery of Amulius, after which they confronted and killed the tyrant. Then, because Romulus wanted to found their new city on the Palatine Hill and Remus preferred the Aventine Hill, they agreed to see a soothsayer. However, each brother interpreted the results in his own favour. This led to a fight in which Romulus killed Remus, and that founded the new city of Rome in 753 BC.

What’s stranger still is that there was a later ‘founding of Rome’ story. Written around the 8th century BC, Homer’s Iliad recalls the story of the Trojan War but Rome's origins are linked to the second telling of this same story by another giant of ancient writing, Virgil, in his book The Aeneid. As well as enhancing Homer’s earlier story, The Aeneid also postdates the tale of Romulus and Remus. This is important because, according to Virgil, Troy’s population wasn’t completely destroyed. Instead, a prince called Aeneas escaped with a small group of Trojans and sailed the Mediterranean until he found an area he liked the look of. So this ancient and noble civilisation transplanted itself in Italy and founded Rome.

Both tales are revealing. The first shows us that the Romans were explaining where their predatory and argumentative attitudes came from: they are all the children of wolves. The second story was created at the time of emperors, so there is a demand for respectability and heritage. The Trojan War was as famous then as now, so why not connect this new empire to a very old and familiar tale?
A stone plate of Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus, suckled by a female wolf, seen at the National Historical Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria, in April 2011. (Photo by Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images)

2) Rome was a bad neighbourBy the 5th century BC, Rome was one of many tiny states on the Italian peninsula. If you were a gambler in 480 BC you would probably have put your money on an eventual Etruscan empire. The Etruscsns were after all the biggest power on the Italian peninsula at that time. Over the centuries the realm had grown substantially, and while Rome’s central and southern towns had thrown off Etruscan dominance, it was still the largest power in an area populated by numerous other Italic peoples, many of their names barely remembered by history.

It's a forgotten fact that the Romans had to conquer the rest of Italy, and one of the first tribes to fall was the Sabines. According to a famous legend, oft repeated in ancient texts (and a popular subject with Renaissance artists), the Romans abducted the Sabine women for breeding purposes, in order to increase the population of Rome. Whether this was true or not is impossible to say, but the Romans were consistently avid slavers, and what is uncontested is that by the dawn of the 4th century BC the Sabine kingdom had been absorbed into Roman lands.
10 things you didn't know about the Romans Romans and Italians were never the same thing. It’s just that the Roman city state was more aggressive, with a better army, or luckier than the other kingdoms of Italy.  It wouldn’t have taken much to snuff out Rome at this time, in which case this article you are reading could have been about the empire of the Frentani, yet another Italic people then located on the east coast of the peninsula.

Although geographically close to each other, these realms were so diverse that they didn’t even speak the same language. Etruscan is still, frustratingly, one of the languages that has yet to be satisfactorily translated. The Sabines, similarly, were not Latin speakers. The Hellenic colonies in the toe of Italy spoke Greek. To these people the Romans were not fellow countrymen carrying out a hostile takeover that was always inevitable and perhaps a tiny bit yearned for. Instead, this was an invasion by a foreign nation of terrifying men who spoke an alien tongue.

3) The first sacking of Rome nearly finished the cityThe traditional date for the first sacking of Rome is 390 BC, but modern historians agree that a date of 387 BC is more likely. When a tribe of Gauls, called the Senones, came over the Alps into Italy in search of lands to settle, the first people they met were the Etruscans. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t want to cede any of their lands to these foreigners, so they asked for military assistance from the rising military power of Rome.

Rome gathered together a large army and sent it north to help its neighbour fight this alien threat. Meanwhile, the diplomacy wasn’t going well. Even in this ancient era there was a general rule that ambassadors and messengers were to be left unharmed, but one of the Roman diplomats killed one of the Gaulish chieftains. The Gauls (not unreasonably) demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice, and some in Rome agreed. However, the Roman masses did not, and this provocation led to the meeting of both sides at the Allia River, both ready for battle.

The Romans had amassed a mighty army; the Senones had an army of about half the size. However, as battle ensued, the Gauls shattered the two flanks of the Roman army and surrounded the elite central force. Now outmanoeuvred and tired from fighting, this Roman army was completely annihilated. The road to Rome was open to the Gauls, who were led by the terrifying figure of Brennus.

What happened next is described in a series of fables and legends, none of which dispute that the Gauls fell on Rome and destroyed much of it. Indeed, they did such a good job that contemporary histories of Rome prior to and during this period are sketchy because of the scale of destruction.

Why the Gauls didn’t settle in the conquered city is unknown. One Roman source claims they were chased away by another Roman army, but this was most likely an explanation created to give the Romans something of a face-saving ending to an otherwise total defeat. What is more probable is that like many northern armies that had tried to settle around Rome, the Gauls found the climate distinctly unhealthy, and it’s probable that disease spread through Brennus’ men. Either way, the Gauls retreated into the mists of legend and hearsay.

Rome was so completely destroyed that there was serious debate about re-founding the capital in the nearby (and completely forgotten town) of Veii. Instead, the Senate decided to stay and authorised the building of the first major stone walls to defend the city.

Battle between Romans and Gauls. (Photo by Leemage/UIG via Getty Images)


4) The battle of Adrianople was the beginning of the endBy the 4th century AD, Germanic invasions were starting to become a serious problem for the Roman empire. It was during this period that a number of new groups began to appear in the Roman hinterlands. Some of these people were known as the Goths.

Initially the Goths agreed to join the empire, settle as farmers and, in essence, merge with the local population. But the Goths were hardly welcomed with open arms, and heavy-handedness by local Roman governors led to Goth resentments and uprisings. Exactly who was to blame for the resulting conflict is hard to say.

The Gothic War lasted from AD 376 to 382. This new wave of barbarians was running amok, and there were frequent clashes with the forces of the western Roman emperor Gratian. However, it was the eastern Roman emperor Valens who went personally to deal with them.

The two sides met near Adrianople (modern day Edirne in Turkey). The Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus claims that Valens had around 25,000 men against a horde of 80,000 (as is often the case with ancient texts, these numbers are probably exaggerated).

The Romans had marched for seven or eight hours over rough terrain; they were tired and out of formation when they arrived in front of the Gothic army. The 4thcentury legions were, by now, clad in mail armour and had large round shields, all of which were an added burden under the hot August sun. Some of the Roman army attacked without orders and were easily pushed back. The Roman soldier’s rash actions meant he had no option but to engage in battle.

The Gothic force’s centre was a defensive circle of wagons, which the Romans failed to penetrate. However, while the Romans were busy attacking this defensive position, the Goth cavalry crept in from the sides and outflanked Valens’ forces. The heavily armoured Romans were not as nimble or agile as the Goths, and while they managed to break out from the enveloping moves by the Goth cavalry, they were now fighting in small groups and not as a unified army. In the ensuing chaos most of the Roman troops were slaughtered, including the emperor, Valens.

Valens’ successor, Theodosius, was forced to turn the Goths from enemies into allies, but at the cost of land. This was a turning point from which the Roman empire never recovered.

5) The capital of the late Roman empire wasn’t RomeThe Roman empire got its name from its founding city. Therefore, when Rome finally fell forever from the power of the emperors, the change in circumstances must mark the end of the Roman empire, right?

However, while it is often recognised that in the late Roman era Constantinople was the more important city, what almost nobody realises is that by the early 5th century AD, the western Roman emperors had moved the capital from the ancient and illustrious city of Rome.

By AD 402 the terrible emperor Honorius felt that Rome was no longer defensible and decided to move the capital to Ravenna. This was a large town with a population of around 50,000, and had been part of the empire since the 2nd century BC. Despite receiving regular investment funds (emperor Trajan built a massive aqueduct), it was never one of the most important urban areas of the empire and had been in decline in recent times. However, Ravenna had a large and easily defendable port and became the base for Rome’s naval fleet in the Adriatic Sea. As it was also surrounded by marshland, it was regarded as a place of safety, with guaranteed connections to the stronger eastern empire.

The move to Ravenna was an admission by Honorius that Rome could no longer hold back the barbarian invasions. It remained the capital of the empire until its eventual fall in AD 476. It was recaptured by the eastern Roman empire in AD 584 and was part of those lands until 751.

6) The last western emperor shared a name with the founder of RomeRomulus Augustus, better known as Romulus Augustulus, ‘little Augustus’, was a boy who ‘ruled’ for about 10 months from AD 475–476.  He was little more than a figurehead for his father Orestes, a Roman aristocrat (of Germanic ancestry), who had manoeuvred his way into a position of power in the court in Ravenna.

By now the title of western Roman emperor was virtually meaningless. The only remaining areas of the empire were the Italian peninsula, along with some fragmentary lands in Gaul, Spain and Croatia. Barbarian groups had already sacked Rome twice, and any real power was held by these tribes and not by the Roman court in Ravenna.

Little is known about the teenage Romulus Augustulus. Coins were minted with his face, but he led no armies and no monuments were built for him. He was an irrelevance.
The 8 bloodiest Roman emperors The Germanic leader Odoacer knew this and, in AD 476, marched on Ravenna. Odoacer had been leading the foederati, the barbarian contingents that by now made up almost the entire ‘Roman’ army. He had all the real power and he knew it.

On arriving in Ravenna and finding no resistance, Odoacer met face-to-face with the so-called emperor, Romulus Augustus. However, the chronicles then say that Odoacer, “taking pity on his youth”, spared Romulus' life. Odoacer carried out no bloody coup, nor did he take the imperial title, because he knew that it had ceased to have any significance. Instead, he recast himself as the first king of Italy, after which he granted Romulus an annual pension and sent him to live with relatives in southern Italy.

Odoacer then got on with reshaping Italy, not in the mould of the old empire, but in the form of a new kingdom. The transformation was long overdue, and as a result, Odoacer was able to bring more stability to the time of his reign than the previous emperors had managed during the past 80 years.

The last western Roman emperor did not go down in a battle, nor did he commit suicide. He was deposed and sent home like a naughty schoolboy. This was final humiliation for a title that, from Scotland to Iraq, had once put fear in men’s hearts.

c475 AD, last Roman emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

7) When the Roman empire ended is up for debateWhat determines the final demise of the empire is notoriously difficult. The easiest date to use is the fall of Rome… but which one? 410 doesn’t mark the end of the list of western Roman emperors, nor does 455. The other problem is that while Rome was the cradle of the empire, by the 5th century it was neither the most important city (Constantinople), nor the capital of the Western Roman Empire (Ravenna).

The second date that could be used is 476, when Romulus Augutulus was deposed. Again, this doesn’t work because the eastern Roman emperor was still the most powerful person in the world (except for the emperor of China). His empire might have become known as the Byzantine empire, and its inhabitants might have begun speaking Greek, but they considered themselves to be as Roman as Julius Caesar – right up until the bitter end – an ending that happened twice.

The Byzantine empire was the victim of the Fourth Crusade and was conquered in 1204. This was the end of the empire then, surely?

However, just a couple of generations later, it threw off its western overlords, and the emperors returned. These were to last until the Ottoman conquest of 1453 (where the last eastern Roman emperor, unlike the last western one, did go down in a blaze of glory on the city’s battlements).

So does 1453 count as the end of the empire? This is an even harder date to use because the 15th-century world was very different to that of the Roman empire at its peak. Worse still, since Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans in 800, there had been a number of Germanic rulers who would, by the Middle Ages, claim to be ‘holy Roman emperors’. They were no such thing, but the title was still in play.

And yet, still later dates could be used: when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, two very different dynasties took up the title of Roman emperor and Caesar. Firstly the Ottoman sultan took the title because he had just conquered the old eastern capital. Secondly, as Constantinople had been the capital of Orthodox Christianity, the Russian rulers, as defenders of the Orthodox faith, took the title Caesar (‘tsar’ in Russian).

None of these dates are satisfactory, so the last fact is really a question. Which date would you choose?
Jem Duducu is the author of The Romans in 100 Facts (Amberley Publishing, 2015). 

Discovery of a Medieval Well Raises New Questions About Nazis and a Polish Castle

Ancient Origins


A team of Polish researchers has discovered a well which dates back to medieval times. It is located in the famous castle of Książ in Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland. Although they previously believed that it may have been a part of a system of tunnels created by Nazis, the real story of the well may be even more fascinating.

According to Gazeta Wyborcza, the well was found under the floor of a tower discovered last July. It is quadrilateral and without any visible damages. One side of the well is 2.5 meters (8.2 ft.) wide, and it is about 50 meters (164 ft.) deep. The tower which covered the mysterious well was discovered while cleaning the road area near the castle. It is dated back to the 18th century and was depicted on drawings of the castle. The well was examined with a camera, which confirmed that the discovery is very rare and will bring much more information after it is further explored by the researchers.
A photo taken inside of the well at Książ Castle in Wałbrzych, Poland. ( ZWIK Łódź )However, the future works will be demanding, and it's necessary to apply more analysis before the team will be able to continue. During the first exploration, they found chisels, but it is unknown what period they come from. It is possible that the medieval well was closed after the18th century, which makes the discovery extremely interesting.
Polish Pyramids: Ruins of Megalithic Tombs from the Time of Stonehenge Discovered in PolandArchaeologists unearth Vampire burial in Poland The Castle of Książ is one of the most iconic in Poland. Originally built in the early medieval period, it was destroyed in 1263. The new castle was created at the end of the 13th century, and through history it had many different owners, including the famous Hochberg family. During World War II, the castle was held by the Nazis. Nowadays, Książ Castle is considered one of the pearls of the region. In this area there are more stories about hidden chests, trains, and chambers where Nazis could have hidden treasures than places for them to actually have hidden it.
A decorated room inside Książ Castle. ( Dariusz Cierpiał / CC BY SA 3.0 )Essentially, every Polish city which belonged to the Germans in the past has stories related to lost loot. One of the most interesting tales is about the precious treasures of Daisy of Pless and her possible lover Emperor Wilhelm II. However, it's only a legend. The treasures from this story were stolen by the Russian army, and any that survived are currently exhibited in a museum.
Wałbrzych, like many other places in Silesia, still hides many secrets. Recently, another group of researchers was trying to find the legendary Nazi train that is said to be filled with treasures. As April Holloway wrote on November 9, 2015:

''Headlines were made around the world as treasure hunters identified a legendary Nazi train packed with weapons, gold, money, and archives hidden in a long-forgotten tunnel in the Polish mountains. It is believed that the train may also contain the long-lost Amber Room of Charlottenburg Palace, an early 1700s room crafted from amber, gold, and precious jewels, estimated to now be worth $385 million.”

Sigrid the Haughty, Queen Consort of Four Countries and Owner of a Strong PersonalityTimeless Stories Built on Grains of Salt: Examining the Masterpieces within a Polish Salt MineHand-colored photograph of the original Amber Room, 1931. ( Public Domain )
Holloway continued:

“Poland’s Culture Ministry announced that the location of the Nazi train was revealed to Piotr Koper of Poland and Andreas Richter of Germany through a deathbed confession.  The Telegraph reported that two treasure-hunters found the 100-meter-long armored train and immediately submitted a claim to the Polish government – under Polish law those who find treasures can keep 10 per cent of the value of their find. The Polish Ministry has confirmed the location of the train using ground-penetrating radar. The train is said to be located in an underground tunnel constructed by the Nazis along a 4km stretch of track on the Wroclaw-Walbrzych line. However, its exact location is being kept hidden, not least because it is believed to be booby trapped or mined and will need to be investigated through a careful operation conducted by the Army, Police, and Fire Brigade.''

Researchers still haven’t been lucky enough to find the legendary train and its rich contents. However, they have already announced that the search will continue.
Top Image: Książ castle in Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia, Poland. (Piotr Bieniecki/ CC BY SA 4.0) Detail: A photo taken inside the newly discovered well. (ZWIK Łódź)

 By Natalia Klimczak

A Polish Stonehenge? Discovery of New Burial Mounds May Rewrite History

Ancient Origins


A group of previously unknown burial mounds has been discovered near Czaplinek in north-western Poland. The most interesting feature found so far is a stone ring, which is shaped similar to the world-famous site of Stonehenge. The complex sheds a new light on the history of these lands.

The team of Polish archaeologists from the Koszalin city museum unearthed a complex in an area previously known to have had an Iron Age site. According to RMF24.pl, the team of researchers found an urn burial with cremated remains inside. Apart from this, several precious artifacts were discovered inside the urn, including a bronze buckle, bone pin, and a clay spindle whorl - which allowed them to conclude that the burial contains a woman’s ashes.
The first artifacts from the site. ( Muzeum w Koszalinie )The site also contains burial mounds which were enclosed with stone rings. The researchers claim that the rings may be similar to the sequence of stones used in Stonehenge – with larger stones connected with a row of smaller ones.
Polish Pyramids: Ruins of Megalithic Tombs from the Time of Stonehenge Discovered in PolandMysterious medieval fortifications buried in Poland detected with advanced imaging technologyThe large stones were overturned through the ages, but it is still possible to find their original location. Archaeologists were able to identify the layout of the stone ring with the large stone in its center. The scientists believe that it was a place for religious ceremonies and ritual burials. The mounds were dated back to a period between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD.
The mound under investigation near Czaplinek. ( Muzeum w Koszalinie )The complex near Czaplinek is one of a few big complexes of mounds and megaliths in Poland. One famous complex is located in Odry, a small village in Pomerania in the north of Poland. This location became famous with the discovery of the second biggest site of stone circles in Europe. It is also known to be the home of at least 600 Neolithic burials. The site was discovered in 1915 by Paul Stephan, who identified various stellar alignments on the assumption that the construction dates back to the 8th century BC.
Archaeologists still debate the origins of the huge burial center amongst the Odry stone rings. It is difficult to agree upon one explanation for the stone circles’ roots. It is also almost impossible to find out how old the constructions discovered in Odry really are. It is known that the area was settled by the Goths at one point in time, but the earlier history of the region has never been confirmed.
Long Hidden Scythian Treasure Site Located at Ceremonial Spring in PolandThe Nazi Temple of Pomerania: Exploring the Mysterious Odry Stone CirclesFor many centuries, these kinds of places were damaged in Poland. The worst devastation took place during the 19th century, when people destroyed old kurgans (prehistoric burial mounds or barrows), stone circles, and other Neolithic constructions to prepare farmers’ fields. Thus, it is not surprising that most of the Neolithic sites that have been found are located in the forest. It could be said that the caring tree roots saved them and protected them over the centuries.
This is another discovery of megalithic tombs made in Poland this year. During the last few years, every few months has brought a new discovery. For example, Natalia Klimczak reported on March 2, 2016 for Ancient Origins that more than a dozen monumental megalithic tombs were discovered in Western Pomerania in Poland. Because of the enormous character of the structures, they are often called the ‘Polish pyramids.’ The site is located near Dolice, Western Pomerania. She writes:

“The  ground structures  were made in a shape of an elongated triangle, surrounded by big stone blocks. The structures stood 3 meters (9.8 feet) tall, and were 150 meters (492.1 feet) long, and 6-15 meters (19.7-49.2 feet) wide. The place where they are located is difficult to examine. The surface is covered by an old forest. On small sites archaeologists have discovered fragments of pottery and other artifacts. The tombs were created by the Funnel Beaker Culture community which lived on the land from the 5th to the 3rd millennium BC.”

An example of a Funnel Beaker Culture Dolmen (single-chamber megalithic tomb) in Lancken-Granitz, Germany. (Skäpperöd/ CC BY SA 3.0 )In that discovery “the mounds contain single burials. According to the researchers, the people who were buried in the tombs were important elders of the tribe. Other information may be available after the researchers summarize more data and explore the sites further. Until now, the research has been based on non-invasive methods.”
Top Image: Part of the recently discovered site in Czaplinek, Poland. Source: Muzeum w Koszalinie
By Natalia Klimczak

Ancient Rome – 6 burning questions

History Extra

Relief portraying a gladiator fight, 1st century AD. From Preturo, L'Aquila Province. (Photo By DEA /A DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
Who founded Ancient Rome?Like all ancient societies, the Romans possessed a heroic foundation story. What made the Romans different, however, is that they created two distinct creation myths for themselves.
In the first it was claimed that they were descended from the royal Trojan refugee Aeneas (himself the son of the goddess Venus). In the second it was stated that the city of Rome was founded by, and ultimately named after, Romulus, son of a union between an earthly princess and the god Mars.
Both myths helped establish the Romans as a divinely chosen people whose ancestry could be traced back to Troy and the Hellenistic world. Roman tradition had Romulus’ foundling city established on the Palatine Hill in what became, for Rome, ‘Year One’ (or 753 BC in the Christian calendar of the West). Archaeological excavation on the hill has found settlement here dating back to at least 1000 BC.

Who ruled in Ancient Rome?Rome made much of the fact that it was a republic, ruled by the people and not by kings.
Rome had overthrown its monarchy in 509 BC, and legislative power was thereafter vested in the people’s assemblies: political power in the senate, and military power with two annually elected magistrates known as consuls.
The acronym ‘SPQR’, for Senatus Populusque Romanus (‘the Senate and People of Rome’) was proudly emblazoned across inscriptions and military standards throughout the Mediterranean – a reminder that Rome’s people (theoretically) had the last word.
By the late 1st century BC, the combination of power-hungry politicians and large overseas territories resulted in the breakdown of traditional systems of government. Even after the rise of the emperors – kings in all but name, who ‘guided’ the Roman political system in the 1st century AD – ‘SPQR’ continued to be used in order to sustain the fiction that Rome was a state governed by purely republican principles.
 Who were gladiators in ancient Rome?Gladiatorial games were organised by the elite throughout the Roman empire in order to distract the population from the reality of daily life.
Most gladiators were purchased from slave markets, being chosen for their strength, stamina and good looks. Although taken from the lowest elements of society, the gladiator was a breed apart from the ‘normal’ slave or prisoner of war, being well-trained combatants whose one role in life was to fight and occasionally to kill for the amusement of the Roman mob.
Not all those who fought as gladiators were slaves or convicts, however. Some were citizens down on their luck (or heavily in debt) while some, like the emperor Commodus, simply did it for ‘fun’.
Whatever their reasons for ending up in the arena, gladiators were adored by the Roman public for their bravery and spirit. Their images appeared frequently in mosaics, wall paintings and on glassware and pottery.

In Ancient Rome, what was the law of the twelve tables?The Twelve Tables was the primary legislative basis for Rome’s republican constitution, protecting the working classes from arbitrary punishment and excessive treatment by the ruling elite (patricians).
Created around 450 BC, the tables were a code that set out the rights and obligations of the people in areas such as marriage, divorce, burial, inheritance, property and ownership, injury, compensation, debt and slavery.
Key provisions included the establishment of burial grounds outside the limits of the city walls, the control of property if the stakeholder was decreed insane, the continual guardianship of women (passing from father to husband), the treatment of children and of slaves (as property), and the settling of compensation claims for injuries sustained at work.
Although the power of the ruling classes was not really constrained by the plebs, the twelve tables were never repealed – they formed the cornerstone of Roman law until well into the 5th century AD.

What did they eat in Ancient Rome?The Romans ate pretty much everything they could lay their hands on. Meat, especially pork and fish, however, were expensive commodities, and so the bulk of the population survived on cereals (wheat, emmer and barley) mixed with chickpeas, lentils, turnips, lettuce, leek, cabbage and fenugreek.
Olives, grapes, apples, plums and figs provided welcome relief from the traditional forms of thick, cereal-based porridge (tomatoes and potatoes were a much later introduction to the Mediterranean), while milk, cheese, eggs and bread were also daily staples.
The Romans liked to vary their cooking with sweet (honey) and sour (fermented fish) sauces, which often helpfully disguised the taste of rotten meat.
Dining as entertainment was practised within elite society – lavish dinner parties were the ideal way to show off wealth and status. Recipes compiled in the 4th century supply us with details of tasty treats such as pickled sow’s udders and stuffed dormice.  
 Why did Ancient Rome fall?A whole variety of reasons can be suggested to explain the fall of the Roman Empire in the west: disease, invasion, civil war, social unrest, inflation, economic collapse. In fact all were contributory factors, although key to the collapse of Roman authority was the prolonged period of imperial in-fighting during the 3rd and 4th century.
Conflict between multiple emperors severely weakened the military, eroded the economy and put a huge strain upon local populations. When Germanic migrants arrived, many western landowners threw their support behind the new ‘barbarian’ elite rather than continuing to back the emperor.
Reduced income from the provinces meant that Rome could no longer pay or feed its military and civil administration, making the imperial system of government redundant. The western half of the Roman empire mutated into a variety of discrete kingdoms while the east, which largely avoided both the in-fighting and barbarian migrations, survived until the 15th century.

Dr Miles Russell is a senior lecturer in prehistoric and Roman archaeology, with more than 25 years experience of archaeological fieldwork and publication. These Q&As were taken from our ‘History Extra explains’ series, which answers burning questions about ancient Rome, the Tudors, ancient Egypt and the First World War. 

Anglo-Saxon Royal Palace Unearthed Near Famous Burial Site

Ancient Origins



A team of archeologists believe they have unearthed a lost Anglo-Saxon royal palace, located only 6 km (four miles) from the famous Sutton Hoo burial site.

According to BBC, the researchers have been working in the area of Rendlesham, which is located close to the Sutton Hoo burial site, known for its undisturbed ship burial, magnificent Anglo-Saxon helmet, and the hoard of ornate artifacts of outstanding historical and archaeological significance. It is one of the most famous discoveries ever made in Britain.

Replica of Anglo-Saxon mask discovered at Sutton Hoo ( Bill Tyne / Flickr )The project co-ordinator, Faye Minter, reported that her team discovered the remains of a 23m (75ft) by 9m (30ft) structure, which could have once been a royal hall or palace. She concluded that it was possible that there are other royal burials similar to Sutton Hoo, which was excavated for the first time in 1939 and dated back to the 7th century. It consists of about 20 burial mounds and the excavations revealed many fascinating and impressive treasures. This time the researchers hope to find even more burials, which could have been placed along the River Deben. Ms Minter, of Suffolk County Council's archaeological unit, suggested that the discovered ''palace'' may be the place described by The Venerable Bede dated back to the 8th century.
A burial mound at Sutton Hoo ( public domain )

''We have discovered what we think is a large Anglo Saxon Hall, which could be the palace itself, if you could call it that,” said Faye Minter [via BBC]. “We're convinced we've found a royal settlement of very high status, and I suppose it would be a large hall rather than a palace as it would spring to mind to us."

As the researchers announced during the conference in Bury St Edmunds, the remains of the palace cover 120-acre (50 ha) site and were discovered due to the analysis of the aerial photography and geophysical surveys.
This LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) survey shows the core Anglo-Saxon areas at Rendlesham, including the main residence area. Credit: Suffolk Archaeological Service.Until now about 4,000 items, including intricate metalwork, coins and weights, have been found at Rendlesham. However, only about 1,000 of them are Anglo-Saxon. According to Dr Helen Geake of the British Museum the discovery of the palace was an ''incredibly exciting'' moment. The researchers suppose that there may be a few more palaces or halls like this dotted in this area.  Those times the king would have toured his kingdom in order to show his power, magnificence, charisma and the reasons to follow him by his people. Therefore, it seems to be logical to have lots of palaces to base himself around the area which belonged to him.
The Great Buckle found at Sutton Hoo ( public domain )It is another surprising discovery related to Anglo-Saxons. In April 12, 2016, Natalia Klimczak from Ancient Origins reported the surprising discover of cemetery. She wrote:
''A group of more than 40 skeletons was found during the building of a new toilet for the parishioners of a church in Hildersham, Cambridgeshire, UK. The remains are about 900 years old.
According to the BBC, the burials are dated to the 11th or 12th century. Some of the graves lay 45 cm (18 in) below the path outside the Holy Trinity Church. They were dug into the chalk, with the bodies laid directly in the cavity. Most of the skeletons were of adults, but five of the individuals were children. The researchers examined 19 skeletons dated to the 9th or 10th century, predating the church by several hundred years, but they left 24 graves intact.
The graves are said to be Anglo-Saxon, although Cambridge University Archaeological Unit experts who examined the site dated the bones to the 11th or 12th century. Until the discovery was made, there was no proof for the existence of a cemetery in this area. The researchers believe that the graves belonged to villagers who lived outside the walls of what was probably an Anglo-Saxon church.
During the excavations , the bones were stored in the mortuary at the village undertaker's for the night. After the end of the works, the skeletons were buried in one new grave. A funeral took place just before Christmas 2015, and the toilet was completed soon after.''
Top image: Main: Sutton Hoo burial mound ( public domain ). Inset: Replica of Anglo-Saxon mask discovered at Sutton Hoo ( Bill Tyne / Flickr )
By Natalia Klimzcak

The big debate: Was Edward II really murdered?

History Extra


The alabaster effigy on the tomb of Edward II at Gloucester Cathedral. © Alamy


If there’s one thing most historians agree on, it’s that Edward II was one of medieval England’s least capable rulers. He is chiefly remembered for squandering his father, Edward I’s, military gains in Scotland (notably by losing the battle of Bannockburn), and alienating his wife and barons by promoting personal favourites such as Hugh Despenser the Younger.


But how did Edward die? We know that Queen Isabella’s patience with her husband snapped in 1326, and that she invaded England with her lover, Roger Mortimer, who was living in exile in France. Edward was forced to abdicate and was then imprisoned at Berkeley Castle, where he was murdered on 21 September 1327 (with, as legend would have it, the assistance of a red-hot poker).
That, at least, has been the accepted view of events for centuries. Yet, in 2005, Ian Mortimer challenged the consensus by arguing – in the journal The English Historical Review – that Edward had cheated death and was still alive in 1330. Mortimer’s theory has sparked a lively debate in the historical community, as the following exchange proves…
Ian Mortimer:How can we be sure whether Edward II did or did not die in Berkeley Castle? The answer is not a straightforward: ‘because this document says so’ – after all, any single piece of evidence could be wrong. It is, rather, a matter of showing first that the evidence for the death, which we have hitherto accepted, is fundamentally flawed; and second that there are multiple independent accounts from people who knew him, stating that Edward was alive at a later date.
According to the royal accounts, Edward II died in Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327. Lord Berkeley’s accounts show that the news was taken in his own letters to the royal household, which was then at Lincoln. An extant letter written at Lincoln by Edward III on 24 September states that news of his father’s death had been received during the previous night. It was therefore accepted in the royal household and circulated from 24 September.
Additionally, one chronicle specifies that members attending the parliament at Lincoln (which finished on 23 September) were told the news as they dispersed. As Lincoln is over 150 miles (240km) from Berkeley, no check on the veracity of the news of the death was possible before it was circulated and preparations for a royal funeral began. The body itself was embalmed and completely covered in cerecloth (waxed fabric used for wrapping corpses) before it was shown publicly, and exhibited only superficially.
So the evidence that led everyone to believe Edward II was dead at that time – and which was widely held as fact until 2005 – depends entirely on that initial message from Lord Berkeley. However, Lord Berkeley admitted in parliament three years later (in November 1330) that he had not previously heard about Edward’s death. We can therefore have no confidence in the reliability of his original message. If he did not know about the death of the ex-king in his custody, how could he have faithfully reported it?
Given that the hundreds of documents attesting to the death are based on this one unreliable message, it behoves us to consider the evidence for possible alternative events, including testimonies of his survival. There are multiple items to consider.
First, there is Lord Berkeley’s own testimony, which implies that the king could still have been alive in 1330. Second, an original letter from the highly regarded archbishop of York states that the latter had received “certain news” that Edward was still alive in January 1330, and the archbishop consequently made efforts to rescue him.
Third, Lord Pecche took part in a plot to free Edward from Corfe Castle in Dorset in 1330. This is significant because Lord Pecche had been in charge of that castle from 1325 to 1329, so had the means to ascertain whether or not Edward II was being held there. Fourth, the Earl of Kent, Edward II’s respected half-brother, was sentenced to death in parliament for trying to rescue Edward from Corfe Castle and make him king again in March 1330.
Fifth, there is an extant copy of a letter written by the secretary of Luca Fieschi, a friend of Edward II, who claimed to have met him in the disguise of a pilgrim at the papal court in 1331. This letter gave a detailed version of Edward’s account, telling how he had been taken by his gaoler from Berkeley to Corfe Castle, then sent to Ireland and only released after the fall of Roger Mortimer, the man who dethroned him. There are at least three other information streams that attest to Edward’s survival after 1330.
These points should be seen in the context of a huge number of otherwise inexplicable circumstantial details that historians have traditionally ignored, such as Edward III’s failure to prosecute Sir John Maltravers for failing in his duty to keep Edward II safely when he was in his care. Taken together, they strongly suggest that Edward III’s maintenance of the lie that his father was dead was a political convenience – one welcomed by everyone who trusted the young king and feared the renewal of the unrest brought about by Edward II during his disastrous reign.

The room at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, in which Edward II was imprisoned – and in which he may have died. © Alamy
Nicholas Vincent:Ian Mortimer makes the case that we should suspend disbelief and allow that evidence points to the survival of Edward II beyond the supposed date of his death, in September 1327. I agree that the evidence here requires careful consideration. I disagree that it is “fundamentally flawed” or that it points inexorably towards the king’s survival.
To disprove a negation is never an easy task. Nonetheless, consider the following. All of the main political actors at the time behaved, after September 1327, as if the king were dead. There was a public funeral at Gloucester. When in 1330 Lord Berkeley denied any knowledge of Edward II’s death, he was on trial for his life, desperate to prove that he had been absent from Berkeley. He did not deny that others had carried out the deed.
As late as 1330, the archbishop of York, Sir John Pecche and Edward II’s half-brother, Edmund of Woodstock, may all have hoped (or feared) that Edward might still be alive. Edmund was executed for a deluded attempt to free the late king from captivity at Corfe – but Edmund had many enemies.
In 1322 Edmund had played a leading role in the execution of his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, and in the following year had seized back Berkeley Castle for the king. After 1326 his alliance with the new regime was never secure, and his trial and execution were very much acts of political vengeance. It is surely significant that even the public executioner, believing that Edmund was too naive to merit death, refused to behead him – he was kept waiting for a whole day until at last a common criminal was found who was prepared to wield the axe. Indeed, Roger Mortimer, when tried later that year on the charge of assuming royal power, was accused of deliberately duping Edmund into the belief that the late king still lived.
As for the Fieschi letter, or Edward III’s later meetings with a ‘hermit’ who claimed to be his father, these fit all too neatly into a wider pattern. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the legend of the hidden or undying king remained a powerful one – in political reality, not just in the legends of Arthur, Charlemagne or Frederick Barbarossa. King Harold, it was rumoured, had not been killed at Hastings but lived on as a hermit outside Chester into the 1180s (by which time he would have been more than 160 years old). The German emperor Henry V, far from dying in 1125, was likewise rumoured to have lived on as a hermit.
As with Edward II after 1327, there were sound political reasons to encourage such rumours, not least to discredit the dynasties that had thereafter ‘usurped’ the succession. Count Baldwin of Flanders, Latin emperor of Constantinople, disappeared into Greek captivity in 1205, assumed dead. The regency government that he left behind had little incentive to confirm his demise; hence, as late as 1225, when a man appeared in Flanders claiming to be the real Baldwin, many were prepared to believe him. He led a revolt against the real Baldwin’s daughter, until the following year when he was unmasked as a Burgundian pretender and executed.
In the Middle Ages, rumour was a powerful weapon. In 1263, Edward II’s grandfather, King Henry III of England, was rumoured to have died. So keen were various people to credit this that the annalist of Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire inserted it as a certain fact in his chronicle, penning a rhyming obituary notice. In fact, Henry did not die until 1272.
As for the ‘hermit’ claiming to be Edward II, whom Edward III is said to have met many years later in Flanders, consider this: I live for much of the year in Paris, where one of our neighbourhood beggars regularly declares himself king of Poland. Rather than denounce him as a pretender, or insist that he share the fate of Lambert Simnel or Perkin Warbeck (both imposters who challenged Henry VII in his claim to the throne), I greet him with a friendly wave and a murmured “Your Majesty”. Perkin Warbeck, it may be remembered, was executed in 1499 only after strenuous attempts to tolerate his mythomania. Lambert Simnel, having dropped all pretence, was allowed to live out his life as a minor court servant. He died in c1530, four decades after his coronation in 1487 in Dublin (the only English coronation ever held there) as ‘King Edward VI’.
Ian Mortimer:This argument is not about ‘suspending disbelief’ – it is about hard information. It is not about what happened to Baldwin of Flanders or Perkin Warbeck – or any other postmortem royal claimant.
It is about what happened to Edward II in 1327. One cannot use the cases of 13th and 15th-century pretenders as evidence for the events of 1327 – that is reductionism. It is like saying: “These cats look grey, therefore all cats are grey.” Nor should we rely on circumstantial evidence when we have direct evidence for how the story of the death came to be circulated.
The key thing that Professor Vincent should appreciate is why he thinks Edward II died in 1327. He relies on the fact that “all the main political actors in 1327 behaved… as if the king were dead”. But why did those political actors behave in that way? Because they had been told Edward was dead by the royal household at Lincoln on 24 September. Their behaviour is therefore merely circumstantial evidence: they weren’t at Berkeley themselves.
Why did the royal household believe Edward was dead? Because Lord Berkeley had sent them news to that effect. As I have explained, the dates of sending and receipt of information prove that there was no check on this news – and, three years later, the sender himself stated he had not heard about the death. The entire edifice of evidence that Professor Vincent trusts was thus founded on a self-confessed lie.
The important aspect here is the methodology. The traditional methodology is basically the same as that employed by those who maintain that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare. Proponents select the circumstantial evidence that best tallies with their preferred belief, and they ignore the testimonies of those contemporaries whose information was obtained at first hand. Every historian should resist such methods, even if the results challenge a long-accepted orthodoxy.
It’s a great shame that here we have a senior academic dismissing a scholarly reappraisal of the inconsistent contemporary evidence. He does this even though the said reappraisal has gone through a peer-review process and been published by The English Historical Review.
Nicholas Vincent:Ian Mortimer demands that I ask myself why I think that Edward II died in 1327. I think that Edward died because people at the time declared this to be so. They also behaved as if it were so. For much the same reasons, I believe that Barack Obama is president of the US and that water flows downhill. I regard the evidence of Edward’s survival to be unreliable, and I believe (foolishly, according to Mortimer; prudently in my reckoning) that this survival story fits in to a wider pattern of such stories that extends across the Middle Ages and into more recent times.
In my opinion, it has not been proved that Edward II cheated death in 1327 any more than Elvis Presley can be proved to be alive and well and living in Hemel Hempstead. Many people believe that Elvis still lives.
Ian Mortimer believes that Edward II did not die at Berkeley Castle. In both cases, a passionate belief is founded upon evidence that unbelievers consider implausible. I remain an unbeliever.


Dr Ian Mortimer is the author of numerous history books and a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Nicholas Vincent is professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia.


Further reading: Medieval Intrigue by Ian Mortimer (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2010) includes the peer-reviewed paper on Edward II mentioned in this article. A Brief History of Britain 1066–1485 by Nicholas Vincent (Robinson, 2011) covers the reign and ousting of Edward II.

Sam’s historical recipe corner: Homity pie

History Extra









Hearty and warming homity pies were popular among land girls during the Second World War. (Credit: Sam Nott)
  
In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates homity pie - a hearty, vegetarian dish popular during the Second World War.
We don’t know where the name for homity pie originates from but the dish was popular with land girls during the Second World War. As well as unrationed items, the recipe also includes rationed foods like cheese, eggs and butter – the original recipe would have used these frugally. Nowadays we don’t have to be so sparing with the cheese and butter, which only make it even tastier.

Ingredients• 4–5 medium potatoes
• 2–3 medium leeks
• 1 eating-apple, cored and chopped into small cubes
• 2 cloves garlic (chopped finely)
• 1 egg
• 3oz butter or margarine, plus more for frying
• 6oz cheese
• fresh or dried thyme
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• shortcrust pastry made with 6oz flour and 3oz butter or margarine

Method1) Make the shortcrust pastry using plain flour and 3oz butter/margarine. Rub the latter into the flour to make breadcrumbs and bind together with some water to make a pliable dough.
2) Roll the dough into a greased pie dish and blind bake in the oven at 200°C/gas mark 6, for about 10 mins.
3) Chop potatoes into small cubes (skins on) and simmer in boiling water until tender.
4) Fry chopped leeks and garlic in butter/margarine until tender. Add apple and thyme.
5) Drain potatoes and add to leeks. Stir in one whisked egg, more butter/margarine and 2oz of grated cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
6) Fill the pie dish with the mixture and add 4oz of grated cheese on top.
7) Cook in an oven at 220°C/gas mark 7 until the top is browned.
8) Leave to cool before eating.

Difficulty: 3/10

BBC History Magazine verdict: “Wholesome and delicious”.


Recipe courtesy of The 1940's Experiment.
This article was first published in the March 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine

Nelson: the unhappy admiral

History Extra


Heinrich Fuger’s oil on canvas portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson, who lost his life at Trafalgar just as he was discovering the contentment that had always eluded him. (Royal Naval Museum/Bridgeman Art Library)

In 18 hours of fury on 2 and 3 August 1798, a British fleet performed an almost unprecedented feat of arms in Aboukir Bay in Egypt. It virtually annihilated a major French fleet, destroying or capturing 11 of 13 warships of the line. In one sensational stroke, Britain established naval supremacy in the Mediterranean, sealed the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte’s expeditionary force to Egypt and heartened a Europe demoralised by the apparently unstoppable vigour of revolutionary France.  Within months of ‘the battle of the Nile’, Turkey, Russia and Austria had joined Britain in a new coalition against the French. The European world changed. Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who had proved as relentless as a guided missile while hunting the French fleet to its death, was an international hero. As Lavinia Spencer, the wife of the first lord of the Admiralty, wrote him: “Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, immortalised Nelson!” It was what the admiral had always wanted, superabundant patriotic military glory. Indeed, it was this constant hunger for exaltation that had given him the edge over other talented naval officers of the day, alerting him to every opportunity for distinction.  But, although his spectacular climb now accelerated, the victory in Aboukir Bay did not herald a period of contented fulfilment. Far from it, Nelson was soon plunged into a deep personal crisis that forced him to reappraise his goals and ultimate aspirations. He began “thinking and hoping for happiness”. In part it was the mid-life crisis of a man of indifferent health turning 40 and feeling his mortality, but it was also the product of a serious disenchantment with his lot, and a realisation that he had “never known happiness beyond moments”. Fame had not been enough.  Some writers have asserted that this led the admiral to court his own death at Trafalgar. Closer study throws cold sea water on that suggestion. Measure of success Even before Jeremy Bentham popularised ‘happiness’ as a defining measure of success, Nelson held it to be the indispensable hallmark of good government and personal fulfilment. When a grateful Ferdinand IV of Naples awarded him the Duchy of Bronte in Sicily in1799, he was clear about his priorities. He said: “My object at Bronte is to make the people happy by not suffering them to be oppressed, [and] to enrich the country by the improvement in agriculture.” His people would be “the happiest in all His Sicilian Majesty’s dominions” and the Duchy “Bronte the Happy”. It was natural, therefore, that he sought for himself what he so readily conceded a necessity for others. Nelson based himself in Naples and Sicily for the two years following the battle of the Nile, and fell passionately in love with Emma, the wife of Britain’s ageing minister at Naples, Sir William Hamilton. Hamilton accepted the ménage in which he frequently seemed to be the surplus partner, but Nelson’s disquiet was rooted in apprehensions about returning to his wife, Frances, in England, especially after Emma conceived his only child in 1800.  
Heinrich Fuger’s oil on canvas portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson, who lost his life at Trafalgar just as he was discovering the contentment that had always eluded him. (Royal Naval Museum/Bridgeman Art Library) There were other aggravations, too. Always hyper-sensitive and hungry for reassurance and affection, Nelson reacted badly to criticism, especially suggestions that he was devoting too much attention to the twin kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and idling in Palermo when he was needed elsewhere.  When the Admiralty appointed a rival, Admiral Lord Keith, to the vacant post of commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean in 1799, Nelson saw it as a direct reflection upon his professional conduct. He returned to England in 1800 nursing a miscellaneous collection of grievances, including what he considered to have been the shabby treatment of some of his officers and the Admiralty’s inability to find one of his brothers more gainful employment than clerking in the Navy Office. He had also been disappointed at the government’s parsimonious reaction to his victory. A barony had placed him on the lowest rung of the peerage with an annual pension of £2,000. Although the East India Company had granted him £10,000, he had reason for complaint in view of the fact that Admirals Earl St Vincent and Viscount Duncan had received more handsome peerages for much lesser victories and half as much again in annuities. The hero returned to his native land feeling distinctly ill-used. Things did not improve. In London Nelson separated from his wife, but was damaged by the public gossip, and furious that his mistress was shunned by the court. Money also became a serious problem. Respectable members of the ‘middling’ classes, with a few influential connections, the Nelsons were nevertheless relatively poor. In an age when property was almost indispensable to ‘gentility’, Nelson’s father, a Norfolk clergyman, was merely a life-tenant of the rectory at Burnham Thorpe, and had few bankable assets. Nelson’s naval successes earned a coat-of-arms and a peerage, but these merely elevated him into a social position he had no means of adequately supporting. “I am called upon, being thought very rich, for everything,” he said, “beyond any possibility of my keeping pace with my rank and station.”   After 1801 these perplexities increased, for he not only found himself being dunned by members of the Nelson tribe, but also had to provide for two homes, his estranged wife’s, and another he hoped to share with his mistress and child. Emma had no money of her own, and Sir William was busy selling his famous collection of antiques and art treasures to clear debts. Nelson was not by nature mercenary, but in these circumstances he was sensitive to anything that blighted his ability to turn his naval services to pecuniary account.          Sicily versus Merton Unwilling to surrender the bliss he had found with Emma, but in need of money as well as further naval glory, Nelson was torn between home and duty. At home he clamoured to return to sea; at sea he canvassed for leave.  Two short campaigns in 1801 only increased Nelson’s dissatisfaction. He resented serving as second to Sir Hyde Parker in the Baltic, where Nelson masterminded a flawless campaign and won a hard battle at Copenhagen, while the other received the pay and emoluments of a commander-in-chief. In both campaigns he feuded with the ‘set of beasts’ at the Admiralty, and complained that deserved rewards were withheld from his men, and that he was unreasonably kept in service when he needed to go home. In that year and the next he also tried to pull political strings to get positions for members of his family, but his slavish support for Henry Addington’s weak administration in the House of Lords was largely futile and only enhanced his scepticism.    Nelson felt betrayed, powerless to raise the standing of his family and protect his friends and followers, many of whom had risked their lives in the state’s service. He believed that he was being used by an establishment that resented his success, and allowed him as meagre a return as possible.  All of this contrasted with the two years he had spent in Italy. There, a more permissive society had seen nothing untoward about the ménage. Nelson had been extravagantly feted by their Sicilian Majesties, and his influence had been such that he amusingly referred to himself as a ‘secretary of state’. The dukedom, among other gifts that Ferdinand had bestowed, outshone the cautious decorations of the British. “Those were happy times,” Nelson wrote to Emma. “Would to God we were at this moment in the Bay of Naples.” In 1801 Nelson made a bold decision. As a general peace looked imminent, he would quit his native land and retire to Bronte, where he felt valued at his true worth, and could live with his mistress and daughter without shame or ridicule. “I am fixed as to the plan of life I mean to pursue,” he told Emma. “It is to take a small neat house, six to 10 miles from London, and there to remain till I can fix for ever or get to Bronte. I have never known happiness beyond moments, and I am fixed as Fate to try if I cannot obtain it after so many years of labour and anxiety.” He was sure that Italy was “the only country” in which he could be “completely happy”. 
Nelson’s daughter, Horatia, shown in a c1806 portrait. The gardens in the background may be those at Merton Place. (National Maritime Museum)
 The dream of Bronte sustained Nelson for almost three years. “Under the shade of a chestnut tree at Bronte, where the din of war will not reach my ears, do I hope to solace myself, make my people happy and prosperous, and, by giving advice… enable His Sicilian Majesty, my benefactor, to be more than ever respected in the Mediterranean.” While enjoying the reputation of a benevolent landlord, he could also make himself useful by using his name to assist his adopted land, for example by brokering peace between Naples and the Barbary States. What, then, deflected Nelson from this course, and reconciled him to a life in England? One reason was Merton Place. While his managers in Sicily wrestled with the task of preparing Bronte for permanent occupation, Nelson purchased a dilapidated estate in Merton, Surrey. The transformation of this house, where Nelson lived as and with whom he pleased during the Peace of Amiens (a hiatus in the war with France, from 1802–03), changed his life.   In four years its extent was tripled to 166 acres. The house was enlarged and improved, and the grounds beautified, with a new lodge and driveway, a kitchen garden and working farm, and spacious pleasure grounds. “The alterations and improvements are far beyond anything I could have supposed,” testified one visitor. “When finished it will be a delightful spot.” Nelson, lionised by the locals, felt himself emerging from darkness into a ‘paradise’. According to Emma, they were “as happy as kings, and much more so.”  When Nelson returned to sea at the outbreak of a new war in 1803, he was a calmer man, secure in the well-being of his domestic life, and able to fully concentrate on his task as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean. For a while Merton and Bronte competed as possible retreats, but whereas Merton’s attractions multiplied, clouds gathered over Bronte. Returning to his old station, Nelson found Italy changed. “Nobody cares for us there,” he lamented. Furthermore, Bronte was struggling to clear its debts, and the political outlook for Naples and Sicily looked bleak, with Napoleon poised to reduce them to subservience. By summer 1805, Nelson was sure that Merton, not Bronte, was where his pilgrimage would end.  
An early 19th-century sketch of Nelson’s villa at Merton in Surrey, where he “left all which I hold dear in this world to go to serve my king and country”. (National Maritime Museum) Family man The idea that Nelson went to Trafalgar ready to die shows little insight into his situation during his final few years. In fact, his affairs had seldom looked brighter. Merton was blooming, and the admiral had brought both Emma and his daughter, Horatia, under its roof. Nelson’s professional standing was also at its height, and new government ministers were routinely conferring with him about the safety of the realm, much as their Sicilian Majesties had once done.   Even the admiral’s finances looked happier. A long-running lawsuit against Earl St Vincent for a share of prize money taken in 1799 had yielded several thousand pounds, and by the end of 1804 Bronte had begun at last to produce an annuity of £2,800. What’s more, a national effort had equipped Nelson with a force sufficient to engage the combined Franco-Spanish fleet when it left Cadiz, creating the opportunity for him to write a glorious finale to his career and win enough prize money to secure his future.    Nelson left England in September 1805 with a clear plan. “I hope very soon to finish with the French fleet and return to England and dear Merton, which I think the prettiest place in the world,” he said.  Only one more battle seemed to stand between Nelson and that golden future of his dreams. “Friday night,” he famously wrote the day he left home for the last time, “at half past 10 drove from dear, dear Merton, where I left all which I hold dear in this world to go to serve my king and country. May the great God whom I adore enable me to fill the expectations of my country, and if it is His good pleasure that I should return, my thanks will never cease being offered up to the throne of his mercy.” But, of course, Nelson did not survive Trafalgar, and that future was poignantly snatched away by a sniper’s bullet fired from the mizzen top of the French Redoutable. In a final conflict, Horatio Nelson fulfilled his professional ambition to achieve the ultimate victory, but tragically lost his personal goal. “Poor man,” said a midshipman who knew him. “How he wished so much to see England again.”   Dr John Sugden’s books include Nelson: A Dream of Glory, which was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The concluding volume, Nelson: The Sword of Albion, is published by Bodley Head.

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Black Death

History Extra

Plague victims in Perugia. From a 14th century manuscript of the vernacular text 'La Franceschina'. (Photo By DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
Here, writing for History Extra, medieval historian Samuel Cohn shares 10 lesser-known facts…
1) The Black Death (October 1347 to c1352) did not eradicate a third of Europe’s populationOpen almost any textbook on western civilisation and it will claim that the Black Death felled one-third of Europe’s population. In fact, in some places such as a village on an estate in Cambridgeshire manorial rolls attest that 70 per cent of its tenants died in a matter of months in 1349, and the city of Florence tax records drawn up shortly before and after the Black Death suggest that its toll may have been about the same in 1348.
Yet, the plague skipped over or barely touched other villages, even within Cambridgeshire, and may not have infected at all vast regions such as ones in northern German-speaking lands. Given the state of record-keeping and preservation, we will probably never be able to estimate the Black Death’s European toll with any precision.

2) The Black Death was not a disease of the black rat transmitted to humans by fleasNot only textbooks but serious monographs on the Black Death and its successive waves of plague into the early 19th century in Europe go on about rats (usually the black ones) and fleas without qualification. But what is the evidence?
No contemporary observers described any epizootic [animal epidemic] of rats or of any other rodents immediately before or during the Black Death, or during any later plagues in Europe – that is, until the ‘third pandemic’ at the end of the 19th century. Yet in subtropical regions of Africa and China, descriptions of ‘rat falls’ accompanying a human disease with buboes in the principal lymph nodes reach back at least to the 18th century.
As for fleas, unlike during the ‘third pandemic’, when plague cases and deaths followed closely the seasonal fertility cycles of various species of rat fleas, no such correlations are found with the Black Death or later European plagues before the end of the 19th century. 

3) The Black Death was not a disease of povertyNot only do contemporary chroniclers list important knights, ladies, and merchants who died during the Black Death, but administrative records also point to a wide swath of the population felled in 1348–49. Furthermore, many wealthy and well-fed convents, friaries, and monasteries across Europe lost more than half of their members; some even became extinct.
However, by the third or fourth wave of plague in the last decades of the 14th century, burial records and tax registers reveal that the disease had evolved into one of the poor.


A Venetian plague doctor, c1800. (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images)

4) The Black Death was not a disease only of large cities and towns and villages in the lowlandsIn 1348–49, some of the worst-hit regions were in mountainous and in relatively isolated zones, such as in Snowdonia in Wales or the mountain village of Mangona in the Alpi fiorentine, north of Florence, whose communications with cities were less frequent than places further down the slopes and closer to cities.
The experiences of these isolated villages may have been similar to small mining villages in Pennsylvania or in South Africa, or Inuit settlements in Newfoundland under attack by another highly contagious pandemic, the Great Influenza of 1918–19, in which they experienced mortalities from 10 to 40 per cent – many times higher than in New York City or London.

5) The Black Death did not afflict all major European cities and towns on principal trade routesFor reasons that are difficult to explain, cities such as Milan and Douai in Flanders, both major hubs of commerce and industry, appear to have escaped the Black Death in 1348 almost totally unscathed.
In the case of Milan, only one household fell victim to the disease, at least according to chronicles, and the plague was successfully contained. Meanwhile, Douai chronicles, monastic necrologies, and archival records (recording, for example, the deaths of magistrates, and last wills and testaments) show no certain signs of the plague entering that city until the plague of 1400.

6) The Black Death did not result everywhere in the massacre of Jews or the blaming of other minoritiesIn German-speaking lands, France along the Rhine, and parts of Spain, municipal governments, castellans, bishops, and the Holy Roman Emperor accused Jews of spreading the Black Death by poisoning foodstuffs and water sources, and massacred entire communities of men, women, and babies for these supposed crimes.
The accusations and massacres, however, were not universal between 1348 and 1351. Massacres did not arise in the British Isles (where, at least in England, Jews had been expelled in 1290 by Edward I), and no clear evidence pinpoints any such violence in Italy (except for the Catalans in Sicily). Nor are any massacres recorded in the Middle East.

7) The first ‘quarantine’ was not invented in Venice – rather it was a ‘trentine’ first legislated in RagusaThe phrase ‘quarantine’ (the exclusion and isolation of those coming from infected regions, or of others suspected of carrying plague, to avoid them mixing with uninfected populations for a certain number of days) was coined in Venice in the early 15th century, based on a 40-day period of isolation (with Biblical resonances). But the city of Ragusa [present-day Dubrovnik] had beaten the Venetians to the punch in 1377 with a plague ‘quarantine’ of 30 days.
By the early modern period, ‘quarantine’ often had been curtailed further. The period deemed necessary to isolate suspected carriers in Milan during its plague of 1557–75, for instance, had dropped to eight daysfor certain categories of suspicion.


Clothes infected by the Black Death being burnt, c 1340. An illustration from the 'Romance of Alexander' in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

8)  All human attempts to end the plague in Europe were not in vainCities that managed to keep plague beyond their borders were those that devised and implemented quarantine: border controls at city gates, harbours, and mountain passes; individual health passports (which identified a person and certified where he or she came from), and other related measures such as spy networks to signal when a plague had erupted in a foreign city or region.
Ragusa was a pioneer in this regard, with its earliest ‘quarantine’ and its increasingly sophisticated measures to isolate the infected and control its borders during the late 14th and 15th centuries. Its last plague was in 1533, while in England it was 1665–56, in the Baltic region 1709–13, and Northern Africa and the Middle East the 19th century. Many Italian regions followed Ragusa’s lead, and after them, other regions of western and central Europe.

9) Despite the thousands who sacrificed their lives assisting spiritually or physically the afflicted during the Black Death, the church awarded none of them with blessed or saintly statusFrom October 1347 in Sicily to the early 1350s further north, contemporary chroniclers decried peoples abandonment of sick family members, and criticised clergymen and doctors who were ‘cowardly’ in reneging on their responsibilities to escape the plague’s vicious contagion. However, occasionally contemporary writers also praised those who stayed on to nurse the afflicted, and who often lost their lives in so doing.
Curiously, the church did not recognise any of these martyrs during the Black Death with elevations to beatitude or sanctity.
The first to be so recognised did not appear until the 15th century, and those who intervened to help those afflicted by the plague (that is, during their own lifetimes and not as post-mortem miraculous acts) remained rare even during 16th and 17th centuries.

10) The Black Death travelled 30 to 100 times faster over land than the bubonic plagues of the 20th centuryIt is thought that the Black Death spread at a rate of a mile or more a day, but other accounts have measured it in places to have averaged as far as eight miles a day.
By contrast, scientists in South Africa, New Orleans, and other places affected by bubonic plague in the early 20th century devised experiments to clock their plague’s spread, and found it moving no faster than eight miles a year. It spread so slowly because modern bubonic plague was a rodent disease and often one dependent on the house rat.
These extreme differences in the spread of the Black Death and the bubonic plagues of modern times are seen despite the revolutions in transport with steam power, railway, and, by the early 20th century, automobiles.
Samuel Cohn is professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd, 2002).

9 weird medieval medicines

History Extra

Anatomical chart of the human body, from 15th-century Tractatabus de Pestilentia (Treatise on Plague) © The Art Archive / Alamy

Medicines in the medieval period were sometimes homemade, if they weren’t too complicated. Simple medicines consisted of a single ingredient – usually a herb – but if they required numerous ingredients or preparation in advance, they could be purchased from an apothecary, rather like a modern pharmacist.
Although some medical remedies were quite sensible, others were extraordinarily weird. They all now come with a health warning, so it’s probably best not to try these at home...

1) St Paul’s Potion for epilepsy, catalepsy and stomach problemsSupposedly invented by St Paul, this potion was to be drunk. The extensive list of ingredients included liquorice, sage, willow, roses, fennel, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cormorant blood, mandrake, dragon’s blood and three kinds of pepper.
Although this sounds like a real witch’s brew, most of the ingredients do have some medicinal value: liquorice is good for the chest – it was and continues to be used to treat coughs and bronchitis; sage is thought to improve blood flow to the brain and help one’s memory, and willow contains salicylic acid, a component of aspirin. Fennel, cinnamon and ginger are all carminatives (which relieve gas in the intestines), and would relieve a colicky stomach.
Cormorant blood – or that of any other warm-blooded creature – would add iron for anaemia; mandrake, although poisonous, is a good sleeping draught if used in small doses, and, finally, dragon’s blood. This isn’t blood at all, and certainly not from a mythical beast! It is the bright red resin of the tree Dracaena draco – a species native to Morocco, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands. Modern research has shown that it has antiseptic, antibiotic, anti-viral and wound-healing properties, and it is still used in some parts of the world to treat dysentery – but I’m not sure it could have done anything for epileptics or cataleptics.

2) A good medicine for sciatica [pain caused by irritation or compression of the sciatic nerve, which runs from the back of your pelvis, all the way down both legs]A number of medieval remedies suggested variations of the following: “Take a spoonful of the gall of a red ox and two spoonfuls of water-pepper and four of the patient’s urine, and as much cumin as half a French nut and as much suet as a small nut and break and bruise your cumin.
Then boil these together till they be like gruel then let him lay his haunch bone [hip] against the fire as hot as he may bear it and anoint him with the same ointment for a quarter of an hour or half a quarter, and then clap on a hot cloth folded five or six times and at night lay a hot sheet folded many times to the spot and let him lie still two or three days and he shall not feel pain but be well.”
Perhaps it was the bed rest and heat treatments that did the trick, because I can’t see the ingredients of the ointment doing much good otherwise!

3) For burns and scalds“Take a live snail and rub its slime against the burn and it will heal”
A nice, simple DIY remedy – and yes, it would help reduce blistering and ease the pain! Recent research has shown that snail slime contains antioxidants, antiseptic, anaesthetic, anti-irritant, anti-inflammatory, antibiotic and antiviral properties, as well as collagen and elastin, vital for skin repair.
Modern science now utilises snail slime, under the heading ‘Snail Gel’, as skin preparations and for treating minor injuries, such as cuts, burns and scalds. It seems that medieval medicine got this one right.

4) For a stye on the eye“Take equal amounts of onion/leek [there is still debate about whether ‘cropleek’, as stated in the original recipe, in Bald’s Leechbook, is equivalent to an onion or leek today] and garlic, and pound them well together. Take equal amounts of wine and bull’s gall and mix them with the onion and garlic. Put the mixture in a brass bowl and let it stand for nine nights, then strain it through a cloth. Then, about night-time, apply it to the eye with a feather.”
Would this Anglo-Saxon recipe have done any good? The onion, garlic and bull’s gall all have antibiotic properties that would have helped a stye – an infection at the root of an eyelash.
The wine contains acetic acid which, over the nine days, would react with the copper in the brass bowl to form copper salts, which are bactericidal. Recently, students at Nottingham University made up and tested this remedy: at first, the mixture made the lab smell like a cook shop, with garlic, onions and wine, but over the nine days the mixture developed into a stinking, gloopy goo. Despite its unpromising odour and appearance, the students tested it for any antibiotic properties and discovered that it is excellent. The recipe is now being further investigated as a treatment against the antibiotic-resistant MRSA bug, and it looks hopeful.
The ancient apothecary was right about this remedy, but it was one that needed to be prepared in advance for sale over the counter.

The apothecary's shop. From Johannis de Cuba Ortus Sanitatis, Strasbourg, 1483. © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

5) For gout“Take an owl and pluck it clean and open it, clean and salt it. Put it in a new pot and cover it with a stone and put it in an oven and let it stand till it be burnt. And then stamp [pound] it with boar’s grease and anoint the gout therewith.”
Poor owl! I can’t think that this would have helped the patient very much either…

6) For migraines“Take half a dish of barley, one handful each of betony, vervain and other herbs that are good for the head; and when they be well boiled together, take them up and wrap them in a cloth and lay them to the sick head and it shall be whole. I proved.”
Betony [a grassland herb] was used by the medieval and Tudor apothecary as an ingredient in remedies to be taken internally for all kinds of ailments, as well as in poultices for external use, as in this case. Modern medicine still makes use of the alkaloid drugs found in betony for treating severe headaches and migraine.
Vervain’s glycoside [a class of molecules in which, a sugar molecule is bonded to a ‘non-sugar’ molecule] derivatives too are used in modern treatments for migraine, depression and anxiety, so once again the apothecary knew what he was doing with this recipe!

7) For him that has quinsy [a severe throat infection]“Take a fat cat and flay it well, clean and draw out the guts. Take the grease of a hedgehog and the fat of a bear and resins and fenugreek and sage and gum of honeysuckle and virgin wax. All this crumble small and stuff the cat within as you would a goose. Roast it all and gather the grease and anoint him [the patient] with it.”
With treatments like this, is it any wonder that a friend wrote to Pope Clement VI when he was sick, c1350, to say: “I know that your bedside is besieged by doctors and naturally this fills me with fear… they learn their art at our cost and even our death brings them experience.”

8) To treat a cough“Take the juice of horehound to be mixed with diapenidion and eaten”
Horehound [a herb plant and member of the mint family] is good for treating coughs, and diapenidion is a confection made of barley water, sugar and whites of eggs, drawn out into threads – so perhaps a cross between candy floss and sugar strands. It would have tasted nice, and sugar is good for the chest – still available in an over-the-counter cough mixture as linctus simplex.

9) For the stomach“To void wind that is the cause of colic, take cumin and anise, of each equally much, and lay it in white wine to steep, and cover it over with wine and let it stand still so three days and three nights. And then let it be taken out and laid upon an ash board for to dry nine days and be turned about. And at the nine days’ end, take and put it in an earthen pot and dry over the fire and then make powder thereof. And then eat it in pottage or drink it and it shall void the wind that is the cause of colic”
Both anise and cumin are carminatives, so this medicine would do exactly what it said on the tin – or earthen pot. The herbs dill and fennel could be used instead to the same effect – 20th-century gripe water for colicky babies contained dill.
This remedy would have taken almost two weeks to make, so patients would have bought it from the apothecary, as needed.

Toni Mount is an author, historian and history teacher. She began her career working in the laboratories of the then-Wellcome pharmaceutical company [now GlaxoSmithKline], and gained her MA studying a 15th-century medical text at the Wellcome Library. She is also a member of the Research Committee of the Richard III Society.

Her books, all published by Amberley, include Everyday Life in Medieval London: From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors; The Medieval Housewife & Other Women of the Middle Ages and her latest book, Dragon’s Blood & Willow Bark: The Mysteries of Medieval Medicine, which is out now.