A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

by Emma Southon

Today’s lesson: don’t fuck with the sacred chickens.

In a move of extraordinary ballsiness, Clodius went full Shaggy in court and declared that it wasn’t him in Caesar’s house because he hadn’t even been in Rome that day.

This is where things started to go really bananas because once Clodius effectively had a personal paramilitary force ready to beat the life out of his opponents, everyone wanted one. Organised violent gangs became the must-have accessory of 58 BCE.

Imagine if your least favourite world leader just refused to stop being in charge when their term ended because they just didn’t want to and that they also had an enormous personal army.

So he states ‘some said that’ Caesar had been suffering from diarrhoea that day and had therefore been unable to stand and greet the senators lest he have an unfortunate accident. You really have to know that you have done something truly terrible when the best possible defence that your biggest fan can give you is that you might have shat yourself.

Tyranny could be tolerated if it was disguised; Caesar kept making it obvious.

I find this version very funny, because it’s essentially Caesar fighting off all of his friends trying to put a crown on his head. One of whom has his dick out.

Antony completed his run through the city in the Forum and produced the diadem from somewhere on his nude body (probably best not to think about it).

Tiberius was a grumpy old man, pretty much from birth, but seemed to have absolutely loved a mystery. He was a budding Miss Marple of the Roman world and something about this case caught his attention and he got really invested in it.

The story goes like this: Pollio had invited the emperor Augustus over for dinner and Augustus had showed up because I guess everyone has an embarrassing mate they can’t get rid of.

Lampreys are a kind of eel which have existed in their current form for over three hundred million years. They are sixty million years older than dinosaurs and they were formed in hell to haunt our nightmares.

Massively lacking in charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent, he primarily got himself some sparkly things, got himself immediately laid and, rudely, continued his Syrian religion in Rome.

Come over to my military camp, the enemy said, let’s have tea. Gaius, being apparently an idiot, pottered over, possibly bearing a gift, and was shocked – shocked! – to discover that it was a trap and there was no tea, only stabbings.

She had the occasional opinion and the ability to persuade her husband and son to do things, and that was basically the same as being a murderer as far as some Romans were concerned.

They proved that emperors, even those descended from Divus Augustus, were in fact just men with squishy insides like everyone else, and so they kick-started the brand new Roman hobby of murdering emperors. And boy did the Romans take to it.

As soon as Marcus Aurelius let his biological son get in on the ruling act, we got Commodus who ruled for fifteen years but is mainly remembered for being a twat and getting killed.

Human sacrifice was barbaric and ritual murder was icky at best; feeding a person to a bear, though, that was a family day out.