Ancient History Quiz (hard)

Molossian Hound, British Museum

Recently I was asked to write a quiz for a kids’ book site based on my first two Time Travel Diaries books. I sent them a quiz which they thought was TOO DIFFICULT. So I am posting it here. 

How well will YOU do? 

This quiz is based on some of the strangest facts I have come across while writing my first two Time Travel Diaries, the first set in Roman London and the second in Ancient Athens. If you don’t know, have an educated guess! Answers at the bottom. 

1. The enamel in a skeleton’s tooth can sometimes tell you
a) where the person grew up
b) what colour their eyes were
c) what part of the world their mother came from
d) all of the above 

2. Athens was famous for producing some of the world’s most famous playwrights. Which of the following died after being attacked by dogs?  
a) Aristophanes (author of The Birds, etc)
b) Euripides (author of Medea, etc)
c) Aeschylus (author of the Oresteia etc)
d) Sophocles (author of Oedipus Rex, etc)

3. What did the philosopher Socrates use to slice a hardboiled egg?
a) A spear
b) A hair 
c) A fork
d) A stylus

4. The word gymnasium comes from the Greek word for
a) naked
b) athletic
c) muscular
d) exercise

5. Londinium (modern London) was founded by 
a) The Celts
b) The Greeks
c) The Romans
d) The Saxons

6. Certain animals frightened away evil spirits and were therefore used to decorate jewellery, clothing, walls and other objects used by Romans. Which animals were NOT used this way by the Romans? 
a) snakes
b) sharks
c) leopards
d) dogs

7. Which of the following fascinating objects was NOT found in Roman London?
a) An ancient version of a Swiss army knife
b) two pairs of leather bikini bottoms
c) an ivory knife 
d) an amber amulet in the shape of a gladiator’s helmet

8) The Roman god Mithras was popular from the first to third centuries AD. Which of the following groups people were his most faithful followers? 
a) high-ranking soldiers
b) retired soldiers
c) men
d) all of the above

9. The god Mithras wore strange clothes. Which of the following was NOT in his wardrobe? 
a) a Greek helmet 
b) a flapping cloak
c) leggings
d) a floppy hat like a Smurf

10. Today you can still visit the foundations of London’s Mithraeum, where the god Mithras was worshipped. Which American company restored it to its original position deep below their London branch and offers free access every day but Monday? 
a) Microsoft Corporation
b) Bloomberg LP
c) Google LLC
d) Walt Disney Corporation

Want to know more? Read or listen to Caroline Lawrence’s first two Time Travel Diaries. And check out her other 30+ historical novels for kids on her website: www.carolinelawrence.com.

_____

Answers: 1 = d (using DNA and isotopes); 2 = b (When he was an old man, Euripides was savaged to death by Molossian hounds); 3 = b (Plato has Socrates tell of using a hair to slice an egg); 4 = a (because Greek men exercised without clothing); 5 = c (London started life as a Roman trading post around AD 50); 6 = b (No shark has ever been found on Roman jewellery); 7 = a (something like a Swiss army knife WAS found, but not in London); 8 = d (In fact we think only men were allowed into his temples); 9 = a (Mithras is never shown with a Greek helmet); 10 = b (You can find London’s Mithraeum in the European headquarters of Bloomberg LP by Bank tube station)

Tabula Rasa

The lower leaf is a 'tabula rasa' or blank tablet

The Latin Programme has just announced a competition for kids to write a story or poem under 500 words. You have until 24 April 2020 and the pieces can tackle any theme and take any form as long as they use the Latin phrase ‘tabula rasa’ as a starting point. First prize is £100 in book tokens with two £25 runners up. And I am one of the two judges! 

But what is a TABVLA RASA? 

In Roman times, a ‘tabula rasa’ was a clean writing tablet. 

The word ‘rasa’ is a participle from the verb ‘rado’, I shave or smooth. We get the word razor from it. 

The word ‘tabula’ means a board or plank. We get the word tablet from it. 

Romans often made writing tablets from small, thin wooden planks coated with beeswax. They would then inscribe letters in the wax, using a the sharp end of a stylus made of metal, bone or wood. By the way, we get the word stylus from Latin ‘stilus’, which means stick, stake or pointed instrument. 

When Romans wanted to erase the words they had written on a tablet, they would use the flat end of the stylus to smooth the wax. Some frescoes show a triangular-shaped spatula that could be warmed and then pulled across the wax to smooth it and make it blank. 

Spatula (far left) on a fresco from Pompeii via @LiberalDespot

So the most literal meaning of ‘tabula rasa’ is a smoothed or ‘shaved’ wax tablet. 

Lupus with wax tablet holder (2007)

In my Roman Mysteries, one of my characters can’t speak so he uses a wax tablet to communicate vital messages. 

Maybe your hero needs a tablet to communicate like Lupus.

The phrase ‘tabula rasa’ has a metaphorical meaning as used by philosophers such as Aristotle and John Locke: a blank mind. Locke believed babies were born with a totally blank mind and that the things that happened after their birth were etched into their brains forever. 

So ‘tabula rasa’ can also mean blank mind. 

Maybe your hero has amnesia.

stylus and scraper via Peter Lorimer

‘Tabula rasa’ can be applied to the type of slate on which Victorian schoolchildren wrote with chalk, like a mini blackboard. For this reason ‘tabula rasa’ can also mean a clean slate like when all your debts (the money you owe) or sins (things you’ve done wrone) are cancelled and you can ‘start fresh’. 

Maybe your hero has a chance to start fresh. 

Finally, a fun idea for a mystery or spy story based on the phrase ‘tabula rasa’ is an ancient method of delivering a secret message where you write a message on the wood tablet, then put the wax on top to hide it. That way the writing tablet looks blank but actually contains a hidden message. 

re-enactor writing on a replica tablet of beeswax coloured with soot

Maybe your hero must get a message to a rescuer. Or intercept a message from a spy. 

So there are lots of meanings of ‘tabula rasa’. You might even think of a new one. 

Just make sure you put that phrase somewhere in your entry! 

HERE is the link to the competition. And HERE is a link to some ideas for how to start your story... Good luck! I can’t wait to read your entries. 

ADORN: Protective Roman Jewellery

Many people who lived in ancient times believed that when you looked at something your eyes would emit little particles of fire, (a bit like Superman with his laser vision.) That meant that an angry, jealous or envious person could actually hurt the person they were looking at. The anger or envy in their heart, transmitted by the beams, could make someone sick and even cause their death. This was called the ‘evil eye’ and children were considered particularly vulnerable. People also believed in a world full of gods, demigods and spirits, not all of them friendly. For this reason, people often wore magic amulets to avert the evil eye or distract demons. Borders, patches and knots in clothing often served this purpose. but it is most clearly seen in jewellery. 

At a new exhibition of jewellery dating from the Bronze Age to the 21st century, I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at some of the objects and spotted five different types of protective Roman jewellery. 

MEDUSA MEDALLION
The first object I spotted is this marvellous little medallion showing the gorgon Medusa. Any face shown looking back will reflect back the ‘evil eye’ but Medusa is doubly powerful, her gaze can turn you to stone! In addition, the amulet is made of jet which was considered a special substance in Roman times because it warms quickly in your hand and if you rub it, then it can move things like dust and hair, seemingly by magic (but really by static electricity.) Jet was very popular with women, so I imagine the British wife of a retired Roman soldier wearing this around her neck for protection. If you look carefully you will see this Medusa also has snakes at her throat as well as in her hair, probably because demons and evil spirits dislike snakes. 

SERPENT BANGLES
Speaking of snakes, these charming little bracelets are stylised serpents. They are made of copper-alloy and come from the later Roman period in Colchester. I think they are a bit sad because they are quite small and may have been worn by a little girl after she died. Perhaps she wore them when she was alive to scare away evil spirits. Snakes were associated with death and rebirth in the Roman world and so these might also protect her in the afterlife. We have found other serpent bracelets from the Roman world. Girls and women seemed to like snakes more than men, but that may just be because men didn’t wear bracelets. 

BULLA EARRINGS
In Roman times baby boys were often given a gold bulla (the word means ‘ball’) to hang around their neck. This was a protective amulet and when the boy reached manhood he would offer it to a god in thanks for protecting him. I have never seen a girl wearing a bulla medallion, but these earrings would have provided twice the protection of a single bulla. They are exactly the same style as some found in Pompeii and might have come all the way from Italy. 

MOON BRACELET
If boys often wore amulets that resembled the sun (gold balls), girls often wore amulets in silver that looked like a crescent moon. The goddess of the moon was Diana and the moon is often associated with females. The lunate or moon-shaped pendant can be seen on many of the so-called Fayum portraits, paintings of Romans living in Egypt in the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. The protective qualities of the silver moon on this bracelet are enhanced by the beads which are made of jet, amber and glass, all ‘magical’ substances. See the coin with the hole? That was another good-luck token. This was literally a ‘charm’ bracelet in that it has protective properties. 

SATYR GEMSTONES
You might have trouble finding these gemstones in the exhibition because they are TEENY tiny, about the size of your little fingernail! They are called intaglios which means they have something engraved into them. These stones would probably have been put in a ring and then used as the owner’s seal or signet. In Roman times a person’s ring was their ‘signature’! In the case of both these semi-precious blue-black gemstones we think the figures are satyrs. Satyrs were mythical creatures – half goat and half man – sacred to the god of wine, Dionysus. Also known as Bacchus, Dionysus was another god who could protect you, and after death he often led worthy souls down to the underworld. So, like all the other objects in my list they served an additional protective function in addition to their decorative use.

The exhibition is called ADORN but they could also have called it ADORN & PROTECT! It is on from 27 July 2019 until 16 February 2020 at Colchester Museums. The show is included in the price of entry to the Castle. For more information, go HERE.

Thanks to curators Glynn Davis and Pippa Pickles for showing me around! The superb photos were taken by Douglas Atfield and are all copyright Colchester Museums. I have used them with permission.

Roman Londoners from the Bloomberg Tablets

by Caroline Lawrence

It is a cool grey Saturday morning in mid-September I am on my way to a London square near St Paul’s cathedral. A writer in search of inspiration, I am hoping to meet some ancient residents of Roman London or Londinium, as it was called. 

fragment of Samian ware with archer now at MOLA

For many centuries it was believed that St Paul’s cathedral was built on the site of an ancient temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Diana. After the great fire in 1666 when the architect Christopher Wren was digging the foundations for his new St Paul’s, he kept a sharp lookout for evidence of Roman occupation. Although he found no trace of a Temple of Diana, he did find other Roman artefacts including fragments of popular Samian ware, a type of imported, glossy orange pottery beloved by rich Romans in Britain. 

Over three hundred years after the new St Paul’s rose from ashes, the multi-national company Bloomberg were digging the foundations for their new European headquarters in the City of London. Like Wren they also found Roman artefacts; not just a few, but over fifteen thousand. These were preserved in the waterlogged soil of the Walbrook, one of several streams that feeds into the Thames. The Roman goodies included leather shoes, pottery, brooches, hairpins, rings and – most exciting of all – over four hundred writing tablets. 

Unlike the famous Vindolanda tablets, most of the so-called ‘Bloomberg tablets’ are not postcard-thin wafers of limewood designed to be inscribed with ink, but stylus tablets made of silver fir reclaimed from imported wine barrels. Also known as wax tablets, these were slim tiles of wood with a shallow depression for a layer of wax. This wax was scratched away with a sharp stylus to reveal the wood underneath. The London tablets were mainly covered with soot-blackened wax, which contrasted with the pale wood underneath. 


As a Classicist, Londoner and writer of historical fiction for kids, I was thrilled when MOLA, the Museum of London Archaeology department, invited me to be one of their ‘ambassadors of archaeology’. I jumped at the chance and was rewarded with a copy of the first of several volumes about the Bloomberg finds and also a private tour of the MOLA repository in Hackney. At Mortimer Wheeler House I saw some of the tablets and artefacts up close. The ancient combs, shoes and brooches were fun, but I’ve seen plenty of those before in museums. 

What I hadn’t seen were items like the wonderful iron stylus from Rome (left) with an inscription on its hexagonal sides declaring: I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point so that you may remember me. I hope I bring you good fortune when the way is long and the money sack is empty. As archaeologist Michael Marshall (above) remarked, this is the ancient equivalent of My Parents Went to Rome and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. 

And then there were the famous tablets. Most would have about the size of a small paperback book (140 cm x 110 cm), but with with the thickness of a smartphone. A few are the size of an iPad and a few are tags. Some have a central depression for the impression of signet rings. Roman wills had to be witnessed by no fewer than seven men and they were always recorded on sturdy wax tablets. 

When you look at the tablets you are amazed that anyone can make sense of the faint chicken scratchings left by the stylus as it pushed through the wax nearly two thousand years ago. But a combination of ultra-modern technology and old-fashioned genius makes this possible. 

Genius photographer Andy Chopping records the traces of scratches left by the stylus and gives them to genius epigraphist Roger Tomlin (above). A kind of code-breaker of ancient Latin cursive, Tomlin has been able to decipher parts of 80 of these tablets. (See how they do it HERE.)

From the archaeological context and a few dates on some of the tablets, we know these documents go right back to the very first years of London’s existence as a Roman town and cover a period of about twenty years, from roughly AD 60 to about AD 80. They give us an extraordinary glimpse into the life of Roman Londoners, naming merchants, craftsmen, soldiers and politicians who lived in the new outpost of the Roman Empire. 

Fittingly for London, almost all the legible tablets have something to do with business and commerce. Each tablet is given a label with a code including the letters WT which stands for ‘Writing Tablet’. 

One thrilling tablet, WT44, was written when Nero was emperor and is dated to 8 Jan AD 57. In it, a freedman named Tibullus notes that he owes another freedman named Gratus 105 denarii for some merchandise which was sold and delivered. 

This tablet sent a chill down my spine when I remembered that Boudica burnt Colchester, St Albans and London only three years later during her brief but violent rebellion. It is claimed that she killed over 70,000 people. Did Tibullus and Gratus survive? 

Tablet WT45 shows how quickly London rose from the ashes and St Albans, too. It is business as usual as Marcus Rennius Venustus agrees to bring twenty loads of provisions from Verulamium to London. It is dated 21 October AD 62, within two years of Boudica’s rebellion.

Another extraordinary label, WT6,  gives us the first historical mention of London. Dated between AD 65 – 70, it is addressed to a certain Mogontius. We don’t know who he was but the name is a Celtic one, linked to the god Mogons who was worshipped in Britain and Gaul and might have been extra-popular with soldiers. 

The tablets are written according to certain conventions. Although the messages themselves are often scrawled in a hard-to-decipher type of writing called cursive, the addresses are usually written in easy to read capital letters. They are either in the dative case or have the Latin word dabis – the verb to give in the second person singular future tense – ‘you will give’ . This was considered more polite than the imperative da! Give! And might be translated ‘Please give...’

So we have tablets addressed thus:

Please give this to Bassus

To Atticus, son of [name lost]

To Sabinus, son of Pirinus

Please give this to Junius the cooper, opposite Catullus’ place

One tablet is addressed to Tertius the Brewer, who might be Domitius Tertius, a brewer mentioned in a tablet from Carlisle. Maybe he sourced his barrels from Junius the Cooper.  

Other Romans named include Julius, Florus, Jucundus son of Flavius and the merchant Optatus. 

My favourite name is Namatobogius; I hope to meet him and find out who he was. 

When I finally arrive at Paternoster Square I am greeted by MOLA development and community project officer Magnus Copps (his real name) who introduces me to four members of The Vicus re-enactment group: Matt the baker, Simon the saddler, Chris the merchant and a lady scribe who wants to remain anonymous. When I ask them which Bloomberg Roman Londoners they are, they say they aren’t specific Londoners mentioned in the Bloomberg tablets, just generic Roman Britons. 

After a flash of disappointment, I take the initiative and assign them possible roles. 

Simon is wearing a fetching Celtic style tunic so I provisionally give him the name Namatobogius. When he does other events with The Vicus – for example at Fishbourne Roman villa or Caerleon legionary fortress – he plays the part of an auxiliary with the Hamian archers, co-incidentally the cohort that appears in my second Roman Quest book. He tells me you can use hair from a horse’s tail as a bowstring, and how the Romans used tannin-rich oak, apple or chestnut to dye leather.

With his bright blue eyes, long yellow hair and torque, Chris from Cambridge is obviously Belgic. But he’s wearing a Roman style toga. This fits his persona of an injured auxiliary from Germania who took early retirement and set up as a merchant. At first I dub him Optatus, a merchant mentioned in the tablets. But when he mentions that he is a micro-brewer, I give him a new persona: Tertius the Brewer. Appropriately, he is holding a beaker. His handmade socks and new shoes are totally authentic. He also confirms what I have always suspected, that it is impossible to run in a toga. 

Matt Hoskins, a cub scout leader from Poplar, a district of Southeast London, is a genial baker in his mid-twenties. With his pale skin, dark hair and tattooed arms he could be Celtic, so I might dub him Mogontius. He is a font of information about sourdough mixture, different types of flour and bugs in honey. He shows me a libum, a type of honey cake made with cheese and decorated with bay leaves. He also demonstrates Locatelli’s theory of how Roman bakers wrapped twine around their round loaves before baking so the customers could easily carry them away when hot. And possibly to keep them out of reach of vermin. 

But what about women?

Vindolanda gave us the famous birthday invitation sent by Sulpicia Lepidina to her friend Claudia Severa, but of all 92 persons named in the 80 legible Bloomberg tablets, not one is female. So I can make the elegant lady scribe anybody I want her to be. But it would be nice to have an authentic name, so I hop over to the online site of RIB, Roman Inscriptions in Britain, and immediately find two possible candidates.

She could be Tullia Numidia, commemorated in the epitaph of a now lost tombstone from London. Or how about Tretia Maria, named in a curse tablet (right) found near Moorgate? The author of the tablet (a lead one in this case, not from Bloomberg) is afraid of Tretia blurting out a secret. He or she writes: I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and memory and liver and lungs mixed up together, and her words, thoughts, and memory; thus may she be unable to speak what things are concealed...

Liver and lungs mixed up together? That’s a bit nasty. But wait! Writers have to be nasty. We have to give our characters interesting opponents and force them to undergo tests and trials. Otherwise the reader will be bored. So Tretia Maria it is. And even as I write it I wonder: Could Tretia be a misspelling of Tertia? In which case, she could be related to Tertius the Brewer: his beautiful daughter perhaps or younger sister. Perhaps Mogontius the baker and Namatobogius the cobbler are both vying for her affections. But what is the secret she knows and who wants to stop her blurting it out?

I feel a story coming on… 

To learn more about the tablets, and the ancient stories they reveal, check out Voices from Roman London. And you can follow MOLA on Twitter: @MOLArchaeology

Tinker Tailor Votive Willies

Caroline Lawrence with the artefact

It is a snapping cold day in February and I am hot on the trail of a Roman artefact from Rome's ancient port of Ostia, the setting of most of my Roman Mysteries series of books. The artefact – a small marble relief of four women and a baby – first came to my attention when someone posted it on an Ostia Facebook Group. We were all very excited because none of us had ever seen it before! A few quick emails told us that it was part of the Wellcome Trust Collection with the Science Museum. It was in storage at a museum repository in West London. As the only member of the Ostia Group based there, I volunteered to go and have a look. My motive was not unselfish: as an author of historical detective stories this is exactly the sort of object that can give me an entire plot line!

East Wing of Blythe House 1924

So on 2 February 2012, I take the train from Clapham Junction to Kensington Olympia, then walk to 23 Blythe Road. I've been to this part of London many times, (and even done a couple of book signings at Brook Green Books), but I never knew about the Victorian treasure box that is Blythe House. Built around the year 1900, its original purpose was to house the Post Office Savings Bank. At one time over a thousand female clerks worked here, segregated from their male counterparts for propriety's sake. They all used to enter via the East (i.e. back) Wing.

East Wing of Blythe House 2012

In 1979 the British Government bought part of Blythe House to use as extra storage space for the British Museum, the Victorian & Albert, and the Science Museum with the Wellcome Trust. The late Sir Roy Strong, director of the V&A called Blythe House "a marvellous building" and said it "should be not just a dumping ground but an exciting new complex for the public." It is a marvellous building. Still attached to the West Kensington Postal sorting office and minus the smokestacks visible in earlier photos, the distinctive red and white brickwork makes it look like a glorious confection of Lego blocks.

Shivering in my down parka, I arrive at the east wing of Blythe House, the same entrance used by all those female clerks. I go to a turnstile called Gate A and press the call button. Anyone can visit, but you have to make an appointment first. I have been put in touch with Ms. Katie Maggs and she has kindly agreed to meet me and show me the artefact. The place is maze-like even before I get inside, but I manage to find reception up some outside stairs. I check in with a porter behind a window. He gives me a yellow plastic pass. Katie meets me a few minutes later. She is young, warm, friendly and informative. With a degree in Classics from the University of Warwick followed by two MAs from University College London, one in Museum Studies and one in History of Medicine, she is the perfect person to tell me about the unusual artefact I'm about to examine.

As Katie leads me down a succession of corridors, stairs and passageways, I get a strong sense of deja vu. I've never been here before, but it seems terribly familiar. There is an odd 1970s institutional feel; it reminds me of the recent film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

'This place has an odd 1970s institutional feel,' I say. 'It's like something out of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.'

'That's because they filmed it here,' says Katie. 'They spent four days here last September.'

Toby Jones (Alleline) & Ciarán Hinds (Bland) on the roof of Blythe House

As a film buff and big fan of the movie, this is an added bonus to my visit! I learn that other movies and TV series were filmed here, (e.g. Minder and The New Avengers). You can also see an atmospheric short film called The Phantom Museum set in the maze of corridors, stairwells and storerooms at Blythe House.

Katie points out the willies

Our first stop is a nondescript door in one of those corridors. Katie has taken me here to pick up gloves, but really - bless her generous heart - she wants to show me some of the ancient treasures stored here. Henry Wellcome, an American adventurer and medical archaeologist, collected over a million objects to do with ancient life and especially medicine. The cream of his collection is on show in a permanent collection called Medicine Man at the Wellcome Collection near Euston, but there are plenty more goodies here in Blythe House. This particular room is full of shelves of clay body parts. These are the objects Romans dedicated to their gods if they wanted healing for a specific part of the body. I see dozens of heads, hands, feet, wombs, babies, breasts, & willies.

Yes, willies. If you couldn't wee or do other useful things with your dangly bits, or if you had some sort of boil or spot, you would dedicate a clay model of the appendage to the appropriate god. And you would pray very, very hard.

Votive eyes (& lead slingbullets?)

On the shelves I also see plaster casts of objects, e.g. a big bunch of votive intestines and the famous Babylonian divination liver in the British Museum. There are a couple of charming pigs. Why pigs? It was an agrarian society, deeply concerned with food and survival. If a farmer had a sick pig, he would offer a votive to the god. In addition to the large and medium objects on shelves, there are also drawers with smaller objects: grotesque faces, wooden nit combs, Etruscan false teeth, a flint knife, marbles, tiny votive statues and votive eyes, some of which look suspiciously like lead sling-bullets.

funeral slab with plug and hole

One funerary object in particular captures my attention: an inscribed slab with a plug over a carved hole into which the mourner could pour a libation of wine to refresh the ashes of the dead lying beneath. I knew about this custom but never realised that there was a special type of slab to make this easier. (I told my hairdresser about these libation slabs the day after my visit and she said a friend of hers often goes to his dad's grave with two beers. He drinks one himself and pours out the other in slurps for his father. I guess we're not so different from the Romans, after all.)

Henry Wellcome in Indian headdress

Henry Solomon Wellcome had a fascinating life. Born in a frontier log cabin in Almond, Wisconsin in the year 1853, his interest in archaeology was sparked by the find of an Indian arrowhead when he was only four. Five years later, his family moved west in a covered wagon and were caught up in a bloody Sioux uprising in Minnesota. Nine-year-old Henry helped his pharmacist uncle Jacob tend those wounded by arrows and tomahawks. These two incidents sparked his abiding interest in "primitive" peoples. Henry gained his love of medicine from working in his uncle's pharmacy. Later, he studied medicine, grew a moustache and went on an expedition to South America in search of quinine bark. In 1880 he moved to London to set up a pharmaceutical business with a friend. From then on, England was his base for travel all over the world. He met famous explorers, associated with cultured socialites and married the beautiful daughter of Dr. Barnardo. But his main fame is for all the artefacts he collected himself and through others, over a million during his lifetime. He was finally knighted and died at the ripe old age of 83, leaving his collection to the Wellcome Foundation, the Trust he himself established.

My three passions are the Romans, the Wild West and movies. In the oft-filmed Blythe House with its many Roman artefacts collected by an American born in the Wild West, those passions have come together in a delightful way. At the end of my hour with the charming and generous Katie, I am excited and enthused. And I haven't even told you about the object of my visit. That I must leave for another blog (which you can find HERE.)

P.S. You can find hundreds more fascinating objects on the Science Museum's great interactive website, Brought to Life. There is also a superb site devoted to Henry Wellcome. And, oh, all right! As you've made it to the end of this post, here is a picture of some votive willies. If you want to make your own investigation, start here.

Roman Poo & Pee

[WARNING: this blog entry contains excerpts from a talk I gave at the British Museum called "Ancient Romans & their Poo". It will make you go "Ewww!"]

When I first started studying Classics, I thought ancient Rome must have been nice and clean because of their marvelous engineering and the aqueducts that brought tons of water from miles away. I thought ancient Rome had luxurious bath-houses and sparkling white marble columns and steps, like this scene (right) from the 1953 film Julius Caesar. I thought everybody wore nice clean tunics and no rubbish marred the streets. And of course Romans used sponges-on-sticks as toilet paper. The next best thing to puppy-soft Andrex. (read more in my blog So What's with the Sponge-Stick?) What could be more sanitary than a soft sea-sponge on a stick?

toilet in shape of chariot

However, as I researched my books and travelled the world, I realized that Rome was probably more like a hot, crowded third-world city: Calcutta, Marrakesh or Cairo. Roman cities would have been colourful but also dirty, crumbly, smelly and very unsanitary. There would have been human and animal dung in the road, plus pee, dead animals, flies, sick and infected people, tainted water, sour wine, mud, blood, rotting vegetables and rubble. Romans didn't know about bacteria or germs, so in many Roman homes you often find the toilet is right next to the hearth in the kitchen. Very rarely do you find a toilet like this luxurious marble one from the Baths of Caracalla, (shaped like a chariot in case you need to go in a hurry!)

In my first book, The Thieves of Ostia, Vespasian is Emperor.

One ancient Roman described Vespasian's expression as that of a man sitting on the toilet trying to do a poo. Here he is (right) with his son Titus. Both these portraits are upstairs in the British Museum. What do you think? Does Vespasian have a strained expression on his face?

When Vespasian was emperor he did several eccentric things, including putting a tax on urine. The ancient version of dry-cleaners were called fullers and they used urine (pee) for part of their cleaning process. (In fact the Latin word for urine is lotium and is linked to the word for wash.) The fullers often had pots outside their establishments where men could stop to pee. They also bought urine from the public latrines, and this was when the tax was paid.

Soon after this urine tax was imposed, Roman wits started calling piss-pots "vespasians". Embarrassed, Vespasian's son Titus asked his father why he insisted on making money by taxing smelly urine. Vespasian pulled out a sestertius and asked Titus to sniff it. "So?" shrugged Titus. "You see," said Vespasian. "Money doesn’t stink."  Some people in Germany liked this story so much that they made a family board game based on going to the toilet in Roman times! It’s called PECUNIA NON OLET which means "money doesn’t stink." Sadly, it doesn't exist in English.

In my second book, about the eruption of Vesuvius, I investigated the different types of graffiti on Roman walls. As well as the Christian graffiti that appears in this book they wrote things like DON'T POO HERE! We also know from inscriptions and graffiti that there were often queues outside the public loos! That meant the public latrines - the foricae - were heavily used and therefore probably quite filthy.

Romans didn't have soap. Instead, they had olive oil. They would go into the baths, strip off and rub scented olive oil all over their bodies. After some exercise and maybe a session in the steam room, they would then scrape it off with a bronze knife thingy called a strigil. Then they flicked this oily mixture of dead skin, oil, sweat and dirt (called gloios) onto the floor by the drains. They did this in the public baths. Imagine if you used your public swimming pool to get clean… along with all the neighbours on your block, young and old, healthy and sick. I used to belong to a health club until I found out people kept getting sick from going in the jacuzzi, the warm tub. If that can happen in today’s world, think how icky it must have been in Roman times!

a Roman chamberpot

In The Charioteer of Delphi, my characters Jonathan and Lupus go to the new Baths of Titus near the Circus Maximus in Rome. Jonathan finds something floating in the hot plunge. This probably happened a lot, unless pools were cleaned regularly. In addition to floaters, imagine a thin scum of dead skin, hair and scabs floating on top of the pool. As well as a scum on the water, think of what would cover the floor. Slippery gloios, spilled oil, and also crumbs from snacks, which we know people ate in the baths. It’s no wonder Pliny the Elder tells us that cockroaches loved the warm and steamy Roman Baths.

Because the Romans didn’t really understand about hygiene, there were probably flies everywhere. Vespasian’s younger brother Domitian used to amuse himself by trying to spear lazy summer flies with his stylus (the sharp implement used to write on wax tablets). One day a man went to see Domitian and asked his Greek scribe if there was anyone else in the room with the Emperor's younger brother. “Nobody,” replied the secretary dryly. “Not even a fly.”

Zoe from Blue Peter drinks pee?

My seventh Roman Mystery, The Enemies of Jupiter, has lots of gruesome facts about medicine and doctors. Doctors were called "dung-eaters" because some of them sipped your pee and tasted your poo to diagnose what was wrong with you. In that book I also tell how one doctor bleached his teeth by drinking his own urine! When I was on Blue Peter a few years ago I convinced presenter Zoe to try some urine teeth-bleaching mouthwash. She didn't like the taste! (Of course she was just pretending.) You can watch the clip on YouTube; the Roman beauty bit starts 4 minutes in. (That's me standing behind Zoe, in the unbleached stola.)

The Sirens of Surrentum is full of passion and poison. For this book I researched half a dozen deadly plants and their antidotes and learned some more fascinating facts. For example, everybody knows an antidote is something you take to stop poison taking effect. But what most books and TV shows don’t tell you is that an antidote counteracts poison by getting your body to expel it, either by vomiting or pooing! Or both.

In The Fugitive from Corinth, a Roman Mystery set on the Greek mainland, somebody accidentally empties a chamberpot out of a tavern window onto somebody down below! What is a chamberpot? It’s a pot you keep underneath your bed or in a corner of your room as a portable toilet. One Latin word for chamberpot is matella, which usually means a narrow necked flagon. Other words were pelvis, scaphium and situla. A Roman poet called Martial wrote an epigram about a  chamberpot "peeing from a chip in the side". (Epigram XII.32) Some scholars think chamberpots might have been more hygienic than toilets over pits or sewers. This is because animals might crawl out of the pit or sewer and track bacteria from poo onto food and bedding.

title card for my British Museum talk

There have always been urban myths about creatures climbing up out of the sewers or toilet. You can read more about this on my blog called Demon in the Toilet. You might think the Romans were silly and superstitious to believe there were demons in the loos. But in her forthcoming book, Roman Toilets: their Archaeology and Cultural History, Dr Gemma Jansen, a Dutch archaeologist, suggests that demons were the ancient Roman equivalent of bacteria. I think that is a brilliant idea. Like demons, bacteria are virtually invisible, but frightening because of what they can do to you… If a demon possessed you, he could make you sick or even kill you. Just like bad bacteria, germs or viruses.

don't worry; it's fake

There may not be pigs, alligators or demons in the loo, but there are germs. We know what the poor Romans didn't know: to wash our hands after doing a poo or a pee!

P.S. Thanks to everyone at the British Museum, and to all the kids who brought their parents to my talk, and to all of you brave enough to touch my fake dog poo. It was "sticky and stretchy"... Ewww!

P.P.S. If you want to know which of my Roman Mysteries has the highest 'yuk' factor it is probably The Enemies of Jupiter, now available as ebook and audio, as well as in the old fashioned format!

[The 17 books in the Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children 9+ studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. The Roman Mystery Scrolls series is aimed at kids aged 7+ and the Roman Quests series, set in Roman Britain, is a follow on for kids 9+]