History Chickens!

me and my soft toy chicken

[I first published this on the History Girls in 2011]

One of the drawbacks of being a historical fiction author living in 21st century London is that you have to keep reminding yourself about things that would have existed in first century Rome. Or a Nevada mining town in the 1860s. Or Jerusalem during the siege of Titus. Or where-ever, when-ever.

Some things don't change about town life: beggars, pickpockets, street markets... But there were lots of critters roaming about back then that you rarely see today on the Kings Road, Chelsea. Horses, stray dogs, feral cats, flocks of goats and... chickens!

ancient Roman pawprint

My husband Richard and I are both avid fans of historical fiction, especially movies and TV productions. Whenever we are watching a Western or a Sword and Sandals drama and we see poultry, we punch the air and shout "CHICKENS!" Then we mentally give the film or TV show an extra star, a kind of "chicken-o-meter" of authenticity. (We have recently added a "spittoon-ometer" to gauge the historical accuracy of westerns. What is YOUR accuracy barometer?)

Forum Boarium 1855

One of my favourite things about HBO's Rome was the presence of chickens in the forum. Most set designers wouldn't dream of making Mark Anthony step over a roosting free-ranger as he went to give Caesar's funeral oration, but the producers of this programme were spot on in this respect. Most Romans would have encountered a daily hazard in steaming piles of manure, scavenging dogs, fleabitten feral cats, etc. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen... Lend me your ugh! What did I just step in?" Any Roman passing through the Forum Boarium would definitely have had to watch his or her step. Forum Boarium means "Cattle Market", but they also dealt in goats, sheep, pigs and no doubt chickens. This is one of the 10% surprises I have blogged about elsewhere.

"Only three sesterces..."

Another one of my favourite historical dramas is HBO's Deadwood. This TV series – with its amazing evocation of an 1870s mining town in the Black Hills of South Dakota – revived the Western genre in America and partly inspired my new P.K Pinkerton Mysteries series. But the producers of Deadwood made one grievous error. NO CHICKENS! (apart from some briefly glimpsed dead chicken feet in the title sequence, that is.) 

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when screenwriter Dom Shaw introduced a sacred chicken and its owner to the CBBC TV adaptation of my book The Slave-girl from Jerusalem. Floridius the Soothsayer, brilliantly played by Mark Benton, posts a sign in the forum:

Threptus & Aphrodite

Aulus Probus Floridius: Haruspex, mercator sacrarum gallinarum, orator, peritissimus ad horoscopos operaque varia. 

(Aulus Probus Floridius: Soothsayer, dealer in sacred hens, orator, very skilled in horoscopes and random tasks)

Floridius also says amusing things like: "Would you like me to sacrifice this nervous chicken to ensure the verdict? Only three sesterces?" and "The entrails of the sacred chickens never lie!" Also, he falls into the fountain a lot.

Most authors would be peeved if a screenwriter introduced a major character into an adaptation of their story. But I loved Floridius so much that I gave him a walk-on part in the final Roman Mystery, The Man from Pomegranate Street. Then I let him have a bigger part in the second volume of Roman Mini-Mysteries, as sidekick to an 8-year-old beggar-boy detective named Threptus. And finally I conceived an entire spin-off series starring the two of them.

And all because of those chickens. 

You can read "Threptus and the Sacred Chickens" in The Legionary from Londinium & other Mini-Mysteries. 

The Roman Mysteries are perfect for children 9+ studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. The Roman Mystery Scrolls series (with chickens) is aimed at kids aged 7+ and the Roman Quests series, set in Roman Britain, is a new spinoff series for kids 9+.

For more information about me and my books, visit carolinelawrence.com

Pee-you! B'kak! P'tooey!

by Caroline Lawrence

Hey, KIDS! If you went back in a TIME MACHINE to ANCIENT ROME, what do you think would surprise you most?

I'm thinking THREE THINGS.

Roman funeral pyre

1. PEE-YOU! (the smell)

They washed clothes in urine (PEE) and then smoked them with sulphur (smells like ROTTEN EGGS). But those little MUREX sea-snails they used to dye cloth scarlet smelled even worse! Steaming piles of HORSE, OXEN and DONKEY MANURE sat right there in the streets. People had BAD BREATH caused by rotten teeth. (We know this because they DRANK PERFUME to make their breath smell better.) Daily sacrifices would have made a RANCID BAR-B-QUE smell. And smoke from a thousand braziers would have caused terrible SMOG. Also, they BURNED DEAD BODIES (cremated) in the graveyard just outside the town walls. Market-stall-keepers probably left FRUIT and scraps of MEAT to ROT! You wouldn't want to be downwind of the garum factories; there would be an awful FISHY smell from the blood and fermented fish GUTS. There would have been lots of SWEATY MEN and PERSPIRING LADIES because there was no deodorant! Have you ever smelled the sickly sweet smell of OPEN SEWERS in the heat? Urgh. Not to mention the PUBLIC TOILETS with multiple seats but no doors (see picture below). And some famous graffiti from Pompeii asks people not to POO in the street. Ew. At night they carried PINE-PITCH torches. But those might have smelled nice because they sometimes burned PINECONES as AIR FRESHENER.

Can you think of any other yukky smells?

soothsayer and sacred chicken

2. B'KAK! (free range animals)
I think there would have been ANIMALS everywhere in ANCIENT ROME. Walking through the Roman Forum, you would have to be careful not to trip over GUARD DOGS, LAP DOGS, SCAVENGING DOGS, Mangy half-wild CATS & RATS feeding on rotting food. You might see a goat herd driving his GOATS to the Forum Boarium, a cow herder driving his CATTLE to the Forum Boarium, a shepherd driving his SHEEP to the Forum Boarium. A priest leading an OX to the altar would be a common sight. So would a priest leading a RAM to the altar.  SACRED CHICKENS, FREE-RANGE CHICKENS, CHICKENS IN A MARKET PEN. SACRED GEESE on the Capitoline Hill were fierce enough to act as guards. Also, what about BUGS? There would have been NITS, LICE, COCKROACHES, FLEAS, FLIES, MOSQUITOES, WEEVILS and DUNG BEETLES. Guess what? Near Ostia's port of Rome there was an ELEPHANT farm to supply the GAMES. Maybe sometimes other WILD ANIMALS destined for BEAST HUNTS in the Colosseum got loose, too.

Can you think of any other animals you might have seen in Ancient Rome?


2. P'TOOEY! (superstition)

whistling in the latrines by Helen Forte 

Romans were INCREDIBLY superstitious and probably SPAT on the ground, KNOCKED ON WOOD, made RUDE GESTURES and grabbed their WILLIES to fend off EVIL. A non-rude SIGN AGAINST EVIL is to hold out your left hand palm first. Here were some NO-NOs that might bring BAD LUCK crashing down on you: Stepping over the threshold with your LEFT FOOT. SNEEZING on board a ship. CUTTING YOUR HAIR on board ship. Doing ANYTHING on the anniversary of a terrible DEFEAT. Romans wore good luck AMULETS shaped like MEDUSA's FACE, EYEBALLS and WILLIES. They feared the EVIL EYE and were wary of people with BLUE EYES. They studied BIRD PATTERNS to see what the gods were saying. Also LIGHTNING, THUNDER and WIND. It was bad luck to get MARRIED in JUNE! Any animal born with a DEFECT was a monstrum or PORTENT. Romans thought DEMONS lived in the SEWERS. To stop them POPPING UP you could WHISTLE. That's why they painted SNAKES & FORTUNA (good luck) on bathroom walls. A HARUSPEX was a man who looked at animal guts to see what the gods were saying. An AUGUR studied BIRDS and WEATHER. A SOOTHSAYER used any methods he could to foresee the future so you could stay safe. Also, most Romans had an altar called a LARARIUM in their house so they could make DAILY OFFERINGS to their special gods. And what do you find hundreds of in museums and at Roman sites? ALTARS. These were stone slabs dedicated to the god in fulfilment of a vow. You could make little offerings on them, too, sometimes even slaughter an animal, which was called a SACRIFICE.

Can you think of any other strange superstitious beliefs they held?

Threptus the beggar by Helen Forte

One of the things I try to do in my books is make them a bit like a TIME MACHINE to take you back to Ancient Rome. I start with an interesting character, put him in an exciting story and then mix in some of the SURPRISING and UNUSUAL ingredients of life in ANCIENT ROME.

My newest series is about a BEGGAR BOY turned SOOTHSAYER's APPRENTICE who lives in OSTIA the PORT of ROME. His name is THREPTUS and he is 8 years old.

We first meet THREPTUS in The Man from Pomegranate Street, when he is bidding four young detectives farewell. The youngest detective, LUPUS, tells Threptus to CARRY ON MY GOOD WORK and gives him a wax tablet.

THREPTUS then pops up in a short story called "Threptus and the Sacred Chickens" in The Legionary from Londinium and other Mini-Mysteries. Ingredients include a KITTEN, a SOOTHSAYER and of course some SACRED CHICKENS. 

Threptus the Roman beggar boy gets a mystery all to himself in The Sewer Demon. In that book, poor THREPTUS has to GO DOWN THE SEWER to look for CLUES!

Pee-you! (illustration from The Sewer Demon by Helen Forte)

Next comes The Poisoned Honey Cake. In that book poor THREPTUS is so hungry that he steals a honey-cake dedicated to a demigod and LOSES HIS VOICE. He has to solve the MYSTERY of how to get his voice back. This book includes ALTARS, SACRIFICIAL HONEY CAKES and SACRED CHICKENS.

I hope you will enjoy all the SMELLY, ANIMAL-FILLED and SPOOKY bits of my stories about THREPTUS, the Roman beggar turned soothsayer's apprentice. www.carolinelawrence.com

Etruscan Book of Thunder

Menrva (Etruscan Minerva) with thunder

Back in the 1970's, undergraduate Jean MacIntosh Turfa first discovered an unusual Etruscan Book of Omens when a fire alarm drove her out of her usual library at Bryn Mawr College. Or so she told us at the Eva Lorant Memorial lecture at the British Museum on Friday 14 October, 2011.

Exiled from her usual library, and not one to waste valuable research time, Turfa went to Bryn Mawr's Classics library instead. It was there that she found an article which led her to the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar, an almanac telling what the rumble of thunder signifies on any given day of the year.

Brontoscopic?!?

Brontos means "thunder" in Ancient Greek. (Any 8-year-old boy will tell you brontosaurus means "thunder lizard")
Scopic means "seeing" and by association "prediction", so...
Brontoscopic means PREDICTION BY THUNDER.

Yes, thunder was considered a means of prophecy in ancient times.

Etruscan civilisation flourished c. 850 BC-AD 50

The Etruscans were the slightly mysterious people already living in Italy before Aeneas and his band settled on the banks of the Tiber. Their language was like no other language ever known anywhere. They had no alphabet until the Greeks came around 750 BC and then they borrowed that one. The territory of the Etruscans was Etruria, modern Tuscany, the region south of the Arno and north of the Tiber. (see map) Some of their famous towns are Tarquinia, Cerveteri and Veii (just 12 miles north of Rome). This region was rich in copper and tin and it made the Etruscans prosperous.

The Etruscans believed the gods spoke through natural phenomena, like lightning or deformed animals. Some of their wisest members learned how to interpret omens. (An omen is any event regarded as a portent for good or evil. The word omen is Latin for "sign".)

In ancient Rome, if you wanted to know what the future held in store for you, your first stop would probably be an Etruscan soothsayer. There were two types of soothsayers.

Etruscan model of a liver for divination

The Haruspex looked at entrails of a sacrificed animal, especially the liver. The Etruscans gave us that famous bronze model of a liver known as the "Piacenza Liver". (right)

The Augur looked abnormal phenomena in the celestial sphere. Not just the flights of birds, but also clouds, rainbows, eclipses... and thunder. Hence the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar. 

WHEN WAS IT WRITTEN?

Yes, they had cosmic rays back then

The fifty years between 850 and 800 BC experienced an unusal bombardment of COSMIC RAYS. There is actually a name for this phenomenon: The Halstatt Minimum. Although it sounds like the title of an episode of The Big Bang Theory, it refers to lively solar flare activity which can skew results of carbon dating and also cause storms with thunder and lightning. This might have been when the Brontoscopic Calendar was first composed. The Etruscans had no written language as yet, but it could have been passed from one soothsayer to another verbally.

WHO WROTE IT?

Etruscan adult and child (Louvre)

The original author might have been a mysterious godlike child. Tages, AKA the Puer Senex ("old man boy") was a strange grey-haired child of great wisdom and bad teeth who sprang up from a ploughed furrow. Cicero sarcastically called him the "Dug Up Boy". The actual bones of Tages might have been found in a special tomb in Tarquinia (Etruscan territory). If this is indeed the skeleton of the Puer Senex, they show he had a brain tumour that might have given him visions and hallucinations. Was he the author? As writing hadn't yet reached the Etruscans in 850 BC, perhaps he gave the oral version.

Then, after the Etruscans adopted the Greek alphabet a century later, it might have been written down on papyrus, cloth or metal. In the first century BC it was translated from Etruscan into Latin by a contemporary of Julius Caesar named Publius Nigidius Figulus. Six hundred years after that, Figulus's Latin version was translated into Byzantine Greek by a scholar named John the Lydian at the court of Justinian. And that is how it has come down to us.

WHAT DOES IT SAY?

The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is a kind of almanac. It assumes that for every day of the year in Etruria, thunder has a different meaning. All the entries begin with the same phrase ει βροντηση - "If it thunders..." The formula goes: If it thunders, then such and such will happen. For example:

June 1 - If it thunders, then there will be a destruction of crops except barley...

In her lecture, Dr. Turfa said boring agricultural entries like the one above show that Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is almost certainly genuine. If it was a Roman or Byzantine forgery, then Figulus or John the Lydian would have spiced it up a bit. However, the almanac is mostly concerned with crops and animals, i.e. FOOD. (Those of us in the affluent 21st century forget just how hard it was to keep food on the table in ancient times.) There are also a lot of mentions of threatening wars and assassination of leaders.

The Thunder Omen

Here are some of my favourite predictions from the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar, ones which might appear in The Roman Mysteries Scrolls my series about a funny soothsayer named Floridius and his apprentice, an ex-beggar-boy Threptus.

June 15 - If it thunders, feathered creatures shall be injured during the summer and fishes shall perish. 
June 28 - If it thunders, there will be drought and a plague of poisonous reptiles. 
August 5 - If it thunders, it means women will be wiser than men. 
August 19 - If it thunders, women and slaves will dare to commit murder. 
October 7 - If it thunders, there will be fewer beans but more wine.
October 23 - If it thunders, the people will be of marvellously good cheer. 
December 15 - If it thunders, many will set out for war, but few will return. 
December 29 - If it thunders, there will be a healthy leanness of bodies. 
January 22 - If it thunders, there will be plenty but also an abundance of mice and deer.

Dr. Turfa's lecture touched on many other fascinating topics such as Caesar's revision of the calendar, an eruption of Vesuvius c. 1780 BC and the earliest chicken wing to be found in Europe (in a hut near Castelgandolfo). Many of her erudite nuggets will no doubt appear in her forthcoming book, Divining the Etruscan World: The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. But you can see the thunder omens for each day in an appendix of The Religion of the Etruscans (right) and also HERE.

[The first of the Roman Mysteries Scrolls series for kids 7+ is The Sewer Demon. Other titles include The Poisoned Honey Cake and The Thunder Omen. The 17+ books in the existing Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children aged 9+, especially those studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. The Roman Mysteries are available on DVD and also Amazon Prime.]

Embalmed in Honey

As an author of 17 novels and a dozen short stories, the most frequent question I get asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" Well, from books like Vicki Leon's is one place!

I bought the wittily titled Working IX to V a few years ago and have been dipping into it with great pleasure. It's all about strange jobs and careers from Ancient Greek and Roman times. She mentions well-known jobs like Gladiators, Pirates, Vigiles, Bakers, Garum-makers, etc. But she also talks about less well-known careers, that of the Armpit Plucker, Amber scout, Cryptologist and Funeral Clown. In one of her accounts, that of the Stercorarius (manure salesman), she mentions the ancient Roman urban myth of a giant octopus in the sewers. This one line gave me the idea for the entire plot of a new book I am working on called The Sewer Demon.

Vicki Leon's latest book, hot off the press, is called How To Mellify a Corpse. Glancing through it, I see she covers topics such as Gems and Gem fakery (idea there for a counterfeiting gem-maker); Stealth Bombs and Stench Warfare (more ideas for deadly poisons); Model flying dove designer Archytas (would be good for a slapstick plot). There is also a chapter about how Alexander the Great decided to be embalmed in honey (i.e. mellified) rather than be cremated like a good Greek boy. That's where the title of the book comes from. Vicki is also posting more free ideas on her great blog called Historical Detective.

Vicki Leon is erudite and witty. Here are some of her throw-away lines: "The Greeks had an edifice complex", "Entrail reading ... splashy in multiple senses of the word", "In days of yore, honey got a lot of buzz", etc.

Above all she is a genius at linking the ancient and modern.
Witness the following chapter headings:
Religious Syncretism: The Grinch who stole Saturnalia
Refrigeration: The Big Chill B.C.
Acoustics: The first surround sound
Ghosts and worse: Necromancing the Stone
Arena Addiction: Franchising Blood and Sand
Archimedes part 1: Early googling

The Sewer Demon

Vicki's books are a veritable gold-mine of ideas for writers like me.

Teachers can use her fun topics as starting points for projects. 

And if you, a family member or friend is a lover of Classics then this is the perfect book for dipping in and out of in, maybe in the latrine!

How To Mellify a Corpse is fascinating fun and I give it X out of X. Enjoy!

[The first of the new Roman Mysteries Scrolls series for kids 7+ is The Sewer Demon. Future titles include The Poisoned Honey Cake and The Thunder Omen. The 17+ books in the existing Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children aged 9+, especially those studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. There are DVDs of some of the books as well as an interactive game.]