Roman life | Alison Morton's Roma Nova

Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Wind back 2000 years to Ancient Rome

Campus Martius Rome, AD 300 (reconstruction)

Shopping is a national obsession in many countries and December is the peak of the frenzy. In a way it’s a sign of the relative wealth of 21st century people, but in another it plays to the instincts of acquisition and somewhere in the lizard brain, survival. Everybody […]

How far is the road to Rome, or even Virunum?

Roman horseman (Author photo of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline)

Travelling in the ancient world was different, fundamentally different. Young (and not so young) men were by far the most mobile in the Ancient Rome over the whole period whether you count it to AD 476 (west) or 1453 (east) because they fought in […]

Limonum or Lemonum? (Poitiers to you and me)

Funerary goods, Antran (Author photo)

Earlier this week I took an afternoon off and went visiting Romans in Poitiers, about an hour’s drive south of where I live. France is rich in Roman archaeology and you can trip over remains in almost every town even if the experts can’t quite agree the site of […]