Rome « Alison Morton's Thrillers

Exile - what does it actually mean?

I expect we can all name a number of famous exiles without too much bother – Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Trotsky, Benazir Bhutto, Roman poet Ovid, Marlene Dietrich, Aristotle, the von Trapp family, Albert Einstein, to name but a few.

Exile is essentially a separation from your homeland and can be temporary or permanent. Sometimes […]

The Roman home front

Our first encounter with Romans is often a film or TV series depicting soldiers marching in armour, being tough, shouting and thrusting a sword into some barbarian in a dark, wet and enemy-infested wood. Or perhaps we think about the ruins left of magnificent imperial or public buildings?

But what about the calmer side of […]

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. […]