You’re teleported to 44 BCE Rome in your everyday street clothes. You’re brought before Caesar and he believes you might be from the future, hoping to bring him fortune. One day he questions you, asking “How Do I Die?”
A fun comic I made based off what I learned about the Julio-Claudians from my Art History class…Roman emperors were kind of hilarious, omg. They’re a bit more based off their likenesses than, say Himaruya’s emperor designs (but I like those too haha). I sent it to my Art History TA and she really liked it eheheh
i want to share with you some of my favourite graffiti from Pompeii
“Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!“
“Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this.“
“We two dear men, friends forever, were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus.“
“Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.“
“On April 19th, I made bread.“
“
I have buggered men.“
“If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend.“
“It took 640 paces to walk back and forth between here and there ten times.“
“Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they every have before!“
“Epaphra is not good at ball games.”
“Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores.“
“Secundus likes to screw boys.“
I’ve always loved these. Humanity has never fucking changed.
If I lived in the Roman Empire I would’ve gotten food poisoning from an unscrupulous street vendor and been immortalised shitting myself to death on a public toilet during the eruption of Vesuvius
and archaeologists would dub me “the shitting man” b/c as usual women’s achievements in history are erased
GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.
[From Daily Life of the Ancient Romans by David Matz]
*rolls up to the window* yeah gimme a number V combo
“I’ll have two number IXs, a number IX large, a number VI with extra ambrosia, a number VIII, two number XLVs, one with cheese, and a large goblet of wine.”
hail, I am Gaius Furius, welcome to Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives
“YEAH CAN I GET A FVCKIN VVVVHHH….VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVHHHHHHHHH…BVRGER?”
History wants so badly for Cleopatra to be beautiful. Like they can’t conceive of Rome being intimidated by anything less
because being a linguist, fleet commander, and powerful ruler doesn’t matter, only her looks
Her Arab contemporaries raved about her being very interested and knowledgeable in the sciences.
She completely reformed the system in Alexandria, and Egypt at large; making it much more of a functional powerhouse.
She did what 300 years of her ancestors couldn’t: Managed to get the support of both the Greek AND Egyptian subjects she ruled.
There is a sculpture that has been identified as her, through comparisons to coins minted under her rule, that proves beyond a doubt that she wasn’t particularly beautiful.
It isn’t that people just happen to believe it by mistake. Rome was fucking terrified of her and painted her as a vapid, scheming, beautiful, sex obsessed queen to discredit her to their people. She was a threat, and that was how they handled it. The unfortunate thing is that that is the most surviving record of her. A smear campaign against one of the smartest, most powerful women in human history.
This is a woman who became her father’s co-ruler at nearly 14 years old in order to train for her actual ascension to the throne, who was forced to marry her own siblings in order to keep her power, and it’s widely believed that she poisoned them so she could rule alone. She’s a Pharaoh who led Egypt into a new era of wealth, who went fearlessly into war to protect her rule and Egypt’s independence from the Roman empire, a woman who took her own life rather than face being raped and tortured by her conquerors, knowing full well that she was leaving her surviving children in their uncertain mercy. Cleopatra is one of the most interesting, morally ambiguous, complexing historical figures we have and the media has turned her into a tantalizing sex object for the male gaze.
Even after Cleopatra died her influence on those around her lived on: her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, was the only child of Cleopatra’s to live to adulthood, and she became queen of Mauretania along with her husband Juba and it’s believed they married for love, which was extremely rare for that time period, especially among nobles/the upper class. Not only did she grow up in the house of her mother’s worst enemy and technical murderer, but she still went on to become a queen who possessed an equal amount of political power as her husband, even having her face minted on coins on the opposite side of his likeness, showing they were equal rulers.
Cleopatra and her influence on history, and her daughter’s legacy, have both been brushed aside in favour of the sexy Cleopatra visage. It’s bullshit. Egyptian mythology is interesting and vivid, and full of powerful women and it’s bullshit that we take some of the most powerful women in Africa’s history and try to turn them into fashion icons or sluts who only ruled through toying with men.
I LIVE FOR PEOPLE TO KNOW THIS, people still refuse to believe that a woman can/could have achieved anything without beauty or fucking magical powers
More. The fact that Cleopatra’s face appears on statues and coins in a way that doesn’t reflect the beauty standards of the time means she WANTED it that way. We know what they beauty standards were because every other fucker had statues made with very similar features. Not Cleopatra. She was like, this is MY face, you will love it as it is.
Steel Phoenix Studios 