“Crossing the Rubicon” has became a phrase to describe any act of passing beyond a point of no return. Once you’ve crossed this line, there’s no going back, and you’re in it till the end. Such was the case for Julius Caesar when he led his legions across the Rubicon River in January of 49 […]
In 66 CE, as the tyrannical regime of the Roman emperor Nero began to crumble, a radical movement called the Zealots took possession of Jerusalem and raised the flag of revolt from the yoke of imperial rule. The revolution gained further momentum as the Romans found themselves distracted by a brutal civil war through the […]
According to legend a man named Romulus, the son of the war-god Mars and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, founded the city of Rome on the Palatine Hill in 753 BCE. Romulus gained the right to found and rule the new city in his own name after a power struggle with his twin brother Remus, […]
Roman emperors, as paragons of both glorious conquerors and vicious tyrants, are among the most popular lyrical subjects of classical reception in metal. Songs dedicated to the likes of Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and other of the most famous and infamous imperatores will get plenty of airtime on this page. Dautha play Swedish epic doom metal. […]
The sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid is devoted to Aeneas’ descent into the Underworld, where the ghost of his father Anchises gives him a vision of the future glory of the Romans, a future dependent on Aeneas’ fulfilling the destiny assigned him by the gods to settle the Trojans in Italy at whatever cost. Guided […]
Rome’s domination of the ancient Mediterranean was by no means inevitable. Between 264 and 146 BCE, the Romans fought three long and bloody wars with their most formidable rival, the Phoenician superpower of Carthage, a city-state in North Africa. The First Punic War (called Punic after the Latin word for ‘Phoenician’) was a slugfest waged […]
Any dungeon synth fans here? Though not technically metal, this genre of keyboard-driven medieval ambience substantially overlaps with metal (especially black metal) in terms of fanbase. Naturally, a few dungeon synth projects also treat classical themes, including Båvingr from Oxford, England. This song is part of a 2018 concept album Bycirce about the most iconic […]
Starting with the iconic anthem by Iron Maiden, the myth of Icarus has not infrequently been taken up by metal bands as a tale of one pushing the limits of humanity and nature to achieve immortality, even if that immortality comes in the form of deathless fame after a tragic but memorable downfall. But the […]
Otus and Ephialtes were two mythical giants, and among the original mortals to challenge the supremacy of the gods. Due to the mythical remembrance of their defiance, those who subsequently challenged or questioned the power of the gods (i.e. the earliest porto-atheists) were conceived of by the ancient Greeks as latter-day incarnations of these gigantic […]
One of the more familiar elements of the Greco-Roman Underworld is Charon, the haggard boatman who ferries souls across the River Styx to their eternal destination, for a fee of course. Those without payment, or who have not been properly given funeral rites and burial, are doomed to linger on the near shore for a […]
Heavy Metal Classicist 