On their third album “Covenant,” the Floridian death metal band Morbid Angel devoted the iconic track “Lion’s Den” to the often sensationalized history of violent persecutions conducted by the Roman Empire against the Christians. On their followup LP “Domination” the band develops this theme into a direct equation of Roman imperialism and anti-Christian Satanism, with […]
In 390 BCE, before the Romans fully developed into an invincible military machine that steamrolled across the Mediterranean and beyond, they got a foretaste of the very medicine they would administer to countless cities. Their own city was captured by an enemy army, pillaged, and burned. 800 years before the Visigoths would get the next […]
For much of the decade of the 50s BCE, Julius Caesar extended Roman dominion over the fields and forests of Gaul (roughly modern-day France). He did so not only through superior discipline, tactics, and logistics of the Roman legions, but also through a careful strategy of divide-and-conquer, taking advantage of the political disunity of the […]
Attila the Hun is the most well known of the barbarian warlords who terrorized the Roman Empire in the 400s CE. Ironically, he was responsible for neither sacking Rome or establishing any permanent kingdom in place of the Western Roman provinces. For the sackings of Rome, we can thank Alaric and his Visigoths (410 CE) […]
“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. […]
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 […]
The politician, general, and real estate mogul Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the major players in Roman history in the turbulent first century BCE. He became the richest man in Rome through ruthless business tactics, including the strategy of having a private fire brigade that would put out fires provided that the building’s owner […]
Heavy Metal Classicist 