Dogs in Ancient Rome

It appears that Romans liked dogs. They were used to assist farmers and hunters and even soldiers. Romans also kept dogs as pets in their homes or as guard dogs. I guess they weren't too fussy about cats according to this website. The Egyptians were the cat people of the Ancient times...

The Molossian was the breed of dog in Rome that we can still see today as it's descendants include the Mastiff breeds including the Neopolitan Mastiff and the Dogue de Bordeaux. I can imagine that the Molossian was a formidable dog on a hunt or on the battlefield.

Convivium

I think it would be interesting to try to recreate a Roman dinner party. Lay on some Roman recipes and then get the guests to each do a turn entertaining the other guests...maybe have one tell a stirring tale of the Battle of Actium...maybe have a musically inclined guest do a little song that he or she created in a style that would fit the "times".
I've been mulling this one over for a couple of years. It's time to get it into gear and plan it up.
Of course, to keep things authentic, costumes would be compulsory :)
The greatest challenge will be to recreate a Roman triclinium or dining room because of the way they laid themselves out to eat and socialize.

Clickable Roman Forum

I've often looked at photographs of the ruins of the Forum in Rome only to feel rather confused as to what I was looking at. Many of the temples and buildings are but foundations now or merely a bit of rubble of mortar and stone.

This is a good place to go to familiarize and orient yourself with the layout of the Roman forum and the buildings, temples, monuments etc contained within. You can click on something and it will come up with a new page that describes that building.
Many of the pages also have a photo showing that particular building now, which is very helpful.

Google Earth Ancient Rome

If you download Google Earth 5, you can see a cool layer in the gallery called "Ancient Rome. It'll add hundreds of model buildings and you can see Rome as it was.

All Things Roman

The theme of this blog is pretty simple really. I have an avid interest in ancient Rome and come across interesting odds and ends all the time in my reading and website surfing so I thought I'd start posting it all here.

BTW: I named this blog after a beautiful villa on Capri where Tiberius lived at the end of his reign as Emperor and my the significance of the username Vipsania Agrippina is that she was the wife of Tiberius whom he loved and had to divorce to marry Augustus's daughter, Julia.

Just random. No real reason.

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