by Q V Hunter
Roman ring-keys can be found in a number of museums. They vary in size and style. When writing of Laetitia, I pictured the kind of key that hinges over to curl into the palm, invisible to anyone looking at the ring band from the outer side of the hand. It would have been of the smallest scale typical of such items, both to fit on her finger and to be unobtrusive when secreted into a bulla.
Similarly, let no reader quibble with my description of the early ‘Swiss army knife’ Apodemius issues Marcus as he sets off to spy on Magnentius. One of these extraordinary all-purpose tools, complete with hinged spoon, is on display in the Antiquities Wing of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum.
Acknowledgements
Adam, Alexander, Roman Antiquities: An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Romans, Collins and Hannay, New York, 1833
Banchich, Thomas, and Eugene Lane, The History of Zonaras: From Alexander Severus to the Death of Theodosius the Great, Routledge, New York, 2009
Barnes, Timothy D., Athanasius and Constantius, Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire, Harvard University Press, Boston, 2001
Brown, Peter, The World of Late Antiquity, Thames and Hudson, London, 1971
Bury, J. B., The Cambridge Medieval History, Volume I, M. Gwatkin, J. P. Whitney, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1936
Cameron, Averil, The Cambridge Ancient History Volume XIII: The Late Empire, 337-425 AD, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Cameron, Averil, The Later Roman Empire, Fontana History of the Ancient World, Fontana Press, 1993
De Tillemont, Lenain, Histoire des Empereurs, Vol. IV Diocletian to Jovian, Charles Robustel, Paris, 1704
Echard, Laurence, The Roman History from the Removal of the Imperial Seat by Constantine the Great, to the Taking of Rome by Odoacer K. of the Heruli and the Ruin of the Empire in the West to its Restitution by Charlemagne, Vol. III, Christ College, Cambridge, 1696
Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1, William Cave Wright, transl., William Heinemann, London, 1913
Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, J.B. Bury, ed. with an introduction by W. E. H. Lecky, Fred de Fau and Co., New York 1906, The Online Library of Liberty
Heather, Peter, The Fall of the Roman Empire, A New History, Macmillan, Oxford, 2005
Kelly, Christopher, Ruling the Later Roman Empire, Harvard University Press, Boston, 2006
Knapp, Robert C., Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women . . . the Romans that History Forgot, Profile Books Ltd. London, 2013,
Goldsworthy, Adrian, How Rome Fell, Death of a Superpower, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009
Goldsworthy, Adrian, The Complete Roman Army, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003
Marcellinus, Ammianus, The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus during the Reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian and Valens, Book I, translated by C.D. Yonge, Henry G. Bohn, London, 1862
MacDowall, Simon, Late Roman Cavalryman AD 236-565, Osprey Publishing, Botley, Oxford, 1995
Stambaugh, John E., The Ancient Roman City, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988
Wace, Henry, William C. Percy, ed., Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century AD, with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts
Zosimus, New History, Book II, Green and Chaplin, ed., London, 1814
Also: deepest thanks to the online communities of:
Romanarmy.com, Jasper Oorthuys, Associate Webmaster, and Jenny Cline, Founder
LacusCurtius at the University of Chicago, webmaster Henry Thayer
ORBISvia at the Stanford University
Forum Ancient Coins and
Academia.edu
With special thanks to Macmillan Publishers, whose map was the basis for the map included herein
Any errors are my own and I welcome corrections.
About the Author
Q. V. Hunter’s interest in Roman history began with four years of Latin study and university courses in ancient religions. A fascination with Late Antiquity deepened when Hunter moved to a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the vicinity of a former Roman colony.
Colonia Equestris Noviodunum was founded around 50 BCE as a retirement community for Julius Caesar’s cavalry veterans. It was listed as the civitas Equestrium id est Noviodunus in the Notitia Galliarum, (the fourth-century directory listing all seventeen provinces of Roman Gaul.)
Noviodunum became Rome’s most important colony along the Lake Leman—with a forum, baths, basilica and amphitheater. Its potable water came via an aqueduct running from present-day Divonne, France. It belonged to a network of Roman settlements radiating out from Lugdunum (Lyon, France) around the Rhône Valley. Caesar established these settlements to supervise the defeated Celtic Helvetii who were shifted there against their will after the Battle of Bibracte in 58 BC. As a result of Alemannic invasions in 259-260 AD, much of Roman Noviodunum was razed but it flourishes again today as the Swiss town of Nyon.
Hunter is married to a self-proclaimed ‘Ur-Swiss,’ a descendant of Alemanni who settled farther north of Nyon in the Alpine lake region that gave birth to the three founding cantons of the Confederation Helvetica, i.e. Switzerland, in the thirteenth century.
They have three adult children.