DeadlyCurious
Menu
A century

1st century

14 stories from this century.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Londinium

The Icenian Queen Who Burned Roman Colchester London and St Albans to the Ground in 60-61 CE Before Being Defeated by Suetonius Paulinus on the Watling Street

Boudicca, queen of the Iceni in eastern Britain, led a revolt against the Roman province of Britannia in 60-61 CE after the Roman procurator had her flogged and her daughters raped. Her army burned Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium and killed an estimated 80,000 colonists and Romanised Britons. She was defeated at the Battle of the Watling Street by Suetonius Paulinus's army of 10,000 against approximately 100,000 Britons.

Read the story →
The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Palatine Hill, Rome

The Roman Emperor Who Reportedly Planned to Make His Favourite Racehorse a Consul of Rome Before His Praetorian Guard Stabbed Him in a Palace Corridor in 41 CE

Caligula ruled Rome from March 37 CE to January 41 CE. He kept his favourite racehorse Incitatus in an ivory stall with marble fittings and is reported by Suetonius to have considered appointing him consul. He was assassinated on 24 January 41 CE by officers of his Praetorian Guard.

Read the story →
The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Circus Maximus, Rome

The Six-Day Roman Fire of July 64 CE That Destroyed Ten of the City's Fourteen Districts and Was Almost Certainly Not Started by the Emperor

A fire began in the wooden Circus Maximus shops in Rome on the night of 18-19 July 64 CE. It burned for six days and destroyed three of Rome's fourteen districts completely, with substantial damage to seven more. Emperor Nero was at his villa in Antium when the fire began and returned to Rome to organise relief. The story that he "fiddled" while it burned was a hostile reconstruction recorded by Suetonius decades later.

Read the story →
The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Stabiae, Bay of Naples

The Roman Admiral Who Sailed Toward the Erupting Volcano to Rescue People and Died on the Beach

Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman naval fleet at Misenum on 24 August 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted. He ordered the fleet to evacuate civilians from the affected shore. He died on the beach at Stabiae approximately twenty hours later, probably of a heart attack triggered by inhaled volcanic gas. His nephew Pliny the Younger wrote the eyewitness account.

Read the story →
The Footnote June 25, 2026 · Amaseia, Pontus

The Greek Geographer Who Preserved Most of What We Know About Eratosthenes by Citing Him to Disagree With Him

Strabo of Amaseia wrote the seventeen-book *Geographika* between approximately 20 BC and 23 AD. The work was substantially the last great Hellenistic geographical synthesis. Strabo disagreed with most of Eratosthenes's specific positions on geographical method, but cited him so extensively in the process of disagreeing that Strabo is now the principal surviving source for Eratosthenes's lost work.

Read the story →
The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum

The Only Classical Library That Survived Antiquity Was Buried Intact at Herculaneum

When [Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD](/articles/vesuvius-pompeii-79), it buried a Roman seaside villa at Herculaneum under 25 metres of pyroclastic debris. Inside the villa was a working library of about 1,800 papyrus scrolls — the only intact classical library that has ever been recovered. The scrolls were carbonised by the heat. Modern X-ray imaging is finally reading them.

Read the story →
The Footnote June 23, 2026 · Point Glyphadia, Antikythera island, Greek archipelago

The Other Things on the Antikythera Wreck

The Antikythera mechanism was not the only thing on the 60 BC Greek shipwreck. Spongers in 1900 brought up four life-size bronze sculptures and a marble youth that nobody could date. Then they found the planetary computer. The other finds have been quietly upstaged for a century.

Read the story →
The Cabinet June 18, 2026 · Pompeii, Campania (modern Italy)

The Eighteen Hours That Stopped Pompeii

On 24 October 79 AD Vesuvius opened above the Bay of Naples and buried two Roman towns under twenty feet of pumice and ash. The people who died in Pompeii were killed in the first wave of the second day, by a cloud of superheated gas at six hundred degrees Celsius.

Read the story →