Did Cicero sometimes use a formulaic curse to hand over an enemy to the gods of the underworld?
Did he educate himself through a pertinent instruction that began with "Take a lead tablet and an iron ring, write the name, the magic sign"?
Perhaps he adapted the template to his desire and scratched something like: "Bound be Clodius' reason, so that he cannot send me into exile.
I bind Clodius for this purpose.
He shouldn't speak, resist, contradict, he shouldn't be able to look or speak back to me, but should be subject to me as long as this ring is buried.” Or did he even wish it dead?
We do not know it.
The disciplinary system for examining the fields of action in ancient Rome once suggested strict separations: here the campaigns, politics, strict morality, there private life and cultural history.
The superstitions of the common people were strictly separated from the gods of the res publica; the public actions of men and the closed spaces of women seemed almost like two different worlds.
If those acted in secret or if they got involved in politics, that was seen as a sign of decay.
Roman moral history was largely the history of decadence.
A deadly mushroom dish
Michael Sommer knows the hidden underworlds of the Romans very well and he skilfully spreads the fruits of his erudition;
his peek through the keyholes under headings like "Bed stories.
Of Emperors and Courtesans” therefore entertains at its best.
Short chapters, clear descriptions and occasionally interspersed current keywords contribute to the reading pleasure.
But the Oldenburg historian does more.
He breaks down the separations mentioned and shows how the secret history was intertwined with the fundamental problem of the always precarious order.
The sanctions against the cult groups that worshiped Bacchus after the Hannibal War can be interpreted as an expression of concern among the Roman leadership that large parts of Italy would once again lose control.
Laws against poisoning, also dating back to the Republic, indicate a fear that the rules might no longer work.
And what does it say of a political system if the man at the top could only be removed by conspiracy, or if dynastic uncertainties suggested the preparation of a deadly dish of mushrooms?
Advances in criminal justice and prosecution
Sommer explains how common this risk was, using the practice of the Pontic king Mithridates, which certainly had side effects, to immunize himself against a major attack by regularly administering small doses of poison, which he apparently also succeeded in doing.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, plagued by pain, stress, and lack of sleep, took theriac, possibly mixed with opium-containing poppy juice.
However, the author leaves open whether the intellectually most brilliant head among the emperors like Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict.
Sommer repeatedly addresses how delicate the criticism of sources is, especially when it comes to hidden life.
In the description of the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy, however, a little more distance to the main witnesses Cicero and Sallust would be appropriate, who were "close" but at the same time are irretrievably contaminated for different reasons.
For the imperial period, it is shown how rumor, insinuation and obscuration arose almost as a matter of systemic necessity and were often able to shape tradition, culminating in Suetonius' biographies of rulers and Procopius's still enigmatic "secret story" about Justinian and Theodora.
Emperor Claudius as Womanizer
The author convincingly succeeds in embedding the often bizarre news in a multi-faceted picture of the Roman world, a world that knew no state monopoly on the use of force, but binding forces that created order, in which "private" and "public" were intertwined and where sexuality was pursued the social space in which it was practiced.
A lot remained hidden, but when events were dragged into the public domain and scandalized, it was amazing how capable the system could be;
Sommer rightly points to the advances in criminal justice and prosecution.
He repeatedly consults historical anthropology in an attempt to explain the actions of the actors.
So not only the elites feared a loss of control;
rather, this was the norm in the ancient world, and people took what was at hand to boost confidence a little.
The book also deals with door locks, contraception and abortion, as well as the ubiquitous practice of harming competitors in bed, in the shop or when betting on charioteers with standardized curses.
Sommer makes a curse tablet made of lead, found in Groß-Gerau, impressively speak.
Friends of spies, stratagems and encryption techniques will also get their money's worth.
In their grave inscriptions, the victims of everyday crime speak to us.
Sommer dusts the Romans off when he calls Emperor Claudius a womanizer and talks about Christian activists, but he doesn't oversimplify.
After the humanistic educational substrate has evaporated, there is a chance to see antiquity in a new way, namely as a "laboratory where the historically possible was experimented with in a sensationally creative way".
Understanding what ideas people could come up with in order to cope with the unavailable or to seek salvation in the corner is not the slightest benefit of this book, which is well worth reading.
Michael Sommer: "Dark Rome". The Secret Life of the Romans.
Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2022. 288 p., ill., hardcover, €23.