Latest news with #RomanEmpire
South China Morning Post
27-05-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
The enduring allure of the signet ring: how a striking piece of jewellery travelled from Mesopotamia in 3,500BC to 21st century fashion runways, donned by Elvis Presley and Meghan Markle
One of the most quietly commanding accessories you can wear – small in size but rich in symbolism – the pinky ring, especially the signet variety, has always been a popular jewellery choice among a certain set. Enjoying a spike in popularity of late, signet rings are frequently being spotted on runways, red carpets and in collections from designers putting their own spin on this old-school staple. So what exactly is a signet ring – and is it the same as a pinky ring? Not quite. A pinky ring is simply any ring worn on the little finger. A signet ring, on the other hand, is defined by its flat surface, often engraved with a crest, initials or symbol. While signets are traditionally worn on the pinky – of the non-dominant hand – a pinky ring doesn't have to be a signet. Still, the two terms are often used interchangeably – and with good reason, as the signet has become the most iconic pinky style of all. A Zodiac 18k gold and diamond ring by Anita Ko worn on the pinky finger. Photo: Handout Advertisement The origins of the signet ring can be traced back to Mesopotamia around 3,500BC, when they were used – often by illiterate businessmen – to authenticate documents and mark property. The ancient Egyptians continued the tradition, carving sacred symbols in reverse to leave imprints in wax or clay – giving rise to the tradition of wearing the ring on the pinky, which made sealing easier without obstructing writing. The use of signet rings continued through the Roman Empire, when carved gemstones served as personal signatures – and status symbols – for emperors and merchants. In medieval Europe, they also became legal instruments, and were often destroyed upon the owner's death to prevent misuse. The pope's Fisherman's Ring, used to seal documents until 1842, symbolises papal authority to this day. By the Renaissance, signet rings were tied to aristocratic tradition, especially in Britain , where they were engraved with coats of arms and passed down through the generations. They also signified allegiance, being worn by Freemasons and other societies as discreet symbols of identity. A stack of Maison H Jewels' 18k yellow gold and diamond rings. Photo: Handout By the early 20th century, the signet's role had shifted once again. It still conveyed status, but increasingly it spoke to personal identity and intellectual legacy too. Winston Churchill famously wore a large square one, bearing the crests of both the Churchill and Spencer families (the latter marking a lineage that would later include Diana, Princess of Wales ). The 1960s and 70s saw another cultural change, with the rings now speaking much more of individuality than heritage. Rock and soul legends like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and James Brown embraced the pinky ring, blending tradition with their own sense of style. King Charles III has been pictured wearing his gold signet ring since the mid-1970s – a royal tradition continued by Meghan Markle , who has started wearing a gold signet ring engraved with her and Prince Harry's royal cipher. Today, the pinky ring is being reinterpreted by a new generation of designers and wearers, with many modern iterations proudly genderless or designed with women in mind, moving away from the outdated notion of signet rings as men's jewellery . Still, the style continues to carry rich historical significance, making it a symbol that bridges tradition and modernity.
Geek Culture
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
Anno 117: Pax Romana – 6 Epic Thrills Of Governing Your Own Roman Empire
Ubisoft Mainz is set to redefine the historical, economic simulation and strategy genre with Anno 117: Pax Romana , an ambitious city-building game that promises to transport players into the heart of Rome's most fascinating era. Far from a traditional strategy title, this game offers players the exploration of empire-building during a time of relative peace and expansion. The development team's vision for the game goes beyond mere construction. Players won't just be building structures or manage resources, but also be able to establish an entire civilisation, with added cultural dynamics. As a newly appointed Roman governor, players will navigate complex political landscapes across two richly detailed provinces – Latium and Albion. The Latium province. Latium represents the quintessential Roman experience, with sun-drenched Mediterranean landscapes across rolling hills and vibrant coastal settlements. Meanwhile, Albion offers a more mysterious frontier, blending Celtic traditions with Roman conquest. The Albion province. The game's core innovation lies in its dynamic choice system. Every decision impacts your empire's development, whether you're fostering cultural integration, managing economic growth, or balancing diplomatic relationships. No two playthroughs will be identical, ensuring significant replay value. With a small but passionate team of just 110 developers, Ubisoft Mainz is crafting what could be the most immersive Roman Empire simulation to date. Launching simultaneously on PC and console this winter, Anno 117: Pax Romana isn't just a game, but a time machine to history's most complex civilisation. During a special hands-on preview for select global media held in Rome, Italy, Geek Culture got an exclusive sneak preview at a work-in-progress build of the game, to explore the first few hours in the Latium province. Even though not every aspect of the game build was playable, we did manage to learn quite a bit more about what fans of the long-running series, which made its debut in 1998, can expect from the game. Here are six exciting new features which strategy and city-building game fans should appreciate when the game hits shelves later this year. The eight attributes used in Anno 117: Pax Romana provides a comprehensive system for managing your Roman Empire's development. Money represents economic resources, while Population tracks the number of workers and city inhabitants, and Happiness measures citizen satisfaction. Cities reflect urban growth and development, while Health prevents diseases, and Knowledge indicates educational levels and technological discovery speed. Meanwhile, Piety reflects the population's devotion to gods and their divine benefits. But that's only seven because the eighth attribute remains a tantalizing mystery, hinted at by the developers but will only be revealed in future updates. These interconnected attributes create a simulation where each aspect of your settlement impacts its overall success, allowing players to strategically balance economic, social, and cultural factors in their empire-building journey. In the game's religion system, players must strategically select deities that align with their gameplay style and objectives, considering the unique bonuses each god provides. For example, Neptune, Roman god of the sea and fresh water, enhances maritime capabilities with faster ships and improved fishing, while Mars, god of war, boosts military performance through more loyal soldiers and reduced combat costs. The new shrine building placement allows players to offer tributes to multiple deities across different islands, creating complex religious strategies that multiply bonus effects empire-wide. Meanwhile, the global system tracks deity popularity, potentially granting empire-wide benefits if a particular god becomes dominant. This polytheistic approach enables cultural flexibility, letting players incorporate deities from various traditions like Roman and Celtic pantheons without locking them into exclusive choices. Ultimately, the religion system becomes a strategic tool where players can craft their empire's spiritual identity while gaining tangible gameplay advantages tailored to economic production, military strength, or cultural development. Ship customisation is a historically authentic and innovative feature in Anno 117: Pax Romana that allows players to build ships modularly, reflecting ancient maritime construction techniques. During that era, ancient civilisations didn't have diverse ship types like frigates or clippers, but instead built basic hulls and added components as needed. The game's system lets players customise their ships by adding different attachments, such as rovers, masts, and combat elements. Players can create faster ships by removing oars, add multiple masts, or equip combat-focused modules. This approach provides depth for micromanagement-loving players while offering pre-designed blueprints for casual gamers who prefer a simpler experience. The modular ship customisation not only adds strategic complexity but also maintains historical accuracy, allowing players to craft unique vessels that suit their gameplay style and reflect the innovative spirit of ancient maritime engineering. The developers aim to create a deeply integrated combat system where land and naval power are interconnected, so players don't simply buy military units, but must consider population, resource management, and strategic deployment. Different deities like Mars can provide military bonuses, while naval strategies with Neptune can enhance ship capabilities. The combat system is designed to be another strategic tool, not a mandatory path, allowing players to choose diplomatic or economic expansion if they prefer. By tying combat mechanics closely to core gameplay elements like population, resources, and cultural attributes, the game offers deep tactical choices that reflect the complexity of managing a Roman Empire. The diagonal street and building placement system allows players to create more organic, natural-looking city layouts compared to previous Anno games. The system enables players to build more creatively, with the ability to fit farm fields into the gaps between meandering streets and create more strategic placements like building resource camps in forests. This approach breaks away from rigid grid-based layouts of old, making city construction feel more fluid and realistic. The diagonal system is designed to enhance both the aesthetic beauty and functional efficiency of city-building, giving players more freedom to design their settlements in a more natural, less constrained manner. 24-Hour Day & Night Cycle The new and improved 24-hour day and night cycle is designed to add depth and realism to the game's visual experience. With the addition of volumetric clouds, atmospheric weather effects, sparkling lakes and rivers, and even lavender fields help create a sense of wonder and immersion for players. The cycle helps make the game world feel more alive and dynamic, allowing players full control over how the environment changes throughout the day, from morning light to evening shadows. This feature contributes to the game's goal of creating a majestic, timeless world that feels both beautiful and realistic, enhancing the overall visual storytelling of the game. Anno 117: Pax Romana releases this winter on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Yonk is a geek who is fortunate enough to have an equally geeky Star Wars fan for a wife, who owns a LEGO Millennium Falcon encased in a glass coffee table as their home's centre-piece. Anno 117 Anno 117: Pax Romana Ubisoft
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
The Buried City by Gabriel Zuchtriegel: Dead city that is still erupting with secrets
The Buried City: Unearthing The Real Pompeii by Gabriel Zuchtriegel (Hodder £22, 256pp) It seems incredible that a city that ceased to exist almost 2,000 years ago is still making headlines today. But so it is. Only last week we learned of how some desperate people, on that fateful summer's day in a Roman city in 79AD, tried to block up the door of a room with a bed, in a desperate attempt to save their lives... That city was of course Pompeii, a city like no other. Because of the catastrophic way in which it was destroyed, first by a rain of tiny volcanic stones, then colossal amounts of super-heated dust and ash, Pompeii was also preserved for centuries, as if frozen in time. Not only its 'houses, shops, bakeries, brothels, pubs, fountains, squares, temples and cemeteries', but 'pots on stoves, loaves in ovens, coins in tills and even unmade beds in bedrooms.' All were buried eventually by this terrible rain from heaven, when the huge mushroom cloud above Vesuvius finally collapsed in on itself. As the author puts it, the effect was like a tower block collapsing in on itself – only a tower block 32km high, ejecting dust at up to 300C. The city ended up buried under 2.5 metres of this dust, a toxic blanket under which nothing could survive. Organic matter eventually rotted away to leave perfect statues in negative, as it were, from which experts have created dramatic and moving casts. Why didn't people escape, incidentally? Well, some did. But the monstrous eruption turned day into night. It was pitch black, the air was choking, and people naturally fled indoors and barred their doors, where they were eventually buried alive. The head of the archaeological excavations today, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, has just brought out this fascinating new book about what we are still learning about this most haunting of all lost cities. Why wasn't the ancient city rebuilt, he asks? In fact, in immediate response to the disaster, the Emperor Titus sent officials down there to do just that. A matter of Roman pride. But viewing the site of the disaster, the officials were horrified to realise that any such reconstruction was quite impossible. There was literally nothing left. In remarkably short time, the doomed city was lost and forgotten, nature returned with amazing speed, vegetation colonising the enriched volcanic soils, becoming a place where 'sheep graze among the olive trees and vines'. Thus it stayed hidden until the first excavations in 1748, excavations which have continued ever since, with startling new revelations – such as that door being blocked by a bed – literally spilling out of the ground almost weekly. One major shock took place only in the last ten years, when the very size of Pompeii had to be radically revised. For a long time, it was reckoned that this glittering, somewhat decadent seaside resort favoured by the celebs and super-rich of Imperial Rome – think Cannes today, perhaps, or Malibu – was thought to have had a population of some 12,000 people, based upon the number of houses. But in 2017 a remarkable funerary inscription was discovered, in which one wealthy local, Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius, proudly recorded that he had once thrown a dinner party 'consisting of 456 tricliniums with 15 men at each triclinium'. A triclinium was a dining table surrounded on three sides by long couches. So his guests numbered 6,840 men. But these were all enfranchised male citizens. Add their wives and children, non-citizens, and the vast armies of slaves, and this would imply that Pompeii was a city of 45,000 people, some living in elegant villas but many living in appallingly overcrowded slums and slave quarters, often little more than a cellar or a subterranean hovel. As the author reminds us, if we look merely to Latin literature and history, we find it concerns almost solely 'a tiny minority of rich and powerful people'. Details of the daily lives of slaves are few indeed. But now, thanks to Pompeii, here is a snapshot: three slaves who lived in a cellar just 16 metres square, on three campbeds, sleeping under woollen blankets. One of the three was a child. The cellar had one tiny window and one chamber pot. And in case we picture Pompeii as always hot and sunny, remember that our mental image of Ancient Rome often comes from Hollywood movies, necessarily filmed in bright sunshine. Winters in Rome or Pompeii could be bitterly cold. Zuchtriegel also writes wryly about his own profession. First there are archaeological finds, and then there are interpretations. And archaeologists can disagree with each other here, often vociferously. One example is the famous Villa of the Mysteries, as it's called, the frescoed walls of which appear to depict all kinds of dark shenanigans. There's a wall-painting of Dionysus, the orgiastic god of wine, along with a female consort. A mysterious object is hidden under a cloth, just about to be unveiled: probably a statuette of an erect phallus. On another wall there is a depiction of 'ritual flagellation and naked dancing'. Crikey, what on earth was this place? Surely the centre of some depraved and drunken cult? Ah, but it's all in the interpretation. Today some scholars think it wasn't really a Villa of Mysteries at all, but more like a Marriage Villa. The Romans were quite an earthy lot, and the wall paintings are simply images of marriage, fertility and childbirth to inspire a newly wedded couple, 'wrapped in places in humorous allegory'. Another site perhaps needs less interpretation. One public bath had extra rooms upstairs, their walls decorated with some really rude paintings. Almost surely a brothel. But all this easy classical nudity can cause unexpected problems with modern social media. At one point, the author's team tried to post some images of marble statues of naked goddesses on their Facebook page, only for them to be blocked as 'inappropriate'! So the story of doomed and tragic Pompeii continues even in the 21st century, and the discoveries will continue for many years yet. And they can be as deeply moving as any film or novel, admits the author, whether it's the preserved outline of a child of five or six, in the throes of death, clutching the nearest adult, or some innocent drawings in charcoal on walls, of little stick men, gladiators, animals, and in one corner, 'the outline of a tiny hand'.
CNN
17-05-2025
- Science
- CNN
Ancient home shows evidence of how Pompeiians tried to shelter from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that four people, including a child, in the ancient Roman town of Pompeii used furniture to block a bedroom door and shield themselves from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Ultimately, the home became their final resting place, according to new research published in April in the E-Journal of the Pompeii Excavations. During the catastrophic eruption, the volcano spewed hot, lethal gases and ash into the air, slowly killing most of the city's population. Ash and volcanic rock called pumice then covered Pompeii and its residents, eerily preserving the victims' last moments for millennia. The excavation team made the discovery while investigating the House of Helle and Phrixus, named for a mythological painting found in the home. Researchers partially investigated the home's front rooms between 2018 and 2019, but the team behind the new study revisited the site over the past couple of years, exposing one-third of the building in preparation to restore and open it to the public, said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. 'Excavating and visiting Pompeii means coming face to face with the beauty of art but also with the precariousness of our lives,' Zuchtriegel said in a statement. The investigation has also revealed that the home was under renovation during the time of the eruption, and ironically, the very art for which the house is named echoes the tragic events that unfolded within it, the researchers said. During the excavations, the team unearthed an atrium with a water collection basin, a banquet hall with lavishly decorated walls, a room with a central opening for rainwater and the bedchamber. Small fragments of volcanic debris probably fell like rain through the opening during the first phases of the eruption, causing the four people inside the home to rush to the bedroom and blockade it with a bed to protect themselves. But as the fallout from the eruption continued, the researchers believe the inhabitants pulled back the bed from the door and attempted to escape. The Pompeiians' remains were found in the banquet hall. 'The arrival of the first pyroclastic cloud that entered the ancient city or the collapse of parts of the upper floors could then have caused the death of the four victims,' the study noted. Pyroclastic clouds, or a dense mixture of ash, gas and rock dispersed during a volcanic eruption, caused a searing, rapid avalanche of debris to fill the home, Zuchtriegel said. The team made a cast of the bed after identifying voids left by the decomposition of the bed frame and pouring plaster inside it to preserve its shape. The scene is just one of many examples that serve as a reminder of the terror and agony faced by Pompeii's residents as they attempted to seek shelter, he added. 'Many took shelter in small rooms of buildings presumably, because they felt safer and more secure than in open areas exposed to the volcanic material raining down,' Zuchtriegel said. 'Just in the last year we have discovered a couple of victims who had barricaded themselves in the narrow entrance hall to The House of the Painters at Work. Having closed the doors at each end of the hallway, they must have believed and hoped they would be protected.' And in the House of the Thiasus, a young man and an older woman closed the window and door to a small room to protect themselves, only to get stuck there. 'Nevertheless, hours into the eruption (the victims) became trapped as the pumice accumulated outside, blocking any potential escape route should they have decided to flee,' Zuchtriegel said. In the home where the four people examined in the new study died, a central wall in the banquet hall has a fresco of Phrixus and his sister Helle from Greek mythology. As the myth goes, Helle and Phrixus escape their hateful stepmother Ino by flying away on a ram with golden fleece. But during the escape, Helle falls into a strip of sea, which was named Hellespont after her — it's known today as the Dardanelles or the Strait of Gallipoli in Turkey. The fresco captures the moment when Helle holds out a hand to Phrixus for help. The ancient story likely no longer held any religious value for Pompeii residents and served merely as a decoration and status display, Zuchtriegel said. But in hindsight, it mirrors the desperate moments faced by the people trapped in the house during the eruption. 'The discovery of a group of individuals, who perhaps represent only a few of the household, were clinging to hope of survival in the face of horror and tragedy much like Helle herself who, in the fresco that lends its name to the house, attempts to cling on to her twin brother in vain,' he said in an email. 'When we excavate everything that we find is a surprise and in Pompeii those surprises come in the form of fragments and clues that can tell very personal stories but also shed light on the collective experience of loss and disaster in tandem with the hope and aspirations of the population,' Zuchtriegel added. The removal of thresholds, missing decorations and portions of cut masonry at the entrance suggest the house undergoing a renovation — but the disruption wasn't significant enough to keep people from living there or seeking refuge during the eruption. The house was also still full of elegant items and was well decorated, Zuchtriegel said. In addition to the human remains, the team also found a bronze bulla, or an amulet worn by boys until they reached adulthood. Amphorae — two-handled jars used for storing liquids — were uncovered in a basement that was utilized as a pantry. Some of the jars contained garum, a pungent fish sauce that was common at the time. The researchers also found a set of bronze pottery, including a cup shaped like a shell, a basket vase, a ladle and a single-handled jug. 'Each house in Pompeii is unique,' Zuchtriegel said. 'Each has its peculiarities, its unique decorations, and its individual assortment of objects reflecting the personal choices and tastes as well as the fortunes and of course, misfortunes of its ancient occupants. The House of Helle and Phrixus was quite small, but it had marvelous paintings, which express the ambition of these people to rise in the social hierarchy. At the same time, they had to be careful not to lose their status.'
Times
16-05-2025
- Health
- Times
Does ‘contrast therapy' work? What to know before taking the plunge
We've all heard that cold water swimming is supposed to be good for us and that regular use of traditional saunas can make us happier and healthier, but the latest trend combines the two extremes. Contrast therapy, as it is known, entails switching between hot and cold temperatures, jumping from cold water to sauna and back again, and is said to improve circulation, boost mood and promote muscle recovery. It's not a new concept: the Romans would have a caldarium (hot steam room) and a frigidarium (cold pool) in their bathhouses, while for decades athletes have used contrast therapy to aid recovery. However, the practice has recently caught the imagination of the wellness brigade and word has spread about its healing capabilities. • Read more
