Historic Replicas

…Many scholars believe that the birthday cake took shape in Germany in the heart of Renaissance Europe.  The Germans baked sweet round cakes in the shape of baby Jesus to celebrate his birthday, and eventually the birthdays of their young children dressed in what we would consider Renaissance costumes.  The Germans were also the first people to consistently light birthday candles, which probably grew out of candles placed on Christmas trees (another German first!).  Candles, of course, have a VERY long history in celebrations, back to the Ancient Greek costumes and beyond.  So when your birthday comes around, have a happy one, and remember that yours is a party thousands of years in the making.  

Today’s my birthday, and it occurred to me that I’d hardly ever thought about birthdays and the origin of cakes, candles, and singing off-key;)  Birthdays are a special time for practically every culture, a time to honor a person’s life and remind them how special they are to us.  Like many modern holidays, people were celebrating birthdays a long time before any of us ever had one.  Once again, the mighty Roman Empire is largely responsible for spreading the idea in Western Europe, and the nations that came after them spread it to the New World.  In fact, the Roman naming day, or dies lustricus, was originally a lot more important.  Birthdays were first celebrated in Rome by the cult of Mithraism, a mystical religion that worshipped the Persian Sun God Mithra. It was popular among Roman soldiers, who traveled far and wide and spread their beliefs.  When Christianity became popular, the custom remained, and the Romans adapted customs from and other holidays, wearing Roman costumes, feasting, and giving gifts. 

While I was researching Latin and the Roman contributions to Romance languages, I turned up a huge amount of information about Roman technology and inventions.  As it turns out, the Romans were responsible for an incredible number of scientific discoveries and techniques.  Some are very well known; the Romans are famous for their Roman costumes, the Coliseum (the ancient stadium of the gladiators that still stands in present-day Rome), their aqueducts, and architecture in general.  The segmented Roman armor of the centurions has been made famous in movies like I am Spartacus and Julius Caesar.  Other Roman technology may surprise you, though.  They used lighthouses to guide their ships, one of which stands to this day, the Tower of Hercules in Spain.  They mastered glassblowing and produced windows, lamps, even mirrors. Roman doctors used a wide variety of surgical tools, and some citizens wore false teeth made of iron.  Businessmen and mathematicians carried a portable abacus, in effect the world’s first pocket calculator, and many people had portable sundials, the world’s first pocket watches.  They even had indoor plumbing!  During a chapter of human history that’s often associated with disease and unsanitary living conditions, the Romans were using public baths and flush toilets.  How’s that for being ahead of your time?  Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire hit the reset button on human understanding; many of the secrets of Roman technology were lost and had to be rediscovered by later civilizations.  But when you consider how organized and sophisticated Rome was, it’s mind-boggling to think what they would have achieved if the empire had survived into modern times.

The Romans were the supreme rulers of Europe for hundreds of years, and few cultures have had as much influence on the cultures that succeeded it.  The art and science of Ancient Rome continue to shape the modern world, 1600 years after the fall of the Empire itself. If you’re new to history, you may wonder how exactly the Romans affected a world so distant from their own. 
 Consider our language.  The Romans spoke Latin, a long-dead tongue that one only hears in church and college classrooms. Latin itself was divided into high, or classical, and “Vulgar” Latin.  Classical Latin was the language of poetry and literature, while Vulgar Latin was the everyday tongue, used to trade goods in the marketplace and direct Roman shields on the battlefield.  Vulgar Latin was the truly universal language of Rome spoken in every corner of the Empire.  Now think about America.  It’s a big country, yet we all speak the same kind of English, more or less, and it will probably stay that way.   Thanks to TV and the Internet, the world isn’t quite so big anymore, and we’re all exposed to the same words and phrases.  But in Ancient Rome, there was no mass communication, and people in far-off provinces might not hear from each other for years! Latin was everywhere, but over time, it began to change in different places; certain words fell out of use, new ones were invented, and Latin began to blend with native tongues.  In time, Latin in different parts of the empire would evolve into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and a score of other languages and dialects.

Millions of people gathered around their TV’s this past Sunday to enjoy the Super Bowl, the ultimate American athletic competition and the most watched television event of the year. It’s a distinctly American sport, as central to our culture as Coca-cola and the fourth of July.  Like our country itself, modern football is a recent development.  The rules we play by today didn’t take shape until 1879.  The origins of the game go back much further, though. 

Football evolved from rugby, a similar game that is extremely popular in England and many other countries.  Rugby is an off-shoot of soccer, first created when a rebellious little player named William picked up the ball and started running with it, or so the legend goes.  Football, then, came from soccer, and that’s where the river of history begins to run deep.  In fact, there’s archeological evidence of people playing soccer or games like it as long as 3000 years ago!  No one is certain how the game spread, but it appears in cultures across the globe.  The Japanese wrote of a similar game in 1004 B.C, The ancient Greeks in 2,000 B.C.  The Roman warriors played a rugby-like game called Harpastum for over 700 years. Sports were a noble pastime for the Romans; they were encouraged to participate during breaks from the battlefield and their historical weapons.  Sports have always been important; they allow people to indulge their aggressive impulses during peace, and experience the thrill of competition and physical conflict without the horror of war.  The Super Bowl may be a modern phenomenon, but it’s part of a tradition that’s as old as civilization itself.

Often referred to as the cradle of western civilization, the birthplace of democracy, also
known as Ancient Greece was predominately a peaceful, progressive, and highly intellectual society for the majority of its existence. This peace saw the advent of modern democracy, the brilliance and grandeur of many philosophers, such as Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, as well as the appreciation for a set standard of superior athleticism displayed through the first Olympic games. This period of Greek history lasted from approximately 1100 BC  until the Roman invasion of Corinth in 146 BC.
 Many influential figures emerged throughout Ancient Greece’s many city-states, which
consisted primarily of  Athens, Sparta, Delphi, and Corinth. These independent, yet closely nitted city-states proved pivotal in Alexander the Great’s legendary defeat of the Persian empire, and in the foundation of the Greek culture that spreaded virtually to all parts of the known world.

 In addition to great philosophers, Greece gave us strategic warefare and gladiators.  To wield a Greek sword or Roman shield was a sign of great power.  Power that soon conquered most of the world.

Athens was really the unofficial capital of Ancient Greece, in that it was the centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato’s academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, the Parthenon, and the Agora. The centerpoint of many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world starkly contrasted with the very warlike Spartan city-state, who trained every male citizen for battle at the youngest age possible with Greek swords. This warlike nature payed its due dividends in not only defending Ancient Greece from the powerful Persian Empire, but also overthrowing said Empire.
 Imagine being able to own your very own replica of Socrates’ toga, an outfit akin to
one of Sparta’s infamous 300 soldiers, led by King Leonidas in their valiant efforts of defending Greece from the Persians. Imagine owning a Greek costume, taking you back to the graudeur of what is affectionately known as the cradle of western civilization. Be a philosopher, an olympian, a Spartan soldier, a politician like Pericles, or even Alexander the Great!

The Renaissance costumes on our website commemorate an era that was famous for its great minds and is remembered as a time of widespread cultural evolution.  Brilliant painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci created some of history’s most famous works of art.  Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy, his epic saga of a mortal’s journey through the afterlife.  Philosophers Niccolo Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne were making giant leaps in political and social thought, gradually reshaping European notions of society and the human condition. The image of the Renaissance in the history books is overwhelmingly positive, a shining beacon of progress and civility that emerges like a lighthouse from the roiling black sea of Europe’s Dark Ages.  So much good was done that it’s easy to overlook the darker side of life during the Renaissance.  While Europeans were liberating themselves from the cruelty and superstition of previous centuries, they were rediscovering slavery.  It had been declining gradually since the reign of the Romans soldiers, and had been almost completely abolished in Northern Europe by the end of the Viking Age in 11th century.  When the Renaissance got going, though, a lot of people were getting rich, and slaves were a mark of status.  Explorers were also discovering new lands across the sea, and when they encountered the Natives, turned to classical philosophers for insight into how to deal with them.  According to Aristotle, slavery was part of the natural order, a suitable form of government for people who were mentally incapable of governing themselves.  With that, the Europeans could justify human bondage, and slavery found new life in an otherwise enlightened era. It became an enduring part of their legacy, to the detriment of all mankind.

  ”All roads lead to Rome” was a popular proverb in ancient Europe.  It was often used metaphorically to describe the vast power and influence of the Roman Empire, but it had a literal connotation as well.  At the height of the Empire, the Roman road system was over 53,000 miles long!  It was an astonishing achievement for an ancient people without the benefit of modern technology.

The Romans shrewdly observed that well maintained roads were critical to the subjugation of their territories and the expansion of their empire, and once the roads were built, Roman legions could travel all over the empire with relative ease and speed.  Like their aqueducts and Roman weapons, the roads were cleverly constructed according to rigidly standardized design specifications.  Construction crews were supervised by learned men called architecti who were trained in geometry and supported by a full-time staff of surveyors and levelers.  Most roads were marked with milestones, and the Romans built and stocked way stations every 10-15 miles to shelter weary travelers.  They even surveyed the entire road network, a task that took over 25 years to complete! A map was on display in the capital, where travelers could copy it down.   The Romans were an exceedingly organized and scientific people, and their vast highway system is one the most impressive achievements of any civilization. 

Roman replicas, including aqueducts, maps and navigation tools can be seen in large museums across the country.  Explore!

    Trying to make a Roman tunic yourself?

If you are intending to dress as a Roman, therefore, you will need a Roman tunic.  It is immaterial what type of Roman you will be dressing as since they all wore tunics.  There is no reason why a woman cannot also wear a shorter man’s tunic, although it was not traditional.  However, not many people will be aware of that so you and your partner should get away with dressing as twins!

If you don’t want to try that, then do as the Roman nobility did and purchase one.  Everything from Roman replicas to real Roman designs are available to purchase online and are available in a number of sizes.  They are not only essetials if you are involved in the forementioned reenactments, but also if you are attending a function with a Roman theme such as a Saturnalia or similar form of Roman feast.