Tasting Life Twice

"No day shall erase you from the memory of time." 

While Virgil was talking about Trojan warriors, Nisus and Euryalus, when he wrote this line in his epic poem, The...

Podcasts are all the rage these days, which in some ways surprises me as I used to write columns on mobile marketing ten years ago when “podvertising” was a new way to promote. When the stellar podcast, Serial, came along in 2014 everyone jumped back on the bandwagon. Fortunately, podcasting has come a long way and there are some fantastic, well-produced gems out there to set your ears upon. Also, if you need a better way to organize your podcasts, check out Overcast.

The Vestal Virgins were among the most important individuals in ancient Rome. They were priestesses of the goddess Vesta, whose hearth was always lit. Their privileges among women of the day were many. They were able to own property and did not have to bear children, they had the best box seats to any event, they had the right of way in the streets, they had personal bodyguards and they had the ability to free slaves and prisoners with a mere touch or command.
We know a lot about the Vestals but we don't know much about what their hair looked like under the elaborate headdresses they wore. Janet Stephens, a Baltimore hairdresser and amateur archaeologist became fascinated with a statue she saw of a Vestal and decided she would find out. It took her seven years of research and now she believes she's figured it out. Take a look:

If not, now you can! This video was set about 200 years after my novel's central character lived, but it still gives a great flavor of what Rome would have been like in ancient times. While the Colosseum wasn't there, nor the Circus Maximus, most of the other major buildings were there in the time that Apicius lived. He would have walked on the stones of the Roman Forum, visited the Temple of Jupiter, looked up through the oculus of The Pantheon. Such power there is in history!
http://vimeo.com/32038695