Coming this month—

• Glory in golden September and savor National Honey Month with a toothsome excerpt from Working IX to V about the hardworking beekeepers of old—plus a peek at what ancient “Labor Day” celebrations were like—Fri., Sept. 3

• Even time-traveling historical detectives go through lotsa shoe leather: author Vic confesses to serial shoe-mania—Tues., Sept. 7

• Stump the Sphinx! Another one-minute mystery from ancient history—Fri., Sept. 10

Later in the month, look for:

• Ancient history research 101: primary sources can be practical—or poignant. Examine examples of both.

• More “Fresh Eye” interviews with experts who’ve mastered the art of
historical detection

• Plus other brain-teasing moments from history—join us!

Vicki León, historical detective

VL: On “Fresh Eye,” we’re chatting further with Adrienne Mayor, author-researcher extraordinaire, and the mysterious world of long-ago toxins and its pioneering adepts.
VL: Adrienne, we’ve discussed your research style and methods, along with some of your startling finds. But what first triggered your curiosity about King Mithradates?
AM: Initially, I was mystified. Why had Mithradates and his deeds been forgotten? The man was once a household word, as famous as Spartacus or Caesar. After I read his 1890 biography (never translated into English), I gained more insight. Author Reinach, along with other scholars of his era, labeled the king a decadent Oriental despot, similar to the corrupt Ottoman sultans of the late 19th century. When the Ottoman Empire crumbled away, the memory of Mithradates was also swept into history’s dustbin—
Mithradates: (interrupting) Enough pedantic mush! It was the cursed Romans who painted me as a barbarian king. They hated independent monarchs who stood up to them. They only won because they turned my surviving son into a traitor. Victors always get to write the history and the Romans wrote me out!
AM: Thank you for sharing, O King.
VL: Adrienne, back to your interest in King Mithridates, and poison—
Mithradates: (interrupts again) It’s “Mithra-da-tes,” not Mithri-da-tes! My name means “gift of Mithra, god of truth and light!” I will not accept the latinization of my fine Greco-Persian name by my detested enemies, the Romans—
VL: (cuts into his tirade) OK, point taken, moving on. Adrienne, which came first, your interest in poisons, or his majesty here?
AM: I’d written previously on deadly topics, from Greek myths about spontaneously combustible garments to toxic honey as a weapon in antiquity. I became intrigued with Mithradates while writing my book on ancient biological and chemical warfare. After learning of his lifelong attempt to make himself immune to all poisons, I was hooked. Mithradates, Rome’s deadliest longterm enemy, was also the world’s first experimental toxicologist—yet no one had written a modern biography of this brilliant scientist.
VL: What were your goals in writing this book?
AM: First, to understand the scientific principles underlying his experiments. That took me into fascinating territory—I eagerly delved into the vast array of plant, animal, and mineral poisons known in antiquity—
Mithradates: (bursts in again) Now we’re in MY territory! I’m planning a fabulous banquet tonight—my Alexandrian physician friend has sent me a condemned murderer, along with an exotic new poison from Egypt. We’ll read out his crimes, then serve him a delicious last meal so we can observe the effects. My research goals are multiple—I’m searching for antidotes, of course. But I’m also after undetectable and rapid poisons, good for getting rid of underlings and inconvenient family members. Plus toxins that bring quick and painless death—ones I can hide in the hilt of my dagger, handy for those untoward situations…
VL: Now we’re getting to the good stuff. O King, don’t hold back.
Mithradates: To start with—I figured out how to make myself immune to normally lethal amounts of dragon’s blood or realgar. That’s the toxin you call arsenic. Starting in boyhood, I daily ingested small amounts of it. Once I was king, I invited guests at my banquets to sprinkle it onto my food and drink. Throughout my long reign, I astounded eyewitnesses by quaffing goblets of wine loaded with enough arsenic to kill a man twice my size. My lifetime regimen gave me a lovely translucent complexion, which naturally enhanced my divine aura.
VL: Any drawbacks to your daily dose of dragon’s blood?
Mithradates: Well, one. When my army and I trekked across the Caucasus Mountains, braving snow and ice to escape Pompey’s legions, many of us suffered frostbite. I was distraught to find that frostbite interacted with the arsenic in my system. The black blisters it made disfigured my face so much, I had to withdraw from public view.
VL: That definitely could put a damper on your social life. How about your other poisonous triumphs?
Mithradates: My toxicological secrets included another trick that invariably stunned my banquet guests. My snake handlers would milk venom from a viper’s fangs into a glass. Everyone fears viper venom, especially arrows dipped in the stuff. To everyone’s utter shock, I would swallow the venom with no ill effects. Few people realized that even the deadliest snake venom can be safely digested—it’s only dangerous if it enters the bloodstream.
AM: Vicki, here’s the science end. Tiny doses of arsenic cause the liver to create enzymes that mop up the toxic molecules. Longterm, low-grade arsenic poisoning stimulates the liver to produce more and more enzymes; thus the body is able to neutralize what would normally be a deadly dose. Mithradates’ experience with frostbite? It’s also confirmed by studies showing that longterm arsenic dosing plus frostbite results in gangrenous skin cancers.
VL: O King, since the statute of limitations on your murder victims is a moot point by now, can you tell us what you used to kill your sons and family?
Mithradates: Time and time again, my first choice was tasteless, odorless realgar or arsenic: the King of Poisons, the Poison of Kings. This valuable export was produced in my own kingdom by workers toiling in the infamous mines on Mt Realgar. Arsenic was a family tradition: my treacherous mother used it to murder my dear father. Of course, I devised more theatrical executions for enemies I particularly detested—such as the gullet full of molten gold that I administered to Aquillius, the greedy Roman officer who invaded my dominions.
VL: Any regrets?
Mithradates: Several times in my tumultuous life, I also had to poison my entire harem and start from scratch.
VL: Why??
Mithradates: The Romans were closing in on my castles and it was my painful responsibility to save the women from fates worse than death. You know, rape and torture by brutish legionaries. For the woman under my protection—my own sisters, children, concubines—I ordered my eunuchs
to employ a gentle poison, such as opium mixed with hemlock.
AM: Vicki, no records exist to tell us exactly which poisons the King used to eliminate family, foes, girlfriends, and rivals. The opium-hemlock mixure, used by the Athenians to execute Socrates, reputedly brought about a calm demise. As for the rest—Mithradates’ experiments involved myriad poisons, some common and others arcane. Since he knew two dozen languages and could correspond easily with farflung allies and other experimenters, the King had access to toxicological treatises from India, Egypt, and other places. We do know that he carried out hundreds of experiments with poisons and antidotes on condemned criminals, on his friends, and on himself.
VL: O Great Poisoner of history, if you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
Mithradates: “King of Kings, sent by the god Mithra to fight for Truth and Light against the forces of Darkness and Deceit. My spirit lives on.”
VL: Adrienne Mayor, how about your choice of an epitaph?

AM: “Historian of Human Curiosity.”

VL: To you both, myriad thanks for the dark secrets and science insights you’ve shared with us!

Welcome to Part 1 of  “ A Fresh Eye”, an interview with historian-folklorist Adrienne Mayor, who specializes in the early history of science. Nonfiction author of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs, her most recent book is a can’t-put-down biography and a National Book Award finalist called The Poison King.
VL: Adrienne, before we get too deep into toxins, I’m wondering: has your research ever taken you outside your comfort zone?
AM: Most of my research does just that–because unanswered questions
are the only kind that attract me! For three decades, I’ve been reading my way through ancient Greek and Roman literature, amassing files and taking notes on topics both weird and neglected. I am attracted—as you are!—to marginal material that no one else seems to find fruitful. The research paths
I prefer can be prodigiously frustrating. But the exhilaration of chasing down elusive kernels of scientific or historical truth keeps me going.
VL: I’m a library freak and imagine you are, too. Any favorites to tell us about?
AM: I have fond feelings for two research libraries in particular. Living in Athens in the late 1970s, I was lucky enough to begin research in classical folklore at the Library of the American School of Classical Studies. There
I met archaeologists, art historians, and classical scholars who patiently and generously responded to my off-the-wall questions. In 1990, when my husband and I moved to Princeton, N.J.,  I developed a crush on the magnificent Firestone Library, spending many happy hours in their rare book rooms.
VL: During your years of research, what have you found to be your most useful tools and strategies?
AM: Insatiable curiosity, for one. Willingness to give ancient sources the benefit of the doubt, for another. I’ve also developed a “rapture of the deep” ability to persist while doing complex library, museum, and internet searches. In addition, I find that dreams help me solve knotty problems.
VL: What’s your writing environment like? Any special rituals or quirks?
AM: Yellow legal pads: indispensable for brainstorming and outlines. White ones just won’t do. I compose on my laptop, being too nomadic to have a desktop computer. Music helps me jumpstart the flow of words. I have a superstitious faith in Chopin’s Nocturnes performed by Daniel Barenboim–and can listen to them for days.
VL: I can relate. To write my first big book, I played Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” over and over. And that was back in the days of LPs and typewriters!
AM: Another genre that puts me in a writing mood is droning, ethereal music, like Jonsi and Alex.
VL: How do you reward yourself after a hard day’s work?
AM: A bowl of popcorn with Greek olive oil and sea salt on it.
VL: Can you describe a few peak research moments for us?
AM: I’ve had many while working on The Poison King and other toxicological projects. For example, I was thrilled to find an obscure paper by an Italian archaeologist who’d discovered residues in a large vat at a villa near Herculaneum. Chemical testing showed the vat had been used to boil medicinal plants, opium, and (the exciting kicker) bits of reptiles!  King Mithradates’ celebrated elixir, his secret “universal antidote” to make him immune to all poisons, was said to contain 50-plus ingredients, including plant toxins AND minced lizards. Decades after Mithradates’ death in 63 BC, Imperial physicians not only claimed to have his original formula but several boasted that they’d “improved” it. Nero’s doctor Andromachus, for example, replaced the minced lizard with chopped viper; another Imperial physician added opium. In the Italian archaeologist’s paper, she concluded that the vat she found may have been used to produce a royal version of the new improved antidote, sometime before AD 79 (when Vesuvius erupted, destroying Herculaneum and Pompeii).
VL: Wow. What an amazing find. Were you able to interview the archaeologist herself?
AM: Sadly, no. I tried for a year to contact her, only later learning she’d left archaeology to become a recluse.
VL: Tell us about researching the Mithradates book. Any memorable breakthrough moments?
AM: Twice King Mithradates nearly died on the battlefield, profusely bleeding from grievous wounds. Ancient historians report that both times
his life was saved by his team of Agari medicine men. These mysterious Scythian shamans hailed from the region between the Black and Caspian Seas, now Azerbaijan. Masters of poison, their specialized repertoire included the secrets of using deadly venoms as medicine. To identify which snake species the Agari would have worked with, I searched online. Turns out the most likely was the Caucasian steppe viper. As I combed the web
for images of it, I turned up a recent article in an Azerbaijani magazine (miraculously in English!) about their country’s valuable new export: the venom of the Caucasian steppe viper. In demand at hospitals around the world, viper venom now brings in more cash than oil does.
Why? Because scientists in the brand-new field of venomics, as it’s called, have discovered that miniscule amounts of venom stop hemorrhage. That’s the secret that Mithradates’ shamans discovered more than 2,000 years ago! Here we have a medical history milestone: the first documented accounts of saving lives with snake venom.
VL: A true eureka! moment for you, then.
AM: Yes. Nevertheless, more mystery remains: how did the Agari shamans manage to dilute and deliver the venom in antiquity?
VL: So we’ve come full circle. More unanswered questions–and seekers like you, patiently pursuing the answers. Thank you, Adrienne!
AM: It’s been a pleasure.
VL: We’re not finished, folks—please join us on the next blogpost for Part 2 of our interview with author Adrienne Mayor, my fellow historical detective and researcher extraordinaire. (To learn more about Ms. Mayor and her books, visit YouTube, facebook, RedRoom, and other sites.)

Q: Which ancient world wonder stood taller than the Statue of Liberty and remained a visitor magnet for 700 years—even after it fell down?

A: The 120-foot Colossus on the Greek island of Rhodes. Completed in a dozen years, the sungod image was ingeniously recycled from enemy war weapons of bronze and iron, including the most colossal siege engine of its day.

(Still curious? See the entry in Vicki’s new nonfiction, How to Mellify a Corpse.)

• I was riveted by a recent article in Time magazine—as were millions of other women. In bullet points, it described the largely unsung use of toxic ingredients in modern cosmetics, citing a new book on the subject, called No More Dirty Looks by Siobhan O’Connor and Alexandra Spunt ((“About Face,” Time July 19, 2010, p. 45. Also http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2010/08/13/the-dangers-that-lurk-in-your-make-up-bag/)
• Among other revelations, these journalists found that today’s mascara may contain coal tar, a carcinogen; sunscreen ingredients may include oxybenzone, a hormone disrupter; and lipsticks may include possible carcinogens and lead as well.
• Once again, it goes to show that human beings have short memories (and few ethics) when it comes to history lessons learned.
• You see, the long and deadly road to female beauty aids had its start thousands of years ago, in ancient Egypt and Rome. In my most recent nonfiction, I explored that road—only to find that not only were cosmetics users at high risk themselves—they inflicted dreadful damage on their unborn children. (I call it “slow-motion toxification.” Why? Because long-ago women’s consumption of lead via food, drink, medications, and other routes traveled easily through the placenta, causing miscarriages, birth defects, mental retardation, and brain damage.)
• Historians never tire of arguing why the Roman Empire crumbled—but few indeed have taken note of the role that toxic cosmetics may have played. Read on for some disquieting news, excerpted from my book, How to Mellify a Corpse. (The “corpse” part as it may have applied to long-ago makeup wearers is merely an eerie coincidence. I think…)
• “Drop-dead beauty—that’s what the affluent Roman matron sought. Given the near-lethal cosmetics she used to get it, the drop-dead part was almost literal. Gone were the classic Greek days of demure. Everyone wanted smooth pale skin, flashing eyes, and ruby lips.
• In ancient times, cold cream was about the only beauty aid that didn’t actively poison its users. The Greeks favored a krinos-lily unguent made in the flower-growing town of Chaeronea. Much later, Roman author Galen dreamed up a concoction of rosebuds steeped in a 1-to-3 ratio of wax and lanolin.
• Skin peels were popular, too: just apply white lead and sublimate of mercury and watch two ugly layers of epidermis slough off! Thanks to earlier Egyptian herbalists, the Greeks and Romans also knew how to mix animal fat with lead salts to make lead soap.
• Onto clean faces, women buffed quantities of white face powder. The most popular—and deadly—was made of pure lead carbonate (we know this because toxic leftovers have been found at various archaeological sites). Elite Roman gals demanded an expensive powder made from the white excrement of crocodiles.
If croc supplies ran low, they used a dusting of arsenic.
• Both lips and cheeks got generous applications of rouge. The base mix included harmless ingredients such as mulberry, lichen, and seaweed. In order to achieve that desirable scarlet color, however, nothing could match minium, cinnabar, or vermillion. A type of red lead, minium these days is usually found in batteries and rustproof paint. Cinnabar contained 86 percent mercury; vermillion was refined from raw cinnabar.
• Reading these ingredients, it’s easy to feel superior to the fashion-mad women of two thousand years ago, who unknowingly chose toxins rather than ghastly pale lips.The ugly truth? The issue is still with us.
• A 2007 product test by the Commission for Safe Cosmetics revealed that one-third of U.S.-made bright red lipsticks tested contained unacceptable levels of lead. None listed lead as an ingredient. Like cinnabar, lead does not belong on lips. Or in stomachs. During a lifetime of daily lipstick wearing, a woman swallows an amazing amount of lipstick—for pounds, on average.
• The eye makeup used long ago presented similar problems; galena, the nature ore of lead, was the standard eyeliner.
• Beauty regimens—they’ve always been hell. And hell on women’s health and future generations, too.”

(Excerpted from How to Mellify a  Corpse by Vicki Leon, published by Walker Books 2010. For permission to reuse, please contact the author via her blog or facebook account.)

two Bangladesh boys

modern evil-eye charms

• Ever thought about the word ‘fascination’? We use it all the time.  It happens to illustrate one of the longest lived superstitions in the world. You see, despite the very real dangers that men and women actually faced long ago, the issue they

often stressed over was…the EVIL EYE. Roman author Horace called it “the unlucky glance that poisons.”
• What havoc could an unlucky glance cause? Long-ago folks from all social classes firmly believed it could wither crops, kill domestic animals, make people sick, and bring them misfortune.

Antioch mosaic of eye

Charm-protected tree in Turkey

• It wasn’t just the Italians who bought into the notion, either. Then and now, around the world, a belief persists that the human eye is capable of inflicting an injury on humans, animals, and whatever else its gaze happens to fall upon. In the 1930s, King Alphonso of Spain brought disaster in his wake and was thought to have the evil eye. So was Pope Pius IX.
• In Greco-Roman times, evil eye protection began at birth. Young and old routinely wore neck or wrist amulets in the shape of frogs, crickets, animal horns, or eye symbols. The most popular by far?  A charm in the shape of a sturdy phallus, which in Latin is called “fascinum.” Some phalluses had wings or a eye, making them even more potent protectors. From the moment of birth, babies were decked out with such symbols. The teething ring used by infants was usually a phallus carved from pink coral. (Not an easy image to erase from your mind’s eye!)
• Evil-eye averting amulets of two millennia ago were far from dainty. They weren’t concealed, either; a fascinum was designed to attract and thwart malicious glances. Museums from Rome to Madrid are full of these talismans, some of them pretty clunky, as these photos show.
• Since homes, workplaces, crossroads, and vehicles needed protection too, Romans and Greeks placed the fascination objects everywhere—as lamps,  windchimes, and art objects. (For his multiple war triumphs, Julius Caesar had various of them dangling from his chariot during the splashy day-long parades.)
• The sheer abundance of anatomically correct phalluses, including supersized ones portrayed in countless paintings, used to flabbergast the archaeologists of earlier centuries—until they connected the dots between the fascinum and the Greco-Roman obsession with warding off bad luck.
• Depictions of exuberant male organs are still ubiquitous in Italy and other Mediterranean locales. These fascinating (in dual senses of the word) objects are found in gardens, imbedded in mosaics, carved into sidewalks and walls, and posted over the doors of bakeries and wineshops and workshops in Pompeii and countless other ancient sites. Some are bathroom crude; others are exquisite works of art. They still embarrass visitors, who tend to read a lot more into the sex lives of the ancients than was probably true!
• Before you chuckle smugly at the superstitious antics of the long-ago Romans and Greeks, take a look at these headlines from our own world:
• ‘Evil eye’ killed fresh graduate?  (source: Arab News.com)
• [Pakistani President] Zardari sacrifices black goats to ‘ward off
the evil eye’     (source: ThaiIndia News.com)
Not convinced? Then check out the pictures in this blogpost. And if the spirit moves you, go window shopping in today’s global marketplace, where trinkets and devices from red thread to blue glass eyes promise to deliver freedom from being fascinated.

evil eye phallic charms, in museum case

"Happiness lives here" fascinum.

(This blogpost is excerpted and expanded upon from an entry in Vicki Leon’s new book, How to Mellify a Corpse, from Walker Books 2010. Please contact the author for permission and crediting to use elsewhere.)

NOTE to blog readers of the August 4 blogpost on Spartacus:
• Question: What was the most unusual true statement in the interview? Answer: Spartacus and his rebel army did camp on Mt Vesuvius for some time. When the Roman army surrounded the base, the rebels used thick vegetation to climb down the opposite side—where they were able to take the army by surprise from the rear. Result: Glaber’s forces got a whipping, Spartacus and company got a dandy supply of Roman weapons.

• Researching the ancient world’s accomplishments is a humbling experience. Turns out that the Greeks beat us to countless firsts, from computers to the secrets of surround-sound. They also clobbered us when it came to imagineering the most horrific monsters and undead bogeymen. If that weren’t enough, long-ago Greeks also pioneered the first corpuscule-craving bogeywomen.

• In How to Mellify a Corpse, I wrote about these early vampire females, some of whom changed into come-hither form to attract males, supping on their flesh as well as their blood. There was Mormo, a queen in a prior life who’d lost her children and developed an eating disorder and a taste for Type O-positive; and Lamia, who stole kids and ate them—quite an athletic feat, since she resembled a giant shark. The most fearsome vampire femme-fatale, however, was Empusa, who sported a donkey leg and another made of brass. To have any sort of social life, Empusa took on the bodies of living women from time to time. The star of the earliest “meet cute” story in history, Empusa hooks up with a young philosopher and deftly drags him to the marriage altar until a famed egghead named Apollonius of Tyana stages a vampire intervention.
• After my book came out—and always on the lookout for more
in-depth information about women, bloodsucking or not–I decided to pick a vampire expert’s brain on the topic. Karen Essex seemed the ideal victim. A bestselling historical fiction author of Leonardo’s Swans and other works, her newest book, Dracula in Love, launches this week.
Vicki Leon: Welcome, Karen. People have believed in vampires for thousands of years. Why do you think they remain such a part of our 21st-century culture?
Karen Essex: Vampires used to reflect our fears. Now they reflect our fantasies. No longer monsters who corrupt and destroy, they have become magical creatures who have what we lust for— immortality. My theory is that while every generation has longed for a fountain of youth, today we have tools that enable us to reject the very idea of aging. Humans today downright abhor the idea of mortality! Who can blame us? We live in a youth-worshipping society—on steroids. We have stem-cell treatments, hormone therapies, cosmetic surgery both invasive and non-invasive, and medicines that can keep us alive beyond our expiration date. I sometimes run into people who look younger than they did twenty years ago! We are vampirizing ourselves; and at the same time, we are humanizing the monsters.
Vicki Leon: As in the current avalanche of movies and books, where the emotional thread that runs through all is the ancient Greek sense of pothos, or longing. Karen, what about the male-female vampire issue? Does it represent male fears or demonizing women? A way to portray women as willing victims? Or fantasies of powerful women?
Karen Essex: Vampires have a long rich history dating to pre-Biblical times. Many mythical blood-drinkers were female, symbolic of feminine magic and power. These are the true bad girls of mythology. The Hindu goddess Kali who punished and possessed her enemies by drinking their blood. The child-eating Lamia of Greece and North Africa who so captivated the pre-Raphaelite artists of Bram Stoker’s day. Lilith, Adam’s first Mesopotamian wife, who drank blood in vengeance. The blood-lusting warrior fairy queens of Ireland. I wanted these sultry sirens in my book, and by God, I did get them in there!
Vicki Leon: How did we get from those full-bodied female terrors to the Victorian notion of vampires, who all seem to be males?
Karen Essex: The Victorians lived in fear of unleashed female sexuality. To their minds, women were pure and innocent creatures who must remain protected from worldly life. If women succumbed to sexual lust, ordered Victorian society would combust. Consequently, in stories like John Polidari’s The Vampyre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it was the male vampires who roamed the streets of London and threatened lovely young ladies.
Vicki Leon: Being a historical research freak, I’m always interested in how others do research. Can you clue us in?
Karen Essex: The gruesome (details) in Dracula in Love come
out of my own head, my own imagination, which I guess makes it even more disturbing.
Vicki Leon: (hair on back of neck now standing on end). Wow. Would you look at the time. Karen, thanks for talking to us. You have given new meaning to the term “undying love.”

Vampires get around, including the nation's capitol

Dateline: southern Italy, 73 BC

• Our roving research reporter has tracked down Spartacus,
the world’s most glamorous ex-gladiator and rebel icon, for an exclusive battlefield interview about life, love, and his prospects for short-term survival:
RR:  Welcome, Spartacus! We’re streaming live from—
Spartacus: (interrupts) We’re a little busy here…forget  streaming, we’re fighting the Roman army. Luckily, they’ve only sent 3,000 rookies and that meathead Glaber against us. Pompey’s away in Spain, and the rest of the legions are getting their hineys whipped by King Mithridates in the east…
RR: Could we step out of arrow-fire range?  (winces)  Ow! A little further away.
Spartacus: (contemptuous sniff) That arrow barely grazed you!
RR: (using toga to mop up blood flow) You’ve assembled an army of runaway slaves, disenchanted gladiators, and assorted Euro-trash—what’s your game plan?
Spartacus:  We’re headed for a terrific hideout, an impregnable base of operations.
RR: And that would be?
Spartacus: (pointing) The top of Mt Vesuvius. Big flat area on top, you know.
RR: Really. Vesuvius? Aren’t you concerned about devastating volcanic activity?
Spartacus: Thing’s been dormant for centuries. Safe as houses. I scoped out a few hot spots on the summit we can even use as barbecue pits.
RR: If you say so… Moving on: regarding your recent gladiatorial career. Any regrets?
Spartacus: Have to admit, I miss the roar of the crowd. And those arena groupies. (chuckles) I was catnip. Talk about no holds barred…
RR: Let’s not go down that eroticism road.  How about sharing some professional secrets?
Spartacus: No way.
RR:  C’mon. Just one for the folks at home.
Spartacus: Will you quit pestering me then? I’ve got a rebellion to run.
RR: I promise. Now spill!
Spartacus: (impatient sigh)  OK. The blood.
RR: You’re saying it’s fake??
Spartacus: No. It’s real, all right. But the blood isn’t ours.
RR: Explain.
Spartacus: Our gladiatorial union, we told them we’d had it with actual flesh wounds. Makes the match too short. If the crowd gets unhappy– bidda-boom, the tips dry up.
RR: So what’s your secret? Where’s the blood hidden?  And whose blood is it, anyway?
Spartacus: Pig blood—nice bright color, doesn’t coagulate too quickly. After some experimentation, we found that pig-testicle patches work best. Easy to hide inside armpits or loincloth. I used to keep a supply stuck to the back of my scutum; plenty of room on a shield. Bit of finesse required, learning how to deploy them, of course. But you get a nice spray of gore.  Oops! Gotta go. (Spartacus wanders off to decapitate an enemy soldier coming at him.)
RR: First century BC fans, you heard it here first—gladiatorial savagery morphs into gladiatorial fakery. And that is today’s trend in extreme blood sports.
RR: (sour look) Is that a wrap?
RR: (to cameraman) Thank Apollo, at least pro wrestling hasn’t become tainted.

TIP to reader: this interview is mostly mock—including the dialogue.
Nevertheless, much of it is fact-based and comes in part from my new book, How to Mellify a Corpse. Can you identify the most unusual true statement in this interview? The answer will be in my next blogpost.
Happy hunting!
Vicki Leon, historical detective

What Spartacus didn’t know:

Vesuvius pops off fairly often—but not predictably.

These eruptions, captured by artists in real time, occurred in 1631, 1760, and 1822.

Posting this month:

• Our roving research reporter conducts a penetrating, mostly mock interview with Spartacus, celebrated
ex-gladiator and rebel icon—Fri., Aug. 6

• 2500 years of the undead: Vampires then and now, with comments from historical novelist Karen Essex, bestselling author of Kleopatra, whose Dracula in Love releases
this month—Tues., Aug. 10

• An eerie evil-eye blog tale for Fri., the 13th of Aug.

• Later in the month, look for: “A Fresh Eye” interview as
we learn how folklorist, author, and toxins expert Adrienne Mayor researches ancient poisons—and notorious poisoners.

• Stump the Sphinx: one-minute mysteries from history,
and other painless diversions—see you here!

Vicki León, historical detective

click to enlarge