Death of Pliny the Elder

Roman writer was fascinated by nature and geography

A 19th century lithograph depicting the death of Pliny
the Elder by the Spanish painter Ricardo Martí Aguiló

The author, philosopher, and naval and army commander who became known as Pliny the Elder died on this day in 79 AD during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples in Campania.

Pliny had been stationed with the Roman Navy a short distance away at Misenum, on what is now known as the Gulf of Pozzuoli, and had organised a rescue mission after a friend had sent him a message saying that she was stranded at Stabiae. It is thought he died from asphyxiation  caused by the toxic gases coming from the volcano.

Born Gaius Plinius Secundus in either 23 or 24 AD in Como, then called Novum Comum, in Lombardy, Pliny grew up to become a prolific writer, naturalist and philosopher.

He wrote Naturalis Historia - The Natural History - a 37-volume work about the natural world, based on his extensive studies and investigations into nature and geography. He also wrote the 20-volume Bella Germaniae, a history of the German wars, which was used as a source by Roman historians such as Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius.

Pliny had some legal education in Rome and became a junior officer in the army at the age of 23. He was interested in Roman literature and through this made influential literary friends, who helped him advance his career.

Pliny the Elder was a writer and
lawyer as well as a naval officer

Pliny the Elder’s first book was about the use of missiles by cavalry troops, but it has not survived. Some of its contents were revealed in his Naturalis Historia, where he refers to using the movements of the horse to assist the rider when throwing a javelin.

During the reign of Nero, Pliny lived in Rome, where he witnessed the construction of Nero’s Domus Aurea, or Golden House. As well as pleading law cases, Pliny studied and carried on writing. His second published work was The Life of Pomponius Secundus, a distinguished statesman and poet.

After the death of Nero, Vespasian became emperor and put Pliny to work immediately governing various provinces and he spent time in Africa and Spain. He was trusted by Vespasian right up to the emperor’s death, which was a few months before that of Pliny.

Vespasian had appointed Pliny as praefectus classis in the Roman Navy and the writer was in Misenum with the fleet when Vesuvius erupted in August 79 AD and he saw what he at first thought was an unusual cloud formation in the sky. According to the writing of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, he ordered a fleet of galleys to cross the Gulf of Naples to Stabiae to investigate what was happening and try to rescue his friend, Rectina, and any others who were stranded there.

A 15th century copy of Pliny the Elder's
Naturalis Historia printed in Venice

When cinders and pumice began to fall on the vessel, Pliny was advised to turn back, but he vowed to continue, saying, ‘Fortune favours the bold.’ 

After reaching Stabiae, strong winds prevented his party from leaving again. But later, when they did try to leave because they realised that they were in danger, a plume of hot, toxic gases engulfed them. Pliny, who it is thought may have suffered from asthma, probably died from asphyxiation.

Pliny the Elder never married and he had no children. In his will, he adopted his nephew, who later became known as Pliny the Younger, to enable him to inherit his entire estate. 

Pliny the Elder had deliberately reserved some of his writing on Roman history to be published after his death, knowing it to be controversial and that it could have put his life in danger during the reign of Nero. During his lifetime he had tried to stick to writing about safe topics, such as grammar and nature.

His huge work, Naturalis Historia, which was published just before his death, is thought to have been the first ever encyclopaedia, and it is the earliest known encyclopaedia to have survived to this day. It remained an authority on scientific matters until the Middle Ages.

Statues of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger
flank the entrance to the Duomo di Como

Travel tip:

Como, where Pliny the Elder was born, is a city at the foot of Lake Como in Lombardy, which in Roman times was called Novum Comum, so called because it was a new city built on swampland at the southern tip of the lake that had been drained on the orders of Julius Caesar after he had deemed that the settlement be moved from its former location on nearby hills. Today it is a popular tourist destination because of its proximity to the lake and has many attractive churches, gardens, museums, theatres, parks, and palaces to visit. The Villa Olmo, built in neoclassical style there in 1797 by an aristocratic family, has hosted Napoleon, Ugo Foscolo, Prince Metternich, Archduke Franz Ferdinand I and Giuseppe Garibaldi, to name but a few of the eminent people who have stayed there. The 15th century facade of Como's duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta - has a portal flanked by Renaissance statutes of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger.

The atrium, with some frescoes still intact, at the
well-preserved Villa San Marco in Castellammare

Travel tip:

The town of Stabiae in Campania, where Pliny the Elder met his death, was an ancient city which used to be situated near the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia. Many Roman villas were built in ancient Stabiae because it was a popular seaside resort for wealthy Romans and, although the town was buried under layers of volcanic ash, like nearby Pompei, some of the villas can still be visited today. They are the largest concentration of well-preserved Roman seaside villas known in the world. Built on the northernmost edge of Varano hill, which offers panoramic views of the Gulf of Naples, they include the Villa San Marco, one of the largest villas ever discovered in Campania, measuring over 11,000 square meters. It has an atrium, courtyard with a pool, triclinium with bay views, colonnaded courtyard, kitchen, and two internal gardens, as well as a private bath complex. The walls are decorated with mosaics and frescoes. At the time of the eruption, the Villa San Marco is thought to have been undergoing repairs following an earthquake and was not occupied.

Also on this day: 

79: Vesuvius erupts, destroying Pompeii and other cities

665: The death of Saint Patricia of Naples

1509: The birth of Borgia cardinal Ippolito II d'Este

1609: Galileo demonstrates the potential of telescope

1691: The birth of architect Alessandro Galilei 

1829: The birth of composer Carlo Eduardo Acton

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24 August

Peppino De Filippo - comedian, actor and playwright

Talented Neapolitan who lived in shadow of his brother

The playwright and comic actor Peppino De Filippo was born Giuseppe De Filippo on this day in 1903 in Naples.  A highly accomplished performer on stage in serious as well as comedy roles, De Filippo also had a list of film credits numbering almost 100, of which he is best remembered for his screen partnership with the brilliant comic actor Totò.  To an extent, however, he spent his career in the shadow of his older brother, Eduardo De Filippo, who after Luigi Pirandello was regarded as the second great Italian playwright of the 20th century.  The two fell out in the 1940s for reasons that were never made clear, although it later emerged that they had many artistic differences.  They were never reconciled, and though Peppino went on to enjoy a successful career and was widely acclaimed it annoyed him that he was always seen as a minor playwright compared with his brother.  When Peppino published an autobiography in 1977, three years before he died, he called it Una famiglia difficile - A Difficult Family. In the book he described his relationship with his sister, Titina, as one of warmth and affection, but portrays Eduardo as something of a tyrant.  Read more…

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Parmigianino - Mannerist painter

Artist from Parma left outstanding legacy

The artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola – better known as Parmigianino – died on this day in 1540 in Casalmaggiore, a town on the Po river south-east of Cremona in Lombardy.  Sometimes known as Francesco Mazzola, he was only 37 years old when he passed away but had nonetheless made sufficient impact with his work to be regarded as an important influence on the period that followed the High Renaissance era of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.  Known for the refined sensuality of his paintings, Parmigianino – literally ‘the little one from Parma’ – was one of the first generation of Mannerist painters, whose figures exuded elegance and sophistication by the subtle exaggeration of qualities associated with ideal beauty.  Parmigianino is also thought to have been one of the first to develop printmaking using the technique known as etching and through this medium his work was copied, and circulated to many artistic schools in Italy and other countries in northern Europe, where it could be studied and admired.  Parmigianino’s figures would often have noticeably long and slender limbs and strike elegant poses.  Read more…

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Carlo Gambino - Mafia Don

Sicilian thought to be model for Mario Puzo's Godfather

Carlo Gambino, who would become one of the most powerful Mafia Dons in the history of organised crime, was born on this day in 1902 in Palermo, Sicily.  For almost two decades up to his death in 1976, he was head of the Gambino Crime Family, one of the so-called Five Families that have sought to control organised crime in New York under one banner or another for more than a century.  He is thought to have been the real-life Don that author Mario Puzo identified as the model for Vito Corleone, the fictional Don created for the best-selling novel, The Godfather.  During Gambino's peak years, the family's criminal activities realised revenues of an estimated $500 million per year.  Yet Gambino, who kept a modest house in Brooklyn and a holiday home on Long Island, claimed to make a living as a partner in a company that advised on labour relations.  Despite coming under intensive surveillance by the FBI, he managed to avoid prison during a life spent almost exclusively in crime.  Everything he did was planned meticulously to avoid detection, even down to communicating with associates through coded messages.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: A History of Neapolitan Drama in the Twentieth Century, by Mariano D’Amora

In a world that tends to homologate, thus becoming, in every aspect of our lives, grey, flat and uniform, so creating the world of universal similarity (including language), does it still make sense today to talk about vernacular theatre? Tackling such a question implies uncovering the reasons for the disappearance of the many regional theatres that were present in Italy in the 19th century. There is no doubt that first the unification of the country in 1861, and then the language policies of Fascism in the 1930s were the final nails in the coffin for local theatres. It is also true, however, that what really determined their downsizing was the progressive loss of connection with their own environment. If we give an essentially superficial interpretation to the adjective “vernacular”, and in a play we see a canovaccio (plot) that the local star uses as a vehicle to show his talent through a series of modest mannerisms, then “vernacular” implies the death certificate of this type of theatre (once the star dies, his alleged dramaturgy dies with him and his mannerisms). On the contrary, if we identify in this adjective the theatre’s healthy attempt to develop a local, social and cultural analysis of its environment, it opens a whole new meaning and acquires a perspective that a national theatre can never aspire to. This is the case of Neapolitan theatre. As D’Amora explains in A History of Neapolitan Theatre in the Twentieth Century, it managed to survive and thrive, producing plays that were capable of critically describing modern and contemporary reality. Neapolitan playwrights forcefully proclaimed their roots as a primary source for their work. The city, in fact, became a direct expression of that cultural microcosm which provided them with the living flesh of their plots.

Mariano D’Amora has taught Drama at Buckinghamshire New University, the University of Naples “Parthenope”, the University of Rome and Royal Holloway, University of London.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all material was factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living at the time of publication, some of the information may need updating.)

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23 August

Rita Pavone - teenage singing star

Precocious talent who conquered America

Rita Pavone, who was one of Europe's biggest teenage singing stars in the 1960s, was still performing live concerts as recently as 2014 and sang at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2020, was born on this day in 1945 in Turin. The singer had her first hit single when she was just 17 years old and enjoyed success at home and in America during a career that spanned more than five decades, going on to become an accomplished actress on television and in the theatre.  She announced she was quitting show business in 2006 but came out of retirement in 2013 to record two studio albums as a tribute to the stars who had influenced her in throughout her career, then embarking on a series of live concerts in Italy in 2014 and performing in Toronto, Canada exactly 50 years after her first appearance there.  In 2016, she appeared in Ballando Con le Stelle - the Italian equivalent of the US show Dancing With the Stars and Britain's Strictly Come Dancing - and finished third with partner Simone Di Pasquale, reaching the final despite being the oldest competitor.  Pavone spent her early years living in a two-room apartment in Turin.  She was the third of four children yet it was not until 1959 that the family was able to move somewhere bigger.  Read more…

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Roberto Assagioli – psychiatrist

Harsh imprisonment sparked new psychiatric theories

Roberto Assagioli, the pioneering psychiatrist who founded the science of psychosynthesis, died on this day in 1974 in Capolona in the province of Arezzo in Tuscany.  His innovative psychological movement, which emphasised the possibility of progressive integration, or synthesis, of the personality, aimed at finding inner peace and harmony. It is still admired and is being developed by therapists and psychologists today.  Assagioli explained his ideas in four books - two published posthumously - and the many different pamphlets he wrote during his lifetime. In 1940 the psychiatrist had to spend 27 days in solitary confinement in prison, having been arrested by Mussolini’s Fascist government for praying for peace and encouraging others to join him. He later claimed this experience helped him make his psychological discovery.  Assagioli was born under the name of Roberto Marco Grego in 1888 into a middle-class, Jewish background in Venice.  His father died when he was two years old and his mother remarried quickly to Alessandro Emanuele Assagioli. As a young child Roberto was exposed to art and music and learnt many different languages.  Read more…

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Pino Presti – bass player and composer

Talented musician could sing, play guitar, write songs and conduct

Pino Presti, one of the most important personalities in the Italian music business, was born Giuseppe Prestipino Giarritta on this day in 1943 in Milan.  He is a bass guitar player, arranger, composer, conductor and record producer and his work ranges between the different music genres of pop, jazz, funk, latin and dance.  His father, Arturo Prestipino Giarritta, was a well-known violinist and Presti began studying piano and music theory at the age of six.  He taught himself to play the bass guitar and began playing professionally at the age of 17, having developed his own special technique using either the pick or thumb.  Presti was a pioneer of electric bass and was probably the first to play a Fender Jazz Bass in Italy.  His talent for playing the instrument led him to collaborate with the major Italian pop artists of the 1960s, including the famous singer, Mina, who is Italy's all-time top-selling female recording artist. Presti arranged and conducted 86 tracks and composed four songs for her, also sometimes backing her as a singer.  Among the many other artists he worked with were Bobby Solo, Gigliola Cinquetti and Adriano Celentano.  Read more…

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Giovanni Minzoni - priest

Devout Catholic murdered for opposing Fascists

Don Giovanni Minzoni, a Catholic priest whose name is commemorated in many street names around Italy, was murdered by Fascist thugs in the small town of Argenta in Emilia-Romagna on this day in 1923.  A parish priest in the town, midway between the cities of  Ferrara and Ravenna, Don Minzoni was attacked at around 10.30pm as he returned to his rectory in the company of Enrico Bondanelli, a parishioner, when he was set upon by two men who were attached to a Fascist militia in Casumaro, almost 50km (31 miles) from Argenta on the other side of Ferrara. He was pelted with stones and, when the blows made him fall to the ground, was beaten. What proved to be the fatal blow was struck with a heavy walking stick. He had a fractured skull and, despite being helped home by Bondanelli and neighbours, died a couple of hours later. His attackers were later named as Giorgio Molinari and Vittore Casoni, who were allegedly acting on the orders of Italo Balbo, a Blackshirt Commander who would later be seen as an heir to dictator Benito Mussolini.  Don Minzoni, a former military chaplain, had made no secret of his opposition to the Fascist regime. Read more…

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Recording of the Day: Italian Hits of the 60s, Various Artists

Italians share a great love of music from north to south and, despite the language barrier, Italy has made a significant and important contribution to both British and American popular music. Many of the major American stars - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, Mario Lanza - came from immigrant families and several pop hits of the 1950s started life as Italian hits. This wonderful collection features 40 Italian hits, and even if you do not recognise the Italian titles, you will surely know many of the tunes. Rita Pavone’s first single, La partita di pallone, which sold over one million copies, features on Disc One of Italian Hits of the 60s, while major Italian artists such as Domenico Modugno, Adriano Celentano, Gianni Morandi, Peppino di Capri, Nilla Pizzi and Mina are also included.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all material was factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living at the time of publication, some of the information may need updating.)

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22 August

NEW - Flavius Stilicho - Roman general

Last defender of the Western Empire

The military commander Flavius Stilicho, who for part of his career could be considered the most powerful man and de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was executed on this day in 408 in Ravenna.  Stilicho had successfully defended the empire against several barbarian invasions and gained his power through acting as regent when the death of Theodosius I in 395 left the Western Empire in the hands of Honorius, his 10-year-old son.  But as a soldier of partly Vandal descent, Stilicho had always aroused suspicion within the Roman court and his failure to deal with the advance across northern Europe of the rebellious Constantine III, leader of the Romans in Britain, combined with rumours that he planned to install his own son, Eucherius, as emperor of the Eastern Empire following the death of Arcadius, sparked a mutiny of the Roman army at Ticinum - modern Pavia - August 13, 408.  Stilicho retreated to Ravenna, then capital of the Western Empire, where he was imprisoned on the orders of Honorius and executed, along with Eucherius, on August 22.  Born around 359, at a time of political turbulence and rivalries within a Roman Empire in decline, Stilicho is thought to have been the son of a soldier of Vandal origin.  Read more…

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History’s first air raid

Balloon bombs dropped on Venice

Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history of warfare on this day in 1849.  It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele Manin had established the Republic of San Marco.  The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources on defeating the Venetians.  They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself, having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation.  However, because of the shallow lagoons and the strength of Venice’s coastal defences, there were still parts of the city that were out of the range of the Austrian artillery.  It was at this point that one of Austrian commander Josef von Radetzky’s artillery officers, Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius, came up with the unlikely idea of attaching bombs to unmanned balloons.  Read more…

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Bruno Pontecorvo - nuclear physicist

Defection to Soviet Union sparked unsolved mystery 

Bruno Pontecorvo, a nuclear physicist whose defection to the Soviet Union in 1950 led to suspicions of espionage after he had worked on research programmes in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, was born on this day in 1913 in Marina di Pisa.  One of eight children born to Massimo Pontecorvo - a Jewish textile manufacturer who owned three factories - Bruno was from a family rich in intellectual talent. One of his brothers was the film director Gillo Pontecorvo, another the geneticist Guido Pontecorvo.  After high school, he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study engineering, but after two years switched to physics in 1931. He received a doctorate to study at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where Enrico Fermi had gathered together a group of promising young scientists, whom he dubbed “the Via Panisperna boys” after the name of the street where the Institute of Physics  was then situated.  Fermi described the 18-year-old Pontecorvo as one of the brightest young men he had met and invited Pontecorvo to work with him on his experiments bombarding atomic nuclei with slow neutrons.  Read more…

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Giada De Laurentiis - TV chef

Food Network star who was born in Rome

The TV presenter, chef, author and restaurateur Giada Pamela De Laurentiis was born in Rome on this day in 1970.  A classically-trained chef who learned her craft in Paris, she worked in the kitchens of a number of restaurants in Los Angeles before breaking into television. Since 2003 she has been a regular on the Food Network, the American cable channel.  Born into a theatre and movie background, De Laurentiis takes her name from her mother, the actress Veronica De Laurentiis, whose parents were the producer Dino De Laurentiis and the actress Silvana Mangano.  Her father is the actor-producer Alex De Benedetti.  Giada spent her first seven years in Rome, where her mother still has a home near the Spanish Steps, but after her parents divorced she and her sisters moved to Los Angeles.  Her grandfather had a home in Hollywood and had by then become a restaurateur and Giada has memories of spending time in the kitchen of his DDL Foodshow delicatessen and restaurant in Los Angeles, where she acquired her interest in cooking.  Her own entry into the catering business came via a roundabout route.  Read more…

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Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi – bishop

Progressive priest who shaped the destiny of a future Pope

Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who was a mentor for the future Pope John XXIII, died on this day in 1914 in Bergamo.  He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bergamo from 1905 until his death and is remembered with respect because of his strong involvement in social issues at the beginning of the 20th century when he sought to understand the problems of working class Italians.  Radini-Tedeschi was born in 1857 into a wealthy, noble family living in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and then became professor of Church Law in the seminary of Piacenza.  In 1890 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and was sent on a number of diplomatic missions.  In 1905 he was named Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bergamo by Pope Pius X and was consecrated by him in the Sistine Chapel.  Radini-Tedeschi was a strong supporter of Catholic trade unions and backed the workers at a textile plant in Ranica, a district of Bergamo Province, during a labour dispute.  Working for him as his secretary at the time was a young priest named Angelo Roncalli who had been born at Sotto il Monte just outside Bergamo into a large farming family.  Read more…

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Luca Marenzio – composer

Madrigal writer influenced Monteverdi

Luca Marenzio, a prolific composer of madrigals during the late Renaissance period, died on this day in 1599 in the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio in Rome.  Marenzio wrote at least 500 madrigals, some of which are considered to be the most famous examples of the form, and he was an important influence on the composer Claudio Monteverdi.  Born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia in 1553, Marenzio was one of seven children belonging to a poor family, but he received some early musical training at Brescia Cathedral where he was a choirboy.  It is believed he went to Mantua with the maestro di cappella from Brescia to serve the Gonzaga family as a singer.  Marenzio was then employed as a singer in Rome by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and, after the Cardinal’s death, he served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este.  He travelled to Ferrara with Luigi d’Este and took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese.  While he was there he wrote two books of madrigals and dedicated them to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d’Este.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker

This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid.  From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history: the spectacular collapse of the 'free' republic, the birth of the age of the 'Caesars', the violent suppression of the strongest rebellion against Roman power, and the bloody civil war that launched Christianity as a world religion.  At the heart of Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire are the dynamic, complex but flawed characters of some of the most powerful rulers in history: men such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero and Constantine. Putting flesh on the bones of these distant, legendary figures, Simon Baker looks beyond the dusty, toga-clad caricatures and explores their real motivations and ambitions, intrigues and rivalries. The superb narrative, full of energy and imagination, is a brilliant distillation of the latest scholarship and a wonderfully evocative account of Ancient Rome.

Simon Baker read Classics at Oxford University. In 1999 he joined the BBC's award-winning History Unit where he has worked on Timewatch and a wide range of programmes about the classical world. He was the Development Producer on the BBC One series Ancient Rome - The Rise and Fall of an Empire. This is his second book.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all material was factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living at the time of publication, some of the information may need updating.)

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Flavius Stilicho - Roman general

Last defender of the Western Empire

A diptych in Monza cathedral is thought to show 
Stilicho (right), with Serena and Eucherius

The military commander Flavius Stilicho, who for part of his career could be considered the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire, was executed on this day in 408 in Ravenna.

Stilicho had successfully defended the empire against several Barbarian invasions and gained his power through acting as regent when the death of Theodosius I in 395 left the Western Empire in the hands of Honorius, his 10-year-old son.

But as a soldier of partly Vandal descent, Stilicho had always aroused suspicion within the Roman court and his failure to deal with the advance across northern Europe of the rebellious Constantine III, leader of the Romans in Britain, combined with rumours that he planned to install his own son, Eucherius, as emperor of the Eastern Empire following the death of Arcadius, sparked a mutiny of the Roman army at Ticinum - modern Pavia - on August 13, 408.

Stilicho retreated to Ravenna, then capital of the Western Empire, where he was imprisoned on the orders of Honorius and executed, along with Eucherius, on August 22.

Born around 359, at a time of political turbulence and rivalries within a Roman Empire in decline, Stilicho is thought to have been the son of a soldier of Vandal origin in the Roman army and a Roman mother. 

A bust of Theodosius I,
in the Louvre in Paris

As a soldier himself, he proved to be a skilled strategist and diplomat and quickly rose through the ranks under Theodosius I, the last emperor of a unified Roman Empire.

His success in 383 in negotiating a territorial settlement with Shapur III, the King of Persia, on behalf of Theodosius saw him quickly promoted to be head of the emperor's corps of bodyguards.

Theodosius increasingly saw Stilicho as a valued ally and strengthened their bond by allowing Stilicho to marry his favourite niece, Serena.

In around 393, Theodosius made him commander-in-chief of the Roman army and entrusted him with the guardianship of Honorius ahead of his death in 395.

Stilicho’s successes on the battlefield strengthened his position still further.

The Battle of the Frigidus in 394 in what is now western Slovenia saw him fighting alongside Alaric, the King of the Visigoths, to defeat the usurper Eugenius, unifying the Empire under Theodosius, while between 395 and 398 he successfully contained the Gothic threat in the Balkans.

In 398 Stilicho defeated Gildo, the rebel governor of Africa, securing a vital grain supply for Rome.

In the early fifth century, he defeated the Ostrogoth king Radagaisus, preventing an invasion of the Italian peninsula, and twice defeated Alaric, his ally in Frigidus, in the Battles of Pollentia and Verona.

A bust depicting Emperor
Honorius as an adolescent

Stilicho’s power inevitably made him enemies, notably a Praetorian prefect by the name of Rufinus, who is said to have been appointed to be the guardian for Theodosius’s other son, Arcadius, in the Eastern Empire.

They clashed over a number of issues but matters came to a head during one of Stilicho’s battles against Alaric, sparked by the latter reneging on a peace treaty with Rome.  

After purportedly trying to negotiate a diplomatic solution to the conflict, Rufinus is said to have instructed Arcadius to order the Roman troops to withdraw just as they were about to attack Alaric's army.  A group of the returning soldiers then murdered Rufinus, leading some historians to speculate that Stilicho ordered Rufinus to be killed because he suspected him of being in league with Alaric.

Stilicho’s power began to wane after the twin threat of Alaric and Radagaisus depleted the Roman forces defending the empire in the north. 

In 407, Constantine, a Roman general who had been proclaimed by his soldiers as the Emperor in Britain, moved his troops across the English Channel, taking control of Gaul and Hispania. 

Stilicho failed to stop his advance, which further drained his resources and highlighted the empire’s inability to defend its borders, leading to growing dissent among the Roman army.

The Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan has a monument called 
 the Sarcophagus of Stilicho, although it is unlikely he is buried there 

This and the false news that Stilicho was planning a coup d’état to install his son as Eastern Roman Emperor led to their mutiny. They killed Stilicho’s most trusted generals, leaving him powerless to the extent that when he was arrested in Ravenna, he is said to have accepted his fate.

For the future of the Western Empire, Stilicho’s execution proved to be a telling moment. In the disturbances that followed, murderous attacks by Romans on fellow  citizens of Vandal and other Germanic descent caused an exodus of 30,000 men to the side of Alaric, demanding that he lead them against the Romans.

The Visigoth leader subsequently led his forces on a campaign that saw them reach the walls of Rome and lay siege to the city in September, 408.

Without a general in the mould of Stilicho, Honorius could do little to break the siege. Alaric tried and failed four times to negotiate a peace treaty until August 27, 410, when - with the people of Rome dying of hunger - his army smashed through the gates and sacked the city.

It was the first time in 800 years that an invading army had successfully breached the walls of the Eternal City and many historians regard the event as the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna is
famous for its Byzantine mosaics

Travel tip:

Ravenna, where Stilicho was executed, was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402, when Honorius moved his court from Mediolanum (modern Milan), until the collapse of the empire in 476, after which it became the capital of the Italy ruled by the barbarian Odoacer until he was defeated by the Ostrogoth king Theodoric. In 540 Belisarius conquered Ravenna for the Byzantine Empire, and the city became the capital of Byzantine Italy.  The city, which is in the region of Emilia-Romagna, about 78km (48 miles) east of Bologna, is now renowned for its wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and has eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics.  Ravenna was also the city where the 13th century poet Dante Alighieri lived in exile until his death in 1321. Dante's tomb is next to the Basilica of San Francesco.

The beautiful Ponte Coperto, which links the city
of Pavia with the suburb of Borgo Ticino

Travel tip:

Ticinum, which occupied the site of the modern Pavia, was an ancient city of Gallia Transpadana, a division of Cisalpine Gaul. It was founded on the banks of the river of the same name - now the Ticino - near where it joins the Po, then called the Padus. Its importance in Roman times was due to the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum (Rimini) to the Padus, which it crossed at Placentia (Piacenza) and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum (Milan) and the other to Ticinum.  Modern Pavia has little in the way of Roman remains.  It is thought that the city’s Duomo might have been built over the remains of an ancient temple, but there is no evidence of this. Pavia’s picturesque covered bridge, the Ponte Coperto or Ponte Vecchio, which originated in the 16th century and was rebuilt after being bombed in the Second World War, linking Pavia with the Borgo Ticino suburb, was preceded by a Roman bridge, of which only one pillar exists under the remains of the central arch of the mediaeval bridge.  Pavia is also known for its ancient university, which was founded in 1361, and its famous Certosa, a magnificent monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396. 

Also on this day:

1599: The death of composer Luca Marenzio

1849: Venice hit by history’s first air raid

1913: The birth of nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo

1914: The death of bishop Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi

1970: The birth of TV chef Giada De Laurentiis

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21 August

Lino Capolicchio - actor

Acclaimed for role in Vittorio De Sica classic

The actor and director Lino Capolicchio, who starred in Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, was born on this day in 1943 in Merano, an alpine town in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northern Italy.  Capolicchio appeared in more than 70 films and TV dramas, and dubbed the voice of Bo Hazzard in the Italian adaptation of the American action-comedy The Dukes of Hazzard.  As a director, he won awards for Pugili, a drama-documentary film set in the world of boxing based on his own storylines, but it is for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, for which he won a David di Donatello award for best actor, that he is best remembered.  The movie is about a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara in the 1930s, whose adult children, Micòl and Alberto, enjoy blissful summers entertaining friends with tennis and parties in the garden of the family’s sumptuous villa.  Capolicchio’s character, Giorgio, from another middle-class Jewish family, falls in love with Micòl but she only toys with his attentions. In any event, everything changes with the outbreak of war as northern Italy’s Jewish population become targets for the Nazis and their Fascist allies.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Meazza - Italy's first superstar

Inter striker who gave his name to the San Siro stadium

Italian football's first superstar, the prolific goalscorer Giuseppe Meazza, died on this day in 1969, two days before what would have been his 69th birthday.  Most biographical accounts of his life say Meazza was staying at his holiday villa in Rapallo, on the coast of Liguria, when he passed away but John Foot, the historian, says he died in Monza, much closer to his home city of Milan.  Meazza, who was equally effective playing as a conventional centre-forward or as a number 10, spent much of his career with Internazionale, the Milan club for whom he scored a staggering 243 league goals in 365 appearances.  In the later stages of his career he left Inter after suffering a serious injury, initially joining arch rivals AC Milan.  A year after his death, the civic authorities in Milan announced that the stadium shared by the two clubs in the San Siro district of the city would be renamed Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in his honour.  Born in the Porta Vittoria area of Milan, not far from the centre, Meazza had a tough upbringing.  His father was killed in the First World War when Giuseppe was only seven.  He was a rather sickly child and was sent to an 'open-air' school.  Read more…

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Emilio Salgari – adventure novelist

Author’s heroes and stories are still part of popular culture

Emilio Salgari, who is considered the father of Italian adventure fiction, was born on this day in 1862 in Verona.  Despite producing a long list of novels that were widely read in Italy, many of which were turned into films, Salgari never earned much money from his work. His life was blighted by depression and he committed suicide in 1911.  But he is still among the 40 most translated Italian authors and his most popular novels have been adapted as comics, animated series and films. Although he was not given the credit at the time, he is now considered the grandfather of the Spaghetti Western.  Salgari was born into a family of modest means and from a young age wanted to go to sea. He studied seamanship at a naval academy in Venice but was considered not good enough academically and never graduated.  He started writing as a reporter on the Verona daily newspaper La Nuova Arena, which published some of his fiction as serials. He developed a reputation for having lived a life of adventure and claimed to have explored the Sudan, met Buffalo Bill in Nebraska and sailed the Seven Seas.  Read more…

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Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri – violin maker

Luthier’s surviving instruments are now worth millions

Bartolomeo Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri, who is regarded as the greatest of the Guarneri family of violin makers, was born on this day in 1698 in Cremona in Lombardy.   He was the son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri and the grandson of Andrea Guarneri, who were both respected violin makers in the city. He learned the craft of violin making in his father’s shop, who in turn had learned from his father, Andrea, who had worked alongside Stradivari in the workshop of Niccolò Amati.  Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri became known as Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri because of the religious symbols on the labels he used on the instruments he produced late in his career.  Although Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ was younger than the celebrated violin maker Antonio Stradivari, he became his rival because of the respect and reverence accorded to the violins he produced. These instruments have now become the most coveted of all by violinists and collectors.  Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ diverged from the family tradition and created instruments in his own style, which were said to have a darker, more robust and sonorous tone than the violins produced by Stradivari.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is an Italian historical novel which chronicles the relationships between the narrator and the children of the Finzi-Contini family - Alberto and his pretty sister, Micòl - from the rise of Benito Mussolini until the start of World War II, a span of about 15 years. It is considered the best of the series of novels that Bassani produced about the lives of Italian Jews in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. Although the novel focuses on the relationships between the major characters, the shadow of creeping Italian Fascism, especially the racial laws that restricted Jews' participation in Italian society, looms over all the novel's events. Micòl and her family open the gates of their huge mansion and even bigger garden to a handful of Jewish friends that have been banned from any recreational activity. In this garden Micòl guides the narrator through the interior journey in search of his identity and maturity, although the deep feellings he has for her are not reciprocated. A haunting, elegiac novel which captures the mood and atmosphere of Italy (and in particular Ferrara) in the last summers of the thirties. The great Italian director Vittorio De Sica turned the book into an Oscar-winning film. 

Although born in Bologna in 1916, Giorgio Bassani grew up in within his prosperous Jewish family in Ferrara. From 1938 onwards he became involved in various anti-Fascist activities for which he was imprisoned in 1943. His works include The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, and Five Stories of Ferrara, which won the Strega Prize. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was awarded the Viareggio Prize in 1962.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all entries was factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living at the time of publication, some of the information may need updating.)

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20 August

Stelvio Cipriani – composer

Musician wrote some of Italy’s most famous film soundtracks

Stelvio Cipriani, an award-winning composer of film scores, was born on this day in 1937 in Rome.  One of his most famous soundtracks was for the 1973 film, La polizia sta a guardare (also released as The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was used again by Cipriani in 1977 for the film, Tentacoli, and also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof in 2007.  Although Cipriani did not come from a musical background, he was fascinated with the organ at his church when he was a child.  His priest gave him music lessons and then Cipriani went to study piano and harmony at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14.  His first job was playing in a band on a cruise ship and then he became the accompanist for the popular Italian singer, Rita Pavone.  Stelvio wrote his first movie soundtrack for the 1966 spaghetti western, The Bounty Killer. This was followed by a score for The Stranger Returns in 1967, starring Tony Anthony. He wrote for other films starring Anthony, as well as for many poliziotteschi - Italian crime films - a type of film popular in the 1970s.  Read more…

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Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel – poet and revolutionary

Noblewoman who sacrificed her life for the principle of liberty

A writer and leader of the movement that established the Parthenopean Republic in Naples, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was hanged on this day in 1799 in a public square near the port.  A noblewoman, she would have expected her execution to be carried out by beheading, but had given up her title of marchioness when she became involved with the Jacobins, founded by supporters of the French Revolution, who were working to overthrow the monarchy.  Pimentel had asked to be beheaded anyway, but the restored Bourbon monarchy showed her no mercy, reputedly because she had written pamphlets denouncing Queen Maria Carolina as a lesbian. On the day of her execution, Pimentel was reputed to have stepped calmly up to the gallows, quoting Virgil by saying: ‘Perhaps one day this will be worth remembering.’ She was 47 years of age.  Pimentel was born in Rome in 1752 into a noble Portuguese family. As a child she wrote poetry, read Latin and Greek and learnt to speak several languages.  Her family had to move to Naples because of political difficulties between Portugal and the Papal States, of which Rome was the capital.  Read more…

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Carla Fracci – ballerina

Brilliant Romantic dancer brought ballet to the people

Destined to become one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century, Carolina ‘Carla’ Fracci was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Carla became a leading dancer of the La Scala Theatre Ballet in her home town and then worked with the Royal Ballet in London, Stuttgart Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, becoming known for her interpretations of leading characters in Romantic ballets such as Giselle, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.  As a small child during World War Two, she had been sent to live with relatives in the countryside, but after the war ended, she returned to Milan and her mother took her and her sister to sit the La Scala Theatre ballet school entrance exam.  She has said of her early days at the school that she found it boring and a terrible chore, but after performing alongside Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty when she was 12, Carla changed her mind about ballet training and started working hard to make up for lost time.  After joining La Scala Theatre Ballet on graduating, Carla was promoted to a soloist within a year. In 1958 she was asked to fill in for the French ballerina, Violette Verdy, in Cinderella.  Read more…

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Pope Pius X

Good hearted pontiff was made a saint

Pope Pius X, who chose to live in poverty and devote his life to the Blessed Virgin Mary, died on this day in 1914 in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.  His body was exhumed from its tomb nearly 30 years later and was found to be miraculously incorrupt and Pius X was made a saint in 1954.  Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in 1835 in Riese in the province of Treviso, which was then part of the Austrian Empire.  He was the second son of the ten children born to the village postman and his seamstress wife. Although the family were poor, they valued education and, as a young boy, Sarto walked six kilometres (3.7 miles) to attend school every day.  In 1850 he was given a scholarship to attend the seminary in Padua, where he completed classical, philosophical and theological studies with distinction.  After being ordained a priest, he continued to study while carrying out the duties of a parish pastor. He then became an arch priest, a vicar capitular and was appointed Bishop of Mantua and Patriarch of Venice.  Pope Leo XIII made Sarto a Cardinal in 1893 and he progressed to become one of the most prominent preachers in the Catholic Church.  Read more…

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Jacopo Peri – composer and singer

Court musician produced the first work to be called an opera

The singer and composer Jacopo Peri, also known as Il Zazzerino, was born on this day in 1561 in Rome.  He is often referred to as the ‘inventor of opera’ as he wrote the first work to be called an opera, Dafne, in around 1597.  He followed this with Euridice in 1600, which has survived to the present day although it is rarely performed. It is sometimes staged as an historical curiosity because it is the first opera for which the complete music still exists.  Peri was born in Rome to a noble family but went to Florence to study and then worked in churches in the city as an organist and a singer.  He started to work for the Medici court as a tenor singer and keyboard player and then later as a composer, producing incidental music for plays.  Peri’s work is regarded as bridging the gap between the Renaissance period and the Baroque period and he is remembered for his contribution to the development of dramatic vocal style in early Baroque opera.  Peri began working with Jacopo Corsi, a leading patron of music in Florence, and they decided to try to recreate Greek tragedy in musical form. They brought in a poet, Ottavio Rinuccini, to write a text.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979: A Critical Survey by Genre, by Kristopher Spencer

Hollywood film scores underwent a supersonic transformation from the 1950s through the 1970s. This genre-by-genre overview of film and television soundtrack music covers a period of tremendous artistic and commercial development in the medium. Film and television composers bypassed the classical tradition favored by earlier screen composers to experiment with jazz, rock, funk and avant-garde styles. This bold approach brought a rich variety to film and television productions that often took on a life of its own through records and CDs. From Bernard Herrmann to Ennio Morricone, the composers of the "Silver Age" changed the way movie music was made, used, and heard. Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979: A Critical Survey contains more than 100 promotional film stills and soundtrack cover art images.

Kristopher Spencer is the founder of ScoreBaby.com. He has nearly 20 years of PR communications experience and a journalism background.

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(To the best of our knowledge, all material was factually accurate at the time of writing. In the case of individuals still living at the time of publication, some of the information may need updating.)

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