Latin | Alison Morton Author

Winter Solstice Blog Hop - Shedding light on the Roman dusk

A post about darkness and light to mark the longest night in the northern hemisphere…

“The Fall of the Roman Empire” was a 1964 epic film starring Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Alec Guinness, James Mason and Christopher Plummer. Emperor Marcus Aurelius was dying and did not want his unpleasant son Commodus to succeed him. […]

Roma Nova world building (1)

Over the past 8 months, readers have become very interested in Roma Nova and its people; some have wanted to sign up to live there! I thought I’d share some of the questions they’ve asked…

Why does the heroine change name? Carina is Karen’s real name. Her mother, who ran off to marry William Brown […]

Roman dating essentials

Julius Caesar (He’s the one on the plinth.)

Watching the countdown calendar to the publication day of INCEPTIO on 1 March reminded that the first of the month in the Roman system – the Kalends – ended up as our word for measuring the whole thing.

In my Roma Nova thrillers, I use […]

Latin, eh?

What connects a Wallsend metro station, an ATM in the Vatican City, Asterix and Wikipedia?

Latin, of course!

Originating in Italy, it was spoken in Ancient Rome and spread through the Mediterranean into much of the then known world. Although now considered a dead language, many students, scholars, and members of the Christian clergy speak […]

Rome and the wolf

The shocking news that the icon of Rome’s foundation, a life-size bronze statue of a she-wolf with two human infants suckling her, is about 1,700 years younger than its city hit the headlines this summer.

Scholars had long established that the bronze figures of Romulus and Remus feeding from their adopted wolf mother were added […]