History

A new slab of the Fasti Ostienses, an ancient Roman marble calendar (extant in fragmentary form) recording imperial news, magistrates and events related to the city of Ostia, the harbour city of ancient Rome, emerged during the second excavation campaign at the Forum of Porta Marina in Ostia Antica, as part of the Ostia Post Scriptum archaeological research project, curated by the Ostia Antica Archaeological Park. The finding was made back in September 2022, when excavations began.

The new white marble fragment of seven carefully written lines mentions facts and events that took place in Rome in 128, the eleventh year of Hadrian’s principate. It perfectly joins with another already preserved in Ostia and is referable to the chronicles of the years 126 to 128. The team at the archaeological park of Ostia Antica defines it as “a find of extraordinary importance”.

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Based on epigraphic, literary and numismatic sources, the team could correlate the text of the inscription with the events of AD 128. We know that in that year, Hadrian assumed the honorary title pater patriae (“Father of the Fatherland”) and his wife, Sabina, that of Augusta. The inscription reveals that to celebrate the occasion, Hadrian offered a congiarium (or donation of money) to the people (congiar(ium) dedit).

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We also know from ancient literary sources that in the spring of 128, Hadrian set sail for the African provinces. Thanks to the discovery of this fragment, we can now specify the exact departure date for Carthage because there is a reference to the fourth day before the ides of April (IIII Idus April(es) reports the inscription), that is, 10 April 128. The date can only be related to Hadrian’s departure and the start of the sailing season (the sailing season ended in November and did not resume until April).

While in Africa, Hadrian reviewed the effectiveness of Rome’s army and stayed in the legionary base of Lambaesis in Numidia (modern Algeria). He observed the legion stationed there, the III Augusta, and the attached auxiliary units in various forts along the African frontier. After observing each unit in and around Lambaesis, he addressed several groups of soldiers in a set of speeches (aldocutio), offering his praise and critique. The speeches were later carved into a massive inscription on the base of a monument at Lambaesis. A substantial part of his speeches has survived (see here). According to the inscription, Hadrian was at Lambaesis on 1 July; on 7 July, the Emperor is attested 90 km to the northwest at Zarai and perhaps at Castellum Phuensium further north near Cirta (Phua near modern Constantine) on 12 or 13 July.

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Hadrian then briefly returned to Rome at the end of the summer, but he would not stay in Italy very long. However, the inscription tells us that before leaving for Athens, Hadrian consecrated (consecravit reads the inscription) a building, certainly a temple in Rome, most probably, the Temple of Venus and Rome, as reported by Alessandro D’Alessio, the director of Ostia Antica. According to him, the consecration could have taken place on 11 August 128, on the day of the anniversary of Hadrian’s accession to the throne in 117.

Alessandro D’Alessio told Newsweek that “from a purely scientific point of view, the discovery of this epigraphic fragment is extraordinary, as it gives us in a few lines, or rather parts of a few lines, such a quantity of information and details about Hadrian’s reign and activity that we did not have before.” You can watch him speak about the research project and this remarkable discovery in this video (in Italian).

The newly-recovered fragment was discovered in an area of the city where other pieces of the Ostian calendar were unearthed in the excavations of 1940-1 and 1969-72 in Foro di Porta Marina. The Forum of Porta Marina, located just outside the Republican city gate near the beach, consisted of a large rectangular building (44 x 39.5 m.) with colonnaded porticoes on three sides and an apsidal hall on the fourth that was paved in opus sectile (colourful marble inlay). At the centre of the area stood a square structure of uncertain interpretation, perhaps identifiable with an altar. The whole complex is built in opus mixtum, generally dated to the Hadrianic period.

The Ostian fasti were maintained by the priests of the Temple of Vulcan, Ostia’s chief deity, who kept a running tally for two centuries. As mentioned in the Fasti, the drafting was the responsibility of the pontifex Volkani, the highest local religious authority. Their carving may have begun as early as the dictatorship of Sulla, in 81 BC, but the earliest surviving portion records the events from 49 to 44 BC. The last extant year is AD 175. However, there are many gaps, and most of the surviving years are damaged. For instance, the years 117 to 124 and 129 to 138 of Hadrian’s reign are missing. The surviving sections of the Fasti cover 79 in whole on in part.

They were carved annually on marble slabs for public erection, perhaps in the central Forum or perhaps near the suburban Forum of Porta Marina, in connection to the Temple of Vulcan and where half of the fragments of the Fasti Ostienses have been found. The fragments of the marble plaques have been found over a long period of time and were all reused for the decoration of walls and floors.

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Fragments of the Fasti Ostienses have been reconstructed for only three years of Hadrian’s reign (126, 127 and 128). We learn from them a few events occurring in Rome, Ostia or elsewhere in Italy. For the year 126, they mention the completion of a major building project, the restoration of the Templum Divorum, a large sacred area, 194 x 77 meters, built by Domitian in the Campus Martius. On this occasion, he gave six days of splendid games, with 1,835 pairs of gladiators fighting in the Circus. He also held the office of duumvir quinquennalis (chief magistrate) in Ostia for the second time.

[- – – – imp. Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Aug. munuls| edidit 126 – – templum Divoru[m] | – – – – – dedicavit, ob quam] causam in circo | [- – – – – – munus editu m et consumm[at. || —– (paribus)] MDCCCXXXV. [IIvir. c(ensoria) p(otestate) q(uinquennales) imp. Caesar Traianus Hadr]ianus Aug. II |

The Fasti have also revealed a journey in Italy (ad Italiam circum) for the year 127 that began on 3 March. They recorded the Emperor’s return to Rome on 1 August, just in time for the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of his accession on 11 August. However, the same inscription indicates that it was not until 20 October that the decennial votive games (ludi votivi decennales) were held in the Circus Maximus. They lasted for ten days, with a day of thirty pyrrhicae, military dances. Also, on his birthday, 24 January, the Temple of Serapis in Ostia was inaugurated. The temple was donated to the city by a private person, Caltilius P.

V Non. Mart. Augustus profe[ct]us ad Italiam circum[circa – -] I(d.] (or K.) || Aug. reversus. XIII K. Nov. lud(i] votivi deceannale[s facti pro] | salute Aug. dieb. X. XIII K. Nov. in Circo p(yrrichae?) f(actae) XXX. VIII K. Febr. templum Sarapi quod . Caltilius P?- – – – sua pecunia exstruxit dedicatum [es]t.

Until now, the Fasti of AD 128 only had a list of consuls who entered office that year. The newly-excavated fragment sheds more light on the activities of Hadrian.

A further fragment of the Fasti Ostienses reveals that Hadrian gave shows in Rome in April and May of an uncertain year. In mid-April, the games lasted 38 days when []28 pairs of gladiators fought, and 2,246 beasts were killed. On 26 May, Hadrian gave the first games for the festival for Venus. They fought for []3 days, with 195 pairs of gladiators, and 443 beasts were killed.

[- – imp. Caesar Traianus Hadria] nus Aug. mu[nus edere. I coepit gladi]ator. (paribus) – -II. XIIII K. Maias composit[a sunt | II lusio]nibus et munere dier. XXXVIII gladiatoru[m (paria) | – -] XXVIII, bestiae confectae n. IICCXLVI. VII K. Iunias || [Augustus p]r(imam) lusionem muneris Veneri edere coepit; pugnat(um) | [diebus -]III, gladiator. (paribus) CLXXXXV, bestiae confectae n. CCCCXXXXIII.

Ostia was largely restored and embellished on Hadrian’s initiative. More than half of the ruins belong to this period, spreading throughout the town (Meiggs, 1973, p.135-144). Public Baths increased in number and scale, and new temples were built. For instance, he financed the construction of the Baths of the Marine Gate with 2,000,000 sesterces, although they were completed under his successor, Antoninus Pius, with additional money and marble. A building inscription, dug up by Gavin Hamilton and now in the Vatican Museums, records this act of generosity (CIL XVI 98). The inscription is dated to late December AD 138 or 139.

Likewise, the Hadrianic masonry of the Baths of Neptune, its size and location, suggests imperial sponsorship. A statue of Sabina in the guise of the goddess Ceres (see here) was found in the baths’ palaestra. The Capitolium of Ostia also dates to Hadrian’s reign (around AD 120). As recorded in an inscription, the colony of Ostia praised Hadrian for preserving and enlarging it with all his indulgence and liberality –colonia conservata et aucta omni indulgentia et liberalitate eius- (CIL VI 972).

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The 2022-2023 excavations at Ostia Antica are taking place in two contexts of extreme interest, located respectively in the Regio II (Area A, never investigated before), behind the area of ​​the Quattro Tempietti (Four Small Temples) and the Domus of Apuleius, and in Regio IV (Area B) inside the Forum of Porta Marina. In addition to the fragment of the Fasti Ostienses, they have also brought to light the remains of several decorations and extensive portions of mosaic floors that will soon be visible to the public.

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Read more about the excavations: Ostia Post Scriptum: the results of the excavation campaigns

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The past hundred years have seen more than one high-profile prosecution branded as the “crime of the century.” The shocking 1924 crime that was among the first to carry the title turned out to be a harbinger of how public mania around criminal cases could influence the legal system, and how psychiatry would be used and abused by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike as the 20th century wore on and gave way to the 21st.

Smithsonian editor Meilan Solly introduces us to teens Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and their botched, but still deadly, effort to perpetrate “the perfect crime.” What happened next was also surprising: After confessing to the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, they were spared capital punishment thanks to their famed attorney Clarence Darrow. True-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson then tells us how public interest in Leopold and Loeb’s fate helped solidify true crime as a durable subject of fascination. She also tells us about the tools used by the prosecution that were in their infancy during the famed case.

A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on the complex legacy of Sojourner Truth, why we’re still counting calories even though that’s been largely discredited as a healthy eating tool, how a new generation of high-end West African restaurants is revealing the roots of “Southern” cuisine and more, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kate Winkler Dawson: I laugh every time I hear an author say “crime of the century.” I’ve read that I can’t even tell you how many times.

Chris Klimek: Kate Winkler Dawson is a journalism professor at UT Austin and the host of several true-crime podcasts.

Winkler Dawson: “True crime” has been a very dirty phrase for a long time, because I think when we say “true crime,” a lot of times it feels like a cable network show that has cheesy re-enactments and there’s nothing going in depth into the part of society that we need to really pay attention to, and this crime illuminates. So my job is to elevate that to say true crime really can address issues that we haven’t talked about or ignored, and now we can draw people to that issue by telling a story that can end in a tragedy or, hopefully, in a triumph.

Klimek: What do you recall about the Leopold and Loeb case?

Winkler Dawson: I actually think Leopold and Loeb was a “crime of the century” case, 1924.

Klimek: We called Kate nearly 100 years to the day the Leopold and Loeb story began to unfold. This famous murder case involved two friends who were intellectually curious about committing a so-called perfect crime. The media followed the story closely, and today many still refer to its impact.

Winkler Dawson: We’re in the middle of Prohibition, we’re approaching the Roaring Twenties, and you have an increase in crime thanks to Prohibition, of course, which is not the intention of Prohibition, but was an outcome. And we’re in Chicago, which is a hotbed for crime and a hotbed for, I think, a lot of stuff. Racial tension. I mean, it’s a city that there’s a lot of corruption in the government, and you have these two young men in 1924 who are, I feel like, just represent so many different facets of society and that just scared everybody.

It was petrifying coming out of Victorian America. When you look at that story of these two relatively good-looking men, clean-cut, lots of resources for them to be capable of that. Could my husband do that? Could my child do that? If these two guys could do it, what about my family members? What about my neighbor? Am I safe? And it just scared people to death.

Klimek: From Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions, this is “There’s More to That,” the show that can bring you true crime and important historical context. In this episode. Leopold and Loeb, a case of the century, a hundred years later. I’m Chris Klimek.

We hope that our episodes are giving you a sense of what the world of Smithsonian magazine is all about, and we’d love to hear from you what you think of this season. If you have the time to help us design our future episodes, please take this survey. You can find it at Smithsonianmag.com/podcastsurvey.

Klimek: Why did you take an interest in the Leopold and Loeb case?

Meilan Solly: There’s been this big rise in kind of true-crime podcasts, et cetera, within the past few years.

Klimek: Meilan Solly is a Smithsonian magazine editor who recently reported on Leopold and Loeb.

Solly: We were interested in looking at Leopold and Loeb, which was considered a crime of the century, and kind of how that set a precedent for the current true-crime obsession and seeing sort of the parallels between coverage today and in 1924.

Klimek: So who were Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb?

Solly: At the time of the murder, they were both teenagers. Leopold was 19 and Loeb was 18, and they were both members of German Jewish immigrant families that were very wealthy and lived in Chicago, and they both were very intelligent and had excelled in school from a young age. Leopold had a really strong interest in ornithology, and he was actually published in an official magazine when he was something like 13 years old, and he claimed to speak as many as 15 languages, although that was probably an exaggeration.

Klimek: Leopold and Loeb had been in similar social circles growing up but didn’t become friends until the summer of 1920.

Solly: Leopold was enrolled at the University of Chicago, and Loeb was preparing for his first year there as more kind of like graduate studies. And, apparently, they didn’t actually really like each other at first, but once they realized that they got along well, things definitely escalated from there. By the following February, their relationship had kind of taken on a different dimension where it was more than just a friendship. It became this very intense kind of romantic, sexual partnership.

Klimek: What was their relationship like?

Solly: There’s a lot of discussion about that, because there’s conflicting views, but generally the idea is that Loeb was more of this gregarious social person who had a lot of charisma and Leopold was a lot quieter and more of the submissive person in their relationship. Loeb was very much interested in committing crimes as something for the thrill of it. Loeb was definitely the one who’s more of the instigator of these crimes, and he viewed them as almost a way of rejecting his upper-class, wealthy family’s expectations.

For Leopold, it was more a matter of he viewed himself as a Nietzschean Superman. He had taken some classes in philosophy and learned about this concept of individuals who were so intelligent that they were above all the rest of the population and they also were above the law, so they could commit crimes without any repercussions. And the only time he really thought that these Supermen should be held responsible for their actions is if they made a mistake or did something that proved that their superior intellect wasn’t as superior as they had thought.

So it was very much kind of an intellectual exercise for Leopold, and he was definitely more interested in maintaining that sexual relationship with Loeb. It was a way of bringing them together. He and Leopold would commit these petty crimes, burglaries, arson and things like that, and then it kind of escalated and then they agreed to commit something that they viewed as the perfect crime, which in this case turned out to be murdering a 14-year-old boy named Bobby Franks.

Klimek: What was the plan for their “perfect crime?”

Solly: First, in choosing their victim, they wanted to choose someone who was going to be really wealthy, because part of their plot was they wanted to kidnap someone and then hold that person for ransom, even though they didn’t actually need any money that they would get from a ransom. So that was just their plot of, that will throw the police off our case, because they won’t suspect people who are very wealthy and don’t actually need this money.

They also wanted to have someone who was younger. They considered abducting a young girl but eventually decided to go with a young boy because he would be more likely to be walking home from school alone without a chaperone, so he’d be an easier target. Ultimately, on the day of the murder, they just drove around the neighborhood, and it was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to them choosing Bobby Franks as their actual victim.

Klimek: So who was Bobby Franks?

Solly: Bobby Franks was 14 years old at the time of the murder and, like Leopold and Loeb, he was from a wealthy Jewish background of immigrant families, had several siblings, was really close to his family and just seemed like he had a really promising future before it was all just taken away from him. We don’t have a ton of information on Bobby Franks’ life just because so much of the coverage about him is only related to his murder.

But one of the things that is really interesting is that two weeks before he was murdered, he actually participated in this debate competition at school where the topic was capital punishment. And so Bobby was very anti-capital punishment, and he made this really impassioned appeal saying the death penalty is unethical and the only person who has the right to take a life is God. That is something that the newspapers really picked up on after the murder, because so many people were pushing for Leopold and Loeb to get the death penalty.

Klimek: Can you walk us through the sequence of events on the day Bobby Franks was killed?

Solly: Leopold and Loeb were driving around their neighborhood and considering different young boys as potential targets, and then they see Bobby Franks. By some accounts, Franks was a distant cousin of Loeb’s. Either way, the two definitely knew each other, and actually the Loeb family had this tennis court [near Franks’ home], so Bobby would often come over and play tennis with the Loebs. He had actually just done that a few days before the murder. Leopold and Loeb are driving in this rented car, and they pull up next to Bobby, and Loeb was just sort of like, “Oh, hi, Bobby, will you come in the car? We can give you a ride home.” And Bobby, he was walking home from school and he was actually only a few blocks from his house, so he tried to decline the offer, but Loeb pushed and was like, “Oh, I want to discuss a tennis racket that you use that I want to buy from my brother.”

So they eventually convinced Bobby to get into the car. Bobby had never met Leopold, so he’s introduced to Leopold, and then Leopold and Loeb sort of say, “Oh, is it OK if we drive around the block before taking you home?” And Bobby agrees, and pretty soon after he gets in the car is when the actual murder takes place. Both Leopold and Loeb said that the other person is the one who actually committed the murder, but the historians generally agree that Leopold was driving the car and Loeb is the one who was in the backseat with Bobby and the one who actually killed him.

So Leopold and Loeb, they have Bobby’s body in the car with them. One of the really haunting details from the case is that Leopold and Loeb just went out and bought sandwiches and root beer while Bobby’s body was just in the car and didn’t seem particularly affected by the fact that they had just murdered this young boy. Night eventually falls, and the two of them decide to take Bobby’s body to this culvert, which is sort of like a tunnel that water goes through by a roadside or something. And this was a spot where Leopold, who was really interested in ornithology, often went birding, which is how he knew about it. So they put his body in this culvert and then leave that area and start driving back to Chicago, where they enact the next phase of their plan.

Klimek: The next phase was the ransom part. Leopold and Loeb told Bobby Franks’ family they would return their son for the price of $10,000. The family may have paid it, but then Bobby’s body was discovered.

Solly: The very next morning there was actually a worker who saw Bobby’s leg sticking out of the culvert, which really threw a wrench in Leopold and Loeb’s plans.

Klimek: So how did the investigation ultimately lead authorities to Leopold and Loeb?

Solly: There was one major clue that pointed to Leopold and Loeb, and that was a pair of eyeglasses that had been left at the crime scene. It had a really unique hinge that was only manufactured by one company in Chicago, and that company in turn had only sold three pairs of glasses with that specific hinge. One of the people who had the glasses was a woman, and so they were able to rule her out pretty quickly. Another one was a man who had been in Europe at the time of the murder, and then the third person was Leopold.

Klimek: It wasn’t long before Leopold and Loeb’s arrest.

Solly: And within something like a week after the murder, the authorities announced that these two young men have confessed to the murder and wrap up the investigation.

Klimek: Meanwhile, the media had been reporting on this case since Bobby’s body was found. The public took an intense interest in the story.

Solly: It didn’t help Leopold and Loeb’s case that they didn’t really show remorse. There’s a quote from Leopold where he says, “A thirst for knowledge is highly commendable. No matter what extreme pain or injury it may afflict upon others. A 6-year-old boy is justified in pulling the wings from a fly if by so doing he learns that without wings, the fly is helpless.” So he’s basically saying, oh, murdering Bobby was just this scientific experiment that was completely justified because we learned how to commit a perfect murder, even though, of course, the plan quickly went sideways.

Klimek: Obviously when they’re saying things like that, they’re not courting public sympathy or helping their case. But can we tell from the press, was there any prejudicial element to the coverage from the fact that they were gay or that they were Jewish or some other reason?

Solly: Yeah, there was definitely prejudicial coverage and it sort of reflected the broader view of Leopold and Loeb within Chicago society. Everyone kind of has a different opinion on why they committed this murder. Actually, the KKK chimes in and says, “Oh, because they’re Jewish immigrants, of course they would do this.” And then in response, their Jewish rabbis were saying, “Well, don’t say that they’re Jewish because they’re atheist. And also they weren’t raised properly and they didn’t believe in Judaism.” And so everyone is trying to deflect responsibility for it onto someone else.

There’s also a lot of discussion of the fact that Leopold and Loeb were really well educated and had gone to college, and people were saying, “Oh no, the youth are too smart that they’re going to school too much and they’re not doing physical hard labor and learning what it really is like to be a functioning person in society.” And so everyone has their own spin on it.

Klimek: Leopold and Loeb confessed to the murder, so there was no need for a traditional court trial. However, their sentencing was still up in the air and placed in the hands of a judge, so they hired a lawyer—one you’ve probably heard of.

Solly: Leopold and Loeb’s families appealed to Clarence Darrow, who at the time was a well-known lawyer but wasn’t as famous as he would eventually be. The following year in 1925, he was involved in the Scopes “monkey trial,” but at the time he was just a prominent local lawyer who had worked in labor law. There’s a great anecdote about some of Leopold and Loeb’s relatives showing up at Darrow’s doorstep early in the morning and begging him to take the case and save their sons, basically. Darrow, when he first hears about this, he’s saying, “Oh, well no, they’ve been falsely accused. They couldn’t have possibly done this.” Again, reflecting those views about people in society who are at this level who couldn’t possibly do something that is so depraved, but then the families say, “No, Leopold and Loeb have actually already confessed to the crime. We know they did it.”

And so Darrow is left saying, “OK, well, what would you like me to do about it?” And they essentially say, Save our sons’ lives. Save them from the noose, because that is a very likely outcome that would’ve happened for them if they had had a different lawyer. Lots of observers and people in the press are really pushing for it. So Darrow agrees to take the case, and a big part of that is because he is anti-capital punishment. He wants to use this case that is going to get a lot of publicity and be a very big thing just to raise attention for his view about capital punishment.

Klimek: So who is representing the prosecution?

Solly: The prosecutor is a man named Robert Crowe and he is very, very pro-capital punishment in this case in particular. And he was using this case as almost sort of a way to bolster his own reputation. The language that he used throughout and was very hyperbolic. He would say things about how Leopold and Loeb were such monsters, and he also made some comments about their sexuality and just using a lot of vitriolic language, but the opinions that he shared were things that were generally shared by the public at the time. The public overall really supported the death penalty for Leopold and Loeb just because they were such unsympathetic characters. They were old enough to know what they were doing, and they have no remorse for what they did.

Klimek: So how are these two figures, Clarence Darrow for the defense, Robert Crowe for the prosecution, each painting the two confessed murderers for the judge? What account do they each give?

Solly: Darrow is very sure to not refer to Leopold and Loeb by their last names. He calls Loeb “Dickie,” which is a nickname from Richard Loeb, and Leopold, he calls “Babe,” which is a nickname that he got as the youngest member of the family. That was a big part of his strategy. because he really wanted to reinforce the fact that they were still young men, teenagers, I guess depending how you look at it, and wanted to create this sense of intimacy. Darrow also emphasized the Nietzschean Supermen theory that Leopold had really embraced, the one about how they were above the law and above others, and he was one part blaming Nietzsche, saying they really drew on this philosophy, and they may have completely misunderstood it, but this is what drove them to do this and it shouldn’t be something that they are held personally responsible for.

Crowe, on the other hand, is being very bombastic and saying that they are both monsters. There’s anecdotes about Crow calling Leopold and Loeb snakes or mad dogs or even cowardly perverts, and he really emphasizes the sexual nature of their relationship and suggests that they were both motivated by these kind of unnatural sexual urges. And at one point he even says Leopold was willing to go along with Loeb because he could use his body for vile and unnatural practices, and he also really just built on the fact that neither of them showed much remorse for the killing and then used that to build public animosity towards the pair.

Klimek: One of the reasons why the Leopold and Loeb case stands out in history is because it was also a test of the budding fields of psychology and psychiatry. These academic fields hadn’t been used as legal testimony in this way before.

Solly: Darrow had asked a bunch of psychiatrists to perform these analyses of the two teenagers over several weeks. His whole argument throughout the case is that people’s actions are predetermined by their childhood experiences. Bad things happened to Leopold and Loeb when they were children. They both had governesses when they were younger, and Leopold’s governess actually, it sounds like she may have sexually abused him in some fashion, whereas Loeb, he had a governess who was very demanding and really pushed him to excel academically and also kind of isolated him from other people his age. And so that may have been a factor in why he didn’t ever really fully learn how to be a social person who interacted with others in kind of a healthy way.

Klimek: But the prosecution brought its own analysts to the table.

Solly: The psychiatrists that they have on their side are looking more at the physical attributes of Leopold and Loeb, saying things like, “Oh, there’s no neurological reason that these two men would’ve committed these crimes.” “Oh, there’s no blood work or anything that indicates that there’s a confirmed ailment that could be affecting them.” They don’t have brain tumors or things like that which could influence their decision making. There’s phrenology where they’re looking at the shapes of people’s heads.

Klimek: Here was a fissure between two branches of science. It was almost like the two ways of thinking were on trial, but many observers didn’t realize it at the time.

Solly: It was interesting, because the psychiatric testimony played such a big role in the case, but people didn’t really understand the difference between neurology and psychoanalysis. They just basically saw, OK, psychiatrists on either side are saying the complete opposite of each other, and so therefore psychiatry is just kind of silly and we shouldn’t believe anyone. Psychiatrists were called alienists, which I guess sort of speaks to how alien that this branch of science felt at the time. Psychiatry was something that was just so misunderstood. The public and the press were really just baffled how these experts who were supposedly in the same field could come to entirely different conclusions.

Klimek: Right, and that fine distinction was lost, it sounds like, in the way this was covered. Do we know if the judge understood that their credentials were not exactly the same?

Solly: So the judge definitely had a greater awareness of the distinctions between the two than just the general public. And it’s interesting because when Darrow was originally making his case for the life imprisonment as opposed to the death sentence, he had specifically asked that Judge Caverly to take into account the two’s mental state. But ultimately, when Caverly actually hands down his judgment, he says, “OK, well the volume of information that has been shared about psychiatry is something that could prove useful for criminal law, but for the purposes of this case, I am completely ignoring it.”

So the decision really ultimately came down to the pair’s relative youth. And so he essentially says they are still young and it’s within my purview to spare them of the execution and just impose this life imprisonment sentence. But he does point out when he is handing down this sentence that in many ways a life imprisonment sentence for people who were so young could in fact be a worse sentence in the long run, even if at the moment it felt like a victory.

Klimek: How did the press cover this? Was there a political slant to the way that different newspapers covered this, for example?

Solly: It was interesting to look at it—the musical Chicago, which is based on actual salacious murder cases that happened at the time with a specific reporter, Maurine Watkins, and she actually covered the Leopold and Loeb case as well. And so it just sort of fed into the public’s desire for really sensationalist coverage of the crimes that were happening in Chicago at the time in the vein of almost the true-crime coverage that we see today. There were also a lot of different editorials that were being published in both national publications and local ones. And those reflected, again, the fact that the case became almost a lens through which different groups could project their own fears about society at the time. And it was less about the specifics of Leopold and Loeb’s case and more just kind of reflecting the arguments that those groups wanted to make.

Klimek: What happens to Leopold and Loeb after they’re sentenced?

Solly: They receive a sentence of life imprisonment for murder and then an additional 99 years each for kidnapping. They are sent to prison pretty soon after the trial, and they’re definitely at risk when they’re in prison. Everyone knew who they were in America at the time. They’re also young, so they would be considered lower in the hierarchy in prison, and so they would’ve been targets for sexual assaults and violence and just coming in a very vulnerable position. So it was definitely a difficult adjustment for them. They were coming from these lives of extreme privilege, and now they were so restricted. At first they’re kept apart, but after a few years, they’re able to be in the same prison, Stateville Penitentiary. And so while they’re there, they really rebuild their friendship. There was a small sticking point between them, which was the fact that neither of them wanted to actually confess to being the person who killed Bobby Franks personally, but they eventually become really close friends again.

They actually start a correspondence high school together at the prison, and they spend a lot of their free time together just playing games or sporting activities, and they both continue their studies in the prison environment. And then in 1936, there’s this pretty horrific incident where an inmate who’s younger, James Day, he slashes Loeb in the prison shower, so he dies at age 30. Leopold finds out about the attack. He comes rushing to the infirmary. He even offers to donate blood if that would help Loeb. And he later writes in his memoir that it was just horrible for him because he had lost someone who had been his best friend for so long, someone who really knew him more than anyone else in the world did.

Klimek: What does Leopold do with the remainder of his life?

Solly: Leopold is extremely depressed after Loeb’s death, and he loses his sense of purpose. He doesn’t do very much of anything for a few years, but then during World War II, he starts volunteering for these malaria trials. Scientists were trying to study the effects of malaria on the human body so that they could better protect soldiers who were stationed in areas where malaria was a big problem. And so he becomes involved in those trials, as both kind of like a volunteer and then also later a researcher, and that’s something that revitalizes him and gives him a purpose again in life. He is finally eligible for parole in the late 1940s and is eventually released from prison at age 53 in 1958. He had served 33 years of his sentence. After his release from prison, he moves to Puerto Rico because there’s an organization there that essentially said, “If you let him out of prison, then we’ll give him a job.”

And so he works as an X-ray technician in Puerto Rico. And he’s essentially there because the case, it was so polarizing and so controversial in the mainland U.S. that wherever he went there, this would always follow him. And in Puerto Rico, it was not something that was as well known, so he was able to escape the limelight more by living there. While he’s in Puerto Rico, he also gets a master’s degree in social work. He gets married to a woman that he meets there, and he also starts pursuing his interest in ornithology again. He actually writes a book about the birds in Puerto Rico, and when he dies in 1971 at the age of 66, the governor of Puerto Rico says something about how the story of Nathan Leopold is one that must confirm the faith and intrinsic goodness of the human being, which is a pretty wild thing to say all things considered.

Klimek: For more perspective on the Leopold and Loeb case, let’s go back to Kate Winkler Dawson. In addition to her teaching and podcasts, Kate is the author of a book called American Sherlock about the history of forensic science. We asked her about the origins of this field and how it dovetails with the fraught nature of the true-crime genre.

Klimek (to Winkler Dawson): How were crimes investigated and prosecuted before these forensic techniques became available?

Winkler Dawson: There were fingerprints. We see cases of detectives in rowboats with giant magnets trying to find the murder weapons that were tossed in water. A lot of it was dumb luck. Investigators would beat suspects, and I think there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, which, circumstantial evidence isn’t the worst thing in the world if it’s correct and if you have enough of it.

Klimek: Kate says that forensics were really taking off by the 1920s when Leopold and Loeb were facing sentencing. But that didn’t mean all forensic testimony could be trusted.

Winkler Dawson: You have an expert who maybe doesn’t have the right conclusion but knows how to talk to a jury really well. And so we’re really seeing the emergence in the ’20s of new forensic techniques and new experts who are willing to get on the stand and say anything that either side wants for a paycheck. I’m not sure that the people who came in into the 1920s made any more sense than the alienists of the 1800s. I think that what’s new about Leopold and Loeb was really dissecting parts of their lives, like their nannies and the way they were treated by their nannies. They’re looking for a cause, and we still do that. We’re still looking for a cause.

Klimek: Would another type of criminal, someone who didn’t have their resources and their wealth, have an alienist or a neurologist testifying on their behalf in this time?

Winkler Dawson: I don’t know. I think that if the victim were high-profile or the criminal were high-profile, or if it was particularly egregious, it’s just like, oh my gosh, we’ve got to figure this out. Then you would see the alienists come in. Most of the time, though, there would be plea bargains. I mean, I just read a stat now that says, and it’s something crazy, like 90 percent of criminal cases now are settled with plea bargains, which makes sense. But back then that certainly happened, too. People just gave up if they didn’t have attorneys. So I don’t think that there even a reason for prosecutors to pay an alienist to come in.

Klimek: How does public interest in a specific case then influence how it is investigated and eventually prosecuted?

Winkler Dawson: Any layperson can look at this and say a case like O.J. Simpson, you look at that case, the amount of pressure on the prosecutors and then, of course, on the defense attorneys was enormous. Enormous. So the rush to be able to get people on the stand who were unreliable, there are different aspects to that case where you just look, OK, clearly they are moving too quickly because there is all of that public pressure. And I think that that can be problematic, of course. And then when you make a mistake and it is proven, if the glove does not fit, you must acquit, and then of course it didn’t fit. And when that happens, then you just erode the public’s faith in law enforcement, prosecutors. The system is eroded. So the rush to get all of this figured out and solved, I think, has been a problem.

Klimek: Kate says that these days, the situation has only gotten worse with different murder cases and the many theories surrounding them blowing up on social media. She pointed to the recent murder of four young people in Idaho that made headlines across the country.

Winkler Dawson: With the Idaho case, you have citizen sleuths turn out and come up with all of these theories, all of which were wrong, putting pressure on Idaho and the state police, and when the federal agents got involved, and eventually they come up with a suspect who nobody knew about, was a total outlier. And people wonder why the police don’t disclose information to the public. And that is the reason why. Doing the right thing, keeping the right amount of information close to the vest so it doesn’t spoil the investigation, is the priority.

Klimek: When considering crimes of the century, like Leopold and Loeb, Kate says it’s most important to think about the humanity of those involved, to not do what the media did back in the 1920s.

Winkler Dawson: People love true crime. This is not new. The modes are new. So when I talk to my students about picking the right kind of podcast to listen to and to support or the right kind of TV series, I always say, “You’ve got to look for the folks where this is victim-forward.” I think that we need more people who are willing to take more responsibility with reporting true crime in a way that’s balanced, in a way that respects the victims, the survivors, and a way that really doesn’t sensationalize all of these crimes, because these are real people.

Klimek: Kate Winkler Dawson is the host of the podcasts “Tenfold More Wicked” and “Wicked Words,” and the co-host of the podcast “Buried Bones.” Thank you, Kate, for this conversation.

Winkler Dawson: Thank you.

Klimek: To read Meilan Solly’s article about Leopold and Loeb, head to SmithsonianMag.com. We’ll also put a link in our show notes, along with links to more of Kate Winkler Dawson’s work.
 

Klimek: Our dinner party fact might not exactly belong at the dinner table, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Let’s go back to Kate from more information on forensic entomology, or the way bugs are used as evidence in murder cases.

Winkler Dawson: One of the best field trips I had ever taken was to what was called the Body Farm. I don’t know if they prefer to call it the Body Farm, but it’s a forensic anthropology lab at the Texas State University, and it is acres and acres of land where you can choose to donate your body after you die, and they will place it on the land and they will observe it and they will see how bugs arrive to it, how animals arrive to it, and it helps them solve crimes.

So when I was there, I learned a little bit about forensic entomology from the Body Farm. The blowflies come first. Within the first 24 hours, they start to lay eggs very quickly. The beetles come next, and then there’s a list of bugs that arrive, and it’s predictable, and it is a great way to figure out how long a body has been there. So it’s been a very useful technique. It’s a solid forensic. It is not junk science. It happens and people use it all the time.

Klimek: “There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions.

From the magazine, our team is me, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly.

From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Ry Dorsey and Edwin Ochoa.

The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Our episode artwork is by Emily Lankiewicz. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

I’m Chris Klimek. Thanks for listening.

Try this delicious Greek honey walnut biscuit recipe from Sweet Greek: Simple Food & Sumptuous Feasts, the cookbook by Kathy Tsaples.

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The papyrus fragment measures 22 by 10.3 cm and is damaged on the left and right sides, so the beginning and the ends of the lines are lost. The document is written in Greek on the back of a 2nd-century AD tax list and consists of twenty lines written in two different hands. The first fifteen lines are written clearly, while the last five (which repeat the first five lines) are written far more irregularly, which shows this was a school text. The 1st hand was written by the schoolmaster, and the 2nd hand by a pupil. The Roman students in Egypt learned Greek by copying the Greek classics, including the Iliad, as shown on another papyrus fragment in the collection of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (E2058) and found at the site of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (published as P. Oxy. 1 21).

The papyrus text seems to be the opening of Hadrian’s epistolary autobiography. J. Bollansée published a text translation in the journal Ancient Society 1994 in “P. Fay. 19, Hadrian’s Memoirs, and Imperial Epistolography” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/44079744).

Imperator Caesar Hadrianus Augustus to his highly-esteemed Antoninus, greeting. Above all, I would like you to know that I am being released from life neither untimely nor unreasonably, pitiably, unexpectedly or with faculties impaired, though – as I have perceived – I thus may appear to do you wrong, you who sites at my bedside, never ceases to comfort me and urges me to hold on. Consequently, I feel compelled to write you the following, not, by Zeus, to cunningly paint some vulgar picture stretching the truth, but to give a straightforward and accurate account of the facts themselves (…)
My natural father was taken ill and died as a private citizen at forty, hence I have survived him by more than half his age; I have approximately reached the same age as my mother, who lived to be sixty. I am presently in my [sixty-third] year…

This text is thought to form part of Hadrian’s autobiography, which was probably written in epistolary form to his successor, Antoninus Pius. Other Romans had written their political memoirs in this form, such as Sulla, who wrote his own achievements to his lieutenant L. Lucullus and Augustus, who wrote his autobiography in the mid-20s BC to Agrippa and Maecenas. Several literary sources explicitly note that Hadrian wrote his autobiography  (Dio Cassius, the Historia Augusta). Hadrian seems to have published the Latin version under his own name, and his freedman, Phlegon of Tralles, possibly edited the Greek translation.

Backhias (or Bacchias), where the papyrus fragment was discovered, was a Greco-Egyptian town in the northeastern part of the Fayum Oasis. It was identified by Grenfell and Hunt with the Kōm Umm el-Athl archaeological area near the modern village of Gorein, based on papyri found on the site. The archaeological site forms a hill approximately 400 × 300 meters in circumference. The ruins of temples have been found, including a large Ptolemaic mud-brick temple dedicated to the crocodile god Soknobkonneus (see plan).

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In this video, Professor Brian Muhs examines E8349 to find out whether the text copied on the papyrus is really a bit from Hadrian’s life history and explains how the papyrus fragment ended in the collection of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in Chicago.

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The Dunhuang manuscripts are a vast collection of around 20,000 scrolls and fragments found in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China. Dating from the 5th to the 11th centuries AD, these manuscripts were sealed in a hidden chamber and remained undiscovered for nearly 900 years. They include a wide variety of texts, such as Buddhist scriptures, Taoist writings, Christian texts, Manichaean literature, as well as secular documents on topics like mathematics, history, astronomy, and folk literature, providing invaluable insights into the cultural and historical interactions along the Silk Route. 

Ten months into the Civil War, the Union was short on a crucial supply, the absence of which threatened to sap the fighting strength of the Northern army: coffee. This critical source of energy and morale was considered almost as vital as gunpowder; Union General Benjamin Butler ordered his soldiers to carry coffee with them always, saying it guaranteed success: “If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold” your position.

But by 1862, imports of coffee were down by 40 percent since the start of the war. Though coffee was cultivated around the world from Java to Ethiopia to Haiti, Brazil had been the main supplier to the United States. The Union blockade of Southern ports, including New Orleans, had slowed coffee imports from Brazil to a trickle—and Union merchants and military contractors were able to reroute only a portion of that Brazilian coffee northward; even with Union port cities trying to pick up the slack, the U.S. imported 50 percent less by value from Brazil in 1863 than it did in 1860. Demand, meanwhile, had quadrupled since the fighting began, fueled by a commitment to provide each Union soldier with a generous 36 pounds of coffee per year. Finding a new source of coffee had become a matter of survival.

Luckily for the Union, Stephen Allen Benson, president of the relatively young Republic of Liberia, had a plan. In February 1862, he sent a message to Americans in the North: “In Liberia there are about 500,000 coffee trees planted … [and] there is now more coffee exported from Liberia than in any previous period.” Born in Maryland to free Black American parents, Benson had emigrated with his family to the West African colony at the age of 6. By the outbreak of the Civil War, in April 1861, he was one of the largest coffee farmers in Liberia—and he hoped that this new country, to which several thousand Black Americans had fled to escape American racial animus, could provide an essential fuel in the Union’s own fight against slavery. A ship that left the port at Monrovia in August 1862 carried 6,000 pounds of premium African coffee. It was the first major shipment to the Union—and would prove vital in the North’s victory.

Coffee replaced tea as the U.S. drink of choice around the time of the American Revolution. From the moment patriots tossed chests of tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773, drinking coffee—and boycotting tea—became a sure sign of loyalty to the cause of independence. Pretty soon, the country was obsessed: By the 1830s, coffee consumption was outstripping tea by five to one. In 1832, Andrew Jackson replaced army alcohol rations with coffee, in hopes of energizing the troops and reducing instances of drunken insubordination. By 1860, the U.S. was importing six pounds of the stuff each year for every man, woman and child in the country—and at the outbreak of the Civil War, Americans were drinking twice as much coffee as they were 30 years before.

But the war introduced a problem for the Union’s coffee drinkers. The sudden demand for more coffee as a crucial army provision combined with the blockade of the Southern ports created a crisis. What the Union could import was hardly enough to keep its army supplied, let alone to caffeinate Northern civilians in the manner to which they’d become accustomed.

Yet there was a promising workaround: An early alliance between Northern abolitionists and the Liberian people had begun to bring small quantities of Liberian coffee to the North before the war. In 1848, before his presidency, Benson had formed a partnership with the Quaker merchant and activist George W. Taylor, whose “Free Labor Warehouse” in Philadelphia exclusively sold goods, food and clothes made without enslaved labor. Benson shipped roughly 1,500 pounds of coffee to Taylor that first year, and their partnership continued fruitfully throughout the next decade as they supplied coffee drinkers who were looking for slavery-free alternatives.

Just as some consumers today boycott brands that trouble them, buy fair trade products and otherwise vote with their wallets, some abolitionists used commerce to fight slavery. Liberian coffee was especially attractive to the American Free Produce movement, with its explicit mandate of using ethical commerce to undermine the global slave trade. Coffee had long been championed by Quakers and other Free Produce advocates like Taylor. It was a product that free laborers could grow and that consumers could support with their purchases, even if it cost a little more to pay the farmers.

At the time, the United States had not yet officially recognized the Republic of Liberia, and no formal trade treaties existed between the two countries. Southern states had stood in the way of recognizing Liberia since its independence in 1847, arguing that it would be inappropriate for the U.S. to host a Black diplomatic representative in Washington. But secession created an opening, and right away, Benson began lobbying the U.S. government to extend “treaties of friendship and commerce” that would allow Liberian farmers to bring in coffee on equal terms with other coffee-producing countries.

By the start of 1862, Benson was not alone in his conviction that the farmers of Liberia could bolster the Union war effort. Mercifully for Union generals, President Abraham Lincoln officially recognized the republic that year and raised the tariff on coffee imports to 4 cents a pound as a war-funding effort. That created an opening for imports of Liberia’s more expensive, but also more ethical, coffee—now not so different in price from more established coffees like those from Java. Taylor’s Philadelphia Free Produce store expanded its network in Liberia, bringing new coffee to market from Liberian farmers like Othello Richards and Thomas Moore.

The Union also sent advisers to Liberia, including Edward Morris, a Philadelphia merchant, who visited in 1862 to give free lectures to farmers about best practices for planting coffee—and to ask farmers what support they needed to increase the scale of this new coffee economy. His success was conspicuous. One Liberian settler, William C. Burke, who had been manumitted to emigrate to Liberia by Confederate General Robert E. Lee, wrote to his American contacts that after Morris’ visit, “the attention of almost every [Liberian] farmer has been lately turned towards raising coffee” for the U.S. market.   

Newspapers from Maine to Ohio to California reported encouragingly on the supplies of Liberian coffee. On the ground, meanwhile, the Union’s ability to purchase and distribute coffee from Liberia, alongside other sources, was helping the army’s morale. In December 1862, one soldier wrote that “what keeps me alive must be the coffee.” The North was gaining a powerful caffeinated edge over the Confederacy, where importers, stymied by the Union’s ongoing blockade, were having far less success. Indeed, by 1863, coffee had become ludicrously scarce throughout the Confederacy. A Vermont soldier, marching through Louisiana, noted: “The richest planters have had no tea or coffe [sic] for over a year—when any poor coffe has been brought here it sold for $8 a pound.” In contrast, a receipt issued by Taylor’s Free Produce shop in Philadelphia in 1863 shows that he charged just 40 cents per pound for his prime Liberian beans, described by one arbiter to be of “superior” quality compared with non-Liberian coffee; one longtime Philadelphia customer extolled Liberian coffee’s “strength, flavor and aroma.”

Confederate soldiers, huddled over their campfires in the predawn light, had to make do with unpalatable coffee substitutes brewed from acorn grounds, sweet potatoes and other dubious ingredients. Military discipline was reportedly difficult to maintain in the Confederate Army, where, one Union soldier noted, “they get no tea or coffee but plenty of whiskey.” One desperate Confederate soldier wrote a hastily scrawled, undated note to Union troops across the line in Fredericksburg, Virginia: “I send you some tobacco and expect some coffee in return … yours, Rebel.” The lack of coffee was fast eroding Confederate morale.

The Union Army acted decisively to press its caffeine advantage. At the end of August 1864, the Alexandria Gazette in Virginia lamented that the Union troops in Sherman’s siege of Atlanta had “destroyed 500 sacks of genuine Rio coffee” intended for Confederate consumption—about 55,000 pounds in all. At this point in the war, Union supplies of coffee, including those from Liberia, were so assured that Northern soldiers could even afford to destroy the Confederate stock rather than confiscate or consume it themselves. An article on the same front page of the Gazette noted that a ship had recently arrived in New York with “40,000 pounds of ‘Liberia-Mocha’ coffee.” Benson’s small individual contribution in 1864, around 220 pounds of coffee sold through Taylor’s Free Produce Warehouse that same year, would have been enough to supply six soldiers for the full final year of the war.

At the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, Michigan soldier William Smith noted that the Confederate soldiers present were licking their lips hopefully, with “a keen relish for a cup of Yankee coffee.” The end of the war and Benson’s much-mourned death in 1865—an Ohio newspaper noted his passing as a “great loss”—did not put a damper on Liberian coffee exports to the U.S., where, after the war, coffee from the republic was increasingly available far beyond Free Produce shops.

For their part, Liberian farmers counted their trading partnership with the Union a success. The war had created a new and durable market for their coffee, thanks in part to cooperation with the Free Produce Movement. As more people tried Liberian coffee, they tended to become devoted to it. As one Yale University chemistry professor recorded at the time, “Its quality was so much superior to most coffee in common use in this country that I at once ordered a sample.” Coffea liberica, as it was officially dubbed in 1876, was not only delicious, but also resistant to diseases that affected other varieties, and it won Liberia plenty of new trading partners: By 1885, its annual exports to countries including Britain and Germany reached an impressive 800,000 pounds—and then, only seven years later, a whopping 1.8 million.

The U.S. coffee market, in turn, was forever changed by the war. Indeed, Smithsonian curator of political history Jon Grinspan says that drinking coffee three times a day had hooked America’s soldiers, with the enlisted men “developing lifelong peacetime habits while camped at Shiloh or Petersburg.” By 1885, the U.S. was importing 11 pounds of coffee per person, per year—nearly double prewar levels. Some news reports from this period—written, perhaps, after a third or fourth cup of Liberian brew—sometimes described coffee as a universal remedy, even touting its alleged benefits as a disinfectant.

And in 1880, after the end of Reconstruction, with many reformers turning their attention from racial justice to temperance, the Philadelphia Times expressed the hope that “coffee houses would yet win the victory over gin palaces.” With the help of the prolific Liberian coffee plant, nothing seemed out of reach.

Coffee Talk

Manic birds, excitable goats and other invigorating tales behind the birth of our java addiction

By Sonja Anderson

Get your goat

According to legend, a ninth-century Ethiopian shepherd named Kaldi noticed his goats acting hyper after eating berries from a strange tree. He harvested some for himself and, upon consuming them, enjoyed a similarly energizing effect. Kaldi shared his zippy discovery with some nearby monks, who disapprovingly threw the berries into a fire—accidentally roasting their seeds, which we call beans. The fragrant beans were scooped from the coals, crushed, and soaked in water—creating the first cup of joe.

Sea fare

Ethiopians took nourishment from the coffee shrub in various ways: brewing its leaves and berries into tea, grinding and mixing the seeds with animal fat, or simply chewing on them. Some say that enslaved Northeast Africans—captured and forced across the Red Sea during a 1,300-year period of slave trade that began in the seventh century—may have carried such sustaining snacks onto ships, accidentally transporting the crop to another region that calls itself the birthplace of coffee: Yemen.

Early birds

In a different account, a 13th-century Moroccan mystic named Sheikh al-Shadhili saw a flock of amped-up birds soaring overhead, chewing unfamiliar-looking berries as they flew. After munching on some of the morsels the birds had dropped, Shadhili felt strangely alert—and he formed a habit.

Energy for days

Yemen’s coffee origin story credits one of Shadhili’s disciples: Omar, a healing priest once exiled from the town of Mocha for moral transgressions. Stranded in the hills, nearly starving, Omar plucked some red berries from a shrub. Finding the raw fruits’ seeds inedibly bitter, he opted to cook them over a fire, which hardened them beyond edibility. To correct this mistake, Omar boiled the roasted seeds, watching while the water turned brown and sweetly fragrant. Omar drank the dark liquid and, it is said, enjoyed days of sustained energy.

Discover a brief history of magic and medicine in ancient Greece, then create your own bath scrub using ancient-inspired ingredients.

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Standing tall for nearly three hundred years, the lone Sycamore tree that grew within a dramatic dip in Hadrian’s Wall was cut down in the early morning of 28 September 2023 in a mindless act of vandalism and violence. Having survived all sorts of storms and extremes of weather that often batter its remote setting, one of Britain’s most famous trees will leave a huge hole in the hearts of Northumbrians and anyone who has visited the Sycamore Gap.

The picturesque tree stood along a dip in Hadrian’s Wall, built by the Roman army after Hadrian visited the province of Britannia in AD 122 (read more here). The Wall, which spans 117 kilometres (73 miles), was the frontier of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years. The Sycamore Gap Tree was by Hadrian’s Wall, between Milecastle 39 and Crag Lough, about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland. The Wall and adjacent land, including the site of the tree, are owned by the National Trust, a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Voted Tree of the Year in 2016 by the conservation charity Woodland Trust, the Sycamore Gap Tree was one of the most photographed trees in the United Kingdom. It’s also known as the “Robin Hood Tree” because it appeared in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, despite Hadrian’s Wall being some 130 miles north of Sherwood Forest.

According to the National Trust, this iconic sycamore tree was planted in the late 1800s by John Clayton, the saviour of Hadrian’s Wall, to be a feature in the landscape. Others have reported that the tree was believed to be about 300 years old. The land and the tree came into the care of the National Trust in the 1940s when the Ordnance Survey was remapping the area. The name “Sycamore Gap” was coined during this time by a National Trust Employee.

Why anyone would want to cut down one of England’s most iconic trees has left everyone baffled and angry. Some may say it is just a tree, but the sycamore is much more. It has been the site of marriage proposals, picnics and many other happy moments, a place of special memories for many people. Some have also had their ashes scattered there. It was also a living monument to our shared history, a testament to the enduring power of nature and a source of inspiration for us all.

The tree appeared to have been cut down with a chainsaw at the base of its trunk, with a white line spray painted on it just below the cut. Northumbria Police arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the felling later that day on suspicion of causing criminal damage (source). A second arrest was made; a man in his 60s was also later arrested in connection with the felling on 29 September 2023 (source) after the teenager was released on bail. Why would anyone do this? A question we are all confused over. Police officers are looking into claims that the tree was felled to be posted online and carried out as part of a TikTok stunt (source).

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 The National Trust and Northumberland National Park hope the very healthy tree may well regrow a coppice from the stump (source), though the tree’s age might make this difficult. Coppicing is a technique that involves felling trees at their base to create a stump, known as the stool, where new shoots will grow. Some tree experts claim that the sycamore is not dead, as Andrew Williams, who owns a 5-acre permaculture smallholding in Caithness in the far north of Scotland, explains in this video here.

That tree isn’t dead it’s going to grow back. By next spring it will start pushing out shoots so that by the end of next year it will be taller than me. With a little bit of shaping or even just letting nature take its course, it will in time revert to a full maiden tree. It’s going to recover because 40% of the mass of a tree is below ground in the toots. Those roots are full of energy with massive amount of carbohydrates ready to start pushing branches out again. […] It’s just gone away for a little while, it’s not dead.

Also, the National Trust ranger team have been on site to collect seeds and cuttings from the tree, and they will be working with other partners and the local community to consider plans for the site and the tree in the future. 

Visiting the Wall won’t be quite the same without the sycamore. The place will look strange and sad. But the tree will live on in the memories of all those who had stood beneath its branches and felt its timeless presence. Decisions are yet to be made about what will happen next, with suggestions ranging from a memorial bench made from its wood to a life-size bronze replica to fill the gap (source). A celebration room has been set up in the Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre for people to come and share their thoughts and memories of the Sycamore tree.

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This crime against nature reminded me (and other people in Classics) of this ancient Greek myth in which Erysichthon, a mythical Thessalian noble, chopped down a tree sacred to the goddess Demeter in order to build himself a banqueting hall. He was cursed by the goddess with a never-ending hunger as revenge for his greed and arrogance, driving him to devour his own flesh. Robert S. Santucci, a Ph.D. candidate in Classica Studies at the University of Michigan, recently wrote a piece for the Antigone journal and considers that “Erysichthon must be the myth for the 21st century” (read here).

There are really two Erysichthons, which our reception tends to collapse into one: Erysichthon the arboricide and Erysichthon the autophage. The former is humanity as perpetrator of crimes against nature, the latter humankind’s slow punishment for them.

The perpetrator won’t suffer the fate of Erysichthon, but an appropriate punishment would be to sentence him to plant a thousand trees.

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The Sycamore Gap Tree has been celebrated for its majestic presence. Its magnificent silhouette against the rugged backdrop of Crag Lough enchanted the millions of tourists from across the globe who came to admire it, capturing its beauty in photographs that would last a lifetime. Two weeks ago, professional photographer Sophie Henderson was incredibly fortunate to witness and capture the Northern lights above the famous tree.

I am lucky enough to have visited Hadrian’s Wall and Sycamore Gap several times. I would hike there and walk up from Milecastle 39, knowing what awaited in the next gap. I never got tired of seeing this beautiful scenery. I would sit down there for a while, as so many of us do and then take tons of photographs, waiting for the sun to come out to get the best light.

And then, later, I would raise a glass of this special tree with a pint of Sycamore Gap at the nearby Twice Brewed Inn. The Twice Brewed Inn has set up a fundraising page that aims to support a project that will not only celebrate the legacy of the sycamore tree but also benefit the community for generations to come. All money raised will be donated to the proposed projects by the National Trust, and we will work closely to support their ideas. DONATE HERE

The Twice Brewed Inn & Twice Brewed Brewery are also offering a £1,500 bar tab as a reward to the person who provides information to Northumbria Police that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for destroying such a precious beacon of natural beauty on Hadrian’s Wall.

I visited Hadrian’s Wall and Sycamore Gap in 2011 and 2017 on the occasion of the Turma! Hadrian’s Cavalry Charge event. Then, in June/July 2022, while taking part in the Vindolanda excavations (see here) and in August/September, while participating in the Hadrian’s Wall 1900 Festival by giving a lecture at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle (see here). I was also there last summer as I participated in the 2023 Vindolanda excavations (see here).

GALLERY 2011

GALLERY 2017

GALLERY 2022

GALLERY 2023

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Follow the Northumberland National Park website here to read their latest update from Sycamore Gap. 

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During Japan’s Sengoku Jidai era, espionage was integral to the strategies of various daimyos. The figure of Hiroyuki, a cook serving a local daimyo while secretly loyal to another lord, illustrates the nuanced roles of shinobi, often depicted in Western media as ninjas. These agents, unlike their mythologized counterparts, primarily engaged in intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, and subterfuge rather than overt assassination.

Common misconceptions about ninjas, such as their supposed magical abilities or the stereotypical all-black attire, have little basis in historical fact. The portrayal of ninjas performing feats like vanishing into thin air or wearing distinct black uniforms is largely a product of popular culture and psychological tactics used by the shinobi themselves to instill fear. Practicality dictated that shinobi blend into their surroundings, often dressing as farmers or monks, to avoid detection. Even the concept of the ninjato, a straight-bladed sword distinct from the samurai’s katana, lacks historical evidence and was likely a later invention.

The notion of a bitter rivalry between ninjas and samurai is also overstated. Many shinobi were, in fact, samurai who used their skills in stealth and espionage to serve their lords. Hattori Hanzo, a famous shinobi, exemplifies this dual role as both a warrior and a spy, serving Tokugawa Ieyasu with distinction.

The Iga and Koka regions, known for their collective governance and resistance to daimyo control, were significant centers for shinobi activity. These communities’ expertise in guerrilla warfare and subterfuge contributed to the enduring mystique of the shinobi. The tale of Iga’s resistance against Oda Nobunaga, although ending in defeat, highlights the strategic prowess of these covert operatives.

Top image:  Samurai and oriental temple in the background, samurai with armor, Generative AI

Source: Kaleb/Adobe Stock

By Robbie Mitchell