Watch Momijigari, Japan’s Oldest Surviving Film (1899)

in Film, History, Theatre | August 27th, 2025

At first, film sim­ply record­ed events: a man walk­ing across a gar­den, work­ers leav­ing a fac­to­ry, a train pulling into a sta­tion. The medi­um soon matured enough to accom­mo­date dra­ma, which for ear­ly film­mak­ers meant sim­ply shoot­ing what amount­ed to stage pro­duc­tions from the per­spec­tive of a view­er in the audi­ence. At that stage, we could say, film still had­n’t evolved past sim­ple doc­u­men­tary pur­pos­es, hav­ing yet to incor­po­rate edit­ing, to say noth­ing of the oth­er qual­i­ties we now regard as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cin­e­mat­ic. This was­n’t a cul­tur­al mat­ter, but a tech­ni­cal one, as evi­denced by Momi­ji­gari, the old­est Japan­ese film in exis­tence.

Shot in 1899, Momi­ji­gari depicts near­ly four min­utes of a kabu­ki play involv­ing Onoe Kiku­gorō V and Ichikawa Dan­jūrō IX, two famous mas­ters of the form at the time. The idea was to pre­serve a record of their pres­ence on stage, no mat­ter how hap­haz­ard­ly or for how short a time, before they shuf­fled off this mor­tal coil.

It cer­tain­ly was­n’t too soon: both men would die in 1903, the year of the film’s first exhi­bi­tion. No fan of West­ern moder­ni­ty, Dan­jūrō had stip­u­lat­ed that it be shown only after his death, but in the event, it was screened for the pub­lic in his place at a per­for­mance at which he was too sick to appear, which extend­ed to a longer run in hon­or of Kiku­gorō’s recent death.

Like its West­ern his­tor­i­cal equiv­a­lents, Momi­ji­gari depicts a the­atri­cal work. The tit­u­lar six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Noh play, also per­formed in kabu­ki and dance-ori­ent­ed shosago­to ver­sions, involves a woman and her ret­inue on an out­ing to do some maple-leaf view­ing (the lit­er­al mean­ing of momi­ji­gari). Like all female kabu­ki roles, these would have been played with­out excep­tion by male actors, who were in any case thought bet­ter able to con­vey fem­i­nin­i­ty onstage. The lady entices a pass­ing war­rior to drink, and when he pass­es out, he’s informed in his dream that she’s actu­al­ly a demon. In the fol­low­ing scene, she reverts to demon form and the two do bat­tle. Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese film­mak­er Shi­ba­ta Tsune­kichi fits a sur­pris­ing amount of this nar­ra­tive into a very brief run­time, which also includes the whol­ly acci­den­tal loss of a fan. Dan­jūrō had insist­ed on shoot­ing out­side, even on a windy day, and one does­n’t sim­ply say no to a kabu­ki mas­ter.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre, Fea­tur­ing 20th-Cen­tu­ry Mas­ters of the Form (1964)

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

The Ear­li­est Known Motion Pic­ture, 1888’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene, Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Essen­tial Japan­ese Cin­e­ma: A Jour­ney Through 50 of Japan’s Beau­ti­ful, Often Bizarre Films

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

Watch Vin­tage Footage of Tokyo, Cir­ca 1910, Get Brought to Life with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Franz Kafka’s Anxious Letters to His Fiancée, Read Aloud by Richard Ayoade

in History, Letters, Literature | August 26th, 2025

It can’t have been easy being Franz Kaf­ka. But then, it can’t have been much eas­i­er being Franz Kafka’s fiancée, as evi­denced by the cor­re­spon­dence read aloud by Richard Ayoade in the new Let­ters Live video above. “It is now 10:30 on Mon­day morn­ing,” he wrote to Felice Bauer on Novem­ber 4, 1912. “I have been wait­ing for a let­ter since 10:30 on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, but again noth­ing has come. I have writ­ten every day but don’t I deserve even a word? One sin­gle word? Even if it were only to say ‘I nev­er want to hear from you again.’ ” This anx­ious, hec­tor­ing tone was not a one-off indul­gence. “Dear­est, what have I done that makes you tor­ment me so?” he plead­ed just over two weeks lat­er.

Kaf­ka and Bauer had been intro­duced three months before. She was a rel­a­tive of Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and even­tu­al lit­er­ary execu­tor, and accord­ing to Kafka’s diaries, made a fair­ly unpre­pos­sess­ing first impres­sion: “Bony, emp­ty face that wore its empti­ness open­ly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domes­tic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was.”

Yet dur­ing their ensu­ing five-year cor­re­spon­dence, he was moved to write her more than 500 let­ters, some of them sent one day after the oth­er — and more than a few berat­ing her for not writ­ing back quick­ly enough.

This rela­tion­ship twice led to engage­ment, but per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, nev­er cul­mi­nat­ed in mar­riage. Nev­er­the­less, Bauer’s rela­tion­ship with Kaf­ka remained impor­tant enough to her that she saved every­thing he wrote to her, which was col­lect­ed and pub­lished in book form as Briefe an Felice (and lat­er, in trans­la­tion, as Let­ters to Felice) in 1967. Per­haps, as bur­den­some as they could no doubt be, Kafka’s let­ters sug­gest­ed to Bauer a cer­tain lit­er­ary skill. (This was, after all, the same peri­od in which he wrote The Meta­mor­pho­sis and “In the Penal Colony,” as well as ear­ly ver­sions of The Tri­al). They also hint at his since-cel­e­brat­ed sense of humor, not least in a con­clud­ing line like “Damn the mail!” — words that, in Ayoad­e’s deliv­ery, draw a round of applause.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Franz Kaf­ka: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to His Lit­er­ary Genius

What Is Kafkaesque?: The Phi­los­o­phy of Franz Kaf­ka

Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb Cre­ates an Illus­trat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Reads Franz Kafka’s Short Sto­ry “A Lit­tle Fable” (and Explains Why Com­e­dy Is Key to Kaf­ka)

Behold the Draw­ings of Franz Kaf­ka (1907–1917)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Origins of Satan: The Evolution of the Devil in Religion

in History, Religion | August 25th, 2025

The Dev­il, the Beast, Beelze­bub, Lucifer, Satan: whichev­er name we hap­pen to call him, we know full well who the guy is — or at least, we think we do. In fact, the images and evo­ca­tions of that embod­i­ment of (or per­haps metaphor for) sin, deceit, and temp­ta­tion that many of us have encoun­tered in pop­u­lar cul­ture have lit­tle, if any­thing, to do with Bib­li­cal scrip­ture. Here to explain Satan’s real tex­tu­al ori­gins is Reli­gion for Break­fast cre­ator Andrew Mark Hen­ry, who in the video above goes all the way back to the ancient Israelites and the Hebrew Bible — in which “the notion of a sin­gu­lar, supreme evil enti­ty and oppo­nent to God is com­plete­ly absent.”

Hen­ry men­tions that the Hebrew term śāṭān, which means “adver­sary or accuser,” does appear ear­ly in the Bible, but it “sim­ply refers to human adver­saries.” Only in lat­er texts, like the Book of Job, does the word take on the mean­ing of a “divine job title, kind of like a pros­e­cu­tor” or “legal adver­sary in a divine court.”

We’re still far from the cur­rent Chris­t­ian con­cept of Satan, which may even­tu­al­ly have arisen, accord­ing to some schol­ars, out of cen­turies of cul­tur­al exchange between Chris­tian­i­ty and Zoroas­tri­an­ism. The ancient Mid­dle East­ern reli­gion pro­pos­es a per­fect­ly good divine being Ahu­ra Maz­da “locked in bat­tle with a whol­ly evil being named Angra Mainyu.” This encounter between civ­i­liza­tions would explain some­thing about the emer­gence of the now wide­ly acknowl­edged idea of “a cos­mic strug­gle between good and evil.”

As one ancient text is lay­ered atop anoth­er, “an evil leader of fall­en angels or evil spir­it in gen­er­al becomes a recur­ring char­ac­ter,” and in the New Tes­ta­ment, “the chief adver­sary of God” is called by the name Satan — or by the Greek word diábo­los, which gave us Dev­il and all its relat­ed words. In ref­er­ence to the ori­gins of Satan, the Book of Isa­iah offers the line “How you are fall­en from heav­en, O Day Star, Son of Dawn!” The term “Day Star,” which refers to the plan­et Venus, was ren­dered in the Latin Vul­gate trans­la­tion as Lucifer, which has become anoth­er com­mon name for this ever-more-charged fig­ure. Whether we fear him, con­demn him, deny his exis­tence, or even — depend­ing on our musi­cal gen­res of choice — imag­ine that we wor­ship him, our cul­ture does, in some sense or anoth­er, seem to need him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Par­adise Lost Explained: How John Mil­ton Wrote His Epic Reli­gious Poem from Satan’s Per­spec­tive

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

The Leg­end of How Blues­man Robert John­son Sold His Soul to the Dev­il at the Cross­roads

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Twain Him­self Meet Satan in the Zany 1985 Clay­ma­tion The Adven­tures of Mark Twain

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Did Paul McCartney Really Die in 1966? How the Biggest Beatles Conspiracy Theory Spread

in History, Music | August 22nd, 2025

No pop music can have inspired more scruti­ny than that of the Bea­t­les. Of course, intense and sus­tained atten­tion has been paid to every aspect of the band’s exis­tence — and, in the case of Paul McCart­ney, his pur­port­ed non-exis­tence as well. The the­o­ry that he actu­al­ly died in the nine­teen-six­ties and was there­after secret­ly played by a dou­ble has demon­strat­ed such pop-cul­tur­al stay­ing pow­er that even those who bare­ly know the Bea­t­les’ music make ref­er­ence to it. The phrase “Turn me on, dead man” now floats free of its ori­gin, an act of cre­ative lis­ten­ing applied to “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” played back­wards.

The idea, as explained in the Vinyl Rewind video above, is that “after an argu­ment dur­ing a Bea­t­les record­ing ses­sion on Novem­ber 9th, 1966, Paul McCart­ney sped off in his car, only to be decap­i­tat­ed in an auto acci­dent when he lost con­trol of his vehi­cle. The U.K. secu­ri­ty ser­vice MI5 advised the band to find a replace­ment, for they feared that if the news of Paul’s death got out, mass hys­te­ria would spread among Bea­t­les fans, lead­ing to civ­il unrest and, pos­si­bly, mass sui­cide.” The hunt for a Paul looka­like turned up “a Scot­tish orphan named William Shears Camp­bell, also known as Bil­ly Shears.”

That name will sound famil­iar to even casu­al Bea­t­les lis­ten­ers, announced as it is so promi­nent­ly, and so ear­ly, on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. The album’s cov­er, too, proved to be a fount of imagery sug­gest­ing that the rumor of Paul’s death, which had been ref­er­enced in an offi­cial Bea­t­les pub­li­ca­tion in 1967 specif­i­cal­ly to dis­pel it, was actu­al­ly true. A cou­ple of years lat­er, a Detroit radio DJ and a Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan stu­dent-jour­nal­ist got the sto­ry into wide cir­cu­la­tion. No one clue — the recur­ring shoe­less­ness of Paul or his imper­son­ator, the death-of-Oswald lines from King Lear incor­po­rat­ed into “I Am the Wal­rus,” the car wreck described in “A Day in the Life,” the license-plate of the VW on Abbey Road’s cov­er  — was dis­pos­i­tive, but even­tu­al­ly, they added up.

They added up if you were express­ly look­ing for evi­dence of Paul’s death and sub­sti­tu­tion: engag­ing in parei­do­lia, in oth­er words, the ten­den­cy to per­ceive mean­ing­ful pat­terns in ran­dom noise, or in this case a range of minor, non-orches­trat­ed details across pieces of media. Giv­en the Bea­t­les’ per­son­al­i­ties, nobody would put it past them to make cheeky hid­den ref­er­ences to exact­ly what they weren’t sup­posed to talk about, but any­one famil­iar with the music busi­ness would also sus­pect that Capi­tol Records had no inter­est in putting a stop to a false rumor that was gen­er­at­ing a prof­it. It’s cer­tain­ly a stretch to imag­ine that some­one who just hap­pens to look like Paul McCart­ney would also be will­ing and able to car­ry on the man’s solo career for decade after decade. But then, the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music is full of lucky men, and maybe — just maybe — Bil­ly Shears was among the luck­i­est.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the “Paul McCart­ney is Dead” Hoax Start­ed at an Amer­i­can Col­lege News­pa­per and Went Viral (1969)

Paul McCart­ney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Ques­tions in Two New Videos

The Paul McCart­ney is Dead Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, Explained

Paul McCart­ney vs. Bri­an Wil­son: A Rival­ry That Inspired Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pep­per, and Oth­er Clas­sic Albums

Hear The Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road with Only Paul McCartney’s Bass: You Won’t Believe How Good It Sounds

Paul McCart­ney Admits to Drop­ping Acid in a Scrap­py Inter­view with a Pry­ing Reporter (June, 1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Ancient Roman Dodecahedron: The Mysterious Object That Has Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries

in History | August 21st, 2025

There isn’t much place for dodec­a­he­dra in mod­ern life, at least in those mod­ern lives with  table­top role-play­ing. In the ancient Roman Empire, how­ev­er, those shapes seem to have been prac­ti­cal­ly house­hold objects — not that we know what the house­hold would have done with them. Thus far, well over 100 sim­i­lar­ly designed cop­per-alloy sec­ond-to-fourth-cen­tu­ry arti­facts labeled “Roman dodec­a­he­dra” have been dis­cov­ered: the first was unearthed in 1739, and the most recent just two years ago. With their com­plex struc­ture, knobbed cor­ners, and (in some cas­es) sur­face designs, their con­struc­tion would have required a skilled met­al­work­er. Per­haps they were the result of pro­fes­sion­al exam­i­na­tion, premised on the idea that a man who can make a prop­er dodec­a­he­dron can make any­thing.

That’s one the­o­ry, if only one of many. In the video above, Joe Scott goes over a vari­ety of them, explain­ing why ama­teurs and experts alike have pro­posed that the Roman dodec­a­he­dron was every­thing from a mil­i­tary rangefind­er to a sun­di­al cal­en­dar to a decoder to a mea­sur­ing device to a coin val­ida­tor to a rit­u­al­is­tic amulet to a “Roman fid­get spin­ner.”

One par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling expla­na­tion holds that it was an aid for a chain-mak­ing tech­nique called “Viking knit­ting,” which would at least make sense giv­en that all extant exam­ples have come from north­ern Europe. Yes, no Roman dodec­a­he­dron has ever been found in Rome, or even in the whole of Italy, and that’s far from the most con­fus­ing fact about these still-mys­te­ri­ous objects.

The propo­si­tion that the Roman dodec­a­he­dron was a knit­ting aid, espe­cial­ly if it was used for mak­ing chain, is under­cut by the lack of wear on all known exam­ples. Mil­i­tary or tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tions are also made some­what implau­si­ble by the absence of numer­als or oth­er mark­ings. While some Roman dodec­a­he­dra have been dug up from army camps, many more came from the tombs of upper-class women, sug­gest­ing that they had more val­ue as a sta­tus sym­bol than a prac­ti­cal tool. Most bewil­der­ing of all is the fact that no texts or images from the peri­od make any ref­er­ence to the things, which Scott takes as evi­dence for their being so com­mon as not to mer­it dis­cus­sion — much like, say, the ice­box doors or tele­phone shelves built into nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry hous­es. At this point, can we real­ly rule out the notion that the Romans made them as a prank on the far-future inher­i­tors of their civ­i­liza­tion?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Glass Bowl in Per­fect Con­di­tion

How the Ancient Greeks Invent­ed the First Com­put­er: An Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (Cir­ca 87 BC)

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

The “Dark Relics” of Chris­tian­i­ty: Pre­served Skulls, Blood & Oth­er Grim Arti­facts

Explore a Dig­i­tized Edi­tion of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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21 Rules for Living from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s Samurai Philosopher (1584–1645)

in History, Philosophy | August 20th, 2025

Browse the ever-vaster selec­tion of self-help books, videos, pod­casts, and social-media accounts on offer today, and you’ll find no short­age of pre­scrip­tions for how to live. Much of what the gurus of the twen­ty-twen­ties have to say sounds awful­ly sim­i­lar, and almost as much may seem con­tra­dic­to­ry. As in so many fields of human endeav­or, the best strat­e­gy could be to look to the clas­sics first, and as rules for liv­ing go, few have stood more of a test of time than the 21 prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō, or “The Path of Alone­ness,” writ­ten by the sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry swords­man Miyamo­to Musashi, who’s said to have fought 62 duels and won them all.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber was, Miyamo­to clear­ly knew some­thing that most of his oppo­nents did­n’t — and for that mat­ter, some­thing that most of us today prob­a­bly don’t either. It was at the very end of his 60-year-long life, about which you can learn more from the videos from Pur­suit of Won­der above and Einzel­gänger below, that this most famous of all samu­rai con­densed his wis­dom into the prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō, which are as fol­lows:

  1. Accept every­thing just the way it is.
  2. Do not seek plea­sure for its own sake.
  3. Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, depend on a par­tial feel­ing.
  4. Think light­ly of your­self and deeply of the world.
  5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
  6. Do not regret what you have done.
  7. Nev­er be jeal­ous.
  8. Nev­er let your­self be sad­dened by a sep­a­ra­tion.
  9. Resent­ment and com­plaint are appro­pri­ate nei­ther for one­self nor oth­ers.
  10. Do not let your­self be guid­ed by the feel­ing of lust or love.
  11. In all things have no pref­er­ences.
  12. Be indif­fer­ent to where you live.
  13. Do not pur­sue the taste of good food.
  14. Do not hold on to pos­ses­sions you no longer need.
  15. Do not act fol­low­ing cus­tom­ary beliefs.
  16. Do not col­lect weapons or prac­tice with weapons beyond what is use­ful.
  17. Do not fear death.
  18. Do not seek to pos­sess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
  19. Respect Bud­dha and the gods with­out count­ing on their help.
  20. You may aban­don your own body but you must pre­serve your hon­or.
  21. Nev­er stray from the Way.

The ref­er­ence to Bud­dha in prin­ci­ple #19 may not come as a sur­prise, giv­en how rich this list is with appar­ent­ly Bud­dhist themes: relin­quish­ment of desire, release of attach­ments, accep­tance of the inevitable. There are also res­o­nances with con­tem­po­rary texts on the art of liv­ing pro­duced by civ­i­liza­tions well out­side Asia: Span­ish Jesuit priest Bal­tasar Gracían’s Orácu­lo Man­u­al y Arte de Pru­den­cia (or The Art of World­ly Wis­dom), for instance, which was first pub­lished just two years after the prin­ci­ples of Dokkōdō.

You might also sense much in com­mon between Miyamo­to’s world­view and that of the Sto­ics, who were lay­ing down their own pre­cepts fif­teen or six­teen cen­turies ear­li­er. Each in his own way, Epicte­tus, Mar­cus Aure­lius, and Seneca reached a form of the same under­stand­ing that Miyamo­to did: that we must first, as he him­self puts it, “accept every­thing just the way it is.” We may devote our lives to sat­is­fy­ing our pref­er­ences, but both the Sto­ics and the samu­rai knew that, as Pur­suit of Won­der’s nar­ra­tor puts it, “it is our abil­i­ty to shift with a world that reg­u­lar­ly oppos­es our pref­er­ences that enhances the qual­i­ty of our expe­ri­ence.” Among Miyamo­to’s dis­tinc­tive con­tri­bu­tions is his empha­sis on focus: that is, “clear intent, devot­ed atten­tion, emo­tion­al con­trol, per­cep­tive­ness, and a kind of men­tal empti­ness and adapt­abil­i­ty”: all qual­i­ties that, hav­ing just last week become a father of two, I’d sure­ly do well to start cul­ti­vat­ing in myself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Be a Samu­rai: A 17th Cen­tu­ry Code for Life & War

What Is Sto­icism? A Short Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Phi­los­o­phy That Can Help You Cope with Our Hard Mod­ern Times

How to Be a Sto­ic in Your Every­day Life: Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci Explains

A Mis­chie­vous Samu­rai Describes His Rough-and-Tum­ble Life in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD)

in Food & Drink, History | August 19th, 2025

Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervil­lain, offers his dis­tin­guished guest a bot­tle of wine, his finest, an ancient vin­tage from one of the most ven­er­a­ble vine­yards. We might fol­low the motif back at least to Edgar Allan Poe, whose “Cask of Amon­til­la­do” puts an espe­cial­ly devi­ous spin on the trea­sured bottle’s sin­is­ter con­no­ta­tions.

If our suave and pos­si­bly dead­ly host were to offer us the bot­tle you see here, we might hard­ly believe it, and would hard­ly be keen to drink it, though not for fear of being mur­dered after­ward. The Römer­wein, or Spey­er wine bottle—so called after the Ger­man region where it was dis­cov­ered in the exca­va­tion of a 4th cen­tu­ry AD Roman nobleman’s tomb—dates “back to between 325 and 359 AD,” writes Aban­doned Spaces, and has the dis­tinc­tion of being “the old­est known wine bot­tle which remains unopened.”

A 1.5 liter “glass ves­sel with ampho­ra-like stur­dy shoul­ders” in the shape of dol­phins, the bot­tle is of no use to its own­er, but no one is cer­tain what would hap­pen to the liq­uid if it were exposed to air, so it stays sealed, its thick stop­per of wax and olive oil main­tain­ing an impres­sive­ly her­met­ic envi­ron­ment. Sci­en­tists can only spec­u­late that the liq­uid inside has prob­a­bly lost most of its ethanol con­tent. But the bot­tle still con­tains a good amount of wine, “dilut­ed with a mix of var­i­ous herbs.”

The Römer­wein resides at the His­tor­i­cal Muse­um of the Palati­nate in Spey­er, which seems like an incred­i­bly fas­ci­nat­ing place if you hap­pen to be pass­ing through. You won’t get to taste ancient Roman wine there, but you may, per­haps, if you trav­el to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cata­nia in Sici­ly where in 2013, sci­en­tists recre­at­ed ancient wine-mak­ing tech­niques, set up a vine­yard, and fol­lowed the old ways to the let­ter, using wood­en tools and strips of cane to tie their vines.

They pro­ceed­ed, writes Tom Kingston at The Guardian, “with­out mech­a­niza­tion, pes­ti­cides or fer­til­iz­ers.” Only the organ­ic stuff for Roman vint­ners.

The team has faith­ful­ly fol­lowed tips on wine grow­ing giv­en by Vir­gil in the Geor­gics, his poem about agri­cul­ture, as well as by Col­umel­la, a first cen­tu­ry AD grow­er, whose detailed guide to wine­mak­ing was relied on until the 17th cen­tu­ry.

Those ancient wine­mak­ers added hon­ey and water to their wine, as well as herbs, to sweet­en and spice things up. And unlike most Ital­ians today who “drink mod­er­ate­ly with meals,” ancient Romans “were more giv­en to drunk­en carous­ing.” Maybe that’s what the gen­tle­man in the Spey­er tomb hoped to be doing in his Roman after­life.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2000-Year-Old Bot­tle of White Wine Found in a Roman Bur­ial Site

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Discover the World’s Oldest Surviving Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, from Ancient Rome

in Food & Drink, History | August 18th, 2025

West­ern schol­ar­ship has had “a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry.” This does not mean, how­ev­er, that cook­ing has been ignored by his­to­ri­ans. Many a schol­ar has tak­en Euro­pean cook­ing seri­ous­ly, before recent food schol­ar­ship expand­ed the canon. For exam­ple, in a 1926 Eng­lish trans­la­tion of an ancient Roman cook­book, Joseph Dom­mers Vehling makes a strong case for the cen­tral­i­ty of food schol­ar­ship.

“Any­one who would know some­thing worth­while about the pri­vate and pub­lic lives of the ancients,” writes Vehling, “should be well acquaint­ed with their table.” Pub­lished as Cook­ery and Din­ing in Impe­r­i­al Rome (and avail­able here at Project Guten­berg and at the Inter­net Archive), it is, he says, the old­est known cook­book in exis­tence.

The book, orig­i­nal­ly titled De Re Coquinar­ia, is attrib­uted to Api­cius and may date to the 1st cen­tu­ry A.C.E., though the old­est sur­viv­ing copy comes from the end of the Empire, some­time in the 5th cen­tu­ry. As with most ancient texts, copied over cen­turies, redact­ed, amend­ed, and edit­ed, the orig­i­nal cook­book is shroud­ed in mys­tery.

The cook­book’s author, Api­cius, could have been one of sev­er­al “renowned gas­tronomers of old Rome” who bore the sur­name. But whichev­er “famous eater” was respon­si­ble, over 2000 years lat­er the book has quite a lot to tell us about the Roman diet. (All of the illus­tra­tions here are by Vehling, who includes over two dozen exam­ples of ancient prac­tices and arti­facts.)

Meat played an impor­tant role, and “cru­el meth­ods of slaugh­ter were com­mon.” But the kind of meat avail­able seems to have changed dur­ing Apicius’s time:

With the increas­ing short­age of beef, with the increas­ing facil­i­ties for rais­ing chick­en and pork, a rever­sion to Api­cian meth­ods of cook­ery and diet is not only prob­a­bly but actu­al­ly seems inevitable. The ancient bill of fare and the ancient meth­ods of cook­ery were entire­ly guid­ed by the sup­ply of raw materials—precisely like ours. They had no great food stores nor very effi­cient mar­ket­ing and trans­porta­tion sys­tems, food cold stor­age. They knew, how­ev­er, to take care of what there was. They were good man­agers.

But veg­e­tar­i­ans were also well-served. “Api­cius cer­tain­ly excels in the prepa­ra­tion of veg­etable dish­es (cf. his cab­bage and aspara­gus) and in the uti­liza­tion of parts of food mate­ri­als that are today con­sid­ered infe­ri­or.” This appar­ent need to use every­thing, and to some­times heav­i­ly spice food to cov­er spoilage, may have led to an unusu­al Roman cus­tom. As How Stuff Works puts it, “cooks then were revered if they could dis­guise a com­mon food item so that din­ers had no idea what they were eat­ing.”

As for the recipes them­selves, well, any attempt to dupli­cate them will be at best a broad interpretation—a trans­la­tion from ancient meth­ods of cook­ing by smell, feel, and cus­tom to the mod­ern way of weights and mea­sures. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing recipe:

WINE SAUCE FOR TRUFFLES

PEPPER, LOVAGE, CORIANDER, RUE, BROTH, HONEY AND A LITTLE OIL.

ANOTHER WAY: THYME, SATURY, PEPPER, LOVAGE, HONEY, BROTH AND OIL.

I fore­see much frus­trat­ing tri­al and error (and many hope­ful sub­sti­tu­tions for things like lovage or rue or “sat­u­ry”) for the cook who attempts this. Some foods that were plen­ti­ful­ly avail­able could cost hun­dreds now to pre­pare for a din­ner par­ty.

SEAFOOD MINCES ARE MADE OF SEA-ONION, OR SEA CRAB, FISH, LOBSTER, CUTTLE-FISH, INK FISH, SPINY LOBSTER, SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS. THE FORCEMEAT IS SEASONED WITH LOVAGE, PEPPER, CUMIN AND LASER ROOT.

Vehling’s foot­notes most­ly deal with ety­mol­o­gy and define unfa­mil­iar terms (“laser root” is wild fen­nel), but they pro­vide lit­tle prac­ti­cal insight for the cook. “Most of the Api­cian direc­tions are vague, hasti­ly jot­ted down, care­less­ly edit­ed,” much of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy is obscure: “with the advent of the dark ages, it ceased to be a prac­ti­cal cook­ery book.” We learn, instead, about Roman ingre­di­ents and home eco­nom­ic prac­tices, insep­a­ra­ble from Roman eco­nom­ics more gen­er­al­ly, accord­ing to Vehling.

He makes a judg­ment of his own time even more rel­e­vant to ours: “Such atroc­i­ties as the will­ful destruc­tion of huge quan­ti­ties of food of every descrip­tion on the one side and the starv­ing mul­ti­tudes on the oth­er as seen today nev­er occurred in antiq­ui­ty.” Per­haps more cur­rent his­to­ri­ans of antiq­ui­ty would beg to dif­fer, I wouldn’t know.

But if you’re just look­ing for a Roman recipe that you can make at home, might I sug­gest the Rose Wine?

ROSE WINE

MAKE ROSE WINE IN THIS MANNER: ROSE PETALS, THE LOWER WHITE PART REMOVED, SEWED INTO A LINEN BAG AND IMMERSED IN WINE FOR SEVEN DAYS. THEREUPON ADD A SACK OF NEW PETALS WHICH ALLOW TO DRAW FOR ANOTHER SEVEN DAYS. AGAIN REMOVE THE OLD PETALS AND REPLACE THEM BY FRESH ONES FOR ANOTHER WEEK; THEN STRAIN THE WINE THROUGH THE COLANDER. BEFORE SERVING, ADD HONEY SWEETENING TO TASTE. TAKE CARE THAT ONLY THE BEST PETALS FREE FROM DEW BE USED FOR SOAKING.

You could prob­a­bly go with red or white, though I’d haz­ard Api­cius went with a fine vinum rubrum. This con­coc­tion, Vehling tells us in a help­ful foot­note, dou­bles as a lax­a­tive. Clever, those Romans. Read the full Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the ancient Roman cook­book here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 202o.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Make the Old­est Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Net­tle Pud­ding Dat­ing Back 6,000 BC

The Old­est Unopened Bot­tle of Wine in the World (Cir­ca 350 AD)

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

The World’s Old­est Cook­book: Dis­cov­er 4,000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Baby­lon

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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