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The Vindictive Pope Who Dug Up and Tried a Rival’s Corpse

Khalid Elhassan November 29, 2024 13 min

Cadaver - The corpse of Pope Formosus, as defendant in the Cadaver Synod — The corpse of Pope Formosus, as defendant in the Cadaver Synod. Sick History

11. The Erasure of Classical Rome

Rome’s Forum of Caesar in the ninth century. Pinterest

Rome’s famous Forum Romanum, where the giants of Roman history had once rubbed shoulders, was now called Campo Vaccino (“Cow’s Field”). The Capitoline Hill, that had once housed the grand temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, was now Monte Caprino (“Goats Mount”). The grand monuments of yesteryear had already been cannibalized for marble, columns, and bricks, while most of the city’s statues had been burned to transform their marble into lime. The destruction of Classical Rome was done not by marauding barbarians, but by the Romans themselves. Most inhabitants lived in ramshackle houses or huts, while the richer sorts lived in older Roman buildings, fortified and repurposed into strongholds.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.