The first few episodes of "Vikings" owed a lot to Ahmad ibn Fadlan, but I think the use of source material went steadily downhill from there. "Roma Sub Rosa" co

The first few episodes of "Vikings" owed a lot to Ahmad ibn Fadlan, but I think the use of source material went steadily downhill from there. "Roma Sub Rosa" correlated well with my classes for the first few books, but I don't know how they've held up in light of any more recent scholarship. Chirologia/Chironomia are more oriented to hand gestures rather than whole body, but they might have some clues. Roman orators had a set of stock poses (the memes of the day?), so maybe Cicero actually said something about shoulder shrugging in the "delivery" part of De Inventione? It's certainly a gesture that would have read well in the back rows, had they used it. EDIT: maybe also somewhere in Quintilian? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutio_Oratoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutio_Oratoria