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Articles (Other)

Other Topics is a category that collects articles related to ancient Rome and the ancient world that don’t fit into the website’s main thematic sections. Here, you’ll find a variety of texts on historical curiosities, source interpretation, pop culture, scientific research, and other related topics that complement knowledge about the Roman Empire. This is a space for unusual topics and content that expands the understanding of the ancient world.

Clothed for Cinema, naked for Rome

There are images that return like a persistent frame from an old film: a row of crosses stretching along a road, a body nailed to the wood, a face frozen in pain, and a garment girded around the hips, modest, almost symbolic, as if meant to shield not so much the body as the viewer’s conscience. In the collective memory, this image has already been polished, transformed by cinematic aesthetics and religious iconography, tamed. The cross appears as a symbol of faith or an individual’s drama, not as a part of the state machine. Meanwhile, Rome, which turned this punishment into a political tool, was not interested in shielding anything.

28 March 2026

Etruscan cuniculi and persian qanats: on the predecessors of Roman aqueducts

When we think of aqueducts, we usually picture rows of arches stretching for kilometres, once supplying the greatest cities of the Republic and later the Roman Empire with drinking water. Indeed, the arcades — many of which survive to this day — were part of that system; however, the majority of aqueducts ran underground: tunnels carved through rock, hidden from enemy eyes and generally far cheaper and more practical to build.

20 March 2026

“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius…” – when a number becomes a Roman name

When Maximus in Gladiator declares his full name, the line sounds like a statement of identity and authority. Yet at the very center of that famous speech lies a detail that is more Roman than all the armor on screen: “Decimus.” It is not a flourish invented by the scriptwriters or a random Latin word chosen for effect. It reflects a real feature of Roman naming traditions. In ancient Rome some male names were literally ordinal numbers and meant exactly what they appear to mean: Quintus the fifth, Sextus the sixth, Septimus the seventh, Octavius the eighth, Decimus the tenth. For a modern reader the conclusion seems obvious. A man called Quintus must have been the fifth son, Sextus the sixth child, Decimus perhaps the tenth descendant. It sounds tidy and logical. But Roman society rarely worked with such neat arithmetic, and the gap between what seems obvious and what can actually be proven is where the real historical curiosity begins.

4 March 2026