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The Roman state existed in practice for XIII centuries, being the power which was impacting the history. Therefore, I decided that I would tell the history of ancient Rome in the articles below, which will not necessarily cover only the Eternal City.
I encourage you to send articles and point out any corrections or inaccuracies.
While reading (or watching) the adventures of Asterix, you must have come across Obelix’s statement: “But those Romans are stupid”. It turns out, however, that the Romans weren’t so stupid after all. Their everyday life may surprise us sometimes, but when you look closely… they are not so distant for us.
Rome’s power, which lasted more than ten centuries, began in 753 BCE. After the destruction of Troy, Aeneas fled a cursed earth ravaged by the Achaean storm. His journey ended only in distant Italy, where he decided to found a new city.
In the Spanish province of Leon, 20 km from Ponferrada, is Las Medulas, the Roman gold digging site. Before the Romans started mining, the local Celtic tribes obtained gold dust from the rivers. Poseidonius of Rhodes, a teacher of Cicero, wrote in the first century BCE about the fact that this precious metal is here.
Monumental St. John in Lateran is probably known to everyone who has been to Rome. But the magnificent structure hides in its basement many ancient secrets that have so far been only partially known. The history of this place is really fascinating – it dates back to the struggle for the domination of Christianity in the Roman world and civil wars for imperial power.
The most famous Roman fortifications are the border fortifications in Europe, such as Hadrian’s wall and Antoninus in Britain, Upper Germanic-Rhaetian limes in southern Germany, Lower Germanic-Rhaetian limes on the Rhine in today’s Germany and the Netherlands. There was Limes Sarmaticus on the Danube, border fortifications were also built in Dacia and the Crimea.
The European and Asian borders of the Roman Empire were the area of constant battles. The former was constantly attacked by barbarians of Germanic and Sarmatian origin, and at the end of the Hun Empire. The latter, in turn, is an area of constant rivalry, first between the Roman and Parthia, and from the 20s of the 3rd century, Roman and Persia.
Almost every child learned the difficult art of saving on the example of piggy banks. They come in various shapes and sizes – the best-known one is the honest “piggy bank”.
Wars in the East waged by legions in the early 2nd century BCE led to the expansion of the area controlled by the Republic. Along with the new territories, Greek culture reached the Tiber with its splendour and new ideas in the field of philosophy and literature. There was an exodus of Greek specialists to Rome.
Currently, Mauritania is a country in northwest Africa, on the Atlantic Ocean. It has a land border with Senegal, Mali, Algeria and Western Sahara, and most of its territory is occupied by the Sahara Desert. In antiquity, however, Mauritania was called the land on the Mediterranean coast in what is now the northern part of Morocco and the northwest of Algeria.
The figure of Hannibal as Rome’s greatest enemy is fairly well known to that learning ancient history. Recognized as one of the greatest leaders of antiquity, the winner of Kann, Trebia or Lake Trasimeno, however, disappears from textbooks with the final defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War and defeat at Zama in 202 BCE Sometimes it seems as if Hannibal died in this battle because in school notebooks it is often the last event related to a Punic chief.
