Curiosities of ancient Rome (Artifact)

Roman gold ring with engraved parrot in green chalcedony. Scientists believe that the parrot belongs to the species rose-ringed parakeet – a bird that occurs, among others in India and which Alexander the Great had a chance to see. The object is dated to the 1st century CE.

Preserved plaster casts of the bodies of Pompeii inhabitants. To this day, we can admire the remains of Pompeii inhabitants buried alive. And this is due to the brilliant method of Giuseppe Fiorelli.

Golden ring of the Roman officer Legio V Macedonica – dated at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd century CE.

In most studies, the equipment of Roman legionary is discussed in terms of armament, and less attention is paid to items that facilitated everyday life in camps and forts or those that were useful in the art of survival. An extremely important element of the professional equipment of a Roman legionary was the so-called dolabra.

A knife is one of the oldest tools known to man. The invention of the Palaeolithic era helped to survive and later facilitated the life of the human species in conditions of settled existence. What about folding knives? Folders and pocket knives are used today, inter alia, in gardening, rescue, military, and tourism… The exchange could be long.

In 2008, David Barker found a bronze knife handle with erotic elements. The handle shows two men and a woman having a sexual act. This strange Roman specimen was found in Britain in Lincolnshire.

Fragment of a wooden Roman barrel found in Oberaden in western Germany, on the site of a former legionary camp. The object is dated to the 1st century CE. Wine was transported in the barrel, which was intended for the soldiers in the camp. Scientists, apart from traces of wine, found traces of pepper that came from distant India.

Stone axe blade from antiquity (the so-called Keraunia or “thunder stone”). The object is dated to the 2nd-3rd century CE.

Cup from Emona. A glass cup was discovered in one of the graves in a cemetery near the Roman castrum (now Ljubljana, Slovenia). It was made of glass in the millefiori technique (an Italian term meaning a thousand flowers). It is a method of obtaining multi-coloured glass, which consists in combining glass paste (in the form of tubes) into decorative patterns, cutting it into slices and then melting it into the surface of the vessel.

Roman fresco on which (probably) the husband and wife sit side by side in the banquet hall (triclinium). The man is shown as a naked, muscular hero, and the woman as an exemplary housewife, pondering. This is a typical depiction of people in antiquity. The object is dated to the 1st century BCE; discovered in the villa of P. Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale (Italia). The artifact is on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.