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Curiosities of ancient Rome

The world of ancient Romans abounded in a number of amazing curiosities and information. The source of knowledge about the life of the Romans are mainly works left to us by ancient writers or discoveries. The Romans left behind a lot of strange information and facts that are sometimes hard to believe.

Roman tent in Scotland

Tents were in use already in ancient times. The ancient Romans used them mainly in marching camps (castra aestiva), which were pitched during military campaigns every day. We owe much information about their construction to the excavations at Vindolanda or Newstead, where leather materials have been preserved. Information about the use of tents by the Romans in war is also provided by reliefs from Trajan’s column in Rome, where selected moments of the Dacian War are depicted.

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11 March 2022
Roman exhibition at National Museum of Scotland

Roman tombstone of Flavia Augustina and her two sons

Roman tombstone of Flavia Augustina and her two sons, commissioned by her husband and father, Gaius Aeresius Saenus – a veteran of the legion VI Victrix. The woman died at the age of 39, and the children were barely two. The relief shows us two parents holding scrolls and in front of them their sons with balls.

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9 March 2022
Roman tombstone of Flavia Augustina and her two sons

Defeat of Jews resulted from disagreement

The defeat of the Jewish uprising (years 66-73 CE) was influenced by the internal division of the insurgents. Jerusalem was torn apart by an internal civil war between four factions: the Jerusalem zealots led by Eleazar Ben-Simon (2,400), the Galilean zealots under John of Gishala (6,000), the Sicarians led by Simon bar Giora (10,000) and the Idumeans led by Jacob ben Sosa and Simon ben Cathlas (5000 people).

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8 March 2022
Demolition of the Temple in Jerusalem by Francesco Hayez

Roman treasure from Wales

Roman coins found in one place in Llanvaches (Wales). The treasury consisted of 599 silver denarii, which were hidden in the middle of the 2nd century CE.

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8 March 2022
Roman treasure from Wales

Constantine the Great and his wife Fausta

Praised by Christian sources Emperor Constantine the Great in 326 CE ordered his wife – Fausta killed. The cause of her death has been interpreted differently; either as a result of the alleged organization of the coup and an attempt to seize power or as a consequence of the affair between the emperor’s wife and the emperor’s son – Crispus. Faust was strangled in an overheated bathhouse.

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7 March 2022
Image of Fausta

From “gas stations” on sea routes to large metropolises

The Phoenician colonization of the western Mediterranean, the controversial rivalry with the Greek settlers and the wealth of Phenicia are issues that are well known to people, even if only superficially interested in antiquity. But what was the process like? How has the community changed, creating new Semitic settlements on unknown lands?

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7 March 2022
Ancient port

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