If you have found a spelling error, please, notify us by selecting that text and pressing Ctrl+Enter.
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.
In 46 BCE Julius Caesar defeated the still opposing optimates (including Cato the Younger) under Thapsus. To celebrate the victory in Africa, Caesar’s supporters decided to organize games (ludi), during which mime competitions were to be held.
Greco-Roman texts provide a great deal of information about the ancients’ views on religious matters, many of which refer to very mundane matters. Often the superstitions of ordinary people from two thousand years ago are present and very popular superstitions. How many people have not stood up at least once with the famous “left leg”? Or vice versa, he ascribed his happiness to his right foot, as did the Germans and the English in their proverbs (“Auf rechten Füssen ist gut stehen” tudzież “Let’s get off on the right foot this year”)?
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.
Roman mosaic depicting a sea scene from a female dressing room (apodyterium) in the thermal baths at Herculaneum. The scene shows the sea god Triton, holding the wheel and a fish, surrounded by dolphins, an octopus and possibly Cupid.
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.
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).
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.
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.
