Curiosities of ancient Rome (Unknown facts)

When in 72 BCE the insurgent army of Spartacus’ slaves marched north through Italy, towards the Alps, the insurgent forces split up. Gauls and Germans, under the command of a certain Crixus, went ahead to plunder Apulia (eastern, central Italy) freely. However, Crixus’ army was defeated by the Roman army and he himself was killed; 20,000 insurgents were to die. It was the first major victory of the Romans in the fight against the slaves of Spartacus.

Name “Eternal City” (Urbs aeterna) was finally given to Rome by Emperor Hadrian, but he had already used it before 1st-century writer Tibullus in “Elegies”. Even Ovid and Livy mentioned the eternity of Rome.

Comparison of the area of ​​the Roman Empire and the North American continent. The map shows the Roman Empire around 117 CE, when the lands under Roman rule stretched from Egypt to Britain.

In ancient Rome, trees were planted along the roads, mainly pines and cypresses. Thus, travellers and merchants could stop and rest in the shade of the sun.

According to Ulpian, the great Roman jurist, the mythical gorgons – dangerous sisters with a terrifying appearance, who were depicted as winged figures with claws, sharp fangs and hair in the form of poisonous snakes – inhabited Africa.

Although gladiator fights were officially banned by Constantine the Great in the year 325 CE they were held until 404 CE. That year, on January 1, the Western Roman Emperor Honorius finally and irrevocably abolished these bloody games.

Pliny the Younger began his clerk career under Emperor Domitian, but withdrew from public life, discouraged by the universal terror. He returned to politics under Emperor Trajan, who trusted him and entrusted him with the governorship of the province of Bithynia and Pontus in 109 CE. At that time, he proposed to the ruler an extremely ambitious and interesting project – the construction of a navigable canal for Nicomedia, which would bypass the Bosphorus. It was also planned to build a series of aqueducts.

Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian from the 1st century BCE in his work Geography mentions the people of Cantabria with whom Rome was at war in the years 29-19 BCE They were finally defeated only in 19 BCE by the troops of Marcus Agrippa. The war was the last phase of the Roman conquest of Spain.