Curiosities of ancient Rome (Unknown facts)

In Rome, there were a phenomenon of throwing wild animals to be eaten (damnatio ad bestias) convicts. This form of execution was used to entertain the crowd.

In 52 CE on Lake Fucine at the behest of Emperor Claudius, there were naumachiae. At the famous cry of the convicts about to take part in the naval battle: Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you, Claudius replied sarcastically: Or not (“Aut non”).

Children up to the age of fourteen wore a medallion called a “bulla” around their necks. The medallions were designed to protect children from evil spirits and forces.

The end of the Greek and Macedonian phalanxes brought clashes with Roman legions fighting in a more flexible manipular formation. The defeats of the Hellenistic armies at Cynoscephalae (197 BCE), Magnesia (190 BCE) and Pydna (168 BCE) ended the centuries-old reign of the phalanx on the fields of an ancient battle.

The inhabitants of ancient Rome possessed a goddess of sewers, a toilet god and a god of excrement.

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).

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.

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?

Roman Senate did not allow slaves to wear clothes that could distinguish them from ordinary citizens. Different costumes could make the enslaved aware of how numerous they are and lead to open rebellion.

In ancient Rome, slave revolts were so feared that a law was introduced whereby if a slave kills his master, he will be punished with no death penalty. only he, but also all the slaves residing in the house of the deceased owner.