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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 the ancient Greco-Roman world, fulling machines were involved in both the production and washing of fabrics. During the excavations at Pompeii destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE several great fulling workshops were discovered, and the best-preserved and located at the so-called Abundance Street belonged to a certain Stefanus.
The third wife of Emperor Claudius, Valeria Messalina, was a nymphomaniac. According to Roman historians, she once decided to compete with a professional prostitute. The women were to confirm who would be able to hold more lovers in one night. It is said that Messalina, who made love with 150 men, was to win.
The Romans invented the calendar, which we most use to this day. The so-called Julian Calendar is a solar calendar developed at the request of Julius Caesar by the Greek astronomer Sosygenes and implemented in 709 AUC (45 BCE) as the calendar of the Roman state.
The colour purple was reserved only for the emperor and senators, and any flaunting it was a betrayal. This dye was obtained from spike venom (Murex).
The capital of the Roman Empire in 14 CE had over 750,000 inhabitants, which constituted a tenth of the entire population of Italy. The population of Rome grew to over a million by the end of the 2nd century CE. This number was achieved by western cities only in the 19th century.
The Roman teaching system was largely based on the education of the Greeks. Hence, the teachers of Roman children were most often Greek slaves or freedmen. An example of a Greek who achieved much in Roman education was Livius Andronicus (c. 284 – c. 204 BCE). In 272 BCE in Tarentum, he was taken prisoner and, along with other prisoners of war, was brought to Rome.
The letter Y was not originally in Romans. Y was added to the Latin alphabet around the 1st century BCE to render Greek words better.
Romans were very superstitious. They believed in many things that they could not logically explain. For example, the old superstition was known – kissing a female mule in the nostrils cured hiccups and a runny nose. It was also believed that some people were capable of hurting others just by looking at them. Such superstition was called the “evil eye”.
Ancient Romans used a spider’s web to stop bleeding, incl. for cracked skulls and cuts after shaving. Although the Romans did not know much about viral and bacterial infections, by trial and error they concluded that the spider’s web is very beneficial for wound healing.
