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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 famous “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”1 – a manuscript from the turn of the 1st century CE, which served merchants navigating the waters between East Africa and India – we can find a place called “Rhapta”, which is described as “the last marketplace of Azania” and was located two days south of the so-called Menouthias Islands (it is suspected that it could have been Zanzibar, Mafia or Pemba).
Life in the army has always been hard and required soldiers to have strong will, perseverance and physical strength. Long and demanding marches caused the soldiers to try to diversify time in various ways, including singing. Did Roman legionaries do the same?
If there were no medieval monks and copyists, many important ancient works would not have survived to our times. Copyist’s work efficiency was 3-6 cards in quarto per day – in Quarto in letterpress it is a double-folded sheet of paper that consists of four cards and eight pages. It took a year to rewrite, for example, the “Bible”. A copyist could rewrite 40 works in his lifetime.
Appian of Alexandria (c. 95 – c. 180 CE), a Greek historian, devoted a large fragment of his “Roman history” work comparing Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. In the ancient world, many generals wanted to gain achievements similar to the young Macedonian king. The same was with Caesar.
When Octavian Augustus heard that among the young children that Herod the Great had ordered to murder in Syria was Herod’s son, he said (having in mind Jewish custom of abstaining from pork)
Basil was already known in ancient Greece and Rome. It was known as ocimum (Latin) or basilikos (in Greek “a herb worth a king”). It is mentioned i.e. by Pliny the Elder, who distinguishes one type of this herb. He also notes that basil may have white, yellow or purple flowers.
Roman citizen could have sex with another man, taking into consideration that he was not a passive partner. Such a citizen in no way lost his masculinity or social status. Most often, a passive person was chosen as a slave, male prostitute or a person from the artistic world who had nothing to lose.
