Curiosities of ancient Rome (Unknown facts)

In ancient Greece and Rome, the wine was diluted with water. People who liked the unreported drink were considered crude, and drinking in this way was defined as “in Scythian fashion”.

After the destruction of Roman army in the battle of Lake Trasimeno in 217 BCE, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (“the delayer”) was entrusted with the dictator’s dignity to save the Republic’s in a crisis situation. Fabius decided to avoid an open confrontation with the army of Hannibal, leading the war against the Carthaginians. His plan was to follow the legions behind Hannibal’s army at such a distance that there was no short circuit, and at the same time not lose sight of the rival.

Emporium in antiquity was a municipal square where goods imported by sea were stored. In Rome, the emporium, founded in 192 BCE, was located on the banks of the Tiber River at the foot of the Aventine Hill.

Plutarch states that the cooks of queen Cleopatra VII had to have different sets of dishes always prepared in case her lover Mark Antony made a visit. Plutarch claims that the source of the rumor was a friend of his grandfather, who was allowed to visit the cuisine of the queen in the palace in Alexandria.

After murdering his brother Geta, Caracalla ordered removing his name from public life. Originally, 174 records of his name survived, however, 37 have survived to our times. Many of the inscriptions are found on the water pipes, which were probably located underground before the edict of Caracalla.

Apparently, Nero loved to perform as famous hero Hercules. His opponent was to be a lion, who was prepared and trained in such a way that the naked ruler could kill him with one blow of a club or by suffocation.

After the tragic defeat of the Romans at Cannae in 216 BCE Rome was so deprived of recruits that there were even enlisted slaves to the army. They were called voluntarii or volones.

Ancile was the oval shield of the same the god Mars, which Jupiter offered to the king Numa Pompilius, the second in the history ruler of Rome. According to the messages, the capital city was to exist for as long as ancile was safe. On the advice of the nymph Egeria, Numa had eleven identical shields to prevent theft.

Elian Claudius, a Roman writer and rhetoric teacher who lived in the times of Septimius Severus, noticed that if someone is wearing a shoe, the animal behaves exactly the same. Hunters wanting to catch an animal used a trick.

Cats in ancient Egypt were sacred. In the middle of the first century BCE Diodorus Siculus witnessed how the Egyptian crowd lynched a member of the Roman embassy who accidentally killed a cat. People did not respond even to the request of Pharaoh Ptolemy XII.