Curiosities of ancient Rome (Unknown facts)

Ancient Romans as farming people wars only fought in the summer between the times of sowing and harvest, and before winter, when military maneuvers were more difficult. For the first time in the winter, Rome led the war at the beginning of the fourth century BCE, when the Romans began to siege the Etruscan city of Veii.

When the plague appeared in any ancient city, so many people died that government gave up individual burials for the mass burying of the dead. An example of such a burial is a mass grave found in Rome in 1876 at a depth of 40 meters from the time of the early empire.

From the category of alternative methods of treatment. Pliny the Elder states that wounds and bruises are best treated with dried dung of wild boar taken in spring. Such a method is recommended, for example, in the case of wounds, after the coachman was pulled behind a chariot or some part of the body was crushed by the wheel.

In 249 BCE, the great-great-grandson of the famous Appius Claudius (as a censor changed Latin spelling and built in Rome one of the first aqueducts), consul Appius Claudius Pulcher during the First Punic War attacked the Carthaginian fleet at Drepanum (today’s Trapani) in Sicily.

In 206 BCE African Scipio created a war veterans colony in Spain, the first located outside the Apennine Peninsula. The colony named Italica was to promote Roman culture to the neighboring Iberian tribes, in the hope that they will adopt Roman way of life.

Claudius Drusus, son of emperor Claudius (10 BCE – 54 CE) and Plautia Urgulanillia, suffocated when he tossed a pear for fun and this one fell his open mouth.

During the II war with the Mithridates (73-63 BCE), the Romans, headed by Lucullus to Pontus near the Black Sea coast and besieged the Pontic city of Themyscira¹. According to Appian from Alexandria there was an unexpected defense strategy from the inhabitants.

Islamic fundamentalists in Syria are responsible for the destruction of many ancient monuments, including Byzantine mosaics and Greco-Roman statues. They do so because showing human beings in art is inconsistent with their confession. It is believed that destroying monuments in Syria is a greater disaster for cultural heritage than blowing up a giant statue of Buddha in Bamian (Afghanistan) in 2001. Then, also, religion was the motif.

In the teritory, which was once under the rule of the Roman Empire, scientists find many interesting objects. Among them are whistles. But the question is whether the whistles, apart from everyday life, were also used in the Roman army, including during warfare?

When, during the conquest of Algeria in 1850, the French general Saint-Arnaud was crossing with his army the Atlas Mountains, through the Kang Pass, he thought he was the first European to take this path.