To most, prison is a living hell. But in many cases, the conditions were much worse in the distant past. The ancient Romans were known for their brutality on the battlefield, and their treatment of prisoners was no different. Fortunately, for the majority of those imprisoned, confinement was often brief because even the Romans thought life imprisonment was inhumane.
To most, prison is a living hell. But in many cases, the conditions were much worse in the distant past. The ancient Romans were known for their brutality on the battlefield, and their treatment of prisoners was no different. Fortunately, for the majority of those imprisoned, confinement was often brief because even the Romans thought life imprisonment was inhumane...
If you were #blessed enough to not be a slave there's a good chance that you were dirt poor. Because slaves were used to perform most manual labor, …
The Ancient Romans are famous for a number of things: their vast imperial conquests, their art and architecture, and a huge body of literature by writers such as Vergil, Cicero, Ovid, and Horace. They also have a reputation in modern times for their excesses in feasting and drinking. The Roman elite are not entirely unfairly cast as gluttonous, hedonistic debauchees who would drink and eat rich foods until they threw up and then eat some more.
For almost 1,500 years, the Roman Empire romped all over the political and military landscape of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. While the last thousand years of its existence may have been shouldered by the so-called Eastern Roman Empire (better known as the Byzantine Empire), Rome arguably peaked during the first few hundred years of the first millennium: post-Republic, pre-decline.
You might think we know a lot about ancient Rome and the Roman way of life, but there's plenty we don't know. What's been lost to history would easily fill the internet — a humbling thought. Sometimes we stumble across archaeological oddities or mysterious symbols that we just can't explain. Here are some unsolved mysteries of the ancient Romans.
