What do we know about life in Ancient Rome?
Ancient Rome is covered with glory and legends … The empire that stood for so long under the pressure of the sands of time. Whose legacy is so great. Whose roads and buildings amaze to this day. Dramatic novels and heroic films are written about the life of the ancient Romans. But there is something else - what actually happened … In reality. Some facts of this are outlined below.
In ancient Rome, if a patient died during an operation, the doctor's hands were cut off.
In Rome during the Republican period, a brother had the legal right to punish his sister for disobedience by having sex with her.
In ancient Rome, a group of slaves belonging to one person was called … a surname.
Among the first fifteen Roman emperors, Claudius alone had no love affairs with men. This was considered unusual behavior and was ridiculed by poets and writers, who said: loving only women, Claudius himself became effeminate.
In the Roman army, soldiers lived in tents for 10 people. At the head of each tent was a senior, who was called … the dean.
In the ancient world, as in the Middle Ages, there was no toilet paper. The Romans used a stick with a cloth at the end, which was dipped into a bucket of water.
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In Rome, wealthy citizens lived in houses - mansions. The guests knocked on the door of the house with a knocker, a door ring. On the threshold of the house there was a mosaic inscription "salve" ("welcome"). Some houses, instead of dogs, were guarded by slaves tied to a ring in the wall.
In ancient Rome, noble gentlemen used curly-haired boys as napkins at feasts. Or rather, of course, they used only their hair, on which they wiped their hands. For boys, it was considered incredible luck to get into the service of a high-ranking Roman as such a "dining boy".
Some women in Rome drank turpentine (despite the risk of fatal poisoning), as it gave their urine the scent of roses.
The tradition of the wedding kiss came to us from the Roman Empire, where the newlyweds kissed at the end of the wedding, only then the kiss had a different meaning - it meant a kind of seal under the oral marriage agreement. So the marriage deal was valid.
The popular expression "return to native Penates", meaning a return to your home, to your home, it is more correct to pronounce it differently: "to return to your native Penates."
The fact is that the Penates are the Roman guardian gods of the hearth, and each family usually had images of two Penates next to the hearth.
The wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, Messalina, was so lustful and depraved that she amazed her contemporaries with many accustomed to it. According to the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, she not only kept a brothel in Rome, but she herself worked as a prostitute herself, personally serving clients. She even put up a competition with another famous prostitute and won it, serving 50 versus 25 clients.
The month of August, previously called Sextillis (the sixth), was renamed in honor of the Roman emperor Augustus. January was named after the Roman god Janus, who had two faces: one looking backward - in the past year, and the other looking forward - into the future. The name of the month of April comes from the Latin word "aperire", which means to open, possibly due to the fact that flower buds open in this month.
In ancient Rome, prostitution was not only not illegal, but was considered an ordinary profession. The priestesses of love were not covered with shame and contempt, so they did not need to hide their status. They walked freely around the city, offering their services, and to make them easier to distinguish from the crowd, prostitutes wore high-heeled shoes. No one else wore heels so as not to mislead those who want to buy sex.
In ancient Rome, there were special bronze coins to pay for the services of prostitutes - spintria. They depicted erotic scenes - as a rule, people in various poses at the time of sexual intercourse.