History is fascinating. It is cruel, but it is fascinating. You may or you may not be a huge fan of history, but you simply have to admit that is amusing to see how people lived hundreds and thousands of years ago.
But don’t worry, we’re not going to bother you with exact years and there’s not going to be a test at the end. We’re going to focus on things that you probably didn’t learned at school. This material was probably under the “not going to be on the test” category and who has time for that when you’re a teenager.
The whole idea of men fighting till death is scary, but that’s not it. The blood of the fallen gladiators was considered as a cure, and it was even sold as a medicine for epileptics. But besides curing powers, Romans drank gladiator’s blood because they believed it contains the life force.
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With all that fighting and blood drinking you would’ve thought that the Romans died young. According to stats, the official average life expectancy in Ancient Rome was 25 years old. But that’s only because many unfortunate deaths during childbirth. If you could make it as a young kid, you could’ve had a long and lasting life as a Roman.
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Romans didn’t care that much about hours, and they didn’t have the technology either. The Roman hour in winter could be 44 minutes and 75 minutes in the summer. Romans relied on the sun when it comes to timekeeping.
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This isn’t much of a surprise when you think about it because we basically do the same thing. Of course we’re not limited to a color, but the more fortunate one have the privilege to wear branded clothes and that’s pretty much the same.
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The Roman ladies tried to make their eyebrows thicker by using goat hair and wood far. And now we do the complete opposite and that’s only because we know that a unibrow is definitely not a sign of intelligence.
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If you’re nervous and scary to go to the dentist, just look at the picture above. Yes, dentistry was in high demand and only rich people could afford to have healthy teeth.
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This is a bit strange because the best philosophers come from the past. Famous Roman philosophers such as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were disliked, because people believed they the study of the human inner is worthless.
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The military leader’s job was to navigate and guide the battle, and not to fight in it. Of course if the battle is lost the only honorable thing for a military leader to do is to kill himself or seek death by the enemy.
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The Romans were YOLO before YOLO was even a thing. Drinking poison sounds crazy, but they had their own reasons. One of them is to obtain immunity by drinking a poison called Mithridatism which is not lethal if it’s not consumed in high dosage.
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You’ve probably learned this in school, but the reason behind the persecution is not quite like we’ve seen in the movies. The Roman Empire was based on polytheism, they believed in numerous Gods. On the other hand, the Christians considered pagan gods as evil demons and that’s when the problems start.
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Well, we do have a similar “tradition” these days as well. But instead of at feasts, we do it at parties. The Romans always overate at feasts until they felt sick, and they even accepted vomiting as a tradition at some point.
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Dyed hair wasn’t always a thing, even for the Romans. It was considered as a sign of prostitute, until Messalina, Emperor Claudius’s third wife, transformed it into fashion, and since then the Romans started with dying hair.
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Electing a horse as a politician is not that bad considering how politics is done these days. But this wasn’t a tradition, it was just an attempt to mock the Roman senators.
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They didn’t use soap, but they had a bath every day. Instead of soap, the Romans used variety of oils and scrapers to remove the dirt from their bodies.
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Not using soap to wash yourself is one thing, but using urine to wash your clothes is a different story. They should’ve used oils as a replacement for detergent as well, but hey, they thought drinking blood will make you more powerful.
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