Welcome to a whirlwind tour of 10 surprising facts that reveal how magic and superstition wove themselves into the very fabric of ancient Roman society. From oddball medical remedies to eerie rituals involving wolves and shields, we’ll unpack the uncanny beliefs that even the most educated Romans couldn’t resist.
10 Surprising Facts Overview
1 Magic, Superstition, And Medicine
Roman physicians often blended practical healing with outright sorcery. Pliny the Elder catalogued a slew of remedies that sound more like wizardry than modern medicine. Below are a few of his most eyebrow‑raising prescriptions – proceed with caution, and never try these at home without a licensed healer.
One startling cure for epilepsy involved the consumption of freshly drawn human blood. The logic was that the living blood would draw out the patient’s own errant spirit, restoring balance.
“It is an appalling sight to see wild animals drink the blood of gladiators in the arena, and yet those who suffer from epilepsy think it is the most effective cure for their disease, to absorb a person’s warm blood while he is still breathing and to draw out his actual living soul.” (Natural History, 28.4)
For bruises and strains, Pliny recommended a rather unappealing poultice: dried wild boar dung collected in spring. This earthy mixture was said to soothe injuries inflicted by chariots or other heavy machinery.
“Strains and bruises are treated with wild boar’s dung gathered in spring and dried. This treatment is used for those who have been dragged by a chariot or mangled by its wheels or bruised in any way. Fresh dung also may be smeared on.” (Natural History, 28.237)
If one desired to either boost or curb sexual vigor, the Romans turned to a cocktail of bizarre ingredients. Among the most infamous was a concoction of a lizard‑drowned man’s urine, believed to dampen desire, while certain animal organs and eggs functioned as potent aphrodisiacs.
“A man’s urine in which a lizard has been drowned is an antaphrodisiac potion; so also are snails and pigeons’ droppings drunk with olive oil and wine. The right section of a vulture’s lung worn as an amulet in a crane’s skin is a powerful aphrodisiac, as is consuming the yolk of five dove eggs mixed with a denarius of pig fat and honey, sparrows or their eggs, or wearing as an amulet a rooster’s right testicle wrapped in ram’s skin.” (30.141)
2 Magic, Superstition, And Pregnancy
Childbirth in ancient Rome was a perilous affair, with maternal mortality outpacing even the grim toll of battlefield deaths. The scarcity of healthy women for marriage amplified anxiety, prompting a flurry of supernatural advice for expectant mothers.
Pliny recounts a macabre ritual: a projectile that had taken three lives—human, boar, and bear—was hurled over a house roof sheltering a pregnant woman. The spell allegedly forced an immediate delivery, regardless of how difficult the labor might have been.
“[ . . . ] if someone takes a stone or some other missile that has slain three living creatures (a human being, a wild boar, and a bear) at three blows, and throws it over the roof of a house in which there is a pregnant woman, she will immediately give birth, however difficult her labor may be.” (Natural History 28.33)
Another odd prescription promised children with jet‑black eyes—if the mother consumed a shrew during her pregnancy. The belief linked the animal’s dark hue to the newborn’s eye color.
“If one wishes a child to be born with black eyes, the mother should eat a shrew during the pregnancy.” (Natural History 30.134)
3 Shapeshifters
Stories of humans turning into beasts circulated widely among Romans, predating the modern werewolf myth by centuries. One vivid account describes a companion who, after relieving himself near ancient tombs, transformed into a wolf before the narrator’s very eyes.
“We came to the tombs, and my friend went to do his business among the gravestones, while I moved off singing and counting the stars. Then, when I looked back at my companion, he had taken off all his clothes and laid them at the roadside. My heart was in my mouth; I stood there practically dead. He pissed in a circle around his clothes, and suddenly turned into a wolf. Don’t think I am joking: nothing could induce me to tell lies about this. [ . . . ] He began to howl and ran off into the woods. [ . . . ] then I went to pick up his clothes, but they had all turned to stone.” (Petronius Satyricon 62)
Given the prevalence of such tales, it’s plausible that at least some Romans genuinely believed in the possibility of shapeshifting, weaving these legends into everyday superstition.
4 Witchcraft
Long before the medieval witch hunts, the Romans were already familiar with the darker arts. A notorious passage from Horace’s Epodes depicts a coven of witches concocting a love potion, complete with gruesome rituals designed to harvest a boy’s liver.
According to Horace, these witches abducted a noble youth, buried him up to his chin, and placed tantalizing food just out of reach. Their aim was to starve him, causing his liver to swell—a prized ingredient for their amorous brew.
Although this episode is literary fiction, it underscores the presence of witchcraft in Roman imagination and the lengths to which imagined sorcerers would go to manipulate love.
5 Interpretation Of Dreams
Dream‑reading was a staple of Roman divination, with scholars compiling exhaustive manuals to decode nightly visions. Artemidorus of Daldis authored a five‑book treatise titled The Interpretation of Dreams, offering startlingly specific analyses.
He claimed that dreaming of turnips, rutabagas, or pumpkins foretold disappointed hopes, likening the massive yet nutritionally poor vegetables to futile surgeries and wounds inflicted by iron tools on the sick or travelers.
“Dreaming about turnips, rutabagas, and pumpkins presages disappointed hopes, since they are massive [vegetables] but lack nutritional value. They signify surgery and wounding with iron implements for sick people and travelers, respectively, since these vegetables are cut into slices.” (1.67)
Equally bizarre, Artemidorus warned that those who dreamed of devouring books were headed for sudden death, while educators could expect a boost in their profession.
“Dreaming that one is eating books foretells advantage to teachers, lecturers, and anyone who earns his livelihood from books, but for everyone else it means sudden death.” (2.45)
6 Reading Animal Entrails
Haruspicy, the art of divining future events by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals, was a cornerstone of Roman religious practice. Practitioners, known as haruspices, claimed that the gods whispered their will through the organs of goats, sheep, and other beasts.
Cicero records that even the Carthaginian commander Hannibal, before his famed campaigns against Rome, consulted a haruspex for strategic counsel, interpreting the signs hidden within animal viscera.
“Cicero (On Divination: 2.52) claims that Hannibal, the renowned Carthaginian commander who defied Rome in the Second Punic War, was an expert in this technique. While he was still a military advisor (before he became commander), he used to give advice to his superiors based on the messages he could read on the organs of sacrificed animals.”
7 Astrology
Stargazing wasn’t just a pastime; it was a serious predictive tool for many Romans, including emperors like Tiberius, Domitian, and Hadrian, who consulted astrologers for personal and political guidance.
One dramatic anecdote tells of Tiberius ordering the execution of a man after the emperor dreamed of handing money to him, believing the dream was a malicious enchantment.
“Cassius Dio (Roman History 57.15) claims that Tiberius had a man executed after he had a dream in which he was giving money to that same man. Tiberius believed that he had that dream under the influence of some sort of enchantment.”
Yet skepticism persisted. Cicero lamented the frequent falsity of astrological forecasts, while Tacitus described astrologers as both treacherous to the powerful and unreliable to the hopeful.
“I am amazed that anyone could continue to put their trust in such people, when the falseness of their predictions is every day made clear by what actually happens.” (Cicero, On Divination: 2.99)
“Astrologers are treacherous to the powerful and unreliable to the merely hopeful; they will always be banned from our state, and yet always retained.” (Histories 1.22)
8 The Shield Of Mars
According to Roman myth, the god Jupiter presented the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, with Mars’s own shield—known as the Ancile. This relic was believed to safeguard the entire Roman state: any damage to the shield would spell disaster for the nation.
To protect the sacred object, the nymph Egeria advised Numa to commission eleven identical copies, confusing any would‑be thieves. The genuine shield was then entrusted to the Salii, a college of priests tasked with its vigilant guardianship.
9 The King Of The Wood
At the sacred grove of Diana near Lake Nemi, the priesthood was governed by a brutal rule: the office of Rex Nemorensis was held by a fugitive slave who claimed it by killing the current priest. This murderous succession meant the incumbent lived in perpetual vigilance, sword in hand, awaiting a challenger.
The ritual is poetically captured by T. Macaulay:
“From the still glassy lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricia’s trees—
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain”
Sir James George Frazer later used this violent priesthood as the cornerstone for his monumental study, The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, illustrating how such rites echo across cultures.
10 Imaginary Beasts
Roman naturalists loved to catalogue exotic and fantastical creatures. Pliny the Elder described a half‑human, half‑horse being called the hippocentaur, which he claimed had been shipped from Egypt to Emperor Claudius, preserved in honey.
Aelian added to the menagerie with tales of one‑horned donkeys and horses from India, whose horns allegedly neutralised poison when used as drinking vessels.
He also recounted the amphisbaena, a serpent boasting a head at each end. Its unique anatomy supposedly allowed it to reverse direction by simply swapping which head led.
“When it is going forward, it uses one head as a tail, the other as a head, and when it is going backward, it uses its heads in the opposite manner.” (Aelian, On Animals 9.23)