Today, we think of Rome as an empire. But in reality, Rome came to dominate the ancient world as a republic then slowly went into decline after its transition to an imperial dictatorship. The Roman Republic was an extraordinary state: bustling, powerful, and seemingly capable of anything. Here are the men who killed it.

10Marius

Gaius Marius is almost forgotten today, but he arguably did more than anyone to ensure the overthrow of the Republic. He was one of ancient Rome’s greatest generals, famous for his victory over nomadic German tribes that threatened Italy.

But to defeat the Germans, Marius had to change Roman society forever. Rome’s legionaries were traditionally small landowners, who served for a short term before returning to their farms. However, Rome’s overseas conquests required legionaries to be away from their farms for long periods, plunging many into poverty. Wealthy aristocrats bought up small estates and merged them into huge plantations.

This meant that Rome struggled to find enough soldiers. Marius’s solution was to allow the urban unemployed to join up. This turned the legions into a full-time profession, with paid solders serving for up to 25 years. The manpower allowed Marius to defeat the Germans, but it also created a dangerous new political force.

9Sulla

Marius may not have realized the implications of his reforms, but one of his subordinates did. Lucius Cornelius Sulla distinguished himself under Marius and then took overall command against an Italian revolt. In 88 BC, he was chosen to lead the war against Mithridates of Pontus. However, Marius jealously had the command transferred to himself.

The war against Mithridates promised to be extremely lucrative, and Sulla’s legions weren’t willing to miss out. A civil war broke out, which ended when Sulla’s professional soldiers took Rome after bloody fighting. Sulla was declared dictator, and the River Tiber ran red with the blood of his enemies.

In 79 BC, he announced he was satisfied with his reforms and retired, restoring democracy to Rome. It didn’t matter—-it was now clear that the legions were more loyal to their generals than Rome. The path to dictatorship had been established. The only question was who would take it next.

8Lucius Licinius Lucullus

In fact, while Sulla was still dictator, a threatening youth appeared at the gates of Rome. His name was Gnaeus Pompeius, but he was extraordinarily vain and relished the title of Pompey the Great. After inheriting an army from his father, he had defeated Marius’s loyalists in Sicily. Now, he demanded Rome celebrate him with a triumph.

Sulla refused, but Pompey informed the aging dictator that “more people worship the rising than setting sun” and declined to disband his legions. Unnerved, Sulla gave in and allowed the triumph.

Later, an aristocrat called Lucullus was chosen to lead a war against Mithridates. He was a good general, but too arrogant to recognize the new reality and bribe his troops with plunder. Soon, an officer named Clodius began stirring discontent, pointing out that Pompey richly rewarded his soldiers, while Lucullus gave his nothing. Before long, the legions mutinied and Lucullus had to be replaced with Pompey.

7Crassus

Pompey won great victories in the east, which were watched jealously by his rival Marcus Licinius Crassus. A key supporter of Sulla, Crassus helped execute the dictator’s enemies, then snapped up their property for a nominal fee. Some wealthy landowners were marked for death simply because Crassus wanted their land. With the profits, he got into moneylending and tax-farming. Before long, he was the richest man in Roman history.

But Crassus still lacked military glory and respect. Although he had ensured Sulla’s victory outside Rome, Pompey had stolen his thunder. Then, Crassus defeated Spartacus’s slave uprising, only to discover that Pompey had arrived at the last minute, massacred some stragglers, and taken credit for putting down the whole revolt.

Unsurprisingly, the two men became deadly enemies and conflict between them seemed inevitable. As Pompey prepared to return from the east, all Rome trembled.

6Julius Caesar

But everyone reckoned without a rising politician named Julius Caesar. Born to an ancient but impoverished noble family, Caesar had made a good name for himself and was elected to a string of offices. He was heavily in debt and had survived by becoming a close supporter of Crassus. But he was also on good terms with Pompey and remained popular with the people.

Caesar realized that, while Crassus and Pompey hated each other, their goals weren’t actually mutually exclusive. Pompey wanted land for his veterans, while Crassus wanted a glamorous military command and legislation that would help his business interests.

Arranging a meeting, Caesar pointed out that Crassus and Pompey risked destroying themselves in a clash. But by working together, Rome’s richest man and its greatest general would be unstoppable. The three men agreed to form an alliance, with Caesar as the political frontman in the senate. Together the three men would be known as the First Triumvirate.

5Cato

By this time, Rome was a sea of corruption, with bribery and intimidation commonplace. But one man stood above it all. Marcus Porcius Cato was a man of iron integrity who openly held his fellow Romans in contempt. This won him the admiration of the Romans, who agreed that they were a pretty contemptible bunch.

However, Cato’s refusal to compromise his beliefs would have disastrous consequences. It was Cato who prevented Pompey from giving his veterans land grants. Pompey then offered to marry Cato’s niece, but received a furious response: “Cato is not to be captured by way of the women’s apartments.” The arrogant general felt humiliated and couldn’t understand why the Romans supported Cato over him.

Caesar and Crassus also tried to reach out to Cato, but the senator wouldn’t consider any deal with those he considered immoral. This relentless opposition was a key reason why the three men felt the need to form the Triumvirate.

4Clodius

Although the Triumvirate dominated Rome, senators like Cato and the famed orator Cicero continued to resist. However, the Triumvirate soon got its way: Pompey’s veterans got land, Crassus took command of a glamorous war against the Parthians, and Caesar received his own war on Gaul.

Meanwhile, a dangerous new force arrived on the political scene. Clodius, the officer who incited mutiny against Lucullus, had returned to Rome, where he continued his rabble-rousing antics. He sensationally gave up his aristocratic status and declared himself a plebeian. He began to whip up the Roman poor into armed mobs, who rampaged through the streets attacking his enemies.

The Triumvirate soon formed an alliance with Clodius to get rid of their enemies. First, he used his position as Tribune of the Plebs to get Cato sent to govern Cyprus. Then, he sent his gang after Cicero. With his life under threat, the senator fled Rome as Clodius’s mob burned his house down and built a temple to liberty from the rubble.

3Milo

Clodius was triumphant and ensured his popularity among the lower classes by securing free wheat for the poor (Rome’s version of welfare). Meanwhile, with Cato and Cicero gone, the Triumvirate began to splinter. Crassus’s old dislike of Pompey (pictured) emerged and he encouraged Clodius to turn on the general.

To his horror, Pompey found himself jeered in the street. In the forum, one of Clodius’s gangsters pointedly dropped a dagger while walking toward the general. Pompey was forced to beat a hasty retreat, with Clodius’s laughter ringing in his ears.

But Pompey the Great was no pushover. He had a supporter named Milo elected tribune and brought in gladiators and hired toughs to back him up. Milo’s professional fighters clashed with Clodius’s larger gangs and soon the whole city was a war zone.

Things came to a head when Milo and Clodius accidentally ran into each other on the road and one of Milo’s gladiators killed Clodius with a javelin. Mad with grief, the mob placed Clodius’s body in the senate and burned the building down on top of him.

2Gaius Claudius Marcellus

In panic, the senate turned to Pompey, who put down the remains of Clodius’s gangs and restored order. Then, word arrived that Crassus had been killed fighting the Parthians. Things were looking up for Pompey, but there was a complication. Caesar had been unexpectedly successful in the north, conquering all of Gaul.

Suddenly, Caesar was a real rival to Pompey, enormously wealthy from his conquests and commanding the loyalty of a battle-hardened army. As the senate became increasingly nervous of Caesar’s power, they turned to Pompey as the one man who could stop him.

The issue came to a head in 50 BC, when the consul Gaius Marcellus recklessly ordered Caesar to give up his command and return to Rome. Without the protection of his army, Caesar was sure his enemies would have him prosecuted for exceeding his authority. In January 49 BC, he took his legions across the Rubicon river and marched on Rome.

1Pompey The Great

As insurance against Caesar, Marcellus had appointed Pompey commander of the legions in Italy. But Pompey realized that his green recruits were no match for Caesar’s veterans and decided to abandon Italy. This was a pragmatic move, but it handed the initiative to Caesar.

In fact, Pompey’s whole campaign was dogged by a curious timidity. Pompey was still a great general, and he consistently outmaneuvered Caesar, but he also seemed intimidated by the younger man’s bold moves. First, he lured Caesar into modern Albania, but he failed to attack before Caesar’s reinforcements arrived. An attempt to starve the enemy into submission failed. Finally, he defeated Caesar at Dyrrhachium but failed to press the advantage.

Finally, Caesar’s innovative tactics won a crushing victory at Pharsalus. Pompey fled to Egypt, where the Pharaoh had him murdered. Although Caesar himself would later be murdered by his opponents, it didn’t matter. The Republic was dead, and his heir Octavian would become the Emperor Augustus.

Working with the limited scientific knowledge they had, the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations came up with a number of theories about the human body. While some were correct, most were not. As a matter of fact, some doctors, philosophers, and thinkers got it hilariously wrong.

10 Food Was Changed Into Blood By The Liver
Originator: Galen

Perhaps the greatest Roman (though, he was of Greek ethnicity) doctor ever, Galen published a vast number of writings on the human body and proposed many correct theories. One of the incorrect ones that he believed was that food was digested by the stomach and taken to the liver, where it was turned into blood. The biggest reason for many of Galen’s errors was that he’d never dissected a human body; in his time, it was outlawed by the Roman Empire. His theories were widely followed—practically blindly—until the 16th century, when Flemish doctor Andreas Vesalius began to question Galen’s findings.

9 Lambs Grew From Trees
Originator: Megasthenes

Megasthenes was a Greek explorer who returned from a trip he took to India and wrote a book about his travels. He referred to cotton plants that he saw as “trees on which grew wool,” which led to the misconception that lambs grew on trees. From that incorrect assumption, a number of other ancient thinkers, including Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder, mentioned “wool-bearing trees” in their writings, perpetuating the myth. As late as the 18th or 19th centuries, this was still a commonly believed theory, with books published on the subject and a number of expeditions undertaken in search of the mythical plant.

8 Light Came From The Eye
Originator: Plato

Plato, one of the greatest Greek philosophers, contributed greatly to medical knowledge—erroneously in a number of cases. Perhaps his worst error was the idea that “a stream of light or fire” emanated from the eye, rebounded off of an object, and combined with sunlight, allowing it to be seen by the eye. An object’s color was said to be “flame particles” that were let off its body. This was a commonly held notion until the 11th century, when Persian scientist Ibn al-Haytham developed his theory that the eye was merely an optical instrument in his writing The Book of Optics.

7 Veins Carried Blood, Arteries Carried Air
Originator: Praxagoras

An ancient Greek physician whose writings have been lost to humanity, Praxagoras is perhaps best known for being the first to realize that veins and arteries are different. However, he believed that air traveled through the arteries (probably due to the fact that blood tends to leave the arteries upon death and accumulates in the veins). Praxagoras explained away bleeding by saying the arteries attracted blood from the neighboring tissue when exposed to air. This theory was widely believed for hundreds of years.

6 Sleep Occurs When Blood Flows Away From The Surface
Originator: Alcmaeon

Another ancient Greek philosopher and doctor, Alcmaeon of Croton was the holder of a number of medical firsts, including the idea that the brain was the seat of understanding, rather than the heart. He also theorized that sensory organs are attached to the brain. However, he wasn’t always correct. He believed that sleep came to humans when their blood flowed from the surface of their bodies to the blood vessels farther in. Alcmaeon also believed that death occurred if all of the blood went deep into the body.

5 The Brain Was Just A Cooling Device
Originator: Aristotle

Aristotle believed the heart was the center of knowledge and the source of the sensations in the human body, rather than the brain, and he had an interesting theory about the brain. He felt that the brain was merely a cooling organ for the heart and an area for “spirit” to pool. Even though earlier Greeks, including Alcmaeon and Plato, had put forth a neuro-centric model of the human body, Aristotle ridiculed them for their “fallacious” views. In addition, he also thought women’s brains were smaller than men’s, another of his errors that persisted for a number of years.

4 Hemorrhoids Could Be Cured In Weird Ways
Originator: Pliny The Elder

Pliny the Elder was one of the greatest Roman authors and published Naturalis Historia, one of the earliest examples of an encyclopedia. Apparently, hemorrhoids were quite the problem for the ancient Romans, because there were a number of cures. Using an onion as a suppository was supposed to help, and eating garlic with wine but vomiting it back up was said to be beneficial to hemorrhoid sufferers as well. Using a fresh root of rosemary and rubbing it on the anus was also very effective (it also helped if you had a prolapsed rectum). Perhaps the strangest cure was a cream made from the lard of a pig and the rust of a chariot’s wheels.

3 Light Traveled Through The Ether
Originator: Aristotle

While Aristotle influenced civilization for thousands of years, it doesn’t give him a pass on some of his wilder theories. Chief among them was his idea that the entire universe was filled with an unknown substance called “the ether.” Aristotle proposed the theory because he believed light would be unable to move through an empty universe. Like many of his ideas, this one persisted, and the best and brightest of the scientific community failed to contradict it. It was widely believed until 1910, when Albert Einstein proved light didn’t need the ether with his theory of special relativity.

2 The Testicles Determined A Person’s Voice
Originator: Aristotle

Aristotle certainly had his fair share of incorrect theories. Not the least of these was that the testicles were a key factor in determining a person’s vocal pitch. Aristotle’s reasoning was that a boy’s voice tended to deepen during puberty, when his testicles dropped (a lot of this theory was dependent on his observations in animals as well). In addition, he noticed that men who were castrated before puberty maintained their “ladylike” voice, as well as a number of other traits. Obviously, we now know the larynx and the mucus membrane within it control the voice’s pitch.

1 The Womb Roamed Around A Woman’s Body
Originator: Hippocrates

Recognized as the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates had a number of incorrect theories, most notably his theory of humorism, which stated that the human body was made up of four elements that caused illnesses when out of balance. However, his craziest theory was the idea of a “wandering womb.” Hippocrates believed that a woman’s body craved warmth and moisture, so they needed to get laid often. If not, their womb would get bored and start to migrate around their body. In addition, an excess of “male activities,” could also cause the womb to wander. Depending on where it finally attached itself, various disorders could result, including hysteria. This was still a widely held theory until the Middle Ages.

Roman families would be both recognizable and unrecognizable today. Their strict social classes and lawful human rights violations will make any rational person glad to be alive in the 21st century. On the other hand, their homelier moments are eternal. Like today, children played similar games, the whole family coddled pets, and they enjoyed the finer things in life.

10Marriage Was A Mere Agreement

Girls married during their early teens while men tied the knot in their mid-twenties. Roman marriages were quick and easy and most didn’t flower from romance but from two agreements. The first would be between the couple’s families, who eyeballed each other to see if the proposed spouse’s wealth and social status were acceptable. If satisfied, a formal betrothal took place where a written agreement was signed and the couple kissed.

Unlike modern times, the wedding day didn’t cement a lawful institution (marriage had no legal power) but showed the couple’s intent to live together. A Roman citizen couldn’t marry his favorite prostitute, cousin, or, for the most part, non-Romans. A divorce was granted when the couple declared their intention to separate before seven witnesses. If a divorce carried the accusation that the wife had been unfaithful, she could never marry again. A guilty husband received no such penalty.

9Feast Or Famine

Social position determined how a family ate. Lower classes mostly had simple fare while the wealthy often used elaborate feasts to showcase their status. Bread featured heavily at both breakfast and lunch. While the lower classes added olives, cheese, and wine, the upper class enjoyed a better variety of meat, feast leftovers, and fresh produce. The very poor sometimes just ate porridge or handouts.

Meals were prepared by the women or slaves of the household, and the children served them. Nobody had forks, so food was consumed using their hands, spoons, and knives. Dinner parties of the Roman rich were legendary for their decadence and delicacies. Lasting hours, guests reclined on dining couches while slaves cleaned up the discarded scraps around them. All classes relished a stomach-churning sauce called garum. Basically the fermented guts of fish, it reeked so bad that it was forbidden to make it within city limits.

8The Insulae And Domus

One’s neighborhood pretty much depended on how high up the totem pole you were. Insulae were apartment buildings, but the kind that would make a modern safety inspector hit the roof. The majority of the Roman population lived in these seven-story-plus buildings. They were ripe for fire, collapse, and even flooding. The upper floors were reserved for the poor who had to pay rent daily or weekly.

Eviction was a constant fear for the families living in a one-room affair with no natural light or bathroom facilities. The first two floors of an insulae were reserved for those who had a better income. They paid rent annually and lived in multiple rooms with windows.

Wealthy Romans either lived in country villas or owned a domus in the city. A domus was a large, comfortable home. They were big enough to include the owner’s business shop, libraries, rooms, a kitchen, pool, and garden.

7Marital Sex

Things in the Roman bedroom weren’t exactly even. While women were expected to produce sons, uphold chastity, and remain loyal to their husbands, married men were allowed to wander. He even had a rule book. It was fine to have extramarital sex with partners of both genders, but it had to be with slaves, prostitutes, or a concubine/mistress. Wives could do nothing about it since it was socially acceptable and even expected from a man.

While undoubtedly there were married couples who used passion as an expression of affection for one another, the general unsympathetic view was that women tied the knot to have children and not to enjoy a great sex life. That was for the husband to savor, and some savored it a little too much—slaves had no rights over their own bodies, so the rape of a slave was not legally recognized.

6Legal Infanticide

Fathers held the power of life or death for a newborn, even without the mother’s input. After birth, the baby was placed at his feet. If the father picked it up, the child remained at home. Otherwise, it was abandoned outside for anyone to pick up—or to die of exposure. Roman infants faced rejection if they were born deformed, a daughter, or if a poor family couldn’t support another child. If the father was suspicious about the kid’s real paternity, he or she could be dumped near a refuge area.

The lucky ones were adopted by childless couples and received the family’s name. The rest risked being sold as slaves or prostitutes or being deliberately maimed by beggars who displayed such children to get more sympathy. If older children displeased their father, he also had the legal backing to sell them as slaves or kill them.

5Leisure For The Family

Downtime was a big part of Roman family life. Usually, starting at noon, the upper crust of society dedicated their day to leisure. Most enjoyable activities were public and shared by rich and poor alike, male and female—watching gladiators disembowel each other, cheering chariot races, or attending the theatre.

Citizens also spent a lot of time at public baths, which wasn’t your average tub and towel affair. A Roman bath typically had a gym, pool, and a health center. Certain locales even offered prostitutes. Children had their own favorite pastimes. Boys preferred to be more active, wrestling, flying kites, or playing war games. Girls occupied themselves with things like dolls and board games. Families also enjoyed just relaxing with each other and their pets.

4Education

Education depended on a child’s social status and gender. Formal education was the privilege of high-born boys, while girls from good families were only allowed to learn how to read and write. Schooling in Latin, reading, writing, and arithmetic were usually the mother’s duty until age seven, when boys received a teacher.

Affluent families had private tutors or educated slaves for this role; otherwise, the boys were sent to private schools. Education for male pupils included physical training to prepare them for military service as well as later assuming a masculine role in society. Country folk or children born of slaves received little to no formal education. To them it was more practical that sons learn their trades from their fathers and little girls learn housekeeping. There were no public schools for disadvantaged children to attend. The closest thing was informal get-togethers that were run and taught by freed slaves.

3Coming Of Age

While daughters crossed the threshold of adulthood almost unnoticed, a special ceremony marked a boy’s transition to manhood. Depending on his mental and physical prowess, a father decided when his son was grown (usually around 14–17).

On the chosen morning, the youth discarded his bulla and childhood toga, and a sacrifice was given. His father then dressed him in the white tunic of a man. If the older man had rank, the tunic reflected this—two wide crimson stripes if he was a senator and slim ones for a knight. The last of the new clothing was the toga virilis or toga libera, worn only by adult males. The father then gathered a large crowd to escort his son to the Forum. Once there, the boy’s name was registered, and he officially became a Roman citizen. After that, the new teenage man could expect an apprenticeship for a year in a profession of his father’s choosing.

2Pets

When it comes to ancient Rome’s animal policies, one can be forgiven if the first image that comes to mind is gory slaughter at the Colosseum. However, private citizens cherished their household pets. Dogs were by far the favorite, but cats were not uncommon. House-snakes were appreciated as ratters, and domesticated birds were also delighted in. Nightingales and green Indian parrots were all the rage because they could mimic human words.

Cranes, herons, swans, quail, geese, and ducks were also kept. While the last three proved very popular, Roman fondness and treatment of peacocks was almost on par with dogs. Some cruelty existed in bird fighting, but it wasn’t a widespread sport. Roman pets were so deeply loved that they were immortalized in art and poetry and even buried with their masters. Other pets included hares (a popular gift exchanged by lovers), goats, deer, apes, and fish.

1Women’s Independence

Ancient Rome wasn’t an easy place to be a woman. Any hopes of being able to vote or of following a career was about as possible as a modern person trying to pluck a diamond out of thin air. Girls were sidelined to a life in the home and childbirth, suffering a philandering husband (if he was so inclined), and having little power in the marriage and no legal claim to her children.

However, because child mortality was so high, the state rewarded Roman wives for giving birth. The prize was perhaps what most women dearly wanted: legal independence. If a free-born woman managed three live births (four for a former slave), she was awarded with independent status as a person. Only by surviving this serial-birthing could a woman hope to escape being a man’s property and finally take control over her own affairs and life.

Ancient Rome holds a mythic place in our imaginations. It’s the land of historical epics like Ben-Hur and Gladiator, where men in golden armor ride chariots and emperors are fed grapes in reclining chairs.

Real life in Rome, though, was quite a bit less glamorous. In a time before modern sanitation and medicine, getting through an average day was a difficult task—and far more disgusting than you could ever imagine.

10 People Washed Their Mouths Out With Urine

In ancient Rome, pee was such big business that the government had special taxes in place just for urine sales. There were people who made their living just from collecting urine. Some would gather it at public urinals. Others went door-to-door with a big vat and asked people to fill it up.

The ways they used it are the last ones you’d expect. For example, they’d clean their clothes in pee. Workers would fill a tub full of clothing and pee, and then one poor soul would be sent in to stomp all over the clothing to wash it out.

Which is nothing compared to how they cleaned their teeth. In some areas, people used urine as a mouthwash, which they claimed kept their teeth shining white. In fact, there’s a Roman poem that survives today in which a poet mocks his clean-toothed enemy by saying, “The fact that your teeth are so polished just shows you’re the more full of piss.”

9 You Shared a Sponge After Pooping

Rome has been praised for its advances in plumbing. Their cities had public toilets and full sewage systems, something that later societies wouldn’t share for centuries. That might sound like a tragic loss of an advanced technology, but as it turns out, there was a pretty good reason nobody else used Roman plumbing.

The public toilets were disgusting. Archaeologists believe they were rarely, if ever, cleaned because they have been found to be filled with parasites. In fact, Romans going to the bathroom would carry special combs designed to shave out lice.

The worst part came when you finished. Each public toilet, which was shared with dozens of other people, would have a single sponge on a stick that you used to wipe yourself. The sponge would never get cleaned—and you shared it with everybody else there.

8 Toilets Regularly Exploded

When you entered a Roman toilet, there was a very real risk you would die.

The first problem was that creatures living in the sewage system would crawl up and bite people while they did their business. Worse than that, though, was the methane buildup—which sometimes got so bad that it would ignite and explode underneath you.

Toilets were so dangerous that people resorted to magic to try to stay alive. Magical spells meant to keep demons at bay have been found on the walls of bathrooms. Some, though, came pre-equipped with statues of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, guarding them. People would pray to Fortuna before stepping inside.

7 Gladiator Blood Was Used As Medicine

Roman medicine also had its fair share of eccentricities.

Several Roman authors report people gathering the blood of dead gladiators and selling it as a medicine. The Romans apparently believed that gladiator blood had the power to cure epilepsy and would drink it as a cure. And that was just the civilized approach—others would pull out the gladiators’ livers and eat them raw.

This was so popular that when Rome banned gladiatorial combat, people kept the treatment going by drinking the blood of decapitated prisoners. Strangely, some Roman physicians actually report that this treatment worked. They claim to have seen people who drank human blood recover from their epileptic fits.

6 Women Rubbed Dead Skin Cells Of Gladiators On Their Faces

The gladiators who lost became medicine for epileptics while the winners became aphrodisiacs. In Roman times, soap was hard to come by, so athletes cleaned themselves by covering their bodies in oil and scraping the dead skin cells off with a tool called a strigil.

Usually, the dead skin cells were just discarded—but not if you were a gladiator. Their sweat and skin scrapings were put into a bottle and sold to women as an aphrodisiac. Often, this was worked into a facial cream. Women would rub the cream all over their faces, hoping the dead skin cells of a gladiator would make them irresistible to men.

5 Pompeii Was Filled With Obscene Art

The volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii left it wonderfully preserved for archaeologists. When they got their first look at it, though, the archaeologists found things that were so obscene that they hid them from public view.

Pompeii was filled with art that was so filthy that it was locked in a secret room for hundreds of years before anyone was allowed to look at it. The town was full of the craziest erotic artwork you’ll ever see—for example, the statue of Pan sexually assaulting a goat.

On top of that, the town was filled with prostitutes, which gave even the street tiles their own special little touch of obscenity. To this day, you can walk through Pompeii and see a sight Romans would enjoy every day—a penis carved into the road with the tip pointing the way to the nearest brothel.

4 Dangerous Places Had Drawings Of Penises For Good Luck

Penises were pretty popular in Rome. They didn’t share our skittishness toward the male member. Instead, they displayed them proudly. Sometimes, they even wore them around their necks.

It was a fairly common Roman fashion choice for boys to walk around wearing copper penises on necklaces. This was about more than looking good. According to Roman writings, these would “prevent harm from coming” to the people who wore them.

They didn’t stop there, either. Good luck penises were also drawn on dangerous places to keep travelers safe. Sharp curves and rickety bridges in Rome often had a penis drawn on them to grant good luck to every passerby.

3 Romans Hold The First Recorded Mooning

Rome holds the unique distinction of recording the first mooning in history. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest, wrote the first description of a mooning while describing a riot in Jerusalem.

During Passover, Roman soldiers were sent to stand outside of Jerusalem to keep watch in case the people revolted. They were meant to keep the peace, but one soldier did a little bit more. In Josephus’s own words, the soldier lifted “up the back of his garments, turned his face away, and with his bottom to them, crouched in a shameless way and released at them a foul-smelling sound where they were offering sacrifice.”

The Jews were furious. First, they demanded that the soldier be punished, and then they started hurtling rocks at the Roman soldiers. Soon a full-on riot broke out in Jerusalem—and a gesture that would live on for thousands of years was born.

2 Romans Vomited So They Could Keep Eating

Romans took excess to new levels. According to Seneca, Romans at banquets would eat until they couldn’t anymore—and then vomit so that they could keep eating.

Some people threw up into bowls that they kept around the table, but others didn’t let themselves get so caught up in the formalities. In some homes, people would just throw up right there on the floor and go back to eating.

The slaves are the people you really need to feel sorry for, though. Their jobs were terrible. In the words of Seneca: “When we recline at a banquet, one [slave] wipes up the spittle; another, situated beneath, collects the leavings [vomit] of the drunks.”

1 Charioteers Drank An Energy Drink Made Of Goat Dung

Romans didn’t have Band-Aids, so they found another way to patch up wounds. According to Pliny the Elder, people in Rome patched up their scrapes and wounds with goat dung. Pliny wrote that the best goat dung was collected during the spring and dried but that fresh goat dung would do the trick “in an emergency.”

That’s an attractive image, but it’s hardly the worst way Romans used goat dung. Charioteers drank it for energy. They either boiled goat dung in vinegar or ground it into a power and mixed it into their drinks. They drank it for a little boost when they were exhausted.

This wasn’t even a poor man’s solution. According to Pliny, nobody loved to drink goat dung more than Emperor Nero himself.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

The gradual process of decline that brought the Roman Empire to an end is one of the all-time favorite history topics. That a nation so powerful could fall has always acted as a warning to any subsequent state that rose to a privileged geopolitical position. The ascension of Commodus in AD 180 is considered by many as the beginning of the end. But in reality, the exhaustion of Rome had started long before.

10 Unclear Succession System

Augustus, the first Roman emperor, could never establish a clear imperial succession system. The result: When the time came to replace an emperor, there were numerous rivals for the throne competing with one another.

Sometimes, the potential emperors had an incentive to end the service of the ruling emperor prematurely so that they could take the throne for themselves. This is part of the reason behind the long record of imperial assassination plots.

The imperial succession was a fragile, unstable system. Within the first 200 years of imperial tradition, Titus (r. AD 79–81) was the only emperor who succeeded his own father, Vespasian, and Commodus in AD 161 was the first emperor to be born to a ruling emperor, Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180).

9 Currency Debasement

When Emperor Nero faced serious economic issues, he decided to debase the currency. Nero reduced the purity of Roman coins by decreasing the amount of precious metal in them. He did this gradually, expecting that the coins would still be accepted for their nominal value. But the reduction in purity became noted, followed by inflation.

The coin debasement became a tendency followed by subsequent emperors. The denarius, the most common Roman coin in circulation, had an average silver content of 91.8 percent during the time of Nero (r. AD 54–68), 76.2 percent during the time of Marcus Aurelius (r. AD 161–180), and 58.3 percent by the time of Emperor Septimius Severus (r. AD 193–211).

8 Inflation

Debasement of Roman coins triggered a severe inflation problem. By AD 301, Emperor Diocletian was forced to issue an Imperial Edict on Prices to control inflation. During the 150 years prior to Diocletian’s edict, the value of silver had increased 86 times and gold, 45. The edict did little to solve the inflation problem.

A measure of wheat in Roman Egypt that sold for six drachmas in the first century AD increased to 200 drachmas by AD 276. Egyptian wheat sold for 78,000 drachmas in AD 324 and over 2 million drachmas by AD 334. The price of 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of pork was fixed at 12 denarii by the edict but cost 90 denarii by AD 412.

Another side effect of inflation was the hoarding of coins. Unlike the debased coins, the “good coins” were kept as long as possible. Archaeologists have found many coin hoards from the late Roman Empire, a sign of economic uncertainty.

7 The Year Of The Four Emperors

The AD 68–69 period is known in Roman history as “The Year of the Four Emperors,” which may be considered a premonition of the countless episodes of imperial instability and double-crossing that would later affect the Roman emperors.

After the death of Nero in June 68, the three emperors that followed only reigned for a short time: Galba for seven months (assassinated), Otho for three months (committed suicide), and Vitellius for eight months (also assassinated). In AD 69, Vespasian became the next emperor until his death in AD 79.

The political turmoil of this period is reflected in the writings of Tacitus. His introduction to this period of Roman history (Histories 1.2) reads: “The history on which I am entering is that of a period rich in disasters, terrible with battles, torn by civil struggles, horrible even in peace and four emperors killed by the sword.”

6 Army’s Diminishing Returns

During the times of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, the Roman army was supported with the booty of conquest. Each new region that was conquered by the Romans brought new land, new slaves to be sold, new taxpayers, and other forms of wealth.

When the Roman Empire reached its maximum size, the army activity became largely defensive. There was no booty conquest to support the soldiers, and the army had to be supported by taxes.

Once the guarantor of Roman growth and prosperity, the army gradually and ironically became a necessary evil that drained the wealth of the Roman people. The increasing tax pressure required to run the army forced many members of the Roman middle class into poverty (Matyszak 2008: 227).

5 Barbarian Pressure

Previously, one traditional explanation for the fall of Rome was that barbarian invasions led to its disintegration. Although the barbarian pressure played a role, this was not the only reason for the fall of Rome.

Many waves of barbarian armies weakened both the northern and eastern borders of Rome, gradually shrinking the size of the empire. Rome lost Britain in AD 406 when the Roman legions stationed there were summoned to continental Rome due to the threat of the Huns. Rome was sacked in AD 410 by the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric.

By AD 455, Spain and North Africa were lost to the Vandals, who also sacked Rome the same year. Barbarian pressure was not a new thing in Rome. What was different this time was the almost complete incompetence of the Roman army to successfully repulse the invaders as they had many times in the past.

4 Praetorian Guard Corruption

The members of the Praetorian Guard, a special branch of the Roman army, were household troops for the emperor and his personal bodyguards. As the power of the army increased, the Praetorian Guard occasionally got involved in the process of appointing new emperors, usually favoring those who favored them.

Their involvement grew larger until they were able to literally make and unmake Roman emperors. In many cases, the Praetorian Guard simply murdered these emperors. By the third century AD, no Roman emperor could rule without the support of the military in general and the Praetorian Guard in particular.

Perhaps one of the most astonishing signs of the Praetorian Guard corruption was a practice called the “donative.” This was an economic incentive paid to the Praetorian Guard.

The reasons for this incentive varied. But one type of donative contributed to the political instability of Rome: A pretender to the throne would promise to pay a substantial reward if he became emperor. The sooner the acting emperor “finished” his government, the better for the Praetorian Guard’s pockets.

Emperor succession became truly messy during the late history of the Western Roman Empire. Many emperors died by the sword of their own bodyguards, who were anxious to receive their donative.

3 Concentration Of Wealth

Although Rome is often depicted as a glorious and advanced nation in the imagination of the general public, social inequality was deeply rooted in Roman society. The backbone of the Roman economy was agriculture. It has been estimated that more than 90 percent of the late empire’s population were rural poor and endured a precarious existence.

This also implied an imbalance between the rural and the urban. Cities were sometimes seen as “predators” on the labor of peasants leading to the exhaustion of the land. Based on osteological studies of Roman skeletons from all periods and all parts of the empire, health issues linked to malnutrition were a common occurrence (Tainter 1990: 133; McKeown 2010: 58).

2 Size Of The Empire

The size of the Roman Empire caused a number of issues. Distances were so long that travel across the empire took weeks. Its borders were so big that they required a considerable army presence to keep them safe. But above all, it was no longer possible to control this vast realm from the city of Rome.

These challenges forced Emperor Diocletian to split the empire in two. The Western Roman Empire was centered around Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire had the city of Byzantium as its capital.

The size of the Roman Empire is central to the study of its fall. It has stimulated many academic discussions about the limits of territorial expansion affecting all political units of a considerable size. Even today, historians and sociologists keep exploring this intriguing topic.

1 Romulus Augustulus Deposition

On September 4, AD 476, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Odoacer had served in the Roman army for years and had attained the rank of general.

A Roman emperor being deposed by a military leader was nothing new in Rome. The novelty was that nobody else was named emperor after Romulus Augustulus’s deposition and that Odoacer was crowned as king of Italy.

At this point, the Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Even the capital of the Western Empire had been moved from Rome to Ravenna. The Roman West was no longer an empire. It had dissolved into several smaller political units (kingdoms and city-states). The imperial traditions remained alive in the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall in 1453.

The ancient Romans were responsible for a number of scientific advancements that greatly benefited humankind. However, some of their solutions didn’t work. Here are 10 diseases and the erroneous cures that the ancient Romans devised.

Warning: These Roman treatments don’t work, so don’t try them.

10 Acne

Acne was probably the scourge of nearly every Roman teenager, so the Romans tried to come up with a cure. Crocodile meat was effective at getting rid of spots, even freckles, when combined with cyprus oil.

If the pimples persisted, the Romans suggested taking a bath with oil and sour cheese to remove the pimples. Leek leaves could get rid of pimples when rubbed on the skin. Lastly, the juice of myrrh, when mixed with cassia and honey, was said to be effective at relieving what the Romans referred to as varus.

If all of that failed to rid one’s face of acne, the court physician of Theodosius, a Roman emperor in the fourth century, told his patients to wipe their faces with a cloth while watching a falling star. For unspecified reasons, this was said to cause the pimples to fall off the face.

9 Warts

Warts had a wide range of cures. Often, Romans would burn cow dung, mouse dung, or the fat of a swan to rid themselves of warts. Pliny suggested taking a freshly podded pea and touching it to each nodule. Then he instructed his readers to wrap the peas securely in a cloth and throw them backward.

Rubbing the wart with sea foam or white sea sand was also supposed to work. If the person could afford it, gold was considered to be an effective remedy for warts.

However, if a Roman couldn’t get any of these cures, he could wait until after the 20th day of the month, lie faceup on a path, look at the Moon, grab whatever was nearby, and rub it on the wart.

8 Headaches

There were a number of cures for headaches, most of which involved animals in some way. For example, wine in which a chameleon had been soaked could be sprinkled on the sufferer’s head.

If that failed, an elephant’s trunk could be touched to the head. (It was considered much more effective if the elephant sneezed.) A Roman could also drink the water left behind by an ox or ass which had been drinking it.

A liniment made from burned cloth which had been stained with menstrual blood and mixed with the oil of roses was said to be an effective cure. As a last resort, the severed genitals of a fox could be fastened around the head to cure a stubborn headache.

7 Constipation

When the ancient Romans had trouble going to the bathroom, there were a number of cures from which to choose. For example, eating raw quinces preserved in honey could help.

Placing wolf’s gall (bile) on the navel with different kinds of milk, salt, and honey could also be effective at loosening the bowels. For those who didn’t like the idea of a wolf’s gall resting on their navel, a bull’s gall could be smashed up with wormwood and applied as a suppository.

Fresh beets that were ground into juice were also beneficial for constipation sufferers. Oddly enough, this remedy was also supposed to work for those afflicted with diarrhea. Almost every kind of fruit was said to be good as well. Finally, men like Cato the Elder prescribed cabbage as a great treatment for constipation and a multitude of other ailments.

6 Nausea

For those suffering from nausea—whether from natural causes or as a reaction to one of the Romans’ many “cures”—a three-finger pinch of cumin was said to work wonders.

Pennyroyal, a common herb in Europe, was also said to help if it was cooked in vinegar. Rose juice could be effective, although the Roman might fall into a deep sleep because it was also a cure for insomnia.

Oddly enough, the ancient Romans believed that drinking lots of wine was a cure for nausea. (They had a cure for the next day’s nasty hangover, too.) However, a Roman woman who was pregnant and feeling nauseous was supposed to eat a pomegranate or drink its juice.

As a last resort, human breast milk could be used to cure nausea. It was supposed to be especially effective if the woman had already weaned her child—and doubly so if she had given birth to a boy.

5 Flatulence

Flatulence was a common side effect of many Roman “cures” and could be treated through a variety of methods. Chicken broth was said to be an excellent purgative for the bowels. If it was made from an old rooster and strongly salted, it was even more effective. A hen’s white droppings were also beneficial for those suffering from uncontrollable flatulence.

When mixed with cobbler’s blacking, basil supposedly eased ferocious flatulence. However, if this cure was used too frequently, it could result in madness or put the patient into a coma.

Pliny also said that mixing cumin and asparagus was helpful, although this cure often caused other unspecified problems. As a last resort, ground beaver meat with vinegar and rose oil could be used as long as it was in liquid form. If eaten, it was for epilepsy.

4 Dysentery

Dysentery is caused by any number of bacteria, viruses, or parasites. It inflames the colon and results in diarrhea with blood for the sufferer. However, in ancient Rome, they didn’t know the cause of this disease, so the cures were quite far-fetched.

Chicken soup was considered to be a cure. Bitumen, a native asphalt of Asia Minor, was also supposed to work. Bitumen could also hasten menstruation for women.

The flesh of a spotted lizard was also an effective cure. But it had to be imported from a foreign country and boiled before it was eaten. The actual type of lizard was not recorded.

Egg yolks without the whites could be mixed with poppy juice and wine. The flowers of pomegranates, a wonder drug in ancient Rome, could be picked and eaten to cure dysentery. Also, vomited blood was supposed to work if it was mixed with wine and a vulture’s lungs.

3 Incontinence

Incontinence could be cured by taking the bladder of a hyena, soaking it in wine, and eating it. Roasted boar’s bladder was supposed to be quite effective as well.

If you could catch them, roasted seahorses were a common cure for incontinence. A smaller fish that was found inside a larger fish’s belly was also a good cure. If the sufferer was a child, Pliny suggested that they eat boiled mice with their food.

Maybe the oddest cure was taking papyrus or linen and touching it to the tip of one’s genitals. If that failed, tying a string of linen or papyrus around the genitals and then around the leg might do the trick.

Stranger still, incontinence could be cured by burning a pig’s penis, mixing it with wine, and drinking the concoction. Then, while the Roman was drunk from “swine wine,” he had to pee in the bed of a dog while saying the following in Latin: “This I do that I may not wet my bed as a dog does.”

2 Gout

Gout, a recurrent attack of acute inflammatory arthritis, could be cured in a number of ways. The combination of mustard, saffron, the fat of a male goat, and the dung of a female goat was supposed to be effective at alleviating the symptoms.

Rubbing a sea hare along the affected parts and wearing shoes made of beaver’s skin was also prescribed. The skin of what Pliny described as the “Pontic beaver” was supposed to be the most effective.

Pliny also believed that the touch of a menstruating woman could relieve the symptoms. Calf dung boiled with lily bulbs was believed to be a useful cure as well. One of the sadder cures was the use of a live fox that was tied to a stake and boiled in oil. It was supposed to make an effective drink to cure gout.

1 Epilepsy

Although epilepsy is still challenging to treat in modern times, the ancient Romans believed that they had a number of successful remedies. For example, an affected Roman could drink water that was taken from a spring during the night and then placed in the skull of a dead man.

The next step was to eat the flesh of a beast that had been killed with an iron weapon. The weapon must have killed a man previously. If all of that failed, putting an iron nail into the ground where someone had suffered a seizure was supposed to help.

The testes of a bear or wild boar dipped in mare’s milk or water was considered to be a highly effective treatment. The smell of the afterbirth of a female ass, especially if it had just borne a male, was beneficial to those who were about to have a seizure. However, this was neither a practical nor timely solution.

If nothing else worked, the affected Roman could take a dried camel’s brain, put it in vinegar, and eat it.

The Romans are perhaps one of the best-studied ancient nations. Modern fascination remains steadfast because the complexities of their culture guarantee that for years, archaeologists will continue to peel back new, unknown layers. There is no end in sight when it comes to figuring out how the ancient Romans really lived, loved, and died. New discoveries take researchers back to the beginning concerning their military might, their unexpected allies, their behaviors and influences from other cultures, public issues, and how gladiators really fought.

10 The Oceanus Tombstone

A mysterious and unique headstone turned up in an unusual place in England. The rare artifact was found resting facedown in a graveyard in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Discovered in 2015, the tombstone’s front is inscribed: “To the spirit of the departed Bodicacia, wife, lived for 27 years.”

That an inscribed Roman tombstone, probably dating to the second century AD, survived in England is noteworthy. Over time, most were removed and reused in construction projects. Only ten have been found in Cirencester, and less than 300 have been found in Britain.

The odd location—a graveyard—is viewed as such by archaeologists since almost no gravestones were left at a tomb site. However, this one, depicting an image of what appears to be the sea god Oceanus, is not in a normal position. It was found in a grave, used like a protective slab over the deceased and not as the person’s standing headstone. Whether the skeleton underneath is Bodicacia, or her stone was pilfered to be used in the Cirencester grave, is unknown. Either way, it’s the first from Roman Britain to bear the mustached deity.

9 A Superstar Recruited Soldiers

In 2002, the base of a statue was found, covered in Greek, in the ancient Roman city of Oinoanda in modern-day Turkey. When it was translated nearly a decade later, the carving turned out to be an 1,800-year-old epitaph. It told an unexpected tale.

The man being honored was named Lucius Flavillianus, a highly regarded veteran of wrestling and a brutal fighting sport called pankration. Needing recruits for the Roman army, the city used a smart but little-used tactic for the time: They asked the popular athlete to inspire new soldiers to sign up. He delivered so many young men to the army’s doorstep that after he died, Flavillianus was rewarded with supreme, hero-like status.

Every community was ordered to erect a statue in his memory, and Oinoanda’s Flavillainus statue once stood on the base discovered in 2002. Researchers aren’t sure if the champion fighter joined the military himself or why he did such a dedicated job, but it’s likely that he was motivated by honor and the attention it brought him.

8 First Major Shipyard

Excavations at Portus in Italy had turned up several ruins. Archaeologists knew that the site was Rome’s maritime center during the first through sixth centuries AD and had hoped to find a heavy-duty shipyard, something from the Roman world that had never been found before. Over the years, they located warehouses, an amphitheater, a lighthouse, and even a palace. Over a decade passed. The team pressed on because ancient writings and a mosaic indicated there was once shipbuilding at the port.

When the mammoth ruins of a rectangular building were found in 2011, they were mistaken for yet another warehouse. Further digging soon revealed that the football field–sized building had piers as well as eight garage-like bays that led into the Tiber river. These findings screamed “shipyard.” The bays ran about 60 meters (200 ft), ample space for ships to be repaired or constructed.

While the building’s position, size, and structure support the theory that it’s the first major Roman shipyard ever identified, one element remains missing. If ramps for launching ships can be found, then it would undoubtedly confirm the yard as the biggest of its kind in the Mediterranean. During its heyday, the shipyard stood five stories tall.

7 Arieldela

For four years, two archaeology professors led a student team at ‘Ayn Gharandal in Southern Jordan. They didn’t realize that they were digging into a patch of Earth that everybody had been searching for. In 2013, they expanded their investigations of an old Roman fort when they found the gate of the ruined complex. The arched structure had long since collapsed, but a single block revealed the answer to a mystery.

Inscribed in Latin were words that still showed traces of red paint. The unexpected find was also decorated with victory symbols, such as laurels and a wreath. Phrases dedicated the fort to four Roman emperors who ruled together from AD 293 to 305. Furthermore, the stone named the Second Cohort of Galatians as the infantry unit stationed there. The title rang an immediate bell with those at the site. Ancient military documents indicate that the unit arrived in Israel to suppress a Jewish revolt in the second century AD. The unit was said to have had a stronghold at a place called Arieldela. Nobody could pinpoint where Arieldela was, until the gate stone surfaced at ‘Ayn Gharandal.

6 A Referee’s Mistake

Around 1,800 years ago, a Turkish-born gladiator died because of a referee’s decision. The sad tone of his gravestone read, “Here I lie, Diodorus the wretched. After breaking my opponent Demetrius, I did not kill him immediately. But murderous Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis killed me.”

The tombstone shows Diodorus standing over his submissive opponent, looking expectantly at the referee (summa rudis in Latin) to declare him the winner. This deviates from normal burials, which typically provide a gladiator’s stage name and how many times he won or lost during his career. The unique tombstone focused on Diodorus’s death both visually and with a written account.

Researchers believe that the referee thought Demetrius had fallen accidentally and fatally ruled that the match could continue. The image adds to a growing belief among scholars that gladiators didn’t merely butcher each other. Granted, Diodorus perished, but he didn’t kill his opponent when he had the chance. Instead, he expected a third party to call the victory. If gladiator combat wasn’t a disciplined sport, there would be no need for referees.

5 The Batavian Jupiter

In 2016, archaeologists browsed a field in the Netherlands. The site in the province of Gelderland was about 80 hectares of pure discovery. The 6,000-year-old haul included an engraved tombstone, a funerary urn, and 2,500 bronze artifacts. The discovery of Roman items wasn’t really a surprise. Gelderland once bordered Roman territory, so that was to be expected. What wasn’t anticipated was a statue of the god Jupiter and a unique ointment pot. Such elite objects would be more at home in a wealthy city or religious center than the area where they were found.

During the artifacts’ time, the land was occupied by mainly Batavian farmers, who lived in humble houses made of wood and mud. This revealing glimpse about the Batavians could mean that the locals were more Romanized than previously believed. To explain the out-of-place possessions, experts have two theories: Either the owner was a rich Batavian who wanted to display his wealth in a Roman manner, or perhaps the settlement had a temple honoring the deities of Rome.

4 The Empire Was Infested

How much a community is at risk of parasitic infections hinges mainly on good sanitation. The Romans were famous for their advanced sanitary system. They had public baths and toilets, plumbing, and aqueducts that provided drinking water. To see how the Romans measured against less sophisticated nations, anthropologists toughened up and inspected ancient poop in 2,000-year-old latrines in 2015. Contrary to what one would expect, the results showed that Roman citizens battled with parasites.

Internal infection was rife, especially whipworms, tapeworms, and roundworms. More surprisingly, it was worse than before they developed their famed sanitation. The problem stemmed from a lack of knowledge about worms. Ancient Romans didn’t understand that cooking killed the parasites and rampantly consumed a raw (and sometimes tapeworm-carrying) fish sauce called garum. Sharing communal baths with infected individuals was also risky. Farmers might also have used the human waste carted from the cities as fertilizer and infected their crops that way. Doctors also believed that worms formed spontaneously and treated patients with useless techniques like bloodletting and diets.

3 San Rocco

Researchers in Northeastern Italy hit upon the historic remains of an ancient fortification comprised of multiple buildings. The main fort, called San Rocco, was flanked by two smaller establishments on either side. Remarkably, the trio dates to around 178 BC. This makes it the oldest known Roman fort in the world, by several decades. San Rocco is the only example of an early Roman fort found in Italy and one of only a few in the world. By putting together its history, researchers hope to one day understand the evolution of what became one of the mightiest military nations on Earth.

The construction of the fortification coincides with a time when the early Romans lost a war with a northern people referred to as “pirates.” The impressive size of San Rocco showed their determination not to lose a second time, and they eventually conquered the Istria peninsula in 178–177 BC. They also protected a settlement that grew from the San Rocco site called Tergeste, which later became the city of Trieste.

2 Friendship With The Huns

Considering that the Huns, under Atilla’s reign, started the destruction of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, this one came as a surprise. A 2017 study found that during the same century, farmers of both nations, who shared contact near the Roman Empire’s eastern border, actually got along. By studying skeletal remains, researchers could determine that they swapped crops and lifestyles in order to adapt to volatile and uncertain times. This was smart. Instead of fighting, they helped each other to survive.

At first, the Huns had animals for milk and meat and grew various crops, while the Romans ate wheat and vegetables. Chemical analysis of the human remains showed that sharing eventually led to a diet which included just about everything on both sides. This mixed community, which lived near the Danube River in Hungary, allows a fresh view of the Huns, who never made it into the history books except as marauders. Elsewhere, people were Romanized, but in this case, some Romans incorporated the local customs, including the practice of elongating their skulls.

1 The Winged Building

A curious structure once stood in Norfolk, England. The large building, which resembled a “Y,” was raised around 1,800 years ago but matches nothing seen before from the Roman Empire.

The oddity begins with a central room that leads to a rectangular chamber, with two extensions forming the so-called “wings.” The central room’s foundations were solid, but those of the chamber and wings were weak. The shoddy foundations indicate that this section was intended to be used for a single event. Most likely, it could only support timber and clay walls topped with a grass roof. The central part probably had a tiled roof as well as more sturdy mortar and was meant to be permanent. The winged part was eventually removed, and a more elaborate replacement was erected over it. The decorated postholes of this newer building can still be seen today.

What the strange building was used for remains a mystery. While a villa nearby could mean the complex was Roman, it doesn’t fit any known design—and Roman architects stayed within a strict set of architectural forms. The building doesn’t match the characteristic style of the ancient locals, the Iceni, either.

Tales of gladiatorial combat have enthralled for thousands of years. From books and paintings to films and television shows, the image of a gladiator with a sword and shield fighting for their life has intrigued and inspired many. However, as the fighting became more popular, the crowd wanted more. Gladiator battles became diverse, and a sword and shield were not quite enough. Here are ten different types of fighters specializing in a diverse array of weapons and novelties.

10Bestiarii

Unlike other gladiators, the bestiarii were combatants who fought animals and not humans. Roman emperors and senators used exotic and powerful animals (for example lions, tigers, elephants, and bears) imported from Africa or Asia to show off their wealth, and put on a spectacle for the crowds at the Colosseum and amphitheaters. Some animals such as elephants were captured to shock and entertain the crowds with creatures they would not have seen before. Other animals were there to hunt and be hunted.

There were two main types of bestiarii: the “damnatio ad bestias” (damned to the beast) and the “venatio” (hunter). The damnatio were those sentenced to death, thrown into the ring for a humiliating and vicious exit to the after-life. Not considered gladiators—they were the lowest class of people in ancient Rome—their death was to entertain the crowd and a single beast could kill hundreds at a time.

The venatio trained and hunted animals for the crowd as part of their performance. There are very few known venatio that have been recorded by historians and chroniclers because they were looked down on compared to other gladiators. The most famous example is Carpophorus who is said to have killed over 20 animals with his bare hands at the Circus Maximus. Also, rather befitting of the time, he trained animals to kill, hunt, and even rape victims.

Several emperors showed off their skill at killing animals as a bestiarii, although, rather than impress the crowds, it actually damaged their popularity. Nero fought animals at the Arena, whilst Commodus heroically fought injured and immobile animals from a safe, raised platform, much to the disgust of the senate.

9Noxii

The noxii were the lowest of the low in Roman society. By far the lowest class of civilians, they were those deemed so offensive to Roman society that they were not even classed as people. These types of people included (in no particular order) Christians, Jews, those who deserted the army, murderers, and traitors. They were not selected for gladiator school, and their appearance in the arenas was purely to die in the goriest way possible as punishment for their crimes.

There were several ways that the noxii could die. One was as part of a bestiarii conflict with beasts, where they would be ripped apart by the animals. Another would have the fighters blindfolded and given instructions by the crowd, like a sadistic blind man’s bluff. Others would be thrown to actual gladiators to be hunted down. Often naked or possibly wearing a loin cloth, the noxii had no armor, and any weapon would be a simple gladius (short sword) or stick.

The Romans took delight in killing the noxii. It served as a reminder to the civilians of the rule of law and order, and also of their place in the social hierarchy.

8Retiarius

Which is better, speed or power? Death by a thousand cuts or one thrust? In the Roman times, the answer was definitely the more power and armor, the better. This is why the retiarius was initially looked down upon as a lower type of gladiator; they had very little armor and had to fight using agility, speed, and cunning. To make up for it though, they had a net to ensnare, a trident that was used to jab and move, and as a last resort, a small dagger that, on some occasions, was four-pronged.

The retiarius would train in a different barrack to the “sword and shield” gladiators and often had worse conditions. They were seen as feminine to others and were mocked. The satirist and poet Juvenal told the story of the minor aristocrat Gracchus, who not only caused disgrace by becoming a gladiator, but he brought further shame to society by fighting as a retiarius.

Despite this, they did gain some favor over the centuries, and became a mainstay in the arena, complementing the different styles of the armed secutores, murmillos, and scissores (a gladiator with a sword that has two blades).

7Secutor

Remember the classic arcade game Donkey Kong? If not, in every level of Donkey Kong the character Mario would have to scale buildings to confront the villainous Kong. Now replace Donkey Kong with a retiarius. Mario would be a secutor whose job it was to chase and defeat the retiarius. A secutor was dressed in heavy armor: he had a large shield, sword, and a round helmet that covered his whole face except for two tiny eye holes. They were developed as a counterpart to the increasingly popular retiarius (net throwers) in a clash of styles.

A typical contest between a secutor and retiarius would begin with the retiarius a safe distance away—in some cases on a raised platform above water—with a stockpile of rocks ready to throw. A secutor (meaning chaser in Latin) would pursue the retiarius and try to avoid being captured in the net or hit by the rocks. They would also have to avoid the retiarius’s trident which was used to keep the secutor far away. The secutor had the advantage of being heavily armed but would also tire easily under the weight of his armor. It led to a gripping contest.

The Emperor Commodus fought as a secutor during the games, and heavily weighted the odds in his favor to ensure that he would win his contests. Another famous secutor was Flamma, a Syrian fighter who fought wearing an outfit from the territory of Gaul. He fought 34 times with a win/draw/loss record of 21-9-4. Amazingly, he was offered his freedom four times and refused each opportunity.

6Equites

Despite sharing some similarities, the equites gladiators should not be confused with the Roman cavalrymen of the same name. The Roman cavalrymen were often minor aristocrats, holding trusted positions in the senate, and could even become emperor. The gladiatorial equites were glorified showmen.

Because the potential of death was not enough, the Colosseum would generally start with an equites bout to liven the crowd up due to the displays of agility and speed that they showed. Beginning on horseback, they would attack each other with their lances, and then dismount to fight with a short sword and shield. They wore light armor to improve their nimbleness and athleticism.

5Provocator

As we now know, many of the contests pitched different types of gladiators against each other. A provocator, however, would only fight other provocators. The reason for this is because they challenged each other to fight, rather than have the match selected for them. They would fight to settle feuds between rival gladiator schools, for the sheer competition of it, or to enhance their own status by beating a well-regarded rival. To reflect the equality, each provocator was armed in the legionnaire (Roman soldier) style with large rectangular shields, a breastplate, and helmet. The heavy armor meant that they tired quickly and it was difficult to injure them.

4Gladiatrix

The debate about whether females should take part in combat sports is not new. Thousands of years ago, philosophers, historians, and senators such as Cassius Dio and Juvenal discussed the merits of females taking part in combat at the Colosseum. A gladiatrix would wear very little armor, be bare chested, and in many cases, not even wear a helmet in order to show off her gender. Armed with a short sword and possibly a shield, these fights were very infrequent and seen as a novelty. As well as fighting each other, to increase the indignation, they also caused shock and outrage by fighting dwarfs.

In a rather extreme case of the aristocrat throwing off her corset and slumming it with the manual workers, many gladiatrices came from a higher status in society, a contrast to the low-born or slave gladiators. Their appearance caused such scandal that they were eventually banned in A.D. 200.

3Gallus / Murmillo

The Gallus were some of the earliest gladiators that came from the Gaul tribe of central and western Europe. They began fighting after being captured as prisoners of war. Heavily armed, they looked like the stereotypical gladiator with a longsword, shield, and a helmet, but they wore the traditional Gaul style of dress. Less agile than other types of gladiator, the Gallus relied on power and brute force to attack their opponents. They often fought prisoners from rival tribes.

Once the Gauls made peace and became part of the Roman Empire, it was seen as distasteful to force an ally to fight for their entertainment, so they adapted into another type of gladiator called the murmillo. Still using the heavy sword and shield, the murmillo dressed closer to a Roman soldier and fought other murmillones, gladiators from rival regions, and the net throwing Retiarii.

A famous murmillo was Marcus Attilius, who, in his maiden fight, managed to beat a gladiator from Nero’s own troops, Hilarus (who had a 12-2 win/loss record). Attilius then followed it up with a victory over the 13-0 Lucius Felix. Not bad for a rookie.

2Samnite

The Samnite were another of the early gladiators, and they share many similarities with the Gallus. They were also originally prisoners of war but hailed from the Samnium region of southern Italy. When the Roman’s conquered, they forced the Samnites into staging mock ceremonial battles. Popular, this eventually evolved into gladiator contests where the Samnite would wear their traditional military outfit with a large rectangular shield and sword.

They fought other soldiers who had been captured from tribes that were feuding with Rome. Forced to compete in their respective military styles, this offered a unique chance to see rival clans battle. Eventually, they fought opponents that were dressed as Roman legionnaires to depict Rome’s triumph over the tribes (which hopefully the Roman’s would win or else it would have been pretty embarrassing).

When Samnium became absorbed as a province of Rome, they no longer fought as a distinct category but developed into the hoplomanchus or murmillo gladiators, who had similar weapons and dress.

1Thracian

The most popular and well-known gladiator is Spartacus (other than Russell Crowe maybe). Spartacus was a prisoner of war from the Thracian tribe of southeastern Europe (around modern-day Bulgaria). He rebelled against his enslavers who had trained him as a gladiator and forced him into combat. After leading his fellow slaves and amassing an army of over 70,000 rebels through several battles with the Romans, he was eventually defeated although his legend lives on today.

Sporting a round shield, curved blade, and a broad helmet with a griffin emblem, the Thracians were arguably the most popular and common of the early gladiators. They would frequently fight the Gallus and Samnites.

In the same way we support sports teams, emperors and senators had their own favorite types of gladiators. Caligula, in particular, supported the Thracians and even killed another gladiator who had defeated his favorite Thracian warrior. Caligula trained to fight as a Thracian when he fought at the Colosseum, and this allowed any close decisions to swing favorably to the Thracians. Another emperor Domitian had such contempt for Thracians that he once threw a spectator to the dogs. The spectator’s crime—he suggested a Thracian may win a fight.

A former editor, now I just write for fun!

The Roman Empire was one of the greatest civilizations ever established. Lasting over 1,000 years, they dominated the ancient Mediterranean. Roman laws and culture have had a lasting impact on the world around us that is deeply felt even today.

The history of the empire was also well-documented compared to the Dark Ages that followed—but those histories do tend to focus on the earlier emperors. Yet some incredible stories came after them: the man who reunited a broken empire, the teenagers who ruled Rome, and the man who bought the imperial throne at auction. Here are ten fascinating stories of Roman emperors after the first 12 Caesars reigned.

10 Caracalla
AD 198–217

Caracalla and his brother Geta provide a wonderful historical tale of sibling rivalry. They were the sons of Septimius, who founded the Severan dynasty. He urged them to cooperate and rule together, but the two despised each other. It is said that they even divided the imperial palace down the middle, with each brother occupying one half.

Caracalla, in one of the more despicable acts of history, called a truce between himself and Geta, with their mother to mediate and settle the dispute between the two. When Geta arrived, however, Caracalla had him murdered—in front of their own mother. The official story was that the “assassins” had intended to kill them both, but most people in Rome knew the truth behind Caracalla’s throne.

As you might expect from a man who had his brother killed in front of his mother, Caracalla was a harsh ruler. His father had given him dying advice: “Enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.” That’s exactly what he did. The soldiers were paid handsomely, but Caracalla’s enemies, including anyone who dared to criticize or mock him, faced terrible vengeance. He is remembered for extending citizenship to all the citizens of the empire (not just Italians), but this may have been done so that he could collect more taxes to pay the soldiers.^[1] He was so despised by his enemies that historian Edward Gibbon called him “The Common Enemy of Mankind.” His fearsome reputation may have led to his assassination and overthrow by . . .

9 Macrinus
AD 217–218

Macrinus was the first Roman emperor to hold the office without having been a senator first.^[2] Although the Senate lost its power to the emperor when Augustus (the first emperor) took over, the wealthiest class were usually members of the Senate, and this included the generals and members of the royal dynasties who traditionally ruled Rome.

The most fascinating fact about Macrinus is how he ascended to the throne. As a prefect in the Praetorian Guard, one of his duties was to read the imperial mail for his predecessor, Caracalla. Caracalla was well-known as a paranoid, vengeful, and suspicious man. When Macrinus read in the imperial post a prophecy that the emperor would be murdered and deposed by his prefect, he was in a bind. When Caracalla heard of the prophecy, he would likely have Macrinus killed. Macrinus, fearing for his own life, felt that he had no alternative but to overthrow Caracalla. So he paid a gladiator to murder the emperor while he was urinating by the side of the road.

Macrinus managed to secure the loyalty of the army and the approval of the Senate after he declared himself emperor. But the good times weren’t to last, as you can see by the fact that he only reigned for a single year. The surviving members of Caracalla’s family plotted against him, and the new heir to the throne, Elagabalus, was also proclaimed emperor. As was often the way in the Crisis of the Third Century, when many imperial rulers were overthrown, they secured the loyalty of the troops by offering them more gold: Macrinus was hunted down and executed, and his head was sent to Elagabalus.

8 Alexander Severus
AD 222–235

Alexander Severus was just 13 years old when he ascended to the throne. Just imagine how you would deal with that kind of responsibility at the age of 13; it’s a miracle his reign wasn’t a complete disaster. Most of that owed to the influence of his mother, Julia Mamea, who was the real power behind the throne for most of his reign.^[3]

Alexander reduced taxes, encouraged literature as well as the arts and sciences, and was religiously open-minded. Rome was still pagan at that time, worshipping Jupiter and the Roman pantheon, but Alexander allowed a synagogue to be built in Rome and even wanted to erect a Christian church as well.

Although he did well on the domestic front, there were plenty of foreign wars with Rome’s great Eastern enemy, the Parthians, and the Germanic tribes were constantly threatening to invade across the Rhine and Danube Rivers. Alexander was never too popular with the soldiers, who were insulted at the prospect of effectively being ruled by a woman and probably wanted a stronger leader, more willing to take them into battle. This would lead to Alexander’s assassination and overthrow by the next emperor on this list . . .

7 Maximinus Thrax
AD 235–238

If Macrinus caused a stir by being the first non-Senatorial Roman emperor, the senators wouldn’t have liked Maximinus Thrax. Not only was he a commoner, but lots of people in the Senate viewed him as a barbarian. He began life as a common soldier, gradually being promoted up the ranks. The story goes that Emperor Alexander noticed that one of the soldiers was unusually strong and had him promoted until he was eventually put in charge of a legion. The ancient sources rather dubiously claim that he stood over 244 centimeters (8′) tall.

Alexander was a young and weak emperor, however, and the soldiers gradually grew to mistrust him for making payments to Rome’s enemies rather than crushing them outright. Soon enough, they murdered Alexander and his mother and acclaimed Maximinus the emperor. With the soldiers on Maximinus’s side, there was little the Senate could do at first about the indignity of having a barbarian ruling over them instead of fighting in the gladiatorial arena for their amusement.

Maximinus had overthrown the last member of the Severan dynasty, which had ruled Rome for many years, and had no legitimacy of his own, so it wasn’t long before he had to put down several revolts across the empire, with various provinces putting forward their own candidates to rule. The Senate backed one of these revolts. When it failed, they knew that Maximinus would have them all killed when he returned to Rome, so they elected some of their own members to rule. As Maximinus returned to crush the rebellion, his soldiers got bogged down besieging the city of Aquileia, and chafing under the harsh discipline of Maximinus, they assassinated him. As was so often the case for a ruler who took the throne by violence, his reign had a violent end.^[4]

6 Julian
AD 361–363

Julian cuts a fascinating figure in Roman History; he was the last pagan emperor of Rome. The only issue for Julian was that the Roman Empire had been converted to Christianity 30 years before by the Christian emperor Constantine, and his sons had continued the tradition. Julian fought against the grain of history, trying to restore Rome to what he believed were its superior former religious values.^[5]

He was the last surviving relative and heir of Constantine’s last son, the brutal and ruthless Constantius II, who had fought civil wars against his brothers to claim the throne. Constantius never trusted Julian, likely suspecting that his religious beliefs were not truly Christian, but he had little choice other to make him his heir in order to continue the dynasty. As heir, Julian controlled the troops in Gaul (France), but Constantius grew jealous and ordered half of Julian’s army to be transferred to the East, where Constantius was fighting. The Gallic soldiers refused to go and proclaimed Julian emperor—and fortunately for Julian, Constantius died on the way toward fighting what would have been another civil war.

Once Julian had sole control of the empire, he gradually attempted to ban Christianity by revoking all of the privileges that the religion had before. He encouraged the pagan cults to return and made many other legal reforms. But he still needed to win the loyalty of the troops in the East and thought that best way to do this was by winning a great victory against the Parthians. Unfortunately for Julian, he rode valiantly into battle but forgot to wear his breastplate and was grievously wounded by a spear. He later died of his injuries.

It’s incredible to think what could have happened if Julian had lived. Would he have succeeded in converting the Roman Empire back to paganism and changing history? We can never know.

5 Majorian AD 457–461

Majorian took over the Western Roman Empire toward the end of its life. (Most historians agree that the empire officially ended in AD 476.) They had lost many of the territories that had once made Rome great; by the time Majorian came to rule, the Western Empire was essentially reduced to Italy, some territories in Gaul, and a strip of land in the Balkans. The Eastern Empire was beginning to drift away, with its own capital in Constantinople, and became less concerned with the affairs of the West.

Despite this, Majorian made the last truly concerted effort to restore the Western Roman Empire to its former glory. He fought military campaigns that reconquered much of Spain and Gaul and prepared a great fleet to retake the province of Africa from the the Vandals who had taken up residence there.^[6] Unfortunately, his fleet was destroyed in the harbor by fire ships used by the Vandals as well as some traitors within the Roman ranks.

Majorian had ruled with a Germanic general named Ricimer, who had campaigned with him in the past, but after the loss of the fleet, his partner in crime turned on him. Majorian suffered an undignified end for such a successful soldier: He was stripped of his imperial robes, tortured, and then executed by Ricimer. After his death, the Western Roman Empire continued to decline, quickly losing its remaining power and influence. Majorian was the last competent emperor of Rome—at least in the West.

4 Didius Julianus
AD 193

Didius Julianus was only emperor of Rome for nine weeks, but he merits inclusion on this list because of the incredible story of his rise to power. This took place during a perilous time for Rome: AD 193 was the Year of the Five Emperors, so called because . . . there were five emperors that year. The man who came before Didius was Pertinax. He made the terrible mistake of underpaying the emperor’s elite military unit, the Praetorian Guard.

The Praetorians were enraged, rushed the palace, and murdered Pertinax. While they were all standing around wondering what happened next, one of them had a very smart idea: Why don’t they auction the throne to the highest bidder? Announcing to the public that the emperor was dead and that the man who would offer to pay the guards the most would be the new emperor, they waited for the bids to roll in.

According to ancient sources, Didius was reluctant to enter the bidding but was persuaded to by his wife. After several bids against another man, Sulpicianus, Didius emerged victorious and was proclaimed emperor by the jubilant guards—who were now being paid a lifetime’s salary for an ordinary soldier.

The guards may have backed Didius, but no one else recognized his legitimacy. After all, he had essentially tried to buy the throne from a military unit. The generals in the various provinces of Rome rose in revolt against Didius, and as it became clear that the bodyguards would be no match for the legions, he was assassinated.^[7] Severus took the throne next.

3 Elagabalus
AD 218–222

Elagabalus, like Caracalla, Geta, and Alexander, was another member of the Severan dynasty. He came to power aged just 14, after Macrinus was overthrown by the Severus family. History remembers Elagabalus for his eccentric religious beliefs and scandalous sexuality by the standards of the day. The ancient sources report that he dressed as a woman, married five times, had many male lovers, and even prostituted himself in the imperial palace. These may all have been rumors, but they were believed by many. It’s very likely that if he was alive today, he would be considered transgender. Rome tolerated homosexuality, but Elagabalus caused outrage in Roman high society.

There’s even a rumor, immortalized in a famous painting, that he had his lovers crushed to death with rose petals once he was finished with them. Alongside this, he was a high priest of the Sun god El-Gabal (aka Elagabalus) and changed his name to reflect his position. He forced the senators of Rome to worship this god in lengthy ceremonies.

Elagabalus was intended to be a puppet of his grandmother, who had schemed to put the Severan dynasty back in charge of Rome. But she evidently considered him to be a liability and arranged for him to be assassinated by the Praetorian Guard and replaced by Alexander, who was easier to control. Elagabalus was just 18 years old when he was killed.^[8]

2 Aurelian
AD 270–275

Aurelian came to power at the height of the Crisis of the Third Century, which we mentioned earlier. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Roman Empire was on the verge of complete destruction when this occurred—yet it recovered and flourished for another century afterward. Aurelian is a major part of the reason why.

When he came to power, the empire had split into three. In the West, the Gallic Empire consisted of the island of Britain and the province of Gaul and had been run independently for years. In the East, the city of Palmyra under Queen Zenobia had taken many of the Eastern provinces from Rome. In the meantime, the remaining provinces faced invasion from Germanic hordes, including the Goths and the Alemanni, who threatened Italy.^[9]

Aurelian changed all that. In an astonishing five-year reign, he won military victory after military victory. He defeated the invading tribes and reorganized the Roman provinces so that they would be easier to defend. Then he went east and reconquered the old Roman territories in the Palmyrene Empire. By showing mercy to the provinces that he had defeated, he was able to win them back into the Roman fold. Nevertheless, the city of Palmyra was sacked, and its rulers were paraded in chains, as was the Roman tradition. When he returned to the West, the Gallic Empire essentially agreed to reunify with Rome without a fight, and Aurelian was given the title of restitutor orbis: the restorer of the world.

Despite this, Aurelian was murdered by conspiracy. He was a harsh man who punished easily. An imperial secretary, concerned that Aurelian would execute him, forged a document which supposedly listed the names of Aurelian’s enemies who were scheduled for execution. He showed this document to those “enemies,” and they conspired to murder Aurelian. When they realized that they had been deceived, it is said that they felt very ashamed. Interestingly, it seems that Aurelian’s widow may have ruled in her own right for a time before the new emperor was proclaimed.

1 Diocletian
AD 284–305

Diocletian was perhaps one of the most successful emperors Rome ever had. After coming to power, he put the Crisis of the Third Century to bed by completely remodeling the Roman system. He established the Dominate, a new system of government in which the emperor’s word was law—he was almost to be worshipped as a god. He established a huge bureaucracy based on subdivisions of the provinces called dioceses, which are still used by churches today.

Deciding that the job of governing the empire was too much for one man to do alone, Diocletian divided it into four and had each district governed by a single emperor, a system called the Tetrarchy. This allowed each of the emperors to focus on their own province more effectively and deal with military threats along their borders. He reformed the currency and the army to deal with the instability that had led to so many emperors being overthrown and killed in the century before.

Perhaps one of the greatest achievements Diocletian had was being able to die of natural causes. He was, in fact, the only emperor to voluntarily retire and abdicate the throne. He went to his palace, which is now the city of Split in Croatia, and farmed cabbages. When the emperors who came after tried to persuade him to come out of retirement to help them rule, he essentially told them, “If you could see the size of the cabbages I’m growing, you’d give up on the Empire, too.”^[10] When you consider that every other person on this list was assassinated, you might see why he preferred cabbage farming.

Thomas is a physics student at the University of Oxford. In his free time, he produces a podcast, Physical Attraction, which explains concepts in physics—one chat-up line at a time. Find him on Twitter @physicspod.

By modern standards, life in ancient Rome was awful. Slavery was rampant, health care was very basic, and if you were poor, the only route to a comfortable retirement was 20 years of military service. However, it was still one of the most progressive societies on Earth at the time.

When the Populares faction were in power, the government actively worked to empower the people at the expense of the elites. Senate funds were used to buy farms off wealthy people and then give them to the poor, as well as to establish hospitals where the poor could be treated for free. Most public buildings were built and maintained with government money and charged very little for entry. Here, we study ten of the ways ancient Rome was surprisingly progressive.

10 Free Food

In the early years of the Roman Empire, Rome’s population grew rapidly.^[1] At the same time, wealthy landowners were buying up agricultural land outside the city, forcing poorer farmers to head to the city for work. The result was a large, impoverished group of people who struggled to find regular work.

Gaius Gracchus’s grain law of 123 BC tackled this by offering grain at half the market price once a month to anyone who was willing to stand in line and wait for it. The practice of doling out grain to Rome’s poorest would last another six centuries.

The system was overhauled during the reigns of Julius and Augustus Caesar. From then on, the grain would be completely free, but only Rome’s poorest 200,000 people would be eligible. They introduced a test which determined who the poorest were.

Though the grain was free, the people still had to pay for the materials and skills to have the grain turned into bread, unless they were able to do it themselves. In AD 270, Emperor Aurelian altered the system, replacing the grain with fresh bread, and introduced a system where pork, oil, and salt were also regularly distributed for free. The policy finally came to an end when the empire fell in the fifth century.

9 Military Pensions

Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, soldiers received a pension upon completion of their military service (16 years for Praetorians, 20 years for regular legionaries).^[2] In the early years of the empire, payment was usually in the form of land. However, the land was often either newly conquered and on the empire’s border—where it was vulnerable to raiders—or publicly owned land that was often rented or in temporary use by other tenants. Neither of these scenarios were particularly satisfactory for the average soldier, and they often led to land disputes.

In AD 6, Augustus Caesar scrapped the system and replaced it with a monetary payment scheme. From then on, each legionary received 12,000 sesterces when he was honorably discharged—along with a bronze plaque that recorded his completion of service. The value was equal to around 12 years of legionary wages and would have been more than enough to allow the soldier to buy a property with money to spare.

Augustus injected 170,000,000 sesterces from the imperial treasury to start the system and maintained it with a five-percent tax on inheritance and a one-percent tax on all goods sold at auction. Many of the wealthy Roman elite complained, since the taxes were hard on them personally, but the system benefited Rome in the long run by making soldiers reliant on the emperor himself for their pensions. It also guaranteed that anyone, regardless of class, could enjoy wealth in their twilight years if they completed a term of service in the military.

8 Free Entertainment

In the modern world, we think it’s natural to pay for our trips to the stadium or the cinema—how else would they be able to support themselves? In Roman times, however, access to shows, whether they were gladiator fights, theatrical performances, or chariot races, was nearly always free.^[3]

Instead, shows were sponsored by wealthy patrons who were attempting to court the people’s favor. Most of the time, these hosts were aspiring politicians who wanted to get the people on their side. Occasionally, they went even further and sponsored the construction of new public buildings. The most extreme example of this was the construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre, commonly known as the Colosseum. Shortly after his succession, Emperor Vespasian began construction of the amphitheater on the old site of Nero’s personal palace, the ultimate symbol of an emperor granting a gift to his people.

In return for sponsoring the games, the patrons were allowed to host them, which included deciding whether gladiators would die or not at the end of a fight. They were also permitted to give speeches or have people speak on their behalf at breaks between the performances. But the key fact remained: No matter how poor you were, you could go to the show for free.

7 Fire And Police Force

In 7 BC, Emperor Augustus decided to reform the way the city of Rome was organized.^[4] He split the city into 14 wards and put them under the control of officials, whose job it was to oversee their portion of the city and ensure that things like crime, housing, and fires were kept in check.

Premodern cities were massive fire risks, and large portions of them were frequently laid to waste by fires that spread out of control. After a particularly bad fire in AD 6, Emperor Augustus finally decided to create a public body responsible for the safety of the city—the vigiles. Made up of seven cohorts of 1,000 men each, the vigiles fulfilled the roles that modern police and fire departments serve today. Each cohort was responsible for monitoring two of the city’s wards.

In many ways, there was little to separate the vigiles from regular soldiers. They lived in barracks and were expected to commit their lives to the job. They were also responsible for policing the city day and night and generally keeping order, including tracking down and returning runaway slaves.

The vigiles had plenty of specialist equipment, including buckets, hooks for pulling down burning roof material, water pumps, axes, and a chemical compound called acetum, which they used to extinguish fires. They even had a fire engine—a horse-drawn cart with a double-action pump.

6 Free Baths

Baths, much like public entertainment facilities, were free to access—most of the time.^[5] During the reign of Diocletian, the entrance fee was just two bronze pennies, and access was free on public and religious holidays. So they were much cheaper than a modern-day gym membership, and a Roman bathhouse contained many of the same features: a swimming pool, a sauna, an exercise room, changing facilities, massage rooms, and exercise rooms.

In many ways, bathhouses served the same role as community centers do in cities today. They were hives of activity, where friends would go to have fun, politicians would go to preach their cause and win support, and pickpockets would go to steal the belongings of the bathers. Notches found in the walls of Roman bathhouses seem to have been storage for scrolls, so baths may even have provided reading material for their patrons—a much more feasible idea in Roman times, when scrolls were made of animal skin and therefore wouldn’t have been as vulnerable to the moisture in the air.

Most baths were surrounded by places where people could buy food and drink. So the average Roman going to the bathhouse in the afternoon could enjoy a night out with friends, a swim, reading material, and a meal for next to nothing. The only caveat was that public baths were often, unsurprisingly, very dirty, and many of the wealthy built their own private bathhouses that they and their friends could enjoy by themselves.

5 Insulae: Social Housing

A Roman text, known as the Regionary Catalogue, states that there were 44,850 insulae and 1,781 domus in Rome in AD 315.^[6] Both were types of residence: A domus was an individual home that contained a single family unit, while an insula was a block of communal housing occupied by tenants. While many of these insulae were built by private landlords, it seems at least some were funded and built by the Roman government to accommodate the capital’s population boom—or were, at the very least, regulated by laws passed by the Senate.

In many ways, these insulae were very modern: The bottom floor was made up of shops or workshops, while the floors above were private residences of between one and four rooms, accessed by a central staircase. Many of them had balconies. While most were four or five stories tall, and laws passed by the Senate restricted structures any taller than this, some stretched to as many as eight stories.

The Roman cityscape was much taller than many of us realize, and a city of similar height wouldn’t develop until the early modern era. While the Roman state seems to have stopped short of providing free accommodation for the poor, it was certainly concerned by the dodgy construction standards some of these insulae were built to, and by the late Roman era, they were even being built out of an early form of concrete. While these Roman blocks of flats certainly didn’t provide the highest of living standards, they were constructed en masse and regulated and monitored by the government in a way that housing projects wouldn’t be again until after 1500.

4 Free Water And Toilets

Ancient Rome, much like modern cities today, provided free public toilets and water fountains for their population.^[7] However, a Roman public toilet wouldn’t meet the standards of many of us these days: A public toilet was a single room, with lavatories around the side walls that emptied into a sewer (sometimes) or a pit. There was no privacy, and anyone who used the toilet would have to use the sponge on a stick that everyone else used. Roman toilets did, however, contain running water fed by an aqueduct—and they were free to access. Public toilets wouldn’t exist again in cities for at least another millennium.

Far more important, though, was the provision of free, fresh, and clean water in fountains. In his De Aquaductu, written around AD 100, Frontinus states that the nine aqueducts that fed Rome its clean water supply fed 591 fountains across the city with enough water to satisfy 900 people each. This wasn’t just the case in Rome; in Pompeii and many other Roman cities, water collection points were regularly spaced across the city. For most Roman people, a fresh supply of free, clean water was less than 46 meters (150 ft) away—a better ratio than many modern cities!

3 Free Health Care/Subsidized Doctors

In ancient Greece, like many places in the ancient world, health was considered a personal matter that people dealt with alone. If they were rich enough, they could pay for access to a consultant or a doctor. For many people, though, the best medical treatment they’d have access to would be common home remedies or family medical knowledge.^[8]

In Rome, however, times were changing. Rome’s first public hospital was built in 293 BC on Tiber Island, using Senate funds. Though hospitals were uncommon across the empire, they were always free to access and built using government funds—often from the purse of the local magistrate. Running costs were often subsidized by donations from people who used the hospital, or wealthy philanthropists.

Much more common, though, were private doctors who ran their own practice (clinicus). Many of these doctors received a salary from the Roman government and used an unusual method of charging patients by increasing the price depending on the assets of the patient. For the very poorest, diagnosis and prescription were very cheap, though treatment was never actually free.

2 Collegia: Social Clubs

In the days of the Roman Republic, almost anyone could form a club, or collegium. All it took was three individuals who agreed to form it.^[9] These groups were very important in everyday society, essentially operating like guilds did in medieval times. Groups of people from the same craft would come together and pool their resources, putting money into a collective pot that would work in a similar way to insurance if any of the group members fell ill, died, or lost their house.

A collegium was like a modern-day corporation, social club, and political party rolled into one. Some collegia, like the example described above, were a kind of social security system for individual traders. Others, however, would have been business or trade ventures, while some clearly existed to support a certain political candidate or to express a certain political view in organized action.

Since any three free individuals could form a collegium, they quickly became popular with the poorer people in society to lobby for political action. These kinds of collegia became increasingly common, until they were seen as a significant threat to the state. When the republic gave way to the empire after the rise of Julius Caesar, one of his first acts was to strictly limit people’s ability to form new collegia, making them have to personally get permission from the emperor rather than just the consent of two other people. Collegia largely disappear from history at this point.

1 Natural Theory Of Disease

In 36 BC, Roman writer and scholar Marcus Varro wrote that new buildings shouldn’t be built close to swamps because of the risk posed by minute creatures that couldn’t be seen by the eye, which enter the body through the nose and mouth and cause serious illness.^[10]

While this idea was far from mainstream in Roman society, most Romans subscribed to a natural theory of disease rather than a divine one. Most commonly, they believed bad smells could be the cause of disease, as could having an imbalance of fluids (called humors) in the body. Marcus Varro’s statement was the closest they came to discovering the existence of germs—but their theories about how to avoid illness were largely accurate: Keep fit, rest when ill, drink clean water, don’t camp in one spot for too long, avoid moist environments, and clean yourself regularly.