Bath and Bodyworks
Roman women bought this scraped substance from arena fighters to use as perfume and skin lotion.
What is gladiator sweat?
These animals were marched over the Alps by Hannibal in 218 BCE for an attack on Rome.
What is an Elephant?
Caligula's obsession led him to plan this shocking political promotion for the animal.
What is trying to make a horse a consul?
Rome’s nighttime police and firefighters, called the vigiles, patrolled streets to stop these two dangers common in crowded apartments.
What are fires and crime?
Many modern languages like Spanish, French, and Italian developed from this everyday speech of the Romans.
What is Latin?
Fullers cleaned togas using this smelly liquid collected from public jugs because its ammonia removed stains.
What is urine used as laundry soap?
In the Colosseum, morning events called venationes featured this spectacle which used imported beasts like lions, bears, and leopards for crowd entertainment.
What are staged animal hunts in the arena or gladiators fighting wild animals?
Nero’s reaction to the Great Fire led to rumors that he did this while much of Rome was in flames.
What is playing music (fiddling) while Rome burned?
Walls of Pompeii are covered with this informal writing—insults, love notes, and advertisements scratched by ordinary people.
What is graffiti?
By replacing scrolls with this format of bound leaves with a spine, Romans helped invent what we now call this common medium for reading.
What is a book (codex)?
Some fashionable Romans wore these—human or animal—wired with gold as charms.
What are teeth used as jewelry?
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Fortune-tellers examined this part of sacrificed animals to predict the future.
What are animal entrails/intestines?
Elagabalus’s strange religious ideas led him to stage this bizarre act at banquets while dressed as a bride.
What is holding mock wedding ceremonies?
While most races happened by day, these "Circus" events occasionally featured night races lit by torches to entertain up to 150,000 screaming fans.
What is Circus Maximus?
The idea that citizens vote for representatives rather than ruling directly comes from this Roman style of government.
What is a republic (representative government)?
Women whitened their faces with powders containing this toxic metal, risking slow poisoning for a pale look.
What is lead?
These plump rodents were raised in special clay jars and served with honey as a luxury snack.
What are dormice (from dormouse jars)?
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Emperor Commodus’s obsession with the arena led him to do this disgraceful act.
What is fighting in the Colosseum as a gladiator?
These Roman street-side snack bars, called thermopolia, served hot stews and wine to citizens without kitchens—an ancient version of this modern convenience.
What is fast food?
Modern calendars follow this reform introduced by Julius Caesar, which organized the year into 365 days with a leap year.
What is the Julian calendar?
This purple dye made from crushed sea snails was so expensive that only the imperial family could legally wear it.
What is Tyrian purple?
Sacred birds of Juno were honored for supposedly saving Rome when their honking warned of a night attack.
What are the Capitoline geese guarding the city?
Domitian’s fear of plots led him to install this unusual feature in his palace corridors.
What are mirrored walls to watch for assassins?
Beneath the city streets lie hundreds of miles of these "underground cities" where early Christians held secret vigils and buried their dead by candlelight.
What are the Catacombs?
Modern farmers still use this Roman practice of planting different crops in successive seasons to keep soil fertile and increase yields.
What is crop rotation?