Tag: Romans

It’s an image that hangs in countless history classrooms (or occupies a slide in teachers’ PowerPoints, at least). The Roman Empire, for some reason always salmon-colored, clearly delineated on a map. The boundaries of the empire look so precise; we see Roman territory and non-Roman terr...

753 B.C. saw the founding of Rome by the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, Romulus and Remus. They lived to defeat that king and found their city on the banks of the Tiber in 753 B.C. after being abandoned on the Tiber by a king of Alba Longa and rescued by a she-wolf. Rome named its f...

The myth of a complete Roman collapse in 476 A.D has been beaten to the ground in the past few decades, as the recognition of the Roman survival in the East as the sole politically legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire countered the traditional assessment of a “Byzantine” rump stat...

Did Ancient Rome fight against the famous Sparta? Yes, this war is known in history as the Laconian or “War against Nabis.” It took place in 195 BCE when Nabis, the ruler of Sparta, was in power. Rome waged war against Sparta, not alone, but with the Achaean League, Pergamon, Macedonia, ...

It’s an image that hangs in countless history classrooms (or occupies a slide in teachers’ PowerPoints, at least). The Roman Empire, for some reason always salmon-colored, clearly delineated on a map. The boundaries of the empire look so precise; we see Roman territory and non-Roman terr...

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, an empire formed in Iran and Mesopotamia called the Seleucid Empire, named after its founder Seleucus, a former general of the Macedonian king. The new power immediately faced problems maintaining the empire’s territorial integrity, especially ...

Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire, known as Byzantium, continued to exist and develop in the East. The Western Roman Empire, however, ceased to exist in the 5th century. But who were the last of the Romans? Famous Flavius Aetius, a consul and general who defeated Attila at the Battle of the Catala...

Did ancient Romans sail to America? Regularly — of course not. But some relatively recent archaeological findings might testify to solitary and most likely accidental visits by Roman seafarers to the American coast. The Head from Calixtlahuaca. In 1982, a Brazilian diver found two Ro...

The most popular dish among the Romans was wheat porridge (puls), prepared with varying degrees of thickness, with or without meat, and with various seasonings. Playwright Plautus called the Romans “porridge eaters” because of their frequent consumption of this dish. In addition to porri...

We know very little about the mysterious druids, the ancient Celtic priests. Mostly, this information comes from the writings of ancient and Roman authors and a few archaeological finds. The Greek traveler Pytheas, who lived in the 4th century BC, was the first to write about the druids. He sailed a...

Did Ancient Rome fight against the famous Sparta? Yes, this war is known in history as the Laconian or “War against Nabis.” It took place in 195 BCE when Nabis, the ruler of Sparta, was in power. Rome waged war against Sparta, not alone, but with the Achaean League, Pergamon, Macedonia, ...

Besides the Latins, Etruscans, Greek colonists, and other Italians, the Samnite people lived near Ancient Rome. The Samnites had long inhabited the mountains of Central Italy, a region referred to as Samnium. They did not form their state; instead, they existed as a union of independent tribes with ...