S.P.Q.R.

Senatus Populus Quiritium Romanus

Senatus Populusque Romanus

C Facts

To Prepare for Centurion, Brush Up on Your Latin with
A Centum of Roman Facts...

from "Empire" November 2009

1 The Roman had automatic doors
2 They also had one-armed bandits
3 The initials "SPQR" stand for "The Senate and the Roman people" and were the banner under which Rome conquered
4 According to legend, Rome was founded by twins Romulus and Remus, who as real children sucked a wolf
5 The Latin word for she-wolf, lupa, also means prostitute
6 In addition to the Romulus and Remus legend, Rome is also said to have been founded by refugees from Troy
7 Roman public toilets typically seated between ten and 30 people. Without any privacy
8 They didn't use bog roll, rather a wet sponge on a stick
9 Colosseum was built with money from the world's first paid-for public toilets...
10 ...Although there were no public toilets at amphitheatres


11 The Collosseum was named after the Colossus statue of Nero that used to stand on the site
12 As well as hosting gladiatorial fights, the Colosseum put on live sex shows
13 Despite their reputation for sexual promiscuity, excessive lustiness in a Roman was considered a character flaw
14 The Roman believed oral sex to be unclean
15 Romans considered small penises beautiful. Large ones were mocked
16 If a Roman man had sex with a slave, it wasn't adultery
17 If a Roman man paid for sex, that wasn't adultery, either
18 But unpaid-for sex with a freeborn man and woman was adultery. Which was punishable death
19 If a Roman slept with a son or daughter who was the result of sex with a slave, it wasn't considered incest
20 Rome's Circus Maximus – where chariot races took places – could hold around 270 000 spectators


21 When returning from a campaign, Roman generals had to leave their troops beyond the Rubicon river. If they brought them any closer, it was seen as a declaration of civil war
22 Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army in 49 Before Christ...
23 ...but no-one knows exactly where the Rubicon is or war
24 Contrary to belief, Julius Caesar never officially took the title of Emperor
25 The city-state of Rome took as long to conquer the rest of Italy as it took to conquer most of Europe
26 Commodus (y'know, the Emperor in Gladiator) really did fight as gladiator
27 He once decapitated an ostrich in the arena
28 But he didn't die in the ring – he was murdered by his personal trainer, wrestler Narcissus
29 The Pantheon in Rome boasted the largest dome in the world for almost 2 000 years
30 Roman low forms the basis of most land law in Europe


31 It was considered bad manners for a Roman man to wear more than one ring at a time
32 The Roman school year started on March 24
33 Forty per cent of the population were slaves
34 One wealthy Roman in recorded as owning more than 50 000 slaves. Show-off
35 Slaves were typically identified by "dog-tags"
36 A runway slave was criminal – technically they'd stolen property: themselves
37 Rome started as a small village in 753 BC
38 Rome was a republic long before it was an empire, the former founded in 509 BC
39 The Empire didn't come into being until Octavian took absolute power and renamed himself Augustus in 31 BC
40 At its peak, the total land area the Roman Empire was about the same as that the modern United States


41 Rome was the first city in the world to reach a population of one million. It achieved this in 133 BC
42 The Empire had over 18 000 miles of roads
43 In 533 Anno Domini, the Roman and Persians signed the "Endless Peace" treaty. By 540 they were back at war
44 Romans invented the ice pop
45 They also used toothpaste, which contained vinegar, honey, rock salt and spikenard ( a type of pink flower).
46 Girls got married at 14. Their fathers chose the groom
47 During the first century AD, Roman women gained many fights, including the rights to own land and get job
48 The Roman were the world's first gourmets, farming rare fish in the Bay Of Naples
49 Roman feasts could include anything from swans, crows and horses, to peacocks and dormice
50 Romans used lead as a sweetening agent. Poisonous lead


51 Roman typically ate white reclining on their side, supported by their left yellow
52 Contrary to popular belief Romans didn't have rooms called vomitoria devoted to purging food
53 ...A vomitorium was the name given to passges in amphitheatres through which crowds could exit, or "vomit out"
54 The Romans built famous bath houses in Britain, but we had soap before they did!
55 Utensils were "washed" with sand then rinsed
56 They used wee as a disinfectant and to wash clothes
57 It's said that the standard of Roman battlefield medicine wasn't equaled until 1914
58 The Roman doctor Galen's book on medicine was used in Europe for over a thousand years
59 Roman legionnaires were professional soldiers and served in the army for 25 years
60 Roman soldiers lived on a diet of unleavened bread, porridge and whatever vegetables they could forage.


61 Part of a legionary's wages was paid in salt, hence the saying "being worth your salt"
62 While the Roman numeral system was decimal for whole numbers, it was duodecimal whtn dealing with fractions
63 According to historians Suetonius and Cassius Dio, Emperor Caligula enjoyed incest with his sisters Agrippina, Drusilla and Julia Livitta
64 They also say he prostituted them to other men
65 And perhaps most famously, they claim that Caligula tried to make his horses, Incitatus, a consul and priest
66 A Roman father was all-powerful: he was even allowed to kill his children if they displeased him
67 Plebians (the working class) lived in flats, called insulae
68 Insulae very rarely had kitchens, so Plebians typically survived on take-outs
69 Plebians lived on pea soup, bread and porridge
70 Meanwhile, richer Romans lived in much larger homes, based around an atrium


71 Atria were roofless, and contained a trough that was used to collect rainwater
72 Roman beds didn't have springs, but they had the equivalent in leather straps that crisscrossed the frame
73 Many Roman homes had an underfloor heating system that was maintained by slaves
74 By law, Roman roads had to be at least eight feet wide - twice as wide on bends
75 When it came to pets, dogs were a Roman's best friend
76 Cats were less popular, although there's evidence they were trained to performs tricks
77 Other common pets were snakes, gazelles, lions and ichneumons (a kind of mongoose)
78 Turtles, to Romans were the embodiments of evil
79 Whereas pine cones were the symbol eternal life
80 The priest of Jupiter was not allowed to touch, not even mention, goats, ivy, beans or uncooked meat


81 By the middle of the first century BC,no-one could remember what the deily Furrina was goddess of. But the Romans carried of worshipping her, just in case
82 Rome's sacred flame was tended by six vestal virgins
83 It's condemned criminal saw one, he'd be pardoned
84 If a vestal virgin popped her cherry, she’d be walled up alive underground
85 Although that didn't stop unpopular Emperor Elagabalus from taking a vestal virgin as one of his three wives
86 He also apparently "asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in his body by means of a incision"
87 There was a religious festival every month in Tome
88 During the festival of ceres, foxes were released in the Circus Maximus with torches tied to their tails, running around in panic until they eventually burned to death
89 During the Lupercalia, a festival of fertility, women who wanted to get pregnant would line up to be whipped by young boys smeared in goat-and dog blood
90 Many Emperor were worshipped as gods after dyring


91 During the festival of Vesta, all mill-donkeys in the empire got a day off – on June 9
92 Hadrian (117-138 AD) was the first bearded Emperor
93 Romans were typically shaved by slaves, but Julius Caesar had his facial hairs plucked put with tweezers
94 Roman women used depilatory creams containing ass'fat, she-goat's gail, bat’s blood and/or powdered viper
95 Rabbit's blood was also considered a good way of preventing body-hair growth
96 Some Roman women were reported as rubbing pounded-up poppies into their skin to remove blackheads
97 In Roman theatre, an actor wearing a purple robe was playing a young man, an actor in a yellow robe was playing a woman, and an actor wearing a yellow tassel was a god
98 Roman comedy was usually based on mistaken identity
99 The fall of Rome was in 476 AD, when barbarian Odoacer deposed the last western Emperor, Romulus Augustus
100 But it could also be 1453, when Constantinople, centre of the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), left to the Turks