Ancient Rome Reborn...

Yvsa

Yvsa

Joined
May 18, 1999
Messages
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There was an article in this morning's Tulsa paper about this program and then a link to news about it in Kim's, "What's New" email this morning.
I have always been captivated with Ancient Rome as well as Ancient Egypt or any Ancient civilization for that matter.
It's absolutely amazing to me that there could be a city of one million or so people in that day and age with public baths and real toilet facilities even in private homes! It is really neat to be able to view what Ancient Rome most likely looked like in 320 AD.:thumbup: :cool: :D

Here is the first link and Here is the second.

Too me it's interesting to set and try to imagine the sights, sounds, and smells intermingled in a city such as Rome during that time. Surely there would have had to have been places to eat as well as get your hair cut or a tooth pulled or the like and then the smells of the animals that would have been present for whatever reason.
And along with all of those smells there would have been the smell of Garum, which I understand was a sort of rotten fish sauce the ancient Romans prized for their food such as salt and pepper is prized by us today.;) :D
 
There's nothing more fascinating to me than to study the Romans: ancient enemies of my people, the Celts.

As a armchair military historian I really like learning from firsthand accounts- things like Livy, Plutarch, Suetonius - Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico, for example, is really lighter reading than you'd think.

Rome is worthy of a lot of study, on many levels. In some ways mankind has not changed much; in some ways not at all.


Mike
 
AND

public water systems

public sewer systems (and sanitation rules ignored in the US at least as late as our Civil War [e.g.: place latrine well downslope from source of water])

central heat in buildings

regular bathing -- in hot water

fire departments

police

courts

banking (bank accounts, interest on savings, letters of credit, bills of exchange)

publishing

census

public mail service


And it [mostly] all came crashing down. (About a 1000 year gap in buildings with domes. The engineering was lost.) The path is not inevitably upwards.
 
... and the first TV (the colosseum) permanently set to The Violence Channel. :p


Mike

the Flavian Amphitheater, if you want to get picky
 
I think it would have been interesting to see if Rome had remained a republic instead of mutating into an empire.
 
It will be interesting to see if we remain a republic, rather than mutating into an empire:eek:
 
Yvsa said:
It's absolutely amazing to me that there could be a city of one million or so people in that day and age with public baths and real toilet facilities even in private homes! :D
Click to expand...

Not only that, but they pulled it all off without electrical power. If you cut power to any US city with one million residents so toilets don't flush in the high-rise apartments, you would be smelling alot more than fish sauce I suspect.
 
Since you mention that.... in Britain with the government's fanatically cultist obsession with wind-farms, the closure of older generating plant and tardiness over the building of a new generation of nuclear power stations.... there may be interesting times ahead.... :(
 
Thomas Linton said:
AND

public water systems

public sewer systems (and sanitation rules ignored in the US at least as late as our Civil War [e.g.: place latrine well downslope from source of water])

central heat in buildings

regular bathing -- in hot water

fire departments

police

courts

banking (bank accounts, interest on savings, letters of credit, bills of exchange)

publishing

census

public mail service
Click to expand...

And the hamburger. :D
Mind you, the original recipe had either almonds or pine nuts mixed in with the ground beef as well.
 
Since everyone's touting the virtues of their public toilets-

My little sister lived in Rome last fall as an exchange student, for one semester, and she related this to me. The toilets were basically a big stone slab around the walls with holes cut out on top. (Naturally there were no dividers for privacy.) But there was a shallow trough or gutter in the floor with water flowing through, just in front of where your feet would be when seated for business.

They used natural sponges for toilet paper. The gutter was there so you wash the excrement off the sponge from the last guy, before using it yourself. :eek: :D :D
 
If you regularly keep up with world news ,you should be aware that the European Union is doing its level best to restore the Roman empire !For those who are of scriptural bent ,an examination of the second chapter of the book of Daniel might help clarify things !!The long and the short of it is ,these things bode very ill indeed , not only for the US of A ,but for English speaking peoples everywhere.May God protect us all
regards
Nigel
 
Despite its multitudinous negatives, at least the original Roman Empire wasn't quite so full of control-freaking bureaucrats!
Vive le Picts!
 
Interesting that you should post this now. I actually just got back from Italy last night!

I went to Rome about a week ago, and checked out a lot of the ruins and stuff. It really is amazing how advanced they were, or maybe, how far civilization regressed immediately after their fall. Very interesting indeed.

Thanks, Yvsa!

SPQR,

Chris
 
The Romans gave us the word 'salary', from the custom of paying their troops partly in salt.

Lots of fine arterial roads in the UK still straight as a die and in good condition as the Romans built them.
 
Lots of fine arterial roads in the UK still straight as a die and in good condition as the Romans built them.
Click to expand...
Many of the Roman roads were top layers put onto roads already constructed and used by the Celts - who, iirc, pioneered the technique of "floating" roads across peaty areas.
 
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