What was amazing about the romans

The Romans are a famous civilisation that started in BC! The Romans would have baths together To keep clean the Romans would go to communal baths — that means big baths where everyone would get in together. More to click Top 10 Facts About Christmas! Back to top.

Instead, ferrets, birds, and monkeys were the most favored pets in Rome, with ferrets acting as a pest control measure against rats and mice. Despite what you might see on most TV shows, the toga was only ever worn by wealthy male Roman citizens. Well, now you know! In the communal toilets of the Roman Empire, there would be a bunch of sticks with a sponge on one side which was used to clean up once someone had finished dropping their business. These sticks were known as Xylospongiums and would be washed by being rinsed in a bucket of water and salt or vinegar.

So, as you can imagine, getting the wrong end of the stick would be a pretty damn horrific experience and it is certainly an experience worthy of having a common saying created after it! The Fact Site requires you to enable Javascript to browse our website. Lower-class Roman citizens were called Plebeians.

Or Plebs, for short. The Romans were the first people to invade Britain. However, despite what Stalin might tell you, quantity is not, in fact, quality.

This is something the Roman Empire learned the hard way. This contributed heavily to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. There were eventually two Roman Empires. The first-ever sack of Rome happened in AD. The Romans recognised that building arches and domes using a quick-drying, liquid material was far easier than trying to build the same features in brick or stone. It was also far cheaper and quicker than building a large structure from solid marble.

It was also the Romans who developed the idea of making a framework in concrete, before cladding it with stone. The Colosseum in Rome is an example of a large, mainly concrete, Roman structure. While this may be a great line that underscores his achievements as emperor, he missed out the most important Roman building material of all — concrete.

The Julian calendar was not the first calendar, but has been the most influential in European history. The Julian calendar has a regular year of days, divided into 12 months, with a leap day added to February every four years.

This system worked well for over a millennium. Although this was only a tiny discrepancy, over the centuries it began to cause problems — the calendar year gained about three days every four centuries. So over long periods of time, it needed adjustments, and changes were brought into effect in 46 BC.

Once again, what had been in use previously was refined and recalibrated in to become our modern day Gregorian calendar. It is fair to say that if Roman legions made it as far as an enemy city or fort, the defenders were at a disadvantage, no matter how high or how thick their walls.

Alongside brutal tactics, the Romans had a number of weapons to bring a siege to a successful conclusion. One of these deadly tools was a ballista what the modern world would call a catapult , which hurled stones or sometimes pots of Greek fire, the ancient equivalent of napalm. Depending on circumstances, ballistas could also be mounted on warships. A later version of the ballista was called an onager , which did pretty much the same job but was cheaper and easier to build.

The scorpio , meanwhile, was like a large version of a crossbow. It could fire bolts over long distances well out of the range of enemy archers and was designed to kill careless defenders on the city walls. Another complex and fearsome weapon was the siege tower. This was a moveable wooden tower, designed to be rolled up to enemy walls, allowing the troops inside to descend onto the enemy defenders.

Siege towers took time to build and needed ramps, which allowed the defenders to see what was coming and gave them time to prepare a counter-attack. Nevertheless, when siege towers were deployed, more often than not they got the Romans over the walls. These rams were protected by a wooden gallery covered in wet cowhides to stop them being burnt by the defenders.

Once enemy walls were breached, the Roman soldiers would advance in a testudo tortoise formation. This involved covering their heads with their rectangular shields, with other shields protecting their front and sides.

Such a formation absorbed arrows and small rocks, giving the men valuable time to get to the breach relatively unharmed. Not all Roman experiments were successful.

In AD , Diocletian, a man of low birth who had risen through the ranks in the army, became emperor. This meant that local issues could be dealt with locally and that power was shared to a certain extent.

Obviously a sub-emperor could go rogue, but after decades of war and strife, the tetrarchy was a welcome idea that brought peace.