Ancient Rome Family
* Women in ancient Rome dyed their hair with goat fat and beech wood ashes. Red and blond were the most popular colors.
* Trajan’s Column is 128 feet high, which is the same height as a nine-story building. The sculptural frieze that wraps around the column is approximately 655 feet in length—the length of about two football fields—and depicts more than 2,500 men.
* The Circus Maximus, a theater in Rome, could hold as many as 250,000 spectators. New York’s Yankee Stadium holds approximately 60,000 people.
* Instead of soap, Romans used oil, which they rubbed into their skin and then scraped off with a metal tool called a strigil.* Trajan’s Column is 128 feet high, which is the same height as a nine-story building. The sculptural frieze that wraps around the column is approximately 655 feet in length—the length of about two football fields—and depicts more than 2,500 men.
* The Circus Maximus, a theater in Rome, could hold as many as 250,000 spectators. New York’s Yankee Stadium holds approximately 60,000 people.
* When the Roman Empire reached its territorial peak in 116 A.D., it spanned 2.5 million square miles.
* Lead was used as both a preservative and a sweetening agent.
* The toga, the official costume of the Roman citizen, was created using a semi-circular piece of white wool cloth that was about 18H feet in diameter.
* Many gladiators, like athletes today, chose colorful surnames to enhance their public identity. One gladiator, whose name is preserved on a funerary monument, was known as Antaios, the name of a giant from Greek mythology.
* The trepan, or drill, that ancient sculptors used to create their art was also used as a surgical instrument to bore holes into the skull. This procedure (called trepanning) was thought to cure headaches, treat brain disorders, let out evil spirits, and treat insanity.
* Roman charioteers belonged to racing clubs or teams. The most well known were the Whites, Blues, Greens, and Reds.
* Roman bath houses used an advanced heating system called hypocaust to heat the caldarium (hot bath) and tepidarium (lukewarm bath), as well as the floors and walls of the complex.
* Romans played board games such as chess, checkers, and tic-tac-toe.
* Many ancient Roman houses had flushing toilets and indoor plumbing.
* Associated with Mercury, the messenger god, a caduceus (a winged stick encircled by two snakes) came to be linked with postal workers and journalists. The caduceus of Mercury is often confused with the rod of Asclepius— a staff with a single serpent—which is a symbol of medicine.
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