hello I'm Simon Whistler you're watching
top 10s and in the video today we're
looking at the top ten fascinating facts
about the Romans ancient Rome had a huge
effect on the world as we know it today
many of the ideas they had in regards to
governing and infrastructure are still
in use in the modern world and similar
to ancient Egypt everyone knows quite a
lot about the ancient Romans however
just like with the ancient Egyptians
when a culture becomes that engrained in
the public consciousness we tend to
learn a lot of things vert aren't
actually true some of these stranger or
less convenient facts get swept under
the rug
the ancient Romans are a fascinating
culture and in some ways stranger and
more disgusting than you might have
imagined
number 10 Christians weren't fed to
lions and many tales of martyrdom were
exaggerated one of the most popularly
told tales of the Romans is how they fed
the Christians to the Lions for having
the audacity to start a new religion and
do their own thing this has been
recounted in so much popular culture it
is staggering and at this point it may
be impossible to remove it from the
public mindset
the sad part here is that it is
incredibly untrue but the untruth has
become so ingrained that it may as well
be a fact to most people not only are
the stories about feeding Christian
salons without any real basis but many
scholars argue that there is no real
proof for the kind of sustained and
targeted persecution that many later
Christian writers would put forth there
were truthfully only a handful of
scattered years where Christians were
ever targeted specifically at all and
many of the more colorful accounts of
martyrdom are completely impossible to
verify and there is good reason to
believe many of the stories were
exaggerated now this doesn't mean that
Christians weren't ever put to death for
reasons that involved their beliefs but
some scholars argue that in many cases
where a Christian was killed for being
Christian it was because they made
statements refusing the divinity of the
Emperor nor something similar while in
court this was not a specifically
targeted persecution although it was a
difficult position for them to be in
number 9 in ancient Rome the word
decimate had an entirely different
meaning when we use the word decimate
today we mean to destroy something
really badly and often completely or
entirely they
is essentially the correct meaning now
because of common usage but when the
term was first coined its meaning was
much more literal as you might imagine
from the root of the word it originally
had to do with the number 10 when a
group of soldiers committed some crimes
such as desertion the entire troop would
be punished to put them in their place
they would isolate the entire group and
then have them draw lots to decide who
was going to die the Romans would then
force those who were to live to kill the
10th of the troops that drew lots this
meant that quite literally they were
removing 1/10 of that troop or
decimating it this is one of the earlier
forms of something referred to today is
military discipline where an entire
troop is punished for a few mens
infractions this makes sure the entire
troop self police's this can be seen
today in some modern armies where
someone will make a mistake and the
entire units will be forced to pay for
the mistake however in today's modern
world we don't kill our troops we just
make them do push-ups or something
similar number 8 Romans shared a sponge
on a stick for cleaning up after using
public toilets today we like to think of
Romans as a very hygienic for their time
in fact we often consider them a beacon
of cleanliness that the world's didn't
see anything like for quite some time
after them they had their own sewer and
water systems and they had public baths
and were very much into being clean
however the truth is that some Roman
habits would disgust many people today
even if they live in countries without
much infrastructure for example their
public bathrooms were an absolute horror
shape it wasn't uncommon for giant rats
to energy out of the sewers and because
they contained a lot of gas fires often
erupted to make matters worse the Romans
of public toilets shared a single sponge
on a stick that they used to clean up
after using the bathroom they would use
the sponge on a stick to wipe themselves
up rinse it and then leave it for the
next person to use most people today
would be absolutely disgusted by the
thought of using a sponge to clean
themselves at a bunch of random people
had also used and while people think
they were clean
the Romans didn't actually bathe
traditionally per say instead they would
cover themselves in various oils and
then scrape that all off with an
instrument called a struggle number
seven the Romans invented an early form
of concrete the Romans did an incredible
amount of building and their gigantic
structures as well as their
infrastructure such as the aqueducts are
one of the things that they are famous
for
one of the biggest reasons we still talk
about their building so much is because
so many of them have vanished to
withstand the test of time they managed
this by using an early form of concrete
something that was essentially unheard
of at that time in history on top of all
of that once the Roman Empire fell their
knowledge was lost and concrete was
basically rediscovered much later on
however that doesn't mean that Roman
concrete is the same as modern-day
concrete modern concrete is actually ten
times the strength of Roman concrete
however the concrete they had back in
the day was still an incredible
achievement their concrete's might have
been weaker but it had advantages that
ours doesn't due to being made with
volcanic ash it actually performs way
better against erosion specifically from
water something that modern concrete
does not deal very well with this has
allowed their buildings to withstand the
test of time for generations of tourists
to continue to explore and be fascinated
by number six the Romans drove a birth
control plant to extinction back in the
day the Romans were known for their love
of sex and they definitely wouldn't have
denied it there was a plant called a
Silphium which they greatly prized
because they believed that it could act
as a method of birth control it could
only be grown wild and attempts to put a
quota on the harvest failed miserably
due to how ridiculously popular the
plant became it was soon worth an
incredible amount of money and before
too many years the Romans had managed to
lust their way to the extinction of the
entire plant
however some today do wonder if it
really worked the problem is that there
is no real way to be actually sure the
planter has gone extinct so we can't
really check samples and there were
plenty of dubious medical cures in
ancient Rome so this simply could have
been one of them however some experts
believe it could have had abortion
inducing effects which mean all the men
taking it would have been wasting their
time with the plant however whether it
worked or not
is hardly important the truth is that
just thinking it had the effect was
enough the Romans loved consequence-free
sex so they drove the plants to
extinction
number five some believe the Antichrist
referred to was Nero the idea of an
antichrist figure who becomes a ruler on
earth and helped set up the final battle
between good and evil that culminates in
the second coming of Christ has been
fascinating people for a very long time
many people will claim that the latest
world leader that they don't like is the
Antichrist and many people have been
suggested to be this over the years
son the Antichrist is always yet to come
but for others he may have already been
many scholars believe it is quite
possible that the passages referring to
the figure we now call the Antichrist
were actually talking about the Emperor
Nero this man blamed the Christians for
the fire of Rome and persecuted them
greatly he killed his own mother and was
known for being one of the most
despicable tyrants in the history of
Rome however even more telling is the
fact that when he died many people
believed he had just disappeared many
believed he was actually going to be
resurrected or return somehow and bring
more evil to the world and if you look
to the encoded numbers that everyone
always points to was the mark of the
beast the numbers can represent Nero's
name if you interpret them a certain way
of course this interpretation may not
have been accurate either but the fact
that the Christians thought he might
resurrect tall shows how much they
feared the man number four the Romans
flooded the Coliseum in order to conduct
mock sea battles the Romans were a
culture that liked to do things on a
very grand scale man they certainly kept
true to this when they reenacted battles
specifically if they decided they wanted
to reenact large-scale naval battles so
they would dig out huge trenches in the
grounds make artificial Lakes and then
fill them with soldiers and rowers
carrying out the various parts of the
battle in order to make it as realistic
as possible prisoners and captured
soldiers would likely be forced to fight
to the death as part of these mock
battles these forms of entertainment
were very popular but due to the
incredible expense they were only done
on special occasions many people were
not sure at first if the Coliseum was
used for these spectacle scissors hard
to find physical evidence and it seemed
like the structure would not support it
however it turns out that the Colosseum
could have supported being flooded for
such a purpose they just would have had
to use smaller ships and while there is
little physical evidence there are
plenty of written sources that point to
the Coliseum being used at least a few
times for this purpose the Romans were
always about going as big and as all-out
as possible then their theater was some
of the most advanced and realistic you
would find anywhere for example today we
stick with pretending to kill people
when putting on a show number three the
very strange lives of ancient Rome's
Vestal Virgins the Romans were very
religious and very superstitious and had
many different gods one of the more
important gods was called Vesta a great
goddess of fire they believed that as
long as her fire
kept burning Rome as a civilization
would endure for the ages to this extent
they decided they needed well-trained
and well disciplined people to keep the
fire burning always in order to make
sure that Rome remains for some reason
they decided that the best way to
accomplish this would be to appoint six
young girls at a time who would remain
virgins as long as they remained in that
position
it was a coveted position that gave them
status most women could never get but it
did come with the price of having to
remain virgins for as long as they were
helping to keep the fire lit a vestal
virgin who briefly let the fire go out
was punished severely usually taken
outside strips and beaten in order to
instill in them how important it is to
attend to their sacred duty and if a
vestal virgin became a virgin no longer
it was considered to be an act of incest
because they were married to the city
and the city citizens were related to
the city in some form this logic might
not seem particularly sound but to the
Romans it was very important that these
women remained virgins when these women
became a virgin no longer certain rules
forbade the normal means of execution
for these women so Vestal no longer
virgins were buried alive as a
punishment
number 2 urine was used as a cleaning
product for both teeth and clothes as we
mentioned earlier the Romans were known
for being hygienic Berta they also did a
lot of things that we might find rather
questionable and one of the most
questionable things would likely be the
way they made you severe in now urine is
mostly ammonia so it can be used in
cleaning products and ammonia does have
cleaning properties but the difference
is that today we are essentially
processing it which keeps out the stuff
we don't need back in the day Romans
would use urine in order to whiten their
teeth and also in order to clean clothes
urine would be collected throughout the
day and then diluted with water somewhat
and poured over clothes the launderer
would then stomp on them to sort of
simulate the workings of how a washing
machine works today while it may have
worked somewhat in cleaning the clothes
we really don't want to imagine what
they smelled like however it's very
likely the Romans would have been used
to the smell or perhaps would have used
various oils or other perfumes to hide
it also as we mentioned they didn't
clean in the traditional sense to begin
with and instead oiled themselves up and
then scraped off the excess number one
there is little evidence that the Romans
threw up on purpose so they could eat
more food one of the most commonly
believed myths is the
Romans had a special room for which they
threw up food so they could then go and
eat more food this has become greatly
confused because there is a word of
vomitorium but this is just the exit of
a Colosseum where it bomb it's out all
the people back onto the street this
fact has made it into books like The
Hunger Games series where the people of
the Capitol are seen as being similar to
the Romans in this respect when most
people learn that this isn't actually
true many insisted the Romans at least
still throw up on purpose in order to
eat more however there is really little
evidence of that actually happening
Romans did sometimes throw up on purpose
just as some people do today but it's
likely they were doing it far the
reasons just as there are other reasons
today there is really very little reason
to believe that Romans were actually
throwing up just to make room for more
food this myth has probably spread
around because the Romans were known for
elaborate feasts and hedonism in general
making it very easy to believe the truth
is what people are talking about likely
wouldn't work that well anyway most
people don't feel like eating after
being fooled then certainly not after
throwing up so I really hope you found
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