On October 25th this year, the Vatican released a document that had remained in its secret archives for seven hundred years. It is the report of the official Church investigation into the activities...
Some people say it is not real, but try to tell them that bad spirits just entered their houses. They will feel insane and try to ignore it, but the unpleasant feeling will stay. In this case people...
For thousands of years, we turned to history to explain the what, why and how an event happened. Although “historian” did not become a professional occupation until the late nineteenth century, the...
Sextus Tarquinius was the son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome who was engaged in the siege of Ardea at the time. One day, Sextus invited his friends for supper and drinks at his...
Salt was one of the greatest treasures of the ancient world. Production facilities dedicated to the mineral provided work for many people, but now most of the sites are destroyed or hidden deeply...
There is a mausoleum in the heart of ancient Rome which saw the funerals of some of the most important people in the history of the Roman Empire. The mausoleum is known as the Mausoleum of Augustus,...
It has long been taken as fact that ancient Romans brutally murdered, abandoned or sacrificed countless infants as piles of baby bones have been found at numerous Roman sites. However, a new study...
The ancient Greeks are widely seen as having been the founders of Western medicine more than 2,000 years ago. But since then our understanding of the human body and how to treat it has changed beyond...
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of followers of pagan religions, the old beliefs haven't survived enough to be included in the group of the five major religions of the world. Officially,...
Tuwana (spelled also as Tyana) is an ancient city that existed since the time of the Hittite Empire. This city is now known as Kemerhisar, and is located in what is today the Niğde Province, Central...
In the Classical world, chariot races were the equivalent of today’s highest-profile sports and had the highest-paid athletes in history. But how did the chariot horses of North Africa cope with the...
The Passetto di Borgo (also known simply as the Passetto, which may be translated as a small passage ) is a corridor that connects the Vatican City, more specifically St. Peter’s Basilica, with the...
Much of what is considered normal in the present day might have been seen as shocking in the past and vice versa. This idea applies to many of the aspects of daily life, including customs related to...
Roman Emperor Caligula fell severely ill six months into his rule. When he recovered, he abandoned the toga for silk gowns and often dressed as a woman. He also declared himself as a living god...
Every place in the world has its own legends and superstitions. These led to beliefs about gods, demons, and spirits which haunt a certain location. Even toilets have their own otherworldly beings...
Incredibly, the end of the Parthian Empire started with a fake wedding. Before the wedding took place, a civil war had been raging in Parthia between Vologases VI and his brother Artabanus V. After...
Julius Caesar was married three times. He also had plenty of romances, including a famous one with the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra VII. Caesar was born on July 13, 100 or 102 BC. During his...
In the ancient world, the public were not so privy to information about the scandalous sex lives of central societal figures. Still, sexual rumors have always existed and, in this way, historical...
Recently discovered ancient British Roman texts on wax-covered wood tablets with legal, correspondence, note-taking and accounting documents have been translated, and researchers are now releasing...
Through the centuries there have been many brave men who wrote their name in history with blood. One of these men was the glorious Roman Publius Horatius Cocles, a young officer in the army of the...
Roman rule meant the control of Rome on ports and marine and land trade routes. In fact, Roman maritime commercial traffic was so important that they improved and expanded existing land routes,...
In the second century AD, the Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a villa for his personal enjoyment as he was not content in his official palace on Palatine Hill. Located on the...
Archaeologists have uncovered a unique insight into the life of one of the Roman Empire’s most prominent landowners. Until now, very little has been known about these leaders, aside from their battle...
Chris Allen / The Conversation Despite thousands of years of hard work by brilliant scholars, the great enigma of where Hannibal crossed the Alps to invade Italy remained unsolved. But now it looks...
