Ancient Rome Facts

In 2009, archaeologists in Modena, Italy discovered two skeletons buried holding hands for 1,500 years. Originally assumed to be a romantic couple, a 2019 DNA study revealed both individuals were male—making it the first known burial of two men holding hands from antiquity.

In many countries, urine was used as a detergent for washing.

There's a fish, known as Salema porgy, that causes severe hallucinations for up to 36 hours when ingested. During the Roman Empire, it was a party drug.

Ancient Romans prized a plant called Silphium so highly for its medicinal and contraceptive properties that they harvested it into extinction by the first century AD.

The word 'mile' is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 - the number of paces it took the average Roman!

A retired gardener borrowed a metal detector in 1992 to find a lost hammer in a Suffolk field. Instead, he uncovered 14,865 Roman coins and 200 pieces of ancient jewelry - the largest late Roman treasure hoard ever found in Britain, valued at £1.75 million. They found the hammer too. It's in the British Museum.