Some Amazing Rules And Laws Of Ancient Roman

1. Pregnancy test with a piece of garlic

The weirdest thing I ever listened to was how they tested if a woman is expectant. The woman had to put a piece of garlic into her private parts and let it remain there overnight. In the morning the doctor would check her breath. If it smelt like garlic she was not expectant. But if there was no smell so she was expectant because the kid was obstructing the path between the private part and the mouth.

 

2. Mithras cult - blood bath as a religious ritual for men only

Wiki: Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries, was a mystery religion centred around the god Mithras that was practised in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to the 4th century CE. The religion was stimulated by the Persian adoration of the god Mithra (Proto-Indo-Iranian/Vedic Mitra), though the Greek Mithras was associated with new and unique imagery, and the status of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practise is deliberated. The mysteries were famous in the Roman military.

 

 

 

One ritual encompassed the slaughtering of a bull. Differentiated members of the devotees enjoyed the freedom to stand nude in a pit below the bull, who was then slaughtered right over their heads. All the blood was seeping on the cult members in the pit, cowering them in the warm blood from head to toe. This was a blood bath.

 

3. Roman triumphs - holy red face

The Roman triumph (triumphs) was a social procession and religious rite of old Rome held to publicly celebrate and glorify the achievement of a military commander who had led Roman troops to victory in the service of the state or, initially and traditionally, one who had completed a foreign war.

 

One humorous ritual is the fact, that the leader of the ceremony, the triumphator, painted his face in red. A red coloured face was the face of the god Jupiter, so for one day, the triumphator could think as divine as humanly possible.

 

 

4. Female beauty - nonsense without ending

 

It was deemed unhealthy if a woman had any hair on her body, except on the head. All other hairs were bitterly and weekly removed. Women attended the baths to epilate during hours by skilled slaves.

 

For to be as white as possible, women utilized a whitener based on lead on their entire body, slowly infecting themselves to death.

 

A facial mask made of the fresh blood of a bat was deemed to heal your skin and was also used by wealthy men.

 

 

 

It appears as if the nonsense had never stopped.

 

5. Obligatory gifts for your slave - who’s the master in the kitchen?

 

When asked to a nice dinner in a wealthy house, the guest brought with him a huge napkin. At the end of the dinner, the guest fastened the remaining food in this napkin and brought it home as a gift (called apophoreta) for his house slave. This was so conventional, that the masters were extremely worried to forget this gift because then the slaves would get very furious and start a fight.

 

 

6. Dancing - forbidden for normal people

 

Romans adored looking at skilled dancers during dinner as a means of entertainment. But they would never have danced themselves. Such behaviour would have been deemed genuine insanity and was strictly forbidden. This could be funded in the fact, that in archaic times dancing was practised openly as a religious ceremony in temples and during religious ceremonies and performed only by chosen priestess like women. So not everyone had the right to dance.

 

 

How would they react when seeing a night club today?

 

7. The holy fire of the Vestal virgins - a life devoted to a simple bonfire

 

Can you visualize a teenage girl expending the rest of her life as a virgin with just the one task to put endlessly timber into a burning fire? And then standing the entire day around this holy fire and “guard” it? What a terrible job. But to be one of those girls and be selected as a Vestal priestess was the biggest possible honour a woman could achieve.

 

 

8. Collection of death masks as a status symbol

 

If you want to show off today, what do you purchase? Do you buy a huge car, a new big house, or costly clothes? In Roman times you had to have an enormous collection of death masks made out of bee wax. All your forefather had to be represented there, at least 5 generations back. All his hundreds of masks were then positioned on the walls in your atrium for each guest to be glimpsed. During nighttime, you would place a tiny oil lamp carefully behind each mask soo that all your 200 ancestors would gleam in the dark, smile upon you and remember you, that all that will be left from you shortly, is nothing else than one further added mask on the wall. Quite creepy…

 

9. Phallic obsession: penises everywhere

 

The penis was not a body portion that carried any sort of shame with it. No men were ashamed to let his personal part “breathe air” whenever and where ever. The penis was a symbol of good luck and success and was therefore hanged dangling in front of each door. The character was also used for jewellery, earrings, pendants, etc. The penis frequently had wings (angel penis ?) or horse feet and lion tails. Various other gods and goddesses could be added and even an additional small penis, like the penis of the penis. There must have been some sort of unique importance for each kind of penis. Those amulets had mysterious power and were called fascinum. Our modern word fascination is based on this word. (Men always loved their penises in all ages.)

 

10. Being at the mercy of your father

 

Each roman dad had the right to decide if his newborn kid was kept alive or right away murdered. The mother had no choice in this decision. Can you visualize the horror every woman had to go through straight after giving birth? When your spouse could murder the baby you carried under your heart for 9 months, just because he felt so?