Download Judith Cheston Publicity

The Romans had dozens of gods – some well known – Neptune, god of the sea etc. but
some rather silly ones
 Penates was god of cupboards
 Robigus was god of mildew
 And Furrina whose festival the Romans celebrated every 25 July but by 100 BC no
one could remember what exactly she was goddess of!
Romans also had a lot of strange superstitions and customs:
 Woman thought combing their hair with the spear of someone just killed in the arena
would bring them luck
 Sausages were banned as only being fit for Barbarians to eat!
 It was bad luck to enter a house left foot first so rich Romans put a servant at the door
to make sure everyone entered right foot first. They were the first ‘footmen’.
Did you know that if a Roman owed a lot of people money they could all take a slice of
him with a knife in payment?
Inventions and Medicine
 The Roman emperor, Vitellus invented a pie made from the tongues of flamingos and
brains of peacocks.
 A Roman cure for snake bite was to rub pig droppings onto the bite and then pour
wine mixed with the herb Fennel up your nose!
Egyptian remedies were just as bad! To cure baldness they mixed viper’s oil with bats ears
and rubbed it all over the bald patch. If you had a toothache you were advised to cut a live
mouse in half then while it was warm and fresh place it in your mouth.
 A pharaoh would jump in the river fully clothed if he’d accidentally touched a pig
because they were considered unclean.
 To show his success in battle an Egyptian soldier would take home the severed right
hand of each of the dead he’d killed so the pharaohs could count the number of their
enemy’s soldiers killed in the battle.
 As a status symbol pharaohs often wore a false beard made of wood and hung by wire
from a band around their foreheads