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To work Posted by leire on Dec 17, 2012
For those of you who speak a latin language, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc. it might be familiar the word (in Spanish) “trabajo“, (Portuguese) “trabalho“, (in French) “travail“… For this post I will take as an example the Spanish version, but any other of the mentioned languages’ word for “work” has the same etymology…
Garum Posted by leire on Oct 30, 2012
Almost like our mayonnaise, ketchup or tomato sauce accompanying many of our meals and dishes, the Romans had their own typical sauce: garum. Because of its high price and scarcity, it might be better to compare it with the occasional spices or condiments more expensive and bizarre of our time, but hey, it serves as…
Hygiene in Ancient Rome Posted by leire on Oct 26, 2012
When waking up men washed their hands and face with water, and after they requested the assistance of the tonsor. This was responsible for shaving the beard and cutting hair, the aristocratic classes possessed one or more of them, we know that Julius Caesar’s liked keeping all his body perfectly shaved. But those citizens who…
Conversation guide for the Ancient Rome Posted by leire on Oct 24, 2012
A few years ago, before going on a trip abroad, it was habitual buying a travel guide of the destination which also included some useful phrases or basic expressions to comunicate with locals. Today, these guidelines are being relegated for Internet applications or smartphones, but if you ever have the good fortune to travel to…
The rail gauges in the U.S. Posted by leire on Oct 15, 2012
The rail gauge in the United States is 4 feet and 8 ½ inches. But why this measure? The answer is very simple. They have that measure because that’s how they did it in Great Britain and the first American rail gauges were built by British engineers. And why did British built them? Because the…
Roman prices Posted by leire on Oct 11, 2012
In the current days we hear everywhere converstations about price increases, salary cuts… So in this post we are going to see what economic policies they carried out in the Ancient Rome. Thanks to the Edict of Maximum Prices or the Edict of Diocletian, let’s see what wages received in professions and what prices consumers…
Memento mori Posted by leire on Sep 27, 2012
Memento Mori is a Latin sentence meaning “remember you will die” and is used to call to a person’s modesty, reminding that we are all human and we all get the time, and also indicating that life is, after all, very short. If we use Catholic terminology, we could say that the “remember that you…