What Everyday Life Was Like in Ancient Rome

Ancient Romans gambling

Ancient Roman history is usually dominated by larger-than-life rulers such as Julius Caesar and eloquent senators such as Cicero. However, these men led an empire of millions of everyday citizens who were usually less concerned with conquering the world than they were with putting bread on the table and simply enjoying life. A look at the lives of typical Roman citizens reveals a culture that in many fundamental ways is not so different from ours; the ancient Romans worked, played, socialized, and expressed themselves — albeit often quite rudely. Here are six facts that offer a glimpse of what it was like to be an average citizen in one of the world’s largest and most influential empires.

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No Matter Where You Went, You Could Always Find a Public Bath

The Romans were masterful architects of public baths, called thermae. These were complex facilities with elaborate heating systems where Romans from all walks of life came together to relax, socialize, and of course, get clean. Bathing in the Roman thermae wasn’t just a simple dip in the water — there was a whole process involved. A visitor would begin by doing some light exercise followed by a hot bath, then a warm bath, and then a cold bath; they could also spend time in a steam room or get a massage. Public baths were a central part of Roman culture, and some citizens even considered them a symbol of Roman identity. In fact, baths were such an essential component of daily life that they were built in nearly every part of the Roman Empire, even in its most remote regions. Roman thermae could be found as far north as the British Isles and as far south as Egypt.

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The Empire’s Cities Were Filled With Graffiti

Archaeological evidence from well-preserved ancient Roman cities such as Pompeii and Herculaneum reveals that, much like people in modern society, the denizens of ancient Rome liked to express themselves through some good old-fashioned graffiti. Since the ancient Romans lived a few millennia before the invention of spray paint, they had to make do by scratching and carving their designs and messages into plaster surfaces around the empire’s cities. Graffiti carved by everyday Romans can be found on the walls of bars, public baths, and other places where people commonly went to socialize. Ancient Roman street art ranged from simple drawings of stick figures and animals to colorful, R-rated jokes and insults. While some of the more famous Romans, such as emperors and statesmen, were commemorated through huge monuments and stately statues, graffiti was often a common person’s best shot at leaving their mark on the world, and many ancient graffiti artists included their names in the messages they left, to be remembered by future generations — even if it was just for a rude boast or scatological joke.

The Roman Workday Ended at Noon

The ancient Romans didn’t have clocks they could use to count the hours of the day. Instead, they kept track of the time using the position of the sun, and employed devices such as sundials to divide the day and night into 12 evenly spaced units called “hora” (hours). Since tracking the sun was the Roman citizen’s principal timekeeping method, the workday was structured around solar positions that were easy to measure with the naked eye, such as sunrise, noon, and sunset. For this reason, a typical citizen would usually start their workday at dawn, which marked the first “hora” of the day, and stop working at noon. This left the rest of the afternoon open for leisure, and citizens from all levels of Roman society would spend that time attending sporting events, theatrical performances, and the all-important public baths.

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The Roman People Loved to Gamble

A love of gambling extended to all levels of ancient Roman society. Less-wealthy citizens would place bets on a wide variety of board games and dice games, which they played in taverns, city streets, and other public spaces, while the rich would build private gaming rooms in their homes. Romans would also frequently bet on the outcomes of gladiator fights and chariot races. (For the most part, only men were permitted to gamble, though women were allowed to participate in games of chance during special festivals.) Even the Roman emperors got in on the action. Rulers such as Augustus and Nero were known for their gaming habits, and for betting small fortunes on a single throw of the dice. Roman Emperor Claudius even had a custom-made carriage built with a gaming table so that he could gamble while traveling.

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The Roman Forum Was the Center of Public Life

With its location right in the middle of the city, the Roman Forum was quite literally the center of everyday life in ancient times. It was where the typical Roman citizen could shop, talk, and find entertainment. It was also the site of most of the city’s public gatherings, the Roman courts of law, and the meeting place of the Roman Senate. What’s more, the forum housed some of Rome’s most important religious sites, including multiple temples dedicated to Roman deities. In other words, if you were a Roman citizen, chances were good that you’d be making frequent visits to the forum for everything from daily errands to grand citywide ceremonies.

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There Was a Temple Where Citizens Could Go to Worship Caesar

One prominent temple in the Roman Forum was dedicated not to the worship of a mythological god, but to the former dictator of Rome, Julius Caesar. During the funeral games held in Caesar’s honor shortly after his assassination in 44 BCE, a comet appeared in the sky for seven days, which the Roman populace interpreted as a divine omen that Caesar’s soul had ascended to the status of divinity. This popular belief that Caesar had become a god was codified into law two years later in 42 BCE, when the Roman Senate officially declared him a deity. After this, a temple was built in the forum in Caesar’s honor. It even had an altar where Roman citizens would offer sacrifices to the deified leader, just as they would to supernatural Roman gods such as Jupiter and Saturn.

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6 Amazing Breakthroughs Made by the Ancient Greeks

Aristotle

For more than two millennia, the ideas of the ancient Greeks have spurred some of humanity’s greatest achievements. Philosophy, drama, science, and mathematics sprung from that particular peninsula in the Mediterranean. The work of the Greek scholars propelled Muslim thinkers during the Islamic Golden Age, and the European rediscovery of their ancient texts ignited the Renaissance and sustained the Enlightenment, giving way to new scientific advancements and even new ways of living and governing. These are six amazing breakthroughs from ancient Greece, born from some of history’s greatest minds.

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Pythagoras’ Theorem Formed the Foundation of Geometry

Pythagoras of Samos is arguably the most famous mathematician from ancient Greece (and there were a lot of them), and that’s because nearly every person at some point in their educational journey is taught his eponymous theorem. Expressed as a² + b² = c², the Pythagorean theorem states that the sum of the squares of the two legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. In ancient times, this proved the existence of irrational numbers and formed the cornerstone of what became Euclidean geometry (more on Euclid later), which plays a very real role in construction and navigation today. Some of the world’s smartest minds have set out to provide proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, including Albert Einstein (he was 12 at the time), and new proofs are still being discovered to this day. Simply put, the world would be a very different place without Pythagoras’ triangular insight.

Hippocrates Looked for a Scientific Cause of Illness

Watch any kind of medical drama, and it won’t be long before you hear the phrase “Hippocratic oath,” meaning a doctor’s sacred duty to “do no harm.” Although a bit of a myth in today’s hospitals, the oath is a lasting testament to the life and work of Hippocrates of Cos. Living in the fifth century BCE, Hippocrates was one of the world’s first physicians to explore the cause of illness beyond the usual divine explanations at the time (Zeus’ displeasure, for instance). He’s known as the “father of medicine” because he took a scientific approach to studying illness and tried devising treatments, as described in the 60 or so of his writings that survive to this day. Hippocrates influenced many future generations, but his most important student was arguably Galen of Pergamum in the second century CE, a Roman physician whose work became bedrock of European and Arabic medicine for more than a millennium, and who once claimed that all his knowledge originated with Hippocrates.

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Aristotle Devised a System for Classifying Animals

During Aristotle’s astounding life in the fourth century BCE, he wrote about a cornucopia of scientific subjects including physics, psychology, economics, ethics, government, and poetry. But what is often lost in that academic deluge is the fact that Aristotle was 2,200 years ahead of his time in the field of biology. Today, we classify animals using Latin names in a system devised by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century, but Aristotle created a classification system back in ancient Greece that was remarkably similar to our modern one. Aristotle separated animals into two groups: those with blood and those without blood (or at least red blood), and while Linnaeus didn’t use this particular distinction, it is similar to how the animal kingdom is separated into vertebrates (those with spines) and invertebrates. From there, the Greek thinker divided animals into “genera,” which were broader categories than the genus distinction we use today, and then by species. This groundbreaking foresight into ordering the natural world is why Aristotle is remembered today as the “father of zoology.”

Euclid Knew That Light Traveled in a Straight Line

Euclid, considered the “father of geometry,” was no slouch when it came to studying the nature of light and vision. Published in 300 BCE, his work Optics is considered the first time a scholar gave serious scientific thought to the nature of light. Euclid theorized that light propagated in rays and traveled in a straight line, a big departure from the Platonic idea of light as an “ethereal emanation.” The nature of light and human vision became a vast field of study, interesting Romans, Muslim astronomers, Renaissance thinkers, Enlightenment scientists, and even 20th-century minds. Albert Einstein, for example, won the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics not for his general theory of relativity (as often presumed) but for a discovery in the field of optics known as the photoelectric effect.

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Aristarchus Knew the Planets Orbited the Sun

The publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’ Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs in 1543 is a major moment in history, as the Polish scientist’s heliocentric theory directly challenged Catholic dogma proclaiming that the Earth was at the center of the solar system. In reality, Copernicus was mostly reiterating what some ancient Greeks knew nearly two thousand years before. In the third century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos (likely drawing from the work of another Greek astronomer, Philolaus of Croton) theorized that the sun was much more massive than the Earth, and he placed the planet in its rightful orbit around the star — the first heliocentric model of the solar system. Much like Copernicus’ work, Aristarchus’ theory was met with pushback (with one Stoic saying he should be indicted for “putting into motion the hearth of the universe”) and his ideas were ultimately rejected. This allowed geocentrism to flourish for far too long until Copernicus, citing both Philolaus and Aristarchus, eventually set the record straight.

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Eratosthenes Accurately Measured the Globe

Around the same time Aristarchus was configuring the solar system into its rightful arrangement, the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes of Cyrene pulled off one of the greatest calculations in world history. For nearly 300 years, the ancient Greeks had known the Earth was round — Pythagoras established as much back around 500 BCE — but understanding that the Earth was a globe and comprehending its precise proportions were two different things entirely, and Eratosthenes set out to solve the latter. On the summer equinox in 240 BCE, Eratosthenes measured a shadow cast by a stick in Alexandria, Egypt, that measured 7.12 degrees (roughly one-fiftieth of a circle). Meanwhile, in Syene (modern-day Aswan, Egypt), a particular well cast no shadow, meaning the sun was directly overhead. The mathematician then hired surveyors to measure the distance from Alexandria to Syene and came up with 5,000 stadia. This measurement enabled him to calculate the Earth’s circumference at 250,000 stadia, or somewhere between 24,000 and 29,000 miles (the exact length of a stadium is debated). Today, we know the Earth measures about 24,900 miles around the equator. In other words, even over 2,200 years ago, Eratosthenes just about got it right.

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7 Facts That Reveal the Wonder of the Ancient Maya

Maya Archeological site

For thousands of years — beginning around 1800 BCE — the Maya flourished throughout Mexico and Central America, primarily calling modern-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador home. One of the great civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica (along with the Olmecs and Aztecs), the Maya created a sophisticated society with advanced mathematics, architecture, and writing. Today, the Maya peoples make up one of the largest Indigenous populations in the Americas. Here are seven facts that explore the complexity and wonder of this ancient culture.

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The Maya Were Skilled Mathematicians

The numerical system used by the Maya, as well as many other Mesoamerican cultures, was a vigesimal (or “base 20”) system. While our modern “base 10” system uses 1, 10, 100, 1,000, and so on, the Maya used 1, 20, 400, 8,000, etc. The Maya system was much more effective for counting than the confusing system of numerals used in the Roman Empire, and the Maya also devised the concept of zero (perhaps around the year 36 BCE), a major mathematical accomplishment. The Maya leveraged their mathematical skills to build impressive cities, chart astronomical movement (using little more than geometry and some sticks), and develop their famous calendar. Speaking of which…

The Maya Did Not Think the World Was Going to End in 2012

The Maya calendar is a complicated system — in fact, it’s three calendars in one. One of them, the Long Count calendar, which measures time in much longer stretches than the other calendars' 52-year cycle, garnered quite a bit of attention in 2012, as some doomsayers believed the ancient calendar marked December 21, 2012, as the end of the world. The Maya, however, did not believe that. The mostly U.S.-based hysteria grew from the fact that the Long Count calendar was about to reach a 13th “b’ak’tun,” which occurs around every 400 hundred years or so, and this particular b’ak’tun also completed what’s known as a Great Cycle or Grand Cycle, which lasts 5,125.366 solar years. The Maya believed that the end of the Great Cycle simply meant the beginning of a new one — not the apocalypse. But lacking any evidence to the contrary, some doomsday soothsayers in the U.S. believed that life on Earth would end with the cycle (it didn’t), or that the ancient Maya were somehow following extraterrestrial instructions (they weren’t). Instead, December 21, 2012, came and went like any other day, and a new Great Cycle began.

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The Maya Civilization Grew to Some 40 Cities at Its Peak

The first Maya cities formed in the Yucatán around 1800 BCE, around the same time as the rise of the first major Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs, from whom the Maya inherited parts of their calendar and writing system. The Maya civilization began to flourish around 250 CE, entering a golden age known as the classic period. Much like the ancient Greeks who thrived centuries earlier, the Maya had no central authority during this period and were instead dominated by dozens of city-states. The Maya followed “kuhul ajaw,” or holy lords, who claimed to be descendants of gods and were seen as intermediaries between the Maya people and their deities. The city-states, of which there were about 40, held populations as small as 5,000 or as large as 50,000 to 120,000. The most famous examples were Palenque, Copán, and Tikal, the largest city in the southern Maya lowlands. During the classic period, anywhere from 2 million to 10 million Maya lived in Mesoamerica.

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Many Maya Cities Were Mysteriously Abandoned Around 900 CE

Around the year 750 CE, the fortunes of the Maya began to change. Artifacts show that by the middle of the eighth century, construction in some cities had drastically declined, and by 925 CE, many of the city-states that made up the heart of this Mesoamerican power were abandoned. So what happened? Well, it’s hard to know for sure, but it’s likely that a combination of factors led to the decline of the Maya civilization. Geologic records gathered from stalagmites in Belize show prolonged drought affected the area at the time. Environmental degradation, overpopulation, shifting trade routes, and warring city-states also likely contributed to the civilization’s decline. However, these ill fortunes mostly impacted the southern lowlands (southern Mexico, northern Guatemala, and Belize), and between 900 CE and 1519 CE, cities in the northern lowlands and Guatemala’s highlands rose to prominence. (After all, the name “Maya” comes from the northern capital Mayapan.) Cites such as the highland city of Utatlán (also known as Qʼumarkaj) in modern-day Guatemala remained regional powers as late as the arrival of the Spanish in 1524.

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Only Three Maya Codices Still Exist

The first evidence of Maya writing, likely adopted from the Olmecs, dates to around 300 BCE, found in the murals at San Bartolo in Guatemala. Similar to the ancient Egyptians, the Maya used ornate hieroglyphics and pictographs to express themselves and record government and calendar events. Maya writing also graces myriad monuments (known as stelae), ceramics, and other objects, but for centuries scholars had no idea what they said. That’s because when the Maya were subjugated to Spanish rule in the 16th century, a zealous inquisitor named Diego de Landa tragically set fire to dozens of Maya codices — essentially accordion-style books made from the bark of a fig tree — that likely contained detailed writings about monuments and other important historical facts about the ancient civilization. Thankfully, three codices (and possibly a fourth, though it has yet to be confirmed) survived the conflagration. These three codices, named for the cities where they’re kept today — Paris, Dresden, and Madrid — along with Landa’s own account of how the Maya writing system worked, allowed scholars to decipher the glyphs in the 1950s and revolutionized our understanding of the culture. Today, some Maya are teaching this rediscovered script to future generations in an effort to preserve the ancient writing system.

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Nearly Half of Guatemala's Modern Population Is Ethnically Maya

Today millions of Maya still inhabit the same regions of their ancestors spread throughout southern Mexico and Central America, and one of the largest populations lives in Guatemala. Out of the county’s 15 million inhabitants, some 6.5 million identify as Maya, which today comprises a rich tapestry of peoples (there are 22 Mayan languages in the country alone). Along with large populations also living in Mexico, including the Yucatecs, the Tzotzil, and the Tzeltal, the Maya are one of the largest Indigenous groups in the Americas today. Despite being the original stewards of these lands, the Maya have endured incredible hardships both past and present. In recent years, the Mexican government, for example, has apologized to the Maya for historical mistreatment, but the group is still subjected to racism, poverty, and inequality. The Maya continue to fight for civil rights, such as bilingual education for the preservation of the Mayan language. In 1992, Maya activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum even received the Nobel Peace Prize for her lifetime of work in promoting the rights of the Maya throughout their ancestral homeland.

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Maya Ruins Are Still Being Discovered Today

In the 1840s, American archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens began clearing the jungle undergrowth that was covering sites such as Uxmal and Palenque in Mexico, kicking off a journey of discovery that continues to this day. Because the Maya occupied dense sections of rainforest, finding ruins can be extremely complex. However, modern laser technology, satellite imaging, and ground-penetrating radar have made the job much easier, and new discoveries are still illuminating aspects of this fascinating culture. In 2018, for example, archaeologists mapped 810 square miles in northern Guatemala by using laser technology to peer through the rainforest’s dense canopy. What they discovered was 60,000 previously unknown Maya ruins — Stephen Houston, a professor of archeology and anthropology at Brown University at the time called the discovery “one of the greatest advances in over 150 years of Maya archaeology.” As recently as February 2023, a similar study revealed a “superhighway” of interconnected cities around 1000 to 350 BCE, showing just how sophisticated the ancient Maya were. As discoveries continue, it’s likely the full nature of this remarkable civilization will only become more clear over time.

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7 Facts About the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Lighthouse of Alexandria

The first list of the wonders of the world was compiled by the ancient Greek writer and poet Antipater of Sidon in the second century BCE, and it included seven extraordinary landmarks around the Mediterranean and modern-day Middle East. Since then, these ancient marvels have been a subject of study, fascination, and awe. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were stunning achievements of sculpture and architecture, built with such intricacy and at such a massive scale that in some cases historians remain baffled as to how ancient civilizations were able to create them. Most of the wonders have been lost to time — only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains in any substantial form — but they still capture the imaginations of generations of people who look to them as a source of beauty and inspiration. Here, we take a brief tour around the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East with seven facts about the ancient wonders of the world.

The Great Pyramid of Giza Is the Largest Compass Ever Built

If you happen to find yourself lost in the deserts of Egypt, you might want to seek out the Great Pyramid of Giza to find your way home. The four corners of the Great Pyramid are aligned with the four cardinal directions, and with such a high degree of accuracy that experts are still trying to puzzle out how the ancient Egyptians pulled it off. The pyramid’s alignment is accurate within one-fifteenth of a degree, a measure that’s difficult to achieve even with modern technology, and especially for a structure so massive (in its prime, the Great Pyramid stood 481 feet tall). Historians theorize that ancient engineers may have used shadows cast by the sun or the location of stars in the night sky to orient the massive structure. However, to this day, the exact method the Egyptians used to pull off this stunning feat of architecture and engineering remains a mystery.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon May Have Relied on a Rooftop Irrigation System

Located in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon (in modern-day Iraq), the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are unique among the seven ancient wonders in that their historical existence remains a subject of debate among scholars. No definitive evidence of the gardens has ever been found, and our modern knowledge of them relies on a handful of detailed descriptions that have survived from antiquity. One common thread among many of these accounts is the ingenious irrigation system that kept the gardens vibrant and thriving. The gardens were said to grow on a series of rooftop terraces, and some historians believe that water was pumped through a complex system of pulleys, pipes, and water tanks from the Euphrates River up into the gardens.

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The Statue of Zeus at Olympia Was Almost Stolen by a Roman Emperor

The Statue of Zeus, a giant sculpture erected outside the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, was famous throughout the Mediterranean, and attracted tourists and religious pilgrims who came from all over Greece to marvel at its sheer scale and beauty. It was considered so amazing, in fact, that the Roman emperor Caligula once decided to add the creation to his personal art collection, and tried to have the entire 40-foot statue moved to Rome. (He also planned to remove the statue’s head and replace it with his own.) According to Roman historians, the plan was abandoned when the statue started laughing and frightened away the moving crew.

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The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus Was Completely Rebuilt After Burning Down

The Temple of Artemis was one of the most famous structures of the ancient world. It was decorated with countless works of breathtaking art, and its massive size made it the most striking building in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey). Unfortunately, the temple’s notability could sometimes draw negative attention, and in 356 BCE it was burned down by a man named Herostratus, who hoped his crime would earn him eternal fame. At great expense and difficulty, the Ephesians undertook the massive task of rebuilding the temple, and finally completed the reconstruction sometime after 323 BCE. Sadly, when the temple was destroyed a second time by invading Goths, it was never rebuilt again.

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The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Gave Us the Word “Mausoleum”

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, a gigantic monumental tomb built for the ancient ruler Mausolus of Caria (in modern-day Turkey), was a whopping 140 feet tall and decorated with sculptures by four of the most famous sculptors in ancient Greece. Its appearance was so awe-inspiring that ever since it was built, the word “mausoleum” has been used for any tomb built in a similar style — though most modern-day mausoleums are a fair bit smaller.

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An Oracle Prevented the Reconstruction of the Colossus of Rhodes

The Colossus of Rhodes, a towering statue of the Roman sun god Helios, stood for just 54 years in the harbor of the Greek city of Rhodes before it toppled in an earthquake around 226 BCE. The Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy III offered to help pay for the reconstruction of the monument, but the project was quickly abandoned when the Oracle of Delphi (the Greek high priestess Pythia) delivered a prophetic warning that rebuilding the statue would provoke the wrath of Helios, and bring divine retribution to the city.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria’s Beacon Could Be Seen for 35 Miles

Constructed around 280 BCE, the Lighthouse of Alexandria in ancient Egypt wasn’t just for show; it played an essential role in guiding ships along the treacherous Egyptian coastline, and its light could be seen by ships up to 35 miles away. Part of the reason for the beacon’s impressive reach was the tower’s massive height. At the time it was built, it was the second-tallest building in the world after the Great Pyramid of Giza (at 350 feet and 481 feet, respectively). The strength of the beacon was further amplified by a gigantic mirror that was used to reflect the light out to sea.

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6 Surprising Facts About Attila and the Huns

Illustration of Attila the Hun

More than 1,500 years after his death, Attila the Hun remains one of the most fear-inducing figures in history. He and his nomadic empire spent decades terrorizing and conquering Europe on horseback, so much so that he’s still remembered all across the continent — sometimes with reverence, sometimes with hatred. But many details of his life are unclear, and some that have been reliably recorded aren’t as widely known as the apocryphal legends about him. Here are five such facts about Attila and his empire.

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No One Knows Where the Huns Came From

The Huns were among the most feared people in the world, as well as some of the least understood. That’s exemplified by the fact that the tribe’s precise origins remain unknown to this day. They were nomads, after all, and while one popular theory posits that their roots can be traced back to the Xiongnu people of ancient Mongolia, it’s impossible to confirm. Even the etymology of the Huns’ name is disputed, with some historians ascribing it to the old Turkic word for “ferocious”; others thinking it comes from the Persian term hūnarā, meaning “skilled”; and others still of the belief that it’s derived from the Ongi River in Mongolia, which could possibly have been the Huns’ ancestral homeland.

They Once Launched an Invasion to Win Attila Another Wife

Attila had many wives — the precise number is unknown — the last of whom was Ildico, whom he married just hours before dying of a nosebleed. His courtships weren’t all traditional, as you might imagine, and he even launched one of his many military campaigns for the explicit purpose of winning himself a wife. That would be Justa Grata Honoria, the sister of Roman Emperor Valentinian III, who was unhappy at having her own hand in marriage promised to a Roman senator and sought Attila’s help in getting out of said engagement. Because she sent him not only a letter but her ring, Attila interpreted her actions as not just a plea for help but a marriage proposal. He accepted this supposed proposal, demanding half of the Western Empire as his dowry. Valentinian was furious and had to be persuaded to merely exile Honoria rather than execute her.

Attila had been hoping to invade Roman territory for some time, and Honoria’s letter offered the pretext he needed. Although he was unsuccessful in winning her hand in marriage and never conquered Rome, it wasn’t due to defeat on the battlefield.

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Attila Almost Sacked Rome Until a Meeting With the Pope Changed His Mind

The Huns proved troublesome for all of Europe, but they especially disliked the Romans. Attila and his army invaded Italy in 452 CE, sacking cities such as Aquileia en route to Rome. Upon his arrival in the capital, three men were sent to negotiate with the Hunnish king: Gennadius Avienus, Memmius Aemilius Trygetius, and, most significantly, Pope Leo I. Though the details of their meeting are lost to history, what is known is that Attila immediately withdrew.
There are theories, of course. Some believe Attila was dissuaded by his own men, who reminded him that Visigothic King Alaric died shortly after sacking Rome 40 years earlier, while others contend that Attila was swayed by this speech from the pope:

"The people of Rome, once conquerors of the world, now kneel conquered. We pray for mercy and deliverance. O Attila, you could have no greater glory than to see suppliant at your feet this people before whom once all peoples and kings lay suppliant. You have subdued, O Attila, the whole circle of the lands granted to the Romans. Now we pray that you, who have conquered others, should conquer yourself. The people have felt your scourge. Now they would feel your mercy."

Whatever the case, Attila left Rome shortly after the meeting. Nearly 1,000 years later, their encounter became the subject of Raphael’s fresco “The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila,” which was completed in 1514 and is now part of the Vatican’s collection.

The Huns Only Lost One Battle During Attila’s Reign

Attila’s military prowess is hard to overstate, as is the terror he inspired in his enemies. No statistic speaks to this quite like the fact that he suffered just one defeat as leader of the Huns, during the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains on June 20, 451 CE. With 200,000 soldiers at his back during the Huns’ invasion of Gaul, Attila wreaked so much havoc that General Flavius Aetius of Rome took the desperate measure of forming an alliance with King Theodoric I of the Visigoths. Only their combined forces were able to best Attila on the battlefield, though Theodoric did not survive — he was one of the “massive number of casualties,” which had the unexpected effect of making his forces fight even harder. “When first light arrived” the following morning, according to historian Paul K. Davis, “both sides were able to view the carnage of the previous day’s fighting and neither seemed eager to renew it.” Victory was short-lived, with both Attila and Aetius dying within the next three years — the latter at the hands of Roman Emperor Valentinian himself.

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Attila Bore No Relation to Genghis Khan

A quick search of the two leaders’ names will result in any number of articles about their many differences, all of which stem from a tendency to conflate the two of them. It’s easy to understand why, as both led nomadic empires that terrorized Europe via brutal warfare and are either lionized or vilified depending on whom you ask. But they weren’t related in any way; in fact, Attila was born sometime around 406 CE and Genghis was not born until 1162 — more than 700 years after the former’s death. Genghis was ultimately much more successful as a conqueror, with his Mongol Empire becoming the largest contiguous land empire in history. Attila might not have been his ancestor, but he probably still would have been impressed by — and perhaps even a little envious of — Genghis’ skill at warfare.

Attila’s Empire Fell Apart Soon After His Death

Following Attila’s strange demise — reportedly due to a nosebleed on his wedding night — his empire was meant to be divided equally among his sons Dengizich, Ellac, and Ernakh. They couldn’t coexist peacefully, however — like father, like sons — and the civil war that followed allowed their vassals to rise up against them. The first was Ardaric, king of the Gepidae, who defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454 CE. (Prior to this rebellion, Ardaric was “famed for his loyalty and wisdom” and Attila “prized him above all the other chieftains.”) Ellac was slain in that battle, and it’s thought that what remained of his brothers’ empire was gone within a year or two — the Huns aren’t mentioned in most historical sources after 469 CE.

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7 Surprising Facts About the Age of Dinosaurs

Illustration of dinosaurs

For millions of years, the predominant class of animal on Earth was that of the dinosaurs — a name that comes from the Greek words for “terrible lizards” (even though dinosaurs were reptiles but not lizards at all). From around 252 million to 66 million years ago, these incredible creatures evolved in every corner of the globe, even Antarctica. Although the age of dinosaurs stretched far longer than humans have even walked upright (186 million years versus 7 million years), scientists have only been aware of the existence of dinosaurs for about two centuries, and our understanding of them changes almost daily as paleontologists uncover more secrets. These seven surprising facts explore the ever-fascinating world of these ancient “terrible lizards.”

Photo credit: DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY / Contributor via Getty Images

Two Mass Extinctions Gave Rise to the Dinosaurs

The Earth is no stranger to mass extinctions, having experienced five (and currently undergoing a sixth) in its 4.6 billion-year history. But none was quite so devastating as the Permian extinction, otherwise known as the “Great Dying.” Scientists are not certain of its cause (a leading theory is continuous volcanic eruptions in modern-day Siberia), but its deadly results aren’t up for debate: The world lost 90% of its plant and animal species. This cataclysmic event, which occurred around 252 million years ago, marked the end of the Permian Period and start of the Triassic Period. As life recovered from this biological trauma, various animals took root, including the Lystrosaurus, ichthyosaurs, and eventually, archosaurs — the ancestors of dinosaurs. The first dinosaurs appeared in the fossil record around 240 million years ago, and a second extinction, known as the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, occurred around 202 million years ago, killing off many of their rival archosaur species. With less competition and larger ranges, the small dinosaurs were then able to thrive and evolve into the gigantic reptiles of the subsequent Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Most Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park Didn’t Live During the Jurassic Period

Although the age of dinosaurs often conjures up an image of a tropical planet with stegosauruses and T. rexes running rampant, the scientific reality is more complicated. The dinosaurs actually lived during three different geologic periods: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous (known overall as the Mesozoic Era). All three periods played host to giant reptiles we know today as dinosaurs, but each one was distinct, with its own unique cast of dino characters. While the Triassic Period saw mostly small dinosaurs, the Jurassic Period gave rise to monstrously proportioned dinos, and the Cretaceous Period hosted an immense diversity of species. Many of the dinosaurs featured in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park — including the velociraptor, triceratops, ankylosaurus, parasaurolophus, and most famously, the Tyrannosaurus rex — actually evolved during the late Cretaceous Period. Only a few starring dinos, such as the dilophosaurus and brachiosaurus (in arguably the best scene in the film), actually lived during the titular Jurassic Period. Thankfully, Hollywood corrected the error with a Jurassic Park-inspired children’s movie in 2020 called Camp Cretaceous.

Photo credit: VW Pics / Contributor via Getty Images

Dinosaurs Measured From a Few Inches Big to Several Stories Tall

Today, the animal class Mammalia features a stunning array of species in all different shapes and sizes, from the 2-gram bumblebee bat to the 200-ton blue whale. The same can be said for the dinosaurs. The smallest of the now-extinct dinosaurs weren’t very big at all; some may have only been the size of a sparrow. On the other end of the spectrum, no creature quite compared to the Titanosaur, an especially gargantuan long-necked sauropod. The largest of this cadre was the Argentinosaurus, a species discovered in (you guessed it) Argentina. Although no complete skeleton of this dinosaur has ever been uncovered, paleontologists estimate it would’ve stood 131 feet tall (taller than a 10-story building) and weighed upwards of 110 tons, making it the largest land animal in Earth’s history.

A Dinosaur’s Day Was Not 24 Hours Long

The world of the dinosaurs was unlike our own. For one, the supercontinent Pangea was beginning to break up during the Triassic Period, so the Earth’s landmasses during the dinosaur age would look unrecognizable to modern eyes. What’s more, the length of a day — the average time it takes Earth to rotate on its axis — wasn’t 24 hours. This is because ever since the Earth’s creation, the planet’s rotation has been slowing down. Some 1.4 billion years ago — long before the dinosaurs — a day on Earth was approximately 18 hours and 41 minutes. At the dawn of the dinosaur age, a day would have been around 23 hours long. Over time, Earth’s rotation continued to slow down as the moon moved further into its modern orbit. Every year, approximately 0.0000135 seconds are added to the length of a day on Earth. Since the end of the Bronze Age (around 1200 BCE), that small change has only added up to 0.047 seconds, but in the many millions of years since the dinosaurs, it made up the difference of an entire hour.

Photo credit: Mohamad Haghani/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

The Tyrannosaurus Rex (And Many Dinos) Had Feathers

One of the biggest paleontological revelations of the past couple of decades is the discovery that most (if not all) dinosaurs had feathers. Similar to how all mammals have some kind of fur — from an alpaca’s extra-dense coat to the wispy hairs found on elephants — dinosaurs also sported a wide range of feathers. When scientists first identified dinosaur fossils in the 1820s, the consensus was that these extinct creatures were simply large reptiles. While true, many dinosaurs are actually more closely related to birds (which can technically be classified as reptiles). However, the reptilian classification caused paleontologists for more than a century to picture these beasts more like scaly crocodiles than resplendent roosters, so when fossil discoveries in the early 20th century displayed evidence of feather insertion points, paleontologists overlooked them in favor of the accepted “big lizard” paradigm. Now scientists know that many of the dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods displayed a wide array of colorful feathers. The precise ubiquity of feathers is still up for debate, with some evidence suggesting that early Triassic dinosaurs and also long-necked dinosaurs such as sauropods were perhaps more scaly than feathery. But experts are now starting to change their perception of even the most famous dinos; one paleontologist described the theropod T. rex as a “roadrunner from Hell.”

Photo credit: JSM Historical/ Alamy Stock Photo

All Land-Based Dinosaurs Died Out Within Nine Months

Mass extinctions are not usually measured in months, but one exception is the K-T (Cretaceous–Tertiary) extinction event that occurred 66 million years ago. When a 6-mile-wide asteroid larger than Mount Everest struck off the coast of what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula, the impact released 100 million megatons of energy, vaporizing the asteroid and sending a massive cloud of material into the atmosphere and across the globe. The resulting rain of molten glass, wildfires, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, scalding air temperatures, and lasting darkness killed off all land-based dinosaurs within just nine months. Just as two extinction events had given rise to the dinosaurs’ rule on Earth, a third one ended it in a geological millisecond — or did it?

Dinosaurs Never Went Extinct

Although swift velociraptors, massive titanosaurs, and carnivorous T. rexes are long extinct, some species of small avian dinosaurs — by some accounts no larger than ducks — survived the cataclysmic blast thanks to their ability to subsist on small amounts of food and forage the world’s destroyed forests with an evolutionary advantage known as a “beak.” It’s from these hardy survivors that all of today’s birds descended. And these avian dinos weren’t the only survivors: Rodent-like mammalian species outlasted the blast in their burrows, eventually awakening to a completely changed world. No longer the constant prey of meat-eating dinosaurs, these rodents ushered in a new age of mammals on land.

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