From Heritage Key - Women on the Verge of the Roman Empire

“ Girl Power in The Early Empire -  social status of Roman women was given a boost by the prosperity of the expanding empire. Wealth brought back from newly vanquished lands was quickly percolating through to the aristocratic as well as the lower-class families. Women were now more likely to find themselves with some control over their family’s assets – particularly if the paterfamilias was killed in battle. It seemed as though, after centuries of having the legal status of a child, things were finally looking up for Roman women…”

From The Atlantic - Plan a Trip Through History

“ Say you were thinking about taking a trip this summer to Italy, and were considering a drive northward from Rome to the ancient coastal city of Ravenna. How long would it take? How would you go about finding that out?

Most likely, you’d use Google Maps, which would tell you that by car you could take a variety of routes, all of which would get you to Ravenna in about four and a half hours.

Now say, just hypothetically, that you wanted to make the same trip except — and it’s kind of a big exception — that the year is not 2012 but 200, you’re not traveling by car but by ox cart, and, just for a little extra challenge, let’s say it’s February. How long would that journey take?

To answer that question there’s ORBIS, a sort of “Google Maps for Ancient Rome,” which will tell you that the fastest way for a third-century traveler to get to Ravenna will be to take your ox cart to the sea, board a ship, and sail around Sicily, around the southern coast of Italy, and northward to Ravenna. It will take you nearly 15 days and cost nearly 400 denarii. Over land, the trip will last a month…”

From Powered by Osteans - Recipe for a Roman Diet

“ Humans evolved to be omnivores.  We’ll eat anything we can get our hands on – fruit, vegetables, beans, grains, meat – and we’ve invented innumerable ways to cultivate and refine those basic ingredients, particularly in the last 10,000 years or so since the agricultural revolution.

But diet in the past was limited, primarily by geography but also by social class or culture.  Before the New World was discovered, Italian food had no tomatoes.  Before the industrialization of food production, many items we think of as dirt cheap today, like salt, were too expensive for the poor to purchase.  If you didn’t live on the coast, you probably weren’t eating seafood…”