After we got back from Ancient Egypt, a lot you asked if we could travel to the ancient Roman Empire next. Well, you've asked, and we've delivered! So, just how hard would it have been for you to survive during the Roman Empire?

Well, that depends a lot on exactly when you were talking about, and where you found yourself in society, but in general, the Roman Empire marked a period of great highs and lows. For instance, the Romans were able to build great systems of roads and highways that were critical to their advanced, interconnected society. Life was able to flourish as both people and information could more easily travel amongst the empire, but then again, so could plagues and diseases.

However, if you were able to avoid the dangers and stay alive, there was quite a good bit of advancements during the reign of the Roman Empire. All of their architectural innovation allowed the Romans to become early adopters of sewers and plumbing systems that would actually carry human waste away from their homes, so they had some degree of sanitation, not as good as when you do your business today, but hey, it's better than nothing! They still didn't have toilet paper, though. 

Wait…What am I suppose…I'm supposed to do what with this?

They also had rather advanced medical practices and knowledge for the times, and a lot of this started on the battlefield. To help keep their soldiers as fighting-ready as possible, the Romans created dedicated field surgical teams. These battlefield medics used a variety of instruments, like hemostatic tourniquets and arterial surgical clamps, to curb blood loss, all while making sure to try and disinfect their tools in hot water before use. With all of this, it's been speculated that even though they had to face the hazards of combat, Roman soldiers tended to live longer than the average citizen because of how good Roman military medicine was.

It doesn't look like the same could be said for gladiators, though. Even though historians speculate that gladiator matches weren't always the "to the death" bloodbaths that movies usually depict them as, they were still very dangerous, and it's thought that most gladiators only lived to around their mid-20s.