You may have heard about the bulimic practices of sybaritic Roman gluttons and the over-cited symbol of Roman culinary excess, the dormouse. Did you know the Romans thought certain foods made you healthy or that those lacking time or cooking facilities could buy fast food? Read: What Did the Romans Eat?.

Also see Ancient Foods.

On this day in ancient history, Vestal Virgins worked on the mola salsa, the Romans' sacred salted cake. In her online article on mola salsa, author Caroline Tully cites Robin Lorsch Wildfang's book on Vestal Virgins to say that this was one of the days on which the Vestal Virgins gathered unripe spelt to use in the mola salsa. The grain would then Read More...

Judgment of Paris at the Metropolitan Museum of Art CC Flickr User *clairity* at Flickr.com

Do you know the disagreement and its settlement that is said to have started the Trojan War or the trick that ended it? How about the attempted draft dodging -- the instance of feigned madness and the other of cross-dressing? Do you know the names of the famous epics connected with it? If not, please read: The Sequence of Major Events in the Trojan War.

On This Day in Ancient History: In A.D. 330, Constantine the Great inaugurated his new capital city, the former Byzantium, which had started as a Greek colony in the 7th century B.C. Later to be known as Constantinople and later, Istanbul, at the time when Byzantium became the New Rome, Christianity was only a recently legalized religion, practiced along with the pagan religions, but Constantine built Christian structures in his new capital city. Constantinople remained the capital of the Byzantine Empire until 1453 when it became part of the Ottoman Empire. Constantinople was located on the European side of the Bosporus, which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.

• Byzantine Era
• Definition of Byzantine
• The Name Constantine
• Archaic Age Greece

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