Memory: Ancient Rome (Directions)

IT LEVEL A L L A B Y MEMORY: ANCIENT ROME

Okay, this is just like the game you played when you were a kid, but with a slight twist: STEP 1 Print out the Printable with the images on two sheets of cardstock. Then flip them over and print the Printable with the “Reverse Sides” on the other side. This is important because the players will not be able to see through the squares as they play. Then cut out each square. You may color them if you like, but use colored pencils so that they won’t bleed through. STEP 2 Flip the squares over, picture sides down, and arrange them in a grid. STEP 3 Players flip two squares over, one at a time. If they match, the teacher / parent reads the blurb about that match from the list below. That player may then go again. STEP 4 Once all the matches have been found. Mix the cards up and set them out again. STEP 5 Play just as before, EXCEPT, in the second round, when a player finds a match, they must repeat what they remember from the blurb read during the first round! The blurbs include quite a bit of information——players shouldn’t get discouraged if they can’t remember everything. Just take it a little at a time!

ROMULUS & REMUS According to legend, the city of Rome was founded by twin brothers who were abandoned and found in the Tiber River by a mother wolf. The wolf fed them and kept them alive until they were found by a local farmer. Eventually the boys started to build a city on the spot where they were found by the wolf. That spot is the Palatine Hill in the city that became Rome.

(The national animal of Italy is the Italian wolf, which can still be found in the Apennine Mountains today. . . Also check out the logo for the professional soccer team A.S. Roma!)

COLOSSEUM This is the Colosseum in Rome. It was finished in AD 80. Ancient Roman society was very militaristic——many rules were very strict, and much of what people did centered around war and supporting the military. The Colosseum was an ancient stadium where up to 80,000 people came to watch very war-like events. The Colosseum could even be filled with water so that mock sea battles could be fought. But most commonly, slave fighters called gladiators fought to the death! Yeesh!

SPQR This inscription stands for “Senatus Populus Que Romanus,” which is Latin (the language of Ancient Rome) for “The Senate and People of Rome.” These initials were placed on all sorts of things to show that the thing was the property of the Roman Empire. These initials showed up on government documents, streets, and buildings. Even slaves and gladiators were tattooed with these four letters. It is still used today throughout the city of Rome, on the coat of arms of the city, and on public works, like sewer manhole covers.

(In 2017, the professional soccer team A.S. Roma wore a special jersey with SPQR written across the chest. Check it out——it was a sweeeeeeeeet jersey!)

JULIUS CAESAR Julius Caesar is probably the most famous Ancient Roman today. He was a very successful general of the Roman army, and when he came back to Rome, he became a very powerful leader in the government. In fact, many people thought he became too powerful. Eventually, the Roman Senate felt threatened by him, and he was stabbed to death by many members of the Senate.

(Julius Caesar was so popular and powerful that the name “caesar” became a title——it is also where the words “kaiser” (German) and “czar” (Slavic) come from.)

ROMAN EMPIRE This was the Roman Empire at its largest, at around AD 117. You can see from this map how far the Romans were able to spread things like their culture and language. (Check out the Romance Languages Lab!) But it also meant that the city of Rome could very easily do business with all of these places, and that people could move in and out of the city to and from all of these places.

ROMAN NUMERALS These are some of the letters that Romans used for numbers. The numbers that we use today are actually adapted from Arabic. The Romans wrote all of their numbers using only letters for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1000. Today, pretty much everyone in the world has adopted the Arabic numerals, but still. . . Roman numerals still show up in some places. Can you think of any? Be on the lookout for them!

SOLAR SYSTEM Did you know that almost all of the planets in our solar system (except for Earth and Uranus, but including Pluto) were named for Roman gods? Not only that, which planet was named for which god or goddess was not random. . . They have to do with some scientiﬁc attribute of that planet. For example, Mars and Neptune were given those names because of their colors. What were Mars and Neptune the gods of? Which is the hottest planet? Which planet moves fastest around the sun? Which is the largest planet? Which planet has the slowest orbit around the sun? Which planet is the coldest? UNITED STATES CAPITOL This is the United States Capitol, home of the legislative (or “law making”) branch of the US government. The United States Senate meets here. But did you know that the Senate was created by ancient Romans? In fact, “senator” is a Latin word. The Romans learned about “government by the people” from the Greeks. When the American founding fathers were trying to build a new government, they had studied ancient Greek and Roman governments closely, and based this new government quite a bit on them!

(The word “democracy” comes from the Greeks for this style of government, while the word “republic” comes from the Romans. They both mean that the government belongs to the people. . . So in fact, “democrat” and “republican” actually mean pretty much the same thing! Wowza!)

ROMAN COINS Romans did not invent money, but they did use coins as money starting around 500 BC. They recognized that normally, people could only trade with someone else if they happened to have the speciﬁc thing that they needed—I have a sheep and I need materials to repair my house, so I need to ﬁnd someone who has the materials I need, but I can only trade with them if they need a sheep. . . But, with money, people can trade with anybody—I have a sheep, and I need materials to repair my house, so I can sell my sheep to anyone who needs a sheep, and then use the money to buy repair materials from anyone who is selling them! Money makes it so much easier for people to get the things they need!

(Roman rulers also realized that money could be used for political purposes, by putting certain images, like their own faces or political messages, on the coins that everybody would see because they use it everyday. Ancient Roman coins have been found as far as India!) MOSAIC This is a mosaic. A mosaic is a picture made up of lots of small pieces of tile, shell, or rocks. Ancient Romans learned to make mosaics from the Greeks. Sometimes, mosaics were used to tell a story, to show who a house belonged to, to show how wealthy someone was, or sometimes even to make maps. Scientists and historians have been able to learn a lot about Ancient Roman society by studying mosaics.

MOUNT VESUVIUS Do you think you could learn a lot about an ancient civilization if you could take one of its cities and freeze it in time? That’s pretty much exactly what Mt. Vesuvius did. When this volcano erupted in AD 79, it buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii (near the modern day city of Napoli) in about 15 ft of volcanic ash, and everything in the city was frozen at the moment it was buried. Scientists and historians have learned very much about Roman society because they had a frozen snapshot of an ancient Roman city thanks to Mt Vesuvius’s eruption! OLIVES & GRAPES Most of the farming done in the Roman Empire happened outside of Italy. Most of its grains came from places that Romans conquered in North Africa, like Egypt and Tunisia. But still, Rome made quite a bit of money growing and selling its main crops, olives and grapes (and still does!).