ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley: Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Fact of the Day (of the Week!) - Ancient Rome Week!

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And welcome to Fact of the Day of the Week. Emperor Vaughn Caesar deans to give us a walking

tour through the history of ancient Roman society. It's time for…

Today's A Fact of the Day is the first day in Ancient Rome Week.

It's Ancient Rome Week at Fact of the Day because everybody's always talking about the

ancient Roman Empire. How many always think of ancient Rome at least once a week.

And now that it's been brought to our attention that we do think about it,

I'm thinking about it even more than I would normally. I had a video of ancient aqueducts

pop up the other day and I was like, this is amazing. This was ages ago. How did they know

all of this? Phenomenal engineering. Well, now I've gone for weird stuff that they did in the

Roman Empire. Yeah, good. For this week's Fact of the Week theme, the ancient Roman Empire.

Today's Fact of the Day is charioteers, people that drove chariots and gladiators,

drank an energy drink made of goat dung and vinegar.

What? Yeah. Goodness. I know. Red Bull gives you wings. Goat dung gives you speed.

Apparently. Yeah. Was it like some kind of like gut combutory drink?

Well, according to fermented somehow. Pliny the elder, who was a Roman

author, naturalist and natural philosopher, goat dung could be used not only for patching up wounds

in the case of an emergency, like a poultice, but also mixed with vinegar to make an energy drink.

Yeah. Yeah, gross. The best dung was collected in spring when the grass that they were reading

was the newest new growth, full of the nutrients that came with spring and dried out and then

powdered and mixed with vinegar and could be drunk. And this also was by Nero, the emperor of

Rome at one stage. Nero drank it because it gave him extra strength and speed in the tegarium,

which was like an equestrian training place for like war, equestrian, not like a sandy square

where a horse goes clip, clop, clip, clop. Yeah. Okay. Nowadays, like it was a far more war adjacent

training. So there's something to think about if you're tucking into your monster energy drink or

Red Bull or V or whatever you're doing, you could just be making your own. I've got a couple of

goats. It is spring. Join me at the upcoming CUMU summer markets. I think I would have

shut down by the council health department. Do you reckon if you keep that up? Because

I didn't prepare it in a commercial kitchen. Great point. I will take it to a commercial

kitchen and dry it out and mix it with vinegar. So today's was basically like the Roman equivalent

of a wellness influencer. Yeah. Well, my dogs love it. Are they Roman? Possibly go poo. Yeah.

When the goats have been on the lawn over one and then they'll go speeding around the room.

Maybe there is something to it. I mean, not worth trying though. So today's fact of the day is

if you would like the recipe for an ancient Roman energy drink, you are going to need some goat

dung and vinegar. Today's fact of the day is it's ancient Rome week. Yeah, good. Great.

Lots of great weird facts about ancient Rome here for it. Yesterday we talked about the gladiator

energy drink that was goat dung and vinegar. Wow. Yeah, goat dung. Often powdered. It was called

G. Yeah, right. Yeah. G goat gives you wings. Yeah. It gives you horns. Is that what G force is?

Yeah, yeah. Man, I used to drink those. I didn't know I'd get a goat. That's why it's not around

anymore. Yeah, right. Everybody started finding out what was in it. So today's fact of the day is

about gladiators. Another sort of one about the gladiators, not the energy drink they used to

drink, but the fact that if they lost in battle and they would die, they would bleed out,

that their body was used for medical purposes. Oh, okay. The blood of wounded gladiators was

sometimes drunk by the rich folk. Yeah, I know the rich ones. Because they believed it could cure

epilepsy. Why epilepsy? Don't know. Wow. Because they were such strong characters. Yeah. Also,

after they'd been in the arena, even if they hadn't fought to the death or they were very

sweaty when they'd come off, they would collect the sweat off gladiators and use it in cosmetics.

What? Yeah. A wealthy woman would use it as face cream or perfume. Because they admired these like

gladiators and strong men so much. Yeah, the gladiators were sort of held above

right. The rest of the population, because everybody loved them so much.

And different body parts were used for different things. Their hair was used as

good luck charms, apparently collecting kept in pockets and stuff. Modern day equivalent of like

the all blacks coming off Eden Park and then we just like scrape them down. Scrape them down for

the sweat. Yeah, you maybe take a little bit of hair from Will Jordan. Yeah, why not? You take

a Barrett's pair of undies or something for whatever reason. Yeah, whatever reason. Whatever

reason you want. You said they were speaking of post-match and undies. Did you see the warriors

all sitting around in their undies after the weekend's game? What, feeling sorry for themselves?

Well, no, they were just having their post-match wine down in their chat after that loss. And

undies. Do they have an undies sponsor or something? No, they were all sitting in their

undies though. I can't chuck that out there for anybody who's maybe missed that. Well,

they wouldn't be jockey because that's the all blacks or they be. Where would they highly find

that for them? Pleasure state. Pleasure state. No, I reckon there'd be a few of them would wear

those Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday undies. The tradey undies. They very well might. Yeah. But

yeah, today's fact of the day and the second day of the ancient Rome themed fact of the day week,

fact of the day of the week. Yeah. Is that parts of gladiators were used for various

non gladiatorial purposes. Today's fact of the day, Anthony supplied this. Thank you, Anthony.

For Roman, ancient Rome, fact of the day, week themed. I still haven't really worked out how to

say that. Rolled off the tongue. Well, this is because and you would have seen this online. Guys,

all they do is think about ancient Rome. Quite a lot. This will get you thinking.

This will get you thinking. Okay. Because Anthony said, have you heard of the nemesh ships of ancient

Rome? And I said, I haven't. And now I've been reading about them. Fascinating yet puzzling.

Okay. Because on a lake, the neme lake neme in Italy, there were two large ships constructed.

Pleasure barges that were destroyed by fire in World War II after Mussolini had spent lots of money

to get them up as a sort of a look at our long history of naval pride. Right. Look at these

beautiful ships that were built centuries ago. They were built in one AD. So by the time World

War I happened, these things were nearly 2000 years old. These ships that had been sitting on

the bottom of the lake neme. Now you might be thinking ships on a lake. How big is this lake?

Well, I've been googling sizes of lakes that are comparable to have two large luxury

pleasure ships built on them. They did like a dinner cruise. They did everything, dude.

I'll tell you more about that in a minute. Okay. If I may tell you needs to localize this,

if you're familiar with Lake Pupuke on the North Shore of Auckland. Nope.

That's a real, it's a small lake. It's really deep though, isn't it? It's very deep. It's very

small. That's how big the lake was. Oh, okay. If for Hamiltonians listening, the Hamilton Lake.

Oh, yeah. The one down by the playground. You know that lake in computer Lake Topor. Whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, calm. You're like a slither. A slither. You've gone way too big. There would be

larger lakes on farms than this lake. And maybe like for Wellingtonians, because I don't know of

any lakes in Wellington. No, maybe like 10 bucket fountains. Oh, okay. I see. No, maybe like 100.

The equivalent of like 1.1 square kilometers. I've got a list of lakes here. You know,

there's over 3000 lakes in the size around New Zealand. Very interesting. Now, I've kind of

got lost a little bit down the rabbit hole of lakes around the lakes around New Zealand,

but there's lots of like local comparisons for like how by the lake. Christchurch, that Pupond.

Why doesn't Hagley Park have a lake? Does they have a lake? Doesn't they? No,

Hagley Park. I did find a Christchurch, a comparable Christchurch lake.

And it's out of town a little bit. Right. It's an extant of petition.

Get Christchurch a lake. Get a nice lake at Hagley Park. So we can go on rowboats and get some ducks

and stuff. They've got the punting down the bloody. Get some ducks. Yeah, I know. It's a river,

isn't it? We're going to shoot the ducks on the Hagley Park lake. No, just like get some ducks

for the lake. I'm just saying. Oh yeah. Ducks will just come to a lake, I think. You don't need

to get them. You don't need to force them. No, you've got to invite them. You've got to start.

You've got to start. You've got to send out a couple of yeah. Facebook invites. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Come and check out this quacker of a new body of water. They wouldn't say that. They're not

self-aware. They don't. Come on. But wait, we're sending them Facebook invites, but they're not

going to get an absolute. Come on. Great pun. Can you take the serious one, please? Ducks don't get

puns, Vaughn. Yeah. God, he's sometimes I wonder. Come and live at our lake for free. You won't be

billed. They're not doing humor. They are famously a humorless bird. Oh, okay. What is wrong with you?

Daffy duck, of course. Donald duck, famously humorous. Humorless. Yeah, thank you. Okay,

so two of these bigger ass boats were built on this lake. Why? Well, it was the lake apparently had

a little bit of like religious reason. So like, yeah, your flitch is rolling his eyes. At the

right, on a full moon, it would like fully reflect the lake. Yeah. And a big image of Jesus. Make

it look. Well, no, this was pre- Jesus from the clouds. Yeah. It was more like Egyptian.

You don't know. Religions. No, it says here. It says Isis. You don't know. The Egyptian Isis cult.

Isis was certainly not around then. Not the Isis. They were floating around in Toyota,

Toyota Hilux. There is a lake in Hagley Park. Yeah, my sister in law just text me saying,

ah, there is a lake. They sail remote control boats on it. Why have I ever seen this lake?

I'm going to look at that. There's a river. A river goes around the outside. I know there's a

river, Vaughn. Pon the Avon. That's the river. The Avon River. Where's the lake in Hagley? I'm

going to keep going with what was on the ship. Yeah, keep going. I'm going to have a look.

So when they finally got these up. Oh, it's big. I can see it without even Victoria Lake. Look at

that. There is a lake. You didn't do a very good Google search for one. I Googled Christchurch

Lakes and it gave me nothing. It gave me one on the outskirts of town. Yeah, no, this is good.

Yeah. Look, that's a nice lake. Shut up, Alice. Alice has just messaged from Christchurch.

Everyone, all our Christchurch listeners are very upset with us. Thank you for getting in touch.

You know what? Next time we're in Christchurch for work, we're going to go to the lake and feed the

ducks. Who? No, you can't feed them. Who are humilist birds? Don't do puns as we've established.

You can't love Facebook. They can't. Yeah, I can stop talking about. Yeah, you'd go from

the Botanic Gardens. You'd go over and then Victoria Lake. Oh, there's a public toilet nearby.

Oh, good. Perfect. That's what I like with my legs. You know, Vaughn,

ducks, humilist, lovebred, have Facebook go cruising old school stores. That's what a duck

does. Anyway, these boats, these boats, sure shouldn't let me tell you about the boats.

When they finally got them, so fishermen, local fishermen knew about these boats for ages,

and when they wanted to like sell things to tourists, I'm talking hundreds of years ago,

they just dropped hooks down until it grabbed something and then just yank it and hope that

they broke a bit off and then they could sell it. So people were doing this for a while. So when

they finally drained this lake pre-World War II, Mussolini's Lake drain it. Let's get this out.

As I said before, let's show the people what a wonderful naval history we had. They'd kind of

been pulled to bits, but there were still things there's a museum dedicated to them. You can go

and see all the brass fittings. But they said they had marble floors, mosaic floor, heating and

plumbing. There were baths on the boat that pumped water in, heated it, you could bathe.

I'm guessing eat, drink. So very similar to the inter-Islander. Very similar, except just on a

lake. And there was two of them on different sides of the lake. They believe it was some sort of

like religious competition on who? Because of Jesus. Who could it? Well, again, Jesus didn't

have skin in the game at the stage of the proceedings. It was the religion du jour was

mostly just Egyptian and Roman gods, but they had different sides of the lakes for the different

moons. Okay. And these two massive boats, they bought them up in World War Two. And they were

like, look, and then they got burnt down. Okay, wrap it up. You've been going on too long. They got

burned down. So I just can't believe had he thought that ducks had a sense of humor. The world's

famously done. The world's first luxury cruisers were invented by the Romans, but were on a small

lake, no bigger than Lake Victoria and Christchurch, which I've known about for years. Wait, is that

the one with the steppamp silver? The one where the birds were impaling themselves on?

I have been to that lake. Me too. Oh, less of a lake, more of a sizeable puddle.

I would like to thank Miss Stevenson for today's fact of the day. Cat, long time

listener of the show. She's been listening for a very long time. Cat Stevenson.

She is a classics teacher. She says she's been loving ancient Rome fact of the day.

Oh, great. We love it too. And she said, and I said, well, you're a teacher. Give me something.

Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. And she said, okay, what about

Commodus, Commodus? Who is her Harkon Phoenix played? Joachim? Sorry, I say that wrong every time.

You do. Joachim Phoenix played in Gladiator. Oh, okay.

They're making a second one. They're making a second one. It's been filmed or it is filming.

Oh, it's Russell. Not that I doubt I could get back into that shape, but it was insane.

Yeah, it was. No, I don't know who's in the Gladiator too. Let me look.

I love that film so much. It's a great film. So it'll be out in 2024. Paul Mescal.

Oh, great. Oh, there you go. From Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Connie Nelson,

Nielsen, Petra Pascal, isn't it? Russell Crowe's playing. I feel like Jason should be in there.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a Gladiator. Spoiler alert.

Didn't he die at the end of the first one? Didn't he die in the arena? He doesn't die.

Yeah. This is serving as a prequel to Gladiator. So maybe they'll de-age him.

How's it going to be a prequel? And de-tum him. It'll be a small role from Russell.

Yeah, I think so. I think that's why the actors' strikes still ongoing. They're

waiting to get the de-tumming. They're waiting for Russell to shred.

So this guy was insane. Kind of his insanity was touched upon in the movie. He was like

brutal and insane and did horrible things. But in real life, he was also like crazy.

He had a very inappropriate relationship with the system. That's a story for another time.

A little bit game of thrones. Yeah. Big, big game of thrones. The original game of thrones.

So his father was a well-respected emperor. He became emperor. He renamed all the months

after himself. You might be thinking, how did he have 12 names? He gave himself a whole lot of

names as well. So they were like Invictus, Felix, P.S., Lucius. It just named all after himself,

basically. Augustus was the only name that stuck that he's continued to. But other things he did,

he believed he was Hercules. The Roman Empire came after the Greek Empire. He believed he was

Hercules reborn. So he'd dress up as him for battles in the arena. But in the arena, he wouldn't

fight gladiators. He would fight disabled people in gladiator costumes. This guy sounds crazy.

He would charge his own government a million surstercies, which is the currency, to fight every

time he did when he'd go into the arena and fight people with disabilities, which equates to about

four million New Zealand dollars these days. Oh, my lord. And he'd go out there and he would often

have his bodyguards, if someone even with a disability was looking like they were getting

the upper hand, the bodyguards would step in. Well, this is not a fair fight, is it? No. And he

would also say he was going to fight all these wild animals, but he'd fight things like giraffes

and other herbivores. Threshing the heads around. Yeah, herbivores that weren't aggressive. And

he would fight them, but he'd just stand on a raised point and just shoot them with both

arms. I'd take the front legs out. Yeah, because they would just be so top-heavy.

Yeah. I just had one leg out. I mean, I don't want to, but if I had to. Three-legged giraffe,

let me google that. That'd be good. The balance would be too much. They'd be easy fodder for

a lioness to take down in a hunt on the planes there in Africa. I want to apologize. Maximus

Meridius does die at the end of Gladiator. Yeah, he definitely does. So today's factor

of the day is the character, Commodus, from Gladiator that was played by Joaquin Phoenix,

was a real life Roman Emperor who was insane on all of them.

Today's factor of the day is about Roman dental care because we are in the midst of

ancient Rome fact of the day weeks. And we've been covering different parts of it. The ancient

Romans actually had pretty good dental care. Oh yeah. They put a lot of time and effort into it.

Some of their toothpaste probably wouldn't have got the tick from nine out of 10 dentists though.

Did they have walnut shells and stuff? Yeah, were they using St. Ives apricot scrub? No,

one of the flavors was mouse brain. Yeah, man. Yeah, road to look at brain. Moolied up and

mixed with bicarbonate soda, sodium, powdered charcoal, and sometimes bark was added.

Charcoal's good though. Charcoal's good for the teeth, isn't it? Oh, is it too abrasive now?

They're saying it's too abrasive. Yeah, they're saying it's bad. It's too abrasive. Okay. Other

toothpaste's included powder of Oxhoof's ashes. So they would burn the Oxhoof's and then powder

them and put them in. Well, that's not vegan. And burnt, no, not at all. And burnt powdered egg

shells. Yeah, what did the ancient vegans do? Well, how did they brush their teeth? The ancient

vegan? Yeah. I don't know. Also, I'll just touch on lightly the fact that they also had a mouthwash.

Did they? They had a mouthwash. What was it? Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius,

washed her teeth with a paste of powdered deer antler and mouse brain and chose to guggle

undiluted human urine, preferably the super strong stuff shipped all the way from Portugal,

where urine was believed to contain more ammonia. Oh, yeah, lover of the Spanish person.

It's that pair. Just strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Best in the world. Best in the world. Barrel age

with a beautiful oaky finish. So yeah, the Romans, especially in the Senate, it was a sign of wealth

if you had white teeth and neglected teeth could get you booted out, even if like naturally,

you just didn't have very nice teeth, nice teeth taken very, very seriously. So today's

our fact of the day. And the final fact for the Roman ancient Rome fact of the day.

Download the podcast of all the fact of the days in one podcast. They're so handy.

It is so handy. Is that ancient Roman toothpaste included things like Portuguese urine and mouse

brains. Fact of the day. Day, day, day, day.

Oh, I just realized I did the whole show with my headphones on backwards.

So. Well, that means the show's backwards, isn't it? We're going to have to play this in reverse.

Well, should we speak in reverse and hopefully they'll they'll work out the other way.

ZM's Fletch Von and Haley.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.