The East was well used to ruler worship and the deification of living people long before the involvement of the Roman Empire in their government. Greece, particularly, was practiced in the art of ruler worship as it had, for several centuries, a series of rulers of different dynasties in quick succession. It was common practice as a legitimate way of showing gratitude and devotion towards a living benefactor to worship them as a god. The Roman inhabitants of Hellenistic Greece were quite used to being worshipped in this manner by their provincials however, their Roman ideals still rejected anyone who tried to put themselves forward. The urge to worship, to show their gratitude, to Augustus seems to have been the strongest ever shown towards a Roman official. It is understandable however, for he brought with him peace after several centuries of war throughout the Empire.
In Asia, a fellowship of Greek cities existed which were responsible for business such as sending ambassadors to the Roman Republic Senate. However, early in the reign of Augustus, this fellowship was strongly linked with the imperial cult for in 29 B.C. they requested permission from Augustus to build a temple in his honour. Nevertheless, either because he wished to avoid resentment, or because he genuine disliked the un-Roman practice, Augustus was very cautious in accepting these divine honors. When the Roman population of two provinces made the same request, Augustus refused them, telling them instead to worship Rome. This did not stop the spread of the imperial cult however, and soon the worship of Augustus was widely diffused in East. 
On the other hand, the establishment of the imperial cult in the West was pushed more by Augustus than it was by the native people of the provinces. Perhaps Augustus came to see the value of the imperial cult in stimulating loyalty to Rome and himself, for he promoted emperor worship in the western provinces where there had been no previous tradition. To promote his worship and divine right to rule, Augustus and his advisers developed a set of images that were capable of conveying the ideals of the renewed Roman Empire to the Western population. These images often showed his connection to the Roman gods through garlands, wreaths and sacrifices. In 12 B.C the sixty Western tribes of the Celtic gathered at Rhone and elected their first high priests of the imperial cult within their area. Gaius Julius Vercundaris Dubius was elected and eventually rewarded, by Augustus, with Roman citizenship. This was the highest honour a provincial elite could hold. The famous Roman poet Ovid wrote, “under the leadership of Augustus both east and west are Roman soil”.
Of the dozens of texts held sacred by the school of Judaic mysticism known as Kabbalah, perhaps the most important is the Sefer Hazohar, (literally the Book of Splendor. Indeed, students of this collection of several lengthy Kabbalistic commentaries on the Torah — most commonly known in the West as the Holy Zohar – often assign it the same stature as Judaism’s two most holy books, the Torah and the Talmud.
Written in an arcane form of Aramaic, the Zohar purports to have been authored by second century rabbi and prominent critic of the Roman government in years following the destruction of the Second Temple, Shimon bar Yochai. Yochai claimed to have received the text from God himself, though most modern day scholars, however, attribute the work to Moses de Leon — a Spanish Kabbalist who lived some eleven hundred years later. Historians do concede, however, that, much like the books of the Bible, the disparate pieces of the Zohar were not all set down at one time. Rather, de Leon merely was the first to recorded several different tracts of the Oral Torah that passed been down from father to son, teacher to student over the course of many generations and that Yochai could have been an initial contributor.
The Kabbalah’s own inborn tradition details its spread. As the Jewish Diaspora spread throughout Europe and Eurasia after the fall of the Temple and, later, the crumbling of the Roman Empire, adepts of the “secret chain of mysteries” that is the Kabbalah brought the sacred knowledge with them, but shared it only with a select few. It would have been in this fashion that the original text of the Zohar was secreted out of the Holy Land and into one of Spain’s many Jewish communities.
And there was good reason for Jewish scholars to keep to the Zohar away from public scrutiny. The book maintains that the Torah and, by extension, all of reality exists on two distinct levels: the exoteric and the esoteric. It further posits that there is no one true interpretation of the Old Testament and that every soul is given – and, more importantly, encouraged — to make its own unique reading of scripture.
This statement alone – which happens to share a fair amount of philosophical overlap with the similarly persecuted Gnostics — would have been viewed as heresy by the religions by Spain’s then Judeo-friendly Catholic Church and citizens.
Consider then the anti-Semitism that swelled throughout the country in the years after Leon’s death. In 1492, all Spanish Jews were forcibly expelled; those that chose to convert in order to remain found themselves facing integration the hands of the Inquisition. And so, formal Kabbalic study was largely eradicated from the Iberian Peninsula – but not before the Zohar had managed become a key text of yet another secretive, albeit quasi-secular, sect: the European alchemists.
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Though oracles were commonplace throughout ancient Greece and Rome, the most famous dwelled at Delphi, a limestone temple on the western face of Mount Parnassus. Built in the 6th century BC, the complex was presided over by a chaste and elderly priestess called the Ptyhia who channeled the “breath” of the sun god Apollo into prophecy.
Those seeking divination at Delphi came from all social strata. From criminals to kings, many sought advice from the Oracle, though how they interpreted her predictions differed wildly. Legend holds that King Croesus of Lydia went to war over the Oracle’s prediction that if he battled the Persians a great army would fall. Unfortunately for him, the army in question turned out to be his own.
The myth of Romulus and Remus tells of two abandoned twins, who after being rescued and raised by a she-wolf, would go on to lay the foundations of the Roman Empire. The motif of humans of reared by wild animals has been re-iterated time and time again in folklore. In Greco-Roman myth alone, beasts served as the adoptive parents of Telephus, son of Hercules, Paris of Troy and even an infant Zeus. Similar tales are told in the mythologies of ancient Ireland, China, India, and Egypt, to name but a few.
Unlike their immediate forbearers in the public’s consciousness, however, Kamala and Amala were undoubtedly real. From the 1950s onwards, the prevailing theory has suggested they were, in fact, autistic or otherwise mentally challenged, rather than truly feral. Meanwhile, other scholars took offense to that notion. After observing the “gazelle boy” of the Spanish Sahara in the 1970s, French anthropologist Jean-Claude Armen wrote: “How could a retarded child, even though ‘aided’ by animals, continue to exist the harsh environment of the desert?” 
Thracian gladiators were one of the four most common gladiatorial groups in Ancient Rome. They evolved during the 2nd century BC when the Romans discovered the race of warriors in the northern Greece region of Thrace. 
The armor of the gladiators was used to helped draw the crowds to the games and their helmets became works of art. Thracian helmets changed a great deal over the centuries, especially during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, which allows them to be dated depending on their features. Earlier helmets have no visor, leaving the eyes exposed to the attacker while the cheeks are covered with plates, and the narrow rim protecting the face like a hat was only slightly curved. On the other hand, more recent helmets contain a grill covering the eye, a wider rim and a more covered neck piece, as shown in the photo.
