Marcus Porcius Cato was born in 234 BC in Tusculum, a small town outside Rome, and that outsider origin never entirely left him. He came from a plebeian farming family with no aristocratic pedigree, and rather than leaving that background behind as his career advanced, he wore it as a badge of distinction for the…

Pizza began as a simple flatbread eaten by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The modern pizza originated in Naples, Italy in the late 1700s. The first pizzas in Naples did not use tomatoes; they were topped with garlic, lard, and salt. The Margherita pizza was created in 1889 to honor Queen Margherita of Savoy. The…

When Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by a terrorist group, a televised séance with a Ouija board was used to figure out where he was being held. But the most likely explanation is that the Italian authorities did not want to out the identity of an informant.

Latium was the region on the Italian Peninsula where Latin originated. It was later adopted by the Roman Republic, which eventually became the Roman Empire. The language then spread throughout Europe and parts of Africa and Asia. The Vulgate Bible is one of earliest standardized Bibles translated into Latin, done by St. Jerome. Today, Latin…