this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
248 points (99.2% liked)

History Memes

2902 readers
736 users here now

A place to share history memes!

Rules:

  1. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.

  2. No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.

  3. Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.

  4. Follow all Piefed.social rules.

  5. History referenced must be 20+ years old.

  6. Avoid posting AI-generated content whenever possible.

Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world

OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
PugJesus@piefed.social
Deceptichum@quokk.au
PugJesus@lemmy.world
248
Lead by example (lemmy.world)
submitted 23 hours ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to c/historymemes@piefed.social
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 23 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

They did sweeten wine with it, so I'm going to say it's more complex than that. At least they didn't burn it with petrochemicals poisoning the whole of biosphere for a whole (two?) generation.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 13 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

More like four ..

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

From my understanding, they knew it wasn't exactly healthy, so they did limit the intake to a "healthy" level. Their life expectancy wasn't that great anyway compared to now, so i think it was a bit of a mixed bag. People thought that cigarettes were healthy, and then they figured out they are not, but people still smoke... Like a lot.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Their life expectancy wasn’t that great anyway compared to now

Low life expectancy has always been caused mostly by high infant and child mortality, not adults dying young of natural causes. Augustus and Tiberius lived well into their 70s, for example.

Duck.ai-generated list, if anybody wants to see it

Roman Born Died Approx. age Cause
Augustus 63 BC AD 14 75–76 Natural causes, probably illness
Agrippa 63 BC 12 BC About 50 Natural causes, probably illness
Maecenas c. 70 BC 8 BC About 62 Natural causes
Tiberius 42 BC AD 37 77–78 Probably natural causes, though ancient sources alleged foul play
Vespasian AD 9 AD 79 69–70 Natural illness
Titus AD 39 AD 81 41–42 Natural illness
Trajan AD 53 AD 117 63–64 Natural illness, possibly a stroke
Hadrian AD 76 AD 138 About 62 Natural illness
Marcus Aurelius AD 121 AD 180 58–59 Natural illness, probably infection
Constantine the Great AD 272 AD 337 About 65 Natural illness
Virgil 70 BC 19 BC 50–51 Natural illness
Ovid 43 BC AD 17 About 59–60 Probably natural causes
Galen AD 129 c. AD 216 About 87 Probably natural causes

Excluded: Julius Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Caligula, Domitian, Commodus, and others who were assassinated, executed, killed in battle, or died by suicide. Claudius is also excluded because he was probably poisoned, and Pliny the Elder died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Low life expectancy has always been caused mostly by high infant and child mortality

In demography, the life expectancy of a modern population is calculated by fitting a curve to the most recent infant and child mortality (< 5 years old) measurements. Not relevant to ancient Rome, but for the modern world life expectancy is not just heavily influenced by infant and child mortality, but is rather 100% a measure of infant and child mortality.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

You are shown AI slop by a grue

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 8 points 21 hours ago

Recent research showed that they had lead-polluted air on top of things like lead-sweetened wine. Apparently the lead air pollution was also a byproduct of silver mining (which was mostly for coinage). e.g. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2419630121