According to Pliny the Elder, Emperor Nero watched gladiator fights through an emerald.
Whether it was a lens or just a sunshade is still debated, but spectacles would not appear for another 1,200 years.
More amazing facts
- 50 · 1769 A steam turbine was built in Alexandria in the 1st century, about 1,700 years before Watt's engine.
- 50 The first vending machine sold holy water.
- 50 An ancient temple could have automatic doors.
- 64 Nero could not have fiddled while Rome burned: the violin was invented in the 16th century.
- 75 · 79 Cuneiform was still being written shortly before Pompeii was buried.
- 77 Pliny the Elder complained of gold draining east: India, China and Arabia, he wrote, take a hundred million sesterces from the empire every year. 'That is what our luxuries and women cost us.'