This week's claims about the ancient world, spurious and otherwise, in search of a source for confirmation:

From the News and Observer:

The word is derived from Maia, a Grecian goddess of fertility. Her voice was the soft song of nightingales, a lullaby of spring awakening. In the ancient Roman world this goddess was known as Diana, a queen dwelling in the woodlands, personification of beauty and passion. The moon was deemed her royal chariot.

Never heard of a Maia-Diana equation before ... Next, from the Philly Inquirer:

The Roman historian Tacitus once observed: "In valor there is hope."

From the Tuscaloosa News:

It may interest some to note the phrase “To call a spade a spade," goes all the way back to ancient Greece, although its exact origin is unknown. Plutarch used it in writing about Macedonians, dramatist Menander penned, “I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade," and it’s also been attributed to playwright Aristophanes in 423 B.C.

UPDATE: Amyntoros of Pothos.org confirms this one:

The Plutarch reference about calling a spade a spade is from the Moralia - number 15 of the Sayings of Kings and Commanders attributed to Philip of Macedon. (178.B)

"When the men associated with Lasthenes, the Olynthian, complained with indignation because some of Philip’s associates called them traitors, he said that the Macedonians are by nature a rough and rustic people who call a spade a spade."

The Loeb edition (Plutarch’s Moralia, Volume III) also has a footnote (c) referring to the phrase: “A reference to a line from an unknown comic poet quoted by Lucian, Iupiter Tragoedus, 32. Cf. also Lucian, Historia quomodo consribenda sit, 41, and Kock, Com. Attl Frag. iii.p. 451, Adespota no. 227.”

From the Hexham Courant:

The Romans invented the first proper herb gardens and when they left Britain,

From Mother Earth News:

In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder advised placing a drop of bat blood under a woman’s pillow as an aphrodisiac.

Last but not least is something from the Sunday Mail which isn't a spurious claim but which a Classicist would read differently than say, a non-classicist (or at least I did):

Because of its red colour the ancient Greeks associated Mars with Ares, their god of war.