When In Rome: A Lady's Life in the Ancient Roman Empire
You weave our way down a dusty street, trying to get your bearings.
You move past shops full of customers and bright stalls full of produce, past public baths and the shouts from the Coliseum. You skirt past a shrine and a slave market, too. It is loud, busy, bustling, humming with industry and ambition. Everyone here wants to rise to some kind of greatness—to grasp what power they can. And though you’re a woman, you aren’t exempt from dreams of glory. Your path toward it might look different than the men around you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a name for yourself here. After all, this is your city. This is ancient Rome.
In this chapter of Season 2, we’ll meet the women who lived amid this ancient-world juggernaut. Many are Roman citizens: the wives and daughters and sisters of influential men who use every tool at their disposal to leave a lasting mark on their fast-changing world—and to survive its cutthroat rules about what women were allowed to do and be. Others are foreigners who refuse to bow to the ever-expanding Empire, fighting against it with both cunning and spears. We will explore the events and laws they had to navigate, the intrigues and wars in which they had a hand. And as always, we’ll try to understand what life was like in ancient Rome for women: what did it look like through their eyes? Lucky for us, we have some expert time traveling companions:
THE PARTIAL HISTORIANS: Hi. I'm Dr. Rad. I'm a specialist in all things Spartacus and historical films. And I am Dr. G. I'm an expert on ancient Rome, particularly ancient priestesses. And then even more particularly, the Vestal Virgins. And together we host a podcast called The Partial Historians.
DR. EVANS: I'm Dr. Rhiannon Evans, I'm the associate professor of Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University, and I'm the main guest on the podcast Emperors of Rome.
Grab a really long sheet and a few vials of poison…just in case. Let’s go traveling.
This map shows how the Roman Empire grew over the years and highlights some of the women who fought against that expansion. You can buy a copy of this poster at my Exploress shop! Just go to the Store page.
MY SOURCES
BOOKS, MAGAZINES AND SCHOLARLY ARTICLES
A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome. Alberto Angela, translated from Italian by Gregory Conti. Europa Editions, 2015.
30-Second Ancient Rome. Edited by Matthew Nicholls. Ivy Press, 2014 (and the awesomely illustrated kids version…) Ancient Rome in 30 Seconds. Simon Holland. Ivy Kids, 2016.
Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: a sourcebook on women's religions in the Greco-Roman world. Ross Shepard Kraemer, Fortress Press, 1988.
Dress and the Roman Woman. Kelly Olson, Routledge, 2008.
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. National Geographic Special Edition, 2014. I believe they’re reprinting this very soon, so keep an eye out at your local newsagent or grocery store!
Atlas of the Roman World. National Geographic Special Edition, 2020. The cool thing about being a nonfiction editor is that I often get to see these gems before you do: sorry not sorry. This one’s great. Keep an eye out for it at your local newsagent or grocery store!
Women’s Life in Greece & Rome. A source book in translation. Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fantasias, 2nd Edition. Duckworth, 1992.
“More Than Matrons: A New Age for Roman Women” by Maris Isabel Nuñez, National Geographic History Magazine, 2018.
“Cosmetics in Roman Antiquity: Substance, Remedy, Poison.” Kelly Olson. The Classical World, Vol. 102, No. 3 (SPRING 2009), pp. 291-310. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
“Virginity and the Place of Virgins in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Society.” A thesis by Kelsi Dynes, Utah Valley University, Dec. 2018. THANKS, KELSI!
PODCASTS
If you want podcasts about the ancient Roman world, you’re living in the right time period. These are all really excellent, and below I’ll tell you why.
The History of Rome by Mike Duncan. If you don’t know Mike, you must not listen to history podcasts…he was one of the first and the greatest, telling the story of the Roman empire in a super engaging narrative that unfolds over many episodes. He doesn’t talk a LOT about the ladies, but that’s fine: I have that covered. Listen to us both and you’ll be pretty well versed.
Emperors of Rome by our special time-traveling companions for this episode, Dr. Rhiannon Evans, and her host Matt. What DOESN’T Rhiannon know about ancient Rome?! Between Matt’s thoughtful questions and her thoughtful answers (and ones from the occasional guest), you’ll get an academic, but very engaging deep dive into ancient Rome and its many facets of life and interesting characters.
The Partial Historians by our special time-traveling companions for this episode, Dr. Rad and Dr. G. These ladies are fun to listen to – very engaging, and clearly so passionate about the subject matter – as they tell the story of the Roman Empire and delve into specific topics with a variety of guests. They are very fastidious and lovely. They even provided this list of resources for the chat we had:
[All available at Lacus Curtius: see entry under ONLINE below]:
Appian, Civil Wars
Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus
Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus
Plutarch, Life of Antony
Other sources:
Bauman, R. A. 1992. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome.
Bonfante, L.; Sebesta, J. L. 1994. The world of Roman costume.
DiLuzio, M. J. 2016. A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome
Freisenbruch, A. 2001. The First Ladies of Rome: The Women Behind the Caesars.
Greenfield, P. N. 2012. Virgin Territory: The Vestals from Republic to Principate. Dissertation, University of Sydney
Fagan, G. G. 1999. Bathing in Public in the Roman World
Killgrove, K.; Bond, S. 2015. ‘Caesar Undressing: Ancient Romans Wore Leather Panties and Loincloths’ Forbes Magazine.
Murdarasi, K. 2019. ‘The Woman Who Would Be King’ History Today.
Nielsen, I. ‘Thermae’ Brill New Pauly - accessed 2/11/2019
Olson, K. 2008. Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-presentation and society
Ward, R. B. 1992. ‘Women in Roman Baths’ Harvard Theological Review 85.2: 125-47
ONLINE
LacusCurtius is a great place to find detailed information about all sorts of Roman-related business.
Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. This site is an amazing resource if you’re looking to access translations of ancient source material. It offers access to a huge database, and I sourced and checked all of my ancient sources through it!
Ancient.eu is always a great place to start with ancient online research. Here’s a link to an article about everyday life in Rome.
“Caesar Undressing: Ancient Romans Wore Leather Panties And Loincloths” by Kristina Killgrove, Forbes.com, 2015.
“Clothing for Women and Girls.” Classics Unveiled.
“Aqueducts: Quenching Rome’s Thirst” by Isabel Roda, National Geographic Magazine, 2016. I think it’s pretty great that they let you access so many of their print articles online!
“Roman Plumbing: Overrated. Ancient Rome’s toilets, sewers, and bathhouses may have been innovative, but they didn’t do much to improve public health.” Julie Beck, The Atlantic, Jan. 2016.
“True Colors: Archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann insists his eye-popping reproductions of ancient Greek sculptures are right on target.” Matthew Gurewitsch, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2008.
“Vestal Virgins: Rome’s Most Powerful Priestesses.” By Elda Biggi, National Geographic History, Dec. 2018. This article has some wonderful accompanying images and graphics that I couldn’t get the rights to show you below, and it’s a great read.
“Women’s Fashion in Imperial Rome.” Women In Antiquity blog, posted on April 15, 2018 by cmcgowan4
who says that the ladies aren’t meant for the gym?
Bikini girls mosaic, Villa del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy, Wikicommons
TRANSCRIPT
I CHOP AND CHANGE AS I RECORD, SO THE audio WON’T BE A PERFECT MATCH FOR THE TEXT BELOW. IT’S VERY LIKELY THERE ARE TYPOS, too - I DO MY BEST, BUT when it comes to getting an episode up something has to give, ya know? also, the quotes in bold are ones I’ve made up for the drama, so please don’t quote them in your high school history paper as fact!
Though we have plenty of marble busts of ancient Roman women to stare at, what we know about their lives and times is far from cast in stone. Our sources for how they conducted themselves day to day rely on ancient writers, pretty much all of whom are men, and whose attitudes and agenda are not always female-positive. When they’re not shoving women to the sidelines of their histories, they’re either demonizing them for their wanton ways or putting them up on a glittering pedestal, presenting us with what a woman SHOULD be. We have other sources to draw from: there’s archeology, tombs and ancient art, though even these give us a specific, and not always generally applicable window. So while we walk through the Roman world, trying to see it through the eyes of a woman, keep in mind that the ground beneath our feet is often more sand than sandstone. Take everything with a healthy dash or two of ancient salt.
THE SHAPE OF YOU (ANCIENT ROME)
As with all the ancient empires we’ve traveled to so far, we need to define what we mean by “ancient Rome.” We’re covering a lot of ground here: the Western Roman Empire starts to take shape around 753 BCE and continues on until 476 CE. And the Eastern Roman Empire continues on for quite a while after that: around another thousand years. That’s some two thousand years of Roman goodness to cover, and of course our lives are going to change depending on where we land within it. So let’s take a hop-skipping tour down ancient Rome’s timeline, getting a lady bird’s-eye view of the civilization we’ll soon be walking through.
Ancient Rome starts out as a kingdom around 753 BCE. How the city was founded is a matter of much debate. Let’s linger over this for a minute, as it sets the scene for our understanding of the Roman psyche, and particularly how it views its women. Unsurprisingly, the Romans have a pretty dramatic legend about their founding. The story goes that long ago, a man named Aeneas and some of his friends escaped from the tire fire that was the Trojan War, went to Italy and becomes king of a land called Alba Longa. Some legends say that Rome would eventually be named after Roma, a woman who traveled with Aeneas. Upon landing on the Tiber, Roma and her ladies weren’t best pleased about moving on from what seemed like a perfectly good place to found a city. So her posse burned the Trojan’s ships, purposefully stranding them in the place that would become Rome. Much better!
A few generations later, two brothers had a fight over who had the right to rule it. The victorious brother, Amulius, killed his bro Numitor’s sons and exiled his daughter, Rhea Silvia. He made her become a Vestal Virgin, a priestess position we will talk about a lot more later, to ensure that she wouldn’t give birth to future rivals.
Maybe it’s just me, but this she-wolf looks like she might be regretting her life choices.
Romulus and Remus suckled by a long-suffering she-wolf.
But the gods sure love to stir the pot. So Mars, the god of war, comes down and rapes Rhea Silvia, and nine months later she gives birth to twins: Romulus and Remus. A warrior taking a woman against her will: not an origin story I’d be super excited about, but we’re going to see the whole thing play out again and again.
Feeling threatened by these teeny babes, but not wanting to piss off the god of war, Amulius imprisons Rhea Silvia and has the babies abandoned by the Tiber River. I mean, it’s not murder when you abandon kids and let the Fates decide if they live, is it? The twins are rescued by a she-wolf, who feeds and takes care of them until a shepherd named Faustulus finds and adopts them, raising them on what will one day become Rome’s Palatine Hill.
When they got older, they decided they didn’t want to rule old Alba Longa, anyway – boring – but found a city of their own. As twins will do, they fought over exactly where they should found it. Much shoving and petty insults later, Romulus killed Remus and named the new city after himself. Mmk.
To get his Roman party started, Romulus invited a colorful cast of characters to come and live in his new city: cutthroats, runaway slaves, former prisoners. Come on down! But there was a problem. None of them were going to produce any progeny without a lady or two in the mix. Where my ladies at? So he called up his neighbors, the Sabines:
ROMULUS: “Hey, guys, Rome here. Wanna send us over some of your women so we can fill our new city with strapping Roman youths?”
SABINES: “Nah, we’re good.”
ROMULUS: “Well screw you and your goat, then.”
ONE WEEK LATER…
ROMULUS: “Hey, guys, Rome again. Sorry about insulting your goat and all that. Want to come on over to this festival we’re throwing? We’re TOTALLY not interested in stealing your women during it. But we are very interested in getting you toasted.”
They get the Sabines drunk as skunks, then proceed to kidnap their wives and daughters. It’s kind of like the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but with a whole lot less singing.
Romulus then pressures these women to marry his men. Livy tells us that he gives a rousing speech promising: “…they should be joined in lawful wedlock, participate in all their possessions and civil privileges, and, than which nothing can be dearer to the human heart, in their common children.” Tempting, Romulus. Very tempting… But when the Sabine menfolk come back in a rage to battle the Romans for their women, they intervene, showcasing some serious Stockholm syndrome. “If you are dissatisfied with the affinity between you,” the ladies say, “if with our marriages, turn your resentment against us, we are the cause of war, we of wounds and of bloodshed to our husbands and parents. It were better that we perish than live widowed or fatherless without one or other of you.” In other words, please don’t fight. We’d rather die than cause trouble! Does this sound like a myth written by a man or what? But it does show us what matters to Romans: respect for the father and the gods, for one. For the other, the role women have to play as bridge builders: the link that holds society’s chain together and create peace between men. Even when it comes at their expense.
This is fine!
The Intervention of the Sabine Women, David, 1799, courtesy of the Louvre Museum
Wife-napping complete, Rome started to grow in earnest. For a while it was ruled by kings, all elected by the people, and the city developed into an up-and-coming urban center, quickly outpacing many of its rivals in the region. But by 509, the populace was growing tired of answering to royal overlords. And then a woman named Lucretia pushed them over the edge.
The story goes that she was sexually assaulted by a guy named Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the current king. Apparently one evening he had some friends over for drinks, one of whom was Lucretia’s husband Collatinus. A few bottles deep, they started debating whose wife was the best, and Collatinus insists that Lucretia would put them all to shame. So they rode around to each man’s house to see what their wives were doing. They found them all getting ready for a night on the town, but not Lucretia: she was weaving dutifully with her maids. Prince Sextus was so impressed by her modesty that he returned several nights later, when Collatinus was conveniently out of town, and asked if he could stay over. Being a good hostess, Lucretia said sure, here’s some food and a guest room, while probably also sighing internally with a “I wish he’d stop checking out my boobs already.” Later that night, Sextus crept past her sleeping servants into her bedroom and declared his passionate love for her. Yikes. But she refused to submit, until he said that if she didn’t he would kill her and lie her naked body next to one of her slaves so that everyone would think she died in the midst of adultery. Post assault, she bravely wrote to her husband and father to come at once, and told them all about it. She asked them to win vengeance for her. And though they tried to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, Livy tells us, she tells them:
“…though I acquit myself of the sin, I do not absolve myself from punishment; not in time to come shall ever unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia.”
She grabs a knife and commits suicide rather than live with her honor tainted. Her raging male relatives carried her body into the street, stirring up the public’s anger, and they went after Sextus with everything they had. In doing so, they effectively killed Rome’s monarchy. One of the guys who accomplished this was named Lucius Junius Brutus: we’ll return to that name in a minute.
While she’s in era-inappropriate clothing, the action behind this painting still captures Lucretia’s horrible end.
Lucretia by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1664. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.
Though it’s entirely likely that she’s mythical, you could say that a woman helped birth the Roman Republic. Are we sensing a disturbingly violent trend here? Again, we learn a lot about how Romans think about women. First, that though everyone agreed the assault was not her fault, the shame and dishonor of it still stand squarely on her shoulders. Second, that a good woman is both fierce, demanding vengeance, and brave, able to take her own life, which she has to do because she can’t ever be that honorable woman again. Yikes. We also see how a woman’s fate has the power to change the course of history. Though often she’s not doing it by fighting, but by dying. Which is a somewhat depressing thought.
And so Rome is now a Republic, set up by a group of ancient aristocratic families known as the patricians. Never again will they suffer a king, they swear, and their aversion to royalty works its way down the generations. The people get to elect their own magistrates: men who make decisions on everyone’s behalf. They’re advised by the rich guys who make up the Senate, a government body that is chosen by the city’s wealthy and are made up of patricians. A senate position is for life, so they’re powerful, but they’re kept in check by two consuls. These guys are probably the most powerful in Rome, but they can only be consul for a year at a time. This system of checks and balances is a far cry from Greece’s absolute democracy, but it means that no one man has absolute power...for now. And women have little power at all.
The Republic kicks along for quite a while fairly happily, but unrest and inner strife start to break things apart. There are growing resentments between patricians and plebeians, the working class, that erupt into strikes and other trouble. And as the territory expands, we see great generals emerge who become very rich, very famous, and develop massively inflated egos, often with big and loyal armies at their backs. We see these generals start to change things. A guy named Marius ends up consul an unprecedented seven times; another guy named Sulla goes against him, sparking Rome’s first civil war, and eventually, with Rome in the middle of a war emergency, Sulla steps in and names himself a temporary dictator. Many heads are hung up in the Forum; things are getting ugly. But then they settle down again, and people assume the Republic will go on as before.
But no dice, because there were plenty of young men who looked up to Marius and Sulla and were like, “hey, they did it. Maybe I can too!” And so, along comes a guy named Julius Caesar. This fallen rich boy and military star does many fascinating things, some of which we’ll talk about when we explore the women who pass through his orbit: he recites poetry for pirates, he leads many military campaigns to surprising victories, he sleeps with many people’s wives. But one of the most bizarre and impressive things he did, with help from his fellow triumvirates Pompey and Crassus, was kick down the final straws of the Roman Republic and send it careening toward an empire with…not a KING, exactly…but a system where one man – and sometimes the woman next to him – ruled.
Caesar declares himself dictator…not just for now, but for LIFE. And then he starts acting a little too kingly a little too loudly, and the Senate starts sharpening their knives. One of those guys was a fellow named Brutus – remember that name? – who feels it’s his personal mission to make sure no king ever rules Rome again. And so in 44 BCE they stab him an outlandish number of times in the middle of the Forum. Look, everybody! No more kinging! But the people aren’t grateful: they are pissed.
The assassins run, and some new ambitious young men step in to chase them: Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son, his bro Marc Antony, and another guy named Lepidus. After battling the assassins, and then battling each other for who would be the champion of Rome, Octavian emerges victorious. And after almost 200 years of continual war and severed heads hung up around the city, everyone’s tired and just wants things to calm down.
Marc Antony's Oration at Caesar's Funeral by George Edward Robertson, 1864, Wikicommons
And that’s how Octavian takes the name Augustus and become Rome’s first emperor. Though he spends his whole life insisting that he ISN’T REALLY an emperor: “Don’t worry, guys, we’re still a Republic. Like, I’m not an absolute ruler. No: I’m just its Princeps (First Citizen), and the Senate still has lots of power. I just happen to be really smart and so everyone agrees with my decisions.” And everyone went yeah, fine, OK, let’s all pretend.
After he dies, we see many more emperors who are…less shy about claiming their power. Some are great, some just okay, some who are too busy cross-dressing and throwing giant ragers to govern effectively, and some who are just downright crazy. We’ll meet a few of them later, but if you want a full and very pretty-looking graphic that gives you a rundown, check out the Timeline of Roman Emperors that author Pamela Toler and I made just for you. You can peruse it on the show notes, or you can buy yourself the poster-sized version in my Etsy shop. It’s full of the influential women around the emperors, too, and some of the ones who oppose them. Naturally.
This timeline is a collaboration between Mr. Exploress, Pamela Toler and myself, and I’m loving it! It is now available to buy in my Etsy shop if you’d like it to hang up on your wall at A2 poster size. That’s really when it’s at its best.
Back to the Empire. Its real heyday stretches from 29 BCE to about 180 CE. Thanks to ambitious rulers and a truly killer military, at its peak the Empire has control of everything the Mediterranean touches: it gets so big that the empire has to split into two because it’s just too vast to be ruled from one city. But eventually, things start falling apart. Bad and short-lived emperors, plague, invasion, so much stabbing. By 476, the Western Empire has fallen. The Eastern Empire, and its capital city of Constantinople, will keep on thriving for quite a long time.
So now we know: there’s a period of kings, then the Republic, then the Empire, which eventually splits into two. I’ve obviously left out a whole lot of detail here; we’ll get a glimpse at several of these periods in much more detail as we move from one interesting lady to the next in our series. But since we’ve got to settle somewhere, let’s explore life as fairly fancy patrician matroni, or married women, at the height of the Empire, in the year 110 CE.
UP AND AT ‘EM
But before we roll out of bed and get going, we’ve got to sort out who exactly we are. What a lady’s average day looks like in Rome depends very much on their socio-economic status and, importantly, whether they are slave or free. If you’re foreign, even if you are free born, you have limited rights within the Empire. But if you’re a citizen of any station, you have some coveted rights: suffragium, or the right to vote; commercium, or the right to enter into legal contracts, and connubium, or the right to marry. We lady citizens, of course, most certainly aren’t entitled to all three.
If there are two things we Romans are obsessed with, it’s family and status. Our gens, or family clan, is everything: it dictates our name, our status, our place, our rights. It’s one of the most important things about us. Remember that. At the top of the power pyramid sits those ancient patrician families who started the Republic, including the emperor and his family. These wealthy upper classes are well connected and tend to hold most of the high political and religious positions. Then there are the equestrians, or knights, one rung below: you could say they’re the business class of ancient Rome. To be an eques, a man has to prove he holds property valued at 400,000 sesterces, while a senator has to prove he’s worth 1,000,000, so that paints a picture of the difference. Then there are the common folk, called plebeians, or plebs. Below that are freedmen and women: those who were once enslaved, but have found their way to freedom. Though considered low class, some freedmen become wealthy and influential. And then, below that, there are a whole lot of slaves.
It’s tough to move up the Roman power ladder, given that it’s based on your family name, but not impossible. Rome’s a city full of clients and patrons: people making deals and alliances, always seeking to improve their lot. Let’s say our family is fairly well to do, from good patrician stock. That being the case, our house, or domus, is likely to be on one of Rome’s seven hills: the higher up we are, the better off. It’s cleaner up on the hill, the view is better, and the smells from the teeming city below are less troublesome. We wake early – with the sun, as no electricity means to tend to work in time with the sun’s rise and fall. Roll over on what’s probably a mattress stuffed with straw, wool or even leaves, and let’s get going.
We’ll be waking on the second floor: the domain of women and servants. Enjoy the solitude, if you happen to have it, because in our very full house, privacy is going to be a hard thing to come by. The room we sleep in is called a cubiculum – yes, that sounds like “cubicle” for a reason, and that’s just about how small they are. Dark and cell-like, with no windows, it has room for sleeping and not much else. Our house is rather like a fortress: pretty from the outside, but built to block out the noisy, sometimes stinky world outside. So though you’re likely to have some pretty frescos on your walls, you can only admire them once your eyes have adjusted or if you’ve lit the lantern near your bed. The house is prone to drafts, too, so if it’s winter there might also be a brazier on the floor to keep you warm, so try not to trip over that.
Our first stop might just be the latrina, which is our at-home toilet. Most well-to-do houses will have them. Emperor Hadrian’s villa will feature 35 toilets, though the average home probably only has a few. It’s likely to be upstairs, or down near the kitchen, or out in the courtyard to try and deal with the smell. It’s likely to be a single-seat toilet, unlike in the public restrooms we’ll visit later, built into the wall and hopefully with a door to close behind us. Its seat is made of either wood or marble, and the hole is shaped something like a keyhole, just like our modern toilets. It’s likely to either be a cesspit toilet, or have a terra cotta drainpipe leading to a discreet downstairs location or perhaps even the street. To wipe, we might be using a sponge on a stick, which we will share with the other members of the household…no thank you! Or we might be using a hanky, or perhaps even just our hands, which we can always just wash off in a minute. That method sound gross to us, but is certainly the most environmentally effective. Who uses what toilet is probably tied to your status in the household; given our obsession with status, I can’t imagine we matrona are sharing a bathroom with the slave who does our hair, but I could certainly be wrong.
snuggle up, bathroom buddy!
Some ancient Roman toilets in modern-day France, courtesy of Jens Vermeersch on Flickr
Feel like hitting the shower? Well, that’s not happening. Though we Romans are fairly famous for our cleanliness, full bathing doesn’t often happen inside our homes. Bathtubs do exist in some rich houses, but they’re a rarity. At most, you might fill a basin with water and give your hands and face a rinse.
Is the water clean? Where does it come from? In this respect, we’re in luck, because we’ve perfected the art of water transport. Rome built its first mighty aqueduct back in 312 BCE, setting a precedent for water purity, control and extensive plumbing that won’t be matched again for millennia. You can see these structures from far outside the city, as iconic a sight as New York City’s skyline, carrying water from far afield into our streets and alleys. Though much of the 250-mile system is actually built underground. They are a really big ancient world deal. “All the abundant supply of water…” Pliny tells us, “…for public buildings, baths and gardens…coming from such a distance, tunneling through mountain, and levelling the route through deep valleys must make this the most remarkable achievement anywhere in the world.”
Relying on gravity to keep things moving, they usher water down waterproofed beds made of concrete, which is actually a Roman invention, though it’s not quite like the stuff we pour into sidewalks in our era. It’s created with volcanic ash, lime and seawater mixed in with volcanic rock. It’s more durable than the stuff we make: it even gets stronger over time. Specialized workers known as aquarii keep it clean, along with special tanks called piscinae limariae where impurities can be decanted. By the time the water collects at the end in a reservoir, where it is stored and then released into lead pipes that make it to most street corners, it’s shockingly clean for an era well before water purification plants.
Color me impressed.
The above-ground portion of an aqueduct in modern-day Spain, courtesy of seriykotik1970 on Flickr.
They’re carrying a lot of water: we’re talking 200 million gallons into the city every day, used for everything from drinking and cleaning to powering industrial water mills. Some industrious city residents even build their own illicit pipes, tapping into the public system to bring water directly into their homes and gardens.
And of course, it feeds our voracious love of public bathing. But going to the bath is an afternoon activity, and one we’ll need to leave the house for. So for now, let’s go ahead and get dressed.
TOGA PARTY
Rome is a place where what you wear can say a LOT about who you are and how people should treat you. Downstairs in his bedroom, your son will be stretching, rolling out of bed in the loin cloth and tunic he probably slept in, then having a slave help him get into his toga. This is the standard outfit for adult male citizens. He’ll have to think carefully about what that toga looks like, though, as our sumptuary laws dictate quite strictly who can wear what. Togas trimmed with purple are only for boys under sixteen, called a toga praetexta. But once he is initiated into the world of men, his toga will be white.
You will be sporting what is in some ways quite a similar outfit, though you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a toga. You COULD, but then people might think you’re either a prostitute or an adulteress, which is probably not the look you’re going for. Another important thing to note: the more skin you’re showing, the less respectable people are going to find you, and the lower status they’ll assume you are. Only slave girls and women of the evening bear their ankles in public! Such things might cause public unrest.
Let’s pause in the nude. Keep in mind that a lot of our knowledge about what women are wearing comes from statues and funeral reliefs, all carved by men. They serve as something akin to an Instagram feed: an artful idealization of what we want people to think we looked like, but not necessarily the best evidence for our actual day-to-day. Luckily, Dr. Rad and Dr. G are here to help.
So, first, let’s deal with our undies. Are we wearing any? The answer seems to be….maybe.
DR. RAD: “…it seems that there's not a lot of underwear like we would recognize it going on. There are images of people wearing what looks like modern underwear to us, but that's probably because they were people...who were engaged in some sort of physical activity, which meant that they couldn't wear what a Roman would normally wear….” Whatever underthings we’re wearing are called subligaculum, or “a little something underneath.”
While our son is probably wearing either nothing under all of his layers or something akin to a loincloth, it’s possible that our underwear is a bit more elegant, probably made of linen imported from Egypt. But here’s as fun fact: we might ALSO be wearing the equivalent of some leather bikini briefs.
DR. RAD: “There is potentially some evidence that women might have worn at some point some sort of like leather bikini. Like maybe when they had their period or something or if they were working out, but it's very speculative on that.” They seem to be made out of goatskin: not very breathable, I would imagine, but definitely waterproof. So if it’s your time of the month, make sure to keep an eye out.
We’ll have a bra too, called a strophium, which is there to bind and lift up our lady orbs.
DR. G and DR. RAD: …women would wear like a sort of breast-band. And it seems like a respectable woman would keep that on even when she was having sex. And this could be used for like a number of reasons.
Our friend Ovid, who seems keen to give ladies advice about how to look their sexiest, tells us that if our breasts aren’t quite the right shape, we can always stuff these bras. Dr. Rad and Dr. G concur: it’s versatile.
DR. G and DR. RAD: …it seems that this could be worn a number of different ways, kind of like there are different kinds of bras, in that women could potentially wear them to pad themselves out like a padded bra. So if you wanted to make yourself look bigger than you actually were, you could potentially wrap around more fabric so that your boobs appeared bigger than they were. Or you could potentially wrap in a certain way to maybe provide a bit more emphasis or, you know, a bit more of a cleavagy look potentially. It also goes the other way, in that you could potentially wear your breastband so that your boobs are minimized or strapped down essentially.
But are all women wearing these wraparound bras? We matroni probably are: in fact, we have written evidence that we don’t take them off during sex, much to the frustration of our husbands. Because
Dr. RAD: ...it would be tricky to take off quickly. We do have sources that say that prostitutes could suddenly flash passerbys and show their breasts. So that would imply that they're not wearing it. But having said that, again, we do have images in art in places like Pompeii, for example, where women are shown having sex and some of them are wearing it and some of them aren't. It's a bit unclear exactly who was wearing it, but presumably respectable women would be wearing one, and we do have references to like slave girls wearing one. So it seems that, yeah, a lot of women probably would've been wearing like a breastband of some kind.
The body ideal we’re shooting for is thin, but with hips wide enough to suggest our potential success at childbearing. But we respectable matronai are not wandering the streets showing off skin or cleavage. Layers are most definitely the name of the game.
See the following video to get a good visual sense of Roman dress conventions for men and women:
We’re probably putting on some kind of slip.
DR. RAD: …something called a supurus, like an under tunic. So it's something that was maybe like a short...I guess kind of like we might think like a short nightie, or a short little dress or something like that that you would potentially wear. Again, it's not really clear how many women would have been wearing one of these. And there's some suggestion that maybe it was something that just young girls wore, but then we do have these references to adult women wearing them, too.
And this is just one layer of several, which if Roman poet Martial has anything to say about it, is going to cause us some distress: “Your unhappy garments, Lesbia, treat you indecently. When you attempt with your right hand, attempt with your left, to pluck them away, you wrench them out with tears and groans, they are so gripped by the straights of your mighty rump.” So, yes: once we’re fully dressed, picking that wedgie is going to be a laborious process.
One thing we will definitely all be wearing is a tunic.
DR. RAD AND DR. G: So the tunic is like your staple garment that everyone would have worn. And the main differences as far as women were concerned probably would have come from like what status you were….So you, basically if you were an elite woman, you probably would have been wearing a tunic that would go all the way down to your feet and provide basically coverage because you're a respectable Roman woman. How stifling! Exactly. No showing off those ankles!
After that, since we are fancy ladies, we will pull on our stola, which goes all the way down to our feet. In fact, it might be longer, so we’ll need to pull it up around the belt we will soon be wearing, kind of like you would a loosely tucked-in t-shirt.
DR. RAD: This is basically like the female equivalent of the toga in that it's something you would wear to show off your status as a citizen: a Roman married woman.
Despite what you’ve seen in period films, your arms and cleavage are not likely to be on display here: the top edges of your stola will probably cover your upper arms, either stitched at the shoulders or pinned all along to show only teeny peeps of skin. That might change if we’re of a lower station: slave women usually have their tunic fall just above their knees, as it’s more practical for their duties. And as a helpful bonus, this helps us know at a glance who is who and how we should treat them. When it comes to our clothes, class is everything.
Dr. RAD and Dr. G: …this is something that the Romans are sort of constantly wrestling with. They have what seems to be a fairly clear dress code so that you can tell who someone is in terms of their social standing just by looking at them. But that starts to get muddy very quickly, because, of course, if you're an upper-class person, do you want your attendants who are slaves to be walking around in rags? Probably not. You probably want them to be dressed reasonably nicely, too. And we do have records of this. And there's definitely always anxiety about can you really tell who's who? Like what if a slave girl got dressed up in upper class clothing: could you tell that she was actually a slave?...Oh, the horror of it all! You couldn't tell on site exactly who somebody was. You couldn't tell if they are a lower class. Bleh!
We might belt our stola under our breasts to create artful folds, then cinch it in with a thicker belt at our waist. The look we’re going for is svelte, but with hips that suggest superior childbearing. Though it’s likely we’re going to be so wrapped up in our next garment that I’m not sure how many admiring men on the street might notice. It’s worth noting here that by the era we’re walking in, there’s evidence to suggest women are no longer wearing this iconic piece of clothing, but just a tunic. Which makes sense, given the weather conditions.
Dr. G: You think about the Italian summer. It's hot, it's sweaty. You're thinking about having a drink, but instead you're wrapped up in a whole bundle of fabric like some sort of weird cocoon.
Later, when we go out of the house, we’ll wrap ourselves in our palla: a two-meter wide, six-meter long scarf and cloak combo that will hang in heavy folds and cover up much of our bodies. There are tons of ways to put it on, but we might need some help from a servant to do it.
DR. RAD: …as Dr. G and I can both attest because we've tried this at ourselves, it's a huge amount of fabric.
DR. G: Yes. The palla is gigantic.
DR. RAD: It's really hard to actually do anything while you're wearing it.
DR. G: It's quite constrictive.
all wrapped up. it’s hot in here!
Roman matrons and the colorful garments, Wikicommons
Sometimes the end will be thrown over our left shoulders, with the end dangling down in front, and the other end drawn around the back and brought around. Likely you’ll need to carry at least one end in your arms, don’t plan on dancing a jig or doing any calisthenics.
DR. RAD: I think that's part of the important thing about the stola and the palla is that they are uncomfortable and unwieldy garments. So in a way, they become a real visual signifier for the upper class. Because who can afford to not have a fully functioning body when they're out in public? And it's really only the elites who, one had the capacity to show off that they can possess such fabric. But also to just be so uncomfortable and do not really have to do much, just sort of parade around and have a particular appearance in the public space.
It’s so big that we can even cover our heads with it: some sources say that married women ALWAYS cover their heads in public, but we don’t know if that’s actually true. So I’ll leave that decision up to you.
Our clothing is probably made of either linen or wool, though they could be cotton. If we’re feeling fancy and have the money to afford it they might also be silk brought all the way from Asia. You’ll want to be careful, though, because Romans have some serious anxieties about seeming either too loose or too excessive when it comes to our outfits.
DR. RAD: …there's always this sort of a moral conversation in the Roman texts about what people in general are wearing, but particularly women. There's always a fine line between appearing, you know, refined and civilized and showing off your status and going too far and being too luxurious. The Romans lose their minds over this kind of stuff all the time with both men and women, but particularly women.
Our pallas are likely to be colorful, too. While statues of old probably have you picturing our getups as all white and sheet-like, we Roman ladies LOVE color. In fact, ancient world Greek and Roman statues weren’t originally white at all, but painted quite brightly: that whole minimalist chic thing we associate with this time period is just a product of paint fading over time. Our dyes are made from plant-based material, and it’s expensive, so most people are wearing black, brown, grey, and cream. Hot tip: do not wrap yourself head to toe in purple, as that’s the emperor’s color and you’re going to get in trouble if you choose to flounce around in it. Anyway, it’s royally hard to come by: Pliny the Elder says it’s made from the murex mollusk and that it takes 10,000 of the shellfish to make just one gram of dye. A pound of nice purple silk will run you 100,000 denarii, which will also buy you half a dozen slaves or a pet lion. So… Red is also considered a power color, made from crushed roots or bugs, whereas white is used for ceremonies and holidays. How do we keep our woolen whites so white, you wonder? We have people called fullers to launder them for us. They use uric acid to keep our woolen garments looking good. There’s nothing quite like the smell of pee-starched tunics in the morning.
Though these decisions may seem trivial, they’re anything but. In a world where women can’t vote, and in fact only have so much power in the public sphere, what they wear really matters, both as an expression of their social situation and status. It can tell viewers how important they are and if they’re married. It’s one of the clearest modes of expression women have. And we aren’t about to give it up. Back in 215 BCE, the city’s rulers passed a wartime austerity measure called the Lex Oppia: a sumptuary law aimed at curbing what women could wear and do in public. After the wars end and there are noises about keeping this law in place, women from inside and outside the city storm the Forum, taking the streets and intimidating voting men into submission. We’ll dive into this moment more in a future episode, but suffice it to say that dress matters.
Now that we’re dressed, it’s time for hair and makeup. Downstairs in his chambers, your husband is probably going through a series of his own beauty rituals: since Alexander the Great set the trend for going beardless, he has to get the dreaded beard shave, done by a servant or slave, and then have that servant pluck his eyebrows and any stray neck hairs. So we can comfort ourselves that we aren’t the only ones suffering for beauty. Suetonius tells us that Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, was known to depilate his leg-hairs by rubbing them with scalding-hot walnut shells. Dang, Augustus! Not that we’re exempt from this torturous plucking game. The poet Ovid, in his book The Art of Love, mentions how important it is to deal with our “underarm goat and bristling, hairy legs” if we want to be considered fine ladies. Thanks, Ovid! We’ll get RIGHT onto that, but first let’s deal with skincare. Hang on tight, because this might take a while. It’s worth noting here that this beauty regime is probably only enjoyed by the very upper classes, as they’re the ones with the time and money to afford them. It’s also worth keeping in mind that a lot of our information about said beauty rituals comes from the writings of men, some of which are meant to be satirical and are often meant to be judgmental.
i find the graphics a little creepy on this one, but it’s a great visual overview of the kinds of our ancient Roman beauty rituals:
In terms of skincare, we feel quite strongly about it. Roman women feel a lot of pressure to have smooth, unblemished skin: a sign of health, of good living, and of general sexiness. In the ancient world, which is full of barely-treatable diseases, this has got to be a difficult thing to achieve. Pliny the Elder mentions a whole host of potential skin problems we might have to deal with: pimples, freckles, spots, facial itching, eruptive skin diseases, leprous sores, and scars, to name a few. Luckily we have a wide array of both mundane and bizarre skin concoctions for treating them.
Some of the ingredients we’re slathering on are ones the modern-day lady will have no problem getting down with: olive and almond oil, honey, fruit juice, seeds, mushrooms, poppy seeds, rosewater, and many forms of fat, both plant and animal. Others are…a little more adventurous. For example, cow placenta is supposed to be great for curing skin ulcers. Bull bile stains the face a pleasing hue. For wrinkles there is swan's fat, asses' milk, or axle-grease. For freckles there is ash of snails. Overnight, we may even have slept in a face mask made of grease derived from unwashed sheep’s wool, which Ovid complains will “offend all noses.” And this is only a partial list.
One of our primary objectives is to look as pale as possible. Tan skin is a sign of the working class, and as patrician ladies we wouldn’t want to be confused with one of them. We have many lotions and creams to help us with this. Narcissus bulb, cantaloupe root and cumin are all handy whiteners, and probably aren’t going to corrupt our organs. Archeologists have found evidence of facial creams containing animal fat, starch and lead or tin oxide, which when rubbed on will leave a smooth, powdery texture and make the skin appear paler. Lead is GREAT for luminous skin: just ask Elizabeth the First! Too bad it builds up in your system, doing all sorts of nefarious things. We might also use white marl, a type of clay, or chalk dust to achieve this aim. Later we might even bathe in asses milk—rumor has it that Cleopatra was a fan, and it’s supposed to help make us pasty as hell. And then of course there’s that old Egyptian staple, crocodile dung. Galen says that it is highly prized. “…it is not enough that there are countless other cosmetics by which their faces are made smooth and shiny,” he says. “No, they also include the dung of crocodiles.” Pliny the Elder assures us that it comes from crocs who live on sweet-smelling flowers, so it actually smells quite pleasant. Spoken like a man who’s never smeared feces onto his face. It’s quite possible that men like Pliny were exaggerating on this point, saying that we slather ourselves in excrement as a kind of pot shot at women who go to extreme measures to be beautiful. Or it could be that we are actually willing to go to such lengths because of the age we live in: it’s unclear.
For those moments where face creams and makeup just won’t do it, we have other means of covering up our skin’s imperfections. Namely, little patches called alutae or splenia. These teeny leather scraps are sometimes treated with alum, then pasted directly on the skin as a kind of artful beauty mark. We might even cut them into cute little shapes and turn them into a fashion statement, much like we’ll see again in 16th-century France.
We also want our teeth looking pearly. Black teeth are something we see frequently amongst slaves and the lower classes. As Ovid tells us, if you’ve got discolored teeth you’ll have to laugh with your lips firmly closed. “You can do yourself untold damage when you laugh if your teeth are black, too long or irregular.” We’ll use things like natron, a kind of bicarb soda like the Egyptians use, and rinses to try and keep them looking bright. We might also give them a little rinse with urine. I tell you, it’s so versatile!
When it comes to body hair, Ovid’s right: we want to keep everything below our eyebrows to a minimum. Several ancient writers suggest that we take much of our body hair off. Much like the Greeks, we’ll be shaving, plucking, ripping it out with resin paste, or scraping it off with a pumice stone. Though we have graffiti from Pompeii that suggests some men advocate for a bushy below-stairs carpet [“It is much better to fuck a hairy cunt than a smooth one: it both retains the warmth and stimulates the organ” (oh my)] – some women are removing some or all of their feminine shag rug, as we discussed in our episode on pubic hair removal through the ages. That should be fun, but nothing the time traveling woman hasn’t had a run-in with before. Also like the ancient Greeks, Roman ladies are said to strive for a fuller eyebrow. A writer named Claudian praises a woman’s beauty by saying: "[W]ith how fine a space between do your delicate eyebrows meet on your forehead." We’ll be darkening and extending them with makeup to make sure they’re as close to a unibrow as possible.
And now our slaves are pulling jars and bottles out of a wooden beauty case, getting ready to make us up in ways we’re very familiar with today: we’re having our eyelashes tinted with ash to make them look fuller. Unmarried daughters especially want to ensure their eyelashes are present and accounted for because, as Pliny the Elder writes, “the eye-lashes fall off with those persons who are too much given to venereal pleasures.” Eyelashes accentuate your chastity, ladies!
To further enhance our eyes, there is kohl, like the Egyptians use, which we will mix with some oil or fat and paint on with a brush. But we can also avail ourselves of squid ink, antimony, and something called lamp-black, sometimes mixed with saffron to help mitigate the smell. Eyeshadow might contain charred, ground rose petals, roasted date stones, or a paste made from toasted ants. Sticky! We’ll also paint on some rouge to give our cheeks a healthy glow. We have several to choose from: made of red ochre, rose and poppy petals, or red chalk.
Some of these ingredients aren’t the best smelling, so we are very keen on perfumes. And while we Romans certainly didn’t invent personal fragrance, we did inspire the word perfume, which comes from the Latin per fumum (which means ‘through smoke’). Remember that we haven’t learned yet how to distill alcohol, so to make them we take olive oil and add in some nice-smelling plants and woods to steep. We’re big fans of many of the same scents as the Egyptians; one rough guesstimate says that by 100 CE we’re using some 2,800 tons of frankincense a year. We sprinkle it on bathroom walls, put it on the soles of our feet, add it to baths, anoint military standards. Some sources whisper that Emperor Nero, who we’ll meet in a later episode, loved the smell of roses so much that had had silver pipes installed so his guests could mist themselves with rosewater. Pliny tells us that we even put perfume in our drinks. He also says that Romans waste “…a hundred million secterces every year; that is the sum which our luxuries and our women cost us …” Blaming it on the ladies, as always, Pliny. I’ll bet that guy is a barrel of laughs at a party.
It always pays to smell one’s best.
Roman perfume bottles (unguentari) on display at Villa Boscoreale, Wikicommons
This seems like a lot. But if we’re in the privileged position to afford such beauty rituals, we can’t really afford to ignore them. Our makeup, we believe, makes us look healthier, younger, more attractive. The word for such things, medicamen or medicamentum, can mean cosmetic, poison, and remedy: these products aren’t used solely for the purpose of looking glam. But remember: restraint is key. We don’t want to be too heavy-handed. Wearing too much makeup can give others the impression that we’re cheap, vain, or a woman for hire. And so we see an age-old contradiction: men want you to look pretty and healthy, darling, but they don’t want you to look like you tried too hard. And they certainly don’t want to see how you do it. As the ever-lovely Ovid says: “…women should keep, till the work’s perfected, out of sight. Do I have to know why your complexion’s white? Shut the boudoir door—why show a half-finished painting? Men don’t need to know too much; most of what you do would shock us if it weren’t concealed from view.” Here comes another piece of advice from Lucretius, who says we ought to be “at greater pains to hide all that is behind the scenes of life.” If that doesn’t define the Roman woman’s lived experience, then I don’t know what does.
Now for hair. Tell us, Dr. Rad.
DR. RAD: Ancient Roman women don't seem to have been big on hats. What they do seem to have been big on is hairdos: really complicated hairdos, piled as high as the sky, sometimes: it's just curls as far as the eye can see…there's definitely certain kinds of hair styles that are on trend at any one given time, but they're all fairly complicated and probably would not have taken the weight of a hat. And they would often be built up with like various false pieces as well to extend the height of them. Yeah, extensions are not a new thing.
What style you’re sporting changes depending on who the empress is: she and her visible public statues are usually the ones that set the fashionable trend. Earlier, under Augustus’s wife Livia, we have a deceptively simple-looking style: wavy hair around the temples, a curl near the forehead and a bun low at the back, called a nodus. But by our current period, our Empress is a lively lady named Pompeia Plotina, and she’s totally a fan of vertically-inclined confections like the women of Flavian Dynasty that came before her. If you look at statues of our current empress, you’ll see that she’s a big fan of the 80’s-style poof of hair in the front, as well as a fetching headband which probably helps the style hold together. I wonder if she’s got some kind of Bump-it situation going on under there? We want our coiffure with many layers. Think of a wedding cake, but made of hair. As Juvenal has it, “So important is the business of beautification; so numerous are the tiers and storeys piled one upon another on her head!”
It’s likely we’ve got curls galore. Our servants will create them with a calamistrum, or curling iron, which is placed in the fire before being applied to our tresses. We’re placing a whole lot of trust in our female slaves. Hair dressing is considered so important that we even have a designated hairdresser, called an ornatrix, whose job it is to become an updo expert.
We might also dye our natural hair. Different kinds of animal fat, antimony, ashes, henna, or special soap balls to dye your hair black, red, or even blonde, if you’re feeling particularly bold. It seems to be quite a popular color, giving its wearer and exotic air, but I’ve read suggestions that the color is one that prostitutes often wear to distinguish them from fine ladies. There’s evidence that some women even dye their hair blue, but this is also apparently a sex worker’s color. Some women get to have all the fun…
It’s likely that you will also attach mountains of fake hair that’s going to piss everyone off at the theater. In fact, later this evening, we might wear a wig: around this time they’re very fashionable. I wonder if the Egyptians helped inspire this trend? We might have several to choose from: black, blond, or red, all made from natural hair. If it’s from a nation or people that Rome has conquered, all the better! Sigh.
Now for jewelry. It’s very likely we’ll be wearing some: fibula, or a kind of pin that keeps our clothing in place and which can act as quite a beautiful piece of jewelry in itself, necklaces, earrings, bracelets. We’ll see gold and silver, gemstones and exquisite detailing. Of course, much like with everything about our outfits, we’ll be very conscious not to overdo it. We respectable matrons have to think carefully about how garish our outfits are, as most Romans are suspicious of excess, and seeing it displayed by a woman makes them especially uncomfortable. What we wear and how we wear it matters, from the rogue on our cheeks to the shoes on our feet, because they say a lot about us and define how others see us. As a woman, this is an especially potent signifier.
What shoes we wear will depend on who we are and what we’re doing. While inside, we’re probably wearing a slipper or your iconic strappy leather sandals. But for outdoor use, we’ve got an array of others to choose from: we’ve got more slippers; we also might have close-toe shoes and half boots made of rawhide. Some of these are quite beautiful. I have a picture of an old Roman shoe in the show notes that has exquisite cutout designs on it that make it into something that most of us would be happy to wear in our century:
great design lasts the ages.
A Roman shoes, courtesy of Mictlantecuhtli via reddit
PART 2
Last episode, we learned a bit about our empire’s history, went to the ladies room, got ourselves dressed, done up, and ready for the day.
Now let’s descend the stairs and explore our house, or domus. The vast majority of Romans live in apartment blocks called insulae, which we’ll walk by a little later, but we’re lucky to live in something a little more luxe. Our house is fashioned like a Greek home, built around a central, rectangular atrium that is open to the sky. This pretty, open space lets light in, but also rain that filters through a bunch of terracotta pots and figures along the funnel-like roofline and tumbles down into a central pool. When it pours, it’s going to be hard to hear yourself think. The water goes down into a cistern, which will be your water source for most of your daily needs. It’s smart design and it looks pretty, too.
Our house is quite sparse in terms of decoration: as a rule, no lavish furniture here. The walls and floors, though, give us plenty to look at. They are covered in colorful murals and frescoes; we Romans do not approve of fresh white walls.
I hope you aren’t yearning for quiet time alone in your new home, because Roman domestic life is most certainly shared. You’ll be dealing with your kids, guests, probably extended family members. And like it or not, as a wealthy matrona, you are assuredly going to be dealing with slaves. They are a prevalent feature of life here and are, alas, something we cannot avoid. Slavery here isn’t race-based: life here is defined by social status rather than ethnicity or skin color, and if you’re a slave you’re at the absolute bottom of the totem pole. Many come from places Rome has conquered, sold into slavery after their side lost. Some are stolen and sold by pirates. Others come from within Rome itself, forced to sell themselves into slavery because they can’t pay their debts. Most are born free, and we Romans are very aware that it is an unfortunate state that can befall almost anyone. That doesn’t always mean they are treated kindly.
There are a LOT of slaves in Rome. By the first century BCE, they make up about 20 percent of Italy’s population. The good news is that they can be very influential in their households if they earn their family’s faith and trust. Some are eventually freed, and for those whose family or sponsors who are citizens, they can adopt the same status. Others are less fortunate, sold into hard labor, prostitution, to fight as gladiators, or are shipped out to large country estates where the work is pretty grueling. When it comes to how they’re treated, it’s a family affair: the law doesn’t much intervene. Your husband gets to decide how to treat those subjugated under their roof, and so do you. This is an ugly reality, but in a pre-industrial age slaves are quite literally keeping this Empire running. So make sure you’re extra nice to the women cleaning and cooking around you…and tell your son he’s not allowed to sleep with any.
KEEPING IT IN THE PATERFAMILIAS
As the materfamilias, or head woman of the family, you are in charge of managing the household. We will oversee the education of our children, plan dinners, preserve our house’s honor, and generally share whatever respect our husband has. You have power within these walls, make no mistake. But your paterfamilias has more power than you ever will.
In ancient Rome, our paterfamilias is very much in charge of us. Here’s Dr. Evans to tell us why.
Dr. EVANS: The paterfamilias is really...he's almost a God in the household. So something that I tell my students often is that Rome is the most patriarchal society I can think of, not because it's the most heavy handed against women, but because patriarchal literally means "the rule of the father." And for the Romans, the father was the leading figure in any household.” And that household isn’t confined to some nuclear family. “… he will usually be the oldest man of a maybe quite extended family. And there might be adopted children, there might be nieces and nephews whose father have died. So it might be more than just his children and his wife that he is literally the ruler of.
He's also the priest of the household, which means he carries out any rituals that need to be done at home. He’ll just pull up the hood of his toga and boom: instant priest!
He manages the money, strikes deals, and decides whom his children should marry. Rome’s first real legal code, the Law of the Twelve Tables from 450 BCE, puts women directly under the control of their paterfamilias. Because really, we’re too feeble minded to stand legally on our own! “Women, even though they are of full age, because of their levity of mind shall be under [male] guardianship.” That’s our problem, ladies: levity, which Merriam Webster defines as “excessive or unseemly frivolity” or “a lack of steadiness.” Thanks a lot, ancient men friends. Of course, not everyone agrees. A guy named Gaius said that “There seems…to have been no very worthwhile reason why women who have reached the age of maturity should be in guardianship. For the argument which is commonly believed, that because they are scatterbrained they are frequently subject to deception and that it was proper for them to be under guardians’ authority, seems to be specious rather than true.” Someone get that gentleman a drink!
The truth is that any of his children, either male or female, are under his authority, and technically need his permission to do pretty much anything. And that control means our father can do what he wants: whip, starve or exile us, if he so chooses, and while social expectation might intervene, the law isn’t going to. Who runs the world? Dad…sigh.
There is no worse crime in Rome than killing your father. The punishment is that you’ll be thrown into a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper and an ape, beaten and then thrown into the Tiber. A very unhappy sack indeed.
But wait…what about our husband? What’s his role in all this? There was a time, early on in Rome’s history, when our father transferred power over us to our husbands.
Here’s Dr. Evans again: It seems to have still existed maybe in the mid Republic, so we might be talking third century BCE, and then it might have existed in exceptional circumstances. And what the manus marriage means is that basically her husband becomes like her father to her. And the manus part of it, which means “hand,” is that she's given over to the kind of symbolic power of the hand of her husband.
But by the mid to late Republic, and definitely by the time we get into Empire, that sort of marriage seems really rare. So it’s dad who runs the show, and this remains true for as long as he lives. If you want a divorce – a thing that isn’t hard to come by in ancient Rome, with very few religious or social repercussions – you’re going to have to ask dad for permission. Doesn’t matter if you’re thirty and an independent woman, dammit.
This has its potential pros and cons, and a lot of them will depend on what kind of father we happen to have. For instance, if your marriage isn’t going well, you have a place to go: a financial and filial security blanket.
DR. EVANS: …I think that's probably better for women because I…and maybe I just think that fathers would be kinder to daughters, which is certainly not always the case… but if a marriage is bad, the father could drag her back into his family, as it were; maybe not drag, but accept her back into his household and he could then arrange a better marriage for her.
But it can also be bad, as dad can yank us out of our marriage anytime he pleases and launch us at another man if he thinks it’ll be more advantageous.
Dr. EVANS: Certainly the father...he still has the right over her dowry. So, for example, divorce is very common in Roman society, especially amongst Roman elites. So you're quite right that a father from an elite family might well decide, I need to make an alliance with that family now, my daughter is to get divorced and I'm going to marry her off to one of those sons. And as we'll see, technically, she has to give acquiescence to any marriage. But again, you know, how much freedom she actually had in that will depend on individual families and there could be a lot of pressure put on her. Similarly, the husband can just decide that he wants to divorce her and then she will go back to her father's household, probably. So it's like she never completely breaks away from her father's household.
Alternatively, if you’re widowed and want to marry again, dad has the power to prevent you. Famously, a tired and lonely Agrippina the Elder has to ask her much-loathed paterfamilias, the emperor Tiberius, if she can marry again. And because he sees her as a threat to his power, he says no, and there’s nothing she can do about it. But here’s a potential plus.
DR. EVANS: So if the paterfamilias, who might well be their father, dies, they might possibly be under their own law, as it's called: sui uris. So they might not be under the authority of their husband or their husband's father or the man in that family. So it is more complicated than just women are transferred around, although they are, and that the paterfamilias rules everybody in the household. Women are in a way in a sort of anomalous position in the household.
And there’s a series of laws that come into play during the reign of our first emperor, Augustus, that says that women who have at least three surviving children (and, if you’re of a lower class, four), you can be legally emancipated from father or husband. A baby bonus, as it were.
As Dr. Evans says: …that meant she could conduct business under her own name. And the Romans are obsessed with legal business. They're obsessed with wills…she could do all of that and buy and sell, which Roman women, if they had property, they could kind of do anyway. But technically, it was always under guardianship. So they had somebody called a tutaila, a guardian, who technically had to kind of approve any exchange of property. It might be another one of those categories whereby (pretty unlikely the tutaila would step in) but if you have obtained your legal freedom, you don't have to worry about it.
We’ll talk about that law and what it meant for women a lot more in another episode. For now, suffice it to say that while there are avenues to legal emancipation for women, the paterfamilias has the power to make it tough for us to operate independently. Though as we’ll see, these rules are probably somewhat subjective, and very much dependent on the kind of tutaila you have.
Here’s Dr. G: So if you've got a good tutor on your side, that you should get anything done. So everything about your potential to do business as an elite Roman woman is constructed through the lens of the male relationship. Yes. And if you happen to have a good setup, "good" in inverted commas, you have as much freedom as just about anybody else.
MEETING MARIUS
But all this talk of the patriarchy is wearying. Let’s fortify ourselves with some food. Our breakfast, or inetaculum, will feature certain staples: bread, buns, honey and milk. There might be some fruit, cheese, even meat, but no coffee or tea I’m afraid. If you’re anything like me, that caffeine headache you’re certain to get is something you’ll just have to suffer through. This isn’t a major meal, and will be eaten swiftly, as business starts early.
Speaking of business, let’s join another of the most important men in our lives: our husband Marius. Now that he’s had his leg hairs rubbed into submission, he’s ready to start conducting what’s called the morning salutatio.
Friendship in Rome is complex. Favors are the main social currency, and it’s all a complex game of who owes who. Later on, Marius might spend some of his morning going around visiting other people’s houses—his patrons, so to speak—offering support and asking for favors. But since he’s quite a big deal, most of the morning you’ll see his clients will show up at yours looking for an in with your husband, to ask his advice, strike deals or maybe kiss up. Rome is a world where who you know matters, and these webs of patronage are the oil that keeps the Roman machine grinding along. In short, husband dear is looking to grease wheels and keep himself well connected. His, and your, prosperity might depend on it.
The first thing guests will see when they walk into your house is the vestibulum, a kind of mud room. In a really nice home it’ll be a greeting space as well, laid out with fine mosaics that say things like ‘Greetings’ and ‘Beware of Dog.’ Marius may even have some death masks of his forebears hung up in this space, as we’re obsessed with our lineage, and maybe because nothing intimidates a visitor like a mask of a dead relative’s face?
As we watch Marius strut around in his toga, let’s reminisce a bit about our Roman childhood and what led us here in the first place. We’re lucky we made it to adulthood at all. The ancient world is rough on infants and mothers, and we think that something like 50 percent of Romans die by the age of five. As a girl, we were probably educated alongside our brothers, learning how to read and write. As fancy ladies, we may even have had a private tutor to teach us some Greek—which is, in our eyes, the height of sophistication. This is the great news about being an ancient Roman woman: education isn’t considered unattractive. Quite the opposite. In his Dissertations, first-century BCE philosopher and jurist Gaius Musonius Rufus said there’s no reason why women shouldn’t receive the same education as men: “Trainers of horses and of dogs make no distinction between male and female in their training.” Not the analogy I would have gone for, Gaius, but I’m feeling your point nonetheless. When asked whether women should study philosophy, he said, “Women have received from the gods the same ability to reason as men…It is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural inclination towards virtue, but women…Women are pleased no less than men by noble and just deeds.” Preach, Gaius! Families with a reputation for an academic bent may even encourage their daughters to become intellectuals. But all this education isn’t to help us get a job or anything. It’s to make sure we can effectively manage our household, and because we play a major role in our children’s education. As Dr. Evans says, “They might not get exactly the same kind of education as men. They're not being trained for the courts and in the republic for political life. So they're probably not as trained in oratory. But we do know that there were female orators. We know their names. So they were able to do it. Some of them engaged in philosophy.” Though some men think that TOO much education might make us pretentious, or even worse, look sexually promiscuous. Are we just well read or a woman of the evening? It really is SUCH a fine line.
WIFING UP
You and your brothers would have played games together, with dolls, marbles, and perhaps with wooden horses on wheels. You would have worn clothes that clearly marked you out as children, including big amulets around your necks meant to protect you from evil and let other people know that, legally and otherwise, you aren’t yet legal. Romans might be marrying young by our standards, but they draw a distinct line between child and adult.
You weren’t left to this childhood for long. Growing up, one thing you knew for sure is that you were ALWAYS destined to get married. Marriage is considered a citizen’s right: it doesn’t apply to slaves, actors, or gladiators. And it’s crucial, because our primary role as Roman women is to have children and raise them up to be good citizens. Nothing matters more than that. Anyway, it’s not like you could have just moved out and become a career girl instead—not really an option for someone of our status—or hang around dad’s house being a drain on his financial resources. Not when we’re the glue that can adhere families together so nicely. In the Roman game of patrons and palm greasing, we ladies are one of our father’s most powerful bargaining chips.
For Roman elites particularly, who are the people we know the most about, marriage is NOT about love or a woman’s choice. It’s about creating alliances. As the paterfamilias, your father had the right to give you away to ANY man he saw as an advantageous match for the family. And given how young we are when we marry, it’s quite possible that we’ll have to marry several men during our lifetimes, and not always of our choosing. So get ready for some serious emotional whiplash.
You would have been married quite young, by our modern standards: probably in your teens, as young as 12 to 14, though your average marriage probably happened closer to 17 or 18. What is an ideal wife supposed to look like, you wonder? What was Marius looking out for? Well, loyalty is important. As is restraint, obedience, childbearing hips, and virginity.
All our young lives, our mother would have hammered home the importance of holding onto our chastity – or pudicitia– which is THE most important quality you can bring with you into the marriage market. Your husband is extremely unlikely to be able to say the same.
DR. EVANS: Pudicitia, chastity, is very important, reputation wise for an elite woman. It's kind of everything. So she's either a virgin or she's been married before and maintained chastity within that marriage, at least as far as anyone knows.
The great ancient writers, as we’ve already discovered, also love a woman who is ready to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Take the story of Aria. When her husband is ordered to commit suicide by the emperor, he hesitates…as one might. So she takes the knife from his hand and plunges it into her own chest, telling him, “It doesn’t hurt, Titus.”
DR. EVANS: And she's held up as this great exemplar. Can you imagine living in that kind of society where that's the woman you're meant to aspire to?
Good question, Dr. Evans. There’s also a famous tombstone that describes an ideal woman for us. It says, in sum:
Dr. EVANS: …this is a not beautiful monument, but it's for a beautiful woman, tells you a little bit about her and ends with the famous statement of "she kept her home, she made wool, that's all. Goodbye.” That kinda sums up what a woman should do, apparently. This is a very affectionate tombstone…
Here’s another one from third-century Rome, in which a man named Paternus calls his wife Urbana: “my sweetest, chastest, and rarest wife…she lived every day of her life with me with the greatest kindness and greatest simplicity, both in conjugal love and the industry typical of her character.” I have so many questions: what’s he mean by simplicity? Is he saying they had sweetly boring sex, or what? Either way, what’s being highlighted here is that she wasn’t a complicated woman, or a wild one, and that made her all that much easier to love.
What do these kinds of expectations do to the Roman woman’s psyche? Are these simply the ravings of men that we can roll our eyes at, or are they bars that we feel pressured to rise to? It’s pretty hard to say.
Once our spouse Marius was selected, our actual marriage was a pretty easy bargain to strike. Once an auspicious wedding day was chosen, he led a bunch of his peeps over to our house, where we were getting ready. Our mother and slaves probably helped us slip on a tunica recta– a special white tunic belted with an elaborate knot called the Knot of Hercules. The hero Hercules is considered the guardian of wedded life, and only our new husband is allowed to unknot it later. Hopefully with his teeth, but who knows! We’ll have done our hair carefully in an elaborate wedding-specific style called seni crines, or “sixbraids.” The six segments would have been parted with a spear – preferably one that’d had blood on it at some point. We’re not sure why, but this joining of violence, sexuality and marriage somehow feels very Roman. We then slipped our feet into some yellow slippers and covered our faces with a saffron-colored veil, casting our entire wedding day in a haze of red. Once the ceremony was done and the paperwork signed, there was a feast, and then a noisy procession to our new home. Many people joined in on this street party, throwing nuts at us for good luck, singing sweet songs, and shouting some extremely lewd jokes. Our new husband or attendants carried us over the threshold, as we Romans are very superstitious and tripping as we enter our new house would have been considered quite a bad omen. Our husband might have handed us some fire and water – perhaps a torch and a cup – to mark our changed status. We were handed the keys to our new house. And from there?
DR. EVANS: When she's married, she becomes what's called a matrona, we think even before she's had children. But that's got the Latin word mater built into it. So the expectation is that she will have children, and that's how she fulfills her role as a wife. She's also in charge of the household.
Of course, some couples do marry for love, or at least FIND love within their union. Among lower classes that are less concerned about creating dynasties, there are probably a lot more love matches. But even among the elite, love exists. Take Tiberius, emperor Augustus’s stepson. When he’s adopted and lined up to become the next emperor…
DR. EVANS: …he is forced to marry Augustus's daughter Julia. But to do that, he has to divorce his wife, Vipsania. And he did not want to divorce Vipsania. He's supposed to have been very annoyed by that and really resentful. And Vipsania, I think was according to Seutonius, she was also very much invested in that marriage. So this is a time when both men and women seem to have had affection for each other in the dynastic strategies could break that apart.
In fact, it seems to be something that Romans aspire to see in a marriage: affection and a real depth of feeling. But how often it exists isn’t clear.
DR. EVANS: We do know that affection and devotion were the ideals, because that's the kind of thing that's recorded on tombstones, which, you know, tombstones always record some kind of ideal, which may reflect nothing of the reality. But still, for it to be there at all means this is what people wanted to see in a marriage. All right. So they wanted this kind of meeting of minds. This affection between the man and the woman and the devotion. They also wanted, despite what we've been saying about divorce being easy, they wanted this idea that a woman in particular would only be married once.
There are several famous women who are so heartbroken by the death of their husbands that they refuse ever to get remarried. While not everyone would love a woman staying single, ancient Romans do respect this position. We even idolize an univira– or “one-man woman.” I suspect that at least some of these women use their show of devotion as a means of staying independent, and if so, I say good on them.
Whether you love Marius or not, being married to a powerful man has its advantages. His glory is your glory…and his failings are yours, too.
YOU BETTER WORK
So what are we doing all day, as a Roman matrona? Since we’re elite women, we’re unlikely to be doing many chores ourselves. Weaving is a skill we’re expected to learn, but if we have money we’re unlikely to be doing it. We’ll spend a lot of time tending to domestic issues, which is often an involved and complicated process that involves a high degree of organization and a head for business. We’ll structure our day around what Marius is up to: during the morning’s salutatio we’ll deal with household matters, and then we’ll throw on our palla and join him for some afternoon leisure time.
What jobs are we likely to see Roman women doing?
Dr. Evans explains: Well, I think they were doing pretty much all the work that men were doing. So, yeah, they did own businesses…We even know of female gladiators. There's a famous plaque to Achilia and Amazonia, as they're called on there. So there were female performers, they're obviously in sex work. They're in all kinds of domestic work…So they're kind of doing everything...There are no jobs specifically closed off from them. It's really all about status rather than gender in Roman society.
The law doesn’t prohibit us from getting involved in business. Some wooden tablets found near Pompeii from the 1st century BCE offer evidence that women were both money lenders and borrowers. So while we think women often need a man to vouch for them on paper, we can certainly get some business done.
Take Eumachia. The daughter of a brickmaker in Pompeii, she marries into a high-ranking family and uses her money to become a notable patroness, building all sorts of impressive buildings. One of them is in the city’s forum, and it boasts a statue of her dedicated by the local fuller’s guild. A landowner named Valeria Maxima, we think from the 1st century BCE, employs two female managers, Eucrotia and Cania Urbana, to run her property. Some wealthy women own quarries and take an active part in the running of them. In less elite circles, some women develop businesses to go along with their husband’s; a found curse tablet tells us that Artemis the gilder was married to Dionysius the helmet maker. They serve as midwives and wet nurses, and doctors as well. I’m digging this tombstone, dedicated by a doctor to his loyal wife: “you guided straight the rudder of life in our home and raised high our common fame in healing—though you were a woman you were not behind me in skill.” Some even work as calligraphers and artists. In short, we ladies are doing quite a lot.
Consider this, too. It’s quite likely that at some point our husbands are going to go off to war or on business journeys. Some 6 to 19 percent of Roman adult men are soldiers, rising up to 25 percent when things get messy. And though there are periods where foot soldiers aren’t allowed to marry, there are plenty of military men who will be leaving their ladies behind, leaving us to take care of the family’s fortunes. When the husband’s away, the woman will take care of business. For example, when Julius Caesar marches off to war for many moons, his wife Calpurnia takes care of all his assets in his absence. When our friend Ovid is exiled, his wife works her contacts and her legal brain to ensure they hold onto their livelihood. During times of war, women often step up and make themselves that money, and they’re not afraid to make noise when the government tries to take it from them. After Julius Caesar dies in 44 BCE, the Triumvirate of guys who step up to lead in his place are all set to forcibly tax 1,400 rich women to help fund a civil war. When much to their dismay, a woman named Hortensia, daughter of the orator Quintus Hortensius, steps up to the rostra to tell them exactly what she thinks about it. According to Appian, she argued:
“Why should we pay taxes when we have no part in the honors, the commands, the state-craft, for which you contend against each other with such harmful results?”
Damn, Hortensia! Mike drop city. She wins that day: the tribunes have to reduce the number of women taxed and tax some men while they’re at it. But such female triumphs in the public sphere aren’t common. For us ladies, our success in maneuvering through the world around us is to find subtle ways of doing business. Frugality and austerity are going to earn us much praise and respectability. Ambition and a naked desire to run the world?…not so much.
So it’s unlikely that you’re going to find yourself a key player at the heart of Roman politics. Unless, of course, we’re a Vestal Virgin.
MAKE WAY FOR THE VESTALS
But before we join the Vestals, let’s talk a little bit about religion in ancient Rome. Our religion is pantheistic: we have tons of deities, imported from all different places throughout the Empire. Many of our gods and goddesses come from Greece, rebranded with Latin names: Jupiter instead of Zeus, Venus instead of Aphrodite. As the Empire grows, we see gods from further afield join their ranks. Eastern gods like Egypt’s Isis and Persia’s Mithras gain popularity, with cults and followers all over the Empire. We have gods for all sorts of things large and small, from fountains to doorways. There’s even a god of manure. You really drew the short straw there, Sterculius! Over time, some emperors and empresses are deified, too. The paterfamilias is the chief priest of our household, but we ladies are responsible for sacrificing to the gods in our new house on the day we get married and leave our family’s nest. Men and women both participate in religious festivals, and we honor many gods: at least before monotheism spreads through the Empire, which won’t happen for quite a while yet. The gods are everywhere: in the house, in the market, always present, always to be respected. Every street in Rome seems to have a shrine. As long as we keep the gods and goddesses happy with sacrifice, they’ll protect us. Honoring them is less about actual belief than it is about respecting ritual. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t superstitious, because boy are we ever. As young girls, we wore that amulet, called a lunula, primarily because it served as protection against the evil eye. As adults, we’re very into astrology, and always looking out for signs and omens. A cockerel crowing during a party, a snake falling from a roof? You best get ready for misfortune. And if a priest happens to see a particularly vicious streak of lightning on the horizon, business might grind to a halt for the day.
Gotta keep that flame burning, ladies. Otherwise they might think we’ve been sleeping around…
The Vestal Virgins making an offering in a Roman temple. Wood engraving, 19th century.
With that knowledge, let’s enter the world of the Vestal Virgins: six powerful priestesses who live at Rome’s religious center. In a world where the religious and the civic are very much intertwined, they have more influence and potent significance than most Roman women will ever be able to claim. But, as we’ll see, they pay a price for it.
These priestesses honor the goddess Vesta, who we think comes from the Greek goddess Hestia. This virgin goddess lives in the hearth, dancing through every fire in Rome. The cult of the Vestal Virgins has been around for a long time, we think, since the early kingly days of Rome. Plutarch tells us that they were first set up by King Numa, who initiated the temple by choosing girls to become Vesta’s special attendants. And they can only be women: that’s key. Romulus and Remus’s mother, Rhea Silvia, was herself a Vestal Virgin. Her legacy helps ensure that Vesta is associated not just with hearths, but with kings and emperors: the roaring fire of Rome’s success.
How exactly the Vestals are chosen is a murky issue, but a particular approach seems to evolve over time. There are always six Vestals, chosen between the ages of six and ten: if they’ve made it to six without perishing, then they’re probably pretty hearty. But it’s crucial they be virgins, and picking them so young will help to guarantee that. As Dr. G tells us: “… it's not just the age bracket that's important. They need to have both their father and mother living, which might sound not that unusual to us, but is more unusual if we're thinking about mortality rates in the ancient world. And so both of them have to be alive. Importantly, she must be free from any impediment in her speech.…this seems to be related to the ritual requirements of the Office of Vestal Virgins. If you are unable to pronounce the ritual verses correctly, this means that they're not necessarily going to unfold appropriately. This means the pax deorum with the gods can fall by the wayside.”
She has to be freeborn, never having been a slave, and she has to live in Italy. She can’t have any significant marks or other signs of bodily imperfection. Early on, she has to come from a patrician family: this is a priestesshood of privilege. And of course, she has to be pure, aka a virgin. This is a very particular set of requirements and, you would think, quite a coveted position. But not everyone wants to volunteer their daughters to be priestesses. Why? Because you’re signing them up for at least 30 years of service, which means no marriage, no children, and no sexy touching. That’s not a duty to be taken lightly.
Dr. G and Dr. Rad, paint a picture for us.
Dr. G: “So the restriction is initially to daughters of patrician families: so the elite of the elite. But things become problematic for the Vestal Virgins as we get into the Augustan Principate…we get a sense from Seutonius's Life of Augustus that there is an issue with families not putting forward daughters for what appears to be the lottery.
Dr. Rad: They probably want them for political marriages.
Dr. G: Quite possibly. So the idea in the Augustan period, and we don't know how far earlier this particular tradition goes, the idea was that you would have a variety of applicants and you would have a pool of, say, 10 or 20 young women offered as potential vestals. They'd all pass all of the physical restrictions. They're all good to go. And then it was a matter of an allotment to see who would get...
Dr. Rad: Kind of like the birthday lottery in the Vietnam War in Australia.
Dr. G: Yeah. Or being selected as tribute in The Hunger Games.
Dr. Rad: I volunteer as tribute!
Dr. G: So we have an issue where not enough are coming forward, and Augustus gets really quite frustrated with this and he comes out sort of all guns blazing. Being like, "look, if I had a granddaughter of the right age, I definitely would be putting her forward. That's how important this priesthood is." And everyone's like, “yeah. Naw.”
Dr. Rad: Easier said than done, Augustus.
And because patricians are reluctant and Rome NEEDS Vestals to keep the whole state healthy, lower class fathers see a chance to move their families up in the world…through their daughters.
Dr. G: And so this opens up some opportunities for non-patrician families who are kind of like, well, it would still be huge kudos for us to be able to say that we had a Vestal in family and...
Dr. Rad: Social climbing.
Dr. G: Yeah. So all of a sudden the equestrians are like, "well, you know what? My daughter is unblemished." And also daughters of free people. And they're like, "well, technically, we're Roman.”
Those chosen are taken by captio, or a process of ritual “capture” by Rome’s chief priest, or the Pontifex Maximus, which is often the emperor himself.
Dr. G: So the pontifex grasps the hand of the candidate and leads them away from their parents. And this signifies her shift from her natal family into this sort of familyless position as a priest that's serving Rome and Rome alone.” Being captured changes her status in a unique and really important way. As soon as she’s led into the House of Vesta, she’s no longer under the patria potestas– or partriarchal power – of her father. But it’s not like when a woman gets married and experiences emancipatio– their “sale” into her new husband’s family. She isn’t tied to any man at all, but to the goddess Vesta. This I-don’t-need-no-man freedom is a rare thing for anyone. And so the Vestals end up in this what is legally this very weird space where they're not beheld to this really specific power, which every other Roman finds themselves in relation to in some way.
They live in the Atrium Vestae, a palace on the eastern edge the Forum. It’s quite luxe, though also known for being quite dark and damp. Not a place a ten-year-old is going to love spending a lot of her time. These women live in a sisterhood with Vestals of all ages: a very exclusive group indeed. The younger ones are initiates for the first ten years of service, looked after by the head priestess, or Vestalis Maxima. It’s important to note that they aren’t like old-school nuns, forever sequestered away behind the walls of the temple. They go to dinner parties and public functions. So while they may not be allowed to marry, or even touch, anyone for the full term of their service, it doesn’t mean they aren’t getting out and about.
A Vestal keeps it all wrapped up, but if you saw her on the ancient streets you’d know just who she was...and you would know not to touch her.
Vibia Sabina, from the Villa Adriana. Wikicommons
They do spend much of their days at the Temple of Vesta, which centers around a giant fire. Their most important job is to keep that sacred flame alive day and night, which they take in shifts, and to cleanse the temple with sacred water. They also make salsa mola, a bread and water mixture that is sprinkled around during every religious ritual in Rome. They also look after secret talismans called the fascinus…which is…a sacred phallus. We’re going to see phalluses ALL over Rome, so we’ll talk about them more a little later. For now, let’s focus in on Vesta’s flame. Because that flame is a symbol of Rome’s health and prosperity, and if it goes out it is a sign that Vesta has stopped protecting us. And in a superstitious city, that is a very bad thing indeed.
Take the following drama. Around 178 BCE, a Vestal named Aemelia got herself into a lot of trouble. As Dionysius of Halicarnassus tell us: “…the fire had been extinguished through some negligence on the part of Aemilia, who had the care of it at the time and had entrusted it to another virgin, one of those who had been newly chosen and were then learning their duties, the whole city was in great commotion and an inquiry was made by the pontiffs whether there might not have been some defilement of the priestess to account for the extinction of the fire.” The powers that be came to investigate. Seeing that she was in some truly deep horse dung, she stretched her arms up toward the altar and cried: "O Vesta, guardian of the Romans' city, if, during the space of nearly thirty years, I have performed the sacred offices to thee in a holy and proper manner, keeping a pure mind and a chaste body, do thou manifest thyself in my defence and assist me and do not suffer thy priestess to die the most miserable of all deaths; but if I have been guilty of any impious deed, let my punishment expiate the guilt of the city." She tore off a piece of her linen and threw it up onto the cold and fireless altar. And what do you know? From the ashes of the fabric leaps a great flame. Was it Vesta or a match cleverly hidden under her veil or something? Either way, a crafty woman saves the day.
the ruins at the temple of vesta in rome.
Wikicommons
A Vestal’s power lies in her continued dedication to the goddess, of which her virginity is an important part. Virgin women have a special kind of power within them. We see this in the Roman pantheon: much like the Greeks, they have virgin goddesses who are powerful precisely because they do not engage in carnal activity. As Kelsi Dynes explains in her thesis, which she kindly let me read, on virginity in the Greco-Roman World, Vesta’s virginity allows her to be a kind of anchor: a stabilizing force that we see in her flame. This idea that a virgin is especially potent seems to come from a belief that, as Kelsey writes, they have “all this untapped energy that will leave as soon as they become sexually active.”
A Vestal’s body is a symbol of purity. Her clothes mirror this. She dresses in many ways like a Roman matrona: she wears a stola and a headband, called an infula. But then there are some very distinctive aspects to her outfit, including…
DR. G: …a very, very particular style is called the seni crines, which means basically ‘sixbraids.’…the six braids is considered a traditional hairstyle for a Roman bride, only to be worn on the wedding day…they're kind of standing at this threshold between the potentiality of the adult female body to be married and always resisting it by remaining a virgin.
Her virginity mirrors Vesta’s, and here’s the thing: it’s also a stand-in for the purity of the state. Your body is quite honestly a temple, and so if anything happens to soil it, or just appears to, then Rome must be in serious peril. No pressure, ladies! So Vestals are wrapped in a kind of untouchable mystery that means they can pass through Rome’s busy streets unmolested. To even brush one by accident is a horrible and punishable crime. Plutarch tells us that: “He who passes under the litter on which they are borne, is put to death.” So don’t be offended if men see you coming and immediately run away from you. You don’t smell bad; they just don't want to risk it. But that’s not all. Plutarch tells us that, “if they accidentally meet a criminal on his way to execution, his life is spared; but the virgin must make oath that the meeting was involuntary and fortuitous, and not of design.” So if a Vestal is to ACCIDENTALLY meet a second cousin in the street who’s about to die, again, BY COMPLETE ACCIDENT…well that’s lucky. Some people even consider the Vestals magical. “… it is a general belief,” Pliny tells us, “that our Vestal virgins have the power, by uttering a certain prayer, to arrest the flight of runaway slaves, and to rivet them to the spot, provided they have not gone beyond the precincts of the City.” They are fascinating creatures, Plutarch tells us: “they were also keepers of other divine secrets, concealed from all but themselves.”
They’re also some of the only women you’re see walking around with bodyguards. After a Vestal is accosted after a dinner party in the late Republican period, they’re granted a lictor, or protector, who are only given to people with serious political or ritual importance. He leads her around while holding a fasces, which is a bundle of reeds with an axe hidden inside it.
DR. G: So even under the very rare circumstance that you just couldn't pick a vestal out, say you just arrived at Rome from somewhere else. You're like, “Who's that lady? She looks alright.” She'd be hanging around most of the time in public with a bodyguard who is holding the fasces and clearing the way, making sure that everybody knows for sure that this person has ritual.
Dr. Rad: ...got an important package coming through! Out of the way people!
Dr. G: Ritual importance! There's no mistaking it. She's very important....maybe don't touch her.
This No Go Zone is great for making sure you aren’t jostled by any bad-smelling strangers, but it can also be used as a powerful tool. Cicero and others tell us that around 143 BCE, a Vestal named Claudia embraced her father while he was in the middle of his military triumph parade through the city to prevent him being dragged from his chariot by his enemies. To grab him they’d have to go through her, and nobody is going to dare touch a Vestal. “She put herself between the two with amazing speed,” Valerius Maximus tells us: “And so drove off a mighty power…the father led one triumph to the capital while the daughter led another to the Temple of Vesta. Nor could it be determined which of the two should be praised the more: he who had the victory by his side or she who had the piety.” A lady-led street party? I’ll take it! And so we also see that, far from forgetting their families when they take the veil, Vestals can actually use their lofty position to help them.
Dr. G: They definitely are tapped on the shoulder by their families to do certain things and to behave in certain ways or to take certain positions on issues. So they do become politicized.
Their powers and position have Vestal Virgins hovering in an almost genderless state, granted privileges that many men can’t lay claim to. Unlike other Roman women, they can operate without a tutor: that man who signs business documents and contracts for you. They can own property and can make their own wills, which means they sometimes become independent repositories for family wealth. They can give not only written evidence in court, but also testify themselves, without being obliged to swear an oath. They get Vestal Virgin VIP seats at festivals and the Coliseum.
Dr. Rad: And special seats in the theater. Hey, front row.
Dr. G: Yeah. Because everybody wants to see the bloodlust a lot closer: particularly virgins!
Dr. Rad: You want the blood to be hitting your clothing. ‘This is the closest I'm gonna get some excitement all day, guys.’
They can even drive around in their own carriages...say whhhaaat? And if they join young and decide to leave after their 30 years, it’s quite possible they’re walking away wealthy—and independent. They can marry, or they can decide not to. Either way, they can run their own affairs in ways most women can’t.
But this state and their importance also makes them vulnerable. If the Empire is going through an unstable time – a plague, say, or some other kind of instability – the powers that be might start pointing toward the Vestals as the source of the issue.
DR. G: If a war is not going very well for Rome and there seems to be no other earthly explanation, maybe it's a Vestal's fault!
As Plutarch writes: “If these Vestals commit any minor fault, they are punishable by the high-priest only, who scourges the offender.” And given that these women have a lot of privilege that might spark jealousy and anger, it’s easy to see how they could be turned into a scapegoat in times of trouble. Things get particularly perilous with an accusation of incestum, or unchastity. If your purity as been violated, then you’ve put Rome in serious peril, missy! And let’s be honest: Can you imagine yourself at age eighteen, young and powerful and respected, sticking with a vow of chastity for what is all of your young life—potentially all of your childbearing years? Maybe, if you knew it was your calling, but these girls are chosen way before it’s clear whether they will be suited to such a role or not.
Dr. G: They have no idea whether they're fit or ready for a life of asexuality as is essentially required from their role. And so the requirement to maintain this virginity throughout the service could be a huge, onerous burden I think for some of them.
DR. RAD: I'll say!
Dr. G: Massive. You don't really have a choice. You're not even really sure what your body is capable of yet. Lo and behold, here you are.
But this isn’t just about whether or not you’ve been sleeping with people.
Dr. G: So early vestals got into trouble for maybe being a little bit too luxuriously dressed. Some have got into trouble for flirtatious behavior.
In 420 BCE a Vestal named Postumia is put on trial because she dresses too fashionably and is rather too droll in casual conversation. Witty and a snappy dresser!? She’s probably a witch of some kind.
Dr. G:“So because it's not just whether you're a virgin in the strict physical sense; you also have to convey what is known as the castitas, the sort of pure moral spirit of a virgin woman.
Dr. RAD: So it's a state of mind, yeah. It's a way of being.
Dr. G: And so some of them, because they can be invited places and they don't need a guardian and things like that, they end up moving in very sort of powerful circles. And you know, you have too much fun at a dinner party, you get a bit flirtatious, that's a no-no as a vestal. That does not look good.
In the first century BCE, for instance, a very rich guy named Marcus Licinius Crassus almost lost his life and property because he was accused of getting a little too close to a Vestal. As Plutarch tells us, he sidles up to a Vestal named Licinia because she owned “a pleasant villa in the suburbs which Crassus wished to get at a low price, and it was for this reason that he was forever hovering about the woman and paying his court to her.” Note here that she owns quite a fancy property, despite being a woman. The court acquitted him, and her, which was lucky. Things don’t always end so well.
Sometimes Vestals are just outright accused of incestum, evidence or no. It there’s a political crises going on, it’s a lot more likely that a Vestal is going to get caught in the anxious public crossfire. This is really worrying, because how can you conclusively prove you’re still a virgin? So when a Vestal named Tuccia is falsely accused of being unchaste, she gave her goddess Vesta a quick ritual call: “Hey girl! Smooches. Hey, look, some guys are giving me a hard time about having lost my V card. Can you do me a solid? If I’m innocent, just let me carry water in a sieve up from the Tiber. That should shut them up. K bye!” Vesta answers her prayer, letting her perform a miracle, but others aren’t so lucky. Livy tells us that in 337 BCE a Vestal named Minucia comes under suspicion because “of her dress, which was more ornate than became her station.” She’s condemned of impiety on the testimony of a slave—remember, in Rome, a slave’s status and their word is considered about as reliable as your household pet’s—and she’s convicted and buried alive “near the Colline Gate, to the right of the paved road in the Polluted Field —so called, I believe, on account of her unchastity.” Harsh, Livy.
When a Vestal is charged with incestum, she’s put on trial. If she’s found guilty, it’s a crime to spill a virgin’s blood.
Dr. G: So the sacrosanctitas of the vestal is the thing that is obviously supposed to preserve their virginity. But it also means that the ritually should not be touched.
Dr. Rad: So you can't murder them with your own two hands.
Dr. G: Yes, you should not. That would be that would make things make a bad situation even worse. So what you do is you leave it up to Vesta herself as the arbiter of these things.
Dr. Rad: In a way that kind of we know means that...There's only one way out.
Dr. G: Well, yeah. There's no way out.
Given that it’s wrong to straight up kill a priestess, Rome figures, instead they bury her alive, bricking her up in a little underground house. Plutarch says:
“…the culprit herself is placed on a litter, over which coverings are thrown and fastened down with cords so that not even a cry can be heard from within, and carried through the forum. All the people there silently make way for the litter, and follow it without uttering a sound in a terrible depression of soul. No other spectacle is more appalling nor does any other day bring more gloom to the city than this. When the litter reaches its destination, the attendants unfasten the cords of the coverings. Then the high priest, after stretching his arms towards heaven and uttering certain mysterious prayers, brings forth the culprit, who is closely veiled, and places her on the steps leading down into the chamber.”
They hand her down there with a little bit of light, and a little bit of bread and milk, then throw dirt over the doorway and they just…leave her there. If Vesta saves her, great! But if she dies of starvation in the pitch black dark, well…she must have been guilty. A pretty horrifying end.
And of course this whole thing can be politically driven, as Dr. G can attest. “We do get one particular story from the early period…where the chief Vestal, Cornelia, is accused of incestum on the back of Domitian, apparently being upset about some stuff. We get this in a letter from Pliny, and he sort of makes it pretty clear from his perspective that Domitian is just being an idiot….And anyway, so like Cornelia is accused, she's not even present when the accusation is made. And Domitian himself declares it and says she's guilty of this. She is horrified and she immediately calls upon the gods as a sort of defense mechanism is to invoke the aid of Vesta, makes it pretty clear that she's like all of the successes that Domitian has had in his reign are due to the fact that she has maintained the integrity of the vestal virgins precisely. But nevertheless, she's forced into this live burial. So forced through a public parade, people turn up for this kind of stuff. It's grotesque. But this kind of...you can't look away. So she processes through public and the story goes that she trips as she falls down, as she starts to go down the stairs, loses her balance slightly as she's entering the underground chamber. The executioner who is leading this sort of live burial ritual offers his hand to help her up, and she disdainfully refuses to allow her body to be besmirched in any way as like this final defiant gesture of her purity and her sanctitas that cannot be compromised regardless of how this is going to end. And the tragedy of this sort of moment.
Dr. Rad: It's commitment. That's Commitment.
Dr. G: Well, not only has she like...because Cornelia is the chief vestal as well. So presumably one of the oldest in the order at the time, living under an emperor who seems to have no respect for the position or what it means. And to still be forced into this position of being buried alive is a huge tragedy.
A women targeted by a manipulative emperor who doesn’t like how much power she’s accrued? A tragedy indeed.
This artistic expression of a Vestal Virgin will soon be available on my Exploress march shop as a greeting card or art print. Check out the Merch page for more details!
part 3
In Part 2 of our day as an ancient Roman woman, we discussed our dads and our husbands, explored our domus, and explored the life of a Vestal Virgin. Now let’s step away from Vesta’s sacred fire and back to our lives as patrician matronae: out into the streets of Rome we go!
All in all, we definitely seem to have more freedom to roam about than our Athenian counterparts. We can go and watch debates at the Forum, attend public games, chariot races and theatrical performances. We wealthy women travel outside the city to go to summer houses when Rome gets too steamy. Some military wives even go out into the fields with their husbands, though a lot of ancient writers are rather horrified by it. And though some stodgy guys think it’s improper for us to take an active role in public life, and we have to be careful about how we do it, we certainly have a presence there.
Because we are wealthy, we’ll probably be carried around in a litter by some of our slaves. We’re almost guaranteed to be accompanied by our husband, a male guardian or bodyguards. But this one time, let’s get wild and head out on foot so we can see the sights. As we wind down our hill, which is one of seven in Rome, things get more crowded and chaotic. Rome’s quite famous for its highway system, which stretches out for some 50,000 miles throughout the Empire; there’s a reason for that old proverb “all roads lead to Rome.” But inside the city, most streets are likely to be made of dirt. Most of those are thin and winding, with a bit of a modern-day Venice vibe…along with a lot of shadows and a definite risk of fire. Don’t count on relying on street signs: there aren’t any. If you have to ask for directions, the Romans feel, then you should probably just get the hell out. The seven hills will provide a helpful point of reference. And in terms of checking the time, we’ve got little more to go on than a sundial. The only thing you really need to watch out for is the setting sun, because our city has no streetlights, and you do NOT want to be out after dark.
Let’s head over to the Quirinal Hill, which is known for its shopping. As we go, we’ll pass a teeming mass of humanity. About a fourth of our city is designated as public space, townhouses make up another third, and the rest (which is a lot) are insulae: apartment complexes with 6 to 8 apartments per block. These are often crowded and cramped, since rent is expensive and many people sublet the rooms they don’t strictly need to pay it. Insulae can get up to seven stories high with rows of shops down on ground level selling everything from fruit and veggies to pots and fabric. Wave up to your friend Druscilla, who is watering some plants on her first-floor balcony. She’s lucky: if you have to live in one of these buildings, the first floor is the place to be. It’s the best insulated, the easiest to escape if there’s a fire, and the most convenient to carry your things to and from.
These places are small and way less fancy than our house. Most women don’t have the luxury of cooking, bathing, or going to the bathroom at home. So we’ll see a lot of them out and about, shopping and eating at taverns. Smell something funny? That’s probably human refuse. Some of our streets are less than fresh, flowing with trash and other waste. Some streets feature little stepping stones that allow you to hop across without having to soil your sandals. You’ll also see large amphorae on some street corners, placed there by fullers: you know, those people who starch our clothes. They need urine donations so they have a steady supply of uric acid. Pee-starched pallas for everyone!
One thing you can count on is a whole lot of noise. Rome is a loud city: tradesmen banging metal and blowing glass, shopkeeps shouting about their wares, people catching up on every corner. “There is nowhere in this city,” wrote Martial, “where a poor man can have a quiet moment to gather his wits.” Along our way, we might stop to read the news. Rome publishes one of the world’s first newspapers. It’s called the Acta Diurna, or Daily Acts, written into metal or stone and put in public gathering places so people can make sure they’re up on the news. You’ll find everything from info about military conquests or gladiatorial bouts and the price of grain here…that is, if you can read Latin. And luckily, way more people can read and write here than in either ancient Greece or Egypt. Such things aren’t just for scribes and priests.
How similar is the Roman Latin to the one we learn in school in our century? It’s harder-edged, but you’re likely to recognize a lot of the words that helped make up what we call the Romance languages. Though I can guarantee you now that you’re going to be confused by the fact that Romans don’t space out their words like we do. You might also be baffled by Roman names. Let’s explain briefly, as this is going to help us later.
Most Roman men have three or four names: a praenomen, which is essentially the name your mother would call you by. Then a gens, or clan, name, so everyone knows which family you come from. This means a whole lot of fathers and sons are walking around with the same two first names. Gaius Julius, meet Gaius Julius…because that won’t get confusing at the dinner table. To avoid frustration, we often get a nickname, or cognomina. Some examples of these are Strabo, which means “squinty,” Cicero, which means chickpea, and Caesar, which means “curly haired.” Caligula, who we’ll talk about later, means “little boot,” and is a childhood nickname he probably hated. Helpful hint: if a name ends with -anus…like Julianus…you know that person has been adopted, which is something that happens a lot in the imperial family to ensure succession.
We ladies, though, tend to have just one name. Can you guess what it’s based on? Our gens, or family name, of course. So if dad’s cognomen is Julius, yours will be the feminine form of that: Julia. If it’s Agrippa, your name will be Agrippina. If it’s Scribonius, unlucky you, you are…Scribonia. I don’t see that one making a comeback! If you have more than one daughter, the Romans don’t feel it’s necessary to reinvent the wheel here. We’ll all have the same name, which means you might have three Julias at the dinner table, distinguished by birth order: major, minor, or tirtia. “Julia II, pass the salt. Julia III, stop your pouting.”
We won’t see any graveyards on our journey, as no one but Caesars and the Vestal Virgins are allowed to be buried inside of Rome. What we will see is shrines, temples, and a whole lot of phalluses. Public penises, you say? Indeed! Much like over in Egypt, Romans consider an erect male member to be good luck. The Latin word for them is fascinum;fascinaremeans “to use the power of a fascinus,” or essentially “to enchant.” That’s where we get our modern-day word ‘fascinating’. Their common function in the Roman world is to ward away evil. So you’re likely to see a whole lot of them: carved into walls and painted red, bread baked into their particular shape. And YOU thought that penis cake mold you bought for your best friend’s bachelorette party was never going to get used again! I’ve even read suggestions that some Roman generals ride into town during triumphal processions holding such a model, just like a phallic foam finger! That is, indeed, pretty fascinating. You’ll find them as personal charms, often with wings, because why not; on pendants and rings, turned into penis lamps: they’re even swinging bronze phalluses over doors with little jingly bells. It’s good luck to touch them, so don’t be shy: give that manly rocket ship a pat. Everyone else is.
Keep in mind that Rome isn’t a very safe city: it will not be making the Most Livable Cities List anytime soon. Crime is common, particularly after dark. Imagine walking through your closest city if it had no electric lights and no streetlamps. “You’ll be considered a pretty careless type if you go out for dinner without making a will,” says the satirist Juvenal. “…this town is full of violent drunks who can’t sleep well until they have beaten someone up.” Take this little scene: you see that those of lower status, including slaves and servants, are wearing their belted tunics as a built-in fanny pack, dumping their shopping down their neck hole so they can carry it home. You watch as one cries out: a thief has cut his belt off, letting his treasures come tumbling out.
So what happens if you need to stop and pee? For men out and about, there are paid public toilets. These are essentially just a bench with a bunch of holes punched into them, featuring a stream running under it to wash all of your refuse away. While it’s true that our city’s cesspits and wells are often uncomfortably close together, we’re fortunate to have a working sewer system. This is a thing that we won’t have again until the 19th century, which is…pretty mind-blowing. The largest and oldest of these in the Cloaca Maxima, which is so big that you could actually sail a boat through it. Ninja turtles, you in here? So while we may not have flushing toilets and these bathrooms are not going to be, to modern eyes, the cleanest places to pull up your tunic, at least it takes our refuse to a sewer, which is regularly flushed out by the aqueducts.
Get ready to find this a cozy space. Men think absolutely nothing of doing their business precisely one foot away from his neighbor without any barrier in between them. In fact, it can be a place of bonding and business. Let’s take a dump while we talk politics! As Martial has it, “He spends all day on the toilet…he’s not sick, he’s looking for a dinner invitation.” Though the public toilet isn’t without its dangers. Now and again naughty youths upriver will light a bit of wool on fire, drop it into the little stream and wait gleefully as their little floating bonfire passes under that row of derrieres. Burnt butt hairs anyone? Once they’ve done their business, they wipe off with a sponge on a stick, clean it in a little trough of water, and leave it there for the next guy. How delightful. I had trouble finding out whether there are public toilets for ladies as well, but let’s assume there are some. Unless Roman men think we don’t have bowel movements, which seems like a thing they might like to believe.
The other thing we’re likely to see a lot of on our travels are statues. In a world without photographs or social media, they are important pieces of propaganda. They let us know who is in charge and what they look like – or at least, how they want to be portrayed. For the imperial family, it’s important PR. You’ll see both men and women looking down at you from their stony pedestals, and as we mentioned before, they aren’t white, but brightly painted. Some are even made with detachable heads, just in case it’s damaged and needs replacing…OR if that emperor falls out of favor, in which case we can just replace him! Pay close attention to any statues of imperial ladies, as the newer ones may help us know what kinds of styles we should be emulating. We may not have OK! Magazine, but we do have that giant likeness of our current empress to go on.
Speaking of her, we might as well meet our first lady and her emperor. His name is Trajan, and he’s going to usher Rome into the peak of its power. The empire is as big as it’s ever going to get right about now, stretching from Scotland to the Persian Gulf, and he’s so popular that the people call him optimus princeps (“Best Ruler”). As his wife, Pompeia Plotina (she of the giant hair poof from Part 1) gets to bask in his reflected glory. She is quite a shrewd empress: like many before her, this well-educated woman knows how to conduct politics from behind a shiny curtain. It’s said that she’s the one who gets her husband to choose Hadrian as his successor; some say she even poisons him to get Hadrian into the top spot. This is a nasty rumor that many imperial women will suffer under. But we’ll save all that imperial intrigue for some future episodes. For now, know that these statues can tell us a lot about the world we’re living in.
It’s likely that we’ll pass by or through the Forum, and we should: surrounded by important temples and buildings, it’s at the very center of our city. This is where people come together to discuss the news, buy and sell goods, register newborns, and generally do their important business. This vast space is full of important-looking statues and the rostra, the podium where people get up and make speeches. This is Rome’s political heart.
And while we ladies can go and watch legal proceedings, of which Romans are very fond, we will NOT be casting any votes, speaking on the rostra, or snagging any political seats in the Senate. Most of us don’t have any part to play in our legal process. We may influence our men from behind hands and curtains, but we do not have official power in this sphere. But we have evidence that women have political opinions, particularly when it comes to their family members, and that they aren’t afraid to make them known. Some graffiti from Pompeii illustrates this point nicely: “I beg you to make Lucium Popidium Secundum aedile. His anxious grandmother Taedia Secunda asks it.” But still, our citizenship does not give us the right to participate in our government. That’s our husband’s job! Most ancient writers think we ladies shouldn’t have such rights because, after all, we’re really quite frivolous and easily manipulated.As the lovely Seneca puts it, mirroring an argument we’ll be hearing all the way through to the Victorian era and beyond: “men and women contribute an equal share to human society, but the one is born to command, the other to obey.” Oh, Seneca. I have more to say about you later.
But here’s the thing: just because we can’t vote, it doesn’t mean we don't have power and influence. Take the battle over the Lex Oppia, which we hinted at in Part 2. From 264 to 146 BCE, the Republic engaged in a series of three wars with their enemy the Carthaginians. And if there is anything we know about wars, it’s that they disrupt the regularly scheduled program and give women a chance to step into the roles their husbands have vacated. While the men rode off to war, battling both men and elephants, Roman ladies started stepping up: taking over businesses, making contracts, and generally accruing their own damn wealth. Concerned by the alarmingly large number of women making fortunes and taking up roles in business and enterprise, in 215 BCE the city’s rulers passed a wartime austerity measure called the Lex Oppia. It’s a sumptuary law, which controls what people are wearing. But not just any people: it’s specifically aimed at curbing what women can wear, and do, in public. The Lex Oppia makes it so that women can’t own more than half an ounce of gold. They can’t rock multicolored tunics, particularly if they’re purple. And they certainly can’t ride in horse-drawn chariots. It’s supposed to be about curbing extravagance during wartime, but really it’s about controlling women’s wealth and thereby limiting what’s seen as a disturbing power.
Cato the Elder thinks this is only right, as women are taking Rome right to hell in a handbasket. “Our ancestors refused to allow any woman to transact even private business without a guardian to represent her; women had to be under the control of fathers, brothers, or husbands. But we (heaven preserve us!) are now allowing them even to take part in politics, and actually to appear in the Forum and to be present at our meetings and assemblies!”
Rome defeated Carthage, emerging as the Mediterranean’s new superpower, and bringing game-changing spoils rolling in. So now we can get rid of that hateful Lex Oppia! Except the men in charge were quite happy to keep it going, thanks kindly. The wealthy matrons, however, were having none of it, and those who wanted to repeal the law butt heads with the conservatives who wanted to see it stay in place. In 195 BCE, they marched on down to the Forum. They weren’t allowed to vote or to speak on the rostra, but damn if they were going to stay home. Livy tells us: “the matrons could not be kept indoors either by the authority of the magistrates or the orders of their husbands or their own sense of propriety. They filled all the streets and blocked the approaches to the Forum...” Women came from way out of town for the occasion, turning it into an ancient Roman women’s march.
Cato was horrified, of course. He gave a super lovely speech up on the rostra, probably wagging a finger all the while:
“Citizens of Rome, if each one of us had set himself to retain the rights and the dignity of a husband over his own wife, we should have less trouble with women as a whole sex,” he says.“As things are, our liberty, overthrown in the home by female indiscipline, is now being crushed and trodden underfoot here too, in the Forum. It is because we have not kept them under control individually that we are now terrorized by them collectively. What are they now doing in the streets and at the street corners? Are they not simply canvassing for the proposal of the tribunes, and voting for the repeal of the law? Give a free rein to their undisciplined nature, to this untamed animal, and then expect them to set a limit to their own license! Unless you impose that limit, this is the least of the restraints imposed on women by custom or by law which they resent. What they are longing for is complete liberty, or rather - if we want to speak the truth - complete license.”
No doubt, Cato! Of course, the guys who opposed the law were only slightly better. A dude named Flaccus countered Cato's suggestion that women wouldn’t fight amongst themselves if they didn’t own anything by saying something along the lines of: “how do you think Roman women are going to feel when they see the wives of Rome’s Latin allies wearing jewels and finery when they cannot?” Yes, Flaccus, this is all totally over whether or not I get to wear my favorite jewels. But then there are others that argue that women have done this before: didn’t the Sabines intervene to stop a war between their husband and brothers? When Rome fell to the Gauls, didn’t the women ransom it? In other words, women were a means of ensuring the public good.
Anyway, as Livy tells us, “At last they ventured to approach the consuls and praetors and other magistrates with their demands.” These women took to the streets, pressuring men with power to repeal the law…or perhaps intimidating them into submission. In that moment, and for perhaps the first time in Roman history, they revealed what can happen when female power was wielded.
We have evidence that other women get up and speak their mind in legal matters. There was Hortensia, who we spoke about in Part 2. There are also women like Amasia Sentia, who Valerius Maximus tells us “pleaded her case before a great crowd of people…pursued every aspect of her defense diligently and boldly and was acquitted, almost unanimously, in a single hearing.” There’s also Gais Afrania, the wife of a senator, who Maximus tells us often repped herself before the praetor because “her impudence was abundant.” Mk, Maximus. So your voice does matter, even if you can’t ever step into the Senate house.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
Now on to the Colosseum: that incredibly impressive oval-shaped amphitheater can hold at least 50,000 people, has an awning that can be pulled out on sunny days, and, as ancient sources tell us, is occasionally flooded to hold mock naval battles. Despite what we might think, not everyone is obsessed with the bloody entertainment to be had there: fights between men and women and animals, public executions in all sorts of guises, and epic gladiatorial fights. But such stadiums can be found all across the Empire and are a central part of it: they hold many people in thrall, so we’d better stop in and have a squint at the carnage. Luckily we’re women, so we’ll be relegated to the cheap seats up in the nosebleed section, and thus won’t be able to see what’s happening in super great detail.
Brutality and violence are common enough in the ancient world. War is baked into the Roman self-image, and so they turn it into public spectacle too. Often victory is celebrated with similarly violent entertainment. In 107, after winning two bloody wars against the Dacians, emperor Trajan will take bring some 10,000 prisoners back to Rome to have them fight in gladiatorial games: 123 days of murderous fun, fun, fun. Not all of them die, but in these big events, plenty do. Most of the unfortunates you’ll find in the arena below are actors, prisoners, gladiators, and slaves forced to fight to the death. It’s worth noting that these events aren’t happening every day. Records indicate that the Empire’s 400 venues see about two big shows each year, which means that the Colosseum isn’t always game-on. But when it’s on, it involves what our modern sensibilities are going to find quite brutal. If you’re an animal lover, this might not be the scene for you.
Are we…having fun yet?
Jean-Leon Gerome, Pollice Verso, from Wikicommons
We will see many beasts pitted against each other and against humans as well. During the games held to celebrate the inauguration of our city’s Colosseum, emperor Titus arranged for 9,000 tame and wild animals to be slaughtered there over 100 days. Yikes.
Romans revere someone who can fight well and with bravery. As Pliny the Elder says, such sights inspire people to “face honorable wounds and look scornfully on death by demonstrating a love of glory and desire for victory even in the persons of criminals and slaves.” Sometimes these events are staged as plays and famous myths, just to add an air of drama. Suetonius recounts how one guy dressed up as Icarus—that gentleman from Greek myth who builds some fake wings and takes flight in them--and is then forced to leap, wings and all, many feet to his death. Women aren’t exempt from this spectacle. Martial tells us that one woman was forced to reenact the myth of Pasiphae, who famously slept with a bull and later gave birth to the Minotaur. All we can hope as that this forced bestiality is an exaggeration and didn’t actually happen. It gets worse, as criminals are often condemned to die in these arenas, including women. In the third century BCE, a 22-year-old woman named Perpetua and her slave Felicitas will be killed in an arena in Carthage, becoming Christian martyrs because they will not give up their faith. Can you imagine walking out into the sunlight, crowds shouting above you, as you wait to die by ad bestias: mauled and ripped apart by beasts? No, Russell Crowe. I am most certainly NOT entertained.
the coliseum would have been quite a place in its heyday.
Courtesy of daisy.images on Flickr
Gladiators are a slightly less depressing part of such festivities. We think they originated early in Rome’s history, used in a ceremonial display to honor the dead. The word gladiator means ‘sword’, though they fight with a whole lot more than that. Anyone can volunteer to become one, but let’s be honest, most are slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war. They train in one of Rome’s four gladiatorial schools, paid for by the state. Even Julius Caesar founded one such school: gladiators are pretty big business.
And they are interesting characters: reviled and lowly in some eyes, but revered as champions and sexy curiosities in others. They have no legal rights or social status, but they can command whole stadiums, with everyone in them chanting their name. Some gladiators are even considered sex idols. One bit of graffiti in Pompeii labels a strapping male gladiator as “the young girl’s torment.”And as our satirist friend Juvenal jokes about a runaway wife: “What were the youthful charms which captivated Eppia? What did she see to allow herself to be called ‘gladiator fodder’?...A wounded arm gave promise of a discharge, and there were various deformities in his face: a scar caused by the helmet, a huge boil upon his nose, a nasty septic dribble always trickling from his eye. But he was a gladiator! It is this that transforms these fellows into the most beautiful youth imaginable.” They’re often invited to fancy banquets the night before their bouts so the upper classes can meet and greet them. Some women are said to flirt with these potentially doomed gentlemen. But even more gloriously, there’s evidence that women were the gladiators, too.
We know precious little about these gladiatrices, and they seem to have been fairly rare. We get only glimpses of them: A plaque from Halicarnassus shows two of them, with the words “Amazonia and Achillia were set free.” First-century historian Suetonius says that Emperor Domitian made some women fight by torchlight. Many are brought in from exotic and faraway corners of the Empire to take place in a bloody, and rather racist, spectacle. But Tacitus tells us that when Nero was Emperor, high-ranking Roman women threw their hats into the gladiatorial ring: "Many ladies of distinction, however, and senators, disgraced themselves by appearing in the amphitheater." It’s hard to say if this is true. In 200 CE, Emperor Septimius Severus will ban all female contests, which suggests there must previously have been some. If visual evidence is anything to go by, they fought with one breast out, just like the Amazons. And of course, the poets mock their manly bodies. Because some things just never change!
They remain shady figures, these women gladiators. But we can be sure that, dressed for battle and with swords in their hands, they were everything Roman women weren’t supposed to be, and that would have made some people uncomfortable. As Juvenal writes: “What sense of modesty can you find in a woman wearing a helmet who runs away from her own gender? It is violence she likes.” And that makes her feel both exciting and dangerous.
GETTING OUR SOAK ON
Let’s wash off all that bloodlust with a trip to one of Rome’s most glorious spaces: the public baths. We Romans are obsessed with the baths, from emperor to lowly gladiator. Some of us go daily, or even multiple times. It’s a place to get clean and a place to be seen.
In the first-century BCE, a wealthy guy named Caius Sergius Orata invented the first hot bath center, taking his cues from the natural hot springs near Mount Vesuvius. Let’s sweat our bad humors away, shall we? Many are small, but we’re going to the giant that is Trajan’s baths, which can hold some 3,000 people within it. It has pools, but also gardens, entertainment spaces, even a library.
Here’s Dr. G: It was kind of like this multifaceted area to hang out. So because you could have a gymnasium aspect to it, because you could buy snacks and have a drink, because you could socialize, because you could be doing politics on the sly, even though it wasn't strictly business time, there's obviously a lot of potential for communal social life to happen. So anybody who's anybody is at the baths because that's where everything is going down. So how you present yourself in that space becomes...It's almost like a new set for the playout of class structures, I'd say.
These combination clubhouse/gym/spa complexes are a central feature of Roman life, and are about more than getting clean. Children, slaves and gladiators all get in for free, but ladies pay more than men for the privilege of visiting: how rude.
As we got dressed in Part 1, we needed to make sure that we weren’t going to flash a wayward ankle. And yet men and women bathing in very scanty outfits.
Dr. G: So it's like obviously you have to get at least partially undressed. You didn't necessarily have to be fully nude. Some people would not be. And that seems pretty clear from the evidence as well, is that people would choose that level of nudity.
Just having a little communal nude dip.
“In The Roman Baths,” Fyodor Bronnikov (1865), Wikicommons
And these are spaces where people of different classes mix together as well, which seems to violate every other rule we’ve learned about navigating our way through Rome. We fine ladies aren’t supposed to be working out next to a gladiator. How do we make sense of this? It helps to remember that the Romans don’t see nudity the same way we do.
Dr. G: … the ideas of shame that we have associated with it is something that wasn't happening for the Romans.
Bathing is considered very healthful – a medical priority, so let’s not get too silly about showing a little skin while we keep ourselves in good nick. And, of course, there are ways even whilst prancing around in the buff to show people our lofty status.
Dr. G: …you would often have attendants with you if you were an upper-class woman. Definitely. You would want to have your slaves hanging around: they're there to protect you. And we also get the sense that because everybody's doing this, these baths are actually, in many cases, really crowded places as well. So it's quite possible that you would want to have an entourage in order to knock other people out of the way.
Are men and women bathing together or separately? You’d think that, having wrapped ourselves in so many layers to walk the streets, we wouldn’t be mixing and mingling with gentlemen. It’s hard to know for sure, and it seems to change over time.
Dr. G: when we talk about, like, mixed bathing, so having men and women in the same baths at the same time, there being a lot of eyes upon each other, this is a much later version of Roman history than, say, original, sort of, back in the day Republican Rome. So we've got some evidence, particularly from the early period, at least anecdotally, to suggest that in the beginning the Romans were really ashamed of nudity. And so we have like Plutarch's Life of Cato the Elder, where he talks about how he wouldn't bathe with his son, and he wouldn't bathe with his son in law, and in fact, communal bathing was just a no no because everybody just felt too ashamed. … And we also see from the architectural remains of early baths that they were two separate sort of parallel structures. So the same sets of rooms, so like going from like the warm to the hot to the cold and things like that, we're running a sequence so that men and women would just never see each other…But then as we shift in to the Imperial period, so Augustus and the Julio-Claudians, we start to see what seems to be a really clear and marked change from this separation of the architecture to they use more public communal spaces where there's just one set of rooms and they're much larger. And not only that, this seems to be plenty of written evidence to suggest that men and women are sharing this space as well.
Evidence from the period before Christianity made serious inroads suggests that at least some baths are mixed. A few years from now under Emperor Hadrian such mixed bathing will be abolished, as it’s seen as threatening to moral virtue. But it doesn’t seem like the law is respected much. Though there are some who say that bathing with women can be dangerous. Here’s Plutarch. “Men should not cleanse their skin in the women’s bath. Men must not be naked together with women. In addition to the indecency, certain effluvia issue from women’s bodies and excretions which are defiling when absorbed by men: anyone who enters the same air or water partakes of them.
Are these bathing outfits completely time period inappropriate? You know it. Let’s strip on down to our tunics, ladies.
The Baths at Caracalla, Lawrence Alma Tadema, Wikicommons
It seems at other times that women will visit the baths during designated hours and men will visit at others, just to make sure they don’t cross paths. Sometimes men are kicked out if a woman wants a little quiet soak time.
Dr. G: Around the second century BCE, Dr. G says, we get a particular story about this. “…there's a Roman military camp and what happens is that one of the wives of one of the consuls comes about and she wishes to have a bath. And it seems that there were only men's baths. So they do a quick clean...they’re like "get out, everybody. The consul's wife want to have a bathe!" There like 'shoo, everyone.'
This issue is charged and apparently hotly contested. Some say that it’s only lower-class women who bathe with men: actresses and prostitutes. Others say high-class ladies are there as well. It’s probably something that varies facility to facility, so make sure to check if you’re concerned about who might see you naked.
We might work out before we bathe. Yes: we ladies are fond of the gym. We might engage in ball sports, weight lifting, or a sort of ancient volleyball, wearing either a tunic or the equivalent of a bikini.
Dr. Rad: And in terms in terms of women working out, there is a particularly famous image that you'll often see that springs up around this. And that's the bikini girls. So whenever you hear anyone talk about underwear or clothing or anything like that, you'll see this image of these two girls. And what they're actually doing in their little banded clothing, you know, like a little strapless bikini, it looks like, is it seems working out, like one of them seems to be holding a discus or something like that…” (see the image up above)
We might get a spot of waxing done. When lodging over a bath Seneca the younger complained:
“When the muscle-men work out with their lead weights and start to strain, you can hear their grunts…then a ballplayer arrives and starting counting his shots. At this point I give up. Add the hooligans looking for a fight, the thieves aught in the act and those who sing at the top of their voices in the baths…then there is the hair-removal expert screeching out his services, shutting up only when he’s depilating an armpit and someone else is doing the screeching …”
After that we’ll enter a sweat room, then a hot bath, then a medium-hot bath and a cold plunge pool. We might even treat ourselves to a massage. Clearing out those toxins! If you’ve brought along your slaves, they might oil you up and dry you off with a woolen towel. This paints a pleasing image for us time travelers, but these places aren’t as crystal clean as you’re imagining. Emperor Marcus Aurelius calls them places full of “oil, sweat, filth and greasy water.”
There’s also the suggestion that we might be having some sexy play time while bathing. Martial recounts a story about a woman he’s courting, named Galla.
Dr. G: …she's often talking to him about how she'd like to see him naked, and how she would look good naked, but then he's a bit bewildered by the fact that she refuses to bathe with him publicly.
It is kind of confusing, but apparently other women are less shy about enjoying the delights of so much flesh. Juvenal gives us this satirical picture of a woman who’s all about her bathing time.
Dr. G: ...She leaves her dinner guests and she goes off to the baths, she's just like "I'll be back." She loves the hot baths and she especially enjoys working out. So she is getting her gym time. But not only that, she then goes for a massage, which is all about a very skillful masseuse...if you know what I'm saying.
Dr. Rad: Happy ending, I'm guessing.
Dr. G: And once she's got a fresh glow about her, she goes back home.
Dr. Rad: Ah, Rome.
DINNER: LET’S GET LAVISH
Now that we’re clean, relaxed, and probably getting hungry, it’s time to settle in for our biggest and fanciest meal of the day. Dinner is a big and social affair, meant to be shared with friends and family and clients. That means we’re pretty much always either throwing or going to a dinner party, so let’s refresh our melting makeup, slap on our best wig, and hop on over to a friend’s.
This is not going to be a quick little sit down. Such dinners are more salon-slash-wedding reception than quiet family affair, with both food and entertainment rolling on into the night. Though not too late for most, as remember how dangerous our streets are: imagine trying to walk home at night in your closest metropolis with no electric lights or lampposts. It’s no wonder crime’s such a serious concern...not to mention getting lost in the dark.
These banquets can last up to six or eight hours: another place to do deals, make friends, see and be seen. We ladies will only ever be invited with our husbands: never alone. Single ladies aren’t having their own dinner parties, either: a real oversight that I’m glad the passage of time has corrected.
We’ll dine in a room called the triclinium. Take your sandals off at the door and check in with the tricliniarcha, an ancient maître d, who will escort you where you need to go. The room is nicely decorated, with a colorful mosaic on the floor and murals on the walls, and it’s probably open on one side so you can bask in the splendor of a garden. We will not be using chairs. Instead, couches are arranged in a horseshoe shape around a central table, each one meant to fit about three people. You will dine quite close to your neighbor while lying partway down and propped up on one elbow! Choking hazard? Maybe.
Shoes off and reclining, a slave might wash our hands with some rose-scented water while we chat, and then we’re ready to eat. What exactly can we expect to enjoy? The first course, or the gustus, might feature eggs, a salad (arugula, or rocket, is popular, as it’s said to be an aphrodisiac), salted fish, or dormice. Yes, you heard me…dormice. These edible rodents, which are a lot bigger than the house mouse you’re thinking of, are sometimes kept in terra cotta jars in the kitchen and fattened up just for this purpose. They will be either roasted, dipped in honey, or stuffed with pork, pine nuts, and spices. A bite-sized treat with a tail...yummy.
Next comes the main course. We won’t enjoy a whole lot of meat unless we have money: chicken, pork, and beef are the most likely candidates. Fish is expensive, so isn’t quite as likely to feature. But since we’re fancy, we have all sorts of oddities to choose from. If you’re not a fan of animals stuffed into other animals, this part is likely to disappoint you. Pig teats stuffed with sea urchin, anyone? How about Trojan pig: a suckling pig stuffed with all sorts of other meat? Snails are a delicacy, bred on milk on special farms for your fine dining pleasure. There might also be peacock’s brains, sow vulva, flamingo, or even a giraffe leg. Alrighty. You’ll be comforted to know that, because we don’t use forks, everything is served in shared bowls in bite-sized pieces so you can pick and choose what you like, shoveling it into your mouth with the fingers the gods gave you.
Get your tastebuds ready, because our meal will likely be heavily salted and spiced. When you don’t have refrigerators or an effective means of preservation, salt is a valuable commodity. There’s a rumor that soldiers are paid their salarium – or salary – in salt: at least that’s what Pliny the Elder tells us. Regardless of our class or socio-economic status, we’re likely to find garumon the table: a fermented fish sauce that’s akin to anchovy taste mixed with balsamic vinegar, and which I suspect would send me running for the nearest spittoon. But it has the advantage of giving any less-than-fresh ingredients an all-over sweet-and-sour tang.
To be clear, this is a rich gal’s dinner; our friend down in the insulae is eating much simpler fare. Our house has its own kitchen, but most people take their state-allocated grain straight to a bakery to get their bread, as they don’t have the facility to make it at home. They are eating stews and porridge, not peacock brains, and they’re eating them out at fast-food bars called thermopolia. Dinner would be a loud and social time down in the streets and in taberna, or taverns. Which sounds fun, if you ask me.
But back to our couch. For the vegetarians amongst you, there should be loads of vegetables and cheese on offer. Because the Empire has grown so vast, we’ll likely see some exotic ingredients too: spices from Asia, dates from Africa, walnuts from Persia. Fruit and honey feature heavily, used as flavoring agents. Things you won’t find: tomatoes, potatoes, rice, chocolate, distilled liquor…or pasta. While those at the taberna are drinking red wine, mostly, our dinner party is likely to feature a lot of white. Our wine is very concentrated and super strong – Pliny the Elder says that a fine wine called Falernium will catch fire if you touch a flame to it – so we’re going to water it down before serving. This might be with spring or saltwater. We might also add some herbs and spices to liven things up. Mulsumis a white wine spiced with honey, which would probably be akin to what we think of as a dessert wine. We might also sweeten it with something a little more dangerous: lead acetate, also known as sugar of lead. There’s much debate over how big an impact this had on the everyday Roman, and if we are consuming enough for it to act as a poison, but I might inquire with your couch buddy about whether or not it’s been used.
There is a lot of etiquette to wrap your brain around. Italians will invent forks at some point, but remember that isn’t what you’ll be using. That’s why that slave currently hovering behind you keeps trying to pour scented water over your sauce-soaked fingers. You will also need to ensure you’ve brought your own napkin, which might later serve as a take-home bag for leftovers. But what is that other implement, you wonder: the one with one end flat and the other curved? The pointy end is meant for picking your teeth, and the spoon-like end is meant to be used to clean your ears…in front of everybody. Yup…that guy beside you is getting all up in his earwax. Sexy.
But here’s the up side: there are a lot of things we can do at this dinner party that no one will judge us for. We can throw our bones and food scraps directly onto the floor: no biggie. Belching is actually a sign of civility! Farting? Also totally fine. Just don’t be alarmed if at some point that ear-wax picker beside you snaps his fingers, beckoning over a slave with a blown-glass bedpan, where he can alleviate himself of all that wine. Ohhhh my.
Both during and after our meal, there is likely to be entertainment. Readings, music, little plays, maybe even some gladiators who come to do a bit of sparring. And now that the host has brought out some sexy dancers, we find ourselves with…more than food on our minds.
LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY
It’s while watching these dancers and trying not to be grossed out by the sight of Marius picking his teeth when we see a beautiful man across the room. That man is, of course, Tom Hiddleston. You didn’t think I’d left him at home, now did you? He is giving us bedroom eyes and is absolutely smoldering in his toga. Gods have mercy! We Romans are quite famous for our loose morals and casual post-dinner orgies, so are you going to be able to indulge in some horizontal tennis time with this Brit-accented gentlemen? Of course not: you’re a married woman! But that doesn't mean your husband won’t partake.
In order to understand Roman sexuality and practice, we have to try and unhook ourselves from our Judeo-Christian moral corset and open our minds to a different way of looking at sex. It’s not that Romans are completely loose and lascivious: it’s just that they’d look at our anxieties and rules about sex, swish a hand in the air and say, “well that’s just WAY too complicated.” Sex is a gift from Venus, they think, so we should go ahead and enjoy it. And being good at it is part of being able to produce healthy children. This attitude toward the sexual is all around us, in the phallic symbols hanging all over our city and the common sight of a pornographic fresco in someone’s home. We have so many of these that we have a good idea of what kinds of sexual positions people might have been exploring. One is delightfully called the lioness, though what it looks like is something I’ll leave you and Tom to ponder. Needless to say, sex isn’t considered something to be hidden or ashamed of.
But of course, it’s not as simple as all that. Here’s our situation. Married men can sleep with pretty much whomever they want: other women, or men: homosexuality isn’t an identity in ancient Rome, but simply a sexual preference, and it isn’t considered something to froth over. Our next emperor, Hadrian, will tour around openly with his male lover. Of course, that changes if we’re talking about a sex-same female couple…women with sexual urges and no desire for a phallus to be involved? That’s just unnatural. Ovid finds it "a desire known to no one, freakish, novel ... among all animals no female is seized by desire for female." Eye roll, Ovid.
But much like in ancient Greece, the thing we ARE going to froth over is whether you’re taking the passive role in the relationship. Early in Julius Caesar’s political career, a rumor cropped up that he was having a sexual affair with Nicomedes, the king of Bithynia. It’s not that they were both men, particularly, but that as the younger and less lofty party, Caesar was playing the passive role in the affair. If you’re sleeping with men of a lower status AND your wife as well, you’re fine. But if you’re sleeping with men of your station AND you haven’t gotten married or had any children, that’s going to be a problem.
Dalliances outside of marriage aren’t even considered adultery as long as our sexual partner falls into the right category. The ‘right category’ means someone who is of lower status: if you’re a high-born man, that means a plebian, a slave, an actress. He might visit a lady or gentleman of the evening at a brothel, which are called lupanari, or wolves dens. House slaves are particularly susceptible targets to sexual advances, which is why I suggested in Part 1 that you tell your son to leave them alone: according to most of the men around him, it’s his right to take them as he pleases.
In terms of picking a sexual partner, at the very least, they should be younger—sometimes so much younger that our modern sensibilities are going to be quite shocked by it. But really, you shouldn’t be shagging anyone who is your social equal. That is key. For men, it’s also key that they always be in the dominating sexual position with their chosen partner. He takes pleasure, but he isn’t supposed to give it out in the form of oral sex. Apparently being accused of having given oral sex to either a man or a women is a fairy racy insult. So if the Bill Clinton/Monika Lewinsky situation happened here in ancient Rome, everyone would probably just shrug about it. A powerful man sleeping with a less powerful, single woman? It happens alllll the time.
But we Romans do believe in restraint and reining in our desires for excess, so this is not a nude orgy free-for-all. Being seen as someone who can’t control themselves means they shouldn’t have control over anyone else. Emperors who indulge in that kind of excess, like Nero and Caligula, get themselves into a lot of hot water.
Having multiple partners and sharing lovers doesn’t have to be an issue, either. In Ostia, a grave marker says it holds the remains of a slave woman named Allia Potestas. Allius, who we assume had the grave marker inscribed, says that he shared her with another man, but that upon her death they stopped being friends. To us, that seems like TMI for a gravestone; I can’t imagine Allia would appreciate it.
Dr. EVANS: There is an inscription that tells us that a slave or an ex slave, I can't remember which, has built a tomb for these two women who were hairdressers. And he's probably a slave in the same household or the same business. And he was married to both of them...now they're slaves, so there is no legal marriage for them anyway. But he regards them as his wives. It doesn't say that they were wives in turn. I think they might have set up a little threesome together from the tombstone and apparently they were fine with it! Such acts only officially become adultery if he sleeps with a married woman or a citizen’s unmarried daughter. So if you fall into either one of those categories, no romp with Tom for you. Why? Because it has the potential to confuse the family lineage. We need to know for sure who a baby’s father is, because in Rome everything is about those family ties. So respectable married women have to stay faithful. They have to stay pure and chaste...So there's this very high standard put up for women. It's definitely a double standard from our point of view, because it's not there for men.
Even the suspicion of a married woman having an affair can be fair grounds for divorce. Julius Caesar’s wife, Pompeia, finds herself in trouble when she hosts a religious festival of the Bona Dea or the “Good Goddess.” She holds this all-lady ritual in their home, but unbeknownst to her a guy named Clodeus dresses up as a woman and sneaks in to have himself a good old time. There’s really no way he and Pompeia got it on during this festival, but just the suggestion that they might have spent time together without a proper male guardian was enough for Caesar to kick her to the curb. Which gave rise to a proverb: “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” While he was sleeping with half the women in Rome and those outside of it. Classy as always, Caesar.
DR. EVANS: Women's sexuality being out of control is a worry that Roman men talk about...and they seem to sort of arise during times of trouble. So there are a lot of these out of control women portrayed in the Late Republic when Roman society is falling apart. So that's definitely a point of anxiety. These women who are going out, you know, they're just consorting with more men than perhaps they should be.
During the reign of Augustus, which we’ll talk about a lot more in another episode, he brings in some new laws that crack down an adultery. Believing that Romans have gotten way too loose and concerned by the falling birth rate, he tries to curb such behavior through harsh punishments: particularly harsh on women.
DR. EVANS: “…it makes adultery illegal in a very complicated and quite brutal way, potentially brutal. So that if a woman is caught in adultery and it is pretty much how it's thought of, then her husband has to divorce her. If he doesn't divorce her, then he can be prosecuted as a pimp because clearly if he doesn't care enough to divorce her, then that's what he's doing, is pimping her out. He should divorce her and he will get most of her property or certainly she will lose at least two thirds of her property. And she and her lover are exiled to different islands. And he practices what he preaches, it seems. Augustus sends his own daughter, and only legitimate heir, Julia, away from the city for her supposed promiscuousness. She’s rather famous for supposedly saying racy things about her sexual exploits. Like this, which Macrobius tells us she uses to explain how she sleeps around without compromising her husband’s lineage: “I never take on a passenger unless the ship is full.”
Aka, she doesn’t bed hop unless she’s already pregnant! Well that’s…something. But all of this loud and proud sexual activity is something dear old dad can’t stand, so he exiles her to an island—and she dies there. So he is not winning him any World’s Best Paterfamilias awards.
And of course, the punishment for women caught cheating is the harshest of all. “So if her father catches her in adultery in very specific circumstances, then he is allowed to kill her.” We don’t have evidence of this happening, so we can hope it didn’t, but just knowing it’s written into the law is not a pleasant thought.
Of course, the texts we have on what we SHOULD do in the bedroom tend to be conservative. But we know of plenty of affairs in Rome that go on for decades. And we know that we went out of our way to cast spells to keep the objects of our affection faithful. Take this one: “If you’ve had a woman, and you don't want another man ever to get inside her, do this: Cut off the tail of a live green lizard with your left hand and release it while it’s still alive. Keep the tail closed up in the palm of the same hand until it dies and touch the woman and her private parts when you have intercourse with her.”
There’s a lot more to say about sex in ancient Rome, but let’s leave something to the imagination.
If you do decide to wander into the shadows with Tom, some of our Roman physicians do give us some ideas about what we might use as a contraceptive. Soranus says that we should smear ourselves either before or after the act with things like old olive oil, honey, cedar, pine bark sumac, wine, and white lead. Great idea! And while there are many and varied opinions about abortion in Rome, and how late is too late to perform one, there are doctors who write about it. There are suggestions from some that you just need to jump up and down and click your heels to your rump a bunch of times. Soranus breaks it down into two steps: first, you have to soften the lady palace with vaginal suppositories to get everything nice and relaxed. Then you need to give yourself a vigorous shaking. He specifically shouts out the benefits of a shake by means of draft animal. So...there’s that.
ROMAN MEDICINE
Now we’re home and getting ready for bed. What happens if we’re feeling a bit sick after our night out, and we fear it isn’t just a hangover? We might think about calling a doctor. But if you’re a time traveler in Rome, it’s really better that you don’t.
Our medicine is heavily influenced by ancient Greece, so there’s a lot of overlap between our practice and theirs. While there are hospitals for soldiers, most people are being attended by physicians at home. As with everywhere in the ancient world, disease is common and life expectancy isn’t what we are used to. As we’ve said before, a LOT of children die before the age of five, and there are a whole lot of diseases we don’t have treatments for…at least not ones that are very effective. That whole ‘four humors’ business is very much alive and well in Rome: that idea that our bodies are dominated by four different forces that need to be kept in balance. That means we’re all about bloodletting, purging, and very strange enemas. So like I said, maybe just drink some tea and leave the doctor to his business. We also believe that miasmas, which travel on the air, are the reason a lot of us get sick. So at least that inspires us Romans to appreciate the value of clean water and bathing.
We have all sorts of medicines to work with and some well-known doctors writing treatises on what works well and what might not. They use a cornucopia of ingredients, some of which are helpful. Saffron, myrrh, pepper, cinnamon, poppy; woad, that stuff that British warriors use to paint their faces blue, is great as an antiseptic, and we do a mean ancient version of calomine lotion. Cato the Elder feels strongly about the medicinal properties of cabbage. He said that the best way to ensure a kid grows up healthy is to bathe him in urine regularly from someone who eats a lot of cabbage, though it’s hard to know how seriously we should take this. The physician Celsus says that hot plasters of mallow root boiled in wine will take care of gout.
We know that we do have some female doctors floating around. One Scribonia Attica has her funeral monument built with a relief on it of her helping deliver a baby. And perhaps that’s best, as Roman men are confused about how our female bodies work. Many prescribe to that wandering womb theory we encountered in both Egypt and Greece – the idea that a woman’s womb migrates around the body, causing mischief and general hysteria, and often has to be scared back into place. Sometimes being a lady also gives us special powers: our time of the month turns us into scary creatures. Pliny the Elder wrote that:
“Terrible things are told about the monstrous power of menses, whose magic I have already discussed, of which I can repeat the following without embarrassment: if the female force begins to flow in a solar or lunar eclipse the harm will be irremediable, even if there is no moon, and sexual intercourse is pestiferous or fatal to the man; purple is contaminated by menstruating women, so much the great is their force.”
He also said that a nude menstruating woman could prevent hailstorms and lightning, and even scare away insects from crops. So that’s neat. For period pains, Celcus has many potential remedies. One is to have someone pour cold water over you. That’s probably better than having someone rub mustard onto your stomach until it turns red or fumigating your womb area with sulfur. No thank you.
Since medicine in this age can only go so far, there are prayers and amulets to go with them. Green jasper is supposed to be good for curing stomach pains and okytokia stones are a sure-fire way for an expectant mother to encourage a quick birth. One found amulet had magical formulas on it, as well as symbol representing the uterus. If you had a mind, you could use a key to open and close with a key, which was supposed to either make you open to conception or close you off to it.
Speaking of which, while we aren’t giving birth just now, let’s talk about what it might be like for us. Just like over in Greece, women will give birth surrounded by female midwives, not male doctors…I mean, we wouldn’t want another man touching our wife’s sensual tidbits. We won’t have any epidurals and very little by way of sterilization, so as with all ancient births, this is a perilous time. But I’m excited to tell you that at least Soranus suggests that midwives wash their hands before delivery…with hot olive oil, which is not soap, but at least it’s something? We would deliver our baby in a birthing chair, whose seat has a crescent-shaped hole in the bottom so that the baby can pass through it. If all goes well, we will soon lay our baby at our husband’s feet, and he will decide whether it lives or dies. So again, we’re back to the power of the paterfamilias. But just because he dominates so much of what happens, it doesn’t mean we can’t set our own goals and achieve them, and that we can’t leave a mark on our world.
CONCLUSION
And with that, we’ll take off our wig, collapse into bed, and bring an end to our ancient Roman day. What an epic journey! But it’s far from over. Next up, we’ll try to pull back the curtain from some of Rome’s most famous women: the wives, mothers, and sisters of emperors and other important political figures, exploring their lives and the different ways they found to navigate their way to power. What was life like for Livia as Rome’s first empress? How did well-protected empress Messalina end up murdered in a public garden? How did Agrippina stay alive when so many members of her family didn't, then become the most powerful political female force Rome had ever seen? Let’s put ourselves in their shoes and try to bring alive their stories.
MUSIC
The music you just enjoyed comes courtesy of Michael Levy, who composes music using recreated lyres from antiquity to give us a beautiful glimpse into the ancient world.
VOICES
John Armstrong
Philip Chevalier
Shawn from the excellent podcast Stories of Yore and Yours
Simon Dinatris
Loran McDougall
Rae from The Womansplaining Podcast
Andrew Yurgold
Paul Gablonski
Avery Downing