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Is this the best routine to boost your health? Yes, according to an ancient Roman intellectual
Pliny the Elder was an intellectual powerhouse of ancient Rome. Though not a physician, in describing the ideal daily routine of a Roman gentleman he revealed how the ancient elite believed health could be improved
In the first century AD, the Bay of Naples was fringed by villas belonging to ancient Rome’s political and military elite. The slopes of Mount Vesuvius rose above lush orchards and gardens, while trading ships came in and out of the harbour, bringing exotic imports. This was one of the most fashionable regions of the Roman empire – a retreat for senators, generals and imperial officials with vast reserves of political power and private wealth. Pliny the Elder lived here in the final years of his life. A senior Roman official, he had been a cavalry commander in his youth, later a provincial administrator, and eventually commander of the fleet stationed at Misenum (now Miseno, in the north-west of the Bay of Naples). Born around AD 23, he lived through the reigns of emperors such as Claudius, Nero and Vespasian, at a time when Rome governed vast territories stretching from Britain to north Africa and the near east. Alongside his public duties, he was an impressive scholar. According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, he read and dictated notes almost constantly, wrote while travelling, and had books read aloud to him as he ate. His greatest work, Natural History, filled 37 volumes. It was an encyclopaedic attempt to catalogue all aspects of life and the natural world: astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, mineralogy, art and medicine. “He literally said: ‘I want to cover everything in the world’,” explains Dr Jess Venner, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It was ambitious, and he did pretty well.” The work survives today as one of the largest single texts to survive from antiquity, preserving fragments of earlier Greek and Roman science that might otherwise have been lost. That ambition shaped his thinking about health, including his views on exercise. “He’s very specific about what he likes to do in a day,” says Venner. By the first century AD, Roman notions of health rested on a sophisticated Greek-derived system, especially the Hippocratic tradition and Galen’s later work. Roman medicine was based on the ancient concept that the body contained four humours – blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile – which needed to be kept in balance to ensure good health. It was a humoral imbalance, triggered by lifestyle or environment, that was believed to cause illness. Read more | Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant The model ancient Roman routine for health In one of his letters, Pliny describes the daily habits of an elderly statesman named Spurinna – a respected senator of the early empire – as a model of balanced living. “He’s saying: ‘This is the best way to be balanced as a Roman man – to achieve good health’,” Venner explains. “He writes that Spurinna is said to rise one hour before dawn, before taking a three-mile walk – naked – around his hippodrome.” In Roman elite culture, exercising unclothed drew on long-standing Greek athletic traditions. Public bath complexes across the empire included exercise yards where men trained before bathing. After the first walk, Spurinna would take two additional walks later in the day. In the Roman world view, walking was considered ideal exercise. Read more | 6 ways people stayed healthy in ancient Rome It was low-impact, rhythmic and adaptable to age. It stimulated digestion – a central concern in ancient medicine – without causing excessive strain. It allowed exposure to fresh air and sunlight, both believed to regulate internal qualities of heat and moisture. The repetition of walks across the day reflects the Roman belief in steady maintenance rather than single bursts of effort. The setting is revealing of elite Roman attitudes, too. Spurinna’s hippodrome was part of a private estate. “He’s going around his lovely verdant gardens, and they’re more like a park,” Venner says, adding: “They’re beautiful. And this is done in the morning sunshine.” Morning sunlight was particularly important. After the cold of night, it warmed the body gently. Roman elites and ball games Pliny also explains that Spurinna enjoyed playing ball games outdoors. “He’ll be throwing around a ball, should it not be too windy,” Venner says. Ball games were popular among the Roman elite, often played in villa courtyards or bath complexes. They provided moderate exercise, again without causing too much strain –consistent with the humoral theory that cautioned against extremes. Different types of balls were used, and sometimes more vigorous games were played, though elites were advised to favour gentler forms suitable for ageing bodies. “These are all activities deemed by Pliny to be beneficial to Spurinna’s mind and body,” Venner says. “And we can reasonably believe that Pliny would engage in these activities himself.” Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since. Listen to all episodes now Health as moral discipline Roman ideas of health were inseparable from notions of character and morality. Elite Roman masculinity valued moderation, discipline and order. Rising before dawn demonstrated self-control; regulating exercise signalled mastery over indulgence; exposure to one’s own land reinforced status and identity. The Roman ideal of virtus –manly excellence – was a combination of physical effort with moral restraint. Read more | “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures” At the same time, it’s important to situate this advice within the broader social hierarchy of ancient Rome. Structured exercise was largely an elite concern. This was guidance for wealthy men with leisure time and landscaped estates, while labourers, enslaved people and soldiers experienced intense physical exertion as necessity. Still, the underlying principles extolled by Pliny have value, emphasising that good health can be maintained though moderate walking, gentle games and exposure to air and light. In that sense, Pliny’s prescription was based on the idea of equilibrium. The best exercise, in his world, was the one that sustained balance, day after day. Pliny himself died in AD 79 – but not because of ill health. When Vesuvius erupted, he sailed across the Bay of Naples from his base at Misenum to observe the phenomenon and to help with evacuation efforts. He died during the catastrophe – killed by one of the natural phenomena about which he had been so insatiably curious throughout his life. Jess Venner was speaking to Kev Lochun on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Were medieval toilets as filthy as you think?
Whether in medieval castles or monasteries, toilets in the Middle Ages were more varied than you might expect
Walk through a busy European town in the 14th century, and numerous powerful and distinct smells would assail your nostrils. Horses trot along, leaving heaps of dung in the streets. Loud market stalls hawk fish and meat that quickly spoil in summer heat. Leather is tanned in vats filled with pungent liquid. To modern noses, the scents would be sharp and unfamiliar. But one thing you wouldn’t necessarily smell would be an open latrine. The idea that medieval people routinely emptied chamber pots straight into the street as their primary method of waste disposal isn’t quite accurate. Medieval towns were governed by councils or guild authorities who issued local bylaws, including regulations on waste disposal, drainage and street cleaning. Across cities such as London, Paris and York, civic authorities specifically banned residents from throwing waste into public roads. Indeed, as historian Katherine Weikert explains on the HistoryExtra podcast series Toilets Through Time, “we like to think of the Middle Ages as being filthy, but people were cognisant that faeces and urine needed to be somewhere else.” In other words, waste management was a top priority in the later Middle Ages – even if the standards of sanitation weren’t as sophisticated as they are today. What did a medieval toilet actually look like? “In general, [a medieval toilet would] probably have had some kind of seat over a pit or a cess,” says Weikert. “It may have been not too dissimilar to what we think of as an outhouse.” That pit, perhaps timber- or stone-lined, might have been set in a yard. Construction depended on wealth and location: stone-lined pits were more durable and easier to clean than simple earth-dug holes. In townhouses, the seat might be in a structure projecting out from an upper floor, with a vertical chute dropping waste into a cesspit below. However, there was no flush mechanism, and no water trap to block odours. Waste simply sat in the pit until it decomposed or was removed – by which time it would be pretty pungent. “The cesspit would get cleared out every now and again, probably when it filled,” Weikert explains. “The more you clear out your cesspit, the less it smells.” A regularly maintained pit would be unpleasant but bearable, whereas a neglected one would likely be quite overwhelming. In some towns, waste removal was regulated and licensed, with designated dumping grounds outside city walls. Read more | What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z These cesspits also tell us more than just how people used the toilet. They also reveal things people brought with them. “We get so many great archaeological finds in cesspits,” says Weikert. “People dropped things in the toilets, just like we drop our phones in the toilet today. That phenomenon is more than 1,000 years old.” Items found preserved in cesspits include everyday objects such as bits of broken pottery, jewellery, seeds and fabric fragments. Analysis of pit contents has even helped reconstruct medieval diets and trade networks, revealing an array of imported spices, fruit stones and fish bones. Toilets through time Member exclusive | What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? Why was the devil thought to lurk in medieval privies? And did constipation turn Henry VIII into a tyrant? In this four-part mini-series, David Musgrove heads down the u-bend in the company of leading historical experts to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences: going to the loo. Listen to all episodes now Castles and the garderobe In medieval castles and larger stone buildings, toilets might have been more architecturally integrated. The characteristic castle latrine was the garderobe – a small stone chamber built into the thickness of an exterior wall. A stone or wooden seat sat above a vertical shaft that ran down the outside face of the building. These featured commonly in fortified residences from the 12th century onwards, when stone castle construction became widespread in western Europe. Waste dropped into a moat, a pit, or occasionally running water. Draughts moving through the shaft helped carry odours downward and away. Some chutes were angled to reduce the incidence of smells drifting back into living quarters. The space had another practical function. “If you were wealthy, you could hang your clothes in the garderobe,” observes Weikert. “The smell would help keep moths away, and bugs out of your clothes.” Read more | Married three times by the age of 15: Margaret Beaufort, the woman who birthed the Tudor Dynasty Some of the most sophisticated medieval sanitation systems were built in monasteries, which followed strict daily schedules and housed large communities of monks, requiring organised solutions. At Cistercian houses such as Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, long rows of latrine seats were constructed above a continuously flowing stream, so running water flushed waste away naturally. Stone-lined channels directed the current beneath the building, creating what was effectively a communal flush system. The Cistercians, a reforming monastic order founded in the 11th century, were known for careful planning of their abbeys with a focus in incorporating advanced water management systems. Smell, air and medieval medicine Just because a medieval settlement smelled different (and, to an extent, worse) from towns and villages today, that doesn’t mean that people were complacent about the odours. Medieval medicine drew heavily on ancient Greek and Roman humoral theory, which posited that health depended on keeping bodily fluids – humours named as blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile – in balance. This intellectual framework, inherited from ancient physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen, remained influential in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Read more | Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant Closely connected was the concept of miasma – the belief that disease spread through corrupted and foul-smelling air. “The smell is something people were also very aware of,” Weikert explains. People were advised to face into the wind while relieving themselves “so that the smell goes in the opposite direction.” Clearly, even then waste management was understood to have a health dimension. Outbreaks of plague and other diseases reinforced the belief that invisible airborne corruption could cause sickness, reinforcing the importance of controlling odours and airflow. Medieval sanitation involved, Weikert says, “management of both the waste and the smell – the side effects of the waste.” So, were medieval toilets uniquely awful? By modern standards, medieval toilets were basic. Sanitation was shaped by availability, wealth, geography and population density. Where running water could be channelled, it was. Where it couldn’t, pits were dug and cleared instead. Medieval toilets might smell bad, especially if neglected, and streets could be unpleasant. But rather than being awash with filth, medieval societies were keenly aware of – and concerned by – waste management. Katherine Weikert was speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore more medieval history with exclusive content from our archives Medieval manners and etiquette: dos and don’ts of the Middle Ages Medieval England's political miracle: how the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for modern Britain How to go on a medieval pilgrimage Why there’s no such thing as a typical medieval peasant Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers
Were the Victorians the luckiest people in history?
In the middle decades of the 19th century, Britain experienced rapid industrial change without suffering revolution or major conflict. How?
Imagine you’re standing on a railway platform in Britain in 1850. The air is thick and acrid with coal smoke. Ears ring with hissing and clanking as a steam locomotive pulls in, brakes squealing as it grinds to a halt. Newspapers – read by an increasingly literate and educated society – report on the country’s industrial expansion, booming imperial trade and widening political inclusion. London has become the largest city on Earth, and the heart of this industry. But it’s only one part of a broader national picture: Manchester’s mills spin cotton imported from across the Atlantic, while shipyards along the Clyde and Tyne build great vessels that will circle the globe. Such was the early phase of the reign of Queen Victoria. To many contemporaries, the scale of change wrought over the past century represented staggering progress. The long wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France had ended in 1815. Britain had emerged victorious from more than two decades of near-continuous conflict, culminating in the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. The spirit of European revolution seemed, by the mid-century, to have left Britain unscathed. Did the Victorians unknowingly live in one of the most fortunate moments in modern history? Jamie Camplin, author of Being Victorian, argues that the answer might be yes. “If we want to get into the heads of people living in 1850, it’s very important to focus on a simple thing,” says Camplin, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “They had their present, and they had some knowledge of their past. What they didn’t know anything about was the future.” That future would, within a century, encompass two world wars, the Great Depression, the decline of the British empire, and the waning of Britain’s global influence. But in 1850, Britain still presided over the largest empire in the world, with colonies and trading posts spanning India, Canada, the Caribbean, parts of Africa and Australasia. But just how prosperous was Britain at that time – and how had it achieved that success? An Industrial Revolution, not a political one By mid-century, the Industrial Revolution that had begun in Britain – largely powered by railway systems – had spread to continental Europe and North America. “Britain had a globally dominant merchant marine, as well as a Royal Navy,” Camplin adds. British goods were exported worldwide in British-built ships, insured by British firms, financed through British banks. Sea routes were controlled by naval power, giving Britain both commercial reach and military security. In the process, London became the centre of global finance. Camplin quotes economist John Maynard Keynes, who later described Britain as conducting “the international orchestra,” coordinating capital and trade flows across continents. To the people of the time, it seemed as though prosperity might continue indefinitely. Victorian society beyond economics Economic growth fed into a broader cultural confidence. The electric telegraph carried messages across Britain – and, later, oceans – in minutes rather than weeks. Scientific discoveries had reshaped understandings of geology, biology and medicine. The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 prompted a profound reassessment of existing beliefs about life and humanity’s place in nature. Health reforms slowly began to address the worst urban problems, with legislation such as the Public Health Acts aiming to improve sanitation in rapidly expanding cities. Many Victorians interpreted these changes as evidence of moral as well as technological advancement. International exhibitions, most famously the Great Exhibition of 1851, encapsulated this burgeoning national confidence and certainty. But, Camplin says, perhaps the most striking feature of this period was political adaptability. Revolutions had recently swept across much of Europe. Governments fell in France. Uprisings shook the German states and the Habsburg empire. And demands for defined constitutions, expanded suffrage and national self-determination often sparked tumult. “Right across Europe there was violence and regime change,” Camplin says. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all Britain appeared vulnerable, too. The Chartist movement – a mass campaign for political reform, including universal male suffrage – organised a vast demonstration on London’s Kennington Common. But when police authorities asked Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor to call off a planned march on parliament, Camplin recounts, “he doffed his cap and they dispersed.” It was an example of peaceful political protest – a world apart from those in other European societies. Partly, Camplin explains, that’s because institutions were willing to adapt to changes in British society. The Reform Act of 1832 had already expanded the electorate. Later measures in 1867 and 1884 would extend it further. By managing reform through parliament, Britain’s ruling class preserved institutional continuity, while gradually widening participation, in a way that European aristocrats had failed to do. The result was rapid economic transformation combined with unexpected political stability. Life in Victorian Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | This six-week course covers everything you need to know about Victorian Britain, guided by historian Ruth Goodman and filmed on location at Black Country Living Museum. Explore the course now Was the mid-Victorian period the best era of modern history in which to live? Taken together, these elements formed a rare historical combination. Industrial growth accelerated. Trade flourished. Political reform proceeded without civil war. Britain avoided major continental conflict. “You have this very curious, perhaps unique, situation in which you have fast change but a very stable society,” Camplin observes. However, this prosperity wasn’t without cost. Though efforts were set in motion to address the worst urban health and sanitation problems, city slums were overcrowded and riddled with disease, and child labour remained widespread. Read more | Was Victorian life really so grim? 5 reasons why the Victorians were 'happy' Ireland – then still part of the UK – suffered catastrophic famine in the 1840s, and the empire’s expansion was predicated on much exploitation and violence. The benefits of stability were experienced very differently across classes, regions and colonies. In general, though, in the mid-19th century Britain was comfortably cushioned between the revolutionary convulsions of the late 18th century and the mechanised disasters of the 20th. It combined industrial dynamism with political continuity in ways that later generations struggled to replicate. “Interestingly, a few years ago, a sentiment analysis algorithm did a vast analysis of Victorian data,” says Camplin, in conclusion. “It came to the conclusion that in the past 200 years, people were happiest at about the time of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.” Jamie Camplin was speaking to Isabel King on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
The forgotten wars that redefined Europe
Aleks Pluskowski traces the story of the Baltic crusades and their transformative impact on eastern Europe
While the crusades raged across the Holy Land in the southern Levant, the kingdoms of central and northern Europe were engaged in their own battle to extend Christendom. Speaking to James Osborne, Aleks Pluskowski details how and when the Baltic crusades – or Northern crusades – began, and examines their links to the broader crusading culture of the Middle Ages. To learn more about the medieval history of central and eastern Europe, listen to our episode on the role of the Rus people in the formation of the lands that are now Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Go beyond the podcast
Think the Victorians were prudes? Their filthiest jokes will shock you
Victorian audiences revelled in riddles, physical comedy and bawdy jokes that challenge everything we think we know about 19th-century respectability
The words ‘Victorian Britain’ might evoke images of men with waxed moustaches and women in high-necked dresses, sitting upright in houses drawn back from the London smog. Indeed, ‘Victorian’ has become shorthand for prudishness, referring to the long reign of Queen Victoria: a period associated with notions of strict social etiquette, restraint and rigid ideas about respectability. But this view irons out a lot of the period’s complexities. Beneath a visage of stiff morality was a culture that delighted in wordplay, physical comedy and, in private, jokes that were startlingly explicit. So what, precisely, did these people find funny? As historian Dr Bob Nicholson explains on the HistoryExtra podcast: “It’s really hard to define the sense of humour of millions of people over a generation, just as it would be now. But when I look at Victorian comedy, I guess there are certain recurring patterns or themes that they really liked.” The Victorian sense of humour The Victorian-era was defined by transformation on a vast scale, powered by world-leading industrialisation, urbanisation and expanding literacy. The population of England and Wales more than doubled during the 19th century, and cities like Manchester and London grew at rapid pace. Now, newspapers, penny weeklies and comic magazines such as Punch could reach a new, mass readership. Music halls became hugely popular too, offering working and lower-middle class audiences a place to enjoy an evening of singing and comedy. Read more | What was daily life like for 'ordinary' Victorians? It was both in print and the spoken word that the Victorian sense of humour really managed to flourish. “The first thing you’ll see when you look at their jokes is that they love puns,” Nicholson says. “They absolutely love wordplay, to a degree that I think we would look at now and think: these are some pretty laboured, torturous puns.” The increasingly literate Victorians delighted in verbal dexterity, double entendres and clever linguistic turns of phrase. Here, Nicholson says, we can see that Victorian humour ran “from incredibly erudite and witty bits of satire through to the most base form of slapstick – somebody slipping on a banana skin. So, I would say their sense of humour was pretty much as broad and varied as ours is.” Physical comedy was the most accessible, requiring no literacy at all, making it especially appealing for large, mixed audiences. Life in Victorian Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | This six-week course covers everything you need to know about Victorian Britain, guided by historian Ruth Goodman and filmed on location at Black Country Living Museum. Explore the course now Word puzzles and wordplay One particularly Victorian form of humour was essentially a riddle disguised as a punchline. Conundrums had earlier roots in 18th-century parlour games but flourished in the 19th century. “These types of pun jokes were really popular,” Nicholson explains. “They were treated almost like puzzles rather than jokes. In fact, they were known as conundrum jokes in the nineteenth century. “You would often have a pause between the setup and the punchline where people were invited to try to solve the riddle,” Nicholson says. “That doesn’t necessarily make for the best rhythm of joke-telling, but it can be very satisfying when you figure it out. The Victorians really enjoyed doing that.” Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all “They even had conundrum competitions on very large scales,” Nicholson notes. “People in the town would submit their jokes, they would be read out on stage, and then judged by a committee of local gentlemen who would decide on the best pun, which would win a prize.” A private appetite for indecent jokes While Victorian public comedy was fairly harmless, more private humour could be shockingly blunt – and rude. The enduring stereotype of prudery comes largely from what was printed in the mainstream. Victorian Britain had strict obscenity laws. The 1857 Obscene Publications Act, for example, gave authorities new powers to seize and destroy material deemed immoral. But censorship didn’t eliminate people’s appetite for more risqué comedy. Nicholson points to an underground publication called The Pearl, “a pornographic magazine circulated in private among gentlemen.” Its limericks and anecdotes were explicit in ways that directly contradict many modern assumptions about Victorian social delicacy. “There are some incredibly rude Victorian limericks,” says Nicholson. One such example that Nicholson gives, among others, is: “There was a young lady of Hitchin Who was scratching her **** in the kitchen. Her father said, “Rose, It’s the crabs I suppose.” “You’re right, Pa, the buggers are itchin’.” “The reason I share these is that they seem so un-Victorian,” he says. “The idea of them using that kind of language, joking about those kinds of things – about lice, sexually transmitted diseases – it seems so unfamiliar to how we imagine the Victorians. Read more | He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was “But those jokes were circulating. They were there and have survived in these fragments. They are not the kind of material you would hear in a mainstream musical or read in a magazine or newspaper,” Nicholson notes. “We have this image of the Victorians as being much more respectable and not interested in bodily humour, in part because that material was edited out for public consumption.” As for Queen Victoria, even her own sense of humour was surprising. What made Queen Victoria laugh? Victoria is often attributed with saying “we are not amused”. While it’s unlikely she actually said it, the sentiment of the phrase has stuck to her reputation. But the reality, Nicholson reveals, was very different. “What did Victoria laugh at? The answer is: loads of things,” Nicholson says. Her diaries contain frequent references to things that amused her at dinner parties and court events and, as Nicholson explains, “she is constantly talking about funny things said at the dinner table.” Victoria kept extensive journals throughout her life, leaving historians a detailed record of her private reactions and amusements. From what Nicholson can gather, she enjoyed physical comedy: “Somebody falling over, a man sitting on his hat, somebody trapping their fingers in a door. The old classics.” Read more | Who were Queen Victoria's sons and daughters? Nicholson also recounts an anecdote from a dinner conversation with a partially deaf admiral describing how he intended to recover a sunken ship. Mishearing the queen’s polite inquiry about his sister, he explained how he would “have her turned over, take a good look at her bottom and scrape all the barnacles off.” Victoria was helpless with laughter, while the admiral remained oblivious. “The image we have of her as incredibly serious does not resemble the version you see in private,” Nicholson notes. After the death of Prince Albert in 1861, it was Victoria’s prolonged public mourning that reshaped her image. For decades she wore black and withdrew from many public appearances. That visible grief hardened into our defining image of Victoria. And her seclusion contributed to a wider association between the monarchy and solemnity during the later 19th century. “In public she had to project the power, authority, and dignity of a sovereign,” Nicholson says. Despite that veneer, Nicholson says that it’s important to remember precisely what the Victorians, including the queen herself, were amused by. Bob Nicholson was speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
During the Second Punic War, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal led his forces to numerous victories. But did he really take war elephants across the Alps?
The Punic Wars – and the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) specifically – were a definitive chapter in the history of the ancient world. Fought between the formidable Mediterranean power of Carthage and the upstart Roman Republic, the conflict ultimately saw the balance of power shift decisively away from the Carthaginians and towards the Romans. Had Rome fallen, Carthage would have retained its influence, and Roman civilisation may never have grown out of its infancy. Instead, the Romans won. Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, at the end of the Third Punic War, eliminated its greatest rival. In victory, they took hold of the ancient Mediterranean, using it as a springboard for imperial expansion across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It wasn’t until the invasions associated with Attila the Hun centuries later that Rome would again face such an existential threat. But that’s not to say that Roman victory was inevitable. During the apogee of the war, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca inflicted a series of devastating defeats on Roman armies. At Cannae in 216 BC, perhaps 50,000 Roman soldiers died in a single day – one of the worst military disasters in Roman history – while earlier victories at Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC) had already demonstrated Hannibal’s military genius. Read more | Long before the ancient Roman empire, a rival superpower looked set for supremacy His most audacious, move, however, was none of these. Marching from Carthaginian territories in Iberia – modern-day Spain – Hannibal led an expeditionary force through southern Gaul and across the Alps, where he traversed the imposing mountainous slopes with a vast army that included war elephants. It was a force that arrived at the gates of Rome, pushing for a Roman surrender. It’s an astonishing story that underlines Hannibal’s determination, and most of all, his astounding logistical capabilities. But for all its fame, did it really happen? While many historians and archaeologists accept its plausibility, no physical evidence has ever been found for Hannibal’s elephantine, Alpine crossing. Ancient texts recount the elephants in detail, but physical evidence has remained conspicuous in its absence. At least, until now. New evidence for Hannibal’s ancient elephants? Archaeologists – led by Professor Rafael M Martínez Sánchez – excavating at Colina de los Quemados, near Córdoba in southern Spain, have uncovered a small elephant foot bone dating to the late third century BC – the period of Hannibal’s campaign. The discovery may represent the first tangible archaeological evidence connected to the elephants used during the Punic Wars. The roughly 10-centimetre cube-shaped bone was found beneath a collapsed wall within an Iron Age settlement. Radiocarbon dating places it firmly within the timeframe of the Second Punic War. Additional finds from the 2020 excavation (including coins, ceramics and military material) suggest the site was associated with armed conflict. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/elephant-bone-60cdac0-e1772187879548.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Comparative figure of elephant third carpal (wrist) bones showing an Iron Age archaeological specimen from Colina de los Quemados, Córdoba (top row) alongside modern Asian elephant and Steppe Mammoth examples, with numbered articular facets used for anatomical comparison." title="elephant-bone" /> Comparisons with modern elephant skeletons and even prehistoric steppe mammoths confirmed the identification. Because elephants weren’t native to Iberia, the researchers argue the animal must have been transported there, most likely by ship as part of a military operation. Carthage had long experience using the animals, likely North African forest elephants (now extinct), as part of its military. Read more | How did a crow help Rome defeat Carthage? Does the age and location of the find, and its surrounding context, point to the possibility of the bone being the remains of an elephant that was part of Hannibal’s war band, perhaps dying before the general began his famous Alpine crossing? As the paper states, the bone “could potentially embody the first known relic … of the animals used in the Punic Roman wars for the control of the Mediterranean.” So, is the bone proof of Hannibal’s elephants? For Emeritus Professor Kevin Walsh, an archaeologist at the University of York, the discovery is significant less for what it proves, than for how it fits into a long-standing historical puzzle. “The new bone evidence supports the argument that elephants were present in Hannibal’s world,” he says, speaking to HistoryExtra. But, he notes, the bone isn’t proof that this elephant belonged to Hannibal. “This does not constitute definitive physical evidence for war elephants in Hannibal’s army, and consequently, certainly not definitive evidence for elephants that would have gone on to cross France and then traverse the Alps.” Read more | Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures” Proof, Walsh says, would ideally be “a site – or sites – that comprise artefacts directly linked to a Carthaginian army at an alpine site, along with elephant bones; a site that comprises several types of evidence supporting the presence of an army in this area in the Alps during the late third century BC.” But, as Walsh explains, preservation itself poses a problem: acidic alpine soils rarely allow bone to survive over long periods. High-altitude environments also shift over time due to erosion, glacial movement and landslides, further complicating the archaeological record. In an ideal scenario, he suggests, researchers might one day detect elephant DNA preserved within lake sediments near a plausible crossing route. In this context, the Spanish discovery serves mainly as confirmation that elephants were indeed present within the military world of late third-century BC Carthage. As Walsh says, it’s “another tantalising piece of evidence for a puzzle that is missing numerous pieces.” What was the point of Hannibal’s war elephants? Even if the bone was firm evidence for Hannibal’s war elephants, Professor Philip Freeman – a classicist at Pepperdine University and specialist in the ancient Mediterranean – says that the broader historical implications would be limited, simply because elephants weren’t always the most effective weapons. “I think the evidence of elephant bones in Spain is intriguing, but it doesn't really change our view of Hannibal or the Punic War,” he says. “No one ever seriously doubted that the Carthaginians used them in battle or that Hannibal took them to Italy, as the ancient texts say.” Read more | The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist “The problem with elephants in ancient warfare was that they never made much difference. They were large and imposing but tactically offered little help. They were hard to control and might just as easily turn on their own side as the enemy. They were good for show, but not much else.” As Freeman notes, according to ancient sources, “Hannibal only had one elephant who survived the crossing of the Alps into Italy, so it made little difference to the war.” Whether the bone belongs to one of Hannibal’s elephants or simply proves the presence of elephants within the Carthaginian context, both Freeman and Walsh argue that the animals themselves were not especially important. Freeman concludes, “it was Hannibal's military brilliance that enabled him to defeat the Romans again and again, not elephants.” Hannibal’s journey across the Alps with elephants, navigating winding passes and narrow mountain ledges, may therefore be more significant as an audacious logistical achievement than as a moment of true military importance. “It is perhaps the enigma itself, and faith in the idea that such an exploit was possible, that makes any new piece of research on the topic interesting,” concludes Walsh. “Hannibal's achievement and his army's remarkable struggle contribute to a timeless story of human resilience in the face of an apparently impossible task.” Roman Britain | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | In this four-week course, discover everything you need to know about Roman Britain, guided by Rob Collins, professor of frontier archaeology at Newcastle University. Explore the course now
Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was Winston Churchill’s shocking plan for Nazi war criminals
As Europe lay in ruins following the end of the Second World War, Churchill’s instinct was to punish the surviving Nazi leadership without a trial. How was the decision made to stage the Nuremberg Trials instead?
In May of 1945, Allied forces pressed through Germany. With Adolf Hitler dead and Berlin fallen, the last remnants of Nazi military resistance were slipping away. As the Allied soldiers broke the Third Reich’s grip on Europe, they encountered scenes that defied belief. With each concentration camp liberated, the mountain of evidence of mass murder on a scale previously unimaginable grew taller. There was a question now looming large in the minds of the victorious Allies: what should be done with the remaining Nazi leaders, such as Hermann Göring, who had led Europe into catastrophe? There was no standing international criminal court, no established legal framework for prosecuting aggressive war, and no precedent for putting a defeated government on trial. International law in 1945 was largely concerned with relations between states, not criminal responsibility for individual political leaders. Some proposed that the most straightforward option would be to execute the surviving architects of Nazi rule and move on from a staggeringly awful chapter of European history. That was precisely the instinct of Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill. So how did the Nuremberg Trials emerge from that backdrop? And how was Churchill convinced to support an unprecedented trial instead? Planning justice before the war had ended Nuremberg wasn’t conceived only after Germany surrendered in May 1945. The question of how to prosecute Nazi leaders had already been percolating for years. Reflecting on the origins of Nuremberg for a four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, international lawyer Phillipe Sands says, “Already in 1942, efforts were underway – with governments in exile in particular – committing to the prosecution of Nazi criminals for crimes committed on their occupied territories.” Nazi Germany | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Everything you need to know about Nazi Germany, guided by historian, author and broadcaster Laurence Rees. Explore the course now Read more | How Nazi investigators used secret tools to create Hitler’s Holocaust ‘hitlist’ In 1942, much of Europe was under Nazi occupation. Governments from Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and other countries were operating in exile, largely from London. Reports of atrocities were reaching Allied capitals. The Holocaust was underway, even if the full scale of it wasn’t at yet clear. Mass shootings in Eastern Europe and the systematic deportation of Jews to extermination camps were already taking place. These governments wanted assurances that their suffering would not be forgotten once the war ended. They pressed Britain and the United States to commit, publicly and formally, to postwar accountability. In 1943, the Allies issued the Moscow Declaration, warning that those responsible for atrocities would be returned to the countries where their crimes were committed to face justice. This declaration marked one of the first collective Allied statements that punishment would follow victory. The question was: how? The Yalta turning point The decisive political moment came in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference, held in Crimea. There, the leaders of the three major Allied powers – Britain’s Winston Churchill, US president Franklin D Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin – met to hash out a postwar settlement. With France and Belgium soon to be liberated, Germany’s defeat seemed assured – but the details of a prospective peace were unresolved. Borders, occupation zones, reparations and political reconstruction all were on the table. So too was the fate of captured Nazi leaders. “[At Yalta], Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met and agreed that there would be a trial to deal with any surviving Nazi leaders,” says Sands, but that Churchill “had to be brought in, kicking and screaming”. “There’s written documentary material which makes it clear that Winston Churchill wanted them lined up and shot,” he notes. Read more | Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery Execution would be, in Churchill’s eyes, “much more efficient, much quicker, much cheaper”. He was also wary of creating legal precedents that might later be used against British imperial actions. Roosevelt and Stalin, however, found themselves aligned. “For different reasons, Roosevelt and Stalin wanted a trial to show that we were different from the Nazis,” Sands explains. “That was symbolically very significant.” For Roosevelt, a public legal process would demonstrate that the Allied war effort had been grounded in law and justice, rather than revenge. For Stalin, whose country had suffered catastrophic losses, a trial would publicly document Nazi crimes and reinforce the extent of Soviet sacrifices. The Soviet Union had lost more than 20 million people during the war, and its leadership wanted international recognition of that loss. Churchill, then, was backed into a corner. “Once the two of them had joined forces on that, Churchill then accepted.” What would a ‘trial’ actually look like? Even after consensus emerged out of Yalta, enormous practical questions remained – especially as there was no international criminal code defining ‘crimes against humanity’. Who would be tried? On what charges? Under whose law? Who would judge? Where would the court sit? The answer to the last question, at least, soon became evident. The German city of Nuremberg had hosted vast Nazi Party rallies before the war and contained a courthouse complex large enough to hold an international tribunal. Read more | Hitler's war on words: how the Nazis used art to bolster their murderous regime The proceedings that followed were also designed to serve as a record. Prosecutors assembled films, documents, and witness testimony to create a detailed archive of Nazi crimes. The proceedings were conducted in four languages, and meticulously transcribed. The trial would go on to establish four central pillars of international law: that aggressive war itself could be criminal; that state officials could be held personally accountable; that systematic atrocities were punishable under international law; and that the victors wouldn’t resort to summary revenge. This legal language defined at Nuremberg would shape later tribunals and, eventually, the International Criminal Court. It was a far cry from Churchill’s desire for immediate execution. But for all of Nuremberg’s successes, the decision to subject the Nazis to the law didn’t resolve growing tensions between the Allies. The United States and the Soviet Union would soon find themselves on opposite sides of a global ideological divide that would define the next decades – a divide that would end back in Germany once more, when the Berlin Wall came toppling down. Phillipe Sands was speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
How Nazi investigators used secret tools to create Hitler’s Holocaust ‘hitlist’
New research reveals that paper conservators and manuscript restorers helped make centuries-old records legible for Nazi racial investigations, demonstrating how highly specialised crafts became entangled in the machinery of the Holocaust
It was SS officers and concentration camp guards who implemented and actualised much of the genocidal policy that had been crafted by senior Nazi officials. The SS, led by Heinrich Himmler, oversaw the police, the concentration camp system and many of the administrative structures that carried out the mass murder of Jewish populations and minority groups. These officers may have been the most visible architects of the Holocaust during the Second World War. But many historians have long argued that the systematic genocide levelled against Europe’s Jewish populations could never have reached the scale that it did without the complicity and active aid offered by ordinary people in everyday professions. It was office administrators, clerks, railway workers and local officials whose work sustained the machinery of the Nazi state. Now, new research has added more occupations to that list: bookbinders, paper conservators and restoration specialists. According to findings by historian Dr Morwenna Blewett, first published in The Guardian, newly uncovered Nazi-era correspondence reveals a Europe-wide programme in which restorers repaired and chemically treated fragile archival documents so that they could be used to better trace Jewish ancestry. The work, she argues, helped Nazi authorities to compile genealogical records that functioned, in effect, as a bureaucratic “hitlist”. Uncovering Jewish ancestry In research that features in her upcoming book, Art Restoration Under the Nazi Regime, Blewett uncovered letters and administrative files showing how these expert restorers were recruited to clean and stabilise old church registers and civil records which documented local births, baptisms, marriages and religious conversions stretching back centuries. Many of these manuscripts had become illegible through years of decay. Rather than preserving them in accordance with proper conservation standards, restorers used aggressive chemical treatments, including saturating pages with glycerine or laminating fragile sheets, to temporarily clean the documents and make them readable – even though these processes would destroy their long-term preservation. Blewett’s research shows that Nazi officials described church books as an important source for proving Jewish descent, allowing the regime to determine who was considered Jewish under its racial laws. Read more | Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery By restoring these records, the conservators directly enabled the identification of people who would then be targeted for deportation and murder. Dr Simone Gigliotti, a historian of the Holocaust and deputy director of Royal Holloway’s Holocaust Research Institute, says that the findings reinforce a broader historical understanding of how widely Nazi ideology penetrated professional life. Speaking to HistoryExtra, she says Blewett’s research “confirms the fact that very few industries: bureaucratic, medical, cultural, economic, industrial or artisanal, were untouched by Nazi ideology. Neutrality in the arts and crafts industries was an illusion.” The power of complicity Blewett’s discovery also helps to clarify the precise mechanisms that underpinned the early stages of genocide. Professor Christopher Browning is one of the world’s leading historians of the Holocaust. Speaking to HistoryExtra about the discovery, he says: “This new research does indeed illuminate the degree to which complicity in the Holocaust permeated even the most obscure professions in Germany. Historians have known this in principle, but not this particular example.” Dr Gigliotti similarly emphasises how deeply professional complicity extended beyond institutions of the Nazi state. “[Professional complicity] was very extensive, indeed, embedded into German society,” she explains. For the Nazis, the importance of tracing Jewish ancestry emerged after the Nuremberg Laws. Introduced in 1935, these laws stripped Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage or sexual relationships between Jews and so-called ‘Aryans’. Professor Browning explains: “Raul Hilberg, one of the founders of Holocaust studies, wrote in 1961 that the first major step in the Holocaust was the definition of the victim. The Nuremberg Laws defined ‘full’ Jews as having three or four Jewish grandparents, and so-called ‘Mischlinge’ [meaning ‘mixed bloods’] as having one or two Jewish grandparents.” This was a determination that required documentary proof. Because Germany lacked a unified national registry before the late 19th century, these records were scattered across thousands of local churches and synagogues. In many regions, especially in rural areas, parish records stretching back to the 17th or 18th centuries were the only surviving documentation of family lineage. Read more | “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp” Professor Browning says: “For the Nazi bureaucracy to determine who was a Jew, or for individuals to document their ancestry as ‘free of Jews’, genealogy businesses sprang up to research old church and synagogue records. What this new research shows is that this, in turn, spawned an additional new business: the cleaning of these old records to make them readable.” The bureaucratic obsession with documentation, however, was not universal across Europe. Browning notes that such painstaking genealogical classification primarily applied to German Jews. In eastern Europe, where most Holocaust victims lived, “no one worried about the details of legal documentation to this degree.” “Being identified as Jewish by one’s neighbours or being suspected of being Jewish by appearance was sufficient to be killed,” he says. Creating a racial hierarchy through genealogy The German reliance on archival records also underlines a deeper contradiction at the heart of Nazi racial ideology. While the regime tried to extol a claim of scientific rationale behind its racial hierarchy, it ultimately depended on paperwork rather than biology. Professor Dan Stone, director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, says Blewett’s findings reinforce a wider understanding of how central genealogy became to Nazi policy. Speaking to HistoryExtra about the research, he explains why it's not surprising that old ancestry documents became such a decisive tool. Read more | Hitler's war on words: how the Nazis used art to bolster their murderous regime “Because the Nazis couldn’t identify such a thing as a ‘Jewish race’ through scientific means (because no such thing exists), their definition of Jews as being people with Jewish grandparents meant that genealogical, as opposed to anthropological or biological, factors were crucial.” “The emotional pull of ‘thinking with the blood’ overrode any scientific findings about the complexity of race,” he says. Dr Gigliotti notes that this bureaucratic fixation produced one of the defining administrative features of the Holocaust: lists. “The Holocaust and its lists are inseparable,” she explains. “Lists of Jewish people selected for deportation, Jewish refugees waiting for visas but denied, Jewish deportees listed as having arrived at concentration camps, Jewish passengers appearing on shipping lists, and finally, that most consequential of lists, the Wannsee Conference list of Jewish communities across the world and their numbers by country. Lists classify, separate and isolate.” Professor Stone agrees that it was this level of organisation that was fundamental in turning abstract Nazi ideology into concrete action. "That there was a bureaucracy tasked with identifying the relevant genealogical records, both to prove who was a Jew and to adjudicate on claims for ‘Aryan status’, makes perfect sense.” Nazi Germany | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Everything you need to know about Nazi Germany, guided by historian, author and broadcaster Laurence Rees. Explore the course now
3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King – without using any weapons
Before picket lines and unionisation, ancient Egyptian artisans learned that collectively withdrawing labour could force even a pharaoh to negotiate
“1768 is really when the word ‘strike’ begins to develop out of the UK.” That’s the view of classicist Sarah E Bond, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. As Bond explains, the word ‘strike’ comes from a moment when sailors in the port of Sunderland decided to literally strike down the topsails of their ships, immobilising them until their demands were met by their bosses. The tactic worked, spread south to the shipyards of the Thames, and quickly entered the political vocabulary. But the behaviour the word came to describe – the collective withholding of labour – is actually far older. “What that word represents is an action that goes all the way back to the second millennium BC,” Bond says. Before the concept of money or coinage, workers had figured out a fundamental principle: stopping work was a way to force those in power to negotiate. The ancient Egyptian origins of strikes “Even if these words were not familiar to those within the ancient world, there are still methodologies within labour disputes that have been happening for thousands of years,” says Bond. One of the earliest, clearest examples of what would now be termed a ‘strike’ comes from ancient Egypt – a civilisation that was rigidly hierarchical and dominated by unquestionable royal authority. Beneath the monumental architecture and other cultural feats, Egyptian society depended on a vast pool of labour. Read more | Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power In the second millennium BC, during the reign of Ramesses III, Egypt had passed the peak of imperial expansion it had enjoyed a century earlier. Ramesses III ruled during the early 12th century BC, at the end of the New Kingdom, a period marked by mounting economic pressure, as well as internal and external instability. Ramesses III presented himself as a traditional warrior-pharaoh, defending Egypt against repeated Libyan incursions and threats from other foreign enemies, such as the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’. Reliefs and inscriptions depict the pharaoh’s decisive victories, but modern historians view his reign as one of crisis management, with Egyptian prosperity faltering. Not only was the kingdom embroiled in expensive wars, but agricultural output was stalling. Despite these pressures, Ramesses III occupied an impossibly powerful position. The Egyptian pharaoh was viewed as a divine intermediary, responsible for maintaining maat – a religious notion of cosmic order that guaranteed harmony between gods, people and nature. Feeding workers, paying temple staff and sustaining major construction projects were all part of that sacred duty. Read more | Life in ancient Egypt: what was it like? However, Egypt didn’t yet have a system of coinage, and instead operated a redistributive economy centred on agricultural surplus. According to Bond, workers were paid in barley and emmer wheat, which would have been enough to feed entire households. The state also collected agricultural produce as tax, stored it in granaries, and redistributed it to soldiers, officials, priests and specialised workers. The system proved effective if harvests were stable and administration functioned efficiently. But during periods of disruption, the impact of shortages rippled through society. The workers of Deir el-Medina The strike itself unfolded at Deir el-Medina, a purpose-built village housing the highly skilled artisans who carved and painted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These workers were salaried state employees, exempt from agricultural work, housed by the government and supplied directly from royal granaries. Many were literate, and they left behind letters, complaints and administrative records that give historians a rare view into the lives of non-elite Egyptians. But because they didn’t farm their own food, missed deliveries of their payment left them vulnerable. When Ramesses III’s administration fell badly behind on promised rations, families at Deir el-Medina faced serious consequences. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-122227075-1-ead9340-e1771582491490.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Ancient Egyptian tomb painting showing a blind harpist performing before a seated couple, with hieroglyphs above the figures." title="Egypt, Ancient Thebes, Dayr al-Madinah (Deir el-Medina), tomb of Anherkha, mural painting of deceased Khai-Inherkha and wife before blind harpist" /> “The necropolis workers decided that they were going to go on strike until they got the rations and payment that they were promised by the pharaoh,” Bond says. The workers peacefully withdrew their labour entirely and carefully chose their protest site. Their actions were documented by local scribes, making this the earliest recorded labour strike in human history. “They decided that they were going to go and sit in the back of a temple, and that they were simply going to refuse to work until they were given the back payments.” Temples in ancient Egypt were sanctuaries of non-violence. Fighting and bloodshed within them was taboo. It’s for that reason that “going and sitting in peaceful protest at the back of a temple, or just outside a temple, was something that became extremely common in Pharaonic Egypt, and continued well into the Ptolemaic period and beyond.” Read more | The dark side of ancient Egypt The protest worked – or at least in the short term. After several days, grain was released from nearby temples and emergency rations were distributed to the workers of Deir el-Medina. Over the following years, delays in payment recurred because of the broader political and administrative trouble, and the artisans repeatedly downed tools. “That, to me, was very much what we would today call a strike – even if that’s not what they were referring to it as,” concludes Bond. As for Ramesses III, the strike was a warning sign of deeper systemic failure, and Egypt’s economic strain only worsened towards the end of his reign. In the final years of his rule, the pharaoh was caught up in the so-called ‘harem conspiracy’ – a palace plot involving members of his own household. Modern forensic analysis suggests that Ramesses was assassinated, likely having his throat cut, bringing his 31-year reign to a violent end. But, even before that, the God-King had already been defeated by a band of striking necropolis workers. Jon Bauckham was speaking to Sarah E Bond on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
The Tudor law that forced an occult practice underground for centuries
As well as creating new regulations on faith, Henry VIII’s 16th-century government also decided which kinds of knowledge were legitimate – and which were criminal
The people who controlled Tudor England made certain that any belief that didn’t align with strictly Christian values was deemed to be highly suspicious, and likely criminal. Witchcraft and demonology were stark examples, but Henry VIII himself also passed a law that criminalised palmistry: the reading of one’s fate from the palm of the hand. Henry VIII ruled from 1509 to 1547, presiding over one of the most transformative periods in English and wider British history. His reign encompassed religious revolution, repeated rebellions and an unprecedented expansion of royal authority. But while Tudor governments worked to centralise authority and standardise religious belief after decades of dynastic instability, many elite thinkers continued to explore esoteric ideas in private: the truth was, the early modern period was the perfect hotbed for alternative ideas to flourish. The people who lived in the early 16th century were wracked by uncertainty. England was still emerging from the Wars of the Roses, and Henry VIII was only the second Tudor king; his claim to the throne rested on recent victory in battle rather than ancient lineage, making loyalty to the crown a constant concern. Early modern governance relied heavily on local surveillance and reputation, and strangers presented a challenge to that system. Roma communities were newly visible in England in the early 1500s. As historian Alison Bashford explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, contemporary Europeans believed these communities came from Egypt. “Hence the term ‘gypsy’,” she says. It was a misidentification that would shape Tudor laws, based on false ideas that Roma people came from a place imbued with ancient, supposedly occult forms of knowledge. The Egyptian Acts and Tudor control Under Henry VIII, Parliament passed a series of statutes known collectively as the Egyptian Acts. They aimed to fix populations in place and eliminate practices that escaped oversight. But they had a much longer reach than you might first think. “Henry VIII’s Egyptian Acts actually run through the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Bashford. “They’re the forerunners of vagrancy acts that continue well into the 20th century.” Watch now | Tudor love lives: inside a 16th-century bedroom These laws targeted cultural practises that didn’t fit within church or guild oversight. The aim was to impose a Tudor vision of order, in which authority flowed from crown to institution to subject. One law that is a perfect example of this attempted authority was the ban of the practice of palmistry. “As far back as Henry VIII’s time, one of the clauses in the original Egyptian Act was to render unlawful the telling of fortunes from the palm,” explains Bashford. Practising palmistry required no licensing and no formal apprenticeship or qualifications. It was an unregulated, and – to Tudor society – incomprehensible form of secret knowledge that posed a tangible threat to the established social and religious order. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/GettyImages-1397985996-6d2d6ae-e1771418600358.jpg" width="1480" height="1000" alt="This woodcut of Roma fortune tellers, first published in 1552, reflects Tudor England’s suspicion of so-called 'Egyptians'. Under a series of Tudor laws, Roma people faced expulsion, persecution while practices such as palmistry and fortune telling were outlawed as fraud or witchcraft." title="Gipsies Fortune Telling" /> Knowledge after the Reformation The ban of palmistry sits within the broader context of the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s fundamentally altered how knowledge and authority were organised in England. By dissolving monasteries, abolishing papal authority, and declaring himself Supreme Head of the Church, Henry concentrated interpretive power in the crown – and thus himself. Palmistry fell victim to this because of who practised it – and how. It was associated with the occult, with women, oral transmission, and independence that didn’t rely on parishes or churches. But by banning this form of knowledge, the king had also turned it into a magnet for some of the elites who were interested in the esoteric. Read more | Porpoise for breakfast and late night sex visits: a day in the life of Henry VIII To demonstrate that point, Bashford points to the 17th century and one of England’s most celebrated intellectual pioneers: Isaac Newton. “Isaac Newton bought what were then called chiromancy books. He bought one called Palmistry: The Secrets Thereof Disclosed,” Bashford says. But just because the elite had discovered a fascination with the subject didn’t mean that the laws were changed. It persisted for centuries. “That law continues through the 18th century and the 19th century,” Bashford explains. “It comes into vagrancy law after the Napoleonic Wars. It remains in place through the 1890s, when a whole number of palmists suddenly proliferating in the West End [of London] are charged … under a clause that has its origin in the Egyptian Acts.” The cultural survival of hidden knowledge Still, the tradition persisted in Roma communities. “All the way along [the story of palmistry] are Roma people themselves – almost always women – traditionally telling fortunes from the palm,” says Bashford. By the 19th century, Roma fortune tellers were fixtures of British leisure culture – Bashford cites Blackpool as a place where it became a key feature of entertainment as the country’s religious tensions began to fade. What the Tudors had framed as a threat to state order steadily became a form of risqué fun-making, imbued with a cultural mystique and links to occult and spiritual traditions. But Henry VIII’s ban on palmistry had never been exclusively about religion and superstition. It was about consolidating authority, and keeping power in the hands of the ‘right’ people. Alison Bashford was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.