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The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof
In ancient Rome, putting on theatrical plays was not just a form of entertainment – it became a powerful tool of propaganda
Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Antigone by Sophocles; Medea by Euripides. Each is a play from ancient Greece, still performed on stages across the world today. Roman plays, on the other hand, are much less common. “We might think of theatre today as belonging to the cultural sphere, but in ancient Rome, it belonged to an incredibly political sphere,” says Dr Jessica Clarke, a research associate at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London and the author of A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Entertainment is never neutral,” she says, but in ancient Rome, the theatre was explicitly political. “In Rome they didn't have independent theatres, so they didn’t have shows put on outside of politically controlled events.” This fact, she says, means that plays from ancient Rome have failed to remain as relevant as their Greek equivalents. The history of ancient Roman theatre Roman theatre hadn’t always been so overtly political; early Roman theatre was a “hodgepodge” of traditions and practices from previous empires and different areas of modern-day Italy, Clarke says. The ancient historian Livy, who Clarke says is the main source of information we have on the origins of Roman theatre, draws a "very neat line from actors arriving from Etruria to Roman theatre," Clarke says. While Etruscan performances did influence what would become Roman theatre, there’s more likely a “complicated web” of things that became the Roman theatrical tradition, including Greek plays translated into Latin and farcical plays from Campania in southern Italy. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide In general, “Rome tended to absorb cultural influences, rather than inventing its own,” she adds – but it certainly gave theatre its own cultural significance. Theatrical shows would be put on at all kinds of events in Roman culture, including religious festivals, the triumphant returns of Roman generals, and even highly organised aristocratic funerals. “Crucially though, all of these performances are put on by politicians, who would have overseen rehearsals and selected the plays,” Clarke says. “Potentially there may have been some censorship involved as well – we don't know for sure, but it's very likely within this context.” This meant that the politicians could choose plays that worked with whatever political narratives they wanted to put forward (or censor parts that didn’t). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-122211671-b717d9b-e1760010634986.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1st-century AD mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii depicts the staging of a theatrical performance. Such scenes highlight the importance of theatre in Roman cultural life, blending entertainment with expressions of myth, satire, and social commentary." title="Roman civilization. Mosaic depicting staging of show in theatre. From House of Tragic Poet in Pompeii" /> The importance of theatre to the Roman political elite If audiences enjoyed the shows staged by politicians, this could have a hugely positive impact on their political careers, Clarke says. “It was an excellent opportunity to win popular favour, to entertain the people, to bring interest to your cause, and to get your name known in Rome,” Clarke says. For this reason, putting on shows was seen as an important thing for politicians to do as they advanced their careers and rose through the ranks. “In a traditional political career in Rome, you would work through the Cursus Honorum, which is essentially the political ladder, to get to the highest position,” Clarke says. “One of those early rungs of the ladder was something called the aedileship. That was the position as a magistrate where you were responsible for putting on games within the city. There were a couple of other responsibilities, but it was primarily putting on the shows.” Read more | The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist The more spectacular a show, whether it was a play or a gladiatorial performance, the more popular a politician might be among voters. “Towards the end of the late Republic, we know that individuals were increasingly pouring huge amounts of their own money and resources into making these shows as splendid as possible, as it was a great opportunity,” Clarke says. The level of expense got so out of hand, that the senate eventually legislated a spending cap. This was brought in under the aedileship of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 182 BC, because his events had cost so much that it became "burdensome" to the state, its allies, and its provinces abroad. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/ancient-roman-theatre-mask-5dec20e.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1st-century BC mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii depicts a tragic dramatic mask, a powerful symbol of Roman theatrical culture. Masks like this were central to performances, allowing actors to embody gods, heroes, and emotions on stage." title="ancient-roman-theatre-mask" /> Different genres, different political messages “There's always something that you can say with a piece of entertainment,” Clarke says, making theatre a useful tool for “political manipulation.” “Tragedy seems to have had a place in high moments of political tension,” she says. For example, at the opening of the first permanent theatre in Rome in 55 BC, “Pompey chose to have two tragedies performed – Clytemnestra and The Trojan Horse – in Latin, translated from the Greek,” she says. “We also know that for Julius Caesar's funeral, again tragedies were chosen to present to the crowd.” 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 Comedies, on the other hand, helped to present and enforce the status quo that oppressed women and slaves. In Roman comedies, “violence towards women is expressed as a joke,” Clarke says. “It's seen as something that's amusing. Women are raped and that is often a plot point in the male characters' narratives, rather than having anything to do with the female character.” Similarly, slave and master dynamics would be reversed in comedies. “Often, the slave would seemingly be in a slightly more autonomous position within a comic plot,” Clarke says. “It's meant to be amusing that a slave could have a role where they are able to control their own destiny or the destiny of other characters in the play.” Some scholars disagree, interpreting the slave’s autonomous role as a challenge to the status quo with an emancipatory message, but that’s not Clarke’s view. “Whilst these comedies are bawdy, rowdy, and quite raucous, we do need to be aware that this is a form of theatre that comes from a society where slavery is institutionalised, and violence towards slaves and women is normalised as part of the comic narrative,” she says. This might be another reason why ancient Roman theatre hasn’t had the longevity that ancient Greek plays have had. “Greek theatre is still performed on the West End,” Clarke says. “But Roman theatre doesn't get performed today, primarily because the themes just aren't appropriate for a modern-day audience – with the slavery, with the depictions of violence. We just don't find that funny anymore.” Jessica Clarke was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
With conflicting advice and endless new trends, it can feel hard to keep up with the modern health and wellness space. But ideas about how to live a healthy life are nothing new. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks had their own list of requirements
Wellness might feel like a modern concept, attached to health-tracker apps, screen time, and green smoothies. But the concept of actively trying to lead a healthy life while keeping the body in a good state isn’t new. In fact, systems of preventative health stretch back more than 2,000 years to the medical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Speaking on the Life Lessons from History series from the HistoryExtra podcast, Sasha Handley, a professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester, says there used to be a “fantastic preventative healthcare culture” based on advice that dates back to ancient Greece. As she sets out, there was a list of six lifestyle factors and behaviours that physicians, medical practitioners, and ordinary people alike knew they had to take care of for their long-term health. These were the ‘six non-naturals’ and the ancient Greeks believed that “temperance of all of those six things was key to long-term good health, according to the wisdom of the time” says Handley. The term “non-naturals” described factors external to the body that could be managed or regulated, as opposed to “naturals,” which were the body’s innate characteristics So what were these six factors, and how much do they align with modern thinking? Fresh air The first non-natural to look after was fresh air – that is, “getting enough of it and making sure that you were not taking in fetid or corrupt air,” Handley says. The Greeks thought that ‘bad air’ could cause disease and advocated for good airflow within houses to lessen exposure to stagnant air. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Today, we know there is no singular concept of ‘bad air’. But there are pollutants in the air that can be hazardous to people, and we do know that some diseases are airborne. Food and drink It was considered important that a person was “eating and drinking the right kinds of things for [their] bodily constitution, but also at the right times of day,” Handley says. Theories about what was good to eat and when were based on the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Different foods being either cold or hot, or wet or dry, affected the balances of the four humours in the body, which led to different outcomes for people’s health and constitutions. For example, someone believed to have an excess of “heat” might be prescribed cooling foods such as cucumber or lettuce. Galen, a Greek physician and philosopher whom the idea of the six non-naturals is attributed to, thought that warm food led to the production of yellow bile, while cold food led to the production of phlegm. Galen practised in the second century AD and became one of the most influential medical authorities in history. Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? Now, our understanding of food and diet is more scientific. But we do know that some specific nutrients have particular health benefits; protein helps to contribute to maintaining muscle mass, while vegetables can be a source of different micronutrients and vitamins. Exercise and rest Getting enough exercise and rest was also believed to be important. Exercise was seen as having a drying effect on the humours, and physicians recommended exercises to patients both to prevent and treat disease. The body, in humoural thought, was constantly shifting in balance; movement was one of the tools available to correct excess moisture or sluggishness. Galen thought work and exercise were equal, defining them as vigorous movements that made you out of breath. The exercises that he prescribed to his patients, though, were more moderate. He recommended exercises that involved a small ball. Watch now | Why the Ancient Egyptians WEREN'T ancient Massage and baths were also seen as having a similar effect to exercise, something that would be echoed in wellness modern wellness trends centred around saunas, sports massage, and cold plunges. Sleep and waking Sleep and dreams were important parts of ancient Greek philosophy as well as their medical knowledge. Dreams were deemed to be evidence of the state of the body, and therefore were helpful in diagnosing medical issues. But they were also important within ancient Greek religion. The ancient Greeks believed that the gods could communicate via dreams and that sleep had healing properties through its link with the gods. We might not bring up our dreams in doctors’ offices these days, but research increasingly shows the powerful health impact of sleep on physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Recent studies show that getting enough sleep can be associated with lower rates of chronic diseases such as dementia, diabetes, and heart disease. Excretion and retention The fifth non-natural “sounds fairly graphic, but it’s excretion and retention,” Handley says. “This refers to bowel habits, but also to things like sweating appropriately and keeping the body at the right temperature.” It was thought that excretion, in all its forms, helped keep the four humours balanced. If one humour accumulated excessively, it could be expelled through sweating, urination, bleeding, or purging. Bloodletting in particular became a standard treatment in later medical traditions influenced by humoural theory. Read more | Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators Although we don’t think about regulating our excretions in terms of bloodletting and purging like the Greeks did, the increasing awareness of gut health – and therefore its impact on the bowel – is perhaps a modern descendant of this idea. Passions of the mind “The very last one is usually called the passions of the mind, which we read today as emotions,” Handley says. “So emotional health, making sure that you were not getting too angry, too sad, and keeping your mind and body in a good balance.” Different emotions were associated with excesses of the four humours, so keeping your emotions in check contributed to your humoural balance. Too much blood might make you too happy and too much phlegm might make you too reserved, while too much black bile might make you melancholic and too much yellow bile might make you angry. Read more | Give away your worries, like an ancient Mesopotamian Clearly this idea links to our modern understanding of mental health – especially now we know that physical health and exercise are linked to mental health. How similar are the non-naturals to ‘wellness’ today? Nowadays, we think of ‘wellness’ as separate from ‘health’. Where health is the absence of disease, and wellness is a more general emotional and physical wellbeing that we can influence via lifestyle factors. The ancient Greeks thought the same. Health was seen as the responsibility of individuals to regulate their non-naturals to look after their own health, and maybe even avoid having to see a doctor. Read more | Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant There was an element of taking personal responsibility for good health, leading to the idea that bad habits could cause certain diseases. But the six non-naturals also worked in tandem with the ‘naturals’ – or the innate factors that we have no control over that also cause disease. Today, we see things similarly: some diseases and conditions are caused by lifestyle factors, whereas others develop independently of how we live. And just like modern ‘wellness,’ ancient Greek health was about more than just the body, too. Medical knowledge was intertwined with ethics, morality, politics, and philosophy – which is why many of the most famous Greek physicians, such as Galen and Hippocrates, were also philosophers, and many philosophers also mused on issues of the body. The ancient Greeks actually thought that achieving perfect health was essentially impossible since it required a precise balance of the humours, which changed every day. Instead, a ‘neutral’ body was the goal – something that doesn’t necessarily align with modern ideas on health optimisation and biohacking. Dr David Musgrove was speaking to Sasha Handley on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist
Historian Josephine Quinn explores how the Phoenicians and their great colony, Carthage, built a maritime empire that once overshadowed both Greece and Rome
The Phoenicians founded one of antiquity’s greatest Mediterranean powers. An ambitious and powerful network of seafaring traders along the eastern Mediterranean coast, they built a commercial empire whose crowning capital was Carthage: a city that rivalled (and for much of its history outshone) both ancient Greece and Rome. It was from here that they imposed a ruthless influence across the region. “I feel like this is something that has been lost in ancient histories that move from Greece first to Rome second. They miss out this massive third power, which was sometimes bigger than both,” says historian Josephine Quinn, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. But this great power began only as a cluster of small port cities, overshadowed by mighty neighbours. So how did the Phoenicians rise to command vast trade routes, create colonies across the western Mediterranean, and challenge the future dominance of Rome? The Phoenicians: masters of the seas Centred on the harbours of modern-day Lebanon and Syria – notably Tyre, Sidon and Byblos – the early Phoenicians developed a reputation as “extraordinary navigators”. “They discovered the Pole Star and founded settlements in the western Mediterranean long before the Greeks were sailing around the region,” explains Quinn. Read more | Ancient Roman theatre was a powerful weapon of empire, so why were actors lives so tragic? As pioneers of open-sea sailing who steered by the stars, they also proved formidable traders. They carried cedar wood, glassware, textiles and most famously purple dye made from murex shells – a commodity so costly that it became the colour of kings. For centuries they acted as middlemen of the Mediterranean, linking Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and beyond. Their alphabet, a streamlined script of 22 letters, spread westward and would later form the basis of Greek and Latin writing systems. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-122321640-58d95d9-e1759403532776.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 4th-century BC relief depicts a Phoenician merchant ship, highlighting the seafaring skills that made the Phoenicians some of the most influential traders of the ancient Mediterranean. Their maritime networks connected cities from Carthage to Cyprus, spreading goods, ideas, and culture." title="Relief portraying Phoenician merchant ship" /> From survivors to empire-builders In their early centuries, Phoenician cities were indeed overshadowed by powerful neighbours. “During the Bronze Age, they were stuck in between enormous empires: the Egyptians, the Hittites and the Babylonians,” says Quinn. Phoenician independence was precarious, and kings of Tyre or Sidon appear in surviving letters pleading with pharaohs or paying tribute. But around 1200 BC, the great Bronze Age states collapsed: Egyptian power waned, the Hittites disappeared, and Mycenaean Greece fell into turmoil. Read more | A Bronze Age Brexit: why did these Britons mysteriously cut themselves off from Europe? This so-called ‘Bronze Age collapse’ remains the subject of debate among historians and archaeologists, but whatever its cause, the Phoenicians emerged as the main beneficiaries. “Once those kings disappeared, that’s when they had the motivation and knowledge to really take advantage and come into their own,” Quinn explains. This resulting ‘golden age’ of Phoenician power, spanning roughly 1000–500 BC, saw their colonies multiply and their ships travel further than ever before. Westward expansion The Phoenicians sailed beyond the Levant and into the central and western Mediterranean, establishing colonies on the islands of Cyprus, Malta, Sicily and Sardinia, as well in north Africa and on the Iberian Peninsula. Crucially, it was in these colonies that the settlers founded a chain of new cities which, according to Quinn, became “even more powerful and wealthy than their Phoenician mother cities”. It was this gradual westward shift that marked the rise of Carthage. 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 Carthage: a mega city of the Mediterranean Founded around 800 BC by settlers from Tyre, Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia) grew into a true superpower. Its location, with access to both the Mediterranean and rich north African hinterlands, made it a commercial crossroads. “Carthage was a mega-city, and it controlled trade and shipping in most of the western Mediterranean,” Quinn explains. By the fifth century BC, Carthage had eclipsed Tyre and Sidon. At its height, it may have housed as many as 400,000 inhabitants, dwarfing most Greek poleis. Its sphere of influence stretched across north Africa, Spain, Sardinia and Sicily. Its merchants dominated trade, and its powerful navy made Carthage the master of western waters. Carthage was also culturally distinctive. Though founded by Phoenicians, it developed its own traditions, religion and political system. Its oligarchic government, centred on a council of elites, was described by Aristotle as one of the best-ordered constitutions of his time. Read more | 14 influential ancient Greeks But Carthage’s dominance rested not just on commerce and control of economic routes. It also wielded great military power. Its war fleets patrolled trade routes, and treaties spelled out its control. “We have various Carthaginian treaties that talk about how people who are not Carthaginians should not go past certain ports. And then there’s a wonderful Greek author, Eratosthenes, who explains that if you did, Carthaginian ships would just come along and toss you into the sea. So they really enforced their control … it really was their sea,” Quinn says. The city’s power extended inland, too. Carthage employed mercenary armies to defend its territories and fight its wars. Wealth from trade paid for soldiers, ships and fortifications, cementing its dominance. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-804448900-14b8416-e1759403684826.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 19th-century illustration portrays Carthaginian general Hannibal leading his army — and famously, his war elephants — across the Alps in 218 BC. One of the boldest manoeuvres in military history, it set the stage for a string of victories against Rome during the Second Punic War, including Cannae in 216 BC." title="Hannibal And His War Elephants Crossing The Alps 218 BC (19th Century)" /> Rome’s greatest rival? From the third century BC, Rome and Carthage collided in the Punic Wars – three great conflicts that shaped the trajectory of the Mediterranean. At the outset, Rome was still a regional power in Italy, while Carthage commanded fleets, colonies and enormous wealth. The wars were brutal, encompassing sea battles that destroyed entire navies, sieges that starved cities, and campaigns that swept across Spain and north Africa. The most famous episode came when the powerful general Hannibal led Carthaginian armies – as well as elephants – over the Alps to devastate his enemies. But Rome was able to withstand the attacks, and after more than a century of intermittent war, it crushed Carthage in 146 BC, razing the city and claiming its empire. Read more | This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts? “You can’t underestimate the power of Carthage in the west and what an extraordinary task it was for the Romans to actually overtake them in the end,” says Quinn. Now, Carthage is known to many as Rome’s defeated enemy, while the Phoenicians are reduced to an obscure and mysterious precursor. But for hundreds of years before Rome’s rise, the Mediterranean was already shaped by the Phoenician cities and the maritime empire of Carthage: a power that wielded its might with an iron fist, and for much of its history, stood taller than either of its more famous rivals. Josephine Quinn was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Were the Amazons just a “male fantasy”? Here’s the truth behind the ancient world’s warrior women
Greek myths of the Amazons blended kernels of truth with male fantasy to create a legend that has lasted for millennia. Here’s the truth behind the Amazons, and why the notion of warrior women fascinated and unsettled the ancient world
Few figures from antiquity capture the imagination quite like the Amazons: fearsome warrior women who fought Greek heroes, rode horses into battle and lived in societies ruled by beautiful and terrifying queens. From epic poetry to vase paintings, they endured as unique symbols of female power and independence in the world of ancient Greece. But were the Amazons ever real? According to Professor David Braund, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the answer is both yes and no. “There are two ways that we use the word ‘Amazons’. There’s a general way to mean women who fight, and if you want to know whether they existed in the ancient world, for sure they did.” In other words, some women certainly did hunt, fight and join pitched battles when their cities were under attack. These women slot into the archetypal image of an Amazon woman: fierce fighters who subverted the typical roles of women who lived in the ancient world. But what about the specific Amazons of Greek myth? The horse-riding warrior queens depicted on temples and vases? Braund argues that these were creations of the Greek imagination, shaped as much by male fantasy as by fragments of reality. Real women who fought across the ancient world The notion of women taking up arms was not purely mythical. Ancient sources, and modern evidence, suggest that some women did fight in exceptional circumstances. Read more | Ancient Greek religion “There were women who certainly went hunting and used weapons, and almost certainly participated in battles at times when their city was under attack,” Braund says. These women were not part of a single all-female society. They were members of families and communities who took up arms in moments of crisis. The ancient Greeks, however, wove these scattered examples into stories of an entire nation of warrior women – an idea that both fascinated and disturbed them. The Amazons of Greek imagination The notion of the Amazons as a unified group appeared as soon as Greek culture began producing literature and art, where they were depicted in combat with heroes like Heracles, Theseus and Achilles. “The Amazons appear in Greek culture as soon as we start to get Greek texts, Greek ideas and, astonishingly, Greek buildings. When a state takes a decision to create one of these great big public buildings like the Parthenon, what do they do? They put depictions of the Amazons across a large part of it.” Read more | Three thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks turned an even older civilisation into a monster Scenes of Amazons battling Greeks decorated the Parthenon’s shield and friezes. That Athenians chose to carve warrior women into their most expensive construction project reveals how deeply the myth resonated. So the idea of the Amazons embodied both danger and allure; women who had to be defeated for Greek order to prevail. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-1435558850-1-5132a47-e1757539619493.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This lekythos, dating to around 420–410 BC, depicts an Amazonomachy — a mythical battle between Greeks and Amazons. Such scenes were popular in classical art, symbolising the clash between civilisation and the ‘other’ in ancient Greek thought." title="Amazonomachy (Battle Of Greeks Against Amazons) Lekythos" /> Where did the myth of the Amazons come from? “In ethnic terms, the Amazons were described as Thracian … [living] somewhere between the lower Danube and the northern coast of the Aegean Sea,” explains Braund. According to myth, Greek heroes destroyed the Amazon homeland in eastern Europe, which was sitting on the edge of the Greek world. Survivors fled, and some were enslaved and shipped across the continent. As Braund explains, some of the enslaved survivors wrested control of the slave ships, but – lacking the knowledge of how to sail them – ended up being at the mercy of the waves. They then washed ashore near the Black Sea, where they encountered the Scythians, nomadic horse-riders famed across the Eurasian steppe. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide But how did these lost Amazons react in this hostile territory? “They’re resourceful, they’re fiercely intelligent, and they really know horses. So, the first thing they do is start trying to find some horses they can steal,” says Braund. Naturally, this brought them into violent conflict with the Scythians, and when the Scythians stripped the armour from dead Amazons, they were astonished. “They thought, ‘My god, these are women, and yet they can fight; they’re strong!’” This foundational myth of the Amazon women, crafted by the Greeks, may have reflected Greek awareness of steppe cultures where women did sometimes ride and fight alongside men. What archaeology tells us about real Amazons Modern archaeology offers glimpses of reality behind the myths. In Scythian-era burials on the Black Sea steppe, some female skeletons have been found with bows, arrows and even spears. Were these women the Amazons of Greek legend? “You do have some burials which may well be burials of women [with weapons]. But the fact that the weapon is there doesn’t necessarily tell you a great deal,” Braund cautions. Read more | Women in ancient Greece: what were their lives like? Some of these women may indeed have been warriors. Others may have been buried with weapons as symbolic objects. So, while the evidence can be overstated, it does show that women in steppe societies sometimes played martial roles, perhaps frequently and visibly enough to fuel Greek stories of Amazons. An ancient Greek male fantasy? For Greeks, the appeal of the Amazons was not just that they were capable warriors – it was that they represented an inversion of the Greeks’ own society. “The Greek image of this Amazon society is that they are entirely matriarchal. They have a queen, and these Amazons are quite explicitly beautiful in a way that appeals to men. After all, this is a Greek male fantasy we’re dealing with here, ultimately.” Read more | The ancient Greeks at war According to Braund, then, the Amazons were considered to be women who were desirable but dangerous; admirable yet ultimately conquerable by Greek heroes. It’s a myth that emphasises the ‘strangeness’ of far-flung lands beyond the borders and control of ancient Greece, while also asserting Greek power. Between myth and reality So – were the Amazons real? Not in the way Greek art and epic described them. There was never a nation of matriarchal warrior queens situated along the rivers of eastern Europe. But there were certainly women who hunted, fought and rode horses in the ancient world, particularly on the fringes of Greece within the nomadic cultures of the steppe. The stories of the Amazons might tell us less about actual women in antiquity than about Greek men: their fears of female power, their fantasies of beauty and violence, and their fascination with societies that inverted their own values. This article is based on an interview with David Braund, speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore more ancient Greek history with exclusive content from our archives Ancient Greek theatre and the Athenian identity Did any ancient Greeks visit Britain? Ancient Greek warrior women: the extraordinary female figures who shaped the Greco-Persian Wars Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers
Arson, murder and goddesses: secrets of a Seventh Wonder of the Ancient World
Bettany Hughes uncovers the secrets of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
What would it have been like to have witness one of the most spectacular sights of the ancient world first-hand? Speaking to Rachel Dinning, Bettany Hughes explores the extraordinary Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. From its awe-inspiring grandeur to its dramatic tales of arson, murder, and sanctuary, she reveals the secrets and significance of this remarkable ancient site.
Three thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks turned an even older civilisation into a monster
Behind the myth of the Minotaur lies the ancient Minoan civilisation – a culture steeped in ritual, rich in symbolism, and obsessed with the power of bulls
Half man, half bull and entirely terrifying, the Minotaur remains one of the most enduring mythic monsters from antiquity. According to Greek myth, it was born from an unwholesome combination of lust, punishment and divine retribution, hidden deep within a labyrinth so vast that no one could ever escape it. But behind the strange and violent tale of the Minotaur was a very real, and very ancient civilisation from whom the Minotaur took its name: the Minoans. Europe’s first complex civilisation, which flourished on the island of Crete more than 3,500 years ago, the Minoans were the subject of a recent HistoryExtra podcast with Dr Ellen Adams, in which she explained how the civilisation lends it name to the popular Greek myth. The Minoans didn’t leave behind written myths that we can read yet, but they did leave vivid traces of their civilisation, uncovered through archaeological excavation – frescoes, palaces and religious artefacts – which suggest a culture fascinated by bulls, performance and the symbolism of power. So, although the Minotaur is a creature of ancient Greek storytelling, it’s a fascinating reflection of the people and cultures that inspired it. Who were the Minoans? The people that we now call ‘Minoans’ were a sophisticated maritime society based on Crete, whose influence peaked between 2000 and 1450 BCE. They built monumental palaces, the largest of which was at Knossos, and developed advanced systems of administration, plumbing and trade. They traded widely across the eastern Mediterranean, from Egypt to the Levant, and left behind striking art filled with natural imagery, ceremonial scenes and athleticism. Their name, however, is modern – and Greek in origin. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide “The term Minoans actually comes from the ancient Greeks,” explains Professor Adams. “The ancient Greeks set this story up for us about the Minoans, and this term comes from their King Minos of Greek myth.” Therefore, it was mere centuries after the Minoan civilisation had disappeared that the ancient Greeks retroactively named them after the mythic King Minos – ruler of Crete and father of the Minotaur. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-566418469-648ad0a-e1753969232494.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This Attic black-figure kylix, dating to around 515 BC, depicts the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Such vessels combined artistry with storytelling and are key to our understanding of ancient Greek myth and culture." title="Ancient Greek Minotaur" /> A monster born of divine punishment According to the myth, King Minos was the son of Europa, a Phoenician princess. She was abducted by Zeus, the King of the Gods (who appeared in the form of a bull) and carried across the sea to Crete. The union between god and mortal, in classic mythological fashion, was not consensual. Minos inherited the throne of Crete and soon found himself in conflict with the gods. “At some point,” explains Professor Adams, “King Minos was obliged to sacrifice a very special bull to Poseidon, God of the sea, and he didn't do so and therefore deserved to be punished.” Poseidon’s punishment for King Minos for refusing to sacrifice the bull was as bizarre as it was brutal. Rather than targeting Minos directly, Poseidon cursed Minos’s wife, who was called Pasiphaë. Read more | Unlocking the ancient Greek alphabet “The punishment was a slightly unusual one,” Adams continues, “in that King Minos’s wife Pasiphaë fell in love with a bull and disguised herself as a heifer in order to have sex with the bull. And they produced the Minotaur. So, this was a sort of monstrous hybrid that she gave birth to, and was hidden away in the labyrinth of Knossos.” It might be a complicated – and to modern eyes, confusing – story. But it fits within the tradition in ancient Greek myth of conflict between the humans and the gods, filled with animalistic imagery. The labyrinth itself, said to have been built by the ingenious inventor Daedalus, was a vast maze constructed beneath the palace at Knossos. There, the Minotaur was imprisoned, a living emblem of divine wrath and royal shame. This version of the story reflects Greek moral anxieties about pride, punishment and the limits of human power – as Daedalus’ son Icarus found when trying to escape the maze, later in the mythology. The myth isn’t Minoan – but the bull obsession was While it’s easy to assume that the myth of the Minotaur emerged directly from Minoan religious practice, Adams clarifies that this isn’t the case. “This is an ancient Greek myth, not a Minoan myth,” she says. “It's a first millennium BC myth: the Minotaur, coming after the Minoans.” Read more | What was the Titanomachy of Greek mythology? The Minoans left behind no known literary texts that explain their beliefs, and their main script – known as Linear A – remains undeciphered. But while the Minotaur itself is a later Greek invention, the obsession with bulls does go back much further, and can be traced to the Minoans. “We don’t know what the Minoans made of the Minotaur, but there are some depictions of the half-bull, half-man figure,” Adams notes. “But they date to the Mycenaean period, so slightly later.” “We are not sure that the Minoans themselves have this Minotaur myth,” she adds, “but they were obsessed with the bull figure and particularly at Knossos.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-520719609-f5e1aec-e1753969927276.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This famous fresco from the palace at Knossos on Crete depicts the Minoan practice of bull-leaping — a dramatic and possibly ceremonial activity. Dating to around 1500 BC, it remains one of the most iconic images of Bronze Age Aegean culture." title="This famous fresco from the palace at Knossos on Crete depicts the Minoan practice of bull-leaping — a dramatic and possibly ceremonial activity. Dating to around 1500 BC, it remains one of the most iconic images of Bronze Age Aegean culture." /> Why bulls? In Minoan art, bulls appear everywhere – charging across frescoes, cast in bronze, carved into vessels. The most iconic scene is that of bull-leaping: a practice in which young people are depicted grasping the horns of a bull and somersaulting over its back. It appears to have been a ritual or elite sport, though its precise meaning is still debated. Read more | Famous and influential ancient Greeks Ritual vessels shaped like bulls’ heads, called rhyta, have been found in elite contexts, further suggesting that bulls played a role in Minoan religious ceremonies. Even the palace architecture itself features stylised bull horns, sometimes referred to as “horns of consecration.” This reverence may reflect the bull’s symbolic power as a fertility figure, a source of strength, or a divine intermediary. In fact, across ancient civilisations, even tracing back to the Mesopotamians, bulls are a recurring symbol in mythology and culture that link the human world to the divine. How the Minoan civilisation is remembered in myth The Minoans vanished from history around 1450 BCE, possibly because of natural disasters and conquest by the Mycenaeans, the Greek-speaking people who dominated the mainland and eventually Crete. But while the society collapsed, its memory endured. Soon afterwards, relatively speaking, Greek myth absorbed fragments of this vanished world – the grandeur of Knossos, the sacred bull, the sense of ancient mystery – and reassembled them into the story of the Minotaur. That myth would echo across the centuries, from classical Athens to modern interpretations, its meaning evolving with each retelling. In recent years, new interpretations of the Minotaur have emerged. “What's happening at the moment is that the Minotaur is being presented as a sort of misunderstood, neurodiverse figure who was actually created monstrously or as a monster because of being misunderstood,” says Adams. “I think this is a very interesting way in which the past can help us articulate our changing values now.” This article is based on an interview with Ellen Adams, speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. 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
Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
Silence your inner critic and forget about perfectionism. That's the life lesson we should learn from the Etruscans and their artistic habits, Dr Lucy Shipley tells Dr David Musgrove
There’s a place I used to go to with my children where you could unleash your creative zing by painting a pot. You picked your pot, you painted your pot, and then they fired it for you and you came back and retrieved your handiwork a few days later. I’m no artist, so my pot designs were always distinctly average. But I enjoyed it, and so did my kids, and in that, we were unwittingly drawing on the mindset of the ancient Etruscans. Dr Lucy Shipley is an expert on this overlooked people, and her life lesson that we should draw from them is simple: paint your own pot. The overlooked Etruscans Before we go into that, let’s have a quick recap of who the Etruscans were. They are the people who lived in parts of what is now Italy, particularly in Tuscany and Umbria, in the period before the rise of ancient Rome, in the first millennium BC. They were neighbours and rivals of the Romans and the Greeks. They lived in cities spread across the region, and from their ports they traded widely across the Mediterranean. The Etruscans pop up in ancient sources quite often, but we only ever have accounts of them from an outside perspective, because their own texts do not survive beyond short inscriptions and one religious text. We have to rely on those accounts, along with archaeology, to get to grips with who they were and how they lived. Most of their cities are hard to excavate as they sit under modern settlements, but new excavations are revealing more of their world. Read more | The history of Florence: Italy's Renaissance powerhouse Etruscan tombs also provide a fascinating insight into Etruscan culture, and some feature remarkable wall paintings. These paintings show scenes from everyday life, religion and myth, but also some graphic sexual acts, which has surprised modern eyes (I’ll come back to that). Though Etruria was eventually subsumed into the Roman empire in the fourth and third centuries BC, echoes of their culture persisted. According to Shipley, there is something about the ancient Etruscans that speaks of a people who weren’t afraid to make mistakes, nor who were intimidated by the people around them. They painted their own pots in an inimitable style, and that is something we can draw on today. Painters, potters and perfectionism Aside from the wall paintings, in Etruscan tombs archaeologists have found great quantities of red- and black-figure pottery (when the background is black and the details are left in the colour of the clay). This is the sort of material you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever looked at ancient Greek vases in a museum. It was originally made in Greece, but inspired Etruscan potters to make their own versions. Some of it was good, but some of it was, well, I’ll leave it to Shipley’s assessment: “They are churning these things out. There is a market for these things, but some of them are terrible. I try not to have value judgments about artefacts, but some of this material looks like somebody has made it with an atrocious red-wine hangover.” There is one particular example that Shipley highlights, of a red-figure vase with a depiction of a hippocamp, or sea beast, which you would have to be very generous to describe as well-executed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/KC773G-e03f9e9.jpg" width="2850" height="3800" alt="A black terracotta pot with two large handles (one on each side) sits on a white column, against a grey background. On the pot, there is an orange drawing of a dragon" title="It would be hard to describe this sea dragon, painted on a fourth-century BC terracotta drinking cup, as well-executed, suggests Shipley (Image by Alamy)" /> “I love Etruscan archaeology. I’m really passionate about it, but even I am almost laughing at some of this Etruscan red-figure material. Yet it seems they were perfectly happy with it. It’s just that way of being able to express yourself. Do what you’re going to do – you paint that bad dragon. “Sometimes the human forms are a bit blobby. They’re not as neat and precise as the ones that you see imported from Greece, but that’s okay. Someone was very happy with that, and I think that’s a really important lesson. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But sometimes it’s time to tell your internal critic to shut up and accept that actually what you’ve done is totally fine.” WATCH | Dr Lucy Shipley on letting go of perfectionism View Green Video on the source website Everyone’s an artist That’s a good sentiment, but can we really read that broader sense of a cultural carefree spirit among the Etruscans from some sub-par pottery? According to Shipley, there’s ample evidence of this mindset when you look for it. She recalls an archaeological site that she worked at just outside Siena. “Back when Poggio Civitate was a flourishing Etruscan site, this was home to one of the largest buildings of the ancient world, and it was a craft centre. It burnt down in an accidental fire. You can see that people just literally dropped what they were working on and got out before the flames came. “The result is that you have incredible preservation of the material they were working on. Some of it’s really beautiful, high-quality carving, and terracotta tiles and all sorts of other things. And some of it is really not so much. There’s a whole spectrum of what people were working on, all these different individuals working together in this place. “Everybody’s doing their best and that’s enough. After that fire, they rebuild in an adjacent area. They build this incredible complex, which has terracotta statues on the roof. If you are looking at, say, the Parthenon marbles, you are going to think that these architectural terracottas are a little bit rustic. They’re quite big and chunky and they don’t have that ‘classical refinement’. But they’re so alive and they’re really enchanting – the famous one is a cowboy figure with a huge hat, and he’s seated on a throne on the roof.” Standing out from the crowd Shipley sees similar confidence in Etruscan tomb painting, which some early art historians have described as quite coarse, but which she sees as being alive and full of natural detail. From all this, we can perhaps take the ‘paint your pot’ idea a little further and infer that these people in ancient Etruria were not only content to produce work on their own terms and to their own standards, but also happy to stand out from the crowd, be a little different, and not be worried about unfavourable comparisons with other people, or indeed other cultures. Shipley adds that while Etruscan depictions of Greek myths are often described as being wrong, they’re not – they’re just an Etruscan version and absolutely right to the person telling that story. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide “I'm going to stick my neck out here,” says Shipley, “and this could be my bias because I’m enchanted by the Etruscans, but I think if we look at their actions, we can see that these are confident, capable people who are absolutely viewing themselves as equal with the Greek people that they’re trading with and other trading partners.” So, in Shipley’s assessment, the Etruscans were a people comfortable in their own skins, not overawed by others, and content with creating the things they wanted to create. That sounds like a good place to be – you might express those sorts of characteristics if you were trying to describe a positive, resilient outlook today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/B21ANR-2f8a341.jpg" width="5291" height="3514" alt="A painted sarcophagus shows a woman dressed in a white gown and headscarf, reclining on her left side, holding something in her hand, while the other hand holds her scarf back from her face" title="A painted terracotta sarcophagus, 150–130 BC, of an Etruscan noblewoman, Seianti Hanunia Tienasa, was found in Poggio Cantarello near Chiusi in Italy (Image by Alamy)" /> There’s one more example that typifies this sentiment. It’s a funeral urn from Chiusi, which you can see in the British Museum today, and it shows the woman whose skeleton is buried in the tomb beneath. “She is represented in a very realistic way. Her face is quite youthful, and they’ve done analysis on her skeleton, so we know she died in her early fifties, but she’s not an idealised form. They’ve done facial reconstruction of her, and it’s recognisably her,” says Shipley. “She’s happy to be depicted in the afterlife as yes, her best self, but as herself. So there’s that idea of being yourself – and unashamedly yourself. And also of not being intimidated by what other people are doing elsewhere and continuing to do the things that have been valuable to your community for a really long time. It’s all wrapped up in that one artefact.” We shouldn’t be rose-tinted about Etruscan society. It wasn’t some utopian land of creative free choice for all its people. As Shipley admits, not everyone would have been able to model this sort of confident, empowered life. “Etruscan society seems to be highly stratified, with people very much divided by access to wealth and luxury goods. While women seem to have had more independence and recognition than in Greece or Rome, this is a long way from being an egalitarian society, and we can’t assume everyone had equality of opportunity or the chance to make their own choices.” But from those who held agency, we can take some life lessons today: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Enjoy being yourself, painting your own pot in whatever milieu you are doing it and just own it. Be proud of what you can do rather than constantly comparing yourself to somebody else.” Sex, death and the meaning of life I love the fact that Shipley’s interpretation casts us back into the minds of these people so vividly, and I definitely subscribe to the pragmatism over perfectionism approach to life. But what about sex? We can’t leave the Etruscans without seeing if they can help us with our sex lives. Let’s go back to those sexy tomb paintings that I mentioned at the start of this essay, which to modern viewers, can be disarming: “It’s quite shocking to walk into a tomb and see an image of a threesome on the wall. You’re not necessarily expecting that”. What’s going on here? Why were graphic sexual scenes painted on the walls of tombs? It’s been much discussed, but Shipley’s view is that it could be reflecting the generational long-view of the rich and important families that were entombed. Sex leads to children, and thus the continuance of the family line, and the passing down of power and wealth. On that basis, why wouldn’t you want to show your legacy literally being ensured through sexual acts in your place of eternal rest? Read more | Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant They’ve been interpreted as great sexual libertines because of these graphic paintings on their tombs and their vases, but that’s not necessarily the case if you follow Shipley’s argument. I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone to start adding pornography to their gravestones now, but I think we can assume that the Etruscans were comfortable with sex and sexuality, and also placed great value on it. We tend to be pretty buttoned-up about talking about sex, and about death, in western culture today, so maybe there’s something else we can draw from them too. To conclude, let’s step back from sex and death, and review Dr Shipley’s wider lessons from the ancient Etruscans: be your authentic self, take risks, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, and don’t let perfectionism stop you from getting things done. As I read them back, I could be chanting the mantra of a modern business, facing up to the hurtling head-rush of the 21st century. Those are the same sentiments that we need today to cope with a world that’s changing before our very eyes. Maybe the people of the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BC felt the same sort of pressures, and maybe we can take a bit of solace and guidance from that. Paint your own pots, people, paint your own pots. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
The Minoans: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Dr Ellen Adams answers all the key questions about the ancient civilisation best known for the legend of the Minotaur
Centred on the island of Crete, the Bronze-Age Minoan civilisation stretched from roughly 3000 to 1200BC, and is probably most famous for its legend surrounding the mythical Minotaur and the fabulous palace of Knossos. But what else do we know about this ancient society? In conversation with David Musgrove, Ellen Adams answers all the key questions about the Minoans. Ellen Adams is the author of The Minoans: Lost Civilizations (Reaktion Books, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones
Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant
From seasonal intimacy schedules to open-air nudity, ancient Greco-Roman thinkers had no shortage of theories on how to stay healthy. Some might still feel surprisingly useful today
Think of the Roman empire or ancient Greece, and your first thoughts might be of political scheming, cultural innovation and incredibly violent warfare, rather than the world of wellness. But even in the ancient world, questions on how to preserve good health commanded the attention of the era’s deepest thinkers. Among the Greeks and Romans, physicians like Hippocrates, Galen and Diocles were fixated on health, how to build it and how to maintain it. They viewed good health as a constantly shifting balance between internal forces and external conditions: food, temperature, movement and even your clothing choices (or lack thereof) played a part. And the wrong choice – at the wrong time of year – could tip that balance in a very unwelcome direction. Read more | What did people eat in Ancient Rome? Professor Claire Bubb, an expert in ancient science and literature, joined the HistoryExtra podcast to explain some of the measures that Greco-Roman doctors advised for a healthy life. Here, we share five tips for maximising your health and longevity, from those ancient Greeks and Romans, as told by Professor Bubb. Tailor your health to your goals, not someone else’s Even before the rise of modern wellness programmes, ancient doctors were pushing personalisation. A healthy regime wasn’t a fixed rulebook. It was a flexible set of principles, adjusted to suit your specific body, lifestyle and ambitions. Want to build strength? There was a plan for that. Want to slim down? A completely different routine applied. “The Hippocratic approach here is very individualised,” explains Bubb, “and this to me is the thing that ancient medicine can still really help us think through and help us be more aware of.” “If you, as an individual, feel that you are overweight and you want to lose weight, you're going to do one thing. If you're underweight and you really want to bulk up and you'd rather be stronger and you want more mass, you have to do these other things, so everyone has their own goals.” Read more | Key Roman dates you need to know An example of this comes from Hippocrates. Bubb explains he believed that anyone looking to lose weight ought to: “Do all exercise in a state of fasting, and eat while you’re still panting and all sweaty and hot… you want to be exercising when there’s no [food] because then you have to use up bits of your body that are already there.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-463927469-085ae5e-e1751389739623.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This Roman mosaic from Saarbrücken, Germany, depicts gladiators in the arena — elite fighters whose intense physical training and brutal contests reflected both spectacle and strength in Roman society. (Photo by Getty images)" title="This Roman mosaic from Saarbrücken, Germany, depicts gladiators in the arena — elite fighters whose intense physical training and brutal contests reflected both spectacle and strength in Roman society." /> However, his advice was completely different for someone with contrasting goals: there was no single ‘one size fits all’ approach to health. What it meant to live a healthy life was relative to you, your situation and your personal goals. “This intentionality about thinking about, ‘How am I exercising, how am I eating, what am I eating, how are my daily choices keeping my healthy and happy?’ I think that’s a huge takeaway that’s equally [relevant] now as it was 2,000 years ago,” she adds. Control your intimacy like it’s medicine In Greco-Roman medical theory, bodily fluids were potent forces that shaped your vitality, and they were to be carefully managed. That made sex, and the loss of semen in particular, something to be taken very seriously. Doctors worried that too much sex could drain a person’s strength, while too little might cause harmful build-up. Read more | Meet the most influential ancient Greeks “Sex is a very specific thing that humans do, that exerts a lot of energy and also does magical things, right?” Bubb says. “Some people, it turns out, actually are healthier if they have sex more frequently… whereas some people are weaker [if they have sex] and too much sex is going to lead to all sorts of problems.” Doctors even recommended adjusting sexual activity seasonally, just as they did with exercise. “When it's really hot in the summer … you're already losing a lot of [energy],” Bubb explains. Summer sex, in the minds of the ancients, would probably make that worse. Their advice? “You should avoid it if you can.” If you want perfect health, you’ll need a lot of free time (and money) Some ancient wellness advice was aimed at people with immense privilege. The medical writer Diocles laid out what Bubb describes as an “almost minute-by-minute” daily regime for maximally optimising health – from morning stretches and facial cleansing to precisely timed meals and midday naps. But this level of detail came with a catch. Read more | Why did the ancient Romans think these foods were disgusting poison? The only person who could have possibly done this is “someone who doesn't have or need a job,” Bubb notes. “That is just rich enough that they can devote all of their resources to maximising health.” Even then, you weren’t supposed to focus on anything else. “Diocles actually says, ‘If you have to go to work, you could maybe do an hour of work now’, but ideally, you wouldn't even do that.” The regime also shifted across the seasons – your lunch portion, nap schedule and even evening walk varied depending on the time of year. While most people didn’t have the luxury to follow such a plan, it reflected a wider ideal: that maintaining health was a full-time pursuit, and deserved your attention. Don’t spend too much time in the gym Modern fitness culture can often feel like it promotes physical extremes, something that Greco-Roman medicine warned strongly against. Some prominent ancient physicians instead thought that athletes and bodybuilders were pushing themselves into unnatural shapes, and in doing so, risking the balance of their health. “Contrary to the modern way of thinking about exercise, and very surprisingly, you read some of these authors and they are so down on athletes,” Bubb says. Read more | The Antonine Plague: the killer disease that devastated the Roman empire “[They think] they've moved themselves way too far to the extreme; that people shouldn't have muscles like that.” Instead, doctors recommended light, full-body movement. They valued the simplicity of walking, or moderate exercise with equipment like a ball. Over-exertion, particularly if not medically supervised, was believed to disturb the body’s inner harmony. In their view, says Bubb, “your normal person should absolutely not be doing a sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger weightlifting regime – that’s unhealthy”, Bubb adds. While doctors competed with gymnastic trainers over control of the body, both agreed: exercise was vital. It just needed to be balanced, purposeful and aligned with individual needs. Sometimes, it’s healthier to be naked Some health theories in antiquity sound bizarre to modern ears – but even these had internal logic. Some thinkers, for instance, argued that walking around naked could help with weight loss by encouraging evaporation from the skin. “Why would it be that walking around naked helps you lose weight?” Bubb reflects. “I think probably it has to do with evaporation.” They had the idea that “more stuff can get out of your body more easily if you’re naked.” Read more | A hidden Roman villa? A pair of "remarkable" swords might have just unlocked its ancient secrets Culturally, this wasn’t considered anything extraordinary. In ancient Greece especially, nudity in public spaces like bathhouses and gymnasia was entirely normal, particularly among men. “This is a culture where they did a lot of naked exercise. They were more down with nudity than we are as a culture.” A wellness legacy with modern echoes From the vantage point of today’s intricate nutrition plans and wearable sleep trackers, modern wellness might feel like it’s a world apart from the ancient rules and advice of the Greco-Roman cultures. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide However, there are many echoes of ancient themes in what we value today. While the Greco-Roman world certainly didn’t have vitamin supplements or dumbbells, its physicians and doctors did have a firm belief that good health was proactive, holistic and in your power to manage and control. And while most of us can’t follow Diocles’s daily plan or take long naked walks before lunch, we can certainly still consider the same question that fixated ancient thinkers: what does it mean to live healthily, and be well? Claire Bubb was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. 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
You probably eat these foods every day, so why did the ancient Romans think they were disgusting poison?
From peaches and lentils to your favourite herb, ancient Mediterranean doctors had strong opinions about what you should (and shouldn’t) eat – and their verdict on some of today’s staple foods might surprise you
Today, there are few foods as uncontroversial, health-wise, as fresh fruit, pulses and herbs. A ripe peach, a handful of lentils and a fragrant basil garnish could form the basis of a very healthy Mediterranean-inspired diet. But for many ancient Romans and Greeks – particularly the medical writers and thinkers working across the Greco-Roman Mediterranean between the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE – these were all foods to be approached with sincere scepticism, and sometimes outright revulsion. So why did some of the most influential physicians in history warn against what we now consider basic nutrition? According to Dr Claire Bubb, a historian of ancient science and literature speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, these views existed within the context of a broader dietary philosophy. “They don’t think in terms of vitamins,” she explains. Instead, she says, “they’re trying to pay attention to what food seems to do to the body.” The conclusions might sound strange now, but they were based on close empirical observation of food, digestion and health – at least, the version of health that was understood by ancient science. Why the ancients hated fruit “Fruit is pretty universally viewed with scepticism,” says Bubb. She explains that Galen of Pergamon, one of the most celebrated physicians of the Roman empire, eyed fruit (and especially peaches) with a wary eye, because they “decompose like crazy”. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide From the modern perspective that might sound obvious (especially if you’ve ever left fruit in a lunchbox too long) and mostly an inconvenience rather than a cause for avoidance. But for ancient doctors, that spoilage could be much more than an unpleasant but inconsequential disappointment. It was seen as actively harmful. “[Galen] says, ‘Look, it’s also decomposing in your stomach and it’s causing everything else in there to decompose,’” Bubb explains. “So, you need to be thoughtful about eating it.” But as well as stemming from observation about how quickly fruit could spoil – and drawing conclusions about what impact this could have on the inside of the body – Galen’s take was also based on personal experience. During Galen’s youth, his consumption of fruit was strictly regulated. “His father dictated his diet and said, well, you can only have [fruit] one time a year,” says Bubb. But like many teenagers, Galen rebelled. “He and his friends just went crazy. He had these bad influence, fruit-loving friends… and then he develops some sort of chronic infection, which he links to the fruit eating, that takes forever to heal from.” Years later, Galen would swear off fruit entirely – and insisted that his father had been right. Therefore, due to its quick decomposition, fruit was viewed by ancient dieticians as a risky indulgence. Especially in a world without refrigeration or sanitised water, where foodborne illness was common and hygiene standards varied greatly, the softer and wetter varieties of fruit were seen as a potentially serious threat to health. The cursed herb: why basil was best avoided If fruit was a source of scepticism, then basil – a staple herb in many modern cuisines – was downright alarming. While today it’s celebrated for its flavour and aroma, the ancients treated it with serious suspicion. “Basil is poisonous,” says Bubb, summarising ancient medical opinions. “If you leave it out in the sun, you let it rot, [and] either worms or scorpions, depending on who you talk to, will spontaneously generate from the basil.” This idea – known as spontaneous generation – was widespread in antiquity. The belief was that decaying matter could spontaneously produce insects or vermin. Read more | What was the Antonine Plague? The killer disease that devastated the Roman empire Why did such an extreme theory take hold? “Rotten basil is foul,” Bubb adds. “It goes from delicious to really gross pretty quickly.” To the ancient observer, the smell of decomposing basil, the sudden appearance of larvae or insects, and the speed with which it spoiled all pointed to something deeply unnatural. “They see and smell the decomposition of it and think, ‘Is it decomposing in my body?’” Bubb explains. “Is that what’s happening when I eat it? We should avoid this at all costs.” The belief wasn’t short-lived, either. It persisted in various medical and herbal texts for centuries, influencing both diet and pharmacology well into the medieval period. Lentils and flatulence Unlike basil, lentils were considered acceptable to Greco-Roman medical thinkers – but only in moderation. Too many, and the body would suffer serious imbalances. In ancient Greek medicine, particularly after the writings of Hippocrates (c460–c370 BCE) and his followers, food was understood through the lens of humoral theory – the idea that health depended on the balance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Foods were classified as hot or cold, dry or wet, and their properties could tip that balance in dangerous ways. Taking lentils as an example, the ancients believed that “lentils [could be] bad for you,” Bubb says. “They’re fine in moderation, but if you go all in on the lentil diet, like [some] philosophers are telling you to, you’re going to get all these things building up, and you’re not going get the right quality of nutrition and flesh in your body.” Read more | 10 Roman dates you need to know The digestive responses to lentils – and other pulses – were also considered valuable diagnostic tools. “If most foods don't give you gas, but then you eat a bunch of beans and suddenly the flatulence is out of control, that's going to suggest to you that beans are doing something in your digestive tract that other foods aren't. And maybe there's a problem,” says Bubb. So, the next time you enjoy a light lentil soup, or a basil pesto pasta, bear in mind that the Greco-Romans might have considered it a medical disaster waiting to happen. Claire Bubb was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.