The official website for BBC History Magazine
Did the ancient Romans wear underwear? The truth is surprisingly complicated
A seemingly simple question opens up difficult debates about ancient Roman beauty ideals and social hierarchy, and reveals how differently the Romans thought about their bodies
At first glance, it seems like a question with an obvious answer. Surely the Romans, famed for the complexity of their social culture, engineering prowess, elaborate fashions and careful etiquette, must have worn underwear? It’s hard to imagine that members of the civilisation that built aqueducts and amphitheatres wandered along their famously straight roads without anything beneath their tunics. Yet as professor Ursula Rothe explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the reality of Roman underwear is very ambiguous, and exceptionally tricky to pin down. “This is quite a controversial topic,” she says. The debate begins with what the people of the Roman empire wore (or didn’t), but morphs into more complex questions about how they viewed the body, beauty, modesty and status. Roman writers left detailed descriptions of clothing, hairstyles, jewellery and elite fashion, but almost nothing about underwear. “On the whole it’s not really something Romans talk about,” Rothe notes. “It’s not something that is depicted.” Most organic Roman textiles have vanished from the archaeological record, not being something that preserves over two millennia. The few surviving garments and images that have survived are often inconclusive. This scarcity of evidence has led to competing interpretations of Roman underwear. But what’s the answer? As Rothe explains, looking at the clues reveals as much about Roman values, as it does about Roman clothing – or lack thereof. 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 Roman fashion and the purpose of the strophium There is one thing we can say with relative certainty about underwear: there was something like a bra. “We do know that women wore a band around their bust called a strophium,” Rothe says. This was a simple cloth band that functioned as a form of support, like a modern bra. And it’s a garment that speaks volumes about Roman beauty ideals. “It was considered a beauty ideal to have a very small bust in the Roman world. A big bust was considered a bit coarse and barbaric,” Rothe explains. A fuller chest was associated with lower status, partly because elite women typically didn’t breastfeed their own children; enslaved wet nurses did. Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? “If you had a big bust, then you looked like you were breastfeeding your own children,” says Rothe, and therefore a tightly wrapped strophium signalled refinement and social rank. Rather than functioning just as underwear, the strophium was part of a broader system of visual cues that signalled a person’s place in the social order. The ‘bikini girls’ of Sicily Images of Roman women wearing what look like two-piece outfits appear to offer clear evidence of underwear. Most famous are perhaps the “bikini girl” mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, the scenes of which depict young women wearing bandeau tops and brief-like bottoms while playing sports. But Rothe urges caution when drawing conclusions from the mosaics. These are late antique mosaics belonging to a specific decorative tradition, centuries removed from the early imperial period that we most often associate with the Roman empire. Read more | Everything you wanted to know about the Roman emperors “They look like they're wearing briefs and this breast band,” Rothe says, “but we don't know whether they were normal underwear, or whether they were used by women for exercising when they had taken everything else off.” These outfits may have been worn only in contexts where clothing was deliberately reduced for strenuous physical activity. Roman men, loincloths and the problem of interpretation Evidence for male undergarments is harder to find a sign of, but not impossible. “We know that men had loincloths,” Rothe says, based on images of labourers, athletes and enslaved workers. These garments appear in scenes where men have removed outer layers in the heat. But did men routinely wear these beneath their tunics? Or was it just in these instances? Sources are ambiguous. Rothe explains that some Roman literature describes men falling over and accidentally exposing themselves, something that implies the absence of underwear. But it’s not solid evidence, and it’s certainly not conclusive. What is clear is that Roman clothing habits varied widely across regions, centuries and social groups. Soldiers, labourers, enslaved people and elites did not dress in the same ways, and expectations differed between urban and rural environments. Why the Romans barely discussed underwear So why, when we know so much about ancient Roman culture, is this specific topic still so ambiguous? The answer lies in the fundamental differences between Roman and modern ideas of modesty and the body. Read more | You've been getting Roman togas wrong your whole life - here's why Roman society was one of communal bathing, open latrines, shared sleeping arrangements and household hierarchies, in which enslaved people routinely saw their masters undressed. Privacy wasn’t concerned with concealing the body. As such, underwear simply might not have been as important to the Romans as it is to many cultures today. Elite women likely wore the strophium. Men and women working or exercising wore loincloths or brief-like garments. But what about the broader public? Was the average person on an average day wearing underwear? Rothe’s conclusion on the debate is one of caveats: “It's a fraught question,” she says. “It’s not entirely clear. We don't know, and I think that debate will continue to rage.” Some individuals may have worn underlayers beneath tunics; many probably didn’t. The deeper lesson is that the question of underwear exposes a cultural gap. Roman underwear, as a marker of modesty or personal privacy, simply didn’t hold the meaning it does today. Ursula Rothe was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Ancient Roman culture would be baffling to modern eyes – and their toilet habits prove it
Ancient Roman ideas of privacy differed radically from our own, and their communal toilets reveal a mindset almost impossible for modern people to imagine
The right to privacy is a pillar of modern human rights. It’s a concept so deeply ingrained in our society that it can feel universal. We assume that certain spaces like our homes – especially their bedrooms and bathrooms – are inherently private while streets, workplaces and public buildings are for communal life. But these distinctions haven’t always existed. And in the culture of the ancient Roman world, the definition of privacy was entirely different. How, then, did the people across the Roman empire conceive of privacy if not through physical seclusion? Why were communal latrines the norm? And what does this reveal about Roman values? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Hannah Platts explains how understanding those answers requires stepping into a cultural world where the individual was less important than the collective, and where privacy meant something very different from what it does today. What “public” and “private” meant to the Romans “It is really important not to conflate the urban realm of the city and the domestic realm of the house with our modern notions of urban as public and domestic as private,” she says. Today, closing a door marks out a sphere of personal privacy. In Rome, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Romans distinguished between the private and the public based on the activity itself, rather than the place where the activity was happening. Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? Confused? You’re right to be. It’s a tricky distinction, but Platts thinks a lesson in Latin can help illuminate what’s going on. “The Latin word privatus translates as ‘of or belonging to an individual’, apart from the state or the community.” By contrast, publicus meant “belonging to the people, belonging to the state, belonging to the community.” So whether something was public or private depended on whether it affected the civic body, not where it happened. A legal consultation in someone’s atrium was public; a bodily function performed in a room full of strangers was private. “It’s not about a space being public or private. It’s about the act that goes on within a space.” Roman toilets as a private place Platts chooses a particularly confronting example to help illustrate the point. Excavations at towns such as Ostia and Pompeii reveal latrines made from long marble benches with regularly spaced holes, often set above flowing channels of water. “These multi-seater toilets could house 20 or so people at one time,” Platts notes. Read more | Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think To a modern eye, these rooms: open, communal and without partitions, appear unmistakably public. But Roman logic meant the opposite. “Going to the toilet on a multi-seater toilet was totally a private act in Rome,” Platts says. That was because the act itself had no bearing on civic life: it did not affect the state, involve business, or concern other citizens. It was therefore considered private, even if dozens of people were seated shoulder to shoulder. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-170976487-a3bf4a4-e1765290185234.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The remains of this 2nd-century AD latrine show the communal approach to Roman toilets. The site is in the Domus of the Triclinium at Ostia Antica served the guild of builders who worked in the bustling port of Rome." title="Ostia Antica. Latrine." /> The Roman house: a public venue in disguise So, if communal latrines were “private”, what was the home considered as? Platts points out that domestic space was often used for activities we would consider definitively public. “Community or state-related activities could, and very often did, take place in the house,” she says. Elite households, especially those of senators, magistrates and wealthy patrons, functioned as political workplaces. Clients would visit their patron’s home to request favours or offer support. Business deals, legal advice, and local administration took place under the same roof as where people slept and cooked. Read more | How did the Roman Republic function? The important thing was whether “what was being dealt with was of relevance to the state or the community,” Platts explains, which made those acts public regardless of setting. Why Roman privacy feels so alien Roman attitudes can feel alien because they reflect a fundamentally different set of social priorities. Public life – civic duty, political participation, and community belonging – were at the core of Roman identity. The individual was secondary to the collective, and personal space mattered far less than the function of an action. That mindset is reflected in Roman architecture too. Roman cities lacked the kind of specialised, closed-off facilities familiar today. Baths were communal, dining was often semi-public, and sleep could take place in rooms accessible to others. Toilets were another of these shared spaces in a culture where solitude was an infrequent consideration. In this way, the Roman multi-seater latrine is an important window into a cultural world structured by very different assumptions about the body, the state and social interaction. It also highlights just how radically notions of privacy have changed, and how distant the Roman worldview can seem. Hannah Platts was speaking to Emily Briffett 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
Female gladiators shocked the ancient Roman world — but not for the reason you think
Though rare, female gladiators did appear in the Roman arena, challenging ancient Rome’s expectations and revealing how spectacle, politics and social boundaries shaped life in the empire
“There were female gladiators and there’s no doubt about that.” That's the assessment of historian Harry Sidebottom, author of Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. A female gladiator is an image that challenges what many think they know about the role of gladiatorial combat in the Roman empire, and the role of women in ancient Rome more broadly. Or does it? In fact, Sidebottom argues, the role of female gladiators wasn’t a subversive example of female empowerment. Instead, it was designed as a spectacle to shock and delight audiences, intentionally playing with preconceptions – and upholding them. Still, it’s a hard image to reconcile with what we know of the gladiatorial games, and women’s lives across the Roman empire. So how should we understand the presence of female gladiators in a society that imposed such strict regulations on women’s behaviour? And how does it fit into the broader story of gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, and the way in which it evolved through antiquity? Sidebottom has some of the answers. Gladiatorial combat: a Roman spectacle with mysterious beginnings Even the Romans were unsure how their most famous form of entertainment began. “Ancient writers said it was an import from the south, from Campania. [Others] said no, it was an import from the north, from Etruria,” Sidebottom explains. Their disagreement reflects how far back the practice reached, well before gladiators became imperial icons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-152190511-fe3456d-e1764672038606.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This detail from the 'Ten Girls' mosaic at the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina shows young women training with hand weights and a discus. Dating to the early 4th century AD, the scene highlights the place of athletic exercise in elite Roman life." title="Detail of the Ten Girls Mosaic depicting women athletes" /> Despite the uncertainty, Sidebottom notes that “the one thing they all agreed on was that gladiatorial combat was an import to Rome.” That claim wasn’t a denial of ownership so much as an affirmation of Roman cultural pride. Sidebottom explains that the attitude was that: “We Romans take the best from everything else in the world… and we then perfect it, transform it, adopt it, adapt it and make it ours.” Read more | If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate? The earliest evidence of gladiatorial games from Rome indicated that this combat, wherever it was imported from, was initially tied to funerary rituals, where fighters battled in honour of the dead. But by the late Republic, the arena had become a distinctly political theatre. Julius Caesar’s lavish games, staged to commemorate relatives who had died decades earlier, show how far the custom drifted from those roots, and its main purpose was now a display of reputation-bolstering public entertainment. How the arena became Roman imperial propaganda By the time Caesar’s successor Augustus established the principate (the first period of the Roman empire, 27 BC–284 AD), gladiatorial games had become integral to public life. Roman emperors were expected to act as patrons, offering grand spectacles of entertainment to secure loyalty among the city’s masses. As Sidebottom puts it, emperors became “the ultimate patron of the plebs” and were hugely popular. With imperial sponsorship came larger crowds, grander staging and an appetite for novelty. Read more | This is what a Roman gladiator really looked like Romans prized variation as well as violence, with hosts of the games keen to find new and surprising ways to entertain. It was within this atmosphere that female gladiators took to the arena. So, what exactly was a ‘gladiatrix’? The term gladiatrix is modern, but the women themselves are historical fact. Evidence includes a carved relief from the ruins of Halicarnassus (near modern-day Bodrum, Turkey), plus a few inscriptions and references by Roman writers. It’s scant evidence, but Sidebottom says it collectively confirms that women did, at times, fight in the arena. The real question is what role they played. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-122213857-a9e150f-e1764671324506.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This marble relief from Halicarnassus, dating to the 1st–2nd centuries AD, commemorates the honourable discharge of two female gladiators known as “Amazon” and “Achillia.” Shown armed like their male counterparts but bareheaded to reveal their hairstyles, the pair exemplifies the rare but striking presence of women in the arena — a reminder of the diversity and spectacle that characterised Roman gladiatorial combat." title="Roman civilization, Relief portraying fight between female gladiators" /> The role of Rome’s female gladiators On that, Sidebottom is cautious. “The debate is: were they serious gladiators, or were they a novelty act?” On balance, he believes their purpose was spectacle rather than elite competition. “It was confounding gender expectations; it was women doing things that men did.” This doesn’t diminish the danger they faced. Even if staged for astonishment, their bouts likely still involved real weapons and real risk. But it did mark them out as different from their male counterparts. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Many forms of Roman entertainment relied on dramatic inversion, temporarily upending norms to delight or shock spectators. Men acted as animals and some emperors played enslaved people in mock performances in front of delighted crowds. Female gladiators fit that pattern. Roman moralists insisted that respectable women stay out of the public gaze and avoid any association with bloodshed. To see a woman step into the arena – armed and on display – created a deliberate clash between expectation and reality. The appeal highlighted the transgression, thereby enforcing it, rather than contradicting it as some Roman form of female empowerment. Their rarity amplified this effect. A female fighter would have been an event precisely because she was unusual. In that way, the female gladiators illuminate a great deal about Roman society. They demonstrate how the arena functioned not only as a site of violence, but as a stage for political messaging and social commentary. Their fights exploited the thrill of seeing boundaries broken, while upholding and reinforcing the structures that created those boundaries outside the amphitheatre. Read more | 6 women who changed the course of Roman history They also highlight how gladiatorial combat was the product of centuries of Roman adaptation. As Sidebottom notes, Romans of all periods agreed on its broad evolution: from funerary rite to mass entertainment, and eventually to an imperial tool of persuasion. Within that long story, the gladiatrix embodied both the transgression of norms and the sensational drama that kept an empire entertained. Harry Sidebottom was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
If ancient Romans didn't understand calories, how was their theory of nutrition so accurate?
The people of ancient Rome didn’t have access to modern science, but they still developed complex – and incredibly intuitive – theories on how nutrition worked
Macronutrients, calories, and antioxidants all seem like very modern concepts, and, today, we certainly know a lot more about nutrition than the ancient Romans did. But while the Romans didn’t understand the science as well as we do now, they absolutely had an intuitive understanding of many of the key concepts behind how best to fuel ourselves. Across the Roman empire, ancient thinkers developed a sophisticated theory of nutrition which allowed them to understand some of the basic principles behind the science of food and diet long before the discovery of recommended daily allowances and other modern standards. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Dr Claire Bubb, assistant professor in the study of the ancient world at New York University, explains that “there are parallel ideas [in ancient Roman thinking] that are expressed with different words, observing some of the same things, but within a totally different theoretical construct of how food and nutrition works.” The Ancient Roman theory of nutrition was surprisingly intuitive Roman ideas about nutrition centred on the blood. They generally thought that food went into the digestive system after it was eaten, and then broken down. Then, “the bits that are useless, we would excrete”, Bubb explains. “But anything in food that could potentially be relevant to our bodies, we would digest and turn into blood. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide “So your food becomes your blood and then your blood becomes any part of your body that it needs to – the building block of your body,” she says. “Say if I'm wearing down my muscles because I'm using them all the time, the blood will go to the muscles, and it'll build new muscle.” Romans classified foods by their qualities, not their nutrients The ancient Romans associated different properties of foods with different impacts on the body, whether that was healing or strengthening. Rather than thinking about the amounts of protein or vitamin C in a food, they were “thinking about the qualities in food.” Some foods were thought to be more nourishing than others, and able to help build muscle. This is what we would think of as protein, Bubb says. Meanwhile, other foods were thought of as “drying,” or as having “good juices in them”. “Some foods have really good humours in them, and that leads to good blood versus bad blood that might make you unhealthy,” she says. The theory of humours suggested that people’s bodies were ruled by four fluids in the body – blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each humour was associated with the elements: blood was air, phlegm was water, yellow bile was fire, and black bile was earth. And different balances of each humour created different qualities – warm, cold, moist, or dry – which led to various diseases. For example, people with diseases that were seen as hot and dry would benefit from eating foods that were seen as cold and wet. Read more | The Antonine Plague: the killer disease that devastated the Roman empire Whether foods were cold or hot, wet or dry, was based on flavour and texture. Cucumbers were cold and wet, for example, whereas bread and roasted meat were dry and hot. Foods with a bit of a kick to them, like onions, garlic, and rocket, were hot, too. Because they believed that the body was ruled by what people ate, they also believed that foods had the power to transfer their characteristics to whoever ate them. Their ideas are understandable, if not scientific “The cool thing about it is how intuitive it is. You can understand if you eat too much, you feel full and kind of gross the next day,” Bubb says.news “It's not surprising that they noticed things that we're also noticing. There are some foods that are refreshing and some foods that really sit heavily in your stomach and are harder to digest, and the ancient Romans experienced those same feelings. “These are intelligent people who are really paying close attention … It's a very empirical approach to how all of this works and how health works.” Read more | Why did the ancient Romans think these foods were disgusting poison? “What they got wrong is in how they explained these things that we still observe – the methodologies that they had. They didn't have microscopes; they didn't have the ability to send things to a lab and figure out what they're composed of.” Instead, they thought about the composition of food in terms of the elements. It may seem “crazy for us to think about there being little bits of fire in our food,” Bubb remarks, but she notes that we talk about calories – which we convert into heat. “They just think about it in a way that, when you really boil down exactly what they're saying, feels just odd and difficult for us to imagine,” she says. The way the Romans thought about food fed into their greater worldview The system of humours didn’t just apply to food and medicine – humours were also thought to rule people’s personalities and emotions. People who had too much blood in them were thought to be cheery and friendly; those with too much yellow bile were considered bitter and daring; too much black bile meant you were melancholic and fearful; and too much phlegm made people placid and forgetful. The way that the ancient Romans thought about food also influenced how they thought about different people in society, about age, and about seasons. Older people were seen as colder, and so needed less warmth and less food, while growing people (such as children and athletes) needed more warmth and more nourishment. They thought people in general should eat more in winter and spring, when the body needs to produce more warmth and therefore, they believed, needed more nourishment. The Romans knew less about food science than we do now, and many of their ideas seem misguided to the modern perspective. But thinking about food, medicine, wellness and constitution as all interlinked is a surprisingly modern way of thinking, paralleling how we think about nutrition today. Claire Bubb was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires
Fear of the living dead, in the form of vampires, is a near-constant trope in modern popular culture – from the regular reinterpretations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to 20th century Buffy. But the tradition has far deeper roots. Discover how ancient Mesopotamians shaped these beliefs and spread the world’s earliest vampire traditions – and why young women were the most terrifying of all
The vampire is an archetypal symbol of late-medieval folklore and gothic literature. However, the idea of the restless dead: spirits of the prematurely deceased who were believed to walk again and cause harm to the living, is ancient, seemingly entangled deep within the fears of the human psyche. But just how far back does the story of vampires really go? That’s the question that historian John Blair, author of Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to The New World discussed on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. As he reveals, the origin story of vampires and other images of the living dead emerged not with Bram Stoker in 19th-century Europe, nor even in the medieval period, but in the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, where some of humanity’s earliest surviving texts describe a fear that's been present through thousands of years. And, it might be even older than that. Mesopotamia's living dead Humans seem to have feared the dead long before the first written languages were created. Archaeologists have uncovered prehistoric burials that appear intent on keeping the dead in the ground, with bodies pinned beneath stones, decapitated, or bound tightly – actions that seem designed to prevent them from rising again. Read more | This ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of the Bible's most famous stories Blair refers to this practice, noting that “there is some archaeological evidence from prehistory, including way back to the Palaeolithic.” But it’s only with the emergence of writing that more concrete evidence becomes available. The beliefs “first appear in written sources, and the earliest written sources are from Mesopotamia.” Mesopotamia, a network of the world’s most ancient civilisations found in what it now modern Iraq and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran, was home to the world’s first cities of Uruk, Ur and Babylon. It was also where the first writing system, cuneiform, emerged. The earliest Mesopotamian texts are silent on the undead. But by the Neo-Assyrian period of the 7th century BC, the picture changes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-919829722-708eb05-e1764087243324.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="These 9th-century BC orthostates from Tell Halaf show the hero Gilgamesh flanked by two bull-headed demigods who raise a sun disc above him, imagery drawn from Mesopotamian myth. Gilgamesh was celebrated across the ancient Near East as a hero and semi-divine king, while bull-man figures and solar symbols evoked themes of power, protection, and cosmic order central to Mesopotamian religion." title="Orthostates Depicting Gilgamesh Between Two Minotaur Demigods Holding Up The Sun Disc. From Tell Hal" /> “We start to get some texts which do appear to refer to what happens,” Blair says, “and what you should do, if corpses start walking around; if they rise up and fight against the living.” Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror These texts instructed priests on how to restore order when a corpse became spiritually dangerous, which tells us that fear of the living dead was part of established Mesopotamian religious practice. In fact, this concern was deeply rooted in the broader Mesopotamian cultural context of beliefs about life and death. In ancient Mesopotamian belief, death didn’t automatically close the book on a person’s existence. A peaceful death, ideally at an old age, with proper rituals and descendants to continue offerings, allowed the life force to dissipate cleanly. But that wasn’t the case with a sudden death. That’s a recurring theme in vampire mythology, explains Blair. Becoming a vampire “often happens to people whose lives have been cut short untimely,” he says. “An important factor in all this is lack of completeness. The people are cut short and their life forces have not dissipated in the normal way. They are still pent up in the body, and that means trouble.” Why young women were especially feared One of the most persistent features of these early beliefs is the gender of the dangerous dead. “There is one category of people that’s very important here: young women,” Blair says. “In many cultures, the dangerous dead have been largely female and, in particular, women between the ages of about 15 and 25.” Read more | Ancient Mesopotamia's weirdest job? Meet the veterinary exorcist This age bracket of women was particularly vulnerable to the idea that, if they were to die, their roles in society would be seen as ‘cut short’. For example, death in childbirth was common. Unmarried young women could die before fulfilling their expected social roles. Both scenarios left unfinished business, and according to ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, meant there was a higher chance of becoming ‘dangerous dead’. And, in some cultures – including Anglo-Saxon England, millennia later – young women were believed to possess heightened spiritual power. Blair explains there was a belief that this power would fade away as women grew older, passing down to younger women, “But if they die young, then the ‘powers’ are still caught up in the body.” Again, that’s a motif that can be seen in the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia. Blair explains that there was a demon named Lilitu, who was “childless, and therefore preys on the children of other people,” while Lamashtu, another demon who had been “thrown out of heaven,” was feared for harming infants and pregnant women. Read more | Vlad the Impaler was medieval Europe's bloodiest warlord, but is the scale of his murder just a myth? These demons weren’t vampires, and nor were they the living dead. But they fit into a broader sense of fear about unfulfilled lives, and how they might come back to haunt the living. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-501582205-dd4fd29-e1764087501298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This bronze head of Pazuzu, likely from Nimrud and dating to the Neo-Assyrian period (c. 800–550 BC), represents one of Mesopotamia’s most striking supernatural figures. Though a fearsome demon associated with destructive winds, Pazuzu also served as a powerful protector, warding off the deadly forces — especially the demoness Lamashtu — believed to threaten mothers and infants." title="Bronze head of Pazuzu, probably from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), Neo-Assyrian, about 800-550 BC." /> How these ideas spread across the ancient world Mesopotamian culture profoundly influenced the wider ancient Near East. As its cities traded, conquered and interacted with surrounding cultures, supernatural beliefs moved with them. Greek myths of lamiae, child-harming female monsters, strongly echo their Mesopotamian predecessors. Hellenistic magical texts include spells to ward off the returning dead. Roman writers describe corpses rising to demand justice. Early Christian theologians, inheriting this tradition, warned of improper burials leading to spiritual disturbances. Read more | Would you kidnap a god? This ancient Mesopotamian empire did – and for a genius reason And none of that’s a surprise. Many elements of Mesopotamian mythology were passed down into later beliefs: the Biblical flood may even be a version of an older Mesopotamian story. By the Middle Ages, these ideas of the undead had evolved into the better-known revenants and vampires of European folklore. Looking across these traditions, the consistency is striking. And, Blair argues, such beliefs emerged from innately human concerns: the trauma of sudden death and the fragility of social bonds. Long before gothic fiction, priests and healers in ancient Mesopotamia were recording what to do with unruly corpses – proof, in Blair’s eyes, that we can look much further back in history to find proto-vampire stories. John Blair was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence
From ritual parades to blood-soaked duels, explore a single day in the life (and death) of the most brutal entertainment in the ancient Roman empire
It’s a hot morning in ancient Rome, and the city is simmering with anticipation. Crowds stream toward the amphitheatre, and by mid-morning, more than 50,000 spectators are packed into the stands, ready for a day of spectacle. As a symbol of the Roman empire, the gladiatorial games were both civic ritual and political theatre. But for those taking part in this vicious entertainment, that symbolism had a very tangible cost. For the Roman gladiators who made it to the arena, what was the experience like ahead of, and after, the great event? Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Harry Sidebottom, author of Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, explains what life as a gladiator would have really been like in the 24 hours surrounding the games. The night before as a Roman gladiator “The day of a gladiator started the night before the fight,” Sidebottom explains, “with a weird social ritual called cena libera, meaning ‘the free dinner’. The public was allowed into the gladiatorial school to watch the gladiators eating.” The ritual meal took place in the ludus, or training barracks, where fighters sat at long tables under the eyes of the spectators. “There are some incredibly pretentious explanations behind this ritual,” says Sidebottom, “but I think it is a very simple one. There was gambling on gladiatorial fights, and the guys who appeared calm and in control were going to have the shortest odds.” Read more | Think you know what an ancient Roman gladiator looked like? The reality will make you think again For the fighters (mostly enslaved men, prisoners of war or convicted criminals) this would have been a final test of composure before the fight itself. After the dinner, once the spectators had left, the gladiators would have gone off to bed, with guards keeping a watch over their doors. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-639163578-2-0c28aae-e1763634537128.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This reconstruction shows the Chester Roman amphitheatre as it may have appeared around AD 100, soon after the founding of the legionary fortress of Deva Victrix. Excavations reveal it hosted a range of spectacles — from cockfighting and bull-baiting to boxing, wrestling, and, most notably, gladiatorial combat — making it a major centre of entertainment in Roman Britain." title="Chester Roman Amphitheatre, c2nd century, (c1990-2010)" /> The morning of the gladiatorial games At dawn, horns would have sounded across the city, heralding the start of a day characterised by excitement and spectacle. The games would have begun with the pompa, a celebratory parade rich with religious meaning and pageantry. Then, the gladiators would have marched through the streets towards the amphitheatre. The sharpness of each sword and spear would have been tested before the crowd, ensuring that everyone was keenly aware of the fact that this was no staged theatre. Read more | Was Maximus Decimus Meridius real? Finally, the event would have opened with solemn prayers to Jupiter, Mars and Nemesis, asking the gods to bless the day’s combat. The first fights, however, wouldn’t have involved men at all. Animal hunts and executions “[First] you had professional huntsmen hunting animals in the arena,” Sidebottom explains. “It was a way of giving the urban plebs a vicarious taste of an elite lifestyle, because hunting was an elite sport.” These venationes (beast hunts) showcased exotic creatures from across Europe and Africa. Brought in were lions from north Africa, bears from the Alps and leopards from Syria. They were living symbols of Rome’s control over nature. Their capture, transport and killing were part of an immense imperial machine that stretched from the shores of Britain to Mesopotamia. After the animal fights, the audience would have still had to wait to see the gladiators in action. The next piece of entertainment was executions, “and these executions were really horrible,” says Sidebottom. Criminals, rebels and various other unfortunate people condemned to death were brought in to die for public amusement. Some were burned alive in the tunica molesta, which was a shirt soaked in flammable liquid that was then set alight. Others faced wild beasts unarmed. Between scenes, entertainers including acrobats, jugglers and musicians kept the crowd amused. But it was all only delaying the gratification of the main event. The afternoon: the gladiators make their entrance “The big event was the afternoon, when the gladiators actually fought. We assume, like any good sporting event, the best fighters were kept back until the end,” Sidebottom explains. The matchups were deliberately theatrical: the secutor, armed with sword and shield, against the retiarius, fighting with trident and net. “The main division was between the big shield men and the small shield men. But within those categories, there were lots of different types with different armour.” Sidebottom adds that pitching those varieties against each other enhanced the “novelty and the fun of the games.” For the crowd, the combat was thrilling not only for its danger, but for its discipline. Gladiators were trained to prolong the fight and heighten the drama. When a fighter fell, the final decision lay with sponsor of the games – often a politician or Roman emperor seeking popularity. A gesture from the stands (the famous turning of the thumb) determined what would follow: death, or a merciful chance to fight again. The evening: gifts and rest As the games were brought to their conclusion, the spectators filtered out of the stands and back to their homes. But that wasn’t the end of the story for the fighters. For those who survived, recovery began immediately. “In the better schools run by the emperor,” Sidebottom explains, “there was excellent medical care, because these guys were expensive investments.” 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 Doctors would have quickly seen to wounds and stitched the gashes back together. That evening, the surviving fighters would have been fed their usual sagina, a calorie-dense barley and bean stew. The next morning, training would have resumed, and soon the cycle would have begun again. For all that the ancient Roman republic and empire are remembered for their technologies and ‘civilising’ innovations, the sheer violence and delight in suffering seen in its greatest form of entertainment shows how their social and moral values were unrecognisable to many of us today. As Sidebottom observes, “it’s moments like that that the gulf between us and the Romans becomes really almost unbridgeable.” Harry Sidebottom was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Think you know what an ancient Roman gladiator looked like? The reality will make you think again
Ancient Roman gladiators are often imagined as chiselled, bronzed heroes of the arena, akin to today’s top athletes. But the truth was far more complex
The gladiators of ancient Rome are nearly always imagined as figures of perfect physical presence. They’re popularly pictured as lean, muscular and bronzed from their bouts under the Mediterranean sun. But as classical historian Harry Sidebottom explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, the reality was far stranger, and more complex. Sidebottom, the author of Those Who Are About To Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind, says that Roman gladiators were impossible to compare to professional athletes today. They were brutalised, scarred, physically lopsided and, as Sidebottom reveals, surprisingly well-padded. Their appearance, and the way Romans responded to it, reveals much about the ancient Roman world’s obsessions with violent spectacle. “On the one hand, gladiators are the lowest of the low,” Sidebottom says. “But on the other hand, they're very glamorous figures; even sex symbols.” A brutal Roman tradition Gladiatorial combat had deep roots in Roman culture. In the third century BC, aristocratic families began to honour the dead with munera; ritual combats staged in memory of the deceased. Over time this would evolve into public entertainment, sponsored by politicians seeking popularity. By the time of the late Roman Republic, games were vast civic events. Julius Caesar staged spectacles featuring hundreds of pairs of fighters, and by the early Roman empire, Roman emperors from Augustus to Commodus used the arena as a means of displaying their power and prestige. The most famous venue, the Colosseum in Rome, commissioned by Vespasian and opened under Titus in AD 80, could seat 50,000 spectators. Gladiators came from across the empire. They were prisoners of war, condemned criminals, and enslaved men trained in state-run martial schools known as ludi. The largest, including sites like Ludus Magnus and Capua, housed thousands of fighters under the watch of strict trainers. Though most entered unwillingly, some free men also volunteered, tempted by the prospect of fame. Different gladiator types, such as the lightly armed retiarius with his net and trident, or the heavily armoured secutor with his curved shield and sword, were pitted against one another for maximum drama. Many gladiators would become famous for their feats, adored by the Roman public. A Roman diet designed for spectacle But the work that went into achieving that adoration required more than fighting in the arenas. It was a full-time job, with a very specific diet that went along with it. “A Roman gladiator was very much not the ripped Hollywood star we’ve come to know,” Sidebottom explains. “They were fed a diet of something called sagina … barley and bean stew. It was carbohydrate rich and designed to build up a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, the idea being they can actually take a wound and bleed in an almost cinematic, visual way. But the blade won't hit any vital organs. “So, gladiators were quite fat.” Read more | What did people eat in Ancient Rome? The fact that fighters could bleed dramatically without dying too quickly was the whole idea, ramping up the spectacle of gladiatorial battles. The crowd wanted to see wounded fighters, not lifeless corpses. “They also had a special drink,” say Sidebottom. “They drank ash diluted in wine to build up calcium … forensic pathologists have looked at the skeletons and, yes, [the remains] have an abnormally high level of ash.” Excavations at the gladiator cemetery in Ephesus in modern-day Turkey confirm this. Bone analysis shows unusually high calcium levels, which would have strengthened gladiators’ skeletons against impact. Along with the food, it was an early form of sports nutrition. The toll of gladiatorial training Gladiatorial training was constant, repetitive and punishing, and this may have taken a heavy toll on the gladiators’ bodies. “They might have looked almost deformed because of the heavy and relentless training,” says Sidebottom. “You begin to almost look lopsided.” Sidebottom compares the effect to that on medieval longbowmen, whose skeletons show exaggerated muscle growth on one side. Like longbowmen, gladiators also developed uneven musculature and asymmetrical frames. This, combined with scars and the impact of injuries, meant that these men were far from the idealised physiques that are imagined today. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide But for the Romans, that had its own unique appeal. “They actually become attractive almost because of the fact that they're not conventionally pretty,” he says. Still, gladiators were clearly conscious of the way they looked, and attempted to shape how their images were remembered. “It’s interesting that the tombstones aren’t photorealistic,” Sidebottom says. “In the western half of the empire, their tombstones make them look like soldiers… In the eastern half … they try and look like athletes.” Sidebottom thinks this was an attempt to apply a retrospective sense of respectability and dignity to people who were seen as some of the lowest in society during their lives. The real gladiators of Rome? The truth of how gladiators looked and lived is both harsher and more revealing than the simplified image of a muscular athlete. These men were lowly labourers trained to fight with misshapen bodies that were designed to provide the maximum possible spectacle. And that took an immense – and perhaps unexpected – toll. Harry Sidebottom was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. 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
This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
The strange and powerful symbol at the heart of one of history’s greatest temples reveals the importance of the goddess Artemis in ruling fertility, childbirth and nature
When we think of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may be the first examples that come to mind. However, the oldest-known versions of the list start with a landmark that is often forgotten: the Temple of Artemis. Located in the ancient city of Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey), this remarkable place of worship was renowned for its size and scale, standing at least 20 metres tall and boasting an enormous tile-covered roof supported by 127 marble columns. With a floor plan of some 6,000 square metres, the temple was also nearly three times as large as the famous Parthenon in Athens. But some of the most startling archaeological evidence from Ephesus isn’t concerned with the dimensions of the temple, nor its complicated history of destruction and rebuilding. Instead, much attention has been directed towards a collection of statues depicting the temple’s patron deity, Artemis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL957668-36357fc.jpg" width="7715" height="4533" alt="A large temple with a triangular roof and many columns holding it up. It sits on top of a large flight of stairs. The roof has a mural of the goddess sitting in the middle and surrounded by crowds of people and two golden horses" title="A 20th-century depiction of the Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the goddess Artemis (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Rather than portraying the goddess as a conventional Greek beauty, the sculptures display Artemis in an altogether different guise. And, according to classicist and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, these statues bear a particularly striking physical characteristic. Read more | On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end “[This] is not the Artemis that you probably have in your heads… this image of a beautiful young woman in a tiny Greek chiton, artfully pulling a bow and arrow,” reveals Hughes on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “She is a huge, towering figure, covered in birds and bees, goats and curious figures. But what none of you will miss… is that she looks as though she has 30 or so breasts.” Thirty breasts… or testicles? What need did Artemis have for 30 breasts? As well as being the goddess of hunting and the moon, Artemis was also revered as a deity of fertility and childbirth. Having a multitude of breasts would therefore be a fitting attribute for a goddess so intrinsically connected with fecundity and womanhood. In fact, even alternative theories – which suggest that the ‘breasts’ are actually bulls’ testicles or sacks of honey – bolster Artemis’s association with abundance. Both motifs have also been used as symbols of procreation in Greek art, so the ambiguity was likely deliberate. “These ancient craftsmen are likely playing a game with us,” says Hughes. Ultimately, the ancient Greeks believed that Artemis was so potent in her fertility that “she didn’t need anything as mundane as sex to procreate”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/M42ADD-2-4bc4f79.jpg" width="5560" height="3707" alt="A large statue of a woman with black hands and face, and covered in light brown bulbous growths. On her head, there is a well-shaped crown" title="A second-century AD interpretation of Artemis, with the head and hands cast in bronze added in the 19th century. Artemis is an enduring symbol of fertility (Image by Alamy)" /> A goddess of power and procreation It’s not just the features on the statue[s] itself that suggest Artemis’s importance – the location where they were discovered is notable too. Ephesus was situated on the eastern edge of the ancient Greek world, where Artemis’s association with fertility and childbirth was perhaps stronger than elsewhere. Read more | Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World “The Artemis who was worshipped in Ephesus was an ‘eastern Artemis’ – a direct descendant of the great nature goddesses of the eastern world,” says Hughes. “Any ancient traveller who went to visit the temple would have been left in no doubts of how extremely strong and potent she was.” While Artemis was regarded as a powerful goddess for all, she was particularly important to women. Care of the temple was entrusted to high priestesses, a system that Hughes likens to a “hive buzzing around, serving the queen bee”. Overall, maleness was not well tolerated at the site; it was intended to be devoted to female presence and power. An offer of sanctuary But it wasn’t just the high priestesses who devoted themselves to Artemis. Countless ordinary women also dedicated themselves to this bastion of fertility, travelling from far and wide to give offerings. “Poor female pilgrims would beat a path to Artemis’s door, and some of them would leave extraordinary gifts [and] beautiful gold offerings,” says Hughes. “They were left as temple dedications and then buried as hoards.” In some cases, the poorest pilgrims would simply leave a seashell for Artemis instead. They merely offered whatever they could, in the hope that the goddess would provide protection and preparation for marriage and childbirth. Crucially, the Temple of Artemis wasn’t solely a place for worship – it also functioned as a place of refuge for the oppressed. Hughes adds, “If you were being persecuted politically, and even if you were a woman escaping domestic abuse, you could go to sanctuary at the temple.” Read more | The gods and their whims: your guide to ancient Greek religion <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/WHA0108722-2-0d5f3b2.jpg" width="5000" height="3542" alt="A brown terracotta jug with a circular spout and no handle lays on its side on the left of the image. On the right, there is a pile of small gold-coloured coins" title="A round-mouthed jug and an assortment of Electrum coins, discovered in the foundations of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Image by TopFoto)" /> A forgotten legacy The Temple of Artemis was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for good reason. Its sheer scale and beauty were matched only by the power of the goddess it honoured. To the modern eye, her many breasts might seem slightly mystifying. But – whether seen as symbols of fertility, abundance or simply a playful riddle set by ancient craftsmen – they remind us of the complexity and depth of her worship. Bettany Hughes was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
The ingenious Roman invention that sparked the ancient empire’s obsession with luxury
Beneath the mosaic floors of Roman villas, an ingenious system of underfloor heating transformed warmth into a mark of power
Think of Roman engineering, and it might be the grandest feats that first come to mind: the towering aqueducts bringing water to towns and cities, the amphitheatres filled with cheering crowds, and the paved roads that stitched the Roman empire together. The hypocaust – the Roman system of underfloor heating – may be less staggering in its scale, but it remains one of the most recognisable features of Roman domestic life. Archaeologists still point to those distinctive stacks of bricks beneath villa floors as a mark of Roman sophistication. “The hypocaust system is really important for us to think about when we consider Roman homes,” explains Dr Hannah Platts on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It was important to them: that it heated their baths and their other spaces.” But they weren’t for everyone. Who owned homes with underfloor heating? And what did such comfort say about status and power? “I should reiterate, having your own bathhouse or having a hypocaust was a luxury,” says Platts. Rome’s underfloor miracle At its simplest, a hypocaust worked by circulating hot air through a hollow space beneath the floor. A furnace, or praefurnium, was stoked outside the building; hot air from the furnace was funnelled into a network of small brick pillars (pilae) that supported a raised floor. But it wasn’t just about heating the floor. Read more | How and why did the Roman empire fall? “The hypocaust was used to heat houses via underfloor heating, but actually we’ve got a number of houses where we’ve got evidence of box flue tiles in the walls,” says Platts. “So we know that hypocausts could heat the walls of the rooms as well.” In the context of ancient Rome this was engineering of incredible sophistication. Archaeological remains from sites such as Pompeii and Ostia, and across Roman Britain, show entire suites of rooms heated by the system. Stepping barefoot on a mosaic floor, warmed from underneath, was quite literally to step upon Roman ingenuity. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-501581407-bcc2688-e1761039389477.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The Roman baths at Salamis, dating to the 3rd century, feature a well-preserved hypocaust system beneath the tepidarium, or warm room. This network of brick pillars once channelled hot air under and through the floors." title="Roman Baths in Salamis, 3rd century." /> From the baths to the villa The hypocaust began as a public luxury, eventually exported to private homes. The earliest examples appeared in the great bath complexes (thermae) of the late republic and early empire. Roman baths were vast public leisure centres and required consistent, large-scale heating. The first recorded Roman hypocausts date to the first century BC, developed under architects and engineers serving figures such as Marcus Agrippa, the ally and later son-in-law of the Roman emperor Augustus. Under Augustus himself, public bathhouses multiplied across Rome and its provinces. The technique soon spread to private villas, where the wealthy adapted public comfort for domestic display. Read more | The Roman invasion: whose side were the Britons on? By the second century AD, during the reigns of emperors such as Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, the hypocaust had become a standard feature of elite architecture across the empire – from the Mediterranean heartlands to the frontier forts of Britain. The price of luxury But this warmth came at a cost. “We know that the idea of heating your house was really important, but it wasn’t for everyone,” says Platts. “To have a hypocaust system in one’s house was a big sign of wealth. It would generally only have been present in examples of really opulent and wealthy dwellings: dwellings that, for example, might have their own private bathhouses. “They didn’t even need to go to the general baths. They could just have fun in their own spaces.” And, Platts says, what often goes forgotten is that maintaining heat from a hypocaust was hard. Read more | Everything you wanted to know about the Roman emperors “It took significant effort to build [and] to maintain,” says Platts. Fires had to be constantly fed with wood, ash cleared away and airways cleaned. “There’s engineering skill behind it too,” says Platts. “Not everyone is going to be able to build a hypocaust. There is a huge amount of skill behind that building process, and then you’ve actually got to be able to run the hypocaust and have it working. It really would’ve taken considerable finances to build a hypocaust within your house.” The result was that the hypocaust became an unmistakable badge of wealth. Visitors entering a villa with warm floors knew instantly that they stood in the home of someone of status. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-122321683-4d378a5-e1761039625347.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This Roman mosaic from Sousse, Tunisia, shows the poet Virgil seated between the muses Clio and Melpomene as he writes the Aeneid." title="Tunisia, Susa, Mosaic work depicting the poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70 A.C... - 19 A.C...) writing the Aeneid sitting between the muses Clio and Melpomene" /> The Roman world of privilege and luxury The hypocaust was one element within the broader picture of Roman luxury. For the upper classes, architecture, fashion, and food all worked together to display wealth and taste. “What also would be luxuries could be the way in which people spent their fortunes in other ways,” Platts says. “I’m thinking about fashionable clothing, or elaborate jewellery or gemstones. Romans loved amber. They loved pearls. They had quite a thing for uncut diamonds – as we all might – and things that were imported: ivory imported from Africa, silks imported from towards China.” The global reach of the Roman empire fed its appetite for exotic goods. To own these luxuries, to eat peppered dishes and dress in silk, was to embody the luxuries of empire. “Anything like fine wines, exotic spices, was a really good way of showing your status,” Platts notes. In this way, food became another way to demonstrate power. Enslaved servants circulated trays of imported delicacies from Britain, Syria and Africa, served to guests in rooms warmed by the hypocaust. Living symbols of servitude Luxury in Rome was also inseparable from labour, says Platts. Read more | Ancient Roman slavery: what was life like as an enslaved person? “Whilst owning a slave in and of itself was not a luxury – Rome was a slave-based economy, and actually, even many of the really relatively poor households would likely have one or two enslaved people living under their roofs – the number of slaves you had, where they came from, and how skilled they were, that really was a sign of wealth and luxury.” For the Roman elites, warm homes – and the people who kept them running – were signs of sophistication and wealth combined. The hypocaust might not have been as spectacular as an aqueduct or as imposing as an amphitheatre, but it does symbolise a crucial fact of ethos of the Roman empire: it shows how innovative engineering served comfort for the wealthy as much as conquest on the frontiers. Hannah Platts was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Ancient Roman theatre was a powerful weapon of empire, so why were actors' lives so tragic?
They performed before thousands and could become celebrities, yet actors in ancient Rome were stripped of their civic rights. What was life really like for the men who took to the Roman stage?
Roman society was acutely hierarchical. Every occupation carried a moral weight, and the line between dignity and dishonour was a stark one. A senator who spoke in the law courts could win eternal repute, but a gladiator who risked his life to entertain the masses was branded socially devalued, and the same was true of actors. No matter how dazzling their performances in front of a packed theatre might be, their profession consigned them to the lowest rungs of society. By law they were infamis; people of ill repute, stripped of civic rights and grouped alongside the enslaved. But what was this paradoxical life of stardom and shame really like for the actors of the Roman empire? Roman theatre’s golden age under Augustus “When we talk about a golden age of Roman theatre, we tend to be talking about Emperor Augustus’s reign and the beginning of the Roman empire,” says Jessica Clarke, author of A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “This was a period with new cultural, religious and political structures being implemented.” Augustus was the first emperor of Rome, ruling from 27 BC until AD 14. And he grasped how useful theatre could be as a political tool. Read more | The worst Roman emperors Spectacle was part of a strategy that Romans would come to call panem et circenses, or bread and circuses: free food and entertainment offered to the populace in return for loyalty and social cohesion. Drama and performance helped bind audiences into a shared Roman identity and provided a stage (quite literally) for imperial ideology. <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" /> A web of theatres across the Roman empire “Augustus built hundreds of theatres across the Roman empire, all following the design of the theatre that he also built for himself in Rome,” Clarke explains. “These theatres are enormous, they’re spread across all of the provinces. Essentially, what he built was a web of entertainment venues that Rome was in charge of.” These theatres were architectural marvels in themselves. The Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, inaugurated by Augustus in 13 BC and named after his nephew, could seat more than 10,000 people. Its semicircular rows of stone seating rose above a wide orchestra space and a stage backed by the towering scaenae frons; a richly decorated permanent backdrop of columns, niches and statues. Men and women alike could attend the performances at this new wave of theatres, (unlike in Greece, where women were mostly banned from attending) and seating was arranged by social rank, with senators and equestrians – members of the second-highest social class – in prime positions, and the poor higher up. Read more | Women in ancient Greece: what were their lives like? Performances ranged from solemn tragedies to ribald comedies, farcical mimes and elaborate pantomimes accompanied by music and dance. Admission was usually free, funded by magistrates or emperors seeking popularity. Who performed and who was excluded The Roman stage, however, was overwhelmingly male. As in Greece, women were largely banned from treading the boards. Clarke points to the existence of scant evidence of female performers in mime and pantomime – forms considered lower status and more risqué – but official theatre roles were reserved for men. “It’s quite similar to Shakespearean rules around who is allowed to step onto a stage,” says Clarke. “Though it would have been slightly easier for men to play the female roles because they had masks on.” Masks, made of linen and plaster or occasionally wood, were central to performance, and not just because they made it easier for men to portray women; they exaggerated expressions and amplified voices too. 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 Actors as infamis No amount of training or talent could lift an actor out of the social stigma that came with the role. “In ancient Rome, acting was an incredibly lowly profession,” says Clarke. “It wasn’t something that was seen as an acceptable job for a Roman citizen to undertake. An actor was in the class known as infamis. “This was the same class as a slave; the same class as a prostitute. You would have no voting rights, and you also don’t have bodily autonomy, so you don’t have legal rights over your body,” Clarke explains. Why this disdain? Roman moralists believed that a respectable citizen should preserve dignitas (dignity) and gravitas (seriousness). To display one’s body on stage, to impersonate others, or to provoke laughter was considered undignified. The actor sold their body and voice for public pleasure, which made the profession inherently shameful. Read more | Who were the gladiators of ancient Rome? Plus Spartacus, Crixus and 8 more fighters you should know This attitude was consistent with how Roman society viewed other entertainers. Gladiators might achieve celebrity in the arena, and charioteers could command passionate fan followings, but both were technically degraded in status. Performers were celebrated in spectacle but lacked any standing in civic life. The life of a Roman actor Evidence from inscriptions, satirical writings and contracts paints a picture of precariousness. Troupes travelled from town to town, dependent on festivals and civic sponsorship for work, while pay was unreliable; some actors received generous gifts, others little more than food and board. The constant would have been the rehearsals. Actors trained their voices to carry across open-air theatres, practised precise gestures codified to signal emotions and maintained the masks, costumes and props essential for performance. Injuries would have been common, especially in physical pantomimes involving acrobatics. Read more | The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t know about some very famous actors,” says Clarke. “One we know of is called Clodius Aesopus. He was the most famous tragic actor in the late Republic. Cicero was friends with him.” Aesopus, active in the first century BC, was celebrated for bringing Greek classics to Roman audiences. As Clarke notes, he became a personal acquaintance of Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of Rome’s greatest statesmen, orators and philosophers, whose speeches still survive as masterpieces of Latin prose. That such a figure could publicly befriend an actor underscores the inherent paradox: Aesopus was admired, wealthy and socially connected, yet in law he remained infamis. Life as a Roman actor was full of strange contradictions. The art form of theatre was a powerful political tool, theatres themselves were magnificent constructions, audiences were vast and enthusiastic, and some performers became famous enough to mingle with Rome’s elite. Yet the profession itself stripped actors of rights and respect. It was a life lived in the spotlight, but without dignity. Jessica Clarke was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.