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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
Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?
Ancient accounts of Julius Caesar’s early life depict an all-action hero who outwitted tyrants and terrorised bandits. But can they be trusted? David S Potter investigates
The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome – sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia. There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune – the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next. Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed. He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge – softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses. Origin stories Caesar’s pirate-slaying escapades represent a truly extraordinary tale. But what are we to make of it? We know a great deal about Julius Caesar in the ‘colossus’ phase of his career – that period stretching from his mid-thirties to his assassination in his mid-fifties when he was an established political and military powerhouse. But for the earlier part of his life – before his every act was performed in the full glare of the ancient world’s attention – it’s a different story. Caesar’s youth and young manhood is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The tales of his formative years are subject to exaggeration, even outright invention. Yet that doesn’t make examining that early life any less worthwhile. Doing so gives us rich insights into not only the rise of one of the ancient world’s towering figures but also of the political motivations of those who wrote that history in the chaos that followed his death. Much of what we know about Caesar’s early life has come to us through his two biographers, Suetonius and the aforementioned Plutarch, both writing towards the beginning of the second century AD, around 150 years after his death. Their accounts of those early years are quite similar, which suggests that they drew on a common source. Based on quotations in Suetonius’s writings, that source can be identified as Gaius Oppius, one of Caesar’s most powerful lieutenants. When it came to setting the record straight, Oppius was more interested in a good story than the truth. The same was true of his colleague Aulus Hirtius, who was at work in the same months editing and updating notes that Caesar himself had left behind. Both men were working under the overall guidance of Cornelius Balbus, who had been Caesar’s chief of staff. Read more | Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise Oppius got to work soon after Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March 44 BC. He needed to set the record straight at a time when Caesar’s legacy was being challenged by two very different forces. First, and most predictably, there were the assassins, who presented the slain leader as a tyrant whose character was shaped by uncontrolled arrogance and ambition. The second was aspiring ruler Mark Antony – leading general and one of Caesar’s most powerful supporters – who was also shaping the dead dictator’s legacy to suppress the interests of his chosen heir, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus. So what do Oppius’s writings, communicated to us via Suetonius and Plutarch, tell us about Caesar’s earlier years? And do they contain any clues about how this product of a moderately successful patrician family rose to such dizzying heights of power? Classical education Caesar certainly seems to have benefited from a good eduction. His mother, Aurelia – whom Plutarch describes as “a woman of discretion” – saw to that. She found him an excellent tutor for his early teens, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who went on to run his own well-regarded school. Gnipho had strong views on the Latin language, arguing that a word should only have a single meaning. This made quite an impression on his pupil: Caesar later wrote a book about this very subject, endorsing his tutor’s opinions. Another influence was an uncle, Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who was famous for his wry sense of humour, which perhaps inspired the wit in Caesar’s writings. One person missing from any story of Caesar’s youth is his father, Gaius Julius Caesar. The biographies emphasise Caesar junior’s devotion to his mother, Aurelia, and make a great deal of his link to another uncle, Gaius Marius, who was renowned as the saviour of Rome from a barbarian invasion around the time of Caesar’s birth. His father, however, is nowhere to be seen. Was Caesar senior an absent dad? Or did he just not care? The marriages arranged for his offspring – to people who, while socially acceptable, lacked the drive to support the young Caesar – suggests the latter. The young Caesar’s first marriage, in his early teens, was to a girl named Cossutia, whose family hailed from well outside the political elite. Young Caesar’s status changed after his uncle Marius had himself installed as consul of Rome – the highest elected public official in the Republic – alongside Cornelius Cinna, following a civil war in 87 BC. To bolster this alliance, Marius had Caesar’s marriage to Cossutia dissolved so that the teenager could marry Cinna’s daughter, Cornelia. Caesar, we’re told, loved Cornelia deeply. If his father had any influence on the new match, the sources don’t mention it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/J0A9PJwebready-7d9568a-e1764601866245.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a large crowd surrounding soldiers, with people bowing down and others reaching out to the crowd" title="This 1789 painting, Marius Returning to Rome, imagines the homecoming of Caesar’s uncle, who rose to become consul – then became embroiled in a bitter civil war with a rival, Sulla (Image by Alamy)" /> Thanks to his family connections, the young Caesar was increasingly pulled into the orbit of political power. For his later biographers, though, that wasn’t enough: what was needed at this stage in his life were adventures providing context for the great events that came later. If these episodes included triumph over loss and oppression, all the better. And in Caesar’s interactions with the Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, that’s exactly what they got. Sulla’s dramatic arrival on the scene – seizing Rome, establishing a dictatorship and ruthlessly hunting down his enemies – shaped the politics of a generation. It also shaped the politics of Caesar himself. Sulla had become a major figure on the political stage when he was elected to one of Rome’s two consulships, in 88 BC. He was then awarded a campaign against Mithridates, ruler of the kingdom of Pontus, who had invaded Rome’s provinces in western Anatolia and encouraged the slaughter of Roman citizens. But then the command against Mithridates was taken from Sulla and awarded to Caesar’s uncle Marius. That’s when things turned ugly. Outraged, Sulla marched on Rome, stormed the city and declared that he had restored the rightful constitution. Marius was forced into hiding, but then returned with Cinna a year later, in 87 BC, winning the civil war mentioned earlier. Sulla then turned the tables on his enemies once again, launching a huge invasion of Italy in 83 BC. His military victory was complete by the end of the following year, at which point he posted up the names of his enemies – his notorious ‘proscription lists’ – around Rome. Read more | Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death Where did this leave Caesar? We can’t know for sure. Yet, as the nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, he may well have been at the top of those lists. Sulla certainly seems to have made life pretty uncomfortable for him. The sources claim that the dictator deprived Caesar of the post of flamen dialis (high priest of Jupiter) to which he had been – or was about to be – appointed. They also tell us of Sulla’s demand that Caesar divorce Cornelia – and that, when the young man refused, he was forced to flee. Marked man For Caesar’s biographers, there was no lack of drama in this period of their subject’s life. He was, they tell us, pursued into hiding by one of Sulla’s assassins, who soon caught up with the fugitive – and spared him only after he agreed to pay a large bribe. When Caesar did eventually appear before Sulla, accompanied by his mother’s brothers and the Vestal Virgins, Sulla reluctantly granted him a pardon. “Have your way and take him,” he reportedly declared, “only bear in mind that the man you are so eager to save will one day deal the death blow to the cause of the aristocracy, which you have joined with me in upholding; for in this Caesar there is more than one Marius.” At this point we must proceed with caution. Did Sulla really utter these portentous words? To many historians, they bear all the hallmarks of a dramatic device, injected into the story to add an extra layer of jeopardy. As for the claim that Sulla denied Caesar the priesthood, that appears to be even more unlikely – because the latter never would have held the position. Cornelius Tacitus, Rome’s greatest historian, states that the post of flamen dialis remained unoccupied for 75 years after the death of a priest called Merula in 87 BC. What’s more, a requirement for the post was that both of the priest’s parents be patricians – members of Rome’s archaic aristocracy. Aurelia was from a wealthy family, but she was no patrician. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-150338287webready-c05f822-e1764602100354.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large stone relief shows a line of people doing different activities, including holding a child and riding on a horse-drawn carriage" title="depict events in a child’s life. Caesar’s youth was shaped by his mother, while his father seems to have been largely absent – or disinterested – during the boy’s early years (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some historians have also speculated that Sulla’s antipathy towards Caesar has been overstated. Light is shed on this point by Caesar’s first post, an appointment to the Roman province of Asia, where he served under one of Sulla’s most trusted lieutenants. Would this man really have taken on a youth whom his boss hated? It seems unlikely. Caesar’s service in Asia was notable for two events. One was the award he won for valour, having saved the life of a fellow soldier in combat. The other was his dispatch to the kingdom of Bithynia in the north-west corner of Anatolia, where he convinced the ruler, Nicomedes IV, to lend Rome naval reinforcements. A story that has swirled for 2,000 years – that Caesar had a sexual relationship with Nicomedes (Suetonius writes that “he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of improper relations with the king”) – appears to be baseless. What does seem certain is that Caesar’s experience of persecution by Sulla – deprived of office and property, pursued by homicidal thugs – moulded his later career. After his rise to power in the 60s BC, Caesar repeatedly drew contrasts between the mercy he showed his defeated foes and Sulla’s mass murder of political rivals. And though he came from a noble family – descended, so the story goes, from Rome’s founder, Aeneas – he took the ‘popular’ path to the political summit in a bid to undo Sulla’s conservative constitution, which was designed to keep wealth in the hands of Sulla’s friends and prevent ambitious people from challenging the status quo. Sulla died in 78 BC, and Caesar returned to Rome soon afterwards. A year later he embarked on a career in law, prosecuting two of Sulla’s most prominent lieutenants for corruption in provincial offices. That wasn’t an act of anti-regime revenge: young men routinely drew attention to themselves by serving as prosecutors. Caesar’s speech in one of these cases, prosecuting a man named Antonius, was so effective that the officials in charge of maintaining the citizen roll quoted it when they banished the convicted man. Caesar’s eloquence was soon attracting more attention among the ranks of Rome’s elite. In the words of Plutarch: “It is said that Caesar had the greatest natural talent for political oratory, and cultivated his talent most ambitiously.” Even Cicero, who opposed Caesar, later stated that the latter could have become the greatest orator of his generation. But that wasn’t good enough for Oppius. He needed to burnish Caesar’s story with one more escapade showcasing his subject’s courage, resilience and resourcefulness. The tale of his capture by pirates did just that. Read more | The shockingly simple question historian Tom Holland would ask Julius Caesar Unlikely anecdotes So, to return to an earlier question, what are we to make of this tale? Caesar may well have been captured by pirates, but details in the story ring alarm bells. A ransom of 50 talents appears extremely high in a region that was largely bankrupt. And at the time, Caesar held no public office and, therefore, no authority to kill anyone, even a pirate. Perhaps, then, we should reassess this episode by considering what Oppius was trying to say about his former boss. The story was, perhaps, an attempt to contrast the ‘mercy’ of Caesar with the brutality of Crassus, who crucified thousands of Spartacus’s followers a few years later – and didn’t cut their throats to spare them protracted suffering. It also establishes Caesar as a foe of piracy years before Pompey – his one-time ally, later bitter enemy – took on a command to purge pirates from the seas. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-122316356webready-1ab06c2-e1764602006327.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large mosaic depicting two ships with groups of men on them, fighting each other" title="A Roman mosaic depicts the god Bacchus fighting pirates. Julius Caesar’s encounter with sea-going bandits may have been embellished to emphasise his courage and resilience, writes David S Potter (Image by Getty Images)" /> No matter how extravagantly the stories of Caesar’s dealings with Sulla and his capture by pirates were embellished, it’s not hard to join the dots between the young Caesar and the icon. He was a brilliant student of literature, shaped by excellent role models. His relationship with Aurelia, a strong character in her own right, may have influenced his own attraction to smart, powerful women, including his long-term mistress Servilia and later, Cleopatra. And he was courageous. The man who stood in the front line during crises in Gaul and the civil war against Pompey was the same person who had saved a fellow soldier’s life in Asia. Caesar the politician, however, was more the product of the dysfunctional Rome of his adulthood than of any event in his youth. When all’s said and done, it was his meticulous attention to detail and supreme ability to think on his feet that powered his incredible rise. And it seems that these were talents with which he was born, rather than ones honed through the adventures of youth. David S Potter is a professor of Greek and Roman history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar (OUP, 2025) This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
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.
Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum territorial extent in the early second century AD, during the reign of the emperor Trajan. The empire would rank as the fifth-largest country in the world if it existed today (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries. 5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg. Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3GettyImages-639158628-7d65967-e1764242013260.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" title="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century. Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire 7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older. Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills. WATCH | Dr David Musgrove finds out what the Romans really got up to on the loo View Green Video on the source website 8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable). Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1211436528-b8e4a0d-e1764242052537.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An aerial photograph of the Pantheon in Rome. It has a large dome roof with a hole in the top and is surrounded by several other red roofed buildings" title="Despite being nearly 2,000 years old, the Pantheon boasts the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian. As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/5GettyImages-1925908763-d918fdc-e1764242087895.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of large white stone fragments with inscriptions on them" title="More than a thousand fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae (‘The Shape of the City of Rome’) have been discovered, giving researchers a remarkable window into early third-century AD Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification. 11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6Termini-McDonalds5-c5a8b6d-e1764242135272.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a McDonald's ordering screen and behind it there is a large, old brick wall" title="Burger, fries… and a fourth-century BC wall? Visitors to the Roma Termini station branch of McDonald’s can marvel at a feat of ancient engineering while they get their fast food fix (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since. 13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year. 14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1451938726-d5b4185-e1764246957408.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A computer generated image of the Colosseum, a large circular building with several arches" title="A computer-generated image depicting the Colosseum during its ancient heyday. The amphitheatre is now a World Heritage Site and a symbol of both modern Italy and ancient Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed. Read more | Sharks in the arena? Gladiator II's real history and historical accuracy explained 16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”. Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent. WATCH | Historian Alison Futrell discusses the real history behind Gladiator II View Green Video on the source website 17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century. 18. Chariot racing was the football of its day Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour. Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-520726031-6041b74-e1764247102231.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" title="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" /> 19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’. The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms. 20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals. At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin. 21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD. 22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water. The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Greekfire-madridskylitzes1-760acd4-e1764242423636.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two boats with men in them. The boat on the left are blowing fire over the one of the right" title="A 12th-century AD depiction of Greek fire being used against the rebel Thomas the Slav in AD 821. The exact composition of this devastating incendiary substance has been lost" /> 23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history. Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence 24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus. As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10Gordian-II-238-ADEdward-Watts--Author-1d53219-e1764242478419.jpeg" width="850" height="413" alt="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" title="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
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.
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.
David Musgrove pays a visit to the revolting world of Roman toilets, in the company of Dr Hannah Platts
What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? In the first episode of our mini-series, Toilets Through Time, David Musgrove begins his journey through the bathrooms of British history in the Roman era, with historian Dr Hannah Platts. They discuss dubious ancient ablutions, the confronting experience of sitting alongside your neighbours on the toilet, and why one gladiator reportedly stuck a toilet sponge down his own throat.
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. 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Harry Sidebottom shares what it was like to be a gladiator in ancient Rome, from brutal training to deadly fights in the amphitheatre
If we were to step back in time on to the blood-soaked sand of the Roman gladiatorial arena, what would we uncover about society, power and entertainment in the ancient civilisation? Speaking to Rachel Dinning, historian Harry Sidebottom guides us through 24 hours in the arena, revealing what life was really like for the gladiators that fought there – and for the crowds who came to spectate. Harry Sidebottom is the author of Those Who Are About To Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind (Cornerstone, 2025). Buy it from Waterstones