HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-21T15:06:17.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Friends, Romans, citizens: why Rome opened its doors to people across the empire
items: The ultimate Romans quiz
items: The people of Roman Britain
items: Reviving Roman voices: Mary Beard on the remarkable life of one woman
items: Fulvia: the maligned wife of politicians who made herself the power broker of ancient Rome
items: Blood, sweat & marble: examining ancient bodies
items: Roman Britain: what six objects can reveal about life for women at Hadrian’s Wall
items: In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome
items: Call the (Roman) midwife
items: Agrippina the Younger: the first true empress of Ancient Rome

Friends, Romans, citizens: why Rome opened its doors to people across the empire
type: item
date: 2026-04-19T11:30:48.000Z
creator: Dr Shushma Malik
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Roman women
description: From Romulus’s open-city policy to Claudius’s reforms, citizenship was used by Rome as both a reward and a weapon. And, as Shushma Malik explains, it enabled the burgeoning empire to build power and define identity
encoded: What made Rome so powerful? Writing in the early 16th century in his Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli (best known for The Prince) argued that the secret lay not in geography or luck, but in people – and in a ruthless flexibility in acquiring them. “Those who design a city to create a great empire must strive with great diligence to fill it full of inhabitants,” he wrote (as translated in 1997 by JC and P Bondanella). “This may be done in two ways: either through love or through force. It is done through love by keeping the pathways open and safe for foreigners who wish to come there to live… it is done through force, after nearby cities are destroyed, by sending their inhabitants to live in your city.” Rome enlarged its population through both of those two methods, enabling it to build enormous fighting forces – Machiavelli cited a figure of 80,000 men, compared with just 20,000 for Athens or Sparta at their peak. Rome flourished, said Machiavelli, not because it had an advantageous location but because of one simple but powerful policy: it made outsiders into Romans. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-113636408-4087aad-e1776332738730.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A bronze sculpture shows a she‑wolf standing alert with her head turned, while two human infants beneath her reach toward her teats." title="A bronze statue shows Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf. According to legend the twins, who founded Rome in 753 BC, were themselves refugees (Image by Getty Images)" /> This concept was integral to the city’s founding story. Romans were not from Rome – as Athenians were thought to be born from the earth of Athens – but travelled and settled there as refugees. According to myth – specifically, Virgil’s epic Aeneid – Aeneas came to Italy after fleeing from a burning Troy. Romulus and Remus, twins supposedly descended from the line of kings that traced back to Aeneas’s son Ascanius, were rescued fr…

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The ultimate Romans quiz
type: item
date: 2024-11-15T07:30:17.000Z
creator: Lauren Good
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Roman Britain
subject: Roman rulers
subject: Roman women
description: From emperors to toilet practices, how well do you actually know the Romans? Put your history knowledge to the test with our quiz…
encoded: View Riddle on the source website

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The people of Roman Britain
type: item
date: 2024-06-24T15:07:15.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Roman Britain course
subject: Roman Britain
subject: Roman women
description: In the second week of the HistoryExtra Academy course on Roman Britain, Professor Rob Collins takes a closer look at the people of Roman Britain – from the men and women living around Hadrian's Wall, to the lives of Roman slaves
encoded: View Green Video on the source website Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Roman Britain course Roman Britain: what six objects can reveal about life for women at Hadrian's Wall – reading time 9 mins Black Britannia: the African people who lived in Roman Britain – reading time 5 mins Ancient Roman slavery: what was life like as an enslaved person? – reading time 7 mins How ethnically diverse was Roman Britain? – reading time 3 mins

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Reviving Roman voices: Mary Beard on the remarkable life of one woman
type: item
date: 2023-12-27T09:00:05.000Z
creator: Professor Mary Beard
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Roman women
description: The remarkable story of one Roman woman, pieced together from fragments over many centuries, reveals insights into family life more than 2,000 years ago. Mary Beard gives voice to the long-silent Turia
encoded: During the civil wars that tore the Roman Republic in the middle of the first century BC, leading to the birth of the empire, one Roman woman was facing her own crises – both public and private. Usually known to us as ‘Turia’, she was born into a high-ranking family and by the late 50s BC had become engaged to be married. It was obviously a ‘good match’ with a man of prospects. But before the wedding could take place, not only had her fiancé suddenly quit Rome to fight under Pompey the Great – in other words, on the losing side in the war against Julius Caesar – but, tragically, her mother and father had also been murdered in their remote house in the country. Turia moved in with her future mother-in-law, but seems to have been largely left to cope with her problems alone, or with the help of just her sister. She managed to take vengeance on her parents’ murderers and successfully fought off some of her own relations who contested her inheritance. At the same time, she sent supplies to her absent fiancé, selling off some of her own jewellery to do so. Things looked up, albeit briefly. Although Julius Caesar was victorious in the war against Pompey, he pardoned his enemies and allowed them to return to Rome, so Turia and her fiancé were eventually able to get married. But worse was to come. Just a few years later, after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, the junta who ruled the city put a price on her husband’s head, and he was forced to leave the city again. It was only thanks to Turia’s intervention on his behalf with Lepidus, one of Rome’s so-called ‘ruling three’ (alongside Mark Antony and Octavian, the future emperor Augustus), that he was allowed back – but not before she had been horribly insulted and beaten black and blue by some of the regime’s apparatchiks. Peace finally came to Rome more than a decade later, under its first emperor, Augustus – who by then had cannily reinvented himself as a responsible elder statesman. The marriage of Turia and her husband l…

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Fulvia: the maligned wife of politicians who made herself the power broker of ancient Rome
type: item
date: 2023-08-08T13:26:06.000Z
creator: Danny Bird
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Roman women
description: As the wife of three successive political heavyweights, Fulvia attained a level of influence that few Roman women could have dreamed of. But, asks Danny Bird, is her legacy as a cruel opportunist (as well as someone willing to mutilate the severed enemy of a fallen enemy) entirely fair?
encoded: After Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great orator and defender of Roman republicanism, was murdered in 43 BC by agents loyal to Mark Antony, his killers delivered his severed head and hands to Rome. There, they were displayed on the speaker’s rostrum in the Forum after Antony’s wife, Fulvia, came to gloat over the gruesome spectacle. Removing the pins from her hair, she repeatedly stabbed Cicero’s now-still tongue – symbolically silencing the man whose eloquence had done so much damage to her husband’s standing, as well as her own honour. Or so the story goes... Fulvia’s life has become entwined in the story of Rome’s transition to one-man rule. Born to Marcus Fulvius Bambalio and Sempronia during the twilight years of the Roman Republic, she was a scion of two of the city’s most respected and wealthiest plebeian families – part of the general citizenry, as opposed to the privileged patrician class. At a time when politics was a male vocation, Fulvia’s innate political instincts distinguished her as an outlier during some of the Republic’s most climactic events. Fulvia’s short-lived marriages #1 and #2 Fulvia initially gained prominence through her marriage to Publius Clodius Pulcher, an ambitious demagogue who appealed to the plebeians. When he was killed in 52 BC by associates of his political rival, Titus Annius Milo, Fulvia had his bloodied corpse displayed in the street, whipping up a mob of his supporters and sparking Milo’s exile. After the customary 10-month mourning period, Fulvia marred Gaius Scribonius Curio. Having maintained the loyalty of her first husband’s plebeian support base, she soon mobilised it around Curio’s own political aspirations. But it was amid the geopolitical turmoil unleashed by Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC that Curio’s – and thus Fulvia’s – fortunes soared as the couple aligned their ambitions with Caesar’s. Read more | What does it mean to 'cross the Rubicon'? However, Curio’s death during the battle of Bagradas in N…

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Blood, sweat & marble: examining ancient bodies
type: item
date: 2023-01-25T09:24:25.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman women
description: Caroline Vout takes us under the dust covers and presents the flesh and blood realities of life in ancient bodies
encoded: Imagine an ancient Greek or Roman body, and the first picture that pops into your head is probably made of marble or stone – perhaps an austere bust, or a gleaming, musclebound sculpture, polished, cold and pale. But what about the experience of living in a real body, in all its pleasure, pain and flaws, during antiquity? Speaking with Elinor Evans, Caroline Vout presents the flesh and blood realities of life – and death – in ancient Greece and Rome. Caroline Vout is the author of Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body (Profile Books, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Roman Britain: what six objects can reveal about life for women at Hadrian’s Wall
type: item
date: 2022-08-24T08:19:31.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Roman Britain course
subject: Roman Britain
subject: Roman women
description: The soldiers who garrisoned Hadrian’s Wall were all men, but what of the many women of diverse backgrounds who lived on and around the frontier? Bronwen Riley selects six objects that offer precious insights into women’s lives at the edge of the empire...
encoded: As is so often the case when exploring the past, we have a clearer picture of the lives of men – particularly Roman soldiers – on Hadrian’s Wall than of the women who lived alongside them. Yet artefacts found on the frontier reveal much about the varied experiences and backgrounds of women in the society that emerged in Britain’s military zone. Here, Bronwen Riley highlights six such objects... The tombstone of a slave who married her master An intriguing example of what an artefact can reveal about the lives of women at Hadrian’ Wall is an elaborate gravestone of the mid-to-late second century AD, from the cemetery outside the Roman fort of Arbeia (South Shields). It depicts a woman, dressed in all her finery, sitting with her spindle on her lap. The Latin inscription beneath this picture of domestic comfort and industry tells us this is Regina, a freedwoman, wife of Barates from Palmyra (Syria) and a member of the Catuvellauni tribe, who died at the age of 30. Beneath, a line in Palmyrene laments: “Regina, freed woman of Barates, alas!” This tombstone reveals the complex and ambiguous nature of relationships in the Roman world, particularly in Britain, on the empire’s north-western frontier. Here is a woman from the peaceful south of Britain – the Catuvellauni tribe were based around Verulamium, near modern-day St Albans – who was enslaved, and bought by a man from Syria. At the time of her death, he had granted her freedom and regarded her (in Latin, at least) as his wife. However, neither Regina nor Barates was a Roman citizen, so any form of marriage they may have contracted would not have been recognised under Roman law. Read more | How important were enslaved people to Roman society? Barates may have been a merchant, and the style of the gravestone suggests that it was the work of a Palmyrene craftsman, implying the existence of a Syrian community in Arbeia. How did this enslaved southern British woman end up on Hadrian’s Wall? She may have been born into sla…

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In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome
type: item
date: 2020-03-26T03:30:00.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Evergreen
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman women
description: What is known about the sexual predilections of the men and women of ancient Rome? What were their attitudes to extra-marital sex and same-sex relationships? And how scandalous were the Roman emperors? Author Paul Chrystal steps inside the Roman bedroom and reveals how, right from the start, sex was linked to momentous constitutional development for the Roman state...
encoded: According to Philip Larkin's best-known poem, Annus Mirabilis, 1963 is the year in which sex was invented in Britain. For the Romans it would have been 750 BC. Of course, like us, Romans and Latins had been having sex forever but, according to Roman historian Titus Livius Patavinus (aka ‘Livy’), soon after the founding of Rome (in 753 BC), sex attained indelible and inextricable political and historical importance in the annals of Rome. Right from the start, sex was linked to momentous constitutional development for the Roman state. The first instance was the 750 BC rape of the Sabine women – a carefully executed example of nation building in which the Romans replenished their dwindling supply of fertile women by carrying off the wives and daughters of the neighbouring Sabines. Soon after, sex was implicated first in the overthrow of the tyrannical monarchy and the establishment of the republic, and then in the restoration of that republic so pivotal to Roman democracy. During the former, virtuous Lucretia [a legendary Roman matron whose fate played a key role in the transition from a Roman Kingdom into a Roman Republic] took her own life in 510 BC after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, last king of Rome. In the latter, virginal Verginia was stabbed to death in 449 BC by her own father to avoid the shame of violation (stuprum) by Appius Claudius, one of the decemviri [an official commission of 10 men]. Preservation of sexual virtue – pudicitia – cost Lucretia and Verginia their lives; so important was pudicitia to Roman values, history and society. Later, Roman historians like Livy embellished the legendary women of the past with the sexual mores they insisted their contemporary women should enshrine. A sense of duty Sex for most Romans was undoubtedly gratifying, but it was also a duty: largely speaking, it was probably more gratifying for the men and more a duty for their women. Men delighted in displaying their vir – manhood an…

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Call the (Roman) midwife
type: item
date: 2019-03-26T12:51:10.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman women
subject: Royal children
description: Even today, childbirth can be arduous, even dangerous – so how did mothers deal with the challenges in antiquity? Laurence Totelin introduces the midwives of the Roman empire and explores their techniques
encoded: Marcus Ulpius Amerimnus and Scribonia Attica, a husband and wife who lived in the second century AD, rest together in their funeral monument at Ostia, near Rome. According to an inscription on the walls of the tomb, Scribonia herself commissioned it for the eternal rest of her family and freed-people. Marcus was a surgeon, as we learn from a bas-relief on the tomb, where he is represented in the act of treating a leg wound, next to his – rather oversized – surgical instruments. Scribonia was a midwife, as illustrated by her own bas-relief, where she is shown delivering a child. A naked woman sits in a birthing chair (a special seat with handles for the mother to grip during contractions), her belly swollen. She is supported by a woman, perhaps a relative, while the midwife sits on a low stool in front of them, ready to catch the baby; she looks straight out at us rather than at her patient’s genitals, perhaps to spare her blushes. Read more Violence, rebellion and sexual exploitation: the darker side of Ancient Rome 7 things you (probably) didn't know about Roman women Scribonia, as another of her names, Attica, indicates, had Greek origins, as did her mother Scribonia Callityche; their ancestors probably included slaves. But the midwife Scribonia had gone up in the world: she had made a good marriage with a skilled healer, and she had acquired wealth. Like her husband, she had tools, which she brought to women in labour: the birthing chair and the stool on which she sat were hers. Childbirth in the Roman empire, as everywhere in the ancient world, was women’s business. Female midwives and family members brought children into the world and attended to the care of newborns. However, with the exception of inscriptions or art on funeral monuments such as that of Scribonia, almost no first-person accounts of pregnancy and childbirth in ancient Rome are available; our knowledge is mediated instead through the writings of male authors. Admittedly, some of these men were v…

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Agrippina the Younger: the first true empress of Ancient Rome
type: item
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical people
subject: Roman women
description: Through she is often defined by her male relatives, Agrippina the Younger – matriarch, wife and murderer – made her name in her own right. Emma Southon charts her rise to power for BBC History Revealed
encoded: Julia Agrippina is best remembered now as the tyrannical mother of mad emperor Nero, or as the overbearing and murderous wife of the emperor Claudius. Rarely, she is remembered as the sister of another emperor, Gaius (Caligula). She is almost never, however, remembered as a woman in her own right, free from the distorting lens of her male relatives. But during her lifetime, Julia Agrippina, more commonly known as Agrippina the Younger, made unique and extraordinary inroads into the spaces of Roman political and social power, to the extent that she ruled for several years as her husband’s equal in power. She was the first true empress of Rome, although you’ll struggle to hear anyone refer to her as such. Born into the Roman ruling family of the first century, the Julio-Claudians, Agrippina was destined to be at the centre of Roman power, but more likely, as a woman, just to the side. Her mother, Vipsania Agrippina (Agrippina the Elder) was the granddaughter of the deified first emperor Augustus, while her father Germanicus was both the adopted son of the emperor Tiberius and biological grandson of Mark Antony. They were for a time Rome’s most beloved couple. Before Agrippina was 20, though, both her parents were dead and it was widely believed that Tiberius had murdered them both. Whim of the emperors During this time, little is known about Agrippina the Younger, except that she was married at the age of about 13 to her much older cousin, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. Her situation changed when she was around 22 when Tiberius died and her brother Gaius, who would be known as Caligula, became emperor. The women who built the Roman Empire 6 women who changed the course of Roman history Mary Beard on why Rome ruled the world His first priority was to rehabilitate his family’s reputation after decades of being maligned by Tiberius, and so he pulled all three of his sisters into the centre of the Roman state. He showered them with all the honours the state could give, incl…

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