Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter

I'm Lauren Ginsberg, professor of Ancient Rome,

and I'm here to answer your questions from the internet.

This is Ancient Rome Support.

[upbeat music]

@Abe_Eagle, why did Romans wear togas?

The average Roman did not go out of their house

hanging out in a toga because togas were extremely long,

extremely complicated gowns to put together.

So even extremely elite Roman citizens recognize the toga

as a ceremonial gown.

I like this image because we have all these people

who are wearing things that are decidedly not togas.

What they're wearing is the basic Roman garment

that any one of any status,

male or female would wear,

which is what's called the tunic or the tunica.

And this is essentially a long T-shirt.

@C450hs, did the Romans really wash their clothes in urine?

Yes, and essentially, so do we.

So if you look at any of your household cleaners,

you will see that one of the highest ingredients

generally is ammonia.

It's very caustic, so it's not always very good

for your things, but it cleans extremely effectively

and so the Romans were able to recognize

that urine when stored for quite some time,

tends to break down into ammonia.

So when you would bring your clothes to a fullonica,

so this is a laundromat essentially in the ancient world.

First thing was it would go into a vat

in which highly concentrated urine would be poured

and you would let it sit there.

Then the clothes would be washed with clean flowing water

in three to four separate vats,

until the end, it was basically perfectly clean

and it could be line dried.

FinnHuckster, did the Romans really have vomitorium?

Yes, but not in the way that you mean.

It is true that if you look at some urban plans in Rome,

stadium buildings, amphitheaters, theaters,

places where tens of thousands of people would come,

you'll often find the word vomitorium that's written there

and somehow a myth has been created

that this is where decadent Romans would go

after they ate too much food

and they would purge themselves.

This is not what those words mean.

It comes from the Latin word vomo,

vomere, which basically means to send forth

and so yes, on the one hand send forth your food,

but on the other, it can mean to send forth people.

So what these were were actually large, large stairways

to get lots of people out of a stadium very quickly.

So we actually still use the exact same technology

that Romans called vomitorium.

We just don't call them vomitorium

and I for one, think maybe we should.

@NotlandLEW, man, they didn't even have popcorn

back in Ancient Rome, true story.

What did they snack on in the Colosseum?

This made headlines last summer

because they've actually started to do excavations

in the drainage system of the Colosseum and in the sewers,

'cause if you think about it,

if you go to a rock concert today,

you can see everything sticky on the floor.

People throw their food all over the place.

Where does that go?

In Ancient Rome, it would go down into the drains

and it would go down into the sewers

and that means that things that can survive

for those millennia, we can be able to tell

that those were the kind of foods that were snacked on.

All sorts of varieties of nuts

and residues of nuts have been found in these sewers.

Fruits, for example, figs and peaches

and other fruits, grapes that were easy to carry.

Also, what they discovered was that people seemed to bring

or at least have access to small portable grills,

sort of like tailgating grills, little braziers

where they could grill meat at the time

as you watched people fight to the death and animals die.

@Juadog, why does concrete from ancient Rome stand up better

than modern concrete?

If we look at this dome in the pantheon of Rome,

it looks pretty spectacular today.

If we consider that this dome is made of concrete

and we think of a bridge

that might have been built into your city in the 1970s,

these two things do not look the same.

So just this past summer, a team of civil engineers from MIT

set out to figure out what this was,

and they think that they have an answer.

If you look at Roman concrete,

you can see in the matrix these chunks of white material.

So this group of MIT scientists figured out

that these white chunks called lime class were deliberate

and were also proof

that the Romans used something called quick lime,

as opposed to lime that had been premixed with water,

which had always been the assumption

and the quick lime superheats the chemical process

as it makes concrete

and so one of the things we've always known

about Roman concrete is that it can harden really quickly,

including underwater.

Also, the other property that they were able to recreate

in the lab was that Roman concrete can be self-healing

to a certain amount.

So if you put modern concrete

and roman concrete in a stress environment

so that the concrete cracks,

Roman concrete can actually heal that cracks

and the key that they think they found

is that these lime clasts, these calcifisised white chunks,

would be able to immediately distribute material

to those cracks and help with the self-healing properties.

It is much more expensive to make concrete this way,

so I'm not actually sure that we're about to have

a Roman concrete revolution,

but it is pretty cool that these scientists

think they've recreated what the secret

of Roman concrete is.

@Dylansfault, did those gladiators really fight lions?

How often did they die?

Absolutely, gladiators really fought lions.

It's not even like they would just be released

from a gate and everyone could tell.

An architectural investigation has shown the technology

through which lions below the surface of the floor

of the Colosseum would able to be launched into the air

to suddenly appear.

But the question about how often did they die,

we have tombstones that show gladiators who have won

50 different competitions in their life.

Evidence of gladiators who retire from being a gladiator

and train other gladiators

and so it wouldn't really make sense if every time

they went into the arena there was a 50/50 shot

that they weren't going to walk out.

Instead, what we see mostly when it's human versus human,

gladiator versus gladiator is a heavily stage managed,

choreographed fight that's designed

to be extremely exciting for the audience.

That doesn't mean that they weren't sometimes killed.

We do also have evidence that gladiators could be killed,

but that would've been agreed upon in advance

by whoever was running the games

and whoever had nominal control over the gladiator's life.

We have Getgators.

What did the Romans invent that we still use today?

One thing we wanna poke at is this word invention,

because the Romans sort of took things that existed,

concrete is a good example and perfected it.

But the example I think of immediately

is actually surgical tools, scalpels, tweezers, forceps.

But the actual basic tools, if you looked on say the set

of Grey's Anatomy or some medical show

would look extremely similar

to what the Romans were using in the past

and they would be made out of similar types of metal.

From ThisIsNiko, did they have bars in Ancient Rome

or did wine just flow freely down the streets?

Unfortunately, no, but they did have bars

and they had bars all over the place.

So these were often called taverna

and these would be bars where you could get drink,

but you could also get food

and this is a great example.

So this comes from some recent excavations in Pompeii,

in an area that were just open to the public.

And what you can see here is a big counter.

So you can imagine someone behind here

actually serving alcohol, but those big jars

that you see would also have food.

So stews, rich, hot items that people would either get

to have as their primary meal of the day in the bar,

or that they would then take home

where they could heat it up simply.

So these bars show up so often

in these working class neighborhoods of Pompeii

and the analogy I like to use is they show up as often

as a Dunkin Donuts does in the city of Boston.

And the graffiti that we found on them

shows that they're really a social hub of the neighborhood.

It's likely that you would just go to the pub on the corner

much the way we think of neighborhood bars today.

From Atepsflame, come on, I suppose next

you're gonna tell me that all those Greek

and Roman statues were actually gaudily painted?

Yes, I'm here to tell you that all of those Greek

and Roman statues were painted,

but I object to the term gaudily.

When people think about what it was like

to walk around the streets of Ancient Rome,

they think about these things that are here.

Bright white marble, marble buildings, marble statues.

The Romans would've found

all of this white marble extremely boring.

They loved vibrancy and they were also world-class painters.

There was a fantastic exhibit last summer

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

that actually featured a number of recreated statues

in which scientists had very carefully taken tiny bits

of pigment on statues, so you could see that say a statue

of someone like Nero here,

each layer of clothing would be painted with shades,

with texture, with patterns

and the same thing is true with Roman buildings.

Rome was a wash of color.

Nevadaknight67, was Ancient Rome really

a sexual free for all?

So here's the thing, Romans had a very healthy sex life.

Romans had sex inside

and outside the institution of marriage.

Romans had sex for procreation, yes, but also for pleasure.

Romans had access to contraception.

Romans, especially Roman women,

would rise up when they thought that those rights

were being curtailed.

Romans have pictures and works of art

and literary texts that talk about sexual desire,

that talk about sex acts,

that talk about their favorite positions.

Short, it's women on top

is the thing that they seem to like a lot.

Men have sex with women, men have sex with men,

women have sex with women, women have sex with men,

and so much like today, it was really a spectrum

of sexual behavior, sexual performance,

sexual interest.

From thekinocorner, which Roman emperor

was objectively the best?

The Roman Empire was an autocracy,

which means that all Roman emperors were autocrats.

And it means, I don't actually think any of them

were very good people.

I think in general that form of government

doesn't lead to people doing good things.

So I'm gonna take a couple of examples

of good and bad emperors.

We have a friend Nero here

who everyone probably agrees,

the worst of the worst emperors.

And then we have everyone's favorite emperor

on the internet, Marcus Aurelius.

He wrote this nice book of stoic philosophy,

and so people think he's extremely chill

and thus under his empire,

things must have gone particularly well.

But let's ask this question objectively,

the best for whom and was he objectively the best

for the substantial population of the Roman Empire

at that time, who were enslaved?

We always have an idea of what we mean as best for whom

and I just don't happen to think that the Roman Empire

produced anyone that we would consider

to be a fair ruler today.

@RoyallyAri, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?

Well, this is a little bit of an unfair question

because I have to say the answer is more than daily

because it is a professional obligation.

I probably think about the Roman Empire

more than your average person.

@NzeoraHQ, how effective were public toilets

and bathrooms at keeping people clean

and how is hygiene in Ancient Rome?

Romans had extremely advanced technologies of water.

For example, they had extensive systems of aqueducts

that were able to bring clean water

across vast expanses of land.

They had a sewer system,

as of I believe the Fourth Century BC, that's bananas.

They had public bathing facilities.

So it was very regular if you were a Roman,

no matter your status, to actually go and use these baths

on a daily basis to clean yourselves.

And yes, they also had public toilets.

This would not be the only place

that people would go to the bathroom.

But you can see in this that we would have stalls.

They would probably not lead to a lot of privacy

and you can see that running along down the side of them

would be places for channels of water.

So what were the Romans not good at in terms of hygiene

with this water technology?

Well, they didn't understand things like dysentery,

about communicable diseases that way.

And so if you're having say, reusable toilet paper,

which in the Roman world would be a sea sponge

and it's being cleaned in vinegar,

which can do some things.

That's not gonna stop things like dysentery

from being passed along.

@NzeoraHQ, what kind of toys did Roman children play with?

We have so much wonderful information about the value

that was put on playing as a social emotional strategy

for raising Roman children.

One of my favorite is actually this doll.

This particular one is made out of ivory

and what's so impressive about it is you can see

that the limbs are articulated.

So you can see that you can sit this doll down,

you can have her stand up

and this doll actually also has the famous hairstyle

of the Roman empress at the time, Julia Domna.

So she's also a high fashion doll.

We know that dice games were very common.

Walking toys that would clearly teach little toddlers

how to walk and a lot of the building blocks

that teach children how to play with each other

were considered particularly important,

and with this doll could also be considered

extremely beloved objects that someone would keep

well past their girlhood.

From @El_Gringo_Loko,

what was the average lifespan of a Roman peasant?

This is a really great question

because you're gonna find on the internet

when you look this up,

this idea that the Roman average lifespan was 35 years

and then people often think as a result that if you made it

to 35, you were grandparent age

and that's just not true. 'cause we have to think about

what an average means.

Infant mortality in Rome was astronomically high.

Most children died within the first year of birth.

So that was just infant mortality.

Child mortality, about 50% of children died by age 10

and you can see already why that's lowering

and lowering that average.

So if you made it to age 10, as a lower class Roman citizen,

whether you were living in the country,

you had a decently high chance of making it

into your mid 50s and we know plenty of people

lived beyond that.

Our next question is from Krista Callen.

How does an archeologist look at an ancient column

and conclude this was a Roman brothel?

They could not do that.

We do know that there's a very famous purpose-built brothel

in Pompeii, and the building is entirely full

of tiny stalls and in each of the stalls

is only a bed shaped platform.

Above the stalls are extremely graphic sex acts

and then there is graffiti.

And my favorite that has survived is over one stall

and I have to imagine this was from the sex worker

that wrote, Thrust slowly.

Putting all of those things together, it's pretty easy

to see that this was a place where sex work

was on the agenda.

Numahonetweetu, what rights did Roman women gain

in Imperial Rome?

Roman women couldn't vote, and that's a big one.

But Roman women could be citizens.

Roman women could own property in their own name.

They could inherit property in their own name.

Roman women could be business owners

and some of whom were using their own business sense

to advance their children, especially their sons

in their political ambition.

Roman women could hire a lawyer to defend themselves

or to bring a suit in court.

Roman women lived with a greater degree of freedom

across social classes than we're used to seeing

in the ancient world.

@EngCreamCakes, how many civil wars did Rome have,

including the Byzantine era?

That is a very hard question to answer

for very good reasons.

One is that the Romans thought that civil war

was something inside them

that you had to fight against every day or it would erupt.

Romans had documented civil wars,

and they're the ones that actually came up with this term

where two Roman armies would fight each other,

headed by two Romans.

But what's the difference between that

and an uprising of enslaved people who are part of

the Roman population like Spartacus?

Is that a civil war?

What's the difference between the whole system

of Roman provinces rising up against Roman rule?

They're part of Rome and they're rising up

and they're fighting, but they're fighting

more with guerilla War tactics.

Do we call that a civil war?

You can see it becomes very hard to parse

when one part of Rome is fighting the other.

But it happens all the time.

@BloodOorange, what the fuck did Ancient Romans wear

during the winter?

I know, right, 'cause all the images we see

are in these sort of lightweight linen shirts

and like sandals.

That's our image of Rome and it snowed in Rome.

Well, the key to Roman happiness,

and this would be layers in the same way that it is today

and Romans actually had access, even then, to material

that we know is the best to keep you warm

and that is wool.

So the average Roman would wear socks.

Yes, Romans really pioneered the idea of socks and sandals.

They would wear extra thick socks,

but they also didn't just wear sandals.

They had thick leather shoes

and the more layers of leather,

the better those shoes would be in winter conditions.

And then cloaks, tons and tons of beautiful wool cloaks

on top.

@RobertSmith29th, I was wondering

how the Romans produced their Roman coins

and how they put the emperor onto the coins.

The way the Romans made coins was a by hand process.

So what you would do is you would have a base

and you would put in this base a mold

that had one side of the coin.

And in that mold you would put a metal disc

and I would put it face down.

So you can imagine it's almost like a clam with two molds

and the metal disc goes in here,

then I take a hammer and I whack it.

And that's called stamping.

And that would put the images on both sides of the coin.

From @theistinthought, did Ancient Romans go on hikes

or go to the beach for relaxation?

Yes, there was a heavy leisure time activity in Rome

where people would go to the coast,

especially the Bay of Naples, and have seaside villas

and go to these really fancy baths,

sort of like a spa vacation,

but it could last months.

The extreme elite of Rome

that would have access to these seaside villas.

So the average Roman person probably didn't have a lot

of time to be able to do that.

So what did they do to relax?

Rome had a lot of holidays around a festival calendar

and these festivals would feature gladiatorial matches.

They would feature chariot racing.

They would feature theatrical spectacles,

including the ancient equivalent of musicals.

And we have evidence that people,

even from rural communities, would come in

for these festivals, especially the big ones.

That's because they were state holidays.

In the empire, there were over 100 days of public holidays.

@jus_Tamon, so like in Ancient Rome,

what was living there like?

People worked and then went home and did they pay rent?

The average Marcus, I should say instead of the average Joe,

he could be a shoemaker,

could be someone who sews clothing, could be a launderer.

Any of the activities that you need done

in your general city life would be the same thing

that they would need done in Ancient Rome.

Sometimes home was right above you.

If they were quite wealthy, they might own the space

that their shop is in.

But often they would be renting out both of those spaces

from a landlord

and you bet the Romans complained about their landlords.

Shoddy upgrades, vermin that weren't being taken care of.

A neighbor who parties too hard

and wakes the baby.

@Tweekfan25, did they have weed in ancient Rome?

Yes, but not in the way that you were asking.

Romans really loved hemp as a plant

and they loved how easy it was to make ropes with it.

We find hemp products all over the place

and hemp, the word for it in Latin is cannabis.

So you can see the connection,

but there's no sense that the Romans, first of all,

smoked it.

Smoking was not a particularly good thing in Roman culture.

But there's also not great evidence

that they recognized

its sort of mind altering possibilities.

@Kevin_Feeney, it will always be faintly extraordinary to me

that Roman historians cannot agree on the answer

to the superficially simple question

of how many Roman emperors were there.

So when Augustus is the first emperor,

he declares a successor, Tiberius.

Tiberius becomes the next emperor

and miraculously we have two.

So why is it so hard to keep counting?

Eventually Rome becomes big

and eventually other people decide they could be emperor

and what does it take to become emperor?

For a lot of Romans, the answer is an army

that they're paying can declare them emperor

and they can besiege Rome until they are declared emperor.

Flash forward to later in the Roman Empire

when we have divided centers.

Is the center of Rome the city of Rome anymore, no.

There is a center in Constantinople.

Sometimes it's Milan, sometimes it's Ravenna.

We're getting them multiple emperors

or people who could be perceived as emperors

at the same time.

But we also get usurpers.

Guys with armies that come in, think, I could do this.

And who gets to declare the emperor at that point?

There aren't rules for this one way or another.

It can become really hard for us to tell who is emperor

and sometimes all we have is a single coin as evidence.

Just one coin that one guy who claims to be emperor minted.

Was he emperor, we have no idea.

@TerraEncounters, how many Gods did Ancient Romans worship?

It's not really fair to ask how many gods they worshiped.

It's more fair to ask what Gods didn't they worship.

Romans saw divine in lots of things.

Springs had a divine being.

Caves had a divine being.

They had a festival to ward off mildew

and it was called the Robigalia and it was in April

and that showed that they also thought that mildew

had a divine spirit in it,

that they could essentially bribe

to not destroy their crops.

So the Romans had a really heavy investment

in seeing the divine in as many places as possible

and finding a way to connect with that religiously.

@ShakeShur, I need someone to tell me if Romulus

and Remus were real, like immediately.

Romulus and Remus are the legendary founders of Rome.

They were twins who had been expelled from their patrimony

by an evil king, and they were supposed to be drowned

in a river and the legend goes that a she wolf found them

and nursed them and prevented them from dying.

And then when they grew up, they were able to overthrow

the evil king and they were able to found

their own civilization.

But even the Romans are pretty skeptical about this story.

You can see a lot of the historians later saying,

really, a she wolf, are we sure it wasn't a sex worker

that we just called a she wolf?

This was a pretty legendary story,

sort of like George Washington and the cherry tree,

and they didn't put much factual faith behind it.

All right, that's all the time we have

for questions for today.

I hope you learn something weird

and interesting about Romans and we'll see you next time.