The Dark Side of Ancient Rome

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal Episode Summary: "The Dark Side of Ancient Rome" Release Date: May 5, 2025

Hosts: Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling
Guest: Historian Emma Southern

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Introduction

In the "The Dark Side of Ancient Rome," Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve into the murky and often gruesome aspects of Roman society, particularly focusing on murder and its various manifestations in one of history's most influential civilizations. Joined by esteemed historian Emma Southern, the episode unravels the complexities surrounding violence, legal structures, and societal norms in ancient Rome.

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Roman Perspectives on Murder

Legal Framework:
Emma Southern elucidates that, contrary to modern perceptions, murder in ancient Rome was not strictly illegal for a significant portion of its history. Early Roman law, particularly the Twelve Tables, lacked comprehensive statutes against murder, rendering it more of a civil matter rather than a criminal offense. This meant that personal vendettas often played out in courts rather than through a centralized legal system.

Civil Repercussions:
"If you killed me, then my husband could take you to court and be like, 'Maddy totally did this murder.'" ([05:25] Maddy Pelling) — Maddy Pelling

In this framework, murder was adjudicated through civil lawsuits, where victims' families could seek recompense rather than punishment for the perpetrator. This system inadvertently normalized violence, especially among the elite who possessed the means to engage in such legal battles.

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Gruesome Methods of Execution

Sack Punishments:
One of the most horrifying punishments was the "sack," wherein a convicted individual was sewn into a sack with live animals—typically a dog, a snake, a monkey, and a chicken—and then thrown into a body of water to drown. Emma describes this as a deeply humiliating and terrifying way to die, ensuring that the victim was isolated and tormented by the presence of unpredictable animals.

"You're sewn inside a sack with a dog, a chicken, a monkey, and a snake... and thrown into a body of water and then you are left to drown while also fighting for very frightened animals." ([18:30] Emma Southern)

Flesh-Eating Fish:
Emma recounts the chilling tale of Vedius Pollock, a wealthy Roman who owned a pit of sea lampreys—flesh-eating fish used to punish enslaved individuals. When a servant broke a crystal bowl during a dinner with Emperor Augustus, Pollock executed the slave by throwing him into the lamprey pit. The lampreys would rasp at the victim's flesh, causing a slow and agonizing death.

"...letting their lampreys latch onto them and rasp them to death essentially." ([14:21] Maddy Pelling)

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Spectacles of Mass Executions

The Spartacus Uprising:
Following the notorious slave rebellion led by Spartacus, the Roman response was brutal and public. Emma narrates how 6,000 defeated slaves were crucified along the Via Appia, Rome's main road, serving as a grim reminder of Rome's dominance and the futility of resistance.

"...when they eventually finish him off, everybody who is with him, they crucify them all along the Via Appia... So all along the road there's 6,000." ([11:26] Emma Southern)

This mass execution was not only a method of punishment but also a form of public spectacle designed to instill fear and reinforce the absolute power of the Roman state.

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Gladiatorial Combat: Blood Sport and Spectacle

Structure and Spectacle:
Gladiatorial games were a cornerstone of Roman entertainment, blending martial skill with theatrical performance. Emma explains that while gladiators were highly trained fighters, the outcomes were often influenced by the "editor" (the person overseeing the games). The decision to spare or kill a gladiator could be arbitrary, adding an element of unpredictability to the spectacle.

"It is deliberate homicide, which is murder by definition." ([23:02] Emma Southern)

Choreographed Fights:
Gladiator matches were meticulously choreographed, ensuring balanced and entertaining bouts. Different classes of gladiators, each with unique weapons and fighting styles, were paired to create engaging and competitive matches.

"They are paired in specific combinations... you get two big guys with swords fighting each other." ([27:08] Emma Southern)

Spectacular Deaths:
When a gladiator was to be killed, it was a clean and dramatic affair, often involving a direct strike to a vital area, such as the jugular. Emma describes the visual impact of these executions, emphasizing the theatrical release of blood.

"...a 4 to 6 foot spurt of blood. It really would make people..." ([26:23] Emma Southern)

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Magical Killings and Beliefs in Witchcraft

Belief in Magic:
Romans held a profound belief in magic and its potential to cause real harm. This belief permeated society, with many attributing unexplained deaths and illnesses to witchcraft or curses. Tomb inscriptions often cited magical causes for deaths, reflecting the pervasive fear of unseen malevolent forces.

"...Romans really, really strongly believe in magic. Like, they really think it's a thing that is dangerous and that could come and get you at any moment." ([35:02] Emma Southern)

Notable Cases:
Emma discusses the case of Germanicus, a beloved Roman prince who died under mysterious circumstances. Many believed he was cursed by Piso, a figure accused of using magic to eliminate rivals. This case highlights how political intrigue and personal vendettas were often cloaked in accusations of magical wrongdoing.

"...the person who allegedly kills him is magical." ([37:33] Emma Southern)

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Moral Objections and Societal Views

Christian and Philosophical Critiques:
While the majority of Roman society appeared to accept and even relish violent spectacles, certain groups, notably early Christians and Stoic philosophers, voiced moral objections. Christians condemned the brutality of public executions, while Stoics criticized the lack of control and excessive crowd involvement in such events.

"They have quite a lot of moral objections. And you get kind of like stoic philosophers will sometimes talk about how they don't like the lack of control, basically." ([32:17] Emma Southern)

However, these dissenting voices were often marginalized or silenced, ensuring that the dominant culture continued unabated.

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Concluding Highlights

Favorite Murder Case:
Emma Southern shares her admiration for a rare instance of domestic murder in Rome, where a high-ranking individual murdered his wife and failed to cover up the crime, believing in the infallibility of his social status and connections. Emperor Tiberius's direct intervention and the subsequent legal repercussions underscore the fragile nature of justice in the Roman elite.

"...he throws her out of the window and then just kind of tried to style it out essentially... Tiberius sees what's described as evidence of force employed." ([39:18] Emma Southern)

Final Thoughts:
The episode concludes with hosts expressing their fascination and horror at the depths of Roman brutality. Emma's insights provide a chilling glimpse into a society where murder was often personal, performative, and intricately tied to power dynamics and societal norms.

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Notable Quotes

• Maddy Pelling: "We're shining a light on murder in ancient Rome... it gets very dark." ([03:02])

• Emma Southern: "If you're going to be killing somebody... make the death a little bit more chaotic and a little bit more intense." ([03:16])

• Anthony Delaney: "You're gonna laugh at death, guys." ([04:19])

• Emma Southern: "Attempting to make these murders performative shows how deeply ingrained violence was in Roman culture." ([Undocumented Timestamp])

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Further Resources

For listeners intrigued by Emma Southern's exploration of Roman history, more information can be found at emmasouthen.com or through her latest publication, A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women.

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If you enjoyed this detailed dive into ancient Rome's dark alleys, please subscribe to "After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal" on your preferred podcast platform and leave us a review!

Transcript

[Anthony Delaney]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Anthony Delaney]

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[Maddy Pelling]

Hi everyone, it's Maddie. I'm jumping on to say that we've had a lot of new and lovely listeners lately who've joined us and we wanted to say that you are really welcome. Now, because of this and because it's a bank holiday here in the uk, we thought that we would rerun one of our earliest episodes, one with the great historian Emma Southern. It's all about the dark and gory side of ancient Rome. It's a good one and trust us, it gets very dark. So needless to say there is adult and sensitive content throughout this episode. We will be back with new episodes on Thursday including the story of the Edwardian doctor Death. See you then.

Hello and welcome to After Myths, Misdeeds.

And the Paranormal, the podcast that takes.

You to the shadier corners of the past, unpicking history's spookiest, strangest, and most sinister stories indeed.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm Anthony.

[Maddy Pelling]

And I'm Maddie. And today we're shining a light on murder in ancient Rome.

[Anthony Delaney]

Because that's what we do here on After Dark. It was a really interesting conversation that we had with Emma Southern. Right. Like, it was one of those ones where there was a couple of times where you and I just looked at each other going, is this actually being said out loud?

[Maddy Pelling]

She, I mean, she's just the most fantastic guest. She is so incredibly knowledgeable and so generous with that knowledge and she's great fun as well. And we talked about possibly some of the most gruesome things we've ever talked about. For me, it's the flesh eating fish that stand out. More on that to come. What about you, Anthony? What was your favorite gruesome part of our discussion with Emma?

[Anthony Delaney]

I had never thought of the fact that if you were going to be killing somebody, which wasn't crime apparently, but if you were gonna be killing somebody, what you should do is tie them in a sack with a dog, a snake, and a plethora of other animals as well, just to make the death a little bit more chaotic and a little bit more intense.

[Maddy Pelling]

I was like, it's so imaginative.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm sorry, there's a sack of animals and you're tying a human person into the thing as well. This is just the most intense. Not to mention, of course, flinging people across coliseums and all the like. There is every type of death in this episode and the truth is, there truly is.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. I mean, Emma has uncovered some truly remarkable ingenuity in human killing. It's grim, it's, dare we say, funny in places.

[Anthony Delaney]

You're gonna laugh at death, guys.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's interesting. And we should say that no dogs were harmed in the making of this episode.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, actually some dogs were like, they're ancient dogs.

[Maddy Pelling]

But some ancient dogs may have been harmed.

[Anthony Delaney]

We didn't harm any dogs.

[Maddy Pelling]

We have not done the harming of the dogs. Right. I think. Without further ado, let's hear from Emma. Emma Southern, welcome to After Dark.

[Emma Southern]

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, it's so lovely to have you here. Big fans, big fans. You will be very excited listeners to hear that we've brought Emma all the way here to speak about murder.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, the best thing to talk about, but even better because it's Roman murder. So it's even gorier and weirder and more horrible than modern murder.

[Maddy Pelling]

We're so excited. Why murder in ancient Rome? What's different about it compared to murder any other time? People have been killing each other since the beginning of time and continue to do so.

[Anthony Delaney]

What's the best way to look at life? People have been killing themselves.

[Emma Southern]

If there's a fundamental thing about humans, it's that we like to kill each other.

[Maddy Pelling]

We do. Some more than others.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, well, the Romans liked to kill each other more than most people. They are a really, really murdery people. They don't have a law against murder for a surprisingly long time. So they have a kind of maybe sor cobble together, try not to kill people law in the 12 tables. But it's not really anything. It's just like, do your best.

[Maddy Pelling]

So just to get this right, it is legal to kill people kind of.

[Emma Southern]

In ancient Rome, but it's a civil matter is what it is. So if you killed me, then my husband could take you to court and be like, Maddy totally did this murder.

[Maddy Pelling]

So if she kill me as revenge for that, would that be okay?

[Emma Southern]

I mean, yes, but then you're family would have to come back.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's a downward spiral. It's a downward spiral.

[Emma Southern]

But they are very litigious. And Romans love what they love even more than killing one another is taking each other to court. So he could take you to court, or he could go to your family and be like, look, she murdered Emma. You give me some money and we'll call the whole thing quits. But it would be a civil matter. So they've not got like a police force or anything involved until like 80 BCE, which is like late Republic. So quite late. 700 years into Rome existing. Wow.

[Anthony Delaney]

So what was the kind of outlook on murder then? Were people kind of just going, oh, such and such was murdered the other day, it's just a cause of death or was there like any kind of moral attached to it?

[Emma Southern]

There is a moral, like, try not like don't do it. I mean, if people do murders and nobody's gonna invite you to dinner, but one you have. People don't really go around murdering other free people that much. And that is a really big distinction because they have slaves and they have so many enslaved people by the time. Like they're expanding constantly. And the thing that the Romans do as soon as they have invaded somewhere is they try to not to Kill that many people because they make so much money off of enslaving and selling people. And they call this war commerce, which is lovely, but they have so many enslaved people in the houses, in their fields, in their. In every form of industry. And those people you can kill with impunity. So if you need to take your temper out on somebody right up until the 4th century, like mid 4th century, is when you get the first law that says you can't murder enslaved people, but in these specific ways. And then it does like a whole. There's a whole page in the. In the law books that survive from them. That is all the ways that you can no longer kill an enslaved person. So it goes. You can't beat them to death unless it's by accident. If you're beating them and they happen to die, then that's fine. Obviously, obviously, you can beat them really hard, but just don't let like on purpose. You can't beat them to death, can't set fire to them. You can't push them off of a cliff. You can't drown them. And there's just like this huge list of ways that people apparently were killing enslaved people all the time. So if you have that kind of desire to take your temper out on somebody, then there's always an enslaved person who's nearby. And if it's your enslaved person, then you don't have to do anything. And if it's somebody else's enslaved person, then you just have to pay them what they're worth.

[Maddy Pelling]

And would enslaved people be entitled to murder as a reaction to that that would happen?

[Emma Southern]

There is actually a very famous case from the reign of Nero, because the law, by the time of the empire, the kind of emperors, there are so many enslaved people in Rome that it's actually made the free Romans quite anxious. So they instituted this law that if an enslaved person murdered their master, their owner, their enslaver, then every single enslaved person in the household would be executed in.

[Maddy Pelling]

So really reasonable there.

[Emma Southern]

Extremely reasonable. And much like the Romans do in everything. In no way is it wildly out of proportion. But what happens is a Gaia who used to be the urban prefect, who's very, very rich, is murdered, murdered by one of his enslaved attendants, possibly because he promised to free this guy and then reneged on his promise, which is a terrible thing to do. So he kills him, and the army are preparing to kill all of the other slaves. But he has in that house, just in that house in Rome, 400 enslaved people, including women and children. And so when they're all taken to be crucified. And this happens like in a very public place in Rome. And the people of Rome, they're kind of non massive slave owning landowners riots basically, and try to stop it. And so it goes to the Senate who have a discussion like, are the people right and we should stop this and this is actually extremely bad, or were we right all along and we should do this? And the argument is preserved by Tacitus. He says, like, basically the argument against is, ooh, that's terrible. But the argument for is as free Romans, they all also have. Everybody in the Senate also has 400, 200, several hundred enslaved people in their house. They don't put their own clothes on, they don't do their own hair. They don't, they've never done anything like they don't put their. Don't tie up their own shoelaces. They have just enormous armies of enslaved people in the houses. And the conservative argument says, if we don't do this, then all of those enslaved people that put you to bed and make your food and pour your water, they'll know that they can kill you and get away with it. And how are you going to go home and go to sleep if you don't do this? And make them know that there is going to be consequences and not just for them, but for their wives, for their children, for their brothers, their friends. And so all of the men in the Senate go, no, yeah, you're right. My peace of mind is more important. Like this system of slavery is way more important than these people. And so they send in like half a legion to surround the entire group of enslaved people and they crucify them.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

In one go. 400 people.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. It's not the most people they ever did in one go. I think 6,000 is the most.

[Anthony Delaney]

In one go.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

I mean, that's a village.

[Emma Southern]

It is. That's after the Spartacus uprising. So when they eventually finish him off, everybody who is with him, they crucify them all along the Via Appia, the main road outside of Rome. So all along the road there's 6,000.

[Anthony Delaney]

Emma just looked at me during that when she said the Spartacus uprising. Like I knew what that was. I may have a PhD in. This is all new to me.

[Maddy Pelling]

US two 18th century historians looking into the lady.

[Emma Southern]

You never seen Stanley's, Kubrick's, Spartacus. It's not got that bit in it.

[Maddy Pelling]

Weirdly, that's my kind of history, if it's on the screen. So one thing that really Strikes me about that though is that it's really as much about the spectacle as the punishment rite. And one thing that you've kind of briefed us on before we started recording Emma is just the sheer variety and inventiveness of how the Romans killed each other. Do you want to talk us through a few things? Now the first thing I want to talk about flesh eating fish.

Tell us more.

[Emma Southern]

So this is one particular guy and this is the best example of you can be a genuine psychopath like Ted Bundy. Levels of swivel eyed and cruel in the Roman world. And everybody will treat it like a minor personality quirk as long as you're only doing it to enslaved people. So we only know this story and that he did this because he tried to do it in front of the Emperor Augustus, who was a friend of his. So it's a guy called Vedius Pollock who is a kind of man about town. He's like a very rich kind of merchanty guy in late republican, early imperial Rome. And he's notorious for owning lots and lots of wild animals. Like exotic animals is his big thing. And he invites Augustus around for dinner. Augustus goes, and then one of the people, the enslaved people bringing dishes, drops a crystal bowl and breaks it. And Vedius Pollo goes, right, that's it. Execution. Can't be doing that in front of the emperor. One strike, you're out. Execution. And the slave drops their knees to Augustus and says, please don't let him do this, please, I beg you. He's not just going to execute me. He's not going to crucify me like the normal guys do. He's going to throw me in the pit of lampreys. And reveals that somewhere in his house Pollio has a pit of sea lampreys.

[Maddy Pelling]

Like a Bond villain.

[Emma Southern]

Yes. So this is like one of his exotic things that he has in his house. And sea lampreys are highly recommend. Anybody google them? Because it's really hard to really impress how horrifying they are. They are about 2 or 3 foot long. They've got no face. What they've got is a just a big circular mouth which is just teeth or like circles and circles and circles of teeth. And what they do in the sea is they latch onto bigger fish and then they just kind of rasp off the, like a kind of leech, but worse. And they just kind of suck off the flesh and then swim away.

[Anthony Delaney]

How many times have these fish been on the COVID of Vogue?

[Emma Southern]

Because they sound stunning. I mean they are under no circumstances. Genuinely horrifying. They're one of the worst things they exist. They're older than dinosaurs. Like they evolved perfectly to be nightmarish for all things millions and millions of years ago and then never changed because they're terrible. And Pollio thought this was great. And so apparently what he was doing was in order to punish enslaved people in his household, was throwing people into this and then letting their lampreys latch onto them and rasp them to death essentially.

[Anthony Delaney]

Not quick, right?

[Emma Southern]

No, because one, lampreys don't really like warm blooded things. Like they almost never bite people because they like cold blooded meat. So you'd have to like have them really be hungry in order to eat you. But also it's going to be a wound and then you're going to bleed to death basically. It's going to be they're going to rasp some bit off of you and then you're going to bleed slowly and horribly and painfully to death in the middle of one of the nicest houses you've ever seen.

[Maddy Pelling]

There's something so, I mean horrifying of course, but there's so much there about the performance of power as well. Right. And that this is in front of the emperor and I'm really interested what you said about the fact we only know about this because the emperor was there and therefore it's written down and.

[Emma Southern]

It'S an anecdote and it's only written down not because Augustus is like don't do that. But because he. It's written down in like tracks about his clemency and about how he never gets angry about stuff. And so his response is to say don't do that, that's deranged. But also he has all of the rest of the china and crystal in the house smashed in order to tell various that that's not okay. And so we only know about it because of Augustus's reaction. If he had just been like eh, or if he had been one of the worst emperors and thought that was very funny indeed, then we wouldn't know about it. And so we have no idea how many other people were doing stuff like this in their house and like doing these really performative, spectacular, like horrifying punishments to one another or to the enslaved people. We know they were crucifying them all the time. We know they were putting them on islands whenever they got sick to die because Claudius makes that illegal. And we know that they were, you know, doing things like beating them to death, burning them to death, drowning them and things like that. But these kind of elaborate punishments. And see this is what happens when you start talking about the Romans and murder is you start going like. And obviously they were beating them to death and burning them to death. As though those things aren't like soul crushingly terrible. As if they're just. Oh yeah, those are normal things that we do every day.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. And the fact that you know a lot of these things seemingly at the whims of the people enacting those punishments and then the people who are like, actually guys, maybe we don't do that. That seems completely random. And down to individual personalities.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Because so much of this is down is there's no kind of. There's no real state for most of Roman history. There's no like official police force or like written down set of laws until quite late in Roman history. And so everything is kind of at the whim of it's free for all. Yeah. It's what's called a self help legal system.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, wow.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Which is about as effective as that sounds. Yeah, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

A bag full of things that a dead person is inside.

[Emma Southern]

Yes.

[Anthony Delaney]

Tell me about this bag.

[Emma Southern]

That actually is a punishment that the Romans could enact to the one type of murder that they thought was worth legislating against, which is parricide or especially killing a father. Patricide. Because fathers in Roman culture are just unbelievably important. Like they're the most powerful, most important. And respect to your father is like not just a filial duty, but like a sacred duty. And it's against the gods to hurt your father. Disobeying your father is bad enough. Hitting your father is. Would get you dragged up into court if you, if somebody wanted to. But killing your father, if you get accused of that, that's the kind of thing that the Romans find like profane, like genuinely upsetting in a way. And so they devise this punishment which they call the sack.

[Maddy Pelling]

I don't like this already.

[Emma Southern]

Which is if you are found guilty of patricide of killing your father, then you are sewn inside a sack with a dog, a chicken, a monkey and a snake.

[Anthony Delaney]

Is it always those animals?

[Emma Southern]

Yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

Are they alive?

[Emma Southern]

They're alive.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay.

[Emma Southern]

And thrown into a body of water. So if you're in Rome, in the Tiber or the sea or whatever is closest, wherever you are in the Emma boat thrown into body of water and then you are left to drown while also fighting for very frightened animals. And it is very, very strange. It's a very horrible way to die. And when they talk about it. They talk about it in a way that is clear that they know it's a horrible thing to do. Cicero claims that the sack is done so that even when you die and then you wash up on the shore, that your bones will never know the freedom of air and soil ever again. So you have profane so badly against the world that you are never allowed to touch the world ever again. The animals, no one ever tries to explain those. They're like, yeah, and obviously we put the chicken in there and then that freaks out.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do they have symbolic meaning or. So it's just to corrupt the human body, I guess, to kind of. It's, like, embarrassing to be.

[Emma Southern]

It's deeply humiliating. It's gonna be deeply frightening for everyone involved because I feel like even being stuck with one of those animals in a bag while drowning, they're going to be freaking out.

[Anthony Delaney]

And can you pick your own dog and your own snake and your own monkey?

[Emma Southern]

Would you want to take your own dog or.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, I don't know. It'd be better than a stranger's dog.

[Maddy Pelling]

Anthony has a very badly behaved puppy, so maybe.

[Emma Southern]

Maybe. Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm not going to drown her.

[Maddy Pelling]

Just for clarification, just to be clear.

[Emma Southern]

I don't know if I'd want to go down, like, with my dog and be like, at least I have the comforting presence of a dog that I love, or if I'd be like, no, save her.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah. True. It's true. It's true.

[Unknown]

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[Maddy Pelling]

I mean, that says so much about the Roman psyche, doesn't it? It's absolutely fascinating. So obviously one of the sort of the most famous ways that Romans are killing each other in terms of spectacle is in the Coliseum. So let's talk a bit about gladiatorial combat and death in that scenario. Is that seen as separate from these other ways of killing that are happening?

[Emma Southern]

It is to me. I included it in the book because to me it is the same. It is very deliberate and sometimes very, very deliberate. Pause and a decision and the gladiator says, do I kill this guy? And whoever is the editor was called the editor, the person who's running the games. And I had to work so hard not to make jokes about that in the book, about editors having the power of life and death.

[Maddy Pelling]

But we all have very nice editors here if they're listening. We all love our editors.

[Emma Southern]

But it's deliberate homicide, which is murder by definition. It doesn't happen as much as people think it does in the arena. So gladiatorial games are somewhere between kind of boxing and fencing, but turned up to 11 in that the pleasure of it for the most part is watching two highly trained or two groups of very highly trained warriors fight each other until one of them is forced to submit. And so watching that kind of. It's not something that I would go to see, I don't think. Cause I don't like boxing. But it is watching two kind of very well trained, very expert fighters, fighters fight one another and like the parrying and the maneuvers and you can get excited about that stuff. But then at the end. They will be bleeding and hurt. And as far as we can tell from kind of graves and things like that, a lot of them just die off stage from head injuries, from broken bones, from wounds that don't heal. But there is always the possibility that it always ends with one going down and then the editor deciding whether they can live or die by turning the thumb, which I don't know what that means, but yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

And is it true that we don't actually know which way up or down the thumb was in relation to?

[Emma Southern]

We don't know. All we have is we have one reference to the turning of the thumb. The editor turning the thumb, but we don't know which way.

[Anthony Delaney]

You should watch Gladiator. The answer's in there.

[Emma Southern]

It is a very accurate film. I'd say it's spot on in terms of all the history and the. It's all great.

[Anthony Delaney]

You're very welcome. That solved that mystery.

[Emma Southern]

I wouldn't have thought of that. Ridley Scott. I was there all along. Yeah. So most of the time they're probably going to say no one. Because the gladiators are very expensive and you have to train them and you can't just go killing them off all the time. But sometimes they're going to say yes if the audience wants it or if it seems like a good ending or if it just seems right in the occasion. And then they're going to put a gladius straight through the jugular.

[Maddy Pelling]

So it's quite. They're not messing around. After the big spectacle of the fight. It is quite a clean.

[Emma Southern]

It is. Although when I was researching this, I was like, I wonder what that would look like. Like, is it gonna be like. Nobody's really gonna see very much. Cause they're far away in the arena. But some people who like doctors and an army specialist person who I didn't wanna ask how he knew, told me that it'll be like the inn will be pretty clean. But once they take the sword out, because of the adrenaline and because the amount of effort that it takes to get blood up into your skull, you're gonna get like a 4 to 6 foot spurt of blood. And so that would look pretty spectacular.

[Anthony Delaney]

Spectacular, yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

That's a real cry pleaser.

[Emma Southern]

It really would make people.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I like the way we all went at the same time. Spectacular.

[Emma Southern]

See, the thing is that when you think about it, you would be like if you were there and you'd gone and you saw it and it was a run of rare occasion, you kind of would be like, wow.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. Yeah, you're getting your money's worth there.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, this is gruesome. But at the same time, look at that flow.

[Emma Southern]

I mean that is a real. Yeah, like on six foot of blood, you're not gonna see that every day.

[Maddy Pelling]

So in terms of the fighting that's going on before these spectacular spurting deaths are happening or not happening depending on the whims of the editor and whoever else. What kind of fights. I know that they. Am I right in thinking they recreated battle scenes and myths sometimes? Was that a big part of it? Was everything really choreographed and scripted?

[Emma Southern]

So they're choreographed in a way. There's certain, there's like various classes of Gladiator. So everybody has their like specialism. So you get like the mermelone, which is the kind of famous one. You see them in Gladiator with like the big round hat that looks like a diving bell thing. And then you have like galley and you have like guys with nets and guys with tridents and all of these different types. And then they are paired in specific combinations. So you will always see like a. You'll never see like a light armed one who's just got a net and a trident against a heavily armed one who's got a giant broadsword or whatever. Okay.

[Maddy Pelling]

So they're matched quite evenly.

[Emma Southern]

So there's always going to be an even match because nobody wants to see a Premier league team play a part time team from your like village.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'll pretend I understand football for that matter.

[Emma Southern]

When I was writing this I had to like do so much googling to I've got. For some reason I thought it would be really good idea to put loads of football metaphors in.

[Maddy Pelling]

Just googling sports analogies.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. And like watches best football team, Football fc. But nobody wants to see that. And the same way they don't want to see like a puny guy with a net fighting a big guy with a sword. They want to see two big guys with swords fighting each other. And there are going to be like certain moves that everybody knows. Like they're going to be like, oh, he's doing this one, he's gone that tactic. And then when on special occasions you do get these like really massive of recreations of battles, but they tend to be executions rather than gladiatorial for the most part. So you get things like Claudius had this big thing where he drained a lake and it ended up being a minor disaster because they had this whole party and everybody went out from Rome to go and see it and he did this thing where he recreated a huge naval battle with enslaved prisoners on rafts, like, fighting each other and people.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow.

[Emma Southern]

This is the only place where it is recorded that the we who are about to die salute you. That's the only time that that was, as far as we know, that was ever said.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, so there is some truth in there. I'm glad it is.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm telling you guys. Primary source.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. So that's. So they all have this big fight on the lake. Loads of people die. It's full of bodies, and then they go to open the kind of gate to drain it, and then it doesn't work. They've not dug it deep enough. And so it's just really embarrassing. And everybody has to go, oh, gosh. So they die for nothing. And he does it again six months later. But you do get. And they sometimes will build kind of big special sets so that they can do this, but they do tend to be executions. Like, everybody who is involved in this is going to die. And if they don't die in it, then they're going to be.

[Anthony Delaney]

And what kind of numbers are we talking here for those kind of arranged executions?

[Emma Southern]

Probably in the hundreds. I would say it's going to be in three figures. So it's going to be pretty spectacular.

[Anthony Delaney]

Also, just the expectation on the enslaved people to go, right, you're gonna die on Wednesday, but before you die, here's an entire script that you're gonna have to learn. And they're like, oh, what's in this for us? Nothing.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, well, you get this a lot because executions end up being so common that they have to liven them up basically to, one, just to show off what they can do, and two, just to keep it entertaining so that people will still come and see them. Because you need people to see the execution in order for the execution to have an impact. If you execute people off stage in the Roman psyche, then you've like, what's the point? The point is that everybody needs to see that this is what happens when you do anything against the Roman state. And it's brutal and it's horrible and it's humiliating. And so you do see most of the descriptions that we have, apart from the opening of the Coliseum, but we have descriptions from Christians, early Christians, who were executed and who were often pushed into engaging in, like, big mythological reenactments that would end up with them being executed. And so, like Saint Perpetua, who is executed In Carthage in 212, they try to make her dress up as a priestess and then kind of Frolic about in this mythological scene, and she's like, no, like, if you're gonna execute me, you're gonna execute me with some dignity. They do not execute her with dignity. She is gored by a cow. But. Well, yeah, but they do, like, press these into people. And some people obviously do push back, and they're like, okay, if you're not gonna go out there, then. Or if you're gonna make it look rubbish, then we won't make you do it. But a lot of the time, people will go along with it, and a surprising amount of the time will join in the fighting and possibly in the hope that they might be able to, because everything's such a whim in Rome. Like, you never know when you're gonna fight really well. And then the emperor or the editor or someone will go, oh, it was really good. Save him.

[Maddy Pelling]

So there is opportunity, potentially.

[Emma Southern]

Potentially. I mean, it never. Not very much, but you never know. Or the emperor will just be like, no, these people here, I don't like any of them. Just murder them all.

[Maddy Pelling]

Time to go.

[Emma Southern]

It's really a 50. 50.

[Maddy Pelling]

Was there moral objection from Romans about this? Were there any Romans who sounds like a great.

[Emma Southern]

I mean, if they were, they weren't recording it. Christians were unhappy about it for fairly obvious reasons. Mainly that they were very often, by the second century, the guys that were.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, they were being made to do.

[Emma Southern]

The bad choreography, and so they thought it was very bad. They also, like, just generally don't like games and things like that. And so they have quite a lot of moral objections. And you get kind of like, stoic philosophers will sometimes talk about how they don't like the lack of control, basically. So Seneca writes a bit about how he doesn't really like the games that much and Cicero does. But it's related to their philosophical outlook, basically, rather than any great objection to the murdering part. It is the crowd kind of interaction that they're less keen on. But if there were, they didn't survive. They've no kind of, like, great surviving tracks against these executions. And most of the things that do survive are the celebrations of them. The. Oh, my God, you won't believe what this guy did. They record them because they are so weird to see and so, like, outrageously theatrical and elaborate that people write them down in a kind of, wow, that was wild. And that is how they survived. Rather than people writing them down being like, they made this guy into. They dressed him up as Icarus and then just wanged him across the arena.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow.

[Emma Southern]

Which is a Thing that happened in the hundred days of the opening of the Colosseum, where they dressed to go up as Icarus and then.

[Maddy Pelling]

Well, there was a hundred days to film. Yeah.

[Emma Southern]

Right. And they had some ideas. Some of them were unbelievably horrific. But, yeah, one of them is that they. Wow.

[Anthony Delaney]

With the intention that they knew he would die at the end of the day.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. With the intention that he would die on impact. Yeah. Like, that's the hilarious. They do the whole myth and then he. And there's another one where they had this kind of. This all comes from Marshall's descriptions. He write loads of poems about the opening of the Coliseum under Titus. And so he's written all of these lovely poems about the things that he saw. And so there's one where they kind of set up this beautiful scene of a kind of bucolic garden. And there's, like, little bunnies hopping about, and they've dressed up these people as, like, Orpheus. And he's lying down in the garden and then a bear just eats him.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, that's one way to go.

[Maddy Pelling]

Fantastic.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. And so they're, like, very, like. They have narrative tension. Like, you know, something bad's gonna happen, but you don't know when. And you don't know, like.

[Anthony Delaney]

But the bunnies are nice.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah.

[Maddy Pelling]

And, you know, the bad. So we've done a really performative. Performative killing of all kinds. What about magical killing? What about killing that's happening surreptitiously from a distance? This is a thing in Rome.

[Emma Southern]

This is a thing that I think people don't talk about enough, which is that the Romans really, really strongly believe in magic. Like, they really think it's a thing that is dangerous and that could come and get you at any moment that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Has a tangible impact in the real world.

[Emma Southern]

And so you get lots of epitaphs, for example, like tomb, that say, Sandra died at 28 because she was killed by witchcraft by somebody unknown.

[Anthony Delaney]

Sandra.

[Emma Southern]

Poor Sandra. And, like, this person has died of long illness. And sometimes they'll say, you know, she was it. Poor Sandra was ill. Fair. Sorry. If anyone's called Sandra, I hope you're right.

[Anthony Delaney]

Sandra's fine.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah, she's, you know, she died of long illness for a year and eight months. And we know, therefore, that it was witchcraft. Somebody cursed her, and we don't know why. Or you will. Sometimes they'll say they know exactly who cursed her. So be like, my daughter died after a year of long illness, and she was cursed by my ex. Freed woman, who I Married and then she left me, which is a real one that happened where an 8 year old died and her father put up this massive tombstone that says she died because I freed my enslaved person and married her. And you'd think she would have been grateful, but she wasn't. And she just ran off with someone that she actually liked and then cursed my daughter.

[Anthony Delaney]

Actually that's something because in the 18th century, which Maddie and I tend to look at in our own work more often, witchcraft and magic is very gendered generally where mostly towards women. Is that what do you find that in ancient Rome too?

[Emma Southern]

Not so much. You do very much get men who are accused of magic as well. And wizards are a big thing. So like the biggest cases that we have. Poisoning is a woman's thing, but magic is for both. So you have Germanicus who is killed. He's a prince of Rome, so he's the adopted son of the emperor Tiberius. And everyone thinks that Tiberius hates him because he's cooler than Tiberius and better looking and has more children. Those like those things mean that Tiberius hates him.

[Maddy Pelling]

These are the criteria for masculinity, right?

[Emma Southern]

And people actually like him. And nobody really likes Tiberius. Like Tiberius is a very awkward man. He doesn't like anybody and nobody likes him. Whereas Germanicus is a kind of charming and delightful man and everyone thinks he's charming and delightful and he's magical and. No, he's not magical. The person who allegedly kills him is magical.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay.

[Emma Southern]

His guy called Piso. So Germanicus goes off to the east and he dies in Syria of kind of mysterious unknown illness. Unrelated. He had just come back from a Nile cruise. So he dies of something unknown and everybody believes that Piso has killed him by putting curses and magical things, which are described as blood soaked ashes and human remains in his walls of his house and that this curse has killed him.

[Anthony Delaney]

I mean, it's probably true. It wasn't the cruise. It wasn't the cruise. It's never the cruise.

[Emma Southern]

No, it's never. Never any of the diseases.

[Anthony Delaney]

I mean, okay, I know we need to wrap things up, but there's so many questions and I just want to ask Emma just, just one thing before we wrap things up.

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[Anthony Delaney]

You clearly have, and I mean this in the nicest way, possible quite a lot of murders in your head.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Ancient Roman murders. Is there one that's your favorite?

[Emma Southern]

My favorite actually is one of the very few cases that we have of like real domestic murder, like interpersonal murder, which is when a guy threw his wife out of a window, like on the Palatine Hill in the middle of Rome. He had just chucked her out of a window and there's kind of possibly maybe there was something going on with like some family stuff to do with him abusing some children maybe, but he threw her out of the window and then just kind of tried to style it out essentially was so really expecting that nothing would happen to him because he was very high ranking and he told everybody that she had sleepwalked her way out of the window while he was asleep. He had just woken up to find her that way suspicious. Her father was a very close friend of Tiberius's and Tiberius would take these whims sometimes where he would go off and investigate stuff so himself. Yeah. So he went and columboed the situation and actually went to the house when the murder occurred to see the scene of the crime, which happens so rarely in Rome that they hadn't tidied it up. And Tiberius sees what's described as evidence of force employed. So like the curtains have been pulled off the wall, like the furniture's all over the place. But no one has bothered to try and cover up the crime because it's just so unlikely that anyone is ever going to come and look and see what's going on. And as a result he allows a prosecution to be brought against the husband. The husband is convicted and then his friends try to get him off by saying that his ex, his kind of previous wife before the one he killed, had cursed him. So that was why he had done it. It wasn't because he was a bad guy, it was because he had been cursed by magic.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's because he has one ex that's a witch and the other one sleepwalks.

[Emma Southern]

Yeah. Okay, so this ex wife is like, hang on, hang on. I'm a what now?

[Maddy Pelling]

Hang on.

[Anthony Delaney]

I was just shopping.

[Emma Southern]

I was literally. I'm over. We've not spoken in years. Yeah. And the whole situation is just so. Obviously it's just so out of what you would expect. Like you expect if someone does a murder, the first thing in a boo is like, oh my God, hide the evidence. But he's just so convinced that there will be no chance that he'll ever. That anyone is ever gonna question him about this. That anyone would ever question his word that, oh, she just sleepwalked out the window, that he just doesn't bother to tidy.

[Anthony Delaney]

Also, side note, Tiberius would have had a podcast.

[Emma Southern]

Oh, yeah, he definitely would. There's a whole thing with him investigating dinosaur bones as well. That's great.

[Anthony Delaney]

Season two.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. Someone write this now, please, Emma. I think that's all we've got time for. Thank you so much. This has been quite literally a bloody delight. So thank you.

[Emma Southern]

Sorry for all of the night nightmares that I've given me.

[Maddy Pelling]

Thanks for listening to After Dark and to Emma Southern for being the most fantastic guest.

[Anthony Delaney]

Now, if you want to find out a little bit more about Emma's work and why wouldn't you after that teaser of an episode, then you can go to emmasouthen.com or you can find even more deaths in A History of the Roman empire in 21 women, her new book, which is out now.

[Maddy Pelling]

If you enjoyed this episode of After Dark, please, please follow wherever you get your podcasts. And if you'd really like to, you can drop us a review and those are always welcome.

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