The Sex Worker Who Murdered A Roman Emperor

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Episode: The Sex Worker Who Murdered A Roman Emperor
Host: Kate Lister
Release Date: June 6, 2025

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Introduction

In this captivating episode of Betwixt The Sheets, host Kate Lister delves deep into the intriguing intersection of sex work and political power in ancient Rome. Titled "The Sex Worker Who Murdered A Roman Emperor," the episode explores the life of Marcia, a prominent sex worker who played a pivotal role in the assassination of Emperor Commodus. Joined by Professor Anise Strong, author of Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World, Kate unpacks the societal norms, legal frameworks, and personal stories that paint a vivid picture of sex work in ancient Rome.

The Genesis of Professor Anise Strong's Research

[05:19] Kate Lister: "What brought you to writing that book?"

[05:38] Professor Anise Strong:
"Honestly, it was early in graduate school when I discovered the story of Vestilia, a wealthy senator's wife known for her numerous lovers. Her conflict with Emperor Tiberius highlighted the complexities of sex work and personal freedom, inspiring me to explore this nuanced subject further."

Legal and Social Status of Sex Workers in Rome

Kate and Professor Strong discuss the legal frameworks surrounding sex work in ancient Rome, highlighting that while prostitution was legal and taxed, sex workers occupied a precarious social status known as infamia. This status affected their reputation and the reliability of their testimonies in court.

[11:04] Professor Anise Strong:
"Prostitutes couldn't marry senators, and although their profession was legal and taxed, they were granted certain legal protections, such as the right to refuse clients, as seen in the case of Manila."

[12:35] Professor Anise Strong:
"The Romans fined women like Manila rather than imposing harsher punishments, recognizing their right to self-defense and refusal of unwanted advances."

The Brothel of Pompeii: A Case Study

The brothel in Pompeii stands out as a unique archaeological site, designed explicitly for sex work. Unlike luxurious portrayals in literature, Pompeii's brothel was a utilitarian space with minimal privacy, reflecting the reality of everyday sex work.

[18:57] Professor Anise Strong:
"The Pompeii brothel, known as the 'Lupanar,' is the only identified establishment designed specifically for sex work. Its graffiti provides invaluable insights into the lives of sex workers, revealing their names and personal interactions."

Marcia: The Sex Worker and Assassin

The episode reaches its climax with the story of Marcia, a freedwoman who becomes the principal mistress of Emperor Commodus. Their relationship illustrates the blurred lines between personal relationships and political power in Rome.

[30:08] Professor Anise Strong:
"Marcia rose to become Commodus's principal mistress, wielding significant wealth and influence. She even intervened to save Christians condemned to die, showcasing her complex role in Roman society."

However, tensions escalate as Commodus's erratic behavior leads him to view Marcia as a threat.

[32:53] Kate Lister:
"Did she get away with it?"

[33:03] Professor Anise Strong:
"Initially, Marcia evaded punishment for orchestrating Commodus's murder by having him strangled in his bath. However, her freedom was short-lived as political tides turned, and she was executed shortly after."

Theodora: Transition and Transformation

The discussion shifts to Theodora, another influential female figure associated with sex work, who becomes Empress of Constantinople. Her marriage to Emperor Justinian marks a significant shift in the legal treatment of sex work.

[34:18] Professor Anise Strong:
"Theodora transitioned from being a principal dancer in chariot racing factions to becoming Empress. Together with Justinian, she banned sex work in Constantinople, leading to the forced conversion of sex workers into nuns or their return to family life."

Unfortunately, this initiative faced resistance and limited success.

[36:25] Professor Anise Strong:
"Many ex-sex workers resorted to suicide, indicating the harsh realities of Theodora's reforms."

Christianity’s Influence on Roman Views of Sex Work

The rise of Christianity significantly impacted societal attitudes towards sex work, shifting perceptions from a tolerated profession to a stigmatized one.

[39:25] Professor Anise Strong:
"Christianity made sex work less respectable. Festivals like Floralia, which celebrated sex workers and actresses, faced vehement opposition from Christians who sought to transform them into symbols of shame."

Gender and Sexuality in Roman Sex Work

The episode also explores the dynamics of male sex workers in Rome, noting that while predominantly catering to male clients, there were instances of male-to-male sexual services.

[43:17] Kate Lister:
"Do you think there's any chance, any chance at all that women were maybe going to the brothel?"

[44:02] Professor Anise Strong:
"There's some possibility. Additionally, gladiators in Pompeii attracted a following that may have included female admirers, blurring traditional gender roles in sex work consumption."

The Precarious Nature of Sex Work

Throughout ancient Rome, sex workers navigated a volatile existence with limited rights and constant societal judgment, making their lives both precarious and dynamic.

[37:30] Kate Lister:
"Women had so few rights anyway, that it must have been an extraordinarily volatile existence."

[46:59] Professor Anise Strong:
"Most likely, successful transitions for sex workers included roles as madams or managers, though evidence is sparse. One notable case is Vibia Chrestis, who proudly identified herself as a madam on her tombstone."

Notable Quotes

• Professor Anise Strong [05:38]:
  "Vestilia was a really wealthy woman, a senator's wife, and so forth. She was notorious for having many lovers."

• Professor Anise Strong [12:35]:
  "She has the right to both self-defense and to refuse a client. That's huge."

• Professor Anise Strong [30:23]:
  "Marcia intervened to save Christians, showing her complex influence in the imperial court."

• Professor Anise Strong [34:44]:
  "Theodora and Justinian's ban on sex work was the first known law making sex work illegal, but it faced significant resistance and limited success."

Conclusion

Kate Lister and Professor Anise Strong provide a nuanced exploration of sex work in ancient Rome, highlighting its integral role in society, the complex interplay with political power, and the shifting moral landscapes influenced by emerging Christian values. The story of Marcia serves as a compelling testament to the agency and influence that sex workers could wield, even in a society as patriarchal and rigid as ancient Rome.

For listeners eager to dive deeper into these fascinating historical narratives, Professor Strong recommends visiting her Western Michigan University website and exploring her comprehensive work on Roman sex work.

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Stay Tuned:
In upcoming episodes, Kate will uncover "The Truth Behind Jane Austen" and continue the sex worker miniseries with a focus on the medieval world.

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Transcript

[Kate Lister]

Hi, I'm your host, Kate Lister. If you would like betwixt the Sheets ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Kate Lister]

Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cait Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello, hello and welcome back. But don't get too comfortable. I have to give you the fair dos warning. And we call that because if you keep listening to this and you get upset, well, fair dos, we did tell you. Here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. Does that feel safer? I feel safer right on with the show. You are joining me live from the streets of ancient Rome where the annual festival of Floralia is in full swing. It's part religious festival for the end of winter, part burlesque and completely and entirely Roman. Which means it's bonkers. What they're doing is they are celebrating a fertility goddess. Of course they are. And how are they gonna do this? Right, here we go. Sex workers are going to be paraded naked through the streets whilst flowers are being thrown at them and wine is being drunk. So it's a little bit like the Met gala, but with less clothes, more hookers and some goat sacrifices. But let us retire to a taverna, open a bottle of wine, and we can unpick the Roman relationship with sex work and meet some of the celebrity sex workers and the thousands and thousands of sex workers who got nowhere near celebrity status. Are you ready for this one? Me too. Let's it do. Do it. Why do you look funny?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Mad? Oh, money. Of course.

[Kate Lister]

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Goodness.

[Kate Lister]

What beautiful d. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. Sex work has been around as long as we have had money to purchase sexual services with. But by the time we get to the Roman period, What was it like to sell sex in ancient Rome? What was it like inside a Roman brothel? What was it like to be a sexually enslaved Roman? And why did the Pope want them to race chariots for him? In this brand new miniseries, I'm going to be joined by some truly fantastic guests and we are going to explore the ways in which sex work existed and how it has been treated throughout history. Today I am chatting to author, lecturer and expert in Roman sex work, Professor Anise Strong, who's going to take us back to ancient Rome and help us try and get to know and understand the people that were selling or. Or were made to sell sex. Togas at the ready betwixt us. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Professor Anise Strong. How are you doing?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Terrific, thank you.

[Kate Lister]

It's so nice to have you here. You are the author of Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World, so you are an excellent person to talk to about sex work, sex for sale, the sex business in ancient Rome. But can I ask you first of all, what brought you to writing that book?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Honestly, it was in particular early on in graduate school, I happened on the story of this one woman named Vestilia who lived right around 2,000 years ago. And Vastilia was a really wealthy woman, a senator's wife and so forth. And she was apparently notorious for having many lovers.

[Kate Lister]

I like her already.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yes. So she has many lovers. Her husband is apparently fine with this, but the Emperor Tiberius is not fine with this because it sort of goes against his idea of family values and so forth.

[Kate Lister]

So the husband was okay, but the Emperor decides to get involved.

[Professor Anise Strong]

The Emperor decides to get involved. And so the Emperor orders her husband to divorce her on the grounds that she's an immoral woman.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And the husband refuses, and Emperor says, well, she's an adulteress. And at that point, Vestilia does something that's really interesting, which is that she goes on down to the City hall of Rome and she registers herself as a sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, there's a move.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Oh, yes.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Because sex workers can't commit adultery because it's their job to sleep with people.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And apparently Vastilli isn't alone in this. We're told that dozens of other women who wanted to live their sexual lives freely try this dodge of going and registering themselves as public sex workers.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Can we still do that? Is that an option?

[Professor Anise Strong]

No, I think not so much. So the Emperor Tiberius is not thrilled by this dodge, and so he passes a whole new law that says that wives of senators cannot be sex workers. Spoil spot. Indeed.

[Kate Lister]

Right. Okay. And what happens to Verstasia? Does she end up on an island, starving to death?

[Professor Anise Strong]

She does end up on an island, unfortunately. He demands again then that her husband divorce her. And her husband asks for three months, which is sort of interesting. He wants some time to consider his options, but ultimately he does, and she goes off to an island in exile and spends the rest of her life there, as far as we know.

[Kate Lister]

What is it with Rome, exiling women to islands? That's a running theme, I've noticed.

[Professor Anise Strong]

It is a running theme. So there's not really a death penalty for Roman citizens in most cases and so forth. And so I think exiling to an island is the easiest way to sort of get them out of the picture, more or less. On what quality island depended on your crimes and who you were, I think. So that story just really got me interested because it made me think that what I'd sort of been told previously was that we had this giant distinction between good women and bad women. And Wealthy, rich women and poor, impoverished, mostly enslaved sex workers. But here was this wealthy, powerful woman who chose to be a sex worker legally. And that seemed to be like, it messed up the whole story about this sort of narrow division here. And so that's what started the book.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose, this history as well. You must have a lot of popular mythology to contend with because if there's one group of people that we like to think of as debauched perverts, it's the Romans. They have that reputation. We project a lot onto them. Is that difficult as a historian of ancient Rome to kind of pick through that?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Very much so. And also because it's not just that that's a modern view, although it very much is. That's something that I'm writing about in my current book, but it's also an ancient view. It shows up in the ancient Roman comedies and it shows up a lot in the early Christian literature. One of the favorite things that the early Christian writers do to cond Rome is to talk about how in particular it's not just that there are sex workers doing debauched things, but that there are powerful and influential sex workers and that they have to.

[Kate Lister]

That's where we draw the line.

[Professor Anise Strong]

That's where we draw the line. It's one thing if they're on the streets or in the brothels and just pleasuring men for money and so forth, but when they're using that power to gain wealth or influence or independence, that's when they become threatening. Wow.

[Kate Lister]

So the thing that it's very easy to miss about Roman history as well is it's a lot longer than you think it is. The period that you're looking at, is it hundreds of years or thousands of years?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So I wound up mostly focusing on sort of big Hundreds on basically 200 BCE to about 200 CE because I had to cut things off a little bit. But even then I cheat a little bit. You know, I end with the. The Empress Theodora in Constantinople, who was certainly a sex adjacent worker in that she got her start as sort of a exotic dancer for the chariot racing team. So.

[Kate Lister]

So we're looking at hundreds of years of history and things can change so much in just a few years, weeks even. What was the state of the legal framework around the sale of sex in ancient Rome? Was there laws around this or was it just you carry on and do whatever you fancy?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So mostly there laws, these sort of parallels. The law that senators wives can't be prostitutes is a law saying that prostitutes can't marry senators. That people who are sex workers can't then marry up and escape, that there's an attempt to sort of say that sex workers permanently have a bad reputation essentially, but it's perfectly legal. They get taxed pretty heavily, in fact, and that suggests that it's pretty profitable and so forth as an occupation. And interestingly, they have some protections under law as well, which was something I hadn't really expected before I started writing the book.

[Kate Lister]

What kind of protections?

[Professor Anise Strong]

These aren't consistent and so forth. But there's a case of a woman named Manila who's sex worker, sort of early Roman republic and so forth, and she's finished working for the night, she's gone to sleep and one of her clients, who's a wealthy rich boy, comes throwing stones at her window at night to try to wake her up, to get her to come down or let him come up and have sex. And she yells at him that, you know, no, she's done, and so forth. And he keeps throwing stones and so she opens her window and she throws a stone back at him and she hits him. And he then brings her up on charges of assault. How dare she?

[Kate Lister]

Not impressed with that one. What did the Romans make of that?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So the fascinating thing is the Romans fined. For her, it's brought to a public trial and it's considered that she had the right to both self defense and to refuse a client.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, they did something nice. Oh, I'm so pleased.

[Professor Anise Strong]

I know it's not.

[Kate Lister]

I don't hear that very often when we're talking about the Romans. It's normally someone's been executed, they've sacrificed something, it's all awful. I wasn't expecting you to say that at all.

[Professor Anise Strong]

I wasn't expecting to find that. But no, they do say, they say, hey, she has a right to refuse clients. And that's. That's huge. As I'm sure you know from this series as well as others, sex workers having the right to refuse clients is not something we find as often as we'd like to. Now, how often that worked in practice and so forth is a lot harder to say and so on.

[Kate Lister]

Was there a legal status that they occupied? The status of infam? What was that?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So infamia is basically you're still a citizen, but yeah, it's sort of literally bad reputation and so forth that you're not considered.

[Kate Lister]

That's a really weird legal status. Like you've got the legal status of being a bit of a wrong unit.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yeah, a bit of a wronging. And then one of the main things is your testimony in court isn't considered reliable and so forth. The sort of the assumption is that you might lie or cheat and so forth. The other way in which that comes up that I find really interesting is there are laws against catcalling on the street. Is catcalling the right word for England or.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, yeah, yeah. Catcalling the women or the women catcalling men?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Catcalling women. But it's a law in gradation and it says that it's wrong in any case to sexually harass a woman verbally on the street, so forth. But you get a worse fine if the woman is dressed respectively. If the woman is dressed like a matron.

[Kate Lister]

That's the Romans I know and love. They're there, okay?

[Professor Anise Strong]

And you can't call. You get a worse fine. Whereas if the woman is dressed like a sex worker, even if she isn't a sex worker, that's where the sex reputation, then you still shouldn't harass her. Like, they still have that bit of protection. You still get a fine for it, but it's a lower fine for that. And if she's dressed like an enslaved woman, again, you still shouldn't harass her. It's still a fine, but it's a lower amount of money that you have to pay in return for it.

[Kate Lister]

Is there anything in that law that says how a sex worker might be dressed? Because I'm always fascinated about that. Like, was there a style? Was there a fashion stuff? I know that, like sometimes you see on like Reddit forums and sometimes I read it in popular history books that the sex workers, by law, they had to have bleached blonde hair and red lips. And I'm never quite sure if that's right.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yeah, so we see that a couple of times reference to the law, they have to wear yellow and. Or they have to wear togas. And the wearing togas is really weird and interesting because normally, you know, we think of togas as being what Romans wear, but the toga was a really uncomfortable and sort of bulky garment. And the sense is that even elite Roman men only wear it in the same way that men wear formal business suits and so forth. You'd wear it to go to the senate, but sex workers are supposed to wear togas. So my best explanation of that is that that's the garment you wear when you're saying you're acting in public. You're being the most public person.

[Kate Lister]

I see. Okay, yes, I can see the joining the dots there. The men wear it when they're out in public. And because you're a public woman, you have to dress like that too.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Right. But that said, we see a couple of references to that in histories and legal texts, but there is not a single surviving visual representation of a woman that is definitely of a sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

God damn it. So close. So, so close.

[Professor Anise Strong]

There's nothing that I can point to that can say this is actually what they looked like. There's a scholar who's an expert on this named Kelly Olson, who's terrific, and she thinks that I agree with her that there may be a big difference between the reality of what sex workers wear, which seems to be more or less whatever they like, although probably designed to attract, you know, attention for their jobs, and this idea that they're all, you know, going around, yet with the bleach blonde hair and the yellow togas and so forth.

[Kate Lister]

Who else would have been regarded as an infamia? Who else would have got that legal category?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Actresses, absolutely. Are one of the big categories there. And definitely some bleed over between actresses and sex workers. Waitresses in taverns.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, wow. I did know that. Okay.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And anyone who's working in a tavern and one of the legal sources says any woman who sells things in public. But again, maybe. But we have all these gravestones that are of people proudly proclaiming themselves as woman shopkeepers and so forth. So I think, again, it's a spectrum rather than a binary, as with so many things.

[Kate Lister]

What sources do you use to try and get as close as you can to the real lived experience of people who'd been selling sex in ancient world? Because it's notoriously difficult to try and get to.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So most of our sources are written by men, which is something we can't really get around, unfortunately.

[Kate Lister]

No.

[Professor Anise Strong]

But I tried to combine sort of like the histories and the plays. The Roman comedies are a really big source there and so forth with the archaeological evidence, the artistic evidence, or to some extent, the sort of lack of artistic evidence and inscriptions and so forth, grave inscriptions, where we can find them.

[Kate Lister]

Let's talk about Pompeii. We've got to talk about Pompeii. And anyone who's been to Pompeii has been to the brothel. It's their biggest attraction. But it's actually like the Holy Grail of sex work history. Is that building. Could you just tell us a little bit about why it's so significant?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Absolutely. Also, you had a great episode with Sarah Leffitt Richardson, who's amazing a couple months ago about it. The thing about that building Is that it's the only one we've identified so far that seems to have been designed specifically for sex work, the only one.

[Kate Lister]

That we know about.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So I think there are a bunch of other buildings that I think were used as brothels, but often they are cases like their fancy villas and so forth that seem to have. The real estate market took a downturn. They were repurposed as brothels, or they were like the back ends of bathouses and so forth. But the Pompeii Lupin are. Seems to have been designed for that, for the beginning. It's not with the concrete beds and so forth in it and so on. And so that combination of it's designed for it and it's not. It's. It is the Holy Grail space and so forth. But it's a great counter to all the images we get from. From literature and modern media of the luxury idea of the brothel. Because it's not a luxurious space. It's frankly not a space that, you know, you'd want to stay in for very long.

[Kate Lister]

It's very, very little privacy. What there would have been would have been a curtain pulled across. I guess it's not as small as I thought it would be. But when you consider that there would be, like, several people shagging in here, it is quite small for that.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Several people shagging, maybe some people standing in line, like, it's very much a get in, get out. And then, of course, the other great thing about it, and this is something that Sarah talks a lot about, is the graffiti collection inside, which, because it's Pompeii, has been so much more well preserved than in most of the other brothel sites around the empire that I've looked at, which all have their own awesome things, but don't have that sort of record of at least some of the names of the people who actually worked there.

[Kate Lister]

I loved the fact that the graffiti is some of the people at work there leaving notes for one another. And it's like swapping almost jokes with each other. I don't think that exists anywhere else in the entire world.

[Professor Anise Strong]

No. And I think there's a couple blocks away, there's a tavern, the Tavern of Salvius, which has these famous sort of comic strip frescoes right outside it, which seem to suggest things you shouldn't do in the tavern. And the first of them is, it depicts a man and a woman kissing. And the sort of speech bubble says, I don't want to do it with Murtale Mertale being a name. And the thing is, Mertale is one of the names that shows up most frequently in the brothel a couple blocks over in one of those front rooms, in one of the two nicest rooms. And the other one that shows up really often is the name Salvia. And this tavern belongs to a guy named Salvius. And so I think that maybe he's trying to promote either his own enslaved woman who's a sex worker, or possibly his own daughter, saying, you don't want to do it with Myrtale.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, there's the Romans that I know and love. There they are. Yep.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So that sense of competition like this is not a tavern for people who like this woman.

[Kate Lister]

This is God, that's wild, isn't it? I'll be back with Anise after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

One of Sarah's arguments is that the brothel, it's not a rich establishment and that possibly it was used by enslaved people and it certainly would have had enslaved people working there. That was something that kind of blew my mind because I, up until that point, I didn't realize enslaved people could have money to go to a brothel.

[Professor Anise Strong]

No, absolutely. I think when you start thinking about the clientele, which is a really an interesting question. So the thing is, you're an enslaved person in Pompeii and it's the end of the week and you've been given your tiny little stipend for from the slave owner, probably something like the equivalent of a dollar or maybe a pound a day and so forth.

[Kate Lister]

Right.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And you have a choice at that point. You could save it up and hope that in five, ten years you could use that money to go and buy your freedom, or you could go get yourself, you know, a decent meal, or you could go to the brothel and get some pleasure. You could go to, you know, the amphitheater for some gladiatorial games and bet and hope to, you know, win. And I think that for most people, even people not living in slavery, but most people in general, in the same way as today, that short term pleasure is going to be a lot more tempting than the save it up and hope that, you know, in five years you could use it to buy yourself out of slavery.

[Kate Lister]

Yes. Do you think there's more weight to the argument that the brothel in Pompeii and perhaps others were used by enslaved people, poorer people? Would it be true that richer, more wealthy people would have had sex with their slaves, with enslaved people?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So here I think there's an important distinction that I've gotten from looking at literature. I think that the heads of the household are absolutely having sex primarily with their enslaved people because frankly, they have easier access and to them it's free and so forth? I think that another major source of the clientele for brothels, though, are the young men of that household. Okay, the people who don't want to have sex with an enslaved person and then have to explain that to their dad and mom, basically, either because their dad is sleeping with the same person or because their mom might have ideas and so forth, that those are the people who have some extra money to spend and so forth and who are going outside of the household for their sexual needs. So those enslaved people and then free working class men who aren't married or don't have enslaved people themselves were the.

[Kate Lister]

People working in these brothels, would they all have been enslaved? And do we know anything about their experience?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Not as much as we would like, which is always the case, and so forth. In the brothels themselves, my guess is some combination of mostly enslaved and free. But there's a huge spectrum. There are people who are working on the street, literally. You know, our word fornicate comes from the idea of having sex under an arch and so forth, because you could lean your back up against it to people working at a brothel who probably have, you know, slightly more comfort and protection and so forth, all the way up to the wealthy freelance courtesans or escorts and so forth, who I think were also significant figures and so forth within Roman society. And those would mostly, I suspect, not have been enslaved. Those would have been people who maybe had started out enslaved but had earned their freedom and were either operating completely independently or, you know, possibly together with a pimper madam.

[Kate Lister]

The professional mistresses, they're always fascinating because, as you said, this all exists on a huge spectrum, and you'd be hard pushed to say that they were respected, but they certainly had a kind of celebrity or could achieve a certain kind of celebrity.

[Professor Anise Strong]

No, absolutely. And could wind up, you know, being treated. We have a couple of the more famous ones getting referred to as second wives and so forth, or as almost like wives and so on. They'd get invited to the best dinner parties. And, you know, Cicero at one point comes home and writes this sort of gossipy letter to his friend. It's like, you'll never believe I went to dinner tonight at so and so's house. And. And his mistress, you know, the courtesan, was right there dining with us, and he's clearly a little bit scandalized by it, but mostly in the, you know, oh, my gosh, I can't wait to go home and tell my friend about this, rather than I'm gonna stalk out of the house because I can't believe I'm dining with a sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

Are there some notable names left to us that we know about, these sort of celebrity courtesans from the Roman period?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yes, absolutely. Marcia is from the Imperial period. She winds up as the principal mistress of the Emperor Commodus, which is not bad at all. And Commodus is famous now because of the movie Gladiator and so forth.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. Yes. I was just about to say, wait a minute. Wasn't that Joaquin Phoenix? And didn't he get killed by a gladiator? Yes, no, that's true.

[Professor Anise Strong]

But in the first draft of the script, Marcia was Played an important role. And then Ridley Scott wrote her out, much to my soundness. Yes, it is true.

[Kate Lister]

Right. I'm gonna write him a letter after this. We're not. That's outrageous. Okay, so who was Marcia?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So, Marcia. So Marcia's a freed woman. And she seems to have been sort of a freed woman in the imperial court. And one of the interesting things we know about her to begin with is that she's raised by a Christian eunuch. So we don't know much about her family. But she is a foster dad and she works her way up. First she marries, you know, a politician in the court and so forth. And then she marries a sort of court chamberlain. And at some point in there, she becomes Commodus sort of principal mistress. And then she starts functioning as a sort of quasi empress in a lot of ways. And we're told that she has a huge amount of wealth and financial power. One of the most interesting things is that she intervenes to save a whole bunch of Christians who'd been condemned to die in the mines in Sicily. And she personally rescues them. One of them winds up becoming pope, in fact, and so forth. It's not clear, but it doesn't seem like she thought of herself as Christian. The Christian writers refer to her as God loving, which is not true. We see elsewhere, sort of interestingly so sympathetic, but maybe not Christian herself. We're told that Commodus really like to have her dress up in gladiatorial costume as an Amazon and sort of cosplay as an Amazon, gladiator and so forth. Although it doesn't seem necessarily like she ever fought Liorina directly. She stops a couple of conspiracies against him. But then ultimately, one of her close friends happens to find a death list that Commodus has written up with her name on it.

[Kate Lister]

Oh. Oh, it's time to get out of town. It's time to leave now.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Except rather than getting out of town, what she does is she conspires with that friend or one or two others, and they murder Commodus.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, Marcia. Oh, no.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yes. No Maximus involved. No gladiator involved. They just have his personal trainer strangle him in his bath.

[Kate Lister]

Did she get away with it?

[Professor Anise Strong]

She gets away with it briefly. She gets away with it for about three months. And then the sort of puppet is.

[Kate Lister]

Not sent to an island, is she?

[Professor Anise Strong]

She's not sent to an island. The puppet guy they've put up as sort of emperor and so forth lasts for about three months. And then he gets overthrown by somebody Else. And the new person wants to seem like he's sort of defending the memory of Commodus. And so she gets executed.

[Kate Lister]

Right. Oh, Marcia. Oh, that was all a bit dramatic and unnecessary. Why would Commodus want to kill her?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So Commodus seems to want to kill her because she's trying to persuade him. It happens right. After a point where he's getting a little more unstable and is wanting to fight in the arena as a gladiator himself.

[Kate Lister]

Enough said. Right. Okay. He was losing it, right?

[Professor Anise Strong]

He's losing it. She's like, I don't think that's such a good idea. I think, you know, you should be focusing on, you know, the raining and so forth, and.

[Kate Lister]

And, wow.

[Professor Anise Strong]

He decides she's spoiling his fun.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, dear Marsh. That would have been a much better gladiator, I have to say.

[Professor Anise Strong]

I think so.

[Kate Lister]

I mean, I'm biased obviously, here, but what about Theodora? We should talk about her. Known as Theodora from the brothel.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yes. Yes. So Theodora gets her start. And again, the chariot racing factions at this point in Constantinople are incredibly powerful and influential and so forth. And besides the actual chariot racing, they have clubs, basically, and big parties, and at the parties, they have dancers, and she gets her start as the principal dancer for one of the chariot racing factions.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And that seems to have involved a fair amount of striptease and so forth.

[Kate Lister]

That kind of dancing.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Gotcha. That kind of dancing. Yes. Although, again, our sources here are biased, but. Very biased. But in any case, the nephew of the Emperor Justinian sees her doing these dances, falls in love with her, and at first they live together simply, her as his mistress and so forth. But then when he becomes emperor, he wants to make her his empress, and so he has to repeal that whole law from 600 years earlier that we talked about right at the beginning that says that sex workers can't marry senators, much less emperors.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And so he does. They get married. And then the thing that really interests me is that one of the first things that she does, they do as a couple, is that they ban sex work in Constantinople. It's the first case that we know anywhere in the world, actually, of a law making sex work illegal. And what Theodora does is they. They round up all the sex workers they can find. And for all of the women who have families that they can go back to, she gives them a new dress and some money and sends them back to their families.

[Kate Lister]

Cheers.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And then for all the women who don't have families they could go back to, they build them A convent. The Convent of Repentance. And they make them all nuns.

[Kate Lister]

Okay. What I. Oh. Do we have any information about how successful this particular project was? Arts.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So our very hostile source claims that a lot of these ex workers throw themselves off the walls of the convent, which suggests unsuccessful.

[Kate Lister]

That didn't go too well then?

[Professor Anise Strong]

It certainly seems to have been a short term thing at best. It's at all unclear that past Theodora's raid and so forth, that sex work, it continues to be officially illegal. But I don't think that sex work in fact completely stops in Constantinople from what we can tell. Another example, one of the things I did find in my book is that when you look at the real life examples of the historical sex workers, none of them seem to want that as a job for their own daughters, for instance, or for other people. And that, I think tells us a lot that the.

[Kate Lister]

I think.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So the people who do wind up in power and influence do not think this is a good career.

[Kate Lister]

It must have been so dangerous and so precarious and women had so few rights anyway, that it must have been an extraordinarily volatile existence.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And a short career as well.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, and a short one. I mean, for the few that made it to be. Well, I was gonna say the few that made it to be the. The Emperor's mistress. But even she met a sticky end, didn't she? I'll be back with anise after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

By the time Theodora is ruling in Constantinople, is the Empire Christian by this point? And what impact did the emergence of Christianity have on sex work in Rome? Sex in general?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So it definitely seems to have made it much less respectable and so forth again until Theodore. It's still legal, but it becomes viewed as, as less respectable. We have some evidence. For instance, there's this annual festival in Rome that goes on for centuries and centuries called the Floralia in which the sex workers, but also all the actresses perform nude and then go on a giant parade through the streets. It's sort of early pride parade in some fashion. The Christians really, really hate that and try and ban it at various points. But when some of the early Christians try and ban it, they get vegetables thrown at them because the people really like seeing these nude plays.

[Kate Lister]

We want our nude actresses on display. That's what we want. Stop messing about with it.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yeah. So references to that, and then I think that's kind of fascinating is that these prostitute festivals and parades in fact keep happening well into the Renaissance because you have records of them of something happening on basically the exact same date in the calendar and so forth, same year, all the way into the 1400s. But they get turned from pride parades into walks of shame. And now the sex workers are racing through the streets while the crowds throw vegetables at them. So.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that doesn't sound nearly as much fun. No. Where was that happening?

[Professor Anise Strong]

That happens. There's. I've counted about 14 different Italian and French cities where that happens regularly. And my, my favorite example of that actually is that in the 1490s in Rome they had had these races in Rome, but there it had been in some ways even worse because they had gotten to the point where they'd have things like three legged races where they would tie together a, a woman sex worker with a elderly Jewish man and have them race through the streets.

[Kate Lister]

There we go. There we go. The one nice thing that the Romans did. And now look at what they're up to. Honestly, they're absolutely bonkers.

[Professor Anise Strong]

But in any case, there starts to be criticism from elites and from the church, but the criticism is mostly about the fact that they're worried about the fact that the respectable women, the matrons, are watching these sex workers, not about.

[Kate Lister]

The fact that they thought it would be funny to tie a sex worker young woman to a disabled Jewish person. That bit's fine.

[Professor Anise Strong]

No, that, that bit's fine. No. But you might give the wives ideas, you see, Honestly. And so the Pope bans this. This is actually the Borgia Popes. But then the solution they come up with is to solve this problem by moving, at least for several years, the sex worker races inside the papal apartment.

[Kate Lister]

I just to have been a fly on the wall at these meetings who came up with that, you see, the.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Problem is that the women might be corrupted.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, yeah, of course, of course. Right, exactly. Exactly.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And so you move them to where only the priests, who obviously can't possibly be corrupted by seeing.

[Kate Lister]

It's not funny, but it's just so ridiculous. So you've got a situation where they're now racing sex workers inside. In the Vatican. Brilliant. Well, that's. That is one of the wildest things that I have heard. That is. That is just properly Monty Python stuff.

[Professor Anise Strong]

It's absolutely. And, you know, I think this only lasts, as far as I can tell, for a couple of years and then they stop those with a new post.

[Kate Lister]

It wasn't still being done in the 80s or something? No, it was.

[Professor Anise Strong]

No, no, we did not accuse.

[Kate Lister]

We've spoken a lot about women selling sex, but obviously men were selling sex as well. Were there different rules for men selling sex? We know that there were some men, for example, possibly selling sex inside the brothel in Pompeii is Adoris, I think, is a name scrawled on the walls.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Yes. So there's definitely some men, almost certainly primarily for male clients, I think.

[Kate Lister]

Do you think there's any chance, any chance at all that women were maybe going to the brothel? Because one of the pieces of graffiti translates to something like, isidoras should be elected to a local official. He's the best cunt licker. Or something like that. And I looked at that, I was like, is there any chance in the world that a woman client could. Probably not. What do you think?

[Professor Anise Strong]

I think absolutely there's some chance. And what I will say is that we see on the walls of the gladiatorial barracks and Pompeii, there are a lot of favorable comments about the sexiness of the gladiators. And so gladiator group, I think it's much more likely that we have gladiator groupies, people who are quite possibly playing the gladiators for their. Their sexual favors, than we have women going to the actual brothel. But I think the hire a gladiator for a private show is. Is very likely.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Happening and is suggested by some of our other.

[Kate Lister]

I think as far as we know, the majority of men selling sex would have been selling it to men.

[Professor Anise Strong]

And there. We know there's one in Rome. We know there's a specific street in Rome where you went for. For male sex workers that was distinct from where you'd go to find female sex workers and so forth. So they had their own. Their own neighborhood, basically. And fascinatingly, it's the Same street where the, the porn shops are or the porn stalls and so on. So you go to the same place if you want to buy scrolls with pornography or erotica on them, and if you want to buy services of a male sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. So that sort of final question then, because I'm always interested in this when, when we get accounts of sex workers throughout history, what we tend to get is like this little flash of history, like a spotlight just shone on a moment of something. We so rarely find out what happens in the long run to these people. Have you ever found a case where it's like you've been able to track the lifespan? I mean, not somebody like Marcia that wound up being murdered, but like, did you retire from this job? Did you, like, like, could you go on to something else afterwards?

[Professor Anise Strong]

So there's, there's one person who, who comes to mind and so forth. So I think the, the most likely sort of successful retirement is into being a madam yourself and so forth. We do see there's a lot of fluidity. So I think there are, we do have a couple of examples of people who seem to go from being sex workers to, say, cooks or managers at a tavern and so forth to maybe back to sex workers or to wives. But there's this one tombstone, it's the only one like it in the whole empire that I've been able to find. That's a family tombstone that set up by a woman named Vibia, Vibia Chrestis. And she sets it up for herself and for her family and also for Vibia Calibanis, whose same name, like, probably belonged initially to the same slave owner, but doesn't seem to be related to her. And she describes her on the tombstone as a madam who earned her own money without cheating others.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Professor Anise Strong]

So that's the only person who lists themselves explicitly as a sex worker on their gravestone. And wow, this seems to have been a family unit of some form. So what's the relationship between these two women, between the woman who sets up the gravestone and for the madam? I really don't know. I kind of want to imagine them as a happy same sex couple because.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Yes.

[Professor Anise Strong]

The first Vivia who sets up the gravestone doesn't have a husband, she has a son, but she has no husband listed whatsoever. And so in my mind they, you know, they retire, they have a good life, she makes money without defrauding people, and then they retire and eventually have this family gravestone for each other. I can't prove that, but let's hope.

[Kate Lister]

Anise, you have been absolutely fascinating. It's going to take me a while to move on from the image of priests racing sex workers in the Vatican. That's going to stay with me for a bit. But if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Professor Anise Strong]

Absolutely. So the easiest place is my website at Western Michigan University. You can absolutely buy my book on prostitutes and matrons, the Roman World. I have a variety of articles if you want to hear more about Marcia, that article is available freely online and so you can learn all the juicy details about Marsha's life and why she gets ignored in the historical record.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you so much for coming to talk to me today. You've been marvelous.

[Professor Anise Strong]

Thank you very much.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Anise for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. I know we ask you to do that every single time time but it actually really does help us if you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello. Perhaps you wanted to know if these events are still happening at the Vatican. Well, you can email [e-mail] Coming up, we've got an episode on the truth behind Jane Austen and the second installment of this sex worker miniseries where we will be diving into the medieval world. This podcast was edited by Tim Austin Tall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt Sheets the history of Sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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