← Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
What Made You Ugly In Ancient Rome?
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- [00:00]
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.
- [00:27]
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- [01:08]
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- [01:39]
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- [02:14]
Kate Lister
Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister and you are listening to Betwixter Sheets and I'm so so glad that you are. And if you're new here, this is the first time you've listen to Betwixt the Sheets. Well then we're extra extra pleased to have you here and we have something for you. This is called the Fair Dues Warning. 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. And we have to tell you that because you might just have wandered in here thinking Betwixt the Sheets is some kind of podcast about interior design or bed furnishings and it's not. It's a smutty rude podcast and if you listen to this and you keep getting offended, well, I'm afraid just tough tits, that one's on you. Because fair dues, we did warn you. Right, on with the show. Speaking as a historian and somebody living in the year of our Lord 2025, one way that you can accurately, with pinpoint precision, measure time is with eyebrow trends. Just bear with me on this one. For instance, I have friends who are still in recovery from the pencil thin eyebrow era of the 90s. NeverForget. And here in a Roman bathhouse of all places, eyebrows are still a big deal. They still have their own fads and trends. Roman women used coal and black dye smeared across their eyebrows to enhance that look. And poets are marveling at their monobrows. Honestly, like a really black, thick monobrow. Just like a line across the center of your face. That was like a whole thing with the Romans. And the trends don't stop there. Of course they don't. Not when it comes to beauty. And so too when it comes to what is not beautiful. What we regard as ugly. So put those tweezers away. And the less said about concealer lips, the better. We have got some exploring to do. What are you, a funny man?
- [04:08]
Emma Southern
Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
- [04:12]
Kate Lister
I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob.
- [04:17]
Emma Southern
And pushing the button.
- [04:24]
Kate Lister
Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
- [04:27]
Emma Southern
Goodness.
- [04:27]
Kate Lister
What beautiful diamond goodness had nothing to.
- [04:30]
Emma Southern
Do with it, dearie.
- [04:35]
Kate Lister
Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Beauty standards and sex history go hand in hand, or rather crotch in hand. If you want to have sex, you probably need to make yourself attractive or at least put on a bit of deodorant and brush your teeth. Not if you're rich, obviously. Then you can just look like whatever the hell you want to look like. People will want to have sex with you anyway. But this isn't a podcast about them. This is a podcast about trying to look beautiful. And the Romans were exactly the same. They were every bit as concerned about looking attractive as we are today. And in this new miniseries, we will be exploring ideas of beauty and ugliness through the ages. And we will be starting with the absolutely fabulous and utterly appalling Romans. Have you ever seen a genuine Roman hairstyle? That would something to behold, I can tell you. How did they smell? What did a Roman smell like? And in what ways were enslaved people part of their beautifying process? Well, joining me today is Longtime friend of the show, the always wonderful and always horrifying Emma Southern, who is an expert in all things ancient Roman and she's gonna help us get under the skin of Roman beauty standards. Are you ready for this one? I know I am. Let's do it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Emma Southern and her cat is also here. How are you two doing?
- [06:05]
Emma Southern
We're very well. We're very cozy. We're all curled up and ready to talk about some Romans. Livia is so excited for this one. She's named after a ro that she's come to join in. She's very beautiful, so she knows all about Roman beauty.
- [06:17]
Kate Lister
So perfect segue. Look at that.
- [06:20]
Emma Southern
A secondary expert. Yes.
- [06:24]
Kate Lister
We are actually here to talk about Roman standards of beauty, which is a fascinating topic as you go back through time. And I'm very curious as to know what on earth the Romans were doing, because every single time I speak to you, I lose even more respect for them than I had.
- [06:42]
Emma Southern
That's how I know I'm doing my job.
- [06:43]
Kate Lister
Yeah, Keep lowering the bar and they keep smashing through it every single time. So if there was any kind of babies that were killed in the pursuit of this or mass strangulation to achieve a flushed glow of the face, I will not be surprised. But we'll start here. For anyone who hasn't listened to you on the show before, which, frankly, would be bonkers, can you give us a sort of a rough estimate of what time period are we talking here? If we say Roman was. Because the Romans are still with us, they're still around today. What do you mean when you say Roman?
- [07:18]
Emma Southern
So when we say Roman, we broadly mean the period from about 500 BCE to about 500 CE, which is the Roman period or the high Roman period. But when people say the Romans or talk about Roman stuff, we're usually talking about a much smaller kind of 200 year period, about 50 BCE to about 200 ish, 250 CE. That's the period for which we have by far the most information. And virtually everybody that I'm going to mention in this episode and everyone that I have ever mentioned probably has come from kind of that period. So the fall of the Republic and then the rise of the empire through to what we call late antiquity, which is when the Christians start getting involved.
- [08:05]
Kate Lister
Is that why everyone stays focused on this quite small chunk of time within a thousand years of history is because there's the most evidence for it? Is there a real or is there yeah, it is. It's not just that those were the.
- [08:16]
Emma Southern
Best bits, the most evidence for those periods. They're the periods when it's like the richest and has the most influence and therefore was doing the most of its writing and the most of its producing stuff. And when they even. All of this stuff that we think we know about the periods before that, like all of the old wars and what they imagined about the foundation of Rome, it's all written during that period. Period. It's all written during the late republic and the very early years, the early decades of the imperial system. So even when we talk about, like, what the Romans considered to be ancient, we're really talking about what the Romans at the time of Cicero and Augustus thought about their own history rather than any other period.
- [08:58]
Kate Lister
In that this is like peak Roman.
- [09:02]
Emma Southern
Exactly.
- [09:03]
Kate Lister
And it's still quite a big chunk of time. And if you think about, like, how much beauty standards change within our lifetime, I mean, I'm sure that you can recall things that you were doing as a teenager or a younger person that now you look back on, you're like, oh, no, why were we doing the eyebrows? That was when I'm old enough to remember the pencil thin eyebrows.
- [09:24]
Emma Southern
I'm also old enough to remember the pencil thin eyebrows. And yes, my sister's eyebrows have never grown back from over Plucking, thankfully, was too much of a wuss to do it.
- [09:36]
Kate Lister
I had to grow mine back with regain that and the boldedness.
- [09:41]
Emma Southern
That's true. I didn't know you could do that. That's amazing.
- [09:44]
Kate Lister
Yeah, well, neither did I, but turns out you can top tip everybody.
- [09:49]
Emma Southern
I'm gonna tell my sister.
- [09:51]
Kate Lister
Yeah, yeah, please do. As a little message. Put a toothbrush and then just comb it through morning and night, and pretty soon three more hairs will emerge. I'm trying to think of, like, what other, like, beauty trend. I remember when you said, does my bum look big in this? And that was bad.
- [10:04]
Emma Southern
That was a bad thing. Yes. Rather than trying to emphasize it, that.
- [10:07]
Kate Lister
Was, like, the worst thing ever.
- [10:09]
Emma Southern
Yeah.
- [10:09]
Kate Lister
And now it's like, hell yeah.
- [10:12]
Emma Southern
Yeah, it does. And like, we used to straighten the hell out of our hair when, like, very poker straight hair was a thing. And then, like, volume came back and we were all doing overnight curls instead. I was thinking earlier, because I was reading, I was like, making lists of all the terrible things that ravens did to their skin. I remember that walnut cleanser that everybody had that had walnut shells in it that, like, exfoliated your skin.
- [10:36]
Kate Lister
Apricot, that, like, scratched a Flesh off. Yeah, it was actually painful highlights like, like that just looked bad. Like just a bit of your hair.
- [10:48]
Emma Southern
Was a different color, was just like a big, thick chunk of hair. Yeah. And that was incredibly hot and cool and. Yeah. And it all, you know, it changes for now. It changes so quickly. But it's always changed from generation to generation. You're always, like, rejecting what your parents were doing and being like, no, we don't do short skirts anymore. We do midi skirts now. Yes.
- [11:08]
Kate Lister
And everything, everything at the moment is very oversized, which I'm enjoying. Like big oversized trousers and big oversized jumpers and T shirts. And that'll change again and it'll look very dated. So you think like, 200 years of history.
- [11:21]
Emma Southern
Yeah.
- [11:21]
Kate Lister
The Romans, like, it must have changed a lot. What was cool and what wasn't cool. Do we have any information on Roman eyebrows?
- [11:29]
Emma Southern
We do, actually. We do, yes. They loved a thick eyebrow. They were real, like that period about five years ago when really big eyebrows were in. They would have loved that. They talk about how women would fill in their eyebrows with kohl with black dye. There's a couple of references to people having false eyebrows, like, to make them thicker, so.
- [11:56]
Kate Lister
Oh, okay.
- [11:57]
Emma Southern
And like, there's one reference to a very sexy monobrow and it's like how. It's a kind of poem about how beautiful someone is. And it says, you know, the gap between your eyebrows is so small. It's delightful.
- [12:12]
Kate Lister
See, that's what I'm talking about. Uniquely, weirdly, Roman things. So they loved a really bushy, like, bushy to the point where the brows are touching. And what else? If, like, you're thinking of, like, Roman beauty standards, like a massive eyebrow, I feel like I should go and, like, get a pencil.
- [12:29]
Emma Southern
A massive eyebrow, big eyelashes as well. So they're mascara ing.
- [12:34]
Kate Lister
What on earth are they using for that?
- [12:36]
Emma Southern
They're using like lamp black and ashes or just anything that you've got a lot of, like, you know, fire and charcoal lying around. You can use that coal. So they love big eyelashes, like big eyebrows. They like very, very, very pale skin.
- [12:52]
Kate Lister
Another one with the pale skin.
- [12:54]
Emma Southern
Another one with the pale skin. It's a classic of, like, pretty industrial societies. We only really like tans because it shows that you can travel and that you can be outside instead of having to be stuck inside at a desk. Whereas it, like, tanning shows leisure time because you can travel and sit on a beach in somewhere warm all year round. But for the Romans and kind of most pre industrial societies, you have paleness means that you don't work outside and means that your leisure time is inside. And so they love this very, very, very white skin. And that never really goes away. They. At all periods, they talk about white, pale skin and using skin lightening and, like, white creams on their face. So you get the classic stuff that still continues where they're using white lead on their face just. And then they're putting other things on their face to deal with the, like, massive sores and peeling skin that they're getting from the fact that they're putting lead on their face. The most famous, apart from the lead, which is pretty bad, is crocodile dung, which was believed to have some kind of bleaching property.
- [14:01]
Kate Lister
Okay, what on earth. How does crocodile dung make your skin whiter? Surely that would make it darker. I've never seen crocodile dung, actually.
- [14:10]
Emma Southern
You'd think so.
- [14:10]
Kate Lister
Maybe it's white.
- [14:12]
Emma Southern
Maybe it's white. But they talk about crocodile dung as a. All we have is men talking about women doing this pretty much. And 99.9% of the time, they're saying, aren't women gross and stupid for doing all of this stuff to themselves? And they don't realize that it makes them not hot at all. As if the only reason that women would do this is to make men happy. And so they. We have. Most of the evidence for this kind of thing comes from poetry, it comes from satires, it comes from plays. It comes from men making jokes about them and being like, ugh, women. Aren't they stupid? Or philosophers being like, God, women. This. Here's the evidence that they're less evolved than we are because they do all of this stupid stuff.
- [14:56]
Kate Lister
This is all sounding horribly familiar. Like, this is. It's like that you still get this rhetoric today of, like, once in a while, some man will be brave enough to venture forth on the Internet with a picture of a woman who doesn't look like she's wearing much makeup, say something like, this is what real beauty is. And then all the women will come charging in going, that's actually quite a fucking lot of makeup. Their pal.
- [15:18]
Emma Southern
Yeah, that's actually loads. And the no makeup makeup thing is totally something that the Romans are like as well, because they're. A lot of the time you will have the. Like, These men will be writing about women who have, you know, they've got lipstick on, they've got blusher on. They're like, aren't they silly for putting, like, chalk on their faces so they look white and then they go out in the. So chalk is something that they use chalk dust and, like, mix it with some kind of oil or something and put it on the skin. And then if they sweated or if it rained, it would run. And so they make all of these jokes about women who. You can see their makeup running because it's cheap makeup, but at the same time, they'll be like, barbarian. Women are so gross because they don't even put makeup on or do their hair properly, like, and they don't enhance their prettiness. And that's how we know. And they will. They're kind of disgusted equally by women that don't do anything to themselves, which is classic. They want this idea of women that enhance their natural beauty, but at the same time, with, like, delicate makeup that looks like they've put some effort in, but not too much effort, but if they have made it so that it. It is clear they're wearing makeup or they're wearing makeup that is unnatural in some way. So, like, colored eyeshadow is something that they'll use. They'll grind up dye. They'll use the same dyes that they use on clothing and use them on as eyeshadow. And they're doing it because it looks pretty and it's fun. And makeup and changing your appearance can be fun. And then men are like, ugh, gross. What are you doing? That's not natural. How dare. I have very clear ideas of what natural is. And those are the only opinions that we're left with, really, apart from one guy. And we don't have any women's opinions. So we don't have, like, any bloggers who are like, I love doing my makeup. I find it really fun.
- [17:15]
Kate Lister
Do you know what's kind of mad about that is just like, when. Just when you said the only people that are writing about makeup are men, that's just thrown the entire thing into a very, very different perspective for me, because I'm imagining these are mostly straight men writing about women being this. If I went up to my dad and I said, who's Charlotte Tilbury? He'd think it was one of my mates. Like, if I tried to, like, say, eyelash curlers, eyebrow gel, a highlight, he would just look at me. I'd say, what have you got, a foundation? He'd think I wanted to, like, do something to the tiles in the bathroom or something. So the idea that men are gonna be able to understand what women are doing, that suddenly makes it really difficult, doesn't it?
- [17:58]
Emma Southern
It does. And they assume because they're men that women are doing it for Them because they have no conception of female community. And women are putting like a huge amount of effort in. And you can see it like hair is the one that we can really see because it survives in paintings and stuff. And you can see how much time and effort and money and expertise, enslaved expertise mostly is going into making these really elaborate hairsty. Also presumably doing very elaborate makeup as well. And they think it looks gorgeous. And the men are like, these women can't even stand up. Hahaha. But they're presumably doing it for other communities of women.
- [18:38]
Kate Lister
Yes.
- [18:40]
Emma Southern
Who are like, God damn, that hair looks amazing. Like, how did you even get that foot tall? Like they have. There's a particular type of hair called flavian hair where there was this period where they made like big. They look like fans, like big flat ovals on the front of their head and then there would be a bun behind them.
- [18:59]
Kate Lister
I want to see.
- [19:00]
Emma Southern
That would be made of like intricate plaits.
- [19:02]
Kate Lister
Has anybody ever recreated it? Because I know there are like food historians out there. Oh, they have. But is there like a hair historian who's redone this?
- [19:09]
Emma Southern
There is. There's a great hair historian on YouTube whose name I've forgotten, but she has recreated them and she shows how they sewed the hair like they would and how time consuming these would be and then how challenging they could be.
- [19:23]
Kate Lister
Hang on. My producer, who's also on the call but keeping quiet, has just texted me. Yep, fucking hair.
- [19:30]
Emma Southern
There you go.
- [19:32]
Kate Lister
Wow, that looks like she's wearing a bonnet. But that's hair.
- [19:36]
Emma Southern
But it's all hair. Like sewn and plaited and like hours of work and probably quite painful. And you're gonna have to keep your head relatively still in order to wear it. But that is clearly not for men. Like, that is not beautifying for men.
- [19:53]
Kate Lister
That's not even for lying down.
- [19:56]
Emma Southern
Like, that is hair for other women to be like, damn, you have a lot of money and a lot of time and that looks cool. And I wish I could do that.
- [20:05]
Kate Lister
I'm just looking at that, like thinking, how would they have done it? Presumably they would have worked out that heat can change the hair for a little bit. So like curlers and stuff like that. But that is if anyone. Well, people, like I said, if anyone's listening to this. Hopefully someone's listening to this. But whoever. Just Google it. Google Roman hairstyle. That is so crazy impressive.
- [20:27]
Emma Southern
It probably is the first thing that comes up. If you Google. There is. I'm gonna find out the name of the one.
- [20:32]
Kate Lister
Yes, we should let's give her a shout out.
- [20:34]
Emma Southern
That's Janet Stevens. If you google Janet Stevens with a ph, her hair recreations of what these like are.
- [20:41]
Kate Lister
It's my evening sorted. That's incredible.
- [20:46]
Emma Southern
Yeah. She does other periods as well, but she shows how a lot of it is done with kind of hair pieces and then they're sewn in.
- [20:54]
Kate Lister
Mind you, we still have hair pieces sewn in today. Weaves and extensions and stitches. I mean, I imagine that the Romans be a bit. A little bit harsher than the ones that you have today. Were they bleaching hair? Because one of the. And I'm never quite sure if this is like an Internet myth about the Romans. I've only been able to find people saying it's true about then other people saying that it's true. The women selling sex had to by law dye their hair blonde and wear makeup. No, no, it's just. It kind of sounds like something they would do, but also not because I don't know if they cared that much.
- [21:35]
Emma Southern
No. Well, you know, selling sex, you need somebody for every taste. Everybody has, you know, the aesthetic of beauty that you see in art and in sculpture, for example, or described by like these guys who are all part of this one elite community, they're all aristocracy are the guys that we're left with these opinions. And they've all got very similar opinions. It's like if we just had like 75 Jacob Rees Moggs and their opinions on beauty and like nobody else basically. But what you clearly see is that people. There's like a whole diversity beauty. So you have people who dye their hair red and you have people who dye their hair black and you have people who dye their hair blonde. And red and blonde are seen as being quite kind of exotic hair colors in Rome because they're quite foreign. So doing that is a statement of being kind of clearly unnatural. It's like dyeing your hair pink and it's a deliberate decision. Like. And people do do it. And then men like Seneca are like, oh my God, how dare you. That's awful.
- [22:43]
Kate Lister
But so they were dying, they were using henna and. Yeah, I imagine chemicals that you'd be lucky if. Yeah. Hair was left on by the end of that.
- [22:52]
Emma Southern
Exactly. All kinds of things that they would use to a lot of plant based materials, but also anything that will bleach or looking at those.
- [23:01]
Kate Lister
Those pictures of that hair and that is. That's wow. Hair. I went to Pompeii, we were filming a documentary and we had a toga expert who came along to dress me and the lovely Dan Snow. And what I was really surprised about is, like, not only how much fabric was involved, but the fact that it's really a balancing act.
- [23:19]
Emma Southern
Yeah.
- [23:20]
Kate Lister
Like, it's not pinned because, like, I was expecting it to get a badge or something and pin it in place. And it's not. It's like it's balanced on you. So if you walk quick, it's gonna come off. But like, looking at that hair as well, you can't move around with that hair. Like, everything these women are doing is just. They're immobile. Surely.
- [23:41]
Emma Southern
They are. And it is a. Much like with the toga, it's a display of how little you have to do because you've got people to do it for you. Specifically, you own people to do it for you. Like that hair and, you know, wearing a lot of makeup and wearing a delicate dress or wearing a toga, which is solidly 2 meters of material, like they're massive, are a demonstration that you don't have to move around very much, that you can sit, you can move slowly, you don't have to carry anything thing. People are going to bring you everything. It is a sign of wealth and. And status as a result, even if you don't have anybody near you right now, it's a demonstration that you do.
- [24:18]
Kate Lister
I. I gen. I usually do. I have somebody available.
- [24:21]
Emma Southern
Yeah, exactly.
- [24:22]
Kate Lister
But we still do that today, don't we? Like you were making that interesting point earlier about a tan is doing the same thing that pale skin was doing throughout history. It's a signifier of, like, look, I've got money. This. This is about me being wealthy.
- [24:35]
Emma Southern
Yeah. And like high heels, for example, in the workplace are a demonstration that you're not going to have to do any manual labour.
- [24:42]
Kate Lister
Good point. Or any labor at all, in my case, because I'm absolutely immobilized by them.
- [24:49]
Emma Southern
Yeah. You're just going to sit. You're not going to be walking too far anywhere. A lot of what is considered to be beautiful that we add to ourselves generally is a sign that we are wealthy. And there is something that is therefore, by design unattainable to 99% of people. And like, all kinds of, like, smooth skin is always an ideal in. And the Romans obsessed with it as well.
- [25:15]
Kate Lister
That's a constant, isn't it, that. Well, like, I'm trying to think of constants. Healthy, I think. Is it? I. Although the Victorians did have a. I like to look a bit sort of pale and a bit sickly at some points, but it wasn't like actually looking sick. It was.
- [25:29]
Emma Southern
Yes.
- [25:31]
Kate Lister
It was like a pale and sort of drawn thing.
- [25:33]
Emma Southern
Yes.
- [25:34]
Kate Lister
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:35]
Emma Southern
Fragile.
- [25:36]
Kate Lister
That's the one. You have to look a bit fragile, but I think looking healthy is fairly consistent. Shiny eyes. Pretty consistent. Smelling nice. That's. That's. At no point in history have I found anyone that doesn't care about smelling nice.
- [25:52]
Emma Southern
No, they do like to smell nice. Romans love to smell nice.
- [25:56]
Kate Lister
What do they smell of? What does a nice Roman smell?
- [25:58]
Emma Southern
A lot of incense. A lot of like imported fragrances. So incense, myrrh, frankincense. Your like quite heavy scents generally that would probably to us smell quite like churchy. Yeah. So they love that kind of things that come from Arabia that are quite intense.
- [26:18]
Kate Lister
Musky stuff.
- [26:19]
Emma Southern
Yeah, musky stuff. And rather than kind of flowery smells that they could get nearby, they like a good heavy oily scent.
- [26:27]
Kate Lister
Nice. I'll be back with Emma after this short break.
- [26:40]
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- [29:34]
Kate Lister
So we've been talking a lot about the women, but what about the men? Because it's. They have beauty standards, too. It's just that women do. Because of the patriarchy, we are forced to put ours on show in different ways, but men are equally as concerned about how they look. So they weren't doing their hair like that. But what were they up to?
- [29:52]
Emma Southern
Men are. My personal favorite, which I'm currently obsessed with telling people, is that men plucked their armpits.
- [30:01]
Kate Lister
I love that.
- [30:03]
Emma Southern
Which I find delightful because it sounds awful. Yeah. And there's this bit, Seneca mentions it twice, which I find really funny. So one point he says he's talking about two different types of orators, but, like, some who do too much and some who don't do enough. And he says, like, on the one hand you have these guys, and they're like the guys who shave their legs because they do too much. And on the other hand, you have these guys who don't do enough and they don't even pluck their armpits. Like, that's just a basic level of. Of bodily care for him is plucking your armpits.
- [30:37]
Kate Lister
Was it all the hair gone?
- [30:39]
Emma Southern
I assume so. It happened in the baths and you had, like, people there who would pluck the. And there's other people who complain about the sound coming from the baths that you can hear people, like, screeching, basically because their armpits are being plucked.
- [30:55]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [30:56]
Emma Southern
All right.
- [30:57]
Kate Lister
Well, they were quite determined then it is.
- [31:00]
Emma Southern
So I like that. That men plucked their armpits. This is actually a really interesting shift that you get, is that for most of Roman history, beards were considered to be quite barbarous and a Sign of a lack of civilization. So shaving the face was considered to be a demonstration of like your control basically that you are obsessed with that, aren't they? Yeah. So hairlessness is considered to be the ideal and beards are considered to be quite foreign and a bit weird. And then there is a very specific shift with the Emperor Hadrian who's about like 170, he's very into Greek culture and he has a beard. And so he single handedly redefines the beard as something manly and cool for Romans. And all of a sudden you get statues and portraits of people who have beards who are able to be masculine and pretty. Whereas had they like 100 years before that, even 50 years before, a Hadrian, a guy with a beard, everybody would have thought he was kind of effeminate and kind of Greek and probably wouldn't be somebody that you would necessarily completely trust, but you certainly wouldn't think of him as beautiful.
- [32:14]
Kate Lister
Did they nick a lot of beauty standards from the Greeks? They seem to have borrowed many other things. Yeah, they did, they did.
- [32:20]
Emma Southern
They inherit them directly and then they. Because the Romans are the descendants of the Greeks and then they steal them pretty clearly as well. Like they think that the Greeks are great. It's just a shame that the gods didn't like them because they didn't do their religion properly. Essentially. If they had been a bit kind of cooler and less beardy, then maybe they could have had their own empire. But unfortunately the Romans came along and fixed all of the problems that the Greeks had a lot of ideas around. One like what a beautiful body looks like. So the kind of musculature and the. Every undergraduate's favorite, the tiny dick.
- [32:59]
Kate Lister
The tiny dick, yeah. What's your thoughts on the tiny dick, Emma? Why?
- [33:04]
Aura
Why?
- [33:04]
Kate Lister
Why? Why?
- [33:05]
Emma Southern
The tiny dick is a demonstration of control and tidiness and elegance and neatness.
- [33:14]
Kate Lister
So.
- [33:15]
Emma Southern
And a large penis is a sign of kind of a, a barbarous lack of control. So yeah, so the tiny penis, the neat little penis is a. It comes directly from the Greeks, but also their ideas that beauty, morality and divine favor or divinity are all inherently connected. That a good person is beautiful and a bad person is ugly, that those two things are, are inherently intertwined, that there can be no like separation between those things and that the gods are beautiful, therefore beautiful people must be godly.
- [33:58]
Kate Lister
Yes. That's pretty privileged and a half, isn't it?
- [34:02]
Emma Southern
It is and it's kind of fascinating because you see all this stuff in fiction, like where people are identified as noble or elite because they're so beautiful. It's like, oh, you're obviously too beautiful to be low class.
- [34:16]
Kate Lister
But you sometimes see that in like, fairy stories and things, where some princess is actually dressed as a peasant, but it's really obvious that she's not because she's so beautiful.
- [34:28]
Emma Southern
Exactly, yeah. And it's the same. Like, it's the exact same tradition of beauty and nobility are connected and then that is connected to divinity.
- [34:38]
Kate Lister
But we do still do that. There's been research paper after research paper published about how people are nicer to people when they perceive them as attractive. The world is a better place if you are good looking, basically. Yes.
- [34:52]
Emma Southern
Yeah.
- [34:52]
Kate Lister
It's like we. I mean, hopefully not to the same extent that the Romans were doing it, but that's still very much with us, this link between moral worth and being noble and what you look like.
- [35:03]
Emma Southern
Also it's very funny how it seems like they almost doing it on purpose, like how obvious they are with it. So when you read Suetonius biographies, every biography that he writes about an emperor and their family ends with like a little potted description of them. And all of the good emperors are like, and his legs were great and his hair was great and he was. His arms were well shaped and he was in great health. And then all of the bad emperors are like, he had bandy legs, he was bald, he had bad skin. And the. It just seems impossible that, like, none of them were fine looking, none of the bad emperors were okay. But no, they were all funny looking because they were evil and that was inherent to them. And therefore their evil came out in their face. And as a result, people who don't meet the kind of beauty standard because they have, like, Tiberius has acne, for example. And like, there's what is very clearly adult acne that is being described as presented as like a representation of his bad moral character. So all of these people around the.
- [36:24]
Kate Lister
World with acne, oh, that's not fair.
- [36:26]
Emma Southern
Being treated as though that is the God cursing them for having bad moral character.
- [36:31]
Kate Lister
Wow. The other thing that you realize when you look at the statues, apart from the rather modest package that a lot of them seem to be working with, and there has actually been research done on that. You know, there's been research papers of answering the question, like, are they actually smaller?
- [36:46]
Emma Southern
Like, compared?
- [36:46]
Kate Lister
So I read one and someone had gone full, like, maths professor on it, ratios and scales and average statistics. And they came back with, yeah, they are. They are actually smaller than average. So they actually.
- [36:59]
Emma Southern
Well, that's good to know.
- [37:00]
Kate Lister
It's good to know, isn't it?
- [37:02]
Emma Southern
I'm glad somebody else did that.
- [37:04]
Kate Lister
I'm so glad that somebody did that. You can read it online, actually, but. But looking at the body that the penis is attached to that is not small and when you are looking at that body, that is every bit as unobtainable as men on the COVID of Men's Health and Fitness today. It's like there's muscles upon muscles on these guys.
- [37:25]
Emma Southern
Yes, everything is very beautifully defined. And I went to the Vatican with my mum last month. When you get up close to them, they're so defined and every muscle is picked out. And part of that is the sculptor showing off like how good they are at doing the human form. But part of that does then drive in the same way that men's magazines do now. Like the idea that this is an ideal body type and men will try to do that. And you do see bath houses are also gyms and men are working out in them. And there are manuals that survive for men for weightlifting, basically, like they do it with rocks. So lifting progressively heavier and heavier rocks and trying to. To tone their bodies. And philosophers again complained that men of men of their generation spend too much time working on their bodies and not working on their minds because some things never change. Funnily enough, kind of women's ideal body type is. Is much more obtainable.
- [38:31]
Kate Lister
It is still squidgier, much squidgier.
- [38:34]
Emma Southern
It is softer. The ideal is small boobs, wide hips and a kind of soft curves. And they don't like. There's all this stuff about women covering up thin bodies by wearing loads of clothes to like give the impression that they have more to them because they don't really like thinness. They don't like fatness because they have the same thing that we do really that fatness is related in some way to lack of control. And they're obsessed with control and self control. So they don't appreciate that. But they do like softness in women. But male beauty is very hard, very toned. And you look like you look at the emperor portraits and Claudius, for example, who is in real life a disabled man. He has some kind of limb difference that means that he limps. This also means that he kind of hunches slightly. And he's called a monster by his mother because he has. Yeah, his mother was kind of terrifying. And he's kept out of the public eye for most of his adult life because he has visible disability and is considered to reflect poorly on the imperial family that they have a disabled person in the family. And that is a sign because they consider disability to sort of be a sign of divine disfavor. And so they keep Claudius out of the public eye for most of his life. But eventually through a series of unfortunate events, he becomes, becomes emperor. And then all of the statues of Claudius are him as this buff ripped 25 year old soldier. Like he's a 55 year old, 60 year old man with visible disability. But that is not how he portrays himself. He portrays himself as the physical ideal of a Roman man, which is he's always got an old face. So he's always and kind of, you know, middle aged man face, but on buff ripped body.
- [40:32]
Kate Lister
Do you know that just makes me think that because like we are at the time of recording Donald Trump's health report was released a couple of weeks ago. And in it he claims to be, it's like six foot two and I think in British weight it's like 14 stone that he claims that he is. And obviously people have some questions about this but like that's sort of the same thing, isn't it? There's a vanity to it. But then like why is he doing it? Well, obviously to try and appeal and pretend that he's this athletic person when he's not.
- [41:10]
Emma Southern
Yeah. And because there is like we maintain the same idea that health of the body and health of the mind are connected. And if Claudius was to portray himself as he was, then people in the empire would trust him less. They would be less willing to allow him to be in charge of the armies. They would be less willing to allow him to make laws. And 90, you know, 99% of the empire only ever sees a statue or a coin and they, they don't really know that he's disabled. And so they, that's fine for them. They're like, okay, what a great guy. And so he can't portray himself as he is. But that has to be, I think quite crippling to. Again, it's an unobtainable body standard because it is, it's like a 4% body fat.
- [42:01]
Kate Lister
Yeah. It's ridiculous that these guys.
- [42:04]
Emma Southern
Rippling muscles. I spend four hours in the gym a day. Gladiator standard. Like it's not one that most people can obtain, but the point of a body ideal is that it's not obtainable for anybody unless their job is having that body. And that makes everybody else feel bad. But then we work really hard in order to try to do it and ideally buy something because all of this stuff is Being sold by somebody. Like, all these people aren't making these cosmetics in their house. They are going to the shops and they are purchasing cosmetics to fix their skin. They are purchasing cosmetics to dye their hair. They are purchasing stuff that will, you know, help them gain or lose weight to fit this bodily ideal. So it's basically all the same, like, create an insecurity and then sell, sell to fix it.
- [42:57]
Kate Lister
Thinking about Roman perceptions of ugliness, and we've definitely touched on some. But I remembered just that, that you told me Julius Caesar was upset because he was bold. He was really embarrassed. It's like, if there was one Achilles heel that that man had on his, like, colossal ego, it was the fact that his hair was thinning.
- [43:14]
Emma Southern
Yes. And a lot of people have this fear that they are losing their hair, that baldness is.
- [43:22]
Kate Lister
Balding's bad.
- [43:23]
Emma Southern
It's ugly. Yeah, right, okay.
- [43:24]
Kate Lister
Balding's ugly.
- [43:26]
Emma Southern
Yeah. Like, it's unmasculine. If they had had hair transplants, they would have. They do have their own little versions of Rogaine. Like, they are rubbing all kinds of herbs and, like, barley into their head and. Oh, no, it's the ashes of snails that they use for freckles. Freckles are also not great.
- [43:45]
Kate Lister
So freckles are out. Okay.
- [43:48]
Emma Southern
Yeah. So you burn a snail, and then you use the ashes on your face. Classic.
- [43:53]
Kate Lister
That's a good. There we go. That's the Romans. That's the Romans that I know and love. As long as something's in pain, somebody has to die.
- [44:01]
Emma Southern
Yes. It's all been very tidy up until this point. Like, nobody's been brutally murdered.
- [44:05]
Kate Lister
No, it's. Is it just. Is it aging? Because in most cultures and times, as far as I can see, I've yet to find a group of people that view aging as erotic or sexy. You can find cultures that find aging as respectful. That you gain wisdom, definitely, but none that I have found. Where it's like, Jesus, you. You're hot when you're 80. It just isn't there. It's always, getting old is bad.
- [44:34]
Emma Southern
Getting old is bad. Yes. Old age remains bad. Men get wisdom. Women obviously don't. Of course not.
- [44:43]
Kate Lister
Why would.
- [44:44]
Emma Southern
There is a poem by. I think it's Marshall where he compares wrinkles on women to mould.
- [44:49]
Kate Lister
Brilliant. Thank you for that. Marshall actually quite glad he's dead.
- [44:54]
Emma Southern
Yes. He's horrible. Big not fan of Marshall. They have the classic thing with women who wear makeup or who dress nicely as soon as they, like, you know, past the point of menopause. They're laughable and hilarious because who would want to have sex with them? And the only reason that anybody would want to be wearing makeup, obviously is to, to have sex or shave your legs. That's the only reason. There couldn't be any other like pressures or desires on to do it. And so that's kind of a classic joke. Is the old lady old lady? I say like a woman my age, basically 42, wearing makeup. It would be, it is depressing. It would be kind of a classic Roman comedy. Is a woman in her 40s or 50s who looks like she might want to be attractive.
- [45:46]
Kate Lister
Brilliant. Thanks Romans. I'll be back with Emma after this short break.
- [46:01]
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- [47:47]
Kate Lister
What about just thinking because what I know about Rome is that he was very multicultural. It was very multicultural. You've talked about that on this show before and, and I've definitely seen Mary Beard doing documentary about how they, they, they weren't. One of the few saving graces about the Romans is they weren't racist. They came up with different ways to hate and persecute people, but race doesn't seem to have been one of them. You were just a Roman no matter what you were. But how did this play into their notions of beauty then? Because it's all sounding Very Western and.
- [48:16]
Emma Southern
White so far it is. And that, to be fair, is one place where they are. Whiteness is beauty as far as they are concerned, really. And darkness is a deviation from that. And so they obviously are fully aware that non white people exist, that they're, you know, they're well into North Africa. They have a lot of contact with Saharan, Subharan Africa. They have their images of black people in Rome and in the Roman world, but never as an I, an object of beauty, always as an object of, of either fetishization or barbarism. So you do see, for example, the fetishization of black men and black male genitalia. So there's this.
- [49:08]
Kate Lister
Wow. Were they the ones that started that? Because that's still very much with us.
- [49:12]
Emma Southern
It's got very much, yes. So there is a mosaic from. I think it's from Pompeii actually. It's definitely from Italy of a black male bath attendant, a slave bath attendant. And then he has an enormous penis.
- [49:29]
Kate Lister
Oh.
- [49:30]
Emma Southern
Not like in a pan way where it is like comedic or it's like divine, but in like fetishizing blackness way.
- [49:39]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [49:40]
Emma Southern
And it's picked out in colors. But they very much have this image of blackness and darkness as being exotic and it cannot be beautiful because it is not whiteness, basically. And they have a very clear idea that that beauty is, is whiteness, which allows certain people from Northern Europe to be considered to be beautiful as long as they adhere to Roman standards. But often they don't. So they think that like, mustaches are hilariously stupid. And they do also think, but they. You don't get the fetishization of. Than northern European in the same way at all.
- [50:25]
Kate Lister
Okay, okay. So as a final question then, a lot of the Roman beauty standards are completely bonkers. Like, if you walked around in that hairdo today, you would get laughed at. If you leaded your face white, you would turn a few heads. People would think you were on your way to some kind of fancy dress party. But was there any beauty treatments that the Romans used that perhaps is still with us that stood the test of time? Or was it just wall to wall insanity? We don't even put. We do pluck body hair, but you don't do it with tweezers.
- [50:59]
Emma Southern
Not so much anymore. I mean, a lot I think of what they do. If you made it with something that was slightly less toxic, it would probably be like you could totally do a Roman beauty tutorial that was kind of lightening the skin, filling in the eyebrows, putting on some rouge, some of the kind of lesser crackers hairstyles are basically just a bun. And you're gonna not be far away from what, you know, I did this morning.
- [51:31]
Kate Lister
Interesting.
- [51:32]
Emma Southern
And, you know, skin lightening, for example, is still very much something that people do as well when you kind of look down at what they're doing. Actually, one thing that I found while I was looking at this, while I was like, going through looking for fun stuff, was pimple patches that they had pimple patches. So they would make very, very thin leather, and they would put little bit of, like, alum on it, which is. And then they would put the little pimple patch on their pimple patch on their spots. And then some of them would color them in to make them like a statement piece.
- [52:05]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [52:06]
Emma Southern
Like the little star face things like.
- [52:08]
Kate Lister
The little beauty spot that you see in 18th century.
- [52:12]
Emma Southern
Yeah, exactly. So little pimple patches treatment. So a lot, like, the stuff that they use is the stuff that they have access to, and what they've got is stuff that, like, it's basically the same stuff that they're using as medicine. But what they are doing is they're trying to smooth the skin, they're trying to make the eyes big, the cheeks pink, the lips pink, and they're trying to make the hair look like time has been spent on it.
- [52:41]
Kate Lister
That sounds very familiar.
- [52:43]
Emma Southern
Yeah. And so it has not changed in terms of what they're doing that much. What we use to do, it is more complicated now, but in terms of what they look like, and when you look at portraits and stuff that we have, it does not look unbeautiful to us. And that's because we are direct descendants of the Romans, so we're still stuck with a lot of their kind of ideas of what health and beauty look like.
- [53:16]
Kate Lister
Emma, you have been fabulous to talk to once more. You always are. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
- [53:23]
Emma Southern
They can find me@emmasothern.com or they can find me@historyissexy.com in my podcast History is Sexy or on Instagram at Emma Southern.
- [53:32]
Kate Lister
Thank you so much. I can't wait to talk to you again.
- [53:35]
Emma Southern
Always a pleasure. I'm always happy to be here.
- [53:40]
Kate Lister
Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Emma for dropping by. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to, like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. I know everybody says that it's the mantra of all podcasters, but it really does help us if there's a subject you would like us to get into or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixtoryhit.com Coming up, we have got episodes on Female Executioners and the second in this mini series, what made you ugly in the Medieval Period with the utterly fantastic and completely beautiful Eleanor Yarniger. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets the history of Sex scandal in Society A podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
- [54:31]
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