Hi, everyone. Before we get into today’s episode, I just wanted to acknowledge that I know there’s a lot of listeners in the United States, and I know that there’s a lot of horrifying things happening in the United States right now. I just wanted to say that so everybody knows right now in the United States, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has been overseeing a mass deportation campaign affecting hundreds of thousands of people through detentions, confinements, and expulsions. Their stated goal is to arrest 3,000 people per day. To attain this number, people are being taken from public places like churches, schools, and hospitals. The people being targeted are predominantly from a Hispanic background. Families are being separated, and people are living in fear. This is a horrific campaign affecting people all across America. I want to highlight some organizations working to help those being affected.

Today, I want to highlight Al Otrolado. Al Otrolado, which means “to the other side,” provides holistic, legal, and humanitarian support to refugees, deportees, and other migrants in the U.S. and Tijuana through a multidisciplinary, client-centred, harm reduction-based practice. This includes helping migrants with legal aid. They also have a water drop program where volunteers go deep into the desert to leave care packages for migrants that might pass through. You can donate to support their work at AlOtrolado.org. That’s A-L-O-T-R-O-L-A-D-O .org.

Enjoy today’s episode.

—————

Ann: So, welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this season, we’ve been looking at, well, recently, the French Revolution and all those guys. It was the same when we looked at the American Revolution, they’re all just like, “Let’s be like ancient Rome. We should all be like ancient Rome.” Even the women were like, “Women in ancient Rome, we should be like them!” And I’m just like, well, what was ancient Rome like? I’ve never really looked into it, but I know someone who has looked into it a lot. And that is our recurring guest star, Gina Berry. Welcome, Gina.

Gina: Hey, girl, hey!

Ann: Oh my god, I’m so excited! [both laugh] Listeners, if you haven’t heard one of the Gina episodes before, like you’re in for a ride, this is going to be a Part One and a Part Two, because once we get talking… Like, we’ve both blocked off the whole afternoon to record this. [laughs] Welcome, Gina. Tell everybody about your fascination with ancient Rome and how it started.

Gina: It really started, probably, I’d say, like, mid-twenties for me. I realized just how much I liked to know. And so, I was like, “Well, what can I know? What kind of information is out there? What can I learn?” And I started finding a lot of information on ancient Rome, because as you said, everyone is always, “Let’s be like Rome.” So, you know, I decided, let me start digging into ancient Rome. And there’s just so much information out there because they wrote everything in Latin, and we can translate Latin a lot easier than we can other ancient languages. And they kept details of everything; whether true or not, I can’t say.

Ann: We’ll get into that. We’ll get into that.

Gina: Yes. But they kept details of everything, like just detailed details of everything, like names and who begot who, and when they were born, and when they died. So, it was just so easily accessible to me, and I just dove into it. It was just seeing the parallels of that society compared to our society today, even some of the building structures, a lot of the government buildings, they have the pillars to them. Well, if you look at the ancient Roman buildings, they had the pillars to them, the Senate and whatnot. So, I just… I was fascinated by it. Obviously, I don’t know if I have any ancient Roman ancestors. It’s very possible. It’s possible most of us do.

Ann: Well, they spread… Like, we don’t need to get into the geography of it all. I feel like most of us do because, like, at its peak, the ancient Roman Empire was like, all of Western Europe, getting into Eastern Europe, getting into Northern Africa. It’s like everyone listening to this has one ancestor from one of those places.

Gina: At least, yes.

Ann: Probably, right? And like the Romans were there.

Gina: It’s just crazy how far they expanded, and that expansion actually was the beginning of their downfall. But that’s a whole other conversation. But yeah, I just really enjoyed what I read. A lot of it was infuriating, and we will get into some of the reasons of why it was infuriating. But a lot of it was just really very interesting, how they came up with some of the ideas that they did and how they enforced them, how they didn’t enforce some others because it was more of a benefit to them to not enforce them in certain situations. So, just, all the way around, it was interesting to me.

But I had always heard a phrase, you know, growing up, that if you don’t know where you came from, then how can you make anything better now? You have to understand, you have to learn from the past, or you continue to make those same mistakes. And so, that was another thing that I really wanted to see is what types of things happened back then? What contributed to downfalls of different societies? What contributed to their expansion? And what are we doing the same today? What are we doing different today? Rome really should be a cautionary tale for everyone. It’s not, because everyone just wants to focus on Julius Caesar and all his conquests, no one wants to focus on where he screwed up, where Rome in general screwed up. So, I look at both sides. What was your conquest, but where did you screw up? And you know, I’m not running the government (it would be much better if I did).

Ann: Oh my god!

Gina: If I was running the government, I would have learned from those mistakes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like any society in the history of man is ever going to change. We’re just going to continue to make the same mistakes. But I’d like to know what I could probably prepare myself for, because, you know, that happened towards the end of that civilization. This is kind of looking like that. So, how do I prepare for that?

Ann: No, this is like— I saw somebody posting somewhere in social media, they were like, “Was the fall of Rome this dumb?” And every historian who saw that was like, “Yes.” I think a lot because so many politicians and military leaders and whatever have been like, “Oh yeah, ancient Rome, that’s the greatest thing,” people focused on, just like you said, the conquests and stuff, where it’s like, but what was actually happening? They wrote all these records, but it’s like, that’s what you want— You look at the newspaper today, and it’s like, “Well, that’s what you want people to think happened. But like, what actually was happening?” And what was happening was just, like, a lot of messy people, making it up as they went along, making bad decisions. They were not these perfect gods— It seems like a lot of people are like, “Let’s just be like Rome again.” It’s like, no, man! No! That didn’t work out for them. Why do you think it’s going to work out for us?

Gina: Exactly. So yeah, once I started getting my fill of that, and what really kind of probably pushed me towards it is when I got to the point in time of Cleopatra’s entrance into Roman history. And I was like, “Okay, but who is she?” So, I started digging into that. I’m like, “Okay, she’s with Ptolemy, though, she’s not really Egyptian.” And you and I have talked about this, too.

Ann: Yeah, listeners, if you want to hear me and Gina talk about Cleopatra for another three hours, like, scroll back through your app, and you’ll find that episode. [chuckles]

Gina: So, I was like, okay, but I want to know what the real ancient Egyptians were like. And that’s what really made me dive into that. And I have to say that I pretty much put everything else on the back burner and just really just absorbed as much as I could about ancient Egypt. I looked a little bit into ancient Greece, because I know Romans really valued the ancient Greeks, learned how to read their language, even tried to fashion some of their society around what they did. So, I learned a little bit about that, but beyond the Zeus and Hercules and all that, it just didn’t interest me. I like the mythology of Greece much better than the actuality of Greece. I like the actuality of Rome. I couldn’t really tell you too much about the mythology, because that didn’t interest me as much. When it comes to Egypt, it all interests me. [chuckles] I want to know about all of it.

Ann: So, this is where, like, you’re on here today. So, you’re just kind of like brushing off that, like, your former obsession about ancient Rome. But I’m so excited to talk about all this with you because I know a bit about ancient Rome, just from, like, some episodes I’ve done on the podcast. Like when we were talking about Cleopatra, you know, I had to learn more about Julius Caesar and stuff. But yeah, just the society itself, and especially the role of women from what— And I know you did your research, and I did my research, and at the end of this, like, I’ll put all the names of all the sources we looked at. But I would say starting in maybe like the 1970s is when people started looking more at, like, the role of women and what were they actually like in ancient Rome. And up until then, from, you know, the year, whatever, 0 before that, up until the 1970s, it was like, “Here’s these great men, and here’s what they did and the women were bitches who were scheming,” or just…

Gina: Completely insignificant. Yup.

Ann: Just, like, overly sexualized monsters. That’s what women were, but let’s look at the men. But I would say like, there’s so much like, I see this in every era I look at. In the 1970s, feminist scholars started getting into universities and doing research on women. Since then, and then I think especially starting in the early 2000s, just people are really trying to put women back into this story, because you can’t understand the civilization if you’re only looking at half of the people who lived in it.

Gina: You’re absolutely right. You really can’t look at a civilization and not look at the people that actually… I don’t know, the ones that actually kept the civilization going, because last time I checked, men can’t produce babies. So, you’ve got to look at the whole of a civilization to really, truly understand it. And even though in every society, for the most part, they’ve always tried to completely downplay the woman’s role in it, but without women, those men wouldn’t be out there conquering anything. Number one, they gave birth to them. Number two, they kept them alive because the dads weren’t around to raise them, because that’s just not how society has been for years; men don’t raise the kids. Number three, most of them, if you could go back in time and ask them, “Who was the person that you would probably go to first if you had some sort of major issue or decision you had to make?” they would probably say, “My mother.”

Women played such a huge role in all of history, yet they’re the main character that is always being erased. And it’s just been very refreshing that that has been starting to get reversed here recently, because the information is there. Like you said, the information is there. Because everyone kept documentation. I mean, even when they had to chisel it and stone, it’s there. The documentation is there. Just take the time to study it, take the time to read it. And I’m really glad that that’s changing now, because that just gives a so much better understanding of all these different civilizations.

Ann: I think it’s also such a good example of something that… I did my undergraduate degree in history, and so I was this little 21-year-old going to this class about like the history of history. It blew my mind then, and so I keep saying it on the podcast of people know where it’s just like history was written by people with an agenda. There’s no objective history. Every single fact that you’ve read, somebody wrote that down. Like in ancient Rome, somebody wrote down in Latin, what they saw happen. And then somebody in Victorian England translated that, but they chose what word. You know, it’s talking about, like, the emperor’s wife and the word, you know, it’s a specific Latin word that can’t really be translated, but one person chooses that to say, “She was nagging.” But then another translator could be like, “She was unreasonable.” You know, it’s just kind of like, what word are we going to use? And that just sets people up to think about people in a certain way. I mean, we won’t get into this today, maybe another episode, the Bible…

Gina: I was thinking the same thing. [laughs]

Ann: How many, how many… You know, where it’s just like no language to language can be a direct word for word. You have to sort of like, “Here’s kind of what they meant. Here’s sort of the vibes of the word,” and what word you’re choosing depends on the biases of the translator. So, already to look at this Roman history, it’s like the biases of the person writing it down, the biases of the person translating it, and then you’re looking at it and you’re like, “Oh wow, I guess this woman was, like, a nagging scold.” But then you go back to the Latin and you’re like, “Oh no, this just says that she had a loud voice,” or whatever.

Gina: Yeah. And it’s funny you say that about the voice, because there’s actually something that I found that I found really interesting that we can get into when we started talking about the expectations of the women of ancient Rome. But it goes along with tone of voice and really how it would be interpreted by the person that was writing down the account of it. So, it’s just, it’s all fascinating. So, we can start wherever you want to start because there’s a lot to put in there.

Ann: There’s a lot to get in here, and that’s why I was like, I told you before, I’m like, part one of this conversation is going to be like, let’s just talk about Rome, baby. And then part two is going to be like the specific biography we’re going to look at. But I think that’ll help when we get to the biography because we’ll kind of know the context of what was happening.

So, I mean, what you were just saying about women and voices and stuff… And I find this really interesting too. Recently I’ve been doing… It reminds me of the research I’ve been doing with the French Revolution, where at that time it was like, here’s the expectation for women, and it’s really similar to Rome. It’s like, they should be, like, quiet, and demure, and domestic, and motherly. And so, they write that down, right? Being like, “This is what women should be like.” But then you read it with the French Revolution, and you’re like, women were taking to the streets with knives! Riots! It’s like, here’s the expectation, but here’s the reality. So, like, do you look at what people say women should be like, or do you look at what the women are actually doing? And I have a sense that Rome was similar in a way where it’s kind of like, “Oh, this is the expectation for women, but behind the scenes, here’s what they were actually doing.”

Gina: Yeah. And it was so ingrained in everyone within the society of what the expectations were, that I think that, unfortunately, there was probably a number of women that really wanted to go against it, but really didn’t see how they could, you know? Because if you’re told something from birth, you are most likely going to believe that that’s just how it’s supposed to be; there’s no way around it, there’s no getting out of it. And they made very sure that that is what was taught—boys and girls, but mostly girls—from day one, where it’s just this just hammered into their head that “This is what you should be. This is what you should do. This is what you cannot do.” So, out of 500 women, you’d have maybe two that was like “Screw this, I’m doing something else.” You know? So, they probably looked at it as “Yes, we’re always going to have an anomaly here. We’re always going to have one that’s going to buck the system. But out of 500, if it’s only two, we can control two a lot better than we can 500.”

You know, and that’s just kind of the way society as a whole is still today, where if you hold someone down long enough, they start to believe it, but you are going to have those rogue agents that are going to come out and be like, “No!” And that’s really what happened… Well, we know it happened a lot in ancient Rome, but it’s what happened with the French Revolution, where not every woman in Rome or France was out there doing that, but you had enough of them to where, you know, they made enough noise. So, I think it was always the goal of the powers that be to limit the number of people that made noise, because you get enough women out there screaming, then there’s going to be others that would be like, “Oh wait, maybe I could be doing that,” and they’re going to get out there screaming. And just a fact of life is women outnumber men, so [laughs] you get enough of us out there and the men don’t stand a chance, you know? They’re bigger and stronger, but there’s more of us.

Ann: Well, that’s where I feel like the American Revolution or the French Revolution places where they’re like, “We’re looking to Rome, we want to be like Rome,” it’s like, okay, and Rome was a place where it was like women should be seen and not heard, and they should be limited to the domestic sphere. So, it’s like they were enforcing that part of Roman culture as well in these kind of societies.

Gina: I know I read that the high-born women, the ladies that, you know, they were the wives of the wives and daughters of the senators and all that, they all studied singing to ensure that they had well-modulated tones when speaking, and they studied dancing to make sure that they held the poise and the grace that society said these high-born women were supposed to have. That is why they studied these. Not because they were interesting arts, they studied them because that was going to help them be the type of woman that these old men wanted them to be.

I mean, fact of the matter is, up until probably the early 1900s, you always had a huge age gap between the man and the woman, the guy would be 40, the woman would be 15. So, these older men, they had the idea of what, sort of, basically subservient type of woman that they wanted, and so they were like, “Well, these are the things we feel they need to do in order to ensure that we’re going to have the wife that we want. Now, it doesn’t really matter what I do, I’m going to be the hypocrite, and I’m going to go out, I’m going to visit the brothels, and I’m going to have my side piece, and I’m going to be sleeping with married women, unmarried women, I don’t really care, because I’m a dude and I can do what I want.”

But these women had to go through intensive training, basically, where they had to learn to sing, to speak properly, they had to learn dance, to sit properly, they had to learn how to take care of the kids, how to run the household. They basically managed the finances of the house; the men didn’t do that, the men basically generated the income and were hardly there because they were always out doing whatever they were doing, sitting in Senate, arguing with each other, whatever. The women really were the brains behind the society; they were the reason why it kept going, because they maintained everything. The men just sat there, made their laws and their rules and yelled and screamed and went to war, and the women kept the city going. I mean, you can break it down to whatever level you want, but overall, women kept the city going.

Ann: In terms of what you’re saying, like with the high-born ladies, I just want to clarify for everybody and for myself, because you’re teaching me, that’s what this episode is about. [Gina laughs] But from what I understand, the society was like, well, you mentioned it’s like, girls were raised this way, boys were raised this way; it was a very gendered society. It was very much girls, boys, there’s no really discussion of what’s in the middle. Girls do this, boys do this, that’s what society is like, and so people are just raised with those expectations. But then it’s also really strict hierarchies in terms of class, because you’ve got the high-born, there’s enslaved people, but there’s also freed people. Can you explain the sort of classes?

Gina: They were very, very class-centric. I mean, everyone needed to know their place in society based off of that class. You had the lowest, which is probably the most utilized, but what was considered to be the lowest class, and that would be the prostitutes, even though they were getting paid for what they were doing, and they had the highest of high men coming to see them on a regular basis, they were still considered to be the lowest class in the entirety of Roman history.

Ann: And is that because… I mean, probably lots of reasons, part of that is like, women should be this perfect, morally upstanding, chaste, whatever, and these women were not that by virtue of their profession.

Gina: Right, and they were making money at it.

Ann: If they rewarded them— Yeah, they were making money out of it, they were not doing what women “should” be doing, so the society is like, “Well, we can’t show any value to that, because then other women won’t be the chaste little trad wives we want.”

Gina: And even the women that owned the brothels were one of the few women in Rome that were allowed to actually own a business, women weren’t allowed to do that. They weren’t allowed to enter into any kind of contracts, anything like that. So, if you really look at it from the woman’s point of view, the ladies that own the brothels, man, those are the women to look up to, because, I mean, they owned small businesses, you know? These women, they didn’t answer to anyone; they were their own person. They had to follow the rules of the land, basically, you know, but all in all, they were allowed to do what they wanted. They could spend their money how they wanted. They had money. I mean, they had more money sitting there usually than these high society women that kind of had to ask for money to do things.

So, you know, they were kind of looked at as being on the same class level as the prostitutes, but yet, I mean, think about it, these women were independent! To me, they ranked higher than that. It’s weird because they were actually ranked lower than the slaves. And slaves were just considered to be property; you could do anything you wanted to them. You could really do anything you wanted to the brothel owners and the prostitutes because, you know, because they were so low class, they weren’t allowed to prosecute anyone. So, if they were raped, if anything got stolen, if they got beaten, whatever, if you killed their brother or whatever, there wasn’t anything they could do because they didn’t rank high enough in the class system to be able to prosecute you for anything.

So, they really probably had the most independent lives, yet the hardest lives because they really had to watch out for themselves in a way that the high society didn’t, you know? You weren’t allowed to really do anything to someone that was in a higher class because you were going to get killed for doing that. These slaves and the brothel owners and the prostitutes, they weren’t they weren’t really looked at as being human. And so, they really had to watch their back a lot because anyone could do anything to them at any time, and there was just never going to be any sort of penance for that.

Ann: I want to clarify too, and maybe you’ve come across this in your research as well, but I was reading about how, like, this society was very gendered, but it was also very, like, “These are the classes.” So, it’s like if I am the brothel owner, I couldn’t just like go around and pretend that’s not who I am. There was specific ways that everybody dressed and, like, if you were a sex worker, you wore your toga like this, and if you were a slave, you wear your toga like this. So, it’s like, just by looking at somebody on the street, which now, you can’t do that really, you could tell exactly the class because you had to dress this way.

Gina: Yeah. Because, like, married women, they wore a specific dress called stola. No one else could wear that. Only a married woman could wear that. Unmarried slaves, prostitutes, they were not allowed to wear those. If you were found wearing it and you shouldn’t be, it’s death upon you. And they were really very unforgiving in a lot of things back then. If you accidentally stepped a toe outside of the class that you were a part of, you were most likely going to get killed. So, that’s how deeply rooted they were in their class system.

You had the plebeians who were kind of like, you just would consider them just to be the middle class today, where they just went about their business, they went about their lives. They had their jobs, they had their farms, they had whatever they had, but they weren’t sitting on a chair with someone fanning them. That’s not the life they live. They were just the plebeians were just the straight middle class. And there were a lot more of them than there was anything else from what I’ve read, just like in today’s world, there’s a lot more middle class than there is anything else, at least here in the United States. So, you know, that class wasn’t looked at as poorly as the other classes, but they still didn’t hold the rank that that upper echelon did.

And that class level would be pretty much compared to, like, your one-percenters today. They would be considered your, not necessarily millionaires—well, maybe some of the millionaires—but they’d be your billionaire class, that higher… you know, they were the Senators. They were the ones in charge of the military, you know, all that kind of stuff where they were the ones making the rules, they were the ones handing out the punishments for the lower class, they felt weren’t following the rules properly, that sort of thing. To be a Senator, up until it turned into the Emperor being there, that was about as high as you were going to get. Anyone that was born into a higher-ranking class, that was the goal for their son, is to be able to get them to be a senator. If you could reach that level, your family was on top and you were running shit, you know, that’s just the way it was. Your daughters were always going to get the best marriages, your sons were most likely going to follow behind you and be some high-ranking something in the military, or at least be a higher level of a magistrate within the city if they didn’t become a senator. So, that was always the goal.

We’ve seen it in every society. I mean, look at how they clawed at trying to be as high as possible within Henry VIII’s court. It was always the high society born were always clawing to get as high as they could, to get as much favour as they could, to get as many titles as they could. It was the same way in ancient Rome: get as many titles, get as high as you can, get as much money as you can, get as much recognition as you can. Not everybody was born into the Julia family, not everybody was born into the Claudio family; those were the two most revered families within ancient Rome. If you weren’t born into those families, then you basically just did what you had to do to try to get as high as you could.

Ann: And everybody was, like, you know, there’s similarities… The way that ancient Roman society was structured is similar to so many other civilizations with the upper class and the lower class, the gender roles and everything, so I don’t want to be too much like, “Oh, it’s exactly like now.” But I think one of the things that we have now that’s a big difference from then, is that there is, for some people, there’s upward mobility. Like, if somebody turns out that they’re really good at sports, they’re really good actor, they invent some app, or whatever, it’s like you can be thrust from the middle class up into this 1%. But in ancient Rome, it’s like 100% just like who were your parents? Who is your family? Maybe a marriage could elevate you a bit if you married someone a bit higher, but there’s no… Like, you’re not going to have your Mark Zuckerberg just, like, emerging out of the middle class to become a billionaire. It’s just you’re born into it or you’re not, and there’s no other possibility.

Gina: Yeah. And it was like that pretty much every civilization. The ones that lucked out— It wasn’t really usually a man that was able to get that upward mobility on marrying higher than his station, it was usually the woman. A lot of times, you know, like right now we have our upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class. If you were a lower-class plebeian, you would try to push your daughter to get up into that middle class or that upper middle class, because you weren’t necessarily that low class, but you weren’t high either. So, you start raising your daughter, you know, even though you might have been considered a lower class, you start raising your daughter, “You need to learn how to sing so you have a well-modulated voice. You need to learn how to dance so you have that poise. You need to carry yourself a certain way. You need to make sure that you’re as close to being a Vestal Virgin as you possibly can, because I’m going to try to marry you up higher.” Obviously, they would want to try to go as high as a Senator if they could, but that would probably be very few and far between that happened.

Ann: Unless, unless you’re like the upper upper middle class and you’re like the most beautiful person anyone’s ever seen.

Gina: That could happen. Yeah. That would be more likely.

Ann: If you just happened to be really beautiful. But otherwise, that leap would be so unlikely.

Gina: Yep. But if you could get to lower middle class to just regular middle class, that was a huge bounce up for your family’s station, because families followed marriages. It doesn’t happen as much now as it did back then, but it still happens a little bit now. But if your daughter married at a higher station than what your family was, typically your family was brought up to that level with her. It’s unfortunate because they always talk today, they talk about the oldest daughter, she’s the one that’s responsible for everything. I’m the only daughter. I’m the youngest child, but I’m the only daughter. So, I feel like I’m responsible for everything that happens in my family; I’ve got to make sure everything’s taken care of with my dad, so on and so forth. And so, that daughter would be taught from birth, “It’s your responsibility to elevate this family. So, you need to do X, Y, and Z to make sure you can marry higher than our current station and bring the family with you.”

I think that went through centuries. I mean, that wasn’t just ancient Rome, that’s happened through all the centuries. I mean, even look, if you watched Downton Abbey, you had women that were trying to marry into a higher station. It’s always been like that, where, unfortunately, that burden was put on these women to try to elevate the family as a whole. So, it wasn’t as hard for those women that were born at that higher level because it was just expected. “You were born at this level, you’re going to marry at that level, and everything’s going to be fine. That’s going to keep continuing.” It was those people that were the regular plebeians that were always trying to elevate to that next level that they possibly could. And unfortunately, that was always on the woman.

Ann: You mentioned the Vestal Virgins. Can you explain who they were?

Gina: [laughs] They were very specifically chosen.

Ann: And where were they— Which class? Does it matter where they’re chosen from or where they’re from?

Gina: From what I’ve found, it didn’t matter what your class was, you just had to be picked. They obviously wouldn’t go for the child of a prostitute. They probably wouldn’t go that low on class, but you could be a regular plebeian. But you were chosen at an extremely young age, like probably around two or three or whatever, where this was going to be your life. And once you got to a specific age, you would be sent off to live where they live. So, you’d be sequestered from everyone else. You had to put in, I think it was, like, 30 years of service; you had to remain a virgin; you had to perform specific, basically cult-like things where you had you did certain types of prayers, went to certain types of functions where it was considered to be favoured by the gods to have the Vestal Virgins there; they were also responsible for keeping the fire going. [chuckles] See, now you got me thinking about things I haven’t read about in a while, but there was a certain fire, it was a fire that was dedicated to a specific goddess, I cannot think of the goddess’s name, but it was a responsibility to keep that fire going because it was said that if that fire ever went out, that was going to be the end of Rome because then they would have no more favour from the gods and just all hell would break loose.

Ann: And the Vestal Virgins were, like, they made this vow to do this for 30 years. They were sort of taken, chosen when they were really young. But they were respected in a way that no other women were.

Gina: They ranked in a way that no other women did. I think the only people that would have ever ranked higher than them would be the Empress at the time, because once Augustus came, they started calling different women Empresses. They would have been the only ones that ranked higher. They had such admiration from everyone in Rome, actually, probably admiration from people outside of Rome as well, because they would be put on such high pedestals. They would have been talked about with such reverence across the entirety of the Roman Empire that everyone would have looked at them as basically being goddesses on Earth. They were supposedly some of the most beautiful women… I don’t know how you can decide what a person’s going to end up looking like when they’re young, but supposedly, they were just these beautiful, godlike women that just could do no wrong. But their main duty was keeping the fire burning and saying the proper prayers for the wealthiest people within Rome. They obviously would have done prayers for others because in every society back then, people would pay to have, like, a priest or whomever do a prayer for them. Vestal Virgins would have been the same way.

I did read at one time, though, that most of them, once their 30 years was done, they would retire. Some of the richest people in Rome because they got to keep the money that they made for the different prayers that these people would want them to do. And so, they were given the option when they retired to marry or not to marry because that was one big thing in Rome, is women had to marry. You couldn’t be unmarried. That was just that was extremely frowned upon. Vestal Virgins, when they retired, they did not have to marry, and from what I’ve read, most of them didn’t.

Ann: This is like, if everything we talked about, I’m just like, “I choose that.” [both laugh] That’s who I would want to be.

Gina: [laughs] I don’t have to deal with anyone. They pay me to do a prayer.

Ann: Out of these options? Sure! Retire age 33.

Gina: They couldn’t have any kids. They were not allowed to because they were not allowed to be sexually active. So, you know, say you start at 15 or whatever to be a Vestal Virgin, you know, you’re still fairly young by the time you retire, you go out there, spend your money, girl, do your thing, you know? Go buy a farm, whatever. They did not have to conform to everything else that the women in ancient Rome had to conform to. And like you said, that or a brothel owner would have been the two things I would have gone for.

Ann: Those are the two options. Everything you’ve said, I’m like, those are the two I would have gone for. But I guess, and we don’t need to get into specifics, but like ancient, like the millions of people who live there, it’s like, I’m saying like, “Yeah, Vestal Virgin, that’s what I choose.” But it’s like, if there’s, I don’t know, two million people in a city, they choose like six to be the Vestal Virgins. Like, your chances are not good to be chosen.

Gina: Not at all. You know, the funny thing is, as you mentioned that about how many people live there, I don’t think people really understand just how densely populated the city of Rome was. Yes, the empire itself was quite vast. So, they had millions and millions of people that were part of ancient Rome. But when you look at the actual city of Rome, man! I just… I can’t imagine living in that close proximity to others, because they were really just smushed in there. And if they didn’t have the sewer systems that they did, that city would not have lasted long at all. I mean, because it was probably even bad enough, even with the sewer systems. So, it’s just, there were so many people.

That’s what gets me, and that’s what a lot of governments have done over the years is there’s so few of them that are in the government and so many that are not in the government. But like I said earlier, if you beat something into someone’s head from day one, long enough and hard enough, they’re going to believe that, and they had these millions of people living in the city that believed, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this because these people that are in charge have told me I can’t.”

Just like my brother mentioned to me once, I was flying down the freeway because we were late, and I was going way faster than I should have. And he said, “You know what amazes me? Is how we are all so conditioned to stay within these lines. We don’t veer outside of those lines when we’re driving. It doesn’t matter how fast we’re going, we stay within those lines.” He’s like, “Who’s, who’s keeping us from getting outside of those lines? No one. It’s all on our heads.” Granted, I wouldn’t want to veer out because I was going fast, and that could have been a really bad car crash. But he’s right. We are taught to stay within the lines in driving, in our lives, in how we speak, whatever. And all those people in ancient Rome, they were taught, “Stay within your lane. Stay in your lane, or you’re going to be punished.” I have no doubts that, just like in today’s world, there was a whole lot of bullshit going on that didn’t get noticed by people, whole lot of crime, whatever, whatever. But for the most part, the vast majority stayed within their lane. And that’s how you keep control of a million people in one small, little city.

Ann: Well, and part of it—I’m going to guess, just because of the person we’re going to talk about in the next episode—like, once you start getting into “This is the emperor. Oh, he’s a god.” Like, if you look up at your leaders and this imperial family as gods on Earth, basically, like they’re named gods after they die, it’s like, well, why would you ever do something? Like, if your leaders are seen as so all-powerful to you, then like, of course you would do— Like, I would imagine, part of where… Can you explain about just sort of like the spirituality? Like, they were a very superstitious… They took gods and stuff very literally in this culture.

Gina: Yeah. I want to say that didn’t start fading until other countries started fighting back against Rome and gaining their independence. But, you know, if you look at Egyptians, if you look at Greeks, if you look at any of them, you know, the Danish, all of them, to me, it all always boiled down to, they had no other way of explaining natural occurrences, so they turned them into gods. You know, Thor, God of Thunder. You can’t explain thunder in, you know, 300 BC, so you’re going to come up with a god that’s going to explain why there’s a bunch of rumbling above my head.

So, they really put sooo much emphasis on religion in ancient Rome. I mean, they had altars to gods and goddesses in their homes, just like they did in other ancient civilizations. They would make sacrifices to them. They would go and pay people like the Vestal Virgins and other priests within the city to have specific prayers for things. You know, if for some reason a woman couldn’t get pregnant, she would make sacrifices and go pay to have specific priests pray over her womb, hopefully to help conceive. And they also felt like if there was ever any calamity in their life, it was because they didn’t give proper homage to their gods and goddesses. And, you know, you would even find different things throughout the city, different statues that everyone could go to and just leave things at the altar and pray to it, where you wouldn’t have to specifically go to a priest. You know, it was more of the rich people that thought that “If I go to this priest and they do this prayer for me, then I’m more likely going to get what it is I’m praying for than if I just went to the altar that’s sitting in the middle of the square where anyone can go to.”

So, they really felt that their lives were really based on, number one, how well were they living their lives? Were they going, were they abiding by the rules? You know, was the wife being as pious as possible? And two, were we giving proper sacrifices to these gods and goddesses? Because they had a pantheon of gods and goddesses, just like everyone else did. There was not one monotheistic God thought process with them, which is why they kind of butted heads a little bit with Herod, because that was Christianity, they believed in the one God. And so, there was that tension there with dealing with these other countries that were more to Christianity than they were the pantheon of gods. But they truly believed that if they didn’t do what they were told, these gods wanted them to do— And that’s another thing. Who decided what these gods did? I mean, that had to come at some point in their history.

Ann: Yeah, who decided what the gods want and what pleased them? Like, someone decided that.

Gina: And so, that was some guy sitting somewhere, because you know it wasn’t a woman, there was some guy somewhere that said, “You know what? This is happening. I’m going to call it this god, this is what they’re in charge of, and this is what they require from you.” And so, that’s another thing, religion, however you want to take that, is something that is beat into people’s heads from day one, and this is what you have to abide by. They really believed that if you didn’t abide by that, that it was going to be the downfall of Rome.

Ann: And it was really, like, the religion was so caught up with the politics and with the city, like, there’s no separation of church and state. It’s all one thing. And I’m just assuming that’s part of like how you keep everybody in line, because everybody follows this religion, and the people in charge are the ones who are being like, “This is the god we’ve offended, here’s how you can please them.” And everyone takes that literally and seriously.

Gina: Right. That’s one thing that people in charge have always tried to use to their benefit— I’m not even going to speak on how it’s happening now—but they always try to use religion to control the people they think are starting to get out of hand. So, this senator makes a certain decree, “I want this, this, and this to happen. And that goes along with what this God so and so wants us to do. And we know that we need to please the gods, because if we don’t, there’s going to be destruction on Rome. So, based on our religious belief, you need to go along with this new law, this new rule that I want to implement, because that’s what’s going to please this god.” And everyone is so stuck on trying to be as religiously correct as they could, they followed along with whatever the senators were telling them to do. Religion has always been used as a weapon against the lower classes, it just has. I mean, whether you want to say left, right, this, that… It doesn’t matter. Religion has always been used to try to keep control of the lower classes, and they were probably a bit more dogmatic about it than we are now, because they really believed it in a different way than we do now, you know?

Ann: Well, and just in terms of, like, just a couple of examples I came across when I was doing my research, just in terms of what I would consider now, like a superstition, they took so seriously. They’re just like, whatever, “Should we go to war with this country or not? I don’t know. Let’s go see how many eggs the chicken lays over there.” Count the eggs. “Oh no, one of them is brown. That means this.” Like, these were the sorts of… They’re like, “Oh my god, a bird just shit on that statue and it covered up these letters. These letters are left. What does what do those letters spell?” Like, this is how they’re making like enormous decisions just based on how many birds just flew past.

Gina: But then you also have, okay, the people that would interpret these signs.

Ann: Yes! You’re right.

Gina: There were specific people that interpreted because you had, you know, Octavian, later on Augustus, he had his specific people that he would go to for interpretations for things, just like people in other civilizations would be like “Let’s read what the bones say.” It’s all about who’s doing the interpreting? What is their goal? Are they being paid by whomever to say, “Oh, this is what the gods want,” to the masses that have gathered? Or are they really giving the interpretation that they feel they’re getting? Nine times out of ten, they were getting paid to say whatever it was the person that paid them wanted them to say.

Ann: And/or, like Octavius, if Augustus is the one who’s like, “What does my horoscope say?” Like, you’re not going to say something that’s going to make him kill you.

Gina: Exactly.

Ann: You’re going to say what you know he wants you to say.

Gina: Right. So, all of these omens and signs and all that, it was just natural occurrences of life, but you were so deeply rooted in religion, you felt that it had to have a meaning. And then you had these people that somehow worked their way up in the system to be the ones that will give you the interpretation, and they were getting paid to give you the interpretation that the powers that be wanted them to give. So, it’s just like, really, really, what is the truth? Do we really know what truth is? I mean, as human beings, do we really know what truth is? Because, like you said, whoever was writing the history, they were writing it based off of how they viewed it. The people that were translating from one language to the other, they were writing it the way they viewed it. What is the actual truth?

Ann: You’re so right. Because if you look at one of these writers, like Tacitus or whatever, he’s like… So, like the example I made up, but it’s this sort of thing, honestly. It’s like, “Okay, should we go to war? Let’s see how many eggs does the hen lay?” And it’s like, and then the seer said, “Because one egg was brown, we should do this.” And, you know, Tacitus writes that down. But like, why did the seer say that? He didn’t write down why the seer said that. He didn’t write down who’s paying the seer. Or like, the seer has a personal grudge against that country and wants to go to war against them. That we don’t have so we’re like, “Okay, so I guess I they took this seriously.” Where it’s like, no, everyone has motivations, no one’s just saying something for no reason.

Gina: Yep. And you know, it’s funny because they have such a huge group of gods and goddesses. The thing that always gets me—and it’s sort of this way in Egypt as well, and Greece—but the vast majority of the supreme deities that were worshiped were women. I mean, you had a couple of guys that were, you know, high-ranking in the pantheon of gods. But for the most part, the ones that were worshiped the most were women. The ones that they would go to when they were seeking advice for whatever was usually always a woman. Yet women were the ones that were considered to be beneath the men.

How does that work? How are you praying to all these women but yet you hold these women in such low regard? The women that are, like, right in front of you that can physically do things for you. Because you’re not guaranteed these goddesses are listening to your dumb ass, you’re not guaranteed they’re going to give you what you’re asking for. These women are right in front of you, that could give you what you’re asking for, if you ask nicely, and you’re still saying, “You’re beneath me.” That is one thing about males that I will never understand.

Ann: Can we pivot to talk about something that I’m really excited to talk to you about, that you brought to my attention, which is female gladiators?

Gina: [laughs] There’s a lot of mixed feelings on: Did they exist? Didn’t they exist? But ultimately, I think enough evidence has been found where they did exist. The reason I think why people try to suppress their existence so much is because think about what we’ve been saying about women, how they needed to be girly girls, they needed to be subservient, they needed to be this, that and the other. A female gladiator is going to kick your ass, she ain’t listening to anything you have to say, and she’s making money doing it. So, I think that’s why they tried to suppress them so much.

There weren’t as many of them as regular gladiators, obviously. But in my research, I found that male gladiators had existed for hundreds of years before the first women ever started doing it. I don’t know what would have caused them to start doing it. I’m pretty sure there were plenty of little girls that saw it and was like, “Ooh, I want to do that.”

Ann: I feel like… I’m going to hypothesize based on a video I watched that you sent me. [laughs] This is gladiators, and I’m sure people are familiar with the concept, but it’s these two men fighting usually to the death in front of an audience of people who are just super hyped and excited. But eventually, it’s just, like, this is getting stale, so that’s when they start bringing animals into it. So, eventually, I can see it’s just like, “Let’s bring women.” It’s like, how can we get people… It’s just the same old show; we need to get some new energy. So, I feel like that’s where the, potentially, female gladiators came from, where it’s just like, “We need people. Not as many people are coming to watch our fights. How can we get the audience back?” And at first, I think that would be shocking. In this culture we’ve been talking about, people just be like, “What?! A female gladiator?” Everyone’s like driving in the lines. They’re just like, “Men are like this. Women are like this.” And then just like a female— Like, it would be so explosive and so controversial. That would get people to go to your coliseum.

Gina: Yeah. And it wouldn’t be high-ranking women either, it wouldn’t be high-society women that would do it because they would feel something like that was beneath them, number one, but just so outside of what you should actually be doing with your life, being a woman of virtue and whatnot. So, it was likely poor women, maybe even slaves, that they had doing this. There’s not a lot of information on the women, the specific women, that were gladiatrix.

Yeah, it was one of those things that… I’ve watched the video since you and I don’t know if they existed before, but Trajan, Emperor Trajan, was the one known to really implement the female gladiators. And if you know anything about Trajan, he was really considered to be the most think-outside-of-the-box emperor in the entirety of the Roman Empire. He’s considered to be one of the best too, one of the most fair. I don’t think I’ve ever really read too many bad things about Trajan. So, he might not have liked it because I’m pretty sure he had the same view of women that everyone else did: they needed to be sewing my clothes and raising my kids.

But he also understood that you can’t lose the backing of these million-plus people living in the city. And if they’re screaming that they need something more in these city-sanctioned games that you’re giving them and they’re tired of seeing just a bunch of brutes going at each other, you’ve got to implement something different. And someone must have come to him with the idea of, how about we put some women out there? And he was like, “[grumbles] Fine. Just don’t make them one of the high-class women, and we’ll be okay.” And I’m pretty sure those fights would have been just as interesting as the guys’ fights because there were so many different types of gladiators— I don’t know that they would have had that many for the women. They probably just gave them just one type.

Ann: One, like, fighting style.

Gina: Yeah, where you go out there with a shield, a sword, and maybe a helmet, maybe they didn’t even give the women helmets. I don’t know. Because there was, like, tons of different types for men, and a lot of it revolved around what region did you come from, is what type of gladiator they would teach you to be.

Also, it probably wouldn’t have been very safe for women to be at a ludus. If you were wondering what a ludus is, a ludus is a gladiator school, and it’s run by a lanista. It would be very unsafe for a woman to be around a bunch of brutes like that with no protection. She would constantly have to be fighting just to survive, really, because you know they would take her food rations, they would beat the crap out of her any chance they got, because they wouldn’t believe that a woman belonged there. So, it would be dangerous on so many fronts to be a female gladiator. So, if a woman actually chose to get into that profession, more power to her, I guess. [chuckles] That would have been hard.

Ann: I am under the understanding that oftentimes, like, you know, gladiator fights, it’s like, “Let’s watch these people fight,” or “Let’s watch this man fight the lion,” or whatever. But often they would be sort of reenacting famous stories that be reenacting like myths, but also legendary battles that the Romans had done, that they’d been involved with.

So, one of the concepts that was in that video—I’ll link to the video in the show notes so people know what we’re talking about—but they suggested, because it was probably like 10 or 20 years after Boudica had like raised an army in the British Isles to try and depose Rome, like perhaps, it was 10 or 20 years after that that there’s evidence that there was female gladiators, like, in London, which was a Roman place at the time. So, could they just be like “We’ve encountered…” Or I think they also talked about, you know, female fighters from like, what is now Russia, the Roman armies have been encountering female fighters. So, this is kind of like, this is their YouTube, this is their news of the day. They’re just like, “I want to see a reenactment of this thing I heard that happened.” And if the thing that happened involved a woman fighter, then you have to get a female gladiator to represent that in the Colosseum, I guess.

Gina: I know one thing I found interesting, and I think it was in one of the videos I watched, where they were talking about married women that were going to be gladiators. The first thing I thought was, “What kind of wimp was that guy to where she could be like, ‘Screw you, I’m going to be a gladiator’?” I mean, because she would have to be pretty tough to be able to get into the arena in the first place. So, did she, like, beat his ass and say “I’m going,” or did she just threaten to beat his ass? I mean, what kind of guy? I mean, how, how would he go to the bar with his friends and be like, “Yeah, my wife’s a gladiator.” [laughs]

Ann: Like, in this civilization we’ve described where men have complete power over their wives and women are so powerless, like, the husband would have to agree to this.

Gina: He would.

Ann: A woman couldn’t just do this.

Gina: And I mean, her family would have felt a bunch of shame because women didn’t do stuff like this. So, most likely, she’d be disowned. I mean, it would be a complete shift in her entire world to get into something like this. So, if a woman chose to do it, that would be a lot she’d have to take under consideration before doing that. So, that is what makes me believe that— I mean, because there were even men that chose to do it, they weren’t all slaves. So, there were men that chose to do it for monetary reasons, or they just had way too much testosterone, whoever knows.

Ann: Somehow, it has to seem like a better option than what you’re currently doing. So, your life has to be… That has to be a step up from whatever your situation is.

Gina: I wouldn’t want to have to fight for my life on a regular basis because, let’s be honest, not as many fights ended in death as what people assume. Everyone always thought that it was absolutely a fight to the death, and it wasn’t. You had the option to raise your finger and surrender, and then it would be up to the Emperor to decide if you lived or died. A lot of times they would, they would let them live, and then they’d bring them back for another fight, probably kill them in that one, but not everyone died in these. But one wrong move, and you’re dead, you know? Whether you had a chance to surrender or not, that’s a completely different subject. You are always going to get to that point in the fight where you can surrender. You take your eyes off that person, just slightly, or they kick some sand in your face, you can’t see it, and boom, you’re dead. So, to make the choice to get into that… You’re right. How bad do things have to be for you to choose to put yourself in that position?

Ann: Where that seems like a better option.

And actually, this leads me into another thing I wanted to talk to you about, and maybe this will be sort of, like, the final part of this conversation, is their view of death was interesting to me? It’s very different, I think, because of this genuine religious belief. They weren’t just like, “This is it.” Death was very much not the end for them. I mean, when I imagine going to see a gladiator fight that ends in death, I was just like, “I would not do that. That sounds horrifying.” The same as going to see a bullfight or something. I’m like, “I don’t want to watch a person or an animal being killed in front of me for fun.” But if you’re in a culture where death is kind of not the end, and where also, there are so many stories of people like Cleopatra and Mark Antony who end up dying by suicide, and that’s seen as honourable. What have you come across in your reading, just about how they viewed death?

Gina: Well, you know, it’s just like the Vikings. If you died in battle, the Valkyries would come and get you. They all glorified death, the life beyond. Same with the Egyptians. You go to the Field of Reeds, where you live happily ever after, where you brought all your slaves with you to feed you grapes and everything while you spent eternity in glory. And pretty much every religion has been like that, I mean, Christianity is the same way. Although we have a Heaven and Hell, they didn’t really think about… They believed that there was an underworld that was not all that great to be in. But still, they always automatically assumed, because they always felt that they were right about everything, they always assumed they were going to what we would consider heaven.

So, you know, when a person died, their funerals, if they were higher class, the funerals would be a big spectacle. They’d have their death mask made, and they’d have a bust of themselves made, and it would be put in the homes of their family, and their family would look at these with such reverence, and they would make the sacrifices to the gods and the goddesses to ensure that this family member that they felt was in heaven would continue to live out the rest of eternity in whatever posh world they thought that they were sitting in. So, they never really viewed them as being gone. You know, in today’s world, we’ll say, “Oh, I have an angel watching over me.” They kind of felt the same way, that way. They didn’t verbalize it as an angel, but they would say that, you know, the ancestors of the family were looking after the rest of the family to ensure…

Ann: I was going to say, like, people say that today, like, about the ancestors, you know?

Gina: Yeah. And that’s the way they viewed it. It’s just you were physically gone, but you weren’t spiritually gone. So, you know, with the gladiators, they would look at it as, “Fine, I died a heroic death, I died an honourable death. I’m going on to where whatever Vestal Virgin died is going to be their feeding me grapes and fanning me with a big palm leaf kind of thing.” They always viewed that when they died, they were going to go to this grand place, so people just didn’t fear death the way we do now, because we look at things a little bit more scientifically, and it’s like, okay, what actually happens to us? Where do we go? Is it just done, or are we just sitting in total darkness the rest of eternity? They didn’t look at it that way. They looked at it as you went on to this grand place, and your spirit popped in here and there to help the family out, to keep the family fortune going, or whatever it was they felt that your spirit was doing.

So, that’s probably why— Well, Romans were debaucherous, they just were. I mean, let’s just put that out there. So, they had no problem with watching bloody, nasty things happening out on the floor of the arena, but they also viewed it as that person dies in the arena; man, the way they’re going to get glorified, the way they’re going to go on to this great life. So, “I want him to die because I want him to have that afterlife.”

Ann: Yeah, that’s like a happy ending for the whole audience. But I wonder too, there was so much… I’m going to say casual death, especially just from what I’ve been reading about what we’re going to talk in the next episode, listeners, during the reign of Augustus, but just kind of like, “That guy looked at me funny, cut off his head. Right now.” There’s so much, just like people were just being casually murdered, or cities are being, like, ransacked. This is a society of people who, seeing death in the Colosseum is probably not the first time any of them saw somebody die.

Gina: It wouldn’t have been, no.

Ann: There’s plagues, there’s death all around them all the time. So, to me, living in, like, Canada, the thought of going to a Colosseum with a bunch of strangers and watching somebody murder somebody is insane, I can’t even quantify it. But it’s, like, if you’re living in a place where there’s death constantly everywhere, then like making death a spectacle where there is this kind of happy ending is a way to sort of control it, or I don’t know, just all these traumatized people working through…

Gina: You know, another thing that I’ve thought about a lot often, and I don’t know why, since there was such a death toll really throughout all of history, because you know, you could die from an ear infection, you know? Look at the Dauphin of France. You’d die from anything back then.

So, how often did it happen where a two or three-year-old, both parents got the plague or whatever, and now this two-year-old is sitting in the street, and they get taken in by a completely different family, they’re raised to believe that that’s their family, that’s their family name. How often did that happen throughout history, where someone from this family ends up in this family? Just like all the illegitimate children of rulers, they would get cast aside, raised by someone else with a completely different name, where they were actually of royal blood, but yet they were raised on the street by someone or whatever. So, how often did something like that happen where, since there was just so much death around, you know, any kind of sickness could kill you, any kind of anything could kill you, you could get some tainted wheat, and next thing you know, you’re dead, you know, the rats could have got in there or whatever. All of a sudden, you’re part of a completely different family, and that lineage keeps going. So, really, it’s like, that’s always kind of gotten me where, technically, we’re probably all related in some way, because who knows…

Ann: Yeah, when you look at the family tree written down and it’s like, this is the mother, and this is the father, and this is the kid. It’s like, but was that the father?

Gina: Yeah, exactly.

Ann: Was that the mother?

Gina: Yeah. And you couldn’t tell back then, because there was just, there was a lot of death happening, just either, like you said, someone didn’t like the way they look, so they slit your throat, or you just died because you didn’t have enough food, or you died because you ate some rotten food. Just, you never know what was going to happen back then. So, you’re right, people would be accustomed to seeing death all around them at all times. But how did it really affect some of these kids and actual family dynamics of who ended up being in what family? It’s almost impossible to say.

Ann: Well, and that is going to lead us very beautifully into part two of our conversation, which will be in the next episode, listeners. But I think some of what I’ve been thinking about and reading is what effect does that have on you when you’re growing up in a society where, you know, if you don’t understand thunder and lightning, and you don’t understand why is the river flooded, or whatever, like, why is this plague happening? You’re like, “Well, it must be the gods, the gods must be displeased.” And how does that affect you when you’re in the imperial family? But then also, if you want to have a measure of control, if you don’t want to think everything is just random, we’re living in olden days, and anyone could, then you’d think, like, “Oh, it must be a conspiracy. Somebody must be murdering all these people.” That’s where people start to kind of… And these are the historians, right? 200 years later are like, “Huh, the sequence of people all died. And it’s like, yes, there was a plague, and yes, there was a bad wheat, and yes, but it’s like, but what if there was a serial killer?” [Gina laughs] And those are the sources we’re looking at, right? Or was it just like a really shitty time to live?

Anyway, we’re going to be getting more into sources next time, because we’re going to be talking about Livia, who was technically the first Empress of Rome. And we’ll explain how and why that happened in the next episode and Gina is going to be here along with me next time. So, get ready. [both laugh]

—————

So, as we said in the episode, stay tuned for a special episode coming out in two days, on Friday, where Gina is back. Now that we’ve sort of laid the landscape of what life was like in ancient Rome, especially for women, we’re going to get into the story of Livia, who I, previously to doing the research that I did for this upcoming episode, mostly just knew as the iconic villainess in the 1976 BBC miniseries, I, Claudius, which I was very all about a few months ago. It’s interesting to see what her real-life story is actually like. So, stay tuned for that special extra episode with Gina coming up on Friday.

And I do also want to mention that I have written a book! It’s coming out next year. It’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, or potentially Britain’s Queen Without a Crown, we keep going back and forth. But it’s for sure called Rebel of the Regency. It is by me, Ann Foster, and you can pre-order it if you’re in Canada and the US at your local independent bookstore. Just go on and be like, “Hey, I’d like to pre-order a copy of Rebel of the Regency by Ann Foster.” You can also pre-order it by going to any of the major online retailers. I have a list of all of them at RebelOfTheRegency.com. You can go there to click through to order a copy of this book.

It’s so important to get people to pre-order the book because that’s how bookstores know that people are interested in it, that’s how bookstores know to order more copies of it so that other people can buy it. So, I know every author with every book is always like, “Pre-orders are important,” but now, I too am an author, and I now understand why pre-orders are important. If you’re just excited about it in general, you can also add it to your “To be read” list on Goodreads or on StoryGraph; that also is valuable and important and shows the enthusiasm for this book. Also, if and when you pre-order it, you can sign up to get some free treats from me. For anyone who shares their receipt for having pre-ordered my book with me, then you can sign up to get a free one-year membership to my Patreon, a free one-year membership to my Substack, and also a beautifully designed Caroline of Brunswick-themed digital paper doll sheet that is incredibly cute. So, anyway, the link to do that, to submit your receipt, is also at RebelOfTheRegency.com.

And we’re talking about ancient Rome, and so I have to bring up our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a woman-owned small business based in the United States that uses 100% recycled gold and makes all their pieces made to order, which means there is no waste when you place an order. They make the items so there’s not a lot sitting around being unused. Their pieces are made in New York City, so everyone involved has healthcare and good wages. Even the packaging is made by a lovely little family-owned business in Chicago. What connects with this week’s episode is that their pieces are all inspired by ancient history, and several of them have connections to ancient Rome.

For instance, they have gorgeous pieces, like pendants and/or rings, featuring some women of Ancient Rome, including Livia, who we’ll be talking about on Friday, as well as Agrippina the Younger, as well as Boudica, the woman from Britain who burned down London and was against the Romans. So, if you’re, like, anti-Roman, you can also get the Boudica design as well. But also, some other pieces they have with some ancient Roman vibes. For instance, there’s a ring that says “Liberi Vivas,” which is an Ancient Roman saying that means “May you live carefree,” and it’s inspired by an actual ancient ring that was actually found. So, you can just walk around cosplay, pretend like you’re an Ancient Roman times person. They also have a Palma Slim Signet Ring, which features a palm frond. And in Ancient Rome, palm fronds were awarded to victorious gladiators, so you can wear that walk around cosplay like you’re a victorious gladiator. There’s also a pendant and a ring that you can get, featuring what’s known as the Magic Sator Square, which is a word puzzle that was first unearthed in the archaeological remnants of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. And if you’re all about the Vestal Virgins, there is also a design featuring the Vestal Virgins. The design of the Common Era piece is based on a Roman coin that depicted the Vestal sacrificing at the Temple Vesta. So, you can get all of your Ancient Roman vibes from Common Era Jewelry. Their pieces are available in solid gold, as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar and/or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. That’s 15% off at Common Era at CommonEra.com/Vulgar.

And we’re going to be back in two days, on Friday, talking about Livia with everyone’s fave, Gina Berry. So, until then, everybody, keep your pants on and your tits out.

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as $1/month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.References:

References:

The video we mention about female gladiators.

Donate to support Al Otro Lado

—

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Preorder info for Ann’s upcoming book, Rebel of the Regency!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

—

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠RSVP for the Vulgar History in-person meet-up in Toronto!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

—

Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout

—

Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)

—

Support Vulgar History on Patreon

—

Vulgar History is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that a small percentage of any books you click through and purchase will come back to Vulgar History as a commission. Use this link to shop there and support Vulgar History.