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Al Mancini takes us on his ultimate

1:00

food and drinking tour, including one legendary

1:02

cocktail at a notorious dive bar. It's

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supposed to be bad. It's supposed to

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questions. That's in our all new special

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episode made in collaboration with Las Vegas.

1:27

Listen to Milk Street Radio wherever you

1:30

get your podcasts. Hello,

1:43

my lovely Betrixters. It's me, Kate Lister.

1:46

I'm here, you're here, the producers are

1:48

here, the guest is here. But

1:51

before we can go any further, I have to tell you that

1:53

this is an adult podcast broken by adults to other adults about

1:55

adulty things in an adulty way. Covering a

1:57

range of adult subjects and you should definitely check it

1:59

out. be an adult too. I do

2:02

sometimes wonder if people just wander into this podcast

2:04

children or people have a sensitive disposition and then

2:06

they hear me giving the fair-dos warning and decide

2:09

to just switch off this isn't for them. I

2:11

don't know if that's ever happened but we will

2:13

continue just in case it ever does. On with

2:16

the show. Hangovers

2:21

are pretty awful at the best of

2:23

time. Nobody's ever had an enjoyable hangover

2:25

that is just a fact. And everybody

2:28

has got their own version of a

2:30

hangover cure. Whether that's curling

2:32

up in a ball in a darkened room

2:34

and just praying for the whole thing to

2:36

be over or eating Scotch eggs and drinking

2:38

red bull. But spare a thought

2:40

for those who were on the piss

2:42

with the Roman Emperor Elegabalus who would

2:44

let his guests sleep off their hangover

2:47

in a room but then as

2:49

a joke would release wild

2:51

animals into the room like

2:54

a lion. Waking

2:56

up in strange surroundings is a harrowing enough

2:59

hangover experience but waking

3:01

up with a lion eating your feet that's

3:03

got to be up there with the worst

3:05

of them. Needless

3:07

to say this didn't end well for

3:09

any of the guests although I guess

3:12

if you've been eaten by a lion that has

3:14

actually got rid of your hangover but that's

3:16

not a cure I would be recommending to anybody.

3:19

What other outrageous ways did these emperors

3:21

live their lives? Well I have got

3:23

just the guest to help us find

3:26

out. What

3:33

do you look for a man? Oh

3:35

money of course. You're supposed to rise

3:37

when an adult speaks to you. I

3:39

make perfect copies of whatever my boss

3:41

needs by just turning it up and

3:43

pushing the button. Yes

3:50

social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness,

3:52

but beautiful times. Goodness has nothing to

3:54

do with it, Darian. Hello

4:00

and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history

4:02

of sex scandal in society with me Kayla Stuhr.

4:05

By now we should all know that the

4:07

Romans were... What word we

4:09

want to use? Extra? Yeah, they were pretty

4:12

extra. You only need to

4:14

listen to our previous episodes on murder

4:16

in the Roman world with the fabulous

4:18

Emma Southern to hear about just some

4:20

of the utterly insane ways that the

4:23

Romans enjoyed themselves. It still haunts me,

4:25

but it's captivating. We've also got episodes

4:27

with Emma on Agrippina, the most powerful

4:29

woman in Rome, and an episode on

4:32

ancient Roman incest. So scroll back to

4:34

have a listen to those and really

4:36

remind yourself how awful these people were.

4:40

And who set the tone for

4:42

the Roman way of life? Well,

4:44

the emperors, obviously. Joining

4:46

us today to enlighten us about

4:48

Rome's most outrageous rulers is the

4:50

one and only Mary Beard, author

4:53

of the best-selling book The Emperor of Rome,

4:55

which is just out now in paperback. Plus

4:59

so many other books on Rome and

5:01

documentaries. This woman has just got Rome

5:03

running through her like a sticker rock.

5:06

What was it like to go to a

5:08

Roman Emperor's dinner party? What was palace life

5:10

really like? And what would happen to you

5:12

if you fell out with the Emperor? Laurel's

5:14

at the ready. I am ready to find

5:16

out if you are. Hello

5:26

and welcome to Patricks

5:28

the Sheets. It's Mary Beard.

5:31

Your Majesty. How are you?

5:35

Hello, I'm very good. Thank you. And

5:38

I'm really pleased to be with you,

5:40

Patricks the Sheets, actually. I'm so thrilled

5:42

to have you here. Honestly, I'm such

5:44

a huge, huge fan. I don't even

5:47

know where to start asking you questions,

5:49

but I suppose I'll start with

5:51

asking you because your whole life's work has

5:54

been the Roman Empire and telling the stories

5:56

and making people understand them and look at

5:58

them in different ways. Do you

6:00

remember when you first became interested in

6:02

the Romans? Was there a moment in

6:04

school or somewhere along the way that

6:06

you thought these people are really

6:08

interesting? I want to know more. Yeah,

6:11

I mean there's two moments. The

6:13

first moment is when I thought

6:15

the very distant past was interesting

6:18

and that was when I went to the British Museum

6:21

with my mum when I was five and

6:23

I hadn't been to London before, we lived

6:25

in Shropshire and I wanted

6:28

to see the Egyptians. It started for me

6:30

with the ancient Egyptians and

6:32

we went to look at the

6:35

gallery that was concentrating on

6:37

ancient Egyptian life and

6:39

my mum said, oh look there's a

6:41

piece of ancient Egyptian cake. You know

6:43

it's three and a half thousand years

6:45

old, right, but museums then

6:48

were very, very un-child friendly

6:51

and this cake was at the back of

6:53

the case and I was five and I

6:55

couldn't see it and she tried

6:57

to lift me up but still, you know,

6:59

I couldn't see it. A

7:01

guy came past, seemed

7:04

very old to me but I expected he was

7:06

about 40, right, and said, was I

7:08

trying to look at something and I said yeah

7:10

I want to see that piece of cake, right,

7:13

and he got some keys out of

7:15

his pocket. He opened

7:17

the case, he must

7:19

have been the curator, he got the cake

7:21

out of it and he held it right

7:24

in front of my nose. It

7:28

was wondrous, it was

7:31

just amazing, you know, imagine being five

7:33

and you're being eyeball to eyeball with a

7:35

piece of Egyptian cake and

7:37

that's where I traced back my

7:39

idea that the past is exciting,

7:41

really exciting to that moment but

7:44

I didn't end up being an Egyptologist

7:46

and I might

7:48

have been but I got interested quite

7:50

quickly after that or a few years

7:52

later in the Romans but

7:54

that was partly I think because

7:57

we lived in Shropshire and in

8:00

a big Roman town near us, you could

8:02

go and visit, the local

8:04

museum was stuffed full of

8:07

Roman stuff. And

8:09

I kind of managed to create

8:11

that excitement that I'd

8:13

felt with the cake, looking at

8:15

all this Roman material, it was actually

8:17

had come up from under our

8:20

feet where I lived. And

8:22

quite soon after that, I was

8:24

allowed to go on excavation, do some,

8:26

you know, some real archeology, it was

8:28

about 15, I suppose by then. And

8:31

that was back in the day you could do that, I don't think

8:33

you could go and dig on an excavation

8:35

if you were 15 now, but back

8:37

in the day you could. And

8:39

it was the same sort of

8:42

excitement really, you know, that

8:44

you were there busy excavating and you

8:46

were picking out of the ground, stuff

8:49

that was, that no

8:51

one had ever touched for 2000 years, you know. The

8:54

last time someone saw this, it was a

8:56

Roman, you know, this used to be in

8:58

a Romans pocket and now I find it. Wow.

9:02

And I think I've never lost that

9:04

sense of sheer wonderment actually, that you

9:06

can get so close to

9:08

the Egyptians or the Romans or whatever. I

9:11

love the fact that sort of your origin

9:13

story is a piece of Egyptian cake in

9:15

the British museum because what I love about

9:17

your work is it's, at least it seems

9:20

to me, is you're always trying to push

9:22

past a lot of the pomp and the

9:24

glory and get into how, well

9:26

the nitty gritty, the cake of it, how

9:28

did people live their lives? What would their

9:30

cake have looked like? Yeah,

9:32

and I think that's what

9:35

first entranced me about

9:38

these people from the past. And

9:40

I think I did spend when I was a student

9:42

and a young academic, I probably did spend

9:45

quite a lot of time not looking at

9:47

cake at all, but looking at generals and

9:49

battles and all that kind of stuff. But

9:52

I suppose in retrospect, I'm not surprised that

9:54

I came back to cake. And,

9:56

you know, the Lava Tris and where

9:58

people really live. in what

10:01

they wrote on walls, not on paparuses

10:03

and things like that. So, you know,

10:05

I did my time doing old-fashioned

10:08

battles and general things. Some of

10:10

it was very interesting, but

10:12

I'm very, I feel at home with a cake. Yes,

10:15

yeah, I do too, because that's, for me,

10:17

that's where the magic of history is, is

10:19

looking at that, well, what was different? How

10:21

did people live their lives? And

10:24

you do that so amazingly with

10:26

all of your work on the

10:28

Romans, but your best-selling book, Emperor

10:31

of Rome, is coming out in

10:33

paperback in July. And you've

10:36

done that again here. You've tried

10:38

to push past the, almost like

10:41

the ba-ba-boom Roman Emperor and tried

10:43

to get into, yeah, but

10:45

what was going on behind the scenes? Why did

10:47

you want to tell that kind of a story? Because

10:49

I think that we'll never

10:51

understand Roman emperors if we

10:54

just think of them as, you

10:56

know, posh white men in skirts, really, and

10:58

we don't see what's going on around them

11:00

and behind them and what they're doing all

11:02

the time. And I think

11:04

one of the misconceptions we

11:07

have about Roman emperors is

11:09

that they are single,

11:12

powerful individuals who

11:15

are ruling the Roman world. Like Darth

11:17

Vader. Yes, that's right. And they're often

11:20

psychopaths as well, you know, in

11:22

the traditional story. We very

11:24

rarely stop to think that

11:26

the Roman emperor could not have

11:28

been, or at least

11:30

the Roman empire could not have been governed

11:32

by a series of psychopaths in

11:35

the way that they're often written up to be.

11:37

It wouldn't have survived if it

11:39

was. So I wanted

11:41

to say, so what's really

11:44

going on here? You know, nobody

11:46

rules alone. You can't rule the

11:48

Roman empire on your own. That's

11:50

impossible. So who is doing

11:52

the work? Who is

11:55

actually making the decisions? Who

11:58

is writing the work? the

12:00

letters that the Emperor signs. How

12:03

does he know about what's going on

12:06

in distant provinces? How does he know?

12:10

Sometimes it would take three

12:12

months to get a message from

12:14

Rome at the

12:16

centre to one of the outside

12:19

provinces. So I was interested in

12:21

the sheer practicality of it. And

12:24

that of course, as soon as you're interested in that,

12:26

you discover there are more people involved. It's

12:28

not just emperors. And

12:30

I was also interested in the

12:33

way that the Emperor

12:35

actually surprisingly gives

12:37

us a view and in

12:39

some ways a clearer view of the

12:42

ordinary people in the Roman world and almost

12:45

anything else. And that's one very simple reason

12:47

for that. And it's

12:49

a reason that I think people, professional

12:51

academics like me, don't share enough. It's one

12:53

of the best bits of the Roman Empire.

12:55

We keep it to ourselves. One

12:58

of the absolute founding principles

13:01

of Roman imperial rule was

13:03

that the Emperor should be available

13:05

to everybody. Now, whether

13:08

that worked in practice, I'm very

13:10

much down. But it was a very important

13:12

myth. And there's a lovely story of the

13:14

Emperor Hadrian who's out in

13:16

the countryside and he's riding along and a woman

13:19

comes up to him and

13:21

says, excuse me, Emperor, I've got

13:23

a question to ask you. And

13:25

he says, sorry, I'm really too

13:27

busy, just too busy. And

13:29

she said, if you're too busy for

13:31

me, you're too busy to be Emperor.

13:33

Oh, that's very clever. And actually, that

13:36

is a kind of something which lies

13:38

at the very, very baseline of

13:40

Roman imperial power. And partly,

13:43

I'm sure it's a myth, you know, that

13:45

there's millions of people in the Roman Empire

13:47

and they certainly didn't all have access to

13:49

the Emperor. But in part,

13:51

it's true. And one of

13:53

the things that we can see is that the

13:57

Emperor was the place you would

13:59

go if If you had a problem,

14:01

you couldn't get solved. And we still

14:03

have the letters that

14:05

people wrote to emperors saying,

14:08

you know, excuse me, I've got a really

14:10

difficult case because a slave

14:12

of mine dropped his chamber pot

14:15

on the head of somebody outside and

14:17

the person died and I'm being accused

14:19

of murder, you know, that kind of

14:21

letter. And we've got quite a lot

14:23

of the emperors replies, trying to

14:25

sort this stuff out. And

14:27

there's very much a sense, okay,

14:30

I expect you needed a bit of

14:32

an inside track and a bit of

14:34

advantage, but there's very much the sense

14:37

that the emperor collects the problems of

14:39

the ordinary people in the Roman

14:41

empire. So if we start to look as

14:43

far as we can, you

14:45

know, at what went into his entree

14:48

in the imperial palace, we find those

14:50

stories of ordinary people, you know, the

14:52

woman who's lost her cow, she

14:55

lent it to someone and then it got killed

14:57

in a war, you know, how was she going

14:59

to get the money back, et cetera. All

15:02

those sort of real life problems

15:05

get revealed through the emperor's eyes.

15:08

I wonder who was replying to all those letters

15:10

because that can't have been the

15:13

emperor himself sat there who's replying to

15:15

battle commands, but also to a woman

15:17

whose slave has done something silly. No,

15:21

he signs them off, you know, and it's like, I

15:24

think people are, you know, very good

15:26

at fudging that, aren't we? If we

15:28

write to the king, we

15:30

will get a reply, but

15:32

we know down well that it wasn't written by the king.

15:35

Yes. Right? If we're

15:37

lucky, be signed by the king, might not

15:39

be. If we write to the prime minister,

15:41

it's not going to be the prime minister

15:43

who's replying, but

15:46

there is a kind of sense

15:48

that he's the figure that

15:50

oversees all this and

15:52

that he has around him, people who

15:55

do find out what was going on, work

15:57

out how you solve it, maybe. says

16:00

to the Emperor, look, I think this is a bit of a tricky

16:02

one. What I made to

16:04

suggest is we do this. And

16:07

it's certain that we

16:10

can't be naive and think that

16:12

the Emperor is literally doing all this

16:14

himself. But he's writing, he's spending a

16:16

lot of time, he's spending more time

16:19

doing his filing and doing his intro than

16:21

he is having sex in the swimming pool,

16:23

I bet you. And even

16:26

what you can see a kind of image of

16:28

that because emperors get

16:30

criticized. Julius Caesar was,

16:33

for example, proto-Emperor. He was

16:35

criticized for going to the

16:37

races and taking

16:40

his intro with him and dealing with

16:42

his letters while he was watching the

16:44

races. And people said that was

16:46

a kind of huge

16:48

insult to the Roman people because

16:51

he wasn't concentrating on popular entertainment.

16:54

It is as if Prince William

16:56

was found out at

16:58

the Cup Final when actually

17:00

he was texting his mates

17:02

on his smartphone. So you

17:04

can see that the idea

17:06

of doing the paperwork, it's

17:09

not quite as sexy as some of the other things

17:11

that we imagine the Emperor got up to. But

17:13

it was probably took a lot more time. Can

17:16

I ask you a really starter question

17:18

for this? Where did the emperors come

17:20

from and how do they work

17:23

within this system? Because they're not quite kings. And if

17:25

anyone said I want to be a king, they seem

17:27

to have got really upset with them. But

17:29

also they do seem to rule like

17:31

kings. So where did this,

17:34

who was the first? And why did everyone go,

17:36

yeah, that's a great idea. Well,

17:39

all those questions lie right at the heart

17:42

of why the empire and the system of

17:44

government is so intriguing. You're

17:46

right to say that emperors,

17:49

certainly when they were in Rome,

17:51

they were called a king. That

17:53

was really bad news. The emperors,

17:56

they were first citizens. They were

17:58

emperors. They were. Caesar's

18:00

sometimes they often call themselves Caesar, they

18:02

were not kings. Now that's

18:04

true in Rome. If you go to the

18:07

eastern part of the Roman Empire

18:09

they're called kings all the time,

18:12

you know the Greek word for

18:14

king is basilius and the Roman

18:16

Empire is often called basilius. But

18:19

Rome itself was very

18:22

very opposed to that sense of

18:25

the emperor being king and it

18:27

is puzzling, you know, how it

18:30

arises and it's puzzling in a way

18:32

how it continues because one

18:34

thing I think is important to get absolutely

18:36

clear but it's completely counterintuitive

18:39

is that there was a Roman

18:41

Empire in terms of geographical extent

18:44

long before there was an emperor. The

18:47

emperors didn't create the empire, Rome

18:50

was a sort of democracy for

18:53

years and years, centuries,

18:55

five centuries and

18:57

it was in that period for

18:59

reasons we don't fully understand that

19:01

Rome acquired its vast land-based empire

19:04

from Syria to

19:06

Spain and Roman

19:08

emperors were nowhere near the scene then, it

19:10

was a sort of democratic

19:12

system. Now in a way it was

19:15

the sheer size of the

19:17

empire and the difficulties of

19:19

governing it that

19:22

created a system of

19:24

one-man rule because up to that

19:26

point Romans had had new

19:28

officials every year never

19:30

staying in office for very long, you know,

19:33

eventually it kind of looked as

19:35

if you couldn't manage the empire

19:37

with that kind of turnover and

19:39

so Julius Caesar is more or

19:41

less the first to

19:44

actually take over and to say no

19:46

right I am going to be

19:48

the boss and he called himself I'm

19:51

going to be dictator forever, he never

19:54

called himself emperor, dictator forever and

19:56

what happens is he's killed, eventually

19:58

people say We want liberty back, we

20:01

don't want a dictator, and he's killed.

20:03

However, what's pretty clear is

20:06

that after that point, they

20:09

all basically saw that

20:12

you needed a command structure. And

20:15

you needed a command structure basically,

20:18

and somewhere with one man where the buck stopped.

20:21

And that is what after a long period

20:24

of civil war, they got with

20:26

the first emperor Augustus. The

20:28

problem is that

20:30

if you say, so where did the

20:32

emperors then come from? Now

20:35

in most modern

20:38

European monarchies, there's

20:40

a very fixed idea of where the king

20:42

comes from or the emperor. It

20:45

is the eldest son or sometimes the eldest

20:47

child of the

20:49

current ruler. And we

20:51

know now, I think King Charles

20:53

isn't quite a Roman emperor, but

20:56

we know that barring disaster, Prince William

20:58

is going to be the next king.

21:01

And there's a fixed line of

21:03

succession and it stays within the

21:05

family, unless they sort of die

21:07

out. And then you go to a sort of a

21:10

subsidiary branch of the family or you have a war.

21:13

Now Rome never had that

21:15

system. It never had an automatic

21:17

system of who comes next.

21:20

Now to some extent, there's huge disadvantages in

21:22

that. Some extent it means that you don't

21:24

have to put up with someone who's absolutely

21:27

hopeless, but just happens to be the eldest

21:29

son, right? So they

21:31

are always looking not just to

21:33

their family, sometimes to that, they're

21:36

looking to the wider

21:38

family. And they're

21:40

also in a really interesting way,

21:43

using adoption, they're looking at

21:46

people who might be suitable

21:48

or the ruling emperor thinks

21:51

is suitable to be his successor. Well,

21:54

it's not that simple. does

22:00

and let's say then you find somebody

22:02

who's you know, vaguely related to his

22:04

great aunt thinks he would be good.

22:07

He adopts him. And he sort of

22:09

marks him out as his successor. But

22:13

when the emperor dies, it's

22:16

still a bit up for grabs. And

22:18

you can see every

22:20

moment where power changes

22:23

hands, the new

22:25

emperor, the person designated is busy

22:27

throwing money at the army to

22:29

keep them on board, throwing money

22:31

at the citizens of Rome, being

22:34

extremely nice to the Roman elite

22:36

in order to establish himself.

22:38

And it's always, always a

22:41

problem that Romans

22:43

never get sorted. But

22:45

it's I think what really

22:48

would strike us is

22:50

how often these people don't come

22:52

from the immediate family of the

22:55

ruling emperor. They're brought

22:57

into it by a system of adoption.

22:59

You know, the

23:01

emperor Hadrian calls himself

23:04

the son of the emperor Trajan

23:06

because he was adopted by Trajan.

23:09

He had no biological connection at

23:11

all. And that

23:13

is one of the things which

23:16

helps widen the pool hugely, both

23:19

in terms of different

23:21

families, but also geographically.

23:24

So by the second century

23:26

with Trajan and Hadrian, those guys

23:28

originated in Spain, they didn't originate

23:31

in Italy. By the

23:33

time you get to the

23:35

third century, and you're one of

23:37

my favorite emperors, Elagabalus, he's

23:39

from Syria. And it's really

23:41

striking how diversity, including

23:44

ethnic and geographic diversity is

23:46

built in to the

23:48

Roman imperial system. They aren't all,

23:51

in fact, very few are born

23:54

in the Roman palace in Rome. I'll

24:00

be back with Mary and the emperors after a short

24:02

break. Have

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25:25

It must

25:29

have been terrifying

25:31

though. Like

25:38

I like the idea of like

25:41

theoretically anyone could be emperor theoretically,

25:43

but without that kind of system of succession,

25:46

what you seem to get is this crazy

25:49

bun fight whenever somebody dies of everyone like right

25:51

I'm going to murder all of my opponents, I'm

25:54

going to put you I was reading your book

25:56

Emperor of Rome and it's no wonder half of

25:58

them were completely bonkers. I

34:00

kind of think poor guys, they probably had

34:02

a very boring sex life really. It was

34:04

probably nothing to write home about. But he

34:07

was always written up as if it was

34:10

larger than life, you know. He

34:12

didn't just sleep with one woman, he slept

34:15

with 25, that kind of stuff. I

34:18

suppose yeah, it's quite a potent fantasy isn't

34:20

it, in mind of the masses of like,

34:22

it's almost as if this power corrupts and

34:24

what would you do if you had nobody

34:26

telling you that no, you can't do that.

34:30

I like to think we wouldn't have sex with our

34:32

relatives, but it's kind of part of that, that

34:35

they're degenerate. Do you think there was anything

34:38

in those accusations around Caligula, by the way?

34:40

Or do you think that was all just

34:42

smear campaign? You know, I think the trouble

34:44

is you can't know. I think it would

34:46

be, you know, a bit of a downer

34:49

to say none of that could be true.

34:51

It was lovely. The rules for sexual engagement

34:53

were different in the ancient world. But

34:56

it's now almost impossible to

34:58

tell what was

35:00

literally true from a

35:03

projected fantasy. The book was

35:05

true. I became more

35:07

and more interested in the fantasy, you know,

35:10

how do they imagine? I mean, you

35:13

know, Nero, when he inadvertently

35:15

killed his wife, papaya, she

35:17

was pregnant, and he hit her in the

35:19

stomach, in this real horrible domestic

35:22

violence, if it's true. One

35:24

thing he did was that he found a

35:27

male slave. It is said, all of this

35:29

is it is said, he

35:31

found a male slave who looked like her.

35:34

He had him castrated and married

35:36

him. Okay. Now, you

35:39

see, is that truth? Is

35:42

it an attempt to pin down

35:44

the power, the, you know, the

35:46

awful power of the Emperor, which

35:48

he turns a man into his

35:50

wife. And,

35:52

you know, we don't know, I'm afraid we don't

35:55

know, or rather, I'm pleased to say we don't

35:57

know, actually, I think, because it opens up the

35:59

whole question. of what is

36:01

going on here. And they said similar things

36:03

about Olaga Ballas didn't they? That he, not

36:05

that he castrated a slave but that he

36:07

wanted to be castrated. Yeah

36:10

he wanted to have a vagina

36:12

made for himself. Now

36:14

you could say that particular operation would have led

36:17

to death in the ancient world you know for

36:19

a start but the modern

36:21

trans community have seen him

36:23

as in a sense a kind

36:25

of early example of transgender. You

36:27

know he also had pronoun issues

36:29

he wanted to be addressed as

36:31

she. Oh I didn't know that.

36:33

So it's for me I

36:35

think because I'm still going to be the old

36:37

academic in the end who's going to say well

36:40

we don't know whether this is true or not.

36:42

I think what these stories say to me is

36:45

not that there was a trans community in ancient

36:47

Rome. I don't know the answer to that. What

36:50

they show and again it's

36:52

through the image of the emperor they

36:55

show that people have always

36:57

been debating what the nature

37:00

of manhood or womanhood

37:02

is. What's the boundary between a

37:04

man and a woman? Those stories

37:07

raise the question I think it's

37:09

in a mythic form really a

37:11

fantasy mythic form but they

37:13

raise the question of what's the difference between a

37:16

man and a woman? Can you create? Can you

37:18

turn a man into a woman? And

37:20

I think that the Roman Empire is pretty

37:22

good for stopping us being

37:24

quite so convinced that the problems that

37:27

we have and the issues that we

37:29

have you know we're the first to

37:31

have them. No we're not the first

37:33

to have them. Issues about what masculinity

37:35

is you know the difference between biological

37:38

sex and gender is something that people

37:40

were discussing 2000 years ago. Do

37:42

you think they would have ever accepted a woman

37:44

emperor because there was never a woman emperor was

37:47

there but there's some very very powerful women but

37:49

do you think that would have ever happened? Power

37:52

in ancient Rome

37:55

is always coded male. That is

37:57

true. Yeah. What

38:00

you do find, stories

38:03

of, possibly true stories, of

38:06

women often related to the

38:08

Emperor, his wives or daughters, apparently

38:11

claiming power at least behind

38:13

the scenes. I

38:16

mean, anybody who's seen the television

38:18

program by Claudius knows

38:20

that, you know, Livia, AKA,

38:22

Sharn Phillips, was always

38:24

getting her own way, usually

38:27

manipulatively and often with

38:29

poison added, right? Now,

38:31

that may be true. I don't want to

38:34

be so kind of dismissive of any possible

38:36

female power that I'd say, no, not true.

38:39

What is clear, however, is

38:41

that when those stories are told, as they're told

38:43

by modern novelists as much as they are by

38:45

ancient ones, in the ancient world,

38:48

they're always told

38:50

as bad things, right?

38:53

The powerful woman, they're not

38:55

saying, isn't Livia great, the

38:57

wife of Augustus? She's really

38:59

controlling stuff. It's always about

39:02

women out of control, women

39:05

usurping male roles. And

39:08

you find that too, when you look at, in

39:11

the Roman imagination, foreign

39:13

queens, people like

39:16

Queen Budica in Britain or

39:18

Queen Zenobia from the East,

39:21

they are portrayed as

39:24

powerful women, but it's always

39:26

transgressive power. Budica

39:29

is not a wonderful monarch

39:31

who is simply standing up

39:33

to Rome. She

39:35

is a murderous, violent,

39:38

deceitful person to

39:41

be avoided and put down. When

39:43

I was reading your book, I was really

39:45

struck by the role of slaves. And

39:48

you've touched on that in a few documentaries that

39:50

you've done as well, because I'm not going to

39:52

try and make a case for slavery that it

39:54

wasn't that bad. But one of the things that

39:56

came out that did quite surprise me is

39:58

that these people could actually hold. quite a lot

40:01

of power and I wondered if it's because if

40:03

like if you're an emperor the world around

40:06

you must be terrifying everybody is a potential

40:08

enemy there's there's danger everywhere you know that

40:10

all the people before you've been bumped off

40:13

who are your friends like when you're

40:15

not empering anymore and you just go back to

40:17

your room and you wanted what friends do you

40:19

have and was that the slaves well

40:22

to some extent I think it is and

40:24

if we were to look at slavery right

40:26

across the Roman Empire 99.9 percent

40:30

of slaves did not have power they

40:32

were exploited they were working

40:35

in the mines or working the field

40:37

whatever however within

40:39

the Roman palace it

40:42

is clear that slaves or slaves

40:44

that the Emperor has freed and made

40:47

citizens but ex-slaves it's

40:51

clear that they hold

40:53

considerable day-to-day power.

40:55

I didn't know, blows my

40:57

mind. It is for

41:00

the reason that you say in a way

41:02

I think that first of all

41:04

they're doing jobs like the filing like

41:07

the bookkeeping like the

41:09

detailed planning the bits of

41:12

research that you know an

41:14

up market elite Roman senator

41:16

wouldn't do but they're

41:18

also and I think this is as you say this

41:20

is really the key there is

41:22

a sense that your slave

41:24

is somebody that you can trust yeah

41:27

that is partly the question of ownership

41:29

I don't think we ought to imagine

41:31

it that it's kind of you know

41:33

pleasant nice relationship of equals but

41:36

the slave is yours

41:39

and so as you say you know you can go

41:42

back to your room everybody's gone home

41:44

and there's someone you can talk to

41:46

because the difficulty or one of the

41:49

many difficulties about being a Roman Emperor

41:52

is that one thing you know is

41:54

that no one's telling you the truth

41:58

it's no wonder they were mad yeah we

42:00

think about flattery. We say it was terrible

42:02

in the Roman court, you know, it was

42:04

a regime of flattery and we tend to

42:06

think about how awful it would be for

42:09

the flatterer but it's also awful for the

42:11

person being flattered because the emperor knows nobody

42:14

is speaking truth to him. So

42:16

in a sense it

42:18

is by looking to people

42:20

who are outside that palace judge and

42:23

who are in a sense owned by

42:25

you where you might find someone that

42:27

you could talk to, you might find

42:30

someone who would talk the truth to

42:32

you. Now it becomes

42:34

hugely controversial amongst

42:37

the Roman elite because

42:39

they see, and we find it puzzling too

42:41

to some extent, they see

42:43

the whole social order being upturned in

42:45

that. They say who's got the power

42:47

in the Roman court? It's the slaves.

42:49

We are living in a world in

42:51

which the enslaved people

42:54

have the power and they go

42:56

on and on and on about

42:58

that without I think

43:01

seeing what the basic

43:03

structure of that is.

43:07

Nero, for example, sends one of

43:09

his ex-slaves to investigate what

43:11

was happening in Britain after the

43:13

rebellion of Queen Boudica and

43:16

the slave goes to

43:18

Britain and Nero has sent

43:20

him because he is the person who will

43:22

tell Nero the truth of what's happening. One

43:25

of our elite historians says

43:27

the people in Britain just

43:30

laughed because they

43:32

thought this is a world

43:34

in which slaves have power.

43:37

They, he said, still knew what the

43:40

virtues of liberty were.

43:43

So you find the whole kind

43:45

of sort of mix

43:47

up of people's values, people's kind of

43:49

sense that the world has been turned

43:52

upside down. One of the reasons you

43:54

know the world's turned upside down is

43:57

that it is not the senators

43:59

have the power now. you know, it's the

44:01

slaves. I

44:04

think being an emperor sounds like

44:06

a horrendous job. I know that it

44:08

comes with a palace and loads of power, but would you

44:10

want to do it, Mary? Like if somebody was like, do

44:12

you want to be the emperor? No,

44:15

and I think that where I kind

44:17

of saw that most was there's nowhere

44:19

to hide, you know? That

44:21

everybody is jostling for position.

44:23

You can't believe anybody. And

44:26

the palace, it is a

44:29

lavish, extraordinary symbol

44:32

of your power. It's also a

44:34

prison, you know? The emperor is

44:37

actually imprisoned within the palace, basically.

44:39

And if you say, look,

44:42

where do most people say

44:44

that emperors get killed? There's

44:46

probably a lot more allegations of assassination

44:48

than real assassinations. I mean, an old

44:50

teacher of mine always used to say,

44:52

in the ancient world, they could never

44:55

tell a case of poisoning from a

44:57

case of peritonitis. And if

44:59

somebody died with a stomach upset, they

45:01

assumed that it was poisoning. So it

45:03

might not have been quite as grim,

45:06

but they don't die in the open.

45:08

You know, Julius Caesar's assassination, you

45:11

know, in the open, in public, assassinated

45:13

by the senators, that

45:16

was rare. Mostly they die,

45:18

they are bumped off at

45:20

home by one of

45:22

their bodyguard, by their personal trainer, by

45:25

their wife. And it's

45:27

the palace, which is the

45:29

prison. And there's a nicer and

45:31

nasty story told about the emperor Domitian,

45:33

at the end of the first century

45:36

CE, when he

45:38

apparently said again, I don't

45:40

know if it's true, he is said

45:42

to have heard the walls, the corridors

45:45

through which he walked, lined

45:47

with shiny stone. Why?

45:51

So he could see who was coming up

45:53

behind him. Because in

45:56

the palace was the place

45:58

where the enemy. might approach

46:00

from behind. That's terrifying,

46:03

isn't it? All right, so my final

46:05

question, although I could talk to you about this forever

46:07

and ever and ever, you mentioned that Ollaga Baos was

46:09

one of your favourite emperors. Do

46:12

you have a favourite? Does it change all the

46:14

time? Do you have a... that's my guy, him.

46:17

I think if you say, do I have

46:19

a favourite in the sense of who do

46:21

I fancy having dinner with? You know, who

46:23

do I fancy, you know, a nice long

46:25

evening over a bottle of Filernian wine? I

46:28

think none of them, thank you very much. I think

46:31

I'll keep the way. Ollaga Baos

46:33

is a favourite in the

46:35

sense of he's completely intriguing.

46:37

I mean, he's an emperor that most

46:40

people haven't heard of. It doesn't exactly have

46:43

name recognition, you know, in the London street

46:45

now, does he? But he

46:47

has attracted anecdotes of

46:50

such luridness that

46:52

it makes Nero look like a kind

46:54

of complete little pussycat. And

46:56

so working through why those

46:59

anecdotes are told are particularly

47:01

interesting in the case of

47:04

the gabbles. I mean, so I think he's

47:06

good. The others, do you know, I think

47:09

to some extent, they're all much of a

47:11

muchness. They all look the same as well.

47:13

All of their statues, they're all kind of

47:15

merge into one. They do. And, you know,

47:17

we have invested in the kind

47:20

of idea of their personal

47:22

idiosyncrasies that, you know, Tiberius

47:24

is hypocritical. Caligula is bonkers.

47:27

Claudius is an old fashioned

47:29

scholar. You know, Nero is

47:32

committed to luxury and performance.

47:35

And to some extent, the Romans

47:37

have given us those images. But

47:39

actually, I think Marcus

47:41

Aurelius was the guy who looked

47:44

back at his predecessors and

47:47

said, basically, you look at them and

47:50

it's same play, different cast. You know,

47:52

they're much more similar than they are

47:54

different. Just like, I think, you know,

47:56

recent British monarchs. I mean, we know

47:59

that, you know, George VI was

48:01

a much more family man than

48:03

Edward VII. But all the

48:05

same, they share many more

48:08

things than divide them. They're

48:10

much more similar. Mary,

48:12

you have been so good to talk to. Thank

48:14

you so much for coming to talk to me.

48:17

You haven't changed my mind at all that being a

48:19

Roman emperor is a terrible thing to be. I would

48:21

not want to be one of them.

48:23

Good. If people know more about you

48:25

and your work, where can they find you? Well,

48:28

I think that read the book, Emperor

48:30

of Rome, which is just about to

48:33

come out in paperback. And

48:35

keep a look on Google because I do

48:37

quite a lot of events around the country.

48:39

And I try to advertise them on Twitter.

48:42

But they're also just online. And

48:44

one of the things that's great fun

48:46

about writing any book now is that

48:48

you do get a chance to meet

48:50

people who've read it or might think

48:52

about reading it. And they

48:54

ask questions, they challenge you, you

48:57

can answer. And, you know,

48:59

it's really great meeting readers. Thank

49:01

you so much, Mary. You've been wonderful.

49:08

Thank you for listening. Thank you so much to

49:11

Mary for joining me. And if you like what

49:13

you heard, then possibly get therapy because those people

49:15

were horrible. But if you like the podcast in

49:17

general, then don't forget to like review and follow

49:19

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49:22

And if you like ancient history, be sure

49:24

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49:27

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49:29

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49:33

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49:35

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49:38

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