Vulgar History - Author Interview： Emma Southon (A Rome Of One's Own： Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire)

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:17.260 foster and today is a special sort of crossover event because my guest is emma southern who is

00:00:24.140 one of the co-hosts of the podcast history is sexy if you haven't heard of that podcast or you

00:00:28.780 haven't listened to it before. I think you can tell by the name. It's great. It's very much got

00:00:33.080 the Vulgar History tits out vibes. And so if you're looking for a new show to listen to,

00:00:38.540 that's one that I recommend. Also, the connection between Emma and this podcast is that she's the

00:00:44.440 author of the biography of Agrippina that I used as basically the source for when I did the Agrippina

00:00:50.940 episode. And I forget if I said this when I was talking to Emma and we were recording or it was

00:00:55.720 before or after. But when I read that book, so her book about Agrippina, which is called

00:01:00.620 Agrippina, Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore, A Biography of the Most Extraordinary Woman

00:01:05.080 in the Roman World. I read it and it's so approachable. She tells jokes throughout, 0.88

00:01:10.320 she's making puns. And it's also really smart and really well-researched. And that really

00:01:15.060 showed me that you can do this. You can do history and also be silly and have fun with it. 0.93

00:01:21.400 and that's part of what I do in this podcast. So really, she's kind of the fairy godmother

00:01:26.020 of this podcast. So a bit about Emma herself. So she has a PhD in ancient late antique history

00:01:33.500 from the university in Birmingham. After a few years of teaching ancient and medieval history,

00:01:38.580 followed by some years teaching academic writing, she quit academia because it is grim and started

00:01:43.260 writing for her own enjoyment. And thank God, because her books are so good. And her newest

00:01:48.680 book, which is what we were talking about today, is called, so it has two different titles. In

00:01:54.500 North America, it's just come out and it's called A Rome of One's Own, A History of the Roman Empire

00:02:00.380 and 21 Women. In the UK, it's called A History of the Roman Empire and 21 Women, How Women

00:02:06.680 Transformed the Empire. So those are the two titles. If you look up her name, there's a link

00:02:12.040 in the thing. You can buy the book. A Rome of One's Own is the title that I read it by. And I do

00:02:16.740 wanted to say something to everybody. I didn't mean that to sound like I would like to make a

00:02:20.380 statement. But just to be clear, when I have authors on this podcast, and someone asked me

00:02:25.180 this when I was doing an Ask Me Anything on Instagram a bit ago, I read all these books.

00:02:30.240 Like I don't just invite anyone on my podcast. I read every book where I interview the author

00:02:37.080 about them. And I bring them on because I think they're really good. And I think that the listeners,

00:02:41.960 you all the tits out brigade would enjoy learning about this book and i think you would enjoy

00:02:47.880 reading this book so just please know um because sometimes when i'm interviewing authors they're

00:02:52.520 surprised that i've read the book because i guess i mean it is a time commitment and not everyone

00:02:57.680 who interviews everybody has time to read the whole book but like i always read the book so

00:03:01.800 when someone's on this podcast know that i've read the book and i legitimately recommend it

00:03:07.300 to you. And I guess because, you know, holiday gift giving season or whatever is coming up,

00:03:13.360 or if you just want to have a recap of all the authors who I've ever interviewed on the show,

00:03:18.260 I do keep a list on my bookshop page. It's a list that's just called authors interviewed

00:03:22.500 on vulgar history. And all the books are listed there. If there was one that you remember hearing

00:03:26.720 about that you thought you liked. And as a reminder that when you buy books using my link

00:03:31.680 to my bookshop page, whether you buy books from that list or from other lists, a little,

00:03:36.380 a small percentage of the book sale price goes to me and to support this podcast. That's a little

00:03:40.940 way. If you're buying the book anyway, you could use that link. Anyway, it's in the show notes.

00:03:44.900 You just go to whatever, bookshop.org. And yeah, Emma Southern. So this book,

00:03:51.280 A Room of One's Own, A History of the Roman Empire and 21 Women. First of all, whenever Emma has a

00:03:55.600 new book, I'm just like, I'm there. I'm in it. I'm going to read it no matter what the title is. I

00:04:00.700 know it's going to be good. And it is always good, but this one has an especially good title because

00:04:04.200 a room of one's own was a phrase that the writer Virginia Woolf said that every woman should have

00:04:08.860 a room of one's own. So a Rome of one's own. And so the women that she talks about in this book, 0.82

00:04:14.000 and I'm, Roman Empire is not a thing I think about every day. You know, there was that whole 0.99

00:04:18.800 meme. The parts of the Roman Empire that I've learned about have been mostly people like

00:04:22.500 Agrippina, like Empresses, like that level of person. But she's like, he had 21 women. And so

00:04:27.340 there are some royals, there's some names you'll know, like Boudicca is mentioned. But also it's

00:04:32.440 a lot of just like quote unquote everyday people just like the people who aren't often talked about

00:04:37.160 and that really helps sort of fill in the blanks of what was the roman empire like it wasn't just

00:04:41.380 a bunch of dudes and togas like inventing democracy and being stoic or whatever there

00:04:46.800 was like people every day doing stuff we hear about in this book in this interview she's going 1.00

00:04:50.600 to explain about sort of a best of hard work figure who is like a woman entrepreneur built 1.00

00:04:55.100 making buildings like she talks about sex workers just like people who are just like getting it done 1.00

00:05:00.340 getting through the day. When I read the book, I was so excited. And when Emma agreed to be in

00:05:05.400 the podcast, I was so excited. And now I'm excited that you all get to hear this amazing

00:05:09.460 conversation I had with Emma Southern about her book, A Rome of One's Own.

00:05:20.500 Okay, so I'm joined today by Emma Southern. Did I say that right?

00:05:24.080 You did.

00:05:24.700 I just asked. Okay, thank you. Author of A Rome, well, most recently of A Rome of One's Own.

00:05:30.340 which is a book about some lesser-known women from the Roman Empire.

00:05:34.760 And my first question is, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?

00:05:39.620 Like multiple times a day, all the time.

00:05:45.740 If I'm not thinking about the Roman Empire,

00:05:47.720 then it's only a matter of time before I bring the conversation back to the Roman Empire.

00:05:54.340 Because it's one of the weirdest and most fun parts of human history.

00:05:59.620 and I love that I was telling my friend Gina about your book she's a big she's really into

00:06:06.260 the Roman Empire that's never been my specific thing but I find so much interesting about it

00:06:12.140 and I said yeah it's this book and it's about the women of the Roman Empire and she's like oh yeah

00:06:16.520 no she's like the men did some stuff but like the women like that's what the good stories are and

00:06:21.000 I'm like it's true it's absolutely true so first can you describe well just for everybody who

00:06:26.660 hasn't read it yet your book like how do you how do you describe the book to people so the book is

00:06:31.080 basically a history of the roman empire so it goes chronologically from the foundation of rome

00:06:36.800 right the way through to the end of the western empire and it is through the lives of 21 different

00:06:43.640 women mostly women that you have not heard of so it doesn't have like your big julia claudian

00:06:49.820 empresses or anything in it because they already have books anybody who already has a book about 0.97

00:06:54.620 them does not get to get put in this book apart from lucretia who's kind of the one unavoidable

00:07:00.240 but it goes through the various phases of roman political evolution but looking at the way that

00:07:08.320 women's lives changed and how the roman empire expanded to encompass lots of different people

00:07:17.020 under the umbrella of roman-ness not just um because taking it back to that kind of how often

00:07:22.460 do you think of the roman empire question they talk about romans as though they are just 12 men

00:07:27.000 from italy but roman encompasses millions of people from um everywhere from libya all the

00:07:36.400 way across to wales it encompasses millions of people have done millions of different experiences

00:07:42.340 that i wanted to include under the umbrella of romaness and then it comes back um to the last

00:07:49.000 roman empress uh who actually did anything in the city of rome so so at the very beginning like okay

00:07:56.120 so i know until i read your book just bits and pieces about rome like i knew agrippina i knew

00:08:01.320 kind of like the cleopatra scenario like kind of like the messalina you know like i knew just

00:08:06.420 bits and pieces but you're really filling in some stuff that i never knew about before

00:08:10.060 that's my hope like the founding of rome and you're like here's this woman and you say something

00:08:16.700 like you know i'm sure there's other women but this is the only person whose name is mentioned

00:08:20.580 like you're just finding it's like oh is that a woman like it's so so few mentioned yeah um at

00:08:27.080 the beginning i mean there's quite a lot in the mythical beginning of um of rome they're knocking

00:08:33.480 about but um there are certainly periods where there are not very many people who have names

00:08:39.960 um it's really hard sometimes to find the name of a woman um it when romans are writing about

00:08:46.960 themselves um because they they kind of lay the foundations for for what we think or for what for

00:08:54.340 a long time historians have thought was history which is that it is only things that men are

00:08:58.840 allowed to do it's only war and it's only politics um and because women were banned from doing that

00:09:03.500 you only get therefore during periods of wild excess the occasional woman who does it wrong 0.99

00:09:09.660 so the late republic and the early empire these periods of kind of what the romans considered to 0.94

00:09:15.540 be like um general insanity and that's why there are so many women that come from that period 0.92

00:09:22.220 because they're also appalled by it um but in periods where things are going well for the

00:09:26.940 romans there are not that many women around because a woman is generally in politics a sign

00:09:31.600 of degeneration so you can look out you have to look outside of history and find women in other 1.00

00:09:37.860 places outside of like capital capital H history which is kind of the male-centered war and 0.90

00:09:44.320 politics history once you step outside of that and or you're able to step outside of that you 1.00

00:09:48.980 can find loads of women kind of knocking about living their lives writing graffiti and and doing 1.00

00:09:55.140 exciting things that would not make the history books that tacitus or whatever would be writing

00:10:01.760 but are nonetheless kind of small h history well and i think just to that point and just so that

00:10:07.100 the listeners get sort of the overall vibe of what this book is like there's a sentence i was just

00:10:11.760 like i gotta save this line this is so perfect so this i'm gonna quote you your book back to you

00:10:16.320 so this is just from early on in the book you say all of this brought much military glory to rome

00:10:21.760 which is of no interest to me at all yeah no it's not as soon as of there it's not to me either it's

00:10:28.080 like a skip over the military stuff so like that's what your book does so i'm just like great great

00:10:33.440 you're already skipping the parts i would have skipped if i was reading a book with that stuff

00:10:36.780 in it yeah yeah yeah and there's so i was like there's so many other books like i can recommend

00:10:40.440 you a bunch of books i'll tell you all about the military stuff if you want to know about the

00:10:44.260 expansion of the empire uh but it to me just makes my brain turn off and my entire body go floppy

00:10:51.400 in a desperate attempt to make it end because I just don't care about anything to do with the

00:10:56.860 military or anything to do with battles like my brain just switches off what I want to know is

00:11:01.740 what's going on around that and how is that impacting stuff so like the military the impact

00:11:07.980 of all of that military glory is that money floods into Rome and floods into Italy and then people

00:11:14.000 get really really rich and then that really changes like family dynamics amongst elite families

00:11:18.760 and that's interesting to me um and then people get really fussy about the fact that

00:11:23.700 like people own tables with only one pedestal which is something that livy gets really upset

00:11:27.860 yeah i know i'm like what sort of tables don't have one pedestal what sort of table would they

00:11:35.040 have wanted people to have had more more legs apparently four legs give one leg bad

00:11:40.460 like he is just um but he just lists all of these things that he considers to be monstrously

00:11:46.880 luxurious and a sign of denigration and tables with one pedestal is apparently one of them but

00:11:51.600 like that the impact of that all of that military success is is really socially and culturally

00:11:57.300 interesting as rome's like romans try to wrestle with the fact that they're now really rich but

00:12:02.280 also they hate rich people but not them obviously because they deserve it and then produce all of

00:12:06.920 this history that explains why they are so rich because they deserve it and that's fun the actual

00:12:14.760 fighting part less so yeah so you know I'm gonna talk to you about Lucretia just because that's

00:12:21.740 where you start and you said yourself it's like you kind of can't mention her so that was a story

00:12:25.780 I hadn't known I read about it recently just in the context of Bess of Hardwick has these tapestries

00:12:32.380 that show like great women from the classical era and one of them is Lucretia so I was like oh who's 0.97

00:12:37.260 that and I read this story and I was like well that's a fucking nightmare story like why would 0.97

00:12:42.480 Why would you put that on your wall? 0.99

00:12:44.300 But I guess it's being like, I, too, am a good wife who would kill herself, I guess.

00:12:49.880 Yeah.

00:12:50.360 So Lucretia is so interesting because her story is that she is the wife of a cousin

00:12:55.820 of the last king of Rome.

00:12:58.040 And she kind of gets caught up in a disaster because her husband and his friends are having

00:13:06.360 an argument while they are at war nearby about who is the best wife.

00:13:11.200 and they decide to sneak back to Rome

00:13:13.400 and see who has the best wife

00:13:15.180 by looking through the windows of their houses

00:13:17.000 and they see the other wives are all drinking wine 1.00

00:13:19.260 and having dinner parties

00:13:20.920 but Lucretia is spinning wool and crying

00:13:25.940 and in Ovid's retelling

00:13:28.800 which is probably the most famous one

00:13:30.860 she is crying about how much she loves her husband out loud

00:13:34.040 and they're so delighted by this

00:13:37.800 that her husband kind of wins the competition

00:13:39.240 But Sextus, who is the son of the king, is so overwhelmed by a jealousy and a desire to destroy, essentially by the fact that she is so perfect and she's so modest and she's so honorable that he comes back another night and he sneaks into her bedroom while she is asleep.

00:14:00.300 and then he rapes her but specifically he will not take her by force he tries to persuade her 0.98

00:14:09.400 to allow him or to have sex with him willingly and when she won't he says that he will kill her 1.00

00:14:15.640 and then kill an enslaved person and um he will place them in the bed next to each other and he 1.00

00:14:21.700 will tell everybody that he caught her committing adultery with an enslaved person and killed her 1.00

00:14:25.860 and therefore destroy her honor so either she can live with a destroyed honor or she can die 0.99

00:14:30.220 with a destroyed honor um and she chooses to allow him to rape her and then the next day she 0.99

00:14:35.580 tells her family what has happened and then she kills herself saying that um she will not allow 0.92

00:14:41.840 um any other woman to live using lucretia as an example as a dishonored woman so she kind of 0.99

00:14:48.560 reclaims her honor and then takes her own life and then a guy who just comes out of nowhere 1.00

00:14:53.580 called brutus who just happens to be there essentially uh takes her body displays it in

00:14:58.960 the roman forum and tells everybody that the king has become a tyrant and this is what's happening

00:15:05.100 and like all of these other terrible things have been happening in rome but now even our wives

00:15:10.600 aren't safe and so as a result they overthrow the kings and that's the end of the kingdom and the

00:15:18.280 beginning of the republic and it's this huge story in roman mythology about themselves and

00:15:24.100 in the foundation of the Republic and in what a woman is supposed to be and how a wife is supposed

00:15:29.400 to be and in how everything they do is supposed to be about preventing one person from becoming

00:15:34.720 too powerful and it's one of those stories that's just completely there's no way of reading it the

00:15:40.660 way the Romans tell it that's not horrifying because they always put themselves kind of

00:15:45.200 behind the eyes of Sextus who is like creeping about being a rapist and they always consider

00:15:51.960 lucretia to be kind of at best she is very heroic for one scene essentially and then brutus takes

00:15:59.680 over and kind of takes the story and in the book i basically i'm explicitly compare her to the 0.99

00:16:04.240 fridged women of comic books she's a woman in the refrigerator in that her purpose is to die 1.00

00:16:09.360 so that um brutus can save everybody and the republic can start and men can take over properly 0.93

00:16:15.780 which she is in almost all retellings but there is also a kind of way of looking at her

00:16:21.760 as a woman who is part of a lineage of other women in Roman myth

00:16:27.640 because this is all Roman myth about themselves, basically.

00:16:32.020 None of this really happened. 0.99

00:16:33.900 But the reason that Sextus is such a bastard 0.96

00:16:38.180 and the reason that his father, who's called Tarquin Superbus 1.00

00:16:42.000 or Tarquin the Proud, is such a bastard 0.97

00:16:44.840 is because the wife of Tarquin and the mother of Sextus 0.99

00:16:49.200 has befouled their family by murdering her father, 0.60

00:16:53.040 murdering her sister and her previous husband, 1.00

00:16:56.240 and then overthrown a dynasty in order to install herself as a queen. 0.79

00:17:00.060 So actually, the whole thing is because of another woman. 0.99

00:17:02.720 And she only does it because she's jealous of her grandmother,

00:17:06.860 who is Tanaquil, who made two men king.

00:17:11.120 And she wants to be like Tanaquil. 0.97

00:17:13.120 So really, Lucretia is the end of a long line of cool women 1.00

00:17:16.480 who are doing kind of terrible or badass things. 0.93

00:17:19.200 and the men are just kind of fulfilling their duty who is the woman the the one in the middle

00:17:26.040 there the one who killed all the tulia her name is yeah tulia yeah i like the part of that story

00:17:32.580 where she because you tell that story in your book as well yeah where it's just like she's just like

00:17:36.780 on this psychopathic rampage and she will not stop and eventually it's like she like her father

00:17:43.100 is killed and then she's like run him over with a chariot where it's just like it's like she just

00:17:47.960 can't not be doing the most evil thing constantly it's like kind of great she is just relentlessly

00:17:55.160 terrible it's kind of amazing like she's just there's a spirit where she goes on a massive

00:17:59.940 rampage where because her husband won't overthrow their own father and so she starts screaming that

00:18:08.700 she didn't get married just to be a wife which i find really funny and then she kills her husband 0.75

00:18:14.900 and runs off with her brother-in-law who's also her cousin who's also who um and they um they just

00:18:20.740 start killing and overthrowing and it's kind of great like she is just so all of the sources just

00:18:25.460 present her as so relentlessly evil um in every way that is kind of beautiful it almost becomes

00:18:32.100 like iconic behavior because then she just has no nothing will stop her from getting what she wants

00:18:39.660 even if her father's body is lying in the street and she has to run over it with a chariot which 1.00

00:18:43.560 produces some very cool art uh from the roman period like of her kind of with her hair down

00:18:50.060 which is considered in roman uh tradition to be barbaric basically so they always wear her with

00:18:55.760 her hair down kind of hanging out of a chariot like riding over her father's body because the

00:19:01.000 roman art is very often quite grotesque um so it just looks really um very dynamic very cool

00:19:06.920 you probably shouldn't emulate her but she she comes across like uh memorably shall we say well

00:19:13.160 and the thing about that too is i'm just like i'm a like i love a messy person from history

00:19:18.380 any gender so i'm just always excited about it but the romans were like oh she's terrible but

00:19:22.440 it's like there were so many terrible roman men also it's not just like you know but it's but

00:19:27.280 she's especially terrible because she was a woman and allegedly did all these things yeah yeah she's 0.94

00:19:31.880 doing all the things that a woman is not like they are kind of um like chalk and cheese basically 1.00

00:19:37.200 in that Tullia is interested in being powerful. 0.96

00:19:41.780 She is interested in speaking in public. 1.00

00:19:43.860 She has no respect for her honor or her chastity. 1.00

00:19:47.520 She only wants to be in male spheres doing male things, basically, 1.00

00:19:53.620 and will sacrifice anything to get what she wants. 1.00

00:19:56.400 And on the other hand, you have Lucretia, 0.64

00:19:59.160 who at one point, Sexta says to her that if she has sex with him,

00:20:03.820 he will make her a queen and she can marry him and she can have all of this power and she will

00:20:09.420 be he will give her gold and she says no her honor is worth more to her than any of that 0.85

00:20:14.040 and um she kills herself to kind of reclaim her honor and she spins and she never speaks and she'll

00:20:22.680 only speak in private and she is like everything and her hair is undoubtedly up in a neat very 0.55

00:20:29.300 elaborate hairstyle but she is so they're like these two opposite forces of what womanhood is 0.70

00:20:35.640 supposed to be amongst the elite uh and um they they balance each other out so one foretells the 0.71

00:20:43.420 the fall of their kingdom and the other one foretells the coming of the beautiful republic

00:20:48.480 that is obviously perfect and could never be fractured in any way you also talk in your book

00:20:52.980 so like again i love the project of looking at people who haven't really been talked about before

00:20:57.600 and that includes some non-empresists like can you talk about the the women in Pompeii

00:21:03.640 yeah Julia Felix she's my favorite she's um she is a woman that we only know about because at the 0.72

00:21:13.520 time that Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii under ash she had put her business up for rent

00:21:20.420 and she had painted a rental advert on the outside um the business like the uh space was

00:21:28.040 originally discovered in the 18th century by Bourbons and they had dug up the inside but no

00:21:34.480 one dug up the streets for a really long time um and so they thought it was just a really weird

00:21:38.940 kind of villa like a big house they shouldn't really work out what it was because it has a

00:21:43.840 really big dining space and some baths and a corridor and then a really tiny living space

00:21:49.520 so nobody could work out what was going on until they uncovered the street in the 1920s and they

00:21:55.260 discovered that there is this big sign on the outside that says for rent for a period of five

00:22:00.240 years a leisure space including bars and a restaurant and apartments and shops and you can

00:22:09.840 rent it for five years inquire within to julia felix daughter of spurious and from that we're

00:22:17.340 able to see that julia felix um was a woman who owned and was running what appears to be a kind

00:22:23.600 of leisure complex so it has food bars around the outside and it has a baths um so you can get kind

00:22:32.820 of takeaway food basically or have a quick sit down food and then you can go to the bars which

00:22:36.700 are quite fancy they're like little boutique like you can fit about eight to ten people in which is

00:22:41.100 quite little for um but it's quite fancy and then there's like little shop area um but then there's

00:22:47.560 this big garden which has kind of fish ponds and little walking areas and a little colonnade and

00:22:54.280 then one little dining room which appears to be a space that you can rent to go to dinner basically

00:23:01.480 so you can go and have reclined dining which is elite style roman dining like most people are not

00:23:09.100 in the roman empire are not lying on their side being fed grapes by enslaved people on a daily

00:23:14.200 basis like most people are just eating sitting at tables like normal people but apparently you could

00:23:19.960 buy that as an experience in the same way that on a like very special occasion you might go to a

00:23:27.380 very fancy restaurant or a michelin-starred restaurant or something and have a tasting menu

00:23:31.140 basically that seems to be what julia was running in her um in her little compound and she has this

00:23:39.740 very very unique frieze painted on her atrium so instead of mythological scenes or scenes of

00:23:46.720 abundance which is what you very often find in in fancy homes what she has is a almost photorealistic

00:23:54.120 portraits of pompey's forum on market day so it has all of these people like buying cloth and

00:24:03.360 looking at shoes and being had like children in the forum being taught and horses and somebody

00:24:11.680 giving a penny to uh what looks like a kind of beggar with a horse on a horse with a dog on a

00:24:17.920 string um and just people kind of living middle class lives basically like people who are rich

00:24:24.800 enough that they can buy fabric that is colored um and they can educate their children but not

00:24:30.560 rich enough that they have people in house who are weaving for them or people who are teaching 0.91

00:24:35.920 their children individually and people who own enslaved people there seems to be a woman selling

00:24:41.340 a child but not people who have like necessarily entire households full of them um and it's this

00:24:48.120 real kind of insight into a middle class kind of business life that you just don't get anywhere

00:24:55.020 else it's never written about it very rarely survives in any kind of like in most archaeology

00:25:01.300 because it is the kind of ephemeral thing that gets eradicated it's not monumental and so it's

00:25:07.020 just such a beautiful space that you can see that this woman is running apparently by herself because

00:25:12.160 spurious is either a person's name or could mean unknown so she could just not know who her father

00:25:19.620 is and yeah she seems to be running a business for the middle classes of pompeii and there's a

00:25:26.240 point where she takes advantage of a an earthquake that happened in 62 which is like just before a

00:25:32.840 decade or so before the Vesuvius erupts because she bought the complex next door and had a road

00:25:40.620 moved and they can see in the archaeology that there used to be a road running underneath the

00:25:44.680 gardens that she bought basically persuaded somebody that she owned the road now and then

00:25:50.860 built over it to extend her area so she was a businesswoman with negotiating skill who at the

00:25:58.420 point at which Pompeii went off in 79 was ready to not be running it on a day-to-day basis anymore

00:26:03.820 I was like ready to hand over to somebody else to be her business manager and she was going to go

00:26:09.520 and be a property owner and hopefully live a beautiful life somewhere that's okay Pompeii

00:26:15.340 was like my entry point into being interested in history whatsoever like as a child I read this

00:26:20.880 book about Pompeii and I was just like this is amazing um well just because for exactly that

00:26:26.520 like because it's this slice of life it's like time travel almost because it's just you can see

00:26:30.580 everything that wouldn't necessarily have been saved from later on and I'd never heard of her

00:26:35.040 before I didn't know about her her little recreation center yeah and she's she's not very

00:26:42.440 well known um but I have a friend called Sophie Hay who works at Pompeii um and she is obsessed

00:26:49.500 and she is on a one-woman mission to make more people know about Julia Felix and she was like

00:26:54.800 you have to put Julia Felix in and I'm so glad that I did um but yeah so so it's thanks to Sophie

00:27:01.660 that she is in there um and I'm just doing her work basically by telling more people about Julia

00:27:07.620 well hopefully it'll get more people going to Pompeii to visit it's like bucket list I'd love

00:27:12.220 to go there one day it is amazing it's huge yeah oh amazing um my when she was younger my mother

00:27:20.480 was in Italy and she was really excited to go to Pompeii and at that time I think a lot of stuff

00:27:24.460 this is like the 70s was like moved out for some reason and because she went there expecting to

00:27:29.740 see like all the bodies everything and it's just like oh yeah no that's not that's it's not no

00:27:35.320 those aren't there no a lot of that is still is in uh is in naples now but um but that's they've

00:27:42.020 done a lot with like they're much better at conservation now because they covered a load

00:27:46.180 of stuff back up because as soon as you expose it to the air it starts decaying and it's really hard

00:27:50.920 to to keep stuff intact so every sort of they they're kind of uncovering stuff but they're

00:27:56.200 much better at conservation and things now than they were in the 70s so exactly another working

00:28:02.320 class person in your book is hypsala is that how you say it the sex worker and now we're just going

00:28:08.220 to take a break for a word from our sponsors the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were

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00:29:13.140 Welcome to the Realms of Peril and Glory.

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00:29:22.140 the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,

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00:29:43.140 The world of Sonic the Hedgehog

00:29:49.040 has been thrust into a not-so-dark,

00:29:52.300 not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story

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00:29:58.620 Follow Sonic and the intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency

00:30:02.140 as they take on their biggest case yet.

00:30:05.440 This high-flying, action-packed adventure

00:30:07.760 will take them across the world,

00:30:10.360 fighting for every quill they can fight,

00:30:12.220 It's one heck of a tale

00:30:14.860 Which is good

00:30:16.440 Because this story might

00:30:18.360 Be the only thing that can save

00:30:20.800 Their lives

00:30:22.420 Well if that's all 0.97

00:30:24.520 I can just dispose of you

00:30:26.120 Wait what?

00:30:30.520 All will be revealed in

00:30:32.620 Sonic the Hedgehog presents

00:30:34.880 The Chaotix Case Files

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00:30:38.200 Wherever you get your podcasts 0.94

00:30:40.100 When the chaotics are on the case.

00:30:47.420 Ever look at someone at the top and wonder, do they even remember where they started?

00:30:52.320 What did it take to get there?

00:30:54.100 I do on every episode.

00:30:56.560 I'm Evelyn, and on my podcast, Reppin', the people the world thinks it knows, gets to

00:31:02.400 say who they actually are.

00:31:04.460 The grit, the doubt, the moments nobody sees.

00:31:07.660 and everything they learned getting there it's yours for the taking repping find us wherever 0.97

00:31:14.660 you listen go get it now and we're back yes the sex worker who brings down an entire italian italy 0.99

00:31:25.500 wide conspiracy the sex worker whistleblower of this murder cult sex orgy organization uh-huh 0.99

00:31:35.200 Yes, she is. So Hispalia is back to 186 BCE now. And this is like a big thing for the Romans, which is the revelation of the Bacchanalia and that this cult of Bacchus exists in Rome that is single handedly going to bring down the Republic because people are murdering each other and having sex with one another and doing dodgy deals all at the same time. 0.95

00:32:01.760 And it's this amazing story from Livy that begins with a formerly enslaved sex worker who is Hispalia, who is what's called a freed woman.

00:32:13.840 So she lived at least part of her life under slavery.

00:32:17.740 And during that time, she was an enslaved sex worker.

00:32:20.360 And then she had been freed somehow, either because her mistress died or just emancipated her.

00:32:28.080 It happens quite a lot in Rome.

00:32:29.260 and um she had continued working as a sex worker by herself and livy calls her yeah livy calls her 0.98

00:32:35.860 um a celebrated whore which is a great term he like she is uh he's pretty clear that she's not 0.95

00:32:43.840 like a high-class courtesan like he uses a bad word for her but he basically literally calls her 0.98

00:32:48.600 a whore and she is working in the nice area of rome and she has a boyfriend who lives next door 0.80

00:32:55.900 who is a bit younger than her and has not yet reached the age of majority which is 21 in Rome 0.99

00:33:01.920 so he's 20 and he lives with his mum and his stepdad and they love each other very much and

00:33:07.540 it's all very sweet until one day he says oh I can't come around for the next couple of weeks

00:33:12.640 because mum says that she has to that she's promised that she'll introduce me to the cult

00:33:19.300 of Bacchus and I have to be celibate for 10 days before that so I can't come over because obviously 1.00

00:33:23.960 all shag so i i'm i just won't be around for a bit but i'll see you when i get back and she 0.98

00:33:28.740 absolutely loses her mind and barricades him into a room until he promises that he will not join the 0.84

00:33:35.320 cult of bacchus because she says i've been there i was forcibly initiated it's a terrible place it

00:33:39.860 will ruin your honor um they'll probably murder you um and she reveals all this stuff that it's 1.00

00:33:45.440 a sex cult full of sex people and they're going to um rape him and possibly murder him and they 1.00

00:33:52.400 love murdering people who are under 20 but at the very worst they're going to introduce him to 1.00

00:33:56.780 a like a conspiracy that is men engaging in like poisoning one another and like forging wills and

00:34:08.180 undermining evidence in court cases which just feel like two very opposed things like one is

00:34:14.040 paperwork and the other one is sex murders but okay and he goes no no no my mom would never do

00:34:19.620 that to me and goes home and says um okay his failure says something dodgy is going on and it

00:34:25.540 turns out that um his mom and stepdad have spent all of his inheritance from his dad they instead

00:34:32.220 of telling him they were going to send him to the sex cult in order to have him murdered ideally

00:34:38.700 and that's why they were initiating him into the cult so he runs away runs away to his aunt who

00:34:46.860 tells her what's going on and his aunt then starts some kind of backroom diplomacy with other women

00:34:53.500 in the palatine until news gets to the consul he's like the head man in rome and that there

00:34:59.240 is a sex cult happening in rome this is my favorite part it revealed like there's this

00:35:04.840 potted history of it where it's like five times a month people are getting together in a grove in

00:35:10.880 the middle of rome and doing sex murders and screaming and wailing and there's machinery

00:35:16.600 and there's people on fire walking into rivers and everyone like it's a tobacco ritual you know

00:35:24.160 it's donna tart and um the consul just goes huh i just thought that was normal noises

00:35:29.720 which i just think is very funny um so he gets a spallier in and says what's going on eventually

00:35:36.720 she tells him that this is happening that there is like a second society occurring in rome that's

00:35:43.120 going to undermine the republic and he promises that he will end it and then kind of then it

00:35:48.240 becomes political and he initiates a decree and says that it's now banned in all of italy

00:35:52.640 and you're not allowed to get together at night because like night rituals are considered to be

00:35:57.020 very bad and men definitely aren't allowed to be involved and it's all very dodgy and we need to 0.69

00:36:02.820 get back to proper roman religion and proper roman ways and we know that this definitely happened 0.89

00:36:06.840 because we have the copies of the decree for it would pop up all over italy which say specifically

00:36:13.080 like you can't you can't get together in groups of more than however many people and you can't

00:36:17.660 worship bacchus in these ways and you have to behave yourself and be good proper romans and

00:36:22.480 hispelia then gets given the rights of an actual free woman and some cash which is nice um as a 0.95

00:36:29.220 result but she um yeah by attempting to save her boyfriend from a from a bad situation she 1.00

00:36:37.300 inadvertently exposes this massive sex cult which is allegedly happening five times a month in rome

00:36:43.100 that everybody is powerfully unaware of and the story is a great exaggeration but it's very very

00:36:50.500 fun no one really knows where that version of the story comes from or why even livy includes it

00:36:55.900 possibly he just enjoys the soap proper of it like i do but i'm really glad that he did

00:37:00.600 there's so many details i love about that story i mean firstly the fact like the fact that his

00:37:07.120 belly is like oh no don't do it it's so dangerous and he's like and then the reveal that actually

00:37:11.380 oh it is that dangerous in fact his mother is sending him to so he would die

00:37:16.520 yeah but actually she's not his nice mom she is because he's like no no no my mom would never

00:37:26.780 try to hurt me like that and then it turns out that she's trying to cover up her own crime

00:37:31.180 it's very agatha christie it's very agatha christie and he's giving me just this really

00:37:36.620 sort of himbo energy of just like oh i'm sure it's fine i'm sure there's nothing mysterious

00:37:40.860 going on. And Hispaglia is like, listen. No, you don't. He's like a floppy haired

00:37:47.420 eaten boy. And she's like, no, you need to pay attention and do not get involved in this lesson.

00:37:54.900 But in just the concept that there is this like five times a month, this like screaming

00:37:59.980 murder ritual happens like in the middle of Rome. And the officials are just like,

00:38:04.560 we did. Well, I do hear screaming about five times a month, but I just thought that was just normal,

00:38:09.180 normal screams i just really thought that was just i mean people do disappear a lot

00:38:14.360 but i just really just assume they were on holiday i don't really but then but then and

00:38:20.320 you mentioned this too but it's also you really draw a line under in the book like the thing that

00:38:24.260 the like men the like consuls were most concerned about they're like wait they're doing illicit

00:38:28.940 paperwork they're doing paperwork five times a month like that was the crime that was what they

00:38:34.660 were most distressed about yeah that is the crime so the all of the like official decrees and stuff

00:38:42.020 and then once it gets to the senate and they're talking about it um they are completely uninterested

00:38:47.360 in the sex murder parts um like the fact that men are having sex with men and women are having sex

00:38:52.260 with men no interest in the idea that women might be having sex with women but all of that just the

00:38:58.000 there's this description of men being dragged away by machinery into caves in a um an imitation of

00:39:06.020 the gods snatching men off of the earth and not interested what they're interested in is people

00:39:11.660 secretly agreeing to give false testimony in court like that's the the sex murder is fine sure who

00:39:18.440 hasn't done a sex murder but yeah false testimony like the vibe is kind of like al capone being

00:39:23.760 caught for tax evasion where it's just like well yeah the only actual crime is this yeah yeah

00:39:30.840 yeah yeah we couldn't get you for the rest of it but if you were just doing the sex murders we

00:39:37.700 would probably not worry so much but we really do have to it's worth noting that the first law that

00:39:42.920 they ever wrote down in the 12 tables as far as we can tell is um if you are called to court you

00:39:49.140 have to come and you have to tell the truth like the thing romans love court so much and it's very

00:39:56.580 important to them like law courts don't you can't mess with law courts you can mess with virtually

00:40:01.820 anything else but law courts they will get very pearl clutchy about and this is part of what's

00:40:06.820 interesting about about your book and just sort of the wide variety of people you're talking about

00:40:11.380 like to me like again a person who does not think about the roman empire much at all ever how often

00:40:16.860 to think about tutor england another question but um i like when i think about the roman empire like

00:40:23.280 when that that meme was going around about it it's like i don't you know like marcus aurelius

00:40:28.140 and like the stoics and i'm just like of course i don't think about that that's just boring like

00:40:32.160 who cares but your book is just being like but what about all of these interesting things that

00:40:37.560 actually were happening yeah because there's so much more interesting things than marcus aurelius

00:40:43.280 writing affirmations to himself this is what i find that the fact that marcus aurelius is so

00:40:47.700 popular really really funny because um it's now kind of like publicized by a certain kind of

00:40:53.840 manosphere person as being like oh yeah that you know strong marcus aurelius being strong

00:40:59.740 but the they're written as affirmations to him like everything's going to be okay marcus we can

00:41:06.800 do this like you're going to be all right it's like today i'm not going to let people upset me

00:41:13.000 um and they're just they're not really like i am a great strong man they are i feel scared but

00:41:19.460 everything's gonna be okay that whole thing mystifies me i'm it's not a sphere that i'm

00:41:25.300 involved with um but just i work i work for the for the public library here and there's suddenly

00:41:30.940 like so many holds on like these books about stoicism and marcus aurelius and i'm like what

00:41:36.780 is happening like why are and it's he's it's really this is joe rogan's fear is got really

00:41:45.820 into stoicism and there's this guy called ryan holliday you've probably come across he writes

00:41:49.920 all these books about yeah um about how if you don't have feelings then it's okay um and yeah

00:41:56.700 no it's really linked to that whole kind of manosphere reclaiming your masculinity in a

00:42:02.700 world of feminism kind of thing it's very sad really it genuinely is but um i'm actually right

00:42:09.480 got right thing tomorrow about this um for uh about how like when all of these men are saying

00:42:16.300 i think about the roman empire and then their girlfriends say why why what are you thinking

00:42:20.540 about they all say marcus aurelius or they conquered so much stuff with a um third thing

00:42:28.180 which is it's the foundation of our civilization and you're like all right stoicism and conquering

00:42:32.020 should not be the foundation of what you think civilization is um that is bad um and that is like

00:42:39.980 weird amount of sphere stuff i blame joe rogan for all of it joe rogan the joe rogan connection

00:42:45.620 i did not realize but that is sort of like where it's coming from that makes total sense to me

00:42:50.500 but that's where yeah well and the way that the romans and this is where i really love this book

00:42:55.380 because it's people be like the roman empire and it's like you said earlier in this podcast it's

00:42:59.780 like it's not just like these 10 guys sitting around being stoic together it's like a whole

00:43:05.300 bunch of people from a whole bunch of cultures like over a whole bunch of years like living

00:43:10.220 all kinds of different lives it's not just that all the time yeah it's not just the point where

00:43:16.420 like where like people from one city in Italy were expanding outwards and conquering and

00:43:21.660 conquering i think people think of like julius caesar on a horse like fighting gauls and like

00:43:28.360 european men on chariots whatever fighting barbarians but once they did that those quote

00:43:37.320 unquote barbarians were then folded into the roman empire and in 227 every single person in the

00:43:44.240 empire was given roman citizenship which makes every african every asian person everybody in

00:43:50.660 Syria and Libya and Turkey and Greece and like all the way up to Hungary and France and Belgium

00:43:58.740 and you know outside of Western Europe huge amounts of people are Roman in both name and

00:44:05.720 practice but they will never be enfolded in the modern conception of Roman and like this is why

00:44:11.460 I included so many Syrian women in the book because Syrian women are never included in the 1.00

00:44:17.680 idea of roman but they are they rule rome for like 50 years and there are millions of women

00:44:25.440 in and and men all over the arab world and the african world who are roman and who live roman

00:44:32.200 lives and fight for and live for the emperor and are consuls and and empresses and they should be

00:44:41.160 included under that umbrella of the roman empire not just marcus aurelius twirling around in a

00:44:48.080 chair saying i'm so good at not having feelings well and also what i think of too when i previously

00:44:56.500 when i thought about the roman empire is just kind of like i claudius just like patrick stewart

00:45:00.160 in a cardboard room yeah wearing a toga yeah no extras no money for extra shoebox sets but um

00:45:10.060 yeah so it's it's such a that's such an important thing I think to in this moment we're in you know

00:45:16.340 what congratulations your book is coming out when like everybody's talking about the Roman Empire

00:45:19.920 timing is great I could not have engineered this better like thinking about the Roman Empire well

00:45:28.100 here's another book yeah here's a way to think about it in a more interesting way than and a

00:45:33.940 way that will hopefully engage more people that also find conquering and stoicism boring well

00:45:40.040 Well, OK, so speaking of like the expanse of the Roman Empire and also speaking of not

00:45:44.920 conquering, but just like regular people, can you talk about the husband and wife who

00:45:48.620 were in Wales, I think, or were they in England?

00:45:52.060 Yeah, Solpica Lepidina and her husband, Serialis, they are Bavarian.

00:45:57.320 So they're from Germany, basically a kind of Germany-Netherlands border, where he is

00:46:02.420 the leader of an auxiliary cohort who go to Britain.

00:46:06.260 And they live on the very northern tip of the Roman Empire, near and off the Hadrian's Wall, which is in northern Britain, at a fort which is called Vindolanda.

00:46:18.320 and we know about them because in the 1970s uncovered were lots and lots of bureaucratic

00:46:24.860 documents and personal letters that were written on slivers of uh slivers of wood almost like

00:46:33.020 postcard thin wood that's folded um and most famously is one from a woman called claudia

00:46:40.760 who writes to solpica and says i'm having a birthday party and i would really really like

00:46:47.880 it if you would come um and invites her to the birthday party she's having at brigo which is a

00:46:53.340 nearby fort and from that and from various other letters for between the two women

00:46:58.920 is revealed this entire domestic situation whereby the two leaders um of the forts and

00:47:07.780 their wives and their children are living in the fort happily domestically going backwards and

00:47:15.360 forwards having parties celebrating new year together celebrating saturnalia together there

00:47:21.260 are like writing exercises which come out um where it's clear that a child is being taught

00:47:28.300 to write the aeneid out and then somebody has written that their writing is lazy um so there's

00:47:34.720 also tutors there the letters which like the personal letters are written in two hands so

00:47:41.400 one is a kind of very professional neat hand and then what happens is you write the kind of

00:47:46.540 proper letter and then you fold them over and then claudia herself has written kind of words

00:47:53.360 of endearment on the front so she has written in a very bad handwriting that suggests she's not

00:47:57.620 very used to it like to my like my most beloved sister severina so there's also enslaved people

00:48:06.140 probably or freed people who are acting as secretaries for them and through the whole

00:48:12.040 the archaeology of Vindolanda and other northern forts in kind of Germany and the Netherlands and

00:48:18.780 Belgium and the like you see them as spaces that are not kind of hard spartan big man areas of

00:48:27.460 deprivation and misery like I think they're kind of imagined and that they're very often portrayed

00:48:32.840 as like if you've seen what's that Channing Tatum film about the last eagle um like they're always

00:48:38.360 portrayed as like really spartan places they're miserable and have nothing in them but we have

00:48:44.400 for example a list of everything that they brought with them that Ciri Alice and his wife brought

00:48:49.700 with them which includes egg cups and bronze cups and bronze plates like cushions and curtains which

00:48:58.620 are dyed scarlet and purple which is expensive in the roman empire like you have to spend money

00:49:05.420 so and they have all of these leather shoes that come out as well hundreds of shoes that come out

00:49:11.280 of bendolanda which are women's shoes they're beautiful shoes they are children's shoes all

00:49:15.980 over not just in the quarters of the the elite but also in the general barracks there are women

00:49:23.000 living there because although technically Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry most places

00:49:29.220 are not filled with Roman soldiers they're filled with auxiliaries who are taken from places that

00:49:33.980 the Romans had conquered and are kind of conscripted but not officially citizens and so they totally

00:49:39.540 are allowed to marry or they were married before and they brought their wife with them which is

00:49:43.100 what Cerealis did and so there are tons of women and children in these spaces and they are really 0.92

00:49:50.060 domestic spaces and they're actually quite soft spaces at least in part with cushions and 0.58

00:49:56.080 luxurious items um and there are places where you can also have parties and yeah have a little

00:50:02.880 birthday party and invite your friends that there's something so genuine like that the birthday

00:50:09.060 party invitation it reminds me i mean that and then like julia felix being like space for rent

00:50:13.800 where it's just like people people have always just been people like i i often still think about

00:50:19.760 people in the past as being like they are in films being very sort of formal and speaking

00:50:24.180 with this sort of British accent and just being like we are from we are from the oldie times but

00:50:29.660 it's like no people are just people yeah and that's always like whenever I find a story about

00:50:35.680 somebody falling over and that's always the most endearing thing to me because I fall over all the

00:50:40.000 time and like something that I like to think about a lot is people in the past like stubbing their

00:50:44.860 toes on on tables and or banging their elbows on doors or trying to fold a curtain and getting

00:50:52.460 tangled up in it like just there because they are people and they feel basically the same that we

00:50:58.280 feel which is like grumpy most of the time and tired very often and and if you're even if you're

00:51:05.600 talking about especially when you're talking about royals and if you're talking about like

00:51:09.540 roman royals most of the time they're wearing two meters of wool and so they're probably 0.96

00:51:13.580 uncomfortable and if you read medical texts like they don't have antibiotics or pain killers they're

00:51:18.740 doing things like rubbing puppy brain in their eye um like they're probably just uncomfortable

00:51:23.600 all the time and like yeah the being people and being embodied people part of the past is the

00:51:31.560 part that I love the most so this idea of like Claudia writing that she really wants her to come

00:51:37.800 and it will make her really happy if she can come to her birthday party and then her getting in a 0.79

00:51:41.980 little carriage and riding over there in order to have whatever version of roman birthday cake there

00:51:47.680 was is just so lovely to me but also speaking of roman people and happenings in in the uk area so

00:51:57.700 you have a chapter where you talk about um do you say bodica or budica budica budica so you talk

00:52:05.140 about her you know fairly well known i have done an episode about her on this podcast but then you

00:52:10.180 contrast her you sort of put in parallel this other queen can you talk about i i keep asking

00:52:15.360 you i'm like what was the names and here's the thing i can't pronounce any of the names and

00:52:19.400 secondly it's all the same name every story you have it's like well the mother had this name and

00:52:24.520 she had this name and her sister had the same name and then he married it's just like the names are

00:52:28.260 like i can't i can't yeah no if in doubt just assume they're called julia because they probably

00:52:34.820 they're either julia or claudius this one is not because she is uh british and she is from

00:52:40.820 yorkshire so she's called carter mandua she exists at the same time as buddhika carter

00:52:45.800 mandua and everybody knows the story of buddhika kind of the uprising and leading an army against

00:52:50.420 the romans and burning down london and st albans and all the other places but at the exact same

00:52:56.720 time carter mandua was a client queen who lives in yorkshire so i'm kind of across the top of

00:53:03.820 England she rules a group called the Brigantes which is probably the biggest kingdom such as it

00:53:10.500 is in England at the time and she immediately capitulates to the Romans when they turn up 0.83

00:53:15.600 when Claudius turns up she's just like yep sure fine okay can't fight you not interested

00:53:20.960 and agrees perfectly like reasonably that she will continue as she is and in exchange she will

00:53:31.680 basically keep everybody paying roman taxes so you pay tribute to the romans and you pay whatever tax

00:53:37.960 um and hope that the romans leave you alone which they do um and then she endears herself to them

00:53:45.080 completely she really like collaborates with the romans she's like a proper quizling um from the

00:53:51.800 kind of rebel perspective because the the pre-boudicca big rebel is called caraticus

00:53:59.220 and he fights claudius and then continues fighting for like a decade and a half afterwards

00:54:05.140 until he loses a big battle in wales and flees to yorkshire he turns up on carter mandua's doorstep

00:54:13.340 and she immediately turns him over to the romans like she takes him in locks him in a room and

00:54:19.620 immediately sends people down to uh colchester where the romans are and says uh i've got him

00:54:26.000 do you want to come and get him and they do they take him back to rome they parade him as a kind

00:54:30.880 of great hero that they have conquered and as a result carter mandua becomes like their favorite

00:54:35.720 client queen in britain and she gets given all kinds of privileges she gets reductions in what

00:54:40.920 she has to pay she gets left alone almost completely because now she has proved her

00:54:46.000 total devotion to the roman empire like if you have proven that hard that you are willing to 0.74

00:54:51.640 do anything for them then they will leave you to do whatever you want they come and rescue her when

00:54:56.460 her husband rebels against her because her husband is very unhappy about the fact that she has turned

00:55:01.200 in keraticus and he goes off to become the new leader of the rebellion essentially and they

00:55:06.960 rescue her whenever he comes and fights her she is very silent during the buddhika uprising buddhika

00:55:13.460 uprising is in 60 only lasts about a year and she is just extremely quiet during the whole thing

00:55:18.620 like had she joined in then it would have been really problematic for the romans because they

00:55:23.300 she would have been coming down from the north and with budica from the south it would have been a

00:55:26.840 real like actually might have forced the romans out and that's an alternate history there that

00:55:32.140 somebody can write but she absolutely did not she stayed where she was and eventually she only lost

00:55:38.080 her throne because um the romans couldn't fight her husband basically and so there because there

00:55:44.860 was a um there was the year of the four emperors going on and they didn't have the strength to do

00:55:49.300 it so they just rescue her and move her to rome um in order to save her life and then because they

00:55:57.000 no longer have a client king or a client ruler in the brigantes area as soon as there is stability

00:56:03.700 again in britain they crush it um and uh destroy it as a an independent kingdom and cover it um

00:56:11.600 absolutely blanket it in roman forts and that is the area where that became kind of the top of the

00:56:16.440 roman empire um and it like along there is where hadrian's wall is so she managed to hold off the

00:56:23.580 romans by collaborating and kind of protecting her kingdom from the the kind of the brutal reality of 0.55

00:56:31.060 what roman invasion was which is that they would come through burn down all your houses and enslave 0.99

00:56:35.760 anybody that they could see within a 10 mile radius and then put them to work somewhere 1.00

00:56:40.300 for a really long time. It's like not until the end of the sixties. So she holds them off for like

00:56:46.480 20 years and then a man comes along and ruins everything. Typical, typical. That's the tea.

00:56:54.220 So your book is, so A Room of One's Own. First of all, congratulations on that title. That's a great

00:56:59.840 title. Thank you. I have to give full credit to my friend Fiona for that one, but it's fantastic.

00:57:06.380 It's great. And it really sets the tone because the book is fun and funny and different from

00:57:11.840 other history books. And I really want to emphasize that to the listeners who maybe

00:57:15.020 haven't read your stuff before. It's similar to what I do when I'm doing a biography episode of

00:57:20.660 my podcast. I'm giving the facts, but I'm also making silly jokes. And that's what your book

00:57:25.720 is like as well. Yeah, because I think that history is really funny. That's the reason that

00:57:30.180 i like it so i just want other people to realize that history is not just a kind of dry litany of

00:57:35.860 things that happened and dates that it is actually history is people and if you like people or even

00:57:42.160 think that people are slightly funny i think if you like watching youtube vlogs then you should

00:57:46.640 like history because it's just youtube vlogs in the past like it's just and there's also a lot of

00:57:53.700 really fun scandal in your book there's a lot of oh my gosh there's like we talked about the

00:57:59.820 the with the bacchanalia cult and stuff but there's other there's other sexy scandals as

00:58:04.660 well in this book so it's funny and it's also sexy so you know everyone should read it but

00:58:10.120 can you let everybody know who are now fans of you if they weren't already where they can hear

00:58:15.600 you on your own podcast and where they can find you on social media and things

00:58:20.500 so um you can find everything at emma southern.com um you can listen to my podcast which is called

00:58:27.820 history is sexy because history is sexy unless your browser or workplace internet blocks the

00:58:34.900 word sexy because apparently it sometimes does in which case just go to emma southern.com

00:58:38.320 and i am nuclear teeth on instagram so you can find me in those places what can you share

00:58:48.880 does nuclear teeth mean?

00:58:52.420 So this is a thing 0.87

00:58:54.300 that seemed like a good idea

00:58:55.640 like a million years ago

00:58:56.900 when I was starting

00:58:57.440 my Twitter account

00:58:58.000 like 15 years ago.

00:58:59.620 It is based on the fact

00:59:01.180 that there was an experiment,

00:59:03.820 a long-running experiment

00:59:04.680 in the 1960s and 70s,

00:59:08.220 I believe, in America

00:59:09.520 where a woman was testing 0.92

00:59:12.440 whether living nearby

00:59:13.780 a nuclear power plant

00:59:16.360 affected kind of

00:59:18.880 like if the nuclear isotopes or whatever got into the bones of people who grew up near them.

00:59:23.480 So she collected teeth from children so they could get, they got rewards if they sent their

00:59:30.360 baby teeth as they fell out to this lab and they got a little badge for it. And on the day I started

00:59:37.620 my Twitter account like 15 years ago, which I've now deleted, that I got an email from a, like a

00:59:44.620 history what things happened today email list that used to exist that was called nuclear teeth and i

00:59:50.260 thought that's a good good title so uh so that's what it means um and it's now stuck but it means

00:59:57.100 i get to tell people about that experiment which i think is cool just this woman collecting loads

01:00:02.400 of teeth in her lab for decades um and it turns out that living near a nuclear power plant will

01:00:08.820 not put uranium in your bones so that's good that's a happy ending because i was thinking 0.87

01:00:13.480 about all these children sending their teeth and then later like rotting away like the radium girls

01:00:17.420 or something no it's okay um it turns out like like because you could they're obviously like the

01:00:25.060 you know the teeth are there already so they can see how they grow and like then they can test

01:00:30.960 the uranium in children who grew up like various distances from power plants and apparently it's

01:00:38.640 fine so that's good they are all okay and they got a cool badge that says I donated my tooth to

01:00:44.960 nuclear science honestly as a kid that would be really cool I would have loved one too I would

01:00:52.460 have loved one frankly I would love one now listeners do you have one send it to us thank

01:00:57.060 you so much for talking to me about your book it's such a fun time to read it and I think I said

01:01:02.500 before we started recording but your book about Agrippina was really influential to me in showing

01:01:07.340 that history can be funny and cheeky and silly and that's very much the vibe of my podcast as

01:01:14.280 well so thank you for for being an influence on me as well well thank you thank you for reading it

01:01:23.520 and telling people about it and for also being it's nice that I'm not the only person but other

01:01:29.280 people are like oh god yeah no history is fun and join in and I like that awesome thank you so much

01:01:35.600 Thank you.

01:01:42.660 So again, just the title is memorable, but I'll say it again. A Rome of One's Own by Emma Southern

01:01:48.680 is available now in North America. In the UK, it's been out for a few months under the title,

01:01:53.520 A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. And you can find all the links to Emma's everything,

01:01:58.900 her podcast, her social media, links to buy the book and stuff is all at emmasouthern.com.

01:02:04.420 And, you know, I'm going to tell you about a thing that I like to tell you about every so often, which is our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which really connects with today's episode, actually, because this is a 100% woman-owned business using 100% recycled gold, and they make jewelry, fine jewelry, inspired by women from the classical world.

01:02:26.840 so we're talking ancient rome ancient egypt ancient greece some of the pieces that they have

01:02:32.860 includes people that we've talked about on this podcast today like bodica agrippina there's an

01:02:38.740 actually there's a quiz um on the website of which difficult women are you and i got agrippina and i

01:02:44.400 was like hell yeah um but she's also got um i say she because tori is the owner she's also got pieces

01:02:50.520 inspired by other people we've talked about on this podcast like cleopatra is there and anne

01:02:54.760 Boleyn as well. You know, it's all people from the classical world and also Anne Boleyn because

01:03:00.040 she's just that important. Anyway, so they make their pieces made to order, which means there is

01:03:04.520 no waste. Like when you order something, they like, I don't know what the word is. They like

01:03:07.600 smelt it for you right away. So I chose to work with this brand partner because everything she's

01:03:14.920 doing is just vibes with me completely. Pieces are also made entirely in New York City. Everyone

01:03:19.660 involved has healthcare and good wages. Even the packaging is made by a little family-owned

01:03:24.920 business in Chicago. So the jewelry is made of like all the tits out women who you know and love. 1.00

01:03:30.600 And also the company is such a delightful small business that I love to support them. 0.96

01:03:34.800 Anyway, they also have pieces inspired by classical mythology as well, like goddesses

01:03:38.840 from Greek mythology, the muses. I have a necklace with Medusa on it, which like so far when I'm

01:03:44.780 wearing it. I have not yet turned men into stone, but one day maybe I will. I'm not making that

01:03:51.040 claim that the necklace will give you the powers of Medusa, but it makes you feel like you have

01:03:55.100 the powers of Medusa. Anyway, so their pieces are available. There's necklaces, there's rings.

01:04:00.620 They're available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. The Anne Boleyn

01:04:05.920 is coming out in gold vermeil later in November. So stay tuned for that. I'll let you know when

01:04:11.400 that is available. And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off anything from her collection

01:04:18.940 from Common Era by going to commonera slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout when you go to

01:04:24.920 commonera.com. That's Common Era Jewelry. And if you want to get in touch with me, I have a website

01:04:32.940 which is vulgarhistory.com. You can also email me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com. I'm on

01:04:38.540 Instagram at vulgar history pod is where my social media is most often. Although I'm using

01:04:46.400 like blue sky a little bit, which I pronounce blue ski because that's, it looks like someone's

01:04:51.500 surname blue ski. Anyway, Instagram is where everything's happening. Um, I also have merch

01:04:56.720 available at vulgar history.com slash store, or if you're outside the U S I recommend using our

01:05:01.600 plan B merch store, which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com. And there is new stuff

01:05:07.920 pending. So stay tuned for that. I don't, I'm not planning any specific like holiday stuff,

01:05:15.400 like Christmas or Hanukkah stuff, but there is going to be something new coming there soon

01:05:19.380 that might have to do with Lola Montez. So stay tuned. Anyway, you can also support the podcast

01:05:24.340 on Patreon at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter. So for $1 a month, you get early ad free access

01:05:31.560 to all episodes of vulgar history if you pledge five dollars or more a month you get early ad

01:05:36.120 free access to all episodes of vulgar history as well as access to our discord server where we hang

01:05:40.820 out and we chat as well as at that level you get bonus episodes of vulgar peace theater where i

01:05:45.740 talk about costume dramas coming up soon i'm gonna be talking about the lion in winter which is the

01:05:52.740 like catherine hepburn movie about eleanor of aquitaine also there's bonus episodes there so

01:05:57.400 this asshole as well as the after show. And also there's a thing. So you can also join the Patreon 0.93

01:06:02.460 for free. And when you join the Patreon for free, you can just see anything I post publicly as well

01:06:08.340 as you can also see, um, you get access to our book club, which is still going on. So we're

01:06:13.660 doing the vulgar history book club. We're talking about let the dead bury the dead by Alison Epstein.

01:06:18.220 You go to vulgarhistory.com slash book club takes you where it takes you is basically to the Patreon

01:06:23.180 free page where we're talking about this book. Have you got the book? Have you read the book?

01:06:27.620 Like, let's talk about the book. Coming up soon, I'm going to be doing a video chat with Alison

01:06:31.860 about the book. So I've got a post up there now saying, what questions do you want me to ask

01:06:36.140 Alison in this? I don't know. We'll call it like Ask Alison Anything AAA coming up soon.

01:06:42.600 And then also you can get transcripts of recent episodes of this podcast at vulgarhistory.com.

01:06:47.020 the newest episodes are where you'll find the transcripts because our our colleague Aveline

01:06:52.940 Malek from the wordery has been working sort of like back to front providing these transcripts

01:06:57.220 thank you so much Aveline for providing these transcripts so people can read this podcast and 0.98

01:07:02.840 until next time everybody keep your pants on and your tits out

01:07:07.860 Vulgar History is hosted written and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi 0.98

01:07:17.020 To be continued...

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Vulgar History - November 08, 2023

Author Interview： Emma Southon (A Rome Of One's Own： Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire)

Episode Stats

Transcript