Vulgar History - You Wouldn't Want To Be Enslaved In Ancient Rome! (with Emma Southon)

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00:00:54.040 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:01:04.020 My name is Anne Foster and today we are talking about slavery in the ancient Roman world with

00:01:08.880 author Emma Southern, whose new book in America is called Not Built in a Day, but in the UK it's

00:01:15.020 called Service. And it's the same book, just different titles. And what you're talking about

00:01:20.480 is Slavery in Ancient Rome.

00:01:22.280 Actually, can you give us the behind the scenes?

00:01:24.160 Why does it have two titles?

00:01:26.260 It has two titles because this happened with my last book as well.

00:01:30.500 I think that American publishers really, really loved the title

00:01:34.380 A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

00:01:36.860 Like they just think it's unbelievably amazing.

00:01:40.680 And so both times I've written, like I've come up with a title

00:01:45.980 and then they've gone, oh, could we have a title

00:01:47.880 that's more in line with um a fatal thing happened on the way to the forum because we just really

00:01:52.980 love that uh and so we've had to go around in some circles to come up with a title that works

00:01:58.040 for this one it was quite hard because we didn't want something that was you can't really do like

00:02:03.420 a pun title for something as serious as slavery like you don't want to make it seem like we're

00:02:09.500 going to be taking that on like not seriously um and so this one went through several rounds of

00:02:16.280 like lists of ideas before not built on a day was the kind of one that we all agreed on um that

00:02:23.540 wasn't too horrific um and wasn't too latin and was um kind of snappy enough uh that it worked

00:02:32.540 for everybody so yeah i think that just american publishers really love the love the idea of a

00:02:39.100 kind of snappy title um and british publishers just like yeah call it whatever

00:02:43.120 what I want to tell the listeners is what I was telling you before is what I would have called

00:02:48.220 this book is you wouldn't want to be a slave in ancient Rome which is a series of children's

00:02:53.240 books that we have in North America at least when I was growing up there's books like you wouldn't

00:02:56.980 want to build the pyramids you wouldn't want to be on the Titanic and it's just kids like picture

00:03:01.280 books about like gruesome awful things from history and your book I kept thinking of that

00:03:06.280 I'm like this is just like that but for grown-ups I think in the UK it's like horrible histories

00:03:10.320 does a similar thing which was very much like the these are the gruesome parts of the like 0.95

00:03:16.540 there were rotten romans was the roman one and like gruesome greeks and terrible tudors and 0.87

00:03:23.600 that kind of thing so just be like all of the gory bits um and all of the like bits involving poo

00:03:30.620 exactly exactly like chamber pot holding is exactly that is in your book but that would

00:03:37.820 also be in those toddlers books i toned that bit down as well yeah that was a longer passage

00:03:42.880 originally you do say i'm just remembering now in the introduction you're like there is going

00:03:47.280 to be a lot of piss in this book there was yeah there is a lot of piss it's surprising how much

00:03:53.340 urine came up oh i didn't expect that but so we're going to talk about today like you've got

00:04:02.680 so many examples of so many things in your book and what i thought is can kind of like introduce

00:04:07.200 introduced the whole concept of slavery in ancient Rome to the listeners who might not know about

00:04:11.460 this, is the way that it's sort of formed in response in some ways to some rebellions,

00:04:18.940 these three major slave rebellions. And each time a rebellion happened, the Romans were like,

00:04:22.860 okay, change course. How can we make this not happen again? And there's another rebellion,

00:04:26.760 you're like, oh, okay, we went too far. Let's go. And by the end of the third one,

00:04:31.660 they're like, we got it figured out. And that kind of stuck. So yeah. So can you explain the

00:04:36.780 first rebellion and the incredible person at the head of it yeah so the first they called the

00:04:44.700 servo was in roman history and they are these three massive rebellions that all happen um

00:04:50.900 it basically in the aftermath of the destruction of carthage and the massive expansion of roman

00:04:57.680 power roman military power into the east of the redeterranean which brings a huge amount of

00:05:04.140 enslaved labor into the Roman economy and just fundamentally changes it. This is the point at 0.94

00:05:08.660 which the Roman economy stops being a normal Mediterranean system that has enslaved people 0.92

00:05:16.180 in it, but is largely run on free peasantry and free labor, and then becomes what we call a slave

00:05:25.240 society, whereby slavery underpins the whole economy and underpins the entirety of how it

00:05:32.400 runs like it just cannot really function without slavery after this point the three slave rebellions

00:05:38.680 get seen as but kind of teething troubles in a way the first one happens in 135 and it happens

00:05:46.940 in sicily the first two happen in sicily and the first one happens in response to basically extreme

00:05:55.840 brutality um the romans have only just really colonized sicily like it is still a fairly new

00:06:04.260 roman colony um and they have done what they always do which is they've stolen all the lands 0.87

00:06:10.580 they've divided it up amongst roman rich roman citizens like sold it off and then they have 0.97

00:06:15.140 started filling it with enslaved labor to um it's one of the bread baskets of rome one of the

00:06:20.700 earliest um places where they are growing huge amounts of wheat and food which they are then

00:06:25.240 exporting to the cities to specifically to Rome and can I just say just because I didn't know

00:06:31.800 this context of it that the enslaved labor that they have the reason why they have so many people

00:06:37.280 is because when they go to war and they capture a city they take all the people in the city

00:06:40.980 and enslave them so they just have it's not people necessarily who were born into this

00:06:45.540 people who five minutes ago were not enslaved yeah and now are and a lot of them will be

00:06:51.720 kind of craftsmen or just random inhabitants in the city. A lot of them will be soldiers who are

00:06:57.180 captured in battle. And a lot of them will just be people potentially who were previously enslaved

00:07:04.160 in Syria. But a lot of them are going to be free people who have been captured basically as booty

00:07:09.700 or as loot from the wars that the Romans are now fighting kind of constantly. That's all they're

00:07:19.160 doing at this stage um the story of the first of our war is that it focuses around a guy called

00:07:27.700 eunice who is amazing he is a syrian he has a flute player he is considered to be a kind of

00:07:36.540 religious figure and he presents himself as a religious figure and there are all these stories

00:07:40.860 that he basically makes himself kind of semi-famous amongst the enslaved population

00:07:45.540 um in his area of sicily because he will go into trances and breathe fire um and dance around and

00:07:54.580 um like give prophecies basically um and people find this to be uh amazing uh the romans write

00:08:03.840 about it i mean i would not find this amazing yeah uh the romans write about it in this way

00:08:10.120 they really want to like debunk it um so there's a greek writer who writes about it who's like

00:08:15.640 really goes out of his way to insist that he knows exactly how he was doing the fire breathing

00:08:21.680 and like really interrupts his own narrative to be like he was doing it by holding like a

00:08:27.200 burning walnut shell in his mouth and then as he would like he would breathe over the walnut shell

00:08:33.340 and that would make flames come out of his mouth i'm like that is quite cool that's also like i

00:08:38.380 couldn't hold a burning walnut shell in my mouth so that's in in and of itself quite a skill but

00:08:43.880 they just really want you to know that he's not really magic but one of the prophecies is that

00:08:48.980 he is one day going to be the king of sicily and so people particularly the the kind of person who

00:08:56.000 owns him the person who enslaves him thinks that this is hilarious and is constantly bringing him

00:09:00.520 out at dinner parties and forcing him to tell this story and be like oh you're going to be the king

00:09:06.320 like you and everybody makes fun of him and then they like will give him food and say oh remember

00:09:10.720 me in the future when you're the king ha ha ha ha and then they send him back to the fields

00:09:14.460 um but he gathers himself a reputation amongst his fellow uh enslaved people as somebody who

00:09:23.240 is a wise man and a good advisor and a leader and so there is an enormous rebellion that kicks off 0.91

00:09:31.620 on a neighboring farm because the Roman citizens there, the enslavers, who are called Damphilus 0.87

00:09:38.560 and Megla, are wicked, basically. 1.00

00:09:41.340 They're evil people. 1.00

00:09:42.340 They delight in tormenting the people that they enslave. 0.99

00:09:46.480 They find it to be extremely fun to torture people.

00:09:50.240 They refuse to fulfill what are kind of seen as their obligations.

00:09:55.200 So they're not feeding people.

00:09:56.740 They're not clothing people. 0.78

00:09:57.920 They're just kind of buying cheap labor and then setting them free into Sicily and leaving them to starve or to fend for themselves.

00:10:08.720 And then at the same time, they are showing off their wealth.

00:10:13.060 And so they will appear like riding around their estate while wearing magnificent clothing and with kind of young, beautiful boys who are kind of dripping in gold.

00:10:24.660 and when people are like like we're freezing to death we're starving to death they will

00:10:29.580 have them whipped for being for complaining basically so there is just extreme cruelty

00:10:34.300 and extreme torture and neglect um occurring which drives the the people who live on that farm to

00:10:43.220 to rise up and they go to Eunice and say is do you think that we do you think that we should

00:10:48.340 kill them basically and he's like yes you should but only if you do it right now um so they do uh

00:10:54.300 and they rise up. They manage to come together and almost immediately gather a very large group 0.97

00:11:02.500 of people from surrounding farms who are experiencing similar circumstances of just

00:11:06.940 being bought, enslaved, disfigured with tattooing, with branding, with whipping, with extreme violence

00:11:16.220 and neglect, and who are fed up, basically, and who all, as soon as there is a kind of spark,

00:11:23.640 They all come together and are able to basically rush the city of Enna and take it.

00:11:32.300 Overnight, as far as the kind of narrative goes, with Eunice at their head, they managed to raise quite a significant kind of army of terrifying herdsmen, rush the city of Enna in Sicily, take it and then start freeing people in the city as well. 0.77

00:11:48.700 and taking their revenge upon the Roman citizens and the citizens of Sicily who they consider to

00:11:56.400 have unfairly enslaved them and to have treated them with extreme cruelty and within a couple of

00:12:02.180 days Eunice has been declared the king of Enna like he said he would like he said he would and

00:12:10.980 he has Damphalos brought to him and some of his friends in the forum and he sits there like a king

00:12:17.840 wood overseeing a city that he has taken and uh he hands out his punishments and in a kind of nice

00:12:25.420 little narrative twist he um forgives all of the men who had given him treats or who had given him

00:12:32.780 presents at the dinner parties where they were making fun of them and he's like you know you 0.96

00:12:36.660 bought my favor in the past so i will give you my favor now uh and then the uh and then he kills all

00:12:42.380 the ones that don't and so his prophecies come true um and he then is able to basically be the

00:12:49.340 king of this or declare himself the king of this part of sicily for about four years what i found

00:12:55.780 really remarkable there's a lot remarkable about this actually but i am obsessed with um people

00:13:00.920 minting coins yeah as a political statement like he is king long enough he he mints coins he does

00:13:06.860 he does mint coins with uh where he calls himself bacillus yeah um and they use like some it still

00:13:14.320 exists there's one in the british museum which is not on display which i find heartbreaking because

00:13:18.200 it should be um and this is one of those situations where the romers kind of don't

00:13:23.700 they do take it seriously fairly quickly because they take a city um and so he is able to

00:13:31.040 hold that city for quite a long time there's another slave rebellion um elsewhere in sicily

00:13:37.520 that rises up to meet him um that also takes another city um and for three years there is

00:13:43.880 like about half of italy is in open warfare over the fact that these people basically just want to

00:13:52.420 be free there is an uprising amongst the free peasantry as well against roman occupation of

00:13:59.260 as it still is at that time um and it is there are extremely hard won battles um and eventually

00:14:07.960 the romans are only able to win through their what i call sneaky fuckery um which is their

00:14:15.320 their the what they do when they're not able to to win with outright force so there's a couple

00:14:22.580 of sieges um and both of those sieges have to be won by them basically taking a prisoner bribing

00:14:30.400 that prisoner largely by offering him freedom then sending him back in to betray to basically

00:14:35.300 open the gates or to betray some kind of opening into the city and they're able to take both of

00:14:42.440 the cities that eunice is controlling through that method one of the rebels in a bit that i

00:14:49.640 absolutely adore apparently uh kills himself by just holding his breath uh well in front of

00:14:56.660 everybody well everybody just stands around and goes well i guess there's nothing we can do about

00:15:01.480 this for like eight minutes i don't know um i just find that story really funny like that he

00:15:07.600 would just be holding his breath for ages um eunice manages to escape um from enna and runs

00:15:15.260 off to the mountains where he is then hunted down um he takes his own life as well and then

00:15:21.740 uh the last kind of 500 to a thousand of the rebels are rounded up and sent to rome to fight

00:15:28.460 in the arena to be executed in the arena whereupon they immediately kill themselves as soon as they

00:15:32.760 are given weapons and so the romans are completely it's almost a moral success um from the point of

00:15:40.340 view of the enslaved because they are unable to really have they have nobody to show to kind of

00:15:45.360 triumph over and they have nothing to put on display and say look what we defeated and the

00:15:51.420 Romans would much rather have something that they can say look at these guys look how handsome and

00:15:56.280 strong they are and we defeated them anyway but they are completely deprived of the ability to

00:16:02.520 do that because all of the rebels are like no i would rather die than be executed but it is a 0.97

00:16:10.600 four-year war that comes about largely because the roman enslavers were so cruel and so unbelievably 0.79

00:16:20.860 um i'm trying to think of a word that's not cruel but they're they just torment the people that they 0.99

00:16:28.780 enslaved to such a degree. They dehumanize them to such a degree that they're treating them as

00:16:32.780 beasts. And they take away any sense of hope, any sense of the potential that this might be

00:16:41.740 a finite condition or that they might be able to improve their condition. And they treat them in

00:16:48.580 the exact same way that they would treat cattle. And that is a large part of what drives this

00:16:54.440 enormous rebellion and it freaks the romans out because they are used to small rebellions like

00:17:02.800 and particularly this time there's quite a lot of little ones where like an entire mind's worth of

00:17:08.260 people will burst out but they only will last a few days or a week or so because generally when

00:17:14.960 a rebellion breaks out the romans are able to send in a bunch of soldiers who scare everybody

00:17:22.240 they fall to pieces um and they're all slaughtered and the romans are able to be like i did an

00:17:29.200 overwhelming show of force and all as well um but this time this is the first time that they're not

00:17:34.480 able to do that um and it kind of freaks them out um and the lesson that they learn from it basically

00:17:41.240 is that you cannot just use brutality in order to keep enormous populations of enslaved people

00:17:48.480 in line like when you are moving into this situation where you have so many enslaved people

00:17:53.360 that they are outnumbering free people to this degree in some like the numbers that are thrown

00:17:58.520 around in the roman sources are always wild they will always be like one source says 17 000 and

00:18:05.840 another source says 117 000 and you're like well that feels like a big a big jump um it just is

00:18:12.900 whatever anybody feels like saying but there's obviously a very very large rebellion that occurs

00:18:18.380 because they have treated humans as animals.

00:18:23.400 And they learn pretty quickly that that cannot be

00:18:26.580 the only form of control that is used

00:18:31.840 when you are dealing with such huge numbers.

00:18:35.240 Am I remembering correctly too that another lesson they learned

00:18:37.920 is to if you're going to capture a city

00:18:39.980 of people who all speak the same language, 1.00

00:18:42.400 don't take all those people to the same place

00:18:44.640 and enslave them all because they all know each other.

00:18:48.380 yeah and and talk to each other like put people who speak different languages together like don't

00:18:53.740 yeah yeah just find an entire city onto a farm yeah and that it is very helpful to have people

00:18:59.760 who don't speak the same language who don't have any like the same religion in common because

00:19:03.800 virtually all of the people are large numbers of the people who are on sicily at this time have

00:19:08.300 come from syria and have come from north africa and all largely are worshiping the same gods in

00:19:13.500 the same way which is very different to how the romans worship their gods like a lot of ecstatic

00:19:17.680 dancing and stuff but it gives them something in common that they can converse about and so

00:19:23.420 you get people like Cato the elder who is about the same time saying like don't have just don't

00:19:30.680 buy loads of people who all speak the same language because they're gonna talk to each

00:19:35.380 other and also they might have arguments about stuff that happened back in the homeland and 0.71

00:19:39.360 you don't want that but yeah they will start to talk about keeping people separate keeping people

00:19:44.920 deliberately confused, stopping people from having any kind of solidarity with one another,

00:19:49.760 even if it's at the level of language. So then some time passes. I'm not sure how much.

00:19:56.420 And a similar thing happens also in Sicily. Yes. So about 30 years passes. The next one is 104.

00:20:03.420 The second Servo War comes about because of a really specific weird thing that happens,

00:20:09.640 which is basically a surfeit of hope

00:20:13.140 that the Romans at this time

00:20:16.780 are fighting on multiple different fronts

00:20:19.300 and in particular Marius

00:20:21.620 who is a consul seven times

00:20:24.480 he's like the first really big guy in Rome

00:20:28.420 like he's the proto-Julius Caesar

00:20:30.140 he is fighting in gore

00:20:32.240 and he's running out of men

00:20:34.040 and so he gets the senate

00:20:37.120 to ask a client king in Bithynia to send some more like conscripts basically to conscript some guys

00:20:44.980 and send them to Gaul to fight to the Romans because that's kind of part of the job of a

00:20:48.700 client king is to be providing resources for the Romans and in return they don't slaughter you all 0.51

00:20:54.740 but the king says look I'd love to but I don't have any men left like between the conscriptions

00:21:03.460 and the wars and the tax farmers who have been coming through. Everyone has been taken into

00:21:09.560 slavery. I just don't have the population left. And so the Senate think that it would be a good

00:21:15.180 idea to issue an edict and say, basically, anyone who has been enslaved, who is a member of a race

00:21:24.980 that is now a client king, if you are now in allyship with the Romans, then you can be free

00:21:31.420 without really thinking through how many people that is, and particularly in Sicily.

00:21:37.940 And this edict is circulated in Sicily and hundreds of people start walking off of the farms and houses where they have been enslaved

00:21:47.080 and walking to the capital to talk to the governor and say, yo, I'm Bithynian or I'm a member of another city that is now allied with the Romans.

00:21:59.180 and here is my proof. And can I go free? And the governor is like, yeah, sure. Go ahead

00:22:03.780 to about a hundred people. And it's just like knock it free and people happily all day long

00:22:09.060 for a couple of days, which obviously freaks out the people who have, as far as they're concerned,

00:22:15.900 purchased labor, which is now being stolen from them. From the perspective of the enslaver,

00:22:21.220 this is um the state coming along and taking their property um and give like freeing it without them

00:22:29.460 having anything in compensation and in much the same way as every slave society has ever freaked

00:22:34.840 out about the loss of money uh over anything else they they freak out um and they basically force

00:22:41.420 the governor to stop it um and as a coward he just kind of shuts his doors um and refuses to

00:22:48.000 hear anybody else um but what happens is you've got hundreds and hundreds of people who have been

00:22:52.720 told oh you can you're free now like all you need to do is get a stamp on a bit of paper and you're

00:22:58.100 free um and then all of a sudden you know a week later they've been told oh no no no actually go

00:23:03.880 back into slavery yeah just joking um which doesn't go very well it takes a couple of goes

00:23:11.480 for that rebellion to really kind of kick off 0.97

00:23:14.260 because the Romans do manage to shut down

00:23:18.460 a couple of attempts.

00:23:22.420 But eventually there are two rebellions

00:23:25.420 that rise in two different parts

00:23:28.340 and they are enormously successful.

00:23:34.400 They come together pretty quickly

00:23:36.880 and eventually are led by a guy called Athanasius

00:23:39.240 who instead of taking a city because they're not actually very successful of it he sets himself

00:23:44.640 up in basically sets up a maroon community he builds his own city at a place called triacola

00:23:51.300 and sets himself up as king there and um they build their own supply lines and this one the

00:23:59.380 romans just don't take very seriously um by the time that is salvius as the other guys at salvius

00:24:07.060 and Athanasius, by the time those two have set themselves up in Ciocala, the Romans are kind of

00:24:14.080 like, oh, we just like we put down all of those rebellions like 20 minutes ago. And it's like

00:24:20.920 loads of effort to raise an army because this is still the time of conscript armies. They don't

00:24:25.780 have a standing army. So every time they need to do something, they have to raise conscripts and

00:24:31.600 arm them and send them all out um and the governor is basically like i can't really be asked um so he

00:24:38.240 just doesn't for ages he just like lets it happen um and by the time he does raise an army and try

00:24:45.700 to do something about it it's too late like they're too strong they have built a really huge

00:24:51.480 army of of people from all over the city all over the province like all over the island are coming

00:24:58.820 because as soon as they have any hope, people just down tools and walk away or murder their

00:25:04.840 enslaver and walk away, which happens quite a lot. People are pouring into this Maroon community

00:25:11.180 and they live there for like three years and successive governors are basically unable to 0.99

00:25:19.580 defeat them. They are unable to besiege them somehow or they just can't be asked to besiege

00:25:25.060 them properly. They refuse to meet in open battle, so they can't kill them. And it is not until

00:25:33.480 they have to send a consul from Rome to come and really basically do the kind of warfare that

00:25:44.200 they're used to doing against foreign enemies. So they have to put in a full siege and attempt to

00:25:50.300 starve them into coming out into open battle um and when they do when they do it actually ends

00:25:57.260 really cool because athanasius and the consul fight in hand-to-hand combat and both injure

00:26:05.540 each other brutally but eventually the consul wins and athanasius is killed um but they um and 0.96

00:26:12.320 at that point they're able to uh basically sack the maroon community that they have built but it 0.68

00:26:19.460 is a genuine and like almost successful attempt to build a community of people who have escaped 0.93

00:26:28.360 slavery for people who have escaped slavery and it lasts for by roman terms quite a long time like 0.91

00:26:36.340 three years is quite a long go and salvius is able to die as a free man like he is co-king

00:26:43.800 he dies two years in as king of tricola and dies as a free king and i think that's really cool

00:26:52.120 um that he manages to basically as far as he's concerned he died successful

00:26:56.760 athanasius sadly doesn't athanasius gets killed but the the main lesson that they learned from

00:27:04.600 that is that you can't just kind of hand out hope basically because if you do go around telling

00:27:10.820 people that oh you can be free just because of whatever or if you offer people any kind of like

00:27:17.280 hope that isn't attached to conditions then there will be kind of runaway rebellion

00:27:24.160 what they end up with is you have to earn punishment so punishment should be pegged to

00:27:30.700 something specific um and you have to earn reward like that cannot just be given out because of um

00:27:38.420 like generic values it should only be given out because you have specifically an individually

00:27:44.900 earned it um and what that manages to do is atomize people into individuals within the system

00:27:51.380 so they're not gonna combine together because they think well i'm special exactly i don't want

00:27:57.500 to get it for everybody exactly and then they can be like oh well i um if other people were

00:28:03.780 better behaved then they also could have the things that i have um and it separates people

00:28:10.080 into individuals who have to work individually and who are not connected by shared background

00:28:17.880 because they've been separated um and are not connected by anything other than kind of chosen

00:28:23.620 family basically and therefore they can be like oh well i'm earning my freedom i'm earning my

00:28:29.060 rewards and you are earning your punishment and you are earning the you know the whippings or the

00:28:35.100 death or the the horrible tortures and if you had behaved better that wouldn't happen to you

00:28:41.960 and it it turns people into enemies of one another rather than comrades or it removes the possibility 0.87

00:28:49.440 of them being able to to build any kind of community or solidarity as enslaved people 0.94

00:28:55.040 Which is genuinely, they do this remarkably swiftly and impressively. And, you know, fairly not long after that, like a generation after that, you have Augustus making it the law that you can't manumit people for no reason. 0.99

00:29:13.500 So you can't free people in your will, for example.

00:29:16.880 You can't say, all of my secretaries will be free or all of my hairdressers will be free.

00:29:24.200 You have to do it by name and give a reason, which atomizes people even more into individuals.

00:29:30.280 The more I read about this, the more I was like, oh, OK, so this is like the Roman version of modern capitalism.

00:29:36.040 Like union busting.

00:29:38.120 Yeah, basically. If you're successful, you're successful not because of any structural reasons, like you were born in the right place or you just happened to be really good looking. It can only be because you worked the hardest at it and you were the best at it and you were the most well behaved and you were the most friendly and the best slave.

00:29:58.780 and if you are punished then it is only because you were badly behaved um and there can be no

00:30:04.280 structural reasons why you end up in a chain gang or you end up imprisoned um or you end up not being

00:30:09.340 freed um and it just was like reading about it just made me feel so much like oh if you're not

00:30:16.360 a billionaire then it's kind of your own fault for sleeping more than four hours a day or if you

00:30:21.140 would only hustle a bit harder and dunk your face in freezing water from a bottle every day then

00:30:25.900 And maybe you too could have, you know, passive income or whatever it is that people are always telling me that I need.

00:30:32.280 And like the the narrative of this is your fault if you are not succeeding.

00:30:40.080 But this is entirely based on individual hard work.

00:30:45.760 If you are succeeding, there's nothing wider than that.

00:30:48.820 Just was very familiar.

00:30:51.580 It is. It's it's incredibly familiar.

00:30:54.060 And just to kind of see, see how, like you said, like how swiftly Rome was able to sort of like change their approach to slavery such that like people weren't exactly just divide and conquer.

00:31:06.320 And now for a quick advertising break.

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00:33:46.800 And we're back.

00:33:48.480 And yet there's still one more major slave rebellion, perhaps the best known because it's led by a certain person called Spartacus.

00:33:56.200 Called Spartacus.

00:33:57.360 Everybody is best friend Spartacus.

00:33:59.820 This is the only one that happens on mainland Italy.

00:34:03.480 It is one of the most stressful things

00:34:06.860 that happens on mainland Italy.

00:34:08.520 And it happens kind of another 30 years later.

00:34:10.700 So it happens in the 70s BCE.

00:34:13.480 At the same time that all of the civil wars

00:34:15.620 are just kind of like we've just had one civil war

00:34:18.360 between Sulla and Marius, which ended in 80. 0.80

00:34:23.920 We're building up to the next one,

00:34:26.220 which is going to kick off in about half a generation.

00:34:29.280 um and down in capua um there is a gladiator school and uh one day a group of gladiators

00:34:38.880 bust out a bit and there's about 70 of them is kind of the agreed number of they steal a load

00:34:48.160 of weapons off of travelers and they run up to the top of vesuvius where they hang out um as a

00:34:55.260 bandit gang and there are lots of different stories about Spartacus and where he comes from

00:35:02.440 and who he is they're kind of two strands of narrative about him and one strand is they all

00:35:09.400 agree he's Thracian which is kind of Bulgaria where Bulgaria is now they all agree he's Thracian

00:35:14.820 they all agree he was a soldier who was captured one strand says that he was a soldier who was

00:35:24.200 allied with the romans and then betrayed them and became a bandit and killed loads of romans and he

00:35:30.040 was captured and put into the gladiator school because he was so wicked and evil and that's why

00:35:36.980 he ended up rebelling and killing loads of romans because he was so wicked and evil and the other

00:35:42.380 strand says that he fought against the romans and was surprisingly greek which means civilized

00:35:50.580 for a Thracian and was actually very clever and good. And he was put in the gladiator school

00:35:56.980 because the Romans are so kind of wicked and bad. And it was very unfair that he was there.

00:36:02.220 And that explains why he was so successful, because he was surprisingly Greek, because a 1.00

00:36:08.820 barbarian could never be so successful. He would have to be civilized in some way or else he'd 1.00

00:36:14.740 never beat the romans obviously but he basically is running a sort of bandit gang on the top of

00:36:20.860 vesuvius and a small i say small like 2 000 men are sent initially to try and stop him and he is

00:36:30.140 able to outwit them basically he at the time this is like a hundred years before the um big vesuvius

00:36:38.620 eruption so Vesuvius is a lot taller and a lot more um difficult to access than it is now um

00:36:45.720 it's basically only one path up and down it and so the soldiers the Romans camp at the bottom of 0.81

00:36:50.940 the path and they're like well we'll just wait until they come down we'll just starve them out

00:36:54.000 but what Spartacus does is he weaves ropes from uh vines um and they basically abseil

00:37:03.120 down the back of the mountain.

00:37:05.840 So they rappel down the back of the mountain 0.73

00:37:08.000 and sneak around the back of the Roman forces

00:37:11.840 and surprise them and defeat them

00:37:14.980 while they're all looking in the wrong direction,

00:37:18.140 which immediately freaks the Romans out a little bit,

00:37:21.660 but also really thrills everybody in the surrounding area. 0.93

00:37:25.680 So everybody who is not a Roman, 0.55

00:37:28.240 this is not that long after there have been wars

00:37:31.520 over who gets to be a roman citizen and whether people in mainland italy count as roman um or

00:37:39.000 whether they have any access at all to roman privileges and so they're like being a roman

00:37:44.820 still kind of um feels a bit invasive to the people of southern italy and so loads of people 0.54

00:37:51.720 in southern italy are like brilliant uh the romans of lust love this do not like those northern guys

00:37:58.560 and people start kind of flooding to join Spartacus and he builds an army with two other

00:38:07.880 guys who end up being his co-generals called Onesimus and Crixus out of people who are fleeing

00:38:14.560 slavery in the surrounding area because this is also a big agricultural area but also free

00:38:19.520 peasantry who have been massively disenfranchised by once again the Romans buying up all of their

00:38:26.080 land and then farming it within slave labor rather than disenfranchising them completely

00:38:31.840 from their land. 0.69

00:38:33.220 And they then spend quite a long time just kind of harrying around Southern Italy.

00:38:39.520 So they, much like any army, they sag cities, they fight Romans, they fight, there's all

00:38:47.620 kinds of like almost comedic events.

00:38:51.060 There's a bit where they almost capture a Roman praetor while he's in the bath and he's naked and he has to flee naked into just escapes the capture, being captured by Spartacus by mere minutes.

00:39:05.480 But they do manage to capture his horse and then Spartacus rides the general's horse around and various humiliations, basically, that they inflict upon these Roman generals.

00:39:19.300 who are supposed to be the most beloved by the gods, the most adored by everybody.

00:39:25.560 Once they have got a fair amount of actual weaponry, like when they're starting off,

00:39:29.700 there's these stories of them using literal sticks and weaving shields out of vines and

00:39:36.660 hardening them. They're having to make their own weaponry. But once they have managed to capture

00:39:41.860 enough stuff, they then decide that they're going to make a run for it out of Italy.

00:39:46.380 and they go up to the Alps, kind of harrying all the way

00:39:51.820 and where they are met by the governor of Transalpine Gaul

00:39:57.560 who is supposed to be able to stop them.

00:39:59.320 He has this enormous army. 0.88

00:40:00.560 He's got a proper trained Roman army and they defeat him. 1.00

00:40:04.020 At this point, they've beaten quite a lot of Romans 0.56

00:40:06.500 and proper Roman troops and the Senate and people

00:40:13.680 of the city of Rome have started to get genuinely quite stressed about it. They start to believe

00:40:18.760 that Spartacus is going to come to Rome and sack them. They start to believe that all he wants is

00:40:26.000 to murder them all and that he hates the Romans and all kinds of stories start spreading about how 0.98

00:40:31.580 barbaric and wicked he is. Weirdly, it's a fascinating insight, I think, into Roman 0.84

00:40:37.660 psychology. One of the worst things that they can say about him is that he holds gladiatorial games

00:40:42.880 and forces romans to fight to the death as gladiators and you're like i love this detail

00:40:49.220 though this is like that's what you were doing to him

00:40:52.540 um like i don't that's the thing that out of everything they're just like wait a minute he's

00:40:59.740 making us be gladiators like one step too far one step too far it's too far and they cannot like

00:41:07.060 this to them is so dishonorable and disgusting that he does this and he does this like as a

00:41:11.640 funeral because Crixus dies and he does this as part of a like funeral for him and they're like

00:41:18.860 so disgusted that he would make Romans fight as as gladiators and you're like I you have such a

00:41:25.980 weird worldview that you just cannot see that you are the same as other people but okay and

00:41:33.720 it then kind of descends sort of into chaos to be honest like as far as I can tell Spartacus

00:41:39.580 really wants to get out of Italy like he personally seems to be trying to get out in any way shape or

00:41:46.040 form and the rest of his army are like what if we just kept fighting Romans forever because this is

00:41:51.900 really fun and so they for whatever reason do not cross the Alps they turn around and go back down

00:41:58.140 again and they go right the way down to the boot and try to get into Sicily but they don't have

00:42:04.380 any boats so there's like this whole thing with them trying to like float over on barrels that

00:42:08.440 doesn't work out at this point the romans have realized that this actually is a proper situation

00:42:14.000 like for a long time the senate did not want to send senatorial resources there and like standing

00:42:21.620 legions or experienced legions because it's extremely dishonorable to them to be fighting

00:42:26.940 gladiators even though spartacus never fought as a gladiator as far as we know and it was a soldier

00:42:34.880 for most of his life like that the fact that he had been a gladiator is so dishonorable that they

00:42:40.080 just won't fight him and it is kind of like a stain on them to be engaged in battle with him

00:42:47.700 so they just won't put the resources in and they think it's kind of funny for a while

00:42:51.320 then they think it's horrifying and then eventually um they allow crassus um so the

00:42:58.760 kind of richest man in Rome, Crassus, who is at the time in, or is coming up to being in the

00:43:05.780 first triumvirate where he kind of agrees with Pompey and Julius Caesar that they will share

00:43:11.300 power amongst themselves. And he manages to get them to give him a kind of special commission.

00:43:16.500 He raises an army. He terrifies that army by immediately getting them to decimate each other.

00:43:21.920 and then he traps Spartacus down in the boot of Sicily.

00:43:29.500 So he manages to break through

00:43:31.060 and then they chase each other all over Italy

00:43:33.260 for like six months

00:43:34.840 until he is finally defeated in battle

00:43:38.420 because there is a threat that Pompey is going to come and join in

00:43:41.380 and Pompey is like the big bad at this point.

00:43:45.700 But it is like three years of Spartacus running around Italy

00:43:50.780 with a huge army constantly being successful constantly being um a visible sign that the

00:44:01.640 romans can be beaten like a really close to home visible sign that the romans can be beaten and

00:44:07.780 they can be beaten by people who are not kings who are not like magnificent foreigners but who 0.88

00:44:14.480 are what they consider to be the lowest of the low. I mean, it's incredibly humiliating.

00:44:20.100 And so according to one source, when he is finally beaten, when they finally take everyone

00:44:26.000 prisoner, Spartacus is never found. He dies in battle and his body is vanished. But all of the

00:44:33.820 survivors are captured and 6,000 of them are crucified every 30 meters along the Via Appia

00:44:44.000 between Capua and Rome so there is a huge basically forest of crucified bodies for what is

00:44:55.320 kind of a three or four day ride or journey into one of the main thoroughfares in Italy

00:45:03.140 and they make a real statement about how any rebellion will be dealt with at this point

00:45:12.420 And that is the final large scale rebellion of enslaved people. After that, you see nothing, nothing in terms of any kind of organized rebellion or organized revolt that happens on anything larger than two or three people running away or two or three people murdering one person.

00:45:37.840 There is no attempt to escape en masse, no attempt to create maroon communities, no attempt to change the system. It becomes so embedded after Spartacus and the system becomes so sophisticated that it ends any sense that there could be large scale change.

00:46:03.080 and this is this is i'm gonna say one of the most action-packed parts of your book

00:46:09.580 well because it's like this is where there is kind of hope there's a chance that maybe this

00:46:16.540 is gonna there's gonna be a way for people to defeat them but eventually the next part of your

00:46:20.420 book for when people read it like it's into like okay like now that slavery is just it's the oxygen

00:46:25.400 that they breathe this is just what life is how does it function and how does it work and yeah

00:46:31.220 and it does for their like their society functions on slave labor for i don't know

00:46:36.720 hundreds of years for hundreds until their society doesn't exist anymore like 0.67

00:46:41.280 it is you know there's still slavery there is still large-scale mass slavery at what we would

00:46:48.540 consider to be the end of empire like so when you're getting into the fifth century and you're

00:46:53.020 talking about like the period when rome is sacked for example so like uh 410 is the big sack of rome

00:47:00.700 so 480 years after Spartacus and you have people like Melania the Younger who is alive at that time

00:47:10.160 who decides that she's going to sell off lots of her property and she frees 8,000 people that she

00:47:17.300 personally owns and really pisses off her family for doing that and that's like not everybody that 0.82

00:47:23.160 she owns that's just some of her property and so you still have like mass enslavement on a 0.52

00:47:29.960 staggering scale, both domestically and agriculturally and in every part of the

00:47:35.200 bureaucracy of empire, well into what we would consider to be the end of the Roman Empire.

00:47:44.460 And so just a question I want to ask you, because this comes up several times

00:47:49.280 in your book, is that there has been in the recent past an assumption of like,

00:47:54.500 well, slavery wasn't so bad in ancient Rome. Where does that idea come from?

00:47:59.960 The idea comes from the fact that for a long time, particularly in English language scholarship

00:48:07.900 in America and Britain, the idea of Rome has been so glorious. Both the British Empire and

00:48:16.680 the American Empire have been based on Rome, explicitly based on the idea that Rome is

00:48:23.180 glorious and we are the new Rome. They are perfect, rational, idealized empire that brought

00:48:29.260 civilization to the barbarians and now we first the british and then the americans are the

00:48:36.080 inheritors of that um and so the whole of ancient history and classics was taught as teaching people

00:48:44.020 how to run an empire um and so for large part of those empires slavery was a part of it um and so

00:48:52.040 they were like well we're doing slavery correctly so the romans we and we're doing it exactly like

00:48:56.560 the Romans did basically. And the idea that the Romans could have been doing anything

00:49:03.560 incorrectly was kind of unthinkable for such a long time because Roman-ness was so core to

00:49:11.120 what power was, what good power was, what imperial power was at a time when imperial power was an

00:49:19.000 unqualified good like up until world war ii like the idea of being a civilizing imperial power

00:49:26.700 was an ideal it wasn't like since then we've come to the conclusion uh that actually maybe that was

00:49:33.620 horrific um and that eradicating entire cultures and enslaving entire cultures um was actually

00:49:39.660 quite bad um but for such a long time that really was considered to be good and so the idea that

00:49:46.300 slavery could be bad just couldn't cross people's minds so they had to be like oh well the sure the

00:49:53.420 romans had slavery but it was it was a fine kind of slavery like it was an egalitarian kind of

00:50:00.560 slavery and it was um they offered freedom so obviously everybody must have been freed and it

00:50:06.820 was like what's the worst thing that could happen you could get beaten a little bit and the the idea

00:50:13.360 of the roman was so glorious and so perfect that it was just impossible for them to imagine them 0.98

00:50:21.220 as brutal to imagine them as because then they would have to see themselves as brutal they would 0.79

00:50:27.600 have to see themselves as cruel they would have to see themselves as um dehumanizing and and doing

00:50:34.500 something that is you know an evil thing to do and people for such a long time couldn't see

00:50:41.820 themselves doing that and it's only with the kind of gradual crumbling of imperialism as something

00:50:49.160 that people want to be doing or at least the growth of the criticism of imperialism and

00:50:56.100 colonialism that we're able to say actually no that is an evil that to take a person and to turn

00:51:02.240 them into property that to take a person and like even if you're going to dangle freedom in front

00:51:08.280 of them at any point. Any kind of enslaving people, turning a person into a not human

00:51:13.680 and into a commodity is an evil thing. It's a really relatively new thing to be thinking.

00:51:21.280 What that brings to mind for me is one of my comfort TV shows that I like to rewatch is

00:51:27.380 I, Claudius, the 1970s BBC series. A great series. I love it. I love it so much.

00:51:34.440 But I know in some of the like behind the scenes stuff,

00:51:36.700 some of the actors have said,

00:51:38.040 like when they went into act,

00:51:39.220 the actors who were playing like the Imperial family

00:51:41.200 and you know, there's like extras

00:51:42.680 where they're being the slaves,

00:51:44.080 like being enslaved characters.

00:51:45.500 And the actors were like,

00:51:46.940 someone would bring them a cup

00:51:47.980 and they would instinctively be like,

00:51:49.000 oh, thank you.

00:51:49.580 And the director's like, no, don't do that.

00:51:52.160 Yeah.

00:51:52.340 Just like the basic human decency

00:51:55.260 that just comes intrinsically to anyone.

00:51:59.220 Yeah.

00:51:59.560 Where the directors like treat them like furniture.

00:52:01.820 And it was a real challenge actually

00:52:03.240 for the actors to not like when someone brings you the chalice of wine don't even look at them

00:52:07.520 yeah that was actually hard for these professional actors we were just over there having coffee

00:52:13.300 together me and this person this actor and it's like well treat them like a chair yeah like they're

00:52:17.760 not a person right now yeah yeah so this thing about like the level of dehumanization and that's

00:52:22.300 just actors portraying it but like what it was actually like yeah the thing that always staggers

00:52:28.140 me and it still does even though i spent like two years doing this book and i've been studying the

00:52:33.540 romans forever is the basic level of quite extreme violence that they would meet out against enslaved

00:52:42.120 people just as a basic and like the sheer humiliation and um oh and and like powerlessness

00:52:50.140 of like at any minute you can just be punched in the face and like there's a medical writer called

00:52:55.380 galen who is um in the he was like marcus aurelius's like private doctor and he wrote this

00:53:03.000 whole thing about anger and how anger is bad for your soul in which he just lists like he's like

00:53:09.040 oh yeah as a doctor and my father had this too you always seeing people come in because they've

00:53:14.380 hurt their hand because they punched a slave and his his advice is that you shouldn't just punch

00:53:21.780 people in the mouth if you're angry at them you should uh wait and calm down and then get the whip

00:53:28.960 and whip them instead which is kind of work um but your hand your hand won't have but your hand 0.61

00:53:36.660 and your soul won't be damaged by that um and uh and he tells and you're just like oh so it's 0.54

00:53:43.580 common just to like be mad and to just punch somebody um or to stab them with a stylus which

00:53:50.680 is something that he says he sees all the time. Or he tells this horrific story about a friend of

00:53:57.120 his and they're traveling across Greece and he has, somebody can't find some luggage, like a bit

00:54:02.780 of luggage has gone missing. And so his friend grabs a sword in its sheath and hits two enslaved

00:54:10.800 men over the head so hard that the sword cuts through the scabbard and into their head. And

00:54:18.460 then he is like oh I feel kind of bad about that and he just goes on ahead and because he can't

00:54:22.820 deal with the consequences of what he has done which is almost kill two people and because some

00:54:28.180 luggage went missing and Galen's takeaway from this is like oh he lost his temper and that shows

00:54:34.160 that his soul is in a bad way and my takeaway is like is this common like that you can just like

00:54:41.820 these people are just doing their job and a bit of luggage has gone missing as it sometimes does

00:54:46.920 Maybe it's just at the bottom of a pile. And now they're either permanently disfigured, they're certainly going to be scarred if they survive this. The potential for the wreckage that can be caused by head injuries of that kind are astonishing. What happens to those guys?

00:55:06.120 And just the base level of violence that is expected and is considered to be normal and average and everyday that is meted out to enslaved people is just so horrific to me that you can just be doing your best and you can experience the humiliation and the sadness of just that somebody can treat you like that.

00:55:35.900 and there is nothing you can do about it,

00:55:38.500 I just think must have been almost one of the worst parts

00:55:43.880 of being enslaved to the Romans.

00:55:46.700 Like a lot of the 20th century writers will say things like,

00:55:49.180 oh, the worst that can happen is you get beaten with rods.

00:55:51.260 No, it isn't. 0.65

00:55:53.280 Firstly, the worst that can happen is you can get killed.

00:55:55.320 But also just that routine slapping and hitting and kicking

00:56:00.300 and being treated like furniture like is it's it's soul destroying for everybody involved in it

00:56:08.460 and it's the your book is called not built in a day but like this is like the entire basis for 0.55

00:56:14.260 roman society yeah level of enslavement like there wouldn't have been like the quote-unquote 0.72

00:56:19.980 like great things that roman society did if it wasn't all these effectively invisible people 1.00

00:56:25.360 yeah there's no empire without them like they do everything like the whole of the bureaucracy 0.99

00:56:32.420 the whole of the army runs you know enslaved people cannot be soldiers but soldiers can be 0.98

00:56:39.720 professional soldiers because they have armies of enslaved people who are doing all of the 0.76

00:56:43.960 bureaucratic work who are doing all of the like everyday work like in soldiers can own enslaved

00:56:50.400 people and they do have enslaved people in every army camp and um there's also imperially owned

00:56:56.640 and um people who are owned by cities and people who are doing all of the labor that allows rome

00:57:03.980 to be as glorious and as great as it is like you don't get senecas and ciceros and glorious palaces

00:57:10.420 and coliseums and whatnot without just this mass of enslaved labor that can be used and

00:57:16.880 worked through and like ground into dust so your book came out in the uk first yes and now it's

00:57:22.580 coming out when this when this airs it's now available in north america as well yeah and how

00:57:26.520 can people keep up with the various events and things that you have going on do yes so you can

00:57:31.920 go to emma southern.com which is not spelt like you think it is but um if you type in any version

00:57:37.800 of that then you should find me um or you can go to my podcast which is called history is sexy

00:57:42.200 and find all the links there

00:57:44.600 or you can follow me on Instagram

00:57:45.720 at Emma Southern

00:57:46.740 and see all of the things

00:57:49.000 that I'm up to

00:57:49.620 and also pictures of my cat.

00:57:52.760 Which is important,

00:57:53.640 your cat, who's called Livia.

00:57:55.160 Yes, she is.

00:57:56.080 And she's a tiny little princess. 0.96

00:57:59.540 Best, you know,

00:58:00.700 speaking of I, Claudius,

00:58:01.760 like Livia is the best character.

00:58:03.820 And so, yeah.

00:58:04.660 And she lives up to her name,

00:58:05.940 I think.

00:58:06.440 She is also very imperious.

00:58:10.280 Familiar to me with my cat

00:58:11.740 who has been here throughout this recording as well.

00:58:14.040 And I've enjoyed every minute of it.

00:58:17.320 Well, thank you so much, Emma,

00:58:18.880 for joining me to talk about your book.

00:58:20.900 I think it's such a,

00:58:22.180 I just want to let listeners know too,

00:58:24.100 because I've read it.

00:58:25.320 It's, you are so knowledgeable about Roman history

00:58:28.220 and I am not,

00:58:29.360 but you write books in a way that it's understandable to me.

00:58:32.220 So I want people to know

00:58:33.020 that you're really holding people's hands

00:58:34.780 and explaining things.

00:58:36.980 I do my best to be like,

00:58:38.960 this is what, but there's like a glossary.

00:58:40.640 it's got a timeline there's a map um so even if you don't really know anything about the romans

00:58:47.920 hopefully you should be able to learn you should be able to follow what's going on like you don't

00:58:52.220 need to know who everybody is um or know loads about the romans um i want to be i want it to be

00:58:58.620 accessible to everybody it shouldn't just be for people who already have like really entrenched

00:59:02.520 opinions about cicero but for those people like there's some good cicero slander in your there

00:59:08.560 it's yeah i do real slag at mafia well thank you so much for for joining me today this is

00:59:15.220 a really fun conversation thank you so much for having me so i need to again just shout out how

00:59:24.520 much i appreciate emma southern her books were really influential to me um when i was developing

00:59:29.520 my voice as a historian who also tells jokes you should read all of her books but especially

00:59:34.700 her new one not built in a day which is available now in north america in the uk it's called service

00:59:40.920 s-e-r-v-u-s and you know what if you if you really like what emma has to say about my book she wrote

00:59:49.680 a really nice blurb about my book which is called rebel of the regency and you can get that basically

00:59:54.860 anywhere it's very very good rebel of the regency.com to find all the links of how and where

00:59:59.200 you can buy it from. Actually, it's currently a deal on Amazon Prime Days, so you can get it for

01:00:05.720 extra discount at the moment if you buy from Amazon. Anyway, the cover of my book has a quote

01:00:11.060 from Emma Southern on it saying how good the book is. So like, who would know better than her? What

01:00:16.200 books are good? Anyway, rubbotheregency.com is where you can get my book or yeah, get a little

01:00:21.480 discount on it at amazon prime days until june 26th i also want to mention we have a beautiful

01:00:29.340 brand partner who is common era jewelry and i like to share them out when we're doing episodes

01:00:33.640 like this about the ancient world so common era jewelry is an american-based company it's a small

01:00:39.160 woman-owned business by my friend tori is a person who designs everything um she has a really small

01:00:44.260 team who she pays really well who makes all the jewelry and so their jewelry is inspired by ancient

01:00:48.980 Rome and other ancient cultures. And so if you're a Rome aficionado, like Emma is, you might enjoy

01:00:55.000 getting some pieces from Common Era jewelry. They make pendants and rings with images on them,

01:00:59.780 both of famous women from the Roman era, like Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as jewelry

01:01:05.180 based on pieces found in archaeological digs, but reimagined for modern times. So their most

01:01:11.200 recent collection on Common Era is called Fragments, which is inspired by kind of the

01:01:15.960 pieces of pieces of art that are left behind so when you go into museums or galleries there are

01:01:21.500 cases filled with broken things these are fragments pieces of larger pieces of art but this is just

01:01:28.000 all that survived so these fragments jewelry pieces are inspired by these so for instance

01:01:34.320 there is the hound pendant which is inspired by a fragment that showed just like a dog a gorgeous

01:01:39.900 little roman era dog that somebody loved so much that they put them on their on their artwork

01:01:44.640 anyway you can get that in a beautiful pendant as well as the other pieces from common era

01:01:48.700 the other pieces most of them are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold

01:01:53.780 vermeil and vulgar history listeners can always get 15 off all items from common era by going to

01:01:59.780 commonera.com slash vulgar or use code vulgar at checkout and also remember to listen to my new

01:02:06.620 podcast i'm doing with my friend gina berry where speaking of rome speaking of spartacus as we were

01:02:11.600 in this episode quite a bit. We're doing a TV recap podcast called NeferTV, N-E-F-E-R TV. You

01:02:18.900 can follow it wherever you get your podcasts. And Gina and I are discussing, we're going episode by

01:02:23.800 episode through the TV show Spartacus Blood and Sand, which I've never watched before and which

01:02:29.340 Gina has watched a bunch of times. So we're bringing different and complimentary energy

01:02:33.880 into these recordings. It's a really good time. So yeah, you should listen to that as well. Just

01:02:38.200 look up nefer tv and efer tv wherever you get your podcasts from wherever you're listening to this

01:02:43.260 right now just look it up we're there we also have a new instagram that's nefer tv podcast so you can

01:02:49.240 you know like and follow us there as well we will be back next week the brand new episode of vulgar

01:02:54.800 history featuring a very special guest who hasn't been on before but i think you're gonna all

01:03:00.060 recognize her from her own social media presence and until then my friends keep your pants on and 0.95

01:03:07.440 your tits out vulgar history is research scripted and hosted by ann foster editor is christina 0.98

01:03:14.400 lumagi theme music is by the severin duo vulgar history artwork by karen moynihan social media 0.98

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01:03:26.360 aveline malik you can get early ad-free episodes of vulgar history by becoming a paid member of

01:03:31.580 our Patreon at patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. Vulgar History merch is available at

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01:03:43.420 Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod. Get in touch with me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

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01:04:51.980 You've watched them from the outside your whole life.

01:04:54.800 on TV, on stage, on the cover.

01:04:57.820 The success that always looks like

01:04:59.540 it happened to someone on a different planet.

01:05:02.240 But what if it didn't?

01:05:03.900 I'm Evelyn, and I've spent over 25 years in entertainment,

01:05:07.360 producing for some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

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01:05:10.700 The distance between you and them,

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01:05:36.420 Reppin, wherever you listen.

01:05:39.660 Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think,

01:05:43.620 how accurate is this really? But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not?

01:05:49.020 NeferTV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times.

01:05:54.000 This season, we're recapping every episode of the show, Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

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01:06:08.380 Join us every other Monday on the NeferTV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

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Vulgar History - June 24, 2026

You Wouldn't Want To Be Enslaved In Ancient Rome! (with Emma Southon)

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Transcript