transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:06] In 1842, an undergraduate at Bowdoin College in the northeast of the United States entered a student writing competition. The contestant was a talented young man named Elijah Kellogg, who would eventually make a name for himself as a congregationalist minister and the author of adventure stories for young readers. But in 1842, he was simply a college boy with a love of history and a great premise for a monologue. The ancient authors loved putting speeches in the mouths of historical figures at pivotal moments in their careers. These were almost always made up, but they spiced up the historical narrative and helped historians underscore moments that they saw as particularly significant. But there was one famous figure from Roman history that was noticeably tight lipped in the sources that had survived from antiquity. This was Spartacus, the famous gladiator turned rebellion leader. If there was a more famous enslaved person to live during the Roman centuries, I don't think I could name him or her. And while there are many accounts of Spartacus' doings during the conflict that has been remembered as Rome's Third Servile War, Spartacus' voice can be hard to locate in the sources. So the young Elijah Kellogg simply had to imagine what he thought someone like Spartacus might have sounded like. To that end, he came up with a speech that he thought Spartacus ought to have given to rouse his force of gladiators and other enslaved people to throw off their shackles and turn violently on the Romans who had put them in bondage. It's a sizable monologue, but here's a taste of Kellogg's imagined call to arms. His Spartacus declares, quote, Today I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet clasps, behold, he was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped and died. The same sweet smile upon his lips that I had marked when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes and bear them home in childish triumph. I told the Praetor that the dead man had been my friend, generous and brave, and I begged that I might bear away the body, to burn it on a funeral pile and mourn over its ashes. I, upon my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the assembled maids and matrons and the holy virgins they call vestals and the rabble shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at the sight of that piece of bleeding clay. And the praetor drew back, as I were pollution, and sternly said, Let the carrion rot, there are no noble men but Romans. And so, fellow gladiators, must you and so must I die like dogs? Oh, Rome, Rome, thou hast been a tender nurse to me. I, thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron and a heart of flint, taught him to drive the sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow of his foe, to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy upon a laughing girl. And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze, thy lifeblood lies curdled. End quote. Oh, it's rousing stuff. Now, Kellogg's depiction of this gladiator at the end of his rope is deeply sympathetic. His rhetoric reminds the reader that Spartacus was not always a killing machine. He was a human being who Kellogg imagines had a peaceful and playful childhood. He had people he loved and friends he cared for deeply. Even after doing his grisly duty in the arena, Spartacus begs only for his friends' dignity in death. His request is humble and seeks only to affirm his slain friends' humanity. But Kellogg's heartless Roman praetor and bloodthirsty Roman audience deny him that. The dead man is sneered at as carrion, food for scavengers, and Spartacus is mocked for his grief. They are both dehumanized by the violent institution in which they are caught up. So, Kellogg's Spartacus decides that if Rome insists that he is an inhuman killing machine, then that is exactly what he will be. Except from now on, he will decide exactly who will find themselves on the wrong side of his blade. He will decide whose lifeblood will lie curdled in the Tiber's deepest ooze. Not bad writing for an undergrad. And sure enough, Kellogg's monologue would go on to be a staple of 19th century rhetoric collections. His take on Spartacus as a righteous avenger and morally guided freedom fighter fit well with contemporary ideas about heroism and political freedom. But of course, his Spartacus was a literary creation. The real Spartacus is something of a historical paradox. On the one hand, he has one of the most recognizable names of any figure from Roman history. On the other, very little can be said about him for certain. His story comes to us from Roman historians for whom enslaved people were usually of little concern. Now, Spartacus is a bit of an anomaly. The success of his slave rebellion meant that he's likely the most discussed enslaved person in all of Roman history. And yet, because he was part of Rome's lowliest class, he remains a bit of a blank slate. He's the kind of figure on to which an historian, dramatist or undergrad monologue writer can reject whatever values, personality or goals they would like. In general, enslaved people are among the hardest to know historically. Their stories were rarely recorded, and they left only the faintest impression on the archaeological record and the physical archive. The further back you go in history, the harder it can become to perceive the lives of the millions of human beings who were held in bondage. What we think of as quote unquote Roman civilization was quite literally built by countless people who had been denied their freedom and were forced to serve those Romans wealthy enough to own another human being. This massive underclass served to underpin the Roman economy for centuries. But despite their huge importance to Roman society, the lives of ancient enslaved people remain obscure to students of history. However, a new book from the historian Emma Southan seeks to bring fresh attention to the lives of enslaved people in ancient Rome. Titled Not Built In a Day, the new book has been described as quote, Taking readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman Empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses, from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe, and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. Dr. Southan makes the case that despite years of scholarship, slavery remains one of the most popularly ignored and misunderstood aspects of Roman history. So I decided that I needed to talk to her about this. Dr. Southan was kind enough to join me for an in-depth conversation about Rome, slavery, and her brand-new book. We've all heard that Rome wasn't built in a day, but how much do we know about who did the building? Let's find out today on Our Fake History. Episode number 249, Who Built Rome, featuring Dr. Emma Southan. Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History. My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told. Before we dive into our talk with Dr. Emma Southan today, I would like to remind everyone listening that this podcast can be heard ad-free through Patreon. Just head to patreon.com/ourfakehistory to get access to an ad-free feed and a ton of patrons-only extra episodes. And speaking of extras, I have an update. The upcoming extra on The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is nearly complete, and I can tell you that it's going to be meaty. You folks gave me a big old topic, so it's going to be another jumbo-sized extra episode for all the patrons. My hope is to have that out for everyone within the next few weeks. So, it's a great time to sign up. Patrons at all levels will get access to that newest extra episode. But if you want the full catalog plus an ad-free feed plus a special shoutout at the end of the show, then consider supporting at $5 or more every month. But honestly, feel free to support at any level that works for you, and there's no better time to join up than in bonus episode season, which is right now. Okay, this week, we are welcoming a guest onto the show. As long-time listeners know, Our Fake History is usually just me telling you a story. But occasionally, we will reach out to authors, experts, and fellow podcasters, who we both enjoy and admire, to get their voices on the show. Well, today, we are joined by someone who ticks all of those boxes. That is Dr. Emma Southan. Dr. Southan is a Ph.D. in ancient slash late antique history from the University of Birmingham, and has authored six books on the ancient Romans since 2013. Those books include A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women, Agrippina, Empress Exile, Hustler Whore, and A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was an examination of murder in the ancient Roman world. She's also published books for children, including Totally Chaotic History, Roman Britain Gets Rowdy. She's been a contributor who's written for History Today, All About History, The British Museum, Opera News, and BBC History. She also shows up in television documentaries for history hit Channel 4 and Netflix. When she's not doing all of that, Dr. Southan also co-hosts a history slash comedy podcast called History Is Sexy. You can find that wherever you get your podcasts. Now, Dr. Southan's latest book, Not Built In a Day, as it's called in the US and Canada, and Service, as it's known in the UK, is a look at slavery in the Roman world. She has written, Quote, We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness. We marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, and the grandeur of their palaces and temples. But the Romans were also enslavers. They built an empire on the backs of millions of people, snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or simply born enslaved. The book attempts to highlight the lives of these ancient enslaved people, who are too often edited out of the historical record. I was delighted to get a chance to speak to Dr. Southan about this new book and about a litany of other myths and misconceptions about the Romans. She was an absolute delight, totally my kind of a historian, you know. Someone who is whip smart, deeply funny and with an interest in stories that are too often overlooked. The book will be appearing on the shelves in the UK on May 21st, 2026, and in the US and Canada on June 30th, 2026. But it is available for pre-order now. If you want to pre-order this book, you can head to the show notes where we will have a link. You can also head to ourfakehistory.com where we will have a link on the episode page for this episode. And you can also pre-order through Simon and Schuster's website. Emma Southan joined me via Zoom from her home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. All right, let's get into my conversation with Dr. Emma Southan. Today's episode of Our Fake History is being brought to you by Shopify. Picture this, it's late at night, and you're scrolling through your feeds when all of a sudden you see it, that one product that you've been looking for. You click the link, add to cart, maybe even shop around a little more before finally hitting checkout. As you're filling in your address, you realize you don't have your card anywhere near you. That's when you see it, that purple pay button that has all of your information saved, making checking out as simple as a tap on your screen. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark, to brands just getting started. With Shopify, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/fake. Go to shopify.com/fake. That's shopify.com/fake. All right, Dr. Emma Southan, thank you so much for being on Our Fake History. Here's where I wanted to start our conversation today. You have a PhD in Roman history, you've written multiple books about the Romans, and yet, you have described your relationship with the ancient Romans as kind of a love-hate relationship. Now, as someone who's also spent some time with Roman history, I think I know exactly what you mean, but I wanted you to get a chance to elaborate on that. What do you mean when you say you have a love-hate relationship with the Romans?

Speaker 2:
[18:50] They are very much the culture that I love to hate and love to tell people how horrible they were. And they're horrible in such a way that I find fascinating. And just endlessly fascinating, because they are, I think, the vision of Rome that you grow up with in the background of your life when you're a child, is that they were an unstoppable war machine and also the peak of civilization. And then when you start learning about them, you learn that actually they were awful. They were an unstoppable war machine, but they were an unstoppable war machine because they had a psychology that was unstoppably borderline psychotic. They just took all losses as a challenge basically, and would just keep coming back like a hija that never seemed to end. And then their version of civilization is one, not at all what you think it is. That the white men and white togas in front of white columns, that's not at all what Rome looks like. And it is a very, very brutal, hierarchical, rigid, controlled version of civilization that involves a lot of blood and violent enforcement of hierarchies and exceptional domination of people in public places. And you're just like, you people are so weird. And I think the disconnect between the vision of Rome that we have, especially that I grew up with, like growing up in Southern England, and then the vision of Rome as they saw themselves, and then what they actually were. Like if you were a Gaul or a person in Africa, or someone in Cappadocia who saw the Romans coming over the hill, like your response would be like, oh no. Like these are the bad guys. And like they're like the evil empire that we have all decided. Like they won, so we've all decided that actually the Sith Lords were great. And that like combination of like their self-image, our kind of post-renaissance image of them, and what they actually were to the people who had to live with them, just continually fascinates me.

Speaker 1:
[21:19] Yeah, I know what you mean. And, you know, I think for a lot of us who are history heads, Rome is sort of a lot of our first love when it comes to history. Because there is something romantic about that period in human history, and the architecture of the Romans, and the military of the Romans. There's all sorts of things that are easy to get excited about. But, you know, a couple of years ago, when it became a bit of a meme, when we were talking about how often people think, especially dudes, think about the Roman Empire, you know, I couldn't help but think that the Roman Empire everyone was thinking about wasn't really the real thing, that we were sort of, we were all sort of ruminating on this myth. So, what do you think are the biggest misconceptions about Rome in general? Let's start there, and then zoom in.

Speaker 2:
[22:15] So, the first one and the main one by far is the image of it as being like, white marble and white togas and white marble statues. Like, that image that you see in like, gladiator and you see in virtually, like, any depiction of Rome is just so wrong. And it is, like, Rome was so colourful. It would be gaudy to the modern eye. Like, and I think that it would be, if you, like, go to North Africa, or if you go to the Middle East, or the Levant or anything, and you go to kind of souks and you see all of these colours and all of this, like, everything is painted blue and purple and red. That is much more how it was. Like, everything was painted with the brightest possible colours, the clashing, hideous combination of those colours. So much like bright red and bright purple, that it kind of would hurt your eyes. And then everyone was wearing brightly coloured clothes as well, because colour is a way to show how rich you are, effectively. And just the whiteness, which was a deliberate thing, that people in the 17th and 18th centuries created, because they had developed their own ideas of purity. And when they found statues, and when they found marble that still had paint on it, they would scrub it off, and they would bleach it. So that everything you see in museums now is white, white, white. But they were so gaudy, and they were dripping in gold jewellery, and gems, and like they were, if you met a Roman, you would be like, oh, wow. Like sunglasses. And that's the first thing that I always want to just destroy. And I've yet to see a version of Rome, like in any visual depiction that I think gets how colorful, and how kind of ugly by our standards it was. And the second thing is how violent it was just on a day to day basis. Like in every, and it never stopped surprising me when I read it. Like the other day I was reading Plutarch's Life of Cato. And there is a bit where it says that people disrespected Cato because when he turned up with his entourage in towns, they wouldn't barge into people's houses and demand to be allowed to stay there basically. Like they were, they would just turn up, like be like, hello. I am Cato senator from Rome. And people would like disrespect him and would, because they expected the arrival of the Romans to be incredibly violent. Like they would expect a Roman governor turning up to be them, like pushing people, kicking down doors, like demanding that they be put up, punching people in the face if they refused. And you just get all of these like, the casual violence of how people asserted their place in the hierarchy or just were on a day-to-day basis, is just continually astonishing to me. And whenever I find these stories about like, my favorite favorite story is the emperor Hadrian getting angry at a scribe who read him a letter, and he's angry at the contents of the letter. So he stabs the guy in the eye with a pen.

Speaker 1:
[25:48] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] We know about this because his doctor wrote about it and was like, oh, he shouldn't have done that. But you get all these stories and then you get these stories about like, a guy trying to punch an enslaved person and accidentally punching a senator because he missed. And you're like, why was he just punching a random guy in public? And he was punching him because the enslaved person pushed him out of the way in order to make way for the senator. And you're like, this is just, like, the levels of violence that are inherent to these interactions are preposterous.

Speaker 1:
[26:24] Those examples are interesting too, because, you know, Hadrian is often perceived as the philosopher emperor, right? Is that like, oh, this was a man that had a taste for the finer things, and then you don't have to look too far in the sources to be like, and then he stabbed that guy in the eye.

Speaker 2:
[26:39] And then he just stabbed him right in the eye. But, yeah, they all have stories where they just did something, like, awful, and you're like, and those were the good guys.

Speaker 1:
[26:51] Right. And then Cato, I love the example of like, oh, here's a, here is an actually genteel Roman, Cato. But then, like, Cato has an incredibly violent death story.

Speaker 2:
[27:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:04] Right. Like, the story of Cato taking his own life is just brutal. And like, and the ancient authors, you know, give it to you in, like, you know, the most, the most visceral detail that they can.

Speaker 2:
[27:16] Yeah, yeah. They really want you to know that he, like, ripped his own, he ripped his own wounds open because they like to stitch him up. He tried to kill himself. They stitched him up and he was like, no, no, no, I'm going to die rather than live under Caesar. And so he tore his own wounds back open again. And you're like, wow.

Speaker 1:
[27:34] Yeah. But you know what? That's interesting, though, for that figure, because again, I think it kind of underscores your point about just how violence was everywhere. And this one figure who's often sort of promoted as the good man is like, well, I'll just take that violence and direct it sort of self-word, you know?

Speaker 2:
[27:49] Yeah, to myself, yeah. The one thing that you can say for Kato, who has a lot of personality faults, is that he was not a violent man. Like Cicero, to a certain extent, he really hates violence.

Speaker 1:
[28:01] But okay, violence is obviously a key theme in your most recent book. You've got a book that's going to be coming out on my side of the planet on June 30th, I believe in the UK in May. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:
[28:17] That is correct. May 21st in the UK and June 30th in the US and Canada.

Speaker 1:
[28:22] Right on. The book is called Not Built In a Day. And it's all about the institution of slavery in Rome. So I would wager that one of our big misconceptions about Rome, or perhaps one of our sort of blind spots when it comes to the popular perception of Rome, is the role of slavery in that society. People that study the Romans obviously know about slavery, but I feel like when we are imagining them, or when we are looking at the popular depictions of the Romans, the slaves don't get much thought. So I wanted to ask you, how did the Roman state get so addicted to human bondage, and how did it exist within that society?

Speaker 2:
[29:15] So it gets addicted through warfare, that slavery is just a normal part of the ancient Mediterranean, it's a normal part of the ancient world. And at least the way the Romans conceptualized it was that it all started with war. They believed and they wrote that slaves were captives who had been captured in war and were being kept alive because they were more useful alive than dead, essentially. And for a long time when Rome was a normal city-state, it was kind of fine because the way that it generally worked in the ancient world was that city-states would fight with each other and they would take each other captive, and then they'd have another fight three years later, and then they'd all go back. And there was a lot of kind of back and forth between the lot. But what happens with the Romans is they defeat Carthage, and then their expansion just explodes across three continents. And the defeat of Carthage and then the kind of almost simultaneous defeat of Macedonia, and then the wars in Greece and West Asia, and then they just expand in all directions very, very quickly. And they keep up the rule that if you conquer a city, or if you conquer people, you can take all their stuff, and you can also take all their people. Which is fine when it's like 50 people or a thousand people, but all of a sudden it is hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. And they flood into the market all at once in a matter of a few years. And the Romans completely reorient in a very quick succession their entire economy around it. They're like, this is brilliant. We can just put enslaved people everywhere. And as they expand and as through the last hundred years of the Republic, they just keep expanding, they just keep adding to numbers of enslaved people that they have, they can just keep putting them into new places. They can build an entire imperial bureaucracy that is entirely based on literate enslaved people. They can have an entire agricultural economy that is entirely staffed by slave people. They can have their houses full of enslaved people. And they're like every job that can be done can suddenly be done by enslaved people, which is helped along by the fact that they have a very ancient belief that work for pay is a kind of a bit unfree. Like any kind of work for pay is a bit disgusting. And the more aristocratic, the more elite you are, the more gentlemanly you are, the less you should be doing work. You should have leisure. And you should maybe do politics and philosophy. But if you can put any work at all onto an unfree person, then you should. And so they have a philosophy that allows it to happen. And then all of a sudden they've got a ton, a ton of people. And they can then are incredibly effective at building a system that perpetuates it. And that as they stop having so many wars, as you move into the imperial period and they stop having these big wars of expansion, and they start basically just having people born into slavery. They are very clever at building a system of punishment and reward, which is extreme at both ends, that maintains the status quo to a terrifyingly impressive degree.

Speaker 1:
[33:02] Well, okay. Can we go to that moment when Roman society changes? So, I'm kind of curious about the before and the after. So, how does this massive injection of slaves, you've already been sort of talking around it, but how does this massive injection of slaves change the society? How is it different after the slaves come in versus how it was before slavery was so widespread, before the Punic Wars?

Speaker 2:
[33:34] It basically becomes that there's just huge numbers more of them. There's far more land and there's far more wealth in general. Like enslaved people and labor is part of a massive injection of wealth. Like it's one of the things. So, they also have tons more land and they also have just extraordinary amounts more money that they can spend on things. So, it's part of a big cultural shift that they're quite antsy about for a long time as they start to really get worried about luxury and whether it's good to be very, very rich or not. They have like a 50 year period where they get really stressed about whether it's okay to be rich and have a chef, which for some reason they think that having a chef is like peak luxury for a while.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] Oh, that's the thing.

Speaker 2:
[34:21] That's the thing. Like having a cook is, because that's about kind of the 130s-ish is when you get like around about the time that they're really stressed about land, they get really stressed about cooks. And there's like a moral panic about having a cook in your house. Which I find really funny. And tables with a single pedestal is another thing that they get really stressed about. Just so specific.

Speaker 1:
[34:50] So hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm a little bit stuck there. Why that one?

Speaker 2:
[34:54] I genuinely don't know. I think that there must be like some kind of fashion for it. Of like a specific type of table.

Speaker 1:
[35:03] And if it's a certain type of workmanship to get the balance just right.

Speaker 2:
[35:08] But there's just like a real, like cooks and tables with a single pedestal are considered briefly to be like the height of luxury.

Speaker 1:
[35:16] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[35:17] But it is all, what happens is that the society flips pretty hard into being much, much richer than it was before, and much less like the rest of its neighbors. It becomes an empire at that point, basically a real imperial state that is now dealing with lots of land that is far, far away from where Rome is, and it has to build all of this infrastructure to deal with it. And enslaved people are able, are one of the resources that they are able to use to make the empire the empire.

Speaker 1:
[36:39] Yeah, do you think that Roman slavery had, aside from its scale, which is obviously like enormous, but aside from its scale, do you think there was a quality to it that was different from other forms of ancient Mediterranean slavery that would have been common amongst Rome's neighbors? Was Roman slavery different from like, what Greek slavery had been, or Carthaginian slavery had been?

Speaker 2:
[37:06] It is, because they develop really impressive systems to both embed it and to maintain it, which no other culture ever has to develop really. Like manumission, for example, is usually the thing that is mentioned. Because if you are an enslaved person and you are owned by a Roman citizen and you are freed, then you get Roman citizenship, which is a massive boon in certainly the early empire. And even if you're not, you can still be freed. Like there is always the possibility of manumission. And it is a carrot that is dangled that did not exist in a lot of other ancient cultures. Like the Greeks were very, very, like they hoarded freedom and citizenship like it was going out, like it was a limited resource.

Speaker 1:
[38:05] Yeah. Yeah. And Aristotle famously was like, someone is constitutionally a slave, right? This was his infamous sort of thoughts on slavery, right?

Speaker 2:
[38:16] Yeah. And the Greeks did have a much more rigid kind of perspective on this. And especially they would not give any kind of privileges or to anybody who was freed from slavery. And they didn't do it very often. Whereas the Romans, as we can see in the inscription evidence, like they did it a fair amount. Not, I don't think they did it as much as other people do, but they do do it enough that it can be a realistic goal for people. And then you can build a life outside of slavery. And a lot of people did. And that is a big thing. But they also have a system that is very carefully calibrated to make sure that everybody feels like they have earned it. So they have a lot of laws that come in. This develops through the Servile Wars. And then Augustus kind of codifies it that you have to, like, as an enslaver, you're not allowed to just like manumit people en masse. And you have, everybody has to, like, make a specific and individual case for manumitting a person. So they really have to feel like it's something that they earned. So they have to work towards it. And that keeps people very carefully in line. Because there's always like a, there's always examples of people who have earned it, but there's always a ladder. And then at the other end, they are astonishingly brutal with their punishment. Like if you fall off the ladder towards manumission, or if you misbehave in any way, they will crucify you. Or they will like torture you in horrific ways. Like the descriptions of the torture of enslaved people are like, toward like they're like splatter punk, like they're so disgusting. And they, and it's amazing how casual they'll be about it. They'll just be like, oh yeah, you know, the rack, the pitch, the burning. And you're like, the what? Like the, the, the punishments for any kind of misbehaviour are so intense and so visible and like lashing and chaining and tattooing that, that they are also a very visible sign for everybody as to what happens if you step out of line. And again, no other cultures don't really need to develop these very visible, so they just don't have slavery on the scale. And when you are a person who owns maybe 100 people in your house, who are enslaved, then you need to have structures that say, that can keep them in line without you having to actually do anything necessarily. You just need to punish a couple and reward a couple and that will keep a lot of people in line. And in other kind of cultures, you just don't get those big houses like the Romans had, where you would have 500 enslaved people, a thousand enslaved people. These hierarchies of slavery within homes that the Romans develop. They, you know, you see in Greek literature, people will have five. And the scale is just like off the charts.

Speaker 1:
[41:38] I'd never considered the rewards, though, of like what it is to be a good slave who is manumitted. God, that sounds eerily familiar.

Speaker 2:
[41:48] Yes, it does. And they also have this thing called Peculium, which no other system really has, which is basically a where enslaved people can semi-own things, so they can have their own money. But at the high levels, they can own quite a lot, like they can own other slaves, they can own property, they can own potentially a whole villa. And so you can get like within the Imperial household or within the very aristocratic household, enslaved people who have enormous sort of wealth. And the best way I can describe it legally is it's like pocket money. So if you have a kid and you give them, I don't know, $5 a week for doing their chores, and they can then go and spend that $5 a week on whatever they want, and they spend it on sweeties or they save it up or whatever it is that they do with their $5. But if they misbehave, if they do something, you can stop their pocket money, you can take it away, you can take away whatever they've bought with it, you can stop their access to their roadblocks. And that is what Peculium is. They don't own it, they can control it, they can go out and buy whatever they want with it. They can have their own slave people, but at any point, their master, their dominus can say, like, legally, that's not yours, legally, that's mine, and I'm taking it away from you. Like that, you know, house that we bought, it's mine. And you've pissed me off, and so you don't get that anymore.

Speaker 1:
[43:29] And I can see how that could just be used by, you know, the ruling class being like, you had a good thing going here.

Speaker 2:
[43:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:35] Right? Like, look, you had a nice little house here, you had some lovely possessions, and then you had to go and disobey me or do something I didn't like, you know?

Speaker 2:
[43:46] And now you don't have that anymore, so we're taking that back. And it's very, very clever because it gives enslaved people something to work towards and something that they feel like they can use to exert their autonomy. Like, they can choose what to spend their peculiar on, they can earn a bit of money, and they can start their own business and they can exert it. But it feels like then they also have something to lose. Because once they have bought something, once they have got a save, maybe they're saving up to buy their own freedom or buy the freedom of one of their children. If they step out of line, if they do anything at all, if they chat back or roll their eyes and their dominance can say, oh no, that's, I'm taking that back now. And so they not only have something that they're exerting their like human autonomy on, they also have something to lose that's worth protecting. And even if they don't want to protect themselves, they might want to protect that.

Speaker 1:
[44:49] Yeah. Pivoting slightly, that's fascinating. I love that. Well, I don't love it as an institution, but I just-

Speaker 2:
[44:56] Yeah, I know. It's incredibly, they're so evil.

Speaker 1:
[45:00] Right? But it's sort of brilliant in its sort of darkness. Now, as someone that does a lot of research into stories that have been sort of hidden or misunderstood, I am really fascinated with any research into an underclass or into what's been called the subaltern.

Speaker 2:
[45:21] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[45:22] Researching an ancient underclass provides even greater challenges. Famously, it's hard to find the voices of the oppressed in the archive. Were you able to find the voices of slaves in your research? What were your sources like? Did they ever squeak through?

Speaker 2:
[45:44] They do a bit, a tiny bit. It's so hard to put together full sources because slavery is so invisible, but they do leave bits of themselves behind. There is tons and tons of epigraphy, like inscriptions that are left behind of themselves. One of my favorite resources is there are these, they're called columbaria. They are like burial spaces for specific groups, and they would sometimes be for an aristocratic family or sometimes be for like a workman's guild or something like that. And you could pay to get like a little niche in one of these columbaria. And that could be a place where your ashes could live and people could go and see it. And what you see is there are a few from aristocratic houses in Rome where you can see full families living, and you can see people getting married, and then having children, and then dying through the inscriptions they left behind about themselves and where they appear on other people's inscriptions. So like there's this family, this guy called Uticus and his wife Aphrodisia. And they have three children that we know of. They're both born into slavery in the Statoly family. And they, we know they're married because Aphrodisia dies and Uticus commemorates her as her husband. And then two of the three children also die when they are in their teens and early twenties. And they are commemorated by their father and their siblings. And then when Uticus dies, he is commemorated by his brother. And he also appears on another commemoration to a friend. And so you can see this like full family, like come into being within this household and then gradually die off one by one. But you can see that they love each other. Like they have taken their money because they had to pay to make these inscriptions and it's not cheap to make an inscription that's got more than one word on it. And to commemorate one another and to say, this is a person that I loved and this is a person that I want to be remembered by other people, not just me. And I want her to be remembered as somebody who is more than just, you know, an ornitrix or more than just what her job was, but as my wife and as the mother of my children or as my mother. And there are, so you get to see some like that, like how they conceptualize themselves, how they, like legally, they weren't allowed to be married. Legally, they are not husband and wife. Legally, they are not even fathers, like fatherhood legally does not exist for an enslaved person, but that's how they see themselves. That's how they'll describe themselves. And you see so much of that. And enslaved people fill up, like so many of the inscriptions that we have, where they are like leaving this little part of themselves behind. And the other thing that was really rich was graffiti. Graffiti, particularly in Pompeii and Herculean, because that's like the best place. But also there is some in the Palatine as well. There's two schools on the Palatine for enslaved boys, where they left loads of graffiti behind. They would just draw on the walls and draw on the floors. And like a surprising amount of drawing on the walls in private spaces. And they would leave each other little notes. And there's this really lovely little set of two brothers in a house in Pompeii who would write each other notes when they passed through a specific room. And so like the first says, you know, Felix, your brother sends his greetings. And the other one underneath will then say, you know, Uticus sends his greetings back to Felix. And you can see them like moving around the space. And sometimes they'll write bits of poetry, and sometimes they'll write like just each other's names. Sometimes like, Romula Lives Here With Her Boyfriend is one of my favorite, which is written like twice. Well, you don't know, did Romula write it because she wants to show off her boyfriend? Or did somebody write it because they're like, haha, Romula's got a boyfriend.

Speaker 1:
[50:21] Yeah, is it Romula's got a boyfriend?

Speaker 2:
[50:23] Yeah. Or is it somebody writing it and Romula's like, oh my god, stop writing that about me.

Speaker 1:
[50:29] She's not my boyfriend, okay?

Speaker 2:
[50:31] Exactly. They're never going to be my boyfriend. But you can see these like, and you can see where they clustered then, because you can, like there's a stairwell particularly where you can see where they would hang out. Or like in kitchens, you can see lots of them. So you can see, you don't get like those full stories of their like beginning, middle and end, but you don't really even get that for emperors. Like so many emperors were like, well, we don't know when they were born. And so even having like these little fragments, and as soon as you start looking, you see so many of them. Like the famous graffiti in Pompeii is the doctor of Trajan. He's like, I can't remember what his full name is now, but it's like I took a shit here. In the toilet in Pompeii. And he's an enslaved person. And so once you start looking, you see so many tiny little fragments that just show one, how many of them there were, but also like what kind of things they were interested in leaving behind about themselves. And it's their humanity more than anything. Like it's their sense of humor. They'll draw little pictures of boats or each other with like funny faces and it's quite moving really.

Speaker 1:
[51:49] Well, I love that. That's because that is humanity, right? That is like humanity eking its way out. Even if you're living in the most like horrible of situations, you've got, you're completely oppressed by your society. You are a victim of violence. And then you're just like, ah yeah, but I mean, you got to laugh.

Speaker 2:
[52:09] Yeah, pretty much. And you know what, like this is what it is and I'm going to fall in love when I'm going to have baby.

Speaker 1:
[52:15] Right. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah. So it's not so much there, we don't get their life stories, but their humanity just can't help but just leave its mark.

Speaker 2:
[52:25] Pretty much. I love that. Yeah, no, go ahead.

Speaker 1:
[52:28] No, no. Well, speaking of humanity sort of bursting forth, I did want to talk about slave resistance. And I wanted to talk about those moments in Roman history when the slaves really did push back in force. And obviously the most famous moments are the Servile Wars. So I've got a few questions about the Servile Wars. One, I hope you don't mind just giving the listeners just a brief thumbnail sketch about what they were. But before we get into that, I wanted to sort of frame it like this. The thing about Roman history is that we learn so much of it from sources that were written by Roman aristocrats. And so I'm sure we are getting a very specific perspective on the Servile Wars. So first, what are the Servile Wars? What were the Servile Wars? And can we trust anything that was written about them?

Speaker 2:
[53:28] So the Servile Wars are three moments in history in quite a tight time frame actually of 70 years, where there were explosions of violence of enslaved people rising up against Roman oppression. Two of them happened in Sicily. The first one is almost immediately after the destruction of Carthage. The second one is about a hundred, and then you have Spartacus as the last one in the 70s BC. And they come about because, well, the first two come about because of a massive concentration of enslaved people in a fairly small space, like Sicily is not that big. And they put a huge amount of enslaved men, most of whom were captured soldiers, onto Sicily and were like, you work the land now.

Speaker 1:
[54:27] Right. For listeners that don't know, Sicily was sort of like Rome's breadbasket. So before Egyptian grain starts coming in en masse, Sicily is where a lot of your wheat comes from. So huge amounts of agricultural labor needed.

Speaker 2:
[54:44] Hugely. And it's their first overseas colony. Although it's visible, it's like 20 seconds away from the tour of Italy. But it's their first overseas colony. They absolutely colonize it, parcel it up amongst Roman aristocrats, and then work that land with enslaved labor immediately in order to feed Rome, and to feed cities on the mainland of Italy. And the first one kicks off because they're basically abusing, they're enslaved men far too much. They're far too violent, and they give them no hope. The second one kicks off because they pass a law that says that if you were a member of a state who is now allied to the Romans, and so if you're from like Bithynia, for example, and the king of Bithynia is now a client king, and so if you're now, your ethnicity is now allied with the Romans, then you can be free, which sounds brilliant, except loads of people then descend upon the capital of Sicily and are like, well, I would like to be free, please. And the landowners then freak out that they're going to lose lots of labor, and they basically shut it down. It's like 100 people are freed, the landowners lose their minds, they shut it down, and then there is a huge rebellion. Those two wars last for a couple of years and terrify the Romans. And then Spartacus breaks out for reasons of his own. There are about a thousand different interpretations as to why Spartacus broke out. He is allegedly a Thracian soldier who is captured and then sent to gladiatorial school. There are two different versions of why. And that brings you to the second part of the question, which is, can you trust anything the Romans say? No, probably not. So the two different versions of Spartacus are either he was a Thracian soldier who was very, very good and very honourable and surprisingly Greek and civilized. And he was captured and he was sent to gladiatorial school for no reason. And that's why he broke out because it was terrible and he didn't deserve to be there. Or he was a Thracian soldier who allied with the Romans, betrayed them, turned against them, became a bandit, did loads of murders and was then sent to gladiatorial school. And he broke out because he was an evil, wicked barbarian. And you can kind of take your pick as to which of those two completely opposite stories you want to believe. And that is kind of the level of sources we have about any kind of rebellion, which is that the Romans automatically believe that their enemies are base and wicked and barbaric and evil and stupid and unworthy of their time or attention. And then they will just say preposterous things about them. And it's very hard to believe. And you kind of the only thing that you can pick out of them is, okay, there was a rebellion, it went on for like four years, they won enough victories that they had to send some consuls in to deal with it. And everything else is probably cinematic. Like creative license. There are lots of lovely details that you get from Roman writers, because they are lovely at writing those kind of cinematic pieces, which is why Spartacus remains so beloved to us. But he is in all the sources, he's so clearly a fictional character.

Speaker 1:
[58:42] Right.

Speaker 2:
[58:44] And so is Salvius and Eunice, who are the leaders of the other two rebellions. They are, they just don't, like they're clearly not people, they are literary creations. And so much of reading Roman history is trying to strip back how much is literary creation and what the core of what actually happened might be.

Speaker 1:
[59:04] Right, right. And so, but you can kind of see in those two portrayals, sort of two different stories that the Roman authors are trying to tell about slavery and also to tell about like, you know, who they kind of consider to be the dignified Romans. It's either like, oh, we are better than these people, and that's why they deserve to be enslaved, or maybe we could learn a thing or two from this noble savage, you know?

Speaker 2:
[59:29] Yeah. Well, they turn Spartacus into a noble savage because he keeps winning against them. And that's basically the only reason they can think why he might be. He's either winning against them because he's a terrible barbarian who's just more savage and he's not adhering to the rules of being a proper gladiator, or he's a noble savage and he's winning because he's morally pure, and therefore that's why he's winning. That's why he's able to march around Italy for three years, causing so much destruction because he's just like us, he just accidentally ended up in slavery. Whereas anyone that they defeat immediately, they defeat immediately because they were base slaves and couldn't do proper war.

Speaker 1:
[60:12] Right, right. It reminds me of how the Roman historian Tacitus writes about Germanic people.

Speaker 2:
[60:19] Yes, yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[60:19] Right? Where it's like, oh, these are just like the most horrible barbarians, but also there's a nobility in their spirit that we Romans maybe have lost. And so perhaps we should use them as sort of, there's something there to emulate. Oh, surely we do not want to become barbarians again, but there's a certain sort of rough nobility that we should be getting back into. And so, but all of this is just fiction. It's all just about telling a tale to Romans about Roman morality, really.

Speaker 2:
[60:55] Yeah. Exactly. Like, Tastis talks about the Germans, and it's like, oh, you know, they only have one wife. I'm like, my friends who all have like seven concubines, and I think that they should have fewer concubines, but I've put that in the mouth of this guy. And look at us, we've fallen even lower than the barbarians. And yeah, like whenever they're writing, they think that history should have a moral dimension. History is not analytical particularly, and it's not even about what really happened. It is always about a moral tale that you are telling your audience. And it frustrates them. Like if you read people like Dionysus of Halicarnassus, or even Suetonius, who tries to like look at all of the different versions of his own history he has and put them together. They're like, this person says there were 33, this person says there were 600, this person says there were nine. Like I don't know how many Savine women there were. And because they just, they don't perceive history to be what really happened. They perceive it to be a moral education and shaping the story of what happened for the reader that you are trying to reach, which is inevitably a senatorial, like it's the guy you sit next to in the Senate, or the guy you go to dinner with, who is an equestrian, then it's never for the subaltern, or people like us.

Speaker 1:
[62:28] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[62:29] Which kind of is what makes it fun to pick apart, because you're like, what is the core of what happened? Like with the various versions of the Spartacus stories, I had a spreadsheet at one point for the Spartacus story, of like all of the different versions of what happens at every point. And like, what actually is the core of what happened here? But then also, what are all these different authors trying to say to people at different times when they're retelling their story across like three centuries? Like, what do they emphasize that is different? And that's kind of what makes it fun to me.

Speaker 1:
[63:04] Yeah, yeah. And you got to love Roman historian Suetonius for really bringing the sexy parts out of Roman history.

Speaker 2:
[63:12] He did, he did. I wish we had more of his writing. He wrote a book called The Lives of Famous Prostitutes, which is lost.

Speaker 1:
[63:21] Sounds like him.

Speaker 2:
[63:22] And I find that very disappointing. We kept his grammarians, we kept his like, rhetoricians, we kept his emperors, but not the really sexy bits.

Speaker 1:
[63:32] Right. Well, I mean, I've talked on this podcast before about a number of famous Romans and Roman emperors. But when you look at Caligula, right? And it's like, we lose tacitus for Caligula. And so we don't have that like, very sort of sober, steady hand on the wheel. And instead, it's all Suetonius. And so it's like, dude, you'll never believe this one.

Speaker 2:
[63:53] You'll never believe what he was doing with his horse. Yeah, everyone. Yeah, his like, combination of like, quite occasionally he'll be really rigorous. Because like at the beginning of the Caligula thing, he has a whole paragraph about how he has personally investigated where Caligula was born.

Speaker 1:
[64:12] Right.

Speaker 2:
[64:12] And all of these other people are wrong about it. And he's put like loads of effort in it. And then by the end, you're like, and then somebody said that he like opened a brothel, and then somebody else said that his horse had their own slaves, and he was definitely going to make it a console. And you're like...

Speaker 1:
[64:27] He reminds me of a history podcaster. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what we do. It's sort of like, hey, I've done a little thing that other people don't do. But now, man, this is a lot of work. So I got to really rely on what everyone else is saying here.

Speaker 2:
[64:42] Yeah, I'm just going to give you the fun stuff as well. You have to give them the fun stuff to keep people hooked. You can't all just be... And then I tried to work out where he was before.

Speaker 1:
[64:51] Yeah. And now we've kind of lost the plot of the Servile Wars here a little bit, but I do want to take it back to that, because I am really curious how those events, you know, getting to the bottom of what actually happened in them is obviously incredibly difficult. But do we get a sense of how the Roman relationship to slavery changed or didn't change as a result of those huge conflicts?

Speaker 2:
[65:17] It does change to a certain extent, because they realized that they, at every point, they basically realized that they have done it to themselves to a certain extent and that what they are doing is not sustainable. So the first one, Eunice allegedly, the way they tell it is that it leaked off because there was brutal and unnecessary and indiscriminate violence and neglect to the enslaved people in Sicily. And they pin it on one guy called Dampflos, but like the thing is that there is just, that they have imported all of these people and then left them to their own devices. There's no hope, there's no comfort, there's nothing. And as a result, they rebel and they're too successful and it scares them. Because it goes on for a couple of years, they sack some cities, they have to send people from Rome to deal with it. And it freaks them out. And so this kind of culturally teaches them and the way that they will then retell it to themselves is that you just can't be indiscriminately violent all the time. Like it can't just be pure suffering to be an enslaved person. And there has to be some level of hope, essentially. And then when the Second Servile War kicks off with Savvius and Athenion, it is because they have done this blanket manumission, which has... and then snatch that away. But they have, like, they've been indiscriminate in both counts. And they're like, oh no, we can never do that again. Like, we can't give people the possibility that there could just be a blanket, like, oh, everyone here is free, or like, oh, we're friends with, like, this Gallic tribe now, so all of the Gauls that we had who belonged to the Kimberley are now free. Like, that just can't happen. So there can be hope, but there can't be too much hope.

Speaker 1:
[67:23] Yeah. And I also wonder when you said that, first I'm like, how did anyone prove that they were anything? Right? Other than just like, like, I've got blonde hair, so maybe I'm Kimberley?

Speaker 2:
[67:38] It literally happens because the King of Bithynia is asked to send people to fight in Marius' war in Gaul as a kind of levy of men. And he says, like, I don't have any men left, like after the war and then after the tax collectors came through and after the levies, like, I don't have any men. And the Senate are like, oh no, okay, well, we need the men, so we'll just do this blanket thing. And they don't really think through the consequences. And then there are a load of Bithynians in Sicily. Sure. But...

Speaker 1:
[68:08] And probably a load of other people that are like, I could probably pass as Bithynian, you know?

Speaker 2:
[68:12] Like, what are you going to do? I'm from next door, like... I have no idea what they were doing to, like, prove this.

Speaker 1:
[68:19] My grandmother was a Bithynian.

Speaker 2:
[68:20] Yeah, I can claim Bithynian descent via my great grandfather. Yeah. But they're like, no, we can't do this. Like, it has to be individual. You have to earn it. It has to be... We can't be making, like, blankets. We can't be treating enslaved people as a group, basically. That gives them class solidarity, and that's the last thing we want from them. And then after the Spartacus War, the main thing that initially, the reason that Spartacus is really able to do so much damage is that they don't treat it seriously at the start. They're like, it's a small number, a handful of enslaved gladiators break out and run up Vesuvius, and they're like, this happens all the time. Like, we can deal with this very quickly. And they send, like, two guys in a stick to deal with it, and it just escalates and escalates. But it takes them quite a long time to start sending in proper armies. And they laugh at it, essentially. And nobody wants to go and fight them, because it's actually quite dishonorable to fight slaves. Like, you're never gonna get a triumph out of that. You're never gonna get any rewards out of it. It just looks bad for everybody. And so they just don't take it seriously until people from the surrounding area have joined in. And what happens again is a class solidarity emerges, that he is also joined by the Free Peasantry, who have had their land taken away from them, which is now a park for Cicero to go hunting in. And they have lost so much that they were able to build this class solidarity. And what they learn is, one, you have to take it incredibly seriously, and if anybody steps out of line, you just kill them immediately. And brutally and horribly. And secondly, you just want to break up any kind of class solidarity as soon as possible. And this is what the system of peculiar and the systems of having hierarchies of enslaved people work out. And also having enslaved people in bureaucratic positions, for example, it's very effective at making free peasantry and the free poor resent enslaved people.

Speaker 1:
[70:44] Right.

Speaker 2:
[70:44] Enslaved people resent the peasantry, and then they're not joining together anymore. And so they start introducing a friction into relations between the kind of lower classes of all forms of freedom that make sure that they are not going to be having meetings or seeing any hope in anything that rises.

Speaker 1:
[71:07] Man, and that kind of class hatred, shall we call it, just persists in European society. I mean, I think even right up to the time of Shakespeare, right? We get to like the 1500s. You read those plays, and a lot of the most vitriol that comes out of the mouths of those characters is towards servants who feel like they're above their station.

Speaker 2:
[71:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[71:29] You know, even from-

Speaker 2:
[71:30] You read Agatha Christie, and you still find it in like the 50s, like servants who talk out of line. Like, they are, it's still so there, like people who think that they are above their station is such a British thing.

Speaker 1:
[71:45] Yeah, well, but I mean, maybe it was also a Roman thing.

Speaker 2:
[71:49] I think it was a Roman thing. And you do see it, like, there's so much poetry and like epigrams, and like, they love to be sarcastic, the Romans. So there's so much like, I wrote stuff about, like, enslaved people and hierarchies of enslaved people in the free. There's like one epigram by Marshall, which is about a captured soldier going to a, being sent to the well to get water, and not giving up his space in the queue for a home-born slave from Rome. So there is a boy who has been born into slavery in a Roman household, and he has precedence at the fountain, and the soldier doesn't, and he should have given up his role. And you can see that friction automatically. Like they've introduced a hierarchy that says this grown man, soldier, is now lesser than this boy who was born into slavery, because he was born in Rome, and so he has to give it up. And you're like, you're so good at like making up a class, and introducing it and then telling people off for not knowing their place in it.

Speaker 1:
[73:03] Right. So, okay. As we sort of head towards the end of our chat here, I'm curious if the Romans ever reached a spot of peak slavery. Now, I do know that, again, spending so much time with this history, Christianity obviously comes in and eventually sort of changes everything. But that's many centuries down the road from the period we've really been discussing. Is there a moment when it peaks? Does it tail off well before we get to the era of Constantine and the other Christian emperors after him?

Speaker 2:
[73:45] It is still very much, I would say probably actually the third century-ish is probably a good peak for it. One of the interesting things about Christianity is that it doesn't reduce slavery at all. It tends to reduce... Constantine introduces two big slavery laws. One is that you can no longer deliberately murder an enslaved person that you own. Which he lays out in quite some detail. But so he does soften it that way. Like you can't just beat them to death anymore or set fire to them. And also that you cannot tattoo enslaved people anymore. Because they did facial tattooing as punishment. Interestingly, that means that Christian enslavers start using slave collars for punishment. And now we have loads of evidence of collars. Like big heavy collars that they would put on people who tried to escape.

Speaker 1:
[74:48] But that's from the Christian period.

Speaker 2:
[74:50] Yeah, yeah, they're all Christian. And they all have Christian symbols on them. Which is super interesting, because it doesn't reduce slavery at all. It just changes how some people enact it. It's not really until you get to... Even St. Augustine is writing about slavery. Like in the fifth century, he's still talking about trying to rescue people who have been enslaved by like Goths. And the enslaved people that he is aware of. And so it's really late that it tails off. And it probably doesn't tail off as much as we would like it to. It's when the big houses break up after 500, and the big estates break up, and that in the west of the empire, that slavery tails off, and it starts to change. But weirdly enough, there is such a division between the very rich and the very poor in the period that we think of as the end of empire, that quite possibly the rich owned more people than the people of the part that we would think of as the early empire, like the Julio Claudians and the Flavian period. Because you get people like Saint Melania the Younger frees 8,000 people from half of her estates.

Speaker 1:
[76:25] From half?

Speaker 2:
[76:26] Yeah. Not including the people that she takes into, she goes into a nunnery and then she takes women with her. And like there's a real thing in the Christian period of elite women going into nunneries and like taking 50 women with them who are enslaved and don't have a choice about it. And so it's like very much still a part of post-Constantine Empire and it's still very much a part of Eastern Roman Empire where those Byzantine palaces are still full of, like eunuchs are not there out of voluntary labor, they're not getting paid. And so it is, I would say it's probably about the 6th century that it really starts to die off, that just because of the breakup of the estates and the families that were holding a huge amount of wealth in people.

Speaker 1:
[77:22] See, that's fascinating because I think that is a big historical misconception. I think when we're painting the broad strokes of European history, often it's like, oh, well, then Christianity emerged and it was a teaching in Christianity that one Christian should not enslave another Christian, and as a result, this institution withered away. But clearly not.

Speaker 2:
[77:44] Oh, very much not. There's a book actually out recently called God's Copywriters, about how the structures of enslaved scribes who wrote the Bible, and the enslaved people around the production and the dissemination of the Gospels, and how slavery is very much part of the early church, and there is no emancipatory theology. They are very much fine with enslaved people getting into heaven, but they have no desire particularly to free them in life.

Speaker 1:
[78:21] See, this is fascinating. I just finished a series on the Vikings, and specifically Norse exploration in North America. But when you're looking at the early stages of what they call the Viking Age, you find all these Christian writers who are just scandalized that the still pagan Norse are taking slaves and selling slaves. And yet, it seems like the institution was still kind of going on.

Speaker 2:
[78:50] A hundred percent, like plenty of them. And lots of, like, one of the... I did a lot of work on early Christianity when I was at university. And like, there's all these stories of, like, women trying to leave their husbands in order to follow St. Paul, or like declaring themselves to be continent. Like they're not going to... they're chaste, they're not going to have sex anymore. And so many of them will try to trick their husbands by putting an enslaved woman in bed and trying to get the husband to have sex with them instead. And then even in, like, the fifth century, you get bishops writing sermons. They're like, can you please stop having sex with your slaves? Like, this does count as adultery. You please stop bragging about it. Please stop doing it. Like, God doesn't like it. But the problem is the continents of the Christian. It's like the enslaved people just have no particular interest whatsoever. It's very late that it's like a much more into the kind of middle ages, that slavery dies off and then people start getting much more interested in different ideas of freedom that is beyond spiritual freedom, which was the only thing that early Christians certainly were interested in.

Speaker 1:
[80:06] Right. Well, Dr., thank you so, so much for coming on and discussing this with me today. It's been a real pleasure. It's been really great to get to know you, and I can't wait to read this book.

Speaker 2:
[80:23] Thank you. I hope that it's got some horrifying stuff in it, but hopefully it is entertaining and human and has enough people and Star Wars jokes in it that people will get through the horror. Because I do want these people to be aware that these were people that lived and they are as much Roman as the Ciceroes and the Caesars and the rest of them, and that they are at every point in Roman life, and they're interesting as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[80:54] Well, famously, history has some pretty horrifying stuff in it.

Speaker 2:
[80:58] It's mostly horrors. It's just one horror after another.

Speaker 1:
[81:01] But then occasionally, there's a hilarious bit of graffiti on a wall.

Speaker 2:
[81:08] With her boyfriend.

Speaker 1:
[81:10] Right.

Speaker 2:
[81:11] Yeah. And then you're like, I love them.

Speaker 1:
[81:15] I love them too. All right. Thanks again. This was wonderful. And I hope I get a chance to talk to you again soon.

Speaker 2:
[81:21] Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:
[81:32] Okay, that's all for this week. Join us again in two weeks' time when we will look at an all-new historical myth. If you would like to order Emma Southan's new book, Not Built In a Day, either follow the link in the show notes, go to ourfakehistory.com, follow the link there, or head to Emma Southan's website, or the Simon and Schuster website. You can also look for it on bookshelves on May 21st in the UK and on June 30th in the United States and Canada. As always, before we go this week, I need to give some very special shoutouts to my people. Big Ups to Old Crow, to Ben Glover, to Lucy Malonvoy, to Liz, to Wes Dwight, to Kersot, to Ashley Broughord, to Emily Glad, to May Lamb, and to Michael Malone. All of these folks have decided to pledge at $5 or more every month on Patreon. So you know what that means. They are beautiful human beings. Thank you, thank you, thank you again for your support. And I promise that that new extra episode on The Seven Wonders is coming out very, very soon. So you don't have to wait too much longer. Again, thank you for your patience, everyone. It takes a while to create these extras, especially when they are big, meaty extras while I'm still producing the main show. So as always, I appreciate your patience. I appreciate your support. I appreciate that you keep this show going because that is what you are doing when you support through Patreon. If you had any questions about today's show, I will be addressing them on an upcoming extra episode. So if you're a patron, use the patrons chat to send along your questions. But if you're just a regular old listener, don't be afraid to send me an email at ourfakehistory.gmail.com. If you want to find me on Facebook, go to facebook.com/ourfakehistory. Hey, follow along on Instagram. I'm going to give the Instagram a little bit of a push here. There's a lot of great art to see on the Instagram that's created by our man, Frank Furantino. And all these shorts and little videos that I create to promote the show can be seen there as well. But if you're a TikTok person, also look for me on TikTok. If you love YouTube, find me on YouTube. You can also send me messages via BlueSky. I'm out there, BlueSky-ing. As always, the theme music from this show comes to us from Dirty Church. Check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com. All the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me. My name is Sebastian Major, and just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real. Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows. We're coming at you with everything we got! With movies like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise, and Gladiator, and TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts, Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah!

Speaker 2:
[85:44] Pluto TV.

Speaker 1:
[85:45] Stream now. Pay never.