How Debauched Were Roman Orgies?

The Romans have gone down as some of the greatest perverts of all time. But what really went on inside a Roman orgy? Joining Kate to get behind the bacchanalia is fan-favourite Emma Southon whose new book is Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Subscribe to the new Betwixt The Sheets YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@BetwixtTheSheetsPodcast Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, Mod Alert ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M-O-D dot com.

• 1:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Welcome back. Hello. It is just so wonderful to have you back once again. But before we go any further, I think you know what's coming. I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things, an adult's way, coming range, or submission, you should be an adult too. Oh, my God, thank God, we've got through that. Do you feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's crack on.

• 2:05Kate Lister?

  I have been invited to a Roman party. But what kind of party, I hear you ask? Tupperware party? Pool party? Children's party? A political party? Don't be silly. It's the Romans. It's an orgy. Of course it is. If you think Romans, you think orgy. The Romans had orgies. We all know that. And luckily for you, because I take my job very seriously, I intend to RSVP and find out once and for all if the rumours are true, or is this just 2,000 years of irresistible gossip?

• 3:02Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Sex and the Romans go together like a horse and chariot. Is that a saying? I don't know. It is now. They're just so intrinsically connected in our popular imagination. It's just all very decadent, indulgent, and very, very sexy. But is this a fair depiction of Roman society? Or is it a smear campaign by the pious Christians who came after them? Well, joining me today is the author and historian Emma Southon, and she is going to help us get to the bottom of these questions. Tovas are ready, everybody. Let's do it.

• 3:44Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back once again to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only the fabulous Emma Southon. How are you doing?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  I'm very well, thank you. You can't get rid of me at this point.

• 3:53Kate Lister?

  We are recording this at the time of the heatwave.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 3:56Kate Lister?

  And how are you coping?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  I'm trying to pass off a sheen of sweat as a youthful glow. I'm just very glowy. That's what I'm telling people.

• 4:07Kate Lister?

  I have found myself thinking a lot about like how people in the past dealt with heats and because we just sort of grind to a halt. Now, obviously, aircon isn't something that the Romans would have had.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:18Kate Lister?

  But they certainly had a lot of hot weather.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  They were very warm a lot of the time. I think that they were probably just sweaty.

• 4:23Kate Lister?

  They're just sweaty.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, to be honest.

• 4:26Kate Lister?

  Just sweaty and a bit wiffy, which makes the topic of conversation today even more interesting. Orgies.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Orgies.

• 4:33Kate Lister?

  Roman orgies. Because if you think of the Romans, you think of orgies.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  You do, which is not, I think, what they would have liked, but it's pretty good.

• 4:39Kate Lister?

  I mean, it's not an immediate, it's probably not like, you know, what school kids are thinking of, but it's probably not an immediate association for everyone. But it's definitely there, like the decadent Romans who, I think it's like big Roman myths off the top of my head, like the vomitorium one where they eat until they throw up.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:55Kate Lister?

  They're all having orgies. And yeah, those are the two that I've got at the moment.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't make a Roman film without having a Roman orgy or explaining why you don't have a Roman orgy. Because I remember when Gladiator came out, loads of people asked why there wasn't an orgy in it.

• 5:10Kate Lister?

  Did they?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like a whole thing of the original coverage in 2000, where people asked Ridley Scott why there weren't any. You've made a Roman film about Roman decadence, but there's no orgies in it. And he kept saying-

• 5:21Kate Lister?

  I think Russell Crowe went on record, either recently, or I've just seen a report of it recently, to explain why he didn't have sex with, oh, what the hell is she called? The leading lady, sister of the emperor.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:31Kate Lister?

  Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, there was a vague love interest. And he said he didn't want that because he felt it was untrue to the character because he was mourning his wife. And he wasn't going to mourn his wife by banging the emperor's sister.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Well, it'd been even nicer if they'd given his wife a name, but yeah.

• 5:45Kate Lister?

  They didn't, did they?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like you, you can't make a Roman film without an orgy.

• 5:50Kate Lister?

  We want the orgy.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Something that we think that they were doing is just doing sex, weird sex in groups constantly.

• 5:56Kate Lister?

  Like you can't walk down a Roman street without stepping over another orgy. I've got orgies all day long and they're interfering with my work.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  What are you doing at three o'clock today?

• 6:04Kate Lister?

  Another bloody orgy.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  It's just getting, like, they're just stacking up my calendar's full.

• 6:12Kate Lister?

  Especially in this weather. Especially, oh, gosh, terrible.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  The smells.

• 6:19Kate Lister?

  All right. So the first thing that we want to tackle is where does this story come from? Like this, this idea of the debauched Romans?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  It comes from three things.

• 6:30Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Firstly, we have the Christian writers of the kind of late imperial period and the then throughout kind of the Middle Ages and into the modern period, who were like, the Romans did a lot of sex and we think that they shouldn't because the Christians went hard against sexuality.

• 6:47Kate Lister?

  That was a big defining feature of their movement, a one that I have heard described as a sexual revolution in its own terms. Not a great one.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 6:57Kate Lister?

  Like not one as far as sexual freedoms go, but there was such a dramatic shift

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:02Kate Lister?

  in sexual attitudes from pre-Christianisation to what came.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:07Kate Lister?

  It was shockingly different.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they do all kinds of things, like invent a new kind of virgin, where they're like, you're not a virgin if you've ever had a lustful thought.

• 7:15Kate Lister?

  Yeah, like it's not only like hardcore virgins. It's not just like you're not having sex, it's like you're not having lustful thoughts. And then Jesus is, mum is a virgin. Jesus doesn't get married. Sorry, DaVinci Code fans. And like he is talking about eunuchs and there are eunuchs and the whole thing is like, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Just don't do it.

• 7:30Kate Lister?

  And they've got one god and he doesn't have sex.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. And never has and never will.

• 7:34Kate Lister?

  Unlike Roman gods.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Greek and Roman gods. And like, and even like the idea that adultery is something that a man can commit.

• 7:41Kate Lister?

  That's out the window as well.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like they have very radically different ideas of what sexuality and appropriate sexuality is.

• 7:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  And they disapprove heartily of everybody who doesn't adhere to that. Then we have the kind of strange change in the word orgy, which is that orgiastic used to mean just pagan rites. So it was a kind of derogatory term for non-Christian religious activity. So sacrifice and the use of chanting and prayer, where you're doing this and that kind of thing. So you get loads of writing from like the period of the Renaissance, for example, and into the 19th century, where people will say, and the Romans engaged in orgiastic rites.

• 8:25Kate Lister?

  I see what's happened there.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 8:27Kate Lister?

  And really, they were just doing that.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Really, they were just doing that. And at worst, we're doing some kind of like secret history, sort of like running around in fields and screaming.

• 8:35Kate Lister?

  But not necessarily-

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:38Kate Lister?

  ripping the knickers off one another.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Not necessarily ripping the knickers off one another. More likely that when they talk about this, because Roman religion is really ritual obsessed. So I imagine it was actually the exact opposite of ripping the knickers off each other.

• 8:47Kate Lister?

  They loved a ritual.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Just a lot of like trumpets and counting things, I think. And then you have the fact that the Romans do have a fairly open, comparatively very open idea of what is appropriate to put in art and literature.

• 9:03Kate Lister?

  Yes, yes.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  And so their art and literature at every level is absolutely full of sex. And they're quite explicit about it. They don't tend to be using euphemism very often. You can, as soon as we started pulling stuff out of Pompeii, we found penises on everything.

• 9:19Kate Lister?

  Dicks everywhere.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Because they use penises as both an erotic thing and a comedy thing, and also a protective thing. So it's, it can be used in any context.

• 9:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  It's on everything.

• 9:30Kate Lister?

  Multifaceted penises in Pompeii.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  They love erotic art particularly.

• 9:35Kate Lister?

  It's kind of interesting. Like, what did they see when they saw that? Because this is one of the central images, like when the Victorians saw it, they, they could only see sex.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:43Kate Lister?

  And they freaked out. They were like, well, clearly this is a sex obsessed culture. Like they must, and that's because that's their conditioning and that's their worldview. And I often was like, well, what did the Romans see when they saw this? Because they cannot have been walking down the street going, oh, my God, it's a dick. Oh, well, it's another one, it's another one, it's another one. Because you just, it must have just been so normal.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're like, it's a dick, it's a, and it's gonna like contextually gonna be dependent. Like if they see it in a bath house, then it's kind of a sex thing. If they see it on a

• 10:12Kate Lister?

  Floor, pavement.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or if they see it in a like carved onto the side of a, an altar, then they're gonna be, okay, it's a protective thing. And like you get the dick jewellery, which is protective, but then you also get like dick lamps, which are clearly supposed to be funny. Like they love a comedy lamp. And I love this about the Romans. They love, like, they obviously gave like little clay lamps to each other as presents and they love a weird sexy lamp.

• 10:37Kate Lister?

  So we don't change, do we? Don't change all that much.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I just love the idea of them all giving each other for satanalia, like the woman having sex with a donkey lamp, or the like spout is shaped like a giant penis lamp. Like, it's so hen party.

• 10:50Kate Lister?

  It really is. It's like the whole of the Roman Empire, just one giant hen party when it comes to penises.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  But then sometimes they'd be like, no, this is a serious penis.

• 10:57Kate Lister?

  This is a serious penis. Stop laughing.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. For the Victorians and like when you start doing like, when archaeology becomes like a real thing, and when people start translating texts that aren't just Tacitus, and they find all of the epigrams in comedy poetry, and then the moralizing texts from the late Republic. So like Cicero is always writing about how people are having sex. And I think he's maybe a bit jealous that he doesn't get invited, but he's always very disapproving of the amount of sex that other people are having. That they're like, oh my God, it's everywhere. It's just dicks coming at my face. In the context where a penis can only be sexual, it's very frightening to them. And so we get this idea that all they were doing was bonking constantly. And they're just, yeah, they, I mean, they do put it on a lot of stuff, so.

• 11:43Kate Lister?

  They do, don't they? But so I get asked that question a lot. It's like, what period in history was the most sex obsessed? And it's a really difficult one to ask, because all of us.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  All of us have always been sex obsessed.

• 11:53Kate Lister?

  We've always been obsessed. There's no one that's more or less obsessed with it. It's just how they process it publicly changes quite a lot.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  The Christians at every point of Christian history talk about it as much as the Romans did.

• 12:06Kate Lister?

  Easily.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Because if not more, because they're trying to stop it.

• 12:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  And so like early Christian texts are absolutely like freakishly erotic, because they're all like, I really love the stories of the desert fathers and the desert mothers who are always going off into the desert to try and punish themselves into a state of angelic purity. And all they do is have weird dreams and then talk about how much they think about sex and like the visions that they're having of beautiful people coming and trying to seduce them, but they know it's the devil. And you're like, you, no one has thought about sex more than you.

• 12:37Kate Lister?

  No, nobody. You wouldn't want to say that the Romans had a particularly sex positive culture, because they have a lot of do's and don'ts and, you know, a lot of sending women to live on islands.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  They have a lot of sending, they're very strict about what women are allowed to do in comparison to what men are allowed to do. Men have a much more freedom and women are very much shamed for any kind of sexual activity that whereas men are like, well, that's like, they very much boys will be boys kind of attitude to life. And they have a lot of kind of forced sexuality as well, because obviously they have slavery. So they have a lot of people who are having sex, whether they like it or not. But they have a very severe attitude that men can do as much bonking as they like, as long as they're not bonking married women.

• 13:20Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  That becomes kind of a problem, specifically because of the women.

• 13:24Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  It is an act of dishonor against the woman's husband and also a threat to him. So women can commit adultery, but men can't.

• 13:34Kate Lister?

  Aha.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  But men can commit stuprum, which is like weird sex. So like dishonorable sex, which usually means sex with someone that you shouldn't be doing it with, or some kind of sex with men that is passive rather than active.

• 13:51Kate Lister?

  Bottoming.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:52Kate Lister?

  Yeah. They don't seem to find sex inherently shameful or secretive. I think we could say that about them.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Oh, no, they talk about it so much.

• 13:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah, they have quite an upfront attitude to it. Like, this is just something that people do and we're gonna talk about it.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. In all kinds of different configurations and they do it constantly.

• 14:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:09Kate Lister?

  And this freaked out later historians and they mistranslated the word orgy to just think they were having orgies all the time.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just kind of shifted. Yeah.

• 14:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you do get stories of whenever they find an example of people having like big group sex, they're so thrilled. They're like, it's real. Like there's this bars, the suburban baths in Pompeii, the changing rooms have these,

• 14:35Speaker 02

  this series of erotic paintings all around the changing rooms. And it's all what the Romans would consider to be really unusual sex. So it's got fellatio, it's got a very graphic depiction of cunnilingus.

• 14:48Kate Lister?

  It does.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And then it's got like MMF threesomes, it's got a foursome, it's got like all kinds of like configurations of different people doing all kinds of different things. And that's just the changing rooms of the baths.

• 15:00Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  So they're, and this presumably is supposed to be very funny, or like very titillating in some way, but probably just quite funny.

• 15:11Kate Lister?

  Just quite funny.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the few times when they are quite funny.

• 15:15Kate Lister?

  They are, they are good images. I have to give them that much.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:17Kate Lister?

  And then this kind of feeds into our imagination and it results in films like Caligula.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  My best beloved film, Caligula.

• 15:26Kate Lister?

  Completely bad.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  It's so bad. I love it so much.

• 15:29Kate Lister?

  That really took the idea that Romans have orgies and ran with it.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then kind of by proxy forced Malcolm McDowell to be in a porn film. And Helen Mirren. The interviews with Bob Gitchione around that film, because it was made by Hustler magazine. And originally the plan was that it would be a very high class film, like Ben-Hur. And that was what was pitched to people. And they got Gore Vidal to write the screenplay. And his screenplay is all very kind of highbrow and about the nature of evil. And then Bob Gitchione snuck onto the set and filmed loads of hardcore pornography and sliced it in at random.

• 16:05Kate Lister?

  Oh, he'd be so mad. He'd be so mad.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Because he was like, no, I think that the only thing we need to know about the Romans is that they were having lots of sex and there's not anywhere near enough sex in this film.

• 16:14Kate Lister?

  So this is, I don't know if we can answer the question of how much sex were they having? But like, were there examples of what we might call an orgy, not a ritualistic rite, not people standing in weird positions, but like an actual group sex situation?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  So we get, they're mostly stories of scandal, pretty much.

• 16:32Kate Lister?

  So it's not like, please come to my orgy, it will take place at, right, okay.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  So you get stories from Cicero likes to talk about things that happen in Baie, which is like the party town outside of Naples for the elite. It's like the Monaco of its time. And he has a couple of speeches where he like really goes in on Clodia and says that she's always having sex parties with handsome boys down there and people swim naked and constantly.

• 16:59Kate Lister?

  This just sounds like trash talk, though.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then he has a story about a sex party on a boat in Bia where everybody, that all of the rowers are lined up according to their sexual proclivities. So like this person is really good at this and this person is really good at this. And you can like choose your.

• 17:17Kate Lister?

  Oh, a buffet.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  So he has these stories of like this. And so you get this idea of Bia as a place where you could go. And like the, this is like the very, very rich, very, very bored, privileged youth of republican Rome, like getting their kicks in weird ways. But it's always about that kind of thing. So you get Tiberius on his, on Capri.

• 17:40Kate Lister?

  Oh, yes. He was said to be up to all kinds of awfulness.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yes, but they're so awful that they didn't translate the sections where they describe what he was up to in Capri and like versions of Suetonius until like the 30s.

• 17:54Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Like, because they're like, only men who can read Latin can cope with the horrors that you will see within. So Tiberius retired to Capri. He left Rome while he was still emperor and was like, I don't want to torture you guys anymore. You're really annoying, for which I do have some sympathy with him.

• 18:09Kate Lister?

  It's not a great move if you're the emperor.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  It's not a brilliant governing move. You can't really govern an empire by letter, but he does it anyway. And then everyone's like, we don't know what he's doing on this island. We assume it's weird. And so they have these stories of him having grottos that are full of people having sex with each other constantly and triple chains in one that they particularly mention. So three men in a row.

• 18:34Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Or a woman and two men that he particularly enjoys watching. And he will walk around and watch these things. But he's making people have sex for his entertainment rather than joining in.

• 18:45Kate Lister?

  Is there any supporting evidence of this, other than just gossip at the time?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Gossip at the time, that's basically it. Yeah, sadly. I mean, it's a very beautiful place, but I don't know if it's the kind of beautiful place where you'd put.

• 18:57Kate Lister?

  No, and like, you know, just do that all day long as well. You'd have to have like different people coming in and like the shifts would have to be quite short. It's a whole logistical nightmare, that one.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I always think of the bureaucracy, like, oh, quick, Tiberius is coming, quick.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Get in. Yeah. So like, but it's always told as scandal.

• 19:15Kate Lister?

  It's, and it's, it's like a bad thing, really, because it's, it's not really about like what was actually happening. It's about saying that this man, Tiberius, is freaking weird and not to be trusted.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  He's weird and gross and he does weird things and he doesn't do sex like the rest of us do.

• 19:28Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  And sometimes you will see like fiction about it, like poetry or satire where people are having weird sex. But almost always when you see in the Roman sources, something written sources about people having orgies or having big group sex, it is an emperor doing something weird and bad and it shows how degenerate they are. Or another rich person doing something weird and bad and it shows how degenerate they are. It's never a like.

• 19:55Kate Lister?

  This is what happens. Everyone had a lovely time.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's never a party report. It's always, I'm so scandalized, he's having unusual sex.

• 20:03Kate Lister?

  Yeah, this is shocking. Caligula's another one.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Caligula in his brothel, where he allegedly forced senatorial women, women of good repute into sex work so that he could raise money.

• 20:15Kate Lister?

  Is that true? I mean, I hear a lot of things about Caligula. It's not the weirdest one I've heard.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  It's not the weirdest one. It's hard to believe that somebody wouldn't have stabbed him at that point. He does, in fairness, get stabbed. It's hard to believe that one. It feels like the kind of like made his consul a horse, made his horse a consul story, which is, he said. I might make my horse a consul and then that kind of got exaggerated over history that it feels like he might have suggested it, or maybe he just did a lot of sex with senatorial wives against their will or with it. But I don't think it's very likely that he actually, because I think that there would probably be pushback against.

• 20:54Kate Lister?

  I think like even for the standards of the time.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:57Kate Lister?

  It's like the, the Messalina myth as well. That's another example of like an orgy being used to, to say that somebody is just an awful person.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  And her going to a brothel voluntarily.

• 21:08Kate Lister?

  And having a sex competition with, with, with the best sex worker in Rome.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yes, there's a whole.

• 21:13Kate Lister?

  That never happened. I'll just list that on, on my top list of things that never happened.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Can all be entirely sure that that never happened.

• 21:19Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's just, that's just the ravings of a, a madman. But again, that's set up to make her look horrendous.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  It's to make her look, so she's dishonoring the emperor and also makes Claudius look bad because he can't control his wife.

• 21:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  And he doesn't know what his wife is up to and his wife is slutting it around town and Claudius is weak as a result. So it's kind of an attack on both of them.

• 21:37Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  But the Romans, when they're writing about it, always talk about it as unusual, as scandalous usually, and as a sign of like moral degeneration.

• 21:47Kate Lister?

  It's not sounding very orgy positive so far.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Very orgy positive, or, or like a religious disaster. So the Bacchanalia scandal, which is where we.

• 21:56Kate Lister?

  What's that? Tell me about the Bacchanalia scandal.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  So it's in the kind of Middle Republic, 186, there is this big scandal in Rome where it comes out that lots and lots of young men and women have been joining the secret mystery cult of Bacchus and they have been having.

• 22:14Kate Lister?

  Who's Bacchus, just for anyone who's unsure?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  The god of wine and partying, basically, also called Dionysus. So he's a good time for all the family. His rites are associated in Greece with mainads and this idea of kind of frenzy.

• 22:30Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  And like running around and losing your mind, getting very drunk, screaming, losing control. There's a play about Bacchus, which ends with women ripping apart one of their sons and like, it's all kind of associated with the loss of control and particularly women losing control. But it all comes out that loads of people have been joining these rites in Italy, when it's very un-Italian, this is weird Greek rites, and they do it at night, which is very, very bad. And then there's stories about what's happening, which is that people are just having loads of sex at them. They're also doing loads of murders.

• 23:07Kate Lister?

  That's a busy night, that.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  The best part about it is it says this is happening five times a month on a hill which is visible from the Capitoline.

• 23:16Kate Lister?

  No, no. Whenever I go to an orgy murder party, I'd like it to be a bit more discreet than that.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  You'd like it to be, one, a bit more discreet and, two, who's got time for five a month?

• 23:25Kate Lister?

  Can't go every week.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's one, twice a week at one point.

• 23:29Kate Lister?

  Come on now.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Apparently this is happening and there's these descriptions of them. The descriptions vary quite wildly. There's like machines that drag people away to be murdered. There's lots of gay sex, like men having sex with men in all kinds of different configurations. There's women having sex with women.

• 23:45Kate Lister?

  Shocking.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  There's women letting their hair down. And then.

• 23:49Kate Lister?

  Outrageous.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Even worse, there's people making plots to undermine the court system.

• 23:54Kate Lister?

  See, well, they wouldn't like that, the Romans.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 23:57Kate Lister?

  They wouldn't, like, they would raise an eyebrow at an orgy and they would be marginally perturbed about a murder, but actually overthrowing the government, they're not having that.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's what stresses them out. Although I do love the idea of two guys standing like with a cup of wine while like somebody's being torn apart over here, there's some bumming happening over here. And they're like, so on Thursday, if you could vote guilty.

• 24:19Kate Lister?

  What's your view on a points based immigration?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. Don't worry about that. This is revealed in the Senate in like a huge scandal.

• 24:30Kate Lister?

  Who's, who's doing the revealing?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  It's actually an ex-sex worker whose boyfriend gets initiated or is about to be initiated by his mother so that his mother can have him killed at the rite so that she can steal all of his money. And the, his.

• 24:45Kate Lister?

  Some Freudian shit in him.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  The sex worker is like, no, no, no, you can't go. This is a nightmare. You will be, people will touch you inappropriately and you might die.

• 24:54Kate Lister?

  You might get murdered.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  You might get murdered. And she raises the alarm, which then escalates through the ranks. So he then confronts his mother, his mother causes a scene which then goes to an aunt, the aunt goes to the wife of the consul, the consul's wife, consul goes to the consul, then he's like, what the hell is going on in my city? And then it like.

• 25:16Kate Lister?

  And then it all comes out.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  It all comes out that all of this is happening. And the entire cult is banned. In Italy, there's like a big crackdown. Lots of people are executed and exiled and punished for involvement in it. And it's like, it's a huge scandal. It's one of the scandals that we have evidence in the texts and we also have the decree that was written that bans it.

• 25:37Kate Lister?

  That sounds like there might be something in it.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  So yeah, there is some kind of truth to the fact that the Bacchanalia was banned and Roman citizens were not allowed to be part of it. It was considered to be un-Roman. What they were actually doing is a different question.

• 25:52Kate Lister?

  We don't know what they were doing.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  No. Even, the main source for it is Livy and he describes a Bacchanalia twice and neither of those descriptions are the same.

• 26:00Kate Lister?

  Did he go to a Bacchanalia?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  No, he's writing like a hundred years later.

• 26:05Kate Lister?

  Right. So this is a very unreliable narrator.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  It's a very unreliable narrator. And he doesn't even seem to be entirely clear on what he's describing. But that's like the big thing that people associate with orgies, like the Bacchanals.

• 26:18Kate Lister?

  And it's still today, you can say that, that it's Bacchanal or.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then it's in the secret history, the Donna Tartt novel, where they have a Bacchanal and then accidentally do a murder. It's great. I highly recommend it.

• 26:33Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Emma after this short break.

• 26:44Kate Lister?

  In case you weren't aware, World Mental Health Day takes place in October. And I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a reminder to practise some proper self-care. Saying no to plans I don't want to go to, guilt-free snacking and Halloween movie marathons. It's also the perfect time to check in with yourself and your mental health. For many, it can mean taking that step and speaking to a professional who can help and guide you through any difficulties you're having. But often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. A lot of online therapy platforms don't accept insurance at all, which means even during a month focused on mental health, you're stuck paying out of pocket or signing up for an expensive monthly subscription. This

• 27:28Kate Lister?

  is where Rula comes in. They partner with over 120 insurance plans, making the average co-pay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Because the whole point of World Mental Health Day is making sure people actually get help, not just think about it. And Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is actually helping you move forward. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. Visit rula.com/shets to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash S H E E T S. You deserve mental health care that

• 28:11Kate Lister?

  works with you, not against your budget.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Medafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives

• 28:56Speaker 01

  you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, Modaler ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M O D dot com.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Hi there. I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  She leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's History.

• 30:24Kate Lister?

  Were there actual sex cults though? Because I'm on a note, like define your terms a little bit, a little bit better than that. The Bacchanalia, it sounds like it's a wild night, but there's so many rumours flying around it. And like, you know, like I know we were joking, but like the logistics of that is it does sort of suggest of like, I think we might've got a bit carried away with this. But one thing that I do quite like about Roman culture is that the religion is like a pick your own adventure, almost. It's like they've got the big gods, but then once in a while, a cult arises of some demigod that like everyone's going, oh, we'll give that one a whirl. And they do seem to be a few of them that they're quite sex heavy. Was it just Bacchus or there others?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  You do have others that are like the mystery cults are the ones that are interesting because you have to do an initiation and you get the mystery revealed to you.

• 31:13Kate Lister?

  It's all very secretive, isn't it?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you have like ISIS is a really big one in the empire. Mithras is a big one. There's a Mithraeum in London that's really cool. And you, so you have all of these like mystery cults and you can kind of join it and you go through a little initiation. The ISIS one is often considered to be like, it was considered to be extremely exotic because the priests would castrate themselves to become.

• 31:37Kate Lister?

  I was just gonna ask you about Cybele.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:40Kate Lister?

  Is that how you pronounce it? C Y B E L E?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Cybele, yeah.

• 31:44Kate Lister?

  Cybele.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And so you get, yeah, Cybele and ISIS and the...

• 31:48Kate Lister?

  Are we counting that as an orgy? I think I might count that as, it's like, there's weird sex stuff going on on mass.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  There's weird sex stuff going on on mass. And the Romans, like non adherents of Thor, that they were doing weird sex stuff in there.

• 31:59Kate Lister?

  I'm counting mass castration as weird sex stuff. That would make my list. It's not an orgy I'd want to go to. And I imagine there'd be people turning up there who are not quite aware of the facts.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Oh, no, wait, this isn't quite what I signed up for. So like people outside of those cults definitely thought that they were doing unusual things in there. And it is like quite an unusual thing to do to really dedicate yourself to a god so much.

• 32:20Kate Lister?

  Do we have like any information about like what the cast, sorry for everybody listening who's gonna get a bit gruesome, but like what the process of this was? Any information about like?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  It can either be cutting or crushing.

• 32:32Kate Lister?

  The priests of Cybele, they've got that, like they work themselves up into a frenzy and then they crunched it.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then they, then they actually become a third gender, which is really interesting.

• 32:43Kate Lister?

  That is.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they do crushing and cutting. You can kind of choose which one you want to do.

• 32:48Kate Lister?

  If you really wanna ruin your day, you can look up Cybele be castration tongs that they found in the Thames.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, real nasty. Yeah.

• 32:56Kate Lister?

  But that's interesting though, because that sort of means that cult was over here.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're everywhere. Because you can pick your own adventure with the Romans, like as long as you do your civic duty, like and sacrifice to the emperor and to the big gods every so often, you can then go off and...

• 33:12Kate Lister?

  And castrate yourself in, on the River Thames.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Or just go and hang out with those guys. Like you can go to their services on Tuesday instead of going to the Mithras services on a Thursday.

• 33:24Kate Lister?

  So I'm not getting a whole lot of positive orgy culture from you here.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  No, I think, I reckon, like pure speculation, that the idea of dynastic Bacchic rituals being sexy was such a big idea in the Roman world. I think if you were a sex person and you wanted to be doing sex parties, of which like there definitely are in every culture, of people who want to be doing stuff, then you would probably be like doing it and calling it a Bacchic, right? Because that's how they think of it. Like they really think of it as a, as a sex party. It's wine, it's sex, it's doing kind of group sex and not just missionary married couple sex. And so if you're the kind of person who wants that, then you're probably going to be putting on Bacchic rituals and doing it.

• 34:08Kate Lister?

  Yeah. It's interesting as well from what you're saying, that a lot of this sounds like, like what's underpinning this is, is a very, well, it's a Greek idea, I suppose, but the Romans definitely ran with it, is this idea of a loss of control.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, they hate that.

• 34:19Kate Lister?

  It seems to be underpinning, I don't know if you'd want to go to a very organised orgy. I think that like there is a limit to how organised you want an orgy to be. You want it to be on time, sandwiches served is always good.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Some slight rules, but you don't want it to be like, and on, at 9.57, we're going...

• 34:37Kate Lister?

  No, you will be meeting up with this partner. No, they're too organised. But what underpins this seems like, because a lot of it, they're describing, people work themselves up to a frenzy, like the Maniads.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  The Maniads, yeah.

• 34:49Kate Lister?

  The Maniads, they work themselves up to a frenzy and the priests of Cybele work themselves up to a frenzy and castrate themselves. And the Bacchanalia mothers are killing sons for some reason. And it's again, it's this, you're gonna lose control.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  You're gonna lose control and you're not gonna be, and then you're going to lose dignity in some way or do an atrocity. They're very obsessed with control.

• 35:08Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Which is why they're kind of weird about oral sex as well. Why part of that like thing in the suburban baths is that they're, they have a woman giving oral sex and then a man giving oral sex, which is like for a masculine submissive position is like such a big thing. Like that's a loss of control for the man, that they find to be extremely titillating because it's so violating to like their everyday life. It's kind of like, like Tory MPs that go to dungeons, like that's...

• 35:39Kate Lister?

  We still live with that, don't we? We still like, like when we're attacking people or if people are deeply unpopular, is we want them to have a weird sex life.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:47Kate Lister?

  As well, like that is still something that's absolutely in currency. Like it's like the whole Hitler had one ball thing. It's not enough that he's a mass murdering fuckhead, he has to have a weird sex life as well.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  He has to have a weird sex life as well, yeah. And we have to very often be quite homophobic about it. So we have to, it's not enough that Trump is just terrible, he has to be kissing Putin.

• 36:04Kate Lister?

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we still do do it. We like, and it's a weird kind of offensive slash titillating.

• 36:11Kate Lister?

  And do you know what else, well, maybe I'm off the market, you can tell me about it, but not only is it a loss of control, but there's something about like the debauchery that's like, you're gonna become too feminine with it as well. And like, like I just thought of it then when you talk about that image in Pompeii, where if you've not seen it, you can look it up, and it's this huge woman with just like her legs splayed like that with this pulsating vulva. And there's a tiny little man right between her legs, tiny little, and he's just...

• 36:38Speaker 02

  He is so little, yeah.

• 36:40Kate Lister?

  He's so tiny. And it's like this real emasculation image for them, because I guess it's like, well, what kind of man would do that when he has a mighty penis at his disposal?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. But then interestingly, the fellatio image is the woman on the floor, but he has his hand on her head. And so she also has the total loss of control. So he's like extremely in control in that position. And then there's a 69 one as well, just for bonuses.

• 37:02Kate Lister?

  Do you think that like this, the sort of use of the orgy and the fear of the Bacchanalia is somehow linked to like a fear of a loss of masculinity?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 37:11Kate Lister?

  Press the Romans, isn't it?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  They're so obsessed with masculinity and like policing masculinity and like what is a proper Roman man? And they just talk about it constantly in the way that suggests that if you have to talk about it constantly, like you're always having to put up a boundary that says, a proper Roman man does this and an improper Roman man does that. And you have to be constantly making jokes at the expense of not proper men, then you are having to, yeah, decide. And so they are kind of obsessed with it. And then that makes transgression exciting.

• 37:42Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  For like, because as soon as you can, like as soon as you've got a hard boundary, transgressing it becomes quite exciting for a lot of people.

• 37:49Kate Lister?

  I mean, there must have been Roman orgies.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely.

• 37:53Kate Lister?

  There must have been.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  They're people.

• 37:55Kate Lister?

  They would have been doing it, but the idea that a Roman just looked at their calendar and was just orgy, orgy, orgy, squeezing a quick orgy between orgy one and orgy three, no.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Almost certainly not.

• 38:08Kate Lister?

  Almost certainly not. Were they...

• 38:10Speaker 02

  They had a whole lot of paperwork to do for a start. That's the thing, they mostly complain that they have to do all the time. They're always like, I've got to go and wit, because the thing about Roman paperwork is you have to have like seven witnesses for everything. So there's so many letters, they're like, oh, and then I had to go and witness this, and then I had to go and witness a will, and then I had to go and witness this.

• 38:28Kate Lister?

  These aren't people that have time for orgies.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  No, they're never complaining that they've got to go to too many orgies and they're always complaining that they've got to go to too many paperwork meetings.

• 38:36Kate Lister?

  So we can blow this myth out of the water, unfortunately for, for fans of the Caligula film.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:43Kate Lister?

  Emma, you have been brilliant once again. Thank you so much. And I believe you have a new book out?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I do have a new book out. It's about Roman slavery. It does have some jokes in it, I promise. It's not as depressing as it sounds. It's called Service: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire.

• 38:56Kate Lister?

  And are you on social media? Can people find you?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  I am, I'm on Instagram at, at Emma Southon.

• 39:01Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about, well, quite crap Roman orgies, to be honest.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Literally anytime.

• 39:11Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much to Emma for joining me. And if you like what you heard and what you saw, we are on YouTube after all, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you wanted us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Jim Arstle and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt a Sheet, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.