Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How Wild Were The Last Days Of Rome?

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

As Rome fell, was it really non-stop orgies and parties?That's become a popular connotation, and in today's episode Kate is joined by historian and friend of the show Emma Southon (https://www.emmasouthon.com) to find out what was happening on the ground as the Roman empire crumbled.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!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 survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwifster Sheets, and we are going to get down and dirty with some historical smut. And because of that, I do have to tell you once again that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adultly way covering around,

subject, newspeed adult too. We call that the Fair Do's Warning, because if you keep listing and you happen to get upset, well, that one's on you, pal, because fair do's, we did warn you. Right, on with the show. Pass the wine, don't let my goblet run dry. If popular history is to be believed, the last days of Rome were a wild, orgy-filled, non-stop party of unbridled decadence and excess.

Sounds like a Leeds weather spoons. But what was it really like? How did the Romans react when the invaders were closing in? Were they really ripping the knickers off one another? Well, I can't wait to find out if you can't. So let's do it. What do you look for a man? Oh, man, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect coppence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets History of Sex Scandal in Society. With me, Kate Lister. With history, it is so easy for myth to become fact.

It just takes a few old duffers a couple of centuries ago to write some nonsense and then it gets written up in the history books as exactly what happened. And this seems to be what happened when we think about the last days of Rome. The connotations that we have of that time of being debauched and immoral has definitely become stuck in the public imagination, but where did that come from? Is there any truth behind it? I mean, I think I know how I'd react if the barbarians were closing in,

but maybe the Romans were different. So how did it go down and how did Rome fall? Joining me today is the always marvelous Emma Southern, and she is going to help us find out. But before we go, old Roman decadence and decay, I do have to ask you, once more, if you wouldn't mind giving us a little cheeky vote for the British Podcast Awards' Listeners' Choice Award.

We've managed to get through to the next round. We have, guys, and that is thanks to you. That's thanks to you and me lying about what Dan Snow would do to us if we didn't win. But even with that, let's keep voting. Let's keep doing it. We can do it. I'm sure that we can. Right, on with the show.

So, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only ever Southern. How are you doing? I'm very well. Thank you very much. How are you today? Well, obviously, I'm very excited to be talking to you because I always have a lot of fun when you're on the show,

mostly learning as if, like, I don't know if the bar can go much lower for my estimation of the Romans, But every time I talk to you, it seems that something new is brought out of the bag and it's like, yeah, they got worse. They actually managed to get worse. I don't know how that happened. That's my raise on Detra these days. Every time someone comes away from a conversation with me, ideally they feel a bit worse about the Romans. See, I kind of do think about them every day now, but mostly just like they were awful. They were horrible, yeah.

My Roman Empire is how horrible the Roman Empire was. That's, yeah. Welcome to my world. It's just me pointing at things going, do you know what that is slavery, pederasting? There must have been one or two nice Romans somewhere that just never got a look in. Just someone who'd set up a little animal sanctuary

without having to sacrifice all the animals or trying to shag all the animals or trying to enslave all of the animals. Just someone somewhere, there must have been somebody who was just a nice Roman. Maybe. I'm sure that there must have been. There must have been somebody who is like, have we ever thought of, like, look at this lovely puppy.

But I'll be honest, the first two things I think of when I think of Robins and Puppies is one guy who killed a puppy in a temple. And Pliny, the elder saying that you can cure epilepsy with a puppy brain. Stop it. They wreck everything. They do. Even a puppy, they somehow manage to ruin it. It's true. There's nice ones.

There's some nice little epitaphs for dogs, people, right? little things about how much they like their dogs. So there you go. Okay. Yeah. There you go. So people who like their dogs at least. All right.

Okay. So that's like a universal constant. That's good to know. Actually, it's so appropriate today. We're talking about the fall of the Roman Empire, which is just I guess where the rest of the world just went, right. No, you've done too much now. Stop it.

You are too awful. We have to put a stop to this. Yeah. You're too rich. You're too awful. What they mostly think, to be fair, is you're really rich. and it looks like you've got a good thing going on, can we join in? And then that ends up being a bunch of wars, basically.

Right. So we have this idea of the fall of the Roman Empire, and we'll get on to the last days of Rome and where this idea of it being a time of even worse debauchery and madness, who came up with that idea? But the idea that the Roman Empire fell is a slightly odd one, because Rome is still there. So what do we mean when we say there was a fall of a Roman Empire?

like what at Tuesday, 4 o'clock, everyone just decided that. So that's enough of that, thank you very much. What are we talking about here? So there is like a moment when people, like I think if you ask most people these days, like when is the end of the classical Roman Empire, then the moment, or I would always say is when Oadica, who is an Austro-Gothic king, has taken over Rome. And he basically takes the Western Roman Emperor, who is a time. child named Romulus Augustulus, basically packs up all of his ceremonial gear and just sends him

to Constantinople. It's like we're not having a Roman emperor in the West anymore. So who was this guy then? The goth, goth king, which is just, I know that the joke's been done before, but it's just you can't help envisioning these people as people wearing black holding skateboards and hanging around supermarkets, can you? Yeah, massive jeans. All ripped up the back. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, so he is basically an Austro-Gothic leader. He takes over Rome kind of fairly bloodlessly. It takes a while to do it.

And the emperor by that time in the West is largely powerless and has no military anymore and has been for a while. And so when he just moves in, he basically just packs up Romulus or Gushulus and is like, I'm in charge of Rome now and sends him on his way. So this is a German goth king and he just walks into Rome? that by this time is not as strong as it was and just picks up this little boy and goes, you're off on your holidays?

Simplifying me monstrously, yeah, basically. Wow. It's pretty bloodless. I would have thought they'd have put up a better fight than that. I mean, this takes centuries to get through. So this is 476 that he packs up. Right. Romulus Augustulus.

476. And so 4.10 is when the goth's first sack Rome. So the first big sack of Rome, which is considered like it's a cataclysmic event when it happens. That happens in 4'10. Did they see it coming or was it like a complete surprise to them? They do see it coming because they've been fighting the ghosts. The ghosts have come across the Danube.

So they're actually from like the Caucasus. So these are people from what is now kind of Ukraine and Southern Russia. And so they have come across the Danube running away from the Huns, who have come from even further east. And there's centuries worth of fighting the gunnob. goths on the Danube, which means that they build themselves into an army, and then led by Alaric, they start marching around Western Europe and nobody can stop them. And they take Rome in 410. What they basically want is some land to call their own. They just want to move

into the empire, essentially. And they want to be given a bit of land and set up. Just that bit that the Romans are living on that bit of land. Yeah, basically. Like there's already people there, but they would quite like to just have some of them. it. Fair enough. Yeah. And they constantly fought and eventually they become an enemy. And so they first besiege and then sack Rome in 410.

And everybody kind of knows it's coming. No big D has any power to stop it. The emperor at the time is Onarius, who is rubbish. And it is so drastic that they actually take the emperor's sister hostage. And she's great, Gallupacilia. She's fascinating. So that is like the cataclysmic event. And then it takes like another 60 years.

for the goth to have fully moved into Rome. So they come in and then they fuck off again? They do fuck off again, yes, because they don't really want Rome at that point. They basically just want to live somewhere. They fuck off to France and then they go down to Spain. They hang around in Barcelona for ages on a holiday. Okay.

Yeah. Then the vandals attack it a few years later and it's a very long process of eroding away power in the West. So that by the time Oadica moves in, everything has been eroded to a nubbing of nothingness essentially. How did that happen though? Because one thing that I do know about the Romans is they were very good at fighting. They were.

They were. They were the bestest at it. If they could do, as horrible as they were, they could channel the awfulness. And they were very good at going around and beating up other people and taking their stuff. And we've got this idea of them being highly militarised and super organised. And they were the first to go, hey, let's use shields. What a great idea. and this kind of stuff.

So how do we go from that to just, oh, there's a bunch of German goths coming in? Oh, no. About a million different things. So one, we have the fact that they have started, they start quite early on by the kind of fourth century, using it extensively. They're using auxiliary troops and mercenary troops a lot. So a lot of these Goths and bandels and all the other people have served in the Roman army at some point. Oh.

And quite a lot of what their argument is for being given land is that they have served in the Roman army for 20 years. They've served in the Roman army and they're not getting any benefits from that. I see. That's interesting. So they've learnt the tricks of the trade then. So we no longer have this like, oh, surprise, we're the best in the world.

Now it's, well, they've been trained that way too. Yeah. And also they would quite like something in return for the service that they gave the empire. Aha. Okay. That's interesting. The other thing is that there are plagues rampaging through the empire.

The plague of Cyprian destroys millions of people. Was that a black death thing or is that something else? They think it's actually possibly an Ebola-like plague. Oh, a nasty. A very nasty plague. And then the other thing is that the climate is changing. So the period of the Roman Empire corresponds to this kind of ideal period. for harvests where the weather is very warm and very rainy.

And so they have been having bounteous harvest for 500 years. And now the weather is shifting is becoming drier and it's becoming colder. And they're having terrible droughts in North Africa and Egypt. And those places were feeding the armies in the West. And they are no longer growing anywhere near enough wheat to feed the armies. So you have a series of controllable and uncontrollable events that severely weaken Western power. It's like Viagra, this.

This is how I'm going to compare this to. Like when Viagra first launched, it was the only one of its kind. It had patents on it. No one had ever seen anything like it before. It did stuff that nothing else can touch it. But eventually the patent runs out and everybody else can manufacture the exact same stuff and they've got their own systems of distribution. And now there's lots of alternatives to Viagra.

and they don't have the stranglehold anymore. Exactly. And that's what happens. And people are hungry. And when people are hungry, there's always unrest. That's not good. Okay, so there's lots of different things coming together to weaken what was the biggest and strongest empire at the time.

Why this goth king, though, were they particularly good at fighting? Like, why them? Why not? I was going to say, why not the British? Because we were just pissed. But why was it them that decided they were. we're going to do this? Well, actually, the Romans considered the Britons to be a hotbed of revolution. And it was always considered to be very dangerous to send anyone powerful to Britain

because they would get to Britain, get their heads swollen, and then try to invade Gaul with their army and declare themselves an emperor happen constantly. Oh, did it? I'm quite proud of us for that. Well done. Well done ancient Britons. There was something about coming to Britain that made people think that they could rule the empire. I mean, it takes across a long time. They appear in the middle of the third century crisis. So they appear in the middle of third century, it takes them about a century and a half to eventually take over the Western Roman Empire. They're basically taught by the Romans to hate the Romans. Bad move that. Yeah. Bad move. And they're just very good at what they do. Like,

they are a spectacular. One of my favourite stories about them actually is after the sack of Rome, they're then kind of going marching around Italy for a little bit because they don't really have a goal particular. I love that about them. Just chaotic, just mad chaos gobbler. wandering around, just looking for a fight and just like, no, no, we'll go to Barcelona now. Yeah, and so they, Alaric was the king at the time. He was their leader, and he dies

while they're in southern Italy. And they worry that if they bury him or have a tomb for him, that the Romans will desecrate it. So they dam a river and divert it temporarily, bury him under the river, and then remove him. the dam so he's buried underneath a river.

That's clever. Oh, I like that. Which I think is very impressive. That is impressive. Oh, I might put that on my funeral plan. You demand to have a river moved for you. That, okay, I'm warming to him slightly. But then, having said that, I wasn't chased bare-ass through the streets of Rome by

Alaric, which might change your perception of him quite severely. It might. Although, I will say that even the people who are really full, freaked out about the Goths sacking Rome, and it really is considered to be like earth-shattering. You have all of these writers write about it because you start getting loads of refugees from Rome, and they end up in North Africa, and they cross the seas and enter the Levant, and they are coming with these kind of stories. But Alaric does quite like Rome, and so they don't damage it.

They don't damage anything. Very respectful barbarians. They are very respectful barbarians. And so they really do very little. And so they're able to have, within 30 years, they've effectively rebuilt Rome completely, like fixed up all of the minor burnings that they did. And by the 450s, when Gallup Cidio's has become Empress,

like Rome is back to glory, essentially. I'll be back with Emma after this short break. So they've got this initial sack, and everybody loses their mind. It sounds like the Goths wandered in. I went, oh, nice statues, everyone. Oh, no, it's lovely. They're almost just tourists and then they go away again. They're kind of like, oh, well, we're in now and we didn't really have a plan and we're going to take some stuff, but we're on the move.

So it's not like they've got a place to take all the stuff back to. So they can't steal all statues because what are they going to do, drag it aroundwards. Yeah, very good point. Very good point. They're basically a nomadic army at this time. They haven't got a place to take loads of golden statues. That would limit what you were going to take away. It really limits mobility.

It does. But then we've got this big push, 476. Yeah. So, and this is like a lot of, because you've also got the vandals who are in North Africa, they sat Rome in 455. And so then it becomes like a kind of constant battle of eroding. Taking part shots. Yeah, basically of people coming from all sides.

Because you've got the Goths who are kind of all over the show. You've got the Franks who are coming. from Germany into kind of France and Belgium and Gaul. You have the vandals who are coming from North Africa. And so on every side there are people who are sometimes working together, sometimes not, sometimes fighting each other. And the Romans are just kind of fighting fires on all sides. And they're constantly fighting each other as well.

And so you run through like dozens of emperors of the West who all have ludicrous names and who no one's ever heard of. and they just become less and less relevant in the fight. It becomes that there are lots and lots of people competing for territory in Europe and North Africa. And the Roma has just become one of those guys rather than the guy. The guy, exactly. And so they become less and less important in the fight until they're not important at all. The only money that they have is none of the resources or money or anything they have is coming from Europe.

It's also coming from overseas, from literally overseas. So it all has to travel into Rome and people just stop sending it. Like the people in Constantinople, the Western, the Eastern emperors just stop sending resources eventually. It must have been a very stressful time. I mean, it's always a stressful time to be a Roman, but a particularly stressful time. Baring in mind, actually, that this is nothing worse than the crap that they've inflicted on other nations throughout their time as the top dog. If anything, they don't suffer anywhere near as much. No.

And it's surprising how much when you read the sources about what's happening in Rome and Ravenna, which has become like a real power, that they seem to be having quite a chill time if you're not in the army. So if you're like, your regular Roman there, because I suppose one of the reasons that I assume that all the Romans are absolutely horrific is because most of the history that you get left from is from very powerful people, people that were interesting enough to have stuff written about them, wars that happened.

And I don't think you get nice, powerful people. I think that to be powerful like that, you have to be an asshole. I think that's sort of baked into it, isn't it? So it's kind of their history. But if you were just like a regular Roman person, you know, you've got a bit of land, maybe you're growing some grapes or something. How much of this would you have been aware of? You are going to be aware of it in that if you're a rich Roman,

you've got far away lands and some of them are being damaged. Yep, fair. But they remain rich. They remain pretty powerful. What happens is if you're rich and powerful Roman, as the Senate stops being useful, the Senate becomes something that only people from the city of Rome go to. It used to be something that people would come from all over the empire to go to,

but it becomes kind of a bit more provincial, and it becomes kind of a last bastion of paganism, as everything else Christianizes around it. But the rest of the Western empires kind of shift into, to the church and starts building up the church as power face. And so you see people from the 5th century who are writing, they all start writing about church stuff, basically instead of going to the Senate.

But they're still rich. They've still got lots of land. They will complain about barbarians in there. There's these letters from 5th century Gaul from a guy called Sedonius writing about how he, I mean, this is such a daily mail thing. He's like, when I'm walking around in town, I hear all these different languages and no one speaks proper Latin anymore. I hear all these barbarian languages.

So you get those complaints and you get people talking about how they can't travel as much as they would like to anymore. But they don't become any less rich. And on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't change as much as you would think. There's this guy called Olympiadorus who writes about how astonishingly rich Rome still. is in his time. And he's writing from the East in the 5th century and he's like, every great house has a city inside it. He's like, they've all got their own bars. They've all got their own stadia. They're all like, they have so much money which comes in from their land. And then he is like, they have games that go on for 10 days and they spend £4,000 of gold on it. And so

there still are people having a good time in Rome while, you know, most of the fighting, apart from at one or two points is happening far away. And people find ways to enjoy their lives anyway. Of course they do. So when the Goths finally show up then, do they move into Ramda? And like what exactly we're talking? It's just all of their outlying lands that they've conquered. They're not allowed to have them anymore.

Like you just allowed the Italian bit. Like what are we talking about here? Did they stay this time the Goths? They do stay and they stay for ages. And they become like the next king after a weather. because Theodoric the great who does a lot in Rome and does a lot of building. And he's like quite classicising. So he likes the idea of like rebuilding stuff in the image of Rome.

And he has all these advisors who were Roman senators like Cassiodorus. It's all very civilized this. It's just like just an exchange of power that's going on. This isn't quite the burn it to the ground and let's murder everybody that I was expecting. This is more administrative than anything else. It kind of is because basically Oadica literally sends Romulus Augustus off with a letter that says, like, we're not going to be in the empire anymore. We'll be a client. We don't mind working with you, but we're not going to be subordinate to you. We're not going to be in your empire. The East are like, okay. And then that's basically what happens. And we have these letters of Cassi Adoras, which go back and forth where he's writing to the Eastern Emperor saying like, oh, Theodoric says X, Y, and they, you know, they are exchanging diplomacy back and forwards. And then, you know, you know, they are exchanging diplomacy back and forwards. And then, you know, you know, There's one attempt in the 6th century to kind of retake Rome, which retakes Ravenna. But other than that, it's fairly...

Sovic civilised. It's kind of a bit of a whimper at the very end. It's just more like we've just voted in a new board of governors. That's sort of the feel of it. It's not quite what I was expecting at the end of this really bonkers time and this really powerful empire. It kind of keeps going, doesn't it? Because you've got like the Roman... empire, the Byzantine Empire, that's still there. How long does that hang on for? Oh, it depends on how

annoying you want to be. Oh, okay, go on. Let's arm everyone with some pedantic information that they can use to correct people around them. Yeah, if you want to be really annoying, you could say that the end of the Holy Roman Empire. That would be really annoying. More reasonably, you would say it is the Ottoman sack of Constantinople in the 1450s, so 1453. Like, that's the end of, you know, continuous rule from Constantine through to the final Eastern Roman Emperor. And it is a centre of power and then the Ottomans destroy it. But then if you want to be difficult, you can say that the Ottoman Empire is a continuation and go all the way through until the end of the Ottoman Empire, which is like 1920s.

Wow. Wow. But yeah, it depends on how much of a dick you want to be. The thing is, it's difficult to say like when does an empire end? Is it? when the Byzantine Empire is Constantinople and two fields. And so calling it an empire is a bit of a stretch. But there are people calling themselves Roman until the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

Like there are people throughout, you know, the Middle Ages calling themselves Roman emperors. Because it's not, I don't know how Germanic Italy is as a result of this. So they must have left again at some point and just kind of left the Italians to get on with it. Well, they don't really impose anything other than Aryanism. Ostrogoths are Aryans, so they are not Trinitarians. They believe in just to bring some theology into this as well. They don't believe in the Trinity, so they don't believe in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit as a single. They believe in separate.

But that's like the only thing that they really introduce is massively different. Otherwise they run it and they don't have a Senate anymore because they have a king. But they like, you know, they like the Roman stuff. have quite a lot of laws that are like, we would really like it if you built temples that looked like Roman temples actually. So where did the idea come from? Because I've heard the expression, oh, it was like the last days of Rome. It was like the final days of Roman.

And you say that when you mean something is just absolutely chaotic and it's got a kind of a tinge of like bacchanalian orgies to it. Like, you know, if something's really excessive, I've heard it say many, many times. But actually, if you're saying it's like the last days of Rome, really you mean there's an administrative exchange of power. That's exactly. That's actually what happened. Yeah. But where did the idea that like it was this hedonistic, people were ripping the knickers off each other? Where does that idea come from? So that idea really comes from like the 19th century. I thought it would. I thought this sounds like something they would come up with. Yeah. And that these

ideas that there is, that there had to be a moral failing for Rome to have fallen. Now that's quite important because I've seen that be repeated even today. in certain quarters and certain circles and certain philosopher people have this idea that a fall of an empire or a country is predicated by a looseness of moral laxity. I've seen that argued by people. Yeah. And, you know, people very much still say this today. And it is this idea that...

Blow jobs equal a loss of power. Exactly. Hashtag science. I was Googling around to see if I could find, like, when the concept of the last days of Rome was first used. And I found a blog from 2011 where somebody, some random blogger had said that it was the last days of Rome because a woman had said fuck on the television. Which I thought was hilarious.

But women didn't use to swear. And that's very much like, I mean, this is something that to an extent the Romans are saying about themselves that if they were better than the gods. would love them more and they wouldn't lose their empire. And then the Christians say this as well. And you see a lot of Christian writers in the 5th century saying the barbarians wouldn't be here if we were better Christians. And then this continues through. And then when in the Enlightenment, when people start thinking about why Rome quite unquote fell or why this empire didn't continue forever, what they look at is texts from all eras of Roman history. So they will pick up on

Caligula, who is like the third Roman empire. And Nero, the fifth. Roman Emperor and then they'll pick some bits from Juvenal, who's like 100 years after that, but all from like the first and second centuries, so 300 years before Rome Falls, and be like, look at these guys, obviously they couldn't have an empire, like they were shagging constantly, they are talking about all the women that they have sex with, they are like having mad orgies. You read Marshall, he was writing in the second seduce, and they are disgusting. Like he is to his absolute filth and he does make his social circle sound like they've never got any clothes on at all. Right. And then in the like 1830s you start getting like French and English

philosophers who are who say, start saying this stuff like oh, it fell because it was decadent. It's this strange equation and really what's going on in my humble opinion. I haven't researched as much as I think I probably should have done before I say this is what they're doing is they're linking it to a feminization of something. You kind of see that. And that goes right the way back to even the ancient Greek writers where you get this sort of Odysseusians. goes on the island and he gets distracted by the beautiful by girls and you get that kind of motif a cropping

and it happens with with Aeneas and Dido like they get stuck they're on this big manly quest or they're going to do questing and manly worst and suddenly some chick turns off on an island and is all like oh but you just come here and just have some wine

and I'll rub your shoulders and it's this whole big like fear that they're going to be infected by this feminine world and lose their masculine potency. Yeah and this something that Romans worried about constantly, like Romans themselves, and this is how 19th century writers are able to have so much kind of ammunition for this idea of decedness. The Romans were saying it about themselves.

They were saying at the very height of their empire, like in the late Republic and the early imperial period, and then into the, you know, the period of Trajan and Hadrian when it's at its biggest and it's the most military successful it's ever been, they're saying, we like baths too much. And men wear too much perfume And it's all Everyone's got a bit Greek And girly

And no one is a good masculine man Like they used to be anymore And we've all become terribly soft And you're like Well you're doing pretty well For a bunch of soft lads Yeah he's still pretty stabby For a bunch of softies

Exactly But they are like everybody always thinks That their period is the worst it's ever been Yeah true And they always think But weirdly enough that the time when it is the worst it's ever been, people are trying to find new ways forward.

But at every point in Roman history, they're always saying, this is the worst it's ever been, and it's this way because we've gone soft. You've gone soft. And then the Victorians picked up on that idea and really ran with it and sort of created this idea

that it was this increasing, horrendous feminization and moral laxity and just lusciousness and everyone's lounging around eating sandwiches. That's what caused the fall of the Roman Empire. That's what caused it because they went too soft. And then you get the racist arguments as well, because you get Eastern emperors.

So people like Septimius Severus, who is Libyan, people like Philip the Arab. And there are these articles from the 20s and 30s that are just horrific. Scholars were writing articles about how there were too many foreign names. Like they went through the epigraphy and looked at names. from the third and fourth centuries were like there were too many foreign names and that's why the entire... Hashtag science.

You're like, what? Hashtag, oh dear. Hashtag 1930 science, yeah. Well, I mean, that was peak eugenics, wasn't it? It is. And then, you know, and look where we ended up with that crap. I'll be back with Emma after this short break. The Victorians had an extra special reason

to be concerned about this and projecting a lot of stuff onto the Roman Empire because they had an empire all of their very own, which they also got by being assholes. Yeah, and they then immediately began to fear that they might lose it by not being as strong as their granddads were and imagining their granddads to be the hardiest men who ever hardied and their grandmothers to be the most pure and wonderful women.

And then they look around at the women and men in their lives and they're like, that man's trousers are terribly tight. We're going to lose Constantinople. This must be the end of days. Yeah. And no empire is ever in a state of chill. Yeah, it's never in a state of chill. It has to be constantly reasserting itself.

And there is never a point in the Roman Empire, there is never a point in the history of any empire where everybody was like, God, I'm so glad that I'm in this empire and where there weren't people trying to leave it. But every imperial power always thinks that if only they could just subdue this one guy or if they could only just be perfect in some way.

everything would be fair. If only they could understand that this is best. I mean, the Victorians had a very odd attitude towards the Romans area because when they discovered Pompeii, they were genuinely quite upset to find as many cocks as they did. That really freaked them out. You've sort of got this weird juxtaposition

of they're projecting a lot of like, oh, well, they lost their empire because they were too morally loose and sexy. But then also at the same time, they really revere them and get very upset when they realize that they quite like looking at a lot of sexy stuff. The British Victorian relationship with the Roman Empire is so confused. Very confused.

Like the fact that Victoria builds this statue of Budica and then has this statue be proclaimed that Budica was so great that she managed to defeat the Romans and then also become the Romans. They simultaneously love and hate them and they want to be them but be better than them. And there is this kind of general belief that the Romans lost their empire because they were decadent and we can keep ours forever and ever if we don't go down that route. If we can just stay morally pure, then we'll be able to hold on to us forever and we'll defeat them. As it turns out, the Romans kept theirs for much longer.

Because it has absolutely nothing to do with morality. No, no, we should say that as well. It really, if you hear somebody saying, oh, you know, all empires before they collapsed were in a sense. state of moral and sexual excess, just hit them with something. You don't even need to talk to them. Just find a book and hit them with it. Just hit them with anything. Yeah, anything.

Just throw fists. It's just, it's a stupid thing. It's the thin end of a wedge to women wreck everything. That's what that argument is. There's a direct pipeline. Women and foreigners and blowjubs spoil everything. Everything. And there is some kind of universal standard of pure masculinity, which you can

apply. That can be infected. Yeah, which can be infected and diluted. Yeah. And it is very European thinking and it's daft because they only ever are thinking about European empires and ever thinking about South American empires or Asian empires or North African empire. And as you rightly point out, the Romans have been absolute dirtbags the entire time that they were there. It didn't get worse. Did it just before they left? It's like their levels of debauchery were fairly consistent. The Romans founded their city by one brother killing another brother and then the murderer brother stealing a hundred

women from nearby towns. See? Like, tricking all of his neighbours to come to a party and then stealing their daughters. They've never behaved themselves. How Rome is founded, like that is their glorious myth. It is not great from the start. Do you think that it would be fair? Because, you know, I don't want to defend the Victorians and I certainly don't want to give them any

ammunition or anyone who thinks that their idea. is a good. But was there anything in their understanding of the Romans? I mean, were they a group people that constantly had orgies? We still like to think of them like that. The Romans could barely walk from one end of the street to the other without being invited to an orgy. I mean, if the poetry is anything to go by and the art, then they were certainly having plenty of sex and surprisingly public sex. Like, it is impossible to read Marshall without even, you know, being fairly like open to various kinds of sexuality and not be like Jesus Christ. Yeah, steady on.

Like steady on lads. And you're reading this at dinner parties, are you? You'd phone the police. It's like if you were just going around to have tea where you're mate and they put porn hub on the telly. That's the sort of the equivalent. Basically, that's how it feels, yeah. And then all of a sudden he's going to be just divvying you a six-line poem about how that girl over there's a lesbian is very funny indeed with like graphic descriptions of her sex life. And or like there's this list he has of poems that you can write on gift tags for presents at Saturnalia.

And like one of them is just a man for sex. And another one is a penis made out of flower. We've all known a marshal, haven't we, that just, you know, you just ignore him the best that you can and try not to love too hard. Except the Romans were like, God, you're brilliant. We're going to make you incredibly rich because we love your poem so much. See, they are consistently rude. But it's interesting, you know, we've spoken about Roman sex before many, many times. But it's not that it was a complete free-for-all.

They had their hang-ups. They were just different hang-ups to the ones we have today. They are. And they are free about some things and not free about other things. And also the people that we are talking about are always like the richest of them. Yeah, the people that can get away with this. Yeah, they're not the middle classes, they're not lower classes. They are the, you know, the moneyed leisure classes, basically,

whose job is writing poetry or just being very rich or being the wife of a senator. Like, they are not people who have jobs to go to. No. But one thing we can say with some confidence is that the fall of the Roman Empire was not caused by people having too much sex. It was not caused by too much sex. It was caused by play climate change and shifting borders, which is decidedly less exciting. It's less thrilling.

It's less fun to bring up in the park, I'll be honest. Oh, Emma, you have been wonderful. Once again, thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? They can find me at emmersouthern.com or they can find me at historyosexy.com And listen to my podcast with Janina Matisseon. Amazing. Thank you so much.

much. Will you come back again? Anytime. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Emma for joining us once again. And if you have got an idea for a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. Coming up, we've got episodes on the real Virgin Mary, and an episode on the vanity of Henry VIII, no less. It's quite a long episode. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheet of history of sex scandal in society,

a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.