Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Valentine's Day in Ancient Rome

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

What are the origins of Valentine's Day?Perhaps the answer lies in a pagan festival that starts with a sacrifice in a cave above Ancient Rome.What connects the naked running through the streets of Rome to Valentine's Day today? How did the onset of Christianity in Rome effect celebrations? And when did Valentine's Day as we know it today first take off?Joining Kate to find out all about this, is friend of the show and author, Emma Southon. Check out Emma's book A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women, here.This podcast was edited by Amy Haddow and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.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. Happy Valentine's Day week or whenever this is going out. There's nobody that I would rather be spending the day with. But before we can do anything together, I have to tell you once again, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adultery way of covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too.

And we have to tell you that, because, If you get upset, well, then we can just say, we did tell you, fair do's, you were warned, and you listened anyway, you maniac. Right, on with the show! It is a beautiful, cool February afternoon in the 5th century BC, and we are in Rome. And I have decided to go for a hike up the Palatine Hill. That is a complete lie. I would not go hiking anywhere, let alone up a hill.

But we will suspend our disbelief for the podcast. Breathe it in, betwixters. This is the stuff. It's good to get out the hustle and bustle, isn't it? It's so tranquil up here. Just a minute. There's a bunch of priests coming out of a cave, completely ruining the vibe I've got going on here.

And they're covered from head to toe in goat's blood? What on earth? This wasn't in the hikers handbook. And now they're wiping it across each other and soaking it in wool and milk. Oh my God, no, I knew hiking was a terrible idea. Right, I'm going back down the hill. But you know what? Now I think about it, those mad priests could have been worshipping the Lupecalia, which tends to happen around these parts at this time. And that was a completely bonkers festival,

which involved goats, blood, cave, and a lot of smearing and whipping. Curious to know more? Well, I know I am. Let's crack on. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the money. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful damn.

Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. Is it a coincidence that our Valentine's Day falls at the same time of year, as the Lupecalia festival was held in ancient Rome. Did Rome's transition to Christianity and a distancing from its pagan past have anything to do with merging goat-smearing priests with fat little cupid babies and boxes of chocolates?

And if it did, or even if it didn't, how did the Valentine's Day we know and possibly loath to this very day become a thing? Joining me today to answer all of these questions and more is the one, and only Emma Southern, expert in all things Roman and disgusting and long-time friend of the show. If this episode has piqued your interest, then why not scroll back to our previous episodes with Emma, including the one on Gladiator's Sex Lives and Murder in the Roman world. Right, goat whips at the ready betwixters. Let's do this. And welcome back to Betwix the Sheeds. It's only Emma Southern. How are you doing?

I am very well, thank you. I am waiting for spring to carve. and all of this... It's fucking freezing, isn't it? It's so cold. And we're here talking about springtime festivals and the possibility of rebirth and we need it right now. Don't we?

For our latest instalment in the unofficial series, fucking hell the Romans were shit, weren't they? Which I'm thoroughly enjoying. We seem to get a lot of mileage. This one's fucking hell the Romans were weird. They're intensely... Before we even get going, I should ask you, have you seen the new Gladiator film yet?

I have seen the new Gladiator film yet. I have seen the new Gladiator. A video. I haven't seen it yet. I should have watched it. I watched it. What's your thoughts? It's not as good as the first one, to be honest with you.

And kind of not weird enough. The sharks are quite good. I'll give me that. I wish they hadn't been ruined by the trailer because I was sort of delighted by them. But yeah, it's not as good as the first one. That's what I thought. Okay. And also, they do bad things to Carrikella,

which I don't think I'll ever forgive Ridley Scott for. But I can go on about that for about a thousand years, but just it's important to note that he was not a small syphilitic insane person. Oh. He was a large, hot African man. Right. Julie noted. Yes.

I don't know if you can stream it yet, presumably you can. I'm going to make myself a little note. Watch Gladiator too this evening. Yeah. And then text Emma about it. That's all right. Just made a little note. Yeah.

But we're not here to talk about Gladiator, more to the pity. We're here to talk about the rather peculiar Roman festival. the lupacalia. Yeah. Which some people float the suggestion, it's a Valentine'sy day thing. But take it from the top, Emma, what on earth is this? It's so weird that even the Romans didn't know what it was or where it came from, and they came up with about 50 different explanations for why it happened.

But the main part of it was a load of noble, kind of equestrian level, so just like the second highest class, young men and senators as well. running around the streets completely naked, hitting women with goat skin lashes and the women being like, yes, I love it. And then they would have a big party afterwards. Yeah, it's weird. That is, that's...

It is weird. How do you end up there? That can't have been somebody suggesting that to a planning committee in all its glory of just like, right, I really think that women want to be whipped for the street with bits of a goat. by naked archantanagan. Yeah.

Naked men, oh God. Yeah. It's very, very ancient. And, like, kind of the ancient historian, kind of anthropological opinion is that it is, like, very pre-Roman, like, Latin or Etruscan shepherd-based, like, ritual to do with kind of letting loose and fertility and men running around protecting people and, like, purification.

that just stuck around in Roman culture like a lot of their stuff did. So they didn't know what the Vestal Virgins were either. They had no clue and they had to constantly make up stories. And that's what they do for the lupacalia because they don't really know why it's called the lupacalia. I don't really know why they do it.

They just know it's really important that they do. And so they come up with like three or four different explanations for why it is important for them to do this. There's also a whole kind of before the bit where they are. are running through the streets naked. They all get together in a cave at the bottom of the Palatine Hill. So a bunch of guys get together and sacrifice a goat. And then they pick two of the boys, like, who are the initiates,

and they put blood of the goat on their forehead. And then they dip some will in milk and then wipe the blood off of their foreheads. And then everybody has to do a ritual laugh. So everyone goes, ha, ha, ha. And then they skin the goat. So it's like it's a combination of just men being really fucking weird in a cave and then insisting that everybody else get involved in their weirdness in the streets. Now the Romans loved a festival and they loved sacrificing things too.

I've learned that from you is if they're not killing something, then frankly, what was the point? Yeah, it's not a day if you've not sacrificed something. So why was this festival particularly odd even to them? Because they've definitely sacrificed. Was it the nudity and the whipping bit that made it really weird? whipping bit, yes. They don't usually go around naked in the streets. And they, usually all of their festivals, they're actually very covered up. So they have a whole thing with covering their heads when they're doing sacrifice and their kind of very most Roman festivals, which there are

hundreds are very like, they look like a person with obsessive compulsive disorder, like doing everything in very specific ways. Everything has to be done with the right sounds and the right movements and the right words at the right time and you have to be kind of very precise and careful and if you do it wrong in any way the whole thing has to be done all over again because otherwise the gods will come and get you and this is one of the few where they have this little bit in the cave where they have to do these things but then the rest of it is kind of a naked free-for-all and there's lots of kind of laughing and men and women are involved which is quite unusual and it ends kind of with a big like dinner.

And so it is quite unusual for a Roman festival, for the kind of actual religious part to be fun, rather than quite a stressful set of rituals, where the gods will smite you if you've done it wrong, and for everyone to be running around naked. So it is a weird one, but it seems to be one that people are really into. Well, I mean, there's a certain element of fun to it.

I can see that. Who's naked? Is everybody naked? At what point did they get naked? They do the thing in the cave with the goat and then everybody, what, goes back home and then gets undressed then? What's happening? I think they probably take their clothes off before they get in there, to be honest.

There's nothing else you don't want blood. If you're like, it's not a very big cave, you probably don't want blood on your toga. Right. But what it is is a collegia, so it's like an association, and you get inducted into it. And it's like a bit like being in the Masons or something. Like Romans loved these things. Oh, so it's a gang. Yeah.

Sort of like a gang, like a little club that you're in, like the Jackbins in the French Revolution or something like that. Like they're a club. And it's only open to people of like a certain class and you get the rest of the year, who knows what they were doing, hanging out. This is the one time of the year that you get to go and like you're very important for the city and you get to go and take off all your clothes and run around. And then it gets kind of linked. So not everyone can do this. It's just certain people get to do it. Yeah.

So only certain people are inducted into it. or are allowed to join, although we have no idea, like, what that process is. All we know is that there are loads of, or not even loads. There's a few, like, epitaphs of people who have had themselves remembered as members of the Lupacali. So they, like, it's a membership thing that you have to presumably, like, apply to be allowed to run around naked every so often. And it's the men applying, not the women. So the women are just in the streets. And it develops this idea that if you are,

hit with the goat skin. So if they hit you, then either you will become pregnant. If you're not pregnant and you want to be, or if you are already pregnant, then you'll have an easy birth. So you won't die in childbirth, which happens surprisingly often. So women kind of love it and they're getting in the way going, ha ha ha, I'm going to be. And it's a kind of giggly time of if you want to get pregnant, then you go and get in the way of whoever is running around. And if you are pregnant, then the story goes that it'll be better for you. So people want to be hit by them for the most part. I'm trying to think of like at what point, what got joined up here to the killing a goat to this is good for pregnant women? Like what, how can we join those dots? Is there any way

of joining the dots? Not really. Goats like good for pregnant women? Well, so it basically when the Romans worked backwards or the Greeks work backwards because a lot of what we have writing about it is the Greeks trying to explain it to other people and then occasionally the Romans trying to explain it to themselves. But the Greeks made it so that it linked to the Greek God Pan who is obviously a goat-hooved god and is connected to kind of wilderness and woods and sex and fertility. And so they developed like this whole myth basically that there's loads of Roman myth. People forget about that the Romans loved a good myth as much as the Romans did. They're just kind of less sexy than the Greek ones. But there's this Roman myth that

there was a guy called Evander who comes from Arcadia in Greece, which is like the middle of the Peloponnese. And he was kicked out for some reason that no one could agree on, went to Italy, founded a city there on the Palatine. And like, it's called Palatineum. And he found a city and then kind of gathers people together and then instructs them in Greek ways. And he introduces to them this very ancient pre-civilisation Greek festival of Pan, which becomes the Lupecalia. And it's called the Lupacalia because he's from a place called Lycia, and that becomes Lupercalia. And that is the best that the Greeks could come up with.

And to say, like, oh, it's very ancient. And that's what Cicero thinks it is. He thinks it's like a very ancient, before we had civilization, everybody was running around naked. And so that's why we take her clothes off. and it's related to pan, so it must be to do with fertility. A sexy thing. Yeah, a sexy thing.

So Cicero writes about it, the Greeks write about it. Who else is throwing their hat in the ring with this and going, I know why we do this. Everybody kind of has a bit of a bash. So Livy has a go. Dionysus of Halicronasis has a go. Plutarch writes about it a lot. It comes up in histories because there is a very, very famous moment that happens at one Lupercalia, which is when Mark Anthony, who is naked at the time, offers Julius Caesar the crown and offers him the chance to be a king.

And Julius Caesar says no. And that happens. I do think that this is underestimated while everybody is nude. There's just a bunch of naked men standing around and everybody's having a giggle. And then Julius Caesar decides to attempt to start a constitutional crisis in the middle of it. But that's like, so everybody then has to explain what the hell was going on and why Mike Anthony has to. had his dick out while he was offering a crown to Julius Caesar. Yes, please.

Yeah. So Plutarch and a bunch of others get involved. And they also offer this like Roman version, which is that it's absolutely nothing to do with the Greeks that they invented it all by themselves. And actually it's to do with Romulus and Remus. And it's either or possibly both that this is the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf. So the Lupacalia comes from lupus.

Or it is to celebrate an occasion when Romulus and Ramos were just running around naked for fun and somebody came up and said, oh, there's a cattle rustler who's coming to steal all of your sheep and cows, and they ran off and chased them away and therefore protected the city. And that's why everybody runs around naked. Or it's a completely separate one to do with, they were just having a party, and then they got nude and ran around, and then they killed a ghost. and dressed up as a goat, and that was hilarious, and everybody just remembers it because it's funny.

And this is Romulus and Remus, the ones who founded Rome allegedly. Yes, so Romulus and Remus are the myth is that the sons of Mars, and a Vestal Virgin, who is raped by Mars, that she then gives up the children at the instigation of her uncle, and she has supposed to drown them, but she doesn't. They are exposed and rescued by a wolf, which is why Romans love wolves, who suckles them until they're taken in by a shepherd and they can go and found their own city

and then they have a big fight over what they're going to call the city and where it's going to be, whether it's going to be on the Palatine or on Esqueline, and Romulus stabs Remus in that argument which is why it's called Rome and not Ream. And not Ream. Yeah. That would have been, you could have had Times New Ream and Fong. Times New Ream. Yes. Occasionally people do memes about Ream and imagining

as like the most glorious peaceful nation. So where Romulus is, it started like the most warlike nation who can't do anything without doing a stabbing. The Rie would be just everybody loves each other and it's peace and harmony and like a 70s flower child. I would like to have seen Rie. Yeah. This is an interested Roman theory that I've read about.

I mean, to the bottom line of like none of it is true. No, no. But I have heard it argued by some people. that the wolf, the wolf that allegedly suckled Romulus and Remus might have actually, actually been a hooker. Yes. And that somewhere along the lines, it got mixed up because the Roman, I said the Roman word, the Latin word,

fucking okay, the Latin word. Yes. For a sex worker is Luper, isn't it? It is. And that's where we have Lupinar, which is a brothel. I think that's from Livy, actually, where he says, like, obviously, he likes to debunk a myth. He doesn't ever say they didn't happen.

He just says that the magic part didn't happen. So he's like those guys who were like, oh, maybe, you know, Noah's Ark actually was a real flood or whatever. So he's like, oh, yeah, no, it wasn't a wolf that Sokol Dorminus and Ramos, it was, we've got confused with the words Lupus and Leap. And actually it was a sex worker and we just don't know what we're talking about. And they didn't. They were just making it up. God bless them. It's all being made up.

It is. I'll be back with Emma after this short break. Is there any chance that the lupacalia could be anything to do with sex workers? Is that a reach? No. In fact, I would say probably sex workers. Damn. They very often are trying to avoid pregnancy, so probably they would stay away.

Oh. Good point. Good points. Okay. It's got slightly wolfy undertones. It has wolfy undertones. And apparently they would also sacrifice a dog. They're like one source of says that they sacrificed a dog, which even, that was weird for the robins.

They didn't do that very often. The whole thing is incredibly weird. Of all the suggestions and explanations have been put forward by various people, all of which sound quite mad. Are there any of them that modern historians like, well, actually that one seems less mad than the others? Well, I think possibly it is pretty Roman.

So the Greek one is, all of the ones that are like this as a Greek thing, it's come from Arcadia, it's to do with Pan, are considered to be just fabrications. The ones, it is very much a Roman festival that almost certainly started when they were just like shepherd guys sitting on a hill. So the ones where the story is that they were protecting or purifying or kind of encouraging the fertility of their sheep flocks are the ones that Arkansas City. I see. I see what you're doing. Most likely. So this is a time when they're running around.

What is the middle of, like it's still winter, it's still pretty grim, it's a good party, and what you're interested in as shepherds is the safety and like increase of your flocks. And then that gets transferred onto people when Rome hasn't got any sheep in it anymore. When it's a city of brick and where the sheep are all outside of the city, then you get worried about the fertility of your people. I mean, we've sat here and said that it's all completely bonkers. It is quite mad. But there are like modern, not recreations of this, but like similar weird festivals that happen. They're not sacrificing dogs or like whipping people. But like there are strange festivals where men like chase after women or try and spank women.

There was one recently that they tried to ban because someone went, should we be spanking women in the street that we don't know? I'm not entirely sure. I don't know how to feel about it. That's a great idea. Yes. But that was, what hell was that? But that was a fertility thing as well.

And there's a few of those that men go running around and they try and either kidnap women joke, joke, kidnap joke, or they spank them for some reason. Yeah. And I don't know, it's like a kind of pre-European, Indo-European, like one of those strange things where it clearly has come from something that is before all of us.

Somewhere. Yeah. Like, you know, you have certain words that appear in lots of languages like that, just or certain myths that appear over and over again across cultures and times because there is something way back in the very distant human Indo-European past and somewhere along the line this idea of kind of grabbing women and spanking or lashing them or holding them like it got embedded in our little monkey brains as a great idea and we keep doing it as a sexy thing.

We think it's really a sexy fun thing to do. Yeah maybe it's not that completely bonkers. We still do weird shit like this around the. world today. But I can't imagine the Christians like this very much, but then I was going to, but what time period are we talking about here? It's presumably before they turned up and went, excuse me, everybody, could you stop doing that, please? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, as far as we know, the Leapacalia existed in Rome from as soon as Rome existed, like the best of a virgin. Yeah, from day dot, it was there and they were doing

some form of it. The last time that we hear that it occurs is in the fifth century, at the end of the fifth century in like 495, AD. So it hung in there, actually. It hung in for a very long time for over a thousand years. Wow. Although by that time it is a very, very different festival, which brings into question what had changed between its foundation and by the time we hear of it in like the late Republic.

What happens is that a pope, a bishop of Rome, writes a letter to somebody in Rome in response to complaints that the Lupercalia isn't being held. and somebody writes to him and says, oh, like there's famine and there's plague here, and we reckon that it's because nobody's holding the lupacalia, and we think that we should do it again, like we should bring it back. And because no one's just really bothered for a while,

it hadn't been outlawed. Sacrifice had been outlawed, but festivals surrounding them hadn't. And the Pope writes back in it's like, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. One, because the lupacalia was never invented to help with plague or famine. Like, it was always about, fertility. Livy says it was about fertility. Everybody says he pulls out all of these quotes and

it's like nobody ever thought it was about plague and if it was about plague then it wasn't doing a very good job. And then he says, you know, it's not like we even do it like they used to anyway because these days we don't run around naked ourselves. We pay somebody else to do it. So they had somebody else running around naked like actors and our women aren't whipped anymore either. What they do is just shout names out. So by the fifth century, had turned into something where there was little to no sexiness. It was just like actors running around in the street and they would like shout people's names out and it had turned into less of a fertility festival and more of a like naming and

shaming festival of like. That doesn't sound nearly as much fun, does it? No. No. So he was like, look, I mean, I think that he does have a great line, which is that if Christians do this, it's spiritual adultery. which is, I think, a great thing to be a keystone. And but he's like, if pagans want to do it, then that's their problem.

But Christians shouldn't be doing it because it's gross. And I'd really appreciate it if you didn't mention this ever again. Thanks, bye. Did anyone else do it? Was it just in Rome? Did anyone else, like, have their own version of the Lupacalia? And this is a question that no one knows the answer to. But because it is so specifically based on this one cave,

like this cave at the bottom of the Palatine, is where it has to be. They think it's possibly just a Roman one in this form that it is. And if other places had something like it, then it would be something that was similar but would have a different name possibly. Was it outlawed? Was it ever outlawed? Did it just sort of eventually fall out of favour, just sort of dwindled away?

Yeah, just kind of drizzles away. That's the last time we ever hear of it. And this is kind of before the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, has any real power to tell anybody. But the sacrifice element was illegal. So that was outlawed by Theodosius a couple of hundred years before that. A couple hundred years? A couple hundred years?

And eventually people just seemed to have stopped, like with a lot of things. Got a bit bald. Yeah, everybody. Like, there's clearly people doing, like, pagan festivals while still being a Christian. And eventually those pagan festivals just lose all of their meaning. And then they just become like a thing and no one knows why they're doing them. And then one year somebody stops. And then it's clear from their.

letter from the Pope that they're not doing it all the time. Like there's obviously been two or three years where it hasn't happened and they're thinking about bringing it back and he's like, no. So we don't know if they actually did bring it back after that or that might have been the end of it that they never did it ever again. So how in the hell does a bunch of naked men running riot and whipping women with bits of a dead goat get linked to Valentine's Day? Because I've never had that on a Valentine's Day.

No, I've never had that on a Valentine's Day. And if you were woken up by a nude man with a bit of a goat trying to whip you, you'd phone the police. I would. I'd be very concerned. Even if it was my husband, I think I'd be like... Very concerned. The last time he bought me a Valentine's Day present, it was to change the gas saver from a metre. And that was extremely good Valentine's Day present. So it would be quite a change of pace with it. It would be stepped up again, wouldn't he if it do?

I'd wonder where he'd got the goat from. It'd be a lot. But it becomes connected to Valentine's Day, kind of in the late Middle Ages, basically. First, there is this whole story that the Pope banned it with this letter and then replaced it with the purification of the Virgin Mary. So it stops being the purification of the Virgin Mary. So that starts in the 16th century. And there's this Italian cardinal, basically, who invents this story that it was that the purification of Virgin Mary has been celebrated. for so long. It's been celebrated since fifth century.

And then everybody sort of stops worrying about the purification of Virgin Mary. It's not something that anybody really celebrates anymore. But what does emerge is the idea of courtly love and concept of romance and seducing and things like that. And the first mention of like St. Valentine that you get as something that people are celebrating in a romantic fashion is Chaucer. So around about the same time, you get this notion that people have started to celebrate it. And then later after that, towards like the 18th, 19th century, people start connecting the fact that this is on the 14th of February and the fact that the Lupercalia was on the 15th of February. They do overlook the fact that there's loads of other festivals that happen at the same time, including one that's called something like the fornicator, which I think is a much. It's one that I would have gone for to link it.

Oh, that sounds like an interesting. I'll tell you, this is one of those ones where Latin is really leading you down. direction that sounds way more fun than it is. Oh, you're just going to tell me it's something like to do with pot plants or something now, aren't you? It's even more fun. It is the celebration of the grain oven. Fuck it. You imagine she missed reading that and showing up completely in the nip of the album.

Yeah. Your latex thigh high boots. Yeah. Oh, no. This one's the oven's one. Yeah. The, oh God, you'd be so disappointed. You'd feel such a.

fool. You would. The embarrassment. So the loop of Galia gets linked to St. Valentine sort of purely by the fact it was the day after and it's got a slightly love romantic-y thing in the fact that it was about fertility. Yeah.

And because St. Valentine is kind of in much the same way, like we celebrate it and it's become quite a big deal in the calendar and people need to come up with a reason why and exactly the same way that Romans were trying to come up with the reason why they ran around naked.

And so St. Valentine doesn't refer to a single saint. There's like two main ones and then a couple of extra ones who have had romances developed around them that are invented in the 18th century as well. And basically we're doing the exact same thing. We're making up like origin stories to explain why we do this stuff and why it occurs. And there is a real desire for festivals that are in the Christian,

calendar to somehow have been deliberately supplanting Roman festivals. Like people say the same thing about Christmas that it was deliberately supplanted, like was brought in or invented in order to supplant the saturnalia, rather than just existing by itself as its own thing and people liking to celebrate stuff. Yeah. We do like that. It's quite a trendy thing, isn't it, to say, well, the Christians, they ruined everything. But in this particular case, ruined nude.

men charging around the streets. They did. They did. Although by the sounds of it, they had already stopped being mostly nude by the time the Christians got involved. Although we don't know, it might have been the Christians that stopped them being naked. It might have been. But there's absolutely no link whatsoever between any of the St. Valentine's who are out there and this particular custom, nothing. No. The only link is that one of the St. Valentine's was from Rome and, like, think he is a saint because he, like, ministered to martyrs. So if he lived in Rome, he almost certainly saw a leopacalia.

And that will have to do us, I think. That's what we've got. That's what he might have seen a goat as well at some point. Yeah, exactly. You know, oh, I don't know if that's disappointing or not. I suppose it's just a thing that happened, isn't it? Do you know there's any chance of was bringing the lupecalia back? I'd be surprised, largely because people are very against sacrificing goats and dogs these days.

And I think if you try to be like... It would be the puppies, you know. It would be the puppies, you know. Yeah. Yes, you're right. You're right. They wouldn't like that at all. We'd have to have like vegan leather.

Yeah. And I'd struggle to connect it vegan like leather to fertility to be honest. So it's dead and gone. Oh, well. RIP. RIP. But it must have been very, very popular in its time for us to still be talking about it and still be wondering about it after this very day.

I feel like it was probably like a carnival or something like that. Like it's a day where everybody gets a day off work. Everybody gets to run around. It's hysterical. Probably everybody's quite drunk. They get to have a big meal. It's like it's a fun day out for... It's a Sunday out.

Yeah. For a Roman. You have been brilliant to talk to yet again. You always are. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? They can find me at emasothern.com. Or they can find me at Emma Southeron on Instagram. or they can find me on my podcast.

The History is Sexy where we are recording an episode on the Marquis de Sard tomorrow, so very sexy. No. If anybody knew anything about whipping anyone with a bit of a goat, it was him. Yeah, quite joylessly, I have to say, having read later this. Oh, thank you so much for coming on. You've been marvellous. A pleasure as always. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Emma for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like. review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject or maybe you wanted to send us a Valentine's Day card, we don't need any goat hides, thank you very much, but you could email it to us at betwixt at history hit.com. Coming up, we've got episodes on everything from the history of fat phobia to Michael Angela's

sex life all come in your way. This podcast was produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets for History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.