Dan Snow's History Hit - Murder in the Roman World

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

The Ancient Romans are often thought of as ahead of their time. They invented concrete, sophisticated road systems and even underfloor heating.But their approach to murder is starkly different to how the modern world recognises it, and frankly, it’s a bit weird. These people saw 26 emperors murdered in one 50-year period and would watch people being killed for entertainment in the Colosseum.Today Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Emma Southon to talk about murder in Ancient Rome.You can find out more about Emma's book here.WARNING: There is adult content and explicit words in this episode.Senior producer: Charlotte Long. Producer: Sophie Gee. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.

Hello my lovely Bitwixters! It's me, Kate Lister. I am here to save you from yourselves, to save you from me, and to save you from this podcast. Because this is your fair dues warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way about a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And now, if you continue listening to this totally unsuitable filth that's going to come your way, and you get offended or upset, then you really can't be mad at anyone but yourself, because fair dues, you were warned. Actually, this one might get a bit spicy today, because we're talking about murder. Murder in ancient Rome. I can't dress that up for you at all. It might well be triggering. If it's not triggering, perhaps that's another conversation you need to have, maybe with a professional of

some sort. So you will be triggered a bit today, but it's completely up to you to decide if you want to listen to this one or not. And if you are still with me, then I am ready to do this if you are. me, then I am ready to do this if you are. What is your idea of a good night out, Betwixters? Do you go to the cinema? Do you go, oh, maybe you go to the theatre, the theatre, or perhaps you're a gig fanatic, like going to a gig, or maybe, just maybe, your idea of a wild weekend is staying in with a thousand piece jigsaw and a bottle of wine. That's not just me. I know that that's not just me. But if you lived in ancient Rome, then you may have considered going to the Colosseum to watch a reenactment of a classical myth. A show that would include triumph and tragedy and some death, except it's real death, proper death, actual death. Yes, the Romans would put the people

in these reenactments to death, but the Romans are nothing if not extra. And if you happen to be wondering, nope, that wasn't illegal, that wasn't illegal at all. It wasn't done on the sly, it wasn't specialist tickets. That was just open for anyone. Take the kids, take the family. Weird. Today, but twixt the sheets, we are going to hear all about ancient Rome's darkly fascinating

history and how ordinary people viewed homicide at the time. They clearly had very different attitudes to our own. I mean, this is a group of people who saw 26 emperors murdered in the space of 50 years. We were shocked when we had three prime ministers in one year. And if you did commit murder, were there any kind of laws or ramifications or was it perfectly all right to do away with the neighbour next door who's been playing music too loud? Laurel reefs at the ready, Betwixters. Let's find out. What do you look for in 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 a knob and pushing the button. E.R.A.! Now! E.R.A.! Now! turning it up and pushing it down. What's up ERA? What's up now? What's up ERA? What's up now? Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful times. Goodness has nothing to do with it, does it? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society, with me, Kate Lister. The ancient Romans are thought of as a rather civilised bunch ahead of their time. They invented all manner of very cool things, including concrete, which I didn't believe when I first read that, but that is true concrete. They also invented sophisticated road systems, a calendar that our own modern calendar is based on, and

underfloor heating. They were a clever bunch, but they were also an incredibly violent bunch, and their approach to murder and torture is starkly different to how those things are viewed in the modern world, and frankly, it's odd. And if I'm saying something's odd on this podcast it is really odd. Today we are going to hear all about the oddness with our fabulous guest Emma Southern. Emma's been on the podcast before to tell us all about Agrippina, Rome's most powerful slash evil empress. But today we are discussing murder and violence in ancient Rome and how it affected politics and society. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Emma Southern. How are you?

Thank you so much for having me back. I'm good, thank you. I'm excited to be here. I could not have you back. Talking to you about Agripp much for having me back. I'm good, thank you. I'm excited to be here. I could not have you back. Talking to you about Agrippina was just absolutely fascinating. I could have just kept going and going. If you think that one was horrible, though, this one is. You might need to lie down. Well, this is the thing, isn't it? Because your two primary areas of expertise, Agrippina being a massive evil,

possibly having sex with a son, but definitely doing some weird murdery shit behind the scenes. And then murder. Murder in ancient Rome, which is a horrible and fascinating subject simultaneously. It is. It is horrible, but it is such an interesting way of seeing cultural quirks that you take for granted otherwise.

Like when you're listening to stories about stuff. The reason I did it was because somebody told me that they use true crime stories as a way to look at cultural norms in the past. She's a high school teacher in America, so she uses it as a way to get her students interested in history. school teacher in America. So she uses it as a way to get her students interested in history. So you can look at Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, and you can look at how institutionalized homophobia allowed him to keep going for such a long time, and then connect that to the AIDS crisis and to wider issues in 80s and 90s USA. Or you can look at H.H. Holmes and then look at the expansion of cities in the Midwest. That's very clever. I might do that. Yeah. I was talking to her about this and I thought, God, that's brilliant. I bet someone's

done a really good one about Rome and nobody had. So I was like, well, now I need to know what murders can you look at that were being written about? What causes a splash? What kind of murder can you get away with in the ancient world? How do they even understand what murder is? Because they have, obviously, gladiatorial games and public execution. So how do they even conceptualize it? And yeah, it turns out that they are very laissez-faire about the

whole situation. There's one thing that you say about the Romans is they do have a reputation for being quite violent people. I mean, the emperors never lasted very long. They were all being bumped off. Like you said, the gladiatory fight to the death, public executions. They are known for being quite slap happy, aren't they? And quite a violent bunch of people. civilisation, the greatest guys that ever lived, the inheritors of the divine right to rule the world because they are so perfect. But when you start to drill down past that a little bit, you realise that the way that they present themselves as being incredibly violent is actually the tip of the iceberg because they are very okay with levels of everyday violence within the home and in public spaces, which would be kind of horrifying to live through. So for example, crucifixions in films and in

modern sources are always shown as being out of town, which they are because they're outside of the city walls, but outside of the city walls is not out of town. It's still a place where people are going in and out constantly. And they specifically talk about how they would hold crucifixions in the busiest places. In the places where people, at crossroads, for example, where people are coming in from two or three roads and where people are likely to see it a lot they specifically put them in the most public places so that people will understand what happens when you cross the romans like if you do something that upsets the roman state then you are going to be nailed to a cross in public and executions are done in the middle of the day in games so that there's a large amount of people seeing them.

And there's just this kind of baseline level of very public, very deliberate killing, which would be nightly news if something happened here. Crucifying people at Crossroads, that's like the modern equivalent of crucifying people up the length of the M6, isn't it? Yeah. That is very public. Crucifixion, despite what Monty Python said, it's a doddle, was actually one of the worst ways to die. So people would have been screaming and moaning, and it's just awful. Went down a horrible rabbit hole with crucifixion. So I was like, how do you die when you get crucified? All right, well, you better share it then.

So they wouldn't be screaming? They wouldn't be screaming because what happens is you've got your arms pulled up behind you and all of your weight is on either being pushed up on your ankles, which are nailed. And so you're pushing up on a wound or you have to dangle off of your wrists, which are also nailed. And so the way that most people probably died is actually suffocation because they would not be able to get the lift to be able to get air into their lungs. I've just clocked on to what you said then for a second.

You said that executions were part of games. If you're being executed, how can you take part? What is that? Is that like the gladiatorial? Because that's not a game, is it? Like, what is that? It's not. No, so gladiatorial games are a completely separate thing.

You can be sentenced to being a gladiator, and most of them are enslaved. But the joy of gladiatorial game is actually more similar to the joy of boxing or fencing. It's about watching two highly trained people hit each other in a skilled manner. And then sometimes one of them dies, but that's a really big deal when one of them dies. Whereas executions, you know that someone is going to die. And they started off being kind of boring, but they quickly, as soon as beasts became a part of games being mauled to death by beasts or being eaten or something along those lines became a fun way for people to watch somebody die or at least because we have quite a lot of christian descriptions of going into the

arena and a lot of mosaics people would make mosaics of people being executed and then put them in their dining rooms and really detailed ones and so basically you weren't really expected to die from that bit but you were expected to be mauled horribly and everybody would cheer but then once you've seen one person be mauled by a bear or set fire you've kind of seen it so then they started been there done that yeah exactly and then no one's going to stick around and see it. They'll nip out in between the beast hunts and the gladiatorial games. So they started introducing narrative

and narrative tension to the executions. And the first one that we know of comes from the first century C, where the time of Julius Caesar is when this kind of stuff really ticks up. So he introduces mock battles where the battles are not between two lots of people who are trying to survive, but they're all going to die. And so he recreates ancient battles. And then the first proper execution that we know of is a guy who was a bandit somewhere around Mount Etna,

who is brought to Rome because he's robbed so many people. And they put him on a wooden mountain underneath of which there are leopards. And the mountain is rickety. And every time he moves, it wiggles. And the audience is watching, knowing that at some point it's going to collapse and he is going to be launched into this cage of waiting beasts and the thrill comes from when is it going to happen it's sadistically creative like what kind of madman comes up with that i mean that's just the beginning and once they've introduced that then it becomes like an arms race of who could do the coolest execution. And the kind of pinnacle of this is the opening of the Colosseum, which is 100 days of games and celebrations and beast hunts and all kinds of things. And all of these executions, which are where they put on basically plays of retelling classical myth.

But where the person in the classical myth would die or where they would go into the underworld, they are literally killed. So there's the story of Daedalus and Icarus, where they build the wings and they're going to escape and da-da-da-da, but then they are literally trebucheted across the arena. The Colosseum opens in like 70-something AD. That is the point that they had got to where they had so badly lost their ability to empathise with people that they had decided were not worthy of life, that this was an entertainment that they could go

to. Is there any chance that that's still spoken about today and we remember it because it was horrifying? Because at the time people were going, we might have gone a bit far with this. No, we know about this because of a poem that was written in celebration. There we go. Right. Okay. And literally the poem ends like, this is so amazing that you brought classical myth to life.

Jesus F. So it's not any sense of like it's a series of poems written about the celebration and yeah and marshall who writes them is genuinely amazed and astonished at how exciting this is basically and they have this real ability as soon as someone is condemned or enslaved or is set outside of the category of person basically and person is entirely to do with status you're just unkillable or unmurderable you can be killed but it cannot be a crime and it can actually be brilliant that it happens i can't get my head around this do we have any sense that the poor sods who were condemned to do this were they forced to act in this so like if you're taking something like the icarus

thing where they're trebuchet across the coliseum there would have been like actors playing the other parts presumably so would there have been rehearsals that these poor bastards had to attend quite possibly i don't know whether they would be forced to attend or whether they were just shoved out. Everything we know about their experience and what it is to be a Roman prisoner or a condemned person comes from the Christians who, once they started persecuting Christians, they will get to the arena

and then they will find that they're being put into an outfit before they're being shoved out. So quite possibly it was just a surprise that they turned up and found that they were not going to die normally. And they've spent a couple of weeks in prison waiting for this day, but they're not going to die easily. They're not going to be set on fire. They're not going to be mauled a bit by a bear and then stabbed. They're going to be part of this horrific event. We've got a fabulous musical number coming up.

Yeah. And then next we've got a fabulous musical number coming up. Yeah. And then next we've got these elephants that we've trained to kneel. Oh, God, they're vicious. They are. What were the crimes that these people were being sentenced for? What had they done? Was murder illegal?

Were these people being trebucheted across the Coliseum guilty of murder? What crimes are going on? Possibly. Murder is illegal in certain circumstances. That doesn't sound good. So one of the weird things about the Roman world is that it is, we always often refer to a Roman state, but there really isn't one. And they have no particular interest in controlling violence. And so they consider that to be a personal matter essentially really yeah and so they don't have anything that could really be described as an official murder law until 81 bce when a dictator brings one in and it is very very specific and says you can't bribe a jury to have someone sentenced to death.

You can't carry a knife with the intent of killing someone. You can't poison people and you can't use magic to do a murder. But that leaves open quite a lot of ways. There's a lot of wiggle room there. Yeah, but there's something in the very, very earliest laws, which is like, can you try not to specifically kill people and mean it? But that is lost by the time you get to the historical period. And they don't have any police or prosecution service. I was going to ask about police. by Augustus at the end of the Republic. So for the whole of the Republic period, nothing really. Then you have these watchmen whose job really is to go around and break up fights and turn up when there is disruption and put out fires and that kind of thing. But they don't have any investigation.

There's no sense of them getting involved and dealing with problems. And they're not going to turn up and take a statement and then file it away everything to do with crime is a private matter so if i get murdered then it would be my husband's job to find out who did it to go down and find a lawyer pay that guy to get all the evidence and give it to him he would then write speech we would then be able to try to get this guy into a court where we would both make our case, which is largely based on moral character and who does the best speech. And then the jury will vote on which one. But if I don't have the time, the resources, doesn't have the money, can't find out who did it, or if I'm killed by somebody who's more powerful,

then there's nothing really that he can do. But if somebody is there for murder, then they're there because the family was able to identify them and make a good enough argument and pay somebody to get it done in the courts. I'll be back with Emma after this short break. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to

Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So murder wasn't illegal. Like, you could bump somebody off, and then unless that other person's family could do something, and presumably they could then just murder your family, and then it could just go on and on and on forever. But there was no infrastructure to say, don't do this. There was no sense of it being illegal. You could just kill people. Kind this. There was no sense of it being illegal. You could just

kill people. Kind of. It was not encouraged. And if you were brought to court and you said, you know, this guy went around and stabbed loads of people or he stabbed my wife, then they would go, okay, yeah, he carried a knife with intent to stab and therefore he would be found guilty of murder. But there is no state structure of any kind to enforce that and it is entirely down to the relatives and you get in tombstones and in people's epigraphs you get where people have no recourse or where they don't know who did it like you get bandits and stuff and street robbery is pretty common so there's one for like a little girl who's 10 and is robbed for her necklace

and dies as a result of the attack. They have no idea who did this. So her parents just have to put up on her tombstone and say she was murdered by strangers. And if that group of bandits gets bad enough, then the army might put someone together to go after them. Like the guy who's executed from Aetna because he's doing so much that it's become a social problem but most murder is not that most

murder is interpersonal most murder is somebody that you know most murder is done in the spur of the moment and 90% of the time there was not a lot that people could do about it unless the person was very high status. It just sounds so weird. How did they keep law and order? Did they keep law and order, or was it just absolute insanity and bedlam? Because they do like to think of themselves as being quite civilized and rational and sensible people, the odd Colosseum trebuchet aside. But it must have just been mayhem if there's just nothing that anybody can do. What you have instead is social pressure. Like really try very hard not to do it. Yeah. And you will be shunned. Like no one's going to

invite you to their dinner party if you did murder your wife. And that sounds ridiculous, but when social life is everything and everything in the roman world is based on connection and personal connection so if you get a reputation as being a guy who murders wives or who kills his friends then you are going to be not included that's fair and you are gonna have your family saying can you not basically because your reputation is then going to spread to them. And one of the interesting things about this is that it really highlights how important the family is to Roman life and how much that keeps everything stable and how they're able to go through life

with most people outside of the imperial family not being murdered, which is that if I do kill my husband, then his family are going to come to my family and there's going to be a series of meetings about it. It's a question as to how much it's enacted, but they do have the power to execute within the family. So if I'm a real problem, then technically my dad or my guardian has the right and the power to have me executed and to get rid of me okay hold a kind of internal family court and say she's behind rehabilitation and to punish me which is why we don't know about a lot of female murderers or a lot of female victims i was just gonna ask you that yeah domestic violence

was that a concept in ancient Rome? It is a concept. It has to escalate very badly. And the only time that we really see it is when it occurs at the very highest, highest level. It's not brilliant, obviously. A woman died. But there is a brilliant story about the time that the Emperor Tiberius decided to go a bit Poirot on a situation, which is the one and only time in the whole of Roman history that an emperor investigated a murder, which is a woman called Apronia, who is a very high ranking, very rich, very well-connected woman who falls out of a window and is found the next morning dead on the ground outside of her house. And her husband claims that he was

asleep and he doesn't know what happened. And she must have just been stumbling around in the dark and fell out of her window, which is probably about as far as it would have gone. But her dad is one of the emperor's closest friends. And he goes to the emperor and says, look, that guy is lying. And I could take him to court, but I'm furious and I don't like him and I want you to do something about it. And Tiberius is obviously bored to that day or didn't have a lot of meetings. So he goes around to Sylvanus's house and goes to look at the bedroom that she fell out of and finds that everyone was so blasé about the fact that it had happened that nobody had tidied up. And he finds, he says, evidence of force employed, curtains ripped off walls and beds turned over. And he finds a mess that has occurred from a fight, which has resulted in the woman being pushed out of the window.

And because of this, he then allows Sylvanus to bring a court case against him. And he is found guilty and exiled and as a fun coder sylvanas's friends are like he would never do this he's a great guy you're ruining his life for nothing and they blame his ex-wife his first wife and say that she cursed him with magic that's pretty rich right so that bit's bonkers that it was magic but i was really struck there when he said that they hadn't even bothered to tidy up yeah that suggests a minimal effort at concealing any of this it never even occurred to him that he wouldn't be believed or that you should try and convince anyone of this yeah he thought at worst her dad might bring a

case but then it's going to come down to he said, she said situation and I can afford good lawyers and I'll take my chances. He never even occurred to him that somebody would come around and look at the crime scene or that anybody would try to gather evidence because it just is not something that really ever happens again. And that is one of two high-profile domestic violence situations that we know about. And the other one got off. This is an interesting one to me because his name is Herod Agrippa, and he is the guy who built the really good still existing theatre that's on the side of the Acropolis, which he built in memory of his wife, Regina,

who he had one of his freedmen beat to death while she was eight months pregnant. Oh, what a shit. Okay, so he got off with that. He got off with that because he is taken to court in Rome by his wife's brother. And basically, Herod is a trained rhetorician and is very good at public speaking. And his wife's brother basically gives a speech which is just listing his famous relatives and gives such a bad speech that he loses. Even though Herod doesn't really deny that she was beaten to death, and he kind of denies

that he gave the order for it, but not really. He just makes a load of jokes at the brother's expense and then gives a better speech, essentially. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, we enjoyed that one more. And so he gets off and he builds this big thing in her name and then goes off to spend the rest of his life being horrible elsewhere. Cheers, mate. Yeah, brilliant.

Brilliant. Got 30 named after you. He once punched an emperor as well, which is pretty funny. What a dick. I don't know. Unless it was a horrible emperor. It was a good emperor. It was a nice emperor. Oh, which is pretty funny what a dick unless it was a horrible emperor it was a good emperor it was a nice emperor oh well then what a dick so like the rates of femicide and domestic murder must have just been off the sodding charts if people are just oh fell out of a window whoops a daisy yeah i absolutely did beat her to death but i've got

a good knock knock joke for you and then that was that it must have been like if you only know of two murder cases of women that's crazy isn't it yeah there's a few more which you can get from epigraphy where people have put on their tombstones like this woman was murdered by her husband but that's possibly the only justice that they ever got was naming him as a murderer. But yeah, anything that happened to women, it happens within a sphere which is not written about. All poetry and history and all of the written sources and even the letter collections and all the ones that seem really personal are about politics and are about high-level politicians. If something does not impinge upon high-level politics, it doesn't get written about and it certainly didn't survive. All of this happens

within a sphere that does not get written down and does not get preserved in any way. It could well be that being a woman in the ancient Roman world was horrifically dangerous and getting married is the most terrifying thing you can possibly do because there is no way to know. There's nothing is there? There's no recast. There's no way of knowing if it even happened. Yeah. Tell me about slaves because it just popped in my head there. This is obviously a society that's built on slavery. I think I know what the answer to this one is going to be. Could you murder a slave? You can't murder a slave. Slaves aren't people. And the way that they talk about enslaved people is horrific. There is this law which sometimes gets called the murder law because

it talks a lot about basically a thing that Roman jurists really like to do is kind of make up hypotheticals and then work out if this happened, who would be liable, like law essay questions. And we have loads of them attached to this law because it is a property damage law. But property damage includes beasts with four legs and enslaved people. So in amongst all of these questions about if you knocked over a vase, but you didn't mean to knock over a vase, do you have to pay for the vase? And if I accidentally run over your cow with my chariot, then how much do I have to pay? Is all of this stuff about if I beat somebody else's slave to death, who's liable? If I overburden a slave, if I have an enslaved person and I need them to carry something and

I give them too much and they collapse and they die as a result, then... groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Who is liable for that? Is it their fault? Is is it my fault is it the owner's fault there's an astonishing one which is like if two people are playing her paystone which is the kind of ball game and they are next to a barber who is shaving a slave and the ball hits the barber and then the barber accidentally cuts the throat of the slave, who is liable to pay for the loss of that property? And they all involve a person dying horribly, but the question is not

who did a murder, but who is liable to pay for the loss of the slave owner's property? And there's a famous case which Cicero prosecuted with two guys who bought a guy together. They purchased an enslaved person and then they both paid for him to be trained as an actor with the plan being that they would then hire him out to plays and they would make money off of him, which is a whole world of nightmares. But one of them lost his temper and killed the enslaved guy. And he then refused to pay what the other guy considered to be his full value. So he said, we spend 100 to 30 on this guy, I'll give you 50. And the other guy was saying no, because we spent another 250 making him valuable as an actor. And now if I was to sell him the day before you murdered him, then he would have been

worth 500 sesterces. So you have to pay me 500 sesterces. And this gets so acrimonious, it goes to court. And Cicero is saying, is on the side of the guy who didn't kill him. And he says, quite literally, no one cares about this slave's body. He's interchangeable with every other guy. His body is worthless. What's worth something is his skill as an actor. And therefore you have to pay for his skill. And he wins because he's Cicero. But they just don't see them as people. As soon as you're an enslaved person, you become effectively dead in their eyes already. You have

as much worth as a particularly nice table. And even when you get to the Christian period and you get to Constantine, Constantine is the first person who introduces this law that says you can't kill your slaves. So that's 317, I think. Up until that point, you can do whatever. And he goes through all of the ways in which you are no longer allowed to kill people that you own that starts with beating and it's like you can't push them off a cliff you can't hang them you can't crucify them you can't burn them you can't drown them and you're like are you doing this to people like jesus must have been doing in order for there to be a law it's like right guys you can't do this anymore. Someone must have been doing that.

One of the things in the book that I get the most messages about is a guy called Vettius Polo, who is a friend of Augustus's. And one day he invites Augustus around for dinner. And one of his waiters, enslaved attendants, drops a crystal bowl. And for this terrible crime, Polio says, okay, off with your head, basically. Like, you're done. I'm going to execute you. And the guy falls to his knees to Augustus and is like, please don't let him kill me. Please don't let him kill me.

He's going to throw me to the lampreys. And it is revealed that Vettius has a pool full of sea lampreys, which are horrific nightmare creatures. Like, they're older than dinosaurs. They're basically a big eel with no face and just one big mouth that is spirals of teeth. And what they do is they sucker onto the side of big fish and whales and then horribly rasp off the flesh, basically. And what he was doing was putting slaves who annoyed him for dropping a bowl into this tank and then letting the lampreys feed off of them.

Then what happened to the lampreys? And then the lampreys just live in his house. And that's how he keeps them fed. He feeds them people. Fucking hell. Jesus. Yeah. And this is kind of a line for the Romans

because this gets repeated a lot As like a God that guy This is the boundary This is a bit too far But it is basically seen as A personality flaw Rather than something that means

That you don't invite him to dinner Or something that means That you put him in prison Forever and ever and ever But it's basically treated as like Having a gambling addiction Or something like god he's a great guy apart from the bit where he does horrific horrific killings regularly

my god one thing that i wanted to know is like obviously true crime now is a huge genre and there's a lot of debates to be had around like why do we do this why are we so fascinated with it and the morality of it. And I say this as somebody who loves a true crime documentary or podcast and often questioned what the hell I'm doing, like, to relax. Why am I watching this stuff? But was this a thing in ancient Rome? Obviously, they didn't have Roman YouTube, effectively.

But was there ever any murder cases that everyone got really excited about or interested in? I mean, apart from the obvious, oh, the emperor's been done in again. Is there any Roman equivalent of the making of a murderer or anything like that? Any famous murder cases? Not unsolved ones. The big ones that get lots of attention are ones which are between two really famous guys, like where one really famous guy was believed to have murdered the other really famous guy.

And then you get a big court case. What gets attention is a big court case between famous people. There might be a whole lost genre of writing because we know they had newspapers and gazettes that were passed out that had news in them. But none of them survive obviously so there may well have been this popular theme of cool and interesting crimes like the fact that this guy from etna which is sicily is famous enough in rome that his execution is a big draw suggests that

there is news which is like this guy struck again in Sicily was that the bandit guy yeah exactly so he's going around with a gang he's robbing people and that's far enough away that if there is news coming into Rome then it's interesting and scandalous that that is being passed through so So there may well have been popular talk, much in the way you get like penny dreadfuls and stuff that would tell people lurid stuff about crimes, but they're not something that people save. They're not things that get copied out in monasteries and they're not things that get inscribed on stone. And those are the only two things which survive, unfortunately. What would happen? Another question that's just popped into my head.

So it's really difficult to prove a murder unless you've got loads of money and a good lawyer and some excellent jokes in your back pocket, apparently. It's quite difficult to do it. What would happen if a slave killed their master? Was there recourse for that or did everyone kind of go, meh? Oh no, that is the worst possible thing that can happen. They have a very easy way around this, which is that if a slave kills their master, they don't need to prove that any one of them did it because they just execute everybody in the household. That's Roman justice right there.

So there is a really big scandal which occurs during the reign of Nero, where a guy called Secundus is killed by one of his slaves. And he is a very, very rich guy. And he has in his household 400 enslaved people, including women and children. And then there's another unknown number of people who used to be enslaved, who he had freed, but who they just stay living there. And the law was that if a slave kills their master, everyone in the household dies. And even the Romans or the Roman people were kind of upset

at the idea of 400 people being killed for the crime of one. And they're crucified. So this is going to be 400 people nailed up on a crossroad somewhere nearby. And the first time that the Praetorian Guard tried to enact this, there's a riot and they pelt them with stones and they're unable to do it because the people of Rome are so upset about the situation. So the Senate have a meeting about it and they sit down and they go, is this the right thing to do? And they explicitly say, this is the right thing to do. And the poor people don't

understand because they are not surrounded by enslaved people. And you and I, rich guys, we're going to have to go home every day to our 500 enslaved people that live in our house and the guys that put on our shoes and the guys that brush our hair and the guys that wash us and the guys that feed us and do everything for us. And we're going to have to know that they would realize that they could kill us and only they would die and their children might be safe. And that is not a good enough deterrent because they might be willing to kill themselves to kill you. And it's much more important that we, as the richest guys in Rome, feel safe in our beds. And we know that we are protected by this deterrent than it is to keep these 400 people alive. And if anything, it's very, very important

that we kill these people so that all of the enslaved people in the whole of the empire know that we are serious about this and know that if they step out of line, then everyone they know will die. And so they do. They bring in the army and the army surrounds the executioners and 400 people. They insist upon doing the children. That's questioned. Like, should we not crucify children? No.

Really important that this is horrible. And then the only exception they will make is that the freedmen are not included. So if you're free then you are allowed to stay but every single person is executed and there's 400 people are killed and there is this real separation between what the people who do not have houses full of slaves feel about the situation and who are able to identify that this is a horrific thing that is occurring and the very elite of the empire who see themselves as being significantly more special and important than everyone else

and their sense of safety is considered to be significantly more important than 400 lives. And this is why it's very important to join a union, I think. Yeah. If you could have got here, I wouldn't reckon. Join a union and get out on the pickets. Emma, you've been incredible and horrifying to talk to. Yeah.

I will look at my employers in different ways now. If you were allowed to execute 400 of us, would you? I wonder. Oh, if people want to know more about you and your research, and they should, where can they find you? They can find me at emmasouthern.com

and links to all the socials and things there. And my book about murder in Rome is called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. You've been so much fun and horrific to talk to at the same time. Thank you for joining me again at Betwixt the Sheets. A pleasure as always.

And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Don't be getting any ideas, Betwixters. When I said, if you like what you heard, I really meant the witty banter, not the idea of murder. So you just behave yourself. But if you happen to have any episode ideas or a subject that you want us to look into, you can now email us. Oh, yes, you can. And you can get us at betwixt at historyhit.com. can and you can get us at betwixt at historyhit.com we have got episodes on molly houses and the notorious giggling granny serial killer all coming your way join me again betwixt the sheets the history of sex scandal in society a podcast by history hit this podcast includes music by epidemic

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