The Ancients - The Truth About the Roman Orgy (And More!)

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

Was Ancient Rome truly as sexually liberated as we think? How did the Greeks feel about nude statues? And how did these ideas vary across the Ancient Mediterranean? In this episode, Alastair Blanshard is back on The Ancients to compare our misconceptions of ancient sexual fantasies with the truth. Having taught at the universities of Oxford and Reading, Alastair is currently Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, Australia.His book on this topic is ‘Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity’.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, where you know the saying, give the people what they want.

And you guys and girls, you went absolutely mad for a podcast that we released not too long ago, all about sex in ancient Rome. And if a record ain't broke, there's no need to fix it. So in today's podcast, we're going to go even further. We're going to be talking about sexual fantasies from the ancient Mediterranean world. And I'm delighted to say that for this topic, we got on the podcast a professor. He's considered very much a legend. He was the first guest that we ever had on the Ancients podcast for the Plague of Athens. This is Professor Alistair Blanchard

from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. And in this episode, we're not going to hold back. We're going to be looking at nudity on Greco-Roman statues and whether there was a sexual aspect to it and the reception of these naked statues down through history. We're going to be delving into the truth about the Roman orgy, we're going to be looking more at fallacies and we're going to be looking at the sex lives of Roman emperors. Suffice to say that adult themes do feature in this podcast, you have been warned. Suffice to say that adult themes do feature in this podcast, you have been warned. So without further ado, to talk about sexual fantasies of antiquity, here's Alistair.

Alistair, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. It's great to be back. Thank you for the invite. You're very welcome indeed. I mean, I've just read your book. It's a very interesting book because the topic, first of all, sexual fantasies from the ancient world, because Alistair seemed to be sexual fantasies that claim to have their origins in the classical world. And these have long impacted Western culture. Yes, absolutely. I should say that it's the only book I've written that my parents don't have out on their bookshelf. Every other book that I've written, they're very happy to show off, but Sex, Vice and Love somehow just never seems to make it onto the bookshelf.

But in some ways, I mean, I think it's one of the most interesting books I wrote because of the huge impact that the Greeks and Romans have had on our sexual fantasies, on how we've imagined erotica, what constitutes the erotic. All of these things have been defined by the Greeks and Romans. And this is a story that we don't often tell. We're very happy to tell the story about the impact the Greeks and Romans on philosophy, mathematics, drama. But actually, when it comes to the kind of sex lives and our kind of erotic imaginations. We have been reluctant to tell it, and yet it's a story that is just so important and has had such an extraordinary impact on how we see the body and how we interact with each other. The legacy of it is really extraordinary,

Alistair. I mean, is it fair to say, to really kick it off, that if we focus on Rome in particular, this civilisation has become secured as this locus of the West's sexual fantasies. Yes, and it has been for a long time. I think that's the really important thing is that our imaginings about the Greeks and the Romans, but particularly the Romans, has been going on for a very long tradition. And the reason for that is to do with the fact that they've been a very convenient whipping boy, right? So that particularly, for example, for the early church, when they're trying to define themselves against what's come before,

trying to carve out a space for a new way of thinking, a new kind of morality, they were very invested in portraying the previous age as one of total sexual abandonment, total kind of degeneracy and amorality. And so that story about Rome proved to be very popular and served various kind of political theological purposes. Now, what's interesting, of course, is that it became such a good story that, of course, people became attracted to it. So you had this kind of rather strange pincer movement whereby early Christian moralists are saying Rome, that whorish place, the center of sexual depravity. And then you had all, of course, all these sexual libertines who were keen to embrace that thinking, yes, the fantasy of Rome,

bring it on, bring on more of it. So both kind of moral degenerates and people who are morally upright were combined in their belief that Rome was where it was happening and that it was a place of extraordinary kind of sexual profligacy. And so for that reason, the idea of Rome as this kind of sexual place of liberation really took off. And in a sense, it was assisted because so much of our ancient literature also talks about sex. And particularly in the Roman context, that discussion to talk about sex, particularly the degenerate sex lives of emperors, for example, comes from a very particular kind of politics and very particular kind of place. Because in the ancient world, and particularly in ancient Rome, knowing the sex lives of an emperor spoke to your kind of

intimacy with the royal court. and in a world in which the emperor is at the center of everything being able to say you know what kind of boys nero likes being able to gossip about the empresses is a way of showing your intimacy with those in power so all our texts are keen to promote these kind of sexual stories because they give the author a sense of power and importance and play up their significance. So that's why you get all these sexual anecdotes. And of course, as I say, there are people who come along later, and this is precisely the kind of material that they're keen to play upon and repeat. So again, this kind of very interesting dynamic that's set

up by, as it were, ancient politics being then reworked into a kind of new environment. I mean, yes, Alistair, for fantasies, you do need this foundation. And it sounds like this is the foundation which they were hearkening back to for these, let's say, for instance, these early Christian writers to create this, can we almost say, sexual fake news? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, there's possibly no greater example of fake news than, of course, the Roman orgy. This is the thing we apparently all know about ancient Rome, that they indulge in orgies. And yet, in fact, actually, the evidence for a Roman orgy is really slight.

You know, the number of orgies that Rome ever had was very small. I mean, for all sorts of reasons, not least which because, in fact, actually, the sort of case of public sex and intertwining of bodies is not something that the Romans particularly enjoy. They don't particularly enjoy the kind of swinging nature of the orgy. So, you know, if we look at, for example, stories about Roman emperors, you can find Roman emperors going to dinner parties, fancying a senator's wife. But they don't, as it were, immediately indulge in intercourse there at the party. They take them away and then come back later. So this idea of the sort of profligate, hedonistic, anything goes swinging kind of orgy, which is so much kind of standard fodder of our sexual imaginations, never happened. Never happened. We will come back to the Roman

orgy and the Roman emperors in due course, Alair i can promise you that but as we have a look at some of these case studies as we really delve into this topic now the first area i'd like to talk about is actually going a bit further back from the romans with looking at the greeks as well because looking at the naked statue in antiquity because when you do think ancient greece ancient rome nowadays you say you think of the fluted columns, the architecture, but naked statues, those are also right up there at the top. Yes, and it's one of the really distinctive features of particularly Greek culture and then later adopted by the Romans. And it distinguishes them from other Mediterranean cultures. So, for example, if you look at early Egyptian statuary and early Greek statuary, very similar looking statues, same kind of pose, same kind of body shape.

What distinguishes them is that the Egyptian statue will always be clothed and more often than not, the Greek statue will be naked. And the Greeks themselves were aware that this was a cultural marker that distinguished them from other Mediterranean peoples. And they invented all sorts of stories to explain it. The idea was that one day there was a famous runner and his clothes fell off and he realized he ran better that way. And then everyone started running naked and performing athletics naked. Sometimes they explain it in terms of, well, it was a sign of how peace-loving we were, that no one was wearing any weapons. And the absence of clothes indicated that no one was armed. So the Greeks have various explanations for it. None of them seem to be particularly plausible. But it is a kind of marker that distinguishes them from other Mediterranean peoples, particularly the Romans

initially. So the Romans are a clothed people. They don't feel particularly comfortable naked, certainly initially. And indeed, the absence of clothes is for them a sign of poverty. It's a sign of suffering. It's a sign of humiliation as well. So the associations of nudity in Roman culture versus Greek culture are very different, whereas for the Greeks, nudity is all about health and athletics and a sign of high status. For Romans, initially at least, the absence of clothing is a sign of low status and humiliation. That all changes, of course, once the Romans conquer the Greeks. And suddenly Romans are out encountering this culture, which is obsessed by

the naked body, which values the naked body. And rather worryingly for the Romans, the Greeks start erecting honorific statues in honor of their Roman conquerors, and they're depicting them naked. And of course, this is a terribly awkward moment if you're an upright Roman and suddenly the Greeks are suddenly erecting naked statues of you. But this is part of the kind of cultural interaction that happens as a result of the expansion of Roman power in the Mediterranean. And just like philosophy, just like rhetoric coming to Rome, so too does nudity. And so within the space of a few decades, we start to see the rise of nudity, public nudity within Rome.

But it's not foretold, it's not 100% that these statues, because we haven't actually even talked about it in your explanation there, that it's an arbitrary choice, therefore, to associate these naked statues with the erotic, with sex. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly, the Greeks were aware that naked statues could exercise a kind of erotic fascination. And that's because, you know, the naked body for them did have erotic connotations. But, you know, the idea was that you were a self-restrained person, so you didn't give in to the erotic desires that a body might do. We do have a lot of stories of people who actually end

up having sex with statues, it must be said, who can't control themselves. But it was always regarded as rather sort of animalistic. So often these anecdotes are prefaced by stories of, well, you'd expect an animal to want to copulate with the statue of an animal, but man should be able to restrain himself. But unfortunately, there are occasionally men who can't, and it's normally men, men who can't restrain themselves and do try and make love to statues. The psychiatric description, in fact, of someone who is erotically attracted to statues is an agalmatophilic. So agalmatophilia is the psychiatric disease of someone who is erotically excited by statues, someone who gets off on having sex with statues.

Yeah, that's definitely an insult to throw at someone at the next party if they're really annoying you, I guess. Or win a game of Scrabble. I've often thought I'd love to win a game of Scrabble with agalmatophilia. I think that would just be fantastic. Absolutely. Watch the next countdown, see if that can turn up. Yes, exactly. fantastic. Absolutely. Watch the next countdown, see if that can turn up. Exactly. I mean, Alistair, and you're kind of touching it there, because from what you're saying, these statues, these naked statues, it's not just always of men in Greco-Roman times. They're also sometimes naked statues of women too. Yes, much fewer. And on the whole, the statues of women, naked women, tend to fall into various types. So Aphrodite, for example, Venus, is depicted naked. But she's

about the only goddess which is regularly depicted naked. Other than that, they tend to be courtesans, prostitutes are naked. And interestingly, Amazons also are the third kind of category of women that are depicted naked. But it's not as common to depict women naked as it is men. So when does it seem to appear, therefore, Alistair, that the naked statue starts to have this increased association with the erotic, with sex in history? Well, look, again, I think it comes down to, for example, the rise of early Christianity. Because with early Christianity, nudity takes a turn towards slightly darker kind of associations. So that if, for example, you think about medieval art, right,

and you think about, well, who's naked in medieval art? Well, naked people in medieval art are normally Christ on the cross or sinners in hell. So nudity, particularly within the early Christian period, is very much associated with kind of suffering and with sin. So that kind of concern is where you start to see the rise of a particular kind of covering the body up again. And how does it evolve from there, Alistair? So what happens then? It's an interesting story. So the medieval period, you know, one sees nudity become, as it were, marked as a sign of suffering and sin. And then, you know, it's the rediscovery of classical sculpture, primarily in Rome, that brings in a whole series of changes.

People are digging up baths, houses, temples, all sorts of things, these excavations in Rome. And they come across these extraordinary naked statues. And this has a profound influence on the artists of the period. And so we start to see them copying the works of the ancients. And so, for example, perhaps one of the earliest nudes is Donatello's David, which again is probably the first naked bronze after antiquity. So we're starting to then see within the Renaissance a reaction to all the classical sculpture that they're doing and a reappraisal of what the naked body might mean. And it's really with the Renaissance that we start to see those erotic connotations start to emerge again in a strong way. But as it seems, as it was in ancient Greek and ancient Roman times,

and, you know, as going on into the Enlightenment and times like that, this association between the naked statue, ancient Greece and Rome, and the erotic, once again, it becomes incredibly, shall we say, complicated. Yes, it does. Because, of course, you know, once, you know, the naked statue becomes a high-prized art object, it becomes sort of vaguely acceptable. And so, again, it's that thing of you look at the statue, you're supposed to admire its anatomy, you're supposed to see it as an object of beauty, but you're not supposed to be erotically attracted to it. So there's this kind of strange game that happens with these statues whereby they're prized, they're supposed to be unerotic, but there's always this kind of erotic potential that can be unleashed. So they almost become like a sort of litmus test of your own morality. You're supposed to be able to look at the statue,

and if you look at the statue and don't feel anything, well, you know that you're a virtuous person. Whereas if you look at the statue and think, oh, actually, that's vaguely attractive, then you should start to worry about the nature of your soul. So it almost sounds like, because it's such a complicated case study to kick off with the whole idea of nudity and the naked statue in Greco-Roman times, Alistair, that as a case study for this sexual fantasisation of the ancient world, particularly the ancient Roman world, for some people, the naked statue is a good case study of this idea of sexual fantasy, but for others, it might not be. Yeah, I think that's right. And people talk about the idea of nudity as costume,

that it might as well be clothes. You're supposed to be unerotic. And again, certain things assist in this. So that, for example, in Greek art, it was never particularly socially acceptable to depict an erection. And so none of the socially acceptable statues would ever depict an erection. And as a result, the eroticism is downplayed. So these sort of small genitals unerect. So the statues themselves are kind of almost chaste. And I think also, again, the fact that the statues come to us often cleaned as white, so they're not painted as they would be. So again, there's that kind of distance of these slightly clinical, perfect, uneroticised bodies. So one can create a kind of distance between them and the erotic.

I mean, is that actually one last thing before we go on to the next case study? One also key point to emphasise is actually when looking at these naked statues and when talking about them from Greco-Roman times is once again to try and imagine them also having been painted. Yes, absolutely. And again, this feeds into why these bodies were attractive. It was because, of course, they were so lifelike. And it's that imitation of life that people find so attractive. And the Greeks and Romans always were aware that there was a kind of latent erotic potential to it. I mean, the most famous story about this is, of course, the story of Pygmalion, who famously carves a statue and

falls in love with it and goes mad trying to wish it to come to life. And eventually, of course, the gods take pity on him and make the statue come to life. And so the story of Pygmalion, I think, plays with the idea of the erotic potential that lives in these statues. I think also the other thing that we should say about being able to look at these statues and not feel any kind of erotic desire also comes because of the way that they're curated, which is to say they were also digging up, in addition to these statues, a lot of quite erotic material. So, for example, the statues themselves may have not had an erection, but of course, you know, they were digging up amulets,

which were giant flying phalluses, wind chimes. Pompeii and Herculaneum was always producing deeply problematic material that you had to hide from visitors to the site. So in fact, actually, one of the earliest curatorial decisions about that material was to, in fact, create this so-called secret museum where material that was deemed too erotic, too distasteful, was kind of put aside and you had to get special permission to go in and have a look at it. So the antiquity that we got was already a kind of very curated, de-eroticised kind of antiquity. Hello, if you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the History Hit Warfare podcast. From the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations

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once they all pointed towards the brothel and stuff like that, is this another idea of a sexual fantasy from the Greco-Roman world? Absolutely. So the idea that you would wander along the streets of Pompeii and you think, well, where is the brothel? And of course, someone would have conveniently put a phallus on the pavement. I mean, that's complete rubbish. What's interesting about it, however, is how early it goes. So we can find that kind of story being circulated even in the 19th century. So we can find that kind of story being circulated even in the 19th century. So already in the 19th century, tour guides to Pompeii are telling people that these phalluses point you to the brothel. Mark Twain, when he visits Pompeii, gets the same story told to him.

So it's a story that's clearly in circulation. And again, I think the question is, why is it a story that we keep on telling? Well, of course, it fits into our notion of what Pompeii was like, particularly this morally degenerate city then destroyed by an earthquake. What better moral could you have than that, than the literal fires of God wiping it out? So the more degenerate we make Pompeii, the better the story seems. Well, moving on then to another case study. You mentioned it earlier. Let's talk about the Roman orgy and the myth of the orgy, Alistair. One of your favourite topics, of course, but this must be one of the most well-known, one of the most striking Roman factoids of the ancient world. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And as I say, factoids in the way that it's very hard to find any sources that would support the idea of it. Indeed, weirdly,

the closest thing we can find to a description of an orgy in the ancient world is actually told about early Christians, not in fact about the Romans. So there's this very famous story about how the Christians, when they get together for their religious rites, meet in a darkened room, and then they tie a dog to a kind of candelabra. And then they throw the dog a bone and the dog rushes to get it, knocking over the lights. The room is plunged into darkness and then sexual depravity breaks out. But this is a story that's told about early Christians. It's not told about the Romans. In fact, it's a story the Romans tell about how weird these Christians are. So the idea that the Romans were the kind of great lovers of the orgy

is a mistake. And as I say, it comes largely through early Christian sources that are keen to distinguish themselves from their sort of pagan predecessors. It's an interesting word because originally orgy was really a word that was more to do with religious rights rather than sexual rights. So if you look at, for example, the early uses of the word orgy in negative connotations in English. What people are normally talking about is, in fact, over-the-top religious kinds of activities, particularly kinds of activities associated with Dionysus. And those sort of Dionysiac festivals where drink is happening gradually work their way into being transformed into kind of largely sexual kinds of activities. And then

the religion kind of falls away, and the orgy becomes an area of concern because of its sex rather than because of its religious actions. Because when you look at like the actuality, as it were, when you do study the ancient history and you look at religion in the ancient Mediterranean world, there is an intention, there does seem evidence that the ancients wanted to distinguish between religion and sex. Yes, absolutely. So, for example, we know that if you wanted to attend a a sanctuary still with semen or any other kind of sexual bodily fluids attached to your person. So religion was, in fact, anti-sex. We know that, in fact, certain religious sects, like, for example, the Pythagoreans, again, are probably the first group in the Mediterranean that seemed to practice celibacy in any big way. So it's not the case that ancient religions were very pro-sex. If anything, they're worried about sex. I mean Alistair, it's so interesting when you look at parallels. For instance, when you look at imperial dynasties in ancient Rome, how one dynasty coming after the one

beforehand would want to try and deride and demonize that preceding dynasty to make themselves look even greater. Then bringing that over to a religious aspect when you look at early Christianity and this idea to kind of deride, demonise Roman religion before that. And one of the ways that it seems that they really strived to do that was through this association of the orgy with Roman religion. Yeah, and in a sense, they'd already got a bit of a cue for this by the Romans themselves. So, for example, when the Romans wanted to talk about religious rights gone wrong, they often described them as having a kind of sexual component or, for example, being a sub diffuse for actual sexual encounters. So, for example, there's an outbreak of sort of wild, illegal

Bacchic rites in Rome, and this causes an area of concern. Now, this is unofficial Bacchic religion. It almost certainly is far more about kind of fantasy than anything that actually happened. But, you know, the Romans, when they want to talk about religious rites that go wrong, already are envisaging that they're that their rights might have a sexual component. And so I think the early Christians are also picking up on this story as well. What the early Christians do is they kind of take this story and rather than regarding these rights as rights that gone wrong, they say, well, all rights were highly sexualized prior to the arrival of Christianity. And so in history, when does it seem that the orgy loses its religious association and why? Look, it's really about the 18th century that I think we start to

see this transition from the orgy being problematic because it's a pagan religious rite and becoming problematic because it involves kind of indiscriminate promiscuous sex. And that's about the 18th century. And the key figures in this are really the kind of libertine movement that is in fact adopting a lot of these principles for their own pleasures. So when you think about things like the rise of groups like the Hellfire Club, for example, these groups of drinking societies of men who are fantasizing about a world that where they're not constrained by what they regard as the stifling morality of their own day. And so they're throwing these kind of elaborate parties, which have the slight frisson of being anti-clerical,

but also have this idea of being promiscuous and sex-filled. And this legacy has endured down to this day, down to the 21st century. Yeah, absolutely. So that in fact, you know, even today in the sort of modern kind of pornographic imagination, Rome is still a place to conjure with and one can find endless pornographic reimaginings of Rome. Well, moving on then to our next case study, and we're going back to what you've talked about right at the start, which is the Roman emperors and these prominent figures come at the end of a dynasty. So they are the ones who, as it were, the subsequent dynasty needs to blacken their name as much as possible. One sees it with Heliogabalus, this desire to really paint your immediate predecessor,

particularly when there's a dynastic change, in the worst light possible. And so we see these figures being played up in this respect. And these stories, they fueled erotic discourse in antiquity and then also down through the ages too. Yeah, absolutely. So that figures like Tiberius on the Isle of Capri, Nero, Heliogabalus, they all become particularly associated with ideas of sexual liberation. Also, interestingly, they get picked up because the descriptions of what is happening are often quite complicated and hard to work out. So, you know, for example, one finds new descriptions of prostitutes that Tiberius entertains on Capri. And the terms that

are used are quite the unusual terms in Latin. And so grammarians and people who write dictionaries become interested in them and try and work out what makes these prostitutes so clever or so particular. So we get, in fact, all sorts of interesting things happening in terms of where these stories get preserved and how they get preserved. So you find stories of prostitutes collected in dictionaries and grammars, as well as in some moral sermons and pornographic writings. So there's a variety of material discussing this. And again, it's partly about wish fulfillment. The emperors are able to have lives that seem to transcend moral boundaries. Indeed, that's where partly these kind of stories of sexual excess are coming in. Because of course, the gods themselves are prone to tremendous sexual excess. So Zeus famously has dozens of lovers, is totally unfaithful to his wife, and violates the

marriages of numerous other people. And so too do the emperors as well. So they're kind of slightly modelling themselves on the gods. I mean, is that also something really important to highlight, to mention, Alistair, this importance of mythology on this portrayal of the ancient Greco-Roman world as being this locus of sexual excess? I think so. And I think in particular of the sort of profligacy of someone like, for example, Zeus, Jupiter is really important. Now, again, the gods aren't having orgies. I think we need to make this clear, right? Heracles, for example, famously deflowers the 50 daughters of Thespius in one night, but he does them one after the other. It's not a kind of mad

orgy. In fact, the story goes, and I think this tells you why the orgy seems such an unlikely thing to happen. So famously, Heracles is staying with Thespius. Thespius looks at Heracles and thinks, look, that man would produce excellent sons. He has 50 daughters. So he convinces the daughters to seduce Heracles. So Heracles goes to bed at night. The first daughter breaks in to the room, seduces Heracles. And then says, oh, look, I'm just going to slip out. And then the next one comes in. But Heracles can't work out whether it's a new daughter or the old daughter.

So he thinks he's actually, in fact, had sex with the same daughter 50 times, when in fact, actually, it's 50 different daughters. But the fact that it's just one after the other, I think really shows the kind of way in which the orgy isn't on the radar for the ancient Greeks and Romans. That's quite a story. Impressive. I mean, Alistair, I mean, keeping on that, then, what do you think we should take away, therefore, let's say, from these stories, from mythology, from these stories of the Roman emperors? And not just the Roman emperors, these people associated with the Roman emperors, these wives, or let's say the figure of Cleopatra, their portrayals today. It sounds like there is this foundation idea, these stories from antiquity about their sex lives.

about their sex lives. But it's looking at those stories critically, whereas in the past, people before us have looked at those stories, taken them, shall we say, almost as fact and saying, that therefore is an example, an epitome of ancient Rome being this hub of sexual fantasy, of sexual excess. Yeah. And that's why it's so important that whenever we look at these stories, we need to think about the social context that is producing them and why people are telling these stories. And one gets that perhaps no more strongly than, in fact, the stories of Roman empresses, because these stories are stories that are produced precisely to besmirch emperors. So one of the things that husbands are supposed to be able to do, if you're a good husband and you're a good Roman citizen, is to be able to control your wives and

control your daughters. So one way of insulting, humiliating, diminishing an emperor is to, in fact, tell stories about the adultery of their wives or their daughters. And so this is the reason why these kinds of stories circulate, is that they are the product of a very kind of macho environment in which male honor is dependent on female chastity. And so you needed to understand that these are stories that are not really about the empresses, they're actually about the emperor. So whenever you talk about an empress getting up to something, you're really actually talking about the emperor and his inability to control his family. And of course, people love the irony of the man who can control

the empire, but can't even control his daughter, which of course is the famous story of Augustus and his inability to control his sexually active daughter, Julia. So these are the reasons why these stories come. But then everyone loves a good story. And so they just get repeated and told. And also, again, they fit into a particular kind of gender dynamic, which is about, you know, that men have self-control, women aren't able to have self-control. And the stories of kind of the sexual profligacy of empresses, you know, are a justification as to why men should rule the world and women shouldn't. So again, this is a sexual story, but it's actually justifying a whole series of exclusions about why women are pushed out of the public sphere. And so there's a very particular kind of gender dynamic that comes from these

stories. A very particular gender dynamic, as you say there. And it's almost as if, Alistair, these stories, these smears, this gossip from Roman times about these figures is then, shall we say, is picked up by the early Christian writers or by Christianity to further their own agenda of this opposing of this previous culture. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, every historical age prior to the age of sexual liberation has, I think, a vested interest, particularly in controlling and diminishing female sexuality. And that's what these stories do. It's been really, really interesting chat, Alistair. To wrap it all up, therefore, as a concluding remark, why has this vision of the Greco-Roman world, but particularly of Rome as this locus of sexual excess, in the West in particular, let's focus in the West for now, why has it proven so successful? Well, as I say, I think because it appeals to two such distinct groups, I think because it appeals to moralists, but it also appeals to sexual adventurers as well.

but it also appeals to sexual adventurers as well. And it's that broad appeal that these two diametric camps, both of them can agree that Rome was depraved. Some wanting it, some rejecting it, but they can at least agree on it. And so I think that is certainly part of the success. Do you think also that Christianity needed this, especially, let's say, in the Middle Ages around that time too? Look, absolutely. I think we always need something to define ourselves against. And particularly, if you're pushing a line about controlling your urges, controlling your desires, if you regard the body as a site of sin, and as it were, something that's going to make your life corrupt you and make your life difficult, then precisely defining yourself against a kind of sexually liberated society is the way to go so again i think it fits into all sorts of ideas that are going on in contemporary

christianity it begs the question therefore what do you think the romans would think if they could see our perception of them today they would be horrified They'd be absolutely horrified by it. I mean, they think there are remarkably moral, restrained people, you know, and so they would be absolutely horrified about our pornographic imagination. Alistair, this has been a great chat. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Pleasure, pleasure to chat. Thank you.