10 things you thought you knew about the Romans . . . but didn't

I shall be replying to the flood of comments about the last post on the Greek fires by the by (though let me say here and now that something very odd happened in the translation of my post on the Greek website that so many people saw!). But meanwhile to happier topics. A fellow blogger suggests that we classicists tend to keep too many secrets about the ancient world to ourselves. So let me share a few.

Here are 10 things you thought you knew about the Romans but didn’t. 10 myths about the Romans exploded…!

1) JULIUS CAESAR’S LAST WORDS WERE ‘ET TU BRUTE’
Well, only in Shakespeare’s version of the assassination. Probably our best ancient source is Suetonius and he records the words as (in Greek) “kai su teknon” – or “you too my child”. What this means, in fact, isn’t so clear. If it is has a question mark, it smacks of quizzical, dying desperation. Give it an exclamation mark and it becomes a threat (“they’ll get you too kid…”).

2) ROME WAS BUILT ON SEVEN HILLS.
Some serious miscalculation here. Palatine, Aventine, Capitoline, Janiculan, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Pincian, Vatican. That’s 10 for a start. Though it all depends I suppose, on what you call a hill.

3) ROMANS HAD ‘VOMITORIA’ TO BE SICK IN BETWEEN COURSES AT LAVISH DINNERS
Sorry. This is an old one, But vomitoria were the exit routes which spewed people out of the amphitheatres.

4) ROMAN MEN DRESSED IN TOGAS
OK sometimes they did. But it was very formal wear – and it’s a bit like saying ‘Englishmen wear dinner jackets’. Actually you’d have seen all kinds of dress on the Roman street, from tunics to trousers -- and, just to confuse things, prostitutes in togas. (Here’s a neat article which sets this one straight.)

5) NERO FIDDLED WHILE ROME BURNED
Not if you mean that he sat around ineffectually twiddling his thumbs while the city went up in flames. Actually what Nero did was fiddle in another sense: he played the violin (or so it was said).

Five more after the jump. . .

6) THE PLEBEIANS WERE THE ROMAN POOR
OK Romans, just like us, did sometimes use the word ‘plebeian’ or ‘plebs’ for the ‘great unwashed’ (literally ‘sordida plebs’). But in the strict sense both ‘plebeian’ and ‘patrician’ were old hereditary divisions of the Roman people. These may once have signalled the poor/powerless versus the rich/powerful. But by the time of the later Republic there were enormously rich plebeians – like Marcus Licinius Crassus, the plutocrat who famously said that you couldn’t be counted as rich if you couldn’t raise your own private army.

7) GLADIATORS SAID ‘HAIL CAESAR, THOSE ABOUT TO DIE SALUTE THEE’ BEFORE EACH SHOW
This favourite phrase is actually attested only once in classical antiquity – and not at a gladiatorial show. It was apparently spoken by the participants at a mock naval battle laid on outside Rome by the emperor Claudius. I tried to lay this particular myth to rest in the book on the Colosseum I wrote with Keith Hopkins – but not with much success I fear.

8) WHEN THE ROMANS FINALLY DESTROYED CARTHAGE IN 146 BCE, THEY PLOUGHED SALT INTO ITS SOIL -- TO MAKE IT COMPLETELY BARREN
This is slightly trickier ground, but I know of no ancient writer who says this. It’s a view that got common currency thanks to an article by B Hallward in the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History – and he gives no ancient reference.

9) THE ROMANS WERE MUCH SMALLER THAN US
Depends on who you mean by ‘us’. The skeletons found in Pompeii and Herculaneum actually suggest that the Roman inhabitants were on average a bit taller than the modern Neapolitans.

10) HADRIAN BUILT HIS WALL TO KEEP THE BARBARIANS OUT OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITANNIA
Only if he was a military idiot. A good proportion of it is built only in turf anyway, which wouldn’t have deterred many self respecting barbarians. Even if the rest was in stone, it is now thought much more likely that the whole thing was administrative (for customs levying perhaps) – and to help east-west communications.

And that’s only the first ten!

Comments

[poulsbo florist]

thanks this is a really great post!

[Mick]

I think the Bards immortal lines paint an accurate picture of Caesars assassination -
CAESARS WIFE - "Last night I dreamt statues of you dripped blood"
CAESAR - "Hmm..a bad omen, i'd better stay home today"
WIFE - "Good, now go spruce yourself up a bit, mothers coming over later"
CAESAR - "Er...on second thoughts i'd better go in, pressing affairs of state to attend to, you know how it is"
SOOTHSAYER on Capitol steps -"Caesar, beware the ides of March"
CAESAR - "**** off you crackhead"
(Inside, Caesar staggers towards Brutus with multiple stab wounds)..
CAESAR - "Help me Brutus my loyal and trusted friend!"
BRUTUS - "**** you Jack" (stabs him)
CAESAR - "Argh you mother******, I thought you was my mate"...

[turner]

Surely the more contemporary sense of "fiddling" which Prof Beard mentions is a transference from Nero's musical act? i.e. to do something trivial while one should be responding to something of great importance? I for (another) one have never thought of "fiddling" in this sense, and can't see one entry for it on the first page of google(search term: "fiddling"). The entries are almost all about square dancing and such. Maybe new Britspeak? But the term Prof Beard uses in another blog on the subject to explain it--"footling"--THAT I don't understand.

[Rob Spear]

Ugh. Must you use "BCE" instead of "BC"? I know it is trendy in the latest generation of academics, but it jars normal people unnecessarily, and does nothing to achieve its stated aim of pretending that our current calendar is not Christan in origin (as if that was even a worthwhile cause - academics are meant to be about the truth, not trying not to offend people)

[Rabid Bibliophile]

I'm a homeschooling mother and have just printed out the main article to share with my sons (11th grade and 7th grade). So far, what we've found most amusing are the statements that *made the list* in the first place! A little logic refutes MOST of them!

The only one that was a bit tricky to explain was the 'Seven Hills' comment, which I was taught not to take literally; I was told that the Seven Hills were the first established, and thus housed the key political centers. This may *also* be inaccurate, but at least it didn't set me up to take the statement at face value, either. (I pictured it in my head as 'downtown Rome' when I was a teen.)

Oh, and thanks SO MUCH for the definition of 'vomitoria'. (Sarcastic grin.) Picture my 12yo renaming *all* exits ALOUD for the remainder of the day. (Laughing.)At least he'll remember the word and what it means!

[Alan Myers]

Yes, Peter Ustinov played the lyre in Quo Vadis. Slip of the brain.

[Alan Myers]

In the film Quo Vadis, Peter Ustinov as Nero is shown strumming on a lute and spouting some execrable 'poetry' -

'O! O lambent flame!

Several cities have 'seven hills' including Sheffield. Probably a borrowing from Rome.

The end of the Roman Wall near Carlisle was of turf but most of it was of stone. The stretch eastward from Newcastle to Wallsend was not quite so sturdy I believe.

Most of the Wall is on the flat. The celebrated central stretch, much photographed, rises to an average 700 feet (like Hampstead) but reaches 1000 feet at one point.

When the Wall was occasionally overrun, the opposition indulged in a good deal of destruction, so it obviously had a disagreeable symbolic significance.

The supposed bad weather on the high Wall is often mentioned, as if it were a picnic in winter continental Europe, but in England you had seaside resorts 30 miles off at each end. Lovely in the summer.

[Antonio]

Damn people, Nero was not in Rome during the fire at all. And he lost many of his own property in the same fire.

[ron fontes]

Nero played the lyre and sang. No bagpipes, no violins.
besides building his Golden House in the ruins (and the grounds were open to the public), he rebuilt substantial portions of the city on a grand scale and instituted contruction standards to prevent fires.
According to some sources, Nero actually fought the fire himself, joining a bucket brigade after a 50 mile trip form an out-of-town concert.
The skeletons in Herculaneum and Pompeii show that women averaged 5' tall, men about 5'4"-5'6". Legionairies were ideally 5'10".
Cleo's comment on the 7 hills is correct.

[Mary]

A reply to John David Galt. The rumor is the ancient equivalent of a conspiracy theory, and as with all such theories -- it's impossible to know whether it is true (though I myself see no reason to believe it). It is based on the fact that Nero did use tracts of the destroyed city as land on which to build his great palace, the Golden House. So (this is the logic) you ask who ultimatey benefited from the fire, and you say he must have started it. Nero in turn of course pointed the finger at the Christians.

[Matt]

The Seven Hills thing was even carried over to Constantinople, where 7 hills were arbitrarily numbered, despite there being more than 7.

It even survived into American thought--"the city on the hill."

[John David Galt]

Can you speak to the rumor that Nero actually set the Great Fire to make way for his expansion of the palace?

[Ross]

The ancient Romans did not have tomatoes, corn, chocolate, potatoes, peanuts, peppers, vanilla, popcorn, pineapples(Not native to Hawaii, either.), squash, pumpkins, tabacco, and even most kinds of beans, but at the same time they did not know what they were missing.

That is because all of these crops are native to the Americas, and were not known in Europe or Asia until after the Columbus voyage of 1492.

If Michael Jackson and former Rep. Mark Foley lived in the Roman Empire, they would have been accepted as normal Roman citizens. That is because the ancient Romans considered women and boys to part of a well-balanced sex program!

[Mary]

Gelfling -- Thanks...but in fact this blogging business teaches you humility all round -- s/he who has 66 comments today may have none tomorrow and vice versa. It'll be me looking enviously at Peter's "spike" (as we bloggers call it) next...

[Gelfling]

Ooh and another thing! I bet your esteemed fellow blogger, Mr Stothard, is very envious of your 66 comments. Come on, Peter! Tell us 10 things we thought we knew about ... ?

[Gelfling]

Wow! 66 comments on this site and counting!
Superb work, Mary, to get the minds of this varied gang of scholars and all working and buzzing hard!! What a winning blog to produce such a vast and deep array of thoughts! Job well done!
Message to Roman scholar - loved the highly comical image of the 'amateur, pedantic historians playing at night'! It could be a promising sketch for a Radio 4 play. Regards, Gelfling.

[emi]

hey, in any case, "Kai su Teknon" would be translated as "tu quoque fili mei"...

[Warren O'Leary]

BCE instead of the correct B.C. ? More Marxist, anti-Christian "political correctness" propaganda within a Western country ; what chutzpah !

[Hein Maassen, Leidschendam, The Netherlands]

Re the salting of the Cathage site: it would not hinder the building of a new trade city, which could easily buy its foodstuffs elsewhere in Africa. The new city could even make a fortune extracting the salt from the soil and selling it for a nice profit. As regards the fiddling Nero: I seem to remember that he played the bagpipe (or is that just another sham)?

[Kieran Gillespie]

Augustus: is this book "et tu brute" by Greg Woolf the very same that the publisher, profile, on their website describe as

"The second title in the new Profiles in History series, edited by Mary Beard."

I guess that leaves out the trouble of shelling out $20 for it.

[Mary]

I am extremely pleased that Augustus enjoyed Greg Woolf's book, Et Tu Brute -- which I think is excellent. Alpha plus.
But as the series editor I am a bit biased and held my light under a bushel, in case people should say I was just promoting my own...

But now Augustus hath spoke, I can fully recommend G Woolf's Et Tu Brute (and the other books in the Profiles in History series.. Emily Wilson on Death of Socrates just out). Enough pliug...

[augustus]

The fist issue about Brutus after he was stabbed, "Et tu Brute?" doesn't take a classicist's attempt to destroy the work of Cicero, leave alone Shakespeare.
It is a shame exalted Beard has not read:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WOOETT.ht
ml?show=catalogcopy or is $19.95 too many €?

[Mary]

thanks tony..will have another go, m

[Tony Francis]

That link is working for me. But, just Google "PubMed.com" and you will get to the same place. In the "search" area, type "archeology height". There is a string of articles tracing various populations in medieval and earlier times. One of interest is: Econ. Hum. Biol. 2003, Dec, 1(3): 367-77 relating that medieval populations did not change in stature during various climatic changes. Leprosarium (Leprosy) patients were shorter. Monastic skeletons were stockier for the height. Common parishioners were more thin for their height. There a several dozen related articles on "related links". You can type in "cacciari" under search to find the other article.

[Mary]

Tony.. I have failed to get into that site, but will try again. I t may be exactly what I and F Gamberini are looking for (but I'm keeping to my basic point though!).