How Debauched Were Roman Orgies?

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3:05Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kade Lister, and you are listening to Betwixte's Sheets. Welcome back. Hello, it is just so wonderful to have you back once again. But before we go any further, I think you know it's come in. I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, but I've also got adult, other adult, but it's just things and adult awake or arranged, or some bit new spin at all too. Oh my god, thank god, we've got through that. Should feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's crack on. I have been invited to a Roman party. But what kind of party I hear you ask? Top of where party? Pool party, children's party. A political party? Don't be silly. It's the Romans. It's an orgy. Of course it is. If you think Romans, you think orgy. The Romans had orgy's. We all know that. And luckily for you, because I take my job very seriously, I intend to RSVP and find out once and for all if the rumors are true. Or is this just 2,000 years of irresistible gossip?

4:20Hello and welcome back to Betwix the Sheet, the history of sex, scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. Sex and the Romans go together like a horse and chariot. Is that what I'm saying? I don't know. It is now. They're just so intrinsically connected in our popular imagination. It's just all very decadent, indulgent, and very, very sexy. But is this a fair depiction of Roman society? Or is it a smear campaign by the pious Christians who came after them? Well joining me today is the author and historian, Emma Southern. And she is going to help us get to the bottom of these questions. Tovers are the ready, everybody. Let's do it. Well, hello and welcome back once again to Betwix the Sheet. It's only the fabulous Emma Southern. How are you doing? I'm very well. Thank you. You can't get rid of me at this point. We are recording this at the time of the heat wave.

5:20Uh-huh. And how are you coping? I'm trying to pass off a sheen of sweat as a useful glow. I'm just very glowy at the moment. That's what I'm telling people. I have found myself thinking a lot about how people in the past dealt with heat. No, because we just sort of grind to a halt. Now obviously, aircon isn't something that the Romans would have had. No. But they certainly had a lot of hot weather. They were very warm a lot of the time. I think that they were probably just sweaty. They're just sweaty. To be honest. Just sweaty and a bit wiffy. Which makes the topic a conversation today even more interesting. Orges. Orges. Roman orges. Because if you think of the Romans, you think of Orges. You do, which is not, I think, what they would have liked. But it's pretty good. I mean, it's not an immediate. It's probably not like, you know, what school kids are thinking of. It's probably not an immediate association for everyone. But it's definitely there. Like the decadent Romans who, like, think it's like big Roman myths of time ahead. Like the vomatorium one where they eat until they throw up. Yeah.

6:21They're all having Orges. And yeah, those are the two that I've got at the moment. You can't make a Roman film without having a Roman Orgy. Or explaining why you don't have a Roman Orgy. I remember when Gladiator came out, loads of people asked why there wasn't an Orgy in it. Did they? Yeah, it was like a whole thing of the original coverage in 2000 with people asking. We want an Orgy. We want an Orgy. They weren't in it that we've made a Roman film about Roman Dectants. But there's no Orges in it. And he could think for some road, but on record either recently, or I've just seen a report of it recently, to explain why he didn't have sex with, oh, what the hell she called the leading lady sister of the emperor. Yeah. Blah, blah. Yeah, there was a vague love interest. And he said he didn't want that because he felt it was untrue to the character because he was mourning his wife. And he wasn't going to mourn his wife by banging the Empress system. Well, it'd been even nicer if they'd given his wife a name. But yeah. They didn't do that. Yeah, so like you, you can't make a Roman film without an Orgy. We want the Orgy. Something that we think that they were doing is just doing sex, weird sex in groups constantly.

7:21And that they... But you can't walk down a Roman street without stepping over another Orgy. Yeah, exactly. And they're interfering with my work quite quickly. What are you doing at three o'clock today? Another bloody Orgy. Yeah. They're just getting out like they're just stacking up my calendars for. It's just especially in this weather. Especially... Oh, God's terrible. Yeah. It smells terrible. All right, so the first thing that we want to tackle is where does this story come from? Like this idea of the deborched Romans. It comes from three things. Yeah. Firstly, we have the Christian writers of like kind of late Imperial period. And then throughout kind of the Middle Ages and into the modern period, who are like the Romans did a lot of sex and we think that they shouldn't, because the Christians went hard against sexuality. That was a big defining feature of their movement. Of one, I have heard described as a sexual revolution in its own terms. Not a great one.

8:22No. Like not one as far as sexual freedoms go, but there was such a dramatic shift in sexual attitudes from pre-Christianisation to what came. Yeah. It was shockingly different. Yeah, and they do all kinds of things like invent a new kind of virgin, whether like you're not a virgin if you've ever had a lostful thought. Yeah, like it's not only hardcore virgin. Yeah. It's not just like you're not having sex. It's like you're not having lostful thoughts. And then Jesus's mum is a virgin. Jesus doesn't get married. Sorry, Da Vinci code of hands. And like he is talking about unix and they're unix and the whole thing is like, don't do it. Yeah, yeah, just don't do it. And they've got one garden he doesn't have sex. Exactly. And never has a never-well movement. Unlike the Greek and Roman gods. And like an even like the idea that adultery is something that a man can commit. That's what I'm going to do as well. So like they have very radically different ideas of what sexuality and appropriate sexuality is. Yeah. And they disapprove heartily of everybody who doesn't adhere to that. Then we have the kind of strange change in the word orgy,

9:24which is the orgyistic use to mean just pagan rights. So it was a kind of derogatory term for non-Christian religious activities. So sacrifice and the use of chanting and prayer where you're doing this and that kind of thing. So you get loads of writing from like the period of the Renaissance, for example, and into the 19th century where people will say, and the Romans engaged in orgyistic rights. I see what's happened there. And what they really they were just doing that. Really they were just doing that. And at worst we're doing some kind of like secret history sort of like running around in fields and screaming. But not necessarily. Yeah. Ripping the knickers off one of them. Not necessarily ripping the knickers off one of them. More likely that when they're doing this because Roman religion is really ritual obsessed. So I imagine it was actually the exact opposite of ripping the knickers off each other. I loved a ritual. Just a lot of like trumpets and counting things I think. And then you have the fact that the Romans do have a fairly open, comparatively very open idea of what is appropriate to put in art and literature.

10:28Yes. Yes. And so there are and literature at every level is absolutely full of sex. And they're quite explicit about it. They don't tend to be using euphemism very often. You can as soon as we started pulling stuff out of Pompeii, we found penises on everything. It's everywhere. Because they use penises as both an erotic thing and a comedy thing. And also a protective thing. So it's it can be used in any context. It's on everything. Multi-faceted penises in Pompeii. They love erotic art, particularly. It's really interesting. What did they see when they saw that? Because this is one of the essential images. When the Victorian saw it, they could only see sex. And they freaked out. They were like, well, clearly this is a sex-obsessed culture. And that's because that's their conditioning and that's their worldview. And I often was like, well, what did the Romans see when they saw this? Because they cannot have been walking down the street going, oh my god, it's a dick. Oh my god, it's a dick. It's another one. It's another one. Because it must have just been so normal to them. Yeah. They're like, interdick.

11:28And it's going to contextually be dependent. If they see it in a bathhouse, then it's kind of a sex thing. If they see it on a movement. The floor movement. Yeah. Or if they see it in a carved onto the side of an altar, then they're going to be, OK, it's a protective thing. You get the dick jewelry, which is protective. But then you also get dick lamps, which are clearly supposed to be funny. Like, they love a comedy lamp. And I love this about the Romans. They love, like, they obviously gave, like, little clay lamps to each other as presents. And they love a weird sexy lamp. So we don't change, do we? And they don't change all that much. I just love the idea of them all giving each other for satanalia, like the woman having sex with a donkey lamp or the, like, spout is straight, like a giant penis lamp. Like, it's so hen party. It really is. It's like, the whole of the woman empire just one giant hen party with constant cleannesses. But then sometimes they'd be like, no, this is a serious piece. This is a serious penis lamp. And stop laughing. Yeah. For the Victorians, and like, when you start doing like, when archaeology becomes like a real thing,

12:29and when people start translating texts that aren't just tacitists, and they find all of the epigrams and comedy poetry, and then the moralizing texts from the late republics, those like, Sissaro's always writing about how people are having sex. And I think he's maybe a bit jealous. He doesn't get invited. But he's always very disapproving of the amount of sex that other people are having. They're like, oh my god, it's everywhere. It's just ticks coming at my face. In the context where a penis can only be sexual, it's very frightening to them. Yeah. And so we get this idea that all they were doing was bonking constantly. And they're just, yeah, they, I mean, they do put it on a lot of stuff. They do. Don't they? But so I could ask that question a lot. It's like, what period in history was the most sex obsessed? And it's a really difficult one to add because all of us, all of us have always been obsessed. Always been obsessed. There's no one that's more or less obsessed with it. It's just how they process it. Publicly changes quite a lot. The Christians at every point of Christian history talk about it as much as the Romans did.

13:31Easily. Because if not more, because they're trying to stop it. Yeah. And so like, early Christian texts are absolutely like, freakishly erotic because they're all like, I really love the stories of the desert fathers and the desert mothers who are always going off into the desert to try and punish themselves into a state of angelic purity. And all they do is have weird dreams. And then talk about how much they think about sex. And like the visions that they're having of beautiful people coming and trying to seduce them, but they know it's the devil. And you're like, you know, no one has thought about sex more than you. No, nobody. You wouldn't want to say that the Romans had a particularly sex positive culture because they have a lot of do's and don'ts. And you know, a lot of sending women to live on islands. They have a lot of something. They're very strict about what women are allowed to do. And you can hear us into what men are allowed to do. Men have a much more freedom. And women are very much shamed for any kind of sexual activity that whereas men are like, well, that's like, they have very much boys, will be boys, with attitude to life. And they have a lot of kind of forced sexuality as well,

14:33because obviously they have slavery. So they have a lot of people who are having sex whether they like it or not. But they have a very severe attitude that men can do as much bonking as they like as long as they're not bonking married women. Yes. That becomes kind of a problem, specifically because of the women. Right. It is an act of dishonor against the women's husband and also a threat to him. So women can commit adultery, but men can't. But men can commit stuprim, which is like weird sex. So like dishonorable sex. She usually means sex with someone that you shouldn't be doing it with or some kind of sex with men that is passive rather than active bottoming. Yeah. Yeah. They don't seem to find sex inherently shameful or secretive. I think we could say that about that. Oh, no, they talk about it so much. Yeah. They have quite an upfront attitude to it. Like, this is just something that people do. And we're going to talk about it. Yeah. And all kinds of different configurations and they do it constantly.

15:34Yeah. And this freaked out later historians and they mistranslated the Wittorchee to just think they were having orgies all the time. Yeah, just kind of shifted. Yeah. Yeah. And you do get stories of whenever they find an example of people having big group sex, they're so thrilled. They're like, it's real. Yeah. Like, there's this bars, the suburban bars in Pompeii. The changing rooms have these, this series of erotic paintings all around the changing rooms. And it's all what the Romans would consider to be really unusual sex. So it's got Felicia, it's got a very graphic depiction of kind of Lingus. And then it's got like MMF three sims, it's got a four sim, it's got like all kinds of like configurations of different people doing all kinds of different things. And that's just the changing rooms of the bar. Yeah. So there, and this presumably is supposed to be very funny or like very titillating in some way,

16:35but probably just quite funny. Just quite funny. Yeah. One of the few times when they are quite funny. Yeah. They are good images. I have to give them that much. Yeah. And then this kind of feeds into our imagination. And it results in films like Collegula. My best beloved film Collegula. Oh, it's completely bad. It's so bad. I mean, that really took the idea that Romans have orgies on round with it. Oh yeah. And then kind of Biproxy forced Malcolm McDowell to be in a porn film. A porn Helen Mirren. The interview to Bob Gaggioni around that film, because it was made by Hustler magazine. And originally the plan was that it would be a very high class film like Ben Hare. And that was what was pitched to people. And they got Gorg Vidal to write the screenplay. And his screenplay is all very kind of highbrow and about the nature of evil. And then Bob Gaggioni snuck onto the set and filmed loads of hardcore pornography and sliced it in at random. Oh, he'd be so mad. He'd be so mad. Because he was like, no, I think that the only thing we need to know

17:35about the Romans is that they were having lots of sex. And there's not anywhere near enough sex in this film. So this is, I don't know if we can answer the question of how much sex would they have? But were there examples of what we might call an an orgy not a ritualistic right, not people standing in weird positions, but like an actual group sex situation? So we get their mostly stories of scandal. Pretty much. So it's not like, please come to my orgy, it will take place at, right? Okay. So you get stories from Cicero likes to talk about things that happen in by E, which is like the party town outside of Naples for the elite. It's like the monaco of its time. And he has a couple of speeches where he like really goes in on Claudia and says that she's always having sex parties with handsome boys down there and people swim naked and a costume like trash talk though. Yeah. And then he has a story about a sex party on a boat in Bia where everybody that all of the rowers are lined up according to their sexual proclivities.

18:37So like this person is really good at this. And this person is really good at this and you can like choose your a buffet. So he has these stories of like this and so you get this idea of Bia as a place where you could go. And like this is like the very, very rich, very, very board privileged youth of Republican Rome like getting their kicks in weird ways. But it's always about that kind of thing. So you get Tiberius on his on Capri. Oh yes, he was said to be up to all kinds of awfulness. Yes, so awful that they didn't translate the sections where they describe what he was up to in Capri and like versions of Sertones until like the 30s. Wow. Like because they're like only men who can read Latin can cope with the horrors that you will see within. So Tiberius retired to Capri. He left Rome while he was still emperor and was like I don't want to talk to you guys anymore. You're really annoying for which I do have some sympathy with him. It's not a great move if you're the emperor. It's not a brilliant governing move.

19:38You can't really govern an empire by letter, but he does it anyway. And then everyone's like we don't know what he's doing on this island. We assume it's weird. And so they have these stories of him having grottoes that are full of people having sex with each other constantly. And triple chains is one that they particularly mentioned. So three men in a row. Right. Or a woman and two men that he particularly enjoys watching. And he will walk around and watch these things. But he's making people have sex for his entertainment rather than joining in. Is there any supporting evidence of this other than just gossip at the time? I gossip at the time. Just basically. Yeah, sadly. Yeah. I mean, it's a very beautiful place, but I don't know if it's the kind of beautiful place where you'd put. No, and like you know, just do that all day long as well. You have to have like different people coming in and like the shifts are not to be quite short. It's a whole logistical line, I always think for the bureaucracists. Like yeah, like quick Tiberius is coming. Quick. No, no, no. Get in.

20:38Yeah, so like, but it's always told as scandal. It's, and it's like a bad thing really because it's, it's not really about like what was actually happening. It's about saying that this man Tiberius is freaking weird. Yeah. Not to be trusted. He's weird and gross and he does weird things and he doesn't do sex like the rest of us do. Yeah. And sometimes you will see like fiction about it, like poetry or satire where people are having wear sex, but almost always when you see in the Roman sources something written sources about people having orgies or having big groups sex, it is an emperor doing something weird and bad and it shows how degenerate they are or another rich person doing something weird and bad and it shows how degenerate they are. Right. It's never like this is what happens. This is how to lovely time. Exactly. It's never a party report. Yeah. It's always I'm so scandalized. He's having unusual sex. Yeah, this is shocking. Collicular is another one. Collicular in his brothel where he allegedly forced sanitorial women, women of good repute into sex work so that he could raise money.

21:40It's that true. I mean, I hear a lot of things about Collicular. It's not the weirdest one I've heard. It's not the weirdest one. It's hard to believe that somebody wouldn't have stabbed him at that point. He does in fairness get stabbed. It's hard to believe that one. It feels like the kind of like made his consular horse, paint his consular made his horse a consul story, which is he said, I might make my horse a consul and then that kind of got exaggerated over history, that it feels like he might have suggested it or maybe he just did a lot of sex with of sanitorial wives against their will or with it. But I don't think it's very likely that he actually, because I think that there would probably be pushback against it. I think like even for the standards of the time. Yeah. It's like the the Messalina myth as well. Another example of like an orgy being used to say that somebody is just an awful person. And her going to a brothel voluntarily and having sex competition with the best sex worker in Rome. Yes. There's a whole never happened. I'll just listen to that on my top list of things in a path.

22:42Can all be entirely sure that never happened. That's just the ravings of a madman. But again, that's set up to make her look horrendous. It's to make her look, so she's dishonoring the Emperor. And also makes Claudius look bad because he can't control his wife. Yeah. And he doesn't know what his wife is up to and his wife is slotting it around town. And Claudius is weak as a result. So it's kind of a tack on both of them. Yeah. But the Romans, when they're writing about it, always talk about it as unusual as scandalous usually and as a sign of like moral degeneration. It's not sounding very orgy positive. It's so far. Very orgy positive. Or like a religious disaster. So the back and alias scandal, which is where we are. Tell me about the back and alias scandal. So it's in the kind of middle republic, 186. There is this big scandal in Rome, where it comes out that lots and lots of young men and women have been joining the secret mystery cult of backers. And they have been having... Whose backers just put anyone in the under? The God of Wine and Partying, basically.

23:45Also called Dionysus. So he's a good time for all the family. His rights are associated in Greece with main ads and this idea of kind of frenzy. And like running around and losing your mind, getting very drunk, screaming, losing control. There's a play about the backers, which ends with women ripping apart one of their sons. And like it's all kind of associated with the loss of control. And particularly women losing control. But it all comes out that loads of people have been joining these rights in Italy when it's very unitaliant. This is weird Greek rights. And they do it at night, which is very, very bad. And then there's stories about what's happening, which is that people are just having loads of sex at them. They're also doing loads of murders. That's a busy night, that. The best part about it is it says this is happening five times a month on a hill which is visible from the cap time. No, no. Whenever I go to an Orgy murder party,

24:46I'd like it to be a bit more discreet than that. You'd like it to be one a bit more discreet and two, who's got time for a couple of months? Yeah, just one twice a week at one point. That point. Come on now. Apparently this is happening. And there's these descriptions of them. The descriptions vary quite wildly. There's machines that drag people away to be murdered. There's lots of gay sex, like men having sex with men in all kinds of different configurations. There's women having sex with women. There's women letting their hair down. And then, even worse, there's people making plots to undermine the court system. See, well, they wouldn't like that. Women. No, they wouldn't like that. They would raise an eyebrow at an Orgy and they would be marginally perturbed about a murder, but actually overthrown the government. They're not. And that's what stress is about. Although I do love the idea of two guys standing like with a cup of wine. Well, like, somebody's being torn apart over here. There's some bumming happening over here. And they're like, so on Thursday, if you could vote guilty.

25:46What should I view on a point-based immigration? Yeah, exactly. Don't worry about that. This is revealed in the Senate in like a huge scandal. Who's doing the revealing? It's actually an ex-sex worker whose boyfriend gets initiated or is about to be initiated by his mother so that his mother can have him killed at the right so that she can steal all of his money. And the... His... Freudian shit, no. The sex worker is like, no, no, no. You can't go, this is a nightmare. You will be... People will touch you inappropriately and you might die. You might get murdered. You might get murdered. And she raises the alarm, which then escalates through the ranks. So he then confronts his mother, has mother causes a scene, which then goes to an aunt, the aunt goes to the wife of the consul, the cons... wife of the consul goes to the consul, then he's like, what the hell is going on in my city? And then it... And then it all comes out. It all comes out that all of this is happening. And the entire cult is banned in Italy.

26:46There's like a big crackdown. Lots of people executed and exiled and punished for involvement in it. And it's like... It's a huge scandal. It's one of the scandals that we have evidence in the text and we also have the decree that was written that banned it. That sounds like there might be something in it. So, yeah. There is some kind of truth to the fact that the baccalaureate was banned. And Roman citizens were not allowed to be part of it. It was considered to be un-Roman. What they were actually doing is a different question. We don't know what they were doing. No. Even the main source for it is Livy and he describes the baccalaureate twice and neither of those descriptions are the same. Did he go to a baccalaureate? No, he's only like a hundred years later. Right, so this is a very unreliable... Very unreliable, the rate. It's a very unreliable narrator. And then he doesn't even seem to be entirely clear on what he's describing. But that's like the big thing that people associate with orgies, like the baccalaureate. Yes. And it's still today you can say that it's baccalaureate.

27:47Exactly. And then it's in the secret history the Donutart novel where they have a baccalaureate. And then accidentally do a murder. It's great and highly recommended. I'll be back with Emma after the short break. This ad is sponsored by ZockDoc. Hi, it's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. Have you been putting off that annual doctor's appointment because you don't want to make the call or maybe you've been meaning to find a new dentist but you have no idea where to start? I find that's especially true and you move. It's hard to find your people. I've been there, which is why I use ZockDoc. Now as a busy podcaster parent and someone who's always juggling a million things, I love anything that makes life easier. And ZockDoc lets you search and compare local in network doctors with over 250,000 providers across more than 200 specialties. You can read reviews from real patients find a provider who feels like the right fit.

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31:58Where are the actual sex cults, though? Because I'm on a note, define your terms a little bit, a little bit better than that. The bacchanalia, it sounds like it's a wild night, but there's so many rumors flying around it, and I know we were joking, but the logistics of that is it does suggest, I think we might have got a bit carried away with this. But one thing that I do quite like about Roman culture is the religion is like a pick your own adventure, almost. It's like they've got the big gods, but then once in a while, a cult arises of some demigod that everyone's going, oh, we'll give that one a whirl, and they do seem to be a few of them, that they're quite sex-heavy. Was it just, yeah, backers or others? You do have others that are, like the mystery cults, so the ones that are interesting, because you have to do an initiation, and you get the mystery revealed to you. It's all very secretive. Yeah, so you have like ISIS is a really big one in the Empire. Mythreuses is a big one. There's a myth rayum in London that's really cool. And so you have all of these like mystery cults

32:59and you can kind of join it, and you go through a little initiation. The ISIS one is often considered to be, like it was considered to be extremely exotic because the priests would castrate themselves to become. I'm just going to ask you about Sibolo. Yes. Is that how proud it is? C-Y-B-E-L-E. Sibolo. Sibolo. And so you get, yeah, Sibolo and ISIS. And the... I can't imagine that as an orgy. I think I might count that as. It's like there's weird sex stuff going on on mass. There's weird sex stuff going on on mass. And the raiment, so like non-adherence of thought that they were doing, where it's weird sex stuff in there. I'm counting mass castration as weird sex. So that would make my list. It's not an orgy I'd want to go to. And imagine there'd be people turning up that. You're not quite aware of the fact. Oh no, wait, this isn't quite what I found out for. So like people outside of those cults definitely thought that they were doing unusual things in there. And it is like quite an unusual thing to do to really dedicate yourself to a... Do we have a lot of any information about like what... The cast... Sorry for everybody listening. It's going to get a bit of a gracing. But like what...

33:59The process of this was any information. And... It can either be cutting or crushing. The... The tests of Sibolo. They've got that like they work themselves up into a frenzy. And then they... Crunched it. Yeah. And then they actually become a third gender, which is really interesting. Yeah, so they do a crushing and cutting. You can kind of choose which one you want to do. You really want to ruin your day. You can look up silaby castration tongues that they found in the terms. Yeah, real nasty. Yeah. But that's interesting. Because that sort of means that that cult was over here. Yeah, they're everywhere. Because you can pick your own adventure with the Romans. Like as long as you do your civic duty. Yeah. And sacrifice the Emperor and to the big gods every so often. You can then go off and castrate yourself on the River Tams. Or just go and hang out with those guys. Like you can go to their services on Tuesday, instead of going to the Mithras services on a Thursday. Yeah. So I'm not getting a whole lot of positive orgy culture for me here.

35:03No, I think I reckon like pure speculation that the idea of dynastic, back-ick rituals being sexy was such a big idea in the own world. I think if you were a sex person and you wanted to be doing sex parties, of which they definitely are in every culture of people who want to be doing so, then you would probably be like doing it and calling it a back-ick right? Yes. Because that's how they think of it. Like they really think of it as a sex party. It's wine, it's sex, it's doing kind of group sex and not just missionary married couples ex. And so if you're the kind of person who wants that, then you're probably going to be putting on back-ick rituals and doing it. Yeah. It's interesting, as well from what you're saying, that a lot of this sounds like what's underpinning this is a very, what's Greek idea I suppose, but the Romans definitely ran with it. Is this idea of a loss of control? Yeah, they have that. It seems to be underpinning. No, I don't know if you'd want to go to a very organized orgy. I think that like there is a limit to how organized you want an orgy to be. You want to be on time.

36:03Samwages served as always. Simmed. Slight rules, but you guys want it to be like, and on at 957, we're going to be meeting up with this partner. Yeah. No, they're too organized. But what underpinns is seems like, because a lot of it, they're describing how people work themselves up to a frenzy, like the maniards, the main ads. The main ads, they work themselves up to a frenzy and the priests have simply worked themselves up to a frenzy and castrate themselves. And the back and earlier, mothers are killing sons, some reason. And it's again, you're going to lose control. You're going to lose control and you're not going to be, and then you're going to lose dignity in some way or do an atrocity. They're very obsessed with control. Which is why they're kind of weird about all sex as well. Why part of that thing in the suburban bar is that they have a woman giving all sex and then a man giving all sex, which is like, for a masculine submissive position, is such a big thing. That's a loss of control for the man. That they find to be extremely titillating,

37:05because it's so violating to their everyday life. It's kind of like Tory MPs that go to dungeons. Like that's... We still live with that. We still like when we're attacking people or people are deeply unpopular, is we want them to have a weird sex life as well. That is still something that's absolutely incurrency. The whole hit had one ball thing. It's not enough that he's a mass-murdering fuckhead. He has to have a weird sex life as well. He has to have a weird sex life as well. We have to be quite home-fabric about it. So we have to be... It's not enough that Trump is just terrible. He has to be kissing Putin. Yes. So we still do it. And it's a weird kind of offensive, such titillating. And you're like, well, maybe I'm off the market. You can tell me about it. But not only is it a loss of control, but there's something about the debauchery that's like, you're going to become too feminine with it as well. And like, I just thought about it then when you talk about that image in Pompeii, and if you've not seen it, you can look it up. And it's this huge woman with just like her legs split. Like that was just pulsating vulva.

38:07And there's a tiny little pan right between her legs. Tiny little, and he's just... He is so little. He's so tiny. And it's like this real amasculation image for them. Because I guess it's like, well, what kind of a man would do that when he has a mighty penis, it is just both. Exactly. But then interestingly, the phlegio image is the woman on the floor, but he has his hand on her head. And so she also has the title loss of control. So he's like, extremely in control in that position. And then there's this 69 one as well, just for bonuses. Do you think that this, the sort of use of the orgy and the fear of the back and earlier is somehow linked to like a fear of a loss of masculinity? Yeah, probably. Press the Roman unit. They're so obsessed with masculinity and like policing masculinity. And like what is a proper Roman man? And they just talk about it constantly in the way that suggests that if you have to talk about it constantly, like you're always having to put up a boundary that says, a proper Roman man does this and an unproper Roman man does that. And you have to be constantly making jokes at the expense of not proper men

39:09that you are having to decide. And so they are kind of obsessed with it. And then that makes transgression exciting. Yes. Because as soon as you can, like soon as you get a hard boundary, transgressing it becomes quite exciting for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, there must have been Roman orgies. So definitely. There must have been. There must have been. There are people. They would have been doing it. But the idea that a Roman just looked at their calendars, just orgy, orgy, orgy, orgy, are quick in, I'll squeeze in a quick orgy between orgy one and orgy three. No, all my certainly not. Almost certainly not. They had a whole lot of paperwork to do for a start. That's the thing they mostly complain that they have to do all the time. They're always like, I've got to go and win because the thing about Roman paperwork is you have to have like seven witnesses for everything. So there's so many letters that are like, oh, and then I had to go and witness this. And then I had to go and witness a wheel. And then I had to go and witness these aren't people that have time for orgy. No, they're never complaining that they've got to go to too many orgy's. And they're always complaining that they've got to go to too many paperwork meetings.

40:10So we can blow this myth out the water, unfortunately, for fans of the colligular film. Yeah. But you have been brilliant once again. Thank you so much. And I believe you have a new book out. I do have a new book out. It's about Roman slavery. It does have some jokes in it, I promise. It's not as depressing as it sounds. It's called Service. How slavery made the Roman Empire? And are you on social media? Can people find you? I'm on Instagram at Emma Southern. Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about, well, quite crap Roman orgies, to be honest. Literally any time. Thank you so much to Emma for joining me. And if you like what you heard and what you saw, we are on YouTube after all, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want it to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixtaddhistoryhit.com. This podcast was edited by Jim Astle and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again with betwixta Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society, a podcast by history hit.

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