Transcripts:
Tier one gladiatorial games. Ancient Rome, the civilization that built aqueducts, wrote epic poetry, and decided that the best way to spend a Sunday was to watch someone's spleen explode in front of 50,000 cheering fans. The gladiatorial games were the Romans version of Netflix, except instead of end credits rolling, the season finale often meant a dead body on the floor.
So, who actually fought in these things? Most of the poor souls in the arena didn't exactly apply for the job. They were enslaved people, prisoners of war or criminals who had displeased the state. This allowed the Romans to kill two birds with one stone, entertainment and public execution. A small percentage of the fighters though were volunteers called octarati.
These were free men who looked at the collapsing job market and thought, you know what sounds better than unemployment? Getting stabbed for applause. By the late republic, around 50% of gladiators were actually volunteers. If you're wondering why a free person would sign up for something like this, the answer is simple.
Money and clout. Successful fighters kept their prize money and became ancient sex symbols. Wealthy women even paid top dollar for vials of gladiator sweat to use as perfume. Disgusting, sure, but it shows the status they held. The gladiators were rich, famous, and desired. But there was a catch. Signing that contract meant social suicide.
You suffered infamia, which meant you lost your rights as a citizen. You could not vote. You could not leave a will. And legally speaking, you were on the same level as adult workers. Once you signed your life away, you went to a lutus or gladiator school. Training was a nightmare, but not in the way you might think.
Fighters were expensive investments. So, the owners, called lenistas, took good care of them. They ate a strict diet of beans and barley to build layers of protective fat and even received the best medical care in Rome. They trained constantly with heavy wooden weapons to build stamina, ensuring that when real steel was involved, they could swing it all day.
When fight day arrived, it was strictly controlled. A referee, the Sumarudis, was in the ring to stop the fight if the rules were broken. Yet, despite all that carnage, not every fight ended in death because the Empire couldn't afford to waste its most popular asset. A good fighter was like a modern influencer.
You couldn't kill the brand too early. Still, with roughly a 1 in 10 chance of dying per fight in the first century AD, which rose to about 50% in later centuries, it really was a terrible retirement plan. If a fighter was too wounded to continue, he would toss his shield or raise a finger to signal surrender.
The fighting stopped and the referee looked at the sponsor of the games, the Monerarius, for the final verdict. The sponsor then looked at the crowd. The crowd's famous signal was the poly vers Verso or the turned thump. Movies usually get this wrong. Historians believed a thumbs up actually mimicked an unshathed sword, meaning kill him.
A closed fist with the thumb tucked in meant keep the sword sheath or mercy. Historians do debate the exact gesture though. If mercy was denied, the loser had to die properly on their knees. The winner delivered the final stab clean and ritualistic. An attendant dressed as Mercury stepped in afterward to press a hot iron to the body just to make sure the job was really done.
The crowd lost their minds, then went home feeling a little more civilized. The same crowd also loved these men. They admired the skill, cheered the courage, and covered tavern walls with their faces. Some of them even believed the fighter blood had benefits when you drank it, which we will circle back to in tier 4.
At the end of the day, gladiators weren't heroes. They were proof that Rome's idea of fun was watching people die. Beasts execution. Imagine you're a Roman citizen in 167 BC. You've had a long week and you want to blow off some steam. Instead of soaking in a nice bubble bath, you head to the forum to watch a group of military deserters get trampled to death by elephants.
This actually happened after the battle of Pidna and it was one of the earliest recorded instance of damnatio adbestius or condemnation to beasts. While gladiators fighting each other was the main event, the Romans had a special place in their hearts for watching people get eaten alive or trampled to death. By the imperial era, this became a scheduled part of the daily grind. The schedule was strict.
Mornings were for the veno where hunters fought wild animals. The midday slot, the lunch break essentially, was reserved for the executions. So, while the elite were having lunch, the criminals were becoming lunch. This treatment wasn't just for murderers. The lineup included runaway slaves, army deserters, and eventually Christians.
During the event, some people were tied to stakes, others trapped in cages. Then the gates opened and the beasts cameout. Lions were the crowd favorite, but bears, leopards, and even crocodiles made guest appearances. The Romans didn't stop at simple mauling. Sometimes the condemned were forced to reenact myths in what historians later called fatal charades.
For example, they would dress a prisoner as Orpheus, a legendary musician who could charm animals with his song. The prisoner would come out playing a liar only to find out the bear in the room wasn't charmed at all. or they would reenact the story of Durst. In Greek mythology, she was tied to the horns of a wild bull as punishment.
To stay true to the plot, the Romans would tie a woman to a raging bull and let it drag her around the arena until she died. Romans tried to rationalize this cruelty by calling the victims beasts in human form, which was just a convenient way to sleep at night after watching someone's leg get chewed off. Crucifixion.
Rome didn't invent the cross, but they sure made it famous. They also turned the whole thing into a full-scale production. First, the victim was stripped and beaten half to death. Then, they were forced to drag a heavy wooden pole through the streets while crowds spat on them. Once they reached the execution site, the real pain started.
The victim was nailed or tied to a wooden beam and left hanging for hours, sometimes days, while slowly suffocating under their own body weight. Roman citizens were usually spared this treatment. The empire liked to save it for the undesirabs like Christians or the rebel army of Spartacus. Spartacus was a gladiator who led a massive slave revolt that terrified Rome.
When the uprising was finally crushed, Craas, the general in charge, decided to send a message using the surviving fighters from the rebel army. About 6,000 of them were crucified along the Aion way, the main road leading straight into Rome. Imagine heading towards the city and seeing enemy soldiers nailed up for miles on both sides of the road.
Eventually in the 4th century, Emperor Constantine abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire. But his decision came from reverence for Jesus Christ, crucifixion's most famous victim, not from mercy. Because while he ended one brutal method, he still allowed one of the most humiliating and painful punishments Rome had.
We'll get to that in tier three. Communal toilets. Imagine you're a Roman citizen and you really need to relieve yourself. You rush into the nearest public restroom, but instead of a private stall, you walk into a crowded room. You lift your toga, sit down on a cold stone bench, and find yourself thigh to thigh with a stranger who wants to talk about the price of olive oil.
This was the reality of the fork or public latrines. The Romans loved bragging about how civilized they were and this was their biggest flex. They built multi-seat latrines with running water and long benches carved like a row of communal thrones. But while the architecture was impressive, the experience was not pleasant, at least by modern standards.
First of all, these places were ticking time bombs. The sewers underneath were dark, unventilated, and full of decomposing waste. This caused methane gas to build up under the seats. Sometimes the buildup was so bad you could actually see the fumes rising up almost like smoke. Since there were no electric lights, people brought oil lamps or torches inside to see in the dark.
This shouldn't have been dangerous, but it was because if that open flame got too close to a pocket of methane gas, the toilet could literally blow up. If you survived the explosion risk, you had to deal with a hygiene situation. The toilets were a biological hazard. There was no toilet paper.
Instead, they used the tersorium, which was a sponge on a stick. But that's not even the worst part. Everyone had to share one tersorium. It sat in a bucket of vinegar or salt water, which was the Roman version of disinfectant. After finishing, you dipped the stick, wiped yourself, rinsed it off, and left it for the next guy.
You could spend the morning soaking in scented oil and brushing your teeth, only to ruin it all by wiping with a community sponge soaked in someone else's leftovers. Modern science proves this whole thing was a bad idea. Archaeologists have dug through Roman sewers and found exactly what you'd expect: mountains of parasite eggs.
We're talking about roundorms, whipworms, and even traces of dysentery causing amiebas. Research shows that intestinal parasites actually increased during the Roman Empire. The irony is almost poetic. Rome conquered continents but couldn't conquer basic hygiene. Tier 2: Patter familious authority. You think your parents were strict because they took your phone away? Well, think again.
Because in ancient Rome, living under your father's roof was a survival sport. The family wasn't just a group of people living together. It was a mini kingdom. And there was only one thing. This king was called the pat familius. This titlebelonged to the oldest living male in the household.
So even if you were a father yourself, if your dad or grandpa was still alive, he was the boss of you and your kids. He held a specific legal power called patria potestas. This translates to power of the father, but it was basically total ownership. He owned the property, the slaves, and yes, even the people in his family. This wasn't just a social norm.
It was written in stone literally. This power came from the 12 tables. One of the laws on those tables was eus vite nasis. That means the right of life and death. Under this law, a father could legally execute his own children for disobedience or physical deformities. He didn't need a judge or a jury. He just needed a sword.
If execution felt too harsh, he could just cash them in. A Roman father could legally sell his children into slavery. But the law had a weird loophole. A father could sell his son three times. If the buyer released the son, the first two times he went back to the father. But if the father sold him a third time, the son was finally free from his authority.
So basically, you could rent out your son like a lawnmower. But if you did it too many times, you lost him. While the selling rule was mostly used for sons, daughters were under the same absolute control. They were often used as bargaining chips for marriage alliances. No other civilization in the world gave men this much terrifying power over their own blood.
This power didn't expire when you turned 18. You remained under your father's thumb until the day he died. Over time, the empire started pretending to have a conscience. By the 2n century AD, emperors like Hadrien began punishing fathers who took things too far. One man killed his son for committing adultery with his stepmother, and Hadrien banished him to an island.
By the late 4th century, under Christian influence, laws were introduced requiring fathers to face trial for executing their children. Progress, I guess. Still, the culture worshiped strict fathers. Stories of men executing their own sons for treason were retold as moral lessons. The Romans believed that if you couldn't control your own house, you definitely couldn't control or even contribute to the empire. Fatal charades.
Modern movies use CGI and stunt doubles to fake dangerous scenes. Ancient Rome didn't have special effects, so they just used the real thing. This resulted in a disturbing entertainment historians call fatal charades. These were theatrical plays based on famous myths, but with a horrifying casting change for the final act.
The play would start normally with professional actors delivering lines and wearing costumes. But right before the character's death scene, the stage crew would pull a switch. The real actor would slip away and a condemned criminal would be shoved onto the stage dressed in the same costume to face the actual death described in the script.
If the play was about Hercules burning to death, the prisoner was tied to a pier and actually set on fire. If the story was about Icarus falling from the sky, they would drop the prisoner from the top of the stadium so he'd smash into the arena floor. There was even a play about Orpheus, the musician who charmed animals.
In the Roman version, the musician was a prisoner who got torn apart by a bear that definitely wasn't charmed. The audience knew exactly what was happening, too. They were there to see a creative execution. It brings a whole new meaning to suffering for your art. The Gonian stairs. If hell had an address in ancient Rome, it was probably the Gonian stairs located right above the Roman forum.
The main city center and downtown plaza where everyone gathered. These stone steps were the empire's unofficial dumping ground for the corpses of traders, enemies, and anyone unlucky enough to fall out of favor. If you were to end up on these stairs, here's how it would go down. First, you'd be strangled in the May time prison.
Your body still warm when soldiers dragged it to the top of the stairs. Then they'd toss you down the steps like yesterday's garbage. Your corpse might stay there for days, baking under the Italian sun, decomposing in front of jeering crowds. Dogs could not your limbs. Birds might peck at your eyes, and Roman citizens would come by to insult what was left of you.
When the stench got unbearable, your remains would be hooked away and dumped into the Tyber River. The most infamous example was Lucius Aliasis in 31 AD. He was Emperor Tiberius's right-hand man and basically ran the empire while Tiberius was on vacation. But Sylvanas got power- hungry and allegedly plotted to take the throne for himself.
The people hated him for his cruelty. So when Tiberius finally ordered his execution, the public was ready for revenge. After Sylvanas was executed, his body was dumped on the stairs. The people of Rome were so angry that they spent 3 days tearing his body apart until there was basically nothing left. His adultchildren were executed, too.
But his young daughter, Janilla, faced something worse. Sources suggest she may have been assaulted by the executioner to get around a specific Roman rule against killing virgins. This is one of those details that reminds you just how messed up the Roman justice system could actually be.
Then came Emperor Vatellius in 69 AD. This guy was known for being obsessed with food and bankrupted the Roman treasury by spending millions on exotic feasts. While he was busy stuffing his face, his enemies were marching on Rome. When the rival army arrived, he was dragged to the stairs, beaten, mocked, and tortured to death. Things like this happened so often that thrown onto the Gimmonian stairs became a common Roman slang for total disgrace.
Even statues weren't safe. If a traitor died of natural causes or ran away before he could be arrested, the Romans didn't let it go. They'd find a statue of him, drag it to the stairs, and smash it just to make the insult official. Over time, emperors may have tried to tone down the gore, but the practice stuck around for quite a while.
Nomaki gladiator fights were cool, but if you wanted to see a real war, you watched the Nomaki. They were naval battles staged purely for entertainment with real ships, real weapons, and real death. The word itself meant sea battle, and the Romans took that literally. They built huge basins or flooded arenas just so prisoners and slaves could reenact famous wars while the crowd snacked and cheered.
Julius Caesar started the trend in 46 BC. To celebrate his victories, he forced laborers to dig a massive artificial lake right in the middle of Rome near the campus Martius. On that lake, he staged a full-scale naval battle with around 4,000 brewers and 2,000 fighters. According to ancient sources, these weren't actors. They were prisoners of war and condemned criminals told to fight until one side stopped breathing.
The crowd that gathered to watch these performances were so massive that some sources claimed people may have been trampled in the chaos. Vendors lined the edges. Adult entertainers worked the stands and the smell of blood mixed with roasted meat. Then came Augustus. Never one to be outdone, he went bigger.
His version in 2 BC used an artificial basin the size of several city blocks measuring roughly 1,800 by 1200 ft. 30 ships clashed in a choreographed slaughter that involved thousands of convicts. But if Augustus went big, Emperor Claudius went absolutely insane in 52 AD. He looked at those man-made ponds and decided they were too small.
So he took about 19,000 combatants, mostly condemned prisoners, and dumped them onto a real body of water called Lake Facinus. This event actually gave us the most famous line from Gladiator. Before the night, the prisoners looked up at the emperor and shouted, "Hail Caesar. We who are about to die salute you." Claudius, who was feeling cheeky, shouted back, "Or maybe not." This was a huge mistake.
The prisoners thought he had just pardoned them, so they just stood there and refused to fight. Claudius absolutely lost it. He started stumbling around the edge of the lake, screaming threats and ordering his guards to burn them alive if they didn't start killing each other. Eventually, the prisoners realized the pardon was fake, and the battle began.
It was a blood bath. Ships were rammed. Men were drowned and the lake turned red while Claudius watched from his throne. It was such a killer performance that when it was over, he actually decided to let the survivors live. Later emperors like Titus and Domission tried to keep the spectacle alive, even flooding the coliseum for many naval fights.
But the scale shrank over time. The cost, logistics, and sheer waste of human life eventually made it impractical. though not before the Romans proved that no civilization could outdo them in organized cruelty. Vetius Polio's eels. Vidius Polio was a wealthy Roman who proved that you didn't need to be an emperor to be a monster.
He owned a massive villa near Naples with extensive fish ponds. But he wasn't interested in breeding fish for the market. His specialty was keeping a specific pool stocked with lampray eels. These aren't standard eels. They are a parasitic fish with sucker-like mouths full of sharp teeth designed to latch on to prey and grind away flesh.
While most Romans ate lampres as a delicacy, Holio used them as a method of erasing people. His household rules were simple and fatal. If a slave made a minor mistake, such as breaking a dish or spilling a drink, the punishment was immediate execution, and as you expect, the method was thrown into the lampay pond alive.
The fish were trained to swarm anything that entered the water, tearing the victim apart. Polio kept these animals specifically because he enjoyed watching a human being torn to pieces in a way that other execution methods didn't provide. The most famous incident involving these eels happened during adinner party polio hosted for Emperor Augustus.
A young slave was serving wine and accidentally dropped a crystal goblet and shattered it. Polio immediately ordered his guards to throw the boy into the lamprey pool. Terrified, the slave broke away and ran to the emperor's feet. He didn't ask for his life to be spared. He only begged to be killed by a sword or any other method that didn't involve being eaten by the fish.
It was so cruel, Emperor Augustus was disgusted by it. He ordered a slave to be freed on the spot. He then ordered all of Polio's expensive crystal cups to be brought out and smashed in front of him, and he commanded that the lampray pool be filled in with solid earth. It was a rare case where the state intervened in the master's rights simply because polio's behavior was too repulsive even for Roman standards.
Tier three, decimation. Imagine being a Roman soldier, exhausted, filthy, and praying for wine when your commander announces that it's time for a little morale boosting event called decimation. Every tenth man in your unit is to be executed by the other nine. The process was simple and horrifying.
If your cohort screwed up, maybe ran from battle, rebelled, or just looked too cowardly, your commander gathered everyone, had lots drawn, and ordered the unlucky 10th man to be beaten to death with clubs or stones by his comrades. The rest then got downgraded to barley rations instead of wheat and had to camp outside the fort like naughty children.
Palibius, a Greek historian who actually hung out with Roman generals, wrote about it like it was just another team building exercise. He said it instills fear in all, meaning it made everyone terrified all the time. The Romans loved fear. It was their version of discipline. You didn't just obey orders because you respected your commander.
You obeyed because if you didn't, you might be the next raffle winner in the murder lottery. Decimation wasn't common, though. Even Roman generals knew that too much of it could ruin morale faster than losing a battle. The earliest story dates back to 471 BC. A console named Aius Claudius supposedly used it after his army panicked and ran away from the Vulskians.
But since that was so long ago, some historians think the story might be a myth. The first well doumented case came in 71 BC when Craus used it. He was the richest man in Rome and was desperate to prove he was a tough military leader. He used it during the Spartacus Rebellion. After two of his legions performed poorly, he decided the best way to motivate them was to make them bludgeon their comrades to death. Surprisingly, it worked.
Other famous leaders like Mark Anthony and Augustus threatened to use it when their troops got out of line. Later emperors like Galba actually went through with it, executing a group of marines just to set an example. By the later empire, decimation mostly disappeared. Soldiers became more powerful than emperors.
If you tried to execute 10% of your army, the other 90% would just kill you instead. The term decimation lives on. It actually popped up again in modern history. During World War I, the Italian general Luigi Kadorna brought it back to punish his own troops for retreating. And over centuries, the word mutated until it just meant mass destruction.
The sack. The Romans took family values seriously. so seriously that if you murdered your parents, they'd turn your execution into a disturbing show. The punishment was called pinai, which means the penalty of the sack. First, they would whip you until you looked like you lost a fight with a cheese grater.
Then, they would stuff you into a leather sack with a combination of animals, often including a living dog, snake, monkey, and rooster. Finally, they would throw the whole thing into a river or the sea. The Romans didn't do this just to be cruel. They saw it as a form of moral cleansing.
By sewing you up in leather, your body never technically touched the water. This meant that your impure corpse wouldn't pollute the elements or the gods. Each animal was meant to insult you on the way out. The dog stood for loyalty, something you clearly didn't have if you killed your own parents. The rooster represented household duty.
The snake was there because, well, it bites. And the monkey was just to make sure your last moments were as humiliating as possible. The punishment started showing up in Roman records around 100 BC. The earliest known case involved a man named Lucius Hostius. He was the first person in recorded Roman history to have killed his father.
The Senate decided prison wasn't punishment enough, so they tried the sack. Over time, the ritual was formalized in Roman law. Under Emperor Hadrien, the law officially required you to include the dog, the monkey, the rooster, and the snake. But in reality, finding a live monkey on short notice was hard work. So if the local authorities couldn't find the whole zoo, they just used whatever animals they hador threw the murderer to the beasts in the arena.
When he was in power, Emperor Constantine briefly toned down the sack by using only snakes. But Emperor Justinian brought the whole circus back in the sixth century. It stuck around in Bisantine law for centuries and even popped up in medieval Germany. Records show people being drowned in sacks with dogs and cats as late as the 1700s. Vestal virgin burials.
The Vestal Virgins were supposed to be the purest women in Rome. They were priestesses chosen between the ages of 6 and 10 to serve the goddess Vesta for 30 years. Their main duty was to keep the eternal flame burning inside her temple. This wasn't just a campfire. The Romans believed this fire represented the life of the city.
If the fire went out, Rome would fall. But they had another rule that was just as important. They had to remain virgins. Their virginity was a national security measure. If a vestal broke her vow, the Romans thought the gods would abandon the city. So when it happened, they didn't take it lightly. The punishment was being buried alive.
The Romans couldn't just execute a vestal like a normal criminal because her blood was considered sacred. She was sealed into an underground room with a small couch, a lamp, and a few pity supplies like bread, water, milk, and oil. By their logic, that meant the state had clean hands. They had left her provisions.
What actually happened was slow suffocation followed by starvation. Rome sure loved its legal gymnastics. To make matters worse, the whole thing was done as a public ritual. The Pontifffects Maximus, the city's high priest, oversaw the ceremony. The condemned vessel, was dressed in morning clothes and carried through the forum in a covered box-like contraption with thick curtains so no one could see her face or hear her voice.
At the burial site near the Colleen gate, the priest led a final prayer and the vestal climbed down a ladder into the chamber, still wearing her sacred veil. Once she was inside, the entrance was sealed with earth and stone. Above her grave, life in the city went on. The sacred fire kept burning and everyone tried to forget the girl who broke the rules.
Condemnation to the mines. If Rome wanted you gone, but still wanted to squeeze something out of you first, it sent you to the mines. Damnio admittala or condemnation to the minds was for all intents and purposes a slow execution disguised as labor. It was handed out to rebellious slaves, criminals and during the persecutions a lot of early Christians.
The state got free manpower and you got blindness, broken bones, and a death certificate waiting to happen. Once condemned, you lost everything. Citizenship, rights, your name, and sometimes your actual face. I mean that literally. They often branded your forehead with hot iron, so everyone knew you were property of the state.
The law called it capitis de minutio maxima, the maximum loss of status. You were legally dead. Officials sent you off in chains to state-run mines or quaries where you lived underground in filth, hacking at rock until you couldn't anymore. So, who actually ended up here? It was mostly rebellious slaves, criminals, and war captives.
But the most famous victims were the early Christians. The practice became really common during the great persecution in the early 4th century. During this era, thousands of believers were rounded up. Theologians like Tertullian and Cyprien both said being sent to the mines was worse than martyrdom. They were right, and we now have proof.
Archaeologists have uncovered shackled skeletons in ancient mines, which pretty much confirms the old texts were not exaggerating. Victims really did have their eyes gouged out and their limbs burned with hot irons while they were trapped down there. Condemnation to the minds as a form of punishment lasted for centuries, even under Christian emperors.
It stayed right there in the law books. Justinian officially codified it in the sixth century for crimes like counterfeing and treason. By then, it was sometimes labeled temporary, but that was usually a joke because most people never lived long enough to serve the full sentence. Tier four, gladiator blood.
There was a time in ancient Rome when people thought epilepsy could be cured with fresh human blood. So when a gladiator fell, crowds didn't just cheer. Some of them ran forward to scoop up the blood while it was still warm. They somehow believed the practice would transfer the dying man's life force to them. Well, it didn't.
It just made them people who drank blood in public. Epilepsy back then was called morbus kamatalis, the falling sickness. And nobody understood what caused it. So instead of medicine, people turned to superstition. Gladiators were young, muscular, and full of vitality. Though the logic was simple and disgusting. Drink his strength, steal his life.
The habit grew into a small trade. When a fighter fell, arena attendants would drain the corpseinto cups and sell the blood before it cooled. It was quick cash and there was steady demand. Early Christian writers used the practice as proof of Roman hypocrisy. Tertullian mocked the crowd by pointing out that the same people rushing to drink the blood of dead men accused Christians of barbarism.
He kind of had a point. Even after gladiator games were banned around 404 AD, the superstition didn't die. People just started using the blood of executed criminals instead. A 6th century physician, Alexander of Trails, even prescribed it, soaked, burned to ash, and mixed with wine. By the middle ages, the same idea lingered at public executions across Europe.
It never worked, but for centuries, Romans believed that drinking death could give them life. Urine as a commodity. If you ever feel bad about your job, you should know that somewhere in ancient Rome, someone's full-time duty was stomping other people's laundry in a bucket of urine. We're talking real human pee. Romans treated it like liquid gold because it was full of ammonia, which is basically the ancient version of bleach.
Public toilets weren't just for convenience. They were for business. The city had jars placed on street corners and near bathous where anyone could relieve themselves. That pee didn't go to waste. Collectors gathered it, stored it, and sold it to Fullers. You can think of them as dry cleaners. After collecting the pee, they'd soak the clothes in vats of the stuff.
Then slaves would step in and stomp the garments until they foamed. The result, cleaner tunics, dirt-free togas, and one very confused modern archaeologist wondering how that smell didn't cause riots. Urine also had a side hustle in the leather industry. Tanners used it to soften hides and strip off hair, which as horrifying as it sounds, was quite effective.
And because Romans just didn't know when to stop, some people even used it for dental care. Yes, toothpaste and mouthwash. Eventually, Emperor Vispassion came to the realization that pee had profit potential. So, in 70 AD, he slapped a tax on the collection of urine, charging launderers and tanners rather than donors.
When his son Titus complained that it was disgusting to make money from waste, Vispassian held up a gold coin and asked, "Does it smell?" Titus said no. And Vpassian replied, "Yet it comes from urine." Historians say that's how he got the phrase peuna non money does not smell. The tax worked. Rome's treasury filled back up after years of civil war and Vispassian became known as the emperor who literally monetized this.
Public urinals across France are still called Vespassians because of it. toothpaste ingredients. Imagine it is 50 BC. You're in a marble villa in Rome and you want to freshen up for a date. You don't reach for the mint. You reach for a jar of crushed bones and urine. The Romans were ahead of their time in many ways, but their toothpaste was a nightmare.
So, what was the secret formula? The base was standard enough. They used crushed oyster shells, burnt bones, and charcoal to scrub off the plaque. But then came the active ingredient. The most famous ingredient was the liquid. They needed a whitener. And they found one in the bathroom. urine, specifically stale fermented urine.
When peace sits for a while, it turns into ammonia. This is the same chemical we use in bleach today. So, the final recipe went something like this. Mix your mouse ash and shell powder into a sticky paste with honey. Add a splash of old urine for that extra shine and then scrub it on your teeth. It sounds horrific, but it was actually considered a luxury.
The Roman poet Catillus wrote a famous diss track about a guy named Ignatius. He mocked Ignatius for having a blinding white smile because in his words, "The more polished your teeth are, the more it proves you drank urine." This wasn't just a metaphor. Ignatius was from Seltteria in Spain, and Spanish urine was considered premium grade mouthwash of the ancient world.
Other cultures went for herbs like mint or myrr when it came to oral hygiene, but the Romans were built different. And to their credit, they did manage cleaner teeth, just with ingredients that could double as a witch's brew. Lead poisoning. Rome built an empire on engineering genius and accidentally poisoned itself with it.
Around the first century AD, lead or plumbum was everywhere. It was in their water, pipes, cookware, wine, cosmetics, and even medicine. What they didn't know was that the same metal that gave them indoor plumbing also gave them infertility, gout, and slowly but surely, absolute brain damage. It started innocently enough.
lead was easy to shape, didn't rust, and made water systems efficient. Vuvius, the Roman engineer, did warn that workers in lead foundies look pale and sickly, and noted that lead pipes could harm water quality. But nobody wanted to trade shiny pipes for ugly clay ones, so Rome kept drinking from toxic straws. The rich had it worse.
Their private leadpipes let water sit overnight, soaking up extra contamination before breakfast. Archaeologists have found evidence suggesting that upper class skeletons from cities like Herculanium had elevated lead in their bones compared to some poorer citizens. Though this wasn't the case in all other locations. The real disaster was in the kitchen. Romans loved sweet wine and they made a syrup called sappa by boiling grape juice in lead pots.
The acid reacted with a metal creating lead acetate nicknamed sugar of lead. It was delicious, deadly, and used as a sweetener for everything from sauces to desserts. The wealthy who drank wine like water were essentially micro doing poison at every meal. Historians wrote of a condition called Morbus aristocratus, which we now know as the aristocrat's gout.
It was basically a painful joint disease. Lead stops your kidneys from filtering out uric acid, so it piles up in your joints and causes gout. Since only the rich could afford to drink huge amounts of this sweetened wine, the disease turned into a strange status symbol. If you had it, that meant you were wealthy enough to slowly poison yourself.
And the symptoms were brutal. We're talking kidney failure, anemia, infertility, nerve pain, hallucinations, and fullon insanity. The list sounds suspiciously like the highlight reel of certain Roman emperors. Caligula, Nero, and Komodus were all infamous for paranoia and violence. And they also drank massive amounts of this wine every single day.
Modern toxicologists can't prove lead drove them mad. But the coincidence is hard to ignore. Even the word satnine, meaning gloomy or slow, comes from Saturn, the god associated with lead. The language snitched before the science did. By the late empire, lead had quietly weakened its masters. Noble bloodlines thinned out, fertility dropped, and decision-making decayed under what may have been low-grade madness.
And in the next tier, we're about to see just how much damage that madness really did. Purify. Damn memoriali. In ancient Rome, being canled wasn't punishment enough for doing something wrong. You had to be erased. The Senate had a tool for that called damnatia memori, which means condemnation of memory. It was the official way to pretend someone never existed.
If an emperor or public figure embarrassed the state, they didn't just lose power. They lost their face, their name, and every trace of their existence. The Romans didn't actually use the phrase damnation memor at the time. That label came from later historians. Back then, it was just called abolition numinous, the eraser of a name.
The Senate or a new emperor would order the person's name to be chiseled off monuments, their statues smashed or melted, and their images removed from coins and portraits. A famous example is Emperor Carakala. After he murdered his brother Gheta, he ordered every mention of him erased. There's a famous family portrait called the Sean Tondo painting.
If you look at it today, you will see Gheta's face has been literally scrubbed off the wood. The result looks like a ghost haunting a happy photo. But the real joke is that it never worked. Every blank wall, every empty plaque, every missing head made people ask, "Who was supposed to be here?" And that's how we ended up learning about the very rulers Rome tried to delete.
The Senate wanted us to forget them, but all they did was make sure we would remember them forever. Let's start with Kamadus Arena Follys. Marcus Aurelius was the philosopher king every textbook loves. But his son Kamadus was living proof that wisdom isn't hereditary. He inherited an empire and treated it like a toy box.
Where his father spent years writing about virtue and reason, Kamadus spent his time playing dress up as Hercules and beating people to death for fun. For the average Roman, his reign was a chaotic mix of expensive parties and total neglect. While Kamadus was busy in the arena, he let his corrupt friends run the government.
They sold public offices to the highest bidder and even created artificial food shortages just to drive up grain prices and make themselves richer. The treasury, which was full when he started, was emptied to pay for his games. Kamadus didn't just admire Hercules. He became him. Or at least he tried to. He walked around in a lion-kinned cape, carried a club, and even renamed months after himself and his imaginary titles.
One month was called Hercules and another Komodus. Statues of him as Hercules filled the empire, and inscriptions praised him as the ultimate and the Roman Hercules. To the Senate, it was humiliating. To the public, it was mildly entertaining. The problem came when the emperor decided he didn't just want to be worshiped.
He wanted to perform. Kamadus treated the coliseum like it was his personal YouTube channel. He fought as a gladiator almost a thousand times. Of course, the fights were fake. His opponents carried wooden swords or none at all. The emperor always won and thecrowd always clapped because what else do you do when your boss is holding a sword? But every so often, the line between theater and execution got blurred.
Kamadus killed real gladiators during practice matches, either to show off or because he got bored. His obsession with spectacle only got more bizarre when he started killing animals. He bragged about shooting hippos, elephants, and even a giraffe. During one show, he beheaded an ostrich with an arrow, strutdded towards the senator's box, and waved the bloody head at them while holding his sword.
Then came the part where he recreated myths. According to the historian Casio Dio, Komodus rounded up a large group of men who had lost their feet due to disease or accidents. He tied fake serpent tails to their legs, called them giants, and clubbed them to death in the arena. The audience watched in horror as he pretended to be Hercules, saving the world.
By the end of his reign, Kamadus had renamed Rome itself into Colonia Kamodana. That was the breaking point. His inner circle finally had enough. On New Year's Eve, 192 AD, they poisoned him. When that failed, his own wrestling partners strangled him in his bath. The Senate immediately declared him a public enemy and wiped his name from everything they could find.
For a short time, later emperors tried to restore his reputation, but the damage was permanent. The mad emperor gas Julius Caesar Dermaticus, better known as Caligula, started out like every empire's dream employee. Young, popular, charming, and the grandson of a war hero. People called him Little Boots because he used to follow soldiers around in tiny armor.
Adorable, right? Then he became emperor in the year 37 and the empire quickly learned that little boots had grown into big problem. At first Rome loved him, then the switch flipped. Historians described his rule as four straight years of chaos, scandals, and random executions. One of his most infamous acts was sleeping with all three of his sisters.
His favorite was Drusilla, whom he reportedly treated like his wife after forcing her husband to divorce her. When she died, he turned her into a literal goddess and banned laughter, bathing, and smiling until he said otherwise. Caligula's family drama didn't stop there. He pimped out his other sisters to his friends at banquetss, then exiled them later for immorality.
And then one of his sisters, Agraina, eventually birthed another crazy emperor. We'll talk about him soon. Caligula loved humiliating the Senate. And one of his favorite ways to do so was using his horses, Incitataris. He gave it a marble stall, an ivory manger, purple blankets, jeweled collars, and even talked about making it console.
Modern historians think he did it to mock the Senate, showing that even a horse had more dignity than they did. He made senators run beside his chariot for miles, hold his napkin at dinner, and sometimes he had them executed just to test their loyalty. His sense of humor was even worse in public. He once wished the Roman people had one neck so he could kill them all with one swing.
When crowds got noisy during the games, he ordered soldiers to beat them out of the arena, causing a stampede that killed nobles, women, and whoever else was in the way. At another event, when wild animals became too expensive to feed, he lined up prisoners and fed them to the beasts instead, not even checking their crimes.
He saved money and entertained himself in one go. Eventually, his insanity caught up with him. He started calling himself a god and demanded worship. He even tried to put a statue of himself in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. That attempt nearly started a revolt. Everyone hated him by that point. >> In 41 AD, his own bodyguards stabbed him to death in a palace hallway.
His wife and baby daughter were murdered, too, erasing his bloodline. In one afternoon, when the news hit the streets, the people cheered. They dragged his statues down and tore them apart. The Senate tried to delete him from history through damnation memory, declaring his birthday cursed and banning his name.
But that didn't last long. His uncle Claudius became emperor and quietly stopped the eraser, the pyromaniac emperor. If you think Caligula was bad, wait till you hear about Emperor Nero. He started as a promising young emperor in 54 AD, guided by smart advisers like Senica. But give a man too much power and a palace full of mirrors and suddenly he believes the universe is his stage.
His worst act came after the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. Flames swallowed most of the city. And while people screamed and lost everything, Nero reportedly sang in costume about the fall of Troy. While rumors spread that he started the fire himself to clear space for his dream mansion, he needed a scapegoat. He blamed the Christians, a small, hated group at the time.
The punishment was disturbing. Tacitus wrote that Christians were covered in animal skins and torn apart by dogs. Others werenailed to crosses or burned alive as human torches to light Nero's garden parties. Imagine walking into an imperial banquet lit by screaming people on fire. Well, the emperor compliments his own singing voice.
Nero's cruelty didn't stop there. His biological father, Nais Domusbas, died when Nero was just 3 years old, leaving him with his mother, Agraina. She was the one who actually put him on the throne. But she was too controlling, so Nero decided she had to go. He tried to make it look like an accident first. He invited her onto a collapsible boat that was rigged to break apart at sea.
But the plan failed because Agraina was a strong swimmer and managed to make it to shore. When Nero found out she survived, he sent assassins to her villa. When the killer drew his sword, Agraina famously pointed to her stomach and told him to strike here because that was where Nero came from. He later examined her corpse and commented on her beauty.
His first wife, Octavia, was executed on fake charges. And his second wife, Pepea, died after he kicked her during an argument while she was pregnant. After Pepea's death, Nero found a young boy named Sporus who looked like her. He had the boy castrated and married him in a public ceremony, complete with a bridal veil and dowy.
He paraded the poor kid around as Poea reborn. By the end, Nero was surrounded by enemies. Senators plotted against him, generals rebelled, and his own guards turned on him. When the Senate finally declared him a public enemy in 68 AD, he fled, whining that the world is losing a great artist. Then he killed himself before they could catch him. Rome didn't send flowers.
After his death, the Senate did their thing. They smashed his statues, chiseled his name off every monument, and defaced his coins. Even his colossal statue was rebranded as the sun god. But like every eraser, every blank spot where his name used to be became a reminder of who he was. Elagabalis eccentricities.
If you thought Roman emperors couldn't get any weirder after Caligula and Nero, that's because you haven't met Elabalis. This guy was so problematic that four years after he became emperor at 14, his own soldiers had killed him in a bathroom. In between, he managed to offend every senator, priest, and moralist in Rome. And it was mostly on purpose.
Elagabalis came from Syria where he served as high priest of a sun god called Elagabal. When he took power in 218 AD, he brought his religion to Rome along with its sacred black meteorite. He built a massive temple for it on the Palatine Hill and then paraded the stone through the streets while he danced backward in front of it.
The Romans watched their emperor run around in silk robes, sacrificing entire herds of cattle and wondered if they'd been cursed. Ancient historians like Casis Dio claimed he even offered human sacrifices, throwing body parts and genitals into his god's temple. It might have been propaganda, but it didn't matter much because everyone already believed he was capable of anything.
But it wasn't the religion that shocked Rome the most. It was him. Elagabalis erased gender lines. He wore makeup, wigs, and gowns and asked to be called lady, queen, and mistress. His favorite lover was a charioteer named Hieracles. And the emperor liked to call himself his wife. He also turned part of the imperial palace into a personal brothel, standing naked at the door to solicit men as if he were a regular sex worker.
Casius Dio said Elagabalis begged doctors to give him female genitalia, offering them huge sums to make it happen. These days, it's considered normal. But back then, people perceived it as really immoral. Marriage didn't calm him down either. He married at least five times in four years, including once to a vessel virgin, which if you don't remember, was a priestess sworn to lifelong virginity.
To Romans, that was like marrying the Pope's daughter and throwing a party in the Vatican. He also married Hierles and another man, the athlete Zodicus. Calling himself the wife in both relationships. For a society obsessed with masculine dominance, an emperor declaring himself a husband's bride was unthinkable.
By 222 AD, Elagabalis had burned through all his political protection. When he tried to kill his cousin, Seis Alexander, the Ptorian guard finally turned on him. These were the elite bodyguards whose only job was to protect the emperor. But even they had enough. Soldiers dragged him from hiding and stabbed him to death inside a latrine. His mother was killed, too.
Their bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets, and dumped into the Tyber River. The Senate wasted no time issuing a damnation memorial. His name was scratched off monuments. His black meteorite god was shipped back to Syria. And his temple got rededicated to Jupiter. His reforms were reversed.
His memory obliterated. The Romans refused to even speak his name, calling him the false antinus or the man who wanted tobe a woman. And yet again, that eraser didn't work. Elagabalis became a legend as the teenage ruler who married men, wore gowns, and terrified the Senate. Tiberius.
Some emperors were killed by angry mobs, but Tiberius just got bored and moved to an island. After ruling Rome for 10 years, he packed his bags in 26 AD and retreated to Capri, leaving the empire in the hands of his ambitious Ptorian prefect, Sajis. But what began as a quiet retirement turned into one of the most infamous isolation periods in history.
By the time he died, people weren't calling him emperor anymore. They were calling him the old goat. Capri was supposed to be paradise, but under Tiberius, it turned into hell. Famous Roman historians like Sutonius and Tacitus described the island as a private resort of corruption. The emperor, already in his late 60s, supposedly filled his villas with young men and women trained in every kind of adult act.
His bedrooms were covered in obscene art. His gardens turned into open air theaters for orgies, and he even stocked an instructional library in case anyone needed a tutorial. Guests dressed up as mythological creatures while performing for him. Capri became the world's first adult theme park built for one customer.
The worst stories were the ones involving children. Sutonius claimed Siberius brought young boys into his baths and called them little fishes. They were trained to swim between his legs and nibble at him to please the emperor. Some reports say he even used infants in obscene ways, pretending to nurse them while committing acts too revolting to describe.
Even in ancient Rome, a society that tolerated plenty of excess, people were disgusted. Some historians later argued these might have been exaggerated rumors spread by his enemies. But the stories stuck because they fit the monster everyone already believed he was. Tiberius didn't just commit cruelty in private.
He made it public entertainment. From a cliff high above the sea, he ordered victims to be thrown off after long torture sessions. Below, soldiers waited with orars and hooks to beat the bodies that survived the fall. It's said Tiberius enjoyed watching these executions during dinner. He also invented creative punishments.
One of his favorites was forcing a man to drink until he burst with urine and tying off his genitals so he couldn't relieve himself. He starved his own grand niece, Lilla, to death because she conspired to overthrow him and helped poison his own son, Dusus. Tiberius locked her in a room and threw away the key.
He also kept his grandsons under watch, afraid they'd overthrow him. When he finally died at 77, Rome celebrated like it was a holiday. Crowds shouted to Tyber with Tiberius, demanding his body be dumped in the river. The Senate even debated erasing his memory. But Caligula, his heir, decided to keep him buried properly.
