How Filthy Were The Romans?

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

History, Education, Scandal, Sex, Society

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some of the key remnants of the Roman Empire are their public baths - huge complexes, multiple different rooms, the basis of many of our modern spas. But were the Romans clean?

How regularly did they wash? Were they really using urine to wash clothes? And what's this about a communal wiping stick?

Kate is joined by the wonderful Alexander Meddings for the first episode in a series where we are trying to find out just how smelly people were in history. Alex is a Rome-based historian and tour guide. Find out more about his work here: https://alexandermeddings.com/

This episode was edited by Nick Thomson. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

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Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello again, my lovely betwixters. It's me. Do you remember earlier this year when we went
0:04.6	completely mad and we did a betwixt live show? Well, it went so well that we are now doing it
0:10.7	again next year. Only we are doing two shows. We have one in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in
0:17.6	London Town on the 25th of May. And tickets are available right now, just in time for Christmas.
0:24.3	Go to Fanefanef-A-N-E.com.com.
0:26.5	And we will see you there.
0:30.2	Hello, my lovely betwixters.
0:32.0	It's me, Kate Lister.
0:33.5	This is Betwixt the Sheeds.
0:35.2	Welcome back.
0:36.4	Thank you for coming again.
0:38.5	And to keep everybody safe and to keep everything just snugly and untriggered, I have to tell you,
0:44.2	this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an
0:47.4	adulty way covering a range of old subjects, newspaper adult too.
0:50.3	Oh my God, I feel so much safer.
0:52.6	Thank God for that.
0:56.7	Right. Shall we press on? I think so.
1:11.3	Oh, a spa day. Plush, white dressing gowns with little cotton slippers, the smell of eucalyptus, soft, ambient music, stone walls and a bit of warm lighting, maybe a candle.
1:13.3	At least that's what you'd expect, right?
1:14.3	Right.
1:19.1	And we should probably thank the Romans for that one, shouldn't we?
1:22.1	They were big on bathing, wasn't all of this their idea?
	...

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