How to Party Like a Roman

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Contrary to popular belief, parties in Ancient Rome were not all depraved wine-fuelled orgies. In fact, Roman get-togethers were relatively tame by the standards of today. They often consisted of noble families sharing elaborate food dishes and entertaining one another with theatrical hysterics. Parties among less wealthy citizens were simpler, yes, but no less raucous. Bashes of all kinds—whether to celebrate great military victories or mark important festivals such as Saturnalia—were beacons of status and huge networking opportunities, which explains why they became such a core feature of everyday Roman life. So, not all crazy sex parties after all! In this episode, Tristan is joined by Dr Ian Goh, Professor of Ancient History at Swansea University, to find out how to party like it’s 1 BC.

If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Ancient content, then subscribe to our Ancient History Thursday newsletter here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's the Engines on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's
0:16.6	podcast, well it is the festive season and although I know late 2021, it's unusual,
0:21.9	of course we've got the Covid pandemic and perhaps there aren't as many Christmas parties
0:26.7	but today we're still going to be talking about how to party like a Roman because it's this
0:31.1	time of year. Of course you have the great festival that was Saturnalia. However in today's episode,
0:37.6	we're going to be focusing in much more on the Roman dinner party, the convivium, the iconic
0:44.0	image we have of elite Romans reclining on couches, drinking wine and eating luxurious types of food
0:52.0	and so on. So we're going to be looking at these different types of food, we're going to be looking
0:56.3	at different types of drink, we're going to be talking about entertainment, we're going to be talking
1:00.3	about the purpose of these dinner parties and of course we're going to be sorting the fact from
1:05.4	the fiction about a certain room which has been called the vomitorium. Now joining me to talk
1:11.0	through all of this I was delighted to get on the podcast Dr Ian Go from Swansea University. Ian
1:17.1	is a legend when it comes to Roman cultural history, he knows his stuff and he also knows his stuff
1:23.5	about Latin literature, especially verse, prose and satire. Now Ian wonderful to have him on the show
1:30.4	and without further ado here he is to talk all about how to party like a Roman.
1:36.3	Ian thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. No worries.
1:40.9	Well we are talking about a topic and a half. Parties and ancient Rome how to party are like
1:46.8	a Roman because Ian, in fact or fiction we do have this image that has come down to us of
1:52.0	Romans especially the elite being party animals shall we say. Indeed yeah and we have some famous
1:59.9	representations of Daringo and Ralkus behavior which are often played up in the sources that we
2:08.0	have. This is of course something that people gravitate towards, look at those Romans, look at how
2:14.5	they behaved and we often fixate on some of the oddities of what happened with the Romans when it
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.