TVP WEEKLY: Can we say that the end of the Roman Empire came when they started wearing pants?

GARRETT RYAN: That’s an interesting question. In a way, the adoption of the attributes of the barbarians really did mark the end of Rome. For a thousand years, no self-respecting citizen wore pants. They were the clothing of the barbarians, either those from the north or the Persians, Parthians, and peoples who traveled on horseback. Pants are much more comfortable than robes when riding, and much more practical in the cold north of Europe. However, legionaries stationed at the Limes (Latin: imperial border - editor's note) found that the clothing of the barbarians was warmer than the tunic or toga. Later, the soldiers themselves were also descended from barbarian peoples, so pants were the first choice for them. In time they became part of the uniform and were called "braccae" From then on it was only a step to popularize this garment in the city, and that meant adopting the fashion of the barbarians. Later, when the barbarians themselves became emperors, wearing pants became fashionable, or at least acceptable, even in Rome itself. Before that, however, wearing pants was a legally forbidden garment, and decrees against pants were issued during the rule of the Empire. Later, at the end of the empire, it became a symbol of the new Roman clothing.

In early ancient art, people were often depicted naked. Why do the Greek statues look like this?

The Greeks revered sports and the athletic body, and Greek athletes – runners, boxers, wrestlers - were known to train naked. They also competed nude. So artists initially created a realistic representation of these naked athletes. Even as art became more sublime, it was still important to create bodies with beautiful proportions – an athlete’s body, the ideal male physique. The Romans adopted this, so even aging emperors could be depicted half-naked with a beautifully built body.

The color of these sculptures confuses us a bit. After all, they were not created from white marble...

Greek statues that we identify with this material were indeed rarely in such colors. Attempts were made to use pigmentation similar to skin color, and sometimes they were painted in gaudy colors or with gilding. Unfortunately, today's statues are weathered, eaten away by the ravages of time or by the hand of earlier custodians. So we have a rather "sanitized" idea of Greek art.

You have swapped a career as an antiquities scholar for a representative of the "pop history" trend or even a Youtuber. Which is better?

Everything has its good and bad sides. The great thing is that as a YouTube content creator and social media maker, I can cover a lot of topics that I could not explore as a researcher. As a researcher, you focus on a specific area, research it thoroughly, write a dissertation or publish a book. I used to do that, but after a while, it became tiring and limiting. Now, I can deal with everything, not just a narrow area. My latest book, "Naked Statues," consists of 36 essays from very different areas of ancient history that I could never fit into a classic history book. This also allows a more creative approach. Another difference is the audience, which has become huge. As a lecturer, I used to speak to an audience of a few dozen; now I am seen by more than a hundred thousand, sometimes several hundred thousand people every few days. It’s very rewarding, just imagining a lecture hall of this size where everyone present is interested in ancient history.

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  Sometimes I feel that everything about this story has been written and rewritten many times. The ancient texts have already been explored since the Renaissance, what is there left to discover?

Indeed, it may seem so. Historians of antiquity often refer to texts that we have been reading for hundreds of years, such as the histories of Herodotus or Tacitus. Their works were already in widespread use more than five hundred years ago and have already been widely reproduced and interpreted. But when it comes to studying Roman everyday life, we can always come across something new. The countless Egyptian papyri discovered since the late nineteenth century shed new light on the ancient world, including details of people's lives; there were even court minutes and tax records. So we shouldn’t assume that we already know everything we ever will about the common people of antiquity. Just recently, fragments of the great Greek poet Sappho were discovered. Archaeologists come across new inscriptions, discover fragments of local stories. Most interesting, however, are the finds at Herculaneum, a library flooded by volcanic debris after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Charred scrolls can now be "unwrapped" by 3D scanning, which could give us access to an incredible number of ancient works.

What would be the most valuable discovery we could come across if we traveled in a "time machine"?

As a Roman historian, I would love to finally read the never-discovered works of my favorite authors, such as Tacitus. He is an outstanding historian of antiquity, but we only know of three of his works that were found during the Renaissance. I would like to see the rest of Tacitus discovered. There are still tragedies and comedies that we know were written, but we do not know them because they were lost in the Middle Ages, like Ovid’s Medea. Above all, we also do not know the true story of Alexander the Great, but only accounts written down centuries after his death. What if we had come across the records of his companion Ptolemy, who assisted Alexander in his expeditions and battles against the Persians? That would be fascinating.

What about the fall of Rome, which has already been described in our time? We always refer to the work of Edward Gibbon, but he wrote a long time ago, in the 18th century.

Edward Gibbon's work is still to me the best history book ever written, although so many years have passed and it may be considered out of date in many respects. It is still the best history of the fall of an empire written in the English language. It is just so well written. In my opinion, however, Gibbon overestimated the role of Christianity in the fall of the empire and claimed that it weakened the empire. Meanwhile, we can argue that the opposite is true! Christianity helped the emperor gain more prestige, and created a source of unity for the Roman people. It is not until his third volume that Gibbon explains that the empire collapsed because the world around it had changed and it was unable to adapt to those changes. Rome had functioned brilliantly for centuries, but it had failed to evolve.

Or it was poisoned with lead….

It is a common belief that the Romans were afflicted by poisoned water from aqueducts built with lead pipes. But they knew that lead was harmful! Vitruvius, a Roman architect, wrote that while the metal improves the taste of drinks, it is bad for your health. The Romans used lead in water pipes, for their cooking pots, they even made sweet wine by boiling wine in a lead pot, which gave the drink extra sweetness. But we forget that the insides of Rome’s lead pipes were coated with lime from the local hard water, so the water had little contact with lead. The analysis of Roman skeletons showed that the lead content in their bones was slightly higher than in today's Europeans, but not to an extent that was harmful to health.

Have you not wondered that this whole empire, with an economy based essentially on the slave labor of the people, didn't collapse through some kind of mass uprising?

It almost did happen during the Late Republic, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, when, after the conquest of the Hellenistic world, slaves came on the market in such large numbers that their value not only decreased, but they were even treated like animals. This may have set the stage for revolt, especially since the captives spoke the same language and could therefore organize. (Whereas slaves during the imperial period came from so many different places that they could not communicate properly and therefore organize themselves.) Later, under the Empire, more "humane" regulations were introduced for the lives of slaves. They could no longer be killed without cause, sales were regulated, and attempts were made to regulate contact between slaves and Roman society. This made revolts less likely.

Basically, they didn’t revolt?

In the late Republic there were already three so-called servile wars, rebellions like that of Spartacus. There were cases of murder of masters by slaves, but here the law was extremely strict. For the death of a master by a slave, all other slaves in the household had to die. In the first century AD such a situation occurred in the villa of a Roman noble, and the Senate debated it for a long time, because it turned out that in carrying out the rule 400 people had to be killed. There were those who thought that this was too cruel, but finally it was concluded that the slaves in the Eternal City should be made to understand that the punishment must be severe. They were all crucified without exception.

Why were the Romans such a bloody and cruel society? They were also the first to invent the entertainment of watching people fight to the death. I guess this is something that completely distinguishes them from the Greeks?

The Greeks were not fond of bloody fights. They preferred plays, tragedies and comedies in their theaters, and there was no room for anything like gladiatorial combat, although bloodless wrestling matches were popular. This does not mean, however, that they did not enjoy fighting and were gentler than the Romans. Their warfare was certainly not like a picnic and was just as cruel. However, in ancient history, Rome is credited with the invention of gladiator games. But it was not entirely a Roman custom, but an Etruscan one. And in the beginning they were sacred, not sporting. The first mention of slaves fighting to the death dates to the 3rd century B.C. and describes a lavish funeral of a wealthy Roman. Over time, this custom evolved into a bloody pastime, the gladiator games, as we know them today. This happened during the Republican period, as early as the 1st century BC.

Does the famous movie "Gladiator," which is to have a sequel, reflect the reality of the ancient world and the slaves fighting in the arena?

I think "Gladiator" is a great movie because it is an amazingly accurate representation of reality during the heyday of the Empire. Even though someone like Maximus - a Roman general condemned to fight in the arena - never existed, and the reign of Commodus was quite different from the history portrayed on the screen, the film satisfies our curiosity about that time. However, we should remember what the facts were. Commodus, the evil, arena-fighting emperor, takes power immediately after the death of his father Marcus Aurelius - this is historically correct. However, he ruled not for a year or so (as in the movie), but for a full 12 years and died not in the arena, but strangled in a bathhouse by one of his wrestlers. During his reign, Commodus portrayed himself as a gladiator and created the image of a legendary strong warrior. In any case, a magnificent statue of him has been preserved, in which he is depicted in the lion skin of Hercules. Later he lost his mind and tried to name Rome after himself. But even before this, he believed he was an excellent gladiator. It is said that he was a talented archer who, during the games, shot arrows from a special platform at bears that were released in the arena.

Supposedly, he considered himself so good that he did not need to use real weapons.

He entered the arena with a wooden or blunted sword, normally used only for training, and fought against his rivals in this way. He demonstrated his magnanimity by showing mercy to the defeated: he did not kill his opponents, but put the sword to their necks to show them that he would spare their lives. We do not know if he was a good fighter. Of course, he may have had a penchant for fighting, but no opponent would really try to kill a rival emperor in battle.

In the time of the gladiators, did many voluntarily choose this profession?

It was mostly a profession of slaves and captives. Very few free men became gladiators, becuase if you chose a gladiatorial career, you had to become the property of a gladiator school owner. Many gladiators were prisoners of war. The fighters used weapons originally used by the conquered peoples of the provinces. Some of the weapons and equipment of the first gladiators resembled those of the Samnites, who the Romans defeated in a series of wars. Gladiators who fought from chariots, likewise, were modeled after Rome's opponents in the conquest of Britain.

There was a lot of stylization in the fights.

A gladiator of the retiarius type or a net fighter fought against a secutor - a heavily armored fighter with a sword. The retiarius had a net and a trident, so he was a "fisherman" fighting a heavily armored opponent who wore armor that made him look like a little like a fish. The Romans were looking for a stylization that guaranteed a greater attractiveness of the spectacle. Another type of gladiator, the andabata, was dressed in chain mail and a helmet through which he could not see anything, since he did not even have eye holes. He walked blindly into the arena and listened to the sounds of the crowd and the cues from the stands.

What about a thumbs up?

This is a big mystery and quite frustrating for researchers. In Latin, the gesture is called pollice verso, but we still do not know whether thumbs down or thumbs up meant death. One theory is that the downward thumb means sheathing your sword, which means sparing your opponent. However, the downward movement can also indicate a stabbing gesture, which seems to mean killing the defeated fighter. We have a slightly different idea of this gesture, because for us a thumbs up always means something positive. This is an interesting detail from ancient history, one of many.

-Cezary Korycki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

Garrett Ryan - Doctor of Classical History from the University of Michigan, former academic lecturer. Creator of toldinstone – a popular history channel on YouTube. His book "Naked statues, pot-bellied gladiators and war elephants" has recently been published.