Undertakers and dead bodies in the sword-and-sandal era

A blue sky background with ywllow text reading "how often do you think about Roman Empire funerals?" There's a white marble statue of three Roman men.

There’s been a lot of hype about the Roman Empire lately, but no one is tackling the big questions.

What about Roman undertakers?!

What did they do with all those bodies after plagues and epic battles?!

Go ahead and obsess over the viral TikTok trend, but while you’re at it, learn some very niche information to spring on your friends the next time Rome comes up in conversation.

A disclosure before we get started: I am not a historian, merely an undertaker who spends too much time on the internet. I’ve cobbled together this relevant information, some of which is contradictory or subject to interpretation. Please don’t well, actually me. Use this for entertainment rather than quoting me in a dissertation. I’ll add my sources at the end.

Moving on… I’m assuming you’re like me and only have a vague recollection of Rome (based on questionable sources like the Gladiator movie).

Russell Crowe in his iconic "are you not entertained" pose from the Gladiator movie

Here’s a refresher:

Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC)
Roman Republic (509–27 BC)
Roman Empire/Imperial Rome (27 BC–AD 395)
The Fall of the Roman Empire (AD 476)
Late Antiquity (AD 250 - 6th or 7th century?)

Note: BC and AD stand for Before Christ and anno Domini (in the year of the Lord not After Death).

You may have noticed a recent shift to the religiously neutral BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). They mean the same thing, and there’s no change in the numbers. There, that’s something new you probably just learned today.

Let’s start with the lady in charge.

An ornate carved statue with a winged skeleton holding a scythe and an hourglass — (Not actually Libitina, but I can’t find any pics of her)

Libitina was the Roman goddess of corpses and funerals. Her name is metonymous with death. That’s a fancy word that’s like synonymous, but in this case includes all the trappings of the death profession rather than just death itself (think Pentagon: it doesn’t just mean a shape; it also implies a specific government facility and all of the goings-on within that building).

Anyways, some say Libitina had a connection with Venus, but there may be confusion with Venus Lubentia/Lubentina, an Italian goddess of gardens.

They may have been one and the same. Who knows? History is a hot mess. There’s not a lot of information about her either, since she wasn’t really worshiped like other gods. Poor thing didn’t even have a shrine or cult. Unfair.

Club Dead

A historic illustration of a Roman undertaker dragging a corpse by a hook into the mortuary as other men look on — Another day, another corpse

The sacred grove of Libitina sat on Esquiline Hill, outside the city walls. The sanctuary was basically a mortuary office: undertakers operated there, collecting the death tax and registering deaths for statistical purposes. Do not underestimate this operation: the Roman historian Suetonius wrote of a plague causing the temple to record 30,000 deaths within in single autumn. That’s a LOT of dead bodies.

It’s thought that similar groves existed to conduct the business of death, storing necessary equipment and providing arrangements for funerals and executions. Yep, that’s right. It was a one-stop-shop. They contracted undertakers not just for corpse disposal, but also for capital punishments and crucifixions. They sort of lumped all the icky morbid jobs together, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.

So beyond keeping the obvious supplies like funeral beds/couches, biers, torches, incense, perfumes, and burial clothing, they also kept essential items like clubs, chains, and ropes. You know, for when someone got condemned to fustigation (being beaten and stoned to death).

**Fun random aside, too weird not to mention:**

The Romans had a special capital punishment reserved for those guilty of patricide (murder of one’s father). It was called ***Poena Cullei***. They sewed the convicted criminal into a sack along with ***a live dog, rooster, viper, AND*** *checks notes* ***a monkey***. The sack of chaos was then tossed into the river.

The Crew

Roman undertakers were known as Libitinarius or Libitinarii (hmmm, sounds an awful lot like the goddess Libitina) and actually had a lot in common with their modern counterparts. Funeral directors were in charge and ran the show. They delegated other people to perform specific tasks, both funereal and performative.

Let’s look at the players in a typical Roman funeral.

Dissignatores (directors): The guy in charge could organize both funerals AND theatrical events, because honestly, there’s a lot of crossover. Arranging equipment, staff, musicians, performers, mourners, costumes, processions, seat assignments… it’s all the same! He could also be a theater usher and a referee or umpire at athletic competitions. He wore distinctive black clothing and a black hat, marking him as more important (and less yucky) than other funeral workers.

Pollinctores (morticians/embalmers): Embalming wasn’t really a “thing,” at least not how we think of it today. These guys washed the bodies and did a superficial anointing with spices and perfumes. They applied powder to the corpse’s face to conceal the discoloration of death. If a rich or famous person had died, they were expected to lie in state for a longer period. In those cases, they could perform cavity embalming.

Lecticarii (corpse bearers): Pretty obvious. They carried the litters, couches, or biers holding the body.

Sketch of a Roman litter, like a bed with a roof and carrying handles — A litter: could be used for carrying dead people, or lazy and entitled rich people

Vespillones (corpse carriers): They carried poor people’s bodies out for burial in the middle of the night. There were also corpse draggers who used hooks to haul away the bodies of executed criminals. No one wanted to touch such unclean people directly.

Fossores (grave-diggers): They dug graves, both in the ground and in underground catacomb type tombs. They were also corrupted by the clergy, who used them as violent hired goons in the highly competitive religious and political feuds of bishops in Late Antiquity. Wild, huh?

Ustores (corpse-burners): They built pyres and performed cremations in the ustrinum (crematorium).

Carnifex (executioners): The word literally means meat/flesh maker or butcher. It’s also the name of a death core band and a monstrous bio-weapon creature in the Tyranid army of Warhammer 40,000.

Note: this is an alien Tyranid Carnifex, not a Roman Empire Carnifex

Praecones (criers): Think of him as the town crier, acting as the funeral hype man. As the funeral procession began, he’d announce the funeral and invite people to join. He helped maintain order and ritual in both funerals and other events, like religious festivals and theatrical competitions. Oh, and he was also the auctioneer.

Performers: Directors arranged for flautists, special horn players, mimes, dancers, and professional wailing women/dirge singers (praeficae) who sang praises of the dead man in front of his house.

What a cool group of people! They must have been well-liked, or if nothing else, highly respected, valued members of society.

Or… not

Unfortunately, Libitinarii were polluted. Romans believed professions had different degrees of honor, and funeral workers were pretty low on the ladder. First, bodies were gross. Anyone working with them had to be tainted. Second, Romans weren’t so hot on the idea of people profiting from death. These stigmas forced undertakers to suffer from infamia, or a loss of legal and social standing.

It varied by job title, with funeral directors being the least defiled, corpse handlers in the middle, and executioners at the bottom. Other similarly marginalized jobs included pimps, prostitutes, gladiators, charioteers, actors, mimes, dancers, and certain musicians.

A black and white mosaic of a reclining skeleton with text that translates to "know thyself" — Translation: “Hey… ‘sup?” or, in actuality, “know thyself.”

Laws proclaimed that the outcast Libitinarii live outside the city walls, near the grove of Libitina. The staff were required to be between age 20-50, and could not (for whatever reason) be bowlegged, one-eyed, blind, limping, or maimed. Perhaps that would have made them a little too stereotypically creepy? Libitinarii could only bathe after the first hour of the night. They could only enter the town at night, and only to fetch bodies or perform executions.

Time restrictions mandated that an abandoned slave corpse on the street must be removed within two hours of daylight, and the highly offensive suicides by hanging had to be removed within one hour of discovery. In order to avoid passing their taint to others, they had to identify themselves with a distinctive red cap and ring bells to warn people away.

A statue of a Roman man with has right arm raised and pointing — ATTENTION EVERYONE! Definitely don’t look where I’m pointing!

The bells didn’t really work as intended. Instead of repelling people, they drew out the morbidly curious to witness spectacles like an executioner dragging a mangled corpse by a hook. Who wouldn’t want to see that train wreck?! People clapped and jeered, excited by blood lust and vengeance carried out on a public stage. It was quite the contradiction; the inherent pollution of the Libitinarii and the corpse didn’t dissuade people from watching gleefully.

Besides ostensibly being viewed as creepy weirdos, Libitinarii were prohibited from holding municipal office or enjoying common legal protections. It was the tradeoff they made: gaining wealth at the cost of civic honor. Directors and criers had things a teensy bit better. They could exploit a loophole because their services applied to other public functions outside of funeral service. They even marked their job titles on their own epitaphs (tombstone inscriptions), which was something other funeral workers were too ashamed to mention.

Still, they all suffered from poor reputations. It’s pretty unfair, considering that disposing of the dead is such a crucially important part of city living. There’s also quite a disconnect between “love of the dead and loathing of the corpse.” Apparently, laying the dead to rest was noble, but being paid for it was ignominious.

Romans felt there was an obligation to bury every dead body. If you found a dead body on the ground, they expected you to at least throw some earth on it.

Yep… every dead body…except felons… and suicides… oh and if someone got struck by lightning, you had to leave them as-is because it meant **Jupiter (Zeus)** had punished them. *Don’t mess with a smiting.*

Good news for undertakers: their status improved in Late Antiquity as Christianity grew in popularity. The Church shifted attitudes on burying during the day rather than at night, ensured the poor got buried respectfully, and assimilated funeral workers into clerical positions. Unfortunately, some workers (namely gravediggers) got demoted again after engaging in violent coups and profiting from people competing to buy the graves closest to buried saints. They did not make good choices.

On to the funeral process! First, a death.

Truly, though, deaths were happening all the time. The mortality rate back then was outrageous. Among a population of 750,000, the city of Rome lost about 30,000 people a year. That’s just a regular year, not a plague year.

Four percent of the population, DEAD.

Contrast that to the year 2019 in the USA: population 326.7 million, 2.9 million deaths = 0.88% of the population. Not to mention Romans expected to live to about 22-33 years old, or 35-42, when infant mortality was factored out. Maybe an average of 50s if they were of the citizen class. Meanwhile, life expectancy in 2019 was about 78.

“Destruction,” 1836, part of the “Course of Empire” series, by Thomas Cole

So, yeah. A lot of deaths.

Let’s pick a body and follow them through the process: say Spartacus died. No, not that one. Spartacus Jones, slightly above-average Roman citizen. Poor Spartacus died at home, surrounded by his family. Well, maybe not “poor.” If he was poor, his family would have illegally dumped him on the street in the middle of the night to avoid paying for a funeral.

If they got caught, they’d get fined for the public nuisance (equivalent to public brawling or unlawfully dumping animal waste). City contracted undertakers would remove him with no fanfare, off to a pauper’s grave without funeral rites.

Our Spartacus was in decent standing and his family had money.

Here’s how his postmortem experience would have unfolded:

Spartacus’ family and home became polluted upon his death and remained so through nine days of cleansing rites following the burial. They planted a cypress tree or strew pine boughs outside their front door to warn away passersby concerned with protecting their purity.

The family really committed to the whole “unclean” thing, wearing special darkened togas, covering their hair with ashes, and not bathing. It’s probably for the best that they isolated during the time they were considered “untouchable.”

Spartacus himself could be touched by female relatives and the perpetually polluted undertakers.
After the family gathered around for the moment of death, the closest relative did a sort of death kiss to seal the passing of the spirit from the body (the soul was in the breath).

Then they closed the eyes, and everyone else turned on the drama. Lamentations, scratching their faces ‘til they bled, crying Spartacus’ name, the whole nine yards. Then they placed the body on the floor, washed him with warm water, and anointed him with perfumes and spices. They dressed Spartacus in a nice, white toga marked with insignias or ranks he’d achieved.

There’s a chance they dropped a single, low denomination coin into his mouth, known as Charon’s obol. Naturally, this was the payment for Charon in order to be ferried across the river Styx. Some consider this to be myth, but archaeological evidence seems to support the custom. Skeletal remains have been discovered with coins in the mouth, even producing discoloration on teeth. It was definitely an intentional placement.

A painting of the underworld ferryman Charon taking a coin from a woman's mouth — That’s a coin, not a snack

Spartacus got plopped onto a funeral couch (like a regular couch, but with a dead person on it) and posed in a somewhat lifelike fashion. Undertakers touched up his pale face with cosmetics. They pointed his feet toward the door, then scattered flowers all about and burned incense. Remember, it was a room packed with a corpse and a bunch of unwashed people.

If Spartacus were richer or more important, embalmers might have done a little something extra to pause early gut decomposition. Average Spartacus didn’t need to last long until his burial. He laid in state for three days instead of the full week a more prestigious guy would have gotten.

At least he got to hang out longer than the 24-hour rush job most commoners got. If Spartacus had lived in an apartment building or a rural setting, his arrangements would have looked different. We’re not really sure though. There’s not a lot of information recorded about that, even though it encompassed the vast majority of the population. All we know is they had to hustle bodies away as quickly as possible so as not to become overwhelmed. Only VIPs got to drag out the experience longer.

A close up of an ancient carving featuring a human skull

Now we’re getting to the fun part.

The funeral procession was a circus-like parade to the cemetery or crematory. It was way cooler than today’s somber line of cars following a hearse. The Roman funeral procession was a way for people to display their wealth and social position, so the wilder the better. It began with the praeco (town crier) calling everyone’s attention and inviting them to join. He’d say something like:

“This citizen has been surrendered to death. For those who find it convenient, it is now time to attend the funeral. He is being brought from his house.”

A carved tablet showing a Roman funeral procession with about thirty people present — Amiternum relief, first century BC, showing a Roman funeral procession, in the Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo, L'Aquila, Italy

The funeral director arranged the order, but you could expect to see something like:

A band of musicians - flutes and special horns played a distinctive tune wherever the corpse went.
Dirge singers - women singing in praise of the dead.
Performers - mimes, buffoons, and jesters who messed around with bystanders and mimicked the deceased (they tried to hire people who resembled whoever died).
Ancestors - actors donned heirloom wax masks of the deceased’s ancestors and clothing appropriate to their time and station. Their presence symbolized departed family members escorting the new guy to the underworld.

Four brownish colored wax death masks propped up against a wooden backdrop — Totally normal, not-at-all creepy wax face masks of ancestors

Memorials - displays of brag-worthy deeds

Finally, the dead guy - perhaps laying on his funeral couch, litter, or bier, and borne on the shoulders of sons, other close relatives, or litter carriers. If he was concealed rather than uncovered, he might have a clothed wooden figure sitting up next to him and wearing a wax mask.
Other sad people - family, friends, neighbors, freedmen (former slaves, especially those freed by this particular dead guy), slaves, and anyone swept up with the excitement of it all. Everyone wore their best mourning toga.

Torchbearers escorted the procession to light the way, even during the day. It was a throwback to when all burials happened at night. Lesser status people still had night funerals, but those of a higher status were now given daytime privileges. In case the family bore their grief too stoically, they hired professional mourners to shriek, wail, and beat their breasts “with abandon.” The goal was to avoid the dead feeling neglected by the indifferent living.

At this point in the procession, our boy Spartacus probably wasn’t treated to a special funeral oration at the Forum. This was a public honor reserved for the most prestigious citizens. Instead, he probably went directly to the cemetery or crematory for the conclusion of the services.

Four lifesize wax Roman statues in white togas carrying a litter with a wrapped body on it — Funeral display, Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren, Belgium

A word on cremation vs burial

Attitudes in Rome shifted from burial to cremation, and then back to burial. At the beginning, there was a big, gross pit outside the city walls known as the Esquiline potter’s field. All the poor people got dumped here, along with dead animals and a fair amount of rubbish. It looked and smelled nasty, as you can probably imagine. It’s thought that these squared pits were the remnants of ancient stone-quarrying sites (called puticuli, or “little pits”).

An area just outside the Esquiline Gate was known as a dumping ground for the bodies of executed criminals and crucified slaves. Red-hatted Libitinarii used hooks to drag the polluted criminals there, and the slaves were often left on their crosses. It was Disneyland for animal and bird scavengers.

Then times changed.

A sepia toned photo of a Roman columbarium, showing many empty niches and some niches with busts or urns — A typical Roman columbarium. A niche for urns was called a *loculus*, plural *loculi*.

Elite citizens began opting for cremation, possibly out of fear of bad guys stealing their bodies and defacing them. No comment on whether that meant removing their faces or some other form of mutilation or misuse. There seems to be a period of burial/cremation overlap during the mid-late Republic and 1st-2nd century Empire.

Eventually, cremations replaced burials entirely. They covered the disgusting mass burial pits and passed laws to force crematories a minimum of two miles away from the city. No one is sure if this was because of sanitation concerns, risk of out-of-control fires, or simply because the whole thing was foul.

Note: It appears these carefully thought out traditions of burial and cremation were tossed out the window during times of plague. During those awful times, they adopted a more “anything goes” attitude and dumped bodies into public sewers and the Tiber river. In retrospect, that was probably unwise. They did what they had to do though.

For soldiers who fell in battle, recovery followed by individual burial or cremation was preferable. If circumstances rendered that impossible, a mass cremation or burial took place instead and they erected a cenotaph monument in honor of the un-recovered men. The soldiers even paid into a fund each month to prepare for the costs involved.

The ustores (body burners) performed cremations in the ustrinum (crematoria). They built individual funeral pyres for the elite but likely held mass cremations for the poor. Plutarch wrote of the practice of adding one female body for every ten males because the fattier tissue fed the flames and assisted in the cremation. These large communal funeral pyres burned hotter and faster than the individual ones, which took about 7-9 hours to fully consume a body. It took even longer if rain put out the fire.

A historic sketch depicting a Roman funeral pyre and people carrying a body on a litter — Ancient Roman funeral pyre and funeral procession

It was incumbent on the ustores to know how to carry out their duties effectively. If they did it poorly, there would be partially burned leftovers and a massive waste of precious materials. One decent pyre took about half a cord of timber to build (64 cubic feet; picture about three standard refrigerators) and pyre wood was expensive. Elite pyres were much fancier, usually about eight layers of timber laid at right angles to form a small tower with an open area inside for a body on a funeral couch.

Some pyres were lavishly decorated inside, including offerings to be burned with the body. Adding incense helped sweeten the smell of the smoke and cover up the nastier smells, plus the resinous material was flammable. A wax replica of the deceased sometimes sat on top of the structure. For an extra touch of flair during the cremation of deified emperors, they hid a caged eagle within the pyre. The poor thing got released at a key moment and symbolized the ascent of the soul.

A historic sketch of an elaborate Roman funeral ceremony with a large funeral pyre and and eagle being released into the sky — “Bye bye, eagle! Don’t forget to take Augustus’s soul with you!”

Cremation eventually fell back out of favor, partially because of the expense and time consumption. Turns out it’s way faster and cheaper to dig a hole in the ground. The shift back to inhumation (burial) may also have been prompted by Christianity. What would Jesus do? He wouldn’t get cremated, that’s for sure. It messes with the whole resurrection thing.

Romans lined the roads outside the city with both simple and elaborate tombs, mausoleums, and columbariums (that’s a mausoleum, but for urns). Families visited often with food and wine for their loved one, and they regularly held special festivals on cemetery grounds.

A wide open space underground in a Roman burial catacomb. Pillars support the roof and spaces are carved out of the walls. — Roman catacombs contain over 150.000 graves!

Besides the fancy outdoor structures, there were also catacombs. They’re like the underground indoor mall of cemeteries. Tunnels connected chambers, and individual burial spots were carved out from the walls for either bodies or urns. Burial societies made sure that the poor got proper burials down here, though they didn’t get the VIP spots. People bribed the gravediggers with top dollar to get the prestigious spots closest to the buried saints.

That turned out to be a few more words than I expected about cremations vs. burials. Let’s rejoin the last farewell of our dear citizen Spartacus. We were at the end of the procession, right before the cemetery or crematory part.

A historic illustration of a Roman funeral in a cemetery — “It says here you forgot to pay the death tax, so cough up!”

Which brings us to…

A portable altar on which we’re going to perform a sacrifice! Don’t worry, it’s a pig, not a human. Spartacus needs the consent of Ceres, goddess of grain, harvest, and fields, and most importantly here, the gatekeeper between the realms of the dead and the living. This sacrifice is so she’ll allow Spartacus’ shade to pass to the underworld.

Here’s the process:

Consecrate the pig with a sacred mixture of salt and grain or flour (called mola salsa)
Stun or kill the pig with an axe or hammer
Turn the pig on its back and eviscerate it
Put the guts (exta) in an earthenware pot (olla) for examination
If the guts were abnormal, it meant Ceres rejected the divine offering and a new sacrifice had to be made
If the guts were normal, the pig got chopped up and divided between the mourners, the goddess, and the dead guy’s shade

A historic illustration of Romans with an assortment of animals to sacrifice — A nice picture, until you realize what’s about to happen

Most of the meat was roasted and eaten by the mourners. Ceres’ portion (the special guts) was burned on the portable altar. The dead guy’s portion got cremated or buried with him.
Poorer people could offer other foodstuffs and wine libations instead of an animal sacrifice. Ceres was okay with the pitiful offering as long as it was pure.
Richer people might sacrifice an ox or a variety of animals, because they’re extra like that

Time to conclude this service.

If we’re burying Spartacus, we’ll consecrate his burial site, purify the attendees, and toss some earth over the body in the grave. If we’re cremating Spartacus, his heir will use a torch to light the pyre while averting his face. Seems like he ought to pay more attention to where he’s sticking that fire, but what do I know?

A historic illustration of a chaotic Roman funeral scene with a person lighting the pyre with a flaming torch. — Hey, watch it!

In a dramatic climax known as the conclamatio mortis, the hired mourners turn the volume up to eleven: weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair, rending of clothing, and scratching their faces bloody while calling out for the deceased. The name shrieking continues as they circle the casket three times. It sounds exhausting.

Let’s say we’re doing a cremation for Spartacus. He might be in a reusable ustrinum pyre, which is cleaned out between uses to avoid mixing remains. If he’s in a bustum pyre instead, it’s single use and the cremated remains just stay in it and it becomes the burial site. In this case, I want Spartacus’ heir to sprinkle wine on his ashes, then scoop them into an urn along with any leftover bone fragments. Now we’re heading over to the catacombs to inter the urn.

An elaborately carved Roman urn with a lid — Is it wine? Is it ashes? It’s both!

As we tuck Spartacus into his final resting place, we’re going to hook him up with everything he might need. They called these items grave goods. Food and drinks, naturally, plus perfumes, nice clothes, lamps, personal trinkets, and… blood, for some reason? Some grave goods were damaged, which could have been intentional as the items were “ritualistically killed” before burial, or it may have simply been the logical choice. If you have two lamps at home, and one is broken, keep the good one and bury the other!

One last job at the cemetery: an epitaph. Roman epitaphs were a big deal. They allowed people’s legacies to live on even after anyone who personally knew them was gone. The carved inscriptions displayed cherry picked highlights of the deceased’s life. Praiseworthy values and achievements, political offices, occupations (unless they were dirty Libitinarii), and family relationships.

An engraved Roman headstone — A fun and very emo inscription I found:
***non fui, non sum, non curo***
Which translates to
***I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care.***
or alternately
***I did not exist, I do not exist, I’m not concerned about it.***
That’s an entire mood right there.

Are we done? We got Spartacus cremated AND buried, saving him from an eternity of wandering the earth and haunting people as a restless spirit. He’s on his way to becoming a benevolent ancestor and hanging out with the other properly funeralized shades in the underworld. So he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

His family still has a bit more to do. After returning home, they have to purify themselves with cleansing rites (suffitio) by sprinkling themselves with water and walking over fire. The home got cleansed too, getting rid of all that death pollution. A mourning period ensued, with more cleansing, offerings, and memorial activities.

It’s A Dead Man’s Party

A historic painting of a Paternalia celebration in a Roman Empire cemetery

Nine days after the death, they held another funeral feast (novendialis or novemdialis). Another animal got sacrificed and burned, but they did not share the meat between the living and the dead. They poured a drink out onto their homie’s grave (I’m not making this up). More fire and water cleansing rites purified the family, releasing them from their funeral duties and allowing them to dispense with the mourning garb. Then, back to the now un-sullied house for more feasting.

Families also partied at the cemetery on the anniversary of the death, plus birthdays, the Rosalia (festival of roses), the Violaria (festival of Attis), and the Parentalia. That last one was a nine-day festival with mandatory attendance to honor parents and ancestors. It sounds a bit like a drunken, joyful Mardi Gras type celebration, with an excess of extravagant feasts, sacrifices, and flowers. If the goal was ostentatious celebration, they nailed it.

A historic mosaic depicting ten Roman gladiators fighting. Their names are written nearby. — *Gladitoria Munera*

Rich, elite families could go even further to honor their dead by hosting funeral games. Doesn’t that sound fun?! What better way to honor the deceased than to have gladiators fight to the death! These family-sponsored gladitoria munera were later organized and subsidized by the state as a form of public entertainment.

… which brings us back to the beginning, when everything you knew about the Roman Empire was limited to the Gladiator movie. We’ve come full circle, and now you know lots of awful little historic factoids to horrify people with.

All I ask is that you credit me in your TikTok videos.