Were Roman women done dirty by modern translations?

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Nagging wives, villainous murderesses, and insatiable nymphomaniacs. The stories of ancient Rome are littered with such female figures, and the women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty are especially infamous. But where do these salacious stories come from, and why have they endured for centuries?

Joan Smith, journalist and the author of a new book on the subject, joined Eleanor Evans to delve into the Latin sources behind long-surviving tales of women's bad behaviour in Rome, and consider what darker truths they might conceal. Joan, thank you so much for joining us on the History Extra podcast today to talk about your new book. Unfortunately, she was an infomaniac. And I think we have to start with your eye-catching title. Could you please start by giving listeners the story behind this?

Yes, so I've been going up and down to Rome quite a lot doing research for the book and looking at one of the advantages of writing about this period is that there are a lot of images of women, so we know what they look like as well as what happened to them, which is an innovation in Roman history. So I was in the Palazzo Massimo, which is in the centre of Rome, and it's one of the great national museums, and I was looking at there's a very famous upstairs room where they have very, very beautiful frescoes on the walls, and they come from the house of the first Empress Livia at Prima Porta, which is about 14 kilometres north of Rome. And it's an amazing survival from the first century BC. And so I was looking at the frescoes and an Italian guide came in with an English party. And he started explaining who the various people involved were.

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