Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED
Lauren D. Ginsberg, an Ancient Rome professor, answers the internet's burning questions about the Roman Empire. What did Romans snack on in the Colosseum? Why does Ancient Roman concrete differ from modern forms of concrete? Did gladiators really fight lions? This Roman expert answers all these questions and much more.
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Constantine Economides
Editor: Louville Moore; Ron Douglas
Expert: Lauren Ginsberg
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Gaffer: Rebecca Van Der Meulen
Sound Mixer: Michael Guggino
Production Assistant: Sonia Butt
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
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I really love when historians discuss the daily life, economy, and traditions of a specific era.
that’s anthropology!!
@@divyajoshi4498 Actually that's not what they are called
It's great! It's called social history
Just think, in a thousand years someone will be discussing the United States in this manner.
Unfortunately she started showing her extremely biased view history when she started blasting feminism
I am delighted to learn that Ancient Romans brought little tailgating grills to the Colosseum. That makes my day.
😊😊😊😊 mine too
I like to think they had giant sponge # 1 fingers, too.
they just wanted to grill
Some things never change.
@@jsharp3165 Nope, sponges were for #2 only, check the section on sewers and hygiene.
This was very good! I’d love to see one about ancient Aztecs, specifically on the subject of Tenochtitlan.
I'd love to see this!
Aztecs weren’t super ancient, more like a renassiance era people.
Aztec civilization is not ancient, it sprung up after the medieval era (1300s) . I think you might be referring to the Olmec Civilization, which popped up approximately 1200-400 BC. Now that’s ancient. The Aztecs and Olmec did share the same geographical area tho. But the Olmecs are way older by the Aztecs a long shot.
@@Ootazfromda03 I think it may also just be that we don’t really recognize how recent the Aztecs were in the span of human history. We think of them as ancient, but they were decidedly modern. Could also be thinking of the Mayans.
@-alovelygaycat- Fun fact: The Mayans actually still exist! They're called the Quechua now and they are an indigenous minority of Mexico and Guatemala. Their language is still even spoken to this day; I've been to Mexico and in some of the tourist areas they have trilingual signs: Spanish, English, and Quechua. It's really cool.
She has so much PASSION for the subject it’s contagious!
Got a little woke there for a minute, then i remembered that was just at their end...
Huh I was just thinking about the roman empire. What a coincidence.
I was watching ancient Rome VS Han dynasty when this popped up 💀
😂
😅
😂
Same😂
So a vomitorium basically vomits people out of a stadium really quick? Still a fitting name.
ancient crowd control could be its own video, super cool to learn about
We need vomitorium ! Get to the vomitorium! Is what Arnold should say
@@Materialist39 Basically, the police anti-riot squad today still uses the same methods the Romans used back then. The most distinguishable is the beating on the shield rhythmically, which creates discomfort to the people in front of you and the illusion that you have way more people than the one there really are.
@@antoniousai1989 They also use the roman testudo formation while marching with their roman style scutum shields.
@@Idiomatick They don't rofl, they mostly walk in lines. The testudo is a semi-myth in the way it is represented. You can't move if you interlock the shields, they just did it occasionally to avoid missiles of any sort, such as arrows or javelins
We need a ancient Greek, Aztec and Mayan experts next please!! This was soooo interesting
i don't think when someone asks who was the best roman emperor they're asking about how nice of a person they were i believe they're masking how effective an emperor they were for the prosperity of Rome As a whole.
This.
Clearly Aurelian was the greatest emperor. He is the Restitutor Orbis after all. (Augustus/Octavian doesn't count. He's not an emperor really)
I agree with this take. I loved most of her responses but this was a complete non-answer and I found it kind of frustrating. I was leaning towards Trajan and expecting her to come in with some interesting insight/ or obscure emperor that I hadn't given much thought towards.
Never trust a Jewish historian.
Wired is woke asf so she has to put left-wing ideology when talking about politics. That's the problem with academia in the US.
Could you do a video about ancient Egypt next? This was extremely interesting and informative!
They've already done a video about aliens.
yes, yes, yes please! WIRED hear our plea 🙏🏽
And ancient Sumer
Dude, I bet Lauren studied about Rome for many years. She can't produce another video about Egypt just because you ask nicely.
Ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians would be interesting people too.
I would love to take a class with this prof. Her energy makes the subject so interesting
Me to
Yeah she’s great! She seems like she’s be a great grade school history teacher too 😁
She is Jewish so take a bit salt with what she is saying; it is truth mixed with degenerate lies to deconstruct europeean identity be forewarned.
Same!! And it makes me really happy to find her on RateMyProf and see she's rated 5/5 :D
I have and she’s a favorite in her department- super nice
Can you please do one on the Indus Valley civilization next ? Especially given they pioneered underground sewage system around 2000 BCE, it would be interesting to understand what archaeologists think about it.
We know very little about the Indus valley civilization. We might know more in 10 years, but anything pre-common era (BCE) has significantly less archaeological evidence, so it's possible we may never know much about them.
Part 2 please!!! This woman is great at explaining this topic and is super knowledgable
She's so articulate in her explanations. I love how she explains the life expectancy and women's rights in terms of how progressive it was for the time, but how it also had its shortcomings.
@@jonbinki9651pls shutup
Not really an historian, more of a feminist who is judging the past through modern lenses, pretty disappointing.
@@Obi-WanKannabis strongly disagree. She doesn't give any unfair treatment to the male or female side of the argument. She's simply stating that our modern standards of rights are far better than that of the Romans.
@@Obi-WanKannabisyikes 🙄
@@burtoncampbell4457hardly, she's attempting to say they were "progressive" in terms of societal sexuality but "regressive" in terms of societal governance... I.e. cherry picking the parts of the society that fit her current narrative of what she considers progressive and acceptable in society to label as good and/or bad
She gives so much detailed into without it stretching forever. Love her energy and how she explains things
the video is fastened before uploading.
@@suyashprksh The video is "cut down" , not "fastened", but her explanations are concise and yet full of detail despite the cuts.
Shes great! Fast and decisive information and you can clearly tell she loves her job. Only thing I disagree with is the part about civil war, where she essentially says "what is civil war, if slaves have an uprising is that civil war?" Slaves were considered...slaves not citizens so that wouldn't be a civil war but a slave uprising. Other than that, amazing video.
It seemed like a video for children. I was hoping I’d learn something new
Great video! I've been studying Roman history for school. This video is very useful for filling in the gaps that most books and lectures don't have time to talk about
What a great video. Love it when actual experts speak on the subject. Thank you.
i love that our ancestors are so much like us, the local pub, grilling before a game, gladiators where basically a hard core version of WWE.
If you walk around in the Colosseum, you can see how much the design of our modern stadiums still follows it's pattern.
@@njhoepnerwell it is an effective architecture idea to use and we've basically only changed a few things.
Ancient Romans had their own version of Thunderdome called Pankration, the two fighters wore battle gloves with blades and spikes in them. The only rules were no biting or gouging, basically the same rule set at the beginning of modern MMA.
@@njhoepner now that I think of it there is only one real way to design a stadium.
This is not a good thing.
I know she’s a professor and literally an expert on Rome but wow she is incredibly intelligent. The depth to which she was able to answer these finite questions is remarkable. What a brilliant scholar, respect to you Dr. Ginsburg
The answer about roman concrete really stuck out to me in this respect! Though maybe just because that's the part I know the least about.
@@NN-zk4uz waman dum
Ok settle down
@@NN-zk4uzyou are just assuming they never would have said that if it was a man doing the video. No proof, just projecting your own biases. Perhaps you need to examine your own conception of women instead of throwing accusations.
@@vladutzuliI'm gonna jump on your comment to add that if the original poster actually had meant that, now they'll never admit it. All because this person jumped to conclusions and couldn't be patient enough to ask a leading question or two to get the op to explain themselves.
This was an absolutely amazing video. I love that we’ve broadened our context of learning to focus on day-to-day lives, context, and culture, and not jist painting in broad strokes and listing dates and lineages of rulers.
shocking lack of comments about the fact that ancient romans’ favourite position was cowgirl
I completely forgot I tweeted that. Glad to have made it into the video!
Tailgating outside the gladiatorial matches is something I never considered but somehow makes perfect sense.
If you're going to be there for at least four hours, it only makes sense to have some food. You may as well have something worth eating.
Lauren was wonderful. Would love a part 2 in the future
I would take all of her classes in a heartbeat. I miss studying history sooooo much and I WISH more professors were like her!!!! Amazing energy
So Gladiators were the ancient world's WWE wrestlers.
My thoughts exactly
More like MMA fighters in the fact that they actually fought but not usually to the death. But it wasn't just basic theatrics a la WWE.
There were also several classes of gladiators. There were criminals condemned to fight on the arena. They were supposed to die there, so they did not really get training. Some of them actually survive and could rise in ranks. There were also professional gladiators, those were often slaves, but they were essentially trained athletes and entertainers. Some of them even became superstars... These are the ones she talked about in the video
@@Stand_By_For_Mind_Control She said it was choreographed to be exciting for the audience...like WWE.
@@Stand_By_For_Mind_Control But MMA is boring. Theatrics for gladiatorial combat was a big deal. They were superstars, not just fighters lol.
This was great! I love her simple and detailed explanations. Please bring her back for more Roman Empire questions!
I concur!
Preferably with citations lol
Fun fact: we DO still call them Vomitoriums in theatre! (Though we do most often just say “vom” for short)
This is so informative. Lauren is so great with answers. I would have loved to have her as a teacher x
It’s kind of crazy how alike the Romans were to us today. Obviously they were lacking in many modern advances in technology and scientific theory. But their culture is so similar in some ways it’s kind of crazy to think how they actually are pretty alike us in the modern era.
Eerily similar. The Late Republic especially.
One of my personal favorite comparisons was the correspondence between Marc Antony and Octavian before their civil war kicked off. They sent letters back and forth between Italy and Egypt just roasting each other. One calling the other an alcoholic, the other calling him a cuckold! It was by all means a twitter argument! Another favorite of mine is a Greek writer devoting a chapter in his book to his dog, and gushing over how awesome his dog is!
@@DirkLasermasterThat's amazing
Yeah like women not being able to vote and having their economy based on slavery...
@@DirkLasermaster Pets in Rome at times had fancier graves and more touching epitaphs than some people
I'd love two experts to see how Rome compared side by side in all facets with the Han of the same time, arguably the two greatest and I'd say inarguably the two most influential civilizations of the ancient world. Would be fascinating
There's a great historian called premodernist who has some good stuff. Unfortunately the rome vs China is a $3 patreon exclusive, but is a really good warch.
for that you gotta read the book
She is so incredibly knowledgable and such a great educator :) Thanks for making this amazing video
I'm so thankful my middle school history/social science teachers were as passionate about teaching history as this professor because i remember so many of these facts. And why i found the "roman empire meme" so amusing. I hope for more of these videos about other cultures! 💕
Love the charisma of this historian! Can we get an Ancient Egypt one?
You got lucky, They did the egyptian one.
So crazy that some gladiators were prepared to die. Imagine going into the colosseum knowing there’s nothing you can do.
Maybe they were told that their families would be taken care of if/when they died?
On some perspective, Gladiators aren't simply put in the colosseum to death, they are there to entertain. They mostly were taught to wound, not kill. Being a gladiator for most of the part is like a MMA Fighter or Sport celebrities these days, there are product advertisements, there are money to be made, and groups or guilds for it. Therefore, some gladiator could retire and enjoy their wealth. but that would be an entire different story if you're Christian on that age of time, death is absolute for you lol
I think she should have worded it better. To me that take makes so little sense, that I interpreted it as "whoever is HOSTING the event decides that a specific gladiator is going to die", without him actually knowing it. So yeah, it was "agreed upon", but not by the person who was going to actually die. I may be wrong, but it makes much more sense like this.
@@AerB111she says agreed upon by whoever had ownership of the gladiator
they themselves didnt know ,their owners did
I LOVED this video! And those were really great questions. Thank you!
Glad you guys are having fun; God bless you and xo
This video was interesting! Can we like get one on other empires too? I would love it as a series.
As an Italian, thank you for covering our ancient culture with such passion. I really enjoyed your explanations!
Ehhhh
you Italians have as much of a cultural claim to Rome as Russia does.
@@Cyanide_and_Loneliness Moscow is the Third Rome!
@@Cyanide_and_Loneliness No seas bruto.
@@Cyanide_and_Loneliness your lack of knowledge is astonishing.
love this !!! we need a part two like immediately!
sweet mercy we need part 2! this was great :)
This was one of the most fascinating videos I've seen in a while. I feel like I'll be thinking more about the Roman empire going forward.
Yes one more!
She did awesome! Would gladly watch her talk about the ancient world again!
U guys always find the loveliest people to do these !
Wow! Thank you so much for all these golden nuggets of information regarding the ancient city. Wow!
I’m an Italian living in Tokyo, and I actually do end up thinking about the Roman Empire daily (when thinking about cultural differences, food, muscle training, skin and hair cleaning etc 😅)
Oh, you're the Thermae Romae opening guy, aren't you!
@@sasstsuma1467 ahahah yes
I feel like I was just attended a very fun Roman History class! Thank you so much and I'm really waiting for the next class!
I am at the nine minute mark, and I have learned more here than in any history class lecture!
Some of these I already knew but reallly loved this!
This video is absolutely incredible. Professor Ginsberg is so passionate, and she has me completely entranced.
She's a person I would literally spend the day listening to. I really love her mind.
Mannnnn it was absolutely fascinating listening to you talk, Dr. Lauren! I was completely enthralled and I wish I could hear you talk about Rome all day, please do come back :D
That was amazing. Roman History has always interested me and it is a delight, when someone with way more insight than a common layman like me presents her knowledge to the audience. Thanks a lot. :)
This was fascinating!. I'm a history teacher and i will definitely be using some of these for my lessons.
This was all so informative 😮😮😮 wow!!! She has a lot of charisma and it’s so clear how passionate she is about her field!!
she's so knowledgeable!! its a treat to watch someone so passionate:)
That was captivating and interesting as it gets. Thank you for this video !
Absolutely awesome segment! More please!
i love how so much of Roman life is so similar to our own that on the one hand it's depressing to see how little we've improved considering how much time has passed but it's also fascinating that we're doing basically the same things
Humans have been humans for a frickin' long time
If consider modern humans have been around for about 150 thousand years, it hasn’t been that long.
Except there’s more slaves and peasants than ‘citizens’
Oh, we’ve improved a fair bit. Many people don’t seem to realize how truly horrible history was once you go back about 500+ years.
@@PerfectSense77*100+
The entire Tech Support series is just consistently great. This was a great topic, I always wondered about the vomitorium...
This was great! Thank you for sharing your knowledge
Loved this. Another amazing Wired session on ancient civilizations by another Prof Lauren 🙂
Loved this, Lauren has an incredibly positive energy and seems to have vast knowledge of many areas, not just her specialisation. Also I do love when historians talk about the common people, not just royalty and generals.
There is a Roman bath in the city of Bath in the UK. In the 70s when I was a youngster you could paddle in it. (not any longer) it's in amazing condition to this day.
"Romans really pioneered the idea of socks and sandals" 🤣🤣 This was great, please invite Professor Ginsberg back for a Part II!
Very informative and interesting. Thanks a lot for answering the questions.
I absolutely adore Greco-Roman mythology and the ancient ways of life. This was enlightening!
It's Greco or Roman. Their way of approaching religion is radically different
@@antoniousai1989 In Greco-Roman mythology the Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus, Mars as Ares, Venus as Aphrodite, etc. Vergilius told the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. Ancient Romans were regiliously very tolerant and they took influences nearly every part of their Empire like Egypt, Asia Minor and Syria.
@@lucone2937 Those gods were only a couple of them that they syncretized into the Roman religion, but the approach to religion itself was radically different. The whole concept of the Roman religion was the "peace with the gods", seen as a contract with the divine forces, which were innumerable. Also, even the position in the Roman Pantheon is different. Mars was a positive figure for the Romans, and an agricultural god as well, something that he wasn't for the Greeks. Saturn was the same, Minervae too, similar but not the same, because even the Greek gods basically did unite with the previous gods already present among the Italic civilizations. Romans also put lots of emphasis on seasons, cycles, and the days of the year, to the point that they had a god who was the conveyor of the concept of change and transformation, Janus.
@@lucone2937 Ehmmm..... I'm not sure you're familiar with a people call christians
@@forzaacmilan36 In fairness, as a Christian myself, if you think that a religion like what Christianity was back then (ostensibly a messianic cult trying to galvanize jewish people into conflict with the state in the near east) would be allowed in other periods either, I think it's just a misunderstanding of the progression of the christian tradition. Bearing in mind that Christians would eventually come to manifest the religion in an entirely different form for the sake of Constantine and the platonists, it's worth considering that it was more of a political issue than a religion issue.
Please do a part 2, I have so many more questions!
Aboslutely loved this. Thank you so much WIRED and Prof. Ginsberg.
Would love an expert on more history like this for other locations, especially the Native Americans as we don't learn much about them in school here.
If you are in the U.S. you do learn quite a bit about tribes in the US, not enough about South America or Mexican tribes though, the truth is there isn't a lot of known history since most of the western tribes were wiped out by plague before any explorers even met them and they didn't have written language so much of the history and culture was lost or misinterpreted due to living members of different tribes merging.
@@avvery8593 that isn't true for most of us, unfortunately.
@@tanyawriter13 It is true, just look at school curriculums across the country.
@@avvery8593 Yeah I've been seeing that some states have started requiring Native American history to be taught in schools, but that's because they teach so little about it. Just a few years ago it was reported that 27 states don't mention a single Native American in their K-12 curriculum
There's 1000s of videos on youtube. If you actually want to learn it's just a click away
I’m a Classical Studies major myself. Absolutely ADORED this vid!
Wow, these are usually fun but Dr. Ginsberg is particularly great. She's so engaging and her enthusiasm for the subject is really infectious.
She's fantastic! Please have her back, I learned a lot in 20 minutes
this was great, we need more time with her! do a second session!
All the experts they invite for these videos are so passionate, makes it really fun and interesting to watch.
This was excellent and informative. Thank you!
I am glad she pointed out the information about concrete . Often you here people say ancient things could not be replicated today , this is totally fallacious. Problem is cost is prohibitive compared to other methods.
It's also not useful for many modern purposes such as roads/bridges due to the drastically different loads and stresses it would incur.
lookin @ you, damascus steel.
Vomitoria do still sometimes show up in live theatre settings, especially classically inspired stages and theatres "in the round." The one I'm most familiar with is in San Diego: the White Theatre in Balboa Park, part of the Old Globe complex, is a theatre in the round and has two vomitoria (or voms) through which actors enter and leave the stage.
That was fabulous!! Thank you so much. I learned so many new things!
I hope she produces more content...super entertaining!
She's awesome, please bring her back if you do more of these
Man, over a hundred days of public holidays, they really got that right.
More of this please! Very informative
This and the Acient Egypt video are fantastic. Love it.
Haha I loved how excited she got showing the stamping of coins. 15:53
Love her energy! Yall just have a knack for getting the best people
You forgot to answer the most important question, "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
For one they gave us the basis for our system of law. The framers of the constitution were heavily influenced by Roman (and Greek) history and used the model of the Roman Republic to craft that document. The US is basically New Rome.
@@robo5013it's a Monty Python joke.
ROMANES EVNT DOMVS
@@leoribic1691 People called Romanes, they go the house?
@@D4N1CU5 No, it says Romans, go home!1!1! To be serious and honest, though, I'm learning Latin right now and that sketch feels hilariously accurate to the experience of it all sometimes.
Thank you, I loved that. I was never a big Roman Empire fan until I read Conn Iggulden’s Emperor series of books, the then the Robert Harris Cicero trilogy.. They got me hooked on Rome and so I visit as often as I can, oh not forgetting I, Claudius by Robert Graves!.. Thank you again, you have a new subscriber 😊
besides the cop out non answer to "best emperor" this was really interesting!
eh, i dunno. seems fair enough to me. If you asked me who "the best us president" was, I'd have a pretty similar answer that frankly, none of them, they all seem kinda like nutsacks to me.
@@candyh4284 Yea but the question obviously means who ruled the state the best so who was best at governing the empire, so her answer is a cop out and is loaded with some modern day political undertones.
@@rainbowstalin594 But that's not really true. When most people cite Marcus Aurelius as the greatest emperor, only a fraction of that has to do with his governance. In actuality, he was the last of the good emperors at the end of the Pax Romana. People think he's the greatest because his death led to Commodus' reign, and after that, the year of the five emperors, but his legacy is so heavily tied to him writing Meditations that it's more: "decent emperor that kept the empire in good shape and wrote an excellent treatise on stoic philosophy that we still read in college today." If you're looking at the best at governing the empire, it would be Trajan. Rome was its absolute largest and most populous under Trajan. That said, I think her point is intended to instill the idea that we really shouldn't be idolizing these people as "good people" or "the best" as it's easy to mistake Augustus' rule bringing Rome into a new era as him being a just and moral person. In actuality, he was quite a brutal ruler who eliminated rivals and spread propaganda that eliminated dissent in much the same way that Caesar did. However those actions were quite effective at whipping various administrative regions that had fractured during the Second Triumvirate back into shape. It's kind of a "Hitler got the trains running on time, but at what cost" situation. Instead, we should look at them in purely descriptive terms like "products of their time" and "having varying degrees of effectiveness at maintaining Rome's power and influence."
This was very interesting. She’s very good and answering questions and explaining history.
Please more videos like this I found this extremely educational
If I'm being real with you, I think of the Roman Republic way more often than of the later Empire.
I just think about the republic way more than any period of the empire honestly
This. This right here. Empire is extremely overrated. The Republic is the best part
Me fascinan estos videos! La historiadora explicó todo perfectamente, por favor hagan más partes.
Wow that was such a cool video! I would have loved to be able to listen to this expert go on for a few hours 😊
As a history teacher i still have plenty of questions to ask her. Please bring her back 🤓
Well worth the time. Thanks for posting.
I just love learning about ancient Rome. The Romes society is sometimes so recognizable to us, still it's 2000 years ago...
We need part 2!
What a wonderful video, more of Lauren D. Ginsberg, please.
I learned so much! Thank you! Thank you! 😊😊
and I think I’m ready for the test! 😊
More like this, please... Fascinating topics..!
Professor Ginsberg seems super fun to hang out with, please join our DND game or something