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Roman ruins reveal how emperors used winemaking in a lavish power play

Historians insist that Rome itself isn’t just “guy stuff,” as some men in videos called it.

“Ancient Rome was of course patriarchal and violent,” Lewis Webb, a historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University, wrote in an email. “But it was also a diverse place: there were numerous forms of masculinity, women could have agency and power, and there were multiple gender expressions and identities, as well as various sexualities.”

Historian Cornwell also points out that Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus, or Elagabalus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 218 to 222, is frequently presented in ancient sources as experimenting with cross-dressing.

“Even when you get to some of the emperors, they’re doing weird and wacky things by modern conceptions of what a man is,” Cornwell points out. There were also female gladiators. “The Romans do have a clear sense of what is masculine and feminine, but within that there is an awful lot of flexibility. Which sometimes we often forget about,” she said.

And she herself, of course, thinks about the Roman Empire quite a lot — on a daily basis, as it is her chosen field. Her partner recently told her he thinks about it “1.6 times a month.”

So what is a healthy amount?

“Goodness,” she said, laughing. “I’d say it really depends on what you’re thinking about.”

CORRECTION

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the time period during which Roman emperor Elagabalus reigned. He was emperor from A.D. 218 to 222, not 218 to 222 B.C. This article has been corrected.