8 things people get wrong about ancient Rome

Ancient Rome maintains a grip on pop culture, from Hollywood blockbusters to video games. Since its establishment in 31 B.C., the Roman Empire exerted its influence throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. But what if the Rome we think we know—complete with deadly arenas, decadence, and marble statues—is more fiction than fact?

From not-so-deadly gladiator tournaments to the real purpose of the vomitorium, here’s the truth behind eight myths about ancient Rome.

Myth #1: Gladiators always fought to the death

In contrast to the kill-or-be-killed depiction of gladiator combat in films, not every bout was a fight to the death. In his book Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants, historian Garrett Ryan estimated that gladiators died in only one-fifth of fights.

It simply didn’t pay to have fighters die in the arena––dead gladiators couldn’t earn money. Every death came at a financial loss to the lanista, or individual who owned, hired out, and maintained a gladiator troupe.

(Two gladiators enter—only one leaves alive, right? Think again.)

That’s not to say gladiator fights were safe. They were a blood sport, after all, and every battle could lead to severe injury and the dangerous infections that often accompanied them.

Myth #2: The vomitorium was a room where Romans purged after feasting

According to popular imagination, ancient Romans over-indulged in lavish feasts. They ate so much that they had a special room in their villas where they could purge themselves before gorging again: the vomitorium.

(Unravel the the mystery of London’s elusive Roman amphitheater.)

Vomitoria really existed, but they had nothing to do with emesis. Instead, the vomitorium was an architectural feature of amphitheaters and arenas. The space enabled spectators to enter and exit the structure efficiently.

Myth #3: Ancient Roman statues were meant to be white

Most people picture ancient statues as serene figures in smooth, white marble. But that colorless look is more accident than artistry.

The Roman world was in living color, as were its busts and sculptures. Artists applied layers of vivid paint to their marble artwork to depict everything from skin tones to sideburns. The paint faded over time, giving sculptures their colorless appearance today.

(These Greek ”masterpieces” are actually clever, legal copies.)

Myth #4: Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned

Nero, who ruled from A.D. 54 to 68, is often remembered as one of history’s most notorious emperors, his reputation steeped in tales of excess and cruelty. One enduring myth claims that as a great fire devastated Rome in A.D. 64, he coldly played a fiddle while the city burned.

(These notorious Roman emperors became ghostly legends.)

It’s a vivid image—but also a fictional one. The main sources describing Rome’s great fire were written long after the event, meaning there were no eyewitnesses to confirm the infamous tale. Moreover, fiddles didn’t even exist until the Middle Ages.

In reality, Nero seems to have taken the fire seriously. He wasn’t in the city when it started, but when news reached him, he raced back to Rome and did what he could, including trying to slow the flames and providing relief to those impacted.

Myth #5: Roman women were confined to the home

True, Rome was a patriarchal society, one in which women had fewer freedoms than men, were disenfranchised, and couldn’t serve in public office.

But that doesn’t mean women were sequestered in their homes, far from public affairs. Instead, Roman women found ways to control their lives, like owning property. Julia Felix was one such woman, and she owned buildings and a bathhouse in Pompeii just before the city’s destruction in A.D. 79.

(Roman Empress Agrippina was a master strategist. She paid the price for it.)

Though lacking legal rights, some women exerted influence over politics, especially the wives, sisters, and daughters of emperors and senators. They weren’t the only ones. In 195 B.C., women took to the streets of Rome to protest the lex Oppia, a law that limited what they could wear.

Myth #6: Everyone in the Roman Empire looked and spoke the same

At its peak in the second century, the Roman Empire stretched from modern-day England to Turkey. It encompassed different people, cultures, and languages, including Aramaic, Greek, and Gaulish.

People moved within the empire, too. In 1901, the remains of an elite Roman woman were discovered in York, England. Over a century later, an analysis of her skeleton enabled researchers to determine that she was likely of North African descent. She wasn’t alone. Hadrian’s Wall, commonly known as the border of Roman Britain, counted African soldiers as some of the troops operating it.

Even emperors didn’t always come from the Italian peninsula. Trajan was born in modern-day Spain, while Septimius Severus hailed from what is now Libya.

Myth #7: Early Christian martyrs were mainly slaughtered in the Colosseum    

In the story of early Christianity, one chapter stands out: that martyrs were cruelly, brutally tortured and killed in the Colosseum.

There simply isn’t any historical evidence that this happened at the Colosseum. Instead, other venues in Rome––like the Circus Maximus––and the provinces had been the staging ground for some religious executions.

(Christianity struggled to grow—until this skeptic became a believer.)

Nonetheless, tales of martyrdom at the Colosseum cropped up in the fifth century––and by then, Christianity had already been adopted as an official religion. By the 16th century, the Catholic Church had elevated the Colosseum to a sacred site, supposedly anointed by the spilled blood of the martyrs.

Myth #8: Rome fell in A.D. 476

According to the conventional story, the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century when the Germanic king Odoacer deposed Emperor Romulus Augustulus.

It technically wasn’t the end of the Roman Empire. In A.D. 330, the empire had split into two parts: the Western Empire, based in Rome, and the Eastern Empire, based in Constantinople. Though Romulus Augustulus had been usurped in 476, Zeno, the emperor of the eastern empire, had not. This part of the empire survived as the Byzantine Empire for the next millennium.

(These three kings ruled Rome. Their bloody reigns sparked a revolution.)

Some have argued that the fall of the Western empire has been overstated. As historian Edward J. Watts points out in The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea, “no one in Italy thought that Roman life had fundamentally shifted following [Odoacer’s] arrival […] All of the things that traditionally marked Rome as Roman continued.”

Indeed, much of Rome still endures––in our infrastructure, our love of sport, and our romance languages. But even as Rome has survived in surprising ways, these inaccurate, longstanding myths don’t have to.