Smokivivs Maximvs!

September 5, 2005 7:39 PM

This week on Rome: Did ancient Romans smoke? What did they smoke, by Jupiter?

"I'm going to drink all the wine, smoke all the smoke, and fuck every whore in the city," so says (fictional) Titus Pullo in the second episode. The first and last part of that declaration I can understand. But what would he smoke? Not tobacco, that's for sure.

posted by WolfDaddy to media & arts (16 comments total)

I do not believe cannabis came into the picture until at least the early few centuries AD (predating the time-frame of this show by 300-400 years). If the classical world knew about cannabis at this point in history they did not record it.

Opium also was wildly used, but I don't believe they smoked it.

If I remember from my Latin classes there's some evidence that they did smoke magic mushrooms, but I don't have the time frame for that.

The trepanation, however, was recorded all the way back to Hippocrates.
posted by geoff. at 7:48 PM on September 5, 2005

WolfDaddy - good catch!

I personally think that the reference is likely an anachronism.

In my past studies of ancient Rome I can't recall any reference -- primary, or secondary -- to smoking in the 1st. Century B.C.

However, the possibility exists here on MetaFilter that I may be corrected!
posted by ericb at 7:59 PM on September 5, 2005

Yeah, I could have done without ... the ... trepanation ... bleah.

I've read nothing (nor seen any visual representation) of Romans smoking anything. I'm pretty sure opium was taken as a syrup, and I believe mushrooms were ingested. Jeez, do people smoke mushrooms now?! bleah²
posted by WolfDaddy at 8:22 PM on September 5, 2005

From the Hashish history at Erowid:

"430 B.C. Herodotus reports on both ritual and recreation use of Cannabis by the Scythians (Herodotus The Histories 430 B.C. trans. G. Rawlinson) "
posted by Manjusri at 8:26 PM on September 5, 2005

In the Carlos Castandea books ("The Teachings of Don Juan"), one of Don Juan's most profound "trips" is smoking psylocybin mushrooms. Castaneda has a long detailed account of those hallucinations.

I'll just stick with ingestion. That is, er, um...if I did them at all. Which I don't. Of course.
posted by zardoz at 8:33 PM on September 5, 2005

There's a discussion on this very subject over at the HBO site.
posted by jrossi4r at 8:36 PM on September 5, 2005

zardoz - "wink, wink"

Ah - Carlos Castaneda.
posted by ericb at 8:38 PM on September 5, 2005

According to Erowid smoking mushrooms is "controversial". Some people say you can, some people say you can't. Most people who take mushrooms are very careful about getting them hot (85 degrees), so I doubt many people try smoking them today.
posted by delmoi at 8:49 PM on September 5, 2005

There's some debate as to whether Herodotus really meant that. Here's the original text:

"They make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks inclined towards one another, and stretching around them woollen felts, which they arrange so as to fit as close as possible: inside the booth a dish is placed upon the ground, into which they put a number of red-hot stones, and then add some hemp-seed.

... [he describes it like flax and states they use both the wild and cultivated plants]

The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy, and this vapour serves them instead of a water-bath;"

It sounds to me, from reading that, they just like the smell of weed. Any stoner will tell you that feral cannabis (ditch weed) will not get you high. Herodotus appears to be describing the ancient Iranians as using the same hemp for clothing as they do for this hemp-seed perfume bath. I would conjecture they were just not prone to taking water-baths. Also seeds don't get you high man. Especially seeds cultivated for use in clothing, which one can conjecture are bred for durability and not THC content.

Furthermore a Greek talking about a Scythian doesn't mean the Romans knew about it or that they smoked it. The Romans had yet to conquer this area of the world and while I would assume limited trade and contact existed, a herb that was found in Europe at the time probably was not. I have a feeling that high THC producing plants were found and originally used farther east, even towards India.

Again, there's no mention of cannabis use from 430 BC to somewhere around 180 AD by Dilinious (I'll look it up tomorrow). Recreational use of it around that time frame as trade to the East increased would have been more logical.
posted by geoff. at 8:50 PM on September 5, 2005

As you know the people of Briton took mushrooms before battle (sorry no reference, I've done enough). Here's a natural distribution map of magic mushrooms. This definitely puts mushrooms within Caesar's Gaul conquest and probably known to the Etrusans and the first cavemen to eat things growing out of cow shit.

Drying and smoking mushrooms do work. I realize there's a debate and I think some people can get high that way and some can't. My friend smoked them and shit his pants then walked around his backyard naked. I don't think he was trying just to prove me wrong.

At this point I'd say that smoking mushrooms is much more likely to be known and used throughout Rome during the time of the show Rome, much more than cannabis use. Meth didn't arrive until the first trailer settlements of 170AD.
posted by geoff. at 8:59 PM on September 5, 2005

From here [no sources cited].
Top ten drugs used in Ancient Rome:
Opium---pain relief, poison, suicide, pleasure.
Mandragora or Mandrake---delirium, madness, soporific, anaesthetic.
Belladonna or Deadly Nightshade---delirium, sedation, paralysis.
Henbane---sedative, hallucinogenic.
Thorn Apple---delirium
Hemlock---sedative, narcotic, poison.
Aconite---painkiller, slows heart rate.
Cannabis.
Alcohol.
Mushrooms.
Opium was on sale from shops openly in Ancient Rome.
posted by tellurian at 9:07 PM on September 5, 2005

From The Common People of Ancient Rome, by Frank Frost Abbott (1911):

In the way of articles offered for sale, we miss certain items which find a place in every price-list of household necessities, such articles as sugar, molasses, potatoes, cotton cloth, tobacco, coffee, and tea. The list of stimulants (II) is, in fact, very brief, including as it does only a few kinds of wine and beer.

There's a well-cited paper on Poisoning and the Drug Trade in Ancient Rome [pdf], which at least confirms the opium (via Pliny), although as a method of suicide -- or a medical anesthetic.

Nothing on smoking, though.
posted by dhartung at 1:08 AM on September 6, 2005

They smoked, and I'm not kidding:

Rabbit hair
Goat Horn and the kicker
Ox shit

You too can read all about it in Pliny's Naturalis Historiae.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:43 AM on September 6, 2005

Looks to me like an anachronism thrown in for flavor. You can't expect historical accuracy from tv.
posted by languagehat at 8:39 AM on September 6, 2005

languagehat, I'm actually finding a lot of details to be surprisingly accurate (Cato not wearing a tunic underneath his toga, for example. How many casual viewers will catch that?), so that's why this little bit of speech leaped out at me. I'm also enjoying how colorful the city of Rome is in this series. A feast for the eyes, and I think it's pretty well accepted that in this time period, at least, Rome was not all polished white marble.

That's a great read, dhartung, thanks for linking it. I didn't see anything in a brief scan of the document talking about "the medicine" often mentioned in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series that women seem to take either as a contraceptive or an abortifact. Since McCullough's done an insane amount of research for those books, this stands out to me as well, but I'm sure I can find the answer on my own.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:43 AM on September 6, 2005

In case anyone's wondering, Plutarch's Lives is where to cite the tunic-less Cato and look all smart and stuff .
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:57 AM on September 6, 2005