11. Three Lovers and a Funeral

Being Roman with Mary Beard

Allia Potestas is a woman remembered in one of the most intriguing and affecting funeral orations of the ancient world. Her lover remembers her diligent application to housework before praising to the skies her beauty and her erotic skills. But he didn’t have Allia to himself. She was shared in a ménage à trois with his male friend. It’s an unusual domestic arrangement and a surprising one to advertise on a tombstone. The lines themselves reveal an enormous amount about Roman morality and the sexual politics of the time, but the story between the lines is even more fascinating. Can we dig beneath the emotional turmoil of the man and guess what Allia herself thought about the arrangement? Mary Beard is joined in Rome by Allison Emmerson of Tulane University to examine this extraordinary funerary monument at the Baths of Diocletian.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Expert contributors: Allison Emmerson, Tulane University; Helen King, Open University; Mairead McAuley, University College London

Cast: Tyler Cameron as Allius

Special thanks to Museo Nazionale Romano