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Every Day Life in Ancient Rome was More Scandalous than Historians Let On

Khalid Elhassan July 8, 2022 38 min

sir lawrence alma tadema the meeting of antony and cleopatra

29. The Ancient Romans Used Lead in Just About Everything

Nowadays, we know that lead should be avoided as much as possible. It once was used in children’s toys, but not anymore, and it is no longer used in paint like it was back in the days. In ancient Rome, however, people were ignorant of what we know of lead’s adverse health effects. So they put it to widespread use in ways that modern science has shown to be quite dangerous. For example, lead was widely used in Roman hair dyes. Rich Romans also used lead pipes to carry water to their homes, and it is theorized that those pipes caused widespread lead poisoning. That might explain why so many Roman rulers were off their rockers.

A first century AD fresco depicting a Roman woman doing her hair. Naples National Archaeological Museum

Recent research has pushed back against that theory, on grounds that lead levels from Roman pipes might not have been as hazardous as previously thought. However, Romans were still exposed to lead in a variety of other ways that ensured they ingested it at exceptionally high levels. They drank water and wine from lead jugs, poured into lead cups. Their cooking pots were made of lead. They used amphorae to transport and store chief staples such as wine, olive oil, and their favorite sauce – a rotten fish concoction called garum. Lead was used to seal those amphorae, so lead particles made it into just about every sip of wine, or bite of their staple meal – bread dipped into olive oil or garnished with garum. Lead was also used in jewelry, to keep precious stones in place.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.