The Painful Reality of Tattoos (& Removal) in Ancient Rome

The ancient Romans looked down on cultures that practiced decorative tattooing. To the Romans, tattoos were utilitarian. They used them to mark slaves, criminals, gladiators and apparently people who worked in weapons factories.

So to fit into Roman society, freedmen, runaways and criminals went to painful and sometimes toxic lengths to get their tattoos removed.

Thanks for watching! I hope this introduction to the tattooing in the ancient Roman world inspires your own research and reading.

0:00 - Intro
0:43 - How the Romans used tattooing
1:42 - Were Roman soldiers tattooed?
2:44 - Ancient Roman options for tattoo removal
3:30 - Pliny the Elder's prescriptions
4:22 - Byzantine physician Aetius' prescriptions
5:20 - Dioscorides' prescriptions

Sources/Reading:

Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity
https://www.academia.edu/10847218/Sti...

Kamen, Deborah. “A CORPUS OF INSCRIPTIONS: REPRESENTING SLAVE MARKS IN ANTIQUITY.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 55 (2010): 95–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41419689.

Gustafson, W. Mark. “Inscripta in Fronte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity.” Classical Antiquity 16, no. 1 (1997): 79–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/25011055.

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