What Did Ancient People Use Instead of Deodorant?

Two thousand years ago, people paid good money for other people's sweat. At Greek gyms, athletes scraped off a paste of olive oil, sweat and dirt, and somebody bottled it and sold it as medicine. Before deodorant, people still had to deal with body odor, and the answers get stranger as we go: Egyptian recipes for armpit pellets and burnt ostrich egg, the mystery of the melting head cones, Roman baths with a layer of scum on top, a poet's rumor about a goat living in a man's armpit, and an emperor who would rather you smelled of garlic. Grab your strigil. Let's get scraping. Chapters 0:00 People paid money for sweat 0:35 The Greek gym and the strigil 0:59 Gloios: selling gym gunk as medicine 1:46 The gladiator sweat myth 2:01 Egypt: the Ebers Papyrus recipes 2:53 The head cone mystery 3:51 Roman baths: did they smell great? 4:29 Marcus Aurelius and bath scum 5:19 Roman smell insults: the armpit goat 5:49 Martial's list of terrible smells 6:11 Perfume: maybe too much 6:36 Perfumed feet 6:51 Vespasian and the garlic 7:13 Wrap-up Sources Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Aliptae" (strigil, gloios, Pliny's 80,000 sesterces, the Beroea gym law): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Rom... Strigil (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil Ancient Anatomies, "Gloios: grime, sweat and olive oil": https://ancientanatomies.wordpress.com/201... Pliny the Elder, Natural History 28.13 (uses of gym scrapings): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?d... Pliny the Elder, Natural History 28 (Latin): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Rom... Paule, "Gladiator Sweat," Preternature 13.2 (2024), author PDF: https://earlham.edu/wp-content/uploads/202... Paule (2024) on Project MUSE: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/932787 Ebers Papyrus (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebers_Papyrus Papyrus Ebers, column 86 (German translation of the sweat-smell recipes): http://www.medizinische-papyri.de/PapyrusE... ANE Today, Smell in Egyptian life: https://anetoday.org/smell-egypt-life/ National Geographic, Ancient Egyptian head cone mystery: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history... Stevens et al., Antiquity (2019), wax head cones from Amarna: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/an... Archaeology Magazine, Amarna head cones (2019): https://archaeology.org/news/2019/12/11/19... Seneca, Moral Letters 86: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_lette... Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.24: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Thought... Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.24 (Read Aurelius): https://readaurelius.org/passage/8/24 University of Cambridge, Roman toilets gave no clear health benefit (Mitchell 2016): https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/roman-... Catullus 69 (English): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?... Catullus 69 (Latin): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?... Ovid, Art of Love, Book 3 (English): https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/... Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3 (Latin): https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.... Martial, Epigrams Book 4 (4.4, "To Bassa"): https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/martial... Plautus, Mostellaria (Latin text, MQDQ): https://open.unive.it/mqdq/testo/testo/ord... Ancient Medicine, "Venerean arts" (Plautus passage): https://www.ancientmedicine.org/home/2022/... Pliny the Elder, Natural History 13.4 (perfumed feet, Otho and Nero): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?d... Suetonius, Life of Vespasian (8.3 garlic; 23 urine tax): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Rom... #history #ancienthistory #scribblyages