Roman Tattoos

[Martijn]

Has anybody here heard or read anything about the use of tattoos in the Roman Empire?

Who had them (soldiers, slaves, senators)? What technique was used? What did the tattoos look like (Legion symbols, "SPQR")?

 

Martijn

[Guest]

Technique

The word you will find in the ancient texts is "stigma" and the meaning isn't very clear. According to C. P. Jones, it means mainly "tattoo". Branding was for animals. Except in some crual practices, as discribed by Juvenal about bad masters branding their slave to hurt them, the bodymarks of the Greco-Roman antiquity were tottoos.

 

Who was marked?

1. Some slaves were marked on the forehead with the abstract of a sentence meaning they were running away. This sentence still exist on tabellae, the slave wore sometime on a necklace.

 

2. Vegetius tell that the recruits should be tattooed with the pin-pricks of the official mark after they has been tested in exercices.

 

3. It seems that some initiated poeple of the Cybele cult were tattooed too.

 

For Greeks and Roman, bodymarks were meaning mainly barbary, slavery and animality, so don't hope to find a tattooed senator

[Crag]

The tattoo for the romans judging by the negative reactions roman historians gave to the celtic tattoo and body art became socially something "the barbarians did" another aspect the civilized romans used to feel superior.

[Morphus]

So bottom line is that Roman Citizens did in general have no tattoos, is this correct?

 

thanks

[schreuderjonkman]

The view on Roman citizens and tattoos is completely wrong here.

 

Roman citizens were basically a very large and diverse group of europeans, euro-asians and middle-easterners. Often in our modern times we confuse this, and think of ancient Rome of some sort of super large country. It was not. Ancient Roman empire, and those who lived in it and had the status of Roman citizen, was nothing more than a union of very different countries and cultures.

 

There is nothing simple about this. They all spoke different languages, from arabic to germanic, and even had two official languages. They all had different religions, as Romans preferred to give a great deal of cultural freedom, as long as the vassal states payed the taxes and supported the legions.

They all had fundamentally different cultures.

 

Now the Roman soldier. He was seldomly actually someone from the land of Italy. Because it was custom to fill the legions with foreigners, Italians did not do their own fighting. In fact, most legionaires came from the area they were actually stationed, or near there, and never did see the great city of Rome.

 

Now tattoos... these were fairly popular in different areas of the empire. For instance the picts (scots, irish, northern england ans thereabouts) appeared to be heavely tattood. But arabic people also have used tattoos since ancient times. And also many germanic tribes. All in different ways, and for different reasons.

 

Now... the roman citizen could be each of these peoples. Of this vast empire, only about two million citizens actually lived in the city of Rome, and maybe a few million more in the provinces. Everybody outside that small area was called a barbarian, but that does not have the same meanig as it has now.

And a lot of so-called barbarians were actually roman citizens, and some even became emperor.

 

It stands to reason that tattoos, like other things those days, like beards or certain clothes, were trends, just like in our modern times. After all, the empire spans many hundreds of years. Why would we assume their fashion behaviour would be different to ours?

 

But it certainly stands to reason that soldiers, and merchants from all over the empire, would regularly be shown to wear tattoos in the great city of Rome.

Soldiers, by the way, appear to have had markings, that might have differed in different areas of the empire. The legions of Syria were for instance very different, in many respects, to those in northern europe. It is hard to say or they actualy had the SPQR tattoo on the left arm, but there are some references.

For the rest, certain religious cults certainly had tattoos, and Rome had many religions. More than we know today.

And tattoos were used as markers for slaves and criminals, although at a later stage tattoos in the face were forbidden.

 

So the bottom line is.... tattoos were about, and probably a fair amount of 'foreign' or 'barbarian' roman citizens brought them to the city of Rome. And possibly they were also 'in fashion' in the Italian circles, from time to time. For instance at times when the Roman emperor happened to be a 'barbarian', and actually had tattoos.