Essential oils: the ancient Romans used essential oils extensively for everything

The Romans were much more generous in their use of oils and perfumes than the Egyptians or the Greeks. The Romans were known for taking from other peoples not only goods and possessions but also knowledge. The Romans never wrote a single medical text, but took it all from the Greeks. If the Greeks used aromatic essential oils to heal the body, so did the Romans. If the Greeks used oils in their temples, so did the Romans. If the Greeks had scented public baths, the Romans improved on this concept by having hot baths, scented with lavender flowers brought daily by slaves. In other words, they copied what the Greek intellectuals had achieved and then took it to the extreme. History shows that the Romans fumigated their temples and political buildings with essential oils and their soldiers are reported to have used aromatic oils on themselves before going into battle to bolster their courage.

The Romans used three types of perfumes: solid ointments, scented oils, and powdered perfumes to scent hair, body, clothing, and bedding. Solid ointments included rhodium, which was perfumed rose and daffodil, of daffodil flowers. Their most popular scented oils include susinumwhich was made with honey, calamus, cinnamon, myrrh and saffron, and nardinium Composed of calamus, cistus, cardamom, lemon balm, tuberose and myrrh. These mixes were very expensive and only the rich could afford them. They were what we would call today “author perfume”.

The height of excess is on display in the report that the Roman Emperor Nero ordered an entire year’s worth of incense production to be burned at the funeral of his wife, Sabina Poppae. A whole fleet of ships was used solely to transport incense from Arabia to Rome. Obviously, she meant a lot to Nero, as the cost of such an extravagance would be staggering in today’s economies. To learn more about Roman society and how they used essential oils, I invite you to attend an aromatherapy program that teaches about the Romans as well as other ancient peoples such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Arabs.