The Aroma of Rome: Perfumes of Power, Pleasure, and Prestige

In the Roman world, perfumes were invisible emblems of power. Exotic aromatics from Arabia, India, and Egypt poured into the empire, filling temples, banquets, and bathhouses with fragrance. Emperors wrapped themselves in clouds of incense, aristocrats perfumed their clothes and halls, and even ordinary Romans could purchase modest unguents from bustling workshops. To trace perfume in Rome is to follow a story of conquest, commerce, and the desire to transform both body and city through scent.

Scent and Power in Rome: Perfume as Social Technology

Rome’s smellscape was a hierarchy you could breathe. Elites signaled rank by mastering both personal scent and public air—oiling bodies after the bath, misting dining rooms, perfuming theaters and even bathhouse walls—while incense wrapped emperors, processions, and funerals in olfactory prestige. As one late–third-century Christian observed:

“The practice of cult stops without incense.”

Arnobius, Against the Nations 7.26

In a world where streets could reek—Pliny the Younger complained of a Pontic:

“pestilential and odoriferous sewer,”

running past a lovely marketplace—fragrance became a tool of distinction and control.

Moralists bristled at excess, but practice outran preaching. Perfume marked the extraordinary: emperors were greeted with:

“clouds of perfume and incense,”

that:

“provided a sweet-smelling odor in the streets,”

and private extravagance echoed public spectacle when hosts scented rooms, baths, even walls. Incense and unguents thus bridged piety and display—burned for the gods, poured for the powerful, and deployed to transform raw urban air into curated ambiance.

This politics of smell cut through gender and class. Aromatics were not inherently “feminine”; the fault lay in too much—in conspicuous consumption—rather than in scent itself. What mattered was calibration: quantities, contexts, and quality that announced rank without tipping into ridicule. Gardens thick with blossoms, theaters misted with saffron, and banquets ending in scented crowns mapped an olfactory border between the street and the salon, the ordinary and the imperial.

Beneath it all lay a Roman ethic that measured propriety—and status—against “nature.” Admixture could be condemned as artifice or praised as improvement; both arguments circled the same axis of legitimacy. In the end, identity was inseparable from aroma. As David S. Potter puts it with stark economy: “Your odor was you”. (Odor and Power in the Roman Empire, by David S. Potter. In Constructions of the Classical Body)

Perfume in Antiquity

Perfume’s story begins long before the word itself—per fumum, “through smoke”—entered Latin. In the earliest urban cultures of the Fertile Crescent, aromatics were first burned as incense to honor the gods; only later did people blend resins, petals, woods, and animal essences into oils that touched the body.

Because written testimony from deep antiquity is scarce, much of what we know comes from archaeology and the scientific analysis of residues on vessels, along with scattered anecdotes in later texts.

Human engagement with fragrance is ancient. Cave paintings at Lascaux (17,300 years ago) hint at early knowledge of plants and their powers for flavor and healing—even if they tell us nothing directly about perfumes.

Biology helps explain why scent has always mattered: smell is mediated by receptor molecules in the body, which means odors are less like fixed colors and more like keys that fit specific biochemical locks. That variability makes fragrance intensely personal and culturally charged.

Across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, scent served ritual, medical, and social ends. Early on, myrrh and frankincense dominated sacred contexts in the Fertile Crescent; later, the Greeks and Romans elevated the rose as a prestige aroma. Anthropologists aptly call perfume “liquid memory”: a smell can summon a place, a feast, or a loved one in an instant—just as modern societies lace odorless natural gas with sulfurous notes so danger can be recognized at once.

Ancient peoples also noticed the bond between scent and desire. Long before the modern term “pheromone” was coined, Egyptians and Mesopotamians harvested animal musk (notably from the musk deer) and other potent substances to anoint bodies and gods, weaving sexuality, divinity, and identity together through smell.

Perfumery itself was a technology. In antiquity it evolved from smoke to salve, from altar to skin: resins were distilled or infused into oils, sometimes layered with spices and flowers, then stored in stone, ceramic, or glass containers whose traces can still be tested today.

Men and women alike used scented oils—to soothe, to heal, to enchant, to signal status. While our evidence is uneven, a clear picture emerges: fragrance was not a trivial luxury but a tool of ritual practice, medicine, memory, and social power.

This broad backdrop frames the Roman story to come. When we turn to the Empire—its trade routes, workshops, baths, banquets, and moral debates—we will see how Romans bottled the ancient world’s sacred smoke into a daily language of prestige and pleasure.

Essential Oils and Ancient Scents: The Chemistry and Culture of Perfume

At the heart of perfumery lie essential oils, aromatic substances derived mostly from plants. Their use in antiquity was deeply shaped by geography: the flowers, resins, and herbs available in a region defined the fragrances its people valued.

Modern science classifies essential oils as top, middle, or base notes depending on their volatility—yet many of the classic bases, from frankincense and myrrh to sandalwood and jasmine, were already staples of ancient perfumery. Although today’s perfumes use ethyl alcohol as a carrier, ancient perfumers relied on wine and other alcohol-containing mixtures, since pure alcohol was not isolated until the twelfth century.

By boiling ingredients in water, they produced scented oils—a method that foreshadowed later steam distillation. Archaeological residues confirm that many compounds with high boiling points, still familiar in perfumery, were robust enough to withstand such processes.

Scents themselves can be grouped into broad families—floral, green, citrus, oriental, chypre, aldehydic, and animalic—with even antiquity recognizing descriptors like mossy, sulfurous, fruity, or resinous. Philosophers like Hans Henning would later attempt systematic models, such as his “smell prism” of 1916, but the ancients already understood the power of scent to carry cultural meaning.

For Egyptians, the lily was prized above all, while the Greeks and Romans cherished the rose. These cultural preferences, confirmed by both texts and archaeological finds, show how perfume was not just chemistry but an expression of identity, memory, and prestige. (Scented Oils and Perfumes, by Narayanaganesh Balasubramanian. In Chemical Technology in Antiquity, ACS SYMPOSIUM SERIES 1211)

The Roman Obsession with Perfume

Among the Romans, passion for perfume knew few limits. After the conquest of Egypt, India, and Arabia, the empire gained vast new supplies of exotic scents, adding to those already obtained from Italy and Gaul. Perfumes filled every part of daily life—used liberally in baths, bedrooms, clothing, and even on beds.

Men, women, and children anointed themselves upon waking, after bathing, and after meals. Clothes were soaked in essences, while spices and aromatics burned day and night. The trade of perfumers (unguetarii) flourished as plant, animal, and mineral resources were scoured to produce oils, balms, powders, pomades, and cosmetics.

Pliny the Elder admitted uncertainty about when unguents first reached Rome:

“I can not exactly say at what period the use of unguents first found its way to Rome.

It is a well-known fact, that when King Antiochus and Asia were subdued, an edict was published in the year of the City 565, in the censorship of P. Licinius Crassus and L. Julius Caesar, forbidding any one to sell exotics; for by that name unguents were then called.

But, in the name of Hercules! at the present day, there are some persons who even go so far as to put them in their drink, and the bitterness produced is prized to a high degree, in order that by their lavishness on these odours they may thus gratify the senses of two parts of the body at the same moment.”

He also recalled the infamous story of L. Plotius, betrayed in hiding by the smell of his unguents:

“…a disgrace which more than outweighed all the guilt attending his proscription.”

Pliny further noted Roman preferences:

“...those unguents which smell of the earth are preferable to those which smell of saffron; being a proof, that even in a matter which most strikingly bespeaks our state of extreme corruptness, it is thought as well to temper the vice by a little show of austerity.”

Some Romans even preferred thicker preparations, called spissum, that could be plastered on. Perfume reached extremes:

“We have known the very soles even of the feet to be sprinkled with perfumes; a refinement which was taught, it is said, by M. Otho to the Emperor Nero.”

Others sprinkled unguents on walls and baths, a luxury practiced not only by emperors but also by private citizens. Nero himself famously spent four million sesterces (around $20–30 million in today’s terms) on roses and perfumes for one of his festivals, and for the funeral of Poppaea used more incense than Arabia could produce in a year.

Efforts to conserve perfumes for religious uses led to restrictions under Licinius Crassus, though enforcement is unclear. Ovid, in contrast, offered women practical recipes for beauty. In one surviving passage he instructed:

“Learn from me the art of imparting to your complexion a dazzling whiteness…”

and gave a detailed recipe of barley, bean flour, eggs, narcissus bulbs, gum, Tuscan-seed, and honey. Elsewhere he advised:

“Rouge a pale cheek, a red one powder, / Each maiden knows that art’s allowed her,”

while cautioning,

“But do not let your art be seen… Your lover must not even find / A powder-puff behind a screen / Or come upon you from behind / When the cold cream is oozing down / And moistening your dressing-gown.”

Perfume was part of Roman banquets as well. Arthur Weigall describes a dinner where Julius Caesar dined with Mucius Lentulus Niger: guests reclined on couches, flower crowns on their heads, cinnamon sprinkled on their hair, and perfumes thrown over their bodies and even mixed with their wine.

Entertainment ranged from dancers and musicians to dwarfs and gladiators, while the menu was extravagant: sea urchins, oysters, mussels, fieldfares with asparagus, hares, cranes, peacocks, and more. Perfume in Rome was therefore both everyday and excessive—woven into personal care, social display, and imperial luxury, a symbol of the wealth and decadence of the empire. (The Diuturnal Use of Perfumes and Cosmetics, by Grace M. Ziegler. The Scientific Monthly)

Workshops of Fragrance: The Roman Perfume Industry

Rome’s passion for perfume was fed not only by imports from Arabia, India, and Egypt but also by thriving local industries. Archaeology reveals that Italy itself became a production center, with cities like Capua earning renown for their workshops. Capua’s unguentarii supplied oils that circulated throughout the empire, confirming what texts only hinted at: perfumes were not just consumed in excess but also crafted with skill at home.

The techniques were practical yet sophisticated. Olive oil served as the base, into which flowers, resins, and spices were infused by boiling or cold maceration. This created unguenta that were thicker and longer-lasting than lighter oils.

Containers for these perfumes—glass flasks, ceramic vessels, and delicate aryballoi—turn up in Roman graves, households, and especially in Pompeii, where whole shops dedicated to the trade have been identified. The finds include perfume presses, amphorae with traces of scented substances, and frescoes that may have depicted the trade itself.

Perfume shops were part of the urban fabric, clustered in marketplaces and near baths. Their presence underlines how scent was democratized: while emperors like Nero poured fortunes into roses and incense, ordinary Romans could still purchase modest unguents. The difference was quality rather than kind. The same archaeological residues show that luxury perfumes sat alongside cheaper blends, catering to a broad clientele.

The evidence from Pompeii and Capua also reveals the integration of the perfume trade into Roman economic life. The unguentarii were organized craftsmen, and their products were part of a larger luxury economy linked to textiles, cosmetics, and the spice trade.

The sheer quantity of vessels and residues indicates a demand so great that entire neighborhoods smelled of oil, resin, and flowers long before the final product reached aristocratic banquets or bathhouse walls. Perfume in Rome, then, was not only a sign of excess but also a craft and commerce, rooted in local workshops that transformed raw materials into the unguents that scented every level of Roman society. (Perfumes in Mediterranean antiquity, by Cécilia Castela, Xavier Fernandez, Jean-Jacques Filippia and Jean-Pierre Brun)

Perfumed Rituals and Roman Practices

Romans inherited and amplified the Mediterranean tradition of perfumery, adapting it to their own cultural and social needs. Perfume was not just cosmetic—it was ritual, medicinal, and symbolic. Variations of the perfume cones once popular in Egypt were also adopted by Roman women, who concealed unguents in their hair to preserve a lasting fragrance throughout the day, ensuring that their presence left an olfactory impression.

Archaeological and literary evidence confirms that perfume use in Rome extended far beyond simple personal adornment. Perfumed oils were part of religious rites, applied to statues, sacred stones, and even ashes after cremation. Roman funerary practices relied heavily on the burning of incense, not only to honor the dead but also to frame death itself within a fragrant aura of dignity and divine favor.

Perfume also entered the realm of medicine. Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica—written in the first century CE—lists a wide variety of perfume recipes with therapeutic purposes, from soothing ailments to purifying the air. Later, Galen and Graeco-Roman papyri from Egypt confirm the overlap between pharmacology and perfumery, showing how scent was viewed as both a cure and a luxury.

Above all, perfumes expressed status. Imported aromatics were costly, their origins tied to Arabia, India, and beyond. The ability to anoint oneself, to perfume one’s home, or to burn incense at feasts marked a Roman out as wealthy, worldly, and powerful. In Rome, scent was never neutral—it was a statement. (Perfumery from Myth to Antiquity, by Dimitra Voudouri & Christine Tesseromatis)

Perfumes in Rome were more than indulgence; they were instruments of culture, commerce, and ceremony. They marked divine favor in temples, softened the harshness of urban life, elevated banquets into theater, and offered a language of prestige that everyone understood. From the smoke of incense to the unguent on the skin, Rome’s perfumes carried not only fragrance but also the weight of empire—distilling identity, hierarchy, and memory into the air itself.