HOW THE ROMANS LIVED

All walks of life filled the streets of ancient Rome, and for the poorer people of society the empire was very different to those at the top.

Work hard, play hard. That appears to be the mantra by which a lot of Romans lived their lives. There’s a general impression that the Romans were a wealthy, articulate bunch, who had splendid villas and clothes. However, that, in truth, is only half the story. As in any society, the normal men and women who lived and worked in Rome (Plebeians) led very different lives to those at the top of the tree (Patricians), residing in homes that were a world apart from the nobility and the elite and having differing levels of access to education and health provisions.

Today, most of the physical evidence of the lower class’ existence has crumbled away. Their poorly built homes and unwritten stories have been lost to time. But historians have still been able to piece together the structure of Roman life: how they ate, what they wore, where they bathed and how they were schooled.

We also know that wealth was the key towards a good life, even for slaves who found they could amass money and sometimes buy their freedom.

Class act: how the Romans were divided

Roman society was a complex system made up of a strong social pecking order that went far beyond a simplistic dichotomy of very rich and incredibly poor. While we are familiar with the privileged lives of the emperors, senators and the equestrians below them, perhaps the most intriguing class of all was that of the plebeian.

The men and women of the lower classes were the beating heart of the empire but there were few comforts their work afforded them, and this didn’t go unnoticed. A great dispute arose between the patricians and the plebeians in 494 BCE and it raged intermittently for 200 years.

In that year, the plebeians threatened to leave Rome – a withdrawal of manpower which would have proved devastating – and concessions were introduced. However, in the minds of the Romans there was still a difference in social standing, and the further down the chain you belonged, the worse your life became.

Beneath the plebeians in the Roman class hierarchy were the freedmen and the slaves. The latter did not hold citizenship, while the former had either been granted their freedom or had purchased it themselves.

Being a citizen afforded a Roman a relatively comfortable life and certain rights, making it possible to vote, own property, lawfully marry, make contracts, sue, and attain a lawyer in court to avoid torture or death for any crime except treason. However, women had a more limited citizenship.

Life among the classes

In such a cut-throat city, how did the patricians, equestrians and plebeians navigate through Roman life?

If there was a social leveller in Rome, then it would be found in the public toilets, where 95 per cent of the million-strong population sat, chatted and did their foulest of business. Within the latrine walls, the Romans were at their most naked, with their tunics pulled up and squatting over the large holes cut in wood or stone, and their privacy completely whipped away. They wiped their bottoms with water-soaked sponges attached to sticks, which they then discarded into the Roman sewer system.

Back out on the streets, however, life was very different. There the class system was very much in place. At the top end of the scale were the higher ranks of Romans: the emperor, senators – who wore tunics with broad stripes called laticlavi – and an economic class of equestrians – who wore a tunic with narrow stripes called the angusti clavi. But further down, there were the ordinary people of Rome, wrapped in a long semicircle of woollen cloth called a toga, as well as the freedmen and the slaves. However the freedmen often occupied roles in the Imperial Palace, and so could improve their social standing and gain quality clothing.

The Plebeians saw Rome as it really was, away from the ornate, marbled villas and the grand buildings enjoyed by the privileged. Their warts-and-all view was of the cramped apartments in which they lived, multiple people to a room, in crowded areas that would absorb ever greater numbers year after year. For them Roman life was the narrow streets between the squalid high-rise garrets, the busy taverns and visiting the ground floor shops (tabernae) to buy food and essentials.

These areas may have wafted with the smell of fresh bread and exotic foods, but there would also have been the unmistakable stench of sweat, blood and human waste. Rome was usually a rowdy city, with fighting in the public areas, rows among residents, evidence of domestic violence and the ever-present risk of fire.

Any moments of bliss could be interrupted by the emptying of a chamber pot out of a window to the ground below, particularly in the roughest part of town (Subura.)

Rome certainly wasn’t a city for the feint hearted, and the governors and senators had a constant battle to quash plebeian revolts and disharmony. Providing a weekly ration of grain and entertainment seemed satisfy the lower classes and the organisers or benefactors of festivals were always held in high esteem.

Rome was seen as a ready-made job market for the poorer man, its streets perceived to be paved with gold as much as dirt and disease. The many building projects meant there was always a pressing need for labour, so plenty of people emigrated there looking to work. After its founding, the city of Rome fast became a bustling multicultural metropolis, but it was impossible to build enough quality accommodation for everyone.

The harsh living quarters were generally as good as it got for hundreds of thousands of people, and for that reason, they tended to live most of their life outside of their apartments. The whole of Rome became their home.

With so much time spent in the company of others, the plebeians were known for being sociable and rowdy. They were also mostly tolerant of different races and religions. Incomers were integrated into the city just as they had been from the moment Romulus and Remus’ founded Rome as a city of outsiders, inviting criminals and runaways to seek asylum. People quickly got involved in the busy Roman way of life.

Workers would rise early, toiling through the day for a small amount of money and seeking ways to supplement their income elsewhere. Children would also work, the boys serving apprenticeships and the girls carrying out domestic chores under the watchful eyes of their mothers or domina (female master) – usually splendidly dressed in their stolas given shape by a belt called a zona. Schools were mainly fee-paying and were reserved for the rich and privileged. However, poorer families would look to educate their sons themselves, fathers teaching sons the tools of their trade.

Generations of the poor, therefore, grew up largely illiterate but skilled none-the-less. By the age of 14 (12 for girls), the men would be married, their coming of age marked by a hearty banquet. Boys could be drafted into the military to help the Roman’s to conquer and control far-flung lands and girls were used to manoeuvre through social circles, and join powerful families.

The soldiers also served another purpose. They were able to capture slaves and bring them back to Rome. Far from being chosen on racial grounds, slaves were generally taken instead for their strength, intelligence, practical skills or appearance. While some were used as labourers or turned into gladiators or other figures of entertainment, they could also hold respectable positions in wealthy households.

Rome’s obsession with health and well-being, for example, saw an influx of Greek doctors entering as slaves after 47 BCE. As well as allowing Romans the benefits of better hospital treatment and the skill of surgeons, the Greeks aided advances in medicine as well. In some ways, they were perhaps a little too enthusiastic – their willingness to experiment with patients in order to test their theories caused a deep suspicion. But it was usually preferable to the expensive quacks whose methods really were quite unorthodox.

Having treatment available was a benefit of Roman life across the classes: even the slaves much lower down the chain benefited to some degree. It also showed that being brought into Rome as a slave could actually be a good career move for the skilled. Many from the East in particular were intelligent and cultured, and were able to slot easily into society and contribute greatly. In fact, some Roman citizens with overwhelming debt would sell themselves into slavery.

Some slaves were also allowed to earn and keep their own money, saving up to buy their freedom or expensive clothes. By the 1st century CE, more than half of Rome’s population was made up of slaves and freedmen. At this time, the Senate proposed slaves wore their own specific identifying tunics but this was rejected because of the potential embarrassment of seeing half of Rome’s population dressed in such a way.

Such was the lure of Rome, that when a slave was afforded the status of a freedman, many would remain, becoming a Roman citizen and using their connections to their advantage. Some freedmen actually went on to hold important positions, such as Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, a close confidant of Emperor Claudius who almost succeeded in stopping Nero’s succession to become ruler.

The nightlife in Rome

When in Rome, what did the Romans get up to? We know they enjoyed wine, theatre and food, but what else?

A good tribute by a husband to a wife was usually Donum servait; Lanam fecit (‘she ran the house and made wool’). Such tributes, however, would never have been paid to a group of women in Roman society who were very much looked down upon: prostitutes. Despite being legal, licensed and taxed, prostitution was considered a shameful profession, and yet there was a great demand for it.

Drawn from the slave class, the women operated from brothels dotted around Rome, satiating the Roman’s fierce appetite for sex. Called Meretrix – or “she who makes commerce of her own body” – they were banned from wearing the stola and had to wear a yellow toga as a sign of their profession. They were also denied the limited rights afforded to other women such as being able to receive an inheritance.

After dark, Rome became much more seedy. Its streets teaming with danger as criminals made the city their very own and preyed on whoever they felt would be rich pickings. As a form of low class in their own right, they would mug and rob people down the unlit, unpoliced narrow streets. Burglary, arson, murder and fraud were typical crimes, and punishments ranged from whipping to crucifixion – but it didn’t deter the desperate. Criminals could be very violent at times and often carried a sharp implement if only to slice the front of a tunic or purse in order to relieve a victim of his possessions. Some victims would take the law into their own hands as they sought to save life and property and there was a clear sense of every man for himself. The courts and lawyers that were in place were not always very effective, with matters not being helped by the fact many people would drink to excess during such periods.

The taverns – which doubled as a poor Roman’s kitchen since making dinner within their own homes was too dangerous – came alive at night. During the day, they were places to eat and rest, allowing people an escape from their homes and work. Entertainment would be laid on for the slaves and plebeians who tended to enter, sitting on bar stools, drinking.

At night taverns became more riotous. Located on a quiet side street, with the doors locked, men gambled, socialised and played games which often became heated. They also – if various artwork and the copious graffiti on the walls of ancient Rome’s slums are to be believed – engaged in relations, for want of a better word, with their servers.

Taverns, however, were no place for the wealthy,who mostly stayed well away from such places and indeed decried them as being immoral and unbecoming of a Roman citizen. Not that some of those in higher society didn’t venture forth. Emperor Nero was a frequent visitor to the taverns and brothels, finding them racy and exciting. Though he always made sure to wear a disguise so as not to cause a scene.

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Housing the Romans

We can see from the architecture left behind across the former Roman Empire that the ancient Romans took construction very seriously and saw it as a way of displaying strength, sophistication and wealth. The equestrians, or the relatively affluent, would live in large, lavish homes called domus, that were erected over one floor surrounding an atrium and had multiple rooms, including one or two for the slaves.

Their homes would often be decorative with marble statues and columns adorning their interior and exterior, and there would be beautiful paintings or mosaics. The domus also often had a large bathing pool and a garden in the middle of the building to create a sense of space and nature.

However, the poor lived in cramped apartment blocks that could be as much as nine-storeys tall. Built from mud bricks or timber and with a flat roof on which to enjoy the views or sleep in hot weather, they were called insulae, and only had a couple of rooms at most in which to sleep.

Up to 40 people could live in one block and the facilities were very poor. The Plebs had to use public facilities, venturing into the courtyard to reach the lavatories, bathhouses and even cooking equipment.

As such, the courtyard often featured as a handy area for socialising, and given the size of their rooms, few Romans wanted to stay indoors.

The ground floor of these buildings would contain a shop – or taberna – which had its own entrances on to the street and so was separated from the apartment block. The wealthy or equestrians would often own these apartments as a way of making extra money from rent.

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Food for the masses

While the rich indulged their taste buds with an array of mouth-watering foods, brought to them by slaves, the diet of the poor was rather more bland. Most were unable to enjoy the sauces, expensive meats and imported spices that the aristocrats digested, so made do with cheaper alternatives.

The poor would rely on the staples of cereal, olive oil and wine and supplement it with bread, lentils, vegetables and porridge. Flat, round loaves made by cereal grain called “emmer” were popular, but later bread made from wheat was introduced. Women would also grind grain into flour in thrusting mills, although there is evidence of animal-driven mills attached to bakeries such as in Pompeii and Ostia.

Farmers, hunters and fishermen had better diets and thanks to no religious restrictions, anything could be consumed. Cured pork was popular, while beef was much less common.

Roman citizens would eat their meals three times a day. They would have breakfast (jentaculum) in the morning, lunch (prandium) at roughly midday and dinner (cena) in the evening. This would be the main meal and the highlight of many days. A lot of effort went into producing the best dinner possible with the resources that were available.

Dinner parties were a popular affair for the patricians, and infamously, they would recline on couches in order to relax as they ate and savoured each mouthful. Stuffed dormouse was a particular delicacy enjoyed by the rich, sprinkled with honey and poppy seeds. Due to the lack of cutlery, the Romans would eat with their hands, so the food had to be conveniently presented. At dinner parties it was considered impolite to eat with your left hand.

In "All About History Book of the Roman Empire", UK, January 2016, excerpts pp. 22-26. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.