DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME I'R \I\VS COl.l'MN \\!) HI I\s ()| B \SILK \ I MM \ HEMICYCLE OF TRAJAN'S MARKET DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME THE PEOPLE AND THE CITY AT THE HEIGHT THE EMPIRE BY JEROME CARCOPINO DIRECTOR OF 1HE ECOLE FRANCHISE DE ROME MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE Edited with Bibliography and Notes BY HENRY T. ROWELL PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Translated fro by E. O. I LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE: 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.G. Printed in Great Britain by Lowe and Brydone Printers Limited, London, N.W.io TO PROFESSOR EMILE SERGENT THE MASTER OF MY SON ANTOINE, MY DOCTOR, AND MY FRIEND. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE In rendering quotations from Martial and Juvenal, Tacitus, Petronius and Pliny the Younger, I have gratefully adopted less often adapted the phrasing of the Loeb Classics, edited by T.E. Page, and Dr. W.H.D Rouse (Heinemann, London). E. O. L. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix PREFACE xi PART I The Physical and Moral Background of Roman Life I. THE EXTENT AND POPULATION OF THE CITY ... 3 1. The Splendour of the Urbs 3 2. The Precincts of Rome and the City's True Extent 10 3. The Growth of the City's Population 16 II. HOUSES AND STREETS 22 1. Modern Aspects of the Roman House 23 2. Archaic Aspects of the Roman House 31 3. Streets and Traffic 44 III. SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CLASSES 52 1. Romans and Foreigners 52 2. Slavery and Manumission 56 3. The Confusion of Social Values 61 4. Living Standards and the Plutocracy 65 IV. MARRIAGE, WOMAN, AND THE FAMILY 76 1. The Weakening of Paternal Authority .... 76 2. Betrothal and Marriage 80 3. The Roman Matron 84 4. Feminism and Demoralisation 90 5. Divorce and the Instability of the Family ... 95 V. EDUCATION AND RELIGION 101 1. Symptoms of Decomposition 101 2. Primary Education 103 3. The Routine Teaching of the Grammarian . 107 4. Impractical Rhetoric 114 5. The Decay of Traditional Religion 121 6. The Progress of Oriental Mysticism 128 7. The Advent of Christianity 136 viii DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME PART II The Day's Routine VI. THE MORNING 143 1. The Days and Hours of the Roman Calendar . 143 2. The Roman Begins the Day 150 3. The Barber 157 4. The Matron Dresses 164 VII. OCCUPATIONS .....171 1. The Duties of a "Client" 171 2. Businessmen and Manual Labourers 173 3. Justice and Politics 184 4. Public Readings 193 VIII. SHOWS AND SPECTACLES 202 1. "Panem et Circenses" 202 2. The Employment of Leisure 206 3. The Races 212 4. The Theatre 221 5. The Amphitheatre 231 6. Late Opposition 244 IX. AFTERNOON AND EVENING 248 1. Strolling, Gaming, and Pleasure 248 2. The Baths 254 3. Dinner 263 SOURCES or INFORMATION 277 NOTES 289 INDEX 319 ILLUSTRATIONS Trajan's Column and Ruins of Basilica Ulpia . frontispiece Hemicycle of Trajan's Market (photo Alinari) . frontispiece The Imperial Fora (plan by I. Gismondi, reproduced by courtesy of the Governatorato di Roma) 4 Via Biberatica in Trajan's Market (photo Governatorato di Roma) 6 Great Hall of the Market (photo Governatorato di Roma) . 6 Remains of an Ostian Insula with Shops and Apartments (Photo Direzione degli Scavi di Ostia) 26 Reconstruction (by I. Gismondi, reproduced by courtesy of Pro- fessor G. Calza; cf. "Le origini latine dell' abitazione mo- derna," Architettura e Arti Decorative III [1923] .... 26 Remains of an Ostian Apartment House (photo Direzione degli Scavi di Ostia) 30 Reconstruction (by I. Gismondi, reproduced by courtesy of Pro- fessor G. Calza; cf. op. cit.) 30 Floor Plan (by Lawrence, reproduced by courtesy of Professor G. Calza; cf. op. cit.) 30 Marble Table with Bronze Base (from Pompeii, now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples; photo Alinari) 38 Chest or Safe for Valuables (from Pompeii, now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples; photo Alinari) 38 Combination Brazier and Stove (from Stabiae, now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples; photo Alinari) 38 Multiple Lamp Holder (from Pompeii, now in the Museo Na- zionale, Naples; photo Alinari) 38 A Lar (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) . 130 x DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME A Camillus (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) . 130 A Sistrum (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) . 130 The Magna Mater (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 130 A Gladiator's Greaves (from Pompeii, now in the Museo Na- zionale, Naples; photo Alinari) 216 A Gladiator's Helmet (from Pompeii, now in the Museo Na- zionale. Naples; photo Alinari) 216 Charioteers of the Four Factions (from an estate on the Via Cassia outside of Rome, now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome; photo Alinari) 216 Theatre of Marcellus (photo Alinari) 234 Colosseum and Arch of Constantine (photo Aiinari) .... 234 PREFACE F "Roman life" is not to become lost in anachronisms or petrified in abstrac- tion, we must study it within a strictly defined period. Nothing changes more rapidly than human customs. Apart from the recent scientific discoveries which have turned the world of today upside down steam, electricity, rail- ways, motorcars, and aeroplanes it is clear that even in times of greater sta- bility and less highly developed tech- nique the elementary forms of everyday life are subject to unceasing change. Coffee, tobacco, and champagne were not introduced into Eu- rope until the seventeenth century; potatoes were first eaten toward the end of the eighteenth, the banana became a feature of our dessert at the beginning of the twentieth. The law of change was not less operative in antiquity. It was a commonplace of Roman rhetoric to contrast the rude simplicity of the republic with the luxury and refinement of impe- rial times and to recall that Curius Dentatus "gathered his scanty veg- l etables and himself cooked them on his little stove/' There is no com- mon measure, whether of food or house or furniture, between ages so different. Since a choice of period must necessarily be made, 1 shall deliberately confine myself to studying the generation which was born about the middle of the first century A. D., toward the end of the reign of Claudius or the beginning of the reign of Nero, and lived on into the reigns of Trajan (98-117) and of Hadrian (117-138). This generation saw Roman power and prosperity at their height. It was witness of the last conquests of the Caesars: the conquest of Dacia ( 106) which poured into the empire the wealth of the Transylvanian mines; the conquest of Arabia (109) which, supplemented by the success of the Parthian campaign (115), brought flooding into Rome the riches of India and the Far East, guarded by the legionaries of Syria and their desert allies. In the material domain, this generation attained the highest plane xii DAILY LIFE IN ANCIENT ROME of ancient civilisation. By a fortunate coincidence all the more for- tunate in that Latin literature was soon to run so nearly dry this gen- eration is the one whose records combine to offer us the most complete picture of Roman life that we possess. The Forum of Trajan in Rome itself, the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the two prosperous resorts buried alive by the eruption of 79, supply an immense fund of archaeo- logical evidence. Recent excavations have also restored to us the ruins of Ostia which date in the main from the time when the emperor Hadrian created this great commercial city as the realisation of his town plan- ning. Literature adds her testimony. We possess a profusion of vivid and picturesque descriptions, precise and colorful, in the satirical romance of Petronius, the Silvae of Statius, the Epigrams of Martial, the Satires of Juvenal, and the Letters of Pliny the Younger. Fortune has indeed favoured the historian in this case, supplying him with both the obverse and the reverse of the medal. It is not enough to focus our study of the Roman's life on a fixed point in time. It would lack foundation and consistency if we did not also focus it in space in the country or in the town. Even today, when the facilities for communication, the diffusion of newspapers, the posses- sion of radios bring something of the pleasure, the thought, and the noise of the metropolis into the humblest country cottage, there remains a vast discrepancy between the monotony of peasant existence and the excitement of city life. A still greater gulf divided the peasant from the townsman of antiquity. So glaring was the inequality between them that, if we are to believe the learned historian Rostovtzeff, it pitted the one against the other in a fierce and silent struggle which pierced the dyke that protected the privileged classes from the barbarian flood. The peasant pariah abetted the invading barbarian. The townsman, in fact, enjoyed all the goods and resources of the earth; the peasant knew nothing but unending labour without profit, and lacked for ever the joys which warmed the heart of even the most wretched in the cities: the liveliness of the palaestra, the warmth of the baths, the gaiety of public banquets, the rich man's doles, the magnifi- cence of public spectacles. We must renounce the attempt to blend two such dissimilar pictures into one, and must make a choice between them.