httpIn truth, one citizen’s standard of living might differ greatly from that of another, depending on their wealth and social status. The affluent minority lived in comfortable villas and dined extravagantly, while the rest struggled to make ends meet in crowded tenements.
Wealthy Romans had little doubt that they lived in the greatest city the world had ever seen, and their provincial counterparts also had few reasons to complain. In the empire’s prosperous days, Roman citizens enjoyed a standard of living that was almost certainly the highest yet known. However, these fortunate formed only a small minority of the total population. Most people lived in servants’ quarters or army barracks, on crowded, noisy tenements or malodorous rural hovels. Daily life in the empire covered a wide spectrum of lifestyles in which one person’s creature comforts were often earned by the sweat of another’s brow, and where luxury and squalor coexisted in close proximity.
By the imperial era the prosperous middle classes could also aspire to comfortable villas. The general plan was one of rooms leading on to an atrium with an open skylight that let in both sunlight and rain (collected in a small pool called the impluvium). This provided both a large, central public space and opportunities for privacy. The bigger villas also had a second courtyard, the peristylum, which was colonnaded, following the Greek fashion, and often served as a garden. Further sophistication, including central heating, followed in imperial times. Glass sometimes came to supplement wooden shutters in windows, although it remained thick and opaque.
Most inhabitants of Rome itself enjoyed few such luxuries. The mass of the population lived in crowded, rank tenements which were up to five or six floors high-the emperor Augustus limited their height to reduce the ever-present risk of fire. Although there were owner-occupiers, the majority of people rented rooms from wealthy landlords or speculative builders-prices in Rome were about four times higher than those found elsewhere in Italy.
Noise pollution was a major problem for city-dwellers. The poet Martial, who lived in a third-floor flat, complained that, “There’s no peace and quiet in the city for a poor man. Early in the morning schoolmaster stop us enjoying any normal life. Before it gets light there are the bakers, then it’s the hammering of the copper-smiths all day.” Nights were little better, because the use of heavy transport was restricted to after dark to relieve congestion in the daylight hours.
For all the complaints, city apartments were in constant demand; even Martial found that he grew homesick for the bustle of Rome when he retired to a Spanish villa. Tenement-living was made bearable by the fact that much of the day was spent out of the house: in the streets, at the circus, and, above all, at the public bath.
“There is nothing more holy, nothing more securely guarded by every religious instinct, than each individual Roman’s home,” the orator Cicero clamed. And the chief responsibility for preserving its sanctity rested squarely on the shoulders of the paterfamilias or father of the family, who had powers, in theory at least, of life and death over his children. Not only could he order them to be exposed at birth, leaving them to die, he could also hand them over to execution or into slavery, if he so chose-although, needless to say, such behavior was extremely rare.
State policy generally favored large families, and officially, at least-adultery and extramarital affairs were regarded with horror. In 18BCE Augustus passed a law that allowed a father to kill his daughter and her lover with impunity if they were caught in flagrante, and that similarly permitted a husband to kill an adulterous rival, although not his wife; instead, he was expected to divorce her promptly or face punishment. Such a woman could not remarry and lost a third of her property; she also faced banishment to an island. The adulterer, if not killed on the spot, lost half his property and could also expect to be deported to an island, although not the same one as the adultress. Such structures were no doubt aimed primarily at Rome’s fast set, a particular cause of concern to the reforming emperor. A more typical picture of Roman family life comes from tombstones, which sometimes bear touching messages of marital affection that echo down the centuries.
Wives were expected to conduct themselves with dignity and circumspection. Often they married at fourteen or fifteen, at which tender age they were already expected to take charge of the day-to-day running of the household. In even moderately wealthy families, that meant directing the work of domestic slaves. Well-to-do women left the nursing and sometimes the upbringing of infants to servants.
In early republican times, the education of Roman children was left very much in the hands of parents. Cato the Elder, in the second century BCE, refused to entrust his son’s upbringing to an educated Greek slave living in his own household. Instead, Plutarch tells us, Cato himself “taught his son reading and writing, the law, physical education, and all sorts of outdoor skills such as throwing the javelin, fighting in armor, riding boxing, swimming, and how to stand up to heat and cold.” Such a man would also expect his boy to follow him in the course of his public duties, whether to the temple for religious observance or to social events, including dinner parties-even to the Senate, if his father were a member.
Later Romans, however, increasingly entrusted their children to teachers, although there was never anything resembling a state school system. Wealthy families might employ a slave, like Cato’s educated Greek, to act as a private tutor. Less well-off parents sent their children from about the age of seven, whether boys or girls, to a schoolmaster to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. These poorly paid individuals held classes in their own homes, or sometimes in rented stalls in the streets. Discipline was harsh, administered with the cane or leather belt. Children learned to write using bone or metal styluses on wax tablets, which could be wiped clean and reused-papyrus rolls were too expensive for school exercises.
Primary schooling came to an end at about age eleven. Following this, the majority of girls were educated at home, learning how to run a household-cooking, spinning, weaving, fetching water, or, if the parents were well-off, giving orders to domestic slaves, Boys, however, might pass on into the hands of a Grammaticus, Rome’s equivalent of a secondary-school teacher, to study Greek and Romans literature. The more ambition students might then go on to a rhetorician for lessons in oratory in preparation for a career in public life or the law.
Of the two languages of learning, Greek carried the greater prestige, and some fortunate students went to Greece to complete their education. For poorer parents, the choices were much more stark, even to the point of infanticide. A letter sent to his pregnant wife by a legionary serving in Egypt acts as a reminder of the realities of parenthood for much of the population: “If you give birth to a boy, keep it. If it is a girl, expose it. Try not to worry. I’ll send the money as soon as we get paid.”
Most Romans lived quite frugally. They ate breakfasts consisting of little more than bread and fruit, perhaps with olives and honey. By imperial times it was normal to have a light lunch (prandium) shortly before noon.
The main meal (cena) was taken around sunset, when the day’s work was finished.
The poor lived mainly on porridge of ground wheat with water, known as puls; this staple could be rendered more appetizing and nutritious by the addition of some cheese, honey, or an egg, if such ingredient were available. In republican days the elder Cato, an economically minded employer, recommended feeding slaves on bread, windfall olives, oil, salt, cheap wine, and the dregs off fish sauce.
In Rome itself, the poorest free citizens could count on the corn dole to protect them from starvation. Initially introduced as a subsidized food scheme by the consul Gaius Gracchus (ca. 160-121BCE), this project was vastly extended at Julius Caesar’s behest as a way of securing support and subsequently became a fixture of life in the capital. Under its terms, a given number of individuals (200,000 under Augustus, although the number varied over the centuries) received handouts of free wheat each months. The cost was borne by the state out of general taxation.
Those Romans who were eligible for the corn dole were happy to receive it, even if their needs were not great. In early imperial times, most citizens could in fact afford to eat well, and a wide range of produce was available. Fish was generally more plentiful than meat, although pork a firm favorite. There was a good variety of poultry, game birds, and wildfowl. Shellfish were esteemed, including oysters raised in artificial beds. Many different types of bread were produced. Romans ate eggs and cheese in large quantities, but regarded butter as a food for barbarians; their principal fat was olive oil.
Apart from water, the only drink that was consumed in large amounts was wine, which was usually diluted with water. Archaeologists have noted that grape pips that have been discovered only appear in strata under the capital from the last quarter of the seventh century BCE on, so it is possible that the cultivation of vines was not native to Latium and was introduced, like so much else, by the Etruscans. certainly, a taste for the grape subsequently spread throughout the Roman Empire, and the only provinces that were without vineyards were northern Gaul and Britain, where the climate at the time was not propitious.
While the majority of Romans may have lived relatively abstemiously, the new rich of imperial times became famous for their excesses. As the empire grew wealthier, its people became greedier. In Nero’s day, the philosopher Seneca accused his fellow- citizens of “eating till they vomited and of vomiting in order to eat more.”
A taste for conspicuous consumption followed the increase in prosperity brought about by the spread of trade. Exotic delicacies became fashionable, and wealthy diners regaled themselves with specialties like roast peacock, mullets’ livers, and flamingos’ tongues. the gourmet Apitcius, to whom the only surviving Roman cookbook is ascribed, provides a menu for boiled ostrich. “Bring pepper, mint, roasted cumin, parsley-seed, dates, honey, vinegar, cooking wine, fish stock, and a little oil to the boil in a saucepan. thicken the sauce with cornflour. Pour over the pieces of ostrich meat in a serving dish and sprinkle with pepper.”
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