History is more than the study of wars and governmental institutions.
As I said in my first lecture, history is essentially the story
of people in their eternal confrontation with each other and with
the forces of nature. So, today let us take a close look at the
everyday life of the Romans. To understand fully the Roman standards
of living, we need to compare Pompeii with Rome, the Eternal city.
Pompeii and Herculaneum are museums to prove the high standard
of living in third rate towns during the first century of the
Roman empire. At Pompeii three municipal baths, two theatres,
a basilica for the law-courts, a temple of Jupiter, and an amphitheater
are luxurious public buildings for any town of 20,000 people in
any age. The shops, the taverns, the bakeries, and the houses
reinforce the picture of a solid comfort and prosperity. The House
of Pansa is 319 feet by 124, that of the Dancing Faun is 262 feet
by 115, and these are big houses for any town or city.
All Pompeian houses face inward. When you walk into the House
of Pansa today you come first into the atrium. This is a tall
room with an opening to the sky in the center of the roof. Beneath
the opening is a rectangular pool to catch the rain-water. At
the sides are rooms opening off the atrium, At the back is a room
called the tablinum. This was a step above the atrium and could
be closed off from it by curtains.
This atrium complex of rooms was, originally, the house in which
the early republican Romans had eaten, slept, and washed dishes.
By the last century of the republic, the atrium had become the
reception hall, while the rooms off it bad been transformed into
expensively-equipped salons. If the family was noble, as in the
case of Pansa, statues of the ancestors stood along the walls
of the atrium, and in a cabinet in one of the wings of it were
their waxen death-masks.
Behind the atrium and tablinum was a formal garden with a colonnade
around it. Thus, if todays visitor to Pompeii walks through the
atrium of the House of the Vettii--the Vettii were two rich bachelor-merchants--he
will find himself in a delightful garden which is once more planted
with shrubs and flowers, while all around him the fountains of
79 AD spout water, just as they used to do. Opening off the colonnade
are the rooms in which the family lived. Let the visitor enter
the room of the amorini, and there he will see Psyches floating
on the wall; while, just above the dado, in a continuous frieze,
are winged and tiny Cupids--Cupids weaving or buying garlands
ff flowers, Cupids at the wine-press, Cupids as goldsmiths and
metalsmiths, Cupids racing in little chariots drawn by goats,
and the like.
The Pompeian houses were sumptuously furnished. The floors were
of tesselated marble. The wall-paintings were vivid. There were
fountains, statues, tapestries, stand-lamps and candelabra, rich
tables of bronze or wood or mosaic. In the new excavations there
is one house with an outdoor dining-room. The Romans reclined
at dinner on three couches, so arranged around a serving-stand
as to leave one end open for slaves to come and go' ln this particular
outdoor dining room, a series of pierced pipes flung a cooling
spray of water over the guests as they ate.
In the dining room of the House of the Moralist there is a vomitorium
at the near end of the left-hand couch; for as Seneca commented
once about the Romans, ''they vomit so that they may eat and eat
so that they may vomit''. On the walls of this dining-room are
written, too, pieces of advice for the guests. One of them translates
as follows: "Do not cast wanton glances or ogling eyes at
another man's wife; be modest in your language."
It is easy to re-create ancient Pompeii in one's imagination as
the home of a prosperous, gay, and materialistic people, working
and playing with no suspicion that Vesuvius, which had been a
dead volcano for centuries on end, would suddenly erupt.
Yet Pompeii was only a small, sleepy, and backward town as compared
to the teeming, hurrying cities which, from Londinium in Britain
and Lugdunum in Gaul to Antioch in the East, dotted the smiling
and peaceful face of the empire. Great amphitheaters still stand
at Verona in Italy and at Mimes in France as well as in scores
of other places. In Switzerland and Austria are to be found the
remains of Roman towns, camps, and theatres. Here and there, as
at Segovia in Spain or at the Pont du Gard in France, one realizes
the mighty arches of Roman aqueducts. ln Crete, today, villagers
still drink from fountains the Romans built. As engineers and
architects, no people surpassed the Romans until the Americans
of the twentieth century.
But what about life at the center, in Rome itself?
Long before the Caesars, Rome was a huge city. Under the empire
it housed over a million people. At its peak, under the Antonines
in the second century AD, the population was probably about a
million and a half. It was a city of great parks, of monumental
public buildings, of great palaces, and of tall apartment blocks.
Let's look briefly at the Forum, the heart of Rome. Today, there
are only somewhat melancholy fragments of its former grandeur,
such as the Arch of Titus, the serene ruins of the House of the
Vestal virgins, the restored Senate-House, the remains of the
Rostra, the foundations of the great basilica built by Julius
Caesar, and a few pillars here and there, pointing toward the
Roman sky. To see it as it was in the days of the empire, we must
visualize that Forum as paved and as glittering with marble, bronze,
and gold. we must re-create the litters and sedan-chairs of high-born
women carried aloft by Nubian slaves, the conscious tread of senators
and magistrates, and the milling about of a mob of people from
every known land-- blond Germans, wide-eyed Britons, stocky Spaniards,
dark Egyptians, burly Thracians, liquid-eyed Syrians, and the
rest. In front of us, if we are looking north-west, will be the
temples on the twin peaks of the Capitoline. Behind us and to
our left, on the Palatine Hill, will rise the palaces of the emperors.
Beyond the Forum to the east and north were the fora constructed
by the emperors. Of these the most striking remnant is the column
of Trajan. That column was erected from the spoils of the conquest
of Dacia, which is now Rumania. Including the base, it is 127.5
feet high. That height was to commemorate to what extent the spur
of the Quirinal Hill had been levelled by the engineers. To the
right and left of that column rose a Greek library and a Roman
library. There was also a huge basilica reached by three steps
of yellow marble. Its entire floor was paved with marble and its
roof glittered with tiles of gilded bronze: while today's traveller
can still stare at the remains of the five stories which, on the
eastern flank, housed the 150 shops of Trajan's market.
Such is a brief hint of the magnificence of the Roman fora. There
were other marvels for the second-century AD visitor to see. There
were miles of parks and gardens along both banks of the Tiber
and on hills, such as the Pincian Hill, where the Borghese Gardens
are the successor to the Gardens of Sallust. There was the Colosseum,
which seated at least 45,000 spectators, and the Circus Maximus,
which had 385,000 places. Even if one allows for exaggeration,
it must have seated at least 200,000 people. There were also the
great public baths.
Today's traveller stares in wonder at the colossal arches of the
ruined Baths of Caracalla. If he could see them in their original
splendor, he would marvel the more. Those baths covered twenty-seven
acres. The vast domes were resplendent with mosaics. The walls
were lined with precious and colored marbles from Egypt and Numidia.
Many of the pipes, taps, and fittings were of silver and bronze'
The floors were of marble. In the halls and porticoes stood famous
sculptures, such as the Farnese Bull and the Farnese Hercules.
The baths of Cracalla could accommodate l,600 bathers at one time.
There were almost a thousand public baths in Rome. Their primary
purpose was for the daily bath, which was part of every respectable
Roman.s life. The usual procedure was to reach the baths at from
two to three o'clock in the afternoon, take exercise at bowling
or some form of ball, then bathe. In bathing, a Roman undressed
in the apodyterium, where his clothes were put in a locker. Next
he entered the warm bath. after this, he took a sweat bath, and
finished off by a plunge in the cold pool. Heating was provided
by hot air flues in the walls and under the floors. Up until the
time of Hadrian women often bathed and swam nude with the men.
The baths were much more than baths. In addition to the exercise
grounds, they contained promenades, gardens, libraries, restaurants,
concert and lecture rooms, massage-rooms, and even rooms for medical
men. Their outer walls were flanked by civic centers: the smaller
one, community halls.
Rome was, like some of the great cities of North America, a mass
of palaces, apartment blocks, and tall tenements. The palaces
were scattered through the city, chiefly on the hills, except
that the Capitoline Hill was reserved for the two great temples
of Jupiter Capitolinus and Juno of the Mint, the Records Office;
while the Palatine Hill was occupied by the emperors. The palaces
were as luxurious and as spacious as the tenements were crowded
and poverty-striken.
Some of the apartment-blocks, as we know from the excavations
at Ostia, the port of Rome, were as roomy and comfortable as their
modern counterparts. Such blocks were built round a central garden
as at present. But the hollows and valleys of Rome were crowded
with tall tenements in which people were hived like bees or ants.
The ground floor was often given over to shops or taverns, as
is again illustrated by the remains of Ostia. Above, two rooms
or one, as in our modern slums, housed a whole family: while lp
under the tiles were lodged the poorest--so high up, says the
satirist Juvenal, that if a fire breaks out down below they will
not know about it until they are being burnt alive. These apartments
and tenements were constructed basically of concrete; but heavy
beams were used to support the flOoring of the five or six stories,
and wood and brick were used for projecting balconies. Wood, rubble
and stone were utilized to make attractive facings. The stairs
were of stone or wood. Windows and balconies were decked with
pots of flowers.
As to the height of these blocks which were called insulae, which
means islands, we know that the Emperor Augustus passed a law
limiting them to seventy feet, which suggests that some were higher,
and we know that law was broken. Fires were apparently, continually
breaking out and though there was a combined police and fire-fighting
force of 7,000, the firefighting equipment was not adequate. The
great fire of 64 :O in the reign of Nero devastated ten of the
fourteen regions of Rome and, of those ten, three were almost
completely destroyed. Since the tenements were often jerry-built,
and since] by law the walls could not be more than eighteen inches
in thickness, the buildings sometimes collapsed under their own
weight. Roman builders, so excellent in their public structures,
paid little attention to permanence in lower-class housing.
Among those apartment and tenement blocks twisted about sixty
miles of alleys and streets. Modern Rome has many of the same
type. In ancient Rome, with living-space at a premium, there were
many lanes which were only six feet in width. Ordinary streets
were less than fifteen feet across, though there were a few thoroughfares
of from fifteen to twenty feet in breadth. Few of the lanes or
streets were paved. Juvenal tells of the pedestrian who returned
to his abode, mudcaked to his knees.
Even worse than the mud were the smells. The Romans had a first-class
sewage system, and at Ostia, as was true of Rome, there were elaborate
public lavatories. But the sewage system did not reach, except
in a few cases, beyond the ground floor. So, from the upper floors,
slop was emptied into the street. An even greater evil was the
constant noise and the continuous mobs pouring through the narrow
thoroughfares. This was chiefly foot-traffic as in modern Venice.
For Julius Caesar had forbidden wheeled traffic in Rome by day
except for the carts of the building contractors.
When night fell, foot-traffic ceased. The streets were unlit and
robbers and gangsters lurked in the darkness. No sensible man,
we are told, again by Juvenal, went out to dinner at night without
making his will; and this exaggeration might be true of the poorer
sections. But with night came, too, the rumbling of wagons and
carts and the curses of drivers as they brought in all the supplies
the great city needed- vegetables, bricks, fish, meat on the hoof,
marble, timbers, milk, and similar necessities. lt is small wonder
that the epigrammatist, Martial, longed for his simple home at
Bilbilis in Spain and finally retired to it.
And what about the people of Rome? Until the end of the republic
it was relatively easy to classify them. Citizens were in the
main of Roman or Italian stock. They were divided into Senators,
knights, and the plebs. The senators, the ruling class, alone
had the right to wear a tunic with a broad purple stripe, an iron
ring, and a pair of red sandals' The second order, the knights,
were the businessmen of Rome and Italy. They wore the tunic with
a narrow purple stripe and a gold ring' The common people, the
plebs, had no distinguishing mark, except that only a Roman citizen
could wear the toga' The toga was a voluminous wrap-around of
white wool.
Those who did not have full citizen rights were either foreigners
or slaves' There were numerous foreigners, naturally. Slaves had
no rights' The number of slaves in the last century of the republic
and in the first century of the empire almost passes belief. It
is estimated that in Rome alone, under the empire, there were
400,000 slaves. The unemployed had no slaves. But an ordinary
man could not make do with less than eight slaves. The upper middle-class
and the rich kept hundreds. They were first divided into country
and city slaves. City slaves were further classified into indoor
and outdoor slaves and then divided into groups of ten, such as
the sweepers, the litter-bearers, the cooks, and so on. Pliny
the Younger, a gentlemen of moderate tastes, owned at least 500
slaves. A contempOrary of his the freedman Caelius Isidorus, when
he died, left behind him 4,116 slaves. The emperors had households
of at least 20,000 slaves.
The multitude of slaves corrupted the Romans. It did something
more as well. Because of the practice of freeing slaves either
during the master's lifetime or after his death--Pliny's will
for example, freed 100 slaves--the freedman class became a very
important element in the population of Rome and Italy. The Rome
of the empire was a completely cosmopolitan city. Apart from hosts
of slaves of elderly nationality inside and outside the empire,
the old Roman-Italic stock was swamped by swarms of freed slaves
and their descendants, who had now become citizens, and by hordes
of provincials--Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Egyptians, North Africans,
Spaniards, Gauls, Britons--who had flooded into Rome. Many of
these, too, had been granted Roman citizenship.
Juvenal, the satirist, a native-born Italian, inveighs bitterly,
against the ''hungry Greeklings'. and at the ''mud-laden torrent''
which Syrian Orontes had discharged into The Roman Tiber. Even
the purple-striped tunic of a senator or of a knight conveyed
no assurance that its wearer was of Roman descent. By the third
century AD the emperors themselves were non-Romans. The Roman
empire ended by almost obliterating the stock which founded it.
At least 80% of the population of Imperial Rome were the descendants
of slaves according to one estimate.
The world of the Roman empire in the first two centuries is almost
frighteningly similar to ours in its excesses and its wealth,
and above all in its devotion to materialistic success at the
expense of the spiritual and the intellectual. Yet it retained
a hard core of solid, down-to-earth virtues and a prosperous middle-class.
It was when that middle-class was squeezed out of existence by
high taxes, paternalistic legislation and an ever-increasing bureaucratic
control that the abyss between wealth and poverty was, at last,
nakedly evident.