Reddit reviews Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire

From Daily Life in Ancient Rome, by Jerome Carcopino:

pp. 152-153:

>"On a base of interwoven strips of webbing were placed a mattress (torus) and a bolster (culcita, cervical) whose stuffing (tomentum) was made of straw or reeds among the poor and among the rich of wool shorn from the Leuconion flocks in the valley of the Meuse, or even of swan's down. But there was neither a proper mattress nor sheets above. The torus was spread with two coverings (tapetia): on one (stragulum) the sleeper lay, the other he pulled over him (operimentum). The bed was then spread with a counterpane (lodix) or a multicoloured damask quilt (polymitum). Finally, at the foot of the bed, ante torum as the Romans put it, there lay a bedside mat (toral) which often rivalled the lodices in luxury.
>A toral on the pavement of the bedroom was almost obligatory. For the Roman, though he sometimes protected his legs by a sort of puttees (fasciae), wore nothing corresponding to our socks or stockings and went barefoot when he had taken off his sandals to go to bed. His normal footwear consisted either of soleae, a kind of sandal such as Capuchins wear, with the sole held by a strap passing through their eyelets, of calcei, leather slippers with crossed leather laces, or of caligae, a type of military boot. On the other hand he was no more accustomed to undress completely before going to bed than the oriental of today. He merely laid aside his cloak, which he either threw on the bed as an extra covering or flung on the neighboring chair.

>The ancients in fact distinguished two types of clothing: that which they put on first and wore intimately, and that which they flung around them afterwards. This is the difference between the Greek endumata and epiblemata; and similarly between the Latin indumenta, which were worn day and night, and the amictus which were assumed for part of the day only.

>First among the indumenta came the subligaculum or licium, not as is sometimes supposed, a pair of drawers, but a simple loin cloth, usually made of linen and always knotted round the waist. In early days it was perhaps the only undergarment worn either by nobles or by labourers. Manual workers had no other."

p. 166:

>"Whether she slept in a room of her own or shared a room with him, the Roman woman's morning toilet closely resembled her husband's. Like him, she kept on her undergarments in bed at night: her loin cloth, her brassiere (strophium, mamillare) or corset (capitium), her tunic or tunics, and sometimes, to the despair of her husband, a mantle over all. Consequently she, like him, had nothing to do when she got up, but to draw on her slippers on the toral and then drape herself in the amictus of her choice; and her preliminary ablutions were as sketchy as his. Pending the hour of the bath, the essential cura corporis for her as for him consisted of attentions which we should consider accessory."

If you really want to gather as much info as you can, you should check out some of the dozens of excellent books on this subject, including Mary Beard's Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (link), Aldrete's Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia (link), or Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (link). As you can see, there is a lot of material on many aspects of life in Pompeii in the first century--way too much to cover here. I can provide some outlining to get your started on your questions, however.

 

Pompeii was a typical town of its type (veteran colony), and had all the amenities we expect from such a place. It was neither large nor small for a veteran colony, but about in the middle, having about 12,000 inhabitants (a third of them slaves) and about twice that many in the immediate surrounds (villas, farms, etc). Most of the "big" buildings were constructed or embellished in the decades after the town became a colony after the Social War, or during the early Empire under Augustus and Tiberius: an aqueduct, a theater, an amphitheater, a recital hall, public baths, temples, markets, etc. There was a large forum, of typical Roman design, with a capitolium temple at its head, a temple of Apollo, a public meeting hall, flanked with colonnaded wings connecting basilica and markets for meat and vegetables, and adjoining a modest bath complex. The streets were roughly orthogonal, with a few kinks and sharp turns belying very ancient foundations, nicely paved but grimy enough to warrant the famous stepping stones.

As far as its importance to the Empire: not very, unfortunately. It was a hub of local commerce in Campania, but one of several, and obviously not indispensable. The city had sided against the Romans in the Social War, and even at the end still wore vestiges of its non-Roman past. Pompeii shared the arena with a neighboring town, Noceria, and had in recent times engaged in a full on riot against the Nocerians over, apparently, a sports disagreement, to the general annoyance of the Emperor back in Rome. In other words: yes, the city was "on the map" at Rome, and big enough to deserve consideration, but not big or important enough to warrant resurrection after the event. In a few decades, the town was apparently almost completely forgotten. Pompeii had been the crossroads of a few important Roman roads, particularly the route moving north and south along the coast between Capua/Neapolis/Stabiae, but this road was completely obliterated in the eruption anyway and when it was rebuilt, it simply traveled over the moonscape terrain which had once been Pompeii. A road leading east to Noceria might have continued to function and might have linked up with the region again after the dust settled, but I can't find any good information on that.

I really encourage you to take a look at one or all of the books I linked above. They are very accessible and stuffed full of good information on the daily goings-ons of the Roman world in the first century.

For starters, there really isn't such a thing as a "middle-class citizen" in the Roman Empire. Roman social classes did not work that way, and wealth actually had less bearing on your existence than social status, inherited mainly from your ancestors.

The best resource for this sort of thing would be Jerome Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Carcopino was the premier classical social historian of his day, and most of what he says is still very much to date. To say more than that would honestly not get you anywhere. The lives of citizens varied pretty wildly depending on social status, wealth, and of course location (life within the city would be very different from life in certain provinces, which would differ even more from each other). A very few things can be said in general, however. The vast majority of the Roman Empire was enjoying the benefits of peace, a blessing that was not lost on them after nearly a hundred years of civil wars and nearly a hundred and fifty years of political strife within the noble orders. The reign of Augustus was also blessed with an extreme degree of wealth, which Rome and her empire had not seen the likes of before, and which was even more welcome considering the extreme deprivation that most people had suffered duing the destructive civil wars. Among the lower social orders the climate of Augustus' reign from the period after the War of Actium was incredibly welcome, providing great social freedom and opportunity, as well as unheard-of wealth. The upper social orders, mainly the survivors of the nobility, were a mixed bag. Most of the remaining prominent members of the senate and nobility had originally been lowlives under Caesar or Octavian, and had joined them because they had hoped that supporting them would help pay off their massive debts from extravagance. The rest were the few survivors of the old nobility that had been sure to kiss up to the dictators, as well as aspiring tyrants like Pompey and Crassus. Since the beginning of the 1st Century, B.C. the political climate at Rome had increasingly been one of power slipping more and more firmly into the hands of private individuals, and as a result there were throughout the century great purges, either through proscriptions or wars, of the members of the nobility. As a result, there was great dissatisfaction with Augustus' seizure of power among the nobles, but for them Rome was rather like a police state, since any disloyal actions would result in Praetorians knocking on their doors. These attitudes are echoed by Virgil and Livy, who had mixed feelings about Augustus, by Cicero (for example, in his Philippics--although all of this is technically before Augustus' reign, it still very much applies, as the loss of political freedom had already been cemented in place following Caesar's victory over the Pompeians), and even by Horace, who owed Augustus and Maecenas everything but who nevertheless could not quite bring himself to agree with the autocracy. For more on the destruction of the Roman political system, see Ronald Syme's groundbreaking work, The Roman Revolution, which was the first study (on the eve of Hitler's declaration of war, to whom Augustus is implicitly compared) to challenge the old Victorian view of Augustus as the "benign dictator."

I would highly recommend this book, and one covering the same subject for Greece

https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Life-Roman-City-Pompeii/dp/0806140275/ref=pd_sim_14_15?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0806140275&pd_rd_r=5GCSRTV1GTEQZGC3PEZJ&pd_rd_w=HisF5&pd_rd_wg=UWb3d&psc=1&refRID=5GCSRTV1GTEQZGC3PEZJ

or
https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Life-Ancient-Rome-People/dp/0300101864


the arc of history is easier to follow when you're familiar with some of the day-to-day aspects of their lives.

I wouldn't recommend Plato for interest in history, the dialogues are good for understanding the foundation of western philosophy, but not for understanding Greece.

Three books at the top of my current pile:

The Great War and Modern Memory - This is superb. I'll be buying copies as Christmas presents this year.

Daily Life in Ancient Rome - Did you know there were five-story apartment buildings in ancient Rome?

The Trouble with Physics - I heard the author speak recently. I am not competent to judge the worthiness of his ideas, but I am eager to believe that there is something wrong with much of modern physics.