10/ 19/ 2 011 Daily Life in Rome #41 Vocab Words 1. Paul 2. Jesus Christ 3. Julius Caesar 4. Roman Empire 5. Augustus 6. Constantine 7. Roman Roads 8. Inflation 9. Legion 10.Romulus Augustulus
10/ 19/ 2 011 Daily Life in Rome #40 Vocab Words 1. Paul 2. Jesus Christ 3. Julius Caesar 4. Roman Empire 5. Augustus 6. Constantine 7. Roman Roads 8. Inflation 9. Legion 10.Romulus Augustulus
Daily Life in Rome What are three things you spend a lot of time doing each day? Did ancient Romans spend time doing the same things? What are three probable jobs that might have existed in ancient Rome?
Slave farm Independent Farms No $ Villa Apartments Danger of fire & collapse
The wealthy lived on the lower levels, the poor on the upper levels. Housing could be very dangerous. People generally lived in fear of fire or collapse of the building. Oil lamps were used for heat and light. Apartments, especially for the poor, were often built at little expense and as quickly as possible. Luckily for the poor, most of the daily activities for Romans took place outside of their apartments. The wealthy often had country villas and farms in addition to their city apartments.
A Roman Villa
ct u d e u q A t hs a B ic l b u P Public water
You d wake up in your apartment, throw out the contents of your bedpan(s),and head out to the public bathrooms. Roman Toilets Not much was private here. The toilets were close together and people typically used sponges or sticks to clean up. At least there was a wash basin. The sewer ran underneath and took the waste out to the river. Aqueducts brought in water from an outside source and were pretty amazing feats of engineering. Toilet paper
Bridge wer e S / s r Gu t t e Co e n o t es l b b Ox Cart Statue of goddess
The streets were dirty from the oxen that ran at night and from the bedpans dumped into the streets, so walking about required you pay attention. The streets were cobblestone and crowned so everything would run off into a type of gutter that emptied into the sewer. The oxen only ran at night. Most people did not walk around at night because of the dangers of being run over by oxen, being beat up or mugged by rowdies, and other problems of a city. If one had to go out at night, he would take along a slave (or more) with a torch for protection.
Shops Str eet Ve nd ors h o t, fas t fo od
Roman Market People usually ate from street. Vendors sold hot and cold items because there was no cooking in the apartments (fire). The role of merchants increased with the Empire as the number of goods they were able to import increased. Merchants included: bakers, fishmongers, and butchers, as well as other food vendors
Temple Forum Gov t buildings
People might have business to conduct at the Forum. The Forum was a place in town for discussing and transacting business, taking care of legal matters (court), debating and making laws. The largest and most famous Forum was built in Rome. A visit to the temple to one of the many gods was also common. Priests performed religious ceremonies, some which included animal sacrifices.
Theatre Circus Maximus Colosseum
Entertaining the masses of poor People was a way to keep them from rioting. By 250 C.E., there were 150 holidays in Rome. There would be events at the Colosseum (seated 50,000) to see the gladiators, or Circus Maximus, (seated 250.000), to see chariot races. In addition, going to the theatre provided entertainment for many with plays and mimes.
Roman Baths
Baths were often part of the daily ritual for men and women and could take hours. Men and women would enjoy coming to the baths not only to get clean, but to meet with friends, exercise, or read in the library.
If you were a Roman, you would know that the public baths were as much a way of life as they were a place to wash. By the early fifth century A.D., there were almost 900 baths in Rome alone. The typical bath had a mosaic of uses and served as a community center, restaurant, fitness center, bar, and also as a performance center, where a juggler, a musician, or even a philosopher might entertain. The most likely time you would have visited is in the afternoon, as the Roman workday for most ended by noon. If that time wasn't convenient, you could bathe in the morning or evening, when some baths were lit by torch. All would come: infants and elderly, men and women, healthy and ill, freemen and slaves, all of whom often bathed naked and together. If you were there at the right time, you might even share a bath with the emperor himself. At your service (if you had the money), would be masseurs and food vendors, bartenders and slaves, poets and musicians. The baths were a bustling place, and one man who roomed above one wrote a letter chronicling its noise, complaining of the "grunt" of a weight lifter, a masseur's "pummeling of a shoulder," the occasional "arresting of a pickpocket," and the "racket of a man who likes to hear his own voice."
First Step: You would head to the Palaestra where oil would be rubbed on the skin. Then you would go to the exercise yard to build up a sweat. The exercise was not vigorous, but done to maintain health. Men might run, wrestle, box, fence, or even play games such as handball Women would swim or play games. Some even lifted small weights.
Romans would then head to the Apodyterium This is the changing room. There were cubicles where you could put your clothing while you bathed. Most left a slave or hired one to guard their belongings because theft was a problem. Bathing paraphernalia: Exercise and bathing garments, sandals, linen towels, toilet kit with anointing oils, perfume,sponge and a strigils
The tepidarium was the place where "strigiling" often took place, the Roman habit of using curved metal tools to wipe oil, and with it sweat and dirt. Instead of using soap, Roman bathers would cover their bodies with oil to loosen dirt and then wipe off the mixture with various strigil devices. This might have been done by your own slave, if you had one, or by one who worked at the baths, if you could afford one. You could receive a massage here. That was definitely less painful than a depilation, which consisted of having your body hairs plucked out, as hairless bodies were fashionable during much of the Roman Empire.
Caldarium This was the hottest room in a Roman bath. At the Baths of Caracalla, the room was 115 feet wide and crowned with a concrete dome. The hot water and steamy air were designed to open your pores, and water and air temperatures may have risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with a sticky 100 percent humidity to exaggerate the effect. At the Baths of Caracalla, the caldarium consisted of a large hall that contained a large pool a little over three feet deep. If you had slaves attending you, they might use a pouring dish called a patara to refresh you with cool water.
This room and its waters, like the tepidarium, were heated by the hypocaust, the system's furnace. The hypocaust, below ground and stoked by slaves, heated a tank of water transported by pipe to the appropriate pool. The furnace heated the air drawn underneath the floor of the caldarium to heat its tiles. You would have probably worn sandals or wooden clogs so as not to scorch your feet. Hot air then rose up through hollowed-out bricks that lined the walls before exiting through chimneys
Frigidarium You have already taken a warm bath in the tepidarium and a hot one in the caldarium, and may even have stopped in other sauna-like rooms. Now it's time to close all the skin pores that have been opened. You can do this by plunging into the frigidarium's cold waters. The dip is meant to refresh and is often the final bath of a visitor.
1. Entrance 2. Toilets 3. Palaestra 4. Apodyterium 5. Tepidarium 6. Caldarium 7. Frigidarium 8. Entertainment 9. Art 10. Food & Alcohol