Daily Life in Rome 15-3

Problems in Early Rome
One million people lived in Rome
Not enough housing.
The air was polluted.
There was crime in the streets.
The cost of living was high.
Many Romans were unemployed.
Romans had to pay taxes on almost everything

Housing
Rich
Lived in a house called a domus.
They had marble walls with colored stone floors.
Windows were made of small panes of glass.
A furnace heated the rooms.
Pipes brought water to the upper floors.
The atrium was the central room.
It was open to the sky and collected rain water.

Poor
Lived in apartment buildings called islands.
They were six or more stories high.
The ground floor was given over to shops.
Rents in Rome were high.
The higher up, the cheaper the apartment.

Household Goods
Roman homes were lit by oil lamps made of clay, bronze, or glass.
Olive oil was poured into the large hole in the center of the lamp.
A cloth wick was placed in the smaller opening and lit.

Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Bread	Cold Meat	Eggs
Fruit	Fish	Fish
Wine and water	Vegetables	Vegetables in wine and honey.
	Bread	Sausages
	Wine and water	Meat
		Chicken Stew
		Dates stuffed with nuts and honey.

The Family
The father was the head of the household and his word was law.
The father arranged marriages to increase status or wealth.
Father could sell or execute family members.
He conducted religious rituals in the home.
Cousins were expected to help one another.

Education
Roman boys and girls went to school together until age 12.

Education for Sons of Wealthy
Then the sons of poor families went to work.
Sons of the rich began their formal education.

Classes
Reading
Grammar
Writing
Music
Geometry
Commercial arithmetic
Shorthand

At age 15 they entered a school of rhetoric, or speech and writing.
This would prepare them for a political career.
Some went to Athens or Alexandria to study philosophy or medicine.

Education for Daughters of Wealthy
Formal education stopped at age 12.
Daughters of rich were given private lessons at home.

Life of Women
Some women worked in or owned small shops.
Wealthy women had slaves to do housework.
They were free to study arts, literature, or fashion.

People of Rome
The average Roman lived to age forty.
Some Romans lived well into their seventies or eighties.
Only 50% of the children from wealthy families lived to their twentieth birthdays.
Due to the high infant death rate the Romans waited until a baby was nine days old to name a child.
Richer people often lived to a later age because of better nutrition and living conditions.
Poor people were exposed to waste thrown out of apartment windows onto the streets.
Common childhood diseases of today would hit with epidemic force on the population.
The sanitary conditions of the water, plates and other items were poor.

Religion
The Romans borrowed Greek, Egyptian, and Persian gods.
They did develop some of their own.
The early Roman religion consisted of worshiping gods of nature.
Isis, an Egyptian goddess had a temple in Rome.
Mithiras, a Persian god, was worshipped by the army.
The Emperor of Rome was worshipped as a god.
This brought them into conflict with Christianity.
Near the end of the empire, Christianty came to be the religion of Rome.

FOOTNOTE ON: MITHRA
Purification through a ritualistic baptism was required of the faithful, who also took part in a ceremony in which they drank wine and ate bread to symbolize the body and blood of the god. Sundays were held sacred, and the birth of the god was celebrated annually on December the 25th. After the earthly mission of this god had been accomplished, he took part in a Last Supper with his companions before ascending to heaven, to forever protect the faithful from above. (Pearse 2004)

Gods and Goddesses
SSRomeJupiterZeus.bmp (30942 bytes)

            Jupiter                                         Juno                                 Apollo                              Venus
      Ruler of the Gods                   Protector of Marriage;            Goddesss of Beauty,           Goddesses of Love
                                                     Wife of Jupiter                     Poetry, Music

        SSRomeGodDianaArtemis.bmp (46454 bytes)

SSRomeGodMinervaAthena.bmp (35782 bytes)

SSRomeGodNeptunePoseidon.bmp (34390 bytes)

              Diana                                     Minerva                               Neptune                               Pluto
      Goddesses of Earth,                    Goddesses of War,                 God of the Sea             God of the Underworld
        wildlife, hunting                         Peace & Wisdom

Medicine
Doctors in Rome were advanced for the time period.
The Romans performed cataract surgery
They developed artificial legs.
They were able to drill into a skull to relieve pressure on the brain.
Doctor's instruments are similar to medical tools today.
Doctors were always men.
They were trained as apprentices.
There were no formal schools to train doctors.
Women often acted as herbal healers and mid wives in their own families.
Doctors treated only those with enough money to pay for their services.
Poor patients had to rely on herbal medicines.
They could make sacrifices at local shrines.
they could ask for the gods to help heal them.

Leisure Activities
People enjoyed playing games in Ancient Rome.
Common games were dice, marbles, and knucklebones.
Knucklebones were jacks made out of dried animal bones. Romans also played games similar to checkers.
Gambling
Public Bathhouses
Public Games

Toys
Infants enjoyed rattles and noisemakers.
Children had piggybanks.
Masks made from ivory or terra-cotta.
Letters cut from ivory.
Lead figurines shaped like gods.
Children played with scooters, jumpropes, kites, yo-yos, and swings.
Small wooden tops were used.
Some children played with small carts that were hitched to the family goat, pony, or dog.
Girls played with rag dolls and wax figurines.
Some of the wooden and terra cotta dolls had movable arms and legs.

BathHouses
Romans could take warm, cold, or steam baths.
Some had gyms, sports stadiums, and libraries.
They could watch or play.
They could listen to lectures.
They could see musical shows.
They could sit and talk.

Coliseum
It opened in 80 A.D. and the opening ceremonies lasted for ten days.
It took ten years to build of marble and limestone.
The Colosseum was oval shaped.
A large awning could be stretched over the top to keep out the hot sun.
It was 160 feet tall, and had four stories of windows, arches, and columns.
Over 9,000 animals were killed the day the Coliseum opened.
It could hold as many as 55,000 people.
The first gladiatorial contests were in 250 B.C.
Mock naval battles were held by removing the heavy wooden flooring.
The lower cells where prisoner and animals were usually kept were then flooded.

SSGreeceChariotRace.bmp (84070 bytes)

Public Games
There were no team sports in Rome.
Free public games ran from dawn to dusk.
When Rome was a republic, the games were staged by politicians looking for votes.
When Rome was an empire, the games were staged by the government.
Games included Circuses, Chariot Races, and Gladiatorial Games.
The chariot races were held in the circus maximus.
The circus was an oval arena that could seat 200,000.

Gladiators
The first gladiators were part of a sacrificial rite adopted from the Etruscans.
Gladiators were people who fought animals and other people.
The word gladiator comes from the Latin for swordsman, from gladius, sword.
Most were slaves, prisoners of war, criminals, or poor people.
There were upper-class gladiators who were looking for excitement or public attention.
Gladiators would go to a feast the night before they were to fight.
They would be looked over and gamblers would place bets.
As they entered the arena they passed the emperor.
"Hail Emperor, those who are about to die salute you."
Many died.
They were the modern day sports heroes.
Some won their freedom.
Poor performers were usually killed.
In 404 AD, gladiator fights were outlawed by Emperor Honorius.

Gladiator Schools
There were three gladiatorial schools where slaves were trained to fight.
The Ludus Magnus was the largest, connected to the Colosseum by an underground tunnel.
Gladiators were trained by managers who would hire them out.

Gladiators Rebel 73-71 BC
Spartacus, native of Thrace in Greece, led a two-year uprising of gladiators, slaves and poor peasants.
He defeated five Roman armies.
The rebellion started at the gladiator school in Capua, south of Rome.
Spartacus was an army deserter who was in training.
Armed with kitchen knives, Spartacus and 70 students managed to break out of the school.
They headed for Mt. Vesuvius, where they slipped past soldiers sent in pursuit.
Spartacus's was killed in battle with the politician and general Marcus Licinius Crassus.
6,000 of his followers were crucified on the Appian Way between Capua and Rome.
Rome would now view gladiators in a different light.
Private individuals could only own a certain number of gladiators.
Gladiators could no longer enter with weapons.

Animals in Public Games
Some animals pulled chariots or performed tricks.
Most animals fought gladiators or other animals.
Lionsm, elephants, snakes, bears, buffaloes, rhinos, and panthers were used.
Some days, 5000 animals were killed in a single day.
The Romans wiped out thousands of animals.
They either captured or drove away entire species.
The hippopotamuses was no longer seen in Egypt.
Lions disappeared from Assyria.
The Mesopotamian lion and the North African elephant became extinct.

Roman Roads
The Romans built some of the best roads in the world.
They built 53,000 miles of road.
They did this so the could connect and control their empire.

Mining
Mining was a dangerous job done usually by slaves or criminals.
The conditions in the mines were very hazardous and unpleasant.
Miners were lowered with a rope into a deep shaft.
The mining tunnels were only tall enough to crawl into.
Flooding was also a problem in the mines.
The Romans invented a water wheel system that was able to take the water out of the mines.
Stone or metal picks and shovels were used to dig out the minerals.
The ores were taken back to the surface in grass woven baskets.
The miners would split rocks by heating them with fire and the dousing the rock with vinegar.
The sudden change in temperature would split the rocks.

Metalworking
Rome imported much of their ores from other areas.
Gold and silver came from Spain and Greece.
Tin from Britain.
Copper came from Italy, Spain and Cyprus.
Smiths would process the ore.
Iron was also used to make rings.
Bronze was used to make everyday objects.
Gold would be worked into rings, earrings and chains for the wealthier Romans.

Aquaducts
The aquaducts were Roman man-made water sysytem.
Water was carried for irrigation and to supply water for cities and towns.
Aqua Claudia supplied Rome with water from 43 miles away.
At the ending point, the water would flow into a distribution basin.
There would be a number of smaller pipes to feed public baths and fountains.
A few wealthy homes in that area of the city would have water.

Clothing
The Romans knew only two articles of clothing: the toga and the tunica.
The toga was worn at official happenings, like the salutatio, and the tunica at home etc.
Instead of a toga, women wore a stola, a white woollen attire.
The Romans wore leather sandals on their feet.
They were comfortable and airy.
They didn't know any other footwear like shoes.

Ships
Goods were transported by sea throughout the Roman Empire.
The Corbitas was the type of ship the Romans used.
It was a round-hulled ship with curving prow and stern.
It could carry cargo weighing between 70 and 350 ton.
Ships could carry as many as 600 passengers.
They could carry or 6000 amphorae (clay jars) of wine, oil, or other liquids.
It took only two to three weeks by ship to go from Egypt to Rome.
In A.D. 50, a lighthouse was set up at Ostia to guide sailors.
At its peak, Rome set up lighthouses in forty different locations to aid sailors.

Pompeii
In 62 AD, an earthquake destroyed much of Pompeii.
79 Ad August 24, Pompeii destroyed by eruption of Mt Vesuvius.
1:00PM, first eruption of Vesuvius.
1:30 PM, pumice and ashegin to fall on Pompeii.
Vocanoe threw up ash for 10 hours.
Pompeii was covered with 9 feet of ash.
Herculaneum got 1".
11:30 PM, lava flowed down the volcanoe reaching Herculaneum and killing the people.
12:30 AM, second lava flow covers Herculaneum, bit did not reach Pompeii.
5:30 AM, Third flow of lava buries Herculaneum and reaches Pompeii.
6:30 AM, fourth lava flow covers Pompeii.
7:00 AM, fifth flow of lava.
8:30 AM, sixth and final lava flow buries Pompeii.
Most of the people who remained behind died.
Many people died in their houses.
Many were crushed when their roofs collapsed.

Pompeii Rediscovered
1594 AD, Count Tutavilla found ancient buildings while digging a trench.
1748 AD, excavations begin with the search for souvenirs and valuables.
1763 AD, name Pompeii was found on a building.
Miles of streets with public buildings and houses were discovered.
Statues, jewelry, and household items are found.
1765 AD, excavators find food on tables, and bread in ovens.
1860s AD, archaeologists bring a scientific approach.
Giueseppe Fiorelli fills cavaties with plaster and creates relicas of people and animals.
1980 AD, large parts of Pompeii are excavated.
Earthquake closes town to tourists.