Romans 2

Homes

Rich people usually lived in a town house called a domus. Many of them also had a country house called a villa. Most people who lived in towns and cities rented an apartment called a cenaculum. Some apartments were big and luxurious but others had only one room.

The richest Romans lived in grand comfortable houses set in beautiful gardens hidden from the rest of the city by high walls. Only wealthy Romans could afford the space for courtyards and fountains in their homes in the middle of the city.

Many wealthy Roman houses consisted of a kitchen, family bedrooms, a dining room ( tricilinium ), a meeting room ( atrium ), a guest room and a study for the master. They didn t have wallpaper or carpets. Some had small rugs but expensive houses had patterned floors called mosaics made from tiny pieces of stone. They used limestone for white and blue, brick for red and purple and glass to give other colours.

Mosaics were made by spreading plaster over the floor and then pressing tiny squares of bright stone into the plaster to make a picture. The gaps between the squares were filled in with plaster.

Fine houses had walls built of lumps of stone mixed with mortar, a kind of cement. Stone masons cut the stones to shape. Most houses had windows, small panes of blue-green glass set in a wooden frame while some had iron grilles for protection.

The wall-plasterer and painter had to work quickly. The plaster was smoothed on to the walls and the painter painted his design while the plaster was still wet. When it dried, the wall painting had a shiny finish. When the walls needed redecorating, the old paint was covered with a thin layer of plaster ready for a new design.

The private house had large kitchens with different fires for cooking different types of food.

A Roman kitchen

The Romans did not have electricity. They usually used oil-burning lamps to light their homes.

Rich Roman homes are thought to have had toilets. They also had central heating which was invented by the Romans. The rooms were warmed from under the floor. This was called a hypocaust.

Most Roman furniture which is still around today is made of marble or metal. They probably had wooden furniture as well. Their beds were probably very plain and made from wood. Some beds were very grand and used as couches in dining rooms.

Roman furniture

The poorest Romans sometimes lived on the top floors of the apartments. These were badly built out of old wood and could catch fire easily. They were made from wooden frames made by carpenters. The gaps between the wooden uprights were either filled with mud bricks or smaller wooden twigs (wattle) and clay (daub) was put on to hold it together. The walls were covered with plaster. Roofs were thatched.

A Roman apartment building

When building land became scarce the Roman architects designed insulae (islands) which were blocks of flats sometimes six storeys high. Ordinary families lived in these. They were badly built, noisy, dirty, and dangerous. Many blocks of flats had central courtyards to provide light and fresh air.

Today most houses are built of brick. Bungalows have only one floor, houses normally have two floors and blocks of flats have many floors with many families living in the same building. In general houses have electricity, running water, some form of heating, wallpaper and carpets. Many houses have central heating.

Clothes

Most Roman men wore tunics. If they were citizens they could wear white robes called togas over them. Togas were a long semi-circular piece of cloth about five metres long. It was draped over the left shoulder, around the body and then over the right arm. A toga worn by a boy between the ages of 14 and 16 usually had a purple border added to it s long straight edge. They also wore warm woollen cloaks with hoods.

Rich women wore long tunics fastened at the waist by a belt. Married women wore bright coloured dresses instead of togas . These dresses were called stollas . This was a long, folded gown, with or without sleeves, which reached the ground. Unmarried women wore a plain tunic.

Roman clothes

Both men and women used silver or bronze brooches to fasten tunics and cloaks. The brooches were often decorated with brightly coloured enamel.

Rich women wore lots of jewellery and make-up, strong perfume and and elaborate hairstyles. They had specially trained slaves to help them dress, arrange their hair and make up their faces.

Ladies hairstyles changed according to the latest fashions but were always based on long hair. Hairpins kept their hair in place.

They also wore makeup to show that they were rich enough not to work indoors. Both men and women used to wear expensive perfume.

Shoes were made of leather. Some were sandals made of one piece of leather that wrapped around the foot. Others were made of separate soles stitched to the upper parts of the shoes. Women wore elegant sandals. Soldiers wore boots studded with nails.

Roman shoes

Education

In early days, rich Roman families paid private tutors to teach their children at home. Later boys schools were set up but parents still had to pay to send their boys there. Very few girls went to school. Some were taught by their mothers.

Most schools had only one room and only one class. There were about twelve pupils. Schools were often above or behind a store. The Romans had a kind of papaer made from reeds and wrote on animal skins but this was too expensive for children to write on. School boys would usually write on wax tablets with a pointed stick called a stylus. They could then rub the wax clean to start again.

A Roman schoolboy

Schools had some textbooks but they were not printed as printing had not been invented. The books they had were written by hand. They were usually made from one long piece of paper rolled round a stick. This was called a scroll. Later, a new type of book called a codex was invented. A codex was shaped more like a book today.

Roman books

They didn t have electronic calculators . Roman numbers did not look like ours. They were written as capital letters.

Roman numbers

As well as reading, writing and numbers, boys were also expected to learn Greek. When they were older, boys could learn to speak in public if they wanted to be a lawyer or a politician. This could take years and was very expensive.

Girls in the richer Roman families were taught how to read and write, and run a household. Some had private tutors and music teachers.

Today, all children from the age of four to sixteen attend school. Schools are very large buildings with several classrooms and sometimes over a thousand pupils. All pupils have books to write and use many different types of pens and pencils. All the text books are printed and pupils use computers for some of their school work.

Medicine

When they were ill many Romans slept in shrines built for Aesculapius, the God of medicine, because they believed that the dreams they had in the shrines would tell them how to get better but most people went to see a doctor.

Rich Romans could pay more and have the doctors visit them at home. Very rich Romans had their own personal doctors who they paid to look after them and nobody else.

People learned to be doctors either in the army hospitals or medical schools. Most doctors were men. Women doctors had a special job of looking after the women having babies.

Roman doctors carried out some very serious operations. These included mending broken bones, and cutting off limbs. The operations were very painful for the patients as they did not have painkillers which meant patients could not be put to sleep for their operation. Some people were given alcohol to drink but the operations were still very painful.

Roman surgical equipment

Some doctors did not have to pay taxes which saved them money so they treated the very poor patients for nothing.

Today there are many doctors and large hospitals. Pain killers and anaesthetics are available so operations are no longer painful. There are many drugs available to treat illnesses. Surgeons are more skilful and can perform many life saving operations. Many illnesses which caused death in Roman times are now easily treated.

Leisure

Romans had lots of different pastimes. There were simple games to play at home, plays to go to see and huge public events for thousands of people.

Roman children had seesaws, swings, kites, hoops and toy houses to play with. Tali (knucklebones) was a game that was popular with grown-ups as well as children. It was like rolling dice.

Roman games

The games that Romans liked to watch the most were chariot racing and gladiator fighting. Chariot races were the most popular of all sports. Sometimes there were twenty four races a day to watch.

A racing chariot was a small two-wheeled cart pulled by fast horses. Racing was dangerous and riders often fell off and were killed.

A racing chariot

Gladiators were slaves or prisoners made to fight each other, or wild animals, in front of crowds of people. The fights took place in huge open-air buildings called amphitheatres.

Roman gladiators

A Roman race track

Food

Romans enjoyed their food and for the rich Romans there was a wide variety. There were many cookery books.

The main meal was in the evening. Those eating the meal lay on setees around a low table in the dining room. They were served by slaves and ate with their fingers.

At parties, rich Romans would have enormous feasts. They ate salads, eggs and shellfish. This was followed by a main course of up to seven dishes.

A Roman dinner party

Plates and bowls made from red glossy pottery came from France. All the richer houses had this tableware, called samian. It was very expensive so if it got broken it was often repaired instead of being thrown away.

Plain jugs and bowls were used in the kitchen. Pots and saucepans stood on iron grilles over slow-burning charcoal or were placed among the embers. Other food dishes and bread were cooked in ovens heated by charcoal.

At public events there were usually people selling different kinds of food. Snacks were often fruit or vegetables.

Poorer people had less choice of food and could not afford meat every day. They ate apples, pears, cherries and plums. Oysters were plentiful and cheap. They very poor ate a form of porridge.

Today people have a very wide range of food to choose from, some expensive, others much cheaper. There any many ranges of tableware and pots and pans available in the shops. There are also many different ways of cooking food.

People

More than a million people lived in Rome in AD 100 but they were not all free-born citizens. Some were foreign merchants, some were peoples from the empire and very many were slaves. Roman law allowed anyone to come and live in the city, so long as they could support themselves but they did not have full citizens rights.

Proper Roman citizens belonged to one of three classes: patricians (nobles), equites (middle-rank) or plebs, short for plebians (ordinary people).

Slaves might be prisoners, captured in war or purchased from slave dealers in nearby lands. Others, the children of slaves, were born unfree.

It was a patricians wife s first duty to provide a son to inherit her husband s lands. Marriages were often arranged to make alliances between noble, powerful families.

Women from respectable families did not take part in public life but at home they would discuss politics with their husbands and influence them.

Fathers had the power of life or death over their children and their slaves.

Citizens had many privileges. Only citizens could go to the public baths, attend gladiatorial games or receive free food from the government.

Work

There were over 150 different trades in Rome from wine merchants and goldsmiths to wagon drivers and bakers. There were also many family run shops and inns.

Farming was big business in Roman times. The estate farms which were owned by patrician families were used to raise animals and grow crops: wheat and barley (for bread), olives (for oil) and grapes (to make wine). There were orchards and vegetable gardens too. Some of this produce was for the family; the rest was for sale. The work on these big estates was done by slaves.

The Romans were great architects and engineers. They built temples, palaces, huge sports arenas, underground drainage systems and bridges.

Roman roads were built by the army because the army used them most as routes for marching quickly across the empire.

Government jobs were only for men. The government was run by consuls, senators and officials. Only men from patrician families were eligible for top government posts.

The poorest citizens, who could only find part time work, relied on government aid to survive. Many slaves worked as cooks, teachers, doctors and scribes. Slaves did all the dirty jobs that their owners would not do.

Poor peasant families worked on their own small farms.

Many Roman roads are still in use today. The surfaces have been repaired but the foundations have lasted two thousand years.

Introduction

The Romans lived in Italy over two thousand years ago. They ruled one of the greatest empires the Western world had known.

Over the centuries the Romans transformed their original cluster of villages into a magnificent city of a million people. It had fine buildings and good drains and sewers although thousands of Romans lived in dingy slums with shaky walls and leaking roofs.

The Romans spent vast amounts of state money and private wealth on works of art. Their mosaics and sculptures are among the best in the world. Yet streets around the fine buildings and statues were full of mud and rubbish, clogged with traffic and had many muggers and theives.

The Romans were great law-makers, clever philosophers, excellent administrators and brilliant engineers.

Roman Britain Jenny Hall and Christine Jones

The Roman Empire Martyn Whittock

Who were the Romans? Phil Roxbee Cox

The Ancient Roman Facts of Life Fiona Macdonald

Ancient Rome John Malam