A Week in the Life of Rome

by James L. Papandrea

  Stachys dropped his denarius into the open hand of Maria, who said nothing to him. And since today was a fasting day, there would be no sesterces for lunch or a shave. Those coins went into a small wooden box on the shelf that had once functioned as an idol niche. Marcus looked into the box and counted the coins.

  Stachys was annoyed at the group of people gathered in his house. He found Ampliatus especially annoying. Ampliatus was always so happy. Stachys squinted at him, making a fist with his thumb between his index and middle finger, and subtly pointed it at Ampliatus.

  Marcus was speaking with the deacons. “I understand you’re skeptical, but I saw the governor of Cyprus become a believer, so anything is possible. There’s nothing the Lord can’t do.”

  “I know something the Lord can’t do!” It was Scrap, tugging at Marcus’s tunic.

  Marcus patted his head. “I don’t know, Scrap, I think the Lord can do anything. What is it that you think the Lord can’t do?”

  Scrap paused as a smile spread across his face. “The Lord can’t lie.”

  Marcus and the deacons laughed. Philologus said, “He’s got you there, Marcus.”

  Marcus said, “Well said, Scrap! You make an excellent point!”

  Stachys couldn’t help but chuckle. Marcus, the man Peter left in charge of the Way-followers in Rome, stumped by a slave boy. He shook his head, turned, and walked out the door without saying goodbye to anyone. The rain had slowed to a drizzle now, so Stachys didn’t mind it much. Rain made the streets muddy, but it also washed much of the merda into the sewer, so the fora would smell a lot better for market day.

  As Stachys walked past the Forum of Caesar, he looked into the bookshops, where the booksellers’ slaves were copying scrolls. He scanned the parchments nailed to the doorposts with lists of documents for sale. It seemed as though every time he passed by there were more and more books available in Latin. He nodded to Atrectus, the shopkeeper of his favorite bookshop. Atrectus nodded back to be polite but quickly turned back to his task of putting scrolls into pigeon holes. He knew Stachys was a looker, not a buyer.

  Stachys pushed his way into the Old Forum, where the senators were heading into Caesar’s Curia. Today was the only day this month that the Senate would be in session. Stachys could see the spear set up in the forum to advertise that there were slaves for sale. He moved on quickly, passing the “bargain” slaves who had tried to run away, with their shaved heads and their face tattoos or branded foreheads. Then he walked past the cheapest slaves, the ones who had tried to commit suicide. Such a thing had to be disclosed to a potential buyer, because it made these slaves a risky investment. But Stachys looked at them with a kind of respect—almost admiration—that they had responded to their misfortune with the noble solution of suicide. But of course, as slaves they had no legal right to kill themselves, because they were someone else’s property. They must not have been the slaves of citizens, Stachys reasoned, because the slave of a citizen would become a citizen himself, if he only waited long enough. Nearby, a slave was begging his master not to sell his young son away from him. Stachys felt awkward witnessing the scene, so he moved on.

  Slavery

  Slavery in the Roman Empire was based on the rights of conquest, which meant that in any war the winners had the power to enslave the losers. There was no assumption that slaves were less intelligent than their masters. They were simply less fortunate. And there was no stigma attached to skin color that was used as a justification for slavery, so in the ancient world one could not tell who was a slave by appearance. On any given day, walking around the city of Rome, one would have seen many citizens, noncitizens, foreigners, and slaves, all interacting with one another, and would not necessarily have known who was who.

  Many Roman slaves were freed, creating the status of freedmen, or former slaves. The freed slaves of Roman citizens also became citizens, so in some ways freedmen had a better life than the free poor. Freedmen often took the family names of their former masters and often continued to work for them, sometimes remaining in the household. In that case they would have continued to receive their food and lodging, but their time was not always their own, and so they (voluntarily) lived a kind of hybrid existence, somewhere between slavery and freedom. Freedmen were considered part of the extended family of their former owners and were often given the right to be buried in the family tomb, so long as they and their descendants agreed to take part in the upkeep of the tomb.

  By the time of our story, Roman conquest of other lands was winding down, which means that fewer and fewer slaves were coming from the spoils of war. Most slaves in the empire were born or sold into slavery or were enslaved as the result of a criminal conviction. Many Roman households would have had no slaves at all, but some estates could have had hundreds or even thousands of slaves, especially in the case of farms or ranches. The imperial household may have had as many as twenty thousand slaves. Within these estates, foremen slaves managed the other slaves, since the owners could not possibly know them all by name.

  Most male slaves were freed after about age thirty, and female slaves were freed after their childbearing years, in their mid-forties (though in both cases manumission for those outside the city, where the main occupation of slaves was farm work, may have been put off until later). For some freedom could be more of a curse than a blessing, because even though most slaves remained connected to the household after manumission, a slave who was unruly or sickly could be freed in order to be abandoned.

  Slaves who tried to run away might be branded, tattooed, or forced to wear a collar with an inscription that gave the name of the owner and instructions for sending the slave back. Normally, though, slaves in Rome did not wear any distinctive clothing or markings. At one time slaves had been made to wear an earring; however, the Romans did away with the practice presumably so that slaves themselves would not be so aware of just how many of them there were. A slave revolt in Sicily in the second century BC, and the famous revolt of Spartacus in the first century BC, made the Romans wary about the possibility of slaves organizing.

  Slaves were always expected to be sexually available to their masters. We might assume that Christian households were the exception to this rule. For all the prevalence and acceptance of prostitution, we should remember that any man who owned female slaves did not need to pay for sex.

  In addition to working within a household or on a farm or ranch, slaves did many of the same jobs that free people did. In fact, the consolidation of land outside Rome into large slave-run estates meant that the city had an increasingly large population of freeborn workers (including former farmhands) who were unemployed or underemployed and who resented the slaves, whom they perceived were taking jobs away from them. Many slaves were not Italians, and yet if they were the slaves of citizens, they had a track toward citizenship and even upward mobility. Freedmen of citizens were citizens, and although they could not rise into the equestrian class, their sons could.

  Figure 3.1. An example of a Roman slave collar (National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

  Stachys strolled on toward the wine market, where he haggled over the price of an amphora of wine and then made arrangements for it to be delivered to Urbanus’s house before the banquet that evening. He knew Urbanus would never serve it to his guests, but he wanted to show his appreciation for the invitation. Then he went down to Marble Street, past the grain silos, to the Aemilia Gate and the bakery market, to arrange for the week’s groceries and bread for his household. Then it was time to take care of business. Stachys walked to the warehouses at the foot of the Palatine Hill and checked his store of olive oil. He casually lied to Turranius, the superintendent of the imperial storehouses, minimizing the success of his business. No need to invite the evil eye, he thought. Other wholesalers were bustling around, talking with the brokers, making deals on everything from paper to bricks, from cured meats to gemstones and precious metals.

  Then it was time to make the long walk out to Urbanus’s farm, where he
would meet with the tenant farmer and discuss the price of olives and schedule the use of the olive press. Stachys considered making a speculative offer on the next olive crop. If he could buy the olives at a reduced rate before they were ripe, he could save some money. But it was a gamble, because if the crop was bad, he would lose money.

  Figure 3.2. Roman warehouses at the foot of Palatine Hill

  It was just as well that today was a fasting day, Stachys reasoned, because there would be no time for lunch anyway. Good thing Maria didn’t know that he was looking forward to a rich banquet at Urbanus’s house on the Tiburtinian Road. Stachys’s thoughts wandered back to the previous day at the baths, and he wondered why the Praetorian prefect Lucius Geta was talking about the Tiburtinian Road.

  At that same time, Lucius Geta was consulting an oracle in a grotto below the temple of Jupiter. He wanted to know whether the child his wife was about to deliver was going to be a boy or whether he was going to have to disappoint his wife again by refusing to raise a daughter. As he ducked his head and entered the grotto, a priestess sat on a tripod stool in the middle of the cave, eating mushrooms from a dirty handkerchief. When it was Geta’s turn, he stepped up to the priestess’s assistant and offered her a special cake he had bought at a very high price. The assistant set the cake down on a small table, next to the offerings of those who had come before Geta. The priestess popped a mushroom into her mouth and closed her eyes. The assistant nodded to Geta.

  “Will the child be a son?” he asked.

  The assistant chanted the question to the priestess, who silently consulted with Apollo, presumably asking him to inquire of Jupiter whether Geta’s wife was going to give birth to a boy. Apparently Jupiter answered, and Apollo relayed the message to the priestess, who, after a long silence, chanted the reply:

  A mother’s hopes will be fulfilled

  This child of hers will surely live

  A father’s life and works repaid

  A fitting reward the gods will give

  Geta smiled, tipped the assistant, and walked out of the grotto. The gods knew his intention to have a girl killed, so if the child would live, it must be a boy. And the part about him getting a just reward for his life of service to the empire—the gods were granting him good fortune, which, he reasoned, was about time. As he stepped out of the grotto and into the light, he was so deep in thought that he almost bumped into his tribune, who was waiting for him. He stared at the tribune as his eyes adjusted to the light. “Have you done what I asked?”

  “Yes, lord. I have men in plain tunics watching his house and following him wherever he goes.”

  “Good. If he is named prefect of the grain supply, I want him dead before he can take office.”

  “Yes, lord. Consider it done.”

  Peter closed his eyes and took a long whiff of the sea air, letting the cool breeze blow through his tunic as he gripped the ship’s rail. When he opened his eyes, the sun was bright and the sky was a clear blue. Up ahead, the island of Malta dominated the horizon. Peter thanked his friend and Lord Iesua that he would soon have a break from the sea—he would soon put his feet on solid ground for a while before continuing his journey to Rome.

  That afternoon Philologus pushed and jostled his way through the Field of Mars, toward the place where Julius Caesar had been assassinated almost one hundred years earlier, in the portico at the back of the Theater of Pompey. Today was the distribution of bread, and since Philologus had not worked in two days, he was hoping to get some bread to help feed his family. As he made his way to the distribution point by the temples behind Pompey’s portico, he could see that many others had gotten there before him, and a few of the emperor’s freedmen, along with Turranius, the superintendent of the imperial storehouses, and some representatives of the millers’ guild were trying to get people to line up in an orderly fashion. Turranius stood up on the steps of a round temple of Hercules and tried to get the crowd to quiet down. “Please line up according to status!” he shouted.

  A few people moved toward the front of what was supposed to be a line, but most of the people gathering could not hear Turranius. Philologus’s heart sank as he saw that there were relatively wealthy people at the front of the forming line—even a few equestrians with their purple-striped cloaks and their gold rings. The emperor’s freedmen patiently showed the growing crowd where to stand, and as the mob slowly turned into a line, everyone was placed in the line according to social class, with the highest status at the front of the line. Philologus found himself standing toward the very end, all the way at Agrippa’s pantheon.

  Figure 3.3. Remains of republican-era temples. Visible in the background are the arches under the street, which are the remains of the Portico of Pompey, part of the Theater of Pompey complex.

  Three hours later, Philologus was just close enough to the front of the line to hear Turranius announce that there was no more bread and the dole was closed. As always happened, the bread ran out before the truly needy people received any. Philologus walked away, disappointed but not broken. Still, he didn’t know how he was going to tell Julia.

  Maria had invited Julia to join her and Rhoda for the day’s trip to the markets. Julia accepted, not because she planned to buy anything but because she welcomed the company. She admired Maria and looked up to her, and she always liked to be around Rhoda because no one ever knew what Rhoda was going to say next. She was the one who said what others were only thinking, even if it was not exactly polite. But she always told the truth and often quoted the Lord Iesua when he said, “The truth will set you free.”

  The women met at the Portico of the Argonauts, near the Saepta Julia, the largest shopping center in the Field of Mars. Rhoda greeted Julia with a smirk and a twinkle in her eye. “Salve, Julia. It’s so nice of you to invite us to your shopping center. It’s quite a thing to have such a monument named after you.” Julia giggled, loving the joke and the attention.

  “I need some new shoes,” Maria said, changing the subject. “Actually, that’s not true. I don’t really need new shoes, but I want to look at new shoes . . . so I’m ready when I do need them.” The other two women laughed as the three of them turned toward the cobblers. Since their men normally did most of the shopping for everything except women’s clothing and shoes, the women were taking the opportunity for some social time. And unlike the cobblers’ shops in the Suburra, the Saepta Julia was a shopping center for luxuries, which meant that it was the place to see the newest fashions.

  What Romans Ate

  The common people ate bread, cheese, fish, polenta (either as a porridge or fried into patties), fried sardines and anchovies, beans, eggs, olives, zucchini, peas, lentils, and chickpeas. They probably could not have afforded meat very often, but when they did have it, it was usually sausages, chicken, or pork. Trade guilds and other clubs had banquets (often held in temples) that included a sacrifice, and they would have served the meat of the animal that had been sacrificed.

  Wealthier people ate more meat, including beef and organ meat such as kidneys, livers, and tripe. They might have eaten boar or other game as well as goose and rabbit. They also enjoyed fruits such as pears, grapes, apples, plums, and dates. There do not seem to have been any citrus fruits there yet, though there is some evidence that people perhaps had lemons. Seafood might have included lobster, snails, and oysters, in addition to the many fish available. Desserts included cakes, muffins, nuts, and other delicacies sweetened with honey (they did not have sugar). According to some sources, the wealthiest Romans ate delicacies such as small birds or mice roasted, dipped in honey, and rolled in poppy seeds.

  Romans used salt, but they did not have pepper. Their main condiment was garum, a salty sauce made from fermented fish guts. They put it on almost any kind of food, similar to the way Americans use ketchup.

  Romans had silverware, which consisted mainly of spoons, knives, and toothpicks. They did not use forks. Wealthy people might have had gold utensils and glass goblets, while poorer people used pot
tery. However, it was not unusual for even modest homes to have silver, since a set of silverware was a common gift given to clients by their patrons.

  Figure 3.4. Bronze Roman cooking pots, of the type used by a more affluent household or a food vendor (National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

  Figure 3.5. Bronze Roman cooking pots (National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

  After checking out the latest in women’s shoes, the three strolled on through the Enclosure for a leisurely walk in the shade. They browsed the art dealers, bookshops, spice merchants, perfumers, and the mirror shop. They watched the ivory carvers for a while and then looked at the silks—the newest and most exotic commodity in Rome.

  It was at the silk shop that Maria recognized Sabina, Urbanus’s wife. Maria approached Sabina respectfully and greeted her. “Salve, noble Sabina. I am Maria, wife of Stachys. Your husband is my husband’s patron.”

  “So he is,” replied Sabina warmly. “And I know my husband is looking forward to his presence at the banquet tonight.”

  Maria tried to hide the fact that she didn’t know Stachys had been invited to a banquet—and on a fasting day. But she knew the invitation did not include her. She knew this was one of those banquets that was only for the men. “I’m sure he is very grateful for the invitation,” she said. “Sabina, may I present Rhoda and Julia.”

  “Oh.” Sabina was caught off guard. She had thought Rhoda and Julia were Maria’s slaves and did not expect to be introduced to them. “Salvete.”

  Maria saw Sabina’s discomfort and recognized the issue. “My apologies. Rhoda is my freedwoman, and Julia is our friend.”