Daily Life in Ancient Rome
What was it actually like to live in the Roman Empire? For the wealthy aristocrats who ran the state, the answer involved marble palaces, cultivated gardens, large dinner parties, a steady stream of Greek philosophers, and a small army of slaves. For the urban poor of Rome itself, the answer was tenements, dole-queued grain, a restless and dangerous life in the streets, and the perpetual hope of bread and circuses. For the slaves, the answer was work — in the fields, in the mines, in the workshops, or in the households. For the majority of Romans, who were farmers, the answer was a life of hard labor on the land, punctuated by military service and the major festivals of the Roman religious calendar.
This cluster page surveys the rhythms of daily life in the Roman world: the city, the house, the food, the family, the religion, the entertainments, and the work. It links out to Roman Gladiators, Roman Baths, the Roman Forum, and the Roman Empire cluster.
The Roman City
The Roman Empire was, by ancient standards, remarkably urban. The city of Rome itself had a population of perhaps a million people in the second century CE, by far the largest in the Western world. Other major cities — Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch in Syria, Carthage in North Africa, Ephesus in Asia Minor, and dozens more — had populations in the hundreds of thousands.
The typical Roman city was laid out on a grid plan, with two main streets (the cardo and the decumanus) crossing at right angles in the center. At the crossing stood the forum, the public square that served as the city’s commercial, civic, and religious center. Around the forum were the principal temples, the basilica (the public hall where courts met), the curia (the council chamber), the macellum (the meat market), and the public baths. Outside the center were the residential districts, with the wealthy living in domus houses and the poor in insulae apartment blocks.
The Roman House
The traditional Roman domus was a single-story house built around an atrium, an interior courtyard with a pool (the impluvium) to collect rainwater. Around the atrium were the tablinum (the master’s office), the triclinium (the dining room), the cubicula (the bedrooms), and the cellae (the slave quarters). Behind the atrium was the peristylium, a columned garden courtyard. Wealthy Romans expanded the basic form into vast mansions with multiple atria, peristyles, gardens, fountains, libraries, and private baths.
The Roman insula was an apartment block. The ground floor was often a taberna (shop), and the upper floors were rented out to tenants. Insulae in Rome could be as many as eight stories tall, although the emperor Augustus limited them to about 70 Roman feet (about 21 meters) after a series of fires and collapses. They were crowded, dark, and often dangerous; the lower floors were relatively desirable, the upper floors cheap but almost inaccessible by the internal stairs.
Roman Food
The basic Roman meal was the cena, the dinner, served in the late afternoon. The poor ate a simple meal of puls, a porridge of emmer wheat, sometimes flavored with vegetables, cheese, or meat. The wealthy ate a multi-course feast that might include a starter (gustus) of eggs, vegetables, and seafood; a main course of roasted meat, game, or fish; and a dessert of fruit, nuts, and sweets.
The Romans were great consumers of bread, olive oil, and wine, all of which were staples of the Mediterranean diet. They ate a wide variety of vegetables — cabbages, lentils, onions, garlic, asparagus, and the like — and a wide variety of fruits — apples, pears, figs, dates, grapes, and cherries. Meat was eaten more often by the wealthy; the poor subsisted largely on bread, porridge, beans, and the occasional piece of bacon. The famous Roman sauce garum — a fermented fish sauce — was a near-universal condiment.
You can read more about the famous Pompeian food shops and the meals of the wealthy in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Roman Baths
The public baths were the most popular public building in the Roman world. Every city, town, and large village in the empire had at least one set of public baths, and the great imperial baths of Rome — the Baths of Agrippa, the Baths of Nero, the Baths of Titus, the Baths of Trajan, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Baths of Diocletian — were among the largest and most impressive buildings in the ancient world.
The full experience of a visit to a Roman bath is described in Roman Baths.
Roman Family Life
The Roman family (familia) was the basic unit of Roman society. The oldest living male, the paterfamilias, had absolute legal power over everyone in the household, including his children, his slaves, and his grandchildren, even if they were adults. In practice, the paterfamilias was often guided by custom and the wishes of the family, but in law his power was nearly absolute.
Roman women had more legal rights than Greek women. They could own property, appear in court, and (if they were free) initiate divorce. In the late Republic and early Empire, upper-class Roman women were politically influential: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, Livia, the wife of Augustus, Agrippina, the mother of Nero, and Plotina, the wife of Trajan, are all examples of powerful Roman women.
The Romans practiced both monogamy and, for those who could afford it, cohabitation with slaves and concubines. Marriage was usually arranged, sometimes between quite young teenagers, and divorce was relatively common.
Roman Religion
The traditional Roman religion was a bundle of household gods (the Lares and Penates), civic rites, and imported cults. The household gods were the spirits of the ancestors and the family, and they were worshipped at the household shrine (lararium) every day. The civic religion was presided over by the priests of the state, the pontifex maximus (a position held by the emperor from Augustus on), the flamines, the augures, and the vestal virgins. The most important gods were the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
In the late Republic and Empire, foreign cults spread rapidly: the Egyptian cult of Isis, the Persian cult of Mithras, the cult of the deified emperor, and eventually Christianity. By the end of the fourth century CE, Christianity had become the official religion of the empire.
Roman Entertainment
The Romans loved entertainment. The most popular were the Roman Gladiators in the Colosseum and the circuses, the chariot races. The most famous circus was the Circus Maximus in Rome, which could seat about 250,000 spectators. Theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses were built in every Roman city of any size.
Roman Slavery
Roman society rested on slavery. Perhaps one in three of the people living under Roman rule was a slave, and slaves performed almost every kind of work. Many were skilled craftsmen, secretaries, teachers, doctors, and accountants; some rose to positions of enormous influence (the emperor Claudius’ secretary Narcissus, for example, was a former slave). Others worked the land, the mines, the mills, and the galleys. The treatment of slaves varied enormously. Some masters were cruel; others were kind. The emperor Augustus limited the manumission of slaves to a specific number per master; later emperors restricted it further. The early Christian church, while not opposing slavery, gradually softened the institution, and slavery died out in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
The Day in the Life
A day in the life of a wealthy Roman might begin with a light breakfast (ientaculum) of bread, cheese, and olives. The Roman patron would receive his morning salutatio — the formal greeting of his clients — in the atrium of his house. After that he might attend to business, the law courts, the Senate, the baths, a friend’s dinner party, or the games. The poor had fewer options: a day of work, a quick meal, perhaps the public baths, and (if they were Roman citizens) the sportula or the free grain dole.