Everyday Life: leisure activities, food and dining, clothing, health, baths, water supply and sanitation
Leisure Activities
• Boxing/athletic contests
• Social gatherings/banquets/receptions/drinking in bars and taverns
• Gambling/gaming
• Theatre/festival games
• Circus/chariot racing
• Gladiatorial games/beast hunts
• Baths.
Food and Dining
• Was one of the favoured pastimes in Rome. Even poorer classes enjoyed it, although this usually took place for them in taverns; in Pompeii alone there were over 100 taverns.
Poorer Romans usually ate a type of boiled porridge. Wealthier people had a diet of meat, cheese, eggs, vegetables, honey, dates, nuts, olives, fruit and shellfish.
Usually three meals a day: breakfast lunch and dinner. Dinner was the main meal, which started around 4pm.
Dinner parties were common among the wealthy; they would start around 4pm and last for many hours. Food was prepared by slaves in unhygienic kitchens and cooked on charcoal stoves in bronze/lead pots; this posed a serious health risk.
Romans liked using garum to flavour their food; excavators have uncovered stalls selling hot food doused in the sauce.
Clothing
• Clothes were made from wool or linen. Woollen cloth was made locally, while linen came from Egypt.
Men wore a loincloth/linen shift underneath the tunic. A toga was worn outdoors by officials and the upper class. Only colour permitted for me besides white purple, but was only for important people.
Women wore a shift and a stola (tunic) down to ankles. Women favoured coloured clothes.
Both sexes wore sandals/slippers. Jewellery (e.g. rings, necklaces, bracelets) were worn.
• Heavy cloak may be worn in bad weather.
• Hats were only worn by slaves or country people.
Health
• Significant problems in Roman society regarding health/disease. Minor afflictions today were life threatening for ancient Romans.
• Cause of disease was not understood by Romans, and remedies were primitive. People turned to magic charms, healing herbs, prayers and religion for cures.
• Most Roman bodies had a high lead content. Lead cooking pots were used and water was flushed through lead pipes; basically, the Romans were poisoning themselves.
Baths
• Regarded as a social activity in ancient Rome.
• Features of the baths (thermae):
Hot, warm and cold baths
Large swimming pool
Sauna-like rooms
Massage rooms
Areas for exercising/playing games
Garden enclosures
• A typical day at the baths followed a sort of procedure:
Undress in changing rooms (apodyterium)
Exercise in the palaestra
Massage in the apodyterium. Oil would be applied to the body then scraped off with a strigil (Romans had no soap).
Series of room: warm room (trepidarium), hot room - 40C (calidarium), sauna (laconicum), cold pool (frigidarium).
• Hypocaust – heating system. System of furnaces located under the bathhouses. Both water/air were heated using this system.
• Prior to aqueducts, water supplied through cisterns/wells. Is evidence of this at Stabian Baths in Pompeii.
• Various baths throughout P+H:
Central Baths (Herculaneum).
Forum Baths (Pompeii). Built between 30-10 BC. Five skeletons found in apodyterium; 4 men and 1 woman. These people may have thought when Vesuvius erupted that the strong roof would protect them.
Suburban Baths (P/H). Located near the sea. Run as a ‘kind of municipal country club for the rich and wealthy’. In very good condition, adds greatly to our understanding of the baths; furnace room still intact with pipes, boiler and wood. Also a room which appears to have been used as a brothel.
Stabian Baths (Pompeii). Were the oldest/biggest baths in Pompeii; date from the (2nd BC. Were severely damaged in 62 AD earthquake; some parts still not in use at time of 79 AD eruption.
Water Supply
• Early inhabitants of Pompeii relied on River Sarno for water; at time of Emperor Augustus, a branch was built off the imperial aqueduct to supply Pompeii. Water from the aqueduct flowed into a water tower (castellum) and was siphoned off into three pipes, which supplied different areas of the city.
• Many private homes were connected to this supply of fresh, running water. One of the three pipes supplied the public fountains throughout the city, which were usually located at crossroads. The supply of water was more important than traffic, as some fountains obstructed the roadway.
• Public fountains supplied a continuous flow of fresh water, and any excess water helped move rubbish along the streets.
Sanitation
• For public latrines, Romans devised a system which involved water running continuously through a drainage channel that moved waste along. Some private homes had latrines, which were near the kitchen area. Waste from these latrines drained to pits beneath the roadway.
• Urine was used by manufacturers of cloth to bleach the fabric; large jars were left outside their shops for passers-by to ‘donate’.
• Town of Pompeii was noisy, dirty, smelly and generally unhygienic, with rubbish everywhere in the streets.[/CENTER]
