What It Was Like To Live In Ancient Rome During Its Golden Age

The hottest place to live from the 2nd century BC through the 2nd century AD was, no doubt, ancient Rome. Though like any major city, it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows, sometimes it was insanely loud streets and using something called a communal sponge to wipe your bum with. Today, we're looking at what was life like in ancient Rome during the Golden Age. But before we dive into the glamorous life of the Romans, be sure to click and subscribe to never miss out on a weird history deep dive. As early as 6th century BC, Rome began taking census information to assist with the needs of the growing population. The population of Rome was generally believed to be in the hundreds of thousands during the 1st century BC and shooting up as high as 800,000 by the reign of Augustus and hitting as many as a cool million during the 2nd century AD. Rome was a hodgepodge of free men and women with varying degrees of wealth and some not so free men and women who contributed to the population frenzy that created a very crowded city with not a lot of space to accommodate its people. Housing was extremely limited with a population of this size, so the city developed insulae or tenements. Insulae consisted of numerous apartments alongside businesses and shops with large numbers of people living in close confines. They were several stories high, poorly built, and home to a variety of income levels both poor and only kind of poor. They were also susceptible to being on fire, collapse, and aided in the spread of disease. An alternative to the ever appealing dorm room coffin-like insulae was a single family home known as the domus. The domus was appealing to the wealthier Roman resident. And the richer the Roman, the bigger the domus. Domus featured one or two stories with reception halls, living rooms or atria, several bedrooms, dining rooms, a kitchen, and bathroom adjoined outdoor spaces for relaxing. Larger houses might contain several bathrooms and even private baths. Doing your business in private wasn't a guarantee in ancient Rome. A domus in Rome was smaller than most houses in other cities due to the tight topography and space of the city during the Roman Empire. The locations of domus in Rome are difficult to pin down, but it's presumed they were located outside the danger of a rising Tiber River and close to places of imperial importance. Domus could span an entire city block. And unlike the poorly constructed hobo shanties of the very safe sounding insulae were standalone structures that didn't face crowded Roman streets directly. As mentioned previously, bathing and cleanliness of Rome were slightly less conventional than what we're used to in modern times. Everyone from slaves to Roman emperors visited the public baths in the city. Called thermae by the first century BC, public baths included hot and cold rooms with pools, steam rooms, and dry heat rooms where people could clean themselves, carry out business transactions, and socialize. The public baths were co-ed until the practice of inter-gender mingling in public baths was forbidden by Emperor Hadrian, a frequent patron of public baths himself in second century AD. Hadrian famously gave a veteran he saw one of his own slaves to perform the duty. The honor of scraping oil off a human body, normally done with a striggle, belonged to servants for the wealthy people while poor trash people had to scrape the oil off their own garbage bodies. The number of baths in Rome increased from first century BC through the fifth century AD and got even more fancy with the addition of fountains and gymnasias. By 400 AD, it is estimated 800 to 900 public baths were getting weird in Rome. Emperors such as Trajan, Caracalla, and Diocletian gifted Rome elaborate baths that could serve thousands of Romans at one time. Diocletian built the largest, a structure with massive pools lined with marble clad walls and granite columns. The task of washing clothes in Rome fell to the fuller, who provided an essential service to Romans since most didn't wash their own clothes. Without the benefits and later internet hilarity of tide pods, fullers got creative in finding ways to bleach linens and wool garments. Urine. Both animal urine and human urine contain the cleaning agent ammonia. Pee would be diluted with water, thrown into a vat, and fullers would stomp around in the bucket like Lucille Ball did with grapes, only not funny and very gross. By the late first century AD, urine became a valuable commodity. So much so, Emperor Vespasian put a tax on urine collected in public. This didn't sit well with Vespasian's son Titus, who didn't think it was super cool for his dad to collect taxes on public conveniences. Vespasian responded by waving a piece of money from the first payment to his son's nose and asked whether its odor was offensive to him. When Titus said no, he replied, yet it comes from urine. Ancient Rome had a reputation for stellar street design for good reason. While most planned cities had patterned streets, unplanned cities could delve into chaos, even if roads were generally well-constructed. Roads linked areas through the empire in Rome, including the Via Appia, which ran for more than 130 Roman miles across the Italian peninsula. While Rome had paved streets that allowed for drainage, the frequent use of chariots and other wheeled vehicles caused a ruckus of epic proportions. Julius Caesar himself in the first century BC made it illegal for wheelie traffic to enter the downtown area of Rome during the day. While the noise was reduced during daytime hours, it only succeeded in turning nighttime into a calamity of noise. Overcrowding and traffic both contributed to constant racket in the streets that made peaceful sleep damn near impossible. Ancient Rome, with an elaborate system of aqueducts and sewers, had running water in their homes and public places, making them pretty sophisticated, all things considered. The Cloaca Maxima, or main sewer, collected water from around the city and channeled it back into the Tiber River. By the third century AD, they turned the open channel into a closed tunnel that collected water from public baths and latrines and got the town's sewage the hell out of Rome. Before iPhones, people used to connect with one another face to face. And what better time to have a conversation with a neighbor than when you're doing your business? At public latrines, there were multiple holes for men and women to relieve themselves with wild abandon. And wealthier Romans would have latrines in their home with one or two holes. In public latrines, human waste would dump out into the running water below. But with little ventilation and communal sponges for toilet paper, the smelling situation in Rome sounds less than desirable. In lieu of doing fun things like watching Netflix until bedtime at 8 PM, Romans had all sorts of ways to spend their leisure time and keep themselves entertained. The Colosseum, which we did a video on, hosted gladiator combat for an exciting but bloody way to pass the time. Rome was home to theaters of varying sizes that were often modeled after Greek buildings with tiered seating and awnings to block out the weather conditions. Smaller theaters existed during this time period, but were mostly for musical performances, with larger theaters being reserved for stage productions. Not everyone thought it was OK to have fun, though. Roman satirist Juvenal made the petty observation that the citizens of Rome only cared about bread and circuses, losing sight of their role in politics in exchange for food and fun, an inalienable human right that is still practiced today by most people. Before it became a big deal for wealthy B-list celebrities to buy their children's way into fancy colleges, the Romans were trailblazing the premise of wealthier people receiving a better education than their poor counterparts. There were no public schools in Rome, and kids received most of their basic instruction from their parents before being sent to a teacher or tutor to finish the job. The father would teach his son how to read and write and do physical, manly stuff, while the women were tasked with training their daughters on how to get married. Lesson plans from teachers and tutors were determined by the amount of money parents were contributing to their education. Wealthy Romans snatched up the best tutors or employed literate trained slaves to educate their children. Other occasions saw the rich kid sent off to school with a pedagogue in tow. Somebody who carried the young students' books, escorted them to classes, and made sure the children behaved themselves. Poor Romans, meanwhile, could skip formal education altogether and go into the family trade. Education was also based on gender, with males studying logic, literature, and philosophy. And the women were taught how to read and write, and that's it. Women didn't need a lot of formal education in Rome because women weren't expected to do a lot. The role of a woman in Rome was determined by her social status, wealth, location, and the auspices of her male guardian, be it her father, husband, brother, or even her son. They had very few legal rights, couldn't even vote, and were prohibited from entering politics by holding public office. They could, however, own property and work outside of the home as a wet nurse, a midwife, an agricultural laborer, or in the marketplace. Women on the lower end of financial luck and social nobodies were relegated to being mothers and providers. While the job opportunities for women were sparse, they could produce crafts or other artisan goods for the home. And while women did provide assistance to the working men in the family businesses, women who were not craftier educated may have turned to prostitution. Wealthy women had fewer responsibilities and domestic chores, which left them with more time for leisurely activities, like checking out a matinee gladiator show or just having lunch with the gals. One last option for women during this time was the life of a priestess. Vestal virgins, for example, dedicated their lives to Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, by committing to 30 years of chastity. Ancient Rome loved their religions. There were temples to gods within the Roman pantheon throughout the city that acted as links between human existence and divine presence. The Temple of Mars Ultor was built to honor Augustus and his military success with the assistance of Mars himself. Temples honoring Venus and Jupiter served as political and religious centers, with Jupiter going through several restorations in the first centuries due to its importance within the Roman state religion. Household gods called pane oversaw the kitchen and home, making it a safe and abundant space. Other house gods, lares, were ancestral spirits who were worshipped all day every day with additional offerings sprinkled throughout the year to keep things copacetic with the ancestral spirit community. Both lares and pane were tethered to the family and moved along with them if they should relocate homes. The presence of pane and lares in everyday life brought cult worship of gods like Bacchus and Isis. The most important cult, however, was the cult we met along the way, the imperial cult. Many emperors were worshipped as deities, which strengthened their ties to the Roman pantheon and earned them a coveted spot amongst the pane and lares in the daily worship cycle of a Roman citizen. With the establishment of tribunes in the fifth century BC, the plebeian class earned a voice within the Roman political system. The wealthy class maintained control of the Roman Senate. But with increasing pressure from farmers, servicemen, and a growing population of immigrants, the concept of citizen was expanded through the second century BC. Tribunes like Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi demonstrated the role citizens could play in their government. In addition to their second century BC agrarian reforms, they called for all of Rome's allies in Italy to become citizens. This never came into fruition, however, as Roman citizens feared what the outcome would mean for their own livelihoods. Gaining citizenship in Rome did come with the right to exercise your civic duty to go to the polls and cast your vote. Citizens would also register for the census every five years, reporting possessions, property, and current number of human beings in the family. All the Roman government insisted back as a citizen of Rome was loyalty and service to the state. The male head of the house was in charge of everything from business matters to property exchanges to arranging marriages for their daughters. The father of the family controlled every aspect of their child's life, even selling them into servitude, disowning them, or straight up murdering them, depending on the circumstances. The paterfamilias did consult with the lady of the house, or the materfamilias, who was most likely his wife, but not in all circumstances. When a daughter was married off, the authority over her was transitioned from the father to the husband. If a man had no son, he could adopt one, many times choosing to take in a nephew or distant family relative to serve as his heir. The male head of a household also led the family in faith, serving a religious role by overseeing the rites practiced the lares, pane, and other deities worshiped in the home. So what do you think? Went in Rome? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Weird History.