The Best (and Worst) Jobs of Ancient Rome | Life in Ancient Times with ‪@DariusArya‬

What kind of job do you want when you grow up? In the U.S., we're told you can be anything you want to be. You can be a doctor, a lawyer. You can be president of the United States. But what about jobs in the ancient world? We're going to take a look at all kinds of jobs in the ancient world. Some great jobs that you want to have, and there are plenty that you'd never want to have. Most people in antiquity were farmers. But with the explosion of cities in Greek and Roman times, people flocked to those urban environs for new jobs. You could be part of the city administration or become involved in the entertainment industries. You could open a shop in the Forum or even run a gladiator school. But there's one job that the state would push its citizens to partake in, and it was quite violent. One of the most intense jobs you could have in the Roman Empire was to be a Roman soldier. Now, when you were a citizen of Rome in the Republic, you had to have a land requirement, and you served whenever you were called upon. But then you have a professional army, and here we have that result. We have the impressive centurion. We have the legionary soldier. And we have the basic components of what they took into battle, like the pilum, like the gladius, like the scutum. And, of course, you have your helmet, and you have your flexible lorica segmentata. So this is what's going to protect you in battle. You enroll for 25 years. If you're not a citizen, afterwards you become a citizen. And, of course, you're going to get that parcel of land upon retirement. But after 25 years, think about what could have happened to you. And in the end, when you get that parcel of land, maybe it's going to be in Morocco. Maybe it's going to be in Syria. Maybe it's going to be in Britannia. But you served, and you served well, and you deserve that parcel of land. And as a veteran, you could always be called upon to serve again, somewhere on the frontier of the Roman Empire. Stepping inside a reconstructed tent, I think you really get a sense of life on the go. Now, these are not only made out of goat hides, but you can see you've got a chest with your private belongings here, made of wood. You've got the bed. You've got your shrine. And, of course, who the gods that you're going to be venerating is going to depend on your own personal tastes. But you have to think about this as your little private, isolated space where you can just, you know, collect your thoughts when you're on the march, when you're at war, and, of course, the gods are going to be ever-present. A career in the military wasn't for everyone. Many people were more interested in making money. Let's travel to the cattle market to see just how one could be a successful businessman. I'm in the Forum Boarium, which is the ancient cattle market, and it was sacred to Hercules because, according to tradition, Hercules passed by here. And there were a number of temples honoring that god, and one of them still stands at the edge of the Tiber River, a beautiful temple made of marble. But right here behind me is a little arch in the Forum Boarium. It's honoring Septimius Severus, his wife and children, who built it. But we just read the inscription, and it says the Argentarii and the Negotiantes built it. Those are the moneylenders and the merchants. And taking a look at this beautiful marble arch, they obviously did very well. Architecture and art, sculpture and painting were such prominent components of the ancient world. Here are two delightful frescoes of women who are painters. And here are the remains of materials from ancient paint preserved from Pompeii. But as an artist, architect, or artisan, how did you learn your trade? I think that most people learned their profession from working as what we would call today an intern at the studio of a sculptor, or as a helper to a mason. That they would gradually learn the crafts in a glass factory, etc., etc. It's enough to look at Roman walls to understand that behind the regularity of these brick walls, there is a long, long period of training, but training on the field with the material. What do you use in your daily life? More often than not, that instrument, that tool, that plate, is going to be made out of plastic, and it was made by a machine. In the ancient world, think about the materials they were using. A lot of things are made of terracotta, but you also have bronze. You have glass. You have silver. You have bone and ivory. So think about that thing that you're picking up in your hand. That comb? It could be made of bone. You have a frying pan made of bronze or ceramic. And if you have a lot of means, if you have a lot of money, you can even have literally silverware. All of those different materials made mean jobs. So we have an enormous artisan class making what I would argue beautiful works of art. The ancient world is obviously very different from ours. What are some of the weirdest jobs you've ever come across that took place only in ancient times? Some of these odd jobs you would find when you went to the baths because you would find there people who were specialized in plucking the hairs from your armpits. I don't think it was a very nice operation, but it was a job that made you sometimes yell more than the person who was pulling out the hairs. Another one, also in the baths, must have been the person responsible for the good functioning of the bathrooms. And there's also responsible for making sure that the water kept running and that the sewer continued to fulfill its function. Another odd job and certainly not a pleasant job was that of heating the rooms in the bath that needed heating because you were in the underground level next to the fireplaces where it was dark, where it was humid, where it was full of smoke, where you didn't have a lot of space to move around with curved backs, etc. So you see that these odd jobs that sometimes to us may seem quite funny, in reality were not at all pleasant jobs. As bad as those jobs sound, I have in mind one that is possibly even worse. How did you get your garments clean in antiquity? Well, to get that toga pristine and white after it was stained, you went to the dry cleaners. In antiquity, it's called the Philonica. So the Fullers were in charge of cleaning clothes. They also had a side business where they could actually dye clothes. But here normally what you do is you bring in your dirty garments and they're going to soak them in cleaning agents. The prime cleaning agents used by the Fullers included urine because it had ammonium, Fuller's earth, and also by burning sulfur. So you'd soak the garments in various smaller tubs or even amphorae jars. You also have large central pools. And you had men inside, jumping and dancing and moving around the garment to interact with the cleaning agents. This was not a job that you would want. In antiquity, we find that major cities usually were located on the Mediterranean, like Alexandria, Athens, and Ostia. And that meant ports and ships. Let's look at the ways in which people were employed in these coastal metropolises. All roads led to Rome. You could say all ships led to Ostia because Ostia was the emporium of Rome. All those goods from the Mediterranean came into one point ultimately, and it was Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber River. So we want to think about all those jobs that were necessary to maintain that constant flow of goods. So we have shipbuilders, ship repairmen. We have the porters employed to offload the ships, to put them into warehouses in Ostia on their way to Rome. They had to maintain those warehouses. They had to secure them. So we have a whole process, a whole mechanism that's in place, all tied to Rome, but it kept Ostia very, very busy throughout the year. One of the great discoveries in Ostia Antica is right here, next to the theater. It's a portico system, and it's known by the excavators as the Piazza of the Corporations. Now, there are no corporate headquarters, there are no corporations in antiquity, but we do have over 50 individual shops, and each one has a mosaic with images and with an inscription that details what transpired in each individual shop. What we learn is that these people had dealings with cities all over the empire, North African cities, European cities, and also the Middle East, and it implies that there's great diversity here in Ostia Antica. It also implies that there's great diversity in goods that are being shipped from all over the empire coming here to Ostia, destined for Rome. Musicians, teachers, chefs, artisans, and architects all were drawn to the cities in antiquity for employment. The city would offer still other jobs in entertainment and creation of art and daily wear, as well as the essentials like grain and wine, all transported on roads, rivers, and from throughout the Mediterranean.