[SKRIVA] A Day in Ancient Rome
- From: Ahrvid <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2014 01:27:01 +0100
(Skriver detta på engelska, då jag tänkt ha med det i mitt kommande EAPA-zine.)
The 24th of October Roberto Angela guested the Italian Culture Institute in
Stockholm, since his book A Day In Ancient Rome had just been released in
Swedish (as En dag i antikens Rom). Angela is a well-known popular science
author in Italy and also a TV personality with popscience shows. He even has an
asteroid namned efter him! Angela was interviewed on stage by the Swedish
author Göran Hägg, who has a house in Italy and speaks Italian (those who
don't, incl me, could follow a translation in headphones).
They discussed for some 1.5 hours and I can't go into everything. But let's
go a little bit into the life in ancient Rome.
Many of our conceptions about it is wrong, to some degree caused by Hollywood
films. For instance, the statues weren't grey marble - they were painted in
brilliant colours! There were colourful wall decorations and clothing. Romans
were very fond of colours. Rome was in those days a city of maybe 1 million,
but only a small portion - the nobility - lived like we see in the films. And
they didn't speak Latin... Well, many did, especially ordinary folks - but the
upper classes prefered Greek, which was the sophisticated language, and many
parts of southern Italy at that time spoke mainly Greek (from the Greek
colonies established earlier). Many Romans were bi-lingual, in Latin and Greek.
Today's latin would BTW perhaps be partly difficult to understand for a Roman,
because it has many new invented words from later times (when Latin was
cultivated by the Church and later became the language of science).
The society was not as brutal as many may think. The gladiators in the
Colosseum very rarely fought to the death. A gladiator was expensive to train
and killing him would be a waste. Fights usually ended with one of the fighters
giving up, possibly with some small wounds (which he'd recover from). The best
gladiators were famous and like today's sports stars and there was a lot of
betting on the fights. Mostly, the shows killed animals.
Yes, Romans had slaves, eg prisoners of war. But the slaves were usually well
treated, like a member of the family. Slaves were also valuable. They were the
"household machines" before we had dishwashers, blenders and other modern
stuff. Some slaves were freed after a number of years in service - freed slaves
were called "liberati" - and would then for instance open a little shop and
have a reasonably good life. (And some slaves also owned their own slaves!)
We have to remember that life in ancient Rome was short. Average lifespan of
women was 29 (cause of death usually childbirth) and for men 41 years. Romans
had to make as much as they could out of their rather short lives. They didn't
have our sense of sexual morality. Prostitution, short affairs of different
kinds, etc were common. Divorce was relatively easy to obtain (basically you
just had to say "I divorce you" but the discussion didn't go into further
details). When archeologists excavated Pompei (not Rome but a Roman city) they
were flabbergasted to find many porn paintings on the walls in the houses.
Most ordinary Romans lived in rather small apartments, in apartment buildings
that were 3-4 stories high. They used the streets as their living room. They
ate in the small restaurants (or from street vendors), they used public
toilets, got water from public fountains and there were many bathing houses.
There was waste disposal. There were street plumpig to remove human waste and
garbage collectors (possibly slaves) to remove bigger stuff.
Rome was civilized and the Romans were proud of their civilisation. Life in
the countryside was different. Less refined, with hard work (eg to supply Rome
and other Roman cities with grain, wine and all other consumables) and rule of
law (Roman Law is a famous concept, a basis for later lawmaking inhistory)
didn't perhaps reach to all parts of the Empire, so violence was probably
common outside the cities. In the cities there were public courts, and the
accused could hire a lawyer (Cicero took such jobs) for his defence.
They didn't go into the Eternal Question of why the Roman Empire fell. (My
own explanation is things like weakness from plagues and civil wars which gave
invading "barbarians" the upper hand.) But Angela pointed out that Rome and the
Roman Empire should be seen as the start of what we call Western Civilization.
And Rome didn't actually just quit and give up. The Catholic Church took over
as a force of some sort of coherence. And eastern Rome, Byzantium, actually
existed until 1435 when Constantinopel fell to the Turks. Through history we
have a legacy from Rome. Great parts of Europe took orders from the Pope, to
one degree or another. We took up the Latin language. We studied Roman (and
Greek) writers. Shakespeare wrote about Roman life. The Renaissance was much
about re-opening the connection with ancient Rome.
The Eternal City still casts its shadow over us.
--Ahrvid
Ps. Afterwards we were provided with Roman spiced wine, their most common
drink. This yellow liquid with saffron and pepper tasted strange at first, but
one could get used to it. The spices were needed to preserve the wine which was
often imported from far away.
--
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