UC-NRLF 
 
 *b 503 am 
 
Wife Stuornts' Srrtrs of Hattn Classics 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF 
 THE ROMANS 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET WATERS PRESTON 
 
 AND 
 
 LOUISE DODGE 
 
 OF TEE 
 
 "niversit: 
 leach, shewell. & sanborn 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 

 Q 
 
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 By LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN. 
 
 73V z f 
 
 Nortooot) ^rrass : 
 
 J, S. Cushing &. Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 -*o*- 
 
 A- PAGE 
 
 t m The Family .1 
 
 II. 
 . The House and Every-day Life 28 
 
 III. 
 • Children, Slaves, GVests, Clients, Freedmen .... 57 
 
 IV. 
 % Food and Clothing 77 
 
 V. 
 
 Agriculture 105 
 
 VI. 
 
 Travel, Transportation, • Amusements 135 
 
 Tables of Weights, Measures, etc * 159 
 
 Index 105 
 
 m 
 
 73t£9 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The following brief account of the private manners and 
 customs of the ancient Romans, their families and homes, their 
 meat, drink, and clothing, their means of culture, amusement, 
 etc., has been compiled, for the most part, from the latest 
 German authorities on this interesting subject. It is especially 
 based on the encyclopedic work of Marquardt and Mommsen, 
 Handbuch der Romischen A Iterthumer : Siebenter Band, Priuadeben 
 der Romer, von Joachim Marquardt. 2 te Auflage. Leipzig, 
 S. Hirzel, 1886. 
 
 For illustrations of the imperial period, constant reference has 
 also been made to the more discursive but always striking and 
 suggestive work of Prof. Ludwig Friedl'ander, Darstellung aus 
 der Sittengeschichte Roms, in der Zeit von August bis ziwi Ausgang 
 der Antonine. Fiinfte neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 
 Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1881. 
 
 The Gallus of Prof. W. A. Becker remains, as it has always 
 been since its first appearance in 1838, an indispensable aid to 
 one who would form a reasonably complete mental picture of 
 the domestic life of classical antiquity. 
 
 Great condensation of material has, of course, been necessary ; 
 the endeavor of the compilers has been to seize the salient 
 points, and to furnish, within the prescribed limit of the 
 volumes constituting this series, at least a fairly complete out- 
 line of a well-nigh inexhaustible subject. 
 
 To facilitate the student's pronunciation of the many un- 
 familiar Latin names of objects which have necessarily been 
 
 v 
 
Vi INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 inserted in the text, the quantity of all the long vowels has been 
 so marked. 
 
 The illustrations have been taken chiefly from Rich's Dic- 
 tionary of classical antiquities: a few from Baumeister, Seyff'ert- 
 Nettleship, Becker, and other authors; but the source of each 
 will generally be found indicated under the illustration itself. 
 
 An appendix has also been added containing tables of Latin 
 weights and measures, and a Roman calendar ; with approxi- 
 mate reductions to American measures and values, and to the 
 modern method of computing time. 
 
 Wherever Latin authors have been directly cited by our 
 German authorities, the references have been carefullv verified. 
 In some few cases other quotations, which appeared to ourselves 
 peculiarly obvious and interesting, have been added; but our 
 aim has been to insert in the present little volume just so many 
 references to original texts as might serve to stimulate the 
 literary curiosity of a youthful reader, yet not enough to be- 
 wilder and overpower him. 
 
 The chapter on agriculture alone has been compiled almost 
 entirely from original sources, — Cato, Columella, Varro, and 
 Virgil, — aided by a considerable familiarity with the rural life 
 of modern Italy, and those farming processes of to-day, many 
 of which differ so very little in essentials from those of Roman 
 times. 
 
 H. W. P. 
 L. P. D. 
 
 London, November, 189,".. 
 

 X 
 
 ALIFOR 
 
 THE 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FAMILY. 
 
 The first step toward making real to ourselves the 
 life of the great Roman people must be to get a clear 
 idea of the constitution of the family, and the relation 
 and obligations of its members to one another. The 
 family bond, in the eyes of a Roman of the best period, 
 was a peculiarly strong and sacred one, and the worship 
 of the lares, or guardian spirits of the home — often con- 
 ceived as the souls of departed kindred — and of the 
 penates, or great gods, in their relation to private and 
 family affairs, was the most vital and heartfelt part of 
 his religion. The family was regarded as both the germ 
 and image of the state. To furnish the state with 
 citizens was a man's first duty. To be the last of one's 
 line was a calamity and a curse. Family life, more espe- 
 cially rural family life, in the early days of the Roman 
 commonwealth was plain and stern and pure, offering 
 singular resemblances, in its spirit and some of its 
 aspects, to the life upon their lonely farms of the first 
 Puritan settlers of Xew England. 
 
2 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 The father of the family was its sovereign in his own 
 right (sul iuris). Wife, children, and slaves were his 
 subjects. The legal power of the husband over the wife 
 was expressed by the term manus. The bride of those 
 primitive times was merely transferred from her father's 
 rule to that of her husband : she ranked thenceforth as 
 a daughter of her husband's house ; she came in manum 
 suam, — "into his hand." 1 Her property became his. 
 He might not sell, and, so long as she remained faithful, 
 he might not slay her, but these were the only limits to 
 his power. 
 
 The patria 2yotestds, or authority of the father over his 
 children, was even more absolute, for it included far down 
 into historic times the legal right to sell, to repudiate, or, 
 in the case of deformed infants and superfluous daugh- 
 ters, to destroy his offspring at birth. When the father 
 lifted the new-born infant in his arms (tollere), it was a 
 sign that he acknowledged and would rear and provide 
 for it. /The power of the father over his sons and their 
 children ceased only when he himself died or lost his 
 rights of Roman citizenship, — a forfeiture which the 
 Italians still express by the stern phrase morte civile, or 
 civil death. The father's power over his daughters ended 
 when they married or took vestal vows. The son also 
 might be emancipated by becoming a flcimen, or priest, 
 and in certain cases with tedious and complicated cere- 
 monies, by mutual agreement between parent and child. 
 
 1 The word manus was at first applied exclusively to the power 
 of the paterfamilias over the females of his own family. After- 
 wards it came to be used more loosely, and was often confounded 
 with potestus, his power over children and slaves ; as we see from 
 the words emancipatio and manumissio. 
 
THE FAMILY. 3 
 
 Livy, 1 gives an instance in the year 358 b.c. J during the 
 consulate of C. Marcius and Cn. Manlius, of a crushing 
 fine imposed upon a father who had endeavored to evade 
 the law forbidding a citizen to hold more than five hun- 
 dred iugera 2 of land, by emancipating his son and then 
 sharing with him a thousand iugexa. 
 
 The authority of the master over his slaves, or dominica 
 potestas, was also absolute ; but it included, in theory at 
 least, his full recognition of these as members of the 
 family, and of his duties to them as such. 
 
 Every member of a Roman household, male or female, 
 bond or free, appears to have had, even in the earliest 
 times, the right to at least two names, his or her own 
 individual appellation, and the genitive of the name of 
 the sovereign father, husband, or master, as Marcus 
 McircJ, Marcus son of Marcus, Lima August!, Livia 
 daughter of Augustus, Marcipor, i.e. Morel puer, Marcus's 
 boy, precisely in the sense in which the owner of negro 
 slaves but lately used the same term. / Later, but still 
 early in republican times, we find the free-born Roman 
 male possessed of three names : his own individual first 
 name, or pmenomen, the name of the gens, or great clan, 
 to which he belonged, the nomen proprium, or nbmen 
 gentilieium. and a cognomen, or surname, which more 
 narrowly defined his family, that is to say, the particu- 
 lar branch or division of the tribe from which he sprung; 
 for instance, Marcus Tullius Cicero, that is Marcus of 
 the Tullian clan, and the family of the Cicerones — 
 -originally chick-pea or vetch-growers. 
 
 A boy-infant received his praenomen on the ninth day 
 after birth (a girl on the eighth) ; the child was at the 
 
 1 Liv. vii. 16. 2 gee table. 
 
4 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 same time purified by lustration, which included sprink- 
 ling with water by means of a branch of laurel or olive, 
 the burning of incense, and the offering of sacrifice, a 
 ceremony plainly pointing to the rite of baptism. But 
 the name thus given was not legally bestowed, nor pub- 
 licly recorded in the archives, until the boy received the 
 toga virllis at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and was 
 publicly proclaimed a citizen of the commonwealth. 
 
 The fact that the iiomen gentilicium, or name of the 
 great patrician clan, belonged equally to the women, 
 freedmen, and clients of a house, led to a great restric- 
 tion in the first names bestowed at lustration upon its 
 freeborn sons." At no period were there more than thirty 
 in use; these, in the time of Sulla, had dwindled to 
 eighteen, and even these were distributed by fixed cus- 
 tom among the different clans. Thus Cseso belonged 
 exclusively to the Fabii and Qumctilii, Appius, and Deci- 
 nius to the Claudii, Mamercus to the iEmilii, and so on. 
 After plebeians were made eligible to the consulate in 
 367 b.c, and subsequently to all the curule magistracies, 
 the descendants of plebeians, who had held any curule 
 office formed a class called udbiles or "known men" (like 
 the Scottish kent folk). They were thus distinguished 
 from the igndbiles , those whose ancestors had never held 
 office, while yet they did not quite attain to the considr 
 eration of the patricians, or men of high descent. They 
 acquired the right, however, on which if possible they 
 laid more stress than the patricians themselves, of set- 
 ting up in their dwellings the images of their ancestors, 
 beginning with the first great office-holder, 1 and, in 
 natural emulation of the patricians, they became quite 
 
 1 This man was neither nobilis nor Ignobilis, but novus homo. 
 
THE FAMILY. 5 
 
 as strenuous as they in limiting the number of first 
 names which they bestowed upon their sons in infancy. 
 Thus the Domitii were always G-naeus or Lucius; the 
 Bibuli, G-aius, Lucius, or Marcus; and so on. The 
 cognomen, or surname, usually in the first instance a 
 kind of nickname bestowed on account of some personal 
 peculiarity, like Xaso, the long-nosed man, Torquatus, 
 the man with a torque or necklace, came to be specially 
 jed by the patricians as indicating in most cases an 
 earlierNjriffin than that of the official nobility. On the 
 other hand, the custom came in of taking new surnames 
 to commemorate some special warlike achievement, like 
 Africanus or Macedonicus, — this was called cognomen ex 
 virtute, — or else upon adoption, when to. the three names 
 of the adoptive father was added the gentile name of 
 the child adopted, with the suffix anus. Thus Publius 
 Cornelius Scipio, iEmilianus was the son of Lucius 
 iEmilius Publius, adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio. 
 A daughter's name in early Roman, as in modern times, 
 consisted of her father's gentile name (nomen gentllicium), 
 that is to say, of the feminine form of it, preceded by a 
 first name of her own, — like Paula Cornelia, Paula of 
 the Cornelian gens; and so long as the old-fashioned 
 marriage rites remained in force, by virtue of which the 
 wife became the adopted child of her husband's house, 
 she assumed at marriage his gentile name, as women still 
 do in Christian countries. But this did not always, or 
 even often, imply a change, because the ancient marriages 
 were usually made between members of the same gens; 
 and in later times, when matrimony had become rather 
 a civil contract than a religious rite, the wife cer- 
 tainly did not take her husband's name. She was known 
 
6 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 by that of her father's gens, as Calpurnia, the wife of 
 Caesar, who was daughter of L. Calpurnius Piso Caeso- 
 ninus (a member of the Caesonia gens, adopted by L. Cal- 
 purnius Piso) ; or as Terentia, wife of Cicero. Even her 
 own individual first name was little used, until a fashion 
 came up, in the time of the empire, of appending it like 
 a cognomen to her own gentile name, as Vespasia Polla, 
 Vitellia liufilla. Sometimes, too, as a matter of family 
 pride, a woman used both the nomen and cognomen of 
 her father, like Caecilia Metella; or one name derived 
 from the father and one from the mother, like Annia 
 Faustina. Only in late imperial times, did women of 
 high distinction aspire to the use of three names, as 
 Furia Sabina Tranquillina. 
 
 A slave, as lias been said, was originally known only as 
 his master's " boy, " — Marcipor, Olipor. The elder Pliny l 
 supposes this custom to date from the time when men as 
 a rule had only one slave. It lasted, however, down to 
 the last days of the republic, and the freedman who took 
 his master's first and gentile name must needs append 
 to it the name of his own servitude, as Aulus Caecilius 
 Oliper; that is, Aulus, formerly the boy of Aulus Caecilius. 
 When, however, the number of slaves had multiplied 
 enormously, by conquest as well as by natural increase, 
 it became necessary to give individual names to slaves, 
 and these were often royal or mythological names, as 
 Pharnaces, Mithridates, bestowed half. in derision, like 
 the "Caesar" and "Pompey" of the plantation hand; or 
 they indicated the place from which the slave had come, 
 like Ephesius. Now, too, the legal term servus replaced 
 the homely and friendly puer, and Pharnaces, the slave of 
 
 1 Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 26. 
 
THE FAMILY. i 
 
 Publius Egnatius, was written Phcmiaces Egnatii Publii 
 Servus. When a slave passed by sale or inheritance to 
 a new owner, he or she added to the name of the latter 
 the cognomen of the former owner with the suffix anus 
 or ana. Thus Anna Livise Msecenatiana was Anna, the 
 slave of Livia, formerly owned by Maecenas. It then 
 became customary for the freedman to take upon his 
 emancipation both the nomen and praenomen of his former 
 master, or occasionally, in the case of a highly prized 
 slave, the latter paid his former servant the compliment 
 of naming him after some friend of his own. Thus 
 Cicero when he emancipated Dionysius, the tutor of his 
 son, called him not Marcus Tullius Dionysius, but Mar- 
 cus Pomponius Dionysius, after his dearly beloved Pom- 
 ponius Atticus, who was also very fond of the accomplished 
 slave. The freedmen of a woman usually took the two 
 names of their mistress's father, as Marcus Livius 
 Augustse Libertus Isniarus. 
 
 All these rules, however, remained strictly in force only 
 so long as the family bond continued to be virtually indis- 
 soluble, and the paterfamilias was the undisputed master 
 of his household. In the last days of the republic, with 
 the almost unbounded facilities for divorce, the great 
 increase in the number of freedmen, and the extension of 
 the rights of Roman citizenship to various classes of 
 foreigners, great irregularities in the matter of names 
 came in, affecting alike their inheritance, their adoption, 
 and their arrangement. The cognomina of distinguished 
 men were used as praenomlna, like Africanus Fabius 
 Maximus, Consul in 10 b.c. ; or the several sons of one 
 father would all receive the same praenomen, but would 
 be distinguished by different cognomina, in which case 
 
8 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 the eldest son usually bore his father's cognomen un- 
 changed, while the second son took his mother's gentile 
 name with the suffix anus. Thus Flavius Sabinus had 
 two sons by his wife Vespasia Folia. The elder was 
 called Sabinus after his father, the younger Vespasianus 
 after his mother. Further confusion ensued from the 
 increasing frequency of adoption for political and othei 
 purposes, and from the very natural desire of the descend- 
 ants of a freedman to get rid of the name which was the 
 badge of ancestral servitude. Novl homines, too, liked to 
 assume names with historic associations, as the parvenu 
 of to-day orders a coat-of-arms ; or to make up in the num- 
 ber of their appellations what these lacked in dignity, 
 in so much that we find persons in imperial times who 
 claimed as many as thirty names, one of which would 
 have to be selected for daily use. Finally, the intro- 
 duction of Christianity brought in names of the order of 
 Fraise-Gocl-Barebones, Deogratias, Quidvultcleus, which 
 were declined like regular Latin proper names of the 
 same terminations. 
 
 A iustum matrimonium, or true marriage, could only be 
 made between Roman citizens (for the woman alsc 
 reckoned as a clvis liomana) of the legal age, not too 
 nearly related, and with the full approbation of the fathers 
 who might hold patria potestds over the bridal pair. The 
 marriageable age was fixed by law at fourteen for the 
 husband and twelve for the wife, but practically it was 
 later, for the boy was never married before he had re- 
 ceived the gown of manhood, and the girl but seldom 
 before fifteen or sixteen. The prohibited degrees of 
 relationship originally included all within the sixth; that 
 is to say, all for which the Latin language had names, and 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 all which had the ius oscull, or within which it was 
 allowable for men and women to kiss. 
 
 Such rigid restrictions were especially needful in those 
 early times, when it was so unusual for a man not to marry 
 in his gens, or clan, that he who failed to do so was 
 said to enubere, — to marry out, as a Quaker may marry 
 out of meeting. As time went on, the rules relating 
 to the marriage of kindred were much relaxed, and we 
 gather from Livy 1 that after the time of the Second 
 Punic war, relatives of the fourth degree, that is to 
 say consobrini, or cousins german, might marry. When 
 in the year 49 a.d. the Senate sanctioned the union of 
 the Emperor Claudius with Agrippina, the daughter of 
 his brother G-ermanicus, marriages in the third degree 
 became lawful ; but with these restrictions, that a woman 
 might marry her paternal uncle (patruus), but not her 
 maternal (avunculus), while a man might never marry his 
 aunt, whether on the father's side (amita), or on the 
 mother's (matertera). 
 
 The marriage contracted under these conditions was of 
 two kinds : the bride either came into her husband's manus, 
 or she did not. In the first instance she passed com- 
 pletely out of her father's family and rule into that of 
 her husband; she surrendered her patrimony and became 
 one of her husband's legal heirs. In the second, she 
 remained under the rule (in potestate) of her father, 
 and retained her own property and her right of inher- 
 itance in his estate. In the former case, according to 
 Cicero, 2 she became a materfamilias, in the latter she was 
 simply an uxor. 
 
 Marriage with manus was itself of three kinds. The 
 1 Liv. xlii. 34. 2. 2 cic. Top. iii. 14. 
 
10 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 most solemn and stately, and by far the most aristocratic, 
 was the marriage by confarreatio, which may be compared 
 for pomp of ceremonial to a Catholic wedding with pon- 
 tifical high mass in a cathedral or collegiate church. 
 Beside the private offerings and taking of auspices, which 
 were seldom omitted in any sort of legal marriage, this 
 included a public ceremony conducted by the Pontifex 
 Maximus and the Flamen Dialis in the presence of at 
 least ten witnesses, and it took its name from the farreum 
 Ubum, or cake of spelt-flour, which was carried before the 
 newly married pair on their return from the wedding 
 ceremony and subsequently broken and eaten between 
 them. 
 
 There remained marriage by usus, in virtue of which 
 the wife came into her husband's mai ms by the mutual 
 consent of both parties, after they had lived together for 
 a year without interruption of more than three sunaes- 
 sive days; and the marriage by coemptio, which, though 
 usually accompanied by domestic religious rites, as p 
 modern wedding may be solemnized by a clergyman in a 
 private house, must still be looked upon in the light of 
 a civil contract. In this case, the father went through a 
 form of emancipating his daughter, in favor of her futi :.■•<■• 
 husband, after which the girl made declaration that sbe 
 entered into the union of her own free will. 
 
 Confarreatio was the oldest as well as the most dignified 
 and imposing of the Roman marriage rites. It was long 
 the exclusive privilege of the patricians, and none but 
 the children of such a marriage could ever become flamines 
 muidres, that is, priests of Jove, Mars, or Quirinus, or 
 vestal virgins. Naturally, thdvfore, marriage by con- 
 farreatio would be the favorite form in the highest sociil 
 

 f 
 
 THE FAMILY. 11 
 
 circles. Marriage by usus, as the simplest and least 
 costly, would prevail, roughly speaking, among the ple- 
 beians, while the civil marriage by co'emptio was the one 
 commonly practised by the intermediate classes. But it 
 is plain, that with the loosening of the- marriage tie, and 
 the progress of what would now be called "advanced 
 ideas," the solemn and ceremonious marriage by confar- 
 reatio went more and more out of fashion; so that Tacitus 
 says 1 that in the time of Tiberius (a.d. 14-37) it had 
 become a matter of some difficulty to find men qualified 
 by their birth to fill the vacancies in the great priestly 
 offices. 
 
 Marriage was regularly preceded by betrothal rites 
 (sponsalia), and children might be betrothed by their 
 parents long before they were of marriageable age. The 
 engagement might be broken by either party or by the 
 guardians of either, without involving any legal penalty, 
 but while it lasted it imposed certain restrictions. 
 Betrothed people might not testify against one another 
 in the courts, and a son might not marry his father's 
 betrothed bride. The ceremony of betrothal was at first 
 very simple. The amount of the girl's dowry having 
 been agreed upon, the boy bridegroom gave his bride a 
 piece of money or a ring, which she wore upon her third 
 finger. It was only in the later imperial times that 
 written marriage contracts were customary, and the cere- 
 mony took place in the presence of invited guests and 
 was followed by a banquet. There were very strong 
 restrictions touching the days of the year when weddings 
 might take place. ,- The whole month of 3Iay was forbid- 
 den ard the firs, half of June, on account of the great 
 
 1 Tac. Ann. iv. 16. 
 
<B> 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 number of religious festivals occurring in the early sum- 
 mer and requiring the constant attendance of the priests. 
 Nor could marriages be made on the dies parentales, from 
 the thirteenth to the twenty-first of February, when there 
 were memorial services for deceased kindred, and offer- 
 ings to their manes, nor on the three days of the year 
 when the underworld was supposed to stand open, — 
 namely August 24, October 5, and November 8, nor on 
 the Kalends, Nones, or Ides of any month. Religious 
 holidays in general were considered inappropriate for the 
 marriage of young girls, though widows often chose them. 
 » On the night before her bridal, the maiden laid aside 
 her toga praetexta, a simple tunic, edged with purple if 
 she were of patrician rank, an^L made utp apparently 
 width-wise of the cloth ; her mother dressed her for the 
 first ti*<ie in a long white garment with vertical seams, 
 calleu' a tunica recta or regilla, and confined her flowing hair 
 in a scarlet net. The true wedding gown, which she would 
 assume upon the morrow, was also a white tunica recta, 
 gathered in at the waist by a woollen gir- 
 dle which was tied in a nodus Hercideus, 
 or true-lover's knot, supposed to be a charm 
 against the evil eye. The Jtammeum, or 
 wedding veil, was of thin, fine stuff and 
 of a brilliant orange red, or flame-color, 
 very ample, first thrown over the head from 
 behind, and then draped gracefully about 
 the person. The girl's hair was also dressed 
 in a peculiar manner for her wedding. The 
 bridegroom himself must divide it into six 
 strands or tresses, with the point of a curved spear, 
 called the hasta caelibdris; ribbons or fillets were bound 
 
 Flammeum 
 (Rich). 
 
THE FAMILY. 13 
 
 between the tresses, which appear afterwards to have 
 been braided and confined to the head. Above the braids 
 and under the veil, the bride wore a garland of natural 
 flowers gathered by her own hand ; and the bridegroom 
 also, at least in later times, always wore a chaplet. 
 
 The wedding ceremonies proper began in the stillness 
 of the early morning with the taking of auspices; and 
 this was usually done by an haruspex, or professional 
 diviner, who was not a minister of the state religion. A 
 victim was then slain for the wedding sacrifice, gener- 
 ally a sheep, and its skin was spread over the stools or 
 chairs, on which the bridal pair was to sit during a por- 
 tion of the religious rites to follow. The guests now 
 assembled, the marriage contract was accepted in the 
 presence of ten witnesses, and the bride signified her 
 willingness to come into the raanus of the bridegroom, 
 and, at least theoretically, to assume his name, by relat- 
 ing the very ancient formula, 1 " Quando tu Gains, ego 
 Gaia," you being Gaius, I am Gaia." The right hands 
 of the pair were then joined by a prdnuba, who must have 
 been but once married; and it would seem from existing 
 bas-reliefs, as well as from the rather obscure testimony 
 of ancient writers, that the wedding party then adjourned 
 to some temple or public altar, where an offering — in 
 ancient times it was a bloodless one of spelt-cakes and 
 fruit — was made to Jupiter ; and the flamen diCdis offered 
 prayers to Juno as the patron of marriage, and to Tellus 
 and other gods of the soil. During the offering the bridal 
 pair sat side by side; during the prayers they moved 
 slowly around the altar accompanied by a servant 
 
 1 Becker thinks that this formula was not pronounced until the 
 wedded pair had entered their new home. 
 
14 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Camillus, with Acerra 
 (Rich). 
 
 (camillus) who bore a basket (cumera) which contained 
 the utensilia of the bride, — probably her spinning imple- 
 ments and marriage gifts. A great feast, 
 usually at her father's house, followed and 
 lasted until nightfall. Then came the de- 
 ductio, or leading home of the bride. She 
 was removed with a feint (sometimes, 
 perhaps, it needed the reality) of force, 
 from her mother's embrace, and led to her 
 place in the nuptial procession, which 
 was followed, first by the invited guests, 
 and afterward, in most cases, by crowds 
 of the common people. Torch-bearers and 
 flute-players preceded the bride, and the whole company 
 joined in singing Fescennlna, primitive and rather coarse 
 marriage songs, probably so called from the immemorially 
 ancient Etruscan town where they had originated. The 
 gamins of the streets nocked about the bridegroom, call- 
 ing for largess of walnuts as a sign that he himself had 
 put away childish things ; while the bride was escorted 
 by three youths, who must be the sons of living parents 
 (jpatrimi et matriml). One of these carried her rock and 
 spindle, while the other two bore torches. The bridal 
 torch was not, as other torches, of pine or fir, but must be 
 made of the wood of the white thorn, which was sacred to 
 Ceres, and a talisman against all kinds of harm. There 
 was a contest for the possession of .it, among the guests, 
 after the wedding was over. Arrived before her new 
 home, the bride anointed its door-posts with oil and 
 wound them with woollen bands. She was then lifted 
 over the threshold, a reminiscence perhaps of the rape of 
 the Sabine women, and received from her husband in 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 the atrium, or chief living-room of the dwelling, tii 
 bolic gifts of fire and water. According to some auth 
 ities, the two then knelt together and lighted their first 
 hearth-fire from the white-thorn torch. It is certain that 
 the bride said a prayer for married happiness before the 
 symbolic bridal couch, which stood in the atrium, opposite 
 the entrance-door, and which had been previously decked 
 by the pronuba. A supper called the repbtia was given 
 by the young people to their relatives on the day after 
 their wedding, on which occasion the bride made her 
 first offering as a matron to the household gods. 
 
 The union thus formed and sanctioned by the divine 
 blessing was at first, and indeed for a long while, re- 
 garded as indissoluble. It assured to the Roman matron 
 a very noble position; she was subordinate to her hus- 
 band in their relations with the world, but her sway 
 inside the home was undisputed. Her spouse, no less 
 than her children and servants, addressed her as domina, 
 or lady. No servile work was ever expected of her; but 
 so far from being confined to one quarter of the dwelling, 
 like the Greek women, she moved freely through it, over- 
 seeing all its activities and arrangements, the prepara- 
 tion of meals, the spinning of her maidens, the lessons of 
 her children. She received her husband's guests, and sat 
 with them at table, while the children, and sometimes 
 even favorite slaves who had been born and reared in the 
 house (vernae), were served at a sort of side-table in the 
 same room. It was not thought seemly for a Roman 
 matron to go out without her husband's knowledge or 
 unattended, but upon these conditions she was free to 
 w -Ik abroad ; place was deferentially made for her in the 
 public ways, and the stola matrondlis, or peculiar outside 
 
iHE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 nt which, she wore, was supposed to be a protection 
 xii all discourtesy. She attended public games and 
 theatrical representations ; her testimony was received in 
 the courts. She might even plead for an accused rela- 
 tive. If she came of a very noble race, she was entitled 
 to a funeral sermon or public oration of eulogy after her 
 death. 
 
 Such was the ideal wifehood of the good old Roman 
 times; and there is a sense in which it may be said 
 always to have remained the ideal. Everybody knows 
 that the mother of the Gracchi and the wife of Marcus 
 Brutus were ladies of austere fashions and immaculate 
 minds. Nay, even as late as the fourth Christian century 
 we find St. Jerome endeavoring to shame some of the 
 more lawless lambs of his flock, by examples of private 
 rectitude and dignity in the first pagan families. 
 
 But long ere that time the prevalent manners had fatally 
 deteriorated. The institution of domestic slavery, the 
 license consequent on the servile and civil wars, the 
 enormous increase of wealth, and the habits of Eastern 
 luxury which came in with the Punic and other wars of 
 foreign conquest, all these were prolific sources of cor- 
 ruption; while the study of Greek philosophy, which was 
 affected by the clever women equally with their lords, 
 promoted the growth of novel ideas, and rendered the 
 " daily round and common task " of the olden time par- 
 ticularly irksome. Marriage with manus and religious 
 rites went more and more out of fashion, except for the 
 priestly caste ; marriage upon any terms was avoided by 
 many. Divorce, on the other hand, became of daily 
 occurrence, and could be had on tthe most frivolous pre- 
 texts, as the lives of the Romans whom we know most 
 
THE FAMILY. 17 
 
 intimately, Caesar, Pompey, and their great contempora- 
 ries, only too plainly show. Strenuous efforts were made 
 by Augustus to restore the old standards of domestic 
 morality, and in certain matters of personal indulgence 
 he himself, after he was firmly seated on the imperial 
 throne, set an honorable example of simplicity of life. 
 He established penalties for celibacy and rewards and 
 immunities for the fathers of three or more legitimate 
 children; but these remedies were applied too late to 
 arrest the inevitable progress of social decay. 
 
 Before proceeding to describe more minutely the daily 
 habits of the Romans, and the houses in which they 
 lived, we will add to our account of the old-fashioned 
 marriage ceremonies a description of the rites of burial. 
 
 Nearly all we know of the funerals of the earliest his- 
 toric period is that they invariably took place by night. 
 
 Later, when there had come to be much emulation in 
 the matter of funeral expense and display, the obsequies, 
 at least of distinguished people, were often celebrated 
 in the daytime, and it was reserved for the Emperor 
 Julian to prescribe a return to the solemn custom of old, 
 by an edict beginning with the simple words, 1 "Death is 
 rest, and night is the time for rest." 
 
 The lighted torch always held its place in the ceremo- 
 nial, as it does for the most part in Latin countries to 
 this day, and thus it became the symbol both of wedding 
 and of burial. Grand public funerals were the exclusive 
 privilege of eminent men and the scions of the great 
 families; and the funeral procession was so arranged as 
 to afford an opportunity for the most pompous exhibition 
 of wealth, political honors, or long descent. Even as 
 
 1 Cod. Theod. ix. 17.5. 
 
18 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 early as 451 b.c. there were laws inscribed on the tenth 
 of the Twelve Tables, limiting the sum which might be 
 expended on incense for burning before the bier, and 
 flowers to be heaped upon it, on the grave-clothes, which 
 were often of extraordinary splendor, on the construction 
 of the funeral-pile (rogus) in cases of cremation, on the 
 number of musicians, and the luxury of the funeral feast. 
 In the time of Sulla, further sumptuary laws were 
 passed to the same end. The aediles were required to 
 exercise a kind of police duty in clearing the way for the 
 procession, and the fire-brigade had to be in attendance 
 in the narrow streets of tall, wooden-roofed houses, to pre- 
 vent accidents from the flaring torches, as well as to stand 
 guard over the ignited pyre. All these precautions were, 
 however, wildly disregarded in the case of Sulla's own 
 costly and ostentatious funeral. 
 
 When a man of rank, whether a patrician or one of the 
 official nobility, had breathed his last, his eyes were closed 
 
 by the nearest of 
 the relatives present, 
 while the rest lifted 
 up a cry called the 
 conclamatio, in the 
 f o r lo r n hope of 
 awakening him 
 should he merely 
 have fallen into a trance. The friends then retired, 
 and the body was left in the hands of professional 
 undertakers, or libitinaril, who washed, anointed, and 
 clothed it richly, set between the teeth — at least from 
 very early times — the coin to pay Charon, the ferry- 
 man of the Styx, and laid it on a couch of state in 
 
 Conclamatio. 
 
THE FAMILY. 19 
 
 the atrium of the dwelling, with feet turned toward 
 the entrance door. Incense was kindled all about, 
 either in trays or on miniature altars (acerrae), and 
 flowers were used in profusion. The insignia of office 
 of the deceased, if he had filled public offices, were all 
 displayed, and also the crowns, if any, which he had won 
 in the public games, or which had been decreed him by 
 the Senate for triumphs upon the sterner field of war. 
 Boughs of cypress or pine were then hung up in the ves- 
 tibule as a token of mourning, and the lying in state 
 lasted from three to eight days, during which time the 
 corpse was visited by kindred, clients, and friends. If 
 the interment or cremation were to be private, the 
 remains were then quickly taken away (funus taciturn or 
 plebeium). Otherwise a herald summoned those who 
 were expected to join the procession by the solemn and 
 very ancient formula, " Ollus Quiris letb datus. Exse- 
 quids quibus est commodum, ire iam tempus est. Ollus 
 ex aedibus effertur." " This Roman citizen is surrendered 
 to death. It- is now time for the fitting guests to attend 
 his burial. He is carried forth from his house." 1 
 
 The order of the procession was then arranged by a 
 master of ceremonies, called a designator. It closely 
 resembled a triumphal march. A band of music went 
 before with trumpets, pipes, and horns (tubae, tibiae, et 
 cornua) ; then came always in ancient times the hired 
 female mourners (praeficae), intoning an elegy (naenia) on 
 
 1 Ollus is merely the ancient form of ille. Qidris is the obsolete 
 singular of quirites, the Roman in his civic capacity, or member of 
 one of the thirty curiae. From association with this mortuary 
 proclamation, the word quirtiatio came to signify a shriek or sor- 
 rowful cry. 
 
20 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 the deceased; next, exactly as in a triumphal procession 
 after a victory in the circus, came dancers and mimes, to 
 whom a singular freedom of speech and action, even of 
 jest, was allowed. In the fourth place, came the most 
 significant and imposing part of the whole stately cere- 
 mony, the procession of ancestors in their imagines, or 
 likenesses. When a man of note died, a wax mask was 
 immediately taken of his features, and colored in exact 
 resemblance to his look in life and health. This mask 
 was affixed to a bust of wood or marble, enclosed in a 
 marble or alabaster shrine with doors, usually shaped 
 like a miniature house, and set up in the hall of the 
 deceased. On the days appointed for the commemoration 
 of the dead, these shrines were opened, and the busts 
 crowned with flowers; and the greater the number of 
 shrines, of course, the longer and more illustrious the 
 line which they represented. On the occasion of a public 
 funeral, these wax masks were removed and worn by pro- 
 fessional actors, hired for the occasion, who might resem- 
 ble the distinguished dead in stature, and would strive 
 further to impersonate them in speech and action. The 
 dead man seemed thus to be accompanied and ushered to 
 his rest by a guard of honor, composed of all his famous 
 forbears, nor was family pride always content with the 
 images of historical personages merely, but mythical 
 ancestors were also introduced, and Tacitus tells us 1 that 
 iEneas and all the kings of Alba Longa walked in the 
 funeral train of Drusus. The same great writer gives 
 one of his most thrilling descriptions 2 of the grand 
 funeral sixty-four years after the battle of Philippi, of 
 the aged Junia, niece of Cato, wife of Cassius, and sister 
 
 1 Tac. Ann. iv. 9. 2 Tac. Ann. iii. 76. 
 
Columbarium. 
 
THE FAMILY. 21 
 
 of Marcus Brutus : " The images of twenty most illus- 
 trious families were carried before her," he says, "but 
 Brutus and Cassius were conspicuous, " — nay, his word 
 is stronger, praefulgebanl, — "were illustrious, by their 
 absence, " being still under attainder on account of their 
 complicity in the death of Caesar. 
 
 After the ancestors, followed the memorials of the 
 dead man's public achievements; if he were a general, 
 the spoils he might have taken in war, and pictures of the 
 cities he had subdued. Then came torch-bearers and 
 lictors with lowered faeces, and, after them, the body 
 itself, extended and exposed in rich garments upon a 
 lofty bier, covered by a magnificent pall, and either borne 
 by sons of the deceased or by slaves who had been set free 
 in his will; or else it was enclosed in a coffin (capulus), 
 which was surmounted by a sitting effigy of the deceased 
 arrayed in robes of state. Last walked the mourners, all 
 in black in early times, though white was afterwards 
 allowed to women. The latter wore no ornaments; the 
 men were without fasces, rings, or any insignia of office. 
 The sons went with veiled faces; the daughters un- 
 veiled, but with streaming hair. Then came freedmen 
 and slaves manumitted by the will of the deceased, — the 
 latter with shaven heads, — clients, friends, the public 
 generally, just as in a funeral of to-day. Custom im- 
 posed no check upon the expression of grief, and flowers 
 and severed locks of hair were freely scattered upon the 
 passing hearse or bier. , 
 
 If there were to be a public oration, the funeral pro- 
 cession moved first to the forum, where the speech was 
 delivered. Such an oration had to be authorized by a 
 decree of the Senate, and the speaker addressed himself 
 
22 THE PRIVATE LTEE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 to the general assembly of Quirites ("Friends, Romans, 
 countrymen") rather than to the relatives of the de- 
 ceased. In other cases an informal eulogy was spoken 
 at the place of interment and addressed to the mourners 
 only. It is not certain that any woman of republican 
 times was ever honored by a formal public oration, save 
 those of the Julian gens. The great Caesar we know made 
 his debut as an orator, at the age of eighteen, in the 
 eulogy of his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius. Under 
 the empire, however, the practice became common for the 
 women of the reigning family and all others of high 
 fashion or distinction. 
 
 From the forum the procession passed on to the place 
 of interment or cremation, which was, with rare excep- 
 tions, outside the city walls. All the great highways 
 leading out of Kome had come, in the last centuries of 
 the state, to be lined with family tombs, the vast ex- 
 tent and infinite splendor of some of which may still 
 be judged from the Castle of Sant' Angelo, which was 
 the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, and from the 
 impressive ruins which border the desolate old Via 
 Appia. Some noblemen had private burial places of 
 great beauty, shady with trees, or gay with flower-beds 
 and fountains, enclosed upon their suburban estates ; and 
 slaves and other dependants of the family were laid, 
 humbly indeed, and at a respectful distance, but within 
 the same precinct as their betters. The tomb was con- 
 ceived as at least the temporary dwelling-place of the 
 dead, and often very richly furnished. The walls were 
 frescoed; there were lamps and candelabra, for both illu- 
 mination and decoration; vases of beautiful shape and 
 workmanship, over and above the cinerarv urns, were 
 

y. 
 
 te 
 
 x 
 
 x 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
 tastefully disposed around about. The warrior had^his 
 weapons beside him, the civic officer his badges, the 
 great lady her ornaments and toilet articles, the child its 
 toys. All these things helped to give the tomb a home- 
 like appearance, both on the grievous day of burial, and 
 on those subsequent days, when religious services were 
 held there in memory of the dead. The remains were 
 either simply deposited with the couch, or lectus, on which 
 they had been 
 carried to the 
 grave, or they 
 were enclosed 
 in one of those 
 
 CQfWEUP CM-F KIPiO (t f i 
 
 sculptured sar- 
 
 cophagi of 
 
 which so many \ i 
 
 beautiful exam- sarcophagus. 
 
 pies are still to 
 
 be seen. The religious rites which followed, called the 
 
 feriae denicales, included both a consecration of the new 
 
 resting-place and a purification of the bereaved relatives, 
 
 from their contact with death. A nine-days mourning — 
 
 the novendial — ensued, and was concluded by an offering 
 
 to the manes, and a funeral feast, — the cena novendialis, 
 
 — after which the mourning robes were laid aside, and 
 
 the ordinary activities of life resumed. If there were 
 
 funeral games, these too were originally celebrated on 
 
 the ninth day. 
 
 In cases of cremation, the simpler and probably older 
 fashion was to excavate a grave some three and a half 
 feet deep, and fill it with fuel. This was a bustum; the 
 corpse was extended on it, the fuel kindled, the bones 
 
24 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 and ashes fell into the cavity with the coals of the dying 
 fire, and the former were subsequently collected in an 
 urn, which was set in the midst of the ashes. The earth 
 was then filled in and heaped above in a tumulus, and the 
 place was enclosed. These were the "vile obsequies," to 
 use the expression of Tacitus, 1 accorded by Nero to his 
 mother Agrippina, and the historian tells furthermore, 
 to the shame of the Emperor, how the body was burned 
 with indecent haste upon a dining-couch, on the very 
 night of the murder, and how the spot remained for years 
 
 unenclosed and uncared for. Cre- 
 <"'• i<&L ''-'" mat ion upon the rogus, or funeral 
 
 pyre, was a much more stately and 
 costly affair. This took place upon 
 unconsecrated ground, but near the 
 family burial place. The rogus was 
 Rogus. often of elaborate and artistic con- 
 
 struction, and all manner of arti- 
 cles of luxury, spices, garments, ornaments, and rich 
 wares of every kind, were laid thereon by friends, as last 
 gifts to the deceased, and consumed in the general con- 
 flagration. The coals were then quenched with water or 
 wine, a few days' exposure to the Italian sun and air 
 sufficed to dry the ashes, which were collected in an urn 
 or other cinerarium, and deposited in the tomb before the 
 end of the nine days' mourning. 
 
 Such were the obsequies of the rich and great. The 
 masses laid their dead away silently, as they have done 
 in all times, and we have already seen that fiinus taciturn 
 and funus plebeium were interchangeable terms. For the 
 comparatively well-to-do there were those vast systems 
 
 1 Tac. Ann. xiv. J). 
 
\3 .A F} y- 
 
 OF THK 
 
 "UNIVERSITY 
 
 *£f califorh^ 
 

 -4-3 
 <1 
 
 go 
 
 O 
 
 
THE FAMILY. 25 
 
 of columbaria, or rows of super-imposed niches, like the 
 nests of a dove-cote, associated chiefly in our minds with 
 their hallowed usage by Christians in the catacombs, but 
 originally a pagan fashion, dating from early Koman 
 times. The columbaria were often constructed and 
 owned by joint-stock companies, who undertook to keep 
 them in order and sold or let the separate niches as 
 required. Or a great nobleman would build a columba- 
 rium for the reception of his slaves, by way of adjunct to 
 the family tomb, as may still be seen in the burying-place 
 of the Volusii near Perugia. For the very poor there 
 were simply vast common pits (puticuli) into which the 
 bodies were flung uncofnned, while the bodies of malefac- 
 tors, even in Horace's time, 1 were exposed unburied to 
 the action of the elements, and to the birds and beasts of 
 prey. 
 
 All through the republican period, and probably in yet 
 earlier times, a vast common burial place extended out- 
 side the Viminal and Esquiline gates of Rome, covering, 
 roughly speaking, the space now occupied by the rail- 
 way station and the new quarter beyond it. Maecenas 
 appears to have been the first to appropriate to private 
 uses a portion of this ancient cemetery, which he trans- 
 formed into a garden or park. His example was followed 
 by Pallas, a freedman of Claudius, and by others, until 
 the whole region became a place of gardens like the 
 Pincian hill, and the recent dead were probably pushed 
 further afield. 
 
 As between burial and cremation, the former was the 
 ancient Oscan and Latian practice, and the innate preju- 
 dices of the Latin race appear always to have been in its 
 
 1 Hor. Ep. i. 8, 17. 
 
26 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 favor. In semi-Greek Etruria, on the other hand, as may 
 be seen in great numbers of existing tombs, the two cus- 
 toms nourished side by side, and they did so in Kome, 
 certainly from an early historic period. The expansion 
 of the city and the vast increase of its population created 
 powerful sanitary reasons in favor of cremation; but 
 certain great families, like the Cornelii, stood out against 
 it to the end. The underlying thought in burial seems 
 to have been that of deep rest on the bosom of the com- 
 mon mother; — in burning, that of consuming the corrup- 
 tible flesh in sacrifice, while the spirit ascended in vapor 
 to the heaven out of which it came. The latter idea 
 seems at first sight the more pious of the two; but their 
 full belief in the resurrection of the body caused it to be 
 rejected by the early Christians, and with the conquest 
 of the Roman Empire by Christianity the burning of 
 man's mortal remains went wholly out of use. 
 
 It remains to say a word concerning Roman feasts and 
 services in commemoration, one might almost say in wor- 
 ship, of the dead. These were numerous and religiously 
 observed, some public and some private. To the former 
 belong the parentalia, celebrated on the dies 2Jctrentales, or 
 days of kindred, which lasted from the thirteenth to the 
 twenty-first of February inclusive. They began with a 
 service of the vestal virgins at the grave of Tarpeia, and 
 while they lasted the temples were closed, magistrates 
 laid aside their badges of office, and weddings, as we 
 have seen, might not take place. We seem to hear an 
 echo of the priestly functions performed on these occa- 
 sions, in the voice which weekly in every Roman Catho- 
 lic church entreats the charity of common prayer for the 
 dead "whose anniversaries occur about this time." Over 
 
Oh 
 
 H 
 
 c 
 a 
 
 DC 
 
 o 
 
THE FAMILY. 27 
 
 and above these public rites, there were many private 
 services in memory of the departed, feasts, like the 
 so-called rosdles, occurring in the spring or early sum- 
 mer, when flowers are most abundant, where friends were 
 invited to a simple funeral banquet of bread and wine, 
 eggs and vegetables at the tomb of the deceased; and 
 roses or violets, as the case might be, were distributed to 
 the guests to be laid upon the grave, and offerings were 
 made there of water, wine, warm milk, honey, -or oil. 
 There exists a fragment of a cippus or funeral stone, the 
 inscription upon which provides that the sleeper shall 
 be commemorated by sacrifices four times each year; 
 namely, "on the anniversary of his birthday, on rose- 
 clay, on violet-clay, and during the general parentalia," 
 and that a lamp shall be lighted and incense burned 
 at his tomb on the Calends, Nones, and Ides of every 
 month. 
 
 , # 
 
28 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HOUSE AND EVERY-DAY LIFE. 
 
 The ordinary Roman dwelling-house had always been, 
 even to the scholar, somewhat of a mystery, until the 
 discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii, in the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, suddenly threw a good deal of 
 light upon its construction and arrangements. The silent 
 testimony of those partially ruined and long buried 
 homes was all the more valuable because, in Pompeii, 
 especially, they represented the average middle-class 
 dwellings of a provincial town, commodious and even 
 elegant as compared with the farm-houses and cottages 
 of the rural poor, cramped and insignificant beside the 
 costly city mansions, and the yet more extensive and 
 extravagant mountain and seaside villas of the wealthy 
 nobles. 
 
 The one essential feature of all these houses, the cen- 
 tral point and distinctive mark of the Roman dwelling 
 in all its developments, that which distinguishes it from 
 the Greek and the houses of the farther East on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, allies it with the houses of our 
 own race, was the atrium, long the common living-room 
 o/o£ the entire family. The earliest Roman houses may 
 indeed be said to have been all atrium. Here, within 
 the same four walls were assembled the family hearth 
 and altar, the family portraits in wax and the marriage- 
 
THE HOUSE. 20 
 
 bed, here the meals were cooked and served, the men 
 lounged after labor, and the women sr#n; the very name 
 is probably derived from the black (titer) color imparted 
 to the room, and its contents generally, by the circling 
 smoke of the hearth fire, which had to find its way out 
 by open door or perforated roof, since it is certain that 
 down to comparatively modern Roman times chimney- 
 flues were unknown. 
 / The houses thus occupied were small and detached 
 v even in the more considerable towns. They were built 
 of wood, or, later, of brick, mostly square in shape, and 
 roofed with wood or thatch, carried up to a point (culmen) 
 in the form of a four-sided pyramid; while a yet meaner 
 sort, circular in shape, with conical roof and built of wat- 
 tled reeds, is still represented by the miserable shelter- 
 huts of the shepherds on the Roman Campagna. It was 
 the typical early Roman house which Virgil conceived as 
 the palace of Evander on 
 the Palatine hill, in the 
 beautiful passage, * where 
 he tells how the pauper king 
 was awakened by the light 
 of early morning streaming 
 through the door of his cot, 
 and the singing of birds 
 
 Upon its 10W rOOf -tree. Sepulchral Urn inform of Primitive House. 
 
 Such, too. was the so-called 
 
 Casa Romulea, long preserved as a kind of sanctuary on 
 the northwesterly slope of the Palatine. But however 
 primitive and promiscuous the life led in these plain 
 dwellings may appear, it was not necessarily vulgar nor 
 
 1 M\\. viii. 455 seq. 
 
30 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 lacking in a certain dignity, as those will readily under- 
 stand who have entered the common room of & podere, or 
 farm, upon the Tuscan hills, or a hospitable farm-house 
 kitchen in Old or New England. 1 
 
 Having thus gotten some idea of what constituted the 
 kernel of a Roman dwelling, let us see what the ordinary 
 town-house had become in the latter days of the republic. 
 
 Its entrance-door did not open directly from the street, 
 but at the end of a passage called the ostium or aditus, 
 ( paved with tiles and flanked by rooms which were usually 
 let out as shops. The door was of wood, with pillars 
 (postes) upon either side. It had regularly two leaves, 
 or fores, which swung outward into the passage on an 
 arrangement of pivot and socket called a cardo, and were 
 secured, when closed, by bolts (pessuli) at the top and 
 bottom. This door led sometimes into a short continua- 
 tion of the passage, divided by a curtain from the atrium, 
 and sometimes directly into the latter, now often called 
 the cavaedium, or hollow part of the dwelling, and still 
 constituting its main apartment. 2 
 
 1 There are scores of verses in "both Horace and Virgil which 
 testify to the sentiment of fond reverence and unavailing regret 
 with which the highly civilized and sophisticated writers of the 
 Augustan age looked back upon the plain old-fashioned country- 
 life. One of the finest of these is the exquisite passage near the 
 end of the second Georgic, beginning with the incessantly quoted 
 "O fortunatos nimium." Cicero says, however {Be Rep. v. 2), 
 what was doubtless the exact truth, that the men of his time for 
 the most part looked back upon the old republic and its customs 
 as on a noble but dilapidated picture which they no longer cared 
 to restore. 
 
 2 Becker and some others maintain that the atrium and cavae- 
 dium were distinct rooms ; but the latest authorities are against 
 
THE HOUSE. 81 
 
 This developed atrium was oblong in shape, and the 
 centre of the floor was occupied by a marble cistern (im- 
 pluvium), with pipes under the floor for carrying off the 
 water. Above this, in the vast majority of cases, there 
 was no roof at all. The tiled covering of the surround- 
 ing space was supported by strong cross-beams, and 
 sloped inward upon its four sides for convenience in 
 conducting the rain-water into the cistern below. This, 
 the simplest kind of roof, and the one most employed, 
 was called a Tusccmicum, or Tuscan roof. Sometimes a 
 pillar was set at each of the four corners of the implu- 
 vium, where the beams intersected, in which case the 
 atrium was said to be tetrastylon, or four-columned. 
 Sometimes the beams were not extended to the wall, but 
 merely supported by a row of pillars around the implu- 
 vium. This was a Corinthian atrium. In other cases 
 the atrium was displuviatum ; that is, the roof sloped out- 
 ward, and the rain-water ran into gutters under the eaves 
 and was carried off by pipes, as in a modern house ; the 
 whole system of roof and pipes being called, in any case, 
 the compluvium. The last kind of roof alone was occa- 
 sionally carried up to a point above the central basin, 
 and the atrium, thus completely roofed in, was called 
 testudineatum. How the atrium was lighted in this case 
 we do not exactly know. It is probable that the small 
 flanking. chambers, presently to be described, had no 
 
 them. Doubtless there were spacious houses with two halls, that 
 is to say, with a sort of ante-chamber between the ostium and 
 cavaedium. Pliny's Laurentian villa we know was arranged in this 
 way, but the progress of Pompeian excavation seems to have ren- 
 dered it certain that the average Roman town-house had no such 
 luxury. 
 
32 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 second-story rooms above them, and that there may have 
 been a row of windows or apertures under the roof, like 
 the clere-story windows of a cathedral. In the far more 
 numerous cases where the atrium was lighted simply by 
 
 \fihe opening above the impluvium, there were always 
 arrangements, as in the theatres, for drawing an awning, 
 or velum, across the open space, as a protection from the 
 sun. The atrium in one or other of these forms was 
 still the place where guests were received, where certain 
 rites of domestic worship were celebrated, and where 
 the dead lay in state. But the cooking was now done in 
 a kitchen (culina) at the back of the establishment, and 
 the hearth-stone, where sacrifices to the household gods 
 had been made in primitive times, was represented by 
 a marble altar, set against the rear wall of the apartment. 
 On either side of the atrium, down about two-thirds of 
 its length, ran a row of small square rooms, the sitting, 
 
 / sleeping, and guest rooms of the establishment. These 
 opened into the hall either by doors or portieres, and 
 from one of them ascended the steep and narrow stairs, 
 which led to the upper story. Beyond this range of 
 diminutive rooms, on either side, the atrium broadened 
 out into two cdae, wings or alcoves, in the comparative 
 seclusion of which were now arranged the portrait busts 
 of the ancestors in their several niches or shrines, and so 
 ordered, in cases of long descent, as to present the sem- 
 blance of a family tree ; while bronze tablets, recording 
 the names and deeds of the persons commemorated, were 
 set in the wall beneath their respective shrines. 
 
 Between the two alae, directly opposite the entrance- 
 door, was the opening into the tablinum, which was 
 usually divided from the atrium by curtains only. In 
 
THE HOUSE. 83 
 
 old-fashioned country houses of the better sort, the tabli- 
 num had been represented by a sort of open porch or 
 veranda, often a sinrpfe pergula, roofed by a trellis for 
 vines, which ran all along the back of the modest dwell- 
 ing, and led to the gaipens or orchards behind it. Under 
 the roof of this porcfh the rustic "Squire," to whom, as 
 always happens, it fell naturally to enact the magistrate, 
 heard complaints and decided differences between his 
 tenants and humble neighbors; and the tabulae, or 
 records of his decisions, were deposited there. Later, 
 when the dwelling had considerably developed, % .and the 
 simple back porch had become only one side of a quad- 
 rangular colonnade, surrounding an open court, the tt 
 \lqe were removed to the interior of the dwelling,, 
 the room where they were kept took its name from thl 
 tablinum. In this, and the corresponding room of 
 town-house, other family archives came also to be depos- 
 ited, and here were put upon record those curious con- 
 tracts for mutual hospitality — hospitia privata, — which 
 will be described in another chapter. Here, too, stood 
 the strong-box of the master of the mansion, and the 
 tablinum was in some sort his study or den. It could 
 be shut off from all the rest of the house, from the atrium 
 by the heavy curtain or curtains already mentioned, 
 from the open court at the back by folding doors ; and it 
 was flanked by two narrow passages (fauces) with doors 
 at either end, through which the family and the domestic 
 slaves could pass and re-pass between the atrium and 
 the rear portion of the house. But if the curtains in 
 front of the tablinum were withdrawn, and the doors at 
 the back thrown open, he who entered the house from 
 the front had an uninterrupted, and, what must have 
 
J 
 
 34 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 been on a bright clay, a very charming view across the 
 atrium, filled with the diffused and softly colored light 
 which filtered through the velum overhead, and down the 
 vista of the tablinum, to the fountain, flowers, and shrub- 
 bery, which occupied the centre of the great pillared court, 
 or peristylum, beyond. 
 
 The peristyle had now become quite as important a 
 member of the dwelling as the atrium. Whoever has 
 seen the garden-court of an Italian villa or palace, 1 or a 
 green convent or college cloister, and has also seen Pom- 
 peii, will have an approximate idea of the general aspect 
 of a peristyle. 
 
 The ambulatory, or surrounding promenade, was much 
 narrower than the covered part of the atrium, the open 
 space, of course, proportionally larger. From the peri- 
 style, and usually on its right, opened the triclinium, or 
 principal dining-room of the house, the neighboring 
 kitchen, or culina, and the sacrarium, or chapel, where 
 the images of the gods were set up, and sacrifices and 
 other ceremonies of private worship were actually per- 
 formed; for the altar in the atrium seems rather to have 
 been a reminiscence of the hearth, and an ornamental 
 symbol of devotion, than intended for frequent use. 
 
 From under the colonnade on the opposite, or left- 
 hand, side opened storerooms of various kinds and a 
 second stair which sometimes led to inferior sleeping- 
 rooms upon the upper story. At the back of the peri- 
 style there was usually an open garden. 
 
 Such being the typical arrangement of the Roman 
 dwelling, there was room, as in our modern houses, for 
 great variations of detail, and it is easy to understand 
 
 1 The beautiful court of the post-office at Rome is a good example. 
 
THE HOUSE. 35 
 
 the sort of change which would be introduced by the 
 increase of wealth, the adoption of Eastern fashions, and 
 the enormous growth of private luxury. To begin with 
 the entrance : — the shallow, sunken porch before the 
 ostium, formed by the projection of the shops on either 
 side, would now be expanded into a spacious vestibule 
 with marble floor, richly adorned with statues and por- 
 trait-busts, prizes of prowess and trophies of arms, even 
 the state chariot which had borne the master of the house 
 on occasions of public triumph sometimes found a place 
 here ; and it was here that the countless throng of friends, 
 clients, and other proteges and dependants who hung 
 upon the footsteps of a distinguished citizen in later days, 
 waited, sometimes from before daylight, to give the salu- 
 tdtio, or morning greeting, to the great man when he came 
 out. The plain door-posts were now sheathed with rich 
 carvings (antepagmenta), or adorned with intricate and 
 costly inlaid work. 1 There were no shops, of course, 
 attached to houses of such grandeur; but the rooms on 
 either side of the entrance became, the one a lodge for the 
 ostiarius, or porter, while the other was often used by 
 the master of the mansion as a species of office, where 
 he received and examined the accounts presented by the 
 stewards of his various rural properties, and took the 
 money for his valuable crops. The town-palace of an 
 Italian nobleman has, to this day, a similar room upon 
 its ground-floor used for almost precisely the same 
 purposes. 
 
 The stately dwelling we are now considering had an 
 indefinitely increased number of living, withdrawing, and 
 guest rooms, opening off the cavaedium and peristyle. 
 
 1 See Verg. G. ii. 463. 
 
36 
 
 «- p«iv ate LIFE 0F the romans 
 
 There were bedrooms for rest both l , 
 (oubtcula diurna aml cubic T , ^ fla y and by night 
 J*h different e Xp0S nrt St^T" ,"? ^^-L 
 dimensions to s„,t the var ou Tn" ' ' ''""' "^ 
 
 nught be entertained. T here ™ * ° f g " eStS " hicb 
 dances even in - provincial^ °w < we fi °d i„- 
 ^eh case the anWior »? eil) * W0 Pe^tyles, i„ 
 gallery (pinacotheca) and HI ° ? ^^ *° a P ic *ure- 
 betraying that the fasluon taH (WW *>. ^ names 
 
 The earliest privatT W If- ad ° Pted fl '° M 6r eece. 
 ^mingly intended as mtt Z T^ and ^ 
 not ^ all as luxurious e 57 "T ° f b °° kS ' ^ 
 ^creation. The walls we^e k f -1^ w life rary 
 («*) or cases of o, n sh ' T^ W CU P boa '* 
 Papyrus r oll S; and some L ^ IW^ reception of 
 ^ptacles occupied the e „ r of r h '* "* ° f S " eb 
 before Giro's time did ** r °° m - N «t much 
 
 Mother , t]le elegance of taf;" t<5 ™ " ith one 
 and to adorn the room with n eh V a PP oi *tments, 
 
 The substance „„ which ^7! "^ Statues ' 
 
 ^written was almost invar ablv,,f S ° f ^ time we « 
 Egyptian p apyni8 , JZ^tt ^ ^ ^ of *»» 
 r^en together basket-wise 'Jh" 8 fibres we re first 
 flat surface and pressed i'„to h " Spread u P«n some 
 Tbe sheet thus obtained was °,i Pr ° Per con ^tcncy. : 
 
 a«d cut into strips (p^) ^ ™ the SU "> "toothed, j 
 one side only, gluedfogeX ! It if ^ Witten U P™ i 
 rolled over a hollow reed T h /"^ Mul ^ 
 varzed from six to thirte , inch' W f h ° f the st ^ 
 page were required it " J' 7 *? * yet broad er ' 
 gether lengthwise, after Xv t * gMn8 these to- 
 *as thus presented in LS T WritteD - The *«t 
 
 parallel columns which were usu- 
 

 
 
ei 
 
 1-- 
 
 < 
 
 w 
 
 
 W: 
 
 n>, 
 
 r. 
 
 < 
 
   
 
 \ I 
 
THE HOUSE. 
 
 3' 
 
 ally divided by scarlet lines. Through the hollow of the 
 reed ran a rod (iimbilicus), which furnished the axis on 
 which the book turned in rolling or unrolling. The pro- 
 jecting ends of this rod were called the cornaa, and they 
 were often painted or gilded, or furnished with metal or 
 ivory nuts. The ends of the papyrus roll itself were 
 carefully evened and dyed black; and the outer covering 
 was of parchment, which was colored in some brilliant 
 hue, usually purple or yellow, while the title of the book 
 was written in scarlet ink upon a small separate slip of 
 parchment and attached to one of the cornua. 
 
 We hear of instances in which an entire work, like the 
 Iliad or the History of Thucydides, was copied upon a 
 single roll, that of the historian being more than eighty- 
 eight yards long. But such a book would, of course, be 
 too unwieldy for ordinary use, and the common way was 
 to divide the works of a prolific writer into several rolls, 
 or volumina, which were all 
 kept for convenience in one 
 light cylindrical wooden 
 box, a capsa or scrinhim, 
 somewhat resembling a 
 modern band-box. The ink 
 (atramentum librarium) was 
 rather thick, and made, like 
 the ink of the Chinese, of lamp-black or sepia ; the pens 
 were slender reeds, or calami, cut and pointed like a 
 goose-quill. After parchment came into general use, 
 the custom of rolling was for the most part abandoned, 
 and the pdginae were simply fastened together at the 
 back like a modern book. Such an arrangement was and 
 is called a codex. 
 
 Writing Materials. 
 
38 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 The domestic slaves were lodged in tiny cells around 
 the posterior peristyle, rather than on the upper floor, 
 where the regular sleeping-rooms of the family seem 
 usually to have been. There would be extensive and 
 beautiful grounds at the rear of such a mansion, laid out 
 in the perpetual Italian taste, embellished with trellises, 
 fountains, and statues, and often overshadowed by mag- 
 nificent trees, like the six ancient and enormous lotus 
 trees in the town-gardens of the orator Crassus upon the 
 Palatine, which were valued at three million sesterces, 
 or about $ 20,000 apiece, and which lived and flourished 
 until they were consumed by Nero's fire in 64 a.d. 
 
 In Rome and the larger towns, however, as in modern 
 cities, especially those of the continent of Europe, the 
 detached dwellings came to be far outnumbered by the 
 Insulae, or apartment-houses, which were often several 
 stories high, with shops upon the street level, and lodg- 
 ings of various grades behind and above. The crowded 
 tenements of the very poor were to be found in the 
 meaner of these insulae, while there were others in the 
 more expensive wards (regiones) where young men of 
 fashion, like Cicero's friend Cselius, had commodious 
 apartments, which probably corresponded very fairly 
 with the bachelor quarters occupied by men of the same 
 class to-day. 
 
 In trying to represent to ourselves more exactly the 
 interior aspect of a completely appointed Roman house, 
 we have first to remember the rich effect of its marble- 
 , wainscoted and frescoed walls ; the broad panels of pure 
 deep color, usually yellow or red, with graceful central 
 figures, and surrounded by brilliant and delicate ara- 
 besques, which Ave find almost universal in Pompeii 
 
THE HOUSE. 39 
 
 even in houses of modest pretensions. There was color 
 also and grace of design in the various kinds of mosaic 
 floors, of which so many specimens are still to be seen, 
 and though the furnishing of the rooms may seem simple 
 and even scanty to our jumbled modern ideas, the sepa- 
 , £^ate pieces were for the most part so excellent in design 
 and so beautiful in workmanship that they well deserved 
 to be set wide apart and relieved, each one, against an 
 artistic background. 
 
 The articles of furniture in common use may be com- 
 prised under a very few heads : lectl, beds and couches ; 
 sedllia, or seats ; ynensae, tables ; arcae and armaril, chests 
 ** and cabinets ; lucernae, lamps, whether standing or de- 
 pending. 
 
 Couches included the lectl triclinia/res, or low dining- 
 couches covered with tapestry and heaped with cushions, 
 on which both men and women reclined at formal meals ; 
 the lectl cubiculares, true beds of rest, for slumber at 
 night or siesta by day; and the lectull or lectl lucubratoril, 
 which had commonly two arms and no back, and were 
 used chiefly for reading or writing at night, when the 
 student reclined his back against one of the arms and 
 supported his tablet or manuscript upon one uplifted 
 knee. And since it was thus that inveterate letter- 
 writers like Cicero and the younger Pliny carried on 
 most of their correspondence, this may be as good a 
 place as any other in which to describe the form of the 
 Roman letter. 
 
 The tablets in question were light, rectangular boards 
 with slightly elevated frames, like a modern slate, and 
 they were spread with a thin coating of wax, on which 
 written characters were traced with a stilus, or pointed 
 
40 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 stick of wood or ivory. One such tablet would serve for 
 the jotting down of hurried notes, or for a schoolboy's 
 exercise. A lengthy letter was composed of several, 
 united at the back, like the leaves of a codex or a modern 
 book, by means of straps or strings passed through holes 
 in the frame. The inner tablets might be waxed and 
 written upon both sides ; the outer, upon the inside only. 
 They were bound together by a strong cord, which for 
 greater security was passed through one or more holes 
 bored in the tablet itself ; the ends of the cord were fas- 
 tened down with wax, which was imprinted with the 
 writer's seal, and the message was conveyed to its desti- 
 nation by a tabellarius, or letter-carrier. In later times 
 these rather unwieldy tablets were superseded by sheets 
 of papyrus. 
 
 The frames of the various kinds of couches were 
 regularly made of wood, often carved or inlaid with 
 
 ivory or brass, and supported 
 sometimes upon ivory feet. 
 The frames were strung 
 with girths or bands (fas- 
 ciae, lor a), on which were 
 laid a mattress (torus) and 
 a bolster (cervical) smdvestes 
 Lectus orbicularis. stragulae, or coverings, of 
 
 more or less magnificence. 
 Beds for slumber, though tolerably broad, were open 
 for the most part upon one side only, being provided 
 with a tall back and arms, like an old-fashioned sofa ; 
 J and they stood higher upon their carved or elaborately 
 turned legs than even the four-posters of our own an- 
 cestors, insomuch that they could only be scaled by 
 
THE HOUSE. 41 
 
 help of a footstool, or even a step-ladder. Bedsteads 
 of bronze and even of the precious metals were used 
 in later times ; and seats and chairs were made of all 
 these different materials and often decorated with great 
 luxury, while in form they ranged from the simple sub- 
 sellium, or four-legged stool, to the cathedra, or deep, 
 commodious chair, like that in which the elder Agrip- 
 pina may be seen sitting with so much grace and dignity 
 in the museum of the Capitol at Rome, or Livia, the 
 exquisitely beautiful, in the seclusion of the Torlonia 
 gallery. 
 
 Under the general head of tables were included the 
 abacus, or side-board, in shape somewhat like a pier or 
 console table, the mensa delphica, or three-legged table, 
 and tiie monojiodium, supported on a single standard in 
 the centre. Tables of the latter shape were often small, 
 extremely precious in material, and elegant in design ; 
 and one such formed part of the furniture of every 
 decent bedroom, and supported, from the time when 
 candles of tallow or wax went somewhat out of fashion, 
 one of the boat-shaped oil lamps of pottery or bronze, 
 with gracefully turned handle (ansa)' at one end, and 
 at the other an opening (rostrum, ndsus) for the wick 
 (ellychnium) , which abound in Pompeii and in existing 
 tombs. A candelabrum was a tall slender stand of wood 
 or metal, usually provided with three claw feet which 
 rested on the floor. In shape and size it corresponded 
 with the standard of a piano-lamp of the present day. 
 which, indeed, is often exactly copied from it. The 
 candelabrum carried atop either a small tray for sup- 
 porting such a lamp as has been already described, or 
 a spike for a large wax candle, like an altar candlestick. 
 
42 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 A shorter kind of candelabrum, often very elaborately- 
 wrought, stood upon a chest or sideboard, and had two 
 or more branches from which small hanging lamps were 
 suspended. 
 
 Bronze Lamp. 
 
 The chest and the cabinet offered, as they have always 
 done, a favorable field for the most elaborate and costly 
 decoration; and these massive articles doubtless pos- 
 sessed in a handsome Roman house exactly the impor- 
 tance which they still retain in grand Italian interiors. 
 
 The table-ware of the affluent had become, in the last 
 days of the republic, extraordinarily luxurious. Some- 
 thing more will be said upon this head in the chapter 
 on food. Here it may suffice to remark that, to judge 
 by the revelations of Pompeii, almost every household 
 implement in daily use at the time of the catastrophe 
 had an artistic significance due to the beauty of its 
 design, over and above its practical value. But the 
 fashion of these articles was to some extent exotic. 
 Their shapes were borrowed from the booty taken in 
 foreign conquest, or else they were the handiwork of 
 
DAILY LIFE. 43 
 
 Greek captives, or of artisans who had learned their 
 methods from them. 
 
 In primitive Roman times the day was divided in the 
 simplest manner, so as to meet the needs and facili- 
 tate the labors of the tiller of the soil. The husband- 
 man rose at sunrise, worked a certain number of hours 
 / before his morning meal, returned to the field after this, 
 and worked until noontide, when he ate again and slept 
 awhile, arising refreshed for another period of labor in 
 the cool of the afternoon, which lasted until sunset 
 and supper-time. Relief to the monotony of this daily 
 round came in the shape of numerous holidays, both 
 public and private. To the former class belonged the 
 general celebrations, bearing more or less of a religious 
 character, like the Compitalia in January, the Matro- 
 nalia in March, the Vinalia Rustica in August, and the 
 Saturnalia in December; to the latter, all the birthday, 
 betrothal, wedding, house-warming, and iSTew Year's gath- 
 erings, with their appropriate suppers and sacrifices, and 
 exchange of gifts and congratulations, as well as the 
 reception given when a youth assumed the garb of man- 
 hood, and the banquets already noted in commemoration 
 of the dead. 
 
 But with the rise of great towns, the growth of com- 
 merce and manufactures, the introduction of new indus- 
 tries, and of new diversions also, and the ever-increasing 
 complexity and expense of existence, the old bucolic 
 arrangement of the day passed wholly out of date, espe- 
 cially among the so-called privileged classes, insomuch 
 that in the time of Nero we find a would-be philosopher 
 like Seneca complaining 1 that, whereas human occupa- 
 
 1 Sen. Ep. cxxii. 10. 
 
44 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 tions used to be regulated by natural laws, now the ob- 
 ject appeared to be to make one's habits as artificial as 
 possible. Daybreak, he says, is bedtime. As evening 
 approaches we begin to show signs of activity. Toward 
 morning we dine. " Nor oportet id facere quod populus" 
 " Come what may, we mustn't do as the common people 
 do." 
 
 Up to the time when the first sun-dial appeared in 
 Rome, 263 B.C., there was no division of the day into 
 hours; and even after this the Romans continued to 
 make a distinction between the natural and the civil 
 day. The former was reckoned from midnight to mid- 
 night — twenty-four hours ; the latter from sunrise to 
 sunset — twelve hours. Practically, the period of daylight 
 still fell into the four natural divisions established by 
 the necessities of rural life, of morning, forenoon, after- 
 noon, and evening; while the four military watches 
 (vigiliae) measured the night. But in the course of 
 the ensuing century, sun-dials (solaria) and hour-glasses 
 (clepsydrae), whether for sand or water, came into gen- 
 eral use ; and some sort of time-keeper, or horologium — a 
 name which comprised both dials and hour-glasses — was 
 to be found, not merely upon all public squares and build- 
 ings, but in every private house. There was this great 
 difference, however, between the Roman measurement of 
 time and our own — an hour was not a fixed period of un- 
 varying length. It was always considered as the twelfth 
 part of the time from sunrise to sunset, and again of that 
 from,sunset to sunrise. The hours of a winter day were 
 therefore actually short, while those of a summer day 
 l. were long; the converse, of course, being true of the 
 nights. At the equinoxes, when the days and nights 
 
DAILY LIFE. 45 
 
 were of the same length, a Roman hour contained sixty 
 of our minutes. At the summer solstice the hours of 
 the day contained seventy-five and a half, and at the 
 winter solstice forty-four and a half minutes. In the 
 former case day began at 4.27 a.m., according to our 
 reckoning, and ended at 7.33 p.m. ; in the latter it began 
 at 7.33 and ended at 4.27. This peculiarity must always 
 be borne in mind, when one would fix in the memory the 
 hour at which a given event occurred. 
 
 Seneca's lament to the contrary notwithstanding, the 
 t Romans were for the most part early risers. Only the 
 idle and the very luxurious, or those who had to sleep 
 off the debauch of the previous night, were wont to lie in 
 bed even until broad daylight. Artisans and shop-keepers 
 went to their work by candle-light. Men of letters, like 
 Cicero, Horace, the elder Pliny, the Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius, preferred to all others the hours before sun- 
 rise for reading and writing. The schools began at a 
 very early hour, 1 so did theatrical representations (prima 
 luce), and all the family festivals already noted; and in 
 Christian times the daily morning service in the churches. 
 The courts of justice sat from the third to the tenth hour; 
 that is, roughly, from seven to five in summer and nine 
 to four in winter. On the days of general election, the 
 comitia began, or, as we should say, the polls opened at 
 sunrise, and did not close till dusk. The sessions of the 
 Senate also began early and continued till sunset. 
 
 In primitive times the master of the house expected 
 to receive good-morrow from his children and servants 
 
 \i 1 " Up," says Martial, in the last epigram of his fourteenth book ; 
 " for the baker is selling the schoolboys their breakfast, and chan- 
 ticleer proclaims the dawn." 
 
46 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 at daybreak, after which he offered the morning sacrifice, 
 and then assigned to his various people their duties for 
 the day. A reminiscence of this custom appears always 
 to have survived in certain of the old families, and it was 
 adopted in the strictly ordered households of the Antonine 
 Caesars. Out of it grew the ceremonious salutatio of late 
 republican and early imperial times, the self-interested 
 compliments of the morning offered to an influential cit- 
 izen by the clients and other lesser folk, who thronged 
 his hall and competed for his favor; and the earlier the 
 salutatio could be made, the better. We read therefore 
 of the Roman streets being alive before light in winter 
 with the hurrying figures of carefully attired clients, 
 who elbowed one another in the stately vestibule of their 
 patron, until the doors were flung open into the atrium, 
 where he stood to receive them. They then defiled be- 
 fore him, each making his bow and uttering his ave, 
 domine, to which the magnate responded by a hand-shake 
 and a word of courtesy — sometimes by a kiss. He 
 made a point of addressing each man by name, and if 
 he hesitated for one instant, he was prompted by the 
 nomenclator at his ear, a slave whose business it was 
 to know the proper appellation of every person present. 
 
 Before going through with this wearisome performance 
 the patron had probably taken his ientaculum, or first* 
 breakfast, in the privacy of his own chamber. The 
 client would have to snatch his where he could in pass- 
 ing from one house to another, — for many paid their 
 daily court to more than one great man, — often doubt- 
 less in the bakeries or cake-shops patronized by the 
 schoolboys. This first meal of the day was invariably, 
 -tas it still is in Latin countries, a very simple one. It 
 
DAILY LI IK. 47 
 
 consisted of bread with salt, or dipped in wine, olives or 
 dates, possibly honey, and a bit of cheese. Hearty food, 
 such as warm and cold meats, fish, vegetables, fresh fruit, 
 and wine, was rarely taken much before mid-day. In 
 early times, and always among the farming population, 
 this mid-day meal constituted the cena, the dinner, or 
 principal meal of the day. while a supper, or vesperna, 
 was served in the evening after work was done. The 
 exigencies of city life caused the noon cena to be replaced 
 by the prandium, lunch or second breakfast, consisting 
 indeed of much the same sort of viands, while the dinner, 
 or cena proper, became vastly more elaborate, and was 
 deferred until toward evening. 
 
 Three meals a day were perhaps the rule among the 
 well-to-do. yet physicians often counselled only two, ex- 
 cept for the old and weak, and many city-folk — even the 
 comparatively affluent — confined themselves to a pran- 
 dium, taken about eleven o'clock, and a late cena. The 
 natural Roman appears to have been, like the average 
 Italian of to-day. an abstemious creature. Only the wan- 
 ton and extravagant gourmands of the decadence dreamed 
 of adding to the interminable courses and fantastic lux- 
 ury of their cena a late supper, or comfesatid, served 
 often in the " wee sma' hours ayant the twal'." 
 
 After the prandium, the world retired for its meridi- 
 atio, or mid-day slumber. This custom was well-nigh a 
 universal one. It belonged both to city and to country 
 life, and dated from the earliest historic period. 'Only 
 the Senate and the courts took no recess at noon, and 
 even there we may believe that, save in times of high 
 excitement, business went on but drowsily. It was dur- 
 ing this hour of gene'ral repose, which, by the way. was 
 
48 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 deemed only less favorable than midnight for the see- 
 ing of spectres, that Alaric surprised Rome in the year 
 410 A.D. 
 
 Refreshed by his merldidtid, the Roman of highly civ- 
 ilized times rose and proceeded directly to that capital 
 | event of the day, his bath. The ringing of a bell an- 
 / nonnced the opening of the great public baths, bahieae 
 or thermae, but it does not come within the scope of this 
 work to describe minutely these characteristic institu- 
 tions of ancient Rome. They were vast in extent, intri- 
 cate in structure, and enormously costly, and they tended, 
 as time went on, to become always more and more artistic 
 and luxurious in their arrangements. Yet the price of 
 admission, even to the most splendid of these establish- 
 ments, was so trifling that they were virtually open to 
 all, — a qaadrans, or quarter- as (that is to say less than 
 one cent) for a man, and two for a woman, while children 
 as a rule were admitted free. 
 
 There were usually separate departments for men and 
 women, but there were porticos and gardens adjoining all 
 the great bahieae, where bathers of both sexes might 
 meet and gossip after the bath was over^-as in the casino 
 of a modern watering-place ; and to the thermae, at least, 
 were often attached libraries and fine art galleries, 
 palaestrae for gymnastic exercise, and sphaeristeria, or 
 courts for playing ball. 
 
 The plain, private dwelling of an earlier period had 
 possessed merely a common lavatrma, or wash-room, 
 situated near the kitchen for convenience of introducing 
 both hot and cold water, and where the different mem- 
 bers of the family took turns in performing their simple 
 ablutions. But subsequently, after the bath had come to 
 
 
DAILY LIFE. 
 
 49 
 
 be regarded as the greatest of luxuries, it was customary 
 to have a balnearium, or miniature bathing establishment, 
 somewhat on the plan of the great balneae, attached to 
 every private house, and especially to every country 
 house having any pretensions to splendor. Traces of 
 such are to be found all over Europe, wherever the 
 Roman rule extended, for Roman governors and other 
 high officials made a point of carrying with them into 
 their provincial exile the personal habits of the capital. 
 A private bath of this kind, small but remarkably well 
 
 Roman Bath, from Ancient Painting. 
 
 preserved, dating from the time of Constantine the Great, 
 was discovered in 1855, at Caerwent, in Wales, and may 
 be taken as a type of them all. It was very nearly square 
 in shape, and its entire dimensions were only thirty-one 
 Roman feet by thirty-four. The included space was, 
 however, divided into the usual rooms, or cellae, — viz. an 
 apodyterium for undressing, a tepidarium provided with 
 seats for the hot air or vapor bath, a caldarium with a 
 large tub for the hot-water bath, and a frlgidarium for 
 the cold-water bath. 
 
 A bather was twice rubbed down by attendant slaves, 
 
 
 1NTIVERSITY 
 
50 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 once after the vapor or sweating bath, and again after the 
 cold bath, and after the latter he was also anointed. In 
 more elaborate establishments there were separate rooms 
 for these processes, the destrictarium and unctorium. 
 
 The private bath in question was heated on the same 
 principle as the great thermae, that is to say, by means 
 of a furnace (hypocaustum, fomax) provided with pipes, 
 through which heated air was conducted underneath the 
 floors and between the walls of the different rooms. The 
 floors were double, the upper one being supported on 
 pillars of clay piping about two feet high. The interven- 
 ing space was made intensely hot, and the whole ingen- 
 ious arrangement was termed a suspensura, and is claimed 
 by Cicero as the invention of one of his own early friends, 
 Gaius Sergius Orata. The heat was graduated for the 
 different cellae by their relative distance from the central 
 furnace, and the varying thickness of their upper floors. 
 The caldarium was situated nearest the fire, the apody- 
 terium farthest from it of the heated rooms, and the suc- 
 cession of hot-air, hot-water, and cold-water baths was 
 the order regularly observed in bathing establishments of 
 every grade. 
 
 -V About an hour after the bath came the cena, or princi- 
 pal meal of the day. Once it had been served in the 
 atrium and had consisted, save upon state occasions, 
 chiefly of bread or porridge, and vegetables. The father 
 and mother and other adult members of the family sat 
 • at table, while children and servants occupied stools or 
 benches at their feet or behind them. Long before the 
 close of the republican period, however, the cena, or 
 dinner, had developed into as dainty a meal as the 
 means of the householder would permit; separate din- 
 
DAILY LIFE. 
 
 51 
 
 ing-rooms were found indispensable in a life of the 
 slightest elegance, and the custom of reclining at table 
 had become universal among the well-to-do. Columella 
 lays it down as a rule that a farm-bailiff should recline 
 at his meals upon high holidays only, and Plutarch, in 
 his life of the younger Cato, tells us that the latter — 
 always a bit of a fanatic — insisted, by way of self- 
 mortification, on sitting at table throughout the period 
 of mourning which followed the battle of Pharsalia. 
 
 The ordinary dining-table was square, surrounded on 
 three sides by the same number of one-armed couches, 
 while the fourth side remained open for convenience of 
 
   j^ serving. Each of these three couches accommodated three 
 
 - persons, who reclined 
 upon the left arm, 
 supported, the one by 
 the arm of the couch, 
 the other two by heaps 
 of cushions, and al- 
 ways with the feet 
 turned outward. In 
 the assignment of 
 places a strict eti- 
 quette prevailed. The 
 couches, or lecti, all 
 more or less handsomely draped, were distinguished as 
 meclius, or the one which stood opposite the open side 
 of the table; summits, the couch adjoining the head of 
 the meclius; and imus, that upon the other side. The 
 meclius and the summus were assigned to guests ; the 
 imus accommodated the master of the house, his wife, 
 and one of the elder children or a favorite freedman. 
 
 
 med 
 
 ius ieciu 
 
 s 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 A 
 A 
 
 
 Y 
 
 y 
 
 a 
 
 CO 
 
 6 
 
 mensa 
 
 Co 
 
 CO 
 
 Co 
 
 From Kiessling's edition of Horace. 
 
52 THE PRIVATE LIEE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 The medius was the couch of honor, and the highest 
 place upon it, as also upon the other couches, was the 
 one nearest the arm. The third place, or that at the 
 foot of the lectus medius, was, however, called the locus 
 consularis, and was usually assigned to the most impor- 
 tant public officer present, both for convenience in the 
 matter of receiving and sending messages and despatches, 
 and because it brought him next the host, who leaned 
 upon the arm of the imus, or lowest couch. Nine was 
 the full number that could be properly served at such a 
 table ; a place might be vacant, but to crowd a couch 
 with more than three people was considered the height 
 of vulgarity. Large parties of guests were entertained 
 in spacious dining-halls, or sometimes in summer in the 
 pleasant solaria, or open loggie, on the roofs of the houses, 
 at separate small tables, each accommodating the ortho- 
 dox number. 
 
 *• Round tables with couches fitted so as to form a semi- 
 circle came into fashion in Cicero's time — extravagant 
 objects, for which men paid an insane price. They 
 were made of rare imported woods, preferably from a 
 slab or section of the massive trunk of the so-called 
 citron-tree, a species of African cypress, very beautifully 
 mottled, and the most admired were supported on a 
 single pedestal of solid ivory. Cicero himself had one 
 such for which he paid 500,000 HS. The philosVpher 
 Seneca is said to have possessed five hundred. The 
 couches of this luxurious period had often silver feet, 
 and were inlaid wjth the same precious metal or with 
 ivory and tortoise-shell. The custom had likewise been 
 introduced from the East of hanging the walls of the 
 dining-room with richly embroidered stuffs, and the 
 
DAILY LIFE. 53 
 
 most sumptuous of all had a very peculiar arrangement 
 of the coffered ceiling. It had long been the fashion to 
 construct this of cross-beams, the square, sunken spaces, 
 or lacunaria, between which were carved, gilded, or 
 otherwise ornamented. These lacunaria were now made 
 in the form of sliding panels, which could be withdrawn 
 for the purpose of scattering flowers, or trifling keep- 
 sakes for the guests, upon the table. 
 
 ~f- Mantelia, or table-cloths, came into use much later than 
 napkins (mappae), which last the fashion of eating ren- 
 dered rather a necessity than a luxury, and they were 
 either brought by the guest or his personal attendant, or 
 offered him by the servants of his host. 
 . The tricliniarii, or dining-room servants, were under 
 the supervision of a tricliniarch.es, or butler, and the 'finer 
 the establishment, the more numerous they were. It 
 was their business to arrange the room for the feast, to 
 set forth upon the abaci, or sideboards, the imposing 
 array of silver, gold, glass, and jewelled vessels, for both 
 eating and drinking, which would be required in the 
 course of the meal, and accurately to place in the centre 
 of the table its principal ornament, the massive sail n urn, 
 
 ^ or salt-cellar. This article, which even the compara- 
 tively poor contrived to have made of silver, possessed 
 a certain sacred significance ; inasmuch as every table 
 was consecrated to the gods, and the sail nxm contained 
 not merely salt for seasoning the viands, but a tray 
 (patella) for the molae salsae, or sacrificial cakes, which 
 were offered to the Lares, and then probably broken and 
 distributed, as a kind of grace, after meat. Silver vessels 
 for vinegar- and oil also formed a part of the permanent 
 furniture of every handsome board. The carving and cut- 
 
54 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 che meats was done at side-tables ; the meal was 
 ed in courses (fercula), which were brought in by 
 .lie servants on trays (rejjositdria) , which had sometimes 
 two or three shelves or stories, and were presented to the 
 guests from behind. The wine-cups were replenished in 
 like manner, "over the shoulder," and these admitted 
 some variety in form, but were usually shallow, with two 
 handles, and often very beautiful in workmanship. 
 
 The implements actually used in eating were few and 
 
 simple, only the right hand 
 of the guest being free to 
 wield them. They con- 
 sisted chiefly of two kinds 
 of spoons, the Ugula and 
 the cochlear. The former 
 was shaped very much like 
 our own table-spoon, the 
 latter had a much smaller 
 bowl, circular in shape, and 
 flat or only slightly hol- 
 lowed, and the handle was 
 pointed for convenience in 
 detaching the meat of shell- 
 fish, or picking up particles 
 of food. Knives and forks 
 were certainly not employed in Rome as table implements 
 before the second century of our era. 
 
 A handsome dinner was served in three principal divis- 
 ions, each of which might consist of several fercula, or 
 courses. The introductory part was called the gustus, or 
 gustatio, and its object was merely to whet the appetites 
 of the diners for the richer food to follow. It consisted 
 
 Spoon? 
 
DAILY LIFE. 55 
 
 mainly of eggs, pickled vegetables, salads in great 
 variety, oysters, raw or cooked, salted fish, mushrooms, 
 artichokes, asparagus, or melons, eaten with salt and 
 pepper. A beverage, midsum, compounded of honey and 
 must, was often served with the gustatio. 
 
 The main part of the meal which followed fell also 
 into three divisions, — the prima, altera, and tertia cena. 
 It consisted of fish, meats, and game, both native and 
 foreign, cooked with endless varieties of seasoning, — 
 salt, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, sweet herbs, and wine. 
 The fish was usually served with a costly imported sauce 
 (garum), prepared with salt water, of which the flavor 
 was highly prized. Some of the viands were eaten 
 steaming hot ; others had to be cooled with ice or snow 
 before they were deemed truly palatable. 
 
 There was a pause after this portion of the meal was 
 concluded, during which the mqla^scUsa^ already men- 
 tioned, was offered to the Lares, after which the secuncla 
 mensa, or dessert, was brought in. It consisted of pastry, 
 confectionery, and fruit, both home grown and imported, 
 and concluded the banquet proper — whence the expres- 
 sion, " ab ovo ad mala," from the egg to the apples, 
 became proverbial for the whole of anything, from the 
 beginning to the end. 
 
 Wine was taken in moderation with all the courses, 
 rarely clear, sometimes iced, but oftener mixed with 
 warm water. The business of regular drinking began 
 only after the dessert had been removed. Those who 
 affected Greek fashions were now perfumed and crowned 
 with garlands. The wine was no longer mixed to taste, 
 in the separate pocula of the guests, but in a huge vase, 
 or crater, whence it was ladled out by the servants in 
 
56 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 cyathi, one-handled cnps or ladles. The cyathus was the 
 unit of measure for a systematic drinker, who, though he 
 often used a goblet of the capacity of several cyathi, 
 always reckoned his feats by the number of the latter 
 which he consumed. 
 
 The comissatio, or late supper of high-livers, which 
 has been already mentioned, was little more than a 
 drinking-bout. It was enlivened, as was also the cena, 
 by the performance of hired musicians, mimes, and 
 dancers ; but conversation, though it found a place, at 
 least in the earlier meal, was never in Rome the fine art 
 and the main entertainment that we find it among the 
 Greeks. 
 
CHILDREN. 
 
 TY 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CHILDREN, SLAVES, GUESTS, CLIENTS, FREEDMEN. 
 
 The lustratio, or naming with religious rites, of a boy 
 infant whom his father had formally acknowledged, 
 occurred on the ninth day after his birth, a girl's upon 
 the eighth. A sacrifice was offered for the child upon the 
 family altar, or it was presented in one or more of the 
 temples of the gods and recommended to their especial 
 protection. As a defence against the evil eye and such 
 mysterious ills, there was also hung round the baby's 
 neck by a ribbon or chain, a small locket, usually 
 heart-shaped or circular, sometimes crescent or cru- 
 ciform, made of gold if the parents were wealthy, 
 otherwise of some inferior material, and containing an 
 amulet'. 
 
 This was the bulla, of which so many specimens are 
 to be seen in various museums, and which never fails in 
 the picture of a well-born lad. The custom was prob- 
 ably of Etruscan origin, and applied originally to the 
 children of patricians only ; but it was subsequently 
 extended to those of knights and of the official nobility 
 generally. A boy wore his bulla constantly until he 
 received the gown of manhood; a girl hers until her 
 marriage. But the ornament was always carefully cher- 
 ished and occasionally resumed, and it is a curious fact 
 
58 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 that a triumphdtor invariably put on his bulla upon the 
 great day of his public glorification, as a protection 
 against the envy of his fellow-citizens. There was no 
 
 such thing as a pub- 
 lic registry of births, 
 for civic purposes, be- 
 fore the time of Mar- 
 cus Aurelius ; but a 
 private record of the 
 lustratio appears, in 
 most cases, to have 
 been kept, and was 
 sometimes appealed 
 to for purposes of 
 identification. 
 
 The child received 
 its first instruction at 
 home. Either the 
 mother was the 
 teacher, or, in cases 
 where several mar- 
 ried sons lived on under the paternal roof, some f reed- 
 woman or female relative of the family acted as nursery 
 governess to all the little ones. In this manner they 
 were taught reading, writing, the elements of arithmetic 
 and of the laws. "When we were boys," says Cicero, 1 
 " we had to learn the Twelve Tables by heart like a 
 species of hymn. Nobody does it now." 
 ^But far more important than even his modicum of 
 book-learning, was held, at least in all the olden time, 
 that practical education which the child received by 
 
 i Cic. De Lee-, ii. 23. M 
 
 Bulla. 
 
UWVERSJTY ! 
 
 OF 
 
 CHILDREN. 50. 
 
 association with his elders, and admission, as he grew 
 older, to their activities. 
 
 Thus the girl learned at her mother's side to spin, 
 to weave, and to sew ; the boy, of his father or elder 
 brothers, the mysteries of planting and harvesting, 
 swimming, riding, boxing, and the use of weapons. If 
 the father were a flamen, or priest, the son was early 
 trained to assist at sacrifices as his cam ill us, or bearer 
 of the sacred vessels. If the mother offered a sacrifice, 
 her daughter acted as Camilla. Were the father of a 
 station to receive clients in his atrium, his boys stood 
 beside him during the ceremony, and so learned to know 
 the names and faces of his political and social following. 
 On days of family triumph or mourning, when the 
 shrines were opened, and the images of the ancestors 
 displayed, the children were always present. They took 
 part in the family meals, when these were simple and 
 there were no guests, and sometimes they helped serve 
 at table. 
 
 Very early also in the history of Borne we find men- 
 tion of both boys' and girls' schools. Plutarch seems to 
 imply that even Romulus and Remus went to school 
 at Gabii, and the unhappy Virginia was on her ? /ay to 
 school when her precocious beauty attracted the fatal 
 notice of Appius Claudius. Virginia was, however, of 
 plebeian rank, and her mother was dead. 
 
 The primary teacher (Utterutor) was usually a slave 
 or freedman, who acted as private tutor, or instructed 
 a small class in the pergula, or veranda attached to a 
 house or shop. Schooling of this kind was paid for by 
 the month, occasionally by the year, and very poorly 
 paid; insomuch that the Iftterdtor h§c) often to eke out 
 
60 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 his income by some other employment, such as the 
 writing of wills. Under Diocletian the monthly fees 
 of a pupil were limited to fifty denarii. 1 
 
 The school year consisted of eight months, with a long 
 vacation comprising July, August, September, and Octo- 
 ber. There were also special holidays, such as the feast 
 of Minerva, and the Saturnalia, NeAv Year's Day, and 
 the twenty-second of February, the great day of com- 
 memoration of the dead. 
 
 The substance of what was taught in these primary 
 schools was the same as that which an old-fashioned or 
 more carefully secluded child acquired at home, — read- 
 ing, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, while the 
 laws of the Twelve Tables, as we have already seen, 
 were long committed to memory like a sort of catechism. 
 
 The Roman system of numerals, in which values are 
 expressed by the collocation of different letters of the 
 alphabet, appears, beside the simplicity of the Arabic, a 
 very clumsy one ; and the regular- employment of duo- 
 decimal fractions, or division of the unit into twelfths, 
 increased yet more the difficulties of reckoning. We are 
 not surprised therefore to learn that even grown men 
 often had recourse to a teacher of arithmetic, or calcula- 
 tor, who was much better paid than the common school- 
 master, nor that the boy at his desk was allowed to assist 
 his ciphering by using the fingers of both hands, as well 
 as by the abacus, or counting-machine. 
 
 Reckoning with the fingers, not yet wholly disused in 
 the East, proceeded upon the basis of expressing by 
 
 1 It is not exactly known what a denarius was worth under 
 Diocletian. Mommsen computes it at nine German pfennige, 
 which would make this maximum monthly price about one dollar. 
 
CHILDREN. 
 
 61 
 
 Abacus. 
 
 eighteen different motions of the left hand, nine units 
 and nine tens, and, by similar movements of the right 
 hand, nine hun- 
 dreds and nine 
 thousands. The 
 term abacus, 
 which we have 
 already seen ap- 
 plied to the side- 
 table of a dining- 
 room, was also 
 used both for a 
 board strewnwith 
 sand, on which 
 geometrical figures were drawn with a pointed stick, or 
 stilus, and for one on which balls representing figures 
 were moved about in grooves representing denominations 
 of figures. This kind of abacus had also a contrivance 
 for reckoning fractions. 
 
 The Roman monetary system had practically two units 
 of value, the sestertius and its quadruple, the denarius. 
 Large sums were commonly computed in the former and 
 reckoned by a decimal system. Small sums were ex- 
 pressed in the latter and its duodecimal fractions. The 
 difficulty which must have arisen from the simultaneous 
 use of the decimal and duodecimal systems was dimin- 
 ished by rules and tables for reducing the one kind of 
 fraction to the other, and these rules and tables appar- 
 ently found a place in the curriculum of the elementary 
 schools. 
 
 The simple instruction, purely practical in its aim, of 
 these primitive establishments was deemed all-sufficient 
 
62 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 for the youth, of Rome clown to the time of the second 
 Punic war. But after that period there grew up an ever- 
 increasing demand for the services of Greek gramma- 
 rians, who not only taught their own language, but intro- 
 duced a more scientific method of studying the Latin 
 itself ; and who succeeded, after a time, in imbuing the 
 Roman mind with something resembling the broad ideal 
 of Greek culture, — that is to say, of the harmonious and 
 equal development of all a man's faculties, both physical 
 and mental. 
 
 The principal text-book of the Greek grammaticus was 
 Homer. The master read aloud, with proper accent and 
 inflection, a passage from the poet. This the pupil had 
 first to commit to memory, and afterward to stand a cer- 
 tain examination, not merely upon its grammar and 
 prosody, but on all the various questions in geography, 
 astronomy, history, and mythology which it might sug- 
 gest. Written exercises had also to be prepared, trans- 
 lations from poetry into prose, and original themes. 
 
 The criticism of these last must have involved some 
 elementary teaching in rhetoric, but a further pursuit of 
 the various branches of learning comprehended under 
 this head was reserved for the higher schools of the 
 rhetoricians. 
 
 The grammatical course was deemed equally appro- 
 priate for boys and girls, and a good number of the latter 
 attended the grammar schools ; although there was 
 plainly always a prejudice in favor of home education 
 for them. 
 
 To get the full benefit even of this amount of instruc- 
 tion it was needful that the pupil should both understand 
 and speak Greek, and this the children of the wealthy 
 
CHILDREN. 63 
 
 learned to do in infancy from domestic slaves of that 
 nation, as those of the Russian nobility learn French and 
 English from their nursery governesses to-day. 
 
 As soon as a boy was old enough to begin his public 
 education, he was placed under the special charge of a 
 servant, called paedagogus, whose business it was to help 
 him prepare his lessons, and go with him to school, and 
 who continued to be his personal attendant until he 
 received the toga virilis. 
 
 Long after this period a young man might, and often 
 did, frequent the schools of rhetoric, which, like the 
 grammar schools, were an importation from Greece, and 
 conducted mainly upon the Greek method, and where 
 music and the higher mathematics were taught, as well 
 as the arts of composition and oratory. 
 
 Yet it is evident that a dull but deep-seated objection 
 to all this outlandish culture lingered throughout the 
 whole republican period, not merely among the masses, 
 but in the minds of enthusiasts for the old Roman spirit 
 and traditions, like the elder Cato ; and when Atticus, 
 the friend of Cicero, published a collection of Greek 
 anecdotes, Ave find Lucullus congratulating him upon the 
 barbarism of some of his expressions, on the ground 
 that it did not become a good Roman to know Greek too 
 well. 
 
 After the Romans came to have a literature of their 
 own, there grew up a class of grammatici Latini, who 
 made a business of teaching Terence, Horace, and Virgil, 
 and who were much frequented. The corresponding class 
 of Latin rhetores had never found favor, either with in- 
 dividuals or with the state. Their teaching was of a 
 very inferior order, and their influence upon manners 
 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 was considered so bad that as early as the year 92 b.c. 
 all such Latin schools of rhetoric were closed by order 
 of the Censors, Domitius and Cassius. 
 
 Every well-bred Koman boy learned to ride, to run, 
 to leap, to box, and to swim, as a necessary preparation 
 for his military service, and the Campus Martius was 
 assigned for the practice of these and all other athletic 
 exercises. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances a lad was supposed to 
 have finished his regular schooling by the end of his 
 -f seventeenth year, at which time also he ceased to be 
 puer and became invents, and liable for military duty. 
 Already, in the vast majority of cases, he had laid aside 
 the toga praetexta, or simple woollen tunic with a broad 
 purple stripe (clavus latus) down the front, worn by 
 both boys and girls of rank, and had been ceremoniously 
 invested by his father or guardian with the toga virllis, 
 or toga pura, the plain white garment of manhood. 
 No precise age was fixed for this solemnity, and 
 the time of the year was also optional, although the 
 religious feast of the Liberdlia — March 17th — was 
 undoubtedly a favorite season. The bulla was first 
 removed from the boy's neck and consecrated to the 
 Lares, and an offering was then made for him in the 
 family chapel, after which, accompanied by a train of 
 relatives and friends, he was led into the Forum and 
 formerly presented to the public. His full name was 
 afterwards inscribed in the list of citizens kept in the 
 Tabularium upon the Capitol, or among the archives of 
 his province ; a sacrifice was offered for him at some 
 public altar, and a banquet followed, accompanied, in the 
 case of imperial and other very distinguished youth, by 
 
CHILDREN. 65 
 
 a largess to the people. The maiden of quality continued 
 to wear her tunica praetextq until marriage. 
 
 For the young man there usually remained, after the 
 ceremonial introduction to public life described above, 
 a finishing year, the tirocinium, of special preparation 
 for the calling which he had elected to pursue. If he 
 were to be a lawyer, or aspired to public life, as almost 
 all the law students did, he attached himself to the train 
 of some eminent statesman, as did Cicero to that of the 
 great Augur, L. Mucius Scaevola, and Cselius afterward 
 to Cicero's, and learned by observation his manners 
 and methods. If he had chosen the military career, he 
 obtained a place, in some respects resembling a staff- 
 position, in the cohort of some famous general, and, 
 without being subjected to all the drudgery of a common 
 soldier, he learned the regime of camps and the duties 
 of an army officer. The former kind of apprenticeship 
 was called tirocinium fori, the latter tirocinium 7nilitiae. 
 
 Boys of the middle and lower classes went directly, 
 as they do now, from school to the business of life. 
 
 Some uncertainty exists as to the time at which a 
 free-born youth obtained the ius suffrdgii, or became 
 qualified to vote in the general elections. He was 
 legally free to marry, to contract debts, to receive a 
 legacy, or make a will, from his fourteenth birthday, — 
 a girl from her twelfth, — but so long as he was praetex- 
 tdtus he certainly did not vote. It is altogether likely 
 that his introduction to the Forum constituted his politi- 
 cal majority, but it must be remembered that the suffrage 
 lost its significance after the state was no longer free, 
 that is to say, in those imperial times about which we 
 know so much more than of any other ; and this is prob- 
 
 of ypv 
 
 CTKIVERSIT 
 
66 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 ably why under the empire the investiture with the 
 toga virilis became more and more a matter of parental 
 caprice ; so that it was sometimes bestowed, as in 
 Caracalla's case, as early as twelve, or, again, as in 
 Caligula's, withheld until nineteen. 
 
 The subject of slavery among the Romans is too large 
 a one to be treated otherwise than very cursorily in so 
 small a manual as this. Slaves there always were in the 
 Roman commonwealth from the earliest historic period ; 
 and the master had legal power of life and death over 
 his human chattels. But the servitude of the olden 
 time, when even a patrician tilled his own fields with 
 the help of his own sons, was practically a light enough 
 order of bondage. The vast majority of masters held 
 only one, or, at most, two or three slaves, who were 
 treated in some sort as members of the family, sleeping 
 under the same roof, and taking their meals in the same 
 room, if never at the same table. Similar social condi- 
 tions are wont to mark the modest beginnings of any 
 state, but in the nature of things they cannot endure. 
 
 A servile population always increases faster than a 
 free one. Great towns grow up and become centres of 
 civic and commercial activity, and the landed proprietor 
 finds it convenient to pass a part or the whole of his 
 year in them, leaving the main business of agriculture 
 to his rustic dependents. Small freeholds are gradually 
 absorbed by extensive estates, which are worked by great 
 gangs of laborers under the supervision of men who 
 have risen from their own ranks. Habits of luxury and 
 ostentation among the privileged class grow fast with 
 the increase of wealth, calling for armies of servants 
 with highly specialized functions. All these changes 
 
SLAVES. 67 
 
 were either accomplished, or in rapid process of accom- 
 plishment, in the Roman state, by the year of the city 
 550 ; that is to say, two centuries before the Christian 
 era. The dominant passion of the race for foreign con- 
 quest had also its influence in developing the institution 
 of slavery. On the one hand a slave could not be drafted 
 into the army, wherefore his services were all the more 
 indispensable in any and every department of home 
 industry. On the other, among the countless prisoners 
 taken in foreign war, and thereby reduced to slavery, 
 there were many from highly civilized Greece, and the 
 farther Orient, who were capable of instructing their 
 comparatively rude conquerors, not merely in the finer 
 arts and crafts, but in every department of human 
 knowledge. Whence it came to pass that a large major- 
 ity, not merely of the skilled workmen of Rome, but of 
 the teachers, readers, and amanuenses, employed by the 
 V wealthy who aspired to culture, were slaves of foreign 
 extraction. 
 
 The first step in the social revolution thus achieved 
 was the division of a man's slaves into the fa mil i a urbana 
 and the familia rustica, a classification corresponding 
 roughly with that of the negro slaves into domestic ser- 
 vants and field hands ; while the same degradation was 
 implied in the transference of a member of the former 
 class to the latter. 
 
 The whole body of "rustic" slaves, often extremely 
 numerous, was under the general supervision of a villicus, 
 who also in most instances kept the farm accounts, and 
 rendered them either directly to the master or to a pro- 
 curator, or steward. Each gang of slaves which was told 
 off to any department of farm-labor had its own overseer 
 
68 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 (magister operae or operdrum). Slave labor on the farm, 
 as in the house, was specialized just as far as the extent 
 of the estate and the wealth of the proprietor would 
 permit. In ideal conditions we not only find each kind 
 of animal under the care of a separate servant or staff of 
 servants (bubulci for the oxen, asindrii for the donkeys, 
 subulct for the pigs, etc.), but each variety of feathered 
 creature — hen, pigeon, pheasant, as the case might be 
 — had its own special attendant, gallindrius, columbdrius, 
 or phdsidndrius. There would be piscatores to look after 
 the fish-ponds, a topidrius to lay out gardens, a hortuld- 
 nus to cultivate them, an apidrius to manage the bees, 
 and an aqudrius to keep the water-works in order, and 
 many others, of whom and of their duties we shall have 
 more to say in another place. 
 
 With regard to the great staff of slaves who raised the 
 crops, there seems some reason to suppose that the vine- 
 yards were occasionally cared for by men who did no 
 other work ; but usually the agricultural laborer passed 
 on, as the season changed, from one kind of work to 
 another, as he does to-day, and the use of such terms as 
 fossor (trencher), messor (reaper), putdtor (grafter), etc., 
 is to specify not a different individual, but the use of a 
 different tool. 
 
 The rural slaves worked under overseers who were 
 almost of necessity hard and cruel, and they were often 
 little better lodged than the beasts for which they cared. 
 Now and then there would be a fanciful and kind-hearted 
 master, like the younger Pliny, who piqued himself on 
 having made the slave-quarters in his Laurentian villa 
 " nice enough for guests " ; l but it may be taken for 
 
 > Plin. Ep. II. 17. 9. 
 
SLAVES. 60 
 
 granted that such philanthropists were not exceptionally 
 numerous in ancient Rome. 
 
 The modest corps of house servants maintained by a 
 distinguished Roman in the earlier time was headed by 
 an atnensis, or steward, who also kept the house-accounts. 
 Later, as the style of living grew more elaborate, these 
 duties had to be divided, and the atriensis became a mere 
 major-domo, who had enough to do in exercising a gen- 
 eral supervision over the arrangements of the dwelling 
 itself. The ever-increasing crowd of menials under him 
 fell into different classes, each with an overseer of its 
 own. The cubicularil performed the duties of housemaids, 
 the triclinarii waited at table, the supellectdril kept the 
 furniture and table-ware in order, the cullnarii were 
 kitchen drudges, while the bahiearii, or those who served 
 the baths, formed another distinct class. The functions 
 of valet and ladies' maid were distributed amongst ornd- 
 tores and orndtrices, tonsores, or barbers, and cinifldnes, or 
 hair-crimpers, and calceatores who took care of the feet. 
 There were clelicdtl, or pages, more or less pampered, to 
 run on errands, an invitator to summon guests, a servus 
 ab hospitiis to look after their lodgement, a porter (iditi- 
 tor or ostiarius) who was sometimes chained in the vesti- 
 bule like a dog. Were the master of an artistic or literary 
 turn, he had people whose special duty it was to look 
 after his pictures and statues, — servants a pinacptheca 
 and a statu! s, — tabellaril to convey his letters to their 
 destination, lectores to read aloud to him at meals, in the 
 bath, or in bed. 
 
 The number of slaves who should accompany a great 
 man or a great lady when he or she went abroad, was 
 matter of lively emulation. Those who walked had ante- 
 
70 THE PRIVATE LIFE OP THE ROMANS. 
 
 ambulatoreSj and pedisequi or pedisequae to go before and 
 behind them. If they took the air in litters, they were 
 borne by lectarii, the most fashionable being Syrians or 
 Cappadocians of unusual stature, who, like the pages, 
 wore a brilliant livery. The boy, as we have seen, had 
 his paedagogus to attend him to school, the daughter of 
 well-to-do parents had her Greek maid, who performed 
 the same office. There was often a capsarius besides to 
 carry the books and tablets. 
 
 All these functionaries were slaves, a limited number 
 being of the comparatively privileged servile class called 
 vernae; that is to say, slaves born in the house and usu- 
 ally trained for the personal service of its children, many 
 of whose educational and other privileges they shared. 
 The freedman who had been verna, always held himself 
 superior to other manumitted slaves. 
 
 A highly prized slave was occasionally set free, by 
 ^)ure grace, or in gratitude for some signal service, 
 either during the lifetime of his master, or in his will. 
 The right of the slave to his own small savings (pecu- 
 lium) was also practically recognized and these might 
 be applied to the purchase of his freedom ; but their 
 accumulation, very slow at best, was yet farther hin- 
 dered by the master's claim upon the little horde, for 
 making good certain pecuniary injuries which he might 
 sustain through the slave. After the number of bondmen 
 had increased enormously, so that one man sometimes 
 owned many thousand souls, it became advantageous for 
 the master to educate them wholesale in trades and crafts 
 for which they might show some aptitude, and then let 
 them out to master-mechanics, bankers, seamen, theat- 
 rical managers, or masters of the amphitheatre, as the 
 case might be. 
 
THE 
 
 VERSn 
 SLAVES. ?1 
 
 X 
 
 Sometimes, too, the master directly advanced the 
 capital for setting his slave up in business, allowing 
 the latter a share of the profits, out of which he might 
 hope some day to buy his freedom. 
 
 The common punishment of a refractory slave was beat- 
 ing. If a runaway were caught, as he could hardly 
 fail to be, since there were extremely heavy penalties for 
 harboring and assisting him, he was either branded or 
 had an iron collar like a dog's welded round his neck, or 
 his legs were fettered, or in exaggerated or repeated cases 
 of offence he was at once turned into the arena or other- 
 wise put to death. If he attempted to take personal 
 vengeance upon his master for any wrong whatsoever, 
 his whole family shared his fate, and the regular form 
 of capital punishment for a slave was crucifixion under 
 the most ignominious and agonizing circumstances. 
 
 The institution of slavery reached its greatest devel- 
 opment in Rome in the last century of the republic, 
 when slave-traders and slave-markets nourished both in 
 the capital itself, and in all the great ports visited by 
 Roman ships. 
 
 Already, however, in the early days of the empire, 
 the spread of philosojDhic and humanitarian ideas had 
 softened the theory of human servitude, and modified 
 the slave's position. Marriage was made legal for him ; 
 he was empowered to testify in certain courts, and to 
 lodge complaint, if treated with outrageous cruelty. 
 Kind masters, like Pliny, respected the provisions of his 
 testament ; under Claudius, if his master abandoned him 
 when he was old or ill. he was thereby set free; under 
 Hadrian, the wanton slaughter of a slave by his master 
 was forbidden; under Constantino, this prime was made 
 
72 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 one of homicide ; and so finally, with the formal conver- 
 sion of the empire to Christianity, the long-declining 
 slave-system of Kome received its death-blow. 
 
 We have considered briefly the position and mutual 
 relations of the ordinary members of a Roman household, 
 or of what may be called the inner family circle ; but 
 there was a sense in which the Roman family might be 
 said to embrace an indefinitely larger number of persons 
 connected with it by ties more or less remote. To this 
 outer circle, or secondary order of members, belonged 
 the authorized guests of a house, its clients, and its 
 freedmen. 
 
 The term hospitium embraced not merely the sponta- 
 neous welcome to bed and board of a man's near kindred 
 and personal friends, but a contract for mutual hospi- 
 tality, written or otherwise attested, which might be 
 made either between two communities, or between two 
 individuals, on behalf of themselves and their depend- 
 ents, or between an individual and a community. The 
 practice was one of extreme antiquity in Italy, older 
 ertainly than the rise of the Roman people. The con- 
 tract was drawn up and presented by accredited messen- 
 gers, attested by a hand-shake or by a formula of words 
 called the sponsio, and accurately recorded, and it 
 remained binding upon the posterity of the contracting 
 parties until formally and publicly annulled. 
 
 Hospitium between two communities, that is, between 
 the inhabitants of certain towns or districts, was called 
 hospitium publicum. It was recorded by engraving on 
 copper or bronze tablets, 1 of which duplicate copies were 
 
 1 It seems altogether probable that a part at least of the famous 
 Eugubean tables — the bronze tablets exquisitely engraved in ar- 
 
GUESTS. 73 
 
 preserved in some temple, or other sacred place, in either 
 town. In Rome the depository of such tablets was the 
 Aedes fidei popull Romani. 
 
 They entitled the stranger to free board and lodging 
 for a certain period, to a physician's attendance in ill- 
 ness, to decent burial if he died. 
 
 Such contracts were in force between Roman and 
 Greek communities as well, and they involved no light 
 charge upon the latter in the days when foreign travel 
 had become a fashion among the Roman magnates. But 
 some — like Cicero when he went as proconsul to Cilicia 
 — preferred to remain independent, and would not avail 
 themselves of the privileges of a public guest. 
 
 Haspitia privata, or contracts for hospitality between 
 individuals, were also sometimes engraved and either 
 inserted in the wall of the atrium or suspended on it. 
 Usually, however, a simpler device was employed by 
 private persons. The guest presented a small" engraved 
 ticket {tessera), of which the host had a duplicate, and 
 was at once made welcome to the privileges of the house. 
 He was given a bath and a meal ; an offering was made 
 for him at the family altar ; he was assigned a bed, and 
 became thenceforth, for an indefinite period, a member 
 of the family. So far from fretting under this as an 
 imposition, the great Roman statesman was ambitious of 
 harboring as many such guests as possible, and it was a 
 matter of policy with him to look well after their com- 
 fort and interests on the ground that they increased his 
 own influence in the provinces and abroad. 
 
 chaic and hitherto only partially deciphered characters — discov- 
 ered under the ruins of an ante-Roman theatre, and now preserved 
 in the palazzo pubblico of Gubbio in the Marches, were records of 
 hospitia jonblica. dating from Etruscan or even Pelasgic times. 
 
74 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Originally, and so long as the state remained free, the 
 relation of client and patron was also a sufficiently hon- 
 orable one, resting like that of guest and host, on pledges 
 of mutual service. There was this difference, however, 
 between the position of a client and that of a legal guest, 
 that the latter was a free citizen in his own commu- 
 nity, while the former had usually no civic rights what- 
 ever. Either he was in banishment from his native 
 place, or he belonged to a tribe or city which had been 
 vanquished in war, and so disfranchised ; or he was a 
 freedman (llbertus) whose manumission gave him no 
 political status. In either case he needed the protection 
 of some powerful personage, and was only too glad, in 
 return for the same, to take the name of his patron, 
 engaging to fight his battles both at home and abroad, 
 and to assist him out of his own private means — if he 
 had such — when extraordinary payments, as of ransom 
 or dowry, were to be made, or the patron was in any way 
 pressed for money. Clients and patrons might neither 
 accuse nor testify against one another in the courts, and 
 the laws of the Twelve Tables made it a capital offence 
 for a patron to betray his client's interests. It was no 
 uncommon thing for the entire population of conquered 
 cities and states voluntarily to seek such a relation with 
 the general who had subdued them, and with his de- 
 scendants. Thus the Marcelli became the hereditary 
 patrons of the Skilian towns, the Fabii of the Allobro- 
 gian, Cato Uticensis of the island of Cyprus, and so on. 
 The freedman either continued to reside in his patron's 
 house and perform his old functions, or he was endowed 
 by the latter with a capital for starting in business, or 
 with some small frct-holr] property. In case of subse- 
 
CLIENTS. 75 
 
 qlient impoverishment, they were still bound to assist 
 one another. The patron always paid for the funeral of 
 his' freedinan. was his legal heir if he died childless, and 
 the ex officio guardian of his children if he left any 
 under age. 
 
 The relations of patron and libertus remained virtually 
 the same throughout the imperial period ; those of 
 patron and client, on the other hand, altered materially, 
 and, from a moral point of view, very much for the 
 worse. When the number and strength of a patron's 
 following had ceased to have any political significance, 
 and do longer increased his importance in the state, 
 it became largely a matter of senseless ostentation on 
 the one side, and of self-interested sycophancy on the 
 other. The hangers-on of a great man received their 
 maintenance, and this, in most instances, was all they 
 wanted. They were of every rank and condition, men 
 of letters from whom a certain tribute was expected in 
 the way of flattery, soldiers of fortune, and professional 
 legacy-hunters, scions of the great families, who had 
 early run through their patrimony, the idle of every 
 grade, with a tatterdemalion fringe of the congenitally 
 and hopelessly poor. A few favored individuals out of 
 this motley regiment might be invited to the patron's 
 own table, but all claimed as their right, and regularly 
 received, either one substantial meal in a day, or its 
 equivalent in money. Occasionally the mass of the 
 clients was regaled at a public feast (epidum publicum), 
 where the viands were supplied by a contractor (man- 
 ceps) at so much a head. This was called a cena recta, 
 and was, originally, at least an exceptional arrangement - , 
 for days of public celebration ; as when Julius Caesar, 
 
76 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 on the occasion of his triumph, in 56 B.C., entertained 
 the entire male population of Rome at 22,000 triclinia. 
 A more common custom was to appoint a place where 
 a species of dole was distributed to all the clientele. 
 This practice was called epulum dtvidere, and the dole 
 itself sportula from the basket in which the food was 
 taken away ; the same name being applied in imperial 
 times to the small money-payment, which had now uni- 
 versally replaced the alms in kind. The average amount 
 of this daily allowance, under the earlier emperors, was 
 twenty-live asses, or about thirty-three cents of our 
 money. On special occasions, like the patron's birth- 
 day, a larger sum was given. Martial 1 mentions one 
 such where it was trebled, but adds contemptuously that 
 it was doubtful whether the man had a right to any 
 birthday at all. On the other hand if the great man 
 were ill and could not receive his clients, there appears 
 to have been no distribution; but even so, a client who 
 managed to make a number of successive salutations, 
 and to keep well with several patrons, as many did, 
 might secure, without further exertion, a modest main- 
 tenance for a rising family. 
 
 1 Mar. Epig. x. 27. 
 
FOOD AND CLOTHING. 77 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FOOD AND CLOTHING. 
 
 Bread, wine, and oil, — on these three abundant and 
 beautiful products of the Italian peninsula the mass of 
 its inhabitants lived and throve in ancient times as they 
 do to-day. Wheat was the grain most grown by the 
 Romans, and wheaten porridge or bread their staple 
 food. In very ancient times the grain of wheat was not 
 even ground, but merely pounded in a mortar, mixed 
 with water, and cooked to the consistency of a thick pulp, 
 called puis. The slaves who pounded the grain were 
 pistoreSj or pinsitores. Even after the superiority of 
 baked bread had been discovered, the baking continued 
 for a long time to be done at home, and was regarded as 
 the special business of the house-mother, or of the chief 
 cook, according to the rank and means of the family. 
 The first public bakery of Rome was established in 
 171 B.c, after which time home-made bread went gradu- 
 ally out of use in cities, though it had still to be pre- 
 pared 011 rural estates by slaves appointed for the 
 purpose. Later it became one of the recognized func- 
 tions of the general government (it had long been held 
 such in times of scarcity) to regulate, year by year, the 
 food supply of the nation; and to see that the mass of 
 the people was provided with cheap and wholesome 
 
78 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 bread. The bread-makers of Kome were now organized 
 into a college or guild, under the presidency of the 
 Praefectus Annonae, and vast establishments, comprising 
 both mills and bakeries, were built and let out to them 
 by the State. 
 
 The members of this guild enjoyed special privileges 
 and immunities, which were extended, after the general 
 decline of agriculture, when grain had to be imported in 
 vast quantities, to the ship-owner and seamen (naviaddrii 
 and caudicarii) , on whose enterprise the supply of bread- 
 stuffs largely depended. Trajan, we are told, 1 gave the 
 ius suffragii to every man who had worked for three 
 years a pistrinum (grain-mill) in which at least one 
 hundred moclii of corn had been ground daily. But it 
 must always be remembered that even under that excel- 
 lent emperor the suffrage did not mean what it had done 
 when the state was free. 
 
 As early as the times of the Gracchi (130 b.c.) there 
 had been a monthly distribution of grain among the 
 people. Four hundred years later, under the Emperor 
 Aurelian, there had come to be a daily distribution of 
 baked bread, either gratuitous or at a nominal price, with 
 which, and the perpetual exhibition of games in the 
 Circus ("pti7ie7)i et Circenses"), the Roman burgher of 
 those degenerate days found his absolute needs both of 
 body and mind satisfied without further exertion upon 
 his own part. 
 
 Different qualities of bread were provided even at the 
 great public bakeries. The best was the panis siUgineus, 
 made from siligo, or wheat flour of the very first quality ; 
 the simila or similago was also a fine white flour, only a 
 
 i Gaii. Inst. 1. 34. 
 
FOOD. 79 
 
 little inferior to the first. Coarser varieties of bread, — 
 the panis cibarius, plebeius, rusticus, as also the panis ca- 
 
 strensis, or bread of the common soldier, — were made by 
 mixing flour of the second quality with bran, or wholly 
 of bran, or sometimes of inferior grains like millet. 
 
 Besides the great public magazines of bread, there 
 were many small cake-shops, where cakes, pastry, and 
 confectionery, and, in general, all the dainties which are 
 summed up by the modern Italian under the comprehen- 
 sive term dolci (sweets) were made and sold. But these 
 establishments were conducted by private enterprise, and 
 their keepers were clulciarii placentdrii, libarii, crustidarii, 
 as the case might be. 'These were the shops which we 
 have already seen besieged by the school-boys in the 
 early morning hours ; but the choice of the young stu- 
 dents was probably limited, and they had to content 
 themselves for the most 
 part, no doubt, with the 
 harmless quadra panis, a 
 plain, round cake quar- 
 tered off by two lines like 
 a hot-cross bun, of which D . , B . . . 
 
 Panis (Rich). 
 
 plenty of illustrations 
 
 exist, and of which specimens were found at Pompeii. 
 
 The grain-mills of the ancients were of three kinds, 
 the molae manudriae, or hand-mills, the molae asindriae, 
 turned hj asses or mules, and the molae aquariae, or 
 water-mills. The first two were identical in principle, 
 and differed only in size. They consisted of two parts, 
 the meta, or nether, and the catillus, or upper mill-stone ; 
 but their construction was very unlike that of the mills 
 of modern times. The meta was a solid cone of stone 
 
80 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Moia(Rich). 
 
 resting upon a firm base with an iron rod projecting a 
 little way from its apex. The catillus consisted of two 
 hollow stones, united in the form of an hour-glass. 
 The lower half fitted over the cone of the meta like 
 an inverted cup. It had a socket at the narrowest part, 
 
 which received the rod 
 aforesaid, and was made 
 to revolve upon it by 
 means of a projecting 
 handle or lever. The 
 grain was poured into the 
 upper cup, and falling be- 
 tween the lower and the 
 solid cone through holes 
 bored for the purpose, it 
 was ground by the revolution of the catillus. If the 
 mill were large and worked by horse-power, there was 
 only one lever, to which the animal, whose eyes had 
 first been bandaged to prevent its becoming dizzy, was 
 harnessed. The smaller hand-mills had a lever project- 
 ing on either side, and were worked by two slaves. 
 Water-mills did not come into general use in Rome 
 before the fourth century of our era, when there was a 
 group of such at the foot of the Janiculan hill. The 
 actual machinery for grinding was still substantially the 
 same as that already described, but the power was now 
 supplied by streams of water falling from an artificial 
 reservoir at the top of the hill upon a large water-wheel 
 (rota aquaria) with float-boards, and having attached to 
 its axis a pair of cog-wheels {tympana dentata) whose 
 motion turned the catillus. It was that able and resource- 
 ful general, Belisarius, who, during the siege of Rome by 
 
FOOD. 81 
 
 the Goths in 536, devised a system of floating corn-mills, 
 whose wheels were turned by the current of the Tiber 
 somewhat like those which may be seen in such num- 
 bers upon the Danube to-day between Vienna and Buda- 
 Pesth. 
 
 Bacon and the sweet, nutty oil of the country were 
 used to impart a relish to porridge and coarse bread, and 
 the ordinary drink of the peasant was milk or must, the 
 unfermented juice of the grape. Moreover, even the 
 comparatively poor man had access to an almost infinite 
 variety of vegetables, — beans, peas, lentils, cabbages, 
 beets, turnips, radishes, carrots, asparagus, artichokes, 
 chiccory, onions, leeks, garlic and parsley, melons and 
 cucumbers. Lettuce, mallow, cress, and many other 
 plants were largely cultivated for salads ; and for sea- 
 soning, mustard, anise, fennel, .mint, and so on. 
 
 Beans and onions were the vegetables most extensively 
 raised in ancient times, the name of the Fabian gens and 
 the cognomen Csepio being derived from these crops. 
 Beans, however, — forbidden altogether by Pythagoras 
 to his disciples, — were considered too heavy food for 
 any but smiths, gladiators, and farm hands ; and though 
 Varro maintains that the men of old were at their raciest 
 when their talk smelt of onions and garlic, the taste for 
 these fierce condiments declined fast with the progress 
 of refinement ; insomuch that Horace devotes an entire 
 epode (the third) to his execration of the latter, and 
 iSTsevius reproaches the gods for not having confounded 
 the gardener who first grew an onion. The finest of all 
 vegetables' to the elder Cato was cabbage, which seems 
 quite consistent with what we know of his character. 
 
 The natural fruits of Italy, apples, pears, plums. 
 
82 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 quinces, olives, and grapes, were carefully cultivated 
 from very early times, and Lucretius, Varro, and Virgil 
 agree in describing the land as literally covered with 
 vineyards and orchards: "tota pomarium" says Varro. 
 These common fruits were cheap enough in their due sea- 
 son, and found a place upon almost every table ; but as 
 luxury increased, there came to be great emulation on the 
 part of the horticulturists in the forcing of early fruit, 
 in the production of new varieties, which were often, 
 then as now, called after distinguished men, as the Ma- 
 tian apple for Gaius Matius, and the Appian from an 
 Appius Claudius; and lastly in the introduction and 
 naturalization of foreign fruits, as the pomegranate (gra- 
 natum) from Carthage, the fig and almond (ficus, amyg- 
 dala) from Greece, the peach (malum Persicum) from 
 Persia, the apricot (malum Armeniacum) from Armenia, 
 the pistaccio nut (pistachium) , unknown before the time 
 of Tiberius, and many others. 
 
 Dried figs, dates, and damson-plums were largely im- 
 ported, and both the native and the naturalized fruits of 
 Italy were introduced by Roman colonists into far dis- 
 tant provinces, as the cherry (cerasum) into Britain and 
 the pistachio (pistachium) into Spain. 
 
 The diet of the early Roman, though never exclusively 
 vegetarian, appears to have been about as largely so as 
 that of the Italian peasant of to-day. The slaughter of 
 neat cattle for food was long regarded as a crime ; mutton, 
 pork, and goat's flesh were the meats most in use. As 
 time went on and taste became more sophisticated, the 
 craving for animal food increased, and accomplished 
 cooks like him in the Pseudolus of Plautus came to regard 
 vegetables as merely accessories to it, and fitter upon the 
 whole for the nourishment of animals than men. 
 
FOOD. 83 
 
 The taste for game also developed rapidly, until the 
 sportsman's hag no longer sufficed for its gratification, 
 but all great country-seats in the last years of the repub- 
 lic had their vivaria, or preserves. The kinds of wild 
 flesh most esteemed were hare (lejrus), wild-goat {caper), 
 though this was condemned by Galen as unwholesome, 
 the wild boar {a per), which was roasted whole and so 
 served at sumptuous tables, and even the wild ass (ona- 
 ger), and a certain species of dormouse (glis). 
 
 Over and above the ordinary kinds of domestic fowl, 
 feathered game was also in great request, such as the 
 lagopus or white grouse, the scoldpax or snipe, the attagen 
 Ionicas or woodcock, which was considered a marvellous 
 delicacy, besides thrushes (turdi), partridges (jierdlces), 
 ortolans (miliarias), pheasants (phasianl), cranes (grues), 
 and pavdnes, or peacocks. These last indeed seem to 
 have been regarded in the year 46 b.c. as the ne plus ultra 
 of table luxury in this line, for it was then that Cicero 
 wrote to his old friend Papirius Psetus, concerning the 
 banquets to which he was perpetually bidden by certain 
 young men of fashion, "whom he taught to declaim, 
 while they taught him to dine," 1 that he had " eaten 
 more peacocks " 2 that winter than Paetus had " ever 
 eaten pigeons." And a little later he tells how he en- 
 deavored to pay off his obligations by a handsome dinner 
 to the same set of youths. " However," he adds, " I did 
 not attempt to have peacock." 3 
 
 For fish there seems to have been no demand whatever in 
 early Roman times, although the taste for it subsequently 
 grew, as artificial tastes are wont to do, into a passion ; 
 
 1 Cic. Ad Fain. ix. 16. 2 cic. Ad Fam. ix. 18. 
 
 3 Cic. Ad Fam. ix. 20. 
 
 
84 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 so that the word obsonium, originally applied to any 
 kind of cooked food except bread, came to signify fish 
 exclusively. Already, in the elder Cato's time, fish was 
 dearer than beef ; unheard-of sums were paid to import 
 alive the fish of other countries, and fish-tanks and fish- 
 ponds (piscinae) for the cultivation of choice varieties 
 became one of the favorite extravagancies of the wealthy. 
 Among the most prized of the native species were the 
 acipenser, a kind of sturgeon; the asp/Jus, which seems to 
 have resembled our cod ; lupus, a species of pike, so 
 named from its voracity, but of which those only were 
 approved by epicures which were taken in the Tiber, — 
 inter duos pontes — that is, in the neighborhood of the 
 island; the mull us, or mullet, especially the bearded 
 mullet, which, though seldom weighing more than two 
 Roman pounds, often fetched an enormous price ; the 
 rhombus, a kind of turbot; and later, the river-fish of 
 North Italy, of the Danube, the Rhine, and the Moselle. 
 There was, moreover, a vast importation of different 
 kinds of salted and pickled fish from various Mediter- 
 ranean ports, those which came from Spain, Sardinia, 
 and Pontus being most esteemed. The common name 
 for all these preparations was tarichos, a word borrowed 
 from the Greek, and under this head were comprised 
 many different sorts and grades. There was tarichos 
 made from fat fishes and tarichos made from lean ; there 
 was a delicate variety made entirely from the young fry 
 taken in the spring, and a coarser but still highly appe- 
 tizing kind made from the large slices (Meldndrya) cut 
 from the back of the thunnus, or tunny-fish; first salted 
 and dried in the sun, then cooked in sea-water or oil, and 
 eaten with vinegar and mustard, by way of gustatdriiun. 
 at the beginning of a meal. 
 
FOOD. 85 
 
 Salted fish was of course a cheaper food than fresh. 
 and there was a certain savory dish, the tyrotarichus, 
 made of some kind of tarichos, eggs and cheese, or spices, 
 which was the subject of endless jests between Cicero 
 and his friends, as a kind of symbol of resolute frugality. 
 
 Oysters (ostreae) were considered as great a delicacy 
 in Roman times as now. Imported in the first instance 
 from the East, and especially from Abydos, they came 
 to be extensively cultivated in the neighborhood of 
 Naples, especially in the Avernine and Lucrine lakes, 
 and subsequently in the remotest parts of the western 
 provinces. In the time of Ausonius, the oysters of Bur- 
 digala (Bordeaux) in Gaul were particularly relished. 
 An important industry also grew up out of the manufact- 
 ure, in seaport towns, of three kinds of fish-sauce, garum, 
 muria, and allex, which greatly tickled the sophisticated 
 Roman palate. Garum was made chiefly from sturgeon 
 or mackerel; muria from tunny. Their preparation is 
 not perfectly understood, but in both cases the fish 
 appears to have been slightly cooked in sea-water, and 
 allowed to ferment for several months. The resultant 
 mixture was then strained, and the clear liquor, which 
 was very costly, constituted garum or muria, the resid- 
 uum allex. The word muria was also used for any brine, 
 and there was a cheap sort of allex, home-made from 
 ordinary fish, which was given to slaves as a relish with 
 their porridge. 
 
 Sugar and butter were unknown among the Romans, 
 their place being supplied by honey and oil. 
 
 A few words only need be given in this place to the 
 comprehensive subjects of oil and wine ; since the mode 
 of manufacturing, from the olive and the grape, these 
 
86 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 important articles, or at least accessories of a Roman 
 diet, will be fully described in the chapter on Agriculture. 
 The cultivation of the olive for .oil was as old in Italy as 
 the time of the Tarquins. It spread thence to Gaul and 
 to Spain ; but the Italian oils were always considered 
 the best in the world, and they were profitably exported 
 in ancient times, as they are to-day. The vine was native 
 all over the peninsula, and always esteemed a pecul- 
 iarly sacred product of the soil. It was under the direct 
 patronage of Jove, in whose honor were celebrated, on 
 the twenty-third of April and the twentieth of August, 
 the feasts of the Vindlia Urbana and the Vinalia Rustica ; 
 and the vintage was opened by the Jldmen didlis with a 
 religious ceremony. These pious, old-fashioned customs, 
 however, had reference merely to the production of the 
 ordinary sour wines of the country, like Horace's vile 
 Sabinum, or that acrid wine of the Alban Mount, which 
 excited the merriment of Cineas, the ambassador of Pyr- 
 rhus. 1 The careful and expensive culture of the vine for 
 the production of choice local varieties did not begin in 
 Italy until after that of cereals had notably declined. 
 
 The elder Pliny tells us in his Natural History, 2 that 
 at the time of his writing, which was probably about 50 
 a.d., there were some eighty varieties of good wine in 
 the Roman market, of which number nearly two-thirds 
 were grown in Italy. Excellent kinds were raised, on 
 all the southern slopes of the Alban hills, at Velitrse, 
 at Prseneste, and notably at Pormiae upon the coast. 
 Among the Sabine wines, the once renowned Caecuban, 
 which Augustus considered the noblest wine on earth, 
 and which chiefly came from the neighborhood of Terra- 
 
 1 Plin. Nat. Hist, xiv. 8. 2 Plin. Nat. Hist. xiv. 11. 
 
FOOD. 87 
 
 oina, was no longer grown in Pliny's time, and its name 
 had become a kind of general expression for any particu- 
 larly excellent vintage. The yet more famous Falernian 
 in all its varieties, brown and pale, sweet and dry, had 
 also lost something of its prestige, owing to the fact 
 that it was unscrupulously adulterated. But the prod- 
 uct of the Mons Massicus, so often and melodiously 
 praised both by Horace and Virgil, still held its pre- 
 eminent place among the wines of the South, and fine 
 varieties were grown upon Vesuvius, in all the environs 
 of Naples and Pompeii, at Cumae, and at Sorrento. The 
 wine of the latter place was much recommended by physi- 
 cians, but it took twenty-five years to ripen, and Tiberius 
 called it " a noble vinegar." There was a brisk demand 
 for certain Sicilian wines, especially those of Messala, 
 Taormina, and Syracuse, and also for those of Central and 
 Eastern Italy, from the vineyards about Spoleto, Ancona, 
 and Cesena, near Ravenna, where, indeed, wine was not 
 merely more wholesome, but cheaper than water. From 
 Aquileia in the North came the Vinum Puclnum, to the 
 use of which Livia ascribed her eighty-two years of ex- 
 ceptional health, and the excellent wine of Istria. The 
 Tuscan wines, as a whole, were considered inferior ; the 
 best was that which came from the higher levels of 
 the Mediterranean coast, near the white marble city of 
 Luna. The Rhsetic wine of Verona was particularly 
 esteemed among those of Cisalpine Gaul. 
 
 Wines of Spain, Provence, the Mediterranean islands, 
 Greece, and Asia Minor 5 were always to be found in the 
 Roman market, but those of the East were always pre- 
 pared for transportation by a treatment with sea-water 
 and resin. Wines which ripened slowly, as those of the 
 
88 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 ' 
 
 far South almost always do, were often taken when un 
 fermented, and either cooked or exposed to the sun o 
 the action of smoke ; and there were Gallic wines, which: 
 like the Scotch whiskey of to-day, always retained a 
 peculiar flavor due to the latter process. 
 
 Among the cheaper fermented drinks relished by the 
 Romans were cider, perry, date and mulberry wines. 
 
 Mention has already been made of the beverage called 
 mulsum. which was compounded principally of wine and 
 honey, and sipped at the beginning of a meal ; but other 
 condiments were added to this mixture in almost infinite 
 variety ; a species of mulse flavored with pepper, and 
 hence called pipperatum, was a special favorite, while 
 more than fifty kinds of distilled liqueurs were manu- 
 factured from the juices of different aromatic plants. 
 
 The first thing to be noted about the dress of the Romans 
 
 is that its prevalent material was always woollen. Sheep- 
 raising for wool was practised among them on an ex- 
 tensive scale, from the earliest historic times, and the 
 choice breeds of that animal, originally imported fi 
 "V Greece or Asia Minor, took so kindly to the soil ; 
 climate of Italy that home-grown wool came even to 
 preferred to the foreign for fineness and softness 
 quality. Foreign wools were, however, always impoi 
 more or less, partly because the supply of native wt 
 seems never to have been quite sufficient, partly beca< 
 the natural colors of wools from different parts vai 
 so considerably as to render the art of the flyer to s< 
 extent unnecessary. Thus, the wools of Canusium (C 
 ossa) were brown or reddish, those of Pollentia 
 
CLOTHING. 89 
 
 ( Liguria were black, those from the Spanish Baetica, 
 y which comprised Andalusia and a part of Granada, had 
 either a golden-brown or a grayish hue ; the wools of 
 Asia were almost all red ; and there was a Grecian 
 fleece, called the crow-colored, of which the natural tint 
 was a peculiarly deep and brilliant black. 
 -£ Goats' wool was rarely used for articles of clothing. 
 Peasants, and especially shepherds, wrapped themsel^s 
 in goat-skins, as they still do ; but only the wool of the 
 long-haired foreign varieties from Spain, Africa, and 
 Asia Minor l was regularly woven into" rough and heavy 
 cloths, which were used for tent-coverings, for bagging 
 in cbmmorce, for blankets and warm oversjioes, and to 
 protect the outer walls of houses in stormy weather 
 against the wind and rain. Ropes and cables were also 
 made of goats' hair. 
 
 Linen cloth made from the fibre of flax was undoubt- 
 edly an Egyptian invention ; but the cultivation of the 
 > plant was ancient all over Italy, as well as the weaving 
 of home-spun linen fabrics, for the undergarments both 
 of men and women, and the belts and girdles of the lat- 
 ter, for the bandages needed in medical practice, and 
 the awnings- {vela) which were used as a protection 
 from tlie sun. Linen threads were also made, and cords 
 for hunting and fishing-nets. The finer grades of woven 
 linen required in later and more luxurious times for 
 handkerchiefs, table-cloths, napkins, and bedding, and, 
 finally for entire suits of garments, were always manu- 
 factured abroad, especially at Damascus, Laodicea, Tar- 
 sus, and Alexandria ; and the later Emperors had private 
 
 1 Thr hair-shirt of later times, cil <%um, got its name from the 
 Cilician goat. 
 
90 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 linen factories both in the East and at Vienna (Vienne 
 in France), where imperial slaves were kept at work to 
 supply the requirements of the court. 
 
 Cotton and cotton fabrics came always from the far 
 East. Introduced into Greece by the returning soldiers 
 of Alexander the Great, late in the fourth century B.C., 
 they were certainly known in Rome not much more than 
 a hundred years afterwards, for we find the word 
 ccwbasina applied to a stuff by the comic poet Csecilius 
 Statins in 191 b.c. ; now carbasus was the technical 
 word for Indian muslin, and it is identical with the 
 Sanscrit name (Jcarpdst) of the cotton-plant. The term 
 was no doubt often loosely employed by Roman writers 
 for linen as well as cotton fabrics ; but the latter had the 
 great advantage for the ancients of receiving more read- 
 ily the blue and purple dyes which they specially affected, 
 and they came on this account to be even preferred by 
 many for purposes of personal adornment. 
 
 Silk (sericum), too, was an article of Eastern luxury, 
 and hardly known in Rome before the end of the repub- 
 lic. The Roman soldiers had indeed seen in 54 b.c. the 
 fluttering of silken banners wrought with gold, and borne 
 before the advancing Parthians ; but not until the time 
 of Augustus do we find frequent mention of silken gar- 
 ments, of which three varieties are distinguished, — the 
 vestes Coae, the vestes bombycinae, and the vestes sericae. 
 The Coan robes were extremely costly, transparently 
 fine and thin in texture, purple in color, and usually em- 
 broidered with gold. They came from the cocoon of the 
 Chinese worm, and derived their name from, the JEgean 
 island, where the silken yarn was spun, dyed, a. id woven. 
 The vestes bombycinae came chiefly from ^«^ ; where 
 
CLOTHING. 91 
 
 the native silk was yellowish in color, not silvery white 
 like the Chinese. Vestis serica was a more general term, 
 referring doubtless to the Chinese product, 1 which, how- 
 ever, was more often imported raw or in loose fabrics, 
 which were subsequently unravelled and mixed with 
 linen or wool, then rewoven into light and supple stuffs 
 for the so-called vestes subsericae. By the fourth century 
 of our era these mixed fabrics had come into rather 
 general use ; but vestes holosericae, or garments of pure 
 silk, were still regarded as a great extravagance, used 
 only by very luxurious persons, on state occasions, or for 
 sumptuous gifts. It was the Emperor Justinian who in 
 - 552 imported the first silk-worms into Byzantium, whence 
 their culture spread slowly into Western Europe, although 
 only one out of the dozen or more varieties native in 
 China and Japan, the bombyx mori, or mulberry silk- 
 worm, ever became thoroughly naturalized and profitable 
 there. 
 
 The spinning and weaving of early times was, for the 
 most part, done at home, and was the special business of 
 the mistress of the house, and the maids whom she 
 directed. The spinner held the distaff (coins), wrapped 
 about with carded wool, in her left hand, under her left 
 arm, or fastened in her waist-band, while with the right 
 hand she drew out the fibres, fastened them to a hook 
 at th'3 top of the spindle (fusus), and, twirling them 
 slightly between the thumb and forefinger, imparted to 
 
 lr The word Seres meant first silk-merchants, but came afterward 
 to be applied to all Chinamen. So that when Virgil speaks (Georg. 
 II. 121) of the Seres who gather off the trees the soft, fleecy threads 
 which the native worms have left hanging there, he may have used 
 either a commercial or a geographical expression. 
 
 
92 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 V 
 
 Colus (Rich). 
 
 the hanging spindle a rotary motion, which continued 
 of itself to twist the lengthening thread. As soon as 
 
 the spindle touched the 
 floor, it was lifted, the 
 thread already spun was 
 wound around it, and the 
 process repeated. When 
 the spindle was quite full, 
 the thread was removed 
 and laid in the calathus, 
 or spinning-basket. 
 
 The most primitive looms 
 of all were vertical, and the 
 weaver worked standing. 
 They were very simple in construction, consisting of 
 two parallel bars, to which the threads of the warp were 
 attached, above and below, while the shuttle containing 
 the thread of the woof was passed in and out between 
 them, and back and forth. In such a loom the web 
 might be woven either upwards or downwards. The 
 term sursum versum, regularly applied to the tunicae 
 rectae, which young people of both sexes assumed at 
 maturity, is thought to indicate that they were woven 
 from the bottom up. Later on, horizontal looms were 
 introduced, at which the weaver sat. They were iden- 
 tical in principle with the hand-looms of every age and 
 country, and substantially the same in arrangement; 
 and there is scarce a mountain village in Italy to-day 
 where a contadina may not be seen tending a fac-simile 
 of the old Roman machine. 
 
 All woollen cloths, ant., most of all, the home-mr ""e 
 fabrics of the early republican period, had to be finish. 
 
CLOTHING. 93 
 
 by the fuller (fullo) before they were fit for use. They 
 were soaked in pits (lacunae) constructed for the pur- 
 pose, treated with chalk and other alkalis, dried, washed, 
 and dried again; beaten and carded until the separate 
 threads were no longer visible ; finally, brushed, shorn, 
 and pressed. 
 
 s The fullers were early organized into a guild (colle- 
 gium), with Minerva for their patroness, and an annual 
 feast upon the fifteenth of March; and their art was 
 applied not only to the preparation of new cloths, but to 
 the cleansing and restoration of old garments. A toga 
 mad3 of new cloth, with a full nap, was called a pexa 
 vestis; after it had begun to be threadbare it was said to 
 be tnta or dejloccata; when it had been whitened and 
 restored by the fuller, it was a toga interpolata. 
 
 Taie time soon came, of course, when homespun goods 
 no longer sufficed for the clothing of Rome, and then 
 large factories (officinae) had to be established for the 
 weaving both of woollen and linen cloths. Meanwhile 
 it is certain that, with one very important exception, the 
 art of the tinctor, or dyer, was seldom employed upon 
 the <>ld-fashioned home-made fabrics. The natural tints, 
 already noted, of sundry foreign wools, furnished all the 
 variety of color demanded by the taste of a primitive 
 time, especially after it became customary to import 
 colored flocks, which were kept strictly separate from 
 the white home-breeds. 
 
 Tb ; one exception refers, of course, to that historic 
 pui>e, which was so highly prized as a mark of social 
 and official rank; whose use at Rome the elder Pliny 
 believes 1 to have been coeval with the city itself, and 
 
 1 °lin. Nat. Hist, ix. 39. 
 
94 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 borrowed by her early kings from the conquered so ver- 
 eigns of Etruria. This famous dye, in all its infinitely 
 varying shades, was obtained from two kinds of shell- 
 fish, common in almost every part of the Mediterranean 
 Sea, — the trumpet shell (bucinum or murex) a~ /; ^^ true 
 purple-shell 1 (purpura ok pelagic). 
 
 The juice of the first was crimson, that of ulv eecoiiu 
 nearly black. It was collected, mixed with salt, and 
 heated in metal vessels by the introduction of warm 
 vapor. The color of the bucihum was brilliant, but not 
 lasting. By mixing with the darker purpura jt became 
 fixed, and those violet or amethystine tints were produced 
 which appear to have been preferred for the cldvus 
 and the striped borders of white garments. The "true 
 Tyrian purple, first introduced into Rome about the 
 die of the last century B.C., was produced by a dq 
 process of dyeing, first in half -boiled purpura, and then in 
 bucinum. A fabric thus dyed appeared nearly 1 
 shadow, but the high, lights upon its folds were 
 glowing red. 
 
 A pound of amethyst or v. ; olet wool in Caesar's 
 was worth about $20; a pound of real Tyrian, more I 
 ten times as much. At a later period, the blatta^ ba ^e 
 into use for both grades of purple, and paler shades ti. n 
 those of the original dye, as. well as a whole ran?e 'f 
 blues, were produced by mixr] vith different animal 
 
 and vegetable substances. (J ear • scarlet was obt-vlu 
 from the coccus llicis, a spec^ > cochineal, and from 
 the red fucus, or rock-lichen. The triibea, or robe. worn 
 by augurs, and on certain occasions by equites (knights,, 
 
 1 The latter is the buccinium lapUlis, the fprmer the mure: bran- 
 
 daris of modern conchology. 
 
CLOTHING. 
 
 95 
 
 Paludamentum 
 (Rich). 
 
 
 was of striped scarlet and purple. The paludamentum, 
   y. or short military cloak worn by a Roman general 
 over his armor, was of a reddish purple, but robes 
 made entirely of blatta, or fine pure purple, 
 were considered strictly appropriate only 
 ' / for triumphatores, who also had them richly 
 ( embroidered, and later for imperial per- 
 sonages. That their use was constantly 
 affected by others is, however, evinced by 
 the prohibitive decrees of different em- 
 perors, as well as by a very curious pas- 
 sage- in Ovid 1 in which he gives it as his 
 opinion that costly robes of pure purple 
 are unbecoming to a woman. He advises 
 instead pale sky-blue or rose pink, a very 
 faint amethyst, or sea-green. Otherwise the deep tint of 
 the Paphian myrtle, the soft gray of a crane's plumage, 
 the brown of acorns or of almond-shells. All this proves 
 very good taste on the poet's part, and that the superi- 
 ority in costume of half-tints over pure colors was already 
 acknowledged by the truly aesthetic. 
 
 We come now to the form of garments both masculine 
 and feminine. From the earliest historic period the 
 V Romans appear to have worn at least two articles of 
 clothing, — a tunic and a toga. Some wore instead of the 
 '■ '<■ m uuder-garment called the subUyuoilum. which 
 tyas 1 M Ie< x m<)re than such a bandage as the gymnasts 
 wore when exercising, and which was preferably, if not 
 alwaj si made of linen. The tunic was necessary indoors, 
 however, where it was considered bad .manners not to 
 lay t] iside. The tunic v*as a species of woollen 
 
 i (>v A-- Ajn iii. 109-188. 
 
 
96 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 / 
 shirt, made with front and back pieces, which were sewn 
 
 together on the shoulders and under the arms. Either 
 it had no sleeves, or the sleeves were short, not reaching 
 
 below the elbow. Long-sleeved tunics 
 (tunicae manicatae or manuledtae) were 
 considered the height of effeminacy, and 
 never came into general use before the 
 third or fourth century of our era. The 
 tunics of the common people were belted 
 in above the hips, and did not hang 
 below the knee. Those who were en- 
 titled to the cldvus latus, or broad purple 
 ^stripe down the front, which was always 
 Tunica (Rich). so arranged as to hang outside the girdle, 
 wore them somewhat longer; soldiers and 
 travellers, even shorter. In the time of Plautus it had 
 become customary to wear also an undershirt or tunic, 
 called the tunica interior or subucula, which was also 
 regularly made of wool, never of linen, until late im- 
 perial times. 
 
 We have already seen how the toga was first put on 
 at the age of maturity, with public and impressive cere- 
 monies. It remains to say a few words concerning the 
 shape and arrangement of this celebrated garment. It 
 ■•was of white woollen cloth, which in the case of carnle 
 magistrates had narrow purple stripes inwoven tot 
 border. It appears to have come from the loom '■■■ &i< 
 'oblong form, and afterwards to have been rounded 
 corners into that of an ellipse. Its length must btf three 
 times the wearer's height measured downwards frcm the 
 shoulder. Its breadth varied greatly with time, ftishion, 
 and the quality of the cloth. The toga of t -ie early 
 
CLOTHING. 
 
 97 
 
 period was comparatively narrow, and the rough, coarse 
 fabric of which it was made permitted no artistic ar- 
 rangement. In those days the toga was the garment 
 of Avar as well as of peace, and when worn in the field 
 it had no loosely hanging ends, but was bound tightly 
 around the body in what was called the ductus Gabinus. 
 Later, after the introduction of the s agum^ or short 
 square military cloak, fastened upon the shoulder with 
 a, fibula, or brooch, the toga became the 
 distinctive garb of peace, and gave scope 
 for enormous vanity, both in its texture 
 and in the mode of wearing it. It was 
 made of ever finer and finer cloth, the 
 supple folds of which were assiduously 
 studied and arranged. The broader the 
 cloth, it was observed, the more graceful 
 the effect which could be given these 
 folds, hence the fashionable toga in- 
 creased in width, until it became nearly 
 circular, and Horace jeers 1 at the f reed- 
 man who paraded the Sacred Way in a 
 toga four yards (bis trium ulnarum) wide, to the scandal 
 of the passers-by. «" 
 
 This elliptical garment was first folded, not exactly on 
 its longest axis, but so as to leave the edges a little way 
 apart One end of the folded cloth was now flung over 
 tlm h ft shoulder from behind so as to fall to the feet in 
 front. The remaining two-thirds of its length were then 
 brought around under the right arm, and the folded cloth 
 so spread as to cover the right side from the armpit to 
 the calf of the leg. It was then gathered and carried up 
 
 1 Hor. Epod. iv. 7, 8. 
 
 Cinctus Gabinus 
 (Rich). 
 
98 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 across the breast, to be thrown backward over the left 
 shoulder. The diagonal breast-folds constituted the 
 sinus, which often served the purposes of a pocket. The 
 portion of the toga first thrown over* the left shoulder, 
 and lying beneath the sinus, was in later times pulled 
 up so as to hang a little way over it in what was called 
 the nodus, or umbo. This precaution was supposed to 
 give firmness to the whole arrangement ; but the toga 
 must always, one would think, have been fastened to the 
 tunic, at least upon the shoulder, else it is impossible to 
 conceive how the wearer could have had any freedom 
 either of locomotion or gesticulation. There seems some 
 reason to believe that the toga of imperial times was cut 
 out in the form of a semi-ellipse, and partially fitted to 
 the person, while a portion was pressed into fine folds 
 by the fuller before wearing. At the opening of the 
 temple of Janus at the Ambarvalia, or ceremony of 
 blessing the fields for a good harvest (which was ob- 
 served on May 27th, and is still observed in most Latin 
 countries), and upon certain other solemn public occa- 
 sions, the Gabinian or girded toga was regularly worn. 
 
 Candidates for office derived their name from the cus- 
 tom which required them to appear in a toga Candida, or 
 pure white toga, either quite new or freshly treat a ith 
 chalk. The mourning toga was originally black later 
 "" the darkest blue was also worn. 
 
 The working-classes used, for defence again; t the 
 
 * weather, an outer cloak called paenula, made of thick, 
 
 • hairy, dark-colored frieze, or even oTle.VJier. It had no 
 sleeves, but was usually provided with a hood (cucuUks), 
 and hooked or buttoned clos ,ly all- down the front. The 
 obvious ponvpnipnpp ami snij ^ OQe of this garment caused 
 
CLOTHING. 99 
 
 it eventually to be adopted as a travelling wrap by men, 
 and even women, of all ranks, and the host's first duty to 
 a guest was to unfasten his paenula. 1 
 
 The birrus or burrus was another outside garment of 
 similar cut, made usually of rough, red cloth. The 
 lacerna was of lighter and more elegant material, and 
 worn outside the toga, less for use than for show. Even- 
 ing-dress, as we understand it, was represented by the 
 vestis cenatoria, which appears to have been an exceed- 
 ingly light and airy mantle, presumably of rich material, 
 and almost always gaily colored, — green, blue, crimson, 
 and variegated. It was easily thrown on and off and 
 sometimes changed several times in the course of one 
 ceremonious dinner. 
 
 The primitive Roman, like the barbarian everywhere, 
 was long-haired and long-bearded. The razor and the 
 shears — novacula and forfex — are indeed mentioned 
 early, the former in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus ; 
 but Ave are expressly told by the elder Pliny, 2 that Scipio 
 -ciiritianus was the first Roman who ever shaved daily, 
 rvnile the beard of Augustus was always cut. The first 
 hair cut from the head of a child, and a""youth's first 
 Vaiti, were consecrated to the gods; but the coins of 
 th late republican period show plainly that young men 
 usr ■• r ly wore a beard, though carefully trimmed and 
 dre ed, and were seldom clean-shaven before forty. To 
 
 1 Hence, too, scindere paniulam (to rend the cloak) became pro- 
 vt >-Ma\ for giving a visitor a pressing invitation to remain ; and we 
 ' ,.l Cicero saying to Atticus (Ep. xiii. 33) of an unwelcome guest, 
 
 Heel ita feci, ut non scinderem paenulam" meaning that he sent^ 
 Vim lit his business without delay. 
 
 2 . Nat. Hist. vii. 59. 
 
100 THE PKIVATE LIFE OF THE ROiviaj>». 
 
 let the beard grow long was a sign of mourning, whether 
 for private loss or public calamity, and continued to be 
 so regarded until the Emperor Hadrian re-introduced 
 the fashion of the full beard even for middle-aged and 
 elderly men. 
 
 There were frequent changes, also, in the mode of 
 masculine hair-dressing. In Cicero's time it was elabo- 
 rate, and depilatories and hair-tongs (psUothra and cala- 
 mistri) were among the barber's regular weapons, whether 
 the latter were a house-slave, or the keeper of a tonstrina, 
 or barber's shop. In the time of Marcus Aurelius the 
 artificially curled and perfumed head was no longer 
 considered in good taste. Later, it became fashionable 
 for even imperial personages to wear the hair close- 
 clipped, like athletes and the Stoics. 
 
 For head-gear the Romans had the plleus and the 
 petasus. The former was a close-fitting felt cap, worn bv 
 
 sailors and artisans, Jw a 
 freedman as the sign of ti 
 emancipation, and b} 
 whole population 1 
 D .. , D . . , Saturnalia, but othe.vif 
 
 Pileus (Rich). 
 
 used by the upper cl 
 only when journeying. The petasus was a felt hat 
 a round brim, worn principally 
 by comic actors, and by the £. 
 spectators in a theatre, as a pro- 
 tection against the light from 
 above. A well-born Roman of 
 the best period, however,— p< 
 
 whether man or woman, — 
 usually disdained any species of hat 01 
 abroad uncovered. 
 
CLOTHING. 
 
 101 
 
 For the clothing of their feet, the Bomans made use 
 both of shoes (calcei) and sandals (sandalid). Every 
 Roman order and every great tribe or gens had a 
 distinctive kind of shoe. The ordinary calceus patricius, 
 or patrician shoe, also 
 called mulleus, was 
 made of red leather, 
 with a high heel, and 
 straps to fasten it 
 about the ankle. It 
 had also a crescent- 
 shaped ornament up- 
 on the front, called 
 the lunula, which was 
 of very ancient origin, 
 and seems, like the 
 bulla, to have had 
 the force of a charm. 
 The second grade of 
 shoe, only a little less dignified than the mulleus, was 
 the calceus senator ius, which was of black leather, with 
 aps and no lunula. Another kind of shoe, called 
 and rather resembling a boot, worn in Avet or 
 
 "- y weather, and always by the equites, was also black, 
 by a simple tie. The' ladies of the higher 
 out of doors, calcei, made of a fine leather 
 
 lied alula, and richly embroidered in silk and gold. 
 At home, both men and women preferred to wear sandals, 
 ( l- simple soles, bound to the foot with straps or ribbons, 
 but it was long "regarded as a great breach of etiquette 
 
 wear sandals abroad. The craft of the sator, or shoe- 
 as Strays a particularly respectable one, and 
 
 Shoes and sandals (Becker's Gallus). 
 
102 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 theirs was one of the original colleges founded b; 
 Numa. 
 
 The civilized Roman lady, like her lord of the same 
 period, wore three garments, — a tunica intima, a stola, 
 and a palla. The woollen undergarment' was virtually 
 the same for both sexes. The stola was much longer 
 
 than the masculine tunic, slit 
 open at the top on either 
 side for the passage of the 
 arms, fastened again upon 
 the shoulders with clasps 
 or brooches (fibulae), which 
 were often articles of great 
 value. It was usually fin- 
 ished at the bottom by a ruf- 
 fled border or flounce called 
 the instita, which admitted of 
 embroidery or other decora- 
 tion. Sometimes it had tight 
 sleeves reaching to the elbow 
 and fastened together on the 
 back of the arm with gold or 
 jewelled buttons, a charming 
 mode, represented upon many 
 existing statues. The stola 
 was confined at the waist bjr 
 a girdle, but pulled up so as 
 to conceal the latter by its 
 falling folds (rugae). This 
 beautiful garment was the matron's robe of ho™ r 
 only married women of unblemished reput 
 allowed to wear it. 
 
 Euterpe with stola and palla 
 (Baumeister). 
 
 

 The palla wal ^Kt ^ U(f 
 
 of the toga, and wa* ^ ^ teo 9 
 
 square or oblong piece of &. *^ 
 
 left shoulder and falling to the i^ *0f 
 
 the back, either above or below the rig,, 
 thrown backward over the left arm or shou. 
 the toga, it could, if necessary, be drawn up o\\.. 
 head. Women of the lower orders, or those not privileged 
 to wear the stola wore, directly over the under-tunic, a 
 palla made of woollen cloth, turned over at the top and 
 folded round the body under the arms, then drawn up 
 and fastened upon either shoulder with clasps or simple 
 buckles. It thus lay double over the breast and back, 
 but fell in a single thickness to the feet. To judge by 
 the management of the folds in existing illustrations, the 
 stuffs most affected for their outer garments by Eoman 
 women who aspired to elegance, were always fine and 
 thin. The mixed fabrics already described, of silk and 
 wool or silk and linen, were probably most employed, 
 pure silk being always an article of great luxury, while 
 the very fine linen and cotton stuffs to which the word 
 byssus was indifferently applied, were a late fashion and 
 fit only for summer garments. 
 
 We have already learned from Ovid how wide was the 
 lange of colors from which a Roman belle could choose. 
 She enjoyed hardly less latitude in her hair-dressing, 
 the styles of which were infinite. The graceful antique 
 fashion had beeivto gather the hair altogether in a knot 
 at the back of the head, sometimes low in the neck, but 
 oftener lifted high upon the crown, and we find the early 
 fathers of the Christian Church, — Jerome, Tertullian, 
 Prudentius, — pleading earnestly for a return to this 
 
102 THE PRIVATE LIFE ots THE ROMANS. 
 
 theirs warn simple mode, and sternly denouncing the 
 ugly and costly artificial structure of cushions, braids, 
 and curls then greatly in vogue. Entire wigs (capilla- 
 menta) were much worn in the first century, and those 
 made of blonde hair brought very high prices. 
 
 Gold and jewelled ornaments, ^anfiuli (rings), monllia 
 (necklaces), armillae (bracelets), worn either at the wrist 
 or above the elbow, with a sleeveless tunic, were affected 
 both by men and women of fashion, and were often of 
 exquisite workmanship. All the principal precious stones, 
 diamonds, rubies, emeralds, opals, were known to the 
 Romans, but the gem which they prized above all others 
 was the pearl ; and unheard-of prices were paid for large 
 
 ! single specimens, to be worn as ear-drops or upon the 
 brow. Julius Caesar is said to have given to Servilia, the 
 mother of Marcus Brutus, 1 a solitaire pearl for which he 
 paid six million sesterces ($262,500), while Caligula 
 received with his wife Lollia Paulina a complete parure 
 of pearls and emeralds, which was an heirloom in her 
 
 , family ; a part of the spoil taken in Eastern war by her 
 grandfather, Marcus Lollius, in the year 2 B.C., and val- 
 ued at forty million sesterces 2 ($2,180,000). Slippers 
 embroidered with seed pearls were common among the 
 rich, and sometimes affected, as the elder Pliny complains, 
 even by the comparatively poor. 
 
 1 Suet. Caes. 50. 2 Plin. Nat. Hist. ix. 35. 
 
 
C-l 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 x 
 
 -Jl 
 
V 
 
 \B>. ARy 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
AGRICULTURE. 105 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Small holdings were certainly the rule among the early 
 Romans. Tradition even averred that Romulus had al- 
 lotted to each of his followers but two iugera l of land. 
 After the expulsion of the kings, the tribune Licinius 
 was said to have decreed an allowance per capita of seven 
 iugera. This did not apparently prevent a proprietor 
 from increasing his possessions if he saw fit, but laws 
 more decidedly restrictive had soon to be passed. Five 
 hundred iugera was fixed as the maximum holding, and 
 one of the reforms which the Gracchi favored was a fur- 
 ther reduction to two hundred. 
 
 The former number remained the nominal maximum 
 down to historic times, and even after the restrictive 
 law had become a dead letter, there was a sentiment in 
 favor of small holdings. " Praise large farms, but till a 
 small one," is the witty precept of Virgil. 2 
 
 Naturally, as the farm increased in extent, the mode of 
 working it became more complex. Two iugera the 
 owner could manage without assistance ; when his pos- 
 sessions increased to seven, he may have had a slave or 
 two to aid him, and perhaps an ass ; but seven iugera 
 would certainly not support a pair of oxen, and indeed 
 
 1 About 1] acres : see table. - Geor. ii. 412-18, 
 
106 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 the spade always held its own against the plough in 
 Roman agriculture. 
 
 In the management of large holdings three methods 
 appear to have been practised. A farm might be let for 
 a fixed money rent, or let on shares with the rent paid in 
 kind, or the owner might choose to be his own farmer, 
 making use of either slave labor or free, or what was 
 perhaps most common of all, having a permanent staff of 
 slaves, and supplementing these with hired hands at the 
 seasons when work pressed, as- at the vintage. 
 
 In choosing a farmstead, the chief thing to be avoided 
 was an unhealthy district. A marshy soil was always to 
 be shunned, and so was a river-bank, though an ample 
 water-supply was indispensable. The ideal situation was 
 a hillside gently sloping to the east. Here the master's 
 residence could be adapted to receive the sun in winter 
 and the breeze in summer, drainage was easily managed, 
 and the very best soil for vineyards and olive-orchards 
 secured. Facility of transportation for the farm-produce 
 was a great desideratum, yet Columella 1 advises against 
 a situation immediately on a high-road, both on account 
 of the depredations of the casual passer-by, and because 
 of the perpetual calls on the owner's hospitality. 
 
 The estate purchased, the proprietor's first care was to 
 have its boundaries clearly established. There was a 
 pleasant fashion of following its outer line with a close- 
 ■set row of trees all of one kind, as elm, ash, or cypress ; 
 or it might be enclosed with hedge or fence, or by a ditch 
 and earthen bank. Otherwise its limits were indicated 
 merely by boundary stakes. 
 
 The next point to be considered was the choice of a 
 
 i Col. De Re Rus. i. 5. 
 
AGRICULTURE. 107 
 
 crop adapted to the soil, and we find great difference of 
 opinion among the writers on agriculture as to those 
 which promised the best return. All agree, however, in 
 lamenting that so many estates were given over to the 
 grazing of cattle and sheep, to the detriment of agri- 
 culture proper. The majority follow Cato in giving 
 their first preference to a choice vineyard, though the 
 vine required more labor than any other crop. To one 
 hundred iugera of vineyard Cato allows ten laborers, one 
 ox-herd, and one yoke of oxen, one ass-driver with three 
 asses (two for the carts and one for the mill), a swine- 
 herd, and a man to look after the willow plantations, 
 from which came the withies for binding the vine, while 
 all the osier baskets required in stripping the vines, 
 gathering the grapes, etc., were woven on the premises. 
 
 Two hundred and forty iugera of olive-orchards were 
 stated by the same authority to require five laborers, 
 three ox-herds for as many yoke of oxen, a pig-tender, an 
 ass-driver with four asses, and a shepherd with a hun- 
 dred sheep. 
 
 The farm-hands, whether many or few, were always 
 under the supervision of a vilicus and vilica, an over- 
 seer and a housekeeper, as we might say. 1 This pair 
 was often, though not invariably, husband and wife. The 
 overseer had to keep a sharp lookout over the slaves by 
 night and day, provide their food and clothing, see that 
 the farm-tools were in good condition, and in general 
 that everything might be ready for the master's inspec- 
 tion at any moment. The sphere of the mlica was 
 within doors, except for the care of the gallinarium, 
 
 1 These offices are perpetuated on the Italian villa farm, where 
 a fattore and fattoressa are always to be found. 
 
108 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 or poultry-yard, where, if there were ever a dearth of 
 fowls or eggs, she was the person held responsible. 
 She saw to the cooking and sweeping, the pickling 
 and preserving. She was also warned to be no gad- 
 about, and not to presume to offer any sacrifices ; for 
 the master of the house undertook the religious respon- 
 sibilities of the whole faynilia. Yet on feast-days, and 
 on the Calends, Nones, and Ides of each month, she 
 was to adorn her hearth with a wreath of flowers, and 
 offer to the Lares her prayers for plenty. 
 
 The food of the familia rustica consisted of a liberal 
 daily allowance of bread, wine, oil, salt, and some sort 
 of relish, such as pickled olives or fish. Every two years 
 the hands received a pair of wooden shoes, and on alter- 
 nate years a tunic and a hooded cloak of shaggy cloth 
 (sagatus cucullus). They were also supplied with patch- 
 work coverings called centones, made up by the female 
 slaves from the sound bits of all sorts of cast-off gar- 
 ments, which might be used either as bedding, or by way 
 of protection from the rain. Special favors in the 
 matter of diet and clothing were often shown to highly 
 deserving slaves; but the punishment, even of trifling 
 offences, was frequently barbarous. 
 
 The slaves were divided into those who worked in 
 fetters (comjiediti, alligati), and those who were allowed 
 liberty of motion ; and a great distinction was made in 
 their housing ; for while the latter had a large common 
 room where they might meet in the evening and on 
 rainy days, and separate cells to sleep in, airy, above 
 ground, and with a southern aspect, the former were 
 lodged in basements lighted only by narrow windows too 
 high to be reached by the hand, and in these underground 
 
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AGRICULTURE. 109 
 
 chambers refractory cases were kept at indoor work by 
 day. There would also be upon large properties a sep- 
 arate balneum, or bath, for the slaves. 
 
 The farmer is earnestly warned against over-building ; 
 but the constructions prescribed as necessary for the 
 farm activities seem to furnish an ample allowance. 
 The rapid increase of luxury in the two hundred and 
 fifty years between Cato and Columella is clearly shown 
 by the difference in their provisions. The buildings 
 enumerated by the latter are certainly more elaborate 
 than anything to be found upon Italian farms to-day, 
 though many of his precepts are still implicitly obeyed. 
 And since he, too, prefaces his description by strenuous 
 injunctions not to build too extensively, his account may 
 be taken as affording a fair idea of an affluent Roman 
 farmstead. 
 
 The master's dwelling, or villa proper, stood a little 
 apart from the rest of the buildings, with long ranges of 
 rooms for summer and winter, covered galleries, and a 
 separate bath. Nearly all the other structures were 
 grouped about a great central court-yard (cors), which 
 was carefully enclosed, and had but a single gateway, 
 affording the only means of entrance not merely to the 
 court-yard itself, but to the surrounding stables and store- 
 houses. Over this gateway in large establishments a 
 porter or janitor always presided. In those of less pre- 
 tension, the vilicus had his rooms there, and it was his 
 place to see that no one passed after dark without his 
 knowledge. Here, too, was chained the watch-dog, with 
 the broad spiked collar, familiar to us from old mosaics, 
 who had been carefully trained to his duties of defence. 
 On this same side of the court-yard were the slaves' 
 quarters and the farm-kitchen. 
 
110 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 The court-yard was always kept strewn with litter, 
 which was removed from time to time, and added to the 
 manure-heaps. These last were built within the court, 
 and allowed to ripen for at least a twelvemonth, before 
 being applied to the land. Here, too, was a pool of fresh 
 water, not only for watering the stock, but large enough 
 for oxen to bathe in. It was supplied by running water, 
 where this was practicable, in other cases, by rain-water, 
 which the Komans well understood the art of collecting 
 and utilizing. 
 
 First in importance among the stabula, or buildings 
 for sheltering the animals, were the bubilia for the oxen 
 and cows. These were long, narrow buildings, usually set 
 at right angles with one side of the court-yard, and they 
 accommodated only a single range of cattle, with room 
 for a passage-way before their mangers. Six or seven feet 
 above the ground ran a horizontal beam, to which the 
 animals were tied. The flooring was of wood or stone, 
 and well bedded with coarse hay or straw, and the barn 
 seems often, if not always, to have had a loft for 
 storing fodder. 
 
 Cattle were bred rather with a view to their powers 
 of draught, than for beef, as is clearly seen in the points 
 given of a model ox. The favorite color was red or dun, 
 though we find frequent allusions to the fine silver gray 
 breed of Central Italy, still extensively maintained. On 
 account of the difficulty of acclimatizing foreign breeds, 
 the farmer who wished to form a herd was advised to 
 buy young cattle in his own neighborhood, and to make 
 the following stipulation with the vendor : 1 " Do you 
 answer for it, that these two-year-olds are perfectly 
 
 iVarr. R.E. ii. 5. 
 
AGRICULTURE. Ill 
 
 sound, and from a healthy herd, and that the purchase 
 of them will involve me in no trouble ? " 
 
 Bullocks were usually broken to the plough when three 
 years old, and this was most carefully and thoroughly 
 done, as was indeed necessary, seeing that the man who 
 held the plough drove as well. This slave, the bubulcus, 
 also took care of his yoke of oxen, washing and carding 
 them, and giving them a sort of massage treatment, sup- 
 posed to prevent the skin from adhering to the flesh. 
 He is further recommended to give them each a quart 
 of wine if they come back tired from the field. 1 
 
 The working of from eighty to a hundred iugera was 
 given to one yoke of oxen ; but in ploughing, they were 
 only allowed to draw, without breathing, what seems to 
 us the incredibly short furrow of one hundred and 
 twenty Roman feet. 2 The yoke (iugum) was some- 
 times fastened to the horns in the present Italian 
 fashion, by which all the draught comes upon the fore- 
 head ; but more often rested, as with us, upon the neck ; 
 but in place of a closed wooden bow, leathern thongs 
 {lor a) were tied around the neck. Neither oxen nor 
 horses were shod, as we understand the term, but they 
 often wore a sort of leathern boot {soled), which was 
 strengthened upon its sole by strips of metal. This 
 fashion seems to have been later than Cato, who rec- 
 ommends protecting their hoofs against cracking, on 
 long journeys over the paved high-roads, by daubing 
 them with pitch. 
 
 In many parts of Italy the climate was genial enough 
 to afford fresh fodder all the year round ; in which case 
 
 i 
 
 In England, hunters are often given beer after a hard run. 
 
 2 See Tables. 
 
112 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 a farmer was advised to double the number of his yokes 
 of oxen and work and pasture on alternate days. When 
 stable-fed, the oxen received hay, straw, barley, and other 
 grain. But besides these staple articles, many others 
 figure in their diet, such as beans and acorns, the refuse 
 of the vintage, and the freshly plucked leaves of many 
 trees. 
 
 A hundred was considered the extreme limit in num- 
 ber of a herd of cows, and these were chiefly kept for 
 breeding; for it must be remembered that butter was 
 unknown to the Romans, though cheese was a common 
 article of food. 
 
 Very singular and sometimes very unpleasant remedies 
 are recommended by the Roman authorities for the 
 various diseases to which neat flesh is liable. The 
 following is declared by Cato 1 to be an almost universal 
 panacea : " a raw egg swallowed whole, to be followed 
 next morning by an onion bruised in a half-pint of wine. 
 Let a fasting man see that the ox drinks this fasting, 
 
 and let both man and 
 i 3 , i —H-J beast stand while it is 
 being swallowed." 
 
 The bubilia were re- 
 quired to have a south- 
 ern exposure for warmth 
 in winter, and a shady 
 yard adjoining, where 
 the cattle might be 
 turned out in summer. 
 Many of the same general prescriptions held good for the 
 equilia, or stables for horses and mules ; but these were 
 
 1 De Re Rus. lxxi. 
 
 Equile, stable (Rich). 
 
AGRICULTURE. 113 
 
 also provided with separate cribs fitted with racks, and 
 though single stalls seem to have been unknown, it 
 was customary to divide the horses by a swinging pole 
 called the longurius, which prevented their interfering 
 with one another. The breeds of horses were innumer- 
 able, some being preferred for one purpose and some for 
 another. 
 
 Race-horses commanded the highest prices, choice 
 mules the next, then ordinary animals, whether intended 
 for carriage, saddle, or draught. These last might be 
 broken in at two years old ; but the race-horses waited 
 another year, and nearly as much more time was spent in 
 their training, so that they were four when they went 
 upon the track. Horses were carefully cleaned and rubbed 
 down each day ; but it seems to have been thought nec- 
 essary to give them bedding only if their stable had a 
 stone floor. Columella says, however, 1 that oak-wood is 
 much better. 
 
 The high feeding of horses is insisted upon; also broad 
 meadow-lands, where the grass is short and sweet, and 
 the water-supply unfailing, are recommended for their 
 pasturage. The Romans, like ourselves, judged of a 
 horse's age chiefly by his teeth, and their knowledge of 
 his anatomy was surprisingly accurate ; but the medica- 
 ments with which he was treated when out of condition 
 show a very elementary stage of equine pathology. 
 
 Asses were much used upon a Roman farm ; for, besides 
 serving as beasts of burden, — and, if fitted with a pair 
 of paniers, they can carry a surprisingly heavy load, — 
 they were also used for light ploughing, to turn the mill, 
 and to raise water from the wells. Black or spotted 
 
 1 Re Rus. vi. 30. 
 
114 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 asses were preferred to mouse-colored, merely because 
 they were more rarely found. 
 
 Nothing could be more generally useful upon a Roman 
 farm than a flock of sheep. Lamb and mutton, it is 
 true, appeared only upon the tables of the rich, but the 
 milk of ewes, and the cheese made from it, were im- 
 portant articles of diet, and their fleece furnished the 
 clothing of the family. White was the color preferred, 
 though certain breeds of black and brown found some 
 favor, and fancy breeds of various colors, notably a 
 reddish yellow, from Baetica in Spain, were raised as 
 curiosities. Sheep were also broadly divided into two 
 classes, soft and harsh fleeced, of which the former were 
 more delicate, and their wool more valuable. Out of 
 many breeds, the farmer is recommended to choose that 
 which may best suit the pasturage at his disposal, 
 and to be careful that the stock is pure, for the one 
 perfectly worthless fleece was grizzled or spotted. So, 
 in a white flock, lambs were to be rejected, not only if 
 they had any spots of dark color on fleece or skin, but if 
 their tongue and palate were black — an infallible sign 
 of mixed breed. 
 
 Sheep were turned out to pasture during some part of 
 the day, nearly all the year round, the morning and 
 evening frost being avoided in winter, and the mid-day 
 heat in summer. For the same reason, though the 
 sheep-fold (ovile) was built low and narrow to protect 
 the flock in winter, it had always a large and shady 
 yard adjoining, where they could be turned out in sum- 
 mer. The fine-wooled sheep, as those of Tarentnm, were 
 chiefly fed indoors, while the reverse was true of the 
 coarser breeds ; but the shepherd is warned that his 
 
AGRICULTURE. 115 
 
 wards must never under any circumstances go hungry, 
 and also that they will soon weary of any kind of food 
 and fall seriously ill unless they have an abundance of 
 salt. If the sheep were to browse, the pasturage must 
 be free from those thorny brambles which were so injuri- 
 ous both to the fleece of the animal and to its skin when 
 freshly sheared. The shepherd is also to keep a sharp 
 lookout for snakes. Virgil recommends smoking them 
 out of their holes by fires of cedar and other aromatic 
 woods, but Columella considers it a more efficient pre- 
 caution frequently to burn women's hair or stag's horn 
 in and about the fold. 
 
 The Romans sheared their sheep, as we do, in the 
 spring; but they preferred that lambing-time should 
 come in the autumn, winter being considered a less dan- 
 gerous season than summer for young flocks. A thou- 
 sand head of sheep might be folded together with safety, 
 but a shepherd was allotted to every hundred, and each 
 shepherd seems to have been accompanied by a dog. 
 These dogs were apparently the direct ancestors of those 
 who guard the flocks upon the Roman Campagna to-day, 
 and no one who has made the acquaintance of the latter 
 can read without a grim smile the following suggestion 
 of Columella : 1 " The shepherd prefers to have his dog 
 white, as this color contrasts with that of wild beasts. 
 And it is important to have some such broad distinction, 
 or else when he is driving off the wolves in the dim light 
 of dawn, he is likely to hit the dog instead of the beast." 
 It may be noticed that docking a dog's tail was supposed 
 to be a preventive of hydrophobia. 
 
 The shepherds and goat-herds also set up temporary 
 
 i Re Rus. vii. 12. 
 
116 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 huts of conical shape (casulae) for shelter, as their 
 successors do to-day ; but one object now aimed at, that 
 of raising themselves sufficiently from the surface of the 
 ground to be out of the reach of the malarious fogs 
 which only rise a few feet above the Campagna soil, did 
 not exist when the region was generally and very effi- 
 ciently drained. 
 
 Next in importance to the sheep came the black-coated, 
 silky goats, from whose hair ropes were woven, and a 
 fabric cheaper and coarser than cloths manufactured 
 from sheep's wool, but to a certain extent water-proof. 
 They were less delicate, too, than sheep and could be 
 pastured on rougher ground, and it was probably for this 
 reason that a goat-herd had charge of only half as many 
 animals as a shepherd. He was to be a sturdy man, 
 with a quick eye and a sure foot, for his flock had to be 
 led, not driven, by him, as was the case with most other 
 creatures. Cheese was made from the milk of goats as 
 well as from that of ewes and cows, and there were 
 several varieties, from the simple curd for immediate 
 use, to one which would keep indefinitely and even bear 
 transportation over sea. Cheeses made from ewes' milk 
 were considered more digestible though less palatable 
 than those made from cows' milk, while the reverse was 
 supposed to be the case with goats'-milk cheeses. 
 
 Black-haired pigs were insisted upon for cold districts ; 
 but if the climate were mild, the more tender white 
 breeds might be raised. Each sow was given a separate 
 pen opening on a central yard, where there was a tank 
 of water, but this opening had a barrier so high that 
 while the sow could get over it, her pigs could not. They 
 were driven to woodland pasture nearly all the year, and 
 
AGRICULTURE. 117 
 
 even when kept in, acorns were still the chief article of 
 their diet, though beans were also given them. They 
 were thought fit for sacrifice when ten days old (whence 
 sacer was the name of a ten-days-old pig among the 
 early Romans) ; and if there were a market-town near 
 by, it was considered most profitable to sell them as 
 sucking pigs. Hogs were also fattened for the sale, and 
 Varro mentions with admiration that they were some- 
 times made too fat to stand upon their feet. 
 
 So far, the arrangements of the farm show merely a 
 legitimate development from the early Roman methods ; 
 but when we come to its feathered denizens, we perceive 
 at once the overweening influence of Greek fashion. 
 Greek names, in their original form, or barely Latinized, 
 are continually employed, while the Romans quite vaunt 
 themselves on having stood out against the Grecian 
 practice of cock-fighting. The game-cock was, however, 
 the favorite breed in Italy as well as in Greece. Two 
 hundred hens were considered a fair number for a flock, 
 and one man, with a child's help, could take care of so 
 many. The following was the most approved way of 
 housing them. The central hen-coop (galUnarium), seven 
 Roman feet on each of its three dimensions, was flanked 
 on either side by a wing of the same breadth, twelve feet 
 high and twelve feet long, divided into two stories by a 
 flooring seven feet from the ground. These wings had 
 no outer door, but communicated through the central 
 coop, which opened on the court-yard, where the fowls 
 were turned out, to scratch and feed through the day. 
 The walls were pierced with windows, which were, 
 however, securely barred against the incursions of evil 
 beasts. Two fashions of providing the hens with nests 
 
118 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 obtained : the first was to hang osier baskets along the 
 walls ; the other, and more approved method, was to 
 build these walls so thick that rows of nests could be 
 hollowed out of them, like the niches in a columbarium. 
 In either case, a vestibulum, or perch, was provided before 
 each nest, so that the hens might not break their eggs 
 by flying straight upon them. Notched stakes served 
 them for stairways to the upper stories of the wings, 
 and the whole coop, like all aviaria, was to be coated 
 within and without with highly polished cement, as a 
 precaution against cats and snakes. 
 
 Cleanliness was greatly insisted on, as well here as 
 in the more elaborate geese and duck yards (chenoboscid 
 and nessotrophia) . Hens were fed upon various kinds of 
 dough, and their water-dishes were fitted with covers 
 pierced with holes large enough to allow the head to 
 pass easily through, whereby, also, the water was kept 
 clean. 
 
 The dove-cote {columbarium) was arranged on the same 
 general principles, except that it was constructed high 
 above the ground, and the purchase of white pigeons as 
 well as that of white hens was discouraged because of 
 their being conspicuous objects to birds of prey. Pigeons 
 certainly commanded fancy prices, duceni nummi (about 
 nine dollars) being thought a fair amount for a pair of 
 perfect birds even in Yarro's time, while five times this 
 amount was not uncommon. 
 
 Thrushes (turdl) were caught and fattened for the 
 markets, as were also blackbirds (merulae), ortolans 
 (mlliariae), quails (coturnlces), and other wild fowl. 
 This class of winged creature was all housed together, 
 often to the number of several thousand. The ornlthon, 
 
AGRICULTURE. 119 
 
 as their place of confinement was called, was often built 
 along a covered walk, and separated from it only by a 
 netting, so that the owner might admire his treasures as 
 he took his daily exercise ; but this is not recommended 
 by all authorities, some being of opinion that the spirits 
 of free-born birds were depressed in captivity by the 
 sight of vegetation. 
 
 Peacocks also (pavones) were kept for show from 
 early times, but after Quintus Hortensius had set the 
 fashion of eating them, their cultivation became one of 
 the most profitable industries of the Roman farmer ; for 
 their eggs fetched ten dollars a dozen, and the birds 
 themselves seventeen dollars a pair. Their coops and 
 feeding-ground were usually, however, at a considerable 
 distance from the farm-yard. 
 
 This was also the case with water-fowl, for whose 
 well-being the most elaborate arrangements were made. 
 They had great yards set apart for them, surrounded by 
 high and smoothly polished walls, and covered by a 
 strong netting. In the yard was a pond, fed by running 
 water, supplied with gently sloping verges, and planted 
 with all the most palatable water-weeds, while around its 
 grassy brim, nests were built, separated from each other 
 by box-hedges and furnished with troughs for the daily 
 supply of grain. 
 
 In the luxurious days of Rome, fish and wild animals 
 were preserved even on comparatively modest estates, 
 and a snail-yard was rarely absent. 
 
 Bee-culture received great attention from the Romans, 
 in whose diet honey took the place of sugar. The super- 
 lative excellence of pot-herbs, and above all thyme, for 
 flavoring honey, was insisted on by all writers, but no 
 
120 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 one has described this branch of agriculture so charm- 
 ingly as Virgil. 
 
 To return to the court-yard and the buildings about 
 it. There were sheds for the housing of unthreshed 
 grain and unpressed olives, granaries and storerooms 
 for fruit, wine, and oil. Fodder was more often stacked 
 than housed, but farm-implements were kept under cover, 
 and the more portable of them under lock and key. In 
 small tools the farmer of those days was perhaps defi- 
 cient, but for working the land his means were abundant. 
 The long prevalence of hand labor probably accounted 
 for the astonishing variety of spades, mattocks, and rakes, 
 for whose Latin names it is not always easy 
 to find exact English equivalents. The ru- 
 trum, the weapon with which Remus was 
 killed, was a kind of shovel. They had a 
 sort of spade called the pdla, both with iron 
 and wooden blade, and this imple- 
 ment was sometimes made with a 
 cross-bar for the foot to rest on. The latter 
 tool is called in Italian vanga, a name which is 
 also found in late Latin. For digging, spading 
 over the land, breaking up fresh soil, etc., the 
 Romans used tools of the nature of the mat- 
 tock, which, while they did the work of a spade, 
 were handled like a hoe. Under this head 
 came the ligo (also used as a hatchet) ; the 
 bidens, with blade notched into two teeth ; the 
 capreolus, where these two teeth were curved 
 inward like a goat's horns, and the raster, 
 which looks like a horseshoe tied to a handle. These 
 were all heavy enough to do the work of the plough, 
 
 Rutrum (Rich). 
 
 Bidens (Rich). 
 
AGRICULTURE. 121 
 
 and were indeed thought to break up the ground more 
 efficiently. 
 
 The names of ditcher and ditching (fossor and fossio), 
 given to the man who thus dug over the ground and to 
 the work which he performed, shows that the earth must 
 have been thrown in successive cuts from one side to the 
 other of a perpetual trench, and there was a clever little 
 machine, the ciconia, for testing the faithfulness of the 
 labor and making sure that this trench was kept straight 
 and of unvarying depth and width. 
 
 Of lighter weight than the tools already mentioned 
 were the marra, with broad, notched blade, and the 
 sarculum and ascici, which nearly corresponded to a 
 long and short handled hoe. The raster was also found 
 with several teeth, and its diminutive, rastellum, was 
 a wooden rake ; the pecten was yet another rake, perhaps 
 of iron. 
 
 Falx is the general name for scythe, sickle, 
 
 hedge-bill, or other agricultural implement of 
 
 like nature. Most curious of all was the falx 
 
 vinitoria, the vine-dresser's pruning-hook, with 
 
 its many edges. Columella 1 gives 
 
 an elaborate description of this tool, 
 
 which would very well describe the 
 
 more elaborate of English hedge- 
 
 bills. The falx denticulata must also 
 
 (Rich). 
 
 Falx vinitoria 
 
 be noted, a sickle with saw-toothed 
 
 cuMmch) blade, f° r cutting the grain just below the 
 
 ear, a practice recommended as facilitating its 
 
 threshing. The Romans had both a two-pronged iron 
 
 fork (furca) and a wooden one with many teeth, used 
 
 1 De Re Rus. iv. 25. 
 
1 <?9 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Arator (Rich). 
 
 for tossing the straw lightly about the threshing-floor, 
 that the wind might detach the chaff, and hence called 
 ventildbrum. 
 
 Leaving the hand-tools we pass to those which had to 
 be worked by cattle. Of these, the most important was, 
 of course, the ardtrum, or plough. In its primitive form 
 
 it was made entirely of 
 wood. A stout-branched 
 sapling was chosen, with 
 a sharp curve, one end was 
 pointed for the vomer, or 
 share, while the other end 
 was left long enough to 
 serve as a pole (temo) for 
 the oxen ; at the point of 
 junction (buris) between temo and vomer, a handle (stiva) 
 was inserted, which the ploughman (arator) held in 
 guiding. A plough hardly more elaborate than the one 
 here described is still used 
 in the wilder and remoter 
 parts of Italy. Virgil's 
 plough 1 is certainly a 
 slight advance on this, 
 and in later Imperial 
 times the Romans had 
 
 ploughs with nearly every feature of our own, though 
 ruder in construction. They had ploughs with coulters 
 and without, ploughs both with and without wheels, 
 ploughs with no mould-board, with one, and with two, 
 some with broad shares, and some with narrow, to suit 
 the nature of the soil, and their two-fold service of 
 
 1 Virg. Geor. i. 169-175. 
 
 Aratrum (Rich). 
 
AGRICULTURE. 123 
 
 breaking ground and ploughing in seed. It appears 
 clear, however, that the plough in common use could 
 not turn over a furrow when held in an upright po- 
 sition, but must be guided a little obliquely, that the 
 weight of the beam might bear on the freshly cut 
 earth. This process made a sloping narrow furrow, 
 and in order thoroughly to work the ground, good 
 farmers commonly turned back (as the double face of 
 their share permitted) lik! ploughed a full, upright fur- 
 row in the same line. The necessity for going twice 
 over the ground made the advantages of the aratrum 
 over the bidens much less than those of the plough over 
 the spade. A bas-relief found in the island of Magnesia 
 shows one of the ploughs which were adapted for cover- 
 ing in the seed, and making a channel for water between 
 the ridges, an instrument which was in constant use in 
 the palmy days of agriculture about Rome. The plough 
 here depicted has for share-beam (dentate) a narrow 
 plank some four feet long, shod at its forward end with 
 an iron share (vomer), which extends above and below 
 the beam, like an arrow-head on its staff. To the sides 
 of the dentate, directly behind the share, are fastened 
 the double mould-boards (aures), which turned up a ridge 
 on either side of the line drawn by the passage of the 
 plough. Behind the mould-boards comes the curving 
 pole (temo), supported by a truss, and at the extreme 
 end the single guiding handle (stlva). 
 
 The Roman irpex was a plank set with teeth and drawn 
 by oxen over the ground. Its use was not that of our 
 harrow (the work of which was usually done by hand), 
 but to clear the ground of small roots ; so, though this is 
 not expressly stated, its teeth were probably set at an 
 
124 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIEE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 angle. A species of brush-harrow called crates was, how- 
 ever, employed. The tribulum was a platform studded 
 with nails, drawn over the grain upon the threshing-floor 
 to open the ears. Unyoked cattle were sometimes driven 
 about over the threshing-floor for the same purpose, and 
 flails (perticae) also were used (these were merely long, 
 pliable rods), especially when the grain had been reaped 
 just below the ear, and was, therefore, almost free of 
 straw. 
 
 The proper mode of preparing the threshing-floor is de- 
 scribed by all the authorities, but nowhere more clearly 
 than by Virgil in the first Georgic. 
 
 The rooms containing the oil and wine presses also 
 opened on the central court-yard. To the harvest of two 
 hundred and forty iugera of olive-orchards, Cato assigns 
 three mills, one worked by a donkey, one by hand, and 
 one so-called Spanish mill; but his estimates are con- 
 fessedly made with a wide margin for accidents. These 
 mills, which all bore the same name (molae), as those used 
 for grinding grain, were probably very like the latter in 
 construction. The lower stone (meta) was immovable ; 
 the upper (catillus) turned about it exactly as in the 
 
 former case ; and by this 
 means the fleshy part of 
 the berry was detached 
 from the stone and 
 bruised, while the latter 
 was left intact. The 
 trapetum was a more 
 elaborate machine for 
 performing the same office, and to these two Columella 
 gives the preference over all other mills. When cleared 
 
 Trapetum (Rich). 
 
AGRICULTURE. 125 
 
 of stones, the pulp was put under the press (torcular), 
 which consisted merely of boards forced down by a 
 press-beam {prelum), working like a long-armed lever. 
 In the time of Pliny, this was replaced by the much 
 more compact and effective screw-press. The juice ex- 
 pressed by the torcular was guided by the slope of the 
 floor into one or more earthen jars sunk below its level, 
 and from these the permanent receptacles were filled. 
 The construction and working of the wine-press was very 
 similar, if indeed the same machine were not used for 
 both fruits. 
 
 That the Romans had a great many species of grain ap- 
 pears from the long catalogue of names furnished by 
 the writers on agriculture, but it is no longer easy to 
 determine the exact nature of all these varieties. Both 
 autumn and spring sowing were practised, as with us, 
 though the former was preferred. About a bushel of 
 wheat (triticum) was used to a iugerum, and this amount 
 of land required four days' ploughing with oxen, one of 
 harrowing, two days for the first hoeing, one for the 
 second, one for weeding, and one and a half for harvest- 
 ing. In this estimate the sowing is plainly included 
 under the head of ploughing. The ground was ploughed 
 three times; the first broke up the earth, the second 
 cross-ploughed it, the third traced the drills in which the 
 seed was sown by hand and harrowed 1 in. The first 
 hoeing (sarrltio) banked up the earth about the young 
 grain and cleared it of weeds; the weeding (runcatio) 
 consisted in lopping with a sickle the tops of the weeds, 
 their roots not being disturbed. The cultivation of all 
 grains followed these general lines. 
 
 2 The occatio or harrowing was performed either by the crates or 
 by the rdstrum. 
 
126 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Pulse formed an essential article of food both, for man 
 and beast, and ranked next in importance to the grains. 
 The faba, the most useful kind of pulse, was evidently 
 some variety of bean. It was often sown without any 
 intermediate ploughing on land from which grain had 
 been harvested, the seed being dropped apparently into 
 the furrow between the ridges of stubble, which were 
 then turned over upon it by the plough. When the 
 beans were three inches high, they were banked up with 
 the hoe, or else the board plough already described was 
 run through between the rows, and afterwards they were 
 two or three times cleared of weeds by the hoe — and 
 this was the general manner of cultivating the other 
 varieties of pulse. 
 
 The value of turnips (rapa) as food for cattle and 
 sheep was perfectly understood, and they were exten- 
 sively raised. 
 
 A few words may here be given to the subject of rota- 
 tion of crops as it was practised by the Eoman farmer. 
 Some of the richer parts of Campania bore a crop of 
 grain every year. The elder Pliny mentions one field in 
 the fork between the roads which diverged from Capua 
 to Cumas and Puteoli, which regularly bore spelt (far) for 
 two years, then panic * (panicum) for one, and so on in 
 perpetual rotation ; but this was a prodigy even in fertile 
 Campania. A recurrent succession of barley (hordeum), 
 millet (milium), and turnips was more common, though 
 this demanded a rich soil, and it was customary to 
 manure for the millet when its turn came round. An- 
 other expedient was alternating spelt and spring beans, 
 manuring the latter. Less fertile land lay fallow every 
 
 1 Panic, though exhausting, was a summer grain. 
 
AGRICULTURE. 127 
 
 third year, common soil on alternate years, this being 
 the method recommended by Virgil ; and certain crops, 
 such as lupine (hqnnus), were sown merely to be ploughed 
 in as a fertilizer. 
 
 There was always a vegetable garden (hortus olitdrius) 
 on the Roman farm, where were to be found a great 
 variety of pot-herbs (lierbae pulmentariae) , lettuce (lac- 
 tuca), and other salads, cabbages (brassicae) of many 
 kinds, leeks (porrum) and onions (caepa), carrots 
 (pastinaca) and turnips (rapa), asparagus and artichokes 
 (carclus), beans {faba) and peas {pisum), cucumbers 
 (cucumis) and melons (melo). 
 
 Market-gardening was a nourishing industry, and the 
 raising of flowers, notably violets and roses, provided a 
 town were within easy reach, was strongly recommended. 
 But the olive and the grape were, after all, the two most 
 characteristic Roman crops. 
 
 If ten per cent was a fair interest on money invested 
 in a vineyard, as Columella asserts, it is curious that 
 viticulture should have gone even temporarily out of 
 fashion, as it seems to have done at one period in the 
 early days of the Empire. Then, as now, the soil pre- 
 ferred for a vineyard was gravelly, and, in starting a 
 fresh one, new ground was broken if possible, or, at all 
 events, that which had never borne vines before. That 
 the young plants should be of good stock, was, of course, 
 the first necessity ; then a thorough and repeated work- 
 ing of the soil was required, and a careful cutting back 
 of the shoots and roots of the vines. 
 
 Practically, there were but two ways of training vines, — 
 on trellises and on trees. In the former case, the main 
 stock of the vine was trained up a pole to the height of 
 
128 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 five or six feet, where it was allowed to branch, and here 
 a cross-bar (iugum) was fastened to the pole. Over this 
 the branches were thrown, and carried back to the ground, 
 where they rooted, and formed new stock to replenish 
 the vineyard. Among trees to which the vine might be 
 trained, the elm was preferred, and Virgil announces in 
 the very opening of the Georgics, that an important part 
 of his pleasing task will be to describe the art of " marry- 
 ing the vine to the elm." 
 
 Its leaves, which had to be plucked in order to give 
 sunshine to the grapes, were an excellent food for cattle ; 
 it grew easily in most soils, and could be severely 
 trimmed without diminishing its vitality. When a tree 
 was intended as the support of a vine, its trunk was 
 kept smooth for eight feet above the ground. Three 
 equidistant branches were then left, and the same num- 
 ber was allowed to grow, at intervals of three feet, to 
 the top of the tree, care being always taken that the 
 members of the successive layers should not come 
 directly above one another. 
 
 The vines were set at varying distances apart, accord- 
 ing to the quality of the soil, the nature of the climate, 
 and the mode in which they were to be trained. Colu- 
 mella says * that nobody can help getting a culleus 2 of 
 wine from a iugerum; but in all cases the soil is required 
 to be incessantly worked. From spring to winter the 
 ground was spaded over at least once a month. One man 
 was supposed equal to the care of seven iugera, and the 
 fettered slaves appear to have been often appointed to 
 this task. At the vintage, of course, extra labor was 
 called in. On the nineteenth of August, the Vinalia 
 
 i De Re Rus. iii. 3. 2 See Table. 
 
AGRICULTURE. 129 
 
 Rustica, sacrifices were offered to Jupiter, and the fiamen 
 dialis, with much solemnity, broke a bunch of grapes from 
 a vine-branch, and declared the vintage begun. Prac- 
 tically, however, grapes appear to have been gathered 
 as they ripened, without much regard to this- festival ; 
 only no new wine might be taken into the city until 
 after it had occurred. 
 
 Long before the grapes were gathered, the vintner must 
 see that all the utensils were ready for the wine-making, 
 cleanly washed and rinsed in salted, or, better still, in 
 sea-water, while vessels of clay were, if necessary, 
 daubed inside with pitch to render them impervious. 
 
 The grapes were first trodden by the feet, then twice 
 pressed, and the final refuse, mixed with water, formed 
 the beverage called lora, which was the winter drink of 
 the slaves. If the must were to be kept sweet, jars were 
 filled with it, tightly covered, then sunk in sand or water 
 for a month or six weeks, after which it was warranted 
 to remain unaltered in taste for a year at least. Much 
 of the must was boiled down into a jelly used for flavor- 
 ing and preserving poor wines. This boiling down was 
 a most delicate operation. It was done by night in a 
 great leaden vessel (brass and copper were thought to 
 impart an unpleasant flavor), over a fire, slow at first, and 
 then brisker, the liquid being constantly stirred to pre- 
 vent burning, and carefully skimmed of all impurities. 
 The resultant jelly received different names, defrutum, 
 sapcbj 1 etc., according to the proportion of the original 
 must which had been boiled away. 
 
 The rest of the must was taken to the wine-cellar 
 (cella vinaria) and put into the dolia, huge earthen jars 
 
 1 Whence the Italian scqxi and French sabe. 
 
130 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Dolium (Rich). 
 
 holding rather more than a hundred gallons. Here the 
 must was allowed to ferment, and here it was doctored 
 with the various ingredients used to flavor and preserve 
 
 it. The chief of these were boiled-down 
 must (defrutum, etc.), sea-water which had 
 been bottled, and kept a number of years, 
 lime, turpentine, and pitch. Aromatie 
 herbs and spices were also, sometimes 
 employed. 
 
 The cella vlnaria was constructed with 
 a dry earthen bed, and if the wine were 
 weak, the dolia were sunk deeply in the earth. Fer- 
 mentation required about nine days, after which the dolia 
 were tightly covered and only looked at from time to 
 time. 
 
 The common wines 
 were drunk directly 
 from the dolia, and 
 from these were also 
 filled the ox- and goat- 
 skins in which wine was 
 transported to a distance. 
 Finer wines were always 
 bottled off in amphorae, 
 with all sorts of super- 
 stitious precautions, and 
 stored away, not as with 
 us in the cellar, but in 
 a dry room at the top 
 of the house (apotheca). 
 Thus Horace in his gay ode to the Amphora, 1 calls upon 
 
 iHor. Od. iii. 21. 
 
 Amphorae (Marquard). 
 
AGRICULTURE. 131 
 
 the jar of choice Massic wine to come down from its 
 place of rest and help him celebrate the festival of his 
 friend Messala Corvinus. Sweet wines were also made 
 from sun-dried grapes, and innumerable liqueurs of which 
 wine formed the basis. 
 
 Although the season of olive-gathering came earlier in 
 Roman days than now in Italy, oil was not made till the 
 vintage was well over. The best way of all was to pick 
 the olive by hand, but where this was impracticable they 
 were gently beaten from the tree with osier-rods. 
 ( From the pulp of the olive were and are expressed two 
 liquids, — oil proper, and that thin, watery fluid, dark 
 and bitter, which was called amurca by the Eomans, and 
 used "by them as manure. This came away from the 
 olive with much less pressure than the oil, or else it 
 oozed from the berry after it was gathered ; and many 
 farmers left the olives spread out upon a dry, sloping 
 floor, for two or three days before they were pressed, on 
 purpose to allow the amurca to run away and a slight 
 fermentation to take place. Others considered this prac- 
 tice most injurious to the fruit. In any case the berries 
 were carefully picked over, and each day's harvest not 
 only cleaned by itself, but kept distinct during all the 
 processes of oil-making. In general, the gentler the pres- 
 sure to which the olive-pulp was subjected, the better the 
 resultant oil, which was roughly divided into three grades. 
 It was cleared of amurca by being poured from one pan 
 to another, often to the number of thirty, after having 
 been allowed to stand for a while and settle in each. In 
 very cold weather, when the oil and amurca could not be 
 separated in this way, a little salt or nitre was mixed 
 with the liquid. "When thoroughly clarified, the oil was 
 
132 THE PKIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 put into dolia and tightly corked. Throughout its 
 making the oil must have been carefully protected from 
 the touch of smoke, which was thought as deleterious in 
 this case as desirable for new-made wine. 
 
 Olives were also pickled and preserved in a variety of 
 ways ; and since the olive-tree commonly bore only every 
 other year, it was customary to have two orchards fur- 
 nishing alternate harvests. Once fairly started, an olive 
 orchard demanded comparatively little labor ; the ground 
 about the trees was annually dug or ploughed, the 
 suckers trimmed, and the roots cut back ; but the trees 
 were manured only every third year, and their branches 
 trimmed once in eight or even more ; on the year they 
 did not bear, some other crop was raised between the 
 trees. 
 
 Grafting was a common practice with all fruit-trees, 
 the Roman method being substantially the same as our 
 own. 
 
 In considering the Roman farmer's year as a whole, 
 we find that he computed rainy days and festivals at 
 forty-five, and reckoned on thirty days after the sowing 
 when there was no field labor to be done. But on these 
 thirty days, and on the stormy ones, there were ropes to 
 make, baskets to weave, and other home-made utensils to 
 prepare ; while all the other implements of the husband- 
 man — his "mute servants," as Varro 1 calls them — had 
 to be repaired and thoroughly cleaned. Even on feast- 
 days certain kinds of work were allowed, such as the 
 clearing of drains and the mending of highways, so that 
 only the December Saturnalia seem to have afforded a 
 complete holiday to the slaves. 
 
 1 Varr. Re Rus. i. 17. 
 
AGRICULTURE. 133 
 
 On New Year's clay, a little work of every kind was 
 done for good luck ; but then followed a time of com- 
 parative relaxation. In the latter half of January, the 
 ground was cleared of brambles, and the trimming of 
 the vineyards completed ; while the autumn-sown grain 
 and the beans, if they were sufficiently grown, were hoed 
 for the first time. Early trees were now grafted, and 
 the stock was planted. Vineyards were also cultivated, 
 and young orchards set out, grass sown and ground 
 broken, fields manured and osier-beds renewed. Vine-sets 
 were also transplanted, if needful, and the late fruit-trees 
 grafted. 
 
 In .March, the vegetable garden was prepared, the 
 autumn grains received their second hoeing, and the 
 spring grains were sown. In April, came weeding, 
 sheep-washing, the setting out of new vineyards, the 
 trimming of old vines, and the olive-grafting. 
 
 May brought the earliest mowing, and in this month 
 the earth was first spaded up about the olive-trees, 
 and the vineyards dug over, this latter process being 
 repeated each month until cold weather. The olives 
 were also trimmed, the vine-shoots nipped ; in warmer 
 latitudes the sheep were shorn, and the lupins, which 
 had been sown as fertilizer, were ploughed in. In June 
 the first ploughing was finished and the second done, 
 the threshing-floor was made ready, vetches mown, beans 
 picked, and honey taken from the hives. 
 
 Grain-harvest took place in July, and the cutting of 
 the straw and gathering of leaves for the winter fodder 
 of cattle. In August, figs and grapes were dried for 
 winter use, and brakes cut for litter. 
 
 September was, par excellence, the month of the vint- 
 
134 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 age, and then, too, turnips were planted, and the later 
 grains harvested. In October, winter grains were sown 
 and harrowed in, trees trimmed, and the olive-picking 
 begun. 
 
 November was devoted to a general cleaning-up of 
 autumn work. The making of oil was finished in Decem- 
 ber, and the vines trained, and we may close the brief 
 resume of the work of the Roman agricultural year by a 
 few general precepts from the Natural History of the 
 elder Pliny l : " He is no farmer who buys what his 
 estate can supply. He is a bad head of a household who 
 does by day what can be done by night, — except in case 
 of foul weather ; he is a worse who does on working- 
 days what is permitted on holidays ; the Avorst of all is 
 he who on a pleasant day chooses to work within doors 
 rather than in the field." 
 
 1 Plin. Nat. Hist, xviii. 6. 
 
TRAVEL. 135 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TRAVEL, TRANSPORTATION, AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 When Rome was at the summit of her power, 
 the entire extent of the Empire was provided with a 
 system of public highways which rendered communica- 
 tion between the different parts of Europe easy and com- 
 paratively rapid. Three principal post-roads diverged 
 from Rome, starting from three separate gates. From 
 the Porta Capena, 1 at the southeastern angle of the city 
 wall, the Via Appia ran over the Alban hills, and across 
 the Pontine Marshes to Capua, where it divided. The 
 right-hand branch led to Rhegium (Reggio), and thence 
 by ferry to Messina and the principal cities of Sicily, one 
 of which, Lilybseum (Capo di Boco), was the regular port 
 of winter departure for Carthage and Africa. In sum- 
 mer the direct sea-passage from Ostia was usually pre- 
 ferred. From Carthage, roads of Roman construction led 
 westward and communicated with Spain, and eastward to 
 Asia, and also penetrated for some distance into the 
 interior. 
 
 The left-hand road from Capua went to Brundusium 
 (Brindisi). From this point, a twent3^-four hours' voyage 
 brought the traveller to Dyrrachium (Durazzo in European 
 
 1 After the building of the Aurelian wall, from the Porta Appia, 
 fifteen hundred yards further out. 
 
136 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Turkey), whence he might follow the Egnatian Way 
 through Illyria, Macedonia, and Thrace to Constanti- 
 nople ; while branch roads led to other important points, 
 and especially to Athens, and to Antioch, which was the 
 centre of Eastern trade. Brundusium was also connected 
 by a coast road with Ariminum (Rimini), the terminus of 
 the Flaminian Way. 
 
 This very important road left Rome by the Porta 
 Flaminia, on or near the site of the present Porta del 
 Popolo, crossed the Tiber at the Mulvian bridge, where is 
 now the Ponte Molle, and ran northward through mid- 
 Italy, by way of Narnia and Spoletum (jSTarni and 
 Spoleto) to Rimini, as aforesaid. From this point 
 another coast road ran northward to Aquileia, — the 
 starting-point for the Danubian provinces; while the 
 Via ^Emilia turned westerly and led by way of Bologna 
 and Modena (Bononia and Mutina) to Milan (Mediola- 
 num). From Modena, another great road led northward 
 to Verona and the Brenner Pass. 
 
 The main highway to Western Europe was unques- 
 tionably the Aurelian, which struck the Mediterranean 
 at Centum Cellse (Civita Vecchia), and followed the 
 coast from there as far as Arelas (Aries), in the Provin- 
 cia, which was a seaport in Roman times, and from 
 which point, Spain, France, and Britain were all easily 
 reached. There was also certainly a way from Milan 
 into Gaul by the passes of the Alps, though its exact 
 course can no longer be determined. Traces of Roman 
 work have, in fact, been found on nearly every Alpine 
 pass now in use, and the " Itineraries " plainly mention 
 those of Mont Genevre, the Great and the Little St. 
 Bernard, and the Spliigen. There was another great 
 
TRAVEL. 137 
 
 system of highways which connected Germany, Northern 
 France, and England. 
 
 The model for all these mighty roads was the oldest and 
 most frequented of them all, the Via Appia. Originally 
 built by Appius Claudius in 312 B.C., it was restored and 
 virtually reconstructed by the emperors Nerva and Tra- 
 jan; and it was their road which, in the sixth century 
 a.d., excited the wonder and admiration of Procopius, 
 who found it broad enough for two teams to pass 
 abreast, and paved with large blocks of foreign stone, 
 so accurately fitted that no joining was visible. It is 
 hardly probable that all the highroads we have enumer- 
 ated were as magnificently constructed as the Appian 
 Way, yet the time made by the regular post does not 
 seem greatly to have varied on the different routes, and 
 was everywhere much the same as that of the modern 
 diligence. 
 
 The speed of government couriers was reckoned, for 
 long distances, at something over one hundred English 
 miles a day. 1 Private travelling, by hired conveyance, 
 was necessarily slower. Caesar, indeed, Plutarch tells 
 us, accomplished the journey from Pome to the Phone 
 (796 Roman miles) within eight days, but then Caesar's 
 journeys were considered miracles of celerity. The 
 private travellers of later times could sometimes make 
 use of the government post, but only by special imperial 
 permission. 
 
 Private letters were usually conveyed by foot-runners, 
 or tabettarii, who made about twentv-five Poman miles a 
 day, covering, for example, the 124 miles from Pome to 
 Capua in about five days. 
 
 1 The journey from Antioch to Constantinople, for example, 747 
 Roman miles, occupied not quite six davs. ^ g. -j g.^ 
 
 f OF THE ^ 
 
 £ UNIVERSITY 
 
138 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 Mansiones, or night quarters, for the bearers of dis- 
 patches, were to be found at similar intervals, that is, 
 about twenty-five Roman miles apart, and they must, in 
 most instances, have been quite regularly distributed, 
 since we find their number used as a measure of dis- 
 tance. Halting-places of a more sumptuous nature were 
 provided for the Emperor and his especial deputies. 
 
 The support of the roads, as well as of the post-system 
 of earlier times, fell entirely upon the districts through 
 which the roads passed; and though some portion of 
 this expense was later transferred to the imperial treas- 
 ury, it always remained a heavy charge upon the prov- 
 inces. 
 
 No public provision was made for private travellers, 
 their needs being met by individual enterprise. There 
 were men in most Italian cities who let out raedae, which 
 were rather roomy four-wheeled carriages, and cisia, a 
 species of light two-wheeled gig, as well as the horses 
 
 or mules to draw them. 
 The offices of these cisiaril 
 or iumentaril, were at the 
 city-gates, — for driving 
 within the walls was almost 
 unknown, — and here the 
 bargain was made either 
 for changing carriage and 
 horses from stage to stage, 
 or for making the whole journey with the same team. 
 Doubtless a man might also use his own conveyance, if 
 he had one, with the horses or mules to be hired along 
 the road. 
 
 In the latter days of the Republic, great pomp began 
 
 Cisium (Rich). 
 
TRAVEL. 139 
 
 to be affected by wealthy travellers, and this increased to 
 such a pitch that Nero's regular train consisted of a 
 thousand wagons, while Poppaea took along with her 
 five hundred she-asses for convenience of bathing in 
 their milk, and tipped her horses' shoes with gold. 
 
 Seneca 1 observes satirically that "everybody travels 
 nowadays with a troop of Numidian cavalry in front, 
 and a band of scouts sent on ahead. . . . They all have 
 mules, loaded with vessels of glass and murrha, and 
 sculptured by the hand of famous craftsmen, for it 
 would be beneath a man's dignity to load his packs 
 with articles which would bear knocking about." And 
 he also tells us, with true Stoic vanity, that he once 
 made a two days' journey with a friend, attended by 
 so few servants that a single vehicle sufficed for them 
 all. 
 
 The traveller of consequence avoided, if possible, pass- 
 ing a single night in any inn. On the incessantly fre- 
 quented route from Kome to Naples, he was almost sure 
 either to have a villa of his own, or a friend whose hos- 
 pitality he might demand. Failing these, he would take 
 tents along and camp out, if the season were sufficiently 
 mild, and doubtless it was the absence of distinguished 
 patronage which made the inn of those days both so com- 
 fortless and so cheap. It is certain, however, that places 
 of public entertainment, such as they were (cleversoria, 
 tabemae, meritoria), existed all along the most frequented 
 roads of the Empire, and that they were, in some cases, 
 aided from the treasury. Neighboring proprietors often 
 built them on speculation, letting them to a landlord, or 
 managing them through their own slaves. At certain 
 
 1 See Ep. cxxiii. G, 
 
140 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 places there would be a choice of inns, and Horace re- 
 marks 1 on the rival establishments of Forum Appii. 
 Poplnae, or restaurants, both popinae sellariolae where a 
 regular table was laid, and the humbler kind where a 
 lunch was taken standing, are mentioned so often as 
 to lead us to infer, that the fashion of renting furnished 
 rooms (meritoriae) and going out for one's meals was 
 as common in ancient Rome as in Latin countries now. 
 
 In the rural inns it was always customary to pay a 
 lump sum for board and lodging, and, indeed, one hardly 
 sees how items could have been specified, when the total 
 bill amounted to a half ass, which Polybius says 2 was the 
 regular charge in his days for one night's entertainment 
 in the inns of Cisalpine Gaul. Among the discoveries 
 at Pompeii is that of a tavern-sign on which is depicted 
 the hostess reckoning the dues of a departing guest, of 
 whom she demands for bread and wine one ass, for other 
 food, two asses, and for mule's provender the same. 
 
 Tavern-signs appear to have been regularly used, 
 and birds and animals were favorite devices, from which, 
 as now, the tavern took its name, — at the sign of the 
 Stork, the Elephant, the great Eagle, the Camel, the 
 Raven. Inscriptions were often painted on these signs, 
 urging the claims of the house upon the traveller, and 
 host or hostess would stand upon the threshold to solicit 
 the patronage of the passer-by. \The proverbial reputa- 
 tion of inn-keepers was very bad. They were supposed, 
 as a matter of course, to water their wine, and steal the 
 fodder of the animals they stabled; and an impression 
 prevailed, exaggerated, one may hope, that they were 
 ready, not merely to murder such guests as were sup- 
 
 1 Hor. Sat. i. 5. 4. 2 Polyb. ii. 157. 
 
TRAVEL. 141 
 
 posed to have valuables about them, but to eat them as 
 well. Galen, who repeats the charge, appends by way 
 of ghastly commentary, and, as it would seem, from 
 experience, tha^_Jiiiiaaai--^dT - tastes much like that of 
 swine. Even St. Augustine x confesses to havingheard 
 tales, which, however, he declines implicitly to believe, 
 of Italian hostesses who put something into their cheeses, 
 which turned those who partook of these dainties into 
 beasts of burden, whom they then compelled to perform 
 certain tasks, restoring them to their human semblance 
 after these were completed. 
 
 The customs-dues appear to have been as much dreaded 
 as they are by the returning European traveller of our 
 own day, and there was a good deal of evasion on the one 
 side, and of rudeness on the other. Soldiers' luggage 
 was, however, free of duty, and a man's effects might be 
 exempted by especial favor of the Emperor, as were those 
 of the sophist Polemo of Smyrna, by Trajan. 
 
 Highway robbers abounded in the outlying provinces 
 of the Empire, in all mountainous districts, and especially 
 in the tract of forest which divided the Pontine marshes 
 from the sea. Military expeditions were frequently sent 
 against them, but without much permanent effect. When 
 Septimius Severus disbanded the Prsetorian guard, a 
 good many of its members, and of the class from which 
 it had been recruited, "took to the road," as the English 
 phrase used to be ; and toward the close of that Em- 
 peror's reign (that is to say, in the middle years of the 
 third century a.d.), there was a famous bandit, bearing 
 the obviously fictitious name of Felix Bulla, and com- 
 manding a band of six hundred men, whose history is an 
 
 1 Aug. Civ. Dei xviii. 18. 
 
142 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 opera ready made. His principal headquarters were 
 in the neighborhood of Brindisi, where all tourists of 
 apparent affluence, arriving either from the West or the 
 East, were ordered to stand and deliver. His force was 
 admirably organized, he was both bold and wary, and 
 long avoided capture, but was at length betrayed into 
 the hands of the Prefect Papinianus. "How came you 
 to be a robber ? " was the rather futile preliminary 
 inquiry of his judge, to which the captive replied, " How 
 came you to be a prefect ? " 1 Felix Bulla was thrown 
 to the beasts in the amphitheatre, but his race survived. 
 Those who went southward from Rome by day, during 
 the first century of our era, were, in general, safe enough, 
 owing to the very press of travel upon the road. There 
 was a constant succession of those pompous caravans 
 described by Seneca, whose owners aped imperial luxury. 
 The expense thus incurred was often literally ruinous, 
 and some of those, who had thus flaunted upon the road, 
 ended their days as gladiators, a profession which Nero 
 had made rather fashionable. For the time being, 
 however, the carriage horses of the ambitious tourist 
 were well matched and well bred, and their leathern 
 shoes were furnished with silver tips. Otherwise, the 
 traveller made use of fast mules, which were no less 
 costly. These animals had often rich purple housings, 
 heavily embroidered, while their harnesses were studded 
 with gold. The wagons were sumptuously decorated 
 with gold and silver plates, on which the value of an 
 entire estate might easily be spent, while their cushions 
 and curtains were of silk or some equally expensive 
 stuff. 
 
 2 Dio Cass, lxxvi. 
 
Carpentum (Rich). 
 
 TRANSPORTATION. 1 43 
 
 One of the vehicles most commonly used was the car- 
 pentum. It had two wheels and an arched awning, and 
 was, in fact, only a lux- 
 urious development of the 
 common farm-cart, which 
 bore the same name, — the 
 cover having been added 
 for protection against rain 
 and sun. This was the 
 kind of carriage affected 
 by those great ladies in 
 whose favor was first relaxed that prohibition of the 
 use of wheeled vehicles inside the walls of Rome, which 
 had remained in force throughout the republican period. 
 When so occupied, the carpentum, and a variety of the 
 same called a pilentum, were always drawn by mules. 
 They were so constructed as to hold two persons beside 
 the driver. In the four-wheeled raeda, or cdrriica, the 
 traveller had appliances for making himself most com- 
 fortable. Propped upon soft cushions, he whiled away 
 the time with reading, writing, dice-throwing and other 
 amusements. Martial advises the man who sets out on 
 a long journey, to make Cicero his travelling companion, 
 and the elder Pliny used to have both an amanuensis and 
 a writing-table in his coach. 
 
 Smaller than the carpentum, but covered like it, and 
 driven by the traveller himself, was the covinus. There 
 were also the open two-wheeled essedum and cisium, each 
 of which had a single seat, accommodating the driver and 
 one other person. The cisium seems, however, to have 
 been lighter built, for the essedum was always drawn by 
 a pair of animals, while the cisium had shafts, to one of 
 
144 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 which an extra horse was often attached, or, if great 
 speed were desired, three animals would be harnessed 
 abreast, as in the Russian troika. The outside horses 
 were called f undies, or funarii, from the rope with which 
 they were attached to the cisium, much in the same 
 manner as a third horse is attached to a street-car 
 among ourselves. Five miles an hour was considered 
 
 greet speed even for 
 a cisium. 
 
 Government couriers 
 usually rode one horse 
 and led another. The 
 Romans, until the 
 fourth century, seem 
 never to have used 
 a saddle {sella eques- 
 tris 1 ) ; they rode eith- 
 er barebacked, or with 
 a pad or cushion called 
 the ephippium, similar 
 to that always used 
 by women, in which 
 case, too, they seem 
 to have ridden side- 
 wise in feminine fash- 
 ion. With or without 
 the ephippium, the 
 stragulum (housing or 
 caparison) was always 
 used. It was often made of the skin of a beast with the 
 
 1 Several kinds of pack-saddles, however, existed long before 
 this date. 
 
TRANSPORTATION. 
 
 145 
 
 fur on, and sometimes of leather, which, for use in the 
 army was covered with plates of metal, and served as a 
 protection for the horse — Virgil 1 gives such a caparison, 
 "covered with brazen scales like feathers," to the horse 
 of Chlorus, the priest of Cybele, in the last battle for 
 Latium. Housings of brightly colored woollen cloth 
 were used for mere ornament, and a leathern band, 
 adorned with plates of metal, often hung down over 
 the breast. The general plan of the head-stall (ccqns- 
 trum) was very like ours; but whether for riding or 
 driving, blinders and curb-bits were unknown. There 
 was a special sort of invalid carriage in use at Borne 
 from very early times, called arcera, from its resem- 
 blance to a large chest. The occupant lay within, upon 
 cushions, while the driver was perched upon a little seat 
 outside ; but after the introduction of litters, the arcera 
 was almost entirely superseded. 
 
 The lectica, or litter, used at first merely for the trans- 
 port of the sick or dead, became later the favorite trav- 
 elling carriage for women. 
 Its use by a man was long 
 considered a mark of effemi- 
 nacy, but in imperial times 
 they became general. The 
 wealth of the possessor of 
 a lectica was evinced, not 
 only by the richness of its 
 ornamentation, but by the 
 number of bearers, two, 
 four, six, or eight. We do not know just how they 
 carried their burden, only that, when set down, it rested 
 
 1 Virg. Mn. xi. 770-771. 
 
 Lectica (Rich). 
 
146 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 on four wooden legs. It also had a roof, supported at 
 the four corners, and there were curtains around the 
 sides, which could be drawn at pleasure ; or else the 
 sides were shut in with windows made from plates of 
 alabaster, or other translucent stone, such as may still 
 be seen in some old Italian churches. The occupant 
 either reclined upon a heap of cushions, or the lectica 
 was fitted with a feather bed. The basterna was a litter, 
 borne by two mules, one before and one behind. All 
 these conveyances were doubtless to be seen any fine 
 day on the Via Appia, as well as trains of sumpter- 
 mules (dossuaril, cllteUarii, sarcinales, etc.), and heavy 
 carts bringing merchandise to the markets of Rome. 
 
 Except during the winter months, when the great 
 majority of vessels was laid up in harbor, the Roman 
 market was largely supplied by means of the boat-service 
 on the Tiber, from the harbors of Ostia and Portus 
 Trajani. A winter voyage is usually mentioned as a 
 thing of horror, but in the pleasant months of the year 
 it seems to have been a mode of travelling much favored 
 by the ancients, and more expeditious than journeying 
 by land. Although merchant vessels proper {naves 
 onerarii), such as those which brought the grain supply 
 from Egypt and Sicily, were propelled by sails alone, it 
 was in rowing that the Romans, like the Greeks, chiefly 
 excelled. How they managed their many banks of oars, 
 no modern is able perfectly to understand, and ships 
 with ten banks or more, must certainly have been mere 
 curiosities. There is even mention of one vessel with 
 forty banks, but three to five were the usual number, and 
 the Greek trireme could be depended upon to make eight 
 miles an hour. The voyage from Brimdusium to Dyrra- 
 
TRANSPORTATION. 147 
 
 cliium (Brindisi to Durazzo), with good wind and weather, 
 might be accomplished in twenty-four hours, but what 
 appliances the luxurious Koman had for making himself 
 comfortable on shipboard, even during this brief transit, 
 we do not know. Cabins there were, in the hold of the 
 vessel, and a tent-like contrivance was sometimes erected 
 on deck, which would, doubtless, afford a pleasant and 
 sufficient shelter on those starlit summer nights which 
 were chosen by preference for the crossing to Illyria and 
 other short trips. On the coasting vessels, both sails 
 and oars were used, and they could make a speed of six 
 to eight nautical miles an hour. 
 
 The Romans were, upon the whole, great travellers, 
 and their customary journeys may be classed under the 
 three heads of business, instruction, and pleasure. 
 Seldom, if ever, has the world seen a more thoroughly 
 organized and extensive commercial system, than that 
 which had its focus in Borne, in the first centuries of our 
 era. Never, of a certainty, since that time, has the 
 same current coin been used over so vast a stretch of 
 territory. Local coinage of silver and copper, for local 
 purposes, there doubtless was, in many of the provinces ; 
 but, except in Egypt, where the Greek drachma always 
 held its own, the Roman denarius became the monetary 
 unit throughout the Empire. It seems, also, to have passed 
 current among the neighboring independent nations, as a 
 Bank of England note will do to-day upon the Conti- 
 nent of Europe. Tacitus l remarks, however, that the 
 Germans always gave the preference to those silver coins 
 with the stamp of the biga, which had prevailed before 
 Nero's day, and to which they were accustomed, while 
 
 i.Tac. Ger. 5. 
 
148 THE PRIVATE LIEE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 they looked with suspicion on later coinages. As for 
 gold, all articles of merchandise were so cheap in Ger- 
 many, that that metal was seldom required. 
 
 Like the merchant of the Middle Ages, his Roman 
 predecessor seems to have travelled in person to the 
 markets where he desired to buy or sell. Horace makes 
 many allusions to the trader who "tempts the wintry 
 sea, moving continually to and fro between the equator 
 and the pole " ; and Manilius describes the same advent- 
 urer as buying up the produce of the world, carrying his 
 own wares into unknown lands, and ever acquiring fresh 
 treasures under novel suns. These apparently poetic 
 statements are corroborated by the monumental inscrip- 
 tion of a merchant found at Hierapolis, which sets forth 
 that he made seventy-two crossings between Malea on 
 the Peloponnesos and Italy, while one C. Oc. Agathopus, 
 declares upon his own gravestone at Pozzuoli, that, 
 wearied out with travelling from East to West, he has 
 here found repose at last. These merchant-voyages were 
 not confined to the Mediterranean and Black Sea, but 
 extended to the xltlantic, to the ports of Spain, France, 
 England, and, very possibly, Ireland. The conquest of 
 Egypt also opened the way to the East Indies. The 
 regular route of the merchant led him first to Alexandria, 
 starting whence in summer, he struck the mouth of the 
 Nile, and sailed up that stream to Coptos, — a twelve 
 days' voyage with favorable Avinds. At Coptos, his 
 wares were transferred to the backs of camels, and the 
 caravan set out for the shores of the Red Sea. Moving 
 only by night, on account of the intense heat, and resting 
 all day, it took nearly a fortnight to reach the coast, with 
 which the Ptolomean canal formed another means of 
 
TRANSPORTATION. * 149 
 
 communication. In Strabo's time, a fleet of a hundred 
 and twenty vessels plied constantly between Myos- 
 hormos, a Red Sea port, lying nearly opposite Mt. Sinai 
 and the extremity of Arabia Petrgea, and India ; and each 
 of these vessels, Pliny further informs us, had a company 
 of archers on board, to protect the cargo against pirates. 
 A voyage of thirty days brought the vessels either to 
 Ocelis (Acila), in Arabia, at the lower extremity of the 
 Red Sea, or to Cane, on the south coast of Arabia. It 
 was forty days' journey hence, to the coast of Malabar, 
 which, however, was in such bad repute for safety, that 
 it was customary to prolong the voyage to a more 
 southerly point. The whole expedition, from Alex- 
 andria to India and back, occupied from six to seven 
 months, that is to say, from midsummer to some time 
 in the following February. The incredible number of 
 Roman coins found in India, testifies clearly enough to 
 the extent of the Indo-Roman commerce. There is, 
 indeed, some reason to suppose that a certain denarius, 
 bearing the image of Augustus, with his adopted sons, 
 Lucius and Gaius, was struck off for this trade only. 
 
 The importations from the East were much the same 
 in Roman times as now, — silk, spices, pearls, ivory, and 
 gold. The article of commerce most sought in the 
 markets of Northern Europe was amber (electrum or 
 siicinitm), for which there was a great demand among 
 the Romans, and, in quest of which the merchants often 
 went far beyond the boundary of the Roman Empire. 
 Tacitus tells * of a colony of Roman merchants, which 
 the army ran across in Bohemia, who confessed that 
 they had come there first in hopes of gain, and then 
 
 1 Tac. Ann. ii. 02. 
 
150 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 stayed on, till the new ties formed in this barbarous land 
 had grown stronger than the old. There was also an 
 excellent opening for trade in Gaul, whose inhabitants 
 were always ready to give a slave for a cask of wine. 
 
 Wherever a permanent camp of Koman soldiers was 
 established, the Roman merchant speedily found his 
 way, and it would be hard to say which formed the more 
 effective missionary of Roman civilization. Foreign 
 merchants also visited Italy in large numbers, especially 
 those of the Orient, which last came, in the process of 
 time, so to throng all ports of the Empire, that in the 
 fifth century Syrian and merchant appear to have become 
 synonymous terms. " Here," writes 1 the Bishop Sido- 
 nius Apollinaris from Ravenna, in his whimsical descrip- 
 tion of that venerable city as a place where everything 
 is topsy-turvy, "here priests let out money at usury, 
 and Syrians sing psalms." 
 
 After Rome, the most important commercial centres 
 were Corinth, Alexandria, and Aries, and certain places 
 appear also then, as now, to have had a monopoly of the 
 trade in certain articles. Thus Alexandria was said to 
 supply the whole world with glass and paper, and Spain 
 sent shiploads of quince marmalade in all directions. The 
 Romans imported their beloved fish sauces largely from 
 Antibes, and preferred the fine linen of Berytus (Bey- 
 rout) to that of any other make. 
 
 Great stress was laid upon travel as putting a finishing 
 touch to the education of a distinguished youth, whose 
 mind was supposed to be expanded by the mere sight of 
 novel scenes. Rich young Romans were sent to study 
 (theoretically) for a year or more away from home, 
 
 i Sid. Ap. Ep. i. 1. 
 
TRAVEL. 1 51 
 
 either in some Italian city or preferably in Greece. 
 Often they followed from place to place some philosopher 
 whose tenets they had embraced ; for the rhetoricians 
 and sophists Avere perpetually on the move, and their- 
 nomad life was adopted by other classes of people. Not 
 onlyj^uack-doctors, but physicians in good and regular 
 standing, travelled about the world, and took pride in 
 the breadth of their experience. So also did portrait- 
 painters and skilled artisans of all kinds, and unques- 
 tionably there were numbers of strolling troupes of 
 actors, musicians, and athletes. 
 
 A sea-voyage and change of air were favorite prescrip- 
 tions with the physicians of those days, and recommended 
 for almost all ailments, — pulmonary weakness, habitual 
 pain in the head, low spirits, and paralysis. Egypt was 
 one of the favorite health resorts ; a residence among 
 pine-woods was often recommended ; milk cures were to 
 be found at many seaside resorts, such as Stabise (Castel- 
 lamare), whilst almost all the medicated springs we know 
 were frequented in Roman times. 
 
 There were also many religious pilgrimages to the 
 temples of distinguished divinities, or to oracles of old 
 and high repute ; while on occasions like that of the 
 Olympic games in Greece, or any particularly gorgeous 
 gladiatorial show at Rome, the influx of pilgrims from 
 abroad was often tremendous. 
 
 The Roman also travelled as a mere tourist, most of 
 all to Greece, whose beautiful monuments every self- 
 respecting citizen of the later Republic felt that he ought 
 once, at least, to have seen. There could hardly be a 
 Grecian town so insignificant as not to boast some temple 
 which, over and above its religious character, partook of 
 
152 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 that of a museum, with glorious works of art dating 
 from the greatest period, and relics of demi-gods and 
 heroes. Though somewhat shamefaced about accepting 
 them implicitly, the Roman traveller was always deeply 
 interested in objects which claimed connection with that 
 great epic war under the walls of Troy, which had led to 
 the building of Rome. Enthusiasts in this line even 
 went to Asia Minor on an express hunt for Trojan relics, 
 while Egypt, after its conquest, attracted larger and 
 larger numbers of the curious year by year. The trav- 
 eller of classic times had few guide-books, but he could 
 hardly reach a city where he would not find a living 
 guide prepared to take him about, and show him all that 
 was worth seeing. These valets-de-place, though not yet 
 called by the name of the most versatile of Romans, were 
 often antiquarians of education and position. 
 
 But while the Roman of the Augustan Age had often 
 a highly cultivated taste in the matter of art, his enjoy- 
 ment of the beauties of nature was much more limited. 
 Those grander aspects and phenomena of the outer world, 
 which are so thrilling to the modern mind, were simply 
 uncomfortable and repugnant to him ; and this is prob- 
 ably why, despite his love of change and restless desire 
 to enlarge his borders, the Roman was never a very 
 ardent explorer. Certain of the gentler aspects and 
 humbler charms of nature — cool springs with mossy 
 banks, broad, green meado\vs and quiet sheets of water, 
 shady groves and fair garden-beds — he did love intensely, 
 as countless passages in the Latin poets show ; and such 
 he would have about his country-house, or if, like 
 Atticus, he were rich enough, even in the city. But his 
 villa was his first extravagance, and always his peculiar 
 
TRAVEL. 153 
 
 pet and pride. " In all the length and breadth of this 
 Empire," says Seneca, 1 "there is no lake whose borders 
 are not studded with the roofs of Roman nobles, no river- 
 bank where they have not built." All along the Medi- 
 terranean, far south from Ostia, these villas lined the 
 coast, crowding close upon one another at favorite sites, 
 like Baise. The inland estates, like those of the younger 
 Pliny, near the sources of the Tiber in Umbria (the 
 modern Citta di Castello), were of much greater extent; 
 but even so, they were almost continuous. 
 
 It is difficult to say how many distinct properties a 
 Roman of rank might not possess in late republican or 
 early imperial times. If Cicero and Pliny, who have told 
 us so much about their various installations, are to be 
 taken as representative cases, one would say that four or 
 five huge country-seats, and as many lesser villas, would 
 be a moderate allowance, while the dates of the letters of 
 these two show how incessantly they moved from one 
 place to another. Sometimes, no doubt, they did so at 
 the bidding of their affairs. Often they were impelled 
 by mere restlessness and love of change. 
 
 "Hence are vague journeyings undertaken," says 
 Seneca 2 in his discourse on Tranquillity of Spirit, "and 
 divers coasts are visited, but everywhere, whether on 
 land or on sea, we discover that levity of mind which is 
 always disgusted with the present. Now we seek Cam- 
 pania, and anon, growing disgusted with its delicacies, 
 we make for the wilderness and explore the forests of 
 Bruttium and Lucania. But the craving for something 
 pleasant revives in the desert, and our dainty eves must 
 needs have some relief from the tedious squalor of those 
 
 1 Sen. Ep. lxxxix. 21. 2 Sen. De Tran. An. ii. 
 
154 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 rude spots. Tarentum is the place ! — we praise its har- 
 bor, its exquisite winter climate, and its fine old mansions, 
 finally we bend our steps toward the city of cities. Too 
 long have our ears missed the din of the streets, the 
 plaudits of the theatre. We are ready even for a taste of 
 human blood. Thus journey follows journey, and scene 
 succeeds to scene, and so it is, as the poet Lucretius says, 
 that 'every man would from himself escape.' " 
 
 The restless being described in this passage was, of 
 course, a spoiled child of fortune, but never at any 
 period of his history was the Roman very ingenious in 
 devising for himself home amusements and simple recrea- 
 tions. It was not quite natural for him to play. The 
 mimes and songs and dances of primitive times had 
 almost all a religious significance. They appeal to the 
 gods, and were laudatory or propitiatory in their char- 
 acter. There are, indeed, allusions in Virgil's roseate 
 picture of the good old times to something like the rustic 
 sports of ( i Merrie England," — " leaping upon greased 
 and inflated hides, in the fair meadows," and the like ; ! 
 and Cicero and Suetonius both speak of casting lots by 
 means of the game called "micare digitis," which consisted 
 of throwing out under cover a certain number of fingers 
 for your adversary to guess, and which was much the 
 same as the mora of modern Italy. But even these ele- 
 mentary amusements, though ancient, were, perhaps, not 
 indigenous, while the dramatic representations and games 
 of the circus, which came to exercise so enthralling a fas- 
 cination over the town-bred Roman of later times, were 
 certainly an importation from Greece. These monster 
 shows however, of which the great majority were organ- 
 
 1 Virg. Geor, ii. 382. 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 155 
 
 ized and exhibited for political purposes, belong to the 
 public rather than the private life of the Roman. 
 
 It remains to say a few words concerning the games of 
 children and youths. The former, like the rising genera- 
 tion always and everywhere, had their dolls and their 
 hobby-horses, their toy houses and carts. They skipped 
 stones, they spun tops (turbines), they walked upon stilts 
 (grallae). They had also active games of emulation or 
 skill, in which the best fellow won, and Horace quotes 
 in his first epistle, the boys who say, " If you beat, you 
 shall be king " (rex eris, si recte fades) , while the rather 
 vulgar catchword of a boys' foot race, " occupet extremum 
 scabies" (a murrain seize the hindmost), is applied by 
 the same humorous author in his Ars Poetica to the 
 freaks of a too froward literary ambition. 
 
 Nuts were such very favorite playthings with a Roman 
 boy, that the expression nuces relinquere came to be 
 synonymous with the putting away of childish things, as 
 we have already seen in the case~of~"the young bride- 
 groom, of whom largess of nuts was demanded by the 
 gamins who followed his bridal procession. Many differ- 
 ent games were played with these cheap and convenient 
 counters, such as the Indus castellorum, which required 
 four nuts, of which three had to be so arranged that the 
 fourth could be balanced upon, without displacing them ; 
 which done, all the four accrued to the deft player ; and 
 the game of par impar, which explains itself, being pre- 
 cisely the universal "odd or even ? " 
 
 The youth who had outgrown nuts or marbles played 
 ball, either by himself, with one, two, or three balls, or 
 with one or more associates, who had to play by turn 
 (tiatatim liaJere), and must be equally expert in throwing 
 
156 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 (dare or mittere), catching (excipere), and returning (re- 
 mittere or repercutere). The trigonw&s a triangular game 
 of ball sufficiently dignified to be played upon the Campus 
 Martius by grown men, and difficult enough to require 
 much practice. The chief peculiarity of the trigon was 
 that the balls were not delivered in regular order, but 
 flung to any player at the caprice of the server, and each 
 of the three players had to catch and throw simultane- 
 ously. The sphaeromachia was a still more elaborate 
 game of ball, in which the players took sides, and their 
 ground was marked out somewhat as for lawn-tennis. 
 
 Children of a yet larger growth amused themselves 
 with the innumerable games of hazard which depend 
 upon the throwing of dice (tesserae or tall). Tesserae 
 were cubical, and marked exactly like the dice of to-day. 
 They were shaken upon a flat surface from a cup or dice- 
 box, which went by many names, — turricula, fritillus, 
 orca. Three dice were usually thrown, and the high- 
 est throw was, of course, 
 triple sixes. Tall were origi- 
 nally made from the ankle- 
 bones of animals, whence their 
 name. They were numbered 
 upon four sides only, being 
 rounded on the other two. 
 Four was the number regu- 
 larly thrown, and the highest cast, called Venus, was 
 that in which the four different numbers, one, three, 
 four, and six came uppermost (two and five were never 
 marked upon tall). There were also several games 
 played with calculi (balls or pellets) upon a board 
 (tabula), a favorite one being the so-called ludus latrun- 
 
 Fritillus (Rich). 
 
AMUSEMENTS. 167 
 
 cularius, which bore some faint resemblance to chess, and 
 where victory seems to have consisted in capturing 
 and disabling as many thieves (latrones) as possible. 
 But war was, after all, the Roman's favorite pastimo. 
 and no manner of contest upon a mimic field commanded 
 his ardent interest. . 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i. 
 
 Roman Measures of Length with English Equivalents. 
 
 A. Smaller Measures. 
 
 Digitus = .7281 in. 
 
 1J Digiti = Uncia = .9708 in. 
 
 4 Digiti or 3 Unciae = Palmus = 2.9124 in. 
 
 3 Palrai = Palmus Major (late) = 8.7372 in. 
 
 4 Palmi = Pes = 11.6496 in. 
 
 5 Palmi = Palmipes = 1 ft. 2.562 in. 
 
 6 Palmi = Cubitus = 1 ft. 5.4744 in. 
 
 B. Larger Measures. 
 
 Pes = 11.6496 in. 
 
 2} Pedes = Graclus = 2 ft. 5.124 in. 
 
 2 Graclus = Passus = 4 ft. 10.248 in. 
 
 2 Passus = Decempeda or Pertica . . = 9 ft. 8.496 in. 
 
 12 Perticae = Actus 1 = 116 ft. 5.952 in. 
 
 1000 Passus = Mille Passuum . . . . = 4854 ft. = .9193 mile. 
 
 II. 
 
 Roman Square Measure. 
 Pes Quadratus = .94245 sq. ft. 
 
 480 Ped. Quad. = Actus Simplex = 1 sq. R. 180.127 sq. ft. 
 
 5 Act. Simp. = Uncia 2 = 8 sq. R. 83.885 sq. ft. 
 
 6 Unciae = Actus Quadratus = 1 rood 9 sq. R. 231.07 sq. ft. 
 2 Act. Quad. = Iugerum 3 = 2 roods 19 sq. R. 189.89 sq. ft. 
 
 1 The Actus was the regulation length of furrow in ploughing with 
 oxen, and was to be drawn without breathing space. 
 
 2 That is twelfth part of Iugerum. 
 
 3 Or very nearly rive-eighths of our acre. 
 
 159 
 
160 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 III. 
 
 Roman Liquid Measure. 
 
 Ligula = .024 pts. 
 
 Cyathus (Uncia of Sextarius) = .096 pts. 
 
 Quartarius (y^ " " ) = .289 pts. 
 
 Hemina ( T 6 2 - " " ) = .578 pts. 
 
 Sextarius = 1.155 pts. 
 
 Congius = 3 qts. .934 pts. 
 
 Urna =13 qts. 1.735 pts. 
 
 Amphora =27 qts. 1.471 pts. 
 
 Culeus = 138 gal. 2 qts. 1.53 pts. 
 
 4 Ligulae 
 
 3 Cyathi 
 
 2 Quartarii : 
 2 Heminae 
 6 Sextarii 
 
 4 Congii 
 2 Urnae 
 
 20 Amphorae 
 
 8 Sextarii 
 2 Semimodii 
 
 IV. 
 
 Roman Dry Measure. 
 
 Sextarius 1 = 
 
 Semimodius = 
 
 Modius 2 = 
 
 .993 pts. 
 3 qts. 1.944 pts. 
 7 qts. 1.888 pts. 
 
 Roman Weights. 
 
 Uncial Divisions of the As. 
 
 1^ Unciae 
 
 1£ Sescuucia 
 1£ Sextautes 
 1£ Quadrantes 
 1] Trientes 
 
 Uncia 3 
 
 Sescuncia 
 
 Sextans 
 
 Quadrans 
 
 Triens 
 
 Quincunx 
 
 2 unciae = 
 
 3 unciae = 
 
 4 unciae = 
 
 Grammes. Oz 
 
 = 27.288 = 
 
 40.932 = 
 
 54.576 = 
 
 81.864 = 
 
 109.152 = 
 
 = 5 unciae = 136.44 = 
 
 Grains 
 (Avoir.). 
 
 421.108 
 
 194.163 
 
 404.716 
 
 388.324 
 
 371.932 
 
 355.54 
 
 1 The Sextarius of dry and liquid measure was of the same capacity, 
 and the same subdivisions were made use of. 
 
 2 Or, for rough calculation, the Modius equals the peck, and the Sex- 
 tarius the pint. 
 
 3 The Uncia differs from the ounce avoirdupois (437.5 grains) by 16.392 
 grains. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ll)l 
 
 
 
 
 Grammes. 
 
 Oz. 
 
 Grains 
 (Avoir.). 
 
 1\ Quincunces 
 
 = Semis = 6 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 1G3.728 
 
 = o 
 
 339.148 
 
 1 ' Semes 
 
 = Septunx = 7 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 191.016 
 
 = 6 
 
 322.756 
 
 lh Septunces 
 
 = Bes = 8 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 218.304 
 
 = 7 
 
 306.364 
 
 1£ Besses 
 
 = Dodrans = 9 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 245.592 
 
 = 8 
 
 289.972 
 
 1^ Dodrantes 
 
 = Dextans = 10 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 272.88 
 
 = 9 
 
 273.580 
 
 lyL Dextantes 
 
 = Deunx =11 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 300. 1G 
 
 = 10 
 
 257.188 
 
 lyL Deunces 
 
 = As (Libra) = 12 
 
 unciae 
 
 = 327.45 
 
 = 11 
 
 240.796 
 
 
 B. Divisions of the i 
 
 Uncia. 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Grammes. 
 
 
 Grains. 
 (Avoir.). 
 
 
 Siliqua 
 
 = 
 
 .189 
 
 = 
 
 2.924 
 
 3 Siliquae 
 
 = Obolus 
 
 — 
 
 .568 
 
 — 
 
 8.77.°. 
 
 2 Oboli 
 
 = Scrupulum 
 
 — 
 
 1.137 
 
 = 
 
 17.546 
 
 2 Scrupula 
 
 = Semisextula 
 
 = 
 
 2.274 
 
 = 
 
 35.092 
 
 3 Scrupula 
 
 = Drachma 
 
 = 
 
 3.411 
 
 = 
 
 52.638 
 
 4 Scrupula 
 
 = Sextula 
 
 = 
 
 4.548 
 
 = 
 
 70.185 
 
 6 Scrupula 
 
 = Sicilicus 
 
 — 
 
 6.822 
 
 = 
 
 105.277 
 
 8 Scrupula 
 
 = Duella 
 
 — 
 
 9.096 
 
 = 
 
 140.369 
 
 12 Scrupula 
 
 = Semuncia 
 
 — 
 
 13.644 
 
 — 
 
 210.55 \ 
 
 2 Semunciae 
 
 = Uncia 
 
 = 
 
 27.288 
 
 = 
 
 421.108 
 
 12 Unciae 
 
 = As (Libra) 
 
 = 
 
 327.45 
 
 = 
 
 5053.296 
 
 VI. 
 
 Roman Money. 
 A. B.C. 268-217. 
 
 
 Weight in 
 Grains (Avoir.). 
 
 Value in 
 Money. 
 
 
 As (copper) 1 = 1754.613 = 
 
 $.01968 
 
 2\ Asses 
 
 = Sestertius (silver) = 17.546 = 
 
 8.0492 
 
 2 Sestertii 
 
 = Quinarius (silver) = 35.092 = 
 
 •S.0984 
 
 2 Quinarii 
 
 = Denarius (silver) - = 70.184 = 
 
 8.1968 
 
 1 In still earlier times the As of money, like the As of weight, con- 
 tained 5053.296 grains. The relative value of silver and copper 250: 1. 
 
 2 Denarius = 75 Libra. 
 
162 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 4 Asses 
 4 Sestertii 
 
 B. Coinage of 217 B.C. 
 
 As (copper) x 
 Sestertius (silver) = 
 Denarius (silver) 2 = 
 
 Weight in 
 Grains (Avoir.). 
 
 419.986 = 
 
 15.0395 = 
 
 60.158 = 
 
 Value. 
 
 $.0105 
 $.042 
 
 $.168 
 
 4 Asses 
 4 Sestertii 
 25 Denarii 
 
 C. Coinage of Augustus. 
 
 As (copper) 
 Sestertius 4 (alloy) 
 Denarius (silver) 
 Aureus 5 (gold) 
 
 Weight in 
 Grains (Avoir.). 
 
 = 240.632 3 = 
 
 = 481.264 = 
 
 = 60.112 = 
 
 = 120.224 = 
 
 Value. 
 
 $.01305 
 $.0522 
 
 $.2088 
 
 $5.22 
 
 1 Silver to copper, 112 : 1. 
 
 2 Denarius = s\ Libra. 
 
 3 It is not absolutely certain that the As in weight equalled four 
 Denarii. 
 
 4 Often coined as a piece of four Asses, as we speak of our dime as a 
 ten-cent piece. 
 
 5 The Aureus, though nominally weighing & Libra throughout im- 
 perial times, became more and more debased by alloy and in size, till 
 in the time of Caracalla it was worth about $4.40. 
 
 The relative value of the same weight of the different metals in the 
 time of Augustus was, according to Mommsen : — 
 
 Copper to gold, 1 : 666|. 
 Alloy to gold, 1 : 333|. 
 Silver to gold, 1 : 121. 
 Copper to silver, 1 : 53|. 
 Alloy to silver, 1 : 26|. 
 Copper to alloy, 1 : 2. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 \&v. ^ n y ^ 
 or t«* ^ 
 
 16^ 
 
 TABLE VII. 
 Months of the Julian Calendar with English Equivalents. 
 
 
 Januarius 
 
 
 
 
 Martius. 
 
 Aprilis. 
 
 
 Sextilis. 
 (Augustus 
 
 ) 
 
 Februarius. 
 
 Maius. 
 Iulius. 
 
 Iunius. 
 September. 
 
 
 December 
 
 
 
 
 October. 
 
 November. 
 
 1 
 
 Kal. Ian. 
 
 
 Kal. Feb 
 
 . 
 
 Kal. Mar. 
 
 Kal. Apr. 
 
 2 
 
 iv. Non. Ian. 
 
 iv. Non. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 vi. Non. Mar. 
 
 iv. Non. Apr. 
 
 3 
 
 iii. " 
 
 i. i 
 
 iii. " 
 
 t i 
 
 v. " " 
 
 iii. " 
 
 4 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 w 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 u 
 
 iv. " 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 5- 
 
 Non. Ian. 
 
 
 Non. Feb. 
 
 iii. " " 
 
 Non. Apr. 
 
 6 
 
 viii. Id. 
 
 C( 
 
 viii. Id. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 viii. Id. " 
 
 7 
 
 vii. " 
 
 ( t 
 
 vii. " 
 
 i i 
 
 Non. Mar. 
 
 vii. " 
 
 8 
 
 vi. 
 
 C( 
 
 vi. 
 
 < ( 
 
 viii. Id. Mar. 
 
 vi. " " 
 
 9 
 
 v. 
 
 t< 
 
 v. 
 
 C( 
 
 vii. " " 
 
 v. " " 
 
 10 
 
 iv. " 
 
 ( i 
 
 iv. " 
 
 ( ( 
 
 vi. " 
 
 iv. " 
 
 11 
 
 iii. " 
 
 t< 
 
 iii. 
 
 < < 
 
 v. " " 
 
 iii. " 
 
 12 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 1 ( 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 i I 
 
 iv. " " 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 13 
 
 Id. Ian. 
 
 
 Id. Feb. 
 
 
 iii. 
 
 Id. Apr. 
 
 14 
 
 xix. Kal. Feb. 
 
 xvi. Kal. 
 
 Mar. 
 
 Prid. " " 
 
 xviii. Kal. Mar. 
 
 15 
 
 xviii. " 
 
 
 XV. " 
 
 " 
 
 Id. Mar. 
 
 xvii. " " 
 
 16 
 
 xvii. " 
 
 
 xiv. " 
 
 i i 
 
 xvii. Kal. Apr. 
 
 xvi. " ' : 
 
 17 
 
 xvi. " 
 
 
 • • • r r 
 
 Xlll. " 
 
 (< 
 
 xvi. " " 
 
 XV. " " 
 
 18 
 
 XV. 
 
 
 xii. " 
 
 i i 
 
 XV. " " 
 
 xiv. " " 
 
 19 
 
 xiv. " 
 
 
 xi. " 
 
 <( 
 
 xiv. " " 
 
 xiii. " " 
 
 20 
 
 • • • it 
 
 Xlll. " 
 
 
 x. " 
 
 i i 
 
 xiii. " " 
 
 xii. " " 
 
 21 
 
 xii. " 
 
 
 ix. " 
 
 i <. 
 
 xii. " " 
 
 xi. " " 
 
 22 
 
 xi. 
 
 
 • • • / f 
 
 vm. " 
 
 i < 
 
 xi. " " 
 
 x. " " 
 
 23 
 
 X. 
 
 
 vii. ' ' 
 
 it 
 
 x. " " 
 
 ix. " " 
 
 24 
 
 ix. 
 
 
 vi. " 
 
 a 
 
 ix. " " 
 
 viii. " " 
 
 25 
 
 viii. " 
 
 
 v. " 
 
 u 
 
 viii. " " 
 
 vii. ". " 
 
 26 
 
 vii. " 
 
 
 iv. " 
 
 u 
 
 vii. " " 
 
 vi. " " 
 
 27 
 
 vi. 
 
 
 iii. « 
 
 (( 
 
 vi. " " 
 
 v. " " 
 
 28 
 
 v. 
 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 u 
 
 v. " " 
 
 iv. " " 
 
 29 
 
 iv. " 
 
 
 
 
 iv. " 
 
 iii. " " 
 
 30 
 
 iii. 
 
 
 
 
 iii. " " 
 
 Prid. " " 
 
 31 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 
 
 
 Prid. " 
 
 
 To February was added, every fourth year, an extra day (dies 
 intercalaris), which had its place after the vii. Kal. Mar., i.e. 
 Feb. 23d. 
 
164 
 
 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE ROMANS. 
 
 TABLE VIII. 
 The Roman Day. 
 
 
 Summer 
 
 Solstice. 
 
 Winter Solstice. 
 
 Sunrise 
 
 4.27 
 
 A. M. 
 
 7.33 a. M. 
 
 1st hour ends . 
 
 
 
 
 
 5.42* 
 
 u 
 
 8.17* " 
 
 2d " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 6.58 
 
 ( ( 
 
 9.2 
 
 3d " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8.13* 
 
 c t 
 
 9.46* " 
 
 4th « 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9.29 
 
 i 1 
 
 10.31" " 
 
 5th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 10.44* 
 
 < i 
 
 11.15* " 
 
 6th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 12. 
 
 M. 
 
 12. M. 
 
 7th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1-16* 
 
 P. M. 
 
 12.44* p. m. 
 
 8th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2.31 
 
 ( c 
 
 1.29" " 
 
 9th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3.461 
 
 u 
 
 2.13* » 
 
 10th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5.2 
 
 ( < 
 
 2.58" " 
 
 11th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 6.17* 
 
 ( I 
 
 3.42* " 
 
 12th " 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7.33 
 
 i 1 
 
 4.27" " 
 
 Length of day hour at summer solstice, 75* minutes. 
 
 " " night " " " " 44* 
 
 " " day " " winter " 44£ " 
 
 night " " " " 75* 
 
 1 1 
 1 1 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abacus, 53, 60, 61. 
 Agricultural implements, 120- 
 
 124. 
 Agriculture, 105-134. 
 Alae, 32. 
 Asses, 113. 
 Atrium, 28-32, 35, 46. 
 
 Baths, 48-50. 
 Beans, 126. 
 Bees, 119. 
 Bibliotheca, 36. 
 Books, 36, 37. 
 Bread, 77-79. 
 Brides, 12, 13. 
 Bulla, 57, 58, 64. 
 Burial places, private, 22 ; pub- 
 lic, 25. 
 
 Candelabra, 41, 42. 
 Carriage-hire, 138. 
 Cattle, 110-112. 
 Cena, 47, 50, 51, 53-55, 75. 
 Children, 57-66. 
 Cldvus latus, 64, 96. 
 Clients, 74-76. 
 Cloaks, 98, 99, 108. 
 Clothing, 88-104, 108. 
 Columbaria, 25. 
 
 Comissatio, 76. 
 Commemoration of the dead, 23, 
 
 26. 
 Commerce, centres of, 150. 
 Cremation, 22-24, 26. 
 Crops, rotation of, 15. 
 Cubicula, 34, 36, 38. 
 Culina, 34. 
 Cultivation of the olive, 130-132 ; 
 
 of the vine, 86, 127-129. 
 Custom-dues, 143. 
 
 Day, Roman, divisions of, 43-45, 
 
 164 ; how passed, 45, 46. 
 Divorce, 15-17. 
 Dress, 88-104, 108. 
 Dyes, 93, 94. 
 
 Education, 58, 59, 150, 151. 
 
 Fabrics, cotton, 90 ; linen, 89 ; 
 
 mixed, 90, 103 ; silk, 90, 91 ; 
 
 woollen, 88, 89. 
 Farms, 105-107. 
 Fauces, 33. 
 Fish, 83-85, 119. 
 Flats, 38. 
 Flour, 78, 79. 
 Food, 77-88, 108. 
 165 
 
166 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fruit, 81, 82. 
 Fulling, 93. 
 
 Funerals, private, 24, 25 ; pub- 
 lic, 17-24. 
 Furniture, 39-43, 51-54. 
 
 Game, 83, 119. 
 Games, 154-157. 
 Goats, 116. 
 Grafting, 132. 
 Grain, 79, 125. 
 Grammaticus, 62, Go. 
 Guests, 72, 73. 
 Guides, 152. 
 
 Hair, dressing of the, 12, 99, 100, 
 
 103, 104. 
 Head-gear, 100. 
 Hens, 117, 118. 
 Highways, chief, from Rome, 
 
 135, 137 ; how maintained, 13 ; 
 
 robbers on, 141. 
 Honey, 85. 
 
 Horses, 112, 113, 144, 145. 
 Hospitium, 72, 73. 
 Hour, Roman, 44, 45, 164. 
 House, Roman, 28-39, 48. 
 
 Ientaculum, 46. 
 Imagines, 20, 21, 28. 
 Interment, 22, 25, 26. 
 Ius suffragii, 65 ; oscull, 9. 
 
 Jewellery, 102, 104. 
 
 Lavdtrlna, 48. 
 Lectl, 39-41. 
 Letters, 39, 40, 137. 
 Liberties, 7, 74. 
 TMterator, 59, 60. 
 
 Litters, 145, 146. 
 Looms, 92. 
 Lustrdtio, 57. 
 
 Mansiones, 138. 
 Manus, 2, 9, 10. 
 Market-gardens, 127. 
 Marriage, 8-17. 
 Mensae, 41, 51, 52. 
 Merchants, 148, 149. 
 Meridatio, 47. 
 Mills, for grain, 79-81 ; for oil, 
 
 124, 125. 
 Money, 61, 147, 161, 162. 
 Mourning, 23, 26. 
 Mules, 117, 146. 
 
 Names, of men, 3-5, 7, 8, 57, 64 ; 
 of slaves and freedmen, 6, 7 ; 
 of women, 5, 6, 8. 
 
 Oil, 77, 85, 86, 124, 125, 131, 132. 
 Olive-raising, 130-132. 
 Ostium, 30, 35. 
 
 Paedagogus, 63. 
 
 Pallet, 103. 
 
 Peacocks, 119. 
 
 Peristylum, 34. 
 
 Pigeons, 118. 
 
 Pigs, 116, 117. 
 
 Pinacotheca, 36. 
 
 Post, public, and private, 137. 
 
 Prandium, 47. 
 
 Press, for oil and wine, 125. 
 
 Pulse, 126. 
 
 Ehetor, 63, 64. 
 Road-making, 137. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 167 
 
 Sacrdriam, 34. 
 
 Salutatio, 46. 
 
 Sandals, 102. 
 
 Sheep, 114-116. 
 
 Shoes, 101. 
 
 Slaves, 6, 7, 38, 53, 66-72, 77, 
 
 107-109. 
 Snails, 119. 
 Spinning, 91. 
 Sponsdlia, 11. 
 Stola, 103. 
 
 Table-ware, 42, 53, 54. 
 Tablinum, 32, 33. 
 Tirocinium, 65. 
 
 Toga, 64-66, 93, 95-98, 103. 
 Travelling, 138, 142-154. 
 
 Vegetables, 81, 82, 127. 
 Vehicles, 138, 143, 145. 
 Vessels, 146, 147. 
 Vilicus, 107, 108. 
 Vine culture, 127-129. 
 
 Wedding ceremonies, 13-15. 
 Wine, 55, 56, 85-88, 125, 129-131. 
 Writing- tablets, 39, 40. 
 
 Year, division of, 132-134, 163. 
 
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