Ancient Roman Daily Life

The Danger of Living on Bread and Circuses: Alice Schroeder

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Rome in the first two centuries A.D. faced a yawning gulf between rich and poor. The mighty empire built on tribute reached its geographic limits. Its economy created few exportable goods. Slaves acquired by conquest built most of its bridges, roads and aqueducts and took jobs in farming, mining and construction. As this cheaper labor replaced Roman citizens, idle, unemployed, hungry people filled the capital.

The Caesars created make-work and part-time jobs, subsidized housing and doled out grain. Even more, they found, was needed. “A people that yawns is ripe for revolt,” wrote Jerome Carcopino in “Daily Life in Ancient Rome.”

The emperors added holidays until, eventually, the Romans spent half their days attending gladiator games, public executions and chariot races. Disgusted, the satirist Juvenal accused his fellow citizens of selling out for bribes of “bread and circuses.” The Romans did nothing to prove him wrong, until two centuries later the empire was divided forever and Rome was sacked by Visigoths.

The complicated causes of Rome’s decline have long fascinated historians, and provide a lens through which to examine the vulnerability of other dominant cultures. Americans’ addiction to entertainment has been compared to the circuses of ancient Rome. We can, and do, spend much of our free time watching dreck on TV like “Half Pint Brawlers,” about a company of self-styled “midget wrestlers” who attack each other with staple guns and broken bottles. In fact, in 2009, people over age 15 spent an average of 58 percent of their leisure time watching television, playing games and using the Internet -- an increase of 16 percent from 2003.

Digital Age

When entertainment dominates a society, it changes more than the culture; it also reshapes the economy. You can see that circuses are where the money is from the rise of digital entertainment, which has steered enormous amounts of discretionary income toward digital content and the devices that run it: laptops, televisions, gaming consoles, smart phones. In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the only major industry other than health care that consistently showed strong real growth was consumer electronics.

Although hit hard by the recession, spending on digital media has now begun to rebound. The question is who benefits. We produce a lot of content, yet most of the devices it comes on are not made in the U.S.

From My Mental Library: Read in 2011 - 11: Daily Life in Ancient Rome

But when I started on this book, not only was I reading some stories from Lindsey Davis' "Falco" series (whodunnits set in Imperial Rome, very well written, with lots of humour and thoroughly researched), but I had also only recently made the acquaintance of a new member to my pub quiz team. Gary is heavily into all things Rome, and his knowledge on the subject is vast, which is one reason why conversation with him is so interesting. History has always been a sort of minor hobby of mine, and so talking to him had inspired me to read up on the subject. He had been for several years Director of the French School of Archaeology at Rome. He knew the city like the back of his hand. Add to this his intimate knowledge of a wide range of Roman writings. His book is a delicious blend of insights gathered from the letters of Pliny and the satires of Petronius, Juvenal and Martial (though with much of the latter's raunchy humour omitted - even the French in 1939 did not have a modern tolerance of Roman vulgarity). The grandeur that was Imperial Rome disguises the violence and the dirt which lay underneath. It is that endemic violence and ubiquitous filth wich Carcopino so tellingly reveals. He strikingly depicts the juxtaposition of wealth and squalor, and their interplay. In a city of a million people, the rich minority lived in splendour, but not in isolation. Carcopino was clearly convinced that Roman morality declined in a pool of self-indulgent luxury, vice and indolence. For him, Roman sexual morality (especially of women) degenerated into licence, and there was an epidemic of divorce (what would poor Carcopino have thought of divorce rates today?). But once we realize that the court poets and historians were describing and caricaturing high society, it becomes as unreasonable to generalise from them as it would be to take today's world of film-stars or fashion models as typical of broad sections of suburban society.

I just found your blog from your comment on Letters from a Hill Farm. I see you are in Ludwigsburg. In '73 and '74 my husband and I lived in Stuttgart while he was a mitarbeiter at the institute fur Raum and Luftfarht at the university there. We went several times to the Castle, especially so I could see the porcelain factory there which I found delightful and amazingly interesting. I just bought a book about it: Dazzling Rococo: Ludwigsburg Porcelain from the Jansen Collection (Text in German) We also make those elderflower fritters you wrote about yesterday. The first time was when we were living in Budapest for a year, on a research exchange. My daughter (8 years old then) and I collected the blossoms and made them, although your batter recipe sounds even more interesting. Now I have elder in my garden in north east Ohio and we make them, and also some years the cordial. Yes, the ordinary people bit is, I think, we we all enjoy blogging so much - and by this I mean not only writing our own blogs, but reading those of others, who lead their ordinary lives and tell us about what's going on, and for some of the readers, it may be rather exotic because their lives are so different and lead in very different places from ours, while at the core we all have the same ordinary wants and needs.

Daily life in ancient Rome, the people and the city at the height of the empire

Daily Life in Ancient Rome

Everyday life in ancient Rome

Life in Ancient Rome

Daily life of the ancient Romans