Announcements:

• Discussion groups do not meet this week.
• Midterm will be Thursday of Week 8 (the week after break)
• CMS wants to buy you lunch: 2/26 (Tuesday) G4 Pettengill 11:30-1:00pm [pizza]

Lecture:

Rich Guys (left over from last Thursday:)

Vestalia

Poor Guys

Poor Guys

• It is far easier for a Roman historian to describe the life and society of the rich than it is to do the same for ordinary and poor Romans. The rich had the resources and time to write and inscribe, and thus they dominate the evidence that has survived until our day. Members of the Roman elite, as we we have seen, also subscribed to an ideology that denegrated the value to society of those who depended on a wage. Cicero, for example, in de Officiis, opined that no workshop could have anything worthy about it. Why would he say this? Because the man who earned a wage, in essence, sold his body to a master. Working for a living to a wealthy Roman was, at least metaphorically, a kind of slavery. While a poor Roman citizen might legally be a free man, his condition deprived him of libertas - the right to speak one's mind, according to the ideology of the elite. Liberty was a luxury only the rich deserved.
  
  
• Thus, we do not simply lack the abundant literary evidence that would allow us to reconstruct the daily lives of ordinary Romans (from their point of view) as completely as we can for members of the elite. We are also tempted to read the evidence we do have through the prism of the ideological scorn the Roman elite felt for the working man. Moreover, even if we correct for this bias in the literary evidence, we still have to correct for our own bias. Modern western cultures exist primarily within political democracies and industrial market economies. Our ideology has the opposite bias of that of the Roman elite. We idealize the working man and scorn the unproductive, yachting, rich folks. Furthermore, despite the fact that Rome was neither a political democracy nor an industrial market economy, we are tempted to impose our categories (craftsman, artisan, factory etc) on evidence of the ordinary Roman's working life, even though these categories don't always fit.
  
  
• The irony of all this from a historian's point of view is that the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the Roman empire were not members of the economic or political elite (nor did they live in Rome). Wealth differentials between the senatorial class and the urban plebs were staggering. The kind of wealth we read of in the pages of Cicero and Sallust were in fact enjoyed by only the tiniest portion of the population. Thus, the lives of the wealthy, which we can document so well, don't really represent the life most Romans experienced.
  
  
• More frustrating, physical evidence of ordinary Roman life abounds . Who, after all, made all those bricks and togas and vases and statues and spears and shields we see in wall paintings and find in archeological digs. Not Crassus. More likely a man like Faustus, (site)a Roman lampmaker of the 1st century CE who inscribed his name on the bases of lamps he made. Archeologists have found his lamps in sites from the eastern part of the Roman empire (Cyprus, Egypt, Libya, and Israel). The dispersion of his lampware (and its good artistic quality) suggests either that Faustus had the resources to move easily around the empire or that he had the resources and name recognition to set up shops around the empire. He did not, however, leave a collection of letters behind - and so we know nothing of his life. Similarly, archeologists have found graffitii (example, sites)on the walls of buildings which are tantalizing, but frustratingly brief: names, expressions of support for favorite gladiators, notices of agricultural sales, obscene references to an enemy, declarations of love.
  
  
• One good place to start looking for the life of ordinary Romans, is in the archeological digs. Pompeii, (sites) whose ruins were preserved by the famous volcano (79 C.E.)(pix) (sites), was filled with streets of shops, taverns and factories. The fora of Rome were similarly crowded with shops. We learn from the archeologists that the first floors of the houses of most wealthy citizens were divided up and leased as shops, where ordinary folks worked during the day, and slept at night. The Romans used the word taberna to refer to both retail shops and taverns. The word tabernius seems to refer to someone who was in a retail business for himself. Insulae, (reconstruction) (sites)or apartment blocks we would call tenements, similar devoted their street level space to tabernae.
  
  
• We shouldn't assume, however, that daily worklife in these shops would have been particularly familiar to us. Slaves might work in assembly style mass production making tools, equipment, armor or building tiles and bricks. Conversely, a shopkeeper and his family might run a tavern. Or a Roman freedman who produced clothes (vestarius), might grow successful enough to hire citizens as mercennarii (wage laborers) and purchase slaves who would work along side him in his shop. A particuarly successful shopkeeper, moreover might be engaged in a variety of businesses. Quintus Remmius Palaemon, a former slave, began his life in textile manufacturing. He became a grammaticus (teacher of language and literature to the sons of the Roman elite), famous for the high fees he charged (and received), and then purchased vineyards where his innovative agricultural techniques were wildly successful. Romans we might call craftsmen and artisans, moreover, did not generally enjoy the same level of prestige the quality of their work would merit today. Credit for a brilliant objet d'art went to the man who had commissioned it before the man who had actually made it.
  
  
• At least this is what Romans of the elite class said. But we also find contradictions in the sources. Cicero knew a man named Vestorius who had invented a technique for dying clothes a particularly beautiful blue. It's clear that Vestorius enjoyed great commercial success which Cicero has to admit even as he derides it ("he knows nothing of philosophy, but the man is experienced enough in accounting"). Another Roman author, Vitruvius, concedes, Vestorius' success was "admirable enough."
  
  
• Not all shopkeepers lived lives of eternal obscurity, moreover. We find in Rome, for example, the tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, a man who began life as the slave Eurysaces, was freed by his owner, Marcus Vergilius, and became a baker. As the inscription indicates, however, Eurysaces moved up in the world, becoming first a contracter, and then a minor public official. Marcus (like Horace), despite his success, never forgot his roots. His tomb is shaped like a panarium - a bread bin, and engraved with scenes showing life in the bakery. Quintus Haterius Tychicus similarly enjoyed commercial success as a building contractor and had his tomb engraved with a picture of a crane and of buildings in Rome he had worked on. Lucceius Peculiaris of Capua also celebrated his work life as a building contractor on his tomb. One of the most interesting testimonials to a Roman merchant is in fact dedicated to a woman, Eumachia of Pompeii (sites). Her family earned its wealth through vineyards and opus doliare (manufacturing of amphoras, bricks and tiles - the only socially acceptable manufacturing activites in which members of the elite could engage because of the purported link to farming. Eumachia ran a highly successful textile shop and was honored with the office of city priestess and a sculpture in her honor, donated by the local fuller's guild.
  
  
• These men, of obscure origin and spectacular success figure prominently in the Cena section [The Banquet of Trimalicho] of Petronius' Satyricon. Petronius lampoons the freedman merchant with pretensions, preceeded by lictors (an honor given only to elected magistrates) and attended by a gang of slaves and hangers-on (for clients), who because of his wealth has earned (bought?) the extraordinary honor of a local priesthood. When we read Petronius, however, we must keep two rather contradictory points of view in mind. On the one hand, the success of men like Palaemon, Eurysaces and Vestorius (which in itself may have been recorded because it was unusual, not typical) whose mere existence threatened the the traditional link between money, land, office and manners, clearly outraged the sensibilities of members of the Roman elite. On the other hand, Petronius appears, in the Satyricon to actually (and quite cleverly) satirize the court of the Emperor Nero. Under this reading, the parvenues who dominate the Satyricon are actually foils for caricatures of the Roman elite. The burlesque, nevertheless, offers some interesting insight at least into the complications of the ideology of the elite. Compare, for example, the idealization of Roman femine virtue offered by the Laudatio Turiae and the satirization of it offered by the Widow of Ephesus? Did Romans like to say that widows remained virtuously loyal to their husbands' memory but know or at least fear, that this might not be so? Did members of the Roman elite liked to think their political and social prominence was natural, but know or at least fear that it was based in good part simply on cash, and thus their lives of good taste were no different than Trimalchio's vulgar excesses?
  
  
• One interesting thing to note about the Satyricon is its setting. The satire takes place in Campania, an area of Italy (modern Naples) originally settled by Greek colonists that had become by the end of the 1st century BCE a resort area for wealthy Romans (Bar Harbor, but warm) [Pompeii and Herculaneum (sites) were in Campania]. It is possible that the social scorn members of the Roman elite felt for the merchant and manufacturers was not so widely or deeply shared in regions of Italy and the provinces at a distance from the capital (do natives always share the prejudices of "summer people")? There is some evidence of local merchants making good and their sons or grandsons rising to the equestrian order. Aulus Umbricius Scaurus of Pompeii, for example, manufactured garum (a disgusting paste made of rotting fish that Roman ate in everything) and achieved the office of duumvir (roughly equivalent to mayor). Either he or his father was a member of the local equestrian order.
  
  
• Nor was the experience of the wildly successful freedman necessarily typical (indeed, one suspects the opposite) of that of ordinary Roman citizens who earned their livings. Evidence from Pompeii suggests that the average tabernius struggled to make wages that would meet the expenses of daily life. Similarly, the price list of Diocletian (a fourth century Emperor who tried to restrain rampant inflation by price controls)shows that while a highly skilled textile worker might make 40 denarii a day, his employer could sell the silk tunic or wool cloak he made for 30 to hundreds of times the price of his wages. Similarly, the evidence of female laborers (sites)indicates that "sweat shops" were then as now a harrowing mode of existence. Prostitution was also a possibility. There is also evidence of women working in traditionally male worksites: brickyards and tile factories In one case, the evidence consists of a graveyard for infant and stillborn burials.
  
  
• In fact, the vast majority of people living in the Roman empire sustained themselves by farming, not crafts or trades. As Vigil's first eclogue indicates, the farmer's life did not offer much economic security. During the difficult period of the Roman revolution (last half of 1st century BCE), what little economic security farming did offer could easily be lost in the political proscriptions. Buccolic poetry is a literary genre that begin in Greece hundreds of years before Virgil (sites). Typically, the poet (a member of the elite) idealizes the simple agrarian lifestyle of farmer and shepherd. Virgil's eclogue is interesting in that it offers the perspective of the farmer, Meliboeus, who has been ordered off his holdings so that a supporter of a victorious general may be rewarded. His friend Tityrus, in constrast, may stay, because of the patronage of another general. In contrast to the uncertainty of crafts and farming, the Roman military (particularly in the imperial era) offered recruits decent and steady wages.
  
  
• There are other literary sources that offers us a view of the life of ordinary people living under the Roman Empire. The Gospels (and other scripture) of the Christian bible (sites)offer an amazing amount of detail about the lives of people living in Judea during the first century of the common era (paypri from Egypt similarly provide evidence of an ordinary person's life). The perspective is quite a corrective. If the publicans (tax collectors) were the flower of the equites, for Cicero, they are the bane of the existence of poor people living in Roman provinces. Consider Luke's delicate and amusing depiction of the rich tax collector Zaccheus (whom the locals called, "a sinner"). Similarly, the daily circumstances of the widow depicted in Mark, are clearly much different from either that of Turia or the Widow of Ephesus. What do you think these sources can offer a historian of the Roman empire? What difficulties do they present?
  
  

Prof. Damon's course on Pompeii and Herulaneum (a great place to explore)

brothel exteriors #1 and #2 / brother interior rooms #1 and #2 / a covered market / bakery #1 and #2

Vesuvius:

accounts #1 (Pliny, Ep. 6.16) and #2 (Pliny, Ep. 6.20)

history of volcano; a geologist's explanation of the eruption in 79CE; nasa satellite image

---

Graffiti:

#1, #2, #3 (inscriptions and graffiti); #4 (from a tavern); #5 (from a basilica) #6 (inscriptions and graffiti from the amphitheater) #7 (inscriptions and graffiti from a temple) #8 (from Ostia)

---

Female laborers:

Eumachia / Women's work (primary sources)

---

Petronius

The Petronion Society Ancient Novel Page / notes on the Satyricon /

Juvenal

Satire 3 (on the decline of Rome)

---

Housing

The Insulae Aracoeli / Insulae in the via Sao Paolo alla Regola /

Roman housing resources

---

The Christian Bible

Acts 32 (communal living of jewish sect); Tabitha the tunic maker / Paul exercises his right as a citizen to appeal to the Emperor / the centurion's servant / the miracle of the loves and fishes / fishermen and tax collectors / the widow's mite

---

Roman Technology

The Technology Handbook

---

Roman economics:

Diocletian / The Price Edicts of Diocletian / an essay on Diocletion's rule

---

The Roman Forum:

Role of forum in society / The layout of the forum / Life in Imperial Rome /

---

Roman Transportation:

Roman Merchant Vessels / The Roman corbita / Ancient Roman Transport

Ostia - good analysis of shipping and trade in the Roman economy of Ostia

 

---

Virgil

bio + links / Donatus' life of Virgil / Virgil org home page / Virgil home page

Virgil bib 1 / Encylopaidea Britannica on Virgil

Eclogue # 4 in translation

Professor Evan's essay on Vergil, Eclogue 1

Vestalia

• The Romans dedicated the month of June (as well as the first day of every month) to the goddess Juno. Her connections with the month, however, are not as striking as for example those between Mars and March. Juno was identified as the Latin version of Hera, consort of Zeus (or in the Roman case, Jupiter) and the Etruscan goddess Uni, and typically identified as a patron of women (particularly with respect to their fertility). Nevertheless, Romans thought that the first two weeks of June (and the last two weeks of May) were particularly unlucky days on which to wed. This may have nothing to do with Juno, in that all the days between the 7th and 15th of the month were dies religiosi, and no one in their right mind would marry on such a day. She was characterized by Virgil, in the Aeneid, as the patronness of the Greeks and the implacable (and fearsomely so) enemy of Troy, its refugees and their effort to found Rome. She reconciled with Aeneas' motley crew by the end of the poem (only after a ton of people died in gory and tragic fashion, however) and became the implacable patronness of Rome.
  
  
• On June 9 (N - five days before the Ides), Romans celebrated the Vestalia. Vesta, (pix)was the goddess of the hearth (associated with the Greek goddess of the hearth, Hestia) and Romans worshipped her privately in their homes and publicly in state festivals like the Vestalia (cf. the public and private worship of the Lares). Interestingly enough, Romans did not portray Vesta, at her altar, in statuary. The flame of the hearth, instead, symbolized her presence. [They did portray both Vesta and Vestals elsewhere (e.g., a row of statues outside the House of the Vestals). At home, the Roman family gathered once a day to offer Vesta a sacrifice.
  
  
• There were several public rituals in which Romans honored Vesta as well. The Temple of Vesta was located in a small round building in the Roman Forum (which thus served as the hearth of the Roman community). Technically speaking , the building was not a "temple," but a "house." Romans believed the fire should never go out. A priestess-hood of specially chosen women (all virgins) were devoted to Vesta and supervised her worship (and the flame of her hearth). Romans called these women the Vestal Virgins. It seems that this group was created to fulfill the religious duties that, according to Plutarch's life of Numa, the daughters of Roman kings had performed under the monarchy. If the Vestal Virgins let the fire go out, they had to rekindle it by rubbing twigs together. Then they were whipped by the Pontifex Maximus, for their failure to attend the hearth.
  
  
• To be a Vestal you had to be a) patrician; b) between the ages of 6 and 10; and c) a virgin, according to Aulus Gellius. Vestals served for 30 year terms, during which they had to retain their virginity. If they didn't, the Romans buried them alive. The Pontifex Maximus was charged with supervision of the Vestal Virgins and the only man allowed to enter their home. The oldest member of the group was called the Chief Vestal. Vestal Virgins lived in a house called the Atrium Vestae near the Forum Romanum (it was connected to the Temple) and the cost of their upkeep was paid from the public treasury. After 30 years, a Vestal could, if she chose, take a nice dowry, retire and even marry. She could, however, also choose to remain a priestess. Most, apparently, remained priestesses. Vestal Virgins enjoyed great respect from Romans of every station (think of the way most folks think of nuns, for example), and in fact, wielded some political influence behind the scenes. No senator, for example, would lightly ignore the request of a Vestal to help someone out. Originally, there were four Vestals Virgins. During the monarchical era, the number was later increased to six. One a Vestal died or retired, the Pontifex Maximus chose another to take her place. In doing so he used words similar to those Roman men used when making a formal marriage offer (tu, amata, capio - you, my beloved, I take). On becoming a priestess, a Vestal Virgin was legally emancipated from her father's authority. She could not, therefore, inherit as an intestate survivor of a member of her family of birth.
  
  
• The Temple of Vesta contained a number of objects the Romans believed were particuarly precious: the Palladium (a statue of Athena rescued from Troy by Aeneas, who assured the ongoing safety of Rome [pix]), two statues of the Penates of the Roman people (like Lares, the di penates, were protectors of the Roman household (pix)), and ashes (of unborn calves sacrificed on the Fordicidia which were mixed with the blood of a victorious horse from chariot races in honor of Jove, which had been sacrificed the previous October, and thrown on burning bean-straws over which shepards jumped,on the feast of the Parilia, an agricultural feast, celebrated on the anniversary of Rome's foundation, in honor of deities so mysterious Romans were not even sure of their gender [a kind of May Day celebration]). Additionally, the Temple of Vesta included a curtained inner sanctuary called the penus (a Roman word meaning "inner storeroom or recess" which is etymological linked to penates - the gods of the household storeroom - and stop giggling, is pronounced with a short "e"). No one knows what was contained in the penus.
  
  
• On March 1, the Vestal Virgins ceremoniously rekindled the fire in Vesta's hearth by starting a flame by rubbing twigs together. When the flame took, they carried the tinder in a bonze sieve to the hearth, where they deposited it.
  
  
• According to Plutarch, Numa also instituted 27 shrines (sacraria) said to belong the Agrei (why "Agrei" is uncertain, perhaps 'Argives," ). On March 16-17, according to Ovid, Romans processed to the shrines of the Agrei. The Agrei were straw, human shaped figures. Unfortunately, Ovid didn't bother to tell us what folks actually did at the shrines. Some speculate that the straw figures were deposited at the shrines in the March rite. On May 14th (according to Ovid, May 15th according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus), however, Romans performed another rite (purificatory in nature) involving the Agrei and the Vestals, about which we know more.
  
  
• On the morning of the feast, the Vestal Virgins, Pontifex Maximus and Roman magistrates made a preliminary sacrifice. They then proceeded (perhaps stopping at the shrines of the Agrei) to the Sublician Bridge (which crossed the Tiber). In this procession walked the flaminica, the wife of the flamen Dialis (a priest devoted to Jupiter, who wore archaic dress and who was quite limited in the activities in the public activities in which he could partake - although these limitations didn't seem to restrict Julius Ceasar much, who served as a flamen Dialis) dressed as though she were in mourning. When they reached the bridge, the Vestals were presented with the Agrei (numbering either 27 or 30), which they then threw into the Tiber.
  
  
• The Romans themselves did not know what god they worshipped by this ceremony or why the ritual included the elements that it did. Some Romans thought that the May ritual recalled a time of human sacrifice in Rome (an expression, "you're over the bridge when you're sixty," was a common adage). Modern scholars, however, find little evidence (and most of it in exceptional times) of human sacrifice in Rome's history or religious tradition. Could the ritual have been designed to appease the river god, Tiber, who must have been offended by the Roman temerity in actually building bridges (Romans believed that the title "Pontifex Maximus," literally meant "greatest bridge builder). Romans themselves debated between Saturn and Dis Pater, as the recipient of the sacrifice, however. Or perhaps there was a fertility element (attendance of the Vestals). Nor should it be forgotten that the Argeis followed closely on the Lemuria (May 9, 11 and 13), with which it shared some features.
  
  
• In order to celebrate the Vestalia in June, the Vestals made mola salsa (holy cake). To do this they walked to a sacred spring to fetch water. They carried the water in special jugs with a base designed to tip the jug over if it was set down. The water for the mola salsa could never come in contact with the earth. The salt used to make the was also prepared in a ritual fashion. Brine was pounded then baked in a jar until it formed a rock so hard that the Vestals had to use an iron saw to cut it. The grain used for the cakes came from ears of spelt gathered on the 7th, 9th and 11th of May. From these ingredients the Vestals made the mola salsa which were then offered to Vesta. The Vestalia continued for 8 days, during which women could enter the temple to worship. They appear to have dressed simply and to take off their shoes before they entered it. The offerings they brought to Vesta were probably platters of ordinary (i.e., not fancy) food.
  
  
• On June 15th, the Vestal Virgins ceremoniously cleaned their house. They swept the floors clean and the dust was carried to the Tiber where it was dumped. They then closed the doors of the temple and it became lawful to again transact public business. According to Ovid, this day became a holiday for bakers and millers. They hung garlands of violets and small loves of bread from their millstones and the asses that turned them.
  

Maecenas pix of House of Vestals /

Temple of Vesta and environs (pix and desc) / Temple of Vesta (pix and desc)

Atrium Vestae (pix)

Esther Boise Van Deman (Roman archeologist) inspired by the Atrium Vestae

Lecture outline on Vestals

The augurs act indicated that the building was deemed sacred by the will of the gods. An "aedes" was a building that had been consecrated only by a pontiff (who could not, as augurs did, guarantee that it had been sanctioned by the will of the gods). Most buildings of the Roman state religion were aedes, but they usually stood on a site that an augur had designated as a templum. Originally, the word aedes only meant "hearth." In addition to meaning hearth, and a place to worship a god, the term was also frequently used to refer to an ordinary "house," or apartment.

return to lecture text / return to week 8 lecture on prayer

M. Beard, "Re-reading (Vestal) Virginity," in Women in Antiquity: New Assessments edited by R. Hawley and B.Levick: Routledge (1995)