What Did Ordinary Romans Do All Day?

What did an ordinary person in ancient Rome do from dawn to dusk? Follow Gaius, an invented man built from real details, through twelve Roman hours: the noise, the rented flat, the patron's hallway, the street food, the baths and the dinner. Chapters 0:00 The locked door 0:17 Gaius wakes in Rome, year 100 1:05 The noise and the insula 2:20 Martial and the Roman hours 2:50 Dawn to hour 3: the patron's hallway 3:40 Hours 4 to 7: work, lunch, siesta 4:49 Hour 8: the baths 6:03 The toilets 6:34 Were the baths clean? 7:19 What the baths were really for 7:56 Hour 9: dinner 8:40 Hours 10 to 12 and night 9:20 Back to you Sources and notes Juvenal, Satire 3 (noise, cracks in walls, falling pots, the will before dinner). Juvenal was a satirist and exaggerated. Martial, Epigrams 4.8 (the Roman day, hour by hour). Seneca, Letter 56 (the noise above a bath house). Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.6 (unequal food and wine at a dinner). Building height limits: Augustus (about 70 Roman feet) and, according to later sources, Trajan (about 60 feet). Piers Mitchell, University of Cambridge, 2016: parasite remains from sites across the Roman world. Curse tablets from the Roman baths at Bath, Britain. Gaius is invented; the details of his day are not. Part of Dawn to Dusk History. #ancientrome #romanhistory #dailylife