You're Poor in Ancient Rome. Here's Your Day.

You wake up in a room with no window, six floors up, and the rent costs more than you earn. This is one full day in the life of a poor Roman, hour by hour. From the morning queue at your patron's door to the docks, the food counters, the rent, the baths and the night when Rome burns. 0:00 A room with no window 0:25 Your building 2:05 The morning queue 2:50 Work: what a day was worth 3:48 Lunch: why you can't cook 5:12 The rent 6:46 The baths: rich for an hour 7:34 Night: carts, thieves and fire 8:58 What the sources really show Sources: Juvenal, Satires 3; Martial, Epigrams 3.7; Cicero, Pro Roscio Comoedo 28; Suetonius, Divus Julius 38 and Nero 16; Res Gestae Divi Augusti 15; Cato, On Agriculture 56; Strabo, Geography 5.3.7; Seneca, Letters 56; Plutarch, Life of Crassus 2; Digest 9.3 and 20.2; CIL IV 1679. Next: What Romans Actually Ate →    • What Romans Actually Ate (It's Not What Yo...   #AncientRome #RomanHistory #History