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What Did People in Ancient Rome Actually Do All Day? — Transcript

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0:00It's still dark outside. You are lying
0:03on a straw mattress in a room the size
0:05of a parking space and someone is
0:08banging on your door. Not a friend, not
0:12an emergency. This is just Tuesday.
0:16In ancient Rome, your day started before
0:19the sun did. There was no coffee, no
0:22alarm clock, no snooze button. You got
0:25up in the dark, in the cold, and you got
0:28dressed by feel. And within the next 20
0:31minutes, you had to be standing outside
0:33a rich man's house in the street. Why?
0:37Because if you weren't there, you didn't
0:39eat that day. That's not an
0:42exaggeration. That was the system. For
0:46hundreds of years, this was daily life
0:48in ancient Rome for hundreds of
0:50thousands of ordinary people. We picture
0:53toas and marble and emperors giving
0:56speeches. The reality was louder,
0:59dirtier, and stranger than any movie has
1:02ever shown you. And here's the part that
1:05breaks most people's brains. The Romans
1:08did not have hours the way you have
1:11hours. Their hours changed length
1:14depending on the season. A Roman hour in
1:17summer was about 75 minutes long. The
1:21same hour in winter was about 45.
1:24Which means when a Roman said, "Meet me
1:27at the 3 hour," he was saying something
1:29that had no fixed answer. Stay with me
1:33because this one detail explains almost
1:36everything about how they lived. Here's
1:39how it worked. The Romans split daylight
1:42into 12 hours. Always 12, no matter
1:46what. Sunrise was hour 1. Sunset was
1:50hour 12. So in June, when the day was
1:54long, they stretched the hours to fit.
1:57In December, when the day was short,
1:59they squeezed them. The day didn't fit
2:02the clock. The clock fit the day. That
2:06sounds small. It isn't. It means the
2:09entire Roman schedule moved with the sun
2:12every single week of the year. Nobody
2:15was ever on time the way you were on
2:18time.
2:19Nobody was late either. But there was
2:22one hour that Romans genuinely did not
2:25want to be caught outside in. One hour
2:28that people avoided the way you'd avoid
2:30a bad neighborhood at 3:00 a.m. And it
2:33wasn't at night. I'll tell you which one
2:36it was and why a little later in this
2:39video. First, you need to understand
2:42what that dawn knocking was actually
2:45about. The knock was the salutatio,
2:49the morning greeting. Every morning
2:52before first light, ordinary Romans put
2:55on their best clothes and walked across
2:57the city to stand outside the front door
2:59of a wealthier man. He was the patron.
3:03They were his clients, sometimes 10 of
3:06them, sometimes a hundred. They queued
3:10in the street like commuters. The door
3:13opened. They filed in. They greeted him
3:16by name. They bowed. And then he handed
3:20each of them a small basket of food or a
3:23few coins. That was called the sportula.
3:27For a huge number of Romans, that
3:29handout was the difference between
3:31eating and not eating. Here's the
3:34shocking part. This wasn't charity. It
3:38was a job.
3:40Your entire morning belonged to a man
3:42who barely knew your face. If he went to
3:45court, you went with him to make the
3:48crowd look impressive. If he ran for
3:50office, you cheered. Your day was not
3:54yours. You were in effect someone's
3:58audience for hire. And if you skipped
4:00it, the basket went to someone else.
4:04Now, think about what that actually
4:05meant. Imagine walking 45 minutes in the
4:09dark, in the cold, in your only good
4:12outfit. Standing in a queue with men who
4:15all silently know they're in the same
4:17situation as you. Smiling at a man who
4:20will not remember your name. Taking the
4:23basket, saying thank you, and doing it
4:26again tomorrow.
4:28The poet Juvenile wrote about this with
4:31real bitterness. He hated it. He did it
4:34anyway. Because here's what we don't
4:37like admitting about life in ancient
4:39Rome. It wasn't marble and glory. It was
4:43mostly people swallowing their pride to
4:45get through the week. That's the part
4:48that makes them feel real. They weren't
4:50statues. They were tired. If this is the
4:54kind of history you actually want, the
4:57human version, not the textbook version,
4:59hit subscribe right now. That one click
5:02tells me to keep making these and it
5:05takes you two seconds. Now
5:08after the greeting, you finally get to
5:10eat. Sort of. Breakfast in Rome was
5:14almost nothing. A piece of bread, maybe
5:17dipped in wine or olive oil, maybe a few
5:20olives or some cheese. It was called the
5:23Ientaculum, and most Romans ate it
5:26standing up or walking. No plates, no
5:29table, no sitting down with the family,
5:32and no forks. The fork didn't exist yet.
5:36You ate with your fingers, a spoon, and
5:38a knife. Then you stepped out into the
5:41street. And the street is where what was
5:44lielike in ancient Rome stops being an
5:46abstract question. Rome was the most
5:49crowded city on Earth. Around a million
5:53people crammed into an area you could
5:55walk across in an hour. The streets were
5:58narrow. Many were barely wide enough for
6:01two people to pass. They were unpaved in
6:04places covered in animal waste, food
6:06waste, and worse. There were no street
6:09signs, no house numbers. You navigated
6:13by landmarks, the fig tree, the temple,
6:17the butcher on the corner, and the noise
6:20never stopped. Here's why. Julius Caesar
6:24banned wheeled carts from the city
6:25during daylight hours. Think about what
6:28that does. It means every delivery in
6:31Rome, every sack of grain, every block
6:34of stone, every barrel of wine had to
6:37move at night. So the city never slept.
6:41It just swapped shifts. By day, a
6:44million people on foot shouting,
6:47selling, arguing. By night, the rumble
6:50of cartwheels on stone all night. Every
6:54night, Romans complained constantly
6:57about not being able to sleep. One Roman
7:00writer said, "Only the rich could afford
7:02silence because silence meant owning a
7:05house set back from the road." Which
7:08brings us to where you actually lived.
7:10And this is where most people's mental
7:12image of Roman daily life collapses
7:15completely because you did not live in a
7:18villa. You didn't have a courtyard or
7:21mosaics or a garden with a fountain. You
7:24lived in something much closer to a
7:26badly built apartment block. And those
7:29buildings had a habit of doing something
7:32terrifying.
7:34They fell down.
7:36The Roman apartment building was called
7:38an insula, literally an island. Ground
7:42floor, shops opening onto the street.
7:45Above that, floor after floor of rented
7:48rooms, sometimes six or seven stories
7:50high. The higher you went, the cheaper
7:53it got, and the worse it got. Top floor
7:57meant climbing dozens of stairs with
7:59everything you owned on your back. It
8:02also meant you died first if the
8:04building burned. and buildings burned
8:07constantly. Wooden floors, wooden
8:10ceilings, oil lamps, charcoal brazers.
8:13Rome burned so often that the emperor
8:16Augustus created a fire brigade of
8:19thousands of men, the vigils, just to
8:22fight it. Here's the detail that gets
8:24me. Most of these apartments had no
8:28kitchen, no fireplace you could safely
8:30cook on, no chimney. Which raises an
8:34obvious question. If a million people
8:36had nowhere to cook, what on earth were
8:40they eating? Hold that thought. The
8:42answer is coming. And it's one of the
8:45best things about Rome. First, water.
8:49You've seen the aqueducts, the arches
8:51marching across the countryside. They're
8:54the most famous thing about the Roman
8:56Empire for a reason. But here's what
8:58nobody tells you. That water did not go
9:01into your apartment. Running water
9:04inside your home was a luxury. You paid
9:07for a private pipe and almost nobody
9:10could. Everyone else used the public
9:12fountains. Rome had hundreds of them,
9:15running constantly, day and night, never
9:18switched off. So, your morning included
9:21this, walking to the corner fountain and
9:24carrying water back up six flights of
9:26stairs every day in a clay jar, usually
9:30more than once. If you were rich,
9:33someone else did it for you. That's what
9:36wealth actually bought in Rome. Not
9:38gold, not jewels. It bought you the
9:41ability to not carry things. And now the
9:45workday begins. Except the Roman workday
9:48is nothing like yours. Here's the myth.
9:52Romans worked from sunrise to sunset
9:54like medieval peasants. Here's the
9:57truth. For most Romans, serious work
10:00ended around midday. The morning hours
10:03were the business hours. That's when the
10:05Roman forum was packed. Court cases,
10:08contracts, deals, arguments, politics.
10:13Shopkeepers opened at dawn and pushed
10:15their goods right out into the street.
10:17Bakers, butchers, barbers, cobblers,
10:21fullers, dyers, potters, rope makers.
10:25Barbers worked outside in the open,
10:28shaving customers in the street with an
10:30iron razor and no soap. It hurt. People
10:34wrote about how much it hurt. But by the
10:37sixth hour, roughly midday, the forum
10:40started to empty. business was done. And
10:43then the entire city did something we've
10:45completely lost. We'll get there in 60
10:48seconds. But first, I have to tell you
10:50about the part of ancient Rome that
10:52makes everything else possible. The part
10:55that's usually left out. Rome ran on
10:58slavery. Not as a side detail, as the
11:01engine. Historians estimate that a very
11:04large share of the city's population was
11:07enslaved. By some estimates, close to a
11:10third. They cooked, they cleaned, they
11:13carried, they taught, they kept the
11:16books, they worked the mines where life
11:19expectancy collapsed to almost nothing.
11:22The beautiful Roman day we're
11:24describing, the leisure, the baths, the
11:26long afternoons, was built on people who
11:29had no day of their own. And here's what
11:32makes it strange to modernize. A Roman
11:35slave might be a Greek scholar teaching
11:37a senator's children. He might run a
11:40business. He might be freed and his
11:43children born free citizens. The system
11:46was brutal and fluid at the same time.
11:49That's the uncomfortable truth
11:50underneath Roman history. Now, back to
11:54midday. Because the sixth hour was the
11:57hour Romans avoided. And the reason is
12:00not what you'd guess. The sixth hour was
12:03noon. And Romans genuinely considered it
12:06unlucky. Midday was when the heat
12:08peaked, when the streets emptied, when
12:11the light went flat and white and the
12:13shadows disappeared. There were old
12:15superstitions about spirits being active
12:18at noon. Ghosts of the restless dead
12:20walking in the blank light. More
12:23practically, it was simply unbearable.
12:26So Rome did the sensible thing. It
12:28stopped. The midday rest was called the
12:32meridiatio.
12:33A nap, a proper one. Shops closed, the
12:37forum emptied. People went home or into
12:40the shade and slept through the worst of
12:42the heat. And then, and this is the best
12:45part of the whole Roman day, they got up
12:48and went to the baths. Not a quick
12:50shower, not a wash. The Roman baths were
12:54the center of social life in the city.
12:57Public, cheap, open to almost everyone.
13:01The entry fee was so low that a poor man
13:03could afford it daily, and children
13:05often got in free. This wasn't a spa for
13:08the elite. This was where the city met
13:11itself every single afternoon. You'd
13:14walk in and hand your clothes to an
13:16attendant. Then you'd go into the
13:18apotium, the changing room, and
13:21immediately face the number one risk of
13:23Roman bathing, theft. Clothes were
13:27stolen constantly. We found curse
13:29tablets, little sheets of lead scratched
13:32with furious messages, where Romans
13:35cursed whoever stole their tunic at the
13:37baths. Actual written rage preserved for
13:402,000 years about a missing item of
13:43clothing. Then you started the circuit.
13:46Exercise first, ball games, weights,
13:50wrestling, a run. The Romans believed
13:52you should sweat before you bathed. Then
13:55the hot room, the calderium, heated from
13:57underneath by a furnace and hollow
13:59floors. Then the warm room. Then the
14:02cold plunge, the frigidarium, to close
14:05everything up. But here's the thing
14:08nobody expects about the baths. The
14:11Romans had no soap. So how did they get
14:14clean? Olive oil. You rubbed oil all
14:19over your body. The oil bonded with the
14:22dirt and sweat. Then you took a curved
14:24metal blade called a stridel and scraped
14:27it all off. Oil, dirt, sweat, and dead
14:31skin scraped off in strips and flicked
14:34onto the floor. If you were wealthy, a
14:37slave did the scraping for you,
14:39especially your back. And the scrapings
14:41from famous athletes were sometimes
14:44collected and sold. People bought it as
14:47a skin treatment, as a cosmetic. I want
14:51you to sit with that for a second.
14:53Now, the water itself, there was no
14:56chlorine. There was no filtration. The
14:59big pools were often not drained daily.
15:02Fresh water flowed in continuously, but
15:04so did everybody else. Roman doctors
15:07wrote warnings about bathing with open
15:09wounds because people did get sick. And
15:12yet, Romans went almost every day
15:15because the baths weren't really about
15:17washing. They were about everything
15:19else. Deals were made there. Gossip
15:23traveled there. Political careers were
15:25built there. There were food sellers
15:28shouting, massage rooms, libraries
15:30attached to the biggest complexes,
15:33gardens, lecture halls. One Roman writer
15:36lived above a bath house and wrote a
15:38famous rant about the noise, the
15:41grunting of the weightlifters, the slap
15:43of the massage, the shriek of the man
15:46having his armpit hair plucked out.
15:48Because yes, that was a service in
15:51public with tweezers. The bath complexes
15:55got absurd. The baths of Kacala could
15:58hold thousands of people at once. The
16:00baths of Diolesian were bigger still.
16:03These were the size of stadiums built
16:06for ordinary citizens, free or nearly
16:08free to enter. Think about what that
16:11says about Roman priorities. But it
16:14raises a question that everyone wonders
16:16about and nobody asks out loud. If Rome
16:19had a million people and no bathrooms in
16:22the apartments, where did everyone go?
16:25Rome had public toilets and they were
16:27nothing like ours. Picture a long room,
16:31stone benches along the walls, holes cut
16:34into the benches, 20 of them, 30,
16:38sometimes more. No doors, no walls, no
16:42dividers of any kind. You sat down next
16:45to a stranger. Then another stranger sat
16:48down on your other side and you talked.
16:51Roman graffiti and writing makes it
16:53clear this was normal social space.
16:56People chatted. People did business.
16:59People complained about their landlords.
17:02Beneath the benches ran a channel of
17:04flowing water carrying everything away
17:06into the sewers. In front of your feet
17:09ran a second shallower channel of clean
17:11running water. That one had a purpose
17:15because Romans did not use paper. They
17:17used a sea sponge fixed to the end of a
17:19wooden stick. You dipped it in the
17:21channel. You used it. You rinsed it in
17:24the channel. And then in many public
17:27latrines, you left it for the next
17:29person. There's a Roman insult recorded
17:32that translates roughly as calling
17:34someone the sponge on a stick, which
17:37tells you exactly how they felt about
17:40it, too.
17:41Now, there's a debate among historians
17:44about how shared those sponges really
17:46were. Some think wealthier Romans
17:48brought their own or used a bunch of
17:51leaves or wool, but the communal setup
17:54is not in doubt. And there was one more
17:57fear attached to the Roman toilet that
17:59is genuinely wild. People were afraid of
18:03the sewer. Not the smell, the things in
18:06it. Rats came up. That's the obvious
18:10one. But Romans also wrote about flames
18:13coming out of the holes, pockets of
18:15methane igniting. Some latrines had
18:19small shrines or images of the goddess
18:21Fortuna placed inside them. You'd sit
18:24down and there she'd be watching.
18:27Because when you're that exposed, you
18:30want luck on your side.
18:33All right, you've bathed, you've handled
18:35the essentials, it's midafter afternoon,
18:37and now Rome does the thing it's best
18:40at. Remember the apartments with no
18:42kitchens? Here's the answer. Rome
18:45invented fast food. They were called
18:49thermopolia, thousands of them across
18:51the city. Picture a stone counter
18:54opening directly onto the street with
18:56big ceramic jars set into it like a
18:59modern hot food bar. Inside those jars,
19:03stews, lentils, beans, chickpeas,
19:07porridge, sausages, fish, spiced wine.
19:11You walked up, you paid, you ate
19:14standing at the counter or took it away.
19:17In Pompei, archaeologists have found
19:19these counters everywhere. some with the
19:22food residue still detectable in the
19:24jars. One of them was excavated recently
19:27with paintings on the front. A chicken,
19:30ducks, a dog, like a menu board. This is
19:34what most Romans actually ate. Not
19:37peacock tongues, not the wild banquetss
19:40you see in films. Bread, porridge,
19:43beans, olives, cheap fish, vegetables,
19:47and wine cut with water. Meat was a
19:50treat, not a staple. Bread was the
19:53foundation of everything. So important
19:57that the state got involved. Rome ran a
20:00grain distribution, the Anona, giving
20:03free or subsidized grain to hundreds of
20:06thousands of citizens. Not because
20:08Romans were kind, because a hungry city
20:12of a million people is a city one bad
20:14harvest away from burning itself down.
20:18That's the real meaning of bread and
20:20circuses. It's not a joke about lazy
20:23citizens. It's a governing strategy.
20:26Feed them, entertain them, keep them
20:29from turning on you. And Rome took the
20:33entertainment half extremely seriously
20:36because now the afternoon opens up. And
20:39here's where almost everyone gets Roman
20:42entertainment completely wrong. When you
20:45think of Roman entertainment, you think
20:47of the coliseum, gladiators, sand,
20:51swords. But gladiator games were not the
20:53most popular thing in Rome. Not even
20:55close. The biggest obsession in the city
20:58was chariot racing. The Circus Maximus
21:01could hold something in the range of
21:03150,000 spectators, vastly more than the
21:06Colosseum ever did, and racing happened
21:08far more often. Here's what makes it
21:11feel modern. Rome had teams, four of
21:14them identified by color. The reds, the
21:17whites, the blues, and the greens. And
21:20people supported them like football
21:22clubs, fanatically, generationally,
21:25violently. You didn't support a driver,
21:28you supported a color. Drivers came and
21:31went. The color was forever. Fans wore
21:34their color. Fans fought each other.
21:36Emperors picked sides. Some emperors
21:39were such obsessive green supporters
21:42that it became a political issue. The
21:44races were chaos. Seven laps, 12
21:48chariots, tight turns at the ends of the
21:50track. Crashes were constant. The Romans
21:53had a word for a wreck. Anraium,
21:56literally a shipwreck. Drivers tied the
21:59rains around their waist for control,
22:01which meant that in a crash, the horses
22:03dragged them. They carried a curved
22:06knife to cut themselves free. And yet
22:08the star drivers became the richest
22:10celebrities in the empire. One of them,
22:13Gas Appalaus Diales, retired with a
22:16fortune that historians have argued
22:18would make him one of the highest paid
22:19athletes in human history. A man from a
22:22modest background, made unimaginably
22:25rich by driving horses in circles. Rome
22:29loved him for it. So where does the
22:31coliseum actually fit? That's a
22:33different kind of day. And it had a
22:35structure most people have never heard.
22:37A day at the amphitheater ran on a
22:40schedule. Morning, midday, afternoon,
22:43three acts. The morning was animals.
22:46Exotic beasts brought from across the
22:48Roman Empire. Lions, bears, leopards,
22:52and animals most Romans had never seen
22:54in their lives. For many in the crowd,
22:57this was a nature documentary. Their
22:59only chance to see what lived at the
23:01edges of the world. The scale of the
23:03destruction was enormous and honestly
23:06grim by any standard. The midday slot
23:09was public punishments. And here's the
23:11detail that tells you everything. The
23:13midday session was considered the boring
23:15part. Romans left. They went to lunch.
23:18The stands thinned out. One Roman writer
23:21described going to the arena at midday
23:23expecting light relief and leaving
23:26disgusted by what he saw. Then the
23:28afternoon, the main event, gladiators.
23:31And the biggest myth of all is here.
23:34Gladiators were not disposable. They
23:36were expensive. A trained gladiator
23:39represented years of investment, food,
23:42medical care, coaching, housing. Losing
23:45one meant compensating his owner
23:47heavily. So most fights did not end
23:49fatally. Many ended with a surrender
23:52that the crowd and the sponsor accepted.
23:54They were closer to prize fighters than
23:56to cannon fodder. They had fan
23:58followings. Graffiti and Pompei names
24:01them and brags about their records.
24:03Women were rumored to swoon over them,
24:05which the Roman upper class found
24:07scandalous and wrote about constantly.
24:10And crucially, games were not daily.
24:13They were special, sponsored by a
24:15politician or an emperor tied to a
24:17festival designed to buy your goodwill.
24:20Which brings us to the two groups we've
24:23barely mentioned because everything I've
24:25described so far, the greeting, the
24:27forum, the baths, the arena was built
24:30mostly around men. So what was the day
24:34like for everyone else? For a Roman
24:36woman, the day was structured entirely
24:39differently, and it depended hugely on
24:41wealth. A wealthy matron ran the
24:44household. That was a real job with real
24:46authority. She managed the staff, the
24:49accounts, the storooms, the education of
24:52the children, the family's social
24:54calendar. Roman wives had more legal
24:57independence than people expect. Under
24:59the common form of marriage in the
25:01imperial period, a woman's property
25:04often stayed hers, not her husbands. She
25:07could own, inherit, and in practice run
25:10businesses. She could divorce. Divorce
25:13in Rome was strikingly simple. It could
25:16be as direct as declaring the marriage
25:18over, but she could not vote, could not
25:21hold office, and was expected to be
25:23publicly modest at all times. The
25:26symbolic activity was woolworking.
25:28Spinning and weaving were so loaded with
25:31meaning that it appears on tombstones as
25:34the highest praise for a wife. Even
25:36women rich enough to never touch a loom
25:39were praised as if they had. Poorer
25:42women had no such symbolism to worry
25:44about. They worked openly. We have
25:47evidence of women running shops, selling
25:50food, working as midwives, hairdressers,
25:53wet nurses, seamstresses, dealers, even
25:56doctors. Their day was the market, the
25:59fountain, the workshop, the children,
26:02and back again. And then there were the
26:04vestal virgins, six women chosen as
26:07children who kept the sacred flame of
26:10Rome burning. They had rights no other
26:13Roman woman had. They could own property
26:15freely, make a will, sit in the good
26:18seats at the games. They were among the
26:21most powerful people in the city. The
26:23price was 30 years of chastity and a
26:26horrifying punishment if the vow was
26:28broken. That's the contradiction of Rome
26:31in one image. Enormous power. Absolutely
26:35no freedom. Now the children. School in
26:38Rome started painfully early. Children
26:41were up before dawn, walking to class
26:44with a slave escort if the family could
26:46afford one. Class was often not in a
26:49building at all. It was a corner of a
26:51shop, a covered walkway, a space rented
26:54by the roadside with a curtain if you
26:56were lucky, which meant the entire
26:59street could hear the lesson and hear
27:01the punishment. Roman teachers struck
27:04their students routinely with a cane or
27:07a leather strap. The poet Marshall wrote
27:10a furious complaint about a school
27:12master near his home waking the whole
27:14neighborhood at dawn with shouting and
27:16the sound of punishment. Students wrote
27:19on wax tablets with a stylus. Write.
27:22Smooth it over. Write again. They
27:24memorized endlessly. Repetition,
27:27recitation, correction. The first stage
27:30taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.
27:32The next stage, for those who continued,
27:34was literature and grammar, Greek as
27:37well as Latin. The final stage was
27:39rhetoric, the art of public speaking.
27:42Because in Rome, the ability to stand up
27:45and persuade a crowd was the single most
27:47valuable skill a man could own. It was
27:50the path to law, to politics, to power.
27:53But most children never got near that
27:55stage. Most were working by their early
27:57teens. apprenticed to a trade, helping
28:00in the family shop, carrying, fetching,
28:03learning by doing. Childhood was short
28:06and the losses were relentless.
28:08Childhood survival rates were brutally
28:10low. And Roman tombstones for small
28:13children are some of the most quietly
28:15devastating objects to survive from the
28:17ancient world. They loved their kids
28:19exactly as much as we love ours. They
28:22just lost far more of them. Now the sun
28:24is going down and the best hours of the
28:27Roman day are about to begin. Dinner,
28:29the china. This was the real meal, the
28:32social center of the day, starting in
28:35the late afternoon and running into the
28:37evening. If you were poor, dinner was
28:39simple. Porridge or bread, vegetables,
28:42whatever was cheap, eaten quickly. If
28:44you were wealthy, dinner was theater.
28:46You didn't sit, you reclined. Guests lay
28:49on couches arranged around a low table
28:52propped on the left elbow eating with
28:54the right hand. The standard arrangement
28:56held nine guests. Three couches, three
28:59people each, and where you were placed
29:01was a coded message about your status.
29:04There was a best seat. Everyone knew
29:06which one it was. Everyone noticed who
29:08got it. A formal dinner came in three
29:10parts. The starters, the main courses,
29:13the dessert, eggs, shellfish, salads to
29:16begin, meat and fish in the middle,
29:19fruit and sweet things at the end, and
29:21on almost everything. Garham, fermented
29:24fish sauce made by layering fish and
29:27salt and letting it break down in the
29:28sun for weeks. It smelled appalling
29:31during production. Some towns pushed the
29:33factories outside the city limits. The
29:36result was salty, savory, and Romans put
29:39it on nearly everything. If that sounds
29:41disgusting, it's essentially the same
29:43idea as the fish sauces used across
29:45Southeast Asia today. The famous
29:48excesses, dorm mice rolled in honey,
29:51flamingo tongues, a whole roast pig
29:53stuffed with sausages, were real, but
29:56they were showing off. Elite dinners
29:58were status competitions with food as
30:00the weapon. Guests were expected to
30:02talk, to recite, to listen to music or
30:05poetry. And then if you were poor, you
30:08went home in the dark through Rome on
30:12foot, which was genuinely dangerous.
30:16Rome at night had no street lighting,
30:18none. No lamps on poles, no lit shop
30:22fronts, nothing. When the sun went down,
30:25the city went black except for the moon
30:28and whatever light spilled from a
30:29doorway. If you had money, you didn't
30:32walk alone. You walked with slaves
30:34carrying torches ahead of you. That
30:37torch wasn't just for seeing. It was a
30:40signal. It said, "This person is not
30:43alone and not worth the risk. If you had
30:47no money, you walked in the dark and
30:50hoped." Robbery was common. Roman
30:53writers talk about muggings almost
30:55casually, the way we'd mention traffic.
30:58Juvenile joked that walking home after
31:00dinner without making your will first
31:02was careless. And remember the carts?
31:06All that banned daytime traffic came
31:08flooding in after dark. Heavy wagons on
31:11stone streets in pitch darkness with no
31:14breaks as you'd understand them. There
31:17were watchmen, the Vhilis, but they were
31:20primarily a fire brigade with policing
31:22duties, not a police force in the modern
31:25sense. If something happened to you in a
31:28dark street, there was no one to call.
31:31So most Romans simply didn't go out at
31:34night. The city that was deafening at
31:36noon was for ordinary people a place you
31:39locked yourself away from after dark.
31:42Which makes the daytime crowding make
31:44more sense. Rome wasn't crowded because
31:47Romans loved crowds. It was crowded
31:50because daylight was the only safe
31:52currency they had and everyone was
31:55spending it at the same time. But
31:57there's one last thing about the Roman
31:59calendar that changes how you should
32:01picture all of this. Romans had no
32:04weekend. The 7-day week with a fixed
32:07rest day isn't how the Roman calendar
32:09originally worked. Instead, they had a
32:12cycle of 8 days called the Nundine.
32:16Every eighth day was market day. Farmers
32:19came in from the countryside. The city
32:22filled up. Business got done. Legal
32:24matters were handled. That was the
32:27rhythm. 7 days of work, then the market
32:30day, then again. But here's the part
32:33that surprises everyone. Rome had an
32:36enormous number of public holidays.
32:39Religious festivals scattered across the
32:41year. Dozens of them. And by some
32:44counts, well over a 100 days a year
32:47carried some festival status. Not all
32:50were days off for everyone. Many were
32:53religious observances rather than
32:55holidays in our sense. But the biggest
32:57ones shut things down completely. The
33:00greatest was Saturnelia in December. For
33:03several days, the normal rules of Rome
33:06inverted. Courts closed, schools closed,
33:10work stopped. People gave each other
33:13small gifts. Gambling, normally frowned
33:16upon, was openly allowed. And most
33:19strikingly, enslaved people were served
33:22by their owners, allowed to speak
33:24freely, allowed to mock them. For a few
33:27days, the most rigid society in the
33:29ancient world let the pressure out on
33:32purpose. Then it snapped back. That's
33:36Rome in a single festival. A brutally
33:38hierarchical society that understood
33:41precisely how much steam it had to
33:43release to survive. So, let's put the
33:46whole day back together. You wake in
33:48darkness in a rented room six floors up
33:51with no kitchen and no toilet. You walk
33:54across the city to stand in a queue and
33:56collect a basket of food from a man who
33:59doesn't know your name. You eat bread
34:01standing up. You work through the
34:03morning in a street so loud you have to
34:05shout. At noon, the city stops and
34:08sleeps. In the afternoon, you go to a
34:10vast public bath complex that would be a
34:13luxury resort today, and it costs you
34:15almost nothing. You scrape the dirt off
34:18your body with a metal blade. You sit in
34:20a room of 30 strangers with no walls
34:23between you and hold a conversation. You
34:26buy hot food from a counter on the
34:28street. Maybe there are races and
34:31150,000 people scream themselves horse
34:34over a color. You eat dinner in the last
34:36of the light. And when it gets dark, you
34:39lock the door. Now, here's the thing I
34:41keep coming back to. Almost none of that
34:44was done alone. The Romans ate together,
34:47bathed together, watched together,
34:49worked in the open street together, and
34:51went to the toilet together. Privacy,
34:53the thing we organize our entire lives
34:56around, was not a value they had. It was
34:59barely a concept. For most Romans, being
35:02alone wasn't peace. It was closer to
35:04punishment. That's the real answer to
35:07what people in ancient Rome actually did
35:09all day. Not conquering, not
35:12philosophizing in marble halls. Waiting
35:14in cues, carrying water, eating,
35:18standing up, talking to strangers,
35:20napping through the heat, shouting at a
35:22chariot race, going to bed early because
35:25the dark was genuinely dangerous. Their
35:27hours stretched and shrank with the sun.
35:30Their city never stopped making noise.
35:33Their luxuries were public and their
35:35misery was private, which is almost
35:37exactly the reverse of ours. And when
35:40you strip away the togas, what's left is
35:42unnervingly familiar. People trying to
35:44eat, trying to move up, trying to be
35:47seen by someone who mattered, and trying
35:49to get home before dark. 2,000 years is
35:52nothing. The buildings changed. The
35:55wanting didn't. If you want to see what
35:57happened when this whole machine finally
36:00broke down, when the cues stopped
36:02forming, when the water stopped running,
36:04when the baths went cold, that's the
36:06video on screen right now. Watch that
36:09one next. It's the other half of this
36:11story.

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