There was nothing more sacred, more securely guarded by all religious instincts, than the home of each individual Roman. “This,” said Cicero, “was the tradition of the fathers of the republic,” and it was followed for a long time. The average Roman home would not seem very comfortable to us, but this did not matter to the Roman, who, at least during the Empire, preferred to spend most of his time outside the home, walking, gossiping in the baths or in the circus, amphitheater or theater. Then he came home for lunch, the main meal of the day. For most, dinner was spent with family, after which there was not much time, unless in the summer, to leave the house again before dark, when this could be dangerous due to hooligans and robbers in the narrow streets and large wheeled traffic, which, by order of Julius Caesar, was allowed in Rome only at night.

Not a single painting or description of a Roman family at home from that time has survived, not a single novel, letter or play conveying a living sense of personal relationships in an ordinary family circle. There are sparse descriptions of lavish dinners and occasional insertions of family scenes in the letters of Cicero, who had two children, and Pliny the Younger, who was a childless nobleman with literary inclinations. From here and from other random remarks we form pictures of Roman life, often contradictory. The prevailing impression is that the Romans were a serious people, possessed of a sense of self-respect, deserving of respect rather than affection, as confirmed by some of the Greeks, whose lively, sympathetic, loving character and whose love of beauty and admiration for cultural superiority formed a marked contrast to the stern, prosaic Romans . Polybius in the middle of the 2nd century BC. e. said that in Rome no one ever gives anything to anyone. Almost three hundred years later, another Greek, the mentor of the future emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that there is no such thing Latin word, which could express the caring, tender love of parents for children, which is conveyed by the Greek word “philostrogos”. He said that in Rome you would never meet a person who could be called by such a word, and that he did not believe that this kind of affection existed in Rome. And this was at the close of that period which Gibbon did not hesitate to call the happiest and most prosperous in the history of the whole world. These learned Greeks exaggerated because it would be wrong to allow this statement to remain silent about the evidence of growing intuition, deeper human feelings, sincere motives and desire for the better with the passage of time. The fidelity of a husband to his wife, their affection for children, slaves and domestic animals are described in many pages of Roman literature and are depicted on many gravestones and monuments that have survived to this day. The inscriptions on the gravestones may seem to have some doubts about their factual accuracy, but they are an echo of what can be found in Roman literature. Lucretius wrote:

After the wife, having united with her husband, is one

She began to live with him as a husband, and the laws of marriage began

Led by them, and they saw their offspring,

Then the human race began to soften for the first time.

Quintilian, who lost first his young wife and then two sons whom he adored, writes about them with bitter words of sadness that pierce the centuries that separate us from him. But he was Spanish.

Tibullus has a nice little sketch depicting small child, who grabbed his father by the ears when he kissed him, and the old grandfather nearby, always ready to keep an eye on the child and never tired of chatting with him. There was also much joy in the homes of the Romans. Cicero tells how Laelius and Scipio had fun outside the city, collecting seashells and having fun.

Cicero himself, whose care and love for his two children must amaze anyone who read his letters, stated in his treatise On Duties that the foundation of society is the family bond, first between husband and wife, and then between parents and children. He believed that “nature, through the power of reason, brings man to man... and, first of all, instills in him, so to speak, a special love for posterity...”. Of course, Cicero was not a cruel and selfish father to his son and daughter. On the contrary, he realized, however, when it was too late, that he was too busy with his own career and public affairs to give them all the attention they needed, and, apparently, spoiled them with excessive indulgence. In ordinary families, things were probably different. Occasional images of Roman children usually show them at school or helping their parents with daily tasks around the house, in the fields and with livestock. Such is the vivid picture captured by Virgil, depicting a boy who very early fell in love with a little neighbor girl, whom he saw early in the morning picking apples in the garden with her mother. Although such evidence is fragmentary, it does indicate that there was much in Roman family life that would seem completely normal to us today, at least as far as boys were concerned.

What about Roman girls and their mothers, on whom then, as today, the task of creating a family circle and a real home largely depended?

WOMAN IN THE HOUSE

Long before the advent of chronology, two forms of marriage relations were practiced in Rome. The first, "koempcio" (literally "purchase"), was a form of wife purchasing and was first practiced mainly among the lower class of plebeians. The other consisted of a solemn religious ceremony performed by two high priests: the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) and the supreme pontiff. It was marked by the exchange of spelled cakes, called “confarreatio” and was a union for life; divorce was practically impossible. The aristocrats or patricians of ancient Rome mostly observed this form of marriage. The differences between the two forms were thought to indicate that the patricians were descendants of ancient Italic invaders who came from the Teutonic north and bequeathed a distinctive oral tradition of marital fidelity.

Marriages through the “purchase” of the bride had a certain religious connotation, since two out of three copper coins - aces - brought by the bride were donated to household lares. The third remained with the groom. This was a symbolic dowry. It was believed that the goddess Juno ushered the bride into her new home. After the bride in her red veil and the groom joined hands, a sacrifice was made to Jupiter. The bride's hair was divided into six strands with a sharp spear-shaped comb. She was escorted to her new home in a merry procession, and after oiling the doors and decorating the doorway, the bride was carried across the threshold.

Rice. 13. Wedding ceremony

The groom greeted her with “water and fire.” A revelry followed, usually enlivened by obscene songs and comments. The verse of Catullus that has survived to this day gives good show about a Roman wedding during the Republic. But such magnificent ceremonies soon became a thing of the past. The third and civil form of marriage, usus, became universal during the imperial era. Marriage was considered concluded when a man and woman lived together as husband and wife for a whole year, and it was important that the wife did not spend three nights in a row outside her husband’s house. At first there was an opinion that such a somewhat looser union was more suitable for people whose position in society was unequal. If a woman spent three consecutive nights a year outside her husband’s house, then she was freed from legal marriage.

The fate of girls and women in the distant times of Ancient Rome today seems difficult and often harsh. The birth of a girl was often considered a sad sign, as it was for a long time in China. If she was left with the family at all, she was treated little better than a slave. Catullus, who was cruelly struck by his intense love for a young Roman matron, uses the abusive word “invisa”, which had no other meaning than “hated” or “despised”, when speaking of the parents’ feelings for their unmarried daughter. The best the poor girl could hope for was that she would be less despised after she married the guy her father found for her. After all, she, like the rest of the family, was entirely under the power of her father. If he found her a husband, she was completely cut off from her family and equally under the absolute authority of her husband or his father, if he was still alive. If a girl did not marry, she could be sold as a slave. Marriage as an institution was very different from what it is today in Western Europe, partly because the laws and practices in Ancient Republican Rome left women without any legal rights in a world where men made and enforced the laws. Moreover, the major differences were partly caused by the large and increasing number of slaves who poured into the city after successful wars. Among them were pretty young women; their numbers multiplied as a result of piracy and high-handed actions in the territories dependent on Rome, which steadily expanded. Rome was not the only place where women were not valued, and parents in other places, like the Chinese today, readily sold their daughters. Thus, the wife faced fierce competition in her own home, where all the slaves were just as completely at the mercy of her husband and master as she was.

But Roman women, even in ancient times, were strong in spirit and ready to stand up for themselves. They achieved the repeal of the martial law issued in 215 BC. e. after the terrible defeat of Rome by Hannibal's army at the Battle of Cannae, prohibiting them from owning more than half an ounce of gold, wearing colored clothing, and riding in a two-horse carriage. Five years after the end of the war, women were tired of such asceticism, but people of the old school, Brutus and Cato, did not want to hear about the abolition of this law. Therefore, “not one of the matrons could be kept at home by anyone’s authority, a sense of decency, or the power of a husband; they occupied all the streets of the city and the entrances to the Forum and begged the husbands who had gone there... to allow the women to return their former decorations. The crowd of women grew every day... Women now dared to approach consuls, praetors and other officials and beg them.” In the end, the women won and the law was abolished.

However, legally, women remained in a miserable dependent position, from which they were gradually freed. They were apparently saved by the advancing civilization, although it did not liberate the Greek women, but it seems more likely that they actually saved themselves by their own strength of character by introducing the institution of dowry into wealthy families who were more interested in the sanctity of the marriage bond because of desires to preserve forever the family name, to maintain family customs and rituals for the benefit of the spirits of their house, their household gods and the shadows of their ancestors, and to ensure the proper and legal transfer of family wealth and property. These pious duties could not be considered fulfilled if the head of the family took as his mistresses young slaves who replaced one another and had neither legal nor religious rights. Wealthy families began to look for a way to strengthen the position of their wife and were proud to provide their daughters with a significant dowry. The consequences were significant. The husband of the wife with the dowry no longer had her completely under his control: her father, who had found the money, was not going to lose it irretrievably if the marriage failed. Consequently, he retained paternal rights over his daughter.

Already by the time of the early empire, the ancient form of marriage "confarreatio" was almost forgotten. No one, except a few of the oldest families, adhered to it; and even those quickly died out. The dowry strengthened the wife's position in the family, since if her husband neglected her for the sake of the house's young slaves, she could complain to her father and put the marriage in danger of dissolution.

Once the old religious marriage ceremonies were abandoned, it became as easy to dissolve a marriage as to enter into one. Religious punishments were a thing of the past, but they were replaced by harsh economic penalties, and they were more feared because if the marriage was dissolved, the dowry had to be reimbursed. The husband did not receive a dowry if his father was still alive, since the son had no independent rights to the property and, therefore, had no recourse to the law in this regard. Before the reign of Augustus, even a son's pay for military service belonged to his father. Since children could legally be betrothed from the age of seven and could marry when a girl reached twelve and a boy 14, there is no doubt about the complete authority of parents over the marriages of their children. The Romans married, remarried and remarried at the whim of their fathers until the reign of Marcus Aurelius towards the end of the 2nd century AD. e., when restrictions were introduced on the right of a father to dissolve the marriage of his children. Fathers were not completely deprived of this right, since they could still end the marriage if they could prove that they had a “good reason” for doing so, and such an excuse was always easy to find. The son, however, could dissolve his marriage himself, although his wife could not do so. During his lifetime, the husband's father also had unlimited power over all his grandchildren, so the parents did not have any legal rights to their own children until the grandfather's death.

By capitalizing on the marriage of their daughters, the Roman fathers demonstrated how little attention was paid to the institution of marriage: it cost nothing for a Roman to marry three or four times.

The fear of having to repay the dowry was a difficult reality that could somewhat moderate the cruelty of a father or husband. The consequences of this were much more far-reaching, as a married daughter lost contact with her family when her father died. She then appointed a legal guardian, who was effectively her agent, while she independently managed her life and dowry. As a result, women were given an independent position that they so lack in many civilized countries today. They could manage their own household and their own way of life. The elegant mixed social life to which women gave such grace and originality became a reality in Imperial Rome, perhaps for the first time in history.

Unfortunately, it cannot be said that all Roman women in high society used their unprecedented freedom wisely and correctly. The high divorce rate has already been mentioned; Also elsewhere in this book, women's superstitious attachment to Eastern mystical cults, their tendency to fall for popular actors, gladiators and chariot drivers, and their cruelty towards the slaves who serve them are mentioned. Like men, they were accused of having lovers among their slaves. The punishment for such crimes was severe fines. A matron who strayed from the righteous path could be sold as a slave, or her father could take her life, and a guilty slave could be burned alive. But the degenerating depravity of an empress such as Messalina exemplifies the depths of the abyss to which a woman who enjoys excessive freedom, in spite of such laws, can fall. The men were no better, and perhaps worse. Much of Roman society in the days of the early empire was thoroughly rotten.

INCENTIVES FOR LARGE FAMILIES

The Romans never forgot their need for manpower; fines imposed on bachelors and privileges given to parents with many children were the two main ways to maintain population numbers. August in 18 BC e. laid the foundation for the policy of the empire in this matter, as part of his great plan of reforming public morals and restoring some of the traditional virtues of the great days of the republic. The need for reform provoked Horace into a short sermon:

In a sin-rich age they are defiled

First marriages, families, births;

Coming out of here, troubles flow

In our homeland, in all the people.

Augustus decided that no amount of half measures would stop “debauchery or adultery.” If a father discovered adultery by his daughter, he could take the life of both lover and daughter with impunity. A husband in such circumstances could also take the life of the guilty man, but not his wife, from whom he, however, had to immediately divorce so as not to be punished. No one was allowed to marry this woman, who, in addition, was to lose half of her dowry and a third of her property and be banished to some island. The guilty man, if his life was spared, was to forfeit half of his property and was also exiled to the island, but, as the law wisely points out, not to the same island to which his guilty partner was sent. Apparently, this law was for the rich, because the poor did not own property and would have starved on the island. Another law, bearing the names of two consuls of that year, Papias and Poppaea, who ironically were themselves bachelors, imposed fines on bachelors, gave privileges to people who married, rewarded those with many children, and removed some class barriers. Since there were many more men than women among the patricians, freeborns, with the exception of senators, were allowed to marry freedwomen (that is, former slaves) and consider their descendants legitimate. Senators and their descendants, down to great-great-grandchildren and great-great-granddaughters, were not allowed to legally marry freedmen or freedwomen, as well as those who had previously been an actor or whose father or mother were actors.

Augustus himself was no saint and deserves to be a victim of his own laws, since he gave birth to his witty and dissolute daughter from his first marriage, Julia. Her scandalous behavior, despite her father's laws, was the subject of city gossip. When (as usual, the last) Augustus learned the truth, his anger was boundless. Julia was exiled to the island of Pandataria, where she spent the rest of her life alone and isolated from the world. When her ex-husband Tiberius became emperor and he hardened her fate so that she died of consumption in her solitary confinement.

The only way to do anything about these and many other Roman laws is to use information against the supposedly guilty party obtained by informers. Accordingly these vile creatures multiplied and prospered; as Tacitus sarcastically noted, denunciation threatened the peace of every home, and the whole country suffered from such laws, as before it had suffered from vices.

The laws of Augustus remained unrepealed, but they were openly spoken of as useless and impracticable. Their failure was only a symptom of a deep-rooted disease that all thinking Romans recognized. Therefore, moralists continued to castigate both women and men. However, on gravestones and in historical chronicles, many women appear in a different light. When, during the reign of Claudius, the fatal death order was sent to Pet, his wife, although it was not at all necessary for her to die, was the first to take up the dagger. Sticking it into her chest, she pulled it out and handed it to her husband, saying before falling dead: “It doesn’t hurt, Pet!” When, during the reign of the next emperor, the freedwoman Epicharia was captured with other participants in the conspiracy against Nero, she refused, under the most cruel torture, to hand over her accomplices, while the men fearfully accused their relatives and friends in the hope of saving their lives. The old traditions were strong: “She loved her husband with all her heart. She gave birth to two sons. Cheerful in conversation, dignified in manners, she ran the house and spun wool.” This was the traditional picture of female virtues during the republican period. The strength of character that these words reveal was a quality that commanded respect even in a male-dominated society, and thus countered the theoretically absolute power of a man in the home.

COSMETICAL TOOLS

Much time will be required to relate the incredible expenditure of time and effort which some Roman matrons devoted to their daily dress and ornaments, but it would hardly be right to regard this as a common way of life, except among a limited number of wealthy women. Then, as today, the vast majority of women had little time or money for such fads. They adhered to the traditions of the early republic, primitive simplicity, more out of necessity than out of free will. Unlike the rich, they did not have small curly and perfumed poodles sleeping on silk pillows, and they were not awakened by a tame parrot shouting: “Good morning! Hello! Bravo!" Poor women did not lie in bed with their faces generously smeared with a mask of flour and milk, waiting for young slaves to bring water with aromatic essences in silver or gold bowls to wash off the mass. In wealthy homes, this preparatory procedure was followed by rinsing the mouth, since toothbrushes, tooth powders and lozenges for fresh breath were part of the daily hygiene routine. Blackened and discolored teeth, common among the poor, shocked polite society, where white teeth were highly valued, as were false teeth made from a special cement paste, ivory or bone. Ovid reminded the girls:

And who has uneven, dark, large teeth,

She will put an eternal ban on smiling and laughter.

Thus, he advised them not to open their mouths when they laugh, but instead to show others their dimples.

Do not open your mouth to its full width, let them be covered

Teeth with lips, and let your cheek form a dimple.

Elegant ladies took morning baths, after which they were dried and massaged. Some used pumice stones to remove excess body hair, a practice that brings to mind the French proverb “beauty requires sacrifice.” Although razors and remedies such as steppe grass, or bryonia, were used for this. Plucked eyebrows, as was believed back in the 1st century BC. e., emphasized beauty.

Long-term attempts to maintain and even thicken hair were made by both men and women in the Roman Empire. The most incredible concoctions were prepared, driven by the age-old illusion that hair could be made to grow by lubricating the head with oils, fats or ointments. They recommended deer bone marrow, bear or sheep fat. One disgusting remedy was made from rat heads and excrement, hellebore and pepper. Despite all the precautions, Romans and Roman women continued to lose their hair. Hair extensions and wigs, like false teeth, attracted sarcasm and ridicule from those who did not need such products. The sight of an important person's bald head, whose wig had been blown away by the wind, was considered sufficient grounds for ridicule and guaranteed immortalization in poetry. Even Ovid could not resist writing down that he once went without warning to one of his friends, who in a hurry put on her wig backwards: “I remember, my friend was suddenly informed about me - a beauty came out, putting her wig on backwards.”

Hair is another matter. Comb them freely

And spread them over your shoulders in front of everyone.

Just be calm, restrain yourself, if you get angry,

Don't make them endlessly unravel and weave!

Let your maid not be afraid of reprisals:

Don't tear her cheeks with your nails. Don’t prick her hand with a needle, -

It’s unpleasant for us to watch a slave, in tears and pricks,

Curls should curl over the hated face.

“If there is not enough beauty in your hair, the door is locked...” was his advice. “It’s a shame for a bush without leaves, and a head without hair.”

Curling iron mentioned by Plautus in the 2nd century BC. e., were used everywhere. Cicero, a hundred years later, said that certain effeminate men also used them.

Rice. 14. Cosmetics: 1 – a jug for makeup; 2 – powder compact; 3 – lipstick; 4 – bottles of incense

The sheer variety of hairstyles was as bewildering during the late Roman Republic and throughout the Empire as it is today, and they attracted equally vitriolic comments from some of the men they were supposed to attract. There were no special Roman or Greek hairstyles, as fashion was constantly changing. Hair fashions changed so frequently that one sculptor took this into account by sculpting a Roman matron with a removable hairstyle, to keep up with the latest fashions as new hairstyles came into fashion. Young girls and young women from good families often tied a white or scarlet ribbon around their heads.

The elegant woman's dressing table was lined with rows of beautiful boxes and caskets containing all sorts of cosmetics, as face powder, perfume and cosmetics were used lavishly. Sometimes cosmetics were overused, in poor taste or skill, and some cosmetics did not withstand heat or weather, again generating derogatory comments.

When old women are decrepit and toothless

They smear themselves, hiding bodily vices under decoration,

Then, as soon as the sweat merges with the ointments, it will turn out

It’s as if the cook has poured many different sauces into one:

And you can’t tell what it smells like, you can only smell a bad spirit, -

says Plautus, stingy with condescension. The tasteless use of strong-smelling perfumes caused Plautus to say:

The best smell in a woman is odorless

To be at all.

However, as the Romans knew, everything depended on the woman and, perhaps, on the weather, and often on how often the woman visited the baths.

Rice. 15. Bronze hand mirror

Eyeliner and lengthening the arch of the eyebrows with something black were also techniques that Roman women knew a lot about. Some people glued black moles or “spots” to their faces, especially if they had to hide small blemishes on the skin. Others relied on displays of wealth by wearing heavy jewelry to add to their attractiveness. Some really overloaded themselves with an abundance of heavy precious stones, regardless of whether the occasion was suitable for such a display of jewelry or not. Pearls and emeralds were highly prized, but diamonds were used little because a way to cut and cut them had not yet been found. The 20th century would have taught Roman women a little about the ability to present themselves beautifully, from bikinis to the use of cosmetics, but the Romans would undoubtedly have been much more jealous high level modern production of high quality cosmetics, many of which are affordable for all segments of society. Among the many modern improvements would be a mirror. The Romans did not know that it was possible to get an accurate reflection from a film of mercury behind smooth glass, and they had to use highly polished metal. They mostly used small hand mirrors, but larger ones were also known.

Barber

Men would have incurred ridicule and disapproval during the early republic if they spent much time and effort on their appearance. In the 3rd century BC. e. Some Romans began to shave their beards, but the practice did not become widespread until the great Scipio Africanus introduced the fashion in the early 2nd century BC. e. Representatives of the poorest sections of the population then, as today, did not always follow fashion. Martial, repeatedly expressing his contempt for the Roman (men) habit of kissing each other on every possible occasion, speaks of "a prickly hillbilly with kisses like a goat." The poor had good reason not to shave, because in Rome it was considered too difficult, if not impossible, to shave yourself. Those who did not have a special slave for this purpose went to some barber, whose establishments could be found throughout the city. They were the center of all gossip, and the action usually extended across the alley or on the street outside their little booths until Domitian cleared the streets of shops. Martial, who urges passers-by to be wary of floating razors, also scolds the awkward barber, warning his readers that those who do not want to go to another world should avoid the barber Antiochus; after all, these countless scars on his chin are similar to the scars of a fighter, but they are of a different origin; These are not traces of the long nails of a jealous wife: the culprit is the damned steel and the unfaithful hand of Antiochus. The goat is the only intelligent animal because it does not shave its beard and therefore does not resort to the services of a barber.

Martial also mentions a woman barber in the poor quarter of Rome, Subura, but he had a very low opinion of her. Roman razors did not have sharp edges like the straight razor used by men before the invention of the safety razor, since the art of hardening and sharpening steel was not mastered by the Romans, who could not effectively harden steel due to a lack of coal and forced drafts. Therefore, the tyrant of Syracuse, who used a lump of shiny charcoal to singe his beard, may have had somewhat different motives than the fear of being stabbed to death with a razor, which was said to compel him to do so. Young people did not start shaving until they put on a man's toga. The first beard shaved from their young faces was often kept in a small box and sacrificed to one of the Roman gods.

The Romans became more fashionable in the 1st century BC. BC, and most of them remained so throughout the history of the empire; they began to believe that the desire to enjoy pleasant sensations was not only feasible, but was the main purpose of life. The old-fashioned way of life of the rude farmers - the soldier, with its Spartan discipline of self-denial and personal sacrifice for the sake of society and the republic - began to seem more and more rustic and backward. Trimmed and elaborate beards appeared on the faces of dapper young people and began to cause ridicule from the older generation, for example Cicero, who came up with a special name for them “barbatuli”.

Rice. 16. Beards in the 2nd century AD. e. (left) and during the late Republic

The fashion for beards returned in the 2nd century AD. e., because Emperor Hadrian (117 - 138 AD) grew a beard to hide some of the flaws on his face. Beards never completely went out of fashion because they were... business card philosophers; they were usually grown as a sign of mourning. However, the revival of beard fashion was not general or lasting because statues after Hadrian depict Romans without beards.

Taking care of the home in most cases came down to providing household members with enough clothing and food. In the days of the early Republic, all clothing was made at home. It's amazing how simple Roman clothing was! And this is quite natural, since the Romans were limited not only by the raw materials, which at first were wool and flax, but also by the means to process them into linen.

The result of many hours of spinning thread from a ball of wool and weaving it on a handloom was a cloth of wool threads. It could be of any shape - square or rectangular, circle or semicircle. This “blanket” served as the basis for all Roman clothing, both for men, women and children, for emperors, consuls and slaves.

Before linen became the very simple garment which the Romans folded on themselves or wrapped around their bodies, it had to be washed, bleached, frayed and combed, unless it was used for clothing for a worker or slave, when such subtleties of processing, except for washing , went down. The simple homespun clothing of the poorer people only disappeared very recently, as it was still very widely used in Britain and the United States until the end of the 19th century. If the Romans had made it from wool taken straight from the back of a sheep, it would have retained its natural fat and lard, making it almost waterproof; but the wool was usually washed before it was spun or woven, and the woven garment itself was given away to remove grease and grease. This work was performed by fullers who used soda - sodium carbonate (sodium nitrate), potash or a special type of alkaline clay, known by its use as fulling clay. No soap was used for cleaning.

Washing clothes was not easy to do at home. Not that it was too difficult, but rather not very pleasant and required more free space, more water, and often much more equipment than the average Roman house could afford. A wall painting from Pompeii depicts fullers at work in large vats, trampling wet cloth under their feet. Washing and “trampling” the fabric, as well as beating, helped to remove the shine from it, “feel” and thus thicken the fabric. After such cleaning, ordinary homespun fabric was returned to be used to make clothes or blankets. High-quality wool, woven more carefully from finely spun threads for wealthier people, was bleached. The bleaching process was also very simple. Panels of fabric were stretched over large round wicker frames and placed over a small pot of smoking sulfur. The profession of fulling was hazardous to health. Breathing sulfur vapor is harmful to the lungs, and on the legs, crumpling fabric in vats filled with chemicals day after day, appeared skin diseases, especially when, due to a lack of chemical knowledge, urine from public toilets on the Roman streets was used. After bleaching, the fabric was washed again and scratched with teasel or hedgehog skin scrapers to obtain pile, which was then cut off with huge scissors, leaving a smooth surface. The soft cut pile was carefully collected and used to stuff pillows.

The final operation was to spray the treated fabric with water. Usually the fullers took water into their mouths and splashed it on the fabric. White pipe clay was also used to enhance the whiteness of the robes. Then, after the last stage of processing - smoothing, the piece of fabric was ready for the customer.

This is how the raw materials for almost all Roman clothing were made. Linen fabrics were also woven from tow, but rarely at home. A guild of linen weavers, the lintonis, existed in the early days of the Republic. As the power expanded to become a wealthy world-scale empire, more and more flax appears to have been used, and the internal supply, which was not always very High Quality, was replenished, as Cicero testifies, with linen imported from Egypt. Cotton has also been known since very ancient times. It is mentioned already around 200 BC. e.; Although cotton came into general use, it was used primarily for the manufacture of canvas, used for awnings and ship sails. Long-staple Egyptian cotton was known in the early Roman Empire, as Pliny in his Natural History, written in the 1st century AD. e., said that it was softer, whiter and more “curly” than any other. Silk was little used in the days of the republic, and during the empire its use was frowned upon because it was very expensive because it was carried with Far East and paid in gold. In the 3rd century AD e. for one pound of raw silk dyed scarlet, they paid three pounds of gold. Roman modesty did not approve of any thin transparent clothing, such as silk, which was also considered degradingly feminine for men and, worse, associated with dissolute women.

Rice. 17. Fullers at work

The color of the material from which clothes were made for men was almost always white, as in most cases for women, although they used colored fabrics with greater freedom, provided that the colors were not too loud. The Romans had a wide range of dyes made from plants and minerals. Their famous purple dye was made from the purple snail. Where color was allowed for men, it was predominantly purple, like the stripes that distinguished senators, consuls and emperors. The same stripes, but narrower, also appear on the tunics of boys, which they wore before reaching adulthood. They went from each shoulder to the bottom of the tunic. Women had more opportunities. The fiery color of the bride's veil was traditional and very ancient, but from the very early days of the republic women were already appearing in colored clothing. The woolen fabric itself was not dyed, but the wool in the fleece was dyed, and linen, cotton and silk were dyed in threads.

Making Roman clothing was a complex operation. The basic underwear for all ages and genders was a simple shirt, chemise or tunic, with or without sleeves. Apparently, it also served as a nightgown or chemise. Tunics for men and boys fell just below the knees. Women's and girls' tunics, tables, covered their entire legs and, apparently, were often decorated with elegant folds. Sewing and embroidery among the Romans was not very sophisticated. Their needles were not made of high-quality steel, like ours today, but of bone or bronze. Due to the coarse needles and thick threads, the stitches were large. It must have been difficult to get the stitches right, so it is not surprising that the Romans used large safety pins, or fibulae, as fasteners much more often than we do. They had buttons as well as buttons, but they were used less frequently. Tunics required only a belt, and togas were not fastened at all.

The basic street attire - the famous Roman toga for men and the women's palla or cape - was in fact nothing more than large white blankets wrapped around the body, much like the Scots plaids. They appeared in this primitive form in the early days of the Republic and remained virtually unchanged for almost the entire thousand years of Roman history.

Rice. 18. Roman ceremonial clothing

The toga was a symbol of Roman citizenship. No noticeable changes in fashion occurred until the empire began to decline in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. e. Then the men's toga became wider, longer and more intricate, while the women's long stola and cape or palla, which was worn over it in the form of a large shawl, became shorter and narrower. Changes in the style of men's clothing were more noticeable than in women's. The toga tended to be regarded more and more as something of a formal attire, but it never went out of fashion like the men's frock coat for casual wear today. Roman sculpture, especially the picturesque bas-reliefs on triumphal arches, on gravestones and monuments, together with scattered traces of Roman painting, are almost the only sources of reliable information on this subject. These sources are not always clear or convincing. We know, for example, from some literature that women may have had a stripe of color at the hem of their dress, or perhaps a frill sewn on about two inches long along the hem of the table, but there is no pictorial evidence of what this looked like. The variety that women could achieve in their appearance was to be found not in the shape, but in the texture, color and embellishment of their outfits. Despite the restrictions, rich women spent huge sums on their outfits. Those who wanted to make an impression at games or in the theater could rent clothes for the occasion. It should be noted that the satirist Juvenal, in one of the most caustic attacks on women ever written, had almost nothing to say about their extravagance in clothing, although he referred to jewelry, perfumes and many other excesses. There were no seasonal fashions, no special cuts for spring, summer, autumn and winter, and therefore no huge investment in women's clothing and its advertising, which are characteristic of our time. It was believed that in ancient times women also wore togas, so apart from their long tunics or tables, women's dress was then basically the same as that of men, as we can see among the Scottish Highlanders in ancient times. With the advent of chronology, however, no one except divorced and immoral women wore togas.

Soldiers wore helmets, of course, but neither men nor women wore hats, except in rural areas as laborers and slaves. However, on the street, women were supposed to cover their heads with a cape; There is a story about how, in Republican times, a certain embittered and old-fashioned Roman divorced his wife because she was seen in public with her head uncovered. He said that her beauty was meant to be admired only by him, and not by the whole world.

Within limits that will certainly seem very narrow to us, the Romans had a keen eye for any deviations from the established style of dress. A man whose tunic was a little longer than required, a woman whose table was a little shorter than necessary, could find themselves the objects of cruel criticism. The awkward toga became tiresome. In Martial's mind, happiness was to throw it off and rest, dressed in a tunic. What bliss it was to escape from Rome to the countryside! But in Rome, wearing anything other than traditional clothing was a serious offense. Already in 397 AD. e. Emperor Honorius established severe fines for anyone who dared to appear “in the holy city of Rome” in pants. Pants were a sign of barbarism, although knee-length trousers were prescribed for wear by senior officers in the active army and horsemen on military campaigns, apparently because trousers were more practical for riding. Very little information has survived about the lower clothing of the Romans; they wore a loincloth or something resembling modern panties; otherwise, men working without a tunic, as fullers did, might offend Roman ideas of modesty. To wear only a loincloth under a loose tunic, with a huge woolen blanket wrapped around it, was to reduce clothing to a minimum. In the mild Italian climate, such meager equipment might be sufficient, except in the cold winter. Then the only remedy for the cold was to wear more tunics and a thick cloak over the toga. It is said that the first Emperor Augustus suffered so much from the cold that he wore four tunics at a time, and another pair of cloaks over his toga.

Rice. 19. Military clothing

When outdoors in bad weather, the Romans wore a variety of cloaks, just as the Victorians wore all sorts of capes, long loose coats, caped cloaks, pea coats, and so on. Some outerwear, especially the widespread penula, could be very thick and strong, made from pure wool, apparently similar to a rougher version of the modern waterproof clothing of Austrian miners. Men forced to be exposed to the elements for a long time, for example workers and hunters, could wear foam capes made of leather. These heavy outer garments were too bulky to be pinned together, so they had to be secured with strong twine or straps, much like modern camping gear. Some may have been cut from a single piece with a hole for the head. Among the many variants of an ordinary cloak, a short cape with a hood attached to it, a cucullus, was presented. Since this tight-fitting cape did not have sleeves, it could not be worn by soldiers who had a short military and traveling cloak - sagum, and if they were centurions, then a penula, which served as a blanket for them at night. A more elegant and richly decorated version of this cloak was the semi-damentum, which was only allowed to be worn by military leaders. A thick double round woolen blanket, from ancient times worn as a cape, called “lena” - laena, apparently fell out of general use by the beginning of the imperial era. The younger generation preferred a lighter cloak with a hood, or lazerna. It was also oblong in shape with a straightened hem. Both halves of it were fastened with a pin on the right shoulder. At first it was viewed with disapproval and considered unworthy to be worn in the city.

At the end of the Republic, Cicero despised Mark Antony for wearing a lacerna instead of a toga over his tunic. As time passed, it became increasingly popular; In addition, lazerna began to be painted in bright colors.

Clothes were prized because they took a long time to make. A gift of a woolen tunic, toga or cloak was considered generous, especially for impoverished hangers-on or clients of wealthy people.

Here it is, the toga, often glorified in my books;

My reader got used to her, and he fell in love with her.

Long ago I received this toga from Parthenius (the poet

The gift is memorable to me) and in it I walked as a prominent rider

In the days when she was new and had shiny fur,

In the old days, when the donor's name went to her.

Nowadays she is an old woman: the chilled one abhors her

The cold is poor, and you can call it “icy.”

Long days and years, you destroy everything indiscriminately!

No longer Parthenia, no: the toga has become mine, -

said Martial.

In such circumstances, no one except the rich had an extensive wardrobe, and impoverished Romans, such as the poet Martial, were happy with only a decent toga and a strong cloak. Returning home, the Roman took off his toga and wore only a belted tunic if the day was not a holiday. On holidays, he could wear a more sophisticated robe of light colors, worn at elegant feasts - synfesis. Like the modern evening dress, it was not included in the wardrobe of every Roman. Martial had only one synphesis, so he was rather sarcastic towards his rich acquaintance Zolius, who apologetically changed his synphesis eleven times during the feast to demonstrate the rich capabilities of his wardrobe. It was considered impolite to appear on the street in a toga on the great festival of Saturnalia, celebrated annually, so those who had synphesis usually wore it on this holiday.

Children wore the same clothes that their fathers and mothers wore, but in miniature. Most of the little boys seemed to wear nothing more than tunics with cloaks for bad weather. Some children from wealthy families wore small togas with a narrow scarlet stripe along the seam - “toga praetexta” - toga praetexta. The sons of more modest citizens could wear white togas, but later, during the empire, when ancient customs were less strictly observed, they apparently also began to wear the toga praetexta. When childhood ended at the age of 16, this child's toga was removed, and with it the bulla or amulet for good luck, which all boys wore around their necks. Then a man's toga was put on, and this event was celebrated in the best families with a special ceremony.

It is possible that in ancient times some little girls also wore togas, since it is believed that both men and women used to wear it. However, judging by scattered sources, it is unlikely that girls were forced to adhere to a custom that their mothers had long ceased to observe, so their usual clothing was a long table or tunic to the ankles, just like their mothers, tied at the waist or slightly higher. Over the table they wore an apron-like cape or blouse, falling freely and not tied with a belt. However, the custom of wearing a toga was not completely forgotten, for when a girl from a wealthy family became a girl, she, like her brother, went through a ceremony of giving up her dolls and children's clothes, and with them, perhaps, the toga.

The relatively minor changes that we can notice in Roman clothing over the thousand years of the history of the kingdom, republic and empire are another illustration of the strength of tradition and the lack of technological development, which affected many other aspects of daily life in Ancient Rome.

FOOD AND DRINKS, Feasts

Tales of lavish Roman feasts with exotic delicacies such as peacocks, ostriches, mice poached in honey, or hundreds of larks' tongues tend to linger in the memory, giving a misleading picture of the eating habits of middle-class families and poorer Romans.

In ancient times, Romans of all classes lived simply and frugally. A stingy Roman, such as Cato the Elder, who tried to save on the food of his slaves, was himself very moderate in food. He ate little meat and a lot of raw food in order to replenish vital energy. The diet of poorer free Romans appears to have been more varied than that of the slaves of comparatively wealthy men such as Cato, but their food was rarely refined. Religious festivals, where animals were sacrificed, were the only opportunity when some of them could eat enough meat. Special occasions, such as birthdays, weddings, the presentation of a civil award, or the visit of friends or relatives, were also celebrated with a more lavish table whenever possible.

But despite the fact that the diet of many Romans was always quite meager, they were aware that they had come a long way since the goddess Ceres came to their aid, since, as legend says, people previously had to subsist on acorns and wild berries. This legend was not just a figment of the imagination; for it is known that the human race as a whole has eaten more acorns than wheat. As one might expect, the Romans, grateful to Ceres for teaching them how to plow the land (as Virgil testifies), when acorns became scarce, they continued to count on her, hoping for a more plentiful diet.

Wheat served as the main food for the vast majority of the Romans, whose main concern was to get enough of it. Following the example of the Greeks, they mostly ate it boiled as a kind of porridge. The monotony of such a simple diet was broken by the addition of a variety of seasonings or side dishes at every opportunity. Variety was achieved with vegetables, herbs, olives, mushrooms, fish, wild birds and, if possible, a small amount of meat. Undoubtedly, then a skilled cook could prepare a delicious dish from wheat porridge, but the majority of cooks were slaves, and their abilities were rather mediocre, so Roman dinners were very often poor and boring. Martial says about the cook:

I prefer that at our dinner

The guests liked the dishes more than the chefs.

Those who did not have a staff of slaves, but who could afford to hire a cook, could do so quite easily or get a ready-made meal from a caterer.

What am I waiting for? Once the foot comes out of the shoe torn,

And suddenly the torrential rain wets me,

And the slave who carried away my dress does not come to my call,

And, bending down, the servant in my ear is frozen

Whispers: “Today Letorius is inviting you to dinner!”

Twenty sesterces? No, it’s better, for me, to starve,

If my payment is lunch, you are paid by the province... -

says Martial.

Not all Romans started their day with breakfast, but those who did ate a light breakfast - jentaculum at sunrise or in the first hour.

Schoolchildren ate spelled cakes for breakfast, as did older family members, along with salt, honey, dates or olives. Some dipped them in wine; perhaps this is why, even today in France or Italy, some people still dip their morning scones in coffee. A heartier breakfast with cheese or meat was rare. The main meal, the cena, or lunch, occurred at about nine or ten o'clock (from about 2:30 to 3:30 pm in the summer and from about 1:30 to 2:30 pm in the winter), when the day's work was finished. A bowl of hotly seasoned spelled porridge might then have been the main course for most Romans, unless a more ceremonial feast was planned or the diners were wealthy and did not need to skimp on food. Then the picture changed. The feast began with a large variety of what we call appetizers - salads, radishes, mushrooms, eggs, oysters, sardines. The Romans called them gustatio (Latin for "snack") or promulsis (Latin for "first course") because they were followed by a drink called mulsum, or wine sweetened with honey. Then came the main courses of lunch - about six or seven changes. They had a rich variety of fish, poultry and meat at their disposal. There were all kinds of Mediterranean fish, mackerel, tuna, mullet, eel, as well as serrated shrimp, oysters and other shellfish. Freshwater fish were less popular among the rich, but had to be caught in rivers and lakes, while the wealthier had their own fish ponds, which often served only as decoration. Cicero bitterly laments that at a time when the fundamental liberties of the Roman people were at stake, the aristocrats of Rome's ruling class had neither the will nor the energy to oppose Julius Caesar because, in his words, "they are so stupid that they seem to hope , as if their fish cages will survive despite the death of the state.” His ridicule of "fish farmers" was thorough and deserved. Meat dishes included wild boar, venison, wild goat, mutton, young lamb, kid, suckling pig, hare and rodent (dormouse) meat. Poultry dishes were made from almost all known species of birds: chickens, geese, ostriches, cranes, ducks, partridges, pheasants, wild pigeons, doves, blackbirds, woodpeckers, and for the rich - peacocks. After dinner, according to the old Roman tradition, there was a short silence while wheat, salt and wine were offered to the household gods at the family altar. Then came dessert, called the "second table", when a variety of honey-sweetened pies and fruits were served. Meanwhile, obedient, silent slaves served wine to the guests. Such lavish personal service by a small army of harshly trained slaves would surprise and perhaps embarrass us if we could experience it first-hand today. Every conceivable need or whim of any guest at the table was given immediate attention. Flies were driven away from food with a fan, sometimes made from peacock feathers. Martial described such fans, calling them “that which prevents the dung flies from tasting your food,” “that which was once the proud tail of an incomparable bird.” The Romans often heated their wines and always mixed them with water. During the summer, the very rich often cooled their wines with carefully preserved snow and ice. The gathering of feasters always continued after dinner was over, with long, copious libations of wine. Hours were spent drinking and talking. Wine diluted with water was brought by slaves in a large bowl (crater); from it it was served to each guest, who had to drink it by order of the chosen “king of the feast.” Long evenings were often varied with music, songs, dancing girls, magicians, dwarfs and acrobats, according to the taste or lack thereof of the host. Such long meals and torrents of wine drunk afterwards working day almost without any food, reclining, propped up on one elbow, on long beds in a stuffy room next to some neighbor in exactly the same position, perhaps of the opposite sex, was often too much stress for many of the guests.

Most Romans dined simply and without guests, and in the old days they dined so early that sometimes a light supper - vesperna - was required before retiring to their beds for the night; this they did for the most part shortly after sunset, for, as we have seen, the dim light from one or a couple of small oil lamps did not help the efforts of most of them to prolong the day by taking it away from the night. Already by the 2nd century BC. e. the hour of the main meal has shifted to a later time, to the tenth hour - between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon in the summer; then lunch (cena) made dinner (vesperna) unnecessary. When the custom of going to public baths every day became a habit at the end of the republic and at the rise of the empire, they dined after visiting the baths, which usually took place at eight o'clock. Then the habit of having a lunch break (something like a second breakfast) at six o'clock (about 11 a.m. our time) became the rule. We know that this was surprisingly early, since Cicero joked that no one dined during the consulate of Cannius Rebilus, one of Caesar's minions, who was appointed to the honorary office of consul at noon, or the seventh hour, on December 31, 45 BC. . e. and who, therefore, remained in office only twelve hours, as the next consul, appointed for the new year, succeeded him in office on the 1st of January.

During imperial times, second breakfast, or prandium, was a lighter meal than lunch. It could consist of just bread and cheese with a small amount of meat in the form of an appetizer, like our today's "snack" sandwiches, up to a more formal meal with hot or cold fish, poultry and meat, washed down with warmed wine with water and mulse.

Rice. 20. Glassware

Since the 1st century BC. e. and further, many wealthy Romans seemed to become slaves to their stomachs. Seneca in the middle of the 1st century AD. e. went so far as to accuse them of eating to the point of vomiting and vomiting what they had eaten from their stomachs in order to eat more. This was the habit of the rich, but, naturally, it infected the rest of Roman society, all of whose members also wanted to be rich. Thus the unbridled luxury of a few became a source of discontent and disappointment for many, who, despite all their contempt for wealth and vice, like some critics of the rich in other centuries, seemed only eager to follow their example and were angry and offended when their appetites were not satisfied. . But while the least restrained and cultured among the very rich were “digging their own graves with their teeth,” the vast majority, both by necessity and by choice, apparently led surprisingly healthy life on a healthier and simpler diet. The fact that they ate mainly whole grain wheat and vegetables made a big difference, thus ensuring that balanced diet, which science has recently discovered is a healthy diet.

KITCHENS AND COOKING

If a Roman said, “Go into the kitchen,” what would we be able to see there? A rough idea of ​​Roman cuisine can be gleaned from what has been excavated at Pompeii, when lava and ash rained down on the hearths, pots and pans, and on the cooks themselves in 79 AD. e. Most kitchens were small and simple. The fire, usually from charcoal since the Romans had no coal, burned in raised stone hearths, and pots and pans, much like their modern equivalents, stood on tripods and iron grates over the burning coals. Those who could not afford to buy charcoal had to make do with wood, although the smoke was certainly unpleasantly strong.

The houses and apartments did not have proper chimneys; at best, there were holes in the walls. In large houses they made something similar to a chimney in the form of a hole in the roof of the room, which was called an atrium, that is, “a room blackened with soot.” In ancient times, smoke escaped through this hole and rain was collected into a pool below it. But in the last years of the Republic and in the days of the Empire, the atrium became the main living room, and the hearth was moved to the kitchen.

Simple utensils found near fireplaces in Pompeii could only be used for frying or boiling. In order to bake or bake something, an oven was necessary; small square or round stone ovens were built over the hearths. When the hot fire lit inside them reached the desired temperature, the coals were either raked out or left to die out, and the food to be baked or fried was placed inside and the oven door was closed. A small, portable version of such a stove could be used to keep food hot in the dining room. Ornate bronze vessels filled with boiling water served the same purpose. Metal kitchen pots and pans were quite expensive and food was mostly cooked in clay pots. They probably became greasy and greasy and broke easily, but they could be bought cheaply.

Rice. 21. Roman cuisine

Not much information survives that could shed light on the very important daily task of preparing food for family and friends. Few Roman writers left menus or references to dinners, but something can be gleaned from them about what was prepared and served at Roman feasts by the master and the serving slaves.

Fortunately, culinary recipes have survived to this day, collected towards the end of the Roman Empire in a book called “On Cooking”, attributed by the compiler to an outstanding gourmet, whom the satirist Juvenal called “poor, stingy Apicius”, which was a surprising attempt at irony, if Seneca's story about him, which has survived to this day, is correct. Finding that he had spent a colossal fortune of 100 million sesterces mainly on food and drink and that he had only 10 million left, Apicius committed suicide. Juvenal or Martial would have considered only an annual interest on half a million an enormous wealth. The recipes collected under the name Apicius bore only a loose relation to his own cuisine, as they appear to have been compiled primarily as a guide for middle- and lower-class housewives, although there were a few more ambitious recipes for the wealthy. Excellent English edition This book appeared in 1958 - the work of Barbara Flower and Elizabeth Rosenbaum, who not only translated it into English, but also tried many of the recipes themselves.

Rice. 22. Kitchen utensils: 1 – baking dish; 2 – frying pan for baking flatbreads; 3 – frying pan; 4 – vessel for heating water; 5, 7 – spoons; 6, 8 – knives; 9 – flint

There is also a good French translation. Therefore, anyone can gain good first-hand knowledge about the basics of Roman cuisine from these publications. The Romans had many such cookbooks, they were often rewritten, and sometimes even illustrated. The one that has survived from Apicius is incomplete. It does not, for example, tell you how to bake bread or how to cook porridge from wheat grains; She is not strong in sweet dishes either.

Several recipes for traditional porridge made from wheat grains were given much earlier by Cato the Censor in the middle of the 1st century BC. BC: “Take half a pound of wheat, wash it well, peel off the husks thoroughly and wash it again. Then put it in a pot and boil it thoroughly. When it is ready, add milk little by little until you get a thick porridge.”

To improve the taste of the dish, he advised adding “three pounds of young cheese, half a pound of honey and one egg” to a pound of boiled wheat grains. This should have been enough for several people.

Apicius's cookbook covers popular sauces and seasonings; about ways to preserve meat, fruits and olives; about sausages and minced meat; about vegetables; about mixed dishes of vegetables, fish, poultry and meat; about soups and legumes (peas, beans, lentils); about a bird; about meat and fish. An entire section is dedicated to special dishes loved by the more discerning eaters and wealthy Romans. One of Cicero's favorite dishes was the fillet of any large sea fish, cooked in butter and mixed with brains, poultry liver, hard-boiled eggs and cheese - all simmered after being sprinkled with crushed pepper sauce with the addition of lovage, marjoram , fragrant rue berries, honey and fat. "Fill it up raw eggs and season with finely ground cumin,” advised Apicius.

As follows from Plautus's play "The Trickster Slave", the Romans had large stock sauces and seasonings. A cook hired at the market to prepare dinner boasts that he is not like other cooks:

Do I cook like other people?

They will serve you meadows on platters.

With seasoning: it’s a feast not for people, but for bulls!

Pliny, who wrote two hundred years after Plautus, lists many herbs and spices. The most skilled cooks probably avoided the excessive use of strong seasonings, but there is no doubt that the general practice was to "beat" the natural flavors and aroma with a rich assortment of herbs, spices, nuts, honey and wine. Fine flour from very finely ground wheat was used to thicken the sauces. Some common sauces or condiments were used regularly, no less than fish sauce (garum) or liquamen (decoction), a savory salty liquid made from fish or fish waste and sea water. One way to prepare the congee was to gut the tuna and put the entrails and other fish scraps into a vessel filled with brine and leave it for six weeks or so. Anchovies (anchovies), sprat, mackerel and other fish were also used. Another highly prized spice was made from a plant called silphium, or lazerpicium (a resinous plant in the Apiaceae family), which has never been identified. It is believed that it was asafoetida.

Concentrated wine was another reserve in Roman cuisine. It was prepared by evaporating the wine to one third of its volume; then the concentrated liquid, known as defrutum - boiled fruit drink, wort - was stored for the future (not without reason, since it was used regularly). A sweeter, syrupy mixture of honey and boiled wine was mulsum, which has already been discussed. It was used as a drink, not for cooking.

Not only such highly seasoned and savory sauces were widely used in the preparation of various dishes; honey was added to many dishes, such as fried meat, a technique to which the English publisher of the work Apicia pays special attention. Even boiled eggs had to be eaten with a sauce consisting of soaked pine kernels, pepper, lovage, honey and vinegar with some of the usual liquamen, or fish sauce. It seems strange to us that there is another recipe where quince and leeks should be stewed in honey, fish sauce and concentrated wine; yet this dish was also prepared, tasted, and found excellent in taste by an English publisher. The recipes do not mention sugar, although cane sugar was known in Rome before this cookbook was compiled. Pliny called it a kind of honey, which is collected from reeds, white as rubber, adding that it is used only in medicine. He said that sugar came from Arabia, but the best was from India. The Romans used honey for sweetening. Dried plums and concentrated wine and must were also used - grape must, from which almost all the grape juice was squeezed.

Rice. 23. Bronze urn

Many recipes are nightmare a reformer of cooking and a tribute to what a good human digestive system can handle. Romans who had no idea about scientific value food products, were guided only by their natural instincts or ingenuity, which, apparently, led them too far. Probably, many Romans did without pretentious sauces and concentrated their efforts on simpler methods of preparing less sophisticated food - goat meat, young lamb, veal, beef.

BAKERY

In ancient times, if you wanted to bake bread, you first had to grind the wheat grains into flour. It was labor-intensive, routine work, as it still is in many parts of the world. From time immemorial until the beginning of the chronology of the Roman Republic, the responsibility of grinding flour was assigned to women. They did this very simply: by laying grains of wheat on a large flat or slightly concave stone and grinding them with a smaller stone, which was either round or long and narrow, like a rolling pin. Such a manual “press,” as the Romans called it, survived almost until the Christian era, along with a pestle and mortar, which, however, the Romans apparently did not use very widely until the middle of the 2nd century BC. e. But by the 2nd century AD. e. these primitive methods of grinding grain were largely replaced by the revolving mill - mola versatilis, or hand mill. Small hand mills worked on the same principle as the Victorian hand grinder: a stone shaped like a hollow cone, fitted as an attachment on top of another solid cone-shaped stone. The grain was poured through a hole onto the upper stone millstone, which rotated, thus grinding the grain on the sides of the lower stone, from where the flour and husks fell onto the table or board.

In the late Republic and during the Empire, most middle- and lower-class Romans relied on merchant bakeries to buy their bread. This follows from the results of excavations in the provincial town of Pompeii, where by 79 AD. e. no traces of homemade bread were found. Poorer citizens, who had to grind their own grain, preferred spelled porridge or cereal to bread: porridge did not require grinding grain, and it did not take too much time to prepare. The Romans approached wheat differently as they discovered that some varieties of wheat were best for flour, bread and pastries, while others were best for porridge. Hulled or awned wheat made the best porridge because the grain was harder, but the skin of the grain itself was thinner than that of the softer non-awned wheat.

The Romans, of refined taste, created large reserves of grape wines. The poet Horace, a bon-viveur of discriminating taste, lovingly describes the choice of bottle in which he found consolation for the fact that he was getting old and for the lack of gay girls who had enriched his early years. He extolled the power of wine to escape from despondency and sorrow, to be inspired by quiet courage, to enjoy the joys of friendship, to celebrate Roman triumphs and one's own deliverance from danger. It is difficult to imagine a Roman of the old school with his degree of courtesy, savoir-faire, but with aloofness and almost indifference in relation to the great achievements of the state. Horace was a government official, but, like Charles Lamb much later, he truly lived only when he escaped from his ledgers into the larger world of literature and congenial friends.

Wine drinking was not a regular habit of the Romans in the days of the early Republic, but became so during the Empire. In ancient times, the Romans were content with water and homemade drinks from all sorts of fruits, flowers and vegetables: figs, medlars, roses, parsley, saffron and other strong seasonings, sometimes mixed with grape juice. Italy was known to the Greeks as a wine-producing region. However, local wines were not very highly regarded at first. When Julius Caesar gave a great feast on his third consulate (46 BC) with four varieties of wine, two were brought from Greece. The Romans soon abandoned their old ideas that wine was a luxury to be consumed infrequently, and that no other wine should be drunk except Greek. At least one Roman grape wine was known to have been harvested from the year Lucius Opimius was consul (121 BC), the same year in which Gaius Gracchus was killed. Unprecedentedly good weather contributed to the production of wine of exceptional quality, which was stored and stored with such meager care that some of it was still preserved by Pliny's time, although it was then no longer drinkable.

Rice. 24. Clay jugs for storing wine and oil

Wine drinking as an art of living began to take on a more widespread form around the middle of the 1st century BC. e. As a drink, wine was already quite common, since Cato, in his book on agriculture and estate management, allowed his slaves to drink a pint of wine diluted with water per day. Of course it was wine of the worst quality. The relative novelty of wine drinking in Rome is best demonstrated by the strictness with which women were long prohibited from even touching wine unless it was very diluted.

Like many other strict rules of the great days of the Roman Republic, this prohibition did not last long during the Empire. The persistence of such an ancient restriction is no more surprising than similar customs in England and America, which excluded women from pubs or saloons and considered it unthinkable for them to smoke, two moral rules that were still strictly adhered to before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. So, in Rome, women began to enjoy the same freedoms as men with the advent of the empire.

By the time of Pliny, a thorough knowledge of wines was gradually accumulating, for he said that there were almost 200 varieties, about eighty of which were of high quality, and two-thirds of these “noble” wines were produced in Italy. Wines from the Greek islands, especially from the island of Chios, were highly prized. In Rome, the wine from Setia, made from grapes from the hills above the Forum of Appius, was highly famous. It was Augustus's favorite wine, as Horace confirms, despite the general opinion that Caecuba wine was then considered the best. But its quality was not preserved because the limited area in which grapes were cultivated for it was dug up when Nero widened the canal from Bai to Ostia. Falernian was another type of wine made from grapes also grown in the fertile soil of Campania. There were several versions of this wine - weak, sweet and tart, depending largely on the weather during the growing period of the grapes. It reached its goal best quality, when his age was 10 – 20 years. Many learned opinions arose about the effects of various wines on health and digestion, and there was great debate about the merits of other wines, such as Alban and Mamertine. Pliny could rightly have thoughtfully noted after a long study of this subject that vineyards, like states, “have their own destiny.”

The number of Romans who savored and enjoyed wines in their purest form, as wine connoisseurs do today, appears to have been relatively small.

It was common practice to mix wine with water. The fact that diluting wine was considered almost obligatory can be judged from Horace’s description of his journey to Brundisium from Rome, when, at the Forum of Appius, he preferred not to drink anything rather than drink the excellent Setian wine diluted, risking diluting it with the legendary bad local water. The Romans used other methods to improve the taste of wines. Mixing wine with honey was a common practice. The resulting drink, mulsum, was served with the first course at a Roman dinner or feast. To make the best mulse, according to Columella, you need to mix about ten pounds of honey with three gallons of grape must, which remained after the grapes were crushed underfoot to make wine; but it had to be taken before all the juice was squeezed out of it entirely. Pliny recommends using dry wine instead of must. Mulse was the same drink as sherry, which we usually drink before lunch or dinner, although the Romans drank it with the first course. It was believed that it promotes longevity, stimulates appetite, and helps digestion.

Rice. 25. Small table for wine

HEALTH AND HYGIENE

Many Romans succeeded in becoming very wealthy, but not always healthy and wise. Most of them, in matters of maintaining health, have not found anything better than to adhere to the old saying that “by the age of forty a person is either a fool or his own doctor,” that is, everyone should already feel their own ailments and know how to treat them. Despite their high numbers, the Romans may have overwhelmingly never lived past the age of forty due to epidemics and disease coupled with dirt, flies and unhealthy food and drink, carrying them away to at a young age. There are certainly records of Romans living to old age, but as the inscriptions on gravestones indicate, many died young. In the absence of statistics, it is impossible to guess the average life expectancy of a Roman. Today it is about 20 years for the average Indian, but almost 70 years for a newborn in New Zealand. We have no reason to believe that the average Roman would live much longer than the average child in India today.

The physical conditions of life during the Roman Empire, however poor they seem to us by our standards, were nevertheless better than those of the early Republic or any other large states in the ancient world. Generous serving clean water per capita was much greater than many of our modern cities can boast; The sewerage system in some areas, at least in Rome itself, was quite acceptable, although the numerous streams of sewage and refuse that flowed into the Tiber certainly made life not very pleasant for the boatmen and river workers, as well as the coastal inhabitants, especially in the summer months . Everyone who had the opportunity left Rome at such a time and in early autumn, during the fever season.

Most Romans had plenty of clothing and a roof over their heads, and many could afford to stay warm during the short but cold winter months. As we shall see, the very poor could join other classes in the great baths which were such a marvelous feature of the imperial city. Cleanliness of the body was therefore accessible to the poorest Romans. Some could not go to the baths due to poor health, and some because they were slaves and worked in chains. Soap was unknown in the days of the Republic and does not appear to have been used as widely as it is now. Both Martial and Pliny speak of it as an invention of the Gauls for giving a reddish tint to hair. Pliny recommends it as a remedy against scrofulous sores. He says it was made from tallow (goat fat) and ashes and was either solid or liquid. Apparently the soap was not cheap. In 300 AD e. a pound of soap cost as much as a skilled artisan could earn in two days. Other cleaning materials, such as sodium carbonate (soda), cost twice as much.

The food of the average Roman was apparently both healthy and simple. The rich were just as likely to damage their health by overeating as the poor were to damage their health by undereating or poor quality food. Rich and poor alike were at risk of disease from contaminated food or water, from flies and mosquitoes, and from animals and people infected with disease. The rich then, as now, were at the mercy of their cooks and dishwashers, whose cleanliness was not always guaranteed.

In addition to infections, there were also ordinary accidents and hardships of life, accidents, congenital deformities, indigestion, rheumatism, gout and all sorts of other diseases to which human flesh is susceptible. Of the man-made dangers, the incredible physical strain of the working class was perhaps the most widespread.

Hard work in flour mills and lack of mechanical aids for lifting and carrying heavy loads caused muscle strain, premature wear and tear of the heart and body of loaders, porters, road hauliers, port stevedores and especially carpenters.

In the city itself, the numerous small fulling factories, with their crude methods and even more caustic chemicals, were certainly as hazardous to health as they were unpleasant. Many mills and bakeries would not be in such a deplorable state if it were not for the excessive dirt and neglect in which the people and animals working there were. Under the gold and gilding of palaces, temples and stately public buildings festered the sores that discredited the vaunted civilization and urbanization of imperial Rome - vices that were the worst of all, since almost all of them could have been gotten rid of, but no one cared.

DEATH AND FUNERAL

When the inevitable comes and the family circle is torn apart by death, the religious observance of ancient traditions required that the dying person be laid on the ground to die in contact with the earth where he would soon end up. The dying man's last breath would be caught by the next of kin, who would close the deceased's eyes and perhaps place a coin in his or her mouth to pay Charon, that mystical ferryman who would carry the soul across the River Styx to the underworld. All family members had to stand nearby, mourning. Professional undertakers - pollictors - prepared the body for burial. If the deceased held a high position, he was dressed in official clothes, and his head was crowned with a wreath of oak or laurel leaves, which were sometimes made of gold. Ordinary citizens were dressed in togas. The body rested in the home atrium and was mourned by hired mourners - prefiks. On the street in front of the house, cypress branches warned passersby that there was a deceased person in the house.

The funeral procession could be very solemn if the deceased was a prominent or very wealthy person. The stretcher on which the body rested in a living position was carried by eight men, led by flute players for those who died young, and trumpeters for the elderly; then came the family members. During the Republic, several male relatives wore the death masks of their distinguished ancestors. Such a procession made an impressive impression on the spectators, who were usually invited to the funeral by a hired herald. It was on such occasions that the great men of Rome's historical past seemed to come to life again, flaunting the mighty achievements of past centuries to the endless admiration and gratitude of the living. When, with the advent of individual rule and the extinction of the ancient noble families, such demonstrations became fewer in number and eventually ceased, Rome lost its strongest connection with the past, together with the motivating incentive to achieve equal achievements in the future.

Rice. 26. Funeral procession

The procession stopped at the Roman Forum, where a speech was given - a eulogy praising the deceased man or woman, whose body was then transferred to the prepared funeral pyre. After the relative lit the fire and the body burned in the flames, the ashes, cooled with wine or water, were collected in an urn. The funeral ceremony was preceded by a feast, and another funeral meal was held in the family burial vault, when the urn containing the ashes was later transferred there. After nine days of mourning new rite sacrifices in the form of food were performed at the grave.

Rice. 27. Graves of distinguished citizens

Sometimes these ceremonies were performed with regal splendor, especially if the deceased was passionately adored by the crowd, like Julius Caesar, or was hailed as the “Savior of the Fatherland,” like Augustus. This can be considered fair to some extent. But even less significant, “little” people could buy their last hour of glory; Isidorus, a freedman, left a million sesterces to pay for his funeral in 8 BC. e. He could afford this because he had a fortune of 60 million, in addition to 4116 slaves, 3600 pairs of oxen and 257,000 head of other livestock. At the same time, he complained in his will that he "suffered enormous losses in the civil war."

Most of this inheritance was spent on gladiator fights and “funeral” games, as well as on food.

The ashes of prominent Romans were placed in tombs, often very elaborately made and located along the main roads leading out of the city. It is difficult to imagine how cluttered these roads must have been with all these memorial stones. The famous 18th-century engraver Piranesi's reconstruction of the graves along the Appian Way is very real and interesting because it clearly demonstrates what could happen centuries later through the efforts of countless families seeking to perpetuate their individuality and pride in their genealogy.

Rice. 28. Columbarium

Needless to say, the poor were unable to afford any of these ceremonies, and apparently did not even have four slaves to carry their coffin; they often did not have a grave: they were buried in a common hole in a public cemetery on the Esquiline Hill. In order to avoid a similar fate, small mutual aid societies, clubs or associations - funeral colleges - were formed.

Cowardly rulers, fearing conspiracies and riots, allowed only such harmless unions or colleges, in addition to trade guilds; their sole purpose was to provide periodic meetings for feasts and the collection of modest funeral funds for their members. Their urns, like the urns of slaves and freedmen from large families, could then find a resting place in the niches of the wall of some large tomb or catacomb. Several thousand urns could be installed in such a place. They were called columbaria, and there were hundreds of them.

Families from the times of Ancient Rome can be compared with modern families, although there are radical differences. Thus, in the 21st century, strict social class rules and legalized violations of rights look simply bizarre. But at the same time, children in ancient times loved to play no less than modern ones, and many kept pets in their homes.

1. Marriage was just an agreement

Girls got married at an early age adolescence, and men got married at 20-30 years old. Roman marriages were concluded quickly and easily, and most of them did not even smell of romance, it was purely an agreement. It was concluded between the families of the future spouses, who could see each other only if the wealth of the proposed spouse and his social status were acceptable. If the families agreed, a formal betrothal took place, during which a written agreement was signed and the couple kissed. Unlike modern times, a wedding was not consummated in a legal institution (the marriage had no legal force), but simply showed the intention of the spouses to live together.

A Roman citizen could not marry his beloved hetaera, cousin, or non-Roman. Divorce was also carried out simply: the couple announced their intention to divorce in front of seven witnesses. If the divorce occurred on the basis that the wife was unfaithful, then she could never remarry. If the husband was found guilty of such a thing, then he would not face such a sentence.

2. Feast or famine

Social status determined by how the family ate. The lower classes mostly ate simple food day after day, while the rich often held feasts and celebrations to demonstrate their status. While the diet of the lower classes consisted mainly of olives, cheese and wine, the upper class ate a wider variety of meat dishes and simply fresh produce. Very poor citizens sometimes ate only porridge. Usually all meals were prepared by women or house slaves. There were no forks then; we ate with our hands, spoons and knives.

The parties of the Roman nobility have gone down in history thanks to the decadence and lavish delicacies they hosted. For hours, guests reclined on dining sofas while slaves picked up scraps around them. Interestingly, all classes savored a sauce called garum. It was made from the blood and entrails of fish by fermentation over several months. The sauce had such a powerful stench that it was prohibited to be consumed within the city.

3. Insula and domus

What kind of neighbors the Romans were depended only on social status. The majority of the Roman population lived in seven-story buildings called insulae. These houses were very vulnerable to fires, earthquakes and even floods. The upper floors were reserved for the poor, who had to pay rent daily or weekly. These families lived under constant threat of eviction in cramped rooms with no natural light or bathroom.

The first two floors of the insulas were reserved for people with better incomes. They paid rent once a year and lived in larger rooms with windows. Wealthy Romans lived in country houses or owned so-called domus in cities. The domus was a large, comfortable house that easily accommodated the owner's shop, library, rooms, kitchen, pool and garden.

4. Intimate life

Complete inequality reigned in Roman bedrooms. While women were expected to bear sons, remain celibate, and remain faithful to their husbands, married men were allowed to cheat. It was quite normal to have extramarital sexual relations with partners of both sexes, but this had to happen with slaves, hetaeras, or concubines/mistresses.

Wives could not do anything about this because it was socially acceptable and even expected of men. While there were undoubtedly married couples who used passion as an expression of affection for each other, in the vast majority of cases it was believed that women tied the knot to have children rather than to enjoy greater variety in their sex lives.

Fathers had complete power over the lives of newborns, without even asking the mother's opinion. After birth, the child was placed at the feet of the father. If he raised a child, then it remained at home. Otherwise, the child was taken out into the street, where he was either picked up by passers-by or died. Roman children were not recognized if they were born with some kind of injury or if the poor family could not feed the child. The discarded “lucky ones” ended up in childless families, where they were given a new name. The rest (those who survived) ended up becoming slaves or prostitutes, or were deliberately maimed by beggars so that the children would be given more alms.

6. Family vacation

Leisure was a big part of Roman family life. As a rule, starting from noon, the elite of society devoted their day to rest. Most entertainment events were public: rich and poor alike enjoyed watching gladiators disembowel each other, cheer at chariot races, or attend theaters. In addition, citizens spent a lot of time in public baths, which GYM's, swimming pools and health centers (and some had intimate services).

The children had their own favorite activities. Boys preferred to fight, fly kites or play war games. The girls played with dolls and Board games. Families also often simply relaxed with each other and their pets.

7. Education

Education depended on the child's social status and gender. Formal education was the privilege of noble boys, and girls from good families were usually only taught to read and write. Mothers were usually responsible for teaching Latin, reading, writing and arithmetic, and this was carried out until the age of seven, when teachers were hired for boys. Wealthy families hired tutors or educated slaves to fill this role; otherwise, boys were sent to private schools.

Education for male students included physical training to prepare boys for military service. Children born to slaves received virtually no formal education. There were also no public schools for disadvantaged children.

8. Initiation into adults

While the girls crossed the threshold adult life almost imperceptibly, in order to mark the transition of a boy to a man, there was a special ceremony. Depending on the mental and physical prowess of his son, the father decided when the boy became an adult (as a rule, this happened at the age of 14-17). On this day, the boy's children's clothes were removed, after which his father put on him a white citizen's tunic. The father would then gather a large crowd to accompany his son to the Forum.

In this institution, the boy's name was registered, and he officially became a Roman citizen. After this, the newly minted citizen became an apprentice for a year in the profession that his father chose for him.

When it comes to the treatment of animals in ancient Rome, the first thing that comes to mind is the bloody massacres at the Colosseum. However, ordinary citizens cherished their pets. Not only dogs and cats were favorites, but domestic snakes, rats and birds were also common. Nightingales and green Indian parrots were in vogue because they could imitate human words. They also kept cranes, herons, swans, quails, geese and ducks at home. And peacocks were especially popular among birds. The Romans loved their pets so much that they were immortalized in art and poetry and even buried with their owners.

10. Women's independence

In ancient Rome it was not easy to be a woman. Any hopes of being able to vote or build a career could be immediately forgotten. The girls were doomed to live in the house, raise children and suffer from the debauchery of their husbands. They had almost no rights in marriage. However, due to the high infant mortality rate, the state rewarded Roman women for bearing children. The prize was perhaps the most desirable for women: legal independence. If a free woman gave birth to three children who survived after childbirth (or four children in the case of a former slave), then she was awarded the status of an independent person.

Ancient Rome ( lat.Roma antigua) one of the largest civilizations of the Ancient World and antiquity. It got its name from the name of the main city of Roma, which in turn was named after its founder Romula.
Periodization Ancient Rome was based on forms of government that reflected the socio-political situation from royal rule to the dominant empire at the end of its collapse.
Tsarist period from 754-3g. until 510-509 BC.
Republic from 510-509 to 30-27 BC
-Early Roman Republic from 509 AD. up to 265 BC.
-Late Roman Republic from 264 AD. up to 27 BC.
Empire from 30-27 BC. to 467 AD
-Early Roman Empire. Principate from 27-30. BC. to 235 AD
Crisis of the 3rd century from 235 to 284 AD
Late Roman Empire. Dominant from 284 to 476 AD

Priceless heritage.

The history of Roman civilization spans more than twelve centuries from the founding of Rome in 753 BC. e. to V century in n. e. During the period of its greatest power and prosperity, the Roman Empire was gigantic. Around Rome and Italy, about 40 provinces were formed, ruled by Roman governors. The provinces stretched from Gibraltar in the west to the Black Sea in the east, from England in the north and to the Sahara Desert, Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula in the south. Only the Persian country was never conquered. The Roman Empire left its mark everywhere and established connections between its territories that were never erased.
The legacy left by this great civilization is priceless: the cities and their magnificent architecture, two of the three great religions - Christianity and Judaism, political organization, the concept of citizenship, the universal language of Latin, art.

Roman society was fundamentally heterogeneous. The status of the inhabitants of the empire was sharply different: between

between slaves and freemen, between foreigners and Romans, between men and women. At the same time, free people were divided into two categories: Roman citizens and foreigners - representatives of other cities or nationalities. There were significantly more of them than the indigenous people. They were called pilgrims. Among the native Romans there was also a rigid hierarchy that separated the crowds of ordinary citizens from the elite. The higher the social status, the more evidence of all kinds remained about the life and activities of these high-born people. Tens of thousands of inscriptions, funeral or laudatory, left on all kinds of stone steles, represent a kind of reference book, perpetuating names and family ties, social status and career high-ranking Romans.

The most characteristic feature of Roman society was slavery, which was present in all spheres of life. Slaves - prisoners of war, bought on the market and slaves born in the master's house, were equated to movable property and did not have any political and legal rights. Between slaves in the same slave-owning family there could be very serious differences in the standard of living, depending on the affections of the owner and the abilities of the servant. Private slaves performed the most various functions from physical to mental. Their position ranged from a confidant, closest assistant and even friend of the owner, to a farm worker doing hard, dirty work and living in terrible conditions.
With the exception of public slaves owned by the city or institutions, most slaves or freed people were still dependent on the will of the slave owner, even if he granted them freedom, his name (if he was Roman) and citizenship.

Roman citizen. Name.

The Romans had three names: a personal name (for example, Marcus), a family name (Tullius), and a family name or nickname (Cicero). Three names for a person were the distinctive sign of a Roman citizen. To this triple name was also added the name of the father (son of Mark) and an indication of the clan - one of the 35 territorial districts into which Roman citizens were distributed. As a result, the citizen's name was: Marcus Tullius Cicero, son of Marcus, of the Cornelian family.

In everyday life, the Roman wore simple clothes, consisting of tunics, cloaks with hood in men and dresses (stola) for women. At official meetings, the citizen appeared in ceremonial clothing - toge, which was worn over a tunic and was distinguished, depending on social status, by “insignia” in the form of a purple stripe along the lower edge of the hem (angysticlaviiyus). Riders wore a toga with a narrow purple stripe and a gold ring, senators wore a toga with a wide stripe (latiklavia). Magistrates also wore togas decorated with a purple stripe (toga protext). By these distinctive signs in clothing, any Roman could see the status of a person and the class to which he belonged.

Civil inequality.

The bulk of society was made up of employees or artisans, free or freedmen, often united in professional colleges. Through their work they acquired some wealth and education, which allowed them a comfortable existence and some involvement in the lifestyle of their masters.
Roman society was divided into classes based on property valuation. The assessment was carried out by the authorities according to the qualifications. Citizens belonging to one class or another performed certain public duties, for which they received the privileges they were entitled to. Belonging to a class was usually lifelong, but not hereditary. The most prestigious class during the empire consisted of six hundred senators, former magistrates who served as advisers to the magistrate.
The equestrian class served in the army and cavalry. She also took an active part in the court hearing. During the empire, both classes participated in the administration of the provinces. Senators and equestrians belonged to the Roman elite, but there were still rich and even very rich people who still did not have enough property and money to enter the elite group.
A special, small group within the elite were the patricians. Their position was hereditary due to the antiquity of the family. They also performed some public duties. During the Republic, among the elite there were clans (gentes), bearing one name (Julius, Cornelius), which they inherited from their closest relatives. By the time of the birth of Christianity, this type of family society gradually disappeared. The Roman elite transformed into the Italian one, and after several generations it included families from the provinces: local nobility and descendants of emigrants.

The words “family” or “family” correspond to two Roman terms: gens or familia. Gens - a genus or a large family, united everyone who bore a generic name (nomen) denoting descent from one mythical ancestor, even if there was no blood relationship between its members, as long as the chain of generations was not interrupted. The clans were divided into branches, united by nicknames (cognomen), not personal, but passed on by inheritance. For example, in the genus of the Cornelii there are Spicioni and Lentus, in the genus of the Claudians there are Drusus and Pulchry. “Last name” - the family was a narrower unit than the clan. She was under the authority of the “father of the family.”
Only the ruling class created real families, where the father of the family (pater familias) was the absolute master, solely owned the name, power over all free and not free household members, had the right of inheritance and family cult. His power was unlimited. The main social and family function of such a father was to preserve the inheritance and continue the family line through marriages and adoptions. Having accepted the children under his authority, the father, from the moment the child began to speak, was actively involved in his upbringing, preparing him for the position of a citizen, a noble man and the father of a family. The Roman family included all relatives and ancestors along the lateral lines up to the sixth generation. Slaves and freedmen were part of the family. In high society, adult married sons left their father's house, but did not receive autonomy, i.e. did not become independent. All property remained the property of the father until his death. When girls got married, they moved from the power of their father to the power of their husband, but later, as documents show, they began to remain under their father’s power, which at that time could be equated to women’s emancipation.
Poor citizens could not start a legal family (house, domus) due to lack of funds, so they lived in free unions.

Types of marriage unions.

Boys married at eighteen, girls married between twelve and sixteen. In a man, in order to be considered an ideal husband, being from a good family, wealth, high morality and fertility were valued. What was valued in a bride? Of course, the same high position and wealth, as well as chastity (castitas), modesty (pudicitia), modesty. During the times of the empire, due to the small number of the elite, young people married later (about 24 years old), when they entered the first magistracy. Only very wealthy people could afford a wedding according to an ancient, solemn ceremony - a conference. Later, towards the end of the Republic, he practically disappeared. The second type of marriage was the “purchase” of a wife in the presence of at least five witnesses, when the future husband gave the daughter’s father a ransom. The third and most common type was called a “customary wedding” (usus), when after a year life together, the woman was part of her husband's family. These marriages applied only to the Romans; the pilgrims retained their own customs.
Wealthy Romans had an average of three marriages due to high female and child mortality rates. Young girls of childbearing age often died after their 20s, so it is not surprising that the Romans “swapped” wives and often married pregnant women or engaged in adoption. Adoption was practiced mainly so that the family line would not be cut short and the family cult of ancestors would not cease. Because of this, girls were almost never adopted. The marriages themselves were usually settled by the fathers of the family and were based not on mutual feelings, but on expediency in the name of procreation and preservation of wealth, especially if this state was significant.

Women and children in the family.

In Roman families married woman(matron) had great rights, although she occupied a secondary place, she was entrusted with the responsibilities of running the household, so she was the full mistress of her house, left it accompanied and participated, sitting, in a meal with men. It was considered good form when a woman managed her family life well, freeing up her husband’s time for more important government affairs. Women's dependence on their husbands manifested itself in property relations; A woman could not own or dispose of property without her husband’s permission. They also had the right to participate in public life.
Boys received names on the eighth day of birth, girls on the ninth, so they officially became part of the family. The father of the family had the right to refuse or put the child out on the street, for example, because of his deformity.
Children wore ceremonial togas (the pretexts in which magistrates wore) and bullae around their necks, balls with amulets, which were removed upon reaching adulthood, upon marriage for girls and until putting on a man's toga at the age of seventeen for boys. Children actively participated in the life of the family, attended home festivities, sitting at a separate table, and served their father during religious home rituals.

Heritage. Certificates and documents.

“Whether I will create something worth laboring if I describe the deeds of the Roman people from the first beginnings of the city, I don’t know for sure. The subject itself requires exorbitant labor - after all, it is necessary to delve into the past more than 700 years, because the state, having started small, has grown so much that it is already suffering from its enormity.

Tim Livy "History from the Founding of Rome", preface.

Citizenship. One of Rome's most important legacies is the concept of citizenship, not participation but status based on legal equality. The popular masses could carry out their demands in such a way that the political system was forced to take them into account, no matter how oligarchic it was presented. By developing this aspect of citizenship, Rome became the ancestor of modern states.
From ritualism to Christianity. For 1000 years, Roman religion was no less strict than Roman law. The ritual was mandatory. It was carried out by those to whom it was entrusted, in forms established by custom, priests and magistrates. Philosophy, speculation and interpretation (especially in the provinces) could only exist from the “edge” of this religion.
In 186 BC. A scandal broke out in Rome. Members of the sect of the god Bacchus were accused of debauchery and corruption of young noble Romans. The repressions were terrible and, at the same time, moderate. The senator consul, whose manuscripts survive, ordered the magistrates to punish the leaders and prohibit this new cult. However, the same decree allowed the traditional cult of Bacchus.

Superstition was considered the only heresy. Philosophical treatises of Cicero of the mid-1st century. BC. were to teach young people to reflect on Roman traditions, where the traditional great “article of faith” was again confirmed: the rejection of superstition. A superstitious person believes his fears more than his reason. “... for it, superstition, attacks us, threatens us, pursues us wherever we turn... the beauty of the world and the order that reigns in heaven prompts the human race to recognize the existence of some eternal superior nature and bow before it. Therefore, just as religion, which is combined with the knowledge of nature, should be spread and supported, so superstition should be torn out with all its roots ... "

Cicero "Philosophical Treatises" I century. BC.
The Romans maintained their religious faith because they grew up with it in their homes. The strength of this belief did not depend much on visits to temples or on the services conducted by priests, because every home, no matter how poor, had its own domestic shrine and altar, before which daily worship took place. These shrines and the small sculptures on them of the family lares, the guardian spirits of the home, were already mentioned in Chapter 2, as they were part of Roman family life. There were also crossroads lares, which were worshiped outside the home and by the homeless or those too poor to have their own family shrines. “The city has a thousand lari,” said Ovid; they were worshiped together with a statue dedicated to the genius of Augustus, the first emperor, who did much to revive the ancient religious rites. The city itself had its own lares, “...twins who watch the crossroads, guarding the city with us,” according to Ovid’s description. Their ancient altar, erected by Augustus, was located on the way along the Sacred Way to the Palatine Hill. Its base next to the Arch of Titus is still preserved, and there you can find the inscription: "Lares Publici". The city of Rome also had its own penates, located in a small chapel on Velia.
As the old way of life lost more and more vitality, and vicious circle self-indulgence began to become boring, the influence of Christianity steadily increased, introducing a fresh stream with its teachings of compassion, kindness, love and mercy towards others, even towards enemies; by its rejection of the world and worldly pleasures; his preaching of abstinence, renunciation of carnal pleasures and sobriety; by its concern for the fallen, the despised and the rejected; faith in the evil of sin, the desire for spiritual rebirth; by his contempt for the idols, statues, temples, festivals and rites of worship of the motley crowd of Roman gods and goddesses; in exchange for all this, it offered faith in one God, the Savior of the world.

The universal language is Latin. One of the most obvious and tangible signs of Roman civilization is Latin language. This local dialect - we are talking about the dialect of the city of Rome - quickly captured wide areas, first in Italy, then in the provinces, and to such an extent that during the era of the Empire it became a universal language. It was, first of all, the language of Roman law. Latin also survived as a universal language of culture and communication: in schools, offices and the Catholic Church. It was so prestigious and so deeply ingrained that modern Romance languages ​​evolved from it. In addition, by the end of antiquity, Latin became the language of Western culture, religion and science and remained so until the beginning of modernity.

The family in Ancient Rome was an independent unit of society with a very complex structure. All family members obeyed their father unquestioningly. He disposed of property and had strong power over all bearers of the family name.

Family structure in Ancient Rome

The families of the Romans were quite large. Three generations of their father’s heirs with their spouses and children gathered in one house. This also included freedmen and slaves who had the name of the owner's family. Among the sons who married, they left their father's house. Their financial position allowed them to live independently. But still their property belonged to their father. Only after his death the property passed into the hands of his heirs.
The duty of the head of the family was to preserve the heritage and reproduce the family. Therefore, if no children were born in the marriage, the Romans could adopt a child who would become equal to their own. The property and family name were transferred to him.

Marriage and family in ancient Rome

Roman marriages took place in early age. Girls were selected for a future husband from the age of 12, and boys entered into marriage at the age of 14-18. The splendor of wedding ceremonies depended on the well-being of the family. Rich people staged a solemn ceremony with sacrifices, which was attended by 10 witnesses. The most common type of wedding was the “redemption” of the wife, in which the groom, in the presence of 5 witnesses, “bought” the wife from her father. During the imperial period, a wedding tradition appeared, before which the engagement took place in the father-in-law's house.
Initially, Rime did not divorce, but later a letter from the spouse about the termination of the relationship was enough for a divorce. The husband had complete power over his wife. According to the laws of the Eternal City, marriage was concluded solely for the continuation of the family line and the preservation of family property.
Within the walls of a Roman home, a woman was considered a sovereign mistress. Husband and wife received guests together. Every day the whole family gathered at the dinner table. A woman’s life in Rome was limited to the family circle, household chores and children. Occasionally, Roman women were allowed to take part in public events.

Useful information: the history of Ancient Rome Are you not at all interested in and the only thing you need at the moment is a high-quality phone case? In this case, you should immediately visit the website itsell.com.ua, where you can purchase a luxurious case for any brand of phone!

Wealthy Romans lived in luxurious mansions called domus. During the construction of the palace, expensive materials were used, such as marble. The walls and ceilings, painted with frescoes and decorated with colored mosaics, gave the house a special chic and sophistication.

Rich and noble families often held dinner parties and lavish feasts. In the dining room, on three sides of the table, there were triclinia: noble Romans did not sit at the table, but reclined. Important guests were greeted by the owner of the house, slaves escorted those invited to the hall and indicated their places. The central triclinium was considered a place of honor; the most important guest was accommodated there. The owner of the house was located next to him. The diners reclined on their left sides and held the portion plate with their left hand. Right hand they took food from common dishes and put it on their plate; at that time there were no forks and spoons. Light wine with honey was served with the appetizers. Throughout the dinner they drank wine mixed with warm or cold water.

The Romans, regardless of social status and occupation, got up very early. At dawn one could see not only artisans and merchants, but also highly respected lords and influential politicians. Breakfast was light and quick. In the afternoon, we worked on personal hygiene and socializing in the thermal baths. Before leaving the house, rich gentlemen wore a woolen tunic over their underwear. The purple patch highlighted those in power. Only senators wore a wide purple patch. A toga was thrown over the tunic: only citizens of Rome could wear it.

Inner courtyard of the Vettii domus, Pompeii

An influential patrician received clients at his home. These were numerous people interested in the patron's patronage, who came on business or simply to express their respect. Slave secretaries assisted the master in maintaining accounts and drawing up business agreements.

During the era of the empire, rich Roman women zealously watched over their beauty and refinement of manners. In all hygienic and cosmetic procedures they were helped by slave maids. The matrons took care of their hair, skin, and nails; they brushed their teeth with powder made from the ashes of burnt bones. Having applied decorative cosmetics to her face, the matron put on a pala and, after looking in the mirror, went out into public. When the mistress went to the baths, she was accompanied by slaves who carried the necessary cosmetics to repeat the entire procedure all over again, after the signora left the bathhouse. Washing off makeup in the evening was a very difficult and painstaking task.

People learned about ghosts a very long time ago, and it was then that the first contacts with ghosts were registered. While studying clay tablets from the second millennium BC, scientists read about the contact of an ancient Babylonian with a ghost. They were afraid of ghosts and...

Astronauts spend a lot of time away from their homeland, friends and home. They are forced to remain in isolation because of their extraordinary profession, which is why astronauts often experience mental disorder called solipsism. In this condition...

By their appearance, ghosts usually instill fear in people. Many consider them to be evil creatures capable of harming living beings. In the past, people came up with many very strange rituals designed to protect them from ghosts. Many of these customs...