SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

Romans had a strong sense of the importance of their past and its influence upon the present. They believed that the values of their ancestors (mos maiorum) were also their values and would be their children’s too, and were perhaps summed up best in the word pietas: commitment to the preservation and glory of family, gods and Rome. Romans had ‘always’ been like that – and always would be. ‘Her men and ancient values kept Rome standing tall’, intoned the second-century BC Roman poet Ennius. That at least was the rhetoric.

Key terms underpinned that commitment. One was virtus: ‘manliness’. The satirical poet Lucilius (second century BC), slamming the customs of his day, put it like this:

It is virtus to know what is right and useful and honourable,
What things are good, and what are evil…
To be the enemy and the foe of bad men and manners,
The defender of good men and manners;

To esteem these highly, to wish them well, to live in friendship with them;

And moreover, to consider the interest of one’s country first;

Then those of parents; and finally to put our own interests in the third and last place.

From this flowed good faith towards others (fides, being true to one’s word and meeting one’s obligations) and gratia, the regard for others which generated co-operation between individuals and families for mutual benefit; and it resulted in dignitas, the respect one gained in the eyes of society from living by these values.

These were, of course, the values of the wealthy great and good, which dominate surviving literature. They were probably shared by the moderately well-off too: doctors, the better rank of soldiers, teachers, architects, merchants, artisans. The poor may have felt differently. As far as we can tell from folk tales, fables, popular sayings and so on, it was a hierachical world, in which gods might be just but did not always show it; the future was quite unpredictable; inexplicable changes of fortune were to be expected; and man’s prospects for improvement were pretty limited. Conflict was the natural order of things, for resources and status. Though gods were committed to justice and good faith, man’s best hope was looking pragmatically to his own interests, maintaining his position in the pecking order, keeping his friends close and his head down: with luck, success might breed success. It was not a matter of being good, but rather of making decisions good enough to enable you at least to survive, and (with luck) thrive, usually by being good at something.

This was not a society characterized by opportunity and aspiration – except for the very wealthy, powerful few. What slaves thought of their lot we do not know. Freed slaves, however, who automatically became Roman citizens, showed no inclination not to own slaves themselves.

For the poor living in the city, it was a matter of making a living out of whatever they could turn their hands to: the rich were there to be served – serve them in any way you could. Those who served the rich also need services – all those greasy spoons and eateries, for people on the go. If one had no trade of one’s own, one turned to helping a blacksmith, butcher, launderer, carpenter, baker or potter; building; serving in shops or the docks; portering; prostitution; labouring – whatever.

As for peasant life in the country, we do have one (anonymous) Roman account of the day – or at least morning – in the life of a peasant, Simylus, composed about AD 15 not by a farmer but by a cultured poet. He was a poor tenant farmer, with just one acre (most families would hope for anything between two and ten acres). Whatever they could make out of their smallholding, such people would supplement earnings by working during off-peak times, labouring, perhaps acting as tenants on other farms, or working as craftsmen in town.

Simylus wakes early. No switching on a light: he gropes for the fire, puffs its embers awake – he must keep a fire burning all the time if he wants light in the morning and heat or a cooking facility in the day – and fetches grain from his cupboard. This is precious: it must be locked away against need. He grinds it into flour, and calls his slave, an African woman Scybale, to fetch wood for the fire, heat cold water and bake the flour into bread. ‘He has no meat-racks, no hard salt ham or bacon slices curing.’ This is real poverty. But he has a small garden, and makes a pesto out of garlic, salt, cheese and herbs to put on the bread which Scybale has now baked. Then off he goes to plough his field.

The peasant’s aim was to be self-sufficient. To achieve that, he needed a little left over which he could sell or exchange for the other goods and services required for subsistence: buying salt, for example, mending and buying implements, or paying rent or interest on a debt. The poet tells us that Simylus’ garden served this purpose: every week he took its produce to market – cabbages, beet, sorrel, mallow, radishes – to make what surplus he could from it.

At the same time, the peasant had to adopt tactics that would see him through periods of unexpected shortage. Since staple cereals like grain could keep for up to two years, Simylus had a store of grain, but kept it locked away, so precious was it. Meat did not play any part in his diet. But if real famine (mercifully rare) did set in, elite city-dwellers would simply commandeer whatever they could, leaving the peasant to the grim consequences of a diet of twigs, tree shoots, bulbs, roots and grasses.

To paint the wider picture, precious metals apart, all the wealth of the ancient world derived from what the land could produce. This fed the population and kept numbers up. Further, even Simylus, at the limit of survival, could produce some surplus; and this surplus could be taxed by local authorities (‘10% of annual surplus’ spread over a defined area was a typical demand), collected and returned to the central treasury. In the case of the Roman Empire, surplus from its provinces was taxed in cash or kind and used (among much else) to pay for the Roman army. The wealthy, who owned huge acreages of land, made their vast fortunes by renting it out and selling the surplus. So Simylus’ activities were replicated across the ancient world, on a smaller or larger scale, and kept the whole system going.

Farming the land was one operation, pasturing another. The encyclopedist Varro described the sort of work this entailed:

For herds of cattle, use older men; for flocks of sheep or goats, use boys. But in either case, the herdsmen who stay in the mountain pastures should be sturdier than those who return everyday to the sheepfolds in the villa. Thus, in the woodland areas you may see young men, usually armed; but close to the villa, boys and even girls tend the flocks…

The herdsmen must be forced to stay in the pasture all day, to let the herds pasture together during the day, but to spend the night alone, each with his own herd. Neither old men nor young boys can easily tolerate the difficult terrain and the steep and rugged mountains, although herdsmen must endure these hardships, especially herdsmen who follow cattle and goats which love to pasture on sheer cliffs or in thick forests…

In choosing herdsmen, examine their physique. They should be sturdy, swift-footed, quick, with good reflexes, men who not only can follow a herd, but also can protect it from predatory animals and from thieves; men who can lift loads onto pack animals; men who can run fast and hurl a javelin.

It is easy to become romantic about the farmer’s life. There was nothing romantic here for the shepherd or herdsman, out in all weathers, in rough terrain, with little in the way of companionship. This was usually slaves’ work, so disagreeable it was.

Quite apart from the danger of thieves, there were Bullingdon Club-style jokers to contend with, in this case the famous emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in a letter:

When my father had got home from the vineyards, I, as usual, mounted my horse and set off along the road, and had gone a little way when I met a flock of sheep, all huddled together in the road, as happens when there is little room, with four dogs and two shepherds; that was all. Then one of the shepherds, seeing our group, said to his mate, ‘Keep an eye on those riders. They always like a bit of rustling.’ Hearing that, I dug the spurs into my horse and galloped right into the flock. Frightened out of their wits, they ran helter-skelter, scattering in all directions, bleating. The shepherd threw his crook at us. It hit my attendant behind me, but we got clear off.

The ancient world was an unforgiving place.

THE FAMILY

By familia, Romans did not quite mean ‘family’ in our sense. They meant rather ‘household’, i.e. the relatives, freedmen, slaves and property that were under the control of one man – ‘the father of the family’, the pater familias. He had absolute power over the disposal of the family and its assets. However doddery their father, his sons, however old, remained technically dependent on him until he died. Familia was related to famulus, ‘slave’, and familia was also used of slave gangs. This hinted at the power that the pater familias wielded. That said, in our texts he was more often seen as ‘estate holder’ than tyrant.

The pater familias could also be called the dominus, a word derived from domus, ‘house, home’ (→ ‘domestic’), with overtones of ‘lord and master’. Cicero punned on the connection, saying that ‘the dominus should bring honour to his domus, not the domus to its dominus’. Our ‘danger’, amazingly, derives, via French, from dominus, relating to the authority of the master of the house and the danger of crossing it.

PATERNAL GENIUS

The pater also enshrined in his person the ‘genius’ of the family. For us, a genius is a person of outstanding capacities far beyond the reach of ordinary people, in whatever field of endeavour. For Romans, genius derived from a stem meaning ‘inborn’ and meant primarily the male spirit of the gens, or family unit, existing in the pater familias and passed down the generations. It was a sort of personal guardian deity. The genius of the emperor was worshipped. The emperor Caligula, we are told, could inflict horrific (Latin horreo, ‘I shudder, shiver, bristle’) punishments on those who did not swear by his genius. Even places and corporations could be held to have a genius within them. Our ‘ingenious, ingenuity’ derive from Latin ingenium, a word emphasizing the ‘natural abilities, talent, intellect’ born in someone.

But whatever a father’s genius, the key to a successful family was the wife’s capacity to produce children.

WOMEN’S FERTILITY

Latin fero meant ‘I bear, carry, produce’, all very relevant to a fertilis (‘fertile’) woman. On her depended the continuance of the family, and so of citizen children, and so of the Roman state and the worship of its gods. Given the high death rate at childbirth and in the first years after, a Roman mother would have to be regularly pregnant to be certain of producing the two to three children that would survive and keep up the population.

Nevertheless, the word for ‘blessed’, felix (→ ‘felicitous’), applied to her: it is related to femina (‘woman’), fecundus (our ‘fecund’), fetus (‘foetus’) and fello (‘I suck milk’).

Our ‘effete’ today is used to mean general languid decadence and moral decay; in Latin effetus meant literally ‘out-wombed’, i.e. ‘worn out (ex-, ‘out, away’) by bearing offspring’.

ADOPTION

If children were lacking, or had turned out to be unimpressive, it was very common indeed to adopt them from another family to ensure the survival of the line, or to give it a boost. Latin optio meant ‘the power to choose’ and adoptio ‘choosing someone to come to one’s family’. As lawyers said, ‘adoption imitates nature’; it was as if the adoptee had been born into the family.

What is so striking about Roman adoption is that it had nothing to do with homeless children or those who had lost parents. It was all about helping the family to succeed. So it was adolescents and adults, not babies, who were adopted by agreement with other families. Childless aristocrats, even emperors, used the system. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were all adopted. The system was clearly not entirely foolproof.

HEART OF THE FAMILY

The religious centre of the family was its focus – its domestic hearth, or fireplace. This was not only the place where the cooking was done; it was also the ‘focal’ point where the personal household deity (lar familiaris) was worshipped. As such, focus in Latin came to mean ‘household, family’ as well as a sacrificial hearth or altar. Our phrase ‘hearth and home’ reflects a similar convergence.

SLAVERY

How many families possessed a slave or slaves is hard to say. They may have made up 30 to 40 per cent of the population. We hear that the fabulously rich Crassus had 800. A slave was a servus – its derivation is unknown – and its associated verb servio meant ‘I serve a master, am politically subject, am subservient to’. Our idea of ‘service’ (→ ‘servitude’) does not quite have these connotations, though the old idea of being ‘in service’ perhaps did. A home-bred slave was a verna, which – via vernaculus, ‘domestic, home-produced, native’ – gives us our ‘vernacular’, one’s local language.

MANUMISSION

A servus was a person without rights or legal status. That tells us nothing about how a slave was treated. A slave on a latifundium (latus, ‘wide’; fundus, ‘country estate, farm’, see here) or in the mines would endure a dreadful existence. A slave working for a family could be treated well or badly. Slaves could reach positions of influence because they owed their position to their master and could therefore (for the most part) be trusted. The emperor Claudius had slaves among his closest advisers. We hear of slaves acting as businessmen on their master’s behalf (see here).

There was certainly some incentive for a slave to behave well, because manumission (release from slavery) was standard – mitto (miss-), ‘I release, dismiss’, manu, ‘from the (master’s) hand/authority’. The slave then became a ‘freedman’, i.e. a slave who had been freed (Latin libertus, feminine liberta), though without political rights; his children, however, became full citizens.

GROWING UP

There is no precise Latin word for ‘baby’, and there were many different theories about the life stages from then on. For example, the Roman encyclopedist Varro suggested an infans (infant-), a little child, technically unable to speak yet, covered years zero to seven, after which education began; the pre-pubertal puer (non-adult young boy, → ‘puerile’) and puella (young girl) covered years seven to fifteen.* The Roman then became an adolescens, from adolesco (adult-), ‘I become mature, grow up’, till thirty; a iuvenis (→ ‘juvenile’) till forty-five; a senior from forty-five to sixty; and a senex from sixty till death. Note the absence of middle age. Another account carved life into seven stages, by seven astrological signs: 0–4: Moon; 4–14: Mercury; 14–22: Venus; 22–41: Sun; 41–56: Mars; 56–68: Jupiter; 68–death: Saturn.

‘Adultery’ has nothing to do with adults. It derives from Latin adultero (adulterat-), literally ‘I [go] to (ad) another (alter)’. Nor did a Roman homo have anything (necessarily) to do with homosexuals. ‘Homosexual’ (first used 1892) derives from Greek homos (ὁμος), ‘one and the same, common, joint’ + Latin sexus, ‘gender’. Homo in fact is related to Latin humanus and meant basically ‘human being’ (of either sex). That it became strongly associated with males may tell one something about the Roman mindset.

DEATH MASKS

Families rejoiced in their history. It demonstrated that the gods favoured them and gave them hope that they would continue to do so. A well-known tradition of the aristocracy was the preservation of busts and portrait-masks of their ancestors (sometimes derived from death masks). These were called imagines (singular imago, from imitor, ‘I copy, imitate’) and during family funerals would be displayed with lists of their achievements and paraded in the forum – a useful reminder to those who are concerned about their ‘image’. Freedmen who had made good were keen to imitate free Romans and would parade busts of their powerful patrons (patroni).

FREEDMEN

If a freed slave had been a member of a wealthy or productive household, he could use his skills to make good in business. If he had the skills needed by the imperial household, he could make good in politics too, in an administrative role. Under the emperor Claudius, some freedmen rose to considerable positions of power, which greatly annoyed the aristocrats. Narcissus, for example, spoke in the Senate, gave leg-ups to promising young men (e.g. the future emperor Vespasian), helped organize the invasion of Britain, and was even put in charge of a big civil-engineering project. Another of Claudius’ freedmen was given an honorary praetorship!

FUNERARY RIGHTS

Our ‘funeral’ derives from Latin funus (funer-), ‘funeral rites, corpse, death’. ‘Cemetery’ derives from Greek via Late Latin: a koimêtêrion (κοιμητηριον) was ‘a room for sleeping in’. Romans used sepulc(h)-rum for ‘grave’ (→ ‘sepulchre’), from Latin sepelio, ‘I dispose of a corpse, submerge’; the Latin seems to have been associated with related words meaning ‘venerate’.

Incidentally, Latin postumus meant ‘last born’. But thanks to a Roman misunderstanding, it came to mean ‘born after a father’s death’. This came about because Romans imagined postumus arose from post + humus, ‘after [the father’s] burial’ (→ our ‘posthumous’). Note humus, ‘ground’ → ‘inhume’ → ‘exhume’.

IMMIGRANTS

From earliest times, according to Roman tradition, citizenship had been open to non-Romans too. The explanation was that, when Rome was founded by Romulus in 753 BC, there was a general shortage of men to make a viable state. Romulus therefore welcomed in assorted riff-raff from elsewhere – slaves, exiles, paupers and debtors – with the promise of citizenship. These were ‘immigrants’, but in the Roman sense: immigro meant ‘I go and take up residence’, not ‘I go in the hope of taking up residence’. Pliny the Younger praised the emperor Trajan for allowing new owners to take up residence in his own inherited estates, ‘so that great houses no longer fall to pieces and decay’. The Latin migro seems to be related to a Greek word meaning ‘I change places’, which was used to describe moving from place to place, passing into a new condition, e.g. from death to life.

LIBERALS

Rome was remarkably liberal about extending citizenship across its empire in a number of formats from restricted to full status, and in AD 212 Caracalla extended full citizenship to all free inhabitants.

Note ‘liberal’: in Latin liberalis referred to one’s status and duty as a free (liber) person – ‘typical of a free man, obliging, generous’. Cicero said of the Greek sophist Hippias that he had all the accomplishments of a liberalis education: ‘Geometry, music, knowledge of literature and poetry, the natural world, ethics and politics.’

EXTENDING RIGHTS

Early Rome was soon in conflict with neighbours and began extending control over them, first by conquest and then by assimilation, i.e. giving them some form of legal relationship with Rome. Two legal rights were especially valued.

The right of marriage (connubium) opened up Roman citizenship. This allowed a non-Roman woman to become upwardly nubile, marry a Roman male and so produce Roman children. The Latin nubo (nupt-, → ‘nuptial’), ‘I marry’, was used of a woman, the con(m)-prefix meaning ‘with’.

The right to engage in commerce with Rome was commercium (→ ‘commercial’). This was vital for encouraging the expansion of trade across Italy in accordance with proper legal procedures. The Latin stem merc- meant ‘commodity, price, sale’, and was the stem of mercennarius, ‘working for hire, someone for sale, mercenary’.*

COMMUNITIES

The Latin munia meant ‘duties, functions’; and communis (com/cum = ‘with’) meant, basically, ‘shared, joint, belonging to or affecting everyone, sociable, obliging’ (→ our ‘communal’). The importance Romans placed on the idea of communal obligations and responsibilities was well illustrated by the praise the historian Livy heaped on Rome’s greatest enemy Hannibal, who took on Rome in Italy, far from his home in North Africa (Carthage):

For here he was, carrying on war in the enemy’s land for thirteen years, so far from home and with very mixed fortunes, with an army made up not of his own citizens but a mixture of the dregs of all nations; with men who had in common no law, no custom, no language; and differing from each other in character, clothing, arms, religious rites, sacred observances, even one might almost say in their gods. Yet he somehow bound them together by a single bond, so that no outbreak ensued among the men themselves nor any mutiny against their general.

BRITISH COMMUNITIES

When the historian Tacitus described the Roman takeover of Britain in the first century AD, he said something about the Britanni (Celts at the time) that seems to have become part of the DNA of our ancestors the Anglo-Saxons:

The Britons themselves actively accept enrolment into the army, taxes and other munia [e.g. road-building, grain collection] associated with imperial rule, provided that there is no injustice. That they will not put up with, being habituated to obey but not to be treated like slaves.

The British have a reputation for doing their duty as long as it is ‘fair’; but they are an independent-minded lot and will not bow to tyrants.

Britannia derived from what the Greek traveller Pytheas (c. 320 BC) heard local Britons call it – Pretannikê (Πρεταννικη). By the first century BC this had become Pretannia, and so ultimately Britannia. The word probably meant something like ‘painted/tattooed people’ – the description the Romans translated into Picti to describe the Picts.

MUNICIPALITIES AND COLONIES

Our ‘municipal’ is based on the muni- stem (see here). Latin municipium meant a self-governing community in Italy, but one which had been granted a number of Roman citizen rights. This distinguished it from a colony.

A colonus meant basically ‘farmer’, and a colonia was a self-governing settlement established outside Rome with land for Romans to work on and live off. Originally, a colonia was established to help to control a conquered town; but over time it became a means of providing Roman veteran soldiers with a retirement home and of Romanizing far-flung places across the Empire. The very name of Lincoln reveals its origin: Lindum colonia, the colony Lindum, an ancient British word meaning ‘lake’.

IMMUNITY

Immunis meant ‘exempted from duties’; immunitas boiled down to ‘exemption from taxes’. It was a much sought privilege. We know of a letter from Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus, begging him to grant freedom from taxes to the Greek island of Samos. He turned her down. We have his communication to the Samians:

It is not right to grant the greatest privilege of all without reason and cause. I have goodwill towards you and would be willing to do a service to my wife who is enthusiastic on your behalf, but not so far as to contravene my custom…

DOING FAVOURS

The great and good in any society like nothing better than mingling with other great and good. It creates relationships, back-scratching (or knifing), and – with luck – bonds of friendship and obligation that can be useful to both sides. ‘Bonds’ indeed: Latin obligo (obligat-) meant basically ‘I tie up, bind’. In the Roman world, this was the way to get on, helping your friends with such things as financial aid, jobs, business deals, court cases, even marriage prospects.

An army commander, for example, would have many junior positions at his disposal. If he gave a position to X on the advice of friend Y, a chain of obligation would be established. The governor of a province likewise could offer jobs and protection; as he went on tour, local bigwigs would be keen to entertain him lavishly and so strike up a relationship. The emperor was the biggest dispenser of patronage of all.

GRACE AND FAVOUR

The world of obligatio tied in with that of gratia (see here, here). What gratia hinted at was ‘a lively sense of future favours’ (ascribed to Sir Robert Walpole), implying a return for services to be rendered at some future date. Power and prestige depended on working these personal connections. Pliny the Younger wrote in this vein to his chum Romatius Firmus:

You and I were born in the same township, we went to school together, and shared quarters from an early age; your father was on terms of friendship with my mother and my uncle, and with me – as far as the disparity in our years allowed. These are overwhelming reasons why I ought to advance you as far as I can along the path of dignities. The fact of your being a mayor in our town shows that you have an income of a hundred thousand sesterces. So, in order that we may have the pleasure of enjoying your society not only as a mayor but as a Roman knight, I offer you 300,000 sesterces to make up the equestrian qualification [see here]. The length of our friendship is sufficient guarantee that you will not forget this favour…

A Roman would not have been pleased, however, if you had congratulated him on his praestigia, source of our ‘prestige’: it meant ‘an action intended to deceive or hoodwink, a trick, deceit’. Sometimes Latin is a little too close for comfort. Its meaning in English derives from conjuring. ‘The prestige’ is the conjuror’s final and most baffling trick (→ ‘prestidigitator’, someone nimble-fingered, like any good magician). The term was extended to any outstanding performance of any sort. The French used it to describe Napoleon’s incredible escape from Elba in 1815 to start his war against England and her allies all over again.

PRIVILEGE

Privilege through family connections was deeply rooted in Roman society. But in Cicero’s day, a privilegium – literally, a law (leg-) relating to an individual (privus) – was always one passed against him; only later was it more of a ‘privilege’ in our sense, of a special right, a prerogative. In a famous case in 62 BC, one Clodius, disguised as a woman, broke into a secret female ceremony. Clodius’ enemy Cicero claimed that a special privilegium had already been brought against Clodius: that if he ever did such a thing, he would be sent into exile. In fact, said Cicero, Clodius bribed his way out of the charge and boasted about what he had pulled off. Since it was Julius Caesar’s house where this ceremony was taking place, Caesar divorced his wife, saying: ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.’

PATRONS AND CLIENTS

Given the huge disparity in power in the ancient world, it is not surprising that the weak looked to the great and good for help. But it was in the great and good’s interest as well: it enabled them to get support among those at the lower end of society with whom they would normally have no dealings.

This relationship was expressed in terms of ‘patronage’: the patronus (compare pater, ‘father’) was an influential person protecting the interests of his cliens (plural clientes); his cliens was a dependant of some sort (a term possibly connected with the Latin for ‘inclined’), rendering services to his patronus.

At this lower level, it was a matter of social welfare: the landowner who provided the tenancy of a farm to a poor family, the politician who wanted to be accompanied around Rome by large groups of followers and would give them meals and a small allowance to do so.

The satirist Juvenal depicted the miserable existence of the poor cliens: first thing in the morning he presents himself at his patronus’s house and picks up his pathetic allowance; then he heads down to the forum and hangs around the law courts in case the patronus needs support; then he follows him home and hopes for a dinner invitation. Fat chance. So off he goes to buy a cabbage and something to cook it with, while the patronus lolls about on his own at dinner, not a guest in sight, hoovering up the best that the woods and sea can offer.

PARASITES

It was easy for rich Romans to see this sort of cliens as a parasite – a Greek word parasitos (παρασιτος) taken directly into Latin as parasitus. It meant in Greek ‘one who eats (sitos, ‘food’) beside (para)’, either as a guest, but more likely as a scrounger, earning his corn by flattering the host. But given the patron’s often supercilious attitude to his clients, it is he who exploited them rather than the other way round.

Supercilium in Latin meant ‘eyebrow’. Seneca urged people not to worry about the ‘eyebrow’, presumably raised in contempt, of any slave calling out guests’ names as they entered a room for a banquet – what did a slave’s opinion count for?

THE WORLD OF WORK (1): SHOP AND MARKETS

A city of a million people, Rome had few natural resources except water and superb volcanic building material. So Romans brought in raw materials from all over the world – foodstuffs, wood, leather, metals, cloth, precious stones, etc. – to use or turn into products that the wealthy and others required in the greatest city in the world. Inscriptions in Rome list some 150 different trades. Many of these would sell their own products through their own shops.

Rome, then, was a city of shopkeepers. The Latin for ‘shop’ was taberna (whence our ‘tavern’), which meant basically ‘wooden hut’ (related to trabs, ‘tree-trunk’), then a wayside inn, and a shop; and a ‘shopkeeper, innkeeper’ was caupo, from which our ‘cheap’ derives.

As well as markets – for instance, the forum vinarium for wine and forum piscatorium for fish – where farmers would come from the country to sell their goods, usually once a week, tabernae lined the streets of Rome – ground-floor single rooms, often with living quarters and workshops attached.

The term covered all manner of shops: retail, small-scale manufacture, inns, cook-shops, brothels (lupanaria, from lupa, ‘she-wolf ’, whence ‘lupine’). We hear of shops dealing in such goods as cheese, leather, books (libraria), charcoal, felt and perfume (unguentaria), but archaeologically it is often difficult to determine what any specific shop sold. There seem to have been plenty of takeaways, selling prepared foods such as bread, hot sausages, pastries and chickpeas. They even had ‘greasy spoons’ (uncta popina, ‘oily [‘unctuous’] cook-shop’ – a place where, presumably, you could just pop in).

We also know shopkeepers advertised their wares keenly, spilling out onto the walkways to do so. This was banned by the emperor, and the Roman satirist Martial wrote:

The barber, innkeeper, cook, and butcher keep within their own doors. What was recently one great taberna is now the city of Rome again.

We also hear of retailers visiting the wealthy at home. The poet Ovid objected to this: these people always arrived when your mistress was in the mood for being showered with gifts!

BUYING AND SELLING

Latin had no specific word for ‘shopping’ as a leisure activity, only buying and selling.* That does not mean they did not go shopping, any more than they did not smile because their only word for that relates to a verb meaning ‘to laugh’. There is a story from Alexandria of ladies shopping for shoes and going through all those in the shop, commenting on style, fit and colour – or were they actually shopping for dildos? Martial told of people window-shopping, gazing longingly at antiques and so on, all quite out of their range.

THE WORLD OF WORK (2): FARMING

Shopping was high on the list of the farming community, the most admired Romans of them all. A farmer was an agricola: colo (cult-), ‘I farm, cultivate’ + ager (agr-), ‘field’. Another term was colonus, ‘cultivator’, a farmer or tenant farmer, looking after a farm for someone else. They were also ‘colonists’, i.e. people who took over conquered territory and made a life for themselves as farmers there. Many veteran soldiers went for this option on retirement (see here).

In his work on agricultura, Cato the Elder provided farmers with the following shopping list and the best sources for them:

Tunics, togas, blankets, patchwork, and shoes should be bought at Rome; caps, iron tools, scythes, spades, mattocks, axes, harnesses, ornaments, and small chains at Cales and Minturnae; spades at Venafrum; carts and sledges at Suessa and in Lucania; storage jars and pots at Alba and Rome; tiles at Venafrum… oil mills at Pompeii, and at Rufrius’ yard at Nola, nails and bars at Rome, buckets, oil vessels, water carriers, wine urns, other bronze vessels at Capua and Nola…

It is difficult for anyone in today’s world to appreciate what serious farming meant in the ancient world. Cato’s treatise runs to over 150 pages of closely written instructions.

THE FOUNDATIONAL FARMER

The farmer comes across as the model of the ideal Roman. Cato the Elder saw them as the moral and military backbone of the nation:

And when our ancestors would praise a worthy man, their praise took this form: ‘good colonus’, ‘good agricola’. One so praised was thought to have received the greatest commendation… It is from the agricolae that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come. Their calling is most highly respected, their livelihood is the most dependable, it arouses the least hostility, and those engaged in it are least inclined to be disaffected.

The Latin for ‘farm’ was fundus. The very word emphasizes its central importance in Roman eyes: it meant ‘bottom, basis, foundation’, whence our ‘fundament(al)’. The farmer and his farm were felt, as Cato the Elder suggested, to be the rock on which Rome was built.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXAMPLE

Because farming was of such central importance, Romans constantly turned to it as an example or paradigm (Greek paradeigma [παραδειγμα]) of how the world should be. The poet Virgil wrote a complete work on farming, his Georgics, from Greek geôrgos (γεωργος), ‘farmer’ – one who works (erg-) the land (gê): hence ‘Farmer George’. In it he drew constant parallels between farming, nature and the state.

The Latin for ‘example’ was exemplum. It derived from Latin eximo (exempt-), ‘I take out, extract’ (→ ‘exemption’): an exemplum drew out wholesome lessons from both the past and the contemporary world (con/cum, ‘simultaneous’ + tempus [tempor-], ‘time’). Pliny the Elder gave a powerful exemplum antiquitatis (‘from antiquity’) in his story of a farmer who was a freed slave, Gaius Furius Chresimus (Chresimus [Χρησιμος] was his slave name, Greek for ‘useful’). He had made a tremendous success of his farm, and was accused by jealous neighbours of using magic to lure away other people’s crops. When the time came for the verdict:

Chresimus brought all his agricultural implements into court and produced his farm servants, sturdy people, well looked after and well clad, his iron tools of excellent make, heavy mattocks, ponderous ploughshares and well-fed oxen. Then he said: ‘These are my magic spells, citizens. But what I cannot show you, or produce in court, are my midnight labours and early risings, my sweat and toil.’ This procured his acquittal by a unanimous verdict. The fact is that cultivation depends on expenditure of labour, and this is the reason for the saying of our forefathers that, on a farm, the best fertilizer is the owner’s eye.

This approach to the past had implications for the Roman concept of history (see here). If analysis of the past consisted to a large extent in mining it for exempla, positive and negative, there was much of significance that the historian would ignore or miss.

THE WORLD OF WORK (3): HANDIWORK

Manufacturing today evokes images of vast factories, smoke billowing from multiple chimneys, daily churning out objects by the thousand. This bears little relationship to pre-industrial ancient manufacturing. In Latin manu factus (or manufactus) had a very specific meaning. Cicero, reflecting on mutual helpfulness as the key to civilization, said:

What we call ‘inanimate’ is for the most part the product of man’s labour. Without manus [‘hand, manual labour’] and ars [‘technique’] we would have none of them – no health-care, no navigation, no agriculture… no exports or imports… no quarrying of iron, copper, gold and silver… no houses… no aqueducts, canals, irrigation works, breakwater or harbours manu factos [‘made by hand’, artificial as opposed to natural].

Lucretius, arguing for a world made of atoms, pointed out that the atoms were not all completely identical since, like ears of corn, for example, ‘they are the products of nature, not manu facta to a set pattern’.

Today, ‘made by hand’ implies a product not made by machine and so untouched by human hand. In the ancient world, ‘made by hand’ was the only way anything could be made, though machines could help.

* Our ‘pubescence’ comes from Latin pubesco, ‘I reach physical maturity’.

* The Mercedes brand name derives from Spanish ‘Mércedès’, the name of the daughter of one of the founders of the company. It means ‘Mercies’ (→ ‘Mary, our Lady of Mercies’), and derives from the merc- stem because – through Vulgar Latin – it acquired the meaning ‘favour, pity’.

* Latin emo meant ‘I buy’, which gives us the phrase caveat emptor, ‘let the buyer beware’ (see also here). Latin vendo meant ‘I sell’, whence our ‘vendor’.