Trumblog

Over the holiday break I read Alberto Angela’s “A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities,” a fascinating walk through Rome in 115 CE during the reign of Emperor Trajan. The book doesn’t focus on Roman history, but instead captures the sights, activities and attitudes of the residents of Rome thereby truly bringing to life the ancient city.

Angela describes living in ancient Rome to be in some ways like living in a campground. For most people homes were small and used primarily for sleeping.  Therefore most of life was lived outside and in public. School was taught in the streets.  Bathing, relieving yourself and eating were all done outside the home in public institutions.

This, and Rome’s severe crowding, makes the concept of privacy very different from how we think of it today.  Consider the public latrines:

“There are no screens, curtains, or dividers that isolate people from each other. They are all seated on one long marble bench, one next to the other, as though they are waiting for the bus.”

The same is true of another public setting that we would today consider intimate, the baths.

“There are men and women, old people and children, craftsmen and soldiers, wealthy people and slaves. The baths of Rome bring everyone without distinction.”

And the streets, baths and most everywhere else in Rome was crowded.  Most Romans lived, both figuratively and literally, on top of one another in apartment buildings or insula that were packed with people and with the population emptying onto the streets during the day you can imagine what the traffic was like.  The close quarters of the street, not to mention the latrine and baths would disturb our Western sensibility for personal space.

Because of the crowding social activity thrived in these locations. Despite the smell, Angela says that the latrine “is one of the social hubs of Rome, like the Forum.”  The same is true of the baths.

“The baths, in fact, are one of those places that combine business and pleasure, exactly like we do today for working lunches.”

By living outside the home and out in the incredibly crowded street it was impossible for the majority of the people of Rome to ever have a truly private conversation, nor for your activity and whereabouts not to be public knowledge.  That was an accepted part of Roman life.  Our modern idea of privacy, expectations for it and guarding of our rights to it are all very modern and even now are not the case for the majority of humans alive today.  Think of this when discussing online privacy policies on Facebook and location-based social media applications like Foursquare, but maintain our modern sensibilities and please don’t share details of the latrine and bath.  We really don’t want to know.

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