Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero

by W. Warde Fowler

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WELL-TO-DO

Before giving some account of the way in which a Roman of consideration spent his day in the time of Cicero, it seems necessary to explain briefly how he reckoned the divisions of the day.

The old Latin farmer knew nothing of hours or clocks. He simply went about his daily work with the sun and the light as guides, rising at or before sunrise, working till noon, and, after a meal and a rest, resuming his work till sunset. This simple method of reckoning would suffice in a sunny climate, even when life and business became more complicated; and it is a fact that the division of the day into hours was not known at Rome until the introduction of the sun-dial in 263 B.C.[407] We may well find it hard to understand how such business as the meeting of the senate, of the comitia, or the exercitus, could have been fixed to particular times under such circumstances; perhaps the best way of explaining it is by noting that the Romans were very early in their habits, and that sunrise is a point of time about which there can be no mistake[408]. But in any case the date of the introduction of the sun-dial, which almost exactly corresponds with the beginning of the Punic wars and the vast increase of civil business arising out of them, may suggest at once the primitive condition of the old Roman mind and habit, and the way in which the Romans had to learn from other peoples how to save and arrange the time that was beginning to be so precious.

This first sun-dial came from Catina in Sicily, and was therefore quite unsuited to indicate the hours at Rome. Nevertheless Rome contrived to do with it until nearly a century had elapsed; at last, in 159 B.C., a dial calculated on the latitude of Rome was placed by the side of it by the censor Q. Marcius Philippus. These two dials were fixed on pillars behind the Rostra in the Forum, the most convenient place for regulating public business, and there they remained even in the time of Cicero[409]. But in the censorship next following that of Philippus the first water-clock was introduced; this indicated the hours both of day and night, and enabled every one to mark the exact time even on cloudy days[410].

Thus from the time of the Punic wars the city population reckoned time by hours, i.e. twelve divisions of the day; but as they continued to reckon the day from sunrise to sunset on the principle of the old agricultural practice, these twelve hours varied in length at different times of the year. In mid-winter the hours were only about forty-four minutes in length, while at mid-summer they were about seventy-five, and they corresponded with ours only at the two equinoxes.[411] This, of course, made the construction of accurate dials and water-clocks a matter of considerable difficulty. It is not necessary here to explain how the difficulties were overcome; the reader may be referred to the article "Horologium" in the Dictionary of Antiquities, and especially to the cuts there given of the dial found at Tusculum in 1761.[412]

Sun-dials, once introduced with the proper reckoning for latitude, soon came into general use, and a considerable number still survive which have been found in Rome. In a fragment of a comedy by an unknown author, ascribed to the last century B.C., Rome is described as "full of sun-dials,"[413] and many have been discovered in other Roman towns, including several at Pompeii. But for the ordinary Roman, who possessed no sun-dial or was not within reach of one, the day fell into four convenient divisions, as with us it falls into three,—morning, afternoon, and evening. As they rose much earlier than we do, the hours up to noon were divided into two parts: (1) mane, or morning, which lasted from sunrise to the beginning of the third hour, and (2) ad meridiem, or forenoon; then followed de meridie, i.e. afternoon, and suprema, from about the ninth or tenth hour till sunset. The authority for these handy divisions is Censorinus, De die natali (23. 9, 24. 3). There seems to be no doubt that they originated in the management of civil business, and especially in that of the praetor's court, which normally began at the third hour, i.e. the beginning of ad meridiem, and went on till the suprema (tempestas diei), which originally meant sunset, but by a lex Plaetoria was extended to include the hour or two before dark.

The first thing to note in studying the daily life at Rome is that the Romans, like the Greeks, were busy much earlier in the morning than we are. In part this was the result of their comfortable southern climate, where the nights are never so long as with us, and where the early mornings are not so chilly and damp in summer or so cold in winter. But it was probably still more the effect of the very imperfect lighting of houses, which made it difficult to carry on work, especially reading and writing, after dark, and suggested early retirement to bed and early rising in the morning. The streets, we must remember, were not lighted except on great occasions, and it was not till late in Roman history that public places and entertainments could be frequented after dark. In early times the oil-lamp with a wick was unknown, and private houses were lighted by torches and rude candles of wax or tallow.[414] The introduction of the use of olive oil, which was first imported from Greece and the East and then produced in Italy, brought with it the manufacture of lamps of various kinds, great and small; and as the cultivation of the valuable tree, so easily grown in Italy, increased in the last century B.C.,[415] the oil-lamp became universal in houses, baths, etc. Even in the small old baths of Pompeii there were found about a thousand lamps, obviously used for illumination after dark.[416] But in spite of this and of the invention of candelabra for extending the use of candles, it was never possible for the Roman to turn night into day as we do in our modern town-life. We must look on the lighting of the streets as quite an exceptional event. This happened, for example, on the night of the famous fifth of December 63 B.C., when Cicero returned to his house after the execution of the conspirators; people placed lamps and torches at their doors, and women showed lights from the roofs of the houses.

An industrious man, especially in winter, when this want of artificial light made time most valuable, would often begin his work before daylight; he might have a speech to prepare for the senate, or a brief for a trial, or letters to write, and, as we shall see, as soon as the sun had well risen it was not likely that he would be altogether his own master. Thus we find Cicero on a February morning writing to his brother before sunrise,[417] and it is not unlikely that the soreness of the eyes of which he sometimes complains may have been the result of reading and writing before the light was good. In his country villas he could do as he liked, but at Rome he knew that he would have the "turba salutantium" upon him as soon as the sun had risen. Cicero is the only man of his own time of whose habits we know much, but in the next generation Horace describes himself as calling for pen and paper before daylight, and later on that insatiable student the elder Pliny would work for hours before daylight, and then go to the Emperor Vespasian, who was also a very early riser.[418] After sunrise the whole population was astir; boys were on their way to school, and artisans to their labour.

If Horace is not exaggerating when he says (Sat. i. 1. 10) that the barrister might be disturbed by a client at cock-crow, Cicero's studies may have been interrupted even before the crowds came; but this could hardly happen often. As a rule it was during the first two hours (mane) that callers collected. In the old times it had been the custom to open your house and begin your business at daybreak, and after saluting your familia and asking a blessing of the household gods, to attend to your own affairs and those of your clients.[419] Although we are not told so explicitly, we must suppose that the same practice held good in Cicero's time; under the Empire it is familiar to all readers of Seneca or Martial, but in a form which was open to much criticism and satire. The client of the Empire was a degraded being; of the client in the last age of the Republic we only know that he existed, and could be useful to his patronus in many ways,—in elections and trials especially;[420] but we do not hear of his pressing himself on the attention of his patron every morning, or receiving any "sportula." All the same, the number of persons, whether clients in this sense or in the legal sense, or messengers, men of business, and ordinary callers, who would want to see a man like Cicero before he left his house in the morning, would beyond doubt be considerable. Otherwise they would have to catch him in the street or Forum; and though occasionally a man of note might purposely walk in public in order to give his clients their chance, Cicero makes it plain that this was not his way.[421]

Within these two first hours of daylight the busy man had to find time for a morning meal; the idle man, who slept later, might postpone it. This early breakfast, called ientaculum[422], answered to the "coffee and roll" which is usual at the present day in all European countries except our own, and which is fully capable of supporting even a hard-working man for several hours. It is, indeed, quite possible to do work before this breakfast; Antiochus, the great doctor, is said by Galen to have visited such of his patients as lived near him before his breakfast and on foot[423]. But as a rule the meal was taken before a busy man went out to his work, and consisted of bread, either dipped in wine or eaten with honey, olives, or cheese. The breakfast of Antiochus consisted, for example, of bread and Attic honey.