Daily Life in Ancient Rome

by Dupont, Florence

• ISBN13: 9780631193951
• ISBN10: 0631193952
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-10-20
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This is a vivid and intimate account of everyday life in ancient Rome during the Republic, from the downfall of the kings in 509 BC to the seizure of power by Augustus in 27 BC. Drawing widely on rich contemporary sources, Florence Dupont recreates the public and private lives, rituals, actions, institutions, and religion of the Roman Republic. She shows how Roman culture and society revolved around one kind of individual, the Roman citizen, whose roles encompassed soldier, voter, estate-owner, householder and slave-master, paterfamilias, priest, party-goer, farmer and city-dweller. It was citizenship, she reveals, that shaped Roman notions of space, time, human nature and the human body. The author describes the profound effect of Rome's increasing power and wealth. Excess, luxury and greed gradually eroded the traditional values of order, thrift, honor and liberty: citizens became transformed into subjects. 'Streets flowed with precious wines and the blood of exotic wild animals and inumerable oxen,' she writes. 'Makeshift theaters were thrown up and bedecked with gold and ivory. In a hopeless attempt to empty both its own coffers and those of the nobility, the republic endowed the city with temples, basilicas and colonnades. But the world was too rich, too vast, and Rome, at its center, choked on all its wealth.'

Author Biography

Florence Dupont is Professor of Latin at the University of Nice.

Christopher Woodall is a freelance translator and journalist.

Table of Contents

Foreword

The City and its People

Naming and Honour

Wealth and Opulence

Freedom

Places and Lives

The Organization of Roman Space

Roman Houses

The Family

The Army

Living in Rome

Political Life in the City

Time and Action

Time and the Romans

Measuring Time

The Roman Calendar and Festivities

The Ages of Man

The Roman Body

People and Bodies

Clothing, Finery and Bathing

Food, Banqueting and the Pleasures of the Evening

Conclusion

Notes

List of Important

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.