BBC-Meet Romans with Mary Beard—Discovering the Ancient Romans#
Created: May 9, 2021 9:37 PM
Tags: Documentary
This is a three-part BBC documentary that I watched last weekend. I highly recommend everyone to take a look. It provides insights into modern urban life by exploring life in an international metropolis from two thousand years ago.
Unlike most documentaries that introduce prominent figures in ancient Rome such as emperors, philosophers, and generals, this documentary focuses on ordinary people in ancient Rome, such as slaves, priests, merchants, bakers, and construction workers. It introduces how they arrived, lived, and eventually died in this ancient super city.
The reason we can have conversations with these people who lived over 2000 years ago and catch a glimpse of their lives is because the ancient Romans had a special custom - making marble tombstones. The smaller tombstones would have the name, life story, occupation, and even a statue of the deceased, while the larger tombs would be like theme parks or professional communities. The humor, suffering, and joy of the ancient Romans are all recorded on these tombstones that have transcended time and arrived in the present.
The Ancient Romans#
The first question about this metropolis is: where did these people come from? And why did they gather here?
Rome started as a city-state and continuously conquered surrounding city-states and regions. Each time they returned victorious, they not only gained new territories, wealth, and food, but also slaves.
Unlike the slaves in the Middle Ages that we are familiar with, the slaves in ancient Rome could obtain freedom and become Roman citizens, and they could even become the legal wives of their slave owners. In fact, in the vocabulary of ancient Rome, the term "family" not only included blood relatives but also slaves. This explains why the family burial grounds of slave owners would bury both the master and the slaves, with little difference in status.
Furthermore, Rome was a way of life and privilege. People from all over the world came to Rome, and almost everyone in Rome had ancestors who were immigrants. However, these immigrants did not discuss their own cultures, but rather how to become Roman. They would even ridicule those with exotic cultures. This is different from our current diversity, but it also has similarities. For example, when people from other places come to Shanghai and want to integrate into the local community.
The City of Rome#
Rome was a metropolis with a population of over a million people, making it the largest city in the Western world before Victorian London. With so many people gathering together, it posed a great challenge. How to feed them? How to provide housing?
Such a super city could not be self-sufficient in terms of food, so food had to be imported.
- In the center of Rome, there is a hill called Testaccio, which means "broken pot hill". As the name suggests, it is made up of neatly stacked fragments of pots used by the ancient Romans.
- The amphorae, narrow-necked jars, were used by the ancient Romans to transport olive oil. Since the olive oil would gradually seep into the cracks of the jars and couldn't be cleaned, the jars eventually became smelly and unusable, so they were piled up there. These jars would be marked with their origin, and most of the olive oil came from Spain.
Rome also imported food from Egypt. In ancient Rome, being a baker was a lucrative profession, as we can see from the tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces. He was a baker and contractor during his lifetime, and he built a themed tomb for himself in the shape of a bakery, with the entire baking process carved on it.
A characteristic of a big city is highly specialized and professionalized work. People started introducing themselves by their professions, such as goldsmiths, fashion designers, hairdressers, and pearl merchants. (In suburban public burial parks, everyone is labeled with their profession)
High-rise Apartments and Public Facilities#
To accommodate a population of millions, there were a large number of six-story high-rise apartments in ancient Rome. The ground floor was for shops, the second floor was for wealthy merchants, and as you go up from the third floor, the rent becomes cheaper and the space becomes smaller. This is probably because there were no elevators at that time.
These apartments may not look much different from our current housing from the outside, but they had significant differences internally. There was no heating, gas, water, or drainage pipes. Therefore, the activities of the ancient Romans could not be completed at home, and everything relied on public facilities. As a result, the following were created:
- Public toilets - to solve the sewage problem
- Public baths - to solve personal hygiene problems, later evolved into social gathering places
- Restaurants and bakeries - to solve the problem of eating
It can be said that, similar to modern urban dwellers, the lives of the ancient Romans were inseparable from these public facilities. However, unlike the Romans' inherent love for socializing (such as public baths), a large part of the reliance on public facilities was actually due to the lack of advanced personal facilities at that time, which is quite interesting.
Many industries and facilities that exist today are the result of professionalization and specialization brought about by industrialization in the 20th century, surpassing social development. The same situation occurred in ancient Rome, but for different reasons. It was
Another interesting aspect of watching this documentary is that we can discover that as super cities, ancient Rome from a thousand years ago and present-day cities like Shanghai, New York, and London face many similar problems, such as population sources, food supply, transportation, housing, and occupations. At the same time, due to technological advancements, many problems have become different. For example, with the advent of elevators, higher floors are no longer cheaper. After people have their own bathrooms, the reason to go to public baths has changed from necessity to socializing or more enjoyment. There are also absolute differences between ancient and modern times, such as the slavery system in Rome and the design and construction of tombstones by the Romans.