Ancient Rome is often envisioned as a city of glorious shining marble structures, where toga-clad emperors and senators reveled at sumptuous and decadent feasts and spectacular gladiator games entertained the people.
This idealized vision of Rome has been heavily shaped by movies, particularly those of the golden age of Hollywood in the 50s and 60s.
There is certainly truth to these images.
Rome was indeed a city of magnificent public structures and profligate spectacles.
But this is not the whole story.
There was a darker, grittier side to life in ancient Rome.
In this lecture, I want to take you behind the familiar facade of shining marble and reveal the bleak reality of what life in ancient Rome was really like for the average inhabitant.
Ancient Rome was, quite simply, a crowded, noisy, smelly, and most of all, dangerous place to live.
For the overwhelming majority of ordinary Romans, daily existence in the great capital was a grim struggle in which you were constantly menaced with an array of deadly threats that could strike without warning at any time.
In particular, there were five major hazards that characterized life in ancient Rome and often played a far greater role in the lives of the city's inhabitants than the city's glories.
I like to call these the five Fs.
Floods, fires, famines, filth, and fevers.
But before we look at these, keep in mind that, due to its size, the city of Ancient Rome was an exception.
It was at least twice as large as any other city of its time.
By the late 1st century BC, the population of Rome was around 1 million people, and it stayed at this level for several centuries.
This was an absolutely huge population for a pre-industrial city.
It was the biggest city yet seen in world history, at least in the Western Hemisphere, and no other city in the Western Hemisphere would reach this size again for another 2000 years, when London hit 1 million in the 19th century.
As late as 1850, only two cities, London and Paris, had populations over 1 million.
Despite its size, most of the hazards that ancient Romans faced would also have been familiar to any inhabitant of an ancient Roman city.
These problems may have been more intense at Rome due to its size, but any urban dweller in the Roman world would have experienced them at least to some degree.
Alright, Rome is famous as the city of seven hills.
But between those hills, the valleys and plains where most of the city was actually located were originally marshy, low-lying land.
Much of Rome was built on top of what were originally swamps.
And when the Tiber River flooded, as it often did, these areas were submerged underwater.
Even worse, the city was situated along the banks of the Tiber River at precisely the most flood-prone spot along its entire length.
There were practical reasons for why Rome was built here, but nevertheless the city's location doomed it to a 3000-year-old struggle against flooding.
Tiber floods were frequent, severe and destructive.
On average, there was a major flood about every 25 years and minor ones about every 5 years.
The worst of these could result in water levels that rose 50 feet above normal and that inundated nearly all the major regions and monuments of the city, including the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus and the Pantheon.
As we've seen with recent disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, floods wreak great havoc on both the city and its inhabitants.
Many buildings can be undermined or weakened by the waters, resulting in spectacular collapses.
The floods also cause the sewers to back up, spreading filth and disease and spoiling the vital food supplies stored in the city's warehouses.
These floods could be so severe that boats were needed to travel through the flooded streets of the city.
The ancient author Cassius Dio notes several such occasions, including one during the reign of Augustus, when the streets were navigable by boat for seven days.
We have other ancient accounts describing floodwaters sweeping people off their feet in the Roman Forum, knocking over bridges and flooding out public spectacles being held in the theaters and in the Circus Maximus.
Not surprisingly, the wealthiest Romans overwhelmingly chose to locate their houses atop hills, which insulated them from many of the negative consequences of flooding.
The poor, the vast majority of the populace, had to settle in the low-lying areas.
Most of the buildings destroyed by floods appear to have been insulae.
That's the often shoddily constructed apartment buildings in which most ordinary Romans lived.
Contrary to the impression one might have for movies, most urban Romans lived in apartment buildings, not individual houses.
An inventory of buildings in the city of Rome from the 4th century AD notes that at that time there were about 47000 apartment buildings in Rome, but only around 1800 houses.
While those fortunate enough to live on hills might have evaded floods, no one in Rome was safe from the ubiquitous and constant threat posed by the next danger fires.
At night, the only light source was small lamps fueled by olive oil.
Also, everyone had to cook over open flames.
Not surprisingly, in the cramped living conditions of the city, it was all too easy for a spark to jump to a combustible surface or for someone to knock over a lamp and ignite a dangerous fire.
The way that the city was laid out exacerbated the threat of fires.
Because Rome had grown organically from a small village.
Its streets were a jumbled maze of narrow twisting paths which offered little or no barrier to the spread of fires.
Under these conditions, once a fire had grown beyond its starting point, it was nearly impossible to extinguish.
It seems that not a night went by without a serious fire somewhere in Rome, and larger fires that destroyed entire neighborhoods appear to have occurred roughly every other year.
One ancient source describes a group of friends climbing up to the top of a hill and watching a section of the city burn down, apparently as a form of entertainment.
We know of at least 85 major fires.
But the worst of all was the Great Fire of 64 AD, which broke out around the east end of the Circus Maximus.
This terrible conflagration burned for nine days and by the end of it, nearly the entire city was affected, with 10 out of Rome's 14 districts devastated by the inferno.
In an attempt to combat the danger posed by fires, the first Emperor Augustus set up a brigade of 7000 night watchmen who patrolled the city carrying buckets and axes.
When they spotted a fire, they would fill up their buckets at the nearest fountain and fling water onto the blaze.
As you can imagine, such methods would only have been effective on very small fires and would have done little to quench a blazing eight-story apartment building.
The only real hope was to catch fires before they could spread.
The poet Juvenal offers a vivid portrait of what must have been every tenant's nightmare being caught on the upper floors of a burning apartment building.
He writes, Smoke pours out, but on the top floor you know nothing of it.
For if the alarm begins on the ground level, he who lives in the attic will be the last to burn.
A lucky Roman might escape the floods and the fires, but few could evade the next threat famine or shortage of food.
While wealthy elites enjoyed lavish banquets and exotic delicacies, for probably around 75 of the city's inhabitants, about 75 of their diet would have been a monotonous round of just three basic staples grain, consumed in the form of bread or a soup-like gruel olives, usually ingested in the form of olive oil, and finally wine.
Because of Rome's enormous size, local resources were nowhere near enough to support the city's populace.
Therefore, food had to be imported on a gigantic scale from all over the Mediterranean, particularly from Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Spain.
In order to sustain the city's inhabitants, a minimum of 500000 tons of those three basic foodstuffs had to be imported from overseas during the summer sailing season, stored in warehouses and then distributed throughout the year.
Just to give you a sense of how massive the scale of these imports was, consider the case of one of the hills in Rome today, which is called Monte Testaccio.
This hill is not a natural topographical feature.
It's actually an artificial mountain made up entirely of the shattered remains of ancient North African and Spanish olive oil containers.
As these pots were emptied at the main warehouses, the workers tossed them out and over 300 years this garbage heap of discarded olive oil pots grew into a mountain, a quarter of a mile long and 150 feet high.
The food supply system of Rome was a delicate construct, and crop failures, natural disasters war, piracy and mismanagement could easily disrupt it, resulting in food shortages and, in severe cases, even famine.
In the first century of the empire there were at least 20 times when there were food shortages so severe that they provoked rioting in the streets.
The worst of these riots could involve pitched battles, senators threatened with being burned alive and even the emperor himself being attacked.
Perhaps you could escape the floods, fires and famine, but nobody could escape the fourth hazard filth.
Rome consumed huge amounts of food, water and marble, but Rome's immense population was an equally profligate producer, and its two main physical products were corpses and sewage.
It's been estimated that every day, ancient Rome's inhabitants would have produced something on the order of 350000 gallons of urine, 100000 pounds of feces and 150 dead bodies.
What happened to all this?
Unfortunately, much of it ended up in the streets of the city.
When one adds to this the waste products of Rome's animals and the various other types of refuse and garbage generated by the city, and then factors in the Romans' complete ignorance of the germ theory of disease, the result was a level of hygiene and sanitation that, by modern standards, was truly appalling.
While the majority of Romans received some basic form of cremation or burial, it's been estimated that each year in ancient Rome, at least 1500 human corpses ended up simply abandoned in the streets, where they rotted and were scavenged by animals.
Public officials may occasionally have had these corpses hauled away, but a number of ancient literary anecdotes testify that decomposing bodies were a common sight in the streets.
In fact, so familiar was this scene that the writer Marshall wrote a poem describing a beggar dying in the streets who, with the last of his strength, is trying to fend off these scavenging vultures and dogs that are gathering to feed on him.
Even the highest levels of Roman society were not insulated from such sights.
Another author tells the story of a street dog which ran into the emperor's palace and dropped a human hand that it was carrying in its mouth beneath the emperor's dining table.
By the way he tells this story, not because such scenes were shocking or surprising, but only because the emperor interpreted this as a good omen, since the hand was a symbol of power to the Romans.
Adding to the human bodies in the streets would have been thousands of carcasses from Rome's considerable population of animals, both domesticated and wild.
What happened when an ancient Roman had to go to the bathroom?
Here one must remember that the primary purpose of Rome's sewers was not to carry away waste, but instead to provide drainage.
While there were some large public latrines, relatively few structures possessed bathrooms that were connected to the sewers.
There are actually some compelling reasons you would not want a direct connection to the sewer.
There were no valves or water traps in Roman plumbing, so a lot of things you would rather not have coming into your home would have gained easy access, such as noxious smells and gases and all sorts of sewer vermin and pests.
Because of this, in most Roman dwellings the latrine would have consisted of a clay pot in a corner that, when full, was in theory supposed to be lugged outside and down the street to the nearest sewer opening where the contents could be poured in.
Particularly for the poor, most of whom remember, lived on upper floors of high-rise apartment buildings.
Hauling a large pot full of reeking sewage down many flights of stairs was not exactly an appealing prospect.
Therefore, many of these chamber pots were emptied by the much simpler expedient of waiting until no one was looking and then dumping the pot's contents out the window.
While technically illegal, it was nevertheless clearly a routine practice.
In fact, one of the most frequent sources of Roman lawsuits was one individual bringing a lawsuit against another for having dumped sewage on him.
The poet Juvenal notes that anyone walking Rome's streets had better have his will in order, because sudden death could come at any moment from a falling pot.
When this practice is multiplied by the number of Rome's inhabitants and the sum total of human waste is augmented by the excrete of Rome's animals, one can imagine that the total amount of raw sewage being deposited in a relatively small area was overwhelming.
The biological waste deposited in the city's roadways was then trampled together with water, mud and garbage to form a vile and stinky layer of muck.
It is probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that many of Rome's streets more closely resemble swampy bogs of human waste and garbage than anything that we would today envision as roads.
It also explains why many wealthy Romans preferred to be carried through the streets on litters surrounded by perfumed curtains.
One can only imagine what all this would have smelled like on a hot Mediterranean summer day.
I have absolutely no doubt that if a time machine actually existed and a typical 21st century American were suddenly to be transported to the streets of ancient Rome, his or her very first reaction upon stepping out would be what is that horrible smell?
All four of the previous characteristics combine to produce the fifth, fevers or diseases.
As you might expect, under such conditions, the inhabitants of ancient Rome suffered from a wide assortment of diseases.
Information from ancient authors can be combined with forensic examination of ancient skeletons to create a vivid, if depressing, portrait of the kinds of diseases that were common among Rome's populace.
First of all, malnutrition and the lack of variety in the diet would have made a number of diseases nearly universal.
Among the more prevalent of these were scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, and rickets.
Second, the poor levels of sanitation caused by the presence everywhere of carcasses and excrement, both animal and human, The scavenging dogs birds rats, flies and other vermin and the general overcrowding would all have combined to foster the growth of diseases and to spread them rapidly throughout the city.
Some of the more common diseases falling into this category include malaria dysentery cholera typhoid gastroenteritis tuberculosis leptospirosis leprosy merasmus, hepatitis and salmonella.
Poor sanitation would also have resulted in widespread affliction with internal parasites and worms, such as hookworms roundworms pinworms, whipworms and tapeworms of all kinds.
An interesting statistical analysis of Roman tombstones has demonstrated a substantial spike in the death rate between August and October, which exactly corresponds to the Malaria season.
While usually not fatal on its own, malaria likely carried off people already weakened by parasites, malnutrition and other diseases.
As if all this were not bad enough, the city was also prone to occasional, sporadic outbreaks of other infectious diseases, such as the plague.
Rome suffered many of these.
For example, an epidemic that swept Rome one autumn during the reign of Nero, killing 30,000 people.
Now sometimes one hears that the Romans were relatively healthy because of the great public baths.
It is true that even poor Romans bathed frequently.
While this practice might have helped keep them free of dirt, it probably did not improve their rural health.
Unlike modern chlorinated pools, the Roman baths use no form of disinfectant and a standard prescription offered by Roman doctors to their patients afflicted with a wide range of diseases including boils, skin rashes, worm infestations diarrhea, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis, was to go take a long soak in the public baths.
There, the warm waters could have provided a perfect medium to transmit whatever they were suffering from to the other bathers.
So while you might walk out of a bath free of dirt, you might well have picked up something a lot nastier while in the water.
While Roman historians like to argue about the exact death rate in ancient Rome, it seems fairly safe to say that the city was an unhealthy environment in which to live.
The health hazards in Rome were particularly dangerous to the old and the young, and rates of infant mortality were horrifically high in the ancient world.
Perhaps as many as one-third of babies did not survive their first year of life, and even the very richest could not escape this grim reality.
To conclude, let us return to that image of ancient Rome as a beautiful and sophisticated city of shining marble and fabulous monumental structures.
The city was indeed a magnificent construct, whose buildings still serve as models and inspirations today.
Nevertheless, while elements of the portrait of the glorious, shining city of Rome are true, in order to make that image completely accurate, we now know that we need to make a few additions.
First, submerge some of those monuments beneath dirty flood water.
Then set a few neighborhoods on fire.
Next, add a starving mob rioting in the forum.
Next, give everyone a couple of diseases and some parasites.
And finally smear mud, garbage and excrement over everything and top it off by sprinkling around some corpses.
That was the real Ancient Realms.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you want to learn more about ancient history or myself, please check out my website, my books or the various audio and video courses that I've made with The Great Courses slash, The Teaching Company.
Those are available from Audible, Apple Books, Amazon, and directly from The Great Courses.
Thanks very much for watching and remember.
It's easier to make sense of the present if you know about the past.
Thank you.
