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 series 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 focus on prominent figures in ancient Rome such as emperors, philosophers, and generals, this series tells the stories of ordinary Romans, such as slaves, priests, merchants, bakers, and construction workers. It introduces how they arrived, lived, and eventually died in this ancient supercity.
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 unique custom - making marble tombstones. The smaller tombstones would have the name, life story, occupation, and even a statue of the deceased, while larger tombs would resemble 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, Roman slaves could obtain freedom and become Roman citizens, and even legally marry 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 together, with little distinction in terms of status.
Secondly, 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, the largest in the Western world before Victorian London. With so many people gathered together, it posed a huge challenge. How to feed them? How to provide housing?
Such a supercity could not sustain itself in terms of food, so food had to be imported.
- In the center of Rome, there is a hill called the Testaccio Hill, 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 oil would gradually seep into the cracks of the jars and couldn't be cleaned, the jars would eventually become smelly and unusable, and could only be piled up here. These jars would have engravings indicating their origin, and most of the olive oil came from Spain.
Rome also imported grain from Egypt. In ancient Rome, being a baker was a lucrative profession, as can be seen from the tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces. He was a baker and contractor during his lifetime, and he built a themed tomb in the shape of a bakery, with the entire baking process carved on it.
A characteristic of a large city is highly specialized and professionalized work. People began to introduce themselves by their professions, such as goldsmiths, fashion designers, hairdressers, and pearl merchants. (In suburban public burial parks, each person is labeled with their profession)
High-rise Apartments and Public Facilities#
To accommodate a population of millions, there were numerous high-rise apartments in ancient Rome, with about six floors. The ground floor was for shops, the second floor for wealthy merchants, and as you go up from the third floor, the rent becomes cheaper, but the space becomes smaller. This is likely 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 supply, 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 emerged:
- 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 significant part of their reliance on public facilities was due to the lack of advanced personal facilities at that time, which is quite interesting.
Many industries and facilities that exist today have emerged from the professionalization and specialization brought about by industrialization in the 20th century. They are the result of the development of productivity surpassing social development. In the case of ancient Rome, which experienced a similar situation, the reasons were different.
Another interesting aspect of watching this documentary is that we can discover that as supercities, ancient Rome from a thousand years ago and modern 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 reasons for going to public baths have changed from necessity to socializing or more enjoyment. There are also absolute differences between ancient and modern times, such as Roman slavery and the design and construction of tombstones by the Romans.