A day in ancient Rome

One ordinary summer day in Rome, around AD 125: the night carts, the bakers, the water, the Forum, the baths, the river, and the night watch. Read by a synthetic voice. Script written and fact-checked by the show's team. Additional sounds: Joseph Sardin, BigSoundBank.com (CC0).

The script

Before the light

It is the hour before dawn, and Rome is not quiet.

All night, the wagons have been moving. By an old law, heavy carts may not cross the city by day... the streets are too narrow, too crowded. So they come in the dark. Wagons of stone for the builders. Wagons of wine jars. Wagons of timber, of grain, of oil. Their iron-rimmed wheels grind over the paving, and the oxen lean into their yokes in the narrow lanes.

Now, at the end of the night, the last of them are rolling out through the gates.

Around a million people live here, by most estimates. They live on seven hills and in the valleys between them, on the flat ground by the river, and in the tall, crowded houses that lean over every street.

High above the rooftops, the aqueducts are carrying water. They have carried it all night, and they will carry it all day, without stopping. No pump moves it. The water simply falls... a few hand-widths every mile... along channels of stone that run for days of walking out into the hills.

The sky in the east turns from black to grey.

The houses that stand on top of each other

Most of Rome does not live in villas. Most of Rome lives in the insulae... the "islands"... great blocks of rooms stacked one above another.

On the ground floor, open to the street, are the shops. A cobbler. A man who sells lamps. A barber, already setting out his stool.

Above the shops, the rooms grow smaller as the stairs grow longer. The first floor, closest to the street, is the best: larger rooms, painted walls, sometimes a window of glass. Higher up, the rooms are narrow, the walls are thinner, and the stairs creak under every step.

The law says how tall these houses may stand. The builders, often, build a little higher.

There is no running water up here. Each morning, somebody carries it up in a jar from the fountain on the corner... one floor... two floors... five floors.

From a window near the top, a woman shakes out a blanket. The light is coming now, gold on the highest walls, while the street below is still in shadow.

Bread

The bakers have been awake for hours.

In the back of the bakery, a donkey walks slowly in a circle, turning a mill of rough grey stone. The stone is shaped like an hourglass, and as it turns, the grain between its two halves becomes flour. Round and round goes the donkey, patient, its eyes covered so that the circle never ends for it.

The dough is shaped into round, flat loaves, cut across the top into eight wedges, so that each loaf breaks easily in the hand. Into the oven they go... a domed oven of brick, white-hot inside.

When the first loaves come out, the smell fills the street.

Much of the grain in this bread has crossed the sea. It grows in Egypt, in North Africa, in Sicily... and great ships carry it to the coast near Rome. For many citizens of the city, a ration of grain is handed out by the state. It is one of the oldest promises in Rome: that the city will be fed.

The morning visit

In the wealthier streets, the doors of the great houses open early.

Outside, a small crowd is already waiting. Men in white woollen togas, some of them a little worn at the edges. These are the clients, and they have come to greet their patron, as they do every morning.

One by one, they are let into the entrance hall. It is cool in here. The roof is open in the middle to the sky, and below the opening, a shallow pool catches the rain. Today the pool is still, and it holds a small square of blue morning.

The master of the house appears. Each visitor greets him. Some ask for help with a lawsuit, or a word with an official, or a loan. Some simply come to be seen, and to receive a small gift of money or food.

It is a quiet exchange, and it has been repeated in this city, every morning, for generations. Loyalty... in return for protection.

Then the patron sets out for the Forum... and the clients walk with him, a slow white procession through the waking streets.

The hours

Rome counts its day differently.

From sunrise to sunset, there are twelve hours. From sunset to sunrise, another twelve. In the long days of summer, an hour of daylight is long and slow. In winter, the hours of the day are short, and the hours of the night are long.

So time stretches and gathers with the seasons... like the shadow on the sundial in the square, moving across its lines.

For cloudy days, and for the night, there are water clocks: vessels that fill, or empty, drop by drop, and mark the hours as the level changes.

It is now the second hour. The shops are open. The city is fully awake.

The water

On the corner, water pours from the mouth of a carved stone face into a wide basin, and it never stops.

It began its journey far away, in springs among the hills. It has travelled underground through tunnels cut in rock, and high over valleys on rows of stone arches... and now it arrives here, still cold.

In these years, ten aqueducts bring water into Rome. Each has its own name, its own source, its own taste... some say the water of one is better for drinking, and the water of another better for the gardens.

A woman fills two jars. A boy drinks from his cupped hands. A dog laps at the edge of the basin.

The water overflows, runs into the gutter, and from there into the drains... and the drains carry it, at last, down to the river.

Through the streets

The streets are narrow, and they are full.

Across the wider roads lie great stepping stones, high blocks of grey stone set in a line, so that walkers can cross without stepping into what runs along the street below. The carts, at night, pass with their wheels between them.

A litter goes by, carried on the shoulders of four men... and inside it, behind thin curtains, someone too important to walk.

The noise is everywhere: the shouts of sellers, the hammer of a smith, a teacher's voice from an open room where boys sit with wax tablets on their knees, copying letters with a stylus.

Above the doorways are signs. A carved goat over the milk seller. A pair of hams. A painted jug.

And on the walls, everywhere, people have written. Names. Jokes. Notices of a house to let. An announcement for the games. A message from one friend to another... scratched into the plaster, and still there, long after both of them have gone.

The Forum

The road slopes down, between the hills, into the oldest heart of the city.

The Forum.

Temples rise on every side, their columns tall and pale, their roofs edged with bronze that catches the sun. Statues stand on high bases... generals, emperors, gods... looking out over the heads of the crowd.

Here, the business of an empire is done. Under long roofed halls, judges hear their cases, and the voices of lawyers carry over the murmur of the crowd. Money changers sit at their tables. Notices are posted on the walls.

On a raised platform, a man is speaking to anyone who will listen.

And all of it... the temples, the halls, the speeches... stands on ground that was once a marsh between hills. Long ago, before the first temple, before the first stone, this was a wet valley where the people of the hills buried their dead and grazed their animals.

Midday

At midday, Rome eats quickly, and standing up.

The thermopolia are open on almost every street: small shops with a counter of stone, and in the counter, set deep into holes, large clay pots of hot food. Lentils. Chickpeas. Stews. Cheap wine mixed with water, sometimes warmed.

Many people in the tall houses have no kitchen of their own... a fire in a small wooden room is too dangerous. So they eat here, at the counters, or buy food to carry home.

On the side of the counter, there is a small jar of the city's favourite sauce: a salty liquid made from fish, left for weeks in the sun until it turns into something rich and strong. It is poured over almost everything. Its smell is part of the street.

The sun is high now. The shadows have shrunk to nothing. Even the dogs lie still in the shade of the walls.

The baths

In the afternoon, the city goes to the baths.

On the slope of one of the hills stand the great Baths of Trajan, opened in these same years... vast halls of brick and marble, built over the ruins of an earlier emperor's palace.

The entrance costs almost nothing. Inside, the visitor moves from room to room. First the warm room... then the hot room, where the floor is so hot that sandals are needed. Beneath it, a fire burns day and night, and its heat flows under the floor, held up on short pillars of tile, and rises through hollow walls.

The steam drifts up into the high vaults. Voices echo.

Then, the cold room: a long, deep pool of cold water, still and clear, under a ceiling so high that the light seems to come from far away.

Not everyone is here to bathe. Some read in the libraries of the baths. Some play ball in the open courtyard. Some simply sit, and talk, and listen... and the afternoon goes slowly by.

The river

Below the hills, the Tiber moves slowly toward the sea.

Along its banks stand long warehouses of brick, cool and dark inside, stacked with grain, with jars of oil, with wine. And on the river, flat barges are moving upstream, pulled by teams of oxen walking along the bank.

They have come from the coast. There, at the mouth of the river, ships from every part of the empire unload their cargo: grain from Egypt, oil from Spain, marble from Greece, spices that have travelled overland for months. At the coast, everything is moved into the barges, and the barges come up the river... slowly... to Rome.

On the riverbank there is a hill unlike the others. It is made entirely of broken pottery... the oil jars, once emptied, are broken and stacked here, one layer above another, year after year. It grows a little every day.

The water slides on, past the bridges, past the island in the middle of the river, and out of the city.

Evening

As the light turns golden, the city begins to slow.

In the wealthier houses, dinner is the meal of the day. The guests recline on couches, three to each couch, around a low table. The walls are painted with gardens... birds, fruit trees, a fountain... so real that the room seems to open out into a summer evening.

Dishes come and go. Eggs, olives, bread. Fish. Fruit and honey at the end.

In the tall houses, it is simpler. Bread, a little cheese, some olives, a cup of wine mixed with water, eaten by the window as the street below turns blue.

Oil lamps are lit. Small clay lamps, each with a single flame, each one no brighter than a candle. One by one, across the hills, the windows begin to glow.

The watch

When darkness comes, the vigiles come out.

They are the city's watchmen, and its firefighters. There are seven companies of them, and each guards two of the city's fourteen districts. All night they walk the streets with lamps and buckets, with axes and blankets... watching for the first light of a fire in a window, listening for a cry.

In a city of wooden stairs and oil lamps and crowded rooms, fire is the oldest fear. When it comes, they form lines from the fountains, passing water hand to hand, bucket to bucket, through the dark.

Tonight, the streets are calm. The watchmen walk slowly. Somewhere above, a door closes. Somewhere, a baby cries, and is quiet again.

Night returns

And now, the wagons return.

Through the gates, out of the dark, they come again... the stone, the timber, the wine... and their wheels begin, once more, to sound on the paving.

On the hills, the lamps go out, one by one.

The aqueducts carry their water through the night, as they did last night, as they will tomorrow night... falling, a few hand-widths every mile, from the hills into the city.

The bakers will be awake before long.

Above the roofs, above the temples, above the long arches of stone... the same stars are turning, slowly, over Rome.

Also from the late hours: Slow Orbit · The Quiet Armoury · Myth and Score