EVERYDAY ROMAN LIFE EATING, BATHING, PUBLIC ENTERTAIMMENT

Roman breakfast or ientāculum might be bread and cheese or vegetables with left-overs from the previous night’s dinner. Food eaten at lunch (prandium) included flat-bread, sausage fried fish and fruit.

The main meal of the day, taken in the late afternoon or evening, was cēna, at which entertainment was often provided. Eggs were often served as appetisers and fruit at the end of the meal, hence the phrase ab ōvīs ad māla (`from the eggs to the apples’) also had the meaning `from start to finish.’

Bath complexes (balneae or thermae) normally had a palaestra or exercise ground attached to them, where people might play games before entering the baths themselves.

This is the changing room or apodytērium (Greek for `undressing-place’) of the Forum Baths at Pompeii.

The apodytērium had shelves of niches for people to leave their clothes, with slaves to guard them. This imaginative reconstruction is by the Victorian artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema

After undressing, people went into the tepidārium, a kind of Turkish bath where they sat round enjoying the warmth. The example here is from Pompeii

Bathers then entered the hot bath or calidārium (shown here from Herculaneum).

After the hot bath, the bather might have olive oil rubbed into his skin and then the oil and dirt scraped off with a metal stirgil.

The final stage was a plunge into the cold frigidārium The final stage was a plunge into the cold frigidārium. The picture shows a reconstruction of the one in the Hadrianic Baths at Leptis Magna in Libya. For details, see the website: http://archpropplan.auckland.ac.nz/virtualtour/hadrians_bath/hadrians_bath.html

Although in the early days of public bath houses both sexes sometimes bathed together, there were generally either separate facilities or separate scheduled times for men and women. The picture is another exercise of imagination by Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

Chariot races were held at the Circus Maximus at the foot of the Palatine Hill. The chariot driver (aurīga) waited behind the barrier at the start (carcer, which also meant `prison’), and, when the starting cloth (mappa) was dropped, they raced around the central reservation (spīna, which also meant `tooth-pick’)

The charioteers were organised in teams distinguished by different colours, with the venetī (`Blues’) and prasinī (`Greens’) the most popular in the imperial period.

The Colosseum (or Amphitheatrum Flavianum), built in the first century , was Rome’s main venue for gladiator fights.

Gladiator contests, like other shows, were put on at the expense of a patron (often the emperor himself) and members of the public were admitted free to the ordinary seats. The patron could decide whether a defeated gladiator lived or died.

Different types of gladiator were equipped in different ways, as exemplified in this mosaic from Leptis Magna in north Africa.

One popular variety was the murmillo, named after a kind of fish that his helmet was thought to resemble.

The thrāx (`Thracian’ ) had both legs protected but a smaller shield.

The retiarius (`net-man’) was armed only with his net and a trident The retiarius (`net-man’) was armed only with his net and a trident. The secutor (`pursuer’)was distingusihed by his helmet with two eye-holes.

Gladiators were originally slaves, prisoners of war or condemned criminals but under the Empire perhaps more than half of the fighters were free men who were prepared to risk death for money and glory. They were trained in gladiator schools (lūdī) under a trainer known as a lanista (a word originally meaning `butcher’!)

Also popular was combat between wild animals and the bēstiārius