Loading...

What was life like in Rome for the average person?

For most of its history, the center of the Roman Empire was the Imperial City of Rome, which historians believe had a population of about one million in the 1st century CE, making it the largest city in the world at that time. While the monumental architecture of the Roman Empire suggests that Roman citizens lived glorious lives, this was not the case for most Romans. Listen to the description left behind by the Roman poet Juvenal, who was not among the Roman rich and famous.

PDF Download “Consider the dangers of the night,” Juvenal suggests, going on to list the many ways a Roman city-dweller could meet a bad end, including being hit on the head by a tile falling from a roof, being attacked by a drunken hooligan, or getting struck by a broken pot thrown out of a window. Don’t go out to dinner, Juvenal says, without writing your will first. But was life for the average citizen of Rome so bad? Juvenal may exaggerate a little, but most Romans did live in small, dirty buildings without plumbing or other sanitation, where disease and crime were rampant. The wealthy chose to live outside the city, in the hills, where fresh water was available and there was no threat of crime or fire.

Transcript

Question

What was life like for the average citizen of Rome?

Dark, dirty, and dangerous. The difference between rich and poor led to resentment among the common people, who were forced to fund the lifestyle of the elite through heavy taxation.