100 Quiet Facts About Nights in Ancient Rome | No Ads
The Sleepy Legionary
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In ancient Rome it was illegal to drive a freight wagon through the city by day, so a million people's food arrived while they tried to sleep.
This is what actually happened in Rome after the sun went down, in 100 facts, from the sources themselves. The seasonal hours that stretched and shrank with the year, and a dinner that started in the middle of the afternoon. The clay oil lamp that fit in the palm of a hand, and how much olive oil it burned in an hour. Martial's mattress stuffing, from good wool down to hay stolen from the mules. The slave room at Civita Giuliana with a chamber pot under the bed, and the bedbugs at Vindolanda. The Roman names for each part of the night, from first torch to cockcrow.
Then the machinery of the dark. The wagon clause on the Heraclean Tablets. The bakers of Ostia grinding grain all night with mules walking in circles. The vigiles, the night watch Augustus meant to be temporary and kept, and the graffiti his watchmen scratched into a converted house in Trastevere. Fire in the apartment blocks, and the Roman law on things thrown from windows. The argument over first sleep and second sleep, Celsus prescribing the sound of falling water, the barefoot midnight ritual of the Lemuria, and the cockerel that ended every night for free.
Sources: Martial Epigrams, Juvenal Satire 3, Horace Satires and Epistles, Pliny the Elder Natural History, Pliny the Younger Letters, Vitruvius De Architectura Book 6, Aulus Gellius Attic Nights, Varro, Isidore of Seville, Vegetius, Livy, Virgil Aeneid Book 2, the Tabula Heracleensis, Historia Augusta, Cassius Dio Book 55, the Digest, the Twelve Tables, Strabo, Seneca, Columella, Petronius, Statius Silvae, Celsus De Medicina, Artemidorus Oneirocritica, Ovid Fasti Books 5 and 6. Parco Archeologico di Pompei on Civita Giuliana, the Metropolitan Museum on the Boscoreale bedroom, the British Museum and Getty lamp collections, the EXARC replica lamp experiment, the Vindolanda bedbug study, Roger Ekirch At Day's Close, and Niall Boyce in Medical History, 2023.
100 Quiet Facts About Nights in Ancient Rome | No Ads
The Sleepy Legionary
5 views
In ancient Rome it was illegal to drive a freight wagon through the city by day, so a million people's food arrived while they tried to sleep.
This is what actually happened in Rome after the sun went down, in 100 facts, from the sources themselves. The seasonal hours that stretched and shrank with the year, and a dinner that started in the middle of the afternoon. The clay oil lamp that fit in the palm of a hand, and how much olive oil it burned in an hour. Martial's mattress stuffing, from good wool down to hay stolen from the mules. The slave room at Civita Giuliana with a chamber pot under the bed, and the bedbugs at Vindolanda. The Roman names for each part of the night, from first torch to cockcrow.
Then the machinery of the dark. The wagon clause on the Heraclean Tablets. The bakers of Ostia grinding grain all night with mules walking in circles. The vigiles, the night watch Augustus meant to be temporary and kept, and the graffiti his watchmen scratched into a converted house in Trastevere. Fire in the apartment blocks, and the Roman law on things thrown from windows. The argument over first sleep and second sleep, Celsus prescribing the sound of falling water, the barefoot midnight ritual of the Lemuria, and the cockerel that ended every night for free.
Sources: Martial Epigrams, Juvenal Satire 3, Horace Satires and Epistles, Pliny the Elder Natural History, Pliny the Younger Letters, Vitruvius De Architectura Book 6, Aulus Gellius Attic Nights, Varro, Isidore of Seville, Vegetius, Livy, Virgil Aeneid Book 2, the Tabula Heracleensis, Historia Augusta, Cassius Dio Book 55, the Digest, the Twelve Tables, Strabo, Seneca, Columella, Petronius, Statius Silvae, Celsus De Medicina, Artemidorus Oneirocritica, Ovid Fasti Books 5 and 6. Parco Archeologico di Pompei on Civita Giuliana, the Metropolitan Museum on the Boscoreale bedroom, the British Museum and Getty lamp collections, the EXARC replica lamp experiment, the Vindolanda bedbug study, Roger Ekirch At Day's Close, and Niall Boyce in Medical History, 2023.