A glimpse of teenage life in ancient Rome Ray Laurence
Translator: tom carter
Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar
It’s March the 17th in A.D. 73.
We’re visiting ancient Rome
to watch the Liberalia,
an annual festival that celebrates
the liberty of Rome’s citizens.
We’re looking in at a 17-year-old
named Lucius Popidius Secundus.
He’s not from a poor family, but he lives
in the region known as the Subura,
a poorer neighborhood in Rome,
yet close to the center of the city.
(Gong)
The tenants of these
apartments are crammed in,
(Grunting)
which poses considerable risk.
Fires are frequent and the smell of ash
and smoke in the morning is not uncommon.
Lucius, who awoke at dawn,
has family duties to perform today.
(Cheering)
His 15-year-old brother is coming of age.
Half the children in ancient Rome
die before they reach adulthood,
so this is a particularly
important milestone.
Lucius watches his brother
stand in his new toga
before the household shrine
with its protective deities,
as he places his bulla,
a protective amulet,
in the shrine with a prayer of thanks.
The bulla had worked.
It had protected him.
Unlike many others,
he had survived to become an adult.
At 17, Lucius has almost
completed his education.
He has learned to speak well,
make public speeches,
and how to read and write
both Latin and Greek.
His father has taught him
the types of things
you can’t learn in the classroom:
how to run,
how to swim,
and how to fight.
Lucius could choose, at 17,
to become a military tribune
and command soldiers
on the edge of the Empire.
But in other ways,
Lucius is still a child.
He’s not trusted
to arrange business deals.
His father will take care
of that until he is 25.
And Dad will arrange Lucius' marriage
to a girl 10 years younger.
His dad has his eye on a family
with a 7-year-old daughter.
Back to the Liberalia.
As Lucius leaves with his family,
the shops are open as the population
goes about its business.
The streets are full
of itinerant traders selling trinkets
and people bustling from place to place.
Large wagons are not allowed
in the city until after the ninth hour
but the streets are still crowded.
Fathers and uncles
take the kids to the Forum Augustus
to see statues of Rome’s famous warriors
like Aeneas, who led Rome’s ancestors,
the Trojans, to Italy.
And Romulus, Rome’s founder.
And all the great generals of the Republic
from more than 100 years earlier.
Lovingly, we can imagine
fathers and guardians
with their now adult children
remembering stories of Rome’s glory
and re-telling the good deeds and sayings
of the great men of the past:
lessons on how to live well,
and to overcome the follies of youth.
There is a sense of history in this place,
relevant to their present.
Romans made an empire
without end in time and space.
(Thump)
Rome was destined to be
eternal through warfare.
Wars were a fact of life, even in A.D. 73.
There are campaigns in the north
of England and into Scotland,
to the north of the River
Danube into Romania,
and on the frontier
between Syria and Iraq to the east.
It’s now the eighth hour –
time to head for the baths.
Lucius and his family head up
the Via Lata, the wide street,
to the Campus Martius,
and the enormous Baths of Agrippa.
The family members leave
the clients and freedmen outside,
and enter the baths with their peer group.
Baths would change from dark,
steamy rooms to light ones.
The Romans had perfected window glass.
Everyone moves from the cold room
to the tepid room
and to the very hot room.
(Man) Oops!
More than an hour later, the bathers leave
massaged, oiled,
(Whistling)
and have been scraped down with a strigil
to remove the remaining dirt.
At the ninth hour, seven hours
after they left home,
the men return for a celebratory dinner.
Dinner is an intimate affair,
with nine people
reclining around the low table.
Slaves attend to their every need
if the diners, through gestures,
demand more food and wine.
As the day closes, we can hear
the rumble of wagons outside.
The clients and freedmen,
with a meal of robust
– if inferior – food inside them,
shuffle off to the now tepid baths
before returning
to their apartment blocks.
Back at Lucius' house,
the drinking continues into the night.
Lucius and his stepbrother
don’t look too well.
A slave stands by in case
either of them needs to vomit.
With hindsight, we know Lucius' future.
In 20 years' time, the Emperor Vespasian’s
youngest son, Domitian, as emperor,
will enact a reign of terror.
Will Lucius survive?
(Drums)