Daily Life In Rome Flashcards

Question

What did the houses of the richest patricians have?

Answer 1

Running water and underfloor heating.

Answer 2

Domus's had small windows and was usually quite dark inside, with light provided by the atrium and oil lamps.

Answer 3

The ground floors had shops or workshops that opened onto the street. Above them were the apartments, the higher you went the smaller the apartments went. The apartments at the top were made of wood and often whole families had to share a single room. The poorest plebians lived on these higher floors. There was no running water and rubbish was thrown into the streets below. There was also a constant danger of fire from wood- burning stoves used for cooking. Forests could spread quickly through the wooden structures.

Answer 4

Slavery was an everyday feature of Roman life. By law, slaves were property of their masters. In Rome itself there were over 300,000 slaves.

Answer 5

Any prisoners of war became slaves. The children of slaves were automatically slaves themselves. People captured by pirates or bandits while travelling were often sold as slaves. Parents in debt often sold their own children into slavery.

Answer 6

Thousands of slaves worked on Romes public building projects such as aqueducts. Most patricians would have owned several dozen. In a domus, the slaves did the cooking, cleaning and other manual labour. Others worked on huge farms or mines, were they were treated harshly and often worked to death.

Answer 7

The slave was branded with their masters initials. These conditions led yo some rebellions - with the most famous led by the gladiator Spartacus in 71 BC.

Answer 8

Manumission is when well educated, highly valued slaves ( often Greeks ) that were treated well and typically worked as teachers, secretaries and doctors were sometimes given their freedom after many years of service to their masters.

Answer 9

Roman girls were usually married by the age of 14 or 15. Marriages were to benefit families involved, and the girl had little to no say in the man her father chose; however, divorce was legal

Answer 10

The conferratio was held at the brides house.

Answer 11

It's a wedding ceremony.

Answer 12

Run her husband's home, make his clothes, supervise slaves, bear a son and oversee the bearing if children.

Answer 13

Yes, they could work in the market or their husband's business, or as a midwife or as a weaver.

Answer 14

Yes they did, for example: a women's property was kept separate from her husband's and could be taken with her if they got divorced.

Answer 15

Because many women died in childbirth, so men married several times. A girl could easily end up marrying a man her fathers age.

Answer 16

They received a basic education at home and then began working with their parents.

Answer 17

There were three different stages. 1. Boys (and sometimes girls) from the age of 7-12 attended a ludus, where they learned reading, writing and arithmetic. 2. At 12, boys would attend a grammaticus, where they learned history, grammar and geometry and studied literature by Greek and Roman writers such as Hogar and Virgil. Girls of the same age were kept at home and thought by there mothers how to spin, weave and run a household. 3. At 16, a patrician boy was thought oratory (the art of public speaking) by a rhetor to prepare him for a career in public life.

Answer 18

Discipline was very strict in Roman schools and students would be beaten for asking mistakes.

Answer 19

They wrote with a pointed wooden stylus on a wax tablet, which could later be melted and reused. They used an abacus to learn arithmetic.

Daily Life In Rome Flashcards

(44 cards)