Daily life in the Late Roman Empire

[PSEUDO ROMANUS]

Hi, guys. Lomg time no see. How's everybody. I hope you're all well.
Right to the point: lately I have come to realize that although I feel relatively confident in my knowledge (as limited and modest as it may be) of military, and government affairs during the late empire, I am really ignorant of the regular stuff that made up the daily activities of life in that same period of time. I am talking about simple things like civilian clothing (for men, women, and children), make-up meals and food (there must have
been a wide variety depending on the regions), methods of writing (wax tablets, scrolls, codices, etc), and so many other things. The problem I have met with is that it is relatively easy to find information about these topics if you are interested in the late republic or the beginning of the principate timeframes, however, coverage of this topic for the late antiquity is very hard to find (or perhaps it is due to my own incompetence). So it occurred to me to ask here for clarification on this. I am sure a lot of you will be able to provide useful information for me and anybody else who share my lack of knowledge. Let's make it simpler though and limit ourselves to the IV century AD, since it is during this period of time that late antiquity really kicks in.
Well, let's begin with civilian clothing, hygiene practices, hairstyles, make-up, and all that personal care stuff.
I will be looking forward to reading what you guys have to say on this .

[Renatus]

If you draw a blank with this forum, you might find something useful here:

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forum-12.html

[Diocle]

I think that the progressive fragmentation of the centralized state caused a large amount of very different living conditions in the territories of the Empire, I think also that it's very hard speaking of the Late Empire as one single historical period starting in the second half of the third century and ending in the V or VI centuries (I hope we all agree that from the VI century on, we can't talk anymore of Late Antiquity). All in all, this is the age in which the different ethnic, linguistic and cultural traditions of modern Europe and Middle East have been born.

I think for example that the living conditions were very different if we consider Gaul in fourth century, as Ammianus describes it in his work, and the Egypt of Augustine or the whole North African dioecesis, which in those years was still a very good place in which living, we should even remind that Procopius still describes a flourishing landscape even under Vandal rule. Italy during the fourth century was still a land in which traditions and costumes were still based on the Imperial Roman heritage, but if you move on of just one century the painting is really different and if you move on to the VI century .. well, what you find is an incredible maze, with a new political and human geography. Similar observations can be made for Britain (in which, during less than a century, a whole language and the people speaking it, simply vanished forever form human history), Spain, Balkans and Middle East.

So, I doubt it's possible having a clear unified picture of that age, as if it was an omogeneous historical period, I think we should focus our questions to get consistent answers, and let me say that the whole subject looks promising .. .. in any case, congrats and thanks for this thread, PR.

[PSEUDO ROMANUS]

@ Renatus: thank you for the link. I'll make sure to check it out.
@ Diocle: I agree with you on the heterogeneity of the ways of life in the empire, especially in late antiquity. So it'd be dangerous to generalize. Having said that though, there must be some concrete information on personal care habits and tools, don't you think? At least I hope there is.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

It's been quite well researched, and recently too:

"The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygine from Antiquity to the Renaissance" by Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott

https://www.amazon.com/Function-Bath...from+Antiquity

"Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World" by Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto

https://www.amazon.com/Children-Ever...+Antique+World

[Darios]

This might not be the answer that you're looking for but the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki is amazing for learning a bit about life in the Late Empire. There were some really neat artifacts there ranging from tunics and floor mosaics to kitchen equipment and tombs frescoes.

It is probably the coolest museum that I have ever visited. You can read more about it here

[PSEUDO ROMANUS]

I thank you both for the links . Interesting books. I like especially the first one, unfortunately too expensive for me. That museum website looks good. I'll check it out.

[Diocle]

My dear friend, I think you already know the French "Revue Antiquité tardive", anyway I've found its online site and the fantastic page of the "Bibliotèque de l'Antiquité tardive", it's in French of course but .. c'mon, it's just modern spoken Latin!

Bibliothèque d'Antiquité tardive: http://antiquitetardive.free.fr/BAT.html

[Sertorio]

You might want to check this out. Harry Sidebottom used it for Warrior of Rome: Fire in the East.
Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leisure-Anc...n+ancient+rome

[First Citizen Gallienus]

I wanted to ask the members/dwellers of the IB forum what they thought about the following topic but we no longer have a Tavern so I thought that this thread was the closest thing to the subject being discussed. I was basically searching for whether or not the Romans referred to the Italian Peninsula as Italia, one commenter mentions that the term wasn't offical until the time of Augustus. What do you think of the following assertion made by the following commenter? Here's the link to the full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistoria..._why_the_name/

"There's a little bit of misinformation in this thread.

Whilst the Romans did refer to the entire Italian peninsula as Italia eventually, that was not originally a name which referred to the entire peninsula. It originally only referred to the south of the Italian peninsula, roughly speaking the sections that contained Greek colonies along with the Italian and Messapian speaking hinterlands of southern Italy. The name that the Greeks of Italy had for themselves as a combined entity was 'Italiotes', there was actually an attempt to set up an Italiote league uniting the cities of Magna Graecia in the 5th century BC that Syrakuse pretty much scuppered dead in the water via war.
The name Italia did eventually come to refer to the entire Italian peninsula, but this was a linguistic drift over time and 3rd century BC Romans would not have used this term to refer to the entire peninsula. The term Italia referring to the entire lot was only formalised during Augustus' time, the last days of the Republic and the beginning of the Principate.
Whenever you see the term 'Italian allies' or 'Italians' in an English translation of a Roman work from the Republican period, or simply in an English historical work about the Roman Republic, it is almost always translating the term socii, the states bound by alliance and treaty to provide Rome with troops in warfare. The translation is fine in getting across the sense of the word, but the actual terminology is anachronistic as 'Italian' would not have been an actual concept at the time.
Now, as for the difference between Rome/Italy, think of it this way. Originally, Rome was a specific city-state. This example has never been a city-state in the same sense, but let's take Edinburgh. Imagine that rather than there being a King of Scotland, the city-state of Edinburgh and its leaders expanded that city-state's direct control over the entirety of what we call Scotland. That's pretty much what you're looking at with Rome's expansion in Italy- the fiction was that all of the other tribes, cities and other communities of Italy that came under Rome's control were the allies of Rome, the city-state. But some of the weirdness (to our eyes) of the Roman Republic was precisely that it came to control a large amount of land (not only Italy, but across the Mediterranean) and yet continued to rule itself and that territory as though it were an extension of the city of Rome and not with a system specifically designed to adminstrate all of this land.
Now, I'm going to have to skip a bit in order to get through all of this. As other posters have mentioned, the Social War was fought in 91-88 BC by many of the socii I previously mentioned specifically so that they would all be granted Roman citizenship. But again, the Republic was still governed as an extension of Rome; this did not lead to the creation of some kind of national government for Italy. Rome had united Italy, but it itself was never specifically associated with being an organisation tasked with governing Italy.
Skipping ahead again to the end of the Western Roman Empire; by this point, every free subject of the Roman Emperor was considered a Roman citizen. But that also means that being a Roman had nothing to do with Italy or even the city of Rome any more. Into the Medieval era, the term evolved further- if you were a Christian, you were a Roman. The identity of 'Roman' was no longer connected to the Italian peninsula in any way, and so 'Rome' never came to refer to the entire peninsula. Instead, like the Romans post-Augustus, they referred to the peninsula as a whole as Italy. One of the major constituent parts of the Holy Roman Empire in the Medieval Era was the 'Kingdom of Italy'. In reality, this Kingdom only encompassed the northern half of the peninsula, but nonetheless the title was Regnum Italicum or Regnum Italiae.
Now, I feel other posters have covered the idea of Italy as an overarching nationality quite well and I won't presume to do the same here. What my post is trying to indicate is that there was never a point in either the ancient OR medieval worlds in which the peninsula as a geographic and regional entity was known as Rome. The term Italia was used starting from the late 1st century BC, and has been used in variations ever since."

[Diocle]

Ouitoulía? The Oscan Víteliú? Esperia? Ausonia? Eridania? .. or the ancient and contested semitic "Atalu" the land of the sunshine?

Anyway I agree, the Romans never had anything even remotely close to the concept of Italian identity, or Italian nation/nationalism.

But, in any case, detaching the complex identity of Rome from its physical being in the peninsula and from its physical belonging to the cultural and anthropological landscape of the peninsula, would be a falsifying, contrived operation, with a high degree of dubious ideological contents.

[Johnadiw26]

ohh interesting topic

[Slaytaninc]

I feel like these sort of threads and discussions completely gloss over peasant life, which is a big mistake given that despite the litany of impressive urabn centers throughout the empire, the vast majority of the population lived in the countryside and would have seen little change in their lifestyles compared to their ancestors centuries previous. Certainly the impact of war crisscrossing Imperial territory meant your taxed produce would have gone to different people over time, and you would have desolation across territory, but that last part is hardly new, the Pax Romana did have a few civil wars of its own and would have still seen small-scale brigandage.