Daily Life In Ancient Rome

Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Florence Dupont reviews all aspects of what life was like for Romans in ancient times. Florence Dupont is Professor of Latin at University of Nice.

This book starts of with a section on “The City and its People.” Its subsections are titled “Naming and Honor”, “Wealth and Poverty” and, “Slaves and Freedom.” In this first subsection, “Naming and Honor”, the great census was noted on. This census occurred every 5 years and all male Romans registered his family, wife, children, slaves, and riches, if not, he would be sold into slavery. This section also discusses how one in ancient Rome becomes famous or well known, by joining the army or by becoming a client to a more famous person than you such as a senate member. A client supports his patron by voting for him, going to court with him, and following him in public occasions. In return, the patron will bring him up in the social ladder. “Wealth and Poverty” largely deals with the fact that being poor does not necessarily mean you have a bad life. There was opulent poverty, an example would be someone who was born noble, lost his or her money but still was in the sena!

te, and there was virtuous poverty, which is how many men in the army liv

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Florence Dupont uses primary and secondary accounts to further prove her points. All Roman towns, including army camps, were set up the same way, there were two roads intersecting in the middle of town called the cardo and the decumanus with gates at each end of the “+” shaped roads. However, Florence Dupont spent more time examining the first chapter than the others. I also thought a Romans was pretty cut and dry but this book changed my mind, now I know that all men, including plebeians, led very complex lives always striving for the next level of greatness or social class.

Part two of Daily Life in Ancient Rome is “Places and Lives”; this piece was about how the town was set up physically and how the average family was constructed and run.

This was an all-inclusive work on Roman existence but I didn’t care too much for it.

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**Bibliography**

Daily Life in Ancient Rome

By Florence Dupont

. Every chapter and sub- chapter provides specific points and in most cases a particular example from ancient Roman history.

In the third and fourth sections of this book, the facts were not as deep as the first two sections.

Bias does add to the frustration with this book. Horace and Cato write some of Dupont’s primary sources. The toga was the most important piece of clothing for a Roman man; he wore it almost all of the time for parties, work, and resting. This book has heightened my reading skills if nothing else, because of this books slower pace, I learned to focus better, although it was hard in the beginning. This is a first-class book to use as an accompaniment to an advanced Roman course in which knowledge of precise Roman people is known.

Approximate Word count = 1027
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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