Pompeii is an ancient city located in what is now the commune of Pompeii near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. This is a city that was buried under 4-6 m of volcanic ash and pumice during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. In this essay, I want to describe my vision of the daily life of the inhabitants of this ancient Roman city, formed as a result of studying historical sources.
In daily life process, everyone in Pompeii had their own job to perform. Since in the Pompeiian era, they did not have much electricity or in fact nothing at all. Therefore, they live depending to the ‘rhythm’ of the sun so they got up as early as 4 am of our time and start working straight away. And connecting to that, not all houses in the ancient Roman cities has their own bath or even water so majority of the citizens had to go get water from public fountains. Water was very important, the reason why it is used with great parsimony; for their personal care and to clean/wash themselves, they had to go to thermal baths. After that, they eat their breakfast which is commonly, for the lower classes, bread and cheese and maybe with vegetables or anything left.
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When that is done, all of them go back to work, from noble merchants to slaves. All the shops were open, markets were ready, and farmers were in the field. Later than that, the streets became more crowded, the markets became livelier, sellers sold items and citizens bought what they needed while in the forum, from there people walked, talked and discussed about all the problems their town had.
After all the work, it is finally the moment to relax. Sometimes, rich noblemen offered to the people in town an exhibition to the gladiators and so everyone went to the amphitheater. It was a very cruel, aggressive and violent show: We would never appreciate it today. Some consider the gladiators and their performance, as the football matches that we have today. Fans fought as they do today. But after all the horrible fights between the fans from Pompeii and the ones from Nocera that obviously caused many deaths, the show of gladiators was banned for several years. Nero established them in order to satisfy a request by Poppea, who was from Pompeii. And this time of the day is also the perfect moment for break made of bread, cake, fish, fruits and more.
After, it is the moment of thermal bath. They were affordable enough that even the slaves can use them. This was the best way for people to be able to wash themselves as well as relaxing and having fun in a certain period of time as it is said that not many houses were provided with water. The average lifespan expectancy during the Roman time was 35 years. They never know at that time that one of the most important for human health is hygiene. Now, when the bath is done, a short time before the sun goes down which happen very early, 5pm in our time. At those times, they had dinner; they commonly had olives and eggs. If they had enough to afford it, they also bought fish, meat and cakes. They don’t have much to do after dinner and it was not safe on the streets, so they went to bed early.
And that concludes my explanation of the daily life in Pompeii.
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