It was business as usual in the Roman Empire on that first Christmas, and it was not a pretty sight

The Christmas story comes as something of a shock to those whose knowledge of the ancient world derives from the Roman historians. The gospel world is one of shepherds, innkeepers and mangers, of carpenters, fishermen and widows with their mites, of the lives and expectations of the lowly and destitute in a difficult Roman province on the edge of a vast empire. But Roman historians like Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny were members of the educated, elite, imperial inner ring. Tacitus had been consul and, like Pliny, governor of a Roman province, Suetonius a bureaucrat in the emperor’s court in Rome. History for them is power politics played out at the very centre of things, and the plebs feature in it only when their actions have political implications that the imperial court cannot afford to ignore.

But it was one world — SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus, meant what it said — and, by calling on non-literary sources in particular, we can get some sense of the lives, hopes and fears of that c. 95 per cent of the populus who did not form the Roman educated elite.

Graffiti tell us that some things at least do not change: ‘I came here, I had a shag, then I went home,’ scrawls one of the last great romantics on a wall in Pompeii. Workers in Pompeii formed co-operatives to support political candidates: graffiti record requests from groups like the fruit-sellers, mule-drivers, goldsmiths, carpenters, cloth-dyers, innkeepers, bakers, porters and removers, chicken-sellers, mat-makers, grape-pickers and late drinkers (!) to vote for this or that candidate for office. Indeed, even the humblest citizen could approach the mighty emperor with a request and expect a reply. We hear of one such response (many like it survive) from Antoninus Pius to a lowly worker:

If you approach the relevant authorities, they will give orders that you should receive upkeep from your father, provided that, since you say you are a workman, you are in such ill health that you cannot sustain your work.

An epitaph, popular enough for it to be known in two versions, says of the tomb:

All a person needs. Bones reposing sweetly, I am not anxious about suddenly being short of food. I do not suffer from arthritis, and I am not indebted because of being behind in my rent. In fact my lodgings are permanent and free!

The plight of thousands of back-street Romans is summarised in this ironic little text. Shortage of food was an obvious problem; so was ill health, though Rome was not filled with the sick and starving (they died). But accommodation created problems too. It was rented and expensive; overcrowding and violence were commonplace. The historian Suetonius tells us that Augustus derived special pleasure from watching groups of people brawling in narrow city streets. Legal texts tell us of a shopkeeper putting his lantern out on the pavement. A passer-by grabs it and the shopkeeper gives chase. The thief hits him with a lash, and in the brawl the shopkeeper knocks out one of the thief’s eyes. We hear of runaway wagons and building materials crushing people to death in the crowded streets.

Even when work was obtained, it was often organised on short-term contracts, especially during the harvest and vintage. We hear of a woman who gave birth while working on a day-contract in a digging gang. Fearful of losing her wages, she hid the child and carried on. She was spotted and, against all expectations, paid in full and sent home by a kindly manager.

The stercorarius (or ‘night soil man’, as he was known well into the Fifties in Britain) had regular, if rather more disagreeable, work. We can assume that the average Roman generated about 1.5lbs of body-waste a day. Imperial Rome, with a population of one million, would therefore generate more than 650 tons of daily sewage. Though we hear of the need for sewer-cleaners and the risk they ran of choking to death, little of this human waste would disappear down a sewer. Very few Romans were connected up since, in the absence of the S-bend, stench and vermin could find their way from sewer into house and, when the Tiber rose, sewage too (we hear of one house which an octopus nightly entered via the drain to eat the pickled fish stored inside). But, more importantly, Romans regularly used human excrement to supplement animal manure. Where there’s muck, there’s brass, and it was the job of the stercorarius to empty the cesspits and sell on the contents to farmers on city outskirts. A graffito from Herculaneum records a payment of 11 asses for the removal of ordure (the as being the lowest denomination of coin).

Yet we should not imagine a population permanently struggling for work. One hundred and sixty different types of employment in Rome are attested from epigraphic evidence; and an insulting graffito (from Pompeii) says of its victim, ‘You’ve had eight different job opportunities — barman, baker, farmer, at the mint, salesman, now you’re flogging pots.... Just lick — and you’ll have done the lot.’

The point is that the Romans were a nation of shopkeepers. Raw materials poured into the city from the countryside to be processed and turned into goods in the myriad tabernae and officinae that crowded Rome. The historian Livy tells of Camillus visiting Tusculum, where he ‘found doors wide open, shops doing business with all their contents out on display. Each artisan was intent on his work. He could hear the learning games of children, voice against voice. He saw the streets were full of people, women and children wandering at will to do whatever they needed.’ Rome was full of workers turning wool, leather, metals, clay, timber, straw, oil, wine and grain into what people wanted — and many such workers made it very good, as huge tomb monuments like that of Eurysaces the contract-baker record.

At one level, the elite despised the plebs (while, naturally, owning the apartment blocks they rented). Cicero saw workers as liars and slaves — liars, because retailers marked up the ‘true’ value of the produce they received; slaves, because they worked for others for pay and were thus dependent on them for life. The elite, of course, had everything done for them in-house.

At the same time, the elite knew — none better than the emperor — that they ignored the people at their peril. ‘Bread and circuses’ (i.e. chariot races) were their answer, not because the people were lazy or feckless but because the culture of benefaction had long been the standard way of harmonising relationships between rich and poor. Races, gladiatorial combat, the theatre and a good, regular grain supply, all paid for by the wealthy or by the wealth that the state generated from its provinces, gave the people a taste of the high life and were seen as the rightful rewards of those who, as farmer-soldiers all those years ago, had made the empire possible.

So when the emperor entered the amphitheatre or circus to watch the games, it was to the cheers, or curses, of the crowd. And he paid attention. He knew which side his bread was buttered. So did the plebs. It was, indeed, one world.