Poor family in one room

[kurtedwr]

From the stuff I read, a single low-income apartment room was peopled by a whole immediate family (parents, siblings, grandparents, maybe cousins, etc.). That's pretty crowded. So how do they sleep, and how do they change clothes, and all the other personal tasks?

[Pantagathus]

People still do this all over the world (India for example).

[Pertinax]

My late Father (raised in rural penury) slept thus-three eldest siblings (8,10, 12) slept with their heads to the wall of the room , the two younger siblings (himself included) were neatly reversed and placed between the others like the teeth of two combs. My Grandmother slept in a chair nearby.

 

He broke the ice on the horse trough to wash before setting off to school. They had no other clothes to change into. Thats England in 1927.

 

This probably informed his attitude to central heating , which he considered to be a softening influence on Western Civilisation.

[phil25]

Even in the case of the rich Roman, "rooms" did not have the clear designations they have nowadays - furniture could be moved into different rooms for different purposes, or a bed could be present in a room used for purposes other than sleeping during the day.

 

Until relatively recent times even the rich in western Europe would have found little privacy as we would have known it. That is why, in Shakespeare's time and after, beds had curtains. Often a servant or children would sleep in the same room. Even then rooms often linked and were accessed from each other, not by means of corridors, so passing through a room others occupied might be essential. A room at the end of a series of interconnecting rooms DID have privacy and thus might belong to the most important person.

 

Roman ideas of privacy were also different to ours. Public toilets were communal and unpartitioned, for instance. Even in private houses, the toilet (if there was one) was often adjacent to the kitchen for plumbing reasons - see surviving examples in Pompeii.

 

As far as I am aware (in Rome the baths apart) it was far less common in the past than today for people to undress completely to wash, to go to bed or to make love, or even to change their clothes. In colder climates in the C19th people would SEW themselves into their underwear through the winter.

 

Kings and rulers did business in their chamber or bedroom up to Tudor times. And the closer you got, as a visitor to the bedroom, the more honour and intimacy you were held in.

 

I use these as examples to show that the past was very different in its assumptions than today. What might be unimaginable or unliveable for us may have been perfectly usual then.

 

Pertinax's example is an excellent one. I could refer you to even more (by our standards) appalling examples of living conditions from London's East End in 1888 - the squalour was unbelievable. Jack London the novelist and researcher visited a workhouse and doss-houses in the same area c 1900 and had to leave because of the stench. One would need a strong stomach to be a time-traveller!!

 

Phil

[caldrail]

I agree about the comparison with poorer countries and thats very much the case. Everything is rougher and readier, no-one worries too much about modern western-style privacy, and in any event, bush radio's weren't invented then. People just helped each other along (normally) and got on with their lives. Things must have been a bit tough normally. I'm lucky. I was born in britain and live well compared to the third world. For that roman family I think day to day survival was uppermost in their minds. But it wasn't all grim. Families like that often experience real joy in their lives for the most simple reasons.

[M. Porcius Cato]

If Romans did not value privacy, then why did rich and upwardly mobile Romans build *private* baths, *private* villas, *private* rooms in their villas, and drape their biers in curtains and thereby achieve *privacy*? The fact that Romans often could not afford such privacy doesn't mean that they didn't want it--and the fact that rich Romans did so much to acheive privacy (once they had the wealth) very much suggests that many ordinary Romans who didn't have privacy were itching for it.

 

Maybe I'm speaking dolphin...

[Moonlapse]

My family (not extended) has been in similar situations a few times. It automatically creates a hierarchy that determines priority, usually age-based. People are naturally inclined to this type of thing. Living standards are completely relative to your peers, so it's probably hard for us to consider this type of thing during the time it was prevalent - most of human history.

[docoflove1974]

This probably informed his attitude to central heating , which he considered to be a softening influence on Western Civilisation.

 

I prefer to be a soft wussy, then.

[phil25]

MPC - my experience of Pompeiian houses is that living in them must have been a much more "collective" experience than (certainly in the UK) most people experience today.

 

I have talked of toilets and their positioning, often next to the kitchen, in private homes to allow for flushing. The number of private houses that had their own baths would have been small, and could have related to convenience - not having to walk to the public baths, queue, jostle etc - rather than a desire for privacy.

 

Cubicula (bedrooms) in private houses seem to have relied upon curtains to close the door off, rather than wooden, or lockable wooden doors. In some houses they open off corridors, and may not have suffered from the need for others to walk through them to access rooms beyond (as much as say in medieval times) but by our standards lacking absolute privacy. Yet the Romans knew of doors and locks but did not use them in that way.

 

But my thrust is not absolute - I do not say that the Romans could not conceive of privacy or desire it - but comparative. IMHO, if we went back in time we would be VERY surprised at the difference in expectations.

 

Phil

[caldrail]

If Romans did not value privacy, then why did rich and upwardly mobile Romans build *private* baths, *private* villas, *private* rooms in their villas, and drape their biers in curtains and thereby achieve *privacy*? The fact that Romans often could not afford such privacy doesn't mean that they didn't want it--and the fact that rich Romans did so much to acheive privacy (once they had the wealth) very much suggests that many ordinary Romans who didn't have privacy were itching for it.

 

Maybe I'm speaking dolphin...

 

The privacy you speak of is illusory. Remember that slaves were in attendance at all times so nothing was ever really private. I agree that wealthy people wanted a retreat from the hordes of hangers-on requested money or favours. Also the amount of extra-marital behaviour exhibited by wealthy romans would need some consideration. By custom a woman could not show herself naked even to her husband. Of course this got ignored right left and center but some decorum must be observed surely? Would you want your enemies and rivals to learn your innermost personal secrets? Slaves usually knew better than to talk but I'm sure some did for a small reward now and then. If privacy was so important, why bathe publicly? Why build communal latrines?

 

Privacy as we understand it is an invention of modern western civilisation although I can accept that the romans were heading in that direction themselves.

[Andrew Dalby]

By custom a woman could not show herself naked even to her husband.

 

As MPC said to me today on a different thread: evidence?

 

But I want to say something more searching about this issue. While puzzling over "privacy" in other societies, we have to be honest about our own. We are very ambivalent about this issue. If I may take US society for a moment (and I'll be corrected if I've got this wrong, but comparable examples could be given from any Western society) a bare female breast on television causes national scandal and prolonged debate, yet nudity, sexual acts of all kinds, sexual violence are all quite OK on websites and in videos/DVDs. And in people's actual behaviour, young/old, drunk/sober, public/private, you can find a whole spectrum from extreme sensitivity over any hint of sexuality to total nonchalance.

 

And then, public bathing. It's quite difficult to get the Roman facts clear, but the proper thing was for those of the same sex but different generations not to bathe together. Sons didn't bathe with fathers: it was considered indecent. In public bathing establishments, the two sexes didn't bathe together, they bathed on separate days, it is thought (but at the beach there was no such rule). Now, how does that compare with our behaviour? With us, all sexes and ages bathe together, but we wear something that conceals our most obvious sexual features from view (but at some beaches there is no such rule). So who's more concerned about privacy, the Romans or us?

[Gaius Octavius]

In the Dark Ages, didn't all the people of a Teutonic castle sleep in one great room? No curtains either.

 

On the U.S. frontier, log cabins and sod huts were one room affairs. The 'company' houses of the late 19th c. to the mid 20th c., were basically one room affairs. In the city slums, this is still the case. Studio apartments, shared by a gaggle of kids in NYC, are still very common.

Edited November 11, 2006 by Gaius Octavius

[Kosmo]

More then a couple sharing a room it's not unusual in today's Romania for the poor. Extended families sometimes still live toghether in a house, most with their own rooms. The fast increase in real estate prices and rents in urban areas makes this the only possibility for many people like poor and young. Sometimes this has other reasons like old people caring for their nephews and receiving care from children because of low quality or inexistant public services.

 

Nudity was present not only in public baths, but also in palestre for gymnastics.

 

Sometimes intimacy, technolgy and social segregation are correlated like in the Reaniassance. The lord's family moved away from the common rooms of the castle with the apparition of advanced heating. They used often carriages instead of horse and foot distancing themselves from the commoners. Public celebrations were replaced with shows for invited guests. The space of the city was changed as areas for the rich appeared. The language used was somehow different and also manners, habits and dressing.

Rome did not go far on this path and rich and poor were not really segregated.

[The Augusta]

The privacy you speak of is illusory. Remember that slaves were in attendance at all times so nothing was ever really private.

 

Caldrail - this fascinates me. Could you point us in the direction of the source that states this fact? It was something I had a slight issue with in the HBO/BBC Rome series.

[phil25]

You beat me to the question, Augusta, and for the same reason.

 

There is a view that the Romans did have a "thing" about a third person watching two others making love - there is a book which I have called "Looking at Lovemaking" by John R Clarke - University of California Press 1998 which explores this. It's subtitle is "Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art" and it consider various relief on cups, frescoes etc.

 

It is an interesting theory, though one about which I have suspicions. If Caldrail or anyone else can provide other evidence or sources, I for one would be very interested.

 

Nudity is a different issue - like many things, when it is omnipresent it effectively becomes invisible. The Romans did not see sensuality as sinful - there was no Judeo-Christian morality in late republican/early principiate thinking - so nudity would not have been a big thing.

 

I remember reading once a quote (can anyone confirm it, I have lost the source) that Livia once commented that seeing a naked man should have no more impact on a woman than seeing a nude statue.

 

Public latrines did not give privacy, and the smell, noises and general atmosphere must have been intolerable (at least to modern sensibilities). There was no nudity. the tunic covered the nether regions at all times, the seating was made to facilitate cleansing with modesty - all assuming Colleen McCullough is right and Romans did not wear any underwear. I support her contention for practical reasons.

 

When I mentioned public toilets it was in the context of the lack of privacy - no locks and doors, rather than about nudity. You can share a room with others and never see them naked, unless they strip to wash. If people keep their day clothes on, as they did in much of antiquity, there is no problem (well there are problems including body odour, but of a different kind!!)

 

I once had the experience of speaking at a conference centre in Cumberland Lodge, a former royal residence in Windsor Great Park - I stayed over night. Apparently rooms do not have locks in royal residences and the bathroom - not en-suite and pretty victorian in character - had none. So, given that there was no shower, I had to sit in the bath (enamel and cast iron on lions feet) set on three steps in the middle of the room, facing a door that anyone could have come through. I am not particularly modest, but it was difficult to relax. Those who live in such circumstances all the time presumably adjust and have ways of "coping".

 

Phil