We may rely on regular sessions of retail therapy or an unfaltering protestant work ethic to get us through the daily drudgery of our working lives, but we have, at least, come a long way from antiquity. Working nine-to-five hasn’t always been a way to make a living, and despite Dolly Parton‘s proclamations that it’s all takin’ and no givin’, having a schedule, a salary, and—in some cases—security is a privilege of living in a modernised world of capital and infrastructure. One that takes us beyond our need to desperately hunt for where the next meal is going to come from.
Had you and I been born in any other period of history, we would have learned this the hard way through a presumably daily dose of blood, sweat, and tears. There was no shortage of any in the ancient world, where endemic violence, war and death could conceivably have been couched as merciful reprieves from some of the more gruelling hardships of everyday life.
This article details an assortment of ancient jobs that make being a call centre worker (sorry), a tax collector (sorry again) or the Ethics Advisor for Boris Johnson (not even remotely sorry here) seem like a walk in the park.
Praegustator (Food Taster)
You might have thought that the delicacies on offer at an imperial Roman banquet would make diners reluctant to share their plates with others. But this would be to overlook an invisible yet omnipresent threat to an emperor and his retinue.
Poisoning had been of public concern in Rome since at least 331 BC, when nearly 200 women were charged with having carried out the mass poisoning of the city’s most eminent citizens. Problematically, the earliest charges of poisoning coincided with a wave of plagues and pestilences, and the inadequacy of Roman post-mortem examinations made it practically impossible to determine which had been the cause of death. By the time of the Roman Empire, however, poisoning seems to have become a scourge on society.
People resorted to poison for any number of reasons: from removing political enemies to ensuring an inheritance to getting rid of a pesky family member. Our sources suggest that poisoning was a big problem in the imperial palace. But it probably also plagued the minds of cheating husbands and rough traders in households throughout Rome and its empire.
The difference is that we have far more evidence for the imperial household, and that the Caesars—unlike most ‘ordinary’ Romans—could afford the luxury of preventative measures. One of these was the regular ingestion of potions. The Roman satirist Juvenal riffs about a man who took an anti-venom to protect himself from his wife (though ultimately it failed to protect him from a swing of her axe). But the most common method taken by emperors in particular was to hire a professional food taster: the praegustator. More bizarrely still, there were enough praegustatores during the early empire to form their own collegium (worker’s guild).
Being a praegustator certainly had its upsides.
Rather than receiving the normal chicken-feed rations reserved for slaves or freedmen (recently freed-slaves), praegustatores were able to wolf down some of the most delicious delicacies of the ancient world. The only downside was that any one of these delicacies could spell agonising death.
A fair few examples come down to us. We know that before the Battle of Actium, Mark Antony, the first known Roman to employ a praegustator, had his charge hard at work, paranoid that one of his many enemies might be set on having him killed (not beyond the realms of possibility as Antony had a reputation as a bit of a twat).
What makes the job of the imperial poison-taster even more bizarre is that, at least under the reign of Nero, there was also an imperial poisoner. Along with his mother Agrippina, Nero employed the services of the skilled poisoner Locusta to get rid of their enemies. Among her alleged victims was the emperor Claudius (another account suggests he was poisoned by his own praegustator) and the emperor Claudius’s son (and Nero’s half-brother) Britannicus.
Nomenclator (Name Caller)
We’ve all been there. You’re standing around a party or drinks event when someone waltzes up to you with a beaming smile and a look of surprise. “Oh my God, what are you doing here!” they exclaim. You know you’ve met before, but you can’t for love or money remember where.
Worse still, you can’t remember their name.
They know yours of course, singing it out as if you’ve been lifelong friends, before asking you how everything’s going and “what’s new with you!” from the last however-many years. You do your best, summoning your best small talk. But you know—and they know—that you’re at a complete loss. And then someone else joins, two becomes three, and all falls silent as you’re expected to do the introductions. The game is up.
The Romans, efficient as they were, insured themselves against such acts of social self-harm. They singled out slaves or freedmen with particularly good memories and employed them as a nomenclator (nomenclatores, plural), whose title literally means “a caller of names”. Indeed, the role of these walking address books was to save their masters from mortifying social embarrassment by loudly announcing the name of whomever they might encounter.
These nomenclatores were put to good use at parties and banquets, waiting patiently by their master’s side to put lengthy Latin names to hooked Roman faces (“was it Lucius Caecilius Balbus or Antonius Caecilius Bantius?”). But away from feasts and festivities, they also served as important political instruments.
From the founding of the Republic, Roman politics involved annual elections. Like in today’s democratic societies, candidates for office would canvas for votes, surrounded by a supportive retinue of friends, clients, and dependents while they presided over the games at the circus or strolled importantly through the Roman Forum. This retinue also featured a nomenclator whose role was essential if the candidate was to avoid embarrassment; for only by performing his role could he ensure his candidate could greet them in a personal and friendly manner.
Ironically, we know few of the names of the people whose job it was to remember names. But scratch deep enough beneath the surface and you find the odd mention. One such example comes from the Roman tombstone above. Dating from the first-century CE, it was dedicated to a freedman named Aristarchus who was employed by his patron as a nomenclator.
Rower
Today, rowing evokes images of rowing machines in gyms, rowing competitively for a college, university, or Olympic team, or—if you’re English like me—the annual Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race. As a sport, rowing is known for being both elitist and physically and emotionally demanding. Perhaps for both these reasons, we see rowing as something that brings a great deal of prestige.
Suffice to say, this is a far cry from how rowing was seen in antiquity.
Fortunately, unless you were born to pushy parents rowing these days is optional. In antiquity, however, those who manned the boats of triremes and warships had little say in the matter. Aside from the measly ration of daily bread, there was no let up for these poor souls. They would simply go until they were done (or died in the process), enjoying the briefest moment’s respite before being made to go again.
As might be the case with more hard-core gym subscriptions (I don’t know; I don’t go), there was no such concept as an “off day”. Slackers would be lashed by the big beasty man standing behind them whose ostensible role was to keep time but whose main task was to maintain discipline.
One common misconception is that all rowers were slaves; an idea propagated by films such as Ben Hur. In reality, it would have made little sense to have chained, poorly trained men rowing your war machine when the way to win your battle ram the enemy vessel. Not only would this have put you at a distinct disadvantage when fighting against an enemy operating with strength, unity and precision, but chained men would have been easy pickings for any enemy boarding your vessel.
Rowing was considered a job that required intense training and dedication to the cause. During the Classical Greek period, the job was vital. Unlike the Romans, the Greeks weren’t great road builders (with such easy coastal access they had little need for them) and so defending their waters from pirates and protecting the vital food supplies needed in the city was a necessity.
Prostitute
Often cited as “the world’s oldest profession”, it goes without saying that prostitution pre-dates the world of antiquity. From the powerful female courtesans of fourth-century Athens to the poor, starving workers that worked the street corners of first-century Rome, prostitution was endemic in the ancient world. And issues of bodily hygiene aside, prostitution brought many of the same problems it does today along with some very alien ones.
Aside from the perpetual problem of having to sleep with pretty much any paying man who walked through your door, prostitutes in the ancient world faced another more existential threat.
It’s often said that contraception was practically unheard of in the ancient world. The reality, however, is much more sinister. Prostitutes or slaves were themselves contraception; sexual vessels for men to use (so they claimed) to protect their wives from the grave threat of childbearing.
It’s worth stressing that the Romans had a much different idea of marriage to the one we do today. Roman marriages were based not on love, but on politics, pragmatism, and property inheritance (unlike in the Christian world, divorces were easily obtainable should issues arise in any of these spheres). Love could be disastrous for a marriage because it would mean frequent sexual intercourse which greatly increased the chances of death for the wife.
It is for this reason that we have a famous anecdote from antiquity in which the upstanding, conservative Roman Cato the Elder praises a young aristocrat he saw leaving a brothel. He commends the young man for sleeping with prostitutes rather than involving himself with other men’s wives. The implication here is that adultery is a great social evil; the reality is that the potentially lethal consequences said adultery could bring posed the greatest threat to the stability of the Roman state.
So what was prostitution like in antiquity?
Aesthetically and sensorially speaking, increasing Greek contact with the Near East brought many developments. Eastern spices transformed female scents and soaps, while Eastern cultures exported a heavier, more durable make-up known as eye shadow. In the Roman world, prostitutes were identifiable by their colourful dress, over-the-top hairstyles, and heavy-set makeup.
Sexually speaking, those plying their trade in the Roman world had the hygienic advantage that the Romans weren’t big into oral sex (and we might assume some of those who were had the decency to attend the public baths). Unfortunately for those of the Hellenistic world, the Greeks seemed to have had fewer qualms.
Urinary Tax Collector
One of the most rewarding things that comes from reading about ancient history is that it throws up a lot of parallels to the modern day. One of these is that paying for public toilets has never been popular—after all, why should having to perform a basic bodily function have to cost? Another is that at no point has there been any love lost between the ordinary, upstanding worker and the taxman.
- Roman public toilets. Phys.org
The Romans of the first century AD would have felt disgruntled on both accounts when they were made to pay a tax that brought a whole new meaning to the term “Render unto Caesar”: the urine tax.
First introduced by the ever-popular emperor Nero (54 – 68 AD), it came into effect again under his eventual successor, Vespasian, in after his rise to power in 69 AD. The measure was widely unpopular, and his son and future successor Titus had no issue taking on his father over the taxation of urine. His response stunned his son into silence, however, when he held up some gold coins procured from the tax and quipped, pecunia non olet: “money doesn’t stink!”
The money might not have stunk, but despite the efficacy of Roman baths its origins would have smelled horrific. The piss would be requisitioned from overflowing public toilets and cesspools, from where it would be put to use for a variety of chemical processes, from soaking animal skins before tanning to extracting the ammonia to clean clothes to—that’s right—using as toothpaste.
The measure might not have been popular but there’s no doubt it was successful. When he came to power in 69 AD, Vespasian inherited an empire that was financially crippled after nearly two years of civil war. When he died 10 years later, he left his successor a surplus. From a fiscal point of view, enforcing a tax on urine was pragmatic. Let’s just spare a moment’s thought for the poor buggers whose job it was to collect it.
Vestal Virgin
Being a professional virgin may have been the opposite to being a prostitute but that didn’t make it any easier. The year 216 BC is a case in point. The fearsome African general Hannibal had just won a stunning victory at Cannae, slaughtering somewhere in the region of 70,000 Romans, including one of Rome’s consuls. Sensing Hannibal’s imminent victory, many of Rome’s Italian neighbours started switching sides. And so, depleted of both money and manpower, Rome was forced to send envoys to grovel for a rather embarrassing loan from the king of Syracuse, Hiero II.
These Romans were an arrogant lot. They couldn’t comprehend that Hannibal may have prevailed because of its own merit or strategic superiority. No. The source of Rome’s misfortune, they reasoned, must have derived from the fact they had displeased the gods. They blamed two Vestal Virgins in particular who had been convicted of… well… not being virgins. In keeping with tradition, the Roman state reacted by walling these Vestals alive at a designated, no-longer extant spot near the Colline Gate (not far from today’s Termini Station).
Plutarch’s description of the punishment reserved for Vestals is worth quoting in full:
The Vestal convicted of incest is buried alive in the neighborhood of the Porta Collina, under the Agger of Servius Tullius. Here is a crypt, small in size, with an opening in the vault, through which the ladder is lowered. It is furnished with a bed, an oil lamp, and a few scanty provisions, such as bread, water, milk, and oil. These provisions (in fact, a refinement of cruelty) are prepared because it would appear a sacrilege to condemn to starvation women formerly consecrated to the gods. The unfortunate culprit is brought here in a covered hearse, to which she is tied with leather straps, so that it is impossible that her sighs and lamentations should be heard by the attendant mourners. The crowd opens silently for the passage of the hearse. Not a word is pronounced, not a murmur is heard. Tears stream from the eyes of every spectator. It is impossible to imagine a more horrible sight; the while city is shaken with terror and sorrow. The hearse being brought to the edge of the opening, the executioner cuts the bands, and the high-priest mutters an inaudible prayer, and lifts up his arms towards the gods, before bidding the culprit good bye. He follows and assists her to the top of the ladder, and turns back at the fatal instant of her disappearance. As soon as she reaches the bottom, the ladder is removed, opening is sealed, and a large mass of earth is heaped upon the stone that seals it, until the top of the embankment is reached, and every trace of the execution made to disappear.
Plutarch, as quoted in Rofolfo Lanciani Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries
The brutality of the punishment came from the importance the Romans attached to the goddess Vesta. They believed she was one of the most important in the Roman pantheon; the goddess of the hearth and home and the protector of the family. It was the main duty of the Vestals, her priestesses, to keep her hearth—a fire in the Temple of Vesta—burning. Failure to do so, so the Romans believed, would lead to chaos for the city and (later by extension) the empire.
The Romans believed it essential that the Vestals were virgins, and this explains why such a slow and painful death awaited any Vestal who forsook her vow of chastity. But there were also punishments reserved for Vestals who broke any other vow. Should a Vestal let the fire go out, for example, she could expect a vicious beating in the dark behind a curtain (the curtain intended to preserve her modesty).
So how (and indeed why) would a girl become a Vestal? Provided she was free of mental or physical defects, any girl between six and 10 could be chosen and committed—or condemned—to 30 years of celibate service. “Chosen” is too forgiving a word. The ceremony in which girls would be taken was called the captio (“capture” in English), in which the pontifex maximus would turn up at the girl’s house and lead her away to the temple.
Still, it wasn’t all bad for the Vestals. At least they were treated pretty well under the emperor Augustus, being given special seats at the games and some land in Rome’s surrounding area.
Miner
Being condemned to work in one of the Roman Empire’s many mines was the worst non-capital sentence you could be dealt in the ancient world. Dreamt up during the first century AD, this sentence stripped you of your citizenship, reduced you to the status of a slave, and consigned you to a short lifetime of laboriously brutal labour. This punishment, which the Romans recognised as a prolonged form of death, was doled out to men and women alike, though usually only to those of lower social standing. We find a similarly drawn-out death in crucifixion: a punishment which the story of Christianity’s founder has rendered familiar to us all.
So what could get you sent to the mines? One was an act of negligence resulting in homicide—dropping a branch out of your window which landed on someone’s head, for example. This might sound like a random, slightly slapstick example, but it actually comes from a third-century CE law book. Other crimes that carried this punishment included: stealing something of moderate value during the day (at night would probably get you condemned ad bestiam—to fight beasts in the arena).
Testament to just how bad this punishment was is its place in the penal hierarchy. The emperor Hadrian certainly believed that being sent to the mines was a punishment worse than death. In a rather baffling act of law, he ruled that cattle rustlers, following their first offence, should be sent to fight in the arena while after their second they should be sent to the mines. Perhaps the logic was that you could theoretically survive as a gladiator through physical prowess and go on to live a pretty decent standard of life. Toiling away in the mines on the other hand, even if for a limited time, left you no chance.
Being condemned to the mines (damnatio ad metella) was usually reserved either for the lower social orders or, as evidenced by Tertullian and Cyprian, Christians. But there were exceptions. The emperor Caligula, for example, did away with the tradition of having noblemen merely beheaded or exiled and also condemned them to the mines during his reign (37 – 41 AD). The Roman Empire was full of mines, the most profitable coming from areas such as Dacia or gold and silver-rich Spain. They provided precious metals for all uses: from coinage to weaponry to sculptures.
Armpit-Hair Plucker
How do we know that the practice of plucking armpit hair was rife during the early Roman Empire? Because a certain Stoic philosopher saw fit to tell us all about it!
In one of his letters, Seneca the Younger, a philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, suggested that not to pluck one’s armpit hair was to be unreasonably negligent in one’s personal care. The practice makes sense, especially given the presumed stench (Roman baths could only do so much, and Rome really does get hot in the summer). But a Roman man had to be careful not to go too far the other way however: in the same passage Seneca criticises men who depilate their legs, implying that doing so is the hallmark of someone who is vain and effeminate.
So what were the beauty standards of when it came to body hair in the Roman world?
Well, thanks to a work called the ars amatoria (the “Art of Love”) written by the Roman poet Ovid, we have a pretty good idea. Women were expected to depilate lest, as Ovid writes, they reek of “wild goat under the armpits” or have “legs bristling with harsh hair”. Men, on the other hand, had a little more flexibility when it came to removing their body hair.
While removing armpit hair was considered acceptable (if not to be encouraged), depilating other parts of your body was seen as overly-effeminate and not becoming of a good old fashioned military Roman. Julius Caesar, for example, ran into some stick when it was pointed out that in addition to his meticulous preening routine (shaving his face, combing over his bald patch etc.) he would have his body hair plucked.
We have another example linking the plucking of body hair with effeminacy from imperial times. Suetonius tells us that Nero’s immediate successor, Galba, received news of his predecessor’s demise from a slave boy called Icelus. Initially overjoyed, Galba then became inexplicably horny, and requested that Icelus have all of his body hair plucked before taking him aside for a good old romp. Classic Galba.
Boxer
In Greek boxing, only blows directed towards the head or the neck were allowed. Body blows, which we might today consider “under the belt”, were strictly forbidden. The reason for this is that Greek boxing was supposedly a Spartan invention, and because the Spartans refrained from wearing helmets—believing a shield to be enough—they had to train to avoid taking blows to the face and, when the blows came, to toughen their faces up.
As you might expect, the focus on the face and neck led to a fair few fatalities throughout the centuries, especially given how hard ancient boxers used to hit. We have a remarkable piece of physical evidence for this: the statue of a boxer at rest (pictured above) complete with facial scars and cauliflower ear. But we know they hit hard because the ancients told us. Cicero once wrote that when boxers deliver any blow they let out a grunt, not because they are tired or in any pain but so they can concentrate all their power into the physical effort.
Most of the information we have from these come from Olympia. This isn’t that surprising. As the most prestigious sporting competition of the ancient world, it makes sense that the athletes would have exerted themselves more. The first known fatality comes from sixth century and took place during the pankration. The pankration was essentially a bare-knuckle submission sport involving a mixture of boxing and wrestling. Because the rules were few (no biting or eye-gouging), serious injuries were common. And in 564 BC, a certain Arrachion lost his life in the event.
He was not the only one. The ancient travel writer Pausanius records one Iccus of Epidaurus losing his life to his rival Cleomedes of Astypalaea. The story became incredibly elaborated in the years to come—with one version saying that Cleomedes punched through Iccus’s body and pulled out his lung—but the long and short of it seem to be that the mighty Cleomedes dealt his rival one powerful punch and killed him instantly.
The judges convicted Cleomedes of foul play—presumably on account of the fact he’d struck the body—and denied him his prize. Their decision drove him mad with grief and he went on to live a reclusive guilt-ridden life. But over time he was forgiven, and upon his death the people of Delphi decided that he should undergo apotheosis (essentially becoming a god). Fatalities from boxing continued throughout antiquity right up until the second century AD.
Imperial Slave
When we think of the population of the Roman world, we tend to think of degenerate emperors, fearsome legionaries, and servile senators. We don’t really think of slaves—the great hidden population of the Roman world—because they’ve left us little mark of their existence. However, across the Roman Empire slaves far outnumbered the free citizenry; a seemingly infinite supply of human property to be used and abused as the master saw fit.
There’s no reason to assume that the abuse of slaves in the imperial household was any worse than the abuse suffered by slaves in other households across the ancient city and empire. The difference is that most of our surviving writing concerns itself with politics, and therefore centres in on the royal palace (and, needless to say, domestic abuses don’t tend to get inscribed onto headstones).
Not all Roman emperors treat their slaves appallingly, and not just because having up to 20,000 at their disposal would have made it logistically difficult to do so. The great philosopher Seneca wrote about how treating slaves well could ensure they in turn performed their service well (and were less inclined to murder you in your sleep). And testament to their longevity, it seems many of Rome’s better emperors took his sage advice on board.
Some of the worst instances of abuse in the imperial household come from the reign of Nero (54 – 68 AD). We’re told that he had a favourite young ex-slave (known varyingly as either Pythagoras or Doryphorus) who after falling head over heals in love with he decided to marry in 64 AD. But Phythagoras / Doryphorus wasn’t the only young man the emperor took a shine to. Nero soon became enraptured with a young slave called Sporus who met a decisively darker fate than his predecessor: being castrated and forced to marry the emperor the year before Nero’s death in 67 AD.
In keeping with character, Nero’s appalling treatment of his slaves continued right up until his final moments. After being declared an enemy of the state and forced to hide out in one of his freedmen’s countryside villas, he resolved to commit suicide. He didn’t quite know how to go about it, though, and so he solicited the help of one of his unfortunate attendants.
Nero passed his slave a dagger and asked him to show him how it was done. Luckily for the slave, at that moment Nero drove a dagger into his own throat, confusing the sound of a passing horse for the arrival of soldiers sent to arrest him.
