Daily Life In Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino

Author:Jerome Carcopino [Jerome Carcopino]
Language: eng
Format: epub

“In quintam varios extendit Roma labores Sexta quies lassis, septima finis erit"⁶⁴

If one bears in mind that the “hour “at the winter solstice equalled forty-five minutes according to our reckoning and seventy-five minutes at the summer solstice, these data bring the Roman working day down to about seven hours in summer and less than six in winter.

Summer and winter alike, Roman workmen enjoyed freedom during the whole or the greater part of the afternoon, and very probably our forty-hour week with its different arrangement would have weighed heavily on them rather than pleased them. Their rural habits, in the first place, and in the second their sense of their incomparable superiority, guarded them against unremitting labour and harassing tasks. So much so that at the time when Martial was writing, the merchants and shopkeepers, the artisans and labourers of the imperial race, upheld by their vital professional unions, had succeeded in so organising their work as to allow themselves seventeen or eighteen of our twenty- four hours for the luxury of repose and enjoyed what we may call if we care to the leisure of people of means.

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