Food and Feasts

Food in a rich household.

             The kitchen was an open hearth filled with charcoal. Most of the cooking pots were made of pottery althoughsome were iron. The burning charcoal must have made the kitchen very hot for slaves who were getting thefood ready. The kitchen slaves washed the vegetables and herbs in a stone sink. Baking was very difficult because there was no oven in the house, so bread, cakes and puddings were usually bought from a baker.
      A Feast

Most people were  too poor  to  buy  fish  or  meat. They ate  mainly porridge, green vegetables, pancakes, washed  down  with watered  wine.This is  what  a ferast in a rich Roman houshold  may  have looked  like. For the first  course they ate raw vegetables, shellfish,eggs  or  stuffed dormice. For the second  course they ate boiled or roast  meat, doves,chicken, pork  or roast  boar. For the third course they had fruit, honey cakes, spiced  loaf or stuffed dates.Guests who  were  invited to a feast  in a rich person's house  lay  on  a couches  and  ate  with  their  fingers. Slaves cut  up  the  meat for them, served out  the food and  brought  round  bowls of  water  so that the  guests  could  wash their  hands  between  courses.  Poets  and  musitians provided entertainment. They played string instrument called a cithara.

Roman Lifestyle . What People Wore

       
Women wore sleeveless tunics made from linen or cotton ,or if they were very rich silk.They wore coloured shawls over their tunics and as much jewellery as they could afford.

       
Men wore togas - loose robes made from the best wool if they were rich or from coarse cloth if they were poor.Togas could be any colour but officials usually wore white togas decorated with a coloured stripe to show that the wearer was an important person.

RomanBath

Roman Baths

Romas went to the bath to keep clean, relax, meet  their  friends and to exercise. Women and men bathed at separate times of the day. 
Why did the Romans take their baths in public?
Taking a bath was a lot more important for the Romans than it is for us today. Roman baths happened in great big buildings, like swimming pools. They had heated floors and many different rooms for different activities.
In the days before central heating systems, they were often heated using natural hot springs where water comes to the surfaces after having been warmed by the hot rock and magma underneath the ground.
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Who went to the baths?

Almost everyone went to the baths at the end of the day, to exercise, socialise and clean themselves. People sealed business deals and chatted with friends while lying around in these hot pools of water.
The city of Rome had hundreds and hundreds of these public baths, where people paid a very small fee before going in and got to stay for hours.
Some public baths, like our swimming pools, were owned by the government and covered large parts of the city.
The largest baths was called the Baths of Diocletian.  It could hold up to 3,000 people at a time.
What did you do when you got to the baths?
The Romans had a special method for taking a bath. You had to go through many different rooms, with different temperatures and activities, in the right order. These rooms and their functions are:
1.    First you went to the apodyterium. This was like a cloakroom where you stored all your clothes.
2.    Then you go into the frigidarium. This was a cold room with a big tank of cold water.
3.    Then the tepidarium. This was a warm room, but not hot yet.
4.    Finally, the caldarium was a hot room with a hot bath that you would plunge yourself into now that you had grown used to the heat.
At the end of your bath you would return to the tepidarium for a massage with oils.
Some Romans would also have their body hairs plucked out and dead skin scraped off using metal implements in this room.
What happened to the Roman baths?
When the Roman Empire collapsed and the Romans left much of the territory they had conquered, they left many baths behind them.
Some of these were taken over by the local people, others were torn down and still others just left to slowly collapse over the years.

Many of these have now been restored, such as the Baths at Bath in England. Bath is a town that took its name from the prominent Roman baths that have been there for centuries. It is now open as a tourist attraction and many people go there on school trips to learn more about how the Romans took their baths and why.