From all accounts, the ancient Romans knew how to do leisure—the privileged classes at least. We dig into in on Episode 543: Leisure Time in Ancient Rome.
According to historians, they didn’t see leisure time as something they got to enjoy once their obligations were completed, but rather, as the ideal state in which to live, when they had control over all their actions.
Can we learn something from this? Are we looking at leisure the wrong way?
You can listen right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 543: Leisure Wars: Italy vs. the United States
Episode 501: How Often Do You Think about the Roman Empire?
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Hello. This is The Bittersweet Life podcast. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany’s in Rome. Katy is in Seattle. She’s an expat. I was, I’m a repat. Am I a repat still? I’ve been gone from Rome for like ten years now, but I guess once you move abroad, you always have that within you.
Today, though, we’re going to be talking about something that was spurred on by the interview that we did, that I did a couple weeks ago with Glynnis MacNicol with her book. I’m mostly here to enjoy myself, and I’m not gonna rehash any of the major themes in that book. But she did have one line in there that I put an arrow to that said, is this true?
And I thought I would ask you about it. And then I, of course, got a little, I ended up doing a deeper dive myself into it. So I have other things to share with you, but this was just a kind of a line that she throws in the mid book, and she’s talking about leisure time. And she says that, I have learned that the latin word for business is negotiam, which translates into the absence of leisure. The Romans did not see leisure time as the slim reward for work, but work as a negative space defined by leisure. Now, that was the statement that I was like, is that true? I wonder if that’s true. I should ask Tiffany if that’s actually true.
The Romans did not see leisure time as the slim reward for work, but work as a negative space defined by leisure. Leisure was more important than work.
Tiffany
You know, I always say I’m not a huge expert on ancient Rome, and I know probably more than the average person, but it’s not kind of my area of expertise within Roman history and art.
But I do remember learning that there was a particular romantic profession called the client. Now, don’t think of it as our modern word for client. They were people who were basically, they were paid for their vote, and it wasn’t considered corruption back in those days. It probably, probably was, but it was more like, you know, you paid your constituents, and obviously not everyone was allowed to vote, and so your vote was probably more valuable.
But there was this whole subset, and I hope I’m not getting any of this wrong, because like I said, this is not my area of expertise. But what I understand is there was this whole subset of the society that all they did was basically sit around in the Roman forum and sort of wait until they had to vote about something or wait until the person that they worked for. And so it was backwards. Like, if you were the client, you were not the one paying. You were the one being paid by a politician until maybe they needed you or needed to talk to you or something.
So that’s why you’ll find the board games in the Roman forum, because people were sitting around, and I think there was a lot less work being done in ancient Rome by citizens. Now, there was a lot of work being done by slaves. So, you know, but if you want to talk about the actual Roman citizens, I don’t think that they worked that much. No.
Katy
And the board games you’re talking about are something we’ve referred to in this show a long time ago, which is if you go look in certain parts of the forum, I don’t know if you can actually see any of them. If you tore down there, you can. Oh, you can. So in the marble, there would be, like, things etched into the marble.
And what those were, were basically like a game board, you know, and you could bring your dice or your whatever else, cards or whatever your accouterments that goes with these board game boards. But the game boards were actually carved into the marble, so you could sit around on the marble steps and play games with each other, which is pretty cool.
Tiffany
Yeah, well, I’m kind of the equivalent of the. I think there’s chess boards, permanent chess boards in Washington Square park.
Katy
Right.
Tiffany
And there are also chessboards. In the pools of the baths in Budapest, there are little seats where you can sit on the edge of this steaming hot bath, and there’s little chessboards and you have to bring your own players.
Katy
Oh, that’s nice.
Tiffany
Your own pieces. Yeah, yeah.
Katy
In downtown Seattle, with certain problematic parks, they have now quote unquote activated those parks. And you can play ping pong and corn-hole and chess and other things like that. They just put out all the equipment for it during the day to try to encourage more people to come and actually be in that park and play in that park.
So it’s not quite as convenient for, I don’t know, people to do on sundry things, I suppose. Well, of course, I learned about the board games in the forum from historian Mary Beard, who is a specialist about ancient Rome. And I happen to have one of her new books, new ish. It’s probably. It’s not that new anymore. A couple years old, called Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard. It’s all about the ancient Roman emperors.
And, of course, there’s a whole section in there about how they spent their time off. And so, since I got interested in this question, I’ve made some notes. There’s a paragraph I want to read to you, but first I want to tell you about what might have passed as a Roman leisure pastime for emperors. And she opens this chapter by talking about a particular emperor named Commodus 192 CE. Are you familiar with this fellow?
Tiffany
I am familiar. He was the one who was obsessed with gladiatorial games.
Katy
That’s correct.
Tiffany
And he would dress as if he was Hercules with a lion skin over his head, and he would parade around the Coliseum and, you know, act like a gladiator.
Katy
Yeah. From what I read in this book, seems like a bit of a piece of work, this guy.
Tiffany
Yeah.
Katy
She refers to this time when he, in the ultimate act of Roman leisure, he hosted 14 days of bloody shows at the Colosseum. The very first day opened with him personally killing 100 bears, which sounds very dangerous and so wasteful of nice bears. But he apparently did not do this like, up close and personal gladiator style. They had constructed special gangways up and above the bears for him to walk along, and he just threw javelins down.
As Mary Beard put it. It was more of a tribute to his accuracy than to his bravery. And then in the later days, in the 13 other bloody days to follow, he killed many more animals, many of which had already been imprisoned by nets. So once they were in a net, then he’d go up and, I don’t know, javelin, them, tigers, hippos, elephants. Apparently he beheaded an ostrich at one point.
And then she said that he was not the only emperor who liked to feel like they were a great gladiator or liked to imitate other great gladiators. She also cites Caligula, which, according to her, says that he was said to have killed a professional gladiator who was armed with a dummy sword.
Tiffany
Very, very brave. Valiant.
Katy
Very brave. I mean, it is interesting, with this much distance, to think that that kind of blood sport would have been entertaining. Right now, with the state of the world as it is, I think most people would be horrified to witness the killing of 100 bears just on an afternoon for a laugh.
Tiffany
Well, why do people go to see horror films, Katy? You know it’s fake. Okay, sure. But when you’re watching the movie, it doesn’t feel fake. And your reactions, they’ve, they’ve proven this. The physical reactions that you have when you’re watching horror films are similar to what kind of reaction you would have in real life with the racing heart and the dry throat and whatever you feel like it’s happening when you’re watching it.
So I don’t actually think that much has changed. I think there’s definitely more of a respect for animals today, thank God. But that’s not across the board. And lots of people still do trophy hunting and kill tigers and elephants and lions. But most people, I would say, don’t approve of that.
But I think there’s still, I mean, the popularity of the true crime stories. I mean, people love it. People love watching stuff about death. Some people are more squeamish. Not everybody wants to see the blood. Some people really like to see the blood and the head being chopped open. I can’t handle that. But I do like a good murder mystery. So even I, you know, clearly there’s something that is entertaining about people getting killed.
Katy
Yeah, no, I get that. I definitely get that. And I know that we’re living in a totally different society than what was happening in 192 CE, but I mean, to just sit there and watch your emperor randomly kill a bunch of bears, I mean, it’s not like he’s wrestling these bears. That would feel like something was at stake, you know?
Tiffany
Yeah, but by the time you got that late in the empire, I think you kind of had to, you know, it was kind of expected. Yeah, it’s like, you know, it’s like when Kim Jong un comes out and everybody’s like, oh, you know, cheering.
Katy
He’s on his 58th bear. Yeah.
Tiffany: You know, yeah. I mean, I don’t know that it’s that bad, but I think some of the emperors, you know, were pretty horrible. And you got it. You had to, you had to show your respect.
But an interesting thing about, about ancient Rome is that entertainment was almost like a right. You know, it was like every citizen had a ticket. You know, they had a little tessera, which, which granted them access to the colosseum. And it was free. It was separated by, of course, you know, social status and, of course, gender. The women had the worst seats, the women and the slaves.
But, you know, you could go, and I don’t know if you could go every day. I don’t know exactly how it worked, because clearly the whole population of the city couldn’t fit in the coliseum, and not everybody’s going every day, but it must have had, like, alternating days or something. But, you know, you could just go and think about the baths. I was, Claudio and I went to a bath complex on Sunday. It was kind of a belated anniversary and his birthday celebration.
Since we didn’t really celebrate either, the place that we’ve been planning to go, and it’s kind of modeled after an ancient Roman bathhouse. Loosely, loosely. They have a lot of the same aspects, the steam room and the cold plunge and the hot pool and lots of falling water that you can use to massage your shoulders. It got me thinking about the ancient Roman baths, the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. There were many, many of these, and it was such a part of Roman daily life. And they would spend hours there sometimes on a daily basis. I’m like, how much free time do you have to have to spend three or 4 hours every day getting massaged, swimming in a cold pool, swimming in a hot pool, going in the steam room, getting a scrub, reading because they had libraries there, playing a game of tennis afterwards. I mean, it was like a glorified athletic club and spa all rolled into one. And you just hang out there all afternoon or all morning if you were a woman. That just goes to show you how much leisure time they had.
Katy: Yeah, I mean, they probably, I mean, what you’re saying is true where, you know, the casual Roman citizen was not working, the slaves were, but the casual Roman citizen was sort of sitting about much of the time.
Tiffany: I mean, I think women were probably working a lot more because they had kids and they were cooking and cleaning if they didn’t have the money to have slaves. And, I mean, like I said, I don’t.
Katy: Yeah. Not your expectation.
Tiffany: I think maybe this is like a middle class, if there was such a thing as a middle class. You know, I don’t think that the poorest of the poor probably had that much leisure time. But, you know, this sort of middle area where people just sort of survived and picked up money here and there and went to the games and went to the baths and hung out and sat around in the forum half the day.
Katy: Well, I mean, now with all the modern technology that we have, I mean, the idea with the modern technology is that it is meant to open up space within our day. You know, the dishwasher, the washing machine, the microwave, all of these things, you know, the lawnmower. I don’t know, all of these things that are supposed to make day to day life easier and arguably do make day to day life easier.
Tiffany: Washing machine. I mean, I think the washing machine changed lives. It changed the life of every poor and lower middle class woman on the planet. You know, who was able to get one changed their life.
Katy: Yeah, I mean, for sure. I mean, even where I’m living right now was the first time I’d had a dishwasher in years. And I do have to say, you know, it’s so easy to forget how much time I used to spend washing dishes now that I have the luxury of just throwing them in a machine. But, you know, so arguably, we do have more time. Not everybody, but some people would have 3 hours to sit around in an evening, you know, at a fancy club or whatever. But do we. I mean, what do we do without leisure time these days?
Tiffany: The tv.
Katy: The tv.
Tiffany: Social media.
Katy: Yeah.
Tiffany: Looking at your phone, scrolling through your phone. I mean, all you have to do is look at your screen time at the end of the day to be like, oh, my God, how many hours did I waste?
Katy: A.
Tiffany: And of course, not all of that time is wasted because we all do productive things on our phones. We’re not just scrolling. But, you know, I think if you added it up, we all do take a lot of leisure time. It’s just. It’s maybe, like, in drips and drabs and it’s hidden and we don’t notice it. Instead of, like, I don’t know, saving it up for something good and worthwhile.
Katy: I mean, I wish that there were baths like that that I could just go sit around in at night chatting with people and playing tennis or what have you. I want to read you another a paragraph from this this book by Mary Beard, Emperor of Rome. That’s also about time off and just see what you think, she said. Roman writers often speculated on how their emperors spent their leisure or time off, as we would put it. In some ways those are misleading phrases to apply to the world of any autocrat, ancient or modern.
In the life of a monarch, the division between work and leisure is always blurred. Whatever the emperor did in any context, in bed or on the battlefield, in the senate or on the sports field, necessarily reflected on the character of his rule.
No matter what he’s doing, it’s reflecting on who he is as a leader, she goes on. Yet there was a difference between pen pushing, the speaking in the Senate, or the judging of legal cases, and what he chose to do when he was free from official duties. Roman terms do not exactly match our own, but there was still a significant contrast between otium, normally translated as leisure, but more accurately, what you did when you were in control of your own time and its opposite, negotiam, or what you had to do when you were not in control of your time.
Tiffany: That’s an interesting way to put it. To think about it.
Katy: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. But then she does give a list of some of the things that emperors like to do besides killing 100 bears. I could read some of these out. I’m not going to read all the details about who it’s attributed to, but I just thought some of the variety of what they might be into.
And she does note that some of these things they would only do in private, either with themselves or their closest inner circle. They would never just do this sitting out on the back porch or something of their epic palace. But she says, of course, the study of literature and oratory, writing poetry, playing music, a wholesome exercise like boxing, wrestling, running, or swimming and painting. She says it’s hard to imagine any emperor of Rome being a watercolorist, but that certain emperors are noted to have been watercolorists, which is interesting to picture.
And then she says that some people had more idiosyncratic hobbies. I thought you’d appreciate this one. Tiberius liked to ask his dinner guests tricky questions based on his recent readings. Like, for instance, what was the name of Jicuba’s mother? And then Titus. She credits him with having a sideline in imitating other people’s handwriting.
Tiffany: Okay. Interesting hobby.
Katy: Yeah. You could do a lot of things with that. I suppose so. I don’t know. I thought it was kind of fun to read some of their other things. And then she does talk about the games, and that gaming was a big thing that even emperors would fall into. And a lot of gambling. Also interesting to think about, you gambling with the leader of the Roman empire.
Tiffany: Would you want to be with an autocrat?
Katy: How much would you bet? Would you try to let him win?
Tiffany: Oh, you would absolutely let him win. Are you kidding?
Katy: Yeah, you wouldn’t dare.
Tiffany: Unless, unless he was like Nero and wanted to be punished. But I mean, you know, sometimes people enjoy losing. It could be part of his kink. I don’t know. Sorry. It’s just. You never know.
Katy: I’m reading another Roman history book right now that’s about the Caesars.
Tiffany: Oh, that’s another another Mary Beard book. Or is that a different one?
Katy: It’s not Mary Beard, but it is more modern. I’ll talk about it another day. Okay. What do you think the emperors of today do, though, on their time off? Do you think Joe Biden goes for a swim and a little watercolor painting?
Tiffany: No, I don’t. I don’t think so.
Katy: I don’t think so either. Well, all right, we’ll leave it there. Until next time.
Tiffany: Until next time.
