Furniture in Ancient Rome: Beds, Couches, Tables, Chairs, Fridges | Early European History And Religion

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FURNITURE IN ANCIENT ROME

Cubiculum (bedroom) at Villa of P Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, with reconstructed furniture

The wealthy owned lavishly decorated and inlaid furniture. Some dining rooms had special couches which sat three people and had special arm rests to support and hold plates. A typical bedroom in 600 B.C. contained a bed made of wicker or wood, a coffer for valuables and a simple chair. Clay jars as tall as 1½ meters were used for storing grain, oil and wine. Pine tar was valuable stuff. It was used for everything from caulking wooden ships to a flavoring for wine.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Furniture is, of course, the most temporary of domestic decoration, easily moved and often replaced. Certain rooms required specific pieces. For example, the atrium of a Roman house was often sparsely furnished, holding chests or arcae of family treasures and documents, as well as a few pieces of furniture such as small tables and candelabra. In the dining room, Romans were accustomed to recline as they dined and so rested on couches while they ate and were served and entertained by slaves. Often fine tableware, such as the silver tableware from the Tivoli hoard in the Museum's collection, was displayed in cabinets around the dining room. [Source: Ian Lockey, Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2009, metmuseum.org \^/]

Our knowledge of Roman furniture is largely indirect, because only such articles have come down to us as were made of stone or metal. Fortunately the secondary sources are abundant and good. Many articles are incidentally described in works of literature, many are shown in the wall paintings mentioned above, and some have been restored from casts taken in the hardened ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In general we may say that the Romans had very few articles of furniture in their houses, and that they cared less for comfort, not to say luxurious ease, than they did for costly materials, fine workmanship, and artistic forms. The mansions on the Palatine were enriched with all the spoils of Greece and Asia, but it may be doubted whether there were many comfortable beds within the walls of Rome. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

Lack of Furniture in Ancient Rome

Apart from their statues of marble and bronze, even furniture the wealthy was relatively sparse for wealth displayed itself not in the number of items but in their quality, the precious materials employed, and the rare shapes which bore witness to their owner's taste. In a passage of Juvenal, the millionaire he pictures was taking precaution to save not what we nowadays would call "furniture' but his curios and objects d'art. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Many of the most common and useful articles of modern furniture were entirely unknown to the Romans. No mirrors hung on their walls. They had no desks or writing tables, no dressers or chiffoniers, no glass-doored cabinets for the display of bric-a-brac, tableware, or books, no mantels, no hat-racks even. The principal articles found in even the best houses were couches or beds, chairs, tables and lamps. If to these we add chests or wooden cabinets with doors, an occasional brazier, and still rarer, a water-clock, we shall have everything that can be called furniture, except tableware and kitchen utensils. Still it must not be thought that their rooms presented a desolate or dreary appearance. When one considers the decorations, the stately pomp of the atrium, and the rare beauty of the peristylium, it is evident that a very few articles of real artistic excellence were more in keeping with the Roman house than would have been the litter and jumble that we sometimes have in our rooms.” |+|

Types of Furniture Found in Ancient Rome

The Greek and Roman furniture which has come down to us is necessarily small in amount and fragmentary because, like most modern furniture, it was made of wood and consequently has been destroyed by damp. There remain, however, some fairly complete pieces, and a considerable number of metal fittings and casings, as well as some models and many illustrations from vases. Among the objects from Cyprus are two bronze tripods, and three ornaments consisting of goats’ feet and bulls’ heads from another. The bronze lions’ paws were feet for a large chair or chest. We have also a little terracotta chair with a diminutive figure in it and a three-legged table of the kind used to set beside a dining-couch, both from Cyprus, as well as a round table on three legs, of much later date. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Two lekythoi, decorated with interior scenes, show chairs of a very graceful and comfortable type, the Greek klismos, and the same kind of chair is seen on the grave-monument of a lady, and on a large amphora. The lady playing a kithara in the wall-painting is seated in a large armchair, the thronos. There is a bronze casing of beautiful work for a piece of furniture and a bronze chair-leg and an ornament terminating in the head of a young bullock. Two tripods and some bronze mountings from Cyprus.

In the cubiculum from Boscoreale is a table of marble and bronze. The bronze rim which surrounds the marble top is inlaid with silver and niello in a beautiful pattern of palmettes and rosette ornaments. A couch, probably for dining, and a footstool stand in the corridor. Bedsteads, which were similar to this couch in shape, were merely frames on which thongs were stretched, like the old-fashioned corded beds, the interlaced leather bands acting as springs. The wooden frames were frequently decorated with bronze fittings, and in the Hellenistic and Roman periods inlay and mountings of silver, gold, ivory, and tortoise-shell were employed for the rich. Couches and beds were usually supplied with a raised head-rest, often finished with bronze animal-heads, such as the mule-heads. Clothing was kept in chests, which were well adapted to the large pieces of cloth composing a costume. One chest on an amphora is decorated with a scene from the story of Danaë and Perseus. There exists a miniature chest of white stone from which the cover has been lost.

Essentials apart from beds, consisted of the covers, the cloths, the counterpanes, the cushions, which were spread over or placed on the bed, at the foot of the table, on the seat of the stool, and on the bench; and finally, the eating utensils and the jewellery. Silver table services were so common that Martial ridicules patrons who were too miserly of their Saturnalian gifts to give their clients at least five pounds of silverware. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Only the very poor used earthenware. The rich had vessels carved by a master hand, sparkling with gold and set with precious stones. Reading some of the ancient descriptions, one seems to relive a scene out of the Arabian Nights, set in spacious, unencumbered rooms where wealth is revealed only by the profusion and depth of the divans, the iridescence of damask, the sparkle of jewellery and of damascened copper and yet all the elements of that "comfort" to which the West has grown so much attached are lacking.

Roman-Era ‘Fridge’ Found in Bulgaria

Roman fridge in Bulgaria

Archaeology magazine reported: Much like today’s college students, Roman legionaries had small fridges in their dorms to store leftovers. Excavation of a barracks in the frontier fortress of Novae exposed a small ceramic-tile food storage unit along with fragments of dishware. Analysis of residues in the refrigerator showed that it contained traces of cooked meat. The soldiers even used small incense-burning vessels to repel unwelcome insects attracted to their fare.[Source: Archaeology magazine, January 2023]

The food storage unit was made of ceramic plates, according to an October 7, 2022 7 news release from the Science in Poland publication. The fridge still had animal bones, fragments of dishes, and traces of cooked meat, archaeologists said. The fridge also contained parts of a small bone that researchers speculated worked as a “censor” for insect repellent, experts said. [Source: Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, October 11, 2022]

Archaeologists found another fridge when they uncovered lead and ceramic water pipes, the University of Warsaw said in a September 13, 2023 news release. Lead archaeologist Piotr Dyczek said in the release. The fridge still had a meal inside, including wine drinking vessels, bowls and animal bones. “The discovery of such ‘refrigerators’ are rare, because they rarely survive reconstructions of buildings,” Dyczek said previously.[Source: Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, September 19, 2023]

According to the Miami Herald: Novae was built for Roman troops in the first century CE as a permanent base on the lower Danube River. The camp housed Italian military recruits until the middle of the fifth century. The exact age of the fridge and its contents have not yet been determined. Excavations at Novae also uncovered ruins of a wooden barracks building linked to the camp’s first permanently-stationed Roman troops, the camp’s earliest known well and a furnace from the fourth century. Archaeologists also unearthed a rare set of wine drinking vessels with a black coloring and a small, silver pendant in the shape of a detailed mouse, the remains of walls, a collection of coins, lead and ceramic pipes, and a house with fishing weights, spindles and weaving, archaeologists said. Novae is in the northern Bulgarian city of Svishtov, about 155 miles northeast of Sofia.

Roman Underground Shaft Refrigerators?

Archaeologists near the Swiss city of Basel are trying to establish if shafts discovered at Switzerland’s Roman Augusta Raurica site in 2013 could have been ancient refrigerators. According to The Local: The Romans used shafts like the four-meter deep examples at Augusta Raurica — some 20 kilometers from Basel — as cool stores during summer. The shafts were filled with snow and ice during winter and then covered with straw to keep the space cool well into the summer months. This then allowed for everything from cheese to wine — and even oysters — to be preserved during warm weather.[Source The Local Switzerland, April 3, 2018]

A team lead by Peter-Andrew Schwarz from the University of Basel is attempting has tried several times to demonstrate that the Augusta Raurica shafts were indeed used as fridges, Swiss news agency SDA/ATS reports A first attempt to recreate the ancient cool box failed after archaeologists at the dig filed the shaft with snow all in one go. But that experiment showed temperatures in the shaft were above freezing point even in winter. The second try was more successful: the shaft was gradually filled with snow and ice blocks were placed inside as well. Using these methods, snow remained until June.

For the third try researchers used methods developed by the so-called ‘nevaters’ or ice-makers on the Spanish island of Majorca. Schwarz and his team placed 20–30-centimeter-thick layers of snow into the shaft. These individual layers will then be compacted down with a straw cover placed on top of each one. “With this method, people in Majorca could keep food cool in summer before the arrival of electric fridges,” Schwarz told regional daily Basler Zeitung in 2017. The experiment won’t prove that the mysterious shaft was actually a Roman fridge but will show that this is possible, Schwarz told the SDA/ATS news agency.

Beds in Ancient Rome

Roman banquet couch

For every Roman, the main item of furniture was the bed (lectus) on which he slept during his siesta and at night and on which he reclined by day to eat, read, write, or receive visitors. Humble people made shift with a shelf of masonry built along the wall and covered with a pallet. Those better off had handsomer and more elaborate couches in proportion to their means. Most beds were single ones (lectuli). There were double beds for married couples (lecti geniales); beds for three which graced the dining-room (triclinia) ; and those who wished to make a splash and astonish the neighbours had couches for six. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Some were cast in bronze; most were simply carved in wood, either in oak or maple, terebinth or arbor vitae, or it might be in those exotic woods with undulating grain and changing lights which reflected a thousand colors like a peacock's tail (lecti pavonini). Some beds boasted bronze feet and a wooden frame, others again ivory feet and a frame of bronze. In some cases the woodwork was inlaid with tortoise-shell; in some the bronze was nielloed with silver and gold. There were even some, like Trimalchio's, of massive silver. Whatever its nature and style, the bed was the major piece of furniture alike in the aristocratic domus and in the proletarian insula, and in many cases it deterred the Romans from seeking to provide themselves with anything else.

A typical Roman bedroom contained a chamber pot, chair and a wooden bed, often made of oak, maple or cedar. Mattresses were stuffed with either straw reeds, wools, feathers or swansdown, depending on what the owner could afford. Pliny described several kinds of mattresses. Noblemen and women used sheets made from silk or linen.

On a base of interwoven strips of webbing were placed a mattress (torus) and a bolster (culcita, cervical) whose stuffing (tomentum) was made of straw or reeds among the poor and among the rich of wool shorn from the Leuconian flocks in the valley of the Meuse, or even of swan's down. But there was neither a proper mattress underneath nor sheets above. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

The torus was spread with two coverings (tapetia): on one (stragulum) the sleeper lay, the other he pulled over him (operimentum). The bed was then spread with a counterpane (lodix) or a multicolored damask quilt (polymitum) Finally, at the foot of the bed, ante torum as the Romans put it, there lay a bed* side mat (toral) which often rivalled the lodices in luxury.

Couches in Ancient Rome

The couch (lectus, lectulus) was found everywhere in the Roman house, as a sofa by day, a bed by night. In its simplest form it consisted of a frame of wood with straps across the top on which was laid a mattress. At one end there was an arm, as in the case of our sofas; sometimes there was an arm at each end, and a back besides. The back seems to have been a Roman addition to the ordinary form of the ancient couch. The couch was always provided with pillows and rugs or coverlets. The mattress was originally stuffed with straw, but this gave place to wool and even feathers. In some of the bedrooms of Pompeii the frame seems to have been lacking; in such cases the mattress was laid on a support built up from the floor. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

The couches used for beds seem to have been larger than those used as sofas, and they were so high that stools or even steps were necessary accompaniments. As a sofa the lectus was used in the library for reading and writing; the student supported himself on his left arm and held the book or writing with the right hand. In the dining-room it had a permanent place, as will be described later. Its honorary position in the great hall has already been mentioned. It will be seen that the lectus could be made highly ornamental. The legs and arms were carved or made of costly woods, or inlaid or plated with tortoise-shell, ivory, or the precious metals. We read even of frames of solid silver. The coverings were often made of the finest fabrics, dyed in the most brilliant colors, and worked with figures of gold.” |+|

Roman 'Bed Burials'

In February 2024, archaeologists announced that they had unearthed a 2,000-year-old Roman funerary bed along with five oak coffins and skeletons at a construction site in London.Live Science reported: While three previously known coffins made of Roman timber were found elsewhere in London from the Roman Britain period (A.D. 43 to 410), this marks the first time that a complete funerary bed has been discovered in Britain. Crafted from oak, the bed includes carved feet and joints attached with small wooden pegs. [Source Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, February 5, 2024]

Researchers determined the bed had been dismantled before being placed in the grave "but may have been used to carry the individual to the burial and was likely intended as a grave good for use in the afterlife." In addition to the coffins and the five beds at the London site, researchers unearthed human skeletal remains and various personal effects, including beads, a glass vial and a decorative lamp that date to the very early Roman Britain period (A.D. 48 to 80).

In 2022, archaeologists said they found a burial of woman lying on bronze 'mermaid bed' dated to the first century B.C. near the city of Kozani in northern Greece. The bed is plain looking, and has a rectangular bronze headboard on both ends. It has several wooden slats. The legs are made out of several knobbly bits of bronze, but nothing intricate. According to Live Science: Depictions of mermaids decorate the posts of the bed. The bed also displays an image of a bird holding a snake in its mouth, a symbol of the ancient Greek god Apollo. The woman's head was covered with gold laurel leaves that likely were part of a wreath, Areti Chondrogianni-Metoki, director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Kozani, told Live Science in an email. The wooden portions of the bed have decomposed. The bronze bed burial was found in 2019. In 2021, another bed burial was found in a nearby cemetery that had an elderly man buried on the remains of a bed made of iron and wood. That burial dated to the fourth century B.C. [Source Owen Jarus, Live Science, June 3, 2022]

In 2023, archaeology announced that they had found the remains of burnt bed at Pompeii. The BBC reported The bed itself is a charred mass caused by a fire. It is barely recognisable apart from its broad outline seared into the walls and floor. If you look closely at the debris, you can see blackened fragments of the textile bedclothes and even the filling from the mattress. Archaeologists can tell from the position of these carbonised remains that the fire occurred relatively early in the eruption. They speculate that a lamp might have been knocked over in the panic to get out. [Source: Jonathan Amos, BBC, July 19, 2023]

recreated room of a Roman villa in Zaragoza, Spain

Tables in Ancient Rome

The table (mensa) was an important article of furniture in the Roman house, whether we consider its manifold uses, or the prices often paid for certain kinds. Tables varied in form and construction as much as our own, many of which are copied directly from Roman models. All sorts of materials were used for their supports and tops: stone wood, solid or veneered, the precious metals, probably in thin plates only. The most costly, so far as we know, were the round tables made from cross sections of the citrus tree. The wood was beautifully marked and single pieces could be had from three to four feet in diameter. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

Cicero paid $20,000 for such a table, Asinius Pollio $44,000 for another, King Juba $52,000 for a third; the family of the Cethegi possessed one valued at $60,000. Special names were given to tables of certain forms. The monopodium was a table or stand with but one support, used especially to hold a lamp or toilet articles. The abacus was a table with a rectangular top having a raised rim; it was used for plates and dishes, in the place of the modern sideboard. The delphica (sc. mensa) had three legs. Tables were frequently made with adjustable legs, so that the height might be altered. On the other hand the permanent tables in the triclinia were often of solid masonry or concrete built up from the floor; they had tops of polished stone or mosaic. The table gave a better opportunity than even the couch or chair for artistic workmanship,

Roman tables had little in common with ours. They never developed into sturdy tables with four legs those were introduced late in history through the intermediary of Christian rites. When the empire was in its glory, the mensa was a set of little shelves in tiers, supported on one leg, and used to display for a visitor's admiration the most valuable treasures of the house (cartibula). Alternatively, it might be a low table of wood or bronze with three or four adjustable supports (trapezophores), or a simple tripod whose folding metal legs usually ended in a lion's claw. As for seats, remains of these are not without reason more rarely found in the excavations than tables. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Chairs in Ancient Rome

The armchair with back, the thronus, was reserved for the divinity; the chair with a more or less sloping back, the cathedra, was especially popular with women. Great ladies, whose indolence is a target for Juvenal's scorn, would languidly repose in them, and we have literary record of their existence in two houses : the reception hall in the palace of Augustus Corneille's "Be seated, Cinna" is derived directly from Seneca's account and in the room (cubiculum) where the younger Pliny invited his friends to come and talk with him. Also they appear in literature as the distinguishing property of the master who is teaching in a schola or, in connection with religious ceremonies, as the property of the jrater arvalis of the official religion, 50 of the head of certain esoteric pagan sects, and later of the Christian presbyter. We speak with perfect right, therefore, of the "Chair of Saint Peter" or the "chair" of a university professor. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Ordinarily the Romans were content with benches (scamna) or stools (subsellia) or sellae without arms or back, which they carried about with thenr out of doors. Even when the seat was the magistrate's ivory sclla curulis, or made of gold like Julius Caesar's, it was never more than a folding "camp stool."

The primitive form of seat (sedile) among the Romans, as elsewhere, was the stool or bench with four perpendicular legs and no back. The remarkable fact is that it did not give place to something better as soon as means permitted. The stool (sella) was the ordinary seat for one person, used by men and women resting or working, and by children and slaves at their meals as well. The bench (subsellium) differed from the stool only in accommodating more than one person. It was used by senators in the curia, by jurors in the courts, and by boys in the school, as well as in private houses. A special form of the sella was the famous curule chair (sella curulis), having curved legs of ivory. The curule chair folded up like our camp-stools for convenience of carriage and had straps across the top to support the cushion which formed the seat. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

The first improvement upon the sella was the solium, a stiff, straight, high-backed chair with solid arms; it looked as if cut from a single block of wood, and was so high that a footstool was as necessary with it as with a bed. Poets represented gods and kings as seated in such a chair, and it was kept in the atrium for the use of the patron when he received his clients . Lastly, we find the cathedra, a chair without arms, but with a curved back sometimes fixed at an easy angle (cathedra supina), the only approximation to a comfortable seat that the Romans knew. It was at first used by women only as it was regarded too luxurious for men, but finally came into general use. Its employment by teachers in the Schools of Rhetoric gave rise to the expression ex cathedra, applied to authoritative utterances of every kind, and its use by bishops explains our word “cathedral.” Neither the solium nor the cathedra was upholstered, but cushions and coverings were used with them both as with the lecti, and they afforded like opportunities for skillful workmanship and lavish decoration. |+|

especially in the matter of carving and inlaying the legs and top.” |+|

recreated room of a Roman villa in Borg, Germany

Chests and Cabinets in Ancient Rome

Every house was supplied with chests (arcae) of various sizes for the purpose of storing clothes and other articles not always in use, and for the safe keeping of papers, money, and jewelry. The material was usually wood; the arcae were often bound with iron and ornamented with hinges and locks of bronze. The smaller arcae, used for jewel cases, were often made of silver or even of gold. Of most importance, perhaps, was the strong box, kept in the tablium, in which the pater familias stored his ready money. It was made as strong as possible so that it could not easily be opened by force, and was so large and heavy that it could not be carried away entire. As an additional precaution it was sometimes chained to the floor. Often, too, it was richly carved and mounted. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“The cabinets (armaria) were designed for similar purposes and made of similar materials. They were often divided into compartments and were always supplied with hinges and locks. Two of the most important uses of these cabinets have been mentioned already: in the library they preserved books against mice and men, and in the alae they held the imagines, or death masks of wax. It must be noticed that the armaria lacked the convenient glass doors of the cabinets or cases that we use for books and similar things, but they were as well adapted to decorative purposes as the other articles of furniture that have been mentioned. |+|

Lamps in Ancient Rome

20120227-lamp 443px-RGM_110.jpg
Roman oil lamp
“The Roman lamp (lucerna) was essentially simple enough, merely a vessel that would hold olive oil or melted grease with threads twisted loosely together for a wick or wicks, drawn out through one or more holes in the cover or top. Usually there was a special hole through which the lamp was filled. The light thus furnished must have been very uncertain and dim. There was no glass to keep the flame steady; there was never a chimney or central draft. As works of art, however, lamps were often exceedingly beautiful. Even those of the cheapest material were frequently of graceful form and proportions, while to those of costly material the skill of the artist in many cases must have given a value far above that of the rare stones or precious metals of which they were made. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“Some of these lamps were intended to be carried in the hand, as shown by the handles, others to be suspended from the ceiling by chains. Others were kept on tables expressly made for them, as the monopodia commonly used in the bedrooms, or the tripod. For lighting the public rooms there were, besides these, tall stands, like those of our “floor lamps”. On some of these, several lamps were placed or hung at a time. Some stands were adjustable in height. The name of the lamp-stands (candelabra) shows that they were originally intended to hold wax or tallow candles (candelae), and the fact that these candles were supplanted in the houses of the rich by the smoking and ill-smelling lamp is good proof that the Romans were not skilled in the art of candle-making. Finally, it may be noticed that a supply of torches (faces) of dry, inflammable wood, often soaked in oil or smeared with pitch, was kept near the outer door for use upon the streets, because the streets were not lighted at night.” |+|

The earliest description of candles comes from A.D. first century Rome. They were made from tallow, a colorless and tasteless solid derived from animal fat, and were regarded as inferior substitutes for oil lamps. Early candles were edible and people sometimes ate them when they were desperately hungry.In Pompeii the rooms were lighted either by candles (candelae) made of tallow or wax; or by oil lamps (lucernae) made of terra cotta, or of bronze, worked sometimes into exquisite designs.

Sundials in Ancient Rome

The place of our clock was taken by the sundial, such as is often seen nowadays in our parks and gardens; this measured the hours of the day by the shadow of a stick or pin. Although sundials had been around at least since 1500 B.C. in ancient Egypt they became more sophisticated and common place under the Romans. Roman sundials not only mapped out hours they cut them into halves and quarters. Not everyone was happy about the advancement. The Roman playwright Plautus wrote in the 2nd century B.C.: “The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours. Confound him, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack up my days so wretchedly into small pieces!”

The principle of the sun-dial was sometimes applied on a grandiose scale: in 10 B.C., for instance, Augustus erected in the Campus Martius the great obelisk of Montecitorio to serve as the giant gnomon whose shadow would mark the daylight hours on lines of bronze inlaid into the marble pavement below. Sometimes, on the other hand, it was applied to more and more minute devices which eventually evolved into miniature solaria or pocket dials that served the same purpose as our watches. Pocket sun-dials have been discovered at Forbach and Aquileia which scarcely exceed three centimeters in diameter. But at the same time the public buildings of the Urbs and even the private houses of the wealthy were tending to be equipped with more and more highly perfected water-clocks. From the time of Augustus, clepsydrarii and organarii rivalled each other in ingenuity of construction and elaboration of accessories. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024