Life in Ancient Rome
Do you know that if you lived during ancient Rome and you have a crooked nose, you would have been considered a leader? Your birthday would have been a major event too and celebrated like a festival, with gifts from relatives, friends and neighbors. Sounds interesting? Good for those with crooked noses, but life’s not all sunny for other people who were part of the ancient Rome.
A toga was usually worn by the early Romans. This is basically just a white sheet that is about nine meters in length. However, the togas were found to be very inconvenient that they did not stay long in the fashion scene. Tunis took the place of the togas, which look and feel like oversized shirts.
Men of ancient Rome wore rings, and proper manners tell them to wear only one ring. However, some men would purposely go against what was “right” and wore as many as sixteen rings. There were no definite hairstyles and no rules about beards. Men sport varied styles throughout the years.
Women in ancient Rome take great pride in how they look. They love to put on makeup, fix their hair, dress up, and adorn themselves with jewelries. And like the men, women wore sandals, but theirs were brightly-colored ones.
Womens and men in Ancient Rome
Girls get married when they were about 12 years old or even less. They were expected to bear as many children as they can afford to have. Women, who were not wealthy families had to go to work and help support their families. Husbands preferred sons over daughters because sons could carry their family names. Thus, exposing a newborn was common in ancient Rome. This means that the newborn babies were displayed at the father’s feet for recognition. In the event that the father picks up the child, the child was recognized as the father’s own. Babies who were not recognized were either thrown in the river or left on the same spot to starve.
Even if ancient Rome sounds close to “romance”, it does not mean the same thing. In fact, ancient Rome speaks little, if at all, about romance. Marriage was not even held as a ceremony. It was merely a union of two people living together as a couple or whenever a dowry was paid. Divorce is just as simple as marriage was. Since infertility is a strong ground for divorce, the wives are actually expected to initiate the divorce to make way for the husbands to have children with somebody else.
Unless you’re a leader or a wealthy person in ancient Rome, there isn’t much to be envious about that time, and more so if you’re a woman. However, people seem to have found pleasures in each of their lives.