When Cicero’s Quaestorship came to an end in 74, he made his way back to Rome. He was feeling very pleased with himself. He had proved his worth as a public official. He had been able to practice and perfect his advocacy techniques in a more relaxed setting than the Forum. He had begun the process of attracting a political following. Above all, he seems to have had a good time. Nevertheless, the episode was a distraction from his true vocation and he avoided further foreign postings. For him, the real point of the Quaestorship was that it gave him entry to the Senate. After years of preparation the serious work of his life was, at last, beginning.
He told an amusing story against himself about an incident on his journey home, a reminder that his thirst for recognition was redeemed by an endearing sense of the ridiculous. “I was filled with the notion that the Roman People would fall over themselves to honor and promote me,” he recalled. He arrived at the seaside resort of Puteoli at the height of the tourist season and had his nose put out of joint when an acquaintance asked if he’d just come from Rome and what was the news. No, Cicero replied, he was on his way back from his province. “Of course,” said the man, “you’ve been in Africa.” No, Cicero observed huffily, Sicily.
Another member of the group, trying to show off his knowledge while smoothing over the misunderstanding, intervened. “Don’t you know that our friend was Quaestor in Syracuse?” With this final inaccuracy (for his headquarters in Lilybaeum had been at the other end of the island), Cicero gave up and decided to act as if he were a holidaymaker like everybody else and had gone only for the bathing.
On reflection he thought he had learned a useful lesson. “Once I had realized that the Roman People was rather deaf, but sharp-eyed, I stopped worrying about what the world heard about me. From that day on, I took care to be seen in person every day. I lived in the public eye and was always in the Forum. I would not allow my concierge, nor the lateness of the hour, to close the door on any visitor.” He trained himself to remember names and liked as far as possible to do without the services of a nomenclator, a slave with a good memory who accompanied a public figure when he went out and whispered in his ear the name of anyone important he was about to meet. Cicero made sure he knew exactly where well-known people lived, where they had their country houses, who their friends and neighbors were. On whatever road he happened to be traveling he could name the owners of the estates he was passing.
Cicero returned to Rome with a growing fortune, a wife and daughter and a bright future. He resumed the pattern of life common to all upper-class Romans of the period. Although he seldom troubled to describe the daily round in his correspondence, there is no reason to suppose that he deviated from the habits and conventions of his friends and peers.
The waking day lasted little longer than the hours of daylight. At dawn Cicero would have risen from his bed in a tiny, barely furnished bedroom and dressed. Traditionalists wore only a loincloth under their togas, but by the first century BC many also put on a tunic, no doubt especially during the winter months. The toga, a remarkably incommodious garment, was a large length of unbleached woolen cloth, cut in a rough circle as much as three meters in diameter. Putting it on was an art and the rich employed a trained slave to arrange its complicated folds. It was draped over the body in such a way that the right arm was free but the left covered. Drafty in winter and stickily hot in summer, it had few practical advantages to recommend it and took continual care and attention to keep in place. But, however uncomfortable, the toga was a Roman’s uniform and a powerful visual symbol of citizenship.
The day’s work began at once. Breakfast was a glass of water or, at most, bread dunked in wine and served with cheese, honey or olives. Cicero’s front door was opened to all comers but especially his clients or followers, who came to pay their respects and accompany him to the Forum when political or legal business took him there. Otherwise, the first half of the day was devoted to work in his study.
AS a rule Romans were clean-shaven. They paid a visit every day or so to a barber’s shop, a center of gossip and chatter, unless they owned a domestic slave who had the necessary skill with a razor. In the absence of soap, barbers used only water and considerable dexterity was required if the customer was to survive the experience without smarting eyes and cut skin. Young men delayed as long as possible before removing the down on their faces (as so often with the Romans, this was the occasion for a religious ceremony, the depositio barbae).
The afternoon was a time for a siesta or at least for winding down. There might be a public entertainment to attend; holidays were frequent and often marked by gladiatorial shows, chariot races, boxing matches or theatrical spectacles. Going to the public baths was the most important, or at least the most regular, of a Roman’s relaxations. These were similar to today’s Turkish baths, with steam rooms for washing and scraping the body, tepidaria for cooling off and cold plunges. The wealthy built small bathhouses in their own homes.
Cicero would take a light lunch or snack if he wished but did not have to wait long for the main meal of the day, dinner, which was taken in the mid- to late afternoon. For a man who liked company, as he did, this was the ideal occasion for entertainment and, witty and well-informed, he was at the top of many guest lists. The food served was as sumptuous as could be afforded and laws were passed in unavailing attempts to limit extravagance. Meals would begin with a gustatio or taster—honeyed wine and canapés. The main courses featured a varied diet of meats—chicken, turbot, boar and (a special delicacy) sows’ udders and vulvas. Fattened game, fowl and pigs were the height of luxury. Finally came dessert, for which only the lightest food was served—not only fruit but also shellfish.
During the late Republic a fashion grew for collecting fish, which sold for very high prices in the markets. Well-heeled gourmets had fishponds of their own where they bred eels, bream and lampreys. One was sold by a contemporary of Cicero for the astonishingly high price of 40,000 sesterces and the mentor of his adolescence, Crassus, was supposed to have gone into mourning when a lamprey of his died.
Diners, lying on couches, were provided with knives, spoons and toothpicks; forks were unknown and much use was made of fingers. Slaves went around with water jugs and towels so that guests could wash their hands course by course. Wine was served during the meal (rich and heavy, it was usually diluted with water), but the real drinking began once the food had been cleared away. This was the commissatio—a ceremonial drinking competition at which goblets had to be drained in a single gulp. Healths were drunk. This was the time for conversation and debate, which might last well into the evening, and was the Roman equivalent to the Greek symposium.
Unless out at a late-night party, most people were safely back at home by sunset, when public life shut down; at this hour Senate meetings were adjourned and the baths closed. For most people bedtime was early, although Cicero admitted to writing speeches or books and reading papers at night (there was a Latin word for it, lucubrare—to work by lamplight).
Sulla’s reforms promised a return to order. Traditionalists were back in charge and, despite a brief, unsuccessful insurrection by a popularis ex-Consul in 77, the Senate’s authority had been greatly enhanced. But two major new threats called for urgent attention. Spain, in the hands of a general who had fought under Marius, was in revolt. Then, in 73, a small band of gladiators escaped from their barracks in Padua, set up camp for a time on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, marched to the cattle ranches of the south and freed thousands of slaves. The gladiators were led by a Thracian named Spartacus, who not only was physically brave and aggressive but was an educated and cultured man. He also had an instinct for generalship and defeated four Roman armies sent out to dispose of him.