Living in ancient Rome

Chapter 4 Meetings

After several hours of hitchhiking without results, finally a farmer named Lucio Anneo, headed to Rome for the market, with his cart full of vegetables and spices pulled by an old donkey with a gray coat, stops and decides to take me with him.
During the journey, he tells me various things about the monarchical age that has just ended and some customs.
He points out to me some country houses (but they can also be by the sea), called villae, and they belong to the aristocrats;  they are a kind of holiday homes;  approaching the center instead there are the domus;  Cesare also has one like this: it is sumptuous, adorned with marbles, statues and mosaics.  The house is organized around two large rooms: the atrium with the impluvium (central courtyard where there is a rainwater collection tank) and the tablinum (main living room) and is often enriched by a garden;
Anneo explains to me that the bigger the house, the more important the family is.
He also talks to me about rus, the typical farmhouse or, as he defines it, “peasants' house”;
The of him stands in the middle of a cultivated field.  It has no furniture and often animals and humans live together, in unsanitary conditions.
He explains to me that when he was young (more or less he was in the midst of the maximum extension of the monarchical age, which ended with the last king Tarquinio Il Superbo in 509 BC), that there were social classes.
He was part of the plebeians, that is, all free Roman citizens;
(merchants, peasants, artisans etc ... also fell into the category)
Then there were the patricians, the aristocrats and finally the slaves;  the latter had no rights and were often prisoners of war or anyone who could not pay off a debt contracted;  slavery was often hereditary.
He also explains to me that during this historical period, there were also many commercial exchanges of textiles, weapons, food, salt with Etruscans and Phoenicians.
Wheat, oil and wine: these are the typical foods of the ancient Romans.
Before the spread of bread, (2nd century BC), wheat was used for the preparation of focaccia;  combined with onions, garlic and cabbage, bread forms the basis of the city's diet while rich people have more refined foods such as game, dried fruit and shellfish.
The banquets are consumed in rooms furnished with sofas (triclinium), on which one eats lying down, supporting oneself with the left arm bent while the right hand, free, is used to grab food.
Deaths from suffocation are frequent, he says;  being stretched out, the food cannot go straight into the trachea and the Romans usually throw up and then continue to eat.
Could it be true?  I don't know how much credibility the words of a farmer who dedicated his life to the fields have ...
As for dressing and fashion these days, on official occasions, people wear the toga while in everyday life, they use the tunic;
The roads and means of transport are very different and perhaps even more ecological than ours.
The litter is certainly the most common among the numerous types of means of transport for people in a circle and practical for getting around the city.
The plaustrum is used for the transport of building material;
The assedum;
The currus, used for the postal service;
The carpentum.
Roads and their technical construction:
the first of the four layers is the statumen, a massive base, made up of blocks at least 30 cm high.
The second is the ruderatio, made of rounded stones bound with lime.
The third represents the nucleus, a layer of gravel leveled with cylinders.
Finally, the fourth layer, the cladding, consists of the pavimentum, made of large boulders of hard basaltic stone, an indestructible material.
The humpback structure is instead reserved for the central part of the carriageway, in order to facilitate the outflow of rainwater which is then conveyed into channels, to allow its disposal.  As for the dimensions of the Roman roads, the standard ones oscillate between four and six meters in width;  the larger ones that allow the passage of two wagons, between ten and fourteen meters.
The sidewalks, on the other hand, are in clay or paved, and are between three and ten meters wide.  The huge stone pedestrian crossings placed in the middle of the road and slightly raised to allow the normal circulation of vehicles, allow citizens to comfortably cross the carriageway, as the road is often flooded and dirty.