For places of social resort there were the baths, the colonnades, the semicircular public seats, the steps of public buildings, the shops, and the eating-houses and taverns.  The middle classes, in the absence of the modern clubs, met to gossip at the barber’s, the bookseller’s, or the doctor’s.  Those of a humbler grade would often betake themselves to the establishments corresponding to the modern Italian osterie, where were to be obtained wine with hot or cold water and also cooked food.  As they sat on their stools in these “greasy and smoky” haunts they might be compelled, says the satirist, to mix with “sailors, thieves, runaway slaves, and the executioner,” but even men of higher standing were often not unwilling to seek low pleasures amid such surroundings, especially when, as was frequently the case, there was provision for secret dicing beyond the observation of the police.

From literature, meanwhile, we may fill in their vivacious language, the courteous terms the people apply to each other, such as “you ass, pig, monkey, cuckoo, chump, blockhead, fungus,” or, on the other side, “my honey, my heart, my dove, my life, my sparrowkin, my dainty cheese.”  But to go more fully into matters like these would carry us too far afield.

We will end this topic with a last look at the ordinary free workman, who wears no toga, but simply a girt-up tunic, a pair of boots, and a conical cap, and who goes home to his plain fare of bread, porridge, lentil soup, goats’-milk cheese, “broad” and “French” beans, beetroot, leeks, salted or smoked bacon, sausages, and black-pudding, which he will eat off earthenware or a wooden trencher, and wash down with cheap but not unwholesome wine mixed with water.  He has no pipe to smoke; he has never heard of tea, coffee, or spirits.  He may have been told that certain remote barbarians drink beer, and he may know of a thing called butter, but he would not touch it so long as he can get olive-oil.  However humble his home, he will endeavour to own a silver salt-cellar, and to keep it as an heirloom.

CHAPTER XV

HOLIDAYS AND AMUSEMENTS:  THEATRE, CIRCUS, AMPHITHEATRE

These topics bring us naturally to the consideration of the chief amusements and entertainments of Rome and of those parts of the empire which were either fairly romanized or else contained a large number of resident Romans.

Holidays, some of them lasting over several days, were at this date liberally spread throughout the year.  Most of them belonged to fixed dates, others were festivals specially proclaimed for victories or other causes of rejoicing.  We may estimate their average number at Rome itself at about a hundred.  At first sight this might indicate an astonishing waste of time and the prevalence of enormous indolence.  But we must remember that the Romans had no such thing as Sunday.  Our own Sundays and the weekly half-holidays