Living and Dying at the Port of Ancient Rome | Hacker News Reader

Living and Dying at the Port of Ancient Rome

arch.cam.ac.uk

84 pointspaganel26 comments

As an aside, if you ever visit Rome take an hour train ride to Ostia Antica. It is the ruins of an entire port town, complete with a tile mural where the baths were and stone seating for a forum. It is about a mile square and you have full reign to wander and explore it with hardly anyone else around.

I'm looking for excuses to visit beautiful Italy -- and Rome! -- once again, so I'll make a note of this. I also find the history of Rome (and of Italy too, actually) fascinating. Thanks!

Yes this is really worthwhile. After a few days of the tourist city life I always want to get out for some relaxing experiences, which this daytour provides. Also it is not far to continue for a short swim in the Mediterranean.

Ostia Antica is often overlooked. This is a smaller Pompeii.

Dr O’Connell continues, “Towards the end of the mid fifth century we see a shift in the diet of the local populations away from one rich in animal protein and imported wheat, olive oil, fish sauce and wine from North Africa, to something more akin to a ‘peasant diet’, made up of mainly plant proteins in things like potages and stews. They’re doing the same kind of manual labour and hard work, but were sustained by beans and lentils”

This goes back to an earlier discussion I had on this site. Roman history covers a lot of time and space. The typical city denizen might have had a very good life at a certain time and place, and not so much at another.

I mean... the middle of the fifth century was literally the unequivocal end of the Western Roman Empire and "Rome". Your point is a little out of place because this period isn't simply representative of long-term fluctuations in wealth and status; it was literally the demise of Rome as the epicenter of the Western world. "Rome" after this period was something else entirely.

Your point is a little out of place because this period isn't simply representative of long-term fluctuations in wealth and status

Point taken that the example in the article is a lower boundary and an outlier. I think my point still stands. There was a lot of variation in the quality of life of a city dweller.

It's pretty cool how the hexagonal harbour has survived. It's a lake now, Lago Traiano, about 2km inland.

Similar to the port of Carthage: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Punic+Port/@36.8447107,10....

Very interesting! I wonder where all the extra land came from and why?

Why is it all land now? Sea level change, or manually filled to extend the coast?

Probably the latter, although uplift happens, sometimes. And subsidence. The coast of Washington state rises over the course of (on average, 10ky window) 300 years, and suddenly drops 3-6 feet when the 9+ earthquake hits. The last one was 320 years ago. Most of the recent-ish ones were spaced closer to 500 years, but that is not predictive.

Neither, just silting up. The Tiber has been filling in that area with sediments for thousands of years. The harbour was just a tiny dent in that natural process.

Here's a poster with some progress drawings over the millennia: https://www.academia.edu/29407769/The_effect_of_the_Tiber_de...

Darn, I would like to see that poster, but I don't want to give Academia.edu (whatever that is) a copy of all my Google accounts!

”by the middle of the 5th century AD, the outer harbour basin was silting up”

So, the Tiber deposited silt in front of the port. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portus, that isn’t surprising. It says:

”Claudius constructed the first harbour on the Portus site, 4 km (2.5 mi) north of Ostia, enclosing an area of 69 hectares (170 acres), with two long curving moles projecting into the sea, and an artificial island, bearing a lighthouse, in the centre of the space between them.”

Those constructs must have decreased water flow, allowing (more) silt to settle.

That must have looked very impressive at the time (and must have been quite an engineering task). Makes me think of something out of a fantasy novel.

For interested folks, there is an experimental route bike from the center of Rome (i.e. the Vatican) to the sea and the ancient port of Fiumicino. Here is the article (in italian) you can translate via google: https://www.viagginbici.com/cicloturismo/cicloturismo-nel-la...

This seems to suggest the porters were not slaves.

Maybe it was just cheaper to feed them with the food imported via the port than transport other supplies for them from the countryside.

That wouldn't explain the fancy parts of their diet though. Huge quantities of grain where passing through Portus. Why would they waste the good stuff on slaves?

I do wonder if the cost of more exotic food in Portus would have been significantly cheaper than 15 miles away in Rome.

One of the real differences with Rome, over previous major civilizations, was that they had a quite established class system.

They worked hard to establish a strong middle class, which is arguably what fueled the majority of the Roman Empire's growth. The rich class also learned that a strong middle class meant lots of taxes, and thus lots of money in the upper government. This money fueled their expansion, construction of major monuments, and their strong military.

This is in stark contrast to previous civilizations that were built mostly on slavery. This isn't to say that Rome didn't have its share of slaves. Slaves were used in the building of many monuments of Rome that still stand today, but most of these slaves were prisoners of war. They were mostly used in dangerous construction projects and then later massacred for entertainment when they lose their usefulness. Rome had plenty of slaves, but not nearly as many per capita when compared to earlier civilizations.

So to your original point, these were likely middle-class dock workers that worked at this port. Just like dock workers today they made a decent salary (this was before unions, now dock workers do surprisingly well for themselves) and lived in reasonable homes and ate surprisingly well.

In fact I would argue that many of them probably were demoted in social status after Rome fell in the 400-500s AD. With Rome no longer the superpower that it once was, the desire to trade with Rome goes down, which meant that fewer ships come into port, which is bad for the dock workers that work at that port. Many of them probably lost their job and this may be the contributing factor to the food changes we see over the next hundred years with these people. There is far less money moving through their city now and more people move to a lower social-economic class.

Imagine if the US immediately collapsed. The billions of dollars of trade that goes in and out of the Los Angeles port (the largest port in the US) would drop by 90% or more. Many of those dock workers, who right now are strong middle-class workers, would lose their jobs and unemployment country-wide would increase dramatically (probably well over 25%). This would make it difficult for dock workers to find new jobs and many would start going hungry or reach poverty status.

It isn't too far of a stretch to assume that this is what happened to Rome's largest port after Rome collapsed.

> Rome had plenty of slaves, but not nearly as many per capita when compared to earlier civilizations.

Interesting. What are the numbers?

Imagine if the US immediately collapsed.

After the collapse of the USSR, regional governments and foreign governments stepped in. If the USA collapsed, New York, Texas, and California would have something to say about it. My point is that "collapse" is rather nonspecific.

The billions of dollars of trade that goes in and out of the Los Angeles port (the largest port in the US) would drop by 90% or more.

That narrows it down a bit.

>After the collapse of the USSR, regional governments and foreign governments stepped in

There was nevertheless a 30% drop in GDP. That's bound to have some effect.

A strong middle class was also key to their military strength, because slaves don't make very good soldiers (with a few exceptions like the Mamluks or Janissaries, but that was a very unusual form of slavery).

I wonder if they were or weren't. Slavery in the Roman empire took a lot of forms from manual labor and prostitution to skilled and educated slaves. Depending on when you're talking about slaves even had some explicitly stated rights.

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