Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Life Out of Doors
Ramsay MacMullen (1928-2022), Enemies of the Roman Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 166-167:
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The climate of most of the Mediterranean basin invited people to live out of doors. Their homes held out no conflicting attraction: cramped, dark; for furniture, straw beds and a chest containing clothes and valuables; on the floor a brazier to cook the soup, sending savor and smoke up to the ceiling, from which, in a hammock contraption, were suspended a baby or two. Turning from such depressing quarters, men satisfied their sociability at cookshops and taverns, gathered at street-corner fountains, or, where the blank walls of houses fell back to form a market place, idled their way through the day's buying and selling. Wealthy people provided all open points of the city with ambitious amenities, very pleasant to enjoy during most seasons of the year...Related posts:
