Roman Nights: Soot, Smoke, and Oil Lamps

Marcus Valerius

You, you really do not know true darkness until you have stood in Rome at sunset. I am talking about the second the sun drops behind the Janiculum hill here in the year one hundred and ten AD. Every tenement, every shop, every bakery, it, it all just collapses into near pitch black darkness. And what do we have to push back against that wall of night? This little thing in my hand. A lucerna. A clay oil lamp no larger than your palm. It gives off, oh, barely one tenth the light of a modern forty watt light bulb, if you can even imagine such a thing. It flickers, it sputters, and yet, it is the only reason we do not smash our shins on the stool the moment we step inside.

Marcus Valerius

I was just down at a vendor stall near the edge of the Subura, bargaining for a fresh one. You pick it up, and you can actually feel the seam along the side where the potter pressed the wet clay into a two part plaster mold. It is mass produced. In fact, if you flip it over and look at the bottom, there is a brand stamp fired right into the clay. F O R T I S. Fortis. That one workshop in Northern Italy makes millions of these things! You can find lamps with that exact same Fortis stamp in military camps along the cold Scottish border or out in the deserts of Syria. It is the most common piece of molded terracotta in the entire Roman world.

Marcus Valerius

But here is the thing people never tell you about living in the city. What do we put inside it for fuel? You might think, ah, fine Mediterranean olive oil! Well, no. Pristine first press olive oil, oleum flos, that is for the dining table. You drizzle that over fresh bread or fish. You do not burn it in a lamp! For lighting, we use amurca. Amurca is the dark, bitter, foul smelling sludge left over from pressing rotten olives and crushed pits. It is cheap, it is thick, and Jupiter help me, it stinks when it burns.

Marcus Valerius

Every single evening, it is the same ritual. You take a bit of twisted linen or flax fiber, push it into the nozzle, and light it. But because you are burning low grade waste oil in a tight room with no glass chimney, the smoke just rises and clings to everything. Archaeologists today like to point out that burning this cheap oil in unventilated apartment rooms left a thick, greasy layer of black soot on the walls. And they are completely right! My wife and I spend half our morning scrubbing thick black grease off our plaster walls before the whole apartment fills with choking smoke. But without that little sputtering flame, you are utterly blind.

Marcus Valerius

Now, if staying inside a soot filled apartment sounds unpleasant, stepping outside after dark is ten times worse. You see, in Rome, there are no public streetlights. None. The city avenues at night turn into dark, narrow canyons, especially down in crowded districts like the Subura. Once the sun goes down, those streets belong to footpads, runaway supply carts, and drunk young nobles looking to pick a fight with anyone walking alone.

Marcus Valerius

Just an hour ago, I saw a wealthy acquaintance of mine leaving a private dinner party. In an elite domus, they can afford tall bronze candelabra stands or hanging lamps that cast light down over the couches. But to get home? He could not just step out into the dark. He had a slave walking three paces ahead of him, serving as a lanternarius. A lantern bearer. The slave was carrying a heavy iron lantern, and instead of glass, the sides were shielded by thin, scraped sheets of translucent animal horn. The horn keeps the wind from blowing out the candle, giving just enough pale light to guide your steps and warn off muggers hiding in the alleyways.

Marcus Valerius

But for those of us living up on the upper floors of a wooden insula tenement, night brings a very different kind of terror. Fire. Think about it. Thousands of families crammed into multi story buildings made of timber, dry plaster, and straw bedding. Inside every single room, someone has an open clay lamp burning amurca oil on a wooden table or a shelf.

Marcus Valerius

There are no glass covers, no safety valves. If a draft catches a curtain, or if a child bumps the table and knocks a lucerna onto the floorboards, that hot oil spills everywhere. In seconds, the straw catches. In minutes, the room is ablaze. And because these wooden insulae are packed so tightly together, one tipped lamp on the third floor can incinerate an entire city block before the bucket brigades even reach the street. We live our lives by that dim, smoky flame, knowing it is the only thing keeping the night at bay, and the one thing that could burn our home to ashes before dawn. Stay safe in the dark, my friends. Talk soon.