Roman Morning Routines: Toga, Patron, and Handful of Coppers

Marcus Valerius

It is the fourth watch... still black as the bottom of a wine amphora outside, and the air... ah, the air in this little third-floor room of mine feels like wet stone. I- I am shivering so hard my teeth are clicking like dice in a cup. And now, the worst part of the morning. I have to drag myself out from under this thin blanket and wrap myself in... this. My toga. It is laying right there on the chest, stiff as a wooden board and smelling faintly of... well, of the fuller's shop. You remember how they clean these things, right? With sulfur and... and aged human urine. It is supposed to make the wool bright white, but in the damp of a November dawn? It just smells like a wet dog that has been swimming in a cesspool. But I have to wear it. You cannot show your face at the *salutatio*—the morning greeting—without it. A Roman citizen without his toga is... is nobody. He is just another dirty tunic in the crowd. So, I- I lift the heavy wool, wrap it around my shoulder—once, twice, tucking the folds just so—and step out into the mud. The streets are pitch black, save for a few slaves carrying torches for their masters, and you have to watch where you step. The night-wagons are just rumbling out of the city gates, leaving deep, wet ruts in the basalt paving stones, and the smell of woodsmoke and rotting cabbage is thick enough to choke a mule.

Marcus Valerius

We are all heading in the same direction, though. Hundreds of us. Men of the middling sort... shopkeepers, scribes, veterans... all of us shuffling through the dark toward the big houses on the Quirinal Hill. I find myself outside the grand *domus* of my patron, Lucius Calpurnius. The vestibule is already packed tight with shivering clients, all of us squeezed together like sheep in a pen, trying to block the cold wind blowing off the river. I look to my left, and there is Sextus... an old friend, a cynic who has been playing this game since the days of Domitian. He is pulling his toga tight around his ears, looking like a grumpy old owl. He nudges me with his elbow and says, "Marcus, my boy, I think the grease on your toga is starting to ferment." I tell him to shut his mouth. We are both freezing, and to make things sweeter, Calpurnius has a new guard dog chained just inside the portal. A massive Molossian hound with a chest like an oak barrel, snapping its jaws and snarling every time the wind blows the door open. But the dog isn't the one you have to worry about. No, the real beast is the *nomenclator*... the patron's chief slave who stands at the door with his wax tablet. This greasy Greek... he knows every one of our names, and he knows exactly how desperate we are. As I get to the front of the line, he doesn't even look up. He just holds out a sweaty palm. "A copper *as*," he whispers, "or I might forget how to pronounce 'Marcus Valerius' when the master asks." One copper coin... just to keep my name on the list. It is extortion, pure and simple, but what am I going to do? Walk away? I reach into my pouch, find the copper, and drop it into his hand. He gives me a slick smile and waves me through.

Marcus Valerius

We step out of the freezing mud and into the atrium, and... ah, it is like entering another world. The air is warm, heated by charcoal braziers that smell of sweet pine resin. The floor is a beautiful mosaic of black and white marble, and the walls are painted with bright frescoes of gods and heroes who look like they have never shivered a day in their immortal lives. There he is. Lucius Calpurnius. He is standing near the household shrine, looking clean, well-fed, and utterly bored. He is wearing a toga of Spanish wool so fine it looks like silk. I straighten my back, try to smooth down my stiff, smelly wool, and step forward. I muster every ounce of Roman dignity I have left and deliver the mandatory greeting. "*Ave, domine!*" Hail, master! And what do I get for my trouble? For three hours of waiting in the wet dark? He gives me a nod. Not a real nod, mind you. A half-second jerk of his chin. He doesn't look me in the eye. He doesn't ask about my family, or how my business is doing near the Forum. He just looks right through me, already searching the crowd for the next face. The household steward steps in, taps my shoulder, and hands me my *sportula*... my daily dole. It is a tiny leather pouch containing exactly one hundred copper *quadrantes*. One hundred farthings. Six sesterces. A shabby pittance for a freeborn citizen of Rome.

Marcus Valerius

I walk back out into the morning light... the sun is finally coming up over the rooftops, burning off the fog... and I stand on the steps of the grand house, looking down at the coins in my hand. Let's do the math, shall we? What does my dignity buy me today? Well, four of these coppers will get me into the Baths of Trajan this afternoon... thank the gods, because I need to wash the smell of this toga off my skin. Another ten coppers will buy me a sextarius of cheap, sour red wine from the tavern on the corner... the kind that burns your throat but warms your belly. For fifteen more, I can get a bowl of hot spelt porridge with some onions and maybe a scrap of salt pork if the cook is feeling generous. And the rest? The rest goes to the landlord of my drafty apartment, or back into the hand of that thieving nomenclator tomorrow morning. It is a humiliating way to live, begging for scraps from a man who wouldn't look twice if I fell into the Tiber. Sextus walks up beside me, jingling his own pouch of coppers, and he spit on the stone step. "A Roman's pride is cheap these days, Marcus," he says. I look at him, then down at my handful of copper, and I can't help but laugh. "Maybe so, Sextus," I say, "but a man must eat." Now, come on... let's get to the baths before the water gets greasy.