OCR GCSE Classical Civilisation Roman City Life: a complete overview of housing, the family, slavery, education, leisure and the evidence of Pompeii

What this option demands

Roman City Life is one of the three Literature and Culture options (Component J199/22), worth 50% of the GCSE. The paper has two equal sections: a Culture section on daily life (using material sources, above all from Pompeii and Herculaneum) and a Literature section on prescribed Roman authors (such as Horace, Juvenal, Petronius and Pliny the Younger). This overview covers the Culture half. The exam rewards precise knowledge (AO1) and the analysis and evaluation of sources plus your own argument (AO2).

Roman housing

Housing varied by wealth. The domus (town house) led from the atrium (with its impluvium) past the tablinum and cubicula to the triclinium and the peristyle garden, and the rich decorated it with frescoes and mosaics to display status. Most ordinary Romans lived in cramped insulae (apartment blocks), and the wealthy also owned a country villa. Housing is a key source for wealth and status.

The family and household

The family was headed by the paterfamilias, who held patria potestas (legal power over the household), though usually exercised mildly. Women were legally subordinate but, especially the wealthy, had real influence over households and property. Marriage aimed at children and joining families; children were the family's future. The household worshipped its own gods (the Lares and Penates) at the lararium.

Slavery and freedmen

Enslaved people came mainly from war, birth and the slave trade. In law they were property, and their experience ranged from comfortable household and professional roles to brutal labour in mines and quarries or the arena. Crucially, manumission could free them (often with citizenship); a freedman (libertus) owed his patron duties but could own property and run a business, and some grew wealthy (the fictional Trimalchio).

Education

Education was private and paid for. The stages were the ludus (the litterator: reading, writing, arithmetic), the grammaticus (literature and language) and the rhetor (public speaking for law and politics). A boy was escorted by a paedagogus. Education differed sharply by wealth and gender: advanced schooling was largely for wealthy boys, while girls rarely went beyond basic literacy.

Leisure

Romans loved leisure. The baths (apodyterium, tepidarium, caldarium, frigidarium, palaestra) were a social hub; the amphitheatre (the Colosseum) hosted gladiatorial games; and the circus (the Circus Maximus) hosted chariot racing between the colour-coded factions. Emperors used spectacle for popularity ("bread and circuses") and to display power.

Pompeii and Herculaneum as evidence

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 buried and preserved both towns: Pompeii under ash (with the body casts), Herculaneum under deeper material that carbonised wood and food. They reveal housing, work, leisure and daily life in unique detail, but are only two towns in one region at one moment, so they must be used with awareness of their limits.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall questions covering the Roman City Life content. Attempt them, then check the solutions.

1. Name three rooms or features of a domus. (3 marks)
2. Where did most ordinary Romans live? (1 mark)
3. What was patria potestas? (1 mark)
4. What was manumission, and what did formal manumission usually grant? (2 marks)
5. Name the three stages of Roman education in order. (3 marks)
6. Name the hot room and the cold plunge in a Roman bath. (2 marks)
7. What were the chariot-racing factions known by? (1 mark)
8. In what year did Vesuvius bury Pompeii and Herculaneum? (1 mark)