Episode 48 – 300k

— “Do you declare, from your heart, to possess a wife?”

A census and a wedding. Rome passes 300 thousand inhabitants, and the Samnites are beaten at Aquilonia.

Parcial Transcript

Hello, this is Abel, speaking from Beijing, China. Welcome to my podcast.

The Tale of Rome, Episode 48 — 300k.

When Lucius Eugenius, Spurius Attius, and young Tatius got a glimpse of the hills surrounding Rome, their spirits went up.

All three made the walk home, all the way from the north — and all three were now war veterans.

For a Roman — and ordinary Roman — that’s no small feat!

And so, once they were down with all the military formalities and once they showed up on their home street,, their women, their children, their slaves, they all walked out to welcome them home!

The DOMUS — house — Lucius Eugenius managed to build with their work, spanned two homes next to each other, a corral for raw materials, and a workshop, right across the street.

Plus, a small garden behind the second house.

This was a piece of real estate that Lucius managed to buy right after the Big War, from an impoverished Patrician.

And of course, we are not counting that around 50 slaves were now working at the workshop, and a dozen or so were busy tending to the needs of the ever growing family.

Life wasn’t that bad, after all!

And after they all settled back in, and once Lucius sat in his favorite reclining chair — Laurentia, his wife, reminded him in a casual tone:

— “In five days we have to walk to the Field of Mars, husband. Town criers have been announcing the event, for days, now…”

Lucius sighed.

Another census.

Everyone hated a census.

The tables of the censors, they so-called Tabulae Censoriae in Latin, were piling up in forums already, to be taken to the field, the day of the census. From Equestrians and Senators, down to the last and lowest Roman, if you were in one of those five social levels, designed by long-gone King Tullius Servius, you had to go.

Plebe or Patrician, everyone had to be there.

— “We’ll take Julia this time,” old Lucius said. “And Spurius, too.”

— “What about his fiancee?” asked Laurentia.

Lucius paused for a second. Good question. Then he replied.

— “No. We haven’t finished all the arrangements, yet. All this fighting. Let her go with the Furnii. The censors will be liking that — looks more respectful.”

In his mind, Lucius cursed the constant wars Rome had, but he knew he couldn’t do a thing about them.

Besides, WARS were making him rich.

Quite rich indeed.

And this richness allowed for Spurius to soon-to-be-wedding a girl of the Furnii, a respectable — even though Plebeian— family.

The Furnii were also one of the oldest families, according to the annals of ancient Rome.

And according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a man named Gaius Furnius — that’s F — U — R — N — I — U — S — came to be a tribune of the plebes, back in the year 445 BC, and that was something Lucius Eugenius respected a lot.

And so — in a few week’s time, Spurius Attius, the young veteran of the Battle of Sentinum, would take a daughter of the Furnii as his wife.

Not bad for the family!

All right, my dear listeners.

As you can see, today we have two topics.

A wedding and a census.

And that means, that after our Latin Word of this episode, we’ll see how Romans went about having a census, and then — how they organized a wedding in those not-so-high circles of society.

The society of ancient Rome.

Now, please be aware that both — weddings and censuses — have had their fair share of evolution in the one thousand years of Roman history, which means that I tried my best — to keep these two events, match the times we are living in, right now.

Which is the beginning of the third century BC.

Oh, and after that, we have the next battle against the Samnites, the battle of Aquilonia, and here goes a little spoiler in the story that follows.

Let me explain.

Right after the battle of Aquilonia, a plague will break out in Rome — one of the larger ones — and we’ll be talking about how a new deity named Aesculapius — adopted from its Greek counterpart named Asclepius, became a world-wide symbol, today — recognized by a serpent bent over a fountain or wrapped around a staff, as if spilling its venom — to be used as an antidote — as a cure.

This serpent can be seen almost all over the world, in pharmacies, hospitals, medical centers, Centers for Disease Control, and even as part of the logo of the WHO — World Health Organization.

The other spoiler is that we’ll soon have the result of our upcoming census, and hey — we’ll know just how many people lived in Rome. Those numbers used to be published on plates all over Rome, especially in the Roman Forum.

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Episode 048 - 300k