Which groups of people were awake at night in antiquity?
score:8
Accepted answer
Aside from the Vigiles (basically, firemen and police) mentioned by sempaiscuba in his comment, there were quite a few groups of people who would have been active at night in Imperial Rome.
Perhaps most numerous were household slaves. They could be required to perform a wide range of duties at night as most were expected to be available at all times:
- running errands (e.g. carrying messages)
- if the master went out, slaves would be required to light the way with torches or provide protection
- serving at banquets and generally being on hand to fetch things, fan the guests or assist those who had drunk too much
Pompeii: "painting of banqueting scene from west wall of triclinium. End of the Banquet. The guests are rising but one of them cannot stand up without assistance3." Source: Pompeii in Pictures
- bedroom slaves were in or near the master / mistress’ bedroom at night (even when couples were making out) in case he/she needed anything
"Fresco of couple in bed. Man talks to his shy bride. A servant on the left watches the scene." Source: Wikipedia.
- watchmen and doormen
- nurses for infants
- Weaving and yarning were done by the female slaves of less wealthy Romans who often had their servants multi-task.
Among other groups active at night were:
- Temple attendants
- Workers in taverns and brothels
- Street vendors
- Soldiers acting as sentries for armies camped for the night
- Bakers had to get up early to prepare bread
- Wagon drivers delivering goods
- Fishermen
- Entertainers, especially musicians
- Christians sometimes met at night
- Some authors would write at night; this was known as lucubratio. This could have been simply working late, or waking up and working and then going back to bed. This could also vary with the seasons, as was the case with both Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger
- According to S. Sticka, "Juvenal relates the importance of fathers training their sons to wake in the middle of the night in order to accomplish their tasks."
- Some slaves also turned to crime at night (as suggested by @bof in his comment).
As Jason Linn points out in his doctoral thesis, The Dark Side of Rome (2014) many of these jobs were boring
Not only did many night jobs entail periods of waiting, but often waiting alone: guards waited for trouble; nurses waited on sleeping children; prostitutes waited for customers.... With plenty of free time many night workers had to stay awake and endure boredom alone... Some guards were even chained to their posts.
Other sources:
Shaun Sticka Segmented Sleep in First-Century Roman Society (Master's thesis, 2017)
K. D. Matthews, The Embattled Driver in Ancient Rome
A. R. Ekirch, At Day's Close
More post
- 📝 Who invented and marketed the first "clip on" headphones?
- 📝 How did Christianity replace Roman Paganism and other ancient religions?
- 📝 Why is Kubb - a skittles game - associated with the Viking Age?
- 📝 When was this photo of Mission Dolores *actually* taken?
- 📝 What were Rommel's views on the Nazi crimes?
- 📝 What are the causes of the 1773 Boston Tea Party?
- 📝 Why are there no photorealistic paintings from the old days?
- 📝 What was the plan for an abort of the Enola Gay's mission to drop the atomic bomb?
- 📝 Meaning of Civil War term "playout"?
- 📝 Why did Spain not participate in World War I?
- 📝 How efficiently did the Red Army conduct itself during the invasion of Poland in 1939?
- 📝 Are tanks the only reason for the abandonment of trench warfare?
- 📝 Who sold this book in London in the 1930s?
- 📝 Are the Egyptians h*m*geneous?
- 📝 Symbol of the San-colottes
- 📝 Has a criminal organisation ever become a formal government?
- 📝 Did the Germans face the same "weather" difficulties for an "Operation Sea Lion" as the Allies faced at Normandy?
- 📝 Challenges Margaret Thatcher faced as a woman?
- 📝 Did Russia and Lenin benefit from the Treaty of Versailles?
- 📝 How were ship kills accounted in WWII?
- 📝 Treatment of Jewish WWI Veterans
- 📝 What was the first book translated from Japanese to any of the European languages?
- 📝 What is the evidence that Galerius raised Severus II to the rank of Augustus?
- 📝 Did anyone find gold in California before 1848?
- 📝 Why was being divided a boon for Europeans, but not for anyone else?
- 📝 Was there a fighter jet designed without cannons?
- 📝 What is the best book to learn about medicine in medieval times? (research for a novel)
- 📝 Why did the UK allow India to be a republic rather than a democratic parliament under the British Monarch?
- 📝 Is there any evidence for dual-wielding in the 12th Century?
- 📝 What is the basis of the Spanish claim to Gibraltar?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Which groups of people were awake at night in antiquity?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?
- 📝 Which native groups were hostile to the fur trade in North America?
- 📝 In view of the widespread use of the term "Semitic", which groups of people are classified as being of Hamitic ethnicity?
- 📝 In 19th century France, were police able to send people to jail without a trial, as presented in "Les Misérables"?
- 📝 How literate were common people in Medieval Europe?
- 📝 Why did Roosevelt and Churchill use voice-based telecommunication, instead of simpler text-based options which were easier to encrypt?
- 📝 Are there any documented examples of wooden ships which were in active service for 100 years or more? If not, what is the longest?
- 📝 Why were people from the Asian Steppes able to militarily dominate Europeans on a repeated basis?
- 📝 Which 11 countries were democratic in 1941?
- 📝 What were Hispanic people called in the US in the 1800s?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Were there any successful attempts by the Allies to "turn" groups of Axis soldiers?
- 📝 Which were the last castles to be besieged and fall in the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Were there any Roman villas in Britain which were used rather than destroyed after the Romans left?
- 📝 What were the rights of various classes of people in the Roman Republic?
- 📝 What weapons were manufactured in India by the British forces which were used during world wars?
- 📝 Have there been any nuclear accidents in the US at nuclear facilities which were not "commercial"?
- 📝 Were groups (or 'companies') of dogs used to attack enemy armies in medieval battles?
- 📝 Were lay people ever forbidden to read the Bible in the Christian world?
- 📝 How many people were affected by the Holodomor [Famine-Genocide in Ukraine]
- 📝 Chiang's allies were "a kidnapper, a hooligan and a bully" but which was which?
- 📝 Which were the continent-wide common languages in human history?
- 📝 Were there any other systems which resemble the complex election procedure for the doge of Venice
- 📝 Which texts/works were lost due to the Mongol invasions of Baghdad?
- 📝 To what extent were religious groups persecuted in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Who were the first people to get divorced in Western* Christendom?
- 📝 How many people were killed by Protestant Inquisition style tribunals? Asking for references/estimates
- 📝 Which operating system were the hackers at the MIT AI Lab using in 1971?
- 📝 How advanced were the people of Indus valley civilization in engineering?