by Caroline Lawrence
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| do I have an internal monologue? |
Over the past dozen years I have been writing books for kids set in the Roman world of the first century CE.
I try to write books that children can identify with. They are partly historical fact, partly a filter through which kids can examine their own lives. If I showed ancient Rome the way it really was, would modern children find too alien to relate to? Would I find it too alien to write?
The more I immerse myself in that world, the more I wonder if we can ever know what it was really like. Sometimes I try to think outside the box and be as creative as I can. I try to think what would surprise me most if I really could transport back to first century Rome. Elsewhere, I’ve blogged about the surprising differences we might encounter in the physical world itself. But what about the Roman mindset? How did they think about the world?
Here are a few laterally thought-up ideas about what might blind-side us if we really could go back to Ancient Rome.
1. No internal monologue.
How did Romans think about themselves? We know that most (literate) Romans only read out loud. To read silently, in your head, was considered strange. So did they have internal monologues in their heads? Did they have the same kind of constant self-commentary that we do?
2. No satellites.
Romans had no idea where they were on the map. The only map we have from the first century doesn’t even look like a map. The most educated might have had some idea, but even the great travellers like Julius Caesar and Strabo had not a tenth of the concept of the world that we do with our Google earth and desk globes. Most Romans probably never budged more than a few miles from where they were born and had no idea what lay beyond. That's why even Romans as intelligent as Pliny the Elder believed in bizarre races of men in far away places.
3. No Judeo-Christian mindset.
Even Richard Dawkins says "Oh, God!" There are concepts of charity and forgiveness so embedded in the fabric of our world after two thousand years that we don't even distinguish these concepts as Judeo-Christian. Yes, Romans had a concept of patronage which is like charity. But what other culture urges us to forgive our enemies? Even the concept that we have a "purpose" or a "journey" on earth is Judeo-Christian.
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| trying to read by candlelight will ruin your eyes |
4. No artificial light.
Yes, they had candles, braziers and oil-lamps. But even urban-dwelling Romans would have been more attuned to the phases of the moon and length of the days than we are. This total dependence on the natural day must have affected the way they acted and behaved. We know from Virgil and other writers that Romans probably enjoyed the two stages of sleep (first sleep and second sleep divided by a natural waking for an hour or so) known to mankind before the invention of electricity. Life for a Roman would have been a succession of ever repeating seasons, the cycles of the year, until you die. There was no Judeo-Christian concept of a journey from childhood to old age, getting older and wiser as you age.
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| happy without chocolate or tea? |
Seriously. The Romans never knew the endorphin lift that a chocolate bar or mug of hot cocoa can give us. Nor did they have tea or coffee. Or tobacco or spirits. Their wine was most likely foul, full of so many nasty congeners that it would give drinkers like Mark Anthony a foul headache. What did they do for a fillip?
6. No mirrors or cameras.
Think how many reflective and reflecting surfaces we have in our lives. Mirrors, shop windows, cameras, CCTV cameras showing us walking past shops. Even the richest Roman with the smoothest silver mirror would not have had a clue what he or she really looked like. Would this lack of an intimate knowledge of their own physical appearance have affected the way they interacted with the world? How many of us "watch ourselves" entering a party or walking along a street? Did a Roman ever visually play mental scenarios beforehand? If so, what were they like? Was it from his or her POV? A bird's eye POV? A fluid POV?
7. No zero.
How did Romans do mental maths? Could they even count beyond the number of fingers and toes doubled? They had no number zero. Did they have times tables?
8. No crayons.
We have dozens of different words for thousands of different shades and hues of colour. The Romans had far fewer and categorized them differently, more by tone and saturation, or by linking a colour to a natural object. Some linguists believe that the language we use determines how we perceive the world. Children in Western society have kindergartens full of crayons dividing the spectrum into bite-sized colours. The Romans didn’t. So did they even see the world differently? (See Mark Bradley's recent Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome for an academic consideration of Latin and Greek concepts of colour)
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| can you make music with that? |
9. No music (as we know it).
Did Romans wake up with music in their heads the way we do? We hear so much music that it lodges in our brains. Also, we hear music played exactly the same way time after time, because we have recordings. Even if you lived in a Roman house where the mother sang all the time, every version would be slightly different. We don't really know what Roman music sounded like. Would we even call it music?
10. Division by gender not age.
Today a woman can do almost anything a man can, thanks to the past two centuries of women’s rights. On the other hand, there are many things children can’t do that adults can. In Roman times it was the opposite, the division was not between child and adult but male and female. Romans did not have our concept of childhood as something to be protected. As soon as a girl reached puberty she could marry (the legal age in first century Rome was 12). As soon as a boy was physically able, he worked. Of course there were a few coming-of-age ceremonies, but the real division of responsibility and privilege in Roman times was marked by gender.
Those are a few random ideas tossed out on a cold Saturday afternoon in December. Some of them might be right, some of them might be crazy. But I still have this nagging thought that I'm missing something so basic and all-pervasive that it hasn't even occurred to me. Anybody?
Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for kids. www.carolinelawrence.com
Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for kids. www.carolinelawrence.com
