CantaClassics

Well, I have just risen from a most delightful slumber as the sun has finally decided to shine on us. I had a boring breakfast of porridge (again) and got washed and dressed into the same toga I have been wearing for the past week. I crept around quietly feeling as though the entire cenaculum was going to fall. Our cenacula is in the attic, and I wake every morning utterly surprised that the building is still standing. As I leave my bed the building swings to and fro and I hurriedly get ready to begin work in the gardens in the courtyard. I worry about my father. One more fall and he will be unable to work. The narrow staircases have already caused him much pain and if the building was to come down with him in it I would shed tears not only for him, but for all those who are forced to live in these buildings that are nothing more than shacks. I envy those in their roomy villas or the wealthy in their private domus. Living in the insulae is pure hell, the men always crowd to catch a glimpse of me undressing and father has forbidden me from talking to the teenaged boys.

I am glad to be returning home for a siesta, the heat reminds me of out previous cenacula which caught fire when a clumsy servant knocked over a candle and set fire to the building. At least we were close to the exit that time. I don’t know why father insists on sending me to school I would be much more help at home. But he says I must think of my future, the future he is taking charge of. I am glad that my schooling will be finished I cannot bear to be in a room with those stinking boys. Do they not know how to wash in the mornings? Finally, I am approaching home. I wish they would clean the streets, they are so dusty and dirty and the beggars always try to get close to single girls like me. I just tell them that I’m married, which I am soon to be.

Wow. My father has just told me that my beauty means I am sought after by many wealthy men and I am to be sent to live with a rich man in his domus. I have always dreamed of living in a house with a room to myself. I would tend the flowers in the peristylium and admire the stone columns that have each been carved into a beautiful goddess. I would feed the fish of the fish pond and at night sleep with my dear husband. The domus is only around the corner from here as we are near the edge of the city and so my family would be able to visit me any time they wish it. I am glad to be leaving my dirty poor home into that of a man with money

I hate sitting still in this cramp Cenaculum; unfortunately I have little choice in the matter as my mother and father are terrified of a collapse like the one that happened next door it’s just ridiculous the extent of which we have to go through just to see another day! It seems everything is falling down in some way, I mean just last week an Ampthieatre collapsed killing 50 people of course the senators will have lavish burials but for people like me, you just get thrown in a hole and rot. Maybe I should sign up for gladiator school at least then I would have a stable roof over my head and perhaps buy my families way out off poverty, but the way those fights are heading I will be dead from exhaustion just training to be one.

And if collapse isn’t enough to worry about fire is another thing we live in perpetual fear of, the whole place is made of wood and plaster and very flammable and as every room is cramp and close together fire spreads quickly throughout the place, the staircases are far too narrow to escape down. A positive would be the spacious court yard this place has. Though we share it with all the other tenants it is a great place of reflection and to socialise with others, even if it isn’t as quiet as the fancy villas or domus like the richer people have but then again life in this city isn’t that quiet anyway.

Another thing, like all Insulae, this place is surrounded by streets on all sides so the racket the street merchants make is horrendous, but no one cares when you’re poor anyway, it doesn’t help that the walls are papyrus thin so there’s no privacy as well. But I guess it’s the best we’ve got and we’re not too far from the shops as they’re all on the ground floor but we still go hungry anyway so who cares.