God I love the internet
'A Roman would usually get up early and work a six hour day.
This of course was only the case for working men. Women stayed at home. Even the task of queuing for the tokens which granted a family its monthly grain dole was done by the men of the house.
And so the many workers, traders and businessmen of the city, be they freemen or freedmen would work all morning, adding to the wild hustle and bustle of the their town or city.
Trade of all sorts naturally centered around Rome. Ostia was a hive of activity, where goods from overseas arrived and was loaded onto barges which carried them up the river to the great capital. All kinds of jobs would be at Ostia. From simple labourers who unloaded the ships, to bureaucrats who checked the arriving goods, wholesale tradesmen and warehouse managers.
The construction industry would also require enormous numbers. For in a time without building machines, it would be simple manpower which would shift earth or break stones.
Architects and engineers, surveyors, foremen, sculptors, stonemasons, carpenters, bricklayers and simple day labourers. All these were necessary to build not merely grand monuments, but also the apartment blocks to house the masses, or the residences of the rich.
The cities and towns contained markets of all kinds, shops, inns and taverns, all in turn consuming raw materials or requiring agricultural produce which needed to be brought in from the countryside.
Sons usually followed in the footsteps of their fathers, inheriting their profession and their business. The upper classes meanwhile found themselves restricted to a career in either the army, law or politics. Other professions were deemed to be too lowly for their kind.
And so many of the other 'academic' jobs such as architecture, medicine, surgery, dentistry, teaching and agricultural management were usually done by freedmen.
The fact that so few jobs were deemed acceptable to the upper classes meant that there was a large group of people who were effectively unproductive.
Not all of this group need necessarily have been aristocratic - some for example might be artists with little income, but they largely made their living as clients.
They would quite literally queue outside the house of their rich patron, dressed in their finest clothes, waiting to be given either money or food. Such were teh responsibilities of the patron that they, within reason, could be expect to be supported.
His 'work' done, the client would then be free to spend his day like any other Roman, heading for the forum or the markets, perhaps to read the daily news which would be hung up in public places. Or else he might take an early bath. For as the working day ended, the bathing began. The women just as much as the men would head for the public bath houses. Bathing was a social affair. Even the rich, who might have their own bath houses, would hardly do so alone, but invite friends to join them.
It was the way the Roman working day came to a close, before one would finally retire for dinner, cena. '