Wealthy Roman citizens in the towns lived in a domus. They were single-storey houses which were built around a courtyard known as an atrium. Atriums had rooms opening up off of them and they had no roofs. A rich Roman house had many rooms including kitchen, bath, dining, bedrooms and rooms for slaves.

Ancient atria In a domus, a large house in ancient Roman architecture, the atrium was the open central court with enclosed rooms on all sides. In the middle of the atrium was the impluvium, a shallow pool sunken into the floor to catch rainwater from the roof.

Domus, plural domus, private family residence of modest to palatial proportions, found primarily in ancient Rome and Pompeii. In contrast to the insula (q.v.), or tenement block, which housed numerous families, the domus was a single-family dwelling divided into two main parts, atrium and peristyle.

Fine Roman homes were built with stone, plaster, and brick. They had tiled roofs. A “villa ubana” was a villa that was fairly close to Rome and could be visited often. Wealthy Romans decorated their homes with murals, paintings, sculptures, and tile mosaics.

Leading off the atrium were cubicula (bedrooms), a dining room triclinium where guests could eat dinner whilst reclining on couches, a tablinum (living room or study), and the culina (Roman kitchen).

Q: Where would the Roman slaves sleep? At night, slaves usually slept on a heap of straw with a blanket on top, either in the kitchen, the hallway, or in the attic. Attractive female slaves also had to submit to the sexual desires of their masters.

Atrium either had no roof or a hole in the roof to serve as a sky light and an opening to allow rain water to fall through it and get collected in a reservoir in the center of the atrium floor. There were multiple rooms in a domus which were used for different purposes.

When out on patrol, Roman soldiers would just go to the toilet wherever they were. The toilets had their own plumbing and sewers, sometimes using water from bath houses to flush them. The Romans did not have toilet paper. Instead they used a sponge on a stick to clean themselves.

spongia

The Romans had a complex system of sewers covered by stones, much like modern sewers. Waste flushed from the latrines flowed through a central channel into the main sewage system and thence into a nearby river or stream.

latrinae

As long ago as 3000 B.C., the ancient Egyptians constructed crude toothbrushes from twigs and leaves to clean their teeth. Similarly, other cultures such as the Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Indians cleaned their teeth with twigs.

8 of the Largest Empires in History

• Persian empire. Also known as the Achaemenian Empire, the kingdom created under Cyrus the Great stretched from Iran into Central Asia and Egypt.
• Han dynasty.
• Umayyad Caliphate.
• Mongol empire.
• Ottoman Empire.
• Spanish empire.
• Russian Empire.
• British Empire.

China

7 Most Advanced Ancient Civilizations in the World

• Ancient China 2100 – 221 BC.
• Ancient Egypt 3150 – 31 BC.
• Inca Civilization 1200 – 1542 AD (Modern day Peru)
• Ancient Greece 800 BC – 146 BC.
• Maya Civilization 2000 BC – early 16th Century (Modern day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras)
• Osirian Civilization (Modern day Mediterranean)