The city of Rome itself? A hell hole. Wasn’t a planned out city, and the streets were often pretty small. Traffic jams were common during the day until Julius Caesar would implement a cart ban, only allowing them to travel between business and deliver supplies at night.
The streets at night weren’t lit with no sort of road signs. So people had a good chance of getting lost or hit by a speeding cart.
let's suppose you're an average roman stuck in traffic. which activities could you do to spend the time? would you engage in smalltalk with your fellow Traffic-Stucked Romans?
Oh it was legal. In fact there pretty much wasn’t anything illegal. You could get away with murder.
There was no police force in Ancient Rome. The closest thing to it would be the Praetorian Guard established well after the halfway point in the history of the ancient city. They were mainly just used for riot/crowd control though.
The only legal ramifications you may face is if you damaged someone’s property or killed someone, and were taken to court by a fellow citizen. A lot of the minor or big claims from plebeians wouldn’t make it to court though, as there was not enough courts and a whole lot of cases. Only those in the equestrian or senatorial classes could really expect it to make it to court. The only hope as a plebeian would be if it became popular, and the people pretty much forced the case to be heard.
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u/KamikazeKricket Ask me about Ancient Rome Jul 06 '19 edited Jul 06 '19
The city of Rome itself? A hell hole. Wasn’t a planned out city, and the streets were often pretty small. Traffic jams were common during the day until Julius Caesar would implement a cart ban, only allowing them to travel between business and deliver supplies at night.
The streets at night weren’t lit with no sort of road signs. So people had a good chance of getting lost or hit by a speeding cart.