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It's March the 17th in AD 73. We're visiting ancient Rome to watch the Liberalia, an annual

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festival that celebrates the liberty of Rome's citizens. We're looking in at a 17-year-old

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named Lucius Papidius Secundus. He's not from a poor family, but he lives in the region

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known as the Sabura, a poorer neighbourhood in Rome, yet close to the centre of the city.

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The tenants of these apartments are crammed in, which poses considerable risk.

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Fires are frequent, and the smell of ash and smoke in the morning is not uncommon.

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Lucius, who awoke at dawn, has family duties to perform today.

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His 15-year-old brother is coming of age.

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Half the children in ancient Rome die before they reach adulthood,

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so this is a particularly important milestone.

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Lucius watches his brother stand in his new toga

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before the household shrine with its protective deities

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as he places his bulla, a protective amulet,

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in the shrine with a prayer of thanks.

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The bulla had worked. It had protected him.

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Unlike many others, he had survived to become an adult.

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At 17, Lucius has almost completed his education.

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He has learned to speak well, make public speeches,

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and how to read and write both Latin and Greek.

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His father has taught him the types of things you can't learn in the classroom.

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How to run.

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How to swim.

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Lucius could choose at 17 to become a military tribute

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and command soldiers on the edge of the empire.

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But in other ways, Lucius is still a child.

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He's not trusted to arrange business deals.

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His father will take care of that until he is 25.

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And dad will arrange Lucius' marriage to a girl 10 years younger.

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His dad has his eye on a family with a 7-year-old daughter.

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Back to the Liberalia.

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As Lucius leaves with his family, the shops are open as the population goes about its business.

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The streets are full of itinerant traders selling trinkets and people bustling from place to place.

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Large wagons are not allowed in the city until after the ninth hour, but the streets are still crowded.

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fathers and uncles take the kids to the forum of augustus to see statues of rome's famous warriors

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like aeneas who led rome's ancestors the trojans to italy and romulus rome's founder

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and all the great generals of the republic from more than a hundred years earlier

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lovingly we can imagine fathers and guardians with their now adult children remembering

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stories of Rome's glory and retelling the good deeds and sayings of the great men of the past.

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Lessons on how to live well and to overcome the follies of youth. There is a sense of history

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in this place relevant to their present. Romans made an empire without end in time and space.

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Rome was destined to be eternal through warfare

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Wars were a fact of life even in AD 73

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There are campaigns in the north of England and into Scotland

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To the north of the river Danube into Romania

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And on the frontier between Syria and Iraq to the east

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It's now the eighth hour, time to head for the bath

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Lucius and his family head up the Via Lata, the wide street

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to the campus marshes and the enormous baths of Agrippa.

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The family members leave the clients and freedmen outside

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and enter the baths with their peer group.

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Baths have changed from dark steamy rooms to light ones.

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The Romans have perfected window glass.

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Everyone moves from the cold room to the tepid room

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and to the very hot room.

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More than an hour later, the bathers leave massaged, oiled and have been scraped down

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with a striggle to remove the remaining dirt.

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At the ninth hour, seven hours after they left home, the men return for a celebratory

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dinner.

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Dinner is an intimate affair, with nine people reclining around the low table.

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attend to their every need as the diners through gestures demand more food and wine as the day

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closes we can hear the rumble of wagons outside the clients and freedmen with a meal of robust

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if inferior food inside them shuffle off to the now tepid baths before returning to their

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apartment blocks back at lucius's house the drinking continues into the night lucius and

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his stepbrother don't look too well a slave stands by in case either of them needs to vomit

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with hindsight we know lucius's future in 20 years time the emperor vespasian's youngest

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At some, Domitian, as emperor, will enact a reign of terror.

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Will Lucius survive?