Everywhere, the smell of roses.
Roses in the hedgerows, rose petals on the street, roses in the garlands of passers-by.
And everywhere, the sweet sharp smell of spring, the unfathomed blue of a new-risen morning,
and all the blush and bloom of Floralia.
The road was already crowded: farmers in rough-spun wool, freedmen in white linen, the occasional
gentleman in painstakingly pleated toga, all heading toward Rome…
Let’s follow one of these men, a tunic-clad fellow named Gaius, as he joins the crowd
heading into the city for Floralia, the festival of flowers.
Gaius is fictional, but the olfactory tour of Rome on which he and you are about to embark
is founded, as far as I could manage, in historical fact.
Although he had seen it times beyond counting, walking, riding, and driving the four miles
from his farm to the city, Gaius had never ceased to be impressed by the Appian Way.
The pine groves, the monumental tombs, the marching arcades of the aqueducts: nowhere
else, he thought, did Rome announce herself with such majesty.
He breathed deep, smelling pine resin, fresh-cropped grass, and just a hint of sheep dung.
A courier galloped past on the bridle path, and the aroma of wet earth, kicked up by the
horse’s hooves, briefly filled the air.
There were tombs on both sides of the road, two, three, even four rows deep.
The greatest of them, so tall that his eyes strained to see the sculptures on their roofs,
were built long ago, in the days before the emperors.
But many others were new, their paint still bright, their statues shining with painful
intensity.
From between the tombs came the smells of the cremation field: ashes, spent incense,
and wine.
Yet even here, the reek of the pyres fell back before the busier noisomeness of life.
There were shanty towns among the tombs, complete with taverns, jerry-built hotels, and stables
for the horses and wagons of travelers.
Here were all the outcasts and offscourings of the city, crouching in the shadows of its
noble dead.
A philosopher, Gaius mused, would surely make something of that.
Here, too, was the familiar bouquet of massed and massively unwashed humanity: stale sweat,
stale breath, stale bread.
Apartment blocks sprouted among the tombs; the aqueducts converged – and abruptly,
he was in Rome.
Visitors from the provinces, he knew, were pointed to the brass and marble monuments
of the Forums and the Campus Martius.
But in his opinion, the most spectacular sight in the city was the Roman crowd.
There was nothing like it – a single beast with a million bodies, and no discernable
mind.
Nor was there anything quite like its smell: damp wool, bean breath, bath oil, and perfume.
Both men and women wore fragrances in ancient Rome, usually made from blends of spices and
oils.
Despite that precedent, this Roman historian is not a frequent user of scents.
The social circles in which I move seldom expect cologne.
But if any brand were going to change my habits, it would be Scentbird, a subscription service
designed to help people develop – or, in my case, initiate – their relationship with
fragrances.
Scentbird sent me three colognes, including Confessions of a Rebel: Well Played…
…and Danse Sauvage by Chris Collins.
But my favorite was Mercedes-Benz Man, “a cool, calm, and collected fragrance” whose
cedar-infused scent reminded me of a hike I once took in the Pontic Alps of northeastern
Turkey.
Scentbird sends subscribers a new designer fragrance every month.
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Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll receive a 30-day supply.
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get 55% off your first month.
So sign up today, to be sure that you’ll never smell anything like the streets of ancient
Rome.
The streets of Rome, as Gaius and every other sentient creature downwind of the city knew,
smelled overwhelmingly of excrement.
The film of feces was scraped away periodically; but it reappeared as soon as it was cleared,
endlessly replenished by a rain of emptied chamber pots.
Especially after coming in from the country, it was hard to miss the reek, which was paired
with the sharp small of urine at every corner and alleyway.
But after a few moments, as usual, his nose surrendered, and the stench faded into the
background.
The Appian Way was wide here, and heaving with humanity.
Walking in Rome, Gaius reflected, was like crossing the deck of a storm-tossed ship:
there was no way to do it gracefully.
He wove and warped his way forward, squeezing and sidling around groups, until he was stopped
dead by cross-traffic at the first intersection.
As he pondered the best way through, he heard shouts behind, and turned to see a curtained
litter approaching.
Litters were one of the great hazards of the Roman street.
Although the light ones you could hire at corners were easy enough to evade, the huge
private litters of the rich, with their tasseled awnings and hobnailed bearers, were a menace.
When one appeared, the only way to avoid it was to crush up against the wall with every
other pedestrian.
But if you managed to get behind a litter, you could follow in its wake as it plowed
down the street.
Judging the litter’s whereabouts from the curses of pedestrians, Gaius maneuvered his
way toward the noise until, with just a bit of apologetic shoving, he emerged among the
litter’s dazed and bruised victims.
Hurrying forward to the sweet spot just behind the bearers, he matched his pace to theirs.
As the litter battered its way across the intersection, Gaius noticed a bewitching scent:
attar of rose, with hints of cinnamon and other exotic spices.
Glancing up, he found himself locking eyes with the litter’s occupant, an aristocratic
lady with piled curls and crimson silks.
She favored him with a barely perceptible nod, then returned to the scroll she had been
reading as her litter turned down a side street.
As Gaius watched the litter disappear, the last traces of the lady’s perfume faded,
and were replaced by less pleasant things.
For years now, the emperor had been building an enormous bath just off the road.
Even here, two hundred paces from the rising concrete domes, the air was bitter with marble
chips and lime dust.
Ahead, at a turning of the Appian Way, were the glowing colonnades and flashing jets of
the great fountain beneath the imperial palace.
As he drew closer, Gaius could feel the spray in the air, and smell the moss and damp.
He turned before reaching the fountain, skirting the gargantuan base of the Circus Maximus.
The gates of the circus were closed – the hunts wouldn’t begin until later – but
Gaius thought he could still smell the dust of the track, beaten flour-fine by a thousand
races.
The shops across from the circus were already open, and their wares were laid along the
edge of the street: a bookseller with his musty papyrus rolls; a spice merchant with
cakes of aromatic incense; a baker with stacked loaves of bread.
Beyond the baker, at the base of an apartment block slumped against the slope of the Aventine,
Gaius followed the aroma of fresh-cooked sausages to the service window of a tavern, where he
ordered a cone of chickpeas.
Crunching contentedly on these, he found the way forward blocked again, this time by some
sort of procession.
To bypass the traffic, Gaius turned left on a narrow alley leading up the Aventine.
This had once been a working-class neighborhood.
But generations of wealthy Romans, drawn by the cheap land, had raised mansions among
the tenements, gradually transforming the entire hill into one of the city’s most
exclusive areas.
It was quiet on the Aventine this morning – most of the shops between the great houses
were closed – and Gaius found himself almost alone.
He stopped beside a small fountain, where a bench was built against the wall, and sat
for a moment, finishing his chickpeas.
As he bent to scoop water from the fountain, he smelled roses again.
Turning, he saw that the neighborhood shrine, a short distance up the street, had been decked
with garlands for the festival.
From the cool and quiet of the Aventine, Gaius descended into the chaos of the Forum Boarium.
A sacrifice was taking place in front of one of the temples – he could smell the meat
roasting on the altar – but the prevailing fragrance here was the river, reeking and
bubbling with sewage.
In summer, when the water was low, the stench could be almost unbearable; now, with a strong
spring current, it was merely unpleasant.
At last, Gaius could see his destination: the theater by the river bank that Augustus
had built two centuries before.
Although he wasn’t normally much of a theater-goer, he made an exception for the performances
during Floralia, when tragedies were replaced by risqué skits, and clothing was optional
for the actresses.
He made his way to one of the entrances, presented his entry token to the public slaves, and
found himself inside the theater.
His seat was high above the marble tiers that ensconced senators and equestrians.
But he could still see the stage, which was all that mattered.
He could feel a slight breeze – fortunately, not from the direction of the river – and
it carried the smell of roasting chicken from the vendors in the theater arcade.
A trumpet blew, and an actress appeared in a silk gown that quivered on the edge of transparency.
From an attendant’s basket, she drew a handful of flowers, and scattered them into the crowd.
As she did, panels opened in the roof of the stage building, and a gentle shower of rose
petals began to descend.
The wind had risen, and it blended the fragrance of the flowers with the scents of the city
beyond: bread and wine, perfume and filth, incense, roses, roses.
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You might also enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
Thanks to Scentbird for sponsoring this video (you can check out their link below), and
thanks to all of you for watching.