Gaius Julius Primus

The Character

Gaius Julius Primus and the Metalworking Tools of the Roman Empire

by Joseph Wolgamott

In the Roman Empire, metalworking was an essential working-class profession. Using a fictional character, Gaius Julius Primus, we can reconstruct what life was like for an apprentice metalworker. Through a network from as far as Egypt and Tunisia,to the northernmost provinces in Gaul and Britannia, there was a trade of common metals such as iron, copper, and lead. These were the resources that metalworkers in the urban centers of the Empire worked with on a daily basis. Gaius Julius Primus, for example, would have used a number of tools at his disposal to create many different types of metal items as an apprentice metalworker. One common type of worked metal is a defixio (curse tablet). Metalworkers sold thin lead sheets with no writings on them to be inscribed by buyers with various curses against an offender of the social contract. This was a daily object found scattered across all Roman colonies, and would have likely been mass produced by the laborers in the metalshop. Other examples include swords, body armor, shields, spears, tridents, rings, necklaces, and bronze statuettes (Dungworth, Oxford Academic, 2010).

Class

In Roman society, particularly in Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France), there were a lot more opportunities for labor as a metalworker because of the military presence. This was a physically demanding profession with various hazards; however, Gaius lived in a populous colony. With roughly 100,000 inhabitants in the 3rd century CE, Lugdunum was densely populated. This would increase market saturation of labor, leading to more opportunities and incentives.

Metalworkers worked a physically demanding profession, working with tools such as tongs, vices, anvils, hammers, and other metal implements. In terms of physical labor, working-class jobs such as construction, metalworking, and clothesmaking were very physically taxing. In terms of metalworking, it was taxing because working with bending metal alloys, and working with heavy tools over the course of a work day was not easy (Dungworth, Oxford Academic, 2010).

A very interesting idea to think about as well, is that the elite think thought of the working poor seeking wealth as a good opportunity for a story and a narrative, and was the elite’s way of peering into the world of the impoverished working class without actually living it, more like vicariously living through a character, not too dissimilar from inventing a character with a modern trope.

For example, labor careers such as metalworking had to deal with scalding red-hot metal pieces potentially injuring them in a time before modern foot and hand protection, and work with metal tools such as tongs, vices, hammers, and anvils, which were heavy and required great physical endurance to work with daily, often caused bone lesions. This trait is noticeable in lower-class people, from children as young as six to impoverished adult Roman citizens through remains analyzed in the modern era. In the documentary, “Meet the Romans,” Classicist Mary Beard explains the toll that hard labor took on working-class children and adult skeletons. We can use this information about the worker’s bodily condition to create an image and vicariously live through their life.

Bodily Autonomy

Bodily autonomy in the Roman Empire is an interesting topic to cover, because that information is highly subjective based on social class, gender, slavery, and age. Bodily autonomy is defined as the legality of controlling a person’s freedom of movement or citizen’s rights, and is connected to the concept of slavery. Slaves did not have bodily autonomy.

Starting with social class, the working class and to some extent the middle class as well, had limited body autonomy compared to the elite or wealthy class. For example, their career was likely limited to the same work as their fathers or other male relatives, as it was based on their reputation in the community. There were exceptions, but it is difficult to discern to what extent, excluding the path of a military career for young men, that they could avoid a traditional career role.

Next, there is gender. Men were expected to provide the sole income to support their household, and were the ones whose reputations hinged on their career and family integrity, and a slight against other household members is taken as one on the man. For example, Gaius would, after reaching adulthood with the absence of a known father and assuming his mother does not remarry, be the head of household by default and assume social responsibility for the family as he is providing the primary safety and income necessary to survive and Roman society idealizes these values. Therefore, such social expectations were male-centric in terms of obligation to uphold roman values in the public eye.

As for the domestic view, the power of the household lay with the woman. When the man was usually away working, they spent most of their time overseeing matters of the home, such as chores, answering for any guests, or sometimes completing necessary work for pay.

In 200 to 300 CE, Roman women could earn their own money and often did. But the household, de jure, was under the male’s guardianship, a law commonly referred to as tutela mulerum. Gauis’s mother would likely have overseen the home, and worked to contribute to the overall household income, as well as manage household matters while Gaius worked (George, Oxford Academic, 2010).

The next aspect of bodily autonomy is slavery. This concept, while adjacent to social class, is more unique in its legal and social implications. Gaius is not a slave, which immensely helps him, because he is working for his entire income rather than income based on his master. While it was a social boon to be kind to your slaves, to let them work for pay, and even to free them, ultimately they did not have to pay their slaves at all. Because Gaius is free and a Roman citizen, he can move about the Empire’s territory freely so long as he has discretionary income.

The final aspect of body autonomy in the Roman Empire is age. Young, able-bodied men worked. After marriage or past the youth stage, men would progress in their career and provide for a family financially, and in many ways, physically as a protector and slave master. The women would be in service to the household, sometimes working as well.

Elder men would then be patriarchal figures, some worked hard into their old age, while the wealthy furthered their family’s status and were considered citizens of the highest regard. Another worthy aspect of discussion was the difference of quality of life and values of citizens in the suburban and urban areas of the sprawling cities of the Roman Empire. Urban citizens enjoyed a life far from the outskirts, away from cemeteries and farms. Those that lived in the outer towns and connected areas were closer to cemeteries. Instead of seeing them as a feature like a statue or a monument, they were becoming a part of daily life as spaces where people honored the dead in daily life. This led to higher reverence and respect for the dead in suburbs or less densely populated areas. These were expansions of cities that extended far beyond their administrative boundaries, leading to restructuring and renaming of the Roman provinces by the time of Hadrian’s reign (117 to 138 CE). This was a key development in the changes of the Late Imperial Period when Gaius lived (235 to 284 CE) (Emmerson, Oxford Academic, 2020).

Bibliography

• Dungworth, David, ‘Metals and Metalworking’, in Martin Millett, Louise Revell, and Alison Moore (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain, Oxford Handbooks (2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 4 Aug. 2014), accessed 28 Apr. 2026.
• Beard, Mary. Meet the Romans with Mary Beard. London: BBC, 2012. George, Michele (ed.), The Roman Family in the Empire: Rome, Italy, and Beyond (Oxford, 2005; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Jan. 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268412.001.0001, accessed 15 Apr. 2026.
• George, Michele (ed.), ‘Family Imagery and Family Values in Roman Italy’, in Michele George (ed.), The Roman Family in the Empire: Rome, Italy, and Beyond (Oxford, 2005; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Jan. 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268412.003.02, accessed 2 May 2026.
• Emmerson, Allison L. C., Life and Death in the Roman Suburb (Oxford, 2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 July 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852759.001.0001, accessed 15 Apr. 2026.