Daily life in Sagalassos during the 2nd century CE

A grounded look at a Pisidian mountain city, where pottery, fountains, farms, baths, local elites, and steep streets shaped daily life.

Sagalassos was a prosperous city high in the mountains of Pisidia, overlooking the Ağlasun valley. In the 2nd century CE it benefited from regional agriculture, long-established pottery production, and elite investment in fountains, baths, a library, temples, and markets. Its elevation shaped every routine: water descended from springs, streets climbed steep slopes, and food and fuel had to move between city and countryside.

Housing and Living Spaces

Homes used local stone, brick, timber, plaster, and tiles on terraces cut into the slope. Courtyards and multipurpose rooms supported cooking, storage, textile work, sleeping, worship, and reception. Wealthy houses could include fine floors, decoration, and controlled water; most non-elite housing is less conspicuous in both excavation and public presentation.

Steep streets made even ordinary movement strenuous. Water jars, firewood, food, and refuse were carried across changing levels, often by people or pack animals. Winter cold and snow at roughly 1,500 meters made roofs, drainage, hearths, durable footwear, and warm cloaks especially important compared with lower coastal cities.

Food and Daily Meals

Bread or porridge, legumes, vegetables, fruit, wine, olives or oil, dairy products, and occasional meat formed the diet. Farms and villages in the Ağlasun and Burdur plains supplied grain and other crops, while sheep and goats provided milk, wool, and meat. Availability shifted with harvests, transport conditions, household means, and season.

Cooking pots, storage jars, amphorae, and Sagalassos Red Slip Ware connected production to consumption. The red-slipped vessels were fine tableware, not evidence that every meal was luxurious. The macellum built under Marcus Aurelius formalized some food selling, while smaller shops and direct rural exchange remained important.

Work and Labor

Pottery production, farming, herding, market selling, construction, stoneworking, transport, textile making, and domestic service employed residents. Red Slip Ware was mass-produced from the Augustan period onward and distributed well beyond the city. The eastern suburb was not simply a “potters' quarter”: excavation also finds other crafts, houses, burials, and rubbish disposal there.

Potters needed clay preparation, forming, molds, slips, fuel, firing, sorting, packing, and transport, dividing production among many hands. Monumental construction likewise relied on quarry workers, carters, masons, sculptors, scaffold builders, and cleaners. Many tasks were seasonal, physically demanding, or performed by people absent from honorary inscriptions.

Social Structure

Sagalassos included civic elites, priests, potters, farmers, herders, traders, artisans, freedpeople, enslaved workers, and visitors from nearby communities. Wealth, land, citizenship, office, gender, patronage, and legal status shaped lives. Elite benefactors converted private resources into monuments and festivals, receiving offices, statues, and lasting public honor.

The city's population remained culturally Pisidian while participating in Greek civic traditions and Roman imperial institutions. People worshipped Greek and local gods, members of the imperial family, and deities introduced through wider connections. Public sanctuaries show organized civic religion more clearly than the small household rites performed at hearths or domestic shrines.

Tools and Technology

Kilns, forming tools, molds, settling basins, lamps, water pipes, fountains, baskets, looms, coins, and masonry tools supported daily work. The Roman bath complex, built mainly between about 120 and 165 CE, covered more than 5,000 square meters and used furnaces and raised heated floors. Running it required abundant water, wood, and continuous skilled labor.

Under Hadrian, a building boom produced the Neon Library, Hadrianic nymphaeum, Temple of Apollo Klarios, and major baths; the macellum followed under Marcus Aurelius. Fountains made water a civic spectacle, but their carved facades conceal the pipes, reservoirs, repairs, and carrying labor behind urban supply.

Clothing and Materials

Most clothing consisted of wool or linen tunics, cloaks, veils, and wraps, fastened with belts or pins. Leather shoes and sturdy outer garments suited steep streets and cold winters. Fine dyes, jewelry, and carefully arranged garments signaled prosperity, while work clothes needed frequent patching. Spinning, weaving, cleaning, and mending absorbed substantial household labor.