One of the questions that I get asked all the time when I tell people about what I study is "So, if you had a time machine, would you go back to Ancient Rome?" My answer is always the same: "Do I get to come back?"

For someone who has grown up in the modern world, the city of Rome, even after its redevelopment by Augustus, was not a particularly pleasant place. I'd actually posit that the gladiatorial contests would be one of the most recognizable - and even accepted - things in modern society. There were rules, there was a referee, and, while certainly a blood sport, a gladiatorial contest was more about fighters coming out on top, rather than the loser actually dying (which was reasonably rare - current estimates are that 80-90% of losers in any of these contests went on to fight again). The arenas were large, with some reserved seating, awnings to protect the audience from the sun, raucous fans, and vendors selling overpriced food. There were even intermissions! ....albeit intermissions that essentially involved brutal executions for a couple of hours. Yeah that part isn't terrifically civilized.

The laws, too, are a bit of a mixed bag. In high school, you often see that the Romans were an ordered people, having everything just so, and establishing firm constants over the area which they ruled. This, like all generalizations, is a lovely fantasy. Perhaps most importantly, the laws and such depended on the period of Roman history which is being discussed. I can talk about how Western Roman history took place over a literal millenium, but that's hard to visualize from the comfort of your couch. So, for perspective, that's like saying that the constancy of Rome is like the constancy of Britain after the battle of 1066. There have been a few changes since then, up to and including the fact that we would not understand the English that was spoken at that point in time, just like people in the Late Republic (1st century BCE) were not particularly good at sussing out their own original legal code, which was written about 3-400 years prior (~450-449 BCE).

Anyway, let me try to nip these tangents in the bud. I'll try to keep it focused around actual life in the city of Rome. The first place to start would be living in the city, methinks. If you were a time traveler who wanted to taste the life for a year or whatever, your first option would probably be to make sure you go with plenty of things with which you could make enough money to live very comfortably through this year. Like a wagonload of cinnamon and pepper. And if you had the foresight to do that, then you might be able to live in a fancy house or apartment downtown that had good access to amenities. We actually have a description of such a downtown apartment from a member of the aristocracy - he uses it as part of an extended metaphor, but hey (translation not my own, hence the archaisms):

Beshrew me if I think anything more requisite than silence for a man who secludes himself in order to study! Imagine what a variety of noises reverberates about my ears! I have lodgings right over a bathing establishment. So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing!

When your strenuous gentleman, for example, is exercising himself by flourishing leaden weights; when he is working hard, or else pretends to be working hard, I can hear him grunt; and whenever he releases his imprisoned breath, I can hear him panting in wheezy and high-pitched tones. Or perhaps I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rubdown, and hear the crack of the pummelling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow. Then, perhaps, a professional comes along, shouting out the score; that is the finishing touch.

Add to this the arresting of an occasional roisterer or pickpocket, the racket of the man who always likes to hear his own voice in the bathroom, or the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming-tank with unconscionable noise and splashing. Besides all those whose voices, if nothing else, are good, imagine the armpit-plucker with his penetrating, shrill voice, – for purposes of advertisement, – continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell instead. Then the cakeseller with his varied cries, the sausageman, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation.

So you say: "What iron nerves or deadened ears, you must have, if your mind can hold out amid so many noises, so various and so discordant, when our friend Chrysippus is brought to his death by the continual good-morrows that greet him!" But I assure you that this racket means no more to me than the sound of waves or falling water; although you will remind me that a certain tribe once moved their city merely because they could not endure the din of a Nile cataract.

Words seem to distract me more than noises; for words demand attention, but noises merely fill the ears and beat upon them. Among the sounds that din round me without distracting, I include passing carriages, a machinist in the same block, a saw-sharpener near by, or some fellow who is demonstrating with little pipes and flutes at the Trickling Fountain, shouting rather than singing.^1

Noise pollution isn't a new thing, as he demonstrates. Even for an aristocrat, downtown living was loud. Not only did you have the constant ruckus of the street, starting with the rattling of the carts before dawn (heavy traffic was forbidden through the day in an attempt to allow for some mobility), then swelling as the streets filled with the usual business. Regarding the cleanliness of the streets, it was not particularly uncommon for people to throw waste into the street, as evidenced by the multiple recurring laws that kept being passed, which banned people from throwing trash, animal skins, human waste, etc. onto the street. Said streets had literal stepping stones because of the waste, and other illustrations for the lack of effectiveness of these laws included the fact that Rome was the first city to implement an organized waste management force to shovel feces out of the streets. Juvenal, the delightful satirist, notes that:

…it’s a long way up to the rooftops, and a falling tile
can brain you. Think of all those cracked or leaky vessels
tossed out of windows—the way they smash, their weight,
the damage they do to the sidewalk! You’ll be thought most improvident,
a catastrophe-happy fool, if you don’t make your will before
venturing out to dinner. Each open upper casement
along your route at night may prove a death-trap:
so pray and hope (poor you!) that the local housewives
drop nothing worse on your head than a pailful of slops.^2

or Martial, who notes that...

If I did not wish and deserve to see you at home this morning, Paulus, may your Esquiline abode be further from me than it is. But I am close neighbor to the Tiburtine column, where rustic Flora gazes at ancient Jove. I must surmount the uphill path from Subura with its dirty stones and steps never dry, and I am scarcely able to break through the long trains of mules and the marble blocks you see hauled by many a rope. What is worse still, Paulus, worn out after a thousand labors, I am told by your janitor that you are not at home. Such is the outcome of my vain effort and my poor soaked gown: it would hardly have been worth it to see Paulus of a morning. Shall the faithful client ever be cultivating unconscionable friends? Unless you stay abed, you can be no patron of mine.^3

Sure, fines were in place for people who did this - but the enforcement of those fines proved to be nearly impossible, since the people of Rome clearly just ignored their existence. The streets were anything but pristine or clean, and the smell must have been abominable.