The Rise of Rome

underground, were built in 312 (by Appius Claudius Caecus, see this page) and in 272. By the middle of the second century, a rising population had led to the construction of the Aqua Marcia, an astonishing feat of engineering that brought water to the top of the Capitol. Few people could afford baths at home, and by about 100 public baths had become a universal feature of daily life.

Most thoroughfares in the city were unpaved, although they might have raised sidewalks; people dumped rubbish and sewage in them, as well as dead animals and the occasional unwanted corpse. Slops from pots often fell on the heads of unwary passersby (Laws were passed regulating claims for damages.) Unsanitary conditions were not the only danger, for wheeled traffic took up much of the available space and accidents were common.

The urban unit was the vicus, a street that functioned as an artery for pedestrians and wheeled traffic and served the neighborhood around it. Each vicus had a central point of reference—a crossroads, a sacred grove, a shrine. To qualify officially for the title of street, or via, the Twelve Tables specified that a roadway should be eight feet wide when straight and sixteen at bends; only two roadways merited the title—the Via Sacra and the Via Nova (New Street), which ran between the Forum and the Palatine.

A snatch of dialogue from the comic playwright Publius Terentius Afer (or Terence) from the middle of the second century, conveys the flavor of a well-to-do part of town. A slave is giving someone directions in a city that has no street signs.

“Do you know that arcade by the market?”

“Of course I do.”

“Go uphill past it, straight along the road. When you get to the top, there’s a slope downward. Rattle your way down that. Next there’s a little shrine on this side, and there’s an alleyway thereabouts.”

“Which one?”

“There’s also a big fig tree.”

“But you can’t get through that alleyway.”

“You’re absolutely right! Really! … I made a mistake: go back to the arcade; yes, you’ll get there much more directly this way, and there isn’t so far to walk. Do you know the house of old Cratinus?”

“I do.”

“When you’ve passed that, go left straight along that road; when you come to the temple of Diana, go to the right. Before you reach the gate, just by the pond, there’s a bakery, and a workshop opposite: that’s where he is.”

On main streets, one- or two-room shops or poky apartments for the poor faced one another along either side. These were usually open to the passersby and could be secured by wooden shutters. All sorts of goods were sold—food, cloth, kitchenware, jewelry, and books. Bars served wine mixed with water and flavored with herbs, honey, or resin (the ancestor of today’s Greek retsina). Soup with bread, stews, diced roasted meat, sausages, pies, fruit, and filled buns were also on offer, even a kind of proto-pizza. Restaurants with seating catered to the more affluent customer.

THE ROWS OF shops and apartments protected the houses of the well-to-do, which lay behind them, from the noises and stinks of the street. They were laid out according to a basic pattern on which those with money and space could expand. A front door led through a narrow vestibule to a semi-public waiting room or hallway; this was the atrium, with an opening to the sky, and lined on three sides by small dark bedrooms. The side facing the visitor was occupied by a raised space, the tablinum, originally the master bedroom but now the owner’s study, with rich frescoes on the walls and the masks of the family’s ancestors on pedestals. Nearby, the triclinium was a formal dining room where guests ate elaborate meals lying on couches. The back of the house was the family’s living quarters, dominated by a columned garden courtyard or peristyle. In the bigger houses there was a first floor and a summer triclinium by the peristyle.

As always, some parts of town were more fashionable—and costly—than others. The most expensive houses could be found on the Palatine and the Velia, a ridge of ground running down alongside the Sacred Way into the Forum, the hub of elite transactions. The land surrounding the city was taken up with market gardens that produced flowers and vegetables. During the second century, many of these horti were purchased by the rich and powerful, who built villas in them: calm, green retreats where they could escape the din and anger of city life. This was rus in urbe, an urban countryside.

There was too little space inside the city walls to meet Rome’s requirements, and buildings began to appear on the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. This was an open area beyond the Capitol that was used for pasturage and military exercises. Scipio Africanus built a villa and garden there. The Circus Flaminius, a public square, was commissioned in 221 for the Plebeian Games by Gaius Flaminius, the populist leader who fell at Lake Trasimene a few years later. It also served as a marketplace and a display area for triumphal booty. There were government structures on the Campus, too; the Ovile was an enclosure rather like a sheep pen where the comitia centuriata held its votes; the adjoining Villa Publica, rebuilt and enlarged in 194, was a headquarters for state officials in which the census was taken and troops were levied.

Rome’s increasing wealth in the second century led to civic improvements. The rich and famous built triumphal arches (Scipio among them), porticoes, and basilicas as public amenities. More streets were paved and the drainage system was improved. Concrete, opus caementicium, was widely used and new temples were constructed, in the Greek manner, from marble or travertine. But the city’s largest entertainment venue, the Circus Maximus, remained a less than glamorous construction of painted wood.

Rome had a long way to go before it could match the magnificence of the Hellenic cities of the East.

AS EVER, THE poor had a hard time of it. There were plenty of jobs in service industries such as food supplies (grain, meat, fish), in construction, in retail and crafts of various kinds (ceramics, glassware, metalwork). But Rome’s population was growing rapidly and slaves soaked up much available work. We can assume high levels of unemployment or part-time employment, at least periodically.

Space was at a premium. As in modern cities, developers began to look skyward and built apartment blocks as many as eight stories high. At first, these were rickety wood-framed structures that had an alarming tendency to catch fire. With the introduction of concrete, something rather more solid was created; the Romans called it an insula, or island. This solidity was more apparent than real, however, for insulae often collapsed without warning.

Many people joined associations (collegia, sodalicia, corpora, or curiae), which would give their lives some stability beyond the family. There was little in the way of local government, and no regular police force or fire service. However, the four aediles (two were originally deputies to the tribunes and were joined in 387 by another pair elected by patricians only) were responsible for the upkeep of the city’s fabric, presentation of the Games, the supply of grain and water, and oversight of the markets. Membership in a trade guild, a professional association, or a cult group provided some protection against the vicissitudes and injustice of life. Members of these organizations met regularly (say, once a month), held a sacrifice, and ate a meal together. There were neighborhood societies, which took part in the annual festival of the Compitalia, a celebration in honor of the Lares Compitales, the gods of local crossroads. Some collegia were burial clubs, to which members made small, regular financial contributions to pay for their funeral costs.

The state was uneasy about these societies, as its reaction to the Bacchanalia crisis showed, because it did not know what they were up to. At times of political upheaval, they might conspire against good order. But potentially subversive “horizontal” social structures were counteracted by the “vertical” pyramid of the clientela. As we have seen, everyone, except those at the very pinnacle of society, was a cliens helpful to and dependent on one or more richer patrons. The relationship was hereditary and recognized, albeit not enforced, by law. If a man was lucky enough to be the client of a senator, he was expected to call on this person at home first thing in the morning and accompany him to the Forum; the more followers in a great man’s train, the greater his prestige. In return, he could expect a sportula—some food or pocket money.

This system of mutual exchange of goods and services bound society together and made revolt from below