CITIES, TOWNS AND URBAN LIFE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

CITIES AND TOWNS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

20120226-Road Libya_LeptisMagna.JPG
Leptis Magna in Libya In addition to being great architects, the Romans were also unsurpassed city planners. With the exception of Rome itself, which had already evolved into a confused mess before Roman planners got a hold of it, Roman cities were laid out in grids with crossing streets, great boulevards, open circle and squares and carefully placed parks, temples and civic centers. Many cities and towns in Europe were founded by the Romans. Cities that got their start as Roman camps (castra) and still have the word in their names include Lancaster, Manchester and Worcester.

Roman cities were neatly laid out in a grid pattern, in many cases with wide streets at right angles to one another, and “every fifth street and avenue of unusual breadth." The buildings had strong foundations and numerous inscriptions with angular Roman letters. Remnants of Roman cities can be found in almost every major population center in southern Europe, Turkey, Syria and North Africa and many places in Spain, France, Switzerland, Britain, Romania and Bulgaria.

A Roman town was not considered a proper town unless it had paved streets, baths, a reliable water supply (often from an aqueduct). The public baths were generally open to everyone rich or poor. Most important cites were surrounded by protective walls and featured a triumphant gateway, colorful mosaic sidewalks, an amphitheater, smaller theaters, a hippodrome (horse track), paved streets. marble meeting halls for the local council, temples honoring Roman and local gods, and a market place with colonnades, often surrounding a fountain.

The towns of the empire were in their general appearance reflections of the capital city on the Tiber. Each town had its forum, its temples, its courthouse (basilica) and its places of entertainment, Its government seemed to be copied after the old city government of Rome. It had its magistrates, chief among whom were two men (duumviri), something like the old consuls. It had its municipal council or senate (curia), controlled by a municipal aristocracy (curiales). Its people delighted in the same kind of shows and amusements that we have seen at Rome. A typical small city was laid out in a grid pattern with a centrally-located market, bath complexes, a library and a theater that could seat 3,500. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com

Books: “The Fires of Vesuvius, Pompeii Lost and Found” by Mary Beard (Belknap Press/ Harvard University, 2009); “Daily Life in Ancient Rome” by Florence Dupont; Life and “Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and Its People” by Alen K. Bowman and J. David Thomas (British Museum Press, 1994).

Slums and Crowded Living Conditions in Roman Cities

The great cities of the Roman Empire are also shadowed by misery, stained by the uncleanness of our slums, dishonored by the vice they harbour. But at least the disease which gnaws at them is usually localised and confined to certain blighted quarters, whereas we get the impression that slums invaded every corner of Imperial Rome. Almost everywhere throughout the Urbs the insulae were the property of owners who had no wish to be concerned directly in their management and who leased out the upper stories to a promoter for five-year terms in return for a rent at least equal to that of the ground-floor domus. This principal tenant who set himself to exploit the sub-letting of the cenacula had no bed of roses. He had to keep the place in repair, obtain tenants, keep the peace between them, and collect his quarterly payments on the year's rent. Not unnaturally he sought compensation for his worries and his risks by extorting enormous profits. Ever-rising rent is a subject of eternal lamentation in Roman literature. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

In 153 B.C. an exiled king had to share a flat with an artist, a painter, in order to make ends meet. In Caesar's day the humblest tenant had to pay a rent of 2,000 sesterces ($80) a year. In the times of Domitian and of Trajan, one could have bought a fine estate at Sora or Frusino for the price of quarters in Rome. So intolerable was the burden of rent that the sub-tenants of the first lessee almost invariably had to sub-let in their turn every room in their cenaculum which they could possibly spare. Almost everywhere, the higher you went in a building, the more breathless became the overcrowding, the more sordid the promiscuity. If the rez-de-chaussee was divided into several tabernae, they were filled with artisans, shopkeepers and eating-house keepers, like those of the insula which Petronius describes. If it had been retained for the use of one privileged possessor, it was occupied by the retainers of the owner of the domus.

But whatever the disposition of the ground floor, the upper stories were gradually swamped by the mob: entire families were herded together in them; dust, rubbish, and filth accumulated; and finally bugs ran riot to such a point that one of the shady characters of Petronius' Satyricon, hiding under his miserable pallet, was driven to press his lips against the bedding which was black with them. Whether we speak of the luxurious and elegant domus or of the insulae caravanserais whose heterogeneous inhabitants needed an army of slaves and porters under the command of a servile steward to keep order among them the dwelling-houses of the Urbs were seldom ranged in order along an avenue, but jostled each other in a labyrinth of steep streets and lanes, all more or less narrow, tortuous, and dark, and the marble of the "palaces" shone in the obsr irity of cut-throat alleys.

Fires and Demolitions in Roman Cities

The Roman houses, moreover, caught fire as frequently as the houses of Stamboul under the Sultans. This was because, in the first place, they were unsubstantial; further, the weight of their floors involved the introduction of massive wooden beams, and the movable stoves which heated them, the candles, the smoky lamps, and the torches which lighted them at night 'involved perpetual risk of fire; and finally, as we shall see, water was issued to the various stories with grudging hand. All these reasons combined to increase both the number of fires and the rapidity with which they spread. The wealthy Crassus in the last century of the republic devised a scheme for increasing his immense fortune by exploiting these catastrophes. On hearing the news of an outbreak, he would run to the scene of the disaster and offer profuse sympathy to the owner, plunged in despair by the sudden destruction of his property. Then he would offer to buy on the spot at a sum far below its real value the parcel of ground, now nothing but a mass of smouldering ruins. Thereupon, employing one of the teams of builders whose training he had himself superintended, he erected a brand new insula, the income from which amply rewarded him for his capital outlay. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Even later, under the empire, after Augustus had created a corps of vigiles or fire-fighting night watchmen, the tactics of Crassus would have been no less successful. In spite of the attention Trajan paid to the policing of the Urbs, outbreaks of fire were an everyday occurrence in Roman life. The rich man trembled for his mansion, and in his anxiety kept a troop of slaves to guard his yellow amber, his bronzes, his pillars of Phrygian marble, his tortoise-shell inlays. The poor man was startled from his sleep by flames invading his attic and the terror of being roasted alive. Dread of fire was such an obsession among rich and poor alike that Juvenal was prepared to quit Rome to escape it: u No, no, I must live where there is no fire and the night is free from alarms!" He had hardly overstated the case. The jurists echo his satires, and Ulpian informs us that not a day passed in Imperial Rome without several outbreaks of fire.

In regard to demolitions, suppose, for instance, that the owner of an insula has leased it for a sum of 30,000 sesterces to a principal tenant who by means of subletting draws from it a revenue of 40,000 sesterces, and that the owner presently, on the pretext that the building is about to collapse, decides to demolish it; the principal tenant is entitled to bring an action for damages. If the building was demolished of necessity, the plaintiff will be entitled to the refund of his rent and nothing further. On the other hand, if the building has been demolished only to enable the owner to erect a better and ultimately more remunerative building, the defendant must further pay to the principal tenant who has been compelled to evict his sub-tenants whatever sum the plaintiff has thus lost.

This text is suggestive both in itself and in its implications. The terms in which it is couched leave no doubt as to the frequency of the practices of which it speaks, and they indicate that the houses of Imperial Rome were at least as fragile as the old American tenements which not so long ago collapsed or had to be demolished in New York.

Life in Pompeii

Along a street in Pompeii, excavations have uncovered the ancient equivalent of a “dry cleaners” shop, known as a fullonica, where people could pay to have their laundry done. In Naples, archaeologists found a 2,000-year-old hall where a Roman emperor, knights and merchants once partied. In Rome, excavations near the Colosseum found an opulent 2,000-year-old home that likely belonged to an elite aristocrat, possibly even a government official. In the basement of two-floored Roman complex in Toledo, Spain researchers found several 1,800-year-old pools. In Yenne, France, Roman resort with a waterfall-fed swimming pool was excavated. A huge Roman bathhouse with stained glass windows was unearthed in Xanten, Germany. [Source: Aspen Pflughoeft, Miami Herald, December 28, 2023]

At Pompeii we find in the graffiti, or writings left upon the walls of buildings, some remarkable evidences of the ordinary life of the townsmen. Some of these writings hardly rise above the dignity of mere scribblings. They are most numerous upon the buildings in those places frequented by the crowds. There we find advertisements of public shows, memoranda of sales, cookery receipts, personal lampoons, love effusions, and hundreds of similar records of the common life of this ancient people.

If we should attempt to draw a distinction among the various towns of the empire, we might observe that the people of the Western towns became more Romanized than those of the Eastern towns. The Latin language prevailed in the West, and the Greek language in the East. But still the Latin was used as the official language in the East as well as in the West; and, on the other hand, the knowledge of the Greek was a mark of culture in the West as in the East. \~\

Town Life

Little is told us in literature about the life of the country towns (municipia). This is the more remarkable because most of the great writers were not Roman-born but came from the municipia of Italy or the provinces. Most of our information is derived from the inscriptions that the citizens of these towns have left behind them, and from the excavations. These remains, dating chiefly from the Imperial Age, may be studied not merely in Italy but in all the provinces. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“At all times the man who was Roman-born looked down on the country towns and their people. The satirists indeed contrast the quiet simplicity of the municipality with the turmoil and vice of cosmopolitan Rome. But then, as now, many preferred the complexity and excitement of the great city with all its discomforts to the greater amount of comfort that their incomes would have brought them in a town.|+|

“Property of course was cheaper and rents were lower in the small town. It was possible to live there in a comfortable house on an income that provided only a cramped lodging in one of the great insulae of the city. Tunic and sandals could be worn instead of the heavy and expensive toga and shoes (calcei). The range of interests in the small town was narrower, often intensely local. To the energetic and generous citizen this local interest and civic pride offered an outlet, and that it was a welcome one is shown by the keen competition for local honors until a late period of the Empire.” |+|

Local Government

The towns were for the most part self-governing. The charters of some of them have been found. The magistrates were elected by popular vote, and the election notices painted on the walls at Pompeii show that all classes took a lively interest in the elections. This does not mean that the spirit of the municipalities was democratic. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

J. A. S. Evans wrote in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: The empire was made up of civitates (or, in the Greek-speaking east, poleis), that is, territories with their political and administrative centers in their chief town. In the east, Rome found poleis or "city-states" already well established with their own laws and customs, and Rome allowed these to continue. Life in the Hellenistic cities in the east continued with little change. Rome continued to foster cities as the Hellenistic kings had done before they were overtaken by Roman imperialism. In the west, cities and Romanization went hand in hand, and the Italian municipality provided the model for new city foundations. The city was responsible for administering its own territory. Egypt was the exception: except for Alexandria, the old capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom, cities were foreign to Egypt. The prefect ruled as the Ptolemaic kings had done before him until the Severan period, when municipalities were established there, too. [Source: J. A. S. Evans, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com]

The members of the city councils (curiae) were chosen from the wealthy notables of the city, and during the great period of the pax Romana they considered it an honor to serve. The curiae were responsible for collecting the taxes, the tributum soli, a tax on land, and the tributum capitis, a poll tax. These were the empire's chief source of revenue, though in addition there were customs dues at the frontiers and at provincial boundaries as well as the aurum coronarium, which began as a voluntary offering of a gold crown by a city to an emperor on his accession and evolved into a supplementary tax that was demanded with increased frequency. Wealthy notables were also generous donors and paid for many of the public amenities out of their own pockets. The ruined cities of Roman Africa in particular bear mute witness to the euergetism of their citizens, who grew rich from the production of wheat and olive oil for export.

The classes were divided by clearly-drawn lines. The candidates for office must come from those who were eligible for membership in the town council (curia); for this there was a property qualification. They must be free-born and of good reputation and not engaged in any disreputable business. No salaries were attached to the offices, however. Indeed, each magistrate was expected to pay a fee (honorarium) on his election, and to make substantial gifts for the benefit of the citizens and the beautifying of the town. Like the great magistrates at Rome they were entitled to the toga praetexta, the curule chair, the attendance of lictors, and special seats at the games. |+|

The curia, or town council, usually consisted of one hundred members (decuriones), including the ex-magistrates. They had to be of a certain age, at least twenty-five; they had to possess the required amount of property, and be free-born. They were entitled to the best places at the games and to the bisellia. Apparently they used the city water free of charge, and at any public entertainment or distribution of money they were entitled to a larger share than the common people. Each probably paid a fee on his admission to the curia and was expected to make generous gifts of some sort for the benefit of his city. |+|

Townspeople in the Roman Empire

Equites, members of the equestrian order made, up the aristocracy of the municipia as the “nobles” did at Rome. Conspicuous among them were the retired army officers, occasionally tribunes, but more often the centurions who were sometimes retired with equestrian rank, particularly the primipilarii, or men who had attained the chief centurionship of their legions. Such a man might come back to cut a big figure in his home town (patria), or might settle in the province where he had seen service. In either case inscriptions often survive to tell us of his war record and his benefactions to his native town. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“Augustales. Below and apart from these were rated the wealthy freedmen. Ineligible for office and council as they were, a special distinction and an opportunity for service and generosity were provided for them in the institution of the Augustales, a college of priests in charge first of the worship of Augustus and then of the following emperors. Each year the decuriones selected a board of six (seviri) to act for that year. At the public ceremonies of which they were in charge they were entitled to wear a gold ring like that of the equites and the bordered toga. They paid a fee on election, provided the necessary sacrifices, and proudly rivaled the decuriones in gifts to the community. |+|

“Plebs. Then came the plebs, the citizens not entitled to serve in the council, and below them the poor freedmen. These were the men who kept or worked in the small shops and made up the membership of the many guilds of which we find traces at Pompeii and which must have been very much the same in other cities. However hard their work and simple their fare, they could not have found their life mere drudgery. They expected the magistrates to see to it that bread and oil, the two great necessities of life, were abundant and cheap in the markets. They also expected them to furnish entertainment in the shape of games in the amphitheater and theater and of feasts as well. Even small towns had their public baths, where the fee was always low, and was sometimes remitted for longer or shorter periods by the generosity of wealthy citizens.” |+|

Public Buildings in Roman Towns

In its baths, theater, and amphitheater, fora, basilicas, paved streets, bridges, aqueducts, arches, and statues, each town was modeled upon Rome. Domestic architecture varied. The Roman houses in Britain and Africa are not of the type that we find at Pompeii. But in public buildings and public works the towns were Roman—as can be easily seen wherever their remains are found. Some of the most striking examples are in Africa, where in the Imperial Age the Romans maintained thriving towns in regions that are desert now. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

street in Ostia

“The strong civic pride of each town and the keen rivalry between neighboring towns expressed itself particularly in handsome buildings and in public works. It has often been said that at no other time in the world were there so many beautiful towns as there were in the Roman Empire during the third century of our era. Yet this does not mean that municipal taxation was heavy or that the revenues from lands and other city property paid for all these works. Much was expected from the generosity of the official class, and much was received. Others, women as well as men, gave liberally. The amphitheater at Pompeii was given by two men who had held high office in the city. A very lively and distinguished old lady, Ummidia Quadratilla, gave a temple and amphitheater at Casinum. Among the gifts of Pliny the Younger to his native town was a library with funds for its maintenance. The dedication of such a building was often celebrated by the donor with a feast for the community, where the citizens shared according to their rank. Inscriptions regularly commemorated such gifts. Sometimes in appreciation of his generosity the curia voted a citizen a statue of honor; sometimes he paid for the statue, too!

“Schools. But the municipalities did not show the large and elaborate school buildings conspicuous in our towns now, nor were there likely to be school taxes. Until a very late period education remained generally a private matter. There were occasional endowments from the wealthy for educational purposes, as, more often, for other charitable foundations. Elementary schools must have been established in the Italian towns and throughout the provinces generally with the spread of Roman influence. The more advanced schools would naturally be found only in the larger towns and cities. At the beginning of the second century of our era Pliny the Younger tells of contributing largely to a fund to open a school in his native town of Comum, that the boys might not have to go to Mediolanum (Milan). The arguments he uses for the education of the boys at home are very much like those used for the establishment of junior colleges in many of our towns at present. Some boys were sent to Rome for the sake of better schools and more famous teachers than the country and provincial towns afforded. Agricola found the establishment of schools in Britain a useful aid in strengthening the Roman hold on the conquered territory.” |+|

Water Supply in Roman Towns

Some houses had water piped in but most homeowners had to have their water fetched and carried, one of the main duties of household slaves. In large towns the poor must have carried water for household use from the public fountains in the treets, where the water ran constantly for all comers.

aqueduct

According to Listverse: The Romans “had two main supplies of water – high quality water for drinking and lower quality water for bathing. In 600 BC, the King of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, decided to have a sewer system built under the city. It was created mainly by semi-forced laborers. The system, which outflowed into the Tiber river, was so effective that it remains in use today (though it is now connected to the modern sewerage system). It continues to be the main sewer for the famous amphitheater. It was so successful in fact, that it was imitated throughout the Roman Empire.” [Source: Listverse, October 16, 2009]

All the important towns of Italy and many cities throughout the Roman world had abundant supplies of water brought by aqueducts from hills, sometimes at a considerable distance. The aqueducts of the Romans were among their most stupendous and most successful works of engineering. The first great aqueduct (aqua) at Rome was built in 312 B.C. by the famous censor Appius Claudius. Three more were built during the Republic and at least seven under the Empire, so that ancient Rome was at last supplied by eleven or more aqueducts. Modern Rome is well supplied by four, which are the sources and occasionally the channels of as many of the ancient ones. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“Mains were laid down the middle of the streets, and from these the water was piped into the houses. There was often a tank in the upper part of the house from which the water was distributed as needed. It was not usually carried into many of the rooms, but there was always a fountain in the peristylium and its garden, and a jet in the bathhouse and in the closet. The bathhouse had a separate heating apparatus of its own, which kept the room or rooms at the desired temperature and furnished hot water as required. |+|

“The necessity for drains and sewers was recognized in very early times, the oldest at Rome dating traditionally from the time of the kings. Some of the ancient drains, among them the famous Cloaca Maxima, were in use until recent years.” |+|

Sewers in Ancient Rome

Far be it from me to stint my well-deserved admiration for the network of sewers which conveyed the sewage of the city into the Tiber. The sewers of Rome were begun in the sixth century B.C. and continually extended and improved under the republic and under the empire. The cloacae were conceived, carried out, and kept up on so grandiose a scale that in certain places a waggon laden with hay could drive through them with ease; and Agrippa, who perhaps did more than any man to increase their efficiency and wholesomeness by diverting the overflow of the aqueducts into them through seven channels, had no difficulty in travelling their entire length by boat. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

They were so solidly constructed that the mouth of the largest, as well as the oldest of them, the Cloaca Maxima, the central collector for all the others from the Forum to the foot of the Aventine, can still be seen opening into the river at the level of the Ponte Rotto. Its semicircular arch, five meters in diameter, is as perfect today as in the days of the kings to whom it is attributed. Its patinated, tufa voussoirs have triumphantly defied the passage of twentyfive hundred years. It is a masterpiece in which the enterprise and patience of the Roman people collaborated with the long experience won by the Etruscans in the drainage of their marshes; and, such as it has come down to us, it does honor to antiquity. But it cannot be denied that the ancients, though they were courageous enough to undertake it, and patient enough to carry it through, were not skilful enough to utilise it as we would have done in their place. They did not turn it to full account for securing a cleanly town or ensuring the health and decency of the inhabitants.

The system served to collect the sewage of the rez-de-chaussee and of the public latrines which stood directly along the route, but no effort was made to connect the cloacae with the private latrines of the separate cenacula. There are only a few houses in Pompeii whose upstairs latrines were so designed that they could empty into the sewer below, whether by a conduit connecting them with the sewer or by a special arrangement of pipes, and the same can be said of Ostia and Herculaneum. But since this type of drainage is lacking in the most imposing insulac of Ostia as in those of Rome, we may abide in general by the judgment of Abbe Thedenat, who thirty-five years ago stated unequivocally that the living quarters of the insulae had never at any time been linked with the cloacae of the Urbs. The drainage system of the Roman house is merely a myth begotten of the complacent imagination of modern times. Of all the hardships endured by the inhabitants of ancient Rome, the lack of domestic drainage is the one which would be most severely resented by the Romans of today.

Forum and Roman Shopping Malls

The forum was the main square or market place of a Roman city. It was the center of Roman social life and the place where business affairs and judicial proceedings were carried out. Here, orators stood on podiums pontificating about the issues of the days, priests offered sacrifices before the gods, chariot-borne emperors rode past worshipping crowds, and people milled about shopping, gossiping and simply hanging out.

Roman shop

Dr Joanne Berry wrote for the BBC: Pompeii's forum was “the political, commercial and social heart of the town, as in all other Roman towns. As was typical of the time, most of the most important civic buildings at Pompeii - the municipal offices, the basilica (court-house), the principal temples (such as the Capitolium), and the macellum (market) - were located in or around the forum. [Source: Dr Joanne Berry, Pompeii Images, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Recent archaeological work has demonstrated that in the years immediately before Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii, building work was taking place to improve the appearance of the forum. Wall-paintings in one of the houses excavated illustrate scenes from the forum, such as bustling market-stalls set up in the colonnade fronting many of the forum buildings. Such evidence highlights the importance of this area in the everyday lives of the town's inhabitants.” |::|

It has been asserted the the Romans invented the shopping mall. Andrew Handley wrote for Listverse: “Trajan’s market was a massive open building in ancient Rome that is probably one of the world’s first examples of something we usually associate with the 20th century—a shopping mall. And while today’s malls probably wouldn’t stand up against even a mediocre hurricane, the Roman building is still standing more than 2,000 years later. [Source: Andrew Handley, Listverse, February 8, 2013]

“The two level building was located in the center of what used to be the main city of Rome, and is large enough to hold roughly 150 different shops. The reason it has weathered so well is because of the innovative way Romans made concrete for their structures—they were one of the first to start mixing lime in with concrete to protect it from corrosion.”

Street Life in the Roman Towns and Cities

It is evident from what has been said that a street in a residence quarter of an ordinary Roman town must have been plain and monotonous in appearance. The houses were all of practically one style, they were finished alike in stucco, the windows were few and mainly in the upper stories, there were no lawns or gardens facing the streets; there was, in short, nothing to lend variety or to please the eye, except, perhaps, the decorations of the vestibula, or the occasional balcony (maenianum), or a public fountain. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

“In the shopping streets the open fronts of the small shops, as well as the balconies and windows above them, gave color and variety during the day; the shops, however, were closed and blank at night. In Pompeii some streets show colonnades extending along the fronts of the buildings. These offered shade and shelter to the shopper and the passerby; walls thus protected were sometimes adorned with paintings. Such advertisements as notices of elections and announcements of gladiatorial fights were very often painted on the walls. In the city streets the rows of tall apartment buildings would seem much like such buildings in the same cities today. The galleries and balconies were full of life in warm weather. There were often flowerpots or window boxes in upper windows. |+|

20120226-street Pompeji_um_1900_strada_fortuna.jpg
Pompeii street “In Rome most of the streets were narrow and crooked. Juvenal, in his third satire, gives a vivid description of the discomfort and even danger involved in threading one’s way through the crowd. Conditions were worse at night because of the lack of any system of street lighting. The street itself was paved, and was supplied with a footway on either side raised from twelve to eighteen inches above the carriageway. The inconvenience of crossing from the one to the other was relieved at Pompeii by stepping-stones, of the same height, firmly fixed at suitable distances from one another across the carriageway. These stepping-stones were placed at convenient intervals on each street, not merely at the intersections. They were usually oval in shape, had flat tops, and measured about three feet by eighteen inches; the longer axis was parallel with the walk. The spaces between them were often cut into deep ruts by the wheels of the vehicles, the distance between the ruts showing that the wheels were about three feet apart. |+|

Urban Park in Aphrodisias, Turkey

Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology magazine: “The South Agora of Aphrodisias, located in southwestern Turkey, was one of two public squares within the ancient city. It was built during the first century A.D., and had been previously interpreted as a commercial complex. However, recent archaeological work has shown that the space functioned in quite the opposite capacity, and was instead an urban park, equipped with a monumental pool, fountains, promenades, trees, and other greenery. “It had the grandeur of public city architecture and design, but was intended for relaxation, strolling, and some retail,” says University of Oxford archaeologist R.R.R. Smith. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, April/May 2018]

The enormous pool at the complex’s center measures 575 feet long and 82 feet wide and was bordered by marble benches, some even inscribed with gaming boards. Excavations and archaeobotanical analysis of plant remains revealed that rows of palm trees (likely Cretan date palms) and other plants once flanked the pool, providing not only a decorative element but also ample shade. These palms were not native to Aphrodisias, but would have been transported from coastal locations in southwest Asia Minor. This 3.7-acre park would have been very expensive to build and maintain. With its shaded walkways, flowing water, and lush vegetation cared for by an association of professional gardeners, it seems to have been designed for no other purpose than to provide the city’s inhabitants with a place of leisure. “It was highly unusual for its time,” says Smith.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024