Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2017
Summary
ROMAN CIVILIZATION WAS DISTINCTLY URBAN. NOT UNTIL THE Industrial Revolution would a comparable percentage of Europeans live in cities. As centers of political, economic, and, therefore, social life, cities offered Romans the greatest opportunities for making their fame and fortunes – or losing them. This book examines how Romans came into contact, interacted, and sought to present themselves in the most used, yet least studied, of urban spaces: the street.
A brief look at three examples illustrates the vividness of the street and its centrality to city life. In his third Satire, written around 110 ce, the poet Juvenal imagines his friend, Umbricius, leaving Rome for a new life in Cumae. Amid a litany of complaints about the caput mundi, Umbricius targets the street:
carts thundering by through the narrow twisting streets and the swearing of drivers caught in a traffic jam would even snatch away sleep from an emperor – or a somnolent seal. When the rich man has an appointment, the crowd parts before him as he sails above their heads in his huge galley. While he moves along he can conduct correspondence or read or sleep inside, for a litter with windows closed is most soporific. But even so he will arrive first; though I hurry, I am blocked by a wave of people in front of me and the people in a huge rank jab my back. One man digs an elbow into me; another strikes me with a hard pole. One man bangs my head with a wood beam, another with a wine jug. My legs are plastered with mud. Then huge feet kick me on all sides, and a soldier plants his boot's nail right on my toe.
For Juvenal, the street was a place of chaotic passage, a space where all manner of goods and people moved through the city in tight quarters and where those possessed of above-average means had ample opportunity to rise above the rank and file.
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- Information
- The Roman StreetUrban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome, pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017