Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Color Plates
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Repopulating the Street
- 1 Street Forms, Street Movements
- 2 Life In The Street
- 3 The Street's Social Environment
- Part II The Street and Its Architectural Border
- Part III The Street in Microcosm
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
2 - Life In The Street
from Part I - Repopulating the Street
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Color Plates
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Repopulating the Street
- 1 Street Forms, Street Movements
- 2 Life In The Street
- 3 The Street's Social Environment
- Part II The Street and Its Architectural Border
- Part III The Street in Microcosm
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
IN A POEM WRITTEN IN EPISTOLARY FORM TO HIS FRIEND FLORUS, Horace launches a litany of excuses for why he is a lousy correspondent. Among his reasons is the difficulty of life in Rome and the strain exacted by its streets:
And anyhow, how do you think I can write poems in Rome, amidst so many cares and so many responsibilities? One man asks me to be his sponsor, another to leave behind all my duties and to hear what he's written: this one's lying sick on the Quirinal, that one's on the furthest part of the Aventine, and yet I've got to pay a visit to both. The distance is hardly convenient. “True, but the roads are clear, so there's nothing to stop you from thinking en route.” Sure. First, a builder in a rage rushes by with mules and workmen; then a huge crane hoists a beam and a boulder; and then comes a funeral procession, jostling its way along with lumbering wagons; a mad dog scampers by this way, a muddy pig that: now go and think carefully on some melodious verse!
For our investigation of street life, at least two things are fascinating about Horace's portrait of urban life. First, the skeptical voice he embeds in his poem sees Roman streets in much the same way that plenty of scholarship on Roman cities has: they are relatively empty; they primarily offer a means of movement; and, when they are broad, few impediments or distractions will be present. Second, Horace's response confirms what we know intuitively even as we look at relatively desolate streets on archaeological sites – namely, that there was much and many that got in the way.
But who and what were present, and what pursuits they engaged in, can contrast markedly with what we normally experience in cities of the modern West. There is, of course, construction equipment – a timeless complaint, it seems – but also beasts of burden, people carrying materials, funerals lumbering along and aloud, and even loose animals. The scene depicts very little “normal” traffic: people like the poet trying to get from place to place.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Roman StreetUrban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome, pp. 45 - 75Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017