11. The Regions of Rome: Fashionable and Plebeian Quarters.—The great Augustus divided the capital into 14 regiones or “wards” and these in turn into 265 vici or precincts. Obviously some of these districts are more select than others. No citizen of decent tastes will, unless compelled by dire poverty, live in the network of hovels beyond the bridges and under the brow of the Janiculum, where a great colony of Jews and other Orientals exist in what is alleged to be extreme squalor. If you go south also from the Forum and Palatine, you are likely to run into a wide complex of unlovely industrial districts and laborers’ quarters, especially along the Tiber, although there are still some very good residential streets upon the Aventine.

In general the northern end of the city is the fashionable section, although the Subura, the street running out between the Esquiline and the Viminal, is notorious for containing some of the vilest tenements in all Rome. To live in a “Subura garret” is about the greatest possible degradation socially. Right above this ill-favored avenue, however, slopes the Esquiline itself, lined with the palaces of many of the most exclusive Senators. Pliny the Younger resided there in his lifetime,[7] and a rich ex-consul has his house at present. Rome is, in fact, decidedly like many later cities; walk only a few blocks, and one can pass from the bottom to the top of the social ladder. Further north, in the regions of the parks and public gardens, the fine residences are probably more continuous, but one can never know Rome by merely visiting its ultra-genteel quarters. There is, consequently, no better place to begin an investigation than near the Esquiline, let us say where the disreputable Subura runs northeast towards the somewhat more select “Patrician Street” (Vicus Patricius).

12. A Typical Short Street, “Mercury Street.”—We may wisely take our stand facing somewhat southward, with our backs to the Viminal and with the domes of the huge Baths of Trajan partially in sight upon the heights ahead. It is a little after dawn on a warm spring morning; but all Rome, we shall discover, rises very early, and normally goes to bed correspondingly early. Even the sedate “Conscript Fathers” of the Senate are supposed to convene at prima luce,—gray morn. What can be seen?

To any later judgment this “Mercury Street” (so named from a local temple)[8] is very narrow, not over fifteen feet from housewall to housewall. Although the sun has now risen the way is still uncomfortably dark, because the houses pressing on either side rise to at least thirty or forty feet. The roadway, one discovers, is skillfully and durably paved with heavy lava blocks, and since it forms a regular thoroughfare it has been swept reasonably clean; although to right and left in the semi-darkness can be descried impossible alleys barely ten feet wide winding off between the tall buildings, and these side passages are more than dirty. This street, like the great majority in Rome, is comparatively short. You come to an abrupt turn, or perhaps to an ascending flight of stone steps worn slippery by innumerable sandals, and immediately enter into a quite different quarter.

There is a very narrow stone sidewalk but it differs slightly before each house, every owner being required to make his own repairs. In the pavement broad ruts have been worn by the wagons, despite the restrictions (presently stated) upon wheeled traffic. Very few streets of Rome are wide enough for two carts to pass freely; and every driver has to look ahead and frequently to wait at corners to let other teams get by. Upon the pavement and especially at intersecting crossways are set groups of four or five large oblong stepping stones; these seem needless at present but can be a veritable godsend in the rainy season when every “Via” and “Vicus” in Rome seems converted into a raging torrent.

13. The House and Shop Fronts.—Looking upward now, one is instantly confronted by a long expanse of stuccoed walls—some pink, yellow, or bluish, but mostly an ugly brown. The lower story, quite on the street level, is broken either by the petty shops which open their shutters and thrust their counters clear out upon the pavement, or else it is merely a solid blank space with only here and there a doorway, or a few small windows, mere peepholes for fear of burglars. The second and upper stories, however, are less solid. There are many larger windows set with window-boxes displaying bright flowers, or even with projecting balconies which reach out so far that neighbors in opposite houses can sometimes clasp hands above the hurrying life below.

Shops abound almost everywhere. In the great commercial quarters by the fora, the Tiber and the Campus Martius, will be found the splendid establishments which cater to wealth, but no quarter of Rome is too mean for its bakeries, vegetable stands, wine shops, and cheap restaurants. In fact, the absence of a speedy means of interurban communication makes a multiplication of small shops absolutely necessary. Most of these retailers do business on the pettiest scale, and a glance reveals that nearly the whole stock in trade is spread on the counter facing the street. As for the shopkeeper, ordinarily he lives and sleeps either in a dark cell just in the rear or in an equally narrow chamber directly above his business. “Born over a shop,” snobbish people say when they wish to brand some person as a nobody.

14. Street Shrines and Fountains.—Nevertheless, commonplace and darksome as this street may seem, there are clear tokens both of an active religious, also of an artistic life. On the flat wall, beside a grocer’s stand, two serpents are crudely painted in yellow—emblems of the guardian genii of the place. Opposite, by a money-changer, is painted a fairly presentable Mercury, the god of Gain. As one goes about the city the painted snakes appear almost everywhere, and also pictures of Jupiter, Minerva, and Hercules.

At the nearby crossroads, however, is something more important. Set against the side of a building is a little niche let into the wall in lieu of an altar. Upon this pious neighbors can deposit small articles of food for the “Gods of the Street Crossings” (Lares Compitales), and above is a low relief of two youthful deities, male and female. Early as it now is, an old woman has already stolen up to deposit a small crust—for the little neighborhood Lares are good and trusty friends; they will never be forgotten.

Opposite this shrine, however, a group of laughing, chattering girls is mustering around a gushing fountain. Romans are justly proud of their excellent water supply. Every house of any pretentions has its separate faucets, perhaps in great number; but the poor tenement dwellers must depend upon the street fountains. Pure, clear water is shooting from a metal pipe into a broad separate stone basin. The stream is issuing from the sculptured head of a Medusa executed with admirable detail and vigor, although this is only one of thousands of similar fountains all over the city. At the next corner the water is spouting from an eagle’s beak; at another from the mouth of a calf, or the head of a Mercury.

The surplus water overflowing the basin trickles away in a streamlet down to the middle of the street, and although this adds to the inconvenience of pedestrians the pitch of the ground makes the flow carry away much of the rubbish (often very filthy) which is thrown out recklessly from the shops and even from the upper windows. It is thanks partly to this admirable water system that Rome is not even more scourged by epidemics, than is unhappily the case.[9]

15. Typical Street Crowds.—So much for the inanimate objects in Mercury Street; what now of its surging humanity? A wise law of Julius Cæsar has indeed forbidden the ordinary use of wheeled vehicles in the city streets between sunrise and the “tenth hour” (4 P.M.). This is a blessed regulation considering the narrow width of even the finest avenues, but, nevertheless, the wagons that were allowed to enter by night bringing heavy building materials to the Senator Rullianus’s new mansion have now to be suffered to depart, and also the wain that had rattled up in the darkness with flour for the nearby public bakery. Also one may possibly see a Vestal Virgin or one of the superior priests exercising their special privileges and driving in a chariot.

The street, however, is crowding with life, even if not a horse is in sight. The most conspicuous are literally dozens of men, each with a heavy toga wrapped carelessly around him, hurrying frantically in every direction. In other cities and other ages they might be “making a train.” Here they are in fact “clients,” duty bound to be at the doors of their patrons early every morning to pay their respects and seek their bounty (see p. 149)—but almost every other type of humanity is represented. Great numbers of boys and girls are trudging reluctantly along to their schools, the poorer bearing their own packages of writing tablets, the better dressed each followed by a sedate male attendant, a pedagogue, bearing the weapons of learning.

In and out there also go youths in humble attire, often running at breakneck speed, thrusting and jostling to make their way; they are the slave messengers from the great houses flying on early errands for their masters. One of them elbows aside a tall and venerable man with a prodigiously long beard and wrapped in a trailing but none too spotless mantle—he is a Greek philosopher on his way to some mansion where he will perhaps expound the theories of Epicurus to a pleasure-loving nobleman. A few steps further and there is seen a fair-haired German clad in his outlandish costume of undressed wolf skins; hardly behind him is a red-headed Gaul in a short tartan cloak; one can speedily recognize also a hawk-eyed, white-robed Arab from the edge of the deserts and presently appears a grinning negro, black as ebony and in a splendid gilt and scarlet livery—the foot-boy probably of some rich lady.

16. Frequent Use of Greek in Rome.—The bulk of the crowd, to be sure, is Italian, with keen, olive faces, dark hair, and rather short stature, graceful and incessantly gesturing. But the Latin chattered on every hand is full of uncouth idioms, the sermo plebis calculated to make Cicero turn in his grave, and there is a great co-mingling of foreign words; above all, about one person out of every four seems to be speaking Greek, now abominably corrupt, now in the purest Attic, and upon penetrating the great houses one would discover Greek to be even more truly a familiar language.

All educated Romans write and speak Greek as Englishmen and Americans will never learn to use French. Learned books are being written by the Tiber in the incomparable tongue of Hellas, and only the most ignorant Romans fail to understand simple Greek sentences. In short Rome seems close to becoming a bi-lingual city. The reigning emperor is so enthusiastic for things Hellenic that his foes brand Hadrian as “the Graecule.” Athens and Corinth seem almost to have conquered their conquerors.

17. Clamor and Thronging in the Streets.—As the sun rises, every instant the street becomes more crowded. A great din is rising from a forge just inside an alley; a second noise from a carpenter shop. As if determined to be heard above everything else, from a second story comes a voice bawling out some kind of a declamation—it is a rhetoric school getting into action, and an ambitious youth is denouncing the dead tyrant Phalaris at the top of his lungs. By yonder wall, almost completely blocking the sidewalk, a nondescript barber has set down a stool and is clipping a victim with huge scissors. Close by him stands a cook’s boy guarding two braziers, on one of which are boiled peas, on the other small sausages that are kept smoking hot. Early as the hour may be, workmen and others who have an active day before them are standing around and laying in a hearty breakfast. Almost upsetting this throng comes a countryman flogging a donkey whose huge paniers laden with garden truck project dangerously to either side.

The noise increases continually. From another lane there comes more shouting. An auctioneer is knocking down the furniture of a poor bankrupt, and the bidding is growing violent. All the shopkeepers are bawling their wares to each prospective purchaser. Now there is a clang and jangling; pushing the crowd aside march ten soldiers, five abreast, with insolent strides, their optio (sub-centurion) stalking before them. Their gilded armor and helmets and the scarlet kilts peeping under their cuirasses, proclaim them to be “Praetorians,” proud members of the imperial guard. Gilded shields clatter on their backs; they warn the slaves and hucksters away with their spear butts while their officer’s red plume nods arrogantly.

Hardly are they gone before there comes the crash of some barbaric music; one hears castanets, trumpets, drums, and sistra (a kind of glorified bronze rattle), and unmelodious singing. Tossing their arms, waving blunted swords or pounding them on light shields, along comes a troupe of the priests and priestesses of Cybele, the uncouth Asiatic goddess; the women, dark-skinned Syrians, whirling in wild dances with hair aflying, the priests puff-cheeked, smooth-faced creatures, busily pounding with their noise-making instruments. They are headed for their temple to spend a day of orgy.

18. The Processions Attending Great Nobles.—Suddenly there is a partial silence. Youths in livery are moving down the street flourishing white wands: “Way, way for his Excellency,” they are shouting. Instantly the word flies around, “The Praetor Fundinus!” Hucksters cease shouting. Everybody stands still and all who wear hoods or hats hastily bare their heads,[10] for the praetor represents “The Majesty of the Roman People.” Behind his viatores “Way Clearers”) a full score of toga-clad clients swing into sight marching ahead of the great man. He rides in a blue tasseled litter borne by eight tall Cappadocians of equal height and pace. Just in front of them march two haughty lictors, attendants of honor, with bundles of rods, the official “fasces,” conspicuously resting upon their shoulders.[11] Close beside the litter walks a well-groomed man with a marked Greek profile—the confidential freedman and man of business of the magistrate. Behind trail more clients and a greater retinue of slaves. Fundinus himself heeds little the incessant greetings cast at him. He can be seen lolling on his cushions, with the little curtains thrown back just enough to show the purple embroidery on his official toga. A book, half unrolled, is in his hand—for it is the best of form to affect a certain bookishness in scenes of great distraction.

As the praetor’s train advances, however, it is met by another headed in the opposite direction. A great concourse appears of handsome slaves, all wearing brown coats and each bearing a box or package upon his shoulder; then follows a group of pretty Levantine slave-girls gaudily clad, then a brown Egyptian boy carrying a pet monkey; then a simpering Celtic maid with a large basket from which peers a small and very uneasy lap-dog; next a perfect hedge of upper slaves and freedmen, some carrying musical instruments, some small caskets obviously crammed with valuables, and some conveying ostentatiously costly garments, and then borne high by her eight slaves in light red livery comes a great lady herself—an ex-consul’s wife, the multi-millionaire Faustina.

19. A Great Lady Traveling.—“Her Magnificence” (Clarissima) also leans back on her cushions with a studied attitude of indifference and boredom, letting the whole street take in the silky sheen of her embroidered mantle, the gem-set handle of her ostrich fan, the gold dust that her maids have sprinkled on her tall pile of brown hair, and the great pearls that shed luster from her ears, neck, and every finger. She is merely making one of her incessant pilgrimages between her Viminal palace and some one of her ten country villas. She would feel disgraced to travel with less than about two hundred slaves and freedmen. Very likely her grandfather was a freedman himself; what matter?—official rank yields to the conquering flash of gold.

Fundinus’s lictors lower their fasces; his litter is set down hastily. As the trains meet the great man hastens to the side of the greater matrona. Faustina is evidently in a gracious mood. She is seen to flip the praetor’s face daintily with her fan. The magistrate climbs back to his own litter smilingly—perhaps he has been bidden to an ultra-select house party at Tusculum. The two trains of attendants elbow past each other, and the street resumes its plebeian bustle.

20. Public Salutations: the Kissing Habit.—As the crowds thin a little, so that the types and faces are more easily seen, several things become noticeable. First the salutations—there are surely advantages in being borne high in a litter. No person in good clothes can proceed far without being incessantly beset with greetings. Everybody seems to know everybody else. It is polite to cry Ave! (“Hail”) or Salve! (“I hope you’re well”) to persons of the scantiest acquaintance, and then, when they return your salute, if there is nothing more to add, Vale! (“Good luck”).

More serious, however, is the incessant kissing. A sedate old gentleman with a narrow purple stripe on his tunic (the token of the “equestrian” rank) appears followed by two spruce slave boys. A nondescript fellow immediately pushes up to him, seizes his hand, then smacks him roundly on the cheek. Doubtless the rascal’s lips are foul and his breath charged with garlic; it is nevertheless most discourteous for the older man to resent it. There is no escaping the incessant attacks, unless you can have a litter, and the poet Martial has vainly complained of acquaintances who insisted on kissing him in December “when round his nose hangs a veritable icicle.” Even the Emperor has to submit to the usage, although the privilege is confined to that envied and exalted circle known as “Cæsar’s friends.”

21. The Swarms of Idlers and Parasites.—Another thing becomes obvious after a short scrutiny—the vast number of idlers. People are incessantly lounging up and down the street manifestly with nothing important to do. Hard work and common trade are, as later explained (see p. 146), by no means genteel; and many a Roman who possesses merely a threadbare toga and has his name on the list for corn doles prefers living by his wits in busy idleness, fawning on the great, and hunting dinner invitations to doing a stroke of honest labor.

Most of the idlers nevertheless are slaves. In the vast familia of the palaces the tasks are all so subdivided that the average slave has far too much time on his hands. He puts in many hours, therefore, wandering about the sights of the city, gaming, following coarse love affairs, and seeking tips on the circus and amphitheater contests. The amount of worthless chatter is infinite. Even at this early hour from the tables of a wine-shop comes the rattle of dice boxes. Another dirty group is actually throwing dice on the pavement under pedestrian’s heels. The law nominally forbids open gaming, but the police are very busy men. Rome, one discovers thus promptly, is all too much a city of “parasites.” By exploiting the world, she is able to maintain a horde of human bipeds, bond or free, who minister nothing to her prosperity.

The gamesters on the pavement halt, however, instantly, when a tumult arises from a neighboring vintner’s stall. A Spanish boy has tried to steal a jar of fine old Massic, but the vessel has been wisely fastened to a pillar with a chain. While he tugs to break this the dealer spots him: “Stop thief!” rises the cry. Instantly appear two broad-shouldered men, in half armor with small steel caps. They carry stout poles tipped with strong hooks useful in fires. These are vigiles (police-firemen) of the city watch. The thief is seized and hustled off howling and protesting, to tell his troubles at the court of the City Praefect. Before the players can resume, they have to stand aside also for a funeral procession—flute players, professional mourners screaming and gesticulating, manumitted slaves of the deceased wearing liberty caps, mourning relatives around the bier; all headed for the cremation-pyre outside the gates.

22. Public Placards and Notices.—Just as the dice are about to rattle again a shrewd-looking fellow with a piece of red chalk is seen stepping up to a space of blank wall. “Celer, the notice writer,” whispers everybody. A large crowd elbows and gathers around him, as to general delight, with quick strokes he letters the following announcement of a gladiator fight:

“Euge! Euge! Bravo, Balbus!” cry the expectant idlers as they go back to their game, and Celer hurries off to repeat his notice on some wall in the next street.

The dice contest can be omitted. Not so with the wall inscriptions which we now discover are scattered over almost every space of available stucco along the thoroughfare. Some are formal notices of games, articles for sale, auctions, tenements to let, etc., written with some skill, although with many puzzling abbreviations, by professional sign-writers like Celer. Thus on one building can be read in tall red letters: “To rent, from the first of July, shops with the floors above them and a house in the Arrius Pollio block, owned by Nigidius Maius. Prospective lessees may apply to Primus his slave,” and another sign advertises the “Venus baths, fitted up for the best people, shops, rooms over shops and second story apartments, in the property owned by Julia Felix.”[12]

23. Wall Scribblings.—More interesting really are the wall scribblings of the humble. “The walls were the writing paper of the poor,” will be declared later by students of Rome. All kinds of sentiments are scratched upon the stucco; sometimes with considerable care with a stylus; sometimes with merely a finger nail; sometimes drawn with charcoal or a red crayon. There are indeed so many writings, especially in frequented places, that we notice a wag has actually added a word of protest:

Every kind of opinion is to be found along a limited stretch of wall. Coarse insults abound where your enemy can promptly see them: “Vile wretch,” “Bold rascal,” “Old fool,” “I hope you’ll die!” “May you be crucified!”—these are merely the mildest. Then other sentiments are more friendly: “Luck to you!” “Good health to you everywhere!” “A Happy New Year and a lot of them,” and “What wouldn’t I do for you, dear eyes of Luscus” (the names of the enemy or friend involved being often added).

Lovers also take up their tale. A girl records her frank opinion: “Virgula to her dear Tertius—You are mighty mean.” A penitent swain spreads forth this “personal” to his mistress: “Do have pity on me and let me come back.” A young lady announces tartly: “Where Verus is there’s nothing veracious” (a pun on words). A gay philanderer explains, “A blonde girl taught me to hate brunettes, and I will hate them if I can—but loving them would come so much easier!” And another youth demands passionately: “My dear Sava, please do love me!” While finally a jealous suitor has broken into verse:

The prosing moralist must likewise have his say. Somebody has sagely scribbled, “A trifling ailment if neglected can grow to be very serious.” There are in addition conundrums and children’s sketches—pictures of playmates, friends, foes, and especially of popular gladiators, marked with red ochre or charcoal, and sometimes limned with considerable vigor, but usually in the manner of the childish drawings in all ages, with forehead and nose marked by a line and with two dots serving for eyes. School boys have scratched down some of the verses in Vergil and Ovid that have just been flogged into them by their masters.

The only thing we can miss in Rome are the election notices which would abound on the walls of all chartered provincial or free Italian cities, entreating us to vote for soand-so for duumvir “he’s a good man”; or declaring that “all the fullers’ guild are out for —— as aedile.”[13] Rome, alas! has lost her liberty; the city is paternally governed by the Emperor aided by the Senate, and popular elections are a thing of the past.

24. The Streets Dark and Dangerous at Night.—One is warned, however, not to tax the patience of the adjacent shopkeepers and linger too long in this street. Written above a drug seller’s stand appears clearly, “No idlers here! Move on you loungers!” and a little distance along upon a wall, “Here you! What are you loitering for?” Indeed the passing throngs are becoming somewhat monotonous. The hurly-burly abates. About noon almost everybody will take first a fairly hearty luncheon, and then a siesta. Nearly every shop will be closed. Then the bustle will be resumed while the more genteel element will be seen headed in great numbers towards the public baths.

By four o’clock, however, the shops will be closing behind heavy shutters, the clamor from the work rooms will cease, and even the humble will begin to prepare for the crowning event of a Roman’s day—dinner, often begun still earlier. After sundown the silence almost of the grave shuts down upon avenues which a few hours earlier were simply swarming with life. There are no street lights. Nobody stirs outdoors if possible, unless accompanied by friends or slaves with lanterns or torches; and it is no harm to carry heavy bludgeons, for despite the watch there are all too many sneak thieves, cutpurses, and even open bandits, “dagger men” (siccarii), with their “your money or your life.” Also lawless young nobles sometimes get an evil pleasure (as did Nero and his companions) by ranging the streets and beating up harmless and poorly guarded citizens.

25. Discomforts of Life in Rome.—People also tell you that at night there is no small peril of being brained by loose tiles which rattle down from the lofty house-tops, or less dangerous but most disgusting, of being drenched by buckets of filthy slops flung recklessly from upper windows into the streets. Then toward dawn your sleep is ruined by the incessant rumbling of the wagons with timber, brick, building stone, cement, and all kinds of food supplies which have to be excluded from the city in the day hours. These are all part of the general discomforts of life in Rome, along with the squalid flat-buildings, the peril from the collapse of rickety houses, the occasional great floods of the Tiber, the fearful conflagrations, the ubiquitous throngs of people, and the grievous absence of privacy.

The complaints are incessant. “School masters in the morning; corn grinders at night; and braziers’ hammers day and night” are subjects for standard diatribes of poets like Martial and Juvenal. And they, like everybody, first praise the quiet simple life possible in the Italian country towns—and then they remain in Rome. The great city with its multitudes, its ceaseless variety of all things good and bad, its appeal to every kind of human interest holds them with so many other mortals fascinated. They are unhappy while in Rome; but still more unhappy until they can return to her.

So much for the merely outward side of a typical street on the slopes of the Esquiline. We can now penetrate the homes of the people, first visiting an insula, a great tenement block of the lowly, and then investigating a more elegant domus, the residence of a magnate.