Italy in the Age of the Empire

List of Cities

Now let us pause for a moment at the height of this fleeting grandeur and try to realize that the empire was greater than the city of Rome. We have lingered too long in this blazing center, which once fascinated the people of the provinces and has since enchanted historians. In truth, the spirit and life of that vast realm no longer resided in the corrupt and dying capital; the remaining strength and health, much of its beauty, and the greater part of the empire’s spiritual life had taken root in the provinces and in Italy. We cannot form a correct idea of Rome’s real importance and its astonishing success in organizing and establishing order and peace unless we leave this city and tour the thousand cities that were the constituent parts of the empire and the Roman world.

At the beginning of Pliny the Elder’s description of Italy, he asks himself: How shall I begin this great task? So many points—so many that no one can count them—with all the fame each possesses! Around and south of Rome lay Latium, which was once its mother, then its enemy, and once again its granary, and finally became a paradise of villas for Romans who combined wealth and taste. From the south and west of the capital, excellent roads and the Tiber River led to two rival ports, Portus and Ostia on the Tyrrhenian coast. The port of Ostia was at the height of its greatness in the second and third centuries A.D. Crowds of merchants, sailors, and dock workers filled its streets and theaters, and its houses and apartments were very much like those of modern Rome. In the late fifteenth century, a traveler from Florence marveled at the city’s wealth, abundance, and splendid decorations. A few surviving columns and an altar designed with perfect beauty and adorned with raised flowers show that even these merchant people had grasped the classical concept of beauty.

South of Rome, along the coast, stood the city of Antium (modern Anzio), where wealthy Romans, many emperors, and favorite gods had palaces and shrines that stretched down to the sea to catch every light breeze. In the ruins of this city, which stretches five kilometers, masterful carvings such as the Borghese Gladiator and the Apollo Belvedere have been found. A surviving historical monument nearby recalls “distinguished citizens,” now nineteen centuries dead, who had just finished enjoying the sight of eleven gladiators dying in combat with ten wild bears. To the north, behind the coastal hills, lay the city of Aquinum, which nurtured the poet Juvenal, and the city of Arpinum, which adorned itself with the births of Marius and Cicero. Thirty-two kilometers from Rome stood the small town of Praeneste (modern Palestrina), whose beautiful houses rose tier upon tier on the mountainside, whose gardens were famous for their red flowers, and whose summit was crowned by a famous temple of the goddess Fortuna Primigenia, patroness of women in childbirth, who gave oracles for a fee. The city of Tusculum, sixteen kilometers from Rome, was similarly rich in gardens and villas. Cato the Elder was born in this city, and Cicero placed the scene of his Tusculan Disputations there. The most famous suburb of Rome was Tibur (modern Tivoli), where Hadrian built his summer villa and where Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, spent her captivity.

North of the city of Rome lay Etruria, which experienced a half-hearted renaissance during the empire. Emperor Augustus destroyed most of the city of Perugia and rebuilt part of it. The skilled workers of this emperor repaired and decorated the old arch of the city, which had survived from Etruscan times. The city of Arretium gave Maecenas to Rome and pottery to the world. The city of Pisa had already grown old: its name and origin go back to a group of Greek colonists who came from the settlement of Pisa in the Peloponnese and made their living by lumbering and timber trade beside the Arno River. Farther up this river, a new Roman colony named Florentia (modern Florence) had arisen, which was an exception among cities because it perhaps underestimated its own future. The marble quarries of Carrara lay at the northwestern extremity of Etruria; from there the finest marbles were carried to the port of Luna and shipped from there to the capital. The city of Genoa had long served as a market for the goods of northwestern Italy. Years earlier, in 209 B.C., the Carthaginians had ruined it in a relentless commercial war. Since then it has been destroyed many times, but each time it has resumed a higher life and emerged in a more beautiful form.

At the foot of the Alps stood the city of Augusta Taurinorum, founded by the Taurini tribe of the Gauls and made a Roman colony by Emperor Augustus. Its old pavements and gutters can still be seen beneath the streets of modern Turin. A great gate from the reign of Augustus also survives, reminding the viewer that the city was once a strong fortress against northern invaders. Here the calm river Padus (modern Po), rising in the Cottian Alps, flows four hundred kilometers eastward and divides northern Italy into two parts. In the early Republic these two parts were known as Transpadane Gaul and Cispadane Gaul. Throughout the peninsula, the Po valley was the most fertile, most populous, and most prosperous region. At the foot of the Alps lay the lakes Verbanus (modern Maggiore), Larius (modern Como), and Benacus (modern Garda), whose grandeur and splendor delighted the eyes and hearts of that generation as they do ours. From Como, the birthplace of Pliny the Younger, a commercial highway ran southward toward Mediolanum (modern Milan). This city, founded in the fifth century B.C. by the Gauls, had by Virgil’s time become a major city and cultural center, and in A.D. 280 it replaced Rome as the capital of the Western Roman Empire. The city of Verona controlled the trade of the Brenner Pass and was so wealthy that it possessed an amphitheater (recently restored) seating twenty-five thousand spectators. Along the winding course of the Po River lay the cities of Placentia (modern Piacenza), Cremona, Mantua, and Ferrara. All these were frontier cities, built as barriers against Gallic invasions.

North of the Po River, east of the Adige, lay the region of Venetia. The name comes from the Veneti people, the first colonists who came here from Illyria. Herodotus records that the chiefs of these tribes gathered marriageable girls in their villages each year, set a price on each according to her beauty, married her to the man who paid that sum, and used the money to provide an attractive dowry for girls who lacked beauty themselves. The city of Venice had not yet arisen, but in Pola on the Istrian peninsula, and in Tergeste (modern Trieste), Aquileia, and Patavium (modern Padua), major cities gleamed like a crown above the Adriatic Sea. Pola still preserves from Roman times a magnificent triumphal arch, a beautiful temple, and an amphitheater that can only be surpassed by its prototype, the Colosseum. To the south (modern Bologna), and Faentia (modern Faenza) reaches Ariminum. In Rimini, of the countless bridges built by Roman engineers, one perfectly preserved bridge remains; this bridge carries the Flaminian Way through an arch of Roman strength and character into the city. A side road ran from Bononia to Ravenna. Ravenna, the Venice of its day, was built on wooden piles in marshes created by the waters of several rivers flowing into the Adriatic. Strabo describes it: It is a city whose streets and passages are formed by bridges and boats. Emperor Augustus stationed his Adriatic fleet there, and several emperors in the fifth century made this city their official residence. The extraordinary earthen rampart of northern Italy, its healthier and more invigorating climate, its mineral resources, varied industries, and cheap water trade route gave this region economic superiority over central Italy in the first century A.D. and political leadership in the third century A.D.

South of Ariminum, on the rocky, stormy, harborless eastern coasts, only a few important cities appeared north of Brundisium. Nevertheless, in Umbria, Picenum, Samnium, and Apulia there were many small towns whose wealth and art can be judged only by studying the city of Pompeii. The city of Assisi gave birth to Propertius and also to Saint Francis; Sarsina to Plautus; Amiternum to Sallust; Sulmo to Ovid; and in Venusia Horace was born. The city of Beneventum was famous not only for the defeat of Pyrrhus but also for the great triumphal arch that Trajan and Hadrian erected there. Trajan narrated the story of his successes in peace and war on its relief inscriptions. The city of Brundisium on the southeastern coast supervised trade with Dalmatia, Greece, and the East. In the “heel” of Italy, Tarentum, once a proud city-state, had now become a declining winter resort for wealthy and noble Romans. In northern Italy the vast estates of the lords had swallowed most of the land and turned it into pasture; the towns were losing their peasant support, and the artisan classes were declining. The Greek communities that once boasted of their luxurious wealth had been shattered by barbarian pressure and the Second Punic War and had now declined into small towns where Latin gradually replaced Greek. In the “toe” of Italy, Regium had a good harbor and its trade with Sicily and Africa flourished. On the upper western coast the old city of Velia no longer remembered the time when Parmenides and Zeno had filled it, like Elea, with the resonance and clamor of philosophical and supernatural poems and irreverent sayings. The city of Poseidonia, which still astonishes tourists with its grand and large temples, had been renamed Paestum by Roman colonists, and its Greek character was melting into a lava of “barbarian” — here Italian — blood. Throughout Italy only in Campania did Greek civilization still live and breathe.

Campania—the hills and shores around Naples—was geographically part of Samnium; but economically and culturally it was a world of its own: industrially more advanced than Rome, financially strong, and within its small and limited area packed with intense life full of political turmoil, literary rivalries, artistic displays, Epicurean luxuries, and exciting public spectacles. Its soil was fertile and produced the finest grapes and olives in all Italy; and it was from here that the famous wines of Sorrento and Falernian came. Apparently when Varro addressed the world in praise of Italy in this way, he had the region of Campania in mind: O you who have traveled through many lands, have you seen any land more cultivated than Italy? … Is not the land of Italy so filled with fruit trees that it appears like one great orchard?

At the southern extremity of Campania, a steep peninsula extends from Salerno to Sorrento. Villas among vineyards and gardens on the hilltops encircled the shore like a garland. Sorrento was as beautiful as modern Sorrento. Pliny the Elder called it “the pearl of nature” and said that nature had bestowed all its gifts upon it. It seems that in these two thousand years nothing has changed there; its people and customs are the same, and its gods are almost the same; and its rocky shore still resists the endless siege of the sea.

Opposite this rocky point lay the island of Capreae (modern Capri). In the southern part of the gulf the volcanic mountain Vesuvius smoked, while the two cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum lay buried under volcanic lava. Now we reach the city of Neapolis or “New City,” which in Trajan’s time was the most Greek of all the cities of Italy. In the ease of Naples one can see the reflection of its ancient addiction to love, pleasure, and art. Its people were Italian, but its customs, traditions, culture, and amusements were Greek. Here there were beautiful temples, palaces, and theaters, and here, every five years, contests for poetry and music were held, in one of which Statius won the prize. At the western corner of the gulf lay the port of Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli). The city’s name came from the foul smell of its sulfur springs. This port improved and prospered Rome’s trade and developed the iron, glass, and pottery industries. The amphitheater of this city, with its underground passages perfectly preserved, shows how gladiators and wild beasts were brought onto the stage. In the harbor of Puteoli the villas of Baiae, whose location between sea and mountain doubled their charm, gleamed. It was here that Caesar, Caligula, and Nero played, and Romans suffering from rheumatism bathed in the mineral waters. The city profited greatly from its fame for gambling and debauchery. Varro relates that young women were shared in this city, and many boys served instead of girls. Claudius considered Cicero polluted with irreparable disgrace because he had once visited this city.

Seneca asks: Do you suppose it was ever possible for Cato to live in a pleasure resort and occupy himself with counting the coquettish women, those colorful boats, those roses dancing on the waves that passed before him? A few kilometers north of Baiae, in the mouth of an extinct volcano, Lake Avernus emitted sulfur vapor with such intensity that, according to legend, no bird could fly over it and survive. Beside this lake was a cave from which Aeneas, the hero of Virgil’s epic poem, descended into Tartarus. North of this lake stood the old city of Cumae, which now, under the stronger attraction of the new city of Neapolis, the better harbors of Puteoli and Ostia, and the industries of Capua, was slowly dying. Capua lay fifty kilometers from the sea in a fertile region that sometimes yielded four crops a year; and its steel and bronze manufactures were unrivaled throughout Italy. Rome had punished this city so severely for aiding Hannibal that it could not recover for two centuries, and Cicero called it “the abode of dead politicians.” Caesar gave it new life by settling thousands of new colonists, and in Trajan’s time the city flourished again.

When in this rapid way we list the major cities of classical Italy, only names appear, and we mistake them for letters and words on a map and feel nothing of the lively, turbulent life of people full of greed and eagerness for women, gold, food, and wine that once filled their streets and squares. So let us turn over the ashes of one of the warm Roman centers and try to feel, from the remarkably well-preserved remains, something of the vital movement that once pulsed in its streets and alleys.

Pompeii

Pompeii was one of the least important cities of Italy, mentioned in Latin literature only for its garum, cabbage, and cemetery. The city was founded by the Oscans and perhaps is as old as Rome itself. Its inhabitants were Greek colonists. Then Sulla captured it and turned it into a Roman colony. Part of it was destroyed by an earthquake in 63 B.C. They were rebuilding it when Mount Vesuvius destroyed it again. On 24 August 79 this mountain began to erupt and sent stones and ash high into the air amid clouds of smoke and flames. Then a heavy rain turned the lava into a flood of mud and stone that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum to a depth of 2.5 to 3 meters in six hours. Throughout that day and the next the earth shook and buildings collapsed. Spectators were buried in the ruins of the theaters, hundreds of residents were suffocated by ash or smoke, and violent waves closed the escape route by sea.

Pliny the Elder, who was then commander of the western fleet at Misenum near Puteoli, moved by the cries for help from the people and also by curiosity to observe the phenomenon closely, boarded a small boat, landed on the southern shore of the gulf, and saved many lives. But when this group tried to escape the hail and smoke the elderly scholar collapsed and died on the spot. The next morning his wife and nephew joined the despairing crowd fleeing southward along the coast, while from Naples to Sorrento the volcanic eruption had turned day into night. The lamentations of many refugees, separated from their husbands, wives, or children in the darkness, added to the existing terror. Some begged help from the many gods, while others cried that the gods were dead and the end of the world, long foretold, had come. When, on the third day, the sky finally cleared, lava and mud had buried everything in Pompeii except the tops of the roofs, and Herculaneum had disappeared without trace.

Of Pompeii’s 20,000 inhabitants, about 2,000 had lost their lives. Many molds were preserved in the volcanic ash: from the rain and stones that fell on them a paste formed that hardened when it dried, and in these instant molds the bodies of the dead were preserved like cast statues. A few survivors dug through the ruins hoping to recover valuables, but soon the site of the abandoned city was deserted and gradually covered by the dust of time. In 1709 an Austrian general dug a well in Herculaneum, but the volcanic layer was so thick (in some places more than twenty meters) that he had to continue the excavation by the slow and expensive method of tunneling. The excavation of Pompeii began in 1749 and has been continued at intervals ever since. Now most of this ancient city has been uncovered, and so many houses, various objects, and inscriptions have been found there that in some respects we know the ancient city of Pompeii better than ancient Rome.

The center of life in Pompeii, as in all Italian cities, was its forum. No doubt the forum was once a gathering place for farmers who brought their produce there on market days; games were also held there and shows were given. The inhabitants had also set up altars for their gods there; at one end of the forum for Jupiter, at the other end for Apollo, and nearby for Venus Pompeiana, the patron goddess of the city. But the city’s residents were not truly religious; their heads were too busy with industry and politics, games and hunting, to have time for worship; and even during worship they venerated the phallus (male organ), which was the height of their Dionysian rites. When the volume and importance of economic and political affairs increased, large buildings for administration, trade, and banking rose around the forum.

From modern Italian cities one can imagine how the streets around the forum were pulsing by day with the movement of peddlers, the bargaining of buyers and sellers, and the noise of workshops, and by night with the clamor of entertainments. Excavators have found in the ruins of shops various fruits, bread, and dried goods that barely escaped the grasp of customers and have been carbonized and fossilized. Farther down the streets were taverns, gambling houses, and brothels, each trying to be a combination of all three at once.

But if the people of Pompeii had not written their feelings on the public walls of the city, we would now have no way to understand the ups and downs of life in Pompeii. Researchers have been able to copy three thousand wall inscriptions, and one can imagine that there were thousands more. Their authors sometimes, as is still a popular habit with some people, wrote only their own name or a crude insult on the wall; and sometimes they gave hopeful advice to their enemies, such as this one: from Samius to Cornelius: Go hang yourself. Many of the inscriptions are love messages and mostly in verse: Romula notes: I spent some time here with Stephylus; and a lovesick youth writes: Farewell Victoria, wherever you are may your sneezes be pleasant.

Almost equal in number to these messages are announcements of public events and auctions of personal items written or painted on the walls. Landowners posted rental notices, those who had lost something described the lost item, guilds and other groups announced themselves as worthy and desirable candidates for the mayoralty. For example, the fishermen have nominated Popidius Rufus for mayor, the carpenters and charcoal sellers beg you to elect Marcellinus. Some wall inscriptions announce gladiatorial contests, and some describe the bravery of famous gladiators such as Cladus (Ah, maidens) or express pure affection for a favorite actor — Actius! Beloved of the people, return as soon as possible!

Pompeii lived in hope of entertainment. It had three public baths, a gymnasium, a small theater seating two thousand five hundred spectators, a larger theater seating five thousand, and an amphitheater in which twenty thousand spectators could enjoy the agony of others’ deaths. One inscription reads: Thirty pairs of gladiators, provided by the mayor, will fight in Pompeii on 24, 25, and 26 November. There will be a spectacular hunt. Long live Marius! Long live Paris! Maius was the mayor or, in other words, the city’s peace officer, and Paris was the leading gladiator.

The remains of the interiors of houses show real and genuine comfort and various arts. Windows were exceptional, and central heating was rare. Baths were reserved for the houses of the very wealthy, and few houses had an outdoor pool in a surrounding garden. The floors of houses were of concrete or stone, and sometimes of mosaic. One blunt money-lover wrote these words on the threshold of his house: Hail to cash! and another showed his money-loving nature with these words: Cash is the cause of joy. Not much old furniture has survived. Almost all of it was wooden and has perished. Nevertheless, a few marble or bronze tables, chairs, and lamps remain. In the museums of Pompeii and Naples one can see various household items such as pens, inkstands, scales, kitchen utensils, toilet articles, and musical instruments.

The art objects discovered in Pompeii or its surroundings show that not only palace-dwelling nobles but also the city’s merchants and tradesmen enjoyed the cultural amenities of life. A private library uncovered in Herculaneum contained one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six volumes or scrolls. There is no need to repeat what has been said about the Boscoreale cups, or the rich landscapes and beautiful female figures painted on the walls of Pompeian houses. Many houses had excellent statues, and in the forum there were one hundred and fifty statues. In the temple of Jupiter the head of one of the gods was found that only Phidias himself could have made. In this statue head, strength and justice shine through the thick curls of hair and beard. In the temple of Apollo stood a statue of Diana with a hole in the back of her head through which a hidden attendant could give oracular utterances. In one of the beautiful houses of Herculaneum there were so many first-class bronze statues that one of the famous halls of the Naples museum is filled with them. Probably the masterpieces of this collection — Mercury at rest, Narcissus or Dionysus, the drunken satyr and the dancing faun — are either originally from Greece or the work of Greek artists of that age; these statues show skillful technique and carefree joy in a healthy body that are characteristic of the school of Praxiteles. One of these bronze statues is a completely realistic bronze bust showing the bald head and grim but not unkind face of Caecilius Iucundus, an auctioneer in Pompeii whose accounts, written on one hundred and fifty-four small wax tablets, were found in his house in Pompeii. This work, by one of the sculptors—probably Italian—of that age, is completely human with its combination of roughness and intelligence, shrewdness and unevenness, and in fact makes the statues of gods and goddesses with their smooth and lifeless faces that surround this statue in the Naples museum appear as if they never existed.

Urban Life

Life, whether private or public, individual or collective, has never been more intense and turbulent in any land than in ancient Italy. But the events of our own age are so attractive and vivid that they leave little interest in examining the details of urban organization during the reigns of the Caesars; the bewildering variety of laws and the precise gradations of voting rights are no longer part of the past life that forms the subject of our discussion.

One of the basic features of the Roman Empire was that although it was divided into provinces, it was organized as a collection of more or less autonomous city-states, each embracing many scattered points. Patriotism among individuals was more a love and attachment to their own city than loyalty to the empire. Usually the free men of each Roman community were content with purely local voting rights, and non-Romans who had been granted Roman citizenship rarely went to Rome to vote. As the example of Pompeii shows, the decline of assemblies in the capital was not accompanied by a similar phenomenon in the cities of the empire. Most Italian cities had a senate (curia) — and most eastern imperial cities had a council (boule) — that made regulations, and an assembly (comitia, ekklesia) that elected the mayor. Every mayor was expected to pay a considerable sum to his city for the privilege of serving it, and custom required that he occasionally give donations for public works and games. Since no salary was paid for public service, democracy — or aristocracy — of free men almost everywhere resulted in an oligarchy of wealth and power.

The urban communities of Italy enjoyed prosperity and well-being for two hundred years, from the time of Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Of course the majority of their inhabitants were poor — nature and exclusive privileges ensured that — but as far as history shows, never before or after this period did the rich ever give so much to the poor. Practically all the costs of running the city, financing shows and games, building temples, theaters, stadiums, gymnasiums, libraries, cathedrals, aqueducts, bridges, and baths, as well as the costs of decorating these places with triumphal arches, colonnades, paintings, and statues, fell on the shoulders of the wealthy. During the first two centuries of the empire, these philanthropic works were carried out with such patriotic rivalry that in some cases they led to the bankruptcy of families or cities that undertook such generosity. In times of famine the rich usually bought grain and distributed it free among the poor. Sometimes free oil or wine, or a public banquet, or a cash gift for all citizens, and sometimes for all inhabitants, was provided. The number of detailed inscriptions recording these donations is enormous. One millionaire in Altinum in Venetia gave 1,600,000 sesterces for a public bath building; one wealthy lady built a temple and an amphitheater for Casinum; Desumius Tolus gave a bath to the city of Tarquinii that cost him 5,000,000 sesterces; Cremona, destroyed by the soldiers of Vespasian, was rebuilt with the financial help of several citizens; and two physicians gave away all their wealth in donations to the city of Naples. Lucilius Gemellus invited all the inhabitants of the populous city of Ostia to dinner, paved a long wide street with stone, repaired or rebuilt seven temples, rebuilt the city’s bath, and donated 3,000,000 sesterces to the city treasury. Many rich men had the custom of inviting large numbers of citizens to a feast on the occasion of their birthday, or election to office, or their daughter’s marriage, or their son’s “toga virilis” (man’s toga), or the donation of a building for public use. In return the city voted to give the donor an office, or a statue, eulogy, or inscription. The poor felt no obligation for all these gifts and accused the rich of having accumulated the money for these philanthropic expenses through exploitation; they demanded fewer magnificent buildings and cheaper grain, fewer statues and more games and entertainments.

If we add to the private donations of individuals the emperors’ gifts to cities, the buildings erected at the emperor’s expense, the natural disasters alleviated at the emperor’s cost, and the public works and jobs whose expenses were met from the municipal treasury, we can understand the splendor and pride of the cities of Italy in the time of the emperors. In rivalry with Rome the streets were paved, drained, maintained, and decorated; a free medical service for the poor was provided; clean water was supplied to houses for a small fee; food was sold cheaply to the poor; public baths were often free thanks to private donations; and to poor families alimenta (peasant child support) was paid so they could raise their children; schools and libraries were built, shows were performed, concerts were arranged, and games were held. Civilization in the cities of Italy was less material than in the capital. These cities competed with one another in building amphitheaters, but they also built genuine temples that sometimes equaled the best temples of Rome, and they brought joy to the months of the year by holding magnificent religious festivals. Cities spent generously and nobly on works of art and provided halls for orators, poets, sophists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and musicians. They provided their fellow citizens with facilities for preserving health, ensuring cleanliness, recreation, and enjoying a rich cultural life. Most of the great writers of the Latin language came from the cities rather than from Rome, and also some of the major masterpieces of sculpture in the world’s museums, such as the Nike in Naples, Eros in Centumcellae, Zeus in Otricoli, were created in the cities. These cities provided a population the size of that of modern Italian cities in the nineteenth century in every respect, and offered people unparalleled immunity from war. The first two Christian centuries witnessed the peak of the greatness of the great Italian peninsula.