Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome

by Bruce W. Frier

Overview

By examining a portion of private law in imperial Rome as a functioning element in social life, this book constitutes an important contribution to the sociological understanding of law in premodern societies. Using archaeological data as well as literary and legal texts, Bruce Frier shows that members of the upper class, including senatorial families, lived in rented apartments and that the Roman law of urban lease was designed mainly for them, not for the lower class.

Originally published in 1980.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691615707
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #115
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

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Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome

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By Bruce W. Frier

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05299-1

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CHAPTER 1

Upper-Class Apartment Housing in Ostia and Rome

Excavations at Ostia, the port city of Rome, have revealed, in the course of the past century, a pattern of urban housing which literary sources also associate with Rome of the High Empire: sturdy four- and five-story apartment blocks (insulae), constructed primarily in brick and concrete with vaults or wooden raftering, and a high density of settlement — in short, an urban pattern perhaps distinguishable from Rome's only by the much smaller size of Ostia (ca. 20,000-35,000 inhabitants). An understanding has also emerged of the relationship between the social structure of Ostia (well-known from inscriptions) and the types of housing uncovered by excavations.

The Ostian excavations have in part merely confirmed what was already known from literary sources. Thus, the stately homes of the Ostian governing classes are perhaps only smaller and less costly versions of the houses of wealthy Roman senators and knights. Into the category constituted by these mansions can be placed as well a number of large and luxurious apartments, which display the same generous proportions and also the same tendency to orient major rooms in loose, functional groups around an interior court. Within such houses and luxury apartments, the rich and powerful of Ostia encountered one another in circumstances of worldly ease.

Nor has lower-class housing occasioned much surprise, although to be sure archaeologists have tended to ignore these humble structures and concentrate instead on the better-built and thus better-preserved housing of the upper classes. Nonetheless, the plan of Ostia displays a great numerical preponderance of lower-class housing: not only large and relatively well-constructed tenements like the Caseggiato degli Aurighi (111, x, 1), but also numerous smaller and more anonymous structures. A typical example is 111, i, 12-13: a Trajanic construction consisting of two rectangular "rooms," each ca. 115 sq. m. and each subdivided by flimsy partitions into two or three tiny "apartments." The use of temporary partitions is very characteristic of lower-class housing at Ostia; it occurs also on the mezzanine floor of the Insula degli Aurighi, on the ground floor of the slum-like Caseggiato del Temistocle (v, xi, 2), and on the first floor of the Casa di Diana (1, iii, 3-4). Because such partitions are easily swept away in the ruin of a building, their existence tends to be ignored by archaeologists. Nonetheless, even the surviving walls confirm an impression of crowding and squalor: rows of rooms no longer easily distinguishable from one another in function, disposed along facades or lightwells, and often reached by long interior corridors. In any event, nothing in the Ostian remains contradicts the picture of lower-class housing given by literary sources. The great majority of the free Ostian population, perhaps some 90-95 percent, occupied these dismal buildings.

What was truly surprising about Ostia, however, was the discovery of a form of housing intermediate between these two extremes. The ruins have yielded up numerous well-built apartment houses that have an astonishingly modern look and "feel," especially in their standardized oblong apartment plan. This plan is also described in a Digest text (D. 9.3.5.2) from the jurist Ulpian (d. A.D. 223), which gives to the apartment its familiar name cenaculum. The plan consists of two large dayrooms (exedrae) disposed at either end of a long axis running through a corridor-like central room (the medianum). All three rooms take light from large windows on the facade, and the exedrae are not infrequently two-storied with two ranges of windows. Across the medianum from the facade, therefore on the inner side of the cenaculum, are a row of from two to five bedrooms (cubicula,) which are directly lighted only on the rare occasions when the back wall is free to the air (e.g. 111, ix, 3-4 and 10). The apartment's entrance is almost without exception directly into, or through a vestibule-corridor into, the medianum, which provides access to all the other rooms. Many cenacula have internal mezzanines that cover the entire lower-floor area except for one or both of the two-storied exedrae. Their total floor area is normally 150-300 sq. m., thus very large.

There can be little doubt, especially in view of the Ulpian text, that the cenaculum form originated at Rome. It first appears at Ostia in the reign of Trajan (98-117), obviously as an aftereffect of Ostia's greatly increased prosperity when Trajan's harbor opened. The earliest cenaculum form is the so-called Casette-Tipo (III, xii, 1-2; xiii, 1-2). A small rectangular lot was developed as two very long rectangular apartment houses. From them survives, to just below windowsill height, the rather crudely constructed walls of four ground-floor apartments without mezzanines; in both buildings, steps to an upper story indicate that a second floor of apartments once stood above. The Casette-Tipo apartments are unusual in their provision of latrines, probably for the ground floor only.

In the reign of Hadrian (117-134) the cenaculum form proliferated at Ostia. It is most easily discussed in relation to the apartments associated with two tract-developments of these years. The first is a very large complex (111, iii-vi and xi-xii) built ca. 124-134 in the northeast of the city, between the river Tiber and the Via Ostiensis leading from the center of Ostia to Rome; the complex (not fully excavated and partially reburied) includes the Baths of Neptune, the Barracks of the Vigiles, at least two horrea for grain storage, large industrial premises, and numerous small shops. Set into this predominantly commercial development are four cenacula that throw considerable light on the origin of the cenaculum form. The Insula dell' Ercole Bambino (11, vi, 3) best illustrates the point, which is, however, also true of the Insula del Soffitto Dip into (11, vi, 6) and of two other unnamed cenacula (11, iii, 3 and 4). The Insula dell' Ercole Bambino is part of a long block divided lengthwise; on the east side of this division are four virtually identical shops whose walls continue in plan through the central dividing wall. The cenaculum on the west side thus consisted originally of four approximately equal rooms (the northernmost shortened by the inclusion of an entrance hall and a staircase); these four rooms were linked by a "corridor" of doorways aligned just inside the west facade. The middle two rooms were later (but perhaps already at the apartment's first leasing) each divided from the "corridor" by brick partitions. The result was the creation of a cenaculum form, with cubicula at the rear of the central rooms and a long narrow medianum linking the exedrae at either end of the plan. The same thing happened in each of the development's other three apartments: a line of rooms was in effect converted into a cenaculum-form apartment.

The meaning of these conversions is obvious; the cenaculum form was created out of and evolved from "strip" apartments consisting of long files of rooms arranged behind a facade.

The second Hadrianic project is the Garden House complex (in, ix), built ca. A.D. 128 in the extreme west of Ostia. This primarily residential complex was developed in a large rectangular tract (ca. 100 m. x 130 m., with the northwest corner slightly truncated); a continuous line of exterior buildings surrounds a central park that contains the two rectangular units known as the Case a Giardino (111, ix, 13-20), each with four ground-floor cenaculum-form apartments. (In the Garden House complex, the cenaculum form was the original plan.) The northeast corner of the surround was given over to a splendid private house about an internal courtyard, the Casa delle Muse (111, ix, 2); as has been happily suggested, this house may have been the developer's. Along the four sides of the great park are arranged, roughly alternating, groups of shops (111, ix, 2, 5, 7, 9, and 11) and cenaculum-form apartments (111, ix, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 21), some of which were later substantially altered. The complex's ground floor thus contained sixteen cenaculum-form apartments. Further, many staircases go up to now vanished upper stories; it is reasonable to suppose that the whole complex averaged three or four stories in height. If the ground-floor plan repeated in upper stories (as is not unlikely in a development of this sort), the entire complex may have contained fifty to sixty cenacula. The Garden House complex can be described as an upper-class housing project.

On the east a monumental triple archway gave entry to the central park; smaller passages led in from the other cardinals. The impressive triple arch, reached by the wide Via delle Volte Dipinte from a major thoroughfare, lay between the Domus dei Dioscuri (111, ix, 1; later extensively modified) on the left, and the Insula delle Pareti Gialle (111, ix, 12) and the Insula del Graffito (111, ix, 21) standing back-to-back on the right.

The Insula delle Pareti Gialle is not only a typical cenaculum, it is also extremely well preserved, and so warrants a closer examination. It and its companion, the Insula del Graffito, are contained in a very slightly rhomboid plot about 21 m. on a side. The architect's intention may have been to divide this approximate square into two rectangular apartments, each having on the south a vestibule with a staircase to upper floors. However, the positioning of the triple archway required the displacement of the two doorways about 1.5 m. to the east; as a consequence, the Insula delle Pareti Gialle gained floor room and the Insula del Graffito lost it. Each apartment has two ground-floor cubicula; in plan these four rooms comprise a square that lies approximately in the center of the plot's north-south axis, but displaced on the east-west axis by the same 1.5 m. to the east. The vestibule, medianum, and smaller exedra of the Insula delle Pareti Gialle became thereby correspondingly larger; indeed, the medianum is virtually a square, and the smaller exedra is both broader and deeper by 2 m. than that of the Insula del Graffito. Only in the rear (west) portion of the plot were the larger exedrae of the two cenacula approximately equal in size — the large exedra of the Insula delle Pareti Gialle being, however, divided by a partition with a door and a huge arched opening.

The result of these adjustments in plan was the creation of two apartments, one of rather grandiose ground-floor dimensions (about 200 sq. m. excluding vestibule), the other somewhat cramped (about 145 sq. m.). The Insula delle Pareti Gialle, furthermore, had a mezzanine reached by the staircase from the vestibule. All rooms in the south two-thirds of the cenaculum (except for the vestibule, which was barrel-vaulted) had wooden rafters, the cornices and footings for which can still be seen in the medianum; in the small exedra and the two cubicula the rafters have been restored. The large exedra, however, lacks these emplacements and must have risen two stories with a double range of windows (like those in the exedrae of 1, iv, 3 and 4). The mezzanine was therefore confined to the apartment's southern two-thirds. By contrast, the Insula del Graffito has emplacements for rafters also in its large exedra. Furthermore, unlike the Insula delle Pareti Gialle whose vestibule gave access also to the mezzanine, the interior of the Insula del Graffito is divided from its vestibule by a threshhold block with sockets for a hinged door. It is therefore likely that this ground-floor cenaculum lacked a mezzanine, and that two or more independent apartments were constructed directly above it.

Within the Insula delle Pareti Gialle space was given a deliberate hierarchy. The cenaculum takes afternoon sun through a range of windows on its long western flank; they are divided into three groups of three each, corresponding to the two exedrae and the medianum. In the two exedrae, the sunlight streams down upon richly patterned mosaic floors; the medianum, cubicula, and vestibule have much simpler mosaics. All the mosaics date from the building's construction. The walls were repeatedly decorated with elaborately painted plaster, the earliest surviving of which dates from the mid-second century, and the lastest perhaps from the fourth century — some measure of the apartment's very long life. The fine yellow and scarlet wall paintings in the large exedra, its alcove, and one cubiculum (they date from ca. A.D. 175-185) gave the cenaculum its name: on a yellow field, broad vertical stripes of scarlet, out of which there develops a delicate and fantastic architecture of thin white columns and lintels.

The esthetics of this handsome imperial cenaculum deserve special mention. From the exterior doorway an uninterrupted line of sight extended from the vestibule (which lay in permanent gloom) through the drab medianum to the door of the large exedra, often brilliant with sunlight by virtue of its great size and fenestration (its windows are 0.25 m. higher than the others on the facade). The doorway of this room was also the focus of a secondary axis running into the elegant small exedra. The plan is simple and clear, yet very dramatic. The large exedra contains the only surprise: an enormous arch (2.90 m. high) opening on a shallow alcove that communicates with the master bedroom. The two cubicula are naturally given no special emphasis, but the corresponding windows on the facade are slightly asymmetrical so as to provide them the maximum light.

The architectural emphasis within this cenaculum was on light, privacy, security, and the orderly flow of spacious volumes. Plainly, a well-to-do family might have dwelt here in more than moderate comfort; the mezzanine presumably housed their slaves. The source of the wealth sustaining this style of life is hinted at by the four heads of Oceanus (one now destroyed) that were placed at the cardinals in the lunettes of the large exedra's mosaic. The apartment appears to have been continuously occupied, without structural alteration except for some buttressing soon after its construction, over more than two centuries.

The Hadrianic era saw even more lavish variants of the basic cenaculum form (such as 1, iv, 3-4;24 in, ix, 6 and 9), but also much humbler variants (1, xiv, 9; in, vii, 5;23 v, iii, 3-4; v, xi, 2). There are a total of more than thirty such ground-floor cenacula from Hadrian's reign, to which may perhaps be added some plans very hard to discern on the ground (such as in, vi, 2). The Hadrianic building programs permanently filled the need for this popular apartment form. Thereafter, the only possible instance of the cenaculum form (iv, iv, 6: built ca. A.D. 222-235) is not easy to understand.

Before discussing the social character of the tenants of these cenacula, it is best to shift the scene briefly to Rome. However, the housing patterns of Rome cannot without further comment be reconstructed on the basis of Ostia. To be sure, the link is obvious in one respect: the Ostians deliberately oriented their city toward a crowded, vertical housing pattern, rather than toward a horizontal spread. The Ostian pattern must recall, though perhaps in a somewhat relaxed fashion, the housing pattern of the capital — a mode of living, in short, which the Ostians intended as a mirror to Rome's urbanity· Still, what is known of the ground-floor plans of Roman insulae (whether from archaeological remains or from the Severan Marble Plan) does not clearly confront us with the Ostian cenaculum form. It is true that the preserved remains are in any event too scanty to allow a systematic view of Roman housing; and much the same criticism can be brought against the Marble Plan, which is also very difficult to read as regards housing. What remains of the Marble Plan may simply miss large isolated complexes similar to the Garden House development.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Plan and Plates, pg. ix
• Foreword, pg. xi
• Preface, pg. xvii
• Abbreviations, pg. xxv
• I. Upper-Class Apartment Housing in Ostia and Rome, pg. 1
• II. The Social Institutions of the Roman Rental Market, pg. 21
• III. Introduction to the Jurists' Treatment of Urban Leasehold, pg. 48
• IV. The Roman Law of Urban Leasehold, pg. 56
• V. Recognition of Interests in Roman Lease Law, pg. 174
• VI. Roman Jurisprudence as an Instrument of Social Control, pg. 196
• Appendix A: An Egyptian "Eviction Notice", pg. 221
• Appendix B: Translation of Latin Passages Quoted in the Text, pg. 223
• Index of Legal Sources, pg. 237
• General Index, pg. 243