Living Arrangements: Roman Houses and Apartments

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Living Arrangements: Roman Houses and Apartments

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

Marcus Tullius Cicero, who owned several villas for his own use, was also a landlord. To judge from his own writings, Cicero seems to have been guilty of neglecting his rental properties.

Two of my shops have collapsed and the others are showing cracks, so that even the mice have moved elsewhere, to say nothing of the tenants.

More than one hundred years after Cicero admitted his negligence as a landlord, Romans still complained about poor living conditions in urban tenements. Decimus lunius luvenalis (Juvenal), in one of his satires attacking the vice and social problems of his society, indicates clearly the magnitude of this housing issue:

Here we live in a city which, to a large extent, is supported by rickety props; that’s how the landlord’s agent stops it falling. He covers a gap in the chinky old building, then ’Sleep easy!’ he says, when the ruin is poised to collapse.

Sources: Cicero, Epistulate ad Atticum (14.9), translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

Houses. The types of homes the Romans inhabited depended upon several factors, including their social and economic status, their preference for urban or rural environment, and their professional occupations and needs. Poor farmers, for example, needed to live close to the land they cultivated, while Roman politicians needed to live close to or even in the cities where they worked. Although city dwellers typically lived and worked in the same place, wealthy Romans often had more than one house so that they could enjoy both the convenience of living close to their workplace as well as the peace and quiet of life outside the cities. Also, when wealthy Romans traveled, it was convenient to stay in one of their own houses or the houses of their wealthy friends rather than at an inn. Poor Romans did not have such a luxury. Peasant farmers stayed on their farms just as poor city folk stayed in the cities, often for their entire lives.

Juvenal, Saturae 3.193–6, from Juvenal: The Satires, translated by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

Types of Villa. A wealthy Roman family might have had a fine townhouse ( villa urband) as well as one or more villas outside of the city ( villa suburbana), These villas included the same features as their urban counterparts, urband) as well as one or more villas outside of the city ( villa suburbana) These villas included the same features as their urban counterparts, but also had certain details peculiar to their locations and functions. A villa in the country could serve not only as a home but also as a working farmhouse ( villa rustica) with rooms for food storage and spaces to accommodate grain mills and oil or winepresses. The country houses were often luxurious retreats, and typically included baths for the comfort and convenience of the owner, his family, and friends. Many villas were built in beautiful locations close to the sea where the occupants could enjoy wonderful views of the ocean, as well as the refreshing breezes during the hot Mediterranean summer.

Financial Resources. The size, style, and decoration of a house could reflect the financial resources of its owner, and thus domestic architecture was a material sign of social and economic status. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect and military engineer of the late Republic and early Augustan era, expresses in his work De architectura the need for domestic architecture to reflect the status and occupation of its owner.

Self-Sufficiency. Men and women who lived in the country usually relied upon the self-sufficiency of their living arrangements to satisfy most or all of their needs. Working rural villas produced the food required by the owner’s family and staff. Cattle could be raised on the property, and sheep’s wool could be harvested and used to make clothing. Any other peculiar or luxury goods would have to be brought from the city. Year-round inhabitants such as farmers and farm slaves of rural areas probably did not have many opportunities to get to cities and towns where they could enjoy public baths and public entertainment. Roman cities also offered to their inhabitants the convenience of water supplied by aqueducts, while those people living outside of cities and towns relied upon well water.

Urban Life. Large urban centers have always attracted people from other areas to settle down and take advantage of economic and social opportunities. Many Roman citizens who were not native to the city of Rome moved there as they advanced in their public careers or business ventures. The same is true of other urban centers such as Ostia and Pompeii. Cities throughout Italy, Europe, Africa, and Asia that had been “Romanized” offered the same amenities such as luxurious public baths, public entertainment at the theater or amphitheater, and public welfare programs in the form of a grain dole. In addition to the allure of such attractions, cities, and especially Rome, suffered the same problems that modern cities continue to fight. Overcrowding in unsafe tenements, fire, crime, poverty, and political corruption were all aspects of urban life the ancients tolerated for the sake of living in the big cities. The wealthy, naturally, could insulate themselves more successfully against these problems, and found periodic if temporary relief from city life by spending vacations in their luxury villas outside of the cities.

Archaeological Evidence. While Vitruvius offers much information concerning the plans of Roman houses, we can also learn a great deal about Roman houses from archaeological work in the city of Rome and all around the Roman world. The southern Italian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum offer some of the best evidence for Roman domestic architecture. Situated on the Bay of Naples, these two cities were buried by the eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Fortunately, so many architectural details were preserved that we can describe accurately the common features of Roman houses.

Typical Floor Plan. By the time of the Late Republic, the atrium-style house had become the traditional form of architecture for single-family houses. The atrium was the principal room around which other rooms opened. The doorway into a house was usually set back from the street, and entered through a vestibulum, or vestibule. The passage leading from the door into the atrium was called the fauces. Around the atrium were usually arranged cubicula, or bedrooms, which were often small and probably used for nothing more than sleeping. Windows in general were few, and artificial lighting in the form of oil lamps was not terribly effective. Consequently, the cubicula must have been dark, and could not have been useful for much else besides sleeping.

Water and Light. In the center of the atrium floor was found the impluvium, a basin for catching rainwater that fell through the compluvium, an opening in the roof directly above the impluvium. The houses of only a few wealthy families were ever fitted with plumbing to supply water directly from aqueducts. Therefore it was important for families to save in cisterns buried on their property whatever water could be gathered in the impluvium, or to fetch water from wells or public fountains fed by aqueducts. The roof of the house sloped towards the compluvium to facilitate the process of gathering water. Another important function of the compluvium was to allow light to enter the atrium.

In the Atrium. Romans usually placed in the atrium a shrine to their household gods (the lares) called a lararium. This shrine might be as simple as a painting on the wall, or

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as elaborate as a miniature temple with figurines. A strongbox for the safekeeping of family valuables was usually placed somewhere in the atrium, too. To ensure the safety of the house and its contents, strong wooden doors that swiveled on pins and were locked from the inside closed the doorway.

Other Rooms. The tablinum was an important feature of the Roman domus, particularly for wealthy families. This

room, purposes including the salutatio when a patron met his clients. The tablinum might also have served as a dining room, or even a study. Rooms called alae were featured at the back of the atrium and to the sides of tablinum. In these alae the Romans displayed their ancestral busts, or kept chests or strongboxes to store valuables. Formal dining took place while diners reclined on couches arranged in a group of three, each couch accommodating as many as three diners comfortably. This arrangement, as well as the dining room itself, was called a triclinium, of which large and well-appointed homes sometimes included more than one. The larger and more elegant houses also had peristylium located beyond the atrium portion of the building. The peristylium was an open area, not roofed, where the homeowner might have a formal garden. Just as rooms were arranged around the atrium, rooms could be arranged around the peristyle. Like the term peristylium, the names of the rooms associated with this back portion of the house are of Greek origin. An oecus was either a reception room or dining room, often elaborately decorated. The diaeta was an open sitting room, while the exedra was more of a recess situated typically at the back of the peristylium. One might have a triclinium, or some other space used for sitting or perhaps reading. While the atrium portion of the house was entirely roofed over, except the compluvium, and offered little natural lighting, the peristylium was open to the sky except perhaps for the roofed colonnade around it, and offered light and air. Houses that were large and well-appointed enough to have these two distinct areas were clearly meant to provide for the owner and his family a variety of rooms to use and enjoy during the different seasons of the year.

AN INSURANCE SCAM REVEALED!

Destroying one’s own property in order to collect insurance money is not a scam unique to the modem world. The same trick was used in Rome, as the poet Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) pointed out in the late first century C.E.

You had bought a house, Tongilianus, for two hundred thousand. An accident, all too common in Rome, took it away. A million was subscribed. I ask you, Tongilianus, couldn’t it look as though you set fire to your own house?

Source: Martial,Epigrammata 3.52, translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Cooking. Romans did most of their cooking over a fire in the hearth of their homes. The hearth was more or less open, rather than the enclosed fireplaces found in modern homes. The hearth, made of stone, was raised off the floor, and under it could be stored fuel for the fire. Since Roman houses lacked a chimney, smoke escaped through a small hole in the kitchen roof, which must have made the Roman kitchen a smoky and smelly place to be. Some houses appear to have had their own ovens for baking, but this is the exception rather than the rule; most people must have purchased their bread from commercial bakeries.

Kitchen and Bathrooms. The kitchen was often grouped with slaves’ quarters and a latrine in a portion of the house designated as a service area. Not all houses necessarily had quarters for slaves on the main floor of the house. Some houses must have had rooms for slaves on an upper story away from the parts of the home occupied and used by the owner’s family. The latrine was small and situated near the kitchen, so as to be easily fitted with plumbing if the house brought water in from the public supply. If a house had its own baths, they too would be located in this area for ease of supplying water.

Furniture. Romans owned comparatively little furniture, and most rooms remained fairly empty until needed. Then a slave or two would move whatever furniture was required into the appropriate room. Except for beds and larger couches, most Roman furniture was small and light and could be moved easily from place to place. The Roman bed was small and narrow, consisting of a mattress stuffed with fibers such as straw, and a wooden frame to support the mattress. Cushions or pillows and blankets would make the bed more comfortable. Slaves, who usually lived in the house along with their owner’s family, often slept in the peristyle without the privacy of their own cubicula or the comfort of a bed. Everyone would have slept fully clothed, particularly in the winter months, since Roman heating devices in the form of braziers were not as efficient as the central heating systems we enjoy today.

Construction Materials. The basic construction materials used to build houses were stone, mortar, and wood. The type of stone used depended to a large extent on the geographical location. Volcanic stone was a common resource throughout Italy, and its qualities varied by region. The exterior walls of a house could be fitted with a finer stone such as marble to give a more elegant appearance to the building. Interior walls were typically covered with plaster and decorated with frescoes, a type of painting that consists of pigment applied directly to the wet plaster, which then becomes a permanent part of the plaster wall. Floors could be left plain or decorated with cut stone or intricate mosaics made up of small stones or bits of colored glass called tesserae. Rugs of natural animal skins were expensive and therefore used mainly by wealthy homeowners.

Sanitary Facilities. The lack of indoor plumbing and a constant supply of fresh water to individual residences meant that personal hygiene was often not as fastidious as our own. Romans of course needed to bathe, but they did not usually do so at home. Rather, people frequented public baths where they not only attended to personal grooming but also indulged in exercise and social interaction. Just as most Roman houses lacked baths, most houses lacked toilets as well. Even when a house had its own toilet, it was not necessarily connected to a sewer system with running water to flush it clean. At home, people used chamber pots that they emptied into the streets or city sewers. Large public latrines with open seating-arrangements were a convenience in many Roman cities.

The Notion of Privacy. The ancient Roman concept of personal privacy must have been very different from our own. Daily activities occurred in the open areas of the house, namely the atrium or peristyle, where individuals could take advantage of natural light. Also, Roman houses accommodated more people than the owner and his immediate family. Other relatives as well as slaves might have lived with the owner’s family. This idea of familia is more extensive and inclusive than our modern notion of a “nuclear family” consisting solely of two parents and their children. Furthermore, spaces adjacent to the house were often rented out as shops and apartments to people unrelated to the homeowner. Typical Roman houses usually consisted of a single story, but some two-story houses did exist.

THE ARCHITECT’S BUILDING PHILOSOPHY

After settling the positions of the rooms with regard to the quarters of the sky, we must next consider the principles on which should be constructed those apartments in private houses which are meant for the householders themselves, and those which are to be shared in common with outsiders. The private rooms are those into which nobody has the right to enter without invitation, such as bedrooms, dining-rooms, bathrooms, and all others used for like purposes. The common are those which any of the people have a perfect right to enter, even without invitation. . . .Those who do business in country produce must have stalls and shops in their entrance-courts, with crypts, granaries, storerooms, and so forth in their houses, constructed more for the purpose of keeping the produce in good condition than for ornamental beauty. For capitalists and farmers of revenue, somewhat comfortable and showy apartments must be constructed, secure against robbery; for advocates and public speakers, handsomer and more roomy, to accommodate meetings; for men of rank who, from holding offices and magistracies, have social obligations to their fellow-citizens, lofty entrance-courts in regal style, and most spacious atriums and peristyles, with plantations and walks of some extent in them, appropriate to their dignity. They need also libraries, picture-galleries, and basilicas, finished in a style similar to that of great public buildings, since public councils as well as private lawsuits and hearings before arbitrators are very often held in the houses of such men.

Source: Viturvius, De architecture 6.5.1-2, translated by Morris H. Morgan (New York: Dover, 1960).

Renting an Apartment. Although we find many houses in Roman cities, the majority of the urban population actually lived in apartments. Simple rooms in a larger house could be rented as an apartment, either along the street fronts or above the shops that lined Roman streets. Some-times individual houses were divided into multifamily dwellings. The majority of apartments, however, were probably to be found in complexes, which the Romans called insulae. Romans rented apartments just as we do, and the landlords could advertise vacancies by painting rental notices on the walls of the buildings.

Crowded Arrangements. Apartment buildings often rose to six or seven stories and were cramped. As in Roman houses, the lighting and plumbing of apartment buildings were never very sophisticated, and tenants often shared cooking and sanitary facilities. Such crowded arrangements must have been dark, noisy, and fairly uncomfortable even for an average sized family. Insulae were also notoriously unsafe; buildings were prone to catch fire and even collapse on account of their flimsy construction.

The Evidence of Ostia. The city of Ostia, which lies on the mouth of the Tiber River, bustled with commercial activity in antiquity. Ostia is so well preserved that we can learn a great deal about the construction of apartment buildings, and the living arrangements within them. The apartment buildings of Ostia, however, may not be representative of the Roman world at large; Ostia enjoyed relative affluence, particularly during the Empire, and therefore seems to have lacked the slums and tenements known to have existed at Rome. Nevertheless, Ostia provides important evidence that contrasts with the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum where houses were the rule.

Strategic Location. Ostia’s importance as a port city began as a result of its strategic location at the mouth of the Tiber River, especially during the First Punic War (246-241), and the business of importation grew following Roman victories over both Carthage and eastern cities. The increasing population of Ostia relied upon the developing importation business to supply staples and luxury goods. During the reign of Augustus and other Julio-Claudian emperors, Ostia enjoyed several new building programs, and also constructed an aqueduct and a permanent theater. Rome’s continuing reliance upon Ostia’s commercial activities ensured a stable economy and further stimulated the growth of Ostia’s population.

Growing Population . The geographical spread of Ostia’s population was limited by the city walls, and by the second century C.E. the inhabitants of the city could be accommodated only by the upward expansion of domestic architecture. Large, multiple-family, brick apartment blocks came to replace the atrium-style houses known from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The style of the apartments reflected contemporary practices at Rome. City dwellers enjoyed many public bath complexes, a theater, an amphitheater, public sewers, and, located throughout the city, many public cisterns fed by aqueduct. While the city of Ostia housed an expansive middle class, wealthy Romans built luxury villas along the shore to the south of the city.

THE MYSTERIOUS IULIA FELIX

Iulia Felix, daughter of Spurius, known only by name, was the proprietor of an establishment in Pompeii that was apparently a dining and bathing club. The property covered an entire city block, and included baths, dining facilities, and a very large kitchen-garden. As many property owners did, lulia Felix rented to tenants the spaces adjacent to her property. According to the following inscription on a building in the ill-fated city, it seems that the entire property was available, including shops and apartments that were not part of the club proper.

FOR RENT FROM AUGUST 13, WITH A 5-YEAR LEASE ON THE PROPERTY OF IULIA FELIX, DAUGHTER OF SPURIUS: THE ELEGANT VENUS BATHS, STREETFRONT SHOPS AND BOOTHS, AND SECOND-STORY APARTMENTS.

Economic Decline. In the third century C.E., Ostia experienced a decline in trade, and the Roman world at large was distressed by the rapid changes in government. The large apartment buildings formerly occupied by the working classes were neglected and abandoned; many were destroyed by fire and not rebuilt. The number of large luxury houses built in this era attests to the continuing presence of wealthy families in the city. However, by the fourth century the middle class of merchants no

longer had business to sustain them in Ostia, a huge gap between the rich and poor. Invading armies and sea raids threatened Ostia during the fifth century, and the population was diminished throughout the following centuries.