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A regionary was an administrative record of the 14 regions of ancient Rome, known today from two 4th-century Imperial examples. It lists and enumerates landmarks, temples, attractions, public facilities, and private buildings region by region.[1] Summary data for the entire city are provided at the end, including streets.[2]

The two extant regionary catalogues are the Notitia de Regionibus (dating to around 337–357 A.D.) and the Curiosum Urbis (357 A.D. or after).[3] They differ from each other only in relatively minor details,[4] but they are "notoriously problematic" as sources.[5] The total given in the concluding summary for any given element doesn't always match the sum that would be obtained by adding the numbers region by region;[6] for example, adding the 14 separate regional figures for insulae (apartment buildings) produces a sum of 44,300, but the overall total given at the end is 46,602.[7] Scholars have varying views on the overall accuracy of the figures they provide,[8] but according to the regionaries, Rome in the mid-4th century had 856 baths (balneae),[9] 144 luxury flushing latrinae (public restrooms),[10] 28 libraries,[11] and 45 brothels large enough to count as tourist attractions.[12]

Interpretation of data

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Filippo Coarelli, a leading authority on the topography of ancient Rome, regards the information in the regionaries as hard data collected by the urban prefect's office.[13] Claude Nicolet compares their value to the Tabulae Heracleenses and the Severan marble plan called the Forma Urbis Romae as documents for understanding Roman administration.[14] They may represent census data in summary form.[15] Some scholars, however, regard them as more like tourist literature[16] and mirabilia such as the Mirabilia Urbis Romae and De mirabilibus urbis Romae, that is, entertaining compilations meant to produce a "wow".[17]

The regionaries organize information region by region, and provide the nickname for each region in addition to its Augustan numerical designation. They list 307 neighborhoods (vici)[18] within the regions along with their officers (vicomagistri, numbered at 48 for each region; xxxxx; xxxxxxx),[19] as well as the buildings and facilities.

Private buildings and businesses

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A private building is classified as either a domus, a large single-family residence for the elite, or an insula, an apartment building that housed people of varying social classes.[20] For instance, the number of domus in Regio II, the Caelian Hill, was 127; the total for Rome is placed by various scholars at 1,782,[21] 1,790,[22] and 1,797.[23]

The insulae within a region number in the hundreds or thousands,[24] for a total of 44,000–46,000 in the city.[25] Although most Romans lived in insulae even by the late Republic,[26] the number is "incredible", as it yields a per-insula figure of about 250 square meters for the ground floor, around 2,423 square feet[27] (as a comparison, at the beginning of 2009, the average size of a new single-family home in the United States was 2,335 square feet[28]). The regionary data suggest a density of insulae in every region that has contributed to debate about whether the term refers to an entire apartment block or a unit within it, and how many stories tall such buildings would have been. The housing figures have also been applied to studies of classical demography,[29] with mixed success.[30] Whatever the exactitude of the figures, a plausible pattern emerges, with density greatest in the center of the city around the Palatine Hill, the Capitoline Hill, and the Forum, as might be expected. The insulae probably varied from large five-story apartment blocks, of which the insula Felicula in Regio IX was the most notable example,[31] to smaller properties with only two or three floors.[32] The three regions with the highest concentration of both insulae and domus are Regio VIII (Forum Romanum), Regio X (Palatium), and Regio XI (Circus Maximus), which also have the most monumental structures. Housing for people of all social ranks were intermingled with public buildings, and the proportion of insulae to domus within each region varies little.[33]

In the administrative reforms undertaken by Julius Caesar during his dictatorship, the insula became the basic unit of the population census.[34] Citizens for the first time were listed by neighborhood (vicus), through the owner of the property (dominus insularum). Augustus reorganized the city into the regiones and vici, subdivisions that are preserved four centuries later in the regionaries. The character of the lists as administrative documents is also suggested by the inclusion of notes on boards of local officials (vicomagistri and ministri).[35]

Although the Severan marble plan shows units opening onto the street that are presumably storefronts, the regionaries record units of property, not how the space was used. Commercial property is generally not distinguished from housing, except for the kinds of businesses that required separate buildings and were subject to taxation and state oversight, as of the food supply for the city. The census of insulae would have been used to administer the grain dole and other benefits. The units of property thus seem to have been those declared by their owners to the Roman state for administrative purposes.[36]

The regionaries are the sole source for some landmarks such as the Basilica Argentaria, which may have been a place where bronze vessels were sold or financial matters transacted.[37]

Most vici have a horreum, a warehouse for storing grain or other commodities, and a bakery (pistrina), with more than 300 horrea[38] and xxxxx pistrinae throughout the city. This decentralization has been seen as part of a deliberate strategy by Augustus for fragmenting and stabilizing a restive urban population whose needs were taken care of within their neighborhoods, capitalizing on a late Republican trend toward a complex system of dispersed markets that shifted commerce away from the Forum.[39]

Religious sites

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The regionaries list some temples, but the criteria for inclusion are unclear. Although both regionaries were created after Christianity became the official religion of the empire, Christian churches known to have existed at the time are not listed.[40] Religious sites, or those associated with myths and legends, include:

Regio I, Porta Capena
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  • Aedes Honoris et Virtutis (Temple of Honor and Virtue);
  • Camenae, a spring and sacred grove sacred to these Italic goddesses, near the Porta Capena
  • Area Apollinis, an open space in a complex dedicated to Apollo;[41]
  • Area Splenis, the nature of which remains somewhat mysterious, perhaps actually Ara Splenis;[42]
  • Aedes Martis, Temple of Mars.
Regio II, Caelimontium
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Regio III, Isis et Serapis
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Regio IV, Templum Pacis
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Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (façade with columns to the right) in the forum
  • named for the Temple of Peace;
  • Templum Telluris, in other sources called an aedes (Temple of Tellus);[44]
  • the templum of Roma (or Roma and Venus;
  • the aedes of Jove (Stator);
  • the templum of Faustina (Temple of Antoninus and Faustina);[45]
  • statue of Apollo Sandaliarius in the neighborhood of the sandalmakers, one of the numerous statues of divine neighborhood patrons presented by Augustus to the vici.[46]
Regio V, Esquiliae
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  • Hercules Sullanus, a shrine or colossal statue of Hercules, presumably a dedication of Sulla[47] to mark the Battle of the Esquiline Gate.[48]
  • Temple of Minerva Medica
  • Isis patricia, a sanctuary of Isis perhaps the ruins at the Church of Saints Peter and Marcellinus.[49] Known only from the regionaries, but a number of Egypt-related cult objects have been found in this area.[50] Likely named for the vicus patricius, depending on where boundaries are drawn.[51]


Regio VI, Alta Semita
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  • A statue of Mamurius[52]
Regio VII, Via Lata
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Regio VIII, Forum Romanum
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Regio IX, Circus Flaminius
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Regio X, Palatium
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Regio XI, Circus Maximus
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  • Aedes Ditis Patris. A temple of Dis Pater listed in the Notitia but not the Curiosum. Perhaps originally the Aedes Summani, Temple of Summanus, whose name was explained in antiquity as deriving from Summus Manium, "Greatest of the Manes". He was equated with Dis Pater by the 3rd–4th centuries.[53]
Regio XII, Piscina Publica
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Regio XIII, Aventinus
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Regio XIV, Transtiberim
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Facilities and attractions

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According to Frontinus,[54] there were four types of state-supported facilities (usus publici) in ancient Rome.

Water distribution

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The regionaries contain information about aqueducts, public water distribution sites, (lacus), and balneae, but the figures pose the usual difficulties of reliability.[55] A lacus was a basin that served as a public water distribution point.[56] Baths in ancient Rome were either thermae, the grand Imperial complexes, or balneae, small neighborhood or private facilities that were far more numerous.[57]

Remains of latrinae at a Roman public restroom in Ostia Antica

1,352 fountains,[58]

SCREWED UP Statistics pertaining to the water supply include just under a thousand distribution points (lacus), almost a thousand baths (balinea),[59] and 1,352 fountains.[60] Figures are also included for public restrooms (latrinae) and brothels (lupanaria).[61] The latter were perhaps included because prostitutes were taxed and had to be registered with the Roman magistrates called aediles.[62] Vespasian had introduced a tax on urine,[63] which was recycled for xxxxx.


Stabula, horse stables for equestrian events, are listed for Regio IX in the lower Campus Martius near the Trigarium.[64] Four gladiatorial schools are listed.[65]

Brothels

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See also: Prostitution in ancient Rome.

The inclusion of brothels (lupanaria), but only 45 or 46 of them and only in the Caelian Hill district (LINK|Regio IV), is perplexing. It may be that these were "purpose-built" and constituted a kind of tourist attraction in the city, located conveniently near a major food-market (macellum magnum), the military base for personnel from the provincial armies (castra peregrina), and police and fire station (xxxxx vigiles). Forced service in a brothel was sometimes used as a punishment, and the brothels may have been state-owned.[66] Prostitutes had to register with the aediles in order to work in the city, and the Caelian Hill brothels may have been recorded for purposes of state revenue or taxation.[67]

Authorship and manuscript tradition

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Elmer Truesdell Merrill provided an amused account of the regionaries' reception:

HERE

The regionaries are collected and edited by:[68]

  • H. Jordan, Topographie der Stadt Röm in Alterthum (Berlin, 1871), vol. 2, appendix.[69]
  • R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma (Rome, 1940), pp. 63–258.
  • A. Nordh, Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae (Lund, 1949).

References

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  1. ^ Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. xx–xxi.
  2. ^ Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (University of Michigan Press, 1991), p. 197.
  3. ^ Stephen L. Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), p. 360. For extensive discussion of dating, see Elmer Truesdell Merrill, "The Dates of Notitia and Curiosum", Classical Philology 1 (1906), pp. 133–144 online.
  4. ^ John Henry Parker, The Archaeology of Rome (Oxford, 1879, 2nd ed.), p. 76 online; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae in Rome: Families and Housefuls", in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), p. 7. Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (unknown edition), pp. 18–19 online, notes "that the discrepancy between these documents is due to the muddle-headedness of the copyist of the Notitia, who appears to have dozed over the detailed enumerations which he had to transcribe". Some differences in the figures given by modern scholars are caused by variant manuscript readings.
  5. ^ Harry B. Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome (University of Michigan Press, 1994, 1997), p. 146, note 21. Evans takes notice at some points of the regionaries, but all in all declines to base his analysis on their statistics, which he considers dubious (pp. vi–vii).
  6. ^ Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (University of Michigan Press, 1991), p. 197.
  7. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 18ff.
  8. ^ See summary of the accuracy issue in Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", p. 8; the author himself is cautiously inclined to consider the figures useful.
  9. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, pp. 254 and 314, note 40; Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome, p. 9, note 38, though Evans himself finds the figure "suspiciously high".
  10. ^ Thomas A. McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 249 online; R.J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (Brill, 1965, 1993), p. 169 online.
  11. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 278.
  12. ^ Or 46 brothels in the less reliable Notitia; this is one of the points of minor discrepancies between the two extant regionaries. Thomas A. McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 167–168, points out that the figure is difficult to interpret; see below below.
  13. ^ Coarelli in "La consistenza della città nel periodo imperiale", as summarized by Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", p. 8. So too Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 360.
  14. ^ Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire, pp. 162–163.
  15. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses in Rome", p. 138.
  16. ^ O.F. Robinson, Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration (Routledge, 1992, 1996), p. 11.
  17. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", p. 8; and "Emperors and Houses in Rome", in Childhood, Class, and Kin in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001), p. 138 online.
  18. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 16.
  19. ^ John Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 18 and 222. When Augustus created the 14 regiones, they were subdivided into 265 vici.
  20. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", pp. 138–139.
  21. ^ John Henry Parker, The Archaeology of Rome: Forum Romanum et Magnum (London, 1879), p. 43.
  22. ^ Thomas A. McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 170; Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 340.
  23. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 23.
  24. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", pp. 7–8.
  25. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, pp. 18–23, notes that adding the figures region by region yields a sum of 44,300 insulae, while the summary at the end gives a total of 46,602.
  26. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 217.
  27. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", p. 8.
  28. ^ According to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders, reported by The Wall Street Journal.
  29. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, pp. 218, 265, and 340; Robinson, Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration, p. 8; Carcopino, Daily Life, extended discussion on population of Rome with reference to the regionaries pp. 16–21. See G. Hermansen, “The Population of Imperial Rome: The Regionaries", Historia 37 (1978) 129–168.
  30. ^ Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire, p. 197.
  31. ^ Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, p. 28.
  32. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", pp. 8, 10; Gregory S. Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 213 online.
  33. ^ Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, p. 213.
  34. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", p. 8, citing Suetonius, Divus Julius 41.
  35. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Domus and insulae", pp. 8–9.
  36. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", pp. 138–139; "Domus and insulae", pp. 8–9; "Emperors and Houses", p. 138.
  37. ^ Roger B. Ulrich, "Julius Caesar and the Creation of the Forum Iulium", American Journal of Archaeology 97.1 (1993), p. 78, note 160.
  38. ^ Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, p. 135.
  39. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, pp. 7, 228, and 272.
  40. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 360.
  41. ^ Mentioned also by Julius Solinus 1.18, who says the area Apollinis contained a silva — "no doubt a well-groomed park", notes John Miller, Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 197, see also pp. 189 and 197 online.
  42. ^ See Platner's entry at LacusCurtius; also Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 37 online.
  43. ^ Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, p. 21 online.
  44. ^ For which see the LacusCurtius edition of Platner's entry.
  45. ^ Temple of Antoninus and Faustina] (in Italian).
  46. ^ Mentioned by Suetonius, Augustus 57; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 14 online; John Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 144–146 online; Robert E.A. Palmer, Rome and Carthage at Peace (Franz Steiner, 1997), p. 73 online.
  47. ^ Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, pp. 186–187, 188, 449.
  48. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 80.
  49. ^ Robert A. Wild, "Isis–Sarapis Sanctuaries of the Roman Period", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.4 (1984), p. 1845 online.
  50. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 282.
  51. ^ Michel Malaise, Inventaire préliminaire des documents égyptiens découverts en Italie (Brill, 1972), p. 178.
  52. ^ In his 15th-century amplification of the regionaries, Pomponius Leto describes the statue as plumbea; Kim J. Hartswick, The Gardens of Sallust: A Changing Landscape (University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 62.
  53. ^ Martianus Capella 2.161; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 110.
  54. ^ xxxxxxxxxxx
  55. ^ Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome, p. 146, note 21.
  56. ^ Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome, p. 11.
  57. ^ Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome, pp. 9–10.
  58. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 230.
  59. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", p. 138; Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, p. 135.
  60. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 230.
  61. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", p. 138.
  62. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", p. 139, citing Suetonius, Gaius 40.
  63. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, p. 139, citing Suetonius, Vespasian 23.
  64. ^ Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait, p. 238.
  65. ^ Brian W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (Routledge, 1992), pp. 85–86.
  66. ^ McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution, pp. 34, 168–169, 221.
  67. ^ Wallace-Hadrill, "Emperors and Houses", pp. 138–139, citing Suetonius, Gaius 40.
  68. ^ Jaś Elsner, "Pausanias: A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman World", in Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 266, note 35 online.
  69. ^ Full text downloadable.
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Category:Topography of the ancient city of Rome

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