STREETS AND STREET LIFE
=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_).
[Illustration: STREET IN POMPEII: present state.
Note the pavement, the stepping stones, the wayside fountain,
and the numerous subdivisions into small houses or shops.]
=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.
[Illustration: STEPPING STONES ACROSS A SIDE STREET:
a gentleman followed by personal slave with umbrella.
_After Von Falke._]
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.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE BEFORE A COOK-SHOP.
_After Von Falke._]
=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.
[Illustration: SHRINE AT THE CROSSWAYS.]
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.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OF A WINE SELLER.]
=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:
IN THE AMPHITHEATER OF TAURUS
THE GAMES OF THE AEDILE BALBUS
_From the 12th to the 15th of May_
THE ‘THRACIAN’ PUGNAX
OF THE
NERONIAN GLADIATORIAL SCHOOL
Who Has Fought Three Times Will Meet
THE ‘MURMILLO’ MURANUS
OF THE
SAME SCHOOL
And The Same Number of Fights
THE ‘HEAVY ARMOUR FIGHTER’ CYCNUS
FROM THE
SCHOOL OF JULIUS CAESAR
Who Has Fought Eight Times
WILL MEET
THE ‘THRACIAN’ ATTICUS
OF THE
SAME SCHOOL
And of Fourteen Fights
_Awnings will be provided against the sun_
“_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:
I wonder O wall,
That your stones do not fall
All scribbled thus o’er
By the nonsense of all!
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:
If any man shall seek
My girl from me to turn,
On far-off mountains bleak,
May Love the scoundrel burn!
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.