ROMAN REGIONS AND GUILDS
The regions and the guilds of Rome illustrate two contradictory
tendencies running parallel throughout the administrative history of
the city, the one towards division and separation as first principles
of organisation, the other towards union and centralisation as
measures of strength. These antagonistic elements which we find at the
very dawn of Roman history were at once utilised as factors in the new
commonwealth.
It is the tradition that King Numa organised nine guilds of
handicrafts amongst the Roman people that they might sink their race
animosities in an identity of interests. Similarly one of the first
great works for the young community, the city wall projected by
Tarquinius Priscus and built by Servius Tullius, was intended to
produce a fusion of the tribes which inhabited the seven hills he thus
physically linked together, and which he had already united under a
common government. Another enterprise, the draining of the marshes and
pools which made impassable barriers of the valleys between the
hills, had the same aim and result--it was a levelling process, moral
as well as physical, to minimise the separation between hill and hill,
race and race.
On the other hand, Servius' division of the city into four regions,
and these again into six parishes or _vici_, laid the seeds of an
internal disunion which lasted throughout the centuries. These four
regions (1) the Suburra or Caelian, (2) the Esquiline and its spurs,
(3) the Collina, comprising the Viminal and Quirinal, which were
called _colles_ in distinction to the other hills, the _montes_, and
(4) the Palatine, persisted until the reign of Augustus. By that time
the city had grown beyond its primitive limits, a thickly populated
region had sprung up on the Esquiline beyond the walls and Augustus
found a new division necessary. He increased the original number of
regions to fourteen, and each of these he subdivided as before into
parishes, the number in each region varying from seven to
twenty-eight, making 265 in all. A magistrate or curator with a set of
officials under him presided over each region. Each parish had its
magistrate, its officers, its chapel built upon the boundary road for
the public worship of the _lares compitales_, the protecting spirits
of the district.
At this period the poorer quarters of the city--a network of narrow
streets with high houses built of inflammable materials--had been
again and again devastated by fire. At night the densest darkness
descended upon the city, street lighting was unknown, shop doors were
shut and barred, and it was unsafe to walk abroad; those who ventured
carried lights, or were preceded by servants with staves and torches.
The ubiquitous beggars haunted the byways, and brigands raided the
outskirts of the town.
As a remedy against these evils Augustus created a force of 7000 men
who were to act both as police and firemen. The whole body he placed
under the command of a prefect, who acted in conjunction with the
curator of the regions in keeping order, and divided it into seven
battalions or cohorts, each under a tribune, and so disposed in the
city that one battalion watched over the safety of two regions. The
cohorts were again subdivided into seven companies under a captain or
centurion. The force was distributed over the town in seven different
barracks, with outlying detached quarters or _excubitoria_.
The firemen's duty was to inspect public furnaces and private
kitchens, the heating apparatus and the offices where the wardrobes
were kept and warmed in the public baths. If a fire broke out in the
town it was the subject of an official inquiry, just as it is to-day,
and if arson or willful neglect were suspected, punishment was meted
out by the proper authorities. Like the modern policeman in Rome,
Augustus' _vigiles_ were not a popular force, and to make it more
palatable he gradually increased its privileges. He built large and
luxurious stations and _excubitoria_ which were beautifully decorated
with precious marbles and statues. Members of the force were granted
the coveted Roman citizenship, and the captains were permitted to
serve _ex officio_ in the Praetorian guard.
[Illustration: FORUM OF NERVA
The picture represents a portion of the ornamental enclosure of the
Forum built by Nerva, near Domitian's Temple of Pallas; she is
represented on the entablature. This fragment is popularly known as
_Le Colonacce_. See page 33.]
At a later period, perhaps sometime in the third century, the regions
of Rome were reorganised on an ecclesiastical basis, and seven were
formed out of the fourteen by the amalgamation of two into one, each
being placed under one of the seven deacons of the city. It is not
known at what precise date their number was again increased to
fourteen, nor when they assumed their present names and distribution,
but probably early in the middle ages. By the thirteenth century only
thirteen regions are recorded, and it was not till the year 1586 that
the conservators and senators of Rome and the captains of the regions
consulted together and decided to include the Leonine city as a
fourteenth region, granting it at the same time a captain, a standard,
and an heraldic device of a lion upon a red field, his paw planted
upon the three mounds of the coat of Sixtus V.
These fourteen regions do not correspond in position, name, or extent
with those of Augustus except that the present thirteenth, Trastevere,
is identical with the ancient fourteenth, Transtiburtina. The names
that they bear to-day represent either their position or some
characteristic feature within their limits. Thus the first and largest
region, the _Monti_, formed from the union of the fifth and sixth of
Augustus, the _Esquilina_ and the _Alta Semita_, is so called from the
hills, the Esquilina Viminal and Caelian, within its boundaries; the
second the _Trevi_, derives its name from the famous fountain in its
midst; the third, _Colonna_, from the column of Marcus Aurelius; the
fourth, _Campo Marzo_, covers this historic ground; the fifth,
_Ponte_, is named from the old _Pons Triumphalis_, that united Rome
with the Vatican region; the sixth or _Parione_ comprises the ground
of which the Chiesa Nuova is the centre, and the name was derived from
the ancient wall and tower which stood close to it; the seventh,
_Regola_, inhabited by some of the most wretched of the population, is
a corruption of Arenula, the drift sand of the river near which this
region lies; the eighth, _S. Eustachio_, behind the university, takes
its name from a parish church; the ninth, _Pigna_, from the bronze
pine cone now at the Vatican and which was once supposed to adorn the
Pantheon (this region corresponds to a certain extent with the ancient
Via Lata); the tenth region, _Campitelli_, includes the Capitol and
Palatine hills and the Forum; the eleventh, the _S. Angelo_ district,
a region inhabited by the very poor, by tanners, and formerly the
Jews' quarter, is named after the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria;
the twelfth is the _Ripa_ or river bank; and the thirteenth and
fourteenth, as we have seen, are _Trastevere_ beyond the river and the
Leonine city or _Borgo_.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF TREVI
One of the numberless fountains of the city; built by Clement XII.
in 1735. The red house is the _palazzo_ of the celebrated art
jeweller Castellani. Visitors leaving Rome who throw a _sou_ into
this fountain are sure to return to the eternal city. See pages 22,
55, 227.]
Each region became a little civic and social centre complete in
itself. Each had its captain, its sub-officers, its religious
organisations, its separate funds for charities and dowries, its
separate police and militia recruits. And the importance that accrued
to these regions lay in the fact that they represented the _plebs_,
the democracy of Rome. With a people so incapable of co-operation for
a common end as the Roman, the spark of their civic liberties would
have been trodden out or have remained for ever dormant but for this
administrative setting which kept it alive and through which, given
the opportunity, it could become once more a living force.
The heads of the regions, the _caporioni_, heirs to the position of
Augustus' tribunes but without their discipline, were the people's
leaders and spokesmen, their representatives and the guardians of
their liberties. They were elected by ballot and the ballot urn was
carried in procession to the Capitol, where the chosen captains
received their investiture at the hands of the Senate. In times of
difficulty they assembled for consultation in that council chamber of
the people, the church of Ara Coeli, but their counsels seldom led to
measures of conciliation which were uncongenial to their fierce
independence and to the arbitrary authority they assumed. In peace or
in war, in sanguinary insurrections or in national rejoicings, the
_caporioni_ were always to the front, their banners with the regional
device upon a coloured field fluttering in the breeze. It was to them
that Cola di Rienzo looked for assistance and support. When a royal
visitor or one of the German Emperors of Rome entered the city in
state, the _caporioni_ were amongst the officials who received them,
their banners carried by their pages on horseback, and themselves clad
in their gala tunics of crimson velvet, cloaks of cloth of gold, white
stockings and shoes, and black bonnets jewelled and feathered. When
Pope Gregory XI. returned to Rome, restoring the papacy to the land of
its birth after an exile of seventy years, the _caporioni_ rode in
procession to give him welcome, and at his death they hurried to the
cardinals assembling in conclave at the Vatican to implore them at all
costs to elect a Roman pope, and they emphasised their petition with a
fierce menace which would assuredly have been carried through to its
sanguinary end but for the intervention of the Colonna forces.
In the carnival processions of the fifteenth century which issued from
the Capitol to perambulate the city, the _caporioni_, surrounded by
fifty mounted grooms wearing their distinctive livery, preceded the
Senators. Representatives from each region marched with them in the
order of their precedence carrying halberds, banners, and lances, and
shields emblazoned with their arms, and escorted by grooms on
horseback. In the same procession, in front of the regions, were
delegates from all the handicraft and trade guilds in the city,
shoe-makers, hatters, apothecaries, tavern keepers, and many others,
each with their banners captains and sergeants; the guild of
ironworkers alone numbered 300, in the midst of whom a team of horses
were harnessed to a cannon of their own making. The procession was
headed by municipal officers and soldiers, and as an emblem of law and
justice a wretched criminal was driven along with blows.
After the Renaissance the _caporioni_ degenerated into mere regional
captains, retaining only a shadow of their former power and
jurisdiction, and the present government has abolished the office
altogether. The organisation and the spirit of the regions are,
however, by no means dead.
[Illustration: COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS, PIAZZA COLONNA
The only work of the time of the emperor-philosopher which has come
down to us. The column is now crowned by a colossal bronze statue of
S. Paul. See pages 32, 55.]
Until the racing of riderless horses down the Corso was forbidden,
each region entered a horse for the race which was decked in the
regional colour, and its success or failure aroused a perfect passion
of rivalry between region and region--an antagonism as old as the age
of Plutarch, who relates that in the month of October chariot races
were run in the Campus Martius; the victorious horse was sacrificed to
the god Mars, but its head was borne in procession to the Forum, all
the regions fighting for possession of the trophy until nothing was
left of it, and the combatants themselves were wounded and disabled.
To this day, on occasions of popular rejoicing or in patriotic
demonstrations, representatives from each region form into procession,
the regional banner carried by _vigili_, who march surrounded by a
group of the so-called _fedeli_, inhabitants of the little town of
Viturcchino, who for good services rendered to Rome in the past have
earned special consideration at the hands of the Roman municipality.
Such processions are headed by the standard of the Commune, S.P.Q.R.
upon a red and yellow ground, and immediately behind follows the
banner of the Monti, the first region, three green hills on a white
field.
The different devices of the regions, carved upon marble shields, were
affixed to house walls in many parts of the city to mark the
boundaries, by order of Benedict XIV., and can still be seen in
position. All those who know Rome at all are probably familiar with
the Monti escutcheon upon the wall of the Aldobrandini palace, and
with the Campo Marzo crescent on a house wall at Capo le Case.
The passage of time has not wholly wiped out the fierce and hereditary
enmity between the inhabitants of one portion of the city and another,
which has been always fostered and encouraged, though unintentionally,
by the regional system.
The Monticiani and the Trasteverini were the most irreconcilable of
foes. The Monti was the first region to be inhabited after the
barbarian invasions, but it was left in comparative isolation and
neglect when the Campo Marzo became the busy centre of papal Rome, and
its people have retained something of their untamed native
independence. They are proud and passionate, are the quickest with the
knife in a quarrel, and will not stoop to domestic service or to
menial trades. They choose husbands and wives amongst their own
people--they believe S. Maria Maggiore to be the most beautiful church
in the world, and will brook no dissent on the subject. Even to-day
they will not speak willingly to a Trasteverino. The enmity between
these two may have had a Guelph and Ghibelline origin. Certainly
Trastevere was a stronghold of the Ghibellines as is shown by an
episode which occurred on the day of Pope Callistus III.'s coronation
in 1445. A groom in the employ of the Orsinis came to words about a
girl with a groom of a rival house, the Anguillara. From words they
came to blows, and quickly the quarrel became general, until in a few
hours 3000 men were under arms ready to fight in an Orsini cause. The
inhabitants of Trastevere, separated from the rest of Rome by the
river and comparatively far from its centre, have retained to the
present day much of their individuality, their habits, character, and
appearance. The sight of a Monticiano arouses in them all the evil
passions. Even as late as the year 1838, it was their habit on every
holiday to meet the Monticiani for a stoning match on the green swards
of the Forum--"the field of cows" as it was then called--the historic
fragments lying about serving as missiles of war. Such matches were
not to revenge any particular wrong but merely for honour and glory,
the victorious region bearing off the palm in triumph until the next
occasion. Sometimes they met at the Navicella, sometimes in the ruined
courts of Diocletian's baths; sometimes a champion from each side came
forward for the contest, sometimes it was a general scrimmage, members
of other regions looking on and encouraging their allies. Sometimes
when the matches fell upon a market day--a market was held once a week
in the Campo Vaccino--the crockery stalls were requisitioned for
ammunition, and earthenware pans and pipkins flew across the Forum in
company with fragments of classic statues and marble friezes. Only
when heads were broken in plenty, and blood poured from wounded faces
and limbs, did these fighters desist, or when the cry "al fuoco"
warned them of the tardy arrival of the _sbirri_. Even these agents of
law and order were powerless to separate the combatants unless they
had had enough, and during Napoleon's occupation of Rome the cavalry
had to be called out to disperse them, the gendarmes having entirely
failed to do so. These stoning matches between Monticiani and
Trasteverini were so recognised an institution in Rome, that the poet
Berneri writing two centuries ago, sums up the Forum Romanum in the
words:
Campo Vaccino
Luogo dove s'impara a fare a sassi.
Field of cows
The place where one learns to throw stones.
The movement towards association between members of a craft or of
persons of identical interests, seems to be, as we have seen, as old
as Rome herself. Whether or no King Numa gave it its first impulse, it
is certain that throughout the first years of the Republic trade
corporations were multiplied in the city without let or hindrance, and
only when their number and importance seemed to menace the
tranquillity of the State were measures taken for their control.
The wave of prosperity which spread over the Roman provinces during
the early Empire gave a further impetus to trade in every branch, and
an industrial class which had been long in the making amongst the
people of Rome, awoke to its own interests and claimed if not sympathy
at least recognition from the aristocratic ruling caste which held all
_plebs_ in contempt.
[Illustration: PANTHEON, A FLANK VIEW
Designed as a Hall of the Baths of Agrippa the contemporary of
Augustus, but appears to have been at once dedicated as a temple.
The Black Confraternity of S. John Beheaded are seen passing the
building, their cross bearer preceding them. See pages 30, 56, 67,
86; [see also pp. 8, 77, 143].]
The only response given however was to prohibit the formation of trade
guilds, exception only being made in favour of a few of the most
ancient, and those devoted to purposes of religion and burial. They
continued nevertheless to multiply under cover of this latter clause
until under Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus they received final
encouragement and recognition. At this time they had increased
enormously in number wealth and importance throughout Rome and the
provinces. Every group of merchants and all those engaged in
handicrafts banded themselves together to form a _college_ or
_university_ as they were called in Rome, as much for the social
pleasures to be derived from such association as for the mutual
support and protection afforded against the impositions and
aggressions of outsiders. Charioteers, gladiators, disbanded soldiers,
itinerant merchants, seamen, Tiber boatmen, grain weighers at Ostia,
palace servants, carters and coachmen founded corporations equally
with the bakers and innkeepers, dyers weavers and tanners.
Every young community sought a rich patron willing to give a plot of
land or the funds necessary for the building of a club-room, promising
in return certain anniversary banquets in his honour, or commemorative
reunions to keep his memory green after death. Each corporation placed
itself under the protection of a god whose name it adopted, and as its
wealth and importance increased, by members' testamentary bequests or
by gifts from patrons, the club premises were increased, and shrines
and chapels were built in honour of the titular deity. Some of the
corporations rose to such a position of importance that senatorial and
consular families sprang from them; they supported colleges of
doctors sculptors and painters of their own, they contributed to the
building of public monuments and made loans to the State, while on
special occasions the emperor's retinue was increased by a hundred
standards and five hundred lances contributed by the trade colleges of
Rome from amongst their own retainers.
Although democratic in constitution, in so far as every member,
however humble, could serve as one of its officers, the college was
founded on the civic pattern, with president, curators, fiscal officer
and all the grades of rank down to its slave members. Thus each unit
represented in miniature the Roman commune and contributed to its
consolidation. Unlike some of the guilds of the North however which
became the nurseries of civic freedom, the Roman Colleges were too
ready to subject their individuality to the spirit of civil discipline
which was characteristic of Roman organisations and we find them
submitting to one Imperial decree after another, losing one after
another of their rights until they fell altogether under State
patronage and became a mere portion of State machinery, a petrifying
slavery being thus imposed upon their members whose liberties they
were founded to safeguard.
As an integral portion of the administrative life of the State, they
proved of the greatest use, not only as adding to its stability and
prosperity but as affording a sort of scaffolding upon which to build
its complicated daily life. To them was given the collection of taxes,
the superintendence of public buildings, the development of the
military system, the clothing of the militia, the provisioning of
the citizens and the supplying of all their daily necessities.
[Illustration: SILVERSMITHS' ARCH IN THE VELABRUM
This arch stands against the Arch of Janus, and was erected to the
Emperor Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Pia, and his sons, by the
guilds of silversmiths and cattle merchants. When Caracalla murdered
his brother the name of the murdered prince was removed from the
inscription. The arch, as the inscription proves, is on the site of
the _Forum Boarium_.]
In return for these services they were exempt from all other
obligations to the State. The livelihood and wellbeing of members of
colleges were thus ensured but at the cost of their liberty. Every
member was obliged to sink a portion of his estate in the funds of the
college, and to contribute another to its expenses. He was forbidden
to will away the remainder except to his sons or nephews who in their
turn were bound to enter the same trade; no member could change his
own trade for any other, the priesthood alone excepted, in which case
he must furnish a substitute. The goods of the corporations were thus
inalienable, and whole families were bound to the same occupation in
perpetuity.
During the civil wars, barbarian invasions and general disunion
following upon the decadence of the Empire, the Roman colleges are
lost sight of, but there seems little doubt that their privileges were
left intact by the foreign conquerors of Rome and that it was their
direct descendants that we find flourishing once more as trade
corporations in the middle ages. As early as the eighth century, the
Lombards, Saxons and Franks had formed _scholae_ for members of these
nationalities resident in Rome, and a little later trade guilds,
founded for the mutual support and protection of their members against
oppression, had already grown prosperous and strong enough to take an
active part in insurrections and civil wars.
We find history repeating herself. The guilds placed under the
protection of a Christian saint were constituted with the obligations
to bury their dead, to succour the widows and orphans of poorer
members, to lend them funds in case of need and to offer masses for
their benefactors. All members swore to the articles of enrolment, the
statutes were formally drawn up, and many of them are preserved to
this day. As funds increased, hospitals were built for sick brethren,
and schools for the children; dowries were given to the daughters, and
the guild standard-bearers and men-at-arms swelled the ranks of
mediaeval processions just as those of their pagan predecessors had
done. The colleges kept great feasts and festivals, and their
messengers paraded the streets two and two bidding householders deck
their windows with bunting for the coming festivities. They endowed
convents and hospices and built churches, many of which still bear the
name of their founders. S. Giuseppe _de' Falegnami_ was built by the
carpenters' guild; S. Caterina _de' Funari_ by the ropemakers'; S.
Lorenzo in Miranda in the Forum belonged to the apothecaries; S. Maria
dell' Orto to the fruiterers and cheesemongers; S. Barbara to the
librarians; S. Tommaso a' Cenci to the coachmen. Streets called after
the cloakmakers, the ropemakers, the watchmakers and other craftsmen
still mark the districts given over to these different industries.
The regulations imposed within the guilds pressed heavily upon the
poorer members. The chief of each guild, the _Capo d'arte_ exacted
implicit obedience. He was the sole arbiter on all trade questions, on
the opening of every new shop, and the examination of every new
worker, and played the part of a petty tyrant. An arduous
apprenticeship of seven years from the age of thirteen was followed by
two or three years as worker, and the payment of heavy fees, before
the position of master-worker was reached.
These powerful guilds hampered the development of trade by the
establishment of monopolies, and they were more than once suppressed,
and finally abolished in the seventeenth century. Many of them,
however, survived, taking on the form of religious confraternities.
These had coexisted with the trade guilds throughout the later middle
ages. They were founded with a purely religious object, were a more
spontaneous creation and were not under any State control. One
confraternity was founded for succouring the sick, another for feeding
pilgrims three days gratuitously, a third begged about the town for
the benefit of prisoners, and a fourth prayed with condemned
malefactors. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, this
confraternity had the right to liberate one prisoner each year, who
was afterwards taken in triumph round the town. Another gave dowries
to deserving girls, and to this day the chapter of S. Peter's conducts
a procession of the _zitelle_ or maidens round the basilica on the
octave of Corpus Christi. At the head of the procession the capitular
umbrella is carried; those girls who are destined to a convent life
wear a crown of flowers, and those to be married are accompanied each
by her _fiance_.
The confraternity of blacksmiths had the privilege of blessing animals
on S. Antony's day (January 17) and the space before their church of
S. Eligio, patron of blacksmiths, used to be crowded with horses,
mules, dogs, sheep and oxen brought for the purpose. The owners paid
large sums to the confraternity, and the Pope's horses and the
equipages of Roman patricians arrived decked in flowers, the Piombino
and Doria coachmen driving eighteen pairs in hand to the admiration of
the crowds.
Since 1870 the confraternities have lost their importance and much of
their amassed wealth, while such of the trade guilds as have not
become purely religious confraternities, have resolved themselves into
the modern trades unions and beneficent clubs.
[Illustration: CONVENT GARDEN OF SAN COSIMATO, VICOVARO
This convent in the Sabine hills stands on a plateau between the
river _Digentia_ (now Licenza) and the Anio. Near it is the site of
Horace's Sabine farm. See page 169.]