| Roman Technology |
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Hypocaust from a late Roman villa. Located at La Olmeda, near Gañinas and Saldaña in Palencia (image from Wikipedia. Reproduced here according to the GNU Free Documentation License)
Several years ago I had an opportunity to spend time in Anchorage Alaska and was struck by the diverse architecture. Those who had settled there came from many different places and each brought his own style to the area. There were Cape Cod houses from New England, Prairie designs from the mid-west, stucco homes with tile roofs from the south-west and homes with walls of glass from the coastline of California, offering wonderful views but oh, so cold winds.
It was not very different for the Romans. However, it was they who were the travelers and settlers. Roman merchants and soldiers brought to other countries designs that had been developed by Romans or borrowed from other countries such as the Greece. The difference between Roman settlers and those in Alaska is that they came from primarily from Rome and brought with them designs from that one place. They adapted these designs for both the climate and the materials that were available in each location. Thus we see the beautiful arches of aqueducts, the triumphal arches that serve as monuments, domes on baths, and temple designs that Romans had borrowed from the Greeks. We also see that they brought with them new technology such as aqueducts and the hypocaust system which allowed the wealthy to have heated floors during cold winters.
What exactly were Roman homes and apartments like? You have read a bit in your text and I asked you to visit some interesting web sites. Let's put it all together. In Latin I there was much discussion of the villa rustica and the villa urbana. Those who had sufficient wealth could have more than one home. Summers in Rome were and are quite hot.
I had shown you images of the ruins of a villa urbana in Baiae that had belonged to a member of the imperial family,or so it is thought. There was a large bath complex as part of the villa as well as exercise rooms. (The Ecce Romani gallery has Baiae images in the chapters 1-7 section)
Remember that not all Romans lived in such grandeur or have the luxury of a summer home. Those who lived in Baiae year round were probably subsistence farmers, growing what they could and selling their produce to allow them to continue to own their small plots of land. We know little of their homes. One can assume they were mud and wattle structures.
Back in Rome however, people lived in either a domus or an insula with the exception of a few who lived on the Palatine Hill in what we now call 'palaces'. These were usually members of the imperial family during the time of the Empire.
The first floor of both insulae and domus had rooms, which opened to the street and were used as shops.
We see the same thing in cities today. In Paris, an elegant apartment house does not have apartments on the ground level. One enters into a central courtyard and takes an elevator or stairs to the upper floors. Servants' quarters had been on the fifth floor that had no elevator access. Even today when these rooms are rented for a tidy sum to tenants one uses the stairs to reach the fifth floor. To enter an apartment house in Paris, one visits the concierge. This individual is much like the ianitor of ancient Rome. He or she monitors the comings and goings of everyone, collects mail, hails cabs, meets the plumber or carpenter or in our case, met my husband and me with the key to our friends' apartment. They were away on the day we arrived in Paris and made arrangements for the concierge to give us the key to their apartment as well as show us where everything was. From the kitchen of this apartment one could look out into the courtyard where there was a small area for parking cars and some gardens.
Street scene in Pompeii with villae urbanae and insulae (image by Joan Jahnige)
So far, the insulae of ancient Rome is not very different from a very nice apartment house in modern Paris. But the difference ends after shops and the central courtyard. Roman insulae did not have kitchens or bathrooms, not even toilets. Running water was not available beyond the ground floor. If one wanted to cook, one used a braiser and thus ran the risk of fire. If it were affordable, one could dash downstairs to a corner thermopolium. If one were fortunate, a latrinum might be on the first floor. For water one needed to visit a nearby fons.
The author of a series of books about ancient Rome, Colleen McCullough, gives an excellent description of an insula:
Literally 'island'. Because it was usually surrounded on all sides by streets or lanes or alleys, an apartment building became known as an insula. Roman insulae were very tall (up to 100 feet in height) and most were large enough to warrant the incorporation of an internal light-well; many were large enough to contain more than one internal light-well. Then, as now, Rome was a city of apartment dwellers. This in itself is a strong clue to the answer to the vexed question-how many people lived in Rome. We know the dimensions of the city within the Servian Walls; one-plus kilometers in width, two-plus kilometers in length. That meant the population of Rome at the time of Marius and Sulla (1st century BCE) had to have been at least one million and probably more. Otherwise the insulae would have been half empty and the city smothered in parts. Rome teemed with people, its insulae were multitudinous. Two million (including slaves) might be closer to the truth of the matter.
The following information is a bit redundant but offers another view of apartment houses:
Multi-story apartment houses, insula or 'islands', were home to urban Romans who couldn't afford their own domus. The ground floor was generally set aside for shops or other commercial use. The next floors might have two or four 'luxury' apartments, with the density increasing and the apartment size decreasing on upper floors. Before the days of elevators, there was no such thing as a 'penthouse.' We don't know the height of the tallest Roman insula, but Augustus limited the height of insulae in Rome to 70 ft. and a later emperor to 60, so seven or eight stories may have been relatively common. Writers of the Republican period complained of the dangers to inhabitants of the insulae, that they often burned or collapsed, killing those who lived there. The remains discovered seem to be of sturdy, well-constructed buildings, but that may be because the worst ones had all been replaced in ancient times.
If we visited one of these ancient apartment houses, in addition to the obvious differences, like no electricity and no bathrooms on upper floors, we might notice the lack of hallways. A great deal of space was used up by multiple stairways serving only apartments directly above one another. The rooms within an apartment opened directly into each other, so that if there were multiple bedrooms one might have to walk through one to get to another.
The walls of buildings in the ancient Mediterranean world were generally brick or masonry rather than wood. They were thick by modern standards, often one and a half to two feet in buildings of only two stories, and thicker in proportion for taller buildings. Modern buildings, even those that appear to be of stone, are supported by frameworks of steel if they reach great heights. The Washington Monument, in Washington D.C., is the tallest modern building constructed entirely of stone and its walls are 15 ft. thick at the base to support its 555.5 ft. height.
While most Romans lived in insulae, there were some who, like our fictitious Cornelian family in Ecce Romani, lived in a private home, a domus. The ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum give us a wonderful glimpse of the floor plans as well as the ornamentation of many homes. Pompeii was a large city prior to the Roman expansion of the Italian peninsula. In 4th century BCE it covered 165 acres and was larger than other nearby towns including Naples but expansion stopped under Roman rule. Romans believed that a city should have a proper support system such as water and sewers and thus tried to restrict growth -everywhere but Rome that is. At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD Pompeii had about 20,000 citizens. While it was a city of commerce, it was also a city of many private homes of various sizes and opulence. Just as in the United States today the cost of living in a private home varied by cities. One could probably purchase a home in Pompeii (prior to the eruption in 79 AD) more inexpensively than a comparable home in Rome at the same time.
Large Roman houses provided living arrangements not only for the immediate family members but also relatives, household slaves and at times, even for those who rented the storefronts. Privacy was not a byproduct of home ownership.
Most Roman houses, according to Vitruvius (Roman architect and writer who lived from 90-20 BCE.), opened inside as do many Italian, French and Spanish homes today. Proportions were determined by customs established by the Etruscans prior to Rome's existence. Much of what you learned about the villa in Baiae is also in a domus.
As a visitor to a Roman house you are met at the door (fauces) by the ianitor who asks your business. If he finds it acceptable you are brought through the vestibulum to the atrium. You do not see the rooms on either side of the vestibulum. Behind the walls are tabernae or perhaps the culina which opens not into the vestibulum but into the triclinium. While waiting in the atrium you see a small fountain spouting water from a statue in the impluvium, the pool in the middle of the atrium. Looking up, you see the compluvium, an opening in the roof which allows rain water to fill the impluvium. Should there be a heavy rain, it was not a problem since the mosaic floor was tilted slightly to allow the excess water to drain into the piscina. If the pater familias is willing to see you, he will come into the atrium to greet you or the servus might lead you straight ahead into his tablinum. What a room this is. Around the walls are cases of scrolls and wax tablets. Here is the lararium in which the lares familiares are honored. The imagines hanging on the wall tell you that this is the house of a person who can trace his family back through several generations of nobility. Perhaps you are invited to dinner, or having traveled some distance to meet with the pater familias, you are invited to spend the night in one of the many cubicula that line the perimeter of the house. If it is a warm evening, the cena might be served in the hortus, the center of the peristylium that you have glimpsed through the opening behind the tablinum. This area also has a piscina and compluvium. If the weather is cool, you find that the hypocaust system that heats the floors of the main area of the house is most welcoming. You are pleased to find that this elegant domus has 'running' water under the latrinum so it will not be necessary to leave the comfort of the domus.
What I just described is a very elaborate town house in which our family might have lived. A less elaborate home would not have a heating system, toilet or peristylium. It would however have an atrium, tablinum, culina, cubicula and triclinium. There might be more stores and less house space.
I invite you to visit this website to see a fine floor plan of an ancient domus. You might want to look at this site before answering the worksheet questions.
Click here to download the Roman Housing worksheet
J. Jahnige February 2002 (revised 2006)
Reference: Images from the Ecce Romani Latin Gallery
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