Life in the Street, or Why Historians Should Read the Poets

T.P. Wiseman

Syllecta Classica, Volume 28 (2017), pp. 81-110 (Article)

Published by University of Iowa, Department of Classics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/syl.2017.0009

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/693644

[ Access provided at 28 Mar 2022 13:17 GMT from UniversitÃÂ degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza ]
 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017): 81–110

LIFE IN THE STREET, OR WHY HISTORIANS SHOULD

READ THE POETS

T.P. Wiseman

Abstract: In order to counter modern historians’ abstract

conception of the populus Romanus, in this lecture I present some
texts from the poets, from Lucilius to Juvenal, as illustrations of
life in the streets of Rome, with some help from material remains
in Pompeii and Herculaneum and the evidence, long neglected, of
the urban ‘gazette’ known as acta populi. Ciceronian texts are also
employed, to disprove the persistent but erroneous belief that the
populus took no part in republican political life.

Street scene in Rome, as imagined by Alan Sorrell

(Sorrell and Birley 12).
82 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

I begin with one of the most famous scenes in the whole of Latin
literature, Horace’s encounter with the pest (Satires 1.9.1–11):1

ibam forte uia sacra, sicut meus est mos,

nescio quid meditans nugarum, totus in illis.
accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum,
arreptaque manu: ‘quid agis, dulcissime rerum?’
‘suauiter, ut nunc est’ inquam, ‘et cupio omnia quae uis.’ 5
cum adsectaretur, ‘num quid uis?’ occupo. at ille
‘noris nos’ inquit; ‘docti sumus.’ hic ego ‘pluris
hoc’ inquam ‘mihi eris.’ misere discedere quaerens,
ire modo ocius, interdum consistere, in aurem
dicere nescio quid puero, cum sudor ad imos 10
minaret talos.

I happened to be going down the Sacra Via as I usually do, thinking

about some nonsense or other, totally absorbed in it. Up comes someone
I know only by name, and seizes my hand: ‘Lovely to see you! How’s it
going?’ ‘Fine at the moment,’ I say, ‘and all the best to you.’ When he
stayed with me, I got in first with ‘Nothing on your mind, is there?’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘you should get to know me, I’ve got an education.’ ‘For
that,’ I say, ‘I’ll think the more highly of you.’ Desperately trying to
escape, I put on speed, then stopped, then muttered something in my
slave-boy’s ear, while the sweat ran right down to my ankles.

‘I happened to be going down the Sacra Via…’ We can see it immediately

in the mind’s eye, as easily as we can see Bertie Wooster strolling down
Piccadilly, or Nick Carraway on Fifth Avenue. But then, at line 10,
something startling happens. ‘I muttered something in my slave-boy’s
ear.’ Slave-boy? What slave-boy? No slave has been mentioned. But then,
he wouldn’t be, would he? We must suddenly adjust our mental image,
and allow that this isn’t so familiar a scene after all.
And why should it be familiar? The ancient world was very different
from ors, and our understanding of it has to be earned. We always need
to pay close attention to the detail of what our sources say. The reason I
begin with this banal observation is a strong sense that some historians
of the Roman republic have forgotten it.
Let me take two recent examples. In his new book Politics in the
Roman Republic Henrik Mouritsen assumes that ‘the Roman masses’
lived in ‘abject destitution’ (78–9):
1
Except where otherwise stated, all translations are mine.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 83

The social landscape of the metropolis must have been dominated

by a wide gap between rich and poor, and the former’s extensive
reliance on unfree and tied labour probably left little room for
an independent and secure, ‘middling’ social category to emerge.
Viewed from this perspective it may be more realistic to assume
that the bulk of the urban citizens were absent from political
events. Their very poverty alienated them from the world of the
governing classes, for whom they remained a marginal and largely
undifferentiated mass, usually described in generic, derogatory
terms as the vulgus or multitudo.

I have argued elsewhere that this vision of a republic with no active

input from the populus Romanus is quite inconsistent with the ancient
sources.2 It is nevertheless a widely held view, largely thanks to Karl-
Joachim Hölkeskamp’s systematic application to the Roman republic of a
sociological model presented by Georg Simmel in 1908. In his influential
volume Reconstructing the Roman Republic (98–9),3 Hölkeskamp set
out to

provide a new complex analysis of key terms, traditional models

of interpreting the world, systems of values, and orientations, as
well as a more satisfactory explanation of their particular strongly
developed binding nature. Especially the peculiar and ingrained
‘depth of obedience’, which seems to have been characteristic of
the populus Romanus and its behavioral patterns, needs to be re-
evaluated in this context.

But since even the abstractions appropriate to sociological analysis

ultimately depend on data provided by particular ancient sources, we
may get a clearer view of the realities of Roman life if we go directly to
the primary evidence. The point I want to make today is that much of
that evidence is found in poetic texts.

FROM SACRA VIA TO VICUS TUSCUS

In Satires 1.9, Horace and his slave were walking down the Sacra Via.
In Epistles 1.7, the noble Marcius Philippus and his slave were walking
2
Wiseman 2017, one of a group of studies in honour of Sir Fergus Millar’s eightieth
birthday.
3
The argument is based on Simmel 1992, 323–40.
84 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

up it. He had spent the morning in the Forum, earning his reputation
as ‘a forceful, valiant pleader in the courts’,4 but now it was the heat of
the day, and at his age he was finding it a long uphill walk back to his
house on the Carinae (Epistles 1.7.49–66):5

conspexit, ut aiunt,
adrasum quendam uacua tonsoris in umbra 50
cultello proprios purgantem leniter unguis.
‘Demetri’ (puer hic non laeue iussa Philippi
accipiebat), ‘abi, quaere et refer, unde domo quis
cuius fortunae quo sit patre quoue patrono.’
it, redit et narrat Volteium nomine Menam 55
praeconem tenui censu sine crimine, notum
et properare loco et cessare et quaerere et uti,
gaudentem paruisque sodalibus et lare certo
et ludis et post decisa negotia campo.
‘scitari libet ex ipso quodcumque refers: dic 60
ad cenam ueniat.’ non sane credere Mena,
mirari secum tacitus. quid multa? ‘benigne’
respondet. ‘neget ille mihi?’ ‘negat improbus et te
neglegit aut horret.’ Volteium mane Philippus
uilia uendentem tunicato scruta popello 65
occupat et saluere iubet prior.

They say he caught sight of someone in an empty barber’s shop,

newly shaved, casually cleaning his nails with a knife.
‘Demetrius’ (the boy was quick at catching Philippus’ orders), ‘go
and ask and tell me who he is, where he’s from, what he earns, who’s
his father or patron.’
He goes, comes back, reports: name Volteius Mena, small-time
dealer, low income, honest, known for hustling and idling, getting
and spending as appropriate, enjoys humble friends, his own place,
and the games and the Campus when his deals are done.
‘I’d like to get all that from the man himself. Tell him to come to
dinner.’
Mena can’t really believe it, ponders in silence. In short, he replies
‘No, thanks.’
‘He would refuse me?’
‘The scoundrel does refuse. Either he doesn’t care or he’s wary of
you.’
Next morning Philippus comes across Volteius as he’s selling cheap
4
Hor. Epist. 1.7.46–7: strenuus et fortis causisque Philippus agendis / clarus.
5
Cf. Varro Ling. 5.47 for Carinae as the caput Sacrae uiae.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 85

second-hand stuff to poor people in working clothes, and takes the

initiative in greeting him.

The rest of the story needn’t concern us. What matters are the two street
scenes — one at siesta-time with the barber’s shop empty, the other in
the morning with the barrow-boy shouting his wares.
Volteius Mena was a praeco, a man with a voice that could make itself
heard. The word could mean ‘herald’ or ‘auctioneer’, but those modern
equivalents may be misleading.6 His status is best indicated by the fact
that Roman law disqualified praecones, along with undertakers and
other lowly trades, from holding public office.7 In the reductive current
jargon, he was a ‘non-elite’; but he wasn’t part of an ‘undifferentiated
mass’, and he certainly didn’t have an ‘ingrained depth of obedience’. In
fact praecones were well known for quick wit and independent opinions.
The classic case was Quintus Granius, famous for a particular kind
of old-fashioned urban humour,8 who featured in Lucilius’ satires:9

conicere in uersus dictum praeconis uolebam

Grani.

I wanted to put into verse what Granius the praeco said.

… Granius autem
non contemnere se et reges odisse superbos.

Granius has a good opinion of himself and hates arrogant grandees.

Much of what we know about him comes from Cicero. In the speech for
Gnaeus Plancius in 54 BC, Cicero seized on the prosecution’s complaint

6
Cf. Joseph. AJ 19.145 on the auctioneer Arruntius Evarestus, who was ‘possessed of
wealth equal to the richest in Rome’.
7
Tabula Heracleensis (ILS 6085 = FIRA 18 = Roman Statutes 24 Crawford), lines 94–6.
Cf. Cic. Verr. 2.2.122, Pis. fr. 9 (Asc. 5C), Fam. 6.18.1.
8
Cic. Fam. 9.15.2 (Romani ueteres atque urbani sales), Brut. 172 (nescio quo sapore
uernaculo), De or. 2.244 (Granio quidem nemo dicacior), 254 (is qui appellatur dicax),
281–2 (examples).
9
Lucil. frr. 411M (Gell. NA 4.17.2), 1181M (Cic. Att. 6.3.7, cf. 2.8.1).
86 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

that his client’s father, an eques Romanus, had spoken disrespectfully to some
senior senators. No, he says, that wasn’t disrespect, just traditional frankness:
‘what’s happened to freedom of speech and equality before the law?’10 He
proved his point with some of Granius’ cheeky one-liners, including one to
a consul ‘in the middle of the Forum’.11 This praeco was someone prominent
senators might greet by name, in public,12 just as Marcius Philippus did when
he came on Volteius Mena doing his morning sales pitch. So it seems that
‘the governing class’ were not, after all, ‘alienated’ from the world of the poor.
Lucilius gives us a hint of the noise and bustle of the Forum:13

nunc uero a mani ad noctem festo atque profesto

totus item pariterque die populusque patresque
iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam;
uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti,
uerba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
blanditia certare, bonum simulare uirum se,
insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes.

Nowadays from morning till night, on holidays and workdays,

all the People and all the senators alike push themselves forward
in the Forum, and don’t give way anywhere. They’ve all devoted
themselves to one single aim and skill — to be able to cheat and
get away with it, fight unfairly, compete in smooth talking, pretend
to be an honest man, set traps as if everyone is everyone’s enemy.

A century later, describing the spendthrift Nomentanus, Horace

provides an equally vivid snapshot of one of the nearby streets (Satires
2.3.226–38):

10
Cic. Planc. 33 (with Schol. Bob. 157–8St): ubinam ille mos? ubi illa aequitas iuris?
ubi illa antiqua libertas…?
11
Cic. Planc. 33: consuli P. Nasicae [111 BC] praeco Granius medio in foro … inquit…
12
E.g. M. Drusus, tribune in 91 BC (Cic. Planc. 33): cum ille eum salutasset et, ut fit,
dixisset ‘quid agis, Grani?’ respondit ‘immo uero tu, Druse, quid agis?’… ille L. Crassi, ille
M. Antonii uoluntatem asperioribus facetiis saepe perstrinxit. (When he’d greeted him,
and said, as you do, ‘What are you up to, Granius?’, he replied, ‘No, Drusus, what
are you up to?’ … He often criticised the policies of Lucius Crassus [cos. 95 BC] and
Marcus Antonius [cos. 99 BC] with even more pointed witticisms.)
13
Lucil. 1228–34M (Lactant. Div. inst. 5.9.20).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 87

hic, simul accepit patrimoni mille talenta,

edicit piscator uti pomarius auceps
unguentarius ac Tusci turba impia uici,
cum scurris fartor, cum Velabro omne macellum,
mane domum ueniant; qui cum uenere frequentes, 230
uerba facit leno: ‘quidquid mihi, quidquid et horum
cuique domi est, id crede tuum et uel nunc pete uel cras.’
accipe quid contra haec iuuenis responderit aequus:
‘tu niue Lucana dormis ocreatus ut aprum
cenem ego, tu piscis hiberno ex aequore uerris. 235
segnis ego, indignus qui tantum possideam; aufer.
sume tibi deciens, tibi tantundem, tibi triplex
unde uxor media currit de nocte uocata.’

As soon as he got his thousand-talents inheritance he invited the

fishmonger, the fruitseller, the bird-catcher, the perfumer, the
crooked crowd from Tuscan Street, the poulterer along with the
scroungers, the whole food market along with the Velabrum, to
come to his house next morning. They turned up in full force, and
the pimp made a speech:
‘Whatever I own, whatever any of these people owns, think of it as
yours and just ask for it any time.’
Listen to what the fair-minded young man said in reply:
‘You sleep in leggings in the Lucanian snow so that I can dine on
wild boar; you sweep the winter sea for fish. I do nothing, I don’t
deserve to own all this. Take it away! You, take a million sesterces
for yourself; you, the same; you, from whose house your wife
comes running when summoned at dead of night, take three times
as much.’

‘Tuscan Street’ (uicus Tuscus) joined the Forum at the temple of Castor
and Pollux. That particular street-corner was Catullus’ point of reference
in poem 37, his elegantly obscene attack on those who frequented a
particular bar, the salax taberna ‘nine columns down from the cap-
wearing brothers’.14
The columns show that the taberna was under a portico, but there is
a more interesting detail that also deserves our attention. The customers
— a couple of hundred of them, in Catullus’ exaggerated picture — were
all ‘sitting in a row’, and he emphasised the point by calling them ‘sitters’
(sessores).15 His poem was going to be, in effect, a scrawl of graffiti on
14
Catull. 37.1–2: salax taberna uosque contubernales, / a pilleatis nona fratribus pila…
15
Catull. 37.6–8: an, continenter quod sedetis insulsi / centum an ducenti, non putatis
88 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

the front of the tavern, and the reason for his fury was that his beloved
girl had ‘sat down’ there with them.16 These ‘sitters’, Lesbia’s lovers, were
not only the great and the good (boni ac beati) but also, it pains him
to say it, all the ‘small-time sidewalk studs’, like Spanish Egnatius with
the long hair and the dense stubble, for ever flashing his teeth.17 The
frons tabernae and the semitarii moechi (semita is the normal term for
a pavement or sidewalk) are reminders that although this up-market
establishment near the Forum did enjoy the shade of a portico, the scene
we are witnessing took place in the street.

BENCHES

To understand why the ‘sitters’ were all in a row (continenter quod

sedetis), we need only turn to Jeremy Hartnett’s excellent new book
The Roman Street. Although he doesn’t cite this poem, his chapter on
‘streetside benches and urban society’, amply illustrated from Pompeii
and Herculaneum, offers precise visual evidence for what it presupposes
— stone benches along the pavement, attached to the walls of public
buildings and private properties alike.18
That evidence may also help with a more puzzling poetic scene, in
Ovid’s account of the Feralia on 21 February (Fasti 2.571–82):

ecce anus in mediis residens annosa puellis

sacra facit Tacitae (nec tamen ipsa tacet)
et digitis tria tura tribus sub limine ponit,
qua breuis occultum mus sibi fecit iter;
tunc cantata ligat cum fusco licia plumbo 575
et septem nigras uersat in ore fabas,
ausurum / me una ducentos irrumare sessores?
16
Catull. 37.9–14: atqui putate: namque totius uobis / frontem tabernae sopionibus
scribam. / puella nam mi quae meo sinu fugit, / amata tantum quantum amabitur nulla,
/ pro qua mihi sunt magna bella pugnata, / consedit istic. Cf. Prop. 2.18.36, to Cynthia:
nec nimis ornata fronte sedere uelis.
17
Catull. 37.14–20: hanc boni beatique / omnes amatis, et quidem, quod indignum
est, / omnes pusilli et semitarii moechi; / tu praeter omnes une de capillatis, / cuniculosae
Celiberiae fili, / Egnati, opaca quem bonum facit barba / et dens Hibera defricatus urina.
Cf. Catull. 39 for Egnatius’ teeth.
18
Hartnett 195–223, esp. 197 fig. 60 and 203 fig. 63 (benches outside taverns).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 89

quodque pice adstrinxit, quod acu traiecit aena,

obsutum maenae torret in igne caput;
uina quoque instillat; uini quodcumque relictum est
aut ipsa aut comites, plus tamen ipsa, bibit. 580
‘hostiles linguas inimicaque uinximus ora’
dicit discedens ebriaque exit anus.

Here sits an old lady, full of years, with girls all round her. She’s
performing the rites of the Silent Goddess (though she herself is
hardly silent!), and with three fingers she puts three pieces of incense
under the threshold, where a little mouse has made a hidden way
for himself. Then she fastens enchanted threads with dark lead, rolls
seven black beans in her mouth, and roasts on the fire the stitched-
up head of a small fish which she has sealed with pitch and pierced
with a bronze needle. She drops wine on it too. Whatever wine is
left over she or her companions drink, but she drinks more. ‘We’ve
bound up hostile tongues and unfriendly mouths,’ she says as she
leaves, and away the old lady goes, drunk.

Were they sitting and drinking indoors, or was the fire a brazier out in
the open? Did she put the incense under the threshold from the inside
or the outside? It may be worth noting that outside the Casa Sannitica
in Herculaneum there was a bench along the pavement with a graffito
above it: hic sitiet amor, ‘love will be thirsty here’.19 As Matthew Robinson
notes in his commentary on Fasti 2, ‘the world of magic was the seedy
world of prostitutes and pimps, male or female’, and a drunken old
woman with girls was surely a lena as well as a witch.20 It would make
sense to think of them sitting outside in the street, looking for custom.21
The lena was essentially an agent or manager, advising her girls how
to deploy their assets to the best financial advantage. That is why she was
a hate figure to the elegiac poets, who pretended they couldn’t compete
with wealthy rivals.22 She too, like Volteius Mena the praeco and the
‘crooked crowd’ in Tuscan Street, was part of an urban economy where
rich and poor were constantly in contact.
19
CIL 4.10562; Hartnett 199–200 and fig. 62.
20
Robinson 361, citing Plin. HN 30.15. For lenae and witchcraft, cf. Tib. 1.5.47–60,
Prop. 4.5.1–20, Ov. Am. 1.8.1–18.
21
Cf. Mart. 6.66.1–2 on prostitutes quales in media sedent Subura.
22
Tib. 2.6.43–54, Prop. 4.5, Ov. Am. 1.8.
90 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

The sessores may also have been in Cicero’s mind when he discussed
in De finibus the natural instinct for action (5.56):

quin etiam inertissimos homines, nescio qua singulari nequitia

praeditos, uidemus tamen et corpore et animo moueri semper
et, cum re nulla impediantur necessaria, aut alueolum poscere
aut quaerere quempiam ludum aut sermonem aliquem requirere,
cumque non habeant ingenuas ex doctrina oblectationes, circulos
aliquos et sessiunculas consectari.

We see that even the most idle of men, those given over to some
depravity or other, are still constantly in action in both body and
mind. Even though they are not hindered by necessary business,
they ask for a gaming board or look for some entertainment or seek
some conversation; even though they have no liberal intellectual
pursuits, they go in search of circuli and sessiunculae.

What exactly do those concluding nouns refer to? Circulus was the
normal term for a group of people talking together,23 as it might be in
the Forum or some other public place.24 Rome was a city full of gossip,
much of it malicious, and circuli were where it was dished up.25 The lena
sitting with her girls in Ovid’s scene had to use magic to counter it; I
think we can call their little group a sessiuncula. Since people in a circulus
were normally standing up,26 it may be that Cicero used both words
because he was imagining his busy idlers either standing round in the
piazza or sitting in a row on the bench in the street in front of a tavern.

THE ACTA POPULI

Speaking of taverns, let’s see if we can find the pub called Ursus Galeatus,
‘The Bear in a Helmet’. We know the address: it was ‘at the lowest Janus’.

23
Sermo in circulis: Cic. Att. 2.18.2, Off. 1.132; cf. Livy 3.17.10, 28.25.5, 34.61.5.
24
E.g. Cic. Q. fr. 3.4.1 (Forum), Quint. Inst. 2.12.10 (orator’s audience), 12.10.74 (per fora
atque aggerem), Petron. Sat. 27.1 (baths), Gell. NA 4.1.1 (in uestibulo aedium Palatinarum).
25
Cic. Flac. 68, Cael. 38 (in tam maledica ciuitate); cf. Balb. 57 (in circulis uellicant);
O’Neill provides full details.
26
Gell. NA 15.9.2 (adsistens), Apul. Met. 2.13 (circumstantium), Porphyrio on Hor.
Sat. 1.6.114 (in his uulgi circulis stare).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 91

The three Iani, summus, medius and imus, were evidently created in 174 BC,
as part of a redevelopment of the Forum shops and porticos.27 They were
probably shop-lined passages bridging the stream channel which at that time
still ran through the Forum,28 and the place names survived even after the
stream was culverted beneath the Forum paving in the first century BC. The
tavern at Ianus imus may have been ‘below the Forum’, in the plebeian area
where Gaius Gracchus chose to live.29 It was probably not far from Catullus’
salax taberna — conceivably even the same place, if Catullus was counting
the columns from the Castor temple down the uicus Tuscus.30
We know about it from a documentary source that is almost totally
ignored by modern historians, the acta populi Romani.31 This gazette
of the daily doings of the city is frequently referred to in Cicero’s
correspondence, particularly in the context of its being copied out
(perscripta) and sent for information to friends abroad.32 When he went
to Cilicia in 51 BC he entrusted this duty to Caelius Rufus, who then
got someone else to do the work:33

Redeeming the promise I made as I took my leave of you to write

you all the news of Rome in the fullest detail, I’ve been at pains to

27
Livy 41.27.12 (forum porticibus tabernisque claudendum et Ianos tris faciendos), cf.
Hor. Epist. 1.1.54 (Ianus summus ab imo). The best known is Ianus medius, the centre
for financial dealings: Cic. Off. 2.87, Phil. 6.15, 7.16, Hor. Sat. 2.3.18.
28
Richardson 205–6. Stream channel: Plaut. Curc. 476 (propter canalem), Paul. Fest.
40L (circa canales fori).
29
Plut. Vit. C.Gracc. 12.1: μετῴκησεν εἰς τὸν ὑπὸ τὴν ἀγορὰν τόπον ὡς
δημοτικώτερον.
30
The culverted stream – the cloaca maxima – ran parallel to the uicus Tuscus (Steinby
463 fig. 169).
31
Suet. Iul. 20.1 (populi diurna acta), Cic. Att. 6.2.6 (acta urbana), Fam. 12.22.1
(rerum urbanarum acta), Petr. Sat. 53.1 (urbis acta), Tac. Ann. 13.31.1 (acta diurna
urbis), 16.22.3 (diurna populi Romani); see Baldwin for full discussion.
32
Cic. Att. 4.15.3, Fam. 8.1.1, 12.22.1, 12.28.3; cf. Att. 6.2.6, from Laodicea in April
50 BC (habebam acta urbana usque ad Non. Mart.).
33
Cic. Fam. 8.1.1–2 (based on trans. by D.R. Shackleton Bailey): quod tibi decedens
pollicitus sum me omnis res urbanas diligentissime tibi perscripturum…
92 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

find a person to cover the whole ground so meticulously that I’m

afraid you may find the result too wordy. … I hope you won’t find
me guilty of arrogance in my performance of this office because
I have delegated the work to someone else …, but I imagine the
volume I’m sending you makes my excuses easily enough. I don’t
know how anyone could have so much time on his hands as to
observe these things, let alone write them out. It’s all here —
resolutions of the Senate, edicts, gossip, rumours. If this specimen
doesn’t happen to appeal to you, please let me know, so that I don’t
spend money merely to bore you. If there’s any major political
event that these hirelings couldn’t cover satisfactorily, I’ll be careful
to write you a full account of the manner of it and of consequent
views and expectations.

Cicero wasn’t impressed: ‘Is this what you think I asked you to send
me — gladiator matches, court adjournments, a burglary?’34
The sort of thing the gazette contained is best attested in authors a
century or more later. According to the younger Seneca, divorces were
a regular feature, while the elder Pliny’s citations from the acta include
a plebeian with twenty-seven grandchildren offering sacrifice on the
Capitol, a fan of the Red team throwing himself on a famous charioteer’s
funeral pyre, a faithful dog trying to rescue his master even after he’d
been executed and thrown in the Tiber, and a phoenix exhibited at the
Comitium that everyone knew was a fake.35 Pliny also has an example
from the late-republican acta: ‘when Titus Milo was pleading a case in
court there was a rain of bricks.’36 No such event is recorded in Julius
Obsequens’ list of prodigies, but Milo was an unpopular politician who
might well have been a target for missiles.37 Whoever the ‘hirelings’ were
who compiled the chronicle, they clearly had a sense of humour.

34
Cic. Fam. 2.8.1: quid? tu me hoc tibi mandasse existimas ut mihi gladiatorum
compositiones, ut uadimonia dilata et Chresti compilationem mitteres…?
35
Sen. Ben. 3.16.2 (nulla sine diuortio acta sunt); Plin. HN 7.60 (5 BC), 7.186, 8.145
(AD 28), 10.5 (AD 48).
36
Plin. HN 2.147 (misdated to 50 BC, when Milo was in exile): eodem causam dicente
lateribus coctis pluisse in acta eius anni relatum est.
37
Obsequens 62–5; Asc. 37C (maxima pars multitudinis infensa … Miloni). Missiles:
cf. Asc. 58C (lapides … ex ultima contione in consulem iacti), Cic. De or. 2.197, Dom.
11 (lapidatio), Macrob. Sat. 2.6.1 (lapidatus a populo).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 93

But how was it published? From where did the person working
for Caelius copy out all those details? Two analogous institutions
may suggest an answer. First, the annual record made public by the
pontifices:38

ita autem annales conficiebantur: tabulam dealbatam quotannis

pontifex maximus habuit, in qua praescriptis consulum nominibus
et aliorum magistratuum digna memoratu notare consueuerat domi
militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies.

Annales were, however, compiled in the following way. Every

year, the Pontifex Maximus had a whitewashed tablet on which,
with the names of the consuls and the other magistrates written
first, he was accustomed to note the things worthy of mention
which had been done at home and abroad, by land and sea,
day by day.

Second, the praetor’s list of each year’s potential jurors for the extortion
court (quaestio repetundarum) after its reorganisation in 122 BC:39

quos legerit, eos, patrem tribum cognomenque, ioudice<s> q[uei

ex h(ac) l(ege) in hunc annum sient … quei ex] h(ac) l(ege) CDL
uirei in eum annum lectei erunt, ea nomina omnia in tabula
in albo atramento script<o>s, patrem tribum cognomenque
tributimque d<i>scriptos hab[eto, eosque propositos suo
magistratu … habeto potestatemque scribundi, quei uolet,
facito.]

Whomever he shall have chosen, [? he is to declare] them, along

with (the indication of ) their father, tribe and cognomen, [as
those who may be] jurors [for the current year according to the
statute; ?and of those? who according to] this statute shall have
been chosen as the 450 men for that year, [he is to] have all
the names on a tablet on a white background, written in black,
along with (the indication of ) their father, tribe and cognomen,
and classified by tribe [and he is to have them published during
his magistracy … and he is to grant the power of writing (them)
down to whoever shall wish.]

38
Serv. Dan. on Verg. Aen. 1.273 = FRHist Annales maximi T3 (trans. J.W. Rich).
39
CIL 12.583.14 = FIRA 10.14 = Crawford 66 (text), 86 (translation). The final clause
is restored from the repetition at line 18.
94 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

Both translators render tabula as ‘tablet’, but ‘board’ probably gives a

better indication.40 A white board — album in Latin, λεύκωμα in Greek
— was used for publishing information of immediate concern,41 unlike
the permanent record that required inscription on bronze or stone.42
Ever since the eighteenth century, when the great painted frieze was
discovered in the property of Julia Felix in Pompeii, we have known
what such notices looked like.43 The painting showed a group of people
in front of the Forum colonnade, looking at a long white board attached
to the adjacent bases of at least four equestrian statues. Its shape was that
of an unrolled papyrus uolumen, no doubt because its purpose was to
provide information for people who could not afford books.44
We can only guess how long a notice would remain in place before
being taken down or painted over to make room for the next one. We
don’t know how frequently the acta populi Romani were posted, but in
any case it seems likely that only the work of individual transcribers could
keep the ephemeral contents of each issue available for later citation.
It is just possible that one such person wrote out the acta for part of 168
BC, and that his record survived for a century or more and was then edited
and inscribed on bronze. All we know for certain is that the ‘transcription
of a fragment of a tabula antiquissima’ was found in the papers of Juan
Luis Vivès (1492–1540) and sent to Stephanus Pighius (1520–1604), who
included it in his Annales Romanorum (1615); it was also quoted by Justus
40
‘A flat piece of wood, board, plank, etc.’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. 1).
41
E.g. Livy 9.46.5 (fasti put up by Cn. Flavius), Cic. De or. 2.52 (annales put up by
pontifices), Dio Cass. 47.3.2 (proscription list put up by Triumvirs), 55.4.1 (draft laws),
Roman Statutes 28.25 and 34, 24.15 and 18 (magistrates’ business). Full references in
TLL 1.1507.49–1509.9, s.v. album.
42
E.g. CIL 6.32323.59–61 (17 BC): C. Silanus cos. u.f. pe[rti]nere ad conseruandam
memoriam tantae r[eligionis … commentarium ludorum] saecularium in colum[n]am
aheneam et marmoream inscribi. (The consul Gaius Silanus said in his speech that it
was important for the preservation of the memory of so great a religious occasion that
a commentary of the ludi saeculares be inscribed on a bronze and marble column.)
Laws were of course inscribed on bronze: Cic. Cat. 3.19, Div. 2.47, Tac. Hist. 4.40.1
(aera legum); cf. Joseph. AJ 14.188, 266 (χαλκαῖς στήλαις).
43
Beard 72–6 and plate 7; Hartnett 85–7 and fig. 24.
44
For the prohibitive cost of papyrus see Wiseman 2015, 3–6.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 95

Lipsius in his edition of Tacitus Annals 15 (1581).45 Andrew Lintott has

the credit of making the text available to modern readers:46

28 March, fasces with Aemilius.

In the morning, laurelled, he made good sacrifice of a sheep at the
temple of Apollo. Eighth hour, Senate summoned to Curia Hostilia.
Senate resolution passed that praetors give verdicts according to
their own permanent edicts. Q. Minucius Scapula prosecuted for
violence by P. Lentulus before praetor Cn. Baebius, C. Sulpicius
defending. Condemn, 15 votes; defer judgement, 33.
29 March, fasces with Licinius.
Thunder and lightning; oak tree struck at top of Velia.
Soon after midday, disturbance in tavern at Lowest Janus, landlord
of Bear in a Helmet seriously wounded.
Plebeian aedile C. Titinius fined butchers for selling uninspected
meat to the People. From proceeds of fines, chapel built to Laverna
at the temple of Tellus.
30 March, fasces with Aemilius.
Rain of stones in Veii district.
Plebeian tribune Postumius sent messenger to consul because he
had refused to summon Senate that day. Matter dismissed by veto
of plebeian tribune P. Decimius.
Q. Aufidius, cashier of banking establishment at Cimbric Shield, left
the Forum with a large sum of other people’s money. Apprehended
and brought back, stood trial before praetor P. Fonteius Balbus.
When it became clear no losses had occurred, he was ordered to
pay back all money in full.
31 March, fasces with Licinius.
Latin Festival celebrated, sacrifice made on Alban Mount, meat
distributed.
Fire on Caeliolus. Two apartment blocks and five houses burned
to ground, four houses damaged.
Pirate leader Demophon, captured by deputy commander Cn.
Licinius Nerva, crucified.
Red flag flown on Citadel. Conscription of young men in Campus
Martius for new oath.
1 April.
Consuls L. Aemilius Paullus (second time) and C. Licinius Crassus.
Consul Paullus and praetor Cn. Octavius in military uniform left
city and proceeded to their province Macedonia, escorted by huge
and unparalleled crowd.
45
Details in Lintott 220–7.
46
Lintott 214–6 (text), 216–20 (commentary), esp. 214 lines 16–19: paullum a
meridie rixa ad Ianum infimum in caupona et caupo ad ursum galeatum grauiter sauciatus.
96 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

[…] the whole Sacra Via from the houses […] as far as Carinae and
shrine of Strenia, to great disturbance of inhabitants.
Funeral of Marcia daughter of Sextus, with procession of ancestral
images more numerous than attendance of people.
Pontifex Sempronius announced Megalensia.
2 April.
Sacred Spring vowed by praetor A. Baebius on recommendation
of pontifices.
Expenses given to ambassadors of Aetolians, 20,000 as each plus
half that for staff.
M. Aebutius proceeded to his province Sicily.
Banquet given to the People for funeral of Marcia by her sons Q.
and L. Metellus; stage-games performed.
Carthaginian fleet entered Ostia with tribute.
3 April.
C. Popillius Laenas, C. Decimius and C. Hostilius sent as
ambassadors to kings of Syria and Egypt to settle war between them.
In the morning, ambassadors with large crowd of dependants and
relatives made good sacrifice of a bull to the Penates of the Roman
People at the temple of Castor, and obtained favourable omens.
Pontifex maximus […] in the temple of Vesta […] made vow
joyfully.

The reference to the scutum Cimbricum (30 March), a feature that must
post-date Marius’ triumph in 101 BC, is a glaring anachronism.47 If this
text is a sophisticated Renaissance forgery, as is normally assumed, that is
totally inexplicable. If on the other hand it was a genuine transcription of
the gazette which was then transcribed again on to bronze — no doubt
in the first century BC, when such restorations of historic documents
were in fashion — then an error or misreading by the later editor might
account for it.48
I must confess that my main reason for wanting to believe in the
essential authenticity of the text is the sardonic report (1 April) of the
funeral of Marcia Sexti filia, at which the ancestors outnumbered the
47
Lintott 214, lines 33–5: Q. Aufidius mensarius tabernae argentariae ad scutum
Cimbricum cum magna ui aeris alieni cessit foro. Cf. De or. 2.266: in Mariano scuto
Cimbrico sub nouis.
48
The orthography of the transmitted text is no earlier than the first century BC. For
restored documents see for instance the elogium of C. Duillius (CIL 12.25 = Inscr. Ital.
13.3.69 = ILLRP 319) and the tomb inscription of C. Poplicius Bibulus (CIL 12.834
= ILLRP 357).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 97

congregation.49 Not everybody in the Roman republic was in awe of

the aristocracy.

COMPITA

Looking for the Bear in a Helmet has taken us away from my main
subject, so let’s come back now to the poets.
Like their historian colleagues, Latinists are very fond of the e-word.
According to Ted Kenney (10), Roman literature ‘was from first to last
the preserve of a relatively small élite in which high culture flourished’;
according to Sander Goldberg (7), modern scholarship is now ‘more
ready to focus on the actions of Rome’s elite and to treat literary activity
as an aristocratic phenomenon’. But in that case, what was Martial talking
about when he sent his book of poems to Caesius Sabinus (7.97.9–13)?

o quantum tibi nominis paratur,

o quae gloria, quam frequens amator!
te conuiuia, te forum sonabit,
aedes, compita, porticus, tabernae.
uni mitteris, omnibus legeris.

What great publicity you’ve got coming, what glory, what a crowd
of enthusiasts! You’ll be heard at dinner parties and in the Forum, at
houses, cross-roads, porticos and taverns. You’re sent to one person,
but you’ll be ‘read’ by all.

The point is that Caesius will share the poems by word of mouth, and
so they’ll be repeated everywhere. The poet wants to reach everyone,
from top to bottom of the social scale.
The most interesting of the sites Martial mentions are the compita.
A compitum was more than just a street intersection, a triuium or
quadriuium; it was the formal centre of the neighbourhood, with a
shrine for the twin Lares who protected it.50 Since there was usually
also a fountain and water basin, as we know from surviving examples
49
Lintott 215, lines 67–8: funus Marciae Sex. f. cum maiore pompa imaginum quam
frequentia hominum.
50
Formal centre: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.14.3–4 (introduced by Ser. Tullius), Plin.
HN 3.66 ([urbs] diuiditur in regiones quattuordecim, compita Larum CCLXV). Details
and discussion in Flower, esp. 115–56, and Hartnett 260–4.
98 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

in Pompeii and Herculaneum,51 it was the natural place for people to

meet and talk.52 We must imagine Caesius or his friends arriving with
hot news: ‘Have you heard Martial’s latest?’ That was how epigrams
reached their audience.
The poet himself might look for an audience at the crossroads, which is
why carmen triuiale became a proverbial phrase.53 If his subject was satirical,
the compitum would be an ideal place to harangue the victims. In his famous
discussion of the genre, Horace tells us how the satirist was regarded by people
whose behaviour left them open to public criticism (Satires 1.4.33–8):54

omnes hi metuunt uersus, odere poetas.

‘faenum habet in cornu: longe fuge! dummodo risum
excutiat sibi, non hic cuiquam parcet amico; 35
et quodcumque semel chartis illeuerit, omnis
gestiet a furno redeuntis scire lacuque
et pueros et anus.

They all fear verses and hate poets: ‘Keep well away, he’s got hay on
his horns! As long as he gets a laugh, he won’t spare either himself or
any of his friends. Whatever he’s once smeared on to his pages, he’ll
be dying for all the people coming back from the bakehouse and the
water-fountain to know about it, even the boys and the old ladies.’

A little later in the poem (65–8) he names two examples:55

Sulcius acer
ambulat et Caprius, rauci male cumque libellis,
magnus uterque timor latronibus; at bene si quis
et uiuat puris manibus, contemnat utrumque.
51
Pompeii: Flower 151–3 and fig.s II.21 and 22, plates 17 and 19; Hartnett 261–2
and fig.s 79–80. Herculaneum: Hartnett 229–33 and fig.s 67–70.
52
E.g. Hor. Sat. 2.3.25–6 (frequentia compita), 2.6.50 (manat per compita rumor);
cf. Cic. Mur. 13 (maledictum ex triuio), Juv. 6.412 (quocumque in triuio … narrat).
53
Juv. 7.55; cf. Verg. Ecl. 3.26–7 (in triuiis … disperdere carmen), Calp. Ecl. 1.28
(triuiali more … canit).
54
Porphyrio ad loc. explains that hay was put on the horns of a dangerous bull, to
warn passers-by.
55
Rightly identified as satirists by Ullman 117–19.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 99

Fierce Sulcius and Caprius are walking about, horribly hoarse, with
their books in their hands. Muggers are afraid of them both, but
no-one who lives properly and keeps his hands clean need pay any
attention to either.

They might well be hoarse, if they had been denouncing folly and vice
at every compitum in town.
For love elegy too the compita were important. Here is Propertius,
confessing that he can’t stop picking up girls everywhere (2.22.1–8):56

nulla meis frustra lustrantur compita plantis;

o nimis exitio nata theatra meo,
siue aliqua in molli diducit candida gestu
bracchia seu uarios incinit ore modos!
interea nostri quaerunt sibi uulnus ocelli,
candida non tecto pectore si qua sedet.

My feet walk past no compitum in vain. Oh, theatres were created

to destroy me, whether someone spreads her white arms in a
languishing gesture or sings in any style — but in the meantime
my eyes are looking for their own damage, if some beauty is sitting
with her breasts uncovered.

If the theatre games were on, he’d fall for a glamorous showgirl; if not,
it would be a young woman advertising herself at the cross-roads. His
love life was already a subject of gossip there: for six months now, he
told Cynthia, all the compita have been talking about us.57 And the
same was true of Ovid and Corinna, as Tragedy herself disapprovingly
observed in Amores 3.1: ‘Your bad behaviour is discussed at drunken
parties, discussed at the compita where the ways divide… Do you not
realise that you are a story told throughout the city?’58
The sort of information, true or false, that was eagerly exchanged at
the compita must have been similar to what people nowadays get from
56
If the lines are in the right order (the repeated candida is suspicious), the comment
about the theatre must be a brief digression.
57
Prop. 2.20.21–2: septima iam plenae deducitur orbita lunae / cum de me et de te
compita nulla tacent.
58
Ov. Am. 3.1.17–18, 21: ‘nequitiam uinosa tuam conuiuia narrant, / narrant in multas
compita secta uias.../ fabula, nec sentis, tota iactaris in urbe.’
100 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

celebrity magazines. Where did the material come from? Two lively
poetic texts may give us an idea.
The first is Propertius 4.8, told as the latest news from a fashionable
part of town: ‘Listen to what got the watery Esquiline going last night,
when there was a crowd running about next to New Fields.’59 It all began
because Cynthia was going to Lanuvium for the rites of Juno Sospita.
She certainly made sure everyone saw her leave (4.8.21–2):

spectaclum ipsa sedens primo temone pependit,

ausa per impuros frena mouere iocos.

What a show she was, sitting [in her carriage], boldly shaking the
reins herself, bent over the end of the yoke-pole amid the dirty jokes.

Propertius, meanwhile, took the opportunity to get a couple of good-

time girls to come over to his place: the peristyle garden was nice and
private for a party of three on a couch, with music.60 But then there
was uproar at the front of the house. Cynthia was back, and there was
hell to pay (4.8.57–62):61

Phyllidos iratos in uultum conicit ungues:

territa ‘uicini,’ Teia clamat, ‘aquam!’
iurgia sopitos turbant elata Quirites,
omnis et insana semita uoce sonat. 60
illas dereptisque comis tunicisque solutis
excipit obscurae prima taberna uiae.

She hurls her angry nails into Phyllis’s face. Terrified Teia cries ‘Help,
neighbours! Fire!’ Screams of abuse disturb the sleepy citizens, and
every alley resounds with the mad voices. Hair torn, clothes undone,
the girls take cover at the dark street’s first tavern.
59
Prop. 4.8.1–2: disce quid Esquilias hac nocte fugarit aquosas, / cum uicina nouis
turba cucurrit agris. The Esquiline is ‘watery’ because it was where the Anio uetus
aqueduct entered the city (Frontin. Aq. 21); for the ‘New Fields’ see Hor. Sat.
1.8.7, a passage which does not refer to the gardens of Maecenas (see Wiseman
2016, 137–41).
60
Prop. 4.8.35–6 (unus erat tribus in secreta lectulus herba. | quaeris concubitus? inter
utramque fui), 37–42 (wine and music).
61
Iurgia at 59 is Baehrens’ emendation of lumina.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 101

And there, of course, they tell their story.

I think we should notice the juxtaposition of respectable sleeping
neighbours and late drinkers in the bar. In the city of Rome rich and
poor lived side by side, as illustrated by my second case of scandal getting
publicised (Juvenal 9.102–13):62

o Corydon, Corydon, secretum diuitis ullum

esse putas? serui ut taceant, iumenta loquentur
et canis et postes et marmora. claude fenestras,
uela tegant rimas, iunge ostia, tolle lucernam, 105
e medio fac eant omnes, prope nemo recumbat;
quod tamen ad cantum galli facit ille secundi,
proximus ante diem caupo sciet, audiet et quae
finxerunt pariter libarius, archimagiri,
carptores. quod enim dubitant componere crimen 110
in dominos, quotiens rumoribus ulciscuntur
baltea? nec derit qui te per compita quaerat
nolentem et miseram uinosus inebriet aurem.

Oh Corydon, Corydon, do you think a rich man ever has a secret?

If his slaves don’t talk, his horses will, and his dog and his doorposts
and his marble statues. Close the shutters, cover the cracks with
curtains, fasten the doors, remove the light, get rid of everyone,
let no-one sleep anywhere near! Even so, what he does at second
cock-crow the nearest tavern-keeper will know before dawn, as
well as hearing what the pastrycook, the chefs and the carvers have
made up about it. What do they hesitate to say about their masters,
when blows from a belt are avenged by telling tales? And there’ll be
someone seeking you out at the compita whether you like it or not,
making your poor ear drunk with the wine on his breath.

In Juvenal’s time there were 265 compita in Rome.63 That adds up to a

lot of gossiping people.

WE THE PEOPLE

I have a very simple point to make. These people in the bars and in the
streets were the populus Romanus. They don’t deserve to be written out
of history, or reduced to a mere abstraction.
62
The allusion in line 102 is of course to Verg. Ecl. 2.69.
63
Plin. HN 3.66 (n. 50 above).
102 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

It was they, of course, who filled the theatres and the Circus when
the games were on, resenting those who had privileged seats:64

ad quingentesimum <quinquagesimum> octauum annum in

promiscuo spectatum esse; quid repente factum cur immisceri sibi
in cauea patres plebem nollent? cur diues pauperem consessorem
fastidiret? nouam, superbam libidinem…

For 557 years [since the foundation of the city] the games were
watched by all together. What suddenly happened to make senators
not want to have plebeians among them in the audience? Why
should a rich man object to a poor man sitting next to him? It’s a
new, arrogant self-indulgence.

Romulus had made all citizens equal;65 Servius Tullius had extended
the privilege to freed slaves, and on the street there was nothing to
distinguish a freeborn citizen from a freedman.66 Equality was taken for
granted under the republic,67 until the profits of empire encouraged the
rich and powerful to regard themselves as something special, a nobilitas;
their victory came with the killing of the Gracchi.68
64
Livy 34.54.5–7, on the introduction of senatorial seats in 194 BC as a diminution
of libertas aequa. For the theatre audience as populus Romanus uniuersus, cf. Cic. Sest.
122, Phil. 1.36, Plin. HN 36.119; cf. Suet. Calig. 30.2 (‘utinam p. R. unam ceruicem
haberet!’).
65
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.7.4 (achieving τὴν κοινὴν καὶ μεγίστην ἰσότητα), 2.28.3
(land divided ἐξ ἴσου).
66
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.22.4 (πάντων ἀπέδωκε τῶν κοινῶν αὐτοῖς μετέχειν ὧν
τοῖς ἄλλοις δημοτικοῖς), App. B Civ. 2.120.505 (ὁ ἐξελεύθερος αὐτοῖς ἰσοπολίτης
ἐστὶ); cf. Ov. Fast. 6.781–4 (Servius popular with the plebs because himself a slave by
birth). For the full history of freedmen’s voting rights see Treggiari 37–52.
67
For equal land allotments (7 iugera), see Columella Rust. 1.3.10, Plin. HN 18.18
(early republic); Val. Max. 4.3.5b, Columella Rust. 1.pref.14, Frontin. Str. 4.3.12, De
vir. ill. 33.5–6 (Manius Curius, 275–4 BC).
68
Sall. Iug. 16.2 (L. Opimius … acerrume uictoriam nobilitatis in plebem exercuerat),
42.4 (ea uictoria nobilitas ex lubidine sua usa). For Gracchan ideals, cf. App. B Civ.
1.11.44 (δίκαιον τὰ κοινὰ κοινῇ διανέμεσθαι), Siculus Flaccus De condicionibus
agrorum 102.32–3 Campbell (contrarium esse morem, maiorem modum possidere quam
qui ab ipso possidente coli possit).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 103

From then on Roman politics became an ideological struggle between

traditional egalitarians (populares) and a newly dominant oligarchy who
called themselves ‘aristocrats’ (optimates).69 We have the best possible
evidence for this, a specific statement from a major politician instructing
his younger contemporaries:70

duo genera semper in hac ciuitate fuerunt eorum qui uersari in

re publica atque in ea se excellentius gerere studuerunt; quibus
ex generibus alteri se populares, alteri optimates et haberi et esse
uoluerunt. qui ea quae faciebant quaeque dicebant multitudini
iucunda uolebant esse, populares, qui autem ita se gerebant ut sua
consilia optimo cuique probarent, optimates habebantur.

In this state there have always been two sorts of people who have
been ambitious to engage in politics and distinguish themselves
there. They have chosen to be, respectively, by name and by nature
either populares or optimates. Those who wanted their words and
deeds to be welcome to the multitude were considered populares,
and those who acted so as to justify their policies to all the best
people were considered optimates.

Who could possibly be better informed on the subject? Unfortunately,

however, it has long been the accepted view among modern historians
that Roman politics had no ideological content at all.71 Some scholars
simply ignore Cicero’s authoritative contemporary testimony, as if not
mentioning it would make it go away;72 others try to disqualify it along
with the notion of political ‘parties’;73 the most creative critic even
69
That should not be controversial (for more argument see Wiseman 2009, especially
chapters 1 and 9); the onus of proof is on those who claim that contemporary evidence
cannot mean what it says.
70
Cic. Sest. 96.9–15; cf. 96.4–5 (rem quaeris praeclaram iuuentuti ad discendum nec
mihi difficilem ad perdocendum). By ‘always’, I think Cicero had in mind the so-called
‘struggle of the orders’, which historians interpreted in anachronistic terms (e.g. Livy
3.39.9 on populares and optimates in 450 BC).
71
For details see Wiseman 2009, 5–32 (‘Roman History and the Ideological Vacuum’).
72
Most recently Joy Connolly and Melissa Lane, neither of whom has optimates or
populares in her index.
73
E.g. Valentina Arena (171) and Richard Alston (353 n. 2).
104 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

describes it as ‘a brilliant rhetorical “conjuring trick”’, ‘unlike anything

else found in the ancient sources’.74 But none of these ingenious strategies
explains how Cicero hoped to persuade his audience, if he was really
telling them something they knew to be false.
Anyone in any doubt about social and political tensions in the late
republic should listen to Cicero as consul in December 63 BC, reacting
to Caesar’s speech in the debate on the Catilinarians:75

si eritis secuti sententiam C. Caesaris, quoniam hanc is in re publica

uiam quae popularis habetur secutus est, fortasse minus erunt hoc
auctore et cognitore huiusce sententiae mihi populares impetus
pertimescendi; sin illam alteram, nescio an amplius mihi negoti
contrahatur.

If you follow the proposal of Gaius Caesar, since he has taken what
is called the popularis line in public life, I shall have less cause to
fear popular attacks with him as the proposer and guarantor of the
motion. If you follow the other proposal [for execution], I think I
may have more trouble in store.

The Roman People, and Caesar on their behalf, did not approve of
citizens being put to death without trial on the say-so of the Senate alone.
Three years later Caesar was elected consul on a popularis programme
of land distribution for the poor. Cicero knew he would have ‘peace
with the multitude’ if he supported it, but he wasn’t going to: it would
mean ‘subjection to our own freedmen, even our slaves’, allowing public
finances to be decided ‘by the shouting of our own servants at one
wretched assembly’.76
74
Mouritsen 122; cf. 154 (‘Cicero created a new political category, which he labelled
“populares”’). Of course the passage is not unique: pace Mouritsen 123–6, Sallust’s
analyses of post-Gracchan and post-Sullan politics fit perfectly with this ‘binary model’.
75
Cic. Cat. 4.9. For Catiline’s popular support cf. Sall. Cat. 37.1 (cuncta plebes
nouarum rerum studio Catilinae incepta probabat), Cic. Flac. 95 (his tomb honoured);
for his popularis policy cf. Cic. Mur. 50 (miserorum fidelis defensor), 51 (duo corpora
esse rei publicae), Sall. Cat. 20.7 (‘res publica in paucorum potentium ius atque dicionem
concessit’).
76
Cic. Att. 2.3.4 (pax cum multitudine), 2.1.8 (an libertinis atque etiam seruis
seruiamus?), 2.16.1 (una contiuncula clamore pedisequorum nostrorum). For freedmen
pejoratively described as slaves see Treggiari 265–6.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 105

Writing to Atticus, a rich man like himself, Cicero didn’t need to

conceal his contempt: the Roman People were just ‘the miserable little
starving plebs’.77 In public, addressing a jury, he would be a little more
discriminating: ‘Now you see what a multitude there is in the Forum,
what sorts, what pursuits, what variety of people.’78 It was only at election
time that he had to think of them as individuals:79

ceterorum <ordinum> omnium nauos homines et gratiosos

complectere. multi homines urbani industrii, multi libertini in foro
gratiosi nauique uersantur.

Embrace [in your campaign] active and influential men of all

stations in life. There are many hard-working city-dwellers, many
influential and active freedmen busy in the Forum.

These were the opifices and tabernarii whom popularis politicians would
mobilise when the interests of poorer citizens were threatened by those of
the rich and powerful.80 It was usually done by a tribune issuing an edict
that all shops should be closed, so that people who had to earn a living
could attend the public meeting or voting assembly without endangering
their business.81 How rowdy they could be when they got there is amply
attested in our narrative sources,82 which makes it all the more baffling

77
Cic. Att. 1.16.11 (misera ac ieiuna plebecula), cf. 1.19.4 (is enim est noster exercitus,
hominum, ut tute scis, locupletium).
78
Cic. Cael. 21: iam quae sit multitudo in foro, quae genera, quae studia, quae uarietas
hominum uidetis.
79
Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 29; cf. 17 on the candidate’s freedmen and slaves (nam fere
omnis sermo ad forensem famam a domesticis emanat auctoribus).
80
E.g. Cic. Cat. 4.17 (tabernae), Dom. 13 (tabernarii), Sall. Cat. 50.1 (opifices), App.
B Civ. 2.5.17 (χειροτέχναι), 2.113.472 (χειροτέχναι καὶ κάπηλοι). For a prejudicial
general statement cf. Cic. Flac. 18: opifices et tabernarios atque illam omnem faecem
ciuitatum quid est negoti concitare?
81
Cic. Acad. 2.144 (tamquam in contionem uocas et quidem, ut seditiosi tribuni solent,
occludi tabernas iubes … ut opifices concitentur); e.g. Cic. Dom. 54 (58 BC), Asc. 41C
(52 BC).
82
E.g. Dio Cass. 36.24.2–4 (67 BC), 38.6.2–4 (59 BC), 39.28.4–29.3 (56 BC),
106 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

that modern historians should persist in the dogmatic belief that there
was no ideological conflict in the politics of the Roman republic.83
For anyone who believes that the Roman People were an
‘undifferentiated mass’ living in ‘abject destitution’, reading the poets
is a helpful antidote. A casual phrase in Catullus defines the populus as
‘those who pass by in the street, absorbed in their own concerns’.84 As
it might be, the upwardly mobile son of a freedman on his way to an
urgent appointment:85

luctandum in turba et facienda iniuria tardis.

‘quid tibi uis, insane?’ et ‘quam rem agis?’ improbus
urget
iratis precibus: ‘tu pulses omne quod obstat
ad Maecenatem memori si mente recurras?’

I’ve got to struggle in the crowd and hurt those who are slow.
‘What’s the matter, are you crazy? What are you trying to do?’
shouts someone rudely, with an angry curse. ‘Do you have to batter
everything in your way just because you’ve remembered it’s time to
rush back to Maecenas?’

The busy city could make it hard for pedestrians:86

festinat calidus mulis gerulisque redemptor,

torquet nunc lapidem, nunc ingens machina tignum,
tristia robustis luctantur funera plaustris.

A contractor in a hurry sweats over his mules and porters, a winch

is dragging a block of stone or a huge beam, sad funeral processions
are competing with sturdy wagons.
40.49.1–3 (52 BC), 42.32.2–3 (47 BC).
83
E.g. Mouritsen 4 (the role of the populus in the political process ‘was highly
formalised, reduced almost to abstraction’); Hölkeskamp 135 (there was a ‘collective
consensus … supporting the social coherence between the populus Romanus and its
political class’).
84
Cat. 15.7–8: qui in platea modo huc modo illuc / in re praetereunt sua occupati.
85
Hor. Sat. 2.6.28–31 (cf. 1.6.45–6, libertino patre natum).
86
Hor. Epist. 2.2.72–4 (en route from the Quirinal to the Aventine).
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 107

In these scenes full of people — porters, muleteers, winch operators,

undertakers, wagon drivers — we should remember that they were all
part of the populus Romanus, making their living with as much right to
be in the public street as a man like Horace, who enjoyed the friendship
of the great and wine bottled in the year of his birth.87

CONCLUSION

What we get from the poets is brief and vivid observation; it’s our job to
draw inferences from it. But even if we insist on abstract categorisation,
an ancient poet can supply that too. This time it’s not Catullus or Horace
or Ovid or Juvenal, but a man known only from the five learned books
of his Astronomica. Manilius took pride in writing for a very small
minority, and had a clear sense of the minutiae of social stratification:88

utque per ingentis populus discribitur urbes,

principiumque patres retinent et proximum equester
ordo locum, populumque equiti populoque subire
uulgus iners uideas et iam sine nomine turbam,
sic etiam magno quaedam res publica mundo est
quam natura facit, quae caelo condidit urbem.

Just as the populace is divided up in great cities, and the senators

hold the most prominent position, and the equestrian order the
next place, and you see how after the equestrians follow the people,
and after the people the powerless crowd and then the nameless
masses — thus is there a commonwealth also in the great heaven,
which nature brings about, creating a city in the sky.

Normally in Latin populus, uulgus and turba are used as synonyms,

but Manilius separates them in descending order. Although we don’t
know what criteria he had in mind, we can at least give him credit for
identifying five distinct strata of society, unlike the modern historians’
crude division into ‘elites’ and ‘non-elites’.
In collecting this poetic evidence for ‘life in the street’, my purpose
has been to juxtapose two quite different intellectual strategies for
87
Hor. Epist. 1.17.35 (principibus placuisse uiris non ultima laus est), Carm. 3.21.1
(nata mecum consule Manlio).
88
Manilius 5.734–9 (trans. Volk 110, slightly adapted); cf. 2.137 (nec in turba nec
turbae carmina condam), 2.600 (in populo scelus est et abundant cuncta furoris).
108 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 28 (2017)

understanding the social realities of the past: that of traditional ‘humane’

scholarship, which depends on the close reading of texts, and that of
the social sciences, in which answers are derived from the application of
abstract models.89 Of course the quarrel between the ‘splitters’ and the
‘lumpers’ will never be resolved, but I hope I have given some reasons
for where my sympathies lie.

Department of Classics and Ancient History

The University of Exeter
T.P.Wiseman@exeter.ac.uk

89
The contrast is briefly outlined by Hölkeskamp 125–6.
 WISEMAN: LIFE IN THE STREET 109

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