ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

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Notes 1 My purpose here has been to present a general survey of a vast subject, rather than to offer a research paper. References have thus been kept to a minimum, and for this the reader’s indulgence is requested. Much of the material will be reexamined, with full documentation, in a book being prepared in collaboration with Sheila Gibson, whose help is gratefully acknowledged. 2 At the conference one member of the audience took issue with details of the architectural terminology used, in particular with the term ‘concrete’. It is, of course, well known that what we have called ‘concrete’ is not concrete in the modern sense, but the term is retained for convenience and out of deference to established usage. Any further comments and suggestions will be very welcome. References 27 Ling: The mechanics of the building trade
Who paid for public buildings in Roman cities? Our information about who paid for public buildings in Roman Britain is rather limited. Many inscriptions show the army carrying out building work. Where this occurred, it was the government who paid, not the local community. But these inscriptions mainly refer to military zones. There is little direct information about how buildings were financed in civilian towns and villages in Britain. I shall turn, therefore, to evidence from the Mediterranean and look in particular at Rome’s North African provinces. Many more answers to the question ‘who paid for public building?’ can be found here. There may not be any straightforward analogy between Africa and a northern province such as Britain: there were crucial differences not only in climate and geography, but also in the level of Italian settlement in the two areas. Nevertheless, a description of how things stood in one part of the Empire must demonstrate possibilities that would have existed in any of the provinces. Before we look at different systems of financing, it is worth saying that some Roman public buildings were not paid for at all. Cicero (In Verrem, ii.5.48) speaks of the ancient Capitol at Rome as having been built for nothing, because it was built with forced labour. Livy (i.56.l-2) says that the Capitol was built with a mixture of forced labour and public funds. Whatever we think of statements about Rome’s early past, forced labour on public works continues to figure in Rome’s later history where there is better documentation. One of the more severe punishments inflicted by law under the Empire was damnatio ad opus publicum, being condemned to labour on public works (cf Berger 1953,610). When the younger Pliny was governing Bithynia under Trajan, he found many men in the largest cities who had been condemned ad opus publicum, but who had managed to escape. Instead of working on buildings, they had found employment in the city as public slaves, which was evidently preferable. The emperor ruled that these men must go back to their original punishment, unless they had been condemned more than ten years previously. Trajan laid down that they must work on servicing public baths, cleaning sewers, and building roads and streets. This is a valuable definition of what ad opus publicum meant, and it clearly does include working on major building works (Pliny, Epistulae, x.31-2; for corvée in the Digest, cf Brunt 1980, 82, n5). The supply of criminals sentenced in this way was not necessarily sufficient. In the town-charter from Urso in Spain (ILS 6087,98) there is a provision for conscripting the citizens and other inhabitants of the town if the magistrates are carrying out building works. This may look to us very severe, since it apparently places the free citizen on a level with the serious criminal. But the amount of time that each citizen had to contribute was very short. The stint was five days per year, with exemption for anyone aged over 60 or under 14. The owners of teams of 28 R P Duncan-Jones oxen had to contribute these also, the stint for ox-teams being three days per year. 2 In Egypt there was a similar standard requirement of five days’ labour per year, to be spent in cleaning out the irrigation channels on which Egypt depended (Sijpestein 1964). In the nature of things, compulsory labour or corvée is very rarely mentioned in building inscriptions. The magistrate who had access to quantities of labour from criminals or even from ordinary townsfolk was very unlikely to mention this in the inscription of the building he was putting up. But there are a few exceptions. The colony of Auzia in Mauretania built a covered market in the year 230; the inscription (ILS 5590) says it was provided from the sportulae of the decurions, but also by the operae, the labour contributions, of the people of the town. In another case we can still see building works that were carried out in this way. At Tiddis, one of the castella of Cirta in central Numidia, big rainwater cisterns were constructed to feed the town baths in the 250s. The work included pulling down the ruins of previous buildings and levelling the site. It was carried out ‘per populum’, by the labour of the citizens themselves (ILAlg ii. 1.3596). We find a few other references to building labour provided by the citizens in Mauretanian inscriptions of the early or mid 3rd century (ILS 6887-9). Forced labour, when it is mentioned in the inscriptions, is always the labour of free citizens. Work by criminals, if recorded at all, would usually count as financing from public funds. When the emperor is recorded as a major road-builder, the labour, unless explicitly provided by the army, may well have been criminal labour. 3 An enormous project like Claudius’s attempt to drain the Fucine lake, which occupied 30,000 men for eleven years, is likely to have depended on criminal labour, and when Nero tried to cut a canal through the isthmus of Corinth, he had criminals, apparently sent from all over the Empire, to work on it (Suetonius, Claudius, 20.2; ps-Lucian, Nero, 3; cf Dio, lxii. 16.2). Though forced labour may have been crucial to some imperial building projects, public buildings in secondary towns were normally paid for in money. Using the citizens themselves as workers on a large scale, as at Tiddis, was a sign that money was lacking. This may be why the few epigraphic references to direct labour come from communities which were either very small or very remote. The typical building inscription, in contrast, tells us that the building was paid for with town funds or by a private individual. That does not necessarily mean that the labour was free. The contractors who undertook to put up a building for cash may have employed a mainly servile workforce. At the end of the Republic Crassus had a big labour-force of slaves engaged in building redevelopment in Rome (Plutarch, Crassus, 2.4; for free building labour in the city of Rome, see Brunt 1980). In theory a Roman town should have been capable of
Page 1 and 2: No 59 ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Bri
Page 3 and 4: Copyright © 1985 Authors and Counc
Page 5 and 6: Illustrations Fig 1 Miletus Fig 2 C
Page 7 and 8: Introduction: the study of Classica
Page 9 and 10: Introduction and the land divided i
Page 11 and 12: Introduction Fig 3 Timgad: the colo
Page 13 and 14: Introduction Fig 6 Lepcis Magna: th
Page 15 and 16: Introduction xvi
Page 17 and 18: Cunliffe: Aspects of urbanization i
Page 19 and 20: Cunliffe: Aspects of urbanization i
Page 21 and 22: PART II THE PLANNING AND BUILDING O
Page 23 and 24: Dilke: Ground survey and measuremen
Page 29 and 30: The mechanics of the building trade
Page 31 and 32: Ling: The mechanics of the building
Page 41: Ling: The mechanics of the building
Page 45 and 46: Duncan--ones: Who paid for public b
Page 47 and 48: Duncan-Jones: Who paid for public b
Page 49 and 50: Civic Pride: a factor in Roman town
Page 51 and 52: Frere: Civic Pride: a factor in Rom
Page 53 and 54: Reece: Roman towns and their plans
Page 55 and 56: Reece: Roman towns and their plans
Page 57 and 58: Wacher: The functions of urban buil
Page 59 and 60: Casey: The Roman housing market leg
Page 61 and 62: Casey: The Roman housing market Evi
Page 63 and 64: Casey: The Roman housing market Rom
Page 65 and 66: Drinkwater: Urbanization in the thr
Page 71 and 72: Forum and Capitolium in the early E
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Page 75 and 76: The quick and the dead: suburbs, ce
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Salway: Geography and the growth of
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Salway: Geography and the growth of
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Crummy: Colchester: the mechanics o
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Crummy: Colchester: the mechanics o
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New streets for old : the topograph
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Jones: New streets for old: the top
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London in the 1st and early 2nd cen
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Perring: London in the 1st and earl
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Perring: London in the 1st and earl
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Marsden: London in the 3rd and 4th
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Barker: Aspects of the topography o
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Fig 81 Wroxeter: the area of excava
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probably from Viroconium, the robbi
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Forum Iuhi (Cividale) (Italy) 61a f
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ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

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