ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

More documents

Recommendations

Info

value of whatever he fails to give up and whatever he with the land’ was confirmed by the emperor Caracalla in still owes out of the rents, increased by half. (Pap AD 213 when he replied to the petition of an aggrieved Oxyrhync, 3200) house-owner: A number of deviations from the practices of Italy may be noticed in this form of lease. Egyptian leases always demanded the return intact of the doors and sometimes the windows. It would seem that in a country where good timber was at a premium the tenants decamped with the woodwork on enough occasions to make such a legal provision a necessity. We may note, secondly, that the rent is payable in advance and in six-monthly instalments. Having looked at the problems of owners and occupiers we turn to the way in which properties were bought and sold. There is no word in Latin for ‘estate agent’; sales were by auction or by private treaty, and the availability of property for sale or rental was made known by word of mouth or advertisement. Two such advertisements have survived in Pompeii, showing the sort of thing which will have festooned the walls of the ancient world: In the Arrius Pollio block owned by Gnaeius Alleius Nigidius Maius, to let from the fifteenth of next July, shops with their stalls, high-class secondstorey apartments, and a house. Prospective lessees may apply to Primus, slave of Gnaeius Alleius Nigidius. (CIL, 4, 138) The fortnight which is to elapse between the traditional date of 1 July for the taking up of a lease and the date of this lease may have been to allow the landlord to refurbish and redecorate the premises after getting vacant possession. A second advertisement from Pompeii offers a mid-August occupation date: On the property owned by Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius, to let from the thirteenth of August to the thirteenth of the sixth August hence, or five consecutive years hence, the elite Venus baths, shops, stalls, and second-storey apartments. (CIL, 4, 1136) That such advertisements were a common feature of Roman property transactions is shown by the fact that in the Satyricon (38) one of Trimalchio’s nouveau riche cronies also resorted to advertisement: Apartment for rent after the first of July. a house. G Pompeius Diogenes. Am buying As well as advertisements, heralds might proclaim the auction of property, especially that acquired by the state by means of imperial confiscation. Few resorted to the tactics of the late republican bully boy, Publius Clodius, who threatened to burn down his neighbour’s house unless he sold out to make way for a new wing on Clodius’s adjacent property. The sale of houses had its own formal, legal documentation and these documents reflect another important aspect of the Roman perception of property. In Roman law a property existed from its foundations in the soil to an infinite point in the sky. This led to the high-rise boom but restricted the sale of the upper floors of buildings, thus leading to the development of the apartment rental market. The doctrine that ‘what stands on the land goes 47 Casey: The Roman housing market If you can prove that the lower floor of the building, which rests on the ground, belongs to you, there is no doubt that the floor above, which your neighbour has added, accrues to you as owner. (Crook 1967, 143, citing Codex Iustinianus, iii.32.2) Houses might be divided vertically, but never horizontally. A sale document from Dacia makes the position clear: Anduia Bato has sold half a house - the right-hand half as you go down the passage - and has received the purchase price of three hundred denarii from Veturius Valens. The house is at Alburnum Major in the vicus Pirustarum and is bounded by the properties of Platorius Acceotianus and Ingenuus Callistus. That part of the house which is involved with the external walls, doors, entries, and windows is rightly to be his... (CIL, 3, 944,8) In Egypt, however, things were a little different and no doubt each province could show some variation on the basic property laws. In Egypt we have evidence for a much more complex division of property, perhaps reflecting aspects of the laws of inheritance in that country. A document from a land registry office shows the problem. After a good deal of officialese it reads: In virtue of a public deed executed on the present day through the record office here, I have bought in the village of Philadelphia the four-fifths part, which is owned in common and undivided, of the sixth part of a house and fixtures. (Hunt & Edgar 1934, no 325) It would appear that this building was in multiple ownership, perhaps within a single family, and presumably in multiple occupancy. In this case the purchaser bought two-fifteenths of a house. There is no record of the sort of domestic problems which must have arisen from such complicated tenural systems, though we have a hint of a first-class family row preserved in the papers of Flavius Abinneus, the 4th-century commander of a fort in the Egyptian Fayum. His wife Nona, who seems to have been a litigious lady, went to court with a very high-priced lawyer from Alexandria in order to fight for the possession of a fourth of a courtyard (Bell et al 1962, 129-36). No doubt the pickings for lawyers at the property bar were very good indeed if we are to judge from incidents such as this and the richness of the surviving legal documentation. This survey of the legal, social, and economic background to residential buildings in the Roman past has tried to convey some of the flavour of a particular aspect of life through the medium of contemporary documentary sources. I would suggest that by studying the legal and social evidence relating to housing and property in general in the ancient world we may be able to formulate new questions to which archaeology may address itself. These questions may not be answered fully, but an appreciation of the complex, vibrant society which inhabited the dour ruins may curb some of the excesses of archaeological pessimism which are detectable among students of the
Casey: The Roman housing market Roman period who, assailed on all sides by prophets of the ‘new archaeology’, have perhaps too readily abandoned the people of the past in favour of abstractions derived from sociological and political theories of recent origin. Note 1 Except where stated otherwise, the texts and translations of classical writers are taken from volumes in the Loeb Classical Library. References 48
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 43 and 44: Who paid for public buildings in Ro
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: Casey: The Roman housing market Evi
Page 65 and 66: Drinkwater: Urbanization in the thr
Page 71 and 72: Forum and Capitolium in the early E
Page 73 and 74: Todd: Forum and Capitolium in the e
Page 75 and 76: The quick and the dead: suburbs, ce
Page 77 and 78: Esmonde Cleary: The quick and the d
Page 87 and 88: Salway: Geography and the growth of
Page 89 and 90: Colchester: the mechanics of laying
Page 91 and 92: Crummy: Colchester: the mechanics o
Page 101 and 102: New streets for old : the topograph
Page 103 and 104: Jones: New streets for old: the top
Page 109 and 110: London in the 1st and early 2nd cen
Page 111 and 112: Perring: London in the 1st and earl
Page 113 and 114:
Perring: London in the 1st and earl
Page 115 and 116:
Marsden: London in the 3rd and 4th
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Barker: Aspects of the topography o
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Fig 81 Wroxeter: the area of excava
Page 133 and 134:
probably from Viroconium, the robbi
Page 135 and 136:
Forum Iuhi (Cividale) (Italy) 61a f
show all

ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?