Living conditions in Rome

Does this mean that the letting and renting of accommodation was a rare and socially unimportant phenomenon in Rome that did not throw up problems? Quite the contrary is true. All too easily are we tempted, today, to visualize living conditions in Rome in terms of what we can glean from the excavation of leisurely country towns like Pompeii or Herculaneum.

We think of wealthy Roman senators residing in private mansions of the type of a Villa dei Misteri or a Casa del Fauno.³⁰ In some instances we may be correct. But space in Rome was limited. It is estimated that the Imperial urbs did not extend beyond an area of eight square miles, yet had to accommodate about 1 200 000 inhabitants.³¹ Owing to the lack of efficient transport systems, the suburban space could hardly be used for the housing of those who had to transact business in town. Only the wealthiest, under these circumstances, could afford to own their own home (domus). Most people had to live in insulae, imposing and often monumental blocks of flats which amazed the ancient world.^[1748] In the more luxurious of them, the ground floor was either let as a whole to one tenant or subdivided into comfortable multiple-room apartment units.^[1749] This ground-floor tenant, however, had to be prepared to pay a very substantial annual rent. Marcus Caelius Rufus, for instance, a contemporary and student of Cicero, is said to have paid 30 000 sesterces.^[1750] According to Carcopino, even "the humblest tenant [at that time] had to pay a rent of 2 000 sesterces a year".^[1751] And he did not get much comfort for that price, either: the insulae in which he lived were ill supplied with water, light and fireplaces. But for the ground floor, they lacked domestic drainage. They were usually dangerous to live in, overcrowded, squalid and noisy.

"Almost everywhere, the higher you went in a building, the more breathless became the overcrowding, the more sordid the promiscuity.... Whatever the disposition of the ground floor, the upper storeys were gradually swamped by the mob: entire families were herded together in them; dust, rubbish, and filth accumulated; and... bugs ran riot."^[1752]

The insulae were normally exploited by a system of letting and subletting.^[1753] They were let to a principal lessee, who in turn sublet the cenacula (or meritoria) of the upper storeys and thus relieved the owner of all the troubles involved in the exploitation of his property. However, so

"intolerable was the burden of rent that the sub-tenants of the first lessee almost invariably had to sub-let in their turn every room in their cenaculum which they could possibly spare".^[1754] ^{^[1755] ^[1756]}

In other words: the free play of forces on the housing market can hardly be said to have produced socially acceptable conditions. If anything, there was a greater need to regulate the relationship between lessor and lessee in Rome than there is today. The extremes of wealth and poverty were much more marked; so was, of course, the inequality of bargaining power as far as the scramble for urban accommodation was concerned.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Zimmermann R.. The Law of Obligations. Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Juta & Co, Ltd,1992. — 1241 p.. 1992

Living conditions in Rome

More on the topic Living conditions in Rome: