Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

It is possible to write (or, at least, conceive of writing) two histories of the city of Rome under the Republic. One is the history of the Roman elite and the way in which the city formed a privileged stage for their political rivalries, played out both in the formal settings of the Senate and the popular assemblies and in less formal but equally important contexts which included the display of their wealth, influence, and distinction through the construction of houses and public buildings, the entertainments they organized for the Roman populace, and the tombs they set up on the roads which led into the city.The other is the history of the mass of the People of Rome: how the city's population expanded dramatically during the republican period, and especially in the first century, as large numbers of slaves were brought to the city and individuals migrated to Rome from all over Italy and, increasingly, beyond; the implications of the crowded and unsanitary conditions in which, for the most part, the inhabitants of Rome below the level of the elite had to live; and the strategies devised to supply the growing city's population with food and water.This chapter sets out not only to outline the histories of “elite Rome” and “Rome of the masses,” but also to explore how far these two histories can be seen to interrelate from the political, social, and economic points of view and the ... log in or subscribe to read full text