Unit 4 Cities in the Roman Empire Flashcards
Introduction
Cities’ their importance and ‘other’ (non admin or ruler) areas it covered?
Cities vital for the empire’s function
Physical home or religious, cultural, social, sporting, military, educational and commerce
- 1 The idea of the city - who (what type) lives there?
4. 2 The functions of Roman cities relationship to rural areas? Where their operating model came from?
Civilised people lived in cities, whereas ‘barbarians’ did not
This explains why the city was such an important institution and point of reference in the empire
Rural areas were all assigned in administrative terms to a local town (part of its ager)
The functions of a Roman city were grounded in the specific history sand workings of the city of Rome - they emulated its functions and infrastructure top-down, bottom-up control
4.2.1 Key functions of Roman cities
districts, officers, tax, expenditure, euergetism
Districts - town relationship
Assemblies, decuriones (senate) duumviri (mayors) Aediles, quaestores, magistrates
City - also a legal centre where jurisdiction was controlled/dispensed by locally elected magistrates - who if needed referred to the governor
Each district responsible for tax collecting and therefore needed a strong store for coin, bullion and agricultural produce
It dispensed operating funds for infrastructure e.g. roads, aqueducts
Euergetism by local benefactors sponsoring major events e.g. games, festivals or donating money for key buildings (lex Irnitana) which displayed rank - who sat where in theatres
Roman traits highly visible in urban areas (male dress, installations and institutions) resulting in a uniformity or cohesion throughout the empire
- 3 The forms and features of Roman cities
4. 3.1 Key features of Roman cities
Anyone entering a typical Roman city would have found familiar infrastructure, buildings and institutions that they would have immediately recognised
Basilica - Large central building where business and legal meetings (including town council ones) would have been held
Forum - open public market, goods bought/sold, people meet and talk and where laws and other monuments could be set up on display e.g. as in Rome
Capitolium - central temple complex dedicated to the main state gods (usually locate near the forum) The Pantheon of gods increased as other states were conquered
Theatre - open air, semi circular for plays and religious festivals and the display of honorific statues.
Amphitheatres for gladiatorial bouts animal hunts and executions.
Also circuses on the edges of towns U shaped, chariot races
Bath houses (thermai)
4.3.1 Key features of Roman cities II
Artisanal/industrial activities e.g. crafts clothing, retail, small metal works
Pottery and fullers probably on the town’s periphery due to noise and smell
New Roman cities (e.g. western ones) tense to have an orthogonal or grid street plan dividing the two into clear quarters with a main road running east-west (decumanus) and another north-south (cardo) these intersecting at the forum (groma or crossroads)often with colonnades to protect people from the heat and sun or rain. These main roads usually ended at the city walls often flanked by towers and on to arterial roads out of town
Minor roads created blocks between them insulae
Cemeteries located outside tows (burial illegal in the city except for Trajan)
Town house general plan - suite of rooms around an atrium (open courtyard) at the front and around a peristyle )a colonnaded garden courtyard) at the back ruled by the paterfamilias
4.2.1 Ket features of Roman cities II
A city’s overall function and importance determined the features found in them:-
Political centre - Capitolium religious and political
Legal centre - Basilica (legal proceedings and archives)
Administrative centre - Basilica - for city officials here or the forum
Economic centre - Forum
Religious centre - Capitolium for ceremonies surrounds state gods and local deities + theatre were religious festivals took place. Religious features matched their function within the city e.g. the god of tax collecting (A219)
Social control- Forum, cemeteries, theatres City walls, Roman houses
Roman cultural centre - Temples, theatres, circus, amphitheatres, bath houses, street grid, walls, drainage, aqueduct
4.4. The development of Roman cities
In Hellenised and developed eastern areas Rome tended to adopt existing cities and local administrative apparatus fitting it in with the Roman administrative methodology
In the Roman west, cities unknown e.g. scattered villages or central fortified settlements on hilltops known by Roman writers as ‘oppida’ where agriculture surplus was stored. light industry and occupied in times when the surrounding (scattered) population needed protection needed - some these settlements ver large and often called proto-urban type - but these were not centralised, administrative Roman type entities
In all these non urbanised non-central organised regions, the romans tended to build from scratch reflecting where deemed acceptable unique traditions of building, indigenous culture and local topography - retained or adapted on a pragmatic basis cities reflecting a mixture of Roman and idiosyncratic features like sanctuaries to deities or occasionally unusual street plans
4.4. The development of Roman cities II
Key factors of cities would/could include:-
Historical development - history/relationship had developed with Rome
Political role - specific functions of the urban features it contained
Climate and topography - landscape/climate affected the city evolved
Culture and tradition - could have a profound effect on the features with a city
Economy - those cities with a special economic function could have evolved in a particular way (fish sauce?)
4.6 A case study: Colinia Ulpia Traiana-Xanten, Germany
Tacitus’ Germania mentions this city
Draws a contrast between the ‘noble and hardy’ Germans and the overly soft, morally corrupt Romans of his day (his agenda) ergo cannot be taken as fact
A typical city started from scratch near Xanten in the lower Rhine
Contained a temple to the Matronae - indigenous mother deites
Also contained a cardo, decumanus, gorma, walls, gates, grid street plan, forum, basilica, ca[ppitolium, artisans quarter in the centre, amphitheater, other temples and bath-houses - an almost ‘perfect’ Roman city
Given the right of ‘colonia’ in 110 by Trajan in the Batavian region
- 8 Bracara Augusta (Braga) Portugal
4. 10 Palmyra-Tadmor, Syria
Man farming for Auxillia fed by the oppida into the conventus (subsidiary centres of provincial administration)
Hierarchical settlement pattern:
Surrounding Castros provide manpower for army via tax, men made warlike by resistance to Roman rule
Palmyra was a kind of ‘Island’ developing its own unique culture and identity on the Silk that connected the Mediterranean with the Far East
Palmyra is unusual because it shows us that in many ways a ‘Roman city’ could survive as such within the empire with what actually appears to have been a bare minimum of Roman characteristics
Activity 4.17 What made city Roman?
It lay within the Roman empire
Was a city during the Roman period
It had the legal stays of a city e.g. a colonia, municipium, civitas
Had Roman features - forum, basilica
Roman functions - e.g. theatre, amphitheatre. baths
It was the centre of a territory and displayed a range of political, cultural, social and economic connections with other parts of the Roman empire
