One significant factor behind the low life expectancy in the city of Rome was the living conditions of the urban population (or the vast majority of that population). However, the problem of the availability of source material is particularly acute in this context: very little literary or archaeological data specifically relate to living conditions in the Republic, and instead we need to reconstruct arrangements for the housing and burial of the poor (for example) from a scatter of pieces of evidence which largely date from the Imperial and late antique periods. Poor housing with inadequate sanitary facilities, high levels of contamination of food and drinking water, and overcrowding can be seen to be symptomatic of the Imperial city and inevitably must have characterized the republican city also, especially in the period of greatest growth: there is documentary evidence of a series of fires, floods, plagues, and other disasters which would have made living conditions even more difficult.38
It is also clear, however, that there was a wide variation in wealth and status between the Roman political elite and the most impoverished inhabitants of the city. Comparative study of other pre-industrial cities has revealed a hierarchy of poverty ranging from the destitute (some 4-6 percent: typically incapable of manual labor due to age, illness, or disability), the ordinary poor (some 20 percent: able to work, but permanently on the verge of crisis), and the temporary poor (some 30-40 percent: artisans or traders, normally employed, but liable to fall into poverty as a result of illness or other disaster).39 A range of strategies were available to those who fell between the extremes of wealth and poverty which might (to a greater or lesser extent) help allow them to survive and serve to alleviate the difficulties achieving adequate living conditions.
The grim reality of the life of the poorest at Rome is illustrated by their fate after their deaths: it has been estimated that some 1,500 paupers annually would have been buried in mass graves on the Esquiline even in ‘‘normal’’ years without particularly noteworthy epidemics.40 During their lives, most of them would have slept rough, living in shanties (tuguria) or in tombs on the outskirts of the city. Those of the poor who had a regular, if limited, income were able to rent rooms in taverns ( cauponae) or on the upper floors of apartment blocks (insulae). Though the latter type of building is particularly well known from the imperial period, an account in Livy of how an ox climbed to the top of an insula close to the cattle market of the Forum Boarium in 218 suggests that examples could already be found in the third century (21.62.3). By the late Republic insulae featured regularly in the property portfolio of the Roman elite: Cicero owned such properties in the Argiletum and on the Aventine (Cic. Att. 12.32, 16.1). These provided a regular and substantial return in the form of hard cash, though with significant risks for the owner involved, too, as the buildings were liable to fire, collapse, and other hazards. Slum property might be let out to poorer tenants, with rent paid on a daily basis, while the more affluent occupied the better apartments on a longer-term basis.41
The city of Rome could be an anonymous and potentially hostile place, and there were limited sources of support available for the migrant to the city, especially for those who arrived without family ties in the metropolis. One possibility for those below the elite was to seek to exploit the possibilities offered by patronage to find a place to live: the degree to which this was a feasible strategy, however, would depend significantly on the status of the individuals themselves and their degree of closeness to an individual member of the elite (see also Chapter 19). The distinction made by Tacitus between the ‘‘filthy plebs’’ and the ‘‘respectable element of the people, attached to the great houses’’ was as appropriate for the Republic as for the year of Nero’s death (Hist. 1.4). The latter might be ‘‘attached’’ to the houses of the elite in a physical as well as a metaphorical sense: evidence from Pompeii suggests that exslaves, individuals, and families favored by the wealthy owners of atrium houses might occupy flats (cenacula), balconies, and workshops (tabernae) around the house, and a similar model might be suggested for Rome in the mid-Republic too.42 Aristocratic houses with associated tabernae were to be found around the Forum into the second century;43 while Livy, in his account of the Bacchanalian affair in 186 describes how Hispala, who had provided information about the cult to the authorities, was installed by the consul in a ‘‘safe house’’ in the form of a cenaculum above his mother-in-law’s home (39.14.2). By the time of the Empire and perhaps already in the late Republic, however, there was a tendency for some areas, like the Palatine, to see a concentration of aristocratic residences, while other districts - the Subura, Transtiberim, and (until the high Empire) the Aventine - were characterized by a predominance of popular housing.
Another strategy available to the migrant was to exploit networks provided by those from one’s own town or region who were already installed in the capital: this scenario is slightly better attested for the Empire than for the Republic,44 but the toponym ‘‘Fregellae’’ at Rome known from Festus (Gloss. Lat. 80L) suggests that there was a particular region in the city known for migrants from that town, most likely in the aftermath of its destruction in 125.45
A third possibility, and one of particular importance in the late Republic (though not one that helped much with the problems of housing), was to become involved in and seek the support of a collegium - a popular association linked with a particular cult, neighborhood in the city, or trade. Comparative evidence suggests that the development of popular associations can be an important means of integrating new inhabitants into a growing city.46 The development of collegia at Rome in the 60s and subsequent decades - which caused the Roman authorities great concern and saw repeated attempts to suppress them because of their involvement in political violence - may thus be symptomatic of the growth of the city population at this time and of the limited scope of traditional patronage to control and order the flow of newcomers. Notoriously, the collegia were associated in this period with the political ambitions of Clodius. As Mouritsen has pointed out, migrants from Italy who continued to be registered in the rural voting tribes were highly prized by those involved in political canvassing, given the comparatively limited number of people at Rome able to vote in those tribes, and for this reason would have been welcomed with open arms by the collegia and those who cultivated their support.47
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