Ostia -> Tiber -> ROME  <- Countryside

Population: 1,000,000 under empire?

Basic Urban Needs

• Water: Aqueducts -> public fountains
• Grain < Sicily, N. Africa, Egypt
• Sold at fixed price (C. Gracchus)
• Free to male citizens (mid 1st c. BC)
• Sanitation:
• Chamberpots (> streets)
• Public toilets & Fuller’s shops
• Cloaca Maxima (-> Tiber)
• Housing
• Insulae ("islands"): large apartment blocks
• Separate houses (more at Pompeii, Ostia)
• Larger mansions, esp. on Esquiline hill
• Shopping
• Shops in insulae at street level
• Open-air marketstalls
• Public Safety:
• Vigiles (fire prevention/night watch)
• Praetorian Guard (vs. civil disturbance)

Bath Complexes

• Baths (caldarium, tepidarium, frigidarium)
• Libraries, art, lecture-halls
• Outdoor exercise grounds

• Comedy (Plautus etc.) and Tragedy
• Mime: slapstick & scurrilous plots
• Pantomime: performance art, w/music
• Street theater, musicians etc.

• Wild beast hunts
• Mock naval battles
• Gladiators (first attested 264 BC)
• Origins as funeral ritual
• Often volunteers, rarely fought to death
• Specialty fighters (e.g. Thracian, Samnite)
• Executions and "fatal charades"

• Circus Maximus & Stadium of Domitian
• 4 teams: Blues & Greens most important

Public Building

• Sewer system (Agrippa, under Augustus)
• Aqueducts (Claudius)
• Harbors at Ostia (Claudius, Trajan)
• Imperial Fora (Augustus, Vespasian,  Nerva, Trajan)
• Temples (e.g. Pantheon)
• Stadium of Domitian (-> Piazza Navona)
• Basilica Ulpia & Markets (Trajan)

• Imperial Residence on Palatine
• Nero’s "Golden House" (Domus Aurea)
• Triumphal Arches: Titus
• Columns: Trajan, Marcus Aurelius
• Mausoleums: Augustus, Hadrian