Through taxes, spoils, indemnities, and inflowing population Rome was now (202 B.C.) one of the major cities of the Mediterranean ensemble. The census of 234 listed 270,713 citizens—i.e., free adult males; the figure fell sharply during the great war, but rose to 258,318 in 189, and 322,000 in 147. We may calculate a population of approximately 1,100,000 souls in the city-state in 189 B.C., of whom perhaps 275,000 lived within the walls of Rome. Italy south of the Rubicon had some 5,000,000 inhabitants.67 Immigration, the absorption of conquered peoples, the influx, emancipation, and enfranchisement of slaves, were already beginning the ethnic changes that by Nero’s time would make Rome the New York of antiquity, half native and half everything.
Two main cross streets divided the city into quarters, each with its administrative officials and tutelary deities. Chapels were raised at important intersections, and statues at lesser ones, to the lares compitales, or gods of the crossings—a pretty custom still found in Italy. Most streets were plain earth; some were paved with small smooth stones from river beds, as in many Mediterranean cities today; about 174 the censor began to surface the major thoroughfares with lava blocks. In 312 Appius Claudius the Blind built the first aqueduct, bringing fresh water to a city that had till then depended upon springs and wells and the muddy Tiber. Piping water from aqueduct-fed reservoirs, the aristocracy began to bathe more than once a week; and soon after Hannibal’s defeat Rome opened its first municipal baths. At an unknown date Roman or Etruscan engineers built the Cloaca Maxima, whose massive stone arches were so wide that a wagon loaded with hay could pass under them.68 Smaller sewers were added to drain the marshes that surrounded and invaded Rome. The city’s refuse and rain water passed through openings in the streets into these drains and thence into the Tiber, whose pollution was a lasting problem of Roman life.
The embellishment of the city was almost confined to its temples. Houses adhered to the plain Etruscan style already described, except that the exterior was more often of brick or stucco, and (as a sign of growing literacy) was often defaced with graffiti—“scratchings” of strictly fugitive verse or prose. Temples were mostly of wood, with terra-cotta revetments and decorations, and followed Etruscan plans. A temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva stood on the Capitoline hill; another to Diana on the Aventine; and others rose (before 201 B.C.) to Juno, Mars, Janus, Venus, Victory, Fortune, Hope, etc. In 303 Caius Fabius added to his leguminous clan name the cognomen of Pictor, painter, by executing frescoes in the Temple of Health on the Capitoline. Greek sculptors in Rome made statues of Roman gods and heroes in terra cotta, marble, or bronze. In 293 they erected on the Capitol a bronze Jupiter of such Olympian proportions that it could be seen from the Alban hills twenty miles away. About 296 the aediles set up a bronze she-wolf, to which later artists added the figures of Romulus and Remus. We do not know if this is the group described by Cicero, or if either of these is identical with the existing Wolf of the Capital; in any case, we have in this a masterpiece of the highest order, dead metal alive in every muscle and nerve.
While through painting and statuary the aristocracy commemorated its victories and recommended its lineage, the people consoled themselves with music and the dance, comedies and games. The roads and homes of Italy resounded with individual or choral song; men sang at banquets, boys and girls chorused hymns in religious processions, bride and groom were escorted with hymeneal chants, and every corpse was buried with song. The flute was the most popular instrument, but the lyre too had its devotees, and became the favorite accompaniment of lyric verse. When great holidays came, the Romans crowded to amphitheater or stadium, and pullulated under the sun while hirelings, captives, criminals, or slaves ran and jumped, or, better, fought and died. Two great amphitheaters—the Circus Maximus (attributed to the first Tarquin) and the Circus Flaminius (221 B.C.)—admitted without charge all free men and women who came in time to find seats. The expense was met at first by the state, then by the aediles out of their own purse, often, in the later Republic, by candidates for the consulate; the cost increased generation by generation, until in effect it barred the poor from seeking office.
Perhaps we should class with these spectacles the official “triumph” of a returning general. Only those were eligible for it who had won a campaign in which 5000 of the enemy had been slain; the unfortunate commander who had won with less slaughter received merely an nation—for him no ox was sacrificed, but only a sheep (ovis). The procession formed outside the city, at whose borders the general and his troops were required to lay down their arms; thence it entered through a triumphal arch that set a fashion for a thousand monuments. Trumpeters led the march; after them came towers or floats representing the captured cities, and pictures showing the exploits of the victors; then wagons rumbled by, heavy with gold, silver, works of art, and other spoils. Marcellus’ triumph was memorable for the stolen statuary of Syracuse (212); Scipio Africanus in 207 displayed 14,000 and, in 202, 123,000 pounds of silver taken from Spain and Carthage. Seventy white oxen followed, walking philosophically to their death; then the captured chiefs of the enemy; then lictors, harpers, pipers, and incense-bearers; then, in a flamboyant chariot, the general himself, wearing a purple toga and a crown of gold, and bearing an ivory scepter and a laurel branch as emblems of victory and the insignia of Jove. In the chariot with him might be his children; beside it rode his relatives; behind them his secretaries and aides. Last came the soldiers, some carrying the prizes awarded them, everyone wearing a crown; some praising their leaders, others deriding them; for it was an inviolable tradition that on these brief occasions the speech of the army should be free and unpunished, to remind the proud victors of their fallible mortality. The general mounted the Capitol to the Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, laid his loot at the feet of the gods, presented an animal in sacrifice, and usually ordered the captive chieftains to be slain as an additional thank-offering. It was a ceremony well designed to stir military ambition and reward military effort; for man’s vanity yields only to hunger and love.