The primary sources most often speak of insulae in reference to their hazards. There are multiple references to the dangers of living in insulae within texts such as satires and histories. It seems the main dangers of living in Roman apartments were fire and collapse. There were also instances when buildings were intentionally torn down and the inhabitants displaced. Catullus satirically praises Furius, a beggar, because he has nothing to fear because he does not own anything:
…you fear nothing, not fire, not heavy collapse, not wicked theft…[1]
Catullus in this line is most likely referencing the incessant fires, collapses, and burglaries that plagued house owners and renters. Here Juvenal satirizes the instability of Roman housing when he says:
But here we inhabit a city supported for the most part by slender props for that is how the bailiff holds up the tottering house, patches up gaping cracks in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease under a roof ready to tumble about their ears… smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic, but you know nothing of it; for if the alarm begins in the ground-floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain but the tiles, where the gentle doves lay their eggs.[2]
Although these are likely exaggerations, this indicates that tall apartments could be seen around Rome held up by wooden props with patches applied to the crumbling mud walls, with the highest floors being the most dangerous because they are the most difficult to escape. Aulus Gellius observes a friend’s trepidation of purchasing buildings in the city because of the frequency of fires:
We, his friends, surrounding him on all sides, were accompanying him home when, while ascending the Cispian Hill, we saw, from where we were, a certain insula, with many high floors attacked by fire. Everything nearby was already burning in a great conflagaration. Some friend of Julianus then said, “The profits from urban properties are worth much, but they are far exceeded by the dangers. But if someone could develop a remedy so that domus at Rome would not burn so assiduously, then, by heaven, I would put up my country properties for sale and buy in the city.”[3]
Although an ambitus, or walkway, surrounded buildings and shared walls were illegal to help mitigate fire damage, the minimum size of an ambitus need only be 70 cm, enough room for one person to walk down.[4] The ambitus is more equivalent to an alley and fires jumped rapidly to adjacent buildings.
In a letter to Atticus, Cicero reports that one of the insula he owns has fallen down:
…two of my shops have fallen down and the rest are cracking. So not only the tenants but the very mice have migrated. Other people call this a misfortune, I don't call it even a nuisance. Oh Socrates and Socratic philosophers, I shall never be able to thank you enough! Good heavens, how paltry such things are in my eyes! But after all I am adopting a plan of building on the suggestion and advice of Vestorius, which will convert this loss into a gain.[5]
Cicero seems completely unphased by this incident and seems more concerned with rebuilding and making a profit than the effect this has on his tenants. The ease with which he talks about the matter makes it appear that insula collapse was common within the city and nothing to fret about, at least for the owners.
We often think of Roman construction for monuments, but the continuous reconstruction of insulae and clearance of debris would have added to the bustle and din of the city and would have been more frequent than monument construction. Strabo in his Geography mentions the unceasing building in the city due to these disasters:
…the building of houses, which goes on unceasingly in consequence of the collapses and fires and repeated sales (these last, too, going on unceasingly); and indeed the sales are intentional collapses, as it were, since the purchasers keep on tearing down the houses and build new ones, one after another, to suit their wishes… Now Augustus Caesar concerned himself about such impairments of the city, organizing for protection against fires a militia composed of freedmen, whose duty it was to render assistance, and also to provide against collapses, reducing the heights of the new buildings and forbidding that any structure on the public streets should rise as high as seventy feet.[6]
From this section in Strabo’s Geography we can imagine the din from constant construction in the city and we can also infer that the fires and collapses in Rome were frequent enough that Augustus felt the need to take action and that the Republic was incapable or unwilling to control building regulations.
Gregory Aldrete describes some of the flaws contributing to these disasters, including misaligned floors due to settling and foundation issues, poor mortar mixtures that have an inadequate amount of lime, and improperly baked bricks that are soluble in water.[7] These cheaper materials would have been more likely to crack or dissolve in a damp environment. By examining insula walls in Pompeii we know that in many cases “the interior core, which should be a solid and impermeable mass of mortar and aggregate, is instead merely a crude mixture of rubble and clay that, when exposed to water, crumbles away and turns to sludge.”[8] These low-quality construction materials would have then been plastered over to give the appearance of a sturdier structure. Thus, the lack of insulae in the archaeological record is not only because they were the frequent victims of urban disasters, but also because the low construction quality of insulae would not have lasted through the ages and explains why we have such scarce remains today.
[1] Catullus, XXIII, 8-10, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0003%3Apoem%3D23.
[2] Juvenal, Satire III, lines 190-204, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/juv-sat3lateng.asp.
[3] Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 15.1.2-3 as quoted by Storey, “Meaning of Insula,” 69.
[4] Glenn Storey, “The Meaning of Insula in Roman Residential Terminology,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 49 (2004), 57.
[5] Cicero, Ad Attica, 14.9, http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Cic.%20Att.%2014.9.
[6] Strabo, V.III, 235, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/5C*.html.
[7] Aldrete, 109-110.
[8] Ibid, 109.
…you fear nothing, not fire, not heavy collapse, not wicked theft…[1]
Catullus in this line is most likely referencing the incessant fires, collapses, and burglaries that plagued house owners and renters. Here Juvenal satirizes the instability of Roman housing when he says:
But here we inhabit a city supported for the most part by slender props for that is how the bailiff holds up the tottering house, patches up gaping cracks in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease under a roof ready to tumble about their ears… smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic, but you know nothing of it; for if the alarm begins in the ground-floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain but the tiles, where the gentle doves lay their eggs.[2]
Although these are likely exaggerations, this indicates that tall apartments could be seen around Rome held up by wooden props with patches applied to the crumbling mud walls, with the highest floors being the most dangerous because they are the most difficult to escape. Aulus Gellius observes a friend’s trepidation of purchasing buildings in the city because of the frequency of fires:
We, his friends, surrounding him on all sides, were accompanying him home when, while ascending the Cispian Hill, we saw, from where we were, a certain insula, with many high floors attacked by fire. Everything nearby was already burning in a great conflagaration. Some friend of Julianus then said, “The profits from urban properties are worth much, but they are far exceeded by the dangers. But if someone could develop a remedy so that domus at Rome would not burn so assiduously, then, by heaven, I would put up my country properties for sale and buy in the city.”[3]
Although an ambitus, or walkway, surrounded buildings and shared walls were illegal to help mitigate fire damage, the minimum size of an ambitus need only be 70 cm, enough room for one person to walk down.[4] The ambitus is more equivalent to an alley and fires jumped rapidly to adjacent buildings.
In a letter to Atticus, Cicero reports that one of the insula he owns has fallen down:
…two of my shops have fallen down and the rest are cracking. So not only the tenants but the very mice have migrated. Other people call this a misfortune, I don't call it even a nuisance. Oh Socrates and Socratic philosophers, I shall never be able to thank you enough! Good heavens, how paltry such things are in my eyes! But after all I am adopting a plan of building on the suggestion and advice of Vestorius, which will convert this loss into a gain.[5]
Cicero seems completely unphased by this incident and seems more concerned with rebuilding and making a profit than the effect this has on his tenants. The ease with which he talks about the matter makes it appear that insula collapse was common within the city and nothing to fret about, at least for the owners.
We often think of Roman construction for monuments, but the continuous reconstruction of insulae and clearance of debris would have added to the bustle and din of the city and would have been more frequent than monument construction. Strabo in his Geography mentions the unceasing building in the city due to these disasters:
…the building of houses, which goes on unceasingly in consequence of the collapses and fires and repeated sales (these last, too, going on unceasingly); and indeed the sales are intentional collapses, as it were, since the purchasers keep on tearing down the houses and build new ones, one after another, to suit their wishes… Now Augustus Caesar concerned himself about such impairments of the city, organizing for protection against fires a militia composed of freedmen, whose duty it was to render assistance, and also to provide against collapses, reducing the heights of the new buildings and forbidding that any structure on the public streets should rise as high as seventy feet.[6]
From this section in Strabo’s Geography we can imagine the din from constant construction in the city and we can also infer that the fires and collapses in Rome were frequent enough that Augustus felt the need to take action and that the Republic was incapable or unwilling to control building regulations.
Gregory Aldrete describes some of the flaws contributing to these disasters, including misaligned floors due to settling and foundation issues, poor mortar mixtures that have an inadequate amount of lime, and improperly baked bricks that are soluble in water.[7] These cheaper materials would have been more likely to crack or dissolve in a damp environment. By examining insula walls in Pompeii we know that in many cases “the interior core, which should be a solid and impermeable mass of mortar and aggregate, is instead merely a crude mixture of rubble and clay that, when exposed to water, crumbles away and turns to sludge.”[8] These low-quality construction materials would have then been plastered over to give the appearance of a sturdier structure. Thus, the lack of insulae in the archaeological record is not only because they were the frequent victims of urban disasters, but also because the low construction quality of insulae would not have lasted through the ages and explains why we have such scarce remains today.
[1] Catullus, XXIII, 8-10, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0003%3Apoem%3D23.
[2] Juvenal, Satire III, lines 190-204, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/juv-sat3lateng.asp.
[3] Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 15.1.2-3 as quoted by Storey, “Meaning of Insula,” 69.
[4] Glenn Storey, “The Meaning of Insula in Roman Residential Terminology,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 49 (2004), 57.
[5] Cicero, Ad Attica, 14.9, http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Cic.%20Att.%2014.9.
[6] Strabo, V.III, 235, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/5C*.html.
[7] Aldrete, 109-110.
[8] Ibid, 109.