Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T14:30:53.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An immigrant neighbourhood in ancient Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2019

Ryan R. Abrecht
Ryan R. Abrecht*
Affiliation:
History Department, KIPJ 265, University of San Diego, 5998 Alcalà Park, San Diego, CA 92110, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines evidence for community among immigrants in ancient Transtiberim (modern Trastevere), a section of Rome that was both socially and spatially distinctive for much of the city's history. The only part of Rome located on the west bank of the Tiber River, Transtiberim was the heart of Rome's Jewish and Syrian communities. These immigrants and their descendants maintained certain traditions, languages and customs from home; participated in civic institutions that helped foster community at the local level; and laboured in institutions that were vital to the capital's urban economy. Though marginal in some ways, Transtiberim was also a neighbourhood where immigrants and their descendants found community and made vital contributions to the life of the imperial city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 2 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Livy 1; Virgil, Aeneid 8; Plutarch, Romulus.

2 Tacoma, L., Moving Romans: Migration to Rome in the Principate (Oxford and New York, 2016), 206, 238–40Google Scholar; Noy, D., Foreigners at Rome (London, 2000), 158–9Google Scholar.

3 Krautheimer, R., Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton, 1980), 16Google Scholar; Lott, J., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge, 2004), 26Google Scholar.

4 Hallman, H., Neighborhoods: Their Place in Urban Life (Beverly Hills, 1981), 34Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 15.

6 Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, 1977), 159Google Scholar.

7 Livy 5.21. The area was originally called Ripa Etrusca (‘The Etruscan Bank’).

8 Res Gestae Divi Augusti 19–21; Suetonius, Augustus 30.1.

9 On the distinction between regiones and vici, see Lott, Neighborhoods, 4.

10 Coarelli, F., Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2014), 337Google Scholar; on the political and religious importance of crossroads, see Flower, H., The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner (Princeton and Oxford, 2017), 234–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Storey, G.R., ‘Regionaries-type insulae 2: architectural/residential units at Rome’, American Journal of Archaeology, 106 (2002), 411–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Packer, J., ‘The insulae of imperial Ostia’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 31 (1971), 65–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Packer, ‘Insulae’, 72–3.

13 Seneca, de Ira 3.35.5; see also Martial 1.108, 117, 3.30, 4.37, 5.22, 6.27, 7.20; Juvenal 3.6, 3,166, 3,190–202, 3.223–5, 3.235–48, 3.268–312.

14 Holleran, C., ‘The street life of ancient Rome’, in Laurence, R. and Newsome, D.J. (eds.), Rome, Ostia, and Pompeii: Movement and Space (Oxford and New York, 2011), 252–3Google Scholar.

15 Taylor, R., Public Needs and Private Pleasures: Water Distribution, the Tiber River, and the Urban Development of Ancient Rome (Rome, 2000), 247–8Google Scholar. For a time, the area also included the Naumachia Augusti, an artificial lake built by Augustus for staging mock naval battles. Trajan filled this in, opening up a swath of new land for development.

16 Dyson, S., Rome: Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Baltimore, 2010), 230Google Scholar.

17 Taylor, Public Needs, 144; Bond, Sarah, Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean (Ann Arbor, 2016), 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aldrete, G., Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 2007), 39–44, 211–16Google Scholar. Other low-lying areas, such as the Emporium and parts of the Campus Martius, also often suffered from destructive flooding. Wealthy Romans tended to avoid these districts, preferring to build private homes (domus) on hills.

18 Bond, Trade and Taboo, 112–14.

19 Martial 6.93; Juvenal, Satire 14.201–2

20 Bond, Trade and Taboo, 114.

21 Holleran, C., Shopping in Ancient Rome: The Retail Trade in the Late Republic and the Principate (Oxford, 2012), 58–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Martial 1.41.4; Price, J., ‘Glass-working and glassworkers in cities and towns’, in MacMahon, A. and Price, J. (eds.), Roman Working Lives and Urban Living (Oxford and Oakville, CT, 2005), 169, 172–7Google Scholar. Although Martial does not specifically state that the glassmaking industry was located in Regio XIV, his association between begging and trading broken glass (useful because it can be recycled) is suggestive of a link.

23 Cicero, de Officiis 1.150 offers a standard view.

24 Taylor, Public Needs, 197, 247; Dyson, Rome, 243–57.

25 Juvenal, 14.134; Martial 12.32; MacMullen, R., ‘The unromanized in Rome’, in Cohen, S. and Frerichs, E.S. (eds.), Diasporas in Antiquity (Atlanta, 1993), 56Google Scholar.

26 Seneca, de Vita Beata 7.25.1

27 Juvenal 5.8; Martial 10.53, 12.25, 32; Holleran, ‘Street life’, 257.

28 It is also worth noting that the bodies of criminals were often thrown in the river.

29 Dyson, Rome, 295.

30 Livy 1.44; Tacitus, Annals 12.23.2–24; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 13.143. The stones (cippi) that marked its line in antiquity have been mostly lost or displaced; none have been found in situ from across the river.

31 Leon, H.J., The Jews of Ancient Rome (Peabody, MA, 1995), 2–3Google Scholar; Rutgers, L.V., ‘Roman policy towards the Jews: expulsions from the city of Rome during the first century CE’, Classical Antiquity, 13 (1994), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cappelletti, S., The Jewish Community of Rome: From the Second Century B.C.E. to the Third C.E. (Leiden, 2006), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar4.

32 Cicero, Pro Flacco 28.66.

33 Gruen, E., Diaspora: Jews Amidst the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 20–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Suetonius, Caesar 84.

35 Josephus, Antiquitates Judicae 14.10.1–8; Leon, Jews, 8–11.

36 Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 158.

37 Considerable debate exists around the size of the community in the early first century CE. Estimates are based on figures given by Josephus (Bellum Judaicum 2.80; Antiquitates Judaicae 17.300) and Tacitus (Annales 2.85). For a summary of perspectives, see Noy, Foreigners, 257.

38 Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 155.

39 Ibid. 157.

40 Philo, In Flaccum 8; Josephus, Contra Apionem 4, de Bello Judaico 2.8; Gruen, Diaspora, 5; Alston, R., ‘Philo's “In Flaccum”: ethnicity and social space in Roman Alexandria’, Greece & Rome, 44 (1997), 170–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Williams, M., Jews in a Graeco-Roman Environment (Tubingen, 2013), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 S. Cohen, ‘Those who say they are Jews and are not’, in Cohen and Frerichs (eds.), Diasporas in Antiquity, 27–8.

43 Jeffers, J.S., ‘Jewish and Christian families in first-century Rome’, in Donfried, K.P. and Richardson, P. (eds.), Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Grand Rapids, 1998), 132Google Scholar.

44 On the social significance of bathing in Roman culture, see Fagan, G., Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor, 2002)Google Scholar.

45 Suetonius, Caesar 84.5; Claudius 25.3–5; Williams, Jews, 122.

46 It is worth noting that Philo's original reason for coming to Rome was to seek imperial aid in the aftermath of anti-Semitic rioting that saw the capture of synagogues and the destruction of Jewish property in Alexandria in 38 CE. Philo, In Flaccum 34–96.

47 Juvenal 3.12–16, 3.296, 6.542–7.

48 Martial 12.57.13, 4.4.1–7; Williams, Jews, 58–61. A number of Roman writers incorrectly believed that the Sabbath was a day of fasting.

49 Leon, Jews, 235. Broken glass was used in the making of new glass; Martial's comment about the Transtiberine peddler trading shards may have been an oblique reference to Jewish glassmakers.

50 Leon, Jews, 236–7; Jeffers, ‘Jewish and Christian families’, 131; Cohen, ‘Those who say they are Jews’, 29–30.

51 Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 18.83–4; Tacitus, Annales 2.85.4–5; Suetonius, Tiberius 36; Cassius Dio 57.18.5; Seneca, Epistulae Morales 108.22.

52 Leon, Jews, 17–20; Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 49–53; Gruen, Diaspora, 29–33; Rutgers, ‘Roman policy’, 60–2.

53 Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 1.3.3. The decision to include worshippers of Isis in the expulsion of 19 CE suggests a generalized reaction against alien religious practices.

54 The motivation behind this edict of expulsion has been the subject of much debate. Food shortages and bread riots are well known in Roman history; other possible explanations include overzealous proselytizing, participation in disturbances and general hostility to the Jewish religion. See Rutgers, ‘Roman policy’, 64; Noy, Foreigners, 42.

55 Williams, Jews, 49–52.

56 It is noteworthy that worshippers of Isis were included in this expulsion, perhaps because they were also fairly easy to identify and locate. Although there is no evidence for an Egyptian quarter in first-century Rome, Regio III, near the later site of the Colosseum, was named Isis et Serapis (‘Isis and Serapis’) after the sanctuary of Isis located there. Gruen, Diaspora, 52.

57 Suetonius, Claudius 25. See also Acts 18:2.

58 Rutgers, ‘Roman policy’, 65–6; Leon, Jews, 23–7; Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 60–89; Gruen, Diaspora, 34–41.

59 The Latin participle tumultantis can also be translated as ‘rioting’. Cassius Dio (60.6.6) maintained that Claudius chose not to expel the Jews because their numbers had grown too large, forbidding them to hold meetings instead.

60 Trastevere: Guida ai luoghi dove iniziòil cristianesimo a Roma (Rome, 2015), 9–22. For a discussion of discriminatory policies issues against the Jews of Rome by Domitian in the aftermath of the Jewish War, see Williams, Jews, 95–110.

61 The existence of a middle class is, of course, a modern concept ultimately derived from Marxist historiography. Nevertheless, a number of scholars have demonstrated that it can be fruitfully, if cautiously, applied to the ancient world; see Zanker, P., Pompeii: Public and Private Life (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar; Veyne, P., ‘La plebe moyenne sous le haut-empire romain’, Annales, 55 (2000), 1169–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayer, E., The Ancient Middle Classes: Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE–250 CE (Cambridge, MA, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Only seven identifiably Jewish inscriptions contain this information, but of these six indicate that the individual commemorated came from Judaea or Syria. Leon, Jewish Community, 239.

63 Noy, David, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. II: The City of Rome (Cambridge, 1995), ixCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 177–91.

64 Corpus Inscriptionum Judiacarum, ed. Jean Baptiste Frey (New York: Ktav, 1975) (CIJ), vol. I, 399; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 139.

65 CIJ, vol. I, 457; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 142. The title mellarchon indicates that the deceased was designated for a leadership position in his synagogue but died before holding office.

66 CIJ, vol. I, 370; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 95.

67 CIJ, vol. I, 353; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 72.

68 Leon, Jews, 46–50, 66; Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 143–51; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 1–2.

69 Williams, Jews, 179.

70 Rome's catacombs were all broken into long before professional excavations began in the nineteenth century. Inscriptions of uncertain provenance were traditionally assigned to Monteverde since it was the first catacomb discovered, but this may skew the evidence. Williams, Jews, 171.

71 Noy, Foreigners, 266.

72 Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 179.

73 Jeffers, ‘Jewish and Christian families’, 130.

74 Rutgers, L.V., The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden and New York, 1995), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Leon, Jews, 94.

76 Ibid., 120; Williams, Jews, 47.

77 Leon, Jews, 110, 243.

78 Rutgers, Jews, 148–51.

79 Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 3; Leon, Jews, 166.

80 Leon, Jews, 140–59.

81 Williams, Jews, 171.

82 Ibid., 172.

83 Leon, Jews, 167, 193–4. For an index of all inscriptions with titles and names of synagogues, see Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 538–40.

84 Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 190–1.

85 Rutgers, Jews, 199.

86 Associations based around a neighbourhood or shared cult or shared profession, or sometimes all three, collegia were an important source of patronage, opportunity and social connections for many Romans. On their various roles in Roman society, see Kloppenborg, J.S. and Wilson, S.G (eds.), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London and New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Holleran, C., ‘Getting a job: finding work in the city of Rome’, in Verboven, K. and Laes, C. (eds.), Work, Labour, and Professions in the Roman World (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2017), 98Google Scholar.

87 Williams, Jews, 45–6.

88 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 433–4 (CIJ, vol. I, 499).

89 Leon, Jews, 138–9.

90 Noy, Foreigners, 235.

91 Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae, 4 vols. in 5 parts (Rome: Instituto italiano per la storia antica, 1968– ) (IGUR), vol. III, 1334; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 17 vols. (Berlin: Berolini, apud G. Reimerum, 1862– ) (CIL), vol. VI, 33813, vol. XIV, 375, 376; Stambaugh, J., The Ancient Roman City (Baltimore, 1988), 269–70Google Scholar; Noy, Foreigners, 236.

92 On Syrian glassmakers at Rome, see Price, ‘Glass-working’, 177.

93 CIL, vol. VI, 1682 = Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 3 vols. in 5 parts (1892–1916; Berolini: Weidmann, 1974) (ILS), 1220; CIL, vol. VI, 1117, 1118; Scriptores Historiae Augustae (‘Augustan History’), 3 vols., multiple authors, translation by David Magie (Cambridge, MA 1982–93) (SHA), Alexander Severus 39.3; Bond, Trade and Taboo, 117–19.

94 Isaac, B., The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, 2004), 335Google Scholar.

95 C. Ricci, Stranieri illustri e comunità immigrate a Roma: vox diversa populorum (Rome, 2006), 90.

96 For example, see IGUR, vol. III, 1287 (discussed in Noy, Foreigners, 235 n. 261), whose dedicator attested ‘my race was Greek, my homeland was Apamaea’.

97 Isaac, Racism, 336–7. The story of the Syrophoenician woman from Tyre (modern Lebanon) in Mark 7:26 is one example. Lucian's treatise de Dea Syria provides useful insight into the entanglement of Syrian and Hellenic traditions; for a Syrian Greek's identity crisis, see Lucian, Revivescentes sive piscator 19.6.

98 For an introduction to the complexity of ancient Syrian identity, see Andrade, N.J., Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge and New York, 2013), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Ricci, Stranieri, 92.

100 Despite the appearance of Hebrew words like ‘shalom’ on Jewish epitaphs, most Roman Jews seem to have primarily spoken Greek. Cappelletti, Jewish Community, 182.

101 Cicero, de Provinciis Consularibus 10; Juvenal 1.102–11, 8.159–61, SHA, Verus 4.4–6; Isaac, Racism, 351; Ricci, Stranieri, 93; Andrade, Syrian Identity, 27–8.

102 Juvenal 1.103–5; Lucian, de Mercede Conductis 10.13 Isaac, Racism, 345.

103 Livy 36.15.5.

104 Lucian, Philopseudes 16; Juvenal 6.542–7; Isaac, Racism, 345.

105 Lucian, De Dea Syria; Juvenal 6.511–16; Suetonius, Domitian 8.7.1.

106 Cohen, ‘Those who say they are Jews’, 30–1; Leon, Jews, 37–42.

107 SHA, Alexander Severus 28.7; Isaac, Racism, 348–9.

108 Ensoli, S., ‘Il santuario della dea Syria e i culti Palmireni nell'area meridionale di Trastevere’, Orizzonti, 4 (2003), 45–59Google Scholar.

109 Juvenal 3.62–3.

110 Goodhue, N., The Lucus Furrinae and the Syrian Sanctuary on the Janiculum (Amsterdam, 1975), 5–10, 48–66Google Scholar; Savage, S.M., ‘The cults of ancient Trastevere’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 17 (1940), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Piana, G. La, Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1927), 314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 CIL, vol. VI, 36802 = IGUR, vol. I, 111; Palmer, R.E.A., ‘The topography and social history of Rome's Trastevere (Southern Sector)’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 125 (1981), 372Google Scholar; Savage, ‘Cults’, 35.

112 CIL, vol. VI, 423 = ILS, 4287; Goodhue, Sanctuary, 38. Jupiter Heliopolitanus was likely the chief deity worshipped in the Syrian Sanctuary; four of the five dedications discovered to him in Rome come from Transtiberim (CIL, vol. VI, 36793, 36791, 422, 423).

113 CIL, vol. VI, 36792 = ILS, 9282.

114 CIL, vol. VI, 36803 = IGUR, vol. I, 110.

115 Noy, Foreigners, 240–1; Ricci, Stranieri, 96; La Piana, Foreign Groups, 315.

116 CIL, vol. VI, 36793 = Inscriptiones Graecae, 14 vols. (Berolini: G. de Gruyter, 1913– ) (IG), vol. XIV, 985 = IGUR, vol. I, 70 = ILS, 398; CIL, vol. VI, 36804 = IGUR, vol. I, 1388; Savage, ‘Cults’, 42.

117 CIL, vol. VI, 32316 = IG, vol. IV, 1512 = IGR, vol. I, 89.

118 Palmer, ‘Topography’, 372; Savage, ‘Cults’, 29; Noy, Foreigners, 242–3.

119 Communal eating played an important role in building social bonds among co-worshippers and members of voluntary associations (collegia); see Tacoma, Moving Romans, 233.

120 Palmer (‘Topography’, 372) counts 32 inscriptions in total associated with this site.

121 Adams, J.N. and Swain, S., ‘Introduction’, in Adams, J.N. et al. . (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language, Contact and the Written Text (Oxford and New York, 2002), 2–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a discussion of the frequency of Syrian names in inscriptions from Rome, see Noy, Foreigners, 237–45.

122 Fowlkes-Childs, B., ‘Palmyrenes in Transtiberim: integration in Rome and links to the eastern frontier’, in Slootjes, D. and Peachin, M. (eds.), Rome and the Worlds beyond its Frontiers (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2016), 193–5Google Scholar.

123 IGUR, vol. I, 120.

124 IG, vol. XIV, 971; Noy, Foreigners, 242–3; Palmer, ‘Topography’, 376.

125 For a further discussion of bilingual Palmyrene inscriptions at Rome, see Noy, Foreigners, 242–4; Tacoma, Moving Romans, 222–3; Fowlkes-Childs, ‘Palmyrenes’, 193–212.

126 CIL, vol. VI, 710 = CIL, vol. VI, 30817 = Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, 4 vols. (Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres: Paris 1881–1962), vol. II, 3.3903; Noy, Foreigners, 243.

127 Tacoma, Moving Romans, 229–31; Noy, Foreigners, 244–5; Ricci, Stranieri, 96; Coarelli, Rome and Environs, 346; Dyson, Rome, 242–57. The Aventine also housed a major temple to Jupiter Dolichenus, a god originating from the kingdom of Commagene on the border of Syria and Armenia. Dozens of inscriptions associated with this site, some of which include cult membership lists, indicate that many worshippers of Dolichenus were immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean. Regrettably, a full treatment of immigration in the Aventine region is beyond the scope of this article.

128 Holleran, C., ‘Migration and the urban economy of Rome’, in Holleran, C. and Pudsey, A. (eds.), Demography and the Greco-Roman World: New Insights and Approaches (Cambridge, 2011), 170–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 Joshel, S., Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions (Norman, OK, 1992), 66Google Scholar.

130 Dyson, S. and Prior, R., ‘Horace, Martial, and Rome: two poetic outsiders read the ancient city’, Arethusa, 28 (1995), 247Google Scholar.

131 Noy, Foreigners, 151–2.

132 Smith, M., ‘The social construction of ancient cities’, in Smith, M. (ed.), The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (Washington, DC, 2003), 20–1Google Scholar.

133 Cohen, ‘Those who say they are Jews’, 29–31.

134 Massey, D., Allen, J. and Pile, S. (eds.), City Worlds (London and New York, 1999), 111Google Scholar.

135 Savage, ‘Cults’, 56.

136 Dyson, Rome, 246.