TRAC 2008

Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Amsterdam 2008

Joep Hendriks

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781782973256
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

A larger than usual selection of papers from the annual TRAC conference. Sessions included Supplying the Army, Imperial communication, The role of the deceased in Roman society, Military identities and Experiencing space and place in the Roman world.

Centrality in its Place:
Defining Urban Space in the City of Rome

David J. Newsome

‘Wherever in the city one is, nothing prevents him from being in its centre all the same.’ (Aelius Aristides, Roman Oration, 26.7)

Introduction: The ‘Spatial Turn’

The session from which this paper developed carried the pre-title ‘The Spatial Turn’, a phrase applied to the broad development of interest in space that has permeated many disciplines, including archaeology and Roman history, with particular vigour over the last two decades (Soja 2000: 7). This interest goes deeper than writing descriptive histories of, in this case, urban topography. Rather, it is an interest in spatiality, wherein space is the object of study rather than the setting; dialogues of space, rather than in space. Although the ‘spatial turn’ is a label that hides debate, disagreement and variability under a neat and concise heading, one point of consensus is the importance of the French sociologist, Henri Lefebvre. If he has not quite defined a theoretical zeitgeist, he has at the very least been the catalyst for the invigoration of urban spatial studies.

In Roman archaeology, Lefebvre’s influence is most apparent in the emphasis on social interaction and its conceptualisation as historically specific ‘spatialisations’ (Shields 1999: 167; cf. Hitchcock 2008: 164–168; Laurence 2008). The attraction of archaeologists to ‘the everyday’ is often brought under the theories of phenomenology; our desire to contextualise the past as one of multiple, discrete realities, though Lefebvre himself criticised phenomenology for prioritising the experiential aspects of space, at the expense of the representational. Lefebvre’s spatial framework does not dictate this line of research but, at times, provides useful guidelines from urban sociology (for criticisms of sociology framing archaeological inquiry cf. Allison 2001, with rebuttals in Laurence 2004: 104–106). It is probably healthy to be aware that the previous statements contain a number of what might be perceived as ‘buzzwords’: action; interaction; representation. It is a reflection of the success of the ‘spatial turn’ that these words are now common to those of us working in a discipline that until relatively recently was entrenched in much less critical buzzwords: models, plans, imitations. Roman urbanism is no longer debated solely in terms of orthogonal planning and symbolic models (however significant these issues remain, cf. Lagopoulos 2008) but by the specificity of practice.

However, the notion of centrality has received little attention in all of this. Its definition is either ignored altogether or at best formed on equally problematic terms such as the ‘symbolic’ or ‘religious’ (but cf. Livy 5.52.2, ‘there is no place in our city that is not filled with religious meaning and with gods’ – how do we write a hierarchy of such places? Is Jupiter on the Capitoline more ‘central’ than Hercules at the Ara Maxima?). Centrality is still regarded, it would seem from a cursory review of almost any general work on Roman topography, to be where the temples were, where the Senate sat, and so on. ‘Centrality? You mean the forum’ – either a question or an assertion, depending on the particular theoretical inclination of the person in question (inclinations that are particularly apparent in translations of spatial terms, cf. Morstein-Marx 2004: 40, who rather uncritically translates Asconius’ (Mil. 41) use of fori as ‘any central square’). To be clear, the issue is not one of disproving the centrality of fora, but demonstrating whether such opinion is or is not valid based on Roman attitudes to space. Traditionally, centrality was synonymous with the apex of a hierarchy of monumental, civic architectures. Regrettably, little has changed, despite the ‘spatial turn’.

In this paper I will examine some of Lefebvre’s theories of urban centrality and the ways in which they might inform a rethinking of our own definition of centrality in the Roman city. It is clear that we need to define our terms more clearly. On the one hand there are familiar, ‘representational’ centres – the symbolic and ideological. On the other, there are the centres of everyday ‘rhythms’ and interactions, wherein the definition of space is based to a large extent on an overlap of practice, concept and experience (Lefebvre 1991; cf. précis in Laurence 1997: 9–10). The paper begins by considering Lefebvre’s thoughts on Roman urban space, before examining some of the commonly ascribed centres within Rome. It ends with an overview of Roman concepts of movement and space as outlined in Varro; though there is no single definition which might speed us along. ‘[T]he question of centrality in general, and of urban centrality in particular, is not a very simple one’ (Lefebvre 1991: 331).

Lefebvre’s Rome and Urban Centrality

Whilst Lefebvre’s broader theoretical understanding of space might inform our reinterpretation of Roman centrality, it is important to note that his own musings on the topic are somewhat unconvincing. In his history of space – itself characterised by the kind of rigid ‘phases’ that archaeology would rather avoid – Rome fell into both the second and third phases – ‘absolute’/‘sacred’ and ‘historical’ space – the former being the epoch of Romulean foundation, the latter being the ideologically saturated period of the Republic and Empire. Such phases are sequential, but have a tendency to overlap where ideologically or politically expedient. For example, Augustus’ restorations of the Lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus (Ovid, Fasti 2.421), could be seen as Romulean tradition forming ‘the bedrock of historical space and the basis of representational spaces (religious, magical and political symbolism)’ (Lefebvre 1991: 48). Rome is replete with examples of successive periods making use of previous spaces for ideological purposes. Unsurprisingly, such uses are almost always in public space (Lefebvre 2004: 96).

Lefebvre characterised the geocentrism of Greece and Rome as ‘cosmological space’ (1991: 236), with the notion that their settlement was physically and metaphorically central in their concepts of the world. There is some familiarity in all of this. It is not too much of a stretch to see in Lefebvre’s model the influence of, in particular, Augustan ideology on the city of Rome as the centre of the world (1991: 243–244; Clarke 1999: 217–218; Vitruvius, De Architectura 6.1.10-11). One wonders what Lefebvre would have made of Agrippa’s famous map of the (Roman) world in the Porticus Vipsania (completed by Augustus; Pliny NH 3.17); a map no doubt imbued with the ideology of empire and like all maps, representational, selective and subjective (Nicolet 1991: 98–111; Dilke 1998: 41–53).

When one moves from Rome as centre to the centre of Rome, Lefebvre’s writings are disappointing. This is not necessarily true of his writings on the space of the city overall, but certainly of his definition of centrality within it. For example, he recognised that dominant ideologies of space in monumentality and urban planning could be appropriated by the users of the city into their own particular spaces of representation (Lefebvre 1991: 244). In Rome, we can recognise how ideological space was redefined by lived space; of women, slaves, children, soldiers (one thinks of Ovid recasting the imperial space of the Porticus Liviae as a space of sexual promiscuity; Ars amatoria 1.71). Conversely, the success of ideology in redefining lived space can also be traced, as in the example of the Regiones Quattuordecim and the independent use of new concepts of urban space very soon after their ‘imposition’ in 7 B.C. (e.g. CIL 6.899, 39207; plebs urbana quae habitat in regione urbis XIII cf. primarily Lott 2004; also Laurence 1991; Wallace-Hadrill 2003).

However, it would seem that the concept of centrality in Rome, owing to its necessity to fit into one of his historical phases, is left under-theorised:

‘In the Greek and Roman cities, centrality is attached to an empty space, the agora and the forum. It is a place of assembly. There is an important difference between the agora and the forum. Prohibitions characterise the latter and buildings will quickly cover it up, taking away from its character of open space.’ (Lefebvre, le droit à la ville, cited in 1996: 169)

That the Roman forum (that is, the forum of a Roman city, not the Forum Romanum in the city of Rome) will be developed with buildings, changing its spatial character in the process, offers a way to develop this issue. This is more than a difference between the Greek agora and the Roman forum, as Lefebvre states. It is, more importantly, a difference between the Roman forum from one period to the next. His attitude appears to be influenced by Le Corbusier’s famous remark about Rome itself: ‘the forum must have been ugly’ (1931: 156). It was a space of ‘bric-à-brac’, devoid of any semblance of planning or layout. Lefebvre’s vision of the forum is one ‘encumbered by objects’ (1991: 239), but such generalisation is misleading. One need only think of the various attempts to clear the Forum Romanum, for example Publius Cornelius Scipio and Marcus Popilius removing the statues of self-aggrandizing magistrates (158 B.C., Pliny NH 34.30), or when Varro (ad. Non. 532) perceived the increase in the dignity of the forum to be explicitly linked to the relocation of cluttering retail from the open space. These changes are, of course, of both practice and perception (The LTVR entries, Coarelli 1995, Purcell 1995a and 1995b, remain the most accessible introductions to the history of this space, though all propagate a straightforward notion of centrality).

Lefebvre continues: ‘…it is not disjointed from the centre of the world: the hole, the sacred-damned mundus, the place from which souls leave, where the condemned and unwanted children are thrown’ (1991: 239). Evocative as this may be, Lefebvre is not the most accurate guide through Rome’s topography; throwing in references to the mundus and the Tarpeian Rock, in a collage of myth and topographic and historical confusion. It would be unfair to criticise too much, since Lefebvre never projects himself as an ancient historian, much less a specialist in Rome’s historical topography between text and archaeology (In The Production of Space, Lefebvre names Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, as well as repeated references to Vitruvius. Owing to his style of dictating his works, we lack the references necessary to check which Latin or Greek texts he was familiar with).

However, by locking Roman centrality within phase three of his rigid history of space, Lefebvre ultimately denies these spaces any history of their own, at least, any history that changes their own spatiality. It need hardly be stated that the forum of Servius Tullius was a different space to that of Diocletian, in physical terms (cf. Coarelli 1999: 27–33), just as the forum of Plautus was different to that of Cicero, or again to Ammianus Marcellinus, in conceptual terms (on the interplay of topography, memory and representation cf. Vasaly 1993: esp. 34–43; cf. Dyson and Prior 1995; Spencer 2007). This historical specificity of centrality must be accounted for and, at least in Lefebvre’s definition above, this specificity is one that we ought to be able to recognise in developing architectures and patterns of accessibility and enclosure (cf. La Rocca 2001; La Rocca 2006: 142–143 on the differing logic of accessibility in the Forum Romanum and the Imperial fora. A valuable synthesis is Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani 2007; cf. Coarelli 1999: 30, who interprets the substantial changes to the Forum Romanum in the early fourth century as a ‘centralization’ of Tetrarchical power; significantly, such intentions are again manifest in the enclosing of ‘open’ space. My thesis deals with these issues in more detail than is possible here).

Despite such reservations with Lefebvre’s attitude to the forum, it is from his work that we can develop our theorising of Roman central space. Although he declared, ‘[T]here is no urbanity without a centre’ (1996: 208; my italics), elsewhere his definition of urban centrality (that is, the centre of the city, rather than the city as centre in relation to the rural periphery) is more nuanced; suggesting the existence of multiple centres. The point that finds most resonance for this present paper is his assertion that “[C]entrality is movable” (Lefebvre 1991: 332). He offers the example of the Greek city, a city in which the centre was forever being moved:

‘From the semicircular area where chiefs and warriors conferred about their expeditions and divided up their booty to the city temple, and from the temple to the agora, a place of political assembly (and later, thanks to annexed arches and galleries, of commerce). This means that in ancient Greece a complex relationship existed between urban space and temporality (rhythms) of urban life…’ (Lefebvre 1991: 332; cf. Vlassopoulos 2007 on the variety of spaces in the agora)

“The same goes for modern cities”, he concluded (1991: 332). True, and the same went for ancient Rome, had he ventured the suggestion. We might “inventory the various shifts in centrality” (1991: 332), at least at an anecdotal level: Remus on the Aventine and Romulus on the Palatine; the forum valley, after it had been drained; the Temple of Vesta; the Rostra; the Capitoline and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; the Campus Martius superseding the traditional Urbs in Strabo’s ‘space of representation’ (5.3.8; cf. Haselberger 2007); the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine; the Compitum Acilii; the Meta Sudans. All of these, and many more besides, could rightly be posited as ‘a centre’ at some point or other in Rome’s long, complex history. It depends on our definition of centrality or, more importantly, on Roman definitions of centrality; their own understanding of space, in both practice and representation. When Lefebvre remarked that, ‘in the future, the city will invariably be polycentric, a multiplicity of centres’ (1996: 208), he could easily have applied this back to the Roman city. After all, Rome itself had, by the time of Pliny (NH 3.66), 265 vici across its 14 regiones. Moreover, in identifying the street as ‘central to social and urban life’ (Elden 2004: 145), and in suggesting that centrality, both mental and social, is defined by the gathering together of objects (people), Lefebvre indirectly offers a close fit for the concepts of centrality in Roman thought and experience.

Representational Centres in Rome

Before examining the street in definitions of centrality, it is first necessary to demonstrate why examples of traditional ‘centres’ are problematic. It has already been noted how Lefebvre placed a special emphasis on the mundus as the centre of Rome, in representational if not geometric terms (cf. Rykwert 1988: 98–99). It is worth briefly considering these representational centres, as they are essentially a part of Lefebvre’s second aspect of space – representations – the domain of ideology and of the architect and urban planner.

There are numerous candidates for the representation of the centre of the city of Rome: the mundus; Roma Quadrata (cf. Wiseman 2007); the Rostra; the Miliarium Aureum; the Umbilicus Romae. The Capitoline is another (Purcell 2007: 188), as ‘the highest head’ of the Roman city and Roman state (Isidore, Etymologiae 15.2.31). Lefebvre himself was well aware of the concepts of omphalos (ò όμφαλός) and umbilicus, of which there were physical manifestations in Delphi and in Rome. He considered such spaces to be “in the centre of the world, the point of departure and arrival” (1996: 168) – though in this passage he is referring to the Asiatic rather than Roman city. Such concepts were usefully discussed by Varro (LL 7.17). In his description, it is noteworthy that he locates the ‘centre’ of Delphi at its side, not in the topographic centre at all (et terrae medium, non hoc, sed quod vocant, delphis in aede ad latus est). This point is useful for demonstrating how models of centrality that hold the centre and the middle (òμέσος; medium) as synonymous are invalid (cf. Menander Rhetor 1.352.10-15). Even the definition of umbilicus, the middle part of the middle lands named from the centre of the human body is, according to Varro, erroneous (quod ultrumque est falsum). In such statements, it is likely that Varro is denying Delphi its claim to centrality, rather than denying the very existence of a centre a...