Building Mid-Republican Rome

Abstract

Building Mid-Republican Rome treats for the first time the development of the Mid-Republican city from 396 to 168 BCE. As Romans established imperial control over Italy and beyond, the city itself radically transformed into the center of the Mediterranean world. The book describes profound changes in terms of new urban architecture and new socioeconomic structures and argues that such developments were in fact closely linked: building Mid-Republican Rome was highly costly, and meeting such costs had significant implications for the structures and institutions of urban society. By viewing building as an historical process, this book brings architectural and socioeconomic developments into a single account of urban change. The author, a specialist in the period’s history and archaeology, assembles an array of evidence, from literary sources to coins, epigraphy, and archaeological remains. Chapters describe the supplies of material and especially labor for urban production. The period saw the decline of architectural production based on obligation and dependency and the rising importance of slavery and an urban labor market. A quantitative model of the costs of the period’s largest monument, the Republican city walls, is contextualized within the flow of labor in the larger productive economy. A new account of Mid-Republican building technology allows for a better understanding of the social character of the city’s builders. The study thus sheds light on a little known but formative period in Rome’s development, while the innovative synthesis of a major Western city’s spatial and historical aspects will hold appeal to a broad readership.