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Spaces of Citizenship

The Census in Roman Republican Topography and Ideology
Kaius Tuori et Juhana Heikonen
p. 335-360

Résumés

L’objectif de cet article est d’explorer les espaces et les pratiques du cens romain, et sa place dans l’imaginaire symbolique du républicanisme romain à travers deux changements majeurs : la transformation de la citoyenneté et le déplacement de l’accent de la Villa Publica à l’Atrium Libertatis pendant la fin de la République et le début du Principat. Il propose de montrer que derrière ces changements se trouvaient non seulement l’accroissement de la population et les difficultés pratiques dans l’organisation de la cérémonie du cens, mais aussi l’évolution de la notion de citoyenneté, passée de son acception d’appartenance à un état comme membre d’un groupe militaire et politique à un ensemble de droits et privilèges juridiques. Ces deux changements eurent des implications fondamentales sur son rôle idéologique, symbolique et spatial. La fin d’un cens performatif rendit possible la disparition de son lieu de déroulement, la Villa Publica, illustrant la manière dont les usages symboliques et fonctionnels de l’espace étaient intriqués.

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Notes de l’auteur

* The work is part of the project “Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition” (SpaceLaw.fi). This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 771874). The authors wish to thank the members of the SpaceLaw project for their comments and help, and Dr Heta Björklund, Ms Oona Raatikainen, Ms Mirkka Koskimäki and Mr Pyry Koskinen for their editorial assistance. The authors also wish to thank the editors of MEFRA and its anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism which has improved the article considerably, as well as other readers and commentators, equally at various events at universities of Helsinki, Edinburgh, Oxford and Yale, as well as Prof. Cristina Rosillo López for her insights on the final version.

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 The work is part of the project “Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Rep (...)
  • 2 On the historical mutability of conceptual interpretation of citizenship, see Crifò 2004; Ando 201 (...)
  • 3 Professio is described in Dionys., Ant., 4, 15, 6; Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Gell., 4, 20, 3; Tab. Hera (...)
  • 4 The literature on the census is substantial, the main contributions are Mommsen 1887, p. 331-417; (...)
  • 5 Sherwin-White 1973 and Brunt 1986 continue to be fundamental on Roman citizenship, but see now Lav (...)

1Roman Republicanism, the long tradition of Republican thought and practice originating in Rome, has for much of European intellectual history defined the concepts of citizenship and legal status.1 However, within the Roman tradition, the concept of citizenship contained not only a well-defined notion of attaining legal status and capacity but also a strong performative aspect.2 Both notions were reinforced through public legal acts which announced the inclusion and belonging of an individual to the citizen body. These legal acts had symbolic and communicative functions and by their very scale they were prominent features in the public space within the city. Roman citizenship was reinforced with the act of professio,3 a highly ceremonialized oath. It was part of the census4 in which the citizen body and its component members was surveyed by the censors at the Villa Publica, determining their eligibility for magistracies and membership in the senatorial and equestrian orders, as well as duties such as taxation and military service. However, this idealized image of the Republic as a closed entity sits ill with notions popular since Sherwin-White that citizenship was distributed with increasing abandon especially during the Principate.5

  • 6 For an overview of the Villa Publica, see Agache 1999.
  • 7 On the Atrium Libertatis, see generally Coarelli 1993.
  • 8 On the Varro passage, see most recently Brown 2019. De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 161, notes the func (...)

2The purpose of this paper is to explore the spaces and practices of the Roman census and its place in the symbolic imaginary of Roman Republicanism through two major changes: the transformation of the Roman notion of citizenship and the shift of emphasis from the Villa Publica6 to the Atrium Libertatis7 during the Late Republic and the Early Principate. Beginning from Varro’s depiction (Rust., 3, 2, 1-17) of the Villa Publica, the location of the census, it analyzes how the symbolic and functional uses of space were intertwined. It argues that behind these changes were not only the growth of the population and the practical difficulties in organizing the ceremonial census, but equally the changing notion of the citizenship itself from a constitutive part of the state as a member of the army and polity to a set of legal rights and privileges. Both of these changes had fundamental implications on its ideological, symbolic and spatial role of the census and citizenship itself. The census, from the locations where it was executed to the magistrates, the censors, performing it and the citizen records themselves, was a manifestation of the importance of citizenship and the performative aspects that celebrated its exclusiveness and function in social and political cohesion. The Villa Publica and Atrium Libertatis were joined as crucial parts of the Roman Republican urban fabric, both as functional entities that housed the census as one of the most essential operations of the Republic, but also as symbols of the Republic and its values. The connection between the two is also reflected in the Roman sources, not purely as the essential locations of the census but also as structures that were simultaneously rebuilt in 194 BC (Livy 34, 44, 5) and whose locations were linked the following year by a portico (Livy 35, 10, 12) extending from the city gates to the Altar of Mars.8

  • 9 From the Republic, see i.a. Gros 1996; Torelli 2007; Davies 2017, p. 32-38. On the attempts at loc (...)
  • 10 . On the discussion about the aerarium, see Tuori 2018.
  • 11 . On the censors, the traditional definition has been Cicero’s idealizing text, Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7 (...)

3One of the peculiarities facing the study of the locations of the Roman Republican administration is the lack of spaces that would have been dedicated solely for administrative purposes.9 There were, of course, the Curia and the Aerarium,10 the latter housed in the Temple of Saturn, but otherwise the administrative buildings from the Republic are few and far between. Vitruvius, the main contemporary source on Roman architecture, lists as the public buildings that a Roman city should have just four: the forum, the basilica, the treasury and the curia (Vitr., Arch., 5, 1-2). The Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis were curious exception to the situation, as buildings found only in Rome. Both date from the Republic and their functions were crucial for the activities of the censors,11 but neither has been definitively located archaeologically despite considerable dispute on the matter.

4While pinpointing definite locations may be beyond our reach, in the following we will establish the parametres within which both were located, what their known functions as locations of the census and the census records inform us of their size and build and how the historical and archaeological sources support such interpretations. We will then discuss the transformation of the census and the Roman notion of citizenship and the implications it had for the census ceremony, the records that were kept and the demands that they would create for space, analyzing what these changes meant for the Republican ideals and imaginaries.

  • 12 . The actual occurrence of the census was less regular, at least based on the extant sources, see B (...)

5A central theme in this inquiry are the changes to the spatial arrangements of the census as a result of the expansion of citizenship from the Late Republic to the Principate. Within the Republican order, the census had a central function in defining the citizen body, but one that was based on a face to face interaction. The enormous rise in the number of citizens from the estimated four hundred thousand before the Social War to the four million during the reign of Augustus, which led to an enormous comparative rise in the participants of the census and thus demands to spaces and arrangements which would accommodate it.12

  • 13 . Suet., Caes., 41; Tarpin 2001; Lo Cascio 1990.

6What this expansion meant in practice is one of the key issues for the understanding of the spatial configuration of the census. While the symbolic importance of the census remained, there were apparent practical steps taken to alleviate the issues, such as the possibility of Caesar changing the census to take place within the vici,13 which would have had implications for the continuation of a ceremonial census and the need for a large building for it. While the spread of citizenship made the Republican type of census impractical if not impossible, can these changes also be seen as indicators of the changes taking place in the conception of citizenship? What did the expansion of citizenship and the changes in the places of census mean for the archiving of data about citizenship, the census records?

  • 14 . On the notions of imperial citizenship, see the discussion in Ando 2016.

7We argue that the symbolic power of the census extended to the notion that it was an active process where each citizen demonstrated their capability as a citizen-soldier. This active notion of citizenship was concretized in the ceremonial muster of troops, where these citizens demonstrated both their role as active components in the citizen body but equally their submission to military discipline. With the changes that were taking place in the Late Republic, especially after Sulla, the tight exclusivity of the citizenship and its links with both military service, voting and taxation became unfastened. Instead of registering soldiers for war and magistrates for service, was the primary ceremony of citizenship that of enrolling a freedman as citizen? It may be argued that in place of a geographically limited notion of citizenship there emerged what one could describe as an imperial notion of citizenship where local and Roman citizenships existed concurrently.14

  • 15 . See, for example, Ando 2015b, p. 3-4. On the reflection of changes in ideas in the built environm (...)

8The transformations taking place in the census and citizenship had fundamental implications to the concept of Republican imaginary, which seeks to utilize the built environment as a component and as a sign of the values and institutions that defined the Republic or were seen to define it. This imaginary meant not only the physical manifestations such as the buildings, such as the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis, and public displays of the institutions and values of the Republic, such as the census, but equally the belief systems that underlie them. In an empire that was so focused on cultivating differences between the various component groups, this demonstration of uniformity and belonging was a crucial part of the notion of exclusivity that was until the Late Republic a trait of Roman citizenship. In this article, what we are primarily interested in are the concepts, thought processes and structures that defined the Roman understanding of being and becoming a citizen and how these intellectual traits were reflected in the physical built environment. In doing so, the article draws upon recent works on public space and how actions and ceremonies performed in these places reinforced and created the sense of community and meaning. For example, Russell has emphasized how citizenship was by its nature performative, one behaved like a citizen according to the conventions of the political system in the spaces reserved for it.15 We argue that the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis should be seen as constitutive spaces, where the citizens acted out their roles as members of the commonwealth and where the inbuilt hierarchies and categories were reinforced. Within the changes that we observe, we argue that the emphasis moves from the Villa Publica and the performance of citizenship towards the registration of freedmen at the Atrium Libertatis.

  • 16 . The main contributions are Castagnoli 1946; Tortorici 1991; Purcell 1993; Amici 1995-1996; Coarel (...)
  • 17 . The literature is extensive, see i.a. Hamilton 1955; Ooteghem 1966; Fuchs 1969; Gwyn Morgan 1973; (...)
  • 18 . There is an extensive demographic discussion on the census, see Hin 2008 for an overview. For the (...)

9Earlier studies on the census, the Atrium Libertatis16 and the Villa Publica17 have focused mostly on the historical and archaeological record. In the case of the census, the interest has lain in the demographics, the rules and the changes of the practice,18 while in the buildings the onus has been on the record of the buildings themselves. The novelty of this study is that it seeks to explore the connections between the buildings and the historical activity that took place in them, the spaces and practices, and see how they influenced and interacted with the ideological and symbolical dimensions of the census. In doing so, it attempts to see what it in practice would mean to hold a census and have the kinds of records that the sources suggest.

The Villa Publica from Varro to the archaeological record and the practices of the census

10The Roman sources on the Villa Publica concentrate on the record of who was responsible for the building and repair works, but they also note that it was the location of the census, where the act of professio took place in the Campus Martius. According to Livy (4, 22), the censors Gaius Furius Pacilus and Marcus Geganius Macerinus approved the building of the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius in 435 BC and the census took place there for the first time. The building was reconstructed and enlarged by censors Sextus Aelius Paetus and Gaius Cornelius Cethegus in 194 BC, who also enlarged the Atrium Libertatis (Livy 34, 44, 5: Atrium Libertatis et Villa Publica ab iisdem refecta amplificataque).

11Varro describes the Villa Publica by comparing it to a private villa, while emphasizing its size and decoration. The depiction of Varro is interesting for a number of reasons, first, the physical description of the villa and its urban context and second, the outline of its functions. Varro mentions how during a day of elections he went with Quintus Axius to the Villa Publica to enjoy some shade, and by chance met with Appius Claudius the augur, who was waiting to be consulted by the people, in addition to a number of senators (Varro, Rust., 3, 2,1-4). The scene is not set to a particular date, but the timeframe is limited to 81-49 BC by the following details: Axius was one of new augurs instituted by Sulla’s reforms in 81 BC, Claudius died in 49 BC and the book itself was written in the early 30s BC. The main focus of the narrative is on birds and consequently the senators they meet have bird-like names. In the description, Varro lists the uses of the villa in contrast to the private villa:

  • 19 . Varro, Rust., 3, 2, 4: Et cum haec sit communis universi populi, illa solius tua; haec quo succed (...)

[T]his villa is common property of the whole population, that one belongs to you alone; this one is for citizens and other people to come to from the Campus, and that one is for mares and asses; and furthermore, this one is serviceable for the transaction of public business – for the cohorts to assemble when summoned by the consul for a levy, for the inspection of arms, for the censors to convoke the people for the census (Rust., 3,2,4).19

  • 20 . On the Ovile, in addition to Varro the relevant passages are Serv. Ecl., 1, 33; Liv. 26, 22, 11; (...)
  • 21 . Green 1997. On the villa as an agrarian symbol, see Brown 2019, p. 344.

12Varro continues to describe how the villa was a splendid building, adorned with sculpture by Lysippus and paintings from the famous Antiphilus (Rust., 3, 2, 5). In another passage, Varro’s text shows that both the voting place and the Capitol were not very far from the Villa, since Appius is both summoned by the consul during their discussion and returns before it ends. At the end of the discussion, Varro and Axius see that their candidate for election approaches the Villa, wearing the broad-striped toga of the magistrate and they escort him to the Capitol (Rust., 3, 7, 1; 3, 12, 1; 3, 17, 10). The description of Varro makes a word play regarding the sheep that a rustic villa would have and the voting enclosure called Ovile,20 literally the sheep pen, implying that the citizens voting in the Ovile are like the sheep of the res publica. For Varro, the villa is a symbol of the agrarian sphere, lodged within the city itself.21

  • 22 . Crawford 1974, 429.2a. The dedication of the coin has prompted a considerable debate over the pos (...)

13The only visual depiction of the appearance of the Villa Publica is on a coin (Fig. 1), a denarius from 55 BC by triumvir monetalis P. Fonteius Capito, with the name T. Didius and the text IMP VIL PVB and an image on the reverse side. The image shows a two-storied building with porticos on both levels,22 tying in well with Varro’s account of seeking protection from the sun at the villa. It is probable that the denarius shows the main entrance of Villa Publica’s long façade, and not the complete structure. A long and low façade is not a fruitful subject for a mint engraver, unlike, for example, a triumphal arch. This could explain the choice to portray a section of the façade, not the whole building. The image gives rise to competing readings of the architectural structure, such as Platner and Ashby’s interpretation of it as a small two storied villa in the middle of a large one storied enclosure. However, this would be comparable to monumentalized porticoed temples, and not to practical functioning buildings, such as horrea.

Fig. 1 – Denarius, 55 BC by P. Fonteius Capito, RRC 429.2.8, British Museum # 2002,0102.4351. Photo by British Museum, asset 630322001, (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Fig. 1 – Denarius, 55 BC by P. Fonteius Capito, RRC 429.2.8, British Museum # 2002,0102.4351. Photo by British Museum, asset 630322001, (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

14Villa Publica’s first storey shows the typical Roman architectural invention of combining classical techtonic architecture with Roman vaulting – the fornix. The coin shows four fornices of the façade, separated by half columns that carry an architrave of a sort. Above the architrave lies the lighter unvaulted first floor showing a saddle roof, which is cut in a fake perspective, typical in older technical drawings. The roof is carried by a denser columniation compared to the ground floor. Depending on the coining, the ratio between ground and first floor columniation is 3:4 or 3:5. It seems the mint has been as liberal with the columniation as Roman architects were with Greek architectural rules. In some coinings, the ground floor fornices give an impression of extra columns on the other side of the façade, giving an appearance of a peristyle, which is also in the heart of our hypothetical reconstruction (Fig. 2 and Fig. 4).

  • 23 . De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 168.
  • 24 . Initially there may have been a distinction where the curiate assembly which met at the Comitium (...)

15The location of the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius had great symbolic value, both as the political and military nexus of the Republic and due to its links with the memory of the overthrow of kings. The Campus Martius had been private property of the Tarquins, but with the advent of the Republic it was dedicated to Mars and declared public property. It was used for both political assemblies and the training of the army. The area was outside the pomerium,23 which was the legal boundary between the demilitarized civitas/urbs and the outside where the military might of Rome would be assembled.24

  • 25 . Compare, for example, Wirszubski 1950; Arena 2012; Balmaceda 2020.

16The names of the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis carry with them many connotations of Republican values. Notions such as public or liberty were weighted concepts that were reflected in countless historical and narrative contexts, for example libertas was a central symbolical element in Republican self-understanding. In it, libertas meant not only the liberty of an individual citizen but also that of the commonwealth itself.25 It is not known where the name Atrium Libertatis comes from as the name of the office of the censors and the etymology of the Villa Publica is likewise mainly assumed. However, behind both names there is a wide range of background understandings or shared convictions that legitimate practices associated with them.

17What Varro outlines is that the Villa Publica is a public building that has three main functions: 1) the assembly of the cohorts to the levy, 2) the inspections of arms, and 3) the execution of the census. What may be deduced from this account is that the structure and its courtyard would have needed to be fairly large to be able to accommodate the people coming in for the census or the cohorts (a Late Republican cohort had c. 480 men). What this means is that it would have been an expansive space, with room for the movement of sizable crowds, but also multifunctional to enable different functions in the same space.

  • 26 . Agache 1999; Richardson 1992, p. 431; De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 171.

18One of the main issues regarding the Villa Publica is its disappearance by the Principate. It has been suggested that the villa would have lost its significance and its space in the monumentalization of the Campus Martius during the Late Republic and early Principate. The Campus Martius was also ravaged by numerous fires and the rebuilding in their aftermaths is equally a possible cause for the disappearance. 26

  • 27 . This notion, suggested only by Cic., Mil., 73, is repeated in numerous works, such as Fantham 200 (...)

19Whether the records of the census were also kept there is not clear due to a lack of sources, as is whether the villa would have acted only as the reception space or that the scribes and other staff would have also worked there permanently. Thus, for instance, would the censors and their scribes only go there for the census, or were the census records kept there as well or were they kept at the Atrium Libertatis? The third theory for the storage of the census records in the Temple of the Nymphs rests on a single unclear reference and thus may indicate at best a temporary location or one linked to secondary purposes for the records such as the frumentationes.27

20There was not only a functional but also a physical link between the Villa Publica and Atrium Libertatis. Livy (35, 10, 12) writes how the portico built in 193 BC by Lucius Aemilius Paulus extended from the Porta Fontinalis (adjacent the Atrium Libertatis) to the Altar of Mars in the direct vicinity of Villa Publica. This portico would have strengthened the connection between the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis, the census location and the archives, by offering an easy and comfortable route for the censors, their staff and documents to pass from one to the other (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 – Hypothetical reconstruction of the Villa Publica and its location (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen and Kaius Tuori)

Fig. 2 – Hypothetical reconstruction of the Villa Publica and its location (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen and Kaius Tuori)
  • 28 . Pina Polo 2011, p. 78-80. The notion that the Villa Publica would have housed Roman triumphators (...)
  • 29 . The sources on the massacre, which are fairly unanimous, state that there were roughly four thous (...)
  • 30 . Plut., Vit. Sull., 30, puts the number of victims at six thousand. Their massacre commenced at th (...)

21The location of the Villa Publica is not known exactly, but we have certain indications which allow for a approximation to be made. From Livy, we know that it stood outside the pomerium near the temple of Bellona and it was used to accommodate foreign embassies. These consisted mostly of non-allies, as allies were invited inside the pomerium (Livy 30, 21, 12; 33, 24, 5). There are also indications that it might have been used to house triumphatores before the triumph.28 This suggests that this was a sizable building that was capable of housing officials on a more permanent basis. The location near the temple of Bellona is suggested by the fact that Sulla executed the four thousand prisoners from the battle of the Colline gate in 82 BC in the Villa Publica. The Senate was at the same time meeting in the temple of Bellona and the senators could hear the cries of the men being massacred there.29 Plutarch notes that this was apparently an intentional tactic of Sulla to spread fear among the senators.30

22However, Plutarch’s text says that the location of the massacre was the circus, but he does not define whether this was the Circus Flaminius or another circus. On the other hand, Cicero indicates that the Villa Publica would have stood close to the Saepta. In his letter to Atticus, he discusses the vast building projects of Caesar, which in the Campus Martius would have involved upgrading the Saepta with marble porticos with a length of a thousand steps and these works would also have involved in unspecified ways the Villa Publica (Cic., Att., 4, 16, 8):

  • 31 . Cic., Att., 4, 16, 8: Iam in campo Martio saepta tributis comitiis marmorea sumus et tecta factur (...)

As for the Campus Martius, we are going to build covered marble booths for the Assembly of Tribes and to surround them with a high colonnade, a mile of it in all. At the same time the Villa Publica will be attached to our building.31 

  • 32 . Brown 2019, p. 347; Agache 1987, 227-231. She returns to the enigma of T. Didius and suggests tha (...)
  • 33 . On the Saepta, see Cic., Mil., 41; Ov., Fast., 1, 53; Gatti 1999; Borlenghi 2011, p. 87-103, sugg (...)

23Agache suggests that the contrast between the image given by Varro and these plans highlight how the area would have earlier resembled a garden with trees and light wooden structures. The building project, focused on the place of the voting assemblies and the census would have been a symbolic way for Caesar to present himself as the protector and promoter of republican values and traditions. Brown maintains that both Varro and Cicero were in fact hesitant to support Caesar’s attempt at taking over this quintessentially republican space, hence Cicero’s mention of the still public villa (villa etiam publica).32 The Saepta, while unknown in the archaeological record, is mentioned in the Forma Urbis, the Severan marble map.33 However, would this have been executed according to the plans of Caesar or some other plan?

  • 34 . Borlenghi 2011, p. 96; Richardson Jr. 1992; Castagnoli 1984.

24The issue of location is complicated by the fact that there were a number of major building projects during the Late Republic in the area, such as the Theatre of Pompey, the Theatre of Balbus and the Porticus Minucia. Not only was the Saepta being revamped, a project completed during the reign of Augustus, there were also other large projects. Equally little is known of the Iseum and Serapeum in the archaeological record. All of these are difficult to locate, leading Castagnoli and Richardson to debate whether the Villa Publica would have been in fact located on the eastern side of the Saepta and whether the Iseum and Serapeum stood there. Richardson suggests that the Villa Publica underwent numerous rebuilding phases, changing its layout from the more or less open space during the Republic to the later monumentalizations. Richardson has maintained that due to the recent reconfiguration of the pieces of the Severan marble plan, the traditional place for the Villa Publica, somewhere East of the Porticus Minucia, near the current Piazza del Gesù, is no longer viable. At the same time, he holds improbable that the old and venerated site would have just been demolished. Richardson suggests that instead of disappearing completely, the Villa Publica would have been renovated by Domitian and dedicated to the deified Vespasian and Titus. This would have given it the strange name in the Forma Urbis that it would be in the future be known by, the Divorum. Borlenghi on the other hand stresses the vicinity, both functional and symbolic, of the Villa Publica to the Ara Martis and the space of the assemblies.34 Richardson’s explanation is in many ways quite logical and would give tidy answers to the issues, but since there is not a single piece of evidence to support it, it remains a hypothesis. Equally, the use of the Villa Publica as a makeshift prison by Sulla would not support the idea that it would have been an open space. To keep thousands of men in place for a length of time one needs walls, which would also be practical for containing the entourages of foreign ambassadors or the troops of victorious imperators going unchecked as they please. What the theory also does not account for is the disappearance of the ceremonial act of the census itself from the historical record.

  • 35 . Manacorda – Zanini 1989, p. 25-28; Carandini 2017, p. 514.

25Surveys of the archaeological evidence have been equally inconclusive, but there are some possibilities within the complex set of remains found in the area. Thus, for instance, the outline of developments around the via delle Botteghe Oscure area places the Villa Publica there with some probability. The problem is that these accounts offer little evidence for it beyond the passage from Varro. There was a massive fire in the area in 80 AD, devastating large parts of the Campus Martius and Domitian’s reconstruction led to major changes, including the raising of the ground level.35

26From the archaeological remains, it has been impossible to piece together the sequence of building projects and the references to them in both the numismatic and the written sources. The ambivalence regarding the different large building projects of the same period, from such major buildings as the Porticus Minucia or the Theatre of Balbus, means that it is very difficult to note which buildings or colonnades superseded, enclosed within them, or replaced the older building stock. The few modern archaeological excavations such as that on the Crypta Balbi have revealed that the Augustan project replaced mostly private houses, not earlier public buildings.

27What kind of a building would the Villa Publica then have been or rather, what buildings were called Villa Publica throughout its various phases? The original was built in 435 BC, it was reconstructed in 194 BC, served as prison in 82 BC, was described by Varro on a date after the Sullan reorganization in 81 BC, was depicted in the coin in 55 BC and underwent unspecified alterations and reconstructions by Caesar, Augustus and, possibly others, following the fire in 80 AD. We cannot, of course, rule out other reconstructions that our sources remain silent. The accounts of Varro about the census and the arranging of troops for inspection suggests a courtyard or an enclosed compound that could equally be used for keeping prisoners. The fact that these prisoners could be massacred without practical difficulties suggests that the area was enclosed. That the building was called a villa does suggest that it would have been something akin to a Roman villa, an individual free-standing building, at some point of its existence. The alternatives are thus either that there was a villa-like building in a walled or colonnaded enclosure, or alternatively that there was just a large colonnaded area. However, one should not assume that if one or more of the earlier incarnations of the Villa Publica had been like a villa in appearance that the later reconstructions would not have deviated from that model, even while retaining the name. Compare for instance the different incarnations of the famous Somerset House in London, where a single name was retained for numerous buildings serving evolving administrative functions at the same place, from an aristocratic town house to a royal palace, from an important archive, administration and registry office to an arts building. In any case, if we attempt to make a rough estimate of the size of the building or the area, we have two pieces of information to start with, the Roman cohort and the four thousand prisoners.

  • 36 . We have extraordinarily little knowledge about the order in which legionaries would have been arr (...)
  • 37 . These numbers are based on how modern troops would be assembled by extending a straightened arm t (...)

28The Roman Late Republican cohort had c. 480 men, divided to six centuries. We know very little of the order in which these men were arranged to display arms.36 If, for example, a century would be organized in three rows for inspection, a single century would demand a space of roughly 5×40 metres. Arranged in a rectangular form with centuries one behind the other, this would mean that a cohort would be able to be laid out for inspection in an area roughly 50×50 metres in size, when one allows for sufficient spaces for the commanding officers to move. This form would be very tight and would not allow any space for manoeuvring. However, if the cohort is organized in a loose fashion, centuries in a single row, the result would be about a 240-metre-long line three rows deep.37

  • 38 . Estimates on crowd density and troop size are based on Neufert – Neufert 2000, p. 16-17.

29The packing of prisoners in an enclosed area is something that could be expected to be done in an unorganized manner. The amount of space that 4,000 prisoners would take up may thus be estimated in the various architectural standards developed for estimating crowd sizes. While the absolute minimum for a tightly packed crowd of 4,000 men is very small, under 1700 square metres, for larger crowd sizes this is impossible due to the movement of people.38 In any case, we can safely say that the prisoners would have fitted in a space where a cohort could assemble, while the first floor of the Villa Publica would provide space for guards and archers in a similar way as military watchtowers (Fig. 2).

  • 39 . On the large variances by even modern measurements, see Hayne – Rumble – Mee 2006. The overall so (...)

30The final locating information is the sound of the screaming Samnite prisoners being heard by senators at the Temple of Bellona. The farthest distance would be the point where sound from prisoners would be at least 34 dB at the temple. Due to numerous unknown variables, it cannot be determined exactly, but based on studies on urban acoustics, the distance of 450 m would be sufficient. Generally, the sound pressure goes up by 3 dB every time you double the number of people. If the distance to the source is much greater than the size of the source, then the loudness will drop by 6 dB for every doubling of distance. The maximum noise the captive Samnites would thus produce would be less than 130 dB in stadium like conditions. However, there is also sound damping that becomes important at long distances. This is highly dependent on temperature, humidity, and frequency, and the urban structure itself, especially if heard inside Bellona through the open doorway.39 However, in 82 BC the area outside the Servian wall, between the Villa Publica and Temple of Bellona, would not have been densely built, lessening the dampening effects.

31From the known facts, we may be able to hypothetically pinpoint the possible location, design and size of the Villa Publica. In order to narrow down the alternative locations, we will exclude locations of known Republican or Julio-Claudian structures in the Campus Martius such as the Saepta, the Porticus Minucia and the Theatre complex of Balbus as less plausible both due to chronology and the topography of the area. They cannot naturally be completely excluded as their renovation or expansion may have contributed to the disappearance of the Villa Publica during the early Empire. If we assume that the building would have been able to house both the Roman cohort and the prisoners of war within its walls, this gives us a rough understanding of its dimensions, here purely assumed as a quadrangle. We may also assume that the Villa Publica was within the c. 500 metre radius from the Temple of Bellona, which excludes a number of traditional suggested sites.

  • 40 . See, for example, De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 170-172; Coarelli 1997, p. 182-3, 187-190, Borlenghi (...)

32In the making of this hypothetical argument for the location of the Villa Publica, we have from the archaeological remains taken the base of a peristyle with niches for statues, which was attributed as Ara Martis i.a. by Coarelli and Carandini as a starting point. The Ara Martis and the Villa Publica were adjacent, the Ara being the location of the lustrum, but neither has been located conclusively. Considering their size, orientation and dating, these remains could hypothetically also be the Late Republican remains of Villa Publica. They could later be demolished after the fire of 80 AD and possibly rebuilt as Divorum as suggested by Richardson. In the schematic plan (Fig. 2), we have utilized as a starting point the extant remains of a peristyle with niches to illustrate how they could equally fit the colonnade of the Villa Publica with their size and orientation. An added argument for this area is its location outside the flood plains, something which would have been vital before the expansive works in the area which raised the ground level. The original archaic Villa Publica would have definitely been placed above the Campus Martius flood plain, thus the location.40

33In conclusion, the Villa Publica was a very large edifice that had both practically and symbolically important function for the Roman Republic. Despite this, it vanishes without mention and trace by the Early Principate. In the outline given by Varro, its considerable size and crucial role both politically and militarily in the Republican polity are highlighted only a little earlier, as a location where the citizen-soldiers were mustered and counted. In a similar fashion, the accounts of the massacre ordered by Sulla reveal that the Villa Publica was well known, large, and could be closed off to serve as a makeshift prison much like football stadiums, which have been used in modern coups to round up opponents. The image on the coin is enlightening, as previously described. Its location remains equally open, but we have attempted to delineate the possible location parametres, suggesting where it would have been located on the map. Of course, this hypothesis cannot at this point be verified as long as the area of Campus Martius remains largely unexcavated.

Atrium Libertatis and the function of the censor’s offices

34If the Villa Publica was where the census took place, the Atrium Libertatis was where the censors had their office and possibly kept the records of the census. While the Villa Publica is little known, even less is known of the location of the Atrium Libertatis. Cicero, again writing to Atticus about Caesar’s building projects, describes how Caesar intends to extend the forum at great cost up to the Atrium Libertatis (Cic., Att., 4, 16, 7-8):

  • 41 . Cic., Att., 4, 16, 7-8: Itaque Caesaris amici, me dico et Oppium, dirumparis licet, <in> monumentum i</in> (...)

So Caesar’s friends (I mean Oppius and myself, choke on that if you must) have thought nothing of spending sixty million sesterces on the work which you used to be so enthusiastic about, to widen the Forum and extend it as far as the Atrium Libertatis. We couldn’t settle with the private owners for a smaller sum.41

35This letter is the same one where Cicero discusses the Villa Publica, another instance where the two buildings are discussed in tandem. Livy mentions the Atrium Libertatis on numerous occasions, from the keeping of hostages there during the war with Hannibal in 212 BC to trials of treason in 169 BC. The hostages escaped after two temple custodians (aeditui) had been bribed, suggesting that it was in no way designed to work as a prison but was instead a common building or even a temple. The hostages and their Roman helper were caught soon afterwards, flogged in the Comitium and thrown from the Tarpeian rock (25, 7, 12-14). Livy’s account of the events of 169 BC and the numerous trials of treason culminated in the censors mounting a protest:

  • 42 . Liv., 43, 16, 13: censores extemplo in atrium Libertatis escenderunt et ibi obsignatis tabellis p (...)

The censors immediately mounted to the Atrium Libertatis and, having there sealed the public accounts and closed the account room and sent away the public slaves, declared that they would transact no public business until the judgment of the people upon them had been passed.42

36From this passage, we may deduce three things: first, that the public records were kept at the Atrium Libertatis, second, that the public slaves were based there, and third, that public business demanded that the censors would allow access to the public records.

37The nature of these public records may be inferred from another passage of Livy, where he notes that decisions regarding the assigning of the people to their voting units and the incorporation of freedmen to the citizen body took place in the Atrium Libertatis. Of 167 BC, Livy writes that the censors had to resolve the issue of which tribe should freedmen be assigned to. They drew lots publicly at the Atrium Libertatis between the four urban tribes and following the result all freedmen were assigned to the Esquiline tribe (45, 15, 5). However, we do not know whether the registration took place at the Villa Publica, but if the records are there this would be likely.

  • 43 . Platner – Ashby 1929, p. 56.

38There are also a number of other references of activities that are linked with the Atrium Libertatis, but may not refer to its primary function. In some of the older commentaries, the Atrium Libertatis is noted as a repository for laws,43 but that may be a simple misunderstanding between depositing the laws for storage inside a building or affixing them on the outer walls of the building as was typically done in the Capitolium. The only source on that are Festus and Granius Licinianus. Festus writes that some of the laws on the Vestals that were fixed in the Atrium Libertatis were destroyed in a fire (Festus, Gloss. Lat., 241, 277 L.). Granius Licinianus writes how laws inscribed in bronze regarding land distribution were fixed on the Atrium Libertatis (Gran. Licin., 28, 10). In both of these cases, the wording refers not to the deposition of the laws in the building but rather to the common practice of publishing laws by affixing them to public buildings.

  • 44 . For example, Platner – Ashby 1929, p. 56 noting that Asinius Pollio founded there the first publi (...)
  • 45 . Tortorici 1991, p. 119; Keith – Houston 2006, p. 675.

39Another function commonly ascribed to the Atrium Libertatis was that of the library founded by Asinius Pollio. In this, the sources are not supportive of this claim because Suetonius only reports that Asinius Pollio restored the Atrium Libertatis, but nowhere in the sources is there a link between the library and the Atrium Libertatis.44 This interpretation continues to be widely supported,45 but again there is the issue that in every source on the matter, there is a link that Asinius Pollio renovated the Atrium Libertatis and that he established the first public library in Rome. Nowhere is there a reference that the Atrium Libertatis would have been that library. In the absence of this linkage, we find it more plausible that the Atrium Libertatis and the library are two different buildings.

40The fact is that the Atrium Libertatis was a sizable building and it was in exceptional circumstances put to different uses. For example, Cicero reports that during the trial of Milo, slaves were subjected to judicial torture in the Atrium Libertatis (Cic., Mil., 59), but this is an individual notion and no other source mentions such activity. Whether this was a one-time activity or a more recurring event is thus not known.

41Tacitus writes (Hist., 1, 31) how during the civil war of AD 69 some German troops were staying at the Atrium Libertatis. Servius, in his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, notes that atria may be very large buildings, such as the Atrium Libertatis and the Atria Licinia (Serv., Ad Aen., 1, 726).

  • 46 . CIL VI, 472 = ILS 3780 (contains just the text libertatis). CIL VI, 10025 is a fragmentary funera (...)

42There are some inscriptions referring to the Atrium Libertatis, but they do not give any useful information on either the location or the function of the building. They do demonstrate that the site was still recognized and restored in Late Antiquity.46

43From these Roman testimonies, we may conclude the following: 1) the Atrium Libertatis was the seat of the censors and housed their archives, staff and offices, 2) it was a building large enough that large numbers of people could be kept there, and 3) it was close enough to the Capitol and the Forum that it was considered to be a building upon which laws could be posted.

  • 47 . Castagnoli 1946, p. 276-291. He argues that because Domitian had abolished the census, no further (...)

44Castagnoli, in his early work on the Atrium Libertatis, argues that it was in fact an office building, situated somewhere between the forum and the Villa Publica. He evaluates the different notions, such as that it would have been located next to the Curia, that the Severan Forma Urbis has the inscription Libertatis in one of the exedras of the Basilica Ulpia, or that it would have been in the vicinity of the forum or the Forum Iulium. His conclusion is that the most probable location would have been the area north of the Forum Iulium, on the small saddle between the Capitolium and the Quirinalis, where the Servian walls ran. This saddle was demolished by the building of Trajan’s forum. The inclusion of the Greek and Latin libraries and the sacrarium for Liberty in Trajan’s forum may indicate how the functions previously associated with the Atrium Libertatis were transferred to the new forum.47

  • 48 . Purcell 1993, p. 125-155. On the historical record on the Tabularium site, see Mura Sommella 1994 (...)
  • 49 . Amici 1995–1996, p. 319 et passim. Her suggestion is supported by Kalas 2015, p. 153-157 but only (...)

45Purcell approached the issue through Cicero’s text regarding Caesar’s plans for his forum. He suggests that the substructures currently associated with the Tabularium were in fact the location of the Atrium Libertatis. The evidence presented for this alternative are by and large circumstantial and while they are not unreasonable, direct links between the now extant structures and the Atrium Libertatis are not to be found.48 In her article, Amici has suggested that it could be linked to the tufa platform found beneath the Church of SS. Luca e Martina, next to the Curia.49 However, this explanation would be in direct contradiction to the description of Cicero on the plans of Caesar discussed above.

  • 50 . Coarelli 2019, p. 115-133.

46In his most recent work, Coarelli has further elaborated Castagnoli’s thesis and reconfirms the conclusion that the Atrium Libertatis would have undergone several reconstructions, first by Pollio and then by Trajan.50 Thus, the site of the Atrium Libertatis would have stayed virtually the same, even though it would have been later incorporated into the structures of the Trajanic complex.

47To conclude, the Atrium Libertatis is the second great mystery of this kind: a large and important building that housed the censors and their archives. Its location remains unverified, but references continued to be made to it. The building continued to have an important function even as its counterpart, Villa Publica, vanishes. It served as a location for registering manumissions and bringing new citizens into the tribes and this function continues well into Late Antiquity. Even though the manumission itself could be performed anywhere, the Atrium Libertatis continues to enjoy a highly symbolic role in Roman topography as the place where freedmen were registered as citizens. In contrast to the highly public, ceremonial role of the Villa Publica, Atrium Libertatis remained far longer in name as a place of administration. In the attempts to locate it, the alternatives of either the Tabularium or the site of the Forum of Trajan are controversial, but of these the site at the Forum of Trajan may be more probable even though the identification of the text in the marble plan is not completely secure to merit complete certainty. However, as with the Villa Publica, pinpointing its exact location is an exercise in virtual archaeology.

The practicalities of the census and their evolution

  • 51 . Gargola 1991, p. 106, 363; Lo Cascio 2001; Hin 2008; Eder 2006. On the Late Republican census fig (...)

48In theory, every five years the censors organized the census where each individual adult male citizen presented the professio, a declaration of their personal circumstances and assets that was reinforced by an oath. Based on this information, the censors distributed citizens to tribes based on where they lived and to centuries (centuriae) according to wealth. They also drew up a list of the Senate and the equites. However, the scope of the census was not limited to taxation, but to the total standing of the citizen in the commonwealth. It encompassed 1) wealth both as a sign of rank and as taxable assets, 2) military capability and equipment, 3) voting rights and eligibility to stand for public office, and 4) family and dependents. However, there is controversy on what many of the central concepts, such as capita civium or qui arma ferre possunt, actually meant. During the Early Republic, it has been estimated that the number of people participating in the census, i.e. men of military age, was roughly over one hundred thousand, climbing to four hundred thousand by the pre-Social War Late Republic. With the expansion of citizenship after the Social War, these numbers grew to several millions. In the Res Gestae (8), Augustus gives three figures of over four million for his three censuses, but whether the Augustan censuses were similar to Republican is not known. However, as Hin has pointed out, who actually participated in the census and how its numerous aims were reconciled is still debated.51

49Though the initial purpose of the census was to enlist men for military service, it continued an equally important purpose of determining eligibility for the senatorial and equestrian ranks, which had wealth thresholds. However, this ceremonial and practical function underwent a crucial transformation during the Late Republic and Early Principate and questions remain regarding whether the census was localized not only in the municipalities but also in Rome itself.

  • 52 . Torelli 1982, p. 10, tab I.4. The dating of the relief is linked either to the consulship (122 BC (...)

50What did the census look like? In the so-called altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, also known as the census relief or the Santacroce relief (Fig. 3), dated to 122 or 115 BC, there is a depiction what would appear to be the professio, the part of the census where citizens would arrive at the censors to give their personal data and a list of their wealth, the codex accepti et expensi. The relief has four central figures, of which the two standing togati have been traditionally interpreted as citizens giving the data and swearing its accuracy, while the seated ones are the seated scribe or iurator, who marks the information in the tabulae censoriae and the censor himself, who has raised his arm to the citizen’s shoulder to demonstrate his power over him.52 What the relief shows is how sparsely the location of this official transaction has been furnished. There is no other furniture except for some chairs for officials. The writing is done on tablets held on the lap. It is not even possible to determine whether the ceremony takes place inside or outside.

Fig. 3 – The so-called altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, section, Louvre Ma 975 (LL 399). Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Source Wikimedia Commons/Jastrow 2007/Public Domain). 

Fig. 3 – The so-called altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, section, Louvre Ma 975 (LL 399). Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Source Wikimedia Commons/Jastrow 2007/Public Domain). 

Fig. 4 – Artist’s impression of the census in the Villa Publica (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen).

Fig. 4 – Artist’s impression of the census in the Villa Publica (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen).
  • 53 . See Torelli 1982, p. 5-25; Coarelli 1968 on the relief and its identification.
  • 54 . Maschek 2018. While Maschek’s reading demonstrates the issues of the traditional reading (and the (...)
  • 55 . Kuttner 1991.

51The relief is a very atypical one in that it depicts a historical scene where the action appears to move from the professio to the lustrum, the ritual purification of the army. There has been an extended discussion over the identification of the various participants in the professio. For example, within the debate between Torelli and Coarelli, while the identification of some of the figures in the relief is disputed, the main issue of what the professio was about is not at stake.53 More recently, Maschek has presented a radical reinterpretation of the whole relief, maintaining that it is in fact not a census but a deductio of a colony by Gaius Gracchus. As Maschek’s helpful compilation of the various interpretations of the relief demonstrates, there have been very many different ways of reading it and ascribing it to certain historical persons and events, from the most common suavetaurilia to a foundation of a new colony, the recruitment of the army either before or after Marius’ reforms and so forth.54 For the purpose of this inquiry, what is crucial is not the identification of the relief to Domitius or even the census, but that the relief illustrates an event of compiling a list of citizens by a Roman magistrate and how that was executed: by the reception of citizens individually to a team of magistrates and scribes. For example, Kuttner has suggested that a similar scene from a relief in Latium also represents a census.55

  • 56 . Gargola 1991, p. 108-110.
  • 57 . Cic., Leg., 3, 7; Hin 2008, p. 218-222.
  • 58 . See Liv. 39, 3, 4-6; 41, 8, 6-12; 41, 9, 9, on the phenomenon of Latins migrating to Rome. Some w (...)

52The expansion of citizenship during the last years of the Republic meant that whatever practical possibilities there had been to conduct a census in the limited space within the Villa Publica became illusory. The sheer number of people and the time and effort it would have taken for this massive travel to Rome meant that other possibilities were most likely explored, such as provincial census. A sign of this may be the emergence of laws relating to citizenship such as those preserved in the Tabula Heracleensis (discussed below), which mention that the declarations should be done locally, and the information sent to Rome within sixty days. Gargola suggests that there would have been other innovations such as assigning the duty to report in Rome to simply the heads of families.56 Within the lists compiled, there is also the categories of the non-male and non-Roman to consider. Slaves and freedmen were registered as part of the familia of the owner or patron. In what way the census recorded also women and orphans is not completely clear.57 Livy notes that members of the allied Latin communities were supposed to be registered in their own communities, but what the procedure regarding the peregrine population was is unknown.58

  • 59 . Hin 2008, p. 187-215.
  • 60 . On the administration of these lists, see Virlouvet 1995. Bur 2018, p. 75-76 suggests that there (...)

53How many individuals participated in the census and its primary purpose remains hotly debated. The numbers given in ancient sources are notoriously difficult to verify, but there are other issues that remain unclear. For instance, who was counted in the census figures: military age men, men able to bear arms, citizens or persons sui iuris? For the Republic, there are interesting comparisons, for instance that Polybios records 273,000 Romans in 225 BC, while the census of 234 BC has a tally of 270,713. This is a very neat comparison but belies the fact that we do not know who was included in which figure. Hin has argued that the three main motivations for holding a census are not mutually compatible. The census has been thought to have been meant: 1) to draw up lists for the levy of soldiers, 2) to establish who should pay taxes and how much, and 3) to determine those eligible to vote. However, these make up three distinct but overlapping groups. Beyond these, there was also the list of the recipients of the annona, which was restricted to Rome.59 Did this mean that there were four different lists? Of this, the issue of the list of annona recipients is perhaps the clearest, as it would necessarily reside there where the annona was distributed, for instance the Porticus Minucia.60 Otherwise, that there was a single list which would have included all of this information is in fact quite likely simply because of the space and expense that drafting separate lists would take.

  • 61 . Suet., Iul., 41: Recensum populi nec more nec loco solito, sed vicatim per dominos insularum egit (...)

54With regards to the problem of separate lists and their locations, one should also discuss the aims of Caesar’s recensus. Suetonius writes how Caesar re-established the census so that instead of the old way and place, the census would be done by vici, in the insulae. Based on the context, the aim was to reduce the number of people in grain distribution, so that instead of the nominal number of people the census would be based on the actual number of people living in the vici. However, it has been noted that this recensus was not the same thing as the census, as it was limited to Rome and sought to determine the recipients of frumentatio. We know that between 70/69 and 28 BC no lustrum was held, suggesting that Caesar’s recensus was an act meant for updating information, not a full replacement of the ceremonial census. Nicolet suggests that a separate list for the frumentatio would have been kept and updated in addition to the census records and it would have been that list that was the object of the arson at the Temple of Nymphs, near the Porticus Minucia, the site of the grain distribution.61

  • 62 . Depending on how many dies fasti there were available, this would have taken ten years. On the su (...)

55The idealized notion of the census as a solemn procedure where each citizen appears before the magistrate is hard to reconcile with the sheer volume of the citizenry by the Late Republic. If we imagine that each declaration and the accompanying oath took some 5-10 minutes, the logistics would be quite simply impossible for the two censors to receive the oaths personally. With five minutes for each citizen, in eight hours two censors would each take the declarations and oaths of 192 citizens. The four hundred thousand citizens of the Late Republic would have needed over two thousand days. However, should we in this imaginary calculation increase the number of scribes and remove the obligation of having censors present in every single operation, the calculations become much more manageable. To conclude the professio part of the census in 100 days would require just 40 scribes working simultaneously for the Late Republican citizenship count.62

  • 63 . Liv. 4, 8, 2-3; 4,24,5; Plut., Cat. Mai., 5 sq.; Val. Max., 2, 9; Dionys., Ant., 2, 62. See also (...)
  • 64 . Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Liv., 45, 15, 3-8; Dig., 1, 2, 2, 17; Suolahti 1963, p. 20-79.
  • 65 . Cornell 2000, especially p. 82-83. On the reforms of the census and censors and the rise of Senat (...)

56The changes taking place within the whole concept of the census may have been reflected in the status of the censors themselves. Initially, censorship was one of the major offices along with consulship and praetorship in that they had the major auspices and were selected by the centuriate assembly. In the Republican system the censor’s main duty was overseeing the census and in doing so to enforce the standards relating to the classes and inscribing and removing individuals from them. 63 The censors had other important tasks, they oversaw public slaves and public property in general, approving public contracts, overseeing public lands and taxation.64 The regimen morum was an extension of this power. However, it has recently been suggested that the prominence of the office of the censors is in fact a late fourth century phenomenon, linked with the way censors began to control membership in the Senate as it was opened to the best of citizens in the lex Ovinia. This may potentially have had an impact also on the prominence that the census was given and thus its physical locations during the Middle and Late Republic.65

  • 66 . On the Late Republican developments and the gap between censors of 86 and 70 BC, see Wiseman 1969 (...)
  • 67 . On the imperial power absorbing the role of the censors, see Ferrary 2001, p. 125-127, 130, 145.

57What should be noted is that the census and consequently the role of the censors was not static but undergoes significant changes from the central role they had in the Middle Republic to its temporary abandonment by Sulla, which included the abolition of the censorship, and Augustus’ census in 28 BC. As mentioned, there was no proper census or at least a lustrum taking place between 70/69 BC and 28 BC due to political strife and war, and we do not know whether the Augustan census was similar in scope or scale to the Republican. Augustus famously raised the prominence of the census, not only as a tool of governance but also a way of forming a connection with the Republican past, as is evident in the ceremonies he re-established such as the equestrian parades and the annual recognitio equitum. It began to lose importance by the second century AD, as sources for it disappear.66 At the same time, the role of the censors is transformed by the early Principate and it gradually becomes a historical relic whose powers are transferred to emperors.67 What remained one of the important duties of the censors was the marking of manumissions and hence the enrolment of new citizens.

58Censors were one of the central gatekeepers of the Republic, but what happens to them and the census should be seen as a reflection of the transformation of the Republic. They conducted the census and provided authoritative lists for military and administrative purposes. They upheld the Republican system and its internal order, maintaining the ranks of citizens and the upper orders with severitas. Their importance appears to peak during the Middle Republic, as they are central in the status competition dominating the time. Much like the disappearance of the Villa Publica, censorship begins to diminish in importance during the Principate, with few known censors taking an active role, censorial power passing to the emperors. After the relief possibly commissioned by Domitius Ahenobarbus and the possibly antiquarian depiction of Varro, the Villa Publica appears to fade from public discussion and the symbolic imaginary. The taking of citizens, the registration of freedmen into the tribes continues to take place, but whether censors still have a role in the action remains unclear.

Transformation of citizenship and the archival record

59The symbolic transformation of the notion of citizenship and the privileges and duties that came with it may be seen to be reflected in the changing role of the notion of liberty. In traditional Republican symbolism, the censors were the ones who made distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. Among the citizens they elevated were those who were sufficiently successful, and they censored those who had disgraced themselves. The liberty that they oversaw was the liberty of the free citizen in a free state. In the process of manumission and transformation of the slave into a citizen, the symbolism was equally powerful. The recognition of liberty and the marking of one’s name in the citizen lists took most likely place in the Atrium Libertatis; it was a place where individual freedom was finally recognized after manumission. How did the changes in the census, the conceptions of citizenship and the vast increase in the number of citizens contribute to the transfer of emphasis from the Villa Publica to the Atrium Libertatis?

  • 68 . Dig., 49, 15, 7, 1; Ando 2015b, p. 6-17; Steel 2018.

60A long continuity existed concerning the different notions of citizenship. Civitas meant not only citizenship, but also the citizen body and the city itself. The ambiguity held in itself a deep symbolic meaning, which for instance Ando sees in relation to jurisdiction. Thus, even though notions such as postliminium continued to be discussed far into Late Antiquity, the idea of losing one’s citizenship, freedom and rights when entering a foreign territory was rejected as absurd in legal discussions. As the jurist Proculus wrote, the empire consisted of peoples who were understood to be free as long as they respected one another and their maiestas. Thus, even the allies of Rome were considered free, even though they were subject to Rome’s superiority.68

  • 69 . The imposition of citizenship is present in accounts of the regal period, Cic., Rep., 2, 33; Liv. (...)
  • 70 . As demonstrated already by Sherwin-White 1973, p. 257. The same development has been noted in inn (...)
  • 71 . Humbert 2010.

61However, this conception of citizenship belies the fact that from the early Republic onwards there were significant changes regarding Roman citizenship and its desirability. Early on, Rome imposed citizenship on conquered enemies, whose communities were completely annexed. In many cases, when allied peoples were offered citizenship, it was actually refused.69 Only later on were grants of citizenship proposed to allied peoples, often as rewards for services in war, and were approved as pieces of legislation. During the Principate, the granting of citizenship was transformed into imperial beneficia, which were initially given to individuals, but gradually they begin to be petitioned for and granted to communities.70 This was in stark contrast to the heavily contested and variously gradated forms of citizenship rights that were offered and sometimes retracted, from civitas sine suffragio to the various Latin rights. Citizenship and the emotional connection to the community also began to appear as a bifurcated affair, such as when Cicero (Leg., 2, 5) wrote of the two homelands, meaning Rome and the city of one’s birth, but earlier he wrote how citizenship cannot be taken away, only abandoned when one abandons the community, since one cannot be a citizen of two citizen bodies (Caec., 99-100). In all of these notions, the idea of belonging, identity and rights were intermingled in curious ways. For instance, the concept of Junian Latins continues to puzzle researchers, as their legal identity remains unclear. On the other hand, manumissions done in the municipia appeared to produce citizens with the full citizen rights of these municipia.71

  • 72 . Sherwin-White 1973, p. 251-261 on the origins of this tendency during the Early Principate. Brunt (...)
  • 73 . On this, see most recently Besson 2020 with ample references to literature.

62The notion of citizenship began from the early Principate onwards in Rome itself revolve around freedmen, while outside Rome citizenship was granted increasingly to provincials. The grants of citizenship to allies and provincials, made only after careful consideration and debate during the Republic, became more and more common after the Social War, but most of those citizens resided outside the city of Rome. Writers of the Principate such as Tacitus (Ann., 3, 40) lamented how the grants of citizenship had become so common that the value of this gift had begun to diminish. This dilution of the granting of citizenship has at least from Sherwin-White onwards been interpreted as a transformation of the nature of citizenship from an exclusive privilege to an ubiquitous formality.72 This development would have then been culminated in the Constitutio Antoniniana of AD 212, which granted citizenship at least in theory to all inhabitants of the empire.73

  • 74 . On this, see Lobrano 2013.

63What this would imply is that the newly minted citizens formed their primary symbolic attachment to the municipium where they had been manumitted or admitted to citizenship. Would this then mean that the rituals and performative acts that would relate to being a part of the community were held at the community, the municipium? What is certain is the considerable variation between the notions of the individual, the community and the state and their development from the Republic to the Principate. What remains, however, is the idea of the Roman Empire as a community of municipalities.74

  • 75 . Lex Flavia municipalis ch. 21 in Gonzáles 1986; Gardner 2001.

64Thus, for instance, the Flavian municipal charter outlined how one could attain Roman citizenship through holding municipal magistracies, but in these cases it was presented as if the attainment of Roman citizenship was aspirational. Considering how these municipal charters were highly standardized and that it is very likely that their text originated from Rome itself, this view of citizenship was not coincidental.75

  • 76 . Culham 1989, p. 104, citing Dionys., Ant., 13,22,4 and Varro, Ling., 6,86 as evidence.
  • 77 . The function, operation and extent of the archival service in Rome remains unclear, see Posner 19 (...)
  • 78 . Woolf 2009, p. 62-63.

65In addition to this symbolic dimension and its role in the formation of identities, there is a distinctly practical side to the way that citizenship, census and their execution began to revolve around municipalities: the growth in numbers made the very act of keeping records cumbersome. This means that in order to understand the execution of the census, the highly disputed character of the archival service in Rome should be addressed. The storage of the census records is one of the most acute questions of public archives due to two factors, 1) the extent of the census data and 2) the importance of maintaining the public reliability of the census records. Culham has argued that the fact that census records were not archived demonstrates the fundamental difference between the Roman and modern notion of historical memory and archival record. She writes how the working records were kept at the Atrium Libertatis, but for older records people went to the homes of previous censors.76 Beyond the documents of individual magistrates stored at their homes, the reliability of the public record and the sheer logistics of storing data on tablets required considerable space, and Corbier and others have noted how prevalent the public posting of documents was.77 Others, such as Woolf, have argued that “archives were haphazard”, meaning that while Roman administration was bureaucratic in that it created documents, it does not appear to have made much use of the records it created afterwards.78 We would argue that the creation of archival records had definite functions, but those functions were not necessarily only administrative but equally ritual and symbolic. However, little suggests that archival records had such significance and role that would have necessitated retrieval after long periods of time. What is clear is that the archival records, either inside the archives or as documents posted on the walls of public buildings, had a role in maintaining the public reliability of documents, such as the records of citizenship granted.

66In the case of the census, the lists that were compiled were in fact put to use. When the census was performed, the officials would need to consult the results of the previous census. For instance, Livy (24, 18) mentions how after the disaster of Cannae, censors went through the lists of citizens, singling out those who were considered to have abandoned the state. As a result, two thousand citizens were expunged from their tribes and made aerarii, deprived of their political rights.

  • 79 . On the Anaglypha Traiani, see Torelli 1982, p. 89-118; Torelli 1999.

67The space demanded by citizenship records remains difficult to estimate. Should we start with a single tablet, one may begin to make some rough estimates on how much space these records would need. A wooden tablet could be fairly small, from the 15×10 cm size for a tablet used in private correspondence to the 50×30 cm or larger depicted in the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus or the Anaglypha Traiani.79 Consequently, a single writing tablet has space for something between twenty and sixty lines of text. If the estimate is based on the size of the writing tablet presented in the Anaglypha Traiani, c. half a metre tall and half as wide, this would give an estimated fifty lines of text. If each line represents a single person, a single male citizen or a single paterfamilias, this would lead to drastically different results.

68The space taken by one tablet was made larger by its frame, which was often 2-3 cm thick. From the known tablets, we may begin with the assumption that the census records could on average be 2.5 cm thick and 50×30 cm size, making one cubic metre fit roughly 240 tablets.

  • 80 . Dionys., Ant., 4, 15, 6; Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Gell., 4, 20; Tab. Heracl. l. 145-148: eorumque nom (...)
  • 81 . It is possible to make some further hypothetical elaborations on the space needed. For instance, (...)

69The crucial question is how much information was given about each individual? Based on the information given by the written sources and the Tabula Heracleensis, we can make some deductions. Dionysios of Halicarnassos maintains that the information required was names, including names of wives and children, ages, names of fathers, their tribe or city and the value of property. Cicero writes that one should record citizens, their ages, families, and slaves and other property, Gellius that they asked about family relations. All in all, registrable matters included personal details and various kinds of property.80 However, one may safely assume that the propertied class was numerically fairly small. Therefore, if one citizen is given on average one line in the census documents, that would amount to c. 50 citizens per tablet. The estimate that during the Republic there would have been between a hundred thousand to four hundred thousand citizens, this would have mean between two thousand and eight thousand tablets. Stacked very closely, this number of tablets would have taken from c. eight to 33 cubic metres of space. In the Principate, such records would take vastly more space due to the increase in the number of citizens. The approximately four million citizens at the time of Augustus would amount to c. 80,000 tablets and over three hundred cubic metres of tablets.81

  • 82 . De Ligt – Garnsey 2012; Mouritsen 2019.

70Of the practice of making lists of persons, we have some illuminating examples, such as the Herculaneum album (CIL X, 14031-l; AE, 1978, 119a-d; AE, 1992, 286a-d). It is a fragmentary list of names inscribed in marble, containing at least 1080 names by the latest estimate (Herculaneum had some five thousand inhabitants). Its purpose has been much debated, but there is a consensus emerging that it is not a census list, with i.a. Mouritsen maintaining that it would have contained a list of freedmen. However, it illustrates how there existed a practice in which municipalities would collect expansive lists and update them.82 The Herculaneum album was attached to the wall of a basilica, suggesting that the list had a clear publicity function, either as giving information to the public or to ensure by publicity the continuing reliability of that information. Information engraved in marble and posted to a public place was not easy to change or to forge later on.

71The method of the Herculaneum album was relatively easy to apply because Herculaneum was a small city. In Rome, using a similar method would have been much more difficult, but not impossible, should one record just names. We can take a rough estimate, using the figure of four hundred thousand as the conservative estimate for the number of inhabitants of the city of Rome in the Late Republic. If we say that out of those four hundred thousand, only a tenth are sui iuris, the rest being listed under dependents as children or slaves, or omitted from the list as peregrini, this would give 40,000 lines of text. For simplicity’s sake, estimating four columns of text per square metre and one cm per line, this gives us four hundred names per square metre. Using this rather low estimate, we will have just one hundred square metres of space to inscribe a simple list of citizens. Posted two metres high for legibility, such a list would need only 50 metres of wall space, something that both the size of the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis would be more than sufficient.

  • 83 . Sherwin-White 1973, p. 314-315; Crawford 1996, p. 388, discussing the earlier evidence for munici (...)
  • 84 . See Northwood 2008, p. 264 on other punishments mentioned in literary sources, ranging from scour (...)

72While in principle, during the Republic Roman citizens were registered in the census every five years, the reality of the census was much more sporadic. Gradually, this practice was transferred to the municipalities. Individual municipalities were given this task in the Late Republic, of which the first sign may be the Tabula Heracleensis. However, the census lists were not a comprehensive proof of citizenship, as otherwise the censors would not have been able to strike spurious claimants from the list. New citizens, such as former soldiers, would have documentary proof of their service and the citizenship they had gained.83 Participation in the census was mandatory and there were different ways of reinforcement. The only legal reference, Gaius (1, 160), mentions how those who evade the census lose both their liberty and their citizenship.84

73The transformation of the making and keeping of the population record from a very public performance, the census, that had a deep symbolic meaning both in the military and the Republican sense, into a closed door inscription of the new freedmen into citizen ranks took place rapidly and quietly. However, this transformation was perhaps a reflection of the change of the Republic from a closed system of exclusive citizenship into a more open system of overlapping status claims, a change that was hastened by the move towards a mainly voluntary, professional army. Behind it was also perhaps the expansion of citizenship from a mere few hundred thousand to several million. The amount of data that had to be recorded and stored grew so fast that the expansion of these records on a municipal level was almost the only option. The influx of freedmen and newly enfranchised citizens from the provinces made the Atrium Libertatis ever more important. The considerable anxiety that matters of citizenship and status generated have been amply demonstrated and what sources such as the Herculaneum album illustrate are the new ways that citizenship was performed, such as drafting lists and posting them publicly.

  • 85 . Cicero’s speeches Pro Archia and Pro Balbo are from this court, otherwise little is known of the (...)
  • 86 . Tab. Heracl., 28, ll. 142-158; Crawford 1996, p. 388-389; Nicolet 1991, p. 127-128. On the implic (...)

74There was considerable anxiety about citizenship and false claims thereof, leading to legislation such as the Lex Papia on foreigners (65 BC), which established a new quaestio, where those suspected of false citizenship could be charged.85 Within the Tabula Heracleensis, there were provisions for combining the results of the municipal and the Roman census, where the local census was executed first locally in the same manner as in Rome and the results were both sent to Rome and deposited in the local archives.86

Conclusions

75In theory at least, the censors would execute the census every five years in a process that would involve each citizen making a public declaration of their assets. However, this process had a symbolic dimension far beyond the mere act of counting, which involved both the legal and the performative notion of citizenship. Within the legal notion, there was the idea of measuring and establishing status and eligibility, not only that of voting rights or rank. It also legally determined the eligibility of standing in the elections for magistracies. In addition to rights, the census established legal duties equally, both in the form of taxes and military service. In this sense, the census straddled the line of the pomerium, from the demilitarized civic community to that of the military order beyond the pomerium.

76The performative side of the census consisted of the presentation of the worth of a man as a citizen and as a soldier, in a symbolic display of both arms and virtue. By taking part, coming to the line, one physically and symbolically became part of the citizen body. This was in one sense an act of submission as one was evaluated and controlled by the power of the censors, but equally a process of elevation, being admitted to the ranks of citizens and even to the higher orders.

  • 87 . Only Nicolet 1991, p. 123-147 has attempted to consider the symbolic implications of the census a (...)

77The operation of the census and the two locations of the Villa Publica and the Atrium Libertatis are not only functional but also highly symbolic processes in which the Republic and its virtues are presented and recreated. Despite the difference in rank, all citizens equally presented themselves in the professio, submitting themselves to the inquiry of the censorial power. The fact that the ceremony took place in a public location emphasized the openness and transparency of the act and through it, the participation of the citizens. Symbolically, the census could be interpreted as an estimation of the resources of the citizen body to operate and exercise power. In the census, the strength and success of its members were made public. The exercise also served in determining the persons who were able to lead and take responsibility in civil matters and the military power of the polity.87 We have outlined how the information could have been collected, how it could have been stored and how these processes would have formed an integral part of the symbolic dimension of the census.

78In conclusion, both the act of the census and the location that was reserved for it underlined its centrality in the Roman Republican tradition. The Villa Publica, its ostentatious magnificence and its scale placed it as the second pole of the symbolic civil-military axis between the Forum and the Campus Martius. It also made clear the linkage between rights and obligations in the Roman concept of citizenship. The duties of citizens arose from being part of the body of the state. In the same way, rights and privileges were highlighted as the real and symbolic power of the citizen. In this sense, the Villa Publica and the census combined the performative notions of citizenship and the legal notions of citizenship.

79However, this idea of the unitary state began to evolve into an idea of an empire and its composite communities. This meant that ideas such as the dual notion of citizenship and the spread of citizenship and related rights began to eat away the exclusivity of being a Roman citizen. It is hard to say how much Varro’s account of the Villa Publica contained a nostalgic, antiquarian notion of the census and the Villa Publica, but in any case, the disappearance of the whole building and the abandonment of the census as a public act at the end of the Republic are indicative of the transformation of the idea of citizenship. At the same time, the rise in the importance of the Atrium Libertatis signals how the inclusion of freedmen became a central concern in the Roman concept of citizenship.

80If there was no longer a need to have the ceremonial census in the Villa Publica and the levy of citizen armies had increasingly been supplanted by recruitment, would there any longer have been a need for the Villa Publica in the first place?

81With the expansion of citizenship and the gradual transformation of its nature from an exclusive duty and privilege to a complex system of status claims, the functioning of the census moved beyond the solemn, centralized ceremonies of the earlier Republican tradition. This meant that if the census was increasingly done on a municipal level or in the vici in the city of Rome, there was no longer a need for a vast complex such as the Villa Publica. The Atrium Libertatis, however, continues to serve as the locus of citizen records.

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Notes

1 The work is part of the project “Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition” (SpaceLaw.fi). This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 771874). The authors wish to thank the members of the SpaceLaw project for their comments and help, and Dr Heta Björklund, Ms Oona Raatikainen, Ms Mirkka Koskimäki and Mr Pyry Koskinen for their editorial assistance. The authors also wish to thank the editors of MEFRA and its anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism which has improved the article considerably, as well as other readers and commentators, equally at various events at universities of Helsinki, Edinburgh, Oxford and Yale, as well as Prof. Cristina Rosillo López for her insights on the final version. The term Roman Republicanism does not refer primarily to the period conventionally termed as the Roman Republic, but to Roman Republican thought, which continued well into the Principate and beyond. On the multifaceted implications of Roman Republicanism in ancient and modern thought, see i.a. Gelderen – Skinner 2002; Millar 2002; Hölkeskamp 2004; Flower 2010; Ando 2013.

2 On the historical mutability of conceptual interpretation of citizenship, see Crifò 2004; Ando 2015a.

3 Professio is described in Dionys., Ant., 4, 15, 6; Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Gell., 4, 20, 3; Tab. Heracl. ll. 145-148. In addition to the census, the term professio is also used in declaring the citizenship of children born or declaring candidacy in elections, see Schulz 1942; Natale 2005; Geraci 2001; Lo Cascio 1990; Sánchez-Moreno Ellart 2001.

4 The literature on the census is substantial, the main contributions are Mommsen 1887, p. 331-417; Pieri 1968; Brunt 1986; Nicolet 2000; Lo Cascio 2001; Hin 2008; Bur 2018, especially on the regimen morum. On the provincial census, see Bagnall – Frier 2006; Bérenger 2000; Christol 2009; Le Teuff 2012.

5 Sherwin-White 1973 and Brunt 1986 continue to be fundamental on Roman citizenship, but see now Lavan 2016.

6 For an overview of the Villa Publica, see Agache 1999.

7 On the Atrium Libertatis, see generally Coarelli 1993.

8 On the Varro passage, see most recently Brown 2019. De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 161, notes the functional and institutional connection between the two.

9 From the Republic, see i.a. Gros 1996; Torelli 2007; Davies 2017, p. 32-38. On the attempts at locating these spaces, using mostly Imperial sources, see Färber 2014; Gros 2001; Marchese 2007; Amoroso 2007; Coarelli 2019.

10 . On the discussion about the aerarium, see Tuori 2018.

11 . On the censors, the traditional definition has been Cicero’s idealizing text, Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7: Censoris populi aevitates, suboles, familias pecuniasque censento, urbista templa, vias, aquas, aerarium, vectigalia tuento populique partis in tribus discribunto, exin pecunias, aevitatis, ordinis partiunto, equitum peditumque prolem describunto, caelibes esse prohibento, mores populi regunto, probrum in senatu ne relinquonto. However, the relationship of this ideal with the historical record is questionable beyond a general outline, compare Livy 4, 8, 2-3. Kunkel – Wittmann 1996, 391; Suolahti 1963; Schmähling 1938.

12 . The actual occurrence of the census was less regular, at least based on the extant sources, see Brunt 1986, p. 13-14 and the table in Suolahti 1963. On the spatial dimension of the census, see most recently Gargola 2017, p. 105-110; Nicolet 1991, p. 124-126.

13 . Suet., Caes., 41; Tarpin 2001; Lo Cascio 1990.

14 . On the notions of imperial citizenship, see the discussion in Ando 2016.

15 . See, for example, Ando 2015b, p. 3-4. On the reflection of changes in ideas in the built environment during the Roman Republic, see for example Steinby 2012; Davies 2017. On the performativity of public space, see Russell 2016, p. 21; Hölkeskamp 2015.

16 . The main contributions are Castagnoli 1946; Tortorici 1991; Purcell 1993; Amici 1995-1996; Coarelli 2019, p. 115-133.

17 . The literature is extensive, see i.a. Hamilton 1955; Ooteghem 1966; Fuchs 1969; Gwyn Morgan 1973; Agache 1987.

18 . There is an extensive demographic discussion on the census, see Hin 2008 for an overview. For the reluctance to discuss spaces, see Northwood 2008, p. 257, 263 specifically noting how the locations of the procedure will be avoided in his work.

19 . Varro, Rust., 3, 2, 4: Et cum haec sit communis universi populi, illa solius tua; haec quo succedant e campo cives et reliqui homines, illa quo equae et asini; praeterea cum ad rem publicam administrandam haec sit utilis, ubi cohortes ad dilectum consuli adductae considant, ubi arma ostendant, ubi censores censu admittant populum (trans. Hooper – Ash, 1934).

20 . On the Ovile, in addition to Varro the relevant passages are Serv. Ecl., 1, 33; Liv. 26, 22, 11; Iuv., 6, 529; Platner – Ashby 1929, p. 373; Gatti 1999.

21 . Green 1997. On the villa as an agrarian symbol, see Brown 2019, p. 344.

22 . Crawford 1974, 429.2a. The dedication of the coin has prompted a considerable debate over the possible role of T. Didius as the restorer of the Villa Publica and the relationship between Capito and Didius. See Hamilton 1955; Fuchs 1969, p. 81-91; Gwyn Morgan 1973; Agache 1987, p. 211-234.

23 . De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 168.

24 . Initially there may have been a distinction where the curiate assembly which met at the Comitium would have been primarily responsible for civic legislation and the centuriate assembly, meeting at Campus Martius, for legislation having to do with war and foreign relations, but during the historical period these distinctions had become blurred. Gargola 2017, p. 132-139; Howarth 2006, p. 90-92.

25 . Compare, for example, Wirszubski 1950; Arena 2012; Balmaceda 2020.

26 . Agache 1999; Richardson 1992, p. 431; De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 171.

27 . This notion, suggested only by Cic., Mil., 73, is repeated in numerous works, such as Fantham 2009, p. 10. On the discussion, see Nicolet 1976, p. 41-51 (considering the reasons why the documents would have been there and the links with the changes administering frumentationes close by; contra Lo Cascio 1997, p. 8); Manacorda 1996; Coarelli 2019, p. 236-237.

28 . Pina Polo 2011, p. 78-80. The notion that the Villa Publica would have housed Roman triumphators before the day of the triumph is from Flavius Josephus, but the passage is fairly loosely interpretable and whether it talks about the Villa Publica is not at all certain. Joseph. BJ., 7, 5, 4 describes the triumph of Vespasian, but does not mention any specific buildings apart from the temple of Isis.

29 . The sources on the massacre, which are fairly unanimous, state that there were roughly four thousand prisoners who were murdered in the Villa Publica. Val. Max., 9, 2, 1: quattuor legiones contrariae partis fidem suam secutas in publica villa, quae in Martio campo erat, nequiquam fallacis dexterae misericordiam inplorantes obtruncari iussit. See also Ampel. 42, 3: reliquias adversariorum eorum, qui se dediderant, in villa publica trucidavit: qui diffugerant, in tabula proposuit iure permisso ut interficerentur. Similarly Flor., 2, 9, 24, that Sulla ordered 4,000 unarmed citizens who had surrendered to be killed in the Villa Publica. Strabo (5, 249) writes how the three or four thousand victims were Samnites, held at the Villa Publica for three days and then slaughtered. Strabo underlines Sulla’s subsequent proscriptions of the Samnites.

30 . Plut., Vit. Sull., 30, puts the number of victims at six thousand. Their massacre commenced at the same time as Sulla was speaking at the meeting of the Senate at the temple of Bellona.

31 . Cic., Att., 4, 16, 8: Iam in campo Martio saepta tributis comitiis marmorea sumus et tecta facturi eaque cingemus excelsa porticu ut mille passuum conficiatur. Simul adiungetur huic operi villa etiam publica (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1999, 341).

32 . Brown 2019, p. 347; Agache 1987, 227-231. She returns to the enigma of T. Didius and suggests that it was a Caesarian reference to the earlier restorer of the Villa Publica.

33 . On the Saepta, see Cic., Mil., 41; Ov., Fast., 1, 53; Gatti 1999; Borlenghi 2011, p. 87-103, suggesting that it was the heart of the whole Campus Martius.

34 . Borlenghi 2011, p. 96; Richardson Jr. 1992; Castagnoli 1984.

35 . Manacorda – Zanini 1989, p. 25-28; Carandini 2017, p. 514.

36 . We have extraordinarily little knowledge about the order in which legionaries would have been arranged for inspection. Even later sources such as Vegetius are silent on the arrangement of smaller units. See Goldsworthy 2003.

37 . These numbers are based on how modern troops would be assembled by extending a straightened arm to the next man’s shoulder.

38 . Estimates on crowd density and troop size are based on Neufert – Neufert 2000, p. 16-17.

39 . On the large variances by even modern measurements, see Hayne – Rumble – Mee 2006. The overall source sound power of a crowd as a function: LWA (crowd) = f(KE, KN, KT, KD). KE is individual voice effort, KN is total number of people, KT is synchronization of source and KD is orientation. The sound pressure in free-field situation would be LW = Lp + 20 log10 d + C, where the constant C = 8 for hemispherical source and d = 450 metres. Even though such calculations are speculative at best, for example a cheering crowd of 200 would still be produce ca. 50 dB within optimal conditions at 1000 metres. Concerning the audio landscape and sound studies around the Forum, see, for example Holter – Muth – Schweisnger 2019. Also, Muth – Schulze 2014.

40 . See, for example, De Caprariis 1991-1992, p. 170-172; Coarelli 1997, p. 182-3, 187-190, Borlenghi 2011, p. 92-97; Filippi 2015; Carandini 2017, p. 514.

41 . Cic., Att., 4, 16, 7-8: Itaque Caesaris amici, me dico et Oppium, dirumparis licet, <in> monumentum illud quod tu tollere laudibus solebas, ut forum laxaremus et usque ad atrium Libertatis explicaremus, contempsimus sescenties sestertium; cum privatis non poterat transigi minore pecunia (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1999, 341, with minor changes).

42 . Liv., 43, 16, 13: censores extemplo in atrium Libertatis escenderunt et ibi obsignatis tabellis publicis clausoque tabulario et dimissis servis publicis negarunt se prius quidquam publici negotii gesturos, quam iudicium populi de se factum esset (trans. Schlesinger 1959).

43 . Platner – Ashby 1929, p. 56.

44 . For example, Platner – Ashby 1929, p. 56 noting that Asinius Pollio founded there the first public library in Rome. The ancient text referred to is the fairly unclear Ov., Trist., 3, 1, 71-2: Nec me, quae doctis patuerunt prima libellis, atria Libertas tangere passa sua est. Suet., Aug., 29 reports that Asinius Pollio repaired the Atrium Libertatis on the advice of Augustus. Similarly, Plin., Nat. hist., 7, 115; 35, 10 and Isid. Orig., 6, 5 note that Pollio founded the library, but do not mention the Atrium Libertatis in this context.

45 . Tortorici 1991, p. 119; Keith – Houston 2006, p. 675.

46 . CIL VI, 472 = ILS 3780 (contains just the text libertatis). CIL VI, 10025 is a fragmentary funerary inscription, possibly fifth century, with post atrium Liber[tatis]. CIL VI, 1794 is an honorary inscription from the end of the fifth century, with fragmentary text in atrio Libert[tatis]). Based on this, and the mention of Secretarium Senatus in the same inscription, Kalas 2015, p. 153-157 maintains that the Atrium Libertatis would have been moved next to the Curia Iulia in Late Antiquity.

47 . Castagnoli 1946, p. 276-291. He argues that because Domitian had abolished the census, no further need would exist for the other functions.

48 . Purcell 1993, p. 125-155. On the historical record on the Tabularium site, see Mura Sommella 1994; Mazzei 2009; Tucci 2013-2014; Coarelli 2019, p. 25-41.

49 . Amici 1995–1996, p. 319 et passim. Her suggestion is supported by Kalas 2015, p. 153-157 but only for the location of Atrium Libertatis in Late Antiquity.

50 . Coarelli 2019, p. 115-133.

51 . Gargola 1991, p. 106, 363; Lo Cascio 2001; Hin 2008; Eder 2006. On the Late Republican census figures and the debates between “high-counters” and “low-counters,” see de Ligt 2007. Similar discussion are evident already in Brunt 1986, which includes fundamental issues such as whether all who were granted citizenship were included in the census. Bur 2017 argues that the Republican census and the ceremonial profession only involved the elite.

52 . Torelli 1982, p. 10, tab I.4. The dating of the relief is linked either to the consulship (122 BC) or the censorship (115 BC) of Domitius Ahenobarbus, mainly due to its location.

53 . See Torelli 1982, p. 5-25; Coarelli 1968 on the relief and its identification.

54 . Maschek 2018. While Maschek’s reading demonstrates the issues of the traditional reading (and the ambiquities of all possible readings), his alternative relies on a compounded hypothesis. While this kind of analysis may appear logical, the chain of assumptions is fairly long, joining numerous others which have sought to find a commissioner for the relief with a suitably naval history, with or without a censorship. Of the many recent interpretations, see also Kuttner 1993; Schmid 2007-2008 (linking the relief to Agrippa’s census); Lohmann 2009. Stilp 2011 is the most exhaustive of the analyses thus far. Recently, the earlier commonly shared theory of the reforms of Marius leading to an all-volunteer army composed mostly of proletarians has been disproven by Cadiou, who illustrates how draft continues with the rise of provincial recruitment and thus the need for a census for military purposes did not disappear overnight. See Cadiou 2018; Cadiou 2008, p. 1-3, 611-648.

55 . Kuttner 1991.

56 . Gargola 1991, p. 108-110.

57 . Cic., Leg., 3, 7; Hin 2008, p. 218-222.

58 . See Liv. 39, 3, 4-6; 41, 8, 6-12; 41, 9, 9, on the phenomenon of Latins migrating to Rome. Some would even register in the Roman census or use fictitious sales to slavery to get their children Roman citizenship. De Ligt 2007, p. 179-181.

59 . Hin 2008, p. 187-215.

60 . On the administration of these lists, see Virlouvet 1995. Bur 2018, p. 75-76 suggests that there would have been a separate list for all administrative purposes.

61 . Suet., Iul., 41: Recensum populi nec more nec loco solito, sed vicatim per dominos insularum egit atque ex viginti trecentisque milibus accipientium frumentum e publico ad centum quinquaginta retraxit. On Caesar’s recensus, see Nicolet 1976, p. 41-51; Lo Cascio 1997, p. 3-14 (who considers it to be a census); Lott 2004, p. 64-65. Both Lo Cascio 1997 and Nicolet 1991, p. 129, make parallels with the organization of registries in Roman Egypt.

62 . Depending on how many dies fasti there were available, this would have taken ten years. On the suspicions regarding the actuality of the census, see Bur 2017.

63 . Liv. 4, 8, 2-3; 4,24,5; Plut., Cat. Mai., 5 sq.; Val. Max., 2, 9; Dionys., Ant., 2, 62. See also the description by Valerius Messalla in Gell., 13, 15, 4. The office of censor was established in 443 BC to oversee the census and the lustrum. Both censors, one patrician and one plebeian, were required to be former consuls. The censors also had an important task in upholding the mos maiorum and maintaining moral standards with a severitas. Their main instrument was the nota censoria, an official rebuke of the behavior inappropriate for the standing of the upper classes. Kübler 1936; Gizewski 2006; Kaser 1940; Baltrusch 1989; El Beheiri 2012, p. 140-143; Bur 2018.

64 . Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Liv., 45, 15, 3-8; Dig., 1, 2, 2, 17; Suolahti 1963, p. 20-79.

65 . Cornell 2000, especially p. 82-83. On the reforms of the census and censors and the rise of Senatorial authority, see Humm 2005; Bernard 2018.

66 . On the Late Republican developments and the gap between censors of 86 and 70 BC, see Wiseman 1969; Astin 1985; Suolahti 1963, p. 457-515, 741. On the resurrection of the equestrian ceremonies, see Davenport 2019, p. 209.

67 . On the imperial power absorbing the role of the censors, see Ferrary 2001, p. 125-127, 130, 145.

68 . Dig., 49, 15, 7, 1; Ando 2015b, p. 6-17; Steel 2018.

69 . The imposition of citizenship is present in accounts of the regal period, Cic., Rep., 2, 33; Liv., 1, 33; 8, 13; 9, 43, 22-24. On Roman citizenship seen as punishment, see Liv., 9, 45, 6-8. Rejecting Roman citizenship was a recurring trend, Liv., 9, 43, 22-24; 23, 20, 2.

70 . As demonstrated already by Sherwin-White 1973, p. 257. The same development has been noted in innumerable studies at a local level, where individual grants precede local ones. Liv., 8, 17, 12: Romani facti Acerrani lege ab L. Papirio praetore lata; Enn., Ann., 1, 157 (Skutsch).

71 . Humbert 2010.

72 . Sherwin-White 1973, p. 251-261 on the origins of this tendency during the Early Principate. Brunt 1986, p. 100-130 on the disputes over census figures and their relationship with the realities on the ground. Based on mechanisms of enfranchisement and the demography of the provinces, Lavan 2016, has argued that the spread of citizenship was much less widespread than earlier thought.

73 . On this, see most recently Besson 2020 with ample references to literature.

74 . On this, see Lobrano 2013.

75 . Lex Flavia municipalis ch. 21 in Gonzáles 1986; Gardner 2001.

76 . Culham 1989, p. 104, citing Dionys., Ant., 13,22,4 and Varro, Ling., 6,86 as evidence.

77 . The function, operation and extent of the archival service in Rome remains unclear, see Posner 1972; Culham 1989; Moatti 1993, p. 63-104; Corbier 2006; Coarelli 2010; Moatti 2011 (summarizing the results of a long project) Coarelli 2019, p. 21-72. See also Haensch 1992, p. 210-219 for the provinces and Varvaro 2007 on the references to archives in legal writings.

78 . Woolf 2009, p. 62-63.

79 . On the Anaglypha Traiani, see Torelli 1982, p. 89-118; Torelli 1999.

80 . Dionys., Ant., 4, 15, 6; Cic., Leg., 3, 3, 7; Gell., 4, 20; Tab. Heracl. l. 145-148: eorumque nomina praenomina patres aut patronos tribus cognomina et quot annos quisque eorum habebit (Crawford 1996, p. 355-391). On the procedure, see Hin 2008, p. 215-216; Northwood 2008, p. 258. It is worth noting that most of our evidence is anecdotal.

81 . It is possible to make some further hypothetical elaborations on the space needed. For instance, if the tablets were stored on shelves, for example three meters high with 50/50% share for stored material and empty space, such an arrangement would theoretically take just 22 m2 of space for the late republican figures or 222 m2 for the Augustan figures. This would account only for the storage, not handling, of the documentation.

82 . De Ligt – Garnsey 2012; Mouritsen 2019.

83 . Sherwin-White 1973, p. 314-315; Crawford 1996, p. 388, discussing the earlier evidence for municipal census; Cic. Arch. 11: census non ius civitatis confirmat. The value of Cicero as an authority on this is debatable, because he is after all arguing for a client who had not registered. See Bérenger 2009 on the introduction of the provincial census and its impact at the end of the Republic, and Nicolet 2000, p. 202-208 on the changes apparent in the Tabula Heracleensis.

84 . See Northwood 2008, p. 264 on other punishments mentioned in literary sources, ranging from scourging to demotion. However, Cic., Att., 2, 1 appears to suggest that Atticus had asked Cicero to put his name on the census list.

85 . Cicero’s speeches Pro Archia and Pro Balbo are from this court, otherwise little is known of the law. Cic., Off., 3, 47 claims that the law would bar foreigners from living in Rome. Brunt 1986, p. 41-42.

86 . Tab. Heracl., 28, ll. 142-158; Crawford 1996, p. 388-389; Nicolet 1991, p. 127-128. On the implications of the Tabula Heracleensis, ranging from frumentationes and the impact of proscriptions, see Giovannini 2004.

87 . Only Nicolet 1991, p. 123-147 has attempted to consider the symbolic implications of the census and the archival records it produced.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1 – Denarius, 55 BC by P. Fonteius Capito, RRC 429.2.8, British Museum # 2002,0102.4351. Photo by British Museum, asset 630322001, (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefra/docannexe/image/13715/img-1.JPG
Fichier image/jpeg, 985k
Titre Fig. 2 – Hypothetical reconstruction of the Villa Publica and its location (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen and Kaius Tuori)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefra/docannexe/image/13715/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 482k
Titre Fig. 3 – The so-called altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, section, Louvre Ma 975 (LL 399). Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen (Source Wikimedia Commons/Jastrow 2007/Public Domain). 
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefra/docannexe/image/13715/img-3.jpg
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Titre Fig. 4 – Artist’s impression of the census in the Villa Publica (Illustration by Juhana Heikonen).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/mefra/docannexe/image/13715/img-4.jpg
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Kaius Tuori et Juhana Heikonen, « Spaces of Citizenship »Mélanges de l'École française de Rome - Antiquité, 134-2 | 2022, 335-360.

Référence électronique

Kaius Tuori et Juhana Heikonen, « Spaces of Citizenship »Mélanges de l'École française de Rome - Antiquité [En ligne], 134-2 | 2022, mis en ligne le 31 janvier 2023, consulté le 22 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mefra/13715 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/mefra.13715

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Auteurs

Kaius Tuori

University of Helsinki — kaius.tuori@helsinki.fi

Juhana Heikonen

University of Helsinki –  juhana.heikonen@gmail.com

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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