Customer Reviews

Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration

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Olivia Robinson is a legal scholar. She's written several books and articles on legal and administrative aspects concerning the Roman period. This book came about, as Robinson relates, from an idea she got from her husband in 1974 when he was working for a Scottish political organization. Oddly, the book wasn't published until 1992, a long time for the amount of information contained in the book. Obviously, this work was not a priority in Robinson's life.

The subtitle of this book is "City Planning and Administration", a fairly broad title that encompasses a lot of material. For the most part, the book is boring and loaded with technical terms, as well as Latin phrases that are not defined. The first few chapters are a real chore to slog through. But soon, the book starts to warm up. Chapters containing such mundane items as bridges, latrines, prostitution and policing become fascinating despite undefined terms. How did Romans bury people or take care of public health? The answers (in part) can be found in this book. It always helps to know that Romans did have public latrines and urinals. The men had it easy, as urinals were cut jars in which one relieved himself. Women apparently had to carry about chamber pots or other devices if they felt the need to go. The urine was sold, mostly to people who used the discharge to clean togas (ring around the collar? No more!). If at home, the waste was collected in buckets and then dumped outside the city or flung into the streets. Other topics include building projects, grain supply, spectacles, sewers and streets, transportation and scads of other stuff. Even though I can't say I cared for the book too much, I did learn a good deal from Robinson.

As mentioned above, undefined terms cause serious problems here, making this a book off-limits to beginners. Other problems include a failure to present the city as it probably really was: a stinking cesspool of odor, crime and disease. These things are talked about to some extent, but not given the place they deserve. Robinson actually emphasizes that the abundance of water in the city, as well as baths, led to a squeaky clean population that was concerned about public health. Rome was a dirty, dangerous place, and it should be emphasized as such. Also, Robinson tends to credit most of the maintenance procedures to the aediles, magistrates that concerned themselves with city upkeep. In the later Empire, Robinson believes that these functions were subsumed into the office of the Urban Prefect. This may be true, but Robinson fails to provide a clear explanation of why this occurred.

I think a better account of this topic could be written. When studying any subject, there are good books as well as bad ones. While this book doesn't fall into the precipice completely, it could have been much, much better.