The Medianum and the Roman Apartment

THE MEANING OF THE WORDS domus, insula, and cenaculum has been debated as often as Roman house or population of Rome has been discussed. The debate has always been particularly heated when it has turned to figures for population of Rome. In Regionaries we have information that, presumably around A.D. 312-315, Rome had 44,850 insulae and 1781 domus (the Breviarium gives 46,602 and 1790, respectively). It is of greatest importance to know precisely what insula means in this case. Any estimate of population of Rome must start by solving this problem, though uncertainties are plentiful even with this difficulty put aside. I propose to approach problem from a different direction: by studying word medianum, I hope to demonstrate with greater clarity what a cenaculum was and consequently help determine meaning of insula. Many interpretations of word insula have been given over years: an apartment, any inhabitable room, a taberna, a floor in an house, a hearth or fireplace. G. Calza gives a list of interpretations and interpreters in Bollettino Comunale.1 In same article he takes von Gerkan to task for contending as recently as 1940 that insula, used in contrast to domus, must mean not a whole building, but an apartment.2 Lately J. E. Packer has stated that the word (insula) would appear to mean only a large dwelling in which smaller units are rented out. Accordingly, an insula meant either a large building covering an entire block or only a small part of another structure. The term was used rather with a legalistic than an architectural connotation., Packer's view seems in main to agree with generally accepted meaning apartment block.' Ancient sources give some simple facts. Digesta 19.2.30, for example, says: Qui insulam triginta conduxerat, singula coenacula ita locavit, ut quadraginta ex omnibus colligerentur. ... This proves that an insula can be divided into cenacula. CIL 6.29791: in his praedis/insula Sertoriana/ bolo esse Aur. Cyriacetis/filie meae cinacula numero VI tabernas/numero

Apartment · Architectural engineering · Civil engineering · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Studies and Legal History · Engineering · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome

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