This chapter is concerned with Roman religion outside Rome - with how far the deities, practices and rules of the religion of the city of Rome came to be extended to the communities of the empire as a whole. The Romans never seem to have had a methodical policy either of imposing their own religion on the peoples they conquered or of accumulating defeated gods in their own capital city. All the same, a complicated relationship grew up between the religion of Rome and the religions of Italy and the provinces. This chapter explores the development and character of that relationship. First (10.1), the particular influence of an archaic religious law, that of the sanctuary of Diana on the Aventine (1.5), is traced from the early Latin League to later coloniae in the provinces; 10.2 is concerned again with Roman colonies, both in Italy and overseas, and with the extent of their borrowing from Rome; 10.3 illustrates two religious aspects of Roman conquest abroad - the development of a cult of the goddess ‘Roma’ in the provinces, and Roman assimilation of the gods of their conquered enemies; 10.4 explores how far priests of the city of Rome claimed authority (or were influential as models of priestly behaviour) outside Rome itself; 10.5 and 10.6 collect some of the best evidence of provincial reactions to the presence of Rome and Roman rulers in the provinces, East and West.

See further: Vol. 1, ch. 7.

The rules of Diana on the Aventine

According to Roman tradition, the temple of Diana on the Aventine was founded by King Servius Tullius (see 1.5d and 1.7a) as a religious centre for the Latin League. The rules established for this sanctuary, regulating for example sacrificial practice and establishing the right of asylum (the right of fugitives to escape arrest), were explicitly extended to other sanctuaries in the Roman empire. It is very likely that other Roman institutions were similarly taken as models in founding Roman colonies in Italy and further afield (see 10.2).

Diana on the Aventine was identified - possibly from the time of the foundation of the temple - with Artemis of Ephesus. It is far from clear what exactly this claim amounted to; but the two cults certainly had features in common - both, for example, had the right of asylum.

This chapter is concerned with divination and prophecy: that is, with the ways in which humans ascertained the will of gods and with the ways in which the gods were believed to make known the future. Divination was central in Roman politics and in the traditional religion of the Roman state. So, for example, before engagement in battle or before any meeting of an assembly, the ‘auspices’ were taken - in other words, the heavens were observed for any signs (such as the particular pattern of a flight of birds) that the gods gave their assent, or otherwise, to the project in hand. But there were many other aspects of divination: some of these (such as astrology) involved specific foretelling of the future; some (such as dream interpretation) were a private, rather than public, affair; some could even be practised as a weapon against the current political order of the state - as when casting an emperor's horoscope foretold his imminent death. The practitioners of divination were as varied as its functions. These ranged from the senior magistrates (who observed the heavens before an assembly) and the state priests (such as the augures who advised the magistrates on heavenly signs) to the potentially dangerous astrologers and soothsayers, periodically expelled from the city of Rome (11.7).

The chapter starts with the official divination of the city of Rome: Roman myths about the activity of early diviners (7.1), procedures for the taking of auspices before an election (7.2), the interpretation of'prodigies’ (7.3) and of the entrails of sacrificial animals (7.4), and the role of the so-called ‘Sibylline Books', a collection of written oracles kept in Rome (7.5). The second part of the chapter deals with some of the wider aspects of divination and prophecy in Rome and its empire: from private consultation of oracles (7.6) to magic (7.7), astrology (7.8) and dream interpretation (7.9).

See further: R. Bloch (1963) 43-157; Dumezil (1970) 594-610; Vernant (1974); Liebeschuetz (1979) 7-29*; North (1990a)*; Dupont (1992) 181-7.

Some early prophets

The myths of early Rome include several stories of great seers or prophets, endowed with sometimes miraculous power and enormous religious authority in their own right.

On 29 September 57 B.C. the pontiflcal College met in Rome to decide the fate of Cicero's house. Cicero's savage repression of the conspiracy of Catiline in 63 B.C. (a dastardly revolutionary plot, or a storm in a tea-cup, depending on your point of view) had rebounded on him. Publius Clodius Pulcher, his personal and political enemy, had taken advantage of Cicero's illegal execution of Roman Citizens among the conspirators without even the semblance of a trial; and in 58 B.C. - with his old enemy clearly in mind - had passed a law condemning to exile anyone who had failed to adopt the proper legal procedures in putting a Citizen to death. Cicero was forced to leave the city, while Clodius promptly celebrated his victory with the destruction of Cicero's house and by consecrating on part of its site a shrine to the goddess Liberty, Libertas (a devastatingly loaded, or intentionally irritating, choice of deity, no doubt — for it was the principles of libertas that Cicero was charged with violating). But, in the switchback politics of the 50s, the tables soon turned once more. By 57 Cicero had been recalled, and the Senate, faced with the problem of his property, referred to the pontifices the question of whether or not the consecration of the site had been valid; whether or not, in other words, Cicero could have his land back. After hearing representatives from both sides, the College decided that, as the consecration had been carried out without the authorization of the Roman people (and so was invalid), the site could be returned to Cicero. The senate confirmed the decision — and Cicero set about re-building.

What sets this incident apart from any of the religious events we have touched on in earlier chapters is the survival of the Speech that Cicero delivered to the pontifices on the occasion of the hearing. We do not, in other words, come to this piece of priestly business through the formal record of problem and decision, in the few sentences (at most) that Livy would normally choose to allot to such matters; we do not meet it as part of history, business done and decided. Cicero's Speech (even though altered or embellished, no doubt, after delivery for written circulation) takes us right into the uncertain process of religious decision making, into the heart of the contest.

The official state calendar was a central institution of Roman religion, and it was regulated throughout Roman history by the pontifices, one of the major colleges of priests. The sequence of religious festivals defined in the calendar created the basic rhythm of the Roman year. In some respects similar to the modern western calendar (in which the religious festivals of Christmas and Easter are also turning-points in the secular year), the Roman calendar organized the use of time, including the timing of public and secular business, through religion.

Calendars inscribed on stone or painted on walls were publicly displayed in Rome itself and in other towns. As we shall see in this chapter (and attempt to decode), they presented a vast amount of information in a highly schematic form. For the historian of religion, they not only indicate the dates of major rituals; but they also provide comments on the content and interpretation of those rituals - as well as indications (when compared over time) of the additions and changes to the sequence of festivals.

Besides the official, Roman state calendar, other calendars regulated the business and religious activities of particular local communities, army units or religious associations. These often drew on the official calendar, selecting some of its major festivals but adding notices and other information or rituals particularly relevant to the group concerned. They are important illustrations of local variations in religious practice.

This chapter starts from an explanation of the basic principles of the Roman calendar (3.1) and a reconstruction of the overall layout of the earliest surviving calendar from Italy (3.2). In 3.3 four versions of the month of April, drawn from different calendars, are compared - showing variations over time and in relation to the function of the calendar; while 3.4 and 3.5 are two calendars with very specific emphases - the calendar of a group of priests of the imperial cult, and of a unit of the Roman army. Finally, two calendars of the second half of the fourth century A.D. offer two contrasting images: 3.6, the development of a Christian calendar at Rome, focused on the commemoration of martyrs; 3.7 a slightly later calendar from Italy, still focused on (mainly local) traditional celebrations.

Roman religion changed fundamentally in the fourth Century A.D. The city of Rome itself ceased to be the primary residence of the emperor or the main centre of government from the late third Century A.D. The military threats posed by ‘barbarians’ on the northern frontiers of the Rhine and Danube impelled emperors to spend more of their time in the north: Trier in Germany, Sirmium in Serbia and Milan in northern Italy all developed as imperial centres. No emperor lived in Rome after the early fourth Century A.D.; indeed after the reign of Constantine (306-337) there were only two imperial visits to the city in the course of the fourth Century. A major factor in Rome's changing role was the division of the empire in A.D. 286 into two halves — east and west. Each half was the primary responsibility of one Augustus’ aided (from A.D. 293) by a junior ‘Caesar'. The east also had its own imperial centres (Nicomedia in north-west Asia Minor and Syrian Antioch; then Constantinople founded by Constantine in A.D. 330). This division of responsibility - which was partly a tactical, military response to external threats to the security of the empire, but also became the basis for a whole new politics of imperial rule - persisted to the end of our period, in the early fifth Century, and beyond; even though from time to time one Augustus’ (like Constantine) proved able to control the whole empire and resembled once more an emperor of the old type. In the eyes of some Rome was still the grand old imperial capital and life went on much as usual; for others, no doubt, it looked more like a ‘heritage city', a tourist ghost-town. But even if the image of Rome, as cultural capital, would remain indelibly imprinted on the empire, it was increasingly displaced from the centre of the political and military stage, occupying a marginal position even in the western half of the empire. The history of Roman religion in the fourth Century can be seen in part as a response to this displacement of Rome.

The upholders of traditional Roman religion at this period were also faced with a new threat. Christians ceased to be systematically harried by the imperial authorities and became instead the recipients of imperial favour.

This chapter sets religion into the fabric of urban life in the first three centuries A.D. - both the official cults of the State and the unofficial cults that we have so far viewed (in chapter 5) largely through the hostile eyes of members of the Roman elite. We shall explore in particular the proliferation of religious choices that had started already in the Republic, but which came even more strongly to characterize the religious world of the city of Rome during the empire: from the great civic cults and festivals, through private or local associations worshipping State gods (such as Aesculapius and Hygieia), through those ‘foreign’ cults that remained strongly linked to particular ethnic groups in Rome (the Palmyrenes or Jews, for example), to cults (of Isis, Mithras, or Christianity) that were purely elective - entered, that is, not by virtue of race or social position, but through individual choice, with no qualification for their adherents (at least in theory) other than personal religious commitment.

The city of imperial Rome was vast, with a population that may at times have approached one million people. (In Europe, even by the end of the seventeenth Century A.D., only London, Paris and Constantinople had populations over 400,000.) The population was also highly diverse, socially, culturally and ethnically. One way of picturing the sharp stratification of Roman society is on the model of a triangle: at the apex was the emperor, with his family and the 600 or so Senators (plus their families) - the highest echelon of the elite, and also the principal holders of religious office in the official System; the next level of social Status was the much broader equestrian order, numbering some thousands; below them came the far greater number of ordinary Roman Citizens, men and women who had little active political role under the empire; below them (and no doubt just as numerous) free non-citizens and slaves. But such a model does not recognize all kinds of other differences that served to distinguish different groups of the population of the city, whether Roman Citizens or non-citizens - notably differences of ethnic and cultural origin.

Ritual solemnity, formal processions, prayers, sacrifice. All these had an important part to play in Roman religious festivals. But so also (just as in our own culture) did less solemn activities: theatrical performances, racing, gift-giving, eating and drinking. Roman festivals were, in fact, strikingly diverse. Some were part of the regular cycle of celebrations prescribed in the Roman calendar (see chap. 3); others (although taking place on specific dates, at regular intervals) were never included in that formal calendar of festivals; some were public affairs, involving widespread popular participation; others took place privately, with no ‘official’ ceremonial; some had an origin lost in the earliest history of the city; others were ‘invented’ in much more recent, well-documented times. There was no one type of Roman religious celebration.

This chapter concentrates on the festivals that took place in the city of Rome itself: starting from major celebrations of the official religious calendar (5.1-4), and the contradictory images of conservatism and innovation in those celebrations (5.5), it moves on to the ceremonies of'oriental’ deities (5.6), to the religious ceremonial of the games (5.7) and the triumph (5.8). These specifically Roman celebrations were, however, just one small part of the religious rituals of the Roman empire as a whole and they were not systematically exported to (or imposed on) conquered provincial communities. Roman soldiers and some Roman citizens resident in the provinces would probably have observed the major religious festivals of the capital with some sacrifice or celebration (note, for example, the religious observances of the Roman coloniae - 10.2; or of army units - 3.5). But generally a visitor to a provincial town in Greece or Gaul would not have found the festivals of the city of Rome reproduced on provincial territory; instead a varied range of local ritual customs were practised even under Roman political control.

See further: for brief discussion of all major traditional festivals, Warde Fowler (1899); Scullard (1981)*; for full citation of ancient sources for each regular festival, Degrassi (1963); for Roman celebrations outside Rome, Vol. 1, 320-39.

This chapter examines the physical context of Roman religious activity. It aims to show that temples, altars, sacred precincts and groves were more than just a ‘backdrop’ to religious ceremony, but were themselves (in their layout, design, decoration) an important part of religious experience, bearers of religious meaning. To put it at its most simple, a different context meant a different religious experience. The chapter starts with the physical context of traditional Roman civic cult (4.1-5), comparing this with the temples of the cult of Mithras (4.6). It then looks at the wider ‘religious geography of the city of Rome (4.7-8), as well as sanctuary sites in Italian towns and countryside (4.9-11). Finally, after the ‘private’ religious space of the home (4.12) and tomb (4.13), it considers Jewish synagogues (4.14) and Christian churches (4.15).

The Roman temple-building

In its simplest form a Roman temple-building (aedes) was a ‘house’ for a statue of a deity. It was not primarily a centre for a congregation or a place of worship. Most ritual associated with the temple (particularly animal sacrifice) took place in the open air - often around an altar, which stood outside the building itself. The aedes (at least in the case of the smaller temples of the city of Rome) may normally have been closed and inaccessible to the public.

See further: Stambaugh (1978)* and I.M. Barton (1989)*. For the distinction between an aedes and a templum, see 4.4.

a The temple ofPortunus at Rome

The small temple of Portunus (a god connected with the harbour) was founded in the fourth or third century B.C. Its present appearance dates to the late second or first century B.C. (with considerable later restorations, including conversion into a church in the ninth century A.D.). In antiquity it would have looked much less austere than this photograph suggests - with a complete coating of white stucco, as well as a decorative frieze in stucco (showing candelabra and festoons).

See further: on the temple of Portunus (once wrongly identified as the temple of Fortuna Virilis), Vol. 1, Map 1 no. 22; Fiechter (1906), Coarelli (1980) 320-2; Colini and Buzzetti (1986); on other forms of Roman templebuildings, and differences between traditional Italic (Etruscan) temples and their Greek equivalents, Kahler (1970); Boethius (1978) 35-64, 156-78*; Castagnoli (1984); Stambaugh (1988) 215-18*.

Roman religion continued under the empire to be a key set of practices which permitted reflections and debates on Roman identity. In part diese reflections picked up earlier preoccupations. Roman religion, as we have seen with the building of temples at Rome, had always been closely linked with the city of Rome and its boundaries. In part the reflections respond to new political imperatives. Under the first emperor, Augustus, the restructuring of a number of religious institutions resulted in changes within Rome, and, more widely, in the empire. It is these that we explore in this chapter, focussing at the same time on the new social and political regime of the end of the first Century B.C., when Rome returned to the government of an autocracy: a monarchy in all but name. The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. had been followed by a series of civil wars in which the supporters of Caesar first defeated the party of his murderers (led by Brutus and Cassius), then turned on each other. Finally in 31 B.C. Octavian (Caesars nephew and adoptive son) defeated his former ally Antony at the battle of Actium and secured what they had all been fighting for - control of Rome and, with it, the Mediterranean world. The reign of Octavian (under the title of Augustus’ that he used from 27 B.C.) was a crucial political turning point in Rome's history. Although it would later be remembered by some as the reign that witnessed the birth of Jesus (son of God, prophet or common criminal — as different people would see him), for most Romans it was the period when Rome reverted to one man rule. Most of the political institutions of the Republic remained intact (the Senate continued to meet and to be of crucial importance; the old republican offices — consul, praetor and so on — were still keenly sought); Augustus’ own watchword was ‘restoration’ not ‘revolution'; but all the same there could be no doubt that Rome was now controlled by the emperor. How then did Augustus’ new deal impact on the traditional religion of Rome?

The importance of the religion of place during this period is illustrated by an episode from Livy's History, written in the early 20s B.C.

This chapter deals with various aspects of the relationship between individuals and the gods. The first three sections are concerned with the most powerful members of Roman society, and with the gradual evolution of the idea that rulers did, or should, enjoy particularly close relations with divinities (9.1) - some even being worshipped as gods themselves (9.2-3). Such an idea was in many ways incompatible with the tradition of Roman republicanism which placed much emphasis on the rotation of power between the great families and on the avoidance of pre-eminent power for any one man. The later sections deal more with the ordinary man or woman in the imperial period: with their conceptions of the place of supernatural beings in human experience (9.4-5), and their ideas of death and the consequences of death (9.6).

See further: Vol. 1, 140-9, 206-10.

Late republican dynasts

In the last period of the Republic, religion provided one of the fields in which Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey, Antony and Octavian/Augustus fought out their conflicts, each claiming to have more reliable access to divine support than did their rivals. Some believed that there had been precedent for such divine associations in the career of Scipio Africanus (236-184/3 B.C. - the conqueror of Hannibal), who was said to have paraded his special relationship with Jupiter.

See further: Vol. 1, 84-7, 140-9; Bayet (1955); Gallini (1970); Weinstock (1971); Champeaux (1982-7) n.215-91.

Scipio Africanus

It is impossible to be sure whether the associations of Scipio with Jupiter (and with Alexander the Great) claimed in the following passage were contemporary with Scipio or later inventions. Their resemblance to the divine associations of such men as Pompey and Caesar has led to the suspicion that they were invented in the first century B.C., to serve as precedents for what was happening then. On the other hand, it is possible that in this, as in other respects, the events of the late third century B.C. anticipated some of the features of the fall of the Republic (see Vol. 1, 86). Scipio may himself have created the impression of having a special relationship with gods, and/or such stories may have originated in contemporary abuse of him - implying that he was seeking unacceptable power through his special connections with the divine.

This final chapter concentrates on a series of specifically self-conscious critiques of Roman religion. They cover more than six hundred years, from the second century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. and are written both by Romans and by outside observers. The piety of the Romans, claimed by the Romans and denied by a Greek contemporary (13.1), became the subject of philosophical debate in the first century B.C. (13.2 and 3), while some religious practices could also be the victim of Roman satire (13.4). The issue of the relationship between religion and philosophy recurs when the emperor Marcus Aurelius expressed his personal views of the role of the gods in relation to his Stoic philosophy (13.5). Christianity added a new element to the debates. Tertullian (writing at the very end of the second century A.D.) denied that the Roman empire was due to Roman piety (13.6). From the fourth century we quote a traditionalist writer describing Rome as a pagan city, with no mention of Christianity and its monuments (13.7), followed (13.8) by a Christian poet, Prudentius, arguing that Christianity had already in the late fourth century A.D. supplanted the traditional cults. Augustine, writing a generation later, also rejected the old gods of Rome, but asserted the profound theological difference between the earthly city and the heavenly city of god (13.9).

For other passages of commentary and critique on Roman religion, see especially: 2.4c, 2.7e and 9.6a (Lucretius’ philosophical critique); 1.1a, 12.6a (Varro's treatise on Human and Divine Antiquities); 9.5d (Seneca's treatise on ‘superstition); 2.Id, 2.10c, 8.10a (Minucius Felix's Christian critique of Roman religion).

See further: Wardman (1982) 52-62* (a review of late republican ‘perspectives’).

Roman piety?

Roman success (particularly in foreign conquest) was commonly ascribed - not only by the Romans themselves, but also by some of those they conquered - to their scrupulous piety towards the gods. Though there was room for debate on how ‘sincere’ that piety was.

See further: Vol. 1, 73-4; Brunt (1978); Harris (1979) 118-25, 166-75.

The restructuring of the religious System of Rome under Augustus introduced our account of Roman religion in the imperial period, from Augustus to Constantine (A.D. 306-337). In the next three chapters we focus on particular themes over these three centuries: the construction and transgression of religious boundaries; the development of official religion in Rome itself, and the proliferation of alternatives to those traditional cults; the role of religion outside the capital in the relations between Rome and the rest of the empire. The final chapter will turn briefly to the period from Constantine onwards, examining the religious transformations of the fourth Century during the reigns of the first Christian emperors.

In each of these chapters the role of the city of Rome as the metropolis of a vast empire will be a crucial factor in understanding the history of Roman religion. In this chapter we shall show how the Roman elite defined 'proper’ and ‘improper’ religious activity (as part of the process of defining their own position in the State), and how they took legal Steps to defend the Roman system against real or imaginary enemies of religion; but we shall also see how the scope of these definitions and actions changed over time, extending a preoccupation with Rome in particular in the late Republic and early first Century A.D. to concern for the whole empire. Chapter 6 focusses explicitly on the religious life of the city of Rome, continuing the theme of the earlier chapters of this book; but at the same time it examines many of the new religions with their roots in more distant parts of the empire, that flourished in the capital over this period (from the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus or Mithras to Judaism and Christianity). Chapter 7 returns to the empire at large, to trace Rome's impact on the religious life of the provinces.

Our aim is to investigate the history of imperial religion over the period as a whole. Many histories of Roman religion effectively stop with Augustus himself, as if from that point on (in Rome at least) the religious concepts and institutions of the imperial period were largely unchanging and without particular interest. It is assumed that the civic cults of the Greek world remained important throughout the imperial period, vital in the life of their cities.

Throughout Roman history, Roman religion was polytheistic: numerous deities were worshipped. Modern scholars, like the Romans themselves, may speculate on the origins of the very earliest of these gods, on how the polytheistic system began, or on what might have preceded it (see chap. 1). But this speculation should not obscure two clear and important facts: first, that there was already a complex system of polytheism as far back as we can trace the city of Rome; second, that at every period of (pagan) Roman history the Romans invented or imported new deities - while, at the same time, neglecting or even forgetting others.

This chapter starts from the most familiar image of Roman deities - the (super-) human form and character of the major gods and goddesses (2.1); but it moves on to consider other types of divinity within traditional Roman cult (2.2; 2.3) and Roman debates and disagreements on the character of the gods (2.4), taking Vesta as a case-study of the variety of interpretations that could surround a single deity (2.5). The second part of the chapter is concerned with change and innovation. It looks at the different ways new deities were introduced to Rome (2.6), and in particular at the case of one eastern deity- Magna Mater (Cybele) (2.7); and it examines ideas surrounding the ‘deification’ of outstanding mortals (2.8). The final sections focus on Rome's incorporation of ‘barbarian’ deities from the western half of the empire (2.9) and different forms of monotheism in the Roman world (2.10).

Gods in human form

The standard modern image of Roman deities is as superhuman men and women. Endowed with life-like attributes, motivations and passions, they intervene (for good or ill) in the world of mortals - while also playing their part in a range of colourful myths and legends (mostly borrowed or adapted from the rich repertory of Greek mythology). This is a crude picture of the character and activities of Roman gods and goddesses. It is not ‘wrong'; but, as we shall see, it is only one facet of the picture that the ancient evidence presents.

The Interpretation of change

The most profound transformation of relations between the Romans and the rest of the Mediterranean world took place between the middle of the third and the middle of the second Century B.C. - even though that was not the period in which the Roman Empire grew fastest in terms of conquest and territorial control. In 241 B.C., at the end of the first Punic War with Carthage, Roman overseas expansion had only just begun, with the addition of Sicily to their established rule over southern Italy. As victors in the long sea-war against the Carthaginians, they had just established themselves as the major force in the western Mediterranean; but they had shown little or no interest in the Hellenistic kingdoms that dominated the Eastern world of the time and had even found the greatest difficulty in the 270s B.C. in beating off the attacks of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (in northern Greece), whose invading armies came very close to Rome itself. Meanwhile in the West, the north of what we today call Italy was under the independent control of many different tribes, who had many years of independence and resistance before they too came under Roman control; and the Romans had not yet even established a foothold in Spain, Gaul or North Africa.

A hundred years later the Situation had become radically different: the Romans had, whether through deliberate planning or through a series of opportunities and accidents, established extensive, if informal, control over much of the Mediterranean world, though they had proved reluctant to acquire overseas territory under their direct control. The growth of Roman power cannot therefore be assessed by counting new provinces; even so the fact is that the military strength of Rome's major rivals was destroyed in a series of wars between 218 and 187 B.C. and that from those years onwards a steady flow of embassies from all the kingdoms and cities of the Mediterranean world brought their problems and conflicts to the Senate at Rome for arbitration and resolution. The authority of the Romans was established: they had no need of permanent garrisons or administrative mechanisms; the fear of potential Roman armed Intervention was enough to sustain their influence and to make sure that no undesirable rival powerstructures had any chance to establish themselves.

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I investigate the diet and health of the mass of Rome's inhabitants. This is not a subject that has roused much interest among historians. The provenance of the foods that poured into the city of Rome, the ‘decline’ of Italian agriculture and the rise of provincial production, the growth of state intervention in the food supply of Rome, the public distribution system (frumentatio), its birth, development and periodic breakdown, its organization and politics – all these issues have been fully investigated and debated. But the discussion has more or less petered out at Rome's ports, warehouses, distribution points and rubbish dumps (notably, the mountain of broken oil-containers that is Monte Testaccio). The plebs frumentaria, once it has received its (unmilled) grain, has faded from view; while the group or groups of non-recipients have never come into focus. My object in this paper is to take the matter of the food supply of Rome into the area of food consumption, concentrating on ordinary Romans.

But who were the ordinary Romans of Rome? It is an integral part of my argument that the social structure of the population of Rome is essential background to any study of the nutritional status of its residents. Most Romans, most of the 750,000–1,000,000 residents of the city, were poor, but there were different levels of poverty.