Ludwig Friedländer

Ludwig Friedländer

Ludwig Heinrich Friedländer (C.E.1824 – 1909), German classical philologist.

Studies on the habits and customs of the Romans:

First lines

• Until the fire set by Nero, Rome was not a beautiful city in the modern sense of the word. After it had been burned by the Gauls, it was rebuilt without a pre-established plan, and as if by chance. The neighborhoods were irregular; the narrow, winding streets; the tall houses, mostly leaning against each other, and until the times of the Pyrrhic War (^[sic] eighty four years before the Christian era) the roofs of the wooden ones, contributed to making it poorer , the darker the appearance, and the city remained more or less so in the following centuries. At the court of Philip of Macedonia, one hundred and seventy-four years before the birth of Christ, the party opposed to the Romans mocked the mean appearance of the capital of Italy.

Quotes:

• Rome never had grandiose views such as Antioch and Alexandria, with their long, straight and wide streets, cut at right angles. Furthermore, several peculiarities of Roman domestic architecture must have brought ^[sic] to the architectural effect of the streets. Such were the frequent deviations of several houses from the straight line, the different heights of the various floors of the houses, the irregularity of the windows particularly in the upper floors, and finally the frequency of recesses and projections in the houses, which made the the section of the road surface. (vol. I, The city of Rome, pp. 14-15)
• However, despite all the defects of its streets and its position, Rome was a city that had no equal, and ^[sic] it produced a great impression due to the immense crowds that continually came there, coming from all parts of the world; for the motion, for the life that continually stirred there; for the quantity and splendor of its public establishments and ^[sic], and finally for the endless extension of the city. The gaze of anyone who had then climbed to the top of the Capitoline Hill would have been almost lost in a forest of monumental buildings, palaces, monuments of every kind, which stretched out beneath his feet, occupying, several miles away, hills and valleys. Where at present a deserted region extends towards the Alban mountains, populated by ruins, ravaged by the Maremma fever , there was at that time a plain that was not at all unhealthy, entirely cultivated, crossed by roads which teemed with people. The city continually expanded in the fields, in the surrounding towns, and its suburbs gave way to new and stupendous villas, to temples, to monuments, whose roofs and marble domes shone in the sun, among the luxuriant greenery of the woods and of the gardens. (vol. I, The city of Rome, pp. 15-16)
• The [at table] service at Augustus was very simple, three to six portals at most; among Tiberius, who wanted to lead everyone to frugality and savings with his example, he was barely decent; on the other hand Titus Flavius ​​Vespasian, economical and good farmer in every other way, kept a splendid table with the aim of favoring the sellers of edible objects. Pertinax called for moderation at the imperial banquets, in which Commodus had madly lavished treasures. It seems that the custom generally observed at large banquets in Rome of treating guests differently according to the diversity of their order and condition was not practiced at the imperial table. At the very least, it appears that Hadrian in order to obviate any possible abuse of his cooks, sometimes had food brought from the other tables, not excluding the last ones. (vol. I, The court, p. 98)
• An anecdote reported by Dio proves what treatments Domitian's guests were exposed to. One day he invited the most distinguished personalities of the senate and the order of knights to lunch; the rooms were decorated in black, the servants dressed in black, almost like ghosts; the food was served in black vessels, as was customary during funeral banquets; next to each guest there was a tablet with each person's name written on it, and next to it stood a lit candelabra, like in tombs. After having tortured his guests in this way, so much so that they all returned home with the fear of receiving the death sentence at any moment, they instead found precious gifts from the emperor. (vol. I, The court, p. 100)

Bibliography:

• Ludovico Friedlaender, Studii around the habits and customs of the Romans in the first two centuries of the common era, translation from the German by Augusto Di Cossilla, vol. I, Establishment Tip.-Lib. F. Manini publishing company, Milan, C.E.1874.