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Rome, Market places and merchants.

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

MARKETS AND MERCHANTS
In the great towns of the ancient world, besides the numerous shops that lined the street of their commercials area, there were the market places. One existed also in Pompeii; a simple one, very much like a North African “suk”. At least this is what we see in a pleasant fresco. In it there is a market stall, a fresh bread one, a high wooden platform built against the place’s enclosure. The barefoot baker sat there cross-legged. All around him were displayed his wares: golden loaves marked by the cut done to help the leavening, those cuts that also made easy to divide the bread in pieces. Nearby, on the right side of the merchant, there was a hamper of plaited palm leaves, a kind of basket absolutely similar to the modern ones found in Libya. It was full of some little ring-shaped cakes, crisp and tasty bites to crunch before the meals that looked very much like the modern Neapolitan salty ones called “taralli”. Some clients stood there waiting to be served, while the little son of one of them, with his arms wide open, implored his father to buy those “taralli” for him.
A shop, this one, of the baker, just a little larger than a niche, the space that was given to the merchants in those markets; one of those stand that the ancient times’ man was accustomed to see all along the markets’ enclosures. A normal place where the life of the town began its turmoil at the very early hours of the morning and pulsated frenetically until midday. A fixed market place.
Of course in the villages these didn’t exist. An open place of hardened soil was enough to establish a market held at the interval of nine days. It was there that, at the “nonae”, the artisans and the small farmers of the area convened. They brought with them the products of their work or of their orchards, a little crowd that came from the workshop or the farms as did the peasant of the “Moretum”, the little nice poem that for long time was attributed to Vergil. The would be buyers examined the wares displayed on the bare ground, discussed, haggled, and, at the end, for the next nine days, everybody went satisfied home.
Instead in the great town, not only there were large markets, with their fixed shops and their well known merchants to whom the clients could turn with full confidence, but many of them were real monuments. Monumental for instance was the Leptis Magna’s market, one of the most beautiful of its time, built at the beginning of the Empire, when this city was very rich and affluent. It enclosed a vast rectangular area and at its middle there were two pavilions, octagonal outside but with a round enclosure at their centre in which there were large windows-like openings that were the shops, and there, on the ample surface of their windowsill, the merchants displayed their wares. While the air resounded with the panegyric with which the merchants praised their offerings, their clients met, chatted and passed the time. Some of them, probably the habituées, spent part of the day crouching on a step of the pavilion and cutting over it a chessboard for some games with which to play in the portico’s shade. It was nearly always the tic-tac-toe game and tic-tac- toe chessboards are found on the steps and the curbs of all the Empire.
A splendid building was the Leptis Magna’s market. It had been offered to the town by a rich ship owner, Iddibal Caphada Aemilius ben Magon, and was dated to that Augustan period when the town was still flourishing and the economy was at its peak. Up to this moment the Romans had not yet meddled with the Phoenician Leptis’ harbour. Of course they were full of good intentions; they only wanted to “ameliorate” it; unluckily they didn’t know a thing about harbors. Their activities destroyed the mooring and the economy reflected it: the town crashed down.
To Leptis remained the glories of the time past: its theatre, the “calcidicus” and of course its market where one could find everything. A market with its special areas and special sectors. The more decorative was the fish’s one. At Leptis the fishmongers stalls, set aside the market entrance, were held by svelte marble dolphins and were so elegant that one could believe that they were the places were refined jewels would be displayed and not anchovies and sardines.
However everywhere fishmongers stalls were done in marble, because it was necessary to keep them well washed and clean and near them there always was the water necessary to do it. This is what we see also in Ostia where, on the back of the two marble stalls of the fishmonger’s shop, there is a large basin.
Of course today we find only the stable arrangements of those markets: the masonry shops the marble pavilions and the stone stalls, but probably in their enclosure there stood also some rickety stands or some staggering wooden banks with their charge of eggs, poultry and vegetables as they are represented in some Ostienses bas relief.
However, markets or no markets, the ancient towns were always full of places where people could fill their shopping bag: small stores, stalls, suks that were not limited to the sole market area. We find shops of this kind, the ones called “tabernae”, in the most crowded street of the ancient towns. Many of them selling bread, wine and vegetables line the sides of the Abbondanza street of Pompeii, shops large or small, with or without backroom. Some of them were modest and simple, but some other were very elegant and well decorated like the shop of Felix . On the Via dell’Abbondanza his sign still reads Felix Pomarius - Felix, the fruits merchant – and in his “taberna” triumph a magnificen stall ornated by Bacchic motives. The painting is now a little faded but, when it was excavated, its colors were still fresh and brilliant just as Felix’s clients had seen them the day before the fateful 24 August of the 79 A.D.. Then Felix ceased to exist, his shop was filled by ashes and lapilli. In the town there was no sound, no voices. There was no more shopping to do and the fruits laid there for so many centuries.
Biliography
Scientific popularization
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Cibi, cucine e triclini in L'alimentazione nel mondo antico. I Romani: etá imperiale, from Archeo, Rome 1987. pp. 70-140








































MARKETS AND MERCHANTS
In the great towns of the ancient world, besides the numerous shops that lined the street of their commercials area, there were the market places. One existed also in Pompeii; a simple one, very much like a North African “suk”. At least this is what we see in a pleasant fresco. In it there is a market stall, a fresh bread one, a high wooden platform built against the place’s enclosure. The barefoot baker sat there cross-legged. All around him were displayed his wares: golden loaves marked by the cut done to help the leavening, those cuts that also made easy to divide the bread in pieces. Nearby, on the right side of the merchant, there was a hamper of plaited palm leaves, a kind of basket absolutely similar to the modern ones found in Libya. It was full of some little ring-shaped cakes, crisp and tasty bites to crunch before the meals that looked very much like the modern Neapolitan salty ones called “taralli”. Some clients stood there waiting to be served, while the little son of one of them, with his arms wide open, implored his father to buy those “taralli” for him.
A shop, this one, of the baker, just a little larger than a niche, the space that was given to the merchants in those markets; one of those stand that the ancient times’ man was accustomed to see all along the markets’ enclosures. A normal place where the life of the town began its turmoil at the very early hours of the morning and pulsated frenetically until midday. A fixed market place.
Of course in the villages these didn’t exist. An open place of hardened soil was enough to establish a market held at the interval of nine days. It was there that, at the “nonae”, the artisans and the small farmers of the area convened. They brought with them the products of their work or of their orchards, a little crowd that came from the workshop or the farms as did the peasant of the “Moretum”, the little nice poem that for long time was attributed to Vergil. The would be buyers examined the wares displayed on the bare ground, discussed, haggled, and, at the end, for the next nine days, everybody went satisfied home.
Instead in the great town, not only there were large markets, with their fixed shops and their well known merchants to whom the clients could turn with full confidence, but many of them were real monuments. Monumental for instance was the Leptis Magna’s market, one of the most beautiful of its time, built at the beginning of the Empire, when this city was very rich and affluent. It enclosed a vast rectangular area and at its middle there were two pavilions, octagonal outside but with a round enclosure at their centre in which there were large windows-like openings that were the shops, and there, on the ample surface of their windowsill, the merchants displayed their wares. While the air resounded with the panegyric with which the merchants praised their offerings, their clients met, chatted and passed the time. Some of them, probably the habituées, spent part of the day crouching on a step of the pavilion and cutting over it a chessboard for some games with which to play in the portico’s shade. It was nearly always the tic-tac-toe game and tic-tac- toe chessboards are found on the steps and the curbs of all the Empire.
A splendid building was the Leptis Magna’s market. It had been offered to the town by a rich ship owner, Iddibal Caphada Aemilius ben Magon, and was dated to that Augustan period when the town was still flourishing and the economy was at its peak. Up to this moment the Romans had not yet meddled with the Phoenician Leptis’ harbour. Of course they were full of good intentions; they only wanted to “ameliorate” it; unluckily they didn’t know a thing about harbors. Their activities destroyed the mooring and the economy reflected it: the town crashed down.
To Leptis remained the glories of the time past: its theatre, the “calcidicus” and of course its market where one could find everything. A market with its special areas and special sectors. The more decorative was the fish’s one. At Leptis the fishmongers stalls, set aside the market entrance, were held by svelte marble dolphins and were so elegant that one could believe that they were the places were refined jewels would be displayed and not anchovies and sardines.
However everywhere fishmongers stalls were done in marble, because it was necessary to keep them well washed and clean and near them there always was the water necessary to do it. This is what we see also in Ostia where, on the back of the two marble stalls of the fishmonger’s shop, there is a large basin.
Of course today we find only the stable arrangements of those markets: the masonry shops the marble pavilions and the stone stalls, but probably in their enclosure there stood also some rickety stands or some staggering wooden banks with their charge of eggs, poultry and vegetables as they are represented in some Ostienses bas relief.
However, markets or no markets, the ancient towns were always full of places where people could fill their shopping bag: small stores, stalls, suks that were not limited to the sole market area. We find shops of this kind, the ones called “tabernae”, in the most crowded street of the ancient towns. Many of them selling bread, wine and vegetables line the sides of the Abbondanza street of Pompeii, shops large or small, with or without backroom. Some of them were modest and simple, but some other were very elegant and well decorated like the shop of Felix . On the Via dell’Abbondanza his sign still reads Felix Pomarius - Felix, the fruits merchant – and in his “taberna” triumph a magnificen stall ornated by Bacchic motives. The painting is now a little faded but, when it was excavated, its colors were still fresh and brilliant just as Felix’s clients had seen them the day before the fateful 24 August of the 79 A.D.. Then Felix ceased to exist, his shop was filled by ashes and lapilli. In the town there was no sound, no voices. There was no more shopping to do and the fruits laid there for so many centuries.


Biliography
Scientific popularization
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Cibi, cucine e triclini in L'alimentazione nel mondo antico. I Romani: etá imperiale, from Archeo, Rome 1987. pp. 70-140