ROMAN CIVILIZATION WAS DISTINCTLY URBAN. NOT UNTIL THE Industrial Revolution would a comparable percentage of Europeans live in cities. As centers of political, economic, and, therefore, social life, cities offered Romans the greatest opportunities for making their fame and fortunes – or losing them. This book examines how Romans came into contact, interacted, and sought to present themselves in the most used, yet least studied, of urban spaces: the street.

A brief look at three examples illustrates the vividness of the street and its centrality to city life. In his third Satire, written around 110 ce, the poet Juvenal imagines his friend, Umbricius, leaving Rome for a new life in Cumae. Amid a litany of complaints about the caput mundi, Umbricius targets the street:

For Juvenal, the street was a place of chaotic passage, a space where all manner of goods and people moved through the city in tight quarters and where those possessed of above-average means had ample opportunity to rise above the rank and file.