The Roman Insulae (Apartment Houses)

[@rockoutshowdown]

here i am again thinking about the Roman Empire. fabulous

[@CuteCatWantsPat]

Been looking a while for a video as detailed as this. Thank you for making this!❤

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

You're welcome!

[@Basauri.48970]

5:28 There were several words in Ancient Rome to designate _tabernae_ that served food and wine. The generic, all encompassing, Greco-Roman term was _thermopolium (pl. _thermopolia)_ which roughly meant 'place where hot foods are sold', with _thermos_ being Greek for hot. However there were also some eating and drinking establishments known as _popina/ae_ , which literary sources associate to debauchery, violence and vice. No virtuous Roman would ever be seen in one of them. They were frequented by the lower classes (slaves, freedmen, assasins, thieves, foreigners...) and there was often (illegal) gambling inside, most commonly in the form of dice games. Sex workers were also always around, even though _popinae_ didn't have any private rooms (they'd ply their trade there, then take the customer somewhere else) . To confound matters more, there were also _caupona/e_ . These were the equivalent of inns, with food and wine at the bottom and rooms on the floor above for guests. However some _cauponae_ didn't have rooms, just the dining area. Maybe they had them once and no longer did. Don't have a clear explanation for that. I guess overtime some denominations changed and others remained, as with the years establishments morphed into something different. And then there's _hospitia/e_ and _stabula/e_ , which had some differences but also served food and wine. But I have to go now and nobody is going to read this anyway 😅

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

No, it was interesting. I think a separate video on these establishments would be a good idea, along with a revision of this one. Thanks!

[@Artasim]

Hello sir! Very interesting it is! Are you a scientist? If I may ask where can I find more about ancient Rome and Greece? I mean authors or researches

[@Pingu_chicky]

Very informative and enjoyed a lot. Pls make more vdos.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

I'm writing scripts now. Between work and research, well, I need more hours in a day.

[@urupanther]

Thank you the video! Very interesting.

[@Dusty-y6b]

Great history lesson. Thanks!

[@MatthewTurner-fp2kb]

I'm from Australia. Iv travelled europe and been to north Italy. Iv been thinking about the roman empire for a whole week now, every night.

[@michaelmcgovern3769]

They were called insulae because each building was freestanding, with street space around all sides, just like an island.

[@JohnChambers-p5k]

Yeah.... yeah we kinda gathered ..

[@shawtylrg]

@@JohnChambers-p5kyeah I was gonna say that’s the first thing mentioned

[@kelsowins]

Thanks for this video! I am writing a book based between 47-62 AD in Rome and am gathering information about the insulae. I would particularly like to know more about individual apartment layouts. I have heard they may have comprised only 2 rooms, but I've had trouble finding out how the rooms were used. Also, were any apartment larger than that? Did any include kitchens of any kind (even if they did not have fires/ovens or actually cook)? Anyway, I found your video informative and will add the details I learned to my research.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Like today, the number of rooms and size would have differed depending on "marketed" tenant (that is, ones on the topmost floors were intended for the poorest, and ones on the second floor (in American terms) or first floor (British terms) were intended for the wealthier types). Because of the lack of elevators, none of the insulae were designated for those of a certain level of wealth (the wealthy had no inclination to trudge up and down stairs to a 6th floor apartment). You could consult a study by August Mau _Pompeii: Its Life and Art_ (1899) or one by Johannes Overbeck _Pompeji in seinen Gebäuden, Alterthümern und Kunstwerken für Kunst- und Alterthumsfreunde_ (1855), both of which you can find and download from the Internet Archive---though of course both are a bit outdated by this point. If you do some searching on the Internet archive, you can doubtless find more. You can also probably find more recent articles on Academia.edu

[@kelsowins]

@@historywaitsfornoone2784 Thanks for that reply! I will check into the references you listed.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

@@kelsowins Sorry to take so long to get back to you; sometimes time flies.

[@attivas2621]

After the introduction you have a picture there with the floor plans. Witch book has these floor plans, or where can I find them?

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

I'm not entirely sure. I've had many of these pictures for years and years, as all these videos started as lectures in my ancient civ. classes. I found that one on the web.

[@gailcurl8663]

Witch?? It's WHICH!!

[@Gackt_1234]

Can you tell me how the interior of the top floor apartments looked like in ancient insular. I mean the ones where the poorest freedmen lived in. Did they have bedroom,living room etc.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Good question, but I have never seen any floor plans or discussion of these attic rooms in the literature.

[@KimNTennessee]

Enjoyed the information greatly. I did mute it and read close captions because the music was distracting. You are entertaining enough without it IMO. Looking forward to searching more of your videos.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

In future videos I'll be limiting the music to just the introductory and conclusory credits. Finding the right music that went with the video that wasn't claimed under copyright was the biggest pain in the .....neck.

[@Felix-so8ez]

Great, as always

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Thanks again!

[@damionkeeling3103]

It's difficult to work out the floor plans at a glance but as they're numbered how about mentioning what some of the rooms are and also how many people would have lived in each apartment.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

The problem stems from my sources. But that's a great suggestion for a revised video.

[@jaymothman]

How did they get in? Were there rental agreements? Would there be squatters who would movie in when someone died ?

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

That's a good question. I'll take that up in the revision.

[@LordDirus007]

Probably some kind of Leasing agreement and a Squatter would probably be beat up and thrown out. I believe they had local court systems.

[@muscledavis5434]

Yes it was basically a lot like today: private businessmen buying/building the houses and owning them, taking rent from the inhabitants. And just like today, there were some who actually cared for the houses and others who only wanted the money and thought of nothing else, creating desastrous living conditions and deadly incidents (like a building collapsing because it's not being maintained in ANY way). Empires come and go, but no one escaped the landlord!

[@catalyst772]

Romans invented property rights, so there would be inheritance

[@declangallagher1448]

Bros been teaching longer than the Internet has been around. Gosh dang he olde

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Yep, I am.

[@nigelmansfield3011]

Just like modern Naples - or maybe better said that Naples looks like nearby Pompeii

[@Kededian]

Very interesting, thank you!

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@RobertMcCartney-oq9jz]

It hadn’t occurred to me that using the stairs at night would be difficult because there was no artificial light

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Well, they had oil lamps, but oil to burn was expensive. Building owners wouldn't install them in stairwells---too expensive, and a huge risk of fire. On moonlit nights it probably wasn't too bad, assuming those stairwells had some sort of opening for light to shine in (some did, some did not), but on moonless or cloudy nights, pitch dark. And on stormy nights, well....

[@LalinDissanayaka]

Wow new channel

[@iDracula2208]

Compared to how the Barbarians of Northern Europe were living , these apartments were gold.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

quite true.

[@PC-Phobic-Jean-Rene]

Interesting. --- I knew about wealthier tenants occupying lower floors of Insulae, thus having easier access to water, and why that mentioned reversal of today: no elevators and the fire danger! --- For those who did not even have the necessity-pot in their cramp-quarters, and may have also been elderly or disabled, _what a hardship,_ income-consigned to _higher-floors!_ --- Even for a fit person, having to descend cold-dark stairs, lamp in hand, multiple-flights both ways _in middle of the night!_ --- Well, another thing to be thankful for in our modern age! I wondered about _glass._ Must have been hard, and or _cold_ in winter! --- _No central heating!_ --- Burr.

[@sustaingainz7856]

Did they use stone for foundation work?

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Good question, I'm not entirely certain. I believe so, but I can't swear to it.

[@scarlett9050]

All I could think about was living on the 5th floor and having even a basic routine stomach bug that causes vomiting and/or diarrhea. Sounds like Hell.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

It was!

[@MrElis420]

I think Tacitus was lucky he never lived in one lol

[@richardfirsten2364]

I appreciate your efforts to educate viewers on sort of housing that the majority of Romans lived in in Ancient Rome, but I must tell you that I get very annoyed when the presenter fails to know his/her facts correctly and, if dealing with a foreign subject, checking out with those in the know about how to correctly pronounced names. You, I have to say, failed on these two points: some of your "facts" and some of your pronunciations. (1) You correctly pronounced 'insula' and the plural 'insulae', but you failed in pronouncing 'domus'. You assumed it's a masculine noun, but it isn't; it's actually feminine. Moreover, its plural is irregular: 'domus' is singular, and 'domūs' is plural. The macron over the u in the plural noun implies that the vowel should be held a bit longer than in the singular noun. In short, there is no 'domi' as you assumed would be the plural of 'domus'. And even if there were, the final vowel would be pronounced 'ee' (doh-mee), not 'eye' (doh-meye). (2) Next, I'd like to point out that nowadays, educated people don't use the terms 'BC' and 'AD' anymore when discussing a year. Now we say 'BCE' (before the Common Era) and 'CE' (in the Common Era). This is to leave religion out of dealing with years. (3) As for 'taberna', you're right in saying that the word simply meant 'shop' to the Ancient Romans, but you neglected to mention that the shops which sold food and drink were called 'popinae'. You'll sometimes hear them referred to as 'thermopolia', but that's a misconception. 'Thermopolium' was used for a very short period of time by the Romans, and most Romans wouldn't have understood what this meant. The common word was 'popina' (the plural being 'popinae'). (4) Another point: Those tenants who lived on the upper floors of an insula used chamber pots to do their business, and these were emptied in the most unsanitary, unhygienic of ways, namely out the window. I don't even want to imagine how the streets of Ancient Rome must have smelled. Please make sure in any future videos you create that you've thoroughly checked out your facts with experts and any pronunciations foreign to you. It's such a shame to come across a video on KZbin with an interesting subject and then have it turned into something mediocre at best because of a lack of professional preparation before the video is made. As an Ancient Roman scholar might have said to you, "Debes pudere."

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Yes, I don't know how I made the domus mistake. I know how to correctly pronounce the names. I've tried using the BCE and CE in classes, but it simply confuses students who are used to the old ways, so I stopped trying to change the world. Its a personal preference on my part. I'm not a Latinist, but I am a historian, though my specialty is not Roman architecture. I have to rely upon my sources.

[@mcrae9999]

I know he's trying to be helpful and try to advise on "mistakes," but richardfirsten2364 comes across as rude. I, and many others, thought the video was very informative, and I thought it was very well put together. I appreciate your work.

[@cristhianramirez6939]

🚨 A redditor breached containment, i repeat, a redditor breached containment! 🚨

[@fotisvon9943]

Wow, living in rome sounds awful! Thank you!

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Compared to living in a modern industrialized city, most places in the past would be pretty awful, more like visiting a developing country that hasn't really even been touched by any kind of development, no power, no air conditioning, no phone service, folk "medicine", more like visiting some isolated tribe in Borneo or the Amazon rain forest. I would love to visit---as long as I couldn't possibly be harmed or come down with some disease or illness, but I would never want to live there, not even as a very wealthy Roman.

[@dsteele27]

Somehow my comment and yours from today have completely disappeared

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

I didn't touch it.

[@Colin-Fenix]

Sorry, didn’t like or subscribe because the graphics are poor and the presentation boring and slow!

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Sorry.

[@Colin-Fenix]

@@historywaitsfornoone2784 - Feedback is feedback. I get tired of the environment, especially on YT where everyone is a winner, no one tells people the truth... Like when every baby is the moooost beautiful. They aren't! Sometimes we just have to shout out to the crowd that the emperor is naked. The graphics could be much better and the narration more direct and to the point.

[@mcrae9999]

Wow. Tough crowd. Picky af.

[@larryandrews1676]

You take too long to et to the point.

[@historywaitsfornoone2784]

Sorry.

[@gailcurl8663]

Most Narraters Do!!