Subure (which one writes also Suburre ) is the name of a poor and populeux district of the ancient Rome, located at the north of the Forum between the Viminal and the Esquilin, which extended to the foot and on the slopes from Viminal and the Quirinal and skirted the imperial Forums.

The district of Subure was in the prolongation of the Argiletum (or Argilète sees) - perpendicular to the Via Sacra ( crowned Voie ) -, the most animated street city with its booksellers, moving towards North, to lead towards these popular quarters of Subure, one of the most sordid hollows of Rome and one of most famous of all the Antiquité.

It was a district of bad reputation, where however was born and was high Jules César in a rather modest house, as we learns it Suétone.

Popular quarters

Subure was a dirty and noisy district, where the greatest concentration of insulae of the city was found. The poor placed themselves there or rather piled up there in too high buildings, made with goes-quickly, which often, collapsed or took fire; therefore the bottom of the Forum of Auguste, which was his neighbor nearest, was equipped with a partition wall 30 height meters intended to protect it from this danger.

A bad reputation

It was certainly the most known district of Rome, its fame coming to a very large extent from its bad reputation due to the venal love which was practiced there and which, a time, attracted the Poète S elegiac. The prostitutes, of bottoms stages which there officiated, sold their charms doubtful or soiled to the poor or with the rich person who wanted encanailler. The Bordel S opened there at the standard time, i.e. per ninth hour.

It was, with Vélabre and the Transtevere, one of the hot districts of Rome. Subure is, neither more nor less, the district more malfamé of Rome. It is there that one found the greatest number of prostitutes, brigands and slaves in escape. The night walker risked his life there, the poor one and the slaves at low prices found there all the joys and the comforts which they sought.

The teenagers in search for pleasures flow there, because the prostitutes are less expensive and more accessible there. Many a submemmium of last categories is available there: they are small cells without windows which are closed using a curtain and where, according to Martial ( Marcus Valerius Martialis ), of the girls and of the naked boys wait, in the stink and the filth, of the prospect customers realizing only two ace.

It is in this district of Subure that the empress Messaline came to appease, thorough by its more bad instincts, its irresistible desire for enjoying the pleasure of the directions, giving to the world the example of the most shameless disordered states, if one believes of it the portrait which of it Th draws up. - F. Debray in its History of the prostitution and the vice among all people of the sphere, since the antiquity most moved back until our days, published in Paris in 1879:

“has Rome the brothels were joined together in the populeux district of Suburre, and it is in one of these houses, in a cell on the door of which was registered the name Lycisca , which the woman of the imbecile emperor Claude was going to be offered to the public lubricity, finding insipid the embraces of his/her lovers ordinary, although they were not often selected with a great delicacy.

As sanguinary as she was discharged, it is especially under this wretched character of courtesan of bottom stages that Messaline remained celebrates, thanks to the features whose Juvénal so precisely overpowered it. How much however fell under the dagger a cheap slave to his orders, the ones to have pushed back its advances, the others to have answered too much there! She escaped from the Palatin, with the favor of darkness, a wig fair dissimulating her black hair, the centres retained by a gold lattice and followed by a slave, her accomplice, épiant the passers by in the streets leading to the low districts of Rome. She arrived finally at the district of Suburre, crossed the door of a brothel attended by the dregs of the rabble and was locked up quivering in the cell of alleged Lycisca”. (See the complete text on the site gallica of the B.N.F)

At the time of the Plays, the prostitutes do not hesitate to try there the easy Romans as well as the winners present, who necessarily had, to go to the Forum, to cross its sinuous, narrow and malfamées streets.

In Subure, it was not rare to see criminals renting prostitutes at low prices or even women and girls who exhibent their body with an only aim of surviving. As in Vélabre, in the south of the Forum, it was impossible to avoid this market of the flourishing sex.

The festival of the horse

The festival of the horse in October (October 15th) proceeded there. With this occasion, there was a horse-race, the gaining horse was sacrificed to the god Mars, its cut head was the stake of a competition disputed between the inhabitants of the district located around Via crowned and those of Subure.

The gantry of Livie

There was in Subure one monument, and still in periphery of the district, the “Portique of Livie”, on the hill of Esquilin, built between 15 and 7 av. J. - C. by the emperor Auguste in the honor of its second wife, on the site of the house that Vedius Pollion bequeathed year to him 739 of Rome (29 av. J. - C.). This monumental gate was located just behind the place where will be built the Thermes of Trajan.

The construction of this gantry, larger than that of Octavie, built 44 years before, was started under the names of its adoptive sons Lucius and Caius, which died during the construction, and when it was completed, Auguste dedicated it under the name of Livie.

The Greek geographer Strabon (in Greek old Στράϐων/ Strábôn , “which has a cast”, in Latin Strabo ), contemporary of Auguste, mentions with admiration the gantry of Livie in its Géographie (Γεωγραφικά/ Geôgraphika ).

To build it, Auguste made demolish the very large one and sumptuous residence (8000 m ²) which had bequeathed to him to his death one freed strong rich person, Védius Pollion. The center of the place was occupied by small a temple, dedicated to the goddess goddess Concorde ( Concordia Augusta ), in the medium of which, two statues, that of Auguste and that of Livie were, respectively represented in March and in Venus. The small temple presented the imperial couple as a model of the agreement which must reign in the Roman State as in the hearths. He was very attended by the young grooms who came to the gantry from Livie to achieve a sacrifice with the Concorde goddess.

Ovide ( Publius Ovidius Naso ), in its Fastes speaks to us about this temple:

“With you also, O goddess Agrees, Livie dedicated a splendid temple, in testimony of the harmony which it ensured her loved husband. Will however know it, generations to come: where currently the gantry of Livie is, an immense residence was built; this house only has it was like a city and occupied more space than do not occupy any of many cities inside their walls. It was completely shaven, not on a charge of aspiration to the throne, but because its luxury even appeared harmful. César agree to demolish basic in roof these so imposing constructions and to lose so many richnesses to which he was the heir: Thus one exerts the censure and that one gives of the examples, when, being judge, one does oneself what one recommends to the others.

( Ovide , Records , 637-648).

The gantry of Livie is evoked by Pline the Young person ( Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus ) in his correspondence (Letter with its expensive Voconius Romanus).

The assassination of Sextius Roscius

This district of Subure, this over-populated district where the heart of Rome beats, was the theater in 81 av. J. - C. of a crime remained famous, which is reported to us in the speech “ Plaidoyer for Sextius Roscius d' Ameria ” of Cicéron ( Marcus Tullius Cicero ), young lawyer of twenty-seven years, which defended the young man, Sextus Roscius wire, suspecté following a plot to be the assassin of its father Sextus Roscius.

Literary testimonys

The Latin Littérature left us many testimonys (Horace, Juvénal, Martial) on this district of Subure, in particular Juvénal ( Decimus Junius Juvenalis ), which ensures to have found the inspiration of its Satires , written between 90 and 127, in the streets of Rome. Its most famous pages describe of them with much liveliness the embarrassments and the dangers, of day like night. It is with the districts of dwelling of the North-East of the city that Juvénal is interested more, and in particular Subure and its effervescence.