Roman identity and public buildings

1“Rome ne fu[t] pas faite toute en un jour”:1 This saying refers to the time it took to build the Roman empire, to establish its power and duration, to develop its achievements and long-lasting impact. It entails a metaphorical meaning as well as a reference to the real city of Rome. The development of Rome was not linear, neither in its political and religious institutions nor in its built urban outline. Over the centuries, there was a constant investment into new buildings and the rebuilding of existing structures. From its humble beginnings Rome developed into to a city of a million inhabitants, from a fortified settlement in the seventh and sixth century BCE to a city of marble in the Augustan period, to a late antique, early medieval city that was still impressive but had many rather small-scale developed quarters. The development of urban infrastructure and the extension of the built-up area went hand in hand with demographic, social, and political changes. A growing populace needed a better water-supply and sewage system, public places for trade, space for storing goods, and a supra-regional road network to secure the food supply and consumption needs. The details of the interferences in and the development of the built environment of Rome are difficult to establish by its archaeological remains because the city was and still is densely populated. Literary, legal or inscribed texts offer valuable clues about a different approach to the building and rebuilding history of Rome. Biographies of members of the senatorial elite and the emperors as well as Roman historiography in the annalistic tradition tell stories of individual building activities for the common good. In this literary context, there is a specific focus on the elite’s piety: building temples and adorning cult establishments was an expression of thankfulness for the divine guarantee for the war successes of the Roman people and the victoriousness of a certain Roman gens.

2The public buildings of Rome were emblematic for the self-fashioning of its citizens from the very beginning of the Roman state’s existence. Apart from the pre-republican city layout with its fortification, it was first and foremost the cults and their temples that created such identity markers of the newly created Roman state. Roman cults with their world of gods, rituals, and priesthoods were different from those of the neighbouring peoples both materially and performatively as well as in their institutional anchoring. It is therefore hardly surprising that in the account of the young Republic’s first steps, the construction of the temple of Jupiter marked the beginning of the Republic. The existing tradition of Jupiter as highest god had to be “re-built” from an Etruscan into a Roman and republican fashion. According to the historiographers Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, Romulus was the first to build a small temple for Jupiter (Feretrius) on the Capitoline Hill, where he dedicated the Romans’ booty taken from the Sabine enemy to this god. Later, the Etruscan Tarquinii began building a larger temple for Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, but – important for the narrative of the establishment of an exclusively Roman Jupiter – were unable to complete it. 2In 509 BCE, the first year of the Republic, one of the two highest magistrates (consules), Marcus Horatius (Pulvillus), consecrated the temple to Iupiter Optimus Maximus.3 In Livy’s account, this ritual act by one consul is given similar value and weight as waging the war against Veii by the other consul, Publicola. Until then, the Etruscan-Roman temple of 509 had been renovated several times. It was then destroyed during the civil war of 83 BCE. Sulla planned to use the columns of the Athenian temple of Zeus/Jupiter, plundered during the sack of Athens in 86 BCE, to rebuild the sanctuary in the Greek style. This new second temple of Capitoline Jupiter was dedicated by the consul of 69 BCE, Q. Lutatius Catulus. After having been damaged and repaired twice during Augustus’s principate, the temple was eventually destroyed by a fire in the civil war of 69 CE. At least rebuilt twice under the Flavians, the temple was still represented on coins minted by Constantius.4 Its history is traceable until some of its material remains were reused for the Palazzo Caffarelli (1573/86). The Capitoline temple’s fate of constant renovation, destruction, and rebuilding is a rather typical building history. It is only one of many similar fortunes or misfortunes of public and sacred buildings in the city of Rome.5 Thus, the case of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill is emblematic for this paper’s subject as it demonstrates that the rhetoric as well as the material evidence of new building operations, extensions, alterations of existing structures, and re-building are often hard to distinguish in the history of one building. In addition, the main legal, financial, and organisational outlines of such operations were largely the same for most building measures. Few differences are known between construction and reconstruction as far as the responsibilities for decisions and the organisation of their implementation are concerned during the republican period. The different handling within the Roman administration can be related to the increasing differentiation of organisational and administrative units in the imperial period and late antiquity. Some of these aspects will be discussed further below. The beginning of the history of the framework for building and rebuilding in the city of Rome, however, looked different.

Building and rebuilding create eternal memory

3In the republican period, Roman senators in general, but especially victorious generals, donated a part of their wealth or booty to temples and later also coined metal for them and their decoration. Less often these donators did so for other public buildings.6 Roman building activities and their legal and ritual contexts were an important focal point for the elite and the populus living in Rome and its surrounding territory well into the mid-republican era.7 In addition, Roman citizens living in Rome were probably integrated into these and other city-of-Rome-connected construction activities by individual munera – duties, be it payments in kind or money or working loads.8 This city, characteristically built on several hills, continued to be the main and only centre of power up to the middle of the third century CE. Thus, not only in theory but also on practical ‘political’ grounds, Romanitas continued to be defined by a physical origo, the city of Rome, a city of some 1373 hectares within the Aurelian walls. It seems that several hundred thousand people in the mid and late Republic and about one million inhabitants at the beginning of the second century CE lived “densely packed” in this city.9 Within this impressive cityscape of the imperial period, a temple like that of Capitoline Jupiter mentioned above had lost its connection with republican power and institutions and had instead turned into an icon of the Roman empire and its leader, the Roman emperor. After having been rebuilt with imperial money under the Flavians, perhaps even with gilded and other exquisite ornaments, it had become a symbol for continuous imperial victory and perpetual triumph.10 However, since the Augustan period, the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus had become the focal point for several processions, not only for those connected to the triumphs and to the cult of Jupiter but also for some of the imperial festive days as well. Changes to the symbolic context of buildings were thus not exclusively dependent on changes of their function or of their appearance, be it through additamenta to the building or through a reconstruction with or without the use of spolia.11 Urban development, new focal points, and infrastructure development with its changes to the surrounding structures of a building could be followed by shifts in relevance and intensity of usage of a specific building. New rituals and changing social institutions could even put an eminent temple like the one of Jupiter into a different light, notwithstanding the continuous financial and material investment in its maintenance and independent of the frequency and extent of its renovations. Against this background, the history and grandeur of Rome together with the tradition and splendour of its most important pagan cults created the multifaceted symbolic value of this building, even for a Christian emperor like Constantius II (337-340), who rhetorically exaggerated that nothing came near to the marvel of this pagan temple.12

4As stated above, the Augustan historiographer Livy and a few others attest that many victorious consuls and praetors built a temple, dedicated their war booty to the gods, and less often added to other buildings in the republican period.13 In the context of the republican senatorial family traditions, rebuilding and renovation are referred to as duties of later generations. This was not just a moral duty of the family; it gave occasion for the public display of statues of family members in and near such a building. For example, the space near the temple of Honos and Virtus outside the Porta Capena was closely linked to the gens of the Claudii Marcelli who had built that temple, and the first victory arch of Rome which spanned the sacred way in the heart of Rome, erected by Q. Fabius Maximus in 121 BCE, was later restored by his grandson.14 This familial engagement honoured the successful ancestors as well as the young generation. In this moral and social setting, taking responsibility for the preservation of buildings and their renovation, if necessary, appears to be more far-sighted than new construction. At least at first sight, such a commitment seems less glorious than building a new structure. However, such an undertaking perpetuates, even immortalises the great value of this family and its never-ending commitment for the res publica. Rebuilding and maintaining temples and other public buildings secured the well-being of the Roman state by guaranteeing the adequate worship of the gods, the remembrance of constant victoriousness, and additionally demonstrated the careful handling of public property, thereby proving respect for the communal ownership.

5The connection between buildings in the republican city of Rome and the senatorial elite was apparent in more than one aspect. Apart from the individual and familial engagement of Roman magistrates and victors in favour of building and rebuilding for the republic, the senatorial office of the censor was responsible for the financial and contractual organisation of public building and infrastructure, including streets and aqueducts, city walls, and main civic and cult buildings. The censors turned construction into one more means to inscribe a family’s name into the Roman architecture.15 Most of the supra-regional roads were built by censors. For example, the construction of the via Appia was begun by the censor of 312 BCE, a member of the Appius family; the via Aemilia Scauri was built by one of the Aemilii in 109 BCE. These roads organised and marked Italian territory as Roman, inter alia claiming authority through the family names of the Roman magistrates. Some Latin writing authors report details of the censorial building records concerning not only the infrastructure measures outside the city, but also the buildings within the city.16 The contemporary Romans and later generations needed neither historiography nor the documentation of the censorial records to understand the close connection between architecture and political power of the republican elite. This became obvious by the visual presence of the buildings themselves, by their public function, and by their respective name often connected to a famous senator or a senatorial family, if the opus was profane. The censorial records included more than just political information. They contained details about the amount of money in stake, but also information about large (or sometimes smaller) governmental contracts for non-senatorial Romans. Architects, craftsmen, and day labourers depended on such commissions already in the Roman Republic, but even more so from the state building boom and renovations onwards that began on a grand scale with Augustus (see below). For public building-contracts in the imperial period, the republican procedure and legal framework were formative. One example of republican tradition is M. Porcius Cato, censor in 184 BCE. Livy reports him holding out several auctions for public contracts.17 Cato’s contracting activities concerned two atria (halls) and four tabernae (shops) he had bought only to tear them down so that there was enough space for the first Roman basilica to be built for meetings and jurisdiction. This new building bore Cato’s family name for many decades: Basilica Porcia. It was not until many generations later, during the imperial period, that the memory of the republican gentes like the Porcii and the family names connected to other buildings gradually disappeared from the collective memory. Most of the imperial public buildings within Rome were connected to the name of an individual emperor – less often their family name (Iulius, Claudius, Flavius, Ulpius etc.). Rome had become the emperor’s city with all their names attached to major public buildings like the forum Augusti or the thermae Antoninianae for Caracalla’s baths.18

The standards of legal procedure – from republican to imperial times

6Not just the names of buildings but also the organisational and administrative system of public building had changed from Republic to empire – but it remained to be based on republican legal standards and procedures even though the republican censor was to lose his function in this building-related context. The organisational basics and the legal framework from the Republic to the beginning of the imperial period are best known from second century BCE-related sources. At that time, state-financed building seems to have been a rather rare act given the limited budget of the republican state.19 With only slight procedural and legal changes and large alterations in decision-making and responsibility, the process survived the censorial republican context into later Roman periods. It started with the decision of what building operations were necessary. The responsible censors and probably other senators as well could make suggestions. The senate decided on the financial volume and, as it seems at least in general terms, on the buildings concerned, new ones as well as existing structures that were to be renovated or were to receive major alterations. Only two cases where the senate declined the censorial proposal are known: in 184 BCE, the senate cancelled censorial contracts because of their dubious financial conditions, and in 155 BCE, the senate forbid the censors to contract for building a permanent theatre on the Palatine Hill because of a lack of public utility.20 Provided building operation and the financial volume were approved by the senate, the details were fixed to be put in auction. Some procedural standards of auction and the legal context of contracting are known from the Lex Parieti Faciendo from the Roman colony Puteoli,21 passed in 105 BCE. It followed the same lines of the procedure with auction and contract that had been established in the city of Rome and can therefore be taken as an attestation of Roman standards. This law (lex) announced the project with a detailed description of what was to be done, how it should be done, with which materials and techniques, and in which time period. It was then fixed and registered as a lex censoria and made public. The publication of this lex was the invitation to take part in the auction. The conditions and duties were not to be discussed; as a rule, the highest bidder was chosen.22 The contractor had to present securities and guarantors who had to confirm their willingness to provide security equivalent to the value of the building operation contracted. The form of the contract was a locatio conductio by leasing out a work and services.23 This kind of contracting was common in private building operations as well. In case everything went well and the private or public work was finished in due time, it was followed by the inspection and probatio – the approval by the responsible magistrate (or the builder in a private context).24 After their approval, the contract was completed and the contractor then discharged from liability. The main features of this procedure remained the framework for building activities in the imperial period, for private as well as for stately initiated projects.25 To ensure that the contractually specified deliverables were fulfilled and the building operation was completed, instalment payments continued to be standard in imperial times and as it seems also in the late antique period, similar to the instalments we know of from the republican lex operum from Puteoli. During the imperial period, contract law in the private sphere seems to have developed in different manners than contracts with the state. The state as builder could not sue the contractor. In turn, the contractor was also unable to sue the state if the instalments were not paid or other commitments, like the delivery of material from one of the imperial marble quarries or the promised quality of building material to be reused, were not met.

The emperor as builder in the city of Rome

9It seems as if the involvement of the senate decreased in course of the principate. It is a matter of debate if the senate continued to be involved in few specific building activities after the Julio-Claudian period. At least in the context of the senate’s supervision of religious matters, decisions concerning the renovation and adornment of cult buildings might have remained in the senate’s province,38 whereas the building of new temples was certainly placed in the hands of the reigning emperor. During the republican period, the censors and less often other magistrates (such as the aediles but more often consuls when there were no censors) formulated all conditions of the building procedure, whether it concerned a renovation or a new building.39 Already in the Augustan period and with changing and developing responsibilities, new officials like the curators and some appointees of the emperor (see below) took over those censorial building-related duties, whereas in the late antique city of Rome, the praefectus urbi became the responsible magistrate for public building activities, representing senatorial-republican and imperial functions.40 At the end of the third century CE, the emperor Maximian had left Rome for a new Italian imperial centre, Milan. In 402 CE, the emperor Honorius made Ravenna his residential centre, whereas the senate continued to meet in Rome. After the emperors had left the city of Rome, the rich senatorial families could again, like in the republican period, leave their imprint on Rome by building – most often rebuilding and renovating existing public structures. Between the fourth and sixth century, private and other official builders other than the emperor are attested in the public context by many inscriptions and few other attestations, a new feature and important chance after 300 years of imperial building dominance.41

10For the Roman people, the raison d’être of the principate was to guarantee a peaceful existence. Moreover, the individual living standard in Rome was improved by 1) the emperor’s generosity (including games, festivals, and buildings) and 2) the emperor’s responsibility a) for the functionality of the infrastructure (e.g. upkeep of roads, market places, aqueducts, sewage and waste disposals), b) for an administration securing supplies and services (e.g. corn distribution, firefighting), and c) for transparent principles of legal actions (e.g. court system, incorruptible judges). Octavian/Augustus took over the responsibility for communal buildings in Rome from the republican censors and to a certain extent from the senate. At the time of his death, the first princeps promulgated the effects of his generosity and responsibility all over the empire with his res gestae. In addition, Augustus’s name was mentioned in the first line of nearly all the inscriptions attached to new, renewed, and reconstructed buildings in Rome. There was not much left for senatorial display.42 Augustus notoriously associated his person with the renewal of the republic,43 referring to the renewed political institutions, to social harmony, to the restitution of property, and to the revival of cults and the respect for the gods. This renewal included the rebuilding of the city not just as an attractive urban centre. With this political and religious concept, renovated buildings and reworking of public buildings and temples on a small and a large scale reclaimed republican tradition even if decorative elements and material of renovated buildings as well as newly built Augustan structures, sanctuaries, and innovative amenities sent out a different message.44

11The populus living in Rome could expect every emperor to rebuild, if necessary, and to generously donate new public buildings within the urbs. Augustus had inaugurated this tradition when he propagated the self-obligation to renovate all neglected and fallen down temples within Rome. He speaks of the Capitoline temple and more than 82 others he restored. Besides sanctuaries, he mentions inter alia the theatre of Pompeius and aqueducts that needed restauration (Res gestae 19-21). He commemorated this as his personal responsibility and financial investment into the city in inscriptions attached to the built or rebuilt structure and, at the end of his principate, in his res gestae. The pre-Augustan rebuilding neglects might have been the indirect consequence of the previous years of civil war with deficits of cash flow on the one hand and shifted priorities and possibilities of policymaking and investment of the senatorial elite in Rome on the other hand. Flooding in the lower parts of the city and fires, which could easily flare up all over Rome, were another recurring threat to private and public buildings, whereas a civil war with destructive effects like that in 69 CE before Vespasian’s instalment was the exception.45 Whatever the reason for one or more fallen down structures, be it physical force, neglect, age or faulty construction, it required efforts and consequences for rebuilding in Rome, often in more than one quarter. Archaeological, epigraphical, and literary evidence from the first and second centuries CE prove that building sites and rebuilding activities were a continuous experience in the streets of imperial Rome. In some cases, the intervals of new building and renovation might have been short, as in the case of the new Flavian colosseum that needed at least some repairs in the upper parts under Nerva (CIL VI 37137), less than 30 years after its inauguration.

12The republican senatorial habit of naming buildings and Augustus’s invented imperial tradition of taking care of the physical wellbeing of his resident city as the heart of the Roman res publica made Roman historiographers and biographers of the emperors (at least the ones before Constantine in the fourth century CE) list new and rebuilt structures in the city as a reference to the quality of a reign and the emperor’s good personal character. Building became a part of the public image of the Roman princeps, similar to the Hellenistic kings’ building activities for their residential city. Augustus’s and before him Agrippa’s construction initiatives had an immense infrastructural and aesthetic impact on the city of Rome.46 This transformative and powerful concept of imperial restitutio was visible in many buildings of the urban centre and in the Campus Martius. At least some of the subsequent emperors successfully created “their” Rome as well. This does not include Nero and Commodus with their unsuccessful and famously disapproved attempts but Trajan or Septimius Severus with a great impact each.47 Even in late antiquity, the rhetoric of the responsibility for the imperial city with its beauty and integrity continued, despite the absence of the emperor or the Ostrogothic king, thus contradicting the reality and contemporaries’ lived experience of the poor condition of parts of Rome’s public monuments.48

13During the principate, the responsibility of the emperor was obvious by his honorific statues inside and outside of public buildings in Rome (and the nearby harbour city of Ostia) and it was promulgated by building inscriptions with huge, often gilded letters highlighting the emperor’s name. The new epigraphic habit started with the Augustan period, labelling all benefactions and other noteworthy acts with Latin inscriptions. This was only one way in the orchestration and promulgation of the new regime.49 As stated above, in connection with building in Rome the responsibilities of the emperor regarding curae (various services and caring about infrastructure) included the firefighting cohortes vigilum, whose efficacy was of great importance for the densely built-up Roman neighbourhoods.50 These measures were connected to securing water supply through wells and fountains all over the city, another improvement of the quality of life, even in the quarters of the poorer population. Conflagration endangered private and public buildings, including freestanding templa and other buildings. During the imperial period, firefighting was much better organised than during the republican period. However, it had become a more difficult task as well. Building gaps were closed and distances between monuments were reduced by connecting porticos and pathways,51 by smaller buildings for administrative tasks like archives and storages in the central parts of the city, by representative nymphaea, thermae, and balnea, and by conspicuously large honorific monuments and arches, just to name some of the new imperial-period facilities of the city. The increasingly dense development and narrow streets of imperial Rome had consequences for the safety of buildings and might have resulted in difficulties with the organisation of the building-related work processes.

14With the radical reduction of potential benefactors from the various senatorial gentes and the removal of the building responsibilities of Roman magistracies in favour of the generous and general responsibility of the princeps in this field, the demand for a new competent authority increased, as all these buildings in public hands had to be looked after. In the imperial period, parts of these duties were taken over by the curatores aedium sacrarum operum locorumque publicorum. Appointed by the emperor, they had no overall responsibility for the supervision of (public) building and rebuilding, in difference to the censors of the republican period and the urban prefects in Late Antiquity. They had little judicial power in this context and it is unlikely that they had control over finances and building contracts for all kinds of public buildings and cult architecture.52 In that respect, Iulius Frontinus’s history of the water supply of Rome is revealing. In his manual, he describes the authority and organisational structure of the cura aquarum, for which he had been responsible in 97 CE. In Rome, water management worked well and water supply for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing etc. was guaranteed. The curator aquarum Frontinus, however, had neither enough staff nor the authority to build up an effective administration and proactive management for the aqueducts and the established distribution network.53 It is still debated if the organisational features and competences of both curae, the one for buildings and cult places and the other for aqueducts and water supply, were similar. Apart from the rather general aspect of taking care of built structures of a defined type, their practical duties, their staff numbers and composition, and their judicial competences differed, as it seems.

15Hints at the complicated administrative structure concerning responsibilities and at the communication between several imperial bureaus and office-holders, which were necessary to implement action for a building operation, can only sometimes be detected. One example is the inscription on the basis of Marcus Aurelius’s column, in which several offices and imperial officials (procurators and freedmen) are mentioned.54 In the case of the curator operum, the inscriptional evidence attests above all the curators’ responsibility for the surveillance and oversight of the public places. For specific places and monuments, individual officials appointed by the emperor are attested from the imperial period to Late Antiquity, like the procurator of the Forum divi Traiani or his pendant of the Baths of Caracalla. These officials were not directly subordinate to one of the two senatorial curator-offices and did not belong to one of the bureaus, the statio cura operum or the statio aquarum.55 Despite Frontinus’s rhetoric to demonstrate the importance of the curator aquarum’s office, the details of Frontinus’s account of the procedure of application, organisation, and supervision of the water supply for the city, including all building activities, proves that at least this specific curator office was nothing more than an executive body with little initiative power. The curator and his staff were responsible for detecting tapping of water pipes and he had to execute measures to terminate such illegal actions.56 As combatting illegal activities is attested for the curator operum as well, and with a methodological caveat of analogy, we may sum up the duties of the curatores operum as follows:

• precise assignment of space for individuals and organised groups to make use of public places for honorific monuments, dedications to the gods, and small scale building,

• supervision of the conditions of public buildings and sanctuaries in the city of Rome,

• in the early principate, responsibility for the destruction of illegal buildings, as attested in the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre,57

• probably, but rarely documented, responsibility for maintenance of (all or most?) built public structures and some, at least small-scale renovation of these buildings.

16It seems likely that the curators continued to cover these duties connected to the public building activities and to those of private builders on public places, including the conclusion of contracts and supervision of the works, up until the fourth century, when the city prefect, praefectus urbi Romae, had mainly become responsible for public places and buildings.58 This shift in responsibilities was due to the more or less permanent absence of the Roman emperor from the city of Rome. In cases of new building or heavy rebuilding, in which the curatores operum did not replace the censors in the overall sphere of building oversight, auctions, and contracting, several officials and bureaus were involved in organising and taking care to connect all sectors and specialisations of the building industries and professional associations for the large imperial building and re-building operations.59 The responsibility seems to have depended on factors and qualities like financing, size, location, the function to define what exactly had to be done, not only out of necessity but e.g. as well concerning aesthetics, the choice between new or reused building material, and the addition of new structures or ornaments. That also applies to negotiating the conditions of the contracts with the entrepreneurs, the redemptores, and the mancipes. During the building process, the responsible person (not always the curator) or someone of his staff or an extraordinarily appointed procurator of the emperor had to supervise the (re-)building activities and finally, after the completion, a probatio was necessary – the acceptance of the work done and the confirmation that all components of the contract were fulfilled.

17Even though the same legal provisions and framework applied to the areas outside the city of Rome, the development there was different.60 We are not only informed about the legal and practical procedures, but also about the difficulties in financing, about problems in the supply of material or a lack of the builder’s experience, and about the competition between cities and members of the elites connected to building activities. The Digesta, a Justinian compilation of commentaries of imperial period jurists with many references to decisions of the emperors since the Hadrianic period, provides an insight into the growing control of governors in the provinces and of especially elected officials over the budget of the cities. This was one of the consequences of the aforementioned difficulties. In addition, from the late first to the mid-third century CE, thousands of inscriptions connected to building activities in the cities of the empire attest the growing involvement of the imperial level in civic affairs.61 However, these specific approaches to solve financial and organisational problems of civic entities within the Roman empire are not transferable to the management of building operations in the city of Rome.

Concluding remarks

18During the imperial period, the awareness and perception of the huge prestige of building operations in the city of Rome was possibly reduced to the inner-elite communication. The amenities of the city had a positive impact on the populace and a good infrastructure was necessary for daily life. The building activities and sites provided the livelihood for many skilled and even more unskilled workers.62 The narratives of the emperors’ biographers and the historiographers of the imperial period attest that the emperor’s building activities, his engagement and specific attention towards temples and cult places, and his personal support of Rome and other cities, which had suffered from fire destruction or earthquakes, soon became one major aspect to qualify him as good emperor – at least in the eyes of the educated elites.

19Renovation or constructing new buildings – this did not make a difference if the mere functionality of the building was the primary concern. However, in the imperial period, there was a difference on the organisational level of the city of Rome depending on whether new structures or rebuilding and renovation were concerned. New public building and new cult-related structures lay in the hand of the emperor, who did not seem to have a specific office and established standard workflow to organise these building measures, (sometimes) making use of the imperial bureaus. The curatores aedium sacrarum et operum locorumque publicorum were responsible for maintenance. They had the oversight of the existing buildings and of the use of places etc. They reported if buildings needed renovation and if they had detected illegal use of buildings or places. Concerning renovation and illegal actions, the curators would take the necessary measures or organise the legal framework with auction, control, and inspection. This general feature applied to the curator aquarum as well for the aqueducts, fountains, wells, and other water instalments: control, inspection, reporting, organisation of renovation and repairs, and measures against illegal actions in the context of water supply of the imperial city of Rome. The various imperial bureaus came into play when large amounts of money were involved, when the imperial building tradition was concerned, and when larger operations and new buildings were planned. The initiative, financing, and responsibility for all public buildings within Rome, profane and sacred, newly built and renovated, lay with the emperor and all larger operations and new constructions were organised by his staff.