MACELLUM
MACELLUM (
ὀψοπωλία,
ὀψοπωλεῖον,
κρεοπωλεῖον), a provision market for butchers, fishmongers,
poulterers, fruiterers, and confectioners: see Ter.
Eun. 2.2, 24, “ad macellum ubi advenimus concurrunt . . .
cuppedinarii omnes, cetarii, lanii, coqui, fastores, piscatores”
(cf. Plaut.
Aul. 2.8, 3; Hor.
Sat. 2.3, 229;
Epist. 1.15, 31). These provisions
were formerly found at Rome in their separate markets--the forum boarium,
piscatorium, olitorium: but for convenience the market was brought together
[p. 2.107]in the
macellum,
built B.C. 179 to the north of the Forum (Fest. s. v.
macellum). Varro (
L. L. 4.32) and Festus speak
of a robber Romanius Macellus, whose house was demolished that a market
might be established on the site; but it must be confessed that the story
has a suspicious appearance of growing out of the name
macellum Romanum, and either Curtius' reference to
macto (
Greek Etym. 338), or the
identification with the Greek
μάκελον or
μάκελλον (which Varro himself suggests
as the alternative), may be accepted in preference. The latter, which seems
the more probable, is connected with the word
maceria, a roughly built wall, and thus macellum may be assumed
to have got its name from being an enclosed space. With this agrees Varro's
expression “aedificatus locus appellatus macellum;” and it had
booths in its colonnade (
macellariae tabernae,
V. Max. 3.4,
4).
To this earliest macellum we refer
Cic. pro
Quint. 6, 25, “ab atriis Liciniis et faucibus
macelli.” The atria Licinia seem to have been auction rooms (cf.
de Leg. Agr. 1.3, 7) near the forum. The Macellum magnum
was in the second region on the Cispian hill, and is placed by some at S.
Stefano Rotondo, it being suggested that the circular construction, with
pillars, is planned upon the old market buildings (Burn,
Rome and
Compagna, p. 221). This is purely conjectural. A similar rotunda
is found on a coin of Nero, with the inscription. “macellum
Augusti” (Eckel, 6.273). The Macellum Livianum was near the Porta
Esquilina and the Arch of Gallienus. It is probable that the macellum of
B.C. 179 was destroyed to make room for the forum Augusti, and that Augustus
built, instead of it, the macellum which he named after Livia. (See Richter,
ap. Baumeister,
Denkm. p. 1534.) To the macella the cooks
would go to buy, and the less wealthy marketed there for themselves (
Juv. 11.10). The salesmen in it were called
macellarii (
Suet.
Jul. 26;
Vesp. 19). Julius Caesar tried to check
extravagance by putting the macella under police control, and the same
control through the aediles was attempted by Tiberius, moved apparently by
the tale of mullets at 10,000 sesterces apiece (
Suet. Jul. 43;
Tib. 34).
The Athenian provision market was called, as a general term,
ὀψοπωλία (
Athen.
1.6a); but more frequently we find the different departments
αἱ ἰχθῦς, τὸ ὄψον, τὰ ἄλφιτα,
&c., which were in divisions in the market-place called
κύκλοι. [
AGORA] The signal for a sale was given by a bell ringing, when
marketers, cooks, &c., flocked there (see Mahaffy,
Social
Life in Greece, ch. 10).
[
J.Y] [
G.E.M]