It was atop the Esquiline Hill that Nero chose to build his legendary Domus Aurea, the Golden House. Just up from the Forum and the Colosseum, it remained one of the most fashionable and important sections of Rome.

HISTORY OF THE ESQUILINE

Region II of Augustus' famous reorganization of Rome, the name Esquiline derives from “excultus”; a reference to ornamental groves planted by Servius Tuillius (578 – 535 BCE). It is the largest of the “Seven Hills” of Rome, and up to the time of Augustus, was one of the original four regions of Rome, dating back to the days of the union of the Esquiline and Palatine settlements (roughly the mid 8th Century BCE). These Regiones Quattuor are often referred to as the Servian city, and the districts were recognized as the main divisions of the city up to the end of the Republic. While the original Servian walls did not include all of the Esquiline, it was definitely within the city walls by the time of Sulla (138 – 78 BCE). The Esquiline is the largest and highest of the hills. The three highest elevations are the Cispius to the north, the Oppius to the south, and the area known as Fagutalis (named for a beech grove) on the western side. The hill is situated between the Mons Verminalis and Caelius, respectively. It looks down directly onto the Subura, and up to late antiquity a ridge called the Velia connected it to the Palatine.

The Esquiline was a place of extremes in the days preceding the Empire -- home to both the wealthy and the most impoverished dregs of Roman society. Adjacent to both the Palatine and Subura, the Esquiline literally straddled both worlds of rich and poor. Sprawling gardens and mansions dominated the western end of the hill. Temples to Cybele, Minerva Medica, as well as the main temple to the City’s Lares were situated on the Esquiline, attesting to the varied spiritual needs and tastes of its residents. The Nymphaeum Alexandri (a monumental fountain related to the Alexandrina aquaduct), the three-story early 2nd Century CE Amphitheatrum Castrense, Baths of Trajan, theaters, and gardens attest to the Esquiline’s elegance and beauty.

The Campus Esquilinus

In the eras preceding the Empire, however, the eastern end of the Esquiline was a place of burial. The Twelve Tables forbade the burial or cremation of any Roman within the city walls, and so, while on the hill’s plateau, the Campus proper was outside the city walls. Wealthy Romans had tombs along the Via Appia, but the average plebe had no recourse to such funerary luxury, and instead went to the portion of the hill just outside the Esquiline gate, lending the spot a (deserved) reputation for uncleanliness and disease.

What we today would recognize as a cemetery would have been the area set aside for the middle class (freedmen and artisans), and took the form of a columbarium that housed cremated remains. There would also have been “amphora” tombs, where the cremated remains of the deceased were buried in a tile-lined container (leather, lead, gold… depending on the individual’s status, materials varied), which was connected to a partially-buried amphora by way of a small pipe, serving double-duty as grave marker, while also allowing family members to offer libations by pouring them through the open top of the amphorae.

By far the most notorious and obvious feature of this side of the Esquiline hill would have been the pits in which the bodies of the poor, the unknown dead, and slaves were thrown, and not in the sense of a mass grave for unknown individuals, but with utter lack of concern, accompanied by the carcasses of dead animals, and general refuse of every sort. Excavations of these pits revealed a large district set aside for this undertaking (no pun intended), measuring roughly one thousand feet long in entirety. This area was known as the “Potter’s Field”, and within it one would have found hundreds of smaller twelve foot square vaults, going down to depths of thirty feet, respectively. These were called “puticuli”. They held as much as they were able, and were in a state of constant use and re-use, as decomposition of the remains deposited therein allowed. If some sort of pestilence swept through the city, and the puticuli were full, the “overflow” would simply be thrown over the city walls, into the thirty-foot deep ditch that surrounded the outer portion of the city walls.

The cemetery on the Esquiline must have seemed, to the eyes of the Romans of the era in which it was in its heaviest use, to be a slice of the underworld come up to the world of the living. The stench and horrors of the open vaults would have been unbearable to anyone who ventured there, and this general fetidness undoubtedly contributed to the vicinity’s use as a general dumping ground for the populace. Travelers arriving to Rome from the south, along the Via Labicana and/or Via Praenestina would have, in addition, been treated to a ghastly exhibition of the bodies and body parts of executed criminals, as traditionally these were displayed outside the Esquiline gate, along with those slaves, unclaimed, and poor whose bodies were discarded at the base of the Servian wall. This sort of danse macabre of the unwanted would have served a twofold purpose to the canny visitor, informing one not only of just how “tough on crime” (or full of criminals) a particular city may be, but also give a rough means by which to estimate the size of the populace that resided on the other side of the walls.

Land use reform was a popular (if not always well-enforced) topic of legislation in Rome, and the Esquiline cemetery saw its due over the years. The most substantial reform (and ultimately the one that would put a stop to the dumping ground and carnarium of Potter’s Field) was put through by Augustus c. 15 BCE. At that time the dumping grounds were moved out of town and officially off the Esquiline. Macaenus(60/70’s BCE – 8 CE), Augustus’ close and trusted advisor, had fresh soil brought to the area, spreading it 30 feet deep across the carnarium and puticuli, and on top of this early land reclamation project built a huge garden, full of statuary and scenic groupings of small out-buildings. He also built a substantial villa on the grounds, a section of which, called Macaenus’ Auditorium, survives to modern times. Some of the area around the former puticuli must have remained in business as garbage collection points, though, as owners of the newly landscaped, elegant gardens of the Esquiline posted signs warning people dumping or disposing refuse to move “60 feet further down or you will get a fine” (for one example).

Callous or hygienically ignorant as these practices would seem to us, as we often find in the study of ancient Rome, the Romans were as full of contradictions and peculiarities as any modern peoples, and despite this charnel house of a public cemetery residing on one end of the Esquiline hill, there were many a gracious villa on it as well. The reforms put through by Augustus more than anything solidified the more patrician aspects of Esquiline living.

If for no other reason, thousands of Romans regularly visited the Esquiline to use the famous Baths that the Flavian Caesars had built over the site of Nero's Golden House; the size of three football fields, every inch of that ill-fated imperial residence were once covered with Rome's most beautiful art.

The region of the hill along the slopes of the Oppian summit was known as the “Carinoe.” It was one of Rome’s toniest neighborhoods, and was home to such ancient luminaries as Pompey, Horace, Virgil, Marcus Antonius, Propertius, and the aforementioned Gaius Maecenas. The height of the Esquiline’s peaks, and nearness to the Palatine Hill undoubtedly contributed to its desirability as a place of residence. Views from the summits of the hill would have afforded sweeping vistas of the city.

After the fire of 64 CE, much of the property on the Esquiline was incorporated into Nero’s sprawling residence complex, known as the Domus Aurea. On the area formerly occupied by the horti Maecenas, he built an enormous imitation of a rustic villa, complete with a stock of live animals to flesh out the cultivated country atmosphere. Eventually the open, delicate structure was used to provide the framework for the massive baths of Trajan (built in 104 CE). The former Domus Aurea actually served as a kind of skeleton for the baths, with whole sections of wall given over to support the barrel vaults of the bath ceilings.

Nero wasn't the only Roman who loved the 'rus in urbe', the countryside elements and park-like scenery in the city. Vineyards, orchards, vegetable gardens and parks, pastures and forests with grazing herds and animals appeared around the palace, at the Caelius, near the Fagutal - the altar in the holy forest at the Esquiline, and at the Oppius.