A little over 2,000 years ago, when the Romans founded what is now Barcelona, the city quickly prospered, especially thanks to the export of local wine. From our current perspective, however, Barcino could hardly be called a city, with a population of just over two thousand souls. And what he exported could not be called wine either, if Marcial is to be believed when he called it “the dregs of Layetania.” Of course, without going into its characteristics, another author of the time, Pliny the Elder, clarified that the region's wine had become "famous for its abundance." In short, a poor quality but very abundant product and, above other considerations, a great business.
In the heat of this business and as production reached very distant parts of the empire, the fortunes and influence of a handful of families grew, some of which even had relevant roles in Rome. The work of archaeologists, historians and specialists from various disciplines in recent decades has shed light on who those wealthy classes of the original Barcino were, how they lived and interacted. At the same time, these investigations also show the life, desires and hardships of the population that was at the other end of the social scale. Remains of buildings, inscriptions and graves are part of the raw material from which scholars extract clues.
It is surprising that two millennia later the profile of characters so distant in time can be reconstructed, but some have been able to be rescued from oblivion. One of them is a true celebrity on a Barcelona scale, Lucio Licinio Segundo, the most honored personality in the city. More than twenty inscriptions have been recovered in his honor in which people from Barcino's high society pay tribute to him, thank him for favors or proclaim with more or less sincerity his friendship. Some research even places the mansion of the influential Licinio Segundo on the current Avinyó street, a sumptuous building of which only a very small part has been excavated.
He could well be one of the first millionaires in Barcelona. But the surprising thing is that Licinius the Second was actually a freedman, a man born a slave but who was freed by his owner. Although his influence in the city was enormous, like all freedmen he maintained certain servitudes with his former master and was not a full citizen.
And his former master was Lucius Licinius Sura, another of those who would undoubtedly choose to enter that pantheon of millionaires. His family, like most of the great lineages of the first century of Barcino's life, had made their fortune thanks to the wine business that was produced in Layetania, a region that included, more or less, areas such as Maresme, Barcelonès , part of Vallès or Garraf. The footprint of the Licinians is so persistent 2,000 years later that the historian Oriol Olesti points out that Lliçà, in Vallès, very possibly took its name from the estate he had there, in the same way that the toponym Cornellà may come from a Cornelius or Vallirana of a Valerio.
But researchers believe that, in reality, Licinio Sura did not spend much time in the city, because while his freedman took care of – and increased – his businesses, he remained in Tarragona or assaulted power in Rome. So much so that he became consul on three occasions (at the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century), was Trajan's lieutenant and could even become his successor, although the death of the emperor frustrated these plans.
The Minicios were another of the families that had members pursuing a political career in the capital. Lucius Minicius Quadronius Verus (96-154) has gone down in history for having held numerous positions throughout the empire, for his proximity to the emperor Hadrian and for reaching the consulship. Also for the chariot races that earned him an Olympic prize in Greece, although, when push came to shove, he chose to hire an experienced charioteer to compete in his name and assume the physical risk. Today a street in the Olympic Ring recognizes his merits – those of Quadronius Verus, not those of the charioteer.
Apparently, he felt very committed to the city. In an inscription in which the scholar Marc Mayer observes a “detail of patriotic pride,” Lucio Minicio Cuadronio Vero highlights having been born in the city and bequeaths, along with his father, also a politician, a significant amount to his neighbors. This is the first known case of a Barcelonan who claims his origins.
But, although it is not often said about it, there was also enormous poverty in the Roman Empire. It is estimated that some 60 million people were under the control of Rome in the imperial golden age, but the bulk of the information that has survived to this day refers to the few hundred thousand who made up the elite. On the other hand, very little is known about the remaining 59 million longs and the same thing happens on a local scale in Barcino. Some of the little data available comes from funerary tombstones.
One of them, found in the necropolis of Plaza Vila in Madrid, was commissioned by a certain Marco Porcio Privato for his sister Salviana. According to archaeologist Isabel Rodà, the poor quality of the plaque reveals that this family could only afford a low-level workshop. Salviana, therefore, was poor, despite which those close to her faced the expense of the burial, something very important in Roman culture.
The funerary complex in Madrid's Plaza Vila has provided a lot of information to experts. For example, about their resources (some settled for a collective grave because they could not afford an individual one); their diet (with evidence of infant mortality and malnutrition); or their work (with signs of bone wear justified by the hardness of the tasks performed).
But in the Roman world class was not a completely immutable reality, since there was a social elevator, although limping and conditioned. The freedmen were the most obvious cases of this rise, since on many occasions, despite being born under slavery, they could end up reaching high levels of influence and their descendants could even hold political positions.
An inscription commissioned by the freedman Gaius Publicius Melisius, for example, pays tribute to his deceased son, Gaius Julius Silvanus, who despite being only 18 years old had come to hold public office in the city. For researchers, this tombstone is a sign of both the social rise of a family and the pride of a father regarding his missing son.
Barcelona then, like today, was a magnet for many people in search of new opportunities. For example, from another tombstone it is known that a certain Cornelio Segundo emigrated from North Africa to Barcino accompanied by his family, on a trip reminiscent of the one thousands of people make today. Second, of humble origins, he not only integrated but prospered in the city, as shown by the fact that the inscription pays tribute to a missing son who, as in the previous case, had come to hold a municipal position.
The similarities between the city of today and that of yesterday are sometimes surprising. The integration between the city and the territory that surrounds it or its role as a focus of attraction for people from abroad demonstrate this. But not everything is similar. If a Barcelonan today had a time machine to travel back 2,000 years, the cultural, social and visual shock would be of historical proportions.
