22 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

Urbanitas against Urbanism: a Latin Paradox

Pierre Maréchaux
Professor, PhD, Université de Nantes
Honorary Member, Institut Universitaire de France
Corresponding Member, Institut d’Études Avancées de Nantes
[email protected]

KEYWORDS: urbanitas; rhetoric; Roman antiquity; Cicero; Vitruvius

The history of concepts and their migration often helps to endorse the axiom that words
invested with primitive sense wind up migrating towards other fields and that, when they return
eventually to their source, they are loaded with adjacent meanings that the crossing of these areas
has crystallized in them. Such is the semantic fate of the concept of urbanitas. The word is one
of the spearheads of Roman rhetoric, but, nevertheless, its origins are in urbs, in the city. And,
by the time urbanitas is fully formed, and the word is retrieved by the architects, it is so loaded
with semantic layers of the art of rhetoric, of social ethology, and of psychology that one should
wonder if, under the pen of licensed urban thinkers, it has not become an empty play on words.
In short, how can architects lay claim to urbanity, when this Ciceronian neologism (we shall come
back to this) is never used in Latin as a category of urbanism? Once it leaves the rhetoric sphere,
does urbanity not look like those mana-words that Claude Lévi-Strauss1 essentially described as
trying to fight against their absence of meaning, despite the lack of any intrinsic meaning within
themselves? By doing nothing more than to fill a gap between the signifier and the signified, they
are like floating signifiers enslaved by a reflection otherwise accomplished, which can be only
partially disciplined, and not fully sealed, by the scientific knowledge.2
We shall not inquire into the extent to which the modern “urbanistical” thinking has been able
to take benefit from the ancient urbanitas, despite the lexical resemblances, and turn it into a
concept which is innovative as well as productive. We shall contain this essay to studying this
notion, from its earliest times of Latinity until Vitruvius.
When the creator of the word urbanitas invented a noun form derived from urbanus, he did
nothing but follow the Greek practice that gave birth to politeia from polis. However, the Greek
politeia is rather far from the Roman urbanitas.
Far from referring to the manners or refinement of the city, politeia designates the concept of
citizenship,3 the urban civic life,4 the ensemble of the citizens of a city,5 the participation to
public affairs,6 the building of a state,7 a certain type of governance,8 or even the democratic
constitution.9 In reality, the passage from urbs to urbanitas is a Roman copy mimiking the

1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, see Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés
archaïques,” in Sociologie et anthropologie, preceded by an “Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss” by
Claude Lévi-Strauss; first publ. of the “Essai,” L’année sociologique, 2nd series, 1 (1923-1924); 1st edition
of Sociologie et anthropologie, 1950 (re-edited Paris: P.U.F. “Quadrige”, 1991).
2 I summarized briefly the reflection of Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss,”
foreword to the Sociologie et anthropologie by Marcel Mauss (Paris: P.U.F., 1950).
3 Thucydides, History of the Peloponesian War, VI, 104; Herodotus, Histories, IX, 34.
4 Demosthenes, Orations, 399, 6.
5 Aristotle, Politics, IV, 4, 31 ; IV, 13, 7.
6 Xenophon, Memorabilia, III, 9, 15.
7 Plato, Republic, 562a.
8 Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, I, 1.
9 Isocrates, Orationes, 67a.
 De Urbanitate. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces 23

etymological relation between the astu and asteios,10 the former referring to the Greek city (in the
language of Homer and the Tragedians), and the latter to good taste and culture,11 to elegance,12
charm,13 intelligence,14 grace and beauty.15 Then, a contemporary of Cicero (or Cicero himself,
who can say?) created the term urbanitas from urbanus.
In the early days of Roman literature, urbanus meant “belonging to the city;”16 it was referring
to the urban refinement and pleasures, even debauchery opposed to the rural and virtuous ideal.
We find this meaning in the Latin comedies, especially in the work of Plautus and Terentius.17
Quintilian reminds us that Cicero considered the word to be a neologism (noua),18 and it is
difficult to know when the word began to indicate social and moral distinction. “A man of
wisdom and bon ton, as we say nowadays” writes Cicero to one of his correspondents.19 However,
Quintilian contradicts himself and makes Cicero lie by citing a definition given by Cato the
Elder:20
Urbanity is the characteristic of a man who has produced many good sayings and replies, and
who, whether in conversation, in social or convivial gatherings, in public speeches, or under
any other circumstances, will speak with humor and appropriateness. If any orator do this, he
will undoubtedly succeed in making his audience laugh.21
In fact, if the Catonian model of urbanity is the Greek astéion, it is because the word urbanus
– which acquired early on the proper sense that we know – finished in Cato’s time by adorning
itself with the entire range of meanings inherent to the concept of astéion. Paradoxically, the noun
derived from it, astéiotès, cannot be the origin of urbanitas,22 despite what the Ovidianist Georges
Lafaye writes.23 As the noun is only recorded since the first century BC, and widely employed by
the authors of the Second and then of the Third Sophistic,24 to the extent that we may wonder
if it was not the Roman urbanitas which influenced the Hellenistic astéiotès, instead of the
contrary, as we have for a longtime imagined. It would appear that, as Cicero qualified urbanus
as nouus, its use was not very spread at the time; it only became so later. However, even if the
word itself is recent, the concept that it contains is well known to the Roman orator. And Cicero
believes that the distinguished manners, the spice of conversation, the spirited dashes, and the
10 There is also an astunomos that refers to the art of living, to civilization. When Sophocles writes, at the
verse 355 of Antigone, about orgai astunomoi, he explicitly refers to the civilized manners, a notion that a
Latin from the 1st century BC would have expressed by urbani mores.
11 Plato, Phaedrus, 116.
12 Aristophanes, The Acharnians, 811.
13 Plato, Lysis, 204c.
14 Plato, Phaedrus, 227d.
15 Hippocrates, Œuvres, 1276, 36.
16 See the debatable thesis of Henri Bléry, “Rusticité et urbanité romaines” (PhD Diss., University of Paris,
1909), which argues the contrary…
17 See Charles Guérin, Person: l’élaboration d’une notion rhétorique au premier siècle avant J.-C : vol. 2.
Théorisation cicéronienne de la persona oratoire (Paris: Vrin, 2011), 249-250.
18 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VIII, 3, 34. He cites a letter of Cicero to Appius Pulcher (Ad familiares, III, 8,
3).
19 In the letter cited above.
20 Cato’s Apophthegmata is a collection of memorable sayings and sententiae, many of which are literal
translations from Greek (see Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, 2). The word urbanus, equivalent of astéios,
may have required a definition by virtue of its recent creation.
21 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VI, 3, 105: “Vrbanus homo [non] erit cuius multa bene dicta responsaque
erunt, et qui in sermonibus, circulis, conuiuiis, item in contionibus, omni denique loco ridicule commode
dicet. Risus erit quicumque haec faciet orator.”
22 On this notion, see the enlightening article by Otto Ribbeck, “Agroikos: eine Ethologische Studie,” Abhandl.
d. K. S. Gesellsch. d. Wissensch 10 (1888): 1-68; esp. 48-66.
23 Georges Lafaye, “L’urbanité romaine [Henri Bléry. Rusticité et urbanité romaines]”, Journal des savants 9,
12 (1911): 543-550.
24 At least according to the Thesaurus linguae graecae and to the Lexicon by Liddell and Scott. They
cite Victorius Valerius, Andronicus of Rhodes, Libanius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and a scholiast on
Aristophanes.
24 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

exquisite courtesy are not solely the privilege of Greeks, but eminently Roman qualities. In fact,
urbanity was not founded by the emergence of Roman cities, by their economic development,
but obviously by the Vrbs. Urbanity is thus related to the bon ton of the capital city: it is what
Quintilian writes later, referring to a certain De urbanitate written by a certain Domitius Marsus:
And as a matter of fact his work was not designed to deal with humor, but with urbane wit, a
quality which he regards as peculiar to this city, though it was not till a late period that it was
understood in this sense, after the word Urbs had come to be accepted as indicating Rome
without the addition of any proper noun.25
Coming back to urbanitas as such and its definition: as shown by Charles Guérin,26 urbanitas is
a quality that makes the difference between the parvenu and the purebred Roman. It is therefore
a social criterion, before being an intellectual touchstone.27 This seems to be the most important
characteristic. Then come the better known specificities: gentleness of manners, civility, politeness,
savoir-vivre, bon ton, good manners, the sense of protocol, politeness of language, the right choice
of words, phraseological purity, fine spiritual jokes, wit, trait of the spirit, proper jest, and good
taste. To these are added the distortions of urbanitas: the play, the joke, the inconsistent mockery,
and the malicious trick.28 The drawback of this casuistry is the lack of the referent. The savoir-
vivre is a floating notion that needs to be anchored in a context: and we cannot lay judgment on
the spices of Roman conversations in the light of the writings of the Chevalier de Méré. Thus
Cicero is undoubtedly the Roman orator who most frequently uses the word urbanitas,29 and
an excerpt from Brutus easily shows just how elusive the notion is: “What fashionable delicacy
do you mean? Said Brutus. I cannot, said I, pretend to define it: I only know that there is such a
quality existing.”30 The occurrences of the word in his texts are far from referring to qualities of
the “accomplished socialite.” In Pro Roscio Amerino,31 urbanitas reflects an excess of refinement;
in Pro Caelio,32 it appears as a superior spiritual form (facetious) of calumny (maledictio). As
Charles Guérin aslo shows, it is on the ethical legitimacy that we should place urbanitas. As he
very well puts it, urbanitas is “in the spirit of the time,”33 and Cicero always takes pleasure in
making his readers seize the “harmonics,” even if the entire meaning is not completely drained.
In De oratore,34 two attributes of urbanitas are detailed: spiritual grace (facetiarum lepos) and the
salt that spices up any speech (tamquam sale perspegatur omnis oratio); we should remember that
the fragment from Brutus cited above discusses the esthetics of foreign orators; when analyzing
the spirit of their eloquence, the truth is revealed without appeal: they lack urbanity, they did not
understand or capture the “air of Rome,” like yore at Versailles, the parvenus were reproached for
failing to grasp the air of the Court.
In one of the letters ad familiars (III, 7, 5), Cicero was praising his correspondent by adding to his
all Stoic uirtus and prudentia, the quality of urbanitas, understood in this case as the “politeness
of manners.” Besides all these, there are some occurrences where the word refers to the spirit.35

25 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VI, 3, 102: “Neque enim ei de risu sed de urbanitate est opus institutum,
quam propriam esse nostrae ciuitatis et sero sic intellegi coeptam, postquam urbis appellatione, etiam si
nomen proprium non adiceretur, Romam tamen accipi sit receptum.”
26 Guérin, Person, 240.
27 On this discriminatory principle, see E. S. Ramage, “Urbanitas: Cicero and Quintilian, a Contrast in
Attitudes,” American Journal of Philology 84 (1963): 400.
28 This typology, sometimes questioned by Charles Guérin (Guérin, Person, 242) comes from the book of E.
de Saint-Denis, Essai sur le rire et le sourire des Latins, (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1965), 144-165.
29 See E. S. Ramage, Urbanitas: Ancient Sophistication and Refinement (University of Oklahoma Press, 1973),
60 sq.
30 Cicero, Brutus, 171: “Et Brutus: qui est, inquit, iste tandem urbanitatis color? Nescio, inquam; tantum esse
quendam scio.”
31 Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino, 120.
32 Cicero, Pro Caelio, 6.
33 Guérin, Person, 247.
34 Cicero, De oratore, I, 159.
35 Cicero, Brutus, 143. De finibus, II, 103.
 De Urbanitate. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces 25

However, we must not forget – like Saint-Denis in his essay – that the term refers to the uita
ciuilis and even to the law.36
Otherwise, Cicero’s correspondence includes critiques that are referring explicitly to the Roman
reality. A letter to Volumnius, dating from his time as proconsul in Cilicia (51-50 BC), reads:
“there is so much scum37 in the city, that nothing can be so graceless38 as not to seem graceful
to someone.”39 Dispirited and discouraged, he urges his friend to unite his efforts with him
in order to defend “the possession of the spirit of the city (urbanitatis possessionem), I beg of
you, at any cost.”40 A few years later, in 46 BC, Cicero addresses Paetus in words with similar
tonality:
For that you love me, and have done so for a long while and without interruption, is indeed a
great thing, or rather the greatest, but it is shared with you by many: but that you are yourself
so lovable, so gracious, and so delightful in every way—that you have all to yourself. Added to
that is your wit, not Attic, but more pungent than that of the Attics, good Roman wit of the
true old city style. Now I—think what you will of it—am astonishingly attracted by witticisms,
above all of the native kind, especially when I see that they were first infected by Latinism,
when the foreign element found its way into the city, and now-a-days by the breeched and
Transalpine tribes also, so that no trace of the old-fashioned style of wit can be seen.
Accordingly when I see you, I seem—to confess the truth—to see all the Granii, the Lucilii, as
well as the Crassi and Laelii. Upon my life, I have no one left but you in whom I can recognize
any likeness of the old racy cheerfulness.41

36 This did not pass by the humanist Marius Nizolius, professor at the University of Parma, and author of
the Observationes in M. Tullium Ciceronem published in 1535, reedited and revised by the author in
1570 in Venice, with the title of Thesaurus ciceronianus. This text refers to the Genovese edition from
1662, entitled: Apparatus latinae locutionis in usum studiosae iuuentutis ex M. Tulii Ciceronis libris
collectis f° 3221.
37 As Bruno Rochette writes, “we can estimate at about one million adult population in Rome at the fall of
the Republic, of whom 60 to 70,000 peregrini.” In “La langue comme facteur d’intégration ou d’exclusion
L’Athènes de Périclès et la Rome de Cicéron”, in Serta antiqua et mediaevalia VII. Il cittadino, lo staniero, il
barbaro, fra integrazione ad emarginazione. Atti del I° Incontro Internazionale di Storia Antica, ed. Maria
Gabriella Angeli Bertinelli - Angela Donati (Genova, 22-24 maggio 2003, Rome, Giorgio Bretshneider
Editore, 2005): 3-20. 
38 Cicero uses a rare word, the Greek hapax akytheron (lit. who has very little charm).
39 Cicero, Ad familiares, VII 32, 2 : «tanta faex est in urbe, ut nihil tam sit akytheron quod non alicui uenustum
uideatur ».
40 Ibid.: “urbanitatis possessionem, amabo, quibusuis interdicis, defendamus.”
41 Cicero, Ad familiares, IX 15, 2-3: “Nam quod me amas, quod id et iam pridem et constanter facis,
est id quidem magnum atque haud scio an maximum, sed tibi commune cum multis; quod tu ipse
tam amandus es tamque dulcis tamque in omni genere iucundus, id est proprie tuum. Accedunt non
Attici sed salsiores quam illi Atticorum Romani veteres atque urbani sales. Ego autem (existimes licet
quidlibet) mirifice capior facetiis, maxime nostratibus, praesertim cum eas videam primum oblitas, tum
cum in urbem nostram est infusa peregrinitas, nunc vero etiam bracatis et Transalpinis nationibus***ut
nullum veteris leporis vestigium appareat. itaque te cum video, omnis mihi Granios, omnis Lucilios, vere
ut dicam, Crassos quoque et Laelios videre videor. moriar si praeter te quemquam reliquum habeo in
quo possim imaginem antiquae et vernaculae festivitatis agnoscere.” See also ad Att. IX 10, 7 and 18, 2
and Philippics, XI 12. I am changing the French translation of Jean Baujeu (C.U.F.): L’amitié qui te lie à
moi, tu y œuvres depuis longtemps et avec constance, ce qui n’est pas peu de chose, ce qui est même
immense à mes yeux, mais ce droit sur la mienne t’es commun avec quantité de gens ; et que tu sois
si aimable, si doux et si agréable en tout genre n’appartient qu’à toi ! Il faut ajouter à cela ton esprit je
ne dirai pas « attique », mais plus épicé que celui qu’on vante chez les Attiques, le vieil esprit romain
de la Ville. Pour ma part, libre à toi d’en penser ce que tu veux – j’adore les plaisanteries, mais surtout
celles de chez nous, et davantage encore en voyant qu’elles ont été imprégnées d’abord par le Latium à
l’époque où le goût provincial s’est répandu dans notre Ville et de nos jours par les peuples transalpins
porteurs de braies si bien qu’on n’aperçoit plus trace de l’enjouement d’autrefois. Ainsi quand je te vois,
je crois voir tous les Granius, tous les Lucilius, et même, à parler sincèrement, tous les Crassus et les
Laelius ! Que je meure si à part toi il me reste encore quelqu’un en qui je puisse reconnaître un reflet de
l’antique gaieté du terroir!
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Devoted to the Roman antiquity, Cicero opposes the Latin causticity, the lepos and the festiuitas,
which are of national tradition,42 with the rusticitas of the transalpine Gauls, these semibarbari,43
recently naturalized, whom Caesar had given access to the Senate, decimated by the civil wars.44
Otherwise, the origins of this contravention to urbanity can be traced back to the gradual
urbanization. The civic life was besieged by a massive sub-proletariat that invaded the Vrbs,45
whose dialectal diversity threatened the integrity of the ancestral speech.46 The linguistic distrust
was thus doubled by a political fear, as this “rampant peregrinitas”47 represented a danger to the
purebred Roman. Cicero considered all strangers, be they professional orators, as pettifoggers
(rabulae) “devoid of education, politeness, and taste”48 (indocti et inurbani aut rustici). And even
more disturbing, these barbaries domestica49 were corrupting the very roots of Roman culture, by
undermining the innocent speech of children, to whom the Grecian50 or Gallic sitters were giving
a very bad example by dropping language and pronunciation mistakes.51
Thus, Urbanitas is the cement of the national unity and, paradoxically, at the antipode of the
Roman urbanization policy. The more they urbanize, the more strangers they accept, and the
more they relinquish that worldly and spiritual “within one’s kind,” that mixture of politeness,
jest, wit, and refined laughter that only bonds the happy few of the Vrbs. We agree in this case
with the dichotomy between urbanitas and rusticitas employed by Quintilian when he defines this
notion, in the beginning of a chapter of Institutio oratoria dedicated to laughter:
First, there is urbanity (urbanitas), which I observe denotes language with a smack of the city
in its words, accent and idiom, and further suggests a certain tincture of learning derived from
associating with well-educated men; in a word, it represents the opposite of rusticity.52 

42 M.S. Celentano, “Umorismo, urbanitas e polemiche retoriche,” in Mousa. Scritti in onore di Giuseppe
Morelli (Bologna: Patron Editore, 1997), 323-330.
43 Suetonius, Life of Iulius Caesar, 76, 3: ciuitate donatos et quosdam e semibarbaris Gallorum recepit in
curiam.
44 See Dion Cassius, XLII 51, 5; XLIII 20, 2; XLVIII 22, 3. M. Gelzer, Caesar. Politician and Statesman.
Translation P. Needham (Oxford 1968): 291 and the note of J. Beaujeu, Cicéron. Correspondance, éd.
CUF, VII, (Paris 1980): 288-289. The foreign accent of a member of the Senate stirs critiques (according
to R.J.A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton 1984), 37 and note 49). For a more general
discussion, see J.N. Adams, Bilingualism and Latin Language (Cambridge, 2003), 432-438.
45 On Rome as an attractive pole of prosperity in the eyes of foreigners, see C. Edwards and G. Woolf,
“Cosmopolis: Rome as World City,” in Rome the Cosmopolis, eds. C. Edwards and G. Woolf (Cambridge
2003), 2-7.
46 Many authors are concerned with the upsurge of thefts and abuses perpetrated by foreigners. See
Seneca, Dialogues, 12, 6, 2-3; Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 44; Juvenal, Satires, III, 60-61. On Rome’s polyglot
environment, see G. Lüdi, Ėlements pour une histoire du plurilinguisme: polyglossie et pratiques
plurilingues chez les Romains, in Estudis de lingüistica i filologia oferts a Antoni M. Badia I Margarit, I
(Barcelona 1995), 553-564 (esp. 555-558). On cultural blends, see R. Oniga, “Lingua e identità etnica
nel mondo romano,” Plurilinguismo IV (1997): 49-64 et M. Moggi, “Lingua e identità culturale nel mondo
antico,” in R. Bombi and G. Graffi (a cura di), Ethnos e comunità linguistica: un confronto metodologico
e interdisciplinare. Atti del convegno int. Udine 5-7 dicembre 1996 (Udine 1998), 97-113. On the
Oriental immigration, see J. Cels-Saint-Hilare, “Citoyens romains, esclaves et affranchis: problèmes de
démographie,” REA CIII (2001): 443-479.
47 The expression belongs to Charles Guérin, Person, 254.
48 Cicero, Brutus, 180. Alas, these adjectives describe the foreign orators and not the simple citizens.
49 Ibid., 258.
50 Tacitus in Dialogus de oratoribus (29) uses the pejorative word graeculae. See also J. Christes, “Rom
und die Fremden. Bildungsgeschichtliche Aspekte der Akkulturation,” Gymnasium CIV (1997): 13-35 [Der
Umgang mit dem Fremden in der Vormoderne. Studien zur Akkulturation in bildungshistorischer Sicht
(Cologne-Weimar-Vienna, 1997), 99-116] and D. Noy, Foreigners at Rome: citizens and strangers (London,
2000).
51 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, I, 1, 4.
52 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VI, 3, 17: “Nam et urbanitas dicitur, qua quidem significari uideo sermonem
praeferentem in uerbis et sono et usu proprium quendam gustum urbis et sumptam ex conuersatione
doctorum tacitam eruditionem, denique cui contraria sit rusticitas.”
 De Urbanitate. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces 27

Another fragment of the same chapter enriches this presentation, turning urbanitas into a
resistance against blandness, tunelessness, foreign influences and rustic stench:
For to my thinking urbanity involves the total absence of all that is incongruous, coarse,
unpolished and exotic whether in thought, language, voice or gesture, and resides not
so much in isolated sayings as in the whole complexion of our language, just as for the
Greeks Atticism meant that elegance of taste that was peculiar to Athens.53 
We reach, thus, the core of the notion: Quintilian substantially argues that, in the name of
the good taste of the city, a good taste that flows into the letters and fosters the art of rhetoric,
linguistic breaches that sound like cultural gaps should be avoided. The absence of such a gap is
warranted by the aesthetics of uniformity inspired by Cicero, who is not against the variety of
styles and the disparities of borrowings, but advocates a sort of synthesis between the ornament
and the spirit of simplicity, according to the model of Demosthenes. It is possible to nurture
the plurality of styles by going from demonstrative clarity to elevation, but the elocution unity
must always be brought forward by convenience, by necessity, by harmony among all parts:54
in a word, one must imagine a balance between Zeuxis and Phidias, between a certain sense of
diversity, and the capability to unify all differences. Or the modern barbaries, this theatre of the
linguistic chaos, undermines any aesthetic that it might foster. The disparity of words and of styles
in Rome is such that the unity of language does not exist anymore. As Cicero writes in a letter to
Curio55 that “the urban spirit (urbanitatem) of old times has run dry,” he turns this urbanitas into
a vector of tonal unity that the anarchic and inconsistent uarietas of the Vrbs, open to strangers,
has helped to develop. Thus, he places this sorrow on the same level as the attachment to the past
of some rare obsoletely philhellenic contemporaries, still devoted to “maintaining the ancient
glory of Athens” (retine[re] gloriam antiquam Atticam). Let us not forget that, here, urbanity is a
Roman equivalent of Atticism. True, the notion also belongs to the field of laughter, as Charles
Guérin has argued thoroughly:56 in the second book of De oratore, it relates to the dicacitas
(causticity) and the facetiae (vigor), and also to the sales (bon-mots, witticisms). The dicacitas
resides “in throwing and smashing a dash of raillery”57 (in iaciendo mittendoque ridiculo), the
facetiae “in a story told with grace”58 (in narrando aliquid uenuste), and the sales in the spiritual
points that pass for a paragon of superior Atticism: “this is certainly all that is most Attic” (id
certe sit uel maxime Atticum), reminds Cicero.59 A sort of progression towards the sublime takes
shape among these three notions. We could imagine that they contribute to certain transference,
to a certain reflection of the breuitas that would strain the sought union insofar as they show the
different facets of the same object. Or the principle of stylistic harmony defined above in relation
to urbanitas unifies this apparent threefold division. By virtue of a fierce segregation, Cicero
subjected the barbaries domestica to the public disdain of the pure Latinity; in the same manner,
in order to prevent urbanitas from getting caught in its own game, from becoming too indulgent
towards itself, he stirs it to seek the rarity (nec nimis requenti), to escape the buffoonery (scurrile)
or the obscenity (subobsceno) – like the mime –, to avoid becoming insolent (petulanti), impudent
(improbum), inhuman (inhumanum), or unbecoming (indecorum).60 We can see clearly, the
decorum (convenience) assists the urbanitas in all its manifestations.
Let us go back to Quintilian and his definition of urbanity. One fragment draws our attention:
“ut non tam sit in singulis dictis quam in toto colore dicendi.” Quintilian does not forbid the

53 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VI, 3, 107: Nam meo quidem iudicio illa est urbanitas, in qua nihil absonum,
nihil agreste, nihil inconditum, nihil peregrinum neque sensu neque uerbis neque ore gestuue possit
deprendi, ut non tam sit in singulis dictis quam in toto colore dicendi, qualis apud Graecos atticismos ille
reddens Athenarum proprium saporem.”
54 This thesis is largely developed in Cicero’s Orator.
55 Cicero, Ad familiares, VII, 31, 2: “exaruisse iam ueterem urbanitatem”.
56 Charles Guérin, Person, 257 sq.
57 Cicero, Orator, 87.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid. 89.
60 Ibid. 88.
28 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

interspersed construction of small casual, scattered elements, provided that their disparity does
not contradict the general spirit of the work. In this case, the style would become abrupt (oratio
concise),
a discontinuous style, since our language is composed not of a system of limbs, but of a series
of fragments: for your nicely rounded and polished phrases are incapable of cohesion. Further,
the color, though bright enough, has no unity, but consists of a number of variegated splashes.
A purple stripe appropriately applied lends brilliance to a dress, but a dress decorated with a
quantity of patches can never be becoming to anybody. Wherefore, although these ornaments
may seem to stand out with a certain glitter of their own, they are rather to be compared to
sparks flashing through the smoke than to the actual brilliance of flame: they are, in fact,
invisible when the language is of uniform splendor, just as the stars are invisible in the light of
day. And when eloquence seeks to secure elevation by frequent small efforts, it merely produces
an uneven and broken surface which fails to win the admiration due to outstanding objects and
lacks the charm that may be found in a smooth surface.61 
Besides the issue of a prose composed of membra disiecta, this text also raises the problem of
aesthetic unity founded on a sum of scattered objects, heterogeneous, strangers to each other and
devoid of common purpose. In short, everything is a matter of teleology. The telos of a text (a
speech, an epic, a musical piece or an ‘urbanistical’ programme) is unity, and Quintilian questions
this unity by asking if the identity of a work is constituted by the sum of its parts.
Cicero had explained it clearly: the parts of a work, no matter their place, must accommodate
each other’s differences. There are qualities to be respected:62 correctness63 (latinitas), clarity and
radiance64 (perspicuitas, lux), convenience65 (decorum), and ornamental propensity66 (ornate dicere).
Thus, urbanity remains the guarantor of these principles. If a speech is not to be interspersed
with barbarisms, be they colorful and picturesque, it is because only the ornatus modulated
according to the decorum reveals a great orator. Thereafter, certain means and techniques
facilitate this convergence towards the unified ideal: the choice of words67 (elegantia), their
arrangement68 (collocatio verborum), their rhythm69 (modus), their beauty70 (forma), the harmony
of their disposition71 (concinnitas), and the manner in which they are associated72 (iunctura).73
Furthermore, the introduction of rhythm into the prose does not make it pretentious, but
rather bestows one of the postulations of poetry: the imitation of Nature. Or, utility may be the
keyword in Nature, but rhythm is equally important, as everything pulsates by numbers: it is
this exact adequacy of form and function that allows the unity of utility and beauty. The celestial
vault, the human body, the framework of a ship, the construction of a well done temple like the
one of Jupiter Capitolinus are marvelous compromises between beauty and utility, and obey to
61 Quintilian, Orator’s Education, VIII, 5, 27-30: “[…] soluta fere oratio et e singulis non membris sed frustis
conlata structura caret, cum illa rutunda et undique circumcisa insistere inuicem nequeant. Praeter hoc
etiam color ipse dicendi quamlibet clarus multis tamen ac uariis uelut maculis conspergitur. Porro, ut
adferunt lumen clauus et purpurae loco insertae, ita certe neminem deceat intertexta pluribus notis uestis.
Quare licet haec et nitere et aliquatenus extare uideantur, tamen et lumina illa non flammae sed scintillis
inter fumum emicantibus similia dixeris (quae ne apparent quidem ubi tota lucet oratio, ut in sole sidera
ipsa desinunt cerni) et quae crebris paruisque conatibus se attollunt inaequalia tantum et uelut confragosa
nec admirationem consecuntur eminentium et planorum gratiam perdunt.”
62 He develops this argument in De Oratore (book III) and in Orator.
63 Cicero, De oratore, III, 29, 37, 38, 39, 40, 49, 52.
64 Ibid., III, 24.
65 Cicero, Orator, 70 and 82.
66 Cicero, De oratore, III, 50.
67 Cicero, Orator, 79.
68 Cicero, De oratore, III, 171-172.
69 Ibid., III, 173,176, 179… See also numerus at paragraphs 184, 194 et 196.
70 Ibid., III, 199.
71 Ibid., III, 100, 203, 207 (concinne).
72 Ibid., III, 91 (iunctio), 172 (iuncta oratio).
73 Ibid., III, passim.
 De Urbanitate. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces 29

a rhythmical and musical perfection74 that provokes pleasure (voluptas). Here, Cicero offers a
definition of classical art: beauty is not defined as overlaid ornament, but as the perception of
an inner and organic rationality, thus vivid, of the work of art, of which the model is the human
body. Luxury is not superfluous, but the necessary, the plenitude of the necessary.
Therefore, urbanitas adapts to the diversity of parts, provided that they obey an idea. This brings
us to the Platonism of Cicero and Quintilian: as shown by Panofsky,75 the ideal sculptor does not
have his heart set out to represent a model, even if perfect; he bears an extrinsic idea of beauty
(species pulchritudinis eximia), and it is this idea that he seeks constantly by shaping the matter.76
In fact, he does not copy the parts of the model, but rather engages in a clever and inspired
assemblage, carefully selecting and combining accomplished aspects of the human beauty. The
realization of the ideal is somewhat dependent of the perfect graft. This demiurgic power finds
an equivalent in the art of using the “three styles” described by Cicero in Orator: the artist must
be a moderator who works on a triple stylistic palette, the tripertita uarietas. A whole array of
possibilities of the language opens for him: first, the low style, close to conversation and mixture
of good linguistics77 (sanitas), diligent carelessness78 (neglegentia diligens) and convenience79
(decorum), in short, a Roman version of the isocratic Atticism. Then, the medium style, which
celebrates the asianist80 tendencies, especially the suavitas, that rules the entire range of tropes.
Proper to the encomiastic (laudatory) genre, this style is founded in imagination and inspires
delectation.81 Finally, the vehement style, the grand style, a sort of focal point of the Ciceronian
spectrum, towards which all the colors and all the lights of the oratory prism converge. Ample,
deep, rich, rough, burning, it is the strong reinforcement of protreptis: it converts the most
unruly spirits; it does not seek a quick and easy change of opinion (what sophists did), but it
pursues interior conversion, lucid adhesion, reconciliation with the self, and civilized redemption.
Urbanitas is thus a mediating quality; it inaugurates an aesthetic of concordia discors, to extend the
metaphor, and a sort of rhetorical diplomacy.
The question that emerges at the end of this journey underlines several paradoxes that could be
of interest to the urban thought. The growing urbanization disintegrates the city, while urbanity
favors the rallying of the best around unifying aesthetic values. No wonder that the minds of
intellectuals and upper classes towards the end of the Republic associated savage urbanism to the
theme of decadence. The rusticitas is without a doubt a vector of coarseness, but the countryside
remains the place of morality. Let us remember Propertius: “it is with sorrow that I am watching

74 The third book of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, dedicated to lexis (figures of speech) and to taxis (parts of speech)
clearly states the need for rhythm within a period or in the arrangement of parts: this is what ensures the
coherence of the global structure of a work. If we look closely at the crown moldings of a temple’s podium,
which is a reversed echo of the base moldings, we can find, in a different order, an illustration of the
Aristotelian rule that a sentence begins with a primary peon and finishes with a secondary peon, in virtue
of a reverse reflection. This analogy ensures the unity of parts and their integration in serial and articulated
series. The sense of symmetry and of proportion is, in fact, equally familiar to orators and architects. See
Aristotle, Rhetoric, III, 8 and 9. Cicero, De oratore, III, 45, 178 sq.
75 Erwin Panofsky, Idea. Contribution à l’histoire d’une ancienne théorie de l’art, translated from German by
H. Joly (Paris: Gallimard, 1983) [1st edition, 1924].
76 I refer to the admirable text from Orator, II, 8: “For it must not be thought that the ingenious artist, when he
was sketching out the form of a Jupiter, or a Minerva, borrowed the likeness from any particular object;--but
a certain admirable semblance of beauty was present to his mind, which he viewed and dwelt upon, and
by which his skill and his hand were guided.” (nec vero ille artifex cum faceret Iovis formam aut Minervae,
contemplabatur aliquem e quo similitudinem duceret, sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis
eximia quaedam, quam intuens in eaque defixus ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat.)
77 Cicero, Orator, 99.
78 Ibid., 77-78.
79 Ibid., 70, 82. The Ciceronian notion of decorum, inherited from prépon in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and
Panetius, finds an equivalent in the Vitruvian décor: thus emerges an analogy between the definitions of
De officiis, I, 96, and De arhitectura, I, 2, 5.
80 They are foreign tendencies, but well managed and by no means “barbarian”.
81 This Ciceronian version of Asianism eliminates all excess, and finds legitimacy in the “attic” authority of
Demetrius and Phalereus.
30 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

you leave Rome; but I am pleased, Cynthia, since you’re without me, you’re in the quiet country.
The fields are chaste…”82 And this decadence is equally related to the spirit of the places as
it is to their infrastructure. The ancient Romans were attached to horizontal landscapes;
but the contemporaries of Cicero are confronted to the vertical landscape of the insulae,
these disparate neighborhoods that border gigantism. Moralists regard them with dismay:
nothing but large windows, flowered pergolas, added balconies, floors laid on top of each
other as suspended, all surrounded by porticoes that prevent a panoptic vision. Supported by
flimsy foundations, these uncomfortable constructions, with no running water, no windows,
steep stairs, heated by improvised fire baskets, were constantly threatened by ruin or fire.83
Cicero’s heart is broken because these insulae have replaced the Pompeiian buildings that
ensured a certain unity of the family life. In his eyes, the transformations of the habitat
reflected the massive immigration witnessed by Rome. In the Roman domus, everything was
hierarchically structured, and urbanism had the color of urbanity: the compluuium that was
giving birth to water rooms and basins in the middle of the triclinium was domesticating
and humanizing nature, summoned in the heart of the city, in the closed space of the domus,
as an affront to promiscuity. On the contrary, the insula instituted this promiscuity as
modus uiuendi. This urban massif contributed to the decline of the distinction and values of
which urbanitas had been the cornerstone. Martial summed it all up in a laconic sentence:
maxima Roma terit, mighty Rome grinds us down.84 This gigantism was the urban fruit of
cosmopolitism: Lucan saw these crowds generated by all these migratory movements as “the
scum of the universe,”85 while Juvenal, anti-Semite, Syriophobic and Hellenophobic, did not
recognize his city anymore.86 As Jean-Pierre Néraudau et Luc Duret write, “urbanitas …was
impracticable in the ‘slimy city’ of Romulus.”87
In fact, the solution to this “unurban urbanism” – to urbanism as infringement to urbanity
– was brought by Vitruvius.88 While Cicero persisted in the ethical, philosophical, and
rhetorical presuppositions, Vitruvius, while remaining Ciceronian, turned these dogmas
towards the practice of architecture, towards his techné. In other words, he made urbanity
possible; he restituted, in the field, its nobility. Despite the apparent divorce between
the Urbs and urbanity, he drew from that urbanity lessons of urbanism. He knew how to
go beyond the dashes of spirit, the witticism, and the bon ton, transcending them and
transferring their substance into his art. What is a jest, after all? A jest is a speech containing
an alliance of consequence (consentaneum) and inconsequence (dissentaneum), of logic and
illogic; it comes down to either a discordant concordance, or a concordant discordance. In
a word, it is an isosceles triangle whose tip is the acumen, the base its matter, and the two
sides are the two antithetic thoughts. The register of mirabilia allows us to draw an episode
well known to the Romans: when the Colosseum was inaugurated, by Titus at the 80 AD games,
in the arena, a ferocious lion spared the small hares that played safely around its jaws. This
paradox was illogic (dissentaneum). It clashed with the lions’ legendary cruelty, or that lion was
the property of the Caesar. Metaphorically, the Caesar was himself a superb and generous lion on
82 Propertius, Elegies, II, 10, 1sq.
83 Ulpianus, Digest, I, 15, 2.
84 Martial, Epigrams, X, 58, 6.
85 Lucan, Pharsalia, VII, 403-405: “… stat tectis putris avitis / in nullos ruitura domus, nulloque frequentem /
cive suo Romam sed mundi faece repletam.”  
86 See Stéphane Itic, “Le grec et le refus du grec dans la poétique juvénalienne,” Ars Scribendi 4 (2006):
1-16.
87 Luc Duret, Jean-Pierre Neraudau, Urbanisme et métamorphoses de la Rome antique (Paris: Belles Lettres,
collection Realia, 1983), 345.
88 On Vitruvius and thetoric, see Pierre Gros, “La rhétorique des ordres dans l’architecture classique,”
Colloque sur la rhétorique. Calliope I (= Caesarodunum, XIV bis) (Paris, 1979), 333-347; see also F. E.
Brown, “Vitruvius and the liberal Art of Architecture,” in Bucknell Review XI, 4 (1963), 99 sq. According
to Pierre Gross, Brown shows that one of the major accomplishments of the Vitruvian project, in his
colmpilation De architectura, is to have established architecture as an ars liberalis in its own right, and
more precisely, to have given it the discipline and the flexibility of rhetoric, which in this time was a means
of expression as well as a way of thinking.
 De Urbanitate. Tales of Urban Lives and Spaces 31

the side of impertinent and helpless poets like the author of this jest, Martial. This account allows
him to celebrate the imperial clemency in a consensual manner. This was the logical side of the
construction (consentaneum). By virtue of the complicity between the microcosms and the
macrocosms, it was natural that the lions were as benevolent as the human god who owned
them. In fact, the poem opens with a paradox and rested in an imperial praise: in nature, of
course, a lion never spares its victim. But in the orbis of the arena, which is a miniature orbis
terranum, the contrary is legitimate as the lion belongs to the emperor: “How can a famished
lion spare a prey at its mercy? But it belongs to you, they say: so it can.”89 We owe the
explanation of this triangular structure to the Polish humanist Mathias Casimir Sarbiewski
(Fig. 1):90 this play with the inconsistencies, the deformities, and the rectified paradoxes,
is a feature of urbanitas, founded on the equilibrium, the symmetry, and the refusal of the
grotesque. As urbanitas is a classical principle, it keeps us from the lures of the imagination,
and from mannerist biases; here, the paradox of the generous lion is quickly rectified: the
emperor is magnanimus, and not his creature.

Fig. 1. Mercedes Blanco, Les rhétoriques de la pointe: Baltasar Gracián et le conceptisme en Europe

We can see, the architecture of the sententious jest – which is one of the spearheads of urbanity –
is in fact a reflection on the proportions, and Vitruvius is the theoretician of this equilibrium in
the architectural domain. In the same manner, he detests the paradoxical creatures, the monsters
and the chimeras,91 and he always takes pleasure in granting symmetria to nature and truth.92 Let
us attempt to see how Vitruvius makes possible the urbanitas. Quintilian’s text cited above (VI, 3,
17) substantially stated that urbanity detested the strange elements that appeared to mistreat the
unity of a work.
Architecture is the art of membra disjecta as the very principle of construction is to unify the
diverse, unless we imagine integral forms, made of a single matter. Quintessentially Vitruvius.
First and foremost, even before speaking of technique, his method consists in gathering the

89 Martial, Epigrams, I, 14: “Unde potest auidus captae leo parcere praedae ?/ Sed tamen esse tuus dicitur :
ergo potest.”
90 Mathias Casimir Sarbiewski, “De acuto et arguto liber unicus siue Seneca et Martialis”, Praecepta
poetica, edition St. Skimina, Cracovie, 1958 [manuscript from 1626]. The scheme comes from the book
of Mercedes Blanco, Les rhétoriques de la pointe: Baltasar Gracián et le conceptisme en Europe (Paris:
Champion, 1992), 175. The example of Martial’s epigram is taken from page 174. We are paraphrasing the
arguments and adding our own.
91 Vitruvius, De architectura, V, 173, 3.
92 Louis Callebat, “Rhétorique et architecture dans le De Architectura de Vitruve,” in Le Projet de Vitruve.
Objet, destinataires et réception du ‘De Architectura’. Actes du Colloque international de Rome (26-27
mars 1993), Publications de l’École française de Rome, 1994, 31-46.
32 studies in History & Theory of Architecture

“dispersed parts”93 of a tradition in order to fuse them into a single organized and functional
body. In practical terms, the concept that presides over this fusion is ordinance94 or ordinatio,
the architectural equivalent of compositio. The ordinance seeks an organic unity achieved by the
commensurability of the membra or partes, but it refers to their dialogue among each other, as
well as to their relation to the totality. It involves a taxis, an disposition,95 which can only make
sense if the ordinance itself obeys a balanced rhythm. Thus enters the concept of eurythmie,96
which is at the same time a “beautiful appearance” (uenusta species) and an appropriate disposition
in the different parts”97 (commodusque in compositionibus membrorum adspectus) of the building,
and the organic thought of its components. There is no disposition without composition, the
latter being undoubtedly a more globalizing and more “overseeing” function, and certainly
being the Latin equivalent of the Platonist sustasis, which assumed a necessary harmonic relation
between the parts, and of each part with the ensemble.98 Looking at the Latin jest that warrants
urbanitas, we can observe that it mostly obeys this ideal of commensurability of parts. These parts
come together briefly at the top of the building that constitutes the acumen.
The aim of this demonstration is clear: if urbanitas sits uncomfortably in the Rome of the social
consequences of urbanization, if an author such as Cicero suffered, socially as well as an esthete,
from the urbanistic anarchy, and if he fought against it, the urbanitas that he theorized and that
Quintilian reinstated, ended up flowing into a competing art, becoming one of the principles
of the immense Vitruvian project that translated rhetoric in terms of res aedificatoria. It is not
the question of reexamining the relations between the ars dicendi and Vitruvianism. It is only
the opportunity to establish a working hypothesis: if the Ciceronian urbanitas was hostile to
urbanism, Vitruvius is nonetheless the artisan of their reconciliation.

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ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Fig.1: Mercedes Blanco, Les rhétoriques de la pointe: Baltasar Gracián et le conceptisme en Europe (Paris,
Champion, 1992): 175.