City Traffic Laws

[Clavdivs]

I might venture to add the text of the relevant passages of the Tabula Heracleensis in English translation, extracted from the University of Grenoble's gold-mine of Roman law, so that readers who cannot read Latin can see the text of the LEX IVLIA MVNICIPALIS -- 

14) After January 1 next no one shall drive a wagon along the streets of Rome or along those streets in the suburbs where there is continuous housing after sunrise or before the tenth hour of the day, except whatever will be proper for the transportation and the importation of material for building temples of the immortal gods, or for public works, or for removing from the city rubbish from those buildings for whose demolition public contracts have been let. For these purposes permission shall be granted by this law to specified persons to drive wagons for the reasons stated.

15) Whenever it is proper for the vestal virgins, the king of the sacrifices, or the flamens to ride in the city for the purpose of official sacrifices of the Roman people; whatever wagons are proper for a triumphal procession when any one triumphs; whatever wagons are proper for public games within Rome or within one mile of Rome or for the procession held at the time of the games in the Circus Maximus, it is not the intent of this law to prevent the use of such wagons during the day within the city for these occasions and at these times.

16) It is not the intent of this law to prevent ox wagons or donkey wagons that have been driven into the city by night from going out empty or from carrying out dung from within the city of Rome or within one mile of the city after sunrise until the tenth hour of the day.

The Latin text refers to heavy goods wagons, the THENSAE drawn by young PATRIMI and MATRIMI (boys whose parents were both still alive, also a condition to be chosen one of the SALII or Leaping Priests of Mars) that bore the attributes of the gods in the POMPA CIRCENSIS or sacred procession to open the LVDI (in Rome as in Greece, games such as chariot races were religious rites), the triumphal chariot and the CARPENTVM of the Vestals and flamines all alike as PLOSTREIS, sing. PLOSTRA, whose descendant PLAVSTRVM became an ox-wagon. 

According to Smith, Wayte and Marindin's ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' the covered CARPENTVM had been allowed to all Roman matrons always, and the four-wheeled PILENTVM at games and festivals, during the early Republic as a reward for their patriotic generosity during the investment and fall of Veii (406-396 B.C.E.) but this seems to have been abolished by the LEX OPPIA in 215 B.C.E.

Despite this law, and the LEX IVLIA MUNICIPALIS on top of it, the CARPENTVM was voted to ladies of the Imperial family several times by the Senate -- Agrippina the Elder, the wife of Germanicus, had her CARPENTVM in her funeral-procession, Valeria Messalina (third wife of the God Claudius) and Agrippina the Younger (fourth wife of the God Claudius and mother of Nero) were both voted the carriage.