What were public buildings like baths and monuments built on top of in ancient Rome? Sometimes residences and neighborhoods, which problematizes euergetism, although evidence of eminent domain in the Roman empire still seems to be thin, according to a new article in G&R by Christopher Siwicki.
Said Cicero when his house was destroyed during an exile (de Domo Sua 41.109, trans. Watts):
What is more sacred, what more inviolably hedged about by every kind of sanctity, than the home of every individual citizen (domus unius cuiusque civium)? Within its circle are his altars, his hearths, his household gods, his religion, his observances, his ritual; it is a sanctuary so holy in the eyes of all, that it were sacrilege to tear an owner therefrom.