A gradus, or flight of stairs, was an excellent spot for displaying an executed criminal’s body. An angiportum backed onto the rear entrances of houses and, as Kaiser suggests, would have been the perfect place for, say, abandoning a baby or committing a murder. Prostitutes worked on viae, but aging, low-class ones could also be found on angiporta. When Catullus, a famously raunchy first-century poet, told his lover that she now hangs out in angiporta, he may, Kaiser points out, “have been suggesting she is not behaving as just a prostitute, but as an old broken-down prostitute.” And it’s no
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