Roman Key Rings, Locksmiths, and Burglars Through the Wall

Marcus Valerius

Do you see this? Here, on my second knuckle. That bent little tooth of bronze jutting off the ring. It's a key, my friend. An L shaped key, forged right onto a finger ring, and I wear it turned outward, like a brass knuckle, as I step out into the dawn crowd. The bakery smells are already rolling down the street, the carts are groaning, and I'm walking out armed with a piece of iron and cast bronze. Come along.

Marcus Valerius

Now, why on my hand? Hmm. Think about what I'm wearing. A tunic. No pocket. Not one. And the toga, ah, yards and yards of good wool, and not a single pocket in it either. So where does a Roman put his key? You could hang it from your belt on a cord. I've seen men do it. And then you walk fifty paces into the Subura, in the crush, elbows everywhere, and a sector zonarius, a cutpurse, slices the cord clean. You feel nothing. Nothing! Until you reach for it and, and, there's just a cut string.

Marcus Valerius

So the finger it is. A thief has to work a lot harder to take a ring off a moving hand. And there's something else, something nobody says out loud but everybody knows. A key tells the street who you are.

Marcus Valerius

Think about who owns a key. The slave at the mill? He owns nothing to lock. The day wage man, sleeping wherever the work is? Same. But a bronze ring key on your knuckle says you hold a rented cenaculum, an apartment of your own, or a heavy oak and iron arca, a strongbox. The wealthy keep their valuables in strongboxes and wear the keys as rings, so the ring is a little announcement. And of course, uh, of course the posers noticed. Some fellows wear gilded rings with fake bitting, cut for show, opening nothing at all. Just think: if the key looks priceless, imagine what must be in the box it opens!

Marcus Valerius

Anyway. This morning, on the stairs of our insula, I nearly walk into Quintus, my neighbor from the third floor. He's hopping, he's cursing Jupiter, he's cradling his thumb like a wounded bird. His cheap iron key has seized in the jamb, and he wrenched it so hard that, well, the thumb lost the argument. So I put my shoulder to that door with him, and, um, we get it loose. Then I say, come, my friend, we're going down to the locksmith. And believe me, he has opinions about locksmiths.

Marcus Valerius

Ah, Servius's shop. Breathe in. Smoke, hot metal, that sour smell of oil. Servius is a clostrarius, a locksmith, and the screech you hear is his bronze file, going and going. Scrap trimmings all over the floor like glittering little curls, and hanging along the wall, all those keys. Rotary barrel keys, hollow in the stem, made to slide over a pin and turn inside the lock. And the bits are cut to pass the claustra, the wards inside. Those are metal fingers in the lock, and the key has to match the cut out areas exactly. Exactly, or it doesn't turn.

Marcus Valerius

Quintus is groaning about his thumb, and Servius takes one glance at the seized key and clicks his tongue. Then, while he works, he tells us something that, well, you didn't hear it from me.

Marcus Valerius

Those wild, maze like notches on the fine ring keys? Half of it is theater. The locksmith adds elaborate cuts on the outside of the bit to impress your dinner guests, and inside the door the bolt mechanism can be, um, shockingly simple. I can't swear to how often. But Servius shrugged when I asked, and that shrug told me plenty. A grand key is a good story. The lock doesn't always need to be.

Marcus Valerius

And now the part that makes me laugh, and also makes me check my walls at night. A tenant spends good denarii on a warded bronze lock. Very proud. Then look at the wall next to that door. Our insula partitions are opus craticium. Timber frames stuffed with reeds and, hmm, crumbling plaster. Flimsy! And the seasoned burglars, the effractores, they know it. They never trouble themselves with the lock. They bring an iron pickaxe and perfodere parietem, they dig straight through the bedroom wall, while you're away at the baths, soaking and gossiping. You come home, the door is locked, the key turns beautifully, and your silver is gone through a hole.

Marcus Valerius

So why keep a key at all? I've asked myself that. And the answer, I think, is that in this city of a million strangers, there is no detective police to chase down your stolen silver. Nobody is coming. The lock isn't a shield, you see. It's a promise. A small, fragile pact that keeps honest neighbors honest.

Marcus Valerius

So I walk home in the lamp light, Quintus beside me with his thumb wrapped in a rag, and I turn the ring back around my finger, bit facing in, the way you do when the day is done. Bronze tooth against my palm. Good enough for tonight. Mostly. I do think I'll be knocking on my bedroom wall before I sleep.