They were stealing the whole city –
those audacious shopkeepers.
There wasn’t a single establishment
that didn’t spill over its doorsill
into the streets themselves…
The worst of the shopping season is over; the streets returning to us at last. Icy and salty and cold but ours to walk down penniless, if we wish. No shopping-bag billboards bashing into pedestrian knees please. We venture out with only our hands in our pockets; the recently ransacked boulevards ours again to stroll.
…Rome, which used to be one enormous bazaar, is a city again.
Martial, VII, lxi
. . . . .