shopping and voting

You find out all sorts of things from the LRB. Here's Mary Beard on Roman shopping malls (not online yet):

The Saepta - enclosures - have their own story of commercialisation to tell: they were planned by Julius Ceasar as a vast, purpose built hall for electoral voting, but at the very moment the democratic Roman Republic was giving way to a style of autocratic government that dispensed with popular elections and they were speedily converted into an arena for gladiatorial shows and then into a very upmarket bazaar and antiques market.

Comments

[Barry Freed]

No doubt giving rise to the first Orange Julius fruit drink stores that would later be such a fixture in American malls of the mid to late 20th century.