Laudator Temporis Acti

Juvenal 13.157-161 (tr. Susanna Morton Braund, with her note):

This is only a tiny proportion of the crimes that Gallicus,²⁷ guardian of Rome, hears continuously from the morning star until the sun sets! If you want to understand the behaviour of humankind, a single courthouse is enough. Spend a few days there and then dare to call yourself unlucky, after you've come away.

²⁷ Gaius Rutilius Gallicus, City Prefect under Domitian.

haec quota pars scelerum, quae custos Gallicus Vrbis
usque a lucifero donec lux occidat audit?
humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti
sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et        160
dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris, aude.

Cambridge University Examination Papers. Michaelmas Term, 1871 to Easter Term, 1872 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873), p. 9:

Una domus: what place is here meant?

Ludwig Friedlaender, ed., D. Junii Juvenalis Saturarum Libri V. Mit erklärenden Anmerkungen (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1895), Vol. II, p. 537:

jedes beliebige einzelne Haus.

Lowell Edmunds, "Juvenal's Thirteenth Satire," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 115.1 (1972) 59-73 (at 69):

...any one house...

F.W. Farrar, Ephphatha or The Amelioration of the World: Sermons (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880), p. 19:

Look, for instance, at the world of disease and pain. You need not go far to look. One house will suffice you to see the wretchedness of the human race.<sup>2

2</sup> "Humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti,
Sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et
Dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris aude."
                                              —Juv. Sat. xiii.159.

George Santayana, "My Father," Selected Critical Writings, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 279-286 (at 282):

He had a great respect for authority in science or letters, and would quote Quintilian in support of his own preference for limited views: Ad cognoscendum genus humanum sufficit una domus:* 'For exploring human nature one household is large enough.'

* Probably a confused memory, mine or my father's, of Juvenal, Satire XIII, 159-160...

J.D. Duff, ed., Fourteen Satires of Juvenal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 408:

either the office or private house, used as an office, of Gallicus: not (as Friedl.), any private house taken at random.

Thomas J. B. Brady, "Notulae," Hermathena 2 (1876) 193-197 (at 196-197):

Surely, here 'domus' is not, as it is usually explained, the private house of Ponticus [sic]; it is the police court where he sits from morning till night...

Edward Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (1980; rpt. Berkeley: Department of Classics, University of California, 2013), pp. 488-489:

Not his [Gallicus'] house, but his office, by the temple of Tellus (RE 22.2519, Lanciani Bull. del Commissione Archeol. di Roma 20, 1892, 19); cf. Demosth. 21.85 τὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων οἴκημα.

The reference is to Rodolfo Lanciani, "Gli edificii della prefettura urbana fra la Tellure e le terme di Tito e di Traiano," Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 20 (1892) 19-37.