Roman Houses

[Pertinax]

Thank you GO. Just to explain a little here, these mosaic examples are fine decorative pieces, so dont confuse them with the "zebra" cross hatch warning panels displayed in servile areas of the house. The trompe l'oeil spatial pattern is exactly the sort of sophisticated confection associated with the aspiring middle classes.

[Pertinax]

A couple of notes to round off the topic, if , as we hope Decimus Vitus' website prospers members will be able to see his "walk through" of a Roman house:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4681

this thread refers to his resurrected website , and I commend it to you.

 

The statistical analysis of Vesuvian dwellings in the work I have been taking notes from:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Society-Pompeii-He...8&s=gateway

 

gives some useful (if not wholly unsurprising ) results:

quartile analysis of dwelling size shows a preponderance of units under 50 (m2) , with at least 40 percent of these units having a first floor.The dwellings in the third and fourth quartile tend to be the Atrium (impluvate) with peristyle dwellings we have visited (or seen frequently illustrated). So our general perception is coloured by the "finer" dwellings, indeed the more notable properties are those we are ,perhaps , most aware of (House of the Faun, Vetii for example).

An interesting feature of Pompeiian land use is that we do not have any "modern" zoning demarcation of property type usage, save as to spatially extensive (and relativeley rare) large houses with garden space, so shops, bars and small workshops mingle extensively with domestic use,

Upper levels are ,probably, much more extensive than we consider-and thsi has ramifications as to how we look at the room hierarchies within buildings, given that ground level survivals are nearly all we have to se at Pompeii (though not so at Herculaneum).

[CiceroD]

I have had the fortune to come across "The Ancient City: life in classical Athens and Rome" by Connolly and Dodge.

 

The illustrations and descriptions make this a first rate book. The chapter on Roman domestic architecture had a few holes in it.

 

For example Connolly and Dodge speak about the Impluvium a pool that caught rain water from the roof and drained it into a cistern. There must have been a method to access this for cleaning purposes but the authors do not mention this.

 

Secondly they do not mention the usual location of slave quarters. Were slaves kept behingd the Atrium near the kitchen? was there some sort of slave cellar? perhaps they were crowded into an unused bedroom. Could they have slept out in the atrium?

 

Lastly, they mention the House of the Wooden Partition in Herculaneum. The authors speak about how the preservation of wooden partitions added greatly to the perception of Roman interior space. And yet in their Illustrations they do not show one in its place in a home. How were they used? How was the Atrium divided. Were they adjustible?

 

I'd be thankful for any help

I'd also be glad to share my gleanings from this book to anyone

[caldrail]

Slave quarters depended on the building itself. The owners wouldn't want visitors wandering past their bedchambers so somewhere in cellars or the back of the house. There's a wealthy mans house on the palatine which has a cellar complex devoted to slave dwellings which had narrow badly lit corridors with low ceilings that would have forced one to stoop. For a rural villa there may even have been a seperate building.

[Klingan]

Lastly, they mention the House of the Wooden Partition in Herculaneum. The authors speak about how the preservation of wooden partitions added greatly to the perception of Roman interior space. And yet in their Illustrations they do not show one in its place in a home. How were they used? How was the Atrium divided. Were they adjustible?

 

Yes I believe they were made to divide the Atrium from the nearby rooms. In the book Pompeji by Jens Erik Skydegaard he's talking about that

 

"In front of those is the atrium expanded on the sides. These were called alae, the wings. The rooms were only receiving light from the atrium's compluvium, and the big wooden doors, could maybe be folded, have been able to divide the atrium from the rooms."

 

I'm responsible if the quote isn't 100% correct it's translated from Swedish.

 

Here is a picture of how I believe they might have been used to make it a little clearer. (Original picture)

[Nephele]

From all the photographs of various impluvia I've seen, they don't appear to be very deep -- practically wading pools, in fact. I could be wrong, but I don't imagine that there might have been too much difficulty in cleaning them, other than the fact that I suppose slaves would periodically have to scoop out stagnant water.

 

As caldrail has already pointed out, the slaves would have been quartered away from the family's rooms. I have a wonderful little book that I believe is now out of print, titled A Day in Old Rome by William Stearns Davis (Biblo and Tannen, 1972) that goes into a lot of detail regarding Roman day-to-day life. In the chapter titled "Roman Homes" there's a section devoted to the slaves' quarters, stating that the family slaves slept "in the very cramped barracks of the second story, a section of which looks down from an upper tier of columns above the court of the peristylium... For the slaves there is extremely little accommodation; any kind of a sleeping pocket, very truly called a 'cell' (cella) will answer, where a stool, a blanket, and a thin mat on the floor suffice for all save the upper servants."

 

Can't help with any information about any wide use of wooden partitions in Roman houses. But I do recommend this book by the late professor William Stearns Davis of the University of Minnesota, for an interesting and detailed look into Roman daily life in the year 134 C.E.

 

-- Nephele

Edited January 20, 2007 by Nephele Carnalis

[Pertinax]

I find that we have two congruent threads with material relevant to both: please scroll backwards to retrieve mor data. Members will note my suggested reading "Houses and Society in Pompeii" as a useful source regarding style, layout and the possible interrelationship of servile/dominant quarters.

[Northern Neil]

I find that we have two congruent threads with material relevant to both: please scroll backwards to retrieve mor data. Members will note my suggested reading "Houses and Society in Pompeii" as a useful source regarding style, layout and the possible interrelationship of servile/dominant quarters.

Pertinax, does this book contain some diagrams and floorplans?

[Pertinax]

Indeed it does, and there is a lot of statistical analysis as well. This is the volume I am packing for my next trip to Pompeii-it will be a big help in notation of images . If you are unable to get a copy pm me before the UK meet and ill bring it along.

If anyone is interested in decorative finishes , I also made reference in my blog to the pigmentation hierarchies prevalent within the relevant time frame (0 AD-79 AD).