THE HOUSES OF ROMAN ITALY 100 BC-AD 250 RITUAL, SPACE, AND DECORATION JOHN R CLARKE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles OxfordPublished with the assistance of the Getty Grane Program University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, Califor University of California Press, Led. Oxford, England © r99r by “The Regents ofthe University of Califomia Library of Congress Cataloging ia-Publicaion Data Clarice, John Ry £945~ ‘Thehouses of Roman Italy, 190 B.C.-A.D. 250 ritual, space, and decoration / John R. Clase Boom Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-07267-7 (alk. paper) 4, Architecture, Roman—taly. 2» Architectuse, Domestio—laly 5, Mural painting and decoration, Roman— Italy. 4. Mueal painting and éecoration— Hhaly. §. Mosaics, Roman—Iealy. 6. Mosa: jcs—Htaly. 1. Tite, NAs4.Cs7_ 199 728'.0937—de20 90-48357 ap Printed in the United States of America g876s45an “The paper used in this publication meets che Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Mate I ANSI Z39.48-1984. ©CONTENTS List of Mlustrations ix Preface xxi Introduction xxiii Maps xxvii Plates (following page xxxii) 1, Space and Ritual in Domus, Villa, and Insula, r00 86.4.0. 250 1 2, Styles of Decoration, 100 BC.—A.D. 250 30 3. Decorative Ensembles of the Late Republic, r00~30 B.C 78 4, Decorative Ensembles of the Third Style, 15 BC-AD. 45 124 5. Fourth-Style Ensembles, AD. 45-79 164 6. Hadrianic and Early Antonine Decoration at Ostia Antica, 4.0. 120-150 266 7. Late Antonine Decorative Ensembles and the Beginning of the Late Antique, 4D. 160-193 304 8. Decorative Styles from the Age of the Severans to the Mid-Third Century, a.p. 193-250 349 Conclusion 363 Glossary 373 Bibliography 379 General Index 397 Topographical Index 409 viiILLUSTRATIONS SSA & 10. Tl. 12. 13. 14. Unless otherwise noted, all color and black-and-white photographs are by Michael Larvey and all drawings are by the author. PLATES (following page xxi) Samnite House, atrium. View looking toward fauces, taken from loggia over tablinum Villa of the Mysteries, 5, southeast corner, Villa of the Mysteries, 5, southwest corner. Villa of the Mysteries, 16, east and south walls with scendiletti. View from western doorway. Villa of Oplomts, 14, north, west, and east walls and floor. Villa of the Mysteries, 2, north wall. House of M. Lucretius Fronto, atrium 6, north wall. House of M. Lucretius Fronto, tablinum h, north wall. House of M. Lucretius Fronto, tablinum h, south wall. House of the Menander, 11, emblema with Nilotic scene. House of Octavius Quartio, room f, west wall. House of the Vettii, oecus q, east wall, fourth panel from south (goldsmiths). House of the Vetti, oecus g, east wall, second aedicula from north (Apollo and Pythia). House of the Vettii, occus p, cast wall, central picture, punishment of Ixion. ix15. 16. 17. 18. 19, 20. 21. 23. a, House of the Vettii, oecus 1, east wall, central picture, death of Pentheus. House of the Vettii, oecus n, south wall, central picture, punishment of Dirce, House of the Vettii, triclinium ¢, south wall. House of the Stags, room 7, ceiling. House of Neptune and Amphitrite, garden room E, north and east walls. House of the Muses, room 5, east wall with mosaic floor. House of the Muses, room 5, cast wall, detail, Apollo. House of the Muses, room 9, east and south walls. House of Jupiter and Ganymede, room 4, east wall. Inn of the Peacock, room 9, north wall. FIGURES Plan and axonomettic of typical atrium house. After Brown, Roman Architecture, fig. 6. 3 House of the Menander, view from fauces to 23. 5 Etruscan deities located at the cardinal points, After Pallottino, The Etruscans, fig. 5.7 House of the Vectii, v, lararium, west wall. 8 House of the Menander, atrium, north wall, west part, lararium. 11 House of the Menander, plan. After Maiuri, Casa del Menandro, phi. 15 House of the Centenary (IX, 8, 6), plan and reconstruction of the view from the triclinium, After Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” figs. 34-35. 18 Samnite House, view from fauces. 32 Boscoreale, Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, cubiculum, ca. 40 8.¢. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903. 33, House of Sallust, drawing of atrium and tablinum. After Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 4. 34 House of the Griffins, drawing of cubiculum Il. After Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 6. 35 Villa of the Mysteries, room 16, drawing of west alcove, After Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 10. 36 ILLUSTRATIONS13. 4, 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21, 22. 23. 24. a5 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 3. Lefkadia, Macedonia, Tomb of Lyson and Kallikles, north or back wall, ca, 250 s.c. Photo by Sp. Tsavdaroglou, courtesy of Stella G. Miller. 37 Rome, Palatine, House of the Griffins, cubiculum II, ca. 80 B.c. Deutsches archiiologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg. 52.19. 42 Viewing patterns dictated by orthogonals in (A) the House of the Griffins, (B) the Villa of the Mysteries, (C) the Casa delle Nozze d’Argento, (D) the House of the Cryptoporticus. After Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 29. 44 Rome, Palatine, House of Livia, tablinum C, ca. 30 8.c. Photo Anderson 420, 51 Rome, Villa under the Farnesina, cubiculum B, north wall, ca. 20 #.c Deutsches archaologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg. 32.147, 53 Boscotrecase, Villa of Agrippa Postumus, 16, north wall. Museo Nazio- nale Archeologico, Naples. Deutsches archaologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg. 59.1972. 54 House of M. Lucretius Fronto, t, west wall, socle. 60 House of the Menander, 18, drawing of Tapestry Manner system. After Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 22. 67 Domus Aurea scaenae frons painting. After Ludovico Mirri and G. Carletti, Le antiche camere delle terme di Tito ¢ le loro pitture .. . (Rome, 1776), pl. 37. 70 Plan, House of the Faun, with visual axis marked. After de Vos, Pompei, 264. 82 Samnite House, plan with mosaics indicated. By Donald Bacigalupi, after Maiuri, Ercolano, fig. 152. 86 Samnite House, facade, detail of capitals. 88 Samnite House, north wall of fauces, detail of landscape panel and ceiling. 89 Samnite House, longitudinal section reconstructing the atrium. By R. Oliva, after Maiuri, Ercolano, pl. 18. 91 Samnite House, 4, pavement. 92 Villa of the Mysteries, plan of Second-Style rooms, ca. 60 B.c. After Maiuri, Villa dei Misteri, pl. B. 95 Villa of the Mysteries, atrium, north wall, east part, detail, landscape. 96 Villa of the Mysteries, 4, view from western entryway. 97 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, view from peristyle. 98 ILLUSTRATIONS xi32. 33, 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. a. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50, 51 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, northeast corner. 99 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, diagram of gazes, After Herbig, Neve Beo- bachtungen, foldout. 100 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, cast wall, detail of Dionysus, 101 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, drawing of the figural frieze. After Maiuri, Villa dei Misteri, fig. 46. 103 Villa of the Mysteries, 6, west wall. 106 Villa of the Mysteries, 6, south wall showing converging consoles. 107 Villa of the Mysteries, 16, east alcove ceiling. 109 Villa of the Mysteries, 16, south alcove, detail of east ressaut. 110 Villa of the Mysteries, 16, south alcove, detail of west ressaut. 111 Villa of Oplontis, plan of excavated portion. After Jashemski, Gardens of Pompeit, foldout, and de Caro, “Oplontis,” fig.2. 112 Villa of Oplontis, atrium, west wall. 114 Villa of Oplontis, atrium, west wall, detail of door, 115 Villa of Oplontis, 15, east wall, detail. 116 Villa of Oplontis, 23, north wall. 117 Villa of Oplontis, 14, east wall at mosaic threshold band. 118 Villa of Oplontis, 11, north and east walls. 119 Villa of Oplontis, 11, ceiling of north alcove. 120 Villa of Oplontis, 11, ceiling of cast alcove, 121 Villa of Oplontis, 11, north alcove, drawing of landscape in tympanum, ‘After drawing by lorio, ca. 1968, courtesy Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei. 122 Villa of Oplontis, plan of western part with Second-, Third-, and Fourth-Style decorative programs. After De Franciscis, “Oplontis,” fig. 1.127 Villa of Oplontis, 8, east and north walls. 128 Villa of Oplontis, 8, north wall, central picture. 130 Villa of Oplontis, 8, east wall, central picture. 131 Villa of Oplontis, 25, north and east walls with scendiletto. 132 Villa of Oplontis, 25, west wall, reconstruction drawing. 133 Villa of Oplontis, 12, southwest corner with Second-Style painting above stucco cornice. 134 Villa of Oplontis, 12, detail frieze, east wall. 135 ILLUSTRATIONS59. 60. 61. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69, 70. 7 tee 73, 74, 75. 76. Tai 78. 7. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84, 85. 86. Villa of Oplontis, 12, reconstruction drawing of east wall. 137 Villa of Oplontis, 30, south wall with portions of east and west walls. 138 Villa of Oplontis, 30, south wall, central part, detail of frieze between median and upper zones. 139 Villa of Oplontis, 30, west wall, north part, tracing of column base and shaft. 140 Villa of the Mysteries, plan showing Augustan-period modifications. After Maiuri, Villa dei Misteri, pl. A. 141 Villa of the Mysteries, 9, mosaic floor. 142 Villa of the Mysteries, north portico, pavement. 143 Villa of the Mysteries, 2, detail predella north wall, center. 144 Villa of the Mysteries, 2, detail north wall, west part, at upper zone. 145 Villa of the Mysteries, 2, detail north wall, west part, center of median zone, 145 House of Lucretius Fronto, plan. After de Vos, Pompei, 315. 147 House of Lucretius Fronto, view from fauces. 148 House of Lucretius Fronto, atrium 6, north wall, detail. 149 House of Lucretius Fronto, atrium 6, west wall, detail. 149 House of Lucretius Fronto, b, north wall, central picture. 150 House of Lucretius Fronto, b, south wall, central picture. 151 House of Lucretius Fronto, h, south wall, west part. 152 House of Lucretius Fronto, », south wall, detail aedicula frame. 153 House of Lucretius Fronto, g, lavapesta floor. Photo Istituto centrale per il catalogo ¢ la documentazione, Rome (hereafter ICCD), neg. series N, no. 48640. 154 House of Lucretius Fronto, g, west wall, detail center. 155 House of Lucretius Fronto, i, north wall, central picture. 160 House of Lucretius Fronto, i, south wall, central picture, 160 House of Lucretius Fronto, i, west wall, south. 161 House of Lucretius Fronto, i, west wall, north, 161 House of Lucretius Fronto, f, east wall, central picture. 162 House of Lucretius Fronto, /, detail north wall. 163 = Villa of Oplontis, 8, cast niche, center part, detail upper zone. 167 Villa of Oplontis, 8, east niche, south wall and ceiling. 168 ILLUSTRATIONS xiiixiv a7 88. 89. 90. o1. 92. 93. 94, 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 11. 112. 113. 114. Villa of Oplontis, 38, north wall and ceiling. 169 House of the Menander, atrium and 4, east wall, 17 House of the Menander, atrium, west wall, upper zone, north part. 173 House of the Menander, 18, east, north, and south walls, 174 House of the Menander, 11, view from southern doorway. 175 House of the Menander, 15, view from western doorway 176 House of the Menander, 4, central picture, south wall. 177 House of the Menander, 4, central picture, east wall. 178 House of the Menander, 4, central picture, north wall. 179 House of the Menander, 15, north wall, central picture. 180 House of the Menander, 15, east wall, central picture. 181 House of the Menander, 15, south wall, central picture. 181 House of the Menander, 15, west wall, south part. 183, House of the Menander, 22, 184 House of the Menander, 24. 185 House of the Menander, 11, northeast corner, detail of frieze. 186 House of the Menander, caldarium of the bath, mosaic floor. 186 House of the Menander, atriolo, east wall, detail frieze, north part, 187 House of the Menander, 23, west wall. 189 House of the Menander, 23, east wall, tracing. 190 House of the Menander, 25, west wall, detail of shrine. 192 House of Octavius Quartio, plan. After de Vos, Pompei, 241. 195 House of Octavius Quartio, axonometric drawing. After de Vos and de Vos, 139. 195 House of Octavius Quartio, f, west wall, upper zone, central part, 196 House of Octavius Quartio, f cast wall, northern part. 197 House of Octavius Quartio, f, north wall, west part. 198 House of Octavius Quartio, f, south wall, west part, priest of Isis. 199 House of Octavius Quartio, chart showing themes of exterior painting, and sculpture. 200 House of Octavius Quartio, view south from h. Photo ICCD, neg. series G, no. $248, 201 ILLUSTRATIONS116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 15s 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. House of Octavius Quartio, 4, east wall. Photo ICCD, neg. series N, no. 40448, 202 House of Octavius Quartio, 4, southeast corner, 203 House of Octavius Quartio, h, chart of epitomized scenes in the Hercules saga and the Iliad cycle. 204 House of Octavius Quartio, view out from h. After Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” fig, 38. 205 House of the Vettii, plan. After de Vos, Pompei, 269. 209 House of the Vertii, b, east wall. 270. House of the Vettii, x! (present location), marble statue of Priapus. 211 House of the Vettii, q, south wall, west part (Hermaphrodite). 213, House of the Vettii, q, east wall, first panel from south (garland makers). 216 House of the Vettii, ¢, east wall, second panel from south (perfume makers). 216 House of the Vettii, q, east wall, fifth panel from south (fullones). 217 House of the Vettii, g, north wall, west part (Dionysian procession), 217 House of the Vettii, q. south wall, east part (dart players). 218 House of the Vettii, peristyle J, east wall, north part (Urania). 219 House of the Vettii, x!, north wall. 220 House of the Vetti, synoptic chart of iconographical relationships of central pictures in p and 1. After Theo Wirth, “Casa dei Vettii,” fold- ‘out facing p. 452. 222 House of the Vettii, p, north wall, central picture. 224 House of the Vettii, p, south wall, central picture. 225 House of the Vettii, 1, north wall, central picture. 226 House of the Vertii, p, north, east, and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg. series G,no. 15612. 228 House of the Vettii, e, north wall, cast part, detail of stucco molding. 229 House of the Vettii, e, west wall, upper zone, south part, figure de- scending staircase. 230 House of Octavius Quartio, f, south wall, west part, figure descending staircase. 231 ILLUSTRATIONS xv139. 140. 141. 142, 143. 144, 145. 146. 147, 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. House of the Vettii, e, west wall, upper zone, center, 232 House of the Vettii, ¢, south wall, upper zone, center. 233 House of the Mosaic Atrium, graphic representation of the four pave- ment systems. After Scagliarini, “Spazio ¢ decorazione,” fig. 40, 236 House of the Mosaic Atrium, view from fauces. 238 House of the Mosaic Atrium, 5, east and north walls. 239 House of the Mosaic Atrium, 7, graphic reconstruction of ceiling. ‘After Cerulli-lrelli, Casa dellAtrio a Mosaico, fig. 8. 240 House of the Mosaic Atrium, 14, east wall. 241 House of the Mosaic Atrium, 23, north wall. 242 House of the Stags, graphic representation of four pavement systems with diagram of original placement of sculpture in garden. After Scagliatini, “Spazio e decorazione,” fig. 41. 244 House of the Stags, view of 18 from oecus 5S. 245 House of the Stags, view south along western cryptoporticus. 246 House of the Stags, 5, east wall with detail ofhead. 247 House of the Stags, satyr with a wineskin, Deutsches archaologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg. 67.2491. 248 House of the Stags, drunken Hercules. Deutsches archdologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg, 67.2493. 249 House of Neptune and Amphitrite, plan. After Maiuri, Ercolano, fig. 330. 257 House of Neprune and Amphitrite, shop, north and cast walls. 252 House of Neptune and Amphitrite, shop, south wall. 253 House of Neptune and Amphitrite, view from fauces. 256 House of Neptune and Amphitrite, E, cast wall. 257 House in Opus Craticium, exterior from north. 258 House in Opus Craticium, plan of ground floor and upper floor. After Maiuri, Ercolano, figs. 345 and 354. 260 House in Opus Craticium, upper story, , south and east walls. 261 House in Opus Craticium, upper story, 5, west wall. 262 House in Opus Craticium, upper story, 6, view of balcony and street below. 263 House of the Muses, plan with mosaics drawn in. After Becatti, Ostia, vol. 4, pl. 225. 269 House of the Muses, quadriporticus, south, view east. Photo ICCD, neg, series E, no. 40648. 271 ILLUSTRATIONS166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174, 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. House of the Muses, 10, view east. Photo ICCD, neg, series E, no. 40720. 272 House of the Muses, 15, mosaic with underlying grid design indicated. 275 House of the Muses, 10, mosaic design, drawing by Karen Bearor. 276 House of the Muses, 5, drawing of floor and walls by Carol ‘Watts. 277 House of the Muses, 5, west wall, north part, Melpomene. 280 House of the Muses, 5, north wall, east part, Erato. 281 House of the Muses, 5, east wall, south part, Urania. 287 House of the Muses, 9, east and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40696. 284 House of the Muses, 9, south wall, upper zone, center. Photo ICCD, Rome, neg. series E,no. 40691, 285 House of the Muses, 16, east and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40653. 286 House of the Muses, 10, south, west, and north walls and floor. Photo ICCD, neg, series E, no. 40666. 288 House of the Muses, 10, south wall, west part. Photo ICCD, neg. series F, no. 40665. 289 House of the Painted Vaults, plan with pavements drawn in. After Becatti, Ostia, vol. 4, pl.222. 290 House of the Painted Vaults, view from southwest. 297 House of the Painted Vaults, 3, from south. 292 House of the Painted Vaults, 2, north and east walls. 294 House of the Painted Vaults, 12, north, east, and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg. series G, no. 40493. 295 House of the Painted Vaults, 12, north wall, cast part. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no, 40491, 296 House of the Painted Vaults, 10, south wall, reconstruction drawing After Fellerti Maj, Casa delle Volte Dipinte, fig. 12. 297 House of the Painted Vaults, 4, ceiling (1987). 298 House of the Painted Vaults, 4, ceiling. American Academy in Rome, Fototeca Unione (1958). 299 House of the Painted Vaults, 5, south wall. 307 House of the Painted Vaults, 6, north wall. 302 ILLUSTRATIONS avixviti 188, 189. 190. 191. 192, 193. 194. 195. 196. 198. 199, 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206: 207. House of the Yellow Walls, plan with mosaics drawn in, After Becatti, Ostia, vol. 4, pl. 224. 306 House of the Yellow Walls, House of the Graffito, and House of the Muses, plans. After Calza, Ostia, vol. 1, plan 6. 307 House of the Yellow Walls, 5, north, east, and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg, series F, no. 40508. 309 House of the Yellow Walls, 5, south wall, east part. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40593. 310 House of the Yellow Walls, 6, east and south walls. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40510, 311 House of the Yellow Walls, 6, north wall, cast part. 312 House of the Painted Ceiling, plan. Courtesy Soprintendenza archeo- logica di Ostia. 314 House of the Painted Ceiling, 1, south wall. 31S House of the Painted Ceiling, 1, west wall. Photo courtesy Soprinten- denza archeologica di Ostia, neg. series D, no. 1292, inv. 3781. 316 House of the Painted Ceiling, 1, southwest corner. Photo Courtesy Soprintendenza archeologica di Ostia, neg. series B, no. 1097, inv. 3586. 316 House of the Painted Ceiling, 1, north wall. Photo courtesy Soprinten- denza archeologica di Ostia, neg. series A, no, 1935. 317 House of the Painted Ceiling, 1, west wall and ceiling. 318 House of the Painted Ceiling, 2, west and north walls. Photo courtesy Soprintendenza archeologica di Ostia, neg, series A, no. 1922, inv. 1922, 319 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, plan. After Calza, “Scavi recenti,” phi. 321 Silver cup with homoerotic scene, modern copy of original in private collection. Photo courtesy the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 323 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, north, east, and south walls and floor. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40949. 327 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, south wall. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40967, 328 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, north wall, west part. Photo ICCD, neg. series Eno. 7816. 330 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, west wall, north part. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 7820. 331 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, east wall central picture. 331 ILLUSTRATIONS208. 209. 210. 2 2. 213 214, 217. 218, 219. 220. 221. 222. 223, 224, 225. 226. 227, House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, east wall, tracing of central pic- ture (1986). 332 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 4, east wall, central picture, recon struction (1990). 332 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 9, west wall. 337 House of Jupiter and Ganymede, 9, west wall, south part. 338 Inn of the Peacock, plan. After Gasparri, Caupona del Pavone, » fig. 1. 343 Inn of the Peacock, 10, east wall, north part, with mosaic floor. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40941, 344 Inn of the Peacock, 8, east and south walls, with mosaic floor. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40937. 345 Inn of the Peacock, 8, west wall. 347, Inn of the Peacock, 8, east wall, north part. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40861. 348 Inn of the Peacock, 8, north wall, east part. 349 Inn of the Peacock, 9, east wall. 351 Inn of the Peacock, 9, east wall, upper level, north part. 352 Inn of the Peacock, 6, north wall, drawing. After Gaspatti, Capona del Pavone, fig. 13. 353 House of the Yellow Walls, 8, north wall, east part, maenad, 355 House of the Yellow Walls, 7, south wall and mosaic floor. Photo ICCD, neg. series E,no. 40511. 355 House of the Yellow Walls, 8, north wall. 356 House of the Yellow Walls, 8, north wall, central picture, Hercules and Achelaos. 357 Villa Piccola under San Sebastiano, walls and ceiling. Deutsches archiologisches Institut, Rome, inst. neg, 57.1062. 359 House of the Yellow Walls, 4, north wall. — 360 Inn of the Peacock, 14. Photo ICCD, neg. series E, no. 40919. 367 MAPS Plan of Herculaneum, with houses in this study indicated. After Maiuri, Ercolano, pl.5. xxix ILLUSTRATIONS xix2. Plan of Pompeii, with houses in this study indicated. After Hans Eschebach, Die stiidtebauliche Entwicklung des antiken Pompeji (Hei- delberg, 1970), foldout 1. xxx Plan of Ostia Antica, with houses in this study indicated. After Calza, Ostia, vol. 1, fig. 36. xxx xx ILLUSTRATIONSPREFACE This book began over ten years ago, when I decided to investigate the ways in which ensembles of mosaics, paintings, and stuccoes coordinated with the ar- chitecture of ancient Roman houses. Ir seemed at the time a fairly straightfor- ward matter: I would study a representative group of houses at Pompeii, Her- culaneum, and Ostia Antica through visits to the sites, photographs, drawings, and published sources. As my work developed both in the field and in my graduate seminars at the University of Texas, however, I began to realize how difficult it was to see these wonderfal Roman interiors with Roman eyes. Studying Roman religious, social, and political institutions broadened my focus as I began to pursue the meanings of the wall paintings, mosaics, and sculpture found in these houses. This investigation naturally led me to pursue questions of taste and patronage None of this would have happened without the inspiration of colleagucs, students, and friends. Among my colleagues, Mariette de Vos has been the most generous over the years, on many occasions drawing on her knowledge of the sites, the ancient literature, and modern sources. Andrew F, Stewart, Eleanor Greenhill, Brenda Preyer, Jerome J. Pollitt, Irving Lavin, Charles Edwards, Randy Swearer, Cynthia Shelmerdine, Ingrid Edlund-Berry, the late Frank Brown, and the late Kathleen Shelton all helped and encouraged me in this project. I learned much from my students; I particularly remember the lively discussions in my seminars on decorative ensembles in Roman art, and the contributions of Don Bacigalupi, Denise Barnes, Karen Bearor, Maria Elena Bernal-Garcia, Carol Fatr, Katherine Crawford Luber, Wesley Tobey, and Carol Watts. Many small grants helped support my research and writing. | wish to thank Yale University for a Griswold Humanities Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies for two Grants-in-Aid, and the University of Texas Re- search Institute for five separate research awards. Dr. David Tobey generously PREFACE xxiprovided much-needed photographic equipment for several campaigns. Jen- nifer Davis, assisted by Jeanine Caracciolo, prepared the plans and drawings for publication. This project would have never come to fruition without the support of the Italian archaeological services. Dr. Valnea Santa Maria Scrinari provided per- missions in the carly stages of research at Ostia Antica; in recent years Dr. ‘Anna Gallina Zevi, the current soprintendente, has helped in the final realiza~ tion of the project. At Pompeii I also worked with two successive soprinten- denti. Dr. Giuseppina Cerulli-Irelli cleared the way in the beginning, while the current soprintendente, Prof. Baldassare Conticello, has kindly helped further this project over the last five years. The anonymous scholars who read this manuscript for the University of California Press deserve thanks for their helpful criticisms. In a study as broad as this, | am bound to have missed some pertinent scholarly discussions. I have included in my notes and bibliography items that I have used in preparing this, book through its completion in May 1990. In looking back over the past decade, filled with long and short visits to Iealy, I must thank the many friends there who encouraged me and made my work all the more enjoyable: Luciano Santarelli, Carolyn Valone, Frangois Uginet, Fausto Donato, Jeffrey Blanchard, and Fabio Pignatelli. ‘Michael Larvey, companion and friend, kept this book going through diffi- cult times, Not only did he insist on the highest standards for the photographs he produced under challenging conditions, but he also always reminded me through his insightful comments just how important this project was. It is to him I dedicate this book: Amico ortimo. PREFACEINTRODUCTION The aim of this book is to put ensembles of Roman interior decoration back into context. Pethaps | should say “contexts,” since it is not enough to describe a room—with its mosaic floor, painted walls, and ceiling—and explain the role of this decorative ensemble in the overall plan of the house. Nor is it ‘enough to draw diagrams showing how the ensemble looks from one or an- other viewing position within the house. Careful study of the meanings of im- ages in the paintings and mosaics is not enough. Even investigating the identity of the patron and his or her taste does not give these ensembles their full con- text. To put Roman interior decoration back into context one must pay atten- tion to all of these issues. This is a tall order. Eyer since Roman interiors began to be discovered, starting in the late fit teenth century with Nero’s Golden House (the Domus Aurea) in Rome, people have been fascinated by the painted, stuccoed, and mosaic decorations that once adorned ancient houses. These embellishments inspired generations of artists and decorators. Drawings, engravings, and photographs have attempted to record them, Archaeologists have carefully dated and classified them. Schol- ars have devoted great energy to plumbing the meanings of figural and deco- rative motifs and have even attempted to reconstruct lost originals of Greek art from the imagery included in Roman mosaics and wall paintings. The common tendency in all of these studies has been to consider these decorations in isola~ tion, Whether working from the original, from drawings, or from photo- graphs, such studies inevitably think away the “containers” of these decora- tions, the individual rooms of houses. Yet it is obvious that no matter how closely a wall painting or mosaic from a house adheres to a particular artistic style or system, a particular owner commissioned it, an individual executed it, and it was tailored to adorn a specific space. One must return to the houses where these decorations still exist to study the whole context. INTRODUCTIONThis study attempts to understand context in several ways. First it ap- proaches the question of how ancient interior decoration looked from the point of view of how it was experienced. But itis not the modern experience of these spaces that will provide the necessary information. We must experience the spaces with Roman senses. We must investigate as far as possible how the spaces that were decorated functioned in the lives of the people who lived in them. Ancient Roman texts that discuss the domestic rituals provide a frame- work for understanding Roman attitudes toward their houses, be they the late Republican domus or first-century luxury villas. Once we understand the kinds of activities that took place in the Roman house, we can investigate how spaces with specific roles functioned in a particular house. Immediately one must get more specific than simply naming the function of a room: tablinum, oecus, or whatever. One must study how that space fits with what we know about the owner of the house, how its design and imagery coordinate with other spaces in the same house, what changes redecoration, ancient and modem restoration, and decay have brought, and how it compares with other decorations of a simi- lar date. Above all, one must investigate how someone would have experienced it: was it meant for a person simply walking through from one area to another or for an invited guest, seated on a couch, to inspect at leisure? What kind of views into and out of the space were arranged by the architect and emphasized by the mosaicist and painter? What was the sequence in viewing the imagery on floor or wall? Because these questions are so many and so specific, when I began this re- search in 1980, I chose to focus on seventeen houses as case studies. My criteria were the facts that the houses contained well-preserved interior decorative en- sembles, that they illustrated discrete periods and styles between 100 B.c. and a.p. 250, and that they had been published in some fashion. This last point has made it possible to concentrate on the issues relating to decorative en- sembles, referring the reader to published sources for complete desctiptions of all the archaeological finds and other kinds of specialized information. Natu- rally | have corrected mistakes where necessary and have challenged unlikely interpretations. In this way | hope to add new, useful information to the existing synoptic discussions of systems of wall and floor decoration." Although they have the 1. Useful surveys of Roman painting: Maurizio Borda, La pittura romama (Milan, 1958); Ha- rald Mielsch, “Funde und Forschungen zur Wandmalerei der Prinzipatszeit von 1945 bis 1975, mit ‘einem Nachtrag 1980," Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, ed. Hildegacd Temporini, pt. 2, vol. 12, no. 2 (Berlin, 1951), 157-264; Roger Ling, “Porapeii and Herculaneum: Recent Research and Future Prospects,” in Papers in Italian Archaeology, vol. 1, pt. 2 (Oxford, 1978 153=174. First Style: Anne Laidlaw, The First Style x Pompeii: Painting and Architecture (Rome, INTRODUCTIONadvantage of exhibiting the range of possibilities within a given style or man- ner, such comparative surveys never give one a sense of how a specific deco- rative ensemble in a particular house fit into the lives of the people who com- missioned it and lived with it. Scholarship on the wall painting, mosaics, and stucco decoration in Roman Italy has for the most part divided very sharply between Pompeii and Her- culaneum on the one hand and Ostia Antica on the other. Few scholars have dared to cross the artificial dividing line furnished by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. One works either at Pompeii or at Ostia, never at both sites. Pom- peianists decry the poor quality and decadence of Ostian painting; Ostianists point proudly to the wealth of black-and-white figural mosaics. | have empha- sized the continuities in style and iconography between Pompeii and Ostia in an attempt to erase this line. The reader will find a good deal of description in these pages. Although the assumption has always been that a picture is worth a thousand words, my ex- perience has been that no amount of looking at a photograph will convey the experience of studying a wall or floor for a long time and under varying condi- tions of light. My ficld notebooks attest to my own discoveries as I returned again and again to the same houses over the years: a previously unnoticed de- tail seems to appear from nowhere, or traces of paint reveal a figure’s outlines where I had noted a blank space. The ancient Roman who lived in these spaces when they were new and fresh took such details for granted, but we must work to recapture them. This brings me to a more difficult, and sadder, goal of this book: to docu- ment, through descriptions, photographs, and drawings, wall painting and mosaics that future generations will probably never see. Although the methods of excavators in past centuries were deplorable, excavators of the twentieth century—armed with scientific conservation methods and photography, and believing full well that their finds would remain forever—have destroyed the most. As the exhibition Pompei, 1748-1980 clearly demonstrated,? much of 1985); Second Style: Hendrick G. Beyen, Pompejanische Warnddekoration vom zweiten bis zum tierten Stil, vol. | (The Hague, 1938), vol. 2 (The Hague, 1960); Third Style: Frédéric Bastet and Mariette de Vos, Proposta per una classificazione del terzo stile pompeiano, Atcheologische Stu: dien van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, no, 4 (The Hague, 1979); Woligang Ehrhardt, Stilgeschichiliche Untersuchungen an romischen Wandmalereien von der spiiten Republik bis zur Zeit Neros (Mainz, 1987); all four styles: Alix Bacbet, La peinture muerale romaine: Les styles décoratifs pompéiens {Paris 1985); Roger Ling, Romar Painting (Cambridge, 1991); post Pompeian painting; Fritz Wirth, Rémische Wandmalerei vom Untergang Pompejis bis ans Ende des dritten Jabrbunderts (Berlin, 1934), 2. Franca Parise Badoni, Irene Bragantini, and Mariette de Vos, Pompei, 1748~1980: tempi della documentazione, exh. cat., Pompeii and Rome (Rome, 1981). INTRODUCTION xxvxxvi the wall painting and mosaics found in good condition in this century has dis- appeared, often without a drawing or photograph to document it. Whether be- cause of neglect, inept restoration attempts, vandalism, theit, or disasters like the earthquake of 1980, much material has been lost at both Pompeii and Os tia, The black-and-white and color photographs reproduced here show the decoration of the case-study houses as it was in the 1980s; in many instances | have had to rely on photographs taken as little as twenty years ago to recover details that are by now gone forever. The reader will find that in the list of figures | have followed the system de- vised by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione for locating the rooms in each house and the paintings or mosaics in those rooms." Both the plan of the house and the system for identifying its spaces—whether by letter ot by number—are those of the excavator. (I have converted roman numerals to arabic equivalents.) Within each space the directions “north,” “south,” “cast,” and “west” locate each wall, and the same directions locate details on those walls. “House of the Vettii, room e, west wall, upper zone, south part,” for example, is the upper left-hand part of the wall ro the right of someone entering the room from its doorway, which is on the north wall. In a group of houses at Ostia oriented northeast-southwest, | have marked the plans with a conventional “north.” The captions supplement this information rather than repeating it, emphasizing the significance of the illustcation rather than its exact location, Nearly all the photographs taken expressly for this book by Michael Larvey include a standard meter marker measuring 160 centimeters each white, black, or red segment on the standard marker measures 20 cen- timeters, for a total of cight units. One exception is figure 2, where the marker is exactly one meter in length. In several details a centimeter tape provides the scale. These uniform standards, both for locating the decorations and for in- dicating scale, should facilitate comparative analysis of the case-study houses. The book begins with an investigation of the types of houses the Romans lived in and how they arranged their spaces to frame the rituals that took place in them. The second chapter surveys the changing fashions in interior decora- tion from about 100 z.c. to A.D. 250, paying special attention to the artists and workmen who designed and executed wall paintings and mosaics. The remain- ing chapters follow these fashions chronologically in the specific circumstances of the case-study houses, Their decorative ensembles demonstrate how individ- ual considerations, such as a house’s size and plan, planned views, or the 3, Irene Bragantini, Mariette de Vos, and Franca Parise Radoni, Piiture e pavimienti di Pompet, Repertorio delle fotografie del gabinetto forografico nazionale. Istituto centrale peril catalogo e la documentazione, 3 vols. (Rome, 1981 = 1986). INTRODUCTIONpatron’s social class and interests, tailored the reigning styles to fit the circumstances. [hope that what I have done will open the study of Roman decoration to broader human questions than past scholarship has asked. This book will have achieved its goal if it sparks new enthusiasm for Roman interiors among people who do not know them well and stimulates debate among those who do. INTRODUCTION xxviithis study indicated. houses in m, Plan of the ancient city, wit uulaneutMAP 2. Pompei. Plan of the ancient city, with the houses in this study indicated.© Som won 150m e0oneson Mar 3. Ostia. Plan of the ancient city, with houses in this study indicated.PLATE 1. First-Style decoration in the Samnite House on the walls of the fauces and in the loggia surrounding upper half of atrium,PLATE 2, A winged demon prepares to whip a woman across a comer of the Room of the Mysteries.PLATE 3. Another corner composition in the Room of the Mysteries: an amorino holds @ mirror for the young woman at her coilet while a second cupid looks on.PLATE 4. Two different mosaic “bedside carpets” (scendiletti) and two dif ferent Second-Style architectural perspectives distinguish the two alcoves in this cubiculum.PLATE 5. A Second-Style triclinium combines a polychrome mosaic carpet with complex perspective views into temple precinetsPLATE 6. An elegant Third-Style tablinum ensemble: a plain white mosaic floor complements black walls articulated with miniature elements.pLare 7. This Third-Style atrium combines a black floor with black walls. At the right a marble table, or cartibulum.PLATE 8. The late Thitd-Style decoration of this tablinum includes a central picture of Mars and Venus. A fenced garden decorates the socle.PLATE 9. The wall facing Pl. 8, with a central picture of Dionysus and Ariadne in a cart, Note landscape paintings on easels and the thin scaenae frons of the upper zone.PLATE ro. The patron selected this emblema, depicting pygmies on the Nile, to insert into the Second-Style tessellated pavement of an oecus.pLare rr, This all-white oecus painted in the Fourth-Style Theatrical Man- ner recalls high-quality decoration in Nero’s Golden House in Rome.PLATE 12. Cupids and psychai work gold in a delicately painted frieze that divides the socle from the median zone of a Fourth-Style schemeApollo and the serpent Pythia appear at the base of the omate widing successive panels in the same room as shown in Pl. 12PLATE 14. Ixion, far left, is tied to a wheel with serpents, his punishment for lusting after Hera (scated, upper right). A nude Mercury oversees the punishment.Maenads tear Pentheus limb from limb, his punishment for spy- PLATE 1 ing on them.PLATE 16, Zethus and Amphion tie Dirce to a bull, avenging their mother, Antiope.PLATE 17. An all-white Fourth-Style triclinium wih an upper zone modeled on the scaenae frons (compare Pl. 11).PLATE 18. The head of Athena in the center of this Fourth-Style ceiling ap- pears right side up to the diner seated in the place of honor, at the back of the room.PLATE 19. A fountain garden decorated with mosaics and hung with the- atrical masks, painting of garden scenery, and a tiny biclinium ceproduce in miniature features of grand villas.PLATE 20. This Room of the Muses (museion) combines a complex black and-white carpet with a Hadrianic reprise of the Second Style of one hundred seventy years before.Pare 2x. Apollo as archer stands on a pedestal in the center of the wall. His elongated proportions recall the sculpture of Lysippos.PLATE 22. This white-and-gold cubiculum recalls Fourth-Style Theatrical Manner decorations (compare Pls. 11 and 17).PLATE 23. Bold panels of contrasting colors and deliberate misalignments in this late Antonine decoration prefigure the Severan panel style while re- calling the Fourth-Style Theatrical Manner of Fig. 135,PLATE 24, The Severan panel style abandons the architectural armature for an all-over pattern of competing shapes.CHAPTER ONE SPACE AND RITUAL IN DOMUS, VILLA, AND INSULA, 100 B.C.-AD. 250The architecture of the Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space around ritual.” This was as true for the Roman house as it was for the temple and the forum. Roman life was filled with rituals, no less so in the private sphere of the home than in the public arena. As might be expected, state reli- gious and political ceremonies, documented not only by literature and inscrip- tions but also by scores of sculptural representations, are much better known than those of the home. Furthermore, the word “ritual” itself has extended meanings in the private sphere, because the Romans tended to think of each space in a house in terms of the ritual ot activity thar the space housed. For this reason, the meaning of “ritual”—in the context of the Roman house and as used in this book—is two-pronged. In its usual sense, it denotes formal, pre- scribed activity, often with religious purposes of rigidly ceremonial overtones. Its second sense is that of the habitual—yet not religiously prescribed—activity that took place in these spaces. Literary sources give us much information about the domestic rituals of worship of the household gods, ceremonies of coming-of-age, marriage, birth, and death; they describe secular rituals such as the visits of clients to the head of the house and the entertainment of guests at dinner parties. Still, we must interpret both prescribed and habitual rituals in terms of the spaces of the houses themselves. Here factors such as size, siting, and social class provide particulars. How, for instance, did a dining room in a small city house function—as opposed to that of a grand seaside villa? One thing is certain from the analysis of the evidence. Literary sources and analysis of the houses themselves tell us that ancient Romans expended great care on the disposition and decoration of their domestic spaces because they valued spaces that were appropriately located and decorated to fit their as- signed activity, Unlike our modern house, conceived as a refuge for the nuclear 1. Frank E. Brown, Roman Architecture (New York, 1961), 92 family, located far from the factory or office, the Roman house was in no way private. It was the locus of the owner's social, political, and business activities, open both to invited and uninvited visitors. Because of this, the location, size, and decoration of each space formed codes that cued the behavior of every per son under its roof, from intimates (the family, friends, and slaves) to discane cli- ents.? This close connection between function and decoration reveals the minds of the ancient Romans as much as do their literature and great public art. This chapter considers the types of houses that appear in Roman Italy in this creative period of the Late Republic and Early Empire, with special attention paid to the arrangement of their spaces and to the activities they housed. Ex- amples have been chosen, where possible, from case-study houses included in later chapters, where the discussion expands to the particulars of how decora~ tion was tied to function and to the viewer's perception of both individual rooms and suites of spaces. SPACE AND RITUAL IN THE PATRICIAN DOMUS Two sources allow us to reconstruct with some degree of certainty the patrician town house, or domus. One is Vitruvius’s De architectura, written in the twen- ties p.c.' The architect carefully names the rooms and prescribes the functions of those rooms. His systematic treatise emphasizes the role of the architect in ensuring that the house and all of its spaces have proper proportions. In spite of his great attention to details, Vitruvius never provides a clear plan for the domus. This has come from our second source, the excavated Roman houses of Italy. Although their third-century .c. plans were later modified, three houses excavated at Pompeii (the Houses of the Surgeon, of Pansa, and of Sallust) al- low us to reconstruct the typical plan of the patrician dwelling described by Vitruvius (Fig. 1). Since the domus, like our modern row house or town house, has party walls on its flanks and an enclosed back area, its principal opening to the exterior is located on the street front. The Romans called this entryway the fauces (literally, “jaws”). Shop spaces for rent often flanked the fauces. ‘A long axis running from the fauces through the atrium, ot central hall, 10 2. “[TIhe Roman house was a constant focus of public life: it was where a public figure not only received his dependents and amici the two categories flow into one another) but conducted business ofall sorts. His house was a power-house: it was where the network of social contacts was generated and activated which provided the underpinning for his public activities outside the house"; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the Roman House,” Papers of the Brit- ish School at Rome 56 (1988): 55-56. 3. For a careful analysis of Vitruvius’s text in relation to the domus, see Lise Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth: Modern Space Conception in Architecture: A Creation of Renaissance Human- ism. Analecta romana Instituti danici, supplement 9 (Rome, 1980), 168-170, SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250fauces hortus C - cubiculum FIGURE 1, The patrician domus of the third century 8.c. reconstructed in plan and axonometcic view.the main reception space, the tablinum, organizes all the house’s interior spaces. Strangely, Vitruvius and other writers on the domus are silent on the subject of the fauces-atrium-tablinum axis, probably because it was such an obvious and invariant feature. A number of compelling architectural forms emphasize the axis. The space of the fauces, which marks the axis from the point of entrance, is long and narrow. A central opening in the atrium’s roof, the compluvium, was designed to funnel the rainwater from the roof into a basin below, the impluvium (Fig. 2). While the impluvium marks the axis by resting directly on it, the compluvium emphasizes the axis vertically, since itis of the same size and shape as the impluvium and is located directly over it. Rain falling from the comphivium into the impluvium makes their reciprocal rela- tionship visible, yet the compluyium is also the source of light for the atrium and its dependencies. Its light reveals the extent of the atrium’s tall spaces, while the movement of the sun marks the hours of the day. The impluvium, on the other hand, is both an axis marker and a symbol of the domus’s indepen- dence from the outside world, for in the times before water was piped to houses, the cistern it fed provided water for the family, What was the ritual that caused the Romans so strongly to emphasize the fauces-atrium-tablinum axis? It was the salutatio, the visit by dependents, collectively called the clientela, to the paterfamilias, their patron or patronus. The “family” headed by the pa- terfamilias extended for social and economic reasons far beyond the immediate family members. The clientela included relatives who could not have the status of a paterfamilias, such as sons who had established independent households, all those who worked for the paterfamilias, including both slaves and freedmen (former slaves of the family), plus an assorted group of unattached persons who made the daily rounds of salutationes to assure their political and eco- nomic security.’ The ritual of the salutatio secured the power and fortune of the paterfamilias through those who served his interests. This ritual structured the domus. ‘A client emerging from the tunnel-like confines of the fauces directly faced the goal of his or her visit, the paterfamilias, standing or seated at the end of the axis in the tablinum and dressed in the toga. A sequence of architecturally framed planes conducted the client’s gaze to the paterfamilias in the tablinum. 4. “When reading the descriptions given by Roman authors of houses and villas, one is also struck by their disinterest in any exact definition of the ground plan”; Lise Bek, “Venusta species: ‘A Hellenistic Rhetorical Concept as the Aesthetic Principle in Roman Townscape,” Analecta ro- ‘mana Insttuti danici 14 (1985): 140. 5. A. von Premerstein, “Clientes,” Paulys Real-Eneyclopadie der classischen Altertums- wissonschafi, ed. George Wissowa (Sturgart, 1894— 1978), [hereinafter Pauly-Wissowal, s.v; ‘Timothy P. Wiseman, “Pete nobiles amicos: Poets and Patrons in Late Republican Rome,” in Lit- evary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, ed. Barbara K. Gold (Austin, 1982), 28-31. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250FIGURE 2. The architect created this long visual axis by using a series of symmetrical framing elements, even though the plan of the house (see Fig. 6) is irregular.The first frame was that of the fauces, of narrow width, sloping upward, and having a relatively low ceiling, The doors of the domus were not flush with the street facade but were set well into the entryway and opened inward, to create a viewing position for the visitor.‘ From here a person would see the tablinum framed by the fauces’ floor, walls, and ceiling. Engaged columns, engaged piers (antae), ot painted decorative frames emphasized the opening of the tablinum, forming a second frame. Behind the tablinum a window or door created a third plane of focus, this time a framed view of the garden, or hortus, behind the tablinum. The impluvium, lit from above and sparkling with water, marked the axis but not the path, for to reach the tablinum the visitor had to walk around the impluvium, visually measuring the height and breadth of the atrium along the way. Moving off the axis, a person would be able to look into the alae, or wings, usually of the same height as the atrium and located at the back of the atrium, to the right and left of the central axis. Facing all who entered through the fauces, the paterfamilias controlled the boundaries of his house. Some scholars have compared his position and control of the domus to that of the Etruscan and Roman soothsayers, ot haruspices, who stood on the platform of the temple to define the physical boundaries (templuma) of its sacred power.’ Clear definition of the axis in front of this plat- form, and of the cardinal points to the right, left, and behind it, formed the basis of the reading of omens that was at the heart of Etruscan and Roman religion. As the chart shows (Fig. 3), the Etruscan deities were located in rela~ tion to the cardinal points, so that the haruspex had to position himself in space to read portents, whether they be lightning, the flight of birds, or the markings on a sacrificed sheep’s liver." Each zone of the 360° circle, defined by the half in front of the priest (pars anterioris) and the half behind him (pars posterioris), belonged to a deity.* If the temple in Roman times, raised on its high podium, was a viewing platform axially situated in a space bounded by its enclosure walls, the tablinum was the seat of power in the domus, controlling the axis of entry that formed its link with the business of the outside world. The atrium also housed many family rituals, collectively called the sacra pri- vata, Images of the family’s ancestors hung in the atrium."” So far only one per- 6. Heinrich Drerup, “Bildraum und Realraum in der romischen Architektur,” ROmische Mit- teilungen 66 (1959): 158-159 7. Drerup, “Bildraum und Realraum,” 148; Brown, Roman Architecture, 1 8. Massimo Pallottino, The Etruscans, rev. ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 1975), Fig. 5. 9. Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore, The Body, Memory, arid Architecture (New Haven, 1977), 3140, argue that ali human beings understand their spatial position from a bodily sense of “up/down,” “iront/back,” “right/left,” and “here in the center.” 10. Vitruvius De architectura 6.3.6, tells us that the imagines maiorum were displayed in the atrium at a height equal to the breadth bf the alae; Rolf Winkes, “Pliny’s Chapter on Roman Fu- neral Customs in Light of the ‘Chipeatae Imagines,”” Americar Journal of Archaeology 83 (1979) 5, SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250PARS N POSTICA AL REGIONS _ Roantcn nus ~ G uw aE cost? ofthe Gates) oka > = < lens | Tin GOS G FS ge cle / gy OR EA reat n &¥ & G42 > S % & o see BE TZ 2 oh 4 835° “#3 W ° 35 sinh n \e 2 we ay 2 |e > “ a Sel z < Fog" = Wf, ea , had ins | Cal wor > * z Ww (Bacchus) (gan) = OF Sons ‘any GOP? PARS S ANTICH FIGURE 3. Deities located at the cardinal points in Etruscan divination (and the fundamental human sense of “in front of” and “behind”) may have in- fluenced the plan of the Roman house. manent shrine to the cult of ancestors has been discovered (in the House of the Menander, discussed below), Icaving one to suspect that they received offerings and prayers on portable altars. There is much greater evidence for the worship of the penates, the lares, and the gertius. Although in earlier times worship of these deities took place at the hearth, where they received offerings of perfume, wine, and cakes, later this daily ritual took place at permanent shrines within the house. The plural form of the word “‘penates” indicates that they were an indistinct group; in fact, the word is used collectively to include all the house~ riette de Vos, “Funzione e decorazione dell’Auditorium di Mecenate,” in Roma le, 18701911: Larcbeologia in Roma capitale tra sterro e scavo, ed. Giuseppina Pisani Sartoria and Lorenzo Quilict (Venice, 1983), 233: SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250FIGURE 4. Lares and the genius of the paterfamilias in a lararium painting ina kitchen, hold deities at Pompeii.” The lares were the most important, a fact under- scored by the great number of shrines to the lares (lararia) found in houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum. They are almost always thought of in pairs and are represented as two young men wearing country clothes and carrying rhytons, or drinking horns (Fig, 4). In their most important festival the lares of the 1, Although the origins of the penates are unknown, they were probably the guardian spirits of the houschold storeroom. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, the term includes all deities worshiped SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.-A.D.crossroads (lares compitales) were worshiped where one family’s land joined another’s.!? The lares familiares, who protected the entire family (including the slaves), were united with the lares compitales in wedding ceremonies." On Pompeian lararia the lares flank the genius of the paterfamilias. The genius is the spirit of the paterfamilias; he wears a toga, usually holds a patera, or liba- tion bowl, and sometimes carries a cornucopia. This deity stood for the prin- ciple of generation, linked in a very matter-of-fact way with the marriage bed, or lectus genialis, which was sacred to the paterfamilias. The genius, then, was a fertility spiric who guaranteed the continuation of the clan, or gents. The ge- nius’s feast day was the birthday of the paterfamilias."’ ‘The presence of many lararia points to the rituals localized in specific spaces in the domus."* Usually located in @ corner of the atrium (Fig. 5) or in the kitchen area, these shrines included, in addition to statues or paintings of the two lares and the genius, other symbols of good fortune, such as the serpent (see Fig. 4). The lares received a variety of offerings, including incense, spelt, grapes, garlands of grain, honey cakes, honcycombs, first fruits, wine, and even blood sacrifices.” At the lararium, the paterfamilias regularly prayed and offered sacrifice to the family lares. When a boy came of age, the rituals of his passage from boyhood to manhood, called the sollemnitas togae purae, took place at the lararium, under the atrium’s high roof. The boy took off his balla, or amulet,” and hung it as an offering in the lararium.” He then put on the in the home. David G. Orr, "Roman Domestic Religion: A Study of the Roman Household Deities and Their Shrines at Pompeii and Herculaneum” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1973), 34-44, 12. Daniel P, Harmon, “The Family Festivals of Rome,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der rémischen Welt, pt. 2, vol. 16, no. 2 (Berlin, 1978), 1594-1595, 13. See below, note 22. 14. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion,” 78. 15. Harmon, “Family Festivals,” 1595, 16. George K. Boyce, “Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 14 (1937). Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion,” passim; David G. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: ‘The Evidence of the Household Shrines,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der rémischen Welt, pt. 2, vol. 16, no. 2 (Berlin, 1978), 1557~1591 17. Ort, “Roman Domestic Religion,” 23. 18, Propertius 4.1.131— 132; ‘mox ubi bulla rudi demissa est aurea collo ‘mairis et ante deos libera sumipia toga . But when you took off the gold amulet and assumed the toga of freedom Before your mother’s gods The Poents of Sextus Propertius, trans. J. P. McCulloch (Berkeley, 1972), 206. 19, Persins The Satires 5.30-31 ‘cuam primum pavido custos mihi purpura cesst bullague subcinctis laribus donata pependit SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 25010 toga virilis, or man’s toga. He also dedicated his beard to the lares.”* A girl's coming-of-age was postponed to the night before her marriage. She dedicated symbols of her girlhood, including dolls, soft balls, and breast bands, to the household gods.** There were three different marriage rites, but all of them seem to have begun in the bride's home. After a wedding feast the bride was conducted to her new home. The bride carried three copper coins. To mark her passing from one family to another, ritual prescribed that she give one to the lar of the crossroads, one to the family lar of her new home, and one to her husband.” At her arrival at her husband's house, the bride anointed the door post and placed woolen bands on it as a sign of her domesticity; escorts then lifted her over the threshold. Once inside the house, the groom gave her fire and water, symbols of her new authority as materfamilias. Led to the lectus geni- alis, she reclined on her husband’s chest. The next day she assumed her duties as materfamilias and presided over the household rituals.” Wreaths on the door announced the birth of a child to the community; a flame was lit on the altar during the first precarious days of the infant's life. Soon after birth the haby was placed on the ground and lifted up by the father to signify his recognition of the child.’* On the eighth day for a girl, on the ninth for a boy, the infant received its name; sacrifices were also made to purify the baby from pollution believed to come from the bicth process." Every year the birthday was celebrated with offerings of thanks, including sacrifices of cakes and the burning of incense and through customary gifts given to the per- son celebrating his or her birthday. Rituals of death and mourning also took place in the atrium. The heir con- ducted the rites, seeing that the deceased was bathed, anointed with spices, and laid upon a couch adorned with flowers with incense burning before it. There was a ritual purification by water and fire of those who returned from the fu- neral, and during the nine-day period of mourning following the burial the heir ‘When, as a shy youth, put off the purple gown of boyhood, and its protection, and hung up my amulet to the short-girt gods of the hearth The Satires of Persius, wans. W. S. Merwin (London, 1981), 76 20. Orr, “Roman Domestic R 21. Harmon, “Family Festivals,” 22! Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion, 33. Harmon, "Family Festivals,” 1600. 74. The ritual may also stem {rom the belief that contact with the earth would strengthen the child, since all living things grow from i. ‘V5, The conferring of the name was called the nominal: the purification ritual was called the ustratio; and the day known as the dies lustricus; Joachim Marquardt and August Mau, Das Pri patleben der Romer (Leipzig, 1886: reprint, Darmstadt, 1964), 28-61. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250rigure 5. A lararium in the corner of the atrium.12 purified the house through a ritual sweeping. At the end of the period of mourning there was a sacred meal, the novendialis cena, a convivial funeral banquet that was the first of an annual rite honoring the deceased person as one of the divine ancestors, or divi parentes.* The atrium, with its ancestral images, and the images of the lares and genius in the lararium, was as much a center of traditional family worship as it was a place to receive business and political clients. In this connection, it is significant that Vitruvius regards the domus as the framework for the responsible citizen's active life within the so- cial pattern of the late Republican and Augustan era, In the original versions of the atrium house, all bedrooms or cubicula sur- rounded the atrium; each cubiculum had a single doorway opening to the atrium, the only source of light and air. The domus nearly always included a horus beyond the tablinum. In fact, it was the light coming through the tab- linum’s back wall or door that marked and extended visually the house’s long axis. Considering its importance in the rituals of Roman business and family life, the persistence of the fauces-atrium-tablinum configuration in later ver- sions of the Roman house is not surprising. What is astounding is the variety of elements added on to this core in subsequent variations. Given the fact that the atrium saw so much traffic, the development of the back of the domus for quiet activities was a logical one. It was this area that became the new center for private rituals in the course of the second century B.C THE HELLENIZED DOMUS-WITH-PERISTYLE With Rome’s conquest of the east during the third and second centuries #.c. came the desire to embellish the domus with great colonnaded porticoes, larger and more elaborate than the venerable hortus. Whereas these peristyles had formed the central courtyard of Hellenistic houses like those preserved at Delos, Pergamon, and Priene, when transplanted to Roman Italy they became articulated gardens, located whenever possible on the fauces-atrium-tablinum axis in order to extend to the maximum the long view from the entryway. Now that the peristyle enclosed bright sunlight and a garden, the atrium be- came a kind of formal anteroom for the reception of clients. New rooms with Greek names, arranged around the peristyle, served the private lives of those who lived in the house. Vitruvius tells us that whereas the vestibule (lacking in most Pompeian houses), atrium, and tablinum constituted the part of the house open to the uninvited public, the dining rooms, baths, and bedrooms were only 26, Marquardt and Mau, Privatleben, 378-385; Harmon, “Family Festivals,” 1003, 27, Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 172. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B-C.—A.D. 250for invited guests." Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has recently demonstrated how this determined hierarchy of spaces—from public to private—reflects Roman social structure of the Late Republic and Early Empire.” Whereas the tablinum had doubled as a dining room, now there was a special room, called a tri- clinium, designed to hold the three couches (Alitai) for Greek-style dining. Vitruvius specified the proportions of this U-shaped space: it should he twice as long as it was wide.” His discussion of occi, rooms similar in shape to the tri- clinia, includes an important reference to the view out from the positions on the couches, suggesting that these rooms were used also for dining and that the view from these rooms was to be planned.” Suites of rooms with special pur- poses could be built off the peristyle. There could be a private bath suite, with a room for each function: a dressing room (apodyterium), tepid room (tepi- darium), hot room (caldarium), and a cold room (jrigidarium). Intimate rooms for daytime lounging and reading (cubicula diurna) were often located along the peristyle, as were open semicircular or rectangular apses (exedrae). Villas or houses boasting views had belvedere rooms, or diaetae. For private meet- ings the paterfamilias might make use of an clegant cubiculum, developed in grander houses and villas into a suite.”* We see such cubiculum suites, consist- ing of a bedroom with two alcoves connected with an oecus, in the Villa of Oplontis (see Fig. 41) and the Villa of the Mysteries (see Fig. 28). The only limit on the luxury of the peristyle was the owner's purse. These spaces housed new rituals of leisure made possible not only by new wealth but also by the architects and artists who emigrated from the devastated east to find work in Italy. ‘The expansion of the domus with the addition of the peristyle helped solve another problem, that of housing the slaves. They were ubiquitous members of the wealthy houschold, arranged in a hierarchy of intimacy with the family members, Most intimate were personal slaves, such as the cubicularii (who slept on mattresses at the bedroom door), followed by cooks, nurses, secre- taries, clerks, and doormen; they often functioned like doors and partitions, forming living buffers between the visitors and the members of the household." 28. Vitruvius De architectura 6.5. 29. Wallace-Hadril, “Social Structure,” 43—97 30. Vitruvius De architectura 6.3.8. 31. Vitruvius De architectura 6.3.10. 32. Wallace-Hadrill, “Social Structure,” 59 note 44 33. Alan M. G. Little, A Roman Bridal Drama at the Villa of the Mysteries (Kennebunk, Me., 1972), 3-5, for the Villa of the Mysteries; Lawrence Richardson, Jr. "A Contribution to the Study of Pompeian Dining Rooms,” Pompeii Herculaneum Stabize. Bollettino dell’ associazione inter- nazionale amici di Pompet 1 (1983): 61~71, discasses such linked suites as dining areas where ‘women ate, seated, separated from the men; against which see Wallace-Hadrill, “Social Structure,” 93 note 147. 34. Wallace-Hadrill, “Social Structure,” 78-81. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250 1314 Yet in the best residences their quarters—unimportant to the prestige of the owner—had to be concealed. A second peristyle with servants’ quarters, or upper-story rooms in either atrium or peristyle, successfully removed the slaves from sight when their services were not required. Some city houses, like that of the Menander, made the slave quarters, kitchen, and latrine “disappear” by placing these spaces on a lower level, which included stables and rustic storage areas (numbers 29—34 on plan, Fig. 6). In his discussion of the rooms off the peristyle, Vitruvius urges the architect to locate rooms to achieve the best possible conditions of light and temperature in relation to the times of the day and the seasons, Baths and winter dining rooms should be located on the west side of the peristyle; bedroom suites, li- braries, dining rooms used in the spring and autumn should be on the east, and summer triclinia should face north.” In testing the dicta of Vitruvius against the evidence of peristyle houses exca- vated in Roman Italy, several contradictions arise. Whereas Vitruvius urges that the peristyle be placed transverse to the atrium, a survey of existing houses shows that most peristyles continue the fauces-atrium-tablinum axis. The House of the Menander, in particular, has received much attention from schol- ars because both its plan and the view from the fances evidence the care taken by the architect to maintain at least a visual axis in the process of adding a peristyle to the preexisting domus. Because the parcels of land acquired by the owner for the addition of the peristyle were irregular, a regular plan was im- possible: there was no way to center the peristyle on the domus’s axis. Working around this problem, the architect still managed to extend the axial view from the fauces, through the tablinum, to the extreme south end of the peristyle (see Fig. 2). To achieve this goal, he widened the spaces between the columns of the peristyle just past the tablinum to frame the axis, and terminated it with the cupping form of exedra 22. Heinrich Drerup uses the House of the Menander as the prime exemplar of his concept of the “view through,” or Durchblick, in his seminal article on pic~ torial space and real space in Roman architecture.”* A series of framing devices located on the visual axis constructs the view through the House of the Me- nander: the widened space between the columns on the axis becomes a window when seen in combination with the low walls (plutei) between the columns and the architrave they carry.” Lise Bek refines Drerup’s analysis of the visual axis as a spatial principle. Instead of Drerup’s direct linear progression toward a visual goal, Bek sees an effect of symmetrically constructed planes lying one 35. Vitruvius De architectura 6.4.11 36, Drerup, “Bildraum und Realraum,” 145-174 37. Drerup, “Bildraum und Realraum,” 160-161 SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C,—A.D. 250\Vicdle Merdionsie sab ns nw 35 Ze 28 8 a ar on Menander. FIGURE 6. Plan of the House of the16 behind the other, articulated by doors, windows, and columns located along the visual axis." If the visual axis from fauces through peristyle is a constant, other axes often cross it to emphasize a secondary or tertiary view. Again the House of the Menander serves to illustrate the point. Two rooms have special secondary views. An especially wide space between the columns of the peristyle in front of the great triclinium (18 on the plan, Fig. 6) forms a strong cross-axis to the dominant visual axis, Within the western cover of the peristyle the relationship between oecus 11 and exedra 25 establishes a third visual axis. Like the prin- cipal visual axis, these secondary axes articulated the values that the architect, and the owner wished to communicate to the visitor. In the House of the Me- nander the principal axis emphasizes both the great size of the house and the symmetry of its parts. On both scores this visual axis cheats a bit. Bek has no- ticed that the space between the columns at the far end of the peristyle is less than that between those at the near end, thereby exaggerating the peristyle’s depth.” Also, the house's actual lack of symmetry is evident from the plan but is much less evident to the viewer walking from atrium to peristyle. The sec- ondary axis along the western peristyle shows how important the cult of the ancestors was to the owner: he even had the exedra sheltering the altar (25) decorated to imitate a venerable rural sanctuary. The axis of the triclinium (fur- ther accented by its distinctive roofline) ® calls attention to its great size (the largest in Pompeii). The rituals that took place in the rooms situated around the peristyle re- quired a different kind of visual planning from that of the entrance sequence. Whereas the fauces-atrium-tablinum axis and the walk around the peristyle ad- dressed the walking spectator, the triclinia, oeci, and exedrae were places where one rested—and looked out from his or her place on a couch, Dynamic, or walking, spaces announced the goal of the walk from the point of entrance, employing arranged views of the terminus to prompt the visitor as he or she progressed through the spaces. Decoration in these spaces, as we will see, was tailored to quick recognition of simple patterns rather than long, tarrying analysis. In static, or resting spaces, the view out was of primary importance. Decoration within this kind of space tended to be complex, requiring the viewer's prolonged attention. The positions taken by guests on the three klinai in the triclinium are central 38. Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 183. 39. Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 185. 40. On the regal associations of the pediment, or fastigivr, in the private house, see Wallace Hadrill, “Social Structure,” 61~64, but also che caution that the roof of this triclinium may be correctly reconstructed. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250to Bek’s arguments about what she calls “view planning” in domestic architec- ture. Strict etiquette surrounded the ceremony of the Roman banquet, begin- ning with an invitation that assigned the guest his or her place at the table, and thereby the person’s rank at the function, Horace’s famous satire on a comical dinner party demonstrates the disastrous consequences of the wrong seating arrangement.“ There was space for nine persons on three klinai, placed in U-shaped order along the back and side walls of the dining room. Each couch had a name, indicating its position in the room. Looking into the room from its entry, the couch on the right was the swimus, that against the back wall the medius, and the one to the left the mus. Romans dined reclining on these couches while supporting themselves on their left elbows, so that the most de- sirable space, both for its convenience and view out of the space, would be from the left of the central couch. The guest of honor received this so-called consular place (called the locus consularis—it was imus in medio), and the host reclined to his right (seemmus in imo). In her survey of rooms likely to have been used for dining at Pompeii and Herculaneum, Bek has attempted to demonstrate that the view out from the rear left-hand side is a favored one. From there one can best appreciate planned views of fountains, statuary, and gardens framed by a symmetrical arrange- ment of window and door frames, columns, or pillars. Like the fauces-atritum- tablinum axis, all of these planned views out of static spaces employed a se- quence of frames and visual symmetry. But unlike the fauces-atrium-tablinum sequence, the view is not strictly axial, but oblique (Fig. 7).*' Although not con- vineing in all particulars, Bek adduces enough evidence for us to infer that the view out of these static spaces in the peristyle was important enough for the architect to move columns, plan gardens, site sculpture, and install fountains as centers of interest for those looking out, and, as we shall see, to substitute painted and mosaic decoration for these features when it was impossible to build them.* 41, Horace Satires 2.81841. 42. Aug. Hug,, “Triclinium,” Pawly-Wissowa, sv, and August Mau, “Convivium,” Pauly Wissowa, s.v. The boorish host Trimalchio overturns the rules and sits summus in stmmo; Pe- tronius Arbiter, Cena Trimalchionis, ed. Martin S. Smith (Oxford, 1975), 66-67, commentary on ca. 31,8. 43. Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 194; a repetition of the same arguments in her “Ques- tiones conviviales: The Idea of the Trilinium and the Staging of Convivial Ceremony from Rome to Byzantium,” Analecta romana Istituti danici 12 (1983): 82-88. 44. Franz Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” Antike Kunst 27 (1984): 99 note 142, 45. For an analysis of the relation of the Durchblick and the view from the locus consularis to painted iconographical schemes in the House of the Ancient Hunt at Pompei (Vi, 4, 48), see Jean- Paul Descoeudres, “The Australian Expedition to Pompeii: Contributions to the Chronology of the Fourth Pompeian Style,” Pictores per provincias: Aventicum V, Cahiers d'archéologie romande, no. 43 (Avenches, Switz., 1987); 136~137, figs. 8-11 SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250 17FIGURE 7. Plan and reconstruction of the guest of honor’s view from the triclinium of the House of the Centenary.But we cannot fully understand the rituals that called for decoration in the rooms of city houses without considering villa architecture. If the peristyle was a way of bringing the countryside within the party walls of city houses, the ideal and inspiration was to be found in the country estate. VIEW VILLAS AND SEASIDE VILLAS As the letters of Cicero and Pliny cloquently demonstrate, the aim of every wealthy noble was to have several villas, or country residences, preferably with views.** When located near the city, like the Villa of the Mysteries (sec Fig. 63), they were called “suburban” villas. Built on a platform with a vaulted corridor (eryptoporticus) beneath, the Villa of the Mysteries must have commanded a panoramic view of the Bay of Naples. Its plan, that of the villa suburbana de- scribed by Vitruvius,” reverses the usual order of the city domus-with-peristyle so that the tablinum and the reception suites clustered around it can enjoy the view through their ample windows. Itis significant for the discussion of ritual to note the changes in the Villa of the Mysteries over its several phases. In the plan of the mid-first century B.¢.,* the tablinum was the goal of the visitor, as in the domus, with the difference that the peristyle came first in the entrance sequence. Majestically rising in two stories, the original peristyle conducted the visitor around its perimeter before he or she entered the atrium. The tablinum lay on the axis as the goal, with the impluvium as axis marker, but a portico surrounding the tablinum and the rooms flanking it encouraged invited guests to enjoy a very different ritual from that of the salutatio: the walk, or ambulatio, around the upper portico. The views afforded from its high platform were the raison d’étre of the villa and its architecture. In the Augustan-period modernization the owner added greater emphasis to the view; he accomplished this through the addition of a large apsidal room beyond the tablinum hat cut through the peristyle and extended to the edge of the villa’s platform.’ With its windows that framed views taken from the pan- 46. Cicero Epistulae ad familiares 3.1.2: Pliny the Younger Epistulae 2.17. 47, Vitruvius De architecuura 6.5.3. Nicholas Purcell, “Town in Country and Country in Town,” in The Ancient Roman Villa Garden, ed. Elisabeth B. MacDougall (Washington, D.C., 1987), 202-203, more fully defines the villa suburbana. He argues that the Romans perched theit villas on platforms so that they could be better seen and admired (196-197) 48. Amedeo Maiuri, La Villa dei Mister, 2 vols. (Rome, 1931), 1:37—40, 99-101; Maiuri believed that the villa originated in the second century 8.c.; Lawrence Richardson, Jr., Pompeit ‘An Architectural History (Baltimore, 1988), 171-176, dates is original construction to the period of its mature Second-Style decorations. 49. Maiuri, Villa dei Mister, 58, notes that che belvedere, constructed in the Augustan period, cas being completely reconstructed at the time of eruption, Richardson, Pompeii, 176, places this SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250 1920 orama, this room epitomizes attitudes expressed by Cicero” and, later on, by Pliny." It was not raw nature, but framed views of nature, that the cultured Roman sought. Two pavilions, or diactae, were built into the corners of the former peristyle. Shaped like cubicula but furnished with windows, these little viewing pavilions stress specific views, this time for a person lounging on a daybed. The Roman passion for the view into the landscape can be followed in de- velopments in the literature from Cicero through Pliny the Younger.” Cicero’s joking discussion with Atticus about the size of windows needed to achieve a view of the garden reveals the importance of the prospect from the room.” ‘More than a century later, Statius’s Silvae, cwo poems describing two villas be~ longing to his patrons, praise above all the views the rooms afford. Especially in his second poem in book two, dedicated to Pollius Felix’s Sorrentine villa, the reader imagines a walk from shore to summit through rooms ever more ingenious in their capturing of specialized views.™ In the second century Pliny the Younger’s descriptions of his Laurentine and Tuscan villas stress neither their layout nor theit geometry but the presence of enticing views from all the rooms. It is important that none of the literary sources discussing views from villas praise what in modern terms is called the panorama; raw nature must be framed by the room and its windows for the view to be delightful. Architec- tural intervention is a necessary part of these constructed views. If Vitruvius considered the placement of rooms and their function to be part of a civic ideal, Pliny defines their function and usefulness according to the time of day and the season. Decor for Vitruvius was part of the well-ordered life; for Pliny it was “the medium of a private fiction.” * The villa added a new experi- ence to those of the city house. To the view of the whole building from the point of entrance (the fauces-tablinum-peristyle view) and the views out of in- dividual rooms located around the peristyle, the view villa incorporated framed views of landscape features. The Vitruvian category of decor gave way to the poets’ concept of amoenitas, ot “pleasantness,” a change fully realized during the course of the first cemtury of our era. Now the poets praised the construction in the post-earthquake period, even though its mosaics and wall construction match that of the Third-Seyle mosaics in the diaetac. 50, Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 173. 31, Dreup, “Bildraum und Realraur,” 17 52. Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Rhetoric of Space (Princeton, N.J., 1988), passim. 53. Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum 2.5.2. 54, Publius Papinius Status Silvae 2.2. 55. Bettina Beremann, “Painced Perspectives of a Villa Visit.” in Elaine Gazda, ed., Roman Art in the Private Sphere (Ann Atbor, Mich., 1991), 49-70. $6, Dek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 180. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250charming place, the locus amoenus. This change in values had many effects on decoration, but they were probably not to be seen in the fabulous villas of the very wealthy—villas that commanded real views—but in the modest houses of the middle class, where paint, stucco, and mosaic decoration created fictive views where there were none. Some city houses were able to enjoy real views. Among the more dramatic city houses with views are the House of the Mosaic Atrium and the House of the Stags in Herculaneum; they share a party wall that runs down the middle of the city block they occupy. Like the Villa of the Mysteries they command a view from a platform, but the platform is the rampart of Herculaneum’s former city walls (see Figs. 141 and 147). Constructed several decades later than the additions to the Villa of the Mysteries, both houses enthusiastically embrace the view, but in different ways. In the House of the Mosaic Atrium, the fauces- atrium-tablinum axis ends in the tablinum, while a garden bounded on three sides by a covered walkway ends in a great oecus oriented toward the view. The stronger axis is the one toward the sea; its conflict with the fauces-tablinum axis is never fully resolved, yet through a window in the atrium’s wall the visi- tor can at least glimpse what visual pleasures await if he or she is invited to step down into the covered portico to enjoy the rest of the house. If Vitruvius saw the atrium as a necessary part of the villa, Pliny regarded it as an old-fashioned requisite.” In the House of the Stags the architect sup- pressed the atrium to create a magnificent oecus that was the first in a series of framed views leading to a platform above the sea. As we will see, both of these urban view villas at Herculaneum, blessed with splendid vistas, have relatively tame decorative schemes in wall painting and pavement systems so as not to compete unduly with the views out of their rooms. There is evidence for a “view mania” also in Pompeii, where in the last de- cades of the first century B.C, houses with multiple stories along Pompeii’s high escarpment abandoned the traditional domus plan to take advantage of the ocean view. But all of these in the end were city houses. One partially exca- vated seaside villa, that of Oplontis near Pompeii (see Fig. 41),.” furnishes some 57. Drerup, “Bildraum und Realraum,” 161 $8. Ferdinand Noack and Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, Baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen ant Stadirand vor Pompeii Berlin, 1936), passim. '59. Alfonso De Franciscis, “La villa romana di Oplontis,” in. Newe Forschungen in Ponspejiy ed. Bernard Andrcac and Helmut Kyrieleis (Recklinghausen, 1975}, 9-10, identifies the site as fncient Oplontis on the basis of the Tabula Peutingeriana, a fourth-century map. See also ‘Withelmina Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas Destroyed by Vesu- vis (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1979), 289-314, with an up-to-date fold-out plan of che villa; Arnold dde Vos and Mariette de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, Guida archeologica Laterza, no. 11 (Rome, 1982), 250-254. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250 242 details of rituals of the very wealthy whose luxury seems to have inspired so many petit-bourgeois imitations in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Although the core of the Villa of Oplontis dates to around 50 B.c., it ex- panded laterally along the shore in later additions." Paintings of such seaside villas, particularly those in the House of M. Lucretius Fronto (see Fig. 75), pro- vide an idea of their appearance. Long porticoes facing the ocean, often of two stories, are frequently arranged symmetrically around a central feature, either a semicircular cupping form ot a large hall. Although the seaward disposition of the central hall at Oplontis will never be known, since it was cut by the build ing of the Sarno Canal in the eighteenth century, the approach from the land is clear. An imposing hall (21 on the plan, see Fig. 41), entirely open to the ave- nue of approach, juts out from porticoes to its right and left. It looks like a monumental gateway, or propylor, since it is supported on its open side by two great columns and corner piers, in this way marking a long visual axis extend- ing to the atrium. Yer this entry hall is not physically accessible to the spaces on that axis. Instead, its back is pierced by a large window opening to an enclosed garden, or viridarium (20), exposed to the sky and painted (redundantly) with plants and fountains. The atrium (5) lies yet farther behind this visual axis, pre~ ceded by a large transverse space (4). To reach the atrium from the north side of the villa, the visitor had to walk along the long, narrow, unlit corridors that flank rooms 21 and 20. This ritual of entry, although owing much to the com- bination of straight visual axis and circuitous path that characterized the expe~ rience of walking from fauces to tablinum in the domus, has become more complex in this grand villa. The process has become one of finding the axis visually, then losing it in the dark corridors, only co realign oneself with the visual axis in the comforting symmetry of the traditional atrium.® Although the mechanism of the framed visual axis is the same as that of the domus, or a domus-with-peristyle like the House of the Menander, the process of attaining the focus of that axis is much more complex. Although we do not know what view completed this grandiose visual axis, it must have been the ocean— framed, to be sure, with columns, piers, and windows. Another important instance of a succession of framed—but physically un- attainable—views enlivens the series of rooms bordering the western porticus of the swimming pool (natatio), Oecus 69, with two framed columns on the side facing the pool, forms the central axial element of the suite. Windows on the long sides of this oecus provide views of unroofed rooms 68 and 70, inac- 60, John R. Clarke, “The Early Thied Style at the Villa of Oplontis,” Romische Mitteilungen 94 (1987); 293-294, figs. 1 61. Vincent Scully, The Earth, the Tentple, and the Gods, rev. ed. (New York, 1969), 210— 212, discusses a similar process of losing and finding the axis at the Roman Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B. A.D. 250cessible yet painted, like room 20, with plants, birds, and fountains, here against a yellow-gold ground. The same system of windows framing views of painted garden rooms—open to the sky—articulates the smaller oeci 74 and 65. Clearly the architect was mirroring nature in theatrically lit painted tab- Jeaux that mimicked the real garden views visible through other windows." He created a contrast between both light and shade and the actual and the fictive garden. The consciousness of view planning evident in the Villa of Oplontis helps explain more modest features encouraging similar experiences of axiality and the view of framed features in urban houses. Rituals of reception and of leisure, but on a grand scale, characterize the spaces of the Villa of Oplontis. One need only consider the sixty-meter swim- ming pool on the eastern extremity of the excavated area, or the large bath suite on the western part, to imagine the extent of the original villa and its wealth. In the context of this study, Oplontis is a precious, though incomplete, source for understanding the models that inspired the ambitious decorative schemes of the middle and lower classes. THE VILLA AS MODEL FOR MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSES Not every Roman lived in an ancestral domus or splashy villa. Particularly after the middle of the first century of our era at Pompeii and Herculaneum a great number of city houses were remodeled to imitate villas, but in miniature. This phenomenon, examined in depth by Paul Zanker," often resulted in pack- ing a great number of disparate and uncoordinated villa features into modest spaces. But instead of clearly framed views of distinct features like the foun- tains, statuary, and swimming pool at Oplontis, the visitor found a hodge- podge giving out mixed signals about the function and meaning of both indi- vidual spaces and the house as a whole Zanker cites the House of Octavius Quartio (sce Fig. 108) as the prime ex- emplar of the “miniature villa.”* The view from the fauces ends not in a tab- linum, for there is none, but in a doorway leading to a three-sided portico sur- rounding a little garden (g). Having reached this area of the house, the visitor has entered a realm of mixed metaphors and hyperbole. To the left is the prin- cipal oecus (h), its larger entry focused, by means of a pavilion, upon a long canal that runs the length of the building lot. It is fed by a second, transverse canal running between two unusual spaces: at the west end is a small pavilion- 62. Jashemski, Gardens of Pompett, 306~314, figs. 470-475, 63. Paul Zanker, “Die Villa als Vorbild des spiiten pompeijanischen Wohngeschmacks," Jabr- buch des deutschen archaologischen Instituts 94 (1979): 460~523. 64. Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild,” 470-480. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C,—A.D, 250 2324 like white room (perhaps a diaeta) outfitted as a little shrine, or sacelltwn, while at the east end there is an outdoor biclinium (a dining area with two couches Zanker counts many built elements taken from villa architecture: the canal, or euripus, allusive to the Nile; the rear peristyle with oecus; the little temple or aedicula with images of Diana; and the biclinium with fountain. Add the many small-scale statues along the upper canal evoking gods as diverse as Isis, Dionysus, and the Muscs, plus five different painted cycles on the exterior walls, (see chart, Fig, 114), two painted friezes from different epic sagas in the oecus, allusions to Isis in the sacellum, and one has an excellent example of the kind of bad taste that Cicero had decried a hundred years before." While Cicero, aris- tocratic patrician, rejected statues of bacchants, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn as thematically unsuitable for an exedra dedicated to cultural pursuits, the owner of the House of Octavius Quartio built miniature grottocs, fountains, sanctu- aries, and canals—and adorned them with statuary and frescoes allusive to a whole panoply of mythic cycles and religions.** How did the ancient viewer experience such miniature villas? From the point of entrance into the peristyle garden, at the tablinum position, a person could walk either to the right or left. To the left he or she would encounter the simaller side entrance of the great oecus ()), probably used for both reception of business clients and convivial feasts. To the right the visitor would pass to the diacta/sacellum (f), taking in the paintings both within the room and on its exterior. From here the view of the upper canal focuses on the biclinium (&). Statuary lined both sides of the canals, as it filled the little peristyle’s garden. Making his or her way through this crowded Disneyland the viewer might also notice the big frescoes on the exterior walls. The next goal would probably be the oecus itself, commanding the carefully arranged view of the lower garden and its three-stage canal. A little bridge crosses the upper canal to reach the pavilion that marks the beginning of this long axis; beneath it, on the lower level, hides a little grotto sacred to Diana. Characteristically, the grotto is too sinall for a person to enter; it is an allusion to the great grottoes that graced large villas. Similarly, the canal may have doubled as 2 fish pond, the piscinae so important to Cicero and other villa owners. One's walk though the lower garden included other surprises: the elaborate fountains that punctuate the ca- nal and a statue of a hermaphrodite. Other examples of villa imitations cited by Zanker, although less extensive than the complex of the House of Octavius Quartio, nevertheless document a 65. Civero Ad Fam. 7.23.2. 66. For a critique of Zanker’s position, see Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” 71-73. 67. John H. D'Arms, Romans on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 44. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.-A.Dnew use of space stemming from new desires on the part of the patrons. If what had meaning in the large villas sinks to mere decoration in Pompeian gardens, it is because a new class, that of the entrepreneurial freedmen, was socially most active in this period. Like the rich former slave Trimalchio in Petronius’s Satyricon,** these new bourgeoisie imitated the wealthy aristocratic upper class in their desire for the material trappings of wealth. The garden architecture, sanctuaries, fountains and resting spots, picture galleries, real and painted stat ues, landscape views, and even painted wild animal parks (paradeisoi) were all ways of possessing a bit of the luxury villa.” HOUSES OF THE LOWER CLASS Vitruvius, who liked to make such distinctions, clearly states that those with modest means had no need of magnificent vestibules, tablina, or atria because it was their lot to call upon others and not vice versa.” The clientela, consisting of freedmen, artisans, and owners of small businesses, often lived in smaller houses with spaces arranged around a covered atrium surrounded by rooms on two stories. The tenacious survival of the atrium in the face of increasing urban density in Pompeii and Herculaneum is all the more remarkable in that it is a relatively space-wasting configuration. Rarcly, however, can one find all the rooms of the domus in these “mini-atrium” houses.”' The abiding feature is the fauces-tablinum axis, but rooms tend to be arranged asymmetrically around it, suggesting that for this class practical uses of the other rooms around the atrium were more important than their representational symbolism. Placement of the house's humble spaces, such as kitchens, latrines, and slaves’ quarters, is much less predictable in these smaller houses than in the large houses and villas, where clear separation is the rule. In the House of the “Menander (see Fig, 6) considerable space is dedicated to these rooms, but they are out of sight, ata basement level; the Villa of Oplontis housed slaves on two stories around a large peristyle, inferior in decoration and construction tech- nique to the opulent areas to either side of it (see Fig. 41).”* But in smalll house: the kitchen, the latrine, and the slaves’ rooms occur in the margins of the recep- tion spaces, smaller in size, often with lower ceilings, litte light, and poor deco- 68. John H. D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 97-120; Wallace-Hadell, “Social Structure,” 43-44, 97, 69. Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild,” 519-522 70. Vitravius De architectura 6.5.1 71. Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” 73-77, discusses the small number of full-fledged atrium houses at Pompeii 72, De Francistis, “Oplontis,” pls. 38-39. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C26 ration, In the House of the Prince of Naples they take up the ill-lit right side and back of the atrium.” At both Pompeii and Herculaneum, particularly after the disastrous earth quake of A.D. 62, experimentation arrived at more rational but less traditional solutions that dispensed with the atrium entirely.” In a clever plan the architect of the House in Opus Craticium at Herculaneum fit two apartments and a shop with workrooms into the space of a narrow atrium house (see Fig. 159). Here the rituals of work blended with those of rest, dining, and entertainment be- cause of the “railroad cac” arrangement of many rooms. On the ground floor, for instance, the axis defined by the entrance at number 10 begins at the street with a shop leading to three work or work/living rooms behind (9—7). Room 6 opens to the area under the stairs (5), which lead to two dining/sleeping rooms on the second floor. Another street entrance, at 14, gives access to the same stairway and upper-floor rooms. Light for all of these spaces comes from the central light well at 4. This disposition of spaces with chin partition walls made it easy to reassign their use for more than one tenant, and the upper rooms that, have windows on the little courtyard are not without some degree of privacy and grace. The same could be said of the separate apartment occupying the remainder of the upper story, reached by an independent stairway at 13. Al- though the corridor connecting the landing with the balcony is dark, the street- side rooms are light and airy. The decoration of the house, as we shall see, was of relatively good quality—aesthetic compensation for the tenant who had to make do with somewhat crowded and makeshift spaces. SURVIVAL AND LOSS OF SPATIAL PATTERNS IN THE INSULAE OF OSTIA ‘A highly satisfactory and uncannily modern solution to urban density devel- oped in Rome during the first century A.D. Employing brick-faced concrete with vaulted support and covering systems, the multistory, multifamily apart- ment house, or insula, replaced the domus and most of its spatial patterns. With sturdy apartment buildings rising as high as five stories, crowded Roman cities expanded vertically instead of horizontally. Because Rome itself has been continuously inhabited, few of these insulae survive, but Ostia, Rome's supply city during the heyday of the empire, is filled with these dwellings, most of them excavated in the twentieth centu: 73. Volker Michael Strocka, Casa del Principe di Napoli (VI 15, 7=8). Deutsches archito- logisches Institut, Hauser in Porpeti, vol. 1 (Tbingen, 1984), passim; Wallace-Hadrll, “Social Structure,” 86. 74, James E. Packer, “Middle- and Lower-Class Housing in Pompeii: A Preliminary Survey,” in Neue Forschuigen in Pompei ed. Berard Andreae and Helmut Kyrieleis (Recklinghausen, 1975), 133-146. SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250Many studies have attempted to establish a typology for the insulae of Ro- man Ostia.” Perhaps the most successful is that of James Packer, who finds prototypes in the covered atrium house (atriuna testudinatum) at Pompeii and Herculaneum and in houses combined with shops ot workshop areas.’* More important for this study of decorative ensembles is the function of the spaces included in the various types of insulae. Carol Watts has proposed a “pattern language,” or typology, of recurring spatial configurations and spatial experi- ences, for a group of domus and insulae at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Ostia Antica.” Watts has demonstrated that although certain characteristic patterns were lost in the change from the domus to the insula, other patterns persisted. Patterns of the domus that do not survive in the insula include the long axis providing a view through its spaces (the “visual axis” discussed above), the varied ceiling heights, and the system of illumination from compluvium and peristyle. Two enduring patterns with special relevance to decorative ensembles are those of spatial hierarchies and “entrance experience.” Spatial hierarchies, ranked from the most to the least important spaces in the domus, remained in the insula—even though the locations of the tablinum-equivalent, triclinium- equivalent, and cubiculum-equivalent changed. Both the placement and the relative sizes of spaces would provide cues to a person visiting a flat in an in- sula. Here mosaic pavements, along with the decorations of painted and stuc- coed walls and ceilings, play an important role in signaling the relative impor- tance of each room; wall, ceiling, and floor decoration express each room’s relative importance in the insula as much as do the shapes and locations of the spaces. In the absence of literary sources describing social, business, and religious rituals that took place in the insula, case-by-case analysis of the archaeological remains must provide likely answers. Arguments for the function of spaces and rooms must be based on careful on-site study. One must also be cautious about naming these spaces. Given the adaptability of the construction technique, a great variety of plans is possible. Two enduring problems, provision for cir- culation and for light, were solved in a variety of ways in the insulae. Windows on the exterior brought light and air from the street, and when party walls prevented exterior windows, the insulae’s rooms opened to courtyards and light wells. 7S. Phillip Harsh, “The Origins ofthe Insulze at Ostia,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 12 (1935): Guido Calza et al., Scavi di Ostia, vol. 1, Topografia generale (Rome, 1953); Paolo Chiolini, I caratteri distributiv’ degli antichi edifci (Milan, 1959), 65-69; Axel Boéthius, The Golden House of Nero (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1960); Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia, 2d ed., with corrections (Oxford, 1975) 239247, i 76. James E. Packer, “The Insalae of Imperial Ostia,” Memoirs of the Americant Academy in Rome 31 (1971): 62. ms ” 77. Carol Martin Watts, “A Pattern Language for Houses at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Os- tia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1987). SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250 27Even more space saving for insulae closed in with party walls on three sides was the so-called medianum plan. In the House of the Yellow Walls (see Fig. 188), the medianum, a well-illuminated, covered courtyard (3 on the plan) with a bank of three high windows opening on the street, provided light and circulation for all the rooms. Although we will analyze this and other houses individually later in this book, a glance at the plan of this apartment suggests new relations between static and dynamic spaces from those encountered in the domus and its variations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. For one thing, a person entering the generous entry hall at 1 has no axial view through the complex. Instead the visitor would have an oblique view of the medianum, with light streaming in from the left, and a view of the doorway to the larger of the two reception spaces, room 7. Once the visitor reaches the medianum, a dynamic distribution space, the hierarchy of functions becomes clear. Whereas their position on the less well-lit side of the medianum announces that 4 and 5 are private rooms, certainly cubicula, the opposite set of circumstances identifies rooms 7 and 8 as reception rooms. They are well lit, each with three windows on the street, and their doorways answer each other across the medianum’s space, creating a visual axis between the two rooms, Further analysis reveals the function of room 7 to be that of a triclinium, both because of the disposi- tion of the mosaic floor, meant to be seen from two couches, and because of its relation to room 6, perhaps intended as a kind of kitchen or pantry space. As we shall see, the decoration of these spaces in the House of the Yellow Walls provides even clearer signals about the function of the spaces and the activities that took place there. This new language of brick-faced vaulted architecture also served the wealthy patron in Rome and at Ostia. The best example to illustrate functional patterns is that of the House of the Muses (see Fig. 163), whose elegant spaces surround 2 spacious arcaded courtyard. Here most of the traditional rooms of the domus-with-peristyle can be found around the courtyard, with the added advantage that the sturdy concrete construction sustained upper floors for ser vants? quarters or for tenants, provided with separate street entrances. A visual axis employing the by now familiar device of successive, symmetrical, framing clements connects two important rooms, room 15, an oecus, with room 5, a small salon dedicated to Apollo and the Muses. The mosaic program distin- guishes dynamic and static spaces, the more complex mosaics also emphasizing Visual axes. Corridor 7 ereates a pocket of privacy for interconnecting rooms 8 and 9, most likely a bedroom suite. The insula challenged the architect both to accommodate the occupants’ rituals and to signal each room’s function for the 78. Gustav Hermansen, Ostia the medianum. scts of Roman City Life (Alberta, 1981), 35: definition of SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250visitor. As close analysis of six representative Ostian insulae will show, these architects succeeded quite well in attaining these objectives. It is interesting in this connection that Axel Boéthius has shown how the insula pattern has sur~ vived in modern Mediterranean cities, demonstrating the practicality and ver- satility of this ancient Roman solution to the problems of urban density.”” This chapter has established that the manifold rituals—both prescribed and habitual—that took place in the Roman house found expression in specific ar- chitectural forms. Despite the diverse shapes that the house's dynamic and static spaces took, several elements remained constant: emphasis of the visual axis in dynamic spaces; planning of the view out from static spaces; and the careful differentiation of public space from private space. As Bek points out: The universal quality appears . . . in the canonical disposition of the rooms, for instance in the entrance sequence and in the relative constancy in the representation of the complete visual image. Owing to this and to the sta- bility of the social pattern, the pattern of private representation in its various aspects is also . . . of a form that was to a certain extent commonly appli- cable. Because of this element of recognition the participants in the cere- monial would have been enabled to carry out the roles allotted to them without difficulty in given situations in any house, as a client or dominus, host or guest, since the accepted order of precedence formed the invariable condition for the distribution of roles. There were no passive spectators, all participated actively through visually taking possession of the room.” If a house’s spatial layout is a system that programs the behavior of all the persons who use it, what role does decoration play in this system? Examination of the general aspects of ritual and space in the Roman house suggests the thesis of this book, that in each house the ensembles of painted, stuccoed, and mosaic decoration participated in a coding process that modified, emphasized, and often personalized ritually defined spaces through perspective, color, and the meanings of images included in the decorative schemes. The following chapter considers the chronologically successive styles of painted and mosaic decoration in terms of their formal development, paying special attention to technique, working methods, and how each style of decoration addresses the viewer, that is, how the viewer perceives the decoration. In this way the reader will be prepared to “enter” the case-study houses in the following chapters with a good understanding of the general stylistic, compositional, and percep- tual problems that belong to each historical system of decoration. 79. Boéthius, Golden House of Nero, 129-185. 80. Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth, 202, SPACE AND RITUAL, 100 B.C.—A.D, 250 29