Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Prof: Good morning. As you can see, the title of today's lecture is "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Houses and Villas at Pompeii." We spoke last time about the public architecture of Pompeii, about the forum, about the temples, about the basilica, about the baths, and also about shops, and tombs as well. But today we're going to turn to the residential architecture of Pompeii; residential architecture that is extremely important, not only for what it tells us about Pompeii, but what it also tells us about domestic architecture in the first centuries B.C. and the first century A.D., because there is no place where the houses are better preserved than at Pompeii. So it tells us again, not just about the city itself, but also about residential architecture in Rome, where we have very few examples, and elsewhere in the Roman world. I want to begin with the image that you see now on the screen, which is a building--and we're talking about the one at the left, front left--a building that is on one of Pompeii's main thoroughfares, the Via dell'Abbondanza, the Via dell'Abbondanza, the Street of Abundance. And the building in question is relatively well preserved, and what is significant about it for us right now is the fact that it is two-storied, as you can see here. What we'll see in the course of today's presentation is that most of the buildings, most of the houses, in early Pompeii, are single-story dwellings, but here we see one that is two-storied. And this two-storied dwelling actually dates fairly late in the history of residential architecture in Pompeii. It dates sometime between the earthquake of 62 and the eruption of Vesuvius of 79; so between 62 and 79 A.D. And we see that it has two stories, in this instance. A story down below that may have been-- that says has entranceways, might even have been opened up as a shop, and then a second story that is very interesting indeed. And it has what we call cenaculae, c-e-n-a-c-u-l-a-e, cenaculae, which are second-story dining rooms that have open panoramic windows, these windows, as you can see, through columns. So an interesting nod to Hellenization once again, this idea of incorporating Greek elements into Roman architecture -- elements that again are under- that come into Roman architecture through the influence of earlier Greek architecture, and views out through those columns. So two important points: one, that these have two stories, and that adding a second story to a Roman building, or a Pompeian building in this instance, doesn't occur until between the earthquake and the eruption of Vesuvius; and secondarily, this idea of the picture window. And we've talked about the importance for the Romans of vista and panorama, and they're doing it here. They're opening up that second floor so that you can sit in one of these dining rooms and then have a very nice view out through the columns of the street and the street life below. Now this building, on the Via dell'Abbondanza, lies at the end of the development of Pompeian domestic architecture. And so what I'm going to do is take us back to the beginning and trace Pompeian domestic architecture from the Samnite period up through the eruption of Vesuvius. With regard to the earliest houses at Pompeii, these were done during again the Samnite period, the fourth and third centuries B.C. Keep in mind that the Samnites were an Italic tribe, that is, indigenous to Italy from way back when-- I had mentioned to you that Pompeii was founded already in the eighth century B.C. And these Italic tribes built houses, obviously, in which they lived already in the fourth and third -- substantial houses -- in which they lived already in the fourth and third centuries B.C. I want to begin our conversation about domestic architecture in Pompeii, and by extension in Rome itself, with the so-called Domus Italica. What was the Domus Italica? The Domus Italica was an ideal Roman house plan, and we know quite a bit about it because of the writings of Vitruvius. Vitruvius -- not to be confused with Vesuvius -- Vitruvius was an architectural theoretician who was writing in the age of Augustus, Augustus being Rome's first emperor. And Vitruvius left a great deal of writings about all kinds of architecture, including domestic architecture, and he talks in detail about the Domus Italica or what he considered the ideal Roman house, and he describes all of its parts. And through his writings we can explore together what the ideal Roman house was, and what you're going to find very interesting, I believe, is the fact that the actual houses at Pompeii conform, or the earliest houses, conform very closely to this ideal plan. Let's run through it together, both in plan and in restored view. Again I'm going to need to go over a lot of terminology here, but I guarantee you I'm going to repeat it enough today that it will be indelibly marked on your minds and you won't even have to-- I don't think you'll even have to study this, when the time comes, because you're going to know these parts of the houses so well after we go through them today. Here you see the plan of the typical Domus Italica. You can see at number 1 is the entrance into the house. The entrance to the house was called the fauces, f-a-u-c-e-s; the fauces or the throat of the house. Sometimes the fauces had before it a vestibule, called a vestibulum--and all of these words are on the Monument List for you-- a vestibulum, which was a place right before the beginning of the fauces, underneath the eaves of the house, where you could actually stand, get in from the rain in case it was raining outside, while you waited for the door to be opened. But in these very early Domus Italica houses, we don't tend to see the vestibulum. So think it away for the moment, just the fauces or throat of the house. Then on either side of the fauces there are two rooms, which are called cells or cellae: cella in the singular and cellae, c-e-l-l-a-e in the plural. These can be treated in a number of different ways. They can either be closed off from the street and used as interior rooms for the house, extra bedrooms or living spaces, or they can be, as you see them in this ideal plan, opened up to the street. When they are opened up to the street they take on the role of shops or tabernae, t-a-b-e-r-n-a-e, shops or tabernae. And those shops could be either used by those who owned the house, to make additional money, or they could be leased out to others for their shops. You see the fauces leads into the most important room of a Roman house, the so-called atrium, the famous atrium of the Roman house, a-t-r-i-u-m. The atrium was the audience hall of the house. And it's important to mention from the outset that Roman houses had a very different role in Roman society than houses do for us today. We tend to think of our houses today in large parts as retreats, as places we can get away from it all -- get away from work, get away from schoolwork and so on, and escape. Although we do enjoy obviously having friends and family visit us there, we tend to think of it as a place of retreat. This was not true in Roman times, when the house was also a place to do some very serious business. The man of the house, the head of the household, the paterfamilias, often greeted clients in the atrium of the house, and when he was away on business, or away at war, his wife, the materfamilias, would stand in for him and she would conduct business in the atrium. So considered a very public part of the house, a place where you wanted it to look its best because you were going to be greeting