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All these rooms had covered porches on the side next the court. These porches, forming an unbroken colonnade on the four sides, were strictly the peristyle, though the name came to be used of this whole section of the house, including court, colonnade, and surrounding rooms. The court was much more open to the sun than the atrium was; all sorts of rare and beautiful plants and flowers flourished in this spacious court, protected by the walls from cold winds.
The peristylium was often laid out as a small formal garden, having neat geometrical beds edged with bricks. Careful excavation at Pompeii has even given an idea of the planting of the shrubs and flowers.
Fountains and statuary adorned these little gardens; the colonnade furnished cool or sunny promenades, no matter what the time of day or the season of the year. Since the Romans loved the open air and the charms of nature, it is no wonder that they soon made the peristyle the center of their domestic life in all the houses of the better class, and reserved the atrium for the more formal functions which their political and public position demanded.
It must be remembered that there was often a garden behind the peristyle, and there was also very commonly a direct connection between the peristyle and the street. It is important to remember that in the town house all these rooms received their light by day from the peristylium.
They were very small, and their furniture was scant, even in the best houses. Some of these seem to have had anterooms in connection with the cubicula, which were probably occupied by attendants. Even in the ordinary houses there was often a recess for the bed.
Some of the bedrooms seem to have been used merely for the midday siesta; these were naturally situated in the coolest part of the peristylium; they were called cubicula diurna. The others were called by way of distinction cubicula nocturna or dormitoria, and were placed so far as possible on the west side of the court in order that they might receive the morning sun.
It should be remembered that, finally, in the best houses bedrooms were preferably in the second story of the peristyle. Collections of books were large as well as numerous, and were made then, as now, even by persons who cared nothing about their contents. The books, or rolls, which will be described later, were kept in cases or cabinets around the walls.
In one library discovered in Herculaneum an additional rectangular case occupied the middle of the room. It was customary to decorate the room with statues of Minerva and the Muses, and also with the busts and portraits of distinguished men of letters.
Vitruvius recommends an eastern aspect for the bibliotheca, probably to guard against dampness. The sacrarium was a private chapel in which the images of the gods were kept, acts of worship performed, and sacrifices offered. The oeci were halls or saloons, corresponding perhaps to our parlors and drawing-rooms, and probably used occasionally as banquet halls.
The exedrae were rooms supplied with permanent seats; they seem to have been used for lectures and various entertainments. The solarium was a place in which to bask in the sun, sometimes a terrace, often the flat part of the roof, which was then covered with earth and laid out like a garden and made beautiful with flowers and shrubs. Besides these there were, of course, sculleries, pantries, and storerooms.
The slaves had to have their quarters cellae servorum , in which they were packed as closely as possible. Cellars under the houses seem to have been rare, though some have been found at Pompeii. Kitchens generally were poorly ventilated and had packed dirt floors. They were meant for slaves only and not for public viewing. Even middle and upper class homes in Pompeii often had a tiny kitchen that was combined with the latrine.
Beard wrote that the kitchen in the House of the Tragic Poet, the setting of a banquet in the popular novel The Last Days of Pompeii , would have been far too small to produce a large banquet.
Fulling is messy business, its main ingredient being human urine The work was noisy and smelly. A stone cooking range and bronze cooking vessels were found in the kitchen of the House of the Vettii.
Dr Joanne Berry wrote for the BBC: Cooking took place on top of the range - the bronze pots were placed on iron braziers over a small fire. In other houses, the pointed bases of amphorae storage jars were used instead of tripods to support vessels. Firewood was stored in the alcove beneath the range. Typical cooking vessels include cauldrons, skillets and pans, and reflect the fact that food generally was boiled rather than baked.
Not all houses in Pompeii have masonry ranges or even separate kitchens - indeed, distinct kitchen areas generally are found only in the larger houses of the town. It is likely that in many houses cooking took place on portable braziers. In an upper class domus the kitchen culina was placed on the side of the peristylium opposite the tablinum. This was regularly of masonry, built against the wall, with a place for fuel beneath it, but there were occasional portable stoves.
Kitchen utensils have been found at Pompeii. The spoons, pots and pans, kettles and pails, are graceful in form and often of beautiful workmanship. There are interesting pastry molds. Trivets held the pots and pans above the glowing charcoal on the top of the stove. Some pots stood on legs. The shrine of the household gods sometimes followed the hearth into the kitchen from its old place in the atrium. Near the kitchen was the bakery, if the mansion required one, supplied with an oven. Near it, too, was the bathhouse with the necessary closet latrina , in order that kitchen and bathhouse might use the same sewer connection.
If the house had a stable, it was also put near the kitchen, as nowadays in Latin countries. It was not necessarily closely connected with the kitchen, because, as in the Old South, lthe numbers of slaves made its position of little importance so far as convenience was concerned.
It was customary to have several triclinia for use at different seasons of the year, in order that one room might be warmed by the sun in winter, and another might in summer escape its rays. Vitruvius thought the length of the triclinium should be twice its breadth, but the ruins show no fixed proportions. The Romans were so fond of air and sky that the peristylium, or part of it, must often have served as a dining-room.
An outdoor dining-room is found in the so-called House of Sallust at Pompeii. Horace has a charming picture of a master, attended by a single slave, dining under an arbor. Most Roman houses, large or small, had a garden. Large homes had one in the courtyard and this was often where the family gathered, socialized and ate their meals. The sunny Mediterranean climate in Italy was usually accommodating to this routine. On the walls of the houses around the garden were paintings of more plants and flowers as well as exotic birds, cows, birdfeeders, and columns, as if the homeowner was trying achieve the same affects as the backdrop on a Hollywood set.
Poor families tended small plots in the back of the house, or at least had some potted plants. Getty Villa garden A peristyle garden was surrounded by a colonnade. A pool or fountain often sat at the center and space was filled with a variety of sculptures and plants.
These gardens were designed be oases of green in an otherwise urban landscape. Those that could afford it decorated their gardens with busts of gods or philosophers and animal statuary. Relief ornaments called oscilas were suspended from space between columns so, as their name suggests, they could oscillate in the breeze. Some large gardens were built by wealthy Romans to display their wealth. In Pompeii, archaeologists have reproduced Roman gardens with the same plants found in classical times.
Opium was sometimes grown in Roman gardens. The Romans were obsessed with roses. Rose water bathes were available in public baths and roses were tossed in the air during ceremonies and funerals. Theater-goers sat under awning scented with rose perfume; people ate rose pudding, concocted love potions with rose oil, and stuffed their pillows with rose petals.
Rose petals were a common feature of orgies and a holiday, Rosalia, was name in honor of the flower. Nero bathed in rose oil wine. At parties he installed silver pipes under each plate to release the scent of roses in the direction of guests and installed a ceiling that opened up and showered guests with flower petals and perfume.
According to some sources, more perfumes was splashed around than were produced in Arabia in a year at his funeral in A. Even the processionary mules were scented. Stone and unburned brick lateres crudi were the earliest materials used in Italy, as almost everywhere else, timber being employed for merely temporary structures, as in the addition from which the tablinum, perhaps, developed.
For private houses in early times and for public buildings in all times, walls of dressed stone opus quadratum were laid in regular courses, precisely as in modern times.
As the tufa, the volcanic stone first easily available in Latium, was dull and unattractive in color, over the wall was spread, for decorative purposes, a coating of fine marble stucco which gave it a finish of dazzling white.
For less pretentious houses, not for public buildings, sun-dried bricks the adobe of our southwestern states were largely used until the beginning of the first century B. Triclinium - The dining room.
Cubiculum - The bedroom. Culina - The kitchen. Town Houses What was a rich Romans house like? Wealthy Roman citizens in the towns lived in a domus. They were single-storey houses which were built around a courtyard known as an atrium. Roman villas were magnificent structures built using stone, wood and brick.
The walls were made from opus caementicium Roman cement that were later faced with stone. The villas ' tiled roofs could be both sloping and flat, while the floors were made of concrete. It is worth noting that Roman houses did not have glass windows up until the first century AD, rather they had holes with shutters with very few facing the street for safety reasons.
These windows were often not very transparent, their primary objective being to only let light through. Kitchen slaves probably slept where they worked, as did stable slaves. Porters would have bedded down in the small cubicles they used to guard the household entrance. Personal servant would have slept in the rooms of their master's or across their thresholds. Many houses of immense size were then erected, adorned with columns, paintings, statues, and costly works of art.
Some of these houses are said to have cost as much as two million denarii. Insulae were of poor quality, but they did have running water and sanitation. Rooms could be owned or rented. They were built in timber, mud brick, and later primitive concrete. The lararium was a shrine to the guardian spirits of the Roman household. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Laurence, Ray, and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, eds. Portsmouth, R. McKay, Alexander G. Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Visiting The Met? Cubiculum bedroom from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale. Tableware from the Tivoli Hoard. Wall painting on black ground: Aedicula with small landscape, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase. Wall painting from Room H of the Villa of P. Wall painting: Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase.
Wall painting: Perseus and Andromeda in landscape, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase. Mosaic floor panel.
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