The domus was more than a residence, it was also a statement of social and political power.

Introduction

To escape the heat and pressures of the city, the wealthiest Roman families retreated to their country homes.

Familiar but enigmatic

The villa, on its face, seems to be the simplest of Roman domestic buildings to understand—after all, we continue to use the Latin term “villa” to conjure up a luxurious retreat in the country or at the seashore.

We find evidence of the ancient Roman villa in both archaeological remains and in ancient texts. Taken together this would seem to suggest a fairly uniform and monolithic body of architecture, while the reality is, in fact, something quite different. In some ways the Roman villa is a conundrum. This is especially true in the earlier phases of the type’s development, where questions of origins and influence remain hotly debated. As a building type, the villa manages to simultaneously seem instantly understandable and completely enigmatic.

History

The earliest examples of buildings grouped into this category, sometimes referred to by the term villa rustica (country villa), are mostly humble farmhouses in Italy. These rural structures tend to be associated with agriculture or viticulture (grapes) on a small scale. The villa form—and the term itself—then comes to be appropriated and applied to a whole range of structures that persist across both the Republican and Imperial periods, continuing into Late Antiquity. One thing that all villas tend to have in common is their extra-urban setting—the villa is not an urban structure, but rather a rural one. Thus we most often find them in rural, suburban or coastal settings. In ideological terms, the country (rus) provided relief from the hectic pressures of the city (urbs), and thus the villa became associated (and remains associated) with rural getaways.

According to Pliny the Elder, the villa urbana was located within easy distance of the city, while the villa rustica was a permanent country estate staffed with enslaved individuals and a supervisor (vilicus). The villa rustica is connected with agricultural production and the villa complex can contain facilities and equipment for processing agricultural produce, notably processing grapes to make wine and processing olives to produce olive oil. Even opulent villas often had a pars rustica, the working or productive part of the building. Latin authors like Cato the Elder and Varro even made and observed strict recommendations, based in agrarian ideology, as to how these rustic villas should be built, appointed, and managed.

Building typology

It is difficult to identify a single, uniform typology for Roman villas, just as it is difficult to do so for the Roman house (domus). In general terms the ideal villa is internally divided into two zones: the urbane zone for enjoying life (pars urbana) and the productive area (pars rustica). As with domus architecture, villas often focus internally around courtyards and atrium spaces. Elite villas tend to be sprawling affairs, with many rooms for entertainment and dining, in addition to specialized facilities including heated baths (balnea).

Republican villas

Villas built in Italy during the period stretching from the fifth to the second centuries B.C.E. can be divided into several groupings, based on their building typology. One typology with the smallest number of known examples is an opulent villa that draws its influence from the tradition of palatial aristocratic compounds of the Archaic period in central Italy, such as the complex at Poggio Civitate (Murlo) and the “palace” at Acquarossa (near Viterbo). These aristocratic compounds might have inspired Roman Republican aristocrats to build similar aristocratic mansions for their extended families as a demonstration of their social and economic clout. Other Republican-period “villas” tend to be small and connected with agricultural production on a small scale. Traditionally they are associated with an open-air, yet enclosed, courtyard that serves as a focal point.

The mid-first century B.C.E. villa of the Volusii Saturnini at Lucus Feroniae provides a good example of an opulent villa built by Late Republican new money. It also demonstrates the pattern that many elite villas would follow during the Imperial period in becoming ever more opulent. In the plan, we see a large peristyle and smaller atrium and dozens of rooms off each.

Ancient writers the likes of Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella theorized that villa architecture evolved over time, with the so-called “Columellan” villa being the most elaborate and sophisticated. While scholars do not accept this evolutionary schema any longer, it is interesting that these ancient authors were focused on villas and their culture and that they appreciated change over time. While the archaeological remains do not bear out or prove this theory of architectural development, the awareness of the villa and its role in Roman ideology is an important concept on its own.

Imperial villas

From the Imperial period, we are fortunate to have evidence for a wide range of villa architecture distributed across the Roman empire. In the provinces of the Roman Empire, the adoption of classic villa architecture seems to serve as a mark of adopting a Roman lifestyle—with elites keen to demonstrate their urbanity by living in villas. An example of such an adoption is the so-called Fishbourne Roman palace at Chichester in the south of England which was likely the seat of the Roman client-king Cogidubnus.

A number of villas destroyed by the 79 C.E. eruption of Mount Vesuvius demonstrate key features of the opulent villa. At Boscoreale the Late Republican villa of Publius Fannius Synistor (c. 50–40 B.C.E.) is well known for its elaborate Second Style wall paintings.

At Oplontis (modern Torre Annunziata, Italy), the so-called Villa A (sometimes referred to as Villa Poppaea) demonstrates the seaside villa (villa maritima). This is a grand pleasure villa, with many well-appointed rooms for leisure and reception.

In the periphery of Rome itself we find a number of villas connected with the Imperial house. These are mostly villas of the villa urbana category—including examples such as the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta that belonged to Livia, the wife of the emperor Augustus. The Prima Porta villa—a private Imperial retreat—is famous for its garden-themed dining room and the portrait statue of Augustus of Prima Porta.

Other emperors would build their own suburban villas as well. Worthy of note in this category is the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli located to the east of Rome. A series of later elite villas (mostly south of Rome) such as the Villa of Maxentius on the Via Appia and the Villa of the Quintilii, show us that the villa continued to be not only a statement of status into the later Roman period, but also maintained its role as a retreat from the crowded confusion of the city.

Late Roman

In Late Antiquity the Roman villa continued to develop. The so-called Villa Romana del Casale just outside of Piazza Armerina, Sicily, was built in the early fourth century C.E. and boasts one of the most complex programs of Roman mosaics preserved from the ancient world.

The Villa Casale was likely the center of a large agricultural estate (latifundium) and its opulent decorations strongly suggest the elite status of its owners. The villa has three sectors that focus on a central peristyle. It seems that the complex was built as a simultaneous project. Its mosaic decorations are rich and complex, with themes that range from natural and geometric scenes, to genre scenes, to hunting scenes, as well as scenes extracted from Graeco-Roman mythology. Villas like the Villa Casale dominated the rural landscape and its economy, engaging in various productive activities from farming to mining.

Roman rural villas remained prominent features in post-Roman landscapes, in some cases becoming centers of monastic life and in others becoming the centers of emergent villages during the Medieval period.

Additional resources

The Oplontis Project.

Digital Hadrian’s Villa.

UNESCO: Villa Romana del Casale.

The idea and Invention of the Villa on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Jeffrey A. Becker and Nicola Terrenato. eds. Roman Republican Villas: Architecture, Context, and Ideology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012).

Bettina Bergmann, “Art and nature in the villa at Oplontis,” in T. A. McGinn ed., Pompeian brothels, Pompeii’s ancient history, mirrors and mysteries, art and nature at Oplontis, & the Herculaneum “Basilica” (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 47) (Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002), pp. 87-120.

Andrea Carandini, Andreina Ricci, and Mariette De Vos, Filosofiana, The villa of Piazza Armerina: the image of a Roman aristocrat at the time of Constantine (Palermo : S.F. Flaccovio, 1982).

Jesper Carlsen, Vilici and Roman Estate Managers Until AD 284, Part 284 (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1995).

John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250: ritual, space, and decoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)

M. Aylwin Cotton, The late Republican villa at Posto Francolise (London: The British School at Rome, 1979).

M. Aylwin Cotton and Guy P. R. Métraux, The San Rocco villa at Francolise (London: The British School at Rome, 1985).

Pierre de la Ruffinière Du Prey, The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Stephen L. Dyson, The Roman Countryside (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology) (London: Duckworth, 2003).

Riccardo Francovich and Richard Hodges, Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology) (London: Duckworth, 2003).

Wilhelmina Jashemski and E. B. MacDougall, Ancient Roman Gardens (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, 1981).

Vincent Jolivet ed., Suburbium II: il suburbio di Roma dalla fine dell’età monarchica alla nascita del sistema delle ville (V-II secolo a.C.) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2009).

Xavier Lafon, Villa Maritima: recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine: IIIe siècle av. J.C.-IIIe siècle ap. J.-C (Rome: École française de Rome, 2001).

Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, eds., Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and beyond (Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997).

Ray Laurence, Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (London: Routledge, 1994).

Eleanor W. Leach, The rhetoric of space: literary and artistic representations of landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

Eleanor W. Leach, The social life of painting in Ancient Rome and on the bay of the Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

William L. MacDonald and John Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa and its Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Annalisa Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy: a Social and Economic History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007).

Alexander M. McKay, Houses, Villas and Palaces in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975).

Lisa C. Nevett, Domestic space in Classical Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

John Percival, The Roman Villa: an historical introduction 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

Jane Clark Reeder, The Villa of Livia Ad Gallinas Albas. A Study in the Augustan Villa and Garden (Providence RI: Center for Old World Archaeology and Art, 2001).

Lucia Romizzi, Ville d’otium dell’Italia antica: (II sec. a.C. – I sec. d.C.) (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2001).

J. T. Smith, Roman Villas: a Study in Social Structure (London: Routledge, 1997).

Walter M. Widrig, Marshall J. Becker, and Joann Freed, “Loc. Tor Bella Monaca: excavations on the ancient via Gabina; second preliminary report,” Notizie degli scavi di antichità 37 (1983) pp. 141-182.

Walter M. Widrig, The Via Gabina villas: sites 10, 11, and 13 (Houston: Rice University, 2009). Online companion

Roger John Anthony Wilson, Piazza Armerina (Austin TX: University of Texas Press, 1983).

Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii two millennia ago—creating a time capsule of the evolution of Roman painting.

Why Pompeii?

Paintings from antiquity rarely survive—paint, after all, is a much less durable medium than stone or bronze sculpture. But it is thanks to the ancient Roman city of Pompeii that we can trace the history of Roman wall painting. The entire city was buried in volcanic ash in 79 C.E. when the volcano at Mount Vesuvius erupted, thus preserving the rich colors in the paintings in the houses and monuments there for thousands of years until their rediscovery. These paintings represent an uninterrupted sequence of two centuries of evidence. And it is thanks to August Mau, a nineteenth-century German scholar, that we have a classification of four styles of Pompeian wall painting.

The four styles that Mau observed in Pompeii were not unique to the city and can be observed elsewhere, like Rome and even in the provinces, but Pompeii and the surrounding cities buried by Vesuvius contain the largest continuous source of evidence for the period. The Roman wall paintings in Pompeii that Mau categorized were true frescoes (or buon fresco), meaning that pigment was applied to wet plaster, fixing the pigment to the wall. Despite this durable technique, painting is still a fragile medium and, once exposed to light and air, can fade significantly, so the paintings discovered in Pompeii were a rare find indeed.

In the paintings that survived in Pompeii, Mau saw four distinct styles. The first two were popular in the Republican period (which ended in 27 B.C.E.) and grew out of Greek artistic trends (Rome had recently conquered Greece). The second two styles became fashionable in the Imperial period. His chronological description of stylistic progression has since been challenged by scholars, but they generally confirm the logic of Mau’s approach, with some refinements and theoretical additions. Beyond tracking how the styles evolved out of one another, Mau’s categorizations focused on how the artist divided up the wall and used paint, color, image and form—either to embrace or counteract—the flat surface of the wall.

First Pompeian Style

Mau called the First Style the “Incrustation Style” and believed that its origins lay in the Hellenistic period—in the 3rd century B.C.E. in Alexandria. The First Style is characterized by colorful, patchwork walls of brightly painted faux-marble. Each rectangle of painted “marble” was connected by stucco moldings that added a three-dimensional effect.  In temples and other official buildings, the Romans used costly imported marbles in a variety of colors to decorate the walls.

Ordinary Romans could not afford such expense, so they decorated their homes with painted imitations of the luxurious yellow, purple and pink marbles. Painters became so skilled at imitating certain marbles that the large, rectangular slabs were rendered on the wall marbled and veined, just like real pieces of stone.  Great examples of the First Pompeian Style can be found in the House of the Faun and the House of Sallust, both of which can still be visited in Pompeii.

Second Pompeian style

The Second style, which Mau called the “Architectural Style,” was first seen in Pompeii around 80 B.C.E. (although it developed earlier in Rome) and was in vogue until the end of the first century B.C.E. The Second Pompeian Style developed out of the First Style and incorporated elements of the First, such as faux marble blocks along the base of walls.

While the First Style embraced the flatness of the wall, the Second Style attempted to trick the viewer into believing that they were looking through a window by painting illusionistic images. As Mau’s name for the Second Style implies, architectural elements drive the paintings, creating fantastic images filled with columns, buildings and stoas.

In one of the most famous examples of the Second Style, P. Fannius Synistor’s bedroom (now reconstructed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the artist utilizes multiple vanishing points.  This technique shifts the perspective throughout the room, from balconies to fountains and along colonnades into the far distance, but the visitor’s eye moves continuously throughout the room, barely able to register that he or she has remained contained within a small room.

The Dionysian paintings from Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries are also included in the Second Style because of their illusionistic aspects. The figures are examples of megalographia, a Greek term referring to life-size paintings. The fact that the figures are the same size as viewers entering the room, as well as the way the painted figures sit in front of the columns dividing the space, are meant to suggest that the action taking place is surrounding the viewer.

Third Pompeian Style

The Third Style, or Mau’s “Ornate Style,” came about in the early 1st century C.E. and was popular until about 50 C.E.  The Third Style embraced the flat surface of the wall through the use of broad, monochromatic planes of color, such as black or dark red, punctuated by minute, intricate details.

The Third Style was still architectural but rather than implementing plausible architectural elements that viewers would see in their everyday world (and that would function in an engineering sense), the Third Style incorporated fantastic and stylized columns and pediments that could only exist in the imagined space of a painted wall. The Roman architect Vitruvius was certainly not a fan of Third Style painting, and he criticized the paintings for representing monstrosities rather than real things, “for instance, reeds are put in the place of columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes, instead of pediments, candelabra supporting representations of shrines, and on top of their pediments numerous tender stalks and volutes growing up from the roots and having human figures senselessly seated upon them…” (Vitr.De arch.VII.5.3)  The center of walls often feature very small vignettes, such as sacro-idyllic landscapes, which are bucolic scenes of the countryside featuring livestock, shepherds, temples, shrines and rolling hills.

The Third Style also saw the introduction of Egyptian themes and imagery, including scenes  of the Nile as well as Egyptian deities and motifs.

Fourth Pompeian Style

The Fourth Style, what Mau calls the “Intricate Style,” became popular in the mid-first century C.E. and is seen in Pompeii until the city’s destruction in 79 C.E.  It can be best described as a combination of the three styles that came before. Faux marble blocks along the base of the walls, as in the First Style, frame the naturalistic architectural scenes from the Second Style, which in turn combine with the large flat planes of color and slender architectural details from the Third Style. The Fourth Style also incorporates central panel pictures, although on a much larger scale than in the third style and with a much wider range of themes, incorporating mythological, genre, landscape and still life images.  In describing what we now call the Fourth Style, Pliny the Elder said that it was developed by a rather eccentric, albeit talented, painter named Famulus who decorated Nero’s famous Golden Palace. (Pl.NH XXXV.120)  Some of the best examples of Fourth Style painting come from the House of the Vettii which can also be visited in Pompeii today.

Post-Pompeian painting: What happens next?

August Mau takes us as far as Pompeii and the paintings found there, but what about Roman painting after 79 C.E.? The Romans did continue to paint their homes and monumental architecture, but there isn’t a Fifth or Sixth Style, and later Roman painting has been called a pastiche of what came before, simply combining elements of earlier styles. The Christian catacombs provide an excellent record of painting in Late Antiquity, combining Roman techniques and Christian subject matter in unique ways.

Additional Resources:

Roman Painting on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Joanne Berry, The Complete Pompeii (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013).

John R Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991).

Roger Ling. Roman Painting (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

August Mau. Pompeii: Its Life and Art. Translated by Francis W. Kelsey. (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1902).  (Available on Kindle)

Pompeii, once called the “City of the Dead,” gives a marvelous sense of day-to-day Roman life.

Preserved under volcanic ash

Pompeii may be famous today, with millions of tourists visiting each year, but in the ancient world It was simply a market and trading town specializing in a fish-based condiment (called garum); other sites on the Bay of Naples were far better known as sumptuous vacation spots.

Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (a volcano near the Bay of Naples) in 79 C.E. making the town one of the best-preserved examples of a Roman city, and tourists today marvel at the sensation of walking through a real ancient city.

While the volcano took thousands of lives and made the region uninhabitable for centuries, the layers of volcanic ash preserved Pompeii in a manner unparalleled at other ancient Roman sites. Not only have the magnificent temples and villas of the town been preserved, but also one-room workshops, graves of lower-class citizens, and modest take-out restaurants frequented by the hoi polloi. Organic materials like food, clothing, and wood are more often preserved in nearby Herculaneum, because of the differences in volcanic materials covering the two towns. And so, Pompeii, this “city of death” in fact tells us more about daily life in first-century Italy than even the city of Rome itself.

Not always Roman

Pompeii, however, was not always a Roman town. By the mid-sixth century B.C.E. both Etruscans and Greeks had settled in this area, yet their specific contributions to the founding of Pompeii as a city are currently poorly understood since archaeological exploration of the earliest phases of the town have been scarce. The Doric Temple in Pompeii’s Triangular Forum, nevertheless, suggests a stronger Greek than Etruscan presence.

The 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E. at Pompeii were a time of dominance by the Samnites—an indigenous people of south-central Italy who spoke the Oscan language. Their settlement occupied what is now the south-west corner of Pompeii, a site strategically placed at the mouth of the Sarno River near the Bay of Naples. By the middle of the 4th century, the melting-pot of cultures in this region had reached a boiling point, with Greek, Samnite, and Roman residents coming into conflict.

Over the course of the 3rd century B.C.E., Pompeii was one of many Italian towns that came to be dominated by the Romans. This power shift put Pompeii on a path to prosperity and many large, new, public buildings were constructed in the late 3rd century and into the 2nd. This was the time at which the Forum acquired its general footprint and large high-status houses replaced simpler ones.

Pompeii becomes Roman

The years 91-88 B.C.E. were dramatic ones for Pompeii, as it took part in a rebellion against Rome (the Social Wars). Having lost this battle of allied cities against the capital, the Roman general Sulla re-founded the city as a proper Roman colony and settled his army veterans in Pompeii. The existing inhabitants of Pompeii must have resented this move, but when new public buildings, including the Amphitheater, were constructed to meet the needs and desires of the new residents, this resentment may have eased. Later, the period of the early Roman Empire (c. 27 B.C.E.-69 C.E.) was a prosperous one for Pompeii; large, luxurious homes as well as imported goods from around the Mediterranean show up at this time.

The City Plan and its Major Features

The vast majority of the buildings visible at Pompeii today are from the Roman period, but some earlier features remain. The nucleus of the city in the 6th century B.C.E. was situated on a plateau overlooking the Sarno River at the southwest corner of what became the final “version” of Pompeii, and was organized around sanctuaries dedicated to Apollo and Minerva (or possibly Hercules). This early city had walls and a roughly grid-shaped street plan.

As Pompeii grew in size and population, the city walls were expanded, with gates at the ends of major roads. Slowly, the largely agricultural land inside the walls was built over with homes, places of production, markets, and other urban amenities. The east-west streets (known today by their modern names via della Fortuna, via di Nola, via dell’Abbondanza) and north-south ones (via Stabiana, via di Mercurio) formed the basis for the creation of insulae (city blocks), most of which are generally rectangular and contained a mix of domestic, commercial, and industrial buildings.

The Forum, “theater district,” amphitheater, and baths

Ancient Roman cities were almost never zoned or planned for specific activities. There are two main areas of Pompeii, however, that were loosely organized around a general function. The Forum, at the southwest corner of the city, was the site of various services and structures, and could be considered a sort of “downtown” for Pompeii.

Additionally, a kind of “entertainment district” in the south-central section of Pompeii included two theaters—one open-air, the other smaller and roofed. In these theaters, one could see plays, hear musical performances, and perhaps hold civic or social gatherings. These entertainments differ drastically from those enjoyed in the amphitheater at Pompeii.

Built more than 150 years before the Colosseum in Rome, Pompeii’s facility is the first known Roman amphitheater, where gladiators fought one another or hunted wild animals as a spectacle. It is estimated that between 10,000-15,000 people could be accommodated in Pompeii’s amphitheater. A fresco from a house at Pompeii illustrates in a shorthand way the spectacula (seating area) and arena (playing surface) as well as the velarium (sun shade) of the amphitheater.

As in Rome, Pompeii also had public establishments for bathing. At least five public baths (and scores of private ones within homes) provided not simply a place to get clean, but also opportunities for social interaction and exercise. Communal bathing was a custom for middle- and upper-class Romans; men especially would spend their afternoons in the baths, enjoying heated pools, steam rooms, cold plunge tubs, massages, ball games, and so forth, in the company of their peers and surrounded by beautiful decoration in mosaic, stucco, and sculpture.

Both the Stabian and the Forum Baths were initially constructed with public funds, indicating the extent to which such establishments were considered essential for Pompeii’s residents. Surviving inscriptions, however, indicate that a wealthy citizen could contribute financing for an addition to (or renovation of) the baths, as in the case of a large marble fountain in the caldarium (hot-water room) of the Forum Baths.

An aqueduct fed both private and public baths, although many residents of Pompeii relied on rainwater or abundant wells in the city to supply their water. The high state of preservation at Pompeii provides a view of the city’s water supply, from the aqueduct, through a distribution center at the high northern part of the town, through water towers and public fountains, and into private homes by way of terracotta and lead pipes. The most luxurious homes in Pompeii had fountains decorated with mosaics, sea shells, sculpture, and even frescoes.

The Forum

The religious, political, and commercial center of any Roman city was its forum. A kind of town center existed in the earliest phases of Pompeii at its southwest corner, but the forum only received monumental form and decoration in the 2nd century B.C.E. At that time, the Temple of Jupiter (eventually the Capitolium), Macellum (market), and Basilica (law court) were constructed and the open piazza of the forum was paved with stone. Statues of illustrious Pompeians, civic benefactors, and the imperial family stood under the forum colonnades and in the open areas of the piazza as well as in two buildings dedicated to the worship of divinized emperors—the Imperial Cult Building and the Sanctuary of Augustus (these statues are now entirely lost, save for their bases).

Religious Life at Pompeii

The forum provided ample opportunity for the citizens of Pompeii to worship their various gods as well as divinized members of the imperial family. Temples to Apollo and Venus stood just outside the forum proper and represent both early (6th century B.C.E.) and later (post-80 B.C.E.) historical building periods, respectively. Smaller temples throughout Pompeii honored Jupiter, Asclepius, and Minerva (in the Greek temple in the Triangular Forum). Even more modest shrines stood at important crossroads and inside the atria of private homes. These lararia, dedicated to somewhat mysterious guardian deities called Lares, were decorated with paintings and received small votive offerings.

A small, yet impressive temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis stands just to the north of the Large Theater. The cult of Isis had been introduced to Italy as early as the 2nd century B.C.E. and was apparently very popular at Pompeii, as indicated by the sumptuous painted stucco decoration of the precinct walls, Fourth Style wall paintings, a marble statue of Isis herself (now in the Naples Archaeological Museum), and abundant finds of votive offerings, some of which were imported from Egypt.

Death and Burial

Because of the circumstances of its destruction, Pompeii often encourages macabre interest in those who perished in the city during the 79 C.E. eruption of Vesuvius. Yet for centuries, citizens of Pompeii had been solemnly commemorating their dead with sometimes elaborate tombs and costly grave goods. Longstanding traditions among ancient Mediterranean cultures generally prohibited burials within a city’s walls and Pompeii followed that tradition. The roads leading from the various city gates are lined on both sides with tombs—some were for individual burials while others were designed for multiple occupancy (usually of the lower classes or freed slaves). The most prestigious burials can be recognized both by their forms and by their location just outside a city gate, where they could be seen by as many passers-by as possible.

There was no standard shape for Roman tombs and Pompeiian funerary monuments could be decorated with statues of the deceased, pseudo-autobiographical relief sculpture, wall paintings, and even functional features like benches. Multiple-occupancy “house tombs,” popular in the last century of Pompeii’s existence, contained the cremated remains of various members of a single family or social group. These lower-cost tombs had brief inscriptions about the deceased persons and small niches held the stone, ceramic, or glass ash urns.

An open-air museum

At the time of the destruction of the city, an estimated 15,000 people lived in Pompeii. As many as 2,000 died in the ash and toxic gases of Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E. The city today is an open-air museum dedicated to the experience of walking through an ancient Roman town. And while the houses and wall paintings from the last phase of Pompeii are what attracts the most visitors, the city’s complex social and building history, as well as the urban infrastructure, are worth noting as well.

Additional Resources:

Ancient Graffiti Project

Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project

Pompeii in Pictures

Buried by a volcanic eruption two thousand years ago, this Roman house was the epitome of wealth and style.

The ancient city may be quiet now, its life ended by a fantastic cataclysm nearly two thousand years ago, but the remains of houses, decorations, and the objects of daily life whisper to us about the lives of the ancient people who inhabited Pompeii before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Domestic spaces, in particular, offer a rich resource for examining ancient lives that, in some cases, ended abruptly. Pompeii was thriving up until the moment of its destruction and in studying its life interrupted, we arrive at important insights about what it was like to live in the Roman Mediterranean.

Overview

The House of the Vettii or Casa dei Vettii (VI xv,1) is a Roman townhouse (domus) located within the ruined ancient city of Pompeii, Italy. A volcanic eruption destroyed Pompeii in the year 79 C.E., thus preserving extraordinary archaeological remains of the Roman town as it was at the time of its cataclysmic destruction. Those remains constitute a nearly unparalleled resource for the study of the Roman world.

Domus architecture

Beginning with the Renaissance interest in all things classical, architectural historians and archaeologists have been debating the form and function of ancient Roman houses for several hundred years. The interest in the domestic architectural form was fueled further by the re-discovery, in the middle of the eighteenth century, of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other sites destroyed by Vesuvius.

A house is, of course, a dwelling—but it is also a stage on which the rituals of daily life and social hierarchy would be performed. During the time of the Roman republic (fifth through first centuries B.C.E.), ranking aristocratic families (patricians) used domestic display as a way to reinforce social position and as a way to advance their own fortunes, as well as those of their dependents and clients (clientes), within the community. Since Republican society operated on the basis of this patron-client relationship, the domus played a key part in the reinforcement of social hierarchy as the patron (patronus) would receive his clients (clientes) in the atrium of his domus each business day. While visiting with the patron, each client would get an eyeful of the patron’s household wealth, thus applying implicit pressure on the patron to ensure that his house was tasteful and fashionable.

The patron-client system revolved around asymmetrical social relationships whereby lower ranking clients were bound to their patrons by the qualities of trust (fides) and dutifulness (pietas). Governed by ancestral custom (mos maiorum), clients would seek support and favors from the patron; in turn the patron provided protection, support, and benefaction, collectively known as patrocinium. This system had changed somewhat by the time of the brothers Vettii and it is unclear to what extent the patron-client system factored in their lives or in their own domestic sphere.

In his treatise on Roman architecture, the first century B.C.E. author Vitruvius outlines the key elements, proportions, and aesthetics of the Roman house, creating what has been treated as a canonical recommendation for domestic architecture of the period. The Vitruvian canon (or standard) proposes a range of plans, suggesting strongly that the organization of interior space was important in Roman architectural theory (De Architectura 6.3.3-6). Although the plan of the Roman domus does reflect the canonical aspects described by Vitruvius, we also see enormous variation with modifications and remodeling undertaken over time.

The standard house (domus) plan has several key architectural elements. Generally entered from the street via a narrow doorway (fauces), the large centralized reception hall (atrium) is flanked by wings (alae) and often bounded by bedrooms (cubicula). The office of the head of household (paterfamilias), known as the tablinum, links the public part of the house (pars urbana) to the private part of the house (pars rustica). This latter area often focuses on an open, colonnaded courtyard (peristylium) and serves as the center of family life, with the kitchen (culina), dining room(s) (triclinium or oecus), and often a small garden (hortus). Many houses also had a second level that may have contained additional sleeping spaces and perhaps storage.

Excavation and identification

The House of the Vettii was excavated between late 1894 and early 1896. The artifacts that were recovered allowed for the identification of the house’s putative owners, Aulus Vettius Conviva and his brother, Aulus Vettius Restitutus. Both men have been identified as former slaves or freedmen (liberti). The Vettii had risen to some prominence; Conviva was an augustalis—the top civic office for which a freedman would be eligible. In the construction and decoration of their house the brothers display a mind-set not uncommon among the newly-rich. Two strongboxes (arca—essentially lockable boxes for storing valuables), concrete signs of wealth, were placed prominently in the large atrium so that visitors would be sure to notice them.

The strongboxes, paired with a painting of the god Priapus in the vestibule, serve to underscore the wealth of the brothers Vettii. This painting, which shows Priapus weighing his own phallus against a bag of money, may represent the socio-economic ambitions of the Vettii and perhaps indicates that those ambitions were different from those of high-ranking citizen families. This is interesting when we consider that achieving the status of augustalis likely indicates that Conviva made a large donation to a public works project in Pompeii.

The plan of the house

The House of the Vettii covers an area of approximately 1,100 square meters. The construction of the house and its decorations belong to the final period of Pompeii’s occupation and therefore provides important evidence of the aesthetics of the city on the eve of its destruction.

The house  was built atop the remains of an earlier house that survives, in part, in the form of the wings (alae) and a doorway. The plan of the House of the Vettii has two large central halls (atria) and, significantly, lacks an office space (tablinum). Entry to the house was gained from the east by way of a vestibule that granted admission to the larger atrium. The stone-lined basin for collecting rainwater (impluvium) lies at the center of the atrium. This larger atrium communicates directly with the peristyle (an open courtyard surrounded by fluted Doric columns) by means of a set of folding doors. The smaller atrium was the focus of the service portion of the house, while the peristyle and its well-appointed rooms was meant for entertainment and dining.

Wall paintings

The decorative schema of the House of the Vettii provides important evidence for trends in domestic decoration in the final years of Pompeii’s occupation. Since Pompeii suffered a major earthquake in 62 C.E. that caused significant destruction, the chronology of the wall paintings and other decorations in the House of the Vettii has been a topic of debate since the house’s discovery.

Most art historians point to the house’s decorative schema as being representative of a key transitional phase, between the Third and Fourth styles of Pompeian wall painting. Some scholars consider it among the finest examples of the Fourth Style at Pompeii. Paul Zanker sees the Fourth Style wall paintings as being imitations of higher art forms, reckoning that the chosen pictures aim to turn the rooms into picture galleries (pinacothecae).

The atrium is richly decorated, as are the rooms opening onto the peristyle. Two of these were in the course of being painted at the time of destruction, while the other three are richly appointed with Fourth Style wall painting. The largest of these, a dining room, is decorated in panels of red and black with an exceptionally fine motif of erotes or putti (mythological winged gods associated with love) engaged in various occupations (image below). The central panel pictures that were likely set into the walls do not survive. Overall the scheme of wall painting in the house of the Vettii suggests an attempt at forward-looking interior decoration on the part of the owners.

Overall the evidence furnished by the House of the Vettii offers key insights into domestic architecture and interior decoration in the last days of the city of Pompeii. The house itself is architecturally significant not only because of its size but also because of the indications it gives of important changes that were underway in the design of Roman houses during the third quarter of the first century C.E.

Standing outside of the state religion, mystery cults are an intriguing puzzle. Does art hold the answer?

In 1938, an excavation at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii revealed a small carved ivory of Indian origin. Pompeii, located near the southern Italian city of Naples, was buried under nearly twenty feet of ash and pumice following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost two thousand years ago. The date of Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E. provides the latest possible year that this carved ivory from India arrived in Pompeii. How did this ivory travel thousands of miles from India to Pompeii? And what does it mean about cultural connections in the ancient world?

The carved ivory portrays three female figures standing on a pedestal. The principal and largest of the three figures is carved in the round. She wears a thick necklace with a pendant, bangles, anklets, and a jeweled girdle and stands with her left leg crossed over her right. Her hair and a headdress frame deeply carved eyes and a soft face, and she turns her head to direct a smile toward an unknown object (possibly an earring) that she holds in the palm of her left hand. She bends her right arm at the elbow behind her head and places this hand on her braided hair. Extending out from the left side of her head is a horizontal, tapered protrusion that is articulated in the same fashion as her headdress.

The two smaller figures who flank the principal figure are understood as attendants. In South Asian art, there is a tradition of emphasizing the importance of a central figure in relation to surrounding and less important figures—a compositional strategy known as hieratic scale. These figures, who are only half as tall as the central figure, also have bangled and braceleted arms and legs. The attendants hold objects that have not been satisfactorily identified, although scholars have suggested that they may be toiletries or jewelry.

The three figures share similar iconography, but the principal figure occupies the most space and is afforded greater detail than the attendant figures. The three figures were carved from a single piece of ivory, and the skillful arrangement of the attendants lends balance to the posed stance of the principal figure.

Three important details are not immediately discernible. At the top of the central figure’s head is a bored hole that extends down toward her navel, and beneath the pedestal upon which the figures stand is a symbol that has been identified, potentially, as an artist’s mark. [1] In addition, it comes as a bit of a surprise that the top of the head of the statuette is only partially complete, with an area left completely uncarved, in this otherwise carefully incised ivory. Why would the artist do this? Is it possible that while the ivory was carved to be seen from most sides, this was a detail that was never meant to be seen? Could the opening at the top of the head indicate that the figure was once attached by a dowel to something else? Could the symbol beneath the pedestal have been just one among others that were carved into the various components of a larger object?

Finding meaning in context and function

Early scholars including Amadeo Maiuri—the archaeologist in Pompeii who discovered the object—and art historian Mirella Levi D’Ancona initially proposed that the figure represented a goddess. [2] Subsequent scholarship, including by Maiuri who had labeled the figure after the Hindu goddess “Lakshmi,” amended this interpretation of the figure as a goddess by focusing more closely on the iconography of the carved ivory. In particular, they noted the carved figure’s similarity to yakshis (female fertility figures) in early Buddhist sites such as Bharhut and Sanchi in India.

A comparison between the carved ivory in Pompeii and the yakshis in stupa 1 at Sanchi, reveal close commonalities in their jeweled adornment, their poses of one leg crossed over the other, and even their garlanded hair. Paintings and sculptures of yakshis in religious architecture and in the secular context were associated with protection and good luck in South Asia. While the parallels between the ivory in Pompeii and the yakshi at Sanchi indicate the popularity of this type of female figure in ancient Indian art, it should be emphasized that their iconography does not automatically imply a sacred or religious affiliation for the ivory in Pompeii.

The carved ivory was found in a large and wealthy home, suggesting appreciation for imported luxury goods. The ivory was excavated from the home’s interior courtyard in a busy part of Pompeii. Ivory was a luxury import in ancient Roman cities and was in such high-demand that the author Pliny (who incidentally died during the eruption of Vesuvius) observed the following in around 77 C.E.:

The tusk alone is of ivory: otherwise even in these animals too the skeleton forming the framework of the body is common bone; albeit recently owing to our poverty even the bones have begun to be cut into layers, inasmuch as an ample supply of tusks is now rarely obtained except from India, all the rest in our world having succumbed to luxury.[3]

The Pompeii Ivory was initially thought of as a standalone figure that was perhaps the handle of a mirror (remember the bored hole at the top of the principal figure’s head?). However, the archaeologist Elisabeth During Caspers suggested another possibility in which the carved ivory was just one of a set of three, perhaps four, caryatids that functioned as legs for a small table or stool. In this scenario, now commonly accepted among scholars, the bored hole would have served to affix the flat-top of the furnishing and the unfinished portion of the Pompeii Ivory’s head would have been covered from above.

What other carved ivories tell us

The discovery, in Begram (Afghanistan), of hundreds of ivory plaques and standalone ivory figures that date to the 2nd century or earlier has shown that ivory, and in particular ivory furniture, was a popular commodity in the early centuries of the common era. [4] Carved plaques, such as the example from Begram above showing women and dancers, were fastened to the backs and sides of chairs, stools, and even small storage chests and are the remnants of furniture that has long since disintegrated. Some of these ivory fragments feature artist marks, similar to the mark found on the carved ivory found in Pompeii.

Like the ivory in Pompeii, one of the Begram ivory figurines stands with one leg crossed over the other. She is dressed in a translucent skirt and jeweled girdle, and she has ankleted feet and bangled arms. But her elaborate hair and the absence of attendants immediately signal different modes of representation for the female figure. The previously mentioned ivory plaque with dancers shows similar portrayals of women, but again with a different style.

Two other ivory objects, more similar in iconography and style to the carved ivory in Pompeii, have been found in Maharashtra in India. [5] The discovery of the so-called Ter and Bhokardan ivories has helped to potentially locate the provenance of the Pompeii ivory in the Sātavāhana period and possibly the region—though the movement of artists is always, of course, a possibility. A horizontal protrusion and a hole in the Ter ivory further support Caspers’s theory that these carved ivories functioned as furniture supports. Mentions of the arrival of wine in the ports of north and south India in the Periplus of the Erythreaen Sea (1st century C.E.) and the discovery of Roman amphorae in places like Ter and Bhokardan offer evidence of trade between India and Rome and offer support for the stylistic and iconographic similarities of the three ivories. [6]

The discovery of ivory remnants of furniture in Begram, which was located on the ancient overland Silk Road, as well as in Pompeii, demonstrates the exchange in the early centuries of the first millennium. The Begram ivories were found alongside Indian, Greco-Roman, Roman-Alexandrian, and Chinese  luxury goods. These objects included painted and enameled glassware, lacquer bowls, jeweled caskets, Hellenistic sculptures and vessels, and, as already mentioned, carved ivories.

While we do not know how the carved ivory arrived in Pompeii, that is, overland or over sea, it is worth noting that the anonymous writer of the Periplus credited the discovery of the patterns of the Southwest monsoons as a critical development in the increased efficiency and safety of maritime trade in the ancient world. [7] Imports into Rome from India were so plentiful that the Muziris papyrus, a document dating to the 2nd century, references a cargo consignment valued at millions of sesterces (an ancient Roman monetary unit) aboard a ship traveling from Muziris (a port on the Malabar coast of southwestern India). In reference to the ships carrying cotton, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, aromatics, spices, and, ivory, Pliny, had lamented the resources drained by the Roman love for luxury a century earlier.

A “conversation” piece?

The carved ivory in Pompeii was found in a place far from its place of production and recent scholarship has suggested that if it was indeed a piece of furniture, it may have been a “conversation” piece, highlighting the cultural and social value to its owner. [8] The other two or three legs of this theoretical piece of furniture have not been located, suggesting that the carving may have even been retained despite having been isolated. Whether it retained value for its owner as a piece of ivory, for its aesthetic quality, or for future up-cycling as part of a piece of new furniture, we cannot know. What we can know with certainty is that the ivory in Pompeii is a historic object of incalculable value, for its survival has ensured rare insight into a period when cultures, stories, and interests intersected, even two thousand years in the past.

Notes:

[1] See Kasper Grønlund Evers, Worlds apart trading together: the organisation of long-distance trade between Rome and India in antiquity (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd., 2017), p. 26 and footnote 179; Laura R. Weinstein, “The Indian figurine from Pompeii as an emblem of East-West trade in the Early Roman imperial era,” in Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World, edited by Serena Autiero and Matthew Adam Cobb (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 194–95 (183–204).

[2] Mirella Levi D’Ancona, “An Indian Statuette from Pompeii.” Artibus Asiae 13, no. 3 (1950): pp. 166–180.

[3] Book VIII: IV, page 7. Pliny the Elder, Natural History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).

[4] Sanjyot Mehendale, “Begram: along ancient Central Asian and Indian trade routes,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale (1997): pp. 51–52 (46–74).

[5] The Ter and Bhokardan figurines, so named for their find-spots of Ter and Bhokardan, are remarkably congruent in style to the Ivory in Pompeii, although the Bhokardan ivory only survives as a partial fragment. Writing in 1971, Vidya Dehejia noted that the Ter ivory had an aperture in its head as well as the remains of what appeared to be a feature that was similar to the protrusion at the head of the Ivory in Pompeii. She also noted that both the Ter and Pompeii ivories had raised arms that reached for their earrings. Vidya Dehejia, Early Buddhist rock temples: a chronology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 131; Also see Evers, referenced above, pp. 27–28.

[6] Sunil Gupta, David Williams, and David Peacock, “Dressel 2–4 Amphorae and Roman Trade with India: the evidence from Nevasa” South Asian Studies 17 (2001): pp. 7–18.

[7] As the maritime route connected Rome and India via the port of Alexandria, ship captains leaving Egypt learned to set sail just in time, usually in July, for the summer southwest monsoon winds to bring them to shore in western India by September. They had learned that an earlier departure risked hazardous conditions at sea and along the west coast of the Indian subcontinent. Similarly, ships left Indian ports with the arrival of the northeast monsoon, usually in December or January.

[8] Weinstein, “The Indian figurine from Pompeii as an emblem of East-West trade,” p. 194.

Is this delicate female portrait what we think? Take part in a discussion of a masterpiece we know little about.

Part 1: