- The Arts Of Living
(By Roger Ling)
Introduction
The object of the present chapter is to review those aspects of Roman art and architecture which impinge upon life, and conversely those aspects of
life which encroach upon the realms of art. Thus, while Chapter 32 will deal with High Art and 'art for art's sake', we shall here concentrate on topics
such as houses and gardens in so far as they affect and reflect life-style, on fittings, furnishings, and interior decoration as documents of contemporary
taste and attitudes, on eating and drinking, on personal effects and ornaments, and on household implements and utensils. The field is vast and varied,
and generalization is inevitable. It is inevitable, above all, that much of the material discussed will relate to Roman Italy and to the first and early
second centuries A.D., for which we have an unparalleled abundance of evidence, both literary and archaeological. The literary evidence is provided
by social poets such as Persius, Statius, Martial, and Juvenal, by novelists (Petronius), by encyclopedists (the Elder Pliny), and by letter-writers (Pliny
the Younger and, for an earlier period, Cicero). The archaeological evidence comes chiefly from the remarkable remains of two 'provincial' towns,
Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. There is, of course, much evidence from other archaeological sites,
for example second- and third-century Ostia; but none of these supplies the same embarras de richesse as Pompeii, still less the same precision of
dating.
Houses and Villas
The traditional middle- and upper-class town-house of republican and early-imperial Italy was the domus, a spreading mansion focused on two inner
light-sources, the atrium at the front and a colonnaded garden or peristyle at the rear. The atrium, the social and religious centre of the house, was the
first open space to confront the visitor as he entered from the street, and it was fittingly endowed in most cases with majestic height, and sometimes
with lofty columns framing the shallow rectangular catch water basin (impluuium) in the centre of the floor. Light flooded through a central opening
in the roof (compluuium) and was diffused to the chambers round the atrium-bedrooms, offices, store-rooms, small dining-rooms, often a pair of broad
and deep recesses (alae) used to display masks or busts of the family's ancestors. At the back, separable from the atrium by a curtain or wooden
partition, was the main reception room, the tablinum. The second light-source, the peristyle, generally lay behind this. Often of great size, it was
surrounded by further rooms, including open-fronted exedrae and banqueting-halls (oeci).