Domus classicus

Architectural Review, The, May, 2004 by Mark Wilson Jones

THE ROMAN HOUSE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY

By Shelley Hales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]55

The Roman house enjoys enduring respect as an emblematic response to its environment, and the Mediterranean climate in particular. This book examines its principal manifestations, including the Pompeian atrium-and-peristyle format and the imperial residences on the Palatine hill in Rome, along with less familiar material from as far afield as Silchester, Antioch and Volubilis (Morocco). This in itself is a welcome service (supported by due academic rigour and a fair repertoire of references and black and white illustrations), but Hales' main contribution concerns the domus as a social response, as a crucial means by which ancient propertied classes defined their status, registered their adherence to conventional mores--their Romanitas and indulged in imaginative projections and personal fantasies.

It is of course inevitable that homcowners express value systems through built form and its decoration. What made Roman homes specially telling social barometers was their public character. While today the rich and famous retreat to private havens only to be violated under tightly controlled conditions (perhaps via a lucrative showing at the safe remove of the pages of Hello), in the Roman world it was open house all year round. Besides being a residence, the domus was a business space, a place of display and a lobbying platform; every morning the paterfamilias received his clientes for the daily round of arrangements, tasks, errands, favours and gifts. He might then proceed to the forum or the basilica, but the shift was only one of scale, not of kind. As Cicero noted, 'my house ... is a forum', and with reference to one of his country homes, 'I own a basilica, not a villa, crowded with the (local) people'.

Hales capably negotiates between the literature and the archaeology with its abundant legacy of wall decoration to engage a range of sub-themes: the affirmation of identity, the perpetuation of memory, the allure of exoticism and the perennial tussle over the border between decorum and 'un-Roman' luxury. Her main conclusions may not be revolutionary, but they are sound and well-argued.

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