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5.2 Early Pompeian Houses and the Ideal Hellenized Domus
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Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Houses and Villas at Pompeii
Domestic architecture at Pompeii from its beginnings to the eruption of Vesuvius with emphasis on the development of the domus italica and the Hellenized domus and featuring the House of the Faun and Villa of the Mysteries.
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Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
I want to show you now the way in which actual Pompeian houses conform
very closely, the early ones, at least, of the fourth and
third centuries BC, conform very closely to this domus Italica ideal plan.
I want to begin with the so-called House of the Surgeon in Pompeii,
which dates to the third century BC.
And it's called the House of the Surgeon because of
all the surgical instruments that were found in the house.
And I show you the array of them now on the screen.
This should be of considerable interest, especially,
and I know there are a number of you in here, students whose major is biology.
And I want to mention, also, that you might be surprised to hear, but
maybe not, Yale has such amazing collections, that
the medical school has a collection of surgical instruments that goes way back.
And it goes way back to ancient Rome.
You can actually see ancient Roman surgical instruments in that collection
that we have here at Yale.
And not, perhaps, as many as this, but an interesting selection.
And those of you who are in that field might, at one point,
want to take advantage of that and get to see them firsthand.
So this house got its name from this cache of surgical instruments that were
found inside.
That probably gives us some sense of the profession of
at least one of the people who was living here.
I show you the plan of the House of the Surgeon, and you'll see a version on your
monument list that actually has the rooms designated there, which I don't have here.
So that will be helpful to you, as I wanted you to have that version so
that when you're studying, you have that before you.
And in any exam, by the way, even if I show something slightly different in
class, I will show you only what is on your monument list in the exam.
So those are the ones that you should study and remember.
But you'll see the plan is exactly the same,
it just doesn't have the labels here.
So we can see that it conforms, the House of the Surgeon,
third century BC, to the ideal domus Italica plan.
You enter here, you enter into the falcase, or throat, of the house.
There are two cells, one on either side.
It's very clear in the plan that this cell is closed to the outside and
opens only off the atrium, so used by the family for their own purposes.
This one is open to the street, clearly used as a shop, either by this family,
or they've leased it out to somebody else.
The atrium is on axis with the falcase.
We can see that the atrium has a pool, a rectangular pool,
or impluvium, and there would have been an compluvium up above.
On either side, the cubicula, or bedrooms, of the house, opening off the atrium.
Over here, the wings, or alae, of the house, for the ancestral shrines.
Over here, again, a dining room, a triclinium that opens off the atrium.
Up here, we think, probably, a portico, one column or two, but
that might belong to a later renovation, and I'll explain why in a moment.
And then in the back, a somewhat irregularly shaped hortus, or garden.
But I think you can see, from this example, how closely these
actual houses track the domus Italica described by Vitruvius.
Another example of one of these early Roman houses that conforms to
the domus Italica type is the so-called House of Sallust in Pompeii
that dates to the third century BC.
This is another house that has the domus Italica as its core.
But just like most of the houses in Pompeii,
you'll remember how when the Romans took over Pompeii in 80, or
made Pompeii a Roman colony, they tossed the Samnites out of their home.
They took them over, and of course, once they took them over, they renovated them.
So there's quite a bit of renovation that takes place to some of these early Samnite
houses, and this case, the House of Sallust, seems to be an example of that.
But we still see the original core of the domus Italica,
the entrance over here into the falcase of the house.
Well, I'll say something about that in a moment.
The atrium on axis with that, with the impluvium.
The cubicula over here, the alae, or wings, here,
the tablinum of the house over here.
In this case, you can see that the triclinium
opens up toward the hortus, instead.
This family wanted to provide views of the hortus,
rather than the atrium, from the dining hall.
Now, what's particularly interesting, and may belong to the renovation,
is the shops that are opening up off the street,
because you can tell in plan exactly how this shop was used.
Anyone volunteer to say, based on the plan?
What kind of a shop was this?
>> A fast food [INAUDIBLE].
>> Yes, a fast food shop, a thermopolium, because we can see the counter, and
we can see the recesses in plan.
So this family either had or lent its space out for one of these thermopolia,
for one of these fast food stands in the front of their house.
So two examples, the House of the Surgeon and the House of Sallust,
that conform closely, third century BC, to the original domus Italica plan.
In the second century BC,
we see something happen in house design, quite extraordinary, and
that is linked to the same kind of development we saw in temple architecture.
And that is, yes, they've been looking at the Etruscan type of plan,
they've been conforming to that, to a certain extent.
All of a sudden, in the second century,
they get the bug to make their houses look more Greek.
And they begin to incorporate elements that they take from earlier Greek
architecture, and the result is quite extraordinary.
I'm showing you here an example of an ideal plan of what we
call the Hellenized domus, the domus that has been Hellenized,
that has been enhanced with Greek elements.
And let's run through the plan, again, of the so-called Hellenized domus type.
You can see that the core is the same as the domus Italica, you enter over here.
Here we can see, in plan, the incorporation of the vestibulum,
this vestibule that is located right in front of,
or at the beginning of the falcase, you can see it right here,
the purpose of which you kind of entered into the house.
The roof of the house protects you in case the weather is not good.
But you still have to stand in that vestibule until you're allowed into
the falcase and the rest of the house.
So we see here the vestibulum, the falcase, the two cells,
cellae, one on either side.
In this case, they are not opened up as shops.
The atrium here, with its impluvium to catch rainwater.
At four, we have the usual cubicula, or bedrooms.
At five, we have the usual alae, or wings.
And then six, the tablinum,
on axis with seven, the triclinium, opening off the atrium.
So once again, the core of the original domus Italica,
very much intact in the Hellenized domus, but look what's happened up here.
What's happened up here is that number eight, under the influence of Greek
architecture, under the influence of what's happening in temple architecture,
they incorporate columns into the interior of the house.
And they place their garden here.
It's a garden court with columns,
which technically is called a peristyle, P-E-R-I-S-T-Y-L-E.
And it is comparable to what we see in temple architecture,
when we saw the the architects giving some of the temples the peripteral colonnade.
Remember the colonnade that goes all the way around and is freestanding,
under the influence of Greek architecture?
It's the same sort of thing here, except it's on the inside of the building.
So this peristyle court, home garden, located right here, and
then on either side, additional bedrooms, or cubicula.
These were probably very desirable to have,
a bedroom that opened, had a nice view out over your garden.
And then back here, two additional triclinia, two additional dining rooms
to take advantage of the beautiful views that one could get, if one could see it.
Probably, not terribly much through these narrow doorways, but
at least, opening up onto the peristyle court.
Neil, one second.
We see, up here, the restored view showing the same, the entranceway.
And look here, you can even see columns added, in the front,
to announce from the very start that this is a house that is owned
by a very cultured individual who knows his Greek, and knows his Greek culture,
and knows to incorporate these Greek elements into his house.
Then we see the compluvium, we see the peristyle from above.
You can see open to the sky with columns, but still very stark, very plain
on the outside, no windows to speak of, very much an enclosed space, Neil?
>> I was wondering, with all the triclinia around,
where the food preparation would take place [INAUDIBLE].
>> Some of these houses did have kitchens, and I'll show you an example in a moment.
And probably more of them did than we're sure of,
it's just a question of what remains, in terms of being able to determine that.
But we certainly have examples of that, so they did seem to have kitchens.
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