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Roman atrium house - form and function |
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written
by jwang3 / 09.22.2005 |
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Patron |
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| http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/italy_except_rome_and_sicily/pompeii/ac880832.html |
| House of the Faun tablinium |
| The tablinium, at the far end of the linear fauces-atrium-tablinium axis, was often elevated in height in order to create a sense of visual heirarchy. |
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At the time of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD, Roman civilization had experienced a movement away from the aristocracy of the Republic to the more centralized and bureaucratic government of the Empire. In Pompeii, however, there is little evidence that suggests that this governmental shift had effected a change in the form of the Roman atrium house. Compared to the insulas (apartments) discovered in Rome and Ostia at the time, an overwhelming number of homes containing essential elements of the atrium-style houses were found among the Pompeiian ruins, indicating that the paterfamilias still engaged in Republican patron-client relationships.
The existence of the paterfamilias as both a household leader and a patron, was very much alive in 79 AD Pompeii. The morning salutation, in which the client visited the home of the patron to either pay or get paid by him, was essential to the establishment of the credibility and power of the paterfamilias. The extent of the furnishing and adornment of the house, especially along the linear visual axis of the fauces-atrium-tablinium, was a direct reflection of the household’s wealth and prestige. From the minute the client entered the home of his patron, he immediately became subject to this axis. In the fauces he would see images of the household lars or the goddess Medusa, symbolizing the existence of divine protection over the home. A guard dog or a doorman at the end of the entryway indicated the wealth of the household. While waiting to be received in the atrium and seeing the beautiful frescoes decorating the room, the intricate mosaics surrounding the impluvium, and the gilded ceilings and furniture, he would sense the prosperity and strength of the family. In addition to all the grandeur surrounding him, directly in his line of sight lay the tablinium, where the paterfamilias, the source of the wealth of the home – and of his own income – sat waiting for him. Even in moving around the public space of the house, each move he made upon entering was under the close eye of the paterfamilias; no matter where he went, he was subject to the influence of the linear visual axis and thus controlled by the paterfamilias. The house, then, functioned to establish what is commonly known as “the matrix of the authority of the father.” Not only does the atrium itself, replete with its rituals and functions, reinforce the role of the omnipotent paterfamilias, but the entirety of the public space of the house serves to emphasize the position of the paterfamilias in the tablinium, both psychologically and physically.
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