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Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.

triclinium

Roman dining room laid out for nine diners reclining on three couches (in Greek: tri cline) from which the room gets its name.

We must now, however, make some mention of those artists who acquired fame by the pencil in an inferior style of painting. Among these was Piræicus, inferior to few of the painters in skill. I am not sure that he did not do injustice to himself by the choice of his subjects … His subjects were barbers’ shops, cobblers’ stalls, jackasses, eatables, and the like, and to these he was indebted for his epithet of “Ithyparographos,” “Painter of Low Subjects.”

tablinum

a room in the Roman house off the atrium and directly opposite the front door. It was the major formal reception room, used to receive clients and conduct business.

In this digression, Pliny makes it clear that the painter could be skilled, but his subject is inferior and among those low forms was still life. Such a judgment is critically important evidence for us of what the Romans thought of painting and while we are historians of art, not critics of it, that in no way means that we should not be aware of the Roman attitudes towards art. For the Praedia of Julia Felix, the painting subjects provide valuable evidence that the estate was used by non‐elites, perhaps rented for special events or existing as a sort of membership‐only club for Pompeii’s newly wealthy sub‐elite inhabitants, often called the “middle class,” to use a term that perhaps applies better to our world than to theirs. The idea of art as conveying class, status, and social and political rank and pretensions is also clear from tombs. One of the best examples of this, the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, is also from Pompeii.