Читать книгу A History of Roman Art онлайн

43 страница из 48

otiumnegotiumatrium

otium

Latin term for leisure, it includes time spent on reading, writing, and academic activities, including rest. Often associated with the Roman villa as the space for otium.

We must determine the situation of the private rooms for the master of the house, and those which are for general use, and for the guests. Into those which are private no one enters, except invited; such are bed chambers, dining rooms, baths, and others of a similar nature. The common rooms, on the contrary, are those entered by any one, even unasked. Such are the vestibule … the peristyle, and those which are for similar uses.

negotium

Latin term for business (literally “not leisure”), including both public and private business.

atrium

the main or central room of a Roman house, usually directly accessible from the front door.

When we examine the layout and rooms of a Roman house, we need to think in Roman terms of public and private, not modern ones. Rather than the default that house = private space, it is critical to think as a Roman would and to distinguish the common rooms from others. The front door of an elite Roman house would have been open throughout the daylight hours and anyone who wished to enter was allowed in. According to Velleius Paterculus (2.14.3) when the architect working for Livius Drusus, Tribune of the Plebs in 91 BCE, promised to make his new house on the slope of the Palatine Hill above the Forum “completely private and free from being overlooked by anyone,” Livius replied, “No, you should apply your skills to arranging my house so that whatever I do should be visible to everybody.” As a result the decor of the front rooms was designed in much the same way a public building was, with a notion of the expected audience. It became a stage to present a public image of the family to those passing on the street and to those who chose to enter. Much of the family’s public image derives from the public service, either civic or military, of the men in the family. The atrium was decorated with their military trophies and achievements, busts of ancestors who had served the state, and this became the means of projecting status. That led to embellishments such as on this house found at Pompeii.