With the growth of fashion, a collection of art became the necessary complement of a wealthy mansion. The need then arose to give this collection the noblest place in the palace, a room apart to enhance its importance. This new view brought about a new architectural distribution of the Roman patrician mansion, not only on account of the family life and obligations of a wealthy class of citizens, but because the well-to-do Roman had obligations towards art and antiquity. In the Roman mansion we thus find first the atrium, a large hall open to friends, clients and visitors at large. The peristyle is the second courtyard, and is reserved for the family. In the atrium the domestic gods were generally placed and records concerning the family, including genealogical trees (stemmata).
With time these atria became regular museums, as they were excellent places for decoration and the display of art, being the open central part of the house girded by a colonnade.
An idea of the importance of these atria may be gathered from that of Scaurus’ palace, which had thirty-eight columns 12½ yards high, made of the same kinds of rare marble that faced the walls—Egyptian green, old yellow or Oriental alabaster, African marble and other rare kinds brought from Syria and Numidia. Scaurus’ atrium appears to have been hung round with tapestries, embroidered with gold, illustrating mythological scenes. Alternating with these rare tapestries were panopliæ and family portraits.
Though perhaps the favourite spot, the atrium was not the only place for the artistic display of the Romans. Their palaces also contained Oeci, magnificent galleries used for receptions, and the Exhedræ, which were rooms for conversation, generally of a more sober decoration. In the Triclinia there were kept works in precious metals and the finest pieces of furniture. There was also the Sacrarium, a private shrine where precious pieces of art were often hidden. Verres found his famous canephoros (basket-bearers) by Polycletus, the Cupid of Praxiteles and the Hercules of Myron in the sacrarium of Heius of Messina.
There was also a room in Roman mansions set apart for the library, and some had special nooks for such collections as gems and cameos. The place where the best paintings were shown was called the Pinacotheca, and was always built towards the north so that the light from the windows should be without much variation, and above all because a northern exposure left no chance for the sun’s rays to enter and spoil the effect of the painting.
The Roman collector of books very often went in for elegant bindings and all the showy and decorative side of a library. Seneca deplores the fact that while every elegant house in Rome contained a library, many of these collections of books were simply for show. Too many collectors, not dissimilar in this from our bibliomaniacs of to-day, had quantities of works they did not care to read. “What is the use of having so many thousand volumes,” cries Seneca, “the lifetime of their owners would hardly suffice to read the titles of the works.... There is a man with scarcely the literary knowledge of a serf, and he is buying volumes, not to read them, but as an ornament for his dining-room! There is another who is proud of his library only because it is in cedar and ivory; he has the mania of buying books that no one looks for. He is always gaping among his volumes, which he has bought solely for their titles. Lazy people, who never read, are likely to be found with complete collections of the works of orators or historians, books upon books. One could really forgive this mania if it had originated in a real passion for reading, but all these fine works, the great creations of divine genius, works ornamented with the portraits of their authors, do but serve to decorate the walls” (Tranq., IX).
A large library was the desire of Horace. He wrote to Lellius:
“Do you know my daily prayer?—Great Gods! let me keep the little I own, less if it is your pleasure; let me live according to my choice the days your indulgence has granted me; let me have plenty of books, one year’s income in advance that I may not be obliged to live day by day from hand to mouth.... As regards the peace of my heart and my happiness, that is my affair” (Sat., II, 6).
Such contrarieties have a genuine echo in our society where the bibliomaniac is rarely a literary man or even slightly interested in literature. Bibliomaniacs collected volumes for the most part either because some of them were considered rare, and therefore advertised the high price paid for them, or because they might serve as a decorative show, but the collecting of general art and curios, with a few exceptions, appears to have been vacuous and freakish. Even specialization, which is held to be progress in modern times, but as a matter of fact more often merely represents the triumph of erudition over art and taste, exercised in Rome the momentary tyranny of fashion.
An example of this specialization is given us by the craze in Rome for Corinthian bronze. Without entering into a discussion about the legend of its origin, and simply hinting that there are strong proofs that the alloy existed long before the siege of Corinth, we are safe in saying that the craze in Rome for Corinthian bronze was one of those freaks of fashion that has had, perhaps, no echo in all the after-history of “collectomania.” Every amateur was at that time bound to have at least one vase of the coveted metal. According to Pliny (XXXIV, 1, 2, 3) in his time this metal was equal to gold in value. In order to obtain two vases of this precious metal Mark Antony ordered the assassination of the owner, and it must be borne in mind that Mark Antony was accused of using golden vessels for the lowest services of his household. Octavianus, supposed to be a collector of mild passions and a man who certainly did give up all such hobbies on becoming emperor, was also very fond of the fashionable metal—corinthiorum præcupidus—and did not scruple to adopt the methods of Sulla and Mark Antony to gratify his ultra-fashionable taste.