Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero

by W. Warde Fowler

THE HOUSE OF THE RICH MAN, IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

We saw that the poorer classes in Rome were lodged in huge insulae, and enjoyed nothing that can be called home life. The wealthy families, on the other hand, lived in domus, i.e. separate dwellings, accommodating only one family, often, even in the Ciceronian period, of great magnificence. But even these great houses hardly suggest a life such as that which we associate with the word home. As Mr. Tucker has pointed out in the case of Athens,[375] the warmer climates of Greece and Italy encouraged all classes to spend much more of their time out of doors and in public places than we do; and the rapid growth of convenient public buildings, porticoes, basilicas, baths, and so on, is one of the most striking features in the history of the city during the last two centuries B.C. Augustus, part of whose policy it was to make the city population comfortable and contented, carried this tendency still further, and under the Empire the town house played quite a subordinate part in Roman social life. The best way to realise this out-of-door life, lazy and sociable, of the Augustan age, is to read the first book of Ovid's Ars Amatoria,—a fascinating picture of a beautiful city and its pleasure-loving inhabitants. But with the Augustan age we are not here concerned.

Yet the Roman house, like the Italian house in general, was in origin and essence really a home. The family was the basis of society, and by the family we must understand not only the head of the house with his wife, children, and slaves, but also the divine beings who dwelt there. As the State comprised both human and divine inhabitants, so also did the house, which was indeed the germ and type of the State. Thus the house was in those early times not less but even more than a house is for us, for in it was concentrated all that was dear to the family, all that was essential to its life, both natural and supernatural. And the two—the natural and supernatural—were not distinct from each other, but associated, in fact almost identical; the hearth-fire was the dwelling of Vesta, the spirit of the flame; the Penates were the spirits of the stores on which the family subsisted, and dwelt in the store-cupboard or larder; the paterfamilias had himself a supernatural side, in the shape of his Genius; and the Lar familiaris was the protecting spirit of the farmland, who had found his way into the house in course of time, perhaps with the slave labourers, who always had a share in his worship.[376]

It would probably be unjust to the Roman of the late Republic to assume that this beautiful idea of the common life of the human and divine beings in a house was entirely ignored or forgotten by him. No doubt the reality of the belief had vanished; it could not be said of the city family, as Ovid, said of the farm-folk:[377]

ante focos olim scamnis considere longis mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos.

The great noble or banker of Cicero's day could no longer honestly say that he believed in the real presence of his family deities; the kernel of the old feeling had shrunk away under the influence of Greek philosophy and of new interests in life, new objects and ambitions. But the shell remained, and in some families, or in moments of anxiety and emotion, even the old feeling of religio may have returned. Cicero is appealing to a common sentiment, in a passage already once quoted (de Domo, 109), when he insists on the real religious character of a house: "his arae sunt, his foci, his di penates: his sacra, religiones, caerimoniae continentur." And this was in the heart of the city; in the country-house there was doubtless more leisure and opportunity for such feeling. In the second century B.C. old Cato had described the paterfamilias, on his arrival at his farm from the city, saluting the Lar familiaris before he goes about his round of inspection; and even Horace hardly shows a trace of the agnostic when he pictures the slaves of the farm, and the master with them, sitting at their meal in front of the image of the Lar[378]. We may perhaps guess that with the renewal of the love of country life, and with that revival of the cultivation of the vine and olive, and indeed of husbandry in general, which is recognisable as a feature of the last years of the Republic, and which is known to us from Varro's work on farming, and from Virgil's Georgics, the old religion of the household gained a new life.

It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the shape and divisions of a Roman house of the city; full and excellent descriptions may be found in Middleton's article "Domus" in the Dictionary of Antiquities, and in Lanciani's Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome; and to these should be added Mau's work on Pompeii, where the houses were of a Roman rather than a Greek type. What we are concerned with is the house as a home or a centre of life, and it is only in this aspect of it that we shall discuss it here.

The oldest Italian dwelling was a mere wigwam with a hearth in the middle of the floor, and a hole at the top to let the smoke out. But the house of historical times was rectangular, with one central room or hall, in which was concentrated the whole indoor life of the family, the whole meaning and purpose of the dwelling. Here the human and divine inhabitants originally lived together. Here was the hearth, "the natural altar of the dwelling-room of man," as Aust beautifully expresses it;[379] this was the seat of Vesta, and behind it was the penus or store-closet, the seat of the Penates; thus Vesta and the Penates are in the most genuine sense the protecting and nourishing deities of the household. Here, too, was the Lar of the familia with his little altar, behind the entrance, and here was the lectus genialis,[380] and the Genius of the paterfamilias. As you looked into the atrium, after passing the vestibulum or space between street and doorway, and the ostium or doorway with its janua, you saw in front of you the impluvium, into which the rainwater fell from the compluvium, i.e. the square opening in the roof with sloping sides; on either side were recesses (alae), which, if the family were noble, contained the images of the ancestors. Opposite you was another recess, the tablinum, opening probably into a little garden; here in the warm weather the family might take their meals.

This is the atrium of the old Roman house, and to understand that house nothing more is needed. And indeed architecturally, the atrium never lost its significance as the centre of the house; it is to the house as the choir is to a cathedral.[381] And it is easy to see how naturally it could develop into a much more complicated but convenient dwelling; for example, the alae could be extended to form separate chambers or sleeping-rooms, the tablinum could be made into a permanent dining-room, or such rooms could be opened out on either side of it. A second story could be added, and in the city, where space was valuable, this was usually the case. The garden could be converted, after the Greek fashion, and under a Greek name, into a peristylium, i.e. an open court with a pretty colonnade round it, and if there were space enough, you might add at the rear of this again an exedra, or an oecus, i.e. open saloons convenient for many purposes. Thus the house came to be practically divided into two parts, the atrium with its belongings, i.e. the Roman part, and the peristylium with its developments, forming the Greek part; and the house reflects the composite character of Roman life in its later period, just as do Roman literature and Roman art. The Roman part was retained for reception rooms, and the Lar, the Penates, and Vesta, with their respective seats, retired into the new apartments for privacy. When the usual crowd of morning callers came to wait upon a great man, they would not as a rule penetrate farther than the atrium, and there he might keep them waiting as long as he pleased. The Greek part of the house, the peristylium and its belongings, was reserved for his family and his most intimate friends. In Pompeii, which was an old Greek town with Roman life and habits superadded, we find atrium and peristylium both together as early as the second century B.C.[382] At what period exactly the house of the noble in Rome began thus to develop is not so certain. But by the time of Cicero every good domus had without doubt its private apartments at the rear, varying in shape and size according to the ground on which the house stood.[383]

The accompanying plan will give a sufficiently clear idea of the development of the domus from the atrium, and its consequent division into two parts; it is that of "the house of the silver wedding" at Pompeii.