A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities

by William Smith

The Atrium or Cavum Aedium was a large apartment roofed over with the exception of an opening in the centre, called compluvium, towards which the roof sloped so as to throw the rain-water into a cistern in the floor, termed impluvium, which was frequently ornamented with statues, columns, and other works of art. The word impluvium, however, is also employed to denote the aperture in the roof. The atrium was the most important room in the house, and among the wealthy was usually fitted up with much splendour and magnificence. Originally it was the only sitting-room in the house; but in the houses of the wealthy it was distinct from the private apartments, and was used as a reception-room, where the patron received his clients, and the great and noble the numerous visitors who were accustomed to call every morning to pay their respects or solicit favours. But though the atrium was not used by the wealthy as a sitting-room for the family, it still continued to be employed for many purposes which it had originally served. Thus the nuptial couch was placed in the atrium opposite the door, and also the instruments and materials for spinning and weaving, which were formerly carried on by the women of the family in this room. Here also the images of their ancestors were placed, and the focus or fire-place, which possessed a sacred character, being dedicated to the Lares of each family.—4. Alae, wings, were small apartments or recesses on the left and right sides of the atrium.—5. [Tablinum] was in all probability a recess or room at the further end of the atrium opposite the door leading into the hall, and was regarded as part of the atrium. It contained the family records and archives. With the tablinum the Roman house appears to have originally ceased; and the sleeping-rooms were probably arranged on each side of the atrium. But when the atrium and its surrounding rooms were used for the reception of clients and other public visitors, it became necessary to increase the size of the house; and the following rooms were accordingly added:—6. Fauces appear to have been passages, which passed from the atrium to the peristylium or interior of the house.—7. Peristylium was in its general form like the atrium, but it was one-third greater in breadth, measured transversely, than in length. It was a court open to the sky in the middle; the open part, which was surrounded by columns, was larger than the impluvium in the atrium, and was frequently decorated with flowers and shrubs.—The arrangement of the rooms, which are next to be noticed, varied according to the taste and circumstances of the owner. It is therefore impossible to assign to them any regular place in the house.—1. Cubicula, bed-chambers, appear to have been usually small. There were separate cubicula for the day and night; the latter were also called dormitoria.—2. [Triclinia] are treated of in a separate article. [[Triclinium].]—3. Oeci, from the Greek οἶκος, were spacious halls or saloons borrowed from the Greeks, and were frequently used as triclinia. They were to have the same proportions as triclinia, but were to be more spacious on account of having columns, which triclinia had not.—4. Exedrae were rooms for conversation and the other purposes of society.—5. Pinacotheca, a picture-gallery.—6, 7. [Bibliotheca] and [Balineum] are treated of in separate articles.—8. [Culina], the kitchen.

Kitchen of the House of Pansa at Pompeii.

The food was originally cooked in the atrium: but the progress of refinement afterwards led to the use of another part of the house for this purpose. In the kitchen of Pansa’s house at Pompeii, a stove for stews and similar preparations was found, very much like the charcoal stoves used in the present day. Before it lie a knife, a strainer, and a kind of frying-pan with four spherical cavities, as if it were meant to cook eggs.—9. Coenacula, properly signified rooms to dine in; but after it became the fashion to dine in the upper part of the house, the whole of the rooms above the ground-floor were called coenacula.—10. Diaeta, an apartment used for dining in, and for the other purposes of life. It appears to have been smaller than the triclinium. Diaeta is also the name given by Pliny to rooms containing three or four bed-chambers (cubicula). Pleasure-houses or summer-houses are also called diaetae.—11. Solaria, properly places for basking in the sun, were terraces on the tops of houses. The preceding cut represents the atrium of a house at Pompeii. In the centre is the impluvium, and the passage at the further end is the ostium or entrance hall.—The preceding account of the different rooms, and especially of the arrangement of the atrium, tablinum, peristyle, &c., is best illustrated by the houses which have been disinterred at Pompeii. The ground-plan of one is accordingly subjoined.

Ground-plan of a House at Pompeii.

Like most of the other houses at Pompeii, it had no vestibulum according to the meaning given above. 1. The ostium or entrance-hall, which is six feet wide and nearly thirty long. Near the street-door there is a figure of a large fierce dog worked in mosaic on the pavement, and beneath it is written Cave Canem. The two large rooms on each side of the vestibule appear from the large openings in front of them to have been shops; they communicate with the entrance-hall, and were therefore probably occupied by the master of the house. 2. The atrium, which is about twenty-eight feet in length and twenty in breadth; its impluvium is near the centre of the room, and its floor is paved with white tesserae, spotted with black. 3. Chambers for the use of the family, or intended for the reception of guests, who were entitled to claim hospitality. 4. A small room with a staircase leading up to the upper rooms. 5. Alae. 6. The tablinum. 7. The fauces. 8. Peristyle, with Doric columns and garden in the centre. The large room on the right of the peristyle is the triclinium; beside it is the kitchen; and the smaller apartments are cubicula and other rooms for the use of the family.—Having given a general description of the rooms of a Roman house, it remains to speak of the (1) floors, (2) walls, (3) ceilings, (4) windows, and (5) the mode of warming the rooms. For the doors, see [Janua].—(1.) The floor (solum) of a room was seldom boarded: it was generally covered with stone or marble, or mosaics. The common floors were paved with pieces of bricks, tiles, stones, &c., forming a kind of composition called ruderatic. Sometimes pieces of marble were imbedded in a composition ground, and these probably gave the idea of mosaics. As these floors were beaten down (pavita) with rammers (fistucae), the word pavimentum became the general name for a floor. Mosaics, called by Pliny lithostrota (λιθόστρωτα), though this word has a more extensive meaning, first came into use in Sulla’s time, who made one in the temple of Fortune at Praeneste. Mosaic work was afterwards called Musivum opus, and was most extensively employed.—(2.) The inner walls (parietes) of private rooms were frequently lined with slabs of marble, but were more usually covered by paintings, which in the time of Augustus were made upon the walls themselves. This practice was so common that we find even the small houses in Pompeii have paintings upon their walls.—(3.) The ceilings seem originally to have been left uncovered, the beams which supported the roof or the upper story being visible. Afterwards planks were placed across these beams at certain intervals, leaving hollow spaces, called lacunaria or laquearia, which were frequently covered with gold and ivory, and sometimes with paintings. There was an arched ceiling in common use, called [Camara].—(4.) The Roman houses had few windows (fenestrae). The principal apartments, the atrium, peristyle, &c., were lighted from above, and the cubicula and other small rooms generally derived their light from them, and not from windows looking into the street. The rooms only on the upper story seem to have been usually lighted by windows. The windows appear originally to have been merely openings in the wall, closed by means of shutters, which frequently had two leaves (bifores fenestrae). Windows were also sometimes covered by a kind of lattice or trellis work (clathri), and sometimes by net-work, to prevent serpents and other noxious reptiles from getting in. Afterwards, however, windows were made of a transparent stone, called lapis specularis (mica); such windows were called specularia. Windows made of glass (vitrum) are first mentioned by Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era; but the discoveries at Pompeii prove that glass was used for windows under the early emperors.—(5.) The rooms were heated in winter in different ways; but the Romans had no stoves like ours. The cubicula, triclinia, and other rooms, which were intended for winter use, were built in that part of the house upon which the sun shone most; and in the mild climate of Italy this frequently enabled them to dispense with any artificial mode of warming the rooms. Rooms exposed to the sun in this way were sometimes called heliocamini. The rooms were sometimes heated by hot air, which was introduced by means of pipes from a furnace below, but more frequently by portable furnaces or braziers (foculi), in which coal or charcoal was burnt. The caminus was also a kind of stove, in which wood appears to have been usually burnt, and probably only differed from the foculus in being larger and fixed to one place. The rooms usually had no chimneys for carrying off the smoke, which escaped through the windows, doors, and openings in the roof; still chimneys do not appear to have been entirely unknown to the ancients, as some are said to have been found in the ruins of ancient buildings.

DŌNĀRĬA (ἀναθήματα or ἀνακείμενα), presents made to the gods, either by individuals or communities. Sometimes they are also called dona or δῶρα. The belief that the gods were pleased with costly presents was as natural to the ancients as the belief that they could be influenced in their conduct towards men by the offering of sacrifices; and, indeed, both sprang from the same feeling. Presents were mostly given as tokens of gratitude for some favour which a god had bestowed on man; as, for instance, by persons who had recovered from illness or escaped from shipwreck; but some are also mentioned, which were intended to induce the deity to grant some especial favour. Almost all presents were dedicated in temples, to which in some places an especial building was added, in which these treasures were preserved. Such buildings were called θησαυροί (treasuries); and in the most frequented temples of Greece many states had their separate treasuries. The act of dedication was called ἀνατιθέναι, donare, dedicare, or sacrare.

DŌNĀTĪVUM. [[Congiarium].]

DORMĪTŌRĬA. [[Domus].]