So now I want to show you some examples of houses that conform to the Hellenized Domus type. This being the first one, it's one of the most famous houses, in Pompeii and if you're making, if you're going, there any time soon and are making a list of must-sees, this is one of those must sees. In Pompeii, the house of the Vettii, the Vettii we think it belongs, although we're not absolutely sure to the Vettius brothers. To the Vettius brothers in Pompeii. And it dates as the monument list indicates to the second century BC and later. Looking at this plan you can see the way in which it conforms to the Hellenized Domus type. Once again, it has the core. It has the domus italic accore. The entrance way over here with the fauces, the cells on either side, the, in this case, used as rooms internal to the house. They do not open off the street as shops. The atrium here with the impluvium, a smaller number of cubicula on either side. Alae over here, look what is happened to the Tablinum, the tablinum is gone essentially, all it consists of is a couple of bla-, plasters that are located right here and I will show them to you in a moment, because its well preserved. Plasters here, so the Tablinum has essentially disappeared it's become a kind of passage way from the core of the house in to the garden and it is a peristyle garden surrounded by columns as you can see and you can see how important that peristyle garden has become. This family has decided to decrease their other space in order to have this stupendously large garden here and they have also put a very large dining hall Triclinium up here, that opens off the peristyle and it has a much bigger opening. So that they could clearly dine and get views of this of this garden, this peristyle garden of which they were obviously incredibly proud. so, some, some major changes, there. Now this particular house, oh, I did want to say, though, despite those changes, the house is still very enclosed and very very plain and stark from the outside. This is a restored view of what we believe the outside looked like. So, geometrically-ordered cubic, as you can see. Just one entranceway, possibly a few small windows, possibly not. And then you can see the the compluvium and the peristyle port. But otherwise, very much enclosed like the earlier domus italica. Not much change with regard to how the exterior of the building is treated. This, again, is one of the reasons everyone flocks to this house, is it's very well preserved. There's been some restoration work, of course but it really, this is one of those must-sees because it really gives you as good of a sense as anything of what these houses looked like in antiquity. We have obviously entered into, we've come through the fauces, We are standing in the atrium. We can see the pool or impluvium here. We can see the compluvium, very well preserved up above. I think it's probably the best preserved compluvium that we have or close to it. And you can see that there were little anti-fixes added in terracotta and stuff as decoration up at the top. As we're standing here we look back through what was once the tablinum and now is basically a point of transition, a passageway from the atrium to the most important part of the house from the point of view of these patrons, the garden. So you're looking through, you see these great piers on either side that are all that's left of the tablinum. You look through that and you see the garden. The garden has its columns surrounding it. The walls are painted, of that, of that garden. All a very lively and wonderful interior and what also comes, becomes very clear in looking at this particular view is something that we've already discussed and that is the importance in the minds of the Romans, of vista or panorama. Of great views that you can see from one part of a building to another. Remember the sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur at Terracina, and all of those wonderful lateral and, and axial entrances and exits where there were all kinds of interesting light effects. We see the same sort of thing here. The idea is to pass from a particularly well lighted area outside into a darker area, the fauces, then a little bit more light added to the system though the compluvium and then a whole host of light that you can see in the distance through the open because of the open peristyle so dark,light,dark,light as progression of space, this progression of light through this structure a a very typical Roman thing to do and the other other thing of course is the emphasis on axiality, the this movement through a structure in a very axial way, the garden here as it looks today would have been of course more beautiful in antiquity when it would have been in better shape. But nonetheless this gives you, it's a bit overgrown now and so on, but it gives you some sense of what it would have looked like. With the greenery in the garden surrounded by the columns with you know, with, with garden furniture, a little fountains, little marble fountains and the like. And with the walls that paintings are not in very good shape today, but imagine they are more vibrant and I'm going to show you examples of that on Thursday and next week, of some of the paintings that are in better condition, and how vibrant this would have been with those paintings. Look also at the columns because you can see, we'll see that some of these columns are made out of stone. Some of them are made out of those those tiles, those that look like bricks that I've shown you before. But in all cases they were stuccoed over white. Why were they stuccoed over white? To make them look like Greek marble. So once again this Helenization of Roman domestic architecture, this attempt to make these things look as Greek as possible. Neal, you asked about the kitchen. Well, this is our best preserved kitchen from Pompeii. It's really quite amazing. There's a stove, and the pots and pans that were clearly still sitting on the, sitting on the stove at the time this particular family had to flee. From the from the, from Vesuvius. And I neglected to show you, but you can look at the monument list for this plan, where the, where the rooms are marked. You will see the kitchen marked on that plan. And you will also see what's called the womens' quarters marked on that plan, which was probably where some of the slaves were owned by this particular family, the Vettius brothers, lived in that, in that area. Another example of a house that conforms, a Pompeian house that conforms to the Helenized Domus type, is the one you now see on the screen. It's a plan of the House of the Silver Wedding in Pompeii, we believe it was remodeled in the 1st century BC although it's controversial. It might have been remodeled a bit later in the 1st century AD. it, it's an interesting structure. It got its name, the House of the Silver Wedding, because it, there was a lot of fanfare. In the late 19th century, I think it was precisely 1893 when the King and Queen of Italy came to visit this particular house. And it became their favorite and so the silver wedding is actually a reference to them and to their marriage and, and so on, and so forth. It's a wonderful house and I think you can see how it conforms. Again, it has a core that is very much the domus italica core. But it is another example of one of these houses that has been remodeled because of the pay-, the owners interest in Helenizing that house. We enter here through the fauces, there are cells on either side opening off the fauces that's an unusual arrangement, then over here the the atrium with the impluvium, Cubiculi on either side. The cell, the alae or the wings of the house. A dining room over here two peristyle courts, one in the back, a smaller one and then a huge peristyle court over here on the left hand side, so for this family one was not enough, they wanted double the garden space and they've, they've allotted a lot of space in this house to those gardens. Then most interesting of all, I think about this house, and the reason I chose it to show it to you, Is that we are starting to see the Helenization of the atrium as well, because looked what's happened to the atrium. They have placed four columns around the impluvium, in the atrium. So it wasn't enough to have these two large peristyles, they wanted columns everywhere, and they place this pour around the impluvium, a, an atrium that has four columns in it, is technically called and I put it on the monument list for you, a tetra-style atrium. This is a tetra-style atrium. Even that wasn't enough. Look at that room in the upper left, that room in the upper left is a banqueting hall, An additional dinning space, but a special dinning space that you can see opens up very nicely off the smaller peristyle of the house. The opening is fairly wide, so it probably would have had some wonderful views of the peristyle garden and look there are four columns in their as well and this particular banqueting hall, its technical name; it's got a kind of a funny name that I don't think you'll forget called an oecus. O-E-C-U-S, and it's even more amusing in the plural, cause it, the plural is O-E-C-I. Oeci. Oeci. So this is an oecus among oeci. An oecus up there and you can see that it's an oecus that has four columns in it, so we call it a tetra-style oecus. All right, so now that we have had an opportunity to look at the plan of the House of the Silver Wedding, I want to give you a sense of what the building looks like today. It's not as well preserved as the House of a Vettii but we can get a very good sense of what it was like in antiquity. And the oecus, which in some respects is the most important room in the house, from our standpoint, is very well preserved. We're looking here at a view. We're standing again in the beginning of the atrium, looking through the atrium, we see the impluvium of the house, a lot of moss and some over, and it's overgrown today, but nonetheless you can see it there as well as the compluvium above, what's most important to us is you can see that this is indeed a tetra-style atrium with four columns that are surrounding the impluvium. Those columns and those columns supporting the ceiling and of course the compluvium above. Also interesting is the way in which the columns are treated. You can see that they have been fluted. And then stuccoed over. Do you remember the Temple at Cori that we looked at where we talked about the fact that, the Temple of Hercules at Cori, we talked about the fact that the columns were fluted part of the way, and then down below, those flutes were covered over with stucco and the stucco was painted. We see the same thing here. And if you look very, very closely, you can even see the remains of the red paint, the red paint that decorated the lower part of these columns. So some interesting correspondences there in terms of building practice. You can also see here as we saw on the House of the Vettii, this wonderful vista from the atrium of the house through what remains of the tablinum, into the garden of the house the peristyle garden of the house, which from the, patron's point of view, was one of the most important, or if not the, most important part, of the house. This is the oecus of the house of the silver wedding, and you can see it is extremely well-preserved, and you can also see how very interesting it is in all kinds of ways. It is a tetra-style oecus, again a banqueting hall. Tetra-style oecus with four columns. Those columns are stuccoed and painted over. The paint is very well preserved. It's a reddish purplish color. Probably meant to conjure up porphyry, P-O-R-P-H-Y-R-Y. Porphyry which comes only from Egypt. It's only quarried in Egypt. Very expensive to bring it that great distance all the way to Pompeii, and of course this isn't for free, it's just a painted column. But the whole idea of this from the point of, the point of the patron's, the patron's point of view was to look like he, he and she were very well-heeled, that they could afford to bring, they're trying to make the illusion that they could afford to bring this expensive stone from very far away. To use in their house here. Look also at the fact, that the, there's a, there's a barrel vault. This is actually a wooden vault rather than a concrete vault here. In this room, but very nicely done, and the walls are extensively painted. They are weathered today, but they give you a very good sense of the original, of what would have been the original appearance of this room, and, as I mentioned, we'll talk in detail about Roman wall painting especially because, as you can see, it does depict architecture, we'll begin that conversation on Thursday and continue into next week.
