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Roman homes: everything you wanted to know
00:50:52
Hannah Platts offers up a tour through the spaces that shaped daily life in the Roman world
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- [00:01]
Emily Briffitt
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- [01:01]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
They do not always show up on.
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Podcast Host
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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- [01:41]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary. Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.
- [01:59]
Emily Briffitt
If you could sneak a peek past the front door of a Roman home, what would you expect to find? Why was having a hole in your ceiling a clever feat of engineering in the ancient world? How could sharing a communal toilet actually still be a very private act? And why was central heating a luxury in ancient Rome? Emily Briffitt is joined by Dr. Hannah Platz as they step inside the ancient Roman home to uncover more.
- [02:24]
Podcast Host
As we're covering a vast spade of land here over a very long time period, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of caveating as we're talking to clarify how it differs. But first and foremost I just want to ask you how did geography, and I suppose with that climate change, influence the architecture of Roman homes across this vast swathe of lands?
- [02:49]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
It's a really, really important question, actually, to be thinking about that notion of empire, the size of empire, and that idea of Regulating where you're living, regulating the temperature, dealing with the elements, dealing with the environment. At its biggest, the Roman Empire stretched, you know, from Spain to Mesopotamia, Judea and Syria, and then from Britain down to North Africa, you're in Morocco, sort of Egypt. So we are thinking of a really vast swathe of lands, I should say. We're talking also about possibly a population of maybe 100 million people. All in all, there's going to be a huge amount of variety. All these parts of the Empire had very different climates, very different environments. They also had very different building techniques, very different traditions and materials that they could draw on, that they could utilize. So I guess if we start by thinking about housing in Rome and mainland Italy, I'm sure the listeners are just all aware just how hot summers can be and are in Italy, particularly sort of when we're thinking in Rome and to the south. We're talking about temperatures in Rome and the Bay of Naples, you know, of July, August temperatures often being over 30 degrees C. We're also talking about relatively little rain, possibly, you know, under 20 millimetres of rain a month. Yes, winters are wetter and winters are cooler, but you know, even actually in the winter, snow in Rome or snow in the Bay of Naples would be a really rare occurrence. But turn that on its head if you're in Britain, we know what British winters are like. We have rain, we have mist, we have murk, we have dark, we have sm.
- [04:55]
Podcast Host
No.
- [04:56]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
So actually it makes sense to need to build according to what the environment is. So taking back the focus to Rome and mainland Italy, we're thinking about a society without air conditioning, we're thinking about a society without electricity. What do you do to make the most of your house, to make it comfortable to live in? So what they did was they took advantage of some really important features of the house. So high ceilings were very often used, particularly in reception rooms, rooms where you would be entertaining. High ceilings that gave a feeling of space, that gave a feeling of grandeur. Yes. But that also allowed airflow. They also used in Rome, in Pompeii, in Herculaneum, thick stone walls that could actually sort of help dissipate heat and actually keep coolness in and so on. And then things like the openings to your house, so the windows high up, narrow windows that could let light in and could let air flow in, but that actually wouldn't let vast amounts of sun in, that would then glare and let too much heat in, if that makes sense. They're also very clever in terms of the architectural structure and Orientation of rooms of their house. If you walk in to a Roman house, you walk in up the. What is called the fauces. The fauces is the throat of the house. It's a narrow passageway. It could be quite small, but then you would lead into what is called. And generally this is the case in Roman houses in mainland Italy and Pompeii and Herculaneum. You would walk into the first sort of reception room called the atrium. And this was, I guess, the way to think about it is it's like our front hall. It's where you would walk in. And this would often be used to receive guests. And it had a very, very important architectural feature within it. Not only did often the bigger houses have these high ceilings that I talked about, but it also had a hole in the ceiling. So that sounds a little bit odd. It sort of makes it seem, to be honest, as if it was slightly unfinished, but it really was very clever, very well organised, because that hole in the ceiling, underneath it, in the floor of the atrium, was a basin. And through that hole in the ceiling, natural light would come, lighting the house again, Airflow would come, but rain would fall. And so any rain that did fall in the summer months in the Bay of Naples could then be stored and could be used in the rest of the workings of the house. So for washing, for plants, for anything like that. But actually, that rain falling is really important because it has a cooling technique. As it evaporates, it cools the surrounding atmosphere. So the atrium in these houses in mainland Italy was a very clever structure, very cleverly organized to regulate temperature, to deal with those hot, dry summers and the fact there was no electricity. So you needed to take as much advantage of natural light as you possibly could.
- [08:47]
Podcast Host
So we're really talking about building for the environment that you have here.
- [08:52]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And actually, you know, it wasn't even just the atrium, for example, they had peristyle gardens, and a peristyle garden would be planted up with flowers and shrubs and trees to give shade, so you could chat with your guests or whatever and just wander quietly and peacefully in the shade of your colonnade. And actually, the use of things like fountains in your house or in your garden or access to water was very much a display of wealth and status in your residence, particularly on the Bay of Naples in Rome, where it's hot and where water is scarcer. If you can have a number of fountains in your garden, you're showing your wherewithal. But it also provides, again, that amazing cooling technique and Then there is the other really cool thing, that they would organize their rooms and orient their rooms according to how their room was going to be used or what season they wanted to use their room for. So we have summer dining rooms in large residences and winter dining rooms. And of course the summer dining room needed to face north so that it would have much less exposure to the sun, whilst winter dining rooms would be the exact opposite. So it's incredibly clever. And it's not just that this happened like a merry chance, it's not just like, oh, yeah, we'll do a bit of building. Oh, and that happens to work. And isn't that nice? There is a marvellous Roman author called Vitruvius who wrote a big 10 volume architectural treatise on different elements of architecture. One of the books tells us about how you structure your city and another one tells us about how you build your house. And in this he very specifically emphasizes the importance of building according to climate, the importance of stressing that where you build you take notice of their location. So he's very careful to emphasise that actually building your residence takes sense and needs to be sensibly done. Now, I guess the question is, well, whoever really read Vitruvius, and that's a fair question, but actually when we go around, you know, Pompeii and Herculaneum or Britain, we can actually see a lot of what Vitruvius is telling us being replicated in the archaeological floor plans. So that possibly suggests that people were just, whether or not they were reading him or were just very attuned to thinking actually regulating our environment is really important.
- [12:01]
Podcast Host
If Roman design was so well thought out, did they adopt building traditions or style or architecture from the places that they conquered or absorbed?
- [12:16]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Yeah, and I think any form of architecture is not static. It doesn't stick, stay the same. It changes according to the wider ideals of society. It also changes according to the individual and what an individual wants from their house or their monument or their whatever they're developing. And Roman houses are no different in that way. So if we're thinking about really early Roman houses, they start out as being sort of round one room huts constructed out of wooden posts that then held up wattle and daub walls. You know, we're talking about clay and mud and twigs and straw all sort of patted together to make the walls. And they'd have thatched roofs and holes to let the smoke out. Okay. These materials are organic and they've rotted away. But we do have the remains of the post holes and the Wall indentations on the Palatine Hill in Rome. So we know we have a fairly good idea of what these very early houses were like. But what's really interesting, and this is where I'm coming into your question about taking on board other influences, is that actually Rome started as a small settlement on a hilltop and wasn't prepared to stay like that as Rome grew and as Rome got bigger, Rome did come up against other cultures. And one very big important culture in Rome's early development was Etruria to the north. There is evidence to suggest that the round huts that Rome started with on the Palatine developed through Etruscan influence. And then we start to see the use of stone and the development of more rectilinear residences. And we think. I mean, there is debate. Anything with early Rome is always debated. I'm going to hold my hands up to that one. But we think very possibly that the actual birth of the atrium, that central reception room, that opening room that I talked about a minute ago, we think that may have come from Etruscan influence. So we see Rome's houses develop from huts to more complicated dwellings. They then become even more elaborate, they develop more rooms, they develop gardens, they develop peristyle gardens. Now, that is really interesting, because the development of the peristyle garden, we believe, comes from a sort of Greek influence. I always think of Rome as a magpie culture, taking what it likes from elsewhere and then making it relevant to Rome. Not just taking, transporting and using it as other cultures used it, but making it Roman and making it relevant to what Rome needed, what was important for Rome's ideals.
- [15:23]
Podcast Host
So could we say it's almost a matter of, in parts, style and fashion, but also actually the functionality and actually how you're going to use it, the practicality.
- [15:34]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
I think you're absolutely right. And I think Rome's skill in engineering is really well known. We only need to look at the aqueducts and so on and so forth that still stand today. And the thing is, as Rome developed these sort of new techniques and as they reached out and came in contact with new cultures, they learned new influences, but they also grew and developed their own new architectural techniques and engineering techniques as well. So they were keen to take on board what they'd learned and utilise it. But they were also, yeah, very aware of fashion and doing things different. I always refer to it as sort of keeping up with the Joneses. I suppose one key area where we see Rome's mastery of techniques coming into play comes in in about the first century C.E. and really takes off in the end of the first into the second century C.E. when we see the working with concrete, because actually what concrete did was it allowed them to really play with space. So it allowed them to build the most immense spaces with vaulted roofs, with curved walls that they had never been able to do before. So we see this, yes, in the public sphere, in urban building, but we also see it coming into the domestic realm too, where we see curved dining rooms with abstract walls and domed roofs and so on. And so I think you're right, it's very much this notion of taking on board what they see from other cultures, using what they want, what's relevant. Also constantly building up their own techniques. And I think all of that makes their architecture, makes their building immense.
- [17:39]
Podcast Host
When we're talking about space, are we always talking about these big, lavish, spacious complexes? What other types of homes existed?
- [17:48]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
I mean, that's a really interesting question. Actually. We have been currently talking about big and lavish, and there are plenty of big and lavish homes. And we know a lot about them, not least because actually, archaeologists were very keen to dig out the big and the lavish, or indeed to dig out the urban, because that's where they would find the mosaics, that's where they would find the big structures, the statues. That's where it was thought the big stories sat. But actually take a walk around Pompeii, take a walk around Herculaneum. And there are quite many smaller houses too. So in the research I've done in Pompeii, for example, I've done a lot of studying and sort of careful monitoring of a range of house sizes. And actually the house sizes that I found the most of for my work were of between 10 to 19 rooms. Some were 50 and above, so really big. But others are really considerably smaller. Those houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum, they're called domus. They are for single family occupancy, but they're not the only type of house. What's really interesting is actually to compare the houses that we have in Pompeii, as I say, which are generally the most of which are these domus, single family occupancy residences, maybe two stories, and that's it. You can compare that with the dwellings in Ostia, which was the ancient port of Rome and Ostia. A lot of the dwellings that we have in Ostia that remain to us today date from the 2nd century A.D. so after the destruction of Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the residences we have In Ostia are multiple occupancy dwellings, many storey residences like our apartments today. Possibly five, possibly six storeys high, maybe more. They could hold a number of stories on the ground floor, first floor, second floor, these would be more sturdy, these would be made of brick. But on the upper floors they were often made of wood so that the stories were lighter, didn't weigh so heavy. And so actually we can never be really sure just how many storeys high these insular, as they're called, these apartments were, because we don't have the wooden storeys anymore on the top, so we've only got the brick ones. But we know that they could at least often hold five storeys, at least.
- [20:48]
Podcast Host
Wow, that's incredible. I'm thinking about my house and I've only got seven rooms in my house. 19 rooms is something. 50 rooms plus. That's extraordinary.
- [20:59]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
So I guess I suppose when I say rooms I do literally mean, I don't mean bedrooms, I mean spaces. So that's talking about what we would think of as washing spaces, cooking spaces, dining spaces, sleeping spaces, whatever. So yeah, as you say, it's not a small residence. I think the other side of that is when you're looking down for the really lower status members of society, a lot of people might live, for example, in their shop. They would have a shop and then have a room, maybe two behind their shop that they would then live in. And it could be a family of six more living there. So then you are talking about some really small spaces. And of course we know there was homelessness and that that really would have been troubling because there was no support in that sense. So where you lacked a home, where would you go? Well, you could go and sleep in the archways under bridges or in the archways of the amphitheatre. You could go and try and get into large tombs and try and sleep there. So I guess if you're thinking about the question of what's the average house size? Average is always a really difficult word. But as I say from my work, there were more houses ranging in the 10 to 19 rooms. So that would be average in one sense of the word, if that makes sense. But there is an awful lot of people who lived under that.
- [22:29]
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- [25:15]
Podcast Host
You've given us a sense of the spectrum of society you mentioned there about roughly how many people might be living. So if it's, say it's just a family, how many generations would be living in one household? I should clarify, this is a question we have from amandararelymad on Instagram.
- [25:35]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Well, actually, it's a really good question, Amanda, to be thinking about what do we mean by family and what do we mean by within a house? Who lived within a Roman house? So the Latin term for family was familia, and that is actually where we get the English word family today. But it's important to realize that there's really no simple definition of the family in Roman culture. And actually, what we think of as family today is not necessarily the same as what was understood in ancient Rome. For one thing, and I think it's really important to highlight this, there was no specific term for what we understand the nuclear family to be. So mother, father, kids. That's a much more recent concept. That wasn't a concept in ancient Rome, having been said. Mother, father, kids were important, don't get me wrong. But there wasn't a notion of the nuclear family as a specific subset within familial relations, if that makes sense. So the word family or familia, it could refer to the immediate family of parents and children, but it also did refer to the extended family members. So it could be things like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so on. So it could refer to people through marriage or blood relationships, but it also referred to enslaved members of the household and indeed also freed slaves. And the reason for why enslaved members of the household were actually then part of that familia is essentially. I mean, it's an awful thing to be thinking about. But they were property. They didn't have a voice in their own right. They belonged as property to the owner of the house, and then that household and their duty was to serve the owner of the house. And similarly, freed slaves, ex slaves, when they were freed, they took on their master or their mistress's name, they would take on the family name. They still kept that connection. So they would still be part of that wider familia, if you see what I mean. So, yeah, the Roman household is actually quite a confusing thing. It's a really difficult question. It's a really good question.
- [27:59]
Podcast Host
It seems like you could have a great number of people almost living in one particular space. Were there specific places or rooms that had certain functions for certain members of the household?
- [28:13]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
When we're thinking about the rooms of the Roman house, most of them tended to be multifunctional, but what might be a helpful way of thinking about them is they may be multifunctional, but they may change their uses at certain times of the day. Can I go back to my favourite example of the atrium?
- [28:31]
Podcast Host
Of course you can.
- [28:32]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Thank you. It is cool. It is great. This was absolutely a multifunctional room, and actually its architecture is why it worked out to be so multifunctional and so useful. So it was the first sort of main room as you stepped off the street. So it was a space where, if you're elite, you could really display your wealth. So, on one hand, it worked as a reception space, which was great. Remember, we're coming back to a time where Romans are living without electricity, so all the light you can take advantage of is really, really important. And the atrium, with its hole in the ceiling, let in quite a lot of natural light. So the room could also be very useful for close hand work, like weaving, like darning, like mending, like producing, like productive work. Weaving in particular is really important. Now, you're unlikely to be wanting necessarily to be receiving guests at the same time as you've got your slaves weaving, or indeed that anyone's weaving. So the likelihood is that certain times of the day, the house would be used for weaving when the sun was at its strongest, and then other times of the day it would be used to meet and greet guests. And indeed, we know that the atrium, one of its functions, was something called the salutatio, which was the morning daily meet and greet session where elite men would open their doors as patrons and their clients would come and visit them daily, and they would be given a handout of food or money or legal advice. So what I'm saying is the atrium could be this place for the meet and greet, for receiving guests, for patronage of your clients. At one point in the day, then the pater familias, the man of the house, would go off and do his political duty, and whilst he went off into the city, then the atrium could be used for weaving using the natural light coming through the hole in the ceiling.
- [30:42]
Podcast Host
Given that spaces were multifunctional, open to the public, or open to those outside the home. How did privacy work in the Roman household? And was it as valued as it is perhaps today?
- [30:57]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
A fabulous question. And it really, really highlights the difference in our perceptions of certain things that we hold important today and how they were perceived in the ancient world. And in this case, it is that very notion of Public and private. And it's going to seem a slightly odd answer to begin with, so just bear with me. It's really important not to conflate the urban realm of the city and the domestic realm of the house with our modern notions of urban as public and domestic as private. Such distinctions in the ancient Roman world were totally anachronistic. So today, whilst we think about private, as you know, I shut my front door, I'm with my family, maybe some friends, it's my private time. That was not the case in ancient Rome. So I'm going to bring in a bit of Latin here and I'll explain it. The Latin word privatus is our word, private, but it translates as of or belonging to an individual. It also translates as apart from or away from the state or the community. The Latin term publicus, where we get public from, means belonging to the people, belonging to the state, belonging to the community. So it's not where an act takes place, but the nature of the act itself. And it's relevant to the state or the community that defines whether something is public or something is private. So it's not about a space being public or private, it's an act that goes on within a space. So let me give you a really good, good example. Romans loved their multi seater toilets. They got plenty of multi seater toilets in Ostia, the port that I've talked about. Multi seater toilets that could house 20 or so people at one time. Now we would say going to the toilet is absolutely, you know, you do it singly on your own. You know, going to the toilet on a multi seater toilet was totally a private act in Rome because it held no relevance to the state or the community. It was only ever something of the person. Conversely, community or state related activities could and very often took part in the house. So you've got meetings taking place in the house and they would be public irrespective of the fact they were taking place in the house. Because yes, they were taking place in a domestic setting. But what was being dealt with was of relevance to the state or the community. So the house really blurred the boundaries of what we think of as public and private. So yes, you would get really private activities of going to the toilet or weaving or sleeping or food preparation. That is all private because it's not of the community. But you would also then have important rituals also taking place in the house that would have a public role. So for example, the salutatio, that early morning meet and greet session that I've talked about. Likewise there were also public facing events that would start in the house and then move into the urban realm of the street. So the wedding or the funeral.
- [34:45]
Podcast Host
So we can't think about this very much as we might today. We're saying the home is secure, it's sacred to me. I will let people in at my own pleasure, at my own convenience. It's a very different function for the.
- [35:00]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Roman house in many ways. Yes. And I mean, I think it's worth remembering that there were doors and there were curtains and there were partitions so you could separate spaces off. So at least they were visually not accessible. So that could be done. And the big, big front doors of houses that we see in Pompeii, you know, we know they were shut at night, we know they were shut during funerals when there's been a death in the family, because the house was seen as polluted because of the death. So you had to go through the whole funerary ritual to cleanse the family. So there were times, absolutely that those doors were shut. But we also know that those doors were often, not all the time, but they were often open and people could potentially just look in through the doors as they walked up and down the street.
- [35:55]
Podcast Host
Okay, so I suppose we've talked about a few rooms within the Roman house. Now, Sarah Fisher on Instagram, she's asked whether. Whether you might be able to give us a little bit of a tour inside the stereotypical Roman home. So today we have, you know, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom. Typically we may also have things like a home office, a lounge, a dining room, a conservatory. I guess this is going to be a difficult question a little bit if the rooms are sort of multifunctional, but what sort of rooms would we encounter?
- [36:25]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Yeah, actually it's a really good question. And you still know that there are spaces that often had a particular use. It's just you could use a room for a lot of different things. And actually the rooms that we have can to an extent map onto the Roman house so we can see similarities there. So, as I say, I mean, you walk in, you've got the four seas, which is the sort of entrance, walkway, maybe a bit like a sort of vestibule or a porch that some houses have today. For example, you know, I then mentioned the atrium, which is really quite like our reception, our hallway. You then in Pompeian houses, very particularly in Pompeian and main houses of mainland Italy, generally you would look through as you stood in the atrium. The room straight ahead of you was called the Tablinum. Now, this started life as the master bedroom of the house. But as houses grew and as families changed and evolved and so on, it became used as almost the library, the study where you would store ancestor records, where you would keep any business documents, where the master of the house might actually do some further elements of. Of the meet and greet, salutatio process. And then often around the atrium, we've got smaller rooms that might lend themselves to being bedrooms. In Italian, these are cubicular. And you can often see, actually in the decoration of these rooms, you can often see whether they were meant to be or could be used as bedrooms, because the mosaic floor will often show a space that isn't mosaic, and that's where the bed, the couch would sit. There's no point decorating a part of the floor if it's just going to have furniture on it that you won't be able to see the mosaic underneath it. Then you can generally tell where the kitchens were. These were often located at a distance from the main reception areas. These. These were noisy, dirty, dark areas where the enslaved members of the household would be working to produce the food for the household. They were often windowless or had a very small window. And you often find these located down corridors or tucked away. We often see evidence of doorways and door architecture that could be used to close them off. We often know that they're kitchens, not just because they're dark and small, but we can often see the ovens there. And then perhaps the best room of all, the dining room. Now, this was a place for elite families to really show their wealth. These could be very opulently decorated with amazing wall paintings, with amazing furniture, couches that would be festooned in fabrics and cushions and so on. The guests would sort of prop themselves up on these couches. The guests would be arranged according to perceived status, and then they would be served food that would be brought to them by the enslaved members of the household. So the dining room was a very, very important room for wealthy display. And as I said earlier in our discussion, I mentioned the fact that some houses would have, you know, more than one dining room. So you might have summer dining rooms, winter dining rooms and so on. Of course, houses often had more than one story. A lot of these upper storeys don't survive, particularly in Pompeii, because of Vesuvius's eruption. So, you know, they might even have an upstairs dining room that might be a more informal dining room, where the family would just eat just as a sort of daily thing, and then they would have their guests come and dine in the triclinium downstairs, the really opulent, showy room.
- [40:38]
Podcast Host
I mean, you've given us a real sense of what it might have been like inside. Now, you've joined us before on the podcast to discuss life inside your own home, give us that real multisensory experience or to from the smells of the kitchen, the surprises we might expect at the dining table. So houses seem to have been designed almost to create spectacle or impress visitors the moment they entered. Could you tell us more about the decor, what we could have seen in terms of that?
- [41:10]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
So the decor could be astounding, to be honest. What's really interesting is even in often the small, smaller of the houses, you can get some really ornate decor. And I think the other question here is, what do we mean by decor? You know, I think about decor and I think, oh, okay, so the colour of the walls and the floor. But actually decoration in Roman housing was thinking about, yes, wall paintings and floor mosaics, fine. But also then thinking about things like the fabrics, thinking about things like the furniture itself, thinking about things like the candelabras, the lighting you might use, thinking about the sculptures you might have on display in your garden or in your triclinium and so on. And actually furniture itself could be really quite decorative. Often the less well off houses would have wooden furniture and then they would put cushions and fabrics on those to make them more comfortable. But some houses, some of the really wealthier houses would have marble and bronze or bronze inlaid furniture and again would decorate these with fabrics and cushions and so on and so forth. But I think it is really interesting that when you take a snapshot of the houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum and that is where we get our best evidence for decoration, because of the way Vesuvius erupted, which actually protected the residences and the city as a whole. Under all that layer of ash and lava, we see that many of the houses have decoration within them. Yes, there may be some rooms, like the kitchen, which are very sparsely decorated, if at all. But actually, what's really interesting is that even the lower status houses really do display decor to some extent or other.
- [43:16]
Podcast Host
I guess given that some of these rooms might be used for entertaining or bringing those people from outside in, it's all about putting your best foot forward.
- [43:26]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Absolutely. If you're thinking about part of your house might be used for business, you may very well have clients come to your house and you want them to.
- [43:36]
Podcast Host
See your wherewithal very much showing that you're capable and someone that someone would.
- [43:43]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Want to do business with. Exactly right. And also Rome is very much a society of precedence, but also competition and keeping up with each other. And what you see one person doing, what you see your neighbor doing, that sort of concept of, well, they can do it, so I want to do it. So I mean there's a really interesting notion of this sort of trickle down effect. So what the elite are doing is then copied by the lower echelons of society.
- [44:11]
Podcast Host
You mentioned earlier about the use of water and access to water as a real opportunity to show your wealth, show that luxury. I've got a question from Charlotte Buntoro on Instagram and also wilco0108 also on Instagram and they've asked how many homes would have had underfloor heating. I think today this is again something that we might consider a bit of a luxury. Was it the case in Rome?
- [44:38]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
Yeah, very much so. So the hypercore system really important for us to think about because that's what we think the Romans were all about and it was really important. It heated their baths, it heated other spaces too. So the heat from the hypocaust, yes, it was used to heat underfloor heating. But actually we've got a number of houses where we've got evidence of box flue tiles in the walls so that actually they could heat the walls of the rooms as well. We know that the idea of heating your house, that was a really important way of doing it, but it wasn't for everyone. It certainly, certainly was not. To have a hypercore system in one's house was a big sign of wealth. It would have, you know, really generally only have been present in examples of those really opulent wealthy dwellings, you know, some of those dwellings, for example, that might have their own private bath houses, they didn't even need to go to the general baths, they could just have fun in their own spaces. And actually I think it's quite useful to think about why it was such a sign of wealth because rather it wasn't the essential thing to have because it took significant effort to build, it took significant effort to maintain. So the outlay of building a hypocaust in terms of the labor, in terms of the materials was huge. Thinking about actually the engineering skill behind it, not everyone is going to be able to build a hypercaust. You know, there is huge amount of skill behind that building process and then you've actually got to be able to run the hypercourst and have it working in the first place anyway. So it really would have taken considerable finances to build a hypocaust within your house.
- [46:37]
Podcast Host
It seems that some of the things that we might take for granted today, having access to water, having access to heats, having access to then being able to cool your house down as well, these are sort of utilities to us. Were there any other things that were considered real luxuries, real niceties to have in a Roman home?
- [46:58]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
So I suppose I could reiterate, having your own bath house was something, having a hypocaust. But actually, I mean, I suppose even just owning more than one house was quite something. It was a sign of real status and standing if you had more than one. And you know, people like Cicero, that really well known philosopher, statesman and so on, I mean he had at least eight residences. But I think the other things that would be luxuries, it could actually be the way in which people spent their fortunes in other ways. I'm thinking about, you know, fashionable clothing, I'm thinking about elaborate jewellery, thinking about gemstones. Romans loved amber, they loved pearls, they had quite a thing for uncut diamonds, as we all might things that were imported. So ivories imported from Africa, silks imported from over towards China. And in fact, actually there was quite a worry about imported silks from China that actually the Roman Senate tried to restrict access to silk for fear of the immorality. This would encourage the moral decline. It might encourage so anything like fine wines, exotic spices, all of that was a really good way of showing your wherewithal to others. I guess one other thing I would say is whilst owning a slave in and of itself was not a luxury, you know, Rome was a slave based economy and actually even many of the really relatively poorer households would likely have one or two enslaved people living under their roofs. But the number of slaves you had, where your slaves came from, yet how skilled your slaves were, that really was a sign of wealth and luxury.
- [48:57]
Podcast Host
So I suppose, Hannah, taking in everything that we've spoken about, all the different features, the functions, the style of Roman homes, I've got a question for you. And that is, if we were to travel back in time, would you have wanted to live in, in a Roman home? Would you recommend it?
- [49:17]
Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
This is a really hard question. Well, I'd quite like to live in one of the nice elite houses. That'd be quite cool. But to be honest though, even the insular houses, they could be really quite opulent actually. So even those houses, those flats in Ostia, you know, they could be really well decorated. So actually we shouldn't just think of oh, the Domus house as being the opulent house and multi apartments being not so good. But would I like to live in one of these houses? Well, yes, I would like to live in one of the elite houses. I think I might find it slightly garish with all the colour on the walls because they did like quite big, bold decoration and a lot of it. So I think I might find that a bit headachy. I'd love it. I'd actually love it, just to be honest. Yeah, I say to my students all the time, I just want to. I want someone to develop a time machine so that I can go back and see what it was like. I'm not sure I'd live there entirely, fully, forevermore, but I would like to go back and see. Yeah, I really would. I really, really, really, really, really, really would. If I had to stay there for very long, I think I'd need to be living in something like an imperial palace or, I don't know, one of the big houses in Pompeii, like the House of the Menander or the House of the Fawn or something like that. I think I wouldn't want to struggle. Should we say anyone out there? Any skills in time travel? Please, I want to know. I really, really want to know.
- [50:59]
Emily Briffitt
That was Dr. Hannah Paul Platz, lecturer in Ancient History and Material Culture at Royal Holloway University of London and the author of Multi Sensory Living in Ancient Power and Space in Roman Houses. In this episode she was speaking to Emily Briffet. Hannah has also previously appeared on the podcast to offer a tour of the sounds, smells and tastes of the Roman home and an episode of Our Toilets Through Time series in which she paid a visit to the pungent world of Roman latrines. You can find those now, wherever you listen. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Emily Briffitt
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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Dr. Hannah Paul Platz
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