Book contents
- Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Kinship ‘In the Halls’
- 2 Domesticating the Ancient House
- 3 Mind the Gap
- 4 A Family Affair
- 5 Textiles in Alkestis’ thalamos
- 6 Architectural Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Architecture
- 7 The Reconstruction of an Agricultural Landscape
- 8 Mudbricks and Papyri from the Desert Sand
- 9 Housing and Community
- 10 The Elusive vestibulum
- 11 Living in the Liminal
- 12 Experiencing Sense, Place and Space in the Roman Villa
- 13 Houses and Time
- 14 Spaces of Desire
- 15 A Response: ‘Using the Material and Written Sources’ Revisited
- Index
- References
10 - The Elusive vestibulum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2022
- Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Kinship ‘In the Halls’
- 2 Domesticating the Ancient House
- 3 Mind the Gap
- 4 A Family Affair
- 5 Textiles in Alkestis’ thalamos
- 6 Architectural Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Architecture
- 7 The Reconstruction of an Agricultural Landscape
- 8 Mudbricks and Papyri from the Desert Sand
- 9 Housing and Community
- 10 The Elusive vestibulum
- 11 Living in the Liminal
- 12 Experiencing Sense, Place and Space in the Roman Villa
- 13 Houses and Time
- 14 Spaces of Desire
- 15 A Response: ‘Using the Material and Written Sources’ Revisited
- Index
- References
Summary
The archetypical elite Roman house (domus) was entered through the vestibulum. In what is the locus classicus, Aulus Gellius defines the vestibulum as a ‘vacant place before the entrance, midway between the door of the house and the street’ (Gellius 16.5). More than a hundred classical texts inform us about the characteristics of vestibula, but for all this textual evidence, ‘real’ vestibula have been remarkably hard to find in the archaeological record. This chapter offers a study of Roman domestic vestibula on the basis of both literary and archaeological sources. In the first part, it is argued that most architectural rooms or spaces that have been labelled as vestibula do not correspond to vestibula as described in the textual evidence. In the second part, a number of reasons for this mismatch are reviewed, after which new ways of dealing with both kinds of evidence are offered, to overcome the discrepancies between the sources.
- Type
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- Information
- Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean WorldMaterial and Textual Approaches, pp. 322 - 353Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022