Floor of Triclinium – House of the Triumph of Neptune at Acholla
(Tunisia)
For the upper
class Roman, his entire house was a critical element in the lifelong and
all-encompassing work of self-advertisement. As a perpetual candidate
for one public office after another, whose home was also his office,
where clients, cronies and business associates came to exchange favors
and broker deals, he designed each room down to the last detail to make
precisely the statement he wished to make about himself.The code of
Roman social symbolism was elaborate and the levels of self-presentation straightly hierarchical: certain rooms were fully public and their message
meant for all. An example of this level is the
atrium, a kind of reception
room where tradesmen or casual visitors might be asked to wait.
Still other rooms were reserved for the admission of more
intimate business associates or clients; such was the
tablinum or personal office.
Only close friends, peers, or those one really hoped to impress would be
invited to dinner, so the triclinium, or dining room, constitutes a third and more important
level of social coding. The visual language of social symbolism was as
commonly understood by the ruling class as their Latin speech, and could
be read at multiple levels simultaneously.
On the surface,
the decorations of a room might feature use-appropriate imagery simply
to identify it. This décor could take the form of wall or ceiling
paintings, for example, or pictorial floor mosaics. Since only rarely
have the painted walls or ceilings of Roman houses been preserved, one
of the most useful features for identifying room use is floor mosaics.
Thus we might expect the floor of a dining room to display images
associated with food or drink, eating and partying. In actuality this is
not as common as one might expect. What are far commoner are oblique
references to drinking in particular; often these take the form of
images of Bacchus, the god of wine, frequently in a mythological
setting; or images of grape vines and grapes. The advantage of such
subtle referencing is that it not only proclaims that this is a room
where wine will flow, but that the master of the house is a
well-educated fellow who knows his Greek mythology.
Far less common
are direct references to food or eating, although they do occur from one
end of the empire to the other, and from the earliest period at which we
find mosaics until the late days of the empire.
One of the earliest
examples of food on the floor (1st c. BCE), and one with the greatest
amount of context preserved, is the floor of the triclinium in the House
of the Faun at Pompeii.
This enormous and luxurious house actually predates the Roman occupation
of
Pompeii; the owners were a
wealthy family of Samnites, a highly civilized tribe of mercantile
Italians. As neighbors of the Greek settlements in
Italy, the Samnites were heavily
influenced by Hellenistic Greek styles and tastes even before the Romans
embraced them. The dining room floor features a central
emblema, or discrete
pictorial image, of Bacchus riding a tiger, a reference to the god’s
triumphal procession to
India, part of his mythology. As
such, it is an appropriate indication of the drinking that will take
place in the room. But at a deeper level the scene is a veiled reference
to Alexander the Great, who also conquered the East. The validity of
this reading is strengthened by the fact that the entire house is filled
with references to Alexander and especially to Alexandria, the Egyptian
city founded by Alexander. A second
emblema, seemingly with no
connection to the first, depicts an assortment of fish, biologically
correct in every detail, At the center of the scene are the unlikely
pair of a lobster and a squid locked in combat. To be sure, this image
evokes the promise of delicious bouillabaisse to come:
Pompeii
was a coastal town and seafood was an important element of any Italian
banquet. But the surprising combination precisely of a lobster and a
squid is an unmistakable reference to Aristotle’s On the Generation
of Animals, a treatise on what is essentially the food chain. Very
likely the entire scene, which occurs elsewhere in the
Pompeii
area as well, derives from a copybook version of a
famous painting, an illustration of Aristotle such as might have been
found in
Alexandria’s famous library or in the attached
research center known as the
Mouseion. Thus to those in the know, the Samnite host identifies
himself with the Alexandrian lifestyle, learned and luxurious at once.
It is even possible that his family fortune was made through commerce in
the Eastern Mediterranean, centered on the
port
of
Alexandria.
A similar evocation of Hellenistic luxury is conjured up by versions of
the brilliant trompe l’oeil called the Unswept Floor (Asarotos
Oikos), which occur in Pompeii,
at the emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli,
and in various provincial locations. They are all linear descendants of
the 2nd
c. original created for the royal palace
of
Pergamum
by the Greek artist Sosos, according to Pliny.
The unswept floor depicts the detritus of a banquet: crab claws, grape
pips, snail shells, even a marauding mouse, executed in deceptively
three-dimensional style. It bespeaks the conspicuous consumption that
has marked the recent banquet, and of course for the Roman adaptors it
also evokes palace life in the fabulous east. But beyond that, the
wittiness of this floor treatment is manifest: one is almost afraid to
step for fear of “smushing” something. Identifying the various bits of
garbage must have amused the diners then even as it does viewers today.
The host marks himself as a man of sophisticated humor, and one who
appreciates his Old Masters.
From the 2nd
century CE we have three examples of food on the floor. One is from the
villa at
Marbella (Malaga)
in
Spain.
The mosaic scheme throughout the house consists of black and white
geometric patterns, with occasional
emblemata in color. Along the
edge of the covered walkway or peristyle that edges the courtyard which
forms the heart of a Roman house, a decorative band appears only across
the face of the walkway fronting the house’s two dining rooms. This
consists of a frieze of cooking implements, cups of drink, and cuts of
meat—rabbit, chicken and pork ribs. Most are executed in black
silhouette as if hanging against a white background; others in white
silhouette, laid upon black trays or tabletops. The chief purpose of
this decoration, unique in the house, seems to have been to identify the
dining rooms behind, or more precisely to mark the way to the rooms. The
interior courtyard of a house, where its familial dining rooms, bedrooms
and specialized reception rooms were located, was the most privileged
area of the establishment, where only one’s intimate friends and family
would be invited. Thus the coded secondary meaning may be seen as a
combination of plenty and hospitality—but also of intimacy, informality.
Offering the guest a glimpse of the preparatory stages of the meal as he
approaches is rather like the gesture of inviting a guest into the
kitchen nowadays: “consider yourself part of the family.”
Another example
from the 2nd century is found in the House of the Triumph of
Neptune at Acholla in modern Tunisia,
ancient
Proconsular Africa. Here the smaller of the two triclinia is adorned with a
geometric grid of small emblemata
of foodstuffs: baskets of fruit, fish, birds and game animals. This is a
very common style of decoration in
North Africa,
where scenes of daily life
predominate over mythological subjects as nowhere else. Such still life
patterns are called by modern scholars xenia, the Greek word for
hospitality, since according to one level of reading they evoke the
ostentatious plenty offered to guests in this wealthy province.
Elsewhere in Acholla, the contemporary House of the Lobster shows a
similar array of xenia panels featuring the eponymous lobster, a
gazelle, deer, peacock, guinea fowl, goat and also artichokes and
baskets of fruit.
Occasionally we
see the more ungainly image of dismembered joints of meat. At Enfidaville in
Proconsular Africa
there appears what is clearly a thigh, perhaps of sheep, as at Cherchel,
also in Africa—but its context is lost. Perhaps it is part of a grid of
xenia. A very similar emblema comes from the House at Micklegate Bar in
York,
England.
Possibly the secondary reference is to meat offered in sacrifice, or
even to the sparagmos, the
rending apart of live animals practiced by the ecstatic devotees of
Bacchus. This may identify the owner of the house as a votary of
Bacchus, or simply be yet another advertence to the divine madness of
drunkenness: how can one criticize guests who fall into such a state
when it is the gift of a god?
One of the most
open references to the menu itself is found at Antioch in the
province of
Syria,
at the House of the Buffet Supper (e. 3rd c. CE). Here emblemata of dishes of eggs and other
appetizers begin the grid, followed by fish, ham and fowl, typical
entrees. Finally a cake represents dessert. All three images are
surrounded by breads, drinking vessels, and the garlands that decorated
tables and diners alike at a Roman banquet. The owner wants to identify
himself as a thorough and impeccable host. The grid is centered by two
large scenes: in one, Ganymede, the cupbearer of the gods, gives drink
to the eagle of Jupiter; in another an overflowing wine bowl is
surrounded by birds. Of course this proclaims “here we shall eat and
drink like gods,” but there may be a political subtext as well. The
eagle is also the imperial bird of
Rome.
Perhaps the owner of this Syrian house is implying that he enriches or
feeds the empire, either as a merchant or gentleman farmer or as a
bureaucrat, and that lesser beings find him a generous patron, even as
the birds drink from the great vessel while the proud peacock looks on.
Niki Holmes Kantzios
Niki Holmes Kantzios received her MA and PhD in
Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from BrynMawrCollege,
and a BA in Classical Studies from the University
of Texas at
Arlington. She has done fieldwork in
Greece and Israel, and as a professional artist
has also served as illustrator for many articles and excavation reports.
Her teaching experience has ranged from grade school to college age,
from the Latin language to anthropology to history. She is currently an
instructor at the
University of
South Florida, teaching Classics courses
in the History and Humanities Departments.
there appears what is clearly a thigh, perhaps of sheep, as at Cherchel,
also in Africa—but its context is lost. Perhaps it is part of a grid of
xenia. A very similar emblema comes from the House at Micklegate Bar in
