Housing the Dead: the tomb as house in Roman Italy - Divinity School

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8 constituting him as a family member. The curse excludes him simultaneously from the gods of the house, di penates, and the gods below, di inferi. The function of the tomb then is to facilitate that link. The display of those united around the di penates, the family gods of the living house, projects their unity into the underworld, the house of the dead. In the end, Vesonius stands stripped to eternity of his pseudo-family, uncertain what to display to the outside world, to the passing hospes. But we should not shed a tear for him too hastily. One of the most important features of Pompeian tombs is the survival within them of individual headstones, called columellae, which often bear the name of the buried. There were no less than 18 such headstones within Vesonius’ tomb. Apart from himself and his patrona, Vesonia, we find a Vesonius Proculus, who died at 13, a Vesonia Urbana, who lived to 20, and a (H)eliodorus, who lived to 18. At this point we can only guess the story. The patrona sounds to have been his partner as well as former owner. Presumably they are the parents of Vesonius Proculus and Vesonia Urbana. Heliodorus should be one of their slaves, as in all likelihood are the 13 other unnamed columellae, unless any of them were freedmen. At least we can be confident Marcus Ofellius was not among them. The interior of the tomb thus reconstitutes the family so partially glimpsed on the exterior. To explore in detail this two-faced internal/external aspect of the tomb throughout Roman Italy would strain the limits of space and time of this paper. Instead, I wish to illustrate what seem to be the substantial changes over time of Roman practice by exemplifying three moments: the first, a mid-Republican moment when Roman material culture still has palpable links to Etruscan practice, through the tomb of the Scipios; the second, a moment of late Republican/early Imperial transition seen through the necropolis of the Porta Nocera at Pompeii; the third, the high imperial tradition of the ‘house-tombs’ of the metropolis seen through the tomb of Valerius Herma beneath St Peter’s. In each case, I shall risk overgeneralization through exemplification; but my interest is underlining the substantial contrasts across time as much as the continuities. The mid-Republic and the tomb of the Scipios The dearth of evidence from Rome of either houses or tombs predating the late Republic, coupled with the sharp imbalance in evidence from Etruria in the same period between abundant tombs and scarce houses, has long meant that Etruscan tombs have had to work very heavily to supply the gaps in our knowledge of housing in both areas, and of tombs in Rome. Carandini’s excavations at the foot of the Palatine, coupled with the chance discovery of a suburban villa site beneath Renzo
9 Piano’s new Auditorium, now mean we are on better ground in talking about Roman houses of the period between the sixth and second centuries. Even so, it is striking to observe how in Carandini’s publication of the Palatine houses, Etruscan tombs are still put under heavy contribution to establish the development of the atrium houses (Carandini and Carafa 1995, esp 237ff, 266ff- see Fig. 6). Just how plausible are Carandini’s reconstructions of house plans of sixth-century Roman atriate houses with central impluvia is not a theme I wish to pursue here, though it must be said it takes courage to reconstruct an entire atrium-house when your only evidence is the odd disjointed fragment of walling. That Etruscan tombs have long seemed to offer a reflection of housing is scarcely surprising. Consider the striking transformation that takes places in the Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri in the late archaic period (Fig.7). In the seventh century the cemetery is characterised by circular tumuli, some very large, some quite modest. The burial chambers beneath them appear in plan rather like bacilli: long corridors with short side elements towards the end, and a culminating chamber. Then in the early sixth century the form of the burial chambers beneath the tumuli changes significantly. They become square in plan, with a characteristic three-fold division: short entrance flanked by two chambers lead to a wide central chamber, and at its back, a group of three equal cells. The formal links with the atrium house seem irresistible: fauces flanked by two rooms lead into atrium, leading to tablinum flanked by two rooms. Then in the late sixth century, the tumulus shell is dropped, to be replaced by neatly aligned streets of ‘cube tombs’ (‘tombe a dado’). We seem to be witnessing an urban revolution, a move from villages of huts to colonial cities laid out on a grid pattern. At the same period we find these neat streets of tombs at a number of other sites, including the necropoli del Crocifisso del Tufo at Orvieto, and the Monterozzi cemetery at Tarquinia. It seems quite reasonable to interpret these tombs as deliberately evoking a domestic parallel. This seems to be underlined by the evocation of domestic features like windows, doors and pilasters, and particularly by the ceilings which often evoke a pitched roof, with central beam and downwards sloping rafters. Yet these pitched roofs are as ambivalent as those of the Vatican ‘house tombs’. Colonna, followed by Carandini, argues strongly for the introduction of the compluviate roof and central impluvium from as early as the sixth century (Colonna 1986). That is the rereading of the fifth-century houses of Marzabotto, long supposed to have been covered by displuviate, outwardsloping, pitched roofs, but now argued on the basis of their internal drainage arrangements to have been compluviate. If it is the case that as early as the sixth and fifth centuries, the characteristic
Page 1 and 2: Housing the Dead: the tomb as house
Page 3 and 4: haec domus aeterna est, hic sum sit
Page 5 and 6: 5 internal architectural arrangemen
Page 7: 7 his wife in on the display (Sat.
Page 11 and 12: 11 external display of status. Inde
Page 13 and 14: The visit to the tomb, like the vie
Page 15 and 16: 15 (Fig.17), with its symmetrically
Page 17 and 18: 17 By my argument, then, these tomb
Page 19 and 20: 19 The early loss of his four year
Page 21 and 22: 21 After this extraordinary catalog
Page 23 and 24: 23 though I have tried to underline
Page 25 and 26: Housing the Dead: the tomb as house
Page 27 and 28: Fig. 3 Tombs at gate of Ostia with
Page 29 and 30: Fig. 8 Tomb of Volumnii, Perugia, v
Page 31 and 32: Fig. 14 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome,
Page 33 and 34: Fig. 19. Tomb of Flavius Philoxenus
Page 35 and 36: Fig. 24 Tomb of C Veranius Rufus Q.
Page 37 and 38: Fig. 28 Tomb of Valerius Herma, nec

Housing the Dead: the tomb as house in Roman Italy - Divinity School

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