Part 2: The Stratigraphy : Trenches in the Area of the Forum, and IX D North : Forum V : Phase I: Republican Construction

Fig. 5: The House of Diana in the republican period. (EF)

In the front two-thirds of the house, the plan was to remain relatively consistent throughout the life of the building (fig. 4 and fig. 5, pl. 2; see part I). It is a plan immediately recognizable from some of the older patrician houses at Pompeii¹³: the narrow fauces (A) flanked by tabernae open to the Forum (C to the southeast, D to the northwest) gave onto a large, square atrium (B) centered on an impluvium. Paired cubicula were located symmetrically on either side of the atrium (to the southeast, the original pair were located in the space that later became room E; to the northwest, from east to west, the cubicula are F and G), and beyond these, the space of the atrium was extended to the left and right by open alae (I and H, respectively). A large tablinum (J) opened from the back of the atrium, directly opposite the fauces. To the right of the tablinum was a door leading to another large room (K), probably a triclinium, while to the left a corridor or andron (M)¹⁴ led past a service room (L) to the rear of the house. In the front of the house, the rooms opening on the Forum retain their original walls, as do the fauces and the northwestern cubicula. The walls shared by the atrium and the southeastern cubicula are original; although the wall between the two cubicula on this side was later removed, the original layout is indicated by a blocked door corresponding to the door of room F (see part I, p. 16). The walls shared by the tablinum and the triclinium are also original, as are the walls shared by the tablinum and the andron.

The situation in the rear of the house is somewhat less clear, since this area seems to have been frequently altered from the Republican period onwards. The northwest two-thirds seem to have formed a garden from the beginning, but the northeastern limit of this garden is obscured by the later floors of the triclinium (K) and the loggia behind the tablinum (Q). The door between K and the atrium, later blocked, suggests that this room was initially oriented to the northeast; by analogy with early Pompeian houses¹⁵, it seems reasonable to suggest that K was originally closed to the southwest by a wall along the same line as the southwest wall of the tablinum. Southwest of R, more bedrock foundations seem to show that the square room (N) present in the last phase of the house occupies more or less the same space as the original room in that area. The earliest room here, however, possessed an additional internal wall (442) that seems, from limited excavation beneath later floors, to have run northeast-southwest through the room about 1.75 meters from the original wall between it and the garden. 442 divided the drainage area from the rest of the space of N and bonded with the paving-slabs that covered it. Through the wall and down into the drain opening ran a flat terracotta channel with upturned flanges along its sides (pl. 50). This channel, together with the other drainage arrangements in this room, suggests the identification of room N as a small bath house, with water possibly heated in the culina, L¹⁶.

The narrow rectangular room (S) in the southwest corner of the house also seems to have been a feature of the original plan. Its northeast wall (235) has been destroyed down to ground level, but the few remnants seem to show pis» construction and seem to bond with the external northwest-south wall of the house. Two plastered blocks (308) closing off the east side of the rock-cut pit to the northwest of this room continue the line of 235 and are probably also an original feature, but the precise relation between the pit and the room remains unclear. By analogy with houses of similar date at Pompeii, and by association with both garden and bath house, it seems likely that room S served as a raised cistern, with the pit constructed as its settling basin.

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13. See part I, pp. 14-19. The best example is probably the House of Sallust (Laidlaw 1993) although the House of Sextus Pompeius Axiochus (VI 13, 19: most recently, in PPM 202-203) also provides striking parallels; cf. Fentress and Rabinowitz 1996 for a more detailed examination of the comparative evidence.

14. To avoid confusion with another corridor in the rear of the house, I will apply the Vitruvian term "andron" to M for the rest of the discussion.

15. Laidlaw 1993.

16. The location of this room in the back of the house, near the kitchen, is consistent with the location of a number of Republican bath rooms. The earliest of these bath areas tended to be composed only of one or two rooms, and most seem to reflect a concern with distancing bathing activity from the more ÏpublicÓ or visible areas of the house. The general simplicity of the earliest phase of room N does not necessarily argue against its use as a bath: one must bear in mind SenecaÌs approving mention of the small, dank, dingy bath appointments in the villa of Scipio Africanus (Ep. Mor. 86). For further material on early Roman private baths, see Fabbricotti 1976; Yegul 1992; Broise 1991; Lafon 1991.