Houses and apartments
Houses
The houses that were inhabited by families of more than average wealth, testifying to the wealth of the owner, are called domus. These houses must as a rule have been owned by the inhabitants, and we may assume that the lay-out and the arrangements were discussed by the first inhabitants, the architect, painters and mosaicists. Sometimes rich houses are found in blocks of rented apartments, opening up the possibility that they were let out. Many domus have external staircases, that is, staircases accessible directly from the street. These obviously led to separate habitations. The upper floor dwellings may have been rented apartments, but they may also have been put at the disposal of freedmen or clientes of the owner of the domus.
If the group is taken as a whole, the following set of features found often or always in the domus can be compiled. The facade is characterized by shops, one or more staircases, long walls with no or few windows, and an accentuated main entrance, especially by a porch. The entrance has two or three doors: a main gate, and one or two minor doors. An important change that took place in the domus in the course of time concerns the central rooms. The earliest domus are of the well-known Pompeian kind, with atrium and peristylium. In Ostia most of the houses of this kind were demolished later and built over. In the course of the first century AD the atrium and peristylium as organizing rooms were abandoned. Instead a courtyard with ambulatory is found, around which the rooms are arranged.
Most of the Ostian domus have been dated to the third, fourth and early fifth century AD. The interior of these later houses has an axial lay-out. The axis runs through the main entrance, or is at a right angle to it. First one encounters a vestibule, often large, and often with benches. Nearby are the door-keeper's rooms. The rest of the building is organized around one or more areas without a roof. These are often the central areas, with an ambulatory. Surrounding these areas are rooms of special importance, in view of their size, decoration, wide entrance (often tripartite), level (often at a somewhat higher level), and height (often two stories high). Furthermore we may find small bedrooms, a kitchen, a latrine, and one or more stairs. The servants' quarters were on the upper floors. The furnishing of the ground floor is characterized by expensive decoration of the floors, walls and ceilings. Statues and fountains are not unusual.
Sometimes it is very difficult or even impossible to distinguish between a domus and the seat of a guild. During the meetings of the members of a guild, meals or distributions of food and money took place, and religious activities focusing on the protective deity of the guild or the Imperial cult. As a result spacious areas, a water-supply, dining-couches, inscriptions recording donations, and shrines were present. A number of guild-seats has an axial lay-out, consisting of a vestibule flanked by shops, and a courtyard behind which is an accentuated room. Accentuated rooms could also be next to the courtyard. Other seats are arranged around a temple. The seats are identified as such primarily through inscriptions found in the buildings. Apart from the inscriptions three features exclude a residential function: a large number of dining-couches, the arrangement of the rooms around a relatively large temple, and the absence of small, private rooms.
Apartments
The overwhelming majority of the population of Ostia lived in rented apartments. Apartments were called cenacula, as we learn from Roman civil law:
| Qui insulam triginta conduxerat, singula caenacula ita conduxit, ut quadraginta ex omnibus colligerentur. | A man who rented a house for thirty aurei, sub-let the cenacula on such terms that he collected forty for all of them. |
| Digesta 19.2.30.pr. Translation S.P. Scott. | |
Most of the apartments were located on upper floors, of which hardly anything has been preserved (the lower part of a few rooms behind a corridor on the first floor of the House of Diana (I,III,3-4) for example). We have to use our imagination to visualize the upper floors with apartments, supported by walls that were often 60 centimeters (two Roman feet) thick. Fortunately several clusters of rather expensive apartments have been found on the ground floor. The size of these apartments is considerable. The average ground floor area is c. 200 square meters. Often at least one upper floor should be added. They have a clear, standard lay-out. Seen from outside such an apartment appears as a rectangular building with many windows in one of the long outer walls. The main entrance is fairly unobtrusive. The lay-out of the interior is asymmetrical, and characterized by rooms arranged around three sides of a central hall (nr. 4 on the plan). The entrance sometimes opens directly onto this central hall, but often leads to a corridor or small vestibule (1). Next to the vestibule may be a latrine and a staircase (2). The central, connecting hall (4) has a ceiling and receives light through windows in one of the long walls. On either end of this organizing area is a main room, the one (7) larger than the other (3). Sometimes these rooms are two stories high. They too have windows in one of the walls. Behind the central hall and sometimes behind the main rooms as well are small rooms, usually receiving indirect light (5-6).
Plan of an expensive, standard apartment. From Hermansen 1982, fig. 8.
The ancient names of the rooms were derived by Gustav Hermansen from written sources, primarily once more from Roman civil law, dealing with "those who pour anything out or throw anything down":
| Si plures in eodem cenaculo habitent, unde deiectum est, in quemvis haec actio dabitur, cum sane impossibile est scire, quis deiecisset vel effudisset ... Si vero plures diviso inter se cenaculo habitent, actio in eum solum datur, qui inhabitabat eam partem, unde effusum est. Si quis gratuitas habitationes dederit libertis et clientibus vel suis vel uxoris, ipsum eorum nomine teneri Trebatius ait. Quod verum est. Idem erit dicendum et si quis amicis suis modica hospitiola distribuerit. Nam et si quis cenaculariam exercens ipse maximam partem cenaculi habeat, solus tenebitur. Sed si quis cenaculariam exercens modicum sibi hospitium retinuerit, residuum locaverit pluribus, omnes tenebuntur quasi in hoc cenaculo habitantes, unde deiectum effusumve est. Interdum tamen, quod sine captione actoris fiat, oportebit praetorem aequitate motum in eum potius dare actionem, ex cuius cubiculo vel exedra deiectum est, licet plures in eodem cenaculo habitent. Quod si ex mediano cenaculi quid deiectum sit, verius est omnes teneri. | Where several persons occupy the same cenaculum and something is thrown down from it, this action will be granted against any one of them, since it is absolutely impossible to know which of them threw it down or poured it out ... Where several persons occupy a cenaculum divided up among themselves, an action will be granted against him alone who occupied that part from which the pouring out was done. Where anyone gives gratuitous lodgings (habitationes) to his freedmen and his clients or to those of his wife, Trebatius says that he is liable on their account. And this is correct. The rule is the same where a man distributes small lodgings (hospitiola) among his friends. For if anyone lets out lodgings (cenaculariam exercens) and he himself occupies the greater portion of the same, he alone will be liable. But if he lets out lodgings and retains for himself only a small part, leasing the remainder to several persons, they will all be liable as occupying the cenaculum from which the throwing down or pouring out took place. Sometimes, however, when no disadvantage results to the plaintiff, the Praetor, influenced by equitable motives, ought rather to grant an action against the party from whose bedroom (cubiculum) or hall (exedra) the object was thrown down, even though several persons occupy the same cenaculum. But if anything should be thrown down from the room in the middle (medianum) of the apartment, the better opinion is that all are liable. |
| Digesta 9.3.1.10-9.3.5.2. Translation S.P. Scott - Alan Watson. | |
We learn that the apartments were usually let out, but could also be put at the disposal of family, dependents and friends of the owners. They had a central room called medianum, "room in the middle" (nr. 4 on the plan; the apartments are today usually referred to as medianum-apartments). This central hall may have been used as a dining-room. The two main rooms (3, 7) were called exedrae. The small rooms behind the medianum (5, 6) were cubicula, bedrooms. Small rooms or rather alcoves behind the exedrae may have been called zothecae (for example in the Houses on Via dei Vigili (II,III,3-4) and the House of the Yellow Walls (III,IX,12)). Pliny mentions such a room, equipped with a bed and two arm-chairs (Letters 2,17,21). But perhaps this was a posh Greek name, not used by many. The people living in these apartments may well have been succesful businessmen who formed part of the city council, the decuriones.
The medianum-apartments have good-quality paintings and black-and-white mosaics with geometric motifs. Some have their own water-supply, witness hacked out niches in some of the Garden Houses (block III,IX), and a floor niche in apartment I,XIV,9. As might be expected, because the buildings were emptied in late antiquity, very little is known about the objects that were used in apartments. Fire-fighters from Rome (vigiles) were stationed in Ostia, and the civil law gives these instructions to their prefect:
| Sciendum est autem praefectum vigilum per totam noctem vigilare debere et coerrare calciatum cum hamis et dolabris, ut curam adhibeant omnes inquilinos admonere, ne neglegentia aliqua incendii casus oriatur. Praeterea ut aquam unusquisque inquilinus in cenaculo habeat, iubetur admonere. | It should be noted that the prefect of the vigiles must be on guard during the entire night, and should make his rounds properly shod, and provided with hooks and axes. He must be careful to notify all occupants of houses not to allow any fire to occur through their negligence. Furthermore each occupant must be directed to always have water in his cenaculum. |
| Digesta 1.15.3.3-4. Translation S.P. Scott. | |
In this way a small starting fire, for example after knocking over an oil lamp, could be extinguished immediately by the inhabitants. Bronze handles were found that may have been used to carry buckets (but they are rather small).
Bronze handle with hooks. L. 0.165. Inv. nr. 4779. Photo: CGBC 1200064891.
The apartments on the upper floors were not necessarily small and simple. During a fire at the end of the third century AD in the House of the Millstones (I,III,1) objects feel down from one or more apartments and were not recovered. The excavators list keys and locks, handles decorated with reliefs, strigils for use in the baths, hairpins, vessels for cosmetics, cutlery and crockery, kitchen utensils, oil lamps, and elaborate candelabra. Parts of black-and-white mosaic floors with geometrical patterns and floral motifs were found, fragments of painted ceilings, parts of marble revetment, and mosaic cubes of glass-paste. Some statuettes must come from a private shrine: Hercules, Jupiter-Serapis, a Dioscure, Minerva, and a Lar on a base with silver acanthus leaves. A small octagonal column with base and capital may well have formed part of the shrine. Silver inlay was found on revetment of furniture. These objects and similar objects found elsewhere in Ostia are known primarily through photos (see the virtual museum of Ostia), but have for the most part not been published.
[JThB - 5-Nov-2024]