ABSTRACT
Just as the stage in a theater gives power and presence to the actors who perform on it, critics have recently come to see the architecture and decoration of the Roman house working together to create a kind of private “powerhouse”2 reinforcing the authority of the dominus. The relationships between rooms and the paintings (especially mythological) in those rooms define spaces where the owner put himself and his personal tastes on display to a select clientele. In Wallace-Hadrill’s own words,3 “we must treat the house as a coherent structural whole, as a stage deliberately designed for the performance of social rituals, and not as a museum of artifacts.” He concludes that the patronus used his house as much for public social rituals as for his private life – an idea generally quite foreign to us in contemporary society.
