Identification and Purpose of Roman Material Remains

Reading a remain as a designed object

Roman material remains were created to do particular jobs: house a family, accommodate spectators, commemorate someone or communicate a message. Their appearance is therefore evidence of choices made by builders, artists and commissioners.

Four questions help establish what you are looking at. Appearance concerns physical features: materials, shape, layout and decoration. Style concerns how those features are treated, such as a columned garden or a monumental stone inscription. Content is what an image or text represents or says. Original location places it within the ancient city, building or room rather than its modern museum setting.

These questions connect to purpose. A street-facing election notice needed to catch passing readers’ attention; a dining-room rule addressed guests already inside a house. The location helps explain both the message and the way it was presented.

Pompeian houses: living space and display

The House of Menander in Pompeii’s Regio I was a substantial home of a high-ranking family. Its atrium contained frescoes depicting scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey. A painting of Menander, an Athenian playwright, in the portico gives the house its modern name. These are different subjects in different parts of the house: the portrait should not be confused with the epic scenes.

Examine the photograph on page 20 of the official Pompeii guide. Columns frame an open planted courtyard, while covered walkways run around its edges. This is the peristyle. Its Rhodian arrangement had a higher northern side. The open garden admitted light and air and provided space for relaxation and social activity; the surrounding architecture and decoration also helped impress visitors. A second household shrine in the garden provided a place to worship the household gods.

The house also had a small bathing area and a service area to the south. The 118 pieces of silverware discovered in a basement included plates, cups and wine-serving vessels used at banquets. Their practical purpose was serving food and drink, but an expensive family service could also make entertaining a display of wealth.

The House of Octavius Quartio in Regio II combined a traditional entrance atrium with an elaborate garden resembling a miniature aristocratic country villa. Two artificial waterways, called euripi, crossed at right angles across garden areas at different heights. Fountains, waterfalls, marble statues and decoration referring to Egypt and Isis made this an ornamental setting rather than simply unused outdoor space.

On page 30 of the same guide, examine the long water channel, columns, overhead beams and surviving wall decoration. These visible features help explain how the garden combined water, planting, shade and decorated spaces. The photograph shows one view, not the complete two-channel layout.

At the eastern end of the upper waterway was a two-couch outdoor dining area beside a cave-like niche with mythological frescoes signed by the artist Lucius. At the western end was a small room apparently dedicated to Isis. Dining, relaxation and worship therefore influenced the garden’s arrangement. The elaborate setting also brought a ‘country’ atmosphere into an urban home.

Herculaneum and Ostia: recognising different uses of space

The House of the Wooden Partition at Herculaneum, III.11, stood on Cardo IV Inferiore. Its defining wooden screen separated the atrium from the tablinum, a room beyond it. A movable division could regulate access and views rather than leaving the rooms permanently open to one another. The atrium contained an impluvium, or rainwater pool, beneath the roof opening, together with a marble table. These features combined water collection, furnishing and display. The substantial façade survived into the second storey, although parts of the original house later became separate dwellings and artisan shops.

The Central Baths at Herculaneum, VI.1, were a public bathing complex rather than a private house. Their entrances reveal the building’s organisation: the principal men’s entrance was on Cardo III; entrances on Cardo IV gave access to the palaestra, the women’s section and the furnace and water-supply service area. Separate access helped different users and staff reach the appropriate spaces. The palaestra provided an exercise area, while the apodyterium was a changing room. In the men’s changing room, a vaulted, stuccoed ceiling and a floor of black, grey and white marble pieces combined a practical interior with attractive decoration.

For the layout, examine Source D on printed page 4 of the OCR June 2022 Roman City Life insert. This is a plan: a view from above, not a picture of the building’s façade. The large rectangular palaestra occupies the centre, with enclosed rooms and passages arranged around it. Follow gaps in the wall outlines to trace connections between spaces. The contrast between the open exercise court and the enclosed bathing rooms helps identify a complex designed for several related activities. The plan establishes these spatial relationships, but does not show the colours, wall decoration or height of the rooms.

The Insula of Diana at Ostia, I.III.3–4, was a brick-built residential block with street-facing shops, stairs, upper-floor accommodation and an internal courtyard. Its shops opened towards Via dei Balconi and Via di Diana: commerce faced the streets, while the courtyard served spaces within the block. Staircases made accommodation above ground level accessible, and a communal latrine provided a shared facility.

Its name comes from a terracotta relief set into the courtyard’s western wall. Diana takes an arrow from her quiver and holds a bow; a dog and deer accompany her. This is an image integrated into the brickwork, not a free-standing statue. It decorated a shared space within the building. The original total height is uncertain, so a precise number of storeys should not be treated as an established identifying feature.

A funerary monument designed to be noticed

The Tomb of Naevoleia Tyche stood outside Pompeii’s Herculaneum Gate, in the roadside necropolis. It was an altar-shaped monument raised on a high base, with an ornamental scrollwork cornice. Its façade faced the street, making its inscription and imagery accessible to passing readers.

Examine Source B on printed page 3 of the OCR June 2022 Roman City Life insert, headed ‘Drawings of the tomb of Naevoleia Tyche’. The left-hand group includes an exterior view, a section through the monument and separate details of a ship and a broad seat. The exterior shows a stepped base supporting a rectangular monument, unlike the circular, columned tomb photographed on page 75 of the Pompeii guide.

The enlarged façade drawing on the right shows a small portrait above a block of lettering, a row of figures below it and curling plant decoration around the panel. Notice how the portrait, words and scene form a single public presentation: they identify and celebrate people rather than merely decorating the stone.

The façade combined Naevoleia’s portrait, an inscription and a scene of grain distribution. On the southern side, a seat represented the public seating honour awarded to her husband, Gaius Munatius Faustus. On the northern side, a ship referred to the trade through which the couple prospered. The carved seat is therefore a symbol of distinction, not seating provided for visitors to the monument. Likewise, the ship communicates commercial success rather than serving a practical funerary function.

Read Source C immediately beneath the drawings, the translation of CIL X 1030. It identifies Naevoleia as the freedwoman of Lucius Naevoleius and names Gaius Munatius Faustus as a member of the Brotherhood of Augustus. It records that the town councillors, with the people’s consent, granted him an honorific seat for his merits. It also states that Naevoleia built the monument during her lifetime for herself, her husband and their freedmen and freedwomen. This connects the seat relief with a specific public honour and the monument with Naevoleia’s own commission.

The monument’s purpose shaped this selection of content: it presented a lasting, public account of the couple’s achievement. It ultimately remained a cenotaph; their ashes were buried in another tomb outside Porta Nocera. Commemoration and actual burial therefore took place at different monuments. The section drawing shows the monument’s internal arrangement, but cannot by itself establish whose remains were placed there.

Entertainment buildings: design serving performance

The Large Theatre in Pompeii’s Regio VIII was built around the middle of the second century BC and refurbished during the Augustan period. Examine page 113 of the official Pompeii guide: curved, rising rows of seats are divided by stairways around the lower performance area. The builders used the natural hillside to support the auditorium. Corridors and stairways organised access; rising seating allowed spectators to look towards the performance.

The theatre staged comedies and tragedies in the Greek and Roman tradition. Refurbishment included work on the stage, numbered seats and a velarium to provide shade. These were responses to the needs of performances and audiences, not merely ornamental additions.

The Colosseum in Rome, also called the Flavian Amphitheatre, was built in the first century AD under the Flavian emperors. Unlike Pompeii’s hillside theatre, it was free-standing and elliptical in plan, with seating surrounding a central arena. Its monumental outer wall used travertine stone. Three tiers of arcades—rows of arches—were framed by engaged columns, attached to the wall, in stacked Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders. These orders are different styles of classical column decoration. Above them stood a tall attic storey decorated with Corinthian pilasters, flat column-like projections. This repeated arrangement of arches and different column styles is a distinctive identifying feature; much of the original outer wall has been lost.

The building accommodated about 50,000 spectators for gladiatorial games and animal hunts. Eighty ground-level entrances, numbered access routes and vomitoria—passages opening into the seating—helped large crowds reach and leave their places. Status-based seating made social distinctions visible within the audience. Beneath the sand-covered wooden arena floor, the hypogeum, added under Domitian, contained passages and holding spaces for animals and performers. Lifts, pulleys and trapdoors enabled dramatic entrances. Its exposed walls now help identify the interior, but originally spectators watched a floor above them. A velarium supported from the upper part of the building shaded the audience. Crowd movement, spectacle and comfort therefore shaped both its internal organisation and its exterior structure.

The Circus Maximus occupied the valley between Rome’s Palatine and Aventine hills. Its long racing space—about 600 metres by 140 metres—suited chariot racing rather than theatre performances. Access galleries connected with the seating, and associated rooms accommodated shops, inns and offices. It also hosted processions and other public events. Much of the surviving structure belongs to rebuilding under Trajan: its ancient appearance developed over time rather than being created in one operation.

Its distinctive ancient layout was an elongated circuit with a rounded end and carceres, starting stalls, at the opposite end. Chariots raced around the spina, the long central dividing barrier, turning around metae, groups of conical turning posts at its ends. The barrier carried decoration including the Egyptian obelisk erected by Augustus and egg- and dolphin-shaped lap counters, which made progress through the race visible. The pulvinar, a prominent elevated shrine and viewing place associated with the gods and the emperor, provided a conspicuous position beside the track. Extensive banks of seating accommodated vast crowds. These features connect directly to racing: the stalls organised the start, the barrier defined the circuit, the posts marked the turns and the counters tracked laps. Today’s open park does not preserve this complete ancient appearance, so distinguish the long surviving site from reconstructions of its former structures.

Inscriptions: matching message, medium and location

The prescribed Pompeian inscriptions show how different purposes produced different kinds of writing.

• Thalamus’s election notice, CIL IV 933: painted in red near the south-west corner of IX.2, by Via Stabiana and Vicolo di Balbo. It supported Publius Paquius Proculus for the duumvirate and identified Thalamus as his client. Its street location made this recommendation public. The translation appears as Source E on printed page 4 of the OCR June 2022 insert.
• Ceratus’s election notice, CIL IV 910: recorded on the wall between VII.1.26 and VII.1.27 on Via Stabiana. Ceratus, identified as a freedman, asked for Publius Vedius Nummianus to become aedile. Naming candidate, office and supporter made the electoral appeal specific.
• Dining rules, CIL IV 7698: verses painted within the triclinium of the Casa del Moralista, III.4.3. They instructed guests to wash their feet and protect the linens, avoid quarrels and refrain from flirting with another man’s wife. Their placement within decorated dining-room walls addressed the behaviour expected in that room.
• The Holconii’s theatre dedication, CIL X 833–834: two monumental inscriptions, each more than six metres long, originally in the Large Theatre’s stage area. They recorded that Marcus Holconius Rufus and Marcus Holconius Celer paid for the vaulted passage, privileged seating areas and theatre seating. Their scale and permanent stone medium publicly associated the donors with the improvements.
• The teacher’s fee graffito, CIL IV 8562: incised in cursive lettering on column XVIII, flute 5, in Pompeii’s Campus beside the amphitheatre, II.7.1. It wished that whoever paid the writer for teaching should receive what they asked from the gods. Its scratched, informal form contrasts with a monumental dedication; it expressed a personal message about payment rather than commemorating public construction.
• The games notice, CIL IV 1189: displayed on the southern side of the Eumachia Building facing Via dell’Abbondanza. It announced that the gladiatorial troupe of the aedile Aulus Suettius Certus would fight at Pompeii on 31 May, with an animal hunt and awnings. It supplied a date, attractions and a comfort feature useful to prospective spectators, while also publicising the named sponsor.

Connecting observation to purpose

A useful explanation moves from a specific feature to what it enabled or communicated. The Large Theatre’s rising seating helped spectators see performances. Octavius Quartio’s dining couches beside an ornamental waterway integrated entertaining with the garden. The Holconii’s large inscriptions turned building improvements into a durable public acknowledgement of their expenditure.

Purpose need not be singular. A garden could be pleasant, practical and impressive; a tomb could commemorate individuals and advertise their achievements. The strongest connections explain why the particular feature belongs in its particular ancient setting.

Identify precisely

Recall appearance, style, content and original location, then connect a distinctive feature to its function.

Buildings and monuments

• Menander, Pompeii Regio I: epic frescoes in the atrium; Menander portrait in the portico; columned garden, bathing and service areas.
• Octavius Quartio, Regio II: two perpendicular garden waterways; outdoor dining; mythological decoration and references to Isis.
• Wooden Partition, Herculaneum III.11: screen between atrium and tablinum; impluvium and marble table.
• Central Baths, Herculaneum VI.1: central rectangular palaestra; surrounding rooms; separate user and service entrances.
• Diana, Ostia I.III.3–4: brick residential block, shops, stairs and courtyard; terracotta Diana relief. Total height uncertain.
• Naevoleia Tyche, outside Herculaneum Gate: altar-shaped cenotaph on a high base; portrait, inscription, grain distribution, honour-seat and ship reliefs. Commissioned during her lifetime; actual burial at Porta Nocera.
• Large Theatre, Pompeii Regio VIII: hillside seating, corridors, stage and awning; comedy and tragedy.
• Colosseum, Rome: elliptical amphitheatre; three travertine arcade tiers with stacked column orders and an attic; about 50,000 spectators. Entrances and vomitoria managed crowds; hypogeum machinery served spectacles; velarium provided shade.
• Circus Maximus, between Palatine and Aventine: elongated racing circuit; carceres, spina with Augustus’ obelisk and lap counters, metae and prominent pulvinar. Distinguish reconstructed ancient structures from today’s open site.

Match inscriptions to purpose

• 933, Thalamus: street election recommendation for Paquius Proculus, duumvir.
• 910, Ceratus: street election recommendation for Vedius Nummianus, aedile.
• 7698, dining rules: painted verses in the Casa del Moralista’s triclinium.
• 833–834, Holconii: monumental theatre inscriptions recording private expenditure.
• 8562, teacher: incised column graffito wishing blessings on a payer.
• 1189, games: Eumachia Building notice advertising 31 May, gladiators, a hunt and awnings.

Explain design

Feature → practical function or message → connection to location.

Distinguish decoration from the subject depicted, original use from later use, and a monument’s ancient setting from its modern display.