Plan of Pompeii with Casa del Menandro marked

The House of Menander (Italian: Casa del Menandro) is one of the richest and most magnificent houses in ancient

Pompeii Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was burie ...

in terms of architecture, decoration and contents, and covers a large area of about occupying most of its '' insula''. Its quality means the owner must have been an aristocrat involved in politics, with great taste for art. The house was excavated between November 1926 and June 1932 and is located in Region I, Insula 10, Entrance 4 (I.10.4) of the city.

Description

The oldest part of the house consists of a relatively modest atrium with immediately surrounding rooms built in 250 BC. About 100 years later the ''

domus In Ancient Rome, the ''domus'' (plural ''domūs'', genitive ''domūs'' or ''domī'') was the type of town house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. It was found in almost all the ma ...

'' was modernised;

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock ...

capitals were used for the entrance door and the ''

tablinum In Roman architecture, a (or , from , board, picture) was a room generally situated on one side of the atrium and opposite to the entrance; it opened in the rear onto the peristyle, with either a large window or only an anteroom or curtain. The ...

''. In the Augustan period the ''domus'' was substantially modified; a

peristyle In ancient Greek and Roman architecture, a peristyle (; from Greek ) is a continuous porch formed by a row of columns surrounding the perimeter of a building or a courtyard. Tetrastoön ( grc, τετράστῳον or τετράστοον, lit=f ...

was built using the space from the demolition of the adjacent residential buildings. In the space to the west, elaborately decorated thermal baths were created, centred around a small 8-columned atrium. The lack of a bath in the

caldarium 230px, Caldarium from the Roman Baths at Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor. A caldarium (also called a calidarium, cella caldaria or cella coctilium) was a room ...

suggests that it could not have been in use at the time of the

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD Of the many eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, a major stratovolcano in southern Italy, the best-known is its eruption in 79 AD, which was one of the deadliest in European history. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD is one of the best-known in ...

. To the east is the business part of the ''domus''. Shortly before the eruption, further modernisation works were carried out in various places in the house as shown by

amphora An amphora (; grc, ἀμφορεύς, ''amphoreús''; English plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storag ...

e filled with stucco and a temporary oven. Indeed, the absence finds of everyday objects such as those connected with food, the presence of building material and latest coin dated to AD 37, imply limited occupancy of house at the time of the eruption. The whole ''insula'' seems to have undergone changes in use and partial abandonment for some considerable time before the final eruption. Eighteen victims of the eruption were found in the house: two men and a woman in room 19, ten more in the corridor, two in room 43 (one on a bed) and three more in courtyard (thirty-four together with a skeleton of a dog). From the lamp, pickaxes and shovels found with the bodies in the corridor, they may have been looting any treasures after the owners had left the house after the initial eruptions of pumice and were overtaken by the final eruptions, though they had missed the silver treasure.

Ownership of the house

Matteo Della Corte thought the owner could be Quintus Poppaeus Sabinus due to a seal and a graffito in the entrance corridor mentioning 'Quintus' and other graffiti in the house referring to 'Sabinus. The house may have belonged to a local magistrate. Furthermore, a ring seal found in the servant’s quarters suggest that the property was owned by Quintus Poppaeus, possibly a relative of Poppea Sabina, the second wife of the Emperor Nero. The nationality of the owner is more in dispute than their economic status. Pompeii’s Mediterranean climate enticed many Romans to invest in holiday

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became ...

s there, so it is possible that the owner at the time of Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 AD was a wealthy tourist, not a local.

Art, architecture, and graffiti

Fresco

The estate is referred to as “The House of Menander” because there is a well-preserved

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plast ...

of the ancient Greek Dramatist

Menander Menander (; grc-gre, Μένανδρος ''Menandros''; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His ...

in a small room off the

. Some speculate the painting is not actually of Menander but rather of the owner of the house or another person reading works by Menander. The house included other frescoes, including one depicting the death of

Laocoön Laocoön (; grc, , Laokóōn, , gen.: ), is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology and the Epic Cycle. Laocoon was a Trojan priest. He and his two young sons were attacked by giant serpents, sent by the gods. The story of Laocoön has been the su ...

Classical style and Hellenism

The large

columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression membe ...

in the peristyle of the House of Menander are representative of the

Doric style The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...

of architecture, an offshoot of the Classical Style, which stems from ancient Greece. The emphasis on

ancient Greek architecture Ancient Greek architecture came from the Greek-speaking people (''Hellenic'' people) whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC unti ...

in Pompeian architecture is not surprising since Greek sailors had been using the port as a trading post before the

Oscans The Osci (also called Oscans, Opici, Opsci, Obsci, Opicans) were an Italic people of Campania and Latium adiectum before and during Roman times. They spoke the Oscan language, also spoken by the Samnites of Southern Italy. Although the language ...

founded the city in the 6th century BC.Roberts, Adam, ''Classical Architecture''. London, Penguin Books. 1990Curran, Leo, Pompeii: House of Pansa: Atrium and Peristyle, 1988

Graffiti

Numerous examples of Roman graffiti can be observed on the exterior walls of the house.

Coppe in argento da pompei, I sec ac-I dc ca

The house was excavated between November 1926 and June 1932.

Later history

In a corridor next to the small atrium of the private baths a

treasure trove A treasure trove is an amount of money or coin, gold, silver, plate, or bullion found hidden underground or in places such as cellars or attics, where the treasure seems old enough for it to be presumed that the true owner is dead and the hei ...

of 118 silver vases was found which had been carefully wrapped in cloth drapes and placed in a tall wooden cabinet during the renovation of the house. In another decomposed wooden casket there were also objects in gold and coins of a value of 1432 sesterces.

Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until Fall of the Fascist re ...

held a lunch party in Room 18 (Pompeii photo archive negatives A/234-236) when he visited Pompeii in 1940. The British Pompeii project was initiated in 1978 to survey and record the insula containing the House of Menander and to analyse and interpret the remains which had not been reassessed since the original Italian publications of the early 1930s.The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii Vols 1-4. Oxford University Press

Gallery

File:MenanderFresco5.jpg, Ancient Roman fresco File:I08 159 Haus des Menander, Atrium.jpg, Atrium File:Casa del Menandro (Pompei) WLM 059.JPG, Lararium in the peristylium File:Coppe in argento da pompei, I sec ac-I dc ca. 04.JPG, Silver cup, part of the treasure trove File:Korkmodell vom Haus des Menander.jpg, Cork model of the House of Menander, as-excavated

References

External links

4K Virtual Tour of the House of Menander in Pompeii
{{Authority control Buildings and structures completed in the 1st century BC M