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REAPPRAISING THE ROMAN HOUSE Simon P. Ellis, Roman Housing. London: Duckworth, 2002. Pp. viii + 224, incl. 30 figures, 22 black-and-white plates, one map, glossary, endnotes and two indices. ISBN 0-7156-3196-9. GBP16.99.
In 1975 McKay's Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World was the most comprehensive introductory work on Roman housing.1 This geographically organised survey focused on housing in Italy and treated provincial evidence separately in two final chapters. McKay was concerned with structure and its origins, and his handbook was typological in nature.2 The study of Roman housing has now been so utterly transformed that a new general treatment is long overdue. In the interim, the houses of elite Romans have been rigorously scrutinised and are now regarded as methodically and deliberately created environments in which a range of activities took place, most important among them the display of their owners' status.3 Whether architectural and decorative innovation should be ascribed to individuals or to societal changes is, Ellis suggests, a fundamental question that has prevented anyone from writing a new general book on the subject of Roman housing until now (p. 4).
The aims of the book astonish. Ellis intends not just to provide 'the first empire-wide, overall introduction to Roman housing, covering all provinces and all social classes, from the origins of Rome to the sixth century AD' to the student and general reader but also 'a wealth of comparative evidence' to specialists (p. 1). Adding to these Herculean tasks, he further promises that the Roman house 'will be taken apart and pieced back together in a way never attempted before' (p. 4). The seven chapter headings are focused topically: 'Introduction' (pp. 1-21), 'Houses of Pretension' (pp. 22-72), 'Town and Country' (pp. 73-113), 'Decoration' (pp. 114-44), 'Furniture' (pp. 145-65), 'The House and Family' (pp. 167-87), and 'Conclusions' (pp. 188-91). Numerous subdivisions in each chapter guide the reader and assist in revisiting particular topics. Ellis' personal interest in 'reception rooms' and other aspects of elite housing provides thematic coherence and is also used to signal, evaluate and demonstrate the implications of recent research concerning Roman houses.4 What the chapter headings conceal is a much-welcome integration of detailed but succinctly related comparative material-from Britain, the European and...