The inequality of ancient life is difficult to measure, yet this article outlines a methodology to do it. Measured distances produced by the ArcGIS Network Analyst and its Closest Facility tool can ...be utilized as data sets to calculate the Gini coefficients of access to water in Roman Pompeii 79 CE, when the city was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In the focus is the distance from a private dwelling to public fountains and the baths, but other aspects, such as the estimated household need for water and the capacity of the Pompeian baths, are included in the Gini calculations to form a more accurate estimation of inequality. As a result, it is possible to estimate an aspect of health inequality in Pompeii, which can be compared to other sites and eras, if their access to water is measured similarly and calculated as a Gini value.
This book examines how Pompeian peristyle gardens were utilized to represent the socioeconomic status of Roman homeowners, introducing fresh perspectives on how these spaces were designed, used, and ...perceived. Pompeian Peristyle Gardens provides a novel understanding of how the domus was planned, utilized, and experienced through a critical examination of all Pompeian peristyles – not just by selecting a few well-known examples. This study critiques common scholarly assumptions of ancient domestic space, such as the top-down movement of ideas and the relationship between wealth and socio-political power, though these possibilities are not excluded. In addition, this book provides a welcome contribution to exploring the largely unexamined middle class, an integral part of ancient Roman society. Pompeian Peristyle Gardens is of interest to students and scholars in art history, classics, archaeology, social history, and other related fields.
AbstractStudies on the reception and impact of ancient models in the emergence of Republican civic structures during the Renaissance have adopted, either of two competing models: continuity or ...reform. The purpose of this article is to engage in this debate by exploring how the ideals of ancient Roman Republicanism were adopted and utilized in the making of new civic spaces and in the formation of institutions in Renaissance Florence. The article examines four key aspects of this transformation: 1) the self-identification of the leaders of Florence with the ancient Romans in Florentine public monuments 2) the reconstruction of administrative spaces and the attempts at realizing the ideals of citizen participation in government; 3) the reformulation of the ideas of Republicanism and popular sovereignty in Florence during the corporatist-republican system exemplified by the guilds; and 4) the emerging ideas of an ideal city, such as those presented by the architect Leon Battista Alberti, and his reinterpretation of ancient Roman ideals. What the article illustrates is the complexity and strategic dynamism of relations that Florence had to not only its own past as a Roman city but to the ideal of ancient Rome and its Republics.
House size is often used as a tool to calculate wealth in ancient societies, and thus it is also a potential source for the study of inequality. The site of Pompeii, on the Bay of Naples in southern ...Italy, was first inhabited about 800 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried it 79 CE. The city provides one of the largest data sets of private architecture in the Roman world, and it has been utilized to calculate the level of inequality in a Roman urban setting. Nonetheless, to understand the inequality of the entire society of the city, these calculations need to be developed. This article uses quantitative and statistical methods, such as Gini coefficients, Lorenz Curves, and also simpler graphs and their interpretation to advance establish methods for exploring inequality through house and building size. A method is proposed for identifying the top economic elite in this urban setting, and the article develops the calculation of inequality further, to encompass even individuals who did not own buildings. As a result, excavated Pompeii's top economic elite is estimated to have comprised 50 to 100 households, with a high level of inequality evident in this ancient city during its final phase, the year 79 CE.
The chapter lays out the aims of the book: what is the object of the study, what are the source materials, what are the methodological and theoretical approaches to the studied material? The main ...question is how does the peristyle garden reflect the socioeconomic status of the owner? It is inseparably connected with the sub-questions: how were the peristyles designed, used, and perceived? On a large scale, these questions and examinations help us to define how ideas and trends circulated in the Roman world and how the peristyles were connected to their wider contexts: the Roman house and urban life. The theoretical stand point is constructed based on the works of social and architectural theorists, such Thorstein Veblen, Pierre Bourdieu, and Amos Rapoport, whose works are applied to the studies of the ancient world by scholars such as Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Paul Zanker.
The chapter begins with a definition of what types of features were used in the peristyle design to signal socioeconomic status. Hypothetically, anything can be interpreted as a status symbol, but in ...order to be a useful status symbol, it has to be something noteworthy, meaning that it has to be extraordinary and visually powerful. The source material, however, is tricky, and not all features are documented so well that it is possible to know what was normal, or on the contrary what was extraordinary. Therefore, the possibility of making a reliable comparison with the entire city - or almost the entire city - is needed for the analysis. There are seven features that fulfill both criteria: the size of the peristyle, the number of porticoes, pools, fountains, sculpture, wall paintings, and floor decoration.
Using the seven most important display features (the size of the peristyle, the number of porticoes, pools, fountains, sculpture, wall paintings, and floor decoration), which were defined in Chapter ...4, Pompeian peristyles can be divided into different groups. These groups also reflect an economic ranking, as the difference in status display can be interpreted to reflect the house owners' wealth or the wealth level they wanted to transmit to outside observers. The highest level - called the opulent peristyles in this study - features a major part of the seven different display features. The second group - the large full peristyles - is close to the highest group, but for several reasons the display elements in their peristyles were not as numerous and various as in the highest group. Following the top two groups, the next two groups - ornamental and large painting peristyles - were distinctively different. Both used a lavish amount of decoration or large decorative elements in their peristyles, but the architecture was not on the same level as in the two upper groups. The fifth group - imitation peristyles - seems to pursue architecture of the highest level, but the space is more restricted. In addition to the aforementioned groups, there are a large number of peristyles - minor decoration and architectural peristyles - that had almost no particular display features.
Using the seven most important display features (the size of the peristyle, the number of porticoes, pools, fountains, sculpture, wall paintings, and floor decoration), Pompeian peristyles can be divided into different groups. The first group is the opulent peristyles, which are the top peristyles as defined by the means of economic display. The second group is called the large full peristyles, and there are 29 examples of the type. The third group is the ornamental peristyles. Large paintings that dominated almost an entire wall appear now and then in Pompeian peristyles. The fifth group of peristyles is called imitation peristyles. This group consists of peristyles that were designed to incorporate as many porticoes as possible, either actually featuring four porticoes or seeking to create an illusion of a large number of colonnades. Among the peristyle gardens that do not yet belong to any group are 25 peristyles that feature a small number of decorative elements.
