Shelley Hales’s The Roman House and Social Identity is an important contribution to the study of domestic architecture in general and, more specifically, to our understanding of the politics of identity in the Roman Empire. Her overall purpose is clear from her introduction: to examine domestic art and architecture from the imperial period so that we might “begin to appreciate the complexities of building a Roman identity and the power of the art of impression to overcome them” (7). Combining the studies of literature, rhetoric, architecture, art, archaeology, and politics, Hales creates an accessible and readable text that will be particularly helpful for students of Roman acculturation in the provinces. At all times Hales is concerned with tensions between dichotomies—mortal and divine, public and private, center and periphery—and how domestic space variously may negotiate, maintain, conflate, or even erase those tensions.

In her introduction Hales identifies two significant problems in most studies of Roman domestic space, which she attempts to combat. Both problems concern the body of evidence that is left to us. First, she observes that remains from Pompeii and Campania have disproportionately absorbed scholarly interest in this area. She rightly notes that houses from that region should not be taken as a model for Rome or the empire simply because of an accident of preservation: “[t]he marriage of Roman text and Campanian visual evidence takes no account of the degrees of separation that come between the two media” (3). Moreover, as Hales points out, the “domus of Rome is known mostly to us through literary sources, [but] the richly painted remains of Pompeii have been the preserve of art historians…” (7). The second problem, intimately related to the first, is that evidence from the provinces, largely considered the domain of archaeologists, is not addressed in most studies of domestic space and decoration under the empire. Hales attempts to round out our understanding of the power of domestic art and architecture in a most collegial manner. As she puts it, “the lack of a cohesive empire-wide survey of urban housing has been enforced by the varied nature of the evidence and traditional scholarly responses to it…” (6).

Hales’s solid introduction is followed by seven chapters divided into three parts. Her organization and scheme is at once helpful and disorienting, as the three sections do not interrelate as the reader might like. The first part, “The Houses of Rome in Ancient Literature,” is nearly as straightforward as it sounds. Chapter 1, “The Ideal Home,” addresses the difficulty of reading a body of literature in which a coherent definition of Romanitas always seems to be assumed but is nowhere “explicitly spelled out” (13). Hales examines the approaches of Cicero, Vitruvius, and Pliny, among others, to the politics of domestic space, and she presents a brief case study of the figure of Lucullus within a larger investigation of the correct place of luxury in the lives of the Roman elite. Her second chapter, “The House and the Construction of Memory,” delves somewhat deeper into the questions of chapter 1, addressing the public and political functions of the house and the relationship between “Rome and home” (55): “The domus was crucial in providing its owners with a past, present, and future, which, in turn, was elemental in ensuring their acceptance by the city. It was a window through which inhabitants might experience Rome and through which Rome could view them” (60). The insight may not sound groundbreaking, but it isn’t misguided and therefore provides a nice foundation for the material that follows in parts 2 and 3. Hales opens the final chapter of part 1, “The Imperial Palace,” with a very good analysis of the House of Augustus and closes with a lengthy treatment of Hadrian’s Villa, both of which are seen to negotiate successfully the political waters in which the princeps had to swim. The chapter also treats other imperial palace-builders: Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. Having the “need to convey an impression of limitless power…” (92), these emperors were of course much more transgressive and less successful than Augustus and Hadrian in terms of the ideals presented in chapters 1 and 2. Relying principally on Suetonius as a literary source, Hales finds that “[t]he emperors focused their attention on the fantastic and the peripheral in visualizing their power in their houses. As such, they remind us of the important role that the world beyond the city played in making Rome” (93).

I must comment here on Hales’s interest in fantasy, which informs the whole of her study and at times, I believe, distracts from her project. In her introduction Hales claims that her book is

an investigation … into the art of impression, the ability of art to produce an impression or fantasy at variance with, or beyond the possibility of, reality. As such, it deliberately flouts the ancient and modern conceptions of ancient art as a medium in pursuit of representation and naturalism. Instead it discusses the freedom of art to invent a reality for those for whom it was commissioned, to help them assume an identity and to create fantasies of status in order that they might participate successfully in the Roman world. (6)

Likewise, in her epilogue, Hales states: “It is precisely these attempts to override the realities of domestic life with painted fantasies of other worlds and to allow real guests to mingle with the occupants of those worlds that makes the Roman house such a rewarding study” (244). First, I do not believe that one can or should make the generalization that either ancients perceived or moderns recognize ancient art as primarily concerned with realism or naturalism. If one must generalize about ancient art, which has to include media other than wall-painting, one may more accurately say that ancient art is concerned with the presentation of an ideal or ideals, the specifics of which change with time. Second, while domestic art certainly could (and did) create a fantasy world for its viewers, it performed myriad other functions as well, many of which were grounded in the presentation of an image or ideal that was meant to refer to reality, even if the imagery was not realistic as such. I wonder whether the fantasies that at times seem apparent to us might have been understood differently by the homeowner (or the viewer). It may be a stretch to claim that “[Pompeian] wall paintings … create fantasy worlds that seem a light world from Rome. The painted world of the Pompeian frescoes is not that of the Roman domus, but of exotic fantasy” (151).

Part 2, “Pompeii—The Living House,” consists of two chapters, “Finding a Way into the Pompeian House” and “The Art of Impression in the Houses of Pompeii.” In the interest of space I shall not say much here about this section of the book. As the author herself notes, much has been written on this material already. Hales’s multiple house plans are very useful, as are her photographs. In the first chapter of this section, she rightly observes that in the Pompeian house “[t]he distinction of public and private is not between visitors and family but between those members of the public admitted to the house and those excluded” (133). The second chapter includes a discussion of Trimalchio, taking us back to the world of literature. Here Hales is again concerned with the notion of fantasy:

The Pompeian paterfamilias may well have acted like a little emperor in a similar way as the satiric invention, Trimalchio, resembles a little Nero. All his transgressions and inversions, however, are carefully confined to fantasy where the impression remains both resolutely indefinable and eminently imitable. Everybody can indulge in their wildest dreams…. By declaring the environment as fantasy, the houseowner avoids responsibility. He cannot be to blame for the impression that is given the visitor. (161)

Part 3, “The Roman House on the Periphery of Empire,” is by far the most groundbreaking and exciting part of the book. Chapter 6, “The Houses of the Western Provinces,” contains case studies of three cities—Vasio (in southern Gaul), Verulamium (in Roman Britain), and Volubilis (in North Africa)—all of which Hales analyzes with thought and skill, illuminating the complexities of the relationships between periphery and center, Roman and non-Roman. She writes: “These new cities … will not be microcosms of the parent city. They are unique amalgamations that neither repeat a set template nor provide a model for future imperial cities. The provinces are regarded as positive and negative simultaneously; they can be integrated within, or distanced from, the centre on a rhetorical whim” (195). Hales begins chapter 7, “The East Greek Oikos,” with the wise observation that “Italians were not the only people to appropriate Greek design. Often, the only recognizable features of the houses across the empire are those Hellenistic elements that had spread around the Mediterranean in the second century B.C.” (208). Having treated Petra, Antioch, and Ephesus—the latter in some detail, from the Hellenistic era through the fifth century—Hales concludes: “[W]e find that all homes in the empire are joined by their participation in the battle between the extremes of belonging and of transgression. Although they might express their participation in very different ways or even with varying degrees of enthusiasm, it is through this participation that they earn the title Roman” (243). I would have welcomed a hint of this conclusion earlier—sometimes it’s nice to know where you’re going. While I do not necessarily agree with each of Hales’s observations along the way (the evidence, of course, lends itself to multiple interpretations), chapters 6 and 7 are well done overall and very important to our understanding of acculturation and identity in the provinces.

Hales’s epilogue is excellent, and, as with chapter 7, I found myself wishing that I had been privy to some of its clear and potentially guiding insights earlier the book. In the epilogue she states that “[t]o be Roman was to learn how to manipulate Roman rhetoric, to avoid alienating oneself by coming down too hard on any one side of any rhetorical topos” (246), and that “Romanitas itself, therefore, was an identity based on negotiation and compromise rather than purity. To be seen to be entering, or indeed to find yourself entered, into this debate was to become Roman” (246–47).

Since its appearance, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) has reshaped the field with its deft analysis of both textual and archaeological evidence and its concern for the lifestyles of the rich and not-so-rich in the cities on the Bay of Naples. Hales’s The Roman House and Social Identity was clearly written under its influence. While at times I may have wanted more—more detail, more explanation, even, surprisingly, more endnotes—Hales’s work is thoughtful and well conceived, a helpful supplement to that of Wallace-Hadrill and her other predecessors in the field. Moreover, she makes substantial headway toward combating the two problems she identifies in her introduction: the privileging of Pompeii and Campania, and the neglect of the provinces.