DOI 10.

1515/etst-2013-0010 Etruscan Studies 2013; 16(2): 313–314

Book Review
Tristes portiques: sur le plan canonique de la maison étrusque et romaine
des origines au principat d’Auguste (VIe-Ier siècles av. J.-C.) by Vincent Jolivet.
Pp. 343, figs. 171 (10 in color). L’École française de Rome, Rome 2011
(Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 342).
€ 100.00 (hardcover). ISBN 9782728308750.

Scholars have long held that the Romans were indebted to the Etruscans for
many components of their architecture, including the forms of arches, vaults,
temples, and even architectural decorations (e.g. terracotta antefixes). Vincent
Jolivet proposes adding the general morphology of the “Roman” house to this
list of Etruscan influences. In this book, which is derived from his habilitation
thesis, the author argues that the canonical plan of the Roman domus might
have been invented and codified in Etruria in the first half of the sixth century
BCE.
To test this hypothesis, Jolivet undertook a meticulous historiographic study
of the modern interpretations of the Roman domus plan in order to make sure that
it, as we know it today, is not a modern re-elaboration. After outlining the stages
of its development in ancient studies, Jolivet was able to reassert the value of
Adolf J.A. Overbeck’s contribution to the subject. This 19th century German scho-
lar was the first to propose an “ideal” plan for the atrium house from the multiple
variations that existed in the archaeological record. Overbeck’s plan was orga-
nized around the cavaedium, literally, the “hollow part” of the house, which was
designed to accommodate the volume of visiting clients (clientes) who would not
otherwise fit into the house. The cavaedium gives the domus not only its cruciform
space but it also provides it with a rectangular ground plan.
As part of his reassessment of the validity of Overbeck’s plan, Jolivet went
back to the architectural traditions likely to have engendered the atrium plan in
the first place. Taking the building’s shape as a starting point, he placed this plan
at the meeting point of two previous traditions—the rectangular and the oblong
arrangements, arguing, as well, that the Murlo building served as the prototype of
the cavaedium. He then distinguished the first examples of the cavaedium domus
built for the Etruscan aristocracy in the late sixth century or the early fifth century
BCE. He brings into the discussion four possible atrium houses on the northeast
side of the Palatine Hill, dated to 540 to 520 BCE, which scholars have identified
as the houses of the elite—or the Etruscan kings—of Rome. Jolivet also cites
examples of the cavaedium domus that were built at that same time in the
orthogonal networks of the city of Marzabotto, possibly as houses for landlords
with high social status. In addition, he proposes that the late Archaic houses at

Brought to you by | Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI)

Authenticated
Download Date | 7/8/15 6:07 PM
314 Reviews

Gonfienti provide a sort of missing link between the Orientalizing “palaces” and
the cavaedium domus as it appears in Rome and Marzabotto.
Jolivet further suggests that the canonical plan of the domus spread from the
fourth to the first century BCE, after a two-century gap. It appears in Emilia-
Romagna and Campania in the fourth century and then in the third-century BCE
in Fregellae and Pompeii (examples include houses as the Protocasa del Centauro
and the Protocasa del Granduca Michele). At the end of the Republic, examples
were on the increase in northern and central eastern Italy, in Rome and Ostia, and
in Southern Italy, but Jolivet concludes that there was no direct link between
“Romanization” and the spread of the atrium house.
The most compelling part of the author’s argument rests in his contextualiza-
tion of the emergence of the atrium domus. Jolivet argues that the atrium plan
materialized from the social and political upheavals of the Republic, which saw
colonization, the emergence of the new organization based on the power of
gentes, and an increasing role played by the families of slaves. The space formed
by the fauces, the alae and the tablinum corresponded to private liturgies and to
the salutatio of clients to their patron; the smaller spaces of the pars postica,
which consists of the tablinum, triclinium and oecus, suggests that family space
was confiscated for the exclusive benefit of the dominus. Moreover, the character-
istics of symmetry and axiality imbedded in the atrium plan, Jolivet argues, are
translations of the values of Etrusca disciplina, embodying the ritual division of
space in the domus.
All things considered, although it may be challenging for some readers to be
convinced by such a sweeping theory based mostly on planimetric interpreta-
tions, we cannot but be won over and convinced by Jolivet’s exhaustive and vastly
informed study. Studies like this add much to our knowledge of Etruscan influ-
ence on early Rome.

Marie-Laurence Haack: Professor, University of Picardie (France), E-Mail: haackml@yahoo.fr

Brought to you by | Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI)

Authenticated
Download Date | 7/8/15 6:07 PM