The House of the Centenary (Italian Casa del Centenario, also known as the House of the Centenarian) was the house of a wealthy resident of Pompeii

Pompeii

The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...

, preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years, although it is not currently erupting...

 in 79 AD. The house was discovered in 1879, and was given its modern name to mark the 18th centenary of the disaster. Built in the mid-2nd century BC, it is among the largest houses in the city, with private baths

Thermae

In ancient Rome, thermae and balnea were facilities for bathing...

, a nymphaeum

Nymphaeum

A nymphaeum or nymphaion , in ancient Greece and Rome, was a monument consecrated to the nymphs, especially those of springs....

, a fish pond (piscina), and two atrium

Atrium (architecture)

In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...

s. The Centenary underwent a remodeling around 15 AD, at which time the bath complex and swimming pool were added. In the last years before the eruption, several rooms had been extensively redecorated with a number of paintings.

Although the identity of the house's owner eludes certainty, arguments have been made for either Aulus Rustius Verus or Tiberius Claudius Verus

Tiberius Claudius Verus

Tiberius Claudius Verus was a local politician in Pompeii. He held the magistracy of duovir in 62 AD, when an earthquake devastated the city on February 5.Claudius Verus lived near or along the Via di Nola...

, both local politicians.

Among the varied paintings preserved in the House of the Centenary is the earliest known depiction of Vesuvius, as well as explicit erotic scenes in a room that may have been designed as a private "sex club".

Site and features

For the purposes of archaeological and historical study, Pompeii is divided into nine regions, each of which contains numbered blocks (insulae); within a block, doorways are numbered in clockwise or counter-clockwise order; the Centenary is numbered IX.8.3–6. It belongs to the luxurious "tufa

Tuff

Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material, although tufa also refers to a quite different rock. Rock that contains greater than 50% tuff is considered...

" period of Pompeiian architecture, characterized by the use of fine-grained gray volcanic tufa that was quarried around Nuceria.

Of the two atriums, the grander one leads to the most highly decorated rooms. The smaller atrium might have been for private family and service access. The triclinium

Triclinium

A triclinium is a formal dining room in a Roman building. The word is adopted from the Greek τρικλίνιον, triklinion, from τρι-, tri-, "three", and κλίνη, klinē, a sort of "couch" or rather chaise longue...

 or dining room was situated so that the guest of honor could view the enclosed garden. The dining room itself was decorated with vertical stalks entwined with tendrils on which birds perch, with leaf-adorned candelabra in the panels between. The house had its own bakery, located in a cellar under the service quarters on the west side.
A graffito in the latrine

Latrine

A latrine is a communal facility containing one or more commonly many toilets which may be simple pit toilets or in the case of the United States Armed Forces any toilet including modern flush toilets...

 uses the rare word cacaturit ("wants to shit") found also once in the Epigrams of Martial

Martial

Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...

. Another records a slave

Slavery in ancient Rome

The institution of slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the Roman economy. Besides manual labor on farms and in mines, slaves performed many domestic services and a variety of other tasks, such as accounting...

's bid for freedom: "Officiosus escaped on November 6 of the consulate of Drusus Caesar and M. Junius Silanus" (15 AD).

It has been suggested that one secluded room (numbered 43), which was decorated with explicit scenes of female-male intercourse, functioned as a private "sex club." Guests would have entered the smaller, more private atrium, passed down a corridor and through a triclinium and antechamber to reach it. A few similar rooms in Pompeiian houses suggest that the intention was to create the ambience of a brothel in a home, for parties at which participants played the roles of prostitute or client

Prostitution in ancient Rome

Prostitution in ancient Rome reflects the ambivalent attitudes of Romans toward pleasure and sexuality. Prostitution was legal and licensed. Some large brothels in the 4th century, when Rome was becoming officially Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly...

, or for which actual prostitutes were hired to entertain guests. A small opening oddly positioned in the wall may have been an aperture for voyeurism. Other scholars categorize Room 43 simply as a bedroom (cubiculum), which often featured erotic imagery, and find it unnecessary to conclude that sexual entertainment was offered to guests there.

Art

The House of the Centenary is known for its large and diverse collection of paintings in the Third and Fourth Pompeiian styles

Pompeian Styles

The Pompeian Styles are four periods which are distinguished in ancient Roman mural painting. They were originally delineated and described by the German archaeologist August Mau, 1840 – 1909, from the excavation of wall paintings at Pompeii, which is one of the largest group of surviving examples...

. The garden nymphaeum is a particularly rich example of combining painting with architectural elements to create the ambience of a country villa

Roman villa

A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman republic and the Roman Empire. A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the upper class...

. A body of water filled with a variety of fish and marine animals was "dramatically" painted on the parapet that encircled the four walls of the nymphaeum; several species are represented accurately enough to identify. The lower part of the wall is painted to look like a balustrade with ivy growing on it, with birds and lizards below. Fountains with sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

 bases are painted within garden scenes to the sides, and the wall around the entrance depicts game parks; in the foreground is a real fountain, with a faux finish to look like rare marble, from which the water would have run down tiers into a basin. Below the steps and above the garden pool, there was a painting of a river god crowned with reeds, no longer visible. The composition has been characterized as a "grotesque potpourri", an assemblage of elements desirable because they represent the country villa lifestyle. Here and in similarly decorated spaces in Pompeii, the owner is concerned with displaying size and quantity and not a harmonious whole.

The room to the north of the peristyle

Peristyle

In Hellenistic Greek and Roman architecture a peristyle is a columned porch or open colonnade in a building surrounding a court that may contain an internal garden. Tetrastoon is another name for this feature...

 featured delicate ivy and stylized flowering vines as decoration. Ducks and lotus leaves also appear together as decorative motifs. Grapes and viticulture appear throughout the house, as in a scene of cupids gathering grapes. The hunting paintings are by the Pompeiian painter Lucius.

Mythological painting

Mythological subjects include Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...

 as victor over the Minotaur

Minotaur

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...

, Hermaphroditus and Silenus, Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

 and Telephus

Telephus

A Greek mythological figure, Telephus or Telephos Telephus was one of the Heraclidae, the sons of Heracles, who were venerated as founders of cities...

, and of Orestes

Orestes

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...

 and Pylades

Pylades

In Greek mythology, Pylades is the son of King Strophius of Phocis and of Anaxibia, daughter of Atreus and sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus. He is mostly known for his strong friendship with his cousin Orestes, son of Agamemnon.-Orestes and Pylades:...

 before Thoas

Thoas (Tauri king)

Thoas was a son of the god Dionysus and Ariadne, the daughter of Cretean king Minos. Some however consider him to be Theseus’s son, together with his brother Oenopion...

. Another room features Selene

Selene

In Greek mythology, Selene was an archaic lunar deity and the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. In Roman mythology, the moon goddess is called Luna, Latin for "moon"....

 and Endymion

Endymion (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Endymion , was variously a handsome Aeolian shepherd or hunter or a king who ruled and was said to reside at Olympia in Elis, but he was also said to reside and was venerated on Mount Latmus in Caria, on the west coast of Asia Minor....

, a Venus Piscatrix ("Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

 the Fisherwoman"), and "floating nymphs."

Bacchus and Vesuvius

A painting in the house's lararium, a shrine to the household gods

Household deity

A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in pagan religions as well as in folklore across many parts of the world....

 the Lares

Lares

Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....

, depicts Vesuvius as it may have looked before the eruption, with a single vineyard-covered peak instead of the double-peak profile of today. Although some scholars reject the single-peak hypothesis, the painting is generally regarded as the earliest known representation of the volcano, even if it should not be taken as a record of what Vesuvius actually looked like.

Literary sources also describe Vesuvius as covered in grape vines before the eruption. Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 says that vines had grown on it in the 1st century BC, when Spartacus

Spartacus

Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...

 and his fellow slaves had taken refuge there and cut them down to make rope ladders. The description by the poet Martial

Martial

Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...

 evokes the painting, which shows vines on the slopes in quincunx

Quincunx

A quincunx is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, that is five coplanar points, four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center...

 arrangement:

Here Vesuvius is shaded green with vines; here the noble grape had exuded its juices in vats: these are the ridges which Bacchus loved more than the hills of Nysa.

The unusual depiction of Bacchus gives him a body composed of grapes, which may represent either the Aminaea variety grown in the area or the eponymous Pompeianum. He carries a thyrsus

Thyrsus

In Greek mythology, a thyrsus or thyrsos was a staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone. These staffs were carried by Dionysus and his followers. Euripides wrote that honey dripped from the thyrsos staves that the...

 and has a panther at his feet. In the foreground is a crested and bearded serpent that embodies the Agathodaemon

Agathodaemon

In ancient Greek religion, Agathos Daimon or Agathodaemon was a daemon or presiding spirit of the vineyards and grainfields and a personal companion spirit, similar to the Roman genius, ensuring good luck, health, and wisdom....

 or Genius

Genius (mythology)

In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...

.

Theatre allusions

Some of the mythological paintings, including one of Medea

Medea

Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...

, are thought to represent scenes from the theatre

Theatre of ancient Rome

The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca...

. The painting of Hercules may be a scene from the Hercules Furens of either Seneca

Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...

 or Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

; the other figures would thus be Amphitryon

Amphitryon

Amphitryon , in Greek mythology, was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis.Amphitryon was a Theban general, who was originally from Tiryns in the eastern part of the Peloponnese. He was friends with Panopeus....

, Megara

Megara (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Megara was the oldest daughter of Creon, king of Thebes. In reward for Heracles' defending Thebes from Orchomenus in single-handed battle, Creon offered his daughter Megara to Heracles and he brought her home to the house of Amphitryon...

, and Lycus

Lycus (Descendant of Lycus)

A son of Lycus , Lycus appears in Euripides's Heracles. Originally from Euboea, he seized power in Ancient Thebes by killing Creon, who at the time was regent for the son of Eteocles, Laodamas. Lycus mistreated Creon's family, throwing them out of their house and depriving them food and clothing...

. A scene from Iphigenia in Tauris shows Pylades, Orestes, and Iphigenia.

Another theatrical reference is found in a graffito scrawled on the wall between the tepidarium

Tepidarium

The tepidarium was the warm bathroom of the Roman baths heated by a hypocaust or underfloor heating system.The specialty of a tepidarium is the pleasant feeling of constant radiant heat which directly affects the human body from the walls and floor.There is an interesting example at Pompeii; this...

(a bath maintained at a pleasantly warm temperature) and the caldarium

Caldarium

right|thumb|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....

(an environment more like a steam bath). Reading histrionica Actica, "Actica the pantomime," the phrase has been interpreted as a record of fan infatuation, and perhaps an indication that the house hosted performances by theatre troupes.

Erotic scenes

Pompeiian bedrooms were not infrequently decorated with scenes referring to lovemaking, sometimes explicitly human, and sometimes allusive and mythological.
One bedroom at the Centenary features a pair of scenes referring to love affairs between a mortal and a divinity: Selene and Endymion, and Cassandra

Cassandra

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...

 with a laurel branch symbolizing her rejection of Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

 as a lover and his revenge. The "sex club" has both: it is decorated with a painting of Hercules surrounded by amorini, as well two "pornographic" scenes (symplegma) similar to those found in brothels. Roman "pornography" (literally "depiction of prostitutes") focuses on human figures in everyday settings, often with detailed and realistic bedding.

Both pornographic images in Room 43 show a female-male couple with the woman on top, one facing the man, and the other in the less common "reverse upright Venus" position, facing away from the man. In the former image, both figures are nude, except that the woman's breasts are covered with a strapless "bra" (strophium); even in the most explicit depictions of sex acts in Roman art, the woman is often wearing the strophium. The rarer "reverse upright Venus" position is more often found in scenes set in Nilotic Egypt.

Further reading

• Lawrence Richardson, Pompeii: An Architectural History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 126–127.