House of the Faun The House of the Faun was built in the 2nd Century BC, in Pompeii, the

owner of which is unknown. However, from the luxury and variety of the artworks within it is probable that the owner was rich and, as we shall discover, used art and architecture to convey messages about what he was like, and provides us with insight into Roman society at the time. The first thing we might notice is the size of the house, 32000 square feet, which is an entire insula, block of apartments. The owner has many rooms at his disposal, including two atria, two triclinia, a tabularium, many cubicula, and service rooms. The faade, as we can see, is made of tufa stone, and is decorated with columns, evoking a sense of public architecture, perhaps showing that the owner wishes to be viewed as important in the public sphere. The wide entrances are of the two-storied tabernae, shops and room for the shopkeepers to sleep. The narrow entrance of the main entrance on the left makes line a of sight with the inner window of room 11, leading the eye of the viewer into the house, into and beyond the first peristyle and to the larger columned one, both of which would be flooded with light from the impluvium and open ceiling. Therefore, the focus of the house is on the visual aspect, in that the owner wishes even the casual passer-by to be drawn visually into his home, to marvel at his home, and the wealth and power it signifies. The Roman emphasis on the visual nature of wealth and power is very evident here. These two peristyles and garden areas showed that the owner had the luxury of space within his house, as well as aspiring to an idealised rural paradise within an urban context. It also shows that he not only has the wealth to have a garden, but the luxury of time to spend in it. Similarly, the private callidarium and tepidarium symbolised refined pleasures and sophisticated entertainment. Similarly, Roman public baths were often places to socialise and aid political strategy; therefore, private baths again allude to a political significance, over which the owner has control. In one of these peristyles, in the impluvium, a dancing faun in bronze was found which gave the house its name. Fauns are symbols of jollity, freedom and fertility, especially within in the Hellenic world. Therefore this sculpture shows the owner of the house perhaps wishing to portray himself as educated and sophisticated in Greek myth and art. Hellenistic influences are seen as symbols of wealth, decadence and learnedness, and so the owner of the house uses this to subtly convey his own luxurious and cultured way of living. This can also be seen in the famous Alexander Mosaic which shows one of the battles in which Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, the last of the Achaemenid empire, either the battle of Issus in 333BC or the Battle of Gaugamela two years later. This incredibly detailed and colourful floor mosaic, a recreation of a lost Greek painting, again showing a desire on the commissioners part to show his erudition and knowledge of Greek history and his fine taste in artwork. Other floor mosaics have subject themes with the Nile and crocodiles, showing the link between the idea of living luxuriously with symbols of the East. Interestingly, the House was originally built under the Samnite period, before the colonization of Pompei by the Romans, yet writing on mosaics inside the house, such as the HAVE welcome mat are in Latin. This may be because the house was partially destroyed in 62AD by an earthquake, and was used as a living space until the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD. However, it could also indicate that

Romanness was desirable, and may indicate that being Roman, as well as showing knowledge of Greece, was associated with luxury, high social status and other such symbols.