House of Sacerdos Amandus I.7.7

The House of Sacerdos Amandus I.7.7, facing onto the Via dell'Abbondanza, is one of the most interesting domus in Regio I for its complex architectural history and, above all, for the refined cycle of paintings in the triclinium, where celebrated Greek myths unfold within expansive landscapes. The arrangement visible in AD 79 resulted from numerous alterations that had changed both the house and the adjoining properties over time.

The modern name derives from inscriptions on the façade. One mentions Amandus sacerdos, a priest named Amandus who supported a candidate for municipal office. This evidence led to the traditional association of Amandus with the house, but it does not prove that he owned it. The name should therefore be retained as an established archaeological convention without turning Amandus into the documented owner of the domus.

A house altered over the centuries

The irregular plan of the House of Sacerdos Amandus reflects a long sequence of changes. TESS dates the building's documented history from the first century BC to AD 79, while some reconstructions of the insula identify still earlier building phases.

Its relationship with the adjoining rooms is particularly significant. In its original form, the complex also included shop I.7.6 and thermopolium I.7.8, which were later separated from the residential unit. The property's boundaries were therefore not fixed, but changed as spaces were divided and reorganised.

The house of AD 79 should be understood as the outcome of this development, not as a building created in its entirety according to a single design.

The entrance on the Via dell'Abbondanza

The main entrance opened directly onto the Via dell'Abbondanza, the great thoroughfare crossing the southern part of the city. A long corridor led from the street to the atrium and gradually introduced visitors to the private rooms.

A location on one of Pompeii's busiest streets also made the façade particularly suitable for political publicity. Painted electoral notices allowed candidates and their supporters to address passers-by directly, turning house fronts into part of the city's public life.

It is in this context that the name of Amandus appears.

Amandus sacerdos

The inscription central to the house's modern name reads “Fuscum aedilem / Amandus sacerdos”: Amandus, described as sacerdos, was supporting Fuscus as a candidate for aedile.

We therefore know that a priest named Amandus participated in Pompeian political life. We do not know with certainty which priesthood he held, nor can it be proved that he lived in this particular house.

A connection with the cult of Isis has sometimes been proposed on the basis of this and other clues, but the available evidence does not securely identify Amandus as an Isiac priest. It is preferable to retain only what the inscription states: Amandus was a sacerdos, without specifying his cult.

The atrium

The entrance corridor led to the atrium, around which some of the house's principal rooms were arranged. The plan lacks the perfect symmetry of a grand aristocratic domus and reflects the property's successive alterations.

The large triclinium opens on the north-west side, while several smaller rooms were arranged to the east. Other passages led to the rear part of the house and the garden.

This relative irregularity is one of the building's most interesting features because it makes the effects of successive architectural changes directly visible.

The great triclinium

The best-known room is the triclinium used for banqueting. It preserves Third Style paintings and a cement-based floor enriched with tesserae and a central panel of marble slabs.

The decoration dates between the late first century BC and the early first century AD. It is one of the most important Pompeian cycles in which mythological narratives are set within extensive natural landscapes.

The Italian Ministry of Culture itself describes the “deeds of heroes” painted in the triclinium as one of the house's defining features.

Myth and landscape

The triclinium paintings do not isolate their mythological figures against simple backgrounds. Rocks, coastlines, trees, cities and stretches of sea occupy a fundamental part of the compositions and contribute directly to the narrative.

This is an important feature of Third Style painting. Myth is placed within a broad landscape that is often far more extensive than the human figures, creating a sense of depth and distance.

Modern studies have also identified interesting parallels between some of these panels and the mythological landscapes in the Villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase, revealing the circulation of pictorial models among workshops active in the Vesuvian area.

Perseus and Andromeda

One of the best-preserved paintings depicts Perseus and Andromeda. According to the myth, Andromeda had been chained to a rock and was to be sacrificed to a sea monster when Perseus came to her rescue.

The composition does not necessarily present only one instant in the story. As often occurs in Roman painting, different moments can coexist within a single landscape: Andromeda's peril, the hero's intervention and the consequences of his victory are suggested through several narrative elements.

The wall of a domestic room was thus transformed into a mythological narrative for the guests at a banquet.

Polyphemus and Galatea

Another scene depicts Polyphemus and Galatea. The Cyclops Polyphemus, in love with the sea-nymph, belonged to a myth widely represented in ancient poetry and art.

The figures are once again set within a landscape dominated by the sea. A ship is also included, visually connecting the Cyclops with the maritime setting of many traditions associated with him.

Different episodes in the Polyphemus tradition should not automatically be conflated. This painting belongs specifically to the love story with Galatea, though its landscape elements evoke the Cyclops' broader mythological repertoire.

The fall of Icarus

The triclinium also included a scene of the fall of Icarus. The young man attempted to escape with his father Daedalus using artificial wings, but flew too close to the sun and plunged into the sea.

In the Pompeian painting, the dramatic event takes place within an extensive coastal landscape. Human figures react to what has happened and guide the viewer's eye towards the point where the tragedy unfolds.

Here too, the landscape is not merely a decorative background: it participates in the narrative and magnifies the distance between the observer and the represented drama.

Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides

A further panel in the triclinium has been identified as Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides, an episode from the hero's celebrated labours.

Hercules had to obtain the golden apples guarded in the remote garden of the Hesperides. The subject allowed painters to combine a heroic figure with a natural setting, making it especially well suited to the same landscape idiom used in the room's other scenes.

The paintings do not necessarily form a single continuous narrative. Perseus, Polyphemus, Icarus and Hercules belong to different traditions, but all transport the viewer into distant, mythical landscapes.

Banqueting and mythological culture

The location of these images in a triclinium is significant. Banqueters spent long periods reclining on dining couches and had ample opportunity to study the walls.

Identifying the myths, recalling their different literary versions and discussing them could become part of the conversation. The paintings demonstrated not only the owner's financial means but also participation in Graeco-Roman mythological and literary culture.

The House of Sacerdos Amandus is especially interesting because it concentrates this sophisticated pictorial programme in a residence much smaller than the grand aristocratic domus.

The cubicula

Several small rooms also opened off the atrium, including cubicula. TESS records cement-based floors decorated with white tesserae arranged in geometric grids and Third Style paintings.

A painting identified as Helen and Paris also came from one of the cubicula, further evidence of the household's interest in major mythological narratives.

Cubicula should not be imagined solely as bedrooms in the modern sense. In Roman houses they could be used for rest, private meetings and other purposes that varied during the day.

Geometric pavements

The house preserves several noteworthy floors. In the triclinium, the cement-based pavement is enriched with tesserae and a pseudo-emblema of marble slabs; in the cubicula, white tesserae form lozenge grids.

One ala also has a cement-based pavement dotted with crosses and a mosaic threshold bearing a white two-strand guilloche on a black ground.

Some of these floors predate parts of the wall decoration, once again showing how occupants might retain earlier pavements while updating their walls in keeping with new fashions.

The rear section

From the atrium, one could reach the rear section of the house, arranged around an open space that TESS identifies as a peristyle or viridarium.

The portico had a terracotta-based cement floor dotted with white cubes. Columns and walls defined a more intimate space than the vast peristyles of larger residences.

The garden nevertheless supplied light and air to the interior rooms and offered a place to relax away from the traffic of the Via dell'Abbondanza.

The loggia and upper floor

The house also had an upper floor, reached by an internal staircase and connected to a loggia overlooking the garden area. Elements of the upper access towards the façade also survive.

These rooms remind us how incomplete the modern perception of Pompeian houses can be. Much of their upper storeys collapsed during the eruption, and the domus are often imagined today as single-level buildings, although the ancient city was far more vertical.

In the House of Sacerdos Amandus, the collapse of the upper floor also preserved one of the most interesting finds from the entire building.

The carbonised wax tablets

During the 1924 excavations, the debris from the upper level yielded very numerous carbonised fragments of small rectangular wooden tablets, together with thicker pieces of wood and remains of plant material.

The tablets were of a type that could be coated with wax and used for writing. The find is particularly important because wood normally decays quickly, whereas carbonisation enabled it to survive.

The excavators initially interpreted the assemblage as the workshop of a lignarius tabellarius, a craftsman who made writing tablets.

A tablet-maker's workshop or an archive?

This interpretation entered the guidebooks and is still often repeated, but it is not the only possibility.

The historian Giuseppe Camodeca observed that the find also included fragments of thicker boards that may have belonged to a cupboard, and that an upper floor would not be an especially logical location for a woodworking shop. He therefore proposed that the tablets instead formed a private archive kept in a wooden cabinet.

Since the original finds no longer allow the issue to be resolved conclusively, both possibilities should remain open. What is certain is that a large quantity of wooden writing tablets was present on the upper floor. Whether they were newly made goods or documents in an archive remains a matter of debate.

Writing in Roman Pompeii

Wax tablets were among the most common writing materials in the Roman world. A shallow recess in a wooden surface was filled with wax and incised with a stylus; several tablets could be joined to form diptychs or triptychs.

They were used for accounts, contracts, receipts, notes and administrative records, as well as for learning to write. Important archives of tablets have been recovered both at Pompeii and at Herculaneum.

Whatever its precise function, the assemblage from the House of Sacerdos Amandus also places the residence within the history of written culture in the city.

The relationship between the house and economic activity

The domus's earlier connection with shop I.7.6 and thermopolium I.7.8, together with the presence of the tablets upstairs, illustrates the complex relationship between residence and economy.

A Pompeian house might own shops opening onto the street, rent out premises, absorb or separate rooms, and combine domestic space with productive activity. Modern categories such as “house”, “shop” and “workshop” do not always correspond neatly to ancient organisation.

The House of Sacerdos Amandus is a good example of this continual transformation of urban property.

Twentieth-century excavation

The house was explored chiefly in 1912 and again in 1924. The second campaign produced the carbonised tablets from the upper rooms.

The investigation therefore took place when Pompeian archaeology was gradually broadening its interests. Not only major statues and paintings, but also everyday objects, carbonised wooden structures and traces of domestic activity were beginning to be valued as important evidence.

The paintings in the triclinium soon became one of the building's best-known features.

Modern restoration

The House of Sacerdos Amandus underwent major consolidation and restoration as part of the Great Pompeii Project. Work addressed the structures, roofs and decorative schemes, making the complex—and especially the paintings in the triclinium—easier to understand.

Conservation is particularly delicate because much of the decoration remains on its original walls and must be protected from water penetration, changes in climate and the deterioration of the masonry.

Modern restoration therefore concerns not only the colours of the paintings, but the entire architectural system on which their survival depends.

A house important above all for its transformations

The House of Sacerdos Amandus I.7.7 is especially significant because it brings together very different aspects of Pompeian life. The inscriptions on the façade introduce us to municipal politics; the irregular plan records successive alterations to the property; the shop and thermopolium recall its relationship with the economy of the Via dell'Abbondanza; and its pavements and paintings demonstrate the standards achieved by domestic decoration.

The triclinium is the high point of the house, with Perseus and Andromeda, Polyphemus and Galatea, the fall of Icarus, and Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides immersed in landscapes that turned the banquet into a visual and cultural experience.

The carbonised tablets from the upper floor add a question that remains open: the workshop of a tablet-maker or a domestic archive? The opportunity to compare different interpretations while distinguishing secure evidence from hypothesis is precisely what makes the House of Sacerdos Amandus one of the most interesting domus in Regio I.