Phase IIIa: Augustan Reoccupation and Renovation

Fig. 15: The House of Diana in the Augustan period (EF)

The house seems to have remained in a state of partial destruction until the reoccupation of the area in the late 1st c. B.C.. At that time, it was reconstructed and substantially modified (see part I, pp. 34-38, for more detailed discussion). The southeast wall (23) was essentially rebuilt from the ground up in a masonry technique involving small stones set in a hard, grainy gray mortar. Several internal walls were also built or modified in the same technique. Both of the shops at the front of the house seem to have been provided with a loft or attic during this reconstruction: in C, a thin partition wall in gray-mortared rubble masonry closed off a narrow space that may have served as a stairwell²³, while in D a construction in gray mortar (206) abutting the southwest wall of the room may be the base of a staircase. The door to the triclinium (K) was blocked at this time, as was the door to the northeastern cubiculum of the pair that preceded room E. Both were blocked in gray-mortar masonry that stands out from the original pis» walls in which the doors were located. The southwest wall of room L (184) was rebuilt with gray mortar during this period, as was its northwest wall (89), which abutted the southwest wall of I (88) and closed the service room off from andron M. To the southwest, 184 also bonded with another thin divider in the same gray-mortared stone interspersed with tile courses (187). Another partition wall in the same technique (305) ran from 23 to bond with 187; together, they enclosed part of the area that had been an open court and formed room P. A line of mortared stones (306) probably represents a sill between M and the new corridor, R. A gray-mortared wall (192) extended andron M to the southwest, separating it from the new loggia. It was built up against the plaster face of the south end of the southeast wall of the tablinum and included a regular stone sill, later robbed and now visible only in the edges of the signinum laid against it and in the tile-and-mortar leveling course beneath it. The doors to P and L may also have had sills, but the somewhat irregular tile-and-mortar courses at the base of both doors (307 and 440) may themselves have served as crude thresholds.

The construction of wall 305 left a narrow space between room P and the bath building. When the northeast (234) and northwest (272) walls of the bath building were rebuilt, bonding with each other and with the wall-stub and engaged column (304) that formed the south end of the loggia (244), this narrow space became a corridor (R) leading to a new door (431) cut into wall 23 (pl. 55). The simultaneity of these construction activities is demonstrated by the relation between walls 23 and 234: while 234 clearly abuts 23, the plaster on its southeastern face continues unbroken across the cut edge of 23. Fragments of mortar preparation left in the area of the sill of this opening seem to preserve the impression of bricks laid in a herringbone pattern over a packed-earth preparation level (330). If this sill was in fact paved in opus spicatum, a technique often used for work-floors and those exposed to moisture, it may support the hypothesis that AB VI was reused as a farmyard²⁴. On the northwest side of the house, the other wall-stub and half-column belonging to the loggia (244) clearly abut the exterior wall (33). While this exterior wall is cut in bedrock, and bonding would not be possible in any phase, the gray-mortar construction of both this wall-stub and the two freestanding columns of the loggia strongly supports their association with the late 1st c. B.C. reconstruction of the house.

Fig. 100: Room J: mosaic pavement

Most of the current floors of the house seem also to have been built at this time. The fauces received a fine signinum pavement (132) equipped with plastered earthen benches in the vestibule, a wide stone doorsill, later robbed, and a drain leading from the atrium out into the forum. This pavement bonded with the pavement of the atrium, which in turn bonded with the basin of the impluvium, the well-head, and the relining of the draw-shaft and cistern (pl. 56). It also bonded with the decorated floor of ala H (pl. 72). In the opposite ala, a beaten-earth floor (82) was laid (pl. 57). This floor was divided from that of the atrium by a sill of rectangular cut stone blocks of varying lengths and widths (86). The sill was located exactly over the south end of the vault of the cistern. It is difficult to say what relation this arrangement bears to the plan of the earlier house, and it is also unclear whether the placement of this sill served some structural function; it may be noted, however, that there was no sign of any earlier pavement or structure in this ala. Other renovations clearly deviated from the original floor plan. The dividing wall of the original cubicula in room E was torn out, and the original pavements were replaced by a single signinum floor (11). This floor was located at a somewhat higher level than the original floors, as the first-phase wall-plaster descends below the rudus of the new pavement. We were unable to see any trace of the original pavement in the small cut that revealed the plaster. At the same time, a new door opening toward the service rooms was cut in the southwest wall of E (87); it may have formed a service entrance for a new indoor dining area. Parallels for this arrangement in triclinia at Pompeii support this interpretation.

Fig. 102: Room K, mosaic pavement

In addition, the signinum and mosaic pavements of the tablinum (94: fig. 100, pl. 5, pl. 73), the triclinium (151: fig. 102, pl. 6, pl. 75) and the loggia (195; pl. 76) date to the reconstruction. Ceramic evidence suggests that the final beaten-earth floors of andron M (141) and of shop D (19, 161, 162, 167, 174, 247)²⁵ also belong to this period.

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23. While it is possible that the grey-mortared partition wall reflects an original Republican division of space, there is additional evidence that the stairwell or corridor was an Augustan addition. Where the edge of the potentially original rear floor is visible in the doorway between the two spaces, it is obvious that this pavement was cut roughly along the line of the new wall. If there had been a pre-existing wall in the same location, one would have expected a molded pavement edge Û as, for example, is found at the end of the same pavement next to the tile basin.

24. Cosa III, 241.

25. What was probably a single beaten-earth surface in D was, as a result of later intrusions in almost every other phase mentioned in this chapter, excavated and recorded under the various numbers above (19 was the surface to which the late hut had been cut; 161 and 162 were non-contiguous areas under the agricultural disturbance of 160, etc.).