Transcript
Narration
This is the ancient port of Carthage - the largest city in the Punic world. The name Punic comes from the Latin word for “Phoenician” - a people originally from modern Lebanon, who founded Carthage.
Following the Roman conquest in 146 BC, the Punic city was destroyed and buried under the foundations of the new Roman city. In recent years a number of Punic houses have been excavated.
The houses themselves are modest in size compared with those of Pompeii and Ephesus. The building plots are long and narrow, separated by alleys which give access to the apartments at the rear.
The front entrance leads into a rectangular room, once again the point of water collection - here into underground cisterns. The cisterns were originally covered and the water channelled from the closed roof by down pipes.
The positioning of the rooms and doorways suggests that some attempt was made to follow principles of symmetry and axiality, and the large, central room may have performed some of the domestic functions of a court or an atrium.
Already a form of mosaic floor - composed of small cubes or tesserae, is being used, prior to the Roman conquest.
But how far did houses like these influence the ones built in the area in the Roman period. The city of Thugga is terraced into a steep hillside. As at Ephesus, the entrances to the houses lead off narrow, cobbled streets. As with some of the elite residences at Pompeii, here imposing entrances give some indication of grand interiors within.
Outside the House of the Trifolium, a pair of columns flank the door itself. But the symmetrical vista into the opulent interior of the house, which you saw at Pompeii, would not have been used here.
Instead, a staircase lead from just inside the front door, down to a basement level, and it seems that this was where some of the most elaborate rooms were located.
A central peristyle may have been planted as a garden. Light and air from here filtered through the surrounding porticoes and into the rooms behind.
These rooms would have been offered protection from the hot African summer by the ground floor above – which is no longer well preserved. Although today the houses of Thugga appear quite stark, they would originally have been elaborately decorated.
From the centre of the courtyard of this smaller neighbour of the House of the Trifolium comes an intricately detailed picture of Odysseus withstanding the lure of the Sirens, now displayed in the Bardo Museum.
This use of a theme from Greek literature echoes the use of similar themes in the painted decoration of houses both at Ephesus and at Pompeii. In this African context such representations are evidence of the way in which elements of Greek culture, adopted by the Italian elite, had also reached other geographical areas. Among the other popular motifs are fishermen and fish. The fish are depicted in such detail that it’s possible to identify individual species. In a world without refrigeration these would have been one of the most prized and expensive foods. The fish also symbolise the natural abundance of the sea.
The mosaic decoration from Thugga also includes more distinctively Roman, as opposed to Greek elements, like this motto, from another house near the House of the Trifolium, which reads omnia tibi felicia: all happiness to you.
The mosaic was originally positioned in the entrance of the house , which also has a small peristyle courtyard.
The houses in Bulla Regia reveal more about local patterns of house design.
The House of the Hunt occupies most of an insula or housing block and shows some attempt to conform to the principles of symmetry and axiality.
The rooms at ground level are not well preserved, although there are the remains of a large peristyle. It seems that ground level was where the functional areas lay.
Once again entered from narrow paved streets, it appears the outer rooms were shops and workshops: a large, circular millstone can still be seen in a room near the street corner.
On the third side lay amenities for the use of the householder, including a lavatory with seating for two people, and a bath.
This is stripped of its decoration but a nearby bath gives an impression of what it might have been like.
The latin motto reads: VENANTIORUM BAIAE – the baths of the hunters.
But as at Thugga, some of the most comfortable living apartments lay downstairs in a basement area.
This lower level opens off a small court. The columns of the colonnade are decorated in the Corinthian order, used for buildings across the Empire.
Here, though, the large curling leaves of the capitals give a distinctive local flavour. Attention is drawn to the entrance of the main room by the pilasters, also in Corinthian style. The window at the far end would have provided a through draft in the hot summer months, while a well to one side gave access to fresh water. At the centre is an elaborate rectangular mosaic, known as a “carpet”, with geometric patterns, which would have contributed to the atmosphere of comfort and elegance.
Beyond the threshold mosaic, the plain mosaic floor marks the location of couches, showing that this was once a dining room. The room’s location below the level of the main house would have meant that it was relatively cool and peaceful.