Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this project is to analyze one of the most relevant vice in Roman society: luxuria. From a Roman point of view, luxuria is a passion, not different from anger or love, in that it is grounded on desire: the desire for pleasures, for luxury in its widest sense. Indeed, it includes lust, gluttony, greed, and sloth. Luxuria expresses a way of life which is the exact opposite of the sober frugality ¿ the mos maiorum - on which the Romans built their self-representation. This mix of moral, literary, economic issues makes it an ideal field for an interdisciplinary research. We would like to focus on the period between the late Ist and the early IInd century CE, because it is in these years that luxuria switch from being labelled as the archenemy of philosophical life (Seneca) to being implicitly accepted as matter of fact, at least from a part of the society (Pliny the Younger). The project is rooted in the literary study of these two authors, which represent two opposite ways of facing this attitude, and of Pliny the Elder, who shows a moralistic attitude similar to Seneca¿s but also provides a sort of vocabulary of luxuria in its material manifestations. In fact, it is crucial to understand the social, political and economic context which determined this cultural turning point. From a historical and economical point of view, we will investigate what really meant to be a wealthy man in those years, and to what extent this way of life was effectively spread in Roman empire. The archaeological inquiry will enrich this research with the focus on objects, houses and places where luxuria expressed itself; at the same time, papyrological documentation will offer evidences of properties and commercial exchanges between Rome and the provinces.