Experiencing Roman picture galleries from Pompeii and Assisi as library spaces

ABSTRACT In Roman domestic contexts the experience of a library, intended as a space for preserving and disseminating knowledge, could be evoked not only through the physical presence of tablets and scrolls, but also through allusions to the literary tradition condensed in the decorative programme of a house. This is the case of the exedra y in the House of the Epigrams in Pompeii and of the cryptoporticus in the House of Propertius in Assisi, from the first centuries BC and AD, displaying series of painted pinakes on mythical subjects complemented by Greek epigrams. The present contribution suggests that these picture galleries were designed and experienced as visual repositories of knowledge, mental libraries of references to previous literary and iconographic treatments of the episodes portrayed. By moving, gazing, and lingering through these rooms, visitors retrieved mythical stories and ancient sources in the same way as they accessed the knowledge stored in a collection of book rolls.