SPECIAL: Literary Sources for the Roman House

Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book How to Make a Home: An Ancient Guide to Style and Comfort, a curated collection of passages (by Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Pliny, Vitruvius, and others) that relate to the design, decor, and ideology of the ancient Roman house and home. The book is part of Princeton University Press's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series.

Preview the book's Table of Contents here.

Read Yung In Chae's 2020 article (in the Princeton Alumni Weekly) about the "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series.

Ancient authors (selection)

• Bibaculus fragments 1 and 2
• Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares and de Officiis
• Juvenal Satires 3; 8
• Ovid, Metamorphoses 8 (Baucis and Philemon scene)
• Pliny the Younger, epistles. Marden also mentions Christopher Whitton's 2013 "Green and Yellow," Pliny the Younger: Epistles Books II (Cambridge).
• Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.13-14
• Vitruvius, de Architectura (various passages)

Also mentioned

• Studies of the Roman house by scholars including Catherine Edwards, Elaine Gazda, Hérica Valladares, and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
• Josiah Osgood's books in PUP's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series

About our guest

Marden Nichols is Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at Georgetown University. She is a scholar of ancient Roman literature, art, and architecture, whose work situates Vitruvius’ De architectura within the literary, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the ancient world. She is the author of Author and Audience in Vitruvius’ “De architectura” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and translator of How to Make a Home: An Ancient Guide to Style and Comfort, a collection of ancient Roman writings about home design and decoration that has just appeared from Princeton University Press.

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

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