6. Cubiculum As much as the front part of the house centered on the atrium, the cubiculum puts the “womb” back into “room.” Small, stuffy, and sparsely furnished with a single sleeping couch, cubicula in Pompeian houses had one tiny square opening high up one wall for the most minimal amount of light to enter. To call them bedrooms is a misnomer, since they were not just for sleeping, and they were not entirely private. Of all the rooms in the domus, their mixed use seems most fraught and counterintuitive to the contemporary imagination. Cubicula were not assigned to one inhabitant but shared among family members, and used for a variety of activities. They lined the walls of the atrium and the peristyle, the most public spaces in the house. They could be stunningly decorated, or minimally color blocked. Closed by doors, curtains, or screens, they offered the only source of privacy in a communal structure, but, as was true throughout the rest of the domus, whenever space was fragmented and claimed, the cost of such privacy was darkness. Despite a variety of uses, the cubiculum was primarily used for sleeping: a place to close your eyes. Dreaming was of great importance to the ancient psyche. It was said to be the way the gods communicated with mortals, appearing variously as enigma, prophecy, nightmare, or apparition. The cubiculum set up the dark and simple tomb-like terms to meet one’s makers for a few hours every night, to confront one’s deepest buried fears, hopes, and fantasies. Or to crash in a cool hole at the hottest time of the day. Or to experience that other “little death,” the oblivion of a sexual encounter. In between these periods of escape from public life, however, the same sleeping couch doubled as a lounger, and other activities prevailed by the light of a burning wick: dressing and grooming, writing, recovery from illness, hosting close friends, the management of confidential business, even murders or suicides (if we are to believe the plots in ancient literature). —AK
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