Luxury and Stoic Polemical discourse

As early as the second-century B.C. men such as the staunch Republican Cato the Elder warned their fellow citizens about the degenerative affects of acquiring decadent foreign luxuries. In late Republican and Imperial times discourses of this kind became more frequent and increasingly directed against individuals who were accused of abandoning ‘traditional’ stoic values. In some extreme cases even legal action followed. (Whitehorne 1969:28)

Despite the fact that most of the ancient polemical texts concerning luxury focused on the acquisition of marble, they were nevertheless used by several post-1980s writers to contextualise wall-painting as evidence of luxury and status. The two factors that were largely responsible for this situation were the paucity of ancient texts referring to wall-paintings and the fact that they are the most visible artefacts to have survived within the Roman house. In the case of marble it provided the visible evidence for Republican discourses condemning ostentatious private ownership. The importation of marble came to signify the contamination of Roman ideals by decadent and effete cultures. Marble dominated ancient discourses on luxury largely because of its capacity to instantly transform mediocrity into magnificence. Its capacity to do this via a thin veneer provided the perfect metaphor for stoic philosophers such as Seneca, who equated it with superficiality and “thin plated happiness”, (Seneca Ep.90.25). Wall-painting's capacity to transform by means of even thinner layers (of paint), appears not to have presented any ethical issues for either Republican or Imperial critics. On the other hand, gold objects, silverware, bronzes and refined clothes, in addition to marble, were singled out by men such as Seneca, Lucan and Horace as evidence of degeneration caused by the pursuit of luxury.

When Pliny the Elder tells us that quarrying marble for purely luxury usage is a sin against nature, he is talking from the perspective of someone still clinging to Republican values (Pliny NH 36.9.125). The values in question relate to austerity and piety in the private sphere. Public buildings, on the other hand, were considered to be synonymous with public edification and therefore Basilicas and Temples warranted expensive coloured marble facades (Pliny NH 36.24.102). Similarly, Augustus made great play on the fact that under his rule the city of Rome was transformed from a city of brick to one of gleaming marble. In contrast, he displayed private stoicism by dwelling in fairly modest surroundings. Seneca, on the other hand, some eighty years later, saw no difference between public and private uses of marble and was critical of the fact that both… “houses and temples are gleaming with marble”,… because… “…slavery lives beneath marble and gold” (Seneca Ep. 90.25 & 88.18-20). Whereas some years earlier, Cicero pointed out that…“the Roman populace hates private luxuriousness, but loves public magnificence” ( pro-Murena 36). Senecas’s critique has formulaic similarities to views espoused by his teacher, the rhetorician and philosopher Papirius Fabianus. (Whitehorne 1969:34) Seneca used the theme of immorality associated with excessive material wealth as both a critique of excess wealth and as a counterpoint to the life enhancing objectives associated with philosophy.