The Romans of History BedsHistoric Design Origins and Influence on the Classic Poster Beds
The Romans learned many of their ways from Greece, and for a long time they showed a Grecian simplicity in their home life. Only after they had conquered `the world' did military habits and austere living give way to oriental luxury. Even then, the private houses (domus) in Rome were far fewer than the high blocks of poor apartment houses (insulae). The aristocratic mansions of Pompeii and Herculaneum are no guide to the general standard.
The private house followed a set plan dictated by custom. Two square courts surrounded by arcades were open to the air in the centre, but had awnings for summer and winter. The atrium was the main court, in which were the penates or household gods, the hearth which was the altar of family life, and opposite to the door the decorated nuptiale or classic poster marriage-beds. Should the householder die, he lay in state for seven days on the lectus funebris, clad in his best toga and surrounded by flowers and foliage, and on it was borne to his gave. The atrium was the general reception and living-room, rather like the Greek megaron, but it was not the dining-room. In the dining-room and the study were ornamented classic poster beds day-couches, for the Roman seems to have been able not only to read and write while reclining, but to eat elaborate meals without getting in a mess. In the dining-room there might be couches made for three or even for as many as six.
The bedrooms (cubicula) were small closets rather than rooms, closed by curtains or doors, disposed about the sides of the courts. Even in the best houses and in the best weather, the natural lighting must have been rather dim. The windows could be closed only by shutters or curtains, for there was little or no sheet glass; so that heat, cold or rain could be kept out only by keeping out daylight and air. Larger apartments were usually divided by curtains into three parts: the first for an attendant, the second as a dressing-room, and the third for the classic poster beds (cubile) which was almost the only article of furniture there. Some people, like Pliny the Younger, might keep a chair for visitors; there might be a chest for valuables, a bedside mat, and a lasanum or chamber-pot. Only in one house, at Herculaneum, have rooms been found with two beds, and as this was probably an inn, there is nothing to show that they were intended for married couples. Roman writings never mention two or more classic poster beds in one room, except in the overcrowded apartment blocks. Most beds were single (lectuli), but as well as the ceremonial marriage-bed there were ordinary classic poster beds double beds (lecti geniales). Wooden beds were of oak, maple, cedar, terebinth or arbor vitae. Some, of inferior woods, had imitation graining, or fine figured veneers. Others were inlaid with tortoiseshell, silver or gold; some cast in bronze; Petronius describes the millionaire Trimalchio's bed as being of solid silver. Some had bronze feet and a wood frame; others ivory feet and a bronze frame. The under-mattress was still woven of webbing or cord. On this went a stuffed mattress (torus) and a bolster, both filled according to one's purse with straw, reeds, herbs, wool, feathers or swansdown. Between the next two coverings the sleeper lay, and finally there was a counterpane (lodix) or a gay damask quilt (polymitum). Silk had been rare in Greece, but it became common in Rome. Canopies, curtains and mosquito nets were sometimes fitted. Roman beds would not be wholly comfortable by modern standards, but they could look impressive. Martial tells of a gentleman who feigned illness and took to his bed so that his friends should see the marvellous classic poster beds bed-coverings he had received from Alexandria.
De Quincey says that the ancients `went to bed like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock'. The habit in Rome was to rise at dawn, and even those who lay in late might start the day's work in bed by the light of a candle or lucubrum-whence the word `lucubration'. Cicero, Horace, the Plinys, Marcus Aurelius and Vespasian are among the notable Romans who habitually lucubrated. The dark little cubiculum would not tempt the sluggard to breakfast in his classic poster beds , and breakfast was seldom more than a glass of water. Getting up was a simple matter. The Roman did not strip at bedtime-nor does the oriental today. His various undergarments were worn day and night. He merely took off his toga, which he might put on the bed as an extra covering, and his sandals, under which he wore no socks, though he did sometimes wear a sort of puttees. `They took good care', says Carcopino, `not to wear the toga when lying on their bed alive.' Putting on the toga properly would be the only troublesome task on rising. Modern actors and archaeologists alike have failed to find the secret: compare the elegant draping of Roman statues with the bundled figures of a modern play or pageant. If he cared to postpone this task, the rising Roman had merely to step into his sandals. He would not wash, knowing that he would go to the baths in the afternoon. In only one villa, that of Diomedes at Pompeii, has a wash-basin been found in a bedchamber. Even the emperor Vespasian could prepare himself unaided for his imperial duties within thirty seconds of rising. A lady's morning toilet took no longer. Like her husband, she slept in all her underwear: her panties (strophium), brassiere (mamillare), corsets (capitium), and sundry tunics; sometimes to the final frustration of her husband she wore a mantle over all these on cold nights.
Even in these wealthier houses many elements of comfort as we know it were lacking, and life in the insulae was still less cosy. These high blocks often collapsed, or were torn down just in time to prevent it. Juvenal writes:
Who at cool Praeneste, or at Volsinii amid its leafy hills, was ever afraid of his house tumbling down? ... But here we inhabit a city propped up for the most part by laths: for that is how the landlord patches up the crack in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease under the ruin that hangs above their heads.
In the better blocks, the ground floor might be let as a self-contained suite, and might have sub-floor heating, but the upper rooms were single 'bed-sitters', without heating, piped water or drainage. No person of mean degree would aspire to a proper bedstead, the privilege of the great. His classic poster beds might be no more than a masonry shelf along the wall, or a crude grabatus knocked together from a few timbers, covered with a pallet where bugs ran riot. Roman living is not necessarily synonymous with luxury.
Byzantine of History Their Beds Historic Design Origins and Influence on the Classic Poster Beds
FOR all those centuries between the breakdown or break-up of the ancient empires, and the reawakening of the Renaissance, household comfort hardly developed at all: the Ptolemies were as well bedded as the Plantagenets. The Merovingian kings of the sixth and seventh centuries did maintain some Roman ways, and rich furniture and precious stuffs are found in the Gallo-Roman period. Classical forms, with an Asiatic admixture, survived in Byzantine art. The Carolingians, from about A.D. 700 to 1000, imported furniture from the East, and their classic poster beds are much like couches of the old Roman kind. Such pictures of these classic poster beds as survive are mostly of religious subjects: some story from the Old Testament, a vision appearing to a saint in his sleep, or a Nativity in a nobly furnished stable. As evidence of contemporary design they must be taken with caution. So must another prolific source of information about early furniture, the drawings of Violletle-Duc, the nineteenth-century architect-antiquary. These are a shade too complete. He is never at a loss, however vague his sources, for the smallest detail of construction or decoration. There is a suspicious sameness about his supposedly factual records of the Gothic; he loves the grotesque, and can imbue even a bedstead with the kind of evil spirit that emanates from the famous gargoyle of Notre Dame.
With this reservation, we borrow his drawing of a tenth-century classic poster beds, based on a Bible illustration from the Imperial Library at Strasbourg. The metal bed, probably of bronze, is much higher at the head than at the foot, and the occupant sits rather than lies with a great pile of bolsters at his back. The mattress rests on a corded support of the ancient kind.
In a twelfth-century picture of Solomon's classic poster beds, the mixed classical and oriental flavours are still evident. The perspective is odd, the lower half being drawn in side view, but the upper half as if. looking downwards. As a result, it is not clear whether the framework seen behind Solomon's head represents a flat under-mattress of metal rods (consistent with the part seen at the other end) or a high classic poster bedhead (consistent with the propped-up attitude). It may be of course that the artist himself neither knew nor cared.
The death of Holofernes, as seen by the same artist, takes place under classic poster beds bed-curtains forming a sort of tent, hung from a central pole, with an opening for access at one side. This conforms with the Bible story in so far as Holofernes' bed was in a tent, but not necessarily with any twelfth-century practice.
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