Les lieux des lettres dans les villae occidentales de l'antiquité tardive

This paper summarizes an attempt to identify a socially crucial space of the aristocratic residence: the “study room”. Many writers, like Pliny the Younger, Sidonius or Symmachus, left testimonies about the social significance of being well read for the aristocrat. This statutory obligation implies that special spaces should have been devoted to the practice of study in the aristocratic residence. But one must admit that, unlike dining rooms or other reception spaces involved in the self-representation strategy, the “study rooms” are not easy to isolate within the private residence, mainly because reading and studying are, by nature, low constraint activities, which are likely to take place in a variety of spots in the house, and the scarcity of explicit archaeological evidence doesn’t help to propose identificatory elements for the “study rooms”. Nevertheless such an attempt, perhaps less hazardous as it first seems, is worth being ventured.

A first step in the identification process is to analyze the antique sources in order to make out the ideal profile of the “study room”. A second one consists in comparing the ideal profile and the available archaeological structures. As a result, this experiment allows to isolate nine probable “study rooms”. It doesn’t allow us, for the moment, to draw out a typology. But it confirms the existence of such structures in the late western villae and encourages carrying on the observations.