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7H. Types and Sizes of Households

Although Greek houses are typically of a standard size, Roman houses and their colonnaded gardens are of quite uneven sizes. Wallace-Hydrill analyzed three different blocks of houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum from A.D. 79 (a total of 234 houses) and then described four different types of houses that vary from 900 to 9,000 square feet or larger. No architectural format is standard:

Type 1 is a shop and back room;
Type 2 has three rooms, one of which may be a main room;
Type 3 has a main room and a rear garden; Fifty seven of the [two hundred and thirty four] houses in the sample are type 3, the "average" size in these two cities, between 1500 and 3105 total square feet; [which is about the size of a modern North American detached family home today.]
Type 4 has both a main room and a colonnaded garden, and in addition may have a horticultural plot, a second main room, and/or a second colonnaded garden. 58 houses are type 4, with between 3,100 and 27,000 total square feet. [which would be very expensive and luxurious even by today's standards.] (1)

Occupation Size

The occupation numbers of 10,215 for the House of the Citharist and 3,340 for the House of Menander are shocking, since many have accepted upper limits of 30 to 50 people in a house worship service, and indeed, these grand houses would have been quite crowded by so many.

But if we calculate a half or a quarter of those numbers, gatherings of the whole church in a city theoretically could still have been of considerable size. It is unwise to set a hard upper limit of 30 to 40 for the number of Christians who might celebrate the Lord's Supper in a Roman triclinium plus colonnaded gardens. (1)

Many Christian assemblies were certainly much smaller than forty; others could have been significantly larger. We have focused on the larger spaces because many writers have assumed that they did not exist. Gaius, head of a synagogue in Corinth; Erasmus, perhaps an aedile in the same city; Prisca and Aquila, who owned a house in Asia and another in Rome; and Phoebe, Paul's patron, theoretically might have owned houses like some of those discussed above, although since we cannot visit them, we will never know. (1)

The need for all early Christian assemblies to have been small and private is a modern projection, not justified by Roman domestic culture or architecture. (1)

The so-called Palatial Mansion in Jerusalem is an example of an ostentatious residence that could easily have accommodated the sorts of activities described in Acts. The house covered more than five thousand four hundred square feet and included an upper level for dwelling and a lower basement or water installations (pools, baths and cisterns.) The structure probably included a second level, an upper story of rooms, but the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has made reconstruction of this level impossible.(2)

Mansion Courtyard

Aquaduct Numerous rooms of this spacious mansion were arranged around a courtyard. The ornate frescoes in many of the rooms testify to strong Hellenistic influences such as may be observed at Pompeii. Two prominent features are worth mentioning: first, the large reception hall measuring twenty four feet wide and thirty three feet long (600 square feet). Access from the courtyard was through a buffer room through which other areas were also reached.

This reception hall could have accommodated seventy five people. Access to three other smaller rooms was gained only by passing through this room. The ornamental frescoes (Ionic columns bearing a schematic Doric frieze) in these rooms suggest a public character. Taken together, the hall and the smaller adjoining rooms would have accommodated about one hundred people quite comfortably.(3)

Water Installations

The second feature is the water installations on the lower level. In addition to a small, tastefully decorated bathroom, there were two large ritual baths, each with a double entrance. Avigad suggests that the emphasis on ritual cleanliness in this household borders on "a cult of immersion."(4) Acts speaks of a significant number of priests responding in faith to the apostle's preaching (6).

Although Acts does not draw a correlation between these priests and the house assemblies, we find a consistent pattern of converts who could have been significant benefactors, including the provision of homes for the community to gather. Water installations such as those in the Palatial Mansion could have functioned for Christian baptisms. (5)

Living Outside

Palm Tree in Sun The mild, brief, rainy Mediterranean winters and long, hot, dry summers create an environment in which, for seven to eight months of the year, the most pleasant place to be is outside, in the shade by day and under the stars by night. Thus the basic design of the Greco-Roman house of the early imperial period features some kind of central court around which rooms are arranged and to which they give access. The front door and whatever small windows may open onto the street are unprepossessing.

The house is turned inward and its life happens inside the walls, yet for the most part out of doors. Even some of the largest and most impressive urban houses preserved have surprisingly small, dark, and airless rooms for sleeping and other indoor functions, with the exception of dining.(1)

Street Access

The early Augustan Latin architect and engineer Vitruvius describes the Greek house as giving access from the street through a narrow opening, with stables on one side and porter's room on the other, to a colonnaded garden, around which are arranged dining rooms, guest rooms, and space for the male head of the household to receive guests and conduct business affairs.

Beyond this grouping of rooms, through a passageway, lay another garden and another complex of rooms consisting of the women's rooms, slave quarters, and rooms for domestic activities, called collectively women's quarters.(1)

Pompeii Excavations

Pompeii Victim The excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, covered by volcanic ash and lava in A.D. 79, have revealed many excellent examples of upper middle class Roman homes. In Asia Minor archaeological work at Ephesus and Priene has also been very rewarding in this regard, although, of course, the remains are not in the well preserved state of the cities covered in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. To the student of the New Testament these sites cannot but bring to mind the congregations of St. Paul, who often held their meetings in similar surroundings.

At Herculaneum the atria average about 25 x 30 feet in size, the less numerous colonnaded garden about 33 x 50 feet including the surrounding colonnaded porches of about 9 feet in width. At Pompeii the averages are somewhat larger, the atria about 31 x 42 feet and the colonnaded gardens about 55 x 67 feet. At Ephesus the excavated dwellings appear to be equally impressive, with the twenty four column colonnaded garden of one patrician mansion measuring 4500 square feet. (3.)

Questions for Discussion

1. Imagine you are in a large upper class Roman home as described above. What would the worship be like?

Bibliography and Notes

(1.) Selections from "Families in the New Testament World - Households and House Churches" by Carolyn Osiek and David L. Balch John Knox Press, Kentucky Copyright 1997. All rights reserved. (2.) Selections from "Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Development" editors Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids. A Compendium of Contemporary Christian Scholarship Copyright All rights reserved.

"You are fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household."

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