Rich Pompeiian Houses, Shops for Rent, and the Huge Apartment Building in Herculaneum as Typical Spaces for Pauline House Churches

Abstract

This article reevaluates previously held assumptions that the atrium house was the primary setting for Pauline house churches, and includes insulae in the discussion. There were massive social contrasts within Roman domus, so that many rich and poor lived in the same domestic spaces. Meggitt’s argument that 1 percent lived totally different lives than the other 99 percent was not the case in Pompeii. Both domus and insulae (apartment buildings) often incorporated shops, again relating owners and slaves to the same spaces. Women owned some domus, the foreign goddess Isis was influential in some wealthy Pompeiian domus, and many owners displayed gorgons to ward off evil influences.