Resumen de Dining as spectacle in late Roman houses
The elements of visual culture preserved in late Roman houses confirm an intense interest in dramatic visual display. This study employs an interpretive lens of spectacle to examine a new form of banquet space amd furnishings in the period, as well as a new style of ‘dinner-theatre’ they served. By considering ancient art as inseparable from active contexts and ephemeral events, a more sophisticated understanding of a society's self-definition through art emerges. Rather than being epiphenomenal to the poliltical culture of late antiquity, spectacle is argued to be central to the creation and contestation of power structures: performance is politics.
