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Document Details : Title: Das vestibulum als politischer Ort Subtitle: Eine Machine-Learning-basierte Untersuchung Author(s): SCHUBERT, Charlotte Journal: Ancient Society Volume: 54 Date: 2024 Pages: 133-159 DOI: 10.2143/AS.54.0.3293600 Abstract : Previous research on the question of what the vestibulum was is based on Gellius 16,5: According to Gellius, there was a more recent form of the vestibule, which was integrated into the house (of course only for rich families), and an older version, according to which the vestibule was defined outside the house, as a space between the house and the street. The use of Word2Vec, the implementation of a neural network from the field of machine learning, has revealed a semantic context that stimulates a differentiation of the previous investigations and also shows the vestibulum as a political place: In Livy, our main source for the Republican period, the vestibulum curiae plays a special role as a place where people waited for the decision of the Senate or for an external communication from the Senate to the public (foreign legations, the corona of great lords such as relatives and friends as well as the plebs had to stay in the vestibulum curiae). From Augustus onwards, however, the vestibule of the imperial palace — the domus Augusti — was used for official acts; Augustus seems to have transferred the cult of Vesta into the vestibule of his residential complex. The political and institutional context of this move becomes clear when one considers the difference between Augustus, Tiberius and later Caligula: The princeps replaces the senate as the supreme institution, his private house becomes more and more officially a public space in which the emperor celebrates cultic and political practices of rule for the urban Roman public. |
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