Il lusso

The precious objects that were brought to Rome from Greece and the Hellenistic world as spoils of war from the IInd century BC onwards influenced the fashions of the richest classes, introducing luxury objects produced to these models, to the private sphere.

Among the objects of high artistic quality and precious materials used in funerary contexts, the remains of a bone bed are outstanding. It is decorated with scenes of the infancy of Dionysus, conserved together with the ashes of the dead in an alabaster urn from the Esquiline, and a brinze funerary bed from Amiterno, with elegant inlays of copper and silver.

The bronze panels from which the so-called Capitoline stretcher has been reconstructed and the polychrome mosaic of sea animals enclosed in acanthus spirals both come from private homes.