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Leisure is most basically defined as the time free from work . The ancient conception and forms of leisure were quite different from the modern ones, which came into discussion during the industrial era. The Roman society was highly stratified and comprised of diverse social classes for which leisure acquired different forms and meanings. Every stratum of the Roman society enjoyed the possibilities and pleasures of leisure proportional to its hierarchy in the social system, so that leisure can be investigated in both public and private contexts in the Roman world. This study aims to investigate leisure , which was one of the main driving social forces in the Roman society, in spatial terms with reference to Roman domestic architecture. The study focuses on central Italy and particularly on Ephesus, the latter of which is a good example to discuss how the Roman conception of leisure was spatially materialized in a provincial private setting since a group of well studied, documented, and published houses constitute an appropriate comparative sample and context in Ephesus.
About the author
Ahmet Çinici received his B.Arch.(2002) from the Department of Architecture and his M.Sc. (2006) from the Graduate Program in Settlement Archaeology at Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the same program at METU. (ahmet.cinici@gmail.com)
