Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2011
Cylindrical objects lying on their sides appear in a number of paintings and stucco reliefs in Roman Italy, and can be divided into three groups: those which serve as seats for actors in figure-scenes, those which appear amid groups of inanimate objects, and those which are provided with attachments resembling the handles of garden-rollers. (A full catalogue of known examples is given, not only in paintings and stuccoes, but also in other media.) Previous writers have tended to seek an all-embracing explanation, however fantastic, for these cylinders; but it is better to consider the groups separately. The first group are probably discarded column-drums, and the other two are probably rollers employed for preparing palaestra-surfaces (though, in origin, they too may be column-drums). The roller, unlike the simple column-drum, seems to have enjoyed only a temporary vogue as an artistic motif, and to have been confined to minor decorative work in the cities of Campania.