Hic habitat felicitas

A study of the house of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, which was one of many places in the Roman Forum during the late republican period where guests could pay for food, drink, and sex. Like other places intended for erotic commerce, this building was structured with more floors and many small rooms, with a kitchen and food counter on the ground floor, a balneum further down, and an underground level with long corridors and small, modular rooms containing lecticula. The title of the book refers to an inscription on a plaque from a bakery in Pompeii, and the book opens with an article by Laurentino García y García reconstructing the history of that plaque. Appendixes contain extracts from two previous works: a reconstruction of the house of Scaurus by François Mazois from Il palazzo di Scauro o descrizione di una casa romana (1825), and an archaeological and topographical study of the house by Giuseppe Lugli from Monumenti minori del Foro Romano (1947).