This essay uses the term 'embodied' to define material things that engage people in a physical way and, in doing so, that prompt them to reflect on the bodily conditions of human existence, and on the social and cultural meanings of human practices. As both immediate physical experiences and culturally and socially shaped encounters, past interactions between humans and objects pose a twofold interpretive challenge to the historian of material culture, and thus call for an integrated phenomenological and hermeneutical approach. A case study from Roman antiquity concerns the embodied relationship between slaves and household artefacts, as illustrated by a key passage in Petronius's Cena Trimalchionis, in which the ex-slave Trimalchio recalls his manipulation of a light instrument (candelabrus) for personal physical use. This anecdote is supplemented by discussion of the series of ephebes from Pompeii, classicizing bronze statues made to be converted into domestic tray-bearers, and as such artworks that reflect the ongoing process of cultural domestication by their Roman users. Read in light of such material object at work, the anecdote is seen as an important testimony of Roman embodied practices.

中文翻译：

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Candelabrus 和 Trimalchio：罗马灯台及其奴隶的具体历史

本文使用“具身”一词来定义物质事物，这些事物以物理方式吸引人们，并在这样做时促使他们反思人类生存的身体条件，以及人类实践的社会和文化意义。作为直接的物理体验和文化和社会塑造的相遇，人类与物体之间过去的互动对物质文化历史学家提出了双重解释挑战，因此需要一种综合的现象学和解释学方法。罗马古代的一个案例研究涉及奴隶和家庭手工艺品之间的具体关系，正如 Petronius 的 Cena Trimalchionis 中的一个关键段落所说明的那样，其中前奴隶 Trimalchio 回忆起他为个人实际使用而操纵的轻型仪器（烛台）。这个轶事还通过对庞贝城的一系列 ephebes 的讨论来补充，这些青铜雕像被转化为国内的托盘搬运工，以及反映罗马使用者正在进行的文化驯化过程的艺术品。根据工作中的这种物质对象来阅读，这则轶事被视为罗马体现实践的重要见证。