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Researchers attempting to reconstruct domestic interiors of Greece's Hellenistic period (lasting from 323 B.C.E. until 31 B.C.E.) have fairly scant evidence from which to draw conclusions. Excavations of Hellenistic domestic sites have turned up coins, vases, and other objects but almost no furniture. The furniture found in tombs outnumbers the furniture excavated from domestic sites. This pattern of preservation is a result of the materials used in construction. Funerary furniture is usually made of stone and thus likely to be preserved. But many of the materials used for domestic furniture, particularly wood, are perishable and have not survived. It should he stressed, therefore, that researchers' grounds for comparison between funerary and domestic spaces are limited. It is impossible to know the amount of perishable furniture used in daily life. Only a few examples of nonperishable parts of furniture, such as metal-sheathed legs or appliques for bed rests, have been excavated from Hellenistic homes. In addition, many sites with Hellenistic habitation were entirely rebuilt in later times, a process leading to the reuse of Hellenistic material in later furniture.

If there was nonperishable domestic furniture, what happened to it? It might seem likely that it, and much perishable furniture, was looted by invading armies, but there is no literary evidence to support this assumption. Furniture is not mentioned, for example, among the plunder obtained from Greek sites in descriptions of Roman triumphs, the processions in which victorious generals paraded the spoils of war through the streets of Rome. Accounts of Asian plunder, by contrast, did mention furniture. One might argue that literary accounts of triumphs are neither accurate nor detailed lists of objects obtained from the enemy but the distinction between Greek and Asian plunder is significant. If furniture was worth carrying off from Asia, then why not from Greece?

There are two possible explanations for the absence of furniture from the Greek plunder described in accounts of Roman triumphs either there was not much luxurious furniture for Roman soldiers to carry off, or the sociopolitical reality of Rome in the second century B.C.E., when most of the plundering of Greece took place, was different from that of the first century B.C. E, the period of the Asian conquests. Perhaps expensive furniture of a private nature was rejected as suitable plunder in the second century because it was too much associated with personal luxury but was acceptable in the first century, when Romans, own tastes had begun to change.