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POMPEII^?
Volume I
Treasures from the Made possible by grants from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Archaeological Museum, The National Endowment The Art Institute of Chicago
Naples, and the for the Humanities and Dallas Museum of Fine Arts
Pompeii Antiquarium Xerox Corporation American Museum of Natural History
1978-1979

"-i::;' " '"^zi-^ipvnvnf-x

 POMPEII^?

x<*
Copyright© 1978 Cover;
by Museum of Fine Arts 61
Boston, Massachusetts Mosaic portrait of a woman
Height 15.5 cm, width Z0.5 cm
Library of Congress catalogue card no. 78-540 1 5 From a small cubkulum in House vi, 15, 14
ISBN0-87846-IZ4-8 Portrait, probably from life, of a young woman.
Typeset by Wrightson Typographers Her hair is parted centrally and tied behind with
a ribbon. She wears earrings of pearls set in gold,
Newton, Massachusetts
a pearl necklace with a gold clasp set with pre-
Printed in U.S.A. cious stones, and a dark, low-necked dress, which
by Case-Hoyt, Rochester, New Yori< shows through a gold-embroidered transparent
veil.Dress and jewelry suggest a woman of rank.
Designed by Carl Zahn
This is a smdio piece {ernbletna} made with
very small tesserae, shaped and toned, set withm
a shallow, tray-like limestone frame. It was
found in the center of an opus sectile pavement
made up of hexagons, lozenges, and triangles of
blue-gray, white, and red marble, dating from
the last period before A.D. 79. In this context it

was almost certainly reused. The mosaic itself

can hardly be later than the end of the first

century B.C.

Title page:
1
Pair of villa landscapes
Width 53 cm, height 22 cm
From Pompeii
Two separate views of villa facades probably
from the lateral panels of a Third Style scheme
(see illustration, p. 27), now mounted as a pair.
The left-hand view shows a straight porticoed
facade upraised on a platform with a tall colum-
nar central porch; in front of the portico is a gar-
den with a large axial enclosure and at either end,
rising from a lower level, is a double portico, of
two orders, facing outward. Above and beyond
the right-hand portico is the facade of a temple-
like building facing inward; there may have been
other buildings or trees in the damaged upper
left-hand part. The right-hand view shows a cen-
tral gabled porch at the junction of two gable-
ended, inward-facing porticoes, enclosing on
three sides a trapezoidal space concentric to
which is an enclosure with posts at the angles.
Above and behind rise a number of other build-
ings including a circular tempietto (tholos) and
another colonnade. The perspective of these
scenes is syntactic, and some of the detail (e.g.,
the half-gables of the flanking porticoes on the
left-hand panel) without parallel in surviving
is

contemporary architecture, but it is generally

accepted that such facades were a feature of the
wealthy vilLe marittimae.

All objects shown in color plates

are from the National Archaeological Museum,
Naples.
 PREFACE

The catastrophic events of August Z4, a.d. and Technological Cooperation, Ministry cal art,was involved in the project from its
79, thatsubmerged Herculaneum and of Foreign Affairs, for their help and advice very inception and followed it through to
Pompeii in an avalanche of ashes, pumice, during the negotiations; we also thank completion. The other members of the
and volcanic mud brought life in these Dr. Guglielmo Triches, Director General for Department of Classical Art, Kristin Ander-
prosperous Roman towns to a sudden and Antiquities and Fine Arts, Ministry of son,Miriam Braverman, Mary Comstock,
total stop. Through the ages the volcanic Cultural Heritage, for his generous help in ArielHerrmann, Emily Vermeule, Cornelius
debris that so tragically cut short the life of the decisions on sites and schedules. Vermeule, and Florence Wolsky, each made
the inhabitants acted as a protective layer Many demanding tasks connected with their own contribution to the exhibition
shielding the towns with all that was inside preparing the exhibition were patiently and its catalogue. Judy Spear edited volume
from the ravages of time. Unearthed by and efficienriy discharged by the staffs of one, Margaret Jupe volume two.
archaeologists in the course of excavations the Naples Museum and the Pompeii We thank John Ward-Perkins and
that extend over more than two centuries, Antiquarium, and we gratefully acknowl- Amanda Claridge for their permission to
the objects are preserved very much as they edge the cooperation of Professor Fausto use a large part of the text of the English
were 1,900 years ago. Zevi, Superintendent of Antiquities, catalogue for the catalogue of the Ameri-
As we walk along the streets and enter Naples and Caserta; Dr. Enrica Pozzi- can exhibition. We gratefully acknowledge
the villas of the rich and the taverns of the Paolini, Director of the National the cooperation of Imperial Tobacco Ltd.
poor, it is as if the occupants had gone a Archaeological Museum, Naples; and and The Daily Telegraph, the sponsors of
moment ago to one of the many shops, to Dr. Maria Giuseppina Cerulli-Irelli, the exhibition at the Royal Academy in
the theater, or to one of the temples in Director of Excavations, Pompeii. London. We thank Dietrich von Bothmer
which they paid homage to their many Dr. Marco Miele, Director of the Italian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for
different gods. The colorful story of their Cultural Institute, New York, acted as their permission to install the Boscotrecase
lifeunfolds before our eyes as we see the an invaluable intermediary with the Italian frescoes and Polaroid Corporation for the
paintings that adorned the walls of their authorities. His constant interest and special large-size photographs that comple-
houses, the inexhaustible variety of para- encouragement has been highly appreciated. ment this part of the exhibition.
phernalia that surrounded them, the utensils We also wish to express our thanks to To name all of those in the four partici-
they used, and the games they played until Alitalia for the special care with which pating museums who have contributed to
the moment of the catastrophe. The they handled the shipments from Naples this unique cultural manifestation is im-
exhibition "Pompeii a.d. 79" consists of to Boston. possible. May all enjoy the exhibition with
many rare and beautiful works of art that On the United States side we would like a sense of gratitude and pride.
can be viewed and admired for their own to thank of all The Honorable John
first

intrinsic artistic merit. But above and Volpe, formerly United States Ambassador
Jan Fontein, Director
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
beyond that the exhibited pieces together to Italy, whose enthusiastic response when
evoke the spirit of the people of Pompeii firstapproached with our proposal created
and make us understand how they lived, the first impetus toward the realization of
what their aspirations were, and what they this project. His successor, The Honorable
believed in. Richard N. Gardner, assisted by Richard T.
Now that "Pompeii A.D. 79," after its Arndt, Cultural Affairs Officer, and Mrs.
unprecedented success in the capitals of Susan Lowe Modi, Assistant Cultural
Europe, begins its triumphal tour of the Attache, provided the indispensable
United States, I consider it a privilege to liaison with the Italian authorities. TTiey
acknowledge our deep indebtedness to all were most helpful and generous with their
of those who have made this unique cul- experienced advice.
tural manifestation possible. The exhibition is made possible by grants
Firstand foremost we wish to express from the National Endowment for the
our deep gratitude to the government of the Humanities and Xerox Corporation; it is
Republic of Italy, the Ministry of Foreign supported by a Federal Indemnity from the
Affairs, and the Ministry of Cultural Heri- Federal Council on the Arts and Humani-
tage for their gracious permission to have ties. The liaison with our corporate sponsor

this exhibition of great cultural treasures was provided by Ruder Finn. &
travel to the United States. We especially A project of this scope and importance
thank His Excellency Dr. Vittorio Cordero involves many people and leaves hardly
de Montezemolo, formerly Director General any department of a museum unaffected.
for Cultural, Scientific, and Technological It was logical, however, that the primary

Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; responsibility for "Pompeii a.d. 79"

his successor in that office. His Excellency should rest with the Department of Classical
Sergio Romano; and His Excellency Art, which has responded with an enthusi-
Raniero Paolucci di Calboli, Vice-Director, asm that permeated the entire organization.
Directorate General for Cultural, Scientific, John Herrmann, assistant curator of classi-
Painting of a villa beside the sea
Diameter 25 cm
From Stabiae
Roundel portraying the two-storied columnar
facade of a vilb marittima. The center of the
facade curves inward, toward a tower-like circu-
lar feature. In front is a platform with two pro-
jecting jetties, human figures, and statues.
 /"•

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This fragment portrays a sanctuary, set on a

Painting of a sanctuary beside the sea rocky island or promontory, and in the fore-
Width 6z cm, height 52 cm ground two boats. The details of the sanctuary
From Pompeii are conventional: a central, circular shrine, or
tholos, flanked by porticoes and a re-entrant
facade wall; in front of this, facing onto the
water, is an open platform, on which are several
groups of figures, including a woman and a dog.
FOREWORD

The arts in America are flourishing today Few events in ancient history are as widely But it is not the King Tuts and the
as they never have before in the history of known as Pompeii and what happened there Scythian Golds — as strong as they have
our nation. Unprecedented interest in on sunny August day 1,900 years ago.
a been as education tools for the public —
museum exhibitions, theater, dance, and And few events in history demonstrate so which form the backbone of the Endow-
music is evident in record-high attendance aptly the fragile quality of man and of his ment's support of public humanities pro-
not only at traditional institutions in major fabrications— or the value of the studies grams in museums and historical organiza-
urban centers but throughout the country we collectively call the humanities. tions. While the larger exhibitions are

wherever artistic activities are taking place. But it would be a mistake to think of an winning headlines and drawing metro-
Equally evident is a surge in creative exhibition like this splendid "Pompeii politan crowds, quieter and no less im-

activity by Americans in both the perform- A.D. 79" as the whole objective, or the portant events are occurring in American
ing and visual arts, thus giving our cultural centerpiece of effort for the National county seats and towns. More than 200
environment a new and distincdy American Endowment for the Humanities. As imagi- grants to historical organizations, art
flavor. native as it is, and and as
as thorough, museums, science museums, namral history
If we search for meaning in this expan- scholarly, it should not overshadow the museums, and children's museums have
sion of interest in the arts, we can recognize larger number of domestic exhibitions also been made. And the Endowment's

the signs of our maturity both as a nation aided by NEH which draw from American interest is always the same: to broaden
and as a people. After 200 years of youthful collections to provide insight into foreign the public understanding of the humanistic
impetuosity, we are embarking on the cultures or to show the variety of Ameri- aspects of our heritage— the political,
process of introspection and delving into can, local, regional, or ethnic heritage. economic, social, religious, and cultural

the past in order to understand and ap- The role of the full-scale international history and the interaction between these
preciate the present. We have begun to exhibition is important. The National human experiences and the natural world.
realize that a sense of history is a pre- Endowment for theHumanities has been This is our conception of the role of the
requisite for a purposeful existence. pleased to have been able to contribute to a museum — as an instrument for explanation
We are at the dawn of a new era for vast variety of educational experiences of the world which we as humans have
Americans. If we are to make the most of through interpretive museum exhibitions inherited.

the opportunities presented to us, we must which have enriched the lives of millions Joseph D. Duffey, Chairman
marshal every resource to permit the arts of our citizens. Each of the major inter- National Endowment for the Humanities
their full expression and to incorporate the national exhibitions of the past four years —
arts of the past into our definition of the the impressionist paintings from the
future. This task is a formidable one, but Leningrad Hermitage in 1973, the French
it will be accomplished if governmental, tapestry exhibition in 1974, the Chinese
academic, and business institutions can be archaeological exhibition, the Scythian
encouraged to contribute their support. gold exhibition, and the "Treasures of
It is in this spirit that Xerox has under- Tutankhamun" exhibition now traveling
taken to sponsor in association with the to six regions of the U.S. — has received
National Endowment for the Humanities wide and enthusiastic public response. We
this extraordinary exhibition. believe the kind of response and the kind
It is our hope that when future historians of interest that has followed these past
comment on our society, they will note that efforts of the Endowment will be repeated

this was a time when America came of age with "Pompeii A.D. 79."
by rewarding the arts with the support
they both deserve and require.
We wish to acknowledge with gratitude
the efforts of the Italian Government,
which made it possible to bring this exhibi-
tion to the United States. We are indeed
proud to be associated, through "Pompeii
A.D. 79" with four of our country's most
prestigious museums: the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston, which organized the exhibi-
tion; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Dallas
Museum of Fine Arts; and the American
Museum of Natural History in New York.
C. Peter McColough
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Xerox Corporation
CONTENTS
Volume I

Preface, page 5

Foreword, page 8

Introduction, page 11

Campania, page 13

History of Pompeii, page 33

The Town: Government and People, page 39

The Town: Planning and Architecture, page 45

The Pompeian House and Garden, page 52

The Economy: Agriculture and Industry, page 59
Cults and Beliefs, page 63

Entertainment, Sport, and Leisure, page 87

Painting, page 97

Sculpture, page 105

The Other Arts, page 108

Herculaneum, page 110
 ?r --'liyar*?

.**C^'
t^i2^^5^S^^>^

T^SA'.K SfSl^:'*

The Forum at Pompeii,

Vesuvius in background

House of Neptune and Amphitrite

at Herculaneum

lO
 INTRODUCTION

Authors' note On the morning of the twenty- fourth of August, a.d. 79, the long-dormant
We could not have written this catalogue volcano of Vesuvius blew up, and by the evening of that day the two flourishing
had it not been for the unstinted help we
towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the nearby coastal resort of Stabiae
have received from many friends, among
were dead, already half-buried by the rain of ash, pumice, and volcanic mud
them Simon Bendall, Joanna Bird, John
beneath which they were to lie entombed for more than sixteen centuries. Before
Callaghan, Maria Giuseppina CeruUi-
Irelli, Anna Fazzari, Martin Frederiksen,
long their very locations were lost. It was not until 1 709 that well-diggers hit
Antonio Giuliano, Wilhelmina Jashemski, upon the theater of Herculaneum, and it was another thirty years before, in
Anne Laidlaw, Demetrios Michaelides, 1738, the Bourbons put in hand the program of organized treasure hunting
Massimo Pallottino, Toby Parker, Enrica
{ziifdiliges raiiberisches Nachwiihlen, "haphazard, predatory grubbing," is
Pozzi Paolini, Dale Trendall, Luciana
Helen White-
how Goethe described it) that furnished the first nucleus of the royal collec-
Valentini, Angela Wardle,
house, and Fausto Zevi. But there have been
tions that were eventually to come to rest in the National Museum of Naples.
many others as well, too numerous to name Then in 1748 attention was diverted to another Vesuvian site, where peasants
individually. To all of them we offer our had recendy made promising finds and where digging was This proved to easier.
sincere thanks. be the lost Pompeii. Here too exploration was at first haphazard and destruc-
We would also like to take this oppor- tive, and it was really only with the appointment of Giuseppe Fiorelli (1860-
tunity of expressing our deep sense of
1875) that systematic excavation may be said to have started. It was he who hit
personal gratitude to our Italian friends,
both in Naples and in Rome, who gave us
upon the idea of making casts of the victims of the eruption, and who intro-
so much of their time and trouble in resolv- duced the system of nomenclature, still in use today, whereby any building in
ing the thousand and one difficulties, great the town can be located in terms of its region, its city block, and the serial
and small, that inevitably arise in the prep- numbers of its street entrances. It was again he and his successor, Michele
aration of an enterprise of this sort and
Ruggiero, who first adopted the modern principle of restoring buildings and of
size.But for their patience, understanding,
conserving finds in place, instead of ripping out the more spectacular and
and unfailing kindness, it would have been

a very different story. We are very conscious leaving the rest to disintegrate.
of our debt. The and overwhelming impression these sites leave on the modern
first

This is not the first time, and it will visitor today is the immediacy of this ancient tragedy. As one gazes on the table
surely not be the last, that the authors of
set for breakfast, on the posters for the next municipal elections, on the pathetic
an exhibition catalogue have had to do their
huddle of bodies clustered in a cellar, the intervening centuries fall away. It is
work far more hurriedly than they would
have wished, often without any possibility just as if yesterday some sudden and dreadful natural catastrophe had over-
of reference back to the objects themselves whelmed all hometown, preserving every intimate
the familiar things of one's
to resolve doubtful points. We have aimed detail of the houses and the supermarket for the archaeologists of future mil-
at accuracy, but we are all too aware that lennia. This sense of yesterday, this powerfully enduring presence of all the
we have not always achieved it.
little everyday things that constimte the externals of a way of life, this is some-
John Ward-Perkins thing unique to Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Amanda Claridge
But not the tragedy of 24 August a.d. 79 as such that is the subject of
it is

this exhibition. We are concerned with one particular aspect of the event,

namely to present, so far as is possible in terms of objects that can be trans-

ported, a cross-section of the art and craftsmanship of the buried cities, as it

stood at the moment when the clock of history was so dramatically stopped:
that of Pompeii in the first instance, because the setting is there more complete
and the range of available material wider, but supplemented where necessary
from Herculaneum, from Stabiae, and from material now in the National
Museum of Naples of which the precise Vesuvian source is no longer known.
Art and craftsmanship: one uses the double term advisedly because the
modern distinction between artist and craftsman would have had very little
meaning, at any rate with reference to contemporary artists. Throughout most
of classical antiquity, and very much so in Roman times, the artist was by defini-
tion a craftsman, working to supply the specific needs of a patron or, more
generally, the demands of public taste. This fact is bound to influence any
modern attempt to present his work. Certain categories and certain individual
products of ancient art may be timeless, transcending all accidents of time and
place. It does not really matter that a fifth-century Athenian viewed the Parthe-

II
non frieze under very different conditions from ourselves, and with very
different eyes: the quahty still shines through. Even so, there can be very few
products of ancient art that do not gain an added dimension from being viewed
within their historical and social context. This is emphatically true when the
objects in question are the products of a society as complex and many-sided as
that of Rome, and doubly true when they represent not some single, homo-
geneous masterpiece, nor the accumulated artistic treasure of some single great
patron, but a selection of the objects that just happened to be assembled on the
walls and in the streets of a town of provincial Italy on that fateful August day
when, without warning, history stood still.
One has therefore to present the art of Pompeii in its context. In the case of
the paintings this is quite literally true, physically as well as metaphorically. The
Romans did possess panel paintings, as we do, but very few of these have sur-
vived, and the paintings that now adorn the walls of museums and galleries were
all once parts of much larger decorative complexes, detached from which they
have much the same artistic significance as a panel cut from a Tiepolo ceiling.
We can still enjoy many of their qualities, but viewed in isolation they have
certainly lost something of their original artistic intention. One has to remember
too that the artists who painted them, most of them simple craftsmen, both
slaves and freedmen, were operating within a context of ideas very different
from our own. Many of the presuppositions of the society for which Tiepolo
and his assistants worked are still common currency, making it relatively easy
for us tc enter into the spirit of their work. Roman society is a very different
matter. It is true that certain aspects of the daily life of Pompeii do strike a
startling note of modernity. Water supply and sanitation; paving and street
drainage, and the organization of such public services as markets and the dis-
posal of refuse; the mechanisms of commerce and banking; the life of the tavern
and bar; the addiction to spectator sport; all of these are still quite near enough
to our own recent past (and indeed in some cases to our present) to strike an
immediate response of comfortable recognition. But the moment one scratches
a little deeper, one is aware also of a number of profound, underlying differ-
ences. The position of the family within the social structure, religious beliefs
and ethics, the status of the professions, the accepted functions and duties of
patronage, these are some only of the aspects of Pompeian life without some
awareness of which it is very hard to arrive at any true evaluation of the ma-
terial remains. The art of Pompeii was an integral part of this wider culture.
An exhibition can and should concentrate on allowing the objects displayed
to speak for themselves. We hope that by our selection and our presentation we
may have conveyed something also of the wider message that, unbeknown to
itself, Roman Pompeii was busy compiling for us to read.

12
 CAMPANIA

f
Today, a century after the unification of modern Italy, it is not always easy to
recall that what was achieved 870 was not the restoration of a natural,
in 1

self-evident state of affairs that had been briefly disrupted by external forces; it

was the re-creation of a national entity that had been laboriously built up by
classical Rome, only to disintegrate into its component parts as soon as the
authority of the Western Roman Empire collapsed. One of the geographical
units that make up Italy is Campania, the region of which Naples is today the
capital. Long before it was a part of Roman Italy Pompeii had been a city of
Campania, and for two of the three thousand-odd years since central Italy first
\ ^8
emerges into history Campania has been independent of, and frequently in
conflict with, Rome. Somewhere between Rome and Naples the South begins.

This is still one of the salient facts of Italian political and economic life and it is

a truth rooted in history.

The heart of Campania has always been the Bay of Naples, together with the
coastal plain that is bounded on the north by the river Volturno and on
fertile

Sketch map
to show the possible position of the
the east and south by the western slopes of the Apennines and the mountains of
port, themouth, and ancient course of the river the Sorrento peninsula. Both geographically and historically it constitutes a re-
Samo in relation to Pompeii. Country villas in Except for the mountains to the south and
markably well-defined unit. east, this
the neighborhood are indicated by an open
circle. is all very fertile country of recent volcanic origin, and it first took historical
I. Villa Riistica, Boscoreale shape when in the eighth century B.C. the Greeks, finding themselves debarred
1. Villa of P. Fannius Syntstor, Boscoreale from further progress up the western coast by the Etruscans, and later by the
3. Villa ofAgrippa Postumus, Boscotrecase
4. Oplontis Romans, established here a number of thriving settlements. During the course of
5. Villa of the Mysteries the fifth century B.C. these Greek colonies and trading stations, together with
6. Villa ofDiomedes
the Etruscan outpost of Capua, lost their independence, passing under the con-
7. Temple of Dionysus, Abbondio
S.

8. Large storerooms, shops, and other trol of Italic tribesmen who had moved down from the mountains of the interior.
buildings belonging to the port The latter were quick to learn the lessons of civilization and the union was a
fruitful one, resulting in a culture that in varying proportions was both Greek
and Campania never lost its Greek cultural roots or its Greek commercial
Italic.

contacts and aptitudes; but at the same time the Italic component remained
strong enough to enable this mixed society to adapt without too much difficulty
to the consequences of the inexorable southward advance of Rome. Whereas
over much of southern Italy the Roman conquest was a sorry story of pillage,

disruption, and catastrophic economic decline, Campania was the exception.

Power and authority had moved to Rome, but in terms of commerce, culture,
and the arts Campania enjoyed a prosperity fully equal to, and in certain
respects in advance of, that of Rome itself.
The history of Pompeii, summarized in the following section, is in most
respects that of Campania in miniature, but we may single out two aspects of
the broader scene that were especially important for the cultural and artistic life

of the Campanian cities. One was the fact that until the emperor Claudius
created his new, artificial harbor at the mouth of the Tiber, the chief seagoing
port of Rome was Puteoli, the modern Pozzuoli. With the establishment of Rome
as a world power in the second century B.C. came, inevitably, great material
prosperity, one facet of which was the settlement at Puteoli of a large and pros-

perous commercial community, derived very largely from the Hellenistic East.
It is symptomatic that as early as 105 B.C. Puteoli should already have had a

Isis and Serapis, and there are many traces of

temple of the Egyptian divinities
was where St. Paul landed on his journey to Rome.
other oriental cults. Puteoli
Another aspect of the Campanian scene very closely related to Rome's new-
found position as a world power was that of the changes that the sudden access
of wealth inevitably brought about in Roman upper class customs. Among these

13
\w >J
Facing page: pushing a goat toward the shrme, perhaps for grace, and intellectual and moral wisdom. There
217 sacrifice. are innumerable examples of this group both in
Wall painting: sacro-idyllic landscape with 153 painting and in sculpture, all obviously copied
shepherd and goats (detail) Wall painting: the Three Graces from the same presumably a well-known
original,
Height 50 cm, width 49 cm Width 53 cm, height 56 cm Hellenistic sculpture. The Graces are commonly
From Pompeii, exact location unknown From the tablinum of the House of Titus portrayed, as here, holding or wreathed with
Dentatus Panthera (ix, z, 16) spring flowers. This explains the presence of
Landscape from the center of a wall panel,
flowers in the landscape setting, a feature not
probably of the Fourth Style. It portrays an Panel cut from the middle of a Fourth Style
represented elsewhere in Pompeian mythological
idealized rustic shrine, set within a rocky land- wall. The Three Graces, or Charites, daughters
scape with trees. In the foreground a man is of Zeus by various mothers, personified beauty,

15
 Roman Campania

was one that calls for no comment today, namely the determination of every well-
to-do Roman to acquire a seaside property. Gaius Marius had a villa at Misenum,
Sulla the Dictator one near Cumae. Among the many prominent Romans known
to have possessed such seaside retreats during the last half-century of the Repub-
lic were Julius Caesar, Pompey, Lucullus, the notorious Clodia, Varro the his-

torian, many distinguished ex-consuls, and several of Cicero's clients; Cicero

himself had no less than three Campanian properties, at Cumae, at Puteoli, and

at Pompeii. By the time the emperor Augustus established himself on Capri, the
Bay of Naples was ringed around with the playgrounds of the rich. As we shall

see, these villae marittimae constituted a natural field for imaginative archi- Facing page:
tectural experiment, while at the same time they ensured that the decorative 23
Head of a young man, perhaps a member of the
tastes and fashions of Roman society found an almost immediate expression in
Popidius family
Campania, and vice versa. They were also a bountiful source of artistic patron- Fine-grained white marble, probably from
Phrygia in Asia Minor
age. Each year there is fresh evidence to show Bay of Naples, and espe-
that the
Height 36.5 cm
cially the area around Puteoli, was busy with the workshops of sculptors, pot- From House of the Citharist (i, 4, 5), found
the

ters, stuccoists, and painters. Late Republican Campania was one of the most together with No. 21 on 19 October 1868 in the
stable block, having perhaps fallen from an
active creative centers of the late Hellenistic world.
upper room.
The area to the south and east of Vesuvius lay somewhat on the fringes of all
Rough surfaces on the shoulders mark the lines
this creative activity. It contributed to and profited from the general prosperity, of drapery folds that have been dressed off, indi-

cating that this was probably retrieved from a

and the latest contemporary artistic fashions were reflected on its walls. But its
statue and adapted to a bust after the earthquake
own interests were predominantly agricultural and its population, as the family of A.D. 62. When found, the nose and ears were
names of Pompeii clearly show, was very largely Italic, many of the families damaged and have been restored in plaster, but
the repair to the lower lip was made in antiquity,
being of Samnite origin but with a generous admixture of newcomers from other
in Italian marble. The hair was probably painted
parts of Italy, reinforced in 80 B.C. by the establishment of colonies of Sullan a reddish brown, and the slightly roughened sur-
faces of the eyeballs may have had the iris and
veterans at Nola and Pompeii. Compared with Puteoli or Baiae Pompeii was
pupil rendered in red and black in the manner
perhaps a trifle provincial, and it lacked the Hellenic sophistication of Naples. usual at this period. The unusually smooth,
Nevertheless, it was a prosperous and lively member of the Campanian com- transparent quality of the flesh surfaces is due to
the fine marble, which also permitted the sculptor
munity, at a moment when Campania was itself in the forefront of contemporary
a greater subtlety and sensitivity of modeling
architectural and artistic progress. than usual.

16
 '

//

^%s.

m^
1

:>

i.*'

i i f [
 17 The man wears a toga and carries a papyrus Facing page:
Painted portrait of aman and his wife scroll with a red seal. His wife wears a tunic and 19
Height 65 cm, width 58 cm mantle, and her hair is dressed in a fashion popu- Wall painting: figure of a girl
From House vii, z, 6, on the back wall of a small larabout the middle of the first century a.d. In Height 56 cm, widdi 38.5 cm
exedra opening off the atrium her right hand she holds to her lips a stylus for From Pompeii
writing on the two-leaved wooden tablet spread
widi wax which The girl is probably intended to represent a figure
she holds in her left. Both in
style and sacrificing or in attendance upon some religious
treatment diere is a striking resem-
in
occasion.
blance to die Egyptian mummy portraits of the
Roman period.

i8
 /'

18
Wall painting: portrait of a woman in profile
Height 52 on, width 39 cm
From Herculaneum or Stabiae
Framed portrait from the center of the left-
hand lateral panel of a Third Style wall. Old
drawings of it show bands of ribbons hanging
loosely down from the hair over the shoulders,
and the loss of this overpainting accounts for the
seeming disproportion of the neck. The same
drawings indicate that the hair-band was shown
as being made of some precious metal, and that
from it sprang delicate sprays of flowers prob-
ably executed in pearls and emeralds on gold
wire stems. The portrait itself is obviously
imitating a cameo, and it has been suggested
that it represents Cleopatra.

Facing page:
129
Wall painting: Europa riding the bull
Width 99 cm, height 125 cm
From the back wall of a cubiculum in the
House of Jason (DC, 5, 18)
Third Style central panel portraying Europa,
daughter of the King of Phoenicia, who, while
playing on the seashore with her handmaidens,
was approached by Zeus in the form of a white
bull, which lured her into seating herself on its
back and thereupon carried her off, across the
sea to Crete. There, after bearingZeus three
sons, she married theKing of Crete, who adopted
her sons, one of whom, Minos, became his heir.
The landscape, with its central oak tree (the
tree sacred to Zeus), echoes the central scene.
On the left-hand wall of the same bedroom
(cubiculum), by the same hand, was the painting
of Pan and the Nymphs (No. 114) and on the
right-hand wall a painting of Hercules, Deianira,
and the centaur Nessus. Common to all three
paintings was the symbolic use of trees within
the landscape.

20
21
 144, 145
Wall paintings: fantasy architecture from a
Fourth Style wall
Height 1.88 m, width 51cm
From Pompeii, May 1760
Narrow venical panels depicting slender fantasy
architecture in receding perspective are com-
monly used to frame the central panel in one
type of Fourth Style wall. On the broad plane
surface of the central panel in the scheme from
which these elements came was painted a small
framed picture of Perseus and Andromeda
(Naples Museum, inv. 8995), and in the middle
of each lateral panel were roundels (see also
Nos. 2, 141). Oneof these was the famous
"Sappho" (Naples Museum, inv. 9084).

Facing page:
114
Wall painting: Pan and the Nymphs
Height 1 .2i m, width 93 cm
From the left-hand wall of the same cubiculum
in the House of Jason as No. 1 29
Third Style panel showing Pan, pipes in hand,
seated on a rock with a goat at his feet. To the
left are seated two Nymphs, one of them holding

two reed pipes in her hand, while to the right

another stands playing a lyre (cithara). Beyond
the left-hand Nymphs is a building set in a rocky

^ landscape, central to which is a pine tree,

sacred to Pan.

i'

h h

2Z
2-3
 HI
Landscape panel of a rustic sanctuary
Height 34 cm, length 6i cm
From Herculaneum

150
Wall painting: woman giving water to a traveler
Width 44 cm, height 38 cm
From the tablinum of the House of the
Dioscuri (vi, 9, 6)

The picture formed part of a longer landscape

frieze,with painted moldings top and bottom,
over the side panels of a Fourth Style wall.

Facing page:
146
Wall painting: Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur
Width 88 cm, height 97 cm
From the exedra off the peristyle in the House
of Gavius Rufus (vii, z, 16)

The central panel of the left-hand wall of a

Fourth Style scheme. It shows Theseus victorious
from his battle with the Minotaur, the bull-
headed monster of Crete to whom the Athenians
had each year to send a tribute of youths and
maidens. The Minotaur lies dead in the entrance
to his lair, the Labyrinth, and his destined
victims press round Theseus in gratitude.

^4
i5
2.6
^m
115, 116
Wall paintings: pair of decorative details
from a Third Style wall
Height 2.00 m, width 44 cm
From Room 15 (cubiculum) in the Villa of
Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase, excavated
1903-1905
These are two of the vertical components of
the architeaonic framework of the side walls
(see reconstruction) of which the dado was a
dark red and the rest of the background uni-
formly black. Though reminiscent of the
candelabra and tripod stands from which much
Third Style ornament was derived, they are here
reduced to a purely schematic, decorative form.
The detailis extremely delicate and includes small

sprays of foliage, now largely effaced, sprouting

from the vertical stems.

Facing page:
135
Fragment of Fourth Style wall painting
Width 98 cm, height 90 cm
From Pompeii
Fragment from the upper zone of an early
Fourth Style wall, including the upper border
and an aedicula set in a formal quasi-architec-
tural scheme of delicate garlands and slender
rods entwined with tendrils, reminiscent of fine
'"Xi late Third Style work (as in the White Triclinium
in the House of M. Lucretius, K, 3, 5). Within
the aedicula is the figure of a woman with flowing
draperies, poised as if flying.

27
80 Most of the elements of this sort of fenced 85
Wall painting of a garden (detail) garden are already present in the Garden Garden painting: a white stork and lizard and
Length 137 cm, height 32 cm Room paintings from the Villa of Livia at Prima a pet dog
From Herculaneum Porta, and they recur in varying combinations Length 1.30m, height 55 cm
in many Pompeian paintings (see No. 79). From the House of the Epigrams (v, i, 18)
This scene, probably from the dado of a wall
of the late Third or Fourth Style, shows one The painting stood in the southeast corner of
side of a garden enclosure, the trellised fence of the peristyle, where it occupied a position closely
which is laid out symmetrically around three resembling that of the very similar paintings in
semi-circular exedrae. the peristyle of the House of the Menander.

28
260-262 260 262
Three red pottery (terra sigillata) bowls Diameter 20.5 cm Diameter 16.8 cm
Found in the tablinum of House viii, 5, 9 on
4 Oaober 1 8 8 1 together with eighty-seven
,
Stamped in the center of the inside by the The letters "MOM" were incised in the mold
maker Vitalis, who was active about A.D. 60-85. in large cursive letters under the decoration,
others of thesame forms and thirty-seven
pottery lamps, all packed in a wooden crate. The probably by the potter Mommo (see No. 2.61).
261
bowls were made by several different Gaulish
potters.
Diameter 6an
Stamped as No. 260 but by Mommo, one of the
most prolific of South Gaulish potters.

100 101
Small blue glass jug (askos) Small jug (askos) in black and white marbled
Height II cm, length zi.i cm glass
From Pompeii, House DC, 2, 26 Height 9.5 cm, length 13.4 cm
From Pompeii, in ix, 7, 6
The glass-blower has imitated a shape long
familiar in Greek pottery and in Campanian Like No. 100 this is free-blown, but it is squatter
bronze ware. in shape and made in thicker, opaque glass.

29
 99
Ribbed blue glass bowl
Height 8.9 cm, diameter 18.9 cm
From Pompeii
These bowls were made by pressing soft glass
into a mold; the interior was polished on a wheel,
the exterior by a second, brief exposure to fire.
Bowls of this form, in multi-colored as well as
in monochrome glass, were popular in the first
century a.d.

104
Dark blue glass jug
Height 1 8 cm
From Pompeii
Fine-quality work, free-blown with a drawn-out
spout and an applied handle. The form clearly
imitates that of a bronze vessel.

98
Stemmed goblet in cobalt blue glass
Height 1 4 cm, diameter of rim 1 5 .4 cm
From one of the sites in the Vesuvius area
The body was blown into a mold; two horizontal
wheel-cut lines decorate the outside. The stem is
formed from two large beads of glass and the foot
added separately. Such drinking cups were used
at table; for a silver version see No. 146.

30
162
Gold lamp with two nozzles
Height 15. 1 cm, length 23.2. cm
From Pompeii
The design of lotus leaves was worked in relief

from the outside with a punch, after filling the

interior with pitch. The plain spouts and base
were cast separatelyand soldered into place. The
lid, now missing, would normally have been the
most highly decorated part.

40
Gold bulla
Length 6.5 cm, weight 14.08 grams
From the House of the Menander ( i, 10, 4)

The bulla, a small bag-shaped amulet, was

worn around the neck, a practice the Romans
derived from the Etruscans, among whom it
seems to have been worn as an ornament by
both sexes. Among the Romans the gold bulla
(sometimes known as Etruscum aureum) took
on a more restriaed significance, being worn
from infancy by the sons of citizens as a visible
token of free birth. On coming of age and for-
mally assuming the dress of manhood (the toga
virilis), it was customary to lay the bulla cere-

moniously aside in the household lararium (see

No. 210). At a later date its use was permitted
also to the sons of freedmen.

31
47 50 52
Gold armband in the form of a snake Gold bracelet Pan of a necklace of gold i\7 leaves
Diameter S cm, length 1 1 cm Diameter 8.3 cm Length 53 cm
From House i, 2., 3 From Pompeii, 9 June iS—
One of a pair of armbands, each shaped from a
flatribbon of gold on which the scales were Two lengths of thick gold wire loosely inter- TTie necklace consisted originally of two
indicated with a V-shaped punch; the head was twined to form eight large loops, soldered concentric bands of isT leaves stamped out of
cast separately, and the eyes were originally set together at the crossings; over one of these is an sheet gold and linked to each other by tiny loops
with green \itreous paste. applied gold ornament. of gold wire; the loops are masked by small gold
bosses. The 48 leaves of this piece converge
symmetrically upon a large convex gold disc. The
clasp that joined the two bands behind the neck
is missing.

3i
 : '

HISTORY OF POMPEII

The eaifiest liisGaiy of Pompdi natst lemam a inatta- of CDiqectiire t^^

rdevaoc aniiaeologkal levds have been mofe sfsteaiatka% eiploied. R^
made io the dcf's tiro Aidiak sanctnarks, ifaat of Apollo beside die Fofom and
erf Herades l[dK Done Ten^jk), diow diat b$r die sisah oeatmy Bx:. Gieek m-
-"
:' :eirasvetysaoag, and it maQrvoytKfl be diat die sde was actually 6ctt

, -zedbyGifdg£tCTnrnm?y,«''*""^f»'CF'™*^'^
rooudi stanoo ior tiadii^ with the natiwe hahc agrimhnral gwiHmilies of die
:
- f t yoOBiydiaiactedsticoftlKlatiErhasbeenfbandiatfaesameam-
, r -' 7 rT(7% assodatiaa if not intamaiii^e with the local peoples;
jidicate ommieice also with Eimscan C^Nia. Fiom die
position of Fompen made it a meetmg place of adtmes.
Ti/cni.;; t*^f&OEnlmy,a£tBrdKdedKWcdefcatofdieEtniscans
in4-'4b«?C :
- TvrBhSfIacll«e,wteJcapeIiodofGBBekploq«ay-
— , - ; i_ Pampei on the spiff owedoolang the riser
ai]^d, to iodnde the whole aiea of some i6o
. TV vidkw Bat the period of nndiipated GfBek
; 7' f>aii8d*cs iweie ^mptomaticof<faeihiea:
— T-ioc, who were afaeadf ipdling domi
-aamydieentipeGcEekaiiWifand,
6om Cnmae in the a (Paestom) io die soiflh, had snccombed
" t invados: on]' -: zed so retain its indqmdence.
~- z newaomeis v. zi- 1 r-3t3oaofpeopleR,theSabdKans,
-
cd a ojorr t^niber of die same indo-Emo-
-' ~' _'.--_ :
:
' :
:
' in the fauKafme vai-
t TTarticnlartiiie
oontDoysiallize;
; ;—fIt^c tribe
-
ur-_ aiddKances
.: ^. 1-^- -lii
-
^^ The Caxnpanio(Ae area. asnaad
bnike:
r - — niiKseenialBSSDdc^neiio-
- -
7 "-^T-rta^ J «m«mM i m
I ili
^|e of
:n odier and, atone
eaoiy of die onion
-r-rTL Another gift
ticteninsof
c convenient n
OscJB iiacn^jn recrjr&is the iaaL&is of ^ — rhe SUCCESS story
Simmatefaiassixz \iB£V2se i- m the Ister
seojad ceabtry sjl. Tfeaf AJirjimeL, yjn
'j-'

r estaisfehmentof
Vj&nes, fc^ mjoey jb hs n'sUto ibe rnen or
" roaD
' '.vroe

crjaaimc6omdfAeibidimE.aadJlpptvtedif
^ — lerce

wTRKfflfwwnHvniRiDc::

riHVrKIVTUHTOCIW-^^IHHI]
Camponii
WRHHf«nV:WHl>Hfn-^3IM tdoeadr^'
^3TTR8VQntHVflJ^3iD^ traden,}:: -arge

33
 The Amphitheater riot of a.d. 59
Naples Museum

numbers all over the eastern Mediterranean; and while a steadily increasing pro-
portion of the financial capital was probably put up by wealthy Romans, there
were rich prizes for the Campanian merchants and middlemen and for those of
the Campanian landed gentry who had money to invest. By the second half of
the second century B.C. Pompeii was, as its monuments show, already a very
prosperous city.

The last Roman Republic was a period of almost continuous

century of the
civil strife and deep social unrest, during which the political and economic
forces loosed by Rome's conquest of Italy, Carthage, and the Hellenistic king-
doms of the eastern Mediterranean battled their way to the new state of institu-

tional equilibrium that we call the Roman Empire. In such troubled times
Campania could not escape involvement: and individuals found them-
cities

selves caught up and many people lost their lives or property.

in larger events,

Pompeii itself was very far from being the happy small town without a history Cam P/\ n/i vy cTon'A v
that it is sometimes painted; but despite temporary ups and downs, it was still
able to maintain a surprising level of economic well-being. Because of its privi-
leged economic position, Campania was better able than a great many parts of
Italy to adjust to the successive new situations, and when in 3 1 B.C. Caesar's Graffito of a triumphant gladiator, drawn by a
nephew and heir, Octavian (or Augustus, as he was to be known from 27 B.C.), Pompeian after the riot of A.D. 59; "Campani
(probably the inhabitants of a suburb of
finally succeeded in reimposing peace and unified rule upon the Mediterranean
Pompeii) you too were destroyed in the victory
world, Pompeii was still a very prosperous town, well placed to take advantage over the Nucerians"
of the opportunities offered by the new Pax Romana.
From the earlier part of this period two closely related series of events stand
out as directly affecting the fortunes of Pompeii. One was the Social War of
90-89 B.C., in which Pompeii, with its fine walls, was one of the Campanian
strongholds of the Italian allies in their struggle to achieve full Roman citizen-
ship. There was heavy fighting, during which Herculaneum was occupied,
Stabiae captured and sacked, and Pompeii itself besieged by the future dictator,
Lucius Cornelius Sulla: one can still see the damage wrought by his artillery in

the walls near the Vesuvius Gate. We do not know the immediate local outcome

34
of those events, but the long-term resuh of the Social War was the unification
of Italy south of the Po valley within the broad framework of the Roman polity.
The conclusion of the Social War did not, however, resolve the immediate
local problems. It was left for Sulla to complete the Italian settlement after his
return to Italy in 83 B.C. from Asia Minor at the head of a victorious army.
Having eliminated all political opposition in Rome itself, he turned his hand to
the larger problem with characteristic ruthlessness and efficiency. One of the
most effective instruments to hand was the establishment of citizen colonies of
on land expropriated from past opponents. Many such
loyal military veterans
colonies were planted in Campania, among them a group of possibly as many as
two or three thousand families on the territory of Pompeii. It was a neat solu-
tion, satisfactory to all parties except the dispossessed, and, in extreme cases, it

must have meant the virtual annihilation of the old Italic upper classes. At
Pompeii, as we shall see, the long-term results were nothing like so drastic. But
the immediate result was to give Pompeii and other similar colonies a new civic
status, a new ruling class, and a new stake in the events of the world around
them.
With the establishment of the Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum in
80 B.C. we turn a page in the city's history. The historical perspectives shift,
slightly but decisively. As a Hellenized Italic city Pompeii, though irrevocably
involved in the fortunes of Roman Italy, had retained a certain measure of
independence. Now, for better or for worse, she found herself a full partner in
the great Roman adventure. For the next fifty years the death throes of the
Roman Republic continued to offer the politically ambitious plenty of scope for
direct involvement in larger events. We catch an occasional glimpse of such
happenings in the pages of Cicero, who owned a property in the neighborhood:
in 62 B.C. he successfully defended the founder of the colony, the dictator's rela-

tive Publius Cornelius Sulla, on a charge of involvement in the conspiracy of

Catiline; in 49 B.C. Cicero himself, on his way to join Pompey in Greece, found
himself approached by the commanders of the three cohorts stationed in or near
the town (an offer he discreetly declined). Again, during the Servile War (73-71
B.C.), Spartacus' army remained for a long time in the countryside near Pompeii,
and actually destroyed Pompeii's neighbor Nola. But such incidents were the
inevitable by-products of troubled times. For the last century and a half of the
city's existence, the inhabitants of Pompeii, in company with those of coundess

other colonies and municipalities in Italy, were fully engaged in reaping the
material advantages of their new status.

From 80 B.C. onward the real history of Pompeii is that of the city and its

inhabitants, and that can only be told in terms of the city's civic institutions,

which are the subject of the section that follows. Here it must suffice to refer to
the three remaining occasions on which Pompeii found itself front-page news
outside Campania.
The first of these was the riot that took place in a.d. 59 after a gladiatorial
spectacle in the Amphitheater, as a result of which a number of visiting specta-
tors from Nuceria were killed or wounded. The matter reached the Senate in
Rome, and as a punishment all spectacles in the Amphitheater were banned for
a period of ten years — a sentence comparable today to a ten-year closure of the
local football stadium. The scene is vividly portrayed in a contemporary pic-
ture, now in Naples Museum (see illustration), which was found in a house near
the theater.
Then, on the fifth of February 6z there was a severe earthquake. Though

35
 nobody at the time knew it, this was Act One of the tragedy of a.d. 79, and like
many earthquakes of a volcanic nature its effects were localized but intense, and
Pompeii was the epicenter. The town was very badly damaged; quite how badly
can be judged from the fact that when, seventeen years later, disaster hit again,
only two of the city's public monuments (the Amphitheater and the Temple of
f':9*>!'*"
and a handful of private houses had been completely restored. Of the Forum
Isis)

and the buildings around it, only in the Temple of Apollo was the work near
completion; even allowing for the fact that after the eruption this whole area
was ransacked for its metals, its marbles, and its building materials, it is quite
evident that the only buildings where reconstruction work was not still in pro-
gress were those like the had not yet started — presumably
Capitolium, where it

because of plans to rebuild them in a more opulent, contemporary manner. In

79 the whole Forum area was a gigantic builders' yard. The same story is re-
Cw^ peated all over the city: in the public bath buildings, the theaters, the Doric
temple, the water supply, a great many of the private houses. As we shall see,
The area affected by the hail of pumice stones
this was not problem Pompeii was having to face in its last years, but
the only
and the relative depths of ash ejected by
Vesuvius in a.d. 79 the earthquake of 62 was in itself undoubtedly a major disaster.
The great eruption of Vesuvius of 24 August 79 came out of a clear sky. The
volcano had been inactive since well before historical times and it was uni-
versally believed to be extinct. Villas and vineyards crowded up the slopes, and
in a land where earthquakes are common the warning of a.d. 62 had passed

unheeded.
For the course of the eruption, which followed a classic pattern, we have two
contemporary sources: the analysis of the deposits of ash and cinders beneath
which the whole city was buried, and the eyewimess account of Pliny the Younger,
contained in two letters addressed to the historian Tacitus. At the time Pliny was

staying with his uncle, the famous scientist and writer, who happened to be in
command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, nineteen miles to the west, at the
mouth of the Bay of Naples. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when
their attention was called to the cloud, shaped like a gigantic pine tree, which
had appeared across the bay:
/ cannot describe its appearance and shape better than as resembling an um-
brella pine tree, ivith a very tall tnmk rising high into the sky and then spreading
out into branches. I imagine this was because ivhere the force of the blast was

fresh it ivas thrust upwards, but as this lost impetus, or indeed as the weight of
the cloud itself took charge, it began to thinout and to spread laterally. At one
moment it was white, at another dark and dirty, as if it carried up a load of earth
and cinders. ,„• , „ . ,,
(Plmy, Letters vi, 16)

Allied troops who wimessed the far less destructive eruption of March 1944
will atonce recognize the description — namre's equivalent of the mushroom
cloud released by an atomic bomb.
Summoning ships, the Elder Pliny headed straight for the coast near Her-
culaneum, where he found it already impossible to land. Instead he put in at
Pomponianus, where he spent the night.
Stabiae, at the coastal villa of a friend,
In the small hours of the following morning a succession of violent earthquake
shocks and the steadily falling ash drove the party down to the beach, where
during the course of the morning of the Z5th Pliny was overcome by the fumes
and died. Meanwhile, Misenum was feeling the same earthquake shocks, and
Facing page:
Volcanic Eruption, undated when a shift of wind into the east brought with it a cloud of darkness and falling
Michael Wutky, Austrian, 1738-1821 ash the whole population took to the open countryside; it was not until the fol-

37
lowing day that the ashes began to cease falHng and that a fitful daylight broke
through once more.
The eruption must have started between lo and ii o'clock on the morning
of the 24th, and by the evening of that day some 6 feet of ash had already fallen
on Pompeii. Here the first 8 or 9 feet of deposit consist of a thin scatter of lava
pebbles {lapilli), the debris of the plug of solidified basalt that had for so long
sealed the volcano, followed by successive layers of almost pure pumice. This
represents the body of volcanic magma that was ejected up the throat as soon as
itwas clear, under conditions of great heat and enormous pressure, to a height
of several thousand meters (the trunk of the "pine tree"); on reaching the upper
atmosphere the drops of magma were able to expand, releasing some of the
gases they contained, and to fall as a dense, spreading cloud of incandescent,
gaseous pumice. More than two thirds of the deposits at Pompeii represent this
first, cataclysmic series of events, after which the gases of the interior were free
to escape upward with a much smaller admixture of pure magma, its place being
taken by increasing quantities of alien material, as the old volcanic matter of the
existing cone collapsed inward upon itself, causing a series of convulsive block-
ages and explosions. This was the peak moment of the eruption, involving a
tremendous release of gaseous pressure and causing the earthquakes that de-
stroyed Pomponianus' villa at Stabiae and spread panic at Misenum. But al-
though the deadly rain of gas and cinders continued, the body of actual solid
matter that fell was already tailing off rapidly. In terms of its power to destroy,
by the afternoon of the 25th the eruption had already done its worst.
The city of Pompeii had ceased to exist, buried beneath twelve feet of lethal
ash. We have no means of estimating the casualties, but in the town itself and the
immediate countryside they must have run into many thousands. Those who
got away did so in the first few hours, the lucky ones by sea, the rest striking in-
land before the roads were blocked and the air became unbreathable. Those who
dallied to collect their valuables or who took shelter in the houses and cellars
died miserably,some when the roofs and upper stories collapsed upon them
under the weight of the ash, most of them suffocated by the steady accumulation
of deadly, sulphurous fumes. The ash solidified around their bodies, leaving for
posterity the pathetic record of their death agonies amid the darkness of that
terrifying August day.
When something like normality had been restored a commission was sent to
Campania to report, but there was nothing to be done. Herculaneum and many
of the villas of the coast along the foot of Vesuvius had vanished from sight be-
neath an engulfing torrent of volcanic mud, washed down the mountainside by
the torrential rains that accompanied the eruption. Pompeii and Stabiae were
slightly better off in that the upper parts of many of the taller buildings were still
visible above the mantle of ash. Here it was at least possible to do some salvage.
The Forum area was ransacked for its bronze statues and its fine building materi-
als, and many houseowners — and others — grubbed their way down into the

houses, hunting for strongboxes and caches of valuables. But the town was
beyond resurrection. The survivors drifted away or were settled elsewhere and,
as has happened many times in Campanian history, nature took over and what
had been Pompeii became once more rich agricultural land. The knowledge that
there had once been a town here lingered on in folk memory: in the eighteenth
century the area was still known as Civita [civitas, or "city"). But as far as the
learned world was concerned Pompeii, like Herculaneum, had been wiped off
the map and had laboriously to be rediscovered.

38
 THE TOWN:
GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE

A great deal of our information about life in Pompeii is derived from inscrip-
tions. In addition to the ordinary everyday uses of writing that distinguish any
advanced society, the to have had a strong portion of the common
Romans seem
human passion for self-commemoration. Three main categories of inscriptions
may be distinguished. One is that of formal monumental epigraphy on stone or
bronze, ranging from long, elaborate, formal texts down to the simple tomb-
stones of the domestic slave and his family. To this category belong dedications
to divinitiesand records of religious events; inscriptions in honor of members of
the Imperial family and distinguished citizens; building inscriptions and funerary
inscriptions. A second category is that of the inscriptions used in commerce and
private life to denote the source of ownership of certain goods, or to facilitate
Foster painted on the wall of House ill, z, i, accounting. These might be an integral part of the object inscribed, as were the
advertising gladiatorial games to be given at the
maker's stamps on many sorts of pottery or lamps, or they might be scratched or
expense of Lucretius Satrius
painted on the object, as frequently for example on silver ware or the painted
tally marks on amphoras. A third group, in which by the circumstances of its

destruction Pompeii is unusually rich, is that o( graffiti (literally "scratches"),

a term that may be used to denote any sort of ephemeral sign or text scratched or
painted on plaster or other appropriate surfaces. Many of these are the work of
the inevitable idle scribbler, but a very unusual and important group consists of

electoral posters painted on the fronts of the houses of the candidates or their
supporters (see page 41). The evidence is not evenly spread: for the final period
of the city we have a great deal of electoral propaganda, but few formal inscrip-
tions setting out the names and careers of the successful candidates. Even so, as a

Who's "Who to the personalities of local politics it remains an invaluable source

of information.
Another unusual group of inscriptions is that of the tabulae ceratae, the wax-
Lucius Caecilius Felix, father of
Lucius Caecilius Jucundus
surfaced wooden tablets upon which a local banker, Lucius Caecilius Jucundus,
Naples Museum kept his business records. These were buried in the earthquake of 62 and never
recovered; and not only do they throw light on aspects of contemporary life
about which we normally hear very little, but they tell us a lot about the people
involved. Because of the rigid rules of precedence prevailing in Roman society,
even a list of witnesses can be an eloquent document.
Most of these inscriptions record the names of individuals, a great many of
them in some public capacity, and to understand their significance it will be
helpful at this point to glance briefly at the Roman rules governing the use of
names, which fortunately for us were remarkably precise. By the end of the
Republic it was standard practice for a Roman citizen to bear three names. Thus
the full name of the most distinguished citizen of Augustan Pompeii was
M[arcus] Holconius M[arci] Rufus. His middle name, Holconius, was
f[ilius]

that of the gens, the family of which he was a member, the equivalent of a mod-
em surname. His first name (praenonien) was given to him at birth, and in
Marcus Holconius Rufus was written abbreviated form (A. for Aulus, L. for
normal Roman practice it in
Naples Museum
Lucius, Gn. for Gnaeus, etc.) and in official documents a man would normally
praenomen, which in the case of Holconius Rufias was the
also give his father's
same as his own. In early Republican times two names had sufficed; but a de-
veloped society can carry only a limited number of plain John Smiths, and quite
early it became the practice in aristocratic circles to add a third name, or
cog-

nomen, a practice that spread steadily down the social scale to all levels of citi-

zen society. These cognomina, when first adopted, were very commonly
descrip-

tive (Ahenobarbus, "Brazenbeard"; Cabus, "Baldhead"; Faventintis, "from

Faventia" [modern Faenza]), but they very soon became conventional names that

39
ran in families. M. Holconius Rufus ("Redhead") was no more necessarily him-
self red-headed than his brother Celer ("Swift") was fast-moving. To his friends
he was probably known as Rufus, although on this point there were no hard and
fast rules. Cicero was M. Tullius Cicero, but Pliny the Elder was Caius Plinius
Secundus, while his nephew on his sister's side, Publius Caecilius Secundus,
whom he adopted, became Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (taking on his

adopted father's family name but retaining his own [Caecilius] as a cognomen).
Women used a simpler form of the same system, usually at this period just
their family name together with that of the father or husband whose legal depen-
dents they were, while household slaves carried a single name, which was nor-
mally Greek, a convention that reflects the fact that the overwhelming majority
of such slaves were of Greek-speaking extraction. Slaves, it must be remembered,

were members of the family. If they were given their freedom (see below) they
took their former master's name and forename, usually retaining their own
slavename as a cognomen. A hypothetical slave of M. Holconius Rufus, named
Narcissus, would have become officially M. Holconius M[arci] l[ibertus =
freedman] Narcissus, whereas the son of the latter would have been (say) M.
Holconius M. f [ilius] Primus, born free and from his name indistinguishable
from any other freeborn citizen. There were innumerable possible nuances of
the system, and with the passage of time names tended to become more complex
and many fresh names came into circulation. But down to a.d. 79 the main
rules still broadly applied.
From the inscriptions we learn that M. Holconius Rufus had been a duovir
of the colony five times (the fourth time in 2/1 B.C.) and quinquennalis twice; he
was a flamen Caesaris Augusti; he was an official patron of the colony; and he
was one of the three known Pompeians to have been appointed a tribunus mili-
tum a populo, an honorary office that gave him equestrian rank in Rome, a
position of privilege second only to senatorial rank. Together with his brother,
Celer, he modernized the Large Theater after the model of the Theater of Mar-
cellus in Rome. This was a very distinguished municipal career. What did these
and how did the system work?
titles signify,

When a Roman colony was founded it was given its own written constitution
and, because the Romans were an orderly minded people, such constitutions
tended to follow a broadly uniform pattern, with relatively minor variations to
meet special local circumstances. There is no direct record of the law with which
in 80 B.C. Sulla established the Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum, but
we do have fragments of several other late Republican or early Imperial con-
stitutions, and it is evident that that of Pompeii followed conventional lines.
The colony was established initially by an official {deductor) who was ap-
pointed by the central government and who in this case was the dictator's rela-
tive, Publius Cornelius Sulla. His tasks included the appropriation and alloca-

tion of lands for the new settlers, the establishment of a municipal council, and
the appointment of the first body of magistrates. The council, a body usually of
some 80-100 members, was known corporately as the ordo decurionum and
its individual members as decurions [decuriones). Decurions had to be freeborn

citizens; certain professions were ineligible (an odd list, including innkeepers,
auctioneers, comedy actors, gravediggers, gladiators, trainers) and others (shop-
keepers and small traders) eligible only under conditions that at this date would
have been prohibitive; tenure was for life, unless a holder was specifically dis-

qualified for some breach of the conditions; and — a very important provision —
there was a high property qualification. A decurion, and a fortiori a magistrate.

40
Election poster: "All the frttitsellers with
W HOICONIVM
Helvius Vestiilis support the election ofM.
Holconius Priscus as duovir" fWSMWRU-SSX.
was expected to spend money on the community. The ordo in effect constituted
a moneyed municipal aristocracy, and as long as money was plentiful member-
ship was a valued privilege. It was a Roman senate in miniature, but— as Cicero
remarks to a friend who had asked his support in getting his stepson appointed
to the ordo of Pompeii — it was rather harder to get into.
The senior elected magistrates were a pair of dnoviri, who between them
presided over the meetings of the ordo, handled all important financial business,
and administered local justice. Among other privileges certain senior priesthoods
were reserved for members of the duoviral families, and a magistrate with good
connections at the imperial court might aspire to the honorary but prestigious
position of patronus. The duoviri were supported by a pair of junior magis-
trates, aediles, who dealt with such day-to-day administrative matters as the
maintenance of streets and public buildings, the management of markets, and
the issue of licenses and permits. These were young men at the beginning of their
careers, and
since election to a magistracy carried with it membership in the
ordo, there was no shortage of candidates. Every five years the duoviri had
special powers and were known as quinquennales, with the special task of carry-
ing out a municipal census and of reviewing the qualifications of the members of
the ordo. This last power must have gready reinforced the tendency for munici-
pal power to fall into the hands of a small self-perpetuating group of wealthy
families. Only if things went badly wrong was central authority (i.e., from the
time of Augustus onward, the emperor) likely to intervene. A properly qualified
newcomer could in theory seek popular election, but in practice the only sure
access was through marriage or adoption into the ruling families and the best
key to that door was wealth.
The magistrates were elected annually by the whole body of free citizens, who
were for the purpose divided into voting districts. As the electoral propaganda
shows (most of it admittedly from the last period of the town's history, when
the hold of the old families had largely broken down) this was a duty that the
population entered into with gusto; and while many of the supporters were no
doubt simply friends, neighbors, and clients of the candidates, others were or-
ganized bodies that may be presumed to have had a serious economic or social
interest in the outcome. Religious associations such as the Isiaci and the Venerii,
influential trade associations such as the fullers (fullones), bodies of people
involved in agriculture or transport, the fishermen, the bakers, the goldsmiths,
various sorts of small shopkeepers or stallholders, all of these are attested, to-
gether with a number of other groups of a less serious character — "the draughts-
players," "the theatergoers," "the late drinkers," and so on. Elections were
evidently lively affairs.
There were also a number of organizations of a partly administrative, partly
is not always an easy one to draw),
social or religious character (the distinction
which offered an outlet to citizens or other residents who were not qualified to
become ordinary magistrates. It has to be remembered that there were also sub-
stantial groups of resident foreigners. But although, slave or freeborn, a man's
position was rigidly defined by his civil status, this was also a surprisingly fluid
society. Not only could slaves of ability rise to positions of very considerable
responsibility as stewards, bailiffs, managers of large estates, and the like, but
slavery was actually one of the recognized roads to social advancement. A
Roman citizen had the right of bestowing freedom upon any slave who had
given faithful service, a right that was freely exercised; and although a freed-
man, or libertus, was debarred from holding certain positions that called for free

41
 birth, his children born after he obtained his freedom were the equals at law of
any other Roman citizen.
A great many of the domestic slaves came from the Greek-speaking East as
prisoners of war, as the victims of a flourishing slave trade along and across the
frontiers, or even as children sold into slavery by their families. Many of them
had natural abilities and aptitudes in fields where the Romans were by tempera-
ment and position less qualified, and by the first century a.d. a very high per-
centage of the professional and commercial skills of a town like Pompeii were
in their hands, either as trusted slaves working for their masters, or else as freed-

men operating on their own behalf or as agents of their former masters. Doc-
tors, teachers, accountants, secretaries, architects, decorators, barbers, cooks,
small craftsmen and tradesmen of every sort, the overseers and technicians of
commerce and industry, the staffs of the city offices: by the first century a.d.
almost all of these would have been slaves or descendants of slaves, and, be-
cause of their natural ability and training, many of them were well-to-do and
some of them were very wealthy. Trimalchio, the millionaire freedman of Petro-
nius' Satyricon, is a caricature, but he is a caricature that everybody would have
recognized as drawn from life.

It was, as we have seen, the regular practice for a freedman to adopt his for-
mer master's family name, and by the second generation it is often quite im-
possible to distinguish the descendants of freedmen from members of the parent
by a.d. 79 a very substantial proportion of the
family. Statistics elude us, but
free urban population of Pompeii must have been descended from freedmen,

and in many cases from the freedmen of freedmen. (In the countryside the pro-
portion would have been less.) Much economy of the town was in their
of the
hands, and many of them were socially The election posters of the
ambitious.
last period include a lot of the old names, and although some of these were
doubtless still the lineal descendants of the old Samnite and Roman families, a
great many others were unquestionably the second- and third-generation prod-
ucts of this extraordinary ethnic melting pot.
For a vivid glimpse of the system at work we may turn to the inscription
recording the rebuilding of the Temple of Isis after the earthquake of 62. The
restoration was paid for by N. Popidius Celsinus, who bears the name of one
of the most distinguished of the pre-Roman families of Pompeii, the Popidii. It

must have cost a lot of when the town was in serious financial
money, at a time
difficulties, and in return the council was doubdess glad to elect him to their

number. The only surprising feature is that at the time Popidius was a boy of six.
The truth is, of course, that the real donor was the boy's father, N. Popidius
Ampliatus, who happened to have been born a slave and who, being himself
debarred from membership in the ordo, chose instead to buy his son's way into
it. But for the eruption, Celsmus, with his family's wealth behmd him, might i„scr,puon from the Tcnple of his {no. 10)
well in due course have become the town's chief magistrate. Naples Museum

NrOPlDlVSNFCLLSlNVS'
i
An^C^llSll^lSTEIlK AElVipTVlA^NlArsAlVl

[ _
^VML'sM 1 A'NNOK\'iM-SrXSe^lMMNl N\Vu K A lU A IM I ^ ,
[ iv\'NI ^
42-
 The case of the restoration of the Temple of Isis is obviously in some respects
exceptional, but it illustrates admirably the intent behind the system. Without
doing violence to the inherited Roman prejudices in favor of free birth and
against most forms of direct commercial activity, a real effort was made to en-
gage the loyalties of the socially underprivileged and to direct their energies and
wealth into socially useful channels. One such outlet was in the local adminis-
tration of the vici and pagi, the subdistricts into which the town and its territory
were divided (see p. 92.). There were bodies known as ministri, who were mostly
freedmen, but who might include freeborn citizens and in some cases even slaves.
In origin the duties of the ministri may have been mainly religious, but, as or-
ganized bodies, they constituted a useful peg on which to hang other local re-
sponsibilities; they carried status, and we find them contributing financially to
such municipal enterprises as building and the provision of games. Another
important outlet was provided by the institution of the imperial cult in the time
of Augustus (see p. 86). Here again, although the forms were ostensibly re-
ligious, the objectives were in reality far wider. The Augustales in particular
were recruited from the most prominent freedmen of the community. They
ranked immediately after the members of the ordo and, in addition to a large
stauitory payment on election, they were expected to use their wealth liberally
on behalf of the community. In a.d. 79 the golden age of the Augustales was
still to come, but even so they were already a powerful force within the

community.
At Pompeii as nowhere else outside Rome we can follow the issues of local
politics in terms of the individuals directly involved, the man in the street as
well as the candidate for whom he voted. We must be content, however, to
summarize the broad conclusions that emerge from the study of this mass of
it illustrates the history of the town during the
detailed information, insofar as
160 years of its existence as a Roman colony.
The first fifty names of those who held
years (80-31 B.C.), as reflected in the
municipal or who were candidates for office, were closely influenced by
office

the play of events elsewhere in Rome and Italy: the shifts of power and of alle-
giance in Rome itself following the rise of Caesar and, striking deeper and more
lastingly, the breakup of the old tribal Italy and the steady emergence of a

more urbanized, more broadly based Roman Italy. In this respect the founder
of the colony, P. Cornelius Sulla, seems to have acted with considerable states-
manship and foresight. Although the colony was in intention founded as a
closed electoral society from which the old Samnite families were excluded,
within barely a generation we find members of the latter already back in the

ordo, and they were joined there by an increasing number of families from other
parts of Campania or from the impoverished inland districts of central Italy.

The pattern is a familiar one. The product of a society that was out of balance,
with large sections of the population adrift socially and seeking fresh oppor-
tunities within the enduring framework of Italian geography, there are many
analogies with modern times.
If the first fifty years were, therefore, a time of rather rapid change, the next
sixty to seventy years were characterized by a no less remarkable stability.

Toward the end of the previous period many of the newcomers seem to have
been partisans of the future emperor Augustus, and with the firm establishment
of central authority after his victory at Actium in 3 1 B.C. they found themselves
very comfortably placed. For a couple of generations the control of Pompeii
seems to have lain in the hands of the small group of closely interrelated families

43
to which M. Holconius Rufus and his brother belonged. As large landed pro-

prietors, with profitable outlets in wine production, the tile industry, and sheep
farming, much of the local economy was in their hands: their wealth is attested

by the sums they spent on buildings, games, and other municipal amenities, and
they had secured an almost complete monopoly of civic office. Because of their
close ties with central authority- the establishment of the imperial cult and the
institution of the Augustales are symptomatic— it was a period during which
any lingering Campanian eccentricities (for example, the use of the old Samnite
weights and measures) were quietly eliminated. As the ferment of the Civil
Wars settled, the processes of Romanization begun in 80 B.C. came to fruition.

By the death of Augustus' successor, Tiberius, in a.d. 37, Pompeii was as fully
Roman a city as were Mantua, Sulmona, and Venusia (Venosa, in Apulia), the
birthplaces of Vergil, Ovid, and Horace.
The last forty-odd years of the city's history were by contrast a period of
change and of urban crisis. The earthquake of a.d. 6z was a serious aggrava-
tion of a difficult simation; another must have been the loss of imperial favor

after the Amphitheater riot of A.D. 59. But the underlying causes were political
and economic. For one thing, Italy in general and Campania in particular were
beginning to lose out economically to some of the developing provinces over-
seas; for another, the monopoly of wealth formerly exercised by the old landed
was facing ever-increasing competition from the emergent middle class
classes
towhich the wealthy freedmen belonged. Exactly how the crisis developed and
on whose authority it was resolved we do not know. There are signs of imperial
intervention (the normal procedure when the affairs of a municipality got out of
hand) and perhaps of a temporary suspension of the normal civic institutions
during the forties. It isnot until after the adoption of Nero by his stepfather, the
emperor Claudius, in a.d. 50, that we begin once more to find records of ap-
pointments to the normal magistracies and priesthoods. But from then on the
record is extensive, and the message is clear. It shows that there had been an
almost complete break with the recent past and with the group of families that
had virtually controlled the city for more than half a century. Instead, many of
the office-holders of the last period are from families with no previous political
record; others are from old families thathad long been excluded from office,
and yet others are manifestly of freedman descent.
The monopoly of local authority by the established landed families had gone,
and its place was being taken by a society in which privilege and wealth were
more widely spread, but which found it difficult to fill the gap left by the with-
drawal of the old, comfortable municipal paternalism. Pompeii was still a busy
city, but it had fewer It is no accident that in a.d. 79 seventeen years
resources. ,

after the earthquake, only two major public buildings had been completely
restored or that many of the fine old houses were being subdivided and con-
verted into commercial premises. Another generation, and a great deal more of
the older, wealthier Pompeii would have vanished. If it was the city's destiny to
be preserved for posterity as a monument to a way of life, the eruption of 79

came just in time.

44
THE TOWN:
PLANNING AND
ARCHITECTURE

The early history of Pompeii is faithfully reflected in its town plan. The original

settlement, which occupied the southwest comer of the later town, was situated
on a spur of higher ground, projecting from the lower slopes of Vesuvius and
looking out over the mouth of the river Sarno and the Bay of Naples. It was
defended by a circuit of walls that on the south and west sides followed the cliffs
above the river mouth, and on the landward side faced out across the saddle
that carried the coast road from Naples toward Stabiae and the Sorrento penin-
sula, following a curving line still clearly visible in the street plan of the later
town. Within this circuit the early town was laid out on orderly, though not
mathematically precise, lines. Of the early two can be
buildings, the positions of
established: the sanctuary of Apollo, which lay beside the reserved open space
that was later to become the Forum, and that of Hercules (?), finely situated on a
rocky spur that projected southeastward above the river (later the "Triangular
Forum"), possibly outside the city walls. This early settlement covered some
twenty-four acres, and the population is estimated at about 2,000 to 2,500 people.
With its command of local land and river traffic and its ready access to the
sea, the settlement prospered and grew rapidly, and in the fifth century B.C. it
was greatly enlarged northward and eastward, within a new circuit of defensive
walls enclosing a roughly oval area of some 160 acres. These walls, several times
strengthened and repaired, were to remain the effective boundary of the city
throughout its subsequent history: any subsequent expansion (and the inscrip-
tions and excavation confirm that there was such expansion) was into suburban
areas outside the gates.
The new town was laid outGreek manner. This consisted ideally of
in the

long, narrow, rectangular residential blocks separated by narrow access-streets

(stenopoi) running at right angles to the main traffic avenues (plateai), and it can
be seen at its simplest and most orthodox in the area south of the Via dell'Ab-
bondanza, toward the Amphitheater. Elsewhere there are many irregularities

of layout, but all of them make good sense as a rationalization of the already
existing road-system outside the walls of the early settlement: the main coast
road running southeastward from the Herculaneum Gate and down the well-
marked valley that led to the Stabian Gate; and, radiating outward, a web of
roads heading for Naples and Flerculaneum, the farms on the slopes of Vesuvius,
Nola, and Stabiae and Nuceria. With a little tidying up at important intersec-
tions, it is all there, a classic instance of an orderly planning system superim-
posed upon an existing topographical situation in such a way as to cause a
minimum of disruption to established suburban street frontages and property
rights.

Of the architecture of the earliest town we have little more than the scanty
remains of the two Greek temples, including the platform of one of them and a
selection of the gaily painted terracotta architecmral ornament that once cov-
ered the superstructures of both. The earliest substantial surviving structures
belong to the mm of the fourth and third century B.C., and it is not really until
the last century of Samnite rule, in the second century B.C., that we begin to get

any coherent picture of the town as such. At this time there was still plenty of
room: among the several wealthy houses of the period still standing in A.D. 79
was the House of the Faun, which occupied an area of some six acres, covering a
whole city block. During this period there was also a lot of public building. The

Forum was enlarged and monumentalized by the addition of enclosing porti-

coes; at the north end it was dominated by a large, upstanding temple of Jupi-
ter, and off the southwest corner there now opened a
grandiose new basilica.

45
 Pompeii
ry.
\

The original settlement

at Pomp,
r-^Dr

R E G I IV M-^^^

Map of Pompeii
Courtesy of Hans Eschebach

A7
 .
. .

1 Forum 8. Temple ofFortuna Augusta 1 5 Central Baths 22. Caupona ofEuxinus

2. Teynple of Venus 9. House of the Faun 16. House of the Centenary 23. House of the Ship "Europa"
3 Forum Baths 10. Insula Ml, 13 17. Bakery ofModestus 24. House ofJulius Polybius
4. House of the Tragic Poet 11. House of the Vettii 18. Stabian Baths 25. House ofPinarius Cerialis
5. House ofSallust 12. House of the Gilded Amorini 19. Temple of Isis 26. House of'Loreius Tiburtinus'
6. Villa ofDiomedes 13. Fullery 20. Theaters (seep. 87J 27. "Praedia" Julia Felix
7. Villa of the Mysteries 14. House of the Silver Wedding zi. House of the Menander 28. Palaestra

CAPUA GATE ^^NOLA GATE

SARNO GATE

SEA
GATE

48
Aerial view of theForum from the
south, showing also the houses
terraced out over the town walls.

The Forum

I. Tetnple ofJupiter
z. Provisions market (macellum)
3. Sanctuary of the City Lares
4. Temple of Vespasian
5. Cloth traders hall (Eumachia Building)
6. Voting hall (comirium)
7. Chief magistrates' (duovirs') office
8. Council chamber
^. Junior magistrates' (aediles') office

10. Basilica
1 1 . Tetnple of Apollo
I z. Control of weights and measures
1-^. Cereals market
14. Commetnorative arches

60m

49
To this same period belong also the first bath buildings of the new Roman type,
the Large Theater in its original form, the elegant Doric colonnades of the Tri-
angular Forum, and, very probably, the predecessors of such later temples as
those of Venus, of Zeus Meilichios, and of Isis. Typical of this late Samnite-
period architecture are the use of the brown tufa stone of Nocera, especially for
house frontages, and of the First Style ("Masonry Style") painted stucco orna-
ment to cover all the more important interior wall surfaces.
Although the establishment of the Sullan colony in 80 B.C. was achieved
without any radical change to the existing urban structure, it was, as one would
The city walls were repaired;
expect, followed by considerable building activity.
the temple at the head of the Forum was
and rededicated in honor of the
rebuilt
Roman Capitoline triad, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; the Stabian Baths were
enlarged and modernized; and a number of new public buildings were erected,
including a smaller, covered theater (theatnim tectum) beside the existing open-
air theater, an amphitheater (inaugurated in 70 B.C.) and a second public bath
building, near the Forum. The list is an interesting one, illustrating as it does not
only the initial contribution of the new colonists, but also their rapid assimila-
tion to local ways. For all its top-dressing of Roman colonial forms, Pompeii
was still Campanian city.
a
Full Romanization came only under Augustus and his immediate successors,
a process neatly symbolized by the formal adoption of the Roman system of
weights and measures in place of the old Sabellian system, which the Sullan
colony had retained. Once again, however, it was a process of organic develop-
ment and mutual assimilation within the existing framework rather than one of
radical change. The Forum was progressively modernized by the addition of a
meat and fish market (macellwn), a group of city offices, and a voting precinct;
by the construction of the "Eumachia Building" by the patroness of the most
powerful of the city's trade associations, the wool merchants; and by the re-
building in limestone of the Forum porticoes — this last still in progress at the

time of the earthquake of A.D. 62. Other major public works of this period
include provision for the newly established imperial cult; the creation of a huge
exercise ground (palaestra) near the Amphitheater; an elaborate remodeling
of the old Samnite-period theater, undertaken by the wealthy brothers Hol-
conius (see p. 40) in conscious imitation of the Augustan Theater of Marcellus
in Rome; and and a city-wide system of public
the building of an aqueduct
water points. To same period, between 80 B.C. and the middle of the first
this

century a.d., belong most of the large private houses, with their elaborate
schemes of Second and Third Style painted decoration. Both in the public and
the private sector, this was a time of great and varied architectural activity.
By contrast, the last thirty years before the eruption were a time of economic
stress and of gathering urban crisis. After the earthquake many of the large
private houses were abandoned as residences; seventeen years later only two
public monuments (the Amphitheater and the Temple of Isis) had been com-
pletely restored and there was little or no new public building. In 79 the Forum
was a vast builder's yard, and even the water supply was still under repair. Of
the few exceptions, the building usually identified as a public lararium, in honor
of the city's protecting divinities, and the small temple in honor of Vespasian,
could both have been considered necessary acts of propitiation toward religious
and secular authority, following the disaster of a.d. 62. The only major new
project of a utilitarian nature was a large new bath building, the Central Baths,
still incomplete in a.d. 79.

50
A street in Pompeii (The paving stones are
made of hard gray lava.)

In its use of building materials and construction techniques the architecture

of Pompeii lies rather on the fringes than at the center of contemporary Italian
building history — rather surprisingly so when one considers that the event that
changed the face of classical architecture, the discovery of the unique properties
of the mortar based on the volcanic sand of west central Italy, took place little
more than 20 miles away, at Puteoli (Pozzuoli), and that some of the outstand-
ing early manifestations of its use are still to be seen at Baiae. At Pompeii there
was evidently a considerable prejudice in favor of the familiar Greek construc-
tion traditions still to be overcome. It was only in such frankly innovating build-

ing types as the amphitheater and the bath building that the arch and the vault
(the forms in which the new Roman "concrete" found its ideal expression)
could be used freely and explicitly without doing violence to the conventions of
established monumental taste. Viewed in context, the amphitheater in particu-
lar appears as one of the outstanding early examples of the emergence of an ar-
chitectural aesthetic based on the candid exploitation of the visual properties of
the arch. At the time this was something quite new in classical architecture.
Another conspicuous innovation, in this case well represented at Pompeii,
was the emergence during the last two centuries B.C. of a number of the new
building types that were to figure so prominently in the later history of Roman
architecture. Pompeii, though surely not a major creative center in its own right,
was in this respect right in the mainstream of progressive architectural thinking.
The stone-built Amphitheater, the upstanding Roman-type theater, the Basilica,
the bath building, the market building with a circular pavilion of the type here
represented beside the Forum: all of these important and distinctive architectural
types seem first to have taken monumental shape in southern Italy rather than
in Rome itself, and to have been products of the new social needs and oppor-
tunities created by Roman wealth and power operating within a setting of so-
phisticated local building skills and technical know-how. Although the amphi-
theater as an institution came from central Italy, Rome itself did not have a
permanent amphitheater building until 29 B.C.; the first permanent theater in
the capital dates from 55 B.C. and the first public bath building not before 19 B.C.
There had been a basilica, the Basilica Porcia, beside the Roman Forum as early

at 184 B.C.; but even in this case there is good reason to believe that the proto-

type came from South Italy, and the Basilica beside the Forum at Pompeii is the
earliest example surviving anywhere. In this respect Campania during the second
and first centuries B.C. was fertile soil, and by the accident of its preservation
Pompeii offers us a unique vision of Imperial Roman architecttire in the making.

51
THE POMPEIAN HOUSE
AND GARDEN

No survey of the art of Pompeii can be complete without some knowledge of

the wealthy houses in which so much of it found its natural place. Buildings such
as the House of the Faun, the House of the Menander, and the House of the
Vettii figured as prominently in the local artistic life of their time as they do
today in the itinerary of the modern visitor. They were not, of course, the only
type of urban dwelling. There were many small, simpler family houses; there
were modest upper-story apartments, particularly in the later period; and there
were one-room or two-room tabernae that opened directly off the street, and
served both as workshops and as living quarters for the poorest families. But,
given the family-centered nature of traditional Italic society, the large, well-to-do
houses did in fact bulk far larger than their equivalents would do in any ad-
vanced modem society, or indeed in the later urban architecture of Rome itself;
the owners of these houses constituted the major source of patronage for local
artistic enterprise.

As an architectural form the Pompeian house was very much a phenomenon

of its age and place, occupying a midway position between the great hall of
archaic Italic practice and the luxurious town residences of the wealthy Roman
families of the Imperial age. Like any such term, "the Pompeian house" re-

presents an abstraction, a convenient label for a page of architectural history

torn from what was in fact a continuously developing historical narrative: but
the use of this term may be justified by the strong element of formal continuity
that runs right through the three centuries and more separating the earliest from
the latest surviving examples. It does, moreover, greatly simplify description.
Although by the end of the period the names and functions of some of the rooms
were changing or had become obsolete (as in our own times such names as
"parlor," "powder room," and "cloak room"), it is still broadly possible to use
the same terminology to describe the individual members of the whole series.
As late as the early second century B.C. a typical Pompeian atrium house such
as the House of Sallust (vi. 2, 4) was still essentially an inward-facing building,
enclosed by bare walls and lit almost exclusively from within. The dominant
A typical residential insula
feature of the plan was a large centrally lit hall, the atrium, the roof of which (city block) VI, 13
might in earlier times have taken on one of the several forms described by
still

later writers, although by the second century B.C. it seems invariably to have
been of "compluviate" form, sloping downward and inward toward a rectangu-
lar opening [compluvium) situated above a rectangular basin {impluvium), so
as to admit more light and at the same time to replenish the cisterns that were
the house's principal water supply.
Grouped around the atrium were the other rooms of the house. The entrance Restored view of an early atrium house
was originally set back within an entrance porch (vestibulum) beyond which
lay a short corridor {fauces). To right and left were service rooms (in the House
of Sallust their place was already taken by shops facing outward onto the street),
and along the two longer sides of the atrium itself a series of small, square bed-
chambers [cubicula), in which the position of the couch was usually marked by
the pattern of the floor and often also by the shape of the ceiling. Along the
fourth side two lateral wings {alae) extended outward, giving access to a range of
rather larger rooms. In the center, opposite the entrance and structurally open
toward the main hall, from which it could be closed off by a wooden screen or
a curtain, lay the tablinum. This was the principal reception room of the house
and, unlike most of the other rooms, itwas often lit by a window, which opened
onto the garden plot (hortus) beyond. Of the two rooms on either side of it,
one was often used as a dining room or triclinium, so named from the D -shaped
5i

\
 -CJSTErm"

HORTUS

nTABLINUM i!

HORTUS

ALA / ALA
ATRIUV

HORTUS

BED

SHOP SHOP I -"-"^

I I ':
I I I

House ofSallust, second century B.C.

Atrium in the House of the Silver Wedding

10m

House ofSallust, a.d. 79

53
 arrangement of three couches (klinai) that constituted the normal dining pat-

and like the cubicula often identifiable from the layout of

tern in classical times,
the floor patterns. Within the atrium one would have looked for such features as
the family strongbox and the household shrine [lararium). Furnishing was by
modern standards scanty, but it might include wooden couches and cupboards
and small tables of wood or later of marble, as well as
wooden doorways and
screens. After dark the rooms were
by means of oil lamps, often on tall bronze
lit

stands, and they were heated by braziers of bronze, iron, and terracotta.
This was the basic pattern of the atrium house, and with the passage of time
it was developed and elaborated in a number of ways. The precise forms and

layouts of such development obviously depended upon the particular circum-

stances of each house in relation to its neighbors, but once again the process
can conveniently be summarized in terms of what was clearly felt to be a normal
type.
The most important single innovation was a direct result of the ever-increas-
ing exposure of Campania to die sophisticated civilizations of the Hellenistic
world, where the standard type of wealthy house was one built around a rec-
tangular, cloister-like, colonnaded courtyard known as the peristyle. These
Hellenistic contacts made themselves felt at every level, notably in the character
and wealth of the architectural detail and in the transformation of the old
cavernous atrium by the incorporation of columnar supports for the central
opening, at first four columns and later whole colonnades, until in extreme cases
itcame to resemble a miniature peristyle. But the most dramatic and far-reach-
ing innovationwas unquestionably the conversion of the old garden area be-
yond the house into a formal peristyle complex, accessible from the atrium by a
corridor or corridors leading past the tablinum, which itself tended also to be
opened up toward the peristyle.
For much of the year the rooms around the peristyle offered far more agree-
able living conditions than the small, rather cramped rooms around the atrium,
and there was an inevitable tendency for the main living rooms to migrate out-
ward. One recurrent form, known as an oecus (a Greek name, which suggests
that it was introduced in the same context as the peristyle itself), was an ela-
borately decorated room open toward the portico and often used as a fair-wea-
ther dining room. Another common innovation was the introduction of a pri-
vate bath suite; yet another, wherever the slope of the ground involved a measure
of terracing, was the introduction of a crypto-portico, a long, narrow, vaulted
chamber or chambers, lit obliquely from above and useful for storage, or even
as a hot-weather residential amenity. Above ground the open area of the peri-
style was regularly equipped with fountains and pools, and with formal gar-
dens which plants and trees
in alternated with statuary and garden furniture.
The atrium-peristyle house needed plenty of space, and in the second century
B.C. most of the wealthy householders could still achieve this by building out
over their existing gardens. But in parts of the town one can already detect
signs of what was to be a growing problem, that of increased population pres-
sures and rising property values. Galleries and upper stories began to be added
along the facade and around the atrium and, as street frontages became more
valuable, more and more of the service rooms on either side of the main entrance
were converted into independent single-room shops [tabernae) opening directly
off the street, just as has happened to the frontages of so many of the palaces of
post-medieval Italy, and for identical reasons.

54
 .

^^m
;<^ _>^-

^J^
.'*-'>.

>>«?*

t-!;;*^ .C'?
*
, «,.
A!

AJ^^' 'M'
>'>»i;

'X

Peristyle garden in the House of the Gilded Amorini (vi, 1 6, 7)

House of the Tragic Poet (vi, 8, 3),

an early peristyle plan
1. Shops
2. Fauces
3. Atrium
4. Bedrooms
5. Ala
6. Tablinum
7. Oecus
8. Peristyle garden
9. Lararium
House of the Vettii, (vi, 15, i),
6. Dining room (triclinium,
a /afe peristyle plan "Pentheus room")
I. Vestibule 7. Peristyle garden
z. Atrium 8. Oecus
3 Staircase to upper story <). Small peristyle
4. Kitchen 10. Dining room/sitting room
5. Dining room {triclinium) 11. Bedroom

55
 A third and more insidious change was inspired by the villas of the contem-
porary countryside. One of the more attractive aspects of Roman culture was
its appreciation of natural beauty and of landscape. The town houses perforce

looked inward toward their gardens, but by the second century B.C. it was
already customary among well-to-do Romans also to maintain a country house
{villa) — or indeed several of them. Although these were normally working farms
{villae rusticae), many of them were also equipped to serve as occasional resi-
dences, and we regularly find these villas situated and designed so as to take full
advantage of their setting, with terraces and garden rooms facing outward
over the adjoining landscape. Within the towns scope for such development was
obviously limited, but both at Pompeii and at Herculaneum we do find in the
later period a number of fine houses terraced out over the walls so as to take
full advantage of the views over the Bay of Naples, and during the first century
B.C. the seaward facade of the Villa of the Mysteries was remodeled in the same
sense. In practical terms, this opening up of the house was greatly facilitated by
the widespread introduction of window glass, and although its full effects would
not be felt in urban architecture until after a.d. 79, it was already a factor in the
later planning of Pompeii.
Seaside villa landscape, in the
The villas on the slopes of Vesuvius, at Boscoreale, for example, and at Bosco- House of Marcus Lucretius Pronto
trecase, were of the sort described, centers of working estates that were also
residences. But there were also the villae marittimae, the luxurious seaside
residences that studded the coastline of the Bay of Naples ever since, in the first

century B.C., Campania had become the preferred playground of the wealthy
Roman. Inevitably their proximity affected standards of luxury and taste in the
neighboring towns. Moreover, they were picked up by the painters of the Third
Style wall paintings and used as one of the stock subjects for the smaller sec-
ondary panels of their large wall compositions. The seaside villa landscapes that
one sees on the walls of a house such as that of Marcus Lucretius Pronto (see
illustration) were genre pieces, but it was a genre rooted in actuality. Waterside
villa platforms, jetties, harbors, single-storied or two-storied colonnaded facades
with projecting wings or outcurving belvedere rooms, towers and balconies,
temples and rustic shrines, grottoes, fountains, and statues: these were the
commonplaces of a landscaped architecture as rich in contrived fantasy as any
eighteenth-century English park. One of the sources of such paintings was un-
doubtedly a real, three-dimensional, luxury architecture, which itself owed
much to what was obviously a very widely felt contemporary taste for romantic
landscape — a taste that turns up again in the so-called sacro-idyllic landscapes
and again in the conventions of the popular Egyptianizing "Nilotic" idiom. In
painting we meet it already
in the mythological landscapes of the late Second
and early Third Styles of painting — the same trees and rocky outcrops, the same
grottoes, the same towers, the same rustic shrines. Whatever the ultimate source
of the individual motifs, these were all very much part of a contemporary
Roman artistic fashion that affected architecture and painting alike.
Finally, a word about the gardens. In origin no doubt these were simply those
parts of the individual building plots that were left over after the building of the
houses, and were planted with fruit and vegetables for domestic consumption.
In A.D. 79 there were still, behind the built-up street frontages, surprisingly
large areas of open green, notably within the southeastern perimeter of the city,
on either side of the Amphitheater and the Palaestra (which had no doubt been
sited here because of the available open space). Here, as recent excavation be-
hind the House of the Ship Europa (i, 15, i) has shown, there were large

56
 ¥

= '
stretches of market garden, inwhich vegetables were combined (as they still
are in Campania today) with orderly rows of fruit trees and areas for bedding
out young plants; there was also at least one sizable vineyard, in the block im-
mediately north of the Amphitheater.
With time, however, and in the more densely populated quarters, there was
an inevitable tendency for the garden to be absorbed within the architectural
complex of the house itself. At one extreme were small, tree-planted courtyards,
areas of shaded green upon which the occupants of the tablinum and the tri-
clinium could look out: this was the logical development of the old Italic hortus.
And at the other extreme, from the second century B.C. onward and, it seems,
like the peristyle itself a newcomer from the Hellenistic East, we have the sort
of highly organized, formal garden that one finds in the peristyle courtyards of
such buildings as the House of the Vettii and the House of the Gilded Amorini.
It has long been known that these gardens were lavishly planted with trees

and shrubs, and recent work is beginning to tell us a great deal not only about
the layouts but also about the actual plants used. Not surprisingly, these in-
cluded a great many of those still familiar in Campania today: olives, lemons,
soft fruits, pomegranates, walnuts and filberts, chestnuts, and vines grown on
Vegetables leave fewer traces that are readily identifiable, but here we
trellises.

have the evidence of wall painting and, most recendy, a beginning of the results
of the analysis of pollen remains. Paintings such as the garden room at Prima
Porta (page 96) show that there were also cultivated garden flowers, but not, it

seems, on any very substantial scale.

Perhaps the most surprising result of recent work is to show how large many
of the trees were.Modem replanting has tended to follow the model of the later
"Italian" garden, with low trimmed hedges and shrubs; and in the formal peri-
style gardens,where the plants were a setting for fountains and statuary, some-
might indeed seem reasonable. But many of the smaller, court-
thing of the sort
yard gardens evidendy followed simpler, more luxuriant patterns, including
substantial trees. This has been demonstrated in the recently excavated House of
JuHus Polybius (ix, 13, 1-3), and also at Oplontis.
Within the town there was little room for landscaping: that had to be left to
the villas of the seaside and the suburbs. But we do get a glimpse of it in the gar-
den of the House of "Loreius Tiburtinus" 11, i, 2), which sloped downhill
(

from the Via dell'Abbondanza toward the open ground within the southern
walls. Here the whole rear frontage of the house opened onto a transverse ter-
race, with a marble-lined water channel and a trellised pergola. At the east end
of this terrace there was an open-air dining room, while a fountain in the middle
dropped its water into a second, architecturally embellished water channel that
ran down the length of the garden. Terrace and fountain basins were adorned
with statuary, while serried lines of trees carried the eye down the garden toward
the view across the Sarno plain and the mountains of the Sorrento peninsula
beyond — a fine example of a studied formal design used to emphasize the beau-
ties of natural landscape.

58
 .

THE ECONOMY:
AGRICULTURE
AND INDUSTRY

The economy of Pompeii was based primarily on two factors: the boundless
fertility of the Campanian soil and the town's position as the harbor for the

whole area south and east of Vesuvius. Although industry was mainly geared to
local needs, the proximity of large numbers of wealthy seaside villas must at the
same time have furnished a steady market for surplus produce, for everyday
tools and equipment, and for building materials. In addition to these local
possibilities, Campanian prominence in the markets of the eastern Mediterranean

offered rich outlets for spare capital, as well as numerous fringe opportunities
for the smaller operators in which this region has always abounded and still
abounds.
and vegetables of almost all sorts familiar in the area today (except, of
Fruits
course, for such post-Roman intruders as the potato and the tomato) are attested
in the wall paintings and in many cases by the organic remains recovered during

the recent excavations. In these, as in grain and other market produce, the city

Terracotta plaque set into a wall

would have been self-sufficient. But the two outstanding agricultural products
north of the Forum, showing ttvo were undoubtedly wine and olive oil. Both of these, particularly the former,
men carrying an amphora strung were widely exported, and they must between them have furnished a high per-
from a pole
centage of the wealth of the rich landed families. Large numbers of wine am-
phoras have been found in southern France bearing the name of two of the
prominent indigenous families, the Lassii and the Eumachii. Another of the
leading local families, the Holconii, gave its name to a special quality of vine,
while another prized vine was known simply as the Pompeian Vine {vitis pom-
peiana). The best known local wines came from the Sorrento peninsula and from
Vesuvius; those of Pompeii itself were said to leave a hangover. The only sur-
viving ancient picture of Vesuvius, from the household shrine of the House of
the Centenary (see illustration), does portray the god of wine, Dionysus, decked
with grapes, and beyond him the lower slopes of the mountain covered with
trellised vines; the remains of the villas recovered on these slopes, like those of
Boscoreale and Boscotrecase (see plan), show that they were not only the occa-
sional residences of their rich owners but also the centers of working estates,
equipped with all wine and oil. Even within the city, exca-
facilities for pressing

vation has recently revealed small vineyards, and the huge oil-storage jars are
everywhere a familiar feature.
The one major exception to this predominantly agricultural, or agriculture-
oriented, economy was the production of woolen goods. The wool was pro-
duced in the highlands of Samnium and Lucania, where some of the indigenous
families still had ties and where many wealthy Romans had acquired large
absentee estates. The family of M. Numistrius Fronto, for example, who was
chief magistrate [duovir) in a.d. 2/3, evidently came from Numistro in north-
Plan of a villa rustica at Boscoreale ern Lucania (Muro Lucano, near Potenza) in the heart of the sheep-rearing coun-
1. Courtyard try; and it was his widow, Eumachia, the heiress to a big local family, who built
2. Wine presses the large courtyard building near the southeast corner of the Forum to serve
Wine vats
J.
as the headquarters of the trade association (collegium) of the wool-traders and
4. Bam
5. Threshing floor fullers. It was used among other things as a cloth market, and periodic auctions
6. Oil press of raw wool were held in the forecourt, toward the Forum. The continuing im-
7. Olive crushing room portance of this woolen industry even after the earthquake of a.d. 6z is shown
8. Bedrooms
9. Kitchen
by the number of fuUeries [fullonicae) that have been found in the city, some of
10-12. Baths them installed in what had previously been well-to-do private residences. The
13 Bakery election posters, too, reveal the members of the association of fullers as active
14. Dining room
and influential supporters of the candidates for municipal office.

59
 iiC
Dionysus and Vesuvius
Naples Museum

60

1
Feltmakers at work (painted on the
outside wall of a shop on the Via
dell' Abbondanza)

The same
election posters give us the names of a great many other trade asso-
and these confirm the impression left by the excavated remains,
ciations,
namely that within Pompeii commerce was geared very largely to local needs.
The associations named include agricultural laborers and smallholders, men en-
gaged various types of transport, dealers in poultry, fruit and vegetables,
in

fishermen, bakers, goldsmiths. The list is not exhaustive -there is no mention,

for example, of the important building
and decorating trades- but it helps us
to people the
markets and the small one-room workshops in which, in the im-
memorial Mediterranean manner, many of them earned their livelihoods. A
few local specialities went further afield. Cato, who farmed in northern Cam-
Plan of a fttller's workshop installed pania, advises sending to Pompeii for oil mills, or to Rufrius' yard at Nola. The
ina private house (vi, 14, 2i-zi) building stone of the Samo valley was shipped extensively to sites around the
1 . Shop unth treading vats and Bay of Naples, while the amphoras made in the local potteries traveled wherever
fuller's press
their contents took them, including Spain, Gaul, and North Africa.
2. Kitchen
Atrium
About industry it is less easy to generalize in terms that are readily compre-
}.

4-7. Living quarters hensible today. In the absence of mechanical power the factory even for a prod-
8. Corridor full of fuller's earth uct with a world market, such as the red-gloss "terra sigillata" pottery of
9. Peristyle with three large basins Arretium (Arezzo, in eastern Tuscany), was litde more than a large group of re-
(A-C) for soaking the doth, on
lated workshops, differing from those that supplied the local markets mainly
three different levels, water
draining from one to the next. D in their number and organization. The only Campanian industry organized on
is a high walk at level of top of this sort of scale about which we hear in the sources was the fine bronzework
basins from which steps lead
into the basins. E. Treading vats.
produced under the late and around Capua. It awaits detailed study,
Republic in
but it was evidenriy based on Greek experience and technical know-how, as

already practiced in several well-known South Italian centers, notably Tarentum

(Taranto), supported by ready access to the output of the Spanish mines, made
available by Rome's defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War. Already in the
second century B.C. Cato advises going to Capua or Nola for bronze pails,
water-jugs, and urns for oil or wine; and for a couple of centuries this area
supplied much of the western Mediterranean, spreading its products up into
central and northern Europe, often beyond the Roman frontiers. At Pompeii
far
itself considerable traces of bronze working have come to light outside the

Vesuvius Gate; the Capuan factories and their Campanian subsidiaries must
have been the source of a great deal of the fine bronzework in local circulation.
Pottery was another flourishing local industry, both for domestic use and to
supply the containers (amphorae) in which wine, oil, garum, and other local
products could be stored and shipped.
Such in outline was the economy on which the manifest prosperity of late
Republican and early Imperial Pompeii was based. But there are many signs
that by the middle of the first century a.d. things were changing, and changing
fast: the earthquake of a.d. 62 hastened, but was not itself the root cause of,

what could well be termed a state of urban crisis. The prosperity of the recent
past, based on Campania's privileged position in the markets of the Mediter-
ranean world, was being rapidly eroded by the growing prosperity of many of
the provinces. Spanish and North African oil were beginning to dominate the
markets of the West. Gaul too was beginning to develop not only its own vine-
yards but also its own industries. Henceforth the bronzework of Capua found
itself competing with workshops established in Gaul and, for the Danube mar-

ket, in North Italy. A dramatic illustration of what this process of devolution

could mean is provided by a crate of South Gaulish red-gloss pottery that
was found at Pompeii, newly imported and not yet unpacked. Under Augustus
the prototypes for such wares had been shipped from Italy all over the known

61
world, from Britain to the Indian Ocean. But already under Tiberius an enter-
prising potter from Arezzo had set himself up in South France, nearer to his
markets, and by a.d. 79 these South Gaulish wares were beginning to be shipped
to Italy.
The economic decline inevitably made themselves felt also in
results of this
the social sphere. The
established landed families were rapidly losing their vir-
tual monopoly of local wealth and, with it, of local political office. During the
last period of Pompeii we find their place increasingly taken by new men, many

of them of quite recent servile origin. As we have seen (p. 44), awareness of
some aspects of the process goes back at least to the beginning of the century;
but while many of the new men no doubt retained their newly won family con-
nections (it was common for patrons to invest capital in the enterprises of able
freedmen), or indeed set about establishing themselves as landed proprietors,
in the last phase of Pompeii there clearly was a considerable shift in both the
distribution and the use of property. Some of the new men were very well-to-do:
witness the reconstruction of the Temple of Isis after the earthquake at the ex-
pense of a man who had been born a slave. Nevertheless a surprising number of Painting of a baker's shop
Naples Museum
the old town houses were abandoned as residences and were being taken over
piecemeal for commercial purposes. Of the private houses in the insula that
contained the House of the Menander only one was actually being used as a
private residence at the time of the eruption. The gentry were moving out. There
was still vitality in the processes of municipal life, as the election posters show,
but by A.D. 79 new social patterns were rapidly emerging.

Bakery ofModestus (vii, 1,36)

6z
I
 CULTS AND BELIEFS

As might be expected in a society that was in a state of rapid transition, the

religion of Pompeii during the last century and a half of its existence was a
stream of many currents. The traditional state religion was one of practice rather
than of religious experience. It satisfied certain enduring everyday needs both
of the individual and of society; but in the absence of any consistent body of
doctrine or of any fount of written authority comparable to the Bible, to the
Koran, or to the works of Karl Marx, for example, it had little or nothing to
An old order was passing away, an order
offer those in search of higher truth.
that was rooted in the needs of the family and of a simple agricultural communi-
ty; and the new order that was to replace it, an order geared to the needs of the

multinational society that came into being as a result of Alexander the Great's
conquests, had still to take definitive shape. Everywhere we are confronted by
a confusion of beliefs and practices. All that we can hope to do is to single out
a few of the more consistent threads that went to make up the larger pattern.
One such thread was that of the popular beliefs and practices, many of them
inherited from a remote past, which were, and were to remain, one of the en-
during aspects of Mediterranean society. At one end of the scale there were the
great gods of Olympus and their Italian counterparts, divinities whom the acci-
dents of history and a powerful literary tradition had singled out for universal
dominion; and at the other end there were the countless little local gods who so
often lurk behind the well-known names. Great and small, together they re-
Lararium m the atrium presented the classical world's first attempt to come to terms with the forces of
of the House of the Menander
nature and the vagaries of human society. Like the local saints of Christian Italy

(who were so often were the intermediaries to whom

their lineal successors) they
men turned when confronted by the hazards and seeming irrationalities of the
world around them.
By comparison with this heritage from an older, simpler past the mystery
religions were relatively recent. Classical Greece had had its Mysteries, but in
the forms in which the Mystery religions made themselves most powerfully
felt at Pompeii and elsewhere in contemporary Italy, they represent a fund of

oriental religious experience to which the classical world fell heir as the result
of Alexander the Great's conquest of the ancient East. More recent again,
though derived ultimately from the same eastern sources, was the institution of
the cult of the emperor as the symbol and formal embodiment of the well-being
of the Roman state.
Few if any classical sites can equal Pompeii for the light they throw on religion

at its popular, grass-roots level. The household shrines [lararia] that are such
a prominent feature of the houses represent religion at its simplest and least
articulate and yet, because it was obviously so much a part of everyday life, also
at its most real. Traditional Roman religion was concerned with success, not
sin: as Cicero remarks, "Jupiter" is called the Best and Greatest (Optirmis Maxi-

mus) not because he makes us just or sober or wise, but because he makes us
healthy, rich and prosperous." At every level of society religion was a matter of
observance, not doctrine.
By Cicero's time the public face of religion was entirely in the hands of col-
leges of priests, prominent citizens who were elected or appointed to perform
the proper ceremonials and rituals on behalf of the community they represented.
Domestically the father of the family fulfilled the same office on behalf of the
household under his care, offering daily prayers and gifts at the lararium, within
which were displayed the figures of the traditional household gods, the Lares
and the Penates, and of such other divinities as the family might hold in special

63
 mm
Terracotta wall plaques with a
phallus

Priapus painted on the vestibule

wall of the House of the Vettii

honor. Here too were performed the rituals associated with important family
events, such as a boy's coming of age. These simple rituals were a part of daily
life no prudent Roman would have willingly neglected.
that
Yet another aspect of primitive religion that lived on into historic times was
an emphasis on fruitfulness and reproduction, an idea closely associated in
popular belief with that of good and evil fortune as active forces that had to be
no less actively fostered or diverted. The Italian peasant who hangs a pair of
horns at his roof tree, or who makes a gesture with his hand to ward off the
evil eye, is acting out traditions that go right back to the patterns of belief nat-

ural to a primitive agricultural society, in which survival and fruitfulness are

virtually synonymous. Many of the oldest Latin gods, such as Faunus, Silvanus,
and Flora, had been concerned with aspects of agricultural or pastoral plenty;
objects such as wreaths of fruit or horns of plenty (cornucopiae) were among
the enduring commonplaces of religious symbolism; and the phallus (the ex-
tended male reproductive organ) is apt to turn up in (to modern eyes) the most
disconcerting contexts: on a plaque at a street corner, on the statue of a minor
rustic divinity, in the entrance lobby of a wealthy villa. The owner of the House
of the Vettii, one of the wealthiest houses of the last period of the city's history,
saw nothing incongruous in displaying in the entrance a figure of Priapus with a
gigantic male organ being weighed in a pair of scales, as a symbol and safeguard
of the prosperity of his house. Fruitfulness was an accepted and important fact
of life.
Man's devotion to the little gods, even when they bore great names, is easy
enough to understand. But what of the great Olympian gods — Zeus, Aphrodite,
Apollo, Poseidon, and their fellows — whose quarrels and whose amatory ex-
ploits fill the pages of classical literature, and who figure so prominently on the
walls of Pompeii? The Romans freely identified them with the gods of their own Facing page:
pantheon. But could any intelligent society take them seriously as divinities? Or 208
Statuette of Aphrodite with Priapus
were they little more than literary and artistic conventions, comparable to Mil-
Fine white, translucent marble, possibly from
ton's nymphs and shepherds or the Venuses of Botticelli and Correggio? Pares
There is no simple, all-embracing answer. The old, anthropomorphic religion Height 62 cm
of the Greek Olympian gods was in truth long dead, killed finally by the col- Found on a table in the tablinum of House
11,4,6
lapse of the institutions that had given it life, and buried forever beneath the
The group represents Aphrodite preparing to
elaborate edifice of mythology that literature and art had built up around it. But
bathe (see No. 209), raising her left foot to re-
despite the massive Hellenization of Roman educated society, and the conse- move her sandal and resting her left forearm on
quent transference to many of the old Italian gods of the attributes and charac- the head of a small figure of the god Priapus;
a tiny Eros sits below her foot. Aphrodite's left
teristics of their Greek counterparts, so far as the traditional religion of Italy was
hand, now missing, was carved in a separate
concerned these were superficial changes. Jupiter might be portrayed in the piece of marble. The group is remarkable for the
guise of Zeus, but it was as the time-honored guardian divinity of Rome, whose extensive remains of gilding as well as some
traces of paint. In addition to her necklace,
temple on the Capitol was at once the symbol and the enduring guarantee of
armbands, a bracelet, and gilded sandals,
Roman prosperity, that he continued to head the Roman pantheon. When in Aphrodite wears an exiguous, bikini-like harness.
80 B.C. a colony of Roman citizens was established at Pompeii, one of the first Her eyes are inlaid with cement and glass paste.
acts of the new regime was to convert the existing temple of Jupiter (Zeus) at the The hair and pubic hair of both main figures
were once gilded (the dark red paint now visible
head of the Forum into a temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus. This
was the underlay),and there are traces of red
was not just a token of Roman political dominion: in terms of traditional paint on the lips of the goddess and on the tree
Roman belief, it was the obvious and natural way of ensuring the continued stump that supports the group; of green on
Priapus' pedestal; and of black on the base.
welfare of Pompeii within the larger polity of Rome, of which Pompeii had now
The statuette was found in the large complex
become a part. of rented accommodation, including a bath-house
and tavern, known as the villa of Julia Felix.
Graffiti and other finds suggest that this part of
the complex may have served as a brothel in the
[text continues on page 81] last years of the town's history.

64
 n 156
Dionysiac scene in marble intarsia
Slate and colored marbles
Length 67 cm, height 23 cm
From
(VII, 4,
the House of the GDlored Capitals
31-51)

One of a pair of Dionysiac scenes foimd in the

tablinum, where they were probably used on the
walls as panel pictures (pinakes). On the left a
maenad dances with torch and
in ecstasy,
tympanon; on the right a satyr clutches a thyrsus
and is waving a goat skin; and in the center is a
small shrine.
The technique is that of intarsia, a sophisticated
i-
variant of opus sectile, composed of shaped and
inscribed pieces of colored marble (giallo antico
from Africa, fior di persico from Euboea, and
paesina verde and palombino from Italy) cut
out and fitted into a slate panel. Third quarter of
the first century a.d.

247
Wall painting: entertainment after a meal
Width 46 cm, height 44 cm
From House i, 3, 18 at Pompeii
The central panel picture (now rather faded)

of a Third Style wall.

Facing page:
192
.-vxaMAA.. ,.». Wall painting: EMonysiac cult objects
Height 46 cm, width 46 cm
From Pompeii
Along a narrow ledge at the top of a small
flight of steps are, from left to right: a tam-

bourine; a wicker basket, on which are a drink-

ing horn draped with a panther skin, a drinking
cup, and a thyrsus; and a second, taller drinking
cup decorated with vine leaves. On the steps are
a spray of bay, a pair of cymbals, and a small
panther grappling with a snake. All these objects
are associated with the cult of Dionysus.

66
67
141 shoulder, the characteristic Dionysiac staff, or
Wall painting: medallion with busts of thyrsus. Behind him, her hand on his shoulder,
Dionysus and a Maenad isone of his attendant devotees, a maenad; she
Diameter 44.5 cm wears a mantle and earrings, with flowers in
From Herculaneum her hair.

Dionysus, god of wine and of ecstatic liberation,

is shown with a wreath of grapes and vine leaves;

in his right hand he holds a drinking cup

(cantharus) and in his left, resting against his

68
152 her. He was subsequently killed while out hunt-
Wall painting: Phaedra and Hippolytus ing, and she hanged herself. In diis painting
Widdi 1.03 m, height 1.04 m Phaedra's old nurse tells Hippolytus of her mis-
From Herculaneum tress's love, as he is setting out for the hunt. The
scene, of which there were several variant copies
Phaedra, wife of Theseus, King of Athens,
at Pompeii, is based on a Hellenistic original,
had conceived a guilty passion for her stepson,
which in turn was inspired by Euripides' tragedy
Hippolytus, a passion that he rejected; where-
Hippolytus.
upon Phaedra accused him of trying to seduce

69
143
WaD painting: Pan and Hennaphroditus
Width 1.25 m, height 74 cm
From the atrium of the House of the
Dioscuri (vi, 9, 6)

Part of the upper zone of a Fourth Style scheme,

from above the doorway leading from the fauces
into the atrium. Hermaphroditus, one of the
more curious by-produas of Greek mythology,
was a minor divinty of bisexual form, with
female breasts and male genitals. In this picture
he is seated by a pool, and Pan, aroused by his
apparently female charms, has just discovered
his mistake. Beyond Pan a tower within a
is

square enclosure, set in a rocky landscape. On

the right is a statue of Priapus, standing on a
pedestal and holding a cornucopia.

70
299 It was organized into teams, or factions, the Following page:
Wall painting of a chariot race support for which was Empire-wide. At first 199
Height 57 on, length 92 cm there were only two Reds and the
factions, the Wall painting from a household shrine
Probably from the House of the Quadrigae Whites, but early in the first century A.D. two (lararium)
(VII, 2, 25), although the inventory books say more were added, the Greens and the Blues. In Width 1.83 m, height 1.28 m
from Herculaneum the long run this proved to be too much for the Found 6 June 1 76 1 in viii, insula 2 or 3

The picture, which bordered below by a

Romans, who at heart were as clearly two-
is The painting is divided into two registers.
faction in racing as the Americans and the
red line but is certainly incomplete above and In the upper register, below three garlands, is a
British are two-party in politics, and by the end
to the left, shows four four-horsed racing scene of sacrifice. The genius, or presiding
of the second century A.D. the Blues had absorbed
chariots (quadrigae) and, top left, the legs of divinity of the household, with head veiled and
the Reds, and the Greens the Whites, a situation
the horses of a fifth. The drivers (aurigae) bearing a cornucopia, symbolic of plenty, holds
that greatly facilitated the expression of rival
stand, as was customary, on a very light two- out a dish (patera) over a marble altar. He is
enthusiasms. It was a clash between the Blues
wheeled frame, dressed in short tunics. For pro- attended by a small boy carrying a fillet (a wreath,
and the Greens that in January 512 reduced the
tection in the event of a crash (and these were with ribbons for tying) and a platter; opposite
center of Constantinople to ashes, leaving at
common) they wear tight-fitting leather helmets him a musician plays the double pipes, beating
least thirty thousand dead behind it— an all-time
and a harness of leather thongs on body and legs. time with a wooden clapper beneath his left foot,
record for active spectator participation.
On the white ground below the picture there while a slave brings forward a pig for sacrifice.
are faint traces of an inscription painted in On either side stand the two Lares of the house-
large letters, which suggests that it comes from hold, pouring wine from a drinking horn, or
a street-front, perhaps of a shop or tavern. rhyton, into a small wine bucket, or situla. In
There was no provision for chariot-racing the lower register two serpents approach the
at Pompeii itself, but many cities both in Italy offerings (of fruit?) upon an altar. Together with
and in the provinces did possess a circus or the setting of rich vegetation, they symbolize the
hippodrome, and as a speaator sport it rivaled fertility of nature and the bounty of the earth
and eventually superseded gladiatorial contests. beneath.

71
7i
 241 238
Large painted panel with still life (right half) Fish mosaic
Ill
Height 74 cm, width 1 14 cm Originally about 90 cm square
From the triclinium on the west side of the From House viii, 2, 16
garden, which lies within the property (praedia)
A studio piece made of very fine tesserae, laid
of JuHa Felix (11,4, 3)
within a tray-like frame of terracotta, for use as
This which is unusually large, comes
still life, the central panel (emblema) of a larger, less deU-
from the upper part of the Fourth Style walls of cate pavement, the design of which is not known.

a dining room. It probably belonged initially to House viii, z, 14

A raised block carrying a large glass bowl full and was reused when this was rebuilt in the early
of fruit (apples, pomegranates, grapes, figs). At Empire and incorporated in this much larger
a lower level, a pottery vase containing dried House VIII, 2, 16.

fruit (prunes?) and, leaning against it, a small Against a black background is displayed a
amphora-shaped jar, its lid tightly sealed by gallery of edible sea creatures, portrayed with
means of cords attached to the handles. a lively naturalism that enables most of them to
be identified, in almost all cases, with species
still found and fished Bay of Naples. Among
in the
the more familiar are oaopus, squid, lobster,
prawTi, eel, bass, red mullet, dogfish, ray, wrasse,
and a murex shell. The inclusion in the mar-
left

gin of a small stretch of rocky landscape, which

is quite out of charaaer, is perhaps to be ex-
plained as a fill-in taken from a different source.

74

Lik
75

J
240 Each of these panels was originally the center-
Four still life panels piece of a large panel in a Fourth Style wall, as
Width 154 cm, height 37 cm in the peristyle of the House of the Dioscuri.
From Herculaneum After being cut out, they were framed together
to form a frieze. The first two are very different
in style from the other two.
a. A plucked chicken or turkey, hung by its feet,

and a rabbit hung by one forepaw.

b. Left, strung from a ring by its beak, a partridge.

Right, a pomegranate and an apple.

c. Upper shelf, thrushes. Lower shelf,

six pink mushrooms.

d. Upper shelf, two birds, probably partridges.
Below, two eels.

'•
'^^ V WW^
Tl
-1

:^.m*.^--
^\
I
~
i» : - y«e:v <?.£.--« Mt-^r .^-

242 Each of these panels was originally the center-

Three painted still life panels piece of a large panel in a Fourth Style wall
Width 1Z9 cm, height 41 cm (cf No. 24 1
. After being cut out they were
) .

From Herculaneum framed together to form a frieze.

a. Young bird and a light-colored pottery jug,
over the mouth of which is placed a glass beaker
with rilled decoration of a type frequently found
in Campania and possibly manufactured at
Puteoli (Pozzuoli). On the shelf above are in-
distinct objeas: leaves, material, or possibly
sheets of tripe.
b. Silver vase, with a small bird perched on its tall

handle; a trident; seafood and shellfish (frutta

di mare), including murex
and a large
shells;
crayfish. On two cuttlefish.
the shelf above,
c. A rabbit nibbling at a bunch of grapes and

a dead partridge hanging from a ring. In the

window, a large red apple.

76
243
Composite picture made up of four separate
fr^ments taken from Fourth Style walls
Width 49 cm, height 43 cm
The writing materials and the still life came
from Herculaneum, the other two from some-
where in the Vesuvius area.

a. A silver urn, probably from the upper zone

of a wall.
two book-scrolls of papyrus, one half-
b. Left,

titles, on little tags, hang from the

unrolled; the
wooden baton on which the papyrus is rolled.
Right, a diptych, or wooden rwo-leafed writing
tablet (as No. 17).
c. Landscape: a rustic shrine with figures.
d. Half of a still life panel, similar to Nos.
240-241: an apple, a pear, and a pomegranate.

77
78
302
Terracotta statue of an actress
Height I.I I m
Found with No. 301
The mask, shown fastened on with a band
decorated with little flowers, is that proper to a
courtesan in tragedy. The figure, whose left hand
was already damaged in antiquity, was colored.
There are extensive remains of the white under-
lay and traces of brown paint on the hair and
of blue and red on the drapery.

Facing page:
309
Wall painting: tr^c mask of a youth
Length 62 cm, height 62 cm

One of four theatrical masks from the House of

the Stags at Herculaneum, where they consti-
tuted the lower parts of four of the vertical mem-
bers dividing the middle zone of the Fourth Style
scheme into panels. Each is shown placed at the
head of the steps leading up onto a stage, within
a frame of garlands with Dionysiac attributes.

79
8o
 [text continued from page 64]

Facing page; What had changed was not the substance of traditional Roman reHgion, but
305 the outward symbols by which its meaning could be expressed, whether in art
Mosaic panel: rehearsing for a Satyr Play
Width 55 cm, height 54 cm When Augustus built a state temple in honor of his own chosen
or in literature.
From the tablinimi of the House of the Tragic guardian divinity, Apollo, or of the divinity who personified the military might
Poet was as natural to have the cult statue carved in
{VI, 8, 5)
of Rome, Mars the Avenger, it

The Greek Satyr Play, the

rehearsal for a terms of contemporary Hellenizing taste as it was for Donatello or Carpaccio
chararteristic postlude for a Greek dramatic
to portray Saint George as a youthful knight in contemporary armor. We meet
trilogy. The action takes place in front of an
Ionic portico hung with oscilla (see No. 69) and
the same phenomenon all the way down the social scale. Trimalchio, the par-
draped with wreaths and fillets, above which is venu millionaire of Petronius' Satyricon, had himself portrayed on the walls of
an facade decorated with pilasters, four
attic
his house as protected and sustained by Mercury, the god of commerce; at
large golden vessels, and a pair of herm-like
musicians. The bald and bearded figure wearing Pompeii we have an actual illustration of just such a situation. On the two door-
a Greek mantle {himation) and sandals is the posts of a dyer's establishment in the Via dell'Abbondanza are shown, respec-
chorus master, possibly the dramatist himself. He tively, Mercury and Venus, of whom the latter was doubly appropriate, both as
watches two actors wearing goatskin loincloths,
the patron of a business that dealt in feminine adornment and as the patron
who appear to be rehearsing dance steps to the
notes of the double pipes played by a richly goddess of Pompeii. Mercury is shown in the traditional guise of the Greek
robed and garlanded musician (who would him- Hermes, staff and money-bag in hand, stepping from his temple to bring his
self have appeared on the stage). On the right an
blessings to the house; Venus, on the other hand, appears in one of her more
attendant is helping another aaor into a shaggy
Silenus costume. Behind the seated figure, on a exotic manifestations, as Aphrodite-Isis, riding in triumph in a chariot drawn by
pedestal, is a male tragic mask, and at his feet four elephants and escorted by the personification of the city bearing horns of
a female tragic mask and a Silenus mask.
plenty.The familiar images of the old gods, and of some of the newer gods too,
had become a conventional language in which anybody might express his own
individual hopes and interests; and it was because of the very familiarity of those
images that they were able to convey their meaning.
With the mystery religions we enter a very different world of ideas. Whereas
traditional religion had been a matter of influencing the higher powers through a
discreet mixture of propitiation, flattery, and ritual observance, the mystery
religions all in varying degrees envisaged the possibility of man's entering into
some more direct relationship with the sources of divine power, and thus of
obtaining special favor in either this world or the next, or both. To achieve this
state one underwent some form of initiation, at which a "mystery" was re-
vealed, and through which one became a member of an inner communion, with
all its privileges and its obligations.
In the classical world, as elsewhere, the basis for such a relationship had
existed since long before the dawn of written history. In any agricultural society
one of the earliest subjects of religious speculation was almost bound to be the
cycle of the seasons and of the death and rebirth of the crops upon which man's

whole existence depended: the notion of the seasonal death or rebirth of some
divine embodiment of these events is one of the commonplaces of primitive
religion everywhere. In Greece the central figure in this annual drama was
Demeter, goddess of crops and in particular of corn, whose daughter Kore, or
Persephone, was abducted by the god of the underworld, whence through the
intervention of Zeus she was each year restored for a spell of life in this world.
The center of the cult of Demeter was Eleusis in Attica, where each year at the
appropriate seasons the story was enacted symbolically in the famous Mysteries.
The archaeological evidence at Eleusis appears to indicate continuity since
Mycenaean times; the story (and by clear implication the Mysteries themselves)
had already taken near-definitive shape by the time it first appears in literature
in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed probably around 600
B.C.

At what stage and in what measure the notion developed that the individual

initiate himself underwent some form of divine rebirth and an assurance

of a

blessed afterlife it is very hard to determine. To ourselves, the heirs to a Christian

gi
 .
. —

^-y -'

Temple ofJupiter Capitolinus at the northern end of the Forum

Aphrodite-lsis riding in an elephant quadriga

Isis-Fortuna from the cookshop ix, 7, 21/22

Naples Museum
Temple of Isis I. Temple
z. Main attar
3 Building with water tank
4. Meeting hall
5 Initiation chamber
6. Priests' lodging

A. Statue of Venus
B. Statue of Isis {no. 191J
C. Hertn ofNorbanus Sorex
D. Statue of Dionysus
E. Shrine of Harpocrates

82
culture within which the concept of individual redemption is central, it is not
easy to envisage the attitudes of mind of a world where such a concept was alien;
but the weight of evidence is that at Eleusis it was in fact quite a latecomer,
probably introduced by assimilation with the ideas of the other mystery cults.
The Eleusinian story plays only a very modest part in the funerary art of Rome,
which our richest single source for the strength and nature of such beliefs in
is

later antiquity. Instead, we are confronted by the stories and the symbols of the
mystery cults of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt: the Great Mother (Cybele) and
Attis, Dionysus (in one of his several aspects), Sabazios, Aphrodite- Astarte and
Adonis, Isis, Mithras, and a host of lesser divinities.
The content and moral tone of these religions varied gready, and Christian
apologists both in antiquity and since have been at pains to emphasize the dif-
ferences between Christianity and the mystery religions. There were indeed
substantial differences, but therewere also a great many resemblances. Jesus'
reply to his discipleswhen they asked him why he taught in parables: "Because
it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven, but to

them it is not given" (Matthew xiii.ii); or Saint Paul's, "Behold, I show you a
mystery ... the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible"
(I Corinthians xv. 51) — these were words that would have been immediately

intelligible to the followers of many other cults. Sacramental rites, including ini-
tiation and ritual meals; a theology based on the death and resurrection of a
member of the divine family; belief in the readiness of divinity to intervene on
behalf of those human individuals who were ready to accept divine authority, a
coupled with an emphasis on purity and morality rather than on the
belief often
performance of ritual acts— in a great many respects Christianity and the my-
stery religions followed parallel paths.
The most obvious and significant difference was that Christianity, the child
of Judaism, held itself rigidly apart from all other creeds, whereas most of the
mystery religions happily gathered in all and sundry as manifestations of one
and the same divine spirit. One of the most moving passages in classical litera-
ture is where Lucius, the hero of Apuleius' second-century a.d. romance, the
Metamorphosis, calls in his trouble upon the Queen of Heaven (Isis), "whether
thou art Ceres ... or Venus ... or Diana ... or Proserpine ... by whatever
form of divinity, by whatever ritual, in whatever shape it is right to call upon
thee." In her reply Isis acknowledges these and many other forms of her god-
head, adding that "It is the Egyptians who call me by my true name, Isis." Here,
out of the welter of ancient cults, we see the emergence of the concept of a single,
ecumenical, all-embracing divinity. Christianity chose a simpler, more direct
road to monotheism. But in the event, as it matured, even Christianity had to
develop such doctrines as the Trinity, the special status of the Mother of God,
and the communion of the saints. Old beliefs have their own ways of creeping
back. As the heirs to a Christian culture, we ourselves have no difficulty in under-
standing the contemporary appeal of the mystery religions.
It was no doubt to her readiness to merge with the established forms of tra-

ditional religion that Isis owed something of her popularity at Pompeii. In the
household shrines (lararia) it is exceptional for Isis and her co-divinities to
usurp altogether the place of the traditional household gods, but they do very
commonly occupy a place side by side with them. Isis in particular, in the guise
of the Roman Fortuna, is found watching over every aspect of daily life. In a
cookshop in Region IX (insula 7, zi/iz) the owner, not content with the tra-

ditional lararhmi in front, had a second shrine painted on the wall leading to the

83
 .

lavatory, in which we see the two serpents characteristic of such shrines, a gra-
cious Isis-Fortuna, and the figure of a man reheving himself. At its most elemen-
6 10m
tary, Roman popular religion could indeed be severely practical.
For a truer assessment of the significance of the mystery religions, we do of Temple of Dionysus, at
course have to look to their more organized manifestations, and here there can S.Abbondio, near Pompeii
be no possible doubt that of the mystery religions current in Italy in the period I. Temple
before A.D. 79 the most popular and widely practiced was that of Isis and her z. Altar
3 Ritual banqueting couches
consort Serapis (the Egyptian Osiris). Although the existing buildings of the .

Iseum at Pompeii all date from the period between a.d. 6z and 79, they followed
closely the lines of a predecessor that was already established there before the
foundation of the colony in 80 B.C. It took the form of an enclosed precinct,

within which the temple, a rather exotic stuccoed and gaily painted version of a
small classical temple, stood on a high platform, facing eastward down the axis
of a peristyle courtyard toward a shrine in honor of the third member of the
divine family, the child god Harpocrates (the Egyptian Horus). In the southeast
comer of the courtyard there was a smaller building, with access to a subter-
ranean vaulted chamber in which there was a tank, thought to have contained Temple ofFortuna Augusta
holy water from the Nile. Opening off the south portico, behind this building,
I. Temple
there was a lodging for the resident priest, and at the far west end, behind the z. Cult statue
temple, two rooms that had evidendy been added at some later date, at the ex- }. Statue niches
4. Altar
pense of the Samnite-period gymnasium. The larger of these was elaborately
decorated and served probably as a place of reunion and, very possibly, for the
service of the ritual meals, which constituted an important part of the cult. The
smaller, entered by a small separate door, seems to have been used at night (in it
were found eighty- four small lamps), and it may well have been the scene of the
dramatic initiation ceremonies that played an important part in this and other
mystery cults.

Temple of Vespasian

I. Temple
z. Courtyard
}. Altar
4. Vestibule
5 Forum portico Altar carved with a scene of
6. Sacristies and storerooms sacrifice (no. 3 on plan)

84
 At the moment of excavation in 1764- 176 5 the walls of these buildings were
still covered with paintings (the illustration is one of many sad reminders of how

much was lost in that earlywork) and although the cult stames had been re-
moved, the altars and most of the temple vessels and fittings were still in place.
The central mysteries of Isiac spirimal experience are probably lost forever. But
the Isiac religionwas also one of elaborate ceremonial observance; here for once,
in the temple at Pompeii, classical literature and the archaeological remains

converge to give us a vivid glimpse of the daily rituals of one of the most power-
fulprecursors and rivals of early Christianity.
Campania's mercantile connections and the large numbers of resident slaves
and freedmen of Greek or Asiatic origin together made it fertile ground for the
introduction of non-Italian religions, and there are in fact at Pompeii scattered
traces of many such (for example, Cybele and Sabazius). But the only one to
have taken a hold at all comparable to the cult of Isis was that of Dionysus
(Bacchus) who, though long an adopted member of the classical Greek pantheon,
was in origin a stranger from the lands to the north and east of the Aegean
(Thrace and Phrygia) and one who had far too many disturbing overtones ever
to be fully absorbed within it. Visitors to the "Thracian Gold" exhibition will

recall the opulent drinking services of the Thracian devotees. But although

Dionysus is best known as the god of the grape and of wine, he did in fact rep-
resent a very wide variety of religious experience, ranging from the uninhibited,
ecstatic possession so vividly portrayed in Euripides' Bacchae to the sort of
fine-drawn mystic experience to which so much later Roman art bears wimess.
His was a complex religious personality, and an aspect of it that bulks very large
in art is its intimate association with the origins of Greek drama. It was in the
Theater of Dionysus, on the slopes of the Acropolis at Athens, that the plays of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were first performed, and the repertory
of later classical art of all periods is filled with motifs that derive from this

association.
body of doctrinal or liturgical Dionysiac
In the absence of any substantial
writing, the precise meaning of any particular archaeological manifestation can

often only be a matter of informed guesswork, but it does seem that at Pompeii
one would have encountered several distinct layers of Dionysiac belief and
practice. One was that of domestic religion. In a town whose prosperity was
so closely linked with the wine trade, it is hardly surprising that many indivi-
duals should, like the owner of the House of die Centenary (K, 8, 3), have
chosen to put themselves under the personal protection of the god of wine.
Another aspect of Dionysiac worship, based presumably on the rituals inherited
from Greece, was that practiced by the community of believers who established
the small temple found and excavated outside the walls at S. Abbondio.
At yet
another level of sophistication were the rites and rituals of which the walls of
the Villa of the Mysteries offer so tantalizing a glimpse. Here the
worship of
Dionysus was plainly a "mystery" based upon one of the primeval aspects of

god of vegetation, of seasonal death and rebirth, and of

his personality, as a
reproduction. Common to all these layers of observance and belief was a sym-
bolic language that was remarkably durable and pervasive. Grapes
and vine
scrolls, pine cones, ivy leaves, satyrs and maenads, panthers, theatrical masks,
certain forms of drinking vessels: these are among the commonplaces of Pom-
common indeed that they often seem to have been used as almost
peian art, so
purely decorative motifs, with very little reference to their symbolic meaning.

85
 What of Jews and Christians? Of Saint Paul, voyaging from Malta to Rome
in A.D. 62,it is recorded that ". on the second day we came to Puteoli. There
. .

we found brethren, and were invited to stay with them seven days" (Acts
28.13-14 Members of this harbor-town Jewish community could well have had
).

connections in Pompeii, and it is just possible that among them there might
have been Christian sympathizers. But that is really as much as one can say. If
there were, they have left (and indeed at this early date they could have left) no
tangible trace that we can recognize. The romantically minded will do better
to rest content with the pages of Bulwer Lytton.
The third strand in the religious life of Pompeii
in its later years was that of
The notion of the ruler as a divine being may seem strange to
the Imperial cult.
modern thinking, but it was one very widely held in antiquity, and it was one
with which the Hellenistic monarchs had found it both prudent and profitable
to come to terms. For a society within which the formal observances of state
religionwere a necessary condition of the welfare of the community, it was in-
deed a logical function of kingship to have a direct line to the sources of divine
authority, and in the eastern provinces Roman rulers, from Caesar onward,
accepted divine honors as a matter of course. Italy, with its long republican tra-
ditions, was not yet ripe for the overt, direct worship of the reigning emperor,
but it was very ready to accept the sort of polite fictions of which Augustus
was master. By getting divine honors conferred upon the dead Caesar, he be-
came himself the son of, and successor to, a god; and within a generation cults
in honor of his genius, his numen, and other similar personifications of his

position as head of the Roman state were springing up all over Italy. At Pompeii
the building shordy before 2 B.C. of an official temple in honor of the Divine
Providence {Fortuna) of Augustus is typical, and there is an inscription [CIL
X. 896) that records the building of a second shrine, dedicated in this case, it

seems, to Augustus himself.

The establishment of these cults was clearly in the first instance a demonstra-
tion of loyalty,which might reasonably be expected to yield a dividend of Im-
perial favor; and it is significant in this respect that one of the very few new
buildings put up in Pompeii in the difficult times following the earthquake of
A.D. 62 was a small temple beside the Forum in honor of Vespasian and the new
Flavian dynasty. But they also served another purpose. Whereas the major
priesthoods were, in effect, elected magistracies and were held by such pro-
minent citizens as Marcus Holconius Rufus (page 39) and his brother Celer,
who were among the first priests [sacerdotes] of the Augustan cult, the day-to-
day administration of the cult could be put in the hands of freedmen (and in
one instance also of trusted slaves), at first as clients of the wealthy families,
but before long as well-to-do citizens in their own right, thus providing a healthy
oudet for the social ambitions of a new and rapidly growing class in the body
politic— and a means of tapping their new-won wealth for the benefit of the
community. The freedmen Augustales occupied a position of status and privilege
second only to that of the municipal senate, the ordo decurionum. The ministri
Augusti and the ministri Fortunae Augustae were smaller fry. Two of the three
men named as ministri Augusti in a Pompeian inscription were still slaves.
Their appointment throws a vivid light on Rome's extraordinary ability to
attract and absorb the talents and loyalties of a potentially troublesome minority.

86
 ..

ENTERTAINMENT,
SPORT, AND LEISURE

The public provision and entertainment at Pompeii faithfully re-

for exercise
flects the city's mixed Greek and At one end of the scale we have
Italic heritage.

the public exercise grounds {palaestrae) that were the direct successors to the
Greek gymnasia, that is to say places where a young man might pursue the
physical excellence that was such an important part of his education. At the
other extreme we have the Amphitheater, an arena for brutal spectator sports,
which took formal architectural shape in Campania, but embodied far older
Italic traditions to which Greece was a stranger; in between the two we have

such buildings as the theaters and the bath buildings, which represent Greek
traditions modified to suit Italic and Roman ways.
The old Samnite-period palaestra, beside the Theater, was in all but name a
Greek gymnasium — a rectangular courtyard surrounded by elegant Doric por-
ticoes, with a row of rooms opening off one short side. At some later date one
end of it was annexed to allow for an extension of the Temple of Isis, but by this
time its place had been taken by the vast new palaestra, undated but almost
certainly an Augustan building, which lay immediately to the west of the Amphi-
theater. This was a huge rectangular open space, three acres in extent and
enclosed on three sides by porticoes. It was shaded by orderly rows of large
plane trees and in the center there was a swimming pool {natatio), the whole
Hot room (caldarium) in the
Forum Baths, Pompeii complex forming a magnificent public setting for such athletic sports as running,
jumping, throwing the discus, wrestling, and swimming. There was a palaestra
Terracotta telamons flankmg
of comparable proportions at Herculaneum but, before the time of Nero, noth-
cupboard niches in the lualls of the
warm room (tepidarium), forum Baths Rome. This was a specifically Campanian innovation.
ing of the sort in
Another, and Roman terms more orthodox, development from the old
in

Greek gymnasium was its incorporation within the newly evolving type of the
Roman bath building— "Roman" because it was the Romans who completed
its development and carried it with them to the remotest corners of the empire.

But we now know that both the technology of the Roman bath building and
the social habits of which was an expression first took shape in Campania.
it

The first public bath building in Rome was not built before 19 B.C., whereas
there were already two in Samnite Pompeii a century earlier. Recent excavations

Plan of the Stabian Baths

1. Palaestra
2. Swimming pool (natatio)
3 Entrance hall
4. Cold bath (frigidarium;
formerly a hot sweating room,
iaconicum)
5 Undressing room
(apodyterium)
6. Wann room (tepidarium)
7. Hot room (caldarium)
8. Furnaces
9. Women's apodyterium
10. Women's tepidarium
1 1. Women's caldarium
1 2. Latrine
13. Bath supervisor's office
14. Individual "hip bath" cubicles

87
 Theater complex

I. Temple of Hercules (Doric

Temple)
2.. Triangular Forum
3. Samnite palaestra
4. Temple of his
5. Temple of Zeus Meilichios
6. Large theater

7. Covered theater (Odeum)

8. Gladiators' barracks

Small Theater

X,.

«*^*
.-rft^'^.Tj^

ri^
'>f.

^^'M;<i
'Amy

.^-

fILl
 within the Stabian Baths have documented in detail the gradual transformation
of what had been a typical Greek establishment (as represented, for example,
at Oiympia), with small individual "hip bath" cubicles, into a fully fledged
Roman bath, with chambers of varying temperatures heated by the passage of
hot beneath the floors and up through the flues in the walls, and equipped
air
with hot-water and cold-water plunges — in effect what today we would call a
Turkish bath, but with certain additional facilities. One of these was the addi-
tion of a palaestra for the taking of exercise before bathing. As the inscription
that records the modernization of the Stabian Baths soon after 80 B.C. records,
therewas already a palaestra in the old Samnite Baths, and it was to remain
an important part of the establishment down to A.D. 79.
The theaters of Pompeii (see plan) represent a comparable merging of Greek,
Italic, and Roman traditions, once again with Campania playing a prominent
part in shaping the merger. As regards both the forms of classical drama and the

nnnnnnnnn highly specialized buildings that grew up to house them, the classical theater
—Q-Q
was, of course, a purely Greek invention. It evolved steadily over the centuries;
10 20rT
X but it retained an extraordinarily durable hard core of continuity, as one sees
very clearly, for example, in the visual conventions of the Roman theater, which
Theater at Pietrabbondante were still Dionysiac symbolic imagery — an association that goes right
steeped in

back to the very origins of Greek drama, in the dances and sacred rituals con-
nected with the cult of Dionysus. The original Samnite-period theater at Pompeii
had been a Greek-style building terraced into the slopes overlooking the Stabian
Gate. Later it was almost totally remodeled in the Roman manner, by building

up the seating and by reshaping the relation of seating to stage and the form of
the stage building itself; but one can still get a very good idea of what the ear-
lier building would have looked like from the recendy excavated second-century

B.C. theater at Pietrabbondante {Bovianum Vetus), a sanctuary deep in the

mountain country of western Samnium. This, it must be remembered, was a
century or so earlier than the first permanent theater in Rome itself, the Theater
of Pompey, built in 55 B.C. Beside the large open-air theater at Pompeii was later
added a smaller, covered theater [theatrum tectum) or Odeum. This was built
soon after 80 B.C. by the same pair of chief magistrates as built the Amphithea-
ter. Except for the subsequent addition of marble paving in the orchaestra and
the facing with marble of the front of the stage building (originally decorated
with Second Style painting) the remains in this case are still those of the original
building. It had an unsupported roof span of 20.6 meters, a good indication of
the technical skills of the Campanian architects of the Sullan period.
performances would these theaters have staged?
^X'hat sort of
For the more serious cultural occasions there was the Covered Theater, occa-
sions such as concerts, lectures, readings of verse, or the displays of visiting
rhetoricians in which antiquity took such a perverse pleasure. The Large Theater
was, by contrast, a place of popular entertainment, and Rome was not the only
society to discover that patronage based on popular taste does not make for a
very high level of theater. It is not improbable that in its more seriousmoments
the Large Theater may have staged the comedies of Plautus and Terence, perhaps
even the tragedies of Pacuvius (who came from south Italy and bore an Oscan

name) and Accius. But in the long run the Roman dramatists of the second
century B.C. were to prove more important for the history of Latin literature
than for the creation of a flourishing dramatic tradition. A single anecdote will
serve to show what they were up against. Even in his own lifetime Terence, who
died in 159 B.C., saw the firstperformanceof one of his plays ruined by the rival

89
w
t -a
.-. ^^^
•"W
^Kf-W-'i

rmri

siri<->'-'?'
>:.vi?r;

Amphitheater

Marble relief from a tomb outside

the StMan (~,ate

Ji.V .jk ii « II till I II ' i7'i « I- ii,-i 1^ i>i« -».»:»ii.'i' *,>,T,^^ .ft-1-Tiii-.fr^tp— '^'Hj

90
 attractions of a rope dancer and a boxer, and, at the second attempt, by rumors
of a gladiatorial combat. By the first century B.C. tragedy had become an almost
exclusively literary form, written for declamation or private performance; and
although comedy was more robust (the texts of some of the plays of Plautus have
survived because they were performed) it too was fast losing ground to simpler,
more popular forms of entertainment.
to present a coherent picture of this popular entertainment, for
It is difficult

several reasons. One is that, being nonliterary or at best sub-literary, it has left
alltoo few traces in the written record. Another is that at this level of perform-
ance the element of improvisation tended to be high and the demarcation lines
correspondingly fluid. If we accept the distinctions made by classical writers, at
least threewell-known types of entertainment were certainly presented in the
Theater at Pompeii: the Atellan Farce, the Mime, and the Pantomime.
The Atellan Farce would have found a ready audience. Named after Atella,
near the modern Aversa, between Naples and Capua, it was a Campanian spe-
ciality, played in Oscan. Like the later Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or (to take a

modern analogy) like many strip cartoons, it portrayed scenes of small-town

revolving around the incongruous adventures and buffoonery of a few stock
life,

characters -Maccus the greedy clown. Pappus the gaffer, and a few others.
Rendered in Latin, it had a brief semiliterary vogue in late Republican Rome,
but it was really popular, grass-roots entertainment, bawdy, topical, and wholly
lacking in sophistication.
Of all the forms of Roman theatrical entertainment, the Mime was at once
the most elementary and the most enduring. Such formal shape as it assumed
was derived from many sources, including no doubt the Atellan Farce and
(another, slightly earlier Campanian specialty) the phlyax players of the fourth
and third centuries B.C., who seem to have specialized in ribald burlesques of
Phlyax players mythological subjects; but above all from the companies of strolling performers,
the forebears of "I Pagliacci," who for centuries past had been dancing, singing,

juggling, and playing their way from town to town, wherever they could drum
up an audience. By Roman times, at any rate, they seemed to have abandoned
the masks of Greek theatrical tradition, since the lead player, the
archimimus,

evidendy relied heavily on facial expression. Like the Atellan Farce, the Mime

had a brief literary vogue in late Republican Rome, but it was really, and it
and lasting popularity pre-
remained, a sub-literary form, deriving its vitality

cisely from its impromptu adaptability to the changing

demands of local taste

and of contemporary fashion.

The most sophisticated of the popular art forms was the Pantomime, which
was introduced to Rome in iz B.C. from the eastern Mediterranean, and which
soon achieved enormous popularity. To modern ears the name calls up visions
of the old-fashioned Christmas pantomime, but the classical
pantomime was in
\c^oor*^j^^I^J01 fact something totally different, far more closely resembling modern ballet,
involving the acting out of some traditional story in wordless gesture.The main
difference was that almost the entire action was in the hands of a single player,
the pantomimns (literally, "one who imitates all things"),
supported by a chorus

and musicians. A top-ranking pantomimus was the pop star of his day, the idol

of the public, and often the intimate of emperors. A typical career was that of
L. Aurelius Pylades, "the first pantomimus of his time,"
who had been born a

slave and, after a successful acting career, was freed by the

emperors Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus (a.d. 161-166). He retired to Puteoli, where, as a

wealthy gendeman of leisure, he became a prominent local benefactor. At Pom-

91
peii, as the graffiti make clear, the ratings of rival pantomimi were followed
eagerly and the visit of a successful pantomimus was a major event.
The level of theatrical performance at Pompeii may not have been very exalted,
but the Theater did undoubtedly play a lively part in local life. This is brought
vividly home to us by on a herm, which dates from about the
a bronze bust,
turn of the first centuries B.C. and a.d. and which is now in the Naples Museum
(inv. no. 4991; inscription CILx. i, 814). It was found in the Temple of Isis and

it commemorates one Caius Norbanus Sorex, described as a player of second

descendant (probably the grandson) of the well-known archimimus of

parts, a
the same name who had been a personal friend of the dictator Sulla. "To play
second parts" was, in Roman terms, "to play second fiddle"; the Pompeian
Norbanus Sorex was no David Garrick. Moreover, in the eyes of the law acting
was one of the dishonorable professions, whose members were disqualified
from holding public office. And yet here we have one of a pair of honorary
herm-portraits (the shaft of the other was found in the Eumachia Building) set
up popular public temple with the formal approval of the town council
in a
{ex decurionum decreto), by the magistri of the pagus Augustus Felix subur-
banus, a body that one might loosely translate as the parish council of one of
the country sub-districts outside the walls of Pompeii — not perhaps a very large
pond, but Norbanus Sorex could be quite a large fish and, by implication,
in it a
a substantial public benefactor. Once again we are reminded that Pompeii was
not Rome, and that, whatever the law might say, a successful local actor could
be an honored member of the community.
The amphitheater was an Italian creation, in which Campania, with its hybrid
Hellenized Italic culture, played a leading part. Rather surprisingly, Rome itself
did not have a permanent arena until 29 B.C., and even then it was built of
timber on masonry footings, not unlike the seating for the open-air opera in the
Baths of Caracalla in present-day Rome. Before 2.9 B.C. displays of gladiators or
of exotic beasts had had to take place under makeshift conditions in such open
spaces as the Roman Forum or the Circus Maximus. This was a costly business,
and it could be dangerous, as when the elephants displayed by Pompey in 55 B.C.
took fright and stampeded. Keeping performers and mobs of excited spectators
apart no new problem in popular spectator sport. The problem was resolved,
is

and it was resolved in Campania, by the creation of the amphitheatrum (literally

"a place for viewing from all sides") consisting of an oval arena separated by a
barrier from rising tiers of stone benches. The Amphitheater at Pompeii, built
soon after the foundation of the colony in 80 B.C., lacks the grandeur and sophis-
ticated planning of the later giants at Capua and Puteoli, or the Colosseum in
Rome. But it has an honored place in architectural history. It is the earliest sur-
viving example of an architectural form that is still in worldwide use today. It is
also one of the first public buildings in Roman Italy to have used the arcade as a
monumental feature in its own right. Campania at this time was way out in
front as a center of lively architectural invention.
Although the Amphitheater could be used for any form of large spectacle, in
practice what the crowd expected was blood, in the form either of gladiatorial
combats or of performances involving the pitting of ferocious wild beasts against
human victims or against each other. The provision of "games" {ludi) was a
ready passport to popular favor, and one of the formal requirements of public
office at Pompeii was the expenditure of a large sum either on public building
or on public entertainment. The human performers were either condemned
criminals exposed to some form of sophisticated butchery, or else trained gladia-

92
 ,

V
Gladiatorial show (graffito on a >-,,„,

^^
,

tomb outside the Nuceria Gate) I '^"l^oT^^

tors, who might be either the unwilhng victims of circumstance (slaves, prisoners

of war, lesser criminals) or else tough, voluntary professionals. They were or-

ganized into schools (familiae) under private or public ownership (in Rome
itself they very soon passed into Imperial hands), one of the earliest and most
famous of such schools being that at Capua from which Spartacus and seventy-
seven other gladiators made their historic escape in 73 B.C. The possession of
an amphitheater was a valuable civic asset, bringing in spectators from all the
nearby towns. The disastrous Amphitheater riot of a.d. 59 was sparked off by
the presence of large numbers of fans from Nuceria, a neighboring city that, in
the best Italian tradition,was also Pompeii's deadly rival. It was natural that
Pompeii, with its fine arena, should set up its own gladiatorial establishment.
This was installed after the earthquake of a.d. 62 in what had been a large
porticoed foyer behind the Theater (see plan, page 88). By a.d. 79 it was already
partly occupied, and in it were found some of the fine armor and weapons now
in the Naples Museum.
Every gladiator was a specialist, belonging to one of a number of conventional
categories clearly distinguished by theirarmor and weapons and bearing con-
ventional names. These names appear regularly in the literature and in the adver-
tisements, and at any given time and place the fans would certainly have known
exactly what to expect (and how to lay their bets) when a myrmillo from such-
and-such a training school, with twenty-five wins to his credit, was matched
against a less experienced but well spoken of Thrax from such another school.
We today cannot follow all the nuances; when one recalls how even in as con-
servative a game as cricket the positioning of players in the field and the naming
of those positions have changed quite substantially in the last fifty years, it is

hardly surprising that the evidence from antiquity is not always consistent.
Most of the main types seem to have been first established by the introduction
of prisoners of war wearing their native armor and weapons, beginning with
the "Samnites" in the third century B.C., and followed by the "Gauls" and
"Thracians" and, possibly introduced by Julius Caesar from Britain, gladiators
fightingfrom chariots (essedarii). Broadly speaking, they may be divided into
the group of heavily armed fighters that evolved from the original "Samnites";
a somewhat more mobile, less heavily armed group of which the "Thracian"
was typical; and a number of more specialized types, of which the most colorful
was the retiarus, or net-thrower, who was very lighriy armored (alone among
gladiators he fought bare-headed) and who was armed only with a net, a fisher-
man's trident, and a dagger, relying entirely on his own greater speed and mobil-
ity. He was normally matched against a myrmillo (so named from the repre-
sentation of a fish, the morimylos, which he wore on his helmet) or a secutor

("chaser").
The games followed an established ritual. After a public banquet the evening
before, in which all the contestants participated, they started off with a proces-
sion ipompa), which was heralded by trumpets and horns, and which included
the sponsor of the games and all the fighters, dressed in splendid costumes and
wearing armor, which they would later change for their actual fighting equip-
ment. After a series of rather tame preliminaries (mock fights, fights with
wooden weapons, etc.) the serious business of the day began with a war trum-
pet (tuba) sounding for the first pair of gladiators, who proceeded to fight to the

death, although there was a reasonable chance of a good loser being allowed to

live to fight another day. About midday there was a slack period, filled with

more mock fighting, assorted displays, and the executions of criminals, after

93
 .

A bar counter on the Via

dell' Abbondanza

Caupona ofEtixinus (i, 1 1, lo)

I.Bar
1. Kitchen and latrine
3 Open air dining/ drinking area
4. Vineyard

which the afternoon would be devoted to venationes, in which wild animals

were pitted against each other or against trained animal-fighters (bestiarii).
Throughout the day there was a more or less continuous accompaniment from
trumpets, horns, pipes, drums, water organs and, possibly, from voices. The
whole performance is vividly portrayed in a marble triple frieze found outside
the Stabian Gate (see illustration, p. 90), probably from a large tomb: in the upper
register, the procession; in the middle, on a larger scale as befits the major

attraction, five scenes of gladiatorial combat; and below, incidents from the
venationes.
To conclude this section about leisure activities, a few words about eating
customs.

94
 The Roman's main meal of the day (cena) was taken in the evening
single
after the afternoon bath. In polite society one dined on a couch reclining on
one's left elbow. The average dining room took its name {triclinium) from the
fact that it held three couches (klinai, or lecti), though a wealthy house might
have several triclinia for different seasons, including one for al fresco dining in
the garden; for a really large dinner party several might be used at once — care-
fully graded socially, if we are to believe the contemporary satirical writers.

The couches faced inward upon three sides of a square, within which stood the
tables and from which the food and drink were served. Three courses were cus-
tomary, each consisting of several different servings, and wine (normally but
not invariably mixed with water, and in some contexts served hot) was drunk
both with and after the meal. The details varied gready according to the taste
of the host and the degree of formality. Frequently the meal was accompanied
or followed by some form of entertainment such as music, dancing, acrobatics,
or, if the host had literary pretensions, readings from poetry. Petronius' Satyri-
con, for all its element of parody, offers a brilliant picture of the sort of dinner
that might have been served by a wealthy vulgarian in mid-first-century Pompeii.
For the man in the street and for visitors there were numerous bars and eating
many of which also provided lodging, with or without fe-
houses [cauponae),
male company. The Caupona of Euxinus will serve as an example. It was one of
a number situated near the Amphitheater to cater for the crowds of visitors who
came from all the neighboring towns whenever there was a show. On the facade
was a painted inn-sign, with a figure of a Phoenix and two peacocks and the
words Phoenix felix et tu ("You too will enjoy the Happy Phoenix"), and below
it were two electoral posters painted up on the orders of the innkeeper, Euxinus,

whose name and address are attested also by the inscriptions on three wine
amphoras found in the bar: Pompeiis ad amphitheatr(wn) Euxino coponi ("to
Euxinus the innkeeper, near the amphitheater, Pompeii"). The premises were
large: on the street corner a bar, with a typical L-shaped counter, a store, large
jars for keeping food hot, and traces of a wooden rack for storing wine am-

phoras; behind the bar three other rooms, a storeroom, and a lavatory; and on it
to the right a large open courtyard, which did double duty as a vineyard and,
as in many a trattoria today, a place for open-air drinking and dining and, no
doubt, gaming. At the far end of the garden was a painted lararium and stairs
leading to some upper rooms; there was more accommodation in the ad-
joining house.
The graffiti found on the walls were characteristic, including representations

of Dionysus and Priapus and tags of verse. One of these ran:

I
V'''>>MJ^t'^C«
fj^i^^c^^hlqiy
i^ff^
//trvc))^;.
fl\i,/f^,,^,^,^|,,j^.

"Blondie bad me hate the dark ones. If I can I will. If I cannot, all unwilling I

willlove them still."

95
 Tablinum wall in the House of
Sallust (First Style)

Cubiculum in the House of the Cubiculum in the Villa of the Cubiculum in the House of the
Wedding (Second Style
Silver Mysteries (Later Second Style Epigrams (from a drawing) (Late
[IIA]) [IIB]) Second Style [im])

Garden Room, Villa of Livia

Tablinum wall in the House of

M. Lucretius Fronto (Late Third
Style)

96
PAINTING

The standard classification of Pompeian wall painting into four successive

"Styles" was first enunciated by August Mau in i88z, and it still provides the
best framework for any oudine survey of the two hundred-odd years of painting
presented on the walls of Pompeii itself and of the neighboring towns and

country villas.

The First, or "Masonry," Style followed closely the conventions of the de-
coratively jointed stone masonry of which it was a gaily colored representation.
Very similar work has been recorded from sites as far afield as Macedonia,
Asia Minor, and Israel, and by the second century B.C. it was evidently already
a commonplace of both public and domestic interior decoration throughout
the Hellenistic world. At Pompeii it was already giving place to the Second Style
when the interior of the Capitolium was decorated shordy after the foundation
of the Roman colony in 80 B.C., and very soon after that it was generally re-

placed by the Second Style. The House of Sallust (see illustration) is one of the
relatively good condition. Relying as it did for its
few examples that survive in

effect upon the patterns of the painted surfaces, which imitated in stucco the

cornices and plinths, blocks and slabs of real ornamental masonry, it was essen-
tially a style that emphasized the real solid qualities of the walls it adorned.
The Second, or "Architectural," Style began to come in soon after 80 B.C.,

reflecting the widening cultural perspectives created both by the foundation of

the Roman colony and by Italy's ever-increasing involvement with the estab-
lished centers of the arts in the eastern Mediterranean. The element common to
all its very varied manifestations was
development of the wall surfaces in
a
seeming depth, usually within a framework of simulated architecture; where
the First Style had emphasized the tangible solidity of the wall, the Second Style
did all it could to play down that solidity and to create an illusion of receding
space. In its earlier stages (Style iia), before the middle of the first century B.C.,
thistook the form simply of making the main wall surface appear to be set back
behind a framing order of painted Corinthian columns, which looked as if they
stood upon a projecting plinth and supported a projecting cornice (see illustra-
tion). This was a direct two-dimensional imitation of a real architectural device
already current in the earliest concrete-vaulted architecture of Campania and of
Latium, and the resulting simulation of reality by every known trick of illusion-
istic perspective and lighting was to remain characteristic of the Second Style

in all its manifestations.

At first the wall surfaces "behind" the framing architectural colonnade con-
tinued to be treated much as in the previous period. But quite soon (for example,
in the secondary rooms of the Villa of the Mysteries, ca. 60— 50 B.C.) this began

to be accompanied by an opening-out of the upper part of the wall, as if the

lower part were merely a screen over the top of which one could glimpse the
open sky framed by receding architectural vistas. This search for visual escape
from the sense of enclosure imposed by the inherited traditions of a compact,
inward-facing urban architecture was to remain one of the dominant trends of
Roman domestic architecture throughout the Pompeian period. The best known
of all Pompeian paintings of this period, the Hall of the Dionysiac Mysteries in
the Villa of the Mysteries, is in this respect an exception. Second Style in date
but not in its composition. omit the columns of the architectural
Not only does it

framework but it if they were act-

also portrays the figures of the frieze itself as
ing out their parts in front of a neutral background rather than moving into and
out of only in
it. It is the small bedchambers [cubicula) that one finds the charac-
teristic glimpses of open spaces beyond the wall (see illustration). In this respect

97
 the great figured frieze of this villa, like the Aldobrandini Wedding frieze in the
Vatican Museums, an intruder for which the precedents must be sought out-
is

side Italy in the Hellenistic world. Within less than a generation, however, this
alien tradition had been captured and assimilated, and it is thus that we find it,
displayed within a conventional Second Style architectural framework, on the
walls of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale on the slopes of
Vesuvius. Despite numerous and continued borrowings from, and links with,
its

the larger Hellenistic world, the Second Style was evidently already an estab-
lished Italian phenomenon, created for the houses and villas of wealthy Romans
in the capital and in Campania, and faithfully reflected on the walls of the well-
to-do citizens of Pompeii.
In the third quarter of the first century B.C. the Second Style (Style im) took
a mm that was to affect the whole subsequent history of wall painting at Pom-
peii.The painted architectural framework, which had at first faithfully con-
formed to the simple rectangular shapes of the rooms it adorned, began to take
on a life of its own, with each individual wall treated as a separate compositional
unit, symmetrically balanced about the central bay within the larger symmetry
of the rooms' three main walls. Both the painted architectural foreground and
the wall surfaces it framed lent themselves admirably to such treatment. Among
the many recurrent schemes one may note the development of the whole wall as
an elaborately three-dimensional architectural facade articulated about three
large doors, as in the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale; the portrayal of
a porticoed courtyard enclosing some central feature such as a circular tempietto
[tholos) glimpsed between the columns and curtains of an ornately baroque
columnar screen, as in the large painted triclinium at Oplontis; or, prominendy
displayed within the central bay, a large representation of a panel picture,
usually depicting some mythological subject (see illustration).
Scholars have expended much erudition and ingenuity in tracing the sources
of these compositions: contemporary stage design, for example; in the fantasy
in
architecture that graced the courts of the Hellenistic monarchs (and particularly
that of the Ptolemies of Egypt); and in the elaborately contrived landscape
architecture of the villas of Campania itself. That there was any single, all-em-
bracing source is in faa doubtful; this was the expression of an aspect of late
Hellenistic taste that no doubt found many outlets. But, making every allowance
for an element of painterly exaggeration, it does seem clear that a great deal of

what we on the walls of Pompeii was rooted in real three-dimen-

see portrayed
sional fantasy architecture. When, in one of the rare surviving passages of classi-
cal literature that indulges in contemporary art criticism, the architectural
historian Vitruvius, writing about 25 B.C., roundly condemns this st\'le for its
"unreality," it is clear from the context that the realitywith which he contrasted
it was the sober functionalism of traditional classical architecture. Not for him
the heady baroque fantasies favored by the avant-garde decorators of Rome
and central Italy.
Two other famous surviving Second Style paintings must be mentioned be-
cause of their importance for what follows. One is the frieze illustrating scenes
from Homer's Odyssey withm the setting of a continuous landscape. Found on
the Esquiline in Rome, it is now in the Vatican Museums. Scholars are divided
as to the extent towhich the "Odyssey Landscapes" reflect lost Hellenistic
originals, but there can be no doubt about the degree to which this tradition of
naturalistic landscape with figures had already taken root on Italian soil. In
this case the landscape is shown as if glimpsed between the columns of a typical

98
columnar order. In the Garden Room from the Villa of Livia, wife of Augustus,
at Prima Porta just outside Rome (see illustration), even this formal restraint is
lacking: the four walls simply flow outward, portraying in loving detail the
trees and shrubs, the birds, and flowers of a formal garden laid out beyond a low
fence. In this respect the Second Style could go no further.
If we have lingered over the Second Style, of which relatively few Pompeian

examples were to survive another century of rebuilding and redecorating (and of

which it is in consequence, very hard to convey any real impression from the
few fragments available for exhibition), it is because this was the great creative
period of Roman wall painting. This was when the basis of most of the subse-
quent repertory was established. It is common to speak of the Third and Fourth
Styles as if they represented an orderly sequence of development. Development
there certainly was, but much of it was achieved in terms of a repertory of in-
herited patterns and motifs, and was punctuated by frequent references back
it

to the recent past, the products of which were still there on the walls of the older
houses for all to see.
The dominant characteristic of the Third Style was its renunciation of the
search for an illusion of three-dimensional depth and its concentration instead
upon the purely decorative possibilities inherent in the formal schemes it had

inherited from the previous period. It retained the rigid horizontal symmetry
of the later Second Style, with its two flanking panels leading the eye in toward
the panel picture framed by the central aedicula; but although the formal vocab-
ulary of the latter was still largely that of Second Style fantasy architecture, it

was increasingly an architecture without substance, litde more than a frame

for the picture thathad become the focus of the whole composition. At the same
time there was a steadily increasing emphasis upon the fields of color and upon

the patterns presented by the surrounding wall surfaces. Slender candelabra,

trailing tendrils, arabesques of delicate foliage, abstract geometrical motifs —
all these were used with an elaborate inner logic to create a formal unity cover-
ing the whole wall surface (see illustration). A good example of this can be seen
in the Villa of the Mysteries, in the black tablinum.
Vertically too there was
same movement away from the illusion of real
the
architecture characteristic of the Second Style toward two-dimensional schemes
of balanced pattern. The plinth, the middle register of the wall, and what had
been the zone opening out above this middle register, became three rigidly dis-
tinct horizontal bands of composition, linked by little more than the shared
tripartite symmetry of the overall design. The gable of the central aedicula

was flattened and compressed downward into the middle zone, to the upper
and lower borders of which added emphasis was given by the introduction of
secondary bands of small, elongated horizontal panels; the plinth became an
independent strip of color set along the base of the wall and with its own in-
dependent ornament, while along the upper register were ranged groups of
delicate, architectural fantasies, as far removed in spirit from the illusionistic
Second Style fantasy architecture of which they were the offspring as the former
had been from the "real" architecture with which Vitruvius so contemptuously
contrasts them.
A third and very important component of the Third Style was its use of color
to emphasize the formal divisions, and in particular the vertical divisions, of the
design. A typical color scheme is that of the oecus of the House of the Menander,
with its black dado, its green middle zone punctuated by black vertical members,
and its white upper zone. To such wall schemes must be added the sober white

99
 1

House of the Red Walls (viii, 5,

37) (Early Fourth Style)

or black and white of the mosaic or marble floors and the patterned polychrome
tracery of the stucco vaulting. These were carefully studied, often sophisticated
effects.To modern eyes much of the coloring may seem rather overpowering,
but there was nothing indiscriminate about its application.
Insofar as it is possible to draw an arbitrary dividing line between two stages
of a single, developing artistic phenomenon, the line between the Second and
Third Styles appears to fall around 15 B.C., and the Third Style may reasonably
be regarded as a direct reflection of the rather formal classicism that charac-
terizes the official art that was just then taking shape at the court of Augustus.
The earliest and finest Third Style paintings in Rome itself come from just such
which was
a milieu, a villa in Trastevere (near the present Villa Farnesina),
probably the residence of M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the colleague and designated
heir of Augustus, after his marriage in 19 B.C. to Augustus' daughter, Julia. If
that is correct, the link with Pompeii is clear.The child of the marriage was
Agrippa Postumus, born shortly after his father's death in iz B.C.; it was in a
villa belonging to this son found in 1902 at Boscotrecase on the slopes of Vesu-
two miles from Pompeii, and reburied by the eruption of 1906, that a
vius,
number of paintings were found, so close in style and content to those of the
Villa Farnesina that they may well have been painted by one of the artists who
had worked there (see illustration). This sort of thing, though we can rarely
document it so precisely, must in fact have been common practice in the wealthy
patrician villas of the Bay of Naples; when one sees how many such villas there
were within a ten-mile radius of Pompeii (see page 16), it is easy to understand
how, in style if not always in quality, the walls of this small provincial city came
to reflect so faithfully and so rapidly the art of Rome itself.
The latest manifestations of the Third Style proper date from the middle of
the first century a.d. (an unusually well-preserved example is the tablinum of
the house of M. Lucretius Fronto ([v, 4, 9; see illustration]) and once again it was
changes of taste at court that ushered in the fourth and last phase of Pompeian
wall painting, in the years immediately preceding the earthquake of a.d. 6z. This
is conventionally known as the Fourth Style, but it might in fact better be de-
scribed as a chronological phase embodying a number of concurrent stylistic

trends, some of which reflect the extravagant innovations of taste introduced

into the art of the capital by Nero, while others hark back to the recent past
of Pompeii itself.

Space permits us to illustrate only a few of the more striking aspects of this
Fourth At one extreme we find rooms like those in the House of the Red
Style.

Walls iViii, 5, 37) and in the House of the Centenary (ix, 8, 6; see illustration),
in which the walls are treated as a single sheet of color, upon which is overlaid

a delicate patterned tracery; there is a marked tendency to reduce the size of

the panel picmres, or even to omit them altogether. A favorite conceit within
this genre is to balance a "\X'hite Room" against a "Black Room," as in the
House of the Centenary and in the recendy excavated House of Julius Polybius
(ix, 13, 19— z6). At the other extreme we find a reversion to the illusionistic

architecture of the Second Style, this time, however, treated as a continuous

architectural backdrop main action of the composition, which is por-
to the
trayed as if taking place on a stage. Good examples of this are in the House of
Pinarius Cerialis (in, 4, 4) and in the House of Apollo (vi, 7, Z3). Between these
two extremes lie a large number of rooms that are formally no more than an
ultimate phase of the Third Style, more or less combined with elements derived
from the Second Style or from other types of Fourth Style practice. A room

lOI
such as the south triclinium of the House of the Vettii (see illustration) quite
obviously incorporates elements derived from both the preceding styles.

Because this was the sort of painting current at the time of the city's destruc-
tion it bulks large in the surviving remains, yet its wider artistic significance is

less. For one thing, the last years of Pompeii were a time of marked economic
and social decline, a decline that was inevitably reflected in the levels of patron-
age and, in consequence, of artistic standards. For another, wall painting as an
important art form was on the way out, to be replaced by marble paneling and,
in really wealthy circles, wall mosaic. In this respect the eruption was nicely
timed. Another few years, and there would have been little left of the older,
finer Pompeii.
And what of the mythological panel pictures that were the most prominent
features of so many Pompeian walls and that, torn from their context, have for
so long dominated the modern image of the Roman painter's art? Very early on
in the was realized that they were in some sense "Old Master
excavations it

Copies," based on well-known Greek originals, and for a very long time it was
almost exclusively as evidence of these lost originals that they captured the ima-
gination of scholars. It is only quite recently that they have begun to be studied
in their own right as paintings that, though presented in terms of certain in-

herited conventions, are in many cases as Roman as the walls they adorned.
That they represent free variations upon the themes established by the ori-
ginals, and not merely straight copies of them, is apparent the moment one com-
pares the different versions of one of the more familiar myths. There are, for
example, ten versions of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur derived from at
least three different originals. The competence varies greatly, and those who
wish to demonstrate the artistic superiority of the lost originals have no difficulty
in finding telling examples; this was after all the work of house decorators doing

their best to furnish their clients with a "Greek" art that was not their own, but
that social convention demanded. But a more fruitful line of inquiry is that of
the extent towhich these panel pictures reflect developments in contemporary
Roman painting. Here their real quality emerges; there can be little doubt that
one of the most significant of such developments lay in the field of landscape
painting, and in particular of the sort of landscape with figures of which Second
Style"Odyssey Landscapes," referred to above, afford such an eloquent foretaste.
Although many of the standard motifs of Second Style landscape paintings
and stuccoes — isolated trees, towers, rustic shrines, altars, columns, rocky out-
crops—do seem from a preexisting Hellenistic tradition of painting
to derive
or stuccowork, few today would question that a painting such as the Rescue of
Andromeda in the House of the Priest Amandus i, 7, 7) represents a fresh and
(

specifically Italian version of that tradition (see illustration). This painting occu-
pies the center of the lefthand wall of a triclinium redecorated in a version of the
Third Style that is variously attributed to the middle of the first century a.d. or
to the years just before a.d. 79. Comparable figured landscapes, portraying
respectively the Fall of Icarus and the story of Polyphemus and Galatea, occupy
two of the other walls, while the fourth wall displays a painting of Hercules in
the Garden of the Hesperides, which is a reasonably competent, if to modern
eyes rather dull, copy of a Greek original (see illustration). The differences be-
tween this last picture and the other three leap to the eye. In it the figures are iso-
lated against a neutral background very much in the manner of the figures of a
carved classical relief; the orange tree, illustrated because it is an essential feature
of the story, stands in the same plane, without the slightest attempt to convey

102
 any illusion of an acnial garden setting. This was the classical Greek tradition.
The other three pictures are quite different in mood, composition, and treat-
ment. It is the landscape that dominates, with its all-encompassing sense of real
space, and the conventions used in its portrayal foreshadow to a startling degree
those of later Roman narrative art. This is truly Roman painting. Ironically, but
predictably, it was
"Greek" picture that got the post of honor. The edu-
the
cated Roman, hypnotized by the prevailing taste for Greek art, was notoriously
blind to his own country's very real artistic achievements.
Much the same qualities emerge in the smaller decorative panels and other
accessories that figure so largely on the walls of the Third and Fourth Styles. Still
lifes, architectural landscapes, the Egyptianizing, or Nilotic, scenes that con-
stitute the Roman equivalent of chinoiserie: painted in the broad, impressionistic
technique of which Roman painters were the masters, they have an assurance
and a directness that cannot fail to appeal to modern taste. This too was an art
that had achieved a distinctively Roman personality.
One final question before we leave these mythological pictures. Was there
Rescue of Andromeda
(from the triclinium of the House
any logic behind the choice of scenes? Did they carry a message, or were they
of the Priest Amandiis) simply the stereotypes of phil-Hellenic artistic fashion.'
That many of the individual scenes carried widely accepted overtones of
religious or philosophical interpretation there can be no doubt. Used in com-
bination with each other and with the secondary motifs by which they were
regularly surrounded (a great many of which had themselves entered the artistic
repertory in the context of religious symbolism), they constimted a visual lan-
guage that could be used to convey a remarkably clear and explicit message.
Thus, the paintings from the villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale
have been very plausibly interpreted as showing that the owner was an initiate
into the mysteries of Aphrodite (Venus) and Adonis. In such a context the lan-
guage of symbolism could be as subtle as it was eloquent, because it was ad-
dressed to people who understood what it was saying. At a more generalized
level of communication, the mythological pictures are commonly used in what

appear to be significant pairs, or trios, and some of these too may have been
chosen because they illustrated the stories of the divinities to whose protection
and good owner of the house aspired. Others (for example, the Trojan
will the

Wild beasts on the garden wall cycle in Ala 4 of the House of the Menander) may simply reflect the owner's
of the House of the Epigrams literary or artistic tastes, although here too it would have been quite easy to read
(V, I, i8)
into them overtones of moral or philosophical meaning.
It does not, on the other hand, follow (as is sometimes claimed) that all of the

mythological paintings at Pompeii carried a deliberate message. It is implicit

in the language of symbolism that the more widely it is used, the more the pre-
cision of its meaning tends to get blunted. The terms become so familiar that
they need a context to give them precise meaning, and in such a situation mean-
ing tends increasingly to lie in The workshops of Pom-
the eye of the beholder.
peii were not laboratories for the portrayal of belief. Under sophisticated pa-

tronage they could be so used, and at a more commonplace level any house-
holder might select the current models that best suited his own personal tastes
and convictions. But they remained essentially workshops, repositories of a
body of established models, patterns, and skills; what they produced was de-
termined by the fashions of contemporary taste, which to many citizens must
have been largely a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. In the matter of giv-
ing more esoteric meanings to these paintings one has to take each case on its
own merits.

103
 We have dealt at some length with the formal painting that, by the ver>- faa
of its survival such quantity', constitutes Pompeii's unique contribution to the
in
history of classical art, and that, because it operated within a very precise range
of conventions, does need some such explanation to be intelligible. By the same
token we
can be very brief in presenting the other facet of Pompeian painting,
namely the popular art that adorns the gardens, domestic shrines, bars, and
shopfronts. Simple, unsophisticated, direct, it tells its own story.
Much of this popular art was concerned with the portrayal of the well-known
things of daily life: the shop of a baker (see page 62] or a potter, fuller or felt-

makers at work (seepage 61), a ship, scenes of tavern life, or of daily life in the
Forum page 105). Occasionally it gives us a glimpse of larger
Csee illustration,

contemporary events, as in the well-known scene of the Amphitheater riot of

A.D. 59 (see illustration, page 34), but for the most part it was the work of sim-
ple craftsmen giving direa expression to what they saw around them. Even so,
it was curiously selective: it was some practical purpose.
rarely used without
It is at this level of meaning that one can most draw a rational
intelligibly
distinction between the spheres of formal and of popular Pompeian art. Al-
though, as we have seen, the former could be used in sophisticated hands to
express the religious, philosophical, or literary preferences of an individual
patron, it was in itself no more than a repertory of motifs and styles of which
the common denominator was the norms imposed by contemporary artistic
taste. Popular art, on the other hand, like the popular religion of which it was

so often an expression, tended to operate at a far simpler, more direct level of

human experience. Nothing could be more stridently "popular" than the painted
household shrines [lararia) with their great curling serpent figures and many of
the street-front paintings were placed direaly under the protection of the own-
er's patron divinity; advertisements of his activities, it may be, but also at the
same time tangible insurances against the changes and chances of a capricious
providence. This was a grass-roots art, shaped not only by its use of everyday
themes but also by its expression of everyday attitudes of mind.
As in most such classifications, the distinctions between formal and popular
Pompeian art tend to get a bit ragged at the edges. One sees this very clearly in
many of the gardens. Here, side by side with formal Third and Fourth Style
rooms are rooms and garden walls treated in a wide variety of other styles.
Many of the subjects are borrowed from the small, secondary panels of the
house itself— landscapes, scenes of hunting, animal landscapes, occasional
mythological figures — but they tend to be treated in a far more relaxed manner,

and often on a very much larger scale; typical examples are the huge landscapes
in the House of the Small Fountain (vi, 8, 23-24; see illustration), the very large
animal frieze on the garden wall of the House of M. Lucretius Fronto (rv, 2, i),
and the birth of Venus in the House of the Venus (11,3, 31). Occasionally the
influence was in the other direaion, the garden influencing the house. Some
miniature garden panels patendy derive ultimately from such famous originals
as the early Third Style garden room of the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, while
plants were freely copied on the dadoes of formal Fourth Style compositions, as,
for example, in the House of the Silver Wedding (v, z, Maw E). There was a
marked tendency for the garden, its fountains, and its plants to invade the paint-
ings of the adjoining walls.At the same time, the influence of wall mosaics was
just beginning to make
The last phase of Pompeian art was one of
itself felt.

transition toward a future that Pompeii itself was never to see. In it what had
been "popular" art was rapidly acquiring a fresh, more monumental dimension.

104
 SCULPTURE

The early histon- of Roman sculpture in Campania is largely shap>ed by the faa
that by the first were few wealthy or influential Romans who
centur.- B.C. there
did not ix)ssess luxurious countr\- residences on the Bay of Naples. These were
the people who, under the late Republic, were busy amassing private collecnons
of sculpture inspired by the huge galleries of Greek loot on display in tfie tem-
ples and public buildings at Rome. Original works were naturally in shon sup-
ply and contemporar>- Greek workshops in the old sculptural centers of the
eastern Mediterranean were quick to take advantage of the grov^ing demand for
replicas and adaptations of old masterpieces. The letters of Cicero who had
two, if not three, properties in Campania, one near Pompeii) provide us with an
entertaining picture of the lengths to which an educated Roman would go in
order to furnish his countr>' retreats with suitable statuar> The amazing array .

assembled by Lucius Calpumius Piso Caesoninus, a rich but not exceptionally

wealthy Roman, in his %illa near Herculaneum see page i lo vividly demon-
and qualit>- of one of these early collections. Most of the eighty-
strates the size
were acquired bet\\een 60 and 40 B.C., the products of various
three pieces
workshops. Among the many close copies and freer interpretations, which reveal
Caesoninus' preference, in common with most of his contemporanes. for
Archaic and Classical Greek originals, was a series of eighteen busts, herms and
Equestrum statues in
the Forum statues of Greek philosophers, orators and poets, and an impressive group of
Naples Museum portraits of Hellenistic kings and generals. There were only nvo portraits of
Romans, both of them historical personalities whose identities are in dispute,
but no portraits of the family itself. Despite their relative prosperit>- the wealthy
citizens of Pompeii could not compete on this level, but small-scale echoes are
found in such bronzes as the Dancing Faun from the House of the Faun Naples
Museum, inv. 5002), tiie statue of Perseus from House v, 3, 10 Naples Museum,
inv. 1261^0), the statue of an ephebe adapted to a lamp-holder from a fourth-
centun.- B.C. original and found in the House of Cornelius Teges i, -, ic: Naples
Museum, inv. 143753), to which may now be added a similar conceit from the
House of Fabius Rufus.
It was not until the political stabilit>- that accompanied the reestablishment
of central authorin.- by Augustus that the erection of public municipal statues in
honor of members of the Imperial family and of prominent local citizens became
part of the ever>day life of a small town like Pompeii. Once launched, the fash-

ion caught on But for the earthquake of 62 and the salvage operations
rapidly.
that followed the eruption, a \-isitor to the Forum would have been confronted
bv a forest of statues. Three ven.- large bronze statues, probably of members of
die Imperial house, occupied most of the space at the southern end, and among
the eighteen equestrian statues that stood on bases marshaled along the front of
the western portico, in front of the Temple of Jupiter and elsewhere, must have
been that recorded on the tombstone of the wealthy gantm manufacturer and
chief magistrate of Pompeii, Aulus Umbricius Scaunis {CIL x, 1024 Perhaps .

his is among those portrayed in a scene of the Forum from the \'illa of Julia
FelLx (Naples Museum, inv. 9068; see illustration About hft>- odier standing
.

figureswearing the toga, the majorin-- probably in marble, commemorated the

services of other local worthies. In the surrounding public buildings and temples,
here and elsewhere in the town, were numerous other opportunities to mdulge
this new craze, .\mong the few sur\ivals are the herm portrait of Norbanus

Sorex (^Naples Museum, 499 1 inv. ; Temple of Isis oi which a

see page 92' in the

duplicate stood m the Eumachia Building^ and those of such conspicuous bene-
faaors and donors of public buildings as Eumachia herself ^Naples Museum,

105
 Bronze portrait busts
Naples Museum

inv. 6232), Marcus Tullius (Naples Museum, inv. 6231), and Marcus Holconius
Rufus (Naples Museum, inv. 6233), who were responsible for the fullers' hall,

the Temple of Fortuna Augusta, and the rebuilding of the Large Theater,
respectively.
It is at this period that portrait statues of family members begin to join the
other sculptures in the Villa at Herculaneum, and portraits appear on semipublic
display in private houses at Pompeii. Fine examples of these are the bronze busts
of a man and a woman placed in an ala of the atrium in the House of the Citha-
rist (Naples Museum, inv. 4992; see illustration) and the series of portraits on
herm shafts found placed at the entrance to the tablinum in several of the larger
houses. The most famous is that of the banker L. Caecilius Felix (better but
mistakenly known as Caecilius Jucundus; see illustration, page 39), but there
are also good-quality marble examples portraying successful businessmen who
were well known in the town: Vesonius Primus from House vi, 14, 20 (Pompeii
Antiquarium, inv. 407-4), Cornelius Rufus from viii, 4, 15 (Pompeii Antiquar-
ium, inv. 403-4), and the portrait of an old man and techniques
(no. 26). Styles
are so closely related to those found in public statuary that presumably, and not
surprisingly, they were produced by the same workshops.
Such "display" portraits must be distinguished from the purely private aspects
of family portraiture that already had a long history, among them stylized
funerary statues executed by local craftsmen in local materials. The series begins
about the time the Sullan colony was established and continues until the erup-
tion. Another aspect is exemplified by the shrine of the imagines maiorum in the
House of the Menander (see illustration). These are little more than puppet
heads carved in the traditional materials of wood or wax, taken to represent the
probably generalized and purely symbolic portraits that formed part of the
ancestral cult.That this was still a living portrait form and not an extraordinary
survivalfrom a much earlier period is shown by the still unpublished wooden
heads, on a larger scale, from Herculaneum, the best preserved of which appears
to represent a woman of Augustan or later date. There was obviously an element
of the population who, whatever it may have thought of the developing, strongly

Hellenized style in vogue for public statuary, preferred to uphold, in a funerary

context at least, the established conventions of an older tradition. Once again
we see the "popular" forms and those more sophisticated trends influenced by
the larger world existing happily side by side.
One of the saddest losses is that of all but a few fragments of the cult figures
of the temples,among which must have been some of the earliest and finest
town possessed. All the statues of divinities that have
pieces of sculpture that the
survived are secondary dedications within the temple precincts or from private
houses, such as a Venus from a blue-painted shrine in the garden peristyle of
House I, 2, 17 (Naples Museum, inv. 6412) and an Artemis (no. 4), all copyist
works of varying quality and almost all produced in the early Empire.

106
 With garden decoration we are again in the famiUar world of Hellenistic
imagery, and here one cannot help being struck by the extraordinary dominance
of Dionysiac themes. These included all the rustic members of Dionysus' com-
pany and of course brought in all the characters of ancient theater. It looks as
though there was a very strongly established convention in this field that the
suppliers and their clients were content to follow. The only major exceptions
appear to be the various animal figures allowed as appropriate to fountains.
There is nothing in the surviving works at any level to support the idea that
Pompeii had its own school of sculpture. Undoubtedlynumber of local jobbing
a
workshops produced much of the simpler sculpted ornament on public foun-
tains, wellheads, less extravagant tombs, and the odd figured group in local
tufa like the naively conceived gladiator and Priapus commissioned by a tavern-
keeper (Pompeii Antiquarium, inv. 11739). Some experienced craftsmen must
have been charged with the daily maintenance and occasional repairs required
by the growing quantities of municipal and official statuary. One or two work-
shops specializing in funerary sculpture of the traditional type — a type found
all over Campania — could have supplied the needs of the town in this context.

But most of the major commissions, if not imported as finished works from
Rome or Greece, would have been executed by the workshops based at Puteoli,
where a steadily growing body of evidence attests the considerable activities of

marble workers and sculptors.

Marble head of a woman from

a statue
Naples Museum

107
THE OTHER ARTS

In a society that made no between fine arts and craftsmanship, the

distinction
"minor arts" were bound to play an important role. Although some of the pieces

here exhibited were heirlooms or luxury pieces imported from other parts of
the Roman world, the majority were made Campania, which is known
locally in

to have been an important center for the production of metalwork and glass,
and which was almost certainly largely self-supporting in such things as jewelry,
the engraving of seals and gems, stuccowork, and mosaic.
In the second and first cenuiries B.C. the long-established Campanian bronze
industry, centered on Capua but with workshops probably in many of the neigh-
boring towns, was exporting all over the Roman world, and although by the
first century a.d. it was losing ground to new centers established in northern

Italy, Gaul, and probably elsewhere in the provinces, in a.d. 79 it was still a

flourishing industry. Its products await detailed study, but it is clear that they

went in very large quantities to the European market, both in the provinces and
beyond the frontiers. Although it was famed particularly for its large wine
vessels (situlae) and other fine bronze tableware, it was certainly producing
bronzework of many other kinds, including household furniture of all sorts,
heating and lighting equipment, small-scale statuary, and statuettes. Several
Pompeian families had connections with the Capuan industry, among them the
Hordionii and the Nigidii, one of whom, M. Nigidius Vaccula, presented a
large bronze brazier to the Stabian Baths and a bronze bench to the Forum
"Imagines maiorum,"
Baths. Small workshops established in the town to undertake repairs may also
House of the Menander
have produced some of the simpler domestic utensils. Two graffiti mention
coppersmiths {fabri aerarii: CIL iv, 3702, and 4256) and a bronze strainer found
at Boscoreale is inscribed pertudit Potnpeis Felicio ("pierced by Felicio at Pom-
peii"). In 1899 a partially excavated site outside the Vesuvius Gate produced

quantities of scrap bronze, two plaster models of heads, a statuette of an ephebe

brought in for repair, and a number of little bronze-workers' anvils. The copper-
smith seen at work in one relief (no. 276) was evidently producing fresh work as
well as undertaking repairs, and he was surely resident in Pompeii. Priscus the
engraver (caelator) who greeted Campanus the gem-cutter in a graffito on the
wall of the Palaestra (Priscus caelator Campano gemmario fel[iciter]) (CIL rv,
Suppl. 8502) could have worked either in bronze or in silver.

The Roman passion for collecting silver plate was first fostered by the enor-

mous wealth of treasure brought back by the victorious generals of the early

second century B.C. from the Greek cities of southern Italy and from Greece it-

self and the East. At first it was available only to the very rich, who bought the
booty sold at public auction, but silversmiths were soon established in Rome,
producing plate in ever-increasing quantities, until by A.D. 79 we find even quite
modest households possessing one or two pieces. Sets of eating silver [argentum
escarium) and drinking silver [argentum potorium), together with one or two
show pieces that were treasured as family heirlooms, were proudly displayed on
special tables, such as that painted in loving detail on the precinct wall of the
tomb of the young aedile C. Vestorius Priscus outside the Vesuvius Gate at
Pompeii (see illustration).

Individual pieces from such services had been found in Pompeian houses
ever since the excavation began, but a great many of the larger collections had
doubtless been recovered after the eruption, and it was not until 1895 that a

complete set of silver plate, 109 pieces in all, was found in a villa rustica at
Boscoreale, two miles northwest of Pompeii. It had been deposited in a vat in

the wine-press room (see plan, page 59), togedier with gold jewelry and over

108
 Tombs outside the Nuceria Gate

one thousand gold coins, and beside it lay the skeleton of a woman. The collec-
tion had been made very largely in the early years of the first century a.d., but
it also included a dish over three hundred years old and there were
some later
purchases. As well as drinking cups and eating dishes there were also some dis-
play pieces and toilet mirrors.
In 1930 this hoard was matched by the discovery of a similar treasure in an
underground room of the House of the Menander (see plan, page 48), where it
had been stored for safekeeping in a large wooden chest, reinforced with bronze,
each piece carefully wrapped in a cloth and neatly arranged in series. It com-
prised 118 pieces, weighing a total of just under 53 pounds (24 kilograms).
Alongside it was found the family jewelry, which included a bulla and a number
of gold and silver coins, carefully chosen (as is customary in such stores of
reserve coinage) from issues that, because of their gold or silver content, were
secure against the inflation that was already steadily eroding the value of ordin-
Mosaic embiema of a Nilotic- ary contemporary coinage. Most of the vessels were probably produced by the
landscape (House of the Menander)
workshops in Rome, but there were silversmiths from southern Italy and Greece
resident in Neapolis and Puteoli who could as easily have supplied the more
strongly Hellenistic forms. The carefully executed repairs made to some of the
silverware found would certainly have been done locally.

Goldsmiths and gem-cutters were among the small craftsmen of Pompeii. The
aurifices declared themselves as supporters of an electoral candidate, and Cam-
panus, a gemmarius, is hailed by the metal-engraver {caelator) Priscus. A dealer
or cutter of gemstones, Pinarius Cerialis, lived in a house ( 1 1 1, 4b) on the Via
dell'Abbondanza, in which were found some engravingand a box con-tools

taining 114 cut and partially worked and agates.

carnelians, sardonyx, amethysts,

Most of the fine glass found in Pompeii probably came from Puteoli, where
glassblowing was a major industry. No glass furnaces have yet been found at

Pompeii itself, but these would in any case have tended to be located outside the
residential districts in areas as yet only very summarily explored. There are,
moreover, several rather simple forms — a particular type of plain beaker, for
example, and a special form of squat, handled wine jug {askos) - that appear to
be peculiar to Pompeii. It seems likely that, like jobbing bronze-workers, small
Display of silver plate painted on
potters, and lamp-makers, there were also glass-workers catering for the simple
the wall of the tomb of Vestorius Priscus
everyday needs of the town.
Among the other craftsmen active at Pompeii, there were a great many paint-
ers, mosaicists, and stuccoists. The almost total absence of any reference to them

in the inscriptions and in the graffiti does, however, suggest that, as at many
other periods of history, such men tended to travel wherever their skills were
required, and that most of them were based elsewhere in Campania. There was
also ameasure of centralized workshop production for some of the finest pieces,
such as the mosaic emblemata that constituted the highly prized centerpieces of
many of the best pavements (as in the House of the Menander; see illustration)
and that were made in specially transportable trays. The same would have ap-
plied to the painted pinakes that, being on wood, have almost all perished. In

both cases one thinks naturally of Neapolis, that great local center of conserva-
tive Greek culture, the Roman-period archaeology of which is probably lost
to us forever.

109
7
HERCULANEUM

Herculaneum lay on the coast, on a spur projecting from the foot of Vesuvius,
about five miles east of Neapolis (Naples) and ten miles west of Pompeii. The
ancient coastline is today so overlaid by later deposits that it calls for a strong
effort of the imagination to picture Herculaneum as it is described by the first-

century-B.C. historian Sisenna, namely as a small city set on a headland between

two inlets that served as harbors. Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to the excel-
lence of these harbors, and Strabo refers to it as an unusually healthy place.
To judge from the few references in ancient literature (and archaeology has as
yet barely touched the earlier levels) its early history was very similar to that of
Pompeii. Founded probably as a fortified Greek trading post, it passed with
Pompeii under Samnite During the Social War it was occupied by Sulla's
rule.

troops in 89 B.C., but there is no evidence to indicate that, like Pompeii, it was
refounded as a Roman colony. Instead, at about this time it seems to have ac-
quired the status of a municipality [municipium), a status that involved the
establishment of municipal institutions closely akin to those of a colonia, but
without any expropriations of property or the introduction of fresh citizens from
outside. Though badly damaged in the earthquake of a.d. 62., Herculaneum
made a more rapid recovery than Pompeii. Within the area excavated much is
rebuilt or redecorated, but there is little unfinished work. In broad essentials the
two cities continued to have much in common, enough certainly to justify the
use of exhibits from Herculaneum wherever, for one reason or another, com-
parable material is not available from Pompeii.
There were, however, also significant differences, of which two in particular
deserve mention here. One is that whereas Pompeii, thanks to its position at the
mouth of the river Sarno, became a prosperous local port and market town,
Herculaneum developed on more exclusively residential lines. Some local com-
merce it did of course have: the main coast road ran straight across the town,
of which it was one of the principal transverse streets, and the harbor was the
natural outlet for the vineyards of the southern slopes of Vesuvius. But one has
only to walk through the streets of the excavated quarter to sense the difference
of atmosphere: almost exclusively residential, with shops and bars grouped
along two of the main streets and very little trace of local industry. Herculan-
eum's role was that of a miniature Brighton, profiting from its salubrious cli-
mate and from the proximity of many wealthy villas. One of these, the Villa of
the Papyri, the property of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of
Caesar, lay just outside the west gate. Here, eighteenth-century tunneling
brought to light a unique series of late Hellenistic bronze sculptures and a li-

brary of more than a thousand papyrus most of them — such are the ironies
rolls,

of archaeological survival — the works of minor Epicurean philosophers. The

area of the city so far uncovered, running southward from the main cross-street
toward the southeastern part of the sea frontage of the promontory, is laid out
on a street grid of Greek type. Among the public buildings excavated, or ex-
plored by tunneled galleries in the eighteenth-century manner, are a small but
richly adorned theater; a building opening off the main street that may or may
not prove to have been a basilica; two public bath buildings, one within the
town and akin to the Stabian baths and a more modern building outside the
walls; and on the east side of the town a large palaestra similar to that near the
Amphitheater at Pompeii. Still to be located, but known from inscriptions, are
a market building (macellum), a temple of Isis, and a temple of Magna Mater,
the predecessor of which had been destroyed by the earthquake and was restored
in A.D. 76 through the bounty of the emperor Vespasian.

no
HerciiLmeum

A second and to ourselves very important distinction between Pompeii and

Herculaneum is the very different manner in which they were hit by the final

catastrophe, a circumstance that has materially affected the nature and condition
of the surviving remains. Whereas Pompeii was slowly but inexorably engulfed
by layer upon layer of airborne, sulphurous debris, at Herculaneum the destruc-
tion took place in two sharply distinguishable stages. The initial bombardment
of incandescent pebbles and rocks resulting from the first explosion may well
have been more intense than at Pompeii; it will be recalled (see page 37) that a
few hours was already unable to put ashore here and had to
later Pliny the Elder

coast down to Stabiae. But there was not much ash, and most of the inhabitants
seem to have been able to make good their escape up the road to Naples. Rela-
tively few bodies have been found within the city. Then came the second stage,
in which the town was engulfed by a horrendous avalanche of liquid mud,

swept down the mountainside by the torrential rains that frequently accompany
an eruption, and channeled toward Herculaneum by the valleys of which the
city's two harbors were the mouths. A wall of mud flooded through the streets

and into the houses, bringing down the roofs of some and filling up others.
When the area became once more accessible, the coasriine had changed beyond
all recognition. The city lay buried beneath a mande of deposit in places as

much as sixty-five feet deep, which was rapidly hardening into the solid rock

through which well-diggers in the early eighteenth century chanced upon the

Roman theater, and upon which the houses of the modern Resina now stand.
This sequence of events had several important consequences. One is that
whatever was not destroyed by the first impact of fire and mud was securely
sealed against intrusion until modern times. At Pompeii few of the public
all

buildings or the wealthier houses escaped the post-eruption attentions of their

owners or of looters. They could be located because many of the taller land-
marks were still visible, and although it was dangerous work (and some of the
bodies found are certainly those of looters rather than of eruption victims), there
were rich prizes to be won. The Forum area was stripped of its bronze statuary
and much of its marble and fine building stone, and private houses were ran-
sacked for their treasure chests and other valuables. At Herculaneum all that
was not removed during the first few hours of the eruption was preserved for
posterity. Sadly, the eighteenth-century treasure hunters destroyed far more
than they recovered, but even so we have a unique body of public statuary
found as and where it was used in antiquity. Another consequence was the pre-
servation not merely of the impressions of organic objects, but also in many
cases of the actual carbonized remains of the objects themselves, such things as
furnishings and woodwork, doors and screens, foodstuffs, or the papyrus rolls

referred to above. Such objects are, alas, too fragile to travel, but they have
added very materially to our knowledge of many aspects of daily life in antiquity,
which in normal circumstances are irrevocably lost.

Ill
'1