Pompeii

by Mary Beard

  56. A little cupid stands at the doorway as Paris and Helen decide to elope, so launching the Trojan War. But this painting from the House of Jason is more loaded than it might seem at first sight. For here Paris is sitting down as if taking the female role, while Helen stands – and the architectural background is reminiscent of Pompeii itself, suggesting that the myth of adultery, elopement and domestic disruption was relevant to ‘real life’ too.

  An unsettling undertone can be detected in another series of paintings, which also features Helen’s adultery with Paris. Three panels decorate a small room in the House of Jason, so called after a painting of the Greek hero Jason in another room. Each one depicts a moment of calm before tragedy strikes: Medea watches her children play, before killing them, to take revenge on the husband who has abandoned her; Phaedra talks to her nurse before killing herself in unrequited love for her stepson Hippolytus, accusing the innocent young man of incest in the process; while Helen entertains Paris at her marital home before their elopement – which is already signalled by the little cupid at the door (Ill. 56).

  As with the series in the House of the Tragic Poet, visual rhymes between the paintings prompt the viewer to compare and contrast the different versions of domestic disaster on show. For example, both Medea and Phaedra are seated, as you would expect of a respectable Roman matron; but in the other scene it is Helen who stands, while her effeminate ‘Oriental’ lover takes the women’s place. But the architectural background adds a disturbing dimension. Its similiarity in each scene does not just bind the three stories together; the style of the architecture and those big heavy doors bear more than a passing resemblance to the style of upmarket domestic architecture in Pompeii itself. It is almost as if the paintings have a point to make about the relevance of the myth to contemporary Roman life, in exposing the tragic dysfunction – from adultery to infanticide – that can creep up on any family, anywhere.

  A room with a view?

  The decoration of Pompeian houses has kept scholars busy for centuries, figuring out the chronology, the aesthetic and functional choices made, the meaning of the myths on the walls. Fascinating details continue to be discovered on everything from the logic of the designs to the technical procedures of the painters who carried them out (the House of the Painters at Work only began to be unearthed in the late 1980s, and the excavations are still incomplete). But there is an important and obvious point about the domestic style of this Roman town which often gets lost among the detail.

  To judge from their plans and the surviving remains, many if not most Pompeian houses would count as claustrophobic places. Only a few of the very richest exploited any kind of view onto the outside world; the vast majority were inward-looking, with hardly more than a couple of tiny windows, to bring in light, onto the street outside. Most of the rooms were small and dark. And although some (the wealthiest again) were endowed with lofty atria and with extensive internal gardens and walkways, in many even the atrium must have felt relatively cramped (especially when filled with all those cupboards and looms) and the garden was not much more than pocket-handkerchief size, more a light-well than a place of pleasure and relaxation.

  Yet the painted decoration tells another story. The clever tricks of illusion suggest vistas that do extend beyond the confines of the house. In the most extravagant cases the internal walls seem to dissolve into a vision of competing perspectives, glimpses beyond the horizon and distant views. Around the borders of the tiny gardens, it must sometimes have been hard to decide at a glance where the domestic plants stopped and the wild landscapes or the river Nile started. Even in the more austere First Style, the viewer is confronted with the puzzle of what the wall they are looking at really consists in: is it painted plaster and stucco or the marble blocks that it pretends to be?

  This sense of something beyond the house is powerfully reinforced by the subjects of the wall paintings. Pompeii was, after all, a small town in southern Italy. Yet it is striking how far its cultural and visual reference points extend: across the Mediterranean, through the repertoire of ancient literature and art, to more exotic shores beyond. The imaginary world of decoration was not claustrophobic in the slightest. It embraced a galaxy of Greco-Roman myth and literature, from the Homeric epics on; it evoked and adapted the masterpieces of classical Greek painting; it exploited the cultural highlights of Egypt, from sphinxes and the goddess Isis, to satires and burlesques on its inhabitants and their weird customs. This is not, of course, all benign multiculturalism. The stereotyped pygmies chasing crocodiles or having riotous sex are portrayed with a mixture of aggressive humour and xenophobia. But the crucial fact is that these distant horizons were portrayed at all. On top of its mixed cultural roots in southern Italy, Pompeii was part of the global Roman empire – and it shows.

  It shows also in the other forms of ornament and bric-a-brac that have been found in these houses. The Indian statuette of Lakshmi (Ill. 11) may be an extreme and unusual case of cultural ‘reach’. But there is plenty of other material to suggest how outward-looking the world of the Pompeian house could be, at least for those with enough cash to spare for decoration. There are, for example, columns, floor tiles and tabletops made from expensive coloured marbles, imported from far-off parts of the empire – from the Peloponnese and the Greek islands, from Egypt, Numidia and Tunisia in Africa, from the coastlands of modern Turkey. Overall Greece, and its history, was in the forefront: a rough-and-ready terracotta statuette identified on its base as ‘Pittacus of Mytilene’ (a sixth-century BCE Greek sage and moralist) and found in the Estate of Julia Felix; an elegant mosaic with a group of Greek philosophers chatting under a tree with what looks like the Athenian Acropolis in the background, unearthed in a villa just outside the city; and of course the Alexander mosaic.

  One of the most striking discoveries is from the House of Julius Polybius. Packed away with other valuables at the time of the eruption, in the grand room with the painting of Dirce, was a fifth-century BCE Greek bronze jug. It had originally been, as an inscription on it declares, part of the prizes at the games held in honour of the goddess Hera at Argos, in the Peloponnese. After a chequered career in which it lost its handles (one suggestion is that it was used in a burial) and had a tap added, it ended up in Pompeii. Whether a prize purchase or a family heirloom, it was a nice reminder of a world and a history outside Pompeii.

  How the painters in the House of the Painters at Work had intended to fill the large, as yet blank, panels we shall never know. Nor can we know if they took to their heels in time to escape to safety. But there’s little doubt that their job had been to create, in paint, ‘a room with a view’.

  Plate 1. Mosaic of musicians, probably intended to depict a scene from a comedy by the fourthcentury Greek dramatist, Menander (pp. 253–4). It comes from the so called Villa of Cicero, just outside the Herculaneum Gate.

  Plate 2. The whole of the garden wall of one house carried this striking scene of Orpheus charming the animals with his music (p. 128).

  Plate 3. Is this the emperor Nero? This painting from a luxurious dining room in a building just outside Pompeii has been identified as Nero in the guise of the god Apollo. So, it has been suggested, this may have been where he stayed on his visit to Pompeii – if he really did visit Pompeii, that is (p. 50).

  Plate 4. Reconstruction of a typically colourful façade on the Via dell’Abbondanza. On the far right a crossroads shrine, then an open bar or shop counter. Election notices are painted on the next door house. Above, wooden overhangs shade the street and entrance ways.

  Plate 5. The carpenters display their craft in a procession. At the far left was a statue of their patron deity Minerva, though little more than her distinctive shield survives. In the middle is a model of their carpentry work (pp. 294–5).

  Plate 6. The gaming table, from a painting in the Bar on the Via di Mercurio (p. 230–31). The brightly coloured, casual clothing contrasts with our image of white toga-clad Romans.

  Plate 7. One of the
best preserved of the scenes of Forum life from the Estate of Julia Felix. A group of men consult a written notice that has been displayed across the bases of the statues in front of the colonnade (p. 76).

  Plate 8. This model of the House of the Tragic Poet shows a cross section of the house from the front door to the rear peristyle (see Fig. 6). In the central atrium, the well sinks down below the floor. The front part of the house has substantial rooms on the upper floor.

  Plate 9. Model of the peristyle garden of the House of the Tragic Poet. The back wall is painted with a garden scene. Under the colonnade is the famous painting of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (Ill. 55).

  Plate 10. Painting from the wall of the large dining room in the Chaste Lovers bakery (p. 218). At first sight an elegant scene, with comfortable cushions and drapes, and glass vessels set out neatly on the table. But the woman behind is already so drunk she can hardly stand up and just visible between the two reclining couples a man has passed out.

  Plate 11. Balancing act. A nineteenthcentury copy of a lost painting from the Bar on the Via di Mercurio. The tightropes are probably a figment of the modern artist’s imagination (pp. 231–2).

  Plate 12. A typical Roman conceit. This gaunt elderly figure was designed to hold all kinds of titbits in his tray, for the benefit of wealthy diners (p.220).

  Plate 13. Almost a ‘comic strip’ series of paintings on the wall of the Inn of Salvius (p. 230). The couple in the first scene used to be taken for two men until cleaning revealed that the left hand figure was female. Although the final scene is damaged, it is clear enough that that landlord is laying down the law: ‘If you want to fight, go outside.’

  Plate 14. Among the gathering of humans and gods that makes up the Villa of the Mysteries frieze (p. 132), a boy reads out from a scroll, watched over by a woman, perhaps his mother. Part of the visual ‘joke’ lies in that fact that we the viewers can neither see nor hear what he is reading out.

  Plate 15. The face of the defeated king Darius from the ‘Alexander Mosaic’ in the House of the Faun (p. 28).

  Plate 16. The baths offered a glimpse of luxury to the ordinary Pompeian bather. This nineteenth-century painting recreates the ambience of the Stabian Baths (p. 246).

  Plate 17. In the centre (tablinum) of the House of the Tragic Poet (Fig 6), this mosaic depicted a group of actors preparing to go on stage. The performance is to be a satyr play, hence the thespians are squeezing into goat costumes (pp. 254–5).

  Plate 18. A painting from the sacred precinct of Isis in a nineteenth-century copy. The Greek priestess Io, one of Zeus’ lovers, is received in Egypt by the goddess Isis. According to the myth, Io had been hounded by the jealous Hera, Zeus’ wife – who at one stage had turned her into a heifer, hence the horns. She is supported by a river god (p. 306).

  Plate 19. The garden wall of the House of the Ancient Hunt, named after this painting.

  Plate 20. A nineteenth-century version of a miniature frieze in the House of the Vettii, showing cupids as metal workers.

  Plate 21. Here, in the original paintwork from the House of the Vettii, the cupids have a chariot crash. (p. 126).

  Plate 22. A vista onto a foreign world. In this painting, pygmies get into all kinds of adventures. One is riding a crocodile, another is apparently being eaten by a hippo, though help is at hand.

  Plate 23. A composite image of the walls of the House of the Tragic Poet. On the lower left Helen departs on her journey to Troy. On the right, in another moment from the Trojan War, the prisoner Briseis is taken from Achilles to be given to Agamemnon (pp. 147–8).

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EARNING A LIVING: BAKER,

  BANKER AND GARUM MAKER

  Profit margins

  Just along the street from the House of Fabius Rufus, in that row of grand mansions with views over the sea, stood a house occupied in the last years of the city by Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, a man who had made his money in the fish sauce (garum) business. He was, in fact, the biggest garum dealer in town. To judge from the painted labels on garum jars found in the area, he and his associates and subsidiaries controlled almost a third of the local supply of this staple of Roman food preparation. The house itself is a vast sprawling affair, made by knocking together at least two earlier, separate properties. It is now in a sadly dilapidated state, partly as the result of the bombing in 1943, which hit this part of town very badly. But in its final form it clearly had not just two, but three atria, as well as one or more peristyles (one with an ornamental fishpond), plus a bath suite on a lower floor.

  We know that it was owned by Umbricius Scaurus because the mosaic decoration on the floor of the third atrium once featured at each of its four corners a jar for fish sauce (Ill. 57). Now removed for safe-keeping, these were made out of white tesserae on a black background, and each one carried an inscription referring to different varieties of fish sauce sold by Umbricius Scaurus: ‘Scaurus’ best garum, mackerel-based, from Scaurus’ manufactory’, ‘Best fish sauce’, ‘Scaurus’ best garum, mackerel-based’, ‘Fish sauce, grade one, from Scaurus’ manufactory’. Unless we are to imagine that some satisfied customer chose to decorate his atrium floor with versions of his favourite sauce jars, then this must be the house of Scaurus himself. Here interior decoration was a form of self-advertisement and product promotion.

  57. In the atrium of the House of Umbricius Scaurus, four jars of fish sauce in mosaic proclaim the family’s source of wealth. Here the jar proclaims ‘Best fish sauce’ – in Latin ‘Liqua(minis) flos’, literally ‘Flower of liquamen’. Liquamen was a variety of the (to us) better known garum.

  Umbricius Scaurus was not the only resident of Pompeii explicitly to celebrate his business success on the floor of his house. At one of the main street entrances of another huge property, the visitor was greeted by a slogan picked out in mosaic: ‘Welcome, profit!’ The sheer size of this house is enough to suggest that the wish had been amply fulfilled. But elsewhere such words must have been more an expression of vain hope. On the atrium floor of a tiny house, we can still see the catchphrase ‘Profit is pleasure’. There is little sign here that this went beyond wishful thinking.

  The Roman economy

  Historians have argued for generations about the economic life of the Roman empire, about its trades and industries, its financial institutions, credit systems and profit margins. On the one hand, are those who see the ancient economy in very modern terms. The Roman empire was effectively a vast single market. There were fortunes to be made from the demand for goods and services, which also drove up productivity and stimulated trade to levels never seen before. A favourite illustration of this comes – unlikely as it may seem – from deep in the Greenland ice-cap, where it is still possible to find the residue of the pollution from Roman metal-working, not equalled again until the Industrial Revolution. Underwater archaeology tells much the same story. Many more shipwrecks have been discovered at the bottom of the Mediterranean, from between the second century BCE and the second century CE, than from any period until the sixteenth century. This is not an indication of the poor quality of either boat-building or seamanship in the Roman period, but of the high volume of sea-borne traffic.

  On the other hand, there are those who argue that Roman economic life was utterly different from our own, in fact decidedly ‘primitive’. Wealth combined with social prestige remained rooted in the land and the main aim of any community was to feed itself, not to exploit its resources for profit or investment. Long-distance transport of goods was risky by sea (witness all those shipwrecks) and prohibitively expensive by land. Trade was only a very thin icing on the economic cake, small-scale and not particularly respectable. Inscriptions on mosaic floors may celebrate healthy profit margins, but there are few Roman authors, elite class that they are, with a good word to say for trade or traders. By and large, trade was vulgar and traders untrustworthy. In fact, from the end of the third century BCE, the highest echelons of Roman society, senators and their sons, were expressly forbidden
from owning ‘ocean-going ships’, defined as those that would hold 300 amphorae or more.

  Besides, Rome developed none of the financial institutions needed to support a sophisticated economy. There was limited ‘banking’, as we shall see, in Pompeii. It is not even clear if there were such things as credit notes, or if you wheeled around a load of coins in a wheelbarrow to make large purchases, such as houses. And, while Roman metal-working may have polluted Greenland, there is very little trace of the kind of technological innovation that went hand in hand with the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. The biggest invention of the Roman period was probably the water-mill, and that – so this side of the argument goes –is not saying very much. But why bother with new technologies, when you have vast quantities of slave power to stoke the fires, man the levers or turn the wheels?

  Country life and country produce

  Most historians now come down judiciously somewhere between these two extremes. And Pompeii itself has features of both the ‘primitive’ and the ‘modern’ model of the economy. It is almost certain that the basis of most wealth in the city was the land in the surrounding area, and that the families which owned the largest houses there would also have had other properties and substantial holdings in the region round about. ‘Pompeii’ as an economic and political unit would have consisted of the urban centre plus its hinterland. The area beyond the city itself probably covered some 200 square kilometres – or, at least, that is a good, if slightly generous, guess, since we have no hard evidence at all where the boundaries lay between what counted as Pompeian land and that of neighbouring towns. It has not been very thoroughly explored by archaeologists, most of their interest being concentrated on the town. In fact, locating villas, farmsteads and other rural settlements under several metres of volcanic debris has been chancy.