by Mary Beard
This was the pattern at Pompeii too. The traces are, at first sight, more fleeting than we might hope – whether because, like the Temple of Venus, these temples were in the middle of building works when the eruption came, or because their precious fixtures and fittings made them an obvious target for looters after the eruption (the archaeological remains, after all, being much the same in each case). Alternatively, of course, their loyal caretakers may have removed some of the more precious objects as they fled the eruption.
But all kinds of telling pieces of evidence do survive. We have already seen the piece of booty from the capture of Corinth in 146 BCE that was put on show in or near the Temple of Apollo. This same temple also displayed a magnificent pair of bronze statues, of Apollo and Diana (only her head now survives) in its piazza, as well as a replica of the strange omphalos (that is the ‘navel of the earth’) which was one of the sacred symbols of Apollo’s famous shrine at Delphi – and another example here of Pompeii’s wide cultural reach. We even get a hint of the security systems that these temples might use. Still visible along the front façade of the Temple of Fortuna Augusta are the remains of metal railings, which could close the building off (Ill. 103). One leading expert on Pompeii once assured me that these had been a nineteenth-century addition, designed to stop tourists climbing on the monument. That is just what they look like. But they were actually intended to keep ancient Pompeians out.
Even some of the town’s most ruined monuments can give us more information on temple life and organisation than we would suspect at first sight, tantalising glimpses of their cult statues and the other riches which once were there, and sometimes unexpected stories of what was going on in Pompeii in 79. A good case in point is the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, which at least from the arrival of the Roman colonists housed the trio of deities which defined Pompeii as a Roman town. It is frankly not much to look at now (Ill. 104). Its steps and some sadly truncated columns remain at the front. On top of the podium, the inner room of the temple is still clearly visible, and within it the scant remains of what was once a two-storey internal colonnade. At the far end are the niches which would have displayed the statues of the three gods. In its present state, it is grim and functional. But we get a vivid ancient view of it in one of the small friezes in the House of Caecilius Jucundus (Ill. 5). Although the intention of this sculpture was to demonstrate the damage done by the earthquake (damage from which this temple perhaps never recovered), it also offers us a nice – maybe slightly imaginative – snapshot of the building in its original setting, complete with some of its decoration. The altar stands outside on a platform set into the steps of the temple. On either side of the steps we find an equestrian statue, while behind the altar, by leaving out two of the six columns, the sculptor has been able to show us the doors leading into the inner room and, above, a garland or wreath decorating the pediment.
We have other clues about the building’s original appearance and its use. First, the podium on which the temple stands is not solid. It is hollow, and contains a basement room, which you could reach either via some stairs from inside the temple, or through a door at pavement level on the east side. Light was brought into this basement by shafts set into the floor above. This fact alone suggests that the room had a practical use. For why provide lighting if no one was likely ever to go into it? One idea is that it was intended as a store for the surplus dedications from upstairs: whenever the temple caretaker felt that a clearout was needed, he would not throw the pious offerings out, but carefully stash them away in the basement. Another is that it was the city council’s treasury or bank vault, just as the treasury at Rome itself was in a temple cellar. Either is possible. But sadly there is no indication that anything was in there at the time of the eruption apart from some assorted pieces of sculpted marble.
103. This nineteenth century reconstruction of the Temple of Fortuna Augusta rightly imagines the religious rituals taking place outside the temple and in its portico. The artist has included the metal railings (though not at a height to keep a vandal out) and has brightened up the exterior with festoons. But the crowd of worshippers in front seem implausibly flamboyant.
104. The now rather desolate ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. How dilapidated this end of the Forum was at the time of the eruption is still disputed.
There are also clear signs that it was once much more richly decorated than it appears today. The floor was inlaid with geometric patterns of marble (so-called opus sectile) and the walls of the inner room were brightly painted. These paintings are now faded almost beyond recognition, but they were clearly visible when the building was first excavated in the early nineteenth century and when this temple was one of the star attractions of the site. In fact it was this spot that the poet Shelley chose for his picnic when he visited Pompeii in December 1818. Even if it was originally rather dark – for there is no obvious source of light except the main doorway – the inner room, with colonnade, statues, rich fittings and offerings, must have been an impressive sight. At more than 10 by 15 metres, and with the doors left open so you could see what you were doing, it would have been a place for the local council to meet.
That is, if there was not too much clutter and bric-a-brac getting in the way. The nineteenth-century excavators found a few inscriptions recording dedications for vows fulfilled (including one for the ‘well-being’ of the emperor Caligula), and the base of a statue put up in honour of a man, Spurius Turranius Proculus Gellianus, who had held various posts in Rome and the town of Lavinium. What his connection with Pompeii was, and quite why he was given a statue in this particular place of honour (if this was its original location), we have no idea. The excavators also turned up, in and around the temple, a good haul of bits and pieces of sculpture. As William Gell describes it in the 1830s, giving a nice flavour of the curious assemblage: ‘Many fingers of bronze were discovered ... a group representing an old man in a Phrygian cap taking a child by the hand, half a foot high; a woman carrying her infant ... a hand, a finger, and part of a foot, in marble; two feet with sandals; an arm, and many other colossal fragments.’
Standing out amongst all this was a colossal marble torso, which could only have come from the statue of a god, and two striking heads: that colossal bearded marble head of Jupiter himself (Ill. 99), and a smaller female head (Juno or Minerva). These heads have often been thought to be all that is left of the cult statues of the three deities. If so they must have been what we now call ‘acrolithic’ sculptures (literally ‘stone extremities’). This was a favourite ancient method of making huge images that would have been too big, heavy and costly to make out of solid marble, and much, much too costly to make entirely out of bronze. It involved constructing a frame out of wood or metal, covering most of the frame with rich clothing, and using marble just to stand in for the skin of hands, feet and faces. This partly explains why museums of ancient sculpture are now rather over-provided with large marble extremities. It is not only because they break off easily (which they do). It is because hands, feet and heads were often all that was made in marble in the first place.
But a more careful look at these remains produces a strange picture of the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva at the time of the eruption. For a start the male head and colossal torso cannot possibly belong together. Then there is the puzzle of why these parts of the precious cult images were found just lying around. Perhaps it was the result of an inefficient rescue job as the volcano exploded, or of hurried looting later. But if, as seems more likely in this case, the general disarray in the temple was caused by restoration works in progress (after one or more earthquakes) why was such little care taken with the old statues? Were the authorities really happy that parts of their venerable old images were just scattered on the temple floor? Most curious of all, on the back of the marble torso there is another sculpture in relief, showing three small figures. The marble has obviously been reused. This heroic male chest has, recently we would guess, been carved ou
t of an earlier relief sculpture. All these factors, combined with the haul of other very fragmentary pieces, have made some archaeologists think that in 79 the building was not merely being restored, but it was actually temporarily decommissioned as a temple and was being used as a sculpture depository, workshop and site office. No need to worry about the careless treatment of the old cult statues. What was found here, impressive as some pieces are, were just the spare fragments in the depository.
We cannot now know for sure. But there are intriguing consequences for the little Temple of Aesculapius, and a whole web of possible stories follow. That temple contained three terracotta statues: a full length pair, male and female, plus an instantly recognisable and crudely crafted bust of Minerva. For Winckelmann the male figure was Aesculapius (Ill. 105), which made the female Hygeia, his daughter and another healing deity – with Minerva thrown in for good measure. But suppose, for a moment, that the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva really was out of commission at the time of the eruption. Surely the Pompeians would have wanted to lodge its cult images somewhere safe. This trio found in the small temple would make an equally plausible Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. What is against them being those very statues from the Forum, temporarily lodging in the temple down the road?
105. One of the statues found in the Temple of Jupiter Meilichios: a terracotta image of a god who could equally well be Aesculapius or Jupiter.
Well, they are not very grand, and they are made of terracotta not marble. Minerva is only a bust. But in religion, sacred and showy are not always synonymous. Sometimes the most humble objects have the most religious power. Maybe – and it is only maybe – we have been looking in the wrong place for that Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.
Celebrating the gods: in public and private
Carved into an altar also found in the Pompeian Forum is a scene of that most iconic of ancient rituals: animal sacrifice. We see it here in its classic guise, as it was described by Roman writers and plastered across the Roman world in thousands of images from coins to triumphal arches. It repays a closer look. For there are details and distinctions that do not immediately strike the modern eye. In the centre is a tripod, serving here as a portable altar. Next to it, the sacrificer, whether a priest or a political official (for both conducted sacrifices on behalf of their community), is reciting the prayer, while pouring an offering of wine and incense. He is wearing a toga, but has pulled part of the material over his head, as was the rule when sacrificing. A musician in the background plays the double pipes, while behind him some attendants (including a child) carry more equipment, including just the kind of shaped bowls and jugs that you can now see filling the cases of the Naples Museum. On the other side of the tripod, the splendid bull is being led to the scene, by three slaves. These are specially dressed for the killing that they will shortly carry out, naked to the waist. One of them is holding an axe ready for the slaughter.
106. The sacrifice of a bull. This altar from the Forum shows – as is usual in Roman art – the preliminaries to the death of the animal, not the kill itself. The social and political hierarchies are made clearly visible, in the contrast between the semi-naked slaves managing the animal and the heavily-draped elite priest, to the left, reciting the prayer.
This is, of course, a very idealised image of a sacrifice. It is the equivalent of a commemorative group photograph or rather – given that it was sculpted on the front of a marble altar where sacrifice would actually have taken place – it offered to the participants in the ritual a perfect image of what they were doing. The bull is not only very well behaved, he is also very large. It has been estimated that an animal this size (assuming the human participants were of average height) would have carried some 500 kilos of meat on him. My guess is that real-life sacrifice was usually a less well-ordered occasion, and that the animals were smaller, and less expensive. But even so we can get a sense here of the occasion itself: the noise, the music, the imminent spilling of blood. We see too some of the hierarchical and social conventions of the ritual. The official sacrificer himself stands at the altar, heavily clothed. He speaks the ritual words but he is not going to labour at the kill nor bloody his hands. That dirty work is to be done by slaves, bared for the task. Even (or especially) at ritual moments the divisions of the Roman social order were clearly marked.
What was sacrifice for? It was, in part, an offering to the god. When the animal had been killed its meat was divided. Some of it was consumed by the human participants, some of it was sold off, but some was burnt on the altar – its savour wafting up to heaven as a gift to the gods. It could also provide a way of finding out the divine will. After the kill, experts (haruspices) would inspect the entrails of the dead animal for signs from the gods. When Julius Caesar, for example, was sacrificing just before his assassination, the story was that the animal was found to have no heart. A bad omen needless to say – though sceptical Romans pointed out that it was impossible for an animal to live with no heart.
But sacrifice also offered a model of how the world was ordered on a much grander scale. The repeated slaughter of animals by humans to gods was an emblem of the hierarchy of the cosmos, with humans in the middle between the beasts on the one hand and the divine on the other. And the sharing of the meat after the sacrifice, and the communal banqueting that sometimes went with it, reaffirmed the human community and its own internal hierarchies. (There were very few civic handouts in the Roman world that did not reassert social rank by giving more to the rich than the poor – an unsettling reversal of our own assumption that more should go to the needy.) Sacrifice was the closest thing the Roman world had to a creed – a creed in action. To reject sacrifice, as the Christians did, was tantamount to rejecting traditional Roman religion. Even vegetarianism was more than a moral or lifestyle choice. By not participating in the consumption of meat, vegetarians put themselves dangerously at odds with the social and cosmic order represented by sacrifice.
We would love to know more of the practical details of sacrifice at Pompeii. How was it funded? How many people actually witnessed it? Did the duoviri have haruspices on their staff, as is mentioned in the Spanish charter? How many shared in the consumption of the meat, and where did that happen? In Rome on some occasions tables were set up in the Forum. Could that have been done in Pompeii as well? How much of the meat was sold off through the butchers? And was it really the case, as some modern historians have claimed, that all meat ever consumed had been part of a sacrifice? I am not convinced. But if the building known as the macellum (‘market’) was primarily a meat market, then at least it was conveniently close to the main temples of the town.
We would also like to know more about when, and how often, sacrifice was performed. A sacrifice might be offered to a god in payment of a vow or to appease the gods after some disaster. It might mark major events or anniversaries: the accession of an emperor, the anniversary of a temple’s foundation, the inauguration of new civic officials or a god’s special festival. But exactly how often the distinctive, full-blown animal slaughter took place – rather than the cheaper ‘shorthand’ of wine, incense and grain, thrown onto the flames of an altar – we can only guess.
Interestingly the sculptor who showed the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva tottering in the earthquake depicted a sacrifice in progress right next door to it (Ill. 5). It has proved very hard to match up this large and distinctive altar, apparently decorated with the sculpture of a pig, to any monument anywhere in the Forum. But there is no need to read this literally, and certainly no need to suppose that a sacrifice had been in full swing at the very moment of the tremor. Much more likely the sculptor was attempting to capture the kinds of activities that symbolised the life of the town at the moment of its interruption. In the Forum, next to the temple, what else but a large bull being led to slaughter by a man naked to the waist, carrying an axe?
Ancient religious festivals could also be fun. We have very little idea how the participants, in Pompeii or anywhere else, reacted t
o the slaughter of the sacrificial animals. The poet Horace had some sentimental reflections on the young goat he intended to sacrifice (‘his head, swollen with horns, / newly grown, gives promise of love and battles; / in vain ...’). But Horace was unlikely to have been typical. And in any case the feasting which followed must surely have been a jolly and celebratory event. Many other ways of honouring the gods involved pleasure for their human worshippers too. We have already looked at shows, theatre and pantomime as part of Pompeian ‘Fun and Games’. Very often these were staged as part of a festival with a religious core. Drama in Italy, no less than in Greece, had its roots in religious celebrations. Many early ‘theatres’ were improvised from the steps of temples, the gods overseeing the performance from within. At Pompeii the Large Theatre is directly linked, by a monumental staircase, to the Triangular Forum and its Temple of Minerva and Hercules – a connection which points to the religious aspect of drama here too.