by Mary Beard
112. Street of tombs. This engraving captures the approach to the city for the early visitors. Entering the city by the Herculaneum Gate, they came face to face with the monuments of death. On the right, just visible is the semi-circular seat which formed the memorial to the priestess Mamia – celebrated by Goethe in his account of a visit to Pompeii.
Quarrels beyond the grave
It was not only the inequalities of Pompeian life that left their permanent mark in the cemeteries outside the town. Occasionally the quarrels and disputes of the living city extended beyond the grave. In fact, one of the most vivid glimpses of the rough realities of ancient society, a sad story of friendship made and lost, comes from a large tomb outside the Nuceria Gate, located near the monument of Eumachia. It is the memorial of an ex-slave, Publius Vesonius Phileros, who built it well in advance, during his own lifetime, for himself and for two others to share. It is a nice indication of the fluidity of relationships and affections, cutting across the formal hierarchies of Pompeian society. For Phileros built a tomb to include also the remains of his one time owner, a woman named Vesonia, and his ‘friend’, a free-born man by the name of Marcus Orfellius Faustus. Full-length statues of all three of them – sadly missing their heads – still look down at the passers-by from a niche on the upper storey of the façade.
113. The tomb of Publius Vesonius Phileros and his one-time friends. The circumstances remain a mystery, but after this tomb was commissioned, the two men fell out – and ended up in litigation (as the added plaque on the façade explains). What had been intended as a monument to friendship became a 2000-year memorial to a quarrel.
Phileros made two adjustments to the monument after it had been completed. He must have become an Augustalis late in life, and was proud enough of that status to have added the word to the plaque that had already been inscribed with the names of the threesome. There was not much space left, so ‘Augustalis’ appears in smaller letters. The other adjustment involved adding an additional plaque to explain that he had since fallen out with the erstwhile friend, Faustus. It runs:
Stranger, stop a little while if it isn’t too much trouble and learn what to avoid. This man that I had hoped was my friend – it was he who produced accusers against me and started a court case. I thank the gods and my innocence that I was freed from all this trouble. May neither the household gods nor the gods below receive the man who lied about our affairs.
The circumstances remain baffling. Why, for example, add this extra notice, rather than simply remove the other man’s name from the first plaque and get rid of his statue? And can we be quite sure that the writer was Phileros? Is it not possible that the injured party was not Phileros but Faustus, who attached this notice to the monument built by his one-time friend? But whatever the exact details, it is a rare story of a friendship between two ordinary Pompeians – which ended not just in recriminations, but in the local courts.
Even the memorials to the dead can throw precious light on the Life of a Roman Town.
MAKING A VISIT
A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints. There are only three pieces of essential equipment: a map of the site (you can get one at the main entrance at the Marine Gate), a bottle of water (a small one is fine, as you can replenish it at one of the many water fountains) and a comfortable pair of sandals or shoes (the streets are rough and a death-trap for any kind of high-heel).
There are three public entrances to the site. The most convenient route is to come by the local Circumvesuviana train, running between Naples and Sorrento, getting off at the station Pompei scavi – Villa dei Misteri. You then enter the site by the main entrance, running the gauntlet of guides and souvenir sellers. Make sure you take some official photo ID (passport, drivers’ licence or bona fide student card) if you want to claim free or reduced entrance to the site. And check the times of the returning trains when you arrive. They run regularly, but (despite a decent, traditional Italian station bar) waiting even half an hour seems a lot longer when you’ve finished a day on the site.
You can also get into the site by the Amphitheatre or at the Piazza Esedra between the Amphitheatre and the Marine Gate. But, for these entrances, you should travel by a different branch of the Circumvesuviana (going towards Poggiomarino) getting off at Pompei santuario, or by the main national (FS) line running north–south, getting off at the Pompei station. Unless you have strong reasons to opt for the others, the Pompei scavi route is the best option, and has the best bookshop.
You can leave the site (but not enter or re-enter) at the Villa of the Mysteries (below no. 10).
There is a large self-service restaurant and bar near the Forum, where you will find the only lavatories in the main area of the site (free, but you will be much more welcome if you leave 50 cents).
The most enjoyable part of any visit is simply to walk through the streets of the town. Don’t spend too much time getting hot in the Forum, which you reach soon after the Marine Gate. There are better things to come. One excellent plan is to walk along the Via dell’Abbondanza – taking in the façades, the bars, the shops and the changing character of the street as you go along. Keep your eyes open for the traffic calming measures, the ways the flow of water is blocked, the holes in the side of the pavement for tying up the animals, etc. And go into any house you find open. Also try to head down any side street where you can escape the other visitors and, cliché as it is, just imagine that you are back in the first century CE.
The site administration is under-funded, and this means that some of the buildings you will want to see will be locked. A few of these may be open through an internet site (www.arethusa.net), which allows you to book a timed entrance to a particular house, which will then be un-locked specially. (This usually, but not always, works.) The list which follows represents my top ten of buildings that are regularly open. You will have missed out if you do not see some of these, at least.
1. The House of the Tragic Poet. Bulwer Lytton’s house of Glaucus.
2. The House of Octavius Quartio. A marvellous garden with water features, and an outdoor triclinium.
3. The House of Marine Venus Take a look at the sprawling goddess of love.
4. The Stabian Baths. The easiest place to get an idea of what Roman bathing involved.
5. The Forum Baths and the Suburban Baths. If you get interested in baths, these make nice comparisons with the Stabian – and the erotic paintings in the Suburban Baths are well worth seeing in their own right.
6. The brothel. Cheesy, but ...
7. The Temple of Isis The best preserved temple on the site
8. The Amphitheatre and the palaestra next door. But remember that it is a long way from the Marine Gate to here. You probably need to decide in advance whether you are up for it.
9. The Fullery of Stephanus (on the south side of the Via dell’Abbondanza at I.6.7). It gives a good idea what a commercial establishment was like.
10. The Villa of the Mysteries. Even if it has been re-touched, the painting is tremendously impressive. It is a good idea to walk to this out of town villa as the last port of call on your visit, past the tombs lining the route. Then you can exit directly and go back to the station.
Once you have seen Pompeii, if you have time, you should try to make it to the nearby town of Herculaneum (also on the Circumvesuviana, a few minutes walk from Ercolano station). This has a much smaller excavated area than Pompeii, but the preservation of some materials (notably wood) is much better, and there are fewer visitors.
Many of the best finds from both sites are displayed – and even more are in store, or temporarily closed and not on view – in the Naples Archaeological Museum in the city centre. This is easy to reach from Metro stops Piazza Cavour or Museo. It is closed on Tuesdays, and when last visited had only a small, ill-stocked café, but better than nothing.
FURTHER READING
The bibliography on Pompeii is vast and multilingual. What follows is inevitably selective. It aims to give pointers to explor
e further the main topics of the book, and directions to some of the more out-of-the-way material I discuss. Where possible, I have included works easily available in English – but sometimes the best, or the only, accounts are in other languages.
General
There are several recent archaeological handbooks and histories of Pompeii. Particularly useful are: J. Berry, The Complete Pompeii (London and New York, 2007); F. Coarelli (ed.), Pompeii (New York, 2002), though the translation from the original Italian is dreadful; A. E. Cooley, Pompeii (London, 2003); J. J. Dobbins and P. W. Foss (ed.), The World of Pompeii (London and New York, 2007); R. Ling, Pompeii: history, life and afterlife (Stroud, 2005); P. Zanker, Pompeii: public and private life (Cambridge, MA, 1998). These often provide further information on the topics I discuss, and I have not usually referred to them specifically in the bibliography that follows. Many of the ancient documents I quote (whether graffiti on the walls or Pliny’s account of the eruption) can be found in A. E. Cooley and M. G. L. Cooley, Pompeii: a sourcebook (London and New York, 2004) – though I have provided my own translations of the Latin, which differ slightly from the Cooleys’. I have only given references here to documents not included in this Sourcebook.
Exhibition catalogues provide some of the best guides to the city. J. Ward-Perkins and A. Claridge (ed.), Pompeii AD79 (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1976) is still useful. More recent discoveries and up-to-the minute interpretation can be found in A. d’Ambrosio, P. G. Guzzo and M. Mastroberto (ed.), Storie da un’eruzione: Pompei, Ercolano, Oplontis (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, etc., 2003) – which is available as an abridged English exhibition guide, P. G. Guzzo (ed.), Tales from an Eruption: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, etc., 2003). Also important, and lavishly illustrated, are M. Borriello, A. d’Ambrosio, S. de Caro, P. G. Guzzo (ed.), Pompei: abitare sotto il Vesuvio (Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, 1997) and A. Ciarallo and E. de Carolis (ed.), Homo Faber: natura, scienza e tecnica nell’antica Pompei (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 1999), translated as Pompeii: life in a Roman town (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999). Most recently an important exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington is accompanied by a catalogue edited by C. C. Mattusch, Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Washington DC, 2008).
A useful website is the site hosted by the archaeological authorities at Pompeii itself (www2.pompeiisites.org). This has an English version and you can search for information on all the major buildings, as well as finding news of recent work in the town (occasionally the Italian version is more up-to-date). A good bibliography, research news (at least up to 2007) and links to e-books concerned with Pompeii can be found at: www.pompeiana.org.
Introduction
The discoveries outside the Nola Gate and the Tomb of Obellius Firmus are fully discussed by S. de Caro, ‘Scavi nell’area fuori Porta Nola a Pompei’, Cronache Pompeiane 5 (1979), 61-101. The story of these and other would-be fugitives are featured in Storie da un’eruzione (Tales from an Eruption), above. Excellent essays on the history of travel and tourism to Pompeii, and on its modern representations in literature and film, are included in V. C. G. Coates and J. L Seydl, Antiquity Recovered: the legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum (Los Angeles, 2007); a lively account is also given by J. Harris, Pompeii Awakened: a Story of Rediscovery (London, 2007). Primo Levi’s poem (trans. Ruth Feldman) is from his collection, Ad Ora Incerta (Milan, 1984).
The stature of ancient Pompeians and other information derived from their skeletons is discussed by M. Henneberg and R. J. Henneberg, in Homo Faber (above), pp. 51–3, and ‘Reconstructing medical knowledge in ancient Pompeii from the hard evidence of teeth and bones’, in J. Renn and G. Castagnetti (ed.), Homo Faber: studies on nature, technology and science at the time of Pompeii (Rome, 2002), 169–87. The teeth and other physical characteristics of the group found together in the large house (House of Julius Polybius, IX. 13. 1–3) are the subject of M. Henneberg and R. J. Henneberg, ‘Skeletal material from the House of C. Iulius Polybius in Pompei, 79 AD’, in A. Ciarallo and E. de Carolis, La casa di Giulio Polibio: studi interdisciplinari (Pompeii, 2001), 79–91. A definitive study of the skeletons of Pompeii will be E. Lazer, Resurrecting Pompeii (London and New York, 2008). The fisher-boy is discussed by A. Butterworth and R. Laurence, Pompeii: the living city (London, 2005), 207. The ancient tooth polishing recipe is given by the Roman pharmacologist, Scribonius Largus (Compositions, 60).
Much important recent work has focused on the seismic activity in the region from 62 CE onwards and on the precise stages of the eruption of 79. T. Fröhlich and L. Jacobelli (ed.), Archäologie und Seismologie: la regione vesuviana dal 62 al 79 DC (Munich, 1995) is an important collection of essays on these subjects, some in English. For discussion of the exact date of the eruption, see M. Borgongino and G. Stefani, ‘Intorno alla data dell’eruzione del 79 d. C.’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani (RStP)10 (1999), 177–215, and G. Stefani, ‘La vera data dell’eruzione’, Archeo 206 (2006), 10–13. Modern scholars have usually (but for no very good reason) followed Tacitus (Annals XV, 22) who places the earlier earthquake in 62, rather than Seneca who places it in 63 (Natural Questions VI, 1–3). The results of ongoing seismic activity at Herculaneum, with associated changes in the coastline, are being explored by the Herculaneum Conservation Project of the British School at Rome (www.bsr.ac.uk/bsr/sub_arch/BSR_Arch_03Herc.htm)
Wartime bomb damage is the subject of a fine study (with dramatic photographs) by L. Garcia y Garcia, Danni di guerra a Pompei: una dolorosa vicenda quasi dimenticata (Rome, 2006). The Africanus graffito from the brothel is (overconfidently) interpreted by J. L. Franklin, ‘Games and a Lupanar: prosopography of a neighbourhood in ancient Pompeii’, Classical Journal 81 (1986), 319–28. The children’s doodles are discussed in A. Koloski Ostrow, The Sarno Bath Complex (Rome, 1990), 59; and the coin impressions by P. M. Allison and F. B. Sear, Casa della Caccia Antica (VII. 4. 48) (Munich, 2002), 83–4. The bed-wetter’s graffito can be found at Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) IV, 4957. For the intestinal parasites whose eggs were found in house VI. 1. 4, see www.archaeology.org/interactive/pompeii/field/5.html
Chapter 1
Useful archaeological discussion of the pre-Roman history and development of Pompeii, includes: J. Berry (ed.), Unpeeling Pompeii: studies in Region I of Pompeii (Milan, 1998), 17–25; M. Bonghi Jovino (ed.), Ricerche a Pompei: l’insula 5 della Regio VI dalle origini al 79 d.C (Rome, 1984) (the House of the Etruscan Column as the site of a rural shrine, pp. 357–71); P. Carafa, ‘What was Pompeii before 200 BC? Excavations in the House of Joseph II, etc’, in S. E. Bon and R. Jones (ed.), Sequence and Space in Pompeii (Oxford, 1997), 13-31; S. de Caro, ‘Nuove indagini sulle fortificazioni di Pompei’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale [Napoli]. Sezione di Archeologia e Storia Antica (AION) 7 (1985), 75–114; M. Fulford and A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Towards a history of pre-Roman Pompeii: excavations beneath the House of Amarantus (I. 9. 11–12), 1995–8’, Papers of the British School at Rome 67 (1999), 37–144 (stressing the early origins of the street plan); S. C. Nappo, ‘Urban transformation at Pompeii in the late 3rd and early 2nd c. BC’, in R. Laurence and A. Wallace-Hadrill (ed.), Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and beyond (JRA suppl., Portsmouth, RI, 1997), 91–120. R. M. Ammerman, ‘New Evidence for the Worship of Athena at the Doric temple in Pompeii’s Triangular Forum’, Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA) 17 (2004), 531–6 conveniently summarises recent early finds from the Temple of Minerva and Hercules. The reuse of the terracotta sculptures in the House of the Golden Bracelet (VI. 17 [ins. occ.]. 42) is discussed and illustrated by E. M. Menotti de Lucia, ‘Le terrecotte dell’Insula Occidentalis’ in M. Bonghi Jovino, Artigiani e botteghe nell’Italia preromana: studi sulla coroplastica di area etrusco-laziale-campana (Rome, 1990), 179–246.
P. Zanker, Pompeii (above) has been particularly influential in the study of the town in the second century BCE (and in the early years
of the Roman colony). The impact on Pompeii of the war with Hannibal is suggested by, among others, Nappo, ‘Urban transformation’ (above). The Alexander Mosaic in the House of the Faun (VI.12.2) is the subject of A Cohen, Alexander Mosaic: stories of victory and defeat (Cambridge, 1996); F. Zevi, ‘Die Casa del Fauno in Pompeji und das Alexandermosaik’, Römische Mitteilungen 105 (1998) 21–65 considers the house as a whole. For the identification of the spoils of Mummius, see A. Martelli, ‘Per una nuova lettura dell’iscrizione Vetter 61 nel contesto del santuario di Apollo a Pompei’, Eutopia 2 (2002), 71–81. Wider issues of ‘Romanisation’ in Italy throughout this period are the theme of A. Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2008).
The siege of Pompeii is documented in F(lavio) and F(erruccio) Russo, 89 A.C. Assedio a Pompei: La dinamica e le tecnologie belliche della conquista sillana di Pompei (Pompeii, 2005). Cicero’s service in the war under Sulla is mentioned by Plutarch, Life of Cicero 3 (though he himself suggests in a speech – Philippic XII, 11, 27 – that he served under the rival general Pompey). The place of the veterans within the physical layout of the city is discussed by J. Andreau, ‘: mais où sont les vétérans de Sylla?’, Revue des Etudes Anciennes 82 (1980), 183–99. F. Zevi, ‘Pompei dalla città sannitica alla colonia sillana: Per un’ interpretazione dei dati archeologici’, in Les élites municipales de l’ Italie péninsulaire des Gracques à Néron (Rome 1996), 125–38. The dating of the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva to the early years of the colony is suggested by the Pompeii Forum Project (see J. J. Dobbins, ‘The Forum and its dependencies’, in The World of Pompeii (above), 150–83).