Lindsay Powell's Blog - Posts Tagged "pompeii"
Meeting the Ancient Romans Face to Face
Pompeii exerts a strange power over devotees of ancient history. I am fortunate to have been to the ancient Campanian city gradually being being exhumed from under a thick 10 metre layer of pumice. You can never quite avoid the crowds of twentieth century tourists. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, thousands visit every day. But it is possible to find quiet spots, places where the guided tours have yet to reach or have already departed from. It makes quite an impression to wander down cobbled streets, to peer into shops and private houses and to stand in its forum with the profile of brooding Vesuvius in the distance.
More impressive yet is neighbouring Herculaneum. I have not been, but I was captivated as a teenager by the photos in Joseph Jay Deiss' book[1] – which I still have – and paid 35 shillings out of my pocket money to buy. There buildings still have carbonised doors, and verandahs, ceilings and roofs. Where Pompeii was decidedly working class with pretentions for advancement, Herculaneum was for those who had already made it.
My first face-to-face encounter with some of the cities' treasures was at the Royal Academy's AD 79 exhibition. It entranced a whole nation in the winter of 1976/77 and sparked a mania for things Roman. I went with my parents by train from Cardiff to London and stood in what seemed an endless queue – I still have the show guide for that show too. My adolescent impatience was rewarded. I still recall seeing the bronze gladiator helmets and greaves – from Herculaneum – for the first time. (After all it was watching Spartacus that first sparked my interest in the Roman period.) Having since moved to the US, I was thrilled to go to Chicago on a cold day in the winter of 2006/7 when the Fields Museum put on its sell-out Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption exhibition. That time it was a strongbox from Villa B in Oplontis which impressed me most: its brute size and grotesque decoration of metal studs and resting hounds on top implied much about the character of its affluent owner.
As an enthusiast for the ancient world I continue to be lured by the two cities on the Bay of Naples so when, this year, the British Museum hosted one of its now set-piece spectaculars I just had to go. Not once but twice. Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum brought together several of the the choicest finds from the region.[2] Some I had seen before, but many I had not. Mary Beard recently wrote about her favourites from the show, and this is my selection.[3]
So what impressed me this time? Finally meeting L. Caecilius Iucundus was a memorable and – it felt like a – long overdue encounter. I had been introduced to him – as far as you can be with a long dead person – as one of the members of the Roman family in the Cambridge Schools Latin Project when I was at high school. “Caecilius est in atrio” I recall from one of the first pages of the pamphlet wrapped in its bright orange cover. (Hardly surprising to find him there, it turned out, as he was a banker and that's where he would greet his clients.) His realistic warts-and-all bronze bust tops a marble herm – a tall tapering column with a disproportionately small penis attached to the front to ward of evil spirits. Interestingly it was set up by one of his freed slaves, named Felix ('Happy'). He has a face that's deep with character. He was a portly gent, with cropped hair, large protruding ears, and a big nose; but it is the strange growth on his left chin which catches the eye. His lightly furrowed brows suggest he was not one given to excessive worry, just hard work. I could imagine him as a canny, no nonsense operator – 'business is business' – but perhaps spoken with a soft voice and having straight forward manner. That he was a man with compassion is suggested by the fact he freed slaves – that act of manumission would have made Felix live up to his silly name. Iucundus may have looked like many men of commerce on the up in Pompeii. In a nearby display case was a clay statuette, a characature of a fat man in a toga, painted white – perhaps mass produced in a workshop and intended to be given as a gift or 'freebie' with the name of the donor painted at the base.
Then there was the iconic wall painting of the baker Terentius Neo and his wife in a cheerful ancient Roman version of Grant Wood's dour American Gothic. Used on the poster to promote the event all over London, seeing it up close it was remarkable for its small, intimate size. Terentius, sporting a whispy beard, clutches a scroll; but his wife, with her hair pulled back and a fringe of intricate ringlets at the front, has the wax tablets – the iPad of the day – and stylus suggesting she was the real brains keeping the operation working efficiently and customers provided with fresh bread. Their large dark eyes engage you as you look at their portrait. These are people you could trust – at least to supply your daily loaf.
The Romans of Pompeii and Herculaneum revelled in life and living. They certainly appreciated Nature. The room from the so-called House of the Golden Bracelet with a wall painting of a garden – is extraordinary. Its plants and birds are so faithfully reproduced that the species can be identified 2,000 years later. All it needs is a medley of birdsong and a breeze to complete the effect. It is matched in quality by the small mosaic of fish, again so well executed that its myriad types can be named. Without a doubt, the Romans enjoyed food and fine dining. Exquisite, if perhaps gaudy, silver tableware, with surfaces so smoothly polished you could almost see your face in them, never fail to astonish today as they must have guests in AD 79. The items on the Latin menu might not all be to our liking, though. The rough clay jar with perches inside for fattening door mice reminds us that this was a world where fresh food meant rearing and killing it in your own kitchen: there were no supermarkets with chilled cabinets in those days.
Surprising too is to learn that the domestic toilet might be located within spitting distance of the kitchen oven. Examples of cast bronze taps and valves show the Romans were masters of the craft of plumbing and controlling the flow of running water, but not every home was connected to the water mains. In those houses the wafting stench of excrement from the toilet would not be far away from the aromas of prepared food, until the kitchen staff flushed it with water, along with all the other kitchen waste. Indeed, quite extraordinary was the recent find of compacted human pooh in the sewer under a street in Herculaneum and with it shells, broken crockery and even lost jewellery. It reminds us that in this regard first century Rome was more like seventeenth century London.
The last things the visitor saw at the exhibition were plaster casts of actual people – a man sitting squat against a wall, a dog laying curled up with its collar, and parents with their two children in poses suggesting they had been blown away by the shock of a blast.[4] (A recent experiment to use resin instead of plaster proved a difficult and expensive undertaking.) Notwithstanding the superb material artefacts to survive, these figures dramatically and unnervingly reveal the human tragedy that occurred during the days of Vesuvius' eruption in AD 79. Some 1,150 bodies have been found 'preserved' this way. If the city of Pompeii was home to an estimated 20,000 inhabitants, it suggests the majority escaped – or that their bodies remain to be found outside the city, along the roadsides.
The exhibition at the British Museum closed for the last time on 29 September. A show like it may visit a city near you one day. If it does book early and go see the treasures great and small from Pompeii and Herculaneum and meet the Romans. You might even find me there.
References:
1. Deiss, Joseph Jay (1968), Herculaneum: A City Returns to the Sun, The History Book Club.
2. Roberts, Paul (2013), Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, Oxford University Press.
3. http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_l...
4. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pl...
More impressive yet is neighbouring Herculaneum. I have not been, but I was captivated as a teenager by the photos in Joseph Jay Deiss' book[1] – which I still have – and paid 35 shillings out of my pocket money to buy. There buildings still have carbonised doors, and verandahs, ceilings and roofs. Where Pompeii was decidedly working class with pretentions for advancement, Herculaneum was for those who had already made it.
My first face-to-face encounter with some of the cities' treasures was at the Royal Academy's AD 79 exhibition. It entranced a whole nation in the winter of 1976/77 and sparked a mania for things Roman. I went with my parents by train from Cardiff to London and stood in what seemed an endless queue – I still have the show guide for that show too. My adolescent impatience was rewarded. I still recall seeing the bronze gladiator helmets and greaves – from Herculaneum – for the first time. (After all it was watching Spartacus that first sparked my interest in the Roman period.) Having since moved to the US, I was thrilled to go to Chicago on a cold day in the winter of 2006/7 when the Fields Museum put on its sell-out Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption exhibition. That time it was a strongbox from Villa B in Oplontis which impressed me most: its brute size and grotesque decoration of metal studs and resting hounds on top implied much about the character of its affluent owner.
As an enthusiast for the ancient world I continue to be lured by the two cities on the Bay of Naples so when, this year, the British Museum hosted one of its now set-piece spectaculars I just had to go. Not once but twice. Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum brought together several of the the choicest finds from the region.[2] Some I had seen before, but many I had not. Mary Beard recently wrote about her favourites from the show, and this is my selection.[3]
So what impressed me this time? Finally meeting L. Caecilius Iucundus was a memorable and – it felt like a – long overdue encounter. I had been introduced to him – as far as you can be with a long dead person – as one of the members of the Roman family in the Cambridge Schools Latin Project when I was at high school. “Caecilius est in atrio” I recall from one of the first pages of the pamphlet wrapped in its bright orange cover. (Hardly surprising to find him there, it turned out, as he was a banker and that's where he would greet his clients.) His realistic warts-and-all bronze bust tops a marble herm – a tall tapering column with a disproportionately small penis attached to the front to ward of evil spirits. Interestingly it was set up by one of his freed slaves, named Felix ('Happy'). He has a face that's deep with character. He was a portly gent, with cropped hair, large protruding ears, and a big nose; but it is the strange growth on his left chin which catches the eye. His lightly furrowed brows suggest he was not one given to excessive worry, just hard work. I could imagine him as a canny, no nonsense operator – 'business is business' – but perhaps spoken with a soft voice and having straight forward manner. That he was a man with compassion is suggested by the fact he freed slaves – that act of manumission would have made Felix live up to his silly name. Iucundus may have looked like many men of commerce on the up in Pompeii. In a nearby display case was a clay statuette, a characature of a fat man in a toga, painted white – perhaps mass produced in a workshop and intended to be given as a gift or 'freebie' with the name of the donor painted at the base.
Then there was the iconic wall painting of the baker Terentius Neo and his wife in a cheerful ancient Roman version of Grant Wood's dour American Gothic. Used on the poster to promote the event all over London, seeing it up close it was remarkable for its small, intimate size. Terentius, sporting a whispy beard, clutches a scroll; but his wife, with her hair pulled back and a fringe of intricate ringlets at the front, has the wax tablets – the iPad of the day – and stylus suggesting she was the real brains keeping the operation working efficiently and customers provided with fresh bread. Their large dark eyes engage you as you look at their portrait. These are people you could trust – at least to supply your daily loaf.
The Romans of Pompeii and Herculaneum revelled in life and living. They certainly appreciated Nature. The room from the so-called House of the Golden Bracelet with a wall painting of a garden – is extraordinary. Its plants and birds are so faithfully reproduced that the species can be identified 2,000 years later. All it needs is a medley of birdsong and a breeze to complete the effect. It is matched in quality by the small mosaic of fish, again so well executed that its myriad types can be named. Without a doubt, the Romans enjoyed food and fine dining. Exquisite, if perhaps gaudy, silver tableware, with surfaces so smoothly polished you could almost see your face in them, never fail to astonish today as they must have guests in AD 79. The items on the Latin menu might not all be to our liking, though. The rough clay jar with perches inside for fattening door mice reminds us that this was a world where fresh food meant rearing and killing it in your own kitchen: there were no supermarkets with chilled cabinets in those days.
Surprising too is to learn that the domestic toilet might be located within spitting distance of the kitchen oven. Examples of cast bronze taps and valves show the Romans were masters of the craft of plumbing and controlling the flow of running water, but not every home was connected to the water mains. In those houses the wafting stench of excrement from the toilet would not be far away from the aromas of prepared food, until the kitchen staff flushed it with water, along with all the other kitchen waste. Indeed, quite extraordinary was the recent find of compacted human pooh in the sewer under a street in Herculaneum and with it shells, broken crockery and even lost jewellery. It reminds us that in this regard first century Rome was more like seventeenth century London.
The last things the visitor saw at the exhibition were plaster casts of actual people – a man sitting squat against a wall, a dog laying curled up with its collar, and parents with their two children in poses suggesting they had been blown away by the shock of a blast.[4] (A recent experiment to use resin instead of plaster proved a difficult and expensive undertaking.) Notwithstanding the superb material artefacts to survive, these figures dramatically and unnervingly reveal the human tragedy that occurred during the days of Vesuvius' eruption in AD 79. Some 1,150 bodies have been found 'preserved' this way. If the city of Pompeii was home to an estimated 20,000 inhabitants, it suggests the majority escaped – or that their bodies remain to be found outside the city, along the roadsides.
The exhibition at the British Museum closed for the last time on 29 September. A show like it may visit a city near you one day. If it does book early and go see the treasures great and small from Pompeii and Herculaneum and meet the Romans. You might even find me there.
References:
1. Deiss, Joseph Jay (1968), Herculaneum: A City Returns to the Sun, The History Book Club.
2. Roberts, Paul (2013), Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, Oxford University Press.
3. http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_l...
4. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pl...
