Three Little Letters

News broke on Thursday of more stunning discoveries as a result of the current excavations in Pompeii’s Regio IX. Whilst the rest of the world is agog, and rightly so, over the stunning frescos that have been revealed (the colours! the details! the lack of panelling!), I am quite excited about the new electoral programmata that has been discovered.

Helen of Troy and Paris. (From PompeiiSites)

I have written before about my interest in the way candidates wrote their names, and more to the point, that some were able to campaign using only their initials. I have always been intrigued not only by the ability to be known well enough by the population of Pompeii based on three letters, but also what implications this has for how Romans remembered names, and what they wrote on the ballot when it came time to vote. This interest is the basis for what has become a much larger project focussing on the process of campaigns and elections in antiquity that is the subject of a forthcoming monograph. I have identified thirty-nine individuals who have used their initials in electoral dipinti, and although the newest revelation does not add to this list, it does provide more evidence.

Prior to this morning, I was aware of one dipinto naming Aulus Rustius Verus that made use of initials – but only two. CIL IV 466 tells us that he is running for aedile:

A(ulum) R(ustium) aed(ilem).
Aulus Rustius for aedile.

We know from several other programmata that this man was successful in his campagin for aedile. There are eleven additional dipinti that name Aulus Rustius Verus, two for the lower magistracy of aedile, four for the higher post of duovir, and five that do not identify the office. They all bear the standard format for this type of notice:

CIL IV 3581
A(ulum) Rustium Verum.
Aulus Restius Verus.

CIL IV 2984
A(ulum) Rustium Verum / aed(ilem) o(ro) v(os) f(aciatis) d(ignum) r(ei) p(ublicae).
Please vote for Aulus Rustius Verus, aedile. He is worthy of public office.

CIL IV 1731
Rustium Verum / duumvirum i(ure) d(icundo) / rogamus Aug(ustales).
The Augustales ask you to elect Rustius Verus duovir with judicial power.

This last notice tells us that the Augustales, a civic and religious organisation primairly composed of wealthy freedmen supported his candidacy.

The new excavations have revealed a new dipinto naming Aulus Rustius Verus, but this one presents his name as three initials: A R V.

New electoral dipinto for Aulus Rustius Verus. (From the BBC video, featuring Dr. Sophie Hay)

The text is similar to some of those above, most notably CIL IV 2984 in which the man is also running for aedile and is described with the phrase d(ignum) r(ei) p(ublicae). This dipinto provides further evidence for the use of initials in campaigns, and allows me to verify that I had correctly identified the example above using two letters as the right person. This is one of the things I find so fascinating about this particular form of the epigraphic habit. I can only decipher who the initials belong to because there are further electoral programmata for the same individuals. I do have some examples where the dipinti could belong to multiple people who shared letters, and one I cannot identify at all as no other texts bearing those initials survive. The discovery of one more, though, gives me some bit of hope about what other texts may someday be found. Hopefully, before I finish writing my book.

#ClassicsTober in Pompeii

For the first time in its three year history, I made a point to participate daily in #ClassicsTober. This initiative started by LE Jenks (otherwise known as Greek Myth Comix) and Cora Beth Fraser is intended to be a creative endeavour sharing artwork based on the daily prompts, but I don’t have quite the artistic ability to fill a month of days, and like many others, have shared objects and artwork from the ancient world. This year, I made the conscious decision to fulfil the brief entirely with things from Pompeii (and the Vesuvian region more broadly). My initial reasoning for doing this was to make a point: I have found that the absolute wealth of material and myriad of ways of engaging with the city can sometimes be dismissed or misunderstood (particularly by hiring committees). It isn’t just one place frozen in time. It is seven hundred years of multicultural interaction, and the archaeology, art, and epigraphy produced by the people who lived there. It is the development of various economies and technologies. It is life and death: theatre and entertainment and baths and tombs. It is all of these things and more, it is a way of finding Roman literary and historic evidence in a physical place, and through the lives of real, everyday people. It is this that brings me back to Pompeii over and over again, and why there is still so much to learn even after more than two hundred years of study. There is little of Mediterranean antiquity that can’t be found in the Vesuvian cities in some way, and I wanted to demonstrate that, in this instance, through Greek myth.

The result, however, has been a surprising new understanding of the art (and some objects) that decorate these sites. I admit that I do not consider myself an expert on wall painting generally. I understand the process of making it, and am aware of many of the issues about how the paintings have been treated, preserved, and lost since excavation. But I have never really paid much attention to the corpus of material as a whole – I have previously been far more interested in individual structures where painting appears – this house, or that tomb. I have never looked for patterns, or how individual myths or figures are depicted. This month of posting though, has made me see two things very clearly: how certain myths / figures are painted, and what texts influence what appears on the walls.

There are, I would argue unsurprisingly, many figures and stories that appear repeatedly. Many paintings show poor Ariadne abandoned by Theseus (day 12), or the man himself in association with the labyrinth and Minotaur. Perseus is also extremely popular, either rescuing Andromeda or killing Medusa (day 2). Hephaestus (day 24) is eternally busy making Achilles’ (day 9) armour, and his mother Thetis (day 26) watches over the blacksmithing god or transports the armour to her son. Odysseus (day 20) appears frequently, both in scenes of the Trojan War and during his exploits on his long journey home, including an interlude with Circe (day 16). In other words, the most frequent myths and figures originate in either the Homeric cycles of the Trojan War (drawn from both the Iliad and the Odyssey), or can be found in the Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Considering the style of painting that makes use of the central panel of a scene – imitating a painting on display as we would conceive of it in a modern context – develops in the so-called Third Style (from approximately the 20s BC), it is not inconceivable that this poem, from circa AD 8, would be an influence and source for this type of painting.

However, I ran into my first difficulty in finding material on day 11 (Pandora). Day 13 (Arachne) was also surprisingly absent, but by day 15 (Prometheus) I noticed something I found odd. The pre-Olympian gods, the Titans and the stories of early people aren’t here. By the time I got to day 19 (Sisyphus) I was positive this was not an anomaly, but for some reason known only by the Pompeians (or the painters), there was no interest placing in these gods and myths on their walls. These are stories that I associate primarily with Hesiod’s Theogony, and am now wondering if this poem was not read in the first century AD in Italy, or simply was not very popular.

Why one myth over another? On one hand, I think this is a confirmation (as if we needed one), of the enduring legacy of the Homeric epics, and the many figures who were involved in that twenty-year tale. The perceived connection between the Trojans, Aeneas, and what becoems Rome is one explanation for the ongoing interest in these tales. On the other, this exercise has also reinforced the idea that something like a sample book for paintings existed and was used in Pompeii and likely elsewhere. There are too many similarities not just in the repetition of certain stories, but in the exact moment of these stories that is depicted. Within the context of mythological figures, the variation of who is painted on the walls and how is far less than I had imagined. There is, of course as is always the case with the Vesuvian sites, an issue of preservation that necessitates a caveat with any conclusions. There were some days I relied on nineteenth century drawings (Prometheus day 15, Atalanta day 17, and Midas day 22) or a stereoview (Nemesis day 29). What has been lost or damaged beyond identification may have contained additional myths.

As a final note on the month long endeavour of #ClassicsTober, I would like to acknowledge that while some of the photos are my own, I would not have been able to post daily without two incredible resources on Pompeii: Pompeii in Pictures and the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project. I didn’t have the space to provide photo credit in my posts, but I found many of the paintings using one or both of these sites. If you haven’t seen my posts you can find them here (on the platform formally known as Twitter) or in bluer skies here. More generally, look for the tag #ClassicsTober23 on whatever social media you use.

 

The Tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio

By now it seems the entire world is aware of the most recent discovery in Pompeii, a tomb located in the necropolis of the Porta Sarno to the east of the city. Having spent so many years investigating the funerary monuments of Pompeii myself, I am thrilled that new material is being excavated (even if it does make my book somewhat outdated. Hmm… second edition maybe?) I (along with others) have always known there were many, many more tombs to discover in the environs of the city. We should all do well to remember that modern Pompei sits atop most of ancient Pompeii’s dead.

There is, however, much excitement about this particular find, and rightfully so, because it contains a variety of evidence that is unique, and in some cases, previously unattested. Some of this new information comes from the inscription:

M(arcus) Venerius coloniae
lib(ertus) Secundio, aedituus
Veneris, Augustalis et min(ister)
eorum. Hic solus ludos Graecos
et Latinos quadriduo dedit.

‘Marcus Venerius Secundio, freedmen of the colony, guardian of the temple of Venus, Augustalis and minister of them. He, on his own, gave Greek and Latin games for four days.

Photo from Pompeii – Parco Archeologico.

One item that has ancient historians taking notice is the specific mention of Greek games – something that has been speculated about but was heretofore unconfirmed as taking place in the theatres of Pompeii.  Georgy Kantor provides a brief exposition on the significance of this. A freedman of the city, Venerius Secundio’s involvement in the worship of Venus, the patron goddess of Pompeii, the evident wealth he obtained that allowed him to sponsor entertainments, and membership of the Augustales are all elements that serve to enhance our understanding of the civic and religious life of the city (and thus, other communities in the Roman world.)

Marcus Venerius Secundio appears in only one other text from Pompeii, one of the wax tablets of Caecilius Iucundus (CIL 4.3340.139). He is included here with two other well known men – Decimius Lucretius Valens and Marcus Stronnius Secundus, which provides a date of the mid AD 50s. The tomb, as it has been described, probably dates to the 60s or early 70s. There is, however, further epigraphic evidence from the monument as a columella was also found marking the burial of a beautiful glass urn, bearing the name of Novia Amabilis. This is a new name to add to the Pompeian prosopography, as no female members of this gens are otherwise attested. There is a single graffito naming a Novius (CIL X 10136), and one naming a Lucius Novius Priscus.

CIL IV 2155
C(aius) Cominius Pyrrichus et  
L(ucius) Novius Priscus et L(ucius) Campius
Primigenius fanatici tres
a pulvinar(i) Synethaei
hic fuerunt cum Martiale
sodale Actiani Anicetiani
sinceri Salvio sodali feliciter.

Although there is some debate about how exactly this should be translated, the general consensus (which is not quite as cryptic as Franklin suggests) is that Novius Priscus and his friends Gaius Cominius Pyrrichus and Lucius Campius Primigenius, three rabid fans of Actius Anicetus, a well known pantomimist, greet some of their other mates. The idea of linking into the same family Novia Amabilis, buried in the tomb of a sponsor of Greek and Latin theatre spectacles and Lucius Novius Priscus, a devotee of a local star of the stage, is admittedly quite an attractive one.

Of course, the one thing I have not yet mentioned is the skeleton. Found in a small cell at the rear of the tomb, there is no doubt it is the best preserved set of human remains yet discovered in the ancient city. Hair! An Ear! Maybe DNA! Heady stuff, to be sure. But what I haven’t yet seen mentioned is what an anomaly it is to actually find a skeleton in a tomb in Pompeii. Prior to Roman colonisation in 80 BC, inhumation was the standard Samnite / Italic form of burial. Graves such as these have been discovered, but they weren’t monumental structures built (primarily) above ground. With the Romans came monumental tomb building and cremation. After all, there are two sets of remains found in the tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio that are cremated, deposited in urns, including that of Novia Amabilis. What this means is a large above ground tomb from the Roman colonial period containing a skeleton is unheard of in Pompeii.

The simple fact of a skeleton existing in a Pompeian tomb (regardless of its state of preservation) is the most incredible thing about this latest find. I hope someone else notices that.

Edited to add: A new video has been released by the Parco Archeologico di Pompei that shows more clearly the small vaulted chamber that contains the skeleton, which was hermetically sealed when excavated. This shows that this is, in fact, an intentional inhumation and reveals a new type of burial, never seen before in Pompeii.

Floored

Earlier this week it was announced that the Italian Ministry of Culture is planning to build a floor in the Colosseum. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reaction from archaeologists and historians is a bit mixed. There is an understandable concern about the mechanisms of the floor and the impact on the structure. How the floor is integrated into the existing architecture is one issue, but the potential harm of the footfalls of the annual influx of six million tourists across the floor, or future structural changes necessary to host cultural events or re-enactments is also a necessary consideration. The official statements about the floor have attested to a low-impact and sustainable plan, going so far to say that the floor could be removed in the future with no lasting effect on the ancient remains. Their aim is to not only provide the view from the centre of the arena floor that those engaged in ancient games would have had, but also to allow the amphitheatre to be used for modern stagings. This is hardly a new or innovative idea: the theatres in Pompeii and Verona have been renovated and used in this manner for years. In the most general terms, as far as it is possible to discern from the limited information, this seem like a very good thing.

What surprised me was that a fair bit of the negative reaction to the plan is that there should be a floor at all, as if this will somehow diminish the experience of the Colosseum as a whole. I found this to be at odds with the design, which seems to be comprised of wooden slats that can be rotated and retracted, thus allowing a view into the hypogeum below, as well as to open the subterranean galleries up entirely.

A full video of how this will work, from which the above images were taken, can be viewed here.

Late on the day of the announcement I was contacted by TimesRadio for an interview about this. I had a very (very!) brief conversation with John Pienaar (somewhere around the one hour mark) about the way the subterranean level of the amphitheatre was used by the Romans. (And yes, of course Gladiator was referenced, but not by me.) Not knowing what I was going to be asked, I had a quick review of Colosseum facts, and this only furthered my consternation about objections to the idea of a floor. The Flavian Amphitheatre, as it was designed in the first century AD, had a floor. In fact, the floor existed for centuries, and it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that hundreds of years of debris and accumulated detritus were finally removed from the ancient floor and subterranean space of the hypogeum. In other words, the Colosseum has had a floor for significantly longer than it hasn’t had one.

The Colosseum was used, as originally intended, for about 500 years. The floor and the hypogeum were integral to putting on the gladiator contests, hunts of wild animals, and sea battles that were held there. The subterranean structures were, as I said on the radio, akin to the backstage elements of a modern theatre: scenery and props held at the ready, places for the next performer to wait (whether man or beast), utilising a series of trapdoors, cages, pulleys and weights, and tunnels connected to the gladiator barracks of the Ludus Maximus across the street, as well as to the stables for the animals. As with any large, heavily used building, there were repairs and alterations made at many points, some the result of the changing needs of those using the structure, some as a result of disasters like earthquakes and fire. A lightning strike caused a fire in AD 217, according to Dio Cassius (78.25), destroying upper levels of wooden seating that was not fully repaired for decades. The last record of repairs were for damage caused by an earthquake in 484, when the consul Decius Marius Venantius Basilius erected an inscription to record this work (CIL VI 1716). Gladiator fights were banned in the late 4^th century and again in the 5^th, but wild animal hunts continued well into the 6^th century, when the consulship of Anicius Maximus was celebrated with such an event.

After that…. ? The bare bones of the Colosseum survive, but it is re-used and abused for centuries. It is rumoured it became a dumping ground for the bodies of criminal elements in the Middle Ages. One end housed a religious order from the mid-14^th until the 19^th century. There were workshops and a Christian shrine, and at one point, a fortress housed by nobles. The building itself was stripped, the spolia of travertine and marble used to build elsewhere, or burned to make quicklime. The bronze clamps holding the stonework together were also stripped for use. Another earthquake brought down the southern side of the building in the 14^th century. This is why the Colosseum appears as it does today – no longer a gleaming white façade, pockmarked and scarred. In the 16^th century the Church got interested, and tried to use the building for new purposes. Pope Sixtus V wanted to turn it into a wool factory to employ the prostitutes of the city, which I think unsurprisingly, failed. In the 17^th century a cardinal suggested holding bullfights, but this was an unpopular suggestion. It was in the 18^th century that the Colosseum was endorsed as a sacred site for Christians, with Pope Benedict XIV forbidding its continued use as a quarry and consecrating the building and including it in the Stations of the Cross, a tradition that still continues today as part of the processions held on Good Friday.

It wasn’t until the 19^th century that interest in the Colosseum as an ancient artefact really took hold. It was then that the first works were undertaken to repair the structure, shoring up both the exterior walls and repairing the interior. This included the first attempts to clear the hypogeum, which had, in the intervening centuries, become well-documented for its abundance of different species of plants. From the first attempts to catalogue the flora, more than 600 types were identified. Eventually, this too was a concern, because of the destructive impact the vegetation had on the structure itself. And so, from the mid 1800s, any remaining bits of floor and the debris accumulated in the substructure were cleared. The project was finally completed in the 1930s during Mussolini’s push to reinvigorate Ancient Rome.

The Colosseum, as anyone has experienced it over the last century, is not what it was. Adding a floor is, in some ways, a small step towards repairing what is lost, and does offer a potential to use the space in a way it hasn’t been for centuries. Monuments are, as odd as it sounds, ever changing. I have been to the Colosseum enough times over the years to have been there when there was no flooring at all, when the hypogeum was closed to the public, and when the upper levels were forbidden. All of those things have changed since I first went to Rome in high school. More to the point, I keep comparing my memories of my visit down into the hypogeum (with the expert on the subject no less) to that of one to the other Flavian amphitheatre, the one in Pozzuoli. It has a floor. It has a similar substructure. Being in the enclosed space of that hypogeum, wandering in and out of the cells and cages, feeling a bit lost in the relative dark and small space, gave me a huge sense of what it was like to be down there two thousand years ago. I can’t help but think that experience is one worth replicating in Rome.

Bare Bones

When I wrote about the latest finds from Pompeii earlier this week, I focused on the stories told about the revelations of new material extracted from the debris of Vesuvius. There is, however, another huge issue that must be grappled with, both as archaeologists and as people, and that is the fact that we are dealing with human remains. How we do that as Classical Archaeologists is, for historic reasons I cannot fully identify, very different from how such remains are handled in other parts of the world, and in other fields of archaeological science.

Five years ago, at the time my doctoral dissertation on tombs was being published as a book, my dad managed to get me invited to give a talk about my research at the local public library in Illinois when I was home for the holidays. After the talk (surprisingly, even attended by people I’m not related to), I was asked a question regarding what happened to the human remains found in Pompeii after excavation. The audience member who asked made specific reference to NAGPRA, which is something that I was well schooled in from my undergraduate days, but had never considered in the context of my work in Italy.  For those not from North America, this law requires the dignified treatment and eventual return of any human remains found on federal or tribal lands to their descendants. This has sometimes caused drawn out legal battles between tribes, in part because the length of time that has passed (multiple thousands of years) can make finding direct lineage difficult, or in many instances, allows claims from more than one group. This is, of course, very much tied up with the historic mis-treatment of Native Americans, their displacement from ancestral lands, and the genocidal level reduction of their population over the last six hundred years. What is intriguing to me, is that this same reverence is not necessarily shown for the remains that are found in the Vesuvian sites. Unlike some of the issues caused by forced migration and genocide of Native American peoples, there should be no doubt that modern Italians are the descendants of ancient Romans (as are numerous other European and North African peoples). All you need to do is listen to a Neapolitan or a Sicilian speak Italian and you can hear faint remnants of your school Latin. Even amongst Americans whose ancestors came from Italy there is still a vague association with the Rome of the past (consider Tony Soprano’s (sweary) response when asked by a Jewish business associate waxing lyrically about the braveness of those at Masada holding out against Roman soldiers.) So what’s the difference, and more to the point, why is there one?

Since excavations in Pompeii began in 1748, approximately 1200 sets of human remains have been found. Initially, these were categorised as the old, the infirm, and children who were physically unable to escape the cataclysm of the eruption in AD 79. This determination, however, was made with no examination of the bones themselves. Since the late nineteenth century, slightly more than one hundred plaster casts have been made of human and animal remains. It is only recently that the skeletons contained in the casts have begun to be studied by Estelle Lazar. Her team has discovered that the previous ideas about who died in the eruption is wrong, and the remains actually represent a broad spectrum of the population of the ancient city. What makes the two recently made casts unique is that the skeletons themselves were examined prior to casting. Skeletal remains from an archaeological site of any context can provide information about age at death, sex, health, diet, occupation, and migration. Mix in a documented cause of death by volcanic eruption, and there is more information to be found about stages of the eruption, cause of death (suffocation from ash, pyroclastic flow gases, blunt trauma, etc.), and the behaviour and reaction to those attempting to escape (consider, for example, the hundreds found on the beach in Herculaneum).

This is, in part, why the skeletons and casts from Pompeii and Herculaneum are, in my view, treated on some level as artefacts rather than as human remains. This can be taken one step further when you consider that a large number of casts were first made in late 1800s. In a sense, they have become artefacts in their own right in relation to the development of the technique and of the evolution of archaeology as a scientific discipline. Many of these have been on display within the archaeological park, in museums, or simply kept gathering dust in storage in various facilities around Pompeii. The casts of the victims have always been a draw for visitors to the site – I can’t tell you how many times a tourist has asked me for directions to ‘the bodies’ – and indeed have featured on postcards and other memorabilia. I suspect – based in part on the reaction I’ve had from some students over the years – that there is some confusion as to what they actually are (and I would guess this may arise from referring to them as ‘casts’). Yes, the process of making a cast preserves the shape of the whole person, including details such as clothing, anything that the individual may have been holding or carrying, and in the case of animals, harnesses or leads. But the outer plaster shell does contain human remains: skulls, teeth, long bones, fingers, and toes. They are not models of what once existed, they are skeletons. They are people. As Mary Beard has said, ‘Pompeii is not just an archaeological site, it’s a site of human tragedy.’  It surprises me that there isn’t more reverence for them, not just by scientists and tourists, but by the people of Italy themselves. Why isn’t there a call to re-bury those we have dug up? Every once in awhile, a meme circulates asking the question how much time has to pass before grave robbing becomes archaeology. It pokes fun at an incredibly awkward question about how we treat those whose resting places (whether intended or tragic) we disturb. I, for one, would rather be an archaeologist.

 

Something Old, Something New

I’ve recently been on site in Herculaneum and Pompeii doing some work. Whilst my research often leads me to new areas of the city or I am trying to find some particular detail about whatever I’m working on, it is rare, having first set foot in Pompeii more than twenty years ago, for me to really see it in a new way. This visit, however, was different.

Currently (and until January), there are thirty bronze sculptures created by Igor Mitoraj placed around the city. This exhibit, reportedly curated by the artist before his death two years ago, places statues in various locales around the city. Many are in obvious public places like the Forum or the Stabian Baths, but others are placed in such a way that they kind of surprise you as you find yourself on the floor of the theatre with them looming above from the wall of the Triangular Forum. The artist was heavily influenced by Classical art, as is obvious from his work. I admittedly knew little about his work until quite recently, but have since read of his fragmented and misplaced or broken bodies as depicting both how damaged ancient statues appear, and as the physical representation of human despair. There is, certainly, a sadness in the faces that appear.

Temple of Venus

Stabian Baths

There were four sculptures, two in the changing room of the Stabian Baths and two in the Triangular Forum, that I found particularly reminiscent of ancient art. The wrappings and postures of these works are evocative of various ancient bronzes of boxers. One that comes to mind most immediately is Boxer at Rest, a late Hellenistic statue found in Rome.

Stabian Baths

Stabian Baths

Triangular Forum

Triangular Foroum

One piece I found quite interesting simply for its placement was at the junction of the Via dell’Abbondanza and the Via Stabiana. In antiquity, much like today, this crossroads was a hub of activity and foot traffic coming and going from the Forum, the theatre district, and the commercial area of the street leading to the amphitheatre and palaestra. It was here one of the most prominent men in Pompeii in the Augustan period built an arch, which was surrounded by statues, including one dedicated to himself, Marcus Holconius Rufus. As this was an area once filled with honourific statues, it was really quite something to see one (more or less) as it should be. The same could be said of an equestrian statue placed in the Forum, positioned on one of the remaining statue bases of antiquity.

Equestrian Statue in the Forum

 

Junction of Via dell’Abbondanza and the Via Stabiana.

I absolutely loved seeing Mitoraj’s work scattered across the city. Besides the fact that his work is incredibly beautiful in its own right, seeing these bronze sculptures against the backdrop of the Pompeian cityscape was quite extraordinary. For one thing, it is rare to see bronze in an ancient site like this – where bronze survived antiquity without being melted down, it is almost exclusively kept in museums. This, although modern art, provided a small glimpse into a missing element of the ancient city. Beyond that, it made me look at Pompeii in a completely different way than I have before. I don’t want to say I am blasé about the remains of the city – I do still feel the same awe as I did the first time I stepped into the Forum as a high school student – but there is a certain amount of complacency when one has worked in the same place year after year. This exhibit of sculptures made me look again at familiar places, in a way that made me appreciate the artistry not just of the art work, but of the buildings, the scenery, and the way they worked together, giving me an entirely new impression of a city I have been in love with for decades.

Quadraporticus

 

Unpeopling the Past

A few weeks ago, I accidentally stumbled across a temporary exhibit at the British Museum of Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome: ‘Light, time, legacy.’ Painted during a year long stay in the Eternal City from 1780 to 1781, this exhibit is a celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the collection’s bequeathal to the British Museum upon the artist’s death in 1816. Towne apparently had some success during his lifetime despite failing to be elected to the Royal Academy on eleven occasions, but was largely forgotten after his death, until his works were re-discovered in the early twentieth century. The works held at the British Museum are not necessarily remarkable as far as eighteenth century landscapes go, but there is a use of light and perspective that I find captivating (beyond the subject matter itself, which of course if irresistible to a Romanist). There is a softness to his paintings that I find evocative of the evening light in Italy (and, in fact, he often wrote the time on the back of his paintings), of the texture of the stones the ancient Romans used to build their monuments, and one obviously endemic to the use of watercolour as a medium. What did strike me, though, as I wandered through the gallery, was the noticeable absence of people in his paintings.

The Roman Forum (1781)

View of the Colosseum from the Palatine Hill (1781)

The Baths of Titus (1781)

The Temple of Minerva at Sunset (1781)

Where the odd person is present, such as those with a cart in The Roman Forum, or the lone figure on the edge of the wall in The Baths of Titus (now identified as the Baths of Trajan), it appears to be a device used to add scale, so that the sheer size of the structures is not underestimated by the viewer. Overall, whether a figure is present or not, there is a feeling in each work of abandonment – that these relics of the ancient world are left in isolation, removed from the current world, and in many cases, slowly being reclaimed by nature. The Temple of Minerva at Sunset is a particularly good example of this, though I must say it did not appear much different the last time I was in Rome.

What immediately sprung to mind, when viewing painting after painting with almost no human trace, was the way archaeological sites are represented. A number of years ago, Jeremy Hartnett wrote about this practice in the early photography of the ruins of Pompeii. (I actually reviewed the volume it appears in for BMCR.) This chapter focuses on Vittorio Spinazzola, the director of excavation from 1910 to 1923, who was a pioneer in using photography to document not only the ongoing clearance of the site, but also the ruins once they were exposed. Hartnett wrote of the new use of photography in excavation for its importance as a means of documentation, where each image was concerned not only with ‘showing what came out of the ground, [but also] they explained how it was brought to light and by whom’ (p. 247). This is clear in a photo from the excavation of the House of Paquius Procolus (I.vii.1):

This photo shows the workman, clearing debris, whilst being supervised under the watchful eye of Spinazzola himself (in the dark suit at the top). Part of the aim of the photographic documentation, and one that anyone with field experience is familiar with today, is to preserve a record of how any particular area is being excavated. In addition, Spinazzola was interested in showing the extent of the work being carried out. The photo below is striking, not just for the length of the area being cleared along the Via dell’Abbondanza, but also for showing how much of the ruins had yet to be uncovered just a century ago (you can just see the upper levels of the amphitheatre in the distance).

What actually brought these photos to mind in viewing the exhibit of Towne’s watercolours, however, is the way in which the excavated areas were documented after the last of the volcanic detritus had been cleared. The workman are gone, Spinazzola himself is absent, and what remains is a street or a house, devoid of any human life.

The streets, wrote Hartnett, ‘are presented as empty, antiseptic spaces, made as whole as possible (with fountains even gushing water in some shots) but then left pristine and uninhabited’ (pp. 265-6). He argues that this was a conscious choice for which photos of the excavation were published, that has had a lasting impact not only on how both scholars and the public view the ancient world, but also on how we present it ourselves. I am sure I am not the only one who has stood in Pompeii (or Rome, or Athens, or anywhere else) and impatiently waited for the tourists to move along, so that I could photograph my own monuments with no human interference. The fact is that I have thousands of photos from Pompeii, and all are of an abandoned, empty, cityscape devoid of human life. This image of an empty space, of a quiet street, or of the abandoned Roman Forum or Colosseum, as presented by Francis Towne, other artists, and many historians and archaeologists, could not be further from the reality of the past. I was struck by this when I first read Hartnett’s work, and was reminded of this when wandering the galleries of the British Museum. The irony here is that the people are, after all, what has always drawn me to the past. Removing life from representations of the past, whether in photo or painting, suddenly seems the antithesis of our work.

 

Duos Annos

It is now two years since I began my Leverhulme Trust funded project looking at social networks in Pompeii. Over the past year, my research has taken me off into a slightly different direction, particularly looking at some very specific aspects of political life in the ancient city, for which the way names are used is a fundamental component. Looking back at what I wrote to commemorate the first anniversary, I am pleasantly surprised by the increase in traffic, comments, and followers for this blog. To date, the site has been visited more than 18,000 times (more than twice the number of the first year), which is, frankly, astounding. I am sure this is in no small part due to the support of Blogging Pompeii and Napoli Unplugged, amongst others, who have frequently shared my posts, for which I am most grateful. I hope that the many people who come here continue to find my work interesting, as I certainly enjoy writing these posts.

And as such, as before, the five most popular posts published in the last year:

5. Losing my Religion (249)

4. Fools & Fakes (275)

3. Samnites in Pompeii (290)

2. Alma Tadema’s Imagined Connections (425)

1. Pompeii & Rome (441)

Samnites in Pompeii

Yesterday came a rather exciting announcement that a Samnite grave has been discovered in Pompeii. The details revealed thus far include that a skeleton, belonging to a woman approximately forty to fifty years old, complete with grave goods including numerous jars still containing traces of their original contents, has been excavated in an area beyond the Porta di Ercolano.

The Samnites were a native Italic people (much like the Latins who founded Rome), whose culture was similarly tribal, consisting of a loose federation of a number of groups who inhabited parts of central and southern Italy. They tended to live in some of the more mountainous regions of Italy, were sheep herders, and famed wool workers. They leave no written record of their own, but survive in the history of Rome written by Livy. His material, however, is heavily biased, as he was largely writing about the Samnites and their part in a series of wars fought against Rome in the fourth and early third centuries BC. Known collectively as the Samnite Wars, this conflict is largely characterised as a struggle for control of the Italian peninsula, in which Rome was the ultimate victor. It should thus come as no surprise that Livy views the Samnites as warlike, uncivilised, and generally inferior.

So how did a Samnite woman end up in Pompeii? Whilst my current work is focused entirely on the Roman period of Pompeii (89 BC to AD 79), the city existed for many hundreds of years before that. The settlement’s history is long and complicated: at a minimum, five separate cultural groups, including the Romans, are thought to have contributed to the town’s development during its six hundred years of existence. There are archaeological remains in Pompeii for Greeks, Etruscans, Samnites, and an unnamed indigenous Italic population in addition to the Romans. The foundation of the city, and the exact phases (if exclusive, which they probably were not) of each cultural group are a bit murky. However, it is clear from the archaeological record in Pompeii and in other towns of southern Italy, that sometime in the fourth century BC, the people of Samnium moved down from the mountains and into some of the more urban areas. Just in Campania, there is evidence of Samnite populations in Capua and Nola in addition to Pompeii.

One of the most comprehensive works published on the Samnites comes from E.T. Salmon. According to him, Samnites practiced inhumation, not cremation, and the archaeological evidence from excavations various necropoleis, such as the one at Aufidena, shows the same burial rite continuously used over centuries. The graves were lined, initially with wooden planks, later progressing to stones, and, eventually, to tiles. Many of the graves were also lined with gravel to facilitate drainage. The body of the deceased was fully dressed and laid out at full length in a supine position. The head was usually propped up on some object serving as a pillow. Grave goods always contained a number of rough impasto jars and a bowl, presumably used in a funeral feast (many recovered were found to contain traces of food). Stones or tiles were used to cover the graves, but they remained unmarked. Amongst the grave goods for women, spindles and loom weights were often found. As these items have been found in abundance in many of the native sites excavated in southern Italy, working wool was clearly a large part of the daily life of Samnite women. Schneider-Herrmann has suggested the importance of wool working was such that the women had great skill in weaving intricate patterns, basing this on the clothing depicted on Campanian vases of the fourth century. Though made under Greek influence throughout the fourth century BC, vases found in Campania and Apulia can be identified as depicting Samnites based on the native costumes worn by the figures.

As to Samnite burial in Pompeii, there are, in fact, a number of pre-Roman graves that have been found around the city. The dominant practice at the time was inhumation, as is expected, and they mostly consisted of simple burials of the corpse in stone or tile-lined cists, or occasionally even unlined burials. Some of these rather basic burials include grave goods such as bronze bracelets, terracotta bowls, jars and lamps, including Greek forms such as lekythoi, kylixes, and skyphoi. There are two areas around Pompeii were Samnite (or at the very least, pre-Roman) burials have been discovered. The largest of these consists of a group of approximately 160 graves, includes both pre- and post-colonial burials. Found five hundred metres beyond the Porta di Stabia in a four-hundred-square-metre area known as Fondo Azzolini, it has been identified as belonging to one family, the Epidii, who continued to use this one specific area outside the Porta di Stabia from pre-Roman times until the end of the city’s life, demonstrating a multigenerational adherence to one spot that is considered atypical. The earliest graves (just over forty in number) are inhumations similar to those attested by the Samnites, but there is alteration in the postcolonial period with a change to cremation, the addition of terracotta tubes for libations, and a greater inclination towards marking the burial locations with columellae.

A few pre-Roman graves have also been identified beyond the Porta di Ercolano, and this is part of what makes yesterday’s announcement so exciting. The original identification probably originated with Mau who notes the existence of a small Oscan cemetery that contains skeletons on the north-west side of the city. This reference is repeated by J.M.C.Toynbee in Death and Burial in the Roman World, who notes a series of four Samnite graves on the north side of the road leading away from the Porta di Ercolano on her plan of the cemetery.

Section of Toynbee’s plan: Samnite graves are numbers 31-32.

But Toynbee failed to elaborate any further on the nature of the burials, or if they had ever even been excavated. This was slightly problematic, as later studies refer back to her when they mention ‘Samnite graves.’ Kockel included a brief description of the graves; his discussion, however, was confused by including a number of pre- and post-Roman burials, and artifacts that could be dated from the late Republican to early Flavian periods. All that was really clear about the area was that it had been used for burial continuously since before colonisation.

But this area, on the northwest side of the road, is exactly where the new grave has been found. From the photos (the best released so far are in the La Repubblica article), it is apparent that the tomb consists of a stone lined, inhumed, skeleton, fully extended in a supine position, with various pots, including red-figure vases of the type that were produced locally in Campania as well as imported from Greece. At first glance, it looks like a text-book example of a Samnite burial. I am sure I am not the only person who is eagerly anticipating further analysis of the bones, the jars and their contents, and hopefully, more excavation in the surrounding area.

The earliest graves in Pompeii resemble the Samnite burials of central and southern Italy dating from the ninth to the fourth centuries BC, which I have always felt indicates there was a stronger Samnite presence in the city than has previously been attested. The limited remains of Oscan (the language of the Samnites, which I intend to get to on another day) has been used by some to argue that Pompeii was thoroughly Romanised already at the time of colonisation, and the changes in burial that took place fairly rapidly after 80 BC may be indicative of that. Still, the pre-Roman graves thus far discovered, including this new one, are all located in the extra-mural environment, which shows that although the Roman directive to bury beyond the city walls was not a change from pre-existing practice, the change in form to cremation and large, above-ground tombs, more or less obliterated the earlier burials from the archaeological record, subject only to accidental discovery. I, for one, am extremely grateful for such a beautiful accident.

a.d. III Nones Iulius

Whilst other Americans are preparing to spend the day celebrating our nation’s independence with barbeques, beer, and fireworks, I started thinking about a slightly different colonial experience. Pompeii, like many other towns in southern Italy, rose up in rebellion against Rome during the Social War (90-88 BC). This was a war fought between many Italian territories who had previously been allies of Rome. Much like the American colonialists, they had become fed up with paying taxes, providing soldiers, and supporting the expansion of Rome without receiving benefits like citizenship and voting rights. Indeed, the Italians also had a problem of taxation without representation. The alliance between Pompeii and Rome prior to the outbreak of the war is largely unknown – there is no clear evidence – but Pompeii was, by 90 BC, more or less surrounded by cities that were beholden to Rome, and had been Romanised (at the very least in terms of the adoption of Latin). Regardless, Pompeii did join other Campanian cities in the fight against Rome. In essence, what the Italian people wanted was either full access to the rights and benefits of being a Roman citizen, or a cessation of ties and alliances all together.

Besieged by Sullan troops in 89 BC, the city eventually fell to Rome. Evidence of the siege can still be seen in the city wall running between the Porta de Ercolano and the Porta del Vesuvio, and it is not uncommon for excavation in the northern sector of the city to turn up ballista and other projectiles used by the Roman soldiers.

The war was over soon thereafter. Despite being ostensibly won by Rome, the Italian allies got what they wanted: full Roman citizenship was granted to the entire population of Italy. There is a fair amount of debate as to what happened in the intervening years particularly as to how the city was governed, but in 80 BC, Pompeii officially became a Roman colony. The foundation of the colony was granted to Sulla, not only because he conquered the city, but as the general responsible for Roman troops in this and many other wars, he had a large number of veterans to provide for. It is from inscriptions such as this that we know the full name of the colony, which included reference to the founding patron:

CIL X 787
M(arcus) Holconius Rufus d(uum)v(ir) i(ure) d(icundo) tert(ium) / C(aius) Egnatius Postumus d(uum)v(ir) i(ure) d(icundo) iter(um) / ex d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) ius luminum / opstruendorum(!) HS |(mille) |(mille) |(mille) / redemerunt parietemque / privatum col(onia) Ven(eria) Cor(nelia) / usque at(!) tegulas / faciundum coera(ve)runt.
‘Marcus Holconius Rufus, duumvir with judicial power for the third time, and Gaius Egnatius Postumus, duumvir with judicial power for the second time, by decree of the decurions, paid 3,000 sesterces for the right to block off light, and say to the building of a private wall belonging to the colonia Veneria Cornelia.’

It is via Sulla that Venus becomes the patron goddess of the city, as she was also his family’s chosen deity. His moniker as ‘lucky’, a cognomen awarded to him (his full name was Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix) can also be found in the name of one of the districts around Pompeii, as attested in a number of inscriptions of its magister’s:

CIL X 1042
M(arcus) Arrius | (mulieris) l(ibertus) Diomedes / sibi suis memoriae / magister pag(i) Aug(usti) felic(is) suburb(ani).
‘Marcus Arrius Diomedes, freedman of a woman [Arria], for himself and his, in memory. Magister of the pagus Augustus Felix suburbanus.’

Roman colonies were typically founded with veteran settlement, and as far as anyone is aware, Pompeii was no different. This likely meant the arrival of approximately two thousand veterans of Sulla’s wars, with families if they had them, into the territory of Pompeii around 80 BC. Unlike places like Praenestae where soldiers were placed into towns abandoned by the previous inhabitants, it appears that the colonists and natives were integrated, at least physically. Pompeii was, in fact, the only colony of Sullan veterans that didn’t completely breakdown – there are examples of completely seperate cities, relocation of the native population, and at the worst, a significant amount of bloodshed. But that doesn’t mean that all went smoothly.

Approximately twenty years after the foundation of the colony at Pompeii, Cicero was called upon to defend Publius Cornelius Sulla, nephew, and at the time patron of Pompeii, against charges of conspiracy and incitement. The younger Sulla had previously had a spot of legal bother when he was elected consul and quickly removed from office for bribery, but in 62 BC was facing charges as a result of his supposed involvement in the Catiline Conspiracy. The passage of Cicero’s defense which relates to Pompeii is brief, and somewhat ambiguous:

Pro Sulla 60-62
‘Furthermore, I cannot understand what is the nature of this charge that the inhabitants of Pompeii were instigated by Sulla to join that conspiracy and set their hand to this nefarious crime. Do you think that they did join the conspiracy? Who ever said this, or was there even a hint of a suspicion of it? “Sulla,” he says “set them at odds with the new settlers in hope to use the division and dissension he had caused to get control of the town with the aid of the inhabitants of Pompeii.” In the first place, the whole quarrel between the inhabitants and the new settlers was reported to the patrons when it had grown chronic and had been pursued for many years. Secondly, in an inquiry conducted by the patrons, Sulla’s views were in complete agreement with those of the others. Finally, the new settlers themselves realize that Sulla was defending their interests no less than those of the inhabitants of Pompeii. This, gentlemen, you can infer from the large crowd of the settlers in court, men of the highest standing who are supporting and showing their solitude for their patron here in the dock, the defender and guardian of that colony. Even if they had not been able to preserve him in the possession of all his fortune and of every office, it is their urgent wish that at least in misfortune which now prostrates him he should through you be helped and kept from harm. The inhabitants of Pompeii who have been included in the charge by the prosecution have come to court to support him with no less enthusiasm. Although they quarrelled with the new settlers about promenades (ambulatione) and elections, they were of one mind about their joint safety. And I do not think that even this is an achievement of Publius Sulla that I should pass over in silence: that although he founded the colony and although political circumstances caused the privileged position of the new settlers to clash with the interests of the inhabitants of Pompeii, he is held in such affection and is so popular with both parties that he is felt not to have dispossessed the one but to have established the prosperity of both.’

Much has been made by modern scholars as to the levels of discord that must have existed between the colonists and the native Pompeians. The reality is that little information is provided by Cicero other than the fact that there was a disagreement over voting rights and a public walkway (this has never been fully understood but I have always liked the idea put forward by T.P. Wiseman and Dominic Berry that this refers to the quadraporticus behind the small theatre), and that in his role as patron Sulla mediated a settlement between the two groups. As proof of this Cicero points out that both Pompeians and colonists are present at the trial supporting him. Others have floated the theory that the small theatre was built specifically to serve as a meeting place for the colonists. Whilst it was constructed, as we know from the dedicatory inscription, by two of the earliest magistrates of the colony, there is no evidence to suggest this purpose was intended or indeed realised. The only actual mention of the colonists that survives epigraphically comes from the amphitheatre, which was constructed by the same two politicians.

CIL X 852
C(aius) Quinctius C(ai) f(ilius) Valgus / M(arcus) Porcius M(arci) f(ilius) duovir(i) / quinq(uennales) colonia<e> honoris / caus{s}a spectacula de sua / pe<c>(unia) fac(iunda) coer(averunt) et colon{e}is / locum in perpetu<u=O>m deder(unt).
‘Gaius Quinctius Valgus, son of Gaius, and Marcus Porcius, son of Marcus, quinquennial duovirs, for the honour of the colony, saw to the construction of the amphitheatre at their own expense and gave the area to the colonists in perpetuity.’

The size of the amphitheatre (unlike the small theatre), in no way relates to the number of colonists, and could never be claimed to be solely for their use regardless of how the inscription is interpreted. The fact remains that if the colonists wanted to present a clear and long lasting physical imprint on the city in order to visually assert their dominance over the native population, they failed miserably. Indeed, not even a funerary monument remains that names a colonist of the Sullan settlement. As to the issue over voting rights, the little evidence there is of longevity amongst politically active families in the pre- and post-colonial periods suggests any impact of a change in regime does not withstand the first generation after colonisation.

The evidence, in all its forms, suggests a true and relatively peaceful integration of veteran colonists and the indigenous population, even though colonisation was a result of war. This was unusual for the time, and as today’s American holiday suggests, unusual even two hundred and fifty years ago.