Transcript Pompeii The Destruction of Pompeii & Herculaneum by C.A.R Hills

Pompeii
Sources:
The Destruction of Pompeii & Herculaneum by C.A.R Hills
Antiquity 1 by
Unlocking the Past by
What has the discovery of Pompeii & Herculaneum told us about
ancient life?
Historical evidence
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They bare whole towns with 2 storeyed buildings in tact.
Pots and jugs still in the kitchen
Meals still waiting on tables.
Historical records tend to only recount the activities of the
rich BUT Pompeii gives us evidence of how the ‘ordinary’
people lived.
Very little of private houses left in Rome but here in P and
H many private houses and streets remain.
The city
 The following buildings/amenities have been excavated
forum
temples
theatres
amphitheatres
public baths
palaestra
shops
private dwellings
 Walled city with 8 gates
 Streets paved and guttered with a good water supply
The Forum
The Forum
pavement
Basilica – a public building
Basilica in Herculaneum, Hercules and Telephus with
Arcadia
The Forum baths
Cork model of the Forum
Gladiator barracks
Temple of Apollo - podium
Homes [domus]
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Usually the wealthy
Ornately decorated usually
Might stay in the one family for generations
Typically faced inwards
Very plain looking from the outside
Designed for security, privacy and peace & quiet
Few windows to the streets
Main hall [atrium] was fed light by opening in roof
Often 2 storeys
Greek influence shown by peristyles, large open colonnaded courtyards at
the back of the house
These were often embellished with statues, fountains & gardens
Fountain - House of Fontana
Grande
Homes [cont…..]
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Homes for the poor might have been over a shop. Ostia
has good examples of this type of housing At the time of
the eruption many larger houses had been divided into a
number of smaller flats
People tended to live in insulae [large blocks]
Some houses split into flats for several families especially
during the last ears before 79AD
No residential area
800 house have been excavated at Pompeii
The ‘best’ 50-room mansions of 2000 square metres down
to homes of only a few rooms
Insula of Julia Felix
Homes
– features of a wealthy home
 The houses of Pompeii were exquisitely designed. The
size and décor of your house usually depended on how
rich you were.
 The houses in Pompeii never had doorsteps but they
always had gardens. The gardens were usually full of
brightly coloured flowers and beautiful green trees.
 As soon as you walk in the door of a Pompeian house you
are standing in the fauces. This is also known as the
entrance hall. In older houses the fauces was usually
divided into two. It was also sometimes used as a
cloakroom the door posts in the fauces was beautifully
decorated and the floor in a wealthy house would be
covered with a mosaic
Heating hypocaust
Fauces House
of
Faun
Homes
[cont…..] –features of a wealthy home
 If you walk through the fauces you arrive at the main room
[atrium], this was where guests were received. The atrium
was covered by a roof which sloped downwards to allow
rainwater to enter the impluvium. Every house had an
impluvium; this was a pool for rainwater that then carried
the water down into a system for general use. In the corner
of the atrium there was a lararium [shrine for the
household gods]. The families would worship their
household gods every morning and every evening.
 After the atrium, there was the tablinum. This was a room
were all the business between the master of the house and
his clients took place. The tablinum was divided from the
atrium by curtains or a wooden screen. It opened out into
the garden
Couch, from the “House of
Carbonized Furniture”
Atrium from tablinum – House of the Tragic
Poet
Atrium from entrance – House of the Tragic
Poet
Compluvium
House of the
Tragic Poet
Homes [cont…..] –features of a wealthy home
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Next to the tablinum was the triclinum, which was also known
as the winter dining room. This room had three large couches
with cushions and also with niches in the walls for supporting
extra wooden couches. Each couch was allocated to certain
people e.g. The first couch was occupied by the master of the
house and the chief guest was seated on the middle couch.
At the back of the house was the summer dining room also
known as the triclinium this room opened out into the garden.
The couches in this room were in the shape of a three-sided
square. Opening out into the garden was broad windows, and
in the garden there were stone couches that would not rot in
the rain.
Tablinum – House of Faun
Triclinum – Tragic Poet
Kitchen in the House of the Tragic
Poet
Homes
[cont…..] –features of a wealthy home
In a Pompeian house there was no set place for a kitchen but it was
usually behind the atrium, the toilet was often next door or even
inside the kitchen. The contents of the toilet drained off into a pit.
Only public toilets had a sewage system.
 Then there was the peristylium, which was the garden. The
surrounding walls of a Pompeian garden were painted with outdoor
scenes. The most popular style garden was with a colonnade, which
offered the people of the house some shade during summer.
 Pompeian houses were always painted white to keep them cool.
Around a Pompeian there was always beautiful painting representing
things like gods or there were usually a lot of paintings showing sexual
scenes.
 Pompeian houses were beautifully built and decorated. The richer you
were the more mosaics and paintings you had in your house.
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Peristyle - House of Amorini Dorati
1st peristyle – House of Faun
2nd peristyle – House of Faun
Room off the peristyle – House of Amorini
Dorati
Religion- temples
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10 excavated in Pompeii
Two functions – to house the gods and be a place for rituals to be carried
out by the priests
Not places of regular worship by the public [except temple of Isis]
Temple of Apollo rebuilt and remodelled several times, and enlarged after
62AD
Temple of Venus which had been destroyed in 62 had only just begun to be
rebuilt in 79
When Pompeii became a Roman colony in 80BC the temple of Jupiter was
converted to the temple of the Jupiter, Juno and Minerva – it had not been
repaired after 62
2 temples associated with imperial [Roman] rule were temples of
Vespasian, and Fortuna Augusta
Temple of Jupiter
Religion
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At least 2 eastern religions practiced in Pompeii – an ivory figurine of a
Hindu fertility goddess, Lakshmi and a bronze bust of the near Eastern
fertility goddess, Sabzias found
Shrines & altars also found on the streets, many at crossroads
1 shrine near a fountain on the Via dell’Abondanza had the charred
remains of a sacrifice made at the time of the eruption
Images of gods were painted on the alls of shops
In the temples rituals etc were carried by priests and priestesses
Images of Venus found throughout Pompeii – the goddess of love and
success
One aspiring politician wrote in graffiti, “Vote for me and the Venus of
Pompeii will bring success to everything you undertake”
Temple of Apollo with altar
Religion- Temple of Isis
• Dedicated to the Egyptian god, Isis
• Worshippers of Isis met in then temple twice a day
• 1st in the morning celebrating the rising of the sun, the rebirth of
Osiris
• 2nd in the early afternoon ceremony of water, where Nile water was
blessed
• Badly damaged in 62 but fully rebuilt by freedman in the name of
his son, N Popidius Celsinus
• Ceremonial objects found with skeletons suggesting the priests had
fled Vesuvius with statues, a silver urn and other vessels
Religion- household
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Household religion was central to roman citizens at the time.
Houses in Pompeii had small shrines [lararium]
Each day offerings were made to the household gods
After the earthquake of 62 most lararia were quickly
restored
• In 79AD people fled with their lares as many lararia found
without their lares as well as many being found in the streets
near skeletons
• Vesta the goddess of the hearth [fireplace]
• Panates, guardian spirits of the pantry!!
Paintings
• Despite kitchens and bedrooms often being small even in
the better houses, generally they were much more beautiful
than modern houses.
• Floor mosaics, wall paintings & decoration exist in
abundance in Pompeii & Herculaneum.
• Art historians are able to identify 4 styles of painting
• Most famous paintings at Pompeii are those of the Villa of
Mysteries showing initiation ceremonies into the worship of
the Greek god, Dionysius.
• These are great works of art BUT also very important
historical documents.
Painting of
Narcissus – House
of Loreius
Tiburtinus
Paintings cont….
• 4 main points about Roman wall painting
• Ancient houses were painted much more than today. Today
we tend to think of individually commissioned murals as
reserved for only the very rich yet in Pompeii and
Herculaneum it was a daily occurrence.
• Quality varies from room to room. The more important, and
therefore more highly visible and visited rooms, received
better paintings.
• Paintings must be considered in the context of the
architecture settings in which they occur. What was the
function of the room? Was it well lit? How does it work with
pavements? With furniture?
• Wall paintings are a measure of the artistic taste and social
aspirations of the owner of the house.
Painting of the
Poet – House of
Menander
Painting to right of fountain in the
House of Fontana Piccola
Paintings in the House of
Ara Massima
Villa of Mysteries
Painting in the Villa of
Mysteries
Streets
 Had raised pavements on either side
 Stepping stones placed at intervals so people could sidestep
water and rubbish
 Streets were cobbled
 Evidence of many ruts in the streets from traffic
 Streets very narrow by modern standards
 Rarely more than 4 metres wide in Pompeii while those
of Herculaneum were even narrow hardly wide enough for
a chariot
 Most intersections had a public fountain with sculptured
headstones
Pompeian Street
Villa of Mysteries room
with frescoes
Another Pompeian street with stepping stones and
wheel ruts. NB how narrow they are!!
Shops & Hotels etc
Much evidence of shops, workshops, hotels, restaurants & places of
entertainment
One hotel in Pompeii has a large dining room, kitchen and 6 bedrooms
Some guest wrote their names in bedrooms
Two friends, Lucius & Primigenus, shared one room and 4 actors shred
another
Plenty of snack bars [thermopolia] in Pompeii – you can still see food
counters & containers from which dishes were served
No large scale industry nor factories in Pompeii but plenty of small
scale business such as dry cleaners, bakers
Shop with wooden clothes press
Thermopolium & fountain
Public buildings
Amphitheatre the oldest surviving in the empire [c 80BC]
Lacks the network of underground rooms found at the Colosseum in
Rome
Forum, temples, law courts, council offices, business headquarters
One of the earliest buildings found in Pompeii was the Temple of
Apollo [6th C BC]
A temple to a Greek god at this time suggests the early influence of
Greek colonists
Fortified towns
Pompeii has strong walls, towers and gates
Earliest sections of wall date from 5th C BC
12 towers added in about 100BC
Sulla besieged the town in 89 BC during the revolt of much of Italy
against Rome in what has become known as the Social War [socii is
Latin for ‘allies’]
Herculaneum also had walls though les well preserved
An indication of how peaceful the Roman empire had become is the
existence of grand houses on the promontory overlooking the sea at
Herculaneum often using parts of the defensive wall as sun terraces!!
Cemeteries were outside the town gates by Roman custom
Graffiti
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This gives us a real insight into the real thoughts of the ordinary
citizen, adult or child, of Pompeii
Herculaneum [a more dignified town!?] had far less graffiti
Much related to the annual March elections for town officials
It is said of one candidate that “he stands for good bread” [bonam
panem fert]
Another said that “Vibius Restitutus slept here alone and missed his dear
Urbana”!!!
One girls rejects the overtures of Tertius because he is too ugly!
Obscene graffiti is very common, both heterosexual and homosexual
Someone else write “everyone writes on walls except me”
A schoolboy also writes that if you don’t like the works of Cicero
you will be whacked!!
Graffiti cont….
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Gladiators get much praise – Celadus the Thracian is “the girls heart throb”
[suspirium puellarum]
Actors seem equally popular – one group inform us that they are “companions of
the Paris Club” while another writes “Actius our favourite, come back quickly
There are signs of a high level of literary culture with Virgil, Tibullus, Lucretius
and Ovid being quoted [think of you quoting Shakespeare!]
Some of these literary quotes, obviously by children judging by their height, are
probably an attempt to show off what they had learnt at school
One adult quoted or wrote some delightful folk poetry
Nothing lasts forever
though the sun shines gold
it must sink into the sea
The moon has also disappeared
which but now so brightly gleamed
so if the loved one rages
hold fast, this storm will soon yield
to the soft Zephyrs
Some more graffiti!!!
 Samius
to Cornelius – go hang yourself!
 Health to those who invite me to lunch
 The weaver, Successus, loves Iris the slave of the
innkeeper’s wife
 I am surprised, O wall, that you who have to bear
the weariness of so many writers, are still
standing
 Lovers, like bees, need a life of honey
Real people!
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It has been possible to identify individuals of Pompeii.
A bronze statue of the banker Lucius Caecilius Iucundus includes a
wart on his face
There is also a wall? painting of a young married couple holding a
papyrus roll and a wax tablet possibly showing Paquius Proculus
who we know rose from being a baker to the town official of aedile
We know that 7 children died in an upper room of the house of
Paquius Proculus
Population of Pompeii has been quoted as between 8000 and 10,000
[antiquity 1] but generally as about 20,000
Real people! Cont….
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One piece of graffiti states “Hail, profit!” perhaps giving us
a real glimpse of what Pompeians were all about!!
40% slaves
We know that the following were included amongst the
people of Pompeii: artists, metal workers, glass blowers,
potters as well as bakers, inn keepers, weaving & spinning
[cottage industries], wine making, olive oil production, bath
attendants and brothel keepers!
Venus, goddess of love, was the patron god of the city!