The ghosts of Pompeii
It started with a rumble, then a roar, then fire, fear and death. Who were the people trapped by Vesuvius’s terrifying eruption in AD79?
A sneak preview of Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum
Lucius was a banker. He lived, as bankers tend to, in a big house, with large rooms, plenty of art and an enviable garden. He enjoyed life’s pleasures, displaying some relatively frisky frescoes on the walls of his home, but he was a god-fearing man, and respectful, acknowledging his humble origins and the role played in his good fortune by his ancestors. He probably threw a decent party. You might have liked him.
We shall never know. There is much that is unknown about Lucius, but it’s the fact that we know anything at all that makes him extraordinary. Lucius Caecilius lucundus, to give him his full title, lived in Pompeii. He may have died or left the town some time before AD79, but he certainly didn’t leave after, because towards the end of that year, his home, and those of his neighbours in Pompeii and the surrounding cities and settlements of Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae, were consumed in one of the most infamous natural disasters mankind has witnessed. Vesuvius, the volcano that towers over Naples but had been relatively quiet for hundreds of years, erupted, producing an ash cloud that rose nearly 20 miles into the air, covering Pompeii in a carpet of pumice.
When the cloud descended some hours later it was the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies: it sent a toxic mix of ash and gas rampaging down into Pompeii and Herculaneum. In places it was powerful enough to pick up buildings and carry them off; it would have destroyed human life in an instant. Poor Lucius, if he hadn’t already made a dash for it, wouldn’t have stood a chance. But while we can’t be certain if he lived or died that day, a number of his possessions survived the eruption and lay caked in ash for nearly 2,000 years, until they were discovered among the ruins of the city. Now, alongside hundreds of other extraordinary links to the past, they are coming to London.
The British Museum’s headline show for this year is Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. While Pompeii is the better known of the two, according to the exhibition’s curator, Paul Roberts, both are vital. “From the moment I went to the ancient sites for the first time with my mum in 1976, I realised that you need both,” he says. “Pompeii has the scale, the theatres, avenues of shops, the casts of the bodies; but Herculaneum has the atmosphere, the two- or three-storey buildings. You really get the feel of these two different cities.”
The volcano produced an ash cloud that rose nearly 20 miles into the air, covering Pompeii in a carpet of pumice
Roberts is the history teacher every school should have. His enthusiasm for his specialist subject leaps out of his holey jumper, and his rich, sonorous voice, with just the faintest twang of his native Herefordshire, paints the most vivid pictures.
“If Naples had been buried we would have discovered much better quality jewellery, frescoes and mosaics, because it was a richer city with a real aristocracy. But that would have given us a completely distorted idea of what life was like. These places are special because they’re ordinary. If Herculaneum and Pompeii were more important to the Romans, they’d be less important to us.”
The aim of the exhibition is to reveal the wonder in such ordinariness. The last show of note in Britain on this subject was at the Royal Academy, nearly 40 years ago.
This one focuses not on the gladiators, the senate or the baths, but on the thing that links us with each slave or citizen of Rome: the home. We can see how these people lived, what they ate, where they drank, prayed and had sex — and as we’ll see, they had sex in a lot of places. It will give, so Roberts hopes, as clear a picture as is possible of what life was like for an ordinary citizen during the time of the Roman Empire.
To get the most out of the artefacts that have been recovered and have made the journey to London from Naples, where most of them now live, we need to understand how they were buried. Pompeii and Herculaneum were hit by the volcano in different ways. Herculaneum was destroyed first. The ash cloud swept across the city at 100mph and 400C, and at that temperature, wood and other organic materials, such as papyrus and wool, were carbonised and preserved, as they were buried and sealed by the ash. One heart-wrenching item from Herculaneum is a wooden cot, that still rocks on its carbonised, charcoal runners. A fragment of a blanket was also found inside. Humans were obliterated instantly, their flesh melting, leaving only their bones, such as those of the baby in the cot, or the 30 or so skeletons that were discovered in the 1980s huddled together in a series of rooms, or the few hundred that were found on the beach. So far, barely 350 inhabitants of a city of 4,000 to 5,000 people have been recovered, since a man digging a well in 1710 first stumbled upon the rich treasures that lay hidden underground. Archeologists estimate that as much as two-thirds of the city has yet to be excavated.
By the time the pyroclastic cloud reached Pompeii, which was nearly four times the size of Herculaneum, it had cooled to about 300C. That was not hot enough to vaporise humans, so bodies remained where they fell, encased in ash, which compacted into stone. Over the years, water and air reached them, rotting the remains, leaving perfectly preserved spaces — voids — where the bodies had been. In the 1860s, an Italian archeologist named Giuseppe Fiorelli devised a method of filling these spaces with plaster and created, in some cases, extraordinarily detailed moulds of the victims. Whole families were reborn, mothers with children clinging to them in their last moments — and, in one case, even a guard dog chained to a post, coiled in fear. “I’ve been looking at these bodies for 30 years and I can’t look at them without my eyes pricking with tears,” says the historian and presenter Bettany Hughes. “It’s a remarkable thing to have encapsulated that moment of passing. There’s almost a beauty to them, and yet it’s a terrible, savage beauty, because you know what they’ve gone through. It triggers something very fundamental about what it is to be human, to be moved by those people, even though we’re separated by 2,000 years.”
While the original casts are too frail to move, a number of remade casts will come to London. “It’s impossible not to be moved by these hunched figures with their heads clasped at the moment of being overwhelmed,” saysRobert Harris, author of the historical bestseller, Pompeii. “They’re not necessarily easy to see in Pompeii, so they’ll be much more striking properly exhibited and lit. And they’re one of the reasons why Pompeii always haunts successive generations — it’s about human frailty, the power of nature, and it is a link with the past that seems to strengthen with the passage of time.”
The submerged city was first discovered at the end of the 16th century, but it was not until 1748 that excavations began with gusto and by the beginning of the next century visitors were able to walk down newly restored Roman streets, just as they can now. The excavations and discoveries that have occurred have changed the way historians see aspects of Roman life.
A fresco of two lovers from the house of Lucius Caecilius lucundus, a banker (Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei)
ONE OF THE interesting things we’ve learnt about is the rise of the ex-slave,” says Roberts. Tablets found in Herculaneum reveal that an extraordinary number — more than half — of the citizens in these cities had slave origins. “A massive number of slaves come into the Roman world through conquests, as prisoners of war or sent by the courts into slavery as punishment. You could also be born into slavery, there were resident slaves with children who lived with their masters in their homes.” But you could buy your freedom, and go from slave to freedman in one generation. “You could run your master’s business, importing wine, for example,” Roberts explains. “He won’t dirty his hands with filthy lucre, but he will put you in charge and give you a cut. You save up that money and, at an agreed sum, there’s a formal ‘freeing’ ceremony where you get half-freedom. You can’t stand for public office, but you’re a citizen, you can vote and your sons and daughters get full freedom. The ex-slaves are often the ones with money, they were the ones buying the big houses.”
Another myth this exhibition will help to dispel is that women were second-class citizens. “We make a real mistake when we think that in the ancient world women could only have influence if they were the empress or extraordinarily rich,” says Hughes. “Those were the women who have come down to us in the historical record, but the archeological record has given us a much more variegated ecology of human life.”
Some of the art bears this out. “There’s a beautiful fresco in the exhibition of a baker and his wife and they’re clearly partners in the business,” says Roberts. “They want to show themselves as sophisticated: he wears a toga, has a mantle round his shoulders and is holding a scroll, which means he can read, and probably owns property. Slightly in front of him is his wife, an equal partner in the business, also holding emblems of literacy. She’s got the tablet on which you keep the records. This blows out of the water the idea that women were completely subservient. Roman women were not allowed to stand for political office, but neither could they in Britain until the 1920s. It didn’t mean they didn’t have money, or influence.”
Hughes agrees. “Women held the top positions in religion, and this is a world where religion meant everything,” she says. “To have a woman as a high priestess, that really means something — it’s not just arranging flowers on a church altar once a month. They were really central to the experience of Roman life. There has to be a base level of respect for women because their role was so important, in all areas of life, including sex.”
Most historians now agree that the phallus was a lucky charm, practically devoid of sexuality
Ah yes, sex. If ever there was an aspect of Roman life we feel confident that we know the ins and outs of, it’s their rapacious thirst for fornication. Well, yes and no.
“As a Pompeian woman, I’d have got sick of all the penises everywhere,” says Hughes. Indeed, anyone who has visited Pompeii will attest that the Romans loved a phallus. They plastered them on walls and above doorways, and there has been much debate as to what they meant. Could they have been signifying that sex was available inside?
The answer appears to be more mundane. Most historians now agree that the phallus was a lucky charm, practically devoid of sexuality.
“I’m absolutely sure the phallus was just for good luck and didn’t denote brothels,” Hughes continues. “People get very excited at the thought of a brothel — we love the idea of these dirty, dubious places where people have slightly exotic and adventurous sex — but that wasn’t how sex worked in Roman times, so I’m sure they were there as good luck symbols. Either Pompeii and Herculaneum were one big brothel, or, well, they weren’t.”
There are a number of items in the exhibition that bear this out, from statues of people with appendages banging alarmingly around their knees, to lamps and jewellery that feature anatomically dangerous, almost cartoonish, phalluses. One of the more considered items that has travelled from Italy belonged to our respectable banker friend Lucius. “He had what we would call a ‘naughty’ painting,” says Roberts. “It’s of a couple making love on a bed, and the interesting thing is it doesn’t come from the bedroom, but the garden — it was hung on the wall of the colonnade, where women and children are going to be walking. These images are a regular part of life, and are all over the place. For the Romans, the phallus was a talisman. There was an association with power, obviously — Roman life was always about power — but it was no ruder than hanging up a horseshoe.”
“The Romans had a very different attitude towards sex,” adds Hughes. “There’s a very healthy delight in both what it does for society and what it does for individuals. But there’s still etiquette.It was considered rude to have sex in the open, in a park or on a boat. We think it’s one of the reasons that there were so many of these little anterooms, called cubiculums, in the houses, so you could have sex when it took your fancy, and not just in the bedroom. There’s very little distinction between public and private in Roman life, people see everything, but there were these little spaces where you could do private things, such as go to the toilet, murder someone, have a business conversation or have a quickie. Sex was just very much part of everyone’s working day.”
A plaster cast of a dog in the position in which it died (Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei) WHEN THEY WERE discovered in the 18th century, some of the more risqué items were hidden away on the orders of the Bourbon king, Charles III. They re-emerged only to be stashed away again, years later, in a secret part of the National Archeological Museum of Naples, so as not to offend the viewing public. Today the museum has a more liberal attitude to showcasing its wares and Roberts has been working in concert with its curators for five years preparing the Life and Death show. “There are several new discoveries coming from Herculaneum that have never been displayed anywhere else,” he says. “Fragments of wooden tripods that were completely veneered in ivory — luxury pieces from a seaside residence called the Villa of the Papyri. The quality is astonishing. They’ve never been seen in Italy, let alone England. The director of the museum in Naples is letting us have the scoop.”
'There were 750 sacks of poo excavated from the drains, too, but don’t worry, we don’t have those'
In all, 20 objects in the exhibition are from the British Museum, the rest are on loan, including 120 from Naples, 272 from Herculaneum, and 41 from Pompeii. Packing them took six months: each was photographed and catalogued, and placed in a foam-lined case. All are transported by land, which takes four days, and then have to fit through the museum’s soon-to-be-replaced loading door, which, at just 2.23 metres, is relatively small. The largest exhibit cleared it by 3cm.
Some of the most interesting items are much smaller, however. There is a loaf of bread, stamped with the mark of a slave, who either made it himself or took it to the baker’s to be baked; a bottle that still contains the rancid remains of olive oil; onions, dates, figs, beans, millet and corn — foodstuffs that we still use today.
But there is one source of protein that hasn’t stood the test of time — and if it turned up in our food chain it would cause a far bigger stink than the recent horsemeat scandal: dormouse. Included in the exhibition is a small pot with air holes, and two cups that would have held water and acorns. It was used for fattening up the mice, which were seen as a delicacy.
And if you’re pulling a face now, it gets worse: food was prepared in a kitchen area that was often also home to the toilet. Indeed, pots and pans, as well as jewellery and ornaments, have been recovered from the drains, into which they must have been knocked while someone was preparing a meal. “We have them in the exhibition,” says Roberts, gleefully, “as well as oil lamps that fell down the toilet when someone went in the night, and a beautiful little terracotta of a woman and child. There were 750 sacks of poo excavated from the drains, too, but don’t worry, we don’t have those.”
Despite that, exhibitions such as this one are likely to trigger new interest in the ancient sites. But is this a good thing? Having survived their long hibernation in the ash, subsequent excavation and Allied bombs during the Second World War, Pompeii and Herculaneum are now exposed to the worst of natural and human intervention. Rains washed away some walls a few years ago, while tourists and vandals can be less than sympathetic. In 1997 a law was passed allowing all proceeds from the 2.5m annual visitors to be used for conservation, but many are sceptical that funds are being used appropriately, with whispers of mafia involvement. “It’s not only Italy, it’s southern Italy. And it’s not only southern Italy, it’s Naples: not an ideal place to have a big, well-funded project,” says Harris. “And the more people go, the more the sites get damaged. It’s one of the world’s great tourist destinations and the tourists are destroying it.”
Publicity can help, argues Hughes. “We must do what we can to support the Italians’ work, to keep the spotlight on it and ensure every last euro is being spent where it should,” she says. “Every year there is some new bit of technology that allows us to investigate more sensitively and more accurately. And once we have what we recognise as the most cutting-edge instruments, we can deal with the excavations in a cutting-edge way.”
“In the end all these things will pass away,” says Harris. “It’s just ordinary bricks, and they’ve now been exposed for several centuries. That’s one of the reasons why this exhibition is so important. I wouldn’t want to discourage people from going to Pompeii — I’d say that, for most who go, it’s a life-changing visit — but it’s wonderful to be able to see things, here, in this way.”
Next weekend you can get an amazing, double-sided Pompeii and Herculaneum poster, FREE with The Sunday Times
Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, sponsored by Goldman Sachs, is at the British Museum from March 28 to September 29. Pompeii Live from the British Museum, a cinema version of the exhibition, will be released nationwide on June 18, with a special schools screening on June 19; britishmuseum.org.
For details of an eight-day escorted tour to Pompeii, Naples and its National Archaeological Museum, call 01283 742382 quoting RZ007 or visit sundaytimesriviera.co.uk
Times+ members are invited to a private view of Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum, including breakfast and a talk from one of the museum’s curators, on April 13 at 9am. Book tickets at mytimesplus.co.uk
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