Wallace-Hadrill 2011-Herculaneum Past Future
Wallace-Hadrill 2011-Herculaneum Past Future
Wallace-Hadrill 2011-Herculaneum Past Future
Preface 6
Frances Lincoln Ltd
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1 Geology 14 9 Low Life 256
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Copyright © Frances Lincoln Ltd 2011 2 The Politics of Archaeology 40 10 The Tale of Two Cities 286
Text copyright @ Andrew Wallace-Hadrill 2011
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3 Ruins Restored 64 11 The Future of the Past 306
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4 The Town and its Setting 88 Further Reading 340
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7 Standards of Living 1987 Index 349
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P
ompeii has been the subject of a flood of of a lost library of antiquity, something like the lost
books, one that grows every year. The site, library of Alexandria, rather than anything visible
now attracting not far short of 3 million visi- on the ground (let alone readable in a library).
tors a year, has become one of our principal, perhaps Herculaneum has not merited this neglect. Even
the principal window on the Roman world and on this is to put it too negatively. Herculaneum is an
everyday life in antiquity. It is studied in schools and extraordinary site, of the very highest world class.
universities all over the world, and is the focus of Small it may be, at least compared to the rolling
a steady stream of television documentaries. Novels acres of Pompeii, but in quality it has no match. The
like Robert Harris’s excellent Pompeii only increase freak of chance that meant Pompeii was blanketed
the appeal. But the focus on Pompeii is not limited in ash and pumice pebbles, while Herculaneum was
to ‘popularizing’ works: over the last decade, several covered in the fine, hot dust of pyroclastic surges
dozen teams from universities in at least ten countries and flows, resulted in the extensive preservation
have undertaken projects of archaeological investi- at Herculaneum of organic material – principally
gation in Pompeii. It has benefited from publication, wood, but also foodstuffs, papyrus and cloth. At
house by house, in a ten-volume encyclopaedia, and the same time, the depth of cover in Herculaneum,
the aim to provide scholarly publication block by much closer to the crater of Vesuvius than Pompeii,
block of houses is rapidly progressing. is three or four times greater, resulting in the exten-
In all this, Herculaneum has progressively been sive preservation of upper floors. Measured from
left behind. There are at most two books in English the ancient seashore to the highest level preserved,
devoted to the site, one by a passionate but frustrated Herculaneum can account for no less than six storeys.
Cambridge professor, Sir Charles Waldstein, who at Only in Herculaneum is it possible to examine a
the beginning of the twentieth century led an unsuc- latrine two floors above the street level; only in
cessful campaign to relaunch the excavation of the Herculaneum is it possible to examine a sewer 50
site, and one by an American amateur (in the best metres long, full to a depth of up to half a metre with
sense of the word) with a passion for things Italian, the contents of ancient kitchens and human bowels.
Joseph Jay Deiss. There are still only a handful of Only in Herculaneum is it possible to put names to
books devoted to the site in any language, mostly nearly half the free, adult, male inhabitants of the
guidebooks and exhibition catalogues, though, as the final years, and through its documents enter into the
Further Reading list shows, there are interminable intimate detail of their legal and commercial lives.
scholarly articles. The site has, until recently, had few I would not suggest for a moment that Hercu-
foreign projects, no encyclopaedia, and a tenth the laneum can be a substitute for Pompeii. There are
number of visitors that Pompeii boasts. It was also, by several things in which Pompeii is much richer
the end of the twentieth century, entering a precipi- (more sex, more violence). These do much to explain
tous state of decay. The Villa of the Papyri was the Pompeii’s popular appeal. But at the very least, we need
View across Cardo IV from
only aspect of Herculaneum that seemed to capture to look at both sites together. They are complementary,
the upper balcony of the
House of Wattlework (a the popular imagination, and even this because of and each offers its own angle. Nobody would want to
Graticcio). the prospect it seemed to dangle of the rediscovery suggest that the 2.5 million visitors to Pompeii should
preface 7
or understand about Herculaneum; about what has I am deeply grateful to the members of the
attracted interest in the past, and why, and what the Herculaneum Conservation Project team, both
potential is for future insights. The game is certainly individually and as a group. I owe a particular debt to
not over until the analysis of the skeletal remains, the Domenico (Mimmo) Camardo, our lead archaeolo-
new publication of the waxed wooden tablets, the gist, and his collaborators from Sosandra, especially
study of the finds, including the organic remains from Domenico (Mimmo) Esposito, and to the geological
the sewers, are all complete, not until new excavations team of Aldo Cinque, Professor of Geology at the
and investigations have cast light on the frustrating University of Naples Federico II, and Linda Irollo,
question of where the forum and heart of the city whose work on the ancient seashore has produced
was, and the basic question of where the town walls vital new evidence of the changing morphology of
ran, especially to the north, all areas in which we can the town; likewise to Mark Robinson, Professor of
expect to see progress in the next decade. Nor will Environmental Archaeology at the University of
the visitor experience have achieved its full potential Oxford, and Erica Rowan, for their analysis of the
until the museum containing the site’s rich harvest of contents of the great sewer, and to our lead archi-
finds is open, and until the two great excavations of tect, Paola Pesaresi, for showing what can be learnt
the eighteenth century – the theatre and the Villa of from reopening Bourbon tunnels. Gionata Rizzi,
the Papyri – are reconnected to the main site. conservation architect, introduced me to some of the
That I have been able to write this book is wholly great debates about restoration, and taught me that
due to my participation in an exceptional project. In restoration is open to as many interpretations as a
2001, the Packard Humanities Institute of California musical score. From Monica Martelli Castaldi I have
launched the extraordinary initiative of a collabo- learned that the key to conservation lies in a constant
rative project with the local heritage agency, the and thorough programme of maintenance, and that
transfer their affections to Herculaneum: much of up their daily lives. What emerges is in many ways Detail from the marble Archaeological Superintendency of Pompeii (now it is indeed possible if not to stop then at least to slow
funerary altar of Marcus
the appeal of Herculaneum lies in being smaller and surprising. We knew for instance that this was a slave Nonius Balbus.
Naples and Pompeii), with the aim of addressing down decay. From engineer Ippolito Massari I have
quieter. Any visitor to Herculaneum is struck by its society, and that slaves could be freed and flourish. some of the root causes of decay on the site. Invited learned how the acute problems of damage caused by
intimacy and immediacy. A higher proportion of But the evidence, as we will see, suggests that freed by Dr David Woodley Packard to set up the project, I water can be managed, and an ancient drainage system
the visitors to Herculaneum are schoolchildren. The slaves outnumbered the freeborn (which necessarily have had the privilege of working closely since 2001 reactivated. From the late Giorgio Torraca, Professor
appeal is instant, and the stimulus to the imagination means that slaves outnumbered them both). Trying with a talented team of (mostly Italian) special- Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Rome, and
effective at almost any age. to understand such a society stretches our imagina- ists drawn from a wide range of disciplines. There his numerous collaborators in the Getty Conservation
The intimacy which attracts the visitor is also tion, and requires patient attention to minute detail. is no point at which my understanding of the site, Institute and universities all round the world co-ordi-
what makes the site so important for understanding This is no guidebook, though I hope that visitors and consequently my framing of this book, has not nated by Alessandra De Vita, I have learned that we
the ancient world. We know plenty about the cities to the site will find it helpful both before and after benefited from their insight and enthusiasm, and cannot expect ancient frescoes, surface and wooden
of the Roman empire, their urban form, their a visit. A guidebook needs to be descriptive and the numerous new results they have generated. It elements to survive without the support of research
administration and economy, and about Roman law thorough; and though there are few corners of the is only too rare for archaeologists and historians chemists. To Massimo Brizzi and his patient team of
and society and politics. What makes Herculaneum site I do not discuss, there is no itinerary. Several to work hand in hand with conservationists, archi- archaeological surveyors I owe a new set of plans of
special is not any addition to our knowledge on adequate guidebooks already exist. Nor does this tects, engineers, surveyors, materials scientists and a degree of accuracy that was previously lacking. To
the grand scale, but the chance to look in intimate book attempt to offer a definitive account. It is too geologists. Our experience, from the beginning of Ascanio D’Andrea I owe the use of a database that
detail at the workings of one particular city at one early for any account to be definitive, and both new the project, has been that, through collaboration makes possible the co-ordination of vast amounts of
moment in time. We can look at this society under evidence and new questions are constantly emerging. in a multidisciplinary team, addressing seemingly information, archival and new. To Sarah Court I owe
the microscope: whether the contents of their bowels Instead, this book attempts an overview of what we banal issues of conservation can deliver a stream of the co-ordination of the multiple lines of communica-
or the legal and economic transactions that made do and, equally interesting, what we do not know exciting results. tion with the scholarly and scientific and educational
8 preface preface 9
world – the constant stream of researchers, interns, former Director General, Dr Nicholas Stanley-Price, in Cambridge in 2008; to my friends in the Faculty attractive house plans. To two institutions I owe the
student and teacher groups that visit the site – and and his colleague Dr Valerie Magar, helping us to see of Classics, especially Mary Beard, Henry Hurst and gift of time: to the British School at Rome for enabling
the local community, of schools, local residents and the problems of Herculaneum in a broader interna- Martin Millett I owe much stimulating discussion. me to continue to work on Herculaneum despite
members of the local administration, from whose tional context, and to recruit the advice and comments Mary did the further favour of reading the text of leaving them, to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
interest and appreciation the site can only benefit. of many participants in ICCROM courses. this book and helping removing errors and stumbling for enabling me to continue to work despite joining
To our Project Manager, Jane Thompson, I owe the We have also been fortunate in the support of the blocks, as did Kenneth Lapatin, Alex Hall repeat- them. To David Packard I owe not only the chance to
vision and the reality of a team that works together municipal authority, the Comune di Ercolano. Three edly combed through the text, always improving it, work on this magical site, but the encouragement and
effectively through the regular exchange of informa- city mayors in succession, Luisa Bossa and Gaetano and made the index. Michael Brunström, as editor, financial support to write the book. My greatest debt,
tion, and which allows the constant evolution in the (Nino) Daniele and Vincenzo Strazzullo, have proved lavished equal care on text and illustrations. To all both as ever, is personal: Jo encouraged me to write when
Below: Detail of a theatrical
light of experience of the aims and priorities of the enthusiastic allies, and helped us to set up together mask from the so-called
I and the reader are deeply indebted. Amy Richardson I should have been sorting out a move, read each
project. an Association and an International Centre for the College of the Augustales. came to my rescue for a second time in sorting out the chapter as it came out and helped ensure that it would
Beyond the conservation team, I have enjoyed the Study of Herculaneum. Massimo Iovino, the architect endless mass of illustrations. Brian Donovan, to whose be readable. To her this book is dedicated.
Overleaf: View of the site from
support of many allies. Professor Pietro Giovanni responsible for Ercolano’s ambitious plan of urban skill as a photographer this book owes much of its
the north-east towards the
Guzzo, Archaeological Superintendent of Pompeii regeneration (‘Urban Herculaneum’), worked with west. appeal, was generous as ever with his time in making AWH
from 1995 to 2009, and latterly also of Naples, was Jane Thompson and Sarah Court to see through all the
the key figure without whose courageous openness to practicalities of a collaboration between local authority,
experiment the project could not have happened: he the Italian State, represented by the Superintendency,
has supported it throughout with his wisdom, deter- and the Herculaneum Conservation Project and the
mination and friendship. He made an inspired choice international community, represented by the British
in appointing Maria Paola Guidobaldi as Director School at Rome. The first Centre Manager, Christian
of the site when the project started; she, supported Biggi, has successfully brought together these diverse
by a fine team on site, has been the staunch ally of interests, and launched a programme of seminars,
the project, and the Further Reading shows how initiatives with local schools, and research into
much I owe to her in writing this book. The project local oral history. The President of the Association,
has been overseen by a scientific committee whose Professor Dieter Mertens, has brought us the great
distinction is equalled by their passion for the site. benefit of his long experience with similar challenges
Professor Stefano De Caro has helped us through in Sicily.
the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Italian State, Without the Herculaneum Conservation Project
first as Superintendent at Naples, then as Regional and the contributions of all those named, and many
Director for Campania, finally as Director General more, I would not have dreamed of writing this book.
of Archaeology. Professor Fausto Zevi has brought But though it comes out of and has been inspired by
us the fruit of decades of knowledge and experience the project, and reflects many of its new findings,
of Campanian archaeology. My former colleagues as this is not a publication of the results of the project.
Directors of Foreign Institutes at Rome, Professor Several volumes are planned and under way. This is
Herman Geertman at the Dutch Institute and a completely personal interpretation of Herculaneum,
Professor Paul Zanker at the German Archaeological and none of the others should be blamed for my views
Institute, have shown that archaeologists can care or errors. John Nicoll persuaded me of the need to write
about conservation. Rome is the seat of ICCROM, a book on Herculaneum: his tenacity and enthusiasm
the international body dedicated to the conservation brought it to fruition, and in a more lavish format
and management of heritage across the world; we are than I had ever dreamed possible. Further stimulus
especially lucky to enjoy the support and advice of its came from an invitation to deliver the Gray lectures
10 preface
12 her cul aneum her cul aneum 13
1
G EOLOG Y
W
Let us stop listening to people who have abandoned Campania and riting in the immediate aftermath of
who have moved out after this catastrophe, saying they will never the major earthquake in Campania
again return to the region. . . . For we are wrong if we think that any that shook the cities of Pompeii and
part of the earth’s surface is safe and immune from this risk [earth- Herculaneum to their foundations, on a date he gives
quakes]. Everywhere is subject to the same laws: nature conceived very precisely as 5 February ad 63, Seneca, one of
nothing to be unmoveable. Things collapse at different times: just the major figures of Latin literature – dramatist, letter
as in cities different houses collapse at different moments, so on the writer, philosopher and, until shortly before, adviser
earth’s surface flaws make themselves apparent at different times. to the Emperor Nero – considers the implications of
(Seneca, Natural Questions 6.1.10–12) this natural event with Stoic detachment. He wishes
to account for natural phenomena, winds, thunder
and lightning, snow, comets, as well as earthquakes,
in the purely scientific terms established by Greek
science. There is no room here for the gods, for
natural phenomena as a manifestation of divine
anger and retribution. For him, there is no predicting
earthquakes or natural disasters, let alone propitiating
Amiata the gods. Humans just have to realize that the laws of
Vulsini nature allow no risk-free life. The earth’s crust, the
Cimini (vico) ADRIATIC
SEA very element which humans count on to be stable,
Sabatini
is in fact fluid, subject to constant and unpredictable
Colli Albani
Campi Flegraei movement.
Roccamonfina
The science of geology has been transformed in
Vesuvius
Ponza Vulture the intervening two millennia, yet his fundamental
TYRRHENIAN Ventotene
0 km 200 Opposite: View of the seafront of the town from the west.
geology 15
Italy is characterized by a long string of volcanoes, Vesuvius has been dormant since the eruption of
some live, some dead, from the Tuscan lakes to the 1944, strangely coincident with the Allied advance
Aeolian islands and Etna. To the north, it is so long through Italy, and that means that modern tourists
since these volcanic formations have seen activity are deprived of the frisson of this spectacle, and can
that human life has long flourished on the mineral- only imagine the likely impact of a new earthquake
rich soils, in Tuscany, northern Lazio and the Alban or eruption on the hundreds of thousands of modern
hills, and as far south as Roccamonfina on the north dwellings in the immediate shadow of the mountain.
of the Campanian plain. To the south, the spectacular Civil defence would love the volcanologists to be able
activity is visible on a daily basis, on Stromboli with to make a prediction. Yet, short of this, they collabo-
its constant fountains of magma, and Etna, with lava rate with archaeologists in trying to understand the
flows that cause regular problems. The Campanian anatomy of past eruptions. It is a rich field for inter-
volcanoes are more intermittent. West of Naples, disciplinary collaboration.
the Campi Flegraei offer ongoing reminders of the Seneca quite evidently could not predict. In
danger beneath with their sulphurous geysers. There scoffing at the Campanian landowners who fled the
has been no major eruption since 1538, when the area, swearing never to return, quite rightly as it
mound of Montenuovo appeared overnight, deleting turned out, he did not even succeed in associating
the village of Tripergole and causing great destruc- earthquakes with volcanic activity. Indeed, he does
tion to nearby Pozzuoli. But Pozzuoli remains today not discuss volcanoes at all in his Natural History.
a highly unstable area. Its historic centre, Rione Earthquakes were a far more frequent phenomenon,
Terra, has been abandoned, officially evacuated after and only rarely are they in fact associated with
the catastrophic earthquake of 1980, and the area volcanoes, though it is the same deep shifting of
today shows the clear signs of the ‘slow quaking’, the plates that generates both phenomena. By quirk of
bradyseism which makes the earth’s crust expand and fate, neither Seneca nor any other Greek or Roman
contract, creating the false impression that the sea is author witnessed a volcanic eruption until of course
rising and falling. the young Gaius Plinius Secundus, and his uncle, the
Vesuvius itself is evidently still active, though on distinguished naturalist and admiral of the imperial
the slow and unpredictable rhythms of geology it fleet, witnessed the eruption of 79. It is significant that
is impossible and absurd to suggest we can predict the uncle’s first reaction was to go to study it closer:
when the next eruption is ‘due’. A major eruption as author of thirty-six volumes of Natural History, he
in 1631 initiated a phase in which low-level activity shared Seneca’s scientific interests and approach, and
was regular for 150 years. It was in this phase that wanted to find out more.
the Grand Tourists gathered to admire the spectacle, This innocence about volcanoes meant of course
and commissioned or bought paintings, whether by that the inhabitants of the area had little idea, even
major artists like Hackert or Volaire or Joseph Wright after the earthquake dated by Seneca to 63, but by
of Derby, or by the hundreds of local craftsmen who the historian Tacitus to 62, of the imminent danger
churned out charming gouaches. The phase of activity in which they stood. But even if they had done so,
also coincided with the long stay in Naples of Sir there is little probability, especially to judge by the
Left: Day and night views William Hamilton, a volcano lover, and his reports behaviour of the contemporary population, that
of Vesuvius from Naples by
to the Royal Society and his beautifully produced they would have abandoned their lands and houses.
an anonymous local artist
in gouache, c.1815 (British Campi Phlegraei (1776) are among the first significant Then, as now, there was too much profit to be made,
School at Rome collection). contributions to the emergent science of volcanology. whether from the fields with their boosted fertility,
16 geology geology 17
or from the flourishing trade that spread its tentacles Not only could they see the evidence of previous
around the Bay of Naples, the best natural harbour activity, but in their mythology they associated the Left: Clearance of the seafront with remains of quarrying outside
in Italy, and the focus, over the preceding three area with the gateway to the underworld (Aeneas the Suburban Baths (2008).
centuries, of the massive trade and importations that descends there at Lake Avernus), with the titanic
Right: The tower of the House of the Telephus Relief before
sustained Rome as the capital of a new global power. battle of the gods and giants, whose bodies lay (above) and after (below) conservation work.
To understand the degree and urgency of the danger, beneath, smitten by the thunderbolts of Jupiter (‘it
you have to speed up the passage of time beyond the is the wounds of the fallen giants, inflicted by the
rhythm of human generations. It is only archaeology, thunderbolts, that pour forth those streams of fire
a science intimately linked in its methods to geology, and water’, says Strabo of the fumaroles of the Campi
which allows us to say how frequently the Vesuvian Phlegraei), and with Vulcan, god of blacksmiths, in
region is devastated by eruptions. Preparations for whose furnaces beneath the ground the magic armour
the construction of a new NATO base at Gricignano of Aeneas was forged. It is not that the ancients were
showed three successive episodes in which human completely innocent, merely that they lacked the
cultivation was covered under a blanket of ashes, on experience over two millennia to foresee what might
top of which later cultivation began. Over the course happen.
of 20,000 years, there have been no less than five In fact, the signs of big trouble brewing are clear,
‘Plinian’ eruptions, of the magnitude of that of 79, if only in retrospect. Recent work down by the
each of which will have impacted on human inhabit- ancient seashore of Herculaneum in the context of
ants. The one most clearly visible today is that called the Herculaneum Conservation Project has revealed
‘the pumice of Avellino’, which took place around a dramatic sequence of seismic activities, stretching
1700 bc, destroying, and thereby preserving the over a century. At the south-eastern corner of the
traces of, early Bronze Age settlements. The remains city, an impressive tower-like building juts out over
of oval huts near Nola, preserving timbers, pottery the edge of the shore, providing the House of the
wares, and even the bodies of goats and livestock Telephus Relief with a series of rooms with wonderful
tethered in their pens, is a vivid reminder of what views out to sea. As it survives today, this structure
was absolutely invisible 2,000 years later to the inhab- stands on three levels. But a test trench has revealed
itants of Pompeii and Herculaneum, separated from that beneath the ground level was originally an entire
this catastrophe by an interval very nearly as long as additional floor, built with the same style of arches
that which separates us from them. and columns as the floors above. Plaster survives on
It would be wrong to suggest that the Romans had the outer face, but also on the inside edge of the arch.
no inkling that Vesuvius was a volcano. The Greek Yet this arch was blocked up in antiquity, implying
geographer, Strabo, writing at the end of the first the abandonment of the floor. Not only that, but
century bc, describes how the summit of Vesuvius is the masonry that blocks the arch shows clear signs
ash-coloured and entirely unfruitful: of erosion by water. The sea had invaded, not only
forcing them to abandon the ground floor, but even
It shows pore-like cavities in masses of rock causing damage to their new defences. The final
looking as though they had been eaten out by fire: response was to build an enormous containing wall,
one might infer from this evidence that the area between the sea and the building, and to backfill the
was previously burning and had craters of fire, area, raising it with 3 metres of Roman rubble. The
which were extinguished when the fuel ran out. black, volcanic sand of the ancient beach could be
(Geography 5.4.8) seen at the foot of the containing wall.
18 geology geology 19
Left: Excavation beneath Far left: Plan of the tower of SOPRINTENDENZA ARCHEO
O'
+18 m. +18 m. PACKARD HUMANITIES IN
ancient beach.
Posizione del saggio e
Scala 1:5
prospetto del muro orientale
integrato nel Prospetto Giugno 2
O-O'/2004
Lim
+8 m.
Telephus Relief. +8 m.
Into
+6 m. +6 m.
+4 m. +4 m.
+2 m. +2 m.
O
0 0
-2 m. -2 m.
-4 m. -4 m. SOPR
O'
+18 m. +18 m. PAC
B
Herc
+16 m. +16 m.
Insula O
Sa
+14 m. +14 m.
Posizione
prospetto de
integrato
O-O
+12 m. +12 m.
+10 m. +10 m.
+8 m. +8 m.
+6 m. +6 m.
+4 m. +4 m.
+2 m. +2 m.
O
0 0
-2 m. -2 m.
-4 m. -4 m.
20 geology geology 21
Such a dramatic change of sea level is compatible
with the phenomenon of bradyseism, still visible at
Pozzuoli. As activity in the magma chamber, many
kilometres below the earth’s surface, builds up,
the ground above expands and rises, and the sea
level apparently falls; as the activity in the magma
chamber recedes, so the ground falls again, and the
sea invades. The Telephus tower was built some-
where around the beginning of the first century
ad, in one of the phases when the ground was high
and dry; the floor was abandoned as it progres-
sively sank. The great earthquake of 62/63 probably
belongs to a turning point in this slow process.
Further evidence is visible a little further round
the seafront in the walls of the Suburban Baths,
built, as was the fashion of the first century ad,
right down by the sea (bathing in the sea was not
yet a fashion; bathing close to it was). Under the
foundations of the baths, caught in the cracks in the
tufo bank (see page 25) on which it stands, there
are grains of sand, mixed with fragments of Roman
pottery. The baths were built on what evidently had
been a beach, though the sea must have by now
been far enough away as to constitute no imminent
threat. Yet the walls of the baths show that the sea
came back, with a vengeance. Sand was piled up to a
metre high against the walls, where it formed a solid
crust. The walls were extensively repaired, adding
a whole extra skin of construction in the contem-
porary ‘network’ style known as opus reticulatum
(see image, right). Windows on the first floor were
blocked up to waist level on the side closest to the
sea; and the old back door that led down a ramp to The Suburban Baths viewed
the beach had also been blocked up. The baths, like from above (top) and below
(middle).
the tower, had suffered badly from ‘marine ingres-
sion’, not that long before the eruption. Right: Detail of the wall
But this episode was almost certainly the second of the Suburban Baths,
showing second skin in opus Façade of the Suburban
time in the course of a century that the sea had
reticulatum added after Baths, showing masonry
invaded and retreated. The ‘shore’, on which ancient damage by the sea. blocking above original
sand can be seen, is in fact an abandoned quarry. wooden sills to protect from
Numerous rectilinear edges show where blocks of damage by the sea.
22 geology geology 23
tufo had been cut out and removed. It cannot have Pliny watched from the safety of his uncle’s house on
been a shore when it was a quarry, so the sand repre- the far side of the bay. It is only over the last twenty
sents a first phase of marine ingression, followed by years or so that the mechanics of the eruption have
retreat and the building of baths and tower, followed been fully understood by scientists. It used to be
Upper pyroclasts by the second ingression and the abandonment of normal to speak of Herculaneum as having been
the bottom level. If Seneca had been able to place buried in an avalanche of mud. So in 1908 Charles
this evidence in the context of the great earthquake, Waldstein accounted for the unique preservation of
Reddish tufo
and if only he had known what the modern geolo- Herculaneum in these words:
gist knows, he would have been a good deal less
sanguine about whether to flee Campania or not. . . . suddenly there appeared the torrent of
The catastrophe of 79 thus had long precursors, liquid mud, of ashes mixed with water from
24 geology geology 25
A cloud rose, from which mountain one could eruptive column, progressively rising higher into the been found in excavations beneath the cathedral of
not make out (later we learned it was Vesuvius), atmosphere under the force of a series of explosions Positano, 20 kilometres south of the cone), whereas
the shape and form of which could best be equivalent to a nuclear bomb exploding every few Herculaneum was wholly unscathed by this phase of
compared to a pine tree. It rose up on high with seconds. On reaching an altitude of about 27 kilome- the eruption.
an extremely long trunk, then spread out into tres, and penetrating the thin air of the stratosphere, The second phase, as Pliny hints, is when, with the
branches, I imagine because it was carried out by it spreads laterally, producing the rain of tiny pellets progress of time, the force of the eruption slackens
the fresh breath, then as the breath grew older, of pumice called lapilli, which we find blanketing and the column can no longer sustain its own very
it was let down or even spread laterally and Pompeii to the depth of several metres. The erup- considerable weight. At this point, when the eruption
vanished under its own weight. tive column continues to rise, to a maximum of itself is reaching its end, it enters its most destruc-
(Letters 6.16.6) about 33 kilometres. The winds in the stratosphere tive form. The billowing hot gases, mixed with a
Below: Skeletons in the vaults
were southwards that day, so that Pompeii, Stabiae, dense cloud of extremely fine ash, begin to collapse
by the seashore.
The observation, according to volcanologists, the Sarno valley and even as far as the ridge of the down the side of the mountain in great swirling
is accurate. The initial eruption produces a tall Sorrentine peninsula received this cover (lapilli have Inside: Panoramic view of the clouds. Their heat is intense; by the time they reach
seafront and vaults.
Herculaneum, where the volcano meets the sea, they
Right: Detail of skeleton are still at a range of 400–500˚C, not hot enough for
showing ‘pugilist’ pose cause
a ceramic furnace, but hot enough to ensure instant
by muscle contractions.
death to any living being in its path, and the conse-
Below: Plan of positions of quent carbonization of wood. It was a joint team of a
the skeletons excavated in
volcanologist and a physical anthropologist who were
1981 by the seashore (Amy
Richardson). able to make sense of the skeletons at Herculaneum,
and detect from their ‘pugilistic’ poses, the muscles
Overleaf: View of the site from
involuntarily contracted like those of boxers in the
the seafront towards Vesuvius.
BATHS
26 geology geology 31
32 her cul aneum her cul aneum 33
final spasm, and the signs of crania that exploded under the force of the instant
vaporization of the brains, that their end was quite different from that of the
corpses at Pompeii.
For long, it was one of the curious contrasts between Pompeii and Herculaneum
that corpses were found in the former but not the latter. (We will see in a later
chapter that there are many contrasts between the sites, and the importance of
Herculaneum is to offer an alternative perspective on similar issues.) Hence it
was in Pompeii that the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli in the second half of
the nineteenth century developed his technique of making ‘casts’ of corpses,
by filling with cement the voids left by the rotted organic matter of the bodies.
Such casts were never possible at Herculaneum, because the more intense heat
stripped the bodies of their organic matter, and left only the skeletons encased
in rock. But even skeletons were rare on site, not more than a dozen or two, until
the new phase of excavations in the 1980s down by the ancient seashore revealed
where the victims were concentrated.
The lowest level of the seafront of the city consists of a series of arches or
vaults. They are sometimes referred to as ‘boat sheds’, but there is no trace of
marine equipment, and they seem simply to have served the function of substruc-
tures to the terraces above them. Nevertheless, they offered the inhabitants the
equivalent of a dozen or so ‘bomb shelters’, where people could take refuge from
the blast. Several dozen bodies, of people young and old, male and female, rich
and poor, master and slave, have been found crowded into each of these arches,
giving a total of more than 300 victims. Almost certainly there were others, and
if one day the location of the ancient harbour is excavated, perhaps immediately
to the east of the town, many hundreds more might emerge.
Why did they take shelter here? Their virtual absence from the houses of Above: The body of the marble the other side of the bay, Pliny could watch: great and tiles everywhere. The body of the marble statue
statue of Nonius Balbus
the town, in contrast to Pompeii, suggests that they had good warning of an flashes of fire, then the cloud descending to the land, of Nonius Balbus was found down by the sea, many
is unearthed in 1981 and
impending event so catastrophic that it was no longer safe to wait in their houses. reunited with the head, which covering the sea, and removing Capri from his sight. metres away from his head, which had rolled off to
Pliny’s second letter evokes the context of midnight on the day of the eruption. He had been discovered in 1941 He was observing what we now know as pyroclastic the base of his tomb on the terrace above.
confirms that ‘for many days before [the eruption] there had been earth tremors, (watched by Giuseppe Maggi surges and flows, the descent of the clouds of hot The site witnessed by the modern visitor has been
and Fausto Zevi, centre left
less frightening because it was so common in Campania, but that night [i.e. of gas. At Herculaneum, we can observe the long and carefully recomposed. It creates the impression of a
and right).
the eruption] it became so strong that everything seemed not simply moving, remorseless sequence. The first or second surge to city ‘frozen in time’, preserved intact by the disaster
but turned upside down’ (Letters 6.20.4). His mother insisted on flight, and they Left above: Roof timbers reach the city will have killed all those left. They that overwhelmed it. But if you look attentively at
excavated on the seashore.
found themselves on the road amid crowds of terrified refugees. They looked in advanced through the streets like a firestorm, ripping the excavation reports, you discover that the state of
astonishment to see the sea had retreated, leaving marine life high and dry on Left middle: Detail of wooden off roofs, and smashing down walls. Heavy material what was excavated was far different. The destruction
the shore: another observation of the movement of the crust that had affected coffering of ceiling, decorated was carried for considerable distances. Down by was so widespread and chaotic, with vast chunks of
in blue and gold.
Herculaneum over the years before. the seashore, we have found an entire roof, beams, masonry tossed sideways, that the archaeologists
If that is what it felt like at distant Misenum, the effect in Herculaneum must Left below: Detail of inverted rafters and roof-tiles hurled down. The lowest levels could not excavate before restoring, but had literally
have been truly terrifying, and it is interesting that the places they chose to take column, beams and building of the wall of rock that blankets the site are full of to put buildings back together again as they were
material in the edge of the
refuge, deep concrete vaults, were indeed ideal in the case of an earthquake rather building materials: a column, inverted like a projec- exposed. There were even situations where a wall
excavation.
than an eruption. They could not imagine what was about to descend. Even from tile, tossed down from a terrace above, and beams initially exposed seemed intact, yet below it emerged
34 geology geology 35
that the lower levels of the wall had been swept away, so that the
portion above was suspended in mid-air.
The pyroclastic surges and flows were not merely hot and
destructive; they also came under high pressure. The dense ash
did not simply settle on surfaces: it penetrated cavities, with all the
force of injection moulding. A sewer, deep beneath a block of flats,
was filled floor to ceiling with dense rock throughout its entire
length. Even the pottery tubes stacked in the Suburban Baths, and
still awaiting installation as heating flues, are completely filled
with the material. It found every void, penetrated every crevice,
and gradually entombed the town in a total shroud of stone. The
pyroclastic surges probably started, to judge from Pliny’s descrip-
tion, around midnight. They continued for at least twelve hours,
covering Herculaneum in layer after layer of solid material. The
deepest point is down by the shore. When a surge hits the sea, it
starts to cool, and back up, so that the depth of cover increases
to some 25 metres. But the surge continued to advance, and the
modern shoreline is a full 400 metres further out than the ancient.
The sheer quantity of solid material moved in the course of
twenty-four hours – calculated at 4 cubic kilometres of material
devastating an area of 300 square kilometres – is scarcely imagi-
nable in ordinary human terms.
This is the ‘avalanche of mud’ which was the standard descrip-
tion in the mid-twentieth century. A natural event had moved
mountains. It is the ideal material for tunnelling. Such ‘tufo’ is
soft enough to hack through with a pickaxe, yet rapidly sets hard
enough not to collapse on your head. And it was by tunnelling that
the site was first explored.
36 geology geology 37
site PLAN OF
HERCULANEUM
Edges of excavation
Cardo I
Cardo II
Cardo III
Cardo IV
Cardo V
Decumanus Maximus
Decumanus Inferior
geology 39
2
T HE P OLI T IC S
OF AR CH AEOLOG Y
W
hy dig up the past? Archaeology is a came across. Nevertheless, the idea of digging
recent science, one which depends on systematically in order to study the past was foreign
geology for its ‘stratigraphic method’, to them.
of looking at the build-up of layers of human activity Why then do we dig up our past? After centuries
over the course of time. Though we use it to study of modern excavation, and after discoveries that
antiquity, it did not exist in antiquity, even if the make as big an impact on the public imagination
word (literally ‘the study of the ancient’) is Greek. as Pompeii and Herculaneum – Troy and Mycenae,
Had Seneca and his contemporaries studied the or the Valley of the Kings – the question of why we
ground they excavated to build their great villas, dig seems too obvious to ask. Yet to understand the
Left: The eighteenth-century
access shaft to the Theatre. they would have been driven to ask questions about rediscovery of Herculaneum, we have to project
the previous volcanic catastrophes of the area. ourselves backwards to a time when such activity,
Below: The Peutinger map The emperor Augustus had a collection of ‘giants’ and the considerable strain on resource that it
of the Roman empire, still
bones’, perhaps dinosaur fossils, but these were a implies, was anything but obvious. The question
marking Pompeii and
curiosity. Cicero explored the cemetery of Syracuse usually posed is why and how the excavation of the
Herculaneum in the fourth
to rediscover the abandoned and overgrown tomb Vesuvian sites started in the early eighteenth century.
century ad.
of Archimedes. When they talked about the ‘heroic The answer reads like, and indeed is, propaganda
Overleaf: Panoramic view of ages’ that preceded recorded history, they doubtless for the the Spanish regime of Charles Bourbon and
a reopened Bourbon tunnel to had in mind the traces of the past they necessarily his heirs, so heroically responsible for initiating the
the north of the Basilica.
her general, the Duke of Marlborough, supported only 10 kilometres from his palace in Naples, was an 1796 with the Villa d’Elbeuf
bottom left, by Francesco La
Austria for fear of a unification of the crowns of irresistible pull. Excavating more made sense for the
Vega.
France and Spain. The battle of Blenheim (1704) was first time in terms of Realpolitik.
fought to keep the French and Spanish in check. In A further twist was that his new bride, Maria
1707 the Austrians seized the kingdom of the Two Amalia of Saxony, happened to come from the
Sicilies. The War of the Spanish Succession ended very court at which the statues of the Herculaneum
with an agreement to keep the French and Spanish women had ended up through diplomatic exchange
crowns permanently separate. Philip V therefore in Dresden. It was said that she recalled as a girl
had to respect the idea of a balance of powers, and seeing them unpacked, ‘wrapped up like sardines in
to recover his lost Italian realm without upsetting a box’. There is no need to attribute the excavations
the balance. The solution was to send out his son, of Herculaneum to Maria Amalia’s girlish enthu-
Charles, to make for the first time an independent siasm; rather she is a vivid illustration of how the
kingdom, one that would not threaten the Austrians news of Prince d’Elbeuf ’s hot finds were travelling
or the other European powers. Charles arrived in around the courts of Europe creating excitement,
Italy in 1732, to take possession of the Duchy of and offering an obvious incentive to a regime keen
Parma inherited from his mother Elisabetta, last heir to make friends and cut a figure.
to the Farnese dynasty. Within two years he wrested Charles Bourbon arrived in Naples in 1734. By
Naples from the Austrians. A new deal was cut with 1736 he was at work on his new palace at Portici. So
the European powers that allowed the Bourbons to close to the site of Herculaneum is it that the south-
reign in the Two Sicilies provided they remained eastern edge of the palace gardens overlaps with the
independent from Spain, an arrangement that was north-western corner of the Villa of the Papyri. By 3
to survive through his heirs for 127 years. November 1738, a major royal project of excavation
The archaeological ambitions of the young king was under way. Inescapably, the project picked up,
are the direct outcome of his political ambitions. in location and in method, where the last episode of
Charles Bourbon needed to establish the validity of tunnelling had left off, in the Theatre. Now the project
his dynasty, its quasi-independence from Spain, and was under military engineers, with Rocque Joaquim
keep the other European powers happy. One tactic de Alcubierre in charge. Military engineering
was to make his court one of the most spectacular probably brought a quantum leap in sophistication
As the fame of these finds spread round Europe, the Grand Tour definitively converge, showing the red bricks of a
triumphal arch collapsed on its side.
shifted its terminus to Naples: ‘see Naples and die’ meant that until you had
been there, your life was not yet complete. So effective was this propaganda that Below: The access shaft to the
tourism has never flagged, with numbers gradually mounting over the years to Theatre.
Plan of Herculaneum in
The 1740s and 1750s were the glory years of reveal. To reopen their tunnels is to discover just
the late nineteenth century,
excavation at Herculaneum. Under a succession of how astonishingly thorough they were, crisscrossing
showing in red the location
engineers (Alcubierre from 1738, Bardet displacing buildings in a dense maze, with nodal points where of buildings mapped by the
him from 1741–5, Alcubierre back 1745–9, handing as many as six tunnels converged, each opened up Bourbon excavators.
over to the Swiss Karl Weber from 1750 to his death progressively, often over a period of many years.
in 1764, to be replaced by Francesco La Vega), the The fruits were an astonishing collection of marble
city was extensively explored. When Amedeo Maiuri and bronze statues, fresco paintings, inscriptions
launched the modern excavation of the site in the and a host of household objects and furnishings,
early twentieth century, he complained of the diffi- particularly in bronze: lamps, candelabra, basins,
culties of excavating structures already undermined jugs, pans, ladles, tables, stools, ornamented
by a diabolical network of Bourbon tunnels. They couches, braziers and water-heaters. Gathered and
reached a good deal further than the known plans displayed in the palace at Portici, they attracted
above it, have an indescribable influence on the replaced. His successor was the ambitious young
mind. One consequently ascends into light and scholar, Giuseppe Fiorelli, who had for some time
life again with feelings of melancholy, which not served the king’s uncle, the Count of Syracuse, as
even the beautiful scenery that courts the eye can secretary, publishing his collection of coins, and
banish for some time. also drafting a famous letter in which the king was
urged to adopt more liberal policies.
The Bourbon ‘kingdom of the Two Sicilies’ Fiorelli’s period in prison after the uprising
and of the Skeleton. But work was suspended on 18 visitors, including the novelist Edward Bulwer Plan of excavations of collapsed in 1860 as Giuseppe Garibaldi success- of 1848, when he had incited the guardians of
Herculaneum between 1828
March 1837 by royal rescript, and the funding for Lytton, to Pompeii, and helped further to spread the fully advanced through the south. The last of Pompeii to arm themselves against the regime,
and 1875 (E. Tascone).
excavation was transferred to the Amphitheatre at fame of that site. She records: the Bourbons, Francis II (Francischiello, ‘Little gave him credibility as an anti-Bourbon, and had
Pozzuoli. The moment for Herculaneum had not Francis’), was manoeuvred into abandoning his also given him the leisure to pull together the old
yet come. Activity was resumed briefly in the 1850s, 12th– Went to Herculaneum yesterday, accom- capital without a blow. The deal had been negoti- records of excavations at Pompeii as Antiquitates
when the House of Aristides, with its precious upper panied by Sir William Gell. This excursion may ated between Garibaldi at Salerno and the principal Pompeianae. A staunch supporter of the new
floors, had to be propped up, an early sign of the well be called a descent into the grave of a buried figures of the government, led by the liberal Liborio national government, he would receive his reward
problems of conservation that were to dog the site. city. . . . Romano, through the mediation of Alexandre in promotion to national Director of Antiquities in
The melancholy feel of Herculaneum in the 1830s The wild and grotesque figures and animated Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, who, 1875. He is rightly remembered as one of the prin-
is vividly evoked by the Countess Blessington’s gesticulations of the guides, waving their torches, having followed Garibaldi’s advance, moored his cipal figures in the archaeology of Pompeii, rather
memoirs, The Idler in Italy. She visited the site in which cast lugubrious gleams of light around this yacht, the Emma, beneath the windows of the royal than of Herculaneum. Yet he did not completely
the company of the indefatigable Sir William Gell, sepulchre of a dead city; the dense and oppressive palace in Naples. Dumas asked for, and received, neglect the site, and in 1869 he reopened the
author of the much-read volumes of Pompeiana, who air, and the reverberation of the sound of the as his reward, responsibility for Pompeii, but his excavations abandoned in 1837, inviting King
in the 1820s and 1830s introduced so many English carriages passing and repassing through the streets position proved untenable, and he was rapidly Vittorio Emanuele to a grand opening ceremony
61
on 8 February 1869: the moment was memorial- for his work on the sanctuary of Hera at Argos and familiar colonialist venture of so much nineteenth- writing a series of popular works and guidebooks,
ized in a contemporary photograph and a large on the Greek sculptor Pheidias. What caught his century archaeology. Nevertheless, the Italians, reaching a culmination in his monumental publi-
oil painting based on the photograph, now in the interest about Herculaneum was its exceptional including the great Giacomo Boni, excavator of cation of 1958, Ercolano: i nuovi scavi (1927–1958),
Naples Museum. It seems to trumpet a grand new potential as a source of Greek art. He knew that the the Roman Forum, had deep misgivings, and in printed with all the elegance and style of which the
beginning. For four years the excavations produced ninety-eight sculptures found in the Villa of the the end his scheme was blocked, the Italian State Poligrafico dello Stato, the Italian State press, was
results, including the exceptional silver bust of Papyri were among the best collections of ‘Greek’ undertaking to do the excavation itself. The Italian capable. With his retirement in 1961, the period
Emperor Galba (see page 185), found outside the works yet found; he belonged to a period when the funds, as Waldstein realized when he published his of new exploration came to a halt, and exten-
house consequently named the House of Galba, most interesting thing about the art of Roman sites account – full of enthusiasm cut with bitterness – sions since then have been intermittent, notably
though the bust had been swept down the street by was its potential to reconstruct the lost master- were simply not forthcoming, and the venture had the excavation of the seashore in the 1980s, and
the pyroclastic surge many metres from its place pieces of classical Greek art. Funerary urn of Charles to wait a full twenty years for the arrival of a Fascist of the area towards the Villa of the Papyri in the
in a public building. But with Fiorelli’s departure Walston (Waldstein), a government, committed as none since Charles 1990s. There are many grounds on which Maiuri
for Rome in 1875, the excavations ground to a halt . . . the fact remains that, from the actual finds Roman vase donated by Bourbon to archaeology as a source of national can be criticized, as we shall see: his restorations
again. made in earlier excavations, we are justified to Amedeo Maiuri (courtesy prestige. Waldstein died in 1927, but not before ran ahead of the evidence, and sometimes his
James Walston).
Late nineteenth-century guidebooks were hope, nay, bound to expect, that discoveries he had taken a final cruise to the Mediterranean, narratives involved distortion or falsification of
singularly unenthusiastic about Herculaneum. of valuable works of Greek art will be made in disembarked at Naples, and gone to visit Amedeo the evidence. Nevertheless, it is to his drive, vision
Typical is the John Murray handbook of 1892: the future, and this to a far higher degree than Maiuri on site at Herculaneum, just as the new exca- and skill that Herculaneum owes the reversal of the
at Pompeii or any other site hitherto known in vations were beginning. Maiuri was deeply moved fall from grace that it has experienced ever since
The Scavi Nuovi are entered by an iron gate classic lands. to be able to realize the dream of a dying man, and Winckelmann’s letter of 1762. Waldstein under-
on the l[eft] of the Vico di Mare, 5 min. from (From Herculaneum Past Present when Waldstein died shortly after, Maiuri sent his stood the importance of the site, ranking it higher
the entrance to the theatre; for those who have and Future, 1908, page 12.) widow an original Roman glass funerary urn from than Pompeii. Maiuri gave reality to that vision.
already seen Pompeii a sufficiently good idea his excavations, in which the ashes lie still.
of the whole can be obtained from the entrance His prophecy has indeed been borne out, at The Herculaneum we see today is essentially the
without. least to some degree, by subsequent excavations, result of Amedeo Maiuri’s work. A man of aston-
though we are less inclined to define the works of ishing energy, he combined a deep knowledge of
The iron gate can still be seen, hidden behind a art as ‘Greek’, rather than contemporary Roman classical antiquity and an exceptional capacity to
low wall and bushes, on the left (as you go down- versions of older Greek works. communicate with the ability to organize with mili-
hill) of the Vico Mare: a reminder of how small Waldstein led a vigorous international campaign tary precision a massive project of engineering and
and unappealing the site was until transformed by to raise funds for the excavation of Herculaneum complex reconstruction that demanded the close
Maiuri’s excavations. But though the public had between 1903 and 1907. In a remarkable model of co-operation of numerous trades and skills and the
deserted the site, there were scholars who under- a spirit of internationalism, urging that the vast co-ordination of hundreds of workers. Without the
stood its importance and potential. costs of excavation were beyond the reach of any willingness of Mussolini’s government to invest
Charles Waldstein was primarily a Greek one nation state, and that our ideal must be to in recreating ‘ancient Rome’, he could never have
archaeologist. Born in New York, he took up a post overcome the barriers of chauvinism and national started, and a large proportion of the excavation
in classical archaeology at Cambridge in 1880, rivalry, he set about finding support at the highest was indeed carried out between 1927 and the
and became Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, levels: King Edward VII, President Roosevelt and collapse of the regime in 1943. Nevertheless, he
Director of the American School of Archaeology President Loubet of France promised patronage, kept his project going not only through the war
at Athens, and Slade Professor of Fine Art at and the Giolitti government was talked round, not but into the post-war period, and played a crucial
Cambridge, a career of some distinction, even if he without difficulty. Finance was forthcoming, with role in relaunching the Bay of Naples as a prime
was not always welcomed by the British establish- the support of figures such as Pierpont Morgan. destination for the new post-bellum mass tourism.
ment. By the end of the nineteenth century, he was From the first Waldstein stressed internationalism, He was not only the excavator and restorer of
an international authority on Greek art, respected leaving Italy in the lead to avoid any hint of the ancient Herculaneum, but its principal publicist,
W
e think of the traces of the past buried the mythological scenes that occupied the walls of
beneath the earth’s surface as having the great public buildings, the scenes of Theseus and
been ‘lost’, and the role of the archae- the Minotaur, Hercules and Telephus or Achilles
ologist as being to ‘save’ them. Lost to sight, certainly. and Chiron, each with dimensions ranging from 1
But at least what is below the ground is in a more to over 2 metres. It was an enormously delicate job
or less stable condition. The damage has been done, to remove these from their walls in a single piece, let
and it has reached some sort of equilibrium with the alone carry them up to the surface without damage.
environment – until, that is, human action comes to The workmen cut through the thick layers of plaster,
disturb it again. The moment we ‘expose’ antiquities and then secured the works in frames of solid wood,
(in the words of the Bourbon publication of The reinforced behind with slates to keep the plaster rigid.
Antiquities of Herculaneum Exposed), we subject The weight was enormous, but the frescoes were in
them to new damage, and to the risk of a second, and the end well preserved in the dry atmosphere of the
this time terminal, destruction. palace museum. What might seem like vandalism
This reflection, familiar to a modern world in turned out to save them.
which conservationists have made their voices heard, Not everything was treated with the same respect.
never troubled the Bourbon tunnellers. They treated Whatever was not a masterpiece could be destroyed.
the remnants of the past with a strange mixture of Frequently the tunnels cut straight through frescoed
reverence and contempt. Statues and frescoes instantly walls and fallen structures. What did not seem worth
achieved the status of ‘lost masters’ and were reveren- preserving was often smashed, and as the suspicions
tially taken to the royal palace for display. Heaving of the court grew that workmen were illicitly selling
them up to the surface, often pieces weighing several fragments to tourists, the king, anxious to maintain
tons, via the rabbit warren of their cunicoli (‘burrows’, his monopoly, ordered that frescoes not brought to
as these tunnels were known), was no joke. Frescoes the surface should be gouged to render them unus-
presented a particular difficulty, because they formed able. We can still see in the Villa of Arianna at Stabiae
part of the integral decoration of walls. Some were the results of this wilful barbarism, which upset many
relatively easy, panels only a few centimetres wide observers at the time. Not even material brought to
and deep, depicting still lives, or landscape vignettes, the surface was safe. Numerous bronze fragments
or cupids at play. These could be hacked out of their were found of a group showing an emperor in a four-
Archival photograph (1930s) original decorative context. This did a permanent horsed chariot, probably from the top of the arch by
of the shop in the front damage to that context, as Maiuri was to discover the Basilica. The task of reassembling these proved
of the House of Neptune when, for instance, he excavated the House of the to be too much of a challenge, and Winckelmann
and Amphitrite, with
Stags to find all the vivid still lives hacked from the lamented that they were first abandoned in a heap in
reconstructed balcony and
wine-rack, and amphorae, walls of the portico. But at least one could re-establish the courtyard of the palace, and then partially melted
grain and a lamp on display. what came from where. Much more challenging were down to make a statue of the Bourbon king himself.
ruins restored 65
The Bourbons had not moved all that far from their predecessors who thought the seeing the houses of the ancient city (which is infinitely more considerable than
classical past was best left buried. Herculaneum) as commodiously as Naples itself.
But voices of concern over the cause of conservation were raised from an
early stage. Winckelmann’s protests rang out across Europe, and King Ferdinand Such advice turned Pompeii into the visitor attraction it is. But it also created
needed to repair his reputation as a barbarian. In July 1766, Conte Coppola, the new levels of risk for the remains. None saw that as clearly as the other English
Royal Chamberlain, commissioned an architect, Ferdinando Fuga, and a painter, knight whose name became so closely associated with the site, Sir William Gell. In
Francesco di Mura, to report on the condition of the frescoes in the royal collection. 1832, after more than a decade of repeated visits to the site, he expressed his deep
Both reported extreme concern at the damage done by the application of modern concern:
varnishes to ‘preserve’ the paintings. Fuga pointed out, correctly, that the paintings
were not pure frescoes, but also had layers of colour applied after the plaster was It has often been noticed, during the winter months, that the stuccoes which
dry, which consequently had a tendency to flake off. The varnishes exacerbated this had been observed perfect, during a first visit to a newly-discovered edifice,
tendency, and he urged careful research into the different pigments and varnishes. had entirely disappeared on a second examination; so that, no traces being left,
The painter di Mura was even clearer. He said the varnish only did damage to the many of the prettiest fancies of antiquity are irrecoverably lost; while the order
paint and made it darker, and that the sort of plaster on which they were based continues to prevent strangers from drawing till three or four years have expired,
would tolerate neither this nor any other sort of varnish or preparation. and the objects become defaced.
Wherefore in all humble respect to Your Majesty, in my feeble opinion I would Gell was of course expressing a personal frustration that he himself, a consum-
say that to conserve as much as possible of the air and spirit of antiquity of these mate draftsman, was being prevented from recording new finds, thanks to a
noble paintings, it is not at all appropriate either to tint them or bathe them in monopoly granted to an Italian architect, who did not even bother to exercise
varnish or in any other type of liquid, but simply to keep them guarded and his right to make images. Even today, the state authorities jealously guard their
protected from the air and the sun’s rays. copyright over the images in their sites, and restrict access to ‘unpublished’ build-
ings (which remain such for many decades). A more enlightened viewpoint might
The authorities did not listen. They continued to apply ever-more modern suggest that images are better conserved by allowing access than by restricting it.
and scientifically advanced preparations up to the paraloids of the late twentieth Once the policy had been adopted at Pompeii of preserving material in the
century, each doing damage. In the nineteenth century it was standard practice to position found on site, a deep, new problem of conservation was created. If you
hurl a bucket of water over a fresco to ‘freshen it up’ for the visitors, doing incal- leave frescoes on their broken walls, open to the weather (let alone ‘refresh’ them
culable damage, and leaving them ultimately faded to nothing. In the twentieth with buckets of water), you guarantee their destruction, and any visitor to Pompeii
century, a mixture of wax and paraffin was designed to rub into the frescoes to today can see the acres of devastation left by this policy, which lasted at least a
keep them bright for longer than the water. Two hundred and forty years after century. The only way to save such frescoes (save removing them from site, which
Francesco di Mura, the modern conservator would say the same thing: protect is maybe not such a stupid policy, after all) is to put a roof over their heads. But in
them from the damp and the sun, and put no liquids and no chemical prepara- that case, you have to decide what sort of a roof. Most of the houses of Pompeii had
tions on them. upper floors, yet only the ground floor was preserved under the blanket of lapilli.
At first it seemed that the priority was to deter the Bourbons from hacking Those who leapt to publish the excavations, with François Mazois, the architect
paintings from the walls. Sir William Hamilton, newly arrived as ambassador supported by Caroline Murat, the French Queen of Naples, dominant during the
to the Bourbon court in 1764, was soon offering advice to the Prime Minister, period of French occupation (1801–15), and William Gell in the vanguard after
Tanucci. The following year, in a letter dated 12 November 1765, he reports: the Bourbon restoration, took particular pleasure in re-imagining the houses
Above: Frescoes damaged by Bourbon excavators. A panel as they were before the eruption, and juxtaposing ‘before’ and ‘after’ views. The
The Marquis Tanucci . . . has lately shown his good taste by ordering that cut out of the Basilica (above) and a figure deliberately scored views of the post-excavation state reveal the absence of roofs; the reconstruc-
through, from the Villa of Ariadne at Stabiae (below).
for the future the workmen employed in the search for Pompeii should not tions put back the original antique roofs (along with the missing decoration,
remove any inscriptions or paintings from the walls, nor fill up after they have Inside: Panoramic view of the Atrium of the Suburban Baths. the furniture, etc.). Consciously or unconsciously, such publications influenced
searched, so that travellers will have the opportunity of walking the streets and the excavators, and when it became clear, under Fiorelli, that it was necessary to
Right: Photograph of
Amedeo Maiuri, excavator of
Herculaneum (1927–61).
re-roof a house in order to conserve it, the conclu- Hence, by the time that Amedeo Maiuri set about
sion seemed obvious that a ‘reconstruction’ of the excavating Herculaneum in 1927, the experimenta-
original condition was the way to go. By the end of tion of a previous century of restoration determined
the century, when the House of the Vettii in Pompeii the broad approach he would use. Material should be
was excavated in a remarkable state of preservation by left, so far as possible, on site in its original position,
Fiorelli’s successor Giulio De Petra, it was equipped not sent back to the museum in Naples, and the struc-
with a series of rooflines that certainly evoked the tures, where the conservation of valuable decoration
impression of a Roman building, even if the use of demanded, should be restored so far as possible to
cement and iron was modern. It was thus not until their original condition in the original style. There
the 1890s that the model of ‘reconstruction’ that was was already a cautionary tale on site that underlined
to become typical was born. the importance of immediate reconstruction. When
the House of Argus was excavated in the first half of where careful volumetric measurements have been Above: North–south cross-
sections of the House of the
the nineteenth century, it was found to have a partial undertaken, the House of the Telephus Relief, the
Gem and the Telephus Relief,
upper floor (something exceptional in Pompeii, but architects calculate that no more than 50 per cent of looking west (above) and east
normal in Herculaneum), including a consider- what is standing is antique: the rest is Maiuri’s recon- (below). Parts shaded in blue
able quantity of carbonized foodstuffs stored there. struction. We have to remind ourselves continuously are modern reconstruction
(drawing by Gionata Rizzi).
The upper floor was left unprotected, and, already that what we see is not the raw evidence, but a
weakened by earlier tunnelling, it started to collapse. re-presentation, one done with consummate skill by Right: Archival photographs of
With great regret, the architect Carlo Bonnucci, who an outstanding archaeologist, but incorporating his Maiuri’s excavations, showing
the compressor for pneumatic
was in charge of excavations from 1828 to 1855, was own interpretations.
drills (above left), trucks for
forced to demolish what remained, something that Because these excavations were documented spoils (above right) and horses
later to Maiuri seemed a scandalous loss. He did not photographically, and occasionally even filmed, as for towing (below).
intend to make the same mistake himself. well as painstakingly recorded in the daybooks of the
The consequence, one which every visitor to the excavations, we can follow the process in detail. In
site needs to keep in mind, is that what we see is not doing so, our admiration for Maiuri only grows. He
an ancient town as preserved by an eruption, but was fearless in using modern technology. A splendid
fragments painstakingly pieced together, stabilized, Ingersoll-Rand compressor powers his pneumatic
reinforced and ‘restored’ by Maiuri. In one house drills, and is proudly recorded for posterity. Tracks
Right: Archival photographs of the excavation of the atrium of the House of the
Telephus Relief in 1934 (top), 1935 (middle) and 1936 (bottom).
Opposite: Archival photograph of the site c.1937, looking over the House of the
Gem and the House of the Telephus Relief from the south-east. Note the relief
after which the house is named is still in its original position.
Overleaf: Marble neo-Attic relief showing Achilles consulting the Delphic Sybil
(left), and healing the seated Telephus with the rust from his spear (right).
84 ruins restored
Left: Excavation trench
running to the Villa of the
Papyri, seen in 2006 before
conservation work.
hand with excavation, and archaeological supervision allowed the water to penetrate, destroying the mosaics View of the site from the
south, looking over the House
was minimal. Workmen with heavy earth-moving below. To make matters worse, the pumps necessary of the Stags towards Vesuvius.
equipment tore through ancient structures, leaving to keep a site such as this dry, lying partly below the
the marks of metal teeth in wooden beams, plaster- water table, were underspecified, and rapidly broke
work, even gouged deeply into brick masonry. There down, causing a major inundation.
was no money, and no time, to put shelters over what The entire site was at risk, and voices from abroad,
had been found, and large plastered surfaces were left the modern successors of Charles Waldstein, pleaded
exposed to the pitiless elements. Only the atrium of desperately for the excavations to continue. What they
the villa itself was given a temporary cover, and one did not understand is that excavation, in itself, does
so crude and flimsy as to offer as much damage as not save a site: it subjects it to the risk of destruction.
protection. Concrete footings were laid on mosaic Until, after over two and a half centuries of excavation
floors, and the plastic sheet roofing, bombarded by at this site, we learn to save what we expose, we must
rubbish hurled from the modern town above, soon continue to ask: ‘Why do we dig up the past?’
W
hy this town here? Location, location, Municipality of Ercolano), such ravines would be
location. The Augustan geographer particularly deep. Herculaneum lay on soft rock,
Strabo, in his sweep around the Bay formed by an eruption perhaps no more than 8,000
of Naples, speaks with particular enthusiasm of the years before the present, and then modified by water
position of Herculaneum, ‘set on a promontory that into a promontory with steep sides.
juts into the sea, and wonderfully exposed to the Its south-westerly exposure and its flanking rivers
breezes of the south-westerly Libyan wind, making also made Herculaneum a good anchorage. Another
it a healthy place to stay’. The eruption so dramati- Greek writer, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his
cally transformed the landscape that it is now hard Roman Antiquities written in the late first century
indeed to imagine this promontory kissed by the bc, attributes the name of the town to Hercules (in
sea breezes. The shoreline moved outwards by 400 Greek Herakleion, named after Heracles) and to the
metres in a matter of 24 hours, and Ercolano now fact the hero anchored his fleet in the safe haven
forms one unbroken strip with neighbouring Portici here, adding that ‘it has safe moorings in all seasons’.
and Torre del Greco. Gone too are the rivers about Strabo’s gentle Libyan winds meet Dionysius’ safe
which a Roman historian wrote (his history survives haven, and conjure up an image of a spot that was
only in fragments – if only the Villa of the Papyri truly blessed, between the fertile green slopes of
would restore us texts like this!). Cornelius Sisenna, Vesuvius and the glittering crescent of the bay. It is
before his death in 67 bc, wrote about the Social harder to imagine today, amid the discordant chaos
War of 91–89 bc, the brutal civil war in which many of one of the most densely inhabited areas in Europe;
of Rome’s Italian allies, especially those who spoke yet in the evening, when the setting sun bathes the
not Latin but Oscan, made a bid for independence. site in golden light, you can catch for a moment
Herculaneum, like its neighbour Pompeii, took sides the advantages of the south-westerly exposure, and
with their fellow Oscan-speakers against Rome. In understand why the rich were so keen to build houses
a citation that survives by chance, he describes a on the lip of the promontory that caught the healthy
Roman commander approaching Herculaneum as breeze and enjoyed the incomparable view.
‘a town on a steep rise by the sea, with little walls, How long before the eruption had this promon-
between two rivers beneath Vesuvius’ (he made tory been inhabited, and by whom? To recognize
the Latin for ‘river’ feminine not masculine, and so Hercules as the founder was inevitable: the busy
Cardo IV viewed from the caught the eye of a grammarian). The soft volcanic hero in his travels around the Mediterranean
north. Note the columns to tufo is easily gouged by torrents descending the steep founded many cities in his name, including Iraklion
support the upper balconies,
slopes of the mountain, and since Herculaneum is (Herakleion) in Crete, the harbour of the Minoan
and the lead pipes running
close to the surface of the at the point of the coast closest to the crater (most palace of Knossos. He thus links two famous archae-
pavement. of which still lies within the jurisdiction of the ological sites. Hercules had been busy in Italy, and
90 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 91
Strabo, more prosaically, says that Herculaneum On one point all these ancient sources are agreed,
had the same story as Pompeii, being held first at least by silence. Nobody wants to say, despite its
by the Oscans, then by the Etruscans, next by the name, that Herculaneum/Herakleion was a Greek
Samnites, and finally by the Romans. This rather town founded by Greek colonists. We had better
schematic account would also push the foundation assume they knew what they were talking about,
before the arrival of the Greeks, since the arrival of as Greek colonial foundation myths were proudly
the Etruscans in Campania in the seventh and sixth treasured by their inhabitants.
centuries was a response to the Greek presence, and To return to location: Herculaneum is very close
Strabo is suggesting there was a local Oscan settle- indeed to Naples. It is 5 kilometres to the outskirts
ment before ever the Etruscans arrived. Strabo may of Naples, 10 to the centre. Nor, apart from the
not be the only source who located Etruscans in rivers that once flanked the promontory, are there
Herculaneum. The Greek philosopher and botanist any significant geographical obstacles. The route is
Theophrastus, writing his History of Plants in the flat, and indeed attracted the first railway line built
Left: View of the site from the early third century bc, talks of a noxious herb called in Italy, by the Bourbon Ferdinand II in 1839. This
south at sunset.
‘ephemerum’ against which there is no remedy, proximity means that whoever lived in Herculaneum
Below: View from the north- favoured by slaves trying to poison their masters, had to take account of Naples. Even if Oscan was
western corner looking south. about which, he throws in casually, ‘the Etruscans their first language, they are liable to have been
in Heraclea’ have made sufficient researches. Our Greek speakers too, so long as the Greek language
‘Heraclea’ is the only one within Etruscan territory. was dominant on the northern bay (as it still was
Capua
Nola
Cumae Neapolis
Dicaearchia Palaeopolis
HERCULANEUM
Nuceria
Pithecoussa Pompeii
Fratte
Stabiae
Vico
Equense Pontecagnano
92 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 93
in the first century ad). One of the striking features of Greek colonization of
southern Italy is how, having occupied an unbroken stretch of coast from the
heel of Italy to the colony they called Poseidonia, and the Romans Paestum,
there is a break, without Greek settlements, from Salerno to Vesuvius. The north
of the Bay of Naples then forms an island of Greekness, after which, north of
Cumae, no further settlements occurred. Evidently the people from the sea had
tough negotiations with the locals, and lines were drawn. And much though they
doubtless would have liked to continue the settlement strip southwards from
their first foothold in Ischia, the locals were strong enough to keep them out.
These locals, speaking the central Italic language called Oscan, had links through
to the peoples of the interior, including those whom the Romans called Samnites.
They were also reinforced in their separateness, at least from the seventh to the
fifth centuries, by the Etruscans, who left traces of their own language from
Pompeii to Salerno. Hence Herculaneum represents the northernmost bulwark
of a non-Greek block.
It would be fascinating to recover traces of what Herculaneum was like in this
period, as has been done for Pompeii. But the archaeology of the site is obstinate
in disgorging no sign of life earlier than the fourth century bc, a period in which
Greek influence, after a series of defeats, was very much on the wane, and the
Samnites of the interior were, as Strabo states, dominant. Perhaps the oldest visible
feature of the site is its street plan. It forms a grid of rectangular blocks, or insulae,
sloping down to the seawall, with which it aligns. The pattern is one familiar from
many Italian cities. In Roman towns, a distinction was drawn between the broad
streets that cut horizontally across the town, preferably west–east (decumani),
and the narrower vertical streets that dropped from north to south (cardines).
(The Latin word cardo also means the hinge of a door, that is, the vertical axis on
which it turns.) Herculaneum fits this pattern; if we take Vesuvius as north, as
is traditional for sheer convenience, the three visible cardines are north–south,
though of course the south-westerly orientation that so impressed Strabo means
94 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 95
96 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 97
Panoramic view of the that, more precisely, they run from north-east to south-west. of Sisenna’s two rivers. There is evidently more of the town to the north of
western edge of the site, with
The excavated portion we can see consists of two decumani: the more north- the Decumanus Maximus, since houses disappear into the escarpment. If the
Cardo III, seen from the
north. erly is significantly broader, and is evidently the main street of the town, hence Decumanus Maximus bisected the town through the middle, as is often supposed,
called, following Latin practice, Decumanus Maximus. Three ‘vertical’ cardines then there may be two rows of insulae or blocks of houses missing; but the lack
are visible, traditionally numbered, from west to east, Cardo III, IV and V. of evidence emerging from under the modern town, north of its main street, the
Two further cardines were marked on the plans made by the Bourbons, hence Corso Resina, might give pause to wonder. We cannot rule out the possibility
numbered from the west I and II, and the steps at the bottom of Cardo II have that only one row of insulae is missing.
been found in the new excavations towards the Villa of the Papyri. The same The layout, as we have seen, can be described in the standard terms of a
excavations verify the Bourbon maps in suggesting that the westernmost block Roman town. But it can equally be described in the terms of a Greek town.
of the town was thinner than the others, with an offset profile, narrowed by the Naples, according to our valued guide Strabo, was divided into broad plateiai
steep drop in the land presumably caused by the passage of the westernmost and narrow stenôpoi. The word plateia itself indicates ‘broad’ and is the origin of
98 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 99
Panoramic view of the eastern the modern piazza or plaza, while stenôpos indicates ‘narrow’. The street pattern down at the ancient seafront has revealed extensive traces of quarrying. The spur
edge of the site, seen from the
of fifth-century bc Neapolis is still clearly legible in the heart of modern Naples, of tufo, which made up this promontory, will originally have sloped gently out to
north.
and its four plateiai have become the central via Tribunali (‘Spaccanapoli’) and its sea. The impression of a cliff face, along which the town walls run, is not natural
parallels. Naples is a grid of four plateiai by twenty or more stenôpoi, an order of but manmade. By quarrying out the stone below, they both made the town more
magnitude greater than little Herculaneum. If Strabo was right that Herculaneum defensible against attacks from the sea, and provided a ready source of building
went back to antiquity like Pompeii, we cannot see it. The visible remains belong material for construction of the town walls themselves (though it must be admitted
to a city laid out in the fourth century bc at the earliest, and maybe later, with a that the earliest walls we can see are made of river-washed boulders). Cutting the
street grid broadly imitating that of its neighbour Neapolis. cliff face also provided the alignment on which the road system is based, so it
We can add another significant element to the argument. Recent excavation should all have happened at the same time. Who the enemies they feared were, we
100 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 101
can no longer tell, Greeks, Samnites, Carthaginians
coming in from the sea, Romans, or just pirates, ever
a scourge of the Italian coast. Strabo calls the town a
phrourion, meaning a ‘garrison’ or ‘hill fort’. Maybe
it was the last outpost of the local Oscans against the
Greeks, but respectfully modelled on their ideas.
Important new light on the shape of the town has
been cast by recent geological studies. The eastern
(strictly south-eastern) side of the town disappears
rather abruptly into the escarpment, on the top of
which runs the access road established by Maiuri.
This escarpment cuts off the town before its edge: the
Palaestra visibly disappears into the rock face, while
to the south, the garden of the House of the Telephus
Relief and the associated range of rooms similarly
disappear. Ironically, as a series of geological core
samples have demonstrated, the excavation stops
only just too soon. The natural tufo spur drops off
steeply to the east of Cardo V. Both the Palaestra and
the House of the Telephus Relief are constructed on
artificial terraces, ramping out the natural slope to
the east, and so enabling construction on several
levels. Instead of respecting the alignment of the
street grid, they are built at an angle, responding to
the contours of the land as it drops. The edge of these
terraces is only a matter of metres further east, step-
ping down towards the sea.
If one of Sisenna’s rivers sliced down to the east of
the Palaestra, it is surely here we should be looking
for the harbour of the town, so sheltered as to attract
a Hercules. At the foot of the tower-like building
constructed above the shore at the most southerly
point of the House of the Telephus Relief, there
are numerous signs of damage by the sea, coming
Left: Views of the junction in from a south-easterly direction. Had there been
of the Decumanus Maximus
further buildings in this direction, this could not be
and Cardo IV, from the
west (above) and the north so. The mouth of the harbour will lie just beyond,
(below). approximately under the new ticket office for the
site.
Right: View down Cardo
IV from the north, with the On the other flank, we can be reasonably confi-
Superintendent, Piero Guzzo. dent of the location of Sisenna’s second river. As
102 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 103
The Herculaneum South-eastern valley
shelf
Valley flank
Valley bottom
About 20 metres
Reddish tufo River bed
A Alluvium
About 20 metres Left: Sections showing the House of the Telephus Relief terraced out over the
natural drop in levels.
Terracing
on landfill
Below: Test trench in the Vicolo Meridionale to the south of the Palaestra,
showing steep drop in natural terrain to the east.
B C
104 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 105
of the interior. But of this settlement, scarcely a trace Herenteis. The dedication is enough to remind us of Above: Excavation trench Above: View of the Sanctuary the wrong side of Sulla was no comfortable experi- imported food supply. Where business (negotium)
leading to the Villa of the of Venus on a terrace outside
remains except in its street pattern. The context of a pre-Roman past largely deleted by the buildings of the town walls.
ence, and Herculaneum doubtless suffered severe led, leisure (otium) followed. Near modern Pozzuoli,
Papyri, after conservation
the Bay of Naples was transformed by the arrival the first centuries bc and ad. work and new protective punishment, including confiscation of lands. This its Roman phase now dramatically visible beneath
of Rome, first as an ally of Naples in 327 bc, and What spelled the end of this phase when shelters (2009). There is no Overleaf: Aerial view of the might explain in part why it is hard to see the Oscan the earthquake-damaged centre, the sulphur springs
sign of a river between the site towards the north-east.
tightening its grasp of the area in the early third Herculaneum spoke a language other than Latin, town – but only in part, since Pompeii, which fell to of Solfatara still attract intermittent tourist interest.
town and the Villa of the
century bc. Just how hard it is to see pre-Roman and called its magistrates and gods by non-Latin a Sullan siege, preserves many traces of this past. The sulphur springs were more active in antiquity,
Papyri.
Herculaneum is reflected in the fact that one soli- names, though nevertheless fighting alongside By the first century bc, the degree and char- especially at Baiae, across the bay immediately west
tary public inscription has been found in the Oscan Rome as an ally, was the Social War of 91–89 bc. Inside: Panoramic view of acter of the Roman presence in the area was much of Puteoli, and the hot steam attracted the interest
Cardo IV from outside the
language, in contrast to the dozens known from Herculaneum, as we have seen, featured with its two changed. The turning point is marked by the foun- of Greek doctors like Asclepiades of Bithynia, who
House of the Wooden Screen.
Pompeii. A marble altar top bore the dedication to rivers in the narrative of the Social War by Sisenna. dation, by Scipio Africanus, the Roman general recommended hot steam baths as a cure-all. Just
Venus by a local magistrate: ‘Lucius Stlabius, son It was probably the scene of the siege and capture who defeated Hannibal, of the Roman colony of as centres like Bath and Brighton flourished in
of Lucius, Aucilus the meddiss tvtiks had it made of Herculaneum by Sulla’s legate, Titus Didius, Puteoli in 194 bc. Deliberately competing with the Georgian England under medical advice, and gener-
for Herenteis Erucina’. He has the authentic title of supported by the loyal Hirpinian commander, old Greek centres of Cumae and Neapolis, it created ated an entire social life in its own right, so Baiae
a Samnite chief magistrate, meddix tuticus as the Minatius Magius of Aeclanum, from whom the a naval and commercial base for Rome that rapidly flourished in the first century bc, and attracted
Romans transliterated it, and Venus, recipient of a Roman historian Velleius Paterculus was proud to established itself as the most important harbour in crowds from Rome. The cocktail of good health,
famous cult at Eryx in Sicily, has her Oscan name of trace his descent (Velleius, Histories 2.16). Being on the western Mediterranean, and a key to Rome’s Greek culture and fashionable company offered
106 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 111
112 her cul aneum her cul aneum 113
by the area turned the entire Bay of Naples into a landowners like Cominius Primus bought and sold properties, With good reason, the original owner of the villa has been
centre for villeggiatura, the Roman rich on holiday. argued over boundaries, and cared for their valued vineyards and identified as Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58 bc, father-in-
Few members of the Roman elite of this period woodlands. At the heart of each of these estates, fundi, was in all law of Julius Caesar, and target of one of Cicero’s most spectacular
are not attested as owning villas, which stretched, probability a farmhouse or villa. It is only in modern times that invectives, the speech Against Piso. The evidence is circumstantial,
in Strabo’s words, like a continuous development ‘villa’ has come to indicate a lavish building. The basic distinc- not documentary. Of the papyrus scrolls that have been painstak-
around the entire crescent of the bay. It is this tion in Latin is between a town house, domus, and a country ingly unfurled and deciphered, a very large proportion contain
massive presence of Roman wealth, both through house, villa. The architect Vitruvius, writing towards the end of works of Epicurean philosophy, in which the work of Philodemus
the trade of Puteoli and the spending of the leisured the first century bc, had considerable qualms about suggesting of Gadara is dominant. Piso was a prominent patron of Epicurean
rich, that is the context for the transformation of any particular recipe for the construction of a villa other than the philosophy, and Cicero represents him in his invective as living on
visible Herculaneum. provision of suitable farm buildings, cow-byres, stables, haylofts, particularly close terms with a particular Epicurean philosopher,
By no coincidence, Herculaneum is as well threshing floors and the like. Rather grudgingly, he concedes that a man of great learning and humanity (unlike Piso himself). The
known for a single villa outside its walls as for those wishing to build more ‘delicately’ can apply exactly the same philosopher is not named, but is surely, as the ancient commenta-
the town itself. The relationship of the Villa of the rules as for building a town house, though he is sarcastic about tors claimed, Philodemus, who explicitly dedicated to him his essay
Papyri to the town is emblematic of the relation- this taste for ‘suburban’ comfort. ‘On the Good King in Homer’. It is a little difficult to imagine who
ship of Roman to local. When the elder Pliny took As Vitruvius was well aware, his ideology was out of step with would have kept such a comprehensive collection of the works of
a squadron of ships into the path of the erupting contemporary practice. Luxury villas were a major expression Philodemus in his library, if not Piso.
volcano, it was not to rescue the local population, west to the unexplored limit to the east, exceeds 220 Above: An example of partly of wealth and status, and had developed an idiom of their own, Whether or not Piso was the owner, the villa is anything but the
unrolled papyrus scroll from
but to respond to the urgent message of a villa metres, and is comparable to the excavated seafront characterized by spaciousness, laxitas, built round successions of country house attached to a country estate of one of the population
the Villa of the Papyri.
owner: Rectina the wife of Tascius, or Cascus or of the town. Contemporaries complained of villas colonnaded porticoes or ‘peristyles’. Vitruvius ironically expresses of Herculaneum. It only makes sense as the luxury villa of a member
Caesius (Pliny the Younger, Letters 6.16.8). By a bold built like cities, and this sort of scale shows why. Overleaf: Panoramc view of the villa as an inversion of the town house: whereas in the town, of the high Roman aristocracy. It is not difficult to imagine that
the newly excavated room on
leap of etymology, the Bourbon antiquarians saw in But it was the finds that gave the villa its fame and the atrium precedes the peristyle, the suburban villa proceeds the villa was built on land confiscated by Sulla from Herculaneum
the lower terrace of the Villa
her name the origin of the name of the village that name: first the exceptional collection of statues, of the Papyri. from peristyle to atrium. That succession, which is far from after the Social War, and awarded to one of his friends. Nor is its
was then still named Resina, until its renaming as some sixty-three in bronze and some twenty-four being a universal rule, can be seen in the Villa of the Mysteries at collection of statues the usual garden furniture that Vesuvian town
Ercolano in 1969. The idea still occasionally reap- in marble, and then the 1,800 or so carbonized Pompeii, the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum – and also the houses, or even a grand villa like that at Oplontis, could display.
pears, in the context of the relaunch of a tourist jetty rolls of papyrus. Much has been written of this Villa of Arianna at Stabiae and the villa at Settefinestre, near Cosa Cicero, who used his friend Atticus as agent in his pursuit of suit-
called Portus Resinae. The connection will not work, villa and its collections, and the papyri themselves in Etruria. But the cases are very different. The peristyle of the able sculptures for his own philosophical villa, the ‘Academy’ at
because, even if Rectina could become Resina (as are of such outstanding importance as to merit a Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii is part of a working farm: the Tusculum, could never rise to the level of this collection. It is at a
opposed to Rettina), Roman naming conventions learned journal in their own right. There is no need rooms that open off it include the kitchens and the wine-pressing level to which only the high elite of the late Roman republic could
would ensure that the villa, if called after her rather to add to this discussion here, except in so far as the room, and none of the elegant reception rooms of the house open aspire, ransacking the east for statuary and libraries in their desire
than after her husband, would be in adjectival form, understanding of the villa adds to that of the town. on this space, but instead concentrate around the atrium. There is to look like eastern kings. The model is neither the country villa
ending ‘-iana’, and based on her (unknown) gentile Herculaneum, like any Roman town, had a a distinct contrast of rustic and urban, utilitarian and luxurious. nor the town domus, but the palaces of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
name. Nor, it is clear, was the Villa of the Papyri her surrounding territory under its jurisdiction. The The Villa of the Papyri also has fine reception rooms around This is a mouseion, a place dedicated to the Muses, to collections
villa. But the point is that the admiral of the Roman territory of the present Comune di Ercolano its atrium, which cannot be the entrance area to the complex of art and philosophical texts. By no coincidence did J. Paul Getty
fleet could unthinkingly give priority to a villa over stretches as far as the crater of Vesuvius, though it since it stands over an edge dropping down to the sea, allowing use it as the basis for his own museum at Malibu; the architec-
a city, something that the sheer wealth of the Villa is bounded to the west by that of Portici, and to the magnificent views for those rooms. But on the other hand, there ture, which makes no sense either for a Roman farmhouse or for
of the Papyri makes a little less incomprehensible. east by Torre del Greco. Such settlements did not is nothing remotely rustic about either of its peristyles, both of a Californian ranch, is perfect for a collection of antiquities. The
Since its exploration by tunnelling, at the hands exist in antiquity, and the boundaries of the ancient which were crammed with valuable works of art. The Villa of modern world constantly reproduces effects designed in antiquity.
of the excellent engineer, Karl Weber, between 1750 town must have been with Neapolis to the north- the Papyri therefore represents a large step further away from The modern tourist industry, in turning the Bay of Naples into a
and 1760, this villa has held an exceptional place in west and Pompeii to the south-east: where exactly the rural origins of the villa ideal. It does not form part of the world of hotels, seemingly living in a parallel universe to the local
the popular imagination. This is due only in part to we cannot tell. It was a territory rich with farmland, integral relationship of town and country, the symbol of the rural social and economic realities, reproduces the effect established by
its size; its seafrontage, from the Belvedere in the and we will meet (page 143–5) documents in which productivity that supports the town, but represents a rupture. the Romans with their luxury villas.
114 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 115
Our understanding of the Villa of the
Papyri and its relationship to the town
of Herculaneum will be limited until
the modern campaign of excavations is
carried to a more satisfactory conclusion.
The campaign of excavation undertaken
between 1996 and 1999 uncovered no
more than a corner of the villa, limited to
its atrium area. Yet it gave results of funda-
mental importance for the understanding
of the villa’s context. By opening a vast
trench to connect the villa to the main site,
and by taking the excavation down to the
level of the ancient shore, it demonstrated
that both the villa and the houses on the
western edge of the town had lower levels
reaching down to the shore. The hasty and
crude work of the initial excavation was put
right in part by a campaign conducted by
the Soprintendenza in 2008. It confirmed
the magnificence of the lower terrace of
the villa, with its pool close to the seashore,
Opposite: Ivory relief depicting a scene of
and its exquisitely carved furniture in wood vintage, discovered in conservation work near
and ivory. Simultaneously, it demonstrated the Villa of the Papyri.
the splendour of the house at the western
This page: Marble relief depicting a religious
edge of the town, decorated with hand- scene, Zeus and a dancing Maenad, at the
some neo-Attic reliefs. What is missing is moment of discovery in a house in the south-
the gap in the middle, a stretch of about western edge of the town (left), and after
restoration (above).
50 metres between the edge of the villa
terrace and the baths, which represent the Overleaf: View of the eastern end of the
westernmost building of the town. In that Decumanus Maximus.
118 the town and its set ting the town and its set ting 119
5
I N H ABI TANTS
I
n the vaults down by the
seashore, the bodies of the last
inhabitants were found in their
hundreds, crowded by the dozen into
each space. There they took refuge
from a catastrophe that they hoped
they might survive, one in the form
of a tremendous earthquake, only to
find themselves overwhelmed by the
catastrophe they had never imagined,
a pyroclastic surge that reduced their
bodies to skeletons in a matter of
seconds, if not fractions of a second.
When someone dies of thermal shock,
their tendons involuntarily contract
into the ‘pugilist’ position of a boxer
in self-defence. The sight is familiar
in the victims of catastrophic fires
and bomb explosions. But so swift
was their death that the process of
involuntary contraction was not even
complete before they died. What is left,
after careful excavation, is a shocking
sight. One can only look with dismay
at the remains of fellow humans so
instantaneously snuffed out. The effect
of the intense heat is to deprive the
skeletons of their humanity, of all the
elements that enable us to recognize
Left: Bronze portrait from the someone, to ‘put a face to them’. Yet
House of the Bronze Herm. the paradox is that this state of fright-
ening anonymity is, after all, legible.
Right: Skeletons from the
seashore, as discovered in Advances in forensic science and
1984. palaeo-osteology, the science of study
inhabitants 123
of the bones of the past, mean that each skeleton can to work with a giant jigsaw puzzle in which many or
be carefully individuated, by gender, age, medical most of the pieces are missing, and those that survive
history and (to some extent) social condition. can only too easily be confused for something else.
Much, as we will see, can be said about these How rewarding it would be to take a skeleton from
victims. Yet nothing will restore their names. We the arches, give him or her a name, assign them a
do indeed have names of the inhabitants in great house, find their dossier of legal documents, identify
abundance. Inscriptions and dedications allow us to their portrait, and then recount the details of their
reconstruct much about the town’s ruling elite over diet. It is never going to work like that. We have to
at least a century. The largest and most important operate at a more generic level, characterizing the
inscription preserved in Herculaneum gives us sort of population they were, what their names,
more than this: the names of up to 500 inhabitants, documents, houses, portraits and diet may tell us
all male and of free status. Even more precious, we about them. Like ghosts, their faces will slip in and
have dossiers of wooden tablets, archives from no out of focus, at one moment vividly present, at the
less than eight of the houses, totalling some 160 next frustratingly out of reach and unknowable.
separate documents. These not only illustrate vividly The skeletons are a good place to start. We have
the life histories of a select group of inhabitants, but, the advantage of knowing that they are all precisely
thanks to the Roman insistence of having every legal contemporary, though on which day exactly they died
document witnessed by at least seven people, provide we can no longer say, since the scientific evidence
hundreds of names from the last two decades of the piles up against the traditional date of 24 August
town’s life, as many as 650 separate individuals. It ad 79 being right. To judge from the ripe pomegran-
is rare, anywhere in the Roman world, to have the ates and other botanical evidence, it was a day in late
evidence of hundreds of contemporary skeletons, or October or November. The date of 24 August given
to know hundreds of contemporary names, let alone in the younger Pliny’s vivid description is, after all,
to have both such sources of information. But that is only one of a number of variants given by the manu-
not, of course, all. We have a good proportion of their scripts, and another source speaks clearly of the ‘late
houses too, the residences, shops and flats in which autumn’. In any case, the same point of death has the
they lived. And in one extraordinary case, which we rare advantage, archaeologically speaking, of freezing
will look at in detail, we have, thanks to the great sewer a cross-section of the population, of different ages
or cesspit that ran under the block of shops and flats and social standing. The excavations that discov-
by the Palaestra, the organic remains that enable us to ered the skeletons, amid considerable international
analyse in detail the diet of several dozen inhabitants excitement, had been instigated by the then director
over the course of a couple of decades. And indeed, of excavations at Herculaneum, Giuseppe Maggi.
if more was needed, we actually can put faces to a Funding for new work had effectively dried up
few dozen of the more wealthy inhabitants, thanks to with Maiuri’s retirement in 1961, and gradually the
their fondness for portraits in marble and bronze. It skilled team of workmen and restorers he had built
is hard to imagine any other ancient population that up was reduced to a rump. Maggi, as director from
can be known in such close-grained detail. 1971, watched helplessly as the site began to disinte-
This chapter will try to pull together some of grate for lack of funding. Then in 1980, despairing
these clues, to build up a picture of the sort of human of support from the Ministry of Culture, he turned
Skeleton of a ‘wealthy matron’
found with a bag of jewellery society which the last inhabitants of Herculaneum to Paolo Martuscelli, responsible for special funding
(National Geographic). represent. To piece together a picture of antiquity is for Naples. Funds were provided for a project to
inhabitants 125
excavate the ancient seashore, with the double aim of addressing Above: Archival photographs of
excavations of the seashore in the
the persistent problems of water management on site (problems
1980s.
which were to trigger further works twenty-five years later), and
of providing a new visitor access. In summer 1980, the first few Right: Archival photographs of the
skeletons emerged, and Maggi realized both the solution to the old boat as discovered on the ancient
shore.
conundrum of where the people of Herculaneum had disappeared
during the eruption, and the potential of the story for attracting
the attention of the international press. By the time in 1982 that
the main groups of skeletons started to emerge in what were then
called ‘boat sheds’ (despite the fact that only one small boat was
found, and not in the so-called ‘sheds’), Maggi had a powerful inter-
national alliance on board, led by the National Geographic Society,
enabling the involvement of American scientific specialists, Sarah
POPULATION %
Age and sex distribution of
Age and sex distribution of the skeletons studied by Luigi
AGE GROUPS skeletons studied by Sarah Capasso: he suggests that the AGE GROUPS
Bisel. Note the shortage of big dip in numbers coincides
unsexed males females unsexed males females
young people. with the earthquake.
130 inhabitants
that of his father, with the same name, his mother used his power of veto to block him. If Balbus were
Viciria, probably his wife Volasennia, and possibly not, thanks to Herculaneum, someone known to us,
his daughters. We meet him in the Theatre, where we would pass over his name, which never comes
his statue in heroic nudity left the impression of his up again in the history books. But evidently, his
face in the tufo. We meet him and his father again, intervention at a critical moment won the future
each on horseback, in a public square outside the emperor’s gratitude, and the reward of promotion to
Theatre, where the inscription recalls his benefac- the praetorship and a province, Crete and Cyrene,
tions to the town, the building of the Basilica and which offered exceptionally rich pickings. Indeed, to
the rebuilding of walls and gates. Finally we meet judge by a long inscription that survives in Cyrene,
him on his terrace below the walls, in the armour governors like Balbus pushed their luck too far,
of a Roman commander, by the funerary altar that and elaborate measures were set up, not long after
bears the full text of the honorific decree passed by Balbus’ tenure, to limit the rapacity of the provincial
the local council after his death, providing that an government.
equestrian statue should be erected to him in the Where does this place our Balbus on a Roman
most crowded place in the town (if only we knew scale? By no means one of the Roman nobility, he
just where it was found, we would have found our did not make it to the peak of a senatorial career
forum), that a marble altar be put up to him at public in a consulship (who knows, maybe protests from
expense (the one we are looking at), that on the day of the fleeced provincials may have stopped him in his
the Commemoration of the Dead, the Parentalia, the tracks). He is what the Romans called a ‘new man’,
procession should start here, that a day of the annual one whose family had not made it to office before:
athletic festival be dedicated to him, and finally that the inscription to his father Nonius Balbus Pater lists
an empty place should be left in his honour in the no claims to distinction. He came from an insignifi-
Theatre. There was no getting away from Nonius cant provincial town, not Herculaneum but Nuceria,
Balbus, wherever you turned. at the other end of the Sarno valley from Pompeii.
Who was he, and how did he rise to this promi- We know this much because his fellow townsmen,
nence? By chance, his name survives in a passing ‘Nucherini municipes sui’, put up a statue to him in
mention in a historical account, that of the histo- Herculaneum. There were plenty of people living in
rian Cassius Dio. The year 32 bc was a critical the area who outclassed him by far: people like Lucius
one for Octavian, the future Augustus. The pact Calpurnius Piso, if it is right that the Villa of the
between him and Antony called the ‘triumvirate’ Papyri belonged to him, consul and father-in-law of
was disintegrating, as they squared off for their Caesar, member of an old and distinguished Roman
final showdown. Each accused the other of being family; or Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 38 bc,
the obstacle to peace and the return to normal life. member of one of the most famous Roman families
The consuls at the beginning of the year were both of all, who shared the stage of the Herculaneum
supporters of Antony, and took the opportunity of Theatre as an honorand with Balbus.
the opening of the year’s proceedings to launch an The fascinating thing about Nonius Balbus is that
attack on Octavian. The consul Sosius, whom we he was not, beyond the confines of Herculaneum and
now remember for the elegant Temple of Apollo by his native Nuceria, all that important. He played a bit
The funerary altar of Nonius
the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, was on the point part in history, and got his reward. But he behaved
Balbus today (above) and at
the moment of its discovery in of introducing measures against Octavian when like a good Augustan. Just as the emperor enriched
1941 (below). Nonius Balbus, one of the ten tribunes of the people, the capital with buildings, turning it famously ‘from
recording a loan of money to one L. Mammius Rufus. Another one panel is a clear indication, in a society where questions of rank Herculaneum, who were full Roman citizens, reminds us is how
loan dates to ad 52, to one Volusius Crescens. Money lending was order were observed scrupulously, that they ranked higher, and little we understand about this society with its rigid distinctions
a classic way of making a fortune in this booming economy, and must therefore be citizens. This does not mean that all followed of slave and free, but numerous and complex ways of passing from
by the year ad 60, he was ready for some social acknowledgement. the same route as Ennychus, of declaring the birth and survival of one status to the other. Slavery is a theme we meet again and again
The first in a series of documents records that on 24 July ad 60 he a year-old child. This was just one of the incentives to reproduce in these legal records. We meet records of sales of slaves, like the
officially declared the birth of a daughter by his wife Livia Acte. The which Augustus introduced. But promotion to citizenship was girl Olympias, bought from Ennychus by M. Nonius Hermeros
name Acte shows that his wife, like Ennychus, started life as a slave, offered as an incentive to others: by the Emperor Claudius to those (another of the M. Nonius clan) on 30 November ad 47. There is
but the family name ‘Livia’ shows that she had been freed. Their who built a ship of a certain capacity and brought grain to Rome C. Iulius Phoebus, who sells a slave girl to one Calatoria and guar-
daughter will have been called Venidia. The declaration must have for at least six years; by Nero to those who built a house of a certain antees her to be free of hidden fault: buying a slave could be a risky
been made on the day of her birth. The next is a document of exactly value in the city of Rome; by Trajan to those who ran a bakery in business if they proved to be a runaway or improperly acquired. Or
a year later, dated 25 July ad 61, and records that in the Basilica Rome for at least three years. Full citizenship was an important we find Lucius Cominius Primus making a loan of 600 sesterces
Noniana in Herculaneum, the magistrates M. Antonius Rufus and inducement to do what the State considered advantageous. from his strongbox to M. Nonius Fuscus, and receiving the slave
O
nce we come to terms with the scale of the shops and houses, mostly handsome town houses of
town, the most remarkable thing about a decent size. In the middle, where Cardo III marks
it must be its evident wealth, at least in the central point, there is a cluster of public buildings.
its final phase, and the magnificence of its public The road itself becomes heavily monumentalized,
buildings. Herculaneum is most familiar to us as a with lavish use of marble linings. A double arch
place to look at Roman private buildings, in their made of brick-faced concrete, originally clad in
intimacy, and ranging from the swanky residences of plaster, marks the beginning of this monumentalized
the rich to simple upstairs lodgings of humbler folk part to the east; a symmetrical brick double arch also
with flimsy wooden partitions. If the modern visi- marked its western edge, though this suffered heavy
tors want public buildings, they head for Pompeii. damage in the eruption, and partially collapsed
It is sometimes hard to remember Herculaneum into the façade of the Basilica. To the south of the
has public buildings at all, because the most impor- Decumanus Maximus, flanking Cardo III, are two
tant ones are at least partially buried: the Theatre, significant buildings, the Basilica Noniana, and what
the Basilica and its larger neighbour, the ‘so-called is currently known as the College of the Augustales
Basilica’, and even the Palaestra, disappear under the (see pages 177–8). To the north of the main road is
rock face. Then there are the public buildings down the largest known public building in town, and the
by the seafront: the Suburban Baths (these indeed one which, after the Theatre, produced the greatest
are impressive), and the two temples on the terrace density of statues and inscriptions, often referred to
of the Area Sacra, so easy to overlook because they as the ‘so-called Basilica’.
have never been reconstructed. It requires an effort The frustration, and indeed the mystery, of the site
to see the public life of the town at all. has always been the location of its forum. The forum
Even so, if we peel back the volcanic cover in our was the heart of a Roman town. Around it clustered
imaginations and see the town as a whole, we get a the principal public buildings, the Curia where the
different picture. This tiny settlement is dominated by local senate met, the Basilica where legal cases were
its main drag, the Decumanus Maximus, its equiva- heard, the temples where the most important gods
lent of Spaccanapoli, the main street of old Naples. were worshipped. Without its forum, Herculaneum
A handsome broad road, it defines the public face is little more than a pleasant suburb. Maiuri was frus-
of the community. To the west is the (still buried) trated to find his excavations stopped, by shortage of
Left: Aerial view of the site Theatre: not the biggest in the Roman world, but with time and finance, but above all by the buildings of
seen from the south-west. its 1,350 seats not bad for such a town. To the east is modern Resina above, at a point where he believed
the Palaestra, with its great cruciform pool, built out the most exciting discoveries were yet to be made. He
Inside: Panoramic view of the
Area Sacra outside the walls, on terraces stepping down, if our reconstruction is had not excavated the public heart of the town: the
with the Temple of Venus. right, to the harbour. The road between is lined with Basilica and the ‘so-called Basilica’ lay maddeningly
on the edges of the site, and somewhere beyond, he was sure, must lie the Forum
and a crop of monuments, statues and inscriptions that would beggar those of the
so-called Basilica. There is, however, a problem, a big problem. The Forum should
lie, if anywhere, at the centre of the town, on the intersection of the Decumanus
Maximus and the central cardo. We may imagine it was immediately to the west
of the trio of public buildings so thoroughly ransacked by the Bourbons. But if
so, how was it that they never found this space, potentially full of statues and
inscriptions? If there was empty space west of the Basilica, why should it be that
when Bellicard drew up his plan in 1745, he marked the Decumanus west of the
Basilica as flanked by shops and houses? When Francesco La Vega came to make
his own plan of the town as a whole in 1796, he too showed blocks of buildings
west of the centre.
Far from placing the Forum by the Basilica, La Vega marked as the Forum
an open area immediately south of the Theatre, that is to say, on the extreme
western edge of the town. He also placed here a temple, the basement of which
can still be seen from the tunnels extending from the Theatre. We cannot
exclude that Herculaneum was so eccentric as to place its Forum on its very
edge, but it would be hard to find a parallel. The Forum belongs in the heart of
the town, more or less the centre: if Pompeii’s Forum is well west of centre, it is
clear that it is because the city spread eastwards after the location of the Forum
was fixed. But if the Herculaneum Forum isn’t to the west, where is it? It may
be time to cut the Gordian knot. Perhaps the monumental heart of the town
View of the triumphal
arch over the Decumanus was precisely the group of three buildings we know about. What you see is what
Maximus. you get, sometimes at least. Rather than assuming that the town had a number
Sarnus
Gate
Vesuvian
Gate
0 100 metres
Herculaneum
Gate
Nucerian
Gate
Stabian
Gate
Marine
Gate
Left: Plan of the site by Francesco La Above: Plan of Pompeii, marking of major missing monuments, it is worth looking more carefully
Vega, 1796. location of public buildings. Note
at the ones we do know about, and starting from the opposite
clusters around Forum, Theatre and
1 Well from which first evidence of the Amphitheatre.
assumption, that these are in fact the principal public spaces of
site emerged Herculaneum.
2 Theatre 1 Forum Public buildings in Roman towns have a distinctive distribu-
3 Forum 2 Temple of Apollo
4 Basilica 3 Building of Eumachia
tion. They are not spread at random through the urban fabric, but
5 Temples 4 Curia cluster. So in Pompeii, the Forum represents the heart of public life,
6 Domus Psedourbana (Villa of the 5 Basilica and round it cluster many of the principal buildings: two temples
Mysteries) 6 Temple of Fortune
(of Apollo and Jupiter), a number of buildings associated with
The tildas mark the Sepulchretum, or 7 Triangular Forum
burial ground 8 Large Theatre
imperial cult, the great porticoed space constructed by the local
9 Small Theatre benefactress, Eumachia, of disputed function (some have seen the
10 Temple of Minerva and Hercules wool exchange, others a slave market), a cluster of what seem to be
11 Temple of Isis
administrative buildings including the Curia, in which the local
12 Temple of Aesculapius
13 Samnite Palaestra senators, decuriones, met, and the magnificent Basilica, tradition-
14 Temple of Venus ally the seat of legal cases. The two northern exits to the Forum are
15 Amphitheatre marked by triumphal arches, designed to support statue groups
16 Large Palaestra
of emperors in four-horse chariots. The Forum then has what we
17 Forum Baths
18 Stabian Baths may think of as a northern extension, marked by a broad stretch of
19 Central Baths road culminating in a further triumphal arch. To the right of this
20 Suburban Baths stretch of road is another temple, that of Fortune, and to the left a
set of public baths.
156 the public face of the town the public face of the town 157
A second cluster in Pompeii is the theatre quarter, sequence of changing room (apodyterium), warm
next to the so-called ‘Triangular Forum’, with two room (tepidarium) and hot room (caldarium),
theatres, one large and open, the other small and they offered a facility to all free inhabitants, male
enclosed, and three temples, of Minerva/Hercules, of and female, at the topographic middle of the town.
Isis, and the minor shrine attributed (erroneously) to Two other, more recently constructed, sets of
Zeus Meilichios, more probably that of Aesculapius, baths marked the western and eastern extremities
the god of healing. There is also a gymnasium, or of the town, standing outside the town walls, like
palaestra, called the Samnite Palaestra, to the east the Suburban Baths at Pompeii, in order to benefit
of the Triangular Forum, though the enormous from the proximity of the sea. The Suburban Baths
four-sided portico behind the Large Theatre may to the south-east are among the most impressive
have replaced its function, before it ended up as the bathing spaces found in the Roman world, thanks
barracks for the gladiators in the final phase. in part to the quality of their preservation. Built
Thus public buildings of various types, religious, out, as we have seen, over the ancient shore, on
administrative and for leisure and entertainment, top of the tufo platform created by quarrying, the
cluster around two ‘central spaces’, one major, one traces of sand trapped under the foundations show
minor. There are further public buildings that defy that they date from the period when the sea had
this pattern of clustering, and instead seem to patrol retreated as a result of the slow expansion of the
the extremities of the city. The Temple of Venus stands earth’s crust. It must have seemed to the inhabit-
at the south-western point of the town, looking out ants of the early first century ad like a gift from the
to sea from its elevation, while the Amphitheatre gods to be able to spread out beneath the sea walls,
occupies the south-eastern corner, fitting neatly and benefit from the gentle sea breezes. They were
into the angle of the walls, while next to it in close built in two episodes: first, the standard cluster of
association opens the Large Palaestra. The Temple entrance (the tall, atrium-like lightwell at the centre
of Venus and the Amphitheatre are the sentinels with its red columns and arches makes this space
of the city, patrolling its furthest reaches, while the particularly evocative) followed by cold, warm and
Forum and Triangular Forum are the double core. hot rooms. This caldarium is small and intimate,
These apart, the only type of public building that is but its luxury is seen in the delicate stucco work
truly scattered through the urban fabric is the baths: and in the glazed bay window, fragments of glass
in addition to the Forum Baths at the edge of the from which remain embedded in the tufo mass,
Forum complex, the Stabian Baths lie a little apart which retains the impression of the circular basin
from the theatre complex, on one of the principal (labrum). The second phase added a new caldarium,
intersections of the road system; the Central Baths but on a wholly different scale. With its own furnace,
are in the middle of a dense area of housing, and the operating by direct heating immediately under the
Suburban Baths are found outside the ‘sea-gate’. bronze ‘samovar’ in the middle of the pool, it offered
Herculaneum too concentrates its public build- an area of warm water big enough for up to twenty
ings in distinct clusters. Baths, as in Pompeii, are to swim in. This second hot room is an enlarge-
relatively scattered. The Central Baths occupy the ment belonging to the final years of the town, after
bottom half of an insula (VI), but do not adjoin Above: Detail of the mosacic floor of the Central Baths of the earthquake of 63. Even so, there was time for
Herculaneum.
the Decumanus Maximus and the monumental it to suffer severe damage as the land sank and the
complex. With their careful separation of (larger) Overleaf: Panoramic view of the apodyterium (changing room) sea returned a second time, with greater violence,
men’s and (smaller) women’s baths, each with their of the Central Baths. damaging the new building severely.
158 the public face of the town the public face of the town 159
160 the public face of the town the public face of the town 161
Left: Atrium of the Suburban Baths.
164 the public face of the town the public face of the town 165
pressure. On it, two local officials have painted an inscription in Oscan. It was replaced, perhaps as
announcement to deter the pollution of the water part of Balbus’ programme, by two small temples,
supply by dumping rubbish nearby. Another pres- probably both dedicated to Venus. Four handsome
sure tower is found further down the same street. reliefs in the style of early Greek sculpture, showing
We can also see, close to the surface of the pave- the gods Minerva, Mercury, Neptune and Vulcan, do
ment, the lead piping that runs downhill from the not necessarily indicate who was worshipped. More
tower. Public fountains formed part of a public water worship of Neptune, god of earthquakes, and Vulcan,
supply, and three are visible, each distinguished by god of fire, might seem to have been called for. The
a divinity: one close to the water tower itself with recently reconstructed dedicatory inscription from
the figure of Venus at its head; one at the east end of the pediment reveals that it was indeed the Temple Below and right: The fountain
and water tower at the top of
the Decumanus Maximus with the face of Hercules; of Venus, repaired and partly rebuilt (not necessarily Cardo IV.
one on the junction of Cardo V and the Decumanus
Inferior with the figure of Neptune. It is possible
that the choice of gods was determined by the street
names. The one south Italian city of which we know
the ancient street names, Thurii, called them after
gods, so Herculaneum may have had a via Herculia,
a via Veneria and a via Neptunia. As important
as the water supply is the drainage system, and
Herculaneum, unlike Pompeii, was well supplied
with drains under the streets, of which the one under
Cardo III is the most easily visible.
Baths, then, plotted the city, marking its corners
and centre – what happened further uphill, we
cannot tell. Other public buildings are limited to two
areas. Of these, the less important is the strip outside
the town walls. One of the benefactions of the great
Nonius Balbus to his town was to repair the walls.
We can see how he monumentalized the southern
wall towards the sea, encasing it in the ‘network’
technique of opus reticulatum that was standard
in the period of Augustus (see page 22). He may
also have helped to improve the terraces beneath
the walls. In any case, his statue and funerary altar
were given pride of place on one of them, by the
entrance to the Suburban Baths. To the west, there
had already, probably since the second century bc,
been a small temple, of which the podium has been
glimpsed in an excavation. This may be the temple of
the goddess Herentas Erycina, the Oscan cult name
of Venus, which is mentioned in the one surviving
after earthquake damage) by the largesse of two local benefactors, The effect of the terrace beneath the town walls is to create
Vibidia Sabina and her son A. Furius Saturninus. Both were born a strip of public land, comprising sacred area with temples,
slaves, Vibidia being exceptionally the freedwoman of an underage funerary altar of Balbus, and baths. It may be thought of as a
girl (‘virginis liberta’). They paid lavishly, not only reconstructing sort of quid pro quo for the reduction of public land above. A
this building, but contributing to the repair of the Capitolium, the town wall, if it is to serve a defensive function, needs to rise to
Temple of Jupiter echoing that on the Capitoline in Rome, and a good height above ground level, and to have a strip of open
making a distribution of cash to members of the local council, the land behind it for the defending troops to pass along. But Balbus’
augustales, and the priestly college of Venus, as well as a gift to wall provided instead a pleasant low parapet, over which the rich
the town of 54,000 sesterces in recognition of their promotion to houses that were built up to and over the walls could enjoy their
honorary membership of the local senate. Rich freedmen had no treasured sea view.
qualms about spelling out the deal by which they traded money for We may now return to the main public area of the town, the
status and recognition. Decumanus Maximus. While Pompeii clusters its central buildings
168 the public face of the town the public face of the town 169
View of the Temple of Venus.
171
Above: Negative impression
in the volcanic ash of the
face of the statue of Nonius
Balbus in the Theatre.
Right: Dedicatory
inscription of the same
statue.
174 the public face of the town the public face of the town 175
Far left: Western portico of the Palaestra.
Aula, that led to a series of grand rooms above the Palaestra.
Above left: Archival photograph of the bronze statue of the
The precise function is not clear, but it was suitable for gran-
Hydra (the many-headed monster killed by Hercules) found in
diose public ceremonies. The paintings that survive from the Palaestra.
this episode, preserved in Naples Museum, include some of
the most famous ‘masterpieces’ there on display. Above right: Fresco representing an actor as king, found in the
Palaestra.
We thus have two of the key areas of public leisure and
entertainment at either end of the Decumanus Maximus.
We may now return to its centre. Three buildings stand, like
the Three Bears, large, medium and small, in a cluster at the
mid-point of the main road of the town. The monumen-
talization of the roads between them makes clear this is a
special area. No wagons and carts carrying supplies to shops
and private houses could pass here: they were blocked off by
the triumphal arches. Even Cardo III, running between the
two smaller buildings, is end-stopped. A rectangular struc-
ture, a little over a metre high, stands in the way of traffic. Its
function is not obvious. It has been identified as a tribunal
or suggestum, from which a magistrate could address the
people, or a public crier could make an announcement or
hold a public auction. If this is right, the paved space in front
of it seems rather cramped. An alternative would be to see it
as the base of a small shrine.
176 the public face of the town the public face of the town 177
Of the three public buildings mapped too. His wife Deianira was Hercules’
in the eighteenth century, only one, the undoing, for, tricked by the dying centaur
smallest, is fully visible today, known to Nessus, she tried to stop his adultery by
visitors as the College or Shrine of the giving him the poisoned cloak that killed
Augustales. Its shape is unusual, with the him. Some of the wives of the divinized
four central columns supporting an upper emperors were uncomfortably reminis-
floor giving the impression of the atrium cent of Deianira: passing over rumours
of a private house, and the central cella about Livia, Agrippina was thought to
or shrine beyond it raised on a platform have poisoned Claudius, leading to his
and decorated in a rich colour scheme, apotheosis, and Seneca made fun of his
in the ‘Fourth Style’ typical of the final admission to heaven not as ‘deification’ but
years of the city, and mythological scenes ‘pumpkinification’.
twice depicting Hercules. In one, he is In identifying the building as the College
bargaining with Achelous, the river god of the Augustales, weight has been given to
whom he fought successfully for the hand two inscriptions, found here or near by.
of Deianira, seen in the background. In the One is the great list of names that was long
second he is seen seated in heaven before taken to be the list, or album, of the augus-
the goddesses Juno (with her rainbow) and tales (discussed in the previous chapter). It
Minerva (with her helmet). As is the way is now agreed that there were far too many
with mythology, the scenes may suggest names for it to be the members of this exclu-
a variety of readings. Those who recalled sive club, and must be the entire citizen
that the river god Achelous was the father body, so one argument falls. The other
of the Siren Parthenope, and hence closely inscription is a dedication to Augustus by
associated with Neapolis, may have seen two brothers, Aulus Lucius Proculus and
a local reference. The scene of Hercules’ Julianus, of something unspecified, but
apotheosis, in the context of early imperial surely not a building but a statue of the
Italy, inescapably recalled the apotheosis divine Augustus. On the occasion of the
of emperors. The ultimate mark of posthu- dedication, the brothers gave a dinner to the
mous respect was for the senate to declare decuriones and the augustales of the town.
them gods, Divi, a privilege restricted by Just as Vibidia Sabina and her son Furius
the time of the eruption to Julius Caesar, Saturninus gave the decuriones and augus-
Augustus, Claudius and Vespasian. There tales a distribution of money to celebrate
were statues of all these ‘Divi’ in the Porticus their promotion, these two brothers were
building opposite, and, more significantly, buying favour with the influential men of
statues to Caesar and Augustus in this the town. It proves no specific connection
building itself. The deification of Hercules of the building with the augustales. It might
was both a mythological charter for what just as well be a meeting place for the town
happened to emperors and, in the context
of the town of Herculaneum, a suggestion
of a particular affinity. But if you wanted, The so-called College of the Augustales, possibly the
you could find subversive readings here Curia, or Senate House.
178 the public face of the town the public face of the town 179
council as for the augustales, and indeed it was identified as the The largest, and certainly most important, of the three Above: Frescoes from the central shrine of the
building, depicting Hercules with Achelous and
Curia in the eighteenth century. In fact, no less than three graffiti public buildings was the one which made the most impact on
Deianeira (left), and his welcome to heaven
on the first column on the right as you enter mention the curia the Bourbon excavators, but which now is hardest for us to by Minerva (with helmet) and Juno (with
or curia Augustiana or curia Augustana, to which body various recapture. Exploration started in 1739, and almost at once rainbow).
candidates are recommended for election. The argument that produced a sensational crop of statues and paintings, which still
because this was the College of the Augustales, the word ‘curia’ have pride of place in the collections of the National Museum
must refer to their college should be stood on its head: because it of Naples. Despite the careful plans and elevations produced by
was the Curia, it cannot have been the College of the Augustales. the Bourbon explorers, there has never been agreement as to its
Herculaneum certainly had a Curia, and this could reasonably be function. Alcubierre initially took it for a Temple of Theseus;
it, loyally dedicated to the Divine Augustus, whose life could be Weber preferred to see it as a Temple of Jupiter or Hercules.
seen as a parallel for Hercules, the great benefactor of mankind. Roofless, it cannot be a temple. Bellicard, following an essay by
M. d’Arthenay published in 1748, identified it as the Forum. But
the identification as a Basilica took root, and is seen in La Vega’s
plans. Later, in the nineteenth century, Michele Ruggiero claimed
Above: Dedicatory plaque from the so-called College of the Augustales. It reads:
it as the Palaestra. Maiuri, who excavated the real Palaestra, then
‘Sacred to Augustus. Aulus and Aulus Lucius, sons of Aulus, of the tribe Menenia,
called Proculus and Julianus, at their own expense, to mark the dedication gave a identified it as the senate house or Curia – another odd sugges-
dinner to the decuriones and the augustales.’ tion for a building without a roof. Jean-Charles Balty rejected
this idea and suggested a market place, or Macellum.
Left: Archival photograph of the discovery of the inscription in 1961.
180 the public face of the town the public face of the town 181
Perhaps we are safest in sticking to architectural form. It had
the plan of a Roman porticus, that is a great rectangular open
space flanked on all sides by porticoes. The closest comparison
is the Eumachia building in Pompeii, but since the function of
that is still hotly disputed, it may not help us. In broad terms,
it was like the type of building that sprang up in Rome under
Augustus, for instance in the Porticus of Livia. Essentially an
open square, it is surrounded by colonnades. The old voting place
of Rome, the Saepta Julia, looked much like this once Augustus
had reshaped it, and it has been noted that some at least of the
decoration was similar. The end walls, as we have seen, were
occupied by grandiose mythological scenes, of Theseus and
the Minotaur, Hercules and Telephus, the musical training of
young Achilles by the centaur Chiron, and the musical training
of Olympus by Marsyas. The elder Pliny tells us that there were
paintings of Olympus with Pan and Achilles with Chiron in the
Saepta Julia, the painters of which were unknown, even though
they were so valuable that the guardians had to answer for their
safety with their lives.
The parallel has suggested that the Herculaneum Porticus
might have a similar function to the Saepta Julia, where the
Romans citizens voted. But in provincial towns, they voted
generally in the Forum itself. The Saepta Julia, like most Roman
public spaces, was used for many things: voting, gladiatorial
shows, athletic competitions, meetings of the senate. We need
to get beyond the idea that buildings were restricted to specific
functions. The important thing was that Herculaneum now had
a big public space just like those in Rome, surrounded by colon-
nades, full of fine works of art. These included, of course, statues,
in profusion, and mostly of members of the imperial family. In
the central niche were the Emperor Titus, flanked by the seated
Augustus and Claudius; in the side niches, before the scenes of
the heroes of old, Theseus and Hercules, were the new heroes,
Augustus and Claudius (again), this time standing in bronze. The
Right above: Fresco depicting Hercules and his son Telephus suckled by a hind in
Arcadia, from the so-called Basilica.
Right below: Fresco of the young Achilles learning the lyre from the centaur
Chiron, from the so-called Basilica.
Opposite: Fresco of Theseus and the dead Minotaur, from the so-called Basilica.
184 the public face of the town the public face of the town 185
body of the portico had plenty of other imperial emperors, has led recent scholars to the identifi-
characters: Tiberius and his mother Livia, Claudius cation of the area as one dedicated to the cult of Above: Exterior of the
and his mother Antonia, his uncle Germanicus, the emperors: an ‘Augusteum’. This is supported so-called College of the
his wife Agrippina and his son Britannicus, and by dedicatory inscriptions by the augustales, Augustales, with the possible
location of the weights and
some others. Most of these were dedicated by the recorded in the eighteenth century. But this may
measures office (‘Pondera’) in
rich freedman Mammius Maximus, who was duly be too specific a reading of this space. It was surely front.
rewarded with his own statue in the Theatre, and a principal, if not the principal, space in which
doubtless other privileges. There is a significant citizens could meet. It may be that d’Arthenay Right above: Watercolour
reconstruction of the so-called
absence of dedications to Nero as emperor, which and Bellicard were not far out in identifying it as
Basilica by F. Morghen
were doubtless torn down on his death with the our missing Forum. If it ever started as a forum, (1835).
damning of his memory, but with the arrival of the the central circulation space of the town in which
Right below: Reconstructed
Flavians, new dedications appeared, to Vespasian, people met to do business, to pray, to argue over
elevation of interior wall of
Titus, Julia daughter of Titus, Domitia wife of justice and to elect their magistrates, it had been the so-called Basilica showing
Domitian, and Flavia Domitilla wife of Vespasian transformed typologically into a Roman porticus. dedication by Augustales.
and mother of Titus and Domitian. We will have to wait for the emergence of the right
Inside: Panoramic view of
The sheer frequency of statues to the imperial inscription to know for sure what label they would the so-called College of the
family, or rather, a succession of families of ‘good’ have given it. Augustales.
186 the public face of the town the public face of the town 191
187 her cul aneum 188 her cul aneum her cul aneum 189 her cul aneum 190
The Porticus is connected to the small building on the other further inscription is relevant here. A long text, reported in the they regarded as a portico attached to the Forum. They were need not have come from the ones Bardet mentions. It evidently
side of the main street (whether College of the Augustales or sixteenth century by the antiquarian Fabio Giordano, records also so depicted in the imaginative watercolour of Filippo was an area, just like the Forum of Pompeii, in which the espe-
Curia) by an arcade structure. Its importance is underlined by the meeting of the decuriones in the Curia, with all present, at Morghen in 1835. Bardet was already excavating in this area cial honour of an equestrian statue was suitable. Unfortunately,
the use of marble cladding, at least on the Porticus side, and which Marcus Memmius Rufus, father and son, duumvirs for the in 1743, three years earlier, and though he does indeed report the great honorific inscription on the tomb of Nonius Balbus
the numerous bases for honorific statues. The similarity in plan second time (‘duumvirs’ were the local equivalent to consuls), finding two bases of equestrian statues, he also found fragments states that the statue should be inscribed ‘To Marcus Nonius
to the Eumachia building in Pompeii encourages the identifica- were thanked profusely for their generosity in putting on games of bronze feet attached to them, which means the Nonii (who are son of Marcus Balbus, praetor, proconsul, patron, the universal
tion of this structure as a ‘Chalcidicum’ (a building type that and for building at their own expense ‘Pondera, a Schola and in marble) were not here. But this area is rich with bases of the people of Herculaneum, in recognition of his merits’. In fact, the
should have originated in Chalcis in Euboea, though Latin a Calchidicum’. The pondera or ‘weights’ will have been an right dimensions for equestrian statues, four visible around the surviving inscription is more simple: ‘To Marcus Nonius son of
inscriptions frequently invert the spelling to Calchidicum). One officially checked set of weights and measures, such as are also brick arch, and four more in the area of the arcade, and the Nonii Marcus Balbus, praetor, proconsul, the people of Herculaneum’.
found in the Forum of Pompeii, against which the weights No mention of him as patron, or of the ‘universal’ people, or of
used by traders could be checked by the local magistrates. The his merits. So we have not quite got a smoking gun.
decuriones give the Memmii responsibility for future supervi- Of the three public buildings, only one now seems certain in
Equestian statue of Nonius Balbus, often supposed to be from the so-called Commemorative inscription to Nonius Balbus recording the gratitude of his fellow
Basilica, in fact from outside the theatre. sion of the weights, and for the provision of a slave to keep townsmen, and the posthumous honours voted to him. its identification, and it is here that the best chances of future
permanent watch over them. A schola is a space for gatherings,
sometimes no more than an exedra, or recess within a portico.
A Chalcidicum seems to be a type of arcade attached to a public
building: Augustus built one, identified as that against the senate
house, the Curia Julia, in Rome, and Eumachia built one as part
of the building named after her in Pompeii. The Chalcidicum of
Pompeii is generally understood to be the arcade that opens on
the Forum. If this arcade in Herculaneum is the Chalcidicum
the Memmii built, the Weights and the Schola should be the two
spaces on either side of the entrance to the so-called College of
the Augustales (or Curia). Analysis of the architecture shows
that these two spaces form an integral unit of construction with
the Chalcidicum that fronts the Porticus. A complex which pulls
together Curia, Schola and Pondera, and Chalcidicum makes
the area look even more like the public heart of the town. Why
look further?
Everything would be clearer if we knew where exactly the
two equestrian statues of the Nonii Balbi, which grace the front
hall of the Museum at Naples, were actually found. The inscrip-
tion on Nonius Balbus’ altar, as we have seen, provided that an
equestrian statue should be erected to him ‘at the busiest place
in town’, in loco celeberrimo. That must surely be the Forum. The
equestrian statues of Balbus and his father emerged, according
to Alcubierre’s reports, in June 1746, at a time when explora-
tions stretched from the Theatre to the Palaestra, and there has
always been much confusion about their find-spot. They were
stated by Cochin and Bellicard, who were there only three years
later in 1749, to have come precisely from this arcade, which
192 the public face of the town the public face of the town 193
Left: Fragment of a mable plaque dimly
discoveries lie. This is the partially visible building
inscribed in ink with a list of names.
to the west of Cardo III. We can be reasonably
confident in identifying it as the Basilica which This page: Marble head of a statue of
an Amazon at moment of discovery
Nonius Balbus built, because the records confirm
(below), and detail of the painting
that statues of the members of his family came around the eye (right).
from there, including himself, his father, and his
mother Viciria Archais. Along the now visible east
wall of the building are a series of statue bases, and
it is almost certainly from these that the gallery
of Balbus’ family came (and for this reason it was
referred to in the eighteenth century as the Galleria
Balbi). If confirmation were needed, a fragment
of a new inscription found in the same area, put
up by the Nucerians (Balbus’ fellow townsmen)
to a female (the name is lost) points to a missing
member of the family portrait gallery.
The dossier of legal documents, which we met
in the previous chapter belonging to one Venidius
Ennychus, records that at a meeting of the local the escarpment, undertaken by the Herculaneum
council on 25 July ad 61 in the Basilica Noniana, Conservation Project, coupled with reopening of
Venidius was recommended to the authorities in old Bourbon tunnels, allows us to confirm details
Rome for promotion to full citizenship. The close from the plans by Bardet and Bellicard. And
association of the Basilica with citizenship, its though we may be dismayed by the extensiveness
formal award and documentation, is confirmed of the warren of tunnels made in the eighteenth
by other recent finds. That the Basilica Noniana century, it is also evident that Maiuri’s instinct was
was where lists of citizens were kept and displayed right, and much remains to be discovered from
is suggested by Maiuri’s discovery of three frag- this focal point of the town. Even in the early days
ments of the inscription when he was excavating of the cleaning campaign, there emerged from the
here in 1961, apparently found in the road outside edge of the old excavations the marble head of an
the building. More recently, there emerged from Amazon of the highest quality. The Amazon is one
within the building two broken slabs of white of a type, closely parallel to a similar head found
marble, which at first sight appeared blank. On in the recent excavations of the lower terrace of
closer examination, traces emerged of faded letters the Villa of the Papyri. What makes this example
in ink or paint of a list of names. In fact, Maiuri particularly valuable is the survival of extensive
had already discovered a similar fragment during traces of paint, not only in the hair, but around the
his excavations. If they kept lists of names painted eyes, including eyebrows, eyelashes, and pupils.
on blank slabs, as well as properly inscribed lists, it The fact that it was excavated and cleaned by
suggests the more strongly that the Basilica is where professional conservators does much to explain
records of citizens were officially stored. the survival of these traces of pigment. Too often,
The plan of the Basilica is now known with marble finds have been scrubbed clean by unob-
reasonable certainty. The campaign of cleaning servant excavators.
J
ust like the skeletons, or the inscriptions and professional middle classes in suburbia and upper
wooden tablets with their hundreds of names, classes in secluded leafy lanes. These distinctions
the houses of Herculaneum offer us a cross- break down completely in the Roman world. In a
section and a vivid insight into how people lived, world in which status not class is what distinguishes,
high and mighty, low and servile. When Amedeo freeborn or slave-born, foreigner or citizen, ordi-
Maiuri published his excavations in two magnificent nary citizen or member of the honoured ‘orders’ of
volumes, he divided up his houses not by area but by decuriones and Augustales, housing patterns worked
status, into eight classes. He started with patrician differently. For one thing, the richer the household,
houses of traditional type, followed by middle class the more numerous were the slaves, so that the
houses of traditional type, which he followed by rich lived not in splendid isolation, but surrounded
grand houses (‘case signorili’) and residential houses by their dependants. You could not be a Marcus
of a non-traditional type. Here he was evidently Nonius Balbus, and leave the town teaming with
torn between two principles of classification, one in your freedmen and the freedmen of your freedmen,
terms of the wealth of the owners, the other in terms without living in a big house full of slaves and other
of the typology of the houses. Why not start with the dependants. We met Venidius Ennychus in the last
grandest houses in town? Alas for Maiuri, they were chapter, the successful businessman whose bundle
not very traditional, in terms of the dominance of of legal documents was found in the House of the
the traditional entrance hall or atrium, so he sepa- Black Saloon. Maiuri had some difficulty in believing
rates these out. Then he slides down his social scale: that this relative ‘upstart’ could live in such a large,
middle class houses with attached shops, multiple- fine house, with its traditional atrium entrance, and
residence houses, tradesmen’s houses and shops indeed we cannot exclude the possibility that he was
with dwellings, and finally shops and workshops in a a lodger or a tenant. But Ennychus was a member of
multi-storey block. an order of dignity in the town, an Augustalis, and
This complicated classification, applied to no we should expect to find him owning a house that
more than sixty units of residence or use, already looked dignified.
suggests how diverse the housing of Herculaneum If we can’t start from modern expectations, where
is, in size, wealth, function and architectural style. can we start? There are few better introductions than
Maiuri’s desire to distinguish houses by social class the extraordinary evocation of life on the Bay of
(flagged by terms like ‘patrician’, ‘signorile’, ‘middle Naples in the first century ad in Petronius’ Satyrica,
class’ or ‘mercantile’) reflects an assumption based one of the two novels written in Latin that gives
Atrium of the Samnite House
on modern western cities that people will gener- us the best insight into Roman imperial society.
with central rainwater basin
(impluvium) and upper ally live clustered by class: the working classes in (Amedeo Maiuri, who himself produced an edition
colonnade. city centre slums or housing estates separate from of the text, would not have disagreed.) In the most
Oscan letters, running right to left, unlike Latin: Left: Atrium of the Samnite
SPUNES LOPI. Otherwise incomprehensible, it is House.
220
8
H IG H L IF E
H
owever much the little houses on standard common fortune, he says quite explicitly, had no
plots may charm the modern visitor, need of magnificent vestibules or tablina or atria,
especially as enhanced by Maiuri’s restora- because they went round ‘paying court’ to others, not
tions, it is no good looking for the grandees of the being paid court to. The Latin word is ambire (root
town in them. We are much better off looking at the of our word ‘ambition’), meaning ‘go around’, but our
main drag of the Decumanus Maximus. Busy shop- expression ‘pay court’ has the advantage of evoking
ping streets in city centres may not appeal much to the physical space, the ‘court’ which characterized the
the modern powerful and wealthy, but in antiquity residences of early modern princes. How you shape
it was a normal place to find them. The ruling elite a house, what your standing is, and how people treat
expressed their domination through the holding of you are all interlinked. The ‘atrium’ was the court of
political office, the local annual magistracies. These the Roman world, in which the mighty were literally
involved being at the heart of the community – being courted.
known to the voters, taking part, indeed officiating, at That said, we may pause in surprise to note that
the local festivals, and adjudicating the endless local the houses of our standard plots also had ‘atria’. Did
squabbles, for example between people who disagreed the owners expect visitors to court them? Partly, the
over boundary walls or tore down their neighbours’ answer is about ‘trickle down’: how the mighty lived
fencing poles, or who challenged whether a slave girl created an image of success that was reproduced in
was a runaway or maybe not a slave at all. Living close miniature by the less mighty. But another answer may
to the heart of the town was seen as a political advan- be that Vitruvius would have laughed in our faces to
tage, an issue on which Cicero, who spent so much of hear us speak of these tiny entrance halls as ‘atria’
his life in the Forum, whether in the law courts or at just because they had rainwater basins in the middle.
senate meetings, was anxious to stress. The house of What he was thinking of, especially when he speaks
a politician should put him on display to the voters, of ‘magnificent atria’, are central spaces with ample
framed in the view from the open front door as he dimensions, and surely also with the classic cruciform
conducted his business. pattern generated by having ‘wings’ on both sides
What is more, the figure of the magistrate was and tablina with wide openings in the centre. Our
closely associated with the grand atrium, and it is in standard houses, as we have seen, struggle to manage
the houses along the Decumanus Maximus that we open space on either side, and are frequently found
find some of the grandest. The Augustan architect closing up their tablina to become rooms looking
Vitruvius, whose typology, as we have seen, Maiuri over the garden.
was so keen to illustrate, is particularly explicit on the The House of the Bicentenary, excavated in 1938,
linkage between high social standing and architec- at the height of the Fascist excavations, on the anni-
The House of the Black
Saloon: view from atrium tural form. The architect had to build houses suitable versary of two centuries of exploration of the site,
through tablinum to peristyle. for the rank and profession of the owner. People of ticks far more of Vitruvius’ boxes than any house
we have considered so far. That is made possible by ‘classic’ aspect. The side alae have marble thresholds
scale: with a plot 18.6 metres (63 Roman feet) wide, that mark off spaces for display, the one on the right
and exactly twice that depth, and covering nearly 700 with wooden sliding doors in position, in which
square metres, it is more than three times the size it would be nice to imagine that the images of the
of a standard plot. It is not clear whether the block ancestors were displayed according to the Roman
was originally laid out like this, or whether the house noble tradition, except that unfortunately not a single
expanded over time, swallowing up smaller neigh- house has produced evidence of this type of ancestral
bours, but in Pompeii too we can see a pattern whereby image. (Those we do meet, as in the House of the
the end plots that fronted on the main streets were Bronze Herm, another ‘standard’ plot, tend to be on
privileged over the smaller plots along the side roads. stands by the side of the tablinum.)
A social division is implicit in this layout. The house But the House of the Bicentenary has some
maximizes its chances to present an appearance of a surprises that rather undermine this grand image.
textbook grand house: an enormous ‘Tuscan’ atrium, The first is the presence of the dossier concerning
with two alae and a tablinum, and beyond, a peristyle Petronia Justa, with its exotic cast of freedmen at
garden surrounded by colonnades, all framed in the loggerheads over an issue of free birth. The dossier was
view from the entrance. Small details enhance this found in a basket in an upper room overlooking the
The layout of the house shows an almost complete shift of emphasis from
atrium to peristyle as the core of the house. The entrance, which gave Maiuri his
rare but surprising example of a ‘testudinate’ atrium (see page 204) is evidently no
more than an entrance lobby, a circulation space which offers access on one side
to the upper rooms, on the other to the eye-catching sequence of reception rooms
visible ‘en filade’ through their aligned doors. It is the antithesis of the Samnite
House, in the lofty Tuscan atrium of which Maiuri saw the values of the patriciate
of the old days. But if Vitruvius could scarcely have approved, the House of the
Stags has more in common with the layout of the majority of the luxurious houses
of the imperial period.
Who then lived here? It was not until some forty years after Maiuri’s excavation
of the house that close study of the archives of the Bourbon excavations revealed
this house as the source of one of the most famous finds of the site: the carbonized
loaf of bread, long held in the Museum in Naples, on which are legible the letters
of a stamp: CELERIS Q GRANI VERI SER: ‘of Celer, slave of Quintus Granius
Verus’. Granius Verus is known to have been a magistrate of the town in the 50s or
early 60s ad, and his name appears as high-ranking witness on several of the wax
tablets. A Quintus Granius, freedman of Quintus, Celer also appears on the great
album of the town, one of the names inserted at the end, presumably close to the
time of the eruption. If, as seems likely, it is the same Celer, he must have achieved
course of the town walls at this point, even larger (1,200 Left: Carbonized loaf of bread
square metres). The similarities leap to the eye: the found in the House of the
enormous proportion dedicated to a peristyle garden, Stags, stamped with the name
of Celer, slave of Quintus
occupying even more open space (250 square metres),
Granius, possible owner of the
and the string of richly decorated rooms looking out house.
to sea. But there are also significant contrasts, which
show how dangerous it is to generalize from one
house about changing fashions. Far from reducing
the atrium to an entrance lobby, this house dedicated public basilica (its shape, and especially its clerestory,
the entire area of what had once been a standard plot make it feel very church-like to us). Since Vitruvius
to an enormous atrium, made the more conspicuous happens to specify that the room he calls an Egyptian
by its fine mosaic floor. The undulations now visible oecus was like a basilica, this may well be the right
in it are, of course, the consequence of the eruption, label for it. But it does not follow that this was a
but what they reveal are the blurred outlines of the standard Roman recipe. It is the sequence of atrium
rooms of an earlier house buried beneath. and basilica in place of tablinum that makes this
This atrium is far from standard. Rather than space distinctive and impressive. The garden area is
following an alae and tablinum arrangement, it still where the main reception rooms open, including
culminates in a tall room, architecturally unparal- the central reception space decorated in blue, with
leled in Vesuvian houses, which surely copies a mythological scenes in brown monochrome, in the
cavated western part of the town. The maps drawn by the Bourbon
engineers indicate that between Cardo I and II lay an enormous
property, occupying the entire insula, and covering a potential had a Greek marble relief fine enough to inspire its modern name,
footprint of over 5,000 square metres. The plans show what seems so the south-western mansion had two fine Greek marble reliefs, of
to be a gigantic peristyle, with dimensions of 40 × 70 metres (2,800 similar proportions, discovered by recent excavations.
square metres). The only part that can now be verified is the portion We can say virtually nothing about house and owner, but the most
that came down to the shore, and was exposed by the trench dug in interesting result is the implication for the appearance of the seafront
pursuit of the Villa of the Papyri. The excavators did not anticipate of the town. At both western and eastern corners were large private
that the edge of the town would protrude this far south, and discov- properties with tower- or pavilion-like structures that defined the
ered to their dismay a very substantial building that blocked their limits of the town. In both cases, public baths with ‘samovar’ pools
proposed drainage channel. The most interesting feature of this is lay immediately adjacent. And in both cases, lower floors had to be
a sort of pavilion with an arcaded façade, reminiscent of the tower abandoned as the sea rose. There is a striking symmetry about the
of the Telephus Relief house. And just as the Telephus Relief house ‘new image’ of the town Nonius Balbus engineered.
R
ich and poor, we have seen, did not live in mighty and humble, must have got to know each
glorious isolation in Herculaneum. Quite other quite rapidly.
apart from the slaves and dependants under We can go a step further. It is not just that grand
their own roofs, the rich had neighbours. To point houses happen to be next door to humble ones:
out that there was a strip of grand houses looking they seem positively to attract them. Insula IV is
out over the sea may create the impression of some a good example. The Stags and the Mosaic Atrium
sort of wealthy enclave. Yet study the street patterns take up more than half the block, but their neigh-
and you swiftly appreciate that even when two bours are a run-down lot. The House of the Alcove,
grand houses lay alongside, like those of the Stags immediately north of the Mosaic Atrium, is the
and the Mosaic Atrium, the inhabitants could not one other house with pretensions. Occupying two
reach each other’s houses to call or attend a dinner ‘standard’ plots, it has a residential quarter with a
without making their way up the side street, along large triclinium with a marble pavement, and the
the lower Decumanus, and back down the next side room with an alcove or apse that gives the house
street, passing a whole cluster of much humbler its name. But that apart, the remaining units have
dwellings. In this little community, rich and poor, a distinctly commercial flavour. The House of the
Right: Objects found in the shop of the gem-cutter: a bronze saucepan (top); a ceramic beaker
(centre); a marble bust of Bacchus from wine shop no 9 (bottom).
Opposite: Marble portrait of a man with an Augustan hairstyle, perhaps the patron of the
gem-cutter.
broken rubbish as well as waste. before the eruption in not insignificant quantities, to be used, broken and disposed Top: Bags containing organic remains.
The Herculaneum Conservation Project’s lead archaeologist, Domenico of); bronze vessels, heavily corroded by the acidic context but recognizable; glass
Above: Corroded rings and coins.
Camardo, therefore adopted an excavation strategy that divided the sewer into perfume jars; a range of oddities, like a terracotta antefix, a small terracotta statuette
1-metre lengths. Each section was excavated stratigraphically, and it was indeed of a mother-and-child figure; and a range of jewellery, especially rings with bronze
possible to distinguish up to three strata in each deposit, divided by fine sandy stamps, gold rings, and semi-precious gemstones.
layers that seemed to result from occasional flooding of the sewer. The earth, rich At this point we called in Mark Robinson from Oxford, an environmental archae-
with organic remains, was carefully separated from the remarkable quantity of non- ologist whose experience with Pompeian cesspits, latrines and waste material went
organic materials, broken pots, lamps etc., which found their way down the drains. back to the late 1990s. He confirmed that the deposit was indeed rich in organic
Everything was carefully bagged up with reference to the context number to allow waste material, including fishbones, eggshells, pips and seeds, and that it would be
association with specific deposits. The non-organic material filled some 177 trays. worth analysing systematically. Since the waste tended to heap beneath individual
Finds include: a large number of lamps, some discarded because broken, others downpipes, it would be worth looking at the material, not as one vast deposit, but
apparently intact; numerous small containers, never as large as a full amphora, as a series of separable deposits associated with individual households. Given the
though with some it is surprising they could travel down the drain intact; vessels, rich variety of commercial and other activities in the units above, it would be the
including red-glazed wares from South Gaul (famously a crate of these was found more interesting to establish whether there were different patterns of consumption
and waste disposal. Robinson’s group took a selective sample from the 774 bags that have certainly been digested are the coprolites (these containing
have been set aside, both to try to ensure coverage of all sections of the sewer, and fish bones), mineralized fig pips, a grape pip and a mulberry pip.
so that plenty of untouched material remains for cross-checking. Seventy-six bags, But what strikes one immediately, especially since this is the sewer
or a 10 per cent sample, were examined. These were then separated by wet-sieving of a block of ‘commercial’ units and apartments, not one of the
through a series of meshes, so separating out material by size. A remarkable quan- rich houses of town, is the evident variety and health of their diet,
tity of the coarser material consisted of building materials, including small lumps of with plenty of fish and seafood, poultry, eggs and fruit. The much
concrete, broken pottery and tile, small iron objects like nails, lumps of rusty, black, repeated story that working Romans lived on a dreary diet of pulses
glassy slag-like material, etc. There was also a rich harvest of small finds, beads, and porridge will need some modification.
gaming counters, hairpins, hinges, a gaming die, and no less than three engraved The lesson that comes very clearly out of a re-examination of
gemstones. It is evident, since we are only looking at a 10 per cent sample, that a this block is that we should not underestimate those who lived in
significant number of gems found their way down the drains, and when we look at such surroundings. The temptation is to see the rich restricted to
the material excavated above ground, there are obvious potential associations. their grand houses, and the other inhabitants as being, to a great or
The Oxford team also found a great variety of biological material. Some has lesser extent, poor. Yet, just as when we look more carefully in the
evidently not passed through the gastric tract, and is kitchen waste from the flats of the House of Wattlework (a Graticcio) and find good deco-
cooking process (we may be struck by how undifferentiated their waste was, with ration, well-made furniture, bronze household gods and pieces of
everything from broken household rubbish through kitchen waste to human marble reliefs, so the Insula Orientalis II proves to be full of objects,
Top left: Mark Robinson examines the results of flotation.
waste passing down the same outlets). Large quantities of charcoal, chopped many of which suggest a level well above poverty (marble busts,
Top right: Painting of game birds and mushrooms, from the animal bone and seashells were found, as well as large quantities of eggshell. Other gemstones and good quality bronze-ware), while its sewers point
House of the Stags.
bones could more easily have passed through the digestive system, copious fish to a varied and healthy diet. The imagined ‘low life’ of this Roman
Above: Gems and a gold ring. bones and small bird bones. Sea urchin also seems to have been popular. What town at least is something altogether more complex.
and irreplaceable, and needed to be excavated judi- specific to its individual location and historical year, the publishing industry brings out a new spate another is gained, and it is Herculaneum’s skeletons
ciously, by ‘men of learning’ who would keep proper development. Of course, any one site may be taken as of books on Pompeii. Those on Herculaneum can be that offer the best hope for future analysis. At the
records. The Bourbon records, though better than representative, to some extent, of the Roman world counted on the fingers of one hand. same high temperature, organic materials carbonize:
nothing, are fragmentary and inadequate. Worse, and Roman civilization in general. But seeing from What, then, makes Herculaneum different and the wooden elements of Herculaneum, beams, beds,
even in the twentieth century, when a great ‘man the viewpoint of a single site brings a loss of perspec- special enough to give us this depth of perspec- cupboards, winches, and writing tablets, along
of learning’, Amedeo Maiuri, was in charge, the tive. It is like looking with one eye. Put Pompeii and tive? It is precisely the tiny differences that change with the foodstuffs, grain, beans, fruit, nuts, even
records kept were still patently inadequate, and not Herculaneum together, and it is like looking through a flat view into a three-dimensional one. Only 10 loaves of bread, and the occasional pieces of fabric,
even fully consulted by the excavator when he came two eyes. They may be close together, but that is miles separate the two cities, yet in terms of the including above all rolls of papyrus, containing both
to publish. Moreover, he did precisely what Walpole enough to restore a sense of depth. It is because they mechanics of a volcanic eruption, that is enough to literary texts and business documents, all these give
did not want, and left it ‘corrupted with modern are both similar and different that they give us a make a profound difference, between burial under the evidence of Herculaneum a quality absent from
repairs’. The combination of heavy restoration and more three-dimensional view. the ash-fall of lapilli and under the hot clouds of a Pompeii.
inadequate documentation means that what we are The geographer Strabo treated Herculaneum pyroclastic flow. A small difference in distance trans- The differences lie not only in the consequences
left with is not the remains of an ancient city, but and Pompeii as if they had the same history: ‘The lates into a difference in temperature, which brings of heat. The sheer depth of the cover left by the pyro-
an interpretation or presentation of those remains. Oscans held both this town and the one next to it, with it enormous consequences for the preservation clastic flows, at points three or four times greater than
Only too often the above chapters have had to ques- Pompaia, past which the river Sarnus flows, then of materials. At 400–500°C, flesh evaporates: the at Pompeii, ensures the preservation of upper floors,
tion Maiuri. the Tyrrhenians and the Pelasgians . . .’ The fate consequence is that the skeletons of Herculaneum without which the understanding of the working
The other issue to which Walpole rightly drew of these cities which shared a common end is to and Pompeii are wholly different. Fiorelli’s casts of a house must be necessarily partial. Combined
attention was the desirability of exploring more be treated like identical twins, joined together at at Pompeii, which preserve the outline of the with the capacity of carbonization to preserve flimsy
than one ancient city. It is not just a matter of accu- birth. And because they are taken to be identical, body and even of its clothing, are not possible at structures like timber frame-work, often character-
mulating more evidence. Each place is unique, quite Herculaneum is systematically overlooked. Each Herculaneum, but though one kind of drama is lost, istic of upper floors, let alone balconies and wooden
followed by Moses Finley, argued that the function it has been possible to suggest that Pompeii had an explicitly representing a variety of sexual acts, and
of an ancient city was to consume the produce of its organized traffic system, with one-way streets and hundreds of graffiti either advertising prices of pros-
hinterland. This model, that of the ‘consumer city’, other zones closed to commercial traffic. The streets titutes or celebrating the satisfaction of their clients,
works rather more convincingly for Herculaneum of Herculaneum have similar paving, but the ruts are is a place where prostitution leaves its unmistakable
than Pompeii. In Herculaneum, the visible signs of rare and unremarkable. The conclusion seems ines- mark. Not so Herculaneum. No space here has been
ostentatious consumption, of costly public buildings, capable: fewer carts plied their way along its streets. identified as a brothel. Sexually explicit scenes are
rich decoration in private houses, and prosperous Just as the commercial pace of Herculaneum absent, unless one counts a version of the standard
material culture, outweigh the visible signs of any seems to have been quieter than that of Pompeii, scene of a satyr surprising Hermaphroditus at rest, or
form of urban productivity. The same is not quite so so other signs of ‘low life’ seem to be less evident. the rare tintinnabulum or lamp with sexual scenes..
true of Pompeii. A familiar aspect of Pompeii is the frequency of a In Pompeii, Matteo della Corte was able to
One sign of commercial activity that always range of features that can be described as ‘porno- decipher numerous graffiti of an erotic nature. His
strikes visitors to Pompeii is the presence of wheel graphic’. The ‘great brothel’ of Pompeii has become harvest in Herculaneum was poor indeed. In the
ruts in the hard stone paving of the streets. Because a major tourist destination, and though the casual peristyle of the House of the Gem he deciphered
most Roman carts had the same axle-span, each cart identification of every house that contains scenes of ‘Bombycion fellat’: the name of this fellator is to
tended to cut down the same parallel tracks, and a sexual nature as another brothel is unjustified, it be corrected to Bombylion. On the ramp to the sea
despite the hardness of the volcanic lava used to pave is evident that there were a good number of estab- beneath Cardo IV he saw in charcoal letters the
the streets, the ruts can be several inches deep. What lishments, including taverns, in which sex was for nonsense sequence, ‘sala . . . glabe rusiunnae lavinia
is more, they are so consistent, carts taking corners sale. Prostitution was an important source of profit futui’, of which only the last word, ‘fucked’, can be
in one direction not another, and wearing down the in a slave-owning society, and Pompeii, between understood. But for unmistakable sexual activity, we
stone curbs on one side of a bend not another, that structures focused entirely on beds, and paintings have to make do with a small group of graffiti in a
on the ground, chosen to pull together expertise in archaeology, The next infrastructural issue was roofing. Damage to decorated
architectural conservation, conservation of surfaces and artefacts, surfaces correlates closely with damage to, or absence of, roofs.
structural and hydraulic engineering, chemical analysis, archaeo- On the traditional model, a roof is only repaired in the context
logical surveying and IT management. of a project on a house as a whole, and the snail-like progress of
The standard model for a conservation project is to take a specific such projects left numerous roofs compromised. By constructing
house or group of structures and attempt to address all problems a project ‘typologically’, aimed at the repair of a series of different
comprehensively. The downside to large projects on isolated areas roofs in different locations that presented similar problems, it is
of a site is that they fail to address the needs of the site as a whole possible to accelerate the process and dramatically slow down the
or see beyond the boundaries of the house or project in question. damage.
A roofing solution which considers only the house in question, The third and most important element is that of continuous
and then, by throwing water on to a neighbouring house, creates care. It is not a substitute for big restoration projects, but some-
new problems there, is merely moving the problem on, not solving thing that must necessarily follow them if the good is to last. If
it. Driven by these considerations, the Herculaneum Conservation the site cannot afford a standing maintenance team such as Maiuri
Project, which had initially aimed to ‘restore’ one insula, the Insula built up, with an accumulation of transmitted knowledge about
Orientalis I (incluing the House of the Telephus Relief and the what the recurrent problems are, and how and when to address
House of the Gem), comprehensively addressing all its conserva- them, the alternative must be to draw up schedules which the
tion problems, shifted its priorities to site-wide infrastructural managers of the site can implement effectively, analysing in detail
issues of three types. the typology of problems that will recur, and providing tested and
The first, and most urgent, was to provide an adequate drainage costed solutions. That in turn requires a continuity of monitoring.
network for the site as a whole, and this could be best done by reacti- Mistakes are inevitable, but a site can learn from them. It is by
vating, so far as possible, the ancient drainage system. Anyone who periodically monitoring how successfully past solutions stand up
has witnessed the damage, across the entire site, caused by water to the test of time that they can be improved.
standing pooled on ancient pavements, seeping though to the very How much can international help achieve, and at what point
rooms which have been protected by roofing, and creeping up the is it better to leave the problems to local hands? The relations
decorative surfaces causing paint to fade and plaster to collapse, between the Pompeian authorities and the international commu-
understands how essential a basic drainage system is. The fact that nity have had a difficult history. The international pressure on the
the one the Romans provided was effective and extensive makes Vesuvian sites is both a blessing and a curse. From the earliest
the intervention less traumatic to the site. visitors, like Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray, and even more
So far as is known, nowhere else in all the world is such a time capsule waiting to be opened.
Antiquity is Italy’s greatest natural resource, Herculaneum the richest of all fields. It seems
incredible and absurd to discover a buried treasure – and not to dig it up.
cunicoli An Italian term based on the Latin for ‘rabbit holes’ (cunicula) atrium
triclinium
to describe the ‘rabbit warren’ of tunnels made by the early explorers impluvium
ala
of Herculaneum. fauces
decumani The broader avenues that cut ‘horizontally’ across a Roman vestibulum
city. The main road is called the Decumanus Maximus.
Decurio see magistrates
dolium A large ceramic container or vat, used to store wine and other
food products.
domus A residential building in a city, contrasted to the ‘villa’ in the
country, but also to the multiple occupancy block in the city (insula).
inde x 349
Herculaneum (cont.), Theatre, 9, 40, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54–5, 56, 57, 105, 133, 134–5, 136–7, 138, O T
Decumanus Maximus, 38–9, 98–9, 102, 120, 151, 152–3, 154–5, 158, 165, 166, 151, 155, 169–74, 172–3, 186, 192, 196, 342, 347 Octavia, 134 Tacitus, 17, 134, 297
168, 175, 177, 196, 202, 218, 223, 226, 237, 238, 291, 292, 297, 329, 345 Villa of the Papyri, 7, 9, 48, 53, 62, 63, 83, 87, 89, 98, 105, 106, 114–19, Ofellius Magnus, Marcus, 142 Talmudius Optatus, Quintus, 144
Forum, 9, 133, 151–5, 181, 186, 192, 196 114–19, 133, 163, 194, 253, 297, 302, 303, 319, 333, 341, 347 Ovid, absence of, 297 Terentius, portrait of, 135
Fountain of Hercules, 166, 168 Hercules, 65, 89, 90, 91, 103, 163, 178, 180, 181, 182, 196, 218, 236, 241, 328, Tetteius Severus, Aulus, 238, 291, 292, 293
Fountain of Neptune, 166, 168 328, 341 P Theophrastus, 93
Fountain of Venus, 166, 168 Packard Humanities Institute, 9, 324, 329, 347 Tiberius, Emperor, 186, 347
House of Apollo the Lyre-Player, 260, 261, 299, 302 J Papyri, carbonized, 53, 114–15 Titus Didius, 106
House of Argus, 57, 74, 253, 262 Julius Caesar, 115, 133, 178, 347 Petronia Justa, 144–5, 225, 305 Titus, Emperor, 182, 186, 296, 347
House of Aristides, 58 Julius Phoebus, Gaius, 143 Petronia Vitalis, 144, 305 Trajan, Emperor, 142, 144, 237
House of Galba, 62, 185 Julius Polybius, Gaius, 244 Petronius (author of Satyrica), 199–201, 271, 296
House of Granianus, 212 Junian Latins/lex Junia, 138–40, 142, 342 Petronius Justus, Gaius, 305 U
House of Neptune & Amphitrite, 64, 76–80, 80–3, 201, 211, 211, 214–15, Junius Blaesus, Quintus, 135 Petronius Stephanus, Gaius, 144, 226, 305 Ulpia Plotina, 144
214–15, 234–5, 288–9, 290, 300, 303 Junius Theophilus, Quintus, 293 Petronius Telesphorus, Gaius, 144, 305 Umbricius Scaurus, 292
House of the Alcove, 257, 260 Peutinger Table, 41, 44
House of the Beautiful Courtyard, 260, 260 K Philodemus of Gadara, 115 V
House of the Bicentenary, 144, 223–6, 224–5, 236, 238, 260–1, 299, 302, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 48, 59, 345, 347 Pliny the Elder, 17, 114, 182, 290, 292, 293 Velleius Paterculus, 106
313, 314–15, 316 Pliny the Younger, 17, 25–6, 31, 34, 35, 36, 114, 125 Venidia, 142
House of the Black Saloon, 140–1, 142, 199, 222, 226–36, 226–36, 241, L Pompeii, Venidius Ennychus, Lucius, 140–1, 145, 194, 199, 232, 236
300, 302–3 La Vega, Francesco, 49, 52, 56, 57, 155, 156, 181, 196 Central Baths, 157–8 Venidius Ennychus, Lucius wooden tablets of, 9, 142–3, 143, 199, 292, 303,
House of the Bronze Herm, 122, 225 Lex Julia, 290 House of Fabius Rufus, 239, 297, 302 341
House of the Carbonized Furniture, 211–17, 211–18, 294, 303 Livia, 178, 186 House of the Chaste Lovers, 318 Venustus, 144
House of the Corinthian Atrium, 204, 205, 210–11, 218, 220–1, 297, 299, Livia Acte, 142 House of the Faun, 241, 246 Vespasian, Emperor, 144, 178, 186, 196, 296, 347
300, 302 Livineius Regulus, 297 House of the Painters, 25 Vibidia Sabina, 168, 178, 196
House of the Fabric (Stoffa), 260 Lucius Julianus, Aulus, 178, 180 House of the Vettii, 73, 83 Vibidius Ampliatus, Sextus, 144
House of the Fullery, 260 Lucius Proculus, Aulus, 178, 180 Stabian Baths, 158, 273, 296 Viciria Archais, mother of Nonius Balbus, 133, 145, 194
House of the Gem, 20, 76–7, 246, 246, 294, 295, 296, 297, 311, 319–21, Temple of Isis, 56, 158 Vinicius, Marcus, 144
323, 325 M Villa of the Mysteries, 115, 302 Virgil, absence of, 297
House of the Grand Portal, 202, 301, 303 Maggi, Giuseppe, 35, 125-6, 128, 327, 340–1, 347 Programma (electoral advertisement), 291, 292 Vitellius, Emperor, 271, 347
House of the Hotel (Albergo), 253, 254–5, 302 Maiuri, Amedeo, 52, 62, 63, 65, 73, 103, 125, 138, 151, 181, 194, 199, 202–6, Publilius Syrus, 297 Vitruvius, 115, 174, 204-211, 223, 238, 242, 244, 246, 261–2, 300, 346
House of the Mosaic Atrium, 232, 239, 244–6, 246, 249, 257, 300, 301, 211, 215, 223, 226, 236, 242, 249, 251, 260, 261, 262, 265, 267, 272, 288, Publius Arrius, 144 Volasennia, 133
302, 303 317–18, 325, 329, 340–1, 347
House of the Painted Papyrus, 260 Maiuri, Amedeo (reconstructions by), 73–84, 275–80 R W
House of the Skeleton, 58, 262, 302 Mammius Flaccus, Lucius, 135, 142 Rectina, wife of Tascius, 114 Waldstein, Sir Charles (Walston), 7, 25, 62–3, 86, 128, 327, 340, 341, 347
House of the Stags, 65, 86, 204, 232, 239–44, 246, 249, 253, 257, 260, 284, Mammius Maximus, Lucius, 134–5, 137, 174, 186 Resina, 47, 49, 50, 50–1, 114, 151, 328, 328 Walpole, Horace, 54, 287–8, 317, 325
293, 299, 300, 302, 312 Mammius Pollio, 134 Rome, Saepta Julia, 182 Weber, Karl, 52, 53, 56, 57, 114, 181, 347
House of the Telephus Relief, 18, 19–21, 22, 24, 74–6, 83, 103, 105, 246– Martuscelli, Paolo, 125 Rufellius Robia, Marcus, 238, 291, 292 Weber, Max, 293
53, 247–51, 286, 299, 302, 303, 321, 325, 325 Memmius Rufus, Marcus, 192 Ruggiero, Michele, 181, 341 Winckelmann, Johannes Joachim, 56, 63, 65, 66, 327, 347
House of the Tragic Poet, 72 Mommsen, Theodore, 138
House of the Tuscan Colonnade, 236–7, 237–9, 302 Morghen, Filippo, 193 S Z
House of the Two Atria, 204, 204, 212 Mumford, Lewis, 293 Samnites, 93, 94, 103, 105, 106, 218 Zan, Luca, 322
House of the Wooden Screen, 107–11, 200, 205, 206–10, 206–10, 238, Mussolini, 63, 76, 347 Satrius Valens, Lucretius, 297
262, 302 Scipio Africanus, 111
House of the Wooden Shrine, 218, 218–19, 265, 302 N Seneca, 15, 17, 25, 41, 178, 315, 347
House of Wattlework (‘a Graticcio’), 6, 94–5, 261–71, 285, 346 Nero, Emperor, 15, 134, 142, 186, 347 Servenius Gallus, Lucius, 142
House with Garden, 302 Nonius Balbus, Marcus, 130–4, 135, 138, 166, 169, 194, 199, 239, 249, 251, Sigurdsson, Haraldur, 25, 128, 340
Macellum, 134, 181, 196 252, 302, 303, 342, 347 Sisenna,Cornelius, 89, 99, 103, 106, 118, 239
Palaestra, 46, 53, 103, 105, 151, 174–7, 174–7, 181, 192, 196, 246, 297, equestrian statue, 192, 192–3 Social War, 89, 106, 115, 290, 347
302, 334–5 funerary altar of, 8, 131–2, 133, 166, 168, 193, 193, 252 Stabiae, Villa of Arianna, 65, 66, 115
Palaestra apartment block, 125, 271–85, 272–85, 300, 324, 343, 345 statue, 35, 35, 131, 166, 169, 172–3 Strabo, 18, 89, 93, 94, 99–100, 103, 114, 252, 288, 292, 303
Samnite House, 198, 202–6, 202–3, 210, 242, 298, 302, 338–9 Nonius Dama, Marcus, 215 Suetonius, 271
Suburban Baths, 19, 22, 22–3, 24, 36, 36–7, 67–70, 134, 151, 158, 159, Nonius Fuscus, Marcus, 143, 304 Sulla, 106, 111, 115, 297, 347
162–5, 166, 252, 296, 342 Nonius Hermeros, Marcus, 134, 143
Temple of Herentas Erycina, 166, 170–1 Nonius, Quintus, 304