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Pompeii. Sources: The Destruction of Pompeii & Herculaneum by C.A.R Hills Antiquity 1 by Unlocking the Past by. What has the discovery of Pompeii & Herculaneum told us about ancient life ?. Historical evidence. They bare whole towns with 2 storeyed buildings in tact.
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Pompeii Sources: The Destruction of Pompeii & Herculaneum by C.A.R Hills Antiquity 1 by Unlocking the Past by
What has the discovery of Pompeii & Herculaneum told us about ancient life?
Historical evidence • They bare whole towns with 2 storeyed buildings in tact. • Pots and jugs still in the kitchen • Meals still waiting on tables. • Historical records tend to only recount the activities of the rich BUT Pompeii gives us evidence of how the ‘ordinary’ people lived. • Very little of private houses left in Rome but here in P and H many private houses and streets remain.
The city • The following buildings/amenities have been excavatedforumtemplestheatresamphitheatrespublic bathspalaestrashopsprivate dwellings • Walled city with 8 gates • Streets paved and guttered with a good water supply
Homes [domus] • Usually the wealthy • Ornately decorated usually • Might stay in the one family for generations • Typically faced inwards • Very plain looking from the outside • Designed for security, privacy and peace & quiet • Few windows to the streets • Main hall [atrium] was fed light by opening in roof • Often 2 storeys • Greek influence shown by peristyles, large open colonnaded courtyards at the back of the house • These were often embellished with statues, fountains & gardens
Homes [cont…..] • Homes for the poor might have been over a shop. Ostia has good examples of this type of housing At the time of the eruption many larger houses had been divided into a number of smaller flats • People tended to live in insulae [large blocks] • Some houses split into flats for several families especially during the last ears before 79AD • No residential area • 800 house have been excavated at Pompeii • The ‘best’ 50-room mansions of 2000 square metres down to homes of only a few rooms
Homes – features of a wealthy home • The houses of Pompeii were exquisitely designed. The size and décor of your house usually depended on how rich you were. • The houses in Pompeii never had doorsteps but they always had gardens. The gardens were usually full of brightly coloured flowers and beautiful green trees. • As soon as you walk in the door of a Pompeian house you are standing in the fauces. This is also known as the entrance hall. In older houses the fauces was usually divided into two. It was also sometimes used as a cloakroom the door posts in the fauces was beautifully decorated and the floor in a wealthy house would be covered with a mosaic
Homes [cont…..] –features of a wealthy home • If you walk through the fauces you arrive at the main room [atrium], this was where guests were received. The atrium was covered by a roof which sloped downwards to allow rainwater to enter the impluvium. Every house had an impluvium; this was a pool for rainwater that then carried the water down into a system for general use. In the corner of the atrium there was a lararium [shrine for the household gods]. The families would worship their household gods every morning and every evening. • After the atrium, there was the tablinum. This was a room were all the business between the master of the house and his clients took place. The tablinum was divided from the atrium by curtains or a wooden screen. It opened out into the garden
Homes [cont…..] –features of a wealthy home • Next to the tablinum was the triclinum, which was also known as the winter dining room. This room had three large couches with cushions and also with niches in the walls for supporting extra wooden couches. Each couch was allocated to certain people e.g. The first couch was occupied by the master of the house and the chief guest was seated on the middle couch. • At the back of the house was the summer dining room also known as the triclinium this room opened out into the garden. The couches in this room were in the shape of a three-sided square. Opening out into the garden was broad windows, and in the garden there were stone couches that would not rot in the rain.
Homes [cont…..] –features of a wealthy home • In a Pompeian house there was no set place for a kitchen but it was usually behind the atrium, the toilet was often next door or even inside the kitchen. The contents of the toilet drained off into a pit. Only public toilets had a sewage system. • Then there was the peristylium, which was the garden. The surrounding walls of a Pompeian garden were painted with outdoor scenes. The most popular style garden was with a colonnade, which offered the people of the house some shade during summer. • Pompeian houses were always painted white to keep them cool. Around a Pompeian there was always beautiful painting representing things like gods or there were usually a lot of paintings showing sexual scenes. • Pompeian houses were beautifully built and decorated. The richer you were the more mosaics and paintings you had in your house.
Religion- temples • 10 excavated in Pompeii • Two functions – to house the gods and be a place for rituals to be carried out by the priests • Not places of regular worship by the public [except temple of Isis] • Temple of Apollo rebuilt and remodelled several times, and enlarged after 62AD • Temple of Venus which had been destroyed in 62 had only just begun to be rebuilt in 79 • When Pompeii became a Roman colony in 80BC the temple of Jupiter was converted to the temple of the Jupiter, Juno and Minerva – it had not been repaired after 62 • 2 temples associated with imperial [Roman] rule were temples of Vespasian, and Fortuna Augusta
Religion • At least 2 eastern religions practiced in Pompeii – an ivory figurine of a Hindu fertility goddess, Lakshmi and a bronze bust of the near Eastern fertility goddess, Sabzias found • Shrines & altars also found on the streets, many at crossroads • 1 shrine near a fountain on the Via dell’Abondanza had the charred remains of a sacrifice made at the time of the eruption • Images of gods were painted on the alls of shops • In the temples rituals etc were carried by priests and priestesses • Images of Venus found throughout Pompeii – the goddess of love and success • One aspiring politician wrote in graffiti, “Vote for me and the Venus of Pompeii will bring success to everything you undertake”
Religion- Temple of Isis • Dedicated to the Egyptian god, Isis • Worshippers of Isis met in then temple twice a day • 1st in the morning celebrating the rising of the sun, the rebirth of Osiris • 2nd in the early afternoon ceremony of water, where Nile water was blessed • Badly damaged in 62 but fully rebuilt by freedman in the name of his son, N Popidius Celsinus • Ceremonial objects found with skeletons suggesting the priests had fled Vesuvius with statues, a silver urn and other vessels
Religion- household • Household religion was central to roman citizens at the time. • Houses in Pompeii had small shrines [lararium] • Each day offerings were made to the household gods • After the earthquake of 62 most lararia were quickly restored • In 79AD people fled with their lares as many lararia found without their lares as well as many being found in the streets near skeletons • Vesta the goddess of the hearth [fireplace] • Panates, guardian spirits of the pantry!!
Paintings • Despite kitchens and bedrooms often being small even in the better houses, generally they were much more beautiful than modern houses. • Floor mosaics, wall paintings & decoration exist in abundance in Pompeii & Herculaneum. • Art historians are able to identify 4 styles of painting • Most famous paintings at Pompeii are those of the Villa of Mysteries showing initiation ceremonies into the worship of the Greek god, Dionysius. • These are great works of art BUT also very important historical documents.
Paintings cont…. • 4 main points about Roman wall painting • Ancient houses were painted much more than today. Today we tend to think of individually commissioned murals as reserved for only the very rich yet in Pompeii and Herculaneum it was a daily occurrence. • Quality varies from room to room. The more important, and therefore more highly visible and visited rooms, received better paintings. • Paintings must be considered in the context of the architecture settings in which they occur. What was the function of the room? Was it well lit? How does it work with pavements? With furniture? • Wall paintings are a measure of the artistic taste and social aspirations of the owner of the house.
Painting to right of fountain in the House of Fontana Piccola
Streets • Had raised pavements on either side • Stepping stones placed at intervals so people could sidestep water and rubbish • Streets were cobbled • Evidence of many ruts in the streets from traffic • Streets very narrow by modern standards • Rarely more than 4 metres wide in Pompeii while those of Herculaneum were even narrow hardly wide enough for a chariot • Most intersections had a public fountain with sculptured headstones
