On the 24th of August, ad 79, the 17-year-old nephew of the eminent Roman politician Pliny the Elder observed an enormous tree-shaped cloud arising from Mount Vesuvius, which was located across the Bay of Naples from Pliny's villa. Determined to investigate the phenomenon, Pliny ordered a ship to be readied and invited his nephew to accompany him. Astonishingly, the teenager replied that he preferred to continue doing his homework rather than take a closer look at the exploding mountain. This day resulted in both personal tragedy and personal advancement for the young man. His beloved uncle died while observing the eruption; however, Pliny in his will posthumously adopted his nephew, thus ensuring his heir's fortune and career. In broader historical terms, the eruption of Vesuvius resulted in similarly mixed consequences. On the one hand, a number of Roman cities were completely destroyed, buried beneath volcanic ash and lava flow, and thousands of their inhabitants were killed. On the other hand, these buried cities, in particular Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, became in essence time capsules that, when finally opened over 1,500 years later, would prove to be one of the most significant and unique sources of information about Roman culture and urban daily life.
The city of Pompeii is located just southeast of the base of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples. The city straddles a key intersection of roads where a main branch splits off heading inland from the coastal road; this
Figure 14.1 Map of Pompeii. (Reprinted from Frank Sear: Roman Architecture. Copyright 1982 by Frank Sear. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.)
1. Triangular Forum; 2. Flouse of the Surgeon; 3. House of the Faun; 4. Villa of the Mysteries; 5. Temple of Apollo; 6. Temple of Jupiter; 7. Meat and Fish Market; 8. Basilica; 9. Theater; 10. Quadriporticus; 11. Stabian Baths; 12. Forum Baths; 13. Small Theater; 14. Amphitheater; 15. Castellum Aquae; 16. Civic Offices; 17. Building of Eumachia; 18. Temple of Fortuna Augusta; 19. Temple of Vespasian; 20. House of the Vettii; 21. House of Loreius Tiburtinus; 22. Central Baths.
Was certainly a factor in its growth and affluence. Archaeological evidence suggests that the city was founded in the sixth century bc and that it exhibited early Etruscan and Greek influences, but Pompeii probably only began to assume its final form when it became a settlement of the Sam-nites, an Oscan-speaking people.
By the third century bc, many of the main public spaces in Pompeii, such as the forum and street grid, had taken shape. The Samnites fell under Roman domination in 290 bc, but the city continued to evolve and prosper while retaining its distinctive Samnite identity. Thus, when the Social War broke out between Rome and its Italian allies in the early first century bc, Pompeii joined with the allies. Rome emerged victorious, and as part of his actions after the war, the Roman general Sulla settled several thousands of his veterans in Pompeii and refounded the city as a colony. The new Roman settlers spurred another wave of building activity in Pompeii, including the construction of an amphitheater and updated bath facilities. Within a generation or two, the old Samnite families began to show up again in urban administrative posts, and the blended populace advanced together in affluence, as revealed by the many fine private houses that dotted the city. This era of economic prosperity continued smoothly into the period of the Roman Empire.
A new phase in the city's life began in ad 62, when the volcanically active region produced a powerful earthquake that struck the city, causing widespread destruction. In general, the Pompeians quickly and energetically began to rebuild, but some wealthy families seem to have fled the unstable region, as evidenced by the conversion of some former elite homes to serve more industrial uses. Many of the wealthy inhabitants of this era seem to have been freedmen, a number of whom commemorated their rise in status and wealth through the construction of sumptuous homes and monuments. The city at this time probably had a population of 15,000-20,000 inhabitants and was one of the wealthy cities of the region of Campania. The Bay of Naples area in general was a favorite vacation spot for wealthy Romans, and many of the elites from Rome owned summer villas along the scenic landscape of the bay. The repairs from the earthquake of ad 62 were still incomplete, however, when an even more catastrophic event overtook the city and the region. In ad 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted with such fury that the entire city was engulfed and buried beneath a layer of pumice and volcanic ash more than four meters deep. Other cities, including the nearby seaside town of Herculaneum, were similarly destroyed and buried. This time there was nothing to rebuild; Pompeii was simply covered over by the eruption, and the entombed city would lie beneath its blanket of volcanic ash for the next 15 centuries.
The first trenches to the buried city were dug in the 1700s. Scholars of that time had a reasonable understanding of Roman history, but their conception of the Romans was heavily influenced by the existing evidence, which consisted primarily of literary texts and works of art. Such sources presented a view of Roman civilization that was skewed toward the experiences of the wealthy and powerful. These early excavators were also mainly interested in finding artworks to adorn the private collections of rich contemporaries. For the next hundred years, Pompeii and Herculaneum were plundered in a haphazard fashion. In this hunt for fine statuary, the unique evidence preserved at these cities remained largely underappreciated.
Eventually, however, the digging became more systematic and careful, and the excavators began to realize the unprecedented nature of the evidence that had been preserved by the eruption. Today, approximately two-thirds of Pompeii has been excavated in an archaeological park of over 60 hectares. Because of the damage that exposure to air and tourism traffic is causing to the unearthed sections, there is reluctance to uncover more of the city until means can be provided to properly preserve the finds. Much of our current understanding of Roman culture and civilization, and in particular our knowledge about the lives of ordinary citizens and nonelites, stems from these special types of data recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum. The volcanic flows that destroyed the two cities paradoxically also preserved otherwise ephemeral objects, some of which have survived nowhere else in the Roman world: wooden furniture, wall paintings, graffiti, household tools, papyri, and even the bodies of the ancient inhabitants. Collectively, this highly perishable evidence of everyday life has done much to help us understand Roman civilization as a real, living culture.
World History
