by Douglas Messerli
Mary Beard The Fires
of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2008)
Early in the
book Beard warns us of easy assumptions, forcing us to question even what
visitors appear to witness on their pilgrimages to the city, reminding us that
although the city was destroyed in 79 CE, there had long been warnings and
smaller eruptions of the impending volcano, most of the citizens consequently
escaping, often with possessions in hand, long before August 25th. To date only
around 1,100 bodies have been unearthed, and speculation is that, at most, 2000
people died in the August eruption. So what we see at Pompeii is not precisely
a city with everything remaining frozen in time and space. In 62 CE, moreover,
the city had been badly damaged in an earthquake, and as late as the Vesuvius
eruption a great deal of repair work was still underway.
Although the
world did not discover the wonders of Pompeii until the late 1700s, locals had
known of the ruins for hundreds of years, over which time numerous digging
looters had raided and destroyed several buildings. The original archeologists,
moreover, were in some cases untrained and careless in their handling of
artifacts. Even since its slow uncovering, the city has crumbled and faded in
the Italian weather and sunlight. Bombings during World War II also damaged the
city extensively. Five larger regions of the city remain unexcavated even
today. In a sense, accordingly, what one witnesses in the vast array of
buildings in Pompeii is a city often very different in appearance and quality
from the Pompeii of 79 CE.
Step by step
Beard takes us through the city through a series of lenses: general living,
street life, house and home, painting and decoration, making a living,
government, pleasure of the body, fun and games, and religion, all in a
brilliant recreation of what it meant to be a Pompeiian citizen. The route,
however, is not a easy one. Hundreds of standard assumptions are questioned,
pet critical theories of scholars are challenged, and conflicting
interpretations vetted. If there is one theme that the reader comes away with
at the end of reading The Fires of
Vesuvius it is that we know less about these subjects than we might
presume.
Fascinating
issues such as the filth of the streets (mixes of urine and dung [human and
animal], garbage, and water)—which help explain several large stepping stones
rising from the pavement— combined with night time dangers of near complete
darkness, make for a clear sense of danger for the average citizen. The small
size of rooms for the average houseowner, combined with cohabitation of slaves
and extended family, further add to a modern reader's sense of discomfort. The
noise, night and day, would seem to have been nearly unbearable, not to mention
the proliferation of smells. Some of the most beautiful houses had to endure
neighbors serving as fulleries (with its smells of hide and urine) or garum
(fish oil) manufacturers. Homes and public buildings, inside and out, were
apparently marked with graffiti.
Further, the
myths we have of Roman dining, three to a couch while consuming a vast quantity
of fish, fruit, and meats seems to have had little reality in Pompeii. While
some houses, such as The House of the Golden Bracelet, show evidence of elegant
dining (in this case, surrounding a small pool within a garden) Beard argues
that most individuals were forced to eat out and even in wealthier homes eating
shared more in common with fast food dining in contemporary American
households, food consumed in various places throughout the house.
It was also a
society very much controlled by a few wealthy men. Women had little power (an
exception may have been the wealthy benefactor and priestess Eumachia) and
wives spent most of their life raising the children and weaving. Men ruled the
city, through aediles and duoviri,
the latter of which were expected to pay for entertainments (public pantomimes
or gladiator bouts) in return for their clout. The wealthy Pompeiian males
found sexual pleasure in the bosom of his slaves (both male and female), while
the poor sought sexual release in bars, some baths, or in the one likely
brothel unearthed. Bathing, Beard explains, was a necessary social activity,
but the pollution of the water was recognized to be a dangerous thing that
could sometimes lead to infection, gangrene, even death.
Besides this more
sordid information, the author also takes the reader on spellbinding trips
through many of the homes, public buildings, and temples, pointing out their
beautiful paintings and tiles, the arrangement of rooms, views, and other
information, much of which is no longer visible. Beard explains to the lay
reader the centrality, yet cultural mix of Roman religion. We begin to
comprehend Pompeii's relationship to Rome itself. In short, by the time Beard
completes these intellectual spins through the bustling, active city, we feel
rather electrified by the exhausting trip. When the author returns us to the
cities of the dead, the cemeteries just outside city gates, we realize that
Pompeii is something we might never before have imagined. Too bad I had not
been able to read Beard's remarkable book before my own stumble through the
ruins of that city in 2007.
Los Angeles,
October 22, 2009
Reprinted from Green
Integer Blog (August 2009).
