22.1.20 Everyday Life

A street in Pompeii, with Vesuvius in the background

The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, and since their rediscovery they’ve become perhaps the most famous Roman archaeological sites in the world, a time-capsule record of life on the Bay of Naples towards the end of the first century CE. Part cemetery, part theme park, they’ve been the subject of many books, films, and series.

What is less well known is that on the walls and streets, and in the homes, of these towns, a huge amount of Latin has been preserved, important for being what J. N. Adams calls ‘the earliest substantial body of genuinely popular Latin’ to survive intact. For me what’s important about Pompeii and Herculaneum is this record left to us by a particular group of humans – a record of their lives, thoughts, and struggles – as they vied for business, went up for election, paid for sex, bought and sold slaves, declared their love, or simply etched their thoughts on a nearby wall. It’s a relatively democratic body of evidence, one which, owing to the terrible nature of its creation, did not discriminate as to whose Latin, or which events, it preserved in ash. And so it’s a reminder that Latin was once a language of the most everyday life, humane in the sense that it recorded all kinds of human experience and behaviour. Here are some snapshots from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A faint picture still visible beneath layers of Roman plaster. It’s in Oscan, not Latin, and dates from the 70s BCE, long before the eruption. It shows four fighters, two on horseback, two on foot.  All four were labelled, through only one label can still be read. It says, in Oscan, ‘Spartacus’.

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Someone has written on a wall: ‘Lovers, like bees, lead a honeyed life.’ But then someone else has come along and added, in a different hand, ‘I wish’.

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Of the many things scrawled and painted in the brothels of Pompeii, someone has quoted Virgil. They’ve put the first word of Aeneid 2 on the wall, as Aeneas begins the story of Troy for Dido: ‘All fell silent …’.

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A woman commissions a tomb for her husband, in which they both will lie. They are ex-slaves, now free, and the words she chose have survived on a limestone plaque outside Pompeii: ‘Caecilia Agathia, freedwoman of Lucius, in her lifetime constructed this for herself and for Lucius Caecilius Dioscurides, freedman of Lucius, her husband.’

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Where to buy food? You need to know which towns will have markets, and on which days. Someone has done up a calendar on the wall of shop. Sun’s day: Cumae – no (Cumae is crossed out), it’s at Nola; Moon’s day: Cumae; on Mars’ day, Puteoli, and on Jove’s day, Capua. We share our days of the week with the people of Pompeii.

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What is Pompeii famous for? Its fish sauce, of course. Painted on a storage jug, or amphora: ‘First-rate mackerel sauce of Marcus Acceius Telemachus’. Business is good, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. On a paving stone in front of a house, the words: ‘Hail, Profit’. In another house: ‘Profit, joy’.

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A transaction recorded on a wax tablet in Herculaneum, rediscovered in February 1931. A slave girl is being bought. Her name was Calatoria. ‘… that [this] girl, who is mentioned above, is healthy, not charged with any theft or injurious conduct, and is not a runaway truant, is being handed over, and twice the price is being given, in accordance with the terms of the edict of the curule aediles … Gaius Iulius Phoebus has pledged …’.

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A black-and-white mosaic in front of the entrance to a house. A big dog to keep it safe, or to keep you out, with the words cave canem. Beware of the dog!

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Tourists in from the countryside, spooked by the rough-and-tumble of big-town life. ‘We came here eagerly; much more eager are we to go away.’

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A Bulgarian gladiator. Athlete, slave, celebrity. ‘Celadus the Thracian, the girls’ idol’.

Note: All the of pieces mentioned here can be found, translated as above and with lots of useful information besides, in A. E. Cooley and M. G. L. Cooley (eds), Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook, 2nd edition, 2014, (Abingdon: Routledge). The J. N. Adams quote is from his An Anthology of Informal Latin, 200BC – AD900: Fifty Texts with Translations and Linguistic Commentary (Cambridge), p. 226.