John Clarke - Art in the Lives of Ordinary Roman

ART IN THE LIVES OF ORDINARY ROMANS

VISUAL REPRESENTATION AND

NON-ELITE VIEWERS IN ITALY, 100 B.C.––A.D. 315

JOHN R. CLARKE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES • LONDON

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2003 by the Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clarke, John R., 1945–

Art in the lives of ordinary Romans : visual representation and non-elite

viewers in Italy, 100 b.c.–a.d. 315 / John R. Clarke.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-520-21976-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Art, Roman—Themes, motives. 2. Art, Roman—Social aspects.

3. Social classes in art. 4. Social status—Rome. I. Title.

N72.S6 C58 2003

709'.37—dc21 2002154934

Manufactured in Canada

13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).8

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • ix

INTRODUCTION • 1

PART 1: IMPERIAL REPRESENTATION OF NON-ELITES • 15

1. AUGUSTUS’S AND TRAJAN’S MESSAGES

TO COMMONERS • 19

2. THE ALL-SEEING EMPEROR AND ORDINARY VIEWERS:

MARCUS AURELIUS AND CONSTANTINE • 42

PART 2: NON-ELITES IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE • 69

3. EVERYMAN, EVERYWOMAN, AND THE GODS • 73

4. EVERYMAN AND EVERYWOMAN AT WORK • 95

5. SPECTACLE: ENTERTAINMENT, SOCIAL CONTROL,

SELF-ADVERTISING, AND TRANSGRESSION • 130

6. LAUGHTER AND SUBVERSION IN THE TAVERN:

IMAGE, TEXT, AND CONTEXT • 160

7. COMMEMORATION OF LIFE IN THE DOMAIN OF THE DEAD:

NON-ELITE TOMBS AND SARCOPHAGI • 181

PART 3: NON-ELITES IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE • 221

8. MINDING YOUR MANNERS:

BANQUETS, BEHAVIOR, AND CLASS • 223

9. PUTTING YOUR BEST FACE FORWARD:

SELF-REPRESENTATION AT HOME • 246

CONCLUSIONS • 269

NOTES • 277

BIBLIOGRAPHY • 331

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS • 353

INDEX • 363

v i i i • CON T EN T S

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Researching and writing this book has been an exciting and rewarding experience—a

very special part of my life for the past six years. I am most grateful for the generous grants

that supported the travel and uninterrupted research and writing time that this project

demanded. A Fellowship for College Teachers from the National Endowment for the Hu-

manities, coupled with a Research Grant from the University of Texas, permitted me to

live and work in Rome in the spring of 1999. To allow me to keep up the momentum of

my spring-term leave, Sherry and Tommy Jacks provided funds to allow me to work

throughout the summer without having to teach summer school. Dicky and Mary Gay

Grigg followed suit with generous grants that allowed me to work full-time on the book

during the summers of 2000 and 2001.

In the course of my researching and writing this book, many scholars generously

oªered their advice and criticism. I know from my own experience what a sacrifice it is

to put aside one’s own work and take the time to read and critique a colleague’s work.

Many individuals made that sacrifice, some returning to my manuscript and the ques-

tions it raised more than once. I wish to thank those who read the full manuscript: An-

thony Corbeill, Penelope Davies, Frank Fisher, Sandra Joshel, Natalie Kampen, Eric Moor-

mann, and Andrew Riggsby; and those who read individual chapters: James Packer,

Richard Shiª, and Michael Thomas. Their corrections, criticisms, questions, and answers

i x

were invaluable; I hope they realize how much their contributions mean to me and how

heartfelt my thanks are.

The same thanks go out to colleagues who advised me on specific questions: Richard

Beacham, Malcolm Bell, Jonathan Bober, John Bodel, Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Luciana

Jacobelli, Gabriele Iaculli, Archer Martin, Matthew Roller, John Tamm, Carolyn Valone,

Eric Varner, Roy Bowen Ward, and Jane Whitehead.

I am also delighted to thank a younger group of colleagues. In a great Art History grad-

uate program like that of the University of Texas at Austin, one’s graduate students be-

come colleagues as they progress through their studies, from seminars to dissertations

to teaching at their own universities. In my spring 2000 seminar, “Pompeii and Ostia:

Visual Representation and Non-elite Romans,” the students read the manuscript of this

book and tested out many of its ideas, and I thank them: Mark Caªey, Charlotte Cousins,

Susan Gelb, Rowena Houghton, Alvaro Ibarra, Kris Muñoz-Vetter, Nathalie Ryan, Jen-

nifer Sherlock, and Carlie Wilmans. My graduate research assistants, Nayla Muntasser

(1999) and Lisa Kirch (2000–2001) provided invaluable help on a variety of tasks rang-

ing from bibliographic searches to photo permissions. Michael Thomas joined Michael

Larvey and me in Italy on several occasions, engaging me through astute questions and

helping with di‹cult photo shoots. I codirected two fine dissertations, both completed

in 2000, that helped shape the questions I ask in this book: Lauren Hackworth Petersen’s

dissertation on the art of the Roman freedman substantially changed my views about so-

called freedman art, and Margaret Woodhull’s dissertation on women’s patronage during

the early imperial period helped focus my inquiries into the links between gender and

patronage.

The American Academy in Rome, as always, provided both a sense of continuity and

opportunities to meet new scholars and artists. Lester Little, the director, and Adele

Chatfield-Taylor, president, helped make the Academy community a vibrant and pleas-

ant one. Pina Pasquantonio, associate director, deserves special thanks, as do Anne Coul-

son, who helped with several permissions. The Academy’s Library, where I have now

worked for thirty years, is better than ever, thanks to Christina Huemer, its director, and

the able staª: Antonella Bucci (now retired), Tina Mirri, Antonio Palladino, Paolo Im-

peratori, and Paolo Brozzi. Alessandra Capodiferro, Lavinia Ciuªa, and Francesca Romolo

in the Academy’s Fototeca helped with photographic research. Thanks also to Renzo Caris-

simi, Luca Zamponi, Norman Roberson, and Enrico Dressler.

In order to study at first hand all of the works of art and architecture in this book, I

sought the help of many individuals. Pompeii’s superintendent, Pier Giovanni Guzzo,

granted permission for extensive on-site study and photography. Antonio D’Ambrosio and

Antonio Varone were wonderfully helpful in facilitating our work, and Lina Ferrante was

especially adroit in expediting the complex paperwork. Grete Stefani graciously guided

me through the photo archive, as did Antonio Parlato and Rosa Verde. At the Museum

of the Civitella in Chieti I enjoyed the support of Adele Campanelli and her staª; at the

Vatican Museum, Francesco Buranelli. Anna Gallina Zevi, superintendent of Ostia, gra-

x • ACKNOWL EDGMEN T S

ciously granted me access to the monuments, and Jane Shepherd was especially helpful

in resurrecting historic photographs from the Ostia Photo Archive and in arranging the

new color photography of the painting from tomb 22 of the Necropolis of the Laurentine

Road. At the Naples Museum, Stefano De Caro generously granted us extensive permis-

sions to study and photograph, and Maria Rosaria Boriello, director of the museum, fa-

cilitated our work. I am most appreciative that the Central Institute for Restoration in

Rome undertook the daunting task of cleaning and restoring the fresco from the Caupona

of Salvius, seen for the first time in this book without its layers of calcified grime. Anna

Mura Somella, director of the Museums of Ancient Art of the City of Rome, gave per-

mission to take new photographs of the Altar of the Vicus Aesculetus, and Emilia Ta-

lamo, director of the Museum of Montemartini, kindly expedited our photographic work.

Antonio Ortolan—as he has for so many of our projects through the years—produced

beautiful prints from the photographs that Michael Larvey took for this book. Kirby Conn

did an excellent job digitizing and refining the linework.

In my trajectories, usually taking me from archaeological sites, to museums, and back

to the library, I lived mostly in the first century. My friends in Rome and Naples encour-

aged my time-travel even while helping me keep abreast of the curious cultural currents

of the fin-de-siècle: Carolyn Valone, Brenda Preyer, Pamela and Larry Christy, José Luis

Colomer, Gerald and Minu Moore, Jeªrey Blanchard, Estelle Reddeck, Luciano Santarelli,

Alessandro Cascone, Sasà Esposito, François Uginet, and Fabio Pignatelli. Long stays at

Pompeii found me always at the Sabatino family’s hotel; they were gracious hosts, and

they and their staª, especially Crescenzo Cirillo, deserve thanks. In Austin, wonderful

friends and neighbors looked after house and garden: Frank Fisher, Ben Welmaker, and

the Rankins: Susan, Jim, Jonah, and especially Zane. Kirk Tuck, Belinda Yarritu, and their

son Benjamin often indulged and encouraged my work on this project, and Alene De

Leon, administrative assistant in the Art History o‹ce, generously gave of her time to

help the book along.

Last—and certainly not least—I am grateful to Michael Larvey, my partner in life and

in work for twenty-five years. He encouraged this project at every step, from shooting the

videos that sketched out the research early on, through the actual research, and on to tak-

ing the beautiful photographs that illustrate this book. Michael kept me asking questions

because he asked so many himself; he made this project both more di‹cult because of

all those questions and more rewarding because we could share the answers (when I found

them). It is to him I dedicate this book: comiti comilitoniqve vagvlo blandvlo. . . .

ACKNOWL EDGMEN T S • x i

INTRODUCTION

In the late sixties, when I first began to study Roman art, no one took the art of ordinary

Romans seriously. The privileged monuments—the ones worthy of serious art-historical

investigation—were great architectural ensembles like the Forum of Trajan; historical re-

liefs like those on the Ara Pacis or the Arch of Constantine; the portraits of emperors and

empresses. All of them, whether commissioned by the emperor, the Roman senate, or

private individuals, exalted imperial ideals. Wall paintings and mosaics were minor arts—

especially when they decorated houses at Pompeii—and belonged in books on everyday

life, not in proper art history. Real Roman art was the art of the elite.

All this has changed now, and we have many diªerent methodologies and disciplines

to thank. Social art history—the study of the conditions surrounding the making and con-

suming of art—broke the ice and got scholars to ask about the other 98 percent of Ro-

man society: the freeborn working poor, slaves, former slaves, and foreigners. Whether

with a Marxist, feminist, or anthropological bent, social art history broadened our knowl-

edge of the use and reception of visual representation in ancient Roman society. Parallel

to these art-historical approaches was groundbreaking work on ancient literature. Clas-

sical texts, of course, reflect elite attitudes toward the non-elite. This is not surprising,

considering that elite males wrote these texts or commissioned them. You will find no

woman, freedman, slave, or foreigner speaking for her- or himself.1Elite authors put words

in their mouths.

1

What is surprising is how much information lies just beyond Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and

Tacitus—in anonymous poetry, legal texts, tomb inscriptions, captions on wall paint-

ings, soldiers’ diplomas, papyri, and gra‹ti. Thanks to new study of nonliterary texts,

we know more about the questions that the literature passes over: the condition of women

of diªerent classes, relations between masters and slaves or former slaves, and Roman

attitudes toward everything from commerce to same-sex relationships. Still, rarely does

a textual scholar venture to interpret the much more ample evidence of Roman visual

representation.

This book is about how ordinary people living in Roman Italy understood and used

visual art. What part did art play in their lives? To answer this question, we have to con-

sider both who paid for the art (the patron) and just who the potential viewers were. We

must also ask how a specific visual representation communicated its message to those

viewers. Analysis of the process of viewing art in its original context can reveal much about

the patron and the people who looked at it. Although these points seem obvious, only re-

cently have scholars begun to study Roman non-elite visual representation to explore ques-

tions of identity, communication, and cultural practice.

NON-ELITE ART AND THE STILWANDEL

When scholars started to explore the art of the non-elite, their focus was not its content

but rather its unusual formal characteristics.2 They focused on its style. They wanted to

use formal analysis of non-elite art to explain an anomaly in Roman art: the change, around

the year 150, from Hellenistic forms of representation to ones they called Late Antique.

How to explain the antinaturalistic traits of Late Antique art? Its preference for frontal

presentation of the human figure, hierarchical proportions (the most important figure

the largest), axially symmetrical compositions, and the rendering of surface in harsh black-

and-white modeling (“optical” chiaroscuro)?

Alois Riegl, in his 1901 study of Late Antique art, was the first to defend this art—until

then considered decadent and unworthy of serious study.3 Although a succession of schol-

ars followed him in their attempts to explain, through careful formal analysis, this mo-

mentous shift in modes of visual representation, they favored imperial monuments—

rather than non-elite ones—in their eªorts to pinpoint the moment when the Stilwandel,

or Change in Style, began.4

In a series of works through 1940, Gerhart Rodenwaldt tried another approach, based

on visual analysis—but with a diªerence. He proposed that Roman art stood between

two poles: state art (or “great” art) being one pole and “popular” art the other.5 His model

was, in a sense, the opposite of the traditional “trickle-down” hypothesis. He proposed

that all of the formal traits that seemed to be such strange invasions into the Hellenisti-

cally based realism of imperial Roman art were, in fact, already present in the art of the

non-elite.

In the postwar period Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli developed Rodenwaldt’s thesis in

2 • I N T RODUC T I O N

a series of works that culminated in his two-volume history of Roman art published in

1969.6What Bianchi Bandinelli added to Rodenwaldt’s scheme was a theory of class strug-

gle loosely based on Marx. He, too, wished to explain the Change in Style, and, like Ro-

denwaldt, he noticed the existence, well before the year 150, of art that looked like Late

Antique imperial art. Bianchi Bandinelli added an ethnic and political element by divid-

ing artistic expression into the elite or “patrician” and the non-elite or “plebeian.” He ex-

plained that the reception of Greek and Hellenistic art in central Italy, beginning in the

third century b.c., was uneven. Whereas the patricians embraced Greek forms to legit-

imize their power, the ordinary Romans, the plebs, viewed Greek art with suspicion, bas-

ing their own art on native “Italic” models. Bianchi Bandinelli analyzed portraits and grave

reliefs from central Italy that ignored the careful modeling, naturalism of proportion, and

perspective systems of Hellenistic art. These were works that seemed to anticipate Late

Antique art by as much as three centuries. According to Bianchi Bandinelli, when the

plebs took political power around a.d. 200, they brought their art forms with them, thus

explaining the formal shifts in imperial monuments like the Arch of Septimius Severus

in the Roman Forum.7

Although there were many problems with Bianchi Bandinelli’s hypothesis, it had the

virtue of framing the paradox of formal change (the Stilwandel) in terms of class and ac-

culturation.8 And by calling attention to works of art that did not conform to the style of

o‹cial monuments of state art, he was suggesting that Roman patrons and viewers de-

manded and consumed a great variety of styles and forms in their art. Bianchi Bandinelli

paved the way for scholars seeking to articulate the social and cultural history of Roman

art. Most germane to the questions I pose here and in the following chapters are the con-

tributions of Paul Zanker, whose work stresses how the elites and the emperor built power

through cultural programs with strong visual components. Always attuned to questions

of audience and reception, Zanker also articulates the ways that specific groups used elite

visual forms in their own, often idiosyncratic ways.9 Zanker represents but one of a new

generation of scholars who shy away from the all-encompassing theories of stylistic change

that so beguiled the founders of Roman art history.10

The new Roman art history seeks to understand how, in specific circumstances, vi-

sual representation functioned within a multilayered system of communication. Style and

form—the focus of most scholarship on Roman art through 1970—are only parts of that

system. There are many other questions that need to be asked. By asking “Who paid for

it?” we can find out about the patron. By asking “Who made it?” we get information about

the artist. The question, “Who looked at it?” seeks to establish the identity of the intended

viewers or consumers. Questioning the circumstances under which people looked at a

work of art leads us into the realms of ritual—from legally prescribed religious practice

to habitual behaviors, including mundane, everyday activities like visiting people, mar-

keting, promenading, bathing, and dining. The question, “What else does it look like?”

takes us back to iconographical models for the work of art and shows how the meanings

of such models can change in each new application. Only by asking these and related

I N T R O D U C T I O N • 3

questions can I accomplish the aim of this book: to analyze artworks in their original con-

texts, and thereby to gain a better understanding of the attitudes, belief systems, and cul-

tural practices of ordinary Romans.

“ELITE,” “NON-ELITE,” AND “ORDINARY”:

TESTING DEFINITIONS OF STATUS THROUGH VISUAL REPRESENTATION

Rather than trying to define an ancient Roman’s status first, and then deciding whether

his or her visual art expresses that status, this book begins with analysis of the art. I use

art to question the patron’s notion of his or her social status or position. Why?

For one thing, no one noun or adjective adequately describes a Roman person’s social

status. There is considerable literary evidence, mostly from Cicero, for the political sys-

tem of the late Republic, the earliest period considered in this book (100 b.c.–27 b.c.).

Yet even for this period, scholars have contested the terminology to describe men who

held o‹ce in Rome. Were they the “governing class,” the “aristocracy,” or the “elite”?11

For another thing, who was elite or non-elite—and how art might express that

diªerence—changed over time. In the reign of Augustus (27 b.c.–a.d. 14), the emperor,

faced with dramatically diminished elite ranks and the funds that came from them, in-

stituted an exclusive freedman order; wealthy former slaves could become seviri augustales,

thereby paving the way for the social advancement of their freeborn sons. A century later,

the terms honestiores and humiliores appear in the legal literature to denote two social groups

who received diªerent legal treatment. The honestiores included senators, equestrians, mu-

nicipal and provincial decurions, soldiers and veterans, judges, and magistrates; they ex-

pected and got privileges, such as exemption from capital punishment and lenient treat-

ment before the courts.12 Slaves, former slaves (freedmen), and men who, although born

free, had neither wealth nor a record of holding prestigious o‹ces, made up the humi-

liores. The situation changed yet again by the late third century, when Diocletian set up a

kind of feudal system that tied people to their land and their trades, making social mo-

bility quite di‹cult.13

Most scholars agree on how ancient Romans defined a person who was “elite.” Ro-

mans had a diªerent conception of human worth from ours. They especially valued

men born of free citizen families that had a record of serving the state and the military

and that possessed wealth—especially in land holdings.14 An elite Roman possessed

the four prerequisites necessary to belong to the upper strata of society: money, im-

portant public appointments, social prestige, and a membership in an ordo. (The ordines

are those of senator, decurion, and equestrian.)15The non-elite person lacked one or more

of the four prerequisites. Slaves occupied the lowest stratum of the non-elites, followed

by the former slaves (freedmen or libertini), who although technically free could not hold

important public o‹ces. Freedpersons—especially those who worked in the imperial

bureaucracy—could gain impressive political power, but the stain of their slave birth sep-

arated them from the upper strata. But free birth was only one of the prerequisites for

4 • I N T R O D U C T I O N

membership in the upper strata, and we find many freeborn Romans (ingenui) in the

lower strata.

Even among slaves there was a clear hierarchy of social value. Imperial slaves in close

contact with the emperor and his family occupied the most privileged position, followed

by well-educated and skilled slaves. Owners of such slaves entrusted them with impor-

tant work, ranging from educating the owners’ children to running their business en-

terprises. These high-level slaves had a good chance of earning their freedom, unlike the

slaves who worked in the fields. Slaves received a regular allowance (peculium), and often

they were permitted to keep a percentage of the income they brought in for their masters

or mistresses. With these earnings a slave might buy his or her freedom. Sometimes a

slave received freedom at the death of his owner, through a provision of the owner’s will;

in other cases a master who was still living might free a slave as a reward for meritorious

service.16

Once freed, the former slave became a client of his or her former master or mistress.

The freedperson—whether born into slavery, abandoned as a baby and brought up as a

slave, or enslaved in war—acquired the legal status of a Roman citizen through the process

of manumission. Nevertheless, freedpersons occupied a social and legal space fraught

with contradictions. Although a former slave had the status of citizen, Roman society des-

ignated him or her as a libertinus or libertina. The former slave carried the stain of hav-

ing been someone’s property, and even though freed, he could not hold prestigious po-

litical and religious o‹ces. Wealthy freedpersons tended to spend their resources in paving

the way for their children’s political careers, since their children were born free and the-

oretically stainless.

The terms elite and non-elite diªerentiate those who were esteemed in Roman society

from the people who for various reasons could not win such esteem. There are many ways

to conceptualize the relations among elite and non-elite Romans. Géza Alföldy’s diagram

demonstrates the stratifying eªects of Roman social organization by focusing on the strict

definitions of the orders (fig. 1). But these social strata were neither static nor rigidly cir-

cumscribed. Brent Shaw’s diagram elaborates Alföldy’s overly neat scheme. In it Shaw

attempts to locate definitions of status (“ruling classes,” “free classes,” and “dependent

classes”) in a dynamic system where relationships among classes depend on mutual needs

(fig. 2).17

Given the di‹culties of defining status in ancient Roman society through study of the

written record, the study of visual representation can at best help to articulate, by means

of concrete examples, the dynamic and shifting relationships among the strata. It cannot

define status and class once and for all. I make no claim to precision in my use of the

terms elite and non-elite. I only claim to test these terms through analysis of visual rep-

resentation. When I use the term non-elite, I want to emphasize that a person either pay-

ing for or looking at a work of art had no access to the upper strata of society. I use the

adjective ordinary as a synonym for non-elite because (in the English language) it em-

phasizes a person’s identification with the cultural values of the lower strata. We will see


Imperial slaves and freedmen (familia Caesaris), wealthy freedmen

The emperor, the imperial household

Ordo senatorius (consulares, “ordinary” senators)

Ordines decurionum (local aristocracy)

Ordo equester (high prefects and procurators, those who possessed the militia equestris, other equestrians both within and above the ordines decurionum)

UPPERCLASSES

LOWERCLASSES

Freeborn FreebornFreedmen FreedmenSlaves Slaves

CITY POPULACE COUNTRY POPULACE

Rulingclasses andinstitutions;emperor,

senate, army

SENATORS

FREEDMEN SLAVES PEASANTRY URBAN POPULACE

EQUITES DECURIONS

“Free”politicalclasses

“Dependent”classes

Political relations

Dependency relations

Status definitions

FIGURE 1

The orders-strata structure and its eªects.

FIGURE 2

Proposed schema of the relationship of social groups to a class model.

that ordinary, or non-elite, Romans tend to esteem activities that the elites of the upper

strata do not, and that they express this diªerence in their art.

Non-elite Romans often choose to represent themselves or others carrying out com-

monplace activities. When elites represent themselves, they favor images that show them

carrying out o‹cial, prestigious practices using the visual language of the imperial house.

Although non-elites will sometimes do the same, more often they tend to commission

art that portrays them in a great variety of ordinary—or at least uno‹cial—acts: sacrificing

to household gods, processing cloth, hauling grain, brawling in the amphitheater, drink-

ing in taverns, defecating, and mourning.

PROBLEMS OF CLASSIFICATION AND THEORIZATION

I admit that neither non-elite nor ordinary is adequate to the range that the visual repre-

sentations reveal. For one thing, definitions and expressions of a person’s status change

over the period considered in this book. In the days of the late Republic, for example, it

is relatively easy to identify a person’s status by looking at the art he commissions; at that

point in time the political elite is more or less identical with the cultural elite.18 By the

mid–first century a.d., the rise of the freedman class blurs this equation. This newly ar-

rived group uses art to impress others with their newly acquired culture. Studies by Paul

Zanker,19 Diana Kleiner,20 Eve D’Ambra,21 and others have called attention to possible re-

lationships between the freedman’s precarious social status and the art that he or she com-

missioned. However, recent scholarship has convincingly critiqued the notion of “freed-

man art” as a special subcategory of Roman art.22 The notion of freedman art has even

entered some surveys of Roman art, generally to explain anomalous visual representa-

tions.23 Although the art of freedmen features frequently in this book, so does that of the

freeborn working poor, the foreigner, and the slave. The art that they commission and

live with—in all of its variety and originality—reveals the hopes and anxieties of people

whose social position is ambiguous. It also helps us to understand the changes in defini-

tions of social status over time.24

I have no general theories to oªer about non-elite visual representation. I resist the

tendency in recent scholarship to use analysis of visual art to generalize about class, gen-

der, and social status. Instead I oªer concrete examples through case studies that allow

me to explore individual works of art in some depth. These case studies usually begin

with the architectural context but then focus on figural representations in the media of

painting, sculpture, and mosaics. (The study of what building types non-elite persons

chose is too vast for me to give it the attention it deserves here.) I have chosen case stud-

ies where I know that the person who paid for the work of art did not qualify for the up-

per strata. I call this person the patron, and I assume that he or she consciously chose

the imagery that the artist made—even though, in the absence of written documents, we

cannot be sure that the patron, rather than the artist, made all the choices. (The term “pa-

tron” is not to be confused with the Latin term patronus, used to designate the man who


agreed to protect another person by making him his client; Roman law clearly defined

the patronus-client relationship between a former slaveowner and his freedman.)25

I glean information about the patron unevenly, although I insist on having some in-

dication of who he or she was. The form of a person’s name in tomb inscriptions often

reveals that he or she was a former slave. In other cases, the purpose of the artwork—to

publicize the services of a wool-treating plant, for example—points to the patron’s non-

elite status. Often the visual representation constitutes wishful thinking: for instance, a

man and his wife portrayed as scholars but displayed in a bakery.

The “ordinary” people whose art I consider vary considerably among themselves. Some-

times they are clearly slaves or former slaves. But sometimes they are would-be elite, on

the borders between elite and non-elite society. To test the blurry borders between the art

of the elite and non-elite, I have deliberately included two monuments belonging to per-

sons technically occupying the upper stratum of Pompeian society. One of these is the

tomb of Vestorius Priscus—who, when he died at twenty-two, was a minor o‹cial (an

aedile) at Pompeii. Although he was “elite,” the poverty of his tomb and its decoration

persuades me to consider him among the non-elite. Another case where o‹cial status

seems to be at odds with visual representation is in the late decoration of the modest house

of Lucretius Fronto. Although written evidence suggests that at least some of the Lucretii

belonged to Pompeii’s elite ranks, the latest phase of painted decoration in the house seems

to tell a diªerent story.

In many ways this book employs the methods and continues the work of Looking at

Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 b.c.–a.d. 250. With that book, I

demonstrated how visual representation reveals a person’s sexual acculturation. Every-

one acquires, from his or her upbringing, attitudes that regulate behavior; we call this

process acculturation. It is possible to understand a person’s acculturation through the

study of visual representation. By paying attention to who sees the art, where he or she

sees it, and under what circumstances, it is often possible to understand a viewer’s atti-

tudes toward what the art represents. The location of a work of art often tells us about the

audience and the expectations that the patron had of that audience. For instance, a rep-

resentation of carpenters at work will convey a diªerent set of meanings depending on

its location. As part of a painting on the facade of a shop, it announces a commercial

activity, addressing both viewers on the street and customers coming into the shop. On

the facade of a tomb the same representation addresses a family member coming to

mourn or a passerby who needs to be informed about the dead man’s profession. The

physical setting reveals both the patron’s and the viewer’s attitudes toward a specific vi-

sual representation.

I am also concerned, of course, with who the viewers are. I have come up with several

strategies to investigate this question. Perhaps the most unusual is that of beginning with

imperial art in part 1, where I look at four important monuments in Rome from the point

of view of ordinary viewers. This strategy is admittedly an exercise in historical imagi-

nation, but one that emphasizes, in a new way, the non-elites living in Rome. Part 1 also


employs a chronological framework, taking us from the late first century b.c. to the year

a.d. 315, when Constantine dedicated his great triumphal arch. Twelve years later he shifted

the capital from Rome to Constantinople.

In part 2 and part 3, where I consider art clearly made for non-elites, I take a thematic

rather than chronological approach because the nature of the evidence changes. The erup-

tion of Vesuvius in a.d. 79 preserved much fragile art that time has erased elsewhere.

For instance, at Ostia, a city gradually abandoned as its harbor filled up with silt from the

Tiber, there is little left of the street-side painting that must have flourished there as it

did at Pompeii and Herculaneum. For similar reasons Pompeii has given us the names

of many more people than Ostia has, since the ashes of Vesuvius preserved ephemeral

evidence, like election slogans painted on walls. Although you will find many more case

studies from Pompeii than from the other cities I consider (Rome, Ostia, Ravenna, and

Chieti), by choosing themes rather than chronology as an organizing principle, I try to

suggest how the practices of the well-preserved period (100 b.c.–a.d. 79) might have con-

tinued and developed in later centuries.

In part 2, I look at art that everybody could see: art in the public sphere. From among

the many themes that I could have chosen, I have limited myself to art that tells us about

how ordinary people handled visual representation in relation to five themes: religion,

work, public spectacle, humor, and burial. I chose these themes because I felt that I had

new insights to bring to them, and also because they give the reader a sense of the great

variety of visual representation that ordinary Romans produced for the public sphere. In

part 3, I shift to art that people invited into a house would have seen, and there I specifically

look at how ordinary people used art to picture the pleasures of the banquet and to rep-

resent themselves.

ROMAN WAYS OF SEEING

In addition to analyzing who the viewers were by considering the circumstances sur-

rounding each artwork, I have also tried to think how each work might have sent diªer-

ent messages to a range of possible viewers. Recent scholarship has addressed in depth

the diªerent ways that a work of art might communicate its message to viewers. John

Berger, David Freedberg, Norman Bryson, and others have demonstrated how the same

work of art can send diªerent messages depending on who the viewer is.26Variables such

as gender, class, religion, and literacy complicate the notion of viewership and change

the eªectiveness of visual communication.27 These variables apply to both the making

and the transmission of images. As Norman Bryson has pointed out in advocating analy-

sis of painting as a sign system, the art-historical project of determining the original con-

text of production must go beyond merely charting the circumstances of patronage or

the conditions of original perception: “Original context must be considered to be a much

more global aªair, consisting of the complex interaction among all the practices which

make up the sphere of culture: the scientific, military, medical, intellectual and religious

I N T RODUC T I O N • 9

practices, the legal and political structures, the structures of class, sexuality and economic

life in the given society.”28 Bryson’s expanded conception of context fits well with my own

approach to the interpretation of Roman non-elite visual representation.29 In my chart

I propose that to begin to understand the making and transmission of images, we must

ask who the patron, the artist, and the viewer are (fig. 3). In addition to investigating the

physical context and the circumstances surrounding the viewing of the imagery, we must

also try to take into account in what terms or in what respect each viewer understands

the imagery.

Authors like Berger, Freedberg, and Bryson, working with early modern and contem-

porary art, have the advantage of being able to investigate a wealth of written sources that

reveal attitudes toward visual representation. With the ancient Romans written sources

on attitudes toward visual culture are scanty for the elite and almost non-existent for the

non-elite. One passage from Ovid’s Art of Love, addressed to elite readers, reminds us

how unlike the modern art historian the ancient Roman viewer could be. Ovid advises

the young man confronted with the confusing panoply of topographical paintings, alle-

gorical figures, and notable individuals passing by in a triumphal procession simply to

concoct interpretations to impress his girlfriend:

And when some girl inquires the names of the monarchs,

Or the towns, rivers, and hills portrayed,

Answer all her questions (and don’t draw the line at

Questions only): pretend

You know even when you don’t. Here comes the Euphrates, tell her,

With reed-fringed brow; those dark

Blue tresses belong to Tigris, I fancy; there go Armenians,

That’s Persia, and that, h’r’m, is some

Upland Achaemenid city. Both those men are generals—

Give the names if you know them, if not, invent.30

What is striking about this passage is that Ovid encourages the viewer to invent what he

doesn’t know for sure: no one is going to check his historical accuracy.31 Although Ovid

is writing satire to amuse his readers, what he says about making up interpretations pokes

fun at the elite practice of ekphrasis, or the explanation of paintings. In his Imagines,Philo-

stratus provides examples of ekphrasis that are as fantastic in their invention as those of

Ovid’s parade-watcher. Jas Elsner’s analysis of texts that treat the interpretation of visual

representation provides further evidence that the elite Romans valued the ability to make

fanciful connections between what they saw and what the image could signify.32 For the

elite viewer, the work of art was just a jumping-oª point for a virtuoso display of rheto-

ric and erudition. By exaggerating such free association in explaining the work of art Petro-

nius satirizes the rich but ignorant freedman Trimalchio.33


MAKING OF IMAGE TRANSMISSION OF IMAGES

WHO IS PATRON? WHO IS ARTIST? VIEWER ADDRESS WHO IS VIEWER?

Patron’s social status: Training and ability Location of image: Viewer’s social status:

Elite street Elite

Non-elite: temple Non-elite:

freeborn dining room freeborn

freedman tomb freedman

slave house slave

foreigner tavern foreigner

latrine

in moving procession

Patron’s gender role Viewer’s gender role

Patron’s motivations: Viewing context Viewer’s past experience

advertisement of goods or services —seen while: —image seen before in:

commemoration working temple

entertainment walking forum

mediation—to resolve community tensions standing theater

appeasing gods or propitiation praying coin

competition or one-upmanship dining house

announcement of status or wealth shopping pattern book

apotropaic/admonition mourning procession or triumph

civic benefaction visiting

defecating

—seen with what other images?

Size and scale of image:

close viewing

distant viewing

Patron’s understanding of image: Has models: Viewer’s understanding of image:

knows/does not know model or referent understands/does not knows/does not know model or

understand models referent

Has no models: believes/does not believe image

invents from observation is a god or goddess

invents through pastiche

Cost and medium of image

Literate/illiterate Literate/illiterate Writing/no writing on image Literate/illiterate

Patron’s occupation or profession Viewer’s occupation or profession

FIGURE 3

A model for the reception of visual art in ancient Rome. Parallels between the making and transmission of images are shown in boxes.

These literary accounts of how people responded to visual art indicate that interpret-

ing imagery was a common social practice. But the point of such interpretation was to

tell a good story that somehow related to what the viewer and his audience could see. Ac-

curate, scientific description was not the principal goal. If contemporary art-historical prac-

tice rewards accuracy in visual analysis, it is because interpretation of visual imagery is

a highly specialized discipline that aims to discover the “correct” meaning. If elite Ro-

mans routinely interpreted visual art in a free-ranging way, perhaps non-elites did so as

well. To address this possibility, in the case studies in this book, I try to imagine the re-

actions of a variety of viewers. Of course, I am going out on a limb, for I am daring to

imagine how, say, a woman who was a slave might see an image diªerently from a free-

born man. My method is purposely speculative. At the end of many of the case studies I

construct scenarios—“what if ” viewing scripts.

I intend these viewing scenarios as a corrective to the only viewer that modern schol-

arly literature has given us: an upper-class male who knows everything because he has

read all of Latin and Greek literature and has the advantage of photo archives and history

books. This is not my idea of a typical—and certainly not an ordinary—Roman viewer,

whose knowledge of myths, visual models, literary sources, and styles had limits, no mat-

ter how learned he or she might have been. No ancient viewer had the advantages of the

modern scholar; to see Roman art exclusively from the scholar’s point of view is to distort

its purposes and meanings for the ancient viewer. To try to correct this modern view, out

on a limb I go! Although I have tried to use my historical imagination responsibly in con-

structing my hypothetical viewers, I am sure that my own conceptions of non-elite Ro-

mans have colored my constructions. I invite readers to improve on—or even to discard—

my viewer profiles, using their own knowledge of Roman history, art, and society.

Language also shapes visual experience. In my attempt to frame non-elite visual rep-

resentation in historically and culturally synchronous terms, I consistently use Latin words

for the objects and actions depicted. They are always in italics the first time I use them

in a chapter, followed by approximate English equivalents. My hope is that language will

help—like my viewer scenarios—to make this art seem strange to you, the reader.34 It is

important that we understand how diªerent ancient Roman culture was from that of con-

temporary Euro-America. Saying that the Romans were “just like us” is really saying noth-

ing at all.

This book attempts to add nuance and substance to the parallels we have always wanted

to draw between ancient Romans and ourselves—to make concrete the generalizations

that have tended to erase diªerence. What emerges is a rich—and indeed strange—set

of cultural and social structures within which individuals used art to express who they

were and what they valued. There is no way of isolating “the” ancient Roman viewer, just

as there is no way of defining the “typical” American or Englishwoman.

My hope is that this book will open your eyes to the astounding complexity and cul-

tural diversity of the lower strata of ancient Roman society. You will meet people who

found ways to celebrate their diªerences through the art that they both commissioned

12 • I N T RODUC T I O N

and looked at, and you will see how this art encoded their social status, identity, beliefs,

tastes, and values. Only if we consider non-elite art as a system of communication em-

bedded within a specific culture can Roman individuals emerge with any distinction. The

certainty of cultural generalization is reassuring but hollow; uncertainty is challenging

but rewarding.

Context is everything.


15

PART 1

IMPERIAL REPRESENTATION OF NON-ELITES

JUST LIKE US?

If we want to understand the art that ordinary people commissioned and consumed in

the Roman empire, we need to begin by looking at the dominating form: art created un-

der the auspices of the emperor. Study of visual representations commissioned by the

emperor—especially when they picture ordinary freeborn Romans (the ingenui), former

slaves, foreigners, and slaves—can show us how the emperor and the upper strata of Ro-

man society wished all viewers to understand the place of non-elites within the system.

Study of imperial art also provides a frame of reference for parts 2 and 3, where we ex-

amine non-elite art and test the “trickle-down” hypothesis: that non-elite artworks are lit-

tle more than debased copies of imperial art. Finally, the focus on imperial art allows us

to reflect on and try to remedy a major problem in the history of Roman art: the fact that

until recently most scholars have set out Roman art as a story of the accomplishments of

imperial visual representation. Imperial art has been the basis for constructing Roman

art history.

There is an agenda behind writing Roman art history on such an exclusive basis. Re-

cent critical theory has demonstrated that the historian’s narrative is rarely what it says it

is: an objective account of the facts. If we ask: What stock did the author have in writing

the history of Roman art on the basis of elite art? a telling perspective unfolds. The art

that traditional historians have examined is monumental, expensive, and imperial. All

three of these features in visual representation comply with “history” as traditionally

conceived—and traditional art history as well. If it is to matter, Roman art history—like

the story of the Romans themselves—must be the tale of Empire.

Just as the ancient Romans constructed their own history over time—and often re-

vised it—so have we moderns. What stands out in modern projects to create the history

of Rome is the desire to make the Romans a precedent for “us.”1 If we look at the history

of writing about the art of Rome, this “us” is the ruling elite of any historical period; the

problematic notion that the Romans were “just like us” forms the premise and subtext

of five centuries of classical studies. If Renaissance princes had a deep stock in estab-

lishing their legitimacy through the study of classical texts, it was because princely poli-

tics and codes of conduct required a powerful precedent—no less authoritative and pow-

erful than the fabled Roman empire. Renaissance humanists looked to Cicero, Virgil,

and Livy for ways to define the early modern state. Subsequent attempts to legitimize the

prince, the absolute monarch, colonialism, nineteenth-century nationalism, and—finally

and most terrifyingly—German and Italian fascism,2 always went back to the ancient Ro-

mans, to those same texts with their histories of emperors and Empire, their great lawyers,

statesmen, rhetoricians, moralists, and poets.

In this formula for writing the history of the Romans, the art that fitted best with the

study of classical texts and inscriptions was the art that illustrated imperial power. The

themes were grand ones—whether chronicling the lives of emperors and their families

(for example, the Ara Pacis) or imperial conquests (the Column of Trajan, the triumphal

arches)—yet the charge was the same: to show the all-encompassing power of the im-

perial model.3 The study of portraiture, presumably the art that would reveal the most

about individuals in Roman history, began with the goal of providing galleries of emperors’

busts for princely Renaissance palaces. The rows of famous Romans became the prince’s

ready-made “ancestors.” Even today, studies of Roman portraiture tend to ignore the anony-

mous portraits—the ones that cannot be identified through comparison with coins bear-

ing images of the emperors and their families. Little wonder that histories of Roman art

inevitably prefer dynastic labels to indicate the date of a work of art: “an Augustan gem,”

“a Trajanic wall painting,” “a Constantinian portrait.”

If these labels and methods of study seem natural to us, it is because contemporary

Euro-American culture is in many ways the product of centuries of adaptation of ancient

Roman texts and cultural artifacts to fit the requirements of increasingly capitalist, bour-

geois, and colonial systems. If the Romans seem to be in all things so much like “us,” it

is because “we” have colonized their time in history. (I use the words “we” and “us” to de-

note the elite, white male of Euro-American culture—the voice I perceive to be the dom-

inant one in traditional scholarship.) We have appropriated their world to fit the needs of

our ideology.

Of course, I, too, have an agenda in writing my history of Roman art. I wish to draw a

picture of a pluralistic, rather than an imperialistic, Roman society. I want to tell the sto-

16 • I M P E R I A L R E P R E S E N T A T I O N O F N O N - E L I T E S

ries of the ordinary Romans—the ones usually excluded from the traditional histories—

and I base my narrative on the analysis of art. My approach fails to create a straightfor-

ward, linear narrative, and this is to be expected. In place of the unity of purpose that char-

acterizes the histories of imperial art, I find a variety of intentions and eªects. I understand

this pluralism of content and style as the logical result of a society that was highly diverse

and anything but monolithic.

Since no monuments could be more multilayered and polysemic than the big impe-

rial ones set up in Rome, it is puzzling that few scholars have considered their imagery

in terms of an ordinary Roman viewer. Most studies assume the view of the omniscient

elite Roman. Not surprisingly, this “ideal” viewer is much like a modern scholar of clas-

sical art and literature.

In the following two chapters I examine imperial monuments for signs of the ordi-

nary Roman. In chapter 1, I consider the Ara Pacis Augustae (9 b.c.) and the Forum, Ba-

silica, and Column of Trajan (a.d. 113). They belong to the optimistic early empire, when

the emperor wished to be thought of as the first citizen, or princeps. Artists used the time-

tested forms of Hellenistic art to portray the emperor fulfilling his religious, civic, and

military duties. Chapter 2 considers the Column of Marcus Aurelius (ca. 193) and the

Arch of Constantine (315). In them artists forge new ways of representing the emperor

as supreme, divine leader; they create visual hierarchies that express the changed social

order.

For all of these visual representations, I conjecture viewers whose acculturation was

diªerent from that of elite persons, and I ask if there were messages for such non-elites

as foreigners, slaves, former slaves (freedmen and freedwomen), and the freeborn work-

ing poor. All of these monuments should encode imperial values—since the patrons are

emperors. Yet when non-elites saw them, how did they understand the messages in terms

of their own status and experience? And if a non-elite viewer finds a‹nities with the im-

agery, then we must ask whether this is an intended eªect: Is he or she receiving a mes-

sage sent from “on high”?

I M P E R I A L R E P R E S E N T A T I O N O F N O N - E L I T E S • 17

1

AUGUSTUS’S AND TRAJAN’S MESSAGES

TO COMMONERS

THE ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE AND THE ORDINARY VIEWER

Much erudite ink has flowed to explain the complex iconography of the Ara Pacis Au-

gustae (13–9 b.c., fig. 4). First and foremost are the attempts to identify the protagonists

in the processional friezes along the north and south sides of the altar’s enclosure. These

friezes probably represent the founding (constitutio) of the altar on July 4, 13 b.c.1 Al-

though scholars agree that the south frieze shows Augustus surrounded by members of

the four priestly colleges, followed by his (extended) family as they approach the plaza in

front of the altar (the west side), there is considerable disagreement about the identities

of the men, women, and children pictured there (fig. 5). Similarly, no one doubts that

some of the men in togas on the north frieze also belong to the priestly colleges, followed

by Augustan family members, yet scholars have reached no agreement on the specific

identities of women and children at the end of that procession.2

A second feature of the Ara Pacis that has been the focus of much debate are the four

panels on the east and west sides of the enclosure wall. The two that are well preserved

have received the most attention. Today there are so many iconographical interpretations

of the relief of a woman with two baby boys in her lap—most of them invoking contem-

porary literary texts for explanations—that one can only call it a complex allegorical figure:

Tellus/Italia/Pax/Venus/Ceres (fig. 6).3 Less problematic is the mythological scene on the

19

FIGURE 5

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, south side. Procession of Augustus and his family.

FIGURE 4

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae (13–9 b.c.), view from west.

west: it illustrates Aeneas sacrificing the white sow with thirty piglets to the Penates

(guardian gods) at Lavinium (fig. 7).4 Enough remains of the panel opposite it on the left

to identify it as Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf while Mars looks on.

Its content serves as a kind of pendant to the Aeneas scene. The same might be said of

the female allegorical figure opposite Tellus/Italia on the enclosure’s east side: despite

the fragmentary condition of the relief, scholars have convincingly identified the figure

as Roma, seated on a heap of weapons.

AUGU S TU S ’ S A N D T R A J AN ’ S M E S S AG E S • 21

FIGURE 7

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, west side. Aeneas sacrificing.

FIGURE 6

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, east side. Tellus/Italia.

The third important problem that scholars have investigated is the decoration of the

inner and outer sides of the enclosure. On the lower half of the inner walls we see, repro-

duced in marble, the wooden boards of the temporary palisade that constituted the orig-

inal sacred boundary (or templum) around the altar. Above this board fence, many-fruited

garlands wound with fillets hang from the skulls of sacrificed bulls, with a libation dish

(patera) centered above each swag of the garland.5 Exuberant vine-scrolls filled with flora

and fauna decorate the exterior face of the palisade (see fig. 10).

Rather than ask what the meaning of each of these components might be—rather than

searching for the “key” to its iconography—I want to ask what the Ara Pacis as a whole

might have communicated to ordinary viewers. To answer this question, we must step

back from the details and look at the altar’s place among the monuments of Augustan

Rome. Diane Favro’s recent study of how Augustus transformed the city during his forty-

one-year reign emphasizes the perceptions of an ancient viewer as he or she walked its

streets, strolled through its gardens and plazas, attended to daily business, took part in

religious rituals, or pursued various forms of recreation.6 Arguably the greatest concen-

tration of Augustan building was on the Campus Martius, an area outside the city’s sa-

cred boundaries (the pomerium) but bordered by the major road to the north, the via

Flaminia (fig. 8). As the illustration demonstrates, the Ara Pacis was one of three highly

original monuments that transformed the area into an Augustan theme-park. The Ara

Pacis was quite modest in size compared with the two monuments that took up the great-

est space: the mausoleum and the sundial.

Each monument articulated diªerent messages. Augustus’s great mausoleum pro-

claimed the dynasty that he founded (fig. 9). Although Augustus insisted in all of his

public political life that he was the restorer of the Republic, he had in point of fact cre-

ated the Roman Empire, ruled by dynastic succession. The mausoleum was to contain

his ashes and those of his successors, the Julio-Claudians. If the mausoleum was a sign

of the end of the Republic for the senatorial class, ordinary Romans may have thought

of it as a strange transplant—for the tombs that they ordinarily saw were massed together

along the roads outside the city walls. Its magnitude, its isolation in a magnificent gar-

den, and the very ashes it contained constituted a reminder of the glory of Augustus and

the extent of his family.7 Since, in point of fact, Augustus spent much of his reign adopt-

22 • I M P E R I A L R E P R E S E N TA T I O N O F N ON - E L I T E S

FIGURE 8

Drawing of Ara Pacis Augustae with horologium and mausoleum.

ing successors only to have them die, dynastic succession was a constant concern: his

mausoleum was one strategy for keeping ordinary Romans from perceiving the ongoing

crises of succession.8

Recent work on the great sundial that occupied the larger part of Augustus’s plaza has

highlighted its relationships with both the mausoleum and the Ara Pacis. The sundial

(called both horologium and solarium in contemporary inscriptions) was a tour-de-force

in both its conception and its construction. Augustus, in concert with wealthy elites ea-

ger to serve his aims, had been filling Rome with expensive buildings that were a won-

der to all—especially to the ordinary Romans who had not seen the splendid cities of

Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt. In this context, the great labor needed to bring a 21.8-

meter (71-foot) Egyptian obelisk to Rome and to set it up as the sundial’s pointer (gno-

mon)was a wonder indeed.9 Its message was a dual one. It was a reminder of Augustus’s

(and Agrippa’s) triumph over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 b.c.—a tri-

umph that gained the rich province of Egypt for Rome. It also symbolized perpetual, cycli-

cal time: the eternal reign of Augustus and his heirs. The horologium told time in a mon-

umental way, its shadow playing over a surface of about 100 square meters (1100 square

feet). In 1976 Edmund Buchner argued that there were important connections between

the horologium, the Ara Pacis, and the mausoleum.10 Most scholars immediately em-

braced his ideas—especially his striking notion that on the afternoon of Augustus’s birth-

day, 23 September, the shadow of the obelisk pointed toward the west entrance of the Ara

Pacis. In 1990 Michael Schütz raised serious doubts about this and other connections—


N

MausoleumUstrinum

VIADELCORSO/VIAFLAMINIA

Sundial

Obelisk

AraPacis

18 37'

15

VIADIRIPETTA

FIGURE 9

Rome, Augustan monuments

in the Campus Martius.

both geometrical and astronomical—among the monuments that Augustus erected on

the Campus Martius.11 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that for the ordinary Roman

the entire complex excited amazement.

What of the imagery on the Ara Pacis itself ? Access to the altar within the precinct

was limited to the priests and Vestal Virgins in charge of the annual sacrifices, although

the fact that the precinct wall had doors opening to reveal both the back of the altar and

its front made it possible for people to see more of the interior imagery than they could

with just one door. People could have glimpsed, perhaps, the garlands decorating the

precinct wall and the small sacrificial friezes on the altar itself. But on ordinary days

these doors were closed, and the curious would have had to be content with views of the

exterior.

It was no accident that the Ara Pacis had pride of place along the via Flaminia, for this

was the road that Augustus took on his triumphant return from Spain and Gaul. Yet Au-

gustus did not celebrate a triumph—an honor he refused; the Ara Pacis was a way of

marking his victory with new imagery. Instead of presenting the moment of the triumphal

procession, Augustus’s curious new altar pictured the union of his family with the o‹cial

priesthoods at the moment of the altar’s first use. The altar’s very strangeness—as an un-

precedented substitute for the triumphal arch—must have piqued the curiosity of elite

and non-elite viewers alike.

But what in its imagery would have caught the attention of the non-elite viewer? The

enclosure wall rose to a height of 6.1 meters (over 19 feet) from the paving of the plaza

to its top. It stood with its back to the via Flaminia, so that only the allegorical figures of

Tellus/Italia and Roma would have been visible from the road, with highly foreshortened

views-in-passing of the two processional friezes on the sides of the enclosure wall. It was

only the viewer approaching from within the broad plaza of the sundial who would have

understood that the dual processions constituted a visual reenactment of the ceremonies

that occurred on the altar’s founding date. Unlike the modern scholar, aided by closeup

photographs, an ancient viewer would not have been able to identify all the figures in

those friezes. For one thing, the processional friezes were quite high up; the bottom of

the frieze was 3.9 meters (nearly 12 feet) from the pavement. For another, it is unlikely

that an ordinary viewer living at the time of the altar’s inauguration could have distin-

guished the slight physiognomic diªerences between one Julio-Claudian man or woman

and another. The only easily identifiable figures are those of Augustus and Agrippa, since

the composition of the south frieze singles them out. Nor would coins in a viewer’s purse

have helped with the identification of the rest of the figures, since Tiberius had yet to have

a coin issued with his profile on it; nor were there coins for Julia, Livia, Drusus the Elder,

and other family members.

What an ordinary viewer would have noticed were the little figures—the images of

children on both north and south friezes. Children had never before appeared on a ma-

jor public monument. In purely visual terms, they break the monotony set up by the adults


in the friezes, who are all about the same height so that their heads line up in the top one-

eighth of the panels. The children’s dress is unusual as well. On the north frieze a little

girl wears the toga, usually restricted to free male citizens. Two of the male children wear

barbarian dress.12 Although it is unlikely that someone outside elite circles could have

identified any of the children, their very presence—highlighted by their unusual dress—

must have provoked comment.

Part of this curiosity about the children, I propose, would have been what we call “hu-

man interest”—in this case ordinary people’s identification with family and child-rearing.

Just as the emperor and his family had oªspring, so did the ordinary person. The chil-

dren’s physical closeness to their mothers and fathers, clinging to their garments even as

they attempt to walk along with the adults, must have struck a common chord with view-

ers who had children of their own.13 Representing children provided the ordinary person

with a point of identification with Augustus and his family.

The children, too, publicized Augustus’smuch-discussed legislation aimed at increasing

legitimate, freeborn oªspring in Rome. Their presence was one way of proclaiming that

the future of Rome rested in its children.14 They also advertised the success of the new

dynasty that Augustus had founded; the images of children clinging to members of Au-

gustus’s family provided visible proof that there were successors to Augustus.

If the processional reliefs freeze for all eternity a particular moment—the beginning—

of the altar’s ritual life, what would an ordinary viewer make of the four reliefs flanking

the enclosure wall’s two doors? Like the processional friezes, they are high up, but in con-

trast to them, it would have been less di‹cult to grasp the basics of their imagery. The

figures are larger and fewer in number. Babies—two of them—in the lap of Tellus/Italia

symbolize human fertility much as do the representations of children in the processional

frieze. The two allegorical figures of winds (aurae) were familiar enough to signal that

this woman with her two infants belonged to the symbolic realm. That the artist juxta-

posed her with the figure of Roma, seated on a heap of captured weapons, made clear

that both reliefs were allegorical. Some viewers may have understood the pair—as mod-

ern scholars have—as a contrast between war and peace. Successful warfare creates peace

and permits the kind of abundance (on land and sea, among animals and humans) figured

in the Tellus/Italia relief.

Whereas the panels on the exterior back of the enclosure that faced the via Flaminia

employ female allegorical figures to announce the dual theme of peace and war, the all-

male characters on the two front panels move in the realm of mythical history. Aeneas

on the right panel enacts the sacrifice that fulfilled his destiny: to found Lavinium by en-

shrining the Penates that he had brought from Troy. This foundation was the prelude to

Rome’s. Ordinary viewers would have connected Aeneas’s act of sacrifice with the ritual

that took place every year at the Ara Pacis: the slaughter of the three animals (ram, steer,

and heifer), the cooking of the choice parts (exta) as a sacrifice to the gods, and the join-

ing in on the feast—eating roasted meat—afterwards.15 The more astute might have con-


nected the image of Aeneas sacrificing with Augustus. Augustus, head veiled like Ae-

neas, appears at the point in the south processional frieze closest to the panel of Aeneas.

Moreover, Augustus was the person who first sacrificed at the newly constituted altar.

The image on the left—Mars observing the suckling of Rome’s eventual founders by

the fabled she-wolf—extended this notion that wondrous events heralded Roman mo-

ments of foundation. Even more marvelous than the sow with thirty piglets that Aeneas

took as a sign for the foundation of Lavinium was the suckling of Rome’s eventual

founder(s) by a she-wolf. Yet for the person standing in the plaza on a ceremonial occa-

sion, these representations attached to the altar’s precinct wall must have paled by com-

parison with the excitement of the rituals themselves.

But for the non-elite viewer—especially the viewer who came not to attend the rituals

but to stroll through Augustus’s great plaza and see what could be seen—there was one

attraction much more interesting than the figural reliefs. Larger by over a foot (0.35 m),

closer to the ground than the figural friezes, and more available to the viewer’s scrutiny

at eye-level, was the beautifully carved and conceived decoration of the enclosure wall’s

lower half.16 As Barbara Kellum has pointed out, it was not just magnificent buildings

and important works of art that attracted the populace to public spaces. She cites the gi-

ant grapevine that shaded the whole of the Porticus of Livia, and the unusual animals—

both live and in sculptural replicas—that Augustus put on display.17 In the context of con-

temporary popular interest in the wonders of the natural world, both the content and the

form of this decoration was arguably the most extraordinary aspect of the Ara Pacis for

all ancient visitors. For one thing, this decoration takes up over one-half of the enclosure’s

exterior surface, and more than one-third of its interior. For another, the exquisite carv-

ing achieves a realism within the stylistic framework of neo-Attic art unsurpassed by any

surviving artifacts from the period. David Castriota’s recent book convincingly argues

through analysis of all its elements that the frieze was much more than fancy decoration;

its flora and fauna were prime carriers of meaning for the ancient viewer.18

From an armature consisting of stylized acanthus tendrils and blossoms, diªerent

botanical species—realistically portrayed—emerge: laurel, ivy, grapevines with grape clus-

ters, and an oak sprig (fig. 10). Flowers, in addition to the acanthus, include poppies and

roses. Foremost among the animals depicted are the great swans that top the candelabra-

like acanthus plants. Early on scholars recognized the swan’s reference to Apollo. Since

identification of gods and goddesses with birds was a popular practice in antiquity, this

reference would not have been lost on the ordinary viewer. Viewers would have heard the

widely circulated stories about Augustus’s mother, Atia, being visited by the god, and some

might have even believed that Apollo was his father.

A second highly visible motif, repeated in the center of both north and south reliefs,

was located right at the bottom of the giant acanthus leaf at the base of the “candelabra.”

A snake winds its way to a nest filled with tiny birds, one of them sounding the alarm

(fig. 11). It is unlikely that the ordinary viewer would have seen this vignette or other un-

usual features of hybrid plants as a metaphor for Augustus’s struggle with Antony, as one


FIGURE 10

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae. Detail of exterior floral frieze.

FIGURE 11

Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae. Snake and bird’s nest.

scholar would have it;19 more likely he would have understood it as a realistic vignette

from the natural world, exciting in its own terms.

It is worth stressing that much of Rome’s population at this time consisted of rural

agricultural folk who had been driven from their land in the bloody civil wars of the first

century b.c. Their education was minimal, and their commercial skills limited, yet they

were free citizens of Italy, entitled to a vote and to a life in the city supported by doles of

food and money. Many were illiterate; their “literature” was the lore about plants, birds,

insects, and animals that they had learned on the farms. Many were also idle, living in a

city where the only glimpses of greenery to be had were in the public spaces, in gardens

and temple precincts.20

I propose that for such Romans the “decorative” frieze would have been a magnet with

much greater power than the processional or mythological panels; these are people who

would have spent many an hour discussing the natural world and its inhabitants in front

of these conspicuously placed and elegantly carved reminders of the natural world they

knew so well and missed so much. The very artificiality of the frieze, especially the way

the artist grafted foliage and flowers from diªerent plants into the acanthus, must have

evoked comment. People might have brought their children there to play at finding all

the creatures and identifying them. There were plenty hidden among the foliage: a scor-

pion, lizards, birds, frogs, a butterfly, grasshoppers, cicadas, birds, snakes, a snail. Pop-

ular beliefs and stories about each of these animals and insects—like those that scholars

have gleaned from elite literature—would have been the stuª of the conversations be-

tween parent and child, between one viewer and another.21

It is possible that the artists of the Ara Pacis had orders to embellish the precinct wall

with this extraordinary combination of flora and fauna precisely in order to give the com-

mon people something to wonder at. This seems certain to me, especially considering

that it was the only part of the altar complex always available for scrutiny, that it was clos-

est to the viewers’ eye-levels, and that its content complemented that of other natural won-

ders that Augustus set up in his city. It turned nature, symbolized by vine scrolls and an-

imals, into marble—a tour-de-force of virtuoso stone carving.

If its message seems modest and lacking in “propaganda,” it is because we are used

to propaganda of a more obvious and bombastic sort—the kind that we have character-

ized as “typically Roman:” temples to the imperial cult, triumphal arches, enormous build-

ings of every sort. For an audience of ordinary people, possessing a system of beliefs and

lore concerned with the phenomena of nature, the floral frieze must have been much

more than fancy decoration. It was an expression of the very magic brought about by Au-

gustus’s reign.

TRAJAN’S FORUM AND THE NEW IMPERIAL CITY

The jump from the Ara Pacis to the Forum of Trajan—like the Ara Pacis, a wonder in its

time—is a big one. In the 122 years between the two monuments Rome had grown to


over one million inhabitants.22 Under Trajan, too, the empire expanded to its largest ex-

tent. Expansion of the city put increasing pressure on its infrastructure, especially in the

period between Nero’s fire of a.d. 64 and Trajan’s dedication of the Forum and Basilica

Ulpia in 112. How did Rome cope with becoming the largest city in the world—not to

find an equal in population until late eighteenth-century London?

The practical measures were many: engineers increased the water supply by building

new aqueducts; the new harbor at Portus near the mouth of the Tiber greatly improved

the supplies of food and goods to the city; and multifamily apartment buildings built of

fire-proof concrete and brick replaced rickety wattle-and-daub tenements. Equally im-

pressive were the city’s new public structures. In addition to the triumphal arches, tem-

ples, and porticoes, architects constructed enormous buildings devoted to popular en-

tertainment, often inventing new or hybrid forms. The Colosseum and Trajan’s baths are

only two of the city’s many responses to the demand for “bread and circuses.” A series

of grandiose imperial fora tripled the available area for people to carry on business, to

hear court trials, and to promenade (fig. 12).

The first of these, Augustus’s own forum, completed in 2 b.c., set a precedent for

magnificence of decoration and complexity of message that it was a great challenge to

surpass. Like the Ara Pacis, Augustus’s forum emphasized the emperor’s role as restorer

of the Republic and its religious institutions—even while it borrowed forms from Peri-

clean Athens to evoke a past Golden Age (fig. 13). The temple dedicated to Mars the Avenger

(Ultor) commemorated Augustus’s vow to avenge the death of his adopted father, Julius

Caesar, yet its imagery also joined Mars with Venus. Augustus claimed divine parentage

through Aeneas, whose mother was Venus. The architect employed twin semicircular


FIGURE 12

Rome, plan of Imperial Fora.

forms, called hemicycles, to introduce variety into the rectangular plan. Descent from he-

roes, both human and mythical, constituted the theme of the twin hemicycles, its niches

filled with statues of great men and inscriptions describing their great deeds (elogia).

If the Forum of Augustus emphasized traditional religion, heroic service to the Re-

public, divine ancestry, and the Greek Golden Age, it was because the emperor wished

to gain acceptance for his monarchy from a senate and people suspicious of kingship and

hereditary dynasties. Trajan, riding the crest of the wave of success that raw imperial power

had brought the city of Rome, had an entirely diªerent agenda. He wished to show the

magnificent results of imperial warfare and to illustrate how and why the Roman army

always won its wars.

Until the recent publication of James Packer’s monumental study, the particulars of

the imagery of the Forum and Basilica—both the architecture and its decoration—were

quite vague.23 Packer provides reconstructions based on measurement and scrutiny of

all remaining elements of the buildings and their decoration. For the first time, we can

begin to appreciate why of all the grand monuments of ancient Rome, ancient visitors

considered the Forum of Trajan to be the best: an eighth wonder of the world.24 What is

more, we can begin to comprehend the meanings of this great Gesamtkunstwerk (total

work of art).


FIGURE 13

Rome, plan of Forum of Augustus with Zanker’s iconographical scheme.

TRAJAN, THE DACIANS, AND THE ARMY IN THE FORUM AND COLUMN

If we put ourselves in the place of the thousands of people who visited the forum to work

as senators, lawyers, clerks, and librarians (and those who enjoyed listening to legal cases,

shopping, loitering, and promenading there), we realize how the whole architectural

complex—Forum, Basilica Ulpia, and Column—was designed to amaze. It is di‹cult to

reconstruct the ancient viewer’s experience of the whole, since only the Column is still

standing, yet today we have a better understanding of that experience thanks to Packer’s

earlier reconstructions and to the two later, computer-generated models that allow the

viewer to “walk through” virtual-reality reconstructions.25

As a viewer entered the Forum and progressed through its spaces toward the Column,

he or she experienced multiple configurations of Trajan’s power.26 Everyone, from elite

citizen to foreigner, saw a very basic message encoded throughout all the spaces in a re-

curring tripartite formula: Trajan, the Dacians, and the army.

The apex of this three-part iconographical scheme was, of course, Trajan himself

(plate 1). The viewer understood Trajan’s triumph over the Dacians as he walked through

the monumental entrance and saw the heroon, a shrine honoring Trajan, probably with

a tripartite entry that recalled the form of the triumphal arch.27 The entryway initiated a

“Trajan axis” running some 212 meters (695 feet) through the center of the forum.28 At

least three monumental statues of the princeps marked that axis: an equestrian statue,29

a group with Trajan riding in triumph in a four-horse chariot placed on the porch of the

Basilica Ulpia, and—most dramatically—a statue on top of the Column that seemed to

float above the basilica’s roof at a height of one hundred fifty Roman feet (44 m).30 The

great size of these statues, and their placement along the central axis of the huge com-

plex, stressed Trajan’s predominant role throughout.

Forum, Basilica, and Column each trumpeted Trajan’s importance in a diªerent way.

The simple fact that the forum was the largest ever built in the imperial city showed that

Trajan was more powerful even than Augustus, the first princeps. Few ancient viewers

would have missed the formal similarities between the Forum of Augustus and that of

Trajan. The visitor entered the Forum of Trajan from a space connected with the north

flank of the Forum of Augustus, so that it was inevitable that he or she would compare

the two in size. Moreover, the Forum of Trajan repeated the paired hemicycles of the Fo-

rum of Augustus—twice. The architect located the first pair at the midpoint of the Fo-

rum’s open space. The paired hemicycles, two huge cupping forms, expanded the Forum

spaces to the viewer’s left and right. The architect incorporated the second pair of hemi-

cycles into the short sides of the Basilica Ulpia, visual echoes that reminded the viewer

of the first pair even while they achieved eªects of space and light quite diªerent from

those of the first pair.

In size, form, and lavishness of decoration the Basilica Ulpia also outstripped any mon-

ument in Rome. At 25 by 76 meters (82 by 249 feet) in plan, and as high as 30 meters

(98 feet) in elevation, the Basilica was easily the largest covered space that Rome had seen.31

A U G U S T U S ’ S A N D T R A J A N ’ S M E S S A G E S • 31

An ancient viewer would have marveled at the lavish use of expensive marbles imported

from the far reaches of the empire. Thanks to the careful work of Packer and others, we

now have a notion of the rich play of color and light that aimed to astonish the first-time

viewer.

Yet today the most concrete way to imagine the grandeur and magnificence of the Fo-

rum and Basilica, now sadly reduced, is by considering the third great marvel of the com-

plex, the Column. In antiquity there was no clear view of the entire Column, as there is

today. The architect enclosed it within a relatively small courtyard between the Greek and

Latin libraries—almost certainly to dramatize its huge base and impressive height. The

architect’s transformation of the honorary column into a gigantic monument with a stair-

case carved out of its center was both a dazzling feat of engineering and a challenge to

the viewer’s imagination. What would it be like to ascend that staircase and stand on the

viewing platform with the emperor’s statue looming high above? Arguably, in the mind

of the ancient viewer, the Column itself was an icon of imperial power without parallel.32

And, in the only exception to the rule that no one, not even the emperor, could be buried

within the sacred boundary of the city, Trajan’s ashes arrived in Rome in triumphal pro-

cession and were buried in the base of the Column.33

Huge three-dimensional images of Trajan dominated and guided a viewer as he or

she progressed from the Forum, to the Basilica, to the Column.34 On the Column itself

Trajan appears fifty-nine times, as the commander-in-chief in the low reliefs that chron-

icle the Dacian wars. Trajan was present in written form as well, his name and his titles

figuring in numerous inscriptions throughout the complex; these redundantly spelled

out, in great detail, his achievements and his honors.

Representations of the enemy formed the second element of the iconographical triad.

Two types of Dacians appeared. White marble statues, about 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall, ap-

peared prominently high up in the upper (attic) level of the Forum’s east and west colon-

nades, where they carried a cornice (fig. 14).35 Larger statues of Dacians, about 3 meters

(101/2 feet) tall, decorated the attic of the south facade of the Basilica, their bodies of white

purple-veined marble from Asia Minor (pavonazetto), their hands and heads of white

marble.36

In the Forum, the cornices on the heads of the Dacians supported a second, upper,

cornice that crowned the attic and carried inscribed pedestals with standards. Alternat-

ing between the Dacian supporting figures on the right and left colonnades were some

sixty portrait heads on shields (imagines clipeatae); the surviving ones are of emperors

and empresses.37 In the attic story of the Basilica’s front, alternating between the Dacian

supporting figures, was another symbol of their defeat: reliefs of captured Dacian arms.

The base of the Column of Trajan repeated this motif.38 Horses and military standards

topped the attics of the Basilica’s porches with the formula, “ex manubiis,” proclaiming

that the spoils of the Dacian wars paid for all of this magnificence.39

The third prominent element in the Forum’s iconographical scheme was the army.

Names of legions and units that served heroically in the Dacian campaigns appeared con-


spicuously, carved in huge letters on the parapet above the Dacians and the imagines cli-

peatae.40 It is significant that Trajan chose these big inscriptions—rather than, say, three-

dimensional statues of soldiers—to represent the army. It is true that images of every as-

pect of the army’s work, detailed so that one could identify the type of soldiers and perhaps

even their units, took center stage on the great column.41 But naming specific units in

written form on the attic panels had a distinct purpose. A unit, such as a 1,000-man or

500-man cohort, was a collective whose eªective fighting entitled it to share in the final

victory. A veteran who saw his unit’s name high up on the parapets, along with other

honored divisions, remembered that success in war came from the obedience of every

man in the unit to the chain of command—all the way up to Trajan himself. The unit’s

name constituted an eªective synecdoche for the nonmilitary viewer as well; his civic work

was like the unit’s military work, and he had to obey orders for it to be successful. This

is only one of many examples that we will meet in this book where a viewer needed to

possess some degree of literacy to receive a message aimed at him. We will fully discuss

non-elite literacy in later chapters. One thing is certain: for both military and civic view-

ers, the virtues of careful organization and intelligent command of all the army’s parts


FIGURE 14

Rome, Forum of Trajan, order of east colonnade, bay.

formed the compelling theme in these inscribed names and in the images of the army

on the Column.

HOW TO READ THE COLUMN?

The tripartite iconography of Trajan, Dacians, and army set the stage for scrutiny of the

Column itself. The Column, unlike the many Roman monuments that remained buried

until the nineteenth century, has always been visible and available for study.42 Scholars

have thought of the Column’s helical frieze, with some 2,500 figures and 154 recogniza-

ble scenes, primarily as a source of information about the Dacian wars. Only one line of

Trajan’s own account of the two campaigns of 101–2 and 105–6 survives, and what re-

mains of Dio Cassius’s history are two brief and confusing abstracts: Excerpta prepared

in the tenth century and the Epitome produced by Xiphilinus in the eleventh century.43

Little wonder that scholars over the centuries have tried to reconstruct the great wars from

the Column’s reliefs.

Unfortunately this project is doomed. In his 1927 monograph Karl Lehmann proved

that the artist composed the Column’s reliefs by creating variations on six stock scenes,

or topoi, generally repeated in the same order.44 Although the end product looks like a

continuous narrative, the same six scenes are repeated, with variations, throughout.45The

army journeys, then builds, then the emperor prepares for battle by sacrificing, then he

addresses the troops. The army battles. The sixth stock scene focuses on the enemy rather

than on the Romans and their work: we see the Dacian barbarians, brought as prisoners

or coming as ambassadors to Trajan. Although the stock scenes vary in length and de-

tails, they are the building blocks of a narrative that has much more to do with the tech-

niques of Greek and Roman epic poetry than with those of modern history.

Yet this is not to say that the Column lacks references to specific events. We see, for

instance, an image of the great bridge over the Danube that Apollodorus of Damascus

built;46we see the submission of the Dacians at the end of the first campaign at their cap-

ital, Sarmizegetusa;47 at the top of the Column we see the conclusion of the second cam-

paign, with Roman soldiers pursuing the Dacians’ leader, Decebalus;48we see Decebalus’s

suicide,49 and Roman soldiers displaying his severed head and right hand on a platter.50

Yet even in all this detail the narrative is an epitomized one.51 These specific scenes, like

the stock scenes themselves, are key images that stand for narrative—a narrative we will

never know fully from studying the visual representation. There is even an allegorical

representation of the time between the two campaigns: halfway up the Column, after the

scene of the submission of the Dacians at the end of the first campaign, the figure of Vic-

tory writes the (temporary) triumph on a shield.52

Stock scenes and salient details—if not the stuª of historical illustration—then what?

What was the purpose of the imagery on the Column of Trajan? What messages did it

have for its intended viewers? Furthermore, how did the ancient viewer see its imagery?


All viewers knew that it was a wondrous invention, a helical frieze winding twenty-three

times around the Column that told the story of Trajan’s two campaigns against the Da-

cians. Yet when we begin to question how exactly an ancient visitor would have gone about

trying to view that “history,” problems arise (plate 2). The Column itself was 100 Roman

feet (29.8 m) high, and it stood on a podium that was 5.4 meters (17 1/2 feet) in height.53

The ancient visitor emerging from the basilica into the small courtyard that contained it

(24.8 × 18.3 m, or 801/2 × 591/2 feet) had a maximum of only 6 meters (191/2 feet) to view

the base of the Column and the shaft.54 The distance from the doors of either library to

the base was only 9 meters (29 feet).

What could a viewer actually see? There are two doorways from the Basilica Ulpia,

each oª-axis with the Column and opening onto the colonnade around it. The viewer

could read the dedicatory inscription and inspect the relief of captured Dacian arms that

decorated the base. Walking around the Column, he could understand that there was a

narrative, and could determine from the composition of the reliefs that it read from left

to right. But he would not have been able to examine the reliefs in detail because of the

excessive foreshortening of the spirals as he craned his neck upwards. It is unclear whether

there were viewing terraces located on a second level, on the loggias of the libraries and

the Basilica Ulpia, and it is highly unlikely that there was a terrace or balcony area in

front of the Temple of the Divine Trajan.55 At most, these higher vantage points would

have allowed the viewer, at a distance of perhaps 9 meters (about 30 feet) from the ground

and 6 meters (about 20 feet) from the Column, to scrutinize another three or four wind-

ings closely. Even so, it would not have been possible to circle the Column from these

hypothetical terraces. The ancient viewer did have one distinct advantage, however, for

the relief was painted in realistic colors, and bronze weapons—today gone—would have

completed the gestures of now empty-handed fighters. He could distinguish key players

by matching up the colors of their distinctive dress: Trajan, Decebalus, the legionaries,

and so on.

Memory of both verbal and visual accounts would have also helped the contemporary

spectator. Viewers of the Column—at least in the years immediately following the great

conflict—would have had in their minds the stories of the campaigns of the war, narrated

by storytellers and veterans, and read in Trajan’s own commentary. Visual accounts might

include the triumphal paintings that soldiers carried in procession when Trajan celebrated

the final victory, put on display in a public space after the celebration.56 Gauer has pro-

posed that there was a scale model of the Column, with detailed rendering of its reliefs,

on view nearby.57 I believe—but cannot prove—that Romans in Trajan’s time could have

seen a copy of the Column’s reliefs at full scale, on display temporarily in the Basilica

Ulpia itself or permanently in one of the many porticoes where Roman generals and em-

perors had displayed art for over three centuries. But even with these aids, the experience

of viewing the helical frieze on the Column itself was diªerent from that of hearing or

reading the narrative—or even seeing it in ground-level replicas.


VERTICAL READING

Scholars have convincingly argued that the artist planned for vertical reading patterns so

that the viewer did not have to circle the Column. Instead of reading the helical frieze

from right to left, as one reads lines of text, viewers scanned the Column from bottom to

top while standing at one of the four sides of the plaza that contained it.58 The Column

is the most important axis-marker in the plan of the forum, and it has four distinct sides.

The window slits that light the spiral staircase inside the column acknowledge these four

sides: the architect centered them over the midpoints of the faces of the square base. The

south side was the principal one, marked by the doorway into the Column base. Behind

the door, within a special chamber to the north side of the pedestal, rested the ashes of

Trajan and his wife Plotina.59 The north side faced the front of the Temple of the Divine

Trajan, both the expression of Trajan’s apotheosis and the end of the Forum’s long axis.

East and west of the Column were the Greek and Latin libraries. From these four princi-

pal viewing points, the ancient viewer could engage in reading correspondences between

scenes and figures, his eye moving up and down the Column’s shaft.

Both Brilliant and Settis illustrate how vertical reading would have created units of

meaning for the ancient viewer. Brilliant proposes that following the helical frieze con-

tinuously (an impossibility in fact) was an “annalistic” treatment, and that reading it in

terms of Lehmann’s six repeated stock scenes was an “iconic” mode, but that recogniz-

ing the relationships among vertical groups, with several windings together making a unit

of meaning, was an “imagistic” code.60 Settis expands upon Brilliant’s observations, pro-

viding a complex menu of viewing possibilities.61Whether one agrees with either scholar’s

proposed groupings in all their details, they emphasize how essential it is to consider the

viewer’s activity in the act of “reading.” Unfortunately, despite the sophistication of their

analysis, neither scholar questions who that viewer was: again the viewer is the omni-

scient scholar.

Burkhard Fehr is the only scholar to date to ask questions about the reception of the

Column’s message by a specific group, in this case the noncombatant elites in Rome.62

In “The Military as Visual Motif: Political Function and Group-specific Perception of the

Forum and Column of Trajan,” he proposes that the special stress that the artist places

on the careful organization and coordination of the army’s activities constituted a pointed

message for a civilian audience, especially the senators and equestrians (equites). The artist

devoted exceptional attention to spelling out the hierarchies within the Roman chain of

command and to showing how Trajan commanded all the army’s personnel—from the

elite praetorian guards all the way down to the most exotic and un-Roman barbarian troops.

He depicts Trajan as the omnipresent First Leader (princeps), overseeing every detail of

the campaigns: we see him marching with the troops, supervising the building of gar-

risons, propitiating the gods with sacrifices, rousing his troops to fight, commanding the

battles, and receiving barbarian delegations. Trajan represents the epitome of the most

important Roman virtues: he exhibits virtus (manly courage), pietas (piety), clementia


(clemency toward the enemy). In Fehr’s interpretation, these images of Trajan as able ad-

ministrator and pious citizen had a pointed meaning for elite viewers: the Column’s em-

phasis on clear organizational hierarchies was a metaphor for the organization of the Ro-

man state. The Column’s message was that civic society should work like—and be as

eªective as—Trajan’s military. I would like to pursue similar questions of reception by

focusing on several diªerent kinds of viewers, all of them non-elite.

FINDING YOURSELF AND THE OTHER ON THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN

We have seen how the imagery of the Forum and Basilica set out a relationship among

Trajan, the Dacians, and the army. We find this same relationship on the Column, where

the artist gives to all three faces, bodies, costumes, and a script. In his visual realization

he elaborates the identities of a great number of non-Romans—not just the Dacians and

their allies but also the noncitizen members of the Army. I believe that the Column’s em-

phasis on the non-Roman people on both sides of the war addressed a particular audi-

ence in Rome, that of citizens of foreign communities (called peregrini), slaves, and for-

mer slaves.63 For them, the story on the Column was an account of the Roman system of

conquest, colonization, and Romanization that they had experienced firsthand.

Several historical observations are particularly relevant to understanding the reactions

of non-elite viewers to the Column’s imagery. The Dacians, although barbarians in name,

were representatives of a highly developed power. Their gold and silver mines produced

great wealth. They were skilled warriors: they had successfully fought the Romans under

Domitian (a.d. 85–89).64The Dacians willingly accepted Roman deserters—many of them

specialists in building defenses and war machines. The Dacians also added to their might

by striking alliances with other tribes of the region. Theirs was a stratified society, with

Decebalus and the other nobles (called pileati because they wore conical hats) at the top,

the comati, or shaggy-haired warriors, in the middle, and slaves at the bottom. The artist

of the Column took some care to depict the Dacian hierarchy, including in his purview a

variety of Dacian people—from high-ranking men, women, and children to the near-sav-

age. Although the artist looked to models in Hellenistic art for some body types and com-

positions, he does not present the Dacians as generic barbarians. It is true that the artist

omits their armor (although captured Dacian armor appears on the Column’s base and

in the Forum’s friezes), and he often shows them running from Roman pursuers, but he

also communicates their valor.65 Their fearless actions, such as the nobles’ mass-suicide

within a besieged and doomed garrison, also come through clearly.66 Finally, and most

importantly for our purposes, the final fall of Dacia brought—in addition to tremendous

wealth in silver and gold—50,000 Dacian slaves to Rome.67 This was the last massive

influx of slaves into the city.

Because the paradigm of Black slavery, established in Europe and the Americas in the

modern period, predominates in contemporary Euro-American constructions of slavery,

it is important to stress that the majority of Roman slaves were Caucasian. Persons of all


ethnicities could be—and were—slaves. Slaves coming from the great centers of Hel-

lenistic culture, like Alexandria, Pergamon, and Athens, continued their professions in

Rome. They served as teachers, scribes, secretaries, engineers, architects, and doctors.

Slaves ran the businesses of their elite owners, who shrank from commerce. The prom-

ise of freedom provided slaves the incentive for productivity: they could buy their free-

dom or have it awarded for good service.68

One cannot think of the system of Roman slavery without attending to the in-between

status of freed slaves. Freedmen and freedwomen designated their status by the term li-

bertini or liberti, abbreviated as l. or lib. in tomb inscriptions. Freedpersons still owed alle-

giance to their former masters and often continued to oversee their masters’ commercial

enterprises. But they were free to marry. Most importantly, although slaves became Ro-

man citizens upon manumission, their civic privileges were limited. But their children

would be freeborn and thus could claim the same rights as other freeborn citizens, in-

cluding holding public o‹ces and priesthoods.69

Parallel to the process of Roman slaves moving up in society through gaining free-

dom was the process of becoming a Roman citizen through service in the army. The Ro-

man army in Trajan’s time consisted of about 350,000 men. Of these, probably 140,000

were legionaries, several thousand praetorians, and about 200,000 auxiliaries.70 Although

only Roman citizens could serve in the legions and praetorian guard, the auxiliaries did

not possess Roman citizenship. The Romans enrolled auxiliaries from among the for-

mer barbarians living within conquered territories (peregrini). Further down in the army’s

hierarchy were the symmachiarii. The term means “those who fight with” the army, and

in the Dacian wars there is at least one named unit of symmachiarii (Asturum), recog-

nizable on the Column because the men fight barechested.71 For all of these non-Roman

fighters the prize to be won—in addition to the meager pay—was Roman citizenship.72

For the foreigner, slave, or former slave looking at the Column of Trajan, the abundant

images of outsiders—both Dacians and non-Roman soldiers—constituted a visual digest

of the steps such a person took from being outside the Roman system to being part of it.

Just as he carefully diªerentiated among the Dacians and delineated their social hier-

archies, the artist represented in remarkable detail the dress, weapons, fighting styles,

and even the physiognomies of each component of Trajan’s army. Estimates place the num-

ber of soldiers who crossed the Danube with Trajan into Dacian territories around 50,000,

with a like number poised to protect garrisons on the river’s right bank. But for our in-

vestigation the most interesting fact about the great war is this: men who were not Ro-

man citizens did most of the fighting. As Rossi points out, there are twenty major battle

scenes represented on the Column. The auxiliaries take part in nineteen of them, the le-

gionaries and/or praetorians are to be found in seven, while auxilia and symmachiarii

fight alone in twelve. Division of the labor of warfare is clearcut: legionaries build

fortifications, handle provisioning and moving troops, and operate long-distance weapons

such as the ballista, a crossbow with a range of 500 yards.73

But in the fray of battle we see the non-Roman soldiers: the auxiliaries with their light


armor and oval shields; symmachiarii, barechested and fighting with clubs;74 the light

cavalry from Mauretania (modern-day Morocco) in North Africa, with their corkscrew

curls;75 Syrian archers with conical helmets and long dresses;76 and slingshot fighters from

Spain.77 In addition to their distinctive dress and weapons, the auxiliaries and irregular

soldiers retain barbarous traits: only auxiliaries, for example, bring back bloody enemy

heads to show to Trajan.78 Trajan—as the bulk of the evidence indicates—was the patron

of the Column, overseeing its imagery in some manner—perhaps quite directly.79 He

wanted to make it clear what a prominent role non-Romans took in winning the victory,

and that the Dacians were worthy opponents. Why?

For all viewers, the images of non-Romans helping the Romans suggested that Ro-

man power was so great that it organized even barbarians.80 But for the non-elites who

looked at the Column, its message was more pointed. It told the outsider—foreigner, slave,

and even ex-slave—that the non-Romans were fighting the war both to serve Trajan, the

best prince of all, and to become full-fledged Romans. For a man serving in the auxil-

iaries or even as a symmachiarius, the greatest prize was to win honors and even citi-

zenship. Twenty-five years’ service—or exceptional valor—brought these non-Romans

citizenship.81 Rossi points out that of the seventy-six units of auxilia (both alae of cavalry

and cohortes of infantry) that served in the Dacian Wars, seventeen have the title “of Ro-

man citizens” (civium Romanorum) on their unit’s name.82 The inscriptions in the attic

stories of the Forum may have even demonstrated this process of gaining citizenship

through valor with the abbreviation c. R.

There is yet another parallel between the military model and the civic model of work-

ing one’s way up: it seems likely that the east apse of the Basilica Ulpia was the Atrium

Libertatis (Hall of Freedom), where the ceremony of giving slaves their freedom took

place.83 Viewers who had received their freedom in the Basilica must have felt a special

a‹nity for the image on the Column showing Trajan himself awarding money (and per-

haps citizenship) to courageous outsider soldiers. This scene, called the dona militaria,

shows an auxiliary soldier kneeling at the emperor’s feet and kissing his hand; a second

soldier departs carrying a sack of booty on his shoulder (fig. 15).84

Finally, beyond these two ways of becoming fully Roman—manumission from slav-

ery and service in the army—there was the process of being conquered and annexed to

the Empire. This is the action that the Romans finally take against the Dacians. At the

top of the Column, after Decebalus’s suicide, we see Roman soldiers destroying Dacian

towns and forcing their inhabitants to relocate at new settlements outside of Dacia.85 For

a peregrinus, these images of dislocation and forced Romanization may have represented

both the tyranny of colonial practice and the eªective erasure of his or her culture. Just

as the barbarian serving in the army would gradually give up native dress and religion,

so Roman conquerors did everything possible to “civilize” the natives of a region.

Pointedly, after the failed first campaign of the Dacian wars, the artist devotes consid-

erable space to representing the army’s progress through Dalmatia—already Romanized—

where the emperor sacrifices to the acclaim of the Romanized population in a Roman-


style walled city with beautifully rendered temple and theater.86 In the further reaches of

Dalmatia, the Romans appear in fortified towns where local deities have merged with the

Roman pantheon. As Trajan advances into Dacia he once again sacrifices at an altar sur-

rounded by a mixed population. The men, women, and children—in both Roman and

Dacian-looking dress—acclaim their emperor.87 In contrast, the desperate vanquished

Dacians in the Column’s last windings were the raw material that Trajan would make into

new Romans. Many of the viewers, themselves fully assimilated foreigners, must have

remembered this process of Romanization from their own experiences.

The largely positive emphasis on the non-Roman, the Other, within the complex of

Forum, Basilica, and Column leads one to suspect that Trajan was trying to compensate

for the negative side of the story. In fact, in Rome it was becoming more di‹cult for freed-

men to move up in society, partly because Trajan himself helped to establish the legal dis-

tinctions between the upper orders (the honestiores) and the lower (the humiliores) that we

discussed in the Introduction.88No matter how wealthy they became, freedmen remained

humiliores, and suªered greater penalties than the honestiores in every aspect of civic


FIGURE 15

Rome, Column of Trajan, XLII–XLV. Dona militaria.

life, from payment of taxes to penal actions.89 This de facto suppression of the freedmen

class enhanced the opportunities of freeborn “new men” (novi homines) from the provinces

to gain political clout at Rome. Trajan himself was a new man from Italica in the province

of Baetica, near modern Seville, Spain.90 In mapping out the concept of self-improvement

through Romanization, Trajan’s Forum, Basilica, and Column proclaimed a benevolence

that masked the hard realities for outsiders—especially the non-elite functionaries—the

slave and freedmen lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers, surveyors, and teachers who

would have frequented the Forum and especially the libraries flanking the Column.91Tra-

jan’s complex projected a success story, where the Emperor’s virtues and the army’s obe-

dience to the rules brought about victory through hard and persistent work.

A free foreigner from the Danube region viewing the Column’s imagery would have

recognized the people—perhaps his former neighbors—and would have recalled his own

experiences of the imposition of Roman military and civic order. He may have either ap-

plauded or detested the way the Column translated the conquest into heroic, monumental

form. As a person who had left his “barbarian” homeland for the Romans’ capital city, he

may have enjoyed its grand public spaces, its complex civic order, and its systems of pub-

lic assistance for the working and unemployed poor. Or he may have rankled at the way

the Column celebrated Rome’s inflexible cultural imperialism.

If our viewer was still a slave, the imagery of the Column, Basilica, and Forum may

have held out the promise of freedom. Nevertheless it constituted a warning that Roman

virtues, rather than Dacian or other “barbarian” virtues, were the ones to cultivate. If he

was already free, the imagery laid out—in military terms—the steps to greater prestige

and glory through service to the princeps. A recently freed slave, thinking on his hard-

won status, would have understood the parallels to the path he had taken and the dreams

he might have for his children.

Trajan’s forum marked both a high point and a fault line in the Empire. Although his suc-

cessor, Hadrian, put a stop to further expansion of the Empire, it became increasingly

di‹cult to control barbarian incursions, with the result that Marcus Aurelius (161–180)

spent most of his rule fighting barbarians in the north. By the time of Marcus Aurelius’s

death it was clear that the good old days were not to return. In the following chapter we

look at new visual strategies for projecting the emperor’s numinous power—and the sup-

posed harmony within Roman society—to ordinary viewers.


2

THE ALL-SEEING EMPEROR AND ORDINARY VIEWERS

MARCUS AURELIUS AND CONSTANTINE

To communicate their intended messages to non-elites, the Ara Pacis and the Column

of Trajan had to show the emperor participating in Roman religion and military service.

On the Ara Pacis, Augustus appears not as omnipotent, divinized emperor but as high-

priest of the Roman state religion, as pontifex maximus. Similarly, Trajan is the high mil-

itary commander, not the divine Trajan he becomes after his death. If most viewers rec-

ognized and embraced the fiction of the emperor as first citizen, it was because they could

still believe in social mobility. With endless war, economic instability, and natural disas-

ters plaguing the empire during the second half of the second century, such sanguine

faith in the future became increasingly fragile. New representations of the emperor’s re-

lationship with his subjects had to address the changed social order. No monument bet-

ter encodes these changes than the Column of Marcus Aurelius.

COMMUNICATING THE EMPEROR’S POWER AND TRANSCENDENCE:

THE COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS

Rome saw momentous changes in the eighty years separating the dedication of the Col-

umn of Trajan and the completion of its “twin,” the Column celebrating Marcus Aurelius’s

victories over a host of trans-Danubian barbarians. Trajan’s Column shows its viewers—

both elite and non-elite—how to achieve success: it preaches the virtues of military or-

42

ganization, right handling of the barbarian enemy, and the proper steps to becoming an

insider to Roman culture. Even though closely modeled on the Column of Trajan, the

Column of Marcus Aurelius presents no such recipes for success. In place of the balance

of forces—emperor, barbarian, and army—that rationalizes warfare through its visual

organization, the Column of Marcus Aurelius isolates and elevates the emperor. It is his

transcendent power that brings victory: power over his army that makes it invincible

against the ghastly barbarian enemy—and, by extension, his power that sustains Rome

itself. How did the artist, working with the Column of Trajan as a model, create this new

image?

The artist both pared down details and employed remarkable new formal devices to

increase legibility. This unknown—and sadly underrated—master was one of the major

exponents of the new visual language that modern art history calls the Late Antique.1Many

of his devices have to do with composition: he reduced the number of windings from

twenty-three to twenty to allow a slight increase in their height; he placed fewer figures

in his compositions, and he eliminated complex details of landscape and architecture.

Other devices have to do with style: he made the relief deeper, with ample use of the run-

ning and stationary drill to create dramatic detachment of light from shadow—this in

contrast to the even modeling and fussy detail on Trajan’s Column.

His most striking device is the so-called frontal composition.2 If in looking at the Col-

umn of Trajan, we seem to be watching the unfolding of a story within its own space—

“out there”—it is because the artist emphasizes the landscape setting, and consistently

combines profile views with the figures’ left-to-right movement. Not so with the Column

of Marcus Aurelius; the artist emphasizes figures rather than their setting, and he con-

stantly interrupts left-to-right reading patterns with eye-catching frontal compositions.

Two symmetrical groups will meet at a center point, as in the macabre scene of Marco-

manni forced to behead their own countrymen (fig. 16). Most frequently, it is Marcus

Aurelius who is in the center of a symmetrical grouping, represented frontally or in three-

quarters view, so that he looks out at you. This constitutes, in contrast to the predomi-

nantly profile rendering of Trajan and his soldiers, direct address to the viewer and a rup-

ture of the “annalistic” reading of the helical frieze. These are the formal means that

connect image with viewer in such a forceful new way. What new content does this new

style serve?

The answer to this question lies in the element of the Column of Marcus Aurelius that

diverges the most from its predecessor—its base. Unfortunately, it is also the element

that is the hardest to analyze, for it has suªered the greatest damage. Because two-thirds

of the base lies buried, its original profile and configuration, as well as the relation of the

column to surrounding buildings, is still conjectural. The original doorway opening into

the base lies 2.65 meters (81/2 feet) below the modern piazza. Yet the other ancient build-

ings and streets around the column were 3 meters (10 feet) lower than this entrance. In

his comparative study of the Column of Trajan and the Column of Marcus Aurelius, Giu-

seppe Gatti concluded that the two columns, although nearly identical in their proportions,

T H E A L L - S E E I N G E M P E R O R • 43

FIGURE 16

Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXI. Marcomanni beheading their countrymen.

FIGURE 17

Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, base. Detail of engraving by Vico, 1540.

had quite diªerent eªects on the viewer. Whereas the Column of Trajan occupied a small

and enclosed space, that of Marcus Aurelius dominated all the buildings of the Cam-

pus Martius, so that a viewer traveling along the via Flaminia would have seen the bronze

statue of Marcus Aurelius at its top, nearly 50 meters (about 163 feet) above.3 On the

one hand, it is di‹cult to assess the eªect that the Column’s higher elevation had on

the viewer—other than making the reliefs that wind around it harder to read from the

ground. The eªect of the big figural relief on the base, on the other hand, contrasts

strikingly with the representation of piled-up arms that covers the base of the Column

of Trajan.

We can reconstruct part of the imagery on the base of the Column of Marcus Aure-

lius using drawings and prints made before 1589, when Domenico Fontana, at the order

of Pope Sixtus V, shaved oª all remaining relief decoration.4 Francisco d’Ollanda’s draw-

ing of 1539–40 shows the north side, decorated with the figures of four equally spaced

victories who stand with swagged garlands between them.5 Scholars assume that the artist

repeated this subject on the west and south sides of the base. Enea Vico’s engraving, ex-

ecuted around 1540, gives us a view of the principal frieze that faced the via Flaminia.6

Here the artist employed the same kind of frontal composition that appears repeatedly

in the helical frieze—although on a much larger scale (fig. 17). Its purpose was to artic-

ulate the relationship between Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, his son and heir to the

throne. Commodus, in fact, did not appear in the reliefs above.7

Two figures dominate the center of the relief, and they balance each other in pose. The

man on the right, dressed in a cuirass partially covered by a cloak, looks out at the viewer

while extending his right arm toward the man on the left, who wears a body-cuirass and

turns toward a group of two kneeling barbarians guarded by two standing Roman sol-

diers. Becatti convincingly identified the pair as Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and

proposed that the smaller figure at the center who looks toward Commodus and the bar-

barians might be Pompeianus, the emperor’s right-hand man who accompanied him

throughout the long campaigns.8Commodus’s dramatic gesture of delivering the captive

barbarians to Marcus Aurelius asserts his key role in both the war and the victory. By plac-

ing himself in this large relief, the most conspicuous and legible on the Column, Com-

modus made the Column a victory monument that advertised his close relation with his

heroic father.

The composition itself is not new. It is a stock scene of submission (submissio) that an

ancient viewer would have recognized because it appeared everywhere: on coins, in re-

liefs, and in statuary groups. Since it is likely that Commodus himself commissioned the

Column, the role he gave himself on its base constituted wishful thinking.9 After Mar-

cus died in the field in 180, Commodus—no soldier like his father—hastily concluded

the burdensome warfare by buying oª the Marcomanni and Sarmatians.10 Commodus

manipulated history not only by highlighting his role in the barbarians’ submission, but

also by using Trajan’s Column as a model. The Column of Marcus Aurelius is one of


history’s great examples of compensatory appropriation or, perhaps better put,

acclamation by association. It is not hard to understand that Commodus wished the

Column to proclaim absolute victory over rude and worthless barbarians: for a whole gen-

eration Rome had suªered the barbarian crisis, years of plague, and repeated threats of

economic collapse. Nor is the artist’s framing of Marcus Aurelius as a godlike philosopher-

emperor di‹cult to comprehend, given Commodus’s need to establish his father as a

god. Yet why, in view of the Column of Trajan’s optimistic messages for the peregrinus,

slave, and ex-slave, and even for foreigners along the Danube, does the Column of Mar-

cus Aurelius remove so many nuances? The barbarians become generic, suªering, sav-

age creatures; the army homogeneous and robot-like; the emperor a commander, yes, but

one with numinous powers who stares out at the viewers as often as he looks at his men.

If we consider the Column’s setting, we see that it is a monument to dynasty. Trajan

did not adopt his successor, Hadrian—unless on his deathbed. Unlike Augustus, who

made his burial place—and even his forum—a statement about the foundation and con-

tinuation of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Trajan made no proclamation of a blood dynasty.

His plans for succession were unclear at the time of his premature death, since he had

not named an heir. Although he planned from the beginning to be buried in the base of

his Column, the column itself constitutes a statement of but one of the accomplishments

of his reign.11 By contrast, everything about the setting of the Column of Marcus Aure-

lius conveys the notion of dynasty. It connects visually and physically with a group of mon-

uments erected by the Antonines, starting with Hadrian’s Mausoleum, to the west, and the

Temple of the Deified Hadrian, to the south, and continuing with the nearby cremation-

sanctuary (ustrinum) and column of Antoninus Pius and Faustina (fig. 18).12

Paradoxically, both Hadrian and Antoninus Pius had to adopt their heirs, their own

male children having died, so that Commodus was the only bloodline Antonine. It is clear

that the Column was of utmost importance in advertising his lineage. He placed the Col-

umn within the precinct honoring the deceased members of the Antonine dynasty, thereby

using it to align himself with his father’s valor and, by association, with that of Trajan.

Furthermore, Commodus appeared in the Column’s most conspicuous position, in the

submission scene that adorned its base, facing the via Flaminia. These messages of vic-

tory, piety, and dynastic succession addressed all viewers, elite and non-elite alike. But in

the end, Commodus proved to be the weakest of the Antonines. Angry at his excesses,

his advisers had him strangled by a champion wrestler on 31 December 192.

Analysis of what the artist (and therefore Commodus, the patron) chose to include and

exclude from the menu oªered by the Column of Trajan allows us to pinpoint the Col-

umn’s messages to the non-elite viewer. In content the Column of Marcus Aurelius is

even less a historical record than that of Trajan. The artist copied many scenes from the

Column of Trajan directly, even retaining their relative places in the windings: the army’s

march across a pontoon bridge at the beginning of the frieze; the figure of Victory writ-

ing on a shield halfway up—facing the via Flamina just as in the submission scene on

the base; the legionaries assaulting a barbarian gate in the tortoise (testudo) formation,


their shields interwoven to cover the top and sides of a walking wedge. The six stock scenes

appear as well, with the diªerence that the artist has pared the scenes of building down

to just two,13 in contrast to the nineteen on the Column of Trajan (where the artist even

provides an elaborate scene of Dacians building fortifications).14 The only stock scenes

to appear in equal numbers on both columns are those of battles and of barbarian en-

voys. Unique to the Column are two “miracles.” The artist pictured two natural catastro-

phes that the Romans took to be miracles: lightning striking and destroying an enemy

siege engine,15 and a violent rainstorm in the land of the Quadii that devastated the en-

emy while providing much-needed water for the Romans.16

READING PATTERNS, THE ART OF COMPARISON,

AND RHETORICAL ADDRESS

Fundamental to the practice of art history is the slide comparison; Heinrich Wöl›in’s

use of lantern-slide comparisons to illustrate his lectures at the turn of the century was


N

Mausoleumof Augustus

Ustrinumof Augustus V

IADELCORSO/VIAFLAMINIA

Sundialof Augustus

Obeliskof Augustus

Ara Pacis

Ustrinum ofMarcus Aurelius

Ustrinum of Antoninus Pius

Column ofAntoninus

Pius

Column ofMarcus Aurelius

VIA RECTA

VIADIRIPETTA

FIGURE 18

Rome, plan of area around

Column of Marcus Aurelius.

FIGURE 19

Rome, Column of Trajan, CXXXVI–CXXXVII. Adlocutio with “horseshoe” composition.

FIGURE 20

Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, IX. Adlocutio with “horseshoe” composition.

perhaps the founding moment of the modern discipline.17 Visual comparison of two

similar but distinct artworks is a pedagogical technique that facilitates discussion of for-

mal and stylistic diªerences, period style, dating, and even the flow of iconographical mod-

els. Seen from the perspective of the discipline of art history, the two columns are a ready-

made slide lecture, and much of the art-historical literature treats them as such. We

assume, perhaps, that the ancient Roman viewer saw the same similarities and diªer-

ences as we do, but unless Commodus arranged an exhibition with images of the two

columns’ reliefs arranged side-by-side at ground level, the ancient viewer had nothing

like our photographic comparisons. Furthermore, he or she was not an art historian,

but a person with a diªerent set of cultural practices, who had specific ideas about im-

itation and oratory.

For someone who had regularly viewed the Column of Trajan over a period of many

years, seeing the Column of Marcus Aurelius, freshly freed of its scaªolding, would have

been like seeing an old friend in new or unusual clothes. The shape and size were right;

so were the dominant features. Yet the details were diªerent. Vertical sweeps of the im-

agery would have assured the viewer that essential scenes were there: the scenes copied

directly from the Column of Trajan, such as the initial Danube crossing, the Victory halfway

up, the testudo, and so on. He would have identified the stock scenes easily, perhaps not-

ing how the artist had nearly edited out scenes of building while increasing the brutality

of the battle scenes. But what would have stood out most in comparing the two columns

were the new frontal compositions featuring the emperor, framed symmetrically and look-

ing out.

Trajan never looks out at the viewer—not even in those scenes of adlocutio where his

soldiers group around him in a horseshoe formation, so that we look over the shoulders

of the ones closest to us (fig. 19). Trajan’s head may be in three-quarter’s view, but he is

still clearly speaking to his soldiers: he is not addressing us, the viewers. The ancient

viewer would have noticed that Marcus Aurelius, in contrast to Trajan, was addressing

him or her—even in the scenes of address to the soldiers. Marcus, like the orator speak-

ing from the rostra in the Forum, casts his gaze and directs his gestures toward the viewer

(fig. 20).

Habits of vertical reading that the viewer had formed in sorting out the imagery on

the older Column would have found distinct—even dramatic—reinforcement on the new

one. The symmetrical compositions with matching elements to either side of the central

figure of Marcus Aurelius (his clothing probably of a distinctive color) emphasized the

vertical axis traced by the viewer’s eye moving up and down the column’s side; such com-

positions were far more direct in the Column of Marcus Aurelius than in the Column of

Trajan. By depicting the emperor’s face frontally, looking out at the viewer, the artist was

setting up visual oratory. Marcus Aurelius directly addressed the viewer in the plaza be-

low. The emperor, now deceased and deified, was stepping out of the historical past to

speak to him or her in the present.


ABSTRACTION, EMPATHY, AND TRANSCENDENT LEADERSHIP

It seems likely that four generations after the completion of the Column of Trajan, when

the events and places of the Dacian wars had receded from collective memory, ancient

viewers must have found many of the scenes and details on the Column of Trajan di‹cult

to decipher. There was less detail to speculate about on the new Column. Its simpler, less

cluttered scenes, rendered in frontal compositions with deep chiaroscuro, encouraged

the viewer to see them as symbolic condensations rather than specific elements of a lin-

ear history or narrative.

Soldiers are no longer individuals, striking varied, naturalistic poses. When they march,

they march as a unit: the artist simplifies their movement through conspicuous repeti-

tion to make them as one (fig. 21). When they kill, they kill e‹ciently; in contrast to the

Column of Trajan, there are no dramatic battles of uncertain outcome. Furthermore, there

is much less space for barbarians, whether in battle or scenes portraying envoys. In con-

trast to the Column of Trajan’s eªorts to portray the Dacians as complex and noble op-

ponents, the artist of the Column of Marcus Aurelius eliminates signs of the enemy’s hi-

erarchical organization, building achievements, and way of life.


FIGURE 21

Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXVII. Soldiers on the march.

What is new are images of the horrors of war: the stabbing of barbarians with spears,

the pursuit of a fleeing barbarian woman with child, and gruesome mass decapitation

(figs. 22 and 23; see also fig. 16). The artist of the Column of Marcus Aurelius strives for

expressive eªects rather than classical balance by making his figures plunge headlong

into battle, grimace pathetically, and die brutally—not posing them prettily like the dead

on the Column of Trajan. Often, like Marcus Aurelius, barbarians look directly out of the

action at the viewer, as if to plead for mercy from the spectator. These pathetic figures

might have reminded Roman viewers of the amphitheater, where vanquished gladiators

pleaded for their lives with similar gestures.


FIGURE 22

Rome, Column of Marcus

Aurelius, LXVIII–LXIX.

Execution of barbarians.

FIGURE 23


Aurelius, LXXIX. Pursuit of

barbarian women.

The message to the elite is relatively simple: the emperor is invincible and his army

an e‹cient fighting machine even against a wild and savage threat. The outcome is—

and always will be—victory. For the foreigner, slave, and freedman the picture is much

less optimistic, for the imagery on the Column of Marcus Aurelius oªers no pattern for

progress through the ranks in its depiction of either barbarians or army. It oªers, instead,

the barbarian as monster, freak, and nonhuman, incapable of redemption by Romaniza-

tion. Nor does the representation of the army emphasize the diversity of its makeup; much

more important, in this time of crisis, to represent the army as a monolithic fighting ma-

chine that will protect the city and its inhabitants.

The emperor’s agency, too, has changed. If the Column of Trajan conveys a message

of social order—and an ordered moving through the ranks—to achieve Romanness, it is

because of Trajan’s constant engagement in details of organization. By presenting him

always in profile view, looking into the unfolding action, the artist emphasizes Trajan’s

executive role. By showing Marcus Aurelius in frontal view, the artist suggests that the

emperor, although engaged in action, does not need to be engaged—whether he is ad-

dressing his troops, performing a sacrifice, or observing a messenger entering camp

(fig. 24). How would the foreigner, slave, and freedman have understood this visual rep-

resentation of Marcus’s power?

On the one hand, the contemporary viewer may have known that Marcus Aurelius

was a Stoic, who proclaimed his Stoic way of life in his Meditations.18 On the Column his

actions demonstrate Stoic virtues, along with the virtues of pietas (respect for the gods)

and clementia (clemency), especially evident in Marcus’s relationship to the two miracu-


FIGURE 24


Aurelius, CI. Messenger

arriving.

lous events depicted: the lightning bolt that destroys the enemy’s siege engine and the

wondrous rain in the land of the Quadii.19 Seen in this light, the Column is an exemplum

virtutis (model of virtue) for the common person. The emperor looks out at the non-elite

viewer in the same way that he looks out at his army, and his exhortation to both is the

same: obey and act together for the common good. Even while Marcus Aurelius is ad-

dressing his troops he is addressing you; just as they achieve victory against savage non-

Roman forces through unquestioning obedience, so should you stay in your place and

obey. You are part of a civilian order, and like the army, you are a cog in the machinery of

Rome. Only by obedience to the emperor and the state will you achieve the virtuous life

and a dignified death, and be remembered after death.

On the other hand, Commodus, as the patron of the Column, may have pushed the

artist to make Marcus Aurelius’s power seem to be that of a god. His power is spiritual—

divine even—a power beyond the moderate limits of Marcus’s Stoic beliefs. Perhaps the

ordinary viewer saw this divinity in the way the artist framed Marcus frontally, in isola-

tion, and usually in nonmilitary garb. His gaze met the viewer’s—especially viewers like

foreigners and slaves who might question his authority—as an icon of power, strength,

and invincibility. Marcus Aurelius did not win wars, like Trajan, through careful atten-

tion to administrative duties, through rational planning and action; he won because he

was a god.

SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, THE AGE OF CRISIS,

AND DIOCLETIAN’S NEW STATE ORDER

The Column of Marcus Aurelius is the visual expression of the profound changes in the

empire that Commodus’s disastrous reign exacerbated: by the time Septimius Severus

took control of the chaos in Rome, the tide had definitively turned against the time-hon-

ored systems of dynasty, army, and empire. Septimius, son of an equestrian, was born in

Leptis Magna in North Africa. At the time of Commodus’s assassination, he was gover-

nor of Upper Pannonia and commander of the largest army on the Danube. On April 13,

193, his troops proclaimed him emperor. Once his claim was secure, he “joined” the An-

tonine dynasty by proclaiming his posthumous adoption by Marcus Aurelius, a fiction

meant to cover the fact that he did not inherit the throne—he took it by military force.20

Septimius then founded his own dynasty, arranging for his sons, Caracalla and Geta, to

succeed him as co-emperors. (Caracalla then murdered his brother to become sole ruler.)

In 203 Septimius erected two arches to commemorate his great victory over the Parthi-

ans, one in the Roman Forum, the other in his native city. The arch in Rome established

new formal and iconographical conventions that proclaimed the full-blown Late Antique—

the Change in Style come to fruition.21 It was also the primary model for Rome’s last tri-

umphal arch, that of Constantine, completed 112 years later.22 Of its many stylistic and

compositional innovations, the most important for this investigation of the non-elite

viewer’s reception was the artists’ new conception of the human figure, especially in the


four relief panels that told the story of the Parthian wars. One artist in particular, the “Se-

veran Master,” completely rejected the proportional system inherited from Hellenistic art

that prescribed figures eight or nine heads high.23 The “new” man was much shorter and

stockier—six or seven heads high. Deep furrows made by the running drill created black

outlines separating one figure from the next, yet the overall impression was of blocks of

individuals acting as one. Instead of using variations in facial and figural types to distin-

guish one man from another, the artist repeated the same type to convey the men’s col-

lective action as a single unit.24

If on the Column of Marcus Aurelius the artist sacrificed the individuality of the sol-

dier and the barbarian for eªects of unified action and reaction, he still articulated diªer-

ence in pose and demeanor. Looking at the soldiers listening to Septimius’s harangue on

the Arch, however, a viewer found little diªerentiation; the soldiers constitute a homo-

geneous block, all equally intent on the emperor’s words (fig. 25). This momentous change

in visual representation finds its fullest expression on the Arch of Constantine.

The great hiatus in state-sponsored art and architecture in Rome between the murder

of Caracalla in 217 and Diocletian’s accession in 284 reflects the focus on the provinces

and away from Rome during the so-called age of the soldier emperors. Many of these em-

perors did not reign long enough to commission new monuments for the city of Rome.

For all practical purposes, during this period it was the army who proclaimed and de-

posed emperors, not the Senate and certainly not the Roman people. Between Caracalla


FIGURE 25

Rome, Arch of Septimius Severus, Roman Forum, southwest panel. Adlocutio.

and Diocletian there were fully twenty-two claimants to the throne, some with reigns as

short as a month, and often with several rival emperors claiming the throne at the same

time.25

Diocletian decentralized power and put it where it would do the most good. Rome, al-

though still the capital, was no longer the sole seat of imperial power. Four rulers, or te-

trarchs, each with his own capital, divided the empire’s defense and administration. An

Augustus of the West, based in Milan, shared power equally with an Augustus of the East,

headquartered in Nicomedia (present-day Iznik across the straits of the Bosporus from

Istanbul). Another set of twin rulers, called Caesares, oversaw the farther reaches of the

empire: one at modern-day Trier in Germany and the other stationed at Thessalonica, in

northern Greece.26 Images of the tetrarchs, looking for all the world like two sets of iden-

tical twins visually cemented in reciprocal embrace, reinforced the central ideology: that

the Augusti held equal power as the senior rulers and, like them, the Caesares shared equal

power as junior rulers—and that they were happy about the fact (fig. 26). At the twenty-

year anniversary of the Augusti’s reigns, they were to abdicate peacefully, allowing the

Caesares to become Augusti: the new Augusti would then appoint new Caesares. This


FIGURE 26

Venice, St. Mark’s Basilica.

Tetrarchs.

four-part division of territory and power, coupled with a ladder-of-succession system, ad-

dressed the need to defend the empire from strategically located capitals; it also improved

control over the army, a force of over 400,000 men—many of whom had never set foot

in Italy, let alone in Rome.

The cost to individuals of Diocletian’s reforms was great. To control headlong inflation,

he established maximum prices for goods and services.27He tied men and women to their

land and to their professions in an eªort to stabilize production and discourage flight to

the cities, where many lived on the dole. The new system of taxation-in-kind addressed

the pay and supply of the army.28 L’Orange characterizes Diocletian’s reforms as the es-

tablishment of the Dominate in place of the Principate: if the old emperors followed Au-

gustus in declaring themselves simply “first citizen,” or princeps, Diocletian and his co-

Augustus, Maximian, were definitively the domini: lords and masters.29

The harmony projected by both textual and visual representations of the tetrarchs

masked conflict, and although Diocletian’s scheduled abdication after twenty years’ co-

rule saw a bloodless change of regime, the tetrarchy was doomed. In the years of turmoil

between 303 and 312 that culminated in Constantine wresting full power from his rivals,

all the inhabitants of the empire accepted the fact that life would never be as it had been

in the good old days.30They eulogized the “Good Emperors”—Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian,

and Marcus Aurelius—as embodiments of what they had lost. The Arch of Constantine—

even more than the Column of Marcus Aurelius—systematically appropriated the rep-

resentations of these Good Emperors even while forging powerful visual codes to illus-

trate the new order. Its messages to the non-elite were clear and unequivocal.

THE GOOD EMPERORS AND CONSTANTINE

If Commodus, in creating the Column of Marcus Aurelius in the likeness of Trajan’s,

forged a set of comparisons to demonstrate that the two men were alike in their victories

and virtues, Constantine created such far-ranging comparisons between himself and for-

mer emperors that they surpassed his own images on his Arch in number and in size.31

Clearly he wanted to create a monument where his presence became so understated that

his identity merged with that of his illustrious predecessors. The form of his arch follows

that of the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum (fig. 27).32 But rather than

using an existing monument’s form and type of relief decoration, as Commodus did, Con-

stantine actually removed sculpture from various monuments of the Good Emperors—

Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius—and incorporated them into his Arch. The sculp-

ture he took included relief panels and single statues, and although he had sculptors recarve

some of the heads of his illustrious predecessors to resemble himself and his co-regent

Licinius, the contemporary viewer would have realized from their style alone that they

belonged to former ages.33

Constantine’s artist did everything possible to diªerentiate his own work from the spo-

lia (the scholarly term for art appropriated from existing monuments and reused).34 The


Constantinian decorative program (with the exception of the two round reliefs on the Arch’s

short east and west sides) does not fit in with the spolia but rather stands out by reason

of its diªerences in size, style, and position on the Arch.35 Scholars have debated Con-

stantine’s motives in commissioning this strange monument—always di‹cult to explain

because of its contrasts. It is a well-made, gigantic structure, yet they have called its con-

temporary decoration everything from “degenerate” to “the fulfillment of Late Antique

style.”36 Many attribute Constantine’s use of spolia to his haste to complete the monu-

ment, whereas others emphasize the propaganda value of such use.37 I would like to step

back for a moment from these art-historical controversies to try to establish what mean-

ings this new monument in Rome’s center might have had for the contemporary, non-

elite viewer.

Constantine chose an important site for his arch that provided a new entryway expe-

rience to the Roman Forum even while defining a new set of relationships with existing

monuments (fig. 28).38 In Constantine’s version of the facts, the triumph that the arch


FIGURE 27

Rome, Arch of Constantine, view from north.

celebrated was his “liberation” of Rome from Maxentius, a usurper who controlled the city

until Constantine defeated him at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312. The

arch spans a most important road, the Triumphal Way (via Triumphalis) leading from the

Circus Maximus (recently restored by Constantine) to the Forum. Along this route the Ro-

man people had seen the great triumphal processions of the past. (The Triumphal Way

eventually connects with the main artery to the south, the via Appia, and also marks the

point where four city districts, or regiones, meet.) Entering the city center along the path

of the triumph on this road and approaching the arch from the south, a viewer would

have noticed how the arch framed views of the 100-foot Colossus of Sol (the Sun God),

axially aligned with the center of the arch. As Mark Wilson Jones has pointed out, Con-

stantine identified himself with Sol Invictus (Omnipotent, or Unconquered, Sun) before

his move toward the god of the Christians, also identified with the Sun in the cult of Christ-

Helios.39 As the viewer passed through the arch, the Colosseum came into full unob-

structed view. Perhaps people recalled that a Good Emperor, Vespasian, had built the Colos-

seum on the site of the lake that was the centerpiece of Nero’s infamous urban villa, the

Golden House. In building the Colosseum there Vespasian returned the center of the

city to the people while creating a monumental amphitheater for their entertainment.

When the viewer turned left, another enormous building by a Good Emperor, Hadrian’s

temple to Venus and Roma, loomed from above its high podium. Maxentius had recently

rebuilt it, and Constantine had installed a shrine to his family, the second gens Flavia,

in the east cella of the temple of Venus and Roma.40 Behind it, farther to the west and

now dominating the Forum, was the basilica begun by Maxentius and finished by Con-

stantine; its high cross vaults may have been visible to a viewer turning west toward the

Forum.

Ahead, the Arch of Titus marked the entrance to the Sacred Way. Standing under the

vault of the Arch of Titus, the viewer saw the Sacred Way descending into the Forum; the

terminus of this view was the speaker’s platform or rostra; behind it was the Arch of Sep-

timius Severus, twin to the Arch of Constantine. In between Septimius’s arch and the


FIGURE 28

Rome, plan with path from Arch of Constantine to Arch of Septimius Severus.

rostra rose a recent monument celebrating the Tetrarchy: five monumental columns serv-

ing as pedestals for statues of Jupiter and the four tetrarchs.41 Together, the rostra, the

five-column monument, and the Arch of Septimius Severus constituted the ideological

and physical focus of the Roman Forum.42 And this is exactly where Constantine’s artist

placed the emperor in the small frieze that runs around the arch just below the attic level

(fig. 29). In that panel, the image of Constantine speaking from the rostra becomes the

axis of the Forum—larger than life and greater than the monuments around him. He be-

comes, as it were, the center of Rome’s monumental center.

NARRATIVE FLOW VERSUS HIERATIC STASIS IN THE SMALL FRIEZE

Considered as a whole, this small Constantinian frieze girdling the arch is arguably the

mouse that roared. Whereas decipherment of the relationships among the subjects of the

spolia—all enormous in scale and covering the arch at every level and on all of its sides—

would have required the viewer to be well versed in imperial history, the Constantinian

narrative is easy to read. It is sequential, it presents contemporary events, and it relates

to the viewer’s own walk from outside the Forum to inside it. It is also the only contem-

porary narrative of Constantine’s deeds to be found on the arch.

Someone approaching the arch from the south would first scan the big elements: the

inscription, the monumental figures atop the attic and at the pedestals, and the large re-


FIGURE 29

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Oratio.

lief panels. Aside from the inscription, none of these oªered a story that connected with

the viewer’s knowledge of the events that led to the arch’s creation; so it is likely that her

eyes would have sought out the little girdling frieze.43For one thing, this “miniature” frieze

was a feature common on most triumphal arches, usually picturing the triumphal pro-

cession.44 For another, only in this relief would the viewer have recognized figures wear-

ing contemporary dress and carved in the modern style.

Two main events in the story of Constantine’s takeover appear on the south side of the

arch—the side a viewer coming into the city would have seen first. To the left is the Siege

of Verona; to the right the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (figs. 30 and 31). The viewer would

have noticed that these two events formed part of a narrative, and that the event on the

left happened before the one on the right. Logic demanded that farther to the left—on

the west side of the arch—he would find an earlier event. There, in fact, a curious viewer

would find the beginning of Constantine’s story. He sets out from Milan to retake Italy

and thereby establish himself—the legitimate ruler—as emperor in the capital. Con-

stantine is conspicuous by his absence here; his proper place would have been ahead of

the standard-bearers (signiferi) and curved-horn players (cornicines) at the right of the re-

lief. The fighters follow in the right half: robot-like infantry on the march, holding shields

and lances (fig. 32). The supply train takes up the left half of the relief. As in the scenes

of marching on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, much of the interest for a

viewer is in the anecdotal details of this profectio (setting out), including a camel, a diminu-

tive groom crouching down beside a horseman, and a wagon coming through the arch

of a tower.

The viewer, returning to the south side, would then see the next chronological event,

the siege of the city of Verona. The artist has made the siege into a fait accompli rather

than a match of equal opponents, using several strategies to emphasize Constantine. The

emperor dominates the left half of the relief; his is the only figure to take up the full height

of the frieze; soldiers all holding the same round shields frame him right and left; and a

Victory flies along the upper left to crown him. The city of Verona, in contrast, is tiny,

complete with two little soldiers silhouetted against its walls. One falls to the ground, the

other rushes to the right. Above Verona’s walls appear the upper bodies of the men de-

fending the city.

In the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the artist separated Constantine from the battle,

placing him at the left and at full height (only his foot remains) with the goddess Roma

on his left and Victory—this time frontally represented—at his right. Beneath Constan-

tine is the River god Tiber. Constantine, we assume, looked out at the viewer from this

framework of gods, while in the rest of the relief, his soldiers mercilessly slaughter Max-

entius’s army. Again the artist separated Constantine’s men from those of Maxentius with

a clear visual device. Constantine’s soldiers stand in the upper half of the relief and deal

death blows to the enemy in the lower half, reduced to a chaos of helpless bodies swirling

in the river.


FIGURE 30

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Siege of Verona.

FIGURE 31

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Battle of Milvian Bridge.

FIGURE 32

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Profectio.

FIGURE 33

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Ingressus.

Following the logic of left-to-right reading, the artist completed this sequential narra-

tive with the final march into Rome—the ingressus—on the arch’s east side (fig. 33). The

ancient viewer now understood how the narrative worked, and as she walked along, look-

ing up, she may have felt she was joining in Constantine’s victorious entry. (The same

device of pairing the depicted movement of the triumphal procession with the spectator’s

walk through the arch had been used 220 years before in the triumphal friezes for the

Arch of Titus.) The artist framed the narrative with an arch at either end, perhaps the

arch over the via Lata on the right and that over the via Flaminia on the left. Once again

Constantine occupies the left end of the relief, larger than the other figures and riding in

a chariot that looks for all the world like a throne on wheels. At the head of the proces-

sion soldiers marching in two tiers hold their spears in front; the resulting pattern, like

repeating arrowheads, emphasizes their resolute movement to the right—a compositional

strategy we have already seen on the Column of Marcus Aurelius (compare fig. 21).

But both the composition and the message of the narrative change once the soldiers—

and the viewer—reach their goal. Standing and looking up at the arch’s north facade, the

viewer saw that it was not just Constantine, his army, and their adversaries who acted in

history. Both reliefs, to left and right, also pictured the viewer—especially the non-elite

viewer—as the end beneficiary of Constantine’s eªorts. More than any imperial monu-

ment in the history of Roman art, these two reliefs put the ordinary person into the lime-

light. They also put him into his place, and in their visual language, this place was per-

manent and suprahistorical.

If the compositions of the reliefs on the arch’s other three sides emphasized a sequential

narrative by making figures move from left to right, and encouraged the viewer to circle

in that direction, both friezes on the north side stopped left-to-right reading with axially

symmetrical, static compositions. As we have seen, with the relief of the left (north) side,

the viewer has arrived at the rostra in the forum, where she would have stood to listen to

the emperor’s oratio, or speech to the assembled people (see fig. 29). She joins the crowd

of ordinary people ranged at the bottom of the relief below the rostra—men, women, and

children. Although a viewer would have understood that the relief depicted a specific mo-

ment in time, its message was also symbolic and eternal. The processional friezes on the

north and south sides of the Ara Pacis also included men, women, and children, but they

were elites, and the families depicted were members of Augustus’s family. On the Arch

of Constantine a viewer saw generic families of the lower strata. If the Ara Pacis reliefs

projected the stability of Augustus’s dynasty, the message of the oratio relief was the sta-

bility of all society.

Constantine stands, larger than life—even larger than the seated statues of two of the

Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius to the viewer’s left and Hadrian to the right.45 Schol-

arly consensus restores the figure of Constantine, although damaged, to share some of

the features of the colossal seated image that originally formed the axial focus of his great

Basilica in the Roman Forum.46 Like the statues of the Good Emperors, Constantine looks

out, eyes fixed in an otherworldly stare, directly addressing the viewer. Constantine has


the power to part the crowd, and the artist has demonstrated this power by displacing the

listeners to right and left of the rostra rather than representing them in front of it, where

they would have actually stood. He even has the power to part the buildings to his left and

right, for the arcades of the Basilica Julia and the Basilica Aemilia extend laterally (rather

than in foreshortened perspective).47Constantine’s magistrates, one size smaller than he

is, partake of the same answering, or paratactic, left-right symmetry. All of this to give

you, the onlooker, a direct view of the center of the composition, the center of your uni-

verse: Constantine. Several scholars go so far as to characterize Constantine, on the ba-

sis of contemporary panegyric texts, as God-Emperor, now dominus (lord) rather than prin-

ceps, his expression that of divina maiestas (divine majesty).48

Paradoxes abound. Although the composition gives viewers of all social strata direct

eye contact, as it were, with Constantine, it also insists on the distinctions between the

upper and lower strata. The medium-size men stand on the rostra flanking the emperor.

They are the elites and they wear the toga; they share the sacrosanct space of the rostra

with Constantine and the statues of the Good Emperors. The non-elites, dressed in tu-

nics, occupy the space below; they are the smallest in stature and lowest in social status.

Comparison of this relief to the frontal representations of Marcus Aurelius on his Col-

umn underscores how much has changed in the representation of the emperor’s power

between 193 and 315 (see fig. 24). It was with such frontally composed scenes on the Col-

umn that the artist broke the left-to-right reading pattern of the narrative to emphasize

the emperor’s address to the viewer. Symmetry in figural and architectural framing em-

phasized a rupture of the historical flow to fix the emperor in timeless contact with the

viewer looking up at him. Yet the viewer is always outside the historical narrative—never

portrayed on the Column like the soldiers or barbarians who look at Marcus, but included

only by the implication of the emperor’s frontal pose and outward gaze.49

With the oratio relief on the Arch of Constantine the artist takes the much bolder step

of representing the onlookers. In so doing he instructs the viewer in the rules of proper

viewership: everyone must stand in his or her place and gaze in the proper direction. The

Good Emperors are Constantine’s models: as they look out at the viewers, so does he. The

elites up on the rostra turn to look at Constantine, who is both the axis of the composi-

tion and the center of their world. Down below the plebs do the same, yet they are liter-

ally the little people—men and women with their children, all showing the viewer how

to act in the presence of the godlike emperor. Through composition, the relative size of

figures, and the figures’ gestures, the oratio relief instructs all the people in proper be-

havior. The visual representation encodes the social order.

The right-hand relief, showing Constantine giving out money to the people of Rome

(the liberalitas), drives home the messages of one’s proper social role with devices even

more obvious than those of the oratio (fig. 34). Once again it is Constantine who marks

the axis and who looks out at the viewer in direct address. In this scene the people gather

not to hear him speak but to collect their coins—the gift of money that is the concrete

benefit of Constantine’s victory. Like so many emperors before, he buys the allegiance of


the people of Rome with money, but here for the first time the ancient viewer saw just

how much he was worth in comparison with others. Once again the artist has employed

a hierarchical, axially symmetrical composition with the emperor at the center, larger than

everyone else. He has also emphasized the upper and lower halves of the visual field by

placing the higher magistrates who give out money to the ordinary people within four

compartments. These o‹cials follow the emperor’s example and mimic his gestures, but

on a smaller scale. Whereas Constantine uses a large, twelve-slotted coin scooper to give

a larger gift to the elites, they employ small, six-slotted scoopers for the smaller dole al-

lotted to people of the lower stratum. Gestures of the recipients, like those of the givers,

repeat mechanically. Each man—elite and non-elite—looks up with hands covered in the

folds of his garment to receive his dole—with a gesture of respect and gratitude.50

FRAMING THE EMPEROR IN LATE ANTIQUITY

In the fourth century and later, both art and ceremony increasingly removed the emperor

from the realm of ordinary people.51 The oratio and liberalitas reliefs are only the begin-

ning of a new kind of visual representation that abandons the realism that had charac-

terized imperial monuments from the Ara Pacis to the Arch of Septimius Severus. In

these earlier artworks artists used Hellenistic conventions of style and composition to


FIGURE 34

Rome, Arch of Constantine. Liberalitas.

demonstrate that the emperor was first citizen, carrying out his duties like other men.

Beginning with the Arch of Constantine, artists will seek out forms that emphasize, in-

stead, the emperor’s transcendence and divinity. In addition to making him bigger than

everyone else and posing him frontally, artists will frame the emperor with symmetri-

cally placed figures and within pavilions of various sorts—all with the goal of singling

him out from the rest of humankind.52 And instead of seeking to show the diversity of

the emperor’s subjects, artists make them look alike: assembly-line citizens.

Representations that separated the ruler from the ruled in such strict hierarchies gave

visual form to new models of behavior for both elites and non-elites. One wonders whether

they were just wishful thinking—didactic documents meant to instruct the emperor’s sub-

jects in proper reverential behavior even while his control was slipping. Such considera-

tions are beyond the scope of this book, but an art that so blatantly rejects the realism of

earlier imperial representations serves to remind us that even those older, “realistic” im-

perial monuments had agendas that had little to do with recording historical events or

facts. Despite their seeming documentary or historical character, the Ara Pacis, Column

of Trajan, and Column of Marcus Aurelius resist straightforward narrative reading pre-

cisely because they had other messages to convey. Their messages were polyvalent and

depended to a great degree on who was looking at them.

If in the north friezes of the Arch of Constantine the artist uses obvious visual devices

to separate elites from non-elites, on earlier imperial monuments such separation was

implicit but no less intended. On the Arch of Constantine the visual separation of ruler

from the various ranks of the ruled baldly articulates the channels of access to the ab-

solute, divine monarch. In place of the first citizen, the princeps, the viewer finds the em-

peror as lord and god. Yet as we have seen, even the monument that attempted the great-

est inclusion of the non-elite, the Column of Trajan, clearly diªerentiated the social orders

to articulate distinct messages to senator and freedwoman, to equestrian and slave. Con-

stantine’s arch simplifies and codifies social diªerences, oªering a clear formula for the

success through unswerving allegiance to the power that apportions and protects one’s

social rank. If success in Trajan’s time meant upward mobility, by the fourth century the

message was to stay put and let the emperor take care of you. The Constantinian reliefs

pledge stability. In exchange for undivided loyalty, you will be part of an eternal order sta-

bilized by divine right and the emperor’s beneficence.

Inscriptions on the arch add nuance to the visual messages of the Constantinian friezes.

Although by now it should be clear that Constantine was the patron, the inscriptions name

him as the recipient of the Senate’s beneficence. The phrases Liberatori urbis (To the lib-

erator of Rome) and Fundatori quietis (To the founder of tranquility) appear in the Tra-

janic reliefs of the central passage, and the main inscription reads: “To the emperor Fla-

vius Constantine the Great, Augustus, pious and fortunate, the Senate and the Roman

People have dedicated this arch, resplendent with triumphs, since by divine inspiration

and greatness of spirit he avenged the state on the tyrant and all his faction with his army,

once and forever, in just battle.”53 Scholars have argued variously that the divinity who


inspired Constantine (in the phrase “by divine inspiration,” instinctu divinitatis) was Chris-

tian, pagan, or even Constantine himself. Yet the interpretation that makes the most sense

is that Constantine controlled the textual message in the same way that he aimed the ar-

chitecture, the spolia, and the contemporary relief sculpture at a constituency that included

both pagans and Christians. For the arch to succeed in solidifying his power, the pagan

viewer had to think of Constantine as a new Good Emperor, restoring the old order; the

Christian viewer had to see him as taking his inspiration from their divinity while creat-

ing a new order. The inscription is deliberately indeterminate, so that the divine inspi-

ration is pagan for a pagan viewer, Christian for a Christian viewer. As Wilson Jones notes:

“Constantine may have leaned toward the Christian’s God, but his was syncretic, inclu-

sive faith, as typical for its time as it was later to become unthinkable.”54 In both its vi-

sual and textual representations, the arch is a monument that looks both to the past and

to the future.

This investigation of how elites represented non-elites on imperial monuments under-

scores how over time o‹cial art increasingly addressed ordinary people in terms of their

proper social roles. Although they are conspicuous by their absence on the Ara Pacis, or-

dinary people—or military and barbarian stand-ins for them—appear within the didac-

tic framework of Trajan’s forum, basilica, and column. The Column of Marcus Aurelius

abandons instructing through analogy in favor of the emperor’s direct address to the non-

elite viewer—a ploy that finds its logical fulfillment in Constantine’s Arch. As we will see

in parts 2 and 3, when a non-elite person pays for art, the focus shifts from instructing

the viewer in proper social roles to telling the viewer about him- or herself. Articulating

one’s own identity—often an identity more complex than that dictated by the State—is

the recurring theme of art paid for by non-elite Romans.


PART 2

NON-ELITES IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Ancient Romans embraced the notion of life in public to a much greater degree than we

do. We tend to worship and bury our dead in buildings or areas separated from the tra‹c

of everyday life. Yet even in modern Euro-American societies, opinions diªer about what

events belong behind closed doors and what might go on in public spaces. There is an

enormous diªerence between the “life in the piazza” that characterizes countries bordering

the Mediterranean and the enclosed, indoor mentality of the northern European coun-

tries. Climate is not the only determining factor: tradition, temperament, and patterns of

social organization come into play as well. Some scholars would even see the ancient Ro-

man model still operative in the formation of the Mediterranean attitude toward life in

public.

There is a semantic problem as well. We understand the word “public” largely in re-

lation to our highly developed sense of its opposite. In ancient Roman times we would

be hard put to find spaces that corresponded in any way to our notions of privacy. Public

processions and rituals advertised a person’s religious practices; most business transac-

tions took place in noisy forums; the audience was as much a part of the show as the ac-

tors on the stage; and tombs vied with each other for the public’s attention. For the elite

as well as the non-elite, who you were depended on how people perceived you in public

spaces. Everyone noted your dress, your walk, your gestures, and your speech—and from

69

REGIO VI

A Caupona of SalviusB Caupona on the Street of MercuryC FullonicaD House of the VettiiE House VI, 15, 14F Necropolis of the Herculaneum GateG Shop of the Carpenters’ Procession

H

I

J

REGIO V

House of Lucretius Fronto House of the Triclinium Tomb of Vestorius Priscus

REGIO III

K

L

House of Pinarius CerialisHouse of the Moralist

REGIO II

M

N O

AmphitheaterHouse of Octavius QuartioPraedia of Julia Felix

REGIO I

P House of Riot in the AmphitheaterQ House of the Sarno LarariumR House of Sutoria PrimigeniaS House of the EphebeT House of the Menander

REGIO IX (central Pompeii)U V W X

House of Epidius SabinusHouse of the Chaste LoversShop of the Procession to CybeleShop of Verecundus

Y

Z

AA

BB

REGIO VIII

Palaestra Temple of Isis Temple of Venus Theater

REGIO VII

CC

DD EE FF GG

House of ”Terentius Neo“House of Gavius RufusHouse of the BakerHouse of the Figured CapitalsSuburban Baths

REG. IV

REG. V

REG. VI

REG. VII

REG. IX

REG. I I I

REG. VII I

REG. I I

REG. I

REG. IV

REG. V

REG. VI

REG. VII

REG. IX

REG. III

REG. VIII

REG. II

REG. I

REG. IV

REG. V

REG. VI

REG. VII

REG. IX

REG. III

REG. VIII

REG. II

REG. I

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0 50 100 200m

MAP 1

Pompeii. Plan showing spaces discussed in parts 2 and 3. Buildings are located by Regio numbers (I, II, III, etc.) and Insula numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.). A third

number indicates the location of the doorway to the building in the Insula. For example, I, 13, 2 (House of Sutoria Primigenia) is located in Regio I, Insula 13,

and entered at doorway 2.

Hall of the GrainMeasurers (I, 19)

Caupona of theSeven Sages

(III, 10)

Forica (latrine)(I, 12)

Forum of the Corporations (II, 7)

Theater(II, 7)

Necropolis of theOstia Road

Necropolis on theLaurentine Road

0 50 100 150 200 250m

A N C I E N T P A T H O F T I B E R

MAP 2

Ostia. Plan showing spaces discussed in part 2.

these markers understood your place in society. Given the importance of such external

signs of status, it is little wonder that visual representation in the public sphere was so

important for non-elite Romans.

Considering the wealth of art in the public sphere and the large range of activities that

it complements or comments on, I have been quite selective. I have chosen works of art

where the archaeological evidence or inscriptions tell us who the patron was, and whose

placement tells us who would have seen them. I have also favored representations that

deviate from elite/imperial models. They show, above all, that non-elites (like the elites)

were passionate about self-representation, but that they invented images that veered away

from standard themes. These paintings and sculptures reveal how ordinary Romans

identified with their gods, their work, their games, their families, and their friends. These

works of art also reveal a much more complex range of religious, social, and cultural in-

teractions than we might expect in a highly stratified society.

72 • NON - E L I T E S I N T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

3

EVERYMAN, EVERYWOMAN, AND THE GODS

For those of us living in the secular states that characterize contemporary Euro-American

culture, it is di‹cult to imagine how pervasive religious worship was in the everyday lives

of ancient Romans. We have succeeded in cordoning oª religion from the world of work—

and from most social interactions as well. We might attend church, synagogue, or

mosque, but rarely—especially among the Christian majority—do we invoke God in our

places of work, or even in daily rituals in our homes. We incorporate buildings for wor-

ship into the fabric of our cities—large and small—but with few exceptions worship oc-

curs behind those buildings’ closed doors, not in public, municipally owned spaces.

A glance at the plan of second-century Ostia, with an estimated population of 40,000,

reveals how much space religious buildings took up—and how much of that space merges

with the realms of civic administration, business, and entertainment (fig. 35). Ostia’s the-

ater, for instance, boasts a huge rectangular portico, similar to the one attached to the the-

ater at Pompeii (fig. 36). But the temple in the center of the portico at Ostia indicates that

it was not just a space for theatergoers to promenade: religious worship took place there.

What is more, mosaic images in the spaces of the portico’s double colonnade tell us that

numerous companies (corporationes) had their o‹ces there. Taken together, theater, por-

tico, o‹ces, and temple constitute a busy, multiuse space where work, leisure, and wor-

ship all intermingled.

73

FIGURE 35

Ostia. Plan showing spaces for business, entertainment, and worship.

FIGURE 36

Ostia. Theater, Forum of the Corporations, and Temple (II, 7, 2–5), reconstruction.

It is worth underscoring that the separation of church and state—an important prin-

ciple of many modern states—simply made no sense to the ancient Romans. The em-

peror was the chief priest of the Roman state religion, the pontifex maximus, and an elite

man’s political career included a series of priesthoods and ministries just as important to

his prestige and advancement as his military and civic duties.1The limited religious o‹ces

available to the non-elite Roman were equally coveted ways of gaining social standing.

Since our purpose is to uncover attitudes and practices that reveal the culture of non-

elite Romans, we will pass over the rich documentation of Roman state religion in favor

of humbler visual representations that celebrate in the public domain ordinary people’s

devotion to the gods.2 The materials for this study are modest ones. Although non-elite

visual representations have some formal and iconographic similarities with monuments

commissioned by the emperor, senators, and decurions, most of them tend to simplify

form in order to communicate their messages directly. These reliefs and wall paintings

are all the more remarkable, because along with the standard imagery borrowed from the

elite monuments, they include details that reveal the identities and religious practices of

ordinary men and women.

PICTURING PIETAS IN THE HOME

In order to understand the patterns behind non-elite representations of worship in the

public realm, we have to consider how ordinary people set up shrines for daily rituals in

their houses. Worship of the gods belonged just as much in the domestic sphere as it did

in the public realm. Every Roman house, whether the villa of a wealthy woman or a poor

man’s tenement, had at least one shrine (lararium) honoring the protective deities of the

house and its owner. A good standard example is the large lararium in the servants’ atrium

of the House of the Vettii at Pompeii (a.d. 62–79; fig. 37), for it represents the key ele-

ments of domestic worship. The central image is the Genius (guardian spirit) of the pater-

familias, or head of the household, sacrificing on an altar. The two Lares flank him. They

wear kilts and hold a rhyton (horn-shaped wine vessel) in one hand while carrying a pail

(situla) in the other.3 A serpent, his body describing S-curves, approaches to take the oªer-

ings from the altar. Such snakes, called agathodaemones (good spirits) and often depicted

in male-female pairs, appear frequently in lararium paintings; they have a long history

in Greek and Roman art as protectors of a place.4 Every day—throughout the empire—

heads of households sacrificed cakes, fruits, and wine at similar shrines in their homes.

Their hope was to appease the protective spirits: the Lares who guarded the house, the

paterfamilias’s Genius, and another set of domestic protector-deities, the Penates.5 Study

of lararia at Pompeii and elsewhere demonstrates the stability of domestic worship

throughout the imperial period.6

Domestic shrines that veer from the standard ones like that in the House of the Vet-

tii often carry a great deal of information about the religious attitudes and practices of

non-elite Romans. Although painted with much less care, the scene decorating the lara-

E V E R Y M A N , E V E R Y W O M A N , A N D T H E G O D S • 75

rium in the House of Sutoria Primigenia (I, 13, 2) at Pompeii provides a particularly eloquent

testimony to the importance of religion in the household (fig. 38).7 This is a relatively

modest house, and the paintings—executed in Pompeii’s last two decades—decorate a

tiny kitchen. Someone entering the kitchen (17 on the plan) would see a representation

of the whole household, or familia, attending a sacrifice (figs. 39, 40). Large figures of

the Lares frame the scene. Next in size are the figures of the Genius, accompanied by the

76 • N O N - E L I T E S I N T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

FIGURE 37

Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1). Lararium.

FIGURE 38

Pompeii, plan of House of

Sutoria Primigenia (I, 13, 2).

FIGURE 39

Pompeii, House of Sutoria Primigenia, room 17, north and east walls.

FIGURE 40

Pompeii, House of Sutoria Primigenia, room 17, east wall, detail.

Juno, or guardian spirit of the woman of the house, both standing at an altar at the left.

Just to the left of the altar the tibicen plays the tibia (double oboe). Only the Genius wears

the toga; because he is sacrificing, he has pulled its edge over his head (capite velato). The

Juno wears the proper garment of the Roman matron, the stola. All thirteen persons to

the right face outwards frontally and wear white tunics with short sleeves, and all hold

their arms and hands in the same attitude—the right arm held to the chest and the left

resting at the waist. An exception is the first person at the left in the front row standing

near the Genius: he must be the camillus (attendant). Beneath this scene of the whole fa-

milia assembled for a sacrifice to the Lares is a frieze showing a man with two pack-mules

leading a bull with a rope—probably the painter’s attempt at a landscape genre-scene.

The niche for the lararium proper is on the north, or left-hand wall, surrounded by

paintings of foodstuªs: skewers with eel and pieces of meat, a ham, the head of a pig,

and hanging sausages. At the bottom a serpent approaches the round altar.8

Unlike the fancy lararium in the House of the Vettii, where the Vettii brothers instructed

the artist to represent only the standard figures and elements, here Sutoria Primigenia

(if she was the owner) ordered a complex composition. Most interesting for our purposes

is the representation of the familia at worship. Was it intended to encourage piety among

the slaves who gathered in this space to oªer sacrifice? Or did it constitute wishful think-

ing, since the kitchen is scarcely large enough to accommodate such a large gathering?

Perhaps the scene records a special sacrifice of thanksgiving or celebration. Although it

is impossible to determine the patron’s purpose in representing the assembled familia

in such a humble space, both its specificity and its elaborateness distinguish it from stan-

dard lararium paintings.

WORSHIP AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE SARNO LARARIUM

The House of the Sarno Lararium in its small size and unusual layout belongs to a group

of modest dwellings for Pompeii’s poorer ranks (fig. 41). In place of the usual atrium,

with a central skylight and a cistern head (impluvium) beneath, the builder used nearly

half the available lot space—and this measures only 162 square meters (about 9 × 18 m)—

for a fully roofed atrium that extends across the full width of the space. To exploit the

space vertically, he constructed a stairway in the atrium leading to the second-floor rooms

over the front of the house; the stairway also gave access—via a wooden balcony—to the

rooms over the back half of the house. Such a concentrated use of the available space sig-

nals both the humble status of the owner and the relatively high price of land within Pom-

peii. Excavators have found houses constructed like the House of the Sarno Lararium

throughout region I, including whole rows of them along the west side of insula 11 and

along the north side of insula 12.9

To compensate for the cramped and relatively dark living quarters of his house, the

owner commissioned an artist to create an elaborate lararium for the modest garden space

at the very back of his house (9 on the plan). Placed at the center of the south wall, it is


the terminus of the house’s long axis, running from the deep entry at 1, through the atrium,

and through the corridor at 6. Obviously the owner conceived the lararium as the focus

of the view from the street, imitating a common feature in the finer houses at Pompeii

and Herculaneum.

The lararium diverges from the standard imagery to represent activities on the Sarno

River that reflected the owner’s world of work (fig. 42). It stands upon a cement podium

surrounded by a canal that must have been filled with water. Red ocher pigment colors

the entire construction, inside and out, and yellow ocher outlines its divisions and serves

as the dominant color to delineate figures. Mariette de Vos has identified a workshop, ac-

tive in Pompeii’s last decades and working in this neighborhood at Pompeii, that regu-

larly employed this economical but showy decoration.10

We find the Genius at the back of a deep vaulted enclosure, standing on a plant-cov-

ered base and in the act of pouring a libation on a round altar; he holds a cornucopia over

his left shoulder. The artist filled the lower walls of the enclosure’s sides with more green

plants on a red ground, and he decorated the vault with white rosettes. The Lares, miss-

ing from the painting, were present in three-dimensional form. When the excavators un-

covered the lararium, they found two statues of Lares, along with a lamp and a bowl, un-

der the shelter of the niche. These objects, all in bronze, must have been the treasures of

this modest household (fig. 43).

In response to the patron’s desire to make his little lararium special, the painter made

it do double duty, both as a shrine and as a poor man’s version of the elaborate mosaic

fountains that grace so many of the wealthier houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum.11He

substituted a picture of running water for the real thing, and he set the lararium inside

a shallow canal. For his image of water he chose the Sarno River. The river’s personification

for the most part follows standard river-god iconography: he is a bearded figure who leans

on a tall rocky outcropping, his head turned to the viewer. He wears a red garment with

a bright blue mantle. Under the river god’s left arm a vessel, lying on its side, pours out

water to create the river. On the river are two men in a boat, laden with unidentifiable


FIGURE 41

Pompeii, plan of House of the

Sarno Lararium (I, 14, 7).

goods. Near the boat’s prow is a little bridge, with two packmules behind it. In the upper

half of this scene the artist has painted a line for three figures to stand on. The two men

at the left wear short tunics: one carries a big basket, while the other gestures to the right,

where another large basket rests on the ground. A third figure, distinguished from all the

others by his long garment with a light blue edge, looks out at the viewer even as he ges-

tures to the scene at the far right. Here two small figures are weighing similar baskets

that hang from the arms of an enormous scale.

Despite his modest talents, the artist has succeeded in conveying the story of work on

and about the river. We know from the geographer Strabo that Pompeii had a harbor on

the Sarno that served neighboring inland towns.12 Because the eruption of Vesuvius

completely changed the river’s course and covered all evidence for it, we do not know where

that harbor lay.13 Scholars have also debated the contents of the boat and the basket. Maiuri,

citing a passage from Columella, believed they contained onions grown in the region.14

What is certain is that the patron must be the man in the long garment who stands in

the center of these activities of weighing and transporting his product. Although paint

losses make it di‹cult to distinguish portrait traits, the six men surrounding him may


FIGURE 42

Pompeii, House of the Sarno

Lararium, the lararium.

be his slaves. If so, they formed the servile part of his familia and would have taken a cer-

tain pride in seeing themselves with their owner every day as they stood behind him to

sacrifice to his Genius and the Lares in the little garden.15

STREET-CORNER RELIGION: THE VICOMAGISTRI

Just as Lares guarded the Roman house and its occupants, so they guarded the very streets

of the city. Minor o‹cials called vicomagistri (that is administrators of the city ward or vi-

cus) erected altars to the Lares of the crossroads (Lares compitales) within the neighbor-

hood under their care.16 The parallels with domestic lararia and their rituals are particu-

larly telling in a stone altar from the vicus Aesculeti in Rome, since it shows the

vicomagistri sacrificing not only to the Lares, but to the Genius of Augustus as well (H

1.05 m, W 0.66 m; fig. 44).17 It was Augustus himself who divided Rome into regions

subdivided into vici, beginning 8–7 b.c.18The vicomagistri’s responsibilities included keep-

ing watch over tra‹c, crime, and fires—and sacrificing to the Lares and to the Genius of

the emperor. In the o‹ce of vicomagister, religion and civic duty merged.


FIGURE 43

Pompeii, House of the Sarno

Lararium, the lararium.

Excavation photo.

Who were the vicomagistri? Analysis of the imagery and inscriptions on the altar, now

in Rome’s Centrale di Montemartini museum, provides several clues. The four figures

wear togas, indicating that they are citizens, either freeborn or freedmen. Since they are

in the act of sacrificing, they have drawn an edge of the toga over their heads. This was a

powerful image for the contemporary viewer, for it was a visual signifier of the virtue of

pietas, or piety, that Augustus promoted. As part of his program to revive the old state re-

ligion, Augustus had artists multiply images of himself, togate, head covered (capite ve-

lato), throughout the city and the empire.19 The emperor wished to stress his role as chief

priest (pontifex maximus) of the Roman state religion. As we have seen, his only ap-

pearance on the Ara Pacis shows him in this guise (see fig. 5). The vicomagistri also

wear laurel crowns. The motif of the laurel is a central one in Augustus’s visual repre-

sentations, and here it also distinguishes the images of the Lares depicted on the altar’s

two sides from ordinary domestic Lares: each carries a large laurel branch in his hand

(fig. 45).20

Yet the vicomagistri are not senators or equestrians belonging to elite priestly colleges,

like those represented on the Ara Pacis. They are non-elite residents of the ward, most

likely freeborn or former slaves, who in return for their work of watching over the neigh-


FIGURE 44

Rome, Altar of the Vicomagistri

of the Vicus Aesculeti.

borhood’s security have won the privilege of parading their status before their neighbors,

accompanied by two lictors.21 In the relief the artist has alluded to this honor by showing

one lictor, carved in low relief at the altar’s left edge. Lictors, too, appear on the Ara Pacis,

identified by the fasces (iron rods bound together) that they carry. The tibia player, essen-

tial to this ceremony, occupies the center, between the four vicomagistri. He assumes a

nearly frontal pose.

Clearly this modest relief crows a bit in its imitation of important state religious cere-

mony, considering that the vicomagistri’s duties were local and discrete. The vicomagistri

instructed the artist to give them the greatest—and equal—prominence, so he arranged

them symmetrically on either side of the altar, their arms all outstretched to sacrifice. In

the right hand of the man on the left is a patera; although it obscures his partner’s hand,

it is doubtful that the man next to him held a patera as well. The forefinger and thumb

of the man on the right hold a grain of incense, and again his arm and hand obscure that

of his fellow vicomagister. If the surfaces of the relief were less damaged, we could as-

certain whether the artist tried to diªerentiate each o‹cial’s face—but otherwise, the im-

age is one of solidarity and equal sharing of duties.

A special aspect of this sacrifice—and its earliest visual representation—is the oªer-


FIGURE 45

Rome, Altar of the Vicus

Aesculeti, right side. Lar.

ing of a bull to the Genius of Augustus.22 As we have seen, pigs are the proper oªering

to the Lares, as is well attested in domestic settings. A viewer would immediately iden-

tify the bull in the relief with the emperor. The sacrifice carried out by the vicomagistri

was much more expensive and complex than the one a paterfamilias o‹ciated over in

his home. We imagine a crowd of people from the vicus watching the proceedings and

eagerly anticipating a feast with abundant roasted meat.

To accommodate the animals and the barechested men (the victimarii) who handled

and killed them, the artist has reduced all four in size.23 The victimarii also crouch down

in front of the altar to keep the view of the all-important vicomagistri clear. The victimarius

on the left carries the sacrificial mallet for stunning the animals (malleus) over his left

shoulder. He wears only a kilt, visible behind the leash he uses to restrain the pig, and

seems to be half-kneeling.24 His partner, only his laurel-wreathed head and right shoul-

der and chest visible, must be kneeling. The refinement of the carving and the artist’s at-

tention to the composition as a whole helps to mask these figures’ illogical poses.

Just as the images on the altar overstate the importance of the four vicomagistri and

their o‹cial duties, so do the inscriptions. The altar’s dedication to the Lares of Augus-

tus appears above the scene of sacrifice on the altar’s molding: LARIB[us] AUGUST[is]—

to the Augustan Lares. Beneath it are the partially preserved names of two of the magistri;

the names of the other two appear on the sides of the altar, above the figures of the Lares

holding laurel branches.25 The last line of the inscription, just above the heads of the four

vicomagistri, is MAG[istri] · VICI · ANNI · NONI, telling all that they dedicated the al-

tar in the ninth year since Augustus established the o‹ce of the vicomagistri (a.d. 2).26

It is significant that two of the names, “[l . . . ]S · L · L · SALVIUS,” (on the right side) and

“P · CLODIUS · P · L” (on the left side) preserve the letter L, placed after the abbreviation

of their former master’s name, indicating that the magister is a former slave. (The first

L in the right-hand inscription is the abbreviation for Lucii, telling the reader that Salvius

is the freedman of Lucius; the P before the L in the second inscription means that P.

Clodius is the freedman of Publius.)27

In some cases the ward o‹cials are slaves. A case in point is the modest altar from

the vicus Statae Matris, found on the Caelian hill in 1906. It commemorates the sixth

year of the establishment of the cult, and bears the names of the four o‹cials (called mi-

nistri rather than magistri). All of them are still slaves, demonstrating how important en-

listing the piety and loyalty of the slaves in Rome must have been to Augustus.28

One can imagine the competition for the rank of vicomagister within Rome’s crowded

popular wards, where it was di‹cult for anyone to gain the public visibility and social im-

portance that were such significant measures of a man’s personal distinction (gloria). Giu-

seppe Gatti, who excavated the altar of the vicus Aesculeti at a depth of 8 meters (25 feet)

under the present via Arenula, remarks that—miraculously—the altar had stayed put since

its dedication, for he found it still resting on its original travertine base with the inscrip-

tion [ma]G[i]STRI VICI AESCLETI ANNI VIIII.29 In addition to repeating the year of its

constitution, this inscription names one of the 265 vici established by Augustus.30 Yet the


inscription also betrays the patrons’ ignorance, and that of the man who carved it, for the

name of their vicus is spelled incorrectly: “Aescleti” for “Aesculeti.” Either they failed to

notice—or if they did, they allowed the error to pass.

If the altar of the magistri of the vicus Aesculeti, despite its modest execution, seemed

familiar to the ancient viewer, it is because it imitated elite monuments of the state reli-

gion. Although most of the deities invoked on the two shop facades at Pompeii that we

will now consider were also familiar ones, they appear in compositions that are much

more complex than that of the altar in Rome. The patrons at Pompeii had diªerent pur-

poses that begin to emerge when we consider where the images appear and who would

have looked at them.

MERGING RELIGION AND WORK: THE CARPENTERS’ PROCESSION

The paintings that decorated the facade of a shop at VI, 7, 8–11 provide a mixture of im-

ages that only make sense when we consider the owner’s profession.31 The shop occu-

pied a busy street corner north of the forum, located diagonally across from a little tav-

ern, the Caupona on the Street of Mercury (see p. 135). Although only one important

fragment of the painted imagery survives, removed to the Naples Museum soon after ex-

cavation in 1827, written descriptions allow us to imagine the facade’s original composi-

tion. What emerges is a fascinating profile of how religious belief, coupled with a con-

cern to ensure protection from harm, merged in the workplace. The owner wanted to

proclaim his identity as a carpenter and at the same time to invoke the deities who safe-

guarded his craft.

There are several entrances to the structure, a workshop with a living area (fig. 46). In

the doorway at 9 a viewer found Mercury and Fortuna facing each other on the door jambs.

A watercolor executed shortly after excavation shows the image of Mercury that graced

the left (south) jamb, with his standard attributes of wand (caduceus),money bag, helmet,


FIGURE 46

Pompeii, plan of Shop of the

Carpenters’ Procession (VI, 7,

8–12).

and winged shoes, approaching the snake wound round Apollo’s omphalos—allusions to

Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi.32 Opposite this image of Mercury, on the right (north) door

jamb, were the attributes of the goddess Fortuna: a golden cornucopia above a blue globe.33

The owner was, as it were, doubling his luck, since Mercury was the god who made

tradesmen and shopkeepers prosper; Fortuna brought wealth and prosperity as well. Com-

plementing these deities in the passageway itself was an image of Minerva on the exte-

rior facade to the left of the doorway at 9. The artist depicted her, armed with shield and

spear, in the act of oªering a libation on an altar; a young girl with her hand on the altar

assists Minerva.34

Although these paintings of protective deities are long gone, the fragment now in

the Naples museum pictures the carpenters themselves honoring their patron goddess.

They or their servants carry a statue of Minerva, set upon a base, on a bier or ferculum

(plate 3).35 All that remains of her figure, in the far left edge of the fragmentary painting,

are the edges of her red dress, her spear, and her shield, leaning against her left leg.36 The

ferculum rides in procession on the shoulders of four men (the last, like the figure of

Minerva, mostly destroyed). The ferculum bearers wear greenish tunics hiked up under

their belts to leave their legs free. To help with the weight they hold canes in their right

hands while holding the ferculum’s spindly handles with their left. Although at first glance

the artist’s rendering of the men seems perfectly logical, if we look at the poles on their

shoulders, we realize that the first and third man are out of place. They should be on the

left side of the ferculum, not on the same plane as the second and fourth man. What is

more, they should be resting the poles on their right shoulders. Even though the per-

spective of the ferculum poles demands that the first and third man be smaller and that

the structure overlap them, the artist simply repeated the same figure four times with mi-

nor variations.

The ferculum itself supports an open structure with gabled roof that gives us a rare

glimpse of the type of images that devotees carried in religious processions. One possi-

ble occasion for such a procession would be the Quinquatria, held in honor of Minerva.37

Garlands of flowers, ribbons, and vessels cover the posts, gable, and eaves of the pavil-

ion. Beneath its protection diminutive figures act in tableaus calculated to honor, in equal

measure, both the carpenters and their protective deities. All the figures must be statues

in the round, sculpted from a lightweight material such as wood—not paintings on wood

or canvas framed within the little building. Although paintings would have been much

easier to execute, only three-dimensional images would have been visible to all viewers.38

At the back of the pavilion, next to the statue of Minerva, a man is planing a board. A

much larger board, supported, it seems, only by a thin board on edge, juts up diagonally

even while it supports one of two men operating a large saw. The man on the board bends

to his task while his partner, on the ground, reciprocates his pull on the saw. Both men

wear only brief kilts around their hips.

Much larger than the three carpenters—matching the scale of the statue of Minerva—

is the figure of a standing man wearing the quintessential worker’s garment, the exomis—


a short tunic covering one shoulder. He looks down at the body of a naked man on the

ground. Scholars have debated the meaning of this image since its discovery, for although

the figure’s dress, bald head, and attribute of a compass in his right hand identify him

as Daedalus, the carpenter-deity with magical powers, it is not clear who the figure on

the ground is. The most likely explanation is that this group is a unique representation

of Daedalus contemplating the dead body of his nephew Perdix.39 A bizarre detail sup-

ports this interpretation. A huge spike punctures the figure’s head from ear to ear. Daedalus

has just killed Perdix, but in a way that finds no parallel in ancient literature.

Perdix is an unusually clever boy who invented both the saw and the compass. In Ovid’s

account, Daedalus in his jealousy flung the boy from the acropolis, but Minerva caught

him in midair and made him into a bird, the perdix or partridge.40 No such rescue saved

Perdix in the Pompeian tableau, yet Daedalus appears a second time, just opposite the

procession image on the other door jamb. The painting was in poor condition at the time

of its discovery and has since disappeared, but its function as a pendant to the image of

Daedalus on the ferculum is clear: the painting represented the god making his most fa-

mous wonder, the wooden cow that Pasiphae ordered, to allow her to satisfy her lust for

Jupiter, who had appeared to her in the form of a beautiful bull.

The scene of Daedalus carrying out Pasiphae’s commission shows the god’s great skill,

a hint to the customer who could expect similar expertise as she ordered some less ex-

traordinary wooden fabrication. Even so, everyone knew that the outcome of the actual

union between Pasiphae and Jupiter was a monster, the Minotaur. When the scene ap-

pears in a grand reception space of the House of the Vettii, it fits with two other pictures

on the same theme of mortal liaisons with the gods.41 But here, most likely, a viewer would

recognize the myth—but think “carpenter” rather than feel the need to plumb its pro-

founder meanings. What then, of the image, up on the ferculum itself, of Daedalus as a

murderer?

In the context of the religious procession, Daedalus’s act speaks not so much about

murder but about protection of his craft from usurpers who would attempt to better him.

It is worth remembering that Minerva—the carpenter’s other protector deity—had a sim-

ilar rival in Arachne, whom the goddess turned into a spider for daring to challenge her

weaving skills.42 No one can upstage the gods. In the eyes of the carpenters, Daedalus’s

superiority over Perdix, like Minerva’s over Arachne, makes him worthy of worship. There

may be another message in Daedalus’s harsh vengeance: just as no one challenges the

god, so no one should challenge the carpenters themselves. Standing as he does at the

head of the procession and over the body of his rival, Daedalus proclaims his supreme

power over the carpenter’s skill.

THE GREAT MOTHER AND VENUS ON MAIN STREET

If the imagery on the carpenter’s shop yields up its meanings, it is because we can know

the relationships between the gods honored there and the purpose of the shop. It is more


di‹cult to understand the complex painting on a shop facade along Pompeii’s main east-

west street (called by excavators the Street of Abundance), for it celebrates the owner’s

observance of a foreign cult—and this without reference to the work or sales activities of

the shop (fig. 47).43 In fact, the shop’s purpose remains a mystery, since the excavator,

Vittorio Spinazzola, was unable to excavate beyond the facade. When he discovered its

remarkable paintings in 1912, they were largely intact and visible.44 Today little remains.

Excavation photos establish that there were several parts to the representation.

Along the top of the facade, beneath a balcony, the artist painted the heads of the four

planetary gods: Sol (the Sun), Jupiter, Mercury, and Luna (the Moon). The four heads,

conceived as a decoration for the architrave that opens over the shop, gaze toward the

center of the composition: Sol and Jupiter to the viewer’s left, Mercury and Luna to the

right. Simply rendered, each has easily recognizable attributes: Sol has the radiate crown

and the whip to spur the horses that pull the chariot of the sun; Jupiter is bearded, with

a scepter at his left shoulder; Mercury wears the winged hat, and his caduceus appears

over his left shoulder as well; the crescent moon appears behind Luna’s head, and she

has a whip at her right shoulder.

Scholars have attempted to explain these four divinities in various ways—none of them

entirely satisfying. Each stands for a day of the week, and if read from right to left we have


FIGURE 47

Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele (IX, 7, 1). View of ensemble in 1911.

the sequence: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday—but why not the other three days?

In my own view, their importance lies not so much in their relation to days of the week

as in the way they set up a cosmos, on high, above the shop’s entrance and in relation to

the images of the gods below. The Sun and the Moon, whose courses through the sky tra-

versed the Roman conception of the universe, frame Jupiter, father of the gods. Mercury,

as we will see, has special significance in a commercial space. The patron, in commis-

sioning this cosmic architrave with its immediately recognizable images, seems to be pay-

ing homage to standard Roman religion in a general way above so that he can represent

his specific—and nonstandard—religious practices below. He grounds his cosmos of

work, as it were, in the large cosmos.

Beneath, to the left of the shop opening, in a white-ground square (1.50 × 1.50 m) above

a high red socle, appears the corpulent image of Pompeian Venus (Venus Pompeiana),

principal deity of the city. When Sulla conquered Pompeii of the Samnites and made it

into a Roman colony in 80 b.c., he named it Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum—

prominently citing his own gens name, Cornelius, along with the name of the goddess

he so venerated. Venus, heavily bejeweled, wears a thick purple tunic that falls to the

tips of her toes. Over that she wears a mantle of the same color and fabric; it has gold-

embroidered edges, and it covers both arms and falls in an overskirt below her knees.

The goddess holds a scepter and rudder in her left hand. The artist put little Cupid up on

a high round base: he flourishes his left wing while holding a large round mirror for the

goddess. Twin cupids fly toward the goddess, one bearing a fillet for her head, the other

the palm of victory.

Spinazzola contends that the images of both Cupid and Venus represented statues well

known to Pompeians—the very statues that they venerated in the Temple of the Pom-

peian Venus near the forum, made of wood so that they could be carried in procession.

The artist carefully recorded all the details of the goddess’s appearance; after all, the god-

dess’s jewelry and clothing were gifts from devotees who dressed the cult statue as an act

of piety.45 Although it is impossible to confirm Spinazzola’s hypothesis from details of

the painting itself, the representation facing the statue of Venus and Cupid on the right

side of the shop’s entrance supports his argument.

Here the artist represented a second statue of a maternal deity, and this time there can

be no doubt that it is a wooden statue used in processions like those we saw in the paint-

ing of the carpenters’ procession, for it still rests upon its ferculum (figs. 48 and 49). She

is not a Roman goddess but an import from Phrygia in Asia: Cybele, also known as the

Great Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater Deum). The four bearers have just set the fer-

culum down.

The statue is about twice life-size, set oª by a high, pointed green backdrop covered

with red stars. Cybele wears a white tunic that shows only at the neck and at her feet. Over

that, she wears a dress of deep purple, worn in the manner of a Greek chiton. A mantle,

draped like the Greek himation, falls nearly to the ground, leaving only the edges of her


white tunic and her sandaled feet visible. She wears a crown in the shape of city walls—

the so-called mural crown—symbol of her role as protector of the city. In her left hand

she holds a long golden branch with thin leaves at the top and a golden patera in her

right. In the crook made by her left arm is a round object, the tympanum (tambourine)

that is one of Cybele’s frequent attributes, like the two little lions at her feet—symbols


FIGURE 48

Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele. Procession to Cybele.

FIGURE 49

Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele. Drawing of Procession to Cybele,

with figures numbered.

of her status as Mistress over the Animals. Di‹cult to see is another of her attributes,

the “net of prophecy” covering the area between her knees and the bottom of her dress.

This net belongs to a group of oracular divinities also including Dionysus, Apollo, and

Artemis-Hecate.46

In fact, the artist included one of these oracular divinities, Dionysus, in a novel way.

He inserted a marble bust of the god in a niche at the left (probably robbed from another

building). Dionysus’s form is that of a herm rendered in the archaic style of the sixth cen-

tury b.c., with heavy beard and a crown of ivy. Dionysus, too, although entering the Ro-

man pantheon from that of the Greeks, is a god of Asian origin, and his cult shares many

features—especially the disorderly and ecstatic procession (thiasus)—with that of the Great

Mother. Although the arrangement of the painting and the bust of Dionysus honors both

deities, the subject of the painting is the devotees of Cybele, who have paraded her im-

age through the streets, and who now, gathered around the priest and his assistants, pre-

pare to sacrifice in her honor.

The artist varied the ages and expressions of the four men who have just set down the

ferculum (figures 13–16). All wear long white tunics partly covered by long red bibs that

hang from shoulders to knees.47 The men still hold the canes that they used to help bear

the statue’s weight, and they have placed the ferculum in three-quarter view so that the

statue surveys the proceedings: the goddess looks toward the niche of Dionysus and to

the representation of Venus’s statue on the other side of the building’s facade.48

As in the Rome Vicomagistri relief, the patron has instructed the artist to rank the

figures in order of importance. The painter represents that pecking order by calling at-

tention to the figures’ relative size, position, and clothing. In the front are the three prin-

cipal actors, all wearing ample white tunics draped like himations and decorated with red

stripes (clavi). The o‹ciating priest (11) holds both hands out. In his right hand he holds

a little green twig and an object that may be an oil lamp or flask, and in his left a gold pa-

tera. The man to the left of the priest (9) who turns to him must be his assistant, and al-

though paint losses make it impossible to know what he held in his right hand, raised

over his left shoulder is the sacred cista, the reliquary containing the objects sacred to

Cybele’s cult, identified by its red cylindrical lid. To the left of the cista-carrier is the tibi-

cen (6) turning his double flutes in the direction of Dionysus in his niche.

Immediately behind the celebrant are two women who stand out a bit from the oth-

ers (10 and 12). Figure 12 wears a vegetal crown and a robe the color of Cybele’s, and she

carries special attributes: a branch in her right hand and a patera in her left. Spinazzola

identifies her as the first priestess of Cybele.49 Her companion (10) also wears a green

dress and a vegetal crown on her head. She stands on the other side of the celebrant and

looks intently at the cista; she may be the second priestess of the Pompeian cult.50 Oth-

ers among the women hold vessels or play musical instruments. Immediately to the left

of the cista-bearer is a woman in a dark dress also looking at the cista (8). Although paint

losses have obliterated the object that she held, the excavator tells us that it was a yellow

basket for oªerings, making her the canephora (basket bearer).51 To the left of the tibicen


is a woman (4) who wears a gold dress trimmed with red stripes. She turns to the right,

looking at the tibicen, and holds two objects: a large-mouthed vase suspended from three

chains in her right hand and a tympanum, hanging from a cord, in her left.

This tympanum is the only idle instrument in what must have been a noisy event. The

artist amplifies the tibicen’s volume, as it were, by representing five others playing in-

struments. Just behind and slightly to the left of the tibicen’s head we see the round form

of a tympanum, held in the outstretched arms of a man who looks toward the woman

playing the cymbals (3). She holds the brass-colored cymbals in her right hand, raised up

at the elbow at the same angle as the pediment over Dionysus’s niche. For some reason,

the artist depicted two of the musicians at half the size of the others and at the left of

Dionysus. Perhaps he meant them to be children. They both wear tunics, and Spinazzola

was able to identify their instruments: the one at the far left plays the syrinx (panpipes),

the other the cymbals.

The patron packed this painting with information about the Cybele statue’s appear-

ance and what her priests and followers did to honor her—and connected this repre-

sentation with images of both Dionysus and Venus Pompeiana. How would a contem-

porary viewer have understood this representation, and what might her response have

been? Cybele’s cult was already quite ancient in Roman times, for it originated in the area

of modern-day Turkey in the second millennium b.c.Worship of Cybele spread to Greece

in the first millennium, where devotees of deities similar to Cybele eagerly embraced her

and connected her with their local gods and goddesses. Particularly interesting in con-

nection with our painting is the venerability of associating Cybele with Dionysus and with

Aphrodite in Attica. The Greeks linked her beloved partner, Attis, with the god Adonis.52

This process of Cybele’s assimilation within the practices of Greek religion, called syn-

cretism, also embraced the fascinating music of her cult. Plato mentions the “Phrygian

harmony,” seemingly a combination of percussion instruments with the double flutes

(diauloi) that had a powerful eªect on those who heard it.53

The Roman Senate, at the suggestion of the Sibylline prophets, invited Cybele to Rome

in 204 b.c.: the Sibylline books suggested that Magna Mater would bring victory over

Hannibal as the Second Punic War (218–201 b.c.) dragged on. King Attalos of Pergamon

permitted the holiest relic of the Great Mother, the meteorite worshipped at her sanctu-

ary in Pessinus, to come to Rome, where it took its place in the Temple of Victory on the

Palatine. In 194 b.c. the Senate instituted a festival in her honor, held every April 4–6,

called the Ludi Matris Magnae, and they dedicated a temple to the goddess nearby.54

Even so, in the two hundred and fifty ensuing years the Romans struggled with the

unruly and illegal aspects of the cult, until the emperor Claudius o‹cially permitted cit-

izens to become its priests in a.d. 50. Senators and lawyers repeatedly called for bans on

cult practices, such as the noisy, exuberant, and licentious dancing and music that ac-

companied Cybele’s processions and rites—and above all the practice of self-castration

by priests of the cult, the Galli.55 The Galli entered Rome along with the sacred meteorite

from Pessinus; their self-castration imitated that of the goddess’s beloved, Attis, who made


himself a eunuch in devotion to Cybele.56 It took Rome several hundred years to accept

priests who compromised their legal identity as men by becoming eunuchs. Epigraphic

evidence shows that even the head priests, the Archigalli,were ex-slaves well into the third

century a.d.57

Equally di‹cult for elite Roman men was the attraction that Cybele’s cult had for

women. Traditional state religion allowed women quite minimal roles: one thinks of the

elite women remaining virgins to become Vestals, and those who appear as priestesses

of Venus, like Eumachia and Mamia at Pompeii. Even in Greek times, the frenzied women

followers of Dionysus threatened the men, a threat with terrible consequences in Euripides’

Bacchae.

Our humble street-front painting is an important indicator of non-elite women’s par-

ticipation in the very public, showy, and noisy cult of Cybele. For one thing, the patron

instructed the artist to represent six women—two of them possibly priestesses—among

the entourage of sixteen. For another, the representation underscores Cybele’s alliance

with two Roman deities who were especially important to women—Dionysus and the lo-

cal Roman maternal deity, Venus Pompeiana.

It was not only the cult of Cybele that attracted many women as devotees. The wor-

ship of the Egyptian goddess Isis also allowed women to take part in the cult and to be-

come priestesses—an attractive exception to the general exclusion of women from o‹cial

roles in the Roman state religion. Although excavations have yet to unearth a sanctuary

to the cult of Cybele at Pompeii, inscriptions and visual representations from Pompeii

and Herculaneum document the importance the cult of Isis for women.58 As with the

cult of Cybele, the inclusion of women as both devotees and priestesses constituted one

of the reasons for the spread of Isiac religion within Roman Italy.59 It is significant that

the only sanctuary to be fully restored from the damage of the earthquake of a.d. 62 was

that of Isis. A former slave, Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, and his wife, Cornelia Celsa,

rebuilt the Temple of Isis at Pompeii with their own money. They attributed the rebuild-

ing to their six-year-old son, Numerius Popidius Celsinus, to pave the way for his politi-

cal career, since the father, a freedman, was not eligible.60 Within the complex decorative

program of the Iseum, the patrons included at least one image of a priestess of Isis in the

paintings of the portico.61 Women—and non-elite women at that—could play important

roles in the worship of these imported, maternal deities.

This shop facade represents an unusually specific commission. The only really stock

images are the heads of the four planetary deities that span the entryway. All the rest are

custom-made, with the patron instructing the artist to represent specific aspects of Venus

and Dionysus, and even to depict a particular moment when priests, priestesses and devo-

tees of Cybele gather. The unique nature of this iconographical program leads back to a

patron who was a special devotee of Cybele; it seems likely that he was the priest (11) whom

we see carrying out the rites in honor of the goddess. If so, did he also require the artist

to represent members of his family, perhaps even his wife, among the women priests and

devotees in the painting?


Although we cannot know the identities of Cybele’s followers in the painting, its im-

portance lies in the way it proclaims the patron’s religious beliefs outside the sanctuary.

Spinazzola, justly proud of his discovery but unable to excavate further, believed that the

space behind the building’s facade was a religious site somehow related directly to the

cult of Cybele and her followers. His identification seems unlikely, since the paintings

take their place among the many shop signs and electoral slogans that crowded facades

all along the Street of Abundance. If it was a shop, as seems likely, the only evidence for

what it manufactured or sold comes indirectly, from an electoral slogan painted on its fa-

cade, along with the religious imagery we have looked at. The most prominent slogan

reads: Quactiliari [sic] rogant . . . (“The Quactiliarii recommend [someone] for election”).

Quactiliarii (usually spelled coactiliarii) were felt-makers; inscriptions show that there were

many felt-makers at Pompeii.62 Some scholars have even suggested that the heavy robes

dressing the statues of Venus and Cybele are made of felt—a subliminal advertisement

of the quactiliarii’s product.63

Whatever product the shopowner and his wife may have sold in the shop, it was their

desire to demonstrate to all who passed by what their goddess and her devotees looked

like that motivated them to commission this highly detailed representation. Advertis-

ing their religious identities as devotees of Cybele seems to have been more important

than announcing what they sold in their shop. What is more, if the shopowner and his

wife were priests of the cult, the viewer would have recognized their likenesses in the

painting. The painting was a way of showing the rank they had attained through their

priesthoods.

If these street-side decorations seem unconventional to us, it is because the patrons wanted

to articulate in them their own religious beliefs and their hopes for their favorite gods’

blessings. Unlike the numerous and well-studied representations of the Roman state re-

ligion, or even the large sanctuaries of foreign cults—like that of Isis at Pompeii or Cy-

bele at Ostia—these are modest commissions tailored to the wishes of a single individ-

ual. Because they were expensive, big temples and their many adornments required wealthy

patrons; their imagery followed traditions—both artistic ones and those dictated by priests.

Elite patrons hired great architects and artists to glorify their favorite deities—usually in

order to fulfill a vow made to the god or goddess in exchange for a favor granted. Ancient

literature tells us both about the works of art in these dazzling sanctuaries and about the

responses of elite viewers to what they saw.

Here, in Pompeii, we get instead the expression of modest shopowners honoring their

preferred gods. There for all to see—the people who passed by and tarried to look, and

those who entered their workspaces—were representations of religious processions and

a mix of images of their gods that followed no particular artistic tradition. They were fresh,

improvised, and anything but standard.


4

EVERYMAN AND EVERYWOMAN AT WORK

You had eight of them. You could get up to sixteen! You ran a tavern, you were a

potter, you made sausages, you were a baker, you were a farmer, you were a peddler,

you were a street vendor, and now you have a bottle shop. If you were to lick cunt,

you would have done everything!

GRAFFITO FROM POMPEII

It is well known that Roman elites did not sully their hands with trade or manual labor.1

Ownership of property was the only proper way for a senator or an equestrian to obtain

wealth, and although equestrians and senators owned businesses of various sorts, oth-

ers performed the actual work. By employing the freeborn poor, freedmen, or slaves to

work the land and to manage industries like shipping and manufacturing, the elite could

bypass the stigma of manual labor and amass great wealth. Cities were full of the work-

ing poor, struggling in one way or another to make ends meet. For a slave, if his master

gave him permission to earn money, it meant he could eventually buy freedom for him-

self and perhaps for his mate and his children. But obligations to one’s former master

did not stop with manumission; the Roman system of maintaining duties of service

through the former slave’s lifetime meant that he continued to enrich his former mas-

ter. Even the freeborn, whether the first generation born of former slaves or from a free

citizen family, might depend on one or more patroni for support.2 The whole system of

patronus-client relationships reinforced the diªerences between the social orders; it also

provided a model that perpetuated the system. Often former slaves followed in their mas-

ter’s footsteps by buying slaves for themselves.

Thus, work both marked a person as non-elite and provided the path to improving his

or her status. Little wonder, then, that in contrast to elite representations of the self, many

95

ordinary people left records of what they did for a living. The study of written materials,

ranging from gra‹ti to formal inscriptions on monuments, has enriched our under-

standing of the kinds of work non-elites did, how that work fitted into the ancient Roman

economy, and why ordinary people wanted to record their profession for posterity.3 In

this chapter I turn to visual representations for further insight into how work figured in

the lives of non-elite Romans. In the paintings and reliefs representing work that I ana-

lyze here, I try to see how their imagery conveys the patron’s attitudes toward his or her

profession. Making an image that communicates the processes and products of a specific

kind of work requires selecting and editing from a whole menu of possible representa-

tions; the decisions that the artist and patron make on what to show a viewer—as well as

how to show it—are revealing in a way that inscriptions and gra‹ti are not.

PAINTING AT POMPEII

The paintings of work that I discuss here all come from Pompeii and date to the period

62–79. I try to balance these with the reliefs and mosaics from other periods—ranging

from the early first century through the mid-third—and from other towns in Roman Italy.

With all of my case studies, my focus is not so much to catalogue the various kinds of

work ordinary people did, but to probe the rationale behind specific representations: why

did the patron want to show the work scenes, and how might a viewer have responded to

them? What emerges is a set of attitudes toward work quite diªerent from those trans-

mitted by the texts and visual representations of the elite.

As we will see, the bulk of representations of work come from burials, where their

purpose was to commemorate the deceased by showing what he or she did in life. The

paintings from street-fronts, workshops, and houses at Pompeii have very diªerent pur-

poses, fashioned as they were for the world of the living. We know their dates, and in

some cases we know the names of the owners of the buildings that the paintings deco-

rated. For these reasons they make excellent case-studies for questioning the attitudes

that both maker and viewer had toward images of labor. I have selected painting ensem-

bles that furnish the fullest information on these questions.

WORK AS DECORATION:

THE FORUM SCENES FROM THE PRAEDIA OF JULIA FELIX (I I , 4)

The paintings removed between 1755 and 1757 from the huge atrium (24) of the praedia

(rental property) of Julia Felix, even though reproduced in every book about daily life in

Pompeii since the early nineteenth century, are highly problematic if we wish to see them

as evidence of attitudes that non-elite Pompeians had toward visual representations of

their work. For one thing, in their original context they formed a frieze 0.60 meters (2

feet) high that began at a height of 2.40 meters (nearly 8 feet) from the pavement.4 Al-

though a viewer would see that the artist painted a colonnade running behind all the scenes,


designating a space like the forum at Pompeii, it would have been di‹cult to compre-

hend just what all the people that the artist placed in that setting were doing. For another,

the grand scale of the room, and Julia Felix’s own advertisement for the rental of the whole

complex, tell us that the scenes of everyday life were meant for wealthy viewers—not the

people who worked in the forum or elsewhere.5 This is work as decoration—genre scenes

meant to amuse the elite viewer.

What is interesting for our inquiry is the great mix of activities and figures that the

artist put into his creation—just what we would expect for a genre picture. Activities that

have nothing to do with commerce were ones that a viewer might associate with the elite.

They include representations of honorific equestrian statues on bases, a scene of men in

togas reading a long scroll attached to the colonnade, that of a girl and her guardian in

front of a magistrate, togate people conversing and promenading, and the comic scene

of a schoolboy being spanked.6 The numerous images of quadrupeds of various sorts,

mounted or pulling carts, add movement and introduce the ambience of commerce.7 Non-

elite activities are those of selling goods: shoes, cloth, pots and pans, and metal tools (fig.

50).8 It is clear that the artist created a sort of compendium of what could go on in pub-

lic spaces like Pompeii’s forum. No genre scene is really an everyday scene, and as Tanzer

points out, not every day was a market day.9 The city’s magistrates would have routinely

regulated the selling activities—just as they would have determined where and when in-

structors could teach their young charges. And the scene of the girl before a magistrate

would probably have occurred in the basilica rather than in the forum’s colonnade.

In short, the frieze was fanciful decoration, not documentation. When Julia Felix had

the house redecorated after the earthquake of 62, she made the atrium into a new mon-

E V E R Y M A N A N D E V E R Y W O M A N A T W O R K • 97

FIGURE 50

Pompeii, Praedia of Julia Felix (II, 4), atrium 24. Sales scene.

umental entrance on the Street of Abundance; the former dining and reception space be-

came a semipublic hall that gave access to the fine rooms-for-rent that she advertised. In

this context, the scenes of forum activities constituted a bit of local color in a decorative

scheme otherwise punctuated by the candelabras, flying figures, and stylized animals that

constitute the figural accents throughout the house.10 If the elite viewers who saw the

frieze in Julia Felix’s atrium had little reason to recognize themselves in the images of fo-

rum life that they saw, the same could not be said for wealthy merchants and low-level

magistrates who may have viewed them. They probably took part in some of the activi-

ties of forum life pictured in the frieze—perhaps in an earlier phase of their lives.

WORK AND SOCIAL STATUS IN THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII (VI , 15, 1)

If the images from the Praedia of Julia Felix belong to the category of genre painting, it

is because the viewer’s pleasure in looking at them comes from recognizing a collection

of familiar scenes of life in the forum. With the frieze of cupids and psyches in the largest

reception space of the House of the Vettii (room q, fig. 51), a viewer’s pleasure comes from

seeing everyday work and play transposed into the realm of cute little demigods that look

like chubby babies with wings—bird’s wings for the males (cupids or amores) and but-

terfly’s wings for the females (psyches).11 It is an art that trades on the transfer of human

activities into a fanciful world. Even so, the painter had to observe real-life work activities

closely to make this transfer convincing for the viewer.


FIGURE 51


Vettii (VI, 15, 1).

It is fortunate that we know that the owners of the House of the Vettii were former

slaves, and wealthy ones at that. A. Vettius Restitutus and A. Vettius Conviva were broth-

ers who had been able to buy their freedom. A. Vettius Conviva was an augustalis, as is

clear from the wax tablets found in the House of Caecilius Iucundus.12 To become an au-

gustalis the former slave had to expend considerable sums of money for public works

and festivals.13 The decoration of the Vettii’s house, perhaps the finest of Pompeii’s last

two decades, is both rich and iconographically bewildering. Much ink (including a good

deal of my own) has flowed in attempting to explain its various—and variously linked—

iconographical programs.14

We cannot even speak of the “program” of the room with the cupid and psyche frieze,

because although it is the largest and most important reception space, room q is one of

the least well-preserved in the house (fig. 52). None of its huge center pictures survives,

probably because they were on wooden panels inserted into the walls; only portions of the

painting schemes above them and to their sides remain.15 What we do have are the fine

paintings of the lowest zones, including the base-band or socle, the lower parts of fancy

pilasters that divide the walls into compartments, and the cupid frieze running around

the room’s perimeter above the socle (often called the predella by analogy to similarly posi-

tioned bottom-panels on Renaissance altarpieces). All of this painting is of high quality.

In my analysis I want to avoid drawing conclusions about the Vettii brothers’ com-

mercial activities from analysis of what the cupids and psyches do in this famous frieze—

E V E R YMAN A ND E V E R YWOMAN A T WORK • 99

FIGURE 52

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. View from entrance.

a tactic that is methodologically unsound.16 After all, the frieze itself is incomplete, and

it played a secondary—perhaps tertiary—role in the room’s decoration. The lost center

pictures declared its big themes—just as we can see in the other reception rooms of the

house, most notably the Ixion room (oecus p) and the Pentheus room (oecus n). Fur-

thermore, unlike the unique paintings of the Praedia of Julia Felix, there is much evi-

dence that vignettes of cupids and psyches at work and play constituted a standard mo-

tif circulating among wall painters. If the frieze in the House of the Vettii is a secondary

part of a room’s decoration—and a standard genre at that—what can it tell us about a Ro-

man viewer’s attitude toward work? Why did the Vettii brothers use this representation

in their best reception space? Since the cupid and psyche scenes constitute decoration—

not documentation—the answers to these questions lie in asking what responses view-

ers of diªerent classes and cultural formation might have had in seeing them.

Since their house lacked a tablinum—the standard space for receiving clients—the Vet-

tii brothers used the room of the cupid and psyche frieze for that purpose. Gra‹ti found

on the columns near oecus q indicate that the clients waited there.17 We must imagine,

then, the daily flow of the slaves, freedpersons, and freeborn dependents entering the

house through the atrium, then turning right to proceed around the peristyle and to the

north oecus. Once in the large room, the client would encounter one or both of the Vet-

tii brothers, standing and dressed in the toga. The client would confer with his patroni

about a range of business and social matters. It is doubtful whether a client engaged in

giving accounts or asking for favors would have the time or the inclination to get close

enough to the cupid and psyche frieze to take in its details. The messages for the clients—

if any—were to be found in the enormous central pictures. And these are lost.

The visitors who would have had the time and the leisure to examine our frieze would

be invited guests, and this at times when the oecus became a hall for dining and wine-

drinking. Romans wealthy enough to entertain had several spaces within their houses

where servants would set up dining couches (klinai) and tables for food and drink. The

Vettii brothers’ house had five such spaces, including a room well sheltered from the

cold that could be used for winter dining (e) and one within a suite with its own diminu-

tive peristyle (t). Oecus q was large enough so that servants could set up nine, rather

than the standard three, couches around the room’s back walls. In dining, Romans fol-

lowed the Greek custom of reclining on the left elbow and eating with the right hand.

Given the height of the couches, and the fact that guests had considerable time during

the banquet and the wine-drinking that followed, it is likely that the cupid and psyche

frieze would have been one of the topics of conversation.

Ten of a total of thirteen original panels of the cupid and psyche frieze remain, and

they show their subjects at both work and play.18 Psyches play darts on the panel on the

right (south) entryway wall. All of the scenes that follow on the right, or east, wall are well

preserved. As a viewer walked along this wall, he must have marveled—as viewers do

today—at their fine execution and whimsical compositions. He would first have taken in

the scene of flower-sellers and garland-makers (fig. 53). Supplies come in on a flower-


laden goat; cupids and psyches manufacture the garlands and hang them on sale-racks.

In the next scene two cupid perfume-makers extract oil from flowers by pounding them

with mallets in a receptacle; a psyche stirs a cauldron; and a cupid and psyche pair mix a

liquid in a tall conical vessel. On a counter next to them is a scroll—perhaps with per-

fume recipes or accounts—and a scale. A psyche-client sits on a fancy bench with a foot-

stool and tests some of the product on her hand (fig. 54).

A scene of play follows: a whimsical circus race with cupids in four chariots each pulled

by two antelopes. Next is a scene of goldworkers (fig. 55). A cupid works on a gold bowl

at right. He stands at the back of a forge with the head of Vulcan on top of it, where a psy-

che is melting metal in its heat. To the left of the forge, a seated cupid is intent on ham-

mering the metal on an anvil. At the center of the panel is a stepped counter that show-

cases objects for sale. A psyche is the client, seated on a bench and resting her feet on a

footstool while a cupid weights an object for her. At the far left two more cupids hammer

an object on an anvil. The compositions up to this point read in a narrative from right to

left, but this one has its focus in the middle.

The final scene on this wall actually reverses the narrative direction so that it reads

from left to right—evidently because guests would be looking at it from their places on

dining couches. Cupids and psyches are at work in a cloth-treating shop, or fullery ( ful-

lonica) (fig. 56). The sequence begins on the left with cupids treading cloth in a square

vat with walls at either side. Next to them a cupid rubs the cloth with fullers’ earth while

another next to him brushes cloth hanging from a sturdy rack. Scenes of checking and

folding the cloth follow to the right. At the far right is a psyche, seated but bending in-

tently over a piece of cloth; her pose—that of a cloth checker—makes it unlikely that the

artist wished to designate her as the proprietor of the fullonica, as Spinazzola suggested.19

It is possible to read most figures in badly abraded scenes on the back (north) wall.

The first panel from the right (east) shows four cupid-bakers celebrating the feast of their

patron, Vesta. In the background to the right and left are asses—the animals bakers used

to turn their grain mills. But the bakers are not working; they recline, holding metal cups

and arranged around a vessel with two handles that must contain wine. They are engaged

in the after-dinner wine-drinking party, or commissatio—an activity that, we may suppose,

often took place in this room. In fact, wine is the theme of all three vignettes on the north

wall and the one preserved scene on the west wall. The central vignette, the largest of all,

has scenes of harvesting grapes to right and left, with the cupids climbing up ladders to

pick the grapes from vines trained to grow between tall trees. In the center of the picture

are two cupids operating a big wine press. The left-hand panel presents a procession go-

ing from left to right—again for the comfort of the person looking at the wall from his

or her place on the dining couch. Dionysus leads the thiasus in his chariot pulled by goats,

followed by an ithyphallic Pan playing the double pipes. A dancing cupid balancing a big

crater (mixing bowl) on his shoulders closes the procession (fig. 57). On the west wall only

one scene is preserved, that of winetasting. On the right, a cupid carefully tilts an am-

phora resting horizontally on a block, watching as the wine pours into a cup held by

E V E R Y M A N A N D E V E R Y W O M A N A T W O R K • 10 1

FIGURE 53

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches making garlands.

FIGURE 54

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches making perfume.

FIGURE 55

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches working gold.

FIGURE 56

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches as fullers.

FIGURE 57

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Dionysiac procession (thiasus).

FIGURE 58

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids winetasting.

another cupid. In the center the cupid-host oªers a cup of wine to his guest or customer.

The host wears a Dionysian fur tunic (the nebris), and holds a kind of ladle (the simpu-

lum), used to mix wine with water, in his left hand. His guest wears a white tunic and car-

ries a thin staª. Behind him stand many amphoras, signaling this space as a wineshop

(fig. 58).

The cupid-and-psyche imagery in this grand room, while not evidence for what the

patrons did to earn their money—and their freedom—does reveal their interest in show-

ing their guests cute, fashionable representations of productive work. It is likely that people

whom the Vettii entertained were, like themselves, relatively wealthy freedpersons, both

men and women. A former slave may not have had to do much manual work to earn his

freedom; the wealthiest slaves—and those most likely to be able to amass the money to

buy their freedom—were administrators, not manual laborers.

A friend of the Vettii’s, then, would have first understood the cupid and psyche frieze

as the best in fashionable decorative painting of the time—a mark of the Vettii’s improved

social and financial status. The earliest paintings in this genre date to the period of the

Third Style of a.d. 15–45 and appear as predelle panels in the grand reception space of the

wealthy Villa Imperiale, built into Pompeii’s west wall.20 All of the other representations

of the genre are later, most found in medium-size houses decorated in the late Fourth

Style (a.d. 62–79).21 The Vettii’s use of the cupid and psyche frieze may be another

expression—like so much of the imagery in their house—of their desire to imitate elite

fashions.22

The Vettii’s banquet guests, seeing cupids and psyches carrying out work that they

supervised—or even once performed—may have reflected on their own experiences as

they worked their way to freedom. The very variety of work activities—and the missing

paintings of the west wall would have provided more—makes the frieze a digest of the

ways working people earned their living. But ordinary working people were not the tar-

get audience in the Vettii’s sumptuous reception space, nor did the frieze present ordi-

nary working people. It consisted of pretty, whimsical translations of the sweaty realities

of work into the never-never land of myth; for the former slaves who viewed the frieze, it

was a sign of what they had left behind and a trophy of their new status. It was a way of

sanitizing the viewers’ servile past even while advertising the Vettii’s new gentility and

good (elite) taste.

VERECUNDUS AND HIS WIFE: CLOTHMAKERS AND SELLERS

If the paintings on the facade of the shop at IX, 7, 1, that we looked at in the last chapter

emphasized the owner’s veneration of Cybele and Venus, Verecundus, who owned an es-

tablishment just a few doors down in the same block, wanted to show viewers just what

his workers did and what he and his wife sold.23 This is not to say that the imagery is en-

tirely secular or documentary—just that it details actual work activities in a way that nei-

ther the Shop of the Carpenters’ Procession nor that of Cybele’s devotees does.24 The fres-


coes occupy two registers on either side of a doorway: the images of the gods are above,

those of work below. On the upper part of the space to the right of the doorway, the painter

created a colorful and dramatic image of Venus Pompeiana, this time in a red chariot in

the form of a ship’s prow being pulled by four elephants (figs. 59 and 60). Venus wears

a sky-blue chiton and mantle. Her attributes include a mural crown, a scepter in her left

hand, and a rudder against her left arm. Cupid, in a yellow mantle, stands at her left, hold-

ing a mirror. Two small flying cupids flank Venus, the one on the left holding a crown,

that on the right a palm branch. Venus is both the center of the composition and the largest

figure; next in size is a standing figure of the goddess Fortuna framing the composition

on the left. She stands on a globe, holding a cornucopia in her left arm; a rudder leans

against her right side. The smallest of the figures is the crowned Genius opposite For-

tuna on the right; like Fortuna he holds a cornucopia in his left arm, but he has a patera

in his extended right hand.

A Pompeian viewer would have quickly understood the messages of this iconograph-

ical triangle. Venus occupies its apex. Only royalty could ride in a chariot pulled by ele-

phants;25 and the chariot, shaped like a boat, alludes to the goddess’s role as protector of

both sailors and their cargo at sea. Her mural crown—like that of Cybele—signals her

role as protector of the city of Pompeii. It is worth noting that the Temple of Venus Pom-

peiana rose on the highest point of the city, where it was a landmark for navigators in the

bay below.26 Fortuna’s message is that prosperity, symbolized by the cornucopia, comes

with proper devotion. Only then will the goddess use her rudder to steer the devotee’s life

on the right course, a meaning that complements that of Venus. The Genius’s cornucopia

signals prosperity as well, but prosperity won through another kind of devotion: to the

guardian spirit of the paterfamilias—in this case the owner, Verecundus. This painting

is the largest of the four (H 1.55 × W 1.82 m) and sets the tone for the ensemble.

A viewer’s eyes would probably look for a match in size and message to the painting

of Venus and would find it in the upper painting opposite it, to the left of the doorway

(fig. 61). Here the other deity who protected merchants and travelers, Mercury, appears

under the porch of a little Roman temple with a high podium and two front columns.27


FIGURE 59

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus

(IX, 7, 5–7), view of entrances

7 and 5, with right pier

of doorway 7.

In addition to his attributes as the messenger of the gods (winged helmet and shoes; the

caduceus), Mercury carries a sack of money in his right hand—symbol of the financial

prosperity that comes from his guardianship over Verecundus’s shop.

Verecundus, having represented all the proper deities who would protect and further

his business in these large and showy paintings above, got the painter to depict some of

his workers, himself, and his wife in the smaller friezes below. He instructed the artist

to fill the long panel beneath the image of Venus Pompeiana with scenes of clothmaking

(H 0.50 × W 1.82 m). We see two operations, the combing of wool and the making of felt

cloth from wool and other animal hairs. There are three wool combers, or pectinarii, sit-

ting in the background: their job was to comb the wool before spinning it to remove knots

and residual impurities. They wear voluminous robes—to keep the flying wool flakes oª

their bodies—and sit on little stools behind low tables. They hold their feet together un-

der the tables to secure the base of a little square wooden column that tapers near the bot-

tom. The top of the column supports two tall combs, one behind the other, at chest level.

Each man is combing wool by drawing it through the tall metal teeth of the parallel combs,

perhaps using a curved instrument with handles on both sides.28 Various tools, includ-

ing several more combs, lie on their tables.


FIGURE 60

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus. Venus Pompeiana and clothworkers with

Verecundus.

At the center are four men, called coactiliarii (quactiliarii in Pompeian dialect), making

felt from the hair on animal hides and from wool (fig. 62).29 The word for the felter, coac-

tor or coactiliarius, comes from the verb cogere, “to compact,” because the felter forced the

fibers together with his hands. To make felt, the felter must press wool and animal hairs

together into a compact, consistent mass, using some sort of greasy or cohesive binder

to size the felt. The felt, called coactilia, shed water and was well suited for the making of

hats, boots and slippers, and raincoats; the military used felt for tents, horseblankets, and

even cuirasses.30 Just left of center is a round boiler with a log fire under it to keep the

coagulant hot. Into its mouth fit two teardrop-shaped basins resting on sawhorses; two

muscular coactiliarii, wearing only kilts, work at each. They are felting the fibers in the

gluey coagulant in a motion that combines scraping and compacting; the leftover liquid

flows back from their work surface into the boiler.31

At the right—directly below the figure of his Genius in the big painting—stands the

proud owner of the establishment (see fig. 60). To make sure that everyone understood


FIGURE 61

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus,

left pier of doorway 7. Mercury

in front of his temple.

that this was the owner, the artist wrote “Verecundus” in small letters under the figure’s

feet. He depicted Verecundus in a frontal pose, proudly holding up one of his oªerings:

a brown cloth adorned with purple stripes.32Verecundus also seems to be modeling some

of the clothing made and sold in his shop; he wears a felt hooded garment, called a cu-

cullus, and felt shoes with leather soles.

Who is Verecundus and what is his profession? It seems likely that he is the same man

named in a gra‹to found in the House of M. Gavius Rufus (VII, 2, 16): M. Vecilius Vere-

cundus, vestiar(ius).33 A vestiarius is both a maker and a seller of cloth and clothing. An-

other gra‹to, this time at the right of the entryway to the shop itself reads: tunica lintea

aur(ata), “a tunic of linen with gold thread.”34 We know that linen was imported to Pom-

peii from Alexandria.35Verecundus, it seems, sold luxury items more expensive than those

made of felt or wool—including, no doubt, the striped cloth he holds up, probably made

of linen or even silk.

To reinforce this point, the painting to the left of the doorway shows a woman selling

a variety of cloth goods (fig. 63). Although she could be an employee or even a slave owned

by Verecundus, most scholars believe that she is his wife. In support of this hypothesis

is her prominent place in the decorative program as a whole. Just as Verecundus and his

workers are literally under (hence symbolically under the protection of ) Venus, Fortuna,

and Verecundus’s Genius, the artist placed Mercury, god of commerce, in the panel above

the wife’s enterprise. She sits behind a high table, wearing a blue hooded mantle and

holding a shoe in either hand. Behind her to left and right are shelves with unidentifiable

objects on them. On the table, between two glass vessels, is a tray with more shoes and

perhaps cloth bundles on it. A second table of about the same height, but narrower, projects

into the foreground;36 it holds a glass vase and four shoes with red and yellow bundles

flanking them on either side—certainly parcels of clothing. At the right, a customer wear-

ing a blue hooded mantle—another of Verecundus’s wares—sits on a bench with a high

back. The artist, despite his meager talents, attempted to give the man a pose that is both

relaxed and intent: he rests his left hand on the bench while he cranes his neck forward

and gestures with his right hand.37

Taken together, the four panels composing the painting program that Verecundus

worked out for the facade of his shop reveal both his values and the expectations of con-

temporary viewers. He invokes the proper deities for the owner of a woolworking and

clothing shop: they appear in capital letters, as it were. It would be a mistake to see the

paintings as “shop signs” advertising wares; the principal message to the passerby—and

it must have been the message that she expected—was the celebration and propitiation

of the proper gods. Yet Verecundus—in lowercase letters—sends a second visual mes-

sage: he invites the viewer to consider the range of his and his wife’s activities by select-

ing just three from among the many involved in his operation.

Why show the combers and felters? Combing was only the first of many steps required

to make cloth out of wool. This first step becomes a sign for all the other operations—


FIGURE 62

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus, right pier of doorway 7. Felt-makers, detail.

FIGURE 63

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus, left pier of doorway 7. Sales scene with woman and customer.

spinning, weaving, cleaning, dyeing, pressing, and so on. Since no one has excavated the

shop area beyond the facade, we have no way of knowing whether any of these operations

actually went on in Verecundus’s shop. The same is true of the scene of feltmaking. It is

one of the many phases in a long process, and therefore a visual synecdoche standing for

the manufacture of felt. The third element of this frieze, Verecundus himself holding up

a piece of cloth and perhaps modeling a felt outfit, seems calculated to tell a viewer that

this is the place to buy all kinds of cloth goods—wool, felt, and others. Rather than illus-

trating systematically what kinds of manufacturing went on in the space behind the shop,

the image of the wool combers stands for items made of wool just as the image of the felt-

ers stands for goods made of felt. Verecundus is the head of this family of workers and

also the proud entrepreneur.

In support of this interpretation is the pendant to this scene, where Verecundus’s wife,

surrounded by felt shoes and bundles of cloth, reigns over her shopkeeper’s domain in

the presence of a customer. This is certainly an image of selling, not manufacturing. Al-

though we will not know for sure until the shop space is excavated, it seems unlikely that

Verecundus was able to make both wool and felt products in his space. We know from

the wax tablets found in the House of Caecilius Iucundus that, between a.d. 56 and 60,

Caecilius rented a wool-treating establishment ( fullonica) belonging to the city.38 Vere-

cundus, like Iucundus, may have rented or otherwise controlled small-manufacturing

sites around Pompeii and used this shop for sales. Its location, along Pompeii’s main

east-west street, is well suited for a sales shop. This, coupled with the emphasis in the

two paintings on exhibiting the owners and the things they sold, argues for sales rather

than manufacturing.

Although the shop’s activities must remain a moot point, the fact of the owners’ self-

representation is clear. What did it mean to show yourself with your wares—and in Vere-

cundus’s case, modeling them? No elite person would commission such a representa-

tion of him- or herself. Yet among the working non-elites—from slaves to freedpersons

to the freeborn—self-representations surrounded by images of one’s trade or profession

are common. Since, as we will see, most of the surviving evidence comes from tombs,

these images on Pompeii’s main street give us a glimpse of self-representation in the realm

of everyday living.

Rather than recoiling from showing themselves with their hands sullied by com-

merce—as any self-respecting elite Pompeian would do—Verecundus and his wife in-

structed an artist to advertise to all who pass just what they sold. Everyone who could read

knew who they were by reading Verecundus’s cognomen, or last name, under his picture.

This visual representation demonstrated that for non-elites there was no stigma attached

to work, but rather that—under the protection of the gods and in full view of all—work

was to be celebrated. If Verecundus chose to include himself in the company of sweaty

feltworkers and lint-covered wool combers—and his wife chose to show herself sur-

rounded by the shop’s wares selling goods to a customer—it was because they took pride

in what they did. And if the main thrust of the painting ensemble was to invoke the fa-

E V E R YMAN A ND E V E R YWOMAN A T WORK • 1 1 1

vor of the gods, the visual connection of Verecundus with his Genius above, and his wife

with Mercury, proclaimed to all the happy results of the gods’ favor.

IMAGES OF WORK IN THE WORKPLACE:

THE FULLONICA AT VI, 8, 20

A fullonica or fullery provided two services: finishing newly woven cloth and cleaning soiled

cloth. Although one could use wool cloth immediately after weaving, the processes col-

lectively called fulling were necessary to clean it further, to shrink it, soften it, bleach it

white, and to give it a nap if desired. The first step was to wash the wool cloth in warm

water with a grease cutter such as natron, potash, soapwort root, or urine. For this and

other washing processes, fulleries needed large supplies of two liquids, water and urine

(both animal and human), and had to make provision to obtain them.39 The next step was

to rub fuller’s earth (creta fullonica) into the cloth to whiten it and give it luster. After

washing the cloth again and beating it, the fullers hung it to dry. Once dry, the fullers

brushed the cloth with various kinds of combs, and then fumigated it with sulphur to

bleach it. For this process they draped the cloth over a wicker frame, the viminea cavea.

At this point the fullers rubbed the cloth with fuller’s earth again, brushed it to give it a

nap, and, if necessary, cropped the fibers to make it smooth. The last step was to press the

cloth, after sprinkling it with water. Rather than using heated irons, fullers employed large

mechanical presses.40

Modern understanding of the workings of the fullonica advanced significantly with

the excavation, in 1825, of the structure at VI, 8, 20, just north of the forum on the Street

of Mercury (fig. 64). Both its unusual architectural features and four paintings repre-

senting fullers at work provided concrete evidence for the activities that written sources

described. The building takes up one-fourth of insula 8 and is the largest fullonica found

to date at Pompeii.

The owner built his establishment into the space of two former private houses. Clients

would enter through the large vestibule (40), furnished with a doorkeeper’s room (7). The

three intercommunicating rooms at the east of the peristyle (39) were reception spaces

(11–13), reserved for customers who dropped oª or picked up items. Small work rooms

(15–23) occupy the spaces on the peristyle’s south side, and at the back are the square

washing tubs of diªerent sizes (26A–C), all furnished with running water. A little stair-

case gives access to the deepest of the tubs (26). Room 27 has six niches for treading cloth,

and room 30 is the largest washing area, perhaps for the final rinsing of the cloth.

The only decoration connected specifically with the structure’s conversion from house

to fullery is the installation of a fountain decorated with paintings between two piers on

the east side of the peristyle (a and b on the plan). The paintings date to Pompeii’s last

two decades. Only the paintings on the right-hand pier survive, since the excavator had

it removed whole to the Naples Museum shortly after its excavation.41 As we will see, these

1 12 • NON - E L I T E S I N T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

paintings are nearly comprehensive in their depiction of how fullers ( fullones) processed

cloth that came from the looms.42 However, modern scholars interested in what the paint-

ings revealed about ancient wool-processing technology have ignored their original con-

text, using them as illustrations of the fulling process rather than asking how they might

function as an expression of the mentality of the owner and his workers.

In its original setting the Naples pier formed part of a fountain installation now re-

duced to near-rubble, since it was left to the mercy of the elements. The other paintings

that completed the decorative program have vanished. One contemporary view survives,

an engraving made after Sir William Gell’s drawing (fig. 65).43 It shows the fountain seen

from the southwest, the view a worker might have as he approached the suite of rooms

(11–13) reserved for clients. Combining Gell’s drawing with contemporary descriptions,

it is possible to reconstruct the decorative program. What emerges is the use of images

of work that have a very diªerent eªect and content from those decorating the front of

Verecundus’s shop.44

The fountain itself consisted of a shell-shaped marble basin supported on a fluted col-

umn. Both the column and the basin itself have disappeared. To either side of the basin

were little spur-walls, rising to the height of the basin, that jutted out from the framing

piers; the pipes inside them spouted water into the basin. When the water flowed over

the edges of the basin, it fell into the peristyle’s rain gutter.45 As the only decorations on

an otherwise unadorned peristyle, the fountain, together with the decorated piers and

waterspout walls, must have held a certain fascination for both visitors and workers.

The artist unified the ensemble in two ways: he provided a red ocher ground for the


FIGURE 64

Pompeii, plan of Fullonica

at VI, 8, 20.

whole (like the painter of the lararium of the House of the Sarno Lararium, fig. 42), and

he painted the whole of the lowest register, or socle, with a frieze of water plants and birds—

punctuated by representations of masks. He also created important symmetries in the

decoration of the upper zones. On the south side of the north pier he painted an image

of Venus, represented as a blurry figure in Gell’s engraving, but well-preserved on the ac-

tual pier in Naples (plate 4). Facing Venus on the north side of the south pier was the im-

age of a water god.46 The river god (similar, perhaps, to the image of the River Sarno in

House I, 14, 7, fig. 42) poured water from an amphora: a fitting allusion to the water-

works of the fountain beneath him. Venus—although born of the sea—does not appear

in any of her watery forms. Instead she wears a radiate diadem and a red mantle that falls

behind her shoulders to reveal her nude body. Images of Venus following the same late-

Hellenistic model appear throughout Pompeii; here she is the youthful goddess of love—

not the large, maternal goddess that we have seen on the shop-fronts of Verecundus and

of the devotee of Cybele.47

These were the images on the inner sides of the two piers that faced the fountain it-

self. On the sides of the piers and spur-walls facing east, where clients gathered in rooms

11–13, the artist carried through the theme of divine presence and protection. (Unfortu-

nately Gell’s engraving does not show us this side of the fountain complex.) On the east

face of the corner pier the artist painted two snakes approaching an altar. Boyce includes

this painting in his corpus of Pompeian lararia, but Fröhlich rejects this designation be-

cause the other necessary element, a niche or altar to place oªerings on, is missing.48 The

image of the snakes, like those of the gods, is an appeal for protection—for the workers

and for the establishment as a whole. The artist rounded out the cycle of deities by paint-

ing images of Dionysus and Apollo on the spur walls jutting out from the piers that car-

1 14 • N O N - E L I T E S I N T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

FIGURE 65

Pompeii, Fullonica at VI, 8, 20. Decorative scheme of fountain, walls, and piers in

southeast part of peristyle, seen from the southwest of peristyle.

ried the water pipes to the fountain basin. The pairing of these two very diªerent, but

complementary, gods is as common in contemporary Pompeian decoration as it is in tex-

tual sources of the period.49

So much for the standard imagery. For the east and north sides of the right-hand pier

the patron instructed the artist to paint images that, rather than invoking the gods’ pro-

tection over his establishment, showed what his workers—both men and women—did

there. A customer would have probably first taken in the charming fountain installation,

and then her eye would scan the two registers on the pier facing the drop-oª and wait-

ing rooms. In the upper painting, reading from left to right, she would first see the im-

age of a woman seated on a stool (plate 4). She wears a long garment and has a hairnet,

necklace, and bracelet. Her right arm rests on her thigh while with her left hand she grasps

the edge of a piece of cloth held by a young servant girl. The servant girl wears a simple

long tunic and holds an object—perhaps a needle—in her lowered left hand. Scholars

have interpreted the seated woman variously: as the proprietor of the fullery,50 as a cloth

checker, or as a customer.51 Given her small size in relation to the other workers, she is

likely to be a worker or customer—not the proprietor. If she is a customer, a viewer could

see herself in this scene—an excellent way to engage and perhaps flatter a client.

To the right of this group are two much larger figures of men, both in essentially the

same dress (short tunics) and in the same pose, but carrying out very diªerent work. The

one on the left leans forward while turning his head to face the viewer. He is brushing a

white tunic with red borders that hangs from a bar. The other worker is carrying the cage-

like viminea cavea on his head; he has a pail—probably filled with sulphur—in his left

hand and a bundle (of cloth?) over his right shoulder.52 An owl sits on top of the fumi-

gating frame—the bird sacred to Minerva, protector and patron of all clothworkers.

The lower picture arranges four workers in apsidal niches, each defined by low pro-

jecting walls (plates 4 and 5; compare also the fullonica scene from the House of the Vet-

tii, fig. 56). The excavator immediately connected this representation with the structures

he found in the room at the northwest corner of the peristyle (27 on the plan), where the

workers tread on the cloth to clean it while using the niches’ side walls for support.53 All

the workers stand in round tubs, but the second figure from the left is at least twice the

size of the other three, a dramatic example of the artist’s use of size hierarchy. The two

workers in the outer niches each hold a piece of cloth; the artist depicted their faces in

three-quarters view so that each looks toward the center of the painting. The second worker

from the right is a bit taller than the outer figures, but unlike them he is fat and bald. He

stands in a frontal pose and holds a cloth that he has pulled out of his treading basin. The

largest figure demonstrates how the cloth treaders used the side walls to support them-

selves while they worked. He looks out at the viewer and wears the same simple, hiked-

up tunic as the others.

Although some would like to make him the owner of the fullery because of his large

size, it is unlikely that the proprietor would want the artist to represent him doing the

least glamorous work in the establishment. Nor is it likely that he is an adult and the oth-


ers are children, since the second figure from the right is bald. The most likely explana-

tion is that the artist, instructed to show four diªerent activities, had to double the height

of this figure to enable him to rest his arm on the niche walls. And as Fröhlich points

out, if all four fullers had been represented at the same size, the painter would have run

out of space.54 As in many representations of work activities where the artist has no icono-

graphical models, shifts of scale are a common way of allowing him to pack extra infor-

mation into a scene. In the image just above, he employed this device to show three ac-

tivities: the woman checking the cloth, the man brushing the cloth, and the one carrying

the viminea cavea.

There exist three other representations of fullers treading cloth in vats—two stone re-

liefs and one painting—but this one is intent on recording the particular installation of

vats and niches that the fullers used in this shop.55 More important, the specificity of both

the activities of each fuller and the careful depiction of each man’s physical traits leaves

little doubt that they are portraits of the workers in this fullonica.

The artist continued his story of the fullonica’s activities on the small side of the pier

that faced north, to a viewer’s right. In the upper picture of the right small side he de-

picted the cloth-press (plate 5). Although there were no remains of this fullonica’s cloth-

press, Spinazzola’s excavations of the Fullonica Stephani on the Street of Abundance

turned up a carbonized cloth-press very much like the one depicted in the painting.56 Once

again, the painter had no traditional models for this image: he had to observe the press

that the establishment used in order to reproduce its details. It is a straightforward im-

age: with a minimum of perspective foreshortening he represented the sturdy framework

and the mechanical apparatus: two large vertical screws pressed the upper board against

the bottom board where workers placed the cloth.

Although the first image we looked at could have been either a cloth checker or a cus-

tomer, there can be no doubt that it is a customer who appears in the picture beneath

this. Two drying poles suspended above in oblique perspective hold cloth set out to dry,

providing a slightly whimsical setting for the scenes beneath. At the lower left a woman

either receives a cloth from a young man standing in front of her or gives the cloth to him

(plate 6). Two details support it as a drop-oª scene: the cloth is not carefully folded, and

the man receiving it looks out to the viewer, away from the customer.57 This, then, is cloth-

ing that has seen use and simply needs cleaning—a motif found in a number of grave

reliefs of fullers.58 And once again, the man who looks out at the viewer is one of the

fullers—another probable portrait of the fullonica’s personnel.

On the right we see a woman clothworker, represented at a larger scale than the group

on the left. She is cleaning a tool, perhaps a wool-comb. The image is an important one,

for it furnishes evidence not only for the presence of women workers in this fullonica,

but also for the visual representation of such workers. Natalie Kampen notes in her study

of second- and third-century reliefs of working women at Ostia that the pattern there is

quite diªerent: artists represent women selling and serving (for example, as shopkeep-


ers or midwives) but never actually performing manual labor.59 This image of a woman

working in cloth production might reflect the owner’s pride in his female workers, or it

may simply indicate an attitude that welcomed such images in Pompeii at the time. There

exists a strong visual parallel in the image of a working psyche in the fulling scenes in the

House of the Vettii (see fig. 56). Although a psyche is a female demigod, not a real woman,

such representations of psyches at work occur frequently in decorative painting of the

period.

What did this painting ensemble, and, in particular, the images of the workers them-

selves, mean to people who frequented this fullery: the proprietor, the customers, and—

perhaps most importantly—the workers themselves? Although the cost of the fountain-

with-painting could not have been great, its importance lies in the fact that the owner

instructed the artist to depict the activities of his workers. The images of the gods are

standard, but the scenes of work were custom-made. The only other decorated spaces in

his establishment were the three interconnecting rooms reserved for customers (11–13);

today only the mosaic floors remain. Descriptions from the time of the excavations re-

veal that the paintings had lofty mythological themes. In room 12 were three center pic-

tures: Theseus Victorious over the Minotaur,60 Adonis and Aphrodite,61 and an uncertain pic-

ture that may have shown Theseus leaving Ariadne on Naxos.62 It is impossible to

determine whether these paintings were left over from the house’s previous life as a res-

idence, or whether the owner of the fullonica ordered them to decorate the waiting rooms.

Either way, the paintings, along with the original Second-Style mosaic floor in room 11,

gave these reception or waiting rooms a semblance of high culture even as they provided

a refuge amidst the noise and stench of the fullery. Those waiting were either the cus-

tomers themselves or their slaves.

But the proprietor, it seems, also wanted to show his pride, not only in his establish-

ment but also in his workers. If he instructed the painter to make into portraits the vi-

gnettes of the workers treading cloth, the man accepting dirty laundry, and the woman

cleaning her tool—as I believe he did—then he wanted to show not just what his em-

ployees did but also what they looked like. He wished to put a face, as it were, on his lit-

tle industrial operation. For the customer, the surprise of matching a worker’s face in the

fresco with the person he or she was dealing with must have been a pleasant one. It was

also, one could argue, a good way for the owner to sweeten his workers as well: seeing

themselves at work—and in the company of the gods and goddesses of the fountain—

would have reinforced their pride in their work and perhaps their loyalty to their boss.

The owner, unlike the self-proclaiming Verecundus, is absent from these scenes. If the

workers were slaves, the paintings exhibited the skills that would perhaps earn them

enough money to buy their freedom one day.

The fountain complex in all its specificity had little in common with the generic dec-

oration that graced many workspaces in Pompeii, and almost nothing in common with

the work scenes transformed into the never-never land of cupids and psyches, like those


in the House of the Vettii. Right there for all to see—owner, customers, and workers—

was a series of images celebrating the workers and the machinery of their establishment.

For each viewer, the paintings’ message was slightly diªerent, depending on his or her

status and his or her relation to the business of the fullery. Yet for all viewers, the images

of the workers and their tools celebrate—and, in a sense, elevate—everyday life and the

ordinary people who worked in the fullery.

WORKER RELIEFS FROM CLASSIS, ROME, AND OSTIA

Most of the stone reliefs showing people at work, or representing the tools of their trades,

come from burial contexts. Scholars have long studied them for the information they pro-

vide about Roman trades and professions.63 Kampen’s study of reliefs from Ostia show-

ing working women was the first to explore questions of gender and social status.64 My

own approach is similar to hers in that I wish to understand how representations of work

articulated the patron’s values, identity, and social standing for viewers of diªerent back-

grounds. From an enormous range of reliefs, I have chosen several whose densely packed

imagery has encouraged me to make connections with the society and economy of the

cities they come from.

WORK AND LEGITIMACY:

THE GRAVE MONUMENT OF THE SHIPBUILDER LONGIDIENUS

Ravenna, the ancient city of Classis, was an important harbor in the Roman period. Lo-

cated on the delta of the Po river, it was a center for trade and shipping, and an important

port on the northern Adriatic. As in all port cities, exchange of goods—in this case, agri-

cultural products from the rich Po valley for luxury items from the eastern Mediterranean—

required a large labor force. Classis was also a base for the Roman navy. The numerous

grave monuments found in Ravenna and throughout the Po Delta provide an idea of the

work that people did and in some cases give us their names and those of their spouses.

The most informative of these monuments is the stele of Longidienus.

Despite the fact that we have no information about the original context of the large

vertical monument commemorating Longidienus and his family, its clear imagery and

inscription provide valuable insights about the patron, his work, and his messages to view-

ers (fig. 66).65 Both its style and its inscription date it to the Augustan period (27 b.c.–

a.d. 14). Among the great number of grave steles and funerary altars from the region

studied by Mansuelli, Longidienus’s is the only one that specifically names a profession

in the inscription: he is a shipbuilder ( faber navalis).66He announces his profession twice,

in fact, for in the relief at the bottom of the stele the artist has shown Longidienus work-

ing. The ship is in drydock, nearly finished, although the mast has not been stepped.

Longidienus wears a tunic and is smoothing a curved board with a kind of axe (ascia),

while standing on a rectangular block or chest.67 It is characteristic of a boat’s architec-


ture that its pieces are not squared rectangles, but curved. Unlike the generic motif of a

man planing a board in the painting of the carpenter’s procession at Pompeii (see plate

3), here the artist has detailed and emphasized Longidienus’s special skills in shaping

and fitting the curved boards.68 The indentations on the board may function to separate

out the shrouds.69

Perhaps the most important aspect of this image is the patron’s insistence that the

viewer know that the person working is Longidienus himself. The little rectangular plaque

between the end of the board and the ship’s rear says: “Publius Longidienus, son of Pu-

blius, busy at work.”70 With this combination of verbal and visual representations (there

were two more completed ships on the narrow sides of the stele) Longidienus drives home

the point that he is not a shipping contractor with a big business but a man whose suc-

E V E R YMAN A ND E V E R YWOMAN A T WORK • 1 19

FIGURE 66

Ravenna, grave stele of

Longidienus and Longidiena.

cess depended on his own skills. In the portraits and inscriptions above that take up the

other two-thirds of the stele, he projects his hopes for the future.

Here Longidienus announces his status as a freeborn Roman citizen even while de-

claring his love for a wife who had been his slave. The artist singled out Longidienus and

Longidiena by placing them in a tall niche with an arch over each figure and by repre-

senting them as nearly half-length figures. Longidienus, on the left, seems to be stand-

ing and surveying the terrain. He wears the toga, symbol of his citizen status, his right

hand emerging from its deep curve (sinus).71 Even though Longidiena’s face is gone, we

can see that the artist placed her behind her mate, since his left shoulder overlaps her

right. She holds her left hand across her breast and wears a garment with its edge pulled

up over her that may be the stola—the proper garment of a Roman matron.

The inscription below articulates their relationship: “Publius Longidienus, son of Pu-

blius, of the tribe of Camilia, shipbuilder, established (this monument) while he was alive

also for Longidiena Stacte, freedwoman of Publius.”72 Longidiena was once his slave, and

Longidienus has freed her in order to marry her legitimately. She had been his property,

and even though he has freed her, her status does not match his: she is not freeborn (in-

genua). The visual representation reinforces this point: in tomb monuments commem-

orating properly married people, the couple often joins right hands, in a gesture known

as dextrarum iunctio.73 Here the artist has placed them as close together as he could, but

their hands do not touch—in fact Longidiena’s right hand is not visible.

The portraits below represent the two young freedmen who dedicated the altar to Longi-

dienus, their patronus. The artist has diªerentiated them from Longidienus as much as

possible. They occupy a single half-circle that allows us to see just their heads and shoul-

ders. Whereas Longidienus stands sti›y erect, his eyes looking out into space, these two

young men are supple and animated. The formulaic inscription says only that these two

former slaves paid for the monument: “Publius Longidienus Rufio, freedman of Publius,

and Publius Longidienus Piladespotus, freedman of Publius, paid the cost [for building

the monument] to their patronus.”74 Yet the composition is anything but formulaic, for

it expresses familial relationships among Longidienus, Longidiena, and the two freed-

men. The household or familia consisted of husband, wife (former slave), and the hus-

band’s freedmen.

The Ravenna relief is particularly eloquent—and touching—in the ways that it reflects

both Longidienus’s world and that of his two freedmen. Longidienus is proud of his work,

and his freedmen emphasize that work in their monument to him. They represent, both

in the inscription and in the four portraits, their relation to their patronus and to his freed-

woman wife. To an elite viewer, the monument was a pastiche: whereas tomb monuments

with portraits like these, showing the deceased looking out from niches, had been popu-

lar among the elite—and copied by wealthy freedpersons—for some time, they never tried

to connect the portraits with the world of work.75 Longidienus’s stele was an aªront to

elite taste. A freeborn man looking at the monument would see in the monument a pat-


tern that was quite frequent among the working poor, when a man’s aªection for a slave—

in Roman thought and law a possession that one owned rather than a person—turned

into a permanent union.

SPECIALIZED MANUFACTURE AND SALES:

THE ALTAR OF ATIMETUS AND EPAPHRA

Another grave monument, in the form of an altar dedicated to Atimetus and Epaphra,

comes from the city of Rome and dates to around the middle of the first century—slightly

later than the stele of Longidienus.76 If the stele of Longidienus articulates complex per-

sonal relationships, it is because the freedmen who paid for it focused most of the im-

agery on portraits while dedicating just one scene to characterize their patron’s work.

The monument’s inscriptions mirror and reiterate this emphasis. Although the inscrip-

tion on the altar tells us that Lucius Cornelius Atimetus—freeborn like Longidienus—

dedicated his altar to himself and his meritorious freedman, L. Cornelius Epaphra, and

to his other freedmen, freedwomen, and their descendants, its imagery focuses on pro-

duction and sales rather than on presenting portraits of the patron and his dependents.77

In this sense it resonates more with the paintings on the facade of Verecundus’s shop at

Pompeii than with Longidienus’s stele, since it emphasizes the connections between the

making and the selling of goods. Their setting and purpose are quite diªerent, of course.

Verecundus was decorating the exterior of his workplace—a temporary thing, to judge

from the fact that most of the paintings got covered by electoral slogans not long after the

artist painted them. The altar, well-carved in fine marble, was meant to perpetuate the

memory of L. Cornelius Atimetus.

The quality of the carving in the two reliefs on either side of the altar is quite high—

a characteristic of many such monuments from the city of Rome.78 On the right side we

see a smith’s shop, where two men in tunics work at an anvil (fig. 67). In the background

is a forge with glowing flames. A detail of the bellows appears behind the man on the left.

On a crossbar above hang a knife, a three-sided cutting device, pincers, a garden-knife,

and a straight knife.79 The standing man raises his hammer to strike the metal object,

possibly a steel rod, that his seated co-worker holds on the anvil with his left hand. Its end

is in the fire, and the seated man holds a tool, perhaps a hammer, in his right hand.

A large cabinet (armarium) filled with the products of the knifesmith’s work domi-

nates the relief on the altar’s left side (fig. 68). Atimetus has arranged them according to

type: in the upper shelf hang sickles and garden knives, in the middle one are nine straight-

bladed knives and two three-sided tools that may have been used to spread the wax on

writing tablets. At the bottom are writing cases bound around styluses.80 Against this back-

ground is a scene that emphasizes—through both pose and dress—the social distinc-

tions between the two men depicted. Gerhard Zimmer proposes that the togatus on the

left is Atimetus and the man in a short-sleeved tunic is his freedman Epaphra.81 He sees

E V E R YMAN A ND E V E R YWOMAN A T WORK • 12 1

FIGURE 67

Rome, Altar of Atimetus and

Epaphra, left side.

FIGURE 68

Rome, Altar of Atimetus and

Epaphra, front and right side.

the relief on the altar’s left side as an image of Atimetus and Epaphra working together:

on the right side they are posing beside their finished wares and wearing the clothing

that distinguishes the freeborn Atimetus from his freedman (but co-worker) Epaphra.

I prefer Kampen’s reading of this scene as one of sales.82 Details of dress, composi-

tion, and gesture support Kampen’s reading. Although both Atimetus and Epaphra had

the right to wear the toga, the artist has contrasted the dress of the two men: the man on

the left wears the toga and the one on the right a tunic—his workclothes. If we under-

stand the togatus as a customer, then the man dressed in workclothes is the proprietor,

Atimetus. If we read the scene from left to right, the togatus is a customer who has en-

tered from the left, and Atimetus’s gesture indicates his goods with his raised right hand.

There may even be a parallel in the paintings on the facade of Verecundus’s shop, where

we see Verecundus and scenes of work on the left and his wife and her customer in a

scene of selling on the right.

The visual diªerences indicate diªerent concerns. Where Longidienus is satisfied

with a single, unembellished representation of his shipbuilding work, Atimetus feels

compelled—like Verecundus—to record details. The closeness of the figures in the

smithing scene and the clutter of goods cornucopiously displayed in the sales scene ex-

press Atimetus’s desire to show the viewer both how he does his work and what an abun-

dance of fine products he provides for his customers. Such emphasis on production and

products—often magnifying the size of the tools used or goods sold so that they dwarf

the human figures in the reliefs—characterizes most reliefs representing handworkers.83

A freedman or slave would perhaps envy Epaphra’s being honored—and probably pic-

tured as well—on this fine altar. A freeborn working man looking at the reliefs would

understand Atimetus’s desire to celebrate both the di‹culty of the work and the full range

of products that people—like the togate customer—sought out. It was a monument to

his pride in his work.

A WORKING WOMAN AT OSTIA

When excavators at Ostia found the well-known relief of a woman selling vegetables and

small animals, they could not determine from what building it came (fig. 69).84 Most schol-

ars assign it a date in the second half of the second century. Although it looks like many

other reliefs of work found on tomb facades at the cemetery of nearby Isola Sacra, its

findspot—along a busy street leading to the mouth of the Tiber—indicated that it was a

shop sign. Considered as such, the relief raises interesting questions about the place of

women in Ostia’s commercial life as well as about the possible responses of customers

to the relief ’s imagery.85

A woman to the right of center stands behind a counter made up of three crates or

cages. She gazes in profile at a diminutive man as she hands him some sort of round veg-

etable or fruit with her right hand; she grasps another with her left hand. The woman’s

figure obscures all but the head and shoulder of a second person behind the counter, a


male or female assistant. To the right, on top of the middle crate, are three stacked bas-

kets; the artist has represented their contents by depicting a snail at the top left of the

stack. Two pet monkeys fill the space of the upper right-hand corner. The artist shows

two hares poking their heads out of the crate beneath the monkeys, and the beaks of fowl—

probably chickens—protrude from the bottoms of the other two cages. We see just their

beaks, and the artist has depicted a gutter for their food at the base of their cages. Our

businesswoman sold dressed as well as live fowl and rabbits: two geese or ducks hang

from a wooden rack to the left of center, and the two men at the far left seem to be dis-

cussing the hare that one of them holds.

At the time that the artist carved this relief, in the second half of the second century

a.d., Ostia was booming. Although it had been an important military camp, protecting

Rome at the mouth of the Tiber since the third century b.c., its growth as a commercial

center came when the building of two great harbors made it Rome’s principal supply city.

The first of these, built by Claudius around a.d. 50, allowed the great ships laden with

grain, oil, and wine to unload their goods within 15 miles of Rome rather than at distant

Pozzuoli or Civitavecchia. Trajan built a larger, more e‹cient harbor fifty years later, along

with a canal that allowed more rapid access to the Tiber. A building boom transformed

the city of Ostia. Building contractors razed the city’s single-story structures to build new

multistoried warehouses and apartment buildings in fireproof brick-faced concrete. Os-

tia’s population soared to about 40,000—mostly non-elite people connected with mov-

ing enough supplies to Rome to sustain its population of more than one million.

In the context of images of working women that we have seen so far—Verecundus’s

wife and the woman cleaning her woolworking tool—there are two anomalies that sin-

gle this particular patron out from the rest. She seems to be the sole proprietor, and she

instructed the artist to represent her pets—two monkeys—in her sign. Toynbee points

out that monkeys had been pets in Italy since the third century b.c., and she considers


FIGURE 69

Ostia, relief with woman selling food.

the ones in the Ostia relief to be the saleswoman’s pets, put there as curiosities to attract

customers.86 They are engaging: they turn toward each other in three-quarters view, the

one on the left scratching its head. Their benign expressions and the fact that they are

not tied up indicates that they belong to the woman at the counter.87

The other anomaly is a more important one in terms of our search for Roman view-

ers’ attitudes. In the absence of inscriptions it is impossible to know whether the shop

was jointly owned by a man and a woman, as seems likely from comparison with the

scenes of work we have looked at so far. It is possible that the man standing to the left

and gesturing broadly with his right hand toward the dead hare is the coproprietor; yet

he could also be a customer. The one unambiguous proprietor is the woman, a point that

the artist reinforced by placing her behind the counter and by giving her an assistant in

the figure who looks out over her right arm.

We do not know her social status, but if she is the owner of her shop—rather than a

slave or freedwoman in the employ of the actual owner—the relief declares to the world

her pride in her work. A viewer would have understood that it was also an advertisement

of what she sold. The clear presentation of the animals, vegetables, and fruits for sale was

the sculptor’s priority: for instance, he made the customer at the counter small so that a

viewer could see the hanging poultry clearly. A freedwoman looking at the sign would

identify with the woman’s pride in her work, since work was the way she had earned her

freedom. A freeborn man might find the details of the scene entertaining (especially the

pet monkeys), yet the image as a whole was unexceptional, since it fitted the stereotype

of visual representations of women working: nearly all showed women engaged in sales

or service occupations.88

GUILDS AND GLORY: THE COLLEGIUM OF THE GRAIN MEASURERS

Collegia of the commercial sort dominated the organization of workers at Ostia to an even

greater extent than at Pompeii. Inscriptions record a great number of diªerent collegia

at Ostia, each with a diªerent commercial interest.89 There were collegia (loosely trans-

lated as “guilds”) of rope-makers, shipbuilders, and carpenters. We get a sense of the in-

tense pace of work that such groups did from the mosaics surrounding Ostia’s so-called

Forum of the Corporations (fig. 70; see also fig. 36). The mosaics decorating the o‹ces

occupying the inboard side of the double portico that surrounded the temple record the

names of many collegia as well as the names of commercial enterprises—loosely trans-

lated as “corporations”—that met with customers there. A grain merchant in Rome, for

instance, would go to an o‹ce with the image of a grain bushel-measure (modius) in front,

perhaps with a leveling stick (rutellum) poised above it. He might be contracting with a

collegium of grain measurers (mensores) to measure the grain in a lot he has bought from

a grain-shipping company at another o‹ce (statio) in the portico.

As it turns out, we have a representation of just this sort of work in a mosaic in a large

hall that was the social and religious center for a collegium of grain measurers (fig. 71).


Brick-stamps found in the walls of the hall date its original construction to a.d. 112. It

formed a meeting place next to the mensores’ little temple, high on a podium with four

columns across the front—certainly dedicated to the grain-goddess Ceres, protector of

all mensores.90 The fact that around 200 masons doubled the thickness of the walls and

added four brick piers suggests that the hall had an impressively high vaulted ceiling.

Bases for travertine columns flanking the entrance complete the picture of a stately open


FIGURE 71

Ostia, plan of Hall and

Temple of the Grain

Measurers (I, 19, 1–2).

FIGURE 70

Ostia, Forum of the Corporations (II, 7, 4), statio 5. Mensor leveling modius with a rutellum.

space of 16 by 9.5 meters (53 by 31 feet) The mensores commissioned the mosaic floor

after the renovations; its style dates it to a.d. 230–50.91

In a decorative field made up of big white bands braided around black circles is a rec-

tangular picture (fig. 72). Its position, parallel to the side walls rather than to the back of

the hall, meant that a viewer entering the hall from the street had to walk in along the

right side of the space and stop midway take in its imagery. For a grain measurer, the

scene was a familiar one. There are six workers, five men and a boy. All are wearing long-

sleeved tunics. The second man from the left has his tunic hiked up with a belt around

his waist, to allow him to move his legs freely; whereas the man at the far right has his

tunic arranged so that it forms a decorative fold at his waist. He is also the only man not

barefoot: the crisscross straps at his ankles show that he is wearing high-topped shoes.

Each man performs a diªerent task. Although we cannot know what the first man on the

left was doing, since a gap has erased his gesture and attribute, it is clear that the man

next to him, weighed down by the big sack over his shoulders, is bringing in the grain to

be measured. Becatti has successfully identified the boy at the center: he is not an alle-

gorical figure with a downturned palm-frond in his left hand, but a worker. His job is to

keep a record of how many sacks of grain get measured, using a simple counting device

(calculus) that he holds in his left hand. It is a cord onto which he adds a wooden stick


FIGURE 72

Ostia, Hall of the Grain Measurers, mosaic.

for each unit that the mensores handle.92 The presence of a boy in this mosaic under-

scores the Romans’ ample use of child labor—whether slaves or freeborn—especially for

simple tasks such as these. The mosaicist has made him an engaging figure, as he looks

out at the viewer and raises his right hand in greeting.

The man holding the rutellum up high also telegraphs the importance of his job to all

viewers. He stands over the huge modius holding his left hand over the grain as though

it were a sacred substance. The modius, in the artist’s vision, has become a substitute

altar—how else explain the gesture of the man at far right? His frontal pose, fancy shoes

and tunic, and above all the way he holds his right hand over the modius show that he is

more important than the rest of the mensores. He is most likely the head of the collegium,

and the artist has stressed his importance by showing him in the stance of a priest oªer-

ing sacrifice at an altar: a Roman viewer would understand this reference at once, since

all that is missing is the patera in his hand.93 Between the measurer and head of the col-

legium we see another stevedore who looks at the modius while holding his empty sack

over his left shoulder.

Becatti’s reconstruction of the inscription above the mensores, although necessarily

hypothetical because of the missing letters, has the merit of being straightforward and

quite plausible. He proposes V[ilici] Sex H(orreorum) Agi(lianorum?) Hi(c) “Six [work-

ers] of the Agilianus Warehouse here.”94 Perhaps the boy’s raised index finger is point-

ing up to the inscription. Surrounding the Hall of the Grain Measurers are rows of ware-

houses extending along the road that leads to the mouth of the Tiber, so that the Hall

could have served both for the collegium’s religious and organizational meetings and as

an o‹ce, much like the stationes of the Forum of the Corporations. (It is unlikely that

grain measuring took place here, since practicality demanded that the mensores went

where the grain was stored and transported, not vice versa.) In addition to the mosaic’s

imagery and its fragmentary inscription, a marker-stone (cippus) found inside the build-

ing confirms that this was the statio of the grain measurers’ collegium.95

The mosaic—particularly in its stately setting within the big hall and next to Ceres’

temple—expresses the solidarity of the group in a way that the other, earlier visual rep-

resentations of work did not. Just as a slave, former slave, or freedperson touted his or

her work as a means of constructing an identity, so the collegium expressed its pride in

its members’ work by showing what they did, how they did it, and who the workers were.

“We six,” the inscription crows.

A member of the collegium would recognize not only the work but also the hierar-

chies of workers in the mosaic. He had advanced through the ranks, from being a little

boy with a counting cord, to a stevedore hefting the bulky sacks, to the mensor, with the

easy job of measuring. Perhaps he had not advanced through the ranks, and the work

had taken its toll on his body, like that of the forty-year-old worker from Herculaneum,

whose skeleton showed fused vertebrae from carrying heavy loads.96 The mensores may

have prevented such abuse of their workers by reserving easier jobs for the older ones—

one advantage of having such a guild, after all. An elite man would perhaps see in the


mosaic the perfection of the Roman system of organization and division of labor, mod-

eled on the e‹ciencies of the military. For the slave, the image showed the way up to

freedom—through hard work that would win freedom and perhaps an easier life.

Simple as it is, the mosaic of the grain measurers encapsulates both the intricacies

and the aspirations of organized enterprise in the later Roman empire. Ostia would suªer,

in fact, from the demands for greater e‹ciency, as Portus, the city built around Trajan’s

harbor, began to take over the handling of the goods that came in on the big ships.97 But

at this moment, the six grain measurers project not only their pride in their work but also

the success of their system to a range of viewers: members, customers, and those not so

fortunate as to be included in their ranks.


5

SPECTACLE

ENTERTAINMENT, SOCIAL CONTROL, SELF-ADVERTISING, AND TRANSGRESSION

The amphitheater was no football stadium.

PAUL ZANKER

Spectacles—shows of various sorts that the ancient Romans thronged to—were more

than mere entertainment. In addition to what they saw on the stage, in the arena, or in

the circus, people saw each other at spectacles. One function of the shows was to demon-

strate and reinforce the organization of the social classes. Furthermore, paying for spec-

tacles was an important way not only for the elites but also for wealthy freedmen to ad-

vance upward. There is an enormous and growing scholarly literature on every aspect of

Roman spectacle, and I cannot address it fully here. Rather, I want to frame the experi-

ence of spectacles with an emphasis on the identities of non-elite viewers. Because of the

nature of the visual evidence I limit my scope to the first century a.d. I begin with ob-

servations on how Roman theater marked both audience and players socially, and how

those social distinctions played themselves out in visual representation. I then examine

images of games in the amphitheater that express the non-elite origins of the men who

commissioned them. Taken together, these visual representations provide a telling profile

of ways that spectacle encoded the culture of ordinary Romans and played an important

role in their lives.

LOOKING AND BEING LOOKED AT (THE AUDIENCE)

Roman theater buildings have much to tell us about Roman social life. Going to the

theater was one of the great collective experiences in the Roman city, connected as it

130

was to the celebration of festivals that liberated everyone—even slaves—from every-

day work. Excavations of Roman cities and towns throughout the empire always turn

up theater buildings along with other marks of Romanness (romanitas)—temples, baths,

and amphitheaters—for the theater was one of the building blocks of Roman culture.1

Up until the time of the late Republic, theater buildings in the city proper were tem-

porary structures; Rome was wary of allowing permanent theater buildings because they

were potentially dangerous gathering places for political upheaval. Rome’s first per-

manent theater rose only in 55 b.c.

In smaller cities the situation was somewhat diªerent. Pompeii’s Large Theater be-

gan around 200 b.c. as a Greek theater, when the city was under Samnite domination.

The Large Theater took advantage of a natural slope for the steeply raked, concentric rows

of seats, and the separate, low stage building allowed theatergoers a view to the landscape

behind. After Sulla reduced Pompeii to a colony in 80 b.c., the Large Theater began to

take typical Roman form (figs. 73, 74). In this process, the architects brought the sepa-

rate elements of stage, orchestra, and seating together into a self-contained building where

access could be controlled and the social classes easily separated.2

As in all Roman theaters, the audience—about five thousand—sat in the cavea, a seat-

ing area in the shape of a half circle. The cavea rose steeply to the full height of the stage

backdrop, a building called the scaenae frons. Actors declaimed on the shallow stage plat-

form, or pulpitum, in front of the scaenae frons.

What is particularly evident at Pompeii is that the extensive renovations during the

reign of Augustus, paid for by M. Holconius Rufus and his younger brother, Celer, aimed

not only to increase the theater’s splendor (all the seats were faced with marble) but also

to separate the classes more clearly. Rufus and Celer erected tribunals, two small rectan-

gular platforms at either end of the stage that were accessible by means of individual stair-

ways. Here sat the magistrates who paid for performances, in full view of all. Between

the tribunals, at ground level, was the orchestra, a semicircle originally used for the cho-

rus, but probably at this time reserved for prominent city o‹cials. M. Holconius Rufus

and Celer also provided additional seating for women, slaves, the poor, and visitors by

building the crypta, a seating area at the top of the cavea.3 To reach its four rows of seat-

ing, however, a person had to climb narrow staircases on the theater’s exterior. The twenty

rows of seats in the middle cavea, reserved for citizen males, now also had separate ac-

cess, allowing the bottom cavea to be reserved for the city’s most prominent men: the lo-

cal senators (decurions) and wealthy citizens. Paul Zanker sees in this new seating arrange-

ment the enactment of Augustus’s cultural politics, as expressed in the lex Iulia theatralis

(the Julian theatrical legislation); the law provided for a larger audience, including de-

serving slaves, but at the same time it sharpened the distinctions between social ranks.4

Inscriptions and statuary celebrated the emperor and the men close to him. The same

inscription advertising the generosity of M. Holconius Rufus and Celer appeared twice,

over the two side entrances to the orchestra (the paradoi) and perhaps on the scaenae frons

as well. It read: M(arcus et) M(arcus) Holconii Rufus et Celer cryptam tribunalia theatrum

S P E C T A C L E • 13 1

FIGURE 74

Pompeii, plan of Large Theater.

FIGURE 73

Pompeii, Large Theater. View of stage from cavea.

s(ua) p(ecunia) “Marcus Holconius Rufus and Marcus Holconius Celer (built) the crypta,

the tribunals, and the seating with their own money.” On the center of the lowest tier of

the middle cavea once stood a monument honoring M. Holconius Rufus—probably a

bronze curule chair, the kind of chair a magistrate sat on.5 Excavators found only an in-

scription and holes cut into the marble for the monument. “[Dedicated] in accordance

with a decree of the city council to Marcus Holconius Rufus the son of Marcus, five times

duumvir with judiciary authority, twice quinquennial duumvir, military tribune by choice

of the people, priest of Augustus, and patron of the colony.”6 The connection of Holco-

nius’s honors with the emperor himself comes through in his titles, including that of priest

of Augustus (flamen Augusti). The arrangement of statues of Augustus and his family

that filled the niches of the scaenae frons must have reinforced this connection between

the theater’s great patron and the emperor.7

But of all the visual signs that declared a person’s status at the theater, perhaps the

most conspicuous was his or her clothing. Senators and decurions had the right to wear

the broad purple stripe on their togas, distinguishing them from the equestrians (equi-

tes)with their narrow purple stripes, and from the freeborn citizens with their plain white

wool togas. Freedmen could also wear the toga, but slaves, foreigners, and women would

have dressed in clothing varied in color, cut, and fabric. From the top of the cavea, a slave

fortunate enough to get standing room could see the social hierarchy embodied in the

concentric rows, going from the literally colorful non-elites at the top to the men in white

closest to the stage.8

The theater, then, was a place to see and to be seen; we can imagine necks craning to

see who of the prominent locals attended. Empty tribunals and bisellia (double-width seats

awarded for civic service) would have been of special interest to all theatergoers, no doubt

causing speculation about why this or that prominent o‹cial had failed to appear.

Each viewer’s experience depended on where he or she sat and on eªects of light and

shade. From up in the summa cavea, or from seats at either side of the cavea’s horseshoe

shape, the views were skewed. Furthermore, lighting was unpredictable. Theatrical

events took place during the day; to shade people from direct sunlight the donors would

often see to it that there was an awning. Advertisements for events in the theater and am-

phitheater often promised “vela erunt”—“there will be awnings.”9

CONTENT AND CLASS IN THEATRICAL PERFORMANCES

Once the audience was in place, the actors and musicians would march in. The actors

took their places on the stage, the musicians on the stage and sometimes in the orches-

tra. In the first century a.d., the theater at Pompeii would have provided a variety of en-

tertainments. By this time, although there was very little new writing for the tragic or

comic stage, written sources indicate that the comedies of Plautus and Terence and the

tragedies of Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, and Accius continued to be performed.10 Visual

representations of theatrical scenes abound, for Pompeians commissioned artists to cre-

S P E C T A C L E • 133

ate paintings and mosaics that represented moments from comedy and tragedy to deco-

rate their houses.11 Analysis of their content shows that for the most part artists were us-

ing models derived from Hellenistic originals—conceived while comic and tragic play-

wrights were still active. Rather than reflecting contemporary theatrical practice, the

widespread incorporation of images from the theater of the past into domestic decora-

tion reflected both the patron’s nostalgia and the wall-painter’s reliance on model books

in circulation that reproduced images from the second century b.c.12

Theater went through a sea-change around the time of Augustus. Two forms, pantomime

and mime, began to replace the performance of tragedy and comedy. Pantomime—best

described as the dance of an individual performer who conveyed specifics of character

and plot solely through movements of his body—arrived with the influx of Greeks and

Greek culture that reached its peak during the first century b.c.13 Sources always describe

pantomime in terms of a specific performer who would take the center stage—and hold

the audience in rapt attention—while he silently acted all the roles in a story to musical

accompaniment.14 Pylades, Augustus’s own freedman, was famous for his pantomime

based on stirring moments in Greek tragedies.15 Lucian—in a long dialogue praising the

importance of pantomime as a high art form—describes in great detail the range of skills

and themes that the pantomime performer commanded; he was able to link solo scenes

together, impersonating the actions and emotions of several characters at the same time.16

The wealthy—and even the emperors—courted talented pantomime artists; ancient au-

thors recount the seamy details of palace intrigues involving pantomime performers, par-

ticularly under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.17

If pantomime was an import from the Hellenistic east, mime had its roots in the ear-

liest Roman theater, the Atellan farces, popular well before Plautus’s comedies took the

stage in the second century b.c. Although the Atellanae—usually translated from their

original Oscan into Latin—were still popular in the time of Augustus, mime gradually

took their place over the course of the first century a.d.18 Mime, unlike the high-minded

pantomime, was neither a silent nor solo performance. Troupes of actors—including

women—created topical, sidesplitting, and often obscene skits, performing without masks,

wearing outrageous costumes—or nothing.

Perhaps the best reflection of class-based social attitudes toward contemporary mime

as it existed at Pompeii is in three of the thirteen paintings that originally decorated the

main room of the Tavern on the Street of Mercury. When excavated in 1823, their sexual

subject matter was quite legible.19 Today little remains of these erotic pictures—although

some of the other scenes are in relatively good condition—so that, to reconstruct their

subject matter, we must rely on engravings published in 1836.20 The paintings seem to

have represented the seamiest side of mime: the nude mime.

By the second century b.c. the original relation of the nudatio mimarum to cults of fer-

tility had faded into obscurity, while the performances of nude mimes became outlandish

explorations of sexual play.21 The annual festival in honor of the goddess Flora, the ludi

Florales, also featured nude dancing; its final spectacle was a stage production with pros-


titutes as actors.22 Valerius Maximus recounts the story that Cato, that staunch upholder

of old Republican values, left the theater at the Floralia in 55 b.c.: he did not want his

stern presence to spoil the people’s fun.23 One painting from the Tavern on the Street of

Mercury has a particularly theatrical flavor; a woman represented in profile bends deeply

at the waist to perform several feats simultaneously (fig. 75). She reaches down with her

right hand to place a wine pitcher on a low table while she raises a glass of wine to her

lips.24 She has just filled both her glass and that of her companion, who seizes the op-

portunity as she bends over to penetrate her from the rear. He stands in a relaxed con-

trapposto, with his left leg extended and turned out in three-quarters view while supporting

most of his weight with his flexed right. He tucks his left hand behind his hip while stretch-

ing out his right arm. The glass of wine that he holds in the palm of his right hand demon-

strates an equilibrium almost equal to that of his partner.

The woman wears only a breastband, with her hair pulled back from the face and piled

up in a crown of curls. The man’s sleeveless tunic descends on a sharp diagonal to reveal

his extraordinarily long penis and one of his testicles. The artist may be representing a

long fake phallus like the ones that male mime actors frequently wore.25 This is a detail

that we cannot verify today because of the painting’s destruction. Nor can we verify the

most curious element of all: the parallel ropes that appear beneath the couples’ feet. Hel-

S P E C T A C L E • 135

FIGURE 75

Pompeii, Caupona on the

Street of Mercury (VI, 10, 1).

“Tightrope walkers.”

big went so far as to suggest that the principal subject was the performance of a tight-

rope act and that the modern draftsman added the man’s erect penis simply to titillate

the nineteenth-century viewer.26 Fröhlich has suggested a more likely solution, that what

the draftsman interpreted as ropes were merely the cast shadows that regularly appear

in Pompeian paintings as thin lines behind the figures’ feet.27

This picture in an ordinary tavern, evoking or recalling an outrageous sexual perfor-

mance from the theater, was one of the owner’s ways of attracting viewers and potential

customers into his little shop. His clientele was not an elite one, but rather men—and

perhaps some women—of the lower stratum.

What is missing from this picture and others like it—stage, background elements, and

representation of the audience—reminds us that it formed part of an interior-decorative

scheme. It alludes to a viewer’s specific experiences in the theater by exploring a colorful

subject. The painting was a conversation piece, not a document recounting particulars

of plot, theater architecture, or the spectators.

Another kind of wall decoration provides some of that information. These are wall-

painting schemes that depict the architecture of the scaenae frons. In them we get a diªer-

ent type of transplant from the theater—and this with an interesting twist, for the artist

populates it with living figures.

THE POPULATED SCAENAE FRONS AND TRANSGRESSIONS OF INFAMY

It seems strange, on the face of it, that visual representation—particularly the relatively

minor art of decorating the walls of houses—should enact transgressions of any sort. But

beginning with Nero’s Golden House in Rome (64–68), painters transform whole walls

into replicas of the scaenae frons, bringing the theater’s salient sign into the domestic

realm. What is more, they populate its aediculas and stairways with figures who don’t re-

ally belong there. Who are they and what might their function be?28

One way to frame this question is to look at another class of figures who don’t belong,

the ones that appear in the mythological pictures that painters placed in the centers of

their wall decorations. Dorothea Michel has explored the problem of these so-called on-

looker figures by analyzing such paintings as the Theseus Liberator from the House of

Gavius Rufus (fig. 76). She was trying to find a rationale for the artist’s inclusion of spec-

tators who have nothing to do with the central action of the plot. In the Theseus paint-

ing, these onlookers are the people the painter has grouped on the right side of the pic-

ture. In the late sixties, Bianchi Bandinelli characterized the picture from the House of

Gavius Rufus as a Romanized version of the painting that decorated a public building,

the Basilica at Herculaneum (fig. 77). In Bianchi Bandinelli’s view, the artist who painted

the version from Pompeii (dated about a hundred years later than the picture from Her-

culaneum) modified the original Greek composition to include the proletariat—yet an-

other instance of the triumph of plebeian art.29 Although Bianchi Bandinelli’s explana-

tion is satisfactory from a formal point of view—after all, the painter has “corrupted,” as


FIGURE 76

Pompeii, House of Gavius

Rufus (VII, 2, 16), exedra o.

Theseus Liberator.

FIGURE 77

Herculaneum, Basilica.

Theseus Liberator.

FIGURE 78

Rome, Domus Aurea, Fourth Style scaenae frons decoration.

FIGURE 79

Sabratha, Libya. Theater, with reconstructed scaenae frons, last quarter of the second century a.d.

it were, the simpler, more noble Greek composition—it begs the question of purpose and

audience.

Michel, basing her analysis on reception theory, postulates that the patrons who had

such pictures in the decorative systems of their houses didn’t want Greek paintings—nor

did they want an art-historically correct art collection. They were less interested in the cor-

rect representation of the myth than in being brought into the picture. For Michel, then,

the onlooker figures are important to the patrons and viewers of these pictures because

they reflect themselves as viewers. The onlooker figures represent the communication

process between the work of art and the viewer.30

If the onlookers are a way of figuring the viewer in panel paintings, what is the func-

tion of the figures inhabiting the scaenae frons constructions that artists begin to develop

and elaborate during the Neronian period? Although they had used modified versions of

the scaenae frons as early as the mid–first century b.c., the full-blown, ambitious com-

positions covering entire walls in Nero’s Domus Aurea, dated between 64 and 68, look

more like preserved stage buildings than either Second or Third Style versions.31 Com-

parison of a drawing of a typical wall from the Domus Aurea with the remarkably well-

preserved scaenae frons of the Theater at Sabratha drives this point home (figs. 78 and

79). In both cases there is a three-part elevation, with a stage platform surmounted by

several stories of flanking aediculas. In both cases the aediculas vary their shapes but are

clearly stacked, with the central aedicula marked by its special tympanum.

More remarkable than the accurate representations of the scaenae frons are the figures

that populate it. The appearance of figures within the architectural representations dis-

tinguishes the Domus Aurea decorations from earlier, unpeopled scaenae frons con-

structions, setting a trend that endures through the destruction of Pompeii in 79. In the

Chamber of Achilles on Skyros, a surviving fragment from the east wall combines statues

with living figures (fig. 80). Three stucco pilasters divide the wall into compartments; in

front of the compartments are two standing figures and one seated figure. Comparison

with similar representations in sculpture identifies the standing males as philosophers

and the seated one as a poet or writer. Representations of statues complete the decora-

tion, including the winged Eros that crowns the central aedicula and the figures of korai

(Greek maidens) that face each other on either side of the pilaster.32

The representation of statues in the painted scaenae frons poses few problems of in-

terpretation, since there exists archaeological evidence that architects frequently placed

statuary in the aediculas. More di‹cult in the theatrical context is the appearance of

philosophers, playwrights, and—as we shall see—oªering figures. As living persons they

do not belong in this architectural construction.

The only living persons who were supposed to appear on stage appeared below the scae-

nae frons, on a shallow stage, and they were actors in costumes, and no one else. Perhaps

the most accurate representation in wall painting of what actors looked like on the stage

is the decoration of cubiculum a in the House of Pinarius Cerialis at Pompeii.33 The artist

has posed figures on the shallow stage in front of an elaborate scaenae frons. On the north

S P E C T A C L E • 139

FIGURE 80

Rome, Domus Aurea, Chamber of Achilles on Skyros, detail.

FIGURE 81

Pompeii, House of Pinarius Cerialis (III, 4, 4), cubiculum a, north wall. Representation of scaenae frons

with Thoas, Iphigenia, Orestes, and Pylades.

wall appears Iphigenia in Tauris, standing between two attendants and framed by the

central aedicula (fig. 81). She is at the top of the stairs leading down to the shallow stage

platform, where two groups appear, the Scythian King Thoas to the left and Orestes and

Pylades, their hands bound in preparation for sacrifice, to the right. On the east wall the

artist put Attis in the central aedicula, with Nymphs of the river Sangarios on the stage

platform to the left. Even though the artist has taken his inspiration from his observation

of theatrical performance, the paintings in the House of Pinarius Cerialis fall short of

documenting theatrical practice. He has omitted masks (and, in the case of the nude

Orestes and Pylades, costumes), making us wonder whether these are actors performing

in a pantomime or tableau rather than in a tragic play.

Actors, because they used their bodies improperly, suªered the status of infamy (in-

famia). Roman law put prostitutes, gladiators, and actors in this category because they

displayed their bodies in public, an act that in the Roman mind debased their persons

and therefore disqualified them for public o‹ce and such activities as voting. In fact, their

professions made them alien and impure in relation to the Roman citizenry.34 Nero’s ap-

pearance both in the arena and on stage therefore constituted the most debased activity

that an emperor could perform. Catharine Edwards has pointed out the parallels between

the actor and the orator. The actor suªered the status of infamy because he used his per-

suasive voice and gestures not for winning law cases or persuading the senate, but for

deceiving the audience into believing that he was the murderous Medea or Canace in la-

bor.35 The actor, then, represented the dark side of oratorical skills.

It is puzzling, then, that the artist of the Domus Aurea—unlike the painter of Pina-

rius Cerialis’s cubiculum—has placed the figures of philosophers and poets in the scae-

nae frons, not on the stage platform, and that he has omitted masks and costumes that

would identify them as actors. If they are citizens and orators, why are they there?

At Pompeii artists expanded the repertory of types beyond the philosophers and writ-

ers that we find in Nero’s Domus Aurea. In room e of the House of the Vettii they appear

in an abbreviated scaenae frons in the upper zone (fig. 82). They flank representations

of Jupiter in the illustration, and Danae and Leda on the other walls; the figures on stair-

ways include elegantly draped women and partially nude males who carry attributes such

as tambourines, pitchers, and trays as they descend the staircases. In the so-called Palaes-

tra at Pompeii the artist has depicted nude athletes; although he borrowed the figural types

from statuary, the artist makes them walk down the stairs to drive home the idea that they

are living persons (fig. 83).

What is the Roman viewer’s relation to these living figures in the scaenae frons? Like

the onlooker figures in the Theseus Liberator picture, these figures are meant, in general,

to enliven the viewer’s visual experience. The geometric divisions of Second and Third

Style scaenae frons compositions are well suited to the wall-painter’s practice of squar-

ing oª the wall with plumb-bob and rule, but because they lack figures they are some-

what boring to look at. The populated scaenae frons asks the viewer to decide what is a

statue and what is a real person while his eye scans the aediculas. The figures break the

S P E C T A C L E • 14 1

FIGURE 82

Pompeii, House of the Vettii, room e. West wall.

FIGURE 83

Pompeii, Palaestra (VIII, 2, 23), courtyard f, south wall. Athlete on stairway.

illusion that the artist is representing an ordinary scaenae frons on the wall, since only

statues—not living figures with recognizable social position—belong there. Although they

were just visual representations, they were also transgressing a deeply ingrained rule—

that one’s appearance on the stage brought the stain of infamy.

When the Roman viewer found living figures—whose social status ran the gamut from

philosophers to athletes—did she interpret them in relation to her own social condition?

If these figures mediate the spectator’s process of viewing, it is because they inhabit a

passageway—or liminal—space between the realm of reality and the make-believe of the

stage. They are actually in the stage architecture rather than on the stage platform. The

living figures help the viewer to transport herself into the space of the theater without

having to suªer the shame of going on stage. They also comment on questions of class

and status.

In Nero’s Domus Aurea, the living figures are beardless poets in Greek dress and

bearded philosophers. They are foreigners who stand in for the citizen viewer. In the House

of the Vettii, owned by two wealthy former slaves, the figures are more ordinary: male

and female figures, perhaps minor temple functionaries, carrying objects associated with

religious ritual. The athletes in the scaenae-frons paintings of the Palaestra and in the

stuccoes of the Stabian Baths mirror—and in their buª beauty perhaps mock—the would-

be athletes exercising and panting in the exercise courts that they decorate.

The living figures in these visual representations challenged viewers of diªerent so-

cial strata to imagine not statues, actors, or mythological figures, but living people—some

of them like themselves—on view in the theater. Seeing these living figures within the

scaenae frons, and knowing the shame of infamy that attended such appearances, the

spectator saw them enacting transgression. In the suspension of disbelief attending all

acts of viewing, this Neronian construction particularly emphasized the viewer’s active

role. It was a guilt-free way of making the viewer into a voyeur.36

GLORY AND THE GAMES: SEVIRI AUGUSTALES ENTERTAIN THE PEOPLE

As we have seen, no amount of wealth could buy a freedman the dignity of high birth.

Augustus faced dramatically decimated senatorial and equestrian classes—the result of

his ruthless proscriptions during the troubled decade between Caesar’s death and when

the Senate gave him the name Augustus in 27 b.c. He needed new elites and money. Al-

though one solution was to allow wealthy equites to buy their way into the senate, an-

other much more ingenious one was to create a new order (ordo): the augustales. Former

slaves wealthy enough to pay could become seviri (or sexviri, literally “six men”) augustales.

After contributing to the city by organizing sacrifices and games, the augustalis belonged

to an order (ordo) that functioned like a collegium. Its members ranked just below that

of the local civic council, made up of freeborn men.37 Being a sevir augustalis carried with

it privileges that dramatically enhanced the former slave’s social status. In the context of

the spectacle, numerous representations advertising the fact that a sevir paid for games

S P E C T A C L E • 143

in the amphitheater indicate that it was this activity more than any other that glorified

the freedman and his family.

To understand the possible eªects that seviri’s sponsoring spectacles in the am-

phitheater might have had in societal terms, we need to consider briefly their content and

social purposes. Collectively called munera, literally “gifts,” the spectacles in the amphi-

theater consisted of three events: men fighting wild beasts (the venatio), beasts killing crim-

inals condemned to death (damnatio ad bestias), and contests between paired gladiators—

the munus gladiatorium or spectaculum gladiatorium. If the games were to take place in

the course of a day, the hunt would take place in the morning, the executions during the

noon hour, and the gladiatorial contests would occupy the afternoon.38

In ways even more compelling than the spectacle of the theater, the munera both ex-

hibited and enforced social order. Seating, in a cavea shaped like two theaters turned toward

each other to make an ellipse (hence the word “amphitheater”), followed the same rules:

elites at the bottom, closest to the action, followed by each social stratum on the succes-

sive bleachers going toward the seats farthest away at the top.39 Also—as in the theater—

clothing distinguished the orders.40 But more important in terms of social control were

the events that took place there.

Although the Romans also called munera “the games” (ludi), we misunderstand the

serious social and cultural implications if we class them with our culture of football and

soccer games. Like modern sports, the munera functioned as a kind of safety valve. But

they went beyond athletic contests to construct a world of carnival, where the crowd aban-

doned their proper social behavior in their lust for bloody violence: men killing animals

and men wounding, maiming, and even killing their opponents for entertainment.41 Al-

though many Romans knew that the ludi had their origins in ancient funerary practice,

where the spilling of blood (both human and animal) honored the dead,42 by the second

century b.c. the ludi had become an occasion for collective frenzy that crossed the bound-

aries dividing the classes: although carefully distinguished by dress and seating, all the

crowd joined in screaming for blood.43

The public executions carried out at noontime constituted a dramatic instrument of

social control. What were the lessons that you were to learn? For one thing, you learned

that crime did not pay. Far from being a police state, Rome devoted relatively few resources

to training and maintaining police forces. In the Imperial period, public executions of

criminals played a central role in crime prevention. The serious criminal knew that if

he or she were caught, condemnation to death in the arena was a likely possibility, a pun-

ishment that inflicted the infamy of being put on public display as well as certain and

bloody public death. Cruelly imaginative executions included macabre spectacles, such

as burning a man alive in the role of Hercules or forcing a woman to have intercourse

with a bull in a literal enactment of the myth of Pasiphae.44 Compassion for the crimi-

nal, or even notions of prolonged imprisonment, reform, and reeducation, could not have

been farther from the Roman mind; it was in the best interests of the state’s control of

citizens’ behavior to make it clear that there was no possibility of compassion or reversal


of the death penalty. As harsh and inhumane as these events might seem to us, watch-

ing condemned criminals being stalked and torn apart by hungry bears and lions must

have been an eªective crime deterrent.45

Yet the most popular events of all—much more so than the executions—were the con-

tests between highly skilled and well-matched gladiators that took up the entire afternoon

program. Fans took sides, probably placed bets, and yelled their votes to the man who

sponsored the games, the editor muneris. Painted programs announced the munera well

in advance.46 Outcomes of these contests were the stuª of record, as numerous gra‹ti

attest. The gra‹ti usually record the names of the pairs of gladiators, the weapons that

they fought with, the gladiatorial school where they were trained, and the outcome of the

match. A gra‹to from Pompeii, for instance, records two such programs. In it we read

of a match between two gladiators from the school founded by Nero at Capua: Pugnax,

with Thracian weapons, and Murranus, who bore Gallic weapons. Each had fought three

battles before, but Pugnax won (vicit) whereas Murranus was killed (periit). The same

gra‹to records a fight between Cycnus and Atticus, both Iuliani, that is, trained in a school

founded by Julius Caesar. Cycnus used the heavy armor and weapons of the hoplomachus;

Atticus that of the Thracian. Cycnus won, but Atticus, presumably because he fought well,

was allowed to leave the arena alive (missus est—“he was let go”).47

THE TOMB OF LUSIUS STORAX

In this context, what did it mean for a wealthy former slave, now a sevir, to sponsor the

munera? Fortunately we have one visual representation of a sevir that answers this ques-

tion, the reliefs from the Tomb of C. Lusius Storax. They commemorate the sevir’s great-

est moment of glory, when all the town acclaimed his munificence.48 Because inscrip-

tions from the tomb complex survive, we can establish Storax’s social position fairly

accurately. Storax was a wealthy freedman who held the title of sevir augustalis in the lit-

tle municipium of Teate Marrucinorum (modern-day Chieti, about 20 km inland from

Pescara, on Italy’s Adriatic coast).

Storax died around a.d. 40, but while still alive built his own lavishly decorated tomb

for himself and his two freedwomen wives within a funerary enclosure owned by a funer-

ary college (collegium)—a burial club. The inscriptions found within the precinct delin-

eate a distinct social pecking order area among the members of the collegium. At the top

is Storax, with his wives—all of them freed by the same owners, Gaius and Iunia. The

monument, the inscription tells us, will not pass to their heirs.49 No sculptural decoration—

only two lists of names—recorded the other members of the college (soci monumenti).

One list has twenty-five names, 30 percent being the names of slaves; the other lists thirty-

two names, with slaves making up 20 percent. As we saw on the altar from the vicus

Aesculeti, slaves had to assume their masters’ first name (the praenomen) and second, or

clan or gens name (the nomen) when they were freed. For example, when Cicero freed

his slave Tiro, his name changed to Marcus Tullius Tiro. The first two names show that

S P E C T A C L E • 145

FIGURE 84

Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment.

FIGURE 85

Chieti, Monument of Storax. Gladiatorial relief.

M. Tullius freed him, the third (the cognomen) that he was once a slave. Torelli’s analysis

of the freedmen’s names in the two lists demonstrates that many of the freedmen had

been owned by men and women belonging to elite gentes; some of their former masters

had been senators, decurions, and military commanders.50

There were, then, three distinct social orders within this freedmen’s tomb. Storax,

as a sevir, had the money and the prestige to put on gladiatorial games and to decorate

his part of the monument with a sculptural program commemorating the moment that

established his glory in Teate. His two wives shared that glory in the inscription, al-

though they did not appear in the sculpture. Next came the freedmen. At the bottom

stratum were the slaves included on the lists, although their very inclusion was an

honor—especially since they expected to be buried in the company of their masters. Some

may have achieved freedman status by the time of their death—although it was too late

to achieve that glory for three of them, listed as already deceased (obiti).

What can the visual representation add to this profile of social hierarchies? The sur-

viving blocks, carved in relief, relate Storax’s merits by choosing salient moments in the

story of how he put on the gladiatorial games. We know from literary sources that it was

a four-part ceremony: it would have begun with Storax carrying out a sacrifice, followed

by a procession called the pompa (modeled on the triumphal procession). The congia-

rium, or giving gifts of money to the people, was next, and finally the games themselves

ensued.

Scholars have puzzled about the relationships among the three sculptural elements

that have survived. The head of a seated, life-size, togate statue of Storax is the least prob-

lematic, since it would have been freestanding, probably within the tomb enclosure.51 Al-

most complete is a roughly triangular relief showing Storax presiding over the gladiato-

rial contests (fig. 84). It must have been positioned above the long frieze featuring paired

gladiators in combat, since most of the victorious gladiators look up from the relief to ob-

tain Storax’s verdict of “vicit” (fig. 85). Filippo Coarelli’s hypothesis—that the frieze (five

meters long), decorated the top of an enclosure wall, with the triangular relief (2.8 me-

ters long) filling the pediment of a low temple front—is the most plausible.52

Reading the horizontal frieze is a fairly straightforward matter, even though we lack

details about the precise identification of some of the gladiators. You read the relief from

left to right, beginning with a pair of equestrian gladiators who have just stepped down

from their horses (not represented) and look up to Storax. There follow eight pairs made

up of a thrax, or Thracian, fighting his traditional adversary, the myrmillo.53 The artist,

despite his modest talents, succeeds in creating a complex and well-articulated compo-

sition. He made the figures on the far left and right ends of the frieze into bookends

that look inward, framing the actions of the others, and he alternated dynamic figures—

standing and moving—with static ones. Several figures turn their back toward the viewer.

The artist has also represented two secondary, noncombatant figures; he carved them in

a shallower relief plane to indicate their ancillary role in the narrative.54

S P E C T A C L E • 147

More di‹cult to interpret are the blocks that made up a kind of truncated pediment

(fig. 86; cf. fig. 84). Although at first glance we seem to be witnessing a particular moment,

when Storax presided over the gladiatorial contests, in fact the artist loaded the relief with

details that make it a compendium of events and social relationships—all glorifying Storax

(fig. 87). A viewer’s eye would naturally seek out Storax first: it is easy to distinguish him

(even in the relief ’s battered state) because he is significantly larger than the other figures

and sits on an elevated armchair near the center of the platform (tribunal). Behind the tri-

bunal the artist represented two wide columns, perhaps an attempt to locate the scene in

the porticus of Teate’s forum. The artist brought further attention to Storax by posing a

man standing behind him who leans forward to speak to him. Storax wears the dress of

the editor muneris, his left arm resting on the arm of the chair and his right lifted as if to

begin the games. To either side of Storax two pairs of men wearing togas (togati) sit on

bisellia (14–15 and 17–18). They must be the higher of Teate’s magistrates, the “four men

with juridical power” (the quattuorviri iure dicundo) rather than the lesser magistrates (the

quattuorviri aediles). The two on the viewer’s right (17 and 18) converse, while 15 turns to

Storax and 14 looks out at the viewer. Two attendants (apparitores) complete this group

at the front of the tribunal (13 and 19); they stand, tunics cinched up at the waist, ready to

carry out the wishes of their master.

Togati standing in various attitudes along the topmost space of the relief complete the

ensemble on the tribunal. An orderly group of five stands to the left of Storax. The toga-

tus on the far left (21), rendered in profile, looks toward the center, drawing the viewer’s

eye to Storax. What remains of the heads of the next three togati indicates that they, too,

look toward the center, but with their heads in three-quarters view (22, 23, 24). The next

man counters this collective gaze toward Storax by turning his head in profile to the left

(25), eªectively completing the composition.

So far, all these actors fit a scenario that would make the subject of the relief quite sim-

ple: Storax presides over, or starts, the games. But the group behind the honored sevir (to

the viewer’s right) contradicts such a simple reading. Chaotic in both composition and

action, this section of the relief taxed the artist’s marginal abilities, for it presents an event

that had to take place earlier. A togatus taller than the rest (26) stands directly behind

Storax and gazes at the action that takes place to the right. Neither the man whispering

to Storax (27), nor the two behind him (28 and 29), seem to be aware of this scene, mak-

ing it all the more dramatic. A togatus (30) holding a scroll (rotulus) in his left hand looks

at what may be either a little box or a tablet that he holds in his right. Another man (31)

helps steady the object with his left hand while he leans forward to write something on it

with a long pointed instrument (a stylus) that he holds in between the thumb and index

finger of his right hand.

Here scholarly interpretations diverge. Torelli believes that the object is a box that holds

the payment of the summa honoraria that entitled Storax to become a sevir augustalis.55

His interpretation not only introduces a temporally distinct element into the relief ’s nar-

rative, but also introduces a new personage in the man with the rotulus: the quaestor or


public accountant.56 Storax would be parading his wealth before the viewer with this scene,

since only those wealthy enough to pay the summa honoraria could become seviri, and

this did not include payment for the games that he is presenting—potentially a much

more expensive venture. Torelli also proposes that this little scene did double duty by re-

minding a viewer of the element of the munera that the artist did not represent, the giv-

ing of money gifts to the people—the congiarium that preceded the beginning of the games.

I believe that the object that togatus 31 is writing on is not a box with coins in it but a

clumsy representation of a bronze or wax tablet. The block of stone that looks like a lit-

tle box is simply the stone the artist left to support the surface of a tablet. The artist would

have painted the block a dark color to minimize its intrusion, as he must have done for

similar stone supports throughout the relief. Storax wanted the artist to emphasize this

act of writing. The most likely interpretation is that they are writing out a written request

of some sort (a petitio) for Storax, the magistrate in charge of the games. The advantage

S P E C T A C L E • 149

FIGURE 87

Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, center part, detail.

FIGURE 86

Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, with figures numbered.

of this interpretation is that it integrates the actions on the tribunal, making them con-

temporaneous. The man whispering to Storax is telling him about the petitio that he is

about to receive.57 Although we will never know for sure, at the very least an ordinary

viewer would have understood the vignette as an expression of Storax’s importance in the

public realm.

Because of the irregular vertical seam between the central block and the one to the

right, the final figure on the far upper right of the tribunal (32) is quite di‹cult to read.

He seems to have been a togatus looking at the group engaged with the writing tablet.

Taken together, who are all these togati in the back row? The composition makes it clear

that they are men with o‹cial duties; counting Storax, but excluding the quattuorviri,

there are twelve in all. Torelli has suggested that they may represent the six incoming and

outgoing seviri for the year, since at this time one did not become a sevir for life: the se-

virate was an annual magistrature organized into colleges of six. Unfortunately, sources

do not point to the existence of a college of augustales in Teate at this time.58 Although we

cannot know how the contemporary viewer would have identified them in their specific

roles, everyone would have understood how the presence of the togati—like the vignette

of writing on a tablet—emphasized Storax’s elevated social standing.

The two blocks that completed the pediment to left and right deflect time—and

perspective—to represent moments and meanings diªerent from the central scene on

the tribunal. A figure made all the more conspicuous because he steps down from the

tribunal and holds the fasces must be one of the two lictors a sevir was entitled to (33).

The other lictor must be the man seated below and to the left of the tribunal who looks


FIGURE 88

Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, left part, detail.

toward the center (12).59 Together they refer to earlier events, for the lictors would have

been present at the sacrifice and would have marched in front of Storax in the pompa.

The figure opposite him on the other side of the tribunal is another seated man (20), this

time holding a curved rod, the lituus of the augur, the o‹cial who took auspices at the

sacrifice. Three rather restless boys, seated farther to the left of the tribunal, also recall

the sacrifice that Storax had o‹ciated over earlier (5, 6, 7). The boys’ long hair identifies

them as camilli, whose duty was to hold the various sacrificial implements (fig. 88).

The two groups of horn players that complete the corners of the relief right and left

took part in both the sacrifice and the games themselves. On the left the tibicines (1–4),

dressed in short tunics and seated on a bench with their backs to the viewer, raise their

straight horns as if saluting Storax and the o‹cials on the dais. The curved-horn players,

the cornicines (34–37), are also seated, but the bulk of their instruments required the artist

to give them more space and, it seems, more contorted poses. To accommodate both groups

of horn players and to represent them clearly, the artist has moved their benches from a

position perpendicular to the tribunal to one at either side of it—an early example of “un-

folded” perspective.60 In addition to these eªects of composition and pose, it is important

to the relief ’s eªect that the hornplayers are blowing their instruments, for their image

must have been calculated to make the viewer recall not just the sights, but also the sounds

of Storax’s munera.

The last element to be accounted for is the least standard: an agitated group of four

people in ordinary clothing, three men (8–10) and a woman in a V-necked dress (11), above

the camilli. They represent the fans, the ordinary people, and must have been the most

talked-about group in the whole relief. Storax, in a clever move calculated to show his

a‹nity with the common people (for he once was one of them), instructed the artist to

include this little vignette—probably the outbreak of a brawl. Positioned conspicuously

at the top of the group, her arms flung out wide and her breasts fully in evidence, the

woman both signals the conflict and intervenes to stop it. She is, significantly, the only

female figure in the entire program, and as such she must stand for all the women who

witnessed Storax’s munera: she is a visual synecdoche for women’s presence at the event.61

In visual terms, her figure answers that of the lictor on the right: her isolation and ges-

ture underscore her importance in the composition.

Immediately to the left is the next-most active figure (10): a man, his torso nude, turns

his head sharply to the woman while grasping a knife in his right hand. Seemingly un-

aware of this aggressor is a man below and to the right (8). His cloak is the workman’s

exomis, covering his left shoulder but leaving his torso bare. He holds his right arm at his

side but stretches out his left to touch the head of another man wearing a long-sleeved

tunic and standing in a frontal pose (9); he is not yet aware of the man about to touch his

head. In fact, the position of both of his hands, down at his sides, suggests that he might

be pulling one of the camilli’s ears.

The artist has cleverly given the viewer a key to this scene in the figure of the dramatically

S P E C T A C L E • 15 1

gesturing woman, for she is the only one of the four who sees what mischief is about to

happen. None of the other figures is completely aware of the possibilities. But why rep-

resent a brawl? The Romans conceived the munera as a cathartic, communal event (like

theatrical productions) that spanned a whole day, beginning with a religious ceremony,

continuing with a parade (pompa) and the giving out of money, and ending with blood

sport.62 If it was a social safety valve, letting oª steam in a brawl must have been part of

the catharsis, and the part that ordinary people understood best. Although we would ex-

pect Storax, as the upwardly mobile editor of the games, to distance himself from such

brawls, he instructed the artist to include the scene. It may even have been a reminder

of a specific incident, one that would go on in memory as long as someone was left who

could tell the story as she looked at the tomb.

THE RIOT IN THE AMPHITHEATER:

CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

We will never know the particulars of the four-person brawl pictured on Storax’s relief,

but it sets the stage nicely for a scene of the full-scale riot that occurred in Pompeii’s am-

phitheater in a.d. 59. This large fresco (1.70 × 1.85 m), now in the Naples Museum, orig-

inally decorated the peristyle of a small house in Pompeii (fig. 89).63 Since its discovery

in 1868, scholars have recognized the painting as an illustration of events described by

Tacitus.64 In his Annales 14.17 Tacitus tells us that under the duumvirate of Cn. Pompeius

Grosphus and Cn. Pompeius Grosphus Gavianus, a riot broke out between the Pompeians

and their rivals, the inhabitants of Nuceria who had come to attend the games.65 The edi-

tor of the games was Livineius Regulus, an ex-senator exiled by Claudius during the cen-

sorship of 47. The Senate held an inquest, exiled Livineius, and suspended the duumviri;

furthermore, it appointed a praefectus iure dicundo, who chose two new magistrates. Fi-

nally, Rome forbade all gladiatorial shows for ten years and dissolved all illegal collegia

(private clubs and trade associations). But it is doubtful that the Senate’s ruling held, since

archaeological evidence shows that the amphitheater was restored after the earthquake

of 62. The porticus of the Large Theater was being used as a barracks for the gladiators

at the time of the eruption, and most—if not all—collegia continued to function.

What does the painting tell us about the riot? Despite its distortions of conventional

perspective, the painting is unusually accurate in its recording of architectural details.

We see, from a bird’s-eye view, the oval of the amphitheater from the north along with

its double exterior stairway, supported by barrel vaults and leading up to the cavea.66 The

divisions of the cavea are clearly visible, as well as the yellow marble facing of the para-

pet that separated the arena from the best seats at the bottom level. Above we see the vela,

extending in this view from the southeast to the southwest towers of the city wall. The

architect built this part of the amphitheater directly against the city walls, presumably to

save on building materials. To the right is the palaestra where gladiators exercised and

practiced. Details in the depiction of the palaestra, such as its two eastern entrances and


the central swimming pool, found corroboration in Maiuri’s 1935–39 excavations of the

area. On the palaestra’s northern wall are two doors framed with pilasters and topped

with tympana. Above the left door we read D. Lucretio fel(i)citer and between the doors in

Greek letters Satri(o) Oualenti O(g)ousto Ner(oni) phelikit(er). The inscriptions celebrate

D. Lucretius (Valens) and his father D. Lucretius Satrius Valens, both known through many

announcements of munera painted on house facades as generous editores munerum of

the Neronian period.67 The inscription in particular trumpets D. Lucretius Satrius

Valens’s special relationship with Nero; he served as a life-time flamen of Nero (flamen

Neronis Caesaris Augusti filii perpetuus).68

The artist’s accurate rendering of the built forms provides a specific setting for the real

subject of the picture: the fighting. But not everyone fights. The figures posed under the

trees in the foreground are not involved in the riot. They wear long robes, possibly togas,

in contrast to the men with their tunics cinched up around their waists who run about

S P E C T A C L E • 153

FIGURE 89

Pompeii, House I, 3, 23, peristyle n, west wall. Riot in the Amphitheater.

gesticulating or engaging others one-on-one. Rioters appear relatively isolated and scat-

tered in the area in front of the amphitheater and at its east side. The battle thickens, with

several paired fighters between amphitheater and palaestra; at the top right, between

palaestra and city walls, the artist repeats the grisly image of a man on the ground with

a sword-wielding adversary standing over him. Fighting is thickest inside the amphithe-

ater, both in a now-illegible section in the middle cavea (probably representing the tri-

bunal) and on the arena floor, where five men battle it out.

It is not surprising, given the specificity of the event depicted and the fact that we hap-

pen to have a contemporary historical account of it, that scholars have devoted most of

their eªorts to expanding the historical account beyond Tacitus’s cryptic comments. Other

parallel eªorts have focused on the painting’s style, analyzing its peculiarities to support

one or another hypothesis about the nature of so-called popular art.69Only Thomas Fröh-

lich has oªered some remarks on the possible identity of the person who paid to have

this painting installed in his house, a question I would like to explore further.70 In so do-

ing I oªer several possible scenarios that might explain why the owner wanted this paint-

ing in his house and—more important—what the painting meant to him and visitors

who saw it.

The first important consideration is the painting’s location. Although it was removed

immediately after its discovery, excavation reports locate it on the west wall of the peri-

style n of the house at I, 3, 23. It is a modest house, located on the slopes adjacent to the

Stabian Road, not far from the gate that allowed the flow of commerce from the south

into the city (fig. 90). Today nothing remains of the other paintings visible at the time of

excavation.71 Two drawings record the gladiator pictures that flanked Riot in the Amphi-

theater.72 One painting showed the victor, whose high crest (galea cristata), oblong shield

(scutum), and single greave (ocrea) identified him as a secutor or Samnite (fig. 91). He

rushes forward to slay his opponent, a Thracian with greaves on both legs; he is down on

his knees, his back to the viewer. A third figure, perhaps the referee, restrains the Sam-


FIGURE 90

Pompeii, plan of House I, 3, 23.

nite, forcing him to wait for the verdict of the spectators. The other painting shows the

same pairing, with the Samnite standing—about to drive his sword through a Thracian

who is on his knees and holds his shield uselessly at his side (fig. 92). The positions of

the two paintings, to right and left of the Riot in the Amphitheater, as well as the way that

their compositions respond to each other symmetrically, make it clear that they were con-

temporaneous with the Riot picture and designed to complement it.

What purpose did the riot picture and its violent, bloody pendants serve in a private

house? Why did the patron wish to see them every day as he strolled his little peristyle,

and why did he want to display them to visitors? These images depart radically from known

patterns for the decoration of peristyles; invariably—if there were to be pictures at all—

owners chose images alluding to high culture.73 The riot scene shows the world of social

and cultural control run amok, while the gladiator pictures glorify the bloody conclu-

sions to two fights to the death. None of these images fits the profile for proper peristyle

decoration.

S P E C T A C L E • 155

FIGURE 91

Pompeii, House I, 3, 23,

peristyle n, west wall.

Drawing of lost painting of

gladiators to left of Riot.

FIGURE 92

Pompeii, House, I, 3, 23,

peristyle n, west wall.

Drawing of lost painting of

gladiators to right of Riot.

The small size of the house makes it unlikely that the owner was wealthy enough to

have used it for extended business activities. In large houses, owned by a propertied pater-

familias, daily visits of clients required a large atrium, a tablinum for receiving clients, and

slaves who would have acted as human barriers to cordon oª the spaces of the peristyle

not normally used for business meetings. In a small house like this one, with its tiny atrium

and no tablinum at all, the peristyle would have hosted most visitors—the owner’s social

equals. This might help explain the fact that the owner placed the riot picture in the peri-

style; for big, complex pictures are rare in peristyles. In large houses such pictures in-

variably grace static reception areas rather than the dynamic spaces of peristyles and atria.74

The fact that the patron went to the trouble of getting an artist to create this large paint-

ing and its pendants for permanent display in his peristyle suggests that he had some-

thing to gain from displaying the painting. We might see it as a conversation piece, an

anecdotal slice of local history to chat about with guests. I want to resist this interpreta-

tion as anachronistic. We live in a culture of news, sustained by modern media, but the

ancient Pompeian did not. We are accustomed to a glut of disaster imagery—a melee at

a soccer match one day and bombings in the Middle East the next. But the Riot painting

was a permanent addition, not an object hung or taped on a wall. What is more, the artist

had no ready models at hand to guide him. For mythological pictures he had model books,

as the large number of replicated pictures at Pompeii proves;75 for this picture he had to

go and observe the amphitheater and palaestra, decide upon a perspective that would high-

light the fighting, and present his sketch to the patron for approval. This was a commis-

sion that, despite its modest level of execution, was unusual—in fact, unique—among

the paintings preserved on Pompeii’s walls. The only near parallels are in the scenes of

work that we discussed in chapter 4.

Comparison of the Riot painting with coins that represent people in the amphitheater

underscores the painting’s singularity, not to say its bizarre aspects. Both the sestertius of

Titus, of a.d. 80–81 (fig. 93) and the painting emphasize the contents of the building—

the people within it—by using bird’s-eye perspective. But the coin image of the Colos-

seum in Rome shows everyone in his or her place; it is the very image of order, social

stratification, and religious ritual.76 The sestertius, an o‹cial representation circulated


FIGURE 93

Sestertius of Titus/Vespasian

Divus, a.d. 80–81, showing

the Colosseum filled with

people. To left: the Meta

Sudans. To right: a portico.

throughout the empire under the emperor Titus, and available to everyone who used coins,

presents the order that should be: the senators in the bottom section with the emperor’s

box in their midst, and the lower classes in the upper two sections. In the painting, that

order has broken down. Within the built order of the rows of seats and the exterior stair-

way, we focus on the disorder caused by human beings out of control: instead of the proper

social hierarchy, with each class, or ordo, in its place, we see the displaced—and there-

fore unmarked—groups fighting. It is order turned upside down. Instead of representing

the stratified masses seated and watching the spectacle below, cordoned oª on the am-

phitheater’s floor, the men who possessed a fixed place and identity have left their places.

It is they who fight in the arena and who spill out of the amphitheater to brawl in the

areas surrounding the amphitheater. The spectators have become the spectacle.

And Pompeii itself has also become the spectacle. The artist has taken pains to iden-

tify the place as Pompeii by including much more of the surrounding neighborhood than

one sees on the coin (where we see the meta sudans on one side and part of the Baths of

Titus on the other). This is not a timeless, archetypal representation of the amphitheater;

it is only one possible place and one possible time. The ground around the amphitheater,

with scattered booths for selling food and wine, and the enormous palaestra, complete

with its inscriptions, enlarge our view of both the place and the event. What it contained

has spilled out. We witness a rupture—an infamous one at that—of the social order.

One possible identity for the patron who commissioned the Riot picture is that of a

gladiator, as Fiorelli and Della Corte suggested.77 Yet far from glorifying the gladiator (as

the flanking pictures do), the scene of the riot has no identifiable gladiators in it at all. A

gladiator would be unlikely to commission a picture that could be construed as discred-

iting the whole enterprise of gladiatorial contests. After all, the rioters fight in a wild, dis-

orderly way, just the opposite of the controlled and regulated hand-to-hand fighting that

the gladiators engaged in. Equally di‹cult to accept is Sabbatini Tumolesi’s interpreta-

tion that the painting celebrated the early lifting of the ten-year ban: in her view the in-

scription naming D. Lucretius Valens indicates that he has used his influence with Nero

to do so.78

Fröhlich’s interpretation, that the man who commissioned the picture was a Pompeian

who took part in the riot himself, makes the most sense, for it provides a motive: the man

in his hate for the Nucerians thought the bloody event was a great success.79 It was an

image he could be proud of. Maiuri proposes that the enmity between Pompeii and Nuce-

ria arose from the fact that Nuceria had taken over lands adjacent to Stabiae that were key

to Pompeii’s economic prosperity.80 It is possible that the owner belonged to one of the

collegia, or clubs, mentioned by Tacitus as being banned by the Senate as a result of the

riot. Central to this question is the scholarly debate surrounding a gra‹to on the facade

of the House of the Dioscuri (VI, 9, 6/7): Campani victoria una cum Nucerinis peristis.

Both Richardson and Moeller believe that the Campani, named in three other gra‹ti,

was one of the forbidden collegia that provoked the fracas, fought against the Nucerians,

and was therefore disbanded by the Senate.81 In this scenario, the gra‹to would trans-

S P E C T A C L E • 157

late “Campanians, in victory you perished along with the Nucerians.”82 Whoever wrote

the gra‹to was reminding the Pompeian fanclub that they lost lives even though they

beat the Nucerians.83

If the man who commissioned the riot painting belonged to the Campani or another

similar club, we have a motive for his commissioning both the riot painting and those of

the gladiators. If the riot picture showed the excesses of being an avid fan, the represen-

tations of the gladiators that framed it reminded members of the collegium of their proper

function—to honor the gladiators. The picture’s placement on the west wall of the peri-

style—not along the axis from the house’s street entrance (the fauces)—meant that it was

clearly visible only to guests with access to the peristyle, and that people looking in from

the street or standing in the atrium could not see it. It is far from the kind of decoration

that up-from-under Pompeians put in their peristyles at this time: in these houses we

find high-minded, complex images appropriated from the villas of the super-rich.84 In

every way the Riot in the Amphitheater is a subversive image that reveals the special in-

terests of a man—and his buddies—who delighted in seeing Roman social order turned

upside down.

SPECTACLE AS AN INDEX OF SOCIAL PRACTICE

In trying to assess the meanings that visual representations of spectacles had in first-

century Italy, it is useful to remember how diªerent the visual and verbal stimuli that

surrounded the Romans were from ours. We Euro-Americans of all classes live enveloped

by—if not submerged in—a much greater variety of sounds, sights, and means of com-

munication. The twentieth century saw a rapid proliferation of technologies making

demands on our senses that would have bewildered an ancient Roman. Rapid travel, both

locally and worldwide, has shrunk the world—and demystified it in the process. Even

the most basic form of modern communication, print, was not available to the ancient

Roman; he or she had to rely upon sharp ears and eyes for information and entertain-

ment. Few had access to written versions of plays presented in the theater or the stories

that they heard—from the epics that schoolboys memorized to the tales sung by poets in

the forum. Commemorating a particular spectacle, as Storax and the owner of the Riot

painting did, was a way of recording specific events in permanent, visual form. What is

more, these commemorations specified a set of social relations that positioned both pa-

tron and viewer in clear ways.

In their inclusion of municipal o‹cials, seviri, and commoners, Storax’s tomb reliefs

address viewers of every social stratum. Local elites may have looked upon the whole mon-

ument with a certain disdain: after all, before Augustus former slaves had no o‹cial means

of flaunting their money and prestige. A freeborn woman, poor but not elite, would no-

tice that even though the composition focuses attention on the only female figure in the

relief, she is part of the rabble: the monument celebrated male privilege and power. A

freedman would immediately understand his social relation to Storax, especially if he


lacked the special status of sevir because he lacked the money to buy that status. He might

long for the glory that was Storax’s. Similarly, a freedwoman whose husband had not been

able to provide such a prestigious tomb for her might envy Storax’s two fortunate wives.

For people lower down on the social ladder, slaves and the working poor, the monument

projected a form of glory that they would probably never attain. Storax’s ploy of repre-

senting the brawl on his funeral monument was a brilliant way of including such non-

elite viewers.

The circumstances surrounding the viewing of the Riot painting, as we have seen, were

quite diªerent. Male friends of the patron—whether or not they had taken part in the

fight—shared his glee in remembering it. A child not yet born at the time of the event

would marvel at its visual accuracy and enjoy the story it told of long ago. If someone out-

side the confidence of the patron saw it, the Riot picture must have seemed quite odd—

not so much because of its subversive content but because proper peristyles ought to dis-

play handsome mythological paintings. He or she would have cast the owner of the house

as a maverick in matters of interior decoration, preferring a representation of an ugly local

event to a timeless and beautiful mythological scene. In every case—and these are but a

few possible viewing scenarios—the viewer’s social status, gender, and experience of the

games aªected his or her understanding of the image. These visual representations, like

the experience of the amphitheater itself, put a viewer in his or her place.

S P E C T A C L E • 159

6

LAUGHTER AND SUBVERSION IN THE TAVERN

IMAGE, TEXT, AND CONTEXT

In the last chapter we saw how the public experience of the theater and the amphitheater

reinforced the social order, and how one non-elite visual representation, the picture of

the riot in Pompeii’s amphitheater, delighted in showing that social order turned upside

down. There is a similar delight in overturning the social order—especially in overturn-

ing social expectations—in humor. For this reason, perhaps more than any other aspect

of culture, humor has the potential to highlight the diªerences between social classes.

This is as true in ancient Roman society as it is in ours. Just as elites create a “them” and

“us” in their jokes, so do non-elites. Humor, especially the kind that relies for its punch

on reversing accepted social roles, becomes a way of asserting power.

In the highly stratified society of ancient Rome, three celebrations—the ludi Florales,

the triumph, and the Saturnalia—temporarily overturned the rules. As we saw in the pre-

vious chapter, the ludi Florales featured nude dancing by prostitutes in honor of the god-

dess Flora. Soldiers marching in a triumphal procession sang obscene songs mocking

their general,1 and the feast of the Saturnalia overturned the dynamics of power: in its

carnival setting master played slave and slave played master.2 Much Roman humor re-

lies on a carnivalesque upsetting of accepted relations of status and power, and this is

clearly the case in the two sets of paintings that I analyze in this chapter.3 Both of them

decorated taverns, one at Pompeii and the other at Ostia, where ordinary men and women

drank and ate. Both suites of paintings—each using diªerent strategies—elicit laughter

through power reversals.

160

What is more, in both taverns written captions are integral to the images. Analysis of

the interplay between the texts and the images reveals some of the viewers’ commonly

held social and cultural assumptions. The texts range from the vulgarities of everyday,

lower-class speech to pretentious verse, yet they deliver their humor only when connected

with the images and when understood in the tavern setting. The process of reading is in-

tegral to the joke, just as the images are integral to the words written next to them.

Studying the combinations of text and image in these humble tavern paintings en-

larges what we can know from the study of classical literature. Authors like Cicero and

Quintilian, for instance, discuss humor, but mostly with the aim of warning orators against

the vulgar kind of humor that I discuss in this chapter.4 Alongside these straightforward

instructions on how to use humor properly in oratory are comic characters, like the rich

freedman, Trimalchio; analysis of what is funny about Trimalchio reveals what the elites

derided and detested about up-from-under people. Seen from this point of view, Petro-

nius’s Satyricon becomes a compendium of elite values.5 Perhaps most revelatory of the

textual sources for understanding non-elite culture are the anonymous poems to the phal-

lic god Priapus. As Amy Richlin has shown, they reveal what Romans found funny about

gender, dirtying, and sexual penetration.6The humor of gra‹ti, as well, has the potential—

largely unexplored—to reveal what the lower strata laughed at.7 These exceptions aside,

for the most part texts articulate elite attitudes toward humor.

Visual humor cuts a wider swathe, since artists made comic images for every stratum

of society. Scholars have favored analysis of elite visual representations, especially cari-

catures found among the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum—usually in the houses

of the wealthy.8 It is relatively easy to explain caricatures in elite contexts, since they reflect

the literary and visual culture of Hellenistic Alexandria that Roman elites valued.9 It is

probable that prototypes in Alexandrian art guided the artists who produced comic art

for the high end of the spectrum, and artists repeated Hellenistic motifs in art that non-

elites saw, such as mold-made objects like lamps.

Yet it is impossible to argue for Alexandrian sources for the tavern paintings I con-

sider in this chapter, and most scholars have thrown them into the catch-all category of

“popular” art—meaning, in the end, art invented by the artist without recourse to elite

iconographical precedents.10 What analysis of all the components—visual, textual, and

contextual—reveals is a much more complex situation, where the artist invented new rep-

resentations but also looked at high-art models, and where he recorded common speech

but also mimicked the diction of poets—all knowingly engaging his audience of ordinary

people.

LAUGHING AT ROLE REVERSALS:

THE CAUPONA OF SALVIUS AT POMPEII

Giuseppe Fiorelli excavated the little Caupona of Salvius (VI, 14, 36) in 1876 (fig. 94).11

Noting the precarious state of preservation of the painted frieze that decorated the north

L A U G H T E R A N D S U B V E R S I O N I N T H E T A V E R N • 16 1

wall of room 1, just above the northern entrance, he had it cut from the wall and removed

to the Naples Museum.12 The frieze covered repairs made to the caupona’s walls after the

earthquake of 62. Four scenes, each about 50 cm square, follow each other from left to

right to make a frieze 2.05 meters long (plate 7). Their function was to decorate this room,

one of the spaces in this establishment where ordinary people ate, drank, gambled, and

perhaps dallied sexually with the male and female slaves who served them.13 At first glance

these pictures seem to represent four separate and unrelated vignettes of tavern life. But

I will argue that, taken together, they depict behavior that the tavern-goers would have

found amusing precisely because it went against culturally accepted norms. The artist ex-

plained and enhanced the outrageousness of these characters’ activity by painting cap-

tions above them that—like modern cartoon balloons—put words into their mouths.

In the first scene, a woman and a man press their upper bodies together and kiss each

other’s mouths. The caption above their heads reads nolo cum Myrtale . . . (plate 8). Al-

though the final word, probably an infinitive, will keep us in eternal suspense, the rest of

the phrase is clear: “I don’t want to——with Myrtalis.” Although “Myrtalis” is the name

of a woman, until recently it was impossible to determine the sex of either of the two

figures because the fresco had never been properly cleaned. Conservation and cleaning

eªorts between 1997 and 2000 at the Central Institute for Restoration in Rome removed

layers of both ancient and modern grime, showing how uninformative both old photo-

graphs and Presuhn’s watercolor reconstructions were.14 The figure on the left is clearly

a woman, since in addition to her long orange-yellow dress, she wears her hair pulled

back in a conspicuous bun.15 The figure on the right seemed to wear a long red dress un-


FIGURE 94

Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), north wall, room 1.

til the cleaning, and a thick layer of calcified grime covered his head and face. Cleaning

was particularly successful in the area of his face, revealing his square jaw, short hair, and

sideburn, as well as the way that he locks his lips with the woman rather than whisper-

ing in her ear, as some scholars had proposed.16 The restorers also discovered through

cleaning that the man is wearing a red tunic that stops above the knees, and that the painter

changed his design in the area below the man’s knees. Today the artist’s pentimenti (changes

of design) are clear. He moved both of the man’s legs, from knee to foot, farther to the

viewer’s right, and created deep shading on the right side of each, emphasizing the man’s

muscular calves and making him lean into the woman in a more dynamic fashion than

he had in the original design.

In the Caupona of Salvius, the image itself—of a man and woman kissing—had no

explicit comic content. A viewer looking at the image alone would not have gotten the

humor, for it was only after reading the caption that he discovered that the man in the

picture is announcing a change of heart: that he is oª Myrtalis and wants to initiate a

sexual relationship with the woman he is kissing. The caption announces the man’s turn-

about to everyone in the bar who can read.

The artist emphasized the woman’s willingness to make sexual contact with the man

in several ways. Like the man, she leans inward with her whole body, so that the meeting

of their lips becomes the focus of the composition, the two bodies forming a kind of tall

triangle whose base is their feet. The woman stands on the toes of her right foot, and the

man on the toes of both feet, another way of emphasizing the passion of their meeting.

The subject of the painting seems oddly out of place in a tavern. Passionate kisses, se-

cret intrigues, and a‹rmations of love are the stuª of an elite literary form: the Greek ro-

mance novel.17To decode the meaning of the painting in its tavern context, we must ques-

tion the identity of the man and woman. If they represent elite persons, the picture

becomes a parody of elite notions of romance for the viewers who frequented the tavern:

slaves, freedpersons, and freeborn workers.

The tavern-goers looking at this picture would have been acutely aware of the diªer-

ences between elite sexual practices and their own. Recent studies of Roman sexuality

have demonstrated how most regulation of sexual behavior was aimed at the protection

of the elite man’s body and his property.18 For example, an elite man must not have in-

tercourse with freeborn individuals, even though he is free to penetrate everyone else.

The axiom voiced in the mid–second century b.c. by a slave in Plautus’s Curculio expressed

the legalities for elite men of the first century a.d.: “Love whatever you want, as long as

you stay away from married ladies, widows, virgins, young men, and free boys.”19 Fur-

thermore, in the ancient Roman scheme of what we call sexuality, a man was supposed

to be active; he should be the penetrator, not the penetrated, whether his partner was male

or female. A woman could only properly be the passive recipient of the man’s penis (so,

too, the passive boy or man). Working within this construction of sexual roles, a “proper”

woman could not take any active role.20 In the painting from the Caupona of Salvius, the

woman’s body language suggests a degree of enthusiastic response, although it is only a

L A U G H T E R A N D S U B V E R S I O N I N T H E T A V E R N • 163

response to a man’s kiss, not actual sexual penetration of the sort we find in the Caupona

on the Street of Mercury (see fig. 75).

There is ample evidence that one of the greatest fears of elite males in this period is

the emancipation of elite women, not only in matters of money and freedom of move-

ment but also in matters of sex.21 A central and—to the ancient Romans—outrageously

funny aspect of Petronius’s Satyricon is the sexual power and freedom of the women.22

Several decades later Martial expresses his anxiety about the emancipated woman, con-

structing her as a dangerous, sex-hungry monster who will often turn to other women to

satisfy her unquenchable lust; she is a phallic woman who likes to strap on a dildo to

penetrate both women and boys—just like a man.23 In the minds of elite Roman men,

women are, by nature, “voracious” in sex, and lesbian lovemaking is proof of their vo-

racious sexual appetites.

But the painting in the Caupona of Salvius is aimed at non-elite men and women, for

whom elite sexual rules must have seemed ridiculous. Non-elites were used to relatively

unregulated sex with a variety of partners: their spouses, other women or men, prosti-

tutes of both sexes, servants in taverns. If they were freeborn or freedpersons, they could

have sex with their slaves; if they were slaves themselves, they could have sex with other

slaves as well as being used sexually by their masters and mistresses. In the non-elite

viewer’s mentality, a man passionately kissing a woman and saying that he doesn’t want

to go with, or perhaps make love to, another woman is the stuª of the high-minded ro-

mance, but not of tavern humor. Here we would expect parody, and this is what the artist

seems to be delivering. For one thing, the specificity of the exchange, both physical and

verbal, is amusing, for it makes inner passions quite public. It is even possible that the

kissing couple are portraits of individuals well-known to the tavern’s clientele, and that

everyone knew poor Myrtalis.

A second possibility is that the artist has reproduced a scene from a play or farce that

the tavern-goers knew from the theater. The figures’ clothing neither confirms nor negates

the possibility, although the woman’s dress may be Greek. It is orange-yellow with a pleated

area at the bottom. Her dress is neither the stola of the elite married woman nor the toga

that the prostitute wore. If the artist was attempting to depict Greek dress, the pleated

area represents the thin chiton showing beneath a heavier overcloak or mantle.24The man

wears a tunic, the common garment worn by non-elite working men.25 The footwear is

also that of ordinary working people; the woman wears ankle-high shoes and the man

wears sandals with two tiers of leather strapping gathered at the ankles. If the artist was

depicting a moment from the theater, the absence of masks and platform boots, and the

fact that a woman plays the female role all point to popular theater, such as mime or farce.

The moment depicted would have been a turning point in a plot that only theater-

goers would have known. Unlike the scenes of sexual coupling in the Caupona on the

Street of Mercury, where the humor lies in the outrageousness of the sex acts themselves,

here the viewer had to know what came before and after in the plot, and he had to be able

to read the caption recording the man’s declaration of a change of heart.


With the second scene we get a new cast of characters and a much more complex

intersection of sexual roles. Two new characters appear: men already in their cups

competing for the wine that the waitress carries (plate 9). The men are seated in three-

quarters view, hands outstretched, both demanding the jug of wine and the winecup that

the barmaid holds. The figure on the left says hoc or “Here!” while his companion coun-

ters non / mia est or “No! It’s mine!”26 The barmaid, feigning indiªerence, says “Whoever

wants it, take it” (qui vol / sumat)—but then with a somewhat ominous change of heart

she oªers the wine to someone: “Oceanus, come and drink” (Oceane / veni bibe).

Todd proposes that this man is none other than a famous Pompeian gladiator named

Oceanus.27 Even if the man she is addressing is not that Oceanus, the name itself must

have carried a cachet in local circles. Martial uses the name four times for a person who

performs the dual functions of usher and bouncer in the theater.28 A second, and more

likely interpretation, is that the barmaid is directly addressing one of the drinkers as

Oceanus with the sense of “Okay, big boy, come and get it.”

Closer examination of the physical types of the two men, their hairstyles, and their

body language support this second interpretation. The man at the left, although he has

a masculine face with large features, is wearing an anomalous hairstyle for the period

(a.d. 60–79). His long hair is parted in the middle, with a thick gathering (or bun!) over

his right ear. His burgundy robe, shaded in black, gathers around the seat of the four-

legged, backless stool. He draws his left leg behind the right to cross it at the calf. It is

clear that his pose was important to the artist, since he repainted the entire upper half of

this figure.29 His drinking companion turns his long, oval face in three-quarters view; al-

though his features are similarly masculine, his hair frames his face, perhaps gathered

in a bun as well. This man’s blue-green robe falls down to bunch at the seat of the stool,

where it turns to shades of black. He crosses his feet in the same way that his fellow drinker

does, as he makes a sweeping gesture with his outstretched arm to dramatize his plea for

more wine.

The artist took pains to diªerentiate the barmaid both from the two men in the scene

and from the woman in scene one. Her scale, facial features, and pose contrast so greatly

with those of the men that she may be the work of a diªerent artist. She is much larger

in stature than the men, and wears a singularly stern expression, her face in profile as

she holds a wine jug in her left hand and a wineglass in the other. (Paint losses reveal

guidelines in red pigment under the jug.) The artist represented her detachment from

her customers spatially: she stands to the right, her feet nearly touching the bottom fram-

ing edge of the picture, making her appear to be closer to the viewer’s space.

The barmaid’s large size, her stern expression, and her response to the men all stress

her power over them. “Whoever wants it, take it” is the set-up line, expressing her lack of

interest in the rival claims for her attention. But her second utterance, nastier than the

first, reveals a change of mind. She becomes the quintessential female wiseguy, moving

from annoyed indiªerence to challenging the annoying customers. Either she calls on

Oceanus, the beefiest character in the bar, to settle the dispute (perhaps violently) or


she mocks their virility by calling them by the name Oceanus. Not only do the men—

probably drunken—make a spectacle of themselves by vying to be the first served, they

both fail in their attempts—a mark of their impotence as men. They can’t even control

a barmaid.

The drinking men also look much weaker in both facial features and gestures than

the men who appear in the other three frames of the painting. The man kissing the woman

in scene one is clean-shaven and has a square jaw and short-cropped hair; as we saw he

expresses his passion toward the woman quite directly. The men arguing over dice in scene

three (plate 10), and then coming to fisticuªs and being thrown out of the bar in scene

four (fig. 95) are also quite diªerent from the drinkers of scene two. Their heads are smaller

in relation to their bodies, and both are bearded, with close-cropped hair. In both body

and head type they conform to the same ideal of masculine beauty that we saw in the

painting of Theseus Liberator from the House of Gavius Rufus (see fig. 76): thin, muscu-

lar but wiry, actively posed. Their faces are fiercely expressive. The artist also diªerenti-

ated the men in scene two from those in scenes three and four through the color of their

tunics. Although the man on the left in scenes three and four wears a red tunic like the


FIGURE 95

Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius, fourth scene. Two fighting men and innkeeper.

man on the left in scene two, the man on the right wears a yellow tunic rather than the

blue-green tunic of the man on the right in scene two.

The drinkers, by contrast, are beardless and eªeminate. I believe that the ancient viewer

recognized in them the stereotype of the passive male or cinaedus.Why else did the artist

take such pains to mark them as diªerent from the other six images of men in the frieze,

with larger heads, longer dresses, womanish hairdos, and seated powerless before a mere

barmaid? The cinaedus constituted a preposterous inversion of the Roman rule that men

penetrated but were never penetrated. Here they are trying to do the impossible: act like

real men. And they fail. The comic eªect depended on the viewer picking up the visual

clues that suggested that they were cinaedi. Not only did the Romans consider cinaedi to

be sexual monsters, they also suªered the same status of infamy that, as we saw in the

last chapter, prostitutes, actors, and gladiators suªered.30

For the male viewers in the Caupona of Salvius the picture with cinaedi trying to get

a barmaid to serve them was ridiculous. A parallel from contemporary visual represen-

tation might help put the vignette of the cinaedi and the barmaid into perspective. Artists

create hybrid animal-humans, rather like Donald Duck or Felix the Cat, that are like hu-

mans but not human. They act out cartoon scenarios that become funny precisely be-

cause they are animal-humans. Similarly, the ancient Roman artist was representing the

disenfranchised human male to the “normal” man. For ancient Romans, the cinaedus

was an outrageously funny curiosity, and having him act like a normal man was as comic

as having Donald Duck fall in love with, and court, Daisy Duck. The male viewer laughed

at this scene for several reasons, but at the most basic level because he saw the world

turned upside down.

From the laughable spectacle of two cinaedi, each vying to be the first served, the artist

shifts to real men getting into trouble over gambling—and this in a two-frame narrative.

In scene three the two are seated at a table (see plate 10). The man on the left holds the

dice-cup or fritillus in his right hand. The artist has him saying, “I won” (exsi). His com-

panion asserts: “It’s not three; it’s two” (non / tria duas / est). This disagreement turns

ugly in the following scene, where the two men, now standing, come to blows (see fig.

95). The man on the left grabs the right shoulder of his dice-partner, who in turn raises

his right hand in a fist. They exchange insults. The man on the left says “You no-name.

It was three for me. I was the winner” (noxsi / a me / tria / eco / fui). The other responds

“Look here, cocksucker. I was the winner.” (orte fellator / eco fui).31 The innkeeper wants

none of this. He tells them “Go outside and fight it out” (itis / foras / rixsatis). The artist

has used primitive but eªective poses to make his point. The two squabbling men are

tight up against each other, their faces nearly touching and their fists raised; the innkeeper

rushes in from below, bending deeply at the waist and stretching out his arms to pull the

men apart if necessary.32

Whereas the first vignette from the Caupona of Salvius is a parody of elite sexual rules

and roles, the other three underscore men’s inability to control either the barmaid or them-


selves. If we interpret the four scenes in the Caupona of Salvius from a contemporary

Euro-American perspective, their humor falls short. Scholars have been content to see

the paintings as a charming slice of everyday Pompeian life, matching the scenes with

their own memories of drinking in modern taverns. Such attempts to normalize the paint-

ing miss the cues that made them much funnier to the ancient Romans than to us.33

LAUGHING AT (POTENTIAL) DISEMPOWERMENT

If there is a theme common to the four panels, it is that of a person’s potential to lose.

A woman could lose a husband or boyfriend to another woman; a man could fail to get

a barmaid to serve him a drink; he could lose at dice; he could get beaten up. Each vi-

gnette likely pointed to very real indignities that ordinary people experienced in pursu-

ing love, drinking, and playing dice. They are stereotypes, of course, but they point to

real-life situations that arose from the fact that the freeborn poor, freedpersons, and slaves

depended on places like the Caupona of Salvius for their freetime pleasures. If an elite

man played dice, it was a gentleman’s game, and no tavernkeeper would kick him out

if he got rowdy. The non-elite person who laughs at the scenes in the Caupona of Salvius

is asserting a kind of power by laughing at how he or she could so easily be disempow-

ered. The hapless victims in the vignettes are stereotypes cut close enough to the reali-

ties of ordinary people’s misfortunes that a viewer’s laughter is really a release from his

or her realities.

Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival as the world turned upside down is a useful

one for considering the four vignettes.34 Each painting, in its own way, points to people

who are on the losing end of the social order. In scene one the absent Myrtalis is the loser,

since the man who kisses the unnamed woman in the painting tells her he no longer

wants to be with Myrtalis. In scene two a serving woman ignores and insults two men

(even if they are cinaedi); in scene three two men lose at dice; in scene four they are out

of control and get thrown out of the caupona. Taken together, the paintings show the or-

dinary person’s world turned upside down, where all of the common pleasures he or she

is accustomed to enjoy in the caupona turn sour. Bakhtin argues that the temporary in-

version of carnival is a societal strategy for asserting the very order it seems to overturn.

Here, in the Caupona of Salvius, a tavern-goer’s laughter at the upside-down situations

pictured on the walls allowed him or her to feel in control.

Scholars have compared the paintings from the Caupona of Salvius with those of the

nearby Caupona on the Street of Mercury; some have proposed that they are the work of

the same artist.35 Like the Caupona of Salvius, it is a small establishment, located a block

north and two blocks east of the forum’s northern entrance, and like it, the Caupona on

the Street of Mercury featured paintings of tavern life for the amusement of its customers.

In the previous chapter we analyzed one of the paintings showing male-female intercourse

for its relation to the nude mimes in the theater (see p. 134). The following lists reveal

parallels in the subject matter of the paintings in the two taverns.


CAUPONA ON THE STREET OF MERCURY CAUPONA OF SALVIUS

Male-female sexual acrobatics 3 Male-female assignation 1

Male servant and customer(s) 3 Female servant and customers 1

Dice playing 1 Dice playing 1

Eating and drinking 1 Brawling 1

Wine transport 1

But what this comparison of subject matters fails to reveal are the quite diªerent strate-

gies for entertaining customers in the two establishments. If the threat of powerlessness

incited laughter in the Caupona of Salvius, the paintings decorating the Caupona on the

Street of Mercury gave the viewer images without implications of conflict. The most amus-

ing paintings in the Caupona on the Street of Mercury were the sexual caprices inspired

by the theater, whereas the other scenes reflected tavern life and normalized it. The only

captions are afterthoughts—not painted by the artist but scratched above figures’ heads

in two of the scenes of wine being served—and they have little humorous content.36 And

if reading the captions is essential to getting the jokes in the Caupona of Salvius, read-

ing has no part in understanding the straightforward representations in the Caupona on

the Street of Mercury.

The patron who ordered the paintings for the Caupona on the Street of Mercury wanted

his customers to see the things they liked to look at: sex shows, wine carts, and images

of themselves, enjoying tavern life. There are no conflicts or inversions. Salvius, if he was

the owner who commissioned the paintings in his caupona, wanted pictures that would

make his clientele laugh—all the more so if they were able to read the captions. We have

already considered two representations of the world turned upside down in the previous

chapter: one in Storax’s relief, where a brawl breaks out among the commoners; the other

in the painting of the riot in the amphitheater. Storax’s relief is so jam-packed with im-

agery that the four-person brawl scene becomes little more than a tidbit thrown in the di-

rection of the commoners. In contrast, the fan who commissioned the picture of the riot

for his house gleefully celebrated its spontaneous inversion—or carnival. Visual repre-

sentations of sexual play, interactions with servants, and dice playing appear in both

cauponae; what makes the images in the Caupona of Salvius funny is the way that text

and image address the viewers’ potential loss of control. The viewer could laugh at some-

body else’s undoing.

The small size of the Caupona of Salvius and the content of the paintings indicate

that this caupona’s clientele were most likely men and women of little means: trades-

people and workers from Pompeii, farmers who came from the neighboring lands to

sell in the markets, and visitors from the region. They could have been freeborn, freed-

persons, or slaves. It is unlikely that elite persons, including the local decurion class and

wealthy freedmen, frequented the caupona, since they would have entertained at home

or would have been invited to the homes of people of the same or higher status. A freed-


person could have seen—and would have been relieved to laugh at—the caupona’s vi-

gnettes of powerlessness, for they encoded the kind of impotence he or she had endured

while a slave.37 A woman could lose her sexual partner to another man; a man could, like

the cinaedi, be refused service by a tough woman servant; men lose at dice; men fight and

get thrown out of the establishment. The freedman probably knew from experience how

in spaces like this, where oppressed men met to let oª steam, a game of dice could end up

in a fistfight. He could laugh at these upsets—but they were also a humorous warning that

the proprietor would throw out clients who behaved like the men in the picture.

The woman viewer in the caupona could have been either a customer or a tavern ser-

vant. Both men and women, mostly slaves, served customers in such taverns, and often

their owners prostituted them to customers for a modest price.38 A woman working in

the Caupona of Salvius may have found the first scene threatening, for she could, like the

absent Myrtalis, lose her lover to another woman. The second scene, in contrast, may

have seemed empowering to her, especially if she could read the caption. The waitress

turns the tables on two insistent, obnoxious, and eªeminate customers with a mild threat

of potential violence. Her refusal to serve the demanding cinaedi—along with her abil-

ity to invoke Oceanus as a backup—gives her power that she is not supposed to have.

The sophistication of the humor in the Caupona of Salvius in Pompeii, with its car-

nivalesque scenarios and clever use of texts, finds a more complex counterpart at Ostia.

Here the subject is not tavern life but lampooning elite values.

THE SEVEN SAGES, EVERYMAN, AND SHITTING

The tavern paintings in the Caupona of the Baths of the Seven Sages at Ostia Antica date

to about 100, forty to fifty years after those of the Caupona of Salvius (number 5 on the

plan, fig. 96). In the Caupona of Salvius it was the characters’ sexual escapades, deviant

sexuality, and bad conduct at the dice table that created the humor—humor that over-

turned expectations of proper behavior among real people. At Ostia the artist attributes

absurd bowel-movement techniques to the venerable voices of wisdom, the Seven Sages

of the seventh century b.c., and he pairs their images with those of ordinary men in the

act of shitting. The paintings of the Caupona of the Seven Sages reveal another side of

Roman humor, where the laughter comes from overturning a set of cultural expectations

quite diªerent from those of the Caupona of Salvius.

Although the high, barrel-vaulted room where Guido Calza discovered these remark-

able paintings in 1936 clearly saw reuse as a dressing room (apodyterium) or a massage

room (destrictarium) for the baths, its original function was not entirely clear at the time

of excavation.39 The focus of the Sages’ adages on defecation might suggest that it was a

latrine, but Calza found no traces of the seats or water channel of a latrine. The most likely

hypothesis is that this room, originally opening onto a small east-west street rather than

to the frigidarium of the bath, was a caupona that served wine.40 Supporting this hypothesis

is the image of a Dionysian flying figure next to two wine amphoras still to be seen on


the north half of the high barrel vault, and tripods holding two more amphoras on the

south and west walls.41 Furthermore, the artist painted the word falernum on the west

wall, the name of a wine highly prized in Roman antiquity.42What remains is a fragment

of the original painting program. Only three of the original seven images of the Sages

have survived in full (plate 11); a fragment of a fourth one is also visible. Scholars have

analyzed these three figures su‹ciently to establish that the artist was reproducing with

some fidelity sculptural types going back at least to the late Hellenistic period.43The figure

on the south wall to the left of the street entrance is Solon of Athens. He is bearded and

sits with his legs crossed. He holds a thin staª in his left hand, and rests his right hand

in his lap. Greek letters spelling solon and athenaios frame him to right and left, but

careful Latin capital letters spell out the words above him: Ut bene cacaret ventrem palpavit

Solon, or “To shit well Solon stroked his belly.”44 There are remains of an untranslatable

inscription below him.45

On the right (west) side of the same wall follows Thales of Miletus, framed by the Greek

words thales and meilhsios. He is clean-shaven, with short hair, and also holds a staª

in his left hand. Here, too, the artist has written the joke in Latin above the venerable sage

from Miletus: Durum cacantes monuit ut nitant Thales, or “Thales advised those who shit

hard to really work at it.”46There is a fragmentary inscription below the Sage that includes

the words [u]taris xylosphongio, or “use the sponge on wood;”47 since the Romans used

sponges to clean themselves after defecation, one scholar proposes that the phrase sug-

gests using the philosopher’s staª for this purpose.48

The long back, or west wall of the room would have contained the images of three

Sages; only one is fully preserved. It is Chilon of Sparta, first on the left (south) part of

the wall, identified by the cheilon and lakedaimonios to his right and left (plate 12).

Chilon is bearded, and he sits in the same three-quarter pose as Solon. He brings his

L A U G H T E R A N D S U B V E R S I O N I N T H E T A V E R N • 17 1

FIGURE 96

Ostia, plan of Caupona of the

Seven Sages (III, 10, 2–3).

right arm up toward his chin and rests his right elbow on his left hand. He holds a scroll

in his left hand. Above him we learn why he was such a great wise man: Vissire tacite

Chilon docuit subdolus, or “Cunning Chilon taught how to fart without making noise.”49

Another figure followed, but a door cut through this figure when the room became an

apodyterium (plate 13). Finally, on the right or north part of the west wall appear the lower

right leg of a stool and traces of the Sage’s drapery, and the name of his city in Greek:

prihneys. Above, in Latin, is the last part of his saying: invenib Bias, or “Bias discov-

ered . . . .” Although we will never know what Bias of Priene discovered, we can assume

from the character of the other sayings that his discovery had to do with defecation.50

Five figures remain lower down on the south and west walls; only the heads and tor-

sos of four of them, and the head of a fifth, are preserved. The top of a red plaster dado,

probably dating to the room’s conversion in the 120s, destroyed the figures below the waist.

They are men, and they must be sitting and defecating, to judge from the words written

above their heads in Latin. Above the man on the south wall (beneath Thales) we read:

mulione sedes, or, “you are sitting on a muledriver.” The artist rendered his head in three-

quarters, so that he looks to his left, across the corner of the room, to address the men

on the west wall (see plate 11). The first man on the west wall says propero—“I’m hurry-

ing up”; the verb appears above his left shoulder (see plate 12). He may be responding to

what the man next to him says: high above this figure’s head are two inscribed guide-

lines. On the upper line appear the words agita te celerius, and on the guideline below the

continuation: pervenies. Here the writer uses the verb agitare in its meaning of shaking

or moving the body—probably the belly—in order to hurry up the process of elimination:

“shake yourself about so that you’ll go faster.” Perhaps this is his remedy for constipation.

The last translatable lines appear above the man next to him; the letters rest on the same

two guidelines: amice fugit te proverbium / bene caca et irrima medicos: “Friend, the adage

escapes you. Shit well and make the doctors blow you (literally, ‘force the doctors to fel-

late you’).”51 A more colloquial translation: “Hey, buddy—don’t you know the saying? Shit

well and fuck the doctors—you don’t need them.”52

Several interesting consequences emerge when we attempt to imagine the scope of

the original program of images and texts—and what a customer drinking in this space

would have seen. It is relatively easy to fill out the rest of the middle zone of the wall, now

occupied by two Sages on the south wall, and one Sage and a part of another one on the

left and right sides of the west wall. We would simply have to add three more Sages, a

third one on the west wall opposite the original entrance where a later doorway pierces

the wall, and two on the north wall.53 Like the preserved Sages, these would masquerade

as statues, placed on plinths; their names and their cities, painted in Greek letters, would

frame them, and a Latin saying having to do with some aspect of defecation would have

appeared above. Beneath this august lineup we would have to fill in the row of men, seated

on a many-seated latrine. Using the size and positions of the four preserved torsos as a

guide, there would have been twenty sitting figures in all, six on the south wall, eight on

the west wall, and six on the north. The ancient viewer would have immediately recog-


nized this configuration, since at Ostia many preserved latrines consist of a large entry-

way with a bench running continuously around the left, back and right walls.54 Holes in

the marble of the bench designate the places where users would sit to defecate (fig. 97).

The artist who literally elevated the statues of the Sages and compared them with the

real, shitting men down below used the physical position of the two kinds of sitters to

mock the grandiose rhetoric of intellectuals in general and the Sages in particular. Mod-

ern intellectuals, like the intellectuals of the ancient world, are fond of reading classical

statuary as being “up there,” its very removal from our everyday world a challenge to our

mundane thoughts and feelings:

The classic statue is the radiant centre of a transcendent individualism, ‘put up on a pedestal’,

raised above the viewer and the commonality and anticipating passive admiration from be-

low. We gaze up at the figure and wonder. . . . The presence of the statue is a problematic

presence in that it immediately retroflects us to the heroic past, it is a memento classici for

which we are the eternal latecomers, and for whom meditative imitation is the appropri-

ate contrition.55

The artist of the Caupona of the Seven Sages amplified the contrasts between “up there”

and “down here”—between the classic statue and the ordinary man—to create a scheme

much more ambitious and multivalent than that of the Caupona of Salvius.

The height of the vault is about 5.2 meters (17 feet) at its crown, perhaps twice as high


FIGURE 97

Ostia, I, 12, Forica on the Street of the Forica.

as the flat ceiling of the Caupona of Salvius, and the painter worked out a program that fea-

tured imagery and text all the way up the wall.56 The four relatively small framed panels

that make up the frieze on the wall opposite the entryway of the tiny room 1 in the Caupona

of Salvius were at eye level, whereas the three registers of figuration in the Caupona of the

Seven Sages would make the viewer crane his neck to take in the imagery—and the texts.

Each vignette in the Pompeian inn paintings uses a kind of cartoon balloon to give the

protagonists speech and to identify how they’re upsetting their expected roles—especially

in scenes one and two. There is also a narrative in the last two scenes, where arguing over

dice-playing ends up in a fight and the threat of expulsion. The case is very diªerent in

the Caupona of the Seven Sages. It is not only the visual representations of wine amphoras,

Sages, and defecating men that would make the viewer’s eyes scan the walls vertically.

Once the viewer got the visual pun connecting the Sages’ sitting with the shitters’ sitting,

reading the texts that accompany these images amplified the humor, a process that re-

quired scanning the lines from left to right.

It is clear that the person who commissioned and paid for this painting program wanted

to give his clients a lot of text to read. I have proposed translations of the texts that are

complete, and I have included the undecipherable ones in the notes; to these we would

have to add the maxims directly attributed to the other four missing Sages and the words

above the heads of the missing sitters. To go along with the twenty sitting men there

would have been the same number of texts, ranging in length from one word (like the

propero) to perhaps ten (like the fairly complex amice fugit te proverbium / bene caca et

irrima medicos).

The humor escalated when someone read these texts. The images of the Sages serve

their comedic purpose by looking as much as possible like the traditional statues and paint-

ings of the Seven Sages that the second-century Ostian might have seen. The use of Greek

labels to tell the viewer each sage’s name and city must have seemed more o‹cial to the

Latin-speaking viewer than Latin labels would have. They are images from elite culture:

of statues adorning gardens, lecture halls, libraries, and the villas of the rich. Our tavern-

goers would have known them from grand public spaces at Ostia, Rome, or any large city.

Their presence in the tavern sets them up for ridicule, especially since the Sages them-

selves do not speak. The bogus sayings above their heads simply report, in the third per-

son, what they purportedly taught. The fact that each line scans in six iambs (they are

iambic senarii) gives the sayings a pseudoliterary flavor that further emphasizes their role

in what was a mockery of elite culture.57

Given the actual content of what the Sages and the shitting men say, it is remarkable

that scholars have doggedly resisted seeing any humor in the painted decoration of the

Caupona of the Seven Sages. Richard Neudecker has recently reviewed in great detail all

the ancient texts that mention digestion and elimination in order to support his hypoth-

esis, based on Michel Foucault’s research, that the luxury latrine of the imperial period

came about because of the development and diªusion of elite models of bodily care.58 In

connection with our paintings, Neudecker cites Plutarch’s symposium of the Seven Sages,


where after dinner they discuss, among other things, food. In Plutarch’s text, the Sages’

comments on digestion are a way to highlight the conflict between body and spirit.

The closest the conversation comes to actual bodily functions is Solon’s exaggerated ac-

count of digestion: “For this, in truth, it is which constitutes the pollution of our flesh

and its bowels of Hell, as it were, teeming with frightful streams and wind, intermingled

with burning fire and corpses.”59 This highbrow utterance is a far cry from Solon strok-

ing his belly, Thales telling shitters to push hard, or Chilon teaching people how to fart

silently—yet Neudecker insists that the paintings of the Caupona of the Seven Sages are

visual explanations of what Plutarch’s Sages say.60 In Plutarch the Sages try to reach be-

yond the body to the spirit; the paintings and texts in the Caupona bring the Sages back

down to the body, and they dirty or soil the Sages’ wisdom. What is more, wise words

coming out of their mouths end up being about what comes from the lower part. Although

the Sages are not shitting, their words represent shit.

Calza, too, denies any humorous content and wants to make the tavern-goers into the

intellectual bohemians of the day who belonged to an exclusive men’s club that met in

this space. Calza’s normalization of both the space and the tavern’s clientele is clearly

anachronistic and reveals more about his own early-twentieth-century culture than it does

about that of the ancient people who frequented the Caupona of the Seven Sages.61 He

sees no humor, only the nobility of the common Roman man who has rejected high-

minded philosophy for practical wisdom.62

I think that we can get closer to the paintings’ meaning for customers in the Caupona

of the Seven Sages by considering how defecating figured in their lives.63Bearing in mind

that ancient Ostians sat together on benches in latrines to urinate and defecate, they would

have been seeing a scene from their everyday lives in the Caupona of the Seven Sages.

The forica (public latrine) was a social setting governed by cultural constructions of elim-

ination quite diªerent from our own. In contrast to the modern requirement that the act

of defecation take place out of the sight of others, ancient Romans had no need or desire

for privacy while defecating.64 If the public latrines suggest that the act of defecation was

normally carried out in the company of others (and probably with persons of both sexes),

the many shrines that decorate them indicate that people wanted the gods to smile on

this act.65 A painting from the latrine in a caupona at Pompeii (IX, 7, 22) represents a

naked man defecating beside an image of Fortuna and framed by luck-bringing serpents

(agathodaemones). Above his head appears the legend: cacator cave malu(m) or “Shitter,

beware of evil!”66 A shrine to Fortuna—complete with the inscription Fortunae Augustae—

decorates the large latrine in the Barracks of the Firemen at Ostia, completed around a.d.

140. The goddess augurs good luck to the men as they relieve themselves.67 In keeping

with the dignity of the public latrines is the generally high quality of their construction,

hygienic provisions, and materials. Whereas in many small latrines, such as those in

houses, a person sat on a bench suspended over a cesspit, in the large public latrines abun-

dant water running beneath the benches carried away the waste. A second stream of water

ran in front of the benches, at the users’ feet, to supply water to clean the sponge that


people wiped with, and to wash away spattered urine. Marble, or painted plaster over brick-

work, adorned the walls, and marble, mosaic, or brick paved the floors.68

The public latrines at Ostia, rather than being dark, stinking, and hidden, were bright

and welcoming places where people met and perhaps tarried to converse. Seen in this light,

the latrine is a social space like the caupona; using the image of the latrine in the painting

of the caupona was a way to compare similar cultural practices. Just as men sat around the

latrine’s perimeter and talked, so they sat on stools conversing in the caupona. But what’s

funny is the fact that the artist has transported the men—and their conversation—from

one social space to another: the artist has depicted the men sitting around the three walls

of the Caupona of the Seven Sages as though it were a latrine, talking about and philos-

ophizing about shitting. The tavern is a place where you ingest food—not a place where

you evacuate it. What the paintings and texts overturn are the expectations of what the

Sages should do. Sages imparting wisdom would be an appropriate representation for cul-

tured men eating and drinking. But the artist has transported that social space into an-

other. He has mixed ingesting food and drink in reality with defecation in representation—

both visual (the shitting men) and verbal (the Sages’ and the men’s words). Here, the artist

sets the Sages against men in a latrine—he has dirtied them visually—and has given them

dirty wisdom. In the tavern the drinkers should be talking about food, wine, and sex; or—

on a higher plane—philosophy, religion, and politics. Instead they vie with the Sages in

commenting on shitting.

What of the clientele of the Caupona? The only class one can rule out is the elite, who

would have entertained and have been entertained in domestic settings. The many free

citizens and freedmen who made up the bulk of Ostia’s population could have frequented

the Caupona of the Seven Sages. Its barrel-vaulted space (5 on the plan, fig. 96) is one of

a cluster of four back-to-back barrel vaults that can still be identified within the later fab-

ric of the Baths of the Seven Sages, constructed in the 120s. Two of the barrel vaults, the

Caupona of the Seven Sages and the area now making up room 6 of the Baths, opened

onto the Street of the Lime Kiln. The other two (2–4 and a similar space now occupied

by the north part of rotunda 7) must have opened onto a second street or inner passageway

that later became area 2. These three additional barrel-vaulted spaces could have pro-

vided further rooms for the Caupona, suggesting that it was a relatively large establish-

ment, serving wine and food and perhaps providing rooms for sexual encounters.69 Al-

though it is impossible to reconstruct the neighborhood surrounding the Caupona at the

time the paintings of the Seven Sages were commissioned (ca. 100), the subsequent de-

velopment (ca. 120–140) is distinctly residential, placing the Caupona in the middle of a

residential area that boasted big and well-appointed apartment buildings rather than the

mix of warehouses and small apartments found in other parts of the city.70

Were the customers literate? The answer must be a resounding “yes,” if we take into

account the sheer quantity of writing on the walls (about five times the amount actually

preserved), and the fact that the only way to enjoy the humor was to read the writing. Of


course, there are degrees of literacy, and in this room it would only take one person read-

ing out loud to the others to explain the jokes; his reading would transfer the humor from

the realm of the visual and written to that of the visual and oral. Someone who could rec-

ognize the scatological words and phrases would be able to make sense of the whole—

as long as he understood who the Sages were and how they figured in elite cultural pre-

tensions. One can imagine clients reading both the maxims of the Sages and the pithy

comments of the defecating men. Here was the stuª of stories about the end product

of digestion even while people were having their fill of food and wine. And this kind of

humor—the kind that dirtied elite pretensions—was an assertion of power over the elite.

It turned the world of high-minded philosophy upside down, soiling what the powerful

held dear.

We get the just the opposite—the elite—approach to the humor of mixing eating and

shitting in Petronius’s character Trimalchio. Petronius creates Trimalchio to illustrate the

wealthy freedman’s bad taste and ignorance, never more boorish than when he treats his

dinner guests—who have ingested an inordinate amount of food and wine—to an ex-

tended commentary on his constipation:

“You’ll excuse me, friend,” he began, “but I’ve been constipated for days and the doctors

are stumped. I got a little relief from a prescription of pomegranate rind and resin in a vine-

gar base. Still, I hope my tummy will get back its manners soon. But if any of you has any

business that needs attending to, go right ahead; no reason to feel embarrassed. There’s

not a man been born yet with solid insides. And I don’t know any anguish on earth like try-

ing to hold it in. Jupiter himself couldn’t stop it from coming. . . . Well, anyone at table who

wants to go has my permission, and the doctors tell us not to hold it in. . . . Take my word

for it, friends, the vapors go straight to your brain. Poison your whole system. I know of

some who’ve died from being too polite and holding it in.”71

Petronius, the arbiter elegantiae (arbiter of elegance), gets his elite audience to laugh by

having Trimalchio comment on how to shit and when to shit—even while his guests

are eating. He dirties the banquet with inappropriate references to elimination. He is

also addled, whether by wine or by nature, so that his musings about constipation free-

associate moronically, leading him from his bowels’ misbehaving to Jupiter’s lack of con-

trol to thoughts of death. In every way Petronius has Trimalchio overturning the rules for

proper banquet conversation and behavior—all for the amusement of the cultured elite

reader.

The situation is quite diªerent in the Caupona of the Seven Sages. It is a gathering

place for the non-elite, and the clients’ experiences of elimination were quite diªerent

from those of the elite. Ostia’s richly decorated public latrines must have aªorded an op-

portunity for ordinary people to socialize while relieving themselves.72 Elites had slaves

bring them chamber pots whenever and wherever they wished to relieve themselves.73


Although this practice did not allow privacy in modern terms, since there were servants

present, it allowed elite individuals to avoid defecating surrounded by the wrong people.

Elite practice remained relatively constant from Roman times to the nineteenth century,

when the water closet came into use. The notion of privacy for everyone came only with

the diªusion of plumbing to lower-class dwellings, and with the creation of public rest-

rooms. Only at this point did common people experience, and come to expect, the privacy

of the bathroom stall in public places.74 In light of ancient Romans’ experience of the com-

munal latrine, we should resist thinking that, in the Caupona of the Seven Sages, the

mere depiction of men sitting around the perimeter of the room and defecating was the

joke. This image merely set the stage for visual and verbal parallels that were much fun-

nier. True, it was the artist’s imaginative transformation of a place where you drank and

ate into one where you sat and shat that set the stage for the humor. By comparing two

kinds of sociability, that of the caupona and that of the latrine, the artist collapsed the

diªerences between the consumption of food and wine and their elimination.

The crux of the humor lies in the visual and verbal parallels between Sages and shit-

ters. Although at first Sages and shitting men resemble each other superficially, since

both are sitting, the viewer knows that the Sages are seated to hold forth their wisdom,

whereas the men are sitting to defecate. What is more, the artist depicted the Sages as

sculptures and the men below as living people. Looking up, a viewer would compare

the representations of the Sages with sculptures and paintings he had seen of them,

seated in their proper philosophers’ stools, set on individual bases, and endowed with

the physiognomic traits that diªerentiated each of them.75 Looking down, he would see

the improvised and nontraditional images of living, workaday men—not statues; per-

haps some of them were even portraits of friends—animatedly engaging in conversa-

tion while defecating.76

Equally funny, because they thwart a viewer’s expectations, are the written words that

convey what Sages and shitters have to say. In ancient lecture halls, libraries, and villas

of the elite, high-minded maxims often accompanied the statues of the Sages, properly

labeled in Greek like the paintings in the Caupona of the Seven Sages.77 But the Sages’

maxims painted high up on the wall are bogus and embarrassingly similar to the words

coming from the sitting men’s mouths down below. In a real Roman latrine, the words

of the men sitting and shitting would not have been out of the ordinary; they belong in

that context. Yet transferred to the caupona these words form a humorous counterpoint

to the expertise in techniques of shitting and farting attributed to the Sages in the state-

ments written above their heads. Both Sages and men say—in all seriousness—silly things

about bowel movements.

Grammar also comes into play. The maxims above pose as historical or factual re-

portage; they use the authority of the third person, the past tense, and the meter of iambic

senarii to disclose what each Sage is supposed to have taught about digestion. The men

below speak in the present, and they speak for themselves; the captions (as in the Cau-

pona of Salvius) appear just above each man’s head. Just as the artist forced the viewer to


compare two very diªerent categories of sitting (seated statues of Sages and real men sit-

ting on a latrine bench), so the written words compare everyday talk with the wisdom of

the ages. The words contrast the “then” of history (or the pseudohistory of the Sages) with

the “now” of the present for comic eªect.

The paintings in both taverns have the potential to enlighten us on how Roman art ac-

commodated its audiences. By cleverly coding their imagery in narratives and scenarios

that spoke to the culture of those who frequented these taverns, the paintings entertained

with their humor and provided grist for inventive commentary and storytelling. Unlike

the bulk of o‹cial art, or even decorative art, nothing (save the images of the Sages) is

standard.

Because the written word constitutes an essential element that the ancient viewer had

to grasp in order to get the jokes, these tavern paintings can serve as indicators of the mix

of levels of literacy of these establishments’ clientele.The writing has three diªerent flavors:

in the Caupona of Salvius, it is vulgar Latin used to script the exchanges of the customers,

barmaid, and owner. In the Caupona of the Seven Sages the writer has cast the maxims

of the Sages in words and meter proper to their dignity; and although the comments of

the seated men include colloquialisms, they are more grammatical than those of the

Caupona of Salvius.

It is likely, but not provable, that clients of both cauponas ranged from the literate to

the fully illiterate.78 If this were the case, we could imagine some drinkers amusing them-

selves, as with the help of their cronies they tried to sound out the written words to get

at the meanings. Others, fully literate, would get the jokes quite rapidly. Although the il-

literate person could understand the two scenes of the gambling and brawling man in

the Caupona of Salvius, he would need to know what the characters in the first two scenes

were saying to get their humor. Comprehension would be quite di‹cult for the illiterate

viewer in the Caupona of the Seven Sages, where the Sages’ maxims and the defecating

men’s remarks were essential elements of the humor. For this reason Calza goes so far

as to rule out an illiterate clientele in his argument that the Caupona of the Seven Sages

is a sophisticated men’s club.79 Even if we discount the obvious anachronism of Calza’s

claim, it is hard to make this an exclusive club merely on the evidence of the paintings

and inscriptions. I propose that the partially literate viewer would have simply needed

more time—and assistance from his literate friends—to comprehend the humor. He

would probably recognize the representations of the statues of the Seven Sages—or seated

Philosopher type in general—and get the visual pun between their sitting and the scene—

familiar from his own everyday experience—of men sitting at a latrine. But the sheer

quantity of the texts and their relatively complex grammar would have blocked the illit-

erate person from getting all the jokes until he heard people read them; he had to rely

upon his literate friends for enlightenment and a laugh.

Writing was everywhere in Roman cities, but most of it was formulaic: inscriptions

on the tombs you passed as you neared the city walls; on triumphal arches that marked


important passages; on statue bases and altars within the forum and temple precincts;

on temples and statue-niches.80 The kind of writing we find in our two taverns is of a

diªerent kind; rather than commemorating the dead, proclaiming an emperor’s titles, or

telling the reader who paid for a statue, it endows painted images of human beings with

speech. And unlike the seriousness of purpose behind inscriptions on monuments, the

writing on these tavern walls was just for fun.

In proposing my interpretations of these two ensembles of tavern paintings, I have

tried to avoid reading them as illustrations of elite values as we know them from existing

ancient texts. Taken on their own terms and in context they reveal the originality of the

artists who created them; they also demonstrate the viewers’ visual and verbal literacy.

The artists could not rely on existing iconographic models (aside from the images of the

Sages themselves) for imagery; they had to make images that reflected scenarios drawn

from the audience’s world, scenarios that fitted with their experiences of bar and latrine.

The artists also had to invent the captions. To get the points of the jokes viewers had to

recognize the contradictions in the visual representations as well as those in the written

words. Compared with the seemingly endless repetition of formulaic representations that

characterizes Roman “high” art, these tavern paintings are highly original expressions

that reveal the inventiveness, wit, and playfulness of ancient artists and viewers.


7

COMMEMORATION OF LIFE

IN THE DOMAIN OF THE DEAD

NON-ELITE TOMBS AND SARCOPHAGI

We have already considered several funerary monuments in previous chapters. The grave

stele of Longidienus and the altar of Atimetus helped us to articulate attitudes of ordi-

nary working Romans toward their professions. In the chapter on spectacle, Lusius Storax’s

tomb sculpture showed how one freedman wished to be remembered at the high point

in his life, when he was both augustalis and giver of the games. In this chapter I examine

the circumstances of display and viewing in “streets of tombs,” where tombs of various

types lined the roads leading out of the city—each vying for the viewer’s attention, each

beckoning the passerby to stop, read the inscription, contemplate the imagery, and re-

member the occupant.1

I focus on several tombs and a sarcophagus (stone co‹n) where we know that the

occupant belonged to the lower social strata, and where his choice of imagery reveals

what he wanted the viewer to think about him. On the whole, we will find attitudes toward

commemoration that recall—even celebrate—the pleasures of life rather than pictur-

ing or symbolizing an ideal afterlife. If this seems strange to us, it is because most of

today’s religions assert that there is a better life after death—a heaven waiting as a re-

ward for those who have lived according to the rules. Coupled with our conceptual dis-

tinction between earthly existence and the heavenly one is our practice of separating the

realm of the dead from that of the living. We commemorate the dead in cemeteries or

18 1

mausolea cut oª as much as possible from the business of daily life and its tra‹c. Noth-

ing could be farther from the Roman mentality, obsessed with prolonging a person’s

memory in public: tombs are meant to be seen as often as possible and by as many people

as possible.

The architecture and decoration of tombs distinguished between two kinds of view-

ing: from outside and from within the tomb. The areas within the tomb’s boundary walls

addressed the familia of the persons buried there, who would likely visit the tomb four

times a year. In addition to visiting the tomb on the deceased’s death-day and birthday,

there were two public religious festivals dedicated to the commemoration of the dead:

the Parentalia (13–21/23 February) and the Lemuria (9, 11 and 13 May).2 During these fes-

tivals the cemeteries buzzed with activity, as families who visited the tombs cleaned and

adorned them with wreaths and flowers.3 They often poured libations—including wine,

milk, honey, oil, and the blood of animal victims—through tubes that reached the ashes

of the deceased to appease the spirits of the dead (the Manes or inferiae).4 The family also

ate a meal at the tomb that could range from a simple picnic (the refrigerium) to a full-

fledged banquet. Some tombs, especially the second- and third-century ones at Ostia, boast

masonry couches, wells, and even bake-ovens, suggesting that the funeral meal was an

elaborate banquet.5

FORMS OF ADDRESS ON THE STREETS OF TOMBS

Roman law required that the dead be buried outside the city’s boundaries, the pomerium,

so that tombs began where the city walls stopped, lining the roads leading out of the city.6

Individuals and their families vied for the choice spots, on main roads close to the city

gates. At Pompeii and Ostia inscriptions tell us how the city government controlled the

burial plots and how the decurions often awarded the best ones to individuals who had

served their cities well. As the plots along the roads leading out from cities filled up, in-

dividuals wanting to locate their tombs near the city settled for the second row back from

the road, creating, in eªect, parallel streets lined with tombs on either side (fig. 98).7

The tombs took many diªerent forms. Cremation predominated in Roman Italy un-

til the mid–second century a.d.Urns containing the ashes of the deceased could be placed

in a great variety of architectural settings. At Pompeii we find ash-urns placed in back of

the so-called schola, a semicircular stone bench; in the cube-shaped altars that loomed

high above the walls that enclosed them; in the bases of round temples (tholi), beneath

aediculae with portrait busts or statues in them; in the niches lining vaulted chambers,

called dovecotes (columbaria) (fig. 99).8 In the cemeteries of Rome, Ostia, and Isola Sacra,

the columbarium predominates. Common to all of the tomb forms was the aim of get-

ting the passerby to stop and look at the exterior imagery and the inscription—and to re-

member the occupant. The schola’s strategy was especially accommodating, since it in-

vited a passerby to stop and sit on its stone bench, resting her back against the inscription

that identified the person whom the monument honored.


There is great variety in the tomb inscriptions. Some simply identify the person buried

there, but more often we find the name of the person who erected the tomb, complete

with a list of his honors. Perhaps the most fascinating for the modern viewer are in-

scriptions that address the passerby and ask him to stop and read the story of the deceased.

One of these, in Pompeii’s necropolis of the Nuceria gate, explains the wrongs the occu-

pant suªered in life:

O traveler, stop a while if it’s no trouble and learn what you have to avoid. The man I hoped

was my friend accused me falsely. In court, thanks to the gods and my own innocence, I

C O M M E M O R A T I O N O F L I F E • 183

FIGURE 98

Ostia, plan of Necropolis of the Ostia Road.

FIGURE 99

Pompeii, Necropolis of the Herculaneum Gate.

was absolved of all guilt. May my defamer be rejected by the penates [the protecting deities]

and by all the gods of the beyond.9

As Giancarlo Susini and others have pointed out, tomb inscriptions fit into a typically

Roman urban landscape filled with public writing—much of it aimed at exalting the name

of a person to guarantee his or her survival in memory.10 For non-elites, tombs with

inscriptions—especially when coupled with paintings and relief sculptures that illus-

trate or allude to great deeds—were a prime vehicle for advancing their social and po-

litical status.

TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE: NAEVOLEIA TYCHE

One of the best examples of a non-elite person’s use of a funerary monument to trumpet

her virtues and those of her family is that of Naevoleia Tyche. When, in the early nine-

teenth century, archaeologists uncovered the tall altar-type monument with an enclosure

wall along the Herculaneum Road, they assumed that it was her burial place (fig. 100).

She appears prominently—her bust peering out from a shuttered frame, overseeing the

grain-dole ceremony that takes place below. On the left ordinary men, women, and chil-

dren, some carrying baskets, approach a diminutive figure who seems to be scooping

grain from a sack into a basket. On the right men in togas observe the largesse—certainly

that of Naevoleia’s freedman husband, Munatius Faustus.11 Just as the visual represen-

tation emphasizes Naevoleia, so too the inscription declares her role in commissioning

the monument:

Naevoleia Tyche, freedwoman of Lucius, [erected this monument] for herself and for Gaius

Munatius Faustus, augustalis and paganus, to whom the decurions, with the agreement of

the citizens, decreed the [honor of ] the bisellium for his merits. Naevoleia Tyche constructed

this monument while alive for her freedmen and freedwomen and for those of Gaius Mu-

natius Faustus.12

Naevoleia tells us that she is a freedwoman, and goes on to name her husband’s honors,

including the fact that he was an augustalis (in a.d. 56–57) and a paganus, meaning he

was magister pagi, an o‹cial in charge of a district (pagus), either of the city or of the sub-

urbs of Pompeii.13 She pictures one of his honors, the bisellium, on the relief on the mon-

ument’s left face. As we saw in the chapter on spectacle, the city awarded the bisellium,

a double-width seat in the theater, as a special honor to prominent men. On the right face

is a ship under sail, a reference either to the family’s mercantile activity or to the passage

to the other world.14

Yet neither Naevoleia’s ashes nor those of her husband rested within the vaulted cham-

ber beneath. A century later, excavators uncovering the tombs outside the Nuceria Gate

found the simple, double tomb of Naevoleia and her husband.15 The most likely scenario


is that Naevoleia survived her husband, and decided to add to her glory and that of her

family by erecting a second, more elegant monument along the Herculaneum Road. It

would serve as a cenotaph (a memorial) to herself and her husband and also as a burial

place for the couple’s former slaves. Unlike the modest tomb in the Nuceria Gate necrop-

olis, the rich sculptural imagery and long inscription on the cenotaph set the stage for

the careers of Naevoleia’s sons, born free. Naevoleia, barred by her servile origins from

public priesthoods of elite women like Mamia and Eumachia, and by reason of her sex

from being an augustalis, focused her energy and her wealth on creating a monument

that trumpeted her identity and the accomplishments of her family to all.16What is more,

the inscription announces Naevoleia’s generosity; she provides a fine tomb for the ashes

of the freedmen and freedwomen of both Naevoleia and Munatius. This act of homage

to the couple’s servile familia did double duty, for while it honored their former slaves it

declared the greatness of the familia in a permanent public memorial.

TRIMALCHIO IN FICTION AND IN FACT

Naevoleia’s monuments demonstrate how important it could be for a freedwoman to ad-

vertise her wealth and status. Little wonder that building an elaborate tomb is so impor-

tant to Petronius’s fictional character, the freedman Trimalchio, whom we left in the last

chapter lamenting the state of his bowels. At the same dinner party, even further in his

cups, Trimalchio gives his friend, the sculptor Habinnas, elaborate instructions on what

his tomb is to look like. Although Trimalchio’s soliloquy is the stuª of side-splitting com-

edy for the elite readers Petronius is addressing, the humor lies not so much in Trimal-


FIGURE 100

Pompeii, Necropolis of the Herculaneum Gate, no. 22, Monument of Naevoleia Tyche.

chio’s desire to be commemorated—for every Roman wanted this—but in his tomb’s ex-

aggerated size and its mishmash of iconographical references:

At the close of the reading, he turned to Habinnas. “Well, old friend, will you make me my

tomb exactly as I order it? First, of course, I want a statue of myself. But carve my dog at

my feet, and give me garlands of flowers, jars of perfume and every fight in Petraites’ ca-

reer. Then, thanks to your good o‹ces, I’ll live on long after I’m gone. In front, I want my

tomb one hundred feet long, but two hundred feet deep. Around it I want an orchard with

every known variety of fruit tree. You’d better throw in a vineyard too. For it’s wrong, I think,

that a man should concern himself with the house where he lives his life but give no thought

to the home he’ll have forever. But above all I want you to carve this notice:

this monument does not pass into

the possession of my heirs.

In any case I’ll see to it in my will that my grave is protected from damage after my death.

I’ll appoint one of my ex-slaves to act as a custodian to chase oª people who might come

and crap on my tomb. Also, I want you to carve me several ships with all sail crowded and

a picture of myself sitting on the judge’s bench in o‹cial dress with five gold rings on my

fingers and handing out a sack of coins to the people. For it’s a fact, and you’re my witness,

that I gave a free meal to the whole town and a cash handout to everyone. Also make me

a dining room, a frieze maybe, but however you like, and show the whole town celebrating

at my expense. On my right I want a statue of Fortunata with a dove in her hand. And oh

yes, be sure to have her pet dog tied to her girdle. And don’t forget my pet slave. Also I’d

like huge jars of wine, well stoppered so the wine won’t slosh out. Then sculpt me a bro-

ken vase with a little boy sobbing out his heart over it. And in the middle stick a sundial

so that anyone who wants the time of day will have to read my name. And how will this do

for the epitaph?

here lies gaius pompeius trimalchio

maecenatianus,

voted in absentia an official of the

imperial cult.

he could have been registered

in any category of civil service at rome

but chose otherwise.

pious and courageous,

a loyal friend,

he died a millionaire

though he started life with nothing.

let it be said to his eternal credit

that he never listened to philosophers.

peace to him.

farewell.17

Despite its clearly comic purpose, many scholars have cited this passage because it is

filled with references that parallel surviving images and inscriptions. Trimalchio, of course,

is not a typical freedman: he is unusually wealthy and unusually vulgar.18 Unlike most


freedmen, he inherited his wealth at the death of his patronus, so that he had no ongoing

obligations to his former master. Trimalchio embraces every cliché about commemora-

tion with such indiscriminate fervor that Petronius’s elite readers winced—and then

laughed. Yet nearly every modern analysis of Roman burial practice quotes Trimalchio’s

soliloquy, for all of the forms that he describes appear in excavated tombs.

Some of the remarkable correspondences between Trimalchio’s tomb, the tomb of

Storax at Teate (chapter 5), and the tomb of Vestorius Priscus at Pompeii are listed in figure

101. If we put the imagery and inscriptions from the tombs of Lusius Storax and Vesto-

rius Priscus together, we have accounted for many of the visual and textual references in

Trimalchio’s tomb. We could also easily find the other images, such as the ship under

sail—one of the principal images on the cenotaph of Naevoleia Tyche. Petronius, of course,

knew the vocabulary of tomb memorials well, and by tweaking and exaggerating details,

he conjured up an image of Trimalchio’s excess in commemoration that matched the ex-

cess of his famous banquet.

WHEN WORDS FAIL: PAINTING PRESTIGE FOR VESTORIUS PRISCUS

Not listed in figure 101 are the images decorating the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus—which

Petronius could have added to Trimalchio’s list (fig. 102).19Vestorius Priscus’s tomb takes

pride of place among the few excavated to date near Pompeii’s Vesuvius Gate, so called

COMMEMORA T I O N O F L I F E • 187

TRIMALCHIO STORAX VESTORIUS PRISCUS

(Figs. 84–88) (Pls. 14–15; Figs. 102–5; 109–15)

IMAGES

Portrait statue Portrait statue

Gladiatorial combat scenes Gladiatorial combat scenes Gladiatorial combat scene

Real orchard and vineyard Painting of garden

Every fruit Pomegranate tree

Ships under sail

Acting as magistrate at games Acting as magistrate at games Acting as magistrate in public

Giving out money Officials checking money-box?

Portrait of wife

Portrait of slaves “Common people” at the games

Sundial

INSCRIPTIONS

This monument does not pass This monument does not pass

to heirs to heirs

Augustalis Augustalis

Service in Rome Aedile in Pompeii

Died a millionaire Cost of funeral 2,000 sesterces

Never listened to philosophers

FIGURE 101

Chart comparing Trimalchio, Storax, and Vestorius Priscus.

FIGURE 102

Pompeii, Necropolis of the

Vesuvius Gate, plan of Tomb

of Vestorius Priscus, with

subjects of paintings.

FIGURE 103

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus in its context. Excavation photo, 1907.

because the steep street that leads up to the gate faces the volcano. Someone coming out

through the city walls at this point saw the high enclosure wall surrounding a central

structure that supported a monument in the shape of an altar (fig. 103). The inscription

reads:

C(aio) Vestorio Prisco Aedil(i)

Vixit annis XXII

Locus sepulturae datus et in

funere HS ∞ ∞

D(ecreto) D(ecurionum)

Mulvia Prisca Mater P(ecunia) S(ua)20

To Gaius Vestorius Priscus, Aedile, who lived 22 years. This burial place and 2,000 ses-

terces for his funeral were given by decree of the decurions. His mother, Mulvia Prisca,

paid for this tomb with her own money.

Despite the fact that, as the inscription boasts, the decurions voted to pay for Priscus’s

funeral and provided the land that the tomb stands on, he was a minor o‹cial and quite

young. There are clear indications that the family had only modest means. The tomb it-

self is quite small, and even so Mulvia Prisca had to build it in two stages. She could not

aªord bronze or marble, but settled for stucco and fresco painting for its decoration. Vesto-

rius Priscus seems to have been aedile in a.d. 70–71, and died while in o‹ce.21 The cog-

nomen Priscus is fairly common at Pompeii: Jean Andreau identifies ten persons with

this last name, and concludes that they are “of humble origin, although none of these

men is designated as a former slave.”22 The visual representations in the tomb express a

certain anxiety about status; the somewhat bewildering array of competing images that

Mulvia Prisca ordered underscores the mother’s fervent desire to amplify her son’s glory

and that of the familia.

The only images directly relating to death that a viewer could see from the exterior are

two stucco figures that flank the inscription. They are nude males with long hair, stand-

ing on flowers and each holding a vegetal candelabrum in the right hand. They represent

the genii of death (genii mortis).23 The other stuccoes that a viewer saw have no specific

death symbolism: a semi-reclining satyr (west side), a maenad flying to the left (north side),

and a maenad flying to the right (south side). Surrounding the central altar with the in-

scription and these three stucco figures on the sides are little altars; on top of each is a ser-

pent wound around an oval stone (omphalos)—representations similar to the protecting

serpents we have seen at domestic altars. Little stucco cupids decorate the altars’ principal

faces, and the artist filled out their minor faces with images of animals; one can still make

out an eagle with a serpent and a panther in two places.24 Mulvia Prisca instructed the artist

to use ordinary motifs for the tomb’s exterior—those common in the paintings and stuc-

coes of houses and baths of the period (the Fourth Style, between a.d. 62 and 79). A passerby

saw nothing of the deceased or his life’s activities. It was quite a diªerent story for those


who entered the tomb through its little doorway (only 1.2 × 0.5 m, or 3' 8" × 1' 7 1/2") at the

back, where the imagery celebrated the young Priscus’s life and status.

Visitors permitted to go into the tomb enclosure were members of the extended fam-

ily of the deceased, the familia who had lived in his house and under his power as pater-

familias. Entering the tomb, the first image a mourner saw was the young Priscus, dressed

in a toga with the red stripes of his o‹ce (clavi). He stands in his house in the room

where he received his clients and he looks out at the viewer (fig. 104). His stance, and the

folding double doors that flank him, indicate that the room behind him is the tablinum;

several excavated houses turned up wooden doors like these designed to shut oª the

tablinum from the atrium when desired.25

Priscus holds his right hand up, and in his left is a scroll (rotulus). A servant boy wear-

ing a green tunic stands in profile to the right. Each door folds in two parts toward the

back, the hinges out. At right and left are two couches, each with a three-legged table be-

hind. The artist took care to show their bronze legs and the net of diagonally crossed cords

stretched across the frames. On the left-hand couch is an open wax tablet with a white

lace for closing it, and behind it a spatula to smooth oª the tablet to take new writing.

More writing instruments crowd the top of the table behind the left-hand couch: another

wax tablet, a rotulus, and a seal with the letters RO.

Although there are no objects on the large couch to the right, there is a pair of slip-

pers beneath it. The table behind it is crowded with objects. At the center is a large cylin-

der filled with scrolls, its cover leaning against it; there is a quill, another wax tablet, four

silver coins and a gold one. At right is a partially open scroll with a money sack in front

of it. Up high on both sides are twin scepters with bulbous handles and white tassels hang-

ing from them.


FIGURE 104

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section showing Vestorius Priscus in his tablinum

(scene 1) and garden plants and peacock (part of scene 5).

Several scholars wish to interpret this scene as Priscus standing to greet his business

clients in the daily ritual of the salutatio; but as only members of Priscus’s family would

have seen this image, it must represent the young man in his role of paterfamilias—one

he took on when his own father died. Just as, in life, he met the members of his familia

in the atrium of his house—framed as he is here, by the folding doors to the tablinum—

so he meets those same members as they enter his tomb. Some scholars have interpreted

the couches to either side as bisellia, but their form is wrong—as is their context.26 In-

stead the artist has depicted two of the portable couches that served as needed in various

rooms of the house, here placed in the atrium at the doors to the tablinum. The writing

tools, scrolls, and even the money on the table underscore Priscus’s responsibilities as

paterfamilias. A family slave looking at the representation might remember how briefly

young Priscus played the role of paterfamilias; she had seen his father in that function

for many years. For surviving brothers and sisters it was an image that reminded them

of how Priscus’s death had realigned their own status. For Mulvia Prisca the painting com-

memorated the son who took up her husband’s responsibilities—only to relinquish them

with his premature death.

Banquets and symposia were central events in the lives of ancient Romans, and they

were part of the commemoration rituals for the dead.27 Having looked at the scene of

Priscus as paterfamilias, a viewer would move to her right, where on the short end of the

central structure she would see a double reference to the funeral banquet. In the large

painting above appeared a literal representation of the symposium, or wine-drinking party,

and in the small painting below a metaphorical reference to such parties—images of Pyg-

mies cavorting on the Nile.

In the image above, five figures recline on a C-shaped couch, the sigma (fig. 105). A

huge drape hanging from a ring forms a canopy over them, and twin statues of peacocks

establish the outdoor garden setting. The men are drinking wine: the second figure from

the left holds up a rhyton (drinking horn) in his right hand, as does the last figure on the

right, whose back is turned to the viewer. Unfortunately the words written above their

heads are illegible; they may have been bits of dialogue between the viewers like those

painted above the heads of drinkers in other Pompeian paintings (see plate 22). The men

are drinking wine from a crater (mixing bowl) that rests on a round table. In the left fore-

ground a tibia-player (tibicen) sits on a low stool and raises his pipes to play, while a slave

arrives from the right carrying a silver pitcher. To his right is another slave carrying a

round tray in both hands. Above him we see a servant behind a table laden with all man-

ner of silver objects. In depicting this silver-laden table, the artist deliberately repeated—

at a smaller scale—the large image of a table with silver on the north enclosure wall at

number 4 (plate 14). It is a clever visual rhyme, for all a viewer need do is glance to his

right to compare the miniature table with the much larger one at 4.28

Looking at the images of Pygmies below the wine-drinkers, a Roman viewer would

have made another kind of association between seemingly separate scenes—this time

not a visual rhyme but rather one of parallel meanings (plate 15). As inappropriate as it

COMMEMORA T I O N O F L I F E • 19 1

might seem to us, Romans consistently commissioned artists to represent the outrageous

antics of Pygmies in places—especially outdoors—where they banqueted and drank. This

practice holds as much for tomb decoration as for the decorations in people’s houses.

Seventeen images of Pygmies occur in the houses excavated so far at Pompeii; their

contexts are listed in figure 106.29 If we focus on the size and placement of each image,

an interesting profile emerges: whereas Pygmy scenes occur in all the covered rooms of

the house, in no case do they take up more than 10 percent of the wall decoration. Typi-

cally they are small decorative friezes. But in the open spaces of peristyles and gardens,

the Pygmy scenes are a major decorative focus. Two Second Style friezes (ca. 60–20 b.c.),

one from the peristyle of the House of the Sculptor, the other from the open area of the

House of Ma. Castricius (VII, 16 [Ins. Occ.], 17), consisted entirely of Pygmies and black

Africans on the Nile.30 In the Fourth Style gardens and peristyles, painters mixed three

distinct motifs related only by the fact that they take place out of doors, in a landscape or

riverscape setting: Pygmies cavorting on the Nile, wild-animal hunts (the so-called para-

deisosmotif ), and landscapes dotted with temples and travelers (the so-called sacral-idyllic

landscapes). This is precisely the mixture that we find in the Fourth Style garden of the

House of the Ceii, with one-third of the space devoted to each of these three genres.31 In

the House of the Ephebe at Pompeii, the whole Nilotic program—including the complex

sexual coupling (symplegma)—decorates the large masonry banquet couch in the garden,

with a paradeisos painted on the garden’s wall (fig. 107).32 Here the Pygmy Others per-

form for the amusement of the diners even while they symbolize the exotic life of luxury

in Egypt.


FIGURE 105

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section showing symposium scene and Pygmies on

the Nile (scene 2) and table with silver service (scene 4).

A Pompeian viewer had likely seen many gardens—especially enclosed gardens in

houses where people banqueted—decorated with images of Pygmies cavorting on the

Nile. Here, in Priscus’s tomb, the artist simply juxtaposed these associated images one

below the other. He painted a river landscape with two boats and an island in the center

(see fig. 105). On the left, a Pygmy on the shore tries to maintain his balance while he

shits on a big fish in the water. To the right is a big river boat under sail but without vis-

ible crew. A second boat, this time with three naked Pygmy sailors, appears on the right

side of the island; its sails are furled, carefully tied to the yard. The Pygmy at the prow

leans forward to look at three fish in the water below, while the one in the middle of the

boat dances with pairs of crossed sticks in each hand. A Pygmy tibicen—counterpart to

the musician above in the symposium scene—plays the accompaniment to his comrade’s

dance.

Most of the scholarly debate about the paintings on this wall has focused on the mean-

ing of the scene of five men drinking rather than on the meanings that the whole com-

position had for an ancient viewer.33 Yet there are three elements: the table with fancy sil-

ver, the men around the sigma-couch, and the long, thin, Pygmy riverscape below. As we

have seen, the process of viewing called extra attention to the silver-laden table: the first

thing to catch a viewer’s eye was the image of the silver vessels because it rhymes visu-

ally with the table and vessels on wall 4. This emphasis on the silver seems calculated to

underscore Priscus’s wealth—he’s worth his weight in silver.34 Next a viewer would think


LOCATION NUMBER WALL SURFACE COVERED

Garden & Peristyle

couch 1 33 percent

one wall 2 100 percent

all walls 2 100 percent

Atrium

upper zone 1 5 percent

frieze 1 5 percent

Ala

upper zone 1 5 percent

Tablinum

predella 1 5 percent

Oecus

median zone 1 10 percent

Triclinium

median 2 10 percent


Cubiculum


Bath


FIGURE 106

Chart showing contexts of Pygmy imagery at Pompeii.

about the event: although the remains of a roast appear on the table, it is clear that the

artist wished to represent the wine-drinking that followed the eating. Is this a funerary

banquet? The fact that the men are outdoors and that they are drinking to the accompa-

niment of music suggests a festive picnic rather than a funeral meal.35

How, then, did the viewer understand the Pygmies cavorting—in wilder, naughtier

ways than the drinkers above? This is not the earliest use of Nilotic imagery in a tomb.

Mulvia Prisca was following elite practice by having the painter include both the image

of the Pygmy defecating and the group of the dancer and tibicen in her son’s tomb. These

images were calculated to disperse—by reason of their “unbecomingness”—evil spirits.

In this way they safeguarded the tomb and its visitors.36 The best sources for compari-

son, and the earliest in Italy, are the paintings found in the large columbarium of the

Villa Pamphili at Rome. In his 1941 publication of this columbarium, Bendinelli illus-

trates more than ten scenes of Pygmies acting much as they do in paintings from the

domestic contexts listed in figure 106.37He dates the complex to the early Augustan period

(30–15 b.c.). Specifically there are scenes of Pygmies taunting a crocodile; Pygmies play-

ing musical instruments and dancing; a Pygmy with two buckets on a pole over his shoul-

ders; the meeting of Pygmies in soldier’s costumes; Pygmies in a boat who taunt a hip-

popotamus; a fight between Pygmies and a crane; and—directly analogous to our

defecating Pygmy—a Pygmy on the prow of a boat who defecates on a hippopotamus.

Additional scenes (recorded only in Carlo Ruspi’s drawings of the 1850s) Bendinelli terms

“orgiastic dances.”38 Although the protagonists were probably not Pygmies, their activi-


FIGURE 107

Pompeii, House of the Ephebe (I, 7, 11), outdoor triclinium with paradeisos painting on walls and Pygmy

painting on masonry couches.

ties place them squarely within the Nilotic repertory. In particular, one drawing shows

two dancers with crossed sticks like those of the dancer in the boat, and a woman about

to squat on the penis of an ithyphallic man while three women look on—quite similar to

the scene on the masonry couch in the garden of the House of the Ephebe.39

In the tomb context, these images of Pygmies’ wild antics served two purposes. First,

like paintings of Pygmies in domestic contexts, here in the tomb they alluded to the ex-

otic Nile and the wild pleasures acted out by the Pygmy Other. Their second function re-

quires a good deal of explanation, for it goes deep into the heart of ancient Roman be-

liefs. The Pygmies are apotropaic, that is, they guard against evil spirits. Why? Because

their antics incited laughter—and Romans believed that laughter dispersed evil spirits.

The best evidence for laughter’s ability to disperse evil is in connection with the Evil Eye.

Ancient Romans believed that an envious person (the phthoneros or invidus) could cause

illness, physical harm, and even death by focusing his or her eye on the envied person.

Although there were many theories on just how such harm could come to a person with-

out physical contact, most ancients believed that the individual was able to focus this grudg-

ing malice through his or her eye; this Evil Eye emanated particles that surrounded and

entered its unfortunate victim.40 How to guard against these dangers? One sure antidote

was to make people laugh. Ancient Romans believed that laughing at images of people

considered ugly or engaged in unbecoming acts dispelled the Evil Eye. A whole host of

visual representations, including macrophallic black Africans (the Aethiops), hunch-

backs, and Pygmies, appear where there was danger of being attacked by the Evil Eye.

Particularly dangerous spots included baths, corners, bridges, and doorways.41 The “un-

becomingness,” or atopía, of these representations caused the laughter that drove away

the Evil Eye and—by extension—evil spirits.42 The images of bizarre sexual couplings in

the dressing room of Pompeii’s Suburban Baths also seem calculated to incite laughter

that would dispel the Evil Eye. There the patron instructed the artist to put the little im-

ages high up on the wall—nearly eight feet above the pavement—and at the back of the

room, above the shelves where bathers put their clothes (fig. 108). The paintings in the

front part of the room, where bathers entered, fully clothed, are standard and unre-

markable. It is only when a bather took oª his or her clothes, and was putting them into

a numbered box on the shelf, that he or she would have seen the sexual pictures high

above. Knowing that it was in the dressing room that a bather, in undressing, was most

likely to be the target of the grudging envy of others—and therefore susceptible to the

Evil Eye—the patron protected him or her by getting the bathers to laugh at the little sex-

ual farces. Laughter disarms the bathers—all nude and laughing at pictures of outrageous

sexual acrobatics rather than looking with evil envy at each other.43

These examples from baths and houses attest to shared beliefs and traditions under-

lying visual representations that seem quite bizarre to us. In the tomb, the images of Pyg-

mies operated on two levels.44 The one that is easier for us to understand is that they are

genre pictures borrowed from domestic contexts, especially those involving the festive

banquet. The less obvious meaning, to incite laughter that protects the tomb’s visitors


from lurking evil, communicated its message to the ancient Roman no less directly. As

we will see, comparable representations of Pygmies play a similar role in two second-cen-

tury tomb complexes near Ostia.

A viewer continuing her reading of the imagery from left to right would then turn the

corner to take in scene 3, where we see Priscus, the aedile, seated on a bronze folding

chair (sella curulis) supported by a high wooden podium or suggestus (fig. 109). Two groups


FIGURE 108

Pompeii, Suburban Baths,

apodyterium 7, south and east

walls.

FIGURE 109

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius

Priscus, section showing

Priscus and twelve listeners

(scene 3), with altar above and

gladiators on west enclosure

wall (scene 8).

of six men in togas flank the podium. Paint losses make it di‹cult to distinguish all the

figures’ gestures and attributes. The best preserved is the man in profile immediately

to the right of Priscus. He raises his right hand and looks up at Priscus as if emphasiz-

ing an important point. One of the partially preserved figures to the right carries the

bound rods, or fasces, indicating that he is a lictor; the last figure to the left carries the

same attribute.

Nearly a century’s worth of scholarly discussion has left us with three possible inter-

pretations of this scene. Although everyone agrees that it shows Priscus in some o‹cial

function related to his o‹ce of aedile, some maintain that it is a scene of judgment,45

others that it is a hearing or audience scene, still others that Priscus is giving out a money

dole (largitio or congiarium).46 What is important in terms of the intended viewers is to

show Priscus’s performance of public duties with all the paraphernalia of his o‹ce: the

two lictors are his appointed guards, and the curule chair on the suggestus distinguishes

him as a curule aedile. A similar desire to illustrate the prestigious civic position of the

deceased comes through loud and clear in the relief of Lusius Storax overseeing the games,

where, accompanied by two lictors and surrounded by twelve togati, he sits on an arm-

chair set up on a tribunal (see fig. 87).

A viewer standing in front of this scene would also understand its relation to the in-

scription directly above (fig. 110). Just as the inscription announces not only that Priscus

was an aedile—but also the fact that the decurions provided the land the tomb stands

upon and the money for his funeral—the painting below memorializes both his status

and the approval of Pompeii’s elites.47 In the end, the painter seems to have left deliber-

ately vague the precise event that put Priscus up on the podium. The painting’s point was

to remind a viewer that Priscus had attained the status of aedile. Just as the first scene

told a member of Priscus’s familia that he had been their paterfamilias for a brief while,

scene 3 reminded her that he had exercised power in the civic realm as well.

At this point, a visitor would turn to wall 4, where she would place a container of wine

for a libation on the bench below the representation of a silver service that we have al-

ready looked at (see p. 191). Excavators found an opening in the center of the altar on top

of the central structure, with a lead tube to allow the wine to flow over the urn contain-

ing Priscus’s ashes. Clearly, since this opening is 3.5 meters (11' 5") above the level of the

pavement, the libation pourer would have to climb a ladder to carry out this piety. The

representation of silver vessels on and under the table alludes to the libation only by its

association with wine serving and drinking: there is no space to set up a table within the

enclosure. More importantly, the tomb was not the place to have the drinking party that

called for such elegant silver. In the elite House of the Menander, Amedeo Maiuri exca-

vated the family’s hoard of silver, a full set of drinking silver (argentum potorium)match-

ing all the shapes of the vessels that the artist pictured here.48 Rather than being a dis-

play of funerary libation vessels, as one scholar has proposed,49 the painting was a way

of showing oª Priscus’s real or imagined wealth—and a way of highlighting his actual,

or wished-for, sophistication.50


A viewer turning to her right, after taking in the details of the silver display, saw in

scene 5 the image of a garden—a common motif in the decoration of Pompeian houses

(fig. 111). Twin herms frame the central fountain on its rectangular base. Birds, mostly

destroyed, drink from its basin. This is not the kind of tomb garden that Trimalchio or-

ders up, but rather a general reference to the luxury of having a garden with fountains

and herms in your house.

Similarly, the still life (scene 6) and the representations of various animals (scene 7)

that cover the southern enclosure wall are also references to elite culture—carried out in

the inexpensive medium of fresco painting (fig. 112). A viewer would place the food that

she and the other visitors had brought to honor Priscus on the little circular masonry

bench beneath the still-life. The food in this picture rhymes with the real food placed be-

low in the same way that the image of the silver service on the opposite wall refers to the

real wine placed beneath it. The artist painted two birds above the food bench, a goose

and a pheasant, as well as a trussed wild boar; a round basket with food in it resting on a

cube takes up the upper left of the painting, while the peacock belonging to this scene

occupies the east wall.


FIGURE 110

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, scene 3, upper part, with

inscription above.

Wild animals in a rocky, tree-filled landscape occupy the remainder of the east wall.

The primary motif is that of a panther hunting down a deer, with other animals and birds

represented at a smaller scale surrounding this central group. The scene of animals hunt-

ing each other in a rough landscape was as familiar to excavators at Pompeii as it was to

the ancient Pompeian viewer. As we have noted, it is a stock scene that appears frequently

on the walls of gardens (like the paintings of gardens with fountains, the Pygmy scenes,

and the sacro-idyllic landscapes). Most scholars agree that they constitute a reference on

the part of houseowners of modest means to the wild-animal parks, or paradeisoi, that

Hellenistic dynasts and super-rich Romans possessed.51 In the context of Priscus’s tomb,

the painting repeats the allusions to wealth, and the enjoyment of the good life, that the

symposium, the silverware, the garden, and the still-life have already announced to the

viewer. It is a theme that we will also see a hundred years later in a tomb at Ostia.


FIGURE 111

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, east interior wall, scene 5: garden.

FIGURE 112

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, south wall, scenes 6 (still life with

goose) and 7 (paradeisos).

FIGURE 113


Priscus, west wall, south part,

scene 8: two gladiators.

FIGURE 114


Priscus, west wall, north part,

scene 9: aedicula.

As a viewer looked at the adjacent north wall, she saw a scene with very diªerent as-

sociations: two gladiators, a standing thrax about to deliver the death blow to a hoplomachus

who has fallen on his shield (fig. 113). The artist has carefully detailed each gladiator’s

gear, yet the motif itself is—as we have seen—a common one—even in domestic deco-

ration.52 Two conventions signal that the fallen gladiator is asking for mercy: he has

dropped his shield and he extends the index finger of his right hand.53 Although gladia-

torial combats had their origins in funeral commemoration, the custom—and probably

the association of the munera with the funeral—had long passed out of fashion.54 As our

analysis of the reliefs of Lusius Storax demonstrated, the primary reason for represent-

ing the munus was to celebrate the prestige of the deceased. We also saw that paintings

of gladiators decorated at least one house in Pompeii, where they express the owner’s en-

thusiasm for the games (see figs. 91 and 92). Priscus, unlike Storax, left no record of his

ever having paid for the games.55 If Priscus did present the games, the choice of this par-

ticular scene, when he was about to let oª the fallen fighter with his life, demonstrated

both his financial gifts and his noble mercifulness. Like Naevoleia Tyche, who shows her

generosity by providing a tomb for her freed slaves, Priscus demonstrates his generosity

by sparing the gladiator’s life. Whether or not Priscus actually presented the games, the

visual representation alludes to his civic and personal generosity—and his place in a time-

honored tradition of elite Pompeians sponsoring the games.

Opposite the gladiators, on the other side of the door, the artist painted the image of

an aedicula (at 9 on the plan; fig. 114). We have seen this form in representations of the

scaenae frons, as well as in paintings of lararia. Here the aedicula creates a shallow porch

with a triangular pediment held up by thin Ionic columns; at the back of the porch is a

doorway with half-open, double-batten doors. Although some scholars have wanted to

see in the half-open doors the common motif alluding to the dead person’s passage to

Hades, there are no examples of artists using doors of this type in such representations;

they must have another meaning.56 Given the widespread use of the aedicula in interior

decoration, the artist may have used it merely to fill the space and to mirror the repre-

sentation that faces it: Priscus framed in the architecture of his atrium. Other scholars

have suggested that the artist has represented the facade of a temple that Priscus rebuilt

on the heels of the disastrous earthquake of 62.57 Whether merely decorative fill or a

representation of a public work, scene 9 is consistent with the other imagery that a viewer

had seen within the tomb: it refers to the realm of the living rather than to that of the

beyond.

A viewer would have completed her left-to-right reading with the image of a pome-

granate tree on the short west wall (scene 10, fig. 115). The pomegranate, the fruit eaten

by Persephone that bound her to the underworld, can symbolize Hades and the hereafter.

Even so, the artist has not diªerentiated this pomegranate tree from those used in domes-

tic decoration, like the contemporary paintings with pomegranates in atrium 93 of the

Praedia of Julia Felix.58


Despite the modest space provided, Mulvia Prisca insisted on packing in as many ref-

erences as possible to her son’s importance, beginning with his greeting of the familia,

progressing through the banquet scene, and leading to the principal scene beneath the in-

scription: Priscus as a public o‹cial. From this point on the references to luxury multiply,

including the silver service, the garden, the still-life, and the paradeisos. Within the small

space of the south corridor, the visitors could set down their wine vessels, pour libations,

and eat the little meal that piety toward the dead required. Although the gladiators and the

aedicula that flank the doorway at the north could refer to public acts of munificence on

the part of Priscus, it seems likely that their function was symbolic of Priscus’s status rather

than—as in the case of Storax—a record of deeds accomplished.

It should surprise us neither that Mulvia Prisca chose such a complex program of dec-

oration, nor that it underscores what Priscus did in life rather than symbolizing the world

of the dead. For the mother it was essential to record both for the passersby and, in more

detail, for the familia the glory that her branch of the gens Vestoria fleetingly attained

through Priscus’s aedileship. Mulvia Prisca, a woman of modest means, was operating

in a social and economic environment much altered by the disastrous earthquake of 62.

Wealthy elites had for the most part left Pompeii to the working freeborn people, freed-

men, and slaves who were still trying to rebuild it when Vesuvius covered the city seven-


FIGURE 115


Priscus, north wall, west part,

scene 10: pomegranate tree.

teen years later. Paul Zanker has shown how these ordinary people often modeled their

houses and temples on the villas of the rich.59 Vestorius Priscus’s tomb fits well within

this framework and provides us with an unusually personal glimpse into one mother’s

use of imagery to articulate her family’s glory and future aspirations.

DEATH AND DIONYSUS: THE TOMB OF APELLA AT OSTIA

Along the Laurentine Road that took travelers south from Ostia to Laurentium, excava-

tors in the nineteenth century found a group of tombs that had been buried some time

in the mid–second century a.d., when builders raised the level of the street dramatically,

filling in the earlier tombs.60 The earliest of these originated in the late first century b.c.

Why were the earlier tombs filled in? The mid–second century was the peak of Ostia’s

boom. In the city of the living, contractors razed old structures to build new ones on top

of them—filling them with several meters of rubble. The same thing happened in this

city of the dead.

The tombs built at the upper level are gone; all that remains is the paving of the new

raised road (fig. 116). But the filled-in tombs, today partially excavated, survive, still telling

their stories in inscriptions and images. Most interesting for our inquiry into visual rep-

resentations of non-elite Romans is the group of tombs commissioned by the freedman

Apella. Squarciapino’s analysis shows that four tomb structures (16, 17, 18 and 22 on the

plan, fig. 117), each of a diªerent form, all date to the Augustan period (27 b.c.–a.d. 14).61

The fact that all of their foundations coincide and that the builders employed the same

construction techniques supports her contention that the whole group was a single fu-

nerary complex, a hypothesis also corroborated by two inscriptions.

The first, on the long flank of tomb 17, tells us that the owner is Gaius Iulius Apella,

freedman of Gaius Iulius and Lucius Sertorius. The inscription also records the names

of those buried in the tomb: Apella, his wife Iulia Aphrodisia, freedwoman of Gaius,

and their freed slaves, Iulia Eleutheris, Gaius Iulius Latinus, and Iulia Sabbatis.62 Apella

was also the owner of tomb 22, as the second inscription inserted on the center of the

enclosure wall demonstrates.63 In it, Apella declares that he constructed the sepulcher

for his freedmen and freedwomen, and for their freedmen; he also mentions Gaius Iulius

Pamphilus, freedman of Cissius and (grain) measurer (mensor), and Aulus Terentius

Nicomedes, freedman of Aulus; there follow other dispositions that establish the reasons

why one could lose the right to use the sepulcher.64

None of the structures of Apella’s complex repeats any other: 16 is essentially a tall

marker or monumentum; 17 an enclosure giving access to 18 and 22; 18 a barrel-vaulted

space with niches for ash urns (columbarium); and 22 an enclosure for funeral banquets

with a masonry triclinium.

The only decoration to survive from Apella’s original project are the fine white stuc-

coes covering the columbarium’s vault (fig. 118).65 Their resemblance to the stuccoes

found in the Villa under the Farnesina prompted Squarciapino to date them to the early


Augustan period, around 20 b.c. She called them “perhaps the finest complex of stuc-

coes found at Ostia.”66 Here the part of the ceiling preserved, approximately one-fourth

of the vault area, includes representations of a Dionysiac dance, a male mask, a bust with

the head of Dionysus, a female figure in front of an altar, and a grouping of Dionysiac

symbols, including the pan-pipes (syrinx).


FIGURE 117

Ostia, plan of Necropolis on

the Laurentine Road, tombs

17–22.

FIGURE 116

Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road.

Why did Apella want the columbarium—arguably the most expensive structure in his

tomb compound—decorated in this way? For a Roman viewer, the primary meaning of

the stuccoes would likely be their association with the elegant and relatively expensive in-

teriors of large houses and villas. The Villa of the Farnesina—its fine rooms all decorated

with white stucco ceilings that closely parallel both the style and subject matter of Apella’s

columbarium—sat on prime land along the right bank of the Tiber, and may have be-

longed to Augustus’s own daughter, Julia, married to his close friend, Agrippa.67 By hir-

ing a workshop to decorate his tomb with the kind of elegant and expensive stuccoes that

elites had, Apella was making known to all his refined and discerning tastes. Since very

little survives of the houses that people lived in from the period, it is impossible to com-

pare the ceiling of Apella’s tomb with contemporary stuccoes in Ostian houses. Yet if what

does survive in late Second Style decorations in Roman Italy is any gauge, Apella—like

Priscus nearly a hundred years later—was using motifs taken from the domestic realm.

Their meanings were not principally funereal.

Dionysus and his followers belong as much in the elegant reproductions of picture-

galleries (pinacothecae) of the Villa under the Farnesina as they do in gardens, dining

rooms, and tombs. It is true that Dionysus promised his followers release from the cares


FIGURE 118

Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, interior of columbarium 18.

of life in wine, revelry, and ecstatic dance. Initiation into the Mysteries of Dionysus prob-

ably mapped out a path that allowed the successful devotee to merge in some way with

the god. But whether there was a promise of an afterlife similar to the heaven of the Chris-

tians is doubtful. The imagery preserved on the columbarium’s ceiling, fragmentary as

it is, allows no reading of a narrative alluding to specific practices in Dionysus’s cult. For

a viewer who could have seen similar motifs in houses and garden sculpture, the allu-

sions to Dionysus on the ceiling of Apella’s columbarium evoked the god in a general

way. The rest of the decorative ensemble—on the walls and perhaps the floor of the tomb—

is gone, covered by later repainting and repaving; we will never know whether Apella am-

plified the Dionysian imagery further or borrowed other motifs from the contemporary

repertory of domestic decoration. What does survive signals his desire to show oª his

worldly success and refinement.

DINING WITH DEATH:

NAUGHTY PYGMIES AND HUNGRY LIONS IN APELLA’S TOMB

The Dionysiac imagery on the vault, dating to the time when Apella built and decorated

the tomb complex around 20 b.c., is a borrowing from the realm of domestic decoration

that we can readily explain. It is more di‹cult to understand the imagery chosen by Apella’s

heirs to redecorate the tomb complex shortly before its destruction in a.d. 150.68 In this

new decoration, the combination of Isis, wild animals hunting, and Pygmies playing on

the Nile announces a set of ideas that we have already seen in the Tomb of Vestorius

Priscus—ideas that were deeply ingrained in Roman traditions but find little resonance

with our modern notions of appropriate tomb decoration.

Apella’s heirs instructed an artist to paint an image of a priestess of the Egyptian

goddess Isis in the niche that faced passersby as they walked along the Laurentine Road

(fig. 119). Today the figure is nearly illegible, so that we must rely on Squarciapino’s descrip-

tion. A thin woman dressed in a red tunic and wearing a fringed mantle around her mid-

dle and over her left shoulder stands in the center of the niche; leaves and red flowers

frame her figure. In her raised right hand she holds a sistrum (rattle), and she rests her

left arm on her hip. There are various creatures around her: on the left is a bird with a

long beak and green plumage; above is a little running dog that seems to be on the bird’s

back; below are a pomegranate, a lizard, and traces of a bird pecking at a branch with two

red flowers. On the right is a big bird with reddish-brown feathers, with perhaps another

bird above it. Squarciapino identified the woman as a priestess of Isis, rather than the

goddess herself, since she lacks the goddess’s diadem with lotus flower.

The artist continued the floral motif in his redecoration of the walls inside the colum-

barium. Although the Dionysian stuccoes of the vault were still in fine condition after

over a century, the patron had the artist replace the original decoration on the walls with

simple geometric divisions on a red socle. Today one can make out traces of fruits, flow-

ers, birds, and trees on the white ground of the middle and upper zones around the niches.


As we saw in Vestorius Priscus’s tomb, paintings of lush gardens were stock themes al-

luding not so much to the Elysian fields as to the world of the living, where they were

synonymous with the life of luxury. The decision to announce Isis to all passersby, right

after they had read the old inscription, was a public declaration of the current patron’s de-

votion to the Egyptian goddess. It also connects with the choice of imagery within en-

closure 22.

Like most of the tombs of the Laurentine Road necropolis, tomb 22 consists of a sim-

ple walled area, where relatives buried the ashes of the cremated in pots or amphoras

within the wall itself or adjacent to it. On the east wall of the enclosure, just behind the

masonry triclinium couch, Calza found part of a double frieze that must have originally

run around all four walls of the enclosure (fig. 120; see also the plan, fig. 117).69 Calza de-

cided to have this fragment (measuring 2.4 × 1.7 m) removed from the tomb. It is now

restored and rests on a modern support; it is in storage in the museum at Ostia Antica.

The upper half of this frieze fragment shows a lion devouring the head of a bull or

cow from which he has already pulled oª one horn (plate 16).70 At the extreme left are

the front legs of another animal, perhaps a deer. The artist painted broad strokes of yel-

low and red ocher to sketch out the ground beneath the animals, and placed a small tree


FIGURE 119

Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tomb 18, external

niche. Priestess of Isis.to the left of the bull’s head and a rock to the right of the lion. There is little suggestion

of shadows, and the sky is simply the white plaster ground. The same white ground forms

the sky or water in the scene of Pygmies beneath. The artist filled the area around the

four preserved figural elements with grasses and aquatic plants, and he used horizontal

stripes of black and green to suggest the water. At the far left a huge duck flaps its wings;

next to it a second duck is carrying a Pygmy who wears only a turbanlike headdress. He

carries a pole across his shoulder with what may be baskets at either end. Paint losses

make it di‹cult to determine why green sashes hang from either side of both baskets. A

little boat with a square stern and curved prow carries two Pygmies. One of them, in three-

quarters view, urinates vigorously in the water, while the other reaches toward him. Both

wear the same kind of turban as the Pygmy riding the duck. At the right of the fragment

the artist has depicted a crocodile looking at the Pygmies in the boat. The artist filled the

area beneath this scene with abundant strokes of green paint.

What would this combination of a wild animal devouring a domestic animal and

Pygmies cavorting on the Nile have meant to the ancient viewer? As we have seen, this

same combination decorates the garden of the House of the Ephebe at Pompeii, where the

Pygmy scenes decorate the masonry triclinium couch and the animal scenes are on

the garden wall directly behind it (see fig. 107). Scenes of domestic animals being hunted

and devoured by wild ones (the paradeisos) constitute one of three principal themes dec-


FIGURE 120

Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tomb 22, south enclosure wall.

Excavation photo.

orating gardens at Pompeii; in the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus we saw how the paradeisos

decorated the wall opposite the two-tiered frieze of banqueting and Pygmies. Becatti pro-

posed that the image of the lion eating a bull’s head from the Tomb of Apella was Dionysiac;

he claimed that the appearance of this same motif in one of the decorative frames of the

mosaic paving the great triclinium of the Schola of the Trajan Statue at Ostia confirmed

this Dionysian connection.71 He reasoned that since members of the guild, or collegium,

banqueted there, and since there are other Dionysiac symbols elsewhere in the pavement,

the lion eating a bull’s head must have had meaning for followers of Dionysus.72 Becatti’s

interpretations, however learned and ingenious, seem excessive in light of the sparse ev-

idence aªorded by the remains of painting in the Laurentine Road group itself.

What can we deduce from the surviving decoration? We have the priestess of Isis sur-

rounded by flora and fauna on the exterior of 18; more flora and fauna on the interior of

18; and a double frieze, presumably running around the perimeter of tomb 22’s enclo-

sure. I believe that the image of the lion devouring the bull, in the tomb context, is pri-

marily a reference to the elite paradeisos, and secondarily an image of death’s hold over

all mortal beings. The rest of the frieze, now lost, would have shown more wild beasts

hunting and devouring domestic ones, thereby amplifying these two messages. The frieze

of Pygmies beneath it, also extending around the enclosure’s perimeter, relates to the theme

of Egypt and to the worship of Isis introduced by the image of her priestess in the exte-

rior niche on tomb 18 (see fig. 119).

We do not know whether further representations of Isiac cult—such as images of the

goddess herself, her priests, or cult implements—did in fact decorate other parts of the

complex, but the scenes of Pygmies’ activities on the Nile were a part of the repertory of

most wall painters at the time. The Pygmy scenes were an easy way for a patron to em-

phasize his connections with Egypt, and, by extension, with Egyptian religion. In the Tomb

of Vestorius Priscus we saw how the Pygmy frieze, directly below the scene of men at an

outdoor picnic, alluded both to the joys of the symposium and the apotropaic protection

aªorded by the Pygmies’ unbecoming behavior. Here the artist—with a big space to dec-

orate and a real banquet couch within the enclosure—created a similar message.

It is a setting that recalls the outdoor biclinium of the House of the Ephebe, where in

a garden decorated with an eclectic mix of statues and paintings, the elements closest

physically to the diners reclining on the couches were the Nilotic scenes (see fig. 107).

Just as those scenes both entertained and protected diners in the House of the Ephebe,

so these the diners in the Tomb of Apella.

Dining, whether in a house or at the tomb, was an activity laden with meanings for-

eign to twenty-first-century Euro-American culture. For instance, banqueters might pass

around a little silver skeleton as a memento mori, a reminder to enjoy life—for it is short.73

When dining in the tomb precinct, next to the remains of the dead, I believe that the ever-

cautious Romans must have also worried about potential harm from evil spirits. Because

Pygmies—like hunchbacks with large phalli and the ithyphallic Aethiops—possessed bod-


ies that were outside the acceptable norms, Romans could laugh at them with impunity.

Their physical appearance made them the inevitable targets of ridicule and laughter—a

laughter that would be especially e‹cacious in dispelling evil spirits.

A slave of the familia who came here would have been grateful that he could laugh

with the rest as he followed the Pygmies’ antics around the frieze. As he placed mattresses

on the masonry couches and served the meal, he may have also read the painted in-

scriptions (now gone) that named the deceased buried in or adjacent to the enclosure wall.

He may have thought about what it would be like to be buried here, finally—he hoped—

able to put the L after his name that meant he had attained freedom. For the freedmen

and freedwomen he served, the paintings reminded them of how like a pretty garden this

tomb enclosure was; it would be a fittingly safe and elegant place to rest forever. Little did

these members of the familia know that within a few decades the whole necropolis would

be filled in, and no one would ever dine there to honor and remember them.

DIONYSUS, THE FATES, AND MORE NAUGHTY PYGMIES AT ISOLA SACRA

The boom in Ostia’s population that prompted the filling in of the earlier necropolis along

the Laurentine Road was also responsible for the rapid growth of another necropolis, lo-

cated along the road between Ostia and the new city of Portus. Portus grew up around

the harbor built by Trajan in a.d. 100. Guido Calza found part of this necropolis in the

early 1920s, sealed under sand dunes, and named it the Necropolis of Isola Sacra, since

it is an artificial island bounded by the ancient seacoast, the natural course of the Tiber,

and the canal that Trajan built to connect his inland harbor at Portus with the Tiber.74

A much fuller program of Pygmy imagery—this time in the medium of black-and-

white mosaic—decorates a portion of the pavement within the enclosure surrounding

tomb 16 (figs. 121, 122).75 The mosaic measures 1.75 by 2.37 meters (5' 8" × 7' 8") and

dates to the second half of the second century a.d. (fig. 123).76 It occupies the large open

area in front of the columbarium. Someone entering the tomb proceeded down the nar-

row corridor leading to the mosaic, where he most likely focused on its central motif. It

is a head of Oceanus, with his customary seaweed crown made up of lobster claws and

tentacles. The left side of the face is gone, leaving only the right eye, right cheek, and part

of his seaweed beard. Oceanus does not properly belong in a Nilotic mosaic. Becatti spec-

ulates that the mosaicist simply made an ad hoc association between the Nile and Ocean,

since they both signify a body of water, but then goes on to add a tantalizing observation:

that the head of Oceanus is an apotropaion—that is, his was an image that kept away evil

spirits.77Herbert Cahn adds that representations of the head of Oceanus, common in the

mosaics of private houses of this period, stood for good luck, and that since the time of

Epicurus it had been a symbol of the soul’s peace.78 All of this argues for the patron know-

ingly combining Oceanus with the antics of the Pygmies, since, like Oceanus, they en-

sure good luck, but through the mechanisms of unbecomingness (atopía).

Having observed the image of Oceanus, a viewer would then survey the imagery be-


neath the central head of Oceanus, where two Pygmies handle a flat river boat. Aquatic

plants, among them lotuses, establish the setting on the Nile. The boat’s prow ends with

the head of an ass, the stern with the head of an ibis, where an ithyphallic Pygmy with

an oar gestures toward his companion at the prow, who is battling a crocodile with a little

square bow and a club with a spherical end. To the viewer’s right, along the west wall of

the enclosure, is another Pygmy carrying two buckets balanced on either end of a pole

slung across his shoulder, surely a reference to the real wellhead that he is walking

COMMEMORA T I O N O F L I F E • 21 1

FIGURE 121

Isola Sacra, plan of tomb 16

with location of mosaic and

place for portable couches.

FIGURE 122

Isola Sacra, tomb 16, view of

mosaic from entrance.

toward. If a viewer walks in this direction, she arrives at the entrance to the covered part of

the tomb complex—the columbarium—where the artist has placed a hippopotamus and

a single palm tree. But another, more outrageous representation may have caused the an-

cient viewer to continue her circuit around the mosaic, to the east side. Here, in another

flat boat headed to the viewer’s right, two male Pygmies copulate. The penetrator, in the

back of the boat, holds two crossed sticks in both hands, like the dancer in the boat in

the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus (see plate 15). His right hand is lowered, his left raised (it

is now partly destroyed). He pushes his penis into the buttocks of the other Pygmy, who

is intent on poking the crocodile with a long stick and turns his head in three-quarters

view as if surprised at being penetrated.

If we see the Pygmies’ frolics and battles in the context of the funeral banquet, and

think how they bestowed the gift of apotropaic laughter on those who visited and ban-

queted at the tomb, the obscene coupling—a male-male one at that—begins to lose its

seemingly inappropriate air.

What of the interior of the tomb? Like the interior of the columbarium in the Lauren-


FIGURE 123

Isola Sacra, tomb 16,

overhead view of mosaic.

tine Road group, the columbarium of tomb 16 features Dionysiac representations (fig. 124).

There are two stuccoes, one with a Dionysiac procession (thiasus), and another featuring

a procession with Silenus falling drunkenly oª his mule.79 Paintings of two Fates, or Par-

cae, appear in niches.80The best connection with the Pygmy mosaic, however, comes from

the much-eroded scene of a funeral banquet (fig. 125). Here the artist is representing an

activity that took place just outside, where the Pygmy mosaic was most evident to those

who banqueted within the precinct.81 The connection between banqueting and Pygmies

cavorting on the Nile is even more explicit in the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, where the

artist painted a frieze of Pygmies directly below the image of a symposium—and the defe-

cating Pygmy set the unbecoming, apotropaic tone of the frieze.

Looking again at the plan, the best space to set up banquet couches would have been

the open space to the east of the mosaic (see fig. 121). The reclining diners would have

looked toward the side of the mosaic with the scene of the male Pygmy penetrating his

companion.82 The person who commissioned the decoration of this tomb wished to cre-

ate a safe place for honoring the dead, with both visits and funeral banquets, by making

sure the Pygmy mosaic caused salubrious laughter. The good-luck charm of Oceanus’s

head doubled the e‹cacy of this apotropaic mosaic.

Unfortunately, unlike the tombs of Priscus and Apella, tomb 16 provides no inscrip-

tions to tell us who commissioned its decoration. It was probably, given the modest na-

ture of the whole necropolis, a freedperson or a freeborn working person. Although tomb

16 is smaller and less elegant than Apella’s tomb complex, its decoration has a similar

flavor, celebrating the joys of Dionysus, the banquet, and the salutary practice of laugh-

ing at naughty Pygmies.

There is yet another, more wide-ranging meaning in the tombs of Vestorius Priscus,

Apella, and Isola Sacra 16. In each one, with diªerences in emphasis, the artists deliber-

ately combined Nilotic imagery, paradeisos imagery, and Dionysian scenes and figures.

Meanings do emerge if we lay aside the oft-repeated assertion that mosaicists and

painters mindlessly repeated stock motifs, and think of a patron actually ordering these

artists to produce precisely these images.83 We can guess, then, at a desire to impress the

viewer with images of luxury: the Nilotic imagery stands out as a reference to Alexan-

dria, the animal hunts to the paradeisoi of the Hellenistic dynasts, and the Dionysiac scenes

to the delights of eating and drinking. In the case of Mulvia Prisca’s commission, the im-

ages may have been just so much wishful thinking, since although the family was free-

born, funds seem to have been scarce. For Apella’s heirs, by this time mostly freeborn

Romans, the images of the Pygmy Other, as well as those of the paradeisos, served to pro-

mote their status and Romanness (romanitas) by imitating the use of similar represen-

tations in elite houses. We can extend this observation to tomb 16, where the owner fur-

ther enhanced his or her tomb compound by paying for a fashionable black-and-white

mosaic floor. The second century saw the artistic flowering of black-and-white mosaic

both as a prized medium and a tasteful style in decoration.84 Several identifiable workshops


FIGURE 124

Isola Sacra, tomb 16, interior

of columbarium. Watercolor

by Maria Barosso, 1931.

FIGURE 125

Isola Sacra, tomb 16, interior

of columbarium, banqueters

stucco, detail.

provided fine mosaics in everything from big baths commissioned by the emperor to small

rooms in private houses.85

In their move from the villas of the rich to these modest tombs, these images become

emblems of elite culture and acquire new meanings: they express the owners’ desire to

move toward upper-class status, to trumpet the diªerence between themselves and the

Pygmy Other, and to celebrate the rituals of commemorative dining. To study them with

their original viewers in mind is an exercise in understanding a set of attitudes toward

death and commemoration quite diªerent from ours.

WORKING, DANCING, AND FRIENDSHIP:

THE SARCOPHAGUS OF TROPHIMAS

We have already seen how Longidienus used an image of himself at work as one aspect

of his person that he wanted viewers to know and remember (see fig. 66). But the togate

portrait of Longidienus and those of his wife and two freedmen complicated the message

and articulated his identity as a freeborn man, even while paying homage to the late-first-

century-b.c. fashion for grave monuments bearing half-length portraits. Beginning in

the early second century, Romans began to prefer interment in stone co‹ns over the prac-

tice of cremation and burial in ash urns. Sarcophagi, usually carved only on three sides

since they were placed against the interior walls of tombs, satisfied patrons’ desires to

make a showy monument for the deceased.

Scholars have studied every aspect of Roman sarcophagi, with special emphasis on

what we could call standard iconographies, that is, the representations of scenes that work-

shops copied endlessly for patrons who bought sarcophagi ready-made.86 It is clear that

the language of the greatest part of the surviving sarcophagi is mythological rather than

biographical. The richer a patron was, the greater the size, quality of carving, and elabo-

ration of the imagery. Even the so-called Menschenleben sarcophagi—loosely translated

“biographical sarcophagi”—use highly standard motifs that admit of only one variation:

since the workshops left the faces of the protagonists (the man and his wife) blank, the

patron could instruct the artist to fill them in with portraits.

Less well studied are sarcophagi with nonstandard imagery, where the patron instructed

the artist to create images specific to the deceased person’s work, religious beliefs, or life-

story.87 The sarcophagus commissioned by Lucius Atilius Artemas and Claudia Apphias

for their friend Titus Flavius Trophimas, found at Ostia in the nineteenth century, pro-

vides an unusual amount of information about Trophimas, a foreigner living and work-

ing at Ostia who died around a.d. 120 (fig. 126).88 The decoration covers only the front;

its sides are roughed out, as is the interior, where the sculptor carved a pillow in relief at

the left end. A framed Greek inscription divides the front of the sarcophagus into two

figural panels: on the left a scene of work and on the right one of dance.

On the left a man wearing a long-sleeved tunic and a mantle sits on a stool; he brings

his knees together to cradle the shoe that he is holding—perhaps to put a sole on it. His


left arm and leg overlap a cabinet with two closed doors; on top of it rest two pairs of

shoes. A second man, dressed in an exomis, holds a distaª in his right hand while stretch-

ing out the rope with his left arm. The finished rope hangs at the upper right. His weight

is on his left leg, and he flexes his right foot so that he can press the distaª against his

right thigh.

To the right of the inscription two men appear—but they are dancing, not working. A

barefoot man wearing only a loincloth holds in each hand two rods ending in long par-

allel tines. His weight is on his left leg, and he leans his body to the viewer’s right in an-

swer to the dance step that he is executing with his right leg. The head is destroyed. A

low table composed of a cube with a rectangular top separates him from the other dancer.

There is a flute or a single tibia on the table. The other dancer wears a long transparent

tunic with very wide sleeves (the dalmatica) and carries out a dance step similar to his

partner’s, while playing a large tambourine by beating on it with his right hand. Weath-

ering has destroyed his facial features.

The remarkable inscription gives names to these men and gives us a vivid picture of

Trophimas himself: “We, Lucius Atilius Artemas and Claudia Apphias, [dedicate this sar-

cophagus] to Titus Flavius Trophimas, incomparable and trusted friend, who always lived

with us. We have given his body a place to be buried together with us, so that he will al-

ways be remembered and will find rest from his suªerings. The straightforward one, the

cultivator of every art, the Ephesian, sleeps here in eternal repose.”89 The adjectives used

to describe Trophimas tell us about his personal qualities, and that he comes from Eph-

esos (modern Selçuk in Turkey). The inscription does not tell us which of the two pro-

fessions represented was his: was he a shoemaker or a ropemaker? Shoemaking and rope-

making may have taken place in the same footwear workshop, since some Roman sandals

were made of coiled rope. It is logical that the two men working are Trophimas and

Artemas, and that they are the same men who are dancing together. The names of all

three friends tell us that they are of eastern origin, probably all from Ephesos, and that

they are Roman citizens.90 The unusual insistence on their lifelong friendship and co-

habitation leads one to wonder whether they were a sexual threesome as well.91


FIGURE 126

Ostia, Sarcophagus of Trophimas.

Several of the adjectives Artemas and Apphias chose to describe Trophimas are un-

usual as well: they call him ásylos,usually translated “trusted,” or “trustworthy,” and aploús,

meaning “simple,” in the sense of “straightforward” or “frank.” He is also pánmousos, a

term that underscores his interests in the arts of music, drama, and dance.92 The image

of the two men working side by side is not di‹cult to interpret. The problematic image

is that of the two men performing their curious music and dance. What meanings would

this image have conveyed to an ancient viewer? Several scholars wish to make it into a

dance sacred to Isis, so that the men would be initiates, or mystes, of the cult.93 Others

see the image of the dancing men as a typical reference to the joys of the afterlife.94 Nei-

ther interpretation takes into account the unusually vivid inscription and the equally un-

usual details in the visual depictions.

Two monuments in particular provide striking parallels for the dancing men. A mo-

saic found in 1711 near S. Sabina in Rome seems to represent professional entertainers

(fig. 127).95 The setting is that of a banquet, for the artist has represented a semicircular

dining couch (sigma) with a Pygmy servant at a four-legged table.96 He holds a wine la-

dle (simpulum); on the other side of the table is a big wine amphora supported on a stand.

It is a scene of loud music and sexy dancing. The double-pipe player (tibicen) at far left

accompanies himself with the footclapper (scabellum) to make music for a dancing woman

with large buttocks who wears a diaphanous dress. She turns her head toward him even

while she moves toward a big male dancer wearing only a loincloth knotted at the front.

Both dancers play percussion instruments. The woman plays the castanets (crotala),97

while the man plays the same kind of stick ending in tines that is played by the dancer

with the loincloth on Trophimas’s sarcophagus. On the right are four performers, another

tibicen with footclapper, and two men dancers in loincloths playing the forked sticks. In

the mosaic from S. Sabina the woman lifts her right leg in a dance step that is similar to

the steps that both men on Trophimas’s sarcophagus are executing. Her arms curve in

an arc over her head.

In 1919 Roberto Paribeni found a marble relief, now in the Palazzo Altemps in Rome,

covering a body in an inhumation grave located along the via Appia, near the town of


FIGURE 127

Rome, mosaic from S. Sabina. Dancers and musicians flanking a circular dining couch (sigma).

Ariccia (fig. 128).98 The top fourth presents various Egyptian deities—although not with

great precision—framed in aediculae. Isis is recognizable from her attributes, as is the

bull-deity Apis. In the main field below we see an ecstatic dance performed for an equally

excited audience standing on a platform and clapping their hands to keep time with the

music. At the far left, where the relief breaks oª, we see a hand holding another stick-

percussion instrument—the crossed sticks that Pygmies play in the painting from the

Tomb of Vestorius Priscus and in the mosaic from Isola Sacra. A man dressed in a kilt

somewhat longer than the ones worn in the S. Sabina mosaic turns toward this figure

and that of a Pygmy. He too plays the crossed sticks. A second Pygmy is intent on clap-

ping his hands and dancing with three women dancers, each wearing a diaphanous dress.

All three have the same full bodies and pronounced buttocks as the women in the mo-

saic, and two of them play castanets. A second clapping man wearing a kilt frames the

three dancers on the right. Given the fact that the relief covered a person’s body, it is logi-

cal to see the deceased as a devotee of Isis. Alternatively, if he himself did not commis-

sion the relief, whoever buried him associated the deceased with the Isaic dance and

thought the relief a fitting memorial.

With Trophimas’s sarcophagus we are in a better position to speculate on the mean-

ing of the representation, since the inscription so clearly indicates the special relation-

ship between Trophimas, Artemas, and Apphias. But the third party of the triad, Apphias,

has no representation other than in the inscription. There are several possibilities. If we

identify Trophimas and Artemas as the shoemaker and the ropemaker, then the two male

dancer-musicians are likely to be the same men. The curious element—one we cannot

find in the mosaic or the relief from Ariccia—is a man wearing the see-through dress.

He directs his glance and gesture to the muscular and quite scantily clad man whom he

accompanies with the tambourine. The man on the right has taken over the dress that

the female dancers wear—but the man in the loincloth has taken over their sexy dance.

It is a scene of double entendre—especially for a viewer who had seen the usual way of


FIGURE 128

Ariccia. Relief with Egyptian

deities and dancers.

presenting the exotic dance, where the focus is inevitably on the woman dancers. The

man in the loincloth should be accompanying, clapping for, framing, or pursuing a woman

dancer in a diaphanous dress. Here he is the handsome center of attention—and it is a

man in a transparent dress who gazes at him and accompanies him. A viewer sees, in

eªect, male-male aªection: a man in a dress looking with sexual attraction at a beautiful,

nearly nude man dancing.99

If Apphias saw the sarcophagus—as she certainly must have—she may have felt a bit

left out—although it is possible that the man in a dress is a stand-in for both her and

Artemas, a way of using cross-dressing to put both of them next to their beautiful dancer

friend (lover?) for all eternity. A foreign man from the Near East looking at the sarcoph-

agus and reading the inscription in his native Greek would have recognized a pattern in

his own life and that of so many foreigners living in Ostia and Rome. Their musical and

religious culture (right side) found no resistance among the native Italians of the same

class since they belonged to, and contributed to, the economic life of their adopted city

(left side). To an elite viewer, accustomed to sarcophagi that employed the metaphors of

myth to commemorate the deceased, this kind of representation of music and dance must

have seemed unbecoming—excesses engaged in by foreigners from the East.100 Yet no

one prevented these naturalized foreigners from celebrating their unusual lifestyle and

religion on their sarcophagus.

Lucius Atilius Artemas did memorialize Claudia Apphias in another form. In a frag-

mentary inscription found at Ostia he clearly names her and another unknown person,

perhaps a woman. The profligate similes and mixed-up syntax caused Kaibel, who first

published it, to call it “perverse and inept.”101 Even without knowing who the other per-

son was, the inscription reveals Artemas’s desire to praise Claudia Apphias through a lit-

erary form, no matter how inept, just as the couple celebrated Trophimas in a combina-

tion of visual and verbal representations on the sarcophagus.

Looking at how all of these men and women from diverse backgrounds wished to be re-

membered, one aspect emerges with great clarity: they wanted people to remember them

living life to the fullest. This desire led them to commission decoration and inscriptions

for their tombs that not only told a viewer who they were in life but often also showed

what they did in life. If at times the visual representations veered into the conventional—

as in the images of Pygmies and the paradeisos—the way these patrons packed conven-

tional images together suggests that they were anxious to include everything that would

add prestige and apotropaic protection.

Even with the overload of imagery that characterizes these monuments, their humble

materials and mediocre workmanship underscore the fact that the patrons were not able

to pay for the more conventional tombs and sarcophagi that the rich commissioned—a

fortunate fact for this study of non-elite self-representation.102 What is important is that

these individuals chose to make the most of their meager resources by getting the artist

to make their final resting places speak to the viewer about their lives.


PART 3

NON-ELITES IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE

Part 2 was concerned with the public sphere, but for Part 3 I have chosen the word

“domestic”—not “private”—to frame the analysis of visual representation in the home.

Ancient Romans never understood the home as a private refuge for the members of a

nuclear family, as a quiet place cut oª from the invasions of commerce and the intru-

sions of strangers. For one thing, families rarely consisted of only mother, father, and

children. For the elite, the word familia included all the persons—including slaves and

freedmen—living under the power of the head of the family, or paterfamilias. For another,

the house was the primary place of business. Daily visits of the paterfamilias’s clients re-

quired the house to be open to everyone.1

Most of the evidence for the following two chapters comes from excavated houses at

Pompeii, where plans of elite houses—and most non-elite ones as well—expressed their

fundamental relationship to the world outside. The domus was transparent to outsiders:

someone standing at the street entry could penetrate its successive spaces simply by gaz-

ing along the visual axis from atrium to tablinum to peristyle. Anyone could enter the

atrium, and depending on the business to be concluded, a client might find himself con-

ducted to spaces that today would be kept private. Slaves acted as gatekeepers at various

points along the way.

Rather than thinking of the whole Roman house as a place of privacy, we should think

221

of it as a place where zones of increasing intimacy opened to the visitor, depending on

the closeness of his relation with the familia. A client would enter the atrium and speak

with the paterfamilias in the tablinum. A peer or special client might visit with the pater-

familias in a cubiculum.2 Servants would guide a dinner guest to a room around the peri-

style and give her a place at the dining couch. A gradient of intimacy determined your

exploration of someone’s house. Who you were determined what you saw.

A house’s decorative scheme distinguished between spaces that anyone might pass

through and those that required special status to enter. Mosaic and fresco decoration diªer-

entiated between dynamic spaces, like the atrium or peristyle, that a visitor would merely

walk through, and static spaces, like reception and dining areas, where he would spend

some time.3 It is rare to find complex mythological pictures in dynamic spaces, just as it

is rare to find static spaces without them.4

What of the subject matter of the decoration? Scholars have analyzed the subject mat-

ter of paintings, mosaics, and sculptures within individual houses in an eªort to charac-

terize the patron’s status, tastes, and beliefs. Often their interpretations tell us more about

the scholar than about the ancient Roman owner. Karl Schefold, for instance, has con-

strued representations of gods and goddesses in the house as evidence for the owner’s

piety;5 Paul Zanker has interpreted the eclectic mix of imagery in a group of late houses

at Pompeii as evidence of freedmen trying to imitate the villas of the elite;6 I and others

have analyzed decorative systems at Pompeii and Ostia Antica in terms of class, gender,

and acculturation.7

In what follows, I take a diªerent approach. Rather than analyzing all the decoration

of a house—including cycles of mythological paintings, decorative statuary, and other

decoration—for clues to the owner’s identity, I single out individual instances of self-

representation. These are in some cases—but not always—portraits of the owners. The fo-

cus of my analysis is to identify the audience for these representations, to determine who

would have seen them and in what circumstances. Considering self-representation in the

Roman house in terms of message and reception, I detect a lively dialogue between home-

owners and guests and between the function of a space and how visual representations—

especially self-representations—animate that space.

222 • NON - E L I T E S I N T H E D OME S T I C S P H E R E

8

MINDING YOUR MANNERS

BANQUETS, BEHAVIOR, AND CLASS

THE BANQUET AS MARKER OF CLASS AND STATUS

Roman literature is rich in the lore of the banquet (convivium), and it reveals how much

stock people of all classes put in luxurious dining and drinking. To represent yourself re-

clining on a couch was to announce your embrace of Greek culture. It was a way of show-

ing that you had arrived in society: you had the money, servants, and good taste to en-

tertain lavishly in the Greek fashion. In the old days of the Republic, Romans dined seated

upright on chairs; but with the importation of the Greek manners, they learned to re-

cline on couches, supporting themselves on their left elbows while eating with the right

hand.1

The convivium was a site of considerable anxiety in the realm of manners and morals.2

Unlike the all-male Greek symposium, the Roman convivium followed Etruscan custom

in including women. Some Roman writers emphasized this diªerence, attempting to take

the higher moral ground by appealing to etymology. They pointed out that the Greek word

symposium means “drinking together,” whereas the Latin word convivium means “living

together.” The convivium was a communal meal. Nonetheless, with both sexes present,

it was a place where a man could fall in love—or dally sexually—with someone else’s

wife, mistress, or boy-love. And the drinking did take place—after the meal. For this event,

when the servants began serving wine mixed with less and less water, the Romans used

223

the word commissatio, the “mixing.” Here the participants opened themselves to the plea-

sures and perils of overindulgence: getting drunk and engaging in loose talk or actions—

especially sexual ones. As we will see, artists tended to emphasize just such incidents in

their representations of the commissatio.

Where in the house did all of this take place? The convivium was a movable feast;

slaves would set up couches for guests and tables for food and drink in whatever room

the master or mistress of the house deemed appropriate. Although excavators tend to la-

bel one particular room the triclinium (a dining space suitable for three dining couches—

klinai in Greek, or lecti in Latin), Romans of even moderate means had several rooms

suitable for use as triclinia, each with a diªerent view, one protected from the cold for

winter use, another shaded from the sun for summer use, and so on.3 In the House of

the Vettii, for example, there are at least four rooms that could be used for dining, de-

pending on the season (see fig. 51). Room e is an enclosed winter dining room, easy to

heat. The twin rooms p and n look out on the garden, as does the biggest room—that of

the cupid and psyche frieze, room q. All of these rooms, and probably room t as well,

would have been appropriate for dining. The couches were generally made of wood, al-

though sometimes of bronze. Excavators have found numerous remains of carbonized

wooden couches in the area buried by Vesuvius.4 Tables of wood or bronze held the food

and drink. All of these items of furniture were portable, so that servants could set them

up in any room of the house.

If the feast was movable, the seating arrangement was not (fig. 129). There was space

for nine persons on three couches, placed against the right, rear, and left walls of a room

in a U-shape.5 On the right was the “high couch” (lectus summus), at the rear the “middle

couch” (lectus medius), and at the left the “low couch” (lectus imus). The three places on

each couch, in turn, were named with the same Latin words for “high” (summus), “mid-


Lectus

imus

Lectus medius

Lectus

summus

sum

mus

mediu

s

imus

s

um

mus

m

ediu

s

im

us

im

us

m

ediu

s

sum

mus

Mensa

FIGURE 129

Diagram of seating in a

Roman triclinium.

dle” (medius), and “low” (imus). A person reclining on the place nearest the door on the

right-hand couch would be “high on the high couch” (summus in summo), the person next

to him would be “in the middle on the high couch” (medius in summo), and so on. The

guest of honor took the place at the right on the middle couch (as seen by someone sit-

ting on the couch)—he or she was imus in medio, and the Romans called this place of

honor the locus consularis. The host reclined at the top of the low couch (summus in imo),

at the right hand of the guest of honor.6

Strict etiquette surrounded the ceremony of the Roman banquet, beginning with an

invitation that assigned the guest his or her place at the table. Putting guests in the wrong

place could easily ruin a convivium. Horace constructs one of his satires around the comic

consequences of the wrong seating arrangement at a dinner party,7 and the boorish host

Trimalchio has everyone in the wrong place, including himself; he overturns the rules by

reclining summus in summo.8

Where you reclined also determined what you got to see. The U-shaped arrangement,

along with the fact that the guests were reclining, meant that their gazes were focused

more than ours are when we sit at table. (Of course, during a long evening diners might

shift positions for a while—a point that comes through in the artist’s reconstruction re-

produced in figure 130.) Since we are not resting the weight of our torso on our left arm,

M I N D I N G Y OUR MANN E R S • 225

FIGURE 130

Artist’s reconstruction of

dining Romans. Top: overhead

view. Bottom: eye-level view.

we are more free to turn alternately—as etiquette instructs—from the guest on our left

to the one on our right. Not so at the Roman banquet, where the guests’ bodies, torsos,

and gazes always tended toward the central table, or mensa. The host and the guests on

the low couch looked across the central table toward the right wall and the entrance to

the room; the diners on the middle couch faced toward the left wall and the entrance;

and those on the high couch faced the guest of honor and the host—and the imagery on

the left and back walls of the room.

The most important work of art in a room—usually a complex mythological picture—

took pride of place in the center of the rear wall.9 Complementing the message of this

picture would be paintings at the centers of the right and left walls. Often these three im-

ages related to each other thematically—an indication that they encouraged the guests to

engage in the practice of ekphrasis—another borrowing from Hellenistic culture. Ekphra-

sis was a rhetorical skill, and consisted in the explanation—often quite fanciful—of an

image or a series of images.10 Typically the speaker elaborated on the myth represented,

filling in details of the story—what had happened before, what happened later on. If par-

ticularly skillful, the dinner guest would wax eloquent in philosophical musings about

the lessons to be learned from the story.11 This was a way for both the host and the guests

to show oª their erudition and inventiveness—even while providing the evening’s en-

tertainment. Of course professional entertainers would often arrive: dancers, pantomime

actors, and musicians playing a variety of instruments.

In addition to taking care to adorn the walls of the dining space, the owner took spe-

cial care to provide interesting views out of the space—especially for the guest of honor.12

Architects positioned features such as colonnades, fountains, statuary, and canals to cre-

ate a special image framed for the guest of honor looking out from his position on the

middle couch (fig. 131). Study of these framed views out of dining spaces reveals that even

people of modest means were aware of their importance; owners at Pompeii and Her-

culaneum often remodeled their houses so that they could have at least one room with a

special view that would impress the guest of honor.

The richer the owner, the greater the number of rooms that he could order to be set

up for dining—each with complex painting programs and delightful prospects. In ad-

dition to the rooms within his house there often were outdoor installations for the ban-

quet. Dining out of doors was an especially important indicator of status, to judge from

the numerous masonry couches found in gardens large and small.13

This, in brief, is the physical and ideological setting for the convivium and commis-

satio. For the modern person, accustomed to the relatively restrained dining and drink-

ing practices allowed by middle-class Euro-American culture, the idea of spending a full

evening reclining on a couch, eating numerous food courses followed by hours of wine-

drinking, seems excessive. For the ancient Roman, especially the non-elite Roman, such

banquets—the more lavish the better—defined who you were. Luxury entertainment was

an important sign of social status. It was also a way of defining your social relations with

others. Just as—on a public level—seating and dress distinguished social ranks in the


theater and amphitheater, so did the seating arrangement at a convivium. You knew ex-

actly who you were in your host’s eyes the moment the servant showed you your place at

table—and you knew how he or she appraised your fellow guests’ status as well. It is such

relationships—and the social and cultural values they encode—that emerge in our analy-

sis of visual and verbal representations in the dining space.

PICTURING (AND LAUGHING AT) THE ELEGANT GREEKS:

THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS

Sometimes patrons had artists paint center pictures in their dining rooms that were more

topical than the usual mythological pictures. Their subject was the banquet itself. At Pom-

peii, we can analyze pictures of the banquet found in dining rooms to trace two very diªer-

ent attitudes toward the convivium. On the one hand are paintings that show the ideal

banquet: beautiful young men and women in luxurious settings. On the other hand we

find—more rarely and only in Pompeii’s last decades—images of real people, including

the owner himself, enjoying themselves at table.

For the ideal banquet scenes the artist could turn to pattern-books that reproduced a

standard repertory that had developed in the Hellenistic period.14 Although none of these

pattern-books has survived, the fact that near-exact replicas of the same compositions ap-


FIGURE 131

Pompeii, House of Octavius

Quartio (II, 2, 2). Reconstruc-

tion of the guest of honor’s

view from oecus h.

pear in mosaics and paintings at Pompeii and elsewhere argues for their existence. Many

scholars believe that artists used pattern-books to show their patrons what the finished

product would look like.15 A case in point is the recent excavation at Pompeii of a finely

decorated triclinium (g on the plan, fig. 132), where the owner, around a.d. 40, commis-

sioned an artist to provide three pictures of the ideal type of banquet. For two of the pic-

tures the artist relied on a pattern-book. The house, called the House of the Chaste Lovers

(IX, 12, 6–7) because of these elegant paintings, probably belonged to an elite person in

a.d. 40. Although excavation is not complete, it is clear that the house was large enough

to boast a peristyle; but by the time of the eruption someone had been turned the entire

structure into a bakery.16

The triclinium, although a long, rectangular room, is slightly unusual in having its

entrance at the room’s southwest corner rather than at one end of the room. However, a

large window on the room’s south wall provided a view out to the little garden at f. The

painter created a graceful Third Style decoration by alternating red and black vertical pan-

els on a uniform black base or socle (fig. 133). Little flying figures adorn the centers of the

red panels. The artist divided the red panels from each other with ribbon-thin pilasters

and framed the black panels with miniature columns.17 Within each black panel the artist

painted a diªerent center picture featuring men and women drinking.

The center picture on the right (east) wall is the most standard of the three: a drink-

ing contest (plate 17). Two male-female couples recline on couches placed against the back-

drop of a portico with drapes swagged between the columns. In front of the couches, on

an axis with the central column, is a round table. The artist has set up a colorful contrast

between the two men’s states of inebriation. The man on the right has passed out; his

head has fallen back and his left arm dangles, barely holding on to the long-handled wine

cup (kantharos) in his hand. Behind him a servant girl fans him, in a vain attempt to bring

him to. His rival, on the other couch, is not faring much better: he wins the contest only

because his partner holds up his head and helps him aim the wine from the drinking

horn (rhyton) so that it will squirt into his mouth. He holds more wine in a kantharos in

his left hand.

The fact that the artist has put the women in charge of this drinking contest indicates

that they are hetairai, professional entertainers and sex-workers, who are central to the

Greek symposium. The Greek symposium was for citizen males, not their wives; female

companionship came in the form of various professionals: hetairai, dancers, girls who

played the double flute, and common prostitutes. In our picture the artist underscores

the Greek character of the scene through the dress and action of the hetairai. The woman

on the left is nude from the waist up, leaning on her left flank with her right knee up.

She holds her companion’s head up with one hand and helps him steady his rhyton with

the other. Despite her balancing act, her intense gaze at her partner reveals that she is

fully alert. The artist has framed her head with an abundant garland and given her two

gold hoop earrings. Even more alert is the hetaira at the right, who turns in profile to eye-

ball the other woman and raises her arm to point an accusatory finger at her. She wears


FIGURE 132


Chaste Lovers (IX, 12, 6–7).

FIGURE 133

Pompeii, House of the Chaste

Lovers, view of room g from

south window.

a transparent dress, her hair done up in ribbons and a garland draped across her shoul-

der to fall between her breasts.

This scene of drinking excesses in the good old days must have amused the Roman

diners who came to this modest dining room to eat and drink in the Greek fashion. The

artist has relied on figural types in circulation to show four beautiful drinkers in four diªer-

ent states of consciousness—from drunken sleep to alert vigilance.18 If inspired to com-

ment on this scene, everyone reclining around the table would recognize the central joke,

that you needed professional help to win a drinking contest. The story goes further, since

a squabble may arise between the hetairai: the woman whose partner has passed out is

accusing the other of cheating by oªering unusual assistance to her barely conscious part-

ner. She is holding him up bodily so that he will win, even as she squirts a bit more wine

into his mouth.

It is important to remember that although this painting of the excesses of the Greek

symposium constituted a proper decoration for this modest Pompeian dining room, con-

temporary viewers did not see it as an illustration of their own customs or behavior. The

notion of decor—that is, furnishing a room with artwork that is appropriate for the ac-

tivities taking place there—was not the same as emulatio, setting up art as examples for

viewers to follow. A woman guest in this triclinium, reclining at table—even for the wine-

drinking part—would certainly not be bare-breasted; nor would she be saddled with the

job of getting her partner drunk. This was the province of prostitutes, not freeborn—or

freed—women like herself. She would have seen the men and women in the picture as

beautiful creatures from another time and culture, appropriate subjects for conversations

about the pleasures and pitfalls of drinking too much. A Roman man viewing this pic-

ture of Greek times might compare his own experiences. He might muse about the times

he attended Roman versions of such drinking parties with prostitutes as partners—

certainly in venues, such as hotels or taverns, far removed from the domestic sphere.

The central pictures on the back and left walls of the triclinium are more refined and

complex in both style and subject matter, indicating that for them the owner hired a diªer-

ent, more talented artist. For these walls the patron chose two pictures that complicate

the theme of the Greek-style symposium to a greater degree than the picture we have just

looked at.

On the north wall the artist has placed two couples on couches beneath the cover of

an elegantly embroidered cloth canopy (plate 18). There are eight figures in all. A viewer

scanning the image from left to right would first notice a woman who sits at the edge of

the left-hand couch and looks out of the picture as she raises a large cup to her lips. She

is a tibia (double oboe) player taking a break, her instrument clearly visible in her left hand.

A young woman stands behind her and turns to her in three-quarters view, her hair tied

with a ribbon, like her companion’s. Immediately to the right a hetaira in a yellow robe

languidly leans back on her left side as she kisses her male companion. She has lost her

left sandal, and her right arm dangles at the side of the couch.19 In her left hand she holds

a little crown of flowers; the man clasps her left wrist with his left hand.


The other couple ignores this moment of tenderness. The man rises, although he still

rests his left elbow on the bolster; he is looking intently to the left side of the picture,

raising his right arm to point at the standing girl or—more likely—to rouse the tibia-

player from her self-indulgent drinking so that she will get up and make more music.

His companion, crowned like him with grape leaves, holds a large kantharos in both

hands and looks at the servant pouring wine at the lower right of the picture. This figure

completes the composition’s arc from left to right. She pours the wine from an amphora

into a silver mixing-bowl or crater that sits within a larger vessel of gold or bronze sup-

ported on three legs. This basin-bowl unit, specially constructed to keep the wine cool,

appears in three other wall paintings.20 Silver drinking-vessels rest on the tall three-legged

table.

The final figure in the composition is the most enigmatic, and, unfortunately, quite

faded. It is a bearded man dressed in a long tunic who holds a gnarled stick with both

hands. He stands in the background, his head crowned with vine leaves, at the center

of the picture. All the others ignore him. Discussion of this figure’s identity began long

ago, thanks to another version of this same composition that has appeared in inventories

of the Naples Museum since 1819 (plate 19).21 (The Naples painting omits the servant

pouring wine at the right.) Scholars have oªered various explanations of the standing man

with a stick. It seems unlikely that he is the god Priapus, armed with a club to punish

trespassers in the garden, since there exist no representations of this guardian of the gar-

den with anything but his huge phallus as a weapon.22 Equally untenable is the notion

that he is the father of one of the men coming to punish his son for wasting his money

on wine and hetairai, since he himself is crowned like the banqueters.23 A similar figure—

almost always identifiable as a statue of Dionysus—appears in other paintings at Pom-

peii showing scenes of the symposium beneath an awning.24 One possible explanation

is that the painter has misunderstood the meaning of the statue, who should be Diony-

sus in this context;25 another, more likely, one is that he has intentionally made Diony-

sus’s thyrsus (or wand) into a stick and animated the statue to introduce a note of levity

to the picture.

Things are, in a sense, already out of control. One couple is getting intimate, and the

flute player has given up her entertaining and turned her back on her employers: she

looks out of the scene as she takes a drink—despite the summons of the man on the right-

hand couch.

The painter created another scenario of the symposium gone awry with the painting

on the west wall (plate 20). Here two couples, each on a beautifully draped couch, are in

the midst of drinking. Behind them appear walls and partitions painted in perspective,

with a door at the left edge of the painting. The servants have placed the couches at right

angles to each other, and on the two round, three-legged tables are drinking vessels. As

the viewer’s eye moves from left to right, she sees a story unfolding. At the doorway a

woman with her mantle pulled over her head, as if dressed to leave, holds up a kantharos

in her right hand while a servant boy behind her grasps her upper arm and leans into her


in an attempt to keep her upright. The couple on the couch next to them reach out their

right arms toward her. The woman on the couch, wearing a yellow gown with a reddish-

purple overskirt, stretches out her right arm, almost touching the drunken woman’s cup,

while she holds a big cup of wine in her left hand. Behind her, her partner—his head

garlanded and his torso nude—turns to look at the other couple on the couch at the

right while gesturing toward the tipsy woman. The viewer looks to the right with him,

where a woman, her torso barely covered with her transparent dress, struggles to hold

herself up while she languidly dangles her empty cup from her right hand. Her partner

is the most active of the figures. His back is turned to the viewer, although his head is

in profile. He rises and gestures with his right hand in an arc that takes the viewer’s eye

back to the tottering woman at the left.

Looking more carefully, a viewer would see yet another figure: a man asleep on the couch

between the two couples, his right arm folded behind his head. He must be the drunken

woman’s partner: someone will have to rouse him and dress him if he is to leave with her.

Will she or won’t she actually leave? She holds up her cup to have “one for the road” even

though she seems unable to focus her eyes.

Another version of this picture—now lost—once graced the east wall of a little room,

perhaps a cubiculum, in the house at IX, 1, 22 (fig. 134).26 Clearly this artist—perhaps


FIGURE 134

Pompeii, House of Epidius Sabinus (IX, 1, 22), cubiculum z (destroyed). Couple at a

symposium with drunken woman.

the same person—used the same pattern-book image for this picture, but he truncated

the image at the right, leaving out the second couple on a couch and the man passed out

in between them. In their place he inserted the figure of a little servant boy in a tunic who

seems to be responding to the man’s glance and gesture. The painting in the House of

the Chaste Lovers clarifies the meaning of this abbreviated version of the composition.

Helbig was at a loss to determine its precise meaning, and decided that the couple on the

couch was forcibly ejecting the drunken woman.27 The man on the couch, who in the full

version actually looks toward the man at the far right, seems to be asking the little boy to

do something about the drunken woman.

Both versions of the scene aim to get a laugh from the viewer. In fact, the pitfalls of

the Greek-style drinking party provide the common thread connecting the three paint-

ings in House of the Chaste Lovers. On the one hand their relatively high quality and im-

portant place in the decoration of this modest house announced to the ancient viewer the

owner’s understanding of Greek culture and manners. On the other hand, the paintings’

narratives encouraged a viewer to laugh: these were young men and their prostitute part-

ners in other times and places—getting into a bit of trouble. The humor depended on a

viewer seeing them and their actions as diªerent from those of the Roman-style convivium

that took place in this very room.

A woman viewer of the freedman class looking at the paintings might have focused

on the hetaira’s status and the work she was paid to do: to make sure her male compan-

ion had a good time. The drunken hetaira of the left-hand picture has failed in this duty

and seems to be leaving without her partner. The same viewer might have seen in the

flute player “on strike” in the picture on the back wall the kind of rebellion that she had

contemplated while a slave—rebellion that could have resulted in punishment.

Humor, then, depended on a viewer seeing the diªerences between the drinking

couples—ideally beautiful yet behaving improperly—and him- or herself. Only in this

way do the lighthearted scenes of the good old days make sense in the decoration of a

modest house like that of the Chaste Lovers. They fit with a sizable group of symposium

paintings found in houses buried by Vesuvius—all inspired by and repeating Hellenis-

tic prototypes.28 For the contemporary Roman viewer, the paintings both held up a model

and permitted her the amusement of comparing that model with the real-life convivia

that took place in the modest dining rooms they decorated.

With the realistic images that patrons begin to order in Pompeii’s last decades, the

strategy changes. The walls and the banqueters themselves begin to speak, in the lan-

guage of Roman—not Greek—ideas about the banquet.

TALKING WALLS AND LAUGHTER IN THE HOUSE OF THE MORALIST

Scholars have taken very seriously the three maxims painted on the walls of a triclinium

in House III, 4, 2. Because of these maxims, they called this house, excavated in 1912,

the House of the Moralist. But consideration of the context, particularly the house’s mod-


est architecture and the freedman status of the owners, suggests to me that these “moral”

injunctions to the guests were meant to make them laugh—not to behave themselves.

The structure is really two houses joined together with two entryways, one at street num-

ber 2, the other at number 3.29 The plan strays far from the canonical atrium house (fig.

135).30 Stairs in 8 and 25 lead to the large, generally well-decorated rooms of the upper

story, yet the ground-floor rooms constitute a veritable rabbit-warren of ill-lit and poorly

decorated spaces.

Evidence suggests that this heterogeneous structure housed several families and in-

cluded commercial spaces. Five electoral endorsements painted on the facade of the house

name a certain E. Epidius Hymenaeus, wine merchant. Inside the house were six am-

phoras with his name in the dative, meaning that they were sent to him.31 But the exca-

vator, Vittorio Spinazzola, also found a bronze seal bearing the name “C. Arrius Crescens”

in an unspecified room near the entryway at 3; and another amphora is addressed to T. Ar-

rius Polites. The Arrii were an old family who owned an estate near Pompeii, a brick fac-

tory, and the Insula Arriana Polliana (VI, 6), put up for rent in the city’s last years.32 Both

C. Arrius Crescens and T. Arrius Polites were probably freedmen of the Arrii and per-

haps engaged in the wine trade like E. Epidius Hymenaeus.33

If two or three of these men and their families shared business interests and the house,

they must also have shared the large garden (13) and the best ground-floor room of all,


FIGURE 135


Moralist (III, 4, 2).

the triclinium (12). This, like the dining room with a loggia above it (26), looked out on

a garden that was almost half the size of the whole house (fig. 136). Paul Zanker, follow-

ing Spinazzola, has proposed that the owner wished to make this garden into a sacred

wood, or lucus—a feature of the great luxury villas—reproduced in miniature.34 Excava-

tors found a little statue of a goddess that reproduces an unusual Hellenistic rendition of

Diana holding a scepter in her right hand and wearing a mantle knotted at her breast.35

At the statue’s feet was a small incense burner in the shape of a ram, indicating that the

occupants of the house honored the goddess. Spinazzola believed that the large cylindri-

cal bronze brazier also found in the garden was for sacrifices to Diana. Huge trees sur-

rounded the statue in a semicircle. In addition to providing a dramatic setting for the rites

of the goddess, the garden provided ample shade and greenery for the diners to enjoy.

Just how much a diner was to enjoy the pleasures of the banquet is the subject of max-

ims painted on the walls of the triclinium—and the reason for the name of the house

(fig. 137). Couches and table, in painted masonry, fill the space. The simple, early–Fourth

Style decoration (ca. a.d. 50) consists of alternating panels in red and black with vignettes

of birds and banqueters’ crowns.36 Above these, on three of the panels, are distichs (two-

line verses) addressing the guests quite directly.37

In the panel above the outboard, or eastern end of the right-hand couch—just below

the panel’s top border—appears the following:

Abluat unda pedes, puer et detergeat udos;

Mappa torum velet, linea nostra cave38

Let water wash your feet, and let a slave-boy dry them; Let a napkin cover the couch, be

careful of our linen.

Behind the central couch, on the room’s west wall, were four panels. Damage suªered in

the accidental bombing of Pompeii in 1943 destroyed the distich painted on the second

panel from the north:

Lascivos voltus et blandos aufer ocellos

Coniuge ab alterius: sit tibi in ore pudor

Keep your sexy looks oª the other man’s wife and don’t make eyes at her: let modesty show

in your face.

On the left, or south, wall were five panels. The artist painted the distich at the top of the

fourth panel out from the back wall:

[Abstine discid]iis odiosaque iurgia diªer

Si potes aut gressus ad tua tecta refer39

Refrain from insults and avoid harsh quarrels if you can, or else go right back home.40


FIGURE 136

Pompeii, House of the

Moralist. Reconstruction, with

summer triclinium and loggia

above.

FIGURE 137

Pompeii, House of the

Moralist, view of triclinium 12.

It is interesting that the three distichs constitute a poetic unity: Vogliano, the first

scholar to discuss them in literary terms, correctly recognized that the guests would read

the epigrams in this order—from right to left—and that they expressed typically Roman,

not Greek, notions of behavior.41 Still, scholars have insisted on characterizing the pa-

tron who paid an artist to insert the maxims as a stiª-necked moralist, someone who knew

what went on at Greek-style banquets and didn’t want anything like that happening in

his triclinium.

If the house was—as seems likely—a multifamily structure, the triclinium was an im-

portant, shared space: there is no other dining installation like it in the house. This fact

complicates the notion that there was one individual—and a moralist at that—responsible

for the distichs, and it casts doubt upon the modern constructions of his personality: fussy

and cheap (don’t dirty our upholstery); prudish and pure (don’t make eyes at anybody’s—

especially my—wife); a milquetoast when drinkers got rowdy (don’t swear or you can go

home). If we have several people commissioning the room’s decoration with the distichs,

we have to rethink their motives. Were they all fussy, prudish, and proper? What is more,

how did they expect their guests to react to the maxims? Finally, like the sayings in the

Caupona of the Seven Sages, the distichs themselves demonstrate that at least some of

the guests had to be literate.

One thing is clear: this is an unusual way of decorating a triclinium. If the triclinium

in the House of the Chaste Lovers represents the norm, it is because both the decorative

system—focused on three center pictures—and the subject matter of the paintings fits

a pattern seen in many houses of the first century a.d. Substituting little poems about

proper behavior at the banquet puts unusual focus on the guest: each distich addresses

the reader in the imperative. This substitution also gives the guest less to look at: she sees

no visual representation of the banquet at all.

Economics also shape this commission. We know that in any campaign of wall deco-

ration, ordinary painters carried out most of the work, including decorative backgrounds

and simple figures. These pictores parietarii (wall-painters) left spaces of unfinished plas-

ter where the fancy center pictures were to go. The patron then employed a specialist, the

pictor imaginarius, to do the center pictures, usually (as we saw in the House of the Chaste

Lovers) copying them from a pattern-book. The imaginarius received at least twice as much

pay as the parietarius.42 The patrons who decided to substitute writing for the expensive

center pictures were saving money as well as being nonconformists. Anyone who could

write in a straight line and handle fresco paint—even someone who painted the notices

of gladiatorial games and electoral slogans on the facades of Pompeii’s houses (by night,

it seems)43—could have painted the maxims.

In addition to economic considerations, we need to think about how a diner would

have read the distichs. The masonry couches fill the room, with little space between them

and the masonry table. Upon arrival in the room, each guest’s immediate concern was

to find his place on one of the couches, and arrange himself on his left elbow. Everyone

could have read the distich on the right wall even before settling onto a couch, since the


writer located it above the end of the lectus summus. And its message directly addresses

what everyone had just experienced—foot washing—and what he or she will do next:

arrange the napkin (mappa) carefully so as not to dirty the upholstery.

Reading the second distich required more eªort, since it was to the right of the mid-

dle of the rear wall. We can imagine the host reading it aloud to the other guests: “Don’t

make eyes at someone else’s wife.” With a glance or wink at a beautiful woman or man

at the table, the reader could turn the moral maxim into comedy. The guests could amuse

themselves as the object of the reader’s wink blushed or fidgeted, self-conscious about

the power of his or her beauty to attract others.

The third distich was above the shoulders and head of the least important diner, the

person who was low on the low couch (imus in imo); he or she would have experienced

the most jostling and disruption, as servants arrived with food and wine, and guests got

up to relieve themselves or go home. This particular spot, most removed from the other

diners (see fig. 129), made him or her as much an observer as a participant. The guest of

honor and the host would lead conversations—and some of them might have turned into

arguments. From this observation point, our diner—a bit apart—saw the course of the

events and, if still sober, might have remembered the marching orders aimed at diners

who got into arguments or used foul language. Perhaps the diner reclining beneath this

distich turned around to read the distich aloud when discussions heated up. We can imag-

ine her intoning the lines in the midst of the din and the laughter that the words “or else

go right back home” provoked.

If this summer triclinium was a space that served members of a shared household,

the “host” who voiced the distichs could have been several people—or diªerent people

at diªerent times—and the guests would have frequently been people who knew each

other quite well. Given their context, the distichs are wisecracks, not moral injunctions.

More importantly, if the patrons and audience for these little maxims consisted of for-

mer slaves, the person speaking in the maxims is really an absent person—their former

master or mistress. How many times had they, when serving at a banquet, heard their

master worrying about sloppy guests spoiling the upholstery, or fretting that so-and-so,

loose with too much drinking, might flirt with someone’s wife? If a fight broke out and

someone had to be escorted home (like the drunken woman in the painting we just looked

at from the House of the Chaste Lovers (plate 20), it was the slave’s job to escort the wob-

bling drunkard home. The voice speaking in the distichs is that of their former masters,

not the newly free owners of this little house. And this voice, prim and stuªy, is that of

an elite—espousing the old-fashioned Roman morals of Cato—a far cry from the former

slaves who actually lived in this house and dined in this triclinium.

The Moralist, then, is a fictional character who tries to control the banqueters with

written language. He speaks out from the walls in two-line poems known as elegiac cou-

plets: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. For the jokes

to work—as in the Caupona of the Seven Sages—the guest must be literate. Assuming

that he is literate, he will recognize the pretentious poetic form—and its inappropriate-


ness in this setting. This is the stuª of schoolboys’ lesson-books, not a triclinium. Instead

of finding verses describing the delights of the banquet—drinking, song, and love—he

finds stuªy warnings to behave himself. If the Roman notion of decor demands that

each space be outfitted with paintings and statues that fit the activities that go on here,

the distichs in this triclinium turn decor on its ear in two ways. Instead of sophisticated

mythological paintings—or, as in the House of the Chaste Lovers, pictures of Greek-

style banqueting—the viewer gets homespun maxims; and their message is just the op-

posite of the pictures that should be there. Pictures should show people having fun—

even too much fun. The distichs so limit the possibility of fun that they become ridiculous.

Like the paintings with their complex and contradictory captions in the Caupona of

the Seven Sages, the maxims in the little triclinium in the House of the Moralist rely on

reversing a viewer’s expectations. Instead of pictures of banqueters, she gets writing. In-

stead of being encouraged to enjoy herself, she’s told to mind her manners. These re-

versals are the stuª of humor, and must have given the freedpersons who dined and drank

here lots to talk about. The kind of “ekphrasis” they practiced must have included many

anecdotes about elite behavior at the convivium—behavior they had observed in their for-

mer lives as slaves. We have no Moralist here, just ordinary people having some fun at

the expense of their former masters.

SELF-REPRESENTATION AT A REAL BANQUET:

THE HOUSE OF THE TRICLINIUM

If the elegant Third Style paintings in the House of the Chaste Lovers communicate both

the look and the values of the Hellenistic symposium, it is because the artist employed

standard motifs, made his couples young and beautiful, and clothed them (or undressed

them) in Greek fashion. In the paintings that graced the dining room in the House of the

Triclinium, also at Pompeii (V, 2, 4), the owner commissioned the painter to show him-

self and his friends, wearing their own (Roman) clothes and saying what they liked to say,

for above their heads in one of the paintings the artist has written their words. Although

the excavator removed the paintings from their walls soon after their discovery in

1883–84, the room, r on the plan, still retains much of its Fourth Style decoration, com-

pleted before the earthquake of 62 (fig. 138).44

Who was the owner? Della Corte proposes that the house—at least in its last years—

was a caupona, basing his hypothesis on seven gra‹ti scratched on the columns of the

portico by a man named L. Quintilius Crescens. His multiple greetings suggested to Della

Corte that Crescens was drunk, for even his signature smacks of alcohol-induced

grandeur: “L. Quintilius Crescens, fuller, reigned here [L. Quintilius Crescens, fullo, hic reg-

natus est].”45Crescens salutes the innkeeper (cauponi), the fullers (fullones), then the fullers

and the owl (ulula), the bird of their patron, Minerva; he goes on to celebrate the Pom-

peians (Pompeiani), then the inhabitants of Salina (Salinienses), Stabiae (Stabiani), and

Sorrento (Surrentini).46 Unfortunately, Della Corte’s hypothesis that the house was a


caupona is of little use to us, since the artist painted the banquet pictures when the struc-

ture was a private dwelling. Sogliano’s notion, that the owner had business or social re-

lationships with one or more of the fullers from the nearby fullonica across the street at

VI, 14, 22, provides a more likely explanation of Crescens’s exuberant gra‹ti.47

Construction technique tells us that the House of the Triclinium was built in the late

second century b.c.; excavators found traces of wall and mosaic decoration during the

intervening periods, and the high-quality late–Third Style decoration of little room q re-

veals an owner lavishing care on an interior.48 It produces a cycle of mythological paint-

ings, and dates to a.d. 45. About fifteen years later the patron commissioned the deco-

ration of the triclinium (fig. 139). As the plan reveals, like the triclinium in the House of

the Chaste Lovers, it was not typical, since entry was from a door giving on to the three-

sided peristyle. Also unusual is the placement of the three paintings that concern us. A

large window looks out to the garden from the left-hand (south) side of the room, so

there is no center picture there. Instead, the artist placed one picture on the east wall, to

the right of someone entering the room, one on the north wall, above the high couch,

and one at the center of the rear (west) wall, where the middle couch would have been

set up.

Much in this room, as well as in the whole house, deviates from the Roman norm of

axiality, symmetry, and framed views.49The middle zone uses a system of alternating pan-

els of red and black, arranged symmetrically on either side of the center pictures. On the

north long wall and on the rear wall the painting is in the middle of the panel scheme—

even though this requires halving the panels to right and left of the center picture on the

short rear wall. A door that originally took up the right half of the east wall forced the

painter to place the picture on the left half, and it remained there even though the owner

later decided to wall up that door, perhaps to isolate the room from the service corridor.

He hired a diªerent painter to try to match the other panels and hide the telltale seams

in the plaster.


FIGURE 138


the Triclinium (V, 2, 4).

Other indications of eccentric planning include the corridor that circles the Third Style

cubiculum (u), with kitchen and latrine placed behind it in spaces v and v'; the refashion-

ing of the columns of the peristyle to support upper-story rooms and a sun-terrace; and

the many tiny rooms along the east side of the atrium and peristyle. The feature of a cu-

biculum next to a principal dining space is a standard one, copied from luxury houses and

villas; the notion was to create a suite of rooms dedicated to the pleasures of the banquet,

one of them large, the other intimate.50

Although scholars have noticed the diªerences among the three center pictures and

the ideal, Greek-style banquet scenes, they tend to shrink from reading them as idiosyn-

cratic expressions of the man who commissioned them in favor of broad, narrative in-

terpretations. Two “cyclical” readings have dominated the literature. Over a century ago

Sogliano proposed that the paintings portray three stages of the drinking party: the paint-

ing on the west wall representing the beginning, that on the north wall the high point,

and the one on the east wall the end. But each takes place in a diªerent setting, and there

are diªerent people in each.51 Another cyclical interpretation would have each painting

representing a diªerent season.52

I believe that these paintings are the result of a specific commission on the part of the

owner: he wished to represent himself and his friends in paintings custom-made for this

space in his house. The owner wished to celebrate and commemorate his feasts—as well

as announce his own understanding of the culture of the banquet.


FIGURE 139

Pompeii, House of the Triclinium, room r, west and north walls.

The first painting an entering guest would see is the one that graced the east wall (plate

21). In that picture, the servants have set up the couches indoors, even though they have

also strewn red flowers on the ground. A viewer reading the picture from left to right

would first see a man wearing a white tunic and purple mantle sitting down so that a

small servant can take oª his right shoe. A larger servant in a white tunic with thin pur-

ple stripes (angusticlavi) oªers him a cup of wine. A young man in a sea-green mantle

turns to him to engage him in conversation and places his right arm around his shoul-

der. The artist has reversed this man’s position for his next figure, a young man looking

in profile to the right, his torso upright as if he were getting up from the kline or arrang-

ing himself and his white mantle to settle down. Here the edge of a window frame divides

the composition vertically, and the three following figures are in front of the window.

Just to the right of the frame stands a bald-headed man wearing a long green garment,

perhaps a toga. He has pulled its edge up over his flower-crowned head. He lays his left

arm on a black boy who stands next to him—perhaps a special servant. Someone has

scratched valetis, “Hello, everyone,” above the man’s head. The last figure on the couch

is a young, almost childish male who supports himself on his left elbow while holding a

big cup in his right hand. He engages the viewer directly, looking out at her, and some-

one has scratched bibo, “I’m drinking,” above his head. The final pair in this unusual ban-

quet vignette is in the right foreground, where a little servant in a white tunic holds up a

much bigger man in a red mantle who is vomiting.

Scholars, hoping to explain the story in this picture, have studiously ignored the fact

that this is an all-male drinking party involving a bald, older man who seems to be the

host, three young men, a very young male drinker, and male servants of various ages.

Women are conspicuous by their absence. An ancient viewer would have recognized in

this scene the Roman version of the Greek symposium—with the amorous targets of same-

sex passion scattered throughout in telling gestures. The most ideal male-male couple is

poised at the left, closely engaged in conversation and touching. The man to the right of

this pair is handsome, by himself, and looking to his older host, who seems to be con-

sidering what pleasure to pursue next. To an ancient viewer, his black slave-boy repre-

sented an expensive and exotic trophy, meant, like any young boy-slave, to serve his mas-

ter in every way—especially sexually. The master may be choosing his pleasures: sex with

his own property or amorous dalliance with the handsome young man who looks his way.

The young man at right ignores the interactions within the scene and looks out to engage

the viewer. His outward gaze, like his raised wine cup, encourages the viewer to enjoy the

drinking party. Although immediate enjoyment is probably far from the thoughts of

the vomiting man, he will soon be able to rejoin the party—the mess cleaned up and the

flowers perfuming the floor once more.

Unlike the paintings in the House of the Chaste Lovers, where the artist used pattern-

books for the composition and for his figural types, here the artist has mixed known im-

ages with ones he has had to invent. The artist’s invention must be a response to the pa-

tron’s wishes to portray people he knew within the scene. I believe, for example, that the


bald man is a portrait of the patron. The painting is not an allegorical representation of

the diªerent ages of men: boy, young man, old man. Instead we see the variety of men

and boys that the owner may have known, some—perhaps all—portraits. The only ide-

ally beautiful faces are those of the three young men on the left; the remaining figures

have highly specific features. If the owner is representing himself surrounded by men

and boys at a drinking party, it is because he wants to show to all invited guests an event

he valued, and the men and boys he felt aªection for. He was also revealing his full em-

brace of boy-love as well as adult male-male lovemaking—an indication of his sophisti-

cation. Most Romans of the mid–first century—and not only those of the elite ranks—

would have immediately recognized this representation of the all-male drinking and

lovemaking party without shock or moral indignation. Like the male-female drinking party,

it was one of life’s important and legitimate pleasures.53

The picture on the north wall represents three male-female couples at the commis-

satio (plate 22). It seems at first to be an ideal representation like those in the House of

the Chaste Lovers; looked at more closely, it becomes a kind of response to the events de-

picted in the all-male drinking party on the east wall. Looking from left to right, a viewer’s

eye would first light upon a girl servant holding a casket behind a woman, naked to the

waist, who dramatically exhibits her skill at drinking: while supporting herself with her

right hand, she stretches her left arm high up to squirt wine from a rhyton into her mouth.

She tilts her head back to enjoy the draft. Her partner, also naked except for a red garland

crossing his right shoulder, supports himself and holds a cup in his left hand. He looks

out at the viewer while he puts his right arm around his partner’s neck.

On the middle kline a nude young man seems to be alone. He is, however, ready for

love, since the artist has represented him with his left arm crooked around his head in

the gesture of “erotic repose.”54 On the right couch there is another pair—and here a

viewer would have recognized his host again in the nearly bald man. He has turned

around on the kline, so that the viewer sees his back, nude to the buttocks, his raised

right arm, and his face in profile. He holds a silver cup in his left hand, his pose and

gesture echoing that of the woman drinking from the rhyton who dominates the left

side of the picture.

The fact that the artist has highlighted this figure in pose, (un)dress, and composition

(his figure hides all but the face of his female companion) suggests that he is the owner

of the house. To drive home the point, the artist puts words in his mouth, in phrases that

cross the painting from left to right. (The writing is not someone’s afterthought, scratched

into the paint surface like the words in the painting we have just looked at; the artist care-

fully painted the lettering in good fresco technique.) The bald man says: “Make yourselves

comfortable, I’m singing [ facitis vobis suaviter, ego canto].” Perhaps he answers his own

declaration, or someone else says: “That’s right! To your health! [est ita, valea(s)].”55 The

final figure on the right is a diminutive boy-servant holding a wine pitcher and looking

at the three-legged table at the picture’s center.

Although the center picture on the triclinium’s rear or west wall emerged from the


ashes badly damaged, enough remains to persuade us that—like the other two pictures—

it was far from the ideal Greek-style banquet scene (fig. 140). Traces of a green awning sug-

gest that this is an outdoor party, and it is the drinking party as it draws near its finale: on

the table at the center of the picture are only drinking vessels—no food—and the drinkers

are watching a nude dancer (barely visible in front of the table) accompanied by two

diminutive flute players (in the left foreground).

The drinkers recline on two couches. Only the outlines of the head of the first figure

on the left remain, but it is possible to see that the second figure, a man, is supporting

himself on his left elbow while tilting his head back to squirt wine into his mouth. But

these are really framing figures for the most important figure, a man dressed in red and

seated in the guest of honor’s place (the locus consularis). He looks out at the dancer—

and hence to the viewer—and claps his hands. The clapping man gains even more promi-

nence from the fact that the man next to him has passed out; the artist has depicted him

leaning out over the kline, his left hand under his chin and his right hanging oª the couch.


FIGURE 140

Pompeii, House of the Triclinium, room r, west wall, center picture. Symposium.

There are only traces of the next three figures. The first, like the clapping man, seems

to be looking out at the viewer, whereas the second turns toward him or her in three-quar-

ter’s view. Behind the couch stands a woman who may be preparing to go home. The

last figure on the right is a woman seen from behind who supports herself with her left

arm and crooks her right arm over her head in the gesture of erotic repose. Framing the

scene on the right is a bronze statue of a nude youth holding a big tray. Although sim-

ilar statues of youths holding lamps have emerged from excavations, in 1977 excavators

found a statue in the House of Julius Polybius with the exact features of the statue in

the painting.56

A guest invited to dine and drink here would have immediately noticed how with this

painting the artist—certainly in keeping with the patron’s wishes—had created a clever

visual rhyme; the clapping man at the place of honor appears just behind where the real

guest of honor reclined. Enough remains of this man’s face and hair to tell that us he is

not the bald man who is the protagonist in the other two pictures. Perhaps the patron

wished to recall a particular moment and had the artist paint a portrait of a friend whose

enthusiasm for the dancing and music disregarded the fact that the party was drawing

to a close. Although the music and dancing seem to be continuing, this man’s clapping

is unlikely to rouse the man next to him, slumped over the couch; it is just as unlikely

that the drinkers about to make their way home will tarry.

All three pictures in the House of the Triclinium veer far from the idealized Greek-

style banquets that artists and patrons generally favored in the first century. The pictures

build their humor, and hold the viewer’s interest, by replacing the ideal couples and stereo-

typed scenarios handed down through pattern-books with scenes of ordinary people par-

tying in their own way. The artist is also willing to abandon the rules of perspective that

govern the ideal banquet picture; in the scene on the west wall, for instance, he dimin-

ishes the size of the dancer and the musicians in order to pack more particulars into the

scene. The owner’s portrait in at least two of the pictures is another non-ideal feature; the

presence of this portrait suggests that some of the other banqueters reproduce the like-

nesses of the owner’s friends. Finally, it is likely that the artist constructed the events in

the paintings not from pattern-books but from stories that the owner related.

In the following chapter I investigate further the question of owners putting portraits of

themselves and their families in their houses. In contrast to the strict rules governing the

practices of Roman elites, we find ordinary people using portraiture with great freedom

and a certain degree of fantasy.


9

PUTTING YOUR BEST FACE FORWARD

SELF-REPRESENTATION AT HOME

Many of us have a place in our homes—a wall, table, or album—where we exhibit photo-

graphs of family. It’s a way to tell guests, through pictures, something about ourselves. What

we choose to show them is important: we might show, for instance, key moments in our

own lives: graduation, marriage, pictures of our children, and so on. Or we might opt for

old pictures that stress our ancestry: parents, grandmothers, and great-grandfathers.

Where we display these images is equally telling. It is one thing to give them pride of

place over the mantel in the living room, but quite another to place them on a corner table

in the study or on a dresser in the bedroom: the circumstances surrounding the display

of such images are important indicators of the resident’s sense of self and her social

and economic class. Medium is also revealing. Photography is an inexpensive medium;

in the homes of the wealthy, portraits might be oil-on-canvas or even bronze or marble

busts.

Clearly, display of portraiture in the home provides a rich field for analysis of cultural

practices in our own world. The same is true for the ancient Roman world—but with im-

portant diªerences. For one thing, before photography, making a likeness of a person to

display in the home was complicated. The patron had to make decisions about medium,

engage a painter or sculptor, and spend considerably more money than we do for photo-

graphs. For another, both sculptures and fresco paintings were relatively permanent ad-

246

ditions to the home. The only way to remove paintings was to chip them oª the wall;

sculpture could be moved—with some di‹culty—but could leave awkward gaps in ar-

chitectural ensembles.

In this chapter I investigate images that depict the owners and occupants of ancient

houses in an eªort to chart some of the attitudes that non-elite Romans had toward rep-

resenting themselves. I choose cases where either the images themselves or archaeolog-

ical evidence tell us something about the owners’ social class. As in other chapters, I imag-

ine the reactions of diªerent hypothetical viewers in an eªort to understand the messages

that the patrons wanted to communicate.

DIONYSUS, DOMINUS, AND DOMINA AT THE DOORWAY:

THE HOUSE OF THE FIGURED CAPITALS AT POMPEII

Pompeii saw its greatest prosperity in the second century b.c., when it was a city domi-

nated by wealthy Oscan-speaking landowners and merchants who built the great town-

houses to the north of the forum (fig. 141).1Their contacts with the eastern Mediterranean

gave them a taste for Hellenistic luxuries: the houses often boasted large gardens sur-

rounded by colonnaded walkways (peristyles), rooms decorated with precious marble revet-

ment (imitated in the molded and painted plaster of the First Style), mosaic pictures on

the floors, and refined bronze and marble statues. The House of the Faun (VI, 12, 2), the

largest and most luxurious of these houses of Hellenized Pompeii, covered an entire city

block (insula), a total of 2,940 square meters (31,000 square feet).2 Complementing its

elegant First Style walls were mosaic copies of famous paintings set into the floor. Artists

went so far as to imitate the brushstrokes of the painted model by laying tiny shaped stones

(tesserae) in strands that followed the contours of figures and objects.3 The pièce de ré-

sistance was the huge Alexander mosaic, a copy of a famous painting of 300 b.c. Com-

posed of perhaps four million tesserae, it covered the entire floor of one of the house’s

main reception spaces.4

If the owners of the House of the Faun chose to trumpet their wealth and Hellenistic

culture by making their house the largest and most ostentatiously decorated in the city,

the owners of the contemporary—but much more modest—House of the Figured Cap-

itals (VII, 4, 57) put themselves on display right on the street.5 Located directly across the

street from the House of the Faun, the House of the Figured Capitals is half its width and

less than half its depth, about 800 square meters in size. Although we do not know their

names or precise social status, the relatively small size of their house and its lack of costly

elements—figural mosaic insets, marble colonnades, and statues—indicates that the own-

ers were people of moderate means.6 The facade of their house, like that of all the houses

built in this period (about 120 b.c.), is a sober one, consisting of rows of carefully carved

tufa blocks. Yet the capitals that top the piers framing the entrance to their house present

anything but sobriety: they represent the owners enjoying the pleasures of the banquet

in the company of Satyrs and Maenads.

PU T T I N G Y OUR B E S T F A C E F O RWARD • 247

The artist set up both visual and ideological correspondences between the realm of

the mythical devotees of Dionysus and that of the owners. On the side of each capital

viewed from the street (the north side) a viewer saw a bearded, drunken Satyr and a Mae-

nad. On the left capital a Satyr dressed with only a lion skin over his shoulders reaches

for a Maenad’s right arm: her hair flies wildly around her face and her brief tunic slips

oª her right shoulder (fig. 142). She is in the act of turning toward the Satyr, who fixes

her with a drunken stare. The pursuit of wine and sex continues on the right-hand capi-

tal (fig. 143). It is another Maenad-Satyr pair, and to signal the Satyr’s state the artist has

him holding his crooked right arm over his ivy-wreathed head—a pose signaling sexual

readiness or erotic repose.7 He clutches a wineskin in the crook of his left arm. Although

his companion’s upright pose indicates alertness, she too wears a wreath in her hair, and

her thin garment has slipped down her shoulder.

By moving from the street sides to the vestibule sides of both capitals, a viewer would

have been able to compare the dissolute world of these Dionysian demigods with the more

staid partying of two human couples. The inner side of the left-hand capital has suªered

significant losses, so that only the outlines of the woman’s head remain (fig. 144). She is

turning toward the man and reaches around his neck to rest her left hand on his left shoul-

der. Although he looks away from her, he grasps her right hand in his left. Opposite them,

on the right side of the vestibule, is the capital that seems to represent the owner and his

wife (fig. 145). Here the matron of the house looks out at the viewer standing in the

vestibule, raising her right arm in a gesture of greeting, the visual equivalent of the word

have—“Hello”—that we find on sidewalks in front of houses and in the pavements of


FIGURE 141

Pompeii. Plan showing distribution of expensive houses (in black) in the second century b.c.

FIGURE 142

Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals (VII, 4, 57), east capital, north side. Satyr and Maenad

with torch.

FIGURE 143

Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, west capital, north side. Maenad and drunken Satyr.

thresholds throughout Pompeii.8 In fact, a pebble mosaic on the sidewalk in front of the

entrance to the House of the Faun, just across the street, spells out have. Such greetings

at entryways were necessary to ensure the visitor’s good luck as he passed from the realm

protected by the city gods and into the house, under the dual protection of the household

gods and the owner himself.9 In this context, the image of the owner’s wife greeting the

visitor takes on special meaning. It is a way of fulfilling her duty to greet the visitor while

protecting him from harm, and it fits with the many novel schemes for surprising some-

one entering a house’s vestibule and the fauces—the deep tunnel-like space leading into

the atrium.10

Dress as well as gesture distinguishes the materfamilias. Unlike the Maenads, she wears

a short-sleeved tunic and has her veil pulled modestly over her head. If the Maenads and

Satyrs on the street sides of the two capitals look at each other drunkenly and with de-

sire, the woman of the house looks out soberly toward her guests. As the Maenad on the

outer face of this capital looks at the Satyr, so the head of the house looks at his wife—a

visual parallel the astute viewer may have noticed. Like the Satyr, he wears a banqueter’s

crown on his head and is nude to the waist, but his hand on her shoulder is a gesture of

solidarity or partnership, not of sexual advance.

If the couple on the right-hand capital are the owners of the house, who are the cou-

ple on the left? They may be the owner’s heir with his wife; this oldest son, although cur-

rently under the power of the his father, would assume his duties at his father’s death.

Another plausible alternative is that the couple represent guests—following the hosts in

celebrating the pleasures of the Dionysian banquet.

A viewer looking at these capitals in 120 b.c., when they were freshly carved, would

have spoken Oscan and Greek—not Latin—and would have felt at home with the Hel-

lenistic culture that predominated in the area, thanks to trade and conquest.11 Despite

the fact that the Romans had by then brought the Mediterranean under their control, many

of them were still resisting the luxurious lifestyle that the successors of Alexander the

Great had cultivated in centers like Pergamon and Alexandria. We read in Athenaeus of

the splendid banquets and pageants in Ptolemaic Alexandria that featured Dionysus and

his retinue; yet at Rome the many elites avoided such excesses—or avoided admitting to

them.12Oscan Pompeii, on the other hand, riding on a wave of prosperity that came from

successful trade with these very areas of the Mediterranean, had no such scruples. The

owners of the House of the Figured Capitals addressed viewers who, like themselves, saw

in the wine-drinking party a way to make some part of that world of luxuria (the Greek

tryphe) their own. By placing themselves visually in Dionysus’s retinue they announced

to all that they valued and embraced the luxury of the banquet, one of the pleasures that

money could buy. The use of self-portraits in the capitals anticipates their use in the paint-

ings of the owner and his friends that decorated the House of the Triclinium (see plates

21 and 22, and fig. 140). Yet the contrast between the abandon of the Satyrs and Maenads

with their own controlled poses told the viewer that the owners’ revelry was of a diªer-

ent sort, a sophisticated hospitality with rational limits. In its contrasts between the world


FIGURE 144

Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, east capital, west side. Woman and man at banquet.

FIGURE 145

Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, west capital, east side. Master of the house and his wife.

of Dionysian demigods and that of its the real-life owners, the entry to the House of the

Figured Capitals sent mixed messages in a way that betrayed the owners’ tentative em-

brace of Hellenistic culture. They were not Romans, nor were they Hellenistic Greeks.

Their self-representation to passersby expresses this cultural diªerence, and veers widely

from the use of portrait images in elite Roman practice.

ELITE DOMESTIC DISPLAY: THE IUS IMAGINUM

For elite Romans, display of portraits of ancestors was not just a choice but a right and a

duty: the ius imaginum, literally the “right of images.”13 The historian Polybius, a Greek

who lived with the family of Scipio Aemilianus between 166 and 149 b.c., wrote with fas-

cination about the customs of elite Romans. In particular, his description of funeral rites

demonstrated the importance of images—wax masks of illustrious family members—in

the cultural formation of young men:

After the burial and all the usual ceremonies have been performed, they place the likeness

of the deceased in the most conspicuous spot in his house, surmounted by a wooden canopy

or shrine. This likeness consists of a mask made to represent the deceased with extraordi-

nary fidelity both in shape and color. These likenesses they display at public sacrifices

adorned with much care. And when any illustrious member of the family dies, they carry

these masks to the funeral, putting them on men whom they thought as like the originals

as possible in height and other personal peculiarities. And these substitutes assume clothes

according to the rank of the person represented: if he was a consul or praetor, a toga with

purple stripes; if a censor, whole purple; if he had also celebrated a triumph or performed

any exploit of that kind, a toga embroidered with gold. These representatives also ride them-

selves in chariots, while the fasces and axes, and all the other customary insignia of the

particular o‹ces, lead the way, according to the dignity of the rank in the state enjoyed by

the deceased in his lifetime; and on arriving at the Rostra they all take their seats on ivory

chairs in their order. There could not easily be a more inspiring spectacle than this for a

young man of noble ambitions and virtuous aspirations. For can we conceive any one to

be unmoved at the sight of all the likenesses collected together of the men who have earned

glory, all as it were living and breathing? Or what could be a more glorious spectacle?14

If Polybius’ description of how Romans used the masks seems strange to us, it is be-

cause most of us do not share their belief in the power of the portrait e‹gy to evoke the

spirits of the dead and—more important—to get them to help the living. The wax death-

masks, displayed in the atrium, constituted both a proclamation of the longevity of the

gens or clan and a projection of its continuity.15

For elite Romans, portraiture in marble and bronze were substituted for the original

death-masks as a gens expanded; scholars repeatedly cite the so-called Barberini Togatus,

a statue of a man in a toga holding the portrait busts of his father and grandfather, to

drive home this point.16 The problem is that both are busts rather than wax masks.17 Pre-


dictably, excavations have yielded no secure traces of the wax imagines, since both the masks

themselves and their supports were made of perishable materials: wax and wood. Maiuri

claimed to have found the impressions of two busts in his excavations of the House of

the Menander at Pompeii (fig. 146).18 Finding hollows in the volcanic material, he poured

plaster-of-Paris into the cavities. The casts that emerged were clearly two Lares, and—

less clearly—two miniature busts. His explanation of their diminutive size—that repeated

copying resulted in ever-smaller masks—is hardly logical. As Harriet Flower has recently

demonstrated, the best evidence for elite display of ancestor portraits comes from analy-

sis of the literature, especially Pliny’s references to the entrance and the reception areas

of the Roman house.19 There a viewer would find the wax face masks kept in cupboards

in the atrium, portraits painted on the wall or on a panel as part of a family tree, images

of famous ancestors with trophies located around the entrance to the house, and shield

portraits, the so-called imagines clipeatae.20

But we are concerned with non-elite Romans’ self-representation in the home. We saw

that the Oscan owners of the House of the Figured Capitals, as relative outsiders to Ro-

man elite culture, chose an unusual form of self-representation to announce their values

to passersby and visitors. Looking for portraits of ordinary Romans takes us back to Pom-

peii, but in the city’s last decades, when it was fully Romanized. As we might expect, both


FIGURE 146

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), lararium 25, west wall.

Shrine to ancestors and Lares.

the types of portraits and the circumstances surrounding their display are quite diªerent

from their counterparts among the elite. It seems that the only limits on self-represen-

tation in the homes of ordinary Pompeians were the imagination of the owner and his

ability to pay the picture-painter’s fees.

MORAL LESSONS FOR CHILDREN:

THE HOUSE OF MARCUS LUCRETIUS FRONTO (V, 4, A)

Two portraits of children in the house of the aedile Marcus Lucretius Fronto, a boy and a

girl at about age ten, have provoked a great deal of speculation among scholars (figs. 147

and 148).21 Most recently, Willem J. Th. Peters and Eric Moormann, in their definitive

publication of the house, proposed that the two little round pictures represent Lucretius

Fronto’s deceased children.22 The portraits are on opposite sides of the entrance to room

i, the girl to the right as someone enters, the boy to the left (fig. 149). But they are not the

principal images in this long, narrow room. Two figural paintings of some complexity

adorn the long left (north) and right (south) wall. Once a viewer had taken them in and

deciphered them, she would have seen the children on her way out.

Even though we know the identity of the owner who commissioned the Fourth Style

decoration in this house, it sheds little light on the purposes of the portraits or the iden-

tity of the sitters. The fact that Lucretius Fronto was a candidate for public o‹ces should

perhaps disqualify the paintings from consideration in this book about ordinary people.23

Yet the fact that the house itself is quite small and modest in its furnishings and the clar-

ity of the context surrounding these unique paintings of children tempt me to think fur-

ther about what meaning they might have had for contemporary viewers.

In Houses of Roman Italy I followed an idea first put forth by Mariette de Vos, that room

i, at the right flank of the house’s elegant Third Style tablinum, was a cubiculum, or bed-

room, for the children. I proposed a reading of the whole painting program as a “moral

lesson” for the children who slept there.24 De Kind, who first suggested that the portraits

represented dead children, has pointed out that the boy is dressed as the god Mercury,

with the attributes of traveling hat (petasus) and wand (caduceus).Mercury is the god who

escorts the dead to the underworld. De Kind also proposes that the tondo, or roundel form,

carries funerary meanings. Further, the room’s location, just to the right of the tablinum,

suggests a space that is formal, like the tablinum, and perhaps commemorative.25 Against

this interpretation is the fact that, in houses, Mercury always appears as the god of com-

merce and financial prosperity—not of death. What is more, why would an o‹cial of even

moderate wealth commemorate his dead children in so cheap a medium—and in such

an informal way—as in the frescoed decoration of a room? Far more appropriate would

be marble or bronze busts; add to this the fact that there are no precedents for com-

memorating deceased children in Roman houses.

When Roman children do appear in a civic, as opposed to a tomb setting, they always

participate in religious or state programs. We considered briefly the children of Augustus’s


FIGURE 148

Pompeii, House of Lucretius

Fronto, room c, west wall,

south part. Portrait of a girl.

FIGURE 147


Fronto, room c, west wall,

north part. Portrait of a boy in

the dress of Mercury.

family on the Ara Pacis, where they walked in procession with their parents and relatives

to celebrate the dedication of the altar (see fig. 5). A viewer understood how their pres-

ence expressed their education in the virtue of piety (pietas)—and therefore provided an

example for all citizens to emulate in raising their own children. The children also stood

for the continuity of the de facto dynasty that Augustus had founded and wanted to pro-

mote. Their bodies carried the blood and seed for future Julio-Claudian emperors, priests

and priestesses, senators, generals, and matrons. Just as the images implied that Augustus

and Livia, contrary to fact, were fertile, so the citizen body should produce new Romans

to carry on the Republic.

The children represented on the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum provide an excellent

response to the Ara Pacis even while they update imperial propaganda about children.

The arch dates to a.d. 118 and commemorates Trajan’s victories over the Parthians. Bene-

ventum lies along the road that took the Roman armies across the mountains from near

Naples to the great harbor at Brindisium. In her recent article, Sarah Currie’s explana-

tion of why Trajan represented children on this triumphal arch parallels my own reasoning

about why he emphasized barbarians in the Forum and on his Column. She points out

that the growth of human beings was essential to an Empire, and that just as barbarians

became slaves, loyal subjects, and citizens, so children were to grow up to be good citi-

zens and soldiers. On the Arch at Beneventum, the images of children—male and fe-

male, slave and free, Italian and barbarian—constituted a visual expression of the impe-

rial process: “The child’s body upon Trajan’s arch was fashioned to convey a wildly idealized

conception of empire. It was one which demanded for its fulfillment, through feeding

and disciplining, the molding of real children’s bodies.”26


FIGURE 149

Pompeii, plan of House of Lucretius Fronto (V, 4, a).

Even though temporally distant, the images of children on the Ara Pacis and the Arch

of Trajan at Beneventum are bearers of meanings that go beyond recording specific events

or o‹cial acts. Do the children’s portraits in Lucretius Fronto’s house carry similar ideo-

logical freight? Dating to about a.d. 70, they occupy a period between the two imperial

monuments, but more importantly they addressed a select audience: Lucretius Fronto’s

family, friends, and perhaps an occasional client. Among family members there may

have been the viewers who would have identified most with these unique portraits: chil-

dren. Whether they were children who recognized, with delight, their own features in

the little boy and girl, or whether they saw there relatives who had died, it is worthwhile

following the process a ten-year-old viewer might go through in taking in the room’s

imagery.

A child of this age would certainly know the myth of Narcissus, depicted in an inept

but serviceable painting on the room’s left wall (fig. 150). Here was a youth who, spurn-

ing the love of the beautiful nymph, Echo, fell in love with himself, stupidly believing that

the image he saw in the water’s reflection was another beautiful boy. He died, pining away

for an illusion. The child’s nurse or mother may have recounted the tale in one of the ver-

sions in circulation at the time—perhaps that of Ovid. The moral of the story was clear:

vanity kills.

Our same child viewer might have considerably more trouble with the painting op-

posite Narcissus (fig. 151).27 For one thing, the story was more complex: a daughter visit-

ing her father, condemned to starve to death in prison, overcomes her sense of shame to

feed him from her own breast. For another, the written Latin verses on the painting might

have caused some di‹culties for a ten-year old:

Quae parvis mater natis alimenta parabat

fortuna in patrios vertit iniqua cibos.

Aevo dignum opus est. Tenui cervice seniles

asp[ice, ia]m ut venae lacte me[ante micant.

Admoto]q[ue] simul voltu fri(ca)t ipsa Miconem

Pero: tristis inest cum pietate pudor.

What food the mother was accustomed to oªer to her newborns,

unkind Fortune turned to food for her father.

It is a task fit for eternity. Look how the slender veins

of the old man’s neck grow large with the flow of milk.

Pero herself draws her face close to Micon and caresses him:

a sad sense of shame together with piety is present (in this picture).28

But di‹culties aside, the message was a clear one, and as appropriate for a child as

the tale of Narcissus. Filial piety—love and sacrifice for your parents—surpassed all other

virtues. Leaving the room after taking in these appropriate, if somewhat heavy-handed,

messages, a little girl would see two children fixed there within the paint on the walls.


FIGURE 150


Fronto, room c, north wall,

center picture. Narcissus

contemplating his own

reflection.

FIGURE 151


Fronto, room c, south wall,

center picture. Pero and

Micon.

Their bright faces communicated health and security just as their gazes returned hers.

If not a moral lesson, what else?

For an adult viewer—even one of the very children depicted on the walls, now grown

up—the room’s painted imagery projected the patron’s values. Marcus Lucretius Fronto,

who held the important o‹ce of five-year duumvir (duumvir quinquennalis) in the years

73–79, belonged to a family steeped in the values espoused by Augustus; it seems that

the Lucretii were among the families that the Emperor himself installed in Pompeii dur-

ing his reign to expedite his political and cultural reforms in the colony.29 Central to Au-

gustus’s program was, as we have seen, the promulgation of Republican virtues—

especially as they related to the family and the rearing of children.30Would a viewer have

seen in this room a somewhat heavy-handed, if not old-fashioned, version of that old

propaganda; or a new variation reflecting the neo-Republicanism of the Flavian emperors

(a.d. 69–96)? We will never know for sure, but the idea is tantalizing, since it connects

us in a unique way with a highly original—and utterly Roman—conception of childhood

and virtue.

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR MAGISTRACY:

THE BREAD DOLE SCENE IN VII , 3, 30

The owner of the little house at VII, 3, 30, rather than having the artist paint portraits of

himself or his family, chose a painting that showed him carrying out an act of public

munificence. Like the patron of the Riot in the Amphitheater picture, he had a modest mo-

ment of glory, and wished to commemorate it forever with a painting (plate 23).31 The

subjects of the two paintings could not be more diªerent, however. For the member of

the fanclub, the moment was one of defiant civil disobedience; for the owner of the house

at VII, 3, 30, it was an event that represented the utmost he could do to win the respect

of his peers: when he was able to provide bread for all Pompeii.

The first description of the picture, in 1864, identified the subject as a breadseller.32

Thereafter the painting (cut out and removed to the Naples museum) illustrated many a

survey on everyday life, supposedly showing how a baker went about selling bread. Re-

cently scholars have questioned this identification, noting how every detail—from the

original location of the painting to the composition itself and the clothing and gestures

of the protagonists—suggests that the painting commemorates a special occasion rather

than recording the banal commonplace of buying bread.33

As the plan reveals, the painting came from a modest house with just the essential

spaces; there is, for example, no peristyle (fig. 152). A visitor entering the house through

the fauces (a)would proceed through the atrium to the small but deep tablinum (e). Lack

of space for proper corridors to either side of the tablinum meant that it was also a pas-

sageway space to the little garden at k and to the adjoining storage room at i, which was

found complete with the remains of little cabinets. The Bread Dole, then, had to grace the

tablinum’s only continuous wall, the left one.


The rest of the house’s decoration, now mostly gone, dates to the last decades of Pom-

peii’s life: it is a rather bland version of the Fourth Style—all the more reason for the

owner to commission this very special picture as the centerpiece of the tablinum’s banal

yellow-ground decoration.

The painting’s composition emphasizes the diªerences between giver and receivers

in several ways. Unlike scenes of sales where the counter allows direct exchange between

buyer and seller, as in the relief of a saleswoman from Ostia (see fig. 69), here the artist

fashioned a “dole station” in perspective. It provides plenty of space to show the abun-

dance of bread and to separate the donor from the group of two men and a boy in the

lower left corner of the picture. Vertical wooden posts and horizontal boards make up the

substantial stand, looking much like the platform (suggestus) in the Tomb of Vestorius

Priscus (see fig. 109). The artist shows the details of its construction, including the nails

that hold the boards in place and the edges of the high shelf behind. Big loaves of bread—

just like those found, carbonized, at Herculaneum and Pompeii—fill the counter and the

shelves. A basket with small buns sits to the magistrate’s right.

Clothing, too, diªerentiates giver and receivers. It is not clear whether the man above

is wearing a toga, but the contrast between his white, full-cut garment and the dark-colored

clothing of the two men and the boy below is clear. The two men receiving bread wear

dark tunics with hoods—much like those of Verecundus’s wool combers (see fig. 60),

and the boy who turns to them with both arms dramatically raised wears a similar, slightly

shorter garment. The only color accent is a yellow cape draped over the shoulders of one

of the men.

Gestures also emphasize the importance of the scene—at least for the man giving out

the bread. He is seated, calm but intent on reaching toward the man with the yellow cape.

In contrast to the boy’s seeming agitation (jubilation?), the artist gave the man reaching

high up for the bread an especially solid stance, feet together and bearded head turned

in full profile.


FIGURE 152


Baker (VII, 3, 30).

This, then, is what we can know from the painting. The house tells us a little more. It

is too modest to be that of an elite citizen of Pompeii. We should not be fooled by the

man’s white robes or his seated position to think that he belonged to the decurion class

and that he is an aedile. The most likely scenario is that he was a bread baker who at a

prosperous moment in his life decided to give free bread to the populace. Although this

might have been a step toward running for a minor o‹ce at Pompeii, nothing in the man’s

house indicates that he achieved any o‹ce.

What might have been a viewer’s reaction to this painting? The small size of the house

makes it unlikely that the owner had extensive business interests. He would not have

needed to meet daily with the people who worked for him (in the ritual of salutatio). Vis-

itors would have been people of his own relatively modest social status, and perhaps em-

ployees and slaves who worked in his bakery. A social equal might remember the special

occasion when the owner doled out bread to the people of Pompeii. He might flatter his

host on the artist’s accurate rendering of the details of the wooden structure (perhaps one

that his friends helped him to build) and the correctness of the man’s features. Perhaps

the owner had the artist also paint the features of friends he knew in the three recipients.

Recognition of people, setting, and the specific event were central to the painting’s suc-

cessful eªect on a man or woman who knew the owner. And the artist adjusted perspective,

gestures, and composition to enhance this kind of recognition.34 Proudly displayed in his

little house, the painting records a deed that enhanced his social status and revealed, per-

haps, his hopes for greater prestige in the future.

THE BAKER, HIS WIFE, AND THE BAKERY

In their search for realistic portraits of ancient Romans, scholars have repeatedly returned

to the remarkable painting from the house at VII, 2, 6 (plate 24). It is unique for several

reasons. Nearly all of the portraits preserved from antiquity are sculptures, and when we

do find paintings that seem to be portraits, analysis usually reveals that they are stock

types, idealized to the point of erasing individual traits.35 Not so with this arresting im-

age of a man and his wife, gazing intently at the viewer while they hold emblems of their

literacy and learning: she a two-leaved writing tablet spread with wax (diptych) and a sty-

lus to write on it; he a scroll (rotulus) with a red seal. The realistic—even unflattering—

rendering of their features suggests that they are specific individuals. Archaeological

evidence demonstrates that a specialist painter executed this portrait in the last years

of Pompeii to adorn the best room of the living quarters within a bakery complex.

The owner carried out substantial structural modifications to an earlier house that oc-

cupied the southeast corner of the block; he installed a bakery in the largest part but re-

served a portion for a small dwelling that communicated directly with the bakery (fig. 153).36

The street entrance is at number 6, leading to a large vestibule (a), fashioned out of a

former streetside shop; and the vestibule opens into the atrium (b). The atrium could

also be reached from the bakery (entered at 3 and comprising rooms a through s) by the


corridor m. Small rooms on the north side of the atrium became reception spaces, and it

is in the central one of these, room g, that the patrons instructed the artist to paint their

portrait. It is significant that this location is directly opposite the corridor m rather than

facing the entry at a: it seems that the owners wanted people coming in from the bakery

area to see it. For over a century scholars have incorrectly called this little room a tablinum,

that is, a space where the paterfamilias received clients—even though its orientation and

size are wrong for this purpose.37

Much scholarly debate has surrounded the identification of the sitters. Giulio De Pe-

tra, who excavated the house in 1868, identified them as the aedile Paquius Proculus and

his wife, on the basis of electoral slogans found on one of the exterior walls.38 In 1926

Della Corte reanalyzed the gra‹ti and slogans, inventing two brothers belonging to the

gens Terentia, one a bread baker (pistor) and the other a lawyer (studiosus).39 It is the lawyer,

he suggests, that we see in the portrait, appropriately dressed in the toga and holding a

scroll. Unfortunately, Della Corte’s identification does not hold up to scrutiny; although

the identification of the sitters as “Terentius Neo and his wife” has entered the literature,

the designation is entirely conventional.40 The most reliable information comes not from

analysis of gra‹ti and electoral slogans, but from analysis of the picture itself in its orig-

inal context.

There was considerable industrial activity in the neighborhood. In addition to the bak-

ery in the southeast corner of the block, there was a large dyeworks directly to the north

of the living quarters (VII, 2, 11–12).41 Another, slightly larger pistrinum, directly across

the street to the east (at IX, 3, 10–12), may have belonged to the same baker.42 Within this

busy, noisy, and smelly environment, it would be hard to make a case for the couple’s be-


FIGURE 153


“Terentius Neo” (VII, 2, 6).

longing to Pompeii’s decurion class. Whoever the man and his wife are, the painting con-

stitutes a case of art ennobling the lives of two ordinary Pompeians.

Soft light falls from the viewer’s left on the two bust-length figures. The woman has a

distinctly oval face, turned in three-quarters view so that we see more of the right side of

her face, whereas the man’s pose is nearly frontal. The woman’s complexion is pinker and

fairer than her mate’s. She wears her hair parted in the middle and held close to her head

with a band, tiny serpentine curls framing her forehead and cheeks, and a few curls de-

scending down her neck. Bushy eyebrows arc in two strong curves that meet across the

bridge of her nose; they frame large brown eyes that gaze steadily to the viewer’s left. The

painter took care to represent the peculiarities of her large nose: he used highlights to

show the variations in its width—how it becomes bulbous at the end and stops quite a

bit above her full but regular lips. The artist indicated the undulations of the man’s nose

with a single wavy highlight line that flares considerably at the nostrils and stops just short

of his full lips. His head is larger, blockier, and broader than his wife’s, with eyes and eye-

brows set farther apart. His gaze meets the viewer’s straight on.

Parallel gestures connect the sitters’ heads with their literary attributes. Just as the

woman raises the stylus that she holds in her right hand to her lips, so the man grasps

the rotulus so it just touches his lightly bearded chin. He wears the white toga, a sign that

he is a citizen—either freeborn or freedman. She wears a pinkish-red tunic and mantle.

Attempts to date these images on the basis of hairstyles have produced somewhat con-

tradictory results. The fact that the woman wears her hair in a fashion popular around

the year 50 does not mean that the painting dates from that period. For one thing, women

often kept a favorite hairstyle long after it had passed out of fashion in imperial or elite

circles. For another, it seems that the painting had just been completed around the time

of the eruption, since the decoration of the rest of the house was still in progress.43

The paintings that are closest stylistically are the Egyptian portraits from the area of

the Fayum, painted in encaustic or tempera on wooden tablets to be inset over the face

of a mummy.44 There is no evidence that the mummy portraits saw double use, first set

up in the owner’s house, then later inset over his or her mummy. Only one Fayum por-

trait created specifically for domestic display survives; it retains its original frame and is

too small to have served as a mummy portrait.45 Domestic display is clearly the purpose

of the portrait of Terentius Neo and his wife: they had the artist paint their likenesses in

true fresco directly and permanently on the wall. Yet the Fayum portraits and that of our

Pompeians have in common their frontal poses, their direct gaze at the viewer, and their

attention to physiognomic peculiarities and details of hairstyle. Rather than making their

subjects into fashionable reflections of court portraits—idealized minor gods and

goddesses—the Fayum artists paid attention to details that belong only to the sitter. The

patrons’ desire to be recognized—even with their imperfections—tells us that they val-

ued their diªerences from prevailing ideals of masculine and feminine beauty, and that

recording these diªerences forever was more important than looking like the elite.

The only portrait from Pompeii to convey the same kind of attention to non-ideal traits


of a person’s face is much earlier. It was found set into the pavement of a little room in a

tavern—probably not its original setting (fig. 154).46 It is, like the mosaics found in the

House of the Faun, made of tiny tesserae imitating brushstrokes. Like the portrait of Te-

rentius Neo and his wife, the mosaic, executed around 100 b.c., must be a portrait of a

specific individual: note the irregularity of the woman’s features and the attention to un-

usual details of her face and jewelry. Specialized mosaicists made this little mosaic to or-

der for a patron, laying out the tiny tesserae on a terracotta tray. The owner then had it

set into a floor paved in much larger mosaic tesserae. In its original setting, probably in

a reception space in the owner’s house, the woman’s portrait would clearly have been

that of his wife (perhaps deceased) or an important female ancestor. By the time the tav-

ern owner acquired it, 150 years after its creation, he used it as a centerpiece set into the

best pavement in his establishment—a cut-marble floor. Viewers must have wondered,

as they contemplated this finely crafted relic from the past, about the identity of the sit-

ter. They had in all likelihood no firmer answers than we do: it had become a collector’s

item and a conversation piece, admired for its technique but no longer a portrait of any-

one the viewers knew.

The case was quite diªerent with the double portrait on its wall in the house at VII, 2,

6. Given the layout of their little house, with its special passageway to the bakery, it seems

obvious that the sitters were the owners of the bakery. Someone coming into the house

from the street entry at 6 would enter the atrium, and see ahead of her the triclinium

with its adjacent kitchen. Only by turning to the right would she see the trio of small rooms,

with room g, dominated by the double portrait, in the middle. Yet someone coming in

from the corridor m emerged into the atrium directly facing room g, and as he drew nearer

the room, Terentius and his wife fixed him with their gazes (fig. 155). The privileged view,

then, is the one from the bakery corridor, suggesting that the owners of the bakery put

special stock in addressing the bakery’s slaves, employees, and clients with their double

portrait.

The original painting ensemble on the wall that held the portrait communicated two

very diªerent kinds of messages to the viewer: one concerns the couple’s status, the other

their mutual aªection. Looking at the portrait itself, it is immediately evident that Te-

rentius Neo and his wife wished a viewer to understand that they knew how to read and

write: he holds a rotulus; she seems to be musing on what her stylus will put down next

on her diptych—she is in the act of writing. Scholars have pointed out parallels with other,

ideal portraits that show the protagonist in the act of writing or painting and have ques-

tioned whether the couple were in fact literate or whether they simply wanted to elevate

themselves through art. Again, it is impossible to know. Della Corte’s overly optimistic

reading makes Terentius Neo into nothing less than a lawyer; Ward-Perkins’s pessimistic

reading makes him and his wife into pretentious, illiterate commoners.47 What is sure

is that the couple valued literacy and instructed the artist to encode reading and writing

into their image.


FIGURE 154

Pompeii, House VI, 15, 14,

mosaic emblema. Portrait of a

woman.

FIGURE 155

Pompeii, House of “Terentius

Neo,” view of room g through

corridor m.

The other message—their mutual love for each other—they expressed in the picture

above their portrait. It is an unusual image of Amor and Psyche, now removed to the

Naples Museum but originally located directly above the portrait in the wall’s upper zone

(fig. 156). This celebrated couple, the divine son of Venus and the most beautiful mortal

girl, are locked in a passionate embrace. Psyche, after her long trials, has achieved im-

mortality; Jupiter in his wisdom has given her the nectar of the gods and has wed her to

Amor.48 Psyche’s butterfly wings signify her divine status, the counterpart of Amor’s bird

wings. Yet to achieve this passionate embrace and kiss, the artist had to stretch his mod-

est talents. Amor sits on a rock at the center of a deep window defined by a coªered ceil-

ing above. Although the artist had plenty of ready-made models for seated figures, he was

hard put to find one for Psyche. For her, he adapted a cartoon for a flying female figure

(a ubiquitous image in Fourth Style decorations). Both the charms and the incongruities

of the artist’s adaptation are evident: Psyche’s drapery still flies even though she is sup-

posed to be at rest, her body hardly fits into her lover’s embrace, and her legs dangle into

space.


FIGURE 156

Pompeii, House of “Terentius Neo,” room g, north wall, upper zone, center.

Amor and Psyche.

More important, we see the patrons’ insistence on this particular image, aligned with

their own. If the double portrait communicates the couple’s equality and solidarity in in-

tellectual or poetic pursuits, it is because the artist has coupled realism with revealing

attributes. And if the image of Amor and Psyche tells a viewer anything further about the

baker and his wife, it is clear that the moment in the myth that the patrons chose to por-

tray communicates their own passion for each other—and perhaps their wish to have

that love go on forever.

The location of the paintings invites speculation about the gaze—in two directions.

On the one hand, the baker and his wife are looking both at the viewer and to the corri-

dor leading to their bakery. If their attitudes are those of the learned reader and writer,

their gaze is a proprietary one—the gaze of owners surveying their domain. The other

gaze is that of the viewers. Since the painting’s location suggests that the principal view-

ers were workers in the bakery and ordinary people who bought baked goods, it is worth

speculating about the messages the painting might have conveyed. For slaves or freeborn

workers, the portrait of the baker and his wife pointed to their own potential success as

owners of a similar establishment. They saw a double portrait representing their employers

removed from the noise and toil of the bakery, enjoying the calm, refined activities of

reading and writing.

In these examples of self-representation in the home, all from Pompeii, we see, above all,

individual patrons ordering nonstandard imagery to communicate specific messages to

viewers. As we saw in the previous chapter, some Pompeians turned away from ideal,

Greek-style representations of the banquet in favor of paintings that showed just what

they looked like and how they behaved at their parties. None of the images we have looked

at qualifies as a masterpiece, yet all of them remain intriguing because they reveal so much

about the people who proudly placed them in their homes. They also tell us that ordinary

artists were able to invent extraordinarily original portraits. Whether of bread-giver or baker,

child Mercury or matron at the banquet, these portraits give us a vivid sense of individ-

ual people proclaiming their identities and values in a way that elite representations—

bound as they are by the conventions of imperial portraiture—rarely do.

Accidents of preservation have blocked us moderns from knowing how the kinds of

non-elite self-representation we have seen in houses at Pompeii developed and changed

in the centuries after the eruption of Vesuvius. As it turns out, most of the art that sur-

vives in Roman Italy consists of portrait busts and mosaics found in houses of individu-

als belonging to the upper strata. These works of art tell us how elite people formed and

modified their images over time—inevitably in accord with Imperial models—whereas

the houses and apartments of ordinary people at Rome and Ostia have yielded few in-

stances of self-representation that we can securely tie to non-elite patrons and viewers.

We can only extrapolate from the much more richly documented areas of public life that

we have looked at in part 2 to imagine that, for their homes, ordinary people continued

to commission artists to show them as they wished their peers, friends, and guests to see


them. I believe that these lost images had little to do with mimicking idealized Imperial

forms; their aim was to create likenesses of the patron and his friends and in recording

events in his life.49 It was an art of life as lived by real people.

Emperors dominated the public monuments we considered in part 1, and it was only

by considering how non-elites might have read these monuments that we could trace their

presence there. By contrast, the representations commissioned by ordinary Romans for

public spaces—their places of work, their taverns, and their tombs—focus on themselves,

their activities, and their favorite gods and goddesses. This sense of ownership of imagery

comes through even more clearly in the representations we have seen in their houses.

Perhaps the quintessential expression of the spirit of non-elite representation is the im-

age of Terentius Neo and his wife greeting their guests while gazing appreciatively down

the corridor to the source of their new-found stature: their bakery. The painting is a haunt-

ing image that reminds us how art never imitates life. It tries to create life.


CONCLUSIONS

VISUAL REPRESENTATION AND NON-ELITE ACCULTURATION

The premise of this book is that analysis of visual representation in context can help re-

veal the tastes, beliefs, attitudes, desires—in a word, the culture—of ordinary Romans.

To situate ordinary Romans within elite culture, we first looked at how four imperial mon-

uments in Rome represented (or failed to represent) non-elites, including the freeborn

poor, noncitizens in the army, foreigners (peregrini), and barbarians. I asked what mes-

sages ordinary viewers might have gotten from these big, image-laden complexes within

Rome’s urban fabric. Substituting non-elite viewers for the omniscient scholar-viewer, I

tried to imagine what aspects of the monuments’ imagery might have engaged them. I

based my imaginings on the assumption that viewers looking at visual representations

decipher them by seeking out the familiar: compositions, motifs, and details that they can

identify from their own experience. If Augustus’s Altar of Peace spoke to commoners in

the symbolic language of vine scrolls, allegorical figures, and foundation myths, Trajan

found a concrete way to speak to non-elite viewers. He focused much of his Forum’s im-

agery on the army and the barbarian to define a social organization that paralleled the

stratified civic structure at Rome. Imagery aimed at the non-elite included the impres-

sive architectural forms themselves as well as the specific representations of two non-

elite groups: barbarian men, women, and children; and the great variety of auxiliary troops.

269

In an age of crisis, the same story of army and barbarian suppressed the humanity of

both to emphasize Marcus Aurelius’s transcendent leadership. By the time Constantine

erected his Arch, artists had found a language that expressed a social hierarchy so rigid

that the common people literally become the little people—their social status determin-

ing their size and place in the reliefs. The style of imperial art in Rome changed in step

with the new messages to its viewers: form followed content.

In the second and third parts of the book the patron changed. Although we continued

to track the responses of non-elite viewers, it was not the emperor but ordinary individ-

uals who paid for the art. Most of the art was intimate in scale, the materials humble, the

execution routine. Yet the personalities of the patrons and the viewers emerged in as-

tounding variety. From a vast array of possible themes in the public sphere, I focused on

religion, work, spectacle, tavern-going, and burial. Here we saw ordinary Romans com-

missioning artists to create representations that featured themselves, their associates, and

their activities with great specificity.

For humble lararia as well as for shop facades, patrons hired sculptors and painters

to show just how they worshiped: what they, their families, and their friends looked like—

sacrificing to the lares, celebrating Cybele and Venus, carrying their gods through the

streets in religious pageants. Although artists relied on established compositions for scenes

of sacrifice, the patrons insisted on showing the particulars of their religious observance.

These images put a face on religion, revealing its pervasiveness in people’s lives, and often

showing how far it veered from the rites of the state; in contrast to the endlessly repeated

stock scenes found in the images of the state religion, these modest paintings were any-

thing but standard.

Images of work revealed how ordinary people, whether free, freed, or still slaves, took

pride in the professions that gave them a special identity. Why else go to the trouble to

show all the steps of the fulling process, or the mechanics of felt-making—especially when

you put yourself in the picture, as did Verecundus and his wife? Or the various tasks that

grain measurers carried out? “We do this work, and here we are” the inscriptions tell us.

Even in tombs, pride in the work that bought you your freedom—and earned you enough

money to have a fine monument—often meant showing a viewer just what you did or

the products you made.

Representations connected with spectacles and tavern-going gave us a glimpse of how

the lower strata enjoyed their leisure. Public shows both emphasized social diªerences

and created spaces of transgression. Even wall paintings derived from theater sets en-

coded enthusiasms as well as anxieties about viewing and being viewed. For a rich augus-

talis like Storax, putting on the games was his life’s greatest accomplishment—so much

so that he went to enormous expense not only to get a sculptor to represent this moment

but also to cram it with as many details as possible. No holding back here. The same will-

ful exuberance about the games—and about “making history”—inspired a Pompeian fan

to put the almost perverse painting of the riot of a.d. 59 into his peristyle.

270 • CONC LU S I O N S

The notion of overturning expectations—especially those of the ruling elite—

constitutes an important theme, whether we find it in paintings that decorate houses or

taverns. In houses the representations break the rules governing behavior at theatrical

and amphitheatrical spectacle. In taverns the kinds of upset range more widely, from

ordinary men fighting over dice to Sages holding forth about shitting and farting. Com-

mon to all these visual representations is the way they encode what ordinary viewers

knew or thought they knew about proper behavior. These paintings made the viewers

laugh by showing improper behavior toward their proper subjects—showing philoso-

phers in the scaenae frons, spectators brawling in the amphitheater, the Sages holding

forth about defecation.

LITERACY AND THE LOWER STRATA

But in the tavern paintings it was not just visual representation that induced laughter, it

was also textual representation. With the tavern paintings a new theme came to the fore:

how written language figured in the lives of non-elites. This theme surfaced with equal

intensity in the case studies of tombs and those of the banquet, for everywhere we looked,

we found writing. Were our ordinary Romans literate? If they were not, they would not

have gotten the jokes in these humble taverns; they would have found little to interest

them in the profuse tangle of names and relationships on the streets of tombs; they would

have been excluded from the fun of the banquet room. And if they were illiterate, why

would they have paid an artist to create such complex things to read?

Someone unable to read could have gotten half of the humor in the Caupona of Salvius

just from looking at the pictures, but he would have gotten quite lost with the elaborate

written jokes in the Caupona of the Seven Sages. The relatively complex two-line verses

in the humble House of the Moralist pointed to rather astute readers—people comfort-

able enough with the written language to make it the focus of their laughter—and also

comfortable enough to comprehend and contemplate the complex expressions of com-

memoration and grief written on tombs and sarcophagi. From this investigation it is clear

that to understand much of the art of the non-elite also meant being able to read rather

well—or at least having someone to read to you.

MULTIPLYING REFERENCES

In tombs where we knew that the patrons were from the lower strata, both texts and vi-

sual representations aided a viewer’s interpretation. Inscriptions on tombs multiplied

references by spelling out interrelationships among blood relations, freedmen and freed-

women, slaves, and friends. Burial among ordinary people was not only a way to trum-

pet one’s wealth and sophistication (real or invented), but also an opportunity to exhibit

your alliances and friendships. If Apella’s inscriptions demonstrated the breadth of this

CONC LU S I O N S • 271

inclusion, the text on Trophimas’s sarcophagus gave us a glimpse of the variety of living

and loving arrangements among three friends who were assimilated foreigners.

We also found a kind of anxiety about visual representation. On the one hand, it came

through in Mulvia Prisca’s exaggeration of her son’s accomplishments—even if the paint-

ings depicting him as an o‹cial were visible only to the family members who got to go

inside his little tomb. On the other hand, it surfaced in the multiplication of references

to the pleasures and possessions of the elite: banquets, silver services, elaborate gar-

dens, wild-animal parks. Freedmen like Apella and his heirs were happy to mix reli-

gious references with the bawdy antics of pygmies on the Nile—all in a desire to show

their sophistication.

Another multiple reference within tomb imagery is in the dual significance of the pyg-

mies’ activities. Scenes of pygmies on the Nile referred to the exotic realms conjured up

in Hellenistic genre painting (and employed liberally in the domestic sphere). But the

pygmies were also Others who performed unbecoming activities to incite laughter and

keep away evil spirits. These representations made sense only in the context of similarly

rude images that Romans placed in other dangerous spaces: the baths, street corners,

doorways, and gardens.

SELF-REPRESENTATION

In the third part of this book, I chose two aspects of visual representation in the home

that had the greatest potential for revealing the culture of ordinary people: the banquet

and portraiture. None of the images we considered fitted elite conceptions in either their

form or their presentation.

Banquet pictures in rooms where ordinary people ate and drank revealed the most

when they veered from the pattern-books. If the pictures in the House of the Chaste Lovers

used time-tested vignettes of handsome Greek revelers, the man who commissioned the

paintings in the House of the Triclinium wanted the here-and-now. He used the paint-

ings to reveal his tastes and to give us images of himself and his friends enjoying them-

selves. We even had him speaking a few lines to encourage everyone to have a good time.

The banqueting couple in the House of the Figured Capitals playfully addressed visi-

tors from high above the vestibule; the portraits of children in the House of Lucretius

Fronto surprised a viewer leaving the little cubiculum; the double portrait of Terentius

Neo and his wife greeted workers and customers coming in from their bakery. All occu-

pied unusual places in the house and avoided stereotypical, classicizing portrait styles in

an eªort to show what the sitters actually looked like.

STYLE, CONTENT, AND THE QUESTION OF “POPULAR ART”

In contrast to the “trickle-down” models espoused by many scholars, who expect freed-

men and foreigners to embrace elite models to represent themselves, the representations


we have considered stood out by virtue of their diªerences from o‹cial art in both style

and content. For example, although many former slaves chose tomb portraits that mim-

icked elite—or even imperial—models for everything from costume to facial types and

hairstyles, many others insisted on showing themselves as they were and engaging in the

work or rituals that meant most to them in life. There were choices.

If not trickle-down, then what? In introducing this book, I discussed how scholar-

ship on so-called Roman popular, plebeian, or freedman art tried to explain its anom-

alous style: How to fit nonimperial—or better, nonstandard—artforms into the history

of Roman art? This book should demonstrate how wrongheaded it is to try to under-

stand non-elite art as an expression of a particular group or class. In the end, there is

no such thing as folk, plebeian, or freedman art: there is only art at the service of ordi-

nary people who might choose standard images for their house, shop, or tomb—or might

not.1 I believe, and have used as a working premise, that artists responded to their pa-

trons’ wishes—and patrons got more or less what they wanted from the artists. If the

patron chose standard representations, the artist interpreted the existing models to the

best of his ability, as we saw in the paintings from the House of the Chaste Lovers. If

he or she chose a representation that had no specific iconographical model, the artist

invented the image, combining direct observation with stock figural types that he knew

how to execute. This was the case with most of the images considered in this book, like

the riot in the amphitheater, the scene of the bread dole, or the painting of the Sarno

lararium.

Art historians concerned with formal problems have focused on the “incorrect” aspects

of such representations: imperfect perspective, figures of diªerent scale within the same

scene, infelicities of figural proportion, frontality, and so on. To explain these character-

istics they would like to create a special category of folk, plebeian, or freedman art. I think

this study demonstrates that there is no special category within Roman art that consciously

went against the grain of Hellenistically inspired imperial art. Instead, when patrons called

upon artists of ordinary (or less-than-ordinary) skills to create an original representation,

the product often failed to look like imperial art. The fact that artists rose to the challenge

and satisfied their patrons—even with less-than-correct paintings and sculptures—

enriches us enormously, for these artworks reveal the lives of ordinary people in a way

that “correct” art cannot.

And even though the visual representations commissioned by the non-elite are often

unique, this does not mean that elites and non-elites had completely diªerent world views.

Rather, it is clear is that both elites and non-elites shared certain values that motivated

them to commission works of art. Both groups wanted to represent themselves in the pub-

lic sphere; both insisted on setting out their accomplishments in public—what the em-

peror or an elite called his res gestae. An elite man might scorn a shipbuilder, but not the

shipbuilder’s need to show what he had accomplished. Both the wealthy man and the

person of modest means attempted to gain a kind of immortality by erecting monuments

that recorded their life stories. There were shared values and anxieties in the realm of re-


ligion as well. Both elites and non-elites wished to keep on the good side of the gods. Both

emperor and felt-maker believed that divine forces surrounded them, and that it was pru-

dent to honor them and to appease them.

In my introduction, I pointed out that scholars had begun to research the “other 98

percent of Roman society.” This book has taken some steps to recover, through the study

of visual representation, the histories and identities of part of that 98 percent. But it can-

not account for the majority of Rome’s non-elite population. All of the monuments I

have considered in this book come from cities and towns, commissioned by people who

had financial means—however great or meager—to commission works of art. Yet we

know that a large part of the total population were not townspeople but rural folk en-

gaged in subsistence agriculture. In relation to rural folk, the city-dwelling non-elites

lived in relative wealth; although outside the true and traditional elite, they were still

among the wealthier in a society composed primarily of peasant farmers. The dual con-

ditions of being city-dwellers and possessing a modicum of wealth might account for

the shared values that come through in some of the non-elite visual representations I

have considered.

JUST LIKE US?

Study of Roman art and culture is undergoing a sea-change. It stems from curiosity about

the other Romans—the ones excluded from elite circles by reason of birth, prestige, or

money; the ones who are silent because they wrote no literature; the ones historically mar-

ginalized because scholars have wanted to create a “better” Rome—populated by emperors

and senators who were acceptable models. Perhaps our curiosity about these silent and

previously invisible Romans comes from the realization that the historian must recog-

nize, rather than erase, complexity and contradiction.

In the introduction I explained why the ancient Romans were not just like us, and the

variety of Roman people we have come to know through their art elucidates this theme.

At this point, however, I can turn this statement around: if we understand the ancient

Romans in all their diversity—of ethnicity, social standing, religious beliefs, language,

and so on—they are like us in many ways. As a result of imperialism’s success, all Ro-

mans had to negotiate an increasingly complex cultural environment. Despite the ap-

pearance of social homogeneity that legal, military, and economic institutions projected,

the reality was one of people of highly diverse cultural formation learning to live together

in spite of their deep diªerences.

Today, financial and cultural imperialism has created a similar set of contradictions.

Rapid communication, rather than creating an “ideal” homogeneity, has given voice and

image—nationally and globally—to the infinite variety of human diªerences. No single

model of family, belief, or governance can—or should—mediate them. How can the his-

torian handle such diªerences? One way is to investigate societies, like that of ancient

Rome, that for better or worse found ways to manage social and cultural diversity.


There are, of course, no answers in history, just the discovery of better ways to ask

questions about ourselves. I have enjoyed getting to know these ordinary Romans who

lived so long ago. I am glad they insisted that they be seen and heard, for they have forced

me to ask new questions about myself and the world I live in. I hope they will do the same

for you.


NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. One exception is the poet Sulpicia, in the poems listed up to now as Tibullus 4.7–12; schol-

ars now agree that this poet was a woman rather than a man writing in a woman’s per-

sona. See Holt N. Parker, “Sulpicia, the Auctor de Sulpicia, and the Authorship of 3.9 and

3.11 of the Corpus Tibullianum,” Helios 21 (1994): 39–62; Judith P. Hallett, “Feminist

Theory, Historical Periods, Literary Canons, and the Study of Greco-Roman Antiquity,”

in Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin, eds., Feminist Theory and the Classics (New

York, 1993), 61, 64.

2. For an excellent historiography of Roman art through 1952, see Otto Brendel, “Prole-

gomena to a Book on Roman Art,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 21 (1953):

9–71, expanded in Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art (New Haven, 1979), 1–137.

3. Alois Riegl, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie (Vienna, 1901), English trans. by Rolf Winkes,

Late Roman Art Industry (Rome, 1985).

4. Overview in Brendel, “Prolegomena”; see also Karl Lehmann, Die Trajanssäule: Ein römi-

sches Kunstwerk am Beginn der Spätantike (Leipzig, 1926); Max Wegner, “Die kunstgeschicht-

liche Stellung der Marcussäule,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 46 (1931):

61–174; Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, “Inizio e caratteri della tarda antichità” (Lecture

notes, University of Florence, 1952).

277

5. Gerhart Rodenwaldt, “Römische Reliefs: Vorstufen zur Spätantike,” Jahrbuch des

Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 55 (1940): 12, n. 1, provides a bibliography of his work

on popular art as the basis for the Late Antique; of these, see “The Transition to Late

Classical Art,” Cambridge Ancient History 12 (2nd ed., Cambridge 1939), 544–70, where

he uses the English terms “great” and “popular.” For a redefinition of Rodenwaldt’s terms,

see H. Gabelmann, review of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Rom, das Zentrum der Macht

(Munich, 1970), in Bonner Jahrbuch 171 (1971): 709–13.

6. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Center of Power, trans. Peter Green (New York,

1970); and Rome: The Late Empire, trans. Peter Green (New York, 1971).

7. Anthony Corbeill (personal correspondence) points out that Bianchi Bandinelli’s the-

ory is quite similar to a once commonly held theory that the “vulgar Latin” that we see

in Plautus became buried during the Golden Age of Latin literature, only to reappear

in the late first century a.d. in authors like Petronius. Instead of a decline in Latin af-

ter the Golden Age, real Italic expression, unaªected by Greek usage, reemerged. See

Leonard R. Palmer, The Latin Language (London, 1954), 148–80.

8. Giovanni Becatti, La colonna coclide istoriata: Problemi storici iconografici stilistici (Rome,

1960), 82, was perhaps the first to point out that although in Bianchi Bandinelli’s scheme

the local and popular in Roman art pass from a secondary to an o‹cial position with

the death of Marcus Aurelius, many important expressions of classical culture remained

in the art of the third and fourth centuries.

9. Paul Zanker, “Grabreliefs römischer Freigelassener,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäolo-

gischen Instituts90 (1975): 267–315; for a review of the full literature, see Valentin Kockel,

Porträtreliefs stadtrömischer Grabbauten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zum Verständnis

des spätrepublikanisch-frühkaiserzeitlichen Privatporträts (Mainz, 1993), 1–14.

10. See especially the following essays in Klassiche Archäologie: Eine Einführung, ed. Adolf H.

Borbein, Tonio Hölscher, and Paul Zanker (Berlin, 2000): Tonio Hölscher, “Bildwerke:

Darstellungen, Funktionen, Botschaften,” 147–65; Marianne Bergmann, “Repräsenta-

tion,” 166–88; Natalie B. Kampen, “Gender Studies,” 189–204; Paul Zanker, “Bild-Räume

und Betrachter im kaiserzeitlichen Rom,” 205–26.

11. Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor, 1998), 4–11, em-

phasizes the di‹culty of categorizing the Roman political system of the late Republic,

where adult male citizens, including freed slaves, elected men to public o‹ce; Millar

reevaluates evidence for democratic elements in Republican politics and contends that

they are more prominent than is normally appreciated.

12. Digesta 48.5.39.8; See also Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman

Empire (Oxford, 1970), 221–22, 267; Natalie B. Kampen, Image and Status: Roman Work-

ing Women in Ostia (Berlin, 1981), 20–32.

13. Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire: a.d. 284–430 (London, 1993), 30–46.

14. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 222–32 and 258. Romans also valued and priv-

ileged noncitizens of high birth and great wealth—especially those from the eastern

provinces—and imperial freedmen who had held prestigious positions in the admin-

istration. These two groups—although lacking one of the prerequisites defined below—

would likely be included among the honestiores in the eyes of the law, whereas someone

born free (the ingenuus) but poor might be classed with the humiliores.

278 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 — 4

15. Géza Alföldy, A Social History of Rome, trans. David Braund and Frank Pollock (rev. ed.,

Baltimore, 1988), 107–8.

16. Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford, 1969), 20–31; on mo-

tives for freeing slaves, see Keith R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A

Study in Social Control (New York, 1997); Keith R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome

(Cambridge, 1994); Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York, 1980).

17. Brent Shaw, “Social Science and Ancient History: Keith Hopkins in Partibus Infidelium,”

Helios 9 (1982): 34–38.

18. See the essays in Institut Français de Naples, Centre Jean Bérard, Les “bourgeoisies” munici-

pales italiennes aux IIe et Ier siècles av. J.-C. (Naples, 1983), especially Jean-Paul Morel, “Les

producteurs de biens artisanaux en Italie à la fin de la république,” 21–39, and Paul Zanker,

“Zur Bildnisrepräsentation führender Männer in mittelitalischen und campanischen

Städten zur Zeit der späten Republik und der julisch-claudischen Kaiser,” 251–66.

19. Zanker, “Grabreliefs römischer Freigelassener,” 267–315; idem, “Die Villa als Vorbild

des späten pompejanischen Wohngeschmacks,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen

Instituts 94 (1979): 460–523; the latter article is slightly revised in Paul Zanker, Pom-

peii: Public and Private Life, translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, Mass,

1998), 135–203, where Zanker modifies his position in a note on 222–23: “ [L]ate Pom-

peian taste in domestic interiors should be seen as a general phenomenon and not be

linked quite so directly with the specific outlook of freedmen, as I conclude in the present

work.”

20. Diana E. E. Kleiner, Roman Group Portraiture: The Funerary Reliefs of the Late Republic and

Early Empire (New York, 1977); idem, Roman Imperial Funerary Altars with Portraits: Ar-

chaeologica 62 (Rome, 1987); idem, Roman Sculpture (New Haven, 1992), passim.

21. Eve D’Ambra, “A Myth for a Smith: A Meleager Sarcophagus from a Tomb in Ostia,”

American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988): 85–100, 311; idem, Roman Art (New York,

1998), passim.

22. See especially Lauren Hackworth Petersen, “Questioning Roman ‘Freedman Art’: An-

cient and Modern Constructions” (Ph.D. diss.,University of Texas at Austin, 2000); see

also Margaret Laird, “Evidence in Context: Public and Funerary Monuments of the Se-

viri Augustales at Ostia” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2001).

23. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, passim; D’Ambra, Roman Art, passim.

24. On the status of slaves and freedmen between the late first century b.c. and the late sec-

ond century a.d. see Sandra R. Joshel, Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome: A Study

of the Occupational Inscriptions (Norman, Okla., 1992).

25. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Patronus,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd ed., Oxford, 1970), 791.

26. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London, 1972); David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Stud-

ies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989).

27. Jas Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to

Christianity (New York, 1995), limits his study to the elite viewer; see my review in Jour-

nal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996): 375–80.

28. Norman Bryson, “Semiology and Visual Interpretation,” in Visual Theory: Painting and

Interpretation, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey (New York,

1991), 72.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 4 — 1 0 • 279

29. See also Paul Mattick, Jr., “Context,” in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nel-

son and Richard Shiª (Chicago, 1996), 70–86.

30. Ovid Ars Amatoria 1.219–28, trans. Peter Green, in Ovid, The Erotic Poems (Harmonds-

worth, England, 1982). The original reads:

Atque aliqua ex illis cum regum nomina quaeret,

Quae loca, qui montes, quaeve ferantur aquae,

Omnia responde, nec tantum siqua rogabit;

Et quae nescieris, ut bene nota refer.

Hic est Euphrates, praecinctus arundine frontem:

Cui coma dependet caerula, Tigris erit.

Hos facito Armenios; haec est Danaëia Persis:

Urbs in Achaemeniis vallibus ista fuit.

Ille vel ille, duces; et erunt quae nomina dicas,

Si poteris, vere, si minus, apta tamen.

I wish to thank Anthony Corbeill for this citation.

31. Mary Beard, “The Triumph of the Absurd: Roman Street Theatre,” in Cosmopolis, ed.

C. Edwards and G. Woolf (Cambridge, forthcoming). I thank Professor Beard for shar-

ing this excellent essay.

32. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 24–28, 35.

33. Petronius Satyricon: Trimalchio interprets the zodiac in an elaborate dish served to his

guests (39), and oªers a ridiculous iconographic explanation of the imagery in his sil-

ver vessels (52).

34. Andrew F. Stewart, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece (New York, 1997), 3, and

235, with a bibliographic note on the Russian and Czech Formalist definition of litera-

ture and art as a defamiliarization or a “making strange” (ostranenie) of objects; Stew-

art also cites Fredric Jameson’s discussion of ostranenie in The Prison-House of Language

(Princeton, 1972), 48–54.

PART 1. IMPERIAL REPRESENTATION OF NON-ELITES

1. John R. Clarke, “‘Just Like Us’: Cultural Constructions of Sexuality and Race in Roman

Art,” Art Bulletin 78, 4 (1996): 599–603.

2. See James E. Packer, “Politics, Urbanism, and Archaeology in ‘Roma Capitale,’ a Troubled

Past and a Controversial Future,” American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989): 137–41.

3. Wendy Stedman Sheard, Antiquity in the Renaissance, exh. cat., Smith College Museum of

Art, April 6–June 6, 1978 (Northampton, Mass., 1979), esp. “Introduction” and “Portrai-

ture,” cat. nos. 78–88 (unpaginated); Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the

Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven, 1981), for a brief overview.

CHAPTER 1 . AUGUSTUS’S AND TRAJAN’S

MESSAGES TO COMMONERS

1. Richard Billows, “The Religious Procession of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Augustus’ sup-

plicatio in 13 b.c.,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 6 (1993): 80–92, argues that of the

280 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 0 — 1 9

five interpretations of the event depicted (dedicatio or constitutio of the altar; inaugurat-

ing the templum which is to be its site; a “disguised” triumph; the festival of Augustus’

elevation to Pontifex Maximus; a supplicatio or public rejoicing), the exterior friezes rep-

resent the last.

2. For a detailed description, see Inez Scott Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art,

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 22 (Rome, 1955), 40–48.

3. Barbara Kellum, “What We See and What We Don’t See: Narrative Structure and the

Ara Pacis Augustae,” Art History 17 (March 1994): 40, n. 11, for a review of the contro-

versy. For the intentional ambiguity of all the imagery on the Ara Pacis, see Karl Galin-

sky, Augustan Culture (Princeton, 1996), 144–55.

4. Varro De Re Rustica 2.17–18; Dionysius of Halicarnasssus 1.56; Varro De Lingua Latina

5.144; Ferdinando Castagnoli, “Lavinio,” Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 3 (Rome, 1987), 151;

although this is Aeneas’s principal mission in the Aeneid, Virgil’s epic does not bring

us to this scene.

5. For discussion of the meanings of this decoration, see David Castriota, The Ara Pacis

Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art

(Princeton, 1995), 29–32.

6. Diane Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (New York, 1996).

7. See Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” in Römische Gräberstrassen: Selbstdarstellung,

Status, Standard, ed. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker (Munich, 1987), 25–41, on

the Hellenistic roots of the “suburban” tomb-park.

8. Penelope J. E. Davies, Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from

Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (Cambridge, 2000), 49–67.

9. Michael Schütz, “Zur Sonnenuhr des Augustus auf dem Marsfeld,” Gymnasium 97

(1990): 436–42.

10. Edmund Buchner, “Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis,” Römische Mitteilungen 83 (1976):

319–65.

11. Schütz, “Sonnenuhr des Augustus,” 432–57. Buchner answers some of Schütz’s objec-

tions in “Horologium Augusti,” Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (Rome, 1996)

3:35–37.

12. Hanns Gabelmann, “Römische Kinder in toga praetexta,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäo-

logischen Instituts 100 (1985): 497–541; C. Brian Rose, “‘Princes’ and Barbarians on the

Ara Pacis,” American Journal of Archaeology 94 (1990): 453–67.

13. The next major imperial monument to feature children is the Arch of Trajan at Bene-

ventum, discussed in chapter 9.

14. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Ar-

bor, 1988), 156–59.

15. Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion, 42, 47; Jas Elsner, “Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in

the Ara Pacis Augustae,” Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991): 50–61.

16. Castriota, Ara Pacis Augustae, 12; Kellum, “What We See,” 28–29.

17. Kellum, “What We See,” 29–32.

18. Castriota, Ara Pacis Augustae, passim.

19. Giles Sauron, “Le message symbolique des rinceaux de l’Ara Pacis Augustae,” Comptes

rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1982): 81–101.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 9 — 2 8 • 281

20. John E. Stambaugh, “The Functions of Roman Temples,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der

römischen Welt, II, 16, pt. 1, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin, 1978): 585–87; Timothy P. Wise-

man, “A Stroll on the Ramparts,” in Horti romani, Atti del Convegno Internazionale,

Rome, 4–6 May 1995, ed. Maddalena Cima and Eugenio La Rocca (Rome, 1998), 13–22;

Ann Kuttner, “Looking Outside Inside: Ancient Roman Garden Rooms,” Studies in the

History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 19 (1999): 28–30.

21. Kellum, “What We See,” 32–37, notes 39–79, provides many ancient textual sources

reflecting elite understanding and interpretation of this lore.

22. Tim G. Parkin, Demography and Roman Society (Baltimore, 1992), 5; Julius Beloch, Die

Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt (Leipzig, 1886), 392–412, estimates 800,000

inhabitants, including slaves and peregrini, in the year 5 b.c., and considers that num-

ber stable through the first three centuries; but see F. G. Maier, “Römische Bevölkerungs-

geschichte und Inschriftenstatistik,” Historia 2 (1953): 318–51, James E. Packer, “Hous-

ing and Population in Imperial Ostia and Rome,” Journal of Roman Studies 67 (1967):

80–95, and Moses I. Finley, review of Pierre Salmon, Population et dépopulation dans

l’Empire romain (Brussels, 1974), in Population Studies 28 (1974): 545.

23. James E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments, 3 vols. (Berke-

ley, 1997).

24. Pausanias 5.12.6, 10.5.11; Dio Cassius 68.16.3; Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10.15–16; Cas-

siodorus, Variae 7.6; Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 3.23.

25. For the earlier reconstructed views, see Packer, Forum of Trajan. The Getty Museum in

Los Angeles created the first of the three-dimensional computer models of the Forum

of Trajan as part of its inaugural show (1997–99). Seen at the museum in a video, this

model, framed by some of the major architectural fragments from the Forum, indicated

to visitors the original positions of the exhibited fragments. Dean Abernathy and Lisa

Snyder, under the direction of professors Bill Jepson and Diane Favro of the University

of California at Los Angeles, realized this model. Kevin Sarring and James Packer served

as consultants. Stills and abridged virtual-reality “tours” from this model may currently

be seen at the Getty Museum’s ArtsEdNet web site: http://www.getty.edu/artsednet/

Exhibitions/Trajan/index.html. Stills from the second model, by John Burge and James

Packer, appear in The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments in Brief, by

James Packer (Berkeley, 2000), 202, fig. 156; 204–11, figs. 156–65; 213–14, figs. 167–68;

217, fig. 171.

26. In what follows, I adhere to the traditional view, that the viewer entered the complex

from the south and progressed along its axis toward the north. Recently Roberto Mene-

ghini has proposed that a viewer encountered the Column first as he or she came in

from a propylon (a kind of pronaos-cum-colonnade in place of the octostyle Temple of

the Divine Trajan) north of the Column: Roberto Meneghini, “Templum Divi Traiani,”

Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 97 (1996): 47–88; Roberto

Meneghini, “L’architettura del Foro di Traiano attraverso i ritrovamenti archeologici più

recenti,” Römische Mitteilungen 105 (1998): 127–48.

27. Excavations have proved that the triumphal arch that scholars have placed here, on the

basis of numismatic evidence, did not form the entrance to the forum. On the heroon,

see Silvana Rizzo, “Fori Imperiali,” Archeo 15, 12 (December, 1999): 45; James E. Packer

282 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 8 — 3 1

(personal communication, July 2000), believes, unlike Rizzo, that the heroon took the

form of the triumphal arch.

28. This figure does not include the Temple of Divine Trajan and its precinct: Packer, Forum

of Trajan, Portfolio, folio 24.

29. “Ultimissime giugno 1999: L’Equus Traiani,” Roma Archeologica (June 1999), unpagi-

nated; Rizzo, “Fori Imperiali,” 43–45.

30. Packer, Forum of Trajan 1:471, concludes that the Roman foot in the Forum of Trajan

equalled 0.2938 m. The height of the Column alone, including its capital and base, is

29.777 m, 100 Roman feet. The Roman foot, at 11.65 in., is slightly shorter than the En-

glish foot.

31. Packer, Forum of Trajan, Portfolio, folios 24 and 25.

32. Penelope J. E. Davies, “The Politics of Perpetuation: Trajan’s Column and the Art of Com-

memoration,” American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997): 41–65.

33. Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1, A History (Cam-

bridge, 1998), 180–81.

34. Packer,Forum of Trajan 1:283, lists the following statues of Trajan: in the six chariot groups

on the three triumphal arches; on the eight pedestals along the entry stair to the Basil-

ica; in the recesses in the East and West Hemicycles; in the tribunals in the apses of the

Basilica Ulpia; on top of the Column, ca. 4 meters (131/2 feet) high; on the pediment of

the Temple, and in its interior.

35. Packer, Forum of Trajan, 1:99.

36. Packer, Forum of Trajan, 1:220.

37. Packer, Forum of Trajan, 1:426–27.

38. The Column becomes a kind of trophaeum, the scarecrow-like post decorated with cap-

tured enemy arms. In this way the benefactions of Trajan—and Trajan himself at the

top—grow out of this trophy. I thank Anthony Corbeill for this observation.

39. Aulus Gellius 1.15.1–3 records these inscriptions.

40. Giuseppe Lugli, Fontes ad topographiam urbis Romae pertinentes, vol. 6, part 1 (Rome,

1965), 85, no. 354: [———/—c]oh. X[———] / urb(ana); no. 355 (a): Leg(io) X [———];

no. 355 (b): [Leg(io)] XI Cl[audia]; no. 355 (c): [———] Valer(ia) Vict(rix); leg XV [Apol

(linaris)———]; no. 356: [Le]g(io) II August(a); no. 357 Coh(ors) / Roman[a] /Palatina;

no. 358: [Coh(ors) Ro]mana Palatina.

41. Lino Rossi, Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars (London, 1971), 98–120, attempts,

though not entirely successfully, to identify the names of legions and cohorts from analy-

sis of the devices on shields and standards represented on the column.

42. Giovanni Agosti and Vincenzo Farinella, “La fortuna della Colonna,” in La Colonna Tra-

iana, ed. Salvatore Settis, Adriano La Regina, Giovanni Agosti, and Vincenzo Farinella

(Turin, 1988), 547–97.

43. Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 6.1–15.1. For a translation combining both Excerpta and

Epitome, see Julian Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps: A Life and Times (Bloomington,

Ind., 1997), 214–18.

44. Lehmann, Die Trajanssäule.

45. Franz Wickhoª, Roman Art: Some of Its Principles and the Application to Early Christian

Painting, trans. and ed. A. Strong (New York, 1900), proposed that the continuous style

NOT E S T O P A G E S 3 1 — 3 4 • 283

was an invention of Roman art. Lehmann’s discovery of the stock scenes disproved

Wickhoª’s thesis.

46. Scene XCIX, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 179.

47. Scene LXXV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 127–31.

48. Scenes XCLII–CXLIV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 264–66.

49. Scene CXLV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, 268. The artist enlarges and isolates the figure of

Decebalus committing suicide, presumably to make it more visible.

50. Scene CXLVII, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 272.

51. Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex (Princeton, 1947), 23–24, 32.

52. Scene LXXVIII, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 137.

53. The most recent drawing, in Packer, Forum of Trajan, 2: pl. 56.1, gives 5.37 m or 171/2

feet.

54. Settis, Colonna Traiana, 45.

55. Packer, Forum of Trajan, 1:275–76, notes that the upper part of the Column was only

visible from the north terrace of the Basilica.

56. Peter J. Holliday, “Roman Triumphal Painting: Its Function, Development, and Recep-

tion,” Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 130–47.

57. Werner Gauer, Untersuchungen zur Traianssäule, vol. 1, Darstellungsprogramm und künst-

lerischer Entwurf (Berlin, 1977), 76–78.

58. Lehmann, Trajanssäule, 145–46; Wegner, “Marcussäule,” 103; Gauer, Traianssäule 1:9–10;

45–48; Vincenzo Farinella, “La colonna Traiana: Un esempio di lettura verticale,”

Prospettiva 26 (July 1981): 2–9; Richard Brilliant, Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan

and Roman Art (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 90–116; Settis, Colonna Traiana, 212–19.

59. Davies, “Trajan’s Column,” 45–47, fig. 6.

60. Brilliant, Visual Narratives, 116: “The imagistic code relies on the tableau as the princi-

pal form of immediate visual communication, creating a series of shifting visiones that

convey the illusion of historical continuity and satisfy the need for proof without losing

sight of Trajan as the dramatis persona.”

61. Settis, Colonna Traiana, 86–255.

62. Burkhard Fehr, “Das Militär als Leitbild: Politische Funktion und gruppenspezifische

Wahrnehmung des Traiansforums und der Traianssäule,” Hephaistos 7/8 (1985–86):

39–60.

63. I thank Gina Tarver, who suggested this approach in her unpublished paper, “Barbar-

ians in the Forum: Images of the Other in the Forum of Trajan,” written in my gradu-

ate seminar, Narrative Structures in Roman Art, at the University of Texas, 1998.

64. Suetonius, Domitian 6.13–16.

65. For example, the heroic Dacian in scene CXV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 216, who fights

with both arms raised, standing on a heap of his dead countrymen.

66. Scene CXX–CXXI, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 227–30, where the Dacians drink poi-

son from a big bowl; in scene CXL (Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 258), other Dacians choose

suicide by the sword.

67. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 101.

68. Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), 126; Joshel, Work, Identity and

Legal Status, 32–35, argues that we need to be careful about this general assumption.

284 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 3 4 — 3 8

69. Technically slaves freed by Romans were citizens. Their children were citizens regard-

less of geography. The most useful characterization of the Roman libertinus from writ-

ten sources is that of Joshel, Work, Identity, and Legal Status. For visual representation,

see Zanker, “Grabreliefs römischer Freigelassener,” 267–315; Petersen, “Questioning

Roman ‘Freedman Art’”; Laird, “The Augustales and the Reception of Roman Imperial

Imagery.”

70. Anna Maria Liberati, “L’organizzazione dell’esercito romano nei rilievi della colonna Tra-

iana,” in Traiano: ai confini dell’impero, exh. cat., Ancona, October 19, 1998–January 17,

1999, ed. Grigore Arbore Popescu (Milan, 1998), 115.

71. I. A. Richmond, “Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column.” Papers of the British School at Rome

13 (1935): 17–18; Rossi, Trajan’s Column, 96.

72. On their retirement, auxiliary soldiers received Roman citizenship as their reward; there

were two records, one in Rome and a copy—a bronze diploma given to the soldier and

recording the privileges issued: see Brian Campbell, The Roman Army, 31 b.c.–a.d. 337:

A Sourcebook (New York, 1994), 193–94.

73. On armor, arms, and heavy weapons such as the ballista, onager, and battering ram, see

Rossi, Trajan’s Column, 84–85, and passim.

74. Scene XXIV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 29–30; XXXVII–XXXVIII, Settis, Colonna Tra-

iana, pls. 52–53; LXX, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 114–15.

75. Their commander Lusius Quietus confers with Trajan as they ride into victorious bat-

tle: scenes LXIII–LXIV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 96–98.

76. Richmond, “Trajan’s Army,” 16; scene LXVI, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 105; CVIII–CIX,

Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 200–201.

77. Scene LXVI, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 105.

78. Scene XXIV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pl. 28; LXXII, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 119–20.

79. Settis, Colonna Traiana, 49–56.

80. I wish to thank James E. Packer for this observation.

81. Robert F. Renz, “The Legal Position of the Soldier and Veteran in the Roman Empire”

(Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1972), 196: “Even with these restrictions military ser-

vice for the non-citizen provided a sure means of obtaining the benefits of citizenship

for himself and several members of his family.”

82. Rossi, Trajan’s Column, 94–96.

83. This is Packer’s view, Forum of Trajan, 1:5, 8, fig. 130, based on the early third-century

marble map of Rome, the Forma Urbis, Gianfilippo Carretoni, ed., Forma Urbis Romae:

La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (Rome, 1960), 1:89–90, cat. no. 29; 2: pl. 28. The

ancient written sources are scant, late, and unreliable: Historia Augusta Commodus 2.1;

Sidonius Apollinaris Carmina 2 (To Anthemius) 554–45. For other characterizations and

locations of the Atrium Libertatis, see J. C. Anderson, Jr., The Historical Topography of the

Imperial Fora, Collection Latomus 82 (Brussels, 1984), 162–166, 177; Filippo Coarelli,

in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, ed. Eva Margareta Steinby (Rome, 1993),

1:133–35, with bibl. 135; Nicholas Purcell, “Atrium Libertatis,” Papers of the British School

at Rome 61 (1993): 125–155.

84. J. B. (Brian) Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army (Oxford, 1984), 183–84; Rossi,

Trajan’s Column, 154–56, “Auxiliary soldiers are bowing before the emperor while they

NOT E S T O P A G E S 3 8 — 3 9 • 285

receive from his own hands their gifts (and, implicitly, the Roman citizenship); they then

embrace and greet one another with joy.”

85. Scenes CLII–CLIV, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 282–85.

86. Scene LXXXVI, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 152–54; see also the view of Drobeta, Scene

XCIX–C, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 180–82, which also boasts an amphitheater.

87. Scenes LXXXIX–XCI, Settis, Colonna Traiana, pls. 160–63.

88. Introduction at n. 11.

89. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 56: “By the time of Hadrian the distinction between

the honestiores . . . and the humiliores . . . had been legally recognized, and it had be-

come common to apply one class of penalties to the one group and more extreme sanc-

tions against the other.”

90. Géza Alföldy, The Social History of Rome (3rd ed., London 1985), 108.

91. Fehr, “Militär als Leitbild,” 53; for high-level slave professions, see Hopkins, Conquerors

and Slaves, 52.

CHAPTER 2. THE ALL-SEEING EMPEROR AND ORDINARY VIEWERS

1. Wegner, “Marcussäule,” 61–174, oªers the fullest treatment of the formal and compo-

sitional innovations of the Column of Marcus Aurelius; see also Becatti, Colonna coclide

istoriata, 79–82.

2. Mary Beard, “The Spectator and the Column: Reading and Writing the Language of Ges-

ture” (forthcoming). I thank Professor Beard for sharing this thoughtful essay with me.

3. Giuseppe Gatti, “La Columna Divi Marci nelle sue caratteristiche architettoniche e nel

suo ambiente,” in C. Caprino et al., La Colonna di Marco Aurelio (Rome, 1955), 22–28,

figs. 4 and 5. See also Guglielmo Calderini’s reconstruction, in Eugen Petersen, Alfred

von Domazewski, and Guglielmo Calderini, Die Marcus-Säule auf piazza Colonna in Rom

(Munich, 1896), 35–38, pl. 2.

4. A. M. Colini and Carlo Pietrangeli, Piazza Colonna, exh. cat. (Rome, 1955), 5–6; A.M.Co-

lini, “Vicende della colonna dall’antichità ai nostri giorni,” in C. Caprino et al., La Colonna

di Marco Aurelio (Rome, 1955), 31–42.

5. Caprini et al., Colonna di Marco Aurelio, 42, frontispiece, and pl. 2, fig. 3.

6. John Spike, ed., The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 30, Italian Masters of the Sixteenth Century:

Enea Vico (New York, 1985), Enea Vico, no. 418-I; later impressions (no. 418-II) are in-

scribed La Colonna Antoniniana and bear the legend Ioannes Orlandi excudit “Giovanni

Orlandi printed (this).” Orlandi was an engraver and dealer active in Rome 1585–1638;

see G. K. Napler, Die Monogrammisten (1919, Niewkoop, 1966), 3:16, no. 50. There is

a reversed copy engraved by an anonymous artist (no. 418-Copy), with the obelisk at

left; this engraving shows the reliefs of base and column as they were, with the spirals

ascending to the viewer’s right. Heinrich Fuhrmann, “Ein Fragment des verlorenen

Reliefs am Sockel der Marcussäule,” Römische Mitteilungen 52 (1937): 261–65, con-

vincingly argues that a fragmentary relief of a suppliant barbarian came from the base

relief.

7. John Morris, “The Dating of the Column of Marcus Aurelius,” Journal of the Warburg and

286 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 3 9 — 4 5

Courtauld Institutes 15 (1952): 33–47, argues for Commodus’s presence in the helical frieze;

Becatti, Colonna coclide istoriata, 48–51, n. 95, convincingly refutes Morris’s arguments.

8. Becatti, Colonna coclide istoriata, 48–53.

9. For a review of the evidence and a convincing argument that Commodus commissioned

the Column, see Davies, Death and the Emperor, 46–48.

10. For an exhaustive treatment of the documents and controversies surrounding the dat-

ing of the column, and whether it represents both German campaigns, see Hartmut

Wolª, “Welchen Zeitraum stellt der Bilderfries der Marcus-Säule dar?” Ostbairische

Grenzmarken. Passauer Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde 32 (1990): 9–29.

11. Paul Zanker, “Das Trajansforum in Rom,” Archäologischer Anzeiger85 (1970): 530–37, pro-

vides convincing arguments in favor of Trajan’s planning to be buried in the column,

followed most recently by Davies, Death and the Emperor, 29–34, who also provides a

review of recent literature and controversies.

12. V. Jolivet, “Les cendres d’Auguste. Note sur la topographie monumentale du Champ de

Mars septentrionale,” Archeologia Laziale 9 (1988): 90–96; Davies, Death and the Em-

peror, 165–71.

13. Petersen, Marcus-Säule, scenes LXXXII and XCIV.

14. Lehmann, Trajanssäule, 40, distinguishes between eleven scenes of building that exclude

other activities and eight scenes where building activities take place in the background.

15. Petersen, Marcus-Säule, scene XI.

16. Petersen, Marcus-Säule, scene XVI.

17. W. Eugene Kleinbauer, ed., Modern Perspectives in Western Art History (New York, 1971),

154.

18. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ed. A. S. L. Farquharson, with English trans. and com-

mentary (2 vols, Oxford, 1952).

19. Sonia Maªei, “La ‘felicitas imperatoris’ e il dominio sugli elementi,” Studi Classici e Ori-

entali (1990): 329–67.

20. Anthony R. Birley, Septimius Severus: The African Emperor (rev. ed., New Haven, 1989),

117–20; Sheldon A. Nodelman, “Severan Imperial Portraiture, 193–217” (Ph.D. diss.,

Yale University, 1965), 66–68.

21. Richard Brilliant, “Arcus: Septimius Severus (Forum),” in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis

Romae, ed. Eva Margereta Steinby (Rome, 1988), 1:103–5.

22. Mark Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis: The Design of the Arch of Constantine in

Rome,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59 (March 2000): 65–70, for

the formal and conceptual relationships between the two arches; see also Sandro De

Maria, Gli archi onorari di Roma e dell’Italia romana (Rome, 1988), 180–85, for the Arch

of Septimius Severus; 197–203 for the destroyed arcus novus of Diocletian, also a model

for the Arch of Constantine.

23. Earlier imperial monuments, including the two decursiones reliefs on the base of the

Column of Antoninus Pius and many of the figures on the Column of Marcus Aure-

lius, anticipated some aspects of the Late Antique figural style. See Wegner, “Mar-

cussäule,” passim; Lisa Vogel, The Column of Antoninus Pius (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).

24. Per Gustav Hamberg, Studies in Roman Imperial Art (Uppsala, 1945), 145–49; Richard

Brilliant, The Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum, Memoirs of the American

NOT E S T O P A G E S 4 5 — 5 4 • 287

Academy in Rome 29 (Rome, 1967), 41, 244–50; John R. Clarke, Roman Black-and-white

Figural Mosaics (New York, 1979), 95.

25. Recent scholarship has emphasized that despite the quick turnover of emperors, there

is no good evidence that the third-century empire as a whole was a world in crisis.

See especially Christian Witschel, Krise-Rezession-Stagnation? Der Westen des römischen

Reiches im 3. Jarhundert n. Chr. (Frankfurt, 1999), who demonstrates that the cities, the

rural economy, and the defense of the frontier stayed intact during the third century,

despite the crises in leadership.

26. Cameron, Later Roman Empire, 8–9, 31–32, 41–42, 45–46; H. P. L’Orange, Art Forms

and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire (Princeton, 1965), 37–68.

27. Tenney Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1940), appendix, with

translation of the Edictum Diocletiani de pretiis rerum venalium by Elsa Rose Graser,

5: 338–39.

28. Cameron, Later Roman Empire, 36–38, 45–46.

29. L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life, 26–27, 101–4.

30. Mats Cullhed, “Conservator Urbis Suae”: Studies in the Politics and Propaganda of the Em-

peror Maxentius (Stockholm, 1994).

31. For an overview of the meanings of the spoliated sculpture and of the inscriptions in

relation to Constantine’s aims, see De Maria, Archi onorari, 203–11; Wilson Jones, “Gen-

esis and Mimesis,” 69–72; see also Niels Hannestad, Roman Art and Imperial Policy

(Arhus, 1986), 318–26; Alessandra Capodiferro, “Arcus Constantini,” in Lexicon Topo-

graphicum Urbis Romae, ed. Steinby, 1: 86–91.

32. Maria Letizia Conforto, Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro, Pietro Cicerchia, Giuliana Calcani,

Angela Maria Ferroni, eds., Adriano e Costantino: Le due fasi dell’Arco nella Valle dell Colosseo

(Milan, 2001), propose that the Arch of Constantine is a rebuilt and remodeled version

of an arch commissioned and built by Hadrian on the same site, a hypothesis proposed

more than once in the past. In my opinion Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis,” 50–57,

convincingly refutes this hypothesis, as do Patrizio Pensabene and Clementina Panella,

eds., Arco di Costantino tra archeologia e archeometria (Rome, 1999).

33. Philip Peirce, “The Arch of Constantine: Propaganda and Ideology in Late Roman Art,”

Art History 12 (December 1989): 387–418, proposes that the recut heads of Constan-

tine’s companion represented his father, Constantius Chlorus.

34. Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis,” 69–72, with bibl. on spolia nn. 96–98.

35. Sandra E. Knudsen, “Spolia: The So-called Historical Frieze on the Arch of Constan-

tine,” American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989): 313–14, proposes that even the small

frieze was appropriated from an earlier monument of Maxentius.

36. Bernard Berenson, The Arch of Constantine or the Decline of Form (New York, 1954);

Bianchi Bandinelli, Late Empire, 76: “What we have is not ‘decadence’ or incapacity (as

critics have alleged), but a new beginning.” For a review of the recent literature, see Peirce,

“Arch of Constantine,” 387–418.

37. Dale Kinney, “Rape or Restitution of the Past? Interpreting Spolia,” in The Art of Inter-

preting, ed. Susan C. Scott (University Park, Pa., 1995), 53–68.

38. I wish to thank Jane McFadden for suggesting this line of inquiry in her unpublished

288 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 5 5 — 5 7

seminar paper, “The Reception of Form: Reconsidering the Context of the Arch of Con-

stantine,” May 1998.

39. Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis,” 69.

40. Simon Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge,

1984), 142–43.

41. H. P. L’Orange, “Ein tetrarchisches Ehrendenkmal auf dem Forum Romanum,” Römi-

sche Mitteilungen 53 (1938): 1–34; Henning Wrede, “Der Genius Populi Romani und das

Fünfsäulendenkmal der Tetrarchen auf dem Forum Romanum,” Bonner Jahrbücher des

Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn und des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande

181 (1981): 121–42.

42. Cairoli F. Giuliani and Patrizia Verduchi, L’area centrale del Foro Romano (Florence, 1987),

161–63, figs. 232–33; 181–87; Franz Alto Bauer, Stadt, Platz und Denkmal in der Spätan-

tike: Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung des öªentlichen Raums in den spätantiken Städten

Rom, Konstantinopel und Ephesos (Mainz, 1996), 101–8; Michael L. Thomas, “Constructing

Dynastic Legitimacy: Imperial Building Programs in the Forum Romanum from Au-

gustus to Diocletian” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2001).

43. For the interpretation of the Constantinian frieze, I follow Armin von Gerkan and Hans

Peter L’Orange, Der spätantike Bildschmuck des Konstantinsbogens (Berlin, 1939).

44. Bianchi Bandinelli, Late Empire, 73.

45. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 450–52.

46. Heinz Kähler, “Constantin 313,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts67 (1952):

1–30.

47. L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life, 99, n. 15.

48. L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life, 102–4, 124–25; H. P. L’Orange, Apotheosis in Ancient

Portraiture (Oslo, 1947), 116–17.

49. For the textual evidence, see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Madi-

son, Wis., 1992).

50. Richard Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art, Memoirs of the Connecticut Acad-

emy of Arts and Sciences 14 (New Haven, 1963), 172, n. 28.

51. Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1981), 177–204.

52. Wulf Raeck, Modernisierte Mythen: Zum Umgang der Spätantike mit klassischen Bildthe-

men (Stuttgart, 1992), 15–23.

53. imp caes fl constantino maximo

p f augusto s p q r

quod instinctu divinitatis mentis

magnitudine cum exercitu suo

tam de tyranno quam de omni eius

factione uno tempore iustis

rempublicam ultus est armis

arcum triumphis insignem dicavit.

54. Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis,” 72, an interpretation first put forward by José Ruysschaert,

“Essai d’interprétation synthétique de l’arc de Constantin,” Atti della Pontificia Accade-

mia Romana di Archeologia, Rendiconti 35 (1962–63): 79–100.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 5 8 — 6 7 • 289

PART 2. NON-ELITES IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

CHAPTER 3. EVERYMAN, EVERYWOMAN, AND THE GODS

1. Ettore De Ruggiero, Dizionario epigrafico di antichità romana (Rome, 1924) 3: 949–59,

s.v. “honores.”

2. For a useful survey of imperial representation, see Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion.

3. Attilio Mastrocinque, “Laren,” in Der neue Pauly Enzyklopädie der Antike 6 (Stuttgart,

1999), 1147–50 with up-to-date bibl.

4. Thomas Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten: Untersuchungen zur

“volkstümlichen” pompejanischen Malerei, Römische Mitteilungen, supplement 32 (Mainz,

1991), 167–69.

5. Although the origins of the Penates are unknown, they were probably the guardian spir-

its of the household storeroom. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, the term includes all

deities worshipped in the home. David G. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: A Study of

the Roman Household Deities and Their Shrines at Pompeii and Herculaneum” (Ph.D.

diss., University of Maryland, 1973), 34–44.

6. George K. Boyce, Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii, Memoirs of the American Academy

in Rome 14 (Rome, 1937); Orr, “A Study of the Roman Household Deities,” passim;

DavidG. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: the Evidence of the Household Shrines,” Auf-

stieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, pt. 2, vol. 16, 2, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin 1978):

1557–91; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder.

7. Onelia Bardelli Mondini, “I 13, 2: Casa di Sutoria Primigenia,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 2

(Rome, 1990), 860–80, with bibl., 861; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 261, L 29.

8. Excavators found a similar representation in the kitchen of the House of Sulpicius Ru-

fus (IX, 9, c): August Mau, Römische Mitteilungen (1889): 116–17; Notizie degli Scavi

(1889): 129–30; Boyce, Corpus of the Lararia, 468; Irene Bragantini, Mariette de Vos,

and Franca Parise Badoni, Pitture e Pavimenti di Pompei, Repertorio delle fotografie del

Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale. Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione,

part 3 (Rome, 1986), 542, where the kitchen is lettered k.

9. Arnold de Vos, “I 14, 7: Casa del Larario del Sarno,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 2 (Rome,

1990), 938; isolated examples include the houses at I, 12, 7; I, 13, 2; I, 13, 7; I, 14, 3 and

the House of the Sarno Lararium (I, 14, 7); Arnold and Mariette de Vos, Pompei Ercolano

Stabia (Bari, 1982), 332–34.

10. Mariette de Vos, “La bottega di pittori in via di Castricio,” in Pompei 1748–1980: I tempi

della documentazione, exh. cat., July–October 1981 (Rome, 1981): 119–30.

11. Pompeii: Houses VI, 8, 22; VI, 8, 23; VI, 14, 43; VII, 4, 56; Herculaneum: House of Nep-

tune and Amphitrite.

12. Strabo 5.4.8.

13. Mau, Pompeii, 10–11, identified the harbor with a group of buildings found about a third

of a mile from the Stabian Gate; but see also Hans Eschebach, Die städtebauliche Entwicklung

des antiken Pompeji, Römische Mitteilungen, supplement 17 (Heidelberg, 1970), 9–10, fig.

2; and most recently Paolo Sommella, “Urbanistica pompeiana,” in Neapolis, vol. 2,Temi

progettuali, ed. Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali (Rome, 1994), 163–218.

14. Columella, De re rustica 12.10.1, refers to the Pompeian onion, or the caepa pompeiana;

290 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 7 5 — 8 0

Amedeo Maiuri, “Navalia pompeiana: Il fiume Sarno e un nuovo larario pompeiano,”

Rendiconti della Accademia di archeologia, lettere e belle arti, Napoli, new series, 33 (1958):

12, pl. 2; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 263, n. 29.

15. On the garden’s west wall is a tiny niche-shrine painted directly on the wall, and pro-

tected by two roof tiles; a third roof tile, placed below the painting of a female figure re-

clining on a couch, forms a little platform, perhaps for oªerings. Maiuri, Navalia pom-

peiana, 9, pl. 1.

16. C. Robert Phillips, “Lares,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., Oxford, 1996): 815–16;

M. Hano, “A l’origine du culte impérial: Les autels des Lares Augusti,” in Aufstieg und

Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II, 16, 3 (Berlin, 1986), 2333–81; Richard J. King,

“Dancers in the Columbarium of Villa Doria-Pamphili,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura

parietale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla Pit-

tura Parietale Antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita (Bologna, 1997), 77–80.

17. Capitoline Museum inv. 855. Erika Simon, in Wolfgang Helbig, Führer durch die

öªentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom, ed. Hermine Speier, 4th ed., vol.

2 (Munich, 1966), 518–20, no. 1741; Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio, “Compitum Vici

Aesc(u)leti,” in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, ed. Steinby, 1:316; Silvio Panciera,

“Ancora tra epigrafia e topografia,” in L’Urbs: Espace urbain et histoire (Ier siècle av. J.-C.–

IIIe siècle ap. J.-C.), Collection de l’École Française de Rome, 98 (1987): 62–73 (recon-

struction of three inscriptions pertaining to an architrave presumably from the aedic-

ula housing the altar); Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio, “Compita Larum: edicole sacre di Roma

antica,” in Edicole sacre romane (1990), 65 (reconstruction of the form of the aedicula).

18. Augustus’s division of Rome into 14 regions and 265 vici began perhaps in 745 in the

Roman calendar, and was completed in 747 (= 8 b.c.). Dio Cassius, Historia Romana

55.8; Pliny, Naturalis Historia 3.66; Suetonius, Divus Augustus 30; L. Preller, Die Regio-

nen der Stadt Rom (Jena 1848), 83; Augusto Fraschetti, “Regiones Quattuordecim (Storia),”

in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, ed. Steinby, 3:197–99.

19. Zanker, Power of Images, 126–36.

20. On Augustus and the symbolism of laurel, see Marleen B. Flory, “Octavian and the Omen

of the Gallina Alba,” Classical Journal 84 (1989): 343–56.

21. On the importance of the cult of the Lares and the honor of having two lictors: Asco-

nius, In Pisonem 4.8; Cassius Dio 55.8.7.

22. Giuseppe Gatti, “Scoperte recentissime,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Co-

munale di Roma 16 (1888): 329; Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion, 60.

23. On the style of this and other altars to Lares of the Augustan period, see Paul Zanker,

“Über die Werkstätten augusteischer Larenaltäre und damit zusammenhängende Pro-

bleme der Interpretation,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma

82 (1970–71): 147–55.

24. Simon, Führer 2: 519, no. 1741 believes the leash is actually the knife used to kill the

animals.

25. In 27 b.c. the senate honored Augustus with the corona civica and the clipeus virtutis for

his virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas; they also gave him the right to hang laurel

branches over the door to his house and honored him with laurel trees flanking his door-

way: Augustus, Res Gestae 34.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 8 1 — 8 4 • 291

26. Panciera, “Ancora tra epigrafia e topografia,” 72.

27. There is some disagreement about the restoration of the two names on the front of the

altar; Christian Hülsen, in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (hereafter CIL) 6:30957, sub-

stantially follows the excavator, Gatti, “Scoperte recentissime,” 328: “[r]OSCIUS C · M

/ MANIUS C · [l. iu]STUS”. Panciera, “Ancora tra epigrafia e topografia,” 69, oªers a

more conservative reading (which I corroborated through examination of the newly

cleaned monument in January, 2000): “[—]+scius / [l(ibertus) vel f(ilius)—]++ntus” and

“C.M[—] / C. [l(ibertus) vel f(ilius)—]+us”. It is significant for our purposes that all schol-

ars restore the names as liberti.

28. The four vicomagistri were Felix, Florus, Eudoxsus, and Polyclitus. They record their

names according to the usage for slaves of the Augustan period: the master’s names,

in the genitive case, follow the slaves’ names. The year and date of the erection of the

altar is 18 September 2 b.c., under the consuls named on the monument: L. Caninius

Gallus and C. Fufius Geminus. No figures appear on the altar (H 0.68 ×W 0.45 m): in-

stead the corona civica (oak crown) appears on the front, the patera on the back, and lau-

rel branches substitute for the laurel-carrying Lares on the sides. On slaves as magistri

and ministri of the Genius of Augustus, see Yvon Thébert, “The Slave,” in The Romans,

ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1993), 163.

29. Gatti, “Scoperte recentissime,” 330.

30. Of Augustus’s 265 vici only the names of about 100 are known: Joachim Marquardt,

Römische Staatsverwaltung (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1885) 3:207, names 307 in the mid–first

century a.d.; Fraschetti, “Regiones Quattuordecim,” 3:197–99.

31. Discovered in 1827, bibl. in Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 320–21; see also Irene

Bragantini, “VI 7, 8.12: Bottega del Profumiere,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 4 (Rome, 1993),

389–98.

32. Reproduced in Bragantini, “VI 7, 8.12,” 392, fig. 2.

33. Bragantini, “VI 7, 8.12,” 393, fig. 3, provides an incorrect illustration of this lost paint-

ing. The watercolor, dated 1828, reproduces the full figure of Fortuna at an altar from

the facade of the nearby House of the Dioscuri (VI, 9, 6–7), reproduced in Fröhlich,

Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 321, fig. 9. Bragantini also reverses the positions of the im-

ages of Mercury and the attributes of Fortuna.

34. Enrico Giuglielmo Schultz, “Rapporto intorno gli scavi pompeiani negli ultimi quattro

anni,” Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 10 (1838): 168–69.

35. Aline L. Abaecherli, “Fercula, Carpenta, and Tensae in the Roman Procession,” Bollet-

tino dell’Associazione Internazionale Studi Mediterranei6 (1935–36): 1–28, for an overview;

several ferculum bearers in a procession on either side of a temple of Venus appear in

a frieze on the north wall of oecus 9 of the House of the Wedding of Hercules (VII, 9,

42): Valeria Sampaolo, “VII 9, 47: Casa delle Nozze di Ercole,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici

7 (Rome, 1997), 373–75, figs. 32–35.

36. Eve D’Ambra, Private Lives, Imperial Virtues: The Frieze of the Forum Transitorium (Prince-

ton, 1993).

37. Bianca Maria Felletti Maj, La tradizione italica nell’arte romana, Archeologica 3 (Rome,

1977), 335.

292 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 8 4 — 8 6

38. There is a close parallel in the two diminutive figures on a ferculum carried in the pro-

cession on the Pompeii Gladiators’ Relief, a stone slab that decorated an unidentified

tomb. Abaecherli, “Fercula, Carpenta, and Tensae,” 2, pl. 2, 1, believes that the proces-

sion represents a guild; Bianca Maiuri, “Rilievo gladiatorio di Pompei,” Rendiconti del-

l’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 8, 2

(1947): 497–98, proposes that they are smiths, and in fact they are seated at either side

of an anvil, with the figure at the right holding up a hammer; she also rightly points out

that the figures are part of the gladiatorial procession, the pompa; see also Ryberg, Rites

of the State Religion, 101–3; Mario Torelli, “Il monumento di Lusius Storax: Il frontone,”

Studi Miscellanei 10 (1963–64), 74, n. 10, pls. 40–41; Alan Pizer, “The Pompeian Glad-

iatorial Relief at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples: A Sacrificial Narra-

tive” (M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1995); Adriano La Regina, ed., Sangue

e Arena (exh. cat., Rome, Colosseum, June 22, 2001–January 7, 2002; Milan, 2001), 359,

cat. no. 74, with bibl.; compare the pompa in the relief from Amiternum (Chieti, So-

printendenza Archeologica dell’Abruzzo, inv. 4424a) where men carry statues of Jupiter

and Juno on fercula: La Regina, Sangue e Arena, 358, cat. no. 73.

39. Eric M. Moormann, La pittura parietale romana come fonte di conoscenza per la scultura

antica (Assen, 1988), 170, cat. 198e, interprets the figure on the ground as perhaps a

statue sculpted by Daedalus.

40. Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.236–59; Iphigenia Levanti, “Perdix,” Lexicon Iconographicum

Mythologiae Classicae 7, 1 (Zurich, 1994): 317–18.

41. This is the subject of the painting on the north wall of room p in the House of the Vet-

tii, discussed in John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 b.c.–a.d. 250: Ritual,

Space, and Decoration (Berkeley, 1991), 222–27, and of a painting from the House of the

Ancient Hunt (VII, 4, 48) now in the Naples Museum, inv. 8979: Penelope M. Allison,

“VII 4, 48: Casa della Caccia antica,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 7 (1997), 26, fig. 31.

42. D’Ambra, Forum Transitorium, 47–59.

43. IX, 7, 1; bibl. in Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 63.

44. Reported by Giovanni De Petra, “Pompei: Scavi di antichità,” Notizie degli Scavi (1912),

110, fig. 7; 138, fig. 1; Vittorio Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via del-

l’Abbonzanda (Rome, 1953) 1: 213–42, figs. 144, 145, 241, 242.

45. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 216–17.

46. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 229; de Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 111.

47. Also seen in the dress of Persians in the painting in oecus g, west wall, west part, of the

House of Octavius Quartio. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce 1: figs. 262–63.

48. For a fragment of a relief from Capua with Cybele’s ferculum bearers using canes, Spinaz-

zola, Pompei alla luce, 1: fig. 261.

49. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 234–35.

50. For the complex hierarchy of priests and priestesses in the cult of Cybele, see Henri

Graillot, Le culte de Cybèle, mère des dieux à Rome et dans l’Empire Romain, Bibliothèque

des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 107 (Paris, 1912), 226–61; he provides

a long list of priestesses, 248–49, n. 1, known from preserved inscriptions.

51. Spinazzola, Pompei alle luce, 1:235.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 8 6 — 9 1 • 293

52. Erika Simon, “Kybele,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, supplement,

744–46, esp. bibl., 746.

53. Plato Republic 3.399–399c.

54. Livy 34.54; alternatively, following Livy 36.36, in 191 b.c.

55. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.600–28; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman An-

tiquities 2.19.3–5; Juvenal, Satires 6.511–21.

56. Catullus 63; A. D. Nock,Essays on Religion and the Ancient World (Oxford, 1972) 1: 7–12;

Erika Simon, “Menander in Centuripe,” Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft

an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe–Universität Frankfurt am Main 25, 2 (1989): 60–61.

57. Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome 1:261, n. 49.

58. Tran Tam Tinh, Essai sur le culte d’Isis à Pompei: Images et cultes (Paris, 1962), passim;

Sharon K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis among Women in the Graeco-Roman World, Études

préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain 51 (Leiden, 1975), 97–102;

Michel Malaise, Les conditions de pénétration et de diªusion des cultes égyptiens en Italie.

Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain 22 (Leiden, 1972);

Beard, North, and Price, Religions of Rome 1:298–300.

59. See Ermanno A. Arslan, ed. Iside: Il mito, il mistero, la magia, exh. cat., Milan, Palazzo

Reale, February–June 1997 (Milan, 1997), esp. 290–523, “Diªusione del culto isiaco in

Italia.”

60. Mau, Pompeii, 170; Petersen, “Questioning Roman ‘Freedman Art’,” chapter 4, “Public

Identity: Rebuilding the Temple of Isis at Pompeii,” 133–77.

61. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Alla ricerca di Iside: analisi, studi e restauri del-

l’Iseo pompeiano nel Museo di Napoli (Rome, 1992), 45, cat. no. 1.21; Valeria Sampaolo,

“Le pitture,” in Le collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Napoli (Rome, 1986) 1:162, no. 278,

Naples inv. 8923.

62. Matteo Della Corte, Case ed abitanti di Pompei (3rd ed., Naples, 1965), nos. 567 and 573.

63. De Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 110.

CHAPTER 4. EVERYMAN AND EVERYWOMAN AT WORK

The epigraph is from a gra‹to found at Pompeii in 1951, at II, 4, 10, to the left of doorway 10:

[ded]uxisti octies. Tibi superat ut (h)abeas sedecies. Coponium fecisti, cretaria fecisti, salsamentaria

fecisti, pistorium fecisti, agricola fuisti, aere minutaria fecisti, propola fuisti, laguncularia nunc facis.

Si cunnum linxseris, consummaris omnia. Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 395–97, no. 851 d–m

(not published in CIL).

1. Gerhard Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen (Berlin, 1982), 6–12; Gerhard Zimmer,

“Römische Handwerker,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, pt. 2, vol. 12,

no. 3 (Berlin, 1985), 217.

2. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Patronus,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd ed., Oxford, 1970),

791, with bibl.

3. See especially Joshel, Work, Identity and Social Status, for a well-reasoned account of the

importance of work in the formation of slaves’ and freedmen’s identity.

4. Valeria Sampaolo, “II 4, 3: Villa di Giulia Felix,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 3 (Rome, 1991),

294 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 9 2 — 9 6

248, fig. 108; Christopher C. Parslow, “Additional Documents Illustrating the Bourbon

Excavations of the Praedia Iuliae Felicis in Pompeii,” Rivista di Studi Pompeiani 7

(1995–96): 115–32.

5. In Praedis Iuliae Sp.f. Felicis/ locantur/ balneum venerium et nongentum, tabernae, per-

gulae,/ cenacula ex idibus Aug(ustis) in idus Aug(ustas) sextas, annos/ continuos quinque/

S(i) Quinquennium) D(ecurrerit) L(ocati) E(rit) N(udo) C(onsensu). (To let, for the

space of five years, from the thirteenth day of next August to the thirteenth day of the

sixth August thereafter, the Venus bath, fitted up for the best people, shops, rooms

over shops, and second story apartments in the property owned by Julia Felix, daugh-

ter of Spurius. With the expiration of the contract at the end of the five-year period.)

Mau, Pompeii, 490, notes that the word nongentum means “knights” since “the nine

hundred” were what people called the knights colloquially; a bath for “the nine hun-

dred” would be designed—as Julia Felix’s was—to attract the patronage of the best

people.

6. Moormann, Pittura parietale, 160, cat. no. 179/1; Sampaolo, “Villa di Iulia Felix,” figs.

115, 121, 122, 124 (equestrians), 122 (reading), 121 (magistrate), 114 (conversing), 124

(promenading), 120 (spanking).

7. Sampaolo, “Villa di Iulia Felix,” figs. 113, 116; quadrupeds abound in the so-called sacral-

idyllic friezes that begin to appear in wall painting of the mature Second Style, for ex-

ample in the yellow frieze in room 3 of the House of Livia: Giulio Emanuele Rizzo, Le

pitture della “Casa di Livia,”Monumenti della pittura antica scoperti in Italia, sec. 3, Roma,

fasc. 3 (Rome, 1936), pls. 5–10; Moormann, Pittura parietale, 232, cat. no. 317/2.

8. Sampaolo, “Villa di Iulia Felix,” figs. 115, 117, 118, 123.

9. Helen H. Tanzer, Common People of Pompeii: A Study of the Gra‹ti (Baltimore, 1939),

55–56.

10. For this complete redecoration of her enormous property, Julia Felix employed the same

lackluster workshop of via Castricio that executed the Sarno lararium: de Vos, “La bot-

tega di pittori,” 126.

11. For an overview of the iconography, see Noëlle Icard-Gianolio, “Psyche,” Lexicon Icono-

graphicum Mythologiae Classicae 7 (Zurich, 1994), esp. 572–73.

12. Jean Andreau, Les Aªaires de Monsieur Jucundus, Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome

19 (Rome, 1974), 172, 205.

13. Steven E. Ostrow, “Augustales along the Bay of Naples: A Case for Their Early Growth,”

Historia 334 (1985): 64–101.

14. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 208–35; more recently David Fredrick, “Beyond the Atrium

to Ariadne: Erotic Painting and Visual Pleasure in the Roman House,” Classical Antiq-

uity 14, 2 (1995): 266–87.

15. Willem J. Th. Peters, “La composizione delle pareti dipinte nella Casa dei Vetti a Pom-

pei,” Mededeelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 39 (1977): 102–5, 121–23; de Vos

and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 170, propose that the central paintings had not yet

been executed at the time of the eruption.

16. For instance, to conclude from the frieze showing the making of wine that the Vettii

were winemakers: Mikhail Rostovtzeª, The Social and Economic History of the Roman

Empire, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1957), 92, followed by Robert Etienne, La vie quotidienne à Pom-

NOT E S T O P A G E S 9 7 — 1 0 0 • 295

péi (Paris, 1962), 151; against this interpretation see Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 70 n. 2,

and Andreau, Monsieur Jucundus, 229.

17. Antonio Sogliano, “La Casa dei Vettii in Pompei,” Monumenti antichi dell’Accademia dei

Lincei 8 (1989): cols. 270–71.

18. There is room for an additional but tiny predella panel under the image of Hermaph-

roditus discovered by Silenus on the west spur wall of the south entry; see Clarke, Houses

of Roman Italy, 213, fig. 123 (where Silenus is incorrectly labeled “Pan”).

19. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce 2:777.

20. Umberto Pappalardo, “Die ‘Villa Imperiale’ in Pompeji,” Antike Kunst 16, 4 (1985): 4,

13, fig. 4: psyches as sellers, cupids making perfume.

21. For Pompeii, see Karl Schefold, Die Wände Pompejis (Berlin, 1957), 41, 50, 100, 140–41,

147–48, 161, 193–94, 207, 234, 248–50, 272, 284, 290; Herculaneum: Sampaolo, “Le

pitture,” 154, nos. 224–29.

22. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 208–35.

23. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 189–210; the images date to before a.d. 72, when the

earliest of the four men named in electoral slogans painted at the edges and on top of

the paintings, Vettius Firmus, was a candidate for aedile: see James L. Franklin, Jr., Pom-

peii: The Electoral Programmata, Campaigns and Politics, a.d. 71–79, Papers and Mono-

graphs of the American Academy in Rome 28 (Rome, 1980), 68, chart 6.

24. There are only two shop signs that leave out the gods and are thus purely profane: the

painted bronze vessels of the taberna vasaria (IX, 11, 4) and the cloth handler of the dye-

works at VII, 2,11; see Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 64.

25. Pompey had elephants drawing his chariot in a triumph at Rome, with disastrous re-

sults: Plutarch Pompey 14.4.

26. de Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 110.

27. For images of Mercury and temple on coins, see Wolª, “Marcus-Säule,” 14–15.

28. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce 1:189–94; Walter O. Moeller, The Wool Trade of Ancient Pom-

peii (Leiden, 1976), 15; J. P. Wild, Textile Manufacture in the Northern Roman Provinces

(Cambridge, 1970), 24.

29. Hugo Blümner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen und

Römern (Leipzig 1875), 1: 211–14; Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen,” 27–28; Moeller,

Wool Trade, 27.

30. Pliny, Naturalis Historia 8.192, reports that adding vinegar to the sizing makes felt so

strong that it resists steel.

31. Similar boilers are found in nearby workshops, I, 12, 4, and IX, 3, 16; see Walter O.

Moeller, “The Felt Shops of Pompeii,” American Journal of Archaeology 75 (1971):

188–89.

32. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce 1:194, believes Verecundus is holding a horse blanket. Com-

pare the relief, now in the U‹zi Gallery in Florence, of two men holding up a large

piece of cloth, probably a toga, for a seated customer: Felletti Maj, Tradizione italica, 322,

pl. 62, fig. 153.

33. CIL 4:3130; Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 154–55, rejects the attribution of the house to

M. Gavius Rufus; see also Valeria Sampaolo, “VII 2, 16–17: Casa di M. Gavius Rufus,”

Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 6 (Rome, 1996), 530–85.

296 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 0 0 — 1 0 9

34. CIL 4:9083.

35. Andreau, Monsieur Jucundus, 107, 284, 289 n. 3, 292, 323.

36. Moeller, Wool Trade, caption to pl. 10, incorrectly reads the legs and trestles of this table

as a drying rack; evidently he saw the fresco when the paint depicting the table surface

and the objects on it had disappeared.

37. Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 130, cat. no. 45, proposes that the man is hold-

ing a shoe in his right hand.

38. Mau, Pompeii, 396; Andreau, Monsieur Jucundus, 23, 54–56, 58, 60, 62–64, 69–70, 229,

281–84, 295–99.

39. The emperor Vespasian is famous for the installation of public urinals in Rome, and

the fact that he taxed urine (Suetonius, Vespasianus 23) suggests that fullers bought the

urine: Moeller, Wool Trade, 96.

40. Moeller, Wool Trade, 18–27; Loredana D’Orazio and Ezio Martuscelli, “Il tessile a Pom-

pei: tecnologia, industria e commercio,” in Homo Faber: Natura, scienza e tecnica nel-

l’antica Pompei, ed. Annamaria Ciarallo and Ernesto De Carolis (exh. cat., Naples, Museo

Archeologico Nazionale, 27 March–18 July 1999), 92–94.

41. The excavator noted that the other piers were unfinished, and like the Naples pier, rec-

tangular rather than square in section. These piers replaced the original, light colon-

nade, providing greater support for the drying terrace constructed where the peristyle’s

roof had been. Spinazzola found that the owner had transformed the peristyle of the

fullonica on the Street of Abundance (I, 6, 7) in the same way, using heavy piers to sup-

port the flat roof of the drying terrace: Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1:772, fig. 757.

42. Naples, inv. 9774; Real Museo Borbonico (Naples, 1824–57) 4: pls. 49–50; Wolfgang Hel-

big, Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten Städte Campaniens (Leipzig, 1868), no. 1502;

Otto Jahn, “Über Darstellungen des Handwerks und Handelsverkehrs auf antiken

Wandgemälden,” Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig

(1867), 305 ª., pl. 4, 1–4; Blümner, Technologie 1:183 ª., figs. 70–73; Valeria Sampaolo,

“VI 8, 20: Fullonica,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 4 (Rome, 1993), 604–10; further bibl. in

Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 230–31 n. 1296.

43. William Gell, Pompeiana: Topography, Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii, The Result of

Excavations since 1819 (London, 1832) 1: pl. 50, facing 190.

44. The excavator replaced the pier taken to Naples with a modern one, still in situ. Sam-

paolo, “VI, 8, 20,” 605, locates the pier incorrectly at the southern corner of the east

side, and her plan omits the pier and fountain installation.

45. I wish to thank Chris Jones and Ian Sutherland for their help in measuring and ana-

lyzing this complex; see also Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 230, who follows

Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia, ed. Giuseppe Fiorelli (Naples, 1862) 2:138,

144–48. The excavator describes the marble shell that received the water from the pipes

that ran along the little walls in his first report (20 August 1825), Pompeianarum An-

tiquitatum Historia 2:138.

46. In his report of 23 February 1826, Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia 2:144, the ex-

cavator describes the area more fully, correcting several errors: “un Fiume sedente con

anfora nella sinistra mano, dalla quale scorre copia di acqua, là una Venere in leggiadro

atto, il cui volto è ora tutto cancellato.” But the fullest description is that of Gell, Pom-

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 0 9 — 1 1 4 • 297

peiana 2:122–23: “Plate L. represents a fountain, at an angle in the court of this edifice,

diªerent from those yet observed either in the streets or private houses. It is placed be-

tween two square piers, and consists in an elegantly shaped tazza, supported by a fluted

pedestal like those commonly used for ancient circular tables, and is of white marble.

From the piers two projections are seen, painted red and ornamented with plants and

birds. These projections serve to conceal certain pipes which spouted water into the basin.

The figure upon the pilaster, too small to be clearly represented in this view, is of Venus.

On the other pilaster is a river god.”

47. Eric M. Moormann, La pittura parietale romana come fonte di conoscenza per la scultura

antica (Assen/Maastricht, 1988) 173, no. 199, compares this image of Venus with one

in room h of House I, 3, 25, at Pompeii (Moormann, Pittura parietale, 142–43, no. 146).

48. Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” 49, no. 171; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 230–31.

49. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 157–58, n. 44.

50. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce 1:773, fig. 758.

51. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 232.

52. Also represented in a grave relief in Forlì: Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen,

128–29, no. 43.

53. Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia, 2:146–47.


55. Grave relief from Forlì: Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 128–29, cat. no. 43; grave

relief from Sens: Zimmer, “Römische Handwerker,” 212, pl. 11, 2, bibl. 227; Pompeii,

House of the Vettii, oecus q, east wall, north part: Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 215,

fig. 126.

56. The Fullonica Stephani (I, 6, 7) is directly across the street from the shop of Verecun-

dus; Spinazzola, Pompeii alla luce, 2:777–78, fig. 765.

57. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 2:777; Blümner, Technologie, 1:177, fig. 22. Fröhlich, Lararien-

und Fassadenbilder, 323, raises the unlikely possibility that the woman is buying cloth

from the man.

58. Grave reliefs: Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 121–27, nos. 35–41; Margot Baltzer,

“Die Alltagsdarstellungen der treverischen Grabdenkmäler,” Trierer Zeitschrift für

Geschichte und Kunst des Trierer Landes und seiner Nachbargebiete 46 (1983), 94–96, nos.

1–17, figs. 38–53.

59. Kampen, Image and Status, 133–34.

60. Sampaolo, “VI 8, 20,” 610, fig. 9, reproduces a drawing of this painting.

61. Helbig, Wandegemälde, no. 338.

62. Helbig, Wandegemälde, nos. 223, 1216.

63. Hermann G. Gummerus, “Darstellungen aus dem Handwerk auf römischen Grab- und

Votivsteinen in Italien,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 28 (1913):

63–126; Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 1–46; Zimmer, “Römische Handwerker,”

205–28.

64. Natalie B. Kampen, “Image and Status of Roman Working Women: Second and Third

Century Reliefs from Ostia” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1976); Kampen, Image and

Status.

65. Ravenna, National Museum, inv. 7, H 2.66, W 0.90, D 0.44 m. At some undetermined

298 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 1 4 — 1 1 8

time, builders used it as a block in Ravenna’s city wall near the Port’Aurea, where ex-

cavators found it in 1588. In this reuse, the stele lost part of its tympanum, and the re-

lief on the left side and back; see Guido Mansuelli, Le stele romane del territorio raven-

nate e del basso Po (Ravenna, 1967), 125–27, no. 12; Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen,

143–44, cat. no. 62.

66. Mansuelli, Stele romane, 103.

67. Zimmer, “Römische Handwerker,” 216, n. 36, reads the image on the chest as a castle,

symbol of the wealth Longidienus attained through his work.

68. Here I disagree with Zimmer, “Römische Handwerker,” 216, who characterizes the

scene as a common image of woodworking that is symbolic for the whole shipbuild-

ing process.

69. I thank Frank Fisher for pointing out nautical particulars of this relief.

70. P(ublius) Longidienus / P(ublii) f(ilius) / ad onus / properat; for the sense of properat see

Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 143.

71. Hans Rupprecht Goette, Studien zu römische Togadarstellungen (Mainz, 1990), 26–27,

type Ab or type Ac.

72. P(ublius) Longidienus P(ublii) f(ilius) Cam(ilia tribu) / faber navalis se vivo constit / uit et

Longidienae P(ublii) l(ibertae) Stactini.

73. Kockel, Porträtreliefs stadtrömischer Grabbauten, 49–50.

74. P(ublius) Longidienus P(ublii) l(ibertus) Rufio / P(ublius) Longidienus P(ublii) l(ibertus)

Piladespotus / inpensam patrono dederunt.

75. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 78–80, bibl. 118.

76. Rome, Vatican Museums, Galleria Lapidaria, inv. 9277, H 1.33, W 1.00, D 0.90 m, ac-

quired from the Villa Negroni-Massimo in the nineteenth century. Front: inscription;

left side: scene of toolmaking, H 0.37 × W 0.40 m; back side: guttus (pitcher) and pa-

tera, H 0.35 × W 0.43 m; right side: sales scene, H 0.42 × W 0.40 m; deep cylindrical

cutting in top for an ash urn. See Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 181–83, cat. no.

114, with bibl.

77. L(ucius) Cornelius / Atimetus / sibi et L(ucio) Cornelio / Epaphrae lib(erto) / benemerenti

/ ceterisq(ue) libertis / lib(ertabus) posterisque / eorum. (Lucius Cornelius Atimetus [ded-

icates this altar] to himself and to Lucius Cornelius Epaphra, his meritorious freedman,

and to the rest of his freedmen and freedwomen and to their descendants.)

78. Kampen, Image and Status, 97–98.

79. There are numerous iconographical parallels to this scene, especially the fragment of a

stele from Aquileia, National Museum, inv. 166: Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen,

186–87, cat. no. 122; and Naples, National Museum, inv. 6575: Zimmer, Römische Berufs-

darstellungen, 185–86, cat. no. 121.

80. Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 181; Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: figs. 225–26,

incorrectly proposes that these are the instruments represented at the top of the pecti-

narii’s combing columns in the painting from Verecundus’s shop facade.

81. Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 181.

82. Kampen, “Image and Status,” 100–101; Kampen, Image and Status, 97–98.

83. Discussed in Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power, 52–68; Zanker, “Über die Werk-

stätten augusteischer Larenaltäre,” 147–155; Zimmer, “Römische Handwerker,” 216–17.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 1 8 — 1 2 3 • 299

84. Kampen, Image and Status, 52–59, 139 cat. no. 3, Ostia Museum, inv. 134, from Ostia,

Regio III, in a building on the via della Foce, near the Serapeum, H 0.21 × W 0.54 m.

85. Raissa Calza and Ernst Nash, Ostia (Rome, 1960), 74, pl. 103; Raissa Calza and Maria

Floriani Squarciapino, Museo Ostiense (Rome, 1962), 20, no. 8, inv. 134; Bianchi

Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power,62–64, pl. 69; Kampen, “Image and Status,” 140–44,

no. 2.

86. J.M.C. Toynbee, Animals in Roman Life and Art (London, 1973), 56; W. C. McDermott,

The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1938), 59 and 280.

87. Calza, Museo Ostiense, 20, makes a curious suggestion about the owner’s ethnicity. Cit-

ing Juvenal, but without giving the precise passage, she asserts that the antics of trained

monkeys were the preferred spectacle of audiences of oriental extraction; she then im-

plies that the shopowner was of oriental origin, citing as further evidence the fact that

the woman’s shop was near the temple of Serapis, an Egyptian deity. No passage in

Juvenal makes the connection between an oriental audience and monkey shows, and

the proximity of the relief ’s findspot to the Serapeum is inconclusive. See Toynbee,

Animals, 55–60, for all the pertinent citations regarding monkeys in ancient Roman

authors.

88. Kampen, “Roman Working Women,” 125–29; Natalie B. Kampen, “Römische Straßen-

händlerinnen: Geschlecht und Sozialstatus,” Antike Welt 16, 4 (1985): 23–42.

89. Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia (2nd ed., Oxford, 1973), 311–36.

90. One of the collegia’s names reflects this devotion: Mensores frumentarii Cereris Augustae

“Grain measurers of the Augustan Ceres.” See J. P. Waltzing, Étude historique sur les cor-

porations professionnelles, vol. 2 (Louvain, 1896), 62; L. Paschetto, Ostia colonia romana,

storia e monumenti (Rome, 1912), 217; Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grec-

ques et romaines (Paris, 1873–1919), s.v. “mensor,” 1726–27.

91. Giovanni Becatti, Scavi di Ostia, vol. 4, Mosaici e pavimenti marmorei (Rome, 1961), 36;

Clarke, Mosaics, 96.

92. Becatti, Mosaici, 34; another calculator appears in the painting from Ostia of the ship

Isis Geminiana, now in the Vatican: Bartolomeo Nogara, Le Nozze Aldobrandini e i pae-

saggi con scene dell’Odissea e le altre pitture murali antiche conservate nella Biblioteca Vati-

cana e nei Musei Pontifici (Milan, 1907), 71–72, pl. 46.

93. Compare, for instance, the contemporary mosaic showing the sacrifice of bulls in the

Augusteum of the Firemen’s Barracks at Ostia: Becatti, Mosaici, 60–62; Clarke, Mosaics,

44–45, figs. 55, 92. Further parallels to the sacrifice may be seen in the worker with the

sack striding in from the left, like the assistant who brings in the animal to be slain at

the altar; the boy, who is like the camillus; and the man with the empty sack (next to the

head of the collegium), who is in the position of the tibicen.

94. Becatti, Mosaici, 35.

95. imo / · statvam / lavrentio · vp— / [patro] no · corpo · mensorm– / [o] b · contem-

platione meritor— / [univ] ersvm corpvs animis exvltantibvs / [dign] issimo

collocavit. (The whole collegium of the Grain Measurers with joyful hearts placed

this statue to Laurentius, most perfect man [and most meritorious] patronus of their

collegium, to honor his benefactions [lit., for the contemplation of his deserving deeds].)

Becatti, Mosaici, 35. The same collegium is mentioned in a fragmentary inscription on

300 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 2 3 — 1 2 8

a marble plaque found in front of the Epagathiana Warehouse: ·········· decvrioni /

[cor]/ pvs · mesorvm / [fru] mentar · ostiens / patrono · et · q– · q

–perpetvo /

ob · plvrima eivs · benefic / in rem · pvblic · svam · conlata. (The Ostian col-

legium of Grain Measurers [dedicates this monument] to the decurion, patronus and

lifetime quinquennalis, for his many benefactions to the city.) Becatti, Mosaici, 35.

96. Sarah C. Bisel, “The Human Skeletons of Herculaneum,” International Journal of An-

thropology 6 (1991): 1–20.

97. The canal that Trajan built from his harbor to the Tiber bypassed Ostia, and although

Ostia already possessed huge warehouses and residences, it was simply more e‹cient

to build more of the same at Portus. Ostia’s decline was slow, but its signs are already

evident in the abandonment or refitting of residential buildings during the later third

century. In the fourth century, wealthy merchants were able to buy whole apartment

blocks and refit them into grand houses for themselves. See Giovanni Becatti, “Case

ostiense del tarde impero,” Bollettino d’Arte 33, 2 (1948): 103–28, and Bollettino d’Arte 33,

3 (1948): 197–224.

CHAPTER 5. SPECTACLE

The epigraph is from Paul Zanker, “Der Kaiser baut fürs Volk,” Gerda Henkel Vorlesung 10 No-

vember 1995 (Opladen, 1997), 30.

1. On the development of the Roman theater building, see Margarete Bieber, The History

of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, 1939), 326–55; Hazel Dodge, “Amusing the

Masses,” in Life, Death, and Entertainment in the Roman Empire, ed. David S. Potter and

David J. Mattingly (Ann Arbor, 1999), 208–24.

2. Richard C. Beacham, The Roman Theatre and Its Audience (London, 1991), 83–84.

3. Natalie B. Kampen (personal communication) questions the notion that women of high

status or wealth actually sat with slaves and the poor at the top of the theater. She doubts

that the lex Iulia was in fact rigidly enforced to the humiliation of mothers and wives—

even those of theater donors.

4. Zanker, Pompeii, 113; E. Rawson, “Discrimina ordinum: The lex Julia theatralis,” Papers

of the British School at Rome 55 (1987): 83–114.

5. On the curule chair, see Thomas Schäfer, Imperii insignia: Sella curulis und fasces zur

Repräsentation römischer Magistrate (Mainz, 1989).

6. M. Holconio M.f. Rufo, II.v.i.d. quinquiens, iter[um] quinq[uennali], trib[uno] mil[itum] a

p[opolo], flamini Aug[usti], patr[ono] colo[niae], d[ecurionum] d[ecreto]. For the identification

of the cuttings as supporting a curule chair, see J. Bauer, “Munificentia privata pom-

peiana,” (master’s thesis, University of Munich, 1988): 52–53.

7. Mau, Pompeii, 148–49; Michaela Fuchs, Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung römischer The-

ater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum (Mainz, 1987).

8. Martial records spectators in white togas in both the theater (2.29.1–4) and the am-

phitheater (4.2.4, 14.135); Calpurnius Siculus, 7.26–29, distinguishes between people

wearing white togas in the Colosseum’s lower levels and the pullati in its highest rows;

see Erik Gunderson, “The Ideology of the Arena,” Classical Antiquity 15 (1996): 123–26;

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 2 8 — 1 3 3 • 301

Florence Dupont, L’acteur-roi ou le théâtre dans la Rome antique (Paris, 1985), emphasizes

how the theatrical dimension pervades Roman society; Holt N. Parker, “The Observed

of All Observers: Spectacle, Applause, and Cultural Poetics in the Roman Theater Au-

dience,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium

Papers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon (New Haven, 1999),

166–67.

9. Rainer Graefe, “Vela Erunt”: Die Zeltdächer der römischen Theater und ähnlicher Anlagen

(2 vols., Mainz, 1979).

10. Beacham, Roman Theatre, 127.

11. A well-known painting from Herculaneum, Naples, inv. 9019, shows an actor prepar-

ing to go on stage. Carl Weber, the excavator, found this painting, along with three oth-

ers, out of place, lying on the floor of a room in the Palaestra. Presumably the owner

prized these paintings so much that he had them removed from their original Third-

Style walls and intended to reinsert them in a new decorative ensemble. For an account

of all four paintings, see Agnes Allrogen-Bedel, “Dokumente des 18. Jahrhunderts zur

Topographie von Herculaneum,” Cronache Ercolanesi 13 (1983): 139–58. Two mosaic em-

blemata from the Villa of Cicero at Pompeii, both signed by the mosaicist Dioskourides

of Samos, reproduce scenes from comedies of Menander: inv. no. 9987 reproduces a

scene from the Synaristosai; inv. no. 9985 the Theophoroumene. See Séraphim Chari-

tonidis, Lilly Kahil, and René Ginouvès, Les mosaïques de la Maison du Ménandre à

Mytilène, Antike Kunst, suppl. 6 (Bern, 1970), 41–44, cat. no. T6 (Synaristosai); 46–49,

cat. no. T8 (Theophoroumene).

12. See, for example, the House of the Theatrical Pictures in Pompeii: Mariette de Vos, “I

6, 11: Casa dei Quadretti teatrali,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 1 (Rome, 1990), 362, 371–81.

13. David S. Potter, “Entertainers in the Roman Empire,” in Life, Death, and Entertainment

in the Roman Empire, ed. D. S. Potter and D. J. Mattingly (Ann Arbor, 1999), 272–75.

14. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.31.

15. On the vicissitudes of Pylades’ relationship with Augustus: Suetonius, Divus Augustus

45; Cassius Dio 55.10.11.

16. Lucian, De Saltatione 37–61; trans. A. M. Harmond, Lucian, Loeb (Cambridge, Mass.,

1936), 248–65.

17. Caligula: Suetonius, Gaius Caligula 11, 36, 54–56; Cassius Dio 59.2.5, 59.5.5. Claudius:

Tacitus, Annales 11.4, 11.36; Cassius Dio 60.28.3–5, 60.31.5. Nero: Tacitus, Annales 14.15;

Lucian, De Saltatione 63.

18. Beacham, Roman Theatre, 128–29.

19. For a full treatment of the structure, with bibliography through 1936: Tatiana Warsher,

Codex Topographicus Pompejanus, Regio VI, ins. 10, pars 1 (typescript, American Acad-

emy in Rome, 1936).

20. Engravings of two of the erotic pictures appeared for the first time in César Famin, Musée

Royal de Naples: Peintures, bronzes et statues érotiques du Cabinet Secret, avec leur explica-

tion (Paris, 1836); they were reprinted in M. L. Barré, Herculanum et Pompéi, recueil général

des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques, etc. découverts jusqu’à ce jour et reproduits d’après le anti-

chità di Ercolano, il Museo Borbonico et tous les ouvrages analogues, vol. 8, Musée Secret

(Paris 1877); Barré’s moralizing comments on the erotic imagery epitomize the attitude

302 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 3 3 — 1 3 4

of the period in regard to sex. A facsimile with Spanish text: Frente de Afirmación

Hispanista, Museo Secreto del arte erótico de Pompeya y Herculano (Mexico City, 1995);

Italian text with catalogue: Laurentino García y García and Luciana Jacobelli, eds., Louis

Barré: Museo Segreto, 2 vols. (Naples, 2001).

21. Nicholas Horsfall, “The Cultural Horizons of the Plebs Romana,” Memoirs of the Amer-

ican Academy in Rome 41 (1996): 114; R.W. Reynolds, “The Adultery Mime,” Classical

Quarterly 40 (1946): 80; Scriptores Historiae Augustae Heliogabalus 25.4.

22. Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (rev. ed.,

New York, 1992), 9–10.

23. Valerius Maximus, 2.10.8, mentions C. Mosius as aedile, presumably the aedile of

55 b.c., making this Cato Uticensis (the Younger); Martial, book 1, introduction, repeats

the story but does not specify the Cato. Martial also implies that Cato entered the the-

ater precisely because he wanted to spoil the people’s fun:

Epigrams are written for those who are accustomed to look at the Games of Flora (Flo-

rales). Let no Cato enter my theatre, or if he enters, let him look on. I think I may justifiably

close my epistle in verse:

You knew the rites to jocund Flora dear,

The festive quips and licence of the rout;

Why on our scene, stern Cato, enter here?

Did you then enter only to go out?

Martial Epigrams, trans. Walter C. A. Ker

(Cambridge, Mass., [1919] 1968), 29–31

24. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 217–18 places his figure 88, the “tightrope walk-

ers” in this position; Bragantini, “VI 10, 1,” places a diªerent picture there, i.e., Salomon

Reinach, Répertoire des peintures grecs et romaines (Paris, 1922), 267, no. 12.

25. Beacham, Roman Theatre, 132.

26. Helbig, Wandgemälde, no. 1503.

27. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 217–18.

28. This subsection is a reworking of my essay “Living Figures within the Scaenae Frons:

Figuring the Viewer in Liminal Space,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica

(IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla Pittura Parietale

Antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita (Bologna 1997), 43–45.

29. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power, 110–14, figs. 115 and 116.

30. Dorothea Michel, “Bemerkungen über Zuschauerfiguren in pompejanischen soge-

nannten Tafelbildern,” in La regione sotterrata dal Vesuvio: Studi e prospettive, Atti del

convegno internazionale, 11–15 November 1979, ed. Alfonso de Franciscis (Naples,

1982): 537–98. See also Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berke-

ley, 1998).

31. The use of the scaenae frons as a way of organizing wall-decorative schemes begins in

the mid–first century b.c. and reappears in the late Third Style of the 40s. Compare

oecus 23 from the Villa of Oplontis, ca. 40 b.c. (Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 117, fig.

45) with the tablinum of the House of Lucretius Fronto, ca. a.d. 40 (Clarke, Houses of

Roman Italy, 152–53, pls. 8 and 9). In Second Style schemes the artist uses the scaenae

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 3 4 — 1 3 9 • 303

frons to open up the wall with bold perspectives; in Third Style schemes the architec-

tural elements of the scaenae frons are thin and the perspectives unconvincing.

32. Moormann, Pittura parietale, 230, no. 310/12.

33. Arnold de Vos, “III 4, 4: Casa di Pinarius Cerialis,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 3 (Rome,

1991), 460–73, figs. 31–41.

34. John R. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100

b.c.–a.d. 250 (Berkeley, 1998), 222, notes 53–54; Parker, “Spectacle, Applause, and Cul-

tural Poetics,” 167–70.

35. Catharine Edwards, “Beware of Imitations: Theater and the Subversion of Imperial Iden-

tity,” in Reflections of Nero: Culture, History, and Representation, ed. JasElsner and Jamie

Masters (Chapel Hill, 1994), 84–93.

36. I do not claim that all viewers felt the same toward the actor; his position was highly

contested in antiquity. See Shadi Bartsch, Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Dou-

blespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).

37. K. J. Neumann, “Augustales,” Pauly-Wissowa Real-Encyclopädie, vol. 2, pt. 2 (Stuttgart,

1896): 2349–61; Ostrow, “Augustales on the Bay of Naples,”; James B. Rives, “Augustales,”

Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., New York, 1996): 215.

38. Potter, “Entertainers in the Roman Empire,” 307–24.

39. J. C. Edmondson, “Dynamic Arenas: Gladiatorial Presentations in the City of Rome and

the Construction of Roman Society during the Early Empire,” in Roman Theater and So-

ciety: E. Togo Salmon Papers, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, 1996), 1:82: “Audiences

too were a cross section of Roman society: from emperor to slave, from senator to peas-

ant, from citizen soldier to foreign tradesman, from vestal virgin to common prostitute.

They were thus microcosms of not just the Roman citizen body but of Roman society

as a whole.” See also 86–95.

40. Edmondson, “Dynamic Arenas,” 84–86.

41. Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (New York, 1998), 34–100; Shelby

Brown, “Death as Decoration: Scenes from the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics,”

in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (New York, 1992),

180–211.

42. Potter, “Entertainers in the Roman World,” 305–7.

43. Alison Futrell, Blood in the Arena (Austin, 1997), passim; Augustine, Confessions 6.8.

44. Kathleen M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological En-

actments,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 44–73.

45. Coleman, “Fatal Charades,” 44–49; Zanker, “Der Kaiser baut fürs Volk,” 30–31; Kath-

leen M. Coleman, “‘Informers’ on Parade,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the

History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon

(New Haven, 1999), 231–45.

46. For a discussion of announcements of gladiatorial contests at Pompeii, see Patriza

Sabbatini Tumolesi, “Gladiatorum paria: Annunci di spettacoli gladiatorii a Pompei,”

Tituli 1 (1980).

47. Mau, Pompeii, 223–24; for the gestures used to communicate the verdict, see Anthony

Corbeill, “Thumbs in Ancient Rome: Pollex as Index,” Memoirs of the American Acad-

emy in Rome 42 (1997): 1–21.

304 • N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 3 9 — 1 4 5

48. The definitive publication remains Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Mario Torelli, Filippo

Coarelli, and Antonio Giuliano, “Il monumento teatino di C. Lusius Storax nel Museo

di Chieti,” Studi Miscellanei 10, pt. 3 (1963–64): 55–102; more recently: Felletti Maj,

Tradizione italica, 362–70; Adriano La Regina, ed., Sangue e Arena, exh. cat., Rome, Colos-

seum, June 22, 2001–January 7, 2002 (Milan, 2001), 357, cat. no. 72; Gabriele Iaculli,

“Necropoli e monumenti funerari,” in L’archeologia delle popolazioni italiche tra formazione

delle identità etniche e romanizzazione, Atti del Convegno Celano-L’Aquila, December

1999, ed. Maria Jose Strazzulla (forthcoming). I wish to thank Dr. Iaculli for providing

me with his text.

49. C. Lusius C. et Iuniae l. S[t]orax Ro[ma]niensis sevir sibi et Lusiae C. et Iuniae l. Oecumeni

et Lusiae [C. et Iu]niae l. Philinnae coniugibus suis vivos f [e]cit. H(oc) m(onumentum)

h(eredem) n(on) [s(equetur)]. (G. Lusius Storax Romaniensis freedman of Gaius and

Iunia, sevir, made this monument while still alive for himself and for his wives, Lu-

sia Oecumenis, freedwoman of Gaius and Iunia, and Lusia Philinna, freedwoman of

Gaius and Iunia. This monument will not pass to their heirs.) Torelli, “Le iscrizioni,”

Studi Miscellanei 10 (1963–64): 62, no. 1.

50. Torelli, “Le iscrizioni,” Studi Miscellanei 10: 61–71, esp. 66–70 for Torelli’s prosopogra-

phy, based on analysis of the gens names in the freedmen’s trinomina.

51. Giuliano, “Il supposto ritratto di Storax,” Studi Miscellanei 10 (1963–64): 100–102.

52. Coarelli, “Il rilievo con scene gladiatorie,” Studi Miscellanei 10 (1963–64): 85–87. Ettore

Ghislanzoni, “Il rilievo gladiatorio di Chieti,” Monumenti Antichi 19 (1908): 540–614,

proposes putting the triangular blocks into a pediment above the gladiatorial frieze, but

the fit is not right.

53. Coarelli, “Il rilievo con scene gladiatorie,” Studi Miscellanei 10: 90; the Thracian wears

high greaves on both shins and a tall plumed helmet.

54. Coarelli identifies them, without evidence, as incitatores, whose job was to spur the

fighters on: Coarelli, “Il rilievo con scene gladiatorie,” Studi Miscellanei, 10:90.

55. Torelli, “Il frontone,” Studi Miscellanei 10: 77, followed by Iaculli, “Necropoli e monu-

menti.”

56. Ettore De Ruggiero, “Honoraria summa,” Dizionario epigrafico di antichità romane,

3:949–59.

57. I owe this reading of the scene to Anthony Corbeill. A less likely interpretation is that the

writer is inscribing the names of the new quattuorviri, or of the new seviri, on the tablet.

58. Another funerary relief, the banquet scene from Amiternum, seems to represent two

such colleges, twelve persons divided into two tables with six seviri at each: Torelli, “Il

frontone,” Studi Miscellanei 10: 78.

59. Petronius, Satyricon 30.1–2; Trimalchio has enormous bronze fasces at the entrance to

his triclinium with the inscription: C. Pompeio Trimalchioni, seviro Augustali, Cinnamus

dispensator (To Gaius Pompeius Trimalchione, sevir of Augustus, from Cinnamus, his

agent).

60. Bianchi Bandinelli, “Dati generali e studi precedenti,” Studi Miscellanei 10: 60, calls it

“capsized perspective” (a prospettiva ribaltata); L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life,

94–104, esp. 99, n. 15, analyzes in detail this “deployed” perspective in discussing li-

beralitas and oratio reliefs on the Arch of Constantine.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 4 5 — 1 5 1 • 305

61. Natalie B. Kampen (personal communication) suggests an alternative interpretation,

that the woman may be a mourner.

62. Felletti Maj, Tradizione italica, 367, proposes that this is no brawl, but a representation

of enthusiastic fans gesticulating in favor of this or that gladiator.

63. Naples, inv. 112222; most recently see Valeria Sampaolo, “I 3, 23: Casa della Rissa nel-

l’Anfiteatro,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 1 (Rome, 1990), 77–81, with bibl.

64. G. De Petra, “L’anfiteatro pompeiano rappresentato in un antico dipinto,” Giornale degli

scavi di Pompei, new series, 1 (1868–69): 185–86, pl. 8; F. Matz, “Scavi di Pompei,” Bul-

lettino dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1869): 240–42; Antonio Sogliano,

Le pitture campane scoverte negli anni 1867–1879 (Naples, 1879), 124, no. 604.

65. Tacitus, Annales 14.17:

Sub idem tempus levi initio atrox caedes orta inter colonos Nucerinos Pompeianosque

gladiatorio spectaculo, quod Livineius Regulus, quem motum senatu rettuli, edebat.

Quippe oppidana lascivia in vicem incessentes probra, dein saxa, postremo ferrum

sumpsere, validiore Pompeianorum plebe, apud quos spectaculum edebatur. Ergo deportati

sunt in urbem multi e Nucerinis trunco per vulnera corpore, ac plerique liberorum aut

parentum mortes deflebant. Cuius rei iudicium princeps senatui, senatus consulibus per-

misit. Et rursus re ad patres relata, prohibiti publice in decem annos eius modi coetu Pom-

peiani collegiaque, quae contra leges instituerant, dissoluta; Livineius et qui alii seditionem

conciverant exilio multati sunt.

About the same date, a trivial incident led to a serious aªray between the inhabitants of

the colonies of Nuceria and Pompeii, at a gladiatorial show presented by Livineius Regu-

lus, whose removal from the senate has been noticed. During an exchange of raillery, typ-

ical of the petulance of country towns, they resorted to abuse, then to stones, and finally

to steel; the superiority lying with the populace of Pompeii, where the show was being ex-

hibited. As a result, many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the cap-

ital, while a very large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents. The trial of

the aªair was delegated by the emperor to the senate; by the senate to the consuls. On the

case being again laid before the members, the Pompeians as a community were debarred

from holding any similar assembly for ten years, and the associations which they had

formed illegally were dissolved. Livineius and the other fomenters of the outbreak were

punished with exile.

Trans. John Jackson, Loeb (Cambridge, Mass., 1937)

66. Extended discussions of the artist’s perspective rendering: Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fas-

sadenbilder, 244–45; Graefe, “Vela Erunt,” 104–8, pls. 112–13 (with special attention to

the mechanics of the velum).

67. CIL 4: 2993 x and y; Sabbatini Tumolesi, “Gladiatorum paria,” 25–27, pl. 1, figs. 1–2; Au-

gusta Hönle and Anton Henze, Römische Amphitheater und Stadien: Gladiatorenkämpfe

und Circusspiele (Zürich, 1981), 134–35, fig. 115.

68. Paavo Castrén, “Ordo Populusque Pompeianus”: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii

(Rome, 1975), 108, 185–86, no. 227: 5 and 12; Sabbatini Tumolesi, “Gladiatorum paria,”

24–25, 27–32, nos. 5–8.

69. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, “Tradizione ellenistica e gusto romano nella pittura pom-

peiana,” Critica dell’Arte6 (1941), 13; Helga von Heintze, Römische Kunst (Stuttgart, 1969),

306 • N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 5 1 — 1 5 4

128, 133, fig. 116; Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power, 66–64, pl. 70; Felletti Maj,

Tradizione italica, 307–8, 312, 330–32, fig. 162; Fausto Zevi, “Die ‘volkstümliche Kunst,’”

in Pompejanische Wandmalerei, ed. Maria Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli et al., trans. Christina

Callori-Gehlsen (Zurich, 1990), 275.


71. Matz, “Scavi di Pompei,” 240, describes paintings on two walls of peristyle n that were

already ruined at the time of excavation. They had been painted on an earlier plaster layer

than the Riot picture with its flanking pictures of gladiators on the west wall, where the

painter created a new plaster layer. On the wall “to the right of someone entering” (pre-

sumably the north wall), Matz saw a table with a palm on it and incomplete remains of

athletes’ figures with names above written in Greek: Sokrion, [ . . . ]perdis, Teimeas, Apate.

72. Reproduced in Theodor Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities, trans. W.C.F. Anderson

(London, 1895), pl. 28, 3–4; Reinach, Répertoire des peintures, 285, 5.

73. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 219–20; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 153–61.

74. Daniela Corlàita Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione nella pittura pompeiana,” Palladio

23–25 (1974–76): 19–20; Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 16, 237, 367.

75. This evidence was recently reviewed, with the addition of a newly discovered painting in

the House of the Chaste Lovers at Pompeii: Antonio Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei lungo

via dell’Abbondanza (Regio IX, ins. 12, 6–7),” in Ercolano 1738–1988: 250 anni di ricerca

archeologica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale Ravello-Ercolano-Napoli-Pompei, 30

ottobre–5 novembre 1988, ed. Luisa Franchi Dell’Orto (Rome, 1993), 617–40; see also

sixteen articles from the symposium, Mani di pittori e botteghe pittoriche nel mondo romano:

Tavola rotonda in onore di W. J. Th. Peters in occasione del suo 75.mo compleanno, ed. EricM.

Moormann, Mededeelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rom 54 (1995), 61–298.

76. Zanker, “Der Kaiser baut fürs Volk,” 28–31.

77. Giuseppe Fiorelli, Descrizione di Pompei (Naples, 1875), 56; Della Corte, Case ed abitanti,

267–68, nos. 534 and 535: he would attribute the house to Actius Anicetus, a gladiator,

an attribution properly rejected by Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, 248.

78. Sabbatini Tumolesi, “Gladiatorum paria,” 25–26.


80. Amedeo Maiuri, “Pompei e Nocera,” Rendiconti dell’Accademia di archeologia, lettere, e

belle arti di Napoli, new series, 33 (1958): 39.

81. CIL 4: 1216, 2380, 5059; Lawrence Richardson, Jr., The Casa dei Dioscuri and Its Painters,

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 23 (Rome, 1955), 88–93; Walter O. Moeller,

“The Riot of a.d. 59 at Pompeii,” Historia 19 (1970): 84–95.

82. The usual translation is “Campanians, in (the same) victory you perished with the Nuce-

rians,” it being assumed that the Campani were the inhabitants of the northwest quar-

ter of the city, the vicus Campanus, who fought on the Nucerian side: Della Corte, Case

ed abitanti, 293–94; Mau, Pompeii, 492; Tanzer, Common People of Pompeii, 73.

83. In an attempt to explain why the ten-year ban did not seem to hold, Richardson, Casa

dei Dioscuri, 88–91, and Moeller, “Riot,” 91–94, propose that the riot broke out not

during the usual gladiatorial games but during an exhibition match organized by elite

youths belonging to collegia iuvenum from Pompeii and Nuceria: only these matches,

not regular gladiatioral contests, were forbidden by Rome. But Castrén, Ordo Populusque

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 5 4 — 1 5 8 • 307

Pompeianus, 33, 111–12, convincingly rejects one of the building blocks of Richardson’s

and Moeller’s argument, Della Corte’s conjecture that there was a collegium iuvenum

called Iuvenes Venerii Pompeiani (Matteo Della Corte, Iuventus [Arpino, 1924], 36); see

also the interpretation of Sabbatini Tumolesi, “Gladiatorum paria,” 25–27.

84. Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild,” 460–523; Zanker, Pompeii, 135–203.

CHAPTER 6. LAUGHTER AND SUBVERSION IN THE TAVERN

1. Livy 3.29.5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 7.72.11.

2. Martial, introduction to book 1 of the epigrams (Floralia); Martial 7.8 (triumph); Mar-

tial 11.2, 11.15 (Saturnalia), discussed in Richlin, Garden of Priapus, 6–11.

3. There is a vast modern literature on the carnival in European culture as a populist in-

version of “high” culture—an empowerment of the non-elite—deriving for the most

part from Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, especially following its first English

translation by Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). For a careful review of this

literature, see Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression

(London, 1986), 1–26, who point out that since carnival is a licensed release, it can also

be a form of social control of the low by the high (13).

4. Richlin, Garden of Priapus, especially chapter 1, “Roman Concepts of Obscenity,” 1–31;

Anthony Corbeill, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Republic (Princeton,

1996), especially Introduction, 3–13.

5. John H. D’Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass.,

1981), 97–120.

6. Richlin, Garden of Priapus.

7. Pedro Paulo Abreu Funari, “Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary People at Pom-

peii,” Journal of European Archaeology 2 (1993): 131–47; Barbara Kellum, “The Phallus

as Signifier: The Forum of Augustus and Rituals of Masculinity,” in Sexuality in An-

cient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. Natalie B. Kampen (New York, 1996),

170–83; Anne Helttula, “Epigraphical Laughter,” in Laughter Down the Centuries, ed.

S. Jäkel and A. Timonen (Turku, 1995), 2:145–59.

8. Two caricatural friezes appear in the House of the Menander, one dating to the late Sec-

ond Style in the atriolo of the bath, the other to the early Fourth Style in oecus 11: Amedeo

Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro e il suo tesoro di argenteria (Rome, 1933), 128–39 (atriolo),

64–74 (oecus 11); Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 185–88. For caricature in literature and

art: Jean Pierre Cèbe, La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique, des ori-

gines à Juvénal (Paris, 1966).

9. Amedeo Maiuri, “La Parodia di Enea,” Bollettino d’Arte 35 (1950): 108–12; Giovanni Be-

catti, “Caricatura,” Enciclopedia dell’Arte Antica, vol. 2 (Rome 1959), 342–48; F. Tiradritti,

“Caricatura (Egitto),” Enciclopedia dell’Arte Antica, 2nd suppl., vol. 1 (Rome 1994),

885–87; Cèbe, Caricature, passim.

10. For a penetrating analysis of the problems surrounding the use of the term “popular

art,” and other equivalents such as “Italic art,” “volkstümliche Kunst,” and “arte ple-

bea,” see Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 13–20.

308 • N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 5 8 – 1 6 1

11. Giuseppe Fiorelli, “Pompei,” Notizie degli Scavi (1876): 193–95; August Mau, “Scavi di

Pompei,” Bullettino dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1878): 191–94; Tatiana

Warsher, “Codex Topographicus Pompejanus,” Regio VI, Insula 14, part 2 (typescript,

American Academy in Rome, 1939), nos. 131–38; Irene Bragantini, “VI 14, 35.36: Caupona

di Salvius,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 5 (Rome, 1994), 366–71. Casellium Aed / Salvius

rog(at), an electoral recommendation found on the exterior wall to the north (left) of the

western entrance, 36, accounts for the name “Caupona of Salvius:” CIL 4:3493; Della

Corte, Case ed abitanti, 81–83, no. 107.

12. Naples National Museum, inv. 111482. See CIL 4:3494 for the various readings of the

captions to the pictures; Mau, “Scavi di Pompei,” 194, gives the readings I accept.

13. Space for such dalliance was on the upper floor; behind room 1 was a small kitchen,

with a staircase leading to the upper floor.

14. Bragantini, “Caupona di Salvius,” 366–71, reproduces both the old photographs and

color reproductions of Presuhn’s watercolors.

15. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 213, sets forth the attractive, but now untenable,

hypothesis that these figures were two eªeminate men (cinaedi) in long dresses kissing,

and that the following three scenes pictured these same cinaedi, in a narrative sequence.

16. F. A. Todd, “Three Pompeian Wall-Inscriptions, and Petronius,” The Classical Review 53

(February 1939): 5–9, proposed that both figures were women, making this a female-

female assignation. I found his arguments convincing, and expanded upon them—

erroneously—in an article written before the cleaning was complete: “Look Who’s Laugh-

ing: Humor in Tavern Painting as Index of Class and Acculturation,” Memoirs of the

American Academy in Rome 43/44 (1998–99): 27–48.

17. Ewen Lyall Bowie, “Novel, Greek,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower

and Antony Spawforth (3rd ed., Oxford, 1996), 1049–50.

18. See especially essays in Roman Sexualities, ed. Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn Skinner

(Princeton, 1998).

19. Plautus, Curculio, 35–38: dum ted abstineas nupta, vidua, virgine,/ iuventute et pueris liberis,

ama quid lubet; my translation.

20. Holt N. Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” in Roman Sexualities, ed. Judith P. Hallett and

Marilyn Skinner (Princeton, 1998), 47–65.

21. Richlin, Garden of Priapus, 202–8, commentary on Juvenal 6.

22. For example: Petronius, Satyricon, 24–25 (Quartilla), 126–33 (Circe, Chrysis), 134–38

(Oenothea, priestess of Priapus).

23. Martial 7.67, 1.90; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 228–29.

24. Hero Granger-Taylor, “Dress,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and

Antony Spawforth (3rd ed., Oxford, 1996): 497–98.

25. Paint losses make it impossible to determine the length or type of the sleeves on either

the man’s tunic or the woman’s dress.

26. Anthony Corbeill points out that the mia est could suggest a sexual advance with the fem-

inine adjective: “She is mine,” with the barmaid responding with appropriate ambiguity.

27. Todd, “Three Pompeian Wall Inscriptions,” 6; the gra‹to, CIL 4:1422, misspells the

gladiator’s name Oceaneanus.

28. Martial 3.95.10, 5.23.4, 5.27.4, 6.9.2.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 6 1 — 1 6 5 • 309

29. The artist’s method was to cover what he had painted with a new stratum of white that

extends on the left from the head to the bottom of the stool and on the right from the

shoulder to the man’s lap; he then repainted this area with the figure as he appears now.

30. Amy Richlin, “Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Ro-

man Law against Love between Men,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, 4 (1993):

554–71.

31. Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 82, translates orte as the vocative of the name Ortus; Todd,

“Three Pompeian Wall Inscriptions,” 8, oªers the much likelier construction oro te,with

the meaning of “come oª it!” or “look here!” Orte appears with this meaning in sexual

vignettes decorating relief medallions on Gaulish vases: see Clarke, Looking at Love-

making, 260–62.

32. Despite losses to the lower right-hand side of this panel, the outlines of the innkeeper’s

head, body, and feet are still visible.

33. Most notably, Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 81, who proposes an improbable interpreta-

tion for scene one: the woman flees Myrtalis and whispers to a man (rather than kiss-

ing him), asking him to protect her. He is none other than the innkeeper Salvius, who

makes her the puella of his inn. On the general modern tendency to see ancient Ro-

mans anachronistically, see John R. Clarke, “‘Just Like Us,’: Cultural Constructions of

Sexuality and Race in Roman Art,” Art Bulletin 78, 4 (1996): 599–603.

34. Bakhtin, Rabelais. I thank Sandra Joshel for suggesting this line of inquiry.

35. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 214–22, esp. 221–22; Irene Bragantini, “VI 10, 1:

Caupona della Via di Mercurio,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 4 (Rome, 1993), 1005–28, bibl.

1005; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 206–12.

36. Someone scratched da fridam pusillum “Give me a little cold water” (CIL 4:1291) on the

painting on the far east part of the north wall showing a male servant pouring wine for

a soldier; the middle picture of the five on the south wall has a man asking a male ser-

vant for wine. Above his head a person scratched the words adde calicem setinum “Give

me a glass of wine from Sentinum” (CIL 4:1292). Since wine from Sentinum was highly

esteemed, perhaps the writer of the gra‹to is poking fun at the low quality of the es-

tablishment’s wine, like someone asking for French champagne in an ordinary beer-

drinkers’ bar.

37. A good literary parallel is Petronius’s Satyricon; scholars have argued that it is an odyssey

in which the main character, Encolpius, searches for an erection to restore his male-

ness: see Niall W. Slater, Reading Petronius (Baltimore, 1990), 40–41.

38. See Andrew M. Riggsby, “Lenocinium: Scope and Consequences,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-

Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung 112 (1995): 423–27.

39. Rudolph Horn, “Ostia,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 51 (1936):

462–67; Guido Calza, “Die Taverne der Sieben Weisen in Ostia,” Die Antike 15 (1939):

99–115.

40. Stephan T.A.M. Mols, “I ‘Sette Sapienti’ ad Ostia antica,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura

parietale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla Pit-

tura Parietale Antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita (Bologna 1997), 90–91, proposes

that the door on the east wall had been filled in, leaving only a window, by the time the

paintings of the Seven Sages were executed—not earlier than the Hadrianic period. He

310 • N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 6 5 — 1 7 0

proposes an asymmetrical arrangement, with one Sage painted on the east wall and two

each on the other three, with the only doorways on the south, where the present door-

way is, and a little doorway on the west side of the north wall, where there is a niche to-

day. For further details of the painting phases in the entire insula, see his excellent ar-

ticle: Stephan T.A.M. Mols, “Decorazione e uso dello spazio a Ostia. Il caso dell’Insula

III x (Caseggiato del Serapide, Terme dei Sette Sapienti e Caseggiato degli Aurighi),”

Mededeelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 58 (1999): 247–386; here Mols also

enriches the analysis of the building by Thea L. Heres, “La storia edilizia delle Terme

dei Sette Sapienti (III x 2) ad Ostia Antica: Uno studio preliminare,” Mededeelingen van

het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 51–52 (1992–93): 76–113. Richard Neudecker, Die Pracht

der Latrine: Zum Wandel öªentlicher Bedürfnisanstalten in der kaiserzeitlichen Stadt (Mu-

nich, 1994), 35–38, wishes to make the room of the Seven Sages a latrine, but without

adducing any new evidence other than the content of the paintings.

41. Mols, “Sette Sapienti,” 338, figs. 3–5.

42. A gra‹to at Pompeii found in a caupona communicating with the Casa dell’Orso (VII,

2, 45) illustrates popular appreciation of Falernum: Assibus (singulis) hic bibitur; dupun-

dium si dederis, meliora bibes; qua[rtum] (assem) si dederis, vina Falerna bibes. “You can

drink here for one as, for two, you’ll drink better. If you pay four asses, you’ll drink Faler-

num.” CIL 4:1679.

43. Calza, “Sieben Weisen in Ostia,” 104–7; Karl Schefold, Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter,

Redner und Denker (Basel, 1943), 154, pl. page 155, 2, 3, 6; P. E. Arias, “Sette Sapienti,”

Enciclopedia dell’Arte Antica 7:223–25; Mols, “Sette Sapienti,” 91, with bibl. in notes 24–30.

44. Edward Courtney, “Musa Lapidaria”: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions (Atlanta, 1995),

87, no. 70A, provides the following translations: “To have a good shit, Solon rubbed his

stomach. Thales instructed the constipated to strain. Crafty Chilon taught how to fart

silently.”

45. ivdici (?) vergilivm legis(se) pveris (?)

or(di) na (?)

46. Nitor, a deponent verb meaning “to strain with physical exertion,” is used actively, as

often happens to deponent forms in colloquial speech. I thank Anthony Corbeill and

Andrew Riggsby for the translation.

47. verbose tibi

nemo

dicit dum priscianu(s)

(?) (u)taris xylosphongio nos

(?a) quas

48. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 36.

49. According to J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1990), 249, the mean-

ing of vissire or visire is “peditum ventris sine crepitu emittere,” “to fart without mak-

ing a sound.”

50. Heikki Solin, “Analecta epigraphica XIII: Griechische Gra‹ti aus Ostia,” Arctos, new

series, 7 (1972): 198 notes that invenib Bias is a phonetic substitution for invenit Bias.

Mols, “Decorazione e uso dello spazio a Ostia,” 307, reads . . . enis Bias. I wish to thank

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 7 1 — 1 7 2 • 31 1

Alvaro Ibarra, who helped me confirm Solin’s reading at the site in 2001. The canoni-

cal Seven Sages, established first in Plato, Protagoras 343 A, and reiterated in Plutarch,

Moralia: Convivium septem sapientium 146–64, and Diogenes Laertius, Thales 35, were:

Thales of Miletus, Pittakos of Mytilenai, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Kleobulos of

Lindos, Myson of Chenai, and Chilon of Sparta; see Bruno Snell, Leben und Meinungen

der Sieben Weisen (Munich, 1971).

51. Werner A. Krenkel, “Fellatio and Irrumatio,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-

Pieck-Universität Rostock 29 (1980): 77–88; Amy Richlin, “The Meaning of irrumare in

Catullus and Martial,” Classical Philology 76 (January 1981): 40–46; Neudecker, Pracht

der Latrine, 35.

52. Anthony Corbeill points out (personal correspondence) that this may be an oblique ref-

erence to the fact that the majority of doctors were Greeks, and were both hated and

feared. The reader who sees the Sages mocked in the Caupona could also read further

mockery of the Greeks in this utterance: just as the real Sages don’t care about bodily

functions (but should), so too doctors rely on hocus-pocus rather than on the basics of

bodily functions, for example, that one should shit well. On Roman intolerance for

Greeks, see J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London, 1979), 32–36; on mistrust

for doctors, see John Scarborough, Roman Medicine (Ithaca, 1969), 96.

53. The missing three Sages would be Pittakos of Mytilenai, Kleobulos of Lindos, and Myson

of Chenai.

54. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 102–10.

55. Stallybrass and White, Transgression, 21–22.

56. The Caupona of Salvius is roofless, but beam-holes visible in the south wall suggest a

maximum ceiling height of 4 m. The frieze, located above the doorway on the north

wall, began at a height of 1.85 m.

57. The Sages’ lines are included in the Carmina Latina Epigraphica, recently revisited by

Joan Gómez Pallarès, “Carmina Latina Epigraphica musiva et depicta Zarkeriana,” Faven-

tia 12–13 (1990–91): 374–77, nos. 1–3; Gómez Pallarès also includes Vergilium legis(se)

pueris, 380, no. 6, as does Paolo Cugusi, Aspetti letterari dei Carmina Latina Epigraphica

(Bologna 1985), 250–51. See also Courtney, “Musa Lapidaria,” 87, no. 70A.

58. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 21–39.

59. Plutarch, Moralia: Convivium septem sapientium 159B, trans. Frank C. Babbitt, Loeb (Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1927). Later on (160A) we find: “Indeed, it is possible to enumerate more

pains than pleasures derived from food; or rather it may be said that the pleasure aªects

but a very limited area in the body, and lasts for no long time; but as for the ugly and

painful experiences crowded upon us by the bother and discomfort which wait upon di-

gestion, what need to tell their number?” Plutarch (b. ca. a.d. 50, d. ca. 120) was roughly

contemporaneous with the paintings of the Caupona of the Seven Sages.

60. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 35.

61. Calza, “Sieben Weisen in Ostia,” 112–13.

62. Gómez-Pallarès, “Carmina Latina Epigraphica,” 375–77, recognizes the humorous con-

tent of both images and texts in his analysis, as does Mols, “Sette Sapienti,” 91–92, who

proposes that the paintings parody the elites’ self-representation as intellectuals in sculp-

tural ensembles.

312 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 7 2 — 1 7 5

63. Emily Gowers, “The Anatomy of Rome from Capitol to Cloaca,” Journal of Roman Stud-

ies 85 (1995): 23–32, for how Roman authors related the city’s sewers to human excre-

ment literally and metaphorically; Stallybrass and White, Transgression, 125–48, on sew-

ers in nineteenth-century London and Paris.

64. Alex Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World,” Klio68 (1986): 429.

65. It is clear that ancient Romans also wished the gods to protect them and bring them

fulfilment in sexual acts. A painting of Priapus oversees the Lupanar (whorehouse) at

Pompeii (Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 199–200), and a painting of an owl overlooks

the three scenes of copulation in the cook’s bedroom in the House of the Vettii (Clarke,

Looking at Lovemaking, 174).

66. Naples, inv. 112285; discussed in Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 40, 59, 296–97,

cat. L. 106, pl. 10, 1, and Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 24, pl. fig. 5.

67. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, 56, 108, 162, no. 74.

68. Neudecker, Pracht der Latrine, chart, fig. 72, and catalogue, 157–67; Ann Olga Koloski-

Ostrow, “Cacator cave malum: The Subject and Object of Roman Public Latrines in Italy

during the First Centuries b.c. and a.d.,” in Cura Aquarum in Sicilia. Proceedings of

the Tenth International Congress on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic

Engineering in the Mediterranean Region, ed. Gemma C. M. Jansen Bulletin Antieke

Beschaving, suppl. 6 (Leiden, 2000), 289–95, points out that many latrines were less

than luxurious and hygienic.

69. I wish to thank Michael Thomas and Michael Larvey for their help in analyzing the con-

struction of the original caupona.

70. Giovanni Becatti, in Scavi di Ostia: Topografia generale, ed. Guido Calza (Rome, 1953)

1:126, 147; see also Carlo Pavolini, Ostia (Rome, 1983), 132–37.

71. Petronius, Satyricon 47, trans. William Arrowsmith (Ann Arbor, 1959); Peter Toohey,

“Trimalchio’s Constipation: Periodizing Madness, Eros, and Time,” in Inventing Ancient

Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World, ed. Mark Golden and Peter

Toohey (New York, 1997), 50–65.

72. But note the cautions against generalizing the luxury and social function of the public

latrine in Ann Koloski-Ostrow, “Finding Social Meaning in the Public Latrines of Pom-

peii,” in Cura Aquarum in Campania, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress

on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean

Region, ed. Nathalie de Haan and Gemma C. M. Jansen, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving,

suppl. 4 (Leiden, 1996), 79–86.

73. Gemma C. M. Jansen, “Water Systems and Sanitation in the Houses of Herculaneum,”

Mededeelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 50 (1991): 145–47, has identified sixty-

two private toilets at Herculaneum, but these were cesspit latrines, not continual flush

toilets.

74. Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality,” 429–30, on the modern need to have pri-

vacy for defecation and sexual intercourse—what he calls the “sex-elimination amal-

gam”; see also Alexander Kira, “Privacy and the Bathroom,” in Environmental Psychol-

ogy, ed. Harold M. Proshansky (New York, 1970), 269–75; Barry Schwartz, “The Social

Psychology of Privacy,” American Journal of Sociology 73 (1968): 749; Norbert Elias, His-

tory of Manners (New York, 1982), passim.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 7 5 — 1 7 8 • 313

75. The closest visual parallels are in the figures of the seated Sages in a mosaic from Mérida

(Augusta Emerita), Spain, and dated to a.d. 350–60: José María Martínez, Museo na-

cional de arte romano (Mérida, 1988), 58; Marie-Henriette Quet, “Banquet des Sept Sages

et sagesse d’Homère: La mosaïque des Sept Sages de Mérida,” Bulletin de liaison de la

Société des amis de la Bibliothèque Salomon Reinach 5 (1987): 47–55.

76. Mols, “Sette Sapienti,” 91–92.

77. Herms with the typical sayings of the Sages found at the “Villa of Brutus” near Rome:

Gisela Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks (London, 1965), 1, fig. 329; the sayings of all

the Sages accompany their portrait busts in the mosaic of the Seven Sages from Baal-

bek, Lebanon (a.d. 250–300): Maurice H. Chéhab, “Le ‘Banquet des Sept Sages’,” Bul-

letin du Musée de Beyrouth 14–15 (1958–59): 36–49; Socrates appears with the Seven Sages

in a mosaic from Apamea, Syria, dated to the mid–fourth century a.d.: Jeanine Balty,

Mosaïques antiques de Syrie (Brussels, 1977), 78–79.

78. William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), proposes that only 5–10

percent of Romans could read and write in this period; for a more optimistic assess-

ment based on the study of electoral notices at Pompeii, see essays in Literacy in the Ro-

man World, ed. John H. Humphrey (Ann Arbor, 1991), esp. Nicholas Horsfall, “Statis-

tics or States of Mind?” 59–76; James Franklin, Jr., “Literacy and the Parietal Inscriptions

of Pompeii,” 77–98; Mireille Corbier, “L’écriture en quête de lecteurs,” 99–118; see also

Stephen L. Dyson, Community and Society in Roman Italy (Baltimore, 1992), 190–92.

79. Calza, “Sieben Weisen,” 104: “Man würde sagen, ein distinguiertes Lokal, nicht für Last-

träger und Fischer des Hafenviertels, sondern für ein weniger einfaches, gebildeteres

Publikum, für eine Gesellschaft von Genießern, die Sinn hatten für den Spott und frechen

Witz der Gemälde und darüber zu lachen verstanden; eine Kneipe nicht für alle, son-

dern exklusiv und besucht von den Bohemiens der Zeit.” (One might say that this was

a distinguished pub, not for the porters and fishermen of the harbor quarter, but for a

less simple, more cultivated public, for a community of bon vivants who had a taste for

the irony and the impertinent wit of the paintings and knew how to laugh about them;

a tavern not for all, but an exclusive one sought out by the bohemians of the period.)

80. Giancarlo Susini, “Spelling Out Along the Road: Anthropology of the Ancient Reader,

or Rather, the Roman Reader,” Alma Mater Studiorum 1, 1 (1988): 124; Michael Koort-

bojian, “In commemorationem mortuorum:Text and Image Along the ‘Streets of Tombs’,”

in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas Elsner (Cambridge, 1996), 210–33.

CHAPTER 7. COMMEMORATION OF LIFE

IN THE DOMAIN OF THE DEAD

1. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker, eds., Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung,

Status, Standard,Kolloquium in München vom 28. bis 30. Oktober 1985 (Munich, 1987).

2. Parentalia: Ovid, Fasti 2.533 ª.; Lemuria: Ovid, Fasti 5.419 ª.

3. Ovid, Fasti 2.5.333–70; Varro, De Lingua Latina 6.13; Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Death and

Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, 1971), 51, 62–64; Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal

(Cambridge, 1983), 233.

4. Arnobius 7.20; they also oªered various fruits, bread, salt, and eggs: Juvenal 5.84.

314 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 7 8 — 1 8 2

5. Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia (2nd ed., Oxford, 1973), 460–61.

6. Two cippi (stone markers) from Pompeii with identical inscriptions, one at the Vesu-

vius Gate, the other at the Nucercia Gate, reveal the city’s recourse to the emperor Ves-

pasian to remove encroachments on the pomerium: “By the authority of the emperor

Caesar Vespasian Augustus, the tribune Titus Suedius Clemens, after an investigation

and having checked the measurements, restored the public property occupied by pri-

vate persons to the public administration of Pompeii.” Ex auctoritate imp(eratoris) Cae-

saris Vespasiani Aug(usti) loca publica a privatis possessa T. Suedius Clemens tribunus cau-

sis cognitis et mensuris factis rei publicae Pompeianorum restituit. CIL 10:1018; de Vos and

de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 154–56, 178.

7. Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 25–41; Petersen, “Questioning Roman ‘Freedman Art’,”

86–88.

8. Valentin Kockel, Die Grabbauten vor dem Herkulaner Tor in Pompeji (Mainz, 1983), 15–43.

9. “Hospes paullisper morare / si non est molestum et quid evites/ cognosce. Amicum

hunc quem speraveram mi esse abeo mihi accusato / res subiecti et iudicia instaurata

deis / gratias ago et meae innocentiae omni / molestia liberatus sum; qui nostrum men-

titur / eum nec di penates nec inferi recipiant.” Tomb 23 Southwest: Stefano De Caro,

“23 OS,” in Antonio D’Ambrosio and Stefano De Caro, Un impegno per Pompei: Foto-

piano e documentazione della necropoli di Porta Nocera (Milan, 1983), n.p. The tomb was

excavated in 1954. For the legal aspects of the inscription, see Pio Ciprotti, Studia et do-

cumenta historiae et iuris (1963), 29, 279–80.

10. Susini, “Spelling Out Along the Road,” 124; Koortbojian, “Text and Image along the

‘Streets of Tombs’,” 210–33.

11. Kockel, Grabbauten, 104–5.

12. Naevoleia L. l. Tyche sibi et C. Munatio Fausto Aug(ustali) et pagano, cui decuriones con-

sensu populi bisellium ob merita eius decreverunt. Hoc monumentum Naevoleia Tyche liber-

tis suis libertabusque et C. Munati Fausti viva fecit. CIL 10:1030.

13. Kockel, Grabbauten, 107.

14. Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 209, cat. no. 157, argues that the man at the rud-

der is C. Munatius Faustus.

15. C(aius) Munatius Faustus / Augustal(is) et pagan(us), D(ecurionum d(ecreto), sibi et /

Naevolaeiae Tyche coniugi. “Gaius Munatius Faustus, augustalis and paganus, (erected this

tomb) for himself and his wife, Naevoleia Tyche, by decree of the decurions.” De Caro,

“9 ES,” in D’Ambrosio and De Caro, Necropoli di Porta Nocera, n.p.

16. Mamia, priestess of the cult of Venus in the Augustan period, built Pompeii’s Temple

of the Genius of Augustus along the east side of the Forum; her schola tomb next to the

Herculaneum gate underscores her importance: M[a]mia P(ublii) f (iliae) sacerdoti pub-

licae locus sepultur(ae) datus decurionum decreto (To Mamia, daughter of Publius, public

priestess, this burial place was given by decree of the decurions). CIL 10:998; Kockel,

Grabbauten, 57–59. Mamia’s contemporary, Eumachia, also a priestess of Venus, built

the enormous multiuse edifice at the southeast corner of the Forum next to Mamia’s

temple. Eumachia’s tomb in the necropolis of the Nucerian Gate, the largest in Pom-

peii, bears a simple inscription on two plaques at either side of the enclosure wall. The

one to the left reads: EVMACHIA / L · F · (Eumachia Daughter of Lucius); that on the

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 8 2 — 1 8 5 • 315

right: SIBI · ET · SVIS · (For herself and her familia). See De Caro, “11 OS,” in D’Am-

brosio and De Caro, Necropoli di Porta Nocera, n.p.; on the benefactions of Mamia and

Eumachia, see Margaret Woodhull, “Building Power: Women as Architectural Patrons

During the Early Roman Empire, 30 bce–54 ce,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at

Austin, 1999), 131–93.

17. Petronius, Satyricon 71, trans. William Arrowsmith (Ann Arbor, 1959), 70–72; John

Bodel, “The Cena Trimalchionis,” in Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. Heinz

Hoªmann (London, 1999), 38–51, reconstruction of Trimalchio’s epitaph, fig. 2.1.

18. D’Arms, Commerce and Social Standing,97–120; Jean Andreau, “The Freedman,” in The

Romans, ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1993), 175–98.

19. In what follows I draw heavily on the definitive modern publication, Stephan T.A.M.

Mols and Eric M. Moormann, “Ex parvo crevit: Proposta per una lettura iconografica

della Tomba di Vestorius Priscus fuori Porta Vesuvio a Pompei,” Rivista di Studi Pom-

peiani 6 (1993–94): 15–52, bibl. 49–50, n. 1.

20. G. Spano, “Pompei: Relazione degli scavi eseguiti negli anni 1908 e 1909,” Notizie degli

Scavi (1910), 402, not yet published in the CIL.

21. This is the conclusion of Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 38, with

full consideration of the epigraphical and prosopographical evidence.

22. Jean Andreau, La vie financière dans le monde romain (Rome, 1987), 336; Iiro Kajanto,

The Latin Cognomina (Rome, 1982), 22–31, 71, 288.

23. Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 19–20.

24. Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 22, figs. 14–15.

25. Wooden partitions were found in Herculaneum, in the House of the Wooden Partition:

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton,

1994), fig. 4.12.

26. G. Spano, “La tomba dell’edile C. Vestorio Prisco in Pompei,” Memorie. Atti della Ac-

cademia nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 7, 3 (1943): 276;

against which Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 41.

27. For the significance of funeral banquets, see F. Ghedini, “Ra‹gurazioni conviviali nei

monumenti funerari romani,” Rivista di Archeologia 14 (1990): 35–62.

28. Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 28, n. 22, figs. 20b, 20c.

29. I base my chart on the entries on Pygmies in Irene Bragantini, Mariette de Vos, and

Franca Parise Badoni, Pitture e pavimenti di Pompei,Repertorio delle fotografie del Gabi-

netto Fotografico Nazionale, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, 4

vols. (Rome, 1981–92); for a synoptic table for Nile landscapes, gardens, and paradeisoi

of all structures at Pompeii, including the Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, see Arnold and

Mariette de Vos, “Die Wanddekorationen der Stabianer Thermen,” in Hans Eschebach,

Die Stabianer Thermen in Pompeji (Berlin, 1979), 92; see also discussion in P.G.P. Mey-

boom, The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy (Leiden,

1995), 82–83.

30. House of the Sculptor: Amedeo Maiuri, “Una nuova pittura nilotica a Pompei,” Me-

morie, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei 7, series 8a (1956): 65–80; Bragantini, de Vos, and

Parise Badoni, Pitture e pavimenti di Pompei, 3: 369–70; Valeria Sampaolo, “VIII 7, 24:

Casa dello Scultore,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 8 (Rome, 1998), 718–31. House ofMa. Cas-

316 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 8 6 — 1 9 2

tricius: I. Sgobbo, “Un complesso di edifici sannitici e i quartieri di Pompei per la prima

volta riconosciuti,” Memorie, Accademia nazionale di Napoli 6 (1942): 23–41; Bragantini,

de Vos, and Parise Badoni, Pitture e pavimenti di Pompei, 3:252–53; Irene Bragantini, “VI

16 (Ins. Occ.), 17: Casa di Ma. Castricius,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 7 (Rome, 1997),

938–46.

31. Mariette de Vos, “I 6, 15: Casa dei Ceii,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 1 (Rome, 1990), figs.

96–111.

32. Arnold de Vos, “I 7, 11: Casa dell’Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici

1 (Rome, 1990), figs. 165–87.

33. Spano, “Vestorio Prisco in Pompei,” 280, 284; J.-M. Dentzer, “La tombe de C. Vesto-

rius dans la tradition de la peinture italique,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, An-

tiquité 74 (1962): 549; Felletti Maj, Tradizione italica, 328, and Ghedini, “Ra‹gurazioni

conviviali,” 48–53, see the banquet as a funeral celebration; E. Jastrzebowska, “Les scènes

de banquet dans les peintures et sculptures chrétiennes des IIIe et IVe siècles,” Re-

cherches augustiniennes 14 (1979): 3–90, sees it as a scene of everyday life, as do C. Com-

postella, “Banchetti pubblici e banchetti funebri nell’iconografia funeraria romana,”

Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Antiquité 104 (1992): 681, 689, and Fröhlich,

Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 180, 227.

34. John H. D’Arms, “Performing Culture: Roman Spectacle and the Banquets of the Pow-

erful,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Pa-

pers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon (New Haven, 1999), 311–12.

35. For the terms of this debate, see the discussion in Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vesto-

rius Priscus,” 41–42, with extensive bibl.

36. Cèbe, Caricature, 350. The shitting Pygmy in the frigidarium of the Sarno Baths (VIII,

2, 17–21) may also be apotropaic: Valeria Sampaolo, “VIII 2, 17–21: Complesso a sei

piani delle Terme del Sarno,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 8 (Rome, 1998), 110, fig. 26.

37. Goªredo Bendinelli, Le pitture del colombario di Villa Pamfili, Monumenti della pittura

scoperti in Italia, vol. 3, Roma, fasc. 5 (Rome, 1941); Roger Ling, “The Paintings of the

Columbarium of Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome,” in Functional and Spatial Analysis of

Wall Painting, Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress on Ancient Wall Paint-

ing, ed. Eric M. Moormann, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving, suppl. 3 (Amsterdam, 1993),

127–35, with current bibl.

38. King, “Dancers in the Columbarium of Villa Doria-Pamphili,” 77–80, proposes that they

represent erotic dances at the crossroads, or compita.

39. De Vos, “Casa dell’Efebo,” figs. 186–87.

40. M.W. Dickie and Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Invidia rumpantur pectora: The Iconog-

raphy of Phthonos/Invidia in Graeco-Roman Art,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum

26 (1983): 10–11. There is a vast literature on the Evil Eye in all periods and societies:

see Thomas Rakoczy, Böser Blick: Macht des Auges und Neid der Götter: Eine Untersuchung

zur Kraft des Blickes in der griechischen Literatur (Tübingen, 1996); Pierre Bettez Gravel,

The Malevolent Eye: An Essay on the Evil Eye, Fertility and the Concept of Mana (New York,

1995); Alan Dundes, ed., The Evil Eye: A Folklore Casebook (Madison, 1981).

41. Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster

(Princeton, 1993), 171–72: “There were places and points of passage where one was es-

NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 9 2 — 1 9 5 • 317

pecially vulnerable: corners, bridges, baths, doorways. The ‘liminal’ areas were highly

charged, dangerous.”

42. John R. Clarke, “Hypersexual Black Men in Augustan Baths: Ideal Somatotypes and

Apotropaic Magic,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. Natalie B. Kampen (Cambridge, 1996),

184–98; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 119–42; Nathalie de Haan, “Nam nihil melius

esse quam sine turba lavari: Privatbäder in den Vesuvstädten,” Mededeelingen van het Ne-

derlands Instituut te Rome 56 (1997): 215.

43. John R. Clarke, “Look Who’s Laughing at Sex: Men and Women Viewers in the Apody-

terium of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii,” in The Roman Gaze, ed. David Fredrick

(Baltimore, 2002), 149–81. Luciana Jacobelli, Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane

di Pompei (Rome, 1995), 98–102, and Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 212–40, inter-

pret the paintings as simply humorous, without references to their possible apotropaic

function.

44. Meyboom, Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, appendix 13, “Pygmies and Dwarfs in Nilotic Scenes,”

150–54, stresses that Pygmies and dwarfs were associated with the god Ptah, giving them

apotropaic powers, and with Bes, god of fertility: they represent revelry and luxury

(tryphe).

45. Spano, “Tomba di Vestorio Prisco,” 289, 292; Lawrence J. Richardson, Jr., “The Tribunals

of the Praetors in Rome,” Römische Mitteilungen 80 (1973): 221; Lawrence J. Richardson,

Jr., Pompeii: An Architectural History (Baltimore, 1988), 97, n. 8; Fausto Zevi, “L’arte ‘popo-

lare’,” in La pittura di Pompei, ed. Maria Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli (Milan, 1991), 270.

46. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 228–29; Thomas Schäfer, “Die Honor Biselli,”

Römische Mitteilungen 97 (1990): 331; Schäfer, Imperia insignia, 389, where he describes

the scene as cura and liberalitas; Compostella, “Banchetti pubblici,” 681.

47. Mols and Moormann, “Tomba di Vestorius Priscus,” 46.

48. Amedeo Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro e il suo tesoro di argenteria (Rome, 1933), 1:332–34,

fig. 129; see also Ernst Künzl, “Le argenterie,” in Pompei 79, ed. Fausto Zevi (Naples,

1979), 221–28.

49. Spano, “Tomba di Vestorio Prisco,” 272.

50. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power, 41–43, fig. 45; Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild,” 519;

Stefano De Caro, “Zwei ‘Gattungen’ der pompejanischen Wandmalerei: Stilleben und

Gartenmalerei,” in Pompejanische Wandmalerei, ed. Maria Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli et

al. (Zurich, 1990), 268; Zevi, “‘Volkstümliche Kunst’,” 277. John Tamm, “Argentum Po-

torium in Romano-Campanian Wall-Painting” (Ph.D. diss., McMaster University, 2001),

has compared this painting of the silver service with extant pieces, demonstrating that

the painter was not closely copying extant pieces, whether earlier or contemporary; some

pieces have no parallels at all. The Priscus service is eclectic, combining realistic ele-

ments to make an unrealistic whole rather than constituting an exact record of a real-

world silver service.

51. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 162–63, with bibl. n. 53; Eric M. Moormann and W. J. Th.

Peters, “Le decorazioni di IV stile,” in La Casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto a Pompei e le

sue pitture, ed. W. J. Th. Peters (Amsterdam, 1993), 340–49.

52. Shelby Brown, “Death as Decoration: Scenes from the Arena on Roman Domestic Mo-

318 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 1 9 5 — 2 0 1

saics,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (New York,

1992), 180–211.

53. Corbeill, “Pollex as Index,” 10–11. There is a parallel scene of fallen shield and gladia-

tor raising his index finger on the relief of Storax from Chieti: see p. 146, fig. 85, center.

54. Georges Ville, La gladiature en occident des origines à la mort de Domitien, Bibliothèque

des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 245 (Rome, 1981), 116–18, 158–59,

203–4.

55. A much more extensive cycle of gladiatorial paintings decorated the so-called Tomb of

Umbricius Scaurus in the necropolis of the Herculaneum Gate, again without any proof

that the occupant (actually N. Festius Ampliatus) even produced the munera. See Kockel,

Grabbauten, 75–85, pls. 18–21.

56. Britt Haarlov, The Half-Open Door: A Common Symbolic Motif within Roman Sepulchral

Sculpture (Odense, 1977).

57. Mols and Moormann, “Vestorius Priscus,” 46, n. 89.

58. Sampaolo, “Villa di Iulia Felix,” 293.

59. Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild”; Zanker, Pompeii, 135–203; Paul Zanker, Pompeji: Stadtbilder

als Spiegel von Gesellschaft und Herrschaftsform (Mainz, 1988), 41–42.

60. For an earlier version of this interpretation of the Tomb of Apella and Isola Sacra, tomb

16, see John R. Clarke, “Sex, Death, and Status: Nilotic Tomb Imagery, Apotropaic Magic,

and Freedman Acculturation,” in Actes du VIIe Colloque de l’Association Internationale

pour la Peinture Murale Romaine, ed. Alix Barbet (Paris, 2001), 85–91.

61. Maria Floriani Squarciapino, “La necropoli lungo la via Laurentina,” in Scavi di Ostia,

ed. Maria Floriani Squarciapino (Rome, 1958), 3:95.

62. C(aius) Iulius C(ai) (Iuli) et L(uci) Sertori l(ibertus) Apell(a), / Iulia C(ai) l(iberta) Aphro-

disia, / Iulia C(ai) et (mulieris) l(iberta) Eleutheris, / C(aius) Iulius C(ai) et (mulieris) l(iber-

tus) Latinus, / Iulia (mulieris) l(iberta) Sabbatis (Gaius Iulius Apella, freedman of Gaius

Iulius and Lucius Sertorius; Iulia Aphrodisia [his wife], freedwoman of Gaius; Iulia

Eleuthereis, freedwoman of Gaius and his wife; Gaius Iulius Latinus, freedman of Gaius

and his wife; and Iulia Sabbatis, freedwoman of his wife).

63. C(aius) Iulius C(ai) (Iuli) et L(uci) Sertori l(eibertus) Apella / sepulchrum inferundi hu-

mandi leiberteis / leibertabusque sueis et leibertorum leiberteis / et C(aio) Iulio Cissi l(ei-

berto) Pamphilo mensori et A(ulo) Terentio / A(uli) l(eiberto) Nicomedi dat. / Seiquis lei-

bertorum meorum conleibertum / suom aut eorum quem quei s(upra) s(cripti) s(unt) inferri

prohibuerit / ei ipsi qui prohibuerit eo inferundei ius / potestasque ne esto (Gaius Iulius Apella,

freedman of Gaius Iulius and Lucius Sertorius, provides this tomb for the burial of his

freedmen and freedwomen and for their freedmen and freedwomen and for Gaius Iulius

Pamphilus, the mensor, freedman of Cissius and for Aulus Terentius Nicomedes, freed-

man of Aulus. If anyone should prohibit the burial of my freedmen and their freedmen

whose names are written above, for the one who shall have prohibited, let there be no

right or power of burial here.” I thank Andrew Riggsby for this translation.

64. G. Barbieri, “Le iscrizioni delle necropoli,” in Scavi di Ostia, ed. Maria Floriani Squar-

ciapino (Rome, 1958), 3:150–51.

65. Squarciapino, “Necropoli lungo la via Laurentina,” fig. 44 and pls. 13–15; Harald

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 0 1 — 2 0 3 • 319

Mielsch, Die Römische Stuckreliefs, Römische Mitteilungen, suppl. 21 (Heidelberg, 1975),

25–26, 115, K 11.

66. Squarciapino, “Necropoli lungo la via Laurentina,” 88; Mielsch, Römische Stuckreliefs,

155, K 11, dates them 20–10 b.c.

67. Hendrik G. Beyen, “Les domini de la Villa de la Farnesine,” Studia varia Carolo Guilielmo

Vollgraª a discipulis oblata (Amsterdam, 1948), 3–21, attributes the villa to Agrippa and

Julia, followed by Peter von Blanckenhagen and Christine Alexander, The Paintings from

Boscotrecase, Römische Mitteilungen, supplement 6 (1962), 60, but Frédéric Bastet and

Mariette deVos,Proposta per una classificazione del terzo stile pompeiano, Archeologische

Studiën van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 4 (The Hague, 1979), 8–9, question the

date of the closely related Villa of Agrippa at Boscotrecase, and Robert B. Lloyd, “The

Aqua Virgo, Euripus, and Pons Agrippa,” American Journal of Archaeology 83 (1979):

193–204, attributes the Villa under the Farnesina to A. Crispinus Caepio.

68. Squarciapino dated the niche-painting of the priestess of Isis to 50 a.d. Its Egyptian

subject matter, however, relates it to the Nilotic part of the double frieze from the walls

of enclosure 22 (plate 16), dated by Calza and Borda to about 150 on the basis of style:

Guido Calza, “Ostia: Sepolcreto lungo la via Laurentina,” Notizie degli Scavi (1938): 62;

Maurizio Borda, La pittura romana (Milan, 1958), 285. Since both the columbarium, 18,

and the enclosure, 22, belonged to the same owner, and since they share their Egyptian

subject matter and are equally styleless, it is likely that the two paintings also date to

the same period. I propose a date of a.d. 150 for both.

69. A well dating from the period after a.d. 150 cuts through this couch. Around that time

the raising of the Laurentine Road by some two meters caused all the tombs to be filled

in; new tombs were erected at the higher level.

70. Bernard Andreae, in Wolfgang Helbig, Führer durch die öªentlichen Sammlungen klas-

sischer Altertümer in Rom, ed. Hermine Speier (4th ed., Tübingen, 1972), 4:146–47, no.

3184.

71. Giovanni Becatti, “Rilievo con la nascita di Dioniso e aspetti mistici di Ostia pagana,”

Bollettino d’Arte 36 (1951): 12.

72. Becatti, “Aspetti mistici,” 12–13, attempts to push further for this image, however, con-

necting it with the neo-Pythagorean flight from violence, killing, and bloodshed, and

wonders whether it might symbolize the opposite of the pure unity and indestructibil-

ity of the eternal monad. He then muses that the accompanying Pygmy frieze below

could be considered a symbol of the battle against the anti-Dionysiac element, repre-

sented by the ducks and by the crocodile.

73. Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Sic Erimus Cuncti . . . : The Skeleton in Graeco-Roman Art,”

Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 101 (1986): 185–212.

74. Guido Calza, Necropoli del porto di Roma nell’Isola Sacra (Rome, 1940); Carlo Pavolini,

Ostia, Guide archeologiche Laterza 8 (Rome, 1983), 258–74.

75. For the development of the group of tombs around tomb 16, see Ida Baldassare, “La

necropoli dell’Isola Sacra,” in Römische Gräberstrassen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Standard,

ed. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker (Munich, 1987), 133, fig. 29.

76. Calza, Isola Sacra, 172–73; Becatti, I mosaici, 306–7.

77. Becatti, I mosaici, 308.

320 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 0 4 — 2 1 0

78. Herbert A. Cahn, “Oceanus,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, 8:914; for

sea creatures as symbols of immortality, see Karl Schefold, “Die Bedeutung der kreti-

schen Meerbilder,” Antike Kunst 1 (1958): 5.

79. Calza, Isola Sacra, fig. 56.

80. Calza, Isola Sacra, figs. 57–58.

81. In Isola Sacra tomb 26 there is a Nilotic scene in a burial recess: Calza, Isola Sacra, 150,

color pl. 152, pl. 5; Meiggs, Roman Ostia, pl. 35.

82. The Romans may have inherited the belief in the apotropaic value of images of defeca-

tion and sexual coupling from the Etruscans. R. Ross Holloway, “The Bulls in the ‘Tomb

of the Bulls’ at Tarquinia,” American Journal of Archaeology 90 (1986): 449, n. 14, points

out that the shitting man in the Tomb of the Jugglers is an apotropaion (illustrated in

Mario Moretti, Nuovi monumenti della pittura etrusca [Milan, 1966], pl. 26); with good

reason Holloway, 448–49, also interprets the two sexual couplings (one male-male, the

other male-female) in the Tomb of the Bulls as apotropaic, as does Larissa Bonfante,

“Etruscan Sexuality and Funerary Art,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. Natalie B. Kampen

(New York, 1996), 155–69, who provides an up-to-date survey with bibliography.

83. For example, Ling, “Columbarium of Villa Doria Pamphili,” 127–35, asserts that the ex-

tensive Pygmy motifs have no particular meaning.

84. Clarke, Roman Black-and-White Figural Mosaics, 58.

85. John R. Clarke, “Mosaic Workshops at Pompeii and Ostia Antica,” in Fifth International

Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics (Bath, England, September 5–12, 1987), ed. Peter John-

son, Roger Ling, and David J. Smith (Ann Arbor, 1994): 89–102.

86. The ongoing corpus of ancient Roman sarcophagi, Die Antiken Sarcophagreliefs, begun

in 1870, generally devotes a volume to each standard iconographical motif. See Akten

des Symposiums “125 Jahre Sarkophag-Corpus,”Marburg, 4–7 October 1995, ed. Guntram

Koch (Mainz, 1998).

87. Jane K. Whitehead, “Biography and Formula in Roman Sarcophagi” (Ph.D. dissertation,

Yale University, 1984); Hanns Gabelmann, Die Werkstattgruppen der oberitalischen

Sarkophage (Bonn, 1973).

88. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 184, H 0.50, W 1.86, D 0.55 m. The sarcophagus

was found out of place in the area in front of the present museum at Ostia. See Silvia Al-

legra Dayan, Luisa Musso, and Paola Lombardi, “Sarcofago di T. Flavius Trophimas con

ra‹gurazione di artigiani,” Museo Nazionale Romano, vol. 1, pt. 2, Le sculture (Rome, 1981),

148–50 with bibl.; Zimmer, Römische Berufsdarstellungen, 132–33, cat. no. 47.

89. My translation. The Greek text:

L ATEILIOS ARTEMAS KAI KLAUDIA AFFIAS TIT(W) FLABIW TROFIMATI

FILW ASUNKRITW KAI ASULW DIA PANTOS CRONOU META UMWN ( 1. HMWN)

GENOMENW TOPON EDWKAMEN TW SWMATI AUTOU TEQHNAI META UMWN

( 1. HMWN) INA DI AIWNOS MNHMHN ECOI KAI WS KOPWN IDIWN ANAPAUSIN

O APLOUS O PANMOUSOS O EFESIOS ENQADE KOIMATAI TON AIWNION

UPN(ON)

G. Kaibel, Inscriptiones Graecae, vol. 14, no. 929

90. Lombardi, “Sarcofago di Trophimas,” 150.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 1 0 — 2 1 6 • 321

91. In a famous epitaph of the late second century a.d., Allius, the patronus, fondly memo-

rializes Allia Potestas, whom he shared sexually with another man. Allius writes: “She

while she lived so managed her two lovers / That they became like the model of Py-

lades and Orestes. / One home contained them and there was one spirit between them.”

See Nicholas Horsfall, “CIL VI 37965 = CLE 1988 (Epitaph of Allia Potestas): A Com-

mentary,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 61 (1985): 265–67; with examples

of other ménages, 266.

92. For this term see Louis Robert, review of Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, vol. 8, in

Hellenica 13 (1965): 56–57, and Luigi Moretti, “Nuovi epigrammi greci di Roma,” Epi-

graphica 37 (1975): 69.

93. Most recently Musso, “Sarcofago di Trophimas,” 149–50.

94. Andreae, in Helbig, Führer durch die öªentlichen Sammlungen 3:317.

95. Vatican Museums, octagonal courtyard, inv. 137; Bartolomeo Nogara, I mosaici antichi

conservati nei palazzi pontifici del Vaticano e del Laterano (Milan, 1910), 6–7, pl. 9, 5;

Marion E. Blake, “Roman Mosaics of the Second Century in Italy,” Memoirs of the Amer-

ican Academy in Rome 13 (1936): 174–75, pl. 42, 6; Günter Fleischhauer, Etrurien und

Rom, Musikgeschichte in Bildern (Leipzig, 1954), 2:124, fig. 71; Klaus E. Werner, Die

Sammlung antiker Mosaiken in der Vatikanischen Museen (Rome, 1998), 43–54, where

the illustration of the mosaic is printed in reverse.

96. Nogara, I mosaici, sees it as an awning or an outdoor pergola; for the sigma couch, see

Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” in Dining in a Classical Con-

text, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, 1991), 121–48.

97. E. Fernique, “Crotalum,” in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, ed. Charles

Daremberg and Edmond Saglio, vol. 1, 2 (Paris, 1873–1919), 1571.

98. Rome, National Museum, inv. 77255, W 1.12 ×H 0.50 m, ca. a.d. 100. Roberto Paribeni,

“Ariccia: Rilievo con scene egizie,” Notizie degli Scavi (1919): 106–12, with pl., 107; Katja

Lembke, Das Iseum Campense in Rom: Studien über den Isiskult unter Domitian (Hei-

delberg, 1994), cat. no. 1, 174–76, pl. 3, 1, with bibl.

99. An alternative interpretation would make the man in the diaphanous dress a trans-

vestite Psyche, a representation common to several third- and early fourth-century sar-

cophagi. See László Berczelly, “The Soul After Death: A New Interpretation of the For-

tunati Sarcophagus,” Acta ad archeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 6 (1987):

59–90. I thank Anthony Corbeill for this reference.

100. For an insightful study of the use of myth and metaphor on Roman sarcophagi, see

Michael Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory in Roman Sarcophagi (Berkeley, 1995).

101. The inscription reads, in English:

Lucius Atilius Artemas

[for . . . ]a and Claudia Apphias his partner

. . . as he/she has done no harm to anyone

. . . and nothing irreverent to the gods and as they alone (feminine)

. . . have accomplished all which will remain indelible forever

As a matter of fact, the greatest ones were more capable and could do no more than

the old ones, not . . .

. . . not Osiris, who showed profuse as first of all fruits

322 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 1 6 — 2 1 9

to the people, not Dionysus, who made war on the Indians, not Ch[ . . .

. . . not are comparable . . . ager, who killed many people . . . ]ades, not the

impiety of Klytemnestra to Agamemnon

. . . not . . . Ios of Pyrrhos [son of Pynlios] to Polyphemos, not . . .

. . . not the piety [of Penelope toward Odysseus] not the love of Thisbe and

[Pyramus . . . not]

. . . [not] authority [of the great kings], not of King Cyrus.

I thank Eric Moormann for help with this translation. The original text is from G. Kaibel,

Inscriptiones Graecae, vol. 14, no. 929:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L. jA t e iv l i o "] jA r t e [ m a' "

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]a/ kai; Klaudiva/ jA [p]Aiavdi s[umbivw/ . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . o{ ti kako;n auj tai'" pro;"] ouj devna tei (i.e. ti) pevpraktai aj [nqrwv pwn . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ouj de; ajsebe;" oujde;]n p[r]o;" tou;" qeou;" kai; w{ ti mov [nai . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eijrgasmevnai] eijsi;n a{ kai; eij" ejw'nan ( i.e. aijw'na) e[so [ntai

aj nexivthla.

ouj ga;r mei'zon oujde;n tw' n ajrcaivwn oiJ kravtis]toi ejkravthsan ke; ejpis[teuv qhsan, ouj . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oujk [Oseiri", o{ "] prw'to" karpou; " pav nta" [ajnevdeixen . . .

toi'" ajnqrwvpoi", ouj Diovnuso", o{" pro;" . . . . . . . ]ou" ejpov lemhse ke; jIndouv ", ouj C [ . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . oujde; sumblhtav ejsti . . . . . . . . . . . ]avgrou megav lou, o{ " pollou; " w[ le [sen . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]adhn, ouj Klutemhvstra" ajsev [beia pro;"

jAgamevmnona

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ouj . . . . . . . . . . . ]o" Puvrrou pro;" Poluxev nhn, ouj . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ouj Phnelovph" pro; " jOdusseva] eujsevbia, ouj Ailiva qivsbh" kai; P[urav mou, ouj . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ouj tw' n megav lwn basilei]w'n ktivsi", ouj Kuv rou Basilevo" [ktl j.

102. The highest-quality work considered in this chapter is the Ariccia relief. The slab, al-

ready broken, was reused to cover a man’s body. Scholarly conjecture would make him

a devotee of Isis, whom pious relatives covered with a beautiful—but broken—relief

honoring the goddess.

PART 3. NON-ELITES IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE

1. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton,

1994), 118.

2. Annapaola Zaccaria Ruggiu, Spazio privato e spazio pubblico nella città romana, Collec-

tion de l’Ecole française de Rome 210 (Rome, 1995), 397–409; Andrew Riggsby, “‘Pub-

lic’ and ‘Private’ in Roman Culture: The Case of the Cubiculum,” Journal of Roman Ar-

chaeology 10 (1997): 36–56.

3. Daniela Corlàita Scagliarini, “Spazio e decorazione nella pittura pompeiana,” Palladio

23–25 (1974–76): 3–44; Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 32–77.

4. An exception is the suite of mythological paintings in the atrium of the House of the

Tragic Poet at Pompeii. See Bettina Bergmann, “The Roman House as Memory The-

ater: The House of the Tragic Poet at Pompeii,” Art Bulletin 76 (June 1994): 225–57.

5. Karl Schefold, La peinture pompéienne: essai sur l’évolution de sa signification, Collection

Latomus 108 (Brussels, 1972).

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 1 9 — 2 2 2 • 323

6. Zanker, “Villa als Vorbild,” 460–523; Zanker, Pompeii, 135–203.

7. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy; David Fredrick, “Beyond the Atrium to Ariadne: Erotic

Painting and Visual Pleasure in the Roman House,” Classical Antiquity 14, 2 (October

1995): 266–87; Bettina Bergmann, “Rhythms of Recognition: Mythological Encoun-

ters in Roman Landscape Painting,” in Im Spiegel des Mythos: Bilderwelt und Lebenswelt,

ed. Francesco de Angelis and Susanne Muth (Wiesbaden, 1999), 81–107.

CHAPTER 8. MINDING YOUR MANNERS

1. Martial 5.70 ridicules Maximus Syriscus for not reclining at table while indulging his

gluttony; Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae Cato Maior 56, claimed that the Younger Cato reclined

only to sleep and sat to dine in his grief over the defeat at Pharsalus.

2. Alan Booth, “The Age for Reclining and Its Attendant Perils,” in Dining in a Classical

Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, 1991), 105–20.

3. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 55: “The essence of the Roman suite is that it provides

an ample context for a crowded social life, allows guests to pass in astonishment from one

fine room to another, and enables the master to hold court wherever the whim of the sea-

son or moment takes him.” See also Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” 124, n. 22.

4. Stephan T.A.M. Mols, Wooden Furniture from Herculaneum: Form, Technique and Func-

tion (Amsterdam, 1999).

5. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 13.11.2, quotes Marcus Varro, who in his Menippean Satires

says the number of guests should be no more than the Muses (nine) and no fewer than

the Charites (three). See also Vitruvius, De architectura6.5.6. On the invariability of hav-

ing no more than nine in the Republic and early Empire, and the changes to large din-

ing spaces in the second century and beyond, see Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,”

123–36. Matthew Roller notes that most paintings of convivia show two couples per

couch, and often two couches placed at right angles to each other (personal communi-

cation; see plates 17–20).

6. August Mau, “Convivium,” Pauly-Wissowa Reallexikon, vol. 4 (1901), 1201–8; A. Hug.,

“Triclinium,” Pauly-Wissowa, vol. 7A (1948), 92–101; Mols, Wooden Furniture from Her-

culaneum, demonstrates that the physical evidence corroborates textual descriptions of

the placement and form of lecti.

7. Horace, Satirae 2.8.18–41.

8. Petronius Arbiter, Cena Trimalchionis, ed. Martin S. Smith (Oxford, 1975), 66–67, com-

mentary on 31.8.

9. Several houses at Pompeii adopt diªerent strategies, notably the House of the Tragic

Poet; see Bettina Bergmann, “The Roman House as Memory Theater,”225–57.

10. Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in He-

liodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton, 1989), 8–13, 31, n. 13.

11. Karl Lehmann, “The Imagines of Philostratus the Elder,” Art Bulletin 23 (1941): 16–

44; Mary Lee Thompson, “Programmatic Painting in Pompeii” (Ph.D. diss., New York

University, 1960); Mary Lee Thompson, “The Monumental and Literary Evidence for

Programmatic Painting in Antiquity,” Marsyas9 (1960–61): 36–77; Brilliant, Visual Nar-

ratives, 71–73; Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer, 24–28.

324 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 2 2 — 2 2 6

12. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 16–18; Lise Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth: Modern Space

Conception in Architecture: A Creation of Renaissance Humanism, Analecta romana Insti-

tuti danici, suppl. 9 (Rome, 1980), 194; Franz Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” Antike Kunst 27

(1984): 71–122.

13. For Pompeii, see P. Soprano, “I triclini all’aperto di Pompei,” in Pompeiana (Naples,

1950), 288–310; Wilhelmina Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii 1 (New Rochelle, 1979),

346, n. 1, listing those discovered since Soprano, a total of 56.

14. For the parallel development in the Hellenistic period of a similar standard repertory

of scenes of lovemaking, see Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 19–55.

15. Roger Ling, Roman Painting (Cambridge, 1991), 128–29, 212–13, 217–20, bibl. 234–35.

For a collection of essays on how painting workshops functioned, and much comment

on the question of pattern-books, see Mani di pittori e botteghe pittoriche nel mondo ro-

mano: Tavola rotonda in onore di W. J. Th. Peters in occasione del suo 75.mo compleanno,

ed. Eric M. Moormann, Mededeelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 54 (1995):

61–298.

16. Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 617–40.

17. For the Third Style, see Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 54–61, with recent bibliography;

for comparanda, see Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 622–23.

18. Types reviewed in Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 629, nn. 61–63.

19. In the frieze of the Mysteries from the Villa of the Mysteries, the drunken Dionysus who

reclines on Ariadne’s lap has also lost one sandal: Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy,98–105,

fig. 32.

20. John Tamm, Department of Classics, McMaster University (personal communication,

2001), cites the following: (1) Pompei, House of the Criptoporticus (I, 6, 2), oecus 22,

south wall, west end, Satyr Banquet (Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 1:268, fig. 132), dated to

the Mature Second Style (40–30 b.c.); (2) Naples, inv. 9015, Couples at a Symposium (a

replica of this composition [see plate 19]); (3) Naples, inv. 9016, Banquet (A. E. Riz,

Bronzegefässe in der römisch-pompejanischen Wandmalerei (Mainz, 1990), 93, cat. 275, pl.

51.20. In Greek dining practice, a similar vessel is called the psykter: see “Psykter,” Der

kleine Pauly (Stuttgart, 1972), 22: col. 1214.

21. Antonio Varone, “Pompei: Il quadro Helbig 1445, ‘Kasperl im Kindertheater,” una nuova

replica e il problema delle copie e delle varianti,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura parie-

tale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla Pittura

Parietale Antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita (Bologna 1997), 149, demonstrates that

the painting did not come from Pompeii I, 3, 18, excavated 1869–73, as proposed by

Richard Herbig in Paul Hermann, Denkmäler der Malerei des Altertums, series 2, text

(Munich, 1939), 25, on the basis of an annotation on a drawing of this picture in the

archives of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, inv. 83, 4, and by himself in

Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 627, n. 53. Its first notice is in Arditi’s 1819 inventory,

and therefore the painting came from an unknown building at Pompeii, Herculaneum,

or Stabiae between 1755 and 1816.

22. Helbig, Wandgemälde, 343, no. 1445, suggested that the figure might be Priapus; but see

Wolf-Rüdiger Megow, “Priapos,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zürich,

1997), 8:1028–44.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 2 6 — 2 3 1 • 325

23. Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 627–28, rejects this notion, then accepts it in Varone,

“Helbig 1445,” 151.

24. Varone, “Scavi recenti a Pompei,” 627–28; Varone, “Helbig 1445,” 149, 150–51.

25. Moormann, Pittura parietale romana, 142, no. 145.

26. Warsher, “Codex Topographicus Pompejanus,” IX, 1, no. 79, reproduces a barely legi-

ble photograph of the painting, labeled room z; Valeria Sampaolo, “IX 1, 22.29: Casa di

M. Epidius Sabinus,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 8 (Rome, 1998): 1001.

27. Helbig, Wandgemälde, no. 1447.


29. Irene Bragantini, “III 4, 2: Casa del Moralista o di C. Arrius Crescens,” Pompei: Pitture

e mosaici 3 (Rome, 1991): 406–34, with bibl. 407.

30. The plan reproduced in Bragantini, “Casa del Moralista,” is completely in error; the

draftsperson confused windows with doorways and created walls where they do not exist.

31. E. Epidius Hymenaeus also appears as a witness in the wax tablets of a.d. 56 found

in the House of L. Caecilius Iucundus, Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, 164–65,

no. 158.17.

32. Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, 137, no. 42.

33. De Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 134.

34. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 2: 759–62; Zanker, Pompeii, 163–65.

35. Jashemski, Gardens of Pompeii, 1:134–35, believes the statue represents Isis.

36. Bragantini, “Casa del Moralista,” 407, 432, assigns the painting to the initial phase of

the Fourth Style.

37. Today the inscription on the back wall is completely gone, since the supporting plaster

fell in the 1943 bombing of Pompeii by Allied troops; the distich on the north wall is

practically illegible, as is that on the south wall. See Bragantini, “Casa del Moralista,”

425, figs. 31 and 32; 426, fig. 33; 428–29, fig. 38.

38. All three distichs collected by Matteo Della Corte, ed., as CIL 4:7698.

39. Reconstruction by Amedeo Maiuri, La cena di Trimalchione (Naples, 1945), 243; Maiuri

discusses and convincingly rejects other reconstructions: [Utere blandit]iis, preferred by

Della Corte, CIL 4: 7698; [Utere praecep]tis, and [Parce a convic]iis. Spinazzola, Pompei

alla luce, 2:754, reconstructs the distich: [Insanas] lites.Maiuri’s reconstruction is accepted

by de Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 135; Bragantini, “Casa del Moralista,” 426,

refrains from any reconstruction.

40. Jashemski, Gardens of Pompeii, 1:134–35: “1. The servant shall wash and dry the guest’s

feet; a napkin shall protect the cushions [on the triclinium] and care shall be taken with

the linen. 2. Cast not lustful glances and make not eyes at another man’s wife; be chaste

in speech. 3. Refrain from anger and insolent language, if you can; if not, return to your

own house.” Courtney, Musa Lapidaria, 72, no. 47: “(a) Let water wash your feet and a

slave towel them while they are wet; let a coverlet drape the couch, take good care of my

linen. (b) Take your lascivious expressions and coaxing eyes oª another man’s wife; let

modesty dwell on your face. (c) If you can, postpone (mad [ = insanas]) disputes and

hateful quarrels; otherwise turn your steps back to your own house.”

41. A. Vogliano, “Epigrammi Metrici,” Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 52 (1925):

220–23.

326 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 3 1 — 2 3 7

42. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 57–61.

43. Mau, Pompeii, 222–23: Scr[ipsit] Aemilius Celer sing[ulus] ad luna[m], “Aemilius Celer wrote

this, all alone by the light of the moon.”

44. Valeria Sampaolo, “V 2, 4: Casa del Triclinio,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 3 (Rome, 1991),

797–98, 811–18, bibl. 798; August Mau, “Scavi di Pompei,” Bullettino dell’Instituto di Cor-

rispondenza Archeologica (1885): 206, 243; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 222–23,

provides further support for Mau’s dating of the painting in early, pre-earthquake Fourth

Style.

45. CIL 4:4107.

46. CIL 4:4100, 4120, 4112 and 4118, 4102, 4106, 4109, 4103.

47. Antonio Sogliano, “Pompei,” Notizie degli Scavi (1884), 111.

48. Today mostly vanished: see Sampaolo, “Casa del Triclinio,” 819–23, figs. 50–57.

49. Mau, “Scavi di Pompei,” 178–81, 202–7, 242–50; Sampaolo, “Casa del Triclinio,”

797–99.

50. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 155–57, 162–63, 169, 277.

51. Noted by Herbig, Denkmäler der Malerei, 22.

52. Amanda Claridge and J. B. Ward-Perkins, Pompeii a.d. 79, exh. cat., Museum of Fine

Arts, 1978–79 (Boston, 1978), 2:198, nos. 244, 245.

53. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 82–90.

54. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 68–70, 104–5, 165, 181, 218, 257.

55. Maiuri, Cena di Trimalchione, 229, pl. 7, and Pio Ciprotti, “Brevi note su alcune scritte

pompeiane,” in Neue Forschungen in Pompeji, ed. Bernard Andreae and Helmut Kyrieleis

(Recklinghausen, 1975), 276, relate facitis vobis suaviter to Petronius, Satyricon 71.10, fa-

cias et totum populum sibi suaviter facientem, “and show all the people enjoying them-

selves,” and Petronius, Satyricon 75.8, vos rogo, amici, ut vobis suaviter sit, “Please, dear

friends, make yourselves comfortable.”

56. Pompei, IX, 13, 3 (Casa di Julius Polybius), Moormann, Pittura parietale, 221, cat. no.

303/4; Sampaolo, “Casa del Triclinio,” 798.

CHAPTER 9. PUTTING YOUR BEST FACE FORWARD

1. Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1998), 32–60.

2. Zanker, Pompeii, 34, with bibl. note 7.

3. This technique is called opus vermiculatum, literally “wormlike style,” because the rows

of tesserae look like worms.

4. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 81–85; Ada Cohen, The Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Vic-

tory and Defeat (New York, 1997), 1–23, 51–82; Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of

the Greek and Roman World (New York, 1999), 40–43.

5. Margareta Staub Gierow, “VII 4, 57: Casa dei Capitelli figurati,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici

7 (Rome, 1997), 63–92, with bibl., 64; Margareta Staub Gierow, Casa del Granduca (VII

4, 56) und Casa dei Capitelli figurati (VII 4, 57), Häuser in Pompeji 7 (Munich, 1994),

46–82.

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 3 7 — 2 4 7 • 327

6. Gierow, Casa dei Capitelli figurati, 81, resists making conclusions about ownership, yet

sees the owners as persons of some means.

7. Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 68–70.

8. Staub Gierow, “Casa dei Capitelli figurati,” 70.

9. In Roman practice, the penates, the lares, and the paterfamilias himself oªered the visi-

tor protection: see Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, 171–72.

10. Clarke, Roman Black-and-White Figural Mosaics, 9–12.

11. Zanker, Pompeii, 32–37.

12. Athenaeus Sophistes Deipnosophistae 5.196a–197c; Ellen E. Rice, The Grand Procession

of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford, 1983); for exceptions, see Erich S. Gruen, Culture and

National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992).

13. Harriet Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1996),

16–59; Andrew Riggsby points out (personal communication) that the ius imaginum

did not exist with the meaning assigned to it in modern literature and may possibly be

a completely modern invention.

14. Polybius 6.53, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (London, 1889).

15. Seneca, Epistulae 44, 5, says that an atrium filled with smoky images of ancestors was

the mark of old nobility.

16. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: Center of Power, fig. 85; Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 36–37,

fig. 13.

17. Flower, Ancestor Masks, 5–6.

18. Maiuri, Casa del Menandro, 100–106.

19. Flower, Ancestor Masks, 42–46, explains these busts as imagines of a local character and

not mentioned by Pliny.

20. Flower, Ancestor Masks, 40–41.

21. Mariette de Vos, “V 4, a: Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 3 (Rome,

1991), 966–29, with bibl., 968.

22. Willem J. Th. Peters and Eric M. Moormann, “Il IV stile,” in La Casa di Marcus Lucretius

Fronto a Pompei e le sue pitture, ed. Willem J. Th. Peters (Amsterdam, 1993), 339.

23. Henrik Mouritsen, Elections, Magistrates and the Municipal Elite: Studies in Pompeian Epig-

raphy (Rome, 1988), 141, 182, n. 62.

24. De Vos and de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, 214; Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 159.

25. R.E.L.B. de Kind, “Two Tondo-Heads in the Casa dell’Atrio a Mosaico (IV 1–2) at Her-

culaneum,” in Die Akten des 4. Internationalen Kolloquiums zur Römischen Wandmalerei,

169; Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 24 (1991). See also de Kind’s review of

Peters-Moormann, Casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto, in Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 71

(1996): 224.

26. Sarah Currie, “The Empire of Adults: The Representation of Children on Trajan’s Arch

at Beneventum,” in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas Elsner (Cambridge, 1996),

181; see review by Eric M. Moormann, Mnemosyne 52 (1999): 251.

27. A second version, from an unknown house in Pompeii and without the distichs, is in

the Naples Museum, inv. 9040: Sampaolo, “Le pitture,” 1:150, no. 199. There are also

two mold-made terracotta statuettes of Pero and Micon in the Naples Museum, dated

to a.d. 70–80. One of them, inv. 124848, came from the aedicula in the garden of a

328 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 4 7 — 2 5 7

house at VI, 15, 5, found 1 October 1895 together with a duck-form vase and a statuette

of Silenus: Carmen Ziviello, “Le terrecotte invetriate,” in Le collezioni del Museo Nazio-

nale di Napoli (Rome, 1986) 1:202, no. 9; see also G. Ballardini, L’eredità ceramistica del

l’antico mondo romano (Rome, 1964), 104, fig. 125.

28. These distichs appear in an ekphrasis of about a.d. 30: Valerius Maximus, Factorum et

dictorum memorabilium 5.4.7.

29. Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, 95–96, 185–86, no. 227; followed by James L.

Franklin, Jr., Pompeii: The Electoral Programmata: Campaigns and Politics, a.d. 71–79,

Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 28 (Rome, 1980), 99–100;

but see Mouritsen, Election, Magistrates and Municipal Elite, 117.

30. Zanker, Power of Images, 156–59.

31. Valeria Sampaolo, “VII 3, 30,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 6 (Rome, 1996): 943–73.

32. Wolfgang Helbig, “Scavi di Pompei,” Bullettino dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeo-

logica (1864): 119–20 (a description furnished by Giuseppe Fiorelli).

33. The fullest, and most convincing, examination is that of Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fas-

sadenbilder, 236–41, pl. 23.

34. As Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 239, points out, there is no exact iconographic

model for this scene, and the bread provider has no insignia; monuments of the late

first century b.c. show that even private people took part in public gift-giving. See a re-

lief urn from Ascoli Piceno, in Hanns Gabelmann, Antike Audienz- und Tribunalszenen

(Darmstadt, 1984), 163–64, no. 72, pl. 22; and Jutta Ronke, Magistratische Repräsenta-

tion im römischen Relief: Studien zu standes- und statusbezeichnenden Szenen (Oxford,

1987), 144–45, 679–80, no. 39, fig. 72–73, where the men wear the toga but are not dis-

tinguished as magistrates.

35. For an overview of ancient portraiture, see Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, “Ritratto,” En-

ciclopedia dell’Arte Antica 6 (Rome, 1965), 695–738.

36. Valeria Sampaolo, “VII 2, 6: Casa di Terentius Neo,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 6 (Rome,

1996), 480–93, with bibl., 481.

37. Fiorelli, Descrizione di Pompei, 184; most recently Sampaolo, “Casa di Terentius Neo,”

480, 488–89.

38. Giulio De Petra, Giornale degli scavi di Pompei (1868–69), 40, 57–64; followed by Fiorelli,

Descrizione di Pompei, 183–84, and Antonio Sogliano, Le pitture murali campane scoverte

negli anni 1867–79 (Naples, 1879), 139, no. 673.

39. Matteo Della Corte, “Publius Paquius Proculus,” Journal of Roman Studies 16 (1926):

145–54; repeated in his Case ed abitanti, 157–60.

40. Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, 227: “Della Corte’s theory about the lawyer Te-

rentius Neo and his brother the baker is based solely on very vague and artificial indi-

cations.”

41. Valeria Sampaolo, “VII 2, 11–12: Tintoria,” Pompei: Pitture e mosaici 6 (Rome, 1996),

496–509.

42. This is Della Corte’s contention: Della Corte, “Paquius Proculus,” 146, fig. 49.

43. A.W. Van Buren, “Further Pompeian Studies,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

10 (1932): 30–31.

44. Klaus Parlasca, Mumienporträts und verwandte Denkmäler (Wiesbaden, 1966), passim;

NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 5 7 — 2 6 3 • 329

Heinrich Drerup, Zur Datierung der Mumienporträts (Paderborn, 1933), for similarities

in pls. 3 and 4, and even in Trajanic images, pl. 6; David L. Thompson, Mummy Por-

traits in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, 1982); Euphrosyne Doxiadis, The Mysterious

Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt (London, 1995); Barbara Borg, Mumien-

porträts: Chronologie und kultureller Kontext (Mainz, 1996); Susan Walker, ed., Ancient

Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, Feb-

ruary 15–May 7, 2000 (New York, 2000).

45. Walker, Ancient Faces, 24, fig. 8, British Museum, inv. GR 1889.10–18.1.

46. Size: 25.5 × 20.5 cm. Valeria Sampaolo, “VI 15, 13.15: Termopolio,” Pompei: Pitture e mo-

saici 5 (Rome, 1994), 699–700, with bibl.

47. J. B. Ward-Perkins and Amanda Claridge, Pompeii a.d. 79, exh. cat., Museum of Fine

Arts 1978–79 (Boston, 1978), 2:122, no. 17.

48. The fullest account, in Apuleius Metamorphoses 4.28–26.24, dates to ca. a.d. 180; Noëlle

Icard-Gianolio, “Psyche,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae 7 (Zurich, 1994):

569–85.

49. The fragmentary painting of about a.d. 150 from room 10 of the House of the Painted

Vaults at Ostia fits this profile; it graces the wall of a dining veranda, partially open to

the street, and may represent a funeral banquet. See Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 297,

fig. 183.

CONCLUSIONS

1. This is also the conclusion of Petersen, “Questioning Roman ‘Freedman Art.’”

330 • NOT E S T O P A G E S 2 6 3 — 2 7 3

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ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Unless otherwise noted, all drawings and plans are by the author.

PLATES (FOLLOWING PAGE 178)

1. Rome, Forum of Trajan, Basilica Ulpia, and Column of Trajan from south. Digital

reconstruction by James E. Packer and John Berge.

2. Rome, View of the Column of Trajan between libraries, basilica, and temple.

Digital reconstruction by James E. Packer and John Berge. James E. Packer, Forum

of Trajan (University of California Press, 2001), 43, fig. 165.

3. Pompeii, Shop VI, 7, 8–11; Naples, inv. 8991. Carpenters’ procession. Photo by

Michael Larvey.

4. Pompeii, Fullonica VI, 8, 20, pier from peristyle, south and east sides; Naples, inv.

9774. South side: Venus. East side, upper register: Clothworkers, including man with

viminea cavea. East side, lower register: Cloth-treading. Photo by Michael Larvey.

5. Pompeii, Fullonica VI, 8, 20, pier from peristyle, east and north sides. North side,

upper register: Cloth press. North side, lower register: Cloth drop-oª. Photo by

Michael Larvey.

6. Pompeii, Fullonica VI, 8, 20, pier from peristyle, north side, lower register. Cloth

drop-oª. Photo by Michael Larvey.

353

7. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), room 1, north wall; Naples, inv. 111482.

Painted frieze with four scenes of tavern life. Photo by Michael Larvey.

8. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius, first scene. Woman and man kissing. Photo by

Michael Larvey.

9. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius, second scene. Two male drinkers and waitress.

Photo by Michael Larvey.

10. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius, third scene. Two men arguing over dice. Photo

by Michael Larvey.

11. Ostia, Caupona of the Seven Sages, south and west walls. Photo by Michael Larvey.

12. Ostia, Caupona of the Seven Sages, west wall, south part. Chilon and sitting

men, detail. Photo by Michael Larvey.

13. Ostia, Caupona of the Seven Sages, west wall and ceiling. Photo by Michael

Larvey.

14. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, north wall, east part, scene 4. Silver service.

Photo by Michael Larvey.

15. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, scene 2. Above: Banquet. Below: Pygmies

on the Nile. Photo by Michael Larvey.

16. Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tomb 22, south enclosure wall. Above:

Lion devouring bull. Below: Pygmies. Photo by Antonio Ortolan. Archivio

Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Ostia.

17. Pompeii, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX, 12, 6–7), room g, east wall, center

picture. Couples at a symposium. Photo by Michael Larvey.

18. Pompeii, House of the Chaste Lovers, room g, north wall, center picture.

Couples at a symposium. Photo by Michael Larvey.

19. Stabiae(?), Naples, inv. 9015. Couples at a symposium. Photo by Michael Larvey.

20. Pompeii, House of the Chaste Lovers, room g, west wall, center picture. Couples

at a symposium with drunken woman. Photo by Michael Larvey.

21. Pompeii, House of the Triclinium (V, 2, 4), triclinium r, east wall, center picture;

Naples, inv. 120029. All-male symposium. Photo by Michael Larvey.

22. Pompeii, House of the Triclinium, triclinium r, north wall, center picture;

Naples, inv. 120031. Symposium scene. Photo by Michael Larvey.

23. Pompeii, House VII, 3, 30, tablinum e; Naples, inv. 9071. Bread dole. Photo by

Michael Larvey.

24. Pompeii, House of “Terentius Neo” (VII, 2, 6), room g, north wall, center picture;

Naples, inv. 9058. Portrait of a man and his wife. Photo by Michael Larvey.

FIGURES

1. The orders-strata structure and its eªects. Drawing by Bill Nelson after Géza

Alföldy, Römische Sozialgeschichte, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1984). · 6

2. Proposed schema of the relationship of social groups to a class model. Drawing

354 • I L L U S T R A T I O N C R E D I T S

by Bill Nelson after Brent Shaw, “Social Science and Ancient History: Keith

Hopkins in Partibus Infidelium,” Helios 9 (1982), fig. 2. · 6

3. A model for the reception of visual art in ancient Rome. · 11

4. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae (13–9 b.c.), view from west. American Academy in

Rome, Fototeca Unione (hereafter AAR-FU), 1051. · 20

5. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, south side. Procession of Augustus and his family.

Photo by Singer. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome (hereafter DAIR),

72.654. · 20

6. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, east side. Tellus/Italia. Photo by Schlechter. DAIR,

86.1449. · 21

7. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae, west side. Aeneas sacrificing. Photo by Singer. DAIR,

72.648. · 21

8. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae with horologium and mausoleum. Drawing by

Edmund Buchner, “Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis.” Römische Mitteilungen

83 (1976): 353, fig. 14. · 22

9. Rome, Augustan monuments in the Campus Martius. Drawing by Bill Nelson

after Edmund Buchner, “Solarium Augusti und Ara Pacis.” Römische Mitteilun-

gen 83 (1976): 364, fig. 19. · 23

10. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae. Detail of exterior floral frieze. Photo by Singer.

DAIR, 72.655. · 27

11. Rome, Ara Pacis Augustae. Snake and bird’s nest. AAR-FU, 27321. · 27

12. Rome, plan of Imperial Fora. James E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A

Study of the Monuments (University of California Press, 1997), vol. 1, fig. 3. · 29

13. Rome, plan of Forum of Augustus with Zanker’s iconographical scheme.

Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1998),

fig. 149. · 30

14. Rome, Forum of Trajan, order of east colonnade, bay. James E. Packer, The Forum

of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments (University of California Press, 1997),

vol. 1, figs. A and 61. · 33

15. Rome, Column of Trajan, XLII–XLV. Dona militaria. Photo by Anger. DAIR,

89.768. · 40

16. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXI. Marcomanni beheading their country-

men. Photo by Schlechter. DAIR, 89.326. · 44

17. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, base. Detail from engraving by Enea Vico,

1540. Albertina Museum, Vienna. · 44

18. Rome, plan of area around Column of Marcus Aurelius. Drawing by Bill

Nelson. · 47

19. Rome, Column of Trajan, CXXXVI–CXXXVII. Adlocutio with “horseshoe”

composition. Photo by Anger. DAIR, 89.640. · 48

20. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, IX. Adlocutio with “horseshoe” composition.

Photo by Schlechter. DAIR, 89.193. · 48

I L L U S T R A T I O N C R E D I T S • 355

21. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXVII. Soldiers on the march. Photo

by Schlechter. DAIR, 89.342. · 50

22. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXVIII–LXIX. Execution of barbarians.


23. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, LXXIX. Pursuit of barbarian women.


24. Rome, Column of Marcus Aurelius, CI. Messenger arriving. Photo

by Schlechter. DAIR, 89.424. · 52

25. Rome, Arch of Septimius Severus, southwest panel. Adlocutio. AAR-FU, Askew

Collection, SW19. · 54

26. Venice, St. Mark’s Basilica, Tetrarchs. DAIR, 68.5154. · 55

27. Rome, Arch of Constantine, view from north. AAR-FU, 733. · 57

28. Rome, plan with path from Arch of Constantine to Arch of Septimius

Severus. · 58

29. Rome, Arch of Constantine. Oratio. Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la

Documentazione (hereafter ICCD), E 109832. · 59

30. Rome, Arch of Constantine. Siege of Verona. ICCD, E 109830. · 61

31. Rome, Arch of Constantine. Battle of Milvian Bridge. ICCD, E109841. · 61

32. Rome, Arch of Constantine, relief. Profectio. DAIR, 3135. · 62

33. Rome, Arch of Constantine, east frieze. Ingressus. ICCD, E 109840. · 62

34. Rome, Arch of Constantine. Liberalitas. ICCD, E 109831. · 65

35. Ostia. Plan showing spaces for business, entertainment, and worship. · 74

36. Ostia. Theater, Forum of the Corporations, and Temple (II, 7, 2–5),

reconstruction. · 74

37. Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1). Lararium. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 76

38. Pompeii, plan of House of Sutoria Primigenia (I, 13, 2). · 76

39. Pompeii, House of Sutoria Primigenia, room 17, north and east walls. Photo

by Michael Larvey. · 77

40. Pompeii, House of Sutoria Primigenia, room 17, east wall, detail. Photo


41. Pompeii, plan of House of the Sarno Lararium (I, 14, 7). · 79

42. Pompeii, House of the Sarno Lararium, the lararium. ICCD, N 56693. · 80

43. Pompeii, House of the Sarno Lararium, the lararium. Excavation photo.

Pompeii, Soprintendenza Archeologica degli Scavi, Archivio Fotografico

degli Scavi (hereafter SAP-AFS), D966. · 81

44. Rome, Altar of the Vicomagistri of the Vicus Aesculeti. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 82

45. Rome, Altar of the Vicus Aesculeti, right side. Lar. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 83

46. Pompeii, plan of Shop of the Carpenters’ Procession (VI, 7, 8–12). · 85


47. Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele (IX, 7, 1). View of ensemble in 1911.

SAP-AFS, 80883. · 88

48. Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele. Procession to Cybele. SAP-AFS,

80888. · 90

49. Pompeii, Shop of the Procession to Cybele. Procession to Cybele, with figures

numbered. · 90

50. Pompeii, Praedia of Julia Felix (II, 4), atrium 24. Sales scene. Naples, inv. 9069.

Photo by Michael Larvey. · 97

51. Pompeii, plan of House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1). · 98

52. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. View from entrance. DAIR,

56 216. · 99

53. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches making garlands.


54. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches making perfume.


55. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches working gold. Photo


56. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids and psyches as fullers. Photo


57. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Dionysiac procession (thiasus). Photo


58. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, oecus q. Cupids winetasting. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 104

59. Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus (IX, 7, 5–7), view of entrances 7 and 5 in 1911.

SAP-AFS, D 80895. · 106

60. Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus. Venus Pompeiana and clothworkers with

Verecundus. SAP-AFS, 80887. · 107

61. Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus. Mercury in front of his temple. SAP-AFS,

D 80893. · 108

62. Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus. Felt-makers, detail. SAP-AFS, 80892. · 110

63. Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus. Sales scene with woman and customer.

SAP-AFS, 510. · 110

64. Pompeii, plan of Fullonica VI, 8, 20. · 113

65. Pompeii, Fullonica VI, 8, 20. Decorative scheme of fountain, walls, and piers in

southeast part of peristyle, seen from the southwest of peristyle. William Gell,

Pompeiana: Topography, Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii, The Result of Excava-

tions since 1819 (London, 1832), vol. 1, plate 50, facing p. 190. · 114

66. Ravenna, grave stele of Longidienus and Longidiena. Ravenna Archaeological

Museum. DAIR, 62.2149. · 119

67. Rome, Altar of Atimetus and Epaphra, left side. Vatican Museums, Galleria

Lapidaria. Vatican Museums, Photographic Archive, XIII.21.21. · 122


68. Rome, Altar of Atimetus and Epaphra, front and right side. Vatican Museums,

Galleria Lapidaria. Vatican Museums, Photographic Archive, XIII.21.19. · 122

69. Ostia, relief with woman selling food. Ostia Museum, inv. 134. AAR-FU,

14491F. · 124

70. Ostia, Forum of the Corporations (II, 7, 4), statio 5. Mensor leveling modius with

a rutellum. AAR-FU, 2396. · 126

71. Ostia, plan of Hall and Temple of the Grain Measurers (I, 19, 1–2). · 126

72. Ostia, Hall of the Grain Measurers, mosaic. AAR-FU, 5015. · 127

73. Pompeii, Large Theater. View of stage from cavea. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 132

74. Pompeii, plan of Large Theater. · 132

75. Pompeii, Caupona on the Street of Mercury (VI, 10, 1). “Tightrope walkers.”

César Famin, Cabinet Secret (Paris, 1836), plate 35. · 135

76. Pompeii, House of Gavius Rufus (VII, 2, 16), exedra o; Naples, inv. 9043.

Theseus Liberator. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 137

77. Herculaneum, Basilica. Naples, inv. 9049. Theseus Liberator. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 137

78. Rome, Domus Aurea, Fourth Style scaenae frons decoration. Engraving

by Ludovico Mirri, Le antiche camere (1776), plate 27. · 138

79. Sabratha, Libya. Theater, with reconstructed scaenae frons, last quarter of the

second century a.d. AAR-FU, 10633. · 138

80. Rome, Domus Aurea, Chamber of Achilles on Skyros, detail. AAR-FU,

11757F. · 140

81. Pompeii, House of Pinarius Cerialis (III, 4, 4), cubiculum a, north wall.

Representation of scaenae frons with Thoas, Iphigenia, Orestes, and Pylades.

SAP-AFS, 81044. · 140

82. Pompeii, House of the Vettii, room e. West wall. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 142

83. Pompeii, Palaestra (VIII, 2, 23), courtyard f, south wall, east part. Athlete

on stairway. Photo by Moscioni. DAIR, 30.147. · 142

84. Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment. La Civitella Archaeological Museum.


85. Chieti, Monument of Storax. Gladiatorial relief. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 146

86. Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, with figures numbered. · 149

87. Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, center part, detail. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 149

88. Chieti, Monument of Storax, pediment, left part, detail. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 150

89. Pompeii, House I, 3, 23, peristyle n, west wall; Naples, inv. 112222. Riot in the

Amphitheater. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 153


90. Pompeii, plan of House I, 3, 23. · 154

91. Pompeii, House I, 3, 23, peristyle n, west wall. Drawing of lost painting of

gladiators, after Theodor Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (London, 1895),

plate 28, no. 3. · 155

92. Pompeii, House, I, 3, 23, peristyle n, west wall. Drawing of lost painting of

gladiators, after Theodor Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (London, 1895),

plate 28, no. 4. · 155

93. Sestertius of Titus/Vespasian Divus, a.d. 80–81, showing the Colosseum filled

with people. To left: the Meta Sudans. To right: a portico. American Numismatic

Society, 1954.203.170. Photo by Sharon M. Suchma, courtesy of the American

Numismatic Society. · 156

94. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), north wall, room 1. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 162

95. Pompeii, Caupona of Salvius, fourth scene. Two fighting men and innkeeper.

Photo by Warscher. DAIR, W85. · 166

96. Ostia, plan of Caupona of the Seven Sages (III, 10, 2–3). · 171

97. Ostia, I, 12, Forica on the Street of the Forica. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 173

98. Ostia, plan of Necropolis of the Ostia Road. · 183

99. Pompeii, Necropolis of the Herculaneum Gate. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 183

100. Pompeii, Necropolis of the Herculaneum Gate, no. 22, Monument of Naevoleia

Tyche. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 185

101. Chart comparing Trimalchio, Storax, and Vestorius Priscus. · 187

102. Pompeii, Necropolis of the Vesuvius Gate, plan of Tomb of Vestorius Priscus,

with subjects of paintings. · 188

103. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus in its context. Excavation photo, 1907.

SAP-AFS, 280. · 188

104. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section north to south showing Vestorius

Priscus in his tablinum (scene 1) and garden plants and peacock (west part of

scene 5). Jane K. Whitehead, “The ‘Cena Trimalchionis’ and Biographical Narra-

tion in Roman Middle-Class Art,” in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed. Peter

J. Holliday (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), fig. 89. · 190

105. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section showing south side of tomb,

symposium scene and Pygmies on the Nile (scene 2) and table with silver

service (scene 4). Drawing by Jane K. Whitehead, “The ‘Cena Trimalchionis’,”

fig. 90. · 192

106. Chart showing contexts of Pygmy imagery at Pompeii. · 193

107. Pompeii, House of the Ephebe (I, 7, 11), outdoor triclinium with

paradeisos painting on walls and Pygmy painting on masonry couches.

SAP-AFS, 1106. · 194


108. Pompeii, Suburban Baths, apodyterium 7, south and east walls. Photo


109. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section north to south showing Priscus

and twelve listeners (scene 3), with altar above and gladiators on west enclosure

wall (scene 8). Drawing by Jane K. Whitehead, “The ‘Cena Trimalchionis’,”

fig. 88. · 196

110. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, scene 3, upper part, with inscription above.


111. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, east interior wall, scene 5: garden.

Drawing by W. A. Loerts, from Stephan T.A.M. Mols and Eric M. Moormann,

“Ex parvo crevit: Proposta per una lettura iconografica della Tomba di Vestorius

Priscus fuori Porta Vesuvio a Pompei,” Rivista di Studi Pompeiani 6 (1993–94):

15–52, fig. 24. · 199

112. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, south wall, scenes 6 (still life with goose)

and 7 (paradeisos). Drawing by W. A. Loerts, from Mols and Moormann, “Ex

parvo crevit,” fig. 26. · 199

113. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, west wall, south part, scene 8: two

gladiators. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 200

114. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, west wall, north part, scene 9: aedicula.


115. Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, north wall, west part, scene 10: pomegran-

ate tree. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 202

116. Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road. ICCD, E35320. · 204

117. Ostia, plan of Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tombs 17–22. · 204

118. Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, interior of columbarium 18.

ICCD, 35641. · 205

119. Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tomb 18, external niche. Priestess

of Isis. Ostia, Museum. ICCD, 35631. · 207

120. Ostia, Necropolis on the Laurentine Road, tomb 22, south enclosure wall.

Excavation photo. Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica

di Ostia, A2249. · 208

121. Isola Sacra, plan of tomb 16 with location of mosaic and place for portable

couches. · 211

122. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, view of mosaic from entrance. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 211

123. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, overhead view of mosaic. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 212

124. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, interior of columbarium. Watercolor by Maria Barosso,

1931. ICCD, E17030. · 214

125. Isola Sacra, tomb 16, interior of columbarium, banqueters stucco, detail.

ICCD, E41074. · 214


126. Ostia, Sarcophagus of Trophimas. Rome, National Museum of the Terme,

inv. 184. ICCD, E18928. · 216

127. Rome, mosaic from S. Sabina. Dancers and musicians flanking a circular

dining couch (sigma). Vatican Museums, Octagonal Room. Vatican Museums,

Photographic Archive, XXXVI.4.14. · 217

128. Ariccia, relief with Egyptian deities and dancers. Rome, Palazzo Altemps,

National Museum of the Terme, inv. 77255. ICCD, E52536. · 218

129. Diagram of seating in a Roman triclinium. · 224

130. Artist’s reconstruction of dining Romans. Stephan T.A.M. Mols, Wooden

Furniture from Herculaneum: Form, Technique and Function (Amsterdam, 1999),

fig. 30. · 225

131. Pompeii, House of Octavius Quartio (II, 2, 2). Reconstruction of the guest of

honor’s view from oecus h. After Franz Jung, “Gebaute Bilder,” Antike Kunst 27

(1984), fig. 38. · 227

132. Pompeii, plan of House of the Chaste Lovers (IX, 12, 6–7). · 229

133. Pompeii, House of the Chaste Lovers, view of room g from south window.


134. Pompeii, House of Epidius Sabinus (IX, 1, 22), cubiculum z (destroyed).

Couple at a symposium with drunken woman. Drawing by G. Discanno, 1870.


135. Pompeii, plan of House of the Moralist (III, 4, 2). · 234

136. Pompeii, House of the Moralist. Reconstruction, with summer triclinium and

loggia above. Vittorio Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via

dell’Abbonzanda (Rome, 1953), vol. 2, fig. 736. · 236

137. Pompeii, House of the Moralist, view of triclinium 12. SAP-AFS, 81032. · 236

138. Pompeii, plan of House of the Triclinium (V, 2, 4). · 240

139. Pompeii, House of the Triclinium, room r, west and north walls. Photo


140. Pompeii, House of the Triclinium, room r, west wall, center picture; Naples,

inv. 120030. Symposium. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 244

141. Pompeii. Plan showing distribution of expensive houses in the second century

b.c. Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1998),

fig. 2. · 248

142. Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals (VII, 4, 57), east capital, north side.

Satyr and Maenad with torch. Photo by Ippel. DAIR, 55.390. · 249

143. Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, west capital, north side. Maenad

and drunken Satyr. Photo by Felbermeyer. DAIR, 43.404. · 249

144. Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, east capital, west side. Woman

and man at banquet. Photo by Felbermeyer. DAIR, 43.401. · 251

145. Pompeii, House of the Figured Capitals, west capital, east side. Master of the

house and his wife. Photo by Felbermeyer. DAIR, 42.1125. · 251


146. Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), lararium 25, west wall. Shrine

to ancestors and Lares. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 253

147. Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto (V, 4, a), room c, west wall, north part.

Portrait of a boy in the dress of Mercury. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 255

148. Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto, room c, west wall, south part. Portrait

of a girl. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 255

149. Pompeii, plan of House of Lucretius Fronto. · 256

150. Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto, room c, north wall, center picture.

Narcissus contemplating his own reflection. Photo by Michael

Larvey. · 258

151. Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto, room c, south wall, center picture.

Pero and Micon. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 258

152. Pompeii, plan of House of the Baker (VII, 3, 30). · 260

153. Pompeii, plan of House of “Terentius Neo” (VII, 2, 6). · 262

154. Pompeii, House VI, 15, 14, mosaic emblema; Naples, inv. 124666. Portrait

of a woman. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 265

155. Pompeii, House of “Terentius Neo,” view of room g through corridor m. Photo


156. Pompeii, House of “Terentius Neo,” room g, north wall, upper zone, center;

Naples, inv. 9195. Amor and Psyche. Photo by Michael Larvey. · 266

MAPS

1. Pompeii. Plan showing spaces discussed in parts 2 and 3. · 70

2. Ostia. Plan showing spaces discussed in part 2. · 71

362 • I L L U S T RA T I O N C R E D I T S

INDEX

363

Accius, 133

acculturation, 3, 17, 222; definition of, 8;

non-elite, 269

Actium, Greece, 23

actors, 131, 133–35, 139, 141; and infamy,

136, 141, 143–44; and orators, 141;

women as, 134

adaptations, by artist, 266

Adonis, 92, 117

Adriatic, 118

aedicula (-ae), 136, 139, 182, 201, 218

aedile, 189, 196

“Aescleti,” for “Aesculeti,” 85

Aethiops, ithyphallic, as apotropaion,

209

agathodaemones (serpents representing

good spirits), 75, 175

Agrippa, 24, 205, 320n67

Alexander mosaic, 247

Alexander the Great, 250

Alexandria, Egypt, 38, 109, 161, 213, 250;

art of, 161; Ptolemaic, 250

all-male drinking party, 243

allowance, for slaves (peculium), 5

Altar from the Vicus Aesculeti, Rome,

81–83

Altar of Atimetus and Epaphra, Rome,

121–23, 181

Altar of Peace, Rome. See Ara Pacis

altars, cube-shaped, 182

Amor and Psyche, 266–67

amphitheaters, 154, 156–57, 159; buildings,

144–45, 152–53

ancestor busts, miniature, 253

Andreau, Jean, 189

animals, as motifs. See motifs, animals

apartment buildings, 29, 124, 176, 267

Apella, Gaius Iulius, 203, 205–6

Aphrodite, 117

Apis (Egyptian deity), 218

Apollo, 26, 91, 114

apotropaic protection, 209; and laughter,

212

apotropaion (-a), 194–95, 209–10, 212–13,

250, 318n43; Etruscan, 321n82. See also

Evil Eye

Arachne, 87

Ara Pacis, Rome, 63, 65–66, 82–83, 256–

57, 269

arch, triumphal, 9, 16, 24, 28–29, 31, 53,

60, 179–80, 256

archigalli, 92; freedman status of, 93

architecture, as motif. See motifs, architec-

ture

Arch of Trajan, Beneventum, 256–57

Ariccia, Italy, 218

Arrius Crescens, C., 234

Arrius Polites, T., 234

art: freedman, 7, 273–74; “popular,” 154,

161, 272–73, 308n10

Artemas, Lucius Atilius, 215–16, 219

Artemis-Hecate, 91

ash-urns, location in tombs, 182

Atellan farces (Atellanae), 134

Athenaeus, 250

Atia, 26

Atimetus, Lucius Cornelius, 121

atopía (unbecomingness), to dispel evil,

194–95, 209–10, 213

atrium, 75, 78–79, 96–98, 100, 156, 158,

190–91, 201, 221–22, 234, 241, 250,

252–53, 259, 262, 264

attendants (apparitores), 148

Atticus, 145

Attis, 92; with god Adonis, 92

augur (official who takes auspices), 151

augustalis (-es), 4, 99, 143, 145, 148, 150,

181, 184–85, 270

Augustus, 4, 19, 22–28, 29, 31, 42, 46, 56,

63, 81–82, 84, 131, 133–34, 143, 158,

205, 256, 259, 269; daughter Julia,

205, 320n67; family of, 256

Aulus, 203

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 324n5

364 • I N D E X

auspices, 151

auxiliary troops (auxilia), in Roman army,

38–39, 269

axe (ascia), 118

axiality, in architecture, 240

axially symmetrical compositions, 63, 65

bakery (pistrinum), 261–62

Bakhtin, Mikhail, 168

ballista, 38

banquet. See convivium

banquet, funeral, 191, 194, 212–13, 316n27

banquet scenes: Greek-style, 241, 245,

267; ideal, 227

barbarians, 67, 256, 269

Barberini Togatus, 252

barmaid, 165–66

barracks of gladiators, in porticus of Large

Theater, Pompeii, 152

Battle of the Milvian Bridge, 60

beauty, masculine ideal, 166

Becatti, Giovanni, 127–28, 209–10

behavior, teaching of, 64

Bendinelli, Goffredo, 194

Berger, John, 9–10

Bes (Egyptian deity), 318n44

Bianchi Bandinelli, Ranuccio, 2–3, 136

Bias of Priene, 172

bier. See ferculum

bird’s-eye view, 152, 156

bisellium (-a) (double-width seat), 133,

148, 184, 191

black boy slave, 242

bombing of Pompeii in 1943, 235, 326n37

bound rods. See fasces

Boyce, George K., 114

brazier, cylindrical, 235

bread, carbonized, 260

bread dole, 259–61, 273, 329n34

breadseller, 259

brick-faced concrete, 124

brick-stamps, 126

Brindisium, 256

Bryson, Norman, 9–10

Buchner, Edmund, 23–24

building boom, at Ostia, 124

bull, as offering to Genius Augusti, 84

bull-deity, Egyptian, 218

burial, 182, 215. See also cemeteries

Caesar (dictator), 143

Cahn, Herbert, 210

Caligula (emperor), 134

Calza, Guido, 170, 175, 179, 207, 210

camillus (-i), 78, 151

Campani, 157

Canace, 141

canephora (basket bearer), 91

capite velato, 78, 82

captions, written, 2, 161–64, 169, 171, 179,

181, 243

caricatures, 161

carnival, 160; and Bakhtin, 168, 308n3

carpenters, 8, 87, 89, 125; in procession,

85–89

cartoon (model for painting), 266

cartoon (modern comic), 167

cartoon balloon, 162, 174. See also

captions, written

Castriota, David, 26

Cato the Elder, 135, 238, 303n23

Cato the Younger, 324n1

caupona (tavern), 239–40

cavea, 131, 133, 152, 154

Celer, 131

cemeteries: Herculaneum Road, Pompeii,

184–85; Isola Sacra, near Ostia, 123,

210; Laurentine Road, Ostia, 207;

Nuceria Gate, Pompeii, 183–85; Ostia

Road, Ostia, 182; Rome, 182; Vesuvius

Gate, Pompeii, 187–89

cenotaph, 185

censor, 252

Central Institute for Restoration, Rome,

162

ceremony, four-part, of munera, 147

Ceres, 126

cesspit, 175

I N D E X • 365

chamber pots, 178

Change in Style (Stilwandel), 2–3, 53

child labor, 128

children: portraits of, House of

M. Lucretius Fronto, Pompeii, 254–

57; in Roman art, 19, 24–25, 37, 40–

41, 63–64, 92, 116, 184, 246, 254–59,

269, 272

Chilon of Sparta, 171, 175

Christ-Helios, 58

Cicero, 145–47, 161

cinaedus (-i), 168, 170, 309n15

Cissius, 203

cistern head (impluvium), 78

citizen, 4, 25, 28, 31, 38, 66, 82, 92, 95,

120, 133, 141, 145, 176, 184, 216, 256,

261, 263; emperor as “first citizen,”

17, 37, 42, 56, 66; males, 131, 228; as

viewer, 143

citizenship: for slaves, 5, 38, 285n69; for

soldiers, 38–39, 285n72

city block (insula), 247

city boundaries (pomerium), 22, 32, 182,

315n6

city government, and burial, 182

city walls, Pompeii, 154

city ward (vicus), 81

Civitavecchia, Italy, 124

class, social. See status, social

Classis, Italy, 118

Claudia Apphias, 215–16, 219

Claudius (emperor), 50, 124, 134, 152

clothing, as motif. See motifs, clothing

and jewelry

coactiliarii (felt-makers), 94, 107–9, 111

Coarelli, Filippo, 147

cognomen, 111, 145–47, 189

coin, with image of Colosseum, 156–57

college of augustales, 150

collegium (-a), 125, 128, 143, 157–58, 209;

funerary, 145; head of, 128; illegal, 152

Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum,

89

colonnades, 32, 226

columbarium, 203, 205–6, 210, 212–13

Columella, 80

comedy, for elite readers, 185

commemoration of the dead: clichés

about, 197; Roman attitudes toward,

182, 215

commissatio (wine-drinking party), 101,

224, 226, 243

common speech, 161

compassion, for handicapped persons,

144–45

compluvium, 234

composition, 147–48, 151, 163, 231, 233,

242–43, 259–61, 269–70; axially

symmetrical, 2, 15, 43, 49, 63–66, 83,

114; frontal, 64, 66, 115, 151, 263, 273

congiarium, 147, 149

Constantine (emperor), 56, 67, 270

constipation, 172, 177

consul, 252

containers, as motifs. See motifs,

containers

context, for viewing visual art, 2, 4, 7,

9–10, 13, 96, 113, 160–61, 180, 191,

209, 212, 233, 238, 254, 262, 269; and

apotropaic greeting, 250; banquet, 231;

burial, 118, 195, 199, 209; freedman’s

house, 233, 238; latrine, 178; and

Pygmy imagery, 192–95, 212, 272;

tavern, 163; theatrical, 139, 143

convivium, 223–25, 226–27, 233, 239;

overindulgence at, 224

Cornelia Celsa, 93

corporations (corporationes), 73, 125

couches, dining (klinai), 100–101, 213,

222; guests’ places on, 224–26; images

of, 190–91, 223–24, 228, 230–33, 242–

45; in masonry, 170, 182, 192, 195, 207–

10, 226, 235, 237–38, 240

couches, dining, C-shaped (sigma), 191,

193, 217, 322n95

cremation, 182

crime deterrent, executions in amphithe-

ater as, 144–45

366 • I N D E X

crypta, Large Theater, Pompeii, 131, 133

cubiculum, 39, 141, 222, 232, 241, 254,

272

cults, illegal, 92. See also Cybele, cult of;

Dionysus; Isis, cult of

cultural imperialism, 15–17, 274

culture: of defecation, 175; Greek, 134, 223,

233; Hellenistic, 247, 250, 252; Roman,

elite, 174–75, 177, 215; Roman, non-

elite, 75, 161, 269

cupid and psyche frieze, House of the

Vettii, Pompeii, 99–101

Cupid/Eros, 89, 106, 139

curule aedile, 197

customers, images of, 109, 115–16, 123

Cybele, cult of, 89, 91, 105–6, 114; brought

to Rome, 204 b.c., 92; and eunuch

priests, 93; rites of, 92; women in,

92–93, 293n50

Cycnus, 145

Dacians: captured arms of, 32, 35; sculp-

tural types, 32–34, 39, 40; social organi-

zation of, 37; wars against, 32–35, 38,

50

dactylic hexameter, 238

dactylic pentameter, 238

Daedalus: murder of Perdix, 87; and

Pasiphae, 87

damnatio ad bestias, 144–45

Danae, 141

dance: Dionysiac, 204, 206, 208; ecstatic,

218; with forked sticks, 217; “orgiastic,”

194–95; with pairs of crossed sticks,

193, 195, 212, 218; pantomime, 134;

sacred to Isis, 215–19

dancers, 226, 228, 244–45

Danube River, 34, 38, 41, 46, 49, 53

dating, on basis of hairstyles, 263

death, Roman attitudes toward, 181, 186,

189, 209, 215

decor, 230, 239

decurions (decuriones), 75, 147, 169, 182,

184, 189, 197, 263

defecation, 176; and representations of

defecating men, 172, 174, 177–78

De Kind, Richard, 254

Della Corte, Matteo, 157, 239, 262

Delphi, Greece, Sanctuary of Apollo, 86

De Petra, Giulio, 262

de Vos, Mariette, 79, 254

dextrarum iunctio, 120

diauloi, 92

didactic imagery, 66–67

dining couch. See couches, dining

Dionysiac dance, 204, 206, 208

Dionysiac procession (thiasus), 91, 101,

213

Dionysian banquet, 250

Dionysus, 91–93, 114; and Apollo, paired,

114–15; herm of, 91; mysteries of, 206

Dioskourides of Samos, 302n11

dirtying, of Sages, 161

disempowerment, of ordinary people, 168

dispelling evil spirits, 195, 210. See also

apotropaion

display, of portraiture in home, 246,

252–54, 263

distichs, 235, 237–38

district (pagus), 184

diversity, 274

divina maiestas, 64

divinities, as motifs. See motifs, divinities

doctors, Greek, 312n52

dole: bread, 259–61, 273, 329n34; grain,

184; money, 64–65, 186. See also

congiarium

domestic, vs. private, 221

domestic worship, 75

Dominate, 56

dominus, 64

domus, transparency to outsiders, 221.

See also house, Roman

Domus Aurea. See Golden House

double flute player. See tibicen

double flutes. See tibia

dovecotes (columbaria), 182

dressing room (apodyterium), 170

I N D E X • 367

drinking contest, 228

drinking horn (rhyton), 75, 193, 228, 230,

247

drinking party. See commissatio; sympo-

sium, Greek

duumvir (-i), 133, 152

dynamic spaces, 222

earthquake of a.d. 62, at Pompeii, 152,

162, 201–2, 239

editor muneris, 148, 152, 153

Edwards, Catharine, 141

ekphrasis, 10, 226, 239, 324n11

electoral slogans, 94, 262, 296n23

elegiac couplets, 238

elite Romans, 1–3, 23, 67, 215, 221, 252,

269; and apotropaia, 194; and ban-

quets, 239, 243, 250; cultural preten-

sions of, 177; defined, 3–8; and Greek

novel, 163; houses of, 221; and humor,

160–61, 170, 271; and hygiene, 174–

76, 178; and manual labor, 38, 95;

and non-elites, shared values, 272–74;

as patrons, 94; as readers, 185–87;

and seating in theater, 144; and self-

representation, 96, 111, 120, 177, 245,

252–55, 267, 272; and sexual regula-

tion, 163–64, 168, 177; as sponsors

of games, 130, 201; as viewers, 10–12,

17, 24, 31, 36–37, 46, 52, 57, 63–65,

94, 97–98, 120, 128, 158, 219; women,

164, 185

Elysian fields, 207

emancipation, of elite women, 164

empire, Roman, 16

emulatio (displaying art as examples), 230

encaustic technique, 263

enclosure, for funeral banquets, 203

Ennius, 133

Epaphra, L. Cornelius, 121

Ephesos (Selçuk), Turkey, 216

Epicurus, 210

Epidius Hymenaeus, E., 234

erotic repose, 243, 245

eruption of Vesuvius, 9, 80, 202, 224, 267

Eumachia, 93, 185, 315n16

eunuchs, devotees of Cybele, 93

Euripides, Bacchae, 93

everyday life, 1, 69, 97, 118, 175, 179, 259

Evil Eye, 195, 317n40. See also apotropaion

executions, public, in amphitheater,

144–45

falernum, 171

familia, 76, 120, 189–91, 197, 221–22

farces, Atellan (Atellanae), 134

farting, humor and, 172, 178

fasces (bound rods), 83, 150, 197, 252

fascism, 16

Fates (Parcae), 213

fauces, 158, 250, 259

Fayum portraits, Egypt, 263

fellatio, forced (irrumatio), 172

felt (coactilia), 108

felt-makers (coactiliarii), 94, 107–9, 111

ferculum (-a), 86–87, 89, 91, 293n38

Fiorelli, Giuseppe, 157

First Style, interior decoration, 247

flamen, 153

Flora, 134, 160

flora, as motif. See motifs, flora

Floralia, 135

Flower, Harriet, 253

flute player. See tibicen

flutes, double. See tibia

folk art, 273, 308n10

foreigners (peregrini), 1, 15, 17, 37–40, 46,

53, 133, 143, 219, 269, 272

forica (public latrine), 175, 313nn68,72

former slaves. See freedmen

formulaic representations, 180

Fortuna, 86, 106, 109, 175

Foucault, Michel, 174

Fourth Style, interior decoration, 105, 189,

235, 239, 254, 260, 266

framed views, 240. See also views

freeborn citizens, 1, 7, 15, 25, 38, 133, 143;

poor, 82, 95, 100, 128, 163, 168–69,

368 • I N D E X

176, 202, 213, 215, 262, 269; as viewers,

12, 120, 123, 125, 158; women, 158,

230

“freedman art,” 7, 273–74, 279nn19–23.

See also models, for interpretation of

non-elite art

freedmen, 1, 4, 38, 41, 82–83, 93, 95, 99–

100, 105, 120, 131, 143–47, 163, 168, 181,

202, 210, 213, 215, 221, 236, 238, 263,

271–72; of the Arrii, 234; and imitation

villas, 222; in nomenclature, 38, 84,

145–47, 184; as patrons, 120, 121–23,

130, 234; and sexual regulation, lack of,

164; status of, in Roman society, 7–8,

40–41, 52, 143–44, 234; Trimalchio, 10,

161, 177, 185–87, 198, 225; as viewers,

17, 159, 163, 169–70, 176; wealthy, 4,

40, 99, 105, 120, 130, 143, 145, 149,

170, 178

freedwomen, 66, 120, 125, 145, 158, 184–

85, 205; Naevoleia Tyche, 185–86; as

viewers, 125, 159, 233

freeing of slaves. See slaves, attaining

freedom

fresco technique, 263

frigidarium, 170

Fröhlich, Thomas, 114, 116, 136, 154, 157,

308n10

fullers ( fullones), 111–13

fuller’s earth (creta fullonica), 112

fullery ( fullonica), 111–12; fulling pro-

cesses, 112

fumigating frame (viminea cavea), 112,

115–16

funeral banquet, 191, 194, 212–13

funeral rites, 144, 252

funerary altars, 118

funerary college, 145

furniture, as motif. See motifs, furniture

and furnishings

Galli (priests of Cybele), 92

Gatti, Giuseppe, 84

gaze: focused, while dining, 225–26;

within image, 123, 148, 219, 226, 228;

outward, of emperor, 49, 52, 64, 242;

of viewers, 64, 173, 258–59, 267; on

visual axis, 221

gender, 118, 161, 222, 278n10

Genius, 76, 79, 81, 106, 108, 112; of

Augustus, 81, 84

genre painting, 97–98; Hellenistic, 272

gens (gentes), 89, 145, 202, 252, 262;

Cornelia, 89; Lucretia, 259; Terentia,

262; Vestoria, 202

gestures, 260–61; of erotic repose, 243,

245

gladiatorial relief, Pompeii, 293n38

gladiators, 51, 144–45, 147–48, 152, 154–

55, 162, 201–2; equestrian, 147; hoplo-

machus (fighting class), 145, 201; and

infamy, 141, 167; myrmillo (fighting

class), 147; schools for, 145; secutor

(Samnite fighting class), 154–55; thrax

(Thracian fighting class), 145–47,

154–55, 201

gloria (personal distinction), 84

Golden House (Domus Aurea), 58, 136,

139, 141

Good Emperors, 58, 63

gradient of intimacy, 222; and domus,

221

graffito (-i), 96, 100, 109, 145, 157, 239,

242, 262; humor of, 161

grain measurers (mensores), 125, 270

grammar, 178–79

Great Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater

Deum), 89, 91. See also Cybele, cult of

Greek culture, 134, 223, 233. See also

culture

guidelines, for lettering, 172

guilds. See collegium

Habinnas, 185–86

Hades, passage to, 201

Hadrian (emperor), 63

hairstyles, dating based on, 263

Hannibal, 92

I N D E X • 369

harbor: at Ostia, 124, 210, 301n97; on

Sarno River, Pompeii, 80

HAVE (greeting), 248, 250

Helbig, Wolfgang, 233

Hellenistic art: genre painting, 272; proto-

types of, 65, 161, 233

Hellenistic culture, 247, 250, 252; and

luxury (tryphe), 247. See also culture

Hellenistic dynasts, 199

Herculaneum, 79, 128, 136, 161

Hercules, 144

hetaira (-ai), 230–31; status of, 233

hierarchies: Dacian, 37; of freedmen, 145–

47; in Roman army, 36–38; social, 5,

66, 270; at spectacles, 133, 157; of

workers, 128

high couch (lectus summus), 224. See also

couches, dining

Holconius Celer, Marcus, 131, 133

Holconius Rufus, Marcus, 133

homosexual, passive male. See cinaedus

honestiores, 4, 41–42, 278n14, 286n89

hoplomachus (gladiatorial fighting class),

145, 201

Horace, Satirae, 324n7

horn players (cornicines), 60, 151

horseblankets, 108

house, Roman (domus), 221; admittance

to, 222–23; axial view, 79; as place of

business, 221; plan, eccentric, 241

household, Roman. See familia

human beings, as motifs. See motifs,

human beings

humiliores, 4, 41–42, 278n14, 286n89

humor, 160–61, 168, 174, 233, 239; textual,

161, 271; visual, 161

hunchbacks, apotropaic, 195, 209

hygiene, in Roman latrine, 175

identity, 67, 267; as carpenter, 85; of free-

born man, 215; of non-elite viewers,

130; and religious practices, 75; of

women, 185

illegal collegia, 152

imperialism, 15–17, 274

infamy (infamia), 136, 141, 143–44; and

actors, 304n36

inferiae, 182

ingenuus (-i), 15. See also freeborn citizens

ingressus, 63

initiates (mystes), 217

inscriptions: Greek, 171, 215–19; Latin, 2,

8, 16, 23, 30, 32–33, 35, 59, 66–67, 72,

84–85, 93, 94, 96, 118, 120, 121, 125,

128, 131–33, 145–47, 153, 157, 171, 175,

179–80, 181, 182–85, 186–87, 189,

197, 202, 203, 207, 216, 265, 270–71;

painted, 210. See also captions

intercourse, male-female, 168–69

interpretation of non-elite art. See models,

for interpretation of non-elite art

irrumatio (forced fellatio), 172

Iseum, Rome, 93

Isiac dance relief, Ariccia, 217–18,

323n102

Isis, cult of, 206; dance and, 215–19;

Temple of Isis, Pompeii, 93; and

women, 93, 294n58

Isola Sacra, Necropolis of, near Ostia,

123, 210

Iulia Aphrodisia, 203

Iulia Eleutheris, 203

Iulia Sabbatis, 203

Iulius Apella, Gaius, 203

Iulius Latinus, Gaius, 203

Iulius Pamphilus, Gaius, 203

Iunia, 145

ius imaginum, 254

Ixion, 100

jewelry, as motif. See motifs, clothing

and jewelry

jokes, 160, 179, 230

Julia (daughter of Augustus), 20

Julia Felix, 96–99

Julio-Claudian dynasty, 256

Juno (guardian spirit), 76–78

Jupiter, 87–88, 141, 177, 266

370 • I N D E X

Kaibel, G., 219

Kampen, Natalie, 116, 118, 123

King Attalos of Pergamon, 92

King Thoas, 141

kline (-ai). See couches, dining

korai, 139

labels: Greek, 174, 178; Latin, 174. See also

captions, written; inscriptions

labor, organization of, Roman, 129

lararium (-a), 75, 78, 114, 201, 270

Lares, 75–76, 81, 253, 328n9; statues of,

79

largitio, 64–65

Latin, language, 134; vulgar, 179, 278n7

latrine, Roman, 173, 178, 241; luxury, 174;

public, 175, 176–77; as social space,

176

laughter: apotropaic, 212; dispersing evil

spirits, 195; and power reversals, 160

laurel motif, in Augustan iconography, 82,

291nn20,25

Laurentine Road, Ostia, 203, 206, 210,

213; Necropolis on, 203, 207

Laurentium, Italy, 203

lead tube, for libations, 197

lectus (-i). See couches, dining

Leda, 141

legionaries, in Roman army, 35, 38, 46

leisure, 270

Lemuria (religious festival), 182

lesbian lovemaking, 164

libations, pouring of, 182

liberalitas, 64–65

libertinus (-i). See freedmen

Licinius (emperor), 56

lictor, 83, 150–51, 197

literacy, 176, 238, 261, 264, 271, 314n78;

degrees of, 33–34, 176–77, 179–80,

261, 264, 271; full, 179

Livia (empress), 256

Livineius Regulus, 152

local senators (decurions), 75, 147, 169,

182, 184, 189, 197, 263

locus consularis, 244. See also couches,

dining

Longidiena Stacte, 120

Longidienus, Publius, 118–20, 215

Longidienus Piladespotus, Publius, 120

Longidienus Rufio, Publius, 120

low couch (lectus imus), 224. See also

couches, dining

Lucian, 134

Lucretius Fronto, Marcus, 254, 259

Lucretius Satrius Valens, D., 153, 157

ludi, 144. See also spectacle

Ludi Florales, 134, 160

Ludi Matris Magnae, 92

Luna (moon goddess), 88

Lusius Storax, C. See Storax, C. Lusius

Maenads, 247, 250

magister pagi, 184, 292n28

magistrates, 64, 97–98, 131, 152

Magna Mater Deum, 92. See also Cybele,

cult of

Maiuri, Amedeo, 80, 153, 157, 197, 253

male-female assignation, 169

male-female sexual acrobatics, 169

male-male affection, 218–19, 242

Mamia, 93, 185, 315n16

Manes, 182

Mansuelli, Guido, 118

manumission, 5, 38–39, 41, 95, 99, 105,

117, 125, 129, 212, 275, 279n16

Marcus Aurelius (emperor), 63, 270

Marcus Varro, Menippean Satires, 324n5

marker-stone (cippus), 128

Martial, 164–65, 324n1

masonry couches. See couches, dining

masks, of ancestors, wax, 252

massage room (destrictarium), 170

materfamilias, 250

Maxentius (emperor), 58

Medea, 141

Mediterranean attitude, toward life in

public, 69

Menander, mosaics representing comedies

I N D E X • 371

of: Synaristosai, 302n11; Theopho-

roumene, 302n11

men’s club, 179

mensor (-es) (measurer), 127–28, 203

Mercury, 85, 88, 106, 109, 112, 254

meteorite, worshiped in cult of Cybele, 92

meter, poetic: dactylic hexameter, 238;

dactylic pentameter, 238; iambic

senarii, 178

Michel, Dorothea, 136

Micon, 257

middle couch (lectus medius), 224. See also

couches, dining

Milan, 60

mime, 134, 164

Minerva, 85–86

ministri, 84, 292n28

Minotaur, 87

Mistress over the Animals, 91

mobility, social, 4, 42; upward, 66, 152.

See also status, social

mockery, of elite culture, 173–74

model books, 134, 156, 242; lack of, 245,

273. See also pattern-books

models, for creating Roman art: Greek,

139; Hellenistic, 134; from high art, 161;

iconographical, 116; late-Hellenistic,

114; unavailable to artist, 156

models, for interpretation of non-elite

art: “freedman,” 7, 273–74; “great” and

“popular,” 2; “patrician” and “plebeian,”

2–3, 136–37, 273; social-historical, 1–2;

“trickle-down,” 2, 15, 272–73

Moeller, Walter, 157

monkeys, 124

Monument of Storax, 147

monumentum (tall marker), 203

moon goddess (Luna), 89

Moormann, Eric, 254

moral lessons, for children, 254, 259

mosaics: copies of famous paintings,

247; fountains, 79; monument, near

S. Sabina, Rome, 217. See also subjects,

of mosaics

motifs

—animals: antelopes, 101; asses, 101;

birds, 114 (with water plants), 198

(drinking from basin), 206 (pecking

branch; long-beaked), 235, 266 (wings

of ); bull skull (bucranium), 22; butter-

fly wings, 98, 266; camel, 60; croco-

dile, 208; deer, 207; ducks, 124, 208

(flapping wings); eagle with serpent,

189; elephant, 106; fowl, 124; geese,

124, 198; hare, 124–25; hippopotamus,

212; lions, 90; lizard, 206; monkeys,

124; owl, 115; pack-mules leading bull,

78, 80; panther, 189, 199 (hunting

deer); peacock, 198; pheasant, 198;

rabbits, 124; stylized, 98; wild boar,

trussed, 198

—architecture: aedicula (-ae), 136, 139,

182, 201, 218; altars, small, 189; booths,

for selling food, 157; canopy, wooden,

252; columns, miniature, 228; doors,

wooden, 190; equestrian statues, on

bases, 97; fountain, 113, 198; grain

mills, 101; herms, twin, 198; pediment,

triangular, supported by Ionic columns,

201; pilasters, 99, 228 (ribbon-thin);

porticus, 148; scaenae frons, 136, 141;

tympanum, 139, 153

—clothing and jewelry: bibs, 91; boots,

108; bracelet, 115; cape, 260; capite

velato, 78, 82; chiton, 106, 164; crowns,

82 (laurel), 91 (vegetal), 235 (ban-

queter), 250 (banqueter); cuirasses,

108; diadem, 114 (radiate), 206 (with

lotus flower); Dionysian fur tunic

(nebris), 105; dress, 151 (V-necked),

217 (diaphanous), 230 (transparent),

232 (transparent); earrings, hoop, 228;

exomis, 86, 151, 216; fillet, 89; gown,

232; greave (ocrea), 154; hairnet, 115;

helmet, 88 (winged), 107 (winged),

154 (high-crested); himation, 89, 91;

hooded garment (cucullus), 109;

kilts, 75, 86, 108, 218; lion skin, 248;

372 • I N D E X

loincloth, 216–17; mantle, 106, 109

(hooded), 114, 164, 206 (fringed),

215, 242, 263; necklace, 115; overskirt,

232; parcels of, 109; raincoats, 108;

red stripes (clavi), 91; robes, 107, 165;

shoes, 86 (winged), 107 (winged), 109

(felt), 127 (high-topped), 164 (ankle-

high); stola, 78, 120, 164; toga, 133

(with broad purple stripe), 252 (gold-

embroidered); traveling hat (petasus),

254; tunics, 78 (short-sleeved), 86, 89,

91–92, 105, 109 (linen), 115, 118, 127

(long-sleeved), 148 (cinched), 151 ( long-

sleeved), 153 (cinched), 163 (red), 164,

166, 199, 206, 215 ( long-sleeved), 216

(long transparent; wide-sleeved), 231

(long), 233, 242 (thin purple stripes),

248, 263; turban, 208; veil, 250

—containers: amphora, 101, 114, 171, 231;

basket, 260; conical vessel, tall, 101;

crater, 101, 191; cylinder, filled with

scrolls, 190; drinking horn (rhyton),

75, 193, 228, 230, 247; drinking vessels,

231, 244; glass vessels, 109; gold bowl,

101; jars, for perfume, 186; metal cups,

101; modius (grain bushel-measure),

125, 128; pail (situla), 75, 115; patera,

83, 90–91, 106; psykter, 325n20; vase

suspended from three chains, 92;

vertical baskets, 124; vessel with two

handles, 101; wine amphoras, 170, 217;

wine cup (kantharos), 228; wineglass,

165; wine jug, 165; wineskin, 248

—divinities (including mythological per-

sonages and personifications): Adonis,

117; agathodaemones (serpents repre-

senting good spirits), 75; Amor and

Psyche, 266–67; Apollo, 26, 91, 114;

Cupid/Eros, 89, 106, 139; cupids

(amores), 98–101, 105, 117–18, 224;

Cybele, 89, 91; Danae, 141; Dionysian

flying figure, 170; Dionysus, 91–93,

114; Fates (Parcae), 213; flying figures,

98, 170, 228, 266; Fortuna, 86, 106,

109, 175; Genius, 76, 79, 81, 106,

108, 112; Genius of Augustus, 81,

84; Hercules, 144; Isis, 206; Jupiter,

87–88, 141, 177, 266; Lares, 75–76,

81, 253, 328n9; Leda, 141; Luna, 89;

maenad, flying, 189; Medea, 141;

Mercury, 85, 88, 106, 109, 112, 254;

Minerva, 85–86; Minotaur, 87; Nar-

cissus, 257; Oceanus, 165–66, 170,

210–11; Pan, ithyphallic, 101; Pasiphae,

87, 144; Perdix, 87; Pero and Micon,

257, 328n27; Persephone, 201; plane-

tary gods, 88; Priapus, 161, 231, 313n65;

Psyche, 266–67, 322n99; psyches, 98–

101, 105, 117–18, 224; river gods, 60,

79, 114; Roma, 60; Sol, 89; Theseus,

117, 136, 141; Venus, 91, 105, 109, 114,

266; Venus Pompeiana, 92–93, 106;

Victory, 60

—flora: branch, 91; crowns, 106, 230 (of

flowers), 231 (of grape leaves); garlands,

186, 228; leaves and red flowers, 206;

lotuses, 211; palm branch, 106; palm

tree, 212; pomegranate, 206; pome-

granate tree, 201

—furniture and furnishings: armarium

(large cabinet), 121; bench, 101; bier

( ferculum), 86–87, 89, 91; bisellium

(double-width seat), 133, 148, 184,

191; bolster, 231; cabinet, 216; canopy,

cloth, 230; chair, folding (sella curulis),

196–97; chairs, ivory, 252; cista, 91;

couches, portable, 191; counter, sales,

101, 123; cube, 198; double doors,

folding, 190; food bench, 198; ladle

(simpulum), 105; pitchers, 141; platform

(suggestus), 196–97, 260; platform

(tribunal), 148; stool, 107, 165, 172,

191 (low), 215; sundial, 186; table, 107

(low), 109, 190 (three-legged), 191

(laden with silver), 216 (low); tray, 109,

141; writing cases, 121; writing tablet,

111, 148–50, 190, 261

—human beings: athletes, 141 (nude),

I N D E X • 373

143 (exercising); black bath servant

(Aethiops), 242; camillus (-i), 78, 151;

dancer, nude, 244; girl servant holding

casket, 243; gladiators, 144, 147; horn

players (cornicines), 60, 151; man, 86

(planing board), 115 (brushing tunic),

116 (brushing cloth; carrying viminea

cavea), 150 (writing), 232 (asleep on

dining couch); men wearing togas

(togati), 97, 148–49; offering figures,

139; pet slave, 186; philosophers, 139,

143 (bearded); poet or writer, 139; poets,

beardless, in Greek dress, 143; priest,

91; referee, 154; rioters, 154, 157; Pygmy,

193 (sailor; tibicen), 208 (riding duck);

woman, 204 (in front of altar), 232

(tipsy); workers, 115

—musical instruments: castanets (crotala),

217; crossed sticks, 195, 197, 214, 218,

220; cymbals, 92; footclapper (scabel-

lum), 217; forked sticks, 219; panpipes

(syrinx), 92, 204; tambourine, 141, 216,

218

—objects and attributes: caduceus, 85, 88,

107, 285; candelabras, 98; canes, walk-

ing, 86, 91; coins, 190; cornucopia,

79, 86 (golden, above blue globe), 106;

crescent moon, 88; curved rod (lituus),

151; dice-cup ( fritillus), 167; fasces, 83,

150, 197, 252; foodstuffs, 78; globe,

106; green twig, 91; golden branch,

90; kantharos, 231; loaves of bread,

260; masks, 114, 204, 253; mirror, 89,

106; money sack, 190; mural crown,

90, 106; net of prophecy, 91; oil lamp

or flask, 91; omphalos, 86; scepters,

twin, 190; staff, thin, 105, 171; wand,

85, 107, 254; wax tablet, 190; wine ladle

(simpulum), 217. See also motifs, furni-

ture and furnishings

—tools: anvil, 101, 121; bellows, 121; boiler,

108; cauldron, 101; cloth-press, 116;

counting device (calculus), 127; distaff,

216; drying poles, 116; forge, with head

motifs (continued)

of Vulcan, 101; garden knives, 121;

hammer, 121; leveling stick (rutellum),

125; parallel combs, 107; pincers, 121;

quill, 190; straight-bladed knives, 121;

straight knives, 121; stylus, 121, 148,

261; tall combs, 107; wicker frame

(viminea cavea), 112; wool-combs, 107,

112, 116

—vehicles: boat, 208 (with square stern,

curved prow), 211 (with prow of head of

ass; with prow of head of ibis); chariot,

101 (pulled by goats), 106 (red, in form

of ship’s prow)

—weapons: club with spherical end, 211;

oblong shield (scutum), 154; square

bow, 211

Mulvia Prisca, 189, 194

mummy, 263

Munatius Faustus, Gaius, 184

municipium, 145

munus (-era) gladiatorium (gladiatorial

games), 144–45, 201

Murranus, 145

musical instruments, as motifs. See

motifs, musical instruments

myrmillo (gladiatorial fighting class), 147.

See also gladiators

Myrtalis, 162–64, 168

mythology, figures of, as motifs. See

motifs, divinities

Naevius, 133

Naevoleia Tyche, 184–85, 201

napkin (mappa), 238

Narcissus, 257

narrative, 59, 66, 179

Naples, National Archaeological Museum,

85, 112, 152, 162, 231, 259, 266

nationalism, 16

natron, used in fulling process, 112

necropolises: Herculaneum Road,

Pompeii, 184–85; Isola Sacra, near

Ostia, 123, 210; Laurentine Road, Ostia,

374 • I N D E X

207; Nuceria Gate, Pompeii, 183–85;

Ostia Road, Ostia, 182; Rome, 182;

Vesuvius Gate, Pompeii, 187–89

neo-Pythagorean philosophy, 320n72

neo-Republicanism, of Flavian emperors,

259

Nero (emperor), 134, 136, 139, 141, 157;

gladiatorial school at Capua, 145

net of prophecy, 91

Neudecker, Richard, 174–75

Nilotic imagery: repertory, 195, 209; in

tombs, 194

noncitizens, in Roman army, 37, 269

non-elites, Roman, 64; acculturation, 269;

representation of, on imperial monu-

ments, 67, 72; sexual regulation, lack

of, 164; tombs of, 184; as viewers, 130,

267; women, 93. See also foreigners;

freedmen

Nuceria, 152, 157

Nucerians, 157–58

nuclear family, 221

nudatio mimarum, 134

nude dancing, 134

nude mime, 134, 168

Oceanus (deity), 165–66, 170, 210–11;

as apotropaion, 210

Oceanus (gladiator), 165

oecus, 100

office (statio), 125

omphalos, 86

onions, cultivation at Pompeii, 80

oracular divinities, 91

oratio, 63, 65

orchestra, 131

orders, social, 4, 157; distinguished by cloth-

ing, 133, 144; distinguished by seating,

131, 157; distinguished in tomb, 147

ordinary persons, Roman, 63, 67, 118; as

audience, 161; as patrons, 270; viewers,

non-elite, 130, 267. See also non-elites,

Roman

ordo (-ines). See orders, social

Oscan, language, 134, 247, 250

Oscan Pompeii, 250

Ostia, 73, 118, 123–25, 129, 160, 203, 215,

267

Ostia, buildings and sites in: Barracks of

the Firemen, 175, 300n93; Baths of the

Seven Sages, 176; Caupona of the Seven

Sages, 170, 174–79, 237–39, 271; Colum-

barium of Apella, 206; Forum of the

Corporations, 125, 128; Hall and Temple

of the Grain Measurers, 125–29; Necrop-

olis on the Laurentine Road, 207;

Necropolis of the Ostia Road, 182;

Street of the Lime Kiln, 176; Tomb of

Apella, 203, 209

Ostia Antica, Museum, 207

outdoor banquet installations, 226

outdoor biclinium, 209

overindulgence, at convivium, 224

overload, of imagery, 219

Ovid, 87, 257

Pacuvius, 133

paganus, 184

pagan viewer, 67

paintings. See subjects, of paintings

painting techniques: encaustic, 263;

fresco, 263

Palazzo Altemps, Rome, 217

panegyric texts, 64

pantomime, 134, 141

Paquius Proculus, 262

paradeisos (-oi), 199, 206, 209, 213

parallels, visual, 178, 250. See also rhymes,

visual

Parentalia (religious festival), 182

Paribeni, Roberto, 217

parody, of elite sexual rules and roles, 167

Pasiphae, 87, 144

passive male homosexual. See cinaedus

paterfamilias, 75, 106, 156, 190–91, 197,

221

patron, 66, 72, 80, 93, 96, 105, 139, 155–

56, 159, 233, 239, 264, 268, 270; and

I N D E X • 375

conventional imagery, 219; definition

of, 7–8; and desire for showy monu-

ment, 215; instructing artist, 96, 195,

210, 245–46; nostalgia of, 134; and

unconventional imagery, 267; values

of, 118; wishes of, 273

patronus (-i), 95, 100, 120, 187; and clients,

relationship with, 95; of colony, 133

pattern-books, 227–28, 272. See also

model books

patterns, in peristyle decoration, 155

pediment, Monument of Storax, 147

penates, 75, 290n5, 328n9

pentimenti (changes of design), 163

Perdix, 87

peregrinus (-i). See foreigners

Pergamon, Turkey, 38, 250

peristyle, 113, 155–56, 158, 241, 247, 259

Pero and Micon, 257, 328n27

Persephone, 201

perspective, 86, 150, 156, 231, 261; aban-

doning rules of, 245; conventional,

distortions of, 152; foreshortening, 116;

imperfect, 273; “unfolded,” 151, 305n60

Pescara, Italy, 145

Pessinus, Turkey, 92

Peters, Willem J. Th., 254

Petraites, 186

Petronius, 185, 187; Satyricon, 161, 164;

Trimalchio, 161, 177, 185–87, 225

phallic woman, Roman construction of,

164

phallus, fake, 135

Phrygia, 8

Phrygian harmony, 92

pictores parietarii, 237

pictor imaginarius, 237

picture-galleries (pinacothecae), 205

pietas, 75, 82, 256

piety, filial, 257

Plato, 92

Plautus, 133; Curculio, 163

plebeian art, 3, 136, 273. See also models,

for interpretation of non-elite art

Pliny, 253

Plutarch, 175; Symposium of the Seven Sages,

174; Vitae Parallelae Cato Maior, 324n1

poetic meters: dactylic hexameter, 238;

dactylic pentameter, 238; iambic

senarii, 178

“popular art,” 161, 154, 272–73, 308n10.

See also models, for interpretation of

non-elite art

Polybius, 252

polyvalent imagery, 66

pomerium (city boundaries), 22, 32, 182,

315–16

pompa, 151–52, 293n38

Pompeii, 79–80, 93, 157, 160–61, 182,

247

Pompeii, buildings and sites in: Caupona

(IX, 7, 22), 175; Caupona of Salvius (VI,

14, 36), 161, 163–64, 167–68, 170, 174,

179, 271; Caupona on the Street of

Mercury (VI, 10, 1), 85, 134–36, 164,

168; Forum, 85, 89, 96–98, 112, 168,

180, 247; Fullonica (VI, 8, 20), 112–

18; Fullonica Stephani (I, 6, 7), 116,

297n41, 298n56; House (I, 2, 6),

261–67; House (I, 3, 25), 298n47;

House (VII, 3, 30), 259–61; House (IX,

1, 22), 232–33; House of the Ancient

Hunt (VII, 4, 48), 293n41; House of

the Baker (VII, 3, 30), 259–61; House

of the Bear (VII, 2, 45), 311n42; House

of Caecilius Iucundus (V, 1, 26), 99,

111; House of the Chaste Lovers (IX, 12,

6–7), 227–28, 231, 233, 237, 239–40,

242–43, 272–73; House of the Crypto-

porticus (I, 6, 2), 325n20; House of the

Dioscuri (VI, 9, 6/7), 157; House of

the Ephebe (I, 7, 11), 195, 208–9; House

of the Faun (VI, 12, 2), 247, 264; House

of the Figured Capitals (VII, 4, 57), 241,

247–52, 253, 272; House of Gavius

Rufus (VII, 2, 16), 109, 136; House

of Julius Polybius (IX, 13, 1–3), 245;

House of Ma. Castricius (VI, 16 [Ins.

376 • I N D E X

Occ.], 17), 316n30; House of Marcus

Lucretius Fronto (V, 4, a), 254–59, 272;

House of M. Epidius Sabinus (IX, 2, 22),

326n26; House of the Menander (I,

10, 4), 197, 253; House of the Moralist

(III, 4, 2–3), 233–39, 271; House of

M. Pupius Rufus (VI, 15, 5), 328n27;

House of Pinarius Cerialis (III, 4, b),

139–41; House of Riot in the Amphithe-

ater (I, 3, 23), 152–58; House of the

Sarno Lararium (I, 14, 7), 78–81, 114;

House of the Sculptor (VIII, 7, 24),

316n30; House of Sulpicius Rufus

(IX, 9, c), 290n8; House of Sutoria

Primigenia (I, 13, 2), 75–78; House

of “Terentius Neo” (VII, 2, 6), 261–67;

House of the Theatrical Pictures (I, 6,

11), 302n12; House of the Tragic Poet

(VI, 8, 5), 323n4; House of the Triclin-

ium (V, 2, 4), 239–45, 250, 272; House

of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1), 75, 87, 98–105,

141, 143, 224; House of the Wedding

of Hercules (VII, 9, 42), 292n35; Insula

Arriana Polliana (VI, 6), 234; Large

Theater (VIII, 7), 131, 152; Necropolis

of the Herculaneum Gate, 184–85;

Necropolis of the Nuceria Gate, 183–

85; Palaestra (II, 7), 152, 154, 156–57;

Palaestra (VIII, 2, 23), 141, 143; Praedia

of Julia Felix (II, 4), 96–98, 100, 201;

Sarno Baths (VIII, 2, 17–21), 317n36;

Shop of the Carpenters’ Procession

(VI, 7, 8–11), 85–87; Shop of the Pro-

cession of Cybele (IX, 7, 1), 87–94;

Shop of Verecundus (IX, 7, 5–7), 105–

12; Street of Abundance, 88, 98; Street

of Mercury, 112; Suburban Baths, 195;

Temple of Isis (VIII, 7, 28), 93; Temple

of Venus Pompeiana (VIII, 1, 3), 89,

106; Tomb of Umbricius Scaurus,

319n55; Tomb of Vestorius Priscus,

187–89, 206, 209, 212–13, 218, 260;

Vesuvius Gate, 187; Villa of Cicero,

302n11; Villa Imperiale, 105

Pompeii, buildings, by address

I, 2, 6 (House), 261–67

I, 3, 23 (House of Riot in the Amphi-

theater), 152–58

I, 3, 25 (House), 298n47

I, 6, 2 (House of the Cryptoporticus),

325n20

I, 6, 7 (Fullonica Stephani), 116,

297n41, 298n56

I, 6, 11 (House of the Theatrical

Pictures), 302n12

I, 7, 11 (House of the Ephebe), 195, 208–9

I, 10, 4 (House of the Menander), 197,

253

I, 13, 2 (House of Sutoria Primigenia),

75–78

I, 14, 7 (House of the Sarno Lararium),

78–81, 114

II, 4 (Praedia of Julia Felix), 96–98,

100, 201

II, 7 (Palaestra), 152, 154, 156–57

III, 4, 2–3 (House of the Moralist),

233–39, 271

III, 4, b (House of Pinarius Cerialis),

139–41

V, 1, 26 (House of Caecilius Iucundus),

99, 111

V, 2, 4 (House of the Triclinium),

239–45, 250, 272

V, 4, a (House of Marcus Lucretius

Fronto), 254–59, 272

VI, 6 (Insula Arriana Polliana), 234

VI, 7, 8–11 (Shop of the Carpenters’

Procession), 85–87

VI, 8, 5 (House of the Tragic Poet), 323n4

VI, 8, 20 (Fullonica), 112–18

VI, 9, 6/7 (House of the Dioscuri), 157

VI, 10, 1 (Caupona on the Street of

Mercury), 85, 134–36, 164, 168

VI, 12, 2 (House of the Faun), 247, 264

VI, 14, 36 (Caupona of Salvius), 161,

163–64, 167–68, 170, 174, 179, 271

VI, 15, 1 (House of the Vettii), 75, 87,

98–105, 141, 143, 224

I N D E X • 377

VI, 15, 5 (House of M. Pupius Rufus),

328n27

VI, 16 (Ins. Occ.), 17 (House of Ma.

Castricius), 316n30

VII, 2, 6 (House of “Terentius Neo”),

261–67

VII, 2, 16 (House of Gavius Rufus),

109, 136

VII, 2, 45 (House of the Bear), 311n42

VII, 3, 30 (House of the Baker), 259–61

VII, 4, 48 (House of the Ancient Hunt),

293n41

VII, 4, 57 (House of the Figured

Capitals), 241, 247–52, 253, 272

VII, 8 (Forum), 85, 89, 96–98, 112,

168, 180, 247

VII, 9, 42 (House of the Wedding

of Hercules), 292n35

VIII, 1, 3 (Temple of Venus Pompeiana),

89, 106

VIII, 2, 17–21 (Sarno Baths), 317n36

VIII, 2, 23 (Palaestra), 141, 143

VIII, 7 (Large Theater), 131, 152

VIII, 7, 24 (House of the Sculptor),

316n30

VIII, 7, 28 (Temple of Isis), 93

IX, 1, 22 (House), 232–33

IX, 2, 22 (House of M. Epidius

Sabinus), 326n26

IX, 7, 1 (Shop of the Procession of

Cybele), 87–94

IX, 7, 5–7 (Shop of Verecundus), 105–12

IX, 7, 22 (Caupona), 175

IX, 9, c (House of Sulpicius Rufus),

290n8

IX, 12, 6–7 (House of the Chaste

Lovers), 227–28, 231, 233, 237, 239–

40, 242–43, 272–73

IX, 13, 1–3 (House of Julius Polybius),

245

Pompeius Grosphus Gavianus, Cn., 152

pontifex maximus, 75, 82

Popidius Ampliatus, Numerius, 93

Popidius Celsinus, Numerius, 93

population, count: Ostia, 124, 210; Rome,

124, 282n22

population, social makeup: Ostia, 73, 176;

Rome, 28–29, 274

Po River, Italy, 118

portraits, 16, 184, 215, 245, 254, 261, 264;

of ancestors, 252; of children, 254, 272;

Egyptian, 263, 329n44; idealized, 263;

of patron, 243

portraiture, 272; elite, 252; imperial, 16,

267; non-elite, 245–46; non-ideal, 245

Portus, Italy, 129, 210, 301n97

potash, 112

Pozzuoli, Italy, 124

praetor, 252

praetorians, in Roman army, 36, 38

predella (-e), 99, 105

Presuhn, Emile, 162

Priapus, 161, 231, 313n65

pride in work: of proprietor, 111, 117; of

worker, 111, 120, 129, 270

priestesses: of Isis, 209; of Venus, 93, 315n16

priesthoods, 75

priests: of Augustus (flamen Augusti), 133;

of Cybele (Galli), 92

princeps, 17, 31, 36, 41, 56, 64, 66

privacy: ancient Roman concepts of, 69,

221; and defecation, 175–76; modern,

in bathroom, 178, 313n74

processions: of carpenters, 86; before

gladiatorial games (pompa), 147,

293n38; public, 69

propaganda, 28, 57, 256, 259

propitiation, of gods, 36, 109

proscriptions, 143

prostitutes, 134–35, 141, 160, 164, 228, 230

Psyche, 266–67; transvestite, 322n99

psyches, 98–101, 105, 117, 224

Ptah (Egyptian deitiy), 381n44

public vs. private. See privacy

public writing, 184

Pugnax, 145

puns, visual, 174, 179

Pygmy, 191, 218; antics of, 191, 193–94,

378 • I N D E X

199, 206, 210–11; apotropaic, 195,

318n44; as Other, 195, 215, 272

Pylades, 134

quactiliarii. See felt-makers

quaestor (public accountant), 148–49

quattuorviri, 150

Quinquatria, 86

quinquennial duumvir, 133

Quintilian, 161

Quintilius Crescens, L., 239

rank, of figures. See scale, hierarchies of

Ravenna, Italy, 118

reading: aloud, 237–38; in Caupona

of Seven Sages, 161; cyclical patterns

of, 241; vertical patterns of, 36, 49

realism, 65

reception theory, 139, 222

religion, 9, 73, 85, 219, 270; and afterlife,

181; Egyptian, 209; Greek, 92; house-

hold, 75–76; Isiac, 93; and Roman

state, 30, 42, 75, 81–82, 85, 89, 93–

94, 270; and women, 93; and worship,

pervasiveness of, 73–75. See also cults,

illegal; Cybele, cult of; Dionysus

representations, formulaic, 180

Republican virtues, 259

revetment, marble, 247

rhymes, visual, 191, 193, 245

Richardson, Lawrence, Jr., 157

Richlin, Amy, 161

riot, in amphitheater, Pompeii (a.d. 59),

307nn82,83

Riot in the Amphitheater, 152, 154–55,

158–59, 169, 259, 273

rituals, 3, 273; domestic, 73, 75; funerary,

191, 215; religious, 22, 25–26, 69, 81,

143, 156; salutatio, 191, 261

river god, 79; Sarno, 114; Tiber, 60

role reversals, 161

Roller, Matthew, 324n5

Roma, 60

romance novel, Greek, 163

Romanization, 37, 39–41, 52, 136, 253

Roman-ness (romanitas), 52, 131, 213

Rome: Arch of Constantine, 17, 54, 56,

58, 63–66, 288nn31,32,34,35; Arch of

Septimius Severus, 20, 56, 58–59, 65;

Arch of Titus, 58, 63; Atrium Libertatis,

39, 285n83; Basilica Aemilia, 64; Basil-

ica Julia, 64; Basilica of Maxentius and

Constantine, 58; Baths of Titus, 157;

Circus Maximus, 58; Colosseum, 58,

156; Colossus of Sol, 58; Columbarium

of the Villa Pamphili, 194; Column of

Antoninus Pius, 287n23; Column of

Marcus Aurelius, 17, 42–54, 63, 66–67,

286nn6,7, 287n10; Column of Trajan,

17, 31–41, 42–43, 45–47, 49–52, 66,

256, 287n11; Domus Aurea, 58, 136,

139, 141; Forum of Trajan, 28–34, 256,

282nn25–27; Meta Sudans, 157; Milvian

Bridge, 58; Temple of Divine Trajan,

282n26; Temple of Venus and Roma,

58; Temple of Victory, Palatine Hill,

92; Triumphal Way (via Triumphalis),

58; vicus Aesculeti, 81–85; vicus Statae

Matris, 84; Villa under the Farnesina,

203, 205, 320n67

Ruspi, Carlo, 194

salutatio, 191, 261. See also rituals

Samnite (secutor), gladiatorial fighting

class, 154–55

sarcophagus (-i), interment in, 215

scaenae frons: painted representations

of, 139, 303n31; in painting, 136;

populated, 136, 141

scale, hierarchies of, 45, 65, 86, 91, 116,

123, 165, 191, 199, 273

Schefold, Karl, 222

scholar-viewer, 12, 269

schools, gladiatorial, 145

sculptures. See subjects, of sculptures

secutor (Samnite, gladiatorial fighting

class), 154–55

self-representation: elite, 96, 111, 120, 177,

I N D E X • 379

245, 252–55, 267, 272; non-elite, 75,

219; non-elite, at home, 253; non-elite,

at work, 111

senate, Roman, 1, 30, 54, 66, 92, 141, 143,

152, 157

Seneca, Epistulae, 328n15

Sertorius, Lucius, 203

sestertius of Titus, 156–57

Seven Sages, 171–75, 311n50; and digestion,

312n59; representations of, 314n77

sex: positions of, 195; regulation of, 163;

roles in, construction of, 163–64; roles

in, threesomes, 322n91

sigma (C-shaped dining couch), 191, 193,

217, 322n95

sinus (curve of toga), 120

slaves, attaining freedom, 5, 38–39, 41, 95,

99, 105, 117, 125, 129, 212, 275, 279n16

socle, 99

Sol (sun god), 89

space: dynamic vs. static, 222; liminal, 143,

317n41; multi-use, 73

spectacle, 9, 130–59, 184, 252, 270–71;

as index of social practices, 158–59

spectaculum gladiatorium (gladiatorial

games), 144–45, 201

Spinazzola, Vittorio, 88, 234

spolia, on Arch of Constantine, Rome,

288nn31,34,35

Stabiae, Italy, 239

state religion, Roman, 30, 42, 75, 81–82,

85, 89, 93–94, 270

status, social: and admittance to Roman

house, 222–23; anxiety concerning,

191–93, 199, 204; definitions of, 4–5,

7–8, 13, 118, 125, 143, 160, 169–70,

247, 261, 264; and dining, 226–27;

freeborn, 120; freedman, 38, 41, 83,

105, 145–47, 158–59, 213, 215, 236;

freedwoman, 120, 184–85; of hetaira,

233–34; humble, 15, 63–64, 78, 181;

infamy and, 141, 167; non-elite, 17, 95,

185; and scale hierarchy, 64, 91, 270;

sevir, 159–60

Stele of Longidienus, Ravenna, 118–21, 181

stock scenes, 270

Storax, C. Lusius, 145–52, 270; and gladia-

torial games, 148; reliefs, in tomb of,

145–52, 158, 169; social standing of, 150

Strabo, 80

strata, social, 15, 63–64, 181. See also orders,

social

streets, of Roman tombs, 181–82. See also

cemeteries

style, archaic, 91

styles, of interior decoration, Roman: First

Style, 247; Third Style, 105, 228, 240,

254; Fourth Style, 105, 189, 235, 239,

254, 260, 266

subjects

—of mosaics: banquet and Isiac dancing,

217; mensores (grain measurers), 125–

29; Oceanus, 165–66, 170, 210–11;

Pygmies, antics on Nile, 210–15; Seven

Sages, 314n75 (seated), 314n77 (and

Socrates); Synaristosai (Menander),

302n11; Theophoroumene (Menander),

302n11; woman, portrait of, 263–64

—of paintings: Achilles on Skyros, 139;

actor preparing for stage, 302n11;

Adonis and Aphrodite, 117; Amor and

Psyche, 266–67; assignation, male-

female, 169; banquet, 325n20; bar-

maid, 165–66; bread dole, 259–61,

273, 329n34; carpenters, procession of,

85–89; children, portraits of, 254–57;

cloth, 101 (brushing; checking and

folding); cloth checker, 101, 115; cloth-

making, 107; cloth-press, 116; cloth-

treaders, 115; couples at symposium,

325n20; cupids, 100 (as flower sellers

and garland makers; playing darts), 101

(as fullers, goldsmiths, and perfume-

makers; treading cloth; and wine press);

Cybele, 105–6; Daedalus, murder of

Perdix, 87; Daedalus and Pasiphae, 87;

Danae, 141; defecators, 172, 174, 175,

177–78; dice-players, 169; Dionysiac

380 • I N D E X

procession (thiasus), 91, 101, 213;

Dionysus, leading thiasus, 101; drinking

contest, 228; drinking party, all-male,

243; Fates (Parcae), 213; felt-makers

(coactiliarii), 94, 107–9, 111; Fortuna,

86, 106, 109, 175; fullers, treading

cloth, 116; garden, enclosed, 198;

gardens, with fountains, 199; girl and

guardian, with magistrate, 97; gladia-

tors, 201; Iphigenia on Taurus, 141;

lion, devouring head of bull, 207, 209;

man and woman kissing, 163; men, 79

(in boat), 86 (operating saw), 97 (in

togas, reading scroll), 167 (squabbling),

191 (drinking wine); Minerva, offering

libation on altar, 86; Narcissus, 257;

Pero and Micon, 257, 328n27; planetary

gods, 88; Pygmies, 191 (playing on

Nile), 194 (battling crane; playing

instruments and dancing; as soldiers;

taunting crocodile; taunting hippopota-

mus), 206 (playing on Nile), 211 (in

river boat; taunting crocodile); Pygmy,

194 (with buckets on pole; defecating),

208 (riding duck), 211–12 (with buckets

on pole); Pygmy riverscape, 193; Riot

in the Amphitheater, 152, 154–55, 158–

59, 169, 259, 273; river boat, 193; Satyr

banquet, 325n20; schoolboy, being

spanked, 97; servant and customer,

169; sexual acrobatics, male-female,

169; snakes, approaching altar, 114; still

life with food, 198; “Terentius Neo” and

wife, 262, 264, 272, 329n40; Theseus

abandoning Ariadne, 117; Theseus Liber-

ator, 136, 141; Theseus Victorious over the

Minotaur, 117; “tight-rope act,” 136;

Venus Pompeiana, 92–93, 106; Vere-

cundus, Genius of, 109; Verecundus

and wife, 105–6, 109, 111, 117, 260,

270; wild animals, 199 (in rocky land-

scape), 206 (hunting); wine transport,

169; woman, selling cloth goods, 109;

woolcombers (pectinarii), 107, 111, 260

—of sculptures: ancestors (busts), 253;

Barberini Togatus, 252; Battle of the

Milvian Bridge, 60; deceased, with

pet dog, 186; Dionysus (herm), 91;

Fortunata, with dove, 186; grain-dole

ceremony, 184; Isiac dance, 217–18,

323n102; knifesmiths at anvil, 121;

Lares, 79; Longidienus, 118–21, 181;

Maenad-Satyr pairs, 248; munera

of Lusius Storax, 145–52, 158, 169;

Pero and Micon, 328n27; portrait (in

shuttered frame), 184; ram (incense

burner), 235; Satyr and Maenad,

drunken, 248; Seven Sages (herms),

314n77; seviri at banquet, 305n58; shoe-

and ropemakers, 216; woman selling

food, 123–25, 260

subsistence agriculture, 274

subversion, in imagery, 158–60

suite of rooms, in house, 241, 324n3

Sulla, 89, 131

sulphur, for bleaching wool, 112, 115

Sulpicia, 277

summa cavea, 133. See also theater build-

ings, Roman

summa honoraria, 148–49

sun god (Sol), 89

sun-terrace, 241

Susini, Giancarlo, 184

symmachiarius (-i), 38–39

symmetry: in architecture, 240; in figural

compositions, 2, 43, 49, 63–66, 83,

114, 155. See also composition

symposium, Greek, 223, 228, 239, 244–45

synecdoche: textual, 33; visual, 111, 151

table, dining (mensa), 224, 226

tablets, writing, 111, 148–50, 190, 261;

wax, from House of Caecilius Iucundus,

Pompeii, 111

tablinum, 100, 156, 190, 254, 259–60, 262

Tacitus, 157

Tamm, John, 325n20

Tanzer, Helen, 97

I N D E X • 381

tavern paintings, 134–36, 161–80

Teate Marrucinorum, Italy (Chieti),

145–47, 150

tempera, 263

tents, 108

Terence, 133

“Terentius Neo” and wife, 262, 264, 272,

329n40

Terentius Nicomedes, Aulus, 203

Tetrarchy, monument to, Rome, 59

texts: and digestion and elimination, 174–

76; and elite humor, 161; and images,

combined, 161, 169–70, 172, 174–76,

179, 271–72; panegyric, 64; reading of,

174

Thales of Miletus, 171–72, 175

Theater at Sabratha, Libya, 139

theater buildings, Roman, 73, 131–36

Theseus, 117, 136, 141

thiasus (Dionysiac procession), 91, 101, 213

Third Style, interior decoration, 105, 228,

240, 254

Thracian (thrax), gladiatorial fighting

class, 145–47, 154–55, 201

thyrsus (Dionysiac wand), 231

Tiber River, Rome, 124

tibia (double flutes), 91, 191, 228; Greek

(diauloi), 92; single, 216

tibicen (-ines) (double flute player), 78, 83,

91–92, 151, 191, 193–94, 217, 228, 230–

31, 233, 244

Tibullus, 277

Tiro. See Tullius Tiro, Marcus

Titus (emperor), 157

Todd, F. A., 165

toga, 120, 123, 153, 164, 260, 263; gold-

embroidered, 252; with purple stripes,

133, 252

tomb of C. Lusius Storax, 145

tombs: forms of, 182; inscriptions on,

183–84

tomb 16, at Isola Sacra, 210, 213

tools, as motifs. See motifs, tools

Torelli, Mario, 147, 149–50

Toynbee, Jocelyn, 124

Trajan (emperor), 16, 29–31, 34, 36, 41–

42, 46, 49, 296; burial in Column

of, 32–33, 36; and Dacians, 31–35, 40;

Forum, Basilica, and Column of,

28–41; and victories over Parthians,

256–57

Trajan’s harbor, Portus, 124, 129, 210

tribunal, 133, 150–51, 197

“trickle-down” models, 2, 15, 272–73.

See also models, for interpretation

of non-elite art

triclinium, 209, 224, 228, 230, 233, 240;

summer, 234–35, 237–39. See also

couches, dining

Trimalchio, 161, 185–87, 225. See also

Petronius

triumph, 23–24, 31, 34, 57–58, 66, 160,

252

triumphal arch, 9, 16, 24, 28–29, 31, 53,

60, 179–80, 256

triumphal paintings, 35

triumphal procession, 10, 32, 58, 60, 63,

147, 160

troops, auxiliary (auxilia), in Roman army,

38–39, 269

trophaeum (trophy), 283n38

Trophimas, Titus Flavius, 215–16

tufa, 247

Tullius Tiro, Marcus, 145–47

tympanum (-a), architectural form, 139,

153

tympanum (-a), musical instrument

(tambourine), 90, 92, 143, 216, 218

“unbecomingness” (atop’a), to dispel evil,

194–95, 209–10, 213

urine, used in fulling process, 112

Valerius Maximus, 135

vehicles, as motifs. See motifs, vehicles

velum (-a) (awning over amphitheater),

152

382 • I N D E X

Venus, 91, 105, 109, 114, 266; as protector

of sailors, 106; Venus Pompeiana,

92–93, 106

Verecundus, 105–6, 109, 111, 117, 260,

270; Genius of, 109; shop of, 113, 121;

wife of, 111

Vespasian (emperor), 58, 315n6

Vestals, 93

Vesuvius, 9, 80, 202, 224, 267

Vettius Conviva, A., 99

Vettius Restitutus, A., 99

via Appia, 217

vicomagister (-i), 81

victimarius (-i), 84

Victory (goddess), 60

vicus (-i) (city ward), 81

vicus Aesculeti, Rome, 81–85

vicus Statae Matris, Rome, 84

viewers: Christian, 67; citizen, 143; con-

temporary, 254; freedman, 17, 37–38,

83, 105, 123, 159–60, 163, 169–70, 176,

238; freedwoman, 125, 159, 233; non-

elite, 130, 267; omniscient scholar-

viewer, 12, 269; pagan, 67; slave, 12, 17,

37–39, 41, 52–53, 78, 80–-81, 105, 117,

123, 129, 131, 133, 159, 169–70, 191, 210

views: axial, 240, 252; framed, 240; inside,

looking out, 226; privileged, 264

villas, miniature, 235

viminea cavea, 112, 115–16

visual representation: and banquets, 237;

and death, 189, 203, 219; and Evil Eye,

195; in homes, 221–22; and humor,

161, 167, 169, 174, 180; imperial, 15–

17, 52, 45, 56, 82; and narrative, 34;

non-elite, 2, 7–10, 12, 72, 75, 83–84,

111, 116, 119–20, 128, 160, 269–74;

in Roman society, uses of, 1–2, 3, 52,

201, 278n10; and sexuality, 8; and

social status, 4–5, 7, 64–65, 130, 147,

158–59; and spectacle, 130, 133–34, 136,

143, 145; and texts, 10; and women, 93,

125, 184; and work, 96