The World of Pompeii

Pedar Foss, John J. Dobbins, Pedar Foss, John J. Dobbins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134689743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

This all embracing survey of Pompeii provides the most comprehensive survey of the region available. With contributions by well-known experts in the field, this book studies not only Pompeii, but also – for the first time – the buried surrounding cities of Campania. The World of Pompeii includes the latest understanding of the region, based on the up-to-date findings of recent archaeological work.

Accompanied by a CD with the most detailed map of Pompeii so far, this book is instrumental in studying the city in the ancient world and is an excellent source book for students of this fascinating and tragic geographic region.

PART I

BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER ONE

CITY AND COUNTRY
An introduction

Pietro Giovanni Guzzo

In 310 BC, during the second Samnite war, the Romans and their naval allies carried out a raid against Nuceria. Livy (9.38.2–3) describes the territorial context as dominated by the fortified city of Pompeii, in which the families that cultivated the surrounding countryside took refuge.

But Strabo (5.4.8) tells us that both Pompeii and Herculaneum had a more ancient history: thanks also to archaeological finds, modern historical criticism considers Pompeii to have already been fortified by the end of the sixth century BC. Parallel evidence is lacking for Herculaneum; it will be better to suspend judgment, but to keep in mind that Strabo records a closely parallel development for the two cities.

For Pompeii’s archaic period, except for the walls and the votive offerings at the Temple of Apollo, the evidence is scarce and uncertain; and in the surrounding countryside only unrecorded finds at Boscoreale can be mentioned. Near Castellammare di Stabia, at Santa Maria delle Grazie, however, a necropolis with trench tombs is known. Its grave goods consist of local and Etruscan products (some inscribed) in use from the end of the seventh until the fifth century BC. To complete our picture of the archaic Stabian settlement we have a small rural nucleus at Gesini di Casola, consisting of burials from the middle of the sixth to the first half of the fifth century BC, and the toponym Petra Herculis (Pliny the Elder, HN 32.17) for the islet of Rovigliano, located probably at the landing place.

It is possible that Pompeii had gradually downgraded the archaic Stabian settlement’s role as a port. Pompeii’s predominance was facilitated by the control it could exercise on the mouth of the Sarno, located just south of the fortified hill of the city. On the right bank of the mouth of the Sarno is attested, at least from the fifth century BC, the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Bottaro (Figure 28.1, A).

The approximate chronological coincidence between the end of the Stabian necropolis and the establishment of the cult at Bottaro seems significant.

The trade on the Nola plateau used the river Sarno. The Samnites were establishing themselves in this area during the fifth century BC, replacing the Aurunci, who occupied it earlier. The Italic toponyms of both Nuceria and Nola contain the root Nou-, which indicates a “new” settlement.

By the end of the fourth century BC, the city of Pompeii had elaborated a new urban layout that gradually filled up with buildings over its entire fortified area (c. 66 ha, or 165 acres). If we look at the main urban road axes (Maps 1–2), we can extend our examination to the surrounding countryside as well. The principal axis is the north–south road that links Porta Vesuvio and Porta di Stabia; east of it two streets head toward the towns of Nola and Sarno. The southern necropolis outside Porta Nocera follows the orientation of the road to Nuceria, which, on the way, crossed the ancient course of the river Sarno at Scafati. From Porta Ercolano, another very important road, to judge from the antiquity of its route, entered the city. It is, in fact, the only road that interrupted the regularity of the urban design by insulae, dividing insula 3 of Regio VI in two.

From this layout we can infer that Pompeii was linked, from Porta Ercolano, to a coast road that passed the area later known as Oplontis (present-day Torre Annunziata), on its way to the coast, where it turned toward Neapolis and Cumae, via Herculaneum.

From the archaic period, inside the fortified city, this coast road intersected with the north–south road that linked the southern slopes of Vesuvius with Stabiae. Furthermore, it was possible to travel up the valley of the Sarno from Pompeii along a number of river and land corridors. These routes intersected at the port at the mouth of the Sarno: it is therefore possible to infer that Pompeii developed profitably.

It is, in fact, Pompeii’s role as distribution point of the agricultural products of the district, whence they were sent on to external markets, that suggests that the countryside was farmed intensively—just as Livy describes it. But the archaeological evidence is practically nonexistent. To this phase can be ascribed a few tombs at Pozzano di Castellammare and a sanctuary in the same township, at Privati, with architectural terracottas made from moulds used in the decoration of the “Doric temple” of the Triangular Forum in Pompeii (Figure 6.2).

It has been observed that the northern suburban villas of Pompeii show the same orientation as the roads that articulate Regio VI, one of the earliest of post-archaic Pompeii (Figure 28.2).¹ It has therefore been proposed that the countryside north of the city had been “centuriated” in continuation of the axes of the city streets, since there was originally a gate, later closed, also at the northern extremity of the Via di Mercurio (Figure 11.3). The farms and the suburban villas would have been built on this grid; some of these constituted the nucleus of the villas, oriented differently, whose Second-Style decoration tells us they were enlarged after the establishment of the Sullan colony (80 BC).

Between the third and second centuries BC, the Samnite magistrates administrated the roads that ran south from Pompeii. There is epigraphic evidence for a “Stabian bridge,” which facilitated transit perhaps not only into town but also between the suburban sanctuaries of fondo Iozzino and S. Abbondio (dedicated to Bacchus), on opposite banks of the river Sarno (Figure 28.1, B–C). The location of the saltpans, documented by Oscan and Latin inscriptions, is uncertain.

The replacement of the previous owners by the Roman colonists brought a period of internal turbulence, but the volcanic deposits from the eruption of AD 79 make it impossible to identify fully the successive centuriations of the ager. The toponym pagus (Augustus) Felix suburbanus (CIL X, 814, 853–7, 924, 1027, 1028, 1030, 1042, 1074c), of uncertain location, suggests that the corresponding nucleus served as a base for the Sullan colonists. The electoral programmata and other inscriptions mention other pagi in the territory, which have not yet been identified. It is certain that the agricultural exploitation of the Pompeian, Nucerian and Stabian countryside continued over time until the fatal interruption.

Figure 1.1 View of the dolia in courtyard (I) of the Villa Regina at Boscoreale (cf. Figure 28.4). Photo: Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei.

The number of the agricultural settlements is gradually increasing thanks to continuing excavations (Figure 28.1). As D’Arms² has already pointed out, we do not in any case know the respective size or the relationship between buildings and fields; for Villa Regina, an area between three and eight iugera of vineyards has been calculated on the basis of the capacity of the dolia (Figures 1.1, 28.4, 28.5). Most of the buildings have rustic rooms, few with frescoed decorations, a sign that the presence of the owner was probably occasional. Sometimes the decoration is quite costly, as in the “tablinum” of the farm at Carmiano 1963, with a Third-Style Bacchic scene; or at Terzigno (Boccia al Mauro), with Second-Style megalographic paintings (1997 excavations). There are plenty of simple decorations that allude to the tutelary gods of the harvest, as in the farm of Villa Regina at Boscoreale; and signs of Egyptian cults, as in the Villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase (Figure 28.1, no. 31).

The principal crop was the vine; wine was traded in the western Mediterranean. Manpower was provided by slaves, as iron shackles attest, but it is possible that free peasants still survived.

In addition to the farms, the territory was occupied by luxurious villas of otium: this typology expands from Cumae and Baiae southward along the coast of the Bay from some time in the first century BC, after the establishment of the Sullan colony. Villas of the kind can be suburban, as that attributed, without foundation, to the Pisones at Herculaneum, with its bronze and marble sculptures, in addition to some 1,800 papyrus scrolls mostly written upon in Greek. Farther from the city are the so-called villa of the Poppaei, at Oplontis (Figures 1.2, 31.5), and that of San Marco at Stabiae, more recent than the destruction of that city by Sulla. Less well preserved, but of equal importance, is the villa at contrada Sora, Torre del Greco, from which come the relief with Orpheus and Eurydice, a replica of Praxiteles’ Satyr Pouring, and a bronze of Hercules and the stag (the latter two in the Palermo museum).

Figure 1.2 Detail of a Second-Style wall painting from the west wall of atrium (5) in the villa at Oplontis (modern Torre Annu...