Joanne Berry, The Complete Pompeii. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.
Pp. 256; ills. 318 (275 in color). ISBN 978-0-500-05150-4. $40.00.
Reviewed by Wakefield Foster, University of Missouri-Columbia
(wakefieldfoster@...)
Word count: 2358 words
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Joanne Berry has spent many years working at the archaeological sites
of Pompeii and Herculaneum (Unpeeling Pompeii: Studies in Region I of
Pompeii, edited by Joanne Berry [Milan: Electa, 1998]), and her
enthusiasm for the mystique and wonder of these ancient cities'
unexpected treasures is evident on every page of The Complete
Pompeii.[[1]] The strength of Berry's book is in its wide range of
information on the subject, concisely and thoughtfully arranged to
appeal to scholars and teachers -- classicists, archaeologists, and
historians -- as well as to students and the layman. Her choice of
illustrations deftly supports the text and elicits the reader's
continuing interest. The Complete Pompeii provides background
information about the "discovery" of Pompeii in the early eighteenth
century, though local inhabitants had always called the site, a
sixty-or-more acre field, Civita (which Berry renders as La Civita\).
Berry begins by summarizing what we already know of Pompeii and
outlines, often in close detail, what we are learning from ongoing work
of the lives and deaths of the city's inhabitants. Her purpose is
clearly to present in a single volume an up-to-date account of the
facts and controversies surrounding Pompeii in the early twenty-first
century. Regarding the often unintelligible and confusing mass of
archaeological remains of public and private buildings and public
spaces, Berry has a distinct talent for gleaning valuable insights
about the ancient Pompeians' daily lives. The author astutely
interweaves her information about the site with past and more recent
political and historical background circumstances. The saga of
Pompeii's excavations has always been inextricably tied to political
contexts from Charles VII of Palermo to Mussolini. Pompeii remains
arguably the most important civic monument in Italian culture and has
been exploited to this end for good and bad.
The Complete Pompeii begins with a chapter titled "Disaster in the
Shadow of Vesuvius", which describes how Pompeii (and Herculaneum) were
destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Berry reproduces in
full the two letters by Pliny the Younger who described to Tacitus what
he had seen from a distance -- the distinctive "umbrella pine" shape of
the cloud which has given modern vulcanologists the term "Plinian" for
this early phase of an eruption. The author includes other ancient
references to Vesuvius, including suspicions by some observers (Strabo,
Vitruvius, and Diodorus Siculus) that Vesuvius may have been an active
volcano in its past. This is interesting because it suggests that not
everyone at the time was surprised by what happened. Suetonius and Dio
Cassius describe an admirably organized relief effort overseen by the
emperor Titus, a disaster relief operation which apparently puts to
shame FEMA's efforts in New Orleans.
Chapter Two, "Rediscovering Pompeii's Buried Past", provides background
information about the first digs, or rather plundering, of the site,
which seems to have been discovered, at least in the modern era, in
1708. Berry points out, however, that extensive tunneling found beneath
the hardened ash, lapilli, and tufa may date to soon after the eruption
when the city's inhabitants returned in search of their possessions.
Sadly, as Berry writes, Pompeii suffered much irreparable destruction,
both to the site and to artifacts buried within it, when haphazard
digging, often by fortune hunters, uncovered, re-covered, shuffled, and
re-shuffled discarded piles of detritus, thus obliterating find-spots
of artifacts that were later returned. The first modern consideration
for the condition of the digs is found in a letter by Horace Walpole in
1740, in which he deplores "the lack of judicious direction over the
recovery of this reservoir of antiquities. . . . If only a man of
learning had the inspection of it and directed the working, and would
make a journal of it" (40.)
Chapter Three, "Birth and Growth of a Roman Town", examines the recent
upsurge in interest in Pompeii's history before the eruption of AD 79.
A number of strategically chosen stratigraphic excavations are being
carried out in different parts of the town in an effort to establish a
chronology of settlements by Oscans, Greeks, Etruscans, and Samnites
before Pompeii came under Roman control in 290 BC (64-66).
Interestingly, a Bronze Age settlement in the region of Campania near
the present site of Nola had been destroyed sometime in the fourth
millennium BC by an eruption of Vesuvius.
Berry's focus in Chapter Four ("The People of Pompeii") is aimed at the
inhabitants of Pompeii. She estimates the population at between eight
and twelve thousand people, consisting of the freeborn, freedmen, and
slaves. The city's racial diversity was apparently not as mixed as
expected for a port city. Romans predominated alongside much smaller
numbers of Oscans and Greeks. Berry asserts that some evidence may
point to the presence of a Jewish and/or Christian community in Pompeii
and Herculaneum, such as the names Mary and Martha inscribed on walls
and some few Semitic inscriptions on amphorae, which, of course, may
only indicate the presence of Jewish traders. She admits that the
paucity of evidence makes the suggestion of a Jewish community very
unlikely (201). Although many houses of the elite have separate slave
quarters, it has long been a question whether and how slaves were
buried. Berry points out interestingly that "there is evidence to
suggest that some slaves at least were buried in the family tombs of
their masters" (91).
A popular window into daily life in Pompeii has long been provided by
its variety of graffiti, ranging from the vulgar (Phoebus the perfumer
fucks the best) to the pragmatic (A brass pot disappeared from this
shop. If anyone brings it back, he'll be rewarded with 65 sesterces),
and including drawings and caricatures.[[2]] It remains unknown how
many people in the Roman empire could read and write, but the fact of
over 11,000 examples of the written word at Pompeii suggests that a
considerable number of Pompeians could, at the very least, read and
write at a rudimentary level. Berry interprets a wall painting from the
house of Julia Felix as a school scene; it depicts a row of boys
sitting (out of doors) in the Forum with wax tablets on their knees
while another boy receives a caning by the schoolmaster. The reviewer
is particularly grateful for Berry's inclusion, though necessarily
limited, of erotic scenes from the infamous "secret cabinet" in the
Naples Museum in the form of paintings, sculpture, and mosaics, as well
as a more extended section (112-119) discussing the roles of women in
Pompeian life.
Chapter Five ("Life in the Public Eye") deals with public life, the
dynamics of which can be studied in surprising detail at Pompeii.
Reputations and status were enhanced for individuals who won public
office. Particularly unique to Pompeii and found in great numbers are
"programmata" or posters painted in red or black on white background
supporting specific candidates for public office. Berry writes that,
based on their freshness at the time of excavation, we know the names
of leading candidates for the aedileship (junior magistracy) in AD 79.
Berry devotes several pages to descriptions and color plates of the
theaters of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Remarkably, a large arena-shaped
depression in Civita was repeatedly dismissed by mid-eighteenth-century
excavators as simply a low spot in the field, and it was not until much
later that archaeologists revealed it to be Pompeii's beautifully
preserved amphitheater. Pompeii boasted a covered theater, or Odeon,
the roof of which would have greatly enhanced acoustics, making it an
attractive and forgiving venue for reading poetry and rhetoric (124),
and an open-air theater was found next to it. A new fashion for
porticoed buildings in Augustan Italy may be evident, Berry suggests,
in the similarities between the porticoed Eumachia Building (excavated
in 1822 -- its function debated ever since) and the portico around
Pompeii's forum. The basilica with portico at Herculaneum is another,
though controversial, example.
Although we can study the structure and often the decoration and
contents of Pompeian houses, we remain far removed from being able to
reconstruct the composition of individual households, their domestic
organization, and the activities that took place within the houses
(154). Other recent scholarship makes less problematic the topic of
domestic organization.[[3]] In Chapter Six ("Houses and Society"),
besides houses and their inhabitants, Berry examines wall paintings,
mosaics, and garden layouts and offers sumptuous color photos of many
of the lesser known mosaics and wall paintings. Many of the finest
examples of mosaics are found in Pompeii and Herculaneum where they
have been described as "carpets," since emblems are often placed at
their centers. She provides a detailed and informative outline of the
four styles of Pompeian wall-painting from 150 BC to AD 79 (170-71). Of
course, Berry lavishes a much deserved attention on the House of the
Faun, which was certainly one of the wealthiest and most luxurious
houses in Pompeii: "Originally excavated in 1830-32, the House of the
Faun was stripped of its elaborate mosaics by the excavators, abandoned
to the elements, and finally damaged in the Allied bombing of 1943.
What can be seen today only hints at the grandeur of the 32,000 square
foot house, the largest in Pompeii" (163). Lastly, Berry devotes
several pages to the domestic gardens of Pompeian houses and to
descriptions and photographs of a sampling of the thousands of
household objects of unknown provenance stored at the Naples Museum.
In Chapter Seven ("Gods, Temples, and Cults") Berry examines what can
be reconstructed about public religious and cult practices in Pompeii.
Apparently, Venus held the most popularity in the town: "More
statuettes and wall-paintings [of Venus] have been found in the houses
and streets of Pompeii than any other deity" (195). Of course, these
may only be ornaments, since statuettes and wall-paintings of Dionysus
are also found at the site. After 80 BC, when Pompeii became an
official Roman colony, Roman temples or existing temples that had been
Romanized dominated, although other, local deities retained some of
their earlier importance along with certain approved "foreign" cults
such as that of Isis. However, excavations even in the early eighteenth
century were well documented, though the sites were usually looted of
objects of value such as wall-paintings. Early visitors often made
drawings of the paintings and the original excavators kept
documentation so that in recent years there has been considerable
success in reconstructing the original find-spots of looted material,
and we have a good idea of what the temple looked like in AD 79 (205).
The oldest temple is the Augustan Temple of Fortuna Augusta. From the
Augustan period onward, public religion included gods directly
associated with the emperors, both dead and alive (192). Berry
describes these as "civic" or "state" cults that had little to do with
personal religious practice and more to do with allegiance to Rome.
Archaeological evidence dates two temples to the 6th century BC, the
Doric Temple, and the Temple of Apollo. She reports that there may also
be compelling evidence for a temple to Mephitis, the Samnite goddess of
love (188). A fourth temple predating the Roman period and established
by Samnite magistrates in the 3rd century BC is the Temple of Bacchus,
outside Pompeii at Sant' Abbondio. Of course, every Pompeian family had
in its home a special shrine -- the lararium -- honoring its own
protective deities -- the Lares.
Chapter Eight is titled "Economic Life in a Roman Town". The so-called
"Via dell'Abbondanza" is the longest and was apparently the busiest
street in Pompeii. Lined with shops of every kind, it stretched from
the Forum to the Sarno Gate and the Amphitheater (210). Because of the
region's volcanic soil, the fertility of Pompeii's land was renowned in
antiquity. Wine was the town's principal product, but fruit and nut
trees and vegetables were cultivated also. Berry includes a
comprehensive list of occupations attested at Pompeii in inscriptions,
graffiti, and wax tablets (221).
Fittingly, the book ends with "The Last Years of Pompeii". The quality
of life in Pompeii's last years was severely impaired by a devastating
earthquake in AD 63 or 62 (the issue is still debated) that lasted for
several days and was clearly a premonitory sign of the eruption of 79.
Berry summarizes thus: "The 16 years from this earthquake in AD 63 to
the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 were marked by disruption as the
inhabitants of the town attempted to rebuild their lives, and endured
further seismic activity" (234). Although many inhabitants, both rich
and poor, undoubtedly left the city in disgust after the 63/62
earthquakes, the majority clearly remained to face the final
catastrophe in AD 79. We have two ancient reports of the seriousness of
the earthquake, one by the historian Tacitus and the other, in much
greater detail, by Seneca, the philosopher and tutor to the young Nero.
In fact, Berry notes, Seneca's description of the town's destruction
has been fundamental to the modern discussion of living conditions in
the last years of Pompeii's life (236).
Berry is to be commended for producing a book that concisely gathers in
a single volume a wide variety of enlightening aspects of the famous
city destroyed and yet preserved in many ways that shed light on
first-century Roman life. The physical quality of the book is exquisite
-- satin gloss pages generously interspersed with color photographs
ranging from aerial shots to rarely shown artifacts (for example,
preserved organic material such as boiled eggs, which I have never seen
in my several visits to the Pompeii collection in the Naples museum). I
recommend the book to all audiences and especially to university or
secondary school Latin teachers, who will find it most valuable when
introducing their students to the Younger Pliny's famous letters to the
historian Tacitus, describing the events that led to his uncle's death
on the beach at Stabiae. More than anything, however, the book is a
comprehensive survey of what is arguably the most famous archaeological
site in the world.
Printer's errors:
p. 40: ". . . exciting finds made been made in . . ." should read ". .
. exciting finds had been made in . . ."
p. 219: ". . . such asa chisel" should read ". . . such as a chisel."
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Notes:
1. A spate of new books on Pompeii has come out recently (e.g.,
Dobbins and Foss, above; Alex Butterworth, Pompeii: The Living City
[New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006] and Allison Cooley, Pompeii
[London: Duckworth, 2003]), among which Berry's The Complete Pompeii
easily holds it own because of its broad scope and appealing admixture
of constituent text and illustrations.
2. There are a number of rather humorous graffiti that Berry didn't
include which might have added pleasantly to her list, such as "miximus
in lecto; fateor, peccavimus, hospes. Si dicis quare, nulla matella
fuit," ("I confess, innkeeper, that I did bad. I pissed in your bed. If
you want to know why, it's because there wasn't any pot!") [Walter H.
Marks, Claimed By Vesuvius (Wellesley Hill, MA: The Independent School
Press, 1975), 27].
3. For example, see J.-A. Dickmann, "Residences in Herculaneum." In
The World of Pompeii, John J. Dobbins and Pedar W. Foss, eds (London:
Routledge, July 2007); Stephan T.A.M. Mols, Eric M. Moormann, Omni pede
stare. Saggi architettonici e circumvesuviani in memoriam Jos de Waele.
Studi della Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei 9 (Naples: Electa
Napoli and Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita\ Culturali, 2005); and
Penelope Mary Allison, The Archaeology of Household Activities (London:
Routledge, 1999).
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