Fig. 37.—The Macellum, restored.
In two small pictures in the black panels of the north entrance Cupids took the place of men. The Pompeians were very fond of the representation of Cupids as engaged in human occupations; it gave opportunity for the poetic treatment of everyday life, which was thus carried over into fairyland. So in one picture sprightly, winged little figures are celebrating the festival of Vesta, the tutelary divinity of millers and bakers, who on this day, just as appears in the painting, wreathed with garlands their mills and much belabored asses that once a year were thus admitted to a share in the festal celebrations of their masters; the reference to trade in bread and flour is obvious.
In the other picture the Cupids are plaiting and selling wreaths; in view of the extensive use of garlands at banquets and on gala days the inference is warranted that they, too, were sold in this market. In the market room for meat and fish there is another interesting picture representing the local divinities of Pompeii—personifications of the Sarno, of the coast, and of the country round about, suggesting that here the products of the sea, the river, and the land might be obtained.
Fig. 38.—Statue of Octavia, sister of Augustus, found in the chapel of the Macellum. She is represented in an attitude of worship, with a libation saucer in her right hand, and a box of incense in her left.
Besides the rooms thus far considered, which served a practical end, we find in the Macellum two other rooms which gave to the building a religious character and placed it under the special protection of the imperial house. One, at the middle of the east end (5), is a chapel consecrated to the worship of the emperors. The floor is raised above that of the rest of the building, and the entrance is reached by five steps leading up from the rear of the colonnade. On a pedestal against the rear wall, and in four niches at the sides, were statues, of which only the two in the niches at the right have been found; these represent Octavia, the sister of Augustus ([Fig. 38]), and Marcellus ([Fig. 39]), the hope of Augustus and of Rome, whose untimely death was lamented by Virgil in those touching verses in the sixth book of the Aeneid. An arm with a globe was also found, doubtless belonging to the statue of an emperor that stood on the pedestal at the rear. The chapel contains no altar; sacrifice was probably offered on a portable bronze coal pan in the form of a tripod. Several beautiful examples of these movable altars have been found, and there are numerous representations of them in reliefs and in wall paintings.
The Macellum in its present form was at the time of the eruption by no means an ancient building. While finished and no doubt in use at the time of the earthquake of 63, it had been built not many years before, in the reign of Claudius or of Nero, in the place of an older structure which dated from the pre-Roman period. The earlier Macellum, of which scanty but indubitable traces remain, could not have contained a chapel for the worship of the emperors; this was probably introduced into the plan of the structure at the time of the rebuilding. The most reasonable supposition is that the chapel was built in honor of Claudius, and that his statue with the globe as a symbol of world sovereignty stood on the pedestal at the rear, while in the niches at the left were his wife Agrippina and adopted son Nero.