Pompeii, Its Life and Art

by August Mau

We can hardly doubt that Claudius was worshipped in Pompeii during his lifetime; it is known from inscriptions that even before the death of Claudius Nero was honored with the services of a special priest. That Octavia and Marcellus, another mother with a son who was heir to the throne, should be placed opposite Agrippina and Nero, was quite natural. Claudius, who through his mother Antonia was the grandson of Octavia, had great pride in this relationship, through which alone he was connected with the family of Augustus; and from Octavia, Agrippina and Nero also were descended, the former as a daughter of Germanicus, Claudius's brother, and the latter through his father Gnaeus Domitius, who was a son of the older daughter of Octavia, also called Antonia. This thought was suggested by the grouping of Octavia and Marcellus with Agrippina and Nero: Octavia's descendants are now on the throne, as Augustus intended that they should be; and Nero is the pride and hope of the emperor and the Roman people, as once Marcellus was.

The room at the left of the imperial chapel, with a wide entrance divided by two columns (6), was also consecrated to the worship of the emperors. It contains a low altar (shown on the plan) of peculiar shape. A slab of black stone rests on two marble steps; it has a raised rim about the edge with a hole in one corner. Evidently this is an altar for drink offerings; in this room sacrificial meals were partaken of, at which the long estrade at the right, like a counter, nearly three feet high, was perhaps used as a serving table. Such meals had an important place among the functions of the Roman colleges of priests, and some priesthood connected with the worship of the emperors apparently had its place of meeting here; but whether this was the college of the Seviri Augustales, composed of freedmen, or a more aristocratic priesthood modelled after the Sodales Augustales at Rome, cannot be determined. The purpose of the niche in the corner, with the platform in front of it approached by steps, is unknown.

In this room, also, there were two pictures containing Cupids. In one they were represented as drinking wine and playing the lyre; in the other, as engaged in acts of worship—both appropriate decorative subjects for a room intended for sacrificial banquets.

The Macellum was entered from three sides. At the front, facing the Forum, was a portico consisting of two orders of white marble columns, one above the other, supporting a roof. Fragments of the Ionic or Corinthian columns belonging to the lower order, and of the well proportioned intermediate entablature, have been preserved. Statues stood at the foot of the columns, as also at the ends of the party walls between the shops at the rear of the portico, and beside the two columns of the little vestibule at the entrance; between the two doors was a small shrine, and here, too, was a statue.

The difference in direction between the front of the Macellum and the side of the Forum is concealed by increasing the depth of the shops from south to north, so that the depth of the portico remained the same. The room at the extreme right, being so shallow that it could not be used as a shop, was made into a shrine; the image or images set up in it must have been very small. What divinities were worshipped here, unless the Street Lares, cannot be conjectured.

Fig. 39.—Statue of Marcellus, son of Octavia, found in the chapel of the Macellum.

There is another entrance on the north side, and a third near the southeast corner. In the latter are steps, and at the left as you come in is a small niche under which two serpents were painted. This humble shrine was probably dedicated to the presiding divinity of the building, the Genius Macelli.

The colonnade of the Macellum was thrown down by the earthquake of 63. At the time of the eruption the stylobate on which the columns rested, and the gutter in front of it, had been renewed; but only the columns on the north side and a part of those on the west side had been set up again. Both the columns and the entablature have entirely disappeared, in consequence of excavations made in ancient times.