One of the results of scientific excavation at Pompeii was to reveal at last the town plan ([Fig. 8.2]), after decades spent in sporadic digging for treasure trove, in cutting paintings out of walls, filling in the excavated houses, and moving on without system to a new area. The plan as now revealed ([Fig. 8.3]) shows the least regular streets in the southwest quadrant of the town around the Forum; this, therefore, should be the oldest part; and in fact architectural terracottas found here, in the so-called Foro triangolare, are dated in the sixth century B.C. Elsewhere the pattern of a rectangular grid is clear, making possible the division of the city for purposes of archaeological reference into nine regions. Each region is subdivided into numbered blocks, or insulae; each insula into numbered houses. The whole 160 acres, big enough for a population of from fifteen to twenty thousand, is surrounded by a wall, in which archaeologists, on the basis of building materials and techniques, have detected four phases. The earliest, with a facing of squared limestone, dates from the fifth century B.C.; the latest, marked by the addition of high towers, from the time of Sulla, who settled some of his veterans here in a colony grandiosely named the Colonia Veneria Cornelia Pompeianorum. Masons’ marks from the third phase (280–180 B.C.) are in Oscan letters, the alphabet of ancient Italy’s major language, next after Latin and Greek. Inscriptions (street signs for example) show that Oscan persisted as Pompeii’s third language, along with Latin and Greek (for the area around Naples had originally been settled by Greeks, and they kept their culture), down almost to the time of the eruption. The wall shows the marks of the stone catapult-balls of the Sullan siege; some of the balls were found preserved as souvenirs in houses. After the Sullan phase the wall was allowed to fall into disrepair, mute evidence of the security of the Augustan peace.
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Whatever curtailment of liberty seemed a price worth paying for security in Rome, Pompeii at least enjoyed an active political life. The evidence is a vast series of election “posters,” painted in red and black on house and shop walls. In these, individuals and groups (for example, the fullers or laundrymen, the fruit-vendors, the fishermen, dyers, bakers, goldsmiths, muleteers, and a private club of gay blades who call themselves the seribibi, late drinkers) urge their fellow-citizens to vote for candidates for aedile, the highest municipal office. For one block of supporters the candidate’s gratitude must have been extremely limited: the notice read: “The sneak-thieves support Vatia for the aedileship.” The bases for the invitations to vote for a candidate like “Vote for X: he won’t squander public funds,” will have a strong appeal for the modern reader.
There was no interference with due process, to judge by the basilica in the Forum, where Pompeii’s legal business was transacted: it is Pompeii’s largest and most important public building. Tiles found in it stamped in Oscan come from a level which shows that the building dates at least from 120 B.C. Across the Forum from the basilica is the comitium, for town meetings and elections: at the south end of the Forum are three buildings, identified as the meeting-place of the town council, with municipal offices on either side.
Pompeii was well-supplied, too, with public amenities. The streets were paved, and supplied at the main intersections with stepping stones, which did not interfere with the passage of high-axled wagons, though some stepping stones were removed in 1815 to allow the Queen of Naples’ coach to pass. (Nowadays visitors with a taste for ostentation can be carried through Pompeii in a sedan chair.) Lead water-pipes found everywhere show that all but the very humblest houses were supplied with running water. There were no less than three sets of public baths, of which the largest was under construction when the catastrophe came. The baths had radiant heating and elegant stuccoed vaults. There were separate sets of rooms for men and for women, and an enormous number of lamps found in one establishment shows that it was in use also in the evening hours.
That the intellectual as well as the physical needs of the population were catered to is deduced from the existence of two stone theaters, one open to the sky, with a capacity of 5,000; one roofed, a théatre intime, for about 800. Both antedate the earliest stone theater in Rome. But the Pompeians did not push the intellectual life to extremes. The portico behind the large theater was remodelled in Nero’s reign to make a barracks for gladiators, complete with armory and lock-up, where three of them were found asphyxiated in the stocks. The amphitheater has seats for 20,000. Legends scrawled on its walls, and on house-walls all over town, testify to the gladiators’ popularity with their fans: gladiatorial records are registered (twenty-four fights, twenty-four victories; the losers most often are murdered and forgotten), and one champion is recorded as SVSPIRIVM PVELLARVM, the one the girls sigh for.
Fig. 8.4 Pompeii, House of the Moralist.
(Spinazzola, op. cit., 2, p. 728)
