When the volcano finally struck, the villa was undergoing extensive remodelling, having apparently not yet recovered from an earlier catastrophe for which there is other evidence, both archaeological and literary: an earthquake in A.D. 62. The master’s quarters were found empty of their contents, as though after the earthquake he had moved out altogether, and sold his elegant furniture at auction. A stamp reveals the name of the new owner: Lucius Istacidius Zosimus. Istacidius is a noble Samnite (Oscan) name; Zosimus is Creek. The inference is that the new owner was a freedman of the former master, who bought up the property and turned the entire establishment into a farmhouse. Evidence of the tasteless change from elegance to stark practicality was found everywhere: piles of mortar, columns and architraves taken down and stored, rooms closed off, an ugly new wall run straight across one of the most tasteful rooms in the master’s quarters (6), a heap of onions piled on a mosaic floor in an alcoved master bedroom, farm tools in the graceful southwest sunroom (9). The apsidal room (25) was apparently destined to become a shrine to the Emperor. In it the statue of Augustus’ consort, the Empress Livia, in painted marble with the head inserted in a second-hand torso (which was found [[Fig. 8.9]] propped against the peristyle wall) was apparently to be set up.
Fig. 8.8 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, reconstruction.
(A. Maiuri, op. cit., p. 56)
Fig. 8.9 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, Statue of Livia, as found.
(A. Maiuri, op. cit., p. 227)
On the rustic side of the villa, business was going on as usual. The winepress ([Fig. 8.10]) was ready for use in the coming vintage; rough wine was ready in large amphorae protected by woven straw like a modern fiascone of Chianti or Vesuvio. Farm tools (picks, hoe, shovel, hammer, pruning hooks) were found hanging in a room (32) beside the vestibule. The porter was on duty. He was found dead in his dark little room (35), on his finger a cheap iron ring set with an engraved carnelian, by his side the five bronze coins which may have been his life savings. He must have heard the dying screams of the adolescent girl whose skeleton was found in the vestibule nearby. Three women were crushed in the rustic quarters (55) when the roof fell in. The excavators found their disordered skeletons, their gold rings and bracelets, a necklace of gold and glass paste beads, and, lying nearby, ten silver coins. In the cryptoporticus were found the bodies of four men, with wine or water jugs by their side. They had hoped the sturdy vaults would hold, and they did, but the mephitic fumes proved deadly. (Altogether, it is calculated that Vesuvius claimed 2,000 victims in Pompeii.) The nine wretched cadavers in the Villa of the Mysteries were the last inhabitants of a mansion which in its day had been one of the most elegant in all Italy.
Though space does not permit a detailed account of the fascinating things Herculaneum has to tell us, the subject of suburban villas cannot be left without mentioning a famous one there, still not fully explored, where in 1752 were found, in a narrow room with cupboards, a vast number of what were at first taken for charred billets of wood. Later, traces of writing were found on them: they turned out to be papyri, a whole library of 1800 rolls. A machine invented to unroll them ruined more scrolls than it unwound, but finally, by 1806, ninety-six were deciphered. They proved to be works of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus, to whose patron Lucius Calpurnius Piso (father of Caesar’s wife Calpurnia) and his descendants the villa may have belonged. It had a gracious peristyle, gardens, fishponds, and a belvedere overlooking the sea at the end of a long graveled walk. In the garden was found a whole gallery of sculpture in bronze and marble, now included among the most famous pieces in the National Museum in Naples. Here a cultured Roman patrician could combine in the ideal Epicurean way the calm contemplation of the beauties of nature and of art with the philosophic study of the atomic structure of the universe.
