Women's Lives, Women's Voices: Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples 9781477323595

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WOMEN’S LIVES, WOMEN’S VOICES

WOMEN’S LIVES, WOMEN’S VOICES ROMAN MATERIAL CULTURE AND FEMALE AGENCY IN THE BAY OF NAPLES

Edited by Brenda Longfellow & Molly Swetnam-Burland

University of Texas Press   Austin

This book has been supported by an endowment dedicated to classics and the ancient world and funded by the Areté Foundation; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Dougherty Foundation; the James R. Dougherty, Jr. Foundation; the Rachael and Ben Vaughan Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2021 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2021 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Longfellow, Brenda, 1973- editor. | Swetnam-Burland, Molly, editor. Title: Women’s lives, women’s voices : Roman material culture and female agency in the Bay of Naples / edited by Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021007086 ISBN 978-1-4773-2358-8 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2359-5 (library ebook) ISBN 978-1-4773-2360-1 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women—Italy—Pompeii (Extinct city) | Women—Italy—Herculaneum (Extinct city) | Material culture—Italy—Pompeii (Extinct city) | Material culture—Italy—Herculaneum (Extinct city) | Material culture—Italy—Naples, Bay of. | Civilization, Classical. Classification: LCC DG70.P7 W725 2021 | DDC 305.40937/72568—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007086

doi:10.7560/323588

Contents

List of Illustrations  vii Introduction. Negotiating Silence, Finding Voices, and Articulating Agency  1 Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland



PART I. PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

Chapter 1. Pompeian Women and the Making of a Material History  11 Lauren Hackworth Petersen Chapter 2. Women’s Work? Investors, Money-Handlers, and Dealers  29 Molly Swetnam-Burland Chapter 3. From Household to Workshop: Women, Weaving, and the Peculium 51 Lauren Caldwell Chapter 4. Buying Power: The Public Priestesses of Pompeii 67 Barbara Kellum Chapter 5. Real Estate for Profit: Julia Felix’s Property and the Forum Frieze 85 Eve D’Ambra



PART II. WOMEN ON DISPLAY

Chapter 6. Contextualizing the Funerary and Honorific Portrait Statues of Women in Pompeii 109 Brenda Longfellow Chapter 7. Portraits and Patrons: The Women of the Villa of the Mysteries in Their Social Context 133 Elaine K. Gazda Chapter 8. “What’s in a Name?” Mapping Women’s Names from the Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum 151 Erika Zimmermann Damer Chapter 9. The Public and Private Lives of Pompeian Prostitutes 177 Sarah Levin-Richardson



PART III. REPRESENTING WOMEN

Chapter 10. Women, Art, Power, and Work in the House of the Chaste Lovers at Pompeii 199 Jennifer Trimble Chapter 11. The House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) at Pompeii: The House of a “Courtesan”? 217 Luciana Jacobelli Chapter 12. Sex on Display in Pompeii’s Tavern VII.7.18 229 Jessica Powers Chapter 13. Drawings of Women at Pompeii 247 Margaret L. Laird



Epilogue. The Complexity of Silence 275 Allison L. C. Emmerson Bibliography 283 List of Contributors 319 Illustration Credits 322 Index 326

Illustrations

FIGURES Figure 1.1. The mosaic from the ekklesiasterion from the Temple of Isis (VIII.7.28), Pompeii 12 Figure 1.2. Plan of the House of the Menander (I.10.4, 14–16), Pompeii  16 Figure 1.3. The elite male’s daily temporal use of space 16 Figure 1.4. Atrium of the House of the Menander (1.10.4, 14-16), Pompeii 18 Figure 1.5. Enactment of working over the cooktop at the House of the Prince of Naples (VI.15.7–8), Pompeii 20 Figure 1.6. Columella of Tyche, tomb 16, Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii 22 Figure 1.7. Necklace from the body of a woman at the House of Holconius Rufus (VIII.4.4), Pompeii 22 Figure 1.8. Curse tablets from the Tomb of the Epidii, Pompeii 23 Figure 2.1. Fresco from the façade of the Shop of Verecundus (IX.7.6–7), Pompeii 38 Figure 4.1. Plan of the Forum, Pompeii 66 Figure 4.2. Plan of Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1), Pompeii 68 Figure 4.3. Forum façade of Eumachia’s building (VII 9.1), Pompeii 69 Figure 4.4. Romulus with the spolia opima, mural from the façade of the house of fuller Ululutremulus (IX.13.5), Pompeii  72 Figure 4.5. Aeneas leading his father and son to safety, mural from the façade of the house of fuller Ululutremulus (IX.13.5), Pompeii 72 Figure 4.6. Concordia Augusta fountainhead outside the back entrance to Eumachia’s building (VII.9.67), on the Felix (II.4.3), Via dell’Abbondanza, Pompeii 75 Figure 4.7. The animal-inhabited acanthus currently at the entry of Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1), Pompeii 76 Figure 4.8. Sacrifice scene from the west side of the Augustan marble altar in Mamia’s Temple of the Genius of Augustus (or the Colony) (VII.9.2), Pompeii 77 Figure 4.9. Modern copies of the portrait statues of a public priestess and a heroized young man from the east side of the Macellum (VII 9.7), Pompeii 79 Figure 5.1. Plan of the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 86 Figure 5.2. Stepped entrance to the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 88 Figure 5.3. Atrium of the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 91

vii

Figure 5.4. Still-life painting in the domus of the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 94 Figure 5.5. Engraving of fragment 9 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 96 Figure 5.6. Engraving of fragment 15 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), Pompeii 100 Figure 6.1. Statue of an anonymous woman from the Herculaneum Gate necropolis, Pompeii  110 Figure 6.2. Detail of the anonymous woman from the Herculaneum Gate necropolis, Pompeii 112 Figure 6.3. Façade tomb 7 OS, aedicula tomb 9 OS, exedra tomb 11 OS, and aedicula tomb 13 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii 114 Figure 6.4. Flavia Agathea from tomb 7 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii 115 Figure 6.5. Vertia Philumina from tomb 13 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii 117 Figure 6.6. Anonymous woman from tomb 9 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii  118 Figure 6.7. Anonymous man and woman from tomb 9 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii 120 Figure 6.8. Statue of Eumachia from Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1), Pompeii 122 Figure 6.9. Detail of the statue of Eumachia from Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1), Pompeii 123 Figure 7.1. Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 134 Figure 7.2. The domina on the west wall of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 135 Figure 7.3. The bridal toilette in the southwest corner of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 135 Figure 7.4. Head of the domina before restoration 137 Figure 7.5. Mosaic portrait of a woman from shop VI.13.15, Pompeii 137 Figure 7.6. Plan of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 139 Figure 7.7. Head of a woman with a child, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii 141 Figure 8.1. Map of Pompeii 155 Figure 8.2. Women’s names in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum (Grand Palaestra, Pompeii), mapped by column 161 Figure 9.1. Map of epigraphic attestations of the brothel’s prostitutes outside the purposebuilt brothel (VII.12.18–19), Pompeii 180 Figure 9.2. Paths from the purpose-built brothel (VII.12-18-19), Pompeii 181 Figure 9.3. Plan of the purpose-built brothel (VII.12-18-19), Pompeii 183 Figure 9.4. Plan of the forum latrine (VII.7.28), Pompeii 183 Figure 9.5. View through VII.12.18, Pompeii 184 Figure 9.6. Fresco vi (westernmost fresco on the south side of the hallway) from the purposebuilt brothel (VII.12-18-19), Pompeii 184 Figure 9.7. View through VII.12.19, Pompeii 186 Figure 9.8. Still of digital reconstruction of the purpose-built brothel 186

viii  ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 10.1. Plan of the House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii 201 Figure 10.2. View of the triclinium, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii 202 Figure 10.3. Painting of Mercury from the façade of the House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii  204 Figure 10.4. Painting of Venus from workroom g, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii 205 Figure 11.1. Plan of the House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii 218 Figure 11.2. Central scene from the north wall of room u, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii  222 Figure 11.3. Central scene from room 23, House of the Citharist (I.4.5) Pompeii 223 Figure 11.4. Central scene from the west wall of room u, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii 224 Figure 12.1. Relief depicting a couple, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 27714 228 Figure 12.2. Plan of tavern VII.7.18, Pompeii 228 Figure 12.3. East wall of room 4, tavern VII.7.18, Pompeii 230 Figure 12.4. Relief depicting a couple, right edge, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714 232 Figure 12.5. Relief depicting a couple, detail, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714 232 Figure 12.6. Relief depicting a couple, back, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714 233 Figure 12.7. Double-sided relief with theatrical masks, marble, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 6619 235 Figure 12.8. Double-sided relief with theatrical masks and dolphins, marble, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 6638  235 Figure 12.9. South wall of room 11, House of the Ephebe (I.7.10–12), Pompeii  237 Figure 13.1. Drawings of mortal women surviving in situ or in apographs  249 Figure 13.2. Drawings of mythological women surviving in situ or in apographs  251 Figure 13.3. Drawing of Minerva; drawing of a man wearing a palla  252 Figure 13.4. Drawing of Fortunata from the Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1), Pompeii  254 Figure 13.5. Drawing of a woman identified as Sagania, from Porta Nocera tomb 12 EN, Pompeii  255 Figure 13.6. Profile of Nigra and salutation, façade of the Shop of Sotericus (III.2.2), Pompeii  257 Figure 13.7. Obsidian mirror between triclinium 11 and cubiculum 12, House of the Orchard (I.9.5–7), Pompeii  259 Figure 13.8. Plan of the Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), Pompeii  262 Figure 13.9. Drawing of Hiria in the peristyle of the house at I.7.19, Pompeii  264

ILLUSTRATIONS  ix

PLATES Plate 1. Painted pier from the fullery/house at VI.8.20, Pompeii Plate 2. Fragment 9 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix, Pompeii Plate 3. Fragment 3 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix, Pompeii Plate 4. Head of the domina after restoration, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii Plate 5. Head of the bride, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii Plate 6. Cupid with a miniature portrait, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii Plate 7. Head of the woman carrying a tray of offerings, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii Plate 8. Detail of Bacchus, Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii Plate 9. Central scene on the west wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii Plate 10. Central scene on the north wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii Plate 11. Central scene on the east wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii Plate 12. Central scene from the north wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii Plate 13. Central scene from the west wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii Plate 14. Central scene from the east wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii Plate 15. Relief depicting a couple, detail, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714 Plate 16. Relief depicting a couple, detail, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714

x  ILLUSTRATIONS

WOMEN’S LIVES, WOMEN’S VOICES

INTRODUCTION

Negotiating Silence, Finding Voices, and Articulating Agency Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland

Negotiating Silence In 1975, excavators in the House of Gaius Julius Polybius (IX.13.1–3) in Pompeii made a remarkable discovery in room HH, which opens off the peristyle garden: a group of six skeletons, the remains of several people who had sheltered together in the eruption of Vesuvius and one (or more) others who had died in the upper level of the house, and whose bodies had fallen into the room as seismic activity damaged the structure. At least two were women. One was a mature adult, wearing jewelry and holding a cloth bag that contained a hoard of coins; another, likely in her teens, was in the late stages of pregnancy.1 The discovery was a powerful reminder of the human face of the circumstances that led to the unique preservation of the sites around the Bay of Naples. Men, women, and children lost their lives, even as many of them hoped for survival and made preparations to sustain themselves and their families. Yet one notable thing about this particular case is that scholars hoping to present the sites to the general public have used it to spin fanciful stories about Roman women’s lives: the older woman has been imagined as the wife of the homeowner, presumed to be the mother of others in the group; the younger woman has been cast as his daughter, about to begin a family of her own. Their final moments have been reconstructed as an interpersonal drama, in which a group was forced to take cover in different parts of the house, knocking on the wall to communicate with each other, because a wayward toddler had run away from his mother to see the eruption firsthand.2 Estelle Lazer has pointed out how little scientific evidence there is to support

   1

an interpretation of the skeletons as biologically related, let alone to reconstruct their last actions.3 Perhaps equally troubling is that, even in accounts that are intended more as vivid reconstructions of the past than factual narratives, women are relegated to traditional social roles. This volume, in contrast, uses recent developments in the study of Campanian material culture to focus attention on female agency and social engagement. It gathers together scholars who are using epigraphic, archaeological, art historical, and architectural evidence to take a new look at women’s lived experiences.

Finding Voices The last decade has witnessed great change in the standard narratives regarding daily life in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Once omitted from scholarship altogether or considered of limited importance in public life,4 women are now included in most treatments of the material. General books on Pompeii often include a section discussing women. Yet the broad scope of these works means that women and their many activities are not the focus, but rather ancillary to men and male activities.5 Sourcebooks include women on equal footing to men but rely nearly exclusively on epigraphic evidence that provides only a partial picture of the lived experience.6 In reality, of course, women were integrated into the rest of the community, and there is little evidence that female patrons or workers emphasized gender-coded activities. In other words, the civic, religious, and funerary monuments built by and for women cannot be visually distinguished from those built by or for men.7 Nor can female workers in the fullery be distinguished from men, or the handwriting of a woman be identified in a graffito. This lack of obvious differentiation has meant that scholars interested in Roman social history have treated Pompeii as a city inhabited by men, effectively silencing female community members when they are not being held up as an exception or exemplum. This volume focuses on the silences, and its goal is to consider how women from a range of social backgrounds engaged with the local community through families, businesses, and religious activity, and how they expressed their identities in the funerary realm. Studies of material culture and the built environment beyond Pompeii, too, tend to assume freeborn, often elite, male users and viewers. Most studies of Roman art and archaeology explicitly or implicitly focus on male activities and agency, at best acknowledging women as backdrops to the activities of elite men—in large part because of the nature of the textual evidence that helps illuminate the intentions of patrons and responses of viewers. Natalie Kampen’s pathbreaking monograph on representations of women from the Isola Sacra necropolis of Ostia was for years the only sustained attempt to grapple with the working lives and identities of non-elites.8 The past two decades, however, have seen an increased interest in addressing the lives and agency of Roman women, in our scholarship and in our teaching.9 Our 2  INTRODUCTION

understanding of the prominent role of imperial women is now well developed,10 and scholars have integrated female activities and agency into the larger social world of Roman communities by focusing on religious activity and the sponsoring of public monuments by elite women in their local communities.11 Though these works have moved the field in exciting ways, several trends are notable: first, elite and imperial women are generally privileged over women of other social groups; second, women of means are defined in terms of male politics, prestige, and patronage; third, textual evidence and lapidary inscriptions are brought to bear on the question more often than visual or archaeological material. This volume, with its close focus on the cities preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, moves the discussion forward on several fronts. The unique nature of the material record in the Bay of Naples opens up exciting possibilities for the study of women because we can see them in action in so many ways: through inscriptions that testify to monuments they built; through portraits from houses, tombs, and public spaces that show how they presented themselves or were presented by others in different contexts; through painted inscriptions (dipinti) that show they sponsored candidates for elections; through mythological paintings they commissioned and enjoyed in their residences. Scholars working with this material have already done much to add nuance to our understanding of Roman women’s lives. To take salient examples, Liisa Savunen and Frances Bernstein have shown that women, particularly non-elites, involved themselves in local elections by endorsing candidates;12 Margaret Woodhull explored how paying for monuments allowed elite women to build connections and prestige;13 Bettina Bergmann and Judith Barringer revealed how images of women in mythological paintings related to literary tropes and societal constructions of ideal behavior.14 In this volume, we build upon this framework to take our knowledge of Pompeian women even deeper. Our authors, on the whole, favor interdisciplinary approaches that bring texts and images into conversation. Several of our contributors are also on the forefront of scholarship that draws on graffiti, informal inscriptions left on the walls by those who inhabited the city. Difficult to work with and understudied, these handwritten texts show women in action—recording their names in buildings (and thus writing themselves into public space), transacting business deals, sending greetings to their friends. We discuss women of a range of ages and social classes, young and old, slave and free, working and leisured. At the same time, we also look beyond Pompeii and Herculaneum, seeking to understand how the unusual evidence preserved there relates to the traditional media used to study women, including imperial portraits, literary texts, legal sources, and monumental inscriptions. The result is that, through our case studies, we not only uncover the voices of the often-overlooked, but better understand the life experiences and motivations of the elite women we thought we understood so well. INTRODUCTION  3

Articulating Agency We have structured the book around three broad themes: public and commercial identities, women on display, and representing women. Throughout, our authors offer new approaches, at times upending long-standing interpretations of the material by adopting a principle of inclusion that counters the male bias in our sources by reading women into the picture in places where they would, in past scholarship, have been omitted. Lauren Petersen articulates this new methodology in chapter 1, “Pompeian Women and the Making of a Material History,” arguing for the necessity of bringing material evidence to bear on women’s lives and outlining the challenges and rewards of bringing textual and visual evidence together. She shows how scholarship on even the best-known and most meticulously documented contexts in Pompeii, such as the sanctuary of Isis, has prioritized discussion of men and boys over women and girls. In that case, the “silence” is all the more striking because, as Petersen points out, the evidence in fact points to the involvement of several women as both devotees and patrons of the cult. This is a lacuna of our making, in other words, not one inherent to the evidence. Similarly, the focus on the axial arrangement of domestic spaces—fauces to atrium to tablinum to peristyle—has created a malecentric model of viewership that ignores the rich evidence for women throughout the house. Yet that evidence is, indeed, there. Petersen cites a touching graffito from the atrium of the House of Trebius Valens (III.2.1) that records a woman’s experience of childbirth. Her essay poses a challenge, taken up by the rest of the volume: understanding ancient women’s lives requires creative thinking and new ways of looking, and brings rich rewards. We then turn to women’s roles in the public sphere, focusing on their economic activities and the prestige they could gain through work and family connections. The chapters by Molly Swetnam-Burland and Lauren Caldwell adopt a comparative approach that brings material from Campania into conversation with inscriptions, legal texts, and papyri from throughout the Roman world. In chapter 2, “Women’s Work? Investors, Money-Handlers, and Dealers,” Swetnam-Burland takes a fresh look at the kinds of labor that women could perform, arguing that they did at times take part in financial operations (counting money, managing resources, and making loans) typically associated with men. In chapter 3, “From Household to Workshop: Women, Weaving, and the Peculium,” Caldwell reexamines the evidence for weaving in the houses and shops of Pompeii, and she argues that producing textiles did far more than enable women to showcase their virtue and piety. Roman law allowed a father to invest money in endeavors undertaken by those in his household and under his legal authority—this included girls, who could use the money to seed small weaving businesses or who could receive specialized training as apprentices in other households. Taken together, the two papers reveal the opportunities for and agency of women in an economic system that was largely intended to profit men. 4  INTRODUCTION

The other papers in this first section show how women used means that they earned or inherited to benefit their communities. In chapter 4, “Buying Power: The Public Priestesses of Pompeii,” Barbara Kellum discusses elite women as patrons of major monuments in Pompeii. She focuses on the impressive buildings along the east side of the Forum, arguing that their patrons simultaneously presented themselves to good effect within the local traditions and revealed themselves as well-connected and educated, deliberately referencing the monuments of Rome. In chapter 5, “Real Estate for Profit: Julia Felix’s Property and the Forum Frieze,” Eve D’Ambra brings these threads of inquiry about women’s economic activities and civic patronage back together, with a close look at the amenities and décor of the estate of Julia Felix—the largest business in Pompeii known to be run by a woman. Close examination of the Forum scenes adorning the atrium provides a glimpse of how fully integrated women from all levels of society were into commercial life, from a graceful matron offering a handout to a bedraggled beggar, to a woman watching over the sale of cloth, to a seated woman holding a child while considering the purchase of shoes. The second section of the book, “Women on Display,” demonstrates how the contextual examination of material remains can help us understand how individual women self-identified and were identified by others. The first two papers focus on portraits of women in three different media and social arenas while the last two consider how women moved through and were documented in the cityscape. Brenda Longfellow begins chapter 6, “Contextualizing the Funerary and Honorific Portrait Statues of Women in Pompeii,” with a reexamination of female portraiture in Pompeii, bringing a largely overlooked corpus, sculptures from extra-mural tombs, into conversation with one of the best-known sculptures from the city, the marble portrait of Eumachia that stood in the city center. She considers both the role female tomb builders had in shaping the format of portrait statues for themselves and others as well as how the later honorific statues, sanctioned by the town council, may have been responding to the earlier funerary precedents. Elaine K. Gazda moves the discussion of portraiture to the famous megalographic frieze in the Villa of the Mysteries in chapter 7, “Portraits and Patrons: The Women of the Villa of the Mysteries in Their Social Context.” She demonstrates how distinctive the facial features of the domina and other women are in the frieze and suggests these are portraits of household members who perhaps were also members of a Dionysiac thiasos, or community of worshipers. Painted in the mid-first century BCE, this frieze was conceived at a time when cemeteries were the only other place in Pompeii with portraits of women. Together, these two essays challenge our notions of what portraits tell us about public prestige—usually considered in a male-centric model that imagines portraits as a way of communicating honor earned through civic or military service. Longfellow and Gazda show how faces and bodies not just communicated domestic virtues but also showcased women as notable and noticeable to audiences of their peers, at home and in the city. INTRODUCTION  5

The second set of essays in this section looks to women lower in the social spectrum. Erika Zimmermann Damer explores how women were named in graffiti from Herculaneum and Pompeii. In chapter 8, “‘What’s in a Name?’ Mapping Women’s Names from the Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum,” Zimmermann Damer shows, first, that references to women as mothers and wives abound. Yet there are also women acknowledged as elderly, pregnant, charming, and beloved, revealing not only those stages of life most often overlooked by elite, male authors, but the deep-felt emotional bonds of women’s lives. Even more importantly, her spatial approach demonstrates that women were everywhere, their presence recorded in homes, shops, tombs, baths, and public porticos. In chapter 9, “The Public and Private Lives of Pompeian Prostitutes,” Sarah Levin-Richardson then explores issues of movement and visibility in the city for a specific category of women: prostitutes, who were in part defined by their sexual availability to the public at large, even as their presence in places beyond the brothel is little acknowledged by scholars. She shows, too, that these women expressed themselves not just as passive objects of lust, but as active participants in the sexual acts they performed. The third and final section of the book, “Representing Women,” explores what idealized representations of women may tell us about their lived experiences. In each chapter, our authors move beyond traditional approaches, which examine depictions of women relative to literary sources or as perceived by the male gaze, instead exploring women as viewers engaged in rich semantic dialogues. Chapters 10 and 11 create a mutually informing dialogue about erotic imagery in the city, investigating how panel paintings worked within their broader environments, and offering new ways to think of paintings that purport to show “real” behavior at luxurious parties. In chapter 10, “Women, Art, Power, and Work in the House of the Chaste Lovers at Pompeii,” Jennifer Trimble demonstrates how a series of paintings that adorned the bakery showing men and women carousing at a symposium contrast sharply with activities that transpired in adjacent rooms, in which grain was milled and bread prepared. In the fictive reality of the paintings, privileged men and women are strongly gendered yet slaves are not—perhaps reflecting the reality of the male and female slaves who worked together and shared the same duties. Luciana Jacobelli, in turn, looks at party scenes from House V.2.4 that depict a woman taking on a more masculine role, drinking from the same type of vessel as men and presented as their equal. In “The House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) at Pompeii: The House of a ‘Courtesan’?,” she argues that the house may have been owned by a courtesan, a woman who offered companionship and sex, independent of a pimp or brothel. Both essays show how the representation of gender could be flexible—male and female slaves emerge as gender-neutral, lacking the differentiation of importance to free and freed people; a high-status courtesan could cross boundaries to behave like and appeal to men. Jessica Powers then offers a detailed look at a gilded marble plaque embedded in

6  INTRODUCTION

the wall of a tavern (chapter 12, “Sex on Display in Pompeii’s Tavern VII.7.18”) that provides new possibilities for thinking about the explicit sex scenes in Pompeian spaces. She argues that the relief is an example of spoliation—reused from an earlier context—and shows how fresh carving and the application of new pigment brought the relief into line with popular erotic imagery, so that it could serve as a pendant to a freshly painted erotic scene on the facing wall. In the final chapter, “Drawings of Women at Pompeii,” Margaret L. Laird flips the script, to consider how women were depicted not in professionally produced artworks (sculptures, paintings, mosaics), but in graffiti, sketched freehand by non-expert artists. These are notable for their lack of interest in hairstyle, jewelry, and other features that characterize painted and sculpted depictions of women. She argues that images of women were not common—female figures could not compete in the Roman imaginary, for example, with gladiators, which are among the most frequently appearing drawn images. Yet Laird nonetheless reveals the power of images of women, able to arrest the eye and engage the mind. Images of women could be erotic and humorous, but also could invoke the gods and ward off the evil eye.

Next Steps It is our hope that the essays assembled in this volume will, in turn, inspire more work on the women of the Bay of Naples. In our epilogue, Allison Emmerson discusses the impact of our work and suggests some future directions. Yet if we have a single aim, it is to bring to light a wide range of women’s experiences, and in so doing to provide models for the ways that other scholars can use the evidence—though at times it is scanty—creatively to cast women as active participants in the social circles in which they moved and the cities in which they lived. To return to the evocative case with which we began: if we are to imagine the lives of the women who died in the House of Gaius Julius Polybius, let us look beyond their roles as wives and mothers to those interests and aspirations that we can indeed ascribe to their peers. Perhaps the young woman wanted to become a public priestess, like Eumachia two generations before, with a statue off the Forum and devotees among the local businessmen. Perhaps the older woman had once written her name on the plastered columns of the Campus ad Amphitheatrum (also known as the Grand Palaestra), or even drawn the face of Medusa in the Stabian Baths to protect herself from evil spirits. Perhaps both took spindle to hand not so that they could sit in the atrium, showing off their virtue, but with the idea in mind that they might use the fruits of their labor to earn a little bit of money—to be spent on whatever their hearts desired, whether food for the table, education for a child, or a flashy gold bracelet.

INTRODUCTION  7

Notes This book began as papers presented at “Women on the Bay of Naples: Recent Research,” the Third Annual Symposium Campanum at the Villa Vergiliana in Cuma-Bacoli, Italy (October 2018). We offer our thanks to the Vergilian Society, the administrative director of the Henry Wilks Study Center, Dottoressa Antimina Sgariglia, and to all those who participated. The presenters were: Lauren Caldwell, Patrick R. Crowley, Eve D’Ambra, Elaine K. Gazda, Mira Green, Luciana Jacobelli, Barbara Kellum, Margaret Laird, Sarah Levin-Richardson, Brenda Longfellow, Neville McFerrin, Kristina Milnor, Lauren Hackworth Petersen, Jessica Powers, Molly Swetnam-Burland, Jennifer Trimble, Hérica Valladares, Elizabeth Wolfram Thill, Margaret Woodhull, and Erika Zimmermann Damer. Allison Emmerson attended the conference and was a vital part of the lively discussions and collaborative spirit that led to this volume. We also thank Erin Daly of the University of Iowa, who proofread the essays and created several of the line drawings herein. Last but not least, we are grateful to Jim Burr and the excellent staff at the University of Texas Press, as well as to the two peer reviewers, whose comments enriched the volume in so many ways. 1. On the excavation, see Auricchio 2001. For documentation and bibliography, PPM X:183–356, s.v. “IX, 13, 1–3, Casa di Polibio.” For the contents of room HH, including skeletal remains, see Allison 2004b. 2. Wilkinson 2003, 158–159; Butterworth and Laurence 2005, 304–306. 3. Lazer (2011, 32–35) offers a cogent summary and rebuttal of these narratives. 4. E.g., Mau 1899. 5. E.g., Berry 2007; Dobbins and Foss 2007. 6. E.g., Cooley and Cooley 2014. 7. McDonnell 2005; Emmerson 2013. 8. Kampen 1981. 9. E.g., D’Ambra 2007; Cooley 2013; Holleran 2013. 10. E.g., Bartman 1998; Wood 1999; Woodhull 2003; Woodhull 2012; Brennan 2018. 11. E.g., Petersen and Salzman-Mitchell 2012; Hemelrijk and Woolf 2013; Longfellow 2014/2015; Hemelrijk 2015; Budin and Turfa 2016; Murer 2017. 12. Savunen 1997; Bernstein 1998. 13. Woodhull 1999. 14. Barringer 1994; Bergmann 1996.

8  INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Pompeian Women and the Making of a Material History Lauren Hackworth Petersen

At the time of its rediscovery in 1764, the ruins of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii fascinated tourists and antiquarians, especially those swept up in an Egyptomania that imagined the temple as a site of mystery and un-Roman rituals practiced by those at the margins of the social order. The fascination with the exotic and the strange has continued into the present, nurtured by scholarly work, exhibition catalogs, guidebooks, and the spectacles produced on site, most recently in 2016.1 In this cultural imagination appears the story of the temple’s reconstruction after 62 CE.2 As will become evident, I begin with this piece of Pompeiana as an example of how historiography produces certain silences with respect to Roman women.3 Traditionally, discussions of the temple begin with its dedicatory inscription—a starting point for thinking about and interpreting the Iseum in a Pompeian context. It reads: Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, with his own money rebuilt from the foundation the Temple of Isis collapsed from the earthquake; for his munificence, the decurions accepted him to their order without further obligation, although he was only six years old.4

The dedicatory inscription thus sets out four facts: (1) the sanctuary was dedicated to the goddess Isis; (2) it was rebuilt after the earthquake; (3) the benefaction was made by a six-year-old boy named Celsinus; and (4) the boy was then accepted into the town’s governing body in gratitude for the gift to Pompeii. Two other inscriptions in   11

FIGURE 1.1.

Reproduction of the mosaic (central image) from the ekklesiasterion from the Temple of Isis (VIII.7.28), Pompeii. G. B. Piranesi and F. Piranesi, Antiquités de la Grande Grèce, ajourd’hui Royaume de Naples (Paris, 1837), pl. 72.

the temple precinct seem to name Celsinus’s parents. His father, Ampliatus, dedicated a statue of Bacchus located in the back niche of the temple, and the base of the statue reads: “Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, father, with his own money.”5 Corelia Celsa was listed with Ampliatus and Celsinus in white tesserae on the black mosaic floor of the ekklesiasterion (gathering room at the back of the precinct); the inscription has been translated as “Corelia Celsa, [wife of ] Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, [mother of ] Numerius Popidius Celsinus.”6 Because Corelia Celsa’s name is in the nominative, and she is thus the active agent, while those of Ampliatus and Celsinus are in the genitive, scholars tend to assume Corelia Celsa is the wife of Ampliatus and mother of Celsinus, although the words for “wife” and “mother” are not present in the mosaic (interestingly, the reproduction illustrated seems to be the only visual testimony we have of the mosaic; fig. 1.1).7 12   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

Despite these and other texts, it is the temple’s dedicatory inscription that has garnered significant attention among scholars and generated the traditional narrative of the temple’s rebuilding.8 Assuming that no six-year-old boy could have conceived of the necessity for rebuilding Pompeii’s Iseum, or had the means to do so, historians and archaeologists have turned to the social standing of the boy and his family to account for this extraordinary gift to the city. Specifically, they have focused on the legal status of the father of young Celsinus, who would have likely paid for and overseen the finances of this benefaction. In an attempt to explain why the father, Ampliatus, would have done so, scholars repeatedly suggest that he was a former slave who sought to provide his freeborn son with social and political advantages by putting the benefaction in his son’s name.9 The plan may have worked, as Celsinus was accepted into a local municipal office.10 It would seem then that for the commission of the six-year-old boy to make sense, the father and his presumed status as an ex-slave had to play a central role in the narrative, and this accords well with the imagined “outsider” status of the Roman followers of Isis. This history/story creates “silences” even as it elaborates and interprets the facts. The child appears only as a passive vehicle for the father’s ambition. The woman, wife, and mother is little more than a name. Even the father, the imagined freedman around whom this narrative revolves, appears only to copy the worldly goals and values of the local male elite; his presumed gift to Pompeii—the Iseum—compares well with other acts of benefaction, such as the dedication of the Temple of Fortuna Augusta to the north of the Forum by the upper-class Marcus Tullius (VII.4.1; CIL 10.820). Could we not imagine other stories concerning the rebuilding of the Temple of Isis? The bare facts, after all, tell us little about motives, desires, or values. Perhaps the father, child, or mother was especially devoted to Isis, had been touched by the goddess, or, like the protagonist Lucius in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, dreamed that Isis appeared with a request. The point is that the facts admit gaps in history—what actually happened—but the traditional historiography—how a story is told—creates other silences about the supposed freedman, the child, and the woman in the sense that the story we now tell reinforces only the values and logic of upper-class men. These narrative omissions belong to a larger pattern of silences in the scholarship on Pompeii. Some scholars, for instance, argue that with few exceptions, archaeology can tell us little to nothing about enslaved people, among many other individuals, because the remains of houses, workshops, and the like reflect only their male owners’ arrangements of space and intents.11 Even where the presence of enslaved individuals, free women, children, or lower-class men is well acknowledged, once that observation has been made, enslaved individuals, free women, children, and lowerclass men disappear from the narrative, remain part of the décor, or become the audience for the activities of propertied, free men. Examples abound in discussions of the Roman banquet or the salutatio (the early morning interactions of a patron and his clients), as these activities are described primarily from the perspective of POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   13

high-ranking, well-to-do men. Further, histories of propertied, free men count as factual. Meanwhile, and this is important, accounts of others from whom we do not hear directly, such as women or enslaved people, tend to be seen as close to fiction as we attempt to bring together scattered pieces of evidence outside of the dominant (male-authored) discourse and world of things.12 At the same time, scholarly work of the last thirty years has enlarged our knowledge of the city’s material culture. Archaeologists and historians have measured and counted the physical features of Pompeii’s streets, houses, and workshops, and they have mapped the structuring of space, the distribution of shrines and fountains, and the location of objects.13 Their work has been invaluable for the creation of sources, turning the material remains into facts, and assembling an archive of the traces of human activities—traffic, movement, work, rituals, politics. The question is how this scholarship has furthered our understanding of a heterogeneous population of men and women, rich and poor, free and enslaved, Romans and foreigners. Building on the work that Sandra Joshel and I have undertaken in our study of Roman slaves,14 which relied on the well-known work of the Haitian historian and theorist MichelRolf Trouillot, this essay invites us to pay close attention to the silences in history and historiography. Recognition of the complexities of silencing, then, helps with a second project that involves “fact-making” and a kind of seeing or, rather, re-seeing.15 Trouillot observes that silences and absences, like mention and presence, “are inherent in history.”16 Everything cannot be recorded; something is always missing. Few would disagree, but Trouillot asks us to see the complexity of silences. He argues that silences “enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of retrieval (the making of narratives); the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”17 These moments are not chronological stages, but “conceptual tools”—ways to talk about processes that “feed on each other.” These processes and the silences themselves are not neutral, natural, or equal to each other. The inequalities of social and economic power in the past translate into inequalities in the “inscription of traces” in the present.18 Sources drawn from these traces then exclude even as they include, with the effect of “privileg[ing] some events over others.”19 Thus, the archive composed of these sources and facts involves “the power to define what is and what is not a serious subject of research and, therefore, of mention.”20 To take a stark example drawn from the domestic sphere, the history of Roman archaeology tends to show a focus on rooms with painted walls and mosaic floors—spaces associated with male owners and the privileged—and inattention, or carelessness, to service areas like kitchens—spaces where we might expect to find enslaved individuals, both male and female.21 In effect, this archive, from which scholars select the materials for their narratives, offers them limited choices in limited categories. When modern historians

14   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

draw on such material and textual archives to craft their narratives, they often repeat the silences of sources and archives.22 However, we do not have to stop at the “uneven power” in the production of sources, archives, and narratives. In Trouillot’s words, we can “reposition the evidence to generate a new narrative.”23 This essay explores how the reassembling of facts and archives might contribute to narratives of a heterogeneous Pompeii with a particular focus on Pompeian women and material culture. The issue is, of course, complicated by a number of factors. On the one hand, we have to ask “which women?” The making of the archive as described above is one that will necessarily privilege women, if at all, who belong to families of means. Pompeii’s famous and oft-cited females—Eumachia and Mamia—come immediately to mind.24 While these two women are highly visible through monumental building and public commemoration, they tend to be defined in terms of the world of male politics. We must also ask what narratives we can generate about women of ordinary means, enslaved women, young and elderly females, and so on. On the other hand, we have to inquire about how we read gender in everyday life and objects. Mirrors, cosmetics, weaving implements, for instance, evoke the female realm.25 But do we tend to make women invisible when material objects are more “gender-neutral”? In what follows, there are more questions than answers. Regardless, I hope to suggest paths to seeing and to narrating Pompeii’s multilayered histories through a brief exploration of some material remains. As a first course of action, we can re-see what count as sources in the archive by shifting attention to the position and movements of people, other than elite men, who were present at particular events and times. For example, descriptions of Campanian houses and villas typically concentrate on the views of owner and guests or point to what we assume were their intentions, such as with the House of the Menander (I.10.4), where views are depicted by three visual axes (fig. 1.2).26 The one dominant axis through the atrium, from the front of the domus to the back, assumes the view of visitors to the house or individuals looking in as they passed by the residence. Indeed, this grand atrium is frequently discussed and understood in terms of the salutatio, which places the male dominus at the center of the house, literally. The other two axes, toward the back of the house, assume the views of owner and guests at the banquet. Further, Ray Laurence’s chart of the temporal use of space (fig. 1.3) shows an elite man’s place of activities throughout the day, as he conducts business at home in the tablinum, and then moves to the public sphere to conduct business, bathe, and perhaps watch entertainments, before returning to his house (or visiting another’s) to partake in the banqueting activities at the end of the day. Laurence’s chart can be read in other ways, however, namely for opportunities to see the atrium peopled when male patrons and clients vacated the space and the domus.27 Texts and artifact assemblages put other individuals there; moreover, objects stored in the atrium and used elsewhere indicate other protagonists moving in and out of this space.28 In fact, different actors moved differently to different ends POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   15

FIGURE 1.2.

Plan of the House of the Menander (I.10.4, 14–16), Pompeii, marked with the three primary visual axes of the owner and guests.

FIGURE 1.3.

The elite male’s daily temporal use of space.

at different times of the day in and through the atrium—not only the owner and his clients, but also enslaved people, free women, children, and outsiders loading or unloading goods. If the atrium is considered a “place”—that is, an area invested with meaning and memory,29 it will have multiple dimensions and mean varied haptic experiences for elite men and women, enslaved men and women, children, and outsiders buying, selling, and delivering goods to the house. If we make the temporal plotting of place à la Laurence a part of how we envision the atrium, we see not a single space but multiple atria layered in time, whose protagonists included females in many roles—matrons, children, child minders, nurses, and servants engaged in cleaning, food preparation, and adornment, among other activities, before and after the salutatio (fig. 1.4).30 When it comes to work and commercial activities, shops and workshops, especially fulleries and bakeries, have also been well described. They are, after all, integral to the commercial and economic life of the city. Most recently, scholars such as Miko Flohr, Nicholas Monteix, and Jared Benton have engaged in the process of re-seeing these sources/facts in the archive.31 Specifically, Flohr puts Roman workers on the move and inquires about the social relations of labor as the workers appear to be mapped in the organization of space and apparatuses.32 He examines what he calls the “communicative landscape” in the context of fulleries and the work of fulling: the physical layout that positions workers in relation to each other, facilitating or inhibiting direct verbal exchange and visual interaction.33 However, these narratives focus on what is likely to have been male slave labor. Female workers in fulleries tend to remain largely invisible in scholarly discourse; the assumption is that the workers were men and the tendency is not to think about women as integral to a workshop’s functioning. For example, the fullery/house at VI.8.20, best known for its painted pier in the retrofitted peristyle (plate 1), is often cited in discussions regarding the fulling process. The east side of the pier highlights the physical/manual activities of fulling undertaken by male workers: treading on the cloth to clean it, brushing a garment, and preparing a wicker frame for bleaching the cloth, with the press shown in the upper register of the north side to signify the last stage of the fulling process. These images of fulling can be corroborated by the archaeological remains at various fulleries throughout the city (treading stalls, rinsing basins, and cloth press) to affirm and privilege what is illustrated as male labor. Such an approach renders women invisible in the workings of fulleries, despite the depiction of women in a fullery setting on the same pier.34 In the upper register of the east side of the pier, a seated woman and a female servant, although smaller in scale than the two men brushing the cloth and carrying the wicker frame, seem to occupy a space in proximity to the work of finishing cloth. Interestingly, the seated female is dressed in a long garment and is adorned with a hairnet, bracelet, and necklace. She appears to handle a piece of cloth. She is often identified as a customer, which would put her on the move through Pompeii’s streets to conduct business. More recently, Flohr has POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   17

FIGURE 1.4.

Atrium of the House of the Menander, with female protagonists inhabiting the space.

identified the seated woman as a worker, specifically as an inspector; she could just as well, however, be the co-proprietor of the fullery and house.35 Furthermore, Flohr suggests that these two women participated in a social network as they engaged in “physically less demanding tasks”36 and that their activities likely took place in the space across the peristyle from the fullery’s treading stalls and rinsing basins. Flohr thus includes women in the working of a fullery but places them on the margins of its main activities.37 How would our narratives about this house and fullery change if we were to consider more rigorously female engagement in the cloth industry at Pompeii; that is, could we consider women, such as enslaved females, in work roles that were somewhat physically demanding (such as hanging garments to dry, an activity that would leave little trace in the archaeological record)? After all, the absence of evidence of women depicted in the labor of fulling is not itself evidence that women did not engage in some form of manual labor. In fact, the image of the woman cleaning a wool-comb on the lower register of the north side of the same pier places women in more manual operations of the fullery, not as selling, inspecting, or serving exclusively.38 We are thus invited to think about the possible (informal) roles of women in this fullery/house, along with relationships among women and with the fullery’s male workers beyond the narrative that privileges male labor and workshop ownership. That is to say, although archaeological remains tend to make visible and thus draw attention to male labor at fulleries, we must still inquire about the material lives of women in and at fulleries. There is, indeed, evidence for women in these spaces. Beads from four necklaces from the house and fullery of Stephanus (I.6.7) attest to women’s presence there. Shifting our narratives means according these materials greater significance, looking at them not as chance finds but as evidence for women’s active participation in the space. One of the necklaces was secured in a small wooden box, showing that it was treated as a prized possession, perhaps further suggesting that its owner did not just come into the fullery from time to time, but worked and perhaps lived there.39 Although later in date and from the realm of satire, a vivid passage in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (9.24) may reinforce this idea: a wife hides her secret lover under the wicker frame of the fullery when her husband returns home unexpectedly, interrupting their sexual encounter.40 (Coincidentally, an unusual scene from a fresco in the fullery/house of Vesonius Primus [VI.14.21–22] depicts a man who seems to be hiding under a wicker frame.)41 When women are made part of the material history of fulleries and allowed within the narrative frame, it becomes possible to recognize that the equipment and spaces of fulleries/houses could be put to multiple uses. Related to the work of expanding what we see and count as sources within the archive is the task of disinterring “facts”/objects that have been in the “archive” for some time, but relegated to insignificance due to the traditional emphasis placed on painting, mosaic, sculpture, and prestige objects in the domestic sphere. Because POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   19

these objects have seemed secondary to the house owner and his self-definition, they have been neglected in scholarship until fairly recently. By attending to artifacts that were marginalized in the making of the archive—that is, by redefining what “count” as facts—we can then include free and enslaved females in our narratives of Pompeii’s history. Importantly, Penelope Allison’s detailed recovery work on the material culture of Pompeian houses explores how things can reveal the state of activities of domestic units in their final days.42 Her work on artifact location and assemblages introduces the movements of those who used or maintained cooking equipment, dinnerware, and other household objects and carried them from place to place within a house. She also examines the characterization of artifacts in particular assemblages with a view to locating gendered practices in contexts without the physical remains of sexed bodies or representations of them. The approach enables her to locate women and gendered activities in specific rooms in the House of the Smith (I.10.7), to take just one example.43 By taking a different approach to artifacts, Mira Green enlarges what we can say about those who have left no or faint traces in the material record. Her interest is the repeated daily practices of using domestic fixtures and utensils. These practices create relationships between bodies and objects, and they shape the body’s

FIGURE 1.5.

Enactment of working over the cooktop at the House of the Prince of Naples (VI.15.7–8), Pompeii.

20   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

relation to its environment as well as individuals’ experiences of their own bodies. Her analysis gives us intense haptic accounts of both working women and men, thus making them materially present and embodied, and not simply the background scenery of elite life (fig. 1.5).44 The work of these scholars, among others, propels us to insert women as we narrate a material history at Pompeii and beyond. I would like to return to the issues raised at the beginning of the essay—namely, history’s silencing of Corelia Celsa at the Temple of Isis, despite her presence at one time—to consider briefly women and the material culture of ritual and religion at Pompeii as a means to further disinter overlooked facts and sources that have been in the archive. For instance, what can the austere columella from tomb 16 (south) at the Herculaneum Gate tell us about a female commemorated somewhat privately as a follower of Venus? The inscribed columella reads (although it has been subject to different translations): “To the Iuno of Tyche, (slave) of Julia Augusta, worshipper of Venus” (fig. 1.6).45 A woman, who seems to have been enslaved, is identified as a worshiper of Venus, that is, presumably by ritual activity that she must have engaged in while living. No priestess or individual connection to civic authority is depicted here, but rather this is a simply stated connection to Venus, the patron deity of Pompeii and an important goddess for mothers, much like Isis (Isis was often assimilated with Venus at Pompeii). This connection must have been rather remarkable, being that an enslaved female seems to have been commemorated with Venus in a unique way. One could also look to Vesuvius’s victims, such as the so-called Porta Nola girl, who as she fled the city was carrying a silver figurine of an enthroned Fortuna and wore, among other things, a ring with a carved image of Isis-Fortuna (Isis was also frequently assimilated with Fortuna).46 Other Pompeian women also seem to have sought protection with Isiac-related amuletic jewelry in their final moments, such as the woman from the House of Holconius Rufus (VIII.4.4) found with a necklace that displayed a number of figures, including Isis and the jackal of Anubis (fig. 1.7).47 One cannot overlook the importance of females’ connections to the religious landscape of Pompeii beyond the monumental—we need to look farther than the go-to archives, that is, we need to re-see in our attempts to conceive new, multilayered narratives and histories. A variety of texts further inscribe women quite literally into Pompeii’s material history—something that many scholars have recently brought to light.48 Three poignant but often overlooked texts serve as vivid reminders of the lives of women at Pompeii—from the enslaved to the well-to-do. One, although we do not know the author, comes from the wall of a small room off the atrium in the House of Trebius Valens (III.2.1). The text simply states: “23rd January, Ursa gave birth on a Thursday.”49 While one scholar writes that such inscriptions record the happy outcome of a pregnancy, I do not think we can be so sure.50 It is presumptuous to claim that the graffito, the possible circumstances surrounding the female’s pregnancy, and the birth of a child resulted in a “happy outcome.” In other words, what lies behind this POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   21

FIGURE 1.6.

Columella of Tyche, tomb 16 (south), Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii, first century. FIGURE 1.7.

Drawing of a necklace from the body of a woman at the House of Holconius Rufus (VIII.4.4), with Isiacrelated amulets labeled B, C, and D, Pompeii, first century.

text is not so simple nor straightforward; Ursa, presumably enslaved, gave birth, an event marked on the wall, an event that has a story we may never know. Nonetheless, it quite possibly points to ways that women occupied space, maybe even the space with the inscribed declaration—that is, it may point to how domestic space was embodied by women, from birthing children, to the raising of those who survived. The second example comes from the realm of ritual: a set of curse tablets excavated from a second-century BCE family burial (Epidii) in the vicinity of the Stabian Gate.51 The tablets were authored by a woman and inscribe female protagonists into Pompeii’s early history (fig. 1.8). The tablets curse a rival female, the slave of Hostilius, and read: Philematium, slave of Hostilius: I curse her face, her hair, her mind, her breath, her vital organs, so that he cannot gain possession of her; may he be hateful to her and she to him; even as she shall have no power over him, so may he be completely unable to give her children. May Philematium, slave of Hostilius, be hated. She . . .

And inside the companion tablet: May she be unable to break this spell either with deeds or with words. Just like this one is deserted by them, may she be deserted in her bed. The 29th of October . . . have been bound with a spell . . . say . . . abandon her. Say to her . . . May she be bound . . .52

These curse tablets may be all that we know of Philematium, the unnamed man (Hostilius?), and the “author” of the text, who, according to Pauline Ripat, may well be the wife of the man. Her respect and position in the household may have come into jeopardy as the husband’s relationship with the enslaved female turned from sexual to affective.53 She likely had no other recourse except for the strategic deployment of curse tablets thrown into an unmarked tomb (the columella was uninscribed). These material objects also have a story to tell—a complicated and emotional one, to be sure. The third text, also from the realm of ritual, allegedly comes from the Temple of Isis and is often omitted from discussions of the precinct. It was an inscribed pilaster

FIGURE 1.8.

Curse tablets from the Tomb of the Epidii, vicinity of the Stabian Gate, Pompeii, second century BCE. CIL 4.9251.

POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   23

(now in a private collection) that supported a now-lost statuette. The inscription reads: To Augustan Isis. Manilia Chrysa [fulfilled] her vow [willingly to the deserving deity].54

With this inscription and the mosaic naming Corelia Celsa, we may thus have two women who contributed to the visual program of the Temple of Isis and whom we can identify by name.55 Nonetheless, Manilia Chrysa and Corelia Celsa tend to be eclipsed in the narrative/history of the Temple of Isis that focuses on male patronage. What would happen if we shifted our lens and rewrote a history with female benefactors more fully integrated into the narrative fabric of Pompeii’s Iseum? Obviously, the “fact-making” work alters the archive: it adds more choices to traditional categories and more categories per se to the archive. Reshuffling evidence already in the archive or including heretofore unused evidence is not without effects, nor is it a simple, benign process without consequences. As Trouillot observes, As sources fill the historical landscape with their facts, they reduce the room available to other facts. . . . They will have to gain their right to existence in light of the field constituted by previously created facts. They may dethrone some of these facts, erase, or qualify others. The point remains that sources occupy competing positions in the historical landscape.56

The problem is thus not only the facts we gather together, but also the shaping of the narrative and history. Emphasis on more than a single aspect of identity—gender, class or wealth, status, and their intersection—might result in some messy discourse, but it also invites complexity. As archaeologist Michael Shanks and anthropologist Ian Hodder observe, “Everyday life is not neat and tidy.”57 In this regard, let us pay attention to the calls from two historians of slavery in America, Anne Yentsch and Dell Upton: draw on all sources of information, without limiting them, to take archaeology back to the people—all people.58 Indeed, we need to resist writing a history,59 as messiness, equivocality, and uncertainty are and must continue to be part of the past we describe and interpret.60 This collection of essays will add to the complexity of writing this past by making Pompeian women, too often rendered invisible in the making of archives, integral to the city’s material history, a story that we have yet to fully retrieve, apprehend, and narrate.

24   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

Notes I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland for the invitation to participate in this exciting project and for shepherding this collection of essays through the publication process. They have been generous from the very beginning and are model editors and colleagues. I also wish to recognize Sandra R. Joshel, whose imprint appears throughout this essay; our work together informs much of what follows. The present essay developed from a co-authored paper that was broader in scope (Joshel and Petersen 2016). 1. The exhibition Il Nilo a Pompei: Visioni d’Egitto nel mondo romano brought visitors to the Temple of Isis, the Palestra, and a host of other venues to illustrate Roman and Pompeian interest in Egypt, with displays of sculptures and artifacts enhanced by videos and soundtracks. It was accompanied by a publication under the same title (Poole 2016). 2. On the rebuilding of the Temple of Isis and its historiography, see Petersen 2006, 17–56; Swetnam-Burland 2015, 105–141. 3. The silencing of ancient women—in both past and present-day discourse—has been a topic of recent scholarly attention. See esp. Richlin 2014 (the introduction provides a useful historiography) and Beard 2017, 3–45, for a pointed and provocative argument. 4. CIL 10.846: N(umerius) Popidius N(umerii) f (ilius) Celsinus aedem Isidis terrae motu conlapsam a fundamento p(ecunia) s(ua) restituit hunc decuriones ob liberalitatem cum esset annorum sexs ordini suo gratis adlegerunt. 5. CIL 10.847: N(umerius) Popidius Ampliatus pater p(ecunia) s(ua). 6. CIL 10.848: N(umerii) Popidi(i) Ampliati N(umerii) Popidi(i) Celsini Corelia Celsa. 7. On interpretations of the mosaic, see Petersen 2006, 248, n. 129; Swetnam-Burland 2015, 123–125, 138. 8. See Swetnam-Burland 2015, appendix 3.1, for the other inscriptions. 9. The reasoning scholars deploy in presuming that Ampliatus was formerly enslaved is indirect; his status is not explicitly expressed in Pompeian inscriptions (see Petersen 2006, 50). In addition, scholars have turned to the vivid freedman character Trimalchio in Petronius’s Satyrica to explain the behaviors and motives of formerly enslaved individuals. On Trimalchio as a problematic model for historical freedmen in analyses of Roman art, see Petersen 2003; 2006, 1–13. 10. This construction of events involves the logical error of post hoc, propter hoc, however. The admission of the boy to the decurion order may have been an effect of the benefaction; admission to the decurion order following the rebuilding of the temple does not necessarily mean that desire for conferred admission was the cause or motive for the benefaction. 11. This assertion seems most pointed when scholars have discussed the challenges of finding distinct traces of enslaved individuals in the archaeological remains. See especially Schumacher 2001, 100–101, 238–239; R. Jackson in Thompson 2003, 267–270; Scheidel 2003, 581; Webster 2005, 163. 12. See Gero 2007 for a succinct account of the ways in which archaeological practice has overemphasized the constructed notion of certainty in the historical and material record;

POMPEIAN WOMEN AND THE MAKING OF A MATERIAL HISTORY   25

she identifies the importance of both interrogation and ambiguity in the practice of archaeology as a feminist concern. 13. For example, Tsujimura 1991; Foss 1994, 1997; Allison 1997, 2004a, 2004b, 2006; Berry 1997; van Andringa 2000; Ellis 2004; Kastenmeier 2007; Hartnett 2008, 2011, 2017; Kaiser 2011a, 2011b; Poehler 2011, 2017a; Cova 2013; Berg 2016; Lohmann 2016. 14. Joshel and Petersen 2014. 15. Some time ago, in a discussion about slavery, archaeology, and comparative approaches, Jane Webster suggested that we have much work still to do: “Our sense of where we need to look—and what we need to look for—may not be as well developed as we appear to think” (Webster 2008, 140). 16. Trouillot 1995, 49. 17. Trouillot 1995, 26. 18. Trouillot 1995, 48. 19. Trouillot 1995, 48. 20. Trouillot 1995, 99. 21. This bias prevails also in the history of conservation; see Riva 1999; Kastenmeier 2007. 22. On silencing and enslaved women, see Roth 2007, 9; on the archaeological record, 53. 23. Trouillot 1995, 27. 24. However, these two women often appear as extensions of the male members of the familia, which is not terribly surprising for a society that privileges males and their activities. For alternative interpretations of elite women and their agency in the public sphere, see, for example, Woodhull 2012; Hemelrijk 2015. 25. For example, Shumka 2016. 26. Clarke 1991, 14–19. 27. See Laurence 2007, 154–166, esp. 158. 28. See Allison 1997, 1999a, 2001, 2004a. Cf. Berg 2016; Lohmann 2016. 29. Favro 1999, 369; Pauls 2008, 66. 30. Joshel deserves credit for the concept behind the image (Joshel and Petersen 2016). 31. Flohr 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2009, 2011; Monteix 2007, 2009, 2010; Monteix et al. 2009, 2010, 2011; Benton 2011. 32. Flohr (2009, 173) proposes a new approach to reading the archaeological record, focusing on the daily work of craftsmen and the social interactions among them in their workplaces. 33. See especially Flohr 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013c (esp. 242–287). For attempts to systematize and ground the ways we identify particular workshops, see also Bradley 2002; Monteix 2010; Benton 2011. 34. See Clarke 2003, 112–118, for a full description of the scenes, including the women. 35. Flohr 2013c, 247, n. 19 (for the woman as a worker/inspector); for a synopsis of other interpretations, see Clarke 2003, 115. 36. Flohr 2013c, 247, 283. 37. Flohr 2013c, 283. 38. Kampen 1982; Hawkins 2016, esp. 242–267. Cf. Clarke 2003, 116–117; Lovén 2016. See also Swetnam-Burland, this volume, for discussion of women’s roles in selling goods at shopfronts.

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39. On the archaeological material, see Flohr 2013c, 268. 40. And see Apul. Met. 9.23 for a story about a baker’s wife hiding her lover under an overturned wooden tub for sifting flour. 41. Moeller 1976, 86–87; cf. Joshel and Petersen 2017. For a reproduction of the image, see Flohr 2013c, 119 (fig. 29). 42. Allison 2004a, 2004b; also Kastenmeier 2007; Cova 2013; Berg 2016; Lohmann 2016. 43. Allison 2015, 112, 114–115. In addition, from his research into the excavators’ reports, Flohr (2011, 89–95) has been able to use artifacts and assemblages to analyze the different activities that took place in specific rooms in the house and fullery of Stephanus (I.6.7), elaborating on the actions and possible actors in what must be called “a multifunctional complex that combined residential and commercial functions.” In a different workshop setting, we can also use the quantity and quality of the artifacts and their locations in the House of the Baker (VI.3.3) to map distinct activities (and with them actors) in different areas of the house/bakery: see Carocci et al. 1990, 21–26, for the report of finds from 1809–10; Joshel and Petersen 2014, 128–142. 44. Green 2015a, 2015b. 45. CIL 10.1023: Iunoni Tyches Iuliae Augustae Vener(iae). Campbell 2015, 162–164 (with bibliography, including Kockel 1983, 70–75); Emmerson 2017, 350–351, for alternative interpretations of the inscription. For a discussion of imperial female slaves, see Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 46. Acquisto-Axeloons 2015, 9–15. 47. Acquisto-Axeloons 2015, 9–15. 48. For example, essays in Churchill, Brown, and Jeffrey 2002; Levin-Richardson 2013; Milnor 2014, esp. 191–232. For women in various types of graffiti, see also Damer and Laird, this volume. 49. CIL 4.8820: X K(alendas) Febr(u)a(rias) Ursa peperit die[m] Iovis. 50. Varone 1994, 157–158. 51. CIL 4.9251. Varone 2002a [1994], 126–129; Kropp 2008, 1.5.4/1; McDonald 2015, 134, n. 7; Urbanová and Cuzzolin 2016, 336–337. The original texts are extremely difficult to read (and are the earliest known from Pompeii). 52. CIL 4.9251: (A) . . . ssun (h)oc prim[um] P(hi)lematio Hostili facia[m] capil(l)u(m) cerebru(m) flatus ren[es] ut il(l)ae non suc(c)edat n[ec] qui praec[. . .] odiu(m) v ut il(l)e il(l)am ode(r)i[a]t q(u)omo[do] (h)aec nec agere ne(c) il(l)ae qui(c)qua(m) agere pos(s)it ul(l)a pos P(hi)lematio Hosti[li] / (B) nec agere nec lin[gua nec] ul(l)a(s) res pos(s)it pete[re] quae ul(l)o (h)uma[no] q(u)omodo is eis desert[us] il(l)a deserta sit cun(n)o a(nte) d(iem) N(onum) k(alendas) N(ovembres) defixos a dic il(l)a deser[ta] . . . ida fiat dic il(l)a[e] Vestilia Hostili. Translation after Varone 2002a [1994], 126–129 and Urbanová and Cuzzolin 2016, 336. 53. Ripat 2014, 345. 54. Isidi Aug(ustae) Manilia Chrysa v(otum) [s(olvit)]. Inscription from Tran Tam Tinh 1964, 176, no. 148. See also Cooley and Cooley 2004, 87; RICIS, 504/0206; SwetnamBurland 2015, appendix 3.1. 55. Corelia Celsa may have been responsible for the frescoes in the ekklesiasterion; see Swetnam-Burland 2015, 123–125.

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56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Trouillot 1995, 49–50. Shanks and Hodder 1995, 9. Yentsch 1994, 311–330, esp. 328. See Kampen 1995, 2003. Gero 2007.

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CHAPTER 2

Women’s Work? Investors, Money-Handlers, and Dealers Molly Swetnam-Burland

Women, slave and free, living in Pompeii and the cities of Roman Italy performed all manner of work.1 Many types of evidence testify to their labor: loom weights, fineware, and utensils reveal ordinary domestic labor, including weaving, cooking, and serving;2 literary sources praise women as industrious wool-workers and recognize those with special expertise, particularly in medical professions;3 visual sources from domestic, commercial, and funerary contexts depict women delivering babies, serving food, and selling goods.4 Above all, epitaphs inform us of the wide range of work in which women were active and, by dint of their inclusion, show that women and those posthumously commemorating them took pride in these identities.5 Women served as wet-nurses and child-minders (nutrix, mamma);6 they created fashionable hairstyles (ornatrix);7 they provided medical care (medica, obstetrix);8 they offered sexual services;9 and they belonged to artisanal workshops, where they made textiles (lanipenda, vestiaria) and jewelry (gemmaria, margaritaria).10 Any study of women’s work, however, must confront a profound evidentiary difficulty. Funerary inscriptions often provide the best evidence for the jobs discussed above, and yet women are named by job title in their memorials far less often than men.11 Further, the most common professions are those that accord with traditional domestic roles.12 Thus, we must acknowledge that there were strong social pressures that conditioned the way women (and men) were celebrated after death: they were praised for their virtues, their familial relationships, and for specialized skills only in instances where that expertise was understood to confer some kind of added prestige.13 Memorials, by the nature of the genre, do not present a complete picture of the 29

work that women performed during their lives. In order to come to a more nuanced and complete understanding, we need to bring memorials into conversation with evidence that shows how women thought and acted day to day.14 In this essay, I address the issue of women’s work through the exploration of an unusual case study: a set of fasti, or list of magistrates organized by year, from the reigns of Claudius and Nero that presents the officers of a household association of slaves and freedmen in the imperial family, including several women.15 The role of women in the familia Caesaris is sorely in need of fresh inquiry, for women in the emperor’s service are generally assumed to have wielded little power, accruing less social prestige through their work than their male counterparts, and primarily to have performed domestic labor.16 The women listed on the fasti are notable both for their presence as representatives of a group defined by close-knit working relationships, and because two of them, Julia Secunda and Claudia Hellas, appear to have been designated by a profession that neither ancient literary nor legal authors associate with women: nummulariae, servants who worked with coins or money.17 According to the Digest, women not only required a tutor to transact financial business on their behalf, but were forbidden from serving in some financial professions.18 To make sense of this apparent contradiction, I turn to the rich evidence from the Bay of Naples that shows women at work, particularly informal inscriptions and wax tablets documenting financial transactions. This material shows that women of all classes and means participated in deal-making, sometimes without guardians or male slaves to negotiate (nominally or actually) on their behalf. Some even acted as moneylenders, offering capital with interest. Though their financial activities may have been on a smaller scale than those of many men, the special cases of Pompeii and Herculaneum demonstrate that women worked with money, with an eye to maximizing profits. Thus, it is possible that women in the emperor’s service also helped manage the bottom line, handling and accounting for the money used in the household. Together, these case studies show that looking beyond epitaphs provides us a far richer and more diverse understanding of the daily working lives of Roman women.

Women’s Work in the Familia Caesaris The members of the familia Caesaris were the slaves and freedmen who were owned by and worked for the emperor and his family members—a vast group of men and women who attended the emperor’s person, staffed his properties, and served as administrators in Italy and the provinces. They have attracted scholarly interest both because they are relatively easy to identify—many proudly proclaimed their status as libertus/a Augusti or servus/a Caesaris—and because their proximity to the imperial family meant that some could wield significant influence.19 Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus all relate anecdotes about imperial freedmen, such as 30   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

Marcus Antonius Pallas, who worked under multiple emperors and controlled their financial affairs.20 The roles of female slaves and freedwomen, however, are less well understood, in part because they are seen primarily through their relationships with male family members.21 Because most of the emperor’s slaves were vernae (slaves raised and trained within the familia), women were foundational within the group as mothers to subsequent generations.22 There is scant information, however, about their work. Literary sources mention a few who served as concubines for the emperors, but— unsurprisingly—do not mention the legions of women who performed more ordinary tasks.23 Even so, the lives of these women surely centered around labor. In her study of the Monumentum “Liviae,” which housed slaves and former slaves owned by Livia, Augustus, and other members of the imperial family,24 Susan Treggiari found many women with job titles, including those serving in the typical female professions (nutrix, ornatrix), as well as many who performed low-level service work done by both men and women. There were personal attendants (pedisequae), a masseuse (unctrix), several menders (sarcinatrices), and dressers (a veste).25 Her in-depth study suggests that Livia’s slaves and freedmen, male and female, formed a vast staff, highly organized, rivaling the emperor’s in the number of jobs attested.26 Looking further afield to the familia Caesaris as a whole, it seems that the specialization of the labor force offered some women opportunities beyond what female slaves might typically expect. There are several instances of women in medical professions, such as medica, obstetrix, and ad valetudinariam (sickroom attendant). Women also took on jobs usually performed by men, including in trades that required technical skills and apprenticeship (a silver-worker, argentaria) and in those that required schooling, including serving as a reader of literature for entertainment (lectrix) and as low-level secretaries and scribes (libraria).27 All in all, memorials for women in the familia Caesaris show that they performed the same jobs as slaves in other elite families, but also that they could, at times, have taken on higher-level functions, including work requiring some level of education and, in some cases, quite refined skills. An examination of evidence available for imperial slaves and freedwomen outside funerary contexts helps refine our understanding of their lives and work in the emperor’s household. A set of fasti (CIL6.8639) with an unknown findspot preserves entries for the magistrates in a collegium consisting of imperial slaves and freedmen, many with job titles, serving in the years 48–50 CE and 66–69 CE; it includes several women.28 The fasti are inscribed on two adjoining slabs of marble, part of what was originally a much longer list, arranged in two vertical columns (see appendix for translation and text). The lettering is compact, with guidelines for individual entries, and was inscribed in no fewer than five hands. There are several erasures, both of consuls and of the collegium’s own officers: an officer in 47 CE, one of the consuls in 65 CE, and an officer in 66 CE.29 Together, these practices of inscription INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   31

suggest a document that was updated frequently, both to create a record of the local officers as they were selected and to keep current as these individuals fell from favor or were ejected from the society for violation of its bylaws. Let us first consider what this unusual inscription may tell us of women’s roles as leaders within a community largely defined by working ties, and then look more specifically at what it may reveal of the nature of their work. Voluntary associations like the one documented here were social organizations created by the slaves and freedmen of elite households, groups that shared extensive connections, both familial and professional, for slaves and freedmen often formed personal relationships with those they worked with.30 Though these groups are often called collegia funeratica, because so much of the evidence comes from columbaria, these groups likely engaged in many other activities, including feasting, conducting meetings, and managing collective funds.31 These associations were similar, too, to those formed in households that came together for festivals and religious observances, such as the association documented in a set of fasti from Antium covering the years 31–51 CE, which also included a calendar marking state festivals and imperial birthdays and which was displayed within the grounds of the imperial villa in a building that may have been either a clubhouse or a theater.32 Though the context for CIL6.8639 is unknown, it may document either a household or funerary group or, perhaps, an association that mixed these functions. Like the fasti of Antium, CIL6.8639 may have been displayed in one of the emperor’s properties. But it also may have been displayed near a place of burial, as was the case for another set of early imperial fasti, dated by consular year, which were affixed to the exterior of a tomb on the Via Appia.33 Even if the context was funerary, however, fasti like these were not primarily intended as memorials. In the example from the Via Appia, scribes kept the list updated, not only adding new annual entries of magistrates, but annotating names with a Greek theta when these esteemed members of the society died.34 Only a handful of the magistrates, however, have this notation. These were lists for the living: they documented magistracies, based on those held by elites, which allowed the society’s members to accrue and display social capital to their peers. Though the specific titles of the officers on CIL6.8639 are not given, the fasti probably represent officers in the society’s decurio, “board members” who were able to make decisions and write decrees on the group’s behalf.35 In this instance, it is notable not only that the women attested sometimes served alongside men (as in 65, 66, and 67 CE), but also that women sometimes made up the entire board (as in 68 CE). Given the date of the inscription, it may be tempting to see the rise of women as an indication that Nero’s household was under stress as civil war began, requiring women to step into unusual economic roles. Yet, in my view, politicized interpretations should be avoided: there is ample evidence that female slaves and freedwomen in the imperial family could attain this honor within voluntary associations.36 Others 32   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

achieved different positions of distinction, including that of “member without fees” (immunis), priestess (sacerdos), and even “honored” (honorata), which seems to have been the highest distinction.37 The fasti, then, demonstrate that female slaves and freedwomen in the imperial household were able to rise to positions of power and prestige among those they worked with, even (or by) representing them and engaging in decision-making for the collective. The job titles on the fasti reveal more about the working community of which these women were a part and show how status was determined within that community. It is an incomplete picture, for not all magistrates are identified with the same information. Freedmen tend to present by their legal names, and slaves by a single name and profession. Even so, the titles suggest that the collegium was composed of the staff of a rural, suburban, or maritime villa. There are several slaves who had jobs at the top of the organizational hierarchy, including two estate managers (vilici), two stewards (dispensatores, in charge of disbursement of funds), and a man in charge of the linen department (praefectus lini).38 There were also several men who we must imagine were underlings, including one household servant (atriensis), a servant who tended a shrine (aedituus), an ornamental gardener (topiarius), a man who worked in the fishpond (a piscina), a sickroom attendant (a valetudinario), a tile-maker (tegularius), and a builder (structor). The image of the villa drawn from these names and designations is of a center of economic production, harvesting flax, raising eels or fish, and making roof tiles.39 While the villa may also have had opulent residential quarters, the list of its staff does not suggest that extravagant displays were its primary purpose—the painters, polishers, physicians, gem setters, and librarians who populated the emperor’s villa in Antium are nowhere in evidence.40 The fact that both laborers and administrators appear on the fasti is telling: the leadership of the collegium did not mirror the villa’s working hierarchy. The collegium provided an opportunity for lower-status workers who took orders from overseers in their daily lives (gardeners, builders, tile-makers, area staff, and most women) to exercise authority over the social life of their peers and superiors in the year they served as decuriones. Social value in this community, in other words, was not solely determined by the kind of labor each performed, but by the relationships they had with their peers. To this point, it has been possible to discuss the prestige that the imperial freedwomen on the fasti garnered as members of a community largely defined by working ties, and to say something of the way they exercised that power in social settings by hosting feasts, formulating decrees, and so on. But the nature of the work they performed is more difficult to determine. Does the abbreviation numm next to the women’s names indicate something about their profession? There are two proposals for how to read the abbreviation, which appears six times on the inscription. It may either be an abbreviated job title (nummularius/a)41 or employed as an indication that money was spent by the officer to acquire the position, nummis “with coins.” Mommsen argued for the former, on INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   33

the basis that there was no other language in the inscription that mentioned the act of giving or stated that funds were given in accordance with the bylaws of the society. Although he viewed it as unusual for women and low-status workers to be designated as money-workers, Mommsen thought that nummularius might be understood as an indication of a slave who combined two jobs within the purview of household.42 Though rare, there is evidence for nummularius added to other job titles;43 there is also evidence that workers who engaged in manual labor kept informal accounts of their work.44 If indeed these women served as nummulariae, we might imagine that they contributed to the prosperity of the villa by working with money, perhaps related to the accounts of the various “departments.” Other scholars have suggested, in contrast, that numm was not a job title.45 Degrassi preferred the reading of nummis “with coins,” understood as recognition that the person so designated had paid entrance fees in exchange for their position of authority. He relied exclusively on a comparison to the fasti of Antium, where fees are mentioned.46 There are problems with both readings. We find no other instances of women named nummulariae in inscriptions or texts; the term is a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once in the corpus of literature or inscriptions. To my knowledge, however, there are also no precedents for nummis employed standing alone as a reference to an unspecified sum of money. The word nummus (coin) appears most often in inscriptions to convey specific information about amounts—usually with cardinal numbers, but sometimes with designations that indicate the source of the funding or agreements about its use. It was used frequently in financial transactions of the type documented in wax tablets, and rarely in lapidary inscriptions from the environs of Rome and in Italy.47 Instead, sua impensa and sua pecunia were employed in inscriptions to speak about money without reference to a specific sum.48 Further, though officers in societies similar to the one documented in CIL 6.8639 did sometimes pay fees to secure their positions, documentation of these fees both employed formulaic language recognizing the gift and also provided precise information about the amounts paid.49 Thus, while I acknowledge that the reading remains uncertain, given the presence of other job titles and the absence of formulaic language regarding fees, I cautiously advocate the first view, reading numm as a title—nummularii and nummulariae, “money-handlers.” Let us turn, then, to consider what kind of work this job title encompassed. The word nummularius derives from nummulus, a coin of small size or value. It appears in literary sources in a way that implies a low-level banker, offering small-scale loans, holding funds as security, and so on.50 Nummularii often worked in public settings, like basilicas, temples, and other public spaces where financial transactions occurred, but they also had places in the workforces of large private estates.51 Andreau has argued that before the mid-second century CE, nummularii were not truly bankers,

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but were instead those who handled money as physical labor, counting coins, ensuring they were not counterfeit, or using weights and measures to verify or convert currency.52 There is material evidence for this kind of physical work. Some coins bearing signs of intervention while in circulation appear in Pompeii and other cities, particularly coins cut in half or quarters to create smaller denominations.53 There are also roughly a hundred extant bone or ivory tesserae, nearly all from Rome and Italy, that were affixed to bags of coins as assurance of the amount or weight of money contained therein.54 These were formulaic but served as official documents, inscribed with a date, the year, the name of the master, and the name of the person who had counted or verified the goods—almost always a slave. Nothing concrete connects these tesserae with nummularii (for none of the slaves is named outright as such), but it seems likely that money-handlers could have counted and verified coins for their masters in similar ways.55 The job of the nummularius emerges, on the one hand, as low within the hierarchy of money-oriented work. Unlike bankers (argentarii), the nummularii of the first century CE did not generally engage in deals for profit; unlike account managers (dispensatores), they did not allocate and make decisions about money’s use. On the other hand, the nummularius occupied a position that required formal training and great confidence on the part of the master. Could such work have been performed by Roman women, such as those attested on the fasti? As a strictly legal matter, women were barred from jobs that involved lending or working with money in a way intended to generate interest. The Severan era jurist Callistratus, adding a note to a section of the Digest that treats contracts, states that “women are considered to have been removed from the office of the banker [argentarius], since this is man’s work.”56 Yet the interest of the jurists was not principally in the role of women in the financial world, but rather the circumstances in which legal documents must be produced in transactions between bankers and those they were dealing with, and the extent to which a person who has legal power over another was obligated by a transaction to which he was not himself party. Both argentarii and nummularii were required to keep detailed records and to produce them on demand so as to protect the parties involved.57 In other words, what distinguished these jobs, in the eyes of the jurists, from those of other slaves working with money by the second century CE (e.g., the dispensator) was their authority to generate documents which might create obligations for a master, a father, a tutor, and so on. The statement that women are prohibited from acting as bankers, therefore, may express not a limitation on women’s ability or propensity to work with money, but rather a denial to women of the legal authority to create such documents or transact in ways that might be understood to impose legal obligations on others.58 Further, the jurists’ discussion is a statement of legal principle, not reportage of what actually happened in the type of transactions they describe. Indeed, the fact that

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   35

the jurists stipulate a prohibition on female bankers suggests a controversy over the question that required resolution and may even imply that women were engaging in these activities. The women documented on CIL6.8639 emerge as unusual in several regards. Though a handful of women are documented in funerary inscriptions as having held similar magistracies within voluntary associations, the fasti alone allow us to see women occupying these leadership roles in something like a daily life context—serving alongside men, in positions that granted them temporary authority over those they lived and worked with. The abbreviation numm next to their names may tell us something of their labor as part of that community—or it may not. Certainly, the jurists, writing centuries afterward, would not have approved women performing this work. Yet the nature of the fasti suggests that we look to other bodies of evidence to better understand the information therein, seeking situations in which we see women in action. Evidence from Campania illustrates that some of the jurists’ concern may have come from real-world situations, in which women not only managed money, but sometimes even engaged in small-scale lending. In the following section, I explore this evidence in depth, exposing the gulf between idealized expectations for women’s behavior and the reality of how they invested their time and their means.

Making a Profit in Campania There is ample evidence from Campania that women engaged in various types of financial transactions, most notably the wax tablets belonging to two lending houses, that of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus (15–62 CE) in Pompeii and that of the Sulpicii (29–61 CE) who worked in Puteoli, though the documentation was discovered stored in baskets at the site of Murrecine.59 There are sixteen receipts from the archive of Iucundus that deal with women’s money. Though most of the transacting parties were men representing women, in at least one case the woman herself was present to make the deal and served as one of the witnesses.60 In the archive of the Sulpicii, who appear to have been intermediaries facilitating money transfers related to auctions operating in Puteoli, women appear frequently, involved in roughly a quarter of all interactions.61 The women range from those of the senatorial class, including Domitia Lepida, aunt of the emperor Nero, to freedwomen and slaves. Eva Jakab explores how some transactions not only involved funds belonging to women, but also reflect female agency and decision-making, even when intermediaries, like trusted slaves, represented them. One woman, Caesia Priscilla, borrows money twice. She clearly has an established account with the Sulpicii in her own name; in one instance the tablets refer to a letter that she may have written herself, perhaps as a contract.62 In other examples, women took an even more active role. One tablet from the Sulpicii archive documents a loan between the borrower Euplia, a woman

36   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

represented in the transaction by her male guardian, and the lender Titiana Antracis, who apparently acted on her own without a tutor.63 The women in these cases were not, of course, “moneylenders” or “money workers,” because they were protected from direct engagement in the matters, whether by a tutor or other representative, or by using the Sulpicii or Iucundus as intermediaries. But they emerge as savvy investors, actively engaged in deals intended to bring a good return. They act in ways that confound the expectation drawn from legal sources that women did not or could not represent themselves in financial transactions. Indeed, Jane Gardner has argued that women could and did engage in many (though not all) of the same interactions as men, but that those of higher social standing were less likely to be present in person than those of lower standing.64 Women also engaged in loan arrangements and deals without intermediaries like the firms of Iucundus and the Sulpicii. Another set of wax tablets found in house VIII.2.3 in Pompeii documents a loan in which a free woman, Didicia Magaris, is the lender and a freedwoman, Poppaea Note, the borrower. The amount of the loan is not specified, but it must have been large, for Poppaea entrusted Didicia with two slaves worth 1,400 sesterces each as collateral. Only one tutor is mentioned, D. Capratius Ampliatus, who authorizes Poppaea’s action. The agreement was sealed in the presence of four witnesses.65 The context in which the tablets were discovered—wrapped in cloth with golden earrings and a set of silver tableware, under the stairs of a furnace of baths in a private house—has suggested to scholars that the tablets were in Didicia Magaris’s possession, either safeguarded as proof of her ownership of the slaves or packed up with other easily portable wealth as the building’s owner fled the eruption.66 Whatever the reason for their deposition, these tablets document a case in which a woman was lending substantial funds in her own control for profit. When we look to the evidence for women of lower social standing and means, a different picture emerges: women played a greater role in a range of smaller transactions involving money (sales, account keeping, moneylending), documented less formally than the legally witnessed wax tablets. Visual evidence from shops and street fronts in Pompeii shows women selling and serving goods, which would require taking payment, making change, and perhaps also keeping accounts.67 For example, the commercial scenes outside the Shop of Verecundus (IX.7.6–7) show a woman standing at an L-shaped counter with a portable table set up in front laden with goods, shoes, and bundles of colored cloth (fig. 2.1). Behind her, there is a closed cabinet with small vials, perhaps dyes or lotions. A client sits on a wooden bench in front of her. Their gestures—she holding up the goods, he pointing to them—may suggest that they are haggling over price. Evidence from inscribed objects, usually the containers in which goods were sold, also show women as vendors: a woman named Gavia Severa sold lomentum, a type of cosmetic lotion, and honey;68 a freedwoman named Umbricia Fortunata helped manage the famous fish-sauce business of Lucius

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   37

FIGURE 2.1.

Fresco from the façade of the Shop of Verecundus (IX.7.6–7).

Umbricius Scaurus.69 Finally, graffiti show that women could set up shops for goods they probably did not produce themselves, as in the case of a wine-seller mentioned in a graffito from the basilica.70 Recent work on Roman marketplaces shows that even such quotidian transactions as selling a bolt of cloth, a vial of lotion, or an amphora of fish sauce may have involved complex negotiations and record-keeping practices. Claire Holleran has shown that there were expansive networks among even street vendors, which influenced supply and demand of goods of all types from fresh produce to luxury goods to recycled materials.71 Cameron Hawkins has argued that artisans often allowed clients to buy on credit, even for small-scale purchases.72 These deals were probably frequently oral agreements, but a few graffiti from Pompeii document them. One, from the Grand Palaestra (also known as the Campus ad Amphitheatrum), lists goods sold on speculation and the amounts collected as repayment.73 Another graffito 38   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

from the same monument preserves the financial records of a teacher, and shows which students paid their fees in part or in full.74 Other graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum also appear to be accounts of prices and daily expenses.75 The inscribers may have written their notes on the walls to create quasi-public records (easy to find only for those who know where to look), or they may simply have used the walls because they were close to hand and cost nothing to use. Similar records were also kept on wax tablets, scraps of papyrus, even, in one case, a piece of fallen plaster.76 Graffiti taking the form of numerals, without other elaboration, are also common in Pompeii. These may have served as reminders or records for those who wrote them, and they also illustrate the process through which calculation was practiced and taught.77 A numerical graffito, from a shop in Herculaneum (Insula Orientalis II.9), appeared in connection with a full alphabet in Greek: this case shows how the owner used tally marks to keep track of his wares and sales, but also illustrates the close connection between such acts of writing and educational systems.78 A crucial point is that, in nearly all of these cases, we do not know if the accounts or lists were kept by women or men, for no information about the author is provided. Yet there is ample evidence that women wrote graffiti,79 and no reason to think that women did not also participate in epigraphic culture in this way. All of which is to say that, even if women merely helped in family businesses by selling goods, there was a lot more to the work than standing at a counter and showing off wares. The foregoing renders all the more remarkable the rare cases in which we do possess good evidence for women lending or investing their money to generate interest—engaging in deals close in nature to those the jurists describe. A woman named Faustilla made two loans to another woman, named Vettia. These loans are documented in a graffito from house VI.14.28 in Pompeii, in which the women act for themselves, without intermediaries.80 Koenraad Verboven has suggested that the forms of these graffiti emulate legal contracts, and he suggests they may have been records of oral agreements.81 Two other graffiti in house I.8.13 also document Faustilla’s business. Written in close proximity to each other, these records are surrounded by numerical graffiti that suggest that someone (probably Faustilla) was also engaged in calculation. In these cases, Faustilla accepted goods as collateral for the loan, in one case a cloak and in the other case a pair of gold earrings.82 Though these amounts are far smaller than those attested in wax tablets, it is likely that for lower-class women the sums were substantial—as was the interest. Faustilla was not unique in putting herself forward as a lender. Another graffito in Pompeii serves as an advertisement of sorts, for a woman named Somene who had fifty denarii to lend out.83 Though Faustilla is sometimes referred to as a “pawnbroker,” in large part because two of the graffiti mention collateral, it is worth noting that many exchanges we think of as more typical moneylending also involved security for the loans in the form of physical goods—wheat, chickpeas, slaves.84 Faustilla and Somene need not INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   39

be thought of as practicing a different profession than men who made loans, but performing the same kind of work on a smaller scale.

Conclusion: Looking Past/Beyond the Label The evidence from the Bay of Naples, then, shows that, despite what the jurists say, women of all social classes dealt with money, some directly and some indirectly, with the goal of making a profit. To this point, however, there is still nothing linking them directly to the job of the nummularius, a slave or former slave who worked with money on the master’s behalf. Only one male nummularius is known from the area, documented in a graffito from the Suburban Baths of Herculaneum: “Hermeros, to his mistress Primigenia: come to Puteoli, in the Tyanianus neighborhood, and ask after Hermeros, slave of Phoebus, from Messius the nummularius.”85 Guiseppe Camodeca has suggested that this refers to a neighborhood in the port city where foreigners lived, where one might expect people would need the services of those who converted currency.86 Yet the work of the money-changer or coin-counter was equally practiced in the home, where elite men conducted personal business with friends and clients. A graffito from the House of the Menander (I.10.4) in Pompeii may be a record of such activity, seeming to suggest one kind of currency cashed out for another.87 Still-lifes meant to show a home as prosperous also include representations of money, scrolls, and legal tablets—everything needed for a good investment.88 The upper register of a still-life scene from the estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3) includes a closed money bag and two large piles of coins, carefully sorted, with writing implements of all kinds below, including a papyrus scroll, and tablets (see fig. 5.4). The scene represents the owner’s wealth in a literal way, but also alludes to the labor that went into keeping track of funds and generating interest.89 The work performed by domestic slaves, male and female, was not just the menial labor of cooking, cleaning, and childminding, but also included helping manage a family’s assets, which were usually stored in the home.90 If we step away from the specific title, nummularius, to think rather about the work it describes—counting money, keeping accounts, engaging in small-scale lending—it is apparent that women, including women who were former slaves, had the capacity to and indeed did perform this work in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Puteoli. A crucial point is that we do not know how these women would have described their work, or what job titles they might have adopted to describe themselves. Yet there were women, like Umbricia Fortunata, who helped manage businesses for their masters and former masters. The same could well have been true of those freed slaves in the imperial household—like Julia Secunda and Claudia Hellas—who had greater opportunities and education than most. On a list that primarily provided information about household members serving as magistrates and the work they did for the emperor, these women are listed with the abbreviation 40   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

numm next to their names, which I have advocated reading as a job title. Debated though the reading may be, if we are to dismiss the female magistrates on CIL6.8639 as nummulariae, it must be for reasons other than that dealing with money was “man’s work,” as Callistratus put it. In the end, the precise nature of the work performed by the women on the fasti remains impossible to pin down. Yet I hope I have demonstrated how bringing together diverse testimonia of daily life activity can shift our understanding of women’s work more broadly. Commemorations, valuable though they are, present a picture of labor conformed to socially constructed ideals of proper conduct, for women and for men. It is useful to keep in mind that the rich information for occupations in Pompeii comes largely from electoral endorsements, tablets, and graffiti. Funerary inscriptions stress elected positions, priesthoods, and other honors, but provide little information about the world of work as it was seen by those who performed it or by others.91 The cases studies explored here do not speak to each other directly, for the women lived and labored in different environments. But together they illustrate that women possessed significant social and financial agency, wielded through their work. Though the financial activities of the “ordinary” women of Pompeii may have been smaller in scale than those of men, women worked with money, strove to maximize profits, and kept records of their efforts. The freedwomen documented on the imperial fasti were selected by their peers, including by individuals who oversaw their working activities, to represent the group and were given authority to make ritual observances, plan feasts, and formulate decrees. Together, these cases show that through their labor, women could do more than simply make money—they could gain the respect of their peers and authority to shape their lives and those of their colleagues.

Appendix. CIL 6.8639 (=10.6637) Text (after Henriksen 2013, no. 22.) Column 1: 1 [---]ṣ Acratus [numm] [---]r·us tegularius numm [---]ros structor numm [---]ṣ Metrodas numm 5

[---L.] Vipstano Poplicola cos [---]dius Amarantus [---]dius Epaphroditus

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   41

[---] vilicus line erased 10 [Q. Veranio] C. Pompeio Gallo cos [---] topiar [---] aedit [---] Amarantus [---] lini praefectus 15 [C. Antistio Ve]tere M. Suillio Nerulino cos [---]n·s disp [---]nus disp [---] Cosmus [---]tus 20 [---] cos Column 2: 1

Ti. Claudius Daphn[---] line erased Euphemus atren Claudia Fausti· [---]

5

Altoria Phlogi[---] Claudia Hellas numm C. Luccio Telesino C. Suetonio [---] Pannychus Sita a valetudi[---]

10 A. Caicilius a pisc[---] Claudia Corin[---] line erased L Iulio Rufo [---] Claudia Tyche [---] 15 Ti. Claudius Q. Ponti[---] Antonius Faustu·[s] Albanus vilicu·[---] P Galerio Trachalo [---] Antonia Musa

42   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

20 Claudia Zosime Iulia Secunda numm[---] [--- S]ulpicio Galba II T. Vinio [---] [---]llus [---] [----]s [----] 25 [----]us [----] Translation Column 1: 1

. . . s Acratus, money-handler (nummularius) . . . rus, tile-maker (tegularius) money-handler . . . ros, builder (structor) money-handler . . . s Metrodas money-handler

5

. . . L. Vipstanus Poplicola consuls

48 CE

. . . dius Amarantus . . . dius Epaphroditus . . . villa manager (vilicus) line erased 10 Q. Veranius, C. Pompeius Gallus consuls

49 CE

. . . ornamental gardener (topiarius) . . . caretaker of a shrine (aedituus) . . . Amarantus . . . in charge of linen production (praefectus lini) 15 C. Antistius Vetus, M. Suillius Nerulinus consuls

50 CE

. . . ns, steward (dispensator) . . . nus, steward . . . Cosmus . . . tus 20 . . . consuls

Column 2: 1

Ti. Claudius Daphnus

65 CE

line erased

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   43

Euphemus, house-servant or major-domo (atriensis) Claudia Fausti . . . 5

Altoria Phlogi . . . Claudia Hellas, money-handler C. Luccius Telesinus C. Suetonius [consuls]

66 CE

Pannychus Sita, servant in charge of the sickroom (a valetudinario) 10 A. Caecilius servant in charge of the pool (a piscina) Claudia Corin . . . line erased L Iulius Rufus . . . [consuls]

67 CE

Claudia Tyche . . . 15 Ti. Claudius, Q Ponti . . . Antonius Faustus Albanus, villa manager P. Galerius Trachalus . . . [consuls]

68 CE

Antonia Musa 20 Claudia Zosime Iulia Secunda money-handler [--- S]ulpicius Galba II, T. Vinius [consuls]

69 CE

. . . llus ...s 25 . . . us

Notes I offer my deep thanks to Brenda Longfellow for organizing the “Women in the Bay of Naples” symposium (one of the most engaging conferences I have attended!) and for inviting me to serve as co-editor of this volume. 1. In what follows, I define “work” as actions or activities undertaken to help an individual earn a living or make money. I emphasize epigraphic evidence that describes women’s work through job titles or that documents their participation in certain kinds of transactions. Yet at the outset I acknowledge that women in the ancient world did all manner of labor that was not valorized with a job title but was nonetheless crucial to the economic stability of the household. 2. Joshel and Petersen 2014, especially 24–87 for domestic labor by slaves of both genders. 3. Though it was a trope that women worked with wool as a display of virtue, cloth

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production also contributed to the economic well-being of a household. See, e.g., Erdkamp 2009, 90–94, and Caldwell, this volume. For women in medicine, see Ripat 2016. 4. Kampen 1981. 5. For a useful overview, see Becker 2016. 6. See, e.g., Bradley 1991, 76–102: nutrices were wet-nurses, who breastfed children who were not their own; mamma could be used for mothers, but also for child-minders. 7. See, e.g., Stephens 2008; Bartman 2001. 8. See, e.g., Laes 2010. 9. See Levin-Richardson, Trimble, Jacobelli, and Powers, this volume. 10. These examples are drawn from Joshel 1992, 211–212, n. 25. See also Holleran 2013. 11. For estimates of frequency, see Joshel’s study (1992, 68–70) of memorials from Rome, which is comprehensive but not exhaustive. Hasegawa’s study of specific columbaria (2005, 30–32) found that women with job titles were even rarer, representing between 2 and 4 percent of the total memorials. 12. See Joshel 1992, table 3.1. 13. Hasegawa (2005, 30–32) shows that, in many columbaria, between 68 and 80 percent of the inscriptions, for both men and women, did not provide any information on profession. Borbonus (2014, 127–128) studied more than fifteen different contexts. He shows that reportage of occupation varied greatly, from 1.4 percent to 31 percent, likely depending on the nature of the community represented and how they identified their common ties. 14. See also Petersen, this volume. 15. CIL 6.8639 = 10.6637; Inscr. Ital. 13.2.32. 16. Weaver 1972, 177: “There was no equality of opportunity or pay for women in the Imperial administration, except in the domestic palace service where women slaves and freedwomen were required for those occupations which were common to all large households with a slave familia.” 17. For discussion of the abbreviation of this word as it appears on the inscription and theories for its reconstruction, see discussion below and n. 41, n. 47. 18. Callistratus (ca. 198–211 CE), Dig. 2.13.12, says that women cannot be argentarii, “bankers.” 19. On the familia Caesaris, see still the treatments in Weaver 1972; Boulvert 1970, 1974. For new directions: Panciera 2007; Mouritsen 2011, 93–109; MacLean 2018, 104–130. 20. On Pallas, e.g., Tac. Ann. 12.1.1–3, 12.53; Plin. Ep. 7.29, 8.6.1. 21. Women were described in inscriptions by the status designations of serva Caesaris or liberta Augusti less frequently than were men. Thus, the identification of women in the emperor’s household is based on nomenclature (i.e., a name that reflects that of the emperor as former master) or is extrapolated based on the self-identification of the husbands, sons, and brothers who commemorated them. See Weaver 1972, 174–178. 22. See especially Weaver 1972, 170–178. Boulvert (1974, 257–319) also focuses his discussion of imperial slaves and freedwomen on issues of marriage and status. 23. Acte, concubine of Nero: Suet. Ner. 28, 50; Tac. Ann. 13.12, 13.13, 13.46, 14.2, 14.63; Dio Cass. 61.7. Caenis, concubine of Vespasian: Suet. Vesp. 3, 21; Suet. Dom. 12.3; Dio Cass. 66.14. 24. See Borbonus 2014, cat. 8, though the name of the monument given by excavators

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   45

suggests that this columbarium housed only slaves that belonged to Livia. The columbarium also served as a resting place for slaves and freedmen owned by other members of the imperial family, including both Augustus and Tiberius. 25. Treggiari 1975, 72–77, appendix; Treggiari 1976 also includes mention of many women from the familia Caesaris. 26. Treggiari 1975, 57–60. See also Hasegawa 2005, 30–51. 27. E.g.: sacinatrices: CIL 6.9037–9039; medica: CIL 6.8926; obstetrix: CIL 6.8947, 8948, 8949; argentaria: CIL 6.5184; ad valetudinariam: CIL 6.9084; lectrix: CIL 6.8786; libraria: CIL 6.8882. 28. See above, n. 15. Other editions and photographs: Thomasson 1997, no. 148; Henriksen 2013, no. 22. There are ten men and women who appear to have been imperial freedmen and slaves. Several other members were affiliated with the gens Antonia, close relations of the emperors by marriage. For discussion of the nomenclature and detailed description of the stone, Henriksen 2013, no. 22. 29. Similar erasures on other inscriptions that document collegia seem to reflect not acts of broader political censure (such as so-called damnatio memoriae, though this may apply to the consul who was erased in this case) but rather the collective decision-making of the body that a member had been admitted contrary to the group’s leges. See especially Tran 2007. 30. The bibliography on voluntary associations (collegia) is vast, and most recent work centers on professional rather than funerary associations. For a survey of scholarship, see Perry 2011, and for new approaches, see, e.g., Liu 2005, Tran 2006, van Nijf 1997. For marriages in the imperial household, see above n. 22. 31. For work on funerary and domestic associations, most often studied through place of burial in columbaria, see, e.g., Boulvert 1974, 242–250; Hasegawa 2005; Borbonus 2014, especially 12–15. For the other activities of “burial clubs,” including having meetings, managing funds, and feasting, see Borbonus 2014, 223, n. 47. 32. CIL 10.6638; Inscr. Ital. 13.2.16. On the findspot, see Cacciotti 2010, 41–42; Chioffi 2016, 437. 33. These fasti are preserved in two fragments, CIL 6.4714, 6.10395, Inscr. Ital. 13.2.23, documenting the years 3 BCE–1 CE; the text lists the decuriones (many, though not all, of whom were imperial freedmen and slaves) and says that they “purchased” (emit, emerunt) their position. That the men appear to have been slaves is based on nomenclature. This monument also included burials of a society of musicians. On the monument, see Borbonus 2014, cat. 3. 34. No thetas were included on CIL6.8639, yet the line erasures (discussed above) are evidence of a similar practice: members returned to the inscription and added or removed information to keep it current. 35. For the titles frequently found in columbaria, see the brief discussion of Borbonus (2014, 130–132) with sources cited. For elaboration, see Boulvert 1974, 239–242, and still Waltzing 1895–1900, 1.363–425. 36. For all titles from the imperial associations, see Waltzing 1895–1900, 4.162–178. For specific examples of female decuriones from communal tombs, see CIL 6.4019, 4056, 4057, 4058, 4059, 4075, 4079, 4083, 4223, 4459, 4484.

46   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

37. Immunes: CIL 6.3951, 4087, 4223, 4265; sacerdos: CIL 6.4003, 4497; honorata: CIL 6.5744. 38. For discussion of the roles of the managers (vilicus, dispensator), see Carlsen 1994. For other roles, see Treggiari 1975; Joshel 1992. 39. On the growing and uses of flax: Plin. HN 19.2. On the imperial brick industry and the role of slaves: Weaver 1998. On fishponds: Higginbotham 1997. 40. On the staff at Antium, see Houston 1985. 41. See, e.g., OLD, s.v. “nummularius,” which lists as separate entries the adjective form (s.v. “nummularius1”: “of or relating to the changing of currency”); a masculine noun (s.v. “nummularius2”: “a kind of small-scale state banker, employed esp. to change foreign currency and test coins”); and a feminine noun (s.v. “nummularia”: fem. of nummularius2). 42. CIL 10.6637, p. 662: numm(ularius), numm(ularia): nam quod item in mentem venit nummos dedisse hos ex nescio qua college vix videtur posse admitti, cum dandi vocavbulum not adsit. Two men’s names on the list combine the abbreviation with a job title, structor numm and tector numm. 43. CIL 13.8353, a negotiator nummularius. 44. Manual laborers sometimes had joint titles, such as a pictor aedituus, a painter who also served as a caretaker of a shrine (CIL 6.9102). Certainly, construction involved record making and accounting, as a series of dipinti on the walls of an exedra in the Baths of Trajan attest—these tracked the progress of a team of builders over time, and it is not a far stretch to imagine that records of money and manpower were also kept by teams of builders. On the inscriptions, see Volpe 2008. 45. For summary of this view, see Henricksen 2013, no. 22, 83, n. 196. Proponents of this view argue that those workers who dealt with money in the imperial court were more usually called argentarii (bankers) or dispensatores (managers who controlled accounts). It should be noted that, despite these assertions, there are indeed several other attested imperial nummularii, listed below, n. 54. 46. Inscr. Ital. 13.2.26, note at 334. 47. There is only one instance in CIL 6 of the abbreviation numm standing for nummis, CIL 6.1785 = 31931, where it is clear that it refers to money because an amount is stipulated. Other examples from Italy of nummus are similarly qualified to denote specific amounts, e.g., AÉpigr 1974, 155; CIL 14.5037; AÉpigr 1993, 468. For numm in wax tablets, where the abbreviation also appears with numerical amounts, e.g., CIL 4.3340, no. 3, no. 6, no. 21 (and many others); TSulp 27; TSulp 46. Nummus also appears in several poetic graffiti from Pompeii, paired with the adjective communis to indicate that it refers to the treasury, apparently a joke or comment on use of public funds: e.g., CIL 4.1597, 1766, 1251. 48. In contrast, too, these phrases are common. The following examples reflect all usages of these phrases from the city of Rome (CIL 6). sua impensa: CIL 6.1257, 1258, 19213, 20218, 27571, 29726, 30768, 30958, 32306; sua pecunia: CIL 6.108, 212, 213, 223, 260, 327, 401, 542, 958, 1259, 1383, 1852, 2616, 4850, 5598, 5874, 8117, 9144, 10302, 10332, 10540, 11678, 13661, 17709, 20050, 21470, 26426, 29028, 29748, 29979, 29981, 29984, 30508, 30556, 30692, 30716, 30720, 30812, 30866, 30985, 31034, 31049, 31062, 33968, 34476, 36855, 37616, 37820. 49. For example, several variations of the same formula appear in the Antium fasti, which

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   47

50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

67.

Degrassi cited as comparison (see n. 46). None are similar to CIL6.8639. Instead, these entries note the specific sum paid and mention the approval of the decurio, which probably refers to the society’s officers; e.g., Inscr. Ital. 13.2.26, III,1. 9: ex d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) allec(tus) sesteriis mille, “the magistrate was adlected with 1,000 sestercii, by decree of the decuriones”; Inscr. Ital. 13.2.26, II.2,14–15: Pro magi(stratu) ex d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) sesteriis mille sescentis, “for the magistracy, by decree of the decurion, 1600 sestercii.” See above, n. 41. The following list is illustrative rather than comprehensive. Nummularii working in basilicas: CIL 6.9709, 9711, 9712; in the circus: CIL 6.9712; in sanctuaries or temples: CIL 1.3067, 10.5689; in households or villas: CIL 3.3989, 10.6699. Andreau 1999, 31. Inscriptions relating to the nummularii in the familia Caesaris suggest that this was not a role of significant authority but held by people working under those managing the mint or major accounts. E.g., CIL 6.8463, the “nummularius of the office of the moneyers”; CIL 6.9709, an imperial freedman working in the basilica Julia; CIL 6.9710, a nummularius who was the slave of an imperial freedwoman; CIL 6.3989, an imperial freedman. For the many uses of live coinage in Pompeii, see Hobbs 2013, and especially 57–58 for severed coins. For discussion, Andreau 1999, 81–89; RE 17.2, s.v. “nummularius,” 1421–1434. For different names and types of bankers, see Andreau 1999, 30–49. It is not possible to say, with precision, which kind of money-handler produced or worked with the tesserae, for none mention a specific occupation. Dig. 2.13.12: Feminae remotae videntur ab officio argentarii, cum ea opera virilis sit. Dig. 2.13.1–14. For example, Ulpian expressly states that male slaves may be bankers (argentarii) since they lend money from their peculium, and he explores the master’s liability for a slave’s conduct as a banker depending on whether the master knows of the money’s use or not (Dig. 2.13.3–5). For women in Roman law, see, e.g., Gardner 1986. For the findspots, history, and authoritative editions of the tabulae, see Meyer 2008, 126–127; Camodeca 2009. For a recent overview, see Verboven 2017. Gardner 1999, 23. Jakab 2013, 130. Jakab 2013, 135–144; TSulp 58; TSulp 71. Gardner (1999, 15) notes that it is also possible that the slave is using money from a peculium. TSulp 60; for discussion, see Jakab 2013. Gardner 1999, 27. CIL 4.3340, 155. For translation including discussion of the text (which takes two legal forms) and witnesses, see Meyer 2008, 141–142. For discussion of nomenclature for women, see Damer, this volume. For detailed discussion of the findspot and the suggestion that the package of tablets and goods may have been prepared in 79 CE, see Camodeca 2009, 19–20. See also Cooley and Cooley 2014, H60, 258–259 for translation and discussion. E.g., women working in bars: Clarke 2003, 165–168; Hartnett 2017, 269–275. For women as vendors, see also Holleran 2013.

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68. CIL 4.5737 (lomentum), 5741 (honey? mel thym imum), 5842, 5843, where no product is listed. 69. Curtis (1991, 95 n. 227) argues that Umbricia Fortunata managed a workshop that was still under her former master’s ownership. She is documented in CIL 4.2573, 5661, 5662, 5674, 5675, and likely several other places where her full name is not preserved. 70. CIL 4.1819. 71. Holleran 2012, 224–231. 72. Hawkins 2017. 73. CIL 4.8566b. For discussion, see Hawkins 2017, 79. 74. Cooley and Cooley 2014, H75–H76, 264–265. CIL 4.8562, 8565. 75. Other price lists from the Grand Palaestra or Campus ad Amphitheatrum: CIL 4.8561; from VII.2.30, CIL 4.4889; from an atrium connected to a shop (IX.7.24–25), CIL 4.5380. 76. See Del Mastro 2003 for papyri found in Pompeii. Few are legible, and most appear to have been records or documents rather than scrolls containing literature. For the plaster inscription inscribed with charcoal, CIL 4.6879, and discussion, see Swetnam-Burland 2020. 77. See Benefiel 2010, 81–84. 78. Benefiel and Sypniewski 2018, 225–229. 79. See Zimmerman Damer, Levin-Richardson this volume. 80. CIL 4.4528 (IV.14.28): IV Idus Feb Vetiia XXX usu(ra) a(sses) XII Febra Faustilla XXV usu(ra) a(sses )VIIII, “8th of February. Vettia, 20 denarii: usury 12 asses. 5th of February from Faustilla, 15 denarii: usury 8 asses.” 81. Verboven 2017, 374–375. For similar view, see Cooley and Cooley 2014, H61–H63, 259–260. 82. CIL 4.8203, 8204. 83. CIL 4.5123, from doorway IX.5.19: Somene dupu(n)diu(m) (denariis) L loc(at), “Somene offers 50 denarii, with interest of 1 dupondius.” Another graffito, CIL 4.2106, may be a case in which the author accepted goods from a woman named Valeria (in collateral for a loan?). 84. For security in the loans of the Sulpicii, see Andreau 1999, 74–75. 85. CIL 4.10676: Hermeros Primigeniae dominae / veni Puteolos in vico Tyaniano et quaere / a Messio num(m)ulario Hermerotem Phoebi. 86. Camodeca 2000b. 87. CIL 4.8310: the graffito seems to refer to the conversion of funds using a mensa. 88. Meyer 2009. 89. It is worth noting that, in this case, the owner of the house was a woman. See also D’Ambra, this volume. 90. See, e.g., Abdy 2013, for discussion of the coin hoard found with the family that perished in the House of the Golden Bracelet (VI.17.44), which contained 40 aurei and 172 denarii. Abdy argues these funds represent the liquid wealth of the household—an impressive sum, the equivalent of five years of a soldier’s pay. 91. Cooley and Cooley 2014, H82, 267–269.

INVESTORS, MONEY-HANDLERS, AND DEALERS   49

CHAPTER 3

From Household to Workshop Women, Weaving, and the Peculium Lauren Caldwell

In this essay, I bring evidence from Pompeii into conversation with literary sources, legal texts, papyri, and inscriptions from around the Roman Empire to explore elite women’s engagement with weaving as part of the urban economy. Specifically, I investigate a particular Roman legal device, the peculium, as a means of deepening our understanding of the business capabilities of daughters in propertied families in Pompeii and in Italy more generally. The peculium, a personal fund allocated by the head of household (paterfamilias) to children or slaves who were under paternal authority (patria potestas), enabled these children or slaves to act as business managers. Recent scholarship on the peculium has pointed to its importance in helping Roman heads of household operate a range of businesses, from banks to taverns to workshops, while also encouraging children and slaves to develop their own commercial skills.1 For textile work and other forms of production, the peculium could allow a wealthy paterfamilias to invest in the training of his child or slave, and then to profit from this investment when the child or slave continued to work for him. The inclusion of Roman law, the major source for our understanding of the peculium, in the study of women and economic life follows a recent trend among historians to make use of the approach of New Institutional Economics, which considers the role of the law in organizing economic activity and distributing wealth across society.2 The question of whether the peculium might have allowed daughters from wealthy families, especially, to operate independent weaving businesses has not

51

to this point received consideration in scholarship, but material and literary evidence raises the possibility that conditions were right for this phenomenon in the first and second centuries CE. First, archaeological evidence from Pompeii for spinning and weaving suggests that these activities often took place in a domestic setting where women spent much if not most of their time. Weaving probably was practiced in virtually every household, where both free and slave women took part in it.3 Second, weaving was regarded as appealing and traditional for respectable women. It was a productive activity in which they could engage while operating within the boundaries of gender norms. Concerns about status meant that daughters from well-to-do families were unlikely to train in certain trades that were associated with freedwomen and slaves.4 As we will see below, they tended to learn to weave at home rather than in a residential apprenticeship with a master teacher, an arrangement in which their slave counterparts might be placed. To this point scholarship on weaving by elite women has emphasized its significance as a marker of virtuous femininity rather than a commercial enterprise.5 However, recent studies on the economy of Pompeii and Rome have begun to consider freeborn women among participants in commerce. Evidence from the brick industry in Rome, for example, shows that propertied freeborn women owned workshops and hired staff.6 Some freeborn women might have been active in the retail trade as sellers in shops or stalls, making use of basic numeracy skills.7 Freeborn daughters who had a living father would have been more limited in their economic opportunities: patriarchal property rules prevented them from owning a workshop outright. Because of these legal and social constraints on their opportunities, perhaps, their presence in the urban economy has gone largely unremarked in scholarship. However, it is worth considering whether the peculium might have provided resources for daughters to contribute to the economy in ways that were compatible with their social standing. In the discussion below, I focus first on what the evidence reveals about spinning and weaving for two groups of women who could receive a peculium: freeborn daughters and slaves. I then turn to the legal evidence for the peculium. Pompeii provides a context for investigating the physical space in which free and slave women worked; the Fayum region of Egypt complements Pompeii by furnishing documentary evidence from papyri that illuminates apprenticeship arrangements for female slaves in weaving workshops. Literature and law add to the picture by revealing the values and norms that operated in this area of economic life. Studying the sources together helps us see that distinctive aspects of weaving work in the Roman world—including its ideological charge as a symbol of virtue for freeborn girls and women and its small-scale setting as an activity in the household—have tended to conceal what might have been considerable business power of daughters who had access to a peculium. My contention is that the ubiquity of weaving as an activity in which daughters as well as slaves were trained offered economic as well as 52   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

social advantages: it provided a special opportunity for these women to take on an increased level of participation in commercial life.

Weaving Workshops and Women’s Labor at Pompeii Pompeii provides some of our best insights into the working world of craftsmen and into industries where elite families took a prominent role. As Damian Robinson has recently argued in a survey of workshops and the urban economy of Pompeii, “In all likelihood, wealthy Pompeians of the sort who would have made up the curial elite should be seen as the organizational heart of the urban economy, or at least a proportion of it.”8 As other chapters in this volume emphasize, the prominence of independent businesswomen at Pompeii is attested by the case of Eumachia, public priestess and possibly a patron of the fullers’ guild, who donated a public building at her own expense and received social recognition, including an honorific statue, for her contribution to the community.9 As Eumachia’s status suggests, textiles were an integral part of production and trade activities at Pompeii, and women were involved in various aspects of commerce. Visual evidence from Pompeii depicts lively market scenes populated by female sellers or customers, as in a painting decorating one wall of the estate of Julia Felix that shows women inspecting textiles for sale.10 Epigraphic evidence adds to the picture, indicating that female slaves were active in weaving work at Pompeii.11 A group of female weavers is documented in the peristyle of the House of Marcus Terentius Eudoxus (VI.13.6), where a graffito lists eleven textrices whose names suggest they were of servile status: Vitalis, Florentina, Amaryllis, Iuanuaria, Heraclea, Maria, Lalage, Damalis, Servola, Baptis, and Doris.12 The large size and features of the peristyle of this house, providing both the space and the natural light necessary for loom work, have led one scholar to argue that the house was a “true spinning and weaving factory, producing for consumption outside the household,” although there is no surviving evidence of the products from the house or where they were sold.13 It may not have been a factory, but the House of Marcus Terentius Eudoxus underscores the likelihood that if weaving went on in the peristyle, a relatively public area of the house, it operated simultaneously with other activities of household life and was on display not only for residents but also for visitors. Additional weaving work may have gone on in smaller or less central rooms in the rear of houses or on the second floor, where some surviving loom weights have been found.14 The location in a less conspicuous part of the house would be similar to workshops devoted to dyeing and fulling, which were often adjacent to or within the houses of Pompeii’s wealthy residents. An example is the pair of dye workshops with tanks and dye vats (V.1.4 and V.1.5) adjacent to the House of the Bull (V.1.3.7).15 In another house, VII.14.5, a dye workshop was located at the back.16 As a result of the scarcity of evidence for weaving workshops, scholarly conclusions WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  53

about the features of the industry have varied widely. Early on, one study concluded that weaving at Pompeii and in Roman Italy more generally remained a largely informal and “disorganized” area of labor.17 A subsequent survey of women and work in the Roman world countered that based on both the demand for cloth and the active networks of trade in the empire, weaving was probably undertaken in “largescale factory” settings, separate from houses altogether.18 Finally, a recent overview of the textile economy of Pompeii has questioned the previous identification of many of the workshops thought to have been associated with wool production. Noting the difficulty of distinguishing between the manufacture of cloth for home consumption and for a market-oriented industry in Roman towns, this study concluded that “the evidence for spinning and weaving is fragmentary and hard to make sense of from a business or economic point of view.”19 If spinning and weaving took place in most if not all households, then it may well have been an area of production that tended to be dispersed rather than concentrated in designated workshops, or to be located in workshops in the rear of a house. Indeed, in analyses of labor in the Roman world, including in Pompeii, a distinction has been drawn between “visible labor”—involving a storefront and integration into the public environment—and “invisible labor,” the sort that took place in domestic workshops for production or shop floors that were not visible from the street.20 For example, in a layout in which a workshop was in the back of the house, such as the dye workshop in house VII.14.5, the main door of the residence opened onto a busy street, while the workshop door at the back, by which cloth workers might come and go, led to a quieter street. Though clear-cut evidence does not exist for weaving workshops, within a single household the work of weaving might have taken on both visible forms—when conducted in the atrium or peristyle, for example—and invisible, when undertaken in a room on the second floor of the house or in a rear room on the first floor. Based on the distribution of loom weights and spindle whorls found in numerous houses in Pompeii, Penelope Allison has suggested that the most likely area for weaving was the well-lit atrium or peristyle, with some weaving taking place on the upper floors.21 This would accord with some literary accounts that depict weaving as an activity that took place in both public and private spaces of the house, and as ideologically linked with the house as a locus of traditional values. As the foregoing demonstrates, though Pompeii provides our best evidence for the range of spaces involved in the weaving industry and their features, it offers only a selective picture. Pompeian evidence does not allow us to address crucial questions about the actors who participated in weaving activities, especially concerning their social status, training, and motivation. For answering some of these questions, the prescriptive guidelines and ideologically oriented discussions found in literary sources offer a starting point.

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Weaving and Literate Education As a traditional symbol of virtue for the elite Roman daughter and wife, weaving carried its own special ideological charge, separate and distinct from the day-to-day practical work of cloth manufacture. Musonius Rufus, the first-century CE Stoic philosopher, offers an example of how the activity of weaving could serve an important purpose for women who received an education in literature and philosophy. In both Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons? and That Women Too Should Study Philosophy, Musonius argues that girls and women should be educated in a way that will contribute to their competence as household managers: Some will say that women who associate with philosophers must be arrogant for the most part and presumptuous: abandoning their own households and turning to the company of men, they practice speeches, talk like sophists, and analyze syllogisms, when they ought to be sitting at home spinning. Yet I should not expect the women who study philosophy to shirk their appointed tasks for mere talk any more than men, but instead I maintain that their discussions should be conducted for the sake of their practical application.22

The activity of spinning and weaving provides an alternative, nonverbal way for modesty and propriety to be expressed when philosophizing could enable a young woman to socialize with men and to “talk like a sophist.” She might take part in the lessons of elite education, but domestic tasks like textile work ensured that these lessons did not subvert ideals of feminine conduct. Moreover, because textile work took place within the space of the house, it insulated girls and women from the potential threats to reputation that abounded on the streets in cities and towns.23 The prioritization of spinning and weaving as part of a daughter’s upbringing, linked strongly to the space of the household, also appears in Suetonius’ account of Augustus, who reportedly enlisted the girls and women of his family to make his clothing.24 The Augustan authors Livy and Ovid also locate weaving within the physical space of the house in their narration of the story of Lucretia, the quintessential devoted matron whose steadfastness and sexual fidelity are demonstrated by time spent on her craft. In Livy’s account, Lucretia is weaving late at night with her female slaves in the front hall (aedes),25 while in Ovid’s tale, she is found weaving in her bedroom in front of the marriage bed (ante torum),26 again suggesting the range of rooms in the house associated with weaving for women. Even texts with ostensibly more practical concerns are preoccupied with the notion that the good girl or woman stays home to make clothes: shortly after the Augustan period, the writer Columella includes in his agricultural handbook a complaint about moral decline among the Romans as exemplified by the many contemporary women who abandon their wool-working (lanificium) and despise garments made at home (domi).27

WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  55

Funerary commemoration, too, seems to associate wool-work with domestic life rather than with activity that extended beyond the house.28 The portrait statue of the deceased Ulpia Epigone, a wealthy freedwoman, depicts her reclining with a basket of wool at her feet. The inclusion of the accessory is perhaps intended to resolve any doubt in the viewer’s mind about her modesty, since she is only partially clothed; her jewelry suggests wealth, while her posture invokes leisure rather than work.29 The language of epitaphs, meanwhile, combines the language of industry with that of virtue: the wife of Marcus is described on her tombstone as lanifica pia pudica frugi casta domiseda (“wool-worker, devoted, modest, moderate, chaste, and one who stays at home”).30 Similarly, the epitaph of Claudia from Rome notes that she had a pleasing way of talking and walking and also “worked wool.”31 The idea that wool-working contributed to social stability carried over into public art in Rome, most notably in the visual program of the Forum Transitorium commissioned by the emperor Domitian.32 In the frieze, whose figures survive only in fragmentary form, the goddess Minerva appears with spindle and distaff and is flanked by women weaving and spinning. Arachne, in the central scene, endures a punishment for challenging Minerva at her craft.33 While designed as an exemplum and a scripted message from the emperor, the scene was also displayed publicly, where it could be viewed by a broad audience whose responses might have been conditioned by social status. A well-to-do viewer might have understood the frieze as a tribute to ideal femininity, for example, while a slave would have been in a position to interpret the imagery as a celebration of weaving as a vocation.34

Learning on the Shop Floor The names of the eleven slave textrices on the wall of the House of Marcus Terentius Eudoxus at Pompeii serve as a reminder that this group, too, received training in their craft. Well-to-do households employed slaves in cloth work, as suggested by the tomb of the Statilii family at Rome, which commemorates eight female slaves who were spinners (quasillariae).35 Of course, whether proficiency with the spindle and loom was linked to virtue depended on whether a particular female was slave, freed, or freeborn: freeborn daughters might learn to spin thread according to prescriptive guidelines for good girlhood, but the quasillariae doing that same work are regarded, at least in the world of the Latin novel, as the lowest of the low in the household.36 The training of quasillariae and textrices sometimes was outsourced in the form of apprenticeships, where a young slave learned a trade and perhaps other businessrelated skills.37 The surviving evidence limits our survey of this phenomenon to the Fayum region of Roman Egypt, where documents on papyrus attest this aspect of professional training.38 Apprenticeship documents suggest that a twelve- or thirteenyear-old slave might be sent to live with an expert teacher for a period of one to two

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years, a considerable investment on the part of a slave owner, who hoped in turn to gain a slave whose value was increased by her training. In one surviving contract, written during the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius, a slave girl, Taorsenouphis, took on the role of apprentice at the behest of her female owner, Segathis, in the village of Soknopaiou Nesos. The contract for Taorsenouphis’s apprenticeship provides a sense of the conditions in which the slave girl learned weaving.39 Moving out of her owner’s house, she was sent to train and reside in the household of the master weaver, Pausiris, for a period of one year and two months: The girl shall be fed and clothed by Pausiris. All public taxes pertaining to the trade shall be paid by Pausiris and the girl shall not be absent from the house of Pausiris by day or by night without his authority. And for whatever number of days she is idle through the fault of her mistress or is sick or neglects her duties, she shall remain for an equal number of days in compensation after the set time.40

This text offers only a brief sketch of the social context of work training in the apprenticeship. It gives little sense of the workshop itself, beyond clarifying that Pausiris was in a position of authority and was expected to pay for some of his apprentice’s expenses. Information about the size of the workshop is not included, nor do physical remains equivalent to those from Pompeii survive to provide a sense of the spatial layout of the workshops or marketplace in the village. Despite the lack of material evidence, it may be possible to speculate about the social dimensions of work training on the shop floor. Jinyu Liu has recently argued that apprenticeship could contribute to the formation of “close-knit trust circles” between teachers and their apprentices.41 It seems likely that Taorsenouphis would have formed social connections with other apprentices or workers and benefited from the affiliation with Pausiris, whom she could cite later as her former teacher. A close teacher–apprentice connection would have been fostered by long days within the combined residenceworkshop that perhaps became the center of Taorsenouphis’s life for the year. The contract stipulates that she should leave the premises only with the permission of Pausiris. The evidence is not extensive enough for us to discern much about the nature of relationships between teachers and apprentices or between slave owners and teachers, although the fact that Segathis and Pausiris lived in the same village raises the possibility that they continued to interact as neighbors and social acquaintances after the apprenticeship contract ended. To be sure, the maintenance of harmonious relations between a slave owner and a teacher largely depended on whether the teacher was judged to have taught the slave everything she needed to know. A first-century CE contract from Tebtunis addresses this concern: the master weaver Orsenouphis, taking on the slave girl Helene as his weaving apprentice for two and

WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  57

a half years, promises Helene’s owner that if he is judged not to have taught her competently, then he will take on all expenses related to her training.42 As for Segathis, we can imagine that she envisioned the slave who could perform skilled weaving tasks as one who enhanced the productivity of the household. Moreover, if demand for textiles in the Fayum was high enough, then the cloth produced in the household might also be sold in the local market. Such participation in economic activity beyond the household might have been something for which Taorsenouphis was prepared by apprenticeship, since living and working with a master teacher could be an entry point to a larger network of weavers in the region or a formal trade association (collegium). As recent studies of collegia in the Roman Empire have shown, trade associations aimed to protect the interests of their members by advocating for better contracts and pooling funds to ensure that members would have their burial expenses covered.43 While it is difficult to ascertain whether female workers were typically included in membership in collegia, there is evidence that some women joined and held office in these organizations, as Molly Swetnam-Burland indicates in her essay in this volume.44 If Taorsenouphis acquired not only technical know-how during her apprenticeship but also the social benefits of entry into a community of workers, then she might have been able to use this experience to increase her value to Segathis and, ultimately, to work her way to freedom. Individual slave owners could free those slaves whom they considered productive and cooperative. One further resource that could provide assistance to Taorsenouphis in the effort to demonstrate her productivity was the peculium, discussed below.

The Peculium and Weaving Businesses As the traditional structure of the household began to be used to organize business activities, the jurists of the early empire worked out rules for how the peculium could be used to allow children and slaves to build independent entrepreneurial skills. In the second century, around the same time Ulpia Epigone was commemorated in a funerary portrait and Taorsenouphis trained as an apprentice, the jurist Gaius was writing at Rome under the emperor Antoninus Pius about the peculium and about how women could make use of it in business transactions related to weaving. To this point, while studies of the peculium and its contribution to the Roman economy have tended to focus on sons,45 the sources on the peculium help shed light on daughters’ roles as well. With its potential to provide funds to daughters and female slaves, the peculium raises the possibility that the household task of weaving could be converted into a commercial activity. There were different ways this could be arranged, based on whether the head of household wished to charge his slave or his daughter with the responsibility of holding the funds or property. For example, a daughter might hold a peculium and act as a business manager, with female slaves 58   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

working for her and taking on the weaving tasks; alternatively, a female slave could hold a peculium, and, as discussed below, she too could act as a manager, supervising other slaves herself. Whomever the paterfamilias decided to put in charge, the key point is that the holder of the peculium had control over the everyday use of the funds or property in the account, which provided slaves and daughters or sons, who could not own property themselves, more opportunity to develop independent business skills.46 By the first century CE, when Pompeian businesses were in their prime, peculia could be very large accounts: a peculium could include cash, land or a building, slaves, or a business such as a workshop. As early as the second century BCE, Cato the Elder recognized the economic independence such an account could afford to slaves when he expressed anxiety about whether the managers of his estate would misuse the funds in their peculia.47 Worry about the proper use of peculia is also evident in an opinion preserved in Justinian’s Digest, where Gaius writes, An action on the peculium lies regarding slave women and daughters-in-power. Especially if a woman acts as a seamstress or weaver or practices some common trade, an action is given for this reason. Julian holds that an action should lie in respect to those women also for deposit and loan-for-use, as well as the actio tributoria if they conduct business with the property in the peculium with the knowledge of their paterfamilias or owner. This is particularly true if he has taken a benefit or if a contract was made on the father’s or owner’s orders.48

Although here Gaius offers only a brief mention of weaving businesses, his perspective on the economic landscape is worth noting. He regards work as a seamstress (sarcinatrix) and weaver (textrix) as “especially” (maxime) appropriate for women who hold peculia. The extent to which this comment about suitable jobs for women reflects a real effort to restrict the availability of business funding for daughters is unclear.49 However, it seems to betray an anxiety, detectable elsewhere too in juristic writings on the status of women, that the modesty of respectable women had to be protected through legal measures. Women were prohibited by law from holding public office, for example, and from working as bankers; they were also protected by law from sexual harassment when they moved about in public, provided they were wearing clothing appropriate to their social status.50 The peculium offered a way for daughters to contribute to the economy, but perhaps only so long as they operated within the constraints of gender norms. How common was it for Roman daughters and female slaves to have access to a peculium? Here again, the answer is unclear. In general, scenarios imagined in legal cases are briefly presented and are schematic in their representations of Roman reality, and it is often difficult to do more than sketch in broad terms the influence WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  59

of social norms and values on the creation of legal rules. However, by including daughters in the category of those who could have a peculium for business transactions related to their textile work, Gaius does imply that literate education and entrepreneurship could go together, adding another dimension to the experience of daughters. When transformed into an activity of economic importance through the peculium, weaving may have provided daughters with a new area of competency and a more elevated role in the household.51 Seen in this light, traditional adjectives in funerary commemoration for women, such as lanifica (wool-worker) and domiseda (woman who stays at home) might be understood to refer to labor in the household economy that also extended into local markets. Most notably, as Cato had acknowledged, the structure of the peculium gave its holders considerable freedom, allowing them to enter into business deals without the approval of the paterfamilias. As Gaius remarks, individuals who made business deals with female slaves (ancillae) or with daughters who were under paternal authority ( filiae familias) were able to file a lawsuit against the paterfamilias if the women did not pay back money they owed, which presented some risk. The jurist Julian, cited by Gaius, wrote that if a female slave or daughter using a peculium went bankrupt, the paterfamilias was responsible, and her creditors could divide up the assets of the peculium amongst themselves.52 While this was a potential downside, the fact that the peculium was widely used in the early Empire suggests that wealthy property owners believed that its benefit was worth the risk that an agent could mishandle the funds. Moreover, the peculium protected the paterfamilias financially. If a slave or daughter was sued for a debt incurred through the peculium, the paterfamilias was liable, but only up to the current value of the peculium.53 This structure shielded the rest of his assets, and in doing so provided the entire household with the potential to participate in the commercial activities of the community with less risk.54 To be sure, it would be overstatement to say that daughters were completely economically empowered by the peculium. While it was a structure that could benefit daughters by inserting them into economic networks, the peculium was also an integral part of the Roman patriarchal property system and did not allow a daughter whose father was living to act as a wholly autonomous agent. She could not own a workshop outright. Many if not most of the economic benefits of her labor may have been enjoyed by the paterfamilias, not by her, and at times she might have received especially close supervision compared to a son. For example, a daughter was prohibited from making contracts with third parties that were binding on herself.55 By contrast, a son had the capacity to make his own contracts, meaning that he could be held more accountable as an individual for a debt he incurred.56 For this reason, a paterfamilias might be more exposed to financial risk if a daughter misused her peculium than if a son did so, and in response, fathers might have managed their daughters’ business transactions more carefully than their sons’. Nevertheless, daughters had the ability to conduct business, and their more or less free administration 60   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

of the peculium for spinning and weaving work was seen as compatible with expectations for the conduct of respectable women. With the presence of workshop spaces, this business activity could have become sophisticated, especially in densely populated areas such as Rome and Pompeii. What households appear to have pursued with the peculium is a balance: daughters and slaves had the opportunity to take on economic roles, while some restrictions aimed to ensure the security of the fund and, when it came to daughters, the reputation of the family. Moreover, for a skilled slave such as Taorsenouphis who was provided with a peculium, the resulting circumstances might have tilted to her advantage. Her peculium could contain slaves she supervised, and she might be able to provide these slaves with their own peculia with which they could enter into transactions with other slaves, building up even more working capital for themselves and for the household.57 In addition to other benefits provided by a network of slaves and their ability to transact business, the peculium allowed slaves in managerial roles, perhaps like Taorsenouphis, to accumulate sufficient funds to buy their own freedom. Once freed, they could embark on their own business plans. An example comes from the funerary monument of Trosia Hilaria, a liberta from Aquileia, who is described on her monument as lanifica circulatrix (a weaver or spinner) who owned slaves and perhaps had her own weaving business.58

Conclusion Pompeii provides an invaluable spatial backdrop to the world of women and weaving, preserving the layouts of domestic and workshop spaces and revealing the Roman household as deeply involved in commercial activity. When combined with the material evidence from Pompeii, other categories of evidence demonstrate that domestic space, where family relationships played out, and economic space, where work was done and commercial transactions could take place, were closely connected. Slavegirl apprentices like Taorsenouphis, who might spend a year or more training in a combined household and workshop setting, embodied this connection. They became temporary household members in the homes of master weavers and then returned to work in their owners’ households. In addition, the role of wealthy families at Pompeii in building the urban economy serves as a reminder that daughters, with their ability to deploy their weaving work both within and outside the house, could be a part of this picture. While it is difficult to tease out the various ways in which the relationship between the paterfamilias and a daughter or female slave played out in regard to the peculium, legal evidence does enhance our understanding of this dynamic. It shows that for daughters, ideology was not so restrictive, nor was dependency so pronounced, that it prevented taking an active role in business. Indeed, a daughter’s labor emerges as flexible in the context of the household and available for the paterfamilias to use to his advantage. WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  61

The situation in urban settings of the Roman Empire may not have been altogether dissimilar to that of cities in the eighteenth-century United States, where heads of household sought to increase household productivity for both internal consumption and the market. Women’s spinning and weaving were valued in both settings.59 While the development of independent commercial skills allowed daughters to weave for reasons other than ideological display, it also offered the opportunity for success to slaves, whose accumulation of assets in a peculium could facilitate the purchase of their freedom. As we consider the implications of the peculium for female slaves’ engagement with weaving as part of the urban economy at Pompeii, we might envision the lives and working conditions of the textrices listed only by name in the Pompeian graffito—Vitalis, Florentina, Amaryllis, Iuanuaria, Heraclea, Maria, Lalage, Damalis, Servola, Baptis, and Doris—in a new way that considers their potential to adopt roles as semi-independent agents and to become women of means as a result of peculia. Taken together, then, the sources create a picture of weaving as a form of labor that allowed Roman women of different statuses to contribute to commercial and household life.

Notes 1. On the peculium, see, e.g., Johnston 1999, 99–104; Gardner 2011, 419–423; du Plessis 2013, 192–206. 2. Wilson and Flohr 2016, 4–5. 3. Allison 1999b, 70–71. 4. Evidence for jobs for female slaves is collected and discussed by Treggiari (1976). Holleran (2013, 324) lists gemmaria ( jeweler, CIL 6.9435), ferraria (blacksmith, CIL 6.9398), and brattiaria (gold-leaf artist, CIL 6.9211) as examples of crafts in which slaves and freedwomen, but not freeborn women, worked in Rome. The case of the female slave who worked as a nummularia (money-handler) is treated by Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 5. For example, Hersh contends that “aristocratic women, even if—or especially since—they were not responsible for clothing their households, dabbled in spinning, weaving, and sewing only as proofs of their virtue” (2010, 126). 6. Becker (2016, 924–927) observes that a woman of high status would have owned and received income from the workshop but hired a manager (officinator) to handle day-today responsibilities. 7. For mention of freeborn women’s possible role in the Roman retail trade, see Holleran 2013, 317. 8. Robinson 2017, 245. 9. On Eumachia and other female patrons at Pompeii, see Longfellow 2014/2015, 82–90. In this volume, see also Kellum, who focuses on Eumachia’s dedication in the Forum of Pompeii of a public building financed with her own money, and Longfellow, who discusses the portrait statue of Eumachia that resided in a niche in the building. 10. In her essay in this volume, D’Ambra posits that the frieze puts an emphasis on women’s

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involvement in the marketplace because it was commissioned by Julia Felix, who was herself a wealthy and successful independent businesswoman. On depictions of cloth sellers at Pompeii and Rome, see Holleran 2012, 203–206. 11. For discussion of textile workers at Pompeii, see Lovén 2016, 207–210. 12. CIL 4.1507. For a catalog of the graffiti at Pompeii that include the names of women, and for further discussion of names as an indicator of women’s social standing, see the essay by Zimmerman Damer, this volume. 13. Moeller 1976, 40. 14. Allison 1999b. 15. On the dye works at Pompeii and next to the House of the Bull, see Robinson 2005, 93–97 and fig. 6.2. 16. Robinson 2005, 95–96 and fig. 6.3. 17. Jones 1960. For an overview of approaches to the study of women in the textile industry in the empire, see Lovén 2013, 109–112. 18. Moeller 1976, 83. 19. Flohr 2013b. 20. Flohr 2013a, 168–172. 21. Allison 2004a, 146–149. Allison (1999b, 70–71) lists loom weights and spindle whorls found throughout Pompeian houses. In addition to the fifty-seven loom weights found in house I.10.8, loom weights were found in varying quantities in houses throughout the city, particularly in the front halls and in small rooms off the front halls. 22. Musonius Rufus 3, trans. Lutz 1947, 43: φασί τινες, ὅτι αὐθάδεις ὡς ἐπὶ πολὺ καὶ θρασείας εἶναι ἀνάγκη τὰς προσιούσας τοῖς φιλοσόφοις γυναῖκας, ὅταν ἀφέμεναι τοῦ οἰκουρεῖν ἐν μέσοις ἀναστρέφονται τοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ μελετῶσι λόγους καὶ σοφίζωνται καὶ ἀναλύωσι συλλογισμούς, δέον οἴκοι καθημένας ταλασιουργεῖν. ἐγὼ δὲ οὐχ ὅπως τὰς γυναῖκας τὰς φιλοσοφούσας ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀξιώσσαιμ’ ἂν ἀφεμένους τῶν προσηκόντων ἔργων εἶναι περὶ λόγους μόνον· ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅσους μεταχειρίζονται λόγους, τῶν ἔργων φημὶ δεῖν ἕνεκα μεταχειρίζεσθαι αὐτούς. 23. On the perceived dangers to respectable men and women in public interactions, particularly in uncontrolled encounters on the street, see Hartnett 2017, 98–105 as well as laws against sexual harassment of respectable women in public, discussed below. 24. Suet. Aug. 64: filiam et neptes ita instituit, ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret (“In bringing up his daughter and his granddaughters, he had them trained in wool-working”) and 73: veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est, ab sorore et uxore et filia neptibusque confecta (“He discreetly wore common clothes for the house, made by his sister, wife, daughter, and granddaughters”). Milnor (2005, 83–88) discusses the ways Augustus prescribed and publicly presented the conduct of female members of his family to uphold the image of the imperial household. 25. Livy 1.57.9: Lucretiam . . . nocte sera deditam lanae inter lucubrantes ancillas in medio aedium sedentem inveniunt (“They found Lucretia, late at night, sitting in the middle of the hall dedicated to her wool-work among her female slaves who were laboring by lamplight”). 26. Ov. Fast. 2.741–742: inde cito passu petitur Lucretia, cuius / ante torum calathi lanaque

WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  63

mollis erat (“From there in swift course they sought Lucretia, in front of whose bed were baskets and soft wool”). For discussion of Lucretia in the Fasti, see Chiu 2016, 52–55. 27. Columella, Rust. 12, pr. 9–10: nunc vero, cum pleraeque sic luxu et inertia diffluant, ut ne lanificii quidem curam suscipere dignentur, sed domi confectae fastidio sint . . . (“Now, though, when most women are so given over to excess and laziness that they do not even think it fit to pay attention to wool-working, and there is a rejection of garments made at home . . .”). On agrarian writers’ habit of espousing traditional morality and lamenting the luxury of present-day Rome, see Henderson 2004. 28. Lovén 2013, 124. 29. For an image of Ulpia Epigone, see D’Ambra 1989, fig. 1. D’Ambra (2000) speculates that nudity in this portrait statue may be intended to assimilate the deceased to the goddess Venus. 30. CIL 6.11602. On female virtue in Roman epitaphs, see Riess 2012; for wool-working in epitaphs, see Lovén 1998 and Lattimore 1962, 295–300. See also Hersh 2010, 126 for the importance of the home as the site of wool-working. 31. CIL 6.15346: sum mareitum corde deilexit suo / gnatos duos creavit horunc alterum in terra linquit alium sub terra locat / sermone lepido tum autem incessu commodo/ domum servavit lanam fecit dixi abei (“Claudia loved her husband with all her heart. She bore two children. One she left on earth, the other beneath it. With her delightful talk and agreeable walk she kept the house and worked wool. I have spoken; go”). 32. Newby (2016, 32–79) argues that the Roman use of Greek mythological imagery in the public sphere both constructed and reflected a particularly Roman sense of values. 33. Newby 2016, fig. 1.10 and 67–68. See also D’Ambra 1993, 49–60. 34. On public art at Rome and girls’ socialization in virtue, see Caldwell 2014, 133–136. 35. On the inscriptions in the tomb of the Statilii at Rome mentioning quasillariae (CIL 6.6339–6346), see Lovén 2013, 121. 36. Petron. Sat. 132: nec contenta mulier tam gravi iniuria mea, convocat omnes quasillarias familiaeque sordidissimam partem, ac me conspui iubet (“Not satisfied with such serious humiliation of me, she summoned all her spinners and the filthiest segment of her household and ordered them to spit on me”). 37. As Bodel (2011, 332 and n. 35) points out, weaving was a common apprenticeship arranged by slave owners for their slaves, both male and female. 38. Papyri from Roman Egypt that attest to slave girls’ apprenticeships include P.Mich. 5.346a; SB 18.13305; Stud. Pal. 22.40; P.Oxy. 14.1647; PSI 3.241. Of the twenty-eight apprentice contracts for teaching weaving that survive, six refer to slave girls, nineteen to freeborn boys, and three to slave boys. No apprentice contract involves a freeborn girl. On apprenticeship, see Bradley 1991, 103–124; Freu 2016; Liu 2016, 217–224. 39. Stud. Pal. 22.40, discussed by Rowlandson (1998, 267–269). 40. Stud. Pal. 22.40, trans. Rowlandson 1998: τρεφομένης καὶ ἱμα[τ]ι[ζομέν]ης τῆς πα[ι]δίσκης ὑπὸ τοῦ Παυσίρεως ἔτι δὲ κ[αὶ τῶν] δημοσίων αὐτῆς πάντων τῆς τέχνης ὄντ]ων [πρ]ὸς τὸν Παυσῖριν οὐ γεινομένη ἀ̣φ̣η̣μ̣[ε]ρος οὐδὲ ἀ̣π̣ό̣κοιτο[ς] ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ Παυσίρε̣ω̣[ς] ο̣ἰ̣κ̣ίας ἄνευ γ̣[ε] τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γνώμης· ὧν δὲ ἡμερ̣ῶ̣ν̣ [ἐ]ὰ̣ν ἀργήσῃ διʼ ἐτίαν τῆς δεσποxίνης ἢ ἀσθενησῃ̣ [ἢ ἀτακτ]ῇ ἐπὶ τῷ τὰς ἴσας μετὰ τὸν χρόνον [ἀ]ν̣τι̣[παραμένει]ν κ[αὶ] μετὰ τὸν χρόνον παραστησάτω. 41. Liu 2016, 217.

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42. P.Mich. 5.346a. The contract for Taorsenouphis also contains a promise that Pausiris will instruct the apprentice in the craft “to the best of his ability.” 43. For discussion of the professional networks and support provided by apprenticeship, see Freu 2016 and Liu 2013. 44. See Becker 2016, 923–925, on the absence of Roman legal evidence prohibiting women from joining collegia, though evidence is scarce for their membership. Swetnam-Burland, in this volume, cites the evidence for women’s participation in collegia in Roman Italy. 45. See, for example, Broekaert 2016, 230–232, on the investment by the paterfamilias in the training of slaves who held peculia. 46. Kehoe 2017, 107, and Frier and McGinn 2004, 270. For discussion of how the peculium enhanced the ability of a slave or child-in-power (a freeborn son or daughter with a living father) to engage in business transactions, see, e.g., Gardner 2011, 419–423. 47. Cato, De Agricultura 5. 48. D. 15.1.27 pr., trans. Frier and McGinn 2004, 271: et ancillarum nomine et filiarum familias in peculio actio datur: maxime si qua sarcinatrix aut textrix erit aut aliquod artificium vulgare exerceat, datur propter eam actio. depositi quoque et commodati actionem dandam earum nomine Iulianus ait: sed et tributoriam actionem, si peculiari merce sciente patre dominove negotientur, dandam esse. longe magis non dubitatur, et si in rem versum est, quod iussu patris dominive contractum sit. 49. Frier and McGinn (2004, 271), for example, wonder whether Gaius is implying that a daughter would have been denied the resources of a peculium if she worked as a prostitute or procuress. 50. Prohibited from jobs as bankers (argentarii): Callistratus, D. 2.13.12. Excluded from holding public office as a judge (iudex), being a magistrate, bringing legal claims for others to court, or representing others in court: Ulpian, D. 50.17.2. Protected from sexual harassment unless wearing inappropriate clothes: Ulpian, D. 47.10.15.15. For further discussion of the evidence for women handling money, see Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 51. Boydston 1996, 186, 196. 52. On the peculium and the actio tributoria, see Johnston 1999, 102–103. 53. On the creation of the peculium and the paterfamilias’s limited liability to creditors, see du Plessis 2013, 196–203. 54. Temin (2013, 124–129) considers the limited-liability arrangement offered by the peculium as evidence that the economy of the Roman Empire was market-based. 55. See Gai. Inst. 3.104 and Frier and McGinn 2004, 251. 56. Gai. Inst. 4.70 mentions that if someone extends a line of credit to a daughter with her father’s permission or to a slave with the master’s permission, the daughter or slave is not liable. See Frier and McGinn 2004, 255. 57. Johnston 1999, 104–105; Gardner 2011, 421; Frier and McGinn 2004, 268. 58. Museo Archeologico di Aquileia inv. no. 4994. For discussion, see Lovén 2016, 217. 59. Boydston 1996, 189–191. See also Rockman 1999.

WOMEN, WEAVING, AND THE PECULIUM  65

FIGURE 4.1.

Plan of the Forum, Pompeii.

CHAPTER 4

Buying Power The Public Priestesses of Pompeii Barbara Kellum

The public priestesses whose buildings grace the east side of the Forum in Pompeii (fig. 4.1) were in the vanguard of what was nothing short of a writ-in-stone revolution during the Augustan period. For the first time in the Latin West, women’s names appear regularly as dedicators of public buildings, beginning with those of Livia and Octavia sometime after 35 BCE, when they were granted the right to be honored with statues in public and to administer their own affairs, as well as formal privileges that equaled the sacrosanctity of tribunes.1 The Augustan portion of the only surviving example of their patronage—the dedicatory inscription from the restored Temple of Fortuna Muliebris at the fourth milestone of the Via Latina, marking the place where the women of Rome turned back Coriolanus and the Volscians in 487 BCE2—asserts just how boldly independent these must have appeared. It reads: Livia (D)rusi f(ilia) uxs[or Caesaris Augusti]3 Livia, daughter of Drusus, wife of Caesar Augustus

Rather than adopting the conventional filiation abbreviation for freeborn males of the first letter of their father’s praenomen and the letter “f,” Livia instead makes use of her father’s cognomen to broadcast her aristocratic lineage as daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus. Moreover, her pedigree precedes the name of her husband the princeps.4 The relationship between Livia’s building activities in Rome, especially her    67

porticus with its shrine to Concord dedicated in 7 BCE,5 and Eumachia’s late August­an or Tiberian building in Pompeii honoring Concordia Augusta and Pietas —first posited by Lawrence Richardson Jr. and most persuasively by John D’Arms— has now been so often repeated that Alison Cooley argued that women in Italian municipalities were “trendsetters” rather than “dedicated followers of fashion.”6 Having recently studied the urban interventions of both Octavia and Livia at Rome, however, I am convinced that this is not an either/or proposition. The public priestesses of Pompeii like Eumachia and Mamia were deeply conversant with how Livia’s and Octavia’s public personas were structured by the buildings they constructed and what was on display within them, and they made deft use of similar strategies in creating monuments that were uniquely their own. A closer analysis of what remains of the buildings of the public priestesses brings this more fully into focus. After first highlighting some of the shared features of the buildings of Eumachia and Mamia, I will then build a case for yet a third building dedicated by a public priestess, on the east side of the Forum. One very revealing element of both Eumachia’s and Mamia’s buildings is their dedicatory inscriptions. Eumachia’s was the largest building (VII.9.1) on the Forum and the first building on the east side anyone coming from the Marina Gate would see (fig. 4.1: D and fig 4.2). Its beautifully cut inscription over the Forum entry took full advantage of the site (fig. 4.3), and, though fragmentary today, it can be

FIGURE 4.2.

Plan of Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1), Pompeii.

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recaptured in full in the small-scale version provided above the secondary entrance off the Via dell’Abbondanza (Street of Abundance): Eumachia L(ucii) f(ilia) sacerd[os] publ[ica] nomine suo et M(arcus) Numistri Frontonis fili chalcidicum cryptam porticus Concordiae Augustae Pietati sua pecunia fecit eademque dedicavit.7 Eumachia, daughter of Lucius, public priestess, made with her own money the chalcidicum, crypta, and porticus to Augustan Concord and Piety. She dedicated it in her name and in the name of her son, Marcus Numistrius Fronto.

Eumachia’s name, filiation, and status as public priestess take pride of place at the beginning of both dedicatory inscriptions and, in the inscription over the secondary entrance, are in the largest letters. In a smaller font, she names her son Marcus Numistrius Fronto with whom she dedicates the chalcidicum, crypta, and porticus in honor of Concordia Augusta and Pietas. Commentators have been quick to point out that Livia dedicated her porticus in Rome, which contained a shrine to Concordia, with her son Tiberius in 7 BCE.8 But what has not received its due is what sets Eumachia’s inscription apart. The literary sources for the Porticus of Livia contradict one another when it comes to who paid for the structure which bore her name—Livia herself or Augustus.9 Eumachia, however, distinctly states that she paid for her building with her own money, and although she includes her son’s name—perhaps for his political advancement—the inscription makes it clear that this is Eumachia’s building.

FIGURE 4.3.

Forum façade of Eumachia’s building (VII.9.1).

THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   69

Next door the public priestess Mamia declares in her dedicatory inscription that she built her temple to the Genius of Augustus (or of the Colony) (VII.9.2) both on her own land and with her own money: M[a]mia P(ublii) f(ilia) sacerdos public(a) / Geni[o Augusti / coloniae s]olo et pec[unia sua].10 Mamia, daughter of Publius, public priestess, [built this] to the genius [of Augustus / of the colony] on her own land and at her own expense.

Like Eumachia, Mamia makes clear that she was the source of funding, but additionally specifies that she purchased the land on which the temple stood, and perhaps did so for that purpose. This is of course not solely a public priestess phenomenon, as just a block from the Forum Marcus Tullius dedicated his temple of Fortuna Augusta (VII.4.1) in 3–4 CE on his own land and at his own expense.11 As I see it, this is a pivotal distinction between municipal practice and that of imperial Rome. Although there has long been a tendency to equate Pompeii’s elite with Roman aristocrats who eschewed direct interest in money-making, a reading of the material culture layer reveals that, in this city of entrepreneurs, taking pride in your wherewithal and the benefactions it allowed you to provide was de rigueur.12 In turn, the grateful decuriones sometimes provided a place of burial as a public honor, as the inscription on Mamia’s refined schola tomb outside the Herculaneum Gate duly records.13 Marcus Tullius’s reward was a similar schola tomb outside the Stabian Gate.14 Eumachia, in contrast, built her own tomb, and thus maintained greater control: having built the largest building on the Forum, she pulled out all the stops and built Pompeii’s largest tomb for herself and her extended family just outside the Nucerian Gate. It monumentalizes the exedral shape of the schola tomb into an extravaganza which, as sculptural fragments indicate, once included figural sculpture and a marble Amazonomachy relief.15 The fortune which supported all this visual opulence in the world of the dead as well as in the world of the living was likely twofold. On his landed estate, Eumachia’s father manufactured terracotta roof tiles and provided the amphoras for the Lassii, one of Campania’s largest wine producers, so she was already an heiress. Then, in 2/3 CE, when her husband, Marcus Numistrius Fronto, died while serving as duumvir (chief magistrate), Eumachia inherited his sheep-farming enterprise and perhaps her connection to the fullers, whose patroness she was.16 To anyone entering Eumachia’s building on the Forum her wealth would have been immediately apparent as so too her independence in mixing and matching the visual tropes of Augustan Rome into a meaningful combination of her own. On the northern side of the entry were statues of Aeneas and Romulus with copies of their elogia (inscriptions with biographies) from the Forum of Augustus in Rome that 70   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

supposedly had been composed by the emperor himself.17 In the Forum of Augustus the statues of these two heroes were the centerpieces of the two exedrae around which statues of the ancestors of the Julian family and the summi viri—the great men of Rome—were arranged.18 This was not, however, a statuary program of interest solely to an aristocratic elite who could read the inscriptions of achievements and perhaps recognize statues of their ancestors among them. Instead, as the wax tablets of Herculaneum make clear, many ordinary men and women summoned in civil court disputes (vadimonia) agreed to appear at court in the exedrae of the Forum of Augustus and were directed to individual tribunals according to which statue they were near—so the statues of the great men of Rome were very much a part of everyday life.19 It is thanks to a fuller that we have any idea what the sculptures looked like. A few blocks down the Via dell’Abbondanza fuller Marcus Fabius Ululutremulus played on his patroness’s display by framing the entry to his house (IX.13.5) with Romulus (fig. 4.4) and Aeneas (fig. 4.5). This in turn inspired a passerby to the immortal graffito “I sing of fullers and screech owls, not of arms and the man,” punning on both the first line of the Aeneid and on the owner’s name as the fuller’s mascot was the screech owl (ulula).20 Given these multiple frames of reference, how might the appearance of Aeneas and Romulus at the entry to Eumachia’s building be perceived when they are considered as a part of the chalcidicum, the sales porch? The two statues seemingly directed their gaze not toward the entry but toward the auction blocks. The image of Romulus, for example was in the niche to the left of the main doorway, and although his body moves forward toward the doorway, his gaze is directed back over his shoulder toward the north auction block, where, as Lisa Fentress has argued, slaves were likely sold.21 This was a visual juxtaposition of those at the top of the social hierarchy and those at the bottom, but I would wager that in this context some savvy Pompeian would have observed that even though they both ultimately had triumphed Aeneas had started out a princeling but, like so many slaves, Romulus had been a foundling! We will never know, but several sculpture fragments from the porticus and chalcidicum—a hand with a ring on its finger, a foot, and an inscribed headless herm—suggest that Eumachia’s building had its own local summi viri and those honored here were a far more socially inclusive group than the military and political leaders enshrined in the Forum of Augustus. The inscribed support for a herm portrait is a duplicate of the complete herm from the Temple of Isis celebrating Caius Norbanus Sorex, player of second parts, erected by the magistri (magistrates) of the Pagus Augustus Felix Suburbanus (suburban district of the blessed Augustus) in a space provided by decree of the decuriones.22 As an actor, his profession, like those of gladiators and prostitutes, marked him as infamis (disreputable) by aristocratic standards, but, as the doubling of this expensive monument indicates, his fellow freedmen magistri held him in high esteem and he was a very public presence in the building of Eumachia.23 The chalcidicum also housed a plaque marking a bequest of THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   71

FIGURE 4.4.

Romulus with the spolia opima, mural from the façade of the house of fuller Ululutremulus (IX.13.5), Pompeii.

FIGURE 4.5.

Aeneas leading his father and son to safety, mural from the façade of the house of fuller Ululutremulus (IX.13.5).

Augustan notable Marcus Lucretius Decidianus Rufus, three times duumvir, once quinquennalis (chief magistrate elected every five years), one of several attesting posthumous gifts to the city, to be used for improving buildings deemed vital to the city’s function in his own day.24 Thus, it seems that individuals of all social levels were represented in this space and used it for many purposes—chief among them as a stage for conferring honors to their peers. Eumachia’s own portrait statue as public priestess dedicated to her by the fullers stood in a rectangular niche in the crypta. It would have been the first thing anyone saw if they came in the secondary entry off the Via dell’Abbondanza. From the porticus visitors might catch a glimpse of the building’s dedicator through the windows let into the walls of the crypta. As many have noted, however, it is also the case that the placement of Eumachia’s statue aligns it with its counterpart statue in the apse which formed the axial focal point of the porticus.25 That statue has long been assumed to be a statue of Concordia Augusta and, given the overall similarities to the Porticus of Livia in Rome with its shrine to Concordia, there has even been speculation that Concordia Augusta might have had the portrait features of Livia.26 Now, thanks to the painstaking archival research of Mario Grimaldi, the statue itself can be identified. It was, however, found headless so both the head and the right hand are nineteenthcentury additions. When first discovered in 1818 her garments bore traces of gilded embroidery; her cornucopia, overflowing with the fruits of the earth, is encircled with a rinceau of leafy tendrils.27 Concordia Augusta’s imagery of agricultural abundance is very much in accord with the persona established by Livia’s buildings in Rome. Against the backdrop of the greening of the Esquiline by the extensive gardens of Maecenas and others—all of which would eventually become imperial—the Porticus of Livia stood on the site of the razed house of the vainglorious Vedius Pollio, making public what had once been private.28 In addition to its shrine to Concordia and its old master paintings, the porticus was renowned for a natural wonder it housed: a single grapevine which shaded the open walks of the entire porticus. No more potent a symbol of rebirth is there than the vine which appears to die in winter until the first new leaf appears in spring, and by late summer it is laden with grapes. Indeed, Pliny specifies that the Porticus of Livia grapevine produced twelve amphoras of wine each year.29 From the time of her betrothal to Octavian with its miraculum (miracle) of the eagle, the white chicken, and the laurel branch at her villa ad Gallinas, Livia’s name and agricultural abundance became synonymous.30 Her name was linked with Ceres and other female deities of plenty, and of course bountiful crops had been the hallmark of successful aristocratic land management from time immemorial. What has often been overlooked, however, is that in Livia’s case this close association with agricultural productivity had a decidedly commercial aspect as well, one which would have made her all the more appealing as a role model to a wealthy businesswoman like Eumachia. Not only did Livia own significant estates both in Italy and in Egypt,31 THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   73

but she also gave public expression to her esteem for the marketplace through her second gift on the Esquiline: the Macellum of Livia, just outside the Esquiline Gate.32 This was a location that in the late Republic already featured the establishments of both a butcher and a cloth dealer 33 and was frequented by sheepherders moving their flocks from summer pasture in the mountains above Tiber to winter coastal grasslands. By the early first century, there was a major wool manufactory at the nearby Horti Tauriani (Taurian gardens), and the Macellum of Livia would have served as an emporium for the agricultural goods produced in the surrounding horti as well as the fruit, figs, vegetables, wine, and flowers of the Tiber countryside.34 I’ll return to this example when I discuss Pompeii’s Macellum and its public priestess in due course, but here I want to emphasize that Livia’s dedications of both porticus and macellum on the Esquiline make her all the more compelling a parallel to Eumachia, whose building functioned not only as a public porticus but also as a place of sale for slaves and perhaps other goods. This also makes it all the more tempting to posit that the statue of Concordia Augusta had the portrait features of Livia, though, as noted above, that the statue was headless when excavated renders this interpretation speculative. Now that the statue itself has been securely identified, however, one piece of evidence that has been hiding in plain sight may take on greater significance. Directly outside the secondary entry to the building of Eumachia in Pompeii sits one of the public fountains fed by the Augustan aqueduct. Its marble fountainhead, which gives the street its modern name—the Via dell’Abbondanza—can now affirm what has long been suspected to be the case: that the bust-length image (fig. 4.6) corresponds to the statue of Concordia Augusta from the porticus. The fountain sculpture, however, retains its head and has a hairstyle which resembles that of Livia on the Salus Augusta dupondius minted in 22 CE.35 With its central part and waves which form melon-like segments that cover the head uniformly, it resembles a clay head of Livia from a Roman temple in the town of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee renamed Julias in her honor or, closer to home, the statue of Livia found in the Villa of the Mysteries, where, in addition to the Salus Augusta hairstyle, Livia’s relatively large eyes set flatly in the face are also comparable.36 The image of Livia in the street with her mouth serving as a water source may initially seem to us unseemly, but the role of the empress in the utilitarian world of the marketplace is a long-lasting one: witness the late antique empress weights hung from yard arms as guarantees of fair measure.37 The Concordia Augusta/Livia fountainhead was the gift-which-keeps-on-giving and provided tangible evidence of this fact each time someone approached to take a drink. Whether or not the imperial allusion registered, it was likely Eumachia who placed this marble fountainhead here, and she herself who garnered gratitude from people in all walks of life as the person responsible for the local iteration of the statue. This is nothing short of a brilliant appropriation of an imperial resource—the 74   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

FIGURE 4.6.

Concordia Augusta fountainhead outside the back entrance to Eumachia’s building (VII.9.67), on the Via dell’Abbondanza, Pompeii.

aqueduct—which was well beyond even Eumachia’s substantial means, but for which in this context she nonetheless received the credit. It is a deft demonstration that Eumachia knew well what buying power was all about and staked her own claim to fame on her version of an era of abundance and prosperity, which her building expressed. I have reserved one element—the acanthus door frame (fig. 4.7)—currently incorporated into the building of Eumachia to make the transition to discussing the public priestess Mamia’s adjacent temple complex. Kurt Wallat argues that the door frame was placed at the entry to Eumachia’s building only in the twentieth century and that it is a better fit for the more modestly scaled entry to Mamia’s Temple of the Genius of Augustus next door.38 As has often been noted, the frieze is certainly related to the acanthus which encircles the outer enclosure of the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) dedicated on Livia’s birthday (30 January) in 9 BCE.39 Like all the sculptural decoration on the altar, the acanthus pulses with the blessings of peace and agricultural fertility. Just as on the Ara Pacis, the grapes of Dionysus amicably intertwine with Apollo’s acanthus on the Pompeii frieze. But, unlike its THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   75

FIGURE 4.7.

Detail of the animalinhabited acanthus currently at the entry of Eumachia’s building but perhaps originally from the entry to Mamia’s Sanctuary of the Genius of Augustus (or the Colony) (VII.9.2).

Roman counterpart, where the flora far outweigh the fauna,40 here the acanthus teems with small animals—especially small birds at liberty in nature, but also exactly the kind of delicacy fowlers trapped with birdlime or tame decoy birds and carted off to market. Equally appealing representationally are snails, dormice, bunnies, and at least one peacock. All four of these creatures had started to be farmed for profit in the late Republic.41 Peacock was not likely served at many meals in Pompeii, but it remained aspirational, as the shop sign of the caupona (inn or bar) of Euxinus (I.11.11) suggests. Like the mythical phoenix, the peacocks hint at the commodious garden within where a thrush or a chicken was what was more likely on offer.42 So too at the entry to Mamia’s building the animal-populated acanthus frieze alludes to the blessings of peace and prosperity, whatever the financial constraints of an individual viewer who entered. 76   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

FIGURE 4.8.

Sacrifice scene from the west side of the Augustan marble altar in Mamia’s Temple of the Genius of Augustus (or the Colony) (VII.9.2).

The temple complex within made maximum use of this small site by tucking the stairs for mounting the temple podium to either side rather than in front, just as at the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Julius Caesar. This left ample space for the centerpiece of the complex: a marble altar which John Dobbins has determined dates from the Augustan period and shows evidence of repair after the earthquake of 62 CE.43 Many of the motifs on the altar are quintessentially Augustan and would have been recognizable to many because they were featured on coins. There, for example, among the priestly implements on the south side of the altar is the ritual staff of the augur (lituus), which Octavian/Augustus included on his coins, just as had Julius Caesar. On the east side of the altar, facing the temple, appear the wreath (corona civica) atop a shield (clipeus) flanked by two laurel trees, a composition which mirrors the honors accorded to Augustus by the Senate and Roman people in 27 BCE—two laurel trees planted on either side of the entry to his house on the Palatine and the corona civica placed above his door while the shield inscribed with his virtues (clipeus virtutis) was put on display at the Curia—all widely celebrated on coins. On the west side there is a scene set in front of a draped temple, as is the altar itself: here the priest or magistrate with his toga draped over his head (capite velato) is preparing to sacrifice a bull (fig. 4.8). The small attendant on the far left appears to THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   77

have a female hairstyle, and Dobbins suggests it might be the priestess Mamia herself, although he opts not to press the point.44 Could it be that Mamia, as a member of a venerable family in Pompeii, had served as an acolyte (camilla) when she was a girl? After all, Marcus Holconius Rufus was already a priest ( flamen or sacerdos) of Augustus Caesar before 2 BCE so sacrifices to the emperor must have taken place.45 This can only be speculative, especially since the date of both Mamia’s temple and the building of Eumachia remain elusive. Dobbins records the many similarities in construction between the two buildings but admits that a date anywhere in the late Augustan to the Tiberian era is conceivable.46 As I have tried to indicate, the two buildings are also parallel in their decorations celebrating abundance and prosperity, which are contemporary to one another in this respect as well. Great admirer of the animal-populated acanthus frieze that I am, I have also often wondered if the edible delectables were a nod to the Macellum another public priestess was building down the street. Because renovations to the Macellum after 62 were so extensive, the date of the pre-earthquake building is indeterminate, but it is likely Julio-Claudian.47 Certainly once all three buildings were in evidence the connections between these dedications by public priestesses would have been multiple. In Mamia’s temple complex, for example, it would have been not only the acanthus frieze but also the sacrifice scene on the front of the altar that you would catch sight of every time you passed the entry, and these were directly anticipatory of what you would find in the Macellum. In its prominent bull and victimarius any Pompeian would have recognized (thanks to those who study the butchery marks on animal bone remains) what modern eyes now understand to be the connection between the visual imagery and physical practice: that most of the cut meat for sale in the Macellum came from sacrifices.48 The archaeological remains of the various foodstuffs on sale at Pompeii’s Macellum (VII.9.7)—fish, meat, small animals for sacrifice, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and olives, among other things—was what first allowed the identification of the purpose of a building type which at the time of its excavation was once dubbed the Pantheon. The fish scales and bones which clogged the drains of the central tholos also revealed the function of this canonical feature of macella as a place where the catch of the day was cleaned and prepared for the table.49 As I have discussed in another context, the Fourth Style wall paintings preserved in the northwest corner of the porticus are all about food.50 In the upper register there are large panels which feature a counter display of fish and one which centers on a chicken for every pot. Even the mythological panels play on the same theme: Argus guarding that sweet little heifer Io, Phrixus on the ram with the golden fleece, and Penelope recognizing Odysseus because of his knowledge of their bed carved from a living olive tree. Of course there is no way of knowing how these may have related to the decoration of the building in its earlier phase, although the fresco which once adorned the large room in the southeastern corner (h) depicted the local river Sarnus and its tributaries and featured a figure of 78   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

FIGURE 4.9.

Modern copies of the portrait statues of a public priestess and a heroized young man from the south wall of the raised central shrine on the east side of the Macellum (VII.9.7).

Tellus/Ceres with the fruitful earth in the foreground. This is certainly in the same spirit as the Augustan-inspired imagery in Mamia’s and Eumachia’s buildings. It also relates to its context with gleeful verve as this room was outfitted with a slanted counter for the display of fish and cut meat and featured a channel of running water, so an apt environment for the Sarnus fresco! In this instance it is not an inscription but a statue which ties this intriguing complex to a public priestess. The statue was found in the raised central shrine area on the east side of the Macellum, one of a pair which stood in the niches in the south wall (fig. 4.9). A hand holding a globe was also found in the shrine so it likely held an imperial image, perhaps that of Divus Augustus.51 It is her headdress which identifies the female statue as a public priestess: a wreath combined with a beaded fillet, or infula. This was a combination first worn by Livia after the death of Augustus in 14 CE when she was adopted into the gens Julia and became the priestess of Divus Augustus. In the Julio-Claudian period it was worn by other imperial princesses and priestesses of the imperial cult. Based on the shape of the leaf and the size of the berry the Pompeian priestess’s wreath is not—as it has sometimes been identified—laurel or myrtle but olive, as seen on the magnificent sardonyx of Livia now in the Capitoline Museum.52 Olive, often associated with Pax, was also, along with wheat sheaves and poppies, characteristic of the foliage crowns of Ceres and of Livia’s THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   79

portrait statues in cult settings. Given the Pompeian statue’s idealized features and her au courant hairstyle, it is perhaps not surprising that many unsuccessful attempts have been made to identify this female portrait statue as any one of a gamut of imperial women.53 Nevertheless, she remains a fashionable local public priestess of the Julio-Claudian period. So too her male companion, for whom imperial matches have also been made, but his is the quite distinctive profile of an individual.54 His downy beard marks him as a youth, and his semi-nude hip mantle is most often associated with the divinized or heroized dead.55 So who might these Pompeians be? Stefania Adamo Muscettola has proposed Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius, chief magistrate (duumvir quinquennalis) in 55–56 CE and first citizen of the colony (princeps coloniae), and his daughter Alleia, a priestess of Venus and Ceres.56 However, the career of Alleius Nigidius Maius began in the Claudian period or earlier and he was still renting out one of his large properties (the insula Arriana Polliana) as late as 79.57 Also, the male statue clearly represents a youth and in an era when girls routinely married in their mid-teens they were often closer in age to their sons than to their husbands, let alone their fathers, so this is not a representation of father and daughter. Alleius Nigidius Maius was one of the most prominent citizens in the last phase of Pompeii’s history. Wealthy and munificent—the gladiatorial games he gave as chief magistrate gained him the epithet “prince of game givers” (princeps munerariorum) from a grateful populace58—he is not represented in the statue, but he certainly, I will argue, has a role to play here, on which more momentarily. First, though, to what I believe is the identity of the public priestess and the young man, surely her son. In honoring herself and her son in the Macellum, which she likely dedicated, this public priestess may have been emulating Eumachia. But, she might just as well have been looking beyond the local context, once again to Rome. In addition to the Macellum of Livia, I argue she also had another building in Augustan Rome in mind: the Porticus of Octavia. In my new interpretation of it, all the artworks on display both in the porticus and in the immediate vicinity honor Octavia as loyal sister, descendant of Venus, and mother extraordinaire to her own children (as well as those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII), but also most poignantly as the young regime’s tragic heroine who lost her only son, Marcellus, the heir apparent, at the tender age of nineteen.59 As he was the first to be buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus, heroic statues of Marcellus abounded.60 And everywhere you looked in the area around the theater named for him there were visual reminders both mythological and historical of those who died too young, which established Octavia’s persona even as she herself withdrew from public life, consumed by grief. One of the reasons this had strong emotional appeal was precisely because Octavia’s loss was not unique. Across the social spectrum young men and women died just when their promise was beginning to be realized, and often it fell to their mothers to commemorate them. Thus, for example, at Pompeii, Mulvia Prisca built the tomb of 80   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

her son Vestorius Priscus, who died at the age of twenty-two while serving as aedile in 75/76 CE.61 Evocatively, Mau actually identified the statues in the Macellum in Pompeii as Octavia and her deceased son Marcellus, precisely the comparanda which the municipal pairing was perhaps intended to suggest.62 There is only one public priestess at Pompeii whom we know with certainty was in this category of bereaved mother: Alleia Decimilla, daughter of Marcus, public priestess of Ceres. She built a tomb on land provided at public expense outside the Herculaneum Gate for her husband, Marcus Alleius Luccius Libella, the adopted son of her father and duumvir quinquennalis in 25/26 CE, as well as their son Marcus Alleius Libella, who was already a decurion when he died at age seventeen.63 The public land for the tomb suggests a major benefaction to the town, which the Macellum would have been. Clearly Alleia Decimilla outlived both her husband and her son, and as the hairstyles of the Macellum portrait statues—popular for women and young men from the Claudian era on—suggest a decade and a half later,64 perhaps as her own death neared, Alleia Decimilla was commemorated as priestess and her son in heroic mode, assuring that they would live in public memory, as did Octavia and Marcellus in perpetuity. That is, of course, until the earthquake of 62, when enters the “prince of game givers,” Alleius Nigidius Maius. He had been born a Nigidius but was adopted by Alleius Nobilis and his wife, Pomponia Decharcis. As Henrik Mouritsen and others have argued, Alleius Nobilis was likely a freedman and heir of the freeborn Alleii of the Tiberian era as well as of the equally now defunct Eumachii and Numistrii families.65 The tombstone of Alleius Nigidius Maius’s adoptive mother, Pomponia Decharcis, was found in the Tomb of Eumachia, as was that of one of Alleius Nigidius Maius’s freedmen, himself an Augustalis.66 Since Alleius Nigidius Maius appears to have controlled the Tomb of Eumachia following her death, he may well have had oversight of her building as well. If I am correct in ascribing the original patronage of the Macellum to the public priestess Alleia Decimilla, active in the reign of Tiberius and beyond, then that building too may have been in the custody of Alleius Nigidius Maius in the city’s final phase. Moreover, he was flamen Vespasiani so he may have offered sacrifice at the restored altar in Mamia’s Augustan sanctuary.67 Although we have no evidence for who paid for the richly marble-clad post-62 restoration of the three buildings of the public priestesses, Alleius Nigidius Maius has potential ties to all three original donors and the accolades which would have accrued to this princeps coloniae would have been many. Pompeians would be thankful for his having brought three commercial and religious structures back to life while most of the Forum still lay in ruins; there would also be honor in this by association for his daughter Alleia, a priestess of Venus and Ceres, whose tomb was built at public expense;68 and last, but certainly not least, he would have been doing on a grand scale what John D’Arms suggested Marcus Holconius Priscus, likely of freedman stock and a candidate for the duovirate THE PUBLIC PRIESTESSES OF POMPEII   81

in 79, did in restoring the statue of the Augustan-era grandee Holconius Rufus and other family members to the tetrapylon next to the Stabian Baths—effectively owning them as ancestors (blood kin) of his own.69 We will likely never know with certainty whether Alleius Nigidius Maius was indeed responsible for restoring the Macellum of (as I have argued here) Alleia Decimilla, and the buildings of Eumachia and Mamia, but if he did, then he had learned well the lessons about purchasing power which those public priestesses had taught: in the first century, as never before, women and those descendants of freedpeople with sufficient capital could structure a monumental public persona which established their dominance by appropriating select imperial themes of prosperity and abundance for their own purposes. In so doing Eumachia, Mamia, and Alleia Decimilla forged multiple relationships between past, present, and future for themselves and their families in spaces which were of fundamental importance to the urban fabric of Pompeii for the remainder of its history. Riffing on everyone from Descartes to Barbara Kruger, it can be said that for these public priestesses of the Julio-Claudian era, their buying power boldly and enduringly proclaimed: I build therefore I am.

Notes 1. Cass. Dio 49.38.1. See Purcell 1986, 85; Flory 1993; Hemelrijk 2005. Female civic benefactors in the Greek East like civic magistrate and aqueduct builder Phile of Priene (ca. 50 BCE) predate Livia and Octavia in this: van Bremen 1996, 31–32. 2. Dion. Hal. 8.55–56; Plut. Comp. Alc. Cor. 37–38. See Schultz 2006, 38–45. 3. CIL 6.883. 4. Flory 1984, 318; Boatwright 1991, 518 (“boastful . . . filiation”); Welch 2011, 330 n. 35. The same formula of patronymic followed by husband’s name is used in the inscription for a statue of Julia Augusta (Livia after 14 CE) found in Pompeii’s Forum: CIL 10.799. 5. Ovid Fast. 6.637–638. 6. Richardson 1978, 267; D’Arms 1988, 53–54; Cooley 2013, 25–46. 7. CIL 10.810, 811. 8. Richardson 1978, 265; D’Arms 1988, 53; Woodhull 2012, 231–234. 9. Ovid Fast. 6.639; Suet. Aug. 29; Cass. Dio 54.23, 55.8. See Woodhull 1999, 80–87; Woodhull 2003, 23–25. 10. CIL 10.816. On Genius Augusti vs. Genius Coloniae: Gradel 1992; Fishwick 1995; Dobbins 1992. 11. CIL 10.820. 12. Kellum 2015. 13. CIL 10.998: Mamiae P(ublii) f (iliae) sacerdoti publicae / locus sepultur datus decurionum decreto (“For Mamia, daughter of Publius, public priestess, a place for burial was given by decree of the town councilors”). Mamia’s tomb is classified by scholars as a schola tomb because it features a semicircular bench that is similar in appearance to a type of honorific bench associated with lecture halls (scholae) in the Hellenistic east.

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14. EE VIII no. 330: M(arco) Tullio M(arci) f (ilio) ex d(ecurio) d(edicato) (“To Marcus Tullius, son of Marcus, granted by decree of the town councilors”). See Emmerson 2010, 78. 15. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 11 OS. 16. Castrén 1983, 165–166, 197–198; Purcell 1985, 8; Longfellow 2014/2015, 87. For the wool-working industry, see also Caldwell, this volume. 17. Plin. HN 22.13. 18. Ovid Fast. 5.563–566; Suet. Aug. 31.5; Gell. NA 9.11.10. 19. Bablitz 2007, 16–27; Shaya 2013, 89–92. 20. Kellum 1997, 173–178. Graffito CIL 4.9131: Fullones ululamque cano, non arma virumque. Versions of the Aeneas statue and of a possible Romulus statue have been found at Emerita Augusta (Mérida), Spain: Edmondson 2006, 261. 21. Fentress 2005, 221–229. Compare Moeller 1972. Contrast Trümper 2009, passim. 22. CIL 10.814. See also Richardson 1978, 267; Dobbins 2007, 166; Longfellow 2014/2015, 93–94. 23. Welch 2007, 564–566. 24. Franklin 2001, 33; Swetnam-Burland 2018. 25. Welch 2007, 558–561; Longfellow 2014/2015, 91–96. 26. Mau 1902, 112, 116. 27. Fiorelli 1860–1864, I:210; Grimaldi 2003, 41–53. 28. Flory 1984, 309, 325–327; Bodel 1997, 10. 29. Ovid Fast. 6.637f.; AA 1.71; Plin. HN 14.11; Kellum 1994, 30. 30. Flory 1989. 31. Wolfe 1952. 32. CIL 6.1178: ma]cello Liviae (“Market of Livia”). Pisano Sartorio 1996, 203–204. Bodel 1994, 51. See Andrews (2015, 160–163) on the archaeological ambiguities of the site. 33. CIL 6.33870 (butcher); CIL 6.9974 (cloth dealer). 34. Malmberg and Bjur 2011, 365–366. 35. Bartman 1998, 215–216. 36. Strickert 2004, 175–176; Bartman 1998, 157–158. 37. McClanan 2002, 29–64. 38. Wallat 1995. Dobbins (2007, 166) rejects Wallat’s theory: “The ample portal [in Eumachia’s building] is framed with an inhabited scroll carved in marble that evokes the acanthus scroll of the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome.” 39. E.g., Zanker 1988, 179, 320; Heslin 2015, 170. 40. On the flora and fauna of the Ara Pacis, see Kellum 1994. 41. Purcell 1995, 158–161; Beerden 2012. 42. Kellum 1999, 285–287. 43. Dobbins 1992, 251–263. 44. Dobbins 1992, 262. 45. D’Arms 1988, 56; Castrén 1983, 68. A relative of Mamia served as aedile in Republican times; see Franklin 2001, 36–37. 46. Dobbins 1994, 647–668. 47. Dobbins 1994, 685; Ball and Dobbins 2013, 486. 48. Van Andringa 2007.

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49. 50. 51. 52.

Mau 1902, 94–101; Ruyt 1983, 137–149. Kellum 2010, 198–199. Small 1996; Cristilli 2008. On olive and other specifics of her headdress, see Kozakiewicz 1996. For the Livia sardonyx in the Capitoline Museum, which was found on the Esquiline in the early 1870s, see Bartman 1998, 192 and fig. 80. 53. For a useful summary of these identifications, see Welch 2007, 561–564 and Longfellow 2014/2015, 96. Both conclude the statue represents a local priestess. 54. For a useful summary of these identifications, see Welch 2007, 562–563. Welch also concludes he is a young Pompeian. 55. Fejfer 2008, 400–401. 56. Adamo Muscettola 1991–92. 57. Franklin 2001, 91–96; Mouritsen 1997, 68–70. 58. CIL 4.7990; Franklin 2001, 95 and Franklin 1997, 434–447. See Osanna 2018 for what he believes to be Alleius Maius’s tomb. 59. I am exploring these ideas further in my manuscript, tentatively titled Winning Hearts and Minds: Visual Strategies at the Buildings of Octavia and Livia in Augustan Rome. 60. There is an inscribed base for a statue of Marcellus in the Triangular Forum near the Large Theater in Pompeii (CIL 10.832), one of the many throughout the Roman world. 61. Spano 1910, 402. 62. Mau 1902, 98–101. 63. CIL 10.1036; Franklin 2001, 49–50. 64. Welch 2007, 561–562; the hairstyle and light beard of the young man match those of the youths who carry statuettes in the so-called Vicomagistri relief, which is probably Claudian but has sometimes been dated earlier in the Julio-Claudian period: Pollini 2012, 309–368. 65. Mouritsen 1997, 68–70. 66. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 11 OS no. 13 (Pomponia Decharis) and 11 OS no. 10 (Eros, freedman of Gn. Alleius Maius). 67. Franklin 2001, 154–156; Moeller 1973, 519. 68. Sogliano 1890, 333. 69. D’Arms 1988, 60–62.

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CHAPTER 5

Real Estate for Profit Julia Felix’s Property and the Forum Frieze Eve D’Ambra

The estate (praedia) of Julia Felix (II.4.3) possesses a curious history, complete with reversals of fortune from antiquity to modernity. In Pompeii’s late phase the elite dwelling appears, from the evidence of the inscription on the exterior, to have been renovated as a commercial establishment.1 It was unearthed in the Bourbon excavations of 1755–1757, but immediately reburied after the removal of select artworks to the Royal Museum in Portici. The excavations in the years of 1933–1935 and 1951–1952 were carried out more systematically to lay bare the structures that indicate that the property encompasses both a private dwelling and semi-public amenities.2 It was not alone among Pompeian houses that underwent conversions to multifamily dwellings or commercial uses, but its scale—a double city lot—and lavish architectural features, as seen in the garden complete with canal and bridges, set it apart from more modest makeovers. With shops at street level, rental apartments above, a bathhouse fronting the Via dell’Abbondanza (Street of Abundance), and an Egyptian-themed summer triclinium with waterworks, the estate of Julia Felix allows us to reconsider notions of public and private space following the earthquake damage of, perhaps, 62 CE.3 Furthermore, it raises questions about the marketing of amenities, such as baths, gardens, and dining pavilions, for a fee. Not only would the management of such a luxurious entertainment and recreation complex be complicated, but other practical considerations come to mind: how would clients move among the quarters that also sheltered private dwellings? Who could have access to which spaces? That a woman owned

85

FIGURE 5.1.

Plan of the estate of Julia Felix, Pompeii.

the property makes it even more interesting, given the relative scarcity of accounts of women’s business activities and of rental markets in Roman urban real estate.4 In the first century CE the elite dwelling was refitted with a redecorated bathhouse, tavern, and snack bar, along with a more formal dining room overlooking lavish gardens (fig. 5.1). All, or most, of this was open to clientele who paid for the services offered, we assume from the inscription near the main entrance to the baths. Christopher Parslow, who has done much to recover the history of the site through a study of its excavations, has suggested that some of the amenities were “semi-public,” that is, the triclinium served (male) members of professional associations, such as guilds.5 In all, as Salvatore Nappo has observed, “The various quarters of the property intercommunicated, permitting clients to reach them easily from several directions. What once must have been a noble house became an economic center based on services to third parties.”6 The commercial aspects of the property were enhanced by an open floor plan. Yet the level of luxury of the amenities and fittings suggests an exclusive atmosphere, rather than an inclusive one. How did one offer, for a fee, the experience of bathing or dining in a noble house, even one that had undergone conversion—to mixed uses? An exploration of movement through the property of Julia Felix may suggest the patterns of communication and flow among spaces. Of particular interest are the features that provided or, conversely, denied access in order to create an atmosphere of privilege for the desired clientele. Do the architectural plan and features exhibit a trade-off of exclusivity and openness? The same query is pertinent to the painted ornament and designs of the walls. The motifs and style of the paintings adhere to conventional tastes of affluent Pompeians of the mid-first century CE. Yet there is one significant work that diverges from the norm: the painted frieze from the so-called atrium (fig. 5.1: no. 24) that depicts scenes of market days in Pompeii’s Forum.7 That humble street sellers of fruit, cloth, and utensils appear in a frieze in a highly visible location off the street is striking since similar genre subjects only appear in the paintings on the walls of taverns or in advertisements for businesses.8 The representation of commercial transactions in the marketplace may have appealed to the clientele who frequented the bar, lived upstairs in the flats, or visited the baths. The extant painting in the bath complex (fig. 5.1: nos. 31 and 32) features the complex patterns of the Fourth Style with refined and elegant mythological motifs, and there is evidence of the Fourth’s Style large central panels for mythological subjects or landscapes in the atrium below the frieze with its genre scenes of the Forum.9 We tend to see the two types of painting, the high and the low styles, as diametrically opposed, but clearly this view was not shared by Julia Felix. The juxtaposition of styles and genres characterized the taste of patrons, such as Julia Felix, with considerable resources but rather less status. Her emergence as one of very few women in the field of real-estate development also raises the question of whether gender JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   87

affected her approach to design and décor, particularly in the most exceptional work of art in the house, the Forum frieze. The second part of this essay reconsiders aspects of the Forum frieze in terms of the relationships depicted among the market’s sellers and buyers, and the demarcation of status of the various members of Pompeian society, its shoppers, merchants, bystanders, panhandlers. The frieze’s imagery departs from conventional representations of trades and occupations in so-called plebeian art: would the gender of the entrepreneurial patron have shaped this particular view of market days in the Forum?

The Inscription On the main avenue, the Via dell’Abbondanza (fig. 5.2), the entrance from the street gave prominence to the baths through a pedimented porch with steps extending out over the sidewalk and flanked by engaged columns, all fashioned from brick. The inscription, or rather painted advertisement, was strategically placed near the porch: To rent for the period of five years from the thirteenth day of next August to the thirteenth day of the sixth August, the Venus bath, an elegant bath suite for prestige

FIGURE 5.2.

Stepped entrance to the estate of Julia Felix.

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clients, shops with living quarters above, apartments on the second floor located in the building of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius. At the end of five years, the agreement is terminated.10

Although framed in the spare language of business contracts, the ad gives the terms of the lease according to the calendar and its range of facilities and types of housing, from the baths for a discerning clientele to mezzanine apartments and humble shops with sleeping lofts, work/living spaces. Yet one phrase stands out: the baths are described as “balneum venerium et nongentum,” an expression that has confounded scholars. According to the elder Pliny (NH 33.31), the nongentii formed a subset of the equestrian order, that is, the nine hundred who would constitute the “best people.”11 That Venus is invoked to characterize a bathhouse does not surprise, as the goddess typically summons highly cultivated affairs and the realm of the senses.12 Furthermore, in the political life of Pompeii Venus served as a patroness of the city, as attested by numerous dedications; among these her appearances in shop signs suggest the goddess’s relevance to the Pompeian streets, as well as to her allusions to the higher life of luxury and leisure.13 Yet, the reference to the baths as nongentum is curious—did this play to the aspirations of potential tenants who wanted to see themselves as prosperous, or upwardly mobile strivers worthy of a “classy” establishment? Here we have the exploitation of real estate for commercial gain, as well as the developer’s propensity to play up to clients’ self-image and sense of worth (if we hadn’t known this was a very old game, we do now). Julia Felix as proprietor is attested—and in fact, her name appears prominently (in the Latin word order)—at the beginning of the ad.14 No intermediary (in the person of an agent or tutor, a legal guardian) represented Julia Felix’s business interests.15 Furthermore, her name might suggest her origins: “Spurius” might be taken as an indication of her (or her father’s) illegitimate birth, which she made no attempt to hide.16 Although the name “Julia” may suggest descendance from imperial freedmen of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, this heritage cannot be substantiated through a rental notice.17 The grand house, with its elaborate landscaping and elegant appointments, marks Julia Felix’s wealth, yet her background remains obscure without a father, nor mention of a husband or any familial ties. No further evidence of Julia Felix has emerged in Pompeii. On either side of the inscription three long benches line the building’s façade along the Via dell’Abbondanza.18 Such benches spilled over from those in the fauces of elite dwellings that provided accommodation for clients lining up for the morning salutatio. Yet the benches fronting posh houses also served the customers of bars and taverns located next door or close by, and here the tavern/bar is located in the very same premises. The combined effects of the prominent porch, benches, and sign no

JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   89

doubt aimed to slow down traffic on the busy thoroughfare to and from the amphitheater at the entrances to the estate.

The Bar The entrance to the estate of Julia Felix, numbered II.4.7, may give us an idea of the flow of traffic from the street. Immediately within the vestibule stands the substantial L- shaped counter at right angles to the door, and the open top included storage for amphoras for dry goods, savories, etc. (fig. 5.1: no. 104). The tavern (a thermopolium or popina) extended vertically, for there is evidence of a pergola above, a living loft on a mezzanine floor (recall the advertised accommodations on the upper floor in the inscription).19 If one turns away from the counter and moves in the other direction, one enters a room (a caupona) offering seats for drinkers and diners. Within a relatively small space, there is a triclinium with a central table, along with two masonry booths, with benches and counters, all of the furniture covered in red stucco (fig. 5.1: no. 103). Although adjacent to the street, the bar also drew drinkers and diners into the baths through the passage to the swimming pool and beyond to the main bathing block. The clientele consisted of men and women, as bathhouses accommodated both in the same quarters in the first century CE.20

The Baths At the formal entrance at doorway II.4.6 one entered a large colonnaded court (fig. 5.1: no. 31). Benches in the northeast corner accommodated those awaiting entry to the baths within. A window opening to the bar may have permitted refreshments to be served to the baths’ clients.21 Fourth Style painting dominates: white panels above, red in the main zone, and black below at the socle. Against the white background, panels framed with free-floating architecture depict motifs such as a soaring Pegasus, candelabra, cornucopia, garlands, and rampant panthers, hanging as if suspended from above by ribbons or cords. Garden statuary, a philosopher and a sphinx forming a fountain, and a herm appear amidst a red background.22 The wall paintings are composed of simple motifs set within intricate frames or panels that create the cumulative effect of a collection of highly ornamental, exquisite miniatures. Behind the portico lies a small waiting room fitted with lockers of a sort, for bathers to leave clothing and belongings (fig. 5.1: no. 30). The bathing quarters are neatly aligned in a row parallel with the edge of the portico and the street façade: swimming pool (natatio—no. 34), cold room ( frigidarium—no. 32) with rectangular basin behind, warm room (tepidarium—no. 41), and hot room (caldarium—no. 42) with a circular domed space identified as a steam room (laconicum—no. 29).23 From east to west, these rooms are arranged in descending size with the largest area of the swimming pool extending into the grounds behind the building. 90   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

The size of the bathing quarters indicates their commercial use, as they are substantially bigger than the private baths of elite houses, yet less so than the older public baths in town. In the period after the earthquake with the other baths in Pompeii in need of repair (only the Forum Baths suffered light damage, while the Stabian Baths were under repair with only the women’s baths open, the new Central Baths not yet completed, and the Sarno Baths being restored), providing a new complex on this side of town was no doubt a sound business decision.24 The floors of the baths were adorned with black and white mosaics from the house’s first phase, but the wall paintings were from the renovation of the mid-first century CE. The frigidarium possesses fine red-ground wall paintings depicting flying cupids and athletic figures, among other subjects.25 With the exception of the laconicum, all the bathing quarters had large windows, and the caldarium’s windows had a vista aligned with the canal in the garden (viridarium). This view

FIGURE 5.3.

Atrium of the estate of Julia Felix.

JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   91

shows bathers the attractions beyond: the little bridges crossing over the canal, and the summer triclinium. The latrine (no. 37) maintains the lavish standards of décor. Under a barrel-vaulted roof (now fallen), the latrine could have accommodated seven to nine clients at one time.26

Atrium, Garden, and Dining Room From the baths one proceeds west through an open space to a courtyard, frequently called an atrium (fig 5.1: no. 24, fig. 5.3), or one could enter from the street (II.4.3). A large space (6 × 9 m), the atrium had a central low fountain, but lacks the usual array of smaller surrounding rooms. This nontraditional atrium seems to serve as a forecourt as it anchors the western corner of the estate. It provides passage along the north–south axis through the marble peristyle of the viridarium to the self-contained residence (domus—fig. 5.1: nos. 90–100) at the southern end. The atrium or court in the northwest corner, however, functions as a transitional space, like a foyer or lobby, among the baths, street, adjacent shops (fig. 5.1: nos. 23 and 67), and service corridor. Although little remains visible today, the atrium was originally highly adorned. A black mosaic pavement interspersed with chips of polychrome marble was underfoot. The walls conformed to the Fourth Style painting with faux-marble effects in the dado, and above large green or red panels with cuttings intended for mythological or landscape panels that had not been completed.27 The atrium, however, is known for its unusual painted frieze crowning the room at a height of two and a half meters, representing genre scenes of a market, along with other everyday activities, in the Pompeian Forum.28 The analysis of the Forum frieze follows the discussion of the remainder of the estate; for now it is enough to note its prominent display near the entrance to the garden and its adjoining dining room (triclinium). The most familiar and spectacular spaces of the property of Julia Felix are the garden (viridarium) and summer triclinium, which was designed to evoke a watery grotto (nymphaeum).29 A water channel ran the length of the garden, which was bordered on the west by delicately fluted marble piers.30 The south and east sides of the viridarium were covered by a pergola shading a series of niches and apses on the east.31 A niche (no. 55) was identified as a shrine to Isis (now destroyed), which may have served as a focus for a sculptural display along the canal consisting of the statuettes of one of the Seven Sages, Pyttacus, and a satyr, as well as a small fountain consisting of a crab in a shell.32 Little marble bridges crossed the channel, a rectangular pool edged in marble, its sides extended with apses and niches. The center of the portico provided entry to the summer triclinium, a barrel-vaulted room with dining couches faced with marble (fig. 5.1, no. 83).33 Marble veneers also faced the lower walls and the cascade. The vaulted ceiling was roughened with a rocky surface to evoke a grotto. Water cascaded down marble steps in a rear niche, then disappeared into a hole in the lowest step only to emerge as a jet in the middle of the 92   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

room. The walls were painted with Nilotic scenes of pygmies and animals in an exotic landscape with the paintings’ dominant blue color complementing the azure glint of the garden’s watercourse.34

The Domus If one continues southward along the peristyle, one finds a self-contained house (fig. 5.1: nos. 90–100) tucked in the far corner, set off by a door. We may assume that this space could have been closed off, and so remained private from the world of the bathers, diners, and strollers. It consists of a central Tuscan atrium (no. 93) with surrounding rooms, including a dining room with two fixed couches (biclinium—no. 91) and an office for the head of household (tablinum—no. 92). All were elegantly painted in the Fourth Style, the biclinium with a color scheme of pale blue and red, and the tablinum decorated in red and yellow. The tablinum’s paintings feature a series of still-life scenes in an upper frieze.35 One depicts a dinner in preparation with ingredients, such as a platter of eggs on a counter and four hanging birds (partridges?) above; alongside these are bronze tableware and a fringed cloth hanging on the wall nearby. A degree of naturalistic detail is observed with the luster of the bronze vessels and the texture of the fringed cloth on its peg, all alluding to the bounty of the table and the host’s capacity to offer a feast to guests.36 Next to this is another still life (fig. 5.4), but with a difference: two shelves holding, on the lower, a series of writing implements, including an inkpot and stylus, papyrus roll, and wax tablets. Above, two piles of coins are on either side of a leather bag or purse. This painted collection of seemingly disparate objects invokes the realm of negotium—the businesses that support this house, its cash flow, so to speak, boldly represented in bundles (perhaps as a sly joke?). The images of literacy may aim higher to the public realm of law and letters, or the wax tablets to the accounts or the daily ledgers of Julia Felix.37 Probably the most-reproduced painting panel is one depicting a rampant panther and Bacchic symbols on a set of steps.38 Recall the panthers represented on the walls of the baths’ courtyard, which also portray a series of isolated objects in tableaux. Mythological themes or narratives (beyond isolated figures or motifs) do not seem to be represented in the estate of Julia Felix, except for a panel of Apollo and the Muses now in the Louvre.39 As the still lifes may evoke the hospitality and the duties of the householder or estate manager, perhaps the Bacchic imagery summons heightened pleasure of the senses, either at the baths or while dining. Windows open up to views of the orchard and the south, but the house here at the southwest corner appears to have been self-contained and able to be closed off when needed. The only permeable boundary is the door near the southwest corner leading between a kitchen and a staircase to an upstairs flat. The most private part of the estate is open to the street for the benefit of the upstairs tenant (II.4.10), so we must JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   93

FIGURE 5.4.

Still-life painting in the domus of the estate of Julia Felix. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 8598.

consider the importance of maximizing the available space for a profit. The views through windows or along colonnaded corridors enhance the experience of moving through a sequence of spaces arranged in a file—or, conversely, of being allowed to look across at sections of the estate not always open and accessible. It is no doubt the tension created by these opposing features of the plan that gave it allure.

The Forum Frieze At the entrance to the domus from the peristyle, a service corridor bears the functional decoration of black stripes.40 Geometric, repetitive designs typically mark work areas, and, conversely, reception and dining rooms received colorful, elaborate painted decoration. The latter seems to have served the so-called atrium (fig. 5.1: no. 24), although its Forum frieze departs from conventional motifs in its representation of the Forum market. There may be 11 meters of the frieze extant from a total of about 20 meters if the frieze ran around the entire space of the room, as most scholars think.41 Its removal in sections in the early excavations of 1755 has led to the deterioration of the frieze.42 From their eighteenth-century display in the Bourbons’ palace in 94   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

Portici to their installation in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the frieze fragments have been cut down in size and some arranged together in framed panels to enhance the scene’s activities. Consequently, the fragments appear to have different dimensions (although they probably were one meter in height originally) and, more significantly, our sense of the subject is dependent on what is left of the entire frieze: did the excavators favor figured scenes and leave behind others?43 Today the paintings’ twelve panels seem to be disappearing rapidly, with many details and even entire contours of figures blurred or dimmed drastically. A series of eighteenthcentury engravings and descriptions have helped scholars discern what may have originally been painted, although caution needs to be exerted as to the degree of detail visible even in the eighteenth century.44 What the frieze shows, however, is a variety of activities in which Pompeians buy and sell wares, transport goods in mule carts, submit to legal or bureaucratic procedures, and otherwise stroll about, conversing and watching their neighbors. Women are featured prominently in the scenes. The most striking aspect of the frieze is its representation of a recognizable backdrop that continues throughout the extant fragments. Clearly visible, even in the fragments that were cut down in height, is the colonnade of the Forum of Pompeii.45 The location of the frieze’s action in a recognizable and real setting is remarkable, as the only other Pompeian painting to depict a local monument is that of the amphitheater during a riot in 59 CE among fans of opposing factions.46 The amphitheater painting thus depicts a specific historical event of some renown. Pompeian painting tends to foreground figures, usually mythological characters, gods, and heroes. Even in the rare painted friezes with continuous backgrounds, such as the Odyssey landscapes in Rome or the Villa of the Mysteries frieze, the settings are depicted minimally or with generic natural elements.47 As with other ancient depictions of architecture or monuments, we should not expect a realistic representation with archaeological accuracy—even if we have evidence of this for a particular period in the past. Exaggerations of scale, simplification of detail, and a shifting focus have served the interests of artists and their patrons who were usually not producing documentary records of the built environment. The painter(s) of the frieze of Julia Felix intended to capture Pompeii’s Forum with the garlanded colonnade and equestrian statues, motifs which were abbreviated to appear as if icons so clearly recognizable even without exact fidelity to reality.48 That the Forum colonnade unifies the location of almost all of the extant frieze sections suggests that the scenes unfold consecutively in the manner of a continuous narrative. However, as mentioned above, continuous narratives in Roman art relate the grand tales of myth or imperial military campaigns, not genre scenes of everyday life. Setting aside the difficulties of reconstructing the order of the surviving panels, the subjects do not seem to depend on a chronological sequence in episodes, but rather portray ordinary, recurring encounters in the Forum during market days.49 Shopping dominates the extant frieze in a series of scenes that unfold one after JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   95

FIGURE 5.5.

Engraving of fragment 9 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix. Baiardi 1762, pl. xlii.

another in one long panel (fig. 5.5 and plate 2); other vignettes of getting and spending appear in the shorter sections, now separately framed. In the one extant long panel, two pairs of fabric vendors, represented back to back, hold out cloths for the inspection of their female customers, who gesticulate or reach toward the samples.50 In terms of the strategies of street peddlers, the fabric vendors have already successfully made their sales pitches, and are now inviting the potential customers to touch the goods, admire the quality, and then proceed to haggle over the price.51 To the right a smaller female figure with a garland on her head, and a cloth draped over her shoulder in a manner similar to both vendors, stands looking on. This figure may serve as an assistant at the ready to hand over more samples of cloth, and remove those not wanted.52 In the middle, a seller of pots and urns turns one of his wares upside-down as if to demonstrate its manufacture, while a boy seated below holds an anvil as he works on the metal vessels (perhaps adding finishing touches?), several of which are arranged in rows on the ground. Another vendor offers a pot to a male customer, who reaches out for it. The customer, accompanied by a little boy holding a shopping basket, wears a toga. Here the background differs, with windows set in a wall, and the next group, set back at an angle, consists of a baker and two male customers hovering over a trestle table loaded with round loaves of bread and hampers.53 The panorama of market day in the forum presents a sampling of routine transactions. What is striking, however, is the lack of distinction among sellers and buyers. The peddlers are barely distinguishable from their customers. Only the vendors’ postures, holding out the goods to be sampled, or their positions, seated behind low tables (in other scenes),54 indicate their livelihood. In manners of dress or bearing, there is nothing to differentiate them from their clientele, except for the one customer who wears the toga, the dress of a Roman citizen. In the hierarchical society of ancient Rome, obsessed with status, those who work for a living and those who do not are sharply segregated. We might expect to see this even in the marketplace. 96   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

In Roman satire, for example, street-hawkers disturb city-dwellers with their loud, incessant sales banter and their looks are off-putting—rough, dirty, bedraggled.55 It is worth noting that women are the clientele (in this scene and another; also, women—and one with a child in her lap—peruse shoes in another scene)56 who exhibit independence and mobility in public. Would respectable women approach these unsavory characters unaccompanied by their male kin or slaves? Clothing indicated status or wealth, of course. Costly fabrics, such as silk, as well as elaborately embroidered mantles and jewelry were luxuries of the well-to-do, if not the rich. Here we have both the garments on the backs of the shoppers as well as the raw materials, the fabrics under consideration for purchase. The dress of the women in mantles and tunics, however, as well as the dress of the sellers in tunics, appears uniform throughout the frieze. Tunics were the standard Roman garment worn by women and men, children and adults, and those of varying status.57 Women’s tunics were longer than those of men, and the quality of cloth and color indicated status through their varying cost. Variety in the cut of the clothing and details is difficult to discern here. Another aspect of female attire that attracted attention by male authorities is head covering: scholars have thought that matrons covered their hair with veils when in public.58 Veils, however, are only occasionally represented in the depiction of women. The heads of the women shoppers appear to be uncovered. The exceptions are those that appear to be workers or servants: the diminutive woman following the second fabric vendor wears a garland of flowers in her hair, and a small figure standing behind a pair of seated female shoppers in another scene has her hair covered by a veil or kerchief.59 The hierarchy of female attire as attested in ancient texts appears undermined by the frieze’s representation of headgear. So, too, with the garments covering the body below: tunics and mantles. The female shoppers wear long, full tunics covered by mantles. So, too, does the female assistant to the vendors.60 In cut and volume, these garments appear similar to those depicted on marble statuary of the early empire. What the frieze provides, however, are brilliant colors across the spectrum. Traces of boldly colored clothing are splashed across the frieze, and can be detected in older images and, very faintly, in those of the current state of preservation. Reds and greens stand out amidst the flaked and faded surfaces of the frieze. Further evidence is offered in the account of the eighteenth-century antiquarians, who not only rendered the frieze panels in a series of engravings but also described its subjects.61 The antiquarians summon boldly colored garments worn by clients and merchants alike: the shopper on the left edge wears red, and she considers a white fabric with red stripes at the borders proffered by a salesman in green, who has a fabric of a darker color over his shoulder;62 the second shopper, wrapped in a sky-blue garment (and, perhaps, with a darker mantle) examines a fabric, which looks greenish in older images, but is described as being the color of shot silk;63 the salesman wears red and carries a white cloth (now gray) over his shoulder. Although JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   97

the accuracy of the eighteenth-century description cannot be tested now, traces of the reds, perhaps originally more burgundy or scarlet, appear on the frieze even in its current deteriorated state; the blue, however, appears faded and more greenish, and the whites grimy. The colors depicted here were opulent and costly to wear on one’s back: the scarlet (coccinus or coccineus) or deep-hued reds from dyes made of millions of insect eggs, the white of undyed wool difficult to keep clean, and the sky-blue desirable for its evocation of the natural world and the heavens above.64 Those who could afford to wear rainbow hues stood out on Roman streets thronged with the patchwork or threadbare rags of slaves or the freeborn poor, and the dark, dingy tunics of laborers and artisans. Poets claim that loud colors advertised the streetwalker’s trade, and the vulgarity and tastelessness of social climbers when worn by men.65 Note that the fictional freedman Trimalchio makes his entrance in a scarlet cloak.66 All of these colors, including green and yellow, appear in the clothing of the frieze’s figures, according to the antiquarians (some of the greens are visible in older photographs, along with traces of yellow). Note the fabric salesmen’s assistant in white, along with the white cloth for sale: working people simply did not wear white clothes.67 Particularly striking are the numbers of figures in purple or violet in other sections: five, of which four are salesmen (plus a purple fabric is being shown to customers in one section).68 Purple signified high rank, as in the stripes on senators’ tunics and togas, since the cost of extracting this dye from the shells of sea mollusks (murex) was prohibitively expensive.69 Pliny observed that purple was in demand by those undeserving of it, so counterfeit dyes were sought out, and a second-hand clothing trade also may have provided these garments to those lower down on the social scale.70 There are a few signs of status in this section of the frieze: the shopper on the left edge is being shown a white cloth with the narrow red stripes connoting equestrian status (the angustus clavus), the figure reaching for a vessel near the right is in a toga, a red toga at that, and the figure at the far right may be wearing a toga as well (although difficult to tell now).71 The toga, the cloth of a Roman citizen, was the foremost insignia of rank, status, and participation in civic life.72 Nothing otherwise is exceptional about the togate figure browsing the pots, who is accompanied by a small boy dressed in a green tunic with a shopping basket. The gesture of the boy holding the edge of the man’s toga suggests that they are related as father and son. The only other figures in the frieze who may be wearing a toga are stopping for a snack in another panel, and in the well-illustrated panel depicting three men and a boy reading a banner displayed at the base of three equestrian statues before the colonnade. The togate figure is seen from the back.73 The toga here is white (or off-white), the traditional color of the garment made of undyed wool. Instead of shopping, civic participation appears in this rare scene of passersby taking in the edicts, proclamations, or banner news written in four lines on the scroll. Officialdom is present in the form of its communiqué to its subjects, who focus on the written word with 98   PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL IDENTITIES

rapt attention (in contrast, the equestrian statues seem to be ignored). This scene, exceptional for its representation of the mass media in ancient Rome, offers what the more common statuary of orators lacked: the most effective means of communication from ruler to ruled, from the latter’s point of view. In this scene of civic engagement, the togate figure also signifies the responsibilities shouldered by those enshrouded in it. In contrast, the few who shop or snack in togas suggest some social differentiation, perhaps, although the sale of cloth with the purple border and even the toga with its brilliant hue suggest these insignia have lost much of their distinction in marking precise degrees of status. What to make of the rather flashy red toga in the market scene? It is certainly not the toga picta or purpurea, that is, a sumptuous draped garment in purple (or winered), with designs outlined in gold, of triumphant generals or emperors.74 It is a toga of a nontraditional color that blends in with the rich, vivid colors of the tunics worn by others in the frieze. That only a few figures may be wearing the toga could suggest that most of the other figures were not of citizen status.75 Yet citizens refused to wear togas that made them hot, were too easily stained, and hampered their movements.76 Could the frieze’s minimal depictions of citizens in togas reflect reality rather than the ideal, as the dress code appears to be mostly ignored? Differentiation, however, seems to appear in the colors of the frieze’s tunics. As noted above, the color purple was worn by those who did not merit its distinction. So, too, the purple (or scarlet) stripes on senatorial and equestrian tunics were imitated by those of the lower orders with examples from Pompeii: not only does the first female shopper linger over a white cloth with a red border, but paintings from the tavern in the Street of Mercury show both customers and servers in tunics with purple stripes, and a banquet scene from the House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) includes a diner in a white tunic and purple mantle and a slave in a tunic with thin purple stripes, the array of colors and prestige insignia worn by those notably lacking prestige.77 Furthermore, a painted advertisement for purple-striped cloth appeared in Pompeii, where, as Lauren Petersen points out, there were no senators, and few equestrians as well as members of the local elite.78 As stripes seemed to have lost their exclusivity and were worn in greater numbers by those not in the elite strata, so, too, were purple and scarlet garments afforded by those who were previously less visible in the Roman street. The smart striped cloth offered for sale and the boldly colored tunics in the frieze of Julia Felix project a level of prosperity and sophistication. The few togas may indicate that demonstrating citizen status was not so crucial, because either citizens did not care to bother with the cumbersome toga or they were not full-fledged citizens. The smart red color of the shopper’s toga seems to diminish its ceremonial significance and align him more closely to the vendors in boldly colored tunics selling him pots and pans. Although the extant frieze generally does not display differences in status in the market scenes, there are two other scenes in which differences among social groups JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   99

are striking. Satirists describe the wide gulf between respectable folk and street people, and we see an example of this in one panel depicting a well-dressed woman, with slave or child in tow, giving a handout to a beggar (plate 3).79 Stark differences in bearing and dress mark one as affluent and the other as destitute: notice how the short beggar leans forward on his staff, and is half-naked with tattered rags and a terrier at his feet. The tall and rather statuesque matron approaches with one hand holding an edge of her full green tunic and the other extended. The smaller figure in dark garments following her with a shopping basket increases her stature.80 It would be expected that different classes encountered one another in the Forum of Pompeii, but social differences cannot be easily detected—except in this example, and one other.81 It is curious that the gap between poor and rich is only visible in a scene of alms-giving, rather than that of a commercial transaction in the market scenes. Recall that the so-called atrium (fig. 5.1: no. 24) opens directly to the street and also provides passage from the baths to the garden, so the frieze must have been required viewing for the majority of the estate’s visitors. Not only were clients of the baths likely to be visiting here, but adjacent at no. 23 is a shop open to the street with another room behind (for living quarters?) with a window onto the atrium, and the shop at no. 105 communicates with the baths (so has indirect access to this part of the estate).82 Those who live upstairs in the flats or passed through as clients of the bar or dining facilities may have seen themselves in the frieze as either the salesmen or shoppers or, perhaps, both (depending on their schedules). Clearly little distinguishes those selling and buying: men, women, and children almost all wear tunics. Reality seems to have coincided with this representation. Yet the painter

FIGURE 5.6.

Engraving of fragment 15 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix. Baiardi 1762, pl. xlii.

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and patron could have distinguished more of the shoppers by depicting them in togas, and it is curious that they did not do so.83 Women appear in the frieze more frequently than in other genres of Roman art: they shop for cloth and shoes (one with a child on her lap; fig. 5.6), one lingers by the fast-food seller, another matron gives to a beggar, while yet another presents a girl to a pair of seated men (who may have some official capacity).84 Children accompany their parents or minders, and a pair of them are playing, peering around a column. Clearly women are out and about in the forum. Only two women are attended by slaves following them, but no larger retinue appears. This accords with social customs allowing women of the lower social orders to move about freely in public, yet departs from prevalent depictions of the public arena or civic life in Roman art, in which women are absent or at the margins. Julia Felix, we assume, commissioned the Forum frieze to represent her peers (and, perhaps, herself ) going about their weekly errands, haggling with merchants, making purchases. Rather than a genre scene, could the frieze portray Julia Felix’s community in its most visible culminating event, the market amidst the Forum colonnades? This subject, however banal to elite Romans, was worthy of depiction in a frieze in the entrance of Julia Felix’s estate. The cohort of shoppers, merchants, and idlers, both female and male, appears strikingly homogeneous in aspect and outlook; in fact, they are defined in status only in contrast to the abject poverty and misery of those without tunics, the beggar and criminal being flogged.85 It would seem that the frieze offers a dazzling vision of Pompeians shopping in their best attire. This is not to say that all those taking part in the Pompeian market actually were decked out in brilliantly dyed tunics, but that the patron wished to project a vision of a prosperous city, a thriving marketplace, and transactions among merchants and customers who seemed to be, more or less, peers. That the traveling salesmen and their public are not differentiated in dress has gone unnoticed in studies of the frieze so far.86 Could the similarity of buyers and sellers suggest that they are from the same social strata and that, on another day or in a shop on the Via dell’Abbondanza, their roles could very well be reversed? Note that there are no grand elites with retinue of slaves and retainers making entrances in the Forum (that is, in the frieze’s extant sections; we have no idea of what has been lost in the frieze). Could the cohesive and inclusive vision of a society of (mostly) equals be attributed to the gender of the patron? It is striking that the frieze’s panorama of many vendors and goods for sale in the Forum market does not focus on a single protagonist, nor is any of the merchandise magnified in detail. Instead, gestures and glances suggest relationships among the participants with an eye for anecdotal detail (a sleepy vendor, children hiding behind statues, etc.) and the showmanship needed to close a sale. In contrast, shop signs and funerary reliefs representing occupations in the late first and second centuries CE foreground the shopkeeper or artisan, frontally disposed, and the products, often shown in larger scale than the human figures.87 Such representations of trades often were commissioned by those with JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   101

considerably less resources than Julia Felix. Her wealth and professional achievements, though not complemented by elite status, allowed her to expand the perspective of her frieze to portray the marketplace as whole (rather than highlighting one trade). Her perspective as a patron may have been informed not only by her gender but also by her status that defied neat categorization: she was a woman of means, who was born out of wedlock. A monied woman without high birth was not unusual in Pompeii; what stands out, though, is Julia Felix’s direct address in her rental notice—no male relatives represented her interests. The frieze from the estate of Julia Felix makes the invisible members of Pompeii’s working and commercial classes all fully and vividly visible. Should we not suppose that this was Julia Felix’s intention?

Notes 1. CIL 4.1136. 2. PPM III:184, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice”; Parslow 1995, 107–122. 3. Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 105–116, 118–142. 4. Savunen (1997, 56–60) on Julia Felix’s baths and the Sarno Bath complex restored by women entrepreneurs; Koloski-Ostrow 1990, 56–58. For women in financial transactions, see also Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 5. Parslow (1998, 129) on the plan of the dining room and surrounding rooms as similar to those of the seat of the priesthood known as the Augustales in nearby Misenum or the later meeting halls of guilds at Ostia; Torelli (2012, 68–69) on the similarity with the dining establishment at Moregine. 6. Nappo 2007, 361. 7. Nappo 1989; Parslow 1998; Olivito 2013, 37–83. 8. Pliny (HN 35.112) on Peiraïkos as a painter of low subjects. 9. Esposito 2009, 218–219; Parslow 1998, 115. 10. CIL 4.1136: In praedis Iuliae Sp(urii) f (iliae) Felicis locantur balneum venerium et nongentum, tabernae, pergulae, cenacula ex idibus Aug(ustis) primis in idus Aug(ustis) sextas, annos continuos quinque s(i) q(uinquennium) d(ecurrerit) l(ocatio) e(rit) n(udo) c(onsensu). Bernstein 2007, 529 for the translation; Beard (2008, 110 and 243) offers “an elegant bath suite for prestige clients,” for balneum venerium et nongentum. 11. Nongentum seems to refer to equites known colloquially as the “nine hundred” (from Pliny HN 33.31); thus the “best people” (Koloski-Ostrow 2007, 238) or the lower strata of the equestrian order who served as poll-watchers (Parslow 1998, 128–129). The “nine hundred” also were associated with collegia, the organizations of business owners, as seen in CIL 4.2630 with the shipbuilders’ guild. 12. The inscription refers to baths worthy of Venus. 13. Small 2007, 186–187. 14. I thank Molly Swetnam-Burland for pointing this out to me. 15. Olivito (2013, 230 and 234) speculates on the possibility of such an agent for Julia Felix. 16. See Olivito 2013, 229 on Julia inheriting a large fortune from her father, but this is speculation without any basis; she may, in fact, have asserted her illegitimate birth to

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suggest that she is freeborn. For the name Spurius used in this way, see Keppie 1991, 19. For another local woman with a father named Spurius, see Zimmermann Damer, this volume, n. 40. I thank Molly Swetnam-Burland, along with Ann Koloski-Ostrow and John Bodel, for sound advice on the inscription. 17. Savunen 1997, 57. For discussion of women’s names, see also Zimmermann Damer, this volume. Although Olivito (2013, 229) asserts that the proprietor was “without doubt” a descendant of a branch of imperial freedmen, the evidence for this is lacking (e.g., nothing is known of her father). See Cooley and Cooley 2014, 224 for G28, a marble plaque naming Julia in Herculaneum as a property owner (thanks again to Molly Swetnam-Burland). 18. Hartnett 2017, 203–209. 19. PPM III:192–195, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 20. As opposed to segregating men and women in separate bathing quarters, as had been done previously (Savunen 1997, 58, on the bathing facilities in Pompeii). 21. PPM III:192, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 22. PPM III:205–215, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 23. Koloski-Ostrow 2007, 237. 24. Nappo 2007, 361. 25. PPM III:220–229, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 26. PPM III:216–219, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 27. Parslow 1998, 115. 28. Parslow 1998. 29. PPM III:185, 238, 244, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 30. Jashemski (1979, 48) on the water channel “made of four large connecting fishponds by little marble bridges.” 31. Jashemski 1979, 48. 32. A bronze tripod of ithyphallic satyrs was found in the shrine at the south end of the viridarium (Berry 2007, 179, with illustration); see also Parslow 1988, 42–43. 33. PPM III:263, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” For recent approaches to nilotica, see SwetnamBurland 2015, 144–155. 34. Whitehouse 1977 on the painting. 35. PPM III:289–291, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” 36. The still lifes may also evoke xenia, guests’ gifts (Leach 2004, 80–81), which may derive from a Greek custom of painting delectables on small wooden tablets as signs of hospitality. 37. PPM III:289–291, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice.” See also Swetnam-Burland, this volume, for discussion of this still life. 38. Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples (henceforth MANN) inv. no. 8795; Guzzo 2003, 148, fig. 1. 39. Parslow 1988, 42–43; PPM III:186, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice”; from room no. 97. 40. PPM III:278, 280, s.v. “Villa di Giulia Felice,” in corridor nos. 90b; Strocka 2007, 303, fig. 20.1. 41. Two small sections are left in situ on the south and west walls, although the latter fragment is barely visible (Parslow 1998, 115, figs. 2 and 3). 42. The Bourbons removed sixteen sections, but wound up with three more in the effort

JULIA FELIX’S PROPERTY AND THE FORUM FRIEZE   103

to cut them down, for a total of nineteen fragments; now mounted in twelve panels in MANN (Parslow 1998, 116); Guzzo 2005. 43. Parslow 1998, 115, 118. 44. Baiardi 1762, 207–229. 45. Although the extant sections represent a garlanded colonnade in the background, details differ throughout: in the size of the intercolumniations, the decoration of the architrave, and the height, as one section shows a second story (Parslow 1998, 117–120). 46. Torelli 2012, 64, fig. 5. 47. Leach 1988, 263–267. 48. Pappalardo and Capuana 2006, 84; Guzzo 2005, 108, 112; Nappo (1989, 94) on the depiction of Corinthian columns in the frieze, while Doric and Ionic orders dominate the Forum portico. 49. See Olivito 2013, 249–263 for analysis of reconstructions of the frieze (by Nappo and Parslow). 50. Baiardi 1762, pl. xlii, 215–217; Nappo 1989, 84–86, fig. 8; Olivito 2013, 50–56, figs. 31–33. 51. Olivito 2013, 51 on the second woman holding a spherical object in her left hand, possibly a purse, a little sack, or a phial for liquids. 52. Why the garland on the figure’s head? Perhaps for festivities for market day; Olivito (2013, 52–53) identifies the figure as an old woman, perhaps a seller of second-hand clothes. 53. Olivito 2013, 55 on scholarly disagreement about the figures’ identifications; the taller figure at the right edge may be in a toga, so identified as a buyer (not seller) of bread. 54. See, for example, fragment 11 (Olivito 2013, figs. 38–39), and fragment 15 (Olivito 2013, figs. 49–50). 55. Magaldi 1930; Holleran 2012, 194–231. 56. Olivito 2013, fragment 15, figs. 49–50; Parslow (1998, 125) had previously noted the number of female figures. 57. Petersen 2009, 207; Lovén 2014, 272. 58. Olson 2008, 33–36. 59. Olivito 2013, fragment 10, figs. 36–37. 60. No shorter tunics mark the working women, for example; or alternatively, the diminutive figure, the assistant to the salesman or, perhaps, a vendor of used clothing—supra n. 42. 61. Baiardi 1762, 207–229. 62. Olivito (2013, 51) observes the red color. 63. Baiardi (1762, 215) for the term cangiante (literally, “changing,” but usually referring to shot silk); Olivito (2013, 51) observes a dark cloth with colored decoration; the antiquarians’ mention of shot silk may reflect eighteenth-century tastes; Hildebrandt 2012. 64. Ovid (Ars am. 3.169–192) for a garment the color of a cloudless sky; Olson 2017, 112–113. 65. Bradley 2009, 181; Olson 2017, 112, 114. 66. Petron. Sat. 32.1–33.1. 67. Artem. 2.3. 68. The salesmen in purple tunics are in fragments 5, 10, 11, 13 (Olivito 2013, figs. 25–26, 36–37, 38–39, 45–46); the purple cloth offered to customers is in fragment 10 (Olivito 2013, figs. 36–37). 69. Olson 2017, 20–21, fig. 1.4; Hughes 2007.

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70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

Plin. HN 16.77; Bradley 2009, 201–202. Supra n. 50 and n. 53. Petersen 2009, 199. Olivito (2013, fragment 14, figures 47–48) sees three togate figures, but this is not clear. Olson 2017, 44–48. The number of togas represented: possibly six (two in fragment 9, two in fragment 14, one in fragment 11, and one in fragment 2). For images, see Olivito 2013, figs. 20, 31, 38, and 47. Olivito (2013, 37–83), however, sees more togas throughout the frieze. Petersen 2009, 207. Olson 2017, 20; Clarke 2003, 242–243, pl. 21. See Plin. HN 33.29 on public criers wearing the wide purple stripe of senators. Petersen 2009, 200 on the garment-maker Verecundus’s shop sign. Nappo 1989, 79–80, fig. 2; Olivito 2013, 40–43, fragment 3, figs. 22–23. The figure probably represents her slave or attendant; note the similar scale and posture to the assistant cloth-dealer in fragment 9 above, supra n. 52. Another panel represents the beating of a figure, identified as a schoolboy or a slave (Olivito 2013, fragment 12, 61–66, figs. 40–41), not discussed in this essay. Pirson 1997, 179. Petersen 2009, 209–212. Olivito 2013, fragment 13, 66–68, figs. 45–46; Parslow 1998, 125. Supra n. 81. Parslow 1998, 131, n. 6, on rich colors of the original frieze, although “there appears to be no particular scheme behind the employment of these colors, nor does color play an essential role in reconstruction of the frieze.” Interests in the color of ancient art, clothing as status markers, and social tensions both revealed and concealed by dress have driven the field more recently. See also Jacobelli, this volume, on color and status. Torelli 2012, 61–76.

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CHAPTER 6

Contextualizing the Funerary and Honorific Portrait Statues of Women in Pompeii Brenda Longfellow

Honorific portrait statues of local elites and imperial family members are integral components of a Roman city’s urban areas and architectural amenities, while funerary portraits depicting people from a larger swath of society are typical fixtures of the exterior façades of late Republican and Augustan tombs lining the roads into a city.1 For both categories of images, male portraits are more prevalent than female. In Pompeii, for instance, approximately 40 percent of the extant funerary portraits depict women, with the earliest examples dating to around the middle of the first century BCE.2 Conversely, portraits of women comprise about 10 percent of the overall population of honorific statues recovered from the fora, streets, and sanctuaries of Pompeii, and the earliest of these dates to the Augustan period. The relatively low percentage of female honorific statues on display among the urban amenities of Pompeii corresponds with general expectations for female honorific statues in a Roman city.3 These statues, which were among the highest honors available to the political and economic elite of a city, could be proposed by a range of individuals and groups, but then they would have to be officially sanctioned by the ordo, or town council, the membership of which primarily consisted of current and former civic magistrates. Honorific statues provided a public and enduring means for an individual to be exalted as an ideal benefactor and community member. Funerary statues, on the other hand, were chosen by those responsible for building or maintaining the familial tomb and its funerary equipment. Half of the known tomb patrons in Pompeii are women,4 thus, the funerary statues were chosen by men and women with a familial or personal relationship to the person commemorated and 109

FIGURE 6.1.

Statue of an anonymous woman from the Herculaneum Gate necropolis, Pompeii. Antiquarium inv. no. 14205.

memorialized with a funerary statue. It is not surprising, therefore, that the number of funerary statues honoring women is more equitable. Over twenty funerary statues of women have been excavated in Pompeii,5 and the most discussed among these is a well-preserved marble portrait of an anonymous woman dating to the middle of the first century BCE. This essay first considers this statue alongside contemporary female funerary portraits, some of which faced passers-by from tombs jointly built by a man and a woman. The primary role Pompeian women took in the production of tombs and their decorative effects allows for a consideration of the insight funerary portraits might provide into not only how women were perceived but also how they projected their own images. This essay then considers the relationship of these early funerary portraits to the female honorific statues of Pompeii, which begin to appear approximately two generations after the funerary statues.6 The earliest known honorific portrait of a woman stood in the Temple of Fortuna Augusta, which was built by Marcus Tullius before 3 CE,7 and the most famous Pompeian honorific statue is that of Eumachia, which dates to the Tiberian period (14–37 CE).8 This essay considers whether honorific statues like that of Eumachia can be understood to be in conversation with the funerary portraits that predate them. By assessing the possibility that female tomb builders helped shape the format of statues for themselves and others and by reflecting on how honorific sculptures may have been informed by or responded to their funerary precedents still visible in the cemeteries flanking the roads leading into Pompeii, this contextual examination of honorific and funerary statues can help us better understand the spectrum along which individual women of different social groups in a single city self-identified and were identified by others.

Funerary Statues The most famous of the funerary statues in Pompeii is also one of the oldest (figs. 6.1–6.2).9 This two meter–tall marble statue of an anonymous woman with aged features was found in 1873 in the Herculaneum Gate necropolis in or near tomb 38 N.10 The markers of age on the marble funerary statue include the lumpy neck, the rather large bags under the eyes, and the wrinkles on the cheeks and at the corners of the mouth and eyes. In addition, the sculptor utilized the natural vertical striations in the marble to accentuate the sagging skin of the woman. Katherine Welch suggests that feminine virtues beyond modesty and moral fidelity should be read into the aged features: “The point was not to represent this woman as youthful and attractive, but as a virtuous, wise and practical (if not intractable) wife—supporter of the family through good works done in the home and occasional public appearances in which she is careful to comport herself modestly.”11 Welch’s suggestion that the aged features emphasize the wise and practical side of a married woman is notable, as these virtues FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   111

FIGURE 6.2.

Detail of the anonymous woman from the Herculaneum Gate necropolis. Antiquarium inv. no. 14205.

correspond with two of the basic masculine virtues typically associated with aged male portraits. As Eve D’Ambra has pointed out, a female portrait with signs of advanced age may signal more than the typical female virtues and perhaps could be a marker indicating that the woman possesses extraordinary dignity and discipline— almost as if she were an honorary male.12 At the same time, the slightly parted, full lips of the woman contrast with the characteristically tight set of the mouth and thin lips found in contemporary aged statues of men. In a similar fashion, the engaged bunches of muscles at the corners of the jaw and furrowed brow, both of which are typical of mature male portraits of the time, are absent from this woman’s portrait. The smooth brow and softening of the mouth and jaw allow the woman to appear dignified and disciplined without appearing aggressive or commanding.13 The sense of dignity and discipline radiating from the facial expression is enhanced by the solid, frontal stance of the statue. The feet are widely spaced and firmly planted, the spine is straight, the chin is held high, and the unwavering gaze of this over-life-size statue goes out over the heads of passers-by. This unyielding stance is both softened and augmented by the use of the pudicitia pose, a modern category of Roman female body types that can be identified by the arm and hand positions.14 The left arm is held tightly across the front of the body at the level of the

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waist, creating a kind of physical barrier in front of the woman’s body, a barrier that is reinforced by the way that the left hand is completely wrapped up in the mantle, or overgarment. The left hand is positioned just below the right elbow, which is bent to lift the right hand to the chin; this hand-to-chin gesture is the defining feature of the pudicitia statue type, and the placement of both arms across the body reinforces the barrier between the onlooker and female body.15 The pudicitia body type is the most common format for funerary statues not only in Pompeii, but across Roman cemeteries, and it was particularly popular in the late Republican period.16 Although this statue does not exhibit the bowed head and lowered gaze that often are paired with the pudicitia body type,17 it does adhere to the standard interplay of garment and body for the type. The mantle works with the tunic beneath to completely envelop the body from the head to the feet; this voluminous wrapping of the body reinforces its closed position. The wrapped body and covered head broadcast the woman’s modesty and high moral standing, virtues that are further emphasized by the ponderous folds of the mantle, which falls slightly past the knees to obscure the curves of the body beneath. This obscuring of the body is particularly effectively achieved with the strong vertical swath of fabric that begins in the right hand beneath the chin. Loosely held by the thumb and fingers, the fold falls straight down the center of the body to the level of the thighs. A second strong vertical fold is created by the fabric held in the left hand. The mantle is tightly wrapped around the left hand and elegantly covers two fingers before falling into an archaizing swallowtail fold, which works with the strong vertical fold concealing the center of the body, and the vertical folds of the long tunic beneath the mantle that pools over the feet to further emphasize the weighty modesty and authority of the woman depicted. The deeply carved, linear folds of the tunic between the legs seem to be a particular feature shared by many of the funerary statues in Pompeii.18 Less characteristic is the skillful carving of the stone surface so that the thin vertical lines of the lighter tunic show through the heavy mantle. Such drapery-through-drapery effects are heralded as a hallmark of high-quality portrait statues in Roman Italy and are shared with the honorific statue of Eumachia discussed below.19 The copious amounts of drapery enveloping the body work together with the large size of the statue, meticulous hairstyle, and multiple pieces of jewelry to further announce the anonymous woman’s high social, familial, and economic status. The uncovered part of the hair is centrally parted and smoothly divided on the forehead into two bands with corkscrew curls in front of the ears, a detail that alludes to the time and care put into her appearance, presumably by an ornatrix, or slave responsible for her hairstyle.20 The bulk of the hair is pulled back into a high bun that is covered by the mantle. If this bun is bound with vittae, or wool bands, then this is an example of the tutulus hairstyle, which was limited in use to a materfamilias.21

FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   113

FIGURE 6.3.

Façade tomb 7 OS (Flavia Agathea), aedicula tomb 9 OS (seated statue), exedra tomb 11 OS (Eumachia), and aedicula tomb 13 OS (Vertia Philumina). Nucerian Gate necropolis, Pompeii.

This hairstyle has a long history of use in Etruria, with one of the earliest examples coming from the Tomb of the Baron in Tarquinia (ca. 510–500 BCE).22 The venerable nature of the hairstyle means it not only adds height to the over-life-size statue but also emphasizes the woman’s adherence to ancestral traditions and her high familial status as materfamilias. The display of wealth is particularly evident with the earrings hanging from the extraordinarily large ears as well as the rings on the pinky finger of the right hand and the first finger of the left hand.23 The pervading sense of dignity, modesty, high status, and constancy of this marble pudicitia statue is shared by five roughly contemporary Pompeian funerary statues and heads, all of which were found in the Nucerian Gate necropolis.24 Each of these tuff portraits, which are associated with tombs dating ca. 50–30 BCE, also have frontal stances, erect spines, and chins held high. Three of the five portraits are not only contemporaries but also occupied neighboring tombs: tombs 7 OS, 9 OS, and 13 OS (fig. 6.3). These two mature and one more youthful portrait faces have full, slightly downturned lips that are slightly parted (figs. 6.4–6.6). Like the marble statue of the anonymous woman, these statues do not share the engaged jaw muscles or furrowed brows featured on contemporary statues of aged men. The heads of all three females are covered by their mantles, but none has the tutulus hairstyle that would announce the status of the woman as materfamilias. Rather, in each case, the hair is divided so that the two sides are pulled back into a low bun at the nape of the neck while the hair on top of the head is looped back to create a knot high on the forehead that is visible in front of the veil. This hairstyle is known as the nodus coiffure,25 and its popularity in the last generation of the Republic and Augustan period is sometimes linked to its use by imperial family members, particularly Octavia, sister of the emperor Augustus, and the empress Livia. Because the nodus

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FIGURE 6.4.

Flavia Agathea from tomb 7 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis.

hairstyle appears on funerary statues and reliefs of freedwomen and elites in Rome, Pompeii, and other cities that predate the first coins depicting Octavia (40 BCE) and the earliest honorific statues of Octavia and Livia (35 BCE),26 and because Cleopatra VII, direct rival of Octavia for Mark Antony’s affections, also wears the nodus hairstyle on coins minted in Alexandria,27 it is possible that this hairstyle was popular for reasons beyond signaling allegiance with the imperial family. In other words, the Pompeian women with this hairstyle may or may not have chosen the hairstyle due to local and/or imperial fashion trends. This hairstyle was generally favored for portraits in Pompeii, which suggests that it not only was considered stylish but also was a sign of status appropriate for freeborn and freedwomen alike. Perhaps surprisingly, none of these funerary statues use the popular pudicitia body type. Indeed, one of these tuff portraits—that of Flavia Agathea, freedwoman

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of Publius—never had a body (fig. 6.4).28 Roughly worked, the short neck supports a broad, flat face devoid of wrinkles, the shape of which is accentuated by the heavy chin, thinned lips, and protruding, globular eyeballs. The head is covered by a veil, which, with its smooth surface, accentuates the cubic shape. The portrait bust occupies the seventh niche from the left in the upper story of façade tomb 7 OS, where it is framed by an aedicula. Paul Zanker has likened the architectural appearance of this façade tomb with portraits filling the niches to an apartment building overflowing with activity.29 This unique tomb was built by two former slaves of the Flavii family: Flavia Agathea, freedwoman of Publius, and Publius Flavius Philoxenus, freedman of Publius, both of whom were alive during construction: P(ublius) Flavius P(ublii) / l(ibertus) / Philoxenus / Flavia P(ublii) l(iberta) Agathea / vivont30 Publius Flavius Philoxenus, freedman of Publius, and Flavia Agathea, freedwoman of Publius, made this while living

Because this tomb was built by and for freedmen, Zanker calls it a communal monument and draws comparison with the columbaria tombs used by collegia in Rome, even though the named freedman and freedwoman seem to share a patron and thus are part of the same extended family.31 The fact that the male and female patrons of the tomb were alive at the time of the tomb’s creation makes the unusual choice of bust portraits for Flavia Agathea and the others occupying the niches that much more interesting.32 Moreover, the inscription on the bust of Flavia Agathea is in the nominative, indicating that Flavia Agathea provided her own portrait for the monument: Flavia P(ublii) l(iberta) / Agathea Salinie(nsi)33 Flavia Agathea, freedwoman of Publius, of the Saliniensis quarter

Because Flavia Agathea is identified as being from a particular region within the city of Pompeii, we have some insight into aspects of her identity beyond the familial, and a sense that these aspects were important enough to memorialize beneath her visage. The Saliniensis quarter is located in the northwest part of Pompeii, across town from the southern necropolis in which she is buried, and this quarter is primarily known from election posters emphasizing localized community support for a candidate.34 This extra identifier in the funerary inscription may or may not indicate that this Flavia Agathea is a different woman from the woman with this name who co-sponsored the tomb; there isn’t enough evidence to state with certainty which 116   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 6.5.

Vertia Philumina from tomb 13 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis.

is the case. If it does signal a different woman, then this differentiation indicates that not only was the tomb’s architectural format, which is unusual for Pompeii but reminiscent of contemporary tombs in Rome, created with the financial holdings and input of a woman, but also that a second woman in the same extended family took the opportunity to provide her own funerary image within the requisite format of a portrait bust. In its abbreviated form and generic features, the draped head, nodus hairstyle, and erect pose of the woman still emphasize her dignity, modesty, and upstanding character in a visual shorthand shared by the full-length female statues displayed on the façades of two nearby aedicula tombs. One of these contemporary aedicula tombs (13 OS) was jointly built by a freeborn man and a freedwoman: FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   117

FIGURE 6.6.

Anonymous woman from tomb 9 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis.

M(arcus) Octavius M(arci) f(ilius) / Men(enia) et Vertia G(aiae) l(iberta) / Philumina in loco / communi monument(um) communem sibei / postereisque sueis fecerunt.35 Marcus Octavius, son of Marcus and of the Menenian tribe,36 and Vertia Philumina, freedwoman of a woman, built this shared monument in a jointly owned space for themselves and their descendants.

Here, the inscription emphasizes not only that the freeborn man and freedwoman built the monument together, but also that they share ownership of the land on which the tomb is built. The vertical tomb consists of a low base, a tall podium, and a tetrastyle aedicula featuring three niches that held full-length tuff statues: a mature, veiled woman, 118   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

identified as Vertia Philumina; an older togate man, identified as Octavius; and a young man dressed in a cuirass, who is presumably their son.37 The clothes and pose of the statue of Vertia Philumina follow the basic formula commonly used for female portraits (fig. 6.5).38 A long tunic is worn beneath a mantle that is pulled over the head and falls slightly past the knees. This outer garment is tightly wrapped around the left arm, which is held at the side of the body, and obscures the left hand. The right arm crosses the body at a diagonal beneath the mantle, but the right hand remains free and is positioned as if the figure is about to adjust the veil over her head, a gesture of modesty.39 The vertical folds of the long tunic fall over the feet, and the folds between the legs are deeply carved in a fashion similar to those of the marble pudicitia statue. The heavy drapery and positioning of the right arm across the body work together to obscure the female figure beneath, and the modest gesture of the right hand works with the closed body position to emphasize the modesty and high moral standing of Vertia Philumina. The inscription, erect posture, and full-length statues of her husband and son complete the picture of a fertile woman committed to her family and of some standing within the larger community that her portrait overlooks, thus signaling that she has moved well beyond her servile background. The tuff seated statue of a mature anonymous woman from the contemporary aedicula tomb (9 OS) located between the tomb of the Flavii and the tomb of Vertia Philumina demonstrates that the female funerary portrait could emphasize even more aspects of a woman’s life and character than modesty, dignity, social status, fertility, and commitment to the family (fig. 6.6).40 The dedicatory inscription for this tomb is not preserved, but this statue is so particular in its accessories and dress that either the woman represented approved the format during her lifetime or her literacy and/or writing skills were a major point of pride for the tomb builder. The statue holds a capsa, or cylindrical container for scrolls, in the left hand and once held a writing implement in the right. This emphasis on writing is echoed in the aged togate statue beside her, which holds a scroll in the left hand (fig. 6.7). Both sit with straight spines, chins held high, and gaze out beyond the crowds traveling the street below. The female statue is clothed in a mantle that covers the head and descends to mid-calves. The mantle is slung over the left shoulder and wrapped around the waist, leaving the chest uncovered and paralleling how the toga is draped on the male statue. Both statues wear short-sleeved tunics beneath the outer garments, but the female statue also wears the garment of a married woman, a stola, which is recognizable by the institae, or characteristic shoulder straps, as well as the prominent V-shaped neckline that reveals the tunic beneath.41 The stola is often discussed as making a comeback under Livia, and so the garment on this late Republican statue is worth noting. So, too, is the fact that it is belted high beneath her breasts, in a rather classicizing manner. The belt forms a central knot, beneath which the stola cascades down to the lap in a cluster of thick, linear folds. Within this group of three contemporary and neighboring tombs, the diversity of FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   119

FIGURE 6.7.

Anonymous man and woman from tomb 9 OS, Nucerian Gate necropolis.

body types and outfits among the female statues is striking, and it should be noted that none uses the pudicitia format or hairstyle chosen for the anonymous woman from the Herculaneum Gate necropolis. What they do share with that marble statue is a wide stance, straight spine, and erect head, so that all statues are gazing out into the far distance from their second-story positions. The decorous modesty that is typically emphasized in later Pompeian funerary and honorific statues with the downward turn of the head does not seem to be part of the vocabulary for this first generation of Pompeian female statues; the modesty is signaled by the costume.

Honorific Statues Examples of the second generation of funerary statues in Pompeii are characterized by a more reserved pose, in which the chins are tilted downwards for a demure gaze and the feet can be positioned impossibly close together for a more passive stance.42 Another noticeable change is the lessening of the emphasis on frontality; torsion is introduced by canting the non-weight-bearing leg so that the knee twists inward and the foot points outward.43 This stance and demure gaze also characterize the earliest-known honorific statue of a woman from Pompeii: a pudicitia statue found in 120   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

the Temple of Augustan Fortune. They are also present in the best-known Pompeian honorific statue of a woman: that of Eumachia (figs. 6.8–6.9).44 The twisting stance of the Eumachia statue is both typical for a female statue produced in the first century CE and strikingly different from the unwavering frontal stance of the first generation of Pompeian funerary statues. The right knee is bent and canted inwards to introduce a gentle twist to the body; the twist in the stance is continued through the torso, shoulders, and head, the last of which is turned toward the weight-bearing left side with the chin tilted downward. The way that the body interacts with the tunic and mantle is unusual among the Pompeian portraits.45 The heavy outer garment is pulled over the head yet still falls all the way to the right ankle, suggesting its immense size; the thickness of the drapery folds indicates its substantial weight at the same time as the nipple of the left breast clearly shows through the layers of garments. The right arm is drawn in and crosses the body, with the wrist and hand emerging from the sling created by the mantle. The right hand clasps a swath of the heavy woolen mantle, a gesture that creates an inverted V shape in the garment that draws attention back to the face before the garment cascades down over the left hip to envelop and fall from the lowered left arm.46 The features of the veiled head (fig. 6.9) are so idealized that Welch has characterized it as having “not-portrait” portrait features, an attribute that aligns it closely with the portraiture of female members of the imperial family, like the empress Livia,47 who received a roughly contemporary honorific statue from the Pompeian town council.48 Eumachia’s hairstyle, which features wavy locks of hair parted at the center and pulled back from the face into a low bun, also finds close parallels with the classicizing features of contemporary imperial portraits. Almost everything about the portrait is classicizing: the covered head is set on a long neck and turned slightly to the left. The oval face is widest at the cheekbones, and the broad, smooth planes of the cheeks draw attention to the small mouth with its full, slightly parted lips. The long, straight line of the nose runs smoothly into the curve of the eyebrows, which anchor the unlined triangular forehead. The eyes are the primary place where the classicizing features have been modified. Traditional in their almond shape and well-defined upper lid, these eyes are rather small and lack a defined lower lid; there are also slight bags beneath. This small indication of individuality stands in direct contrast to the greater signs of age and range of physiognomic features emphasized in most of the surviving portraits in Pompeii, both funerary and honorific.49 As Welch has noted, classicizing portraits have a long history in the Hellenistic East but were less frequently used in Italy. She suggests the Greek origins of Eumachia’s family name may have played a role in the choice, as may her civic role as a public priestess of Venus in Pompeii.50 Other scholars have emphasized that such a classicizing countenance feeds into the ideology of the Augustan age and draws connections with the imperial family that “elevated and ennobled their neighbor FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   121

FIGURE 6.8.

Statue of Eumachia from Eumachia’s building. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 6232.

FIGURE 6.9.

Detail of the statue of Eumachia from Eumachia’s building, Pompeii. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 6232.

Eumachia.”51 Indeed, the parallels between the portraits of Livia and that of Eumachia become that much more meaningful when one recognizes not only that there was at least one honorific statue of the empress in the heart of Pompeii but also that Livia’s classicizing hairstyle and facial features were incorporated into images that were created for the same complex as the honorific statue of Eumachia: the fountain relief of Concordia just outside the back entrance and probably also the cult statue of Augustan Concord located along the central axis inside Eumachia’s building.52 Its similarities to the physiognomies of Concordia and Livia suggest that the Eumachia portrait was created with an eye to its intended placement within Eumachia’s building, where it would be encountered between two images of Concordia. In addition to the unusually strong emphasis for an elite portrait on a generically classicizing physiognomy,53 the Eumachia statue is also unique among the extant honorific and funerary statues of Pompeian elites due to its display context. This statue stood in a solitary broad niche located at the back end of the central axis and along the back corridor of the large multipurpose building that Eumachia built and FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   123

paid for on the east side of the Forum (see figs. 4.1 and 4.2). The dedicatory inscription was displayed above both entrances into the building and reads as follows: Eumachia L(ucii) f(ilia) sacerd[os] publ[ica] nomine suo et M(arcus) Numistri Frontonis fili chalcidicum cryptam porticus Concordiae Augustae Pietati sua pecunia fecit eademque dedicavit.54 Eumachia, daughter of Lucius and a public priestess, built at her own expense the chalcidicum, crypta, and porticus to Augustan Concord and Piety. She dedicated them in her name and in the name of her son, Marcus Numistrius Fronto.

Eumachia’s building effectively extends the public space of the Forum and adds several new amenities to the Pompeian cityscape, including the new imperial cult of Augustan Concord and Piety, deities to which Livia and her son, Tiberius, had dedicated temples in Rome.55 As Barbara Kellum (in this volume) and many other scholars have noted, Eumachia drew inspiration from contemporary building projects in Rome, particularly the Porticus of Livia, which was famous for its gardens and featured a shrine dedicated to Augustan Concord; and the Forum of Augustus, which showcased statues of the great men of Rome and the ancestors of the imperial family.56 In Eumachia’s building, the chalcidicum is a deep porch that opens onto the Forum and retains numerous statue bases and statuary niches, perhaps for a display of the great men of Rome and Pompeii as well as the ancestors of the Eumachii;57 it also features two elevated platforms of about 1.25 m in height for auctioning goods and/or addressing a crowd.58 The porticus, which consists of a central courtyard surrounded by a colonnade that creates a covered walkway, is similar in size and shape to the Porticus of Livia in Rome.59 The cult statue of Concordia Augusta stood in the central apse located in the back wall of the covered walkway,60 and the central courtyard of the porticus may have provided the first public green space in the city. The crypta is a roofed corridor leading from the back entrance and around the back and sides of the portico; the honorific statue of Eumachia stood in a large niche at the center of its back, eastern, wall. Windows in the walls separating the crypta and porticus meant that people could see from one area into the other.61 Thus, although the statue of Eumachia faced onto the crypta, it was also visible to people in the back colonnade of the porticus, and particularly to anyone moving toward the cult statue of Concordia Augusta. The honorific statue of Eumachia is striking for several reasons, including the fact that it was displayed in a building paid for by Eumachia and because its classicizing features so closely emulate those of Livia—as well as those of the goddess Concordia Augusta, whose visage occupied the central niche of the porticus and the fountain relief in the street. I would argue that this portrait of an elite woman is made even 124   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

more striking by the fact that it was displayed alone at the back of the edifice rather than as one statue within a larger group, such as the familial group that probably stood among the statues in the chalcidicum. This independent honoring of an elite woman seems to be innovative, as honorific statues of elite women in Italy were set within larger groups throughout the Augustan and Claudian periods, and particularly within familial groups. In Paestum, for instance, a statue of Mineia, daughter of Marcus, stood alongside statues of living and deceased family members in the basilica she renovated around 15 BCE.62 In Herculaneum, a marble statue of Viciria Archais, daughter of Aulus, stood in the Basilica Noniana alongside eight other statues of family members, including her son, Nonius Balbus, who built the basilica around 20 BCE.63 Closer to home, the anonymous pudicitia statue found in the Temple of Augustan Fortune in Pompeii occupied one of four statuary niches set into the lateral walls of the cella. Another niche was occupied by a togate statue identified as Marcus Tullius and a third by a statue of Augustus.64 Whether the female statue honored a member of the imperial family, perhaps the daughter or granddaughter of Augustus, or whether it represented a relative of Marcus Tullius, the duumvir who built the temple on land that he owned, has been debated, but in either case, the anonymous woman appears as a member of a familial group.65 After the Claudian period, to which the statue of Eumachia dates, female honorific statues continued to be positioned in familial groupings around Pompeii, including the now-lost statue of Holconia in the tetrapylon of the Holconii and the Neronian statue of a priestess paired with a heroically bare-chested young man in the imperial shrine located in the Macellum (see fig. 4.9).66 The emphasis on familial devotion and generational continuity that comes through with the statue groupings in funerary settings is also present when an honorific statue is placed within a larger statuary group in a civic setting. But when the honorific statue stands isolated from other statues, as appears to be the case of the statue of Eumachia, the prominence of the family is supplanted by an emphasis on the individual’s devotion to and place within the larger community. Rather than adding Eumachia into a larger picture of familial involvement with the community, Eumachia’s solitary statue emphasizes her individual identity as community patron. For instance, the placement of Eumachia’s honorific statue along the central axis of this complex underscores not only her role as patron of the fullers who dedicated the honorific statue but also as patron of the larger community that used her multipurpose edifice. Several scholars have suggested that Eumachia dedicated the building in her name and that of her son in order to boost her son’s political career, even suggesting that the building was built during a year he was running for office.67 If that was the primary intention, however, then it seems as if Numistrius Fronto would be the focus of the dedicatory inscription and sculptural display rather than Eumachia. An example of how the political career of a son might benefit from a Pompeian mother’s FUNERARY AND HONORIFIC PORTRAIT STATUES OF WOMEN IN POMPEII   125

(and father’s) civic munificence can be seen in the Pompeian sanctuary of Isis, the dedicatory inscription of which credits the six-year-old Numerius Popidius Celsinus alone for rebuilding the sanctuary; the same inscription mentions that the child was awarded membership on the town council.68 As Kellum observes in chapter 4 of this volume, Eumachia’s name not only appears first in both dedicatory inscriptions for her edifice, but it is also the largest text in the inscription over the back entrance. In other words, the dedication is absolutely clear about whose wealth and vision are behind the edifice, and to whom the community should reciprocate. This singularity is echoed in the isolated position of the honorific statue.

Conclusion The Eumachia statue was added to the heart of Pompeii generations after the first funerary statues were placed on tomb façades lining the streets leading to the city. The earlier funerary statues discussed in this essay remained on display until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, thus providing a range of possible models for how the honorific portrait of Eumachia might be conceptualized. Indeed, Eumachia shares with these statues basic formal characteristics that Glenys Davies has demonstrated are typical of ancient Roman female statues: closed position, hands clutching garments, garment folds that create barriers in front of bodies, and arms crossing the body to create even larger visual barriers.69 These basic features of female statues provide the foundation for an ideal image of a virtuous, modest, and upstanding woman of some status, but the unwavering gaze, straight spines, and wide stances of the first generation of funerary statues must have appeared archaic to Eumachia and her contemporaries. None of the known funerary statues from Pompeii—the Augustan ones of which share the downturned gaze and shifted stance of the honorific portraits—date after the early first century CE, begging the question of whether the wider social spectrum in Pompeii gradually lost access to the public portrait type after elite women began receiving honorific portraits in civic spaces.70 In the funerary monuments, the emphasis of the portraits is on familial relationships and an individual’s modesty, fertility, and dignified position in society, but, as seen with the neighborhood identity provided for Flavia Agathea and the writing implements held by the seated anonymous woman in the Nucerian Gate cemetery, the emphasis can be expanded in the inscription or portrait to include other aspects of a woman’s identity. The anonymous pudicitia statue from the Herculaneum Gate cemetery probably faced the street from a tomb façade to emphasize the modesty, decorum, and steadfastness of the materfamilias, as well as her role in caring for and perpetuating the family line, while the honorific statue of Eumachia looked into the large, multipurpose building she built for the community to emphasize similar virtues plus her service as public priestess as well as her role as a public benefactress. Whereas most honorific statues of women in 126   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

Julio-Claudian Italy stood within family groups, the Eumachia statue was set up in a niche along the central axis of the complex that seems to have been created with this single statue in mind. From Flavia Agathea to Eumachia, the honorific and funerary statues of Pompeii permit a rare glimpse of how a Roman community might recognize women both as members of families and as individuals—and perhaps how individual women recognized idealized versions of themselves.

Notes 1. On funerary portraits associated with tomb exteriors: Zanker 1975; Wrede 1981; Kockel 1993; Fejfer 2008; Ewald 2015. In the first century CE, there is a dramatic decrease in the number of funerary portraits occupying the exterior faces of tombs. This decline is often associated with a societal shift in focus away from public imagery and toward imagery intended to be seen by those visiting the tomb, like that found on funerary altars and urns. Hesberg 1982; Hesberg and Zanker 1987. 2. At least 72 funerary statues can be associated with the tombs of Pompeii. Of these, 23 are female, 33 are male, and 2 are male children. 3. Fejfer 2008, 331. 4. McDonnell 2005, 30; Campbell 2015, 74–79. For catalogs listing the known dedicatory inscriptions of Pompeian tombs, see McDonnell 2005, appendix A; Emmerson 2013, appendix A. 5. Murer (2017, 31) only counts twelve female funerary statues in Pompeii. Among the ones not counted are Bonifacio 1997, cat. nos. 25 and 28 as well as a headless white limestone statue associated with the Tomb of Aulus Campius Antiocus (D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 27 OS); a tuff statue from the Tomb of Lucius Caesius Logus and Tita (Sogliano 1887a, 34; Mau 1888, 130–132; Campbell 2015, 286–287); two travertine statues from the arch tomb built by Mancia Dorius (Sogliano 1887b, 455; Mau 1888, 132–134; Campbell 2015, 287–288); a female statue from Fondo Pacifico tomb 6 (Mau 1888, 120–149); a white limestone head found on 24 May 1954 (D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 1 OS); and two statues found in 1961 along the Via Nuceria that are now in the modern church (Soprano 1961). 6. Forbis (1990) studied the extant honorific and funerary inscriptions for women in Italy, demonstrating that the honorific inscriptions praised women for their civic involvement while the funerary inscriptions focused on each woman’s role in the family. This distinction cannot as easily be traced in the portraits. In her study of funerary and honorific statues in the western Roman Empire, Davies (2008) draws on the data collected by Alexandridis (2004) to consider when different female body types were used. She concludes that more open poses were preferred for imperial family members while more closed poses were typically chosen for the statues of local women, regardless of whether the statue was intended to be a funerary or honorific one. 7. The Temple of Augustan Fortune has long been thought to have been built in response to Augustus’s safe return to Italy in 19 or 13 BCE; the earliest known dedication in the temple dates to 3 CE (CIL 10.824 = ILS 6382).

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8. Late Augustan date: Zanker 1998, 100. Tiberian date: Polaschek 1972, 168; Bieber 1977, 200–201; Cantilena 1989, 120 no. 16. 9. Four less well-preserved tuff statues of women previously had been found in 1769 and 1813 in the same vicinity as this one: Fiorelli 1860–1864, I:1, 234 (29 July 1769); I:2, 116 no. 24; I:3, 106–107 (18 March 1813); I:3, 259 (28 February 1813). 10. Mau 1874, 158. Based on similarities in craftsmanship, quality, and general findspot, Kockel (1983, 171–172) argues that this pudicitia statue was paired with a togate portrait that was cut off at the hips in antiquity. Welch (2007, 575) suggests that the pudicitia statue stood alongside this male statue on the tomb façade, although the excavation documentation is vague about its findspot. 11. As Welch (2007, 574) has suggested for the herm portrait of Vesonius Primus, the aged features uncoupled from aggressive qualities might convey loyalty and compliance. 12. D’Ambra 2007, 19. 13. Welch 2007, 570. 14. Davies (2018, 163) has noted that the designation of this particular statue type as the pudicitia is a modern one; images of the deity Pudicitia do not utilize this gesture. 15. For overviews of the different body types used for female statues, see Lenaghan 1999, 221; Welch 2007; Fejfer 2008, 331–351; Olson 2008; Davies 2013; Davies 2018, 161–168. In addition to this anonymous statue, six other pudicitia-type statues are known from the tombs of Pompeii. Two of these were found in the general vicinity of this anonymous statue but date later, to the late Republican or early Augustan period (Kockel 1983, 173 nos. 7–8, pl. 63d and 63e). The other four examples come from the Nucerian necropolis: 1. late Republican tuff head from tomb 6 EN (Pompeii Antiquarium inv. no. 10931; Bonifacio no. 26; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 6 EN no. 1). 2. late Republican to early Augustan marble statue with an unworked back found between tombs 4 EN and 6 EN (Pompeii Antiquarium inv. no. 13932; Bonifacio 1997 no. 20; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 4 EN no. 6). 3. headless tuff statue from tomb 10 EN (Pompeii Antiquarium inv. no. 14497; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 10 EN no. 1). 4. Augustan travertine statue found in 1952 during the Fondo Prelatura excavations. The statue is now on display just inside the back exit of the modern church (Soprano 1961, figs. 7–8, 10). In this variation, the left arm crosses the body at the waist and the right elbow rests on the left hand, but the right hand is not held to the chin. Two more statues from the Nucerian cemetery are often classified as pudicitia types, but these do not exhibit the basic features of the statue type: 1. late Republican tuff statue still in situ in tomb 13 OS and identified as Vertia Philumene (Bonifacio 1997, no. 16; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 13 OS no. 1). The left arm does not cross the body at the waist and the right hand is not under the chin. Lenaghan (1999, no. 10) classifies this statue’s body position as the “Sarsina” format. 2. late Republican to early Augustan limestone head found in 1983 near tomb H North but possibly from tomb G North (Pompeii Antiquarium inv. no. 33505; Bonifacio 1997, no. 25; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1987, 213, no. 4, pl. 34c–d). The youthful head

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with large ears does not appear to be veiled and the chin does not preserve evidence of the right hand beneath. 16. Davies 2013. 17. Contra Fejfer 2008, 335 n. 24. 18. I thank Elaine K. Gazda for drawing my attention to this feature of Pompeian funerary statues. 19. This is the only Pompeian funerary portrait on which I have observed the draperythrough-drapery effect, but that may be due to the poor states of preservation of other funerary statues. 20. See Swetnam-Burland, this volume, for a discussion of the work of the ornatrix. 21. Varro, Ling. 7.44. Mau (1874, 158) thought he saw the vestiges of a ribbon emerging from beneath the mantle and onto the forehead. 22. Sebesta 1994, 49 and fig. 13.2a. 23. Very few funerary statues in Pompeii have sculpted rings, but such details could have been painted. 24. Bonifacio 1997, cat. nos. 16 (Vertia Philumina, tomb 13 OS, in situ), 19 (tomb 9 OS, in situ), 25 (tomb H North, Pompeii deposito inv. 33505); 26 (tomb 6 EN, Pompeii deposito inv. 10931), 28 (Flavia Agathea, tomb 7 OS, in situ). 25. Ovid (Ars am. 3.139–140) recommends the nodus coiffure for women with squat, round faces. 26. For the coins featuring Octavia, see Newman 1990, 45; Wood 1999, 43–49. For the first honorific statues of Octavia and Livia, see Flory 1993; Hemelrijk 2005. 27. For coins of Cleopatra VII with the nodus hairstyle, see Mattingly 1923, Cleopatra VII 9; Meadows 2001, 177–178. 28. Bonifacio no. 28; Zanker 1975, 274–275; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 7 OS. 29. Zanker 1975, 274. 30. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 7 OS. This inscription is on a marble plaque affixed beneath the fifth niche of the second story and next to a second marble plaque that duplicates the inscription, minus the last word (vivont). 31. Zanker 1975, 274–275; for a discussion of collegia, see Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 32. Because the portrait busts are reminiscent of the partial-view portraits used in Roman funerary reliefs, Zanker (1975, 275) suggested that the façade tomb type was imported to Pompeii by early Roman colonists and their freedmen. However, this direct connection with Rome is unnecessary, as freedmen funerary reliefs are known from the Bay of Naples, including one example now in the modern church of Pompeii. Moreover, D’Ambrosio and De Caro (1983, 7 OS) have down-dated the tomb to ca. 50–30 BCE. 33. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 7 OS. 34. Ling 1990, 205. 35. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 13 OS. 36. As Roman citizens, Pompeians were eligible to vote at Rome, and most Pompeians were enrolled in the same voting group: the Menenian tribe. 37. The letters “M F” were seen by the excavators in the plaster beneath the niche of the older togate figure, further suggesting that this statue was that of the male tomb builder. D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 13 OS.

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38. Zanker 1975, 274–275, 283 fig. 15; Bonifacio 1997, no. 16; Döhl and Zanker 1984, fig. 100; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 13 OS; Lenaghan 1998, 304 no. 10; Murer 2017, A11. 39. Bonifacio 1997, 16. 40. Bonifacio 1997, no. 19; D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 9 OS; Murer 2017, A10. 41. Filges 1997, 160–164. 42. This is exemplified by two limestone statues found in 1952 during a construction project for the Prelatura of Pompeii (Soprano 1961). 43. Few Pompeian tombs in the excavated cemeteries date after 40 CE, and no examples of female funerary portraits are known after the time of Tiberius. 44. Four female honorific statues are known from dedicatory inscriptions: CIL 10.799 (Livia), CIL 10.933 (Agrippina the Younger), CIL 10.813 (Eumachia, daughter of Lucius and public priestess), and CIL 10.950/1 (Holconia, daughter of Marcus and public priestess). Other honorific statues of women are known solely from sculptural remains, all but one of which come from religious contexts: the cella of the Temple of Augustan Fortune, the imperial cult shrine at the back of the Macellum, and portrait heads from the sanctuary of Isis. A now-lost female head probably was displayed in the tetrapylon of the Holconii. 45. Welch 2007, 579–580, n. 34; Davies 2018, 305, n. 88. 46. The craftsmanship of the Eumachia statue is often discussed as equal in quality to what imperial workshops produced. More locally, the care taken with the details of this statue compares favorably with the marble funerary statue for the anonymous woman in the Herculaneum Gate necropolis. Both Pompeian statues exhibit the drapery-throughdrapery effects that were a hallmark of the highest-quality portrait statues in Roman Italy. Moreover, the careful attention paid to carving the facial features of the Eumachia statue echoes the careful attention paid to the aged features of the funerary statue, and in particular to how skillfully the natural striations of the marble were transformed into the sagging skin of the venerable woman. 47. Kleiner (1996, 34) has suggested that the Eumachia portrait is based on that of Livia on the Ara Pacis Augustae. 48. The inscribed statue base for Livia dates 14–42 CE and was found either in the Macellum (fig. 4.1: A) or the imperial cult building often associated with the public lares (fig. 4.1: B). The base reads: Augustae Iulia[e] / Drusi f (iliae) / Divi Augusti / DD (“To Julia Augusta, daughter of Drusus, wife of the deified Augustus, by decree of the decurions”). CIL 10.799, National Archaeological Museum in Naples (henceforth MANN) inv. no. 3815. 49. A key exception is the cubic head of Flavia Agathea, which, with its smooth features and bulbous eyes, is even more generic than Eumachia’s. 50. Welch 2007, 545. Eumachia’s role as public priestess is part of her public identity and included on the inscribed base supporting the statue. The honorific inscription (CIL 10.813) reads as follows: Eumachiae L(uci) f(iliae) / sacerd(oti) publicae / fullones (“For Eumachia, daughter of Lucius and public priestess. The fullers commissioned it.”) Because Eumachia is identified on this dedicatory inscription and elsewhere in Pompeii as a daughter rather than a wife, she is usually identified as a widow and married to the Marcus Numistrius Fronto who died while serving as duumvir in 2/3 CE (CIL 10.892;

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51. 52.

53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62. 63.

Savunen 1997, 55; Cooley and Cooley 2004, 98). But, as I’ve discussed in Longfellow 2014/2015, public priestesses in Pompeii consistently self-identify and are identified by the larger community with their fathers alone; this designation of Eumachia as a daughter adheres to this local tradition. Zanker 1998, 101. See also D’Ambra 2012, 403–404. Mau (1899, 112, 116) suggested that the headless cult statue of Concordia Augusta had the classicizing features of Livia. More recently, scholars have noted that the face of Concordia on the contemporary fountain located outside the back entrance to Eumachia’s building echoes the features and hairstyle of Livia (De Caro 1992, 30; Zanker 1998, 100; Longfellow 2014/2015, 95). Kellum (this volume) suggests that the fountain relief is an image of Livia as Concordia. Although the face of the female portrait in the Macellum shrine has many classicizing features—from the smooth triangular forehead and broad planes of the cheeks, to the almond-shaped eyes with well-defined upper and lower lids, to the continuous line of the nose curving into that of the eyebrows—the shorter, wider nose and rosebud mouth that dramatically thins at the corners break from the classicizing mold, giving the face a far greater sense of individuality than that of Eumachia. CIL 10.810 (smaller version over the back door) and 10.811 (larger version on the Forum architrave). Livia dedicated a shrine to Concordia in the Porticus of Livia in 7 BCE, Tiberius re­dedicated a temple of Concord in the Forum Romanum to Augustan Concord between 10 and 12 CE, and the Senate dedicated an altar to Augustan Piety in 22 CE. Ov. Fast. 6.637–640; Cass. Dio 54.23.6, 55.8.1, 55.9.6. Mau 1899, 111–112; Rebert and Marceau 1925; Bernstein 1987, 118–120. E.g., Richardson 1978, 260–272; D’Arms 1988, 52–54; Dobbins 2007, 165–166; Zanker 1998, 94–97; Kleiner 1996, 33–34; Welch 2007, 260–261; Cooley 2013, 33–36. Although copies of the well-known inscriptions for the statues of Aeneas and Romulus are displayed beneath two niches in the back wall of the chalcidicum, Kockel (2005, 69–72) has suggested that these inscriptions date after the construction of Eumachia’s building. In addition, he argues that they were not found in the chalcidicum and are better associated with the cult precinct on the east side of the Forum that is usually associated with the public lares (fig. 4.1: B). Although Fentress (2005) suggested the platforms were used for slave auctions, this hypothesis has been effectively refuted by Trümper (2009, 50–51). Richardson (1978, 270–272) was the first to notice the similarities between the plan of Eumachia’s building and that of the Porticus of Livia on the Severan marble plan. The statue of Augustan Concord was long thought lost, but a statue in MANN (inv. no. 6362) has been matched with the excavator’s description of the statue holding a gilded cornucopia that was recovered from the central niche in 1822 (Grimaldi 2003, 41–53; Kockel 2005, 65–68). The southern part of the crypta could be secured, and Mau (1899, 112) suggested goods might be sold here and then locked away after business hours. Fentress (2005) has suggested that luxury cloth was sold in the crypta. Mello and Voza 1968, nos. 81–84; Torelli 1991, 155, nos. 2–5. MANN inv. no. 6168. The headless body was found with its inscribed base on 22 May

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64. 65.

66.

67. 68.

69. 70.

1739 (CIL 10.1440); the head was found later that same year on 25 June. Nonius Balbus served as praetor in Rome in 26/25 or 25/24 BCE and then governor of Crete and Cyrene. A Herculanean wax tablet dated 25 July 61 CE identifies the edifice as the Basilica Noniana. Camodeca 2000a, 68; Camodeca 2008, 99; Esposito and Camardo 2013, 229. Togate statue: MANN inv. no. 3853. Dedicatory inscription for the statue of Augustus: CIL 10.823. The excavators found the portrait head of the pudicitia statue in the cella, detached from the body and with its face deliberately removed. See Fiorelli 1860–1864, II:95; III:48. Zanker (1988, 84–85) suggested this unusual treatment of the face indicates that the statue portrayed an imperial family member who suffered banishment. For another possibility, see Longfellow 2018, 44. For a discussion of the Holconia statue, see Fiorelli 1860–1864, II:565; Longfellow 2014/2015, 89. For a discussion of the priestess in the Macellum shrine, see Fiorelli 1860–1864, III:31; Stefani 2006, 225–228; Welch 2007, 561–562; Longfellow 2014/2015, 96; and Kellum, this volume. E.g., Zanker 1998, 93; Bernstein 1987, 120; Welch 2007, 558–561; Murer 2017, 26–27. CIL 10.846. The now-lost floor mosaic in the large room at the back of the sanctuary indicates that his mother, Corelia Celsa, paid for that room (CIL 10.848). His freedman father, Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, dedicated a statue in the sanctuary with his own money (CIL 10.847). For a discussion of this family’s involvement with the sanctuary of Isis, see Petersen, this volume. Davies 2018. Female statues in the domestic sphere seem to be rare before the Claudian period. The female busts found in the House of the Citharist (I.4.5) date after the Augustan period, and the female statue found in the peristyle of the Villa of the Mysteries (often identified as Livia) received a new portrait head in the Tiberian period. For a discussion of Republican era painted portraits in the Villa of the Mysteries, see Gazda, this volume.

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CHAPTER 7

Portraits and Patrons The Women of the Villa of the Mysteries in Their Social Context Elaine K. Gazda

Since their discovery in 1909, the famous murals in Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries have been the subject of numerous studies, the vast majority of which have sought to interpret the iconography of the Bacchic rituals and their meaning (fig. 7.1). Almost all have acknowledged an element of marriage in the frieze, owing to the presence of a “bride” and of Bacchus and a consort who most scholars believe is the god’s wife, Ariadne.1 The image of a seated woman on the west wall (fig. 7.2) has often been identified as the domina, or materfamilias, of the household, and occasionally scholars have referred to the figures represented on the north, east, and southeast walls as members of a local thiasos, a congregation of Bacchic worshipers. Some observers of the frieze have remarked that the faces of many of the figures appear to be Italian or Campanian. Others have attempted to associate certain figures with specific Pompeian individuals or, more generally, with members of the owner’s family.2 The recent cleaning of the murals has brought to light new details of facial physiognomy that must now be taken into account. The new visual information strengthens the possibility that the faces of many, if not all, of the women, and possibly also those of the mythological males, were meant to be understood as portraits of individuals of the household. Relying largely on visual analysis of the cleaned and restored images, I focus on the portraits of the domina and bride as well as the relationship between these two women. Moreover, I revisit the composition of figural groupings and of the gazes of the figures to cast new light on, and underscore, the social hierarchy on display in the fresco. Recognizing the roles played by the subordinate figures on the frieze helps to anchor the murals within the life of the villa’s household while 133

FIGURE 7.1.

Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, looking east.

consideration of epigraphic evidence from Rome suggests the structure of the thiasos that the murals represent and illuminates the roles that individuals played. Beyond the household, funerary portraits of Pompeian women from the same period further enlarge the social context in which the murals have been studied and interpreted and strongly suggest that the murals had a commemorative purpose. I argue that the patron was likely the bride and that she wished to honor her mother, the domina. Further, I suggest that the funerary imagery associated with women in Pompeii may indicate that the domina was deceased at the time the paintings were commissioned.

The Domina and the Bride The dignified domina on the northwest wall sits alone and self-contained, her left arm extended across her body and her right bent upward with the hand resting against her cheek (fig. 7.2). She gazes pensively toward the southwest corner of the room, where the bride is accompanied by an attendant standing behind her and helping her dress her hair (fig. 7.3). These two figures are flanked by two cupids, one of whom gazes at them across the southwest corner.3 As has long been recognized, the domina and bride are segregated both spatially and compositionally from the figures on the north, east, and southeast walls, who enact rituals related to the god Bacchus 134   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 7.2.

The domina on the west wall of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries.

FIGURE 7.3.

The bridal toilette in the southwest corner of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries.

and his consort situated at the center of the east wall. The physical and compositional segregation of the domina and bride is complemented by their actions—they do not participate in the rituals enacted by the others. Rather, they form a discrete unit of the room, connected to one another and to the rest of the murals only by their red background, their life-size scale, and their gazes.4

Portraits Newly visible features confirm that the faces of the domina and the bride were intended to represent distinct individuals. Before and after images of the domina illustrate striking differences (fig. 7.4 and plate 4). Before cleaning and restoration, the domina’s face appeared more delicate, her mantle was missing large patches of pigment, and her facial features were partially obscured by encrustations that covered the wall.5 The cleaned and restored image of the domina, in contrast, reveals a rounded, somewhat heavy jaw, thicker and sharply angled eyebrows, a blunt-tipped nose, slightly parted bow-shaped lips, and straight brown hair with little wisps escaping along the hairline. The restored mantle, drawn over her head, imparts a more somber appearance. The recent cleaning has also revealed a gap between the domina’s two front teeth. This gap is not likely due to a chip in the pigment, for the conservators took great care to repair such damage and left original details untouched. Moreover, this gap is not unique. A similar one occurs on the well-known mosaic portrait of a young woman of the late Republican period from Pompeii, created with two tiny black tesserae (fig. 7.5). In addition to this gap, the slightly irregular line of her nose and asymmetrical, heavy-lidded eyes indicate that the mosaic image of this woman is an individualized portrait.6 The image of the domina is no less so, even though she is conventionally shown as youthful.7 As would be expected, the bride is also portrayed as a young woman (plate 5). Like the domina, she is seated, but raises her left arm to hold up her hair in a pose similar to that of Venus Anadyomene.8 Her cleaned and restored image shows that she shares some of the domina’s facial characteristics—such as smooth cheeks and full, bow-shaped lips. At the same time, her oval face with tapered chin, gently arched eyebrows, prominent aquiline nose, and light, reddish-brown straight hair distinguish her as a unique individual. Especially noteworthy is her arresting gaze, which the viewer immediately encounters upon entering the room from the main doorway at the center of the west wall. She is assertively present.

The Miniature Image In the bridal composition the standing figure who helps the young woman dress her hair looks toward the cupid on the viewer’s left, appearing to gaze directly at the small framed image of a woman, which the cupid holds high with both hands 136   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 7.4.

Head of the domina before restoration.

FIGURE 7.5.

Mosaic portrait of a woman from shop VI.13.15, Pompeii. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 124666.

(plate 6). This framed image has always been identified as a reflection of the bride in a mirror. However, the image is not reversed as it would have been if it were a reflection. Rather, it must be a miniature painted portrait. The bust-length image represents a woman with dark brown hair who wears a purple-hued garment and raises her left arm to gather up her hair—repeating rather than reflecting the gesture of the bride. While it is possible that this is a portrait of the bride herself, notable differences must be taken into account. The woman’s dark brown hair distinguishes her from the bride, who has light reddish-brown hair, and her purple-hued garment falls off her right shoulder, exposing a small part of her chest. The bride, in contrast, wears an off-white sleeved tunic that covers her shoulders and chest. The visual evidence thus appears to present two different women. Who might the woman in the miniature be? Such portable hand-held images were common, as we know from literary references to them.9 They were carried, and even worn on the body, serving to remind the owner of the person they represented. Though later in date, such portraits have been found in Pompeii. In the context of the bridal composition, a miniature portrait image would only have been appropriate if it were of someone important to the bride. Compositional and iconographic details noted above persuade me that the miniature indeed represents someone very important—her mother, who I believe is the domina. Her miniature image is made more prominent in the composition by the two bracketing figures—the cupid, who stands on his toes to raise the small image as high as he can, and the bride’s attendant, who gazes intently at it, momentarily distracted from helping the bride dress her hair. That these two figures deliberately call the viewer’s attention to the miniature image is all the more evident now that the previously damaged wall has been cleaned and repaired. Since Roman mothers are known to have participated in their daughters’ bridal preparations, an image of the bride’s mother would seem especially fitting.10 Indeed, the miniature might well have represented her mother in her youth, perhaps dressing her hair for her own wedding. The Venus-like position of her arms and the cupid as her image-bearer favor this possibility. Further, her dark brown hair and the purple color of her garment establish a subtle visual connection to the image of the domina across the room, suggesting that she is the same woman.11 Moreover, the Venus-like position of the arms of the bride and of the woman portrayed in the miniature might also have signaled the importance of the family lineage of these two Roman women.

The Bride’s Gaze A proper analysis of the bride’s gaze and its interaction with several figures on the frieze has not been possible until now. Severe damage caused by water seepage shortly after the murals were discovered in 1909 had worsened over the years, effectively obscuring her facial expression and the spatial and compositional dynamics at play 138   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 7.6.

Plan of Room 5 showing gazes of the figures and the bride’s cone of vision.

in the room. Now, however, an analysis of her gaze can clarify the bride’s relationship both to the domina and other figures on the frieze and to the viewer as well.12 In his 1958 study of the murals in Room 5, Reinhard Herbig produced a plan of the room with dotted lines showing the pattern of gazes among the figures on all the walls.13 It indicates the domina’s gaze toward the bride but shows the bride’s gaze as directed only toward the figure of the so-called pregnant woman (4) on the north wall, who in turn gazes in the bride’s direction. Herbig’s plan places the viewer at the intersection of their gazes, failing to account for the fact that the viewer was mobile and would not necessarily have encountered the bride’s gaze or that of the pregnant woman at only this point in the room. The cleaned murals reveal that the gaze of the bride, and to a lesser extent that of the pregnant woman, are also mobile; they follow the viewer into the room.14 It is possible to trace an arc of the bride’s gaze, which engages the viewer so assertively at the main entrance of the room and follows her as she moves toward the center, where Herbig’s plan places the viewer. My revised version of Herbig’s plan indicates this arc, as well as the bride’s cone of vision, as THE WOMEN OF THE VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES   139

extending from the main entrance at least as far as that point in the room where the bride’s gaze meets that of the pregnant woman (fig. 7.6). The bride’s sweeping gaze, I believe, was intended to include the domina, even though it does not appear to return the domina’s gaze directly. That the figures are located on walls that are at right angles to one another makes it impossible to portray intersecting gazes of the two women. A visual connection does appear, however, when the viewer stands in the doorway to Room 4 on the north wall adjacent to the image of the domina. The bride’s gaze is clearly directed there and connects her to the zone of the room that the domina occupies and thus, indirectly, to the domina herself.

The Social Context of the Villa, the Household, and Its Cult In terms of iconography, a common reading of the murals asserts that the bride is shown undergoing initiation into the mysteries of Bacchus in preparation for her marriage. While an initiation does seem plausible, the visual evidence does not support the claim that the same woman appears repeatedly at different stages of her initiation. All the faces of women are distinctive; none of them resembles the bride. Nor do any resemble the domina. Yet, the visual prominence of the Bacchic rituals as well as their location in the largest entertainment space in the villa strongly implies that both the domina and the bride were participants in the Bacchic cult and, further, that they were joined by the members of the domina’s household. These members would have included male and female blood relatives, freed women and men, and personal slaves.15 The Bacchic rites, then, would have served to reinforce the social bonds of the familia. As mentioned at the outset, almost from the time of their discovery in 1909, viewers of the murals have recognized distinctly Italian facial types among the participants in the rites of Bacchus. Some have even suggested that they represent family members.16 A more detailed examination of the faces reinforces the impression that they represent individuals of the household. Indeed, despite similarities of facial type, style, and execution, each face on the frieze is distinctive. Two examples will suffice for illustrating my point—the so-called pregnant woman (4) and the seated woman (3) who helps a young boy read from a scroll (plate 7 and fig. 7.7). Despite their similarly oval faces, their eyes, noses, and mouths are as distinctive as their coiffures.17 The possibility that these as well as other faces on the murals are intended to be likenesses of members of the household is strengthened when we consider the composition of a Bacchic thiasos. A rare document—an inscribed statue base of the mid second century CE housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—once held a now-lost statue of Pompeia Agrippinilla.18 Though it is said to have been found in Rome and dates some two centuries later than the murals in Room 5, the monument and its inscription offer instructive insight into the membership and structure of a domestic Bacchic 140   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 7.7.

Head of a woman with a child (no. 3 on fig. 7.6), Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries.

thiasos, or congregation.19 The long inscription, in Greek, names nearly four hundred members, representing the full range of social classes in two related households. Moreover, the membership included men, women, and children. It also singles out individuals not only by name but also by the roles they played in the Bacchic rites. Although Pompeia Agrippinilla’s thiasos was much larger than the one portrayed on the walls of Room 5, the inscription mentions the roles of participants, including, among many others, carrier of a liknon (winnowing basket), phallus-bearer, maenad, Silenos, and hero, positions that are reminiscent of the roles played by figures portrayed on the Bacchic frieze in Pompeii. This inscription, then, along with the visual evidence offered by the murals themselves, reinforces the impression that the figures who enact the cultic rituals on the walls of Room 5 were meant to represent actual individuals of the household thiasos—women as well as men.20 If, as I propose, their faces are individualized, and not merely South Italian facial types, they would have anticipated the practice of inscribing the names of cult members on monuments of priestesses that were set up in public, such as the one of Pompeia Agrippinilla in Rome. The possibility that the THE WOMEN OF THE VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES   141

figures in the Pompeian murals were intended to be seen as recognizable individuals of the villa’s household finds further support in a painted frieze from the Tomb of the Physician, honoring a man named Patron, from Rome. Now in the Louvre and likely dating to the first century BCE, thus close in time to the villa’s murals, this frieze contains painted labels naming each member of Patron’s household.21 Because the villa’s familia was highly stratified, it seems likely that the organization of its thiasos was similarly stratified. But class distinctions are difficult to identify, even in the inscription on Agrippinilla’s statue base. Some scholars believe that social status did not play a part in assigning cultic roles, while others believe that the members of the senatorial class played the most prominent roles and lower-status members less prominent roles.22 While this matter cannot be resolved definitively, I favor the latter view. Accordingly, in the case of the villa’s murals I propose that the social status of members of the household was made evident by the various roles they played. The visual evidence again provides important clues. The compositional groupings, as is well known, highlight certain figures within each group, and it seems likely that they were members of higher status than those who played supporting roles. Those of higher status have been the focus of much of the previous scholarship on the murals. Briefly, in addition to domina and the bride, these figures include the veiled woman who appears to stride toward the ceremonies (1 [see fig. 7.6]), the seated woman with the child (2/3), the woman seated at the table (6), the startled woman (11), Bacchus and his female companion (15, 16), possibly the kneeling figure who is about to be whipped by the winged demon (21), and the dancing maenad (24). It is not hard to imagine these figures as the daughters or perhaps freed women of the domina. The lower-status participants for the most part play subordinate roles and are not as prominent within the compositional groups. However, their postures or body language, objects they hold, actions they perform, and, to some extent, their costumes signal their status within the household.23 Some of their ritual actions even had counterparts in the jobs that would have been performed in the daily life of the household. Examples include: figures 4 and 5, who carry trays of offerings; figure 7, who pours water over a sprig of myrtle; figures 17, 18, 19 in the scene of unveiling the items in the liknon; and possibly also figures 22 and 23 in the flagellation scene. The standing figure (26) who assists the bride (27) with dressing her hair is another possible example.24 One of the cultic roles identified on Agrippinilla’s statue base is that of hero, which occurs only once and apparently refers to the god himself. It seems obvious that only one person of the Pompeian household could have played this role—the pater­ familias, or dominus. Might the face of Bacchus (plate 8) on the east wall of Room 5 be his portrait? The physiognomy is highly unusual among representations of the youthful deity. The sharply upturned nose, no doubt exaggerated by the thrown-back position of the head, is striking in itself. So are the bulging eyes and the prominent 142   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

gap between his two front teeth. As the central figure, along with his female consort, I posit that the head of Bacchus portrays, or at the very least alludes to, the domina’s husband, the dominus.

The Question of the Patron It has been suggested that some members of Agrippinilla’s thiasos paid for her monument.25 In the case of the Bacchic murals, which were painted in the years immediately before it became acceptable to honor women with public statues for their contributions to their communities, the honoring of a prominent woman with an elaborate work of art would likely have had to be a private family affair.26 In the case of the Bacchic murals, which would have been very expensive, only wealthy members of the familia would have had the requisite financial resources. It is unlikely that the members of lowest status, the household slaves, would have been in a position to pay for such a commission, and although one or more of the freed slaves might have been rich enough to afford such a lavish work of art, it seems more likely that the patron was one of the elite members of the household. Under most circumstances, the dominus would be the obvious person. However, the murals are so heavily populated by images of women performing rites that appear to be directed exclusively at women—perhaps, as many scholars have thought, an initiation of a woman into the cult of Bacchus in preparation for her marriage—that we should consider the possibility that the patron was a woman. Either the domina or the bride would have had the necessary resources, but of the two, the bride might have had greater motivation. The bride’s portrait calls attention to itself through its arresting but mobile gaze, which draws viewers into the room and follows them for some distance, her eyes simultaneously seeming to scan the figures on the north wall. Though not participating in the rites of Bacchus, her gaze nevertheless projects a sense of her active presence in the room. Moreover, it seems likely that the murals celebrate her and her marriage.27 And yet, the miniature image in the bridal scene, which I believe represents the bride’s mother, asserts the domina’s importance to the bride and suggests to me that the bride commissioned the murals in her honor. A grand commemorative work such as the murals would have been particularly appropriate if the domina had been deceased at the time they were commissioned, and it is to an examination of this possibility that I now turn.

The Social Context of Commemoration in Late Republican Pompeii Funerary portraits of women from the late Republican period have much to offer us for understanding the larger social context of the villa and the semantic field within which its murals would have been viewed and understood. Portrait statues of women from tombs in Pompeii, along with funerary portraits of women from the same THE WOMEN OF THE VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES   143

period from elsewhere in Italy and the Hellenistic East, offer compelling evidence for expanding the framework within which we can interpret the social meaning of the murals and the family prestige they would have conveyed. During the late Republican period in Pompeii, as elsewhere in the Roman world, the commemoration of women was a family matter. One’s lineage was of paramount importance, and putting it on display was essential for establishing one’s place in society. Accordingly, wax masks or portrait busts of prominent male ancestors were placed in the atrium of Roman houses, a prominent space that was open to the public and visited daily during the morning salutatio (ritual of greeting between patron and clients). Family tombs, however, provided an even higher-profile public venue for commemorating the family and its lineage. Although portraits of deceased women were not traditionally placed in household atria, they were prominently displayed on the façades or in front of tombs alongside those of male and other female members of their families. At Pompeii, numerous portraits of women have been found at the sites of tombs located outside the city’s gates and along the streets leading out from them.28 Notably, some of these female portraits, as well as some tombs, were paid for wholly or in part by the women themselves.29 A portrait statue of a woman from a tomb outside the Herculaneum Gate is thought to date from the Sullan colonial period, 80–30 BCE (see fig. 6.1).30 The woman is shown in the pudicitia pose, with her left arm extending across her torso and her right arm bent upward to hold the portion of the mantle that covers her head. The summarily rendered facial surfaces and the prominence of creases and furrows were clearly meant to represent this woman at an advanced age.31 Most funerary portraits of women, however, show them as more youthful—idealized according to the norms of the day.32 The standing pudicitia was often repeated in a funerary context in Pompeii, Rome, and elsewhere and is sometimes echoed in images of seated women who hold their arms in a comparable configuration, with one crossing the torso and the other reaching upward with the hand touching the cheek or holding the mantle drawn over the head. The arms of the seated domina are configured in a similar way, with her left arm extending across her torso and her right bent upward with the curled fingers touching her cheek. Her posture also recalls that of deceased women depicted on Attic grave stelai of the fourth-century BCE and even more so the seated Demeter in the fourth-century BCE Tomb of Persephone in Vergina. It also calls to mind seated women among the funerary statues in Pompeii.33 When seen against this backdrop of tomb images, the portrait of the seated domina could have been understood as funerary. The ubiquity of such funerary portraits in Pompeii and beyond must have made an indelible impression. It is easy to imagine that the monumental statue-like figures in these megalographic murals would have recalled statues of women at tombs that

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lined the roads leading out of the city, such as the Herculaneum Road in Pompeii, or in necropolises surrounding the city, such as the one outside the Nucerian Gate. Indeed, there may even have been such a statue close at hand in the villa itself. Although found in the peristyle, we cannot verify its primary archaeological context prior to the early imperial period when the original portrait head was replaced with one of Livia or a woman who closely resembled her. However, it is possible that it had been erected somewhere in the villa or in one of the gardens surrounding it or that it came from a family tomb on the villa grounds.34

Further Associations with the Afterlife There is a striking resemblance between the domina’s image on the west wall and that of Bacchus’s companion at the center of the east wall. Both women are seated with their feet elevated on footstools, and both wear voluminous garments with contrasting broad borders.35 The domina’s isolation on the west wall sets her apart from the other actors on the walls. The god’s companion is similarly set apart in terms of composition. She sits upright, elevated above the god, her head originally positioned at the apex of the compositional triangle. Because her upper body has not survived, we cannot know whether she bore facial features resembling those of the domina nor whether she was gazing at Bacchus, as in other versions of this often-repeated composition,36 or at some other point in the room. If, as I have posited, the head of Bacchus represents the dominus, it would be logical for his female companion to represent the domina in the guise of Bacchus’s wife, Ariadne.37 The practice of elite Romans identifying themselves with a patron deity was well established by the late Republic and would not have seemed out of place in this room. The domina being identified with Ariadne in this way would have alluded to her own transition from a mortal woman to one who had joined the gods. An allusion to the deceased domina in the afterlife would then strengthen the possibility that the miniature portrait of her in the bridal composition was meant to represent her in her prime. As such it would have been a poignant reminder of the absent mother-ofthe bride. At the same time, along with the principal image of the domina, it would have reinforced the bride’s own social standing by calling attention to her mother’s respected place within her own family and, beyond her household, within Pompeian and Roman society. In portraying her deceased mother in the context of Bacchic rites, the bride may have intended viewers to recall the public rituals that took place at tombs in Pompeii. By taking part in those ceremonies, participants reinforced their ties to the familia of the deceased.38 The participants in the rites of Bacchus portrayed in Room 5 may similarly have wished to claim their relationship to the domina and, at the same time, by performing those rites, to secure for her and for themselves the god’s promise of a blissful afterlife.39

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Notes I have been fortunate to study the murals on-site in Room 5 on many occasions over the years since 1998 thanks to permission granted by successive former Superintendents of Pompeii, Pier Giovanni Guzzo and Teresa Elena Cinquantaquattro, and to the former General Director of the Parco Archeologico di Pompei, Massimo Osanna. My work was also facilitated by the past Directors of Excavations, Antonio D’Ambrosio and Grete Stefani, along with members of their administrative staff. In 2003 Dr. Guzzo and Ernesto De Carolis, former Director of Conservation, authorized Stefano Vanacore, Capotecnico of Conservation, and his assistant Vincenzo Serrapica to clean small patches of the bridal composition for me in connection with my earlier research on the murals (see Gazda 2007). My work on Room 5 has been inspired from the beginning by the research conducted by the graduate students in my 1998 seminar on “Women and Cult in Ancient Italy”— Elizabeth de Grummond (now Colantoni), Catherine Hammer, Shoshanna Kirk, Brenda Longfellow, Molly Swetnam-Burland, and Drew Wilburn, which led to an exhibition in 2000. They were joined by Jessica Davis (now Powers) in raising questions about the murals and their meaning in relation to local and regional contexts as well as to earlier artistic models (see Gazda 2000). In 2002 new photography was carried out by James Stanton-Abbott, and in 2018 Indiana graduate student Kelly McClinton made detailed images of the heads of all the figures. In 2002 and 2003 I was joined in Pompeii by Barbara Kellum, Hérica Valladares, Bettina Bergmann, Elizabeth Marlowe, and Pat Simons. Their ideas, generously shared with me then and in the years since, have helped me refine my own thinking. Recent on-site discussions with Neville McFerrin about costumes and jewelry have been likewise helpful. My keynote lecture for Natalie Kampen’s retirement symposium in 2009 launched me on my current trajectory of attempting to understand the frescoes in relation to the villa’s household. I have been encouraged by discussions with John R. Clarke, Sandra Joshel, Tom Carpenter, Elizabeth Bartman, Lynley McAlpine, and many others, including, most recently, the participants in the Symposium Campanum in 2018, whose enthusiasm has carried me forward. I especially thank Brenda Longfellow for her invitation to participate in the symposium and for her generosity in sharing both her own knowledge and her images of funerary statues of women in Pompeii; and, not least, Barbara Kellum for her ongoing insightful comments and encouragement. My research on Roman villas in Campania has been supported over the years by annual grants from the Department of the History of Art and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of the University of Michigan, which have allowed me to travel regularly to Pompeii. 1. A representative sample includes: Bieber 1928; Toynbee 1929; Bruhl 1953; Herbig 1958; Maiuri 1960; Lehmann 1962; Zuntz 1963; Ling 1991; Little 1972; Brendel 1980; Clarke 1991; Kuttner 1999; Veyne 2016; Ling 2018. For identification as Semele: Boyancé 1965–66; Kerényi 1976; Sauron 1998, 2007. As Aphrodite/Venus: Pappalardo 1982; Longfellow 2000. For a connection to Ceres: Brendel 1980, 123–130. For a general bibliography up to 2007 on the murals in Room 5, see Sauron 2010, 163–166. 2. Maiuri (1960, 70 and 76) expressed this view in his publication of his excavation of

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

the villa, stating that the head of the domina is a portrait and that she is the mother of the bride. For the domina’s face as Campanian, see Maiuri 1953, 58. Zuntz (1963, 191) regards the faces as “almost all of them unmistakable portraits” resembling those of people in “any Italian town.” He further asserts that the figures are “highly likely members of a local thiasos.” Accepting the assumption that the domina is the mother of the bride (192), he proposes further that the murals were commissioned by the parents of a beloved daughter on the occasion of her marriage (199). Most recently Veyne (2016, 25, 32) also proposes that the domina is the mother of the bride. Scholars have often identified the domina as the bride at a later stage of the events portrayed. However, the figure that I and many others call the bride is portrayed according to well-known iconographic conventions of bridal imagery. See Kirk 2000. Toynbee (1929, 67) notes the tendency of early scholars to ignore the figures of the domina and bride in interpreting the murals’ content, largely owing to their spatial and compositional segregation from the rest of the frieze. Since their discovery, the walls had been treated repeatedly by wiping them with a waxy solution. Over time, the wax had darkened and had leached pigment out of the walls. In a personal communication, Stefano Vanacore, who was the head of conservation at Pompeii when the walls were cleaned and repaired (in 2014–2015), explained to me that the conservators took care to remove only half of the wax layers in order to avoid removing too much ancient pigment. Full publication of the detailed documentation that the conservators amassed has, to my knowledge, not yet appeared. An article by Jarrett Lobell (2014) summarizes the conservation work in progress. See also Bergmann 2007 for an account of the treatment of the walls shortly after they were discovered in 1909. For a recent discussion of this portrait, see Bergmann 2018, 144–145. The mosaic emblema was found in shop VI.13.15 in Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples (henceforth MANN) inv. no. 124666. See Dillon (2010, 166) on idealized female portraits of the Hellenistic period, which assimilate them to “the highly conventional and uniform visual language of female beauty.” For this and other references to Venus in the villa, see Longfellow 2000. Bergmann (2018, 146–147) notes the emotional bonding that could take place between viewer/owner and the faces in such portable portraits. She also discusses the prevalence of portable portraits, citing Cicero’s letter to Atticus (Att. 6.1.25) in which he discloses that Vedius Pollio had carried five miniature portraits of women in his luggage, suggesting that he had affairs with a number of aristocratic women. For further references to portable portraits, see Bergmann’s note 8. A miniature portrait painted on glass, found in Pompeii, is now in MANN (inv. no. 132424). I am grateful to Molly Swetnam-Burland for pointing out this portrait to me. See Treggiari 1991, 163. The dark hair and purple mantle of the woman who stands behind the bride establish a further possible connection. She is normally thought to be a slave whose role was that of an ornatrix, or chambermaid. For discussion of the work of hairdressers, see also Swetnam-Burland, this volume.

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12. The bride’s arresting gaze and the illusion of her eyes’ movement have become strikingly clear since the cleaning of the murals in 2014–15. 13. Herbig 1958, foldout at back. See also Clarke 1991, 100, fig. 33. 14. Herbig’s plan (1958) also indicates that the gaze of the young satyr on the north side of the east wall intersects with the viewer at the same viewing spot in the room. While it is important to take all gazes in the room into account, this one does not intersect directly with the bride’s gaze, and so it does not concern me here. 15. A few scholars have intuited that members of the family appear on the walls of the room. Zanker (2010, 26) notes that the figures may represent members of the owner’s family. See Zuntz 1963, n. 3. 16. In addition to Zanker (2010) and Zuntz (1963), some scholars who assume an Augustan date for the murals speculate that the domina represents Istacidia Rufilla (Will 1979) or Livia (Bendinelli 1968, 831). 17. It did not take much specificity of facial detail for viewers of this period to recognize an individual woman. See Dillon 2010, 135–163 on “not-portraits” of Hellenistic women. 18. IGUR I, 160. See n. 22 below. 19. On other types of household associations, see Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 20. The senatus consultum issued in response to the Bacchanalian riot in Campania in 186 BCE limited the size of a thiasos to a small number—three women and two men— and decreed that the leader must apply to the urban praetor for permission to perform the rites. The decree may not have been strictly observed more than a century later when the larger household thiasos of the Villa of the Mysteries was portrayed in Room 5. The decree was apparently no longer enforced at all by Agrippinilla’s time. See de Grummond 2000 for a discussion of the inscription. 21. Blanc and Martinez 1998. I am grateful to Barbara Kellum for bringing this painting and bibliographical reference to my attention. Bodel (2018, 217) cites this tomb as early Augustan. The practice of labeling figures in tomb paintings dates back at least to the fourth century in Etruria. The Tomb of the Shields and the Tomb of Orcus, both in Tarquinia, provide examples. 22. IGUR I, 160. Alexander 1933; Cumont 1933; Vogliano 1933; and Scheid 1986, as discussed by de Grummond (2000, 81–82), who synthesizes the arguments of the earlier scholars and suggests correspondences between several of the roles named in the inscription and the figures on the Villa of the Mysteries frieze. 23. The fact that these figures are well dressed does not necessarily imply that they are of as high a status as the other figures. As Barbara Kellum has pointed out to me, upper-class women often dressed their slaves in fine clothing, as is apparent from a painting in room q in the House of the Vettii. See also D’Ambra, this volume. 24. Susan Treggiari’s research (1975) on the jobs of Livia’s household slaves is instructive, though it does not specify all of the jobs that I suggest are represented on the murals. Concerning the flagellation scene, corporal punishment was another common feature of slave life. Thus, as viewers of the murals, slaves would have been able to recognize similarities between their jobs in daily life and the cultic roles shown on the frieze. 25. See de Grummond (2000, 77) on the likelihood that the statue of Agrippinilla was erected and dedicated by members of her Bacchic circle.

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26. See Longfellow (2014/2015) on Pompeian women as patrons in the early imperial period. 27. See the recent analysis by Veyne (2016). 28. See Longfellow’s chapter in this volume. Bonifacio 1997, cat. nos. 14, 19–20; McDonnell 2005; Campbell 2015, 74–79 for a discussion of epitaphs commissioned by or for Pompeian women and a discussion of the tomb of Veia Barchilla in the Nucerian Gate necropolis (PNc 33), which may be of the colonial period. Veia’s name precedes that of her husband in the epitaph, indicating that her family commissioned and paid for the tomb. See Campbell 2015, 76. 29. Longfellow, in this volume, points out two further examples of female patronage in late Republican Pompeii: Flavia Agathea paid for her own portrait and, along with a fellow freed slave Publius Flavius, paid for their tomb; and the freed woman Vertia Philumina and Marcus Octavius, a freeborn man, built a tomb for themselves and their descendants on land owned jointly. 30. Found at tomb 38 in the Herculaneum Gate necropolis (PErc 38N); Bonifacio 1997, cat. no. 14, pl. XV, 62–64; Welch 2007, 573–575, figs. 36.14a–b. See also Longfellow’s discussion of this statue, in this volume. 31. Welch (2007, 573–574) interprets the pudicitia posture and facial rendering as expressions of female virtues of “modestia, decor, and castitas (modesty, grace or propriety, and moral fidelity).” See Longfellow, this volume, for further discussion of the pudicitia posture. 32. A statue of a younger woman in the pudicitia pose and wearing the nodus coiffure was found between tombs 4 EN and 6 EN in the Nucerian Gate necropolis. Bonifacio (1997, cat. no. 20, 70–71, pl. XVIIIb) dates this woman’s statue between the end of the Republic and the early Augustan period. Funerary reliefs of freed slaves from Rome also contain idealized but still individualized portraits of women. Coin images of the late Republic that display profile portraits of named women, such as Fulvia or Octavia, are similarly idealized but recognizable as distinct individuals. 33. A stele of an unknown woman and her maidservant from Piraeus, now in the National Museum in Athens (inv. no. 726; Stewart 1990, fig. 478), presents a version of the type. In this case the woman’s head is uncovered and inclines downward, almost touching her fingers. The Demeter on the east wall of the Tomb of Persephone in Vergina is much closer in composition to the domina (Andronikos 1994, 26–28, pls. X–XII). For a seated woman from tomb 9 OS in the Nucerian Gate necropolis see Bonifacio 1997, cat. no. 19, pl. XVIII, a. In this case the woman’s hands are resting on her lap to hold a cylindrical box for scrolls and a now-missing writing implement. For a discussion of this figure, see Longfellow in this volume. 34. There is abundant evidence that tombs were built on villa estates. See Bodel 2018, 203–208 and Marzano and Métraux 2018, 185–186, 411, and 456 for recent discussions and examples. For the statue see Bartman 1998, 39–40 and 157–158 (cat. 27). 35. The purple and white of the companion’s garment is similar to the gold, purple, and white of the domina’s. 36. See Davis 2000, 90–92 for discussion of other versions, citing earlier scholarship. 37. I do not discount the possibility that this female figure could also represent Venus, given that Bacchus was worshiped in Pompeii along with Venus at their sanctuary at

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Sant’Abbondio. See Swetnam-Burland 2000, 59–62. See also Longfellow 2000 on imagery related to Venus in the Villa of the Mysteries. The probable multivalency of the frieze has been well established by scholars such as Clarke (1991, 98–105). 38. On tombs as sites of ritual performance and social bonding, see Cormack 2007, 592–594 and McAlpine 2014, 159–167. 39. Turcan 1996, 312–313, on “funerary Dionysism.” I am grateful to Lynley McAlpine for prompting me to think about the funerary dimension of the Bacchic cult, a topic that I will take up at greater length in a future publication of the murals in Room 5.

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CHAPTER 8

“What’s in a Name?” Mapping Women’s Names from the Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum Erika Zimmermann Damer

The sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum provide remarkable evidence of the pervasiveness of writing in an ancient Roman city. The wall plaster that has survived, inside and outside of buildings, has preserved not only the majority of extant ancient Roman fresco, but also thousands of written messages—both official, public, painted announcements (dipinti), and unofficial, individually handwritten messages scratched into plaster or portable objects (graffiti). The handwritten inscriptions are filled with names and references to those dwelling in or traveling through Pompeii and Herculaneum, and include the names of many non-elite women of Campania. Study of these women has been hindered by several different issues, including the types of names that appear in graffiti. Graffiti, due to their short and ad hoc nature, rarely give the same sorts of standardized information that appears in formal lapidary inscriptions. A formal dedicatory or sepulchral inscription often offers a great deal of information about the person honored, and about the communities or people honoring them. The most basic information, the name, can provide the formal, juridical status of a Roman, and is thus revealing about an individual’s position in the Roman social hierarchy. The components in a name can communicate whether the person is a freeborn Roman citizen, a non-Roman, formerly enslaved, or an enslaved person, and they may incorporate the name of an individual’s father or mother, or, in the case of someone freed, the name of the former owner. More standardized forms of written communication at Pompeii, such as the electoral programmata, announcements of gladiatorial games, or funerary inscriptions, have allowed scholars to trace which residents supported    151

particular candidates, what the supporter’s employment or neighborhood was, and what their social network of patronage and clientela looked like.1 Roman graffiti lack this standardized information.2 What they have in common with other forms of inscriptions, however, is the prominence of Roman names. In graffiti, a person’s single name—probably a cognomen (the personal name), a nomen (the family name), or even a nickname (an agnomen)—appears in the majority of the inscribed wall inscriptions that have been published (ca. 60 percent).3 Campanian graffiti, then, offer us abundant opportunity to learn more about the social history of Roman Pompeii and Herculaneum and the women who appear in these testimonia. The aim of this essay is twofold: (1) to demonstrate that onomastics and digital mapping resources can aid scholarly inquiry into women’s lives in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and (2) to follow up on a comment James Franklin made about the epigraphy of Pompeii: Nor have women attested at Pompeii ever received the attention they deserve . . . apart from listings, we currently seem able to say little about them. Women are regularly named in and wrote graffiti, owned slaves and directed freedmen, but as yet they have been treated only in descriptive fashion.4

The chapter appendix documents a significant sample of the names of women that appear in the graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum,5 specifically, those published in the third supplement to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, volume 4 (CIL 4.7997–10706). This essay moves beyond enumeration to demonstrate where in these cities their names occur in both domestic and public, interior and exterior contexts. In what follows, I give some answers to three questions: how often do women appear in the “graffiti habit” of Roman Pompeii and Herculaneum (to twist a famous phrase), and what are their names? Where do they appear, and what can a method I call “carto-onomastic” teach us about the women of the cities?6 This chapter represents results of my initial study establishing and mapping the women’s names of the graffiti of Herculaneum and Pompeii. This project complements the work of James Franklin, Paavo Castrén, and others by offering a macroscale spatial study of the women of Campanian graffiti, a project that has never been undertaken.7 Used together with traditional onomastic resources, the Ancient Graffiti Project (AGP) and the Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project (PBMP) demonstrate the pervasive spatial visibility of women in the graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and advance our awareness of women’s presence throughout the written spaces of both sites.8 My findings complement the work of scholars such as Sarah Levin-Richardson, Kristina Milnor, and Emily Hemelrijk to make the case for women’s ability to shape the written record of the Roman world.9 Though the interpretation of individual examples may be debated, the corpus, when read as a whole,

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shows that elite and non-elite women made a tangible, material impact on the urban spaces they inhabited, not only as relatives of men, but also as their own autonomous agents with aspirations, businesses, families, friends, a sense of play, and a desire to commemorate and be commemorated.

Erasures and Contexts We know that women are subjects commemorated in lapidary inscriptions celebrating their munificence around Pompeii and Herculaneum. From Eumachia, owner of the largest tomb yet discovered in Pompeii, to Mamia, priestess who dedicated the sanctuary to the genius of Augustus, to Corelia Celsa, the mother whose six-year-old son restored the Temple of Isis, stone inscriptions commemorate women of the Pompeian community as makers of urban spaces.10 Allison Cooley and Hemelrijk demonstrate that these women’s elite munificence as public benefactors and patrons in the empire is not unique to Pompeii.11 As Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf are careful to remind us, women need not be segregated from men in the Roman world as an independent category.12 While women lacked the ability to be magistrates in public office, free and freedwomen influenced voting campaigns, ran commercial interests, conducted business, had the legal rights to own and control property and the autonomy to move around urban spaces freely, and represented their communities in religious organizations.13 By the time Pompeii became a Roman colony in the late Republic, women predominantly married sine manu (remaining under the legal control of their father) so that while they had a guardian from their natal line, their money was often functionally retained in their own hands.14 Yet despite this evidence in the Roman epigraphic record, the women documented in Pompeian graffiti have experienced a triple form of erasure in scholarship, reflecting gaps and oppressions in both the gathering of evidence and its interpretation. First, onomastic research has frequently omitted graffiti, because the lack of the three names of the tria nomina (the praenomen, nomen, and cognomen), or other forms of juridical nomenclature, in graffiti means that it is not considered a valid form of onomastic evidence. On similar grounds, scholars of Pompeian political and social life have excluded graffiti because of the difficulty of firmly identifying a person on the basis of a single name (cognomen, nomen, or agnomen).15 Second, scholars have often excluded the graffiti in this study because they contain only women’s names. Because women were unable to hold office, they have not often been accounted for in studies of Pompeian political life. Ironically, even scholars who have studied Roman women in Pompeii have overlooked this body of evidence in favor of lapidary inscriptions.16 Third, we lack even the most basic entry-level tool for the graffiti catalogued in the third supplement of CIL 4: the onomastic indices of wall inscriptions. Such indices are provided in the fourth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum as

MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   153

well as its first two supplements, making this lacuna in its third supplement, which is the focus of this chapter and contains the records published in the twentieth century (CIL 4.7997–10706), noticeable and problematic. This chapter thus names and foregrounds a new corpus of Roman women previously buried in the individual records of the CIL, and provides a critical data set to fill a scholarly gap. Where some scholars have chosen a principle of exclusion when faced with uncertainty about a name, I make the opposite methodological assumption. I undertake this catalog from the principle of radical inclusion of possible attestations of women, in an attempt to correct assumptions that have elided, erased, or effectively silenced the presence of these women of Campanian graffiti. The result is a substantial body of Pompeian evidence, set against all of Herculaneum’s graffiti. The nearly 7,000 drawn and handwritten graffiti offer up the richest collection of “private” expressions by individuals from Roman antiquity, quotidian examples of people leaving their mark on the space they are in to send a greeting, record a memory, a price, or an inventory, play a game, doodle, or quote popular literature.17 Moreover, since much ancient reading would have been vocalizing the texts aloud to understand them, Pompeian writings would have been accessible to far more people than those who could read Latin fluently.18 In sum, my corpus addresses the very erasures that have obscured our understanding of women in graffiti, and furthermore allows us to see the women of Pompeii and Herculaneum in action in the spaces and places where they spent time—in private houses, public buildings, baths, shops and taverns, marketplaces, and streets.

Method and Material: Comparative Onomastics What Roman graffiti remain to demonstrate women’s impact on the textual fabric of these urban spaces? First, from Herculaneum, the Ancient Graffiti Project (AGP), a digital resource and search engine created by Rebecca Benefiel and Sarah Sprenkle, offers updated critical editions for 343 graffiti, as well as their findspot, location, and current state of preservation.19 Twenty-five names of women appear in these distinct graffiti throughout the excavated area of Herculaneum. I created a database of the women’s names that appear in the graffiti of Pompeii from the unindexed third supplement of CIL 4,20 and I am thus drawing from a corpus of greater than 2,250 Pompeian inscriptions.21 Within this count, attestations of women by name or noun appear in approximately 11 percent of the total graffiti recorded in that supplement (appendix). At Herculaneum, there are approximately 200 unique names that appear in about 160 inscriptions. Women’s names appear twenty-five times in the graffiti of Herculaneum, comprise about 16 percent of the names, and thus appear in about 9 percent of the textual graffiti of Herculaneum. Thus, graffiti naming women appear slightly more frequently at Pompeii than at

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Herculaneum.22 At Herculaneum, among the Greek graffiti, one woman’s name appears;23 and thirty-seven Greek names belong to the Pompeian women. Ten names attested at Herculaneum also occur at Pompeii, or a close variation of them appears.24 Among these names is the very common Primigenia, appearing eleven times at Pompeii in this study.25 Seven of these graffiti at Herculaneum simply name a woman; eight graffiti make women the object; and others greet women.26 For each city’s data, I adopted a spatial and onomastic approach that is visible in the maps I’ve included or linked in this chapter. The twenty-five graffiti of Herculaneum appear throughout the excavated area, although the western side of the site is better represented. This distribution demonstrates that women’s names appear in public and domestic contexts, and on wall façades and in interior spaces throughout Herculaneum. Often these women’s names appear in richly inscribed spaces, but not always. In the Tavern of Priapus (IV.17), for example, scholars have recorded eight graffiti, including a reference to Crocale barbata, “bearded Crocale,” along with three other names.27 While Herculaneum’s graffiti are fully updated and already mapped on the AGP, the graffiti from Pompeii required a more complex and labor-intensive method—one that wedded a spatial analysis to a comparative onomastic study. From this data, I built a database to map these 240 names and references, the text of the inscription, and cross-references to onomastic comparisons as a layer onto the PBMP map, created by Eric Poehler.28 As at Herculaneum, women’s names occur across the site

FIGURE 8.1.

Map of Pompeii. Dark gray indicates the insulae with graffiti in which names of women appear; light gray indicates the unexcavated portions of the site and roads.

MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   155

in a wide range of structures (fig. 8.1). They are most frequent in structures with a high density of graffiti, such as the Grand Palaestra, also known as the Campus ad Amphitheatrum. Before turning to analysis of this data, a few words are in order regarding the principle of inclusion I have employed, and how it relates to past approaches. Basic questions presented themselves in this study, such as whether a graffito referred to a person or an object, and whether a name was that of a man or of a woman. The names I have indexed are those that I have verified exist elsewhere in the epigraphic record as women’s names.29 Iiro Kajanto’s lists of names draw from a much larger corpus of data than Heikki Solin’s, so his comparisons are valuable, and Castrén’s Ordo Populusque Pompeianus offers both limits and opportunities.30 Kajanto’s magisterial collection presents some limitations, in that he was concerned only with Roman cognomina, not foreign, so Solin’s studies of slave names in the Roman world and Greek personal names from Rome helped add comparanda to non-Latin names. Kajanto catalogues some 133,059 individuals, with roughly 6,000 distinct names (N = 5,783).31 The name Ampliata, for instance, attested in my Pompeian catalog, occurs among 83 ingenuae (freeborn women) and 15 enslaved or freed women in Kajanto’s compendium. In toto across his data, women made up 28 percent of the people attested (or 36,961 people), a significantly higher percentage than the 11 percent that appears in the graffiti of Pompeii and the 9 percent from Herculaneum graffiti. For Ordo Populusque Pompeianus, Castrén chose to leave out names attested only in the form of a single name, thus omitting most of the graffiti.32 Additionally, he did not consider families genuine if their names were attested only among women.33 His omission of the names attested in graffiti has left a significant scholarly gap that my name list helps close. Where he has begun from a position of exclusion when faced with uncertainty, my catalog is radically inclusive. Indeed, my Pompeian catalog has only 56 unique names that have cross-references in Castrén’s collection. The Latinocentric limits of Kajanto’s catalog are supplemented by Solin’s studies of slave names and Greek personal names in the Roman epigraphic record.34 The corpus of data Solin draws from is smaller than Kajanto’s, but he fills in the gaps for Greek and other non-Latin names, such as Acte, Musa, and Roxane, which appear in my Pompeian catalog.35 In some instances, the graffito text shows an alternative spelling, or a misspelling of a known name, as at CIL 4.8137, Dulcis amor, perias eta (:ita) | Taine bene amo dulcissima | mea | dulc (“sweet love, may you pine away like this. My very sweetest sweet Taine, I love you well”). This name, Taine, is most likely Thais, attested twenty-three times in different spellings in Solin’s collection.36 Together with Kajanto, Solin’s collections are vital to demonstrating whether a name attested in graffiti should be considered a true cognomen, a nomen, or a nickname. Many names that on first glance appear to be nicknames are in fact attested cognomina for Roman women across a variety of social statuses, from enslaved, to freedwoman, to freeborn. 156   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

PLATE 1.

Painted pier depicting activities of fulling from the fullery/house at VI.8.20, Pompeii, first century CE.

PLATE 2 (left).

Fragment 9 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix, Pompeii. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 9063. PLATE 3 (below).

Fragment 3 of the Forum frieze in the atrium of the estate of Julia Felix, Pompeii. Naples, National Archaeological Museum inv. no. 9059a–b.

PLATE 4 (left).

Head of the domina after restoration. Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. PLATE 5 (above).

Head of the bride. Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.

PLATE 6 (above).

Cupid with a miniature portrait. Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. PLATE 7 (right).

Head of the woman carrying a tray of offerings (no. 4 on fig. 7.6). Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.

PLATE 8 (left).

Detail of Bacchus. East wall of Room 5, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. PLATE 9 (above).

Central scene on the west wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii. In situ. 63.5 × 74 cm.

PLATE 10.

Central scene on the north wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii. In situ. 63.5 × 70 cm.

PLATE 11.

Central scene on the east wall of triclinium m, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii. In situ. 63.5 × 70 cm.

PLATE 12.

Central scene from the north wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 120031.

PLATE 13.

Central scene from the west wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 120030.

PLATE 14 (above).

Central scene from the east wall of triclinium r, House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 120029. PLATE 15 (right).

Relief depicting a couple, detail: woman’s head, with traces of pigment and gilding. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 27714.

PLATE 16.

Relief depicting a couple, detail: woman’s and man’s genitals, with traces of pigment and gilding. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 27714.

Results At Pompeii, there are 137 unique women’s names or ways of addressing or speaking to women among the 240 graffiti I identified; with names from A to Z, excluding initial Y and initial B (appendix). There are twenty-four unique ways of addressing or speaking to women at Herculaneum among its twenty-five graffiti (appendix). Cognomina, personal names, dominate the evidence, along with feminine nomina gentilicia and references to female-gendered people. Unlike Roman free men, who bore tria nomina, the praenomen, nomen gentilicium, and cognomen (and sometimes more names even than that in inscriptions), women’s names are typically dual in formal inscriptions, and take the form of the feminine nomen gentilicium followed by a cognomen.37 Since graffiti typically offer a single name only, conventions for referring to women and men were different in informally inscribed wall inscriptions than in more formal inscriptions. The most frequently occurring name is Prima, attested in seventeen different graffiti; followed by Primigenia, mentioned in eleven different graffiti. Next, in descending frequency, are Chloe, Quartilla, Fortunata, Lucida, Triaria, Musa, Nicopolis, Venus, Anthis, and Salvilla. Some of these names are very common, describing women by birth order or position within a family, while others are relatively frequent names that appear more than twenty times in the epigraphic record. In some cases, a name may appear multiple times in nearby inscriptions that repeat or copy one another.38 Among the graffiti there are nine women with dual names or with additional identifiers. These are Calpurnia Ornata, Celerina Spuri f(ilia) (“Celerina, daughter of Spurius”), Assella Flavia, Poppaea Triquinia, Poppaea Augusta, Novellia Primigenia Nucerina, Sit(t)ia Pro(cula?), Mulvia Prisca mater (“Mulvia Prisca, the mother”), and Octavia Augusta.39 Matteo Della Corte suggested that Celerina may have been the sister of Julia Felix, owner of the large estate next to the amphitheater.40 Alternatively, the cognomen Celer only occurs among decurional families at Pompeii.41 Assella Flavia may be part of the gens Flavia;42 Poppaea Triquinia may be part of the empress Poppaea Sabina’s Campanian family or an imperial freedwoman;43 and Mulvia Prisca is well known for the lavish tomb for her son, Gaius Vestorius Priscus, aedile in 75/76 CE.44 Octavia (39–62 CE) and Poppaea Sabina (30–65 CE) were the first two wives of the emperor Nero. These graffiti, then, are remarkable in form, because they possess both a nomen gentilicium and a cognomen, and in two cases, they possess a recognizable marker of filiation. These women who were given multiple names are also from prominent families associated with economic or class status in Pompeii. The extended names in these graffiti have given these women some marks of social distinction by giving them fuller names, and the graffiti writers have emulated lapidary practices, where multipart names indicate higher social standing. MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   157

The graffiti also reveal language preference and may, cautiously, provide information about cultural identity or geographic origin of the women of the cities. Nearly 70 percent of the names among my Pompeian catalog are Latin; while at least 65 percent of the distinct names among the Herculaneum graffiti are also Latin in origin. Ninety-five of these names from Pompeii and twenty-one from Herculaneum are recognizably Latin in origin; thirty-seven from Pompeii and five from Herculaneum are Greek in origin, one is Hebrew, one is Persian, and one is Sabellian.45 It is perhaps not surprising that Latin names predominate in Campania in the first century CE. Another group of nineteen graffiti refer to women by nouns or adjectives rather than by proper names. Women are referred to as amata (beloved), anus (old woman), domina (mistress), filia (daughter), gravida (pregnant woman), mater (mother), matrena (mistress or lady?), matrona (wife and mother of a household), mulier (woman/wife), nuptula (little bride), nymphe (bride), puella (girl), pupa venusta (charming doll), soror (sister), tibicina (female flute-player), una (one woman), uxor (wife), virgo (maiden), and dulcissima et amantissima (most sweet and most beloved).46 It is worth noting how many of these references link women to lovers, family members, or spouses, as the four words for wife, nymphe (bride), nuptula (little bride), mulier (woman), and uxor (wife) demonstrate. There is at least one expression of filiation in Celerina Spuri f(ilia), discussed above. Other women are addressed as filia (daughter), mater (mother), matrona (mistress), matrena (lady?), puella (girlfriend), and soror (sister).47 Finally, women are addressed as domina (mistress), and in at least one instance, Roufilla is referred to as the domina of a named enslaved person, Mamilla.48

Social Standing of Women of Pompeian Graffiti: Preliminary Suggestions This onomastic study has allowed me to reach some tentative suggestions about the social standing of the women of Pompeian graffiti. The people who appear in these records may well predominantly include those who lived outside of the tiny slice of Roman society who belonged to the ordo decurionum (senatorial or governing class) of Pompeii. Because the women typically have a single name, certainties are impossible, however. In each case, we can only state that it is statistically probable that a woman is of a particular social status. Moreover, from a catalog of 240 women, in only thirty-eight graffiti is it most likely either that the named woman is of the decurional or economic elite, or that she is definitely not in that class. My comparisons with Kajanto’s catalog and the different frequencies of the incidence of women’s names problematize claims that graffiti were written by the enslaved and the formerly enslaved, or that they are the products of a few schoolboys darting around the city. The majority of names in Pompeii occur with the highest frequency among freeborn women, ingenuae, when attested in Kajanto. On the other 158   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

hand, the great majority of the unique women’s names here also appear in Solin’s catalog of slave names in the Roman Empire. The two onomastic sources seem to point to different social statuses (freeborn or enslaved) for the women of Campanian graffiti. As John Bodel explains, six of the ten most frequently attested slave names in the Roman record in Solin’s corpus are Latin.49 In other words, the fact that most of these names appear elsewhere as the names of freeborn women could indicate their social status as ingenuae. That is not at all a secure interpretation, however, since Roman naming practices are conservative and Latin names predominate, even among the enslaved and formerly enslaved attested in the epigraphic record.50 Castrén’s study, focused particularly on Pompeian families, allows us to cautiously risk a more fine-grained examination of these women’s social status, because he was able to form some conclusions about names that never appear borne by slaves or former slaves, and names that never appear among the decurional class in Pompeii.51 In his study, cognomina including Celer, Proculus, Rufus, and Sabinus never seem to have been used by slaves or former slaves.52 These appear in female form in the case of Celerina Spuri f(ilia), Sit(t)ia Pro(cula), and Sabina. There may be one additional example in a very insecure reconstruction of a difficult graffito, Roufilla domina Mamillae.53 This seems to add more clues to Roufilla’s social status. Not only does her cognomen appear only among decurional families at Pompeii,54 but this graffiti refers to her as the mistress of Mamilla. Castrén also identified twelve names that never appeared among the decurional class, and six of them are represented in the graffiti by Acte, Fausta, Faustilla, Fortunata, Ianuaria, and Prima.55 Thus, these final five names may testify to their owner’s social status in Pompeii, as people outside of the highest elite groups, and they are also among the most frequently occurring cognomina for women in Pompeii.56 There are many people attested with each of these names in Solin’s collection of slave names as well. It is probable then that these names represent the cognomina of enslaved or formerly enslaved people at Pompeii. Because they are such popular names in the Roman epigraphic record, however, that must always remain a suggestion.

Grand Palaestra: Campus ad Amphitheatrum The final sections of the paper turn to three case studies, demonstrating where women appear in the graffiti of the Campus ad Amphitheatrum, to the question of identifying Novellia Primigenia across the city of Pompeii, and to women as writers of graffiti. With more than 490 graffiti, the Grand Palaestra is the most densely inscribed area in Pompeii, and these graffiti naming women make up roughly 9 percent of the textual inscriptions on the columns in the Grand Palaestra. There are forty-five graffiti of women’s names, or naming women among these wall inscriptions.57 In the 1930s, Maiuri excavated a monument he termed the palaestra grande, MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   159

a building visible in the famous painting commemorating the riot of 59 CE in the neighboring amphitheater.58 The Campus ad Amphitheatrum is a large colonnaded space, similar in size to the Saepta Iulia at Rome, and a contemporary to the Augustan porticoes that reshaped the urban landscape of Rome. Like these, it occupies a large rectangular space, and is bounded on three sides by porticoes, which were mirrored by two rows of planted plane trees, whose root cavities survive. The south side is linked to a public toilet, and the north side of the ambulatio (walkway) has two wells. In the central area is a pool. Della Corte identified the Campus ad Amphitheatrum as the location for the Collegium Iuventus, a paramilitary youth organization emphasizing competitive athletic and equestrian activities, but this identification is quite dubious.59 Its use was probably far more general: it provided a market, meeting, and urban park space, and its heaviest use probably occurred during festivals, when it offered water, shelter, and sanitation.60 The Campus shows signs of earthquake damage and repair. Some columns have been re-anchored with lead clamps, and not all were re-stuccoed by the time of the eruption.61 The re-stuccoing and renovations give some security to a dating of the inscriptions between 62 and 79 CE. As a surface for inscriptions, the flutes of the columns encourage economy of writing, and most inscriptions do not extend beyond a few words or a single image (fig. 8.2). Frequent, too, are writers who work in multiple lines within a flute, and multiple inscriptions appear on multiple contiguous column flutes. There are many examples of single letters arrayed downwards along a column flute, several alphabets, images, salutations, simple names, and tallies. Within these forty-five inscriptions, three longer texts appear,62 but the majority are either names, or salutations, such as Lucilius | Lucidae | ubique | sal(utem) (“Lucilius greets Lucida everywhere”).63 Paralleling dialogues among graffiti of the basilica and elsewhere at Pompeii, Apsyrtus greets Lacaena and Valentina everywhere;64 and there is one explicitly erotic graffito: Felicula fellas (“Felicula you perform oral sex”).65 Through these graffiti, we can sample the different agencies and powers women have to create meaning for the passerby within what must likely have been understood as an impermanent form of Latin writing. Twenty-two of the women named in these graffiti are the grammatical subjects—including women who claim relationships with others, a woman who performs sexual acts, and an old woman whose philosophical thinking about the transience of life recalls Horace’s endless exhortations.66 Women can also be invoked in imperative greetings, or be the grammatical object of someone’s greeting. Women’s names appear most frequently on the north portico (fig. 8.2), in large part because of a single super-inscribed column (n. 106), which once held eighteen inscriptions.67 That column bore nine instances of the women’s names Dorcas, Iucunda, Prima, and Primigenia, which clustered in three heavily inscribed striae (column flutes) on the column’s eastern side.68 The texts of these graffiti, and their physical appearance, show how graffiti writers emulate the work of others and vary 160   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

FIGURE 8.2.

Women’s names in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum (Grand Palaestra), mapped by column. Parentheses indicate amended readings or suggestions for expansion of the texts; brackets indicate texts that appear multiple times on the same column.

it in their own compositions. The most complex text suggests that three people were present, or acted upon, by the graffito in stria 4: Pittaius / cum / Primigenia / hic / Prima seq= / uere / Volu= / mnius Voluumnius Pittacius was here with Primigenia. Prima, follow!69

In stria 5, Primigenia is with Prima, and Liberalis and Dorcas have also arrived.70 The texts in stria 6 are difficult to construe, but a sixth person, Sollemine, appears.71 Read together, this column gives life to six Pompeians, all of whom bear names MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   161

associated with enslaved or formerly enslaved people. Among these texts, Primigenia, Dorcas, and Prima all claim grammatical subjecthood. Among all the Campus ad Amphitheatrum columns, the names Prima, Chloe, and Lucida appear most frequently (seven and five instances). While Prima is the most common woman’s name to appear among the graffiti of this study, the names Chloe and Lucida occur only here in the Campus.

Concluding Analyses I offer two concluding analyses from the new knowledge this carto-onomastic study of the women of the graffito of Pompeii and Herculaneum has produced. First, I aim to balance my principle of radical inclusion with one of reasonable skepticism about identifying who may have borne these names. Among the most discussed women of Pompeii is Novellia Primigenia.72 The name Primigenia appears twenty times among the graffiti of Pompeii (eleven times in this study), and once among the graffiti of Herculaneum.73 To several scholars, it has been appealing to assume that this is one particular figure, Novellia Primigenia of Nuceria, whose drawing appears in profile alongside an elegant graffiti from the Suburban Baths at Herculaneum.74 Della Corte and Antonio Varone have both offered biographies of this character, and have linked the multiple appearances of the name Primigenia to one real woman. Varone places Primigenia in his chapter on prostitution, and labels her a high-class prostitute,75 like a Greek hetaera, and a mime actress, like Gallus’s elegiac mistress Volumnia Cytheris, called Lycoris in his poetry.76 On the onomastic grounds of this study, the commonness of the name Primigenia itself precludes this interpretation. As Kajanto demonstrates in his collection of Roman cognomina, every fourth person attested in the epigraphic record bore one of these highly common names: Felix/-ula, Fortunatus/a, Primus/a, Primigenius/a; of those, fully 40 percent are Primus/a or Primigenius/a names.77 To me, that startling frequency makes it suspect to correlate multiple appearances of the name Primigenia occurring across a heavily inscribed space like Pompeii to the same person.78 It thus becomes far more difficult to reconstruct an elaborate biography with such a common name. Elegiac scholarship’s turn against the biographical fallacy that tried to construct the lives of real, historical, and specific Roman women from the details Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid wrote about their puellae in Roman elegy also preclude this identification of a Pompeian elegiac woman.79 Second, I will weigh in on the question of authorship of these graffiti. I agree with Kristina Milnor, Sarah Levin-Richardson, Rebecca Benefiel, and Virginia Campbell that some of our graffiti were likely inscribed by women writers.80 Levin-Richardson has assembled a helpful body of evidence to demonstrate that women in a range of times, places, and holding different statuses in the Greek and Roman worlds participated in the epigraphic habit of graffiti, from prostitutes in the purpose-built brothel 162   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

at Pompeii, to Julia Balbilla’s poetry inscribed on the Colossus of Memnon in Egypt.81 As she puts it, a significant number of Pompeian women “who could be classified as illiterate might better be categorized as having some form of partial literacy.”82 Moreover, Benefiel has argued from some of these graffiti that women with very limited literacy could copy the writing of another more literate woman,83 and many women may have known how to write well enough to write their own name, or a common, formulaic graffito greeting.84 As the Grand Palaestra graffiti attest, women in the Pompeian graffiti have differential access to agency, as subjects, objects, and incidentals. The brief nature of most graffiti makes them difficult to interpret, because there is so little text. Still, when these graffiti were discovered, they were in situ and as a result, we have tremendous geographical or spatial data. Further studies will turn to the question of where precisely within spaces these graffiti occur. Still, even from this preliminary study, some conclusions are clear: women’s names appear throughout the excavated portions of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in domestic and public contexts. It is most common by far for women’s names to appear not in relationship to their families, but as individuals sending or getting greetings, or as a simple name. The women of the graffiti of Campania allow us to see a group of women who do not often appear in Roman literature or historiography because they are outside of the capital, and, it seems most probable, non-elite. They are thus unlikely to find their literary sisters represented in writings mostly produced in Rome, and usually emphasizing Roman social elites, or members of their households (including the enslaved, and the formerly enslaved clientela). They also have different names from the decurional class, whose family members have dominated scholarly studies of Pompeii’s political life. These women then let us take a careful, mindful look at some non-elite, non-Roman members of the Roman world. They let us see and name these women on their own, as autonomous people leaving their mark in that most Roman of means, the inscription. To conclude with an optimistic, and totally speculative, perspective, the evidence I’ve gathered here encourages me to see the written women of Pompeii as autonomous individuals in their own right, and as full agents engaged in the crucial work of making and remaking their city to commemorate their own lives.

Appendix: Breviarium of Graffiti Naming or Addressing Women in Pompeii (CIL 4.7997–10706) and Herculaneum The names appear here in alphabetical order (even if a preceding adjective modifies the name), and are presented first in Latin or Greek as they appear in the graffiti, with the case preserved (e.g., nominative, accusative, vocative). English translations follow, then CIL number and location. All references are to CIL 4 supplement III. MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   163

Fragmentary Names

1. . . . cla musa, “-cla Muse”: 4.8136, I.7.2 2. . . . illa, “-illa”: 4.8254, I.10.3 3. . . . lia, “-lia”: 4.8001, I.6.2 4. C. Caecina Ad(metus), “C. Caecina Admetus”: 4.10083, II.4.10 5. [C]ypare, “[C]yparis”: 4.8219a, I.8.17 6. . . . a dulcissimae amantissimaeque, “ . . . to the sweetest and most beloved girl”: 4.8177, I.7.19 7. . . . plia (: Euplia) “Euplia”: 4.8218h, I.8.17

Names

8. Acanthus, “Acanthus”: 4.4.8565b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 18 9. Acte, “Acte”: 4.9077, IX.7.67–68 10. Acti (: Acte), “Acte”: 4.10175a, II.11.6 11. Africana, “Africana”: 4.10155, II.7.10 12. Agele, “Agele”: 4.8191, I.8.5 13. Amomus, “Amomus”: 4.8897, III.5.2 14. Ampliata, “Ampliata”: 4.10179, II.12.1 15. Anthis, “Anthis”: 4.8218b, I.8.17 16. Anthis, ”Anthis”: 4.8218c, I.8.17 17. anus, “old woman”: 4.8605, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 30 18. Arria, “Arria”: 4.8911, III.6.1 19. Arsinoe, (: Αρσυνοε), “Arsinoe”: 4.10097a, II.4.11 20. Asella, “Asella”: 4.8618c, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 61 21. Aspasia, “Aspasia”: 4.10129, II.7.6/estate of Julia Felix 22. Assellam Flaviam, “Assella Flavia”: 4.8902, III.5.4 23. Attice, “Attice”: 4.8191, I.8.5 24. Calpurnia Ornatta, “Calpurnia Ornatta”: 4.9223, Villa of the Mysteries 25. Camudia, “Camudia”: 4.8449, II.2.5 26. Casta, “Casta”: 4.9037, VII.6.38 27. Casta . . . mater, “Casta”: 4.8842, III.3.6 28. Ceia, “Ceia”: 4.10045, II.1.16–17 29. Celerina Spuri f (ilia), “Celerina, daughter of Spurius”: 4.10130, II.7.6/estate of Julia Felix 30. Ceres mea, “my Ceres”: 4.9202, Villa of the Mysteries 31. Cha(ris?), “Cha(ris?)”: 4.8662, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 72 32. Chloe, “Chloe”: 4.8618b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 61 33. Chloe, “Chloe”: 4.8626a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 62 34. Chloe, “Chloe”: 4.8626b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 62 35. Chloe, “Chloe”: 4.8626d, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 62 164   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

36. Chloe ((: avis in saxo stans)), “Chloe (with image of bird standing on a stone)”: 4.8635nota, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 63 37. Chole (: Chloe), “Chloe”: 4.8608, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 31 38. Chloe Eutychia, “Chloe Eutychia”: 4.8321, I.10.4 39. Chr(a)esime, “Chr(a)esime”: 4.8261, I.10.3 40. Cissam, “Cissa”: 4.9153, outside the Marine Gate, on the base of a staircase 41. (Dubious) Lege Cl(a)u(dia?), “by the Claudian law(?)”: 4.10204, VII.1.8 42. Cleopatra, “Cleopatra”: 4.8324, I.10.4 43. Clodiae, “Clodia”: 4.8148, I.7.7 44. Comsi (: Cosme or Compse), “Cosme or Compse”: 4.10171b, II.11.3 45. Coponam, “barmaid”: 4.8442, II.2.3 46. Calos Qoponi (: Copona), “the beautiful barmaid”: 4.9146h, outside the Marine Gate 47. Cosseia, “Cosseia”: 4.10051, II.1.17 48. Cucuta, “Cucuta”: 4.8065, I.7.1 49. Cu(cuta) | Cucuta Ner(onis), “Cucuta, Nero’s Cucuta”: 4.8066, I.7.1 50. Cuspia, “Cuspia”: 4.8850, III.4.1 51. Daphnus, “Daphnus”: 4.8191, I.8.5 52. Delia, “Delia”: 4.9156, outside the Vesuvian Gate 53. Delia, “Delia”: 4.9173, Tomb of Septumia, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 54. [D]omi[n]a? (: Domina?), “Mistress (?)”: 4.8243c, I.10.2 55. Do[mi]na, “Mistress”: 4.9080, VII.7.2 56. Domina, “Mistress”: 4.9246, Villa of the Mysteries 57. Valen Domin(a) | Valens Domina, “powerful mistress”: 4.8824, III.2.1 58. Dorcas, “Dorcas”: 4.8771a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 59. Dorcas, “Dorcas”: 4.8771b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 60. Edone (: Hedone), “Hedone”: 4.10233, tomb 12 EN, Nucerian Gate necropolis 61. Elencia, “Elencia”: 4.8739, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 96 62. Enna(e), “Enna”: 4.7997, I.6, on the side of the insula 63. Euhodia, “Euhodia”: 4.8154, I.7.7 64. Euplia, “Euplia”: 4.10004, 1.9.5 65. Fausta, “Fausta”: 4.8375, I.10.4 66. Fausta, “Fausta”: 4.8945, III.7.1 67. Faustilla(m), “Faustilla”: 4.8203, I.8.13 68. Faustilla(m), “Faustilla”: 4.8204, I.8.13 69. Feliclam (: Feliciam), “Felicia”: 4.8917, III.6.1 70. Felicia, “Felicia”: 4.10066, II.3.3 71. Felicula, “Felicula”: 4.8711a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 88 72. Filia, “daughter”: 4.10149, II.7.7 73. Firm(a), “Firma”: 4.8454, II.2.5 74. Flora, “Flora”: 4.8840, III.3.6 MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   165

75. Fortunata, “Fortunata”: 4.8034, I.6.12 76. Fortunata, “Fortunata”: 4.8185, I.8.1 77. Fortunata, “Fortunata”: 4.8984, IX.14.b 78. Fortunata, “Fortunata”: 4.10005, I.9.5 79. Fortunatae, “Fortunata”: 4.9117, IX.13.4 80. Fulvina, “Fulvina”: 4.8306b, I.10.4 81. Fuscae, “Fusca”: 4.8836, III.3.6 82. Gem(ellam), “Gemella”: 4.10194a, II.15.3 83. Gravidam, “Pregnant”: 4.10231, tomb 12 EN, Nucerian Gate necropolis 84. Hantis (: Anthis?), “Anthis”: 4.8218f, I.8.17 85. Hantis (: Anthis?), “Anthis”: 4.8218g, I.8.17 86. Hermia, “Hermia”: 4.8697b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 85 87. Hiredem (: Iridem), “Iris”: 4.8258, I.10.3 88. Hiredem (: Iridem), “Iris”: 4.8259, I.10.3 89. Hiria, “Hiria”: 4.8184, I.7.19 90. Ianuaria, “Ianuaria”: 4.8361, I.10.4 91. Ianuaria, “Ianuaria”: 4.8465b, II.3.2 92. Irenae, “Irena”: 4.10079, II.4.6 93. Irimici (: Primige?), no translation possible: 4.8367c, I.10.6 94. Iri(s), “Iris”: 4.8585, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 21 95. Issae ((: imago mulieris magnae)), “Issa (with image of a large woman)”: 4.8954, III.7.2 96. IucuI///dilla (: Iucundilla), “Iucundilla”: 4.10102, II.4.11 97. Iuno, “Juno”: 4.9243b, Villa of the Mysteries 98. Iuunia(e) (:Iunonia), “Iunonia”: 4.8029, I.6.7 99. Lacene (: Lacaena), “Lacaena”: 4.8535, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 8 100. Leda(m), “Leda”: 4.9202, Villa of the Mysteries 101. Licaria (:Ligaria), “Ligaria”: 4.8655, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 70 102. Λιπασία, “Lipasia”: 4.9237, Villa of the Mysteries 103. Lucidae, “Lucida”: 4.8708, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 88 104. Lucidae, “Lucida”: 4.8717a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 90 105. (Lucidae), “Lucida”: 4.8721, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 91 106. Lucidae suae, “his Lucida”: 4.8627b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 62 107. Lucidae suae, “his Lucida”: 4.8676b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 78 108. Mamillae, “Mamilla”: 4.9025, VII.6.28 109. Maria, “Maria”: 4.8224, I.8.17 110. Marinae, “Marina”: 4.8227, I.8.18 111. Matrena culibonia, “Matrena of the good ass”: 4.8473, II.4.1 112. Matris Ele(u)sina(e), “of the Eleusinian mother”: 4.8560, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 17

166   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

113. Matris Heleusinae (: Eleusinae), “of the Eleusinian mother”: 4.8610, II.7.1/ Grand Palaestra, column 33 114. Mat|r(o)n|a, “Matrona”: 4.8593. II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 24 115. Melisse (:Melissa), “Melissa”: 4.8508, II.7.6 116. Melisse (: Melissa), “Melissa”: 4.9168, Tomb of Septumia, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 117. Mula, “Mula”: 4.8185, I.8.1 118. mul(i)eri, “wife”: 4.8590, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 23 119. mulieres, “women”: 4.8767, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 105 120. (Mulvia Prisca), “Mulvia Prisca”: 4.9160, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 121. Musa, “Muse”: 4.9210, Villa of the Mysteries 122. Musa, “Muse”: 4.9239, Villa of the Mysteries 123. Musa, “Muse”: 4.9244, Villa of the Mysteries 124. Askanii | Musa ih(?), “Muse of Ascanius (?)”: 4.9215a, Villa of the Mysteries 125. Myrine, “Myrine”: 4.10033b, I.12.3 126. Myrine, “Myrine”: 4.10033c, I.12.3 127. Nasi (: Nais), “Nais”: 4.8307, I.10.4 128. Nicopolis, “Nicopolis”: 4.8171, I.7.18 129. Nicopolis, “Nicopolis”: 4.8218a, I.8.17 130. Nicopolis, “Nicopolis”: 4.8218d, I.8.17 131. Nicopolis, “Nicopolis”: 4.8218e, I.8.17 132. Ni . . . (: Nice), “Nike”: 4.9219, Villa of the Mysteries 133. Novelliam Primigeniam, “Novelia Primigenia”: 4.8356, I.10.4 134. Nuptula(m), “little bride”: 4.10023, I.9.13 135. Nyphe (:Nymphe), “Nymphe”: 4.8897, III.5.2 136. Octavia Augusti, “Octavia, wife of Augustus”: 4.8277, I.10.3 137. Pacqui(a), “Pacqui(a)”: 4.8526, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 4 138. Pamhira (: Palmyra?) si[t]ifera, “Pamhira (or Palmyra?) the thirst-bringer”: 4.8475, II.4.1 139. Caupona Pherusaa, “the barmaid Pherusa”: 4.8909, III.6.1 140. Pithia Prima, “Pithia Prima”: 4.10151, II.4.10/estate of Julia Felix 141. Pithia Prima, “Pithia Prima”: 4.10154, II.4.10/estate of Julia Felix 142. Plataco Turuda (: Turda), “Plataco Turda”: 4.8218i, I.8.17 143. Pop(p)a[e(ae)] (: Poppaeae) August(a), “Poppaea Augusta”: 4.10049, II.1.17 144. Poppae[ae] triquinia (: Tarquiniae), “Poppaea Triquinia (or Tarquinia)”: 4.9137, IX.13.5 145. Postalne, “Postalne”: 4.9169, Tomb of Septumia, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 146. Pr(imae), “Prima”: 4.8366, I.10.7 147. Prim . . . , “Prim . . .”: 4.8367b: I.10.7

MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   167

148. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8248, I.10.2 149. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8270, I.10.3 150. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8624a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 61 151. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8737, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 95 152. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8769c, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 153. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8770a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 154. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8770e, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 155. Prima, “Prima”: 4.8771b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 156. Prima, “Prima”: 4.10153, II.7.10 157. Prima, “Prima”: 4.10156, II.7.10 158. Prima, “Prima”: 4.10157, II.7.10 159. Prima domina (?), “Prima mistress (?)”: 4.8241, I.10.2 160. Prima domina (?), “Prima mistress (?)”: 4.8367a, I.10.4 161. Primae suae, “his Prima”: 4.8364, I.10.7 162. Primae suae, “his Prima”: 4.8365, I.10.7 163. Primigen . . . , “Primigenia”: 4.8175, I.7.19 164. Primigenia, “Primigenia”: 4.8260a, I.10.3 165. Πριμιγενια, “Primigenia,” 4.8274, I.10.3 166. Pr(i)migenia, “Primigenia”: 4.8988, IX.14.b 167. Primigeniae, “Primigenia”: 4.8373b, I.10.7 168. Primigenia, “Primigenia”: 4.8769c, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 169. Primigenia, “Primigenia”: 4.8770a, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 106 170. Primigenia, “Primigenia”: 4.9136, IX.13.5 171. Primigeniae Nucerinae, “Primigenia of Nuceria”: 4.10241, D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 20 EN 172. Primigen(iam?), “Primigenia”: 4.10244, tomb 7 ES, Nucerian Gate necropolis 173. Primilla, “Primilla”: 4.8360, I.10.4 174. Pula (: Puella), “girl”: 4.10040, II.1.14 175. [p]uel(l)a, “girl”: 4.10197, II.15.3 176. puella mea, “my girl”: 4.10195, II.15.3 177. puella Mula, “girl Mula”: 4.8747, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 96 178. puellarium, “of the girls”: 4.8916b, III.6.1 179. puel(l)ar(um), “of the girls”: 4.8559, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 17 180. puellarum, “of the girls”: 4.9146f, outside the Marine Gate 181. Pupa venusta, “Doll is charming”: 4.8807a. II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 118 182. Quartila, “Quartila”: 4.8212a, I.8.17 183. Quartila, “Quartila”: 4.8212b, I.8.17 184. Quartila, “Quartila”: 4.8218l, I.8.17 185. Quartilla, “Quartilla”: 4.8218k, I.8.17 186. Quartilla, “Quartilla”: 4.8219b, I.8.17 187. Quartilla, “Quartilla”: 4.8219c, I.8.17 168   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

188. Restitu(t)a, “Restituta”: 4.9033, VII.6.30 189. Restituta, “Restituta”: 4.9036, VII.6.38 190. Roxane, “Roxane”: 4.9235, Villa of the Mysteries 191. Roufilla, (:Rufilla), “Roufilla (?)”: 4.9025, VII.6.28 192. Sabidia, “Sabidia”: 4.8712, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 89 193. Sabina, “Sabina”: 4.9171, Tomb of Septumia, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 194. Sagania, “Sagania”: 4.10229, tomb 12 EN, Nucerian Gate necropolis 195. Salvilae, “Salvila”: 4.8926, III.6.1 196. Salvilla(m), “Salvilla”: 4.8384, I.10.4 197. Salvil(l)ae, “Salvilla”: 4.8926a, III.6.5 198. Satria, “Satria”: 4.8294, I.10.4 199. Satura, “Satura”: 4.8304, I.10.4 200. Secundilla fellatrix ((: sub phallo)), “Secundilla sucker (under a drawn phallus)”: 4.9228, Villa of the Mysteries 201. Seppiae, “Seppia”: 4.8826, III.2.1 202. Serciia (: Sergia), “Sergia”: 4.10171a, II.11.3 203. Seren(a), “Serena”: 4.8978, IX.14.4 204. Sit(t)ia Pro(cula?), “Sit(t)ia Pro(cula?)”: 4.9000, VII.6.3 205. Sop(h)e, “Sophe”: 4.10013, I.9.9 206. sorori, “sister”: 4.8883, III.5.2 207. Spem, “Spes”: 4.8306a, I.10.4 208. Successae, “Successa”: 4.8211, I.8.17 209. Successa, “Successa”: 4.8421c, I.11.4 210. Symphascusa pura, “pure Symphascusa”: 4.9172, Tomb of Septumia, Vesuvian Gate necropolis 211. Taine (: Thais), “Thais”: 4.8137, I.7.2 212. Thymeli, “Thymele”: 4.8653, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 70 213. Tibicina, “flute girl”: 4.8873, III.5.1 214. Triaria, “Triaria”: 4.8885, III.5.2 215. Triaria, “Triaria”: 4.8888a, III.5.3 216. Triaria, “Triaria”: 4.8888b, III.5.3 217. Triaria, “Triaria”: 4.8888c, III.5.3 218. Triaria, “Triaria”: 4.8890, III.5.3 219. Umbricia, “Umbricia”: 4.8783, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 108 220. unam, “one woman”: 4.10128, II.7.6/estate of Julia Felix 221. Urusa (: Ursa), “Ursa”: 4.8404b, I.10.11 222. Ussae, “Ussa”: 4.9153, outside the Marine Gate, on the base of a staircase 223. uxsor (: uxor), “wife”: 4.8697a., II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 85 224. Valentin(a)e, “Valentina”: 4.8540, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 10 225. Valeria(e), “Valeria”: 4.8227. I.8.18 226. Valeria, “Valeria”: 4.10033a, I.12.3 MAPPING WOMEN’S NAMES FROM THE GRAFFITI OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM   169

227. Veneria, “Veneria”: 4.8291, I.10.4 228. Veneria, “Veneria”: 4.8465a, II.3.5 229. Veneriana, “Veneriana”: 4.8290, I.10.4 230. Banarousa (: Venerusa?), “Venerusa?”: 4.8878, III.5.2 231. Venerem, “Venus”: 4.9137, IX.13.5 232. Venus, “Venus”: 4.8404a, I.10.11 233. Venus, “Venus”: 4.8711b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 88 234. Venus, “Venus”: 4.9139, IX.13.5 235. Vicciam(?), “Viccia”: 4.8776b, II.7.1/Grand Palaestra, column 107 236. Viriria, “Viriria”: 4.8909, III.6.1 237. virginis, “maidens”: 4.8939, III.7.1 238. virgines, “maidens”: 4.8940, III.7.1 239. Vivcunla (: Iucunda aut?), “Iucunda or [untranslatable]”: 4.8771c/Grand Palaestra, column 106 240. Zmaragdis, “Zmaragdis”: 4.9153, outside the Marine Gate, on the base of a staircase Herculaneum

1. Amata, “Beloved”: 4.10508a, III.11–19 2. Amplianda, “Amplianda”: 4.10697, ramp 3. Aniciae, “Anicia”: 4.10511, III.19 4. Charca miam (: meam?), “my Charca”: 4.10648, Ins. Or. II.2–3 5. Crocale barbata, “bearded Crocale”: 4.10547, IV.17 6. Fausta, “Fausta”: 4.10704, ramp 7. Ianua, “Ianua”: 4.10513, IV.21 8. Iulaiam (: Iuliam?), “Iulia”: 4.10646, Ins. Or. 1.1a 9. Lavinia(m), “Lavinia”: 4.10684, ramp 10. Myrine, “Myrine”: 4.10521 11. Phlavia (: Flavia), “Flavia”: 4.10602. VI.1.7–10 12. Phyl (: Phyllis), “Phyllis”: 4.10692, ramp 13. Primigeniae, “Primigenia”: 4.10676, Suburban Baths 14. Προκλα, “Procla”: 4.10577, V.18 15. Rufula, “Rufula”: 4.10548, IV.17 16. Sabina, “Sabina”: Varone 2000b, 279, Decumanus Maximus (main north–south street) 17. Sab(ina?), “Sabina”: 4.10517, IV.2 18. Salvia Superba, “Salvia Superba”: 4.10583b, V.31 19. Saturnina(e) matr(i), “mother Saturnina”: 4.10519, IV.1–19 (cardo IV) 20. Sira (: Syra?), “Sira or Syra”: 4.10648, Ins. Or. II.2–3 21. Timinia, “Timinia”: 4.10600, VI.1.7–10 22. Urosacula, “Urosacula”: 4.10693, ramp

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23. Valentina ((: phallus)), “Valentina” (with image of a phallus): 4.10604, VI.1.7–10, Central Baths 24. Veneria, “Veneria”: 4.10697, ramp 25. Verginiam suam, “his Verginia”: 4.10525, IV.10

Notes I owe many thanks to Rebecca Benefiel, Holly Sypniewski, Jacqueline DiBiasie Sammons, and Kyle Helms for an amazing ongoing collaboration with the Ancient Graffiti Project (AGP). Enormous thanks are due to Silvia Orlandi, EAGLE, and the Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR: http://www.edr-edr.it/default/index.php), to Eeva-Maria Viitanen, and to my fellow presenters at the Symposium Campanum for suggestions on how to develop my initial conference paper. Thanks are due as well to Tuomo Nuorluoto for help with Roman onomastics, to the Finnish School in Rome, the American Academy in Rome, the Library of Topography and History at La Sapienza, and to the fantastic editors of this volume, Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland. 1. Castrén 1983; Sabbatini Tumolesi 1980; Mouritsen 1988; Franklin 2001; Chiavia 2002; Campanile 1996; Mouritsen 1999; Biundo 2003. The most up-to-date peer-reviewed resource for the programmata of Pompeii are Michele Stefanile’s records in the EDR. Unfortunately, EDR does not allow searching by the author of a record. There are currently 1,129 records of painted wall inscriptions at Pompeii. To read them, go to edr-edr.it. Select “search,” and then “advanced search.” In the “ancient city” range, type in “Pompeii.” Under the “material” search, scroll down to tectorium (wall plaster). Under “writing technique,” scroll down to pictura. Then scroll to the bottom and hit “search.” This will return all the painted wall inscriptions published in the EDR, part of the Electronic Archive of Greek and Latin Epigraphy. 2. On the difficulties in studying graffiti collectively, see Benefiel, Sypniewski, and Zimmermann Damer 2019. Several major studies exist: see, e.g., Varone 2012; Keegan 2014; Benefiel and Keegan 2016; for erotic graffiti, Varone 2002a; for poetic graffiti, Gigante 1979 and Milnor 2014; for graffiti from the lupanar, see Levin-Richardson 2019. 3. 3,800 Pompeian graffiti have names in them; there are more than 5,800 textual graffiti, and more than 800 drawn graffiti, according to Eeva-Maria Viitanen (2019, private correspondence). 4. Franklin 2007, 523. 5. The sample represents my initial study, and is substantial enough to enable generalizations about how women expressed themselves in and were described by others in graffiti, but it is not comprehensive for Pompeii. I have begun with the third supplement to CIL 4, because it is not yet accompanied by that most basic scholarly tool—an onomastic index to the names that appear. The appendix thus offers a scholarly tool for studying the women who appear in the wall graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum. A catalog providing the full text of the graffiti and onomastic metadata in the appendix resides at: https://github.com/erika-zimmermann-damer/Women-of-Campanian-Graffiti/. 6. My term was created in homage to Eric Poehler, who uses the term “cartobibliography” in Poehler 2014.

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7. Franklin 2001; Castrén 1983; Milnor 2014. 8. The AGP (ancientgraffiti.org) solves the problem of locating graffiti (perhaps the most vexing challenge to the study of the graffiti), foregrounds mapped archaeological contexts, provides links to other databases, and is flexible, with open-access data and permanent citations for reference. The PBMP (https://digitalhumanities.umass.edu​ /pbmp/) is similar in that it foregrounds the mapped archaeological context, links to other scholarship, and has open-access data. Both projects make their data available for download so that it can be used for other scholarly enterprises. 9. Levin-Richardson 2013, 2019; Milnor 2014; Hemelrijk 1999, 2013. 10. On these figures, see Petersen, Kellum, and Longfellow, this volume. 11. Cooley 2013; Hemelrijk 2013. 12. Hemelrijk and Woolf 2013, 2–3. 13. See also Swetnam-Burland, D’Ambra this volume. 14. Under the ius trium liberorum (law of three children) of Augustus’s marital laws, women of different social statuses could even be freed from this tutela muliebris by having three or more children who survived to be presented to a magistrate (Grubbs 2002, 84). 15. The graffiti of Pompeii’s brothel (VII.12.18) are an exception. See Varone 2003 and LevinRichardson 2019 for further bibliography of the people named in the lupanar graffiti. 16. Bernstein 1987; Castrén 1983. Exceptions include Savunen 1997 and Levin-Richardson 2019. 17. See n. 4. 18. See Levin-Richardson 2019, 47 n. 43. Harris (1989, 226) estimates general literacy at about 15 percent, but no more than 10 percent for women. 19. This project was begun by Rebecca Benefiel with Sarah Sprenkle. Holly Sypniewski is the assistant director. For all contributors, see http://ancientgraffiti.org/about/teams/. For explanations of how to use the AGP, see Benefiel et al. 2017, and Benefiel, Sypniewski, and Zimmermann Damer 2019. 20. The records in the third supplement were first published in 1909 by Della Corte, and completed in 1970 with contributions from Cipriotti and Giordano. 21. This working count comes from Rebecca Benefiel (private correspondence, July 2020) and is based not only on the individual CIL records, but also their subentries, such as CIL 4.8218a–l. 22. Cf. Laird, in this volume, who finds female figures comprise about 11 percent of the figural graffiti in her study. 23. Προκλα, “Procla”; see Benefiel and Sypniewski 2018, 222. 24. Valentina, Salvia (Salvilla at Pompeii), Sabina, Rufula (Roufilla at Pompeii), Procla (Procula at Pompeii), Primigenia, Myrine, Ianua (Ianuaria at Pompeii), Fausta, Amplianda (Ampliata at Pompeii). 25. CIL 4.8175, 8260, 8274, 8988, 8373b, 8769c, 9136, 8770a, 10241, 10244, 8356. 26. E.g., CIL 4.10508a (name alone); CIL 4.10697 (woman as object); CIL 4.10511 (woman greeted). See the appendix for further examples. 27. CIL 4.10547; for location metadata, see http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/graffito/AGP​ -EDR140131. This name is attested only four times elsewhere in the epigraphic record, but the AGP’s photographs, enhanced with line drawings, allow us to confirm that the inscription does combine this name with its unusual epithet.

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28. Poehler 2017b. 29. In working through the third supplement to CIL 4 for names, I began by building a dataset of all the potential names that might be feminine cognomina, references, or nomina gentilicia. This yielded more than three hundred possibilities. 30. Solin 1996; Kajanto 1965; Castrén 1983. 31. For the imperial period (in CIL volumes), Kajanto (1965) lists ca. 29,000 free women vs. ca. 78,000 men; and he lists ca. 3,200 slaves or freed women versus ca. 6,800 slaves or freed men. 32. Castrén 1983, 22. 33. Castrén 1983, 23. 34. Solin 1996, 2003. 35. Solin (1996) records more than 28,000 attestations of ca. 5,500 names of slaves and formerly enslaved by their cognomina. 36. Thais is, like several of the women’s names that appear on the walls of Pompeii, a name of a known hetaera. Other hetaera or puella names are Delia, the name of Tibullus’s elegiac puella, appearing on a tomb outside the Vesuvian Gate, and Aspasia, at II.7.6. 37. Cognomina appear in Roman names in the late second century BCE on Delos, at Capua, and at Praeneste. In the Augustan period, 52 percent of women’s names appear without a cognomen; but in the remainder of the first century CE, four out of five women had a cognomen. It continued to be a practice for elite women to use only a nomen. Kajava 1994 is essential reading on Roman practices of naming women. 38. As, e.g., in the case of graffiti appearing on a single flute of a column in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum. 39. For the inscriptions: Calpurnia Ornata (CIL 4.9223), Celerina Spuri f(ilia) (CIL 4.10130), Assella Flavia (CIL 4.8902), Poppaea Triquinia (CIL 4.9137), Poppaea Augusta (CIL 4.10049), Novellia Primigenia of Nuceria (CIL 4.8356), Sit(t)ia Pro(cula?) (CIL 4.9000), Mulvia Prisca mater (CIL 4.9160), Octavia Augusta (CIL 4.8277). 40. See Della Corte’s discussion in the apparatus criticus for CIL 4.10130; Castrén 1983, 249. 41. Castrén 1983, 264. 42. Castrén 1983, 168. 43. Castrén 1983, 209. 44. Castrén 1983, 193. 45. Maria (Hebrew); Roxane (Persian); Pacquia (Sabellian), all from Pompeii. 46. All from CIL 4: amata (10508a), anus (8605), domina (8243c, 9080, 9246), filia (10149), gravida (10231), mater (8610, 8842, 8560), matrena (8473), matrona (8593), nuptula (10023), puella (e.g., 10195, 10197), pupa venusta (8807a), soror (8883), tibicina (8873), una (10128), uxor (8697a), virgo (8939), and dulcissima et amantissima (8177). 47. All from CIL 4: filia (10149), mater (8842), matrona (8593), matrena (8473), puella (10040, 10197, 10195, 8747, 8619b, 8559, 9146f ), and soror (8883). 48. CIL 4.9025. This graffito is discussed in greater depth below. 49. Bodel 2003, reviewing Solin 1996. 50. Eighteen names have more than one thousand examples each in Kajanto, and every fourth person attested in the epigraphic record studied in Kajanto bore one of these most common names, Felix/-ula, Fortunatus/a, or Primus/a (1965, 29–30). Feminine versions

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and variations of these very common names appear throughout our Pompeian names: Fausta/-illa, Felicia/-cula; Fortunata; Ianuaria/Ianua; Prima; Procula (maybe); Rufula/ -illa; Sabina; Tertia; and Vivuncula. As Bodel (2003) points out, Felix, Primus, Faustus, and Fortunatus are among the top ten most common slave names. See also Kajanto (1965, 448–449) for the cognomina of Pompeian graffiti that appear more than ten times. 51. Castrén 1983, 264. 52. Castrén 1983, 264. 53. CIL 4.9025. 54. S.v. “Istacidia N(umerii) f(ilia) Rufilla”; “Petacia Rufilla”; “Pithia Rufilla.” See Castrén 1983, 259. 55. Acte appears at CIL 4.9077; Fausta, 4.8375, 8945; Faustilla, 4.8203, 8204; Fortunata, e.g., 4.8034, 8185; Ianuaria, 4.8361; Prima, e.g., 4.8770e, 8771b, 10153. 56. Castrén 1983, 262. 57. All from CIL 4: 8565, 8605, 8618c, 8662, 8618b, 8626a, 8626b, 8626d, 8635nota, 8608, 8771a, 8771b, 8739, 8711a, 8697b, 8585, 8535, 8655, 8717a, 8721, 8708, 8627b, 8676b, 8560, 8610, 8593, 8590, 8767, 8526, 8737, 8624a, 8769c, 8770a, 8770e, 8747, 8559, 8807a, 8712, 8653, 8783, 8697a, 8540, 8711b, 8776b, 8771c. 58. This painting was found in I.3.23, the House of Anicetus, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples (inv. no. 112222). 59. Parslow 2007, 221 n. 19. 60. Parslow 2007, 217. 61. Parslow 2007, 218. 62. CIL 4.8590 [10 lines], 8565 [7 lines], and 8767 [7 lines]. 63. CIL 4.8708. 64. CIL 4.8535, 8540. 65. CIL 4.8711a. 66. CIL 4.8605. 67. The inscriptions appear at EDR160313, EDR167731, EDR167732, EDR167733, EDR167867, EDR167868, EDR167869, EDR167870, EDR167871, EDR167872, EDR167873, EDR167874, EDR167875, EDR167876, EDR167709, EDR168237, EDR167879, EDR167880. The AGP studied the Campus ad Amphitheatrum graffiti in summer 2019, and what I present here are some preliminary findings related to women’s names. We have made interpretive decisions to break up some graffiti CIL published in single records into separate EDR records, so the EDR numbers given above present the newest critical editions for these graffiti. 68. CIL 4.8769, striae 4, 5, 6. This column also bears one of the few quotations from Vergil found in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum, from Aen. 4.223. 69. AGP-EDR167733, The Ancient Graffiti Project, http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti​ /graffito/AGP-EDR167733 (accessed: Aug. 6, 2019). 70. CIL 4.8770a–e. 71. CIL 4.8771a–d. 72. CIL 4.8356. 73. Virginia Campbell (2014) shares some of these graffiti at: https://pompeiinetworks​ .wordpress.com/2014/01/27/primigenia-of-nuceria/.

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74. CIL 4.10676; see also Laird, this volume. 75. Varone 2002a, 151–152 and Della Corte 1960. 76. Keith 2008, 92. 77. Kajanto 1965, 29–30. 78. Clauss, Kolb, Slaby, and Woitas (2020) return thirty-one instances of Primigenia at Pompeii: http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epi_ergebnis.php (conducted July 29, 2019). Primigenius/a names are 16 percent of all the epigraphically attested Roman cognomina in Kajanto 1965. 79. See Wyke 2002. 80. Milnor 2014; Levin-Richardson 2013, 2019; Benefiel 2012; and Campbell 2014. 81. Levin-Richardson 2013, 321–326. 82. Levin-Richardson 2013, 326. 83. Benefiel 2012, 28. 84. Levin-Richardson 2019, 120.

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CHAPTER 9

The Public and Private Lives of Pompeian Prostitutes Sarah Levin-Richardson

Whores are sometimes called “women of the people, public, common” for the obvious reason that in a sense they belong to everyone. A dam s 198 3, 34 3

Roman prostitutes were known for—and legally defined by—their indiscriminate availability: their “public-ness,” one might say.1 This ideology was not restricted to the metropolis of Rome or to the abstraction of law codes. At Pompeii, too, this was clearly articulated in a graffito written in the basilica: quoi scripsi semel et legit, mea iure puellast. | quae pretium dixit, non mea sed populi est, “The girl to whom I wrote and who accepted my message is rightfully mine. The girl who quoted her price [i.e., a prostitute] is not mine but the property of all.”2 Yet the full range of roles and experiences of these “public” women remains, in many ways, in the shadows.3 Just as scholars focus on the presumed “outsider” status of the male patrons of the sanctuary of Isis at the expense of the temple’s female patrons (highlighted by Lauren Hackworth Petersen), so too is the silence surrounding Pompeian prostitutes created by scholarly narratives that make prostitutes (intel)-legible only to the extent that they accord with our ideas of them as “outsiders.”4 Following Ria Berg’s and Luciana Jacobelli’s rigorous, archaeologically based studies of Pompeian courtesans,5 I aim to illuminate the lives of Pompeii’s prostitutes by combining general observations about Pompeian prostitution with a deep exploration of the embodied experiences of real individuals who sold their sexual labor. Along the way, I highlight the arenas—physical, social, and emotional—in which 177

prostitutes found ways to express agency and draw attention to the underappreciated public visibility and roles that these individuals had at Pompeii. I first show that women who sold sex were visible in numerous ways in Pompeii’s urban landscape, from small streets to large civic structures and everywhere in between. In the purpose-built brothel, too, they were readily visible to passersby and to the diverse set of clients from around the Bay of Naples that circulated through the structure. I then turn to the roles that these women performed, highlighting how they promoted the masculinity of their clients and performed emotional labor that may have been monetized by their managers or owners (or even themselves). I end with an exploration of their private lives, using the purpose-built brothel to flesh out some of the possible experiences of prostitutes out of the public eye. Ultimately, I use the physical evidence provided by Pompeii—from its graffiti to its art to its structures and artifacts—to recover the experiences of real women and girls who performed sexual labor at Pompeii.

Visibility Visibility in Pompeii’s Cityscape Recent analyses by Thomas McGinn, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, and Vincenzo Scarano Ussani can give us a sense of the scale of prostitution at Pompeii. McGinn lists fifty-four possible places where sex was sold at Pompeii, while Guzzo and Scarano Ussani catalog fifty-nine properties for the same purpose.6 While debate regarding how to identify locations where sex was sold continues and faults can be found in each catalog made on the subject,7 there is broad similarity in the number and types of establishments of each list. These include not only the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19) and the dozen or so single rooms opening onto streets (called cellae meretriciae by scholars) but also taverns (including VII.7.18, discussed by Jessica Powers) and houses (including the House of the Chaste Lovers [IX.12.6], discussed by Jennifer Trimble).8 The number and variety of locales help us visualize the ubiquity of prostitution—and those who sold sex—at Pompeii.9 In addition, McGinn identifies 142 potential female prostitutes out of a population of approximately 25,000 individuals;10 one of every hundred females at Pompeii might then have sold her sexual labor, if we assume that half of the population was female. Because of the difficulty in determining who worked as a prostitute—for instance, is a female name in a tavern necessarily that of a prostitute?—let us focus on the women whose names appear in the purpose-built brothel. At least twenty-six women worked in the structure in the seven years before the eruption of Vesuvius—that is, the time period after the brothel was last renovated, in 72 CE.11 These were Anedia, Aplonia, Atthis, Beronice, Cadia, Cressa, Drauca, Fabia, Faustilla, Felicla, Fortunata, Habenda, Helpis, Ianuaria, Ias, Mola, Murtis, Myrtale, Mysis, Nais, Panta, Restituta, Rusatia, Scepsis, Victoria, and the daughter of Salvius.12 This represents a minimum, 178   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

as six more names (which are fragmentary or of indeterminate gender) may also have been of female prostitutes,13 and some women who sold sex in the space may not have been represented in the brothel’s graffiti. Antonio Varone notes that 20 percent of these names are gentilicia, indicating freeborn women rather than enslaved individuals.14 Freeborn prostitutes would likely have had longer and stronger connections to the community than girls brought to Pompeii to serve as sex slaves, and may have had greater mobility, too, if they lived somewhere other than the brothel, as will be discussed below.15 The mobility of the brothel’s prostitutes is also suggested by epigraphic evidence. Varone, noting that many of the names of the brothel’s prostitutes can be seen elsewhere at Pompeii, suggests that these individuals may have worked or picked up clients throughout town.16 While it is impossible to know if the graffiti in question refer to the same person (and Erika Zimmermann Damer comments upon the frequency of names like Fortunata), Varone focuses, for the most part, on graffiti that have erotic content (e.g., representations of amorous couples, a sexual act, or price) or come from establishments where many graffiti of that type have been found.17 Restricting his examples to only those with a sexual act or price—the most rigorous criteria—still allows us to see the visibility of these women throughout Pompeii (see fig. 9.1).18 This includes Pompeii’s largest thoroughfares: Myrtale (also spelled Murtale) and Felicla are recorded along or near the Via Stabia (Stabian Way; see numbers 2 and 3 on the map), which was the cardo maximus (primary north–south street); Mola (also spelled Mula) and Fortunata are attested along or near the Via dell’Abbondanza (Street of Abundance; see numbers 4, 5, and 7), which was the southern decumanus (major east–west street). Portraits (discussed by Margaret Laird) accompany Fortunata’s epigraphic presence (CIL 4.8185, number 5 on the map; CIL 4.10005, number 7 on the map). The portrait from the House of the Fruit Orchard (I.9.5; see fig. 13.1:b) depicts Fortunata in profile, mouth open to perform fellatio on a phallus pointing toward her. The other portrait, from the interior of bar I.8.1 (see fig. 13.4), shows Fortunata in a frontal view; Laird comments that it “arrested viewers familiar with the direct gaze of the gorgoneion,” and brilliantly reminds us that the gorgoneion was “a visage with the power to make men rock hard.”19 The brothel’s prostitutes also moved in or through main civic areas. To get to number 1 on the map—directly across from tavern VII.7.18 of Powers’s chapter!— Restituta likely walked through Pompeii’s forum. (Might a prostitute be one of the brightly dressed women in the forum scenes of the estate of Julia Felix discussed by Eve D’Ambra?)20 The presence of Felicla (also spelled Felicula) is additionally noted in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum or Grand Palaestra, a multipurpose, porticoed civic space near the amphitheater (see number 6 on the map) that attracted dozens of other texts and drawings of women (as Zimmermann Damer and Laird highlight).21 There were other tasks that may have brought the brothel’s prostitutes out of the THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES OF POMPEIAN PROSTITUTES   179

FIGURE 9.1.

Map of epigraphic attestations of the brothel’s prostitutes outside the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19; indicated with a star), Pompeii. 1. CIL 4.1631: Restitut[a] felat, “Restitut[a] suks [i.e., performs fellatio]”; Vico dei Soprastanti, between shops VII.6.33 and VII.6.34 2. CIL 4.3494a: nolo | cum Murtale [. . .], “I don’t want to [word unclear] with Murtale”; on a fresco of a male and female figure seemingly about to kiss; inside the Tavern of Salvius (VI.14.35–36) 3. CIL 4.4023: Felicla verna a(ssibus) II, “Felicla the homeborn slave for two coins”; inside doorway to house/bakery V.1.15 4. CIL 4.8034: Fortunata | a(ssibus) XXIII, “Fortunata for twenty-three coins”; Via dell’Abbondanza, outside shop I.6.12 5. CIL 4.8185: Mula fellat [A]ntoni(?) | Fortunata a(eris) a(ssibus) II, “Mula sucks at Antonius; Fortunata for two bronze coins”; interior wall of bar I.8.1 6. CIL 4.8711a: Felicula | fellas, “Felicula, you suck”; column in north portico of Grand Palaestra (II.7) 7. CIL 4.10005: Fortunata, “Fortunata”; next to a drawing of a figure in profile about to perform fellatio; peristyle of house I.9.5

building. For example, one of the objects found in the brothel was a bronze shellshaped basin to hold water for personal hygiene practices.22 Since the brothel was not directly connected to the public water system, water would need to be fetched from a nearby fountain. While there may have been other individuals who could run this errand—perhaps the “water boys” mentioned in association with unchaste women in literature, or the young children of prostitutes—there are reasons to think it would have been the prostitutes themselves.23 We have already seen epigraphic evidence that some of the brothel’s prostitutes picked up clients outside the brothel;

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FIGURE 9.2.

Paths from the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19) in Pompeii to the closest three fountains.

sending one of the prostitutes to collect water may have been a purposeful decision to attract potential clients. Moreover, since I have argued elsewhere that the brothel rarely if ever operated at full capacity, prostitutes would have had the time to run this errand.24 Finally, prostitutes may have sought out this task as an opportunity to linger and socialize with neighbors and friends away from the watchful eyes of whoever managed the brothel.25 One of the three closest fountains is on the Via Stabia near its intersection with the Via degli Augustali (Street of the Augustales) in front of VII.1.32 (see fig. 9.2). If one of the brothel’s prostitutes were to fetch water from this fountain, she would pass at least eleven shops, including a laundry facility, a bakery and its retail shop, and three bars or food sellers with masonry counters.26 The main entrances of four houses were along this path, including the House of the Bear (VII.2.45) with its elaborate fountain visible from the house’s entrance, the House of Marcus Caesius Blandus (VII.1.40)—large enough to have a private bath complex—and house VII.2.51 with its stately First-Style façade and tall pilasters with tufa capitals flanking the doorway.27 Along the way, she could be seen passing neighborhood shrines at the intersections of the Vicolo del Lupanare (Alley of the Brothel) and Via degli Augustali and the latter with the Via Stabia.28 In walking to and from this fountain, she might run into neighbors dropping off or picking up their laundry, individuals buying bread, and folks shopping for groceries or dry goods or other products. If these individuals skewed toward the lower end of the social hierarchy—that is, household slaves or poor individuals who ran their own errands—the individuals coming and going from

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the four houses would have covered the spectrum of statuses, from slaves associated with the households to the houses’ owners, guests, clients, and children. To get to the fountain on the Via dell’Abbondanza near its intersection with the Vicolo del Lupanare (in front of VII.14.13 and VII.14.14), she would pass sixteen shops, including the bar that Sittius fixed up complete with its painted elephant sign (VII.1.44–45).29 In addition to the large painted shrine with its twin snakes coiling up to an altar (between VII.11.12 and VII.11.13), she would pass by the main entrances of two houses, including the luxurious House of Siricus (VII.1.47) with its double peristyles, Fourth-Style mythological frescoes (of the same quality as those in the House of the Tragic Poet), and secondary entrance from the Via Stabia.30 Large public establishments opened onto her path, including one of the two entrances (VII.11.14) to a very large inn, and three entrances to the Stabian Baths, including the main entrance (VII.1.48) to the smaller suite of bathing rooms, labeled over the door with the word mulier, “woman,” in black.31 In walking to and from this fountain, a prostitute would be visible not only to all the merchants and customers of the shops along the way, but also to the fifty or so lodgers in VII.11.14, and to a large percentage of the town for whom the Stabian Baths was their closest public bathing facility (especially since the Central Baths [IX.4] was not yet operational).32 She would encounter a large number of women of all statuses using the women’s entrance to the Stabian Baths, as well as men who used one of the rear entrances to the complex. Perhaps she even ran into Publius Vedius Siricus, the presumed owner of the House of Siricus, who was a candidate in 75 CE for the highest elected office at Pompeii, quinquennial duumvir, an office that combined the normal duties of the two elected head magistrates with special duties that fell on a five-year cycle.33 The third nearby fountain was in a less busy location, on the Vicolo della Maschera (Alley of the Mask) near its intersection with the Vicolo del Balcone Pensile (Alley of the Hanging Balcony) in front of VII.1.5. A prostitute would nevertheless pass the main entrances to four houses, four shops (including a bar and laundry facility), and an inn, in the process coming into contact with lodgers, homeowners and their guests and slaves, and folks patronizing the bar, laundry facility, and other shops.34

Visibility in the Purpose-Built Brothel The purpose-built brothel can provide a case study for further exploring the visibility of prostitutes.35 First, the brothel was designed to be penetrable to the gaze of those walking by. When doorway 18 was open, a passerby could see directly into the structure’s main hallway (see figs. 9.3 and 9.5). This visibility from the street contrasts with some other buildings, like public toilets, that have a staggered set of entrances meant to prevent those passing by from seeing inside the structure (see fig. 9.4).36 In the brothel, by contrast, if any of the prostitutes were standing in the doorways of the

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FIGURE 9.3.

Plan of the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19), Pompeii.

FIGURE 9.4.

Plan of the forum latrine (VII.7.28), Pompeii.

rooms, or congregating in the hallway, they effectively would be on display to anyone glancing through this doorway. In addition, doorway 18 was the ideal viewpoint for seeing the brothel’s frescoes, which were prominently located in the brothel’s hallway rather than the small rooms whose interiors are generally less visible from the street (see fig. 9.5; cf. the lack of visibility from the street of tavern VII.7.18’s erotic décor).37 In fact, doorway 18 is the only spot from which all of the structure’s frescoes can be seen by the viewer without turning around. Five of the brothel’s seven extant erotic frescoes feature a male–female pair having sex (for one of these, see fig. 9.6), putting sexual activity—if not also prostitutes’

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FIGURE 9.5.

View through VII.12.18.

FIGURE 9.6.

Fresco vi (westernmost fresco on the south side of the hallway) from the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19), Pompeii.

bodies and their sexual labor—prominently on view to those inside and walking by the structure. While Anise Strong has shown that there is no definitive way to identify prostitutes in Roman art—no type of clothing (or lack thereof ) or sexual activity can be tied to visual representations of prostitutes alone (as opposed to domestic sex slaves, or lusty wives), and there are more commonalities than differences between sexual imagery in the brothel and in domestic spaces38—several factors suggest that viewers may have interpreted the female figures in the brothel’s frescoes as prostitutes. First, the settings depicted in the frescoes overlap with the objects found in the brothel to a much greater degree than previously realized.39 Two basins, two pitchers, a lampstand with lamp, and three sets of slippers are shown on the floor or on low footstools within the brothel’s frescoes. In figure 9.6, for example, there is a basin and pitcher to the left of the bed, as well as slippers on a low table below the bed. A counterpart to the bronze basins of the frescoes can be found in the bronze basin discovered by excavators, while the two pitchers of the frescoes—presumably for pouring liquids—may have reminded viewers of the glass bottle and two glass cups found in the structure.40 The lamp shown in one of the frescoes had a parallel in a single-nozzle terracotta lamp from the brothel. When covered with mattresses—a scenario that scholars agree is likely—even the masonry platforms of each room may have looked more similar to the beds/couches of the frescoes than previously thought.41 While John Clarke sees the brothel’s frescoes as presenting a world far removed from the “rough and ready” reality of the brothel, I have argued that frescoes and reality echo one another to a large degree.42 Second, the lack of servile figures who stand attentively in the margins of the frescoes—one of the key ways to mark the status of other figures in a composition as non-servile (see, e.g., the banqueting frescoes in the House of the Chaste Lovers discussed by Trimble)—means that there is nothing, visually, to indicate if the male and female figures of the brothel’s frescoes were slave or free.43 While this did not compel viewers to identify the female figures as prostitutes, it certainly left open the possibility. Finally, the fact that prostitutes might be seen in the hallway, just below the erotic frescoes and sometimes even framed, like artwork, by the doorways of the small rooms,44 may have led viewers to associate the female figures performing sexual acts in the frescoes with the female prostitutes, known to perform sexual acts, whom they saw in the structure. The visual penetrability of the structure continued with the brothel’s other door (see figs. 9.7 and 9.8). When doorway 19 was open, it allowed passing individuals a direct view into room b (scholars have found no evidence that doors closed off the small rooms, though there may have been something more ephemeral, like curtains).45 If a prostitute were reclining on the masonry platform of this room, parts of her body would come into view and then disappear again as one passed the doorway, almost like a walk-by “peep show.” One might imagine a prostitute verbally soliciting men walking past, or instigating conversations with individuals she knew. THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES OF POMPEIAN PROSTITUTES   185

FIGURE 9.7.

View through VII.12.19, Pompeii.

FIGURE 9.8.

Still of digital reconstruction of the purpose-built brothel (VII.12.18–19) from Museo Archeologico Virtuale, Herculaneum.

Indeed, prostitutes may have used the brothel’s auditory and visual permeability as an opportunity to further their own connections to the wider community, even while working.46 Individuals could see the prostitutes inside the brothel not only by walking past one of the entrances, but also by themselves patronizing the establishment. In contrast to the common assumption that the brothel’s clients were all lower-status, and that they had only short encounters in the brothel, there was a wide range of individuals who circulated through the brothel, and they took their time there. In terms of status, Varone has pinpointed at least five definitively freeborn men among the fifty-three male names in the structure, including a certain Lucius Annius, whose relative Caius Annius Marulus was duumvir in 2/3 CE, and a certain Nonius, who came from a well-attested gens with magisterial candidates.47 This, however, is a minimum, as it is impossible to determine with certainty the status of the forty-seven other named males. At least one was literate enough to quote the Aeneid,48 and another, a certain Phoebus, identifies himself as an unguentarius, “perfumer.”49 Moreover, from details in the graffiti we know that individuals from throughout the Bay of Naples were clients. One graffito records a certain Lucrio from Sarno,50 while the rivalries expressed in the following graffito suggest clients from (or at least fans of ) Nuceria, Pompeii’s closest neighbor and rival to the east, and Puteoli, the largest port in southern Italy, located twenty-five miles northwest of Pompeii: Puteolanis feliciter | omnibus Nucherinis | felicia et uncu · Pompeianis | Petecusanis. Good luck to the Puteolans! To all the Nucherians [= Nucerians], luck! [But] an anchor for the Pompeians [and] the Petecusans [= Pithecusans].51

The archaeological finds and graffiti suggest that clients were encouraged to linger in the establishment and that many of them did.52 I argue elsewhere that the glass cups and bottle found in the brothel were most likely for offering alcohol to clients—perhaps paralleling, in a much simplified manner, the erotic drinking parties discussed by Jacobelli in association with the House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) and Trimble for the House of the Chaste Lovers—and so suggest a certain amount of time that clients spent in the structure apart from sex.53 Moreover, features of the graffiti point to clients reading and responding to the statements on the brothel’s walls. In the above graffito about local town rivalries, Rebecca Benefiel identifies up to four different contributors: a first person wrote Puteolanis feliciter; a second person came along and used a different grammatical construction for expressing good luck with omnibus Nucherinis | felicia; a marked change in handwriting indicates that another person picked up with et uncu · Pompeianis, and finally, on a fourth line, another individual added in smaller letters Petecusanis.54 In another case, someone appended the Greek letter theta to the name THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES OF POMPEIAN PROSTITUTES   187

Ikarus, either to indicate that Ikarus had died, or as a threat to him.55 In other cases, conversations continue across multiple graffiti, as with a set of statements about a woman named Victoria that cluster on one wall of room f.56 In addition, one of the brothel’s figural graffiti was drawn using parts of the textual graffiti that had already been written on the wall.57 Specifically, someone drew a human profile so that the preexisting boast futui, “I fucked,” was located on the figure’s forehead.58 This was a conscious and clever decision, I suggest, as it calls to mind—and perhaps subverts— the practice of branding or tattooing the foreheads of slaves with words such as fugi, “I have fled,” or fur, “thief,” replacing marks of servile punishment with a proud proclamation of penetrative agency.59 In sum, individuals who sold sex were readily visible in Pompeii’s landscape. They could be seen traversing the cityscape, getting water from fountains, and on display in the purpose-built brothel. In addition, a large number and broad spectrum of clients—including individuals from around the Bay of Naples—spent time in the purpose-built brothel drinking with, having sex with, and perusing graffiti with the structure’s prostitutes.

Roles The primary role of prostitutes was to provide sexual gratification to clients and, through this, profit for their owners or managers or, in some situations, for themselves.60 The provision of sexual gratification needs more attention, however, as prostitutes were rarely in a position, legally or economically, to decline a particular client or refuse a client’s wishes.61 As Mira Green argues, enslaved individuals were often the outlets for the non-normative desires of free men, and that must surely be the case with those who sold sex, too.62 Graffiti relating to prostitution—both in the brothel itself and around Pompeii—often refer to fellatio (in addition to vaginal sex) and, more rarely, anal sex. Prostitutes may have had to perform non-normative or painful sexual activities that clients would not ask of their wives or partners. In addition, prostitutes—at least those in the purpose-built brothel—had a role in affirming and boosting the masculinity of their clients. Sexual boasts are common in the brothel’s graffiti, and the form of most—a male name followed by a sexual verb in the third person—suggests authorship by the named clients (as even autobiographical claims were made in the third person in Pompeian graffiti).63 Even if the majority of boasts leave out the names of specific prostitutes—as in Phoebus · unguentarius | optume futuit, “Phoebus the perfumer fucks best”—these proclamations of masculinity gain power from the understanding that clients sexually penetrated these prostitutes, right here, in the purpose-built brothel.64 Prostitutes and their sexual labor thus make these boasts possible (or at least more powerful), even if that is not explicitly stated. 188   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

Prostitutes may have had a more direct role in the nine boasts from the brothel that employ second-person forms, as in S[ol]lemnes | b[e]ne futues, “S[ol]lemnes, you fock w[e]ll.”65 This same formula was used with the names Felix, Vitalio, and December.66 A certain Syneros was praised with the same formula, but in Greek,67 and Victor was praised three times total with Victor | valea qui bene | futues (“Victor, may you fare well who focks well!”).68 The second-person forms—in contrast with the more common “autobiographical” third-person forms—make it seem as though someone other than the named clients wrote these graffiti. In other words, readers are meant to think that prostitutes have written these statements about their clients. And prostitutes may have in fact done so, as I have argued elsewhere that they would have been literate enough to write short graffiti.69 However, it is also possible that clients wrote these graffiti, knowing that the second-person forms would make their claims seem both stronger and less self-interested. Ultimately, we will never know who wrote these statements, since even the simplest examples of authorship in graffiti may in fact be playing with personas or ventriloquism.70 Prostitutes thus either directly (through writing these graffiti) or indirectly (through their voices being co-opted for such boasts) promoted the masculinity of clients, and in the popular semi-public arena of the brothel, in the permanent medium of wall writing, no less. This social function gains extra significance when we consider that some of the brothel’s clients were enslaved and formerly enslaved men, and thus potentially the sexually penetrated objects of their enslavers and former enslavers;71 their masculinity may have needed reinforcement more so than their freeborn or elite neighbors, then. Prostitutes may have also played the role of “girlfriend” to their clients in the brothel, in this way performing emotional labor in addition to sexual labor. Eight greetings were written in the structure, almost all of which were written to or from prostitutes, suggesting longer-term and more affective relationships than usually thought.72 In Ias Magno salute, “Ias [sends] greeting to Magnus,”73 not only do we see a woman leaving a permanent greeting for her client, but we also see a repetition of the same pairing from a graffito on the opposite wall (Iias cum Ma|gno ubique, “Iias [= Ias] with Magnus everywhere”).74 Add to this the fact that sixteen male names are repeated at least once (and oftentimes three or four times) in the structure, suggesting repeat customers.75 Could Phoebus the perfumer, whose name appears five times in the brothel,76 have given a gift like the glass vial of perfume or cosmetics found in the structure to his favorite prostitute? Moreover, it seems likely that prostitutes provided company while clients drank alcohol and read and wrote graffiti.77 The fiction of a relationship with a prostitute was one of the things that set the brothel apart from street prostitution, and in that way the emotional labor of prostitutes was monetized.78 This brings us to our last role, that of generating profit. Presumably most of this went to the prostitute’s owner (if she were enslaved) or manager (if not). From there, some would have ended up with the owner of the building THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES OF POMPEIAN PROSTITUTES   189

in which the brothel was located, through rent paid to him by the brothel’s manager.79 Some profit may have been kept by the women and girls themselves through various means (a peculium, or small allowance, if enslaved;80 if free, the portion of earnings that was not owed to a manager; for both, hiding earnings from owners/managers), and this in turn may have circulated through Pompeii as these individuals bought food or drink, went to the public baths, contributed toward their family’s rent, or purchased small gifts (the perfume/cosmetics vial, to interpret it another way?) for themselves or others.

Private Lives It is possible that the roles these women performed seeped into their private lives, too. The need to appeal to clients—both physically and emotionally—may have led women and girls who sold sex to internalize the expectations demanded of them. Indeed, Powers asks if the reused erotic relief in tavern VII.7.18 had this effect on the female workers there.81 In one of Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, Crobyle, impoverished from being widowed two years prior, must prostitute her daughter Corinna to survive.82 To prepare Corinna for having sex with her first client, Crobyle describes the types of self-policing that successful courtesans practice: In the first place, she dresses attractively and looks neat; she’s joyful with all the men, without being so ready to cackle as you are, but smiles in a sweet bewitching way; later on, she’s very clever when they’re together, never cheats a visitor or an escort, and never throws herself at the men. If ever she takes a fee for going out to dinner, she doesn’t drink too much—that’s ridiculous, and men hate women who do—she doesn’t gorge herself—that’s ill-bred, my dear—but picks up the food with her finger-tips, eating quietly and not stuffing both cheeks full, and when she drinks, she doesn’t gulp, but sips slowly from time to time.83

When Corinna asks, “Even if she’s thirsty, mother?” Crobyle responds: “Then most of all, Corinna.”84 Not only do we see that poverty could force freeborn girls into prostitution, but we are told of the types of behaviors and attitudes that were thought necessary for this endeavor. A prostitute must carefully manage her appearance and affect (including her emotional state and how much to laugh and smile), how and when to deploy her intellect, how much and the manner in which she drinks and eats, and her actions (including whether they might make too much noise!). Women who sold sex may have even policed each other. In a passage preserved in Athenaeus, new prostitutes are examined by their more experienced peers, who “immediately reshape them, so they don’t act or look the same anymore.”85 In addition to using various artificial means (e.g., padding, makeup, platform shoes) to cover up shortcomings—a well-worn literary trope about women, especially 190   WOMEN ON DISPLAY

courtesans86—the older prostitutes assess the younger women’s best features, and these are put on display whether the prostitute consents or not. Sometimes this morphs into emotional labor, as when prostitutes are expected to laugh to show off their teeth; other times, this involves physical manipulation or punishment, as when prostitutes who refuse to laugh are forced to hold slivers of wood upright in their mouths until they smile. Investigating the brothel as “multiple . . . [and] layered in time” (as Petersen encourages us to think about the central halls of Pompeian houses) allows us to see how prostitutes in the brothel could also use their private time to practice self-care, support one another, and claim the fullness of their identities.87 They could wash their own or each other’s bodies (and bruises) with water from the bronze basin. They could put on perfume or cosmetics from the glass vial for their own purposes. They could congregate in the largest room, perhaps all clambering on the large platform there, and share stories not only of their clients—which is how Greco-Roman literature imagines the private lives of courtesans—but also of their families, friends, and hopes. Perhaps they used the glass cups and bottle found in the structure to sneak sips of alcohol meant for their clients, either as an act of resistance or as a form of self-care in the face of the precariousness, powerlessness, and violence they faced. For the 20 percent of the brothel’s female prostitutes who were freeborn—Anedia, Aplonia, Cadia, Fabia, and Rusatia88—we might imagine that they returned to their homes and families after each shift (though we might imagine scenarios where they lived at the brothel along with the enslaved prostitutes, too).89 On the way, they may have chatted with neighbors and run errands, ultimately arriving at home, where they would once again be someone’s daughter, sister, or even mother.

Conclusions The analyses above have repercussions in several areas. First, the visibility of individuals who sold sex, both in the brothel and in the wider landscape, raises further doubts about the existence of moral zoning in Pompeii, a proposition which is partially based on the presumed hiddenness either of the brothel, of prostitutes, or both.90 This visibility mirrors that of Pompeian women more generally, as demonstrated in this volume by Zimmermann Damer’s and Laird’s analyses of names and drawings of women in graffiti.91 Second, these individuals could exercise agency in multiple arenas, and for multiple purposes. They traversed the city to pick up clients, to run errands, to chat with neighbors and friends, and in some cases, to return to their families. They may have called out to friends or clients as the latter walked past the brothel; used their emotional labor—especially fostering relationships with their clients—for their own purposes (e.g., bettering their living conditions, or increasing the likelihood of being able to leave prostitution); sneaked alcohol; and cared for themselves and each other. THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES OF POMPEIAN PROSTITUTES   191

These forms of agency overlap in many ways with the agency of enslaved individuals as teased out of the archaeological record by Petersen and Sandra Joshel, and show that those on the margins of society were visible (if often ignored, both in antiquity and today), played important roles, and asserted their agency even in the most inhumane of situations.92 Third (and relatedly), those who sold sex were embedded in the physical, economic, and social landscape of the community—a finding for which Liisa Savunen’s dissertation on Pompeian women paved the way.93 In addition to the visibility already discussed, prostitutes contributed to Pompeii’s economy both through the profit extracted from them (by enslavers, managers, and property owners), and through the purchases they may have made in town. This can be added to the economic contributions made by female weavers (including enslaved women and freeborn daughters-in-power discussed by Lauren Caldwell), by Pompeian women involved in finance (discussed by Molly Swetnam-Burland), by female customers purchasing goods in the Forum (as suggested by the estate of Julia Felix frescoes discussed by D’Ambra), not to mention by the owner of the House of the Triclinium, postulated by Jacobelli to be a courtesan.94 Finally, while this volume as a whole brings new attention to women’s roles beyond (or in addition to) those of wife, mother, and daughter, in the case of Pompeii’s prostitutes, the opposite—acknowledging the familial bonds of these “public” women and girls—might be more radical.

Notes I would like to thank Brenda Longfellow for organizing the 2018 “Women on the Bay of Naples” conference, which was the origin not only of this volume, but also of many inspiring conversations with other participants (whom I also thank). I am grateful for the feedback of Brenda, Molly Swetnam-Burland, and the anonymous reviewers of the volume. 1. For the indiscriminate availability of prostitutes in the popular imagination, see, e.g., Prop. 2.23.13–24; Sen. Controv. 1.2.5; and the examples discussed at Adams 1983, 343–344 and Åshede 2016, 937–938. For the legal and ideological importance of indiscriminate availability, see, e.g., Edwards 1997, 76; McGinn 1998, 124–135, 324–325; Flemming 1999, 52; McGinn 2004, 7. 2. CIL 4.1860 Add. p. 464; text and trans. Varone 2002a [1994], 37. Other translations are my own, unless noted. 3. I restrict myself to female prostitutes in this essay. For male prostitutes at Pompeii, see especially Levin-Richardson 2019, 129–139. 4. Petersen, this volume. 5. Berg 2018b; Jacobelli 2018; and Jacobelli, this volume. 6. McGinn 2004, 267–294; Guzzo and Scarano Ussani 2009, 71–111. 7. See, e.g., McGinn 2013. 8. Powers and Trimble, this volume.

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9. On sex and Pompeian taverns, see also Berg 2019, 222–230, and Powers, this volume. 10. McGinn (2004, 295–302), with the following caveats: that defamatory graffiti representing women performing sexual acts cannot be distinguished from those attesting to the sale of sex; that multiple appearances of the same name may (or may not) indicate the same individual; that these women did not all work in the same time period; and that identifying prostitutes based on archaeological context can become circular. For Pompeii’s population in the early first century CE, see Osanna 2018, 316 (although he rounds up to 30,000 for unknown reasons). 11. The date comes from a coin pressed into the fresh plaster; see Fiorelli 1862, 52. 12. Cf. Varone 2003, 199–203, where he also includes the names Fortuna, Issa, and [——]nice, leaving out Panta. He reads CIL 4.2173 as salve Ilia (rather than Salvi filia), and thus replaces “the daughter of Salvius” with the female name Ilia. Planis is another female name in the structure, though her slave Fro[n]to is the subject of the graffito (CIL 4.2257). For discussion of female names in Pompeii, see Zimmermann Damer, this volume. 13. Varone 2003, 199–203. 14. Varone 2003, 202–203. 15. See also Ramgopal’s (2018, 142) discussion of the mobility (voluntary or involuntary) of freeborn (sometimes married) women who provided sexual services in garrisons outside of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt; cf. the limited mobility afforded to the enslaved apprenticeweaver Taorsenouphis, discussed by Caldwell, this volume. 16. Varone 2003, 209–211, 214; see also Franklin 1986; Guzzo and Scarano Ussani 2009, 61, 122 table 3. 17. Less convincing are, e.g., graffiti referring to a certain Restituta dancing (CIL 4.1338 and 1341), or those referring to Faustilla’s role in pawnbroking (CIL 4.4528 and 8203). For discussion of Faustilla, see also Swetnam-Burland, this volume; for Fortunata, see also Laird and Zimmermann Damer, this volume. 18. Note that I include CIL 4.3494a from the Tavern of Salvius (VI.14.36), which is painted on a fresco of a male and a female figure seemingly about to kiss, and CIL 4.10005, which is written next to a drawing of fellatio. 19. Laird, this volume. 20. See D’Ambra, this volume. 21. CIL 4.8711a (on which, see also Zimmermann Damer, this volume); Laird and Zimmermann Damer, this volume. 22. None of the objects found in the brothel can be located today; most were transferred to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples shortly after excavation but were not given inventory numbers. For transcription, summary, and analysis of the original excavation reports (the Giornale dei soprastanti; note that Fiorelli’s [1862, 48–59] summary is not entirely accurate), see Levin-Richardson 2019, 149–150. 23. For “water boys,” see McGinn 2004, 37. 24. Levin-Richardson 2019, 49–51, 146. 25. See Levin-Richardson 2019, 114–115, and for the resistance of enslaved folks while running errands, see Joshel and Petersen 2014, 100–114. 26. Laundry facility: VII.12.17; bakery: VII.1.36–37; bars or food sellers: VII.1.32, VII.1.39, VII.12.15; other shops: VII.1.34–35, VII.1.41–42, VII.2.46, VII.2.49, VII.2.50, VII.2.52.

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27. For the bath complex in VII.1.40, see PPM VI:380, s.v. “VII 1, 40: Casa di M. Caesius Blandus.” Other house: VII.2.48. 28. VII.1.42; IX.2.1. 29. VII.44–45: see PPM VI:462, s.v. “VII 1, 44–45: Caupona e hospitium di Sittius”; other shops: VII.1.49, VII.1.52–57, VII.1.60–62, VII.11.13, VII.11.15, VII.11.16, VII.11.17, VII.14.14. 30. See PPM VI:228–229, s.v. “VII 1, 25.47: Casa di Sirico.” Other house: VII.14.15. 31. VII.1.48: see PPM VI:151–152, s.v. “VII 1, 8: Terme Stabiane.” Other entrances on the Vicolo del Lupanare: VII.1.50 and VII.1.51; for the latter, the main entrance was at VII.1.8. 32. For the number of lodgers in VII.11.11, 14, see PPM VII:463, s.v. “VII 11, 11–14: Albergo.” For the Central Baths, see Koloski-Ostrow 2007, 224. 33. PPM VI:228, s.v. “VII 1, 25.47: Casa di Sirico.” For Publius Vedius Siricus, see Castrén 1975, 234–235. 34. Houses: VII.1.10, VII.12.21, VII.12.22–23, VII.12.26; bar: VII.11.7–8; laundry facility: VII.11.5; other shops: VII.11.9, VII.12.25; inn: VII.11.6. 35. Parts of the following sections have been adapted from Levin-Richardson 2019, 27–28, 100. 36. Koloski-Ostrow 2011, 54. 37. For tavern VII.7.18, see Powers, this volume. 38. Strong 2016, 118–141. 39. For this argument, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 74–77; for the finds from the brothel, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 31–39. 40. See further Levin-Richardson 2019, 34–35. 41. For mattresses in the brothel, see, e.g., de Vos and de Vos 1982, 303; Varone 2002b, 194; Levin-Richardson 2019, 38. 42. Clarke 1998, 201–206; Levin-Richardson 2019, 77. 43. Levin-Richardson 2019, 78–79; Trimble, this volume. 44. See also Levin-Richardson 2019, 100. 45. For the lack of internal doors (and the possibility of curtains), see Zajac 2008, 42–43 and Levin-Richardson 2019, 17–18. 46. For slaves’ use of service entrances for their own purposes, see Joshel and Petersen 2014, 98–114. 47. Varone 2003, 203; Castrén 1975, 135, 196. 48. CIL 4.2213: contiquere [omnes]; Aen. 2.1. 49. CIL 4.2184 Add. p. 215. 50. CIL 4.2267. 51. CIL 4.2183 Add. p. 465. For the role of graffiti in local rivalries, see Benefiel 2004. 52. Cf. Powers’s argument, this volume, that the décor of tavern VII.7.18 enticed customers to spend more time and money there. 53. Levin-Richardson 2019, 36, 100–101; Jacobelli and Trimble, this volume. 54. Benefiel 2004, 357. 55. CIL 4.2177. For theta indicating a deceased individual, see, e.g., Mednikarova 2001; for the theta as a threat, see Franklin 1986, 326.

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56. CIL 4.2212 Add. p. 215, 2221, 2225, 2226, 2227, 2228. See further Levin-Richardson 2019, 123–124. 57. See Levin-Richardson 2019, 60, 126 and fig. 22. For graffiti with portraits, cf. Laird, this volume. 58. CIL 4.2191. 59. For marks of servile punishment, see Kamen 2010. 60. See below for prostitution mitigating impoverishment; for slaves buying their freedom through prostitution, see, e.g., Kamen 2014; Perry 2014, 56–57. 61. See, e.g., Levin-Richardson 2019, 112–113. 62. Green 2015c (with a focus on domestic sex slaves). 63. E.g., scribit Narcissus, “Narcissus writes [this]” (CIL 4.1841). 64. CIL 4.2184 Add. p. 215. For boasts in the brothel, see especially Levin-Richardson 2011. 65. CIL 4.2185; see also 2186. The following paragraphs are adapted from Levin-Richardson 2019, 115–116. 66. CIL 4.2176, 2187, 2219. 67. Ϲυνέρωϲ | καλὸϲ · βινεῖϲ (CIL 4.2253); for the grammar, and the possibility that Syneros was a male prostitute, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 137. 68. CIL 4.2218, 2260 Add. p. 216, 2274 Add. p. 216. 69. For prostitutes’ literacy, see Levin-Richardson 2013, 321–327. 70. Williams 2014, 494–495, 502–504. 71. For the status of clients in the brothel, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 99. 72. CIL 4.2180, 2201, 2206 Add. p. 215, 2208, 2212 Add. p. 215, 2231, 2237 Add. p. 215, 2239. 73. CIL 4.2231 Add. p. 215. 74. CIL 4.2174. 75. According to Varone 2003, 199–203; note that some of these may be male prostitutes, and as Varone acknowledges, not all repeat attestations necessarily refer to the same individual. 76. Phoebus: CIL 4.2182, 2184 Add. p. 215, 2194 Add. p. 465, 2207, 2248 Add. p. 215; see also Levin-Richardson 2019, 109. 77. See Levin-Richardson 2019, 116. 78. For other ways sex or eroticism was monetized, see Trimble, Jacobelli, and Powers, this volume. 79. See esp. Zajac 2008, 56–60. 80. Cf. Caldwell, this volume. 81. Powers, this volume. 82. For this situation, see Strong 2012. 83. Luc. Dial. meret. 6.294; trans. MacLeod 1961 with modifications. 84. Luc. Dial. meret. 6.294; trans. MacLeod 1961. 85. Ath. 568a; trans. Olson 2010; see further 568a–d. 86. See especially McClure 2003, 112–117. 87. Petersen, this volume. For possible networks among female workers, see also Caldwell on female weavers, this volume. The following is adapted from Levin-Richardson 2019, 128. 88. Varone 2003, 203.

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89. For the housing of the brothel’s prostitutes, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 38–39, 92. 90. For proponents of moral zoning, see Wallace-Hadrill 1995 and Laurence 2007 [1994], 82–101; cf. McGinn 2002. 91. Laird and Zimmermann Damer, this volume. 92. See Joshel and Petersen 2014. 93. Savunen 1997. 94. Caldwell, D’Ambra, Jacobelli, and Swetnam-Burland, this volume.

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CHAPTER 10

Women, Art, Power, and Work in the House of the Chaste Lovers at Pompeii Jennifer Trimble

Visual images are an important source of evidence for Roman women—not because they depict women’s actual lives but because they clarify the ideas and assumptions that shaped those lives. But women were not only depicted in art; they were also viewers of art, raising intriguing questions about how images and experience interacted. In thinking about women as viewers, however, we confront an immediate methodological challenge. There is often no direct evidence for viewers and their responses, and this problem is even more acute in non-elite contexts. An unfortunate result is that women can disappear from interpretations of Roman visual culture and lived spaces.1 In this essay, I explore interactions between women depicted in art and women looking at art. My case study is a commercial space, a combined mill and bakery (pistrinum) at Pompeii known to modern scholars as the House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6). There, on the walls of the triclinium, were painted three scenes of men and women reclining on couches and drinking (plates 9–11). One couple is kissing (plate 10), giving the building its modern name. These paintings illuminate Roman ideas about women and gender; I will also discuss women as their viewers. There is no direct evidence for women in the House of the Chaste Lovers. However, women were involved in Roman commercial enterprises at many different levels, and it is important to find a way to see them there.2 To address this methodological challenge, I employ a dual approach, both looking closely at the paintings and also considering how the nature of work in the pistrinum shaped viewing. The essay is organized, accordingly, into two parts. The first focuses on paintings. 199

I look again at the triclinium frescoes and connect them to images of Mercury and Venus elsewhere in the building. In these paintings, gender and eroticism are represented as a privileged category of experience, while servitude is depicted as comparatively gender-neutral. In the second part, I delve into the tasks and workflow performed in the pistrinum, and identify two ways in which they shaped viewing: through stark contrasts and an evaluative gaze. All this then allows a reconstruction of viewings that are grounded in the realia of the building’s visual imagery and workflow. I argue that differently positioned women interacted very differently with these paintings depending on their involvement in the hard labor of the pistrinum, their perception of their own opportunities in life, and their sense of just rewards for the enterprise’s commercial success. Ultimately, this study is an experiment in making women more visible in our assessments of Roman visual culture and commercial spaces.

Women Depicted in Art: The Paintings in the Pistrinum Existing scholarship has illuminated key aspects of the House of the Chaste Lovers and its triclinium paintings. The setting is decidedly commercial.3 This pistrinum’s main entrance (a on fig. 10.1) opened onto the Via dell’Abbondanza, the major commercial artery connecting the Forum to the Sarno Gate. All around were shops, residences, a street shrine (IX.12.7), and a water fountain directly across the street (I.9.1). Inside, a bread oven dominated the main circulation space (fig. 10.1), with a kneading machine and related containers in front of it. Numeric graffiti, perhaps accounts, were found both on the bread oven and in the vestibule (a).4 To the left of the oven was a workroom (g) with tables for mixing dough and forming loaves.5 Beyond the oven, in room f, four grain mills stood on a basalt floor. Draft animals turned the mills and carried deliveries. A stable (i) with a wooden manger stood off the mill room; a second stable (p) opened onto a side street and contained the skeletons of five donkeys or mules; carbonized fodder was found in a hayloft above room q.6 The recent discovery of the initials “C·I·P” painted onto one of the grain mills identifies the bakery’s owner as Caius Iulius Polybius, known from other sources as a baker and candidate for civic office; his grand residence stood next door.7 At the back of the building was a residential suite (l, o, m, n). The large room m had a window looking into a raised internal garden (h). The building’s layout thus created a contrast between spaces for work and spaces for leisure. Different forms of religious observance further distinguished these spaces. Several small niches were built into the walls of the oven and the millroom beyond it (f ); they may have had religious functions linked primarily to the smooth execution of the work. Taking a different form was the lararium at the center of the west wall of the internal garden (h), the focus of household worship. Here, a built altar stood in 200  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 10.1.

Plan of the House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), Pompeii. N.B.: The mills (f ) and latrine (r) are not drawn to scale, and this plan does not reflect the exact location of the painting of Venus on the east wall of the workroom.

front of a wall painting in two registers, with Hercules presented to the Olympian gods above, and two facing serpents below. Part of this wall painting, directly above the altar, was blackened by the smoke from burnt offerings made here, attesting the shrine’s repeated use.8 Triclinium m was the most elaborately painted room in the building (fig. 10.2).9 A smaller, black-ground zone at the south end marked the entrance and framed the window looking into the garden (h). The rest of the room was primarily red, with black panels at the center of each wall framed by spindly architecture. Within each WOMEN, ART, POWER, AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS   201

black panel was a small scene depicting a drinking party (plates 9–11). The scenes on the west and north walls are dated to the 40s CE. The east wall was rebuilt at a later date but with the same decorative scheme, showing that the owner wanted to maintain the room’s visual themes.10 Little is known about who used this room and saw these paintings. The owner, Caius Iulius Polybius, had a large and grand house next door that included several dining rooms. He had no obvious need of this one, unless it served a different purpose or brought together a different clientele. An appealing alternative is that someone else, perhaps one of Polybius’s trusted freedpeople, acted as the pistrinum’s day-to-day manager or supervisor, and lived in the residential rooms in the rear of the building. Alternatively, Antonio Varone has suggested that the room was rented out for banquets and parties.11 In any case, the audience for these paintings most likely included the owners or managers of the pistrinum, other Pompeian businesspeople of similar status, their families, clients, and dependents, and the slaves who served them. Seating in a Roman triclinium was hierarchical, with the most honored guest on the middle couch; this may have meant that the image on the north wall received heightened attention (plate 10).12 Above all, the triclinium paintings evoke opulence and abundance: they are “a hymn to the joy of the banquet and an invitation to convivial delights.”13 In each painting, two male–female couples recline on elegantly draped couches, some

FIGURE 10.2.

View of the triclinium, House of the Chaste Lovers, looking north.

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wearing wreaths of vine leaves and flowers. The reclining women, in various states of undress, lean against the bare-chested men behind them. All the revelers are young adults, healthy and good-looking. The scenes are erotic but not explicit, creating a mood of sociable indulgence and sexual anticipation.14 These are drinking parties: there is no sign of food, but several revelers hold cups or drinking horns, and additional drinking vessels appear on small tables in the foreground. Standing attendants serve the revelers. The parties are set indoors (on the west wall), outdoors (north), and in a portico (east). On the north wall, the figure at rear center may be a statue of Dionysus presiding.15 A closer look rewarded viewers with humorous vignettes. These drinking parties are all going slightly wrong.16 On the west wall, the woman at left stands fully dressed as though departing, but she is too drunk to stand and has to be propped up by an attendant (plate 9). Her drinking partner has passed out; his bent arm and head are visible between the two reclining couples. On the north wall, a seated woman at left holds a double flute in one hand and takes a drink with the other (plate 10). Apparently, instead of doing her job of providing music, she is taking a break and drinking like a reveler. On the east wall, a drinking contest is underway (plate 11). The man at right is unconscious, head flopping back and arm hanging down. His partner points a finger at the other woman, perhaps accusing her of cheating by holding up both her partner’s heavy-lidded head and the drinking horn (rhyton) so as to aim more wine into his mouth. These details encouraged viewers to make a story out of what they saw, and different interpretations were possible. Like mythological images elsewhere, these paintings offered diners and drinkers in the room material to talk about, laugh at, emulate, differ from, and otherwise engage with. Less attention has been paid to the serving figures on the sides and in the background. These were almost certainly slaves.17 Within the paintings, they are subordinated by their smaller size and marginal locations, as well as by their postures and actions. The revelers on the couches recline, gesture, and drink as much as they want. The attendants, however, stand and serve; they do not drink, except for the flute-player.18 The serving slaves are also depicted as essential to the pleasure of the revelers. On the east wall, a slave woman at right fans the unconscious man; on the north wall, a slave at the right edge pours wine into a cooling vessel. These painted slaves serve the paintings’ viewers as well, helping make the humorous vignettes comprehensible. On the west wall, for example, the drunkenness of the standing woman is communicated partly through the slave’s action of propping her up. Who were the women depicted on the couches? Their willingness to drink heavily and socialize in mixed company while partly nude does not match the sexual modesty expected of respectable Roman women. For this reason, they are almost universally interpreted as prostitutes or courtesans.19 And, because Roman culture did not have drinking parties as such, and Roman men did not normally dine or drink barechested, some scholars have interpreted these as images of Greek symposia and the WOMEN, ART, POWER, AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS   203

women as hetairai, Greek courtesans. However, Matthew Roller argues persuasively that the painted actions and furnishings were entirely recognizable within a Roman frame of reference.20 These women may therefore have been viewed as Roman prostitutes (who were usually slaves) or courtesans (more often free or freed women), the latter having a measure of agency, money, and status of their own.21 It is also productive to broaden the focus beyond sex work. The reclining women are depicted as full participants in the proceedings, although still subordinated to their male companions by being placed below them on the couches. These women are served by the attending slaves; they gesture just as the reveling men do; they drink as much as they want; they are represented as erotic partners. Here, Roller’s work provides additional insights. In Roman culture, a woman reclining on a couch with a man was always signaling her sexual connection to him. But this was appropriate behavior for women as long as that connection was a “licit” one in Roman terms, not an “illicit” connection like adultery. A man and woman reclining together could be husband and wife, man and concubine, master and slave woman, client and courtesan.22 This point usefully opens up possibilities in the viewing and reception of these paintings. With the existing scholarship in mind, I now add two new considerations. One is that paintings elsewhere in this pistrinum were thematically connected to the triclinium paintings. Anyone entering the building through the main doorway (a) saw a painting of the god Mercury on the exterior wall, just to the right of the entrance (fig.

FIGURE 10.3.

Painting of Mercury from the façade of the House of the Chaste Lovers. 0.78 × 0.66 m. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, Gabinetto Segreto.

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10.3).23 Framed by green garlands, Mercury strides leftward toward the pistrinum’s entrance, carrying a caduceus and a coin purse, wearing winged sandals and a green loincloth. His brown skin, beard, and defined musculature identify him as an adult male, as does his impossibly large erection. Ithyphallic images are associated with good fortune at Pompeii, and Mercury himself is frequently linked to commercial success.24 Here, he holds the coin purse right next to the head of his penis, and both of these were painted roughly at eye level, closest to the bakery entrance. This painting linked extreme masculinity and sexual potency to commercial success, invoking fortune and prosperity for the bakery. In contrast, a painting of Venus on the east wall of workroom g depicted extreme femininity in red monochrome (fig. 10.4).25 Damage obscures the details, but the goddess stands between two vertical elements. She is nearly nude, draped only from the mid-thighs down; she is adorned with a necklace, delicate chains crossing her chest,

FIGURE 10.4.

Painting of Venus from workroom g, House of the Chaste Lovers. In situ. 67 × 60 cm.

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an armring around her upper right arm, and a bracelet on her right wrist. In keeping with Roman conventions of feminine beauty, she has pale skin, soft flesh, and long hair, and she is absorbed in her own desirability, lifting a lock of her own hair and looking at herself in a mirror held by Cupid at lower right. In this context, Venus’s hyper-femininity was a counterpart of Mercury’s hyper-masculinity on the façade, both ensuring the health and prosperity of the bakery. In the workroom, Venus’s embodiment of erotic love and fertility was perhaps linked to the fertile production of dough and bread necessary for commercial success. In contrast to the image of Mercury, her image was seen only by people inside the workroom: the pistrinum’s workers, supervisors, and owners.26 These two images of Mercury and Venus affected the meanings and viewings of the triclinium paintings. There again, masculinity, femininity, and commercial success were connected, but now in a different way. As in the image of Mercury, the reclining men in the west and north triclinium paintings have brown skin and bare torsos. In the later painting on the east wall, gender was marked not by skin color but by the contrast between the women’s soft flesh, breasts, and wide hips and the men’s defined musculature. As in the image of Venus in the workroom, the reclining women have pale skin and soft flesh, various degrees of nudity, elaborately arranged hair, and jewelry. In all three triclinium paintings, the lefthand woman’s entire body is languorously displayed to the viewer’s eye, as is Venus’s body. Different in the triclinium is that men and women are erotically paired.27 Homoeroticism is well attested elsewhere in Roman art and culture but not here: gender in these paintings is binary and heteronormative. There is only male and female, and erotic relationships are between one man and one woman. At the same time, there is humor in the differences between the gods and these mortal revelers. Mercury had an enormous erection; these men’s groins are hidden and in any case they are more or less incapacitated by drink. Venus was painted as purely beautiful and desirable; these reveling women, too, are depicted as beautiful and desirable, but they also drink too much (west wall), gaze longingly at the wine rather than their male companion (north wall), or squabble with each other (east wall). The hyper-gendered, sexually potent images of Mercury and Venus are here softened and brought down to a mortal level, for these triclinium paintings depict an achievable fantasy, not the unattainable world of gods or myth. But the connection to commercial prosperity remains strong. In the triclinium, gender and eroticism are depicted as a reward for commercial prosperity; indeed, that prosperity could pay for such furnishings, wine, people, and pleasures. A second consideration is the distinctive interaction of gender and power in the triclinium paintings. Gender is strongly marked for the revelers on the couches, as seen above. It is much less marked, even ambiguous, for the slaves who serve them. On the east wall, the slave with the fan is shown as female by her pale skin and twice-belted dress that leaves her arms bare (plate 11). But she is smaller than the 206  REPRESENTING WOMEN

women on the couches, fully dressed in a rather drab color, standing by herself rather than reclining with a partner, and looking rather than being looked at. On the west wall, the slave propping up the drunken woman at left has brown skin and short hair, suggesting that he is male, but the tunic has fallen off his shoulder, more indicative of a girl or woman (plate 9).28 On the north wall is an even more ambiguous figure (plate 10). The small person pouring wine at the scene’s right edge has the pale arms and clothing of a girl or woman but the brown face of a boy or man. Perhaps this was a painter’s mistake, but no such ambiguity appears among the central couples.29 In short, these paintings treat servitude as comparatively gender-neutral; gender and eroticism are painted as a privileged category of experience.30

Women as Viewers of Art: Labor and Looking in the Pistrinum These observations can be developed further by taking into account the nature of work in the pistrinum. The actions, sensations, and ways of viewing that characterized work in the pistrinum must have strongly shaped the way the triclinium paintings were viewed. Even outsiders could only view the paintings by first passing through the bakery’s working spaces. Guests most probably entered from the Via dell’Abbondanza (a) and moved past the bread oven, through the mill room (f ), into room l, and into the triclinium (m). Less probably, they entered from the side street into stable p, moving past the latrine (r), along a narrow corridor, and through the mill room (f ) into room l to reach triclinium m. For everyone, and especially for the people most involved in it, the work of the pistrinum was a primary frame through which the paintings were seen. Who worked in a pistrinum? The literary and legal sources describe mills and bakeries as dreadful environments, worked by slaves. Slaves in other contexts could be threatened or punished by being sent to work in a mill; convicted criminals could be condemned to millwork.31 Apuleius famously describes workers in a pistrinum as dressed in rags, constantly whipped, half-blind from the oven’s smoke, filthy with flour and dirt; this passage is highly rhetorical but it had to match his audience’s knowledge to some degree.32 The sources attest both male and female workers, but their gender is not foregrounded; rather, the emphasis is on their labor.33 Gender no doubt shaped slaves’ lives in the pistrinum; adult men probably did the heaviest labors, while women and children carried out lighter tasks but were especially vulnerable to sexual abuse. The archaeological record, in contrast, offers the best evidence of the specific nature and flow of the work. I draw here in particular on Nicolas Monteix’s reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire of a Roman pistrinum.34 The pistrinum entailed an intricate choreography of hard labor and skill, carried out by interacting humans, animals, and machines.35 A first phase involved obtaining and then soaking the grain before it was ground. Workers had to unload deliveries, carry and stack sacks or other containers, fetch and pour water. The grain was then WOMEN, ART, POWER, AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS   207

ground in room f in a mill made up of a conical base (meta) and a movable, hour-glass-shaped upper element (catillus), driven by a donkey or mule.36 Workers had to feed, water, yoke, and drive the animal; fetch the soaked grain and pour it into the catillus; collect the ground flour and sift it. The next stage happened in workroom g, with its painting of Venus; workers had to carry the sifted flour there, fetch more water, mix the dough, knead it. This pistrinum had a kneading machine opposite the oven; workers had to carry the dough there, load the machine, turn the shaft as long as required, unload the kneaded dough, and clean and maintain the machine. The dough was then set to rise;37 workers later had to remix it, divide it into lumps, form them into loaves, set those loaves aside, and cover them to rise a second time, perhaps on workroom g’s mezzanine. Baking required first heating the bread oven, which was a domed chamber on a solid base. Workers had to bring and load fuel into the chamber and light it. The oven had to reach ca. 250°C, at which point workers removed the embers and refilled the hot chamber with loaves.38 After baking, workers removed the loaves from the oven and put them elsewhere to cool. The baked bread may have been sold from vestibule a or in the adjacent shop (d); if so, someone had to do the selling and track the money.39 Alternatively, the bread may have been loaded onto an animal or into a cart for delivery, requiring someone to tack up and drive the animal, know the destinations and how to get there, and keep track of the quantities delivered and perhaps also payments. Certain characteristics of this workflow stand out. The sensory impact must have been powerful, with tremendous heat from the oven; smoke, flour dust, and flies hanging in the air; strong smells of manure, sweat, and baking bread. The pistrinum was loud, with hoofbeats and brays, spoken instructions or shouted warnings, grinding mills and clanking containers, or the clatter of fuel being loaded. The work itself was grueling, involving heavy lifting and repetitive motions, which meant fatigue, strain, and injuries for the workers. We do not know how many people toiled here, how the labor was divided up, whether these different phases occurred simultaneously, or how long each working day was. However, it is striking to note how many of these tasks required skill and knowledge as well as hard work. A hierarchy of labor and skill is built into this workflow. The least skilled workers could fetch and carry, sift flour, and sweep up animal manure. More knowledge was required to mix dough, hitch up the animals, or load the oven correctly. Additional skill was required to regulate the grain hopper during milling or keep the pistrinum’s accounts. Evaluation was built into every aspect of this work: workers had to know how much of what to do when and for how long, and they had to carefully assess every product along the way (grain, flour, dough, bread). The stakes were high for everyone, although they differed at different levels of this hierarchy. There were dangers in handling burning fuel or animals that might bite or kick; punishments for spilling a load or ruining a batch; injuries both acute 208  REPRESENTING WOMEN

and chronic. At the highest levels of the hierarchy were the possible loss of income, livelihood, and social standing; to illustrate, wealth was a fundamental qualification for the prestigious civic offices sought by Caius Iulius Polybius. These characteristics shaped the viewing of the paintings in the triclinium in at least two ways. The first was through contrasts. For anyone involved in the work of the pistrinum, the primary impact of the triclinium paintings was arguably that they depicted a very different and far more pleasant world. Dirt, smells, and heat disappeared; in the paintings, all was clean and comfortable. Machines and tools were replaced by luxurious couches, elegant clothing, and silver vessels. There were no draft animals, with their smells, manure, and misery, only elegant tables with animalshaped legs. The bakery’s laborious tasks of carrying, grinding, sifting, mixing, and so on were replaced by the easy actions of reclining or lifting a cup of wine. Pistrinum workers may often have gone hungry or eaten bad food; the painted revelers drank good wine, as much as they wanted, and did not worry about the repercussions. Workworn, scarred bodies in the bakery were replaced by whole and healthy bodies in the images; brutal sensations gave way to erotic touch and intoxication. These contrasts recall the viewing conditions of the painting of Venus in the workroom. There, the perfect, nude, bejeweled body of the goddess of love was seen by enslaved, dirty, tired, injured workers performing grueling labor. Venus’s desirability there was as much about leisure and rest as the beauty of her body. In the triclinium, such pleasurable contrasts may also have dominated the viewings of outsiders—guests, clients, freedmen—if they, too, worked in commercial enterprises involving hard labor and unpleasant conditions. A second effect of this working environment was that viewers looked at the paintings with an evaluative gaze. Anyone involved in the pistrinum’s production—or in similar commercial enterprises—performed a constant, high-stakes evaluation of substances and processes. But in the triclinium paintings, the daily pressure to evaluate and act was replaced by permission to relax and enjoy, or even give up paying attention altogether under the influence of wine. The paintings’ humorous vignettes, too, interacted in specific ways with this evaluative gaze. The viewers’ everyday work of assessing materials and actions no doubt attuned them to evaluating people and objects in the paintings, and to noticing where processes were going wrong. But the paintings responded to such a gaze with very low stakes. No one in the paintings was punished or lost their livelihood because a flute-player took a break or a reveler became too drunk to stand. In this commercial setting, the paintings may have offered a restful comedy of errors, both stimulating their viewers’ assessing gazes and offering humor and ease in response. With these observations in mind, it is now possible to reconstruct different kinds of women as viewers. Besides the owner, Caius Iulius Polybius, there is no direct evidence of who worked in or visited this pistrinum, male or female, but it is possible to identify women who certainly could have been present and seen these paintings, WOMEN, ART, POWER, AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS   209

and to think about what and how they saw. Of course, many women never saw these paintings at all. It is unlikely that many members of the Pompeian elite came here. And, enjoyment of the triclinium was by invitation only, meaning the pistrinum’s owners or managers, their families, freedpeople, and dependents, and guests at all of these levels. Hired prostitutes (female or male, slave or free) may have been brought here and seen the paintings. Enslaved women were almost certainly among those who served food and drink here, and prepared, cleaned, and maintained the triclinium at other times. It is also possible that many slaves who toiled in the pistrinum never had occasion or permission to enter the triclinium at all. I begin by considering enslaved women as viewers. They presumably had little time and leisure with which to contemplate wall paintings, but may have gained familiarity through repeated work assignments in the room. Enslaved women no doubt noted the contrasts between their own hard toil and the pleasurable ease depicted in the images. Within the deep hierarchies of Roman slavery, serving in the triclinium was treated as higher status than much of the labor done in the mill-bakery proper. This serving work was mirrored in the paintings by the serving figures, so that the paintings confirmed the building’s internal hierarchies; they could remind actual serving women of their position between the pistrinum’s worst-off slaves and the free(d) hosts and guests. In addition, the paintings may have been aspirational because manumission was frequent in urban, commercial settings; an enslaved viewer might hope for a change of state and see here the possibility of more luxury and ease in the future. At the same time, enslaved women viewers could not fail to notice how idealized these painted depictions of servitude were. As is typical in Roman art, there is no sign in the paintings of the violent punishments, sexual abuses, and humiliations that characterized Roman slavery. Instead, the work is depicted as easy, and all sexual contact is consensual and mutually pleasurable. In the world of the paintings, a servant can even take a break and have a drink, like the flute-player on the north wall. Not only the furnishings and reclining couples are idealized in these paintings; so is servitude. Thinking about freedwomen as viewers means considering women who had endured slavery and whose situations had markedly improved, even within the legal constraints that bound freedpeople to their ex-masters. Here, there are important differences between male and female manumission. Enslaved men were often freed because of their commercial abilities and contributions to the owner, and these continued in a different form after manumission. Enslaved women could be freed for similar reasons, but the sources more often emphasize their sexual relationships with male owners as a route to manumission.40 Any freedwomen in this situation might view the triclinium paintings differently. One possibility is that they noticed the gendered differences between the serving women and the reveling women in the

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paintings; this difference might recall their own servitude and the different forms female slavery could take. They might also see here a reminder of their own sexual desirability to their masters when they were enslaved, and the way they had been able to survive and navigate very difficult circumstances to make a better life for themselves. The highest-status women who can plausibly be placed in this triclinium, including guests, were themselves the owners or managers of this pistrinum or of a similar commercial enterprise (a possible if relatively rare situation for Roman women), or they were the wives or other close family members of the owners or managers (a frequent situation). In the House of the Chaste Lovers, these might include immediate family members of Caius Iulius Polybius.41 Women at this level were often freedwomen as well, but here I want to stress commercial interests and prosperity. Claire Holleran has explored the ways in which such women were involved in the family business.42 In the House of the Chaste Lovers, such a woman would have access to all the pistrinum’s rooms, including the workroom with the painting of Venus; she may also have had some say over the imagery chosen for the triclinium. In real life as in the paintings, men were still at the top of the hierarchy. But, like the reclining women in the paintings, women at this level could fully participate in the pleasures on offer: drinking good wine, being served by others, enjoying erotic encounters (although only with her husband, in the case of a proper wife). Indeed, the paintings’ emphasis on women and men enjoying themselves together may have made such images desirable to wives as well as husbands. Here, the distance between the idealized paintings and lived reality may have been useful. Wives and other highstatus women could mirror whatever aspects of the paintings they chose, reclining at their ease, drinking wine, enjoying a licit erotic connection. They could also adopt, modify, or reject other aspects: drinking to the point of oblivion, reclining half-naked. The key point is that, in this setting, enjoying these pleasures as a woman was part of the reward promised by the paintings for these women’s hard work and contributions to commercial success. At the end of any social event in the triclinium, there was only one exit: through the only doorway into the anteroom (l) and from there back into the millroom (f ). Whatever pleasure and ease hosts and guests had enjoyed in the triclinium, this now gave way once again to the pistrinum’s hard labor, dust, and smells. Beautifully painted walls and any furnishings in the triclinium were replaced by the much plainer walls and productive machinery of the bakery. On first arriving, visitors had enjoyed a visual surprise upon entering the triclinium: the garden, until then hidden behind the east wall of the mill room, now appeared through the large window in the triclinium south wall, enlarging the space and bringing in fresh, clean air as well as the sight of plants and paintings. Now, for departing guests, the garden disappeared once again behind the wall of the millroom. Was this a jolting return to reality and

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the everyday world of work? Or, for hosts and guests with full bellies, warmed by wine and other pleasures, were the bakery and its toils now viewed through a hazier, rosier gaze? The structure and decoration of the building make no attempt to soften this jarring contrast, and that is perhaps the point. Only hosts and guests could fully cross this boundary, moving back and forth from the world of work into the ease and pleasure of the triclinium. The two spaces were made architecturally, experientially, and conceptually dependent on each other: every social gathering in the triclinium confirmed anew that its bounty and pleasures depended on the harsh toils of slaves and animals in the adjacent pistrinum.

Conclusions This essay has explored interactions between visual images of women and women viewers, focusing on the pistrinum known as the House of the Chaste Lovers. To close, I summarize some findings and implications. First, heteronormative gender and sexual potencies—female as well as male—were connected to commercial prosperity in this building’s paintings, from Mercury on the façade to Venus in the workroom to the revels depicted in the triclinium. There was a thematic progression: if the paintings of the gods invoked male and female sexual potency for commercial success, the triclinium paintings rewarded that success with heteroerotic pleasures for mortals. But gender also marked power and privilege, whether in the extreme masculinity and femininity of Mercury and Venus, or in the contrasts in the triclinium paintings between the strongly gendered reclining couples and the relatively gender-neutral slaves who served them. The triclinium paintings, and indeed gatherings in the room itself, were presented as pleasurable rewards, but only for some. The gendered identity, prosperity, and pleasures of the revelers, both painted and real, depended on the servitude of others, be it the attendance of the painted slaves or the labors of the pistrinum’s actual slaves. Second, the nature of work in the pistrinum shaped the meanings and reception of these paintings in important ways; here, I explored the effects of contrasts and an evaluative gaze. Grounding the discussion in the realia of the paintings and the building was essential for reconstructing women’s viewings there. These reconstructions by no means address all possible situations or responses, nor can they be confirmed, but they are nonetheless useful. Taking embodied experiences into account showed how differently women in different social and commercial positions might view the same paintings. A further implication is that very similar paintings of eroticized, drinking couples located elsewhere may have been seen very differently, if the viewing context was very different from this one.43 Another implication is that thinking about the nature of work and embodied viewing may help in interpreting art in other commercial contexts, for it avoids the pitfalls of either assuming elite emulation or importing modern middle-class values.44 212  REPRESENTING WOMEN

Lastly, I return to my starting questions about how images of women and women’s actual lives interacted. The case of the House of the Chaste Lovers underscores the extent to which women’s experiences and viewing depended on their situations. Interestingly, the paintings respond to a range of viewings. For example, these depictions normalized and indeed idealized slavery; at the same time, they pointed toward manumission and a better, easier life. They rewarded women at the top of the pistrinum’s hierarchy with images of full participation in conviviality and eroticism, although those pleasures were constrained within male dominance, heteronormativity, and licit sexual relations. In various ways, the paintings offered a dynamic tension between ideological framework and interpretive wiggle room—the more so for viewers higher up in the hierarchy. Women could mirror, modify, reject, or otherwise engage with what they saw. Whatever they did, it is important for our understanding of Roman visual culture to keep making women visible as viewers as well as subjects of art.

Notes I thank the editors and the conference participants for their stimulating ideas and helpful feedback. 1. The literature on these issues is extensive. Clarke 2003 remains fundamental; LevinRichardson 2019 exemplifies an exciting new approach. More broadly on “non-elite” art, see De Angelis et al. 2012; Petersen 2015. 2. Holleran 2013; see also Petersen and Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 3. Vittorio Spinazzola excavated the building’s façade in 1912; Allied bombs damaged it in 1943. The interior was excavated under Antonio Varone between 1987 and 2004; consolidation and restoration continue today. Excavation reports are Della Corte 1912, 258–259, 281–282, 284–286; Spinazzola 1953, 1:97–100; Varone 1988, 1989, 1993 (delays in publication mean that Varone 1993 describes an earlier state of excavation than Varone 1989). Dunn and Dunn offer an invaluable photographic tour of the building: https://​ pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R9/9%2012%2006.htm. 4. I have not seen these graffiti and do not know of any published photographs. Another example of numeric graffiti is discussed by Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 5. In the center of this room, the excavators found stone orthostats that they interpreted as supports for wooden tabletops (Varone 1989, 232). For similar examples in other pistrina at Pompeii, see Monteix et al. 2013. 6. A detailed plan of stable p and its finds is in Varone 1989, 234, fig. 12. No wagons or carts were found in the building but these may have been kept elsewhere. Two more equine skeletons were found in workroom g, having perhaps sheltered there during the eruption. Staircases up to the second floor were found in the northeast corner of room a and the southwest corner of room l. 7. On the painted initials, Monteix et al. 2013, 19–20, confirming Varone’s earlier suggestion that Caius Iulius Polybius owned this pistrinum (1989, 236). The House of Iulius Polybius (IX.13.3) lies directly east, just across the side street (see now Castiglione Morelli et al. 2015, with a discussion of Polybius himself at pp. 95–116). WOMEN, ART, POWER, AND WORK IN THE HOUSE OF THE CHASTE LOVERS   213

8. More rudimentary paintings on the wall are perhaps preparatory sketches. Varone 1988, 148 and 150, fig. 7; Varone 1989, 233–234; Varone 1993, 622 and pl. CLIV.2. 9. No dining couches or other direct indications of the room’s function survive; it is identified as a triclinium by its size, the two-part decorative scheme known from other triclinia, and the iconographic theme of the central paintings. Roman rooms were multifunctional; this one, too, presumably served other purposes as well. Lime was piled on the floor at the east wall, suggesting that repairs or renovation were underway in 79 CE. 10. On these dates, see Varone 1993, 623. Female figures floated on the red parts of the walls, carrying symbols of abundance (Varone 1993, 629; 2001, 43). On floating figures, see Valladares 2014. Compare Gee (2015) on the ways in which later paintings were carefully integrated into existing decoration cycles in Villa A at Oplontis. 11. Varone (1993, 629) compares the House of the Triclinium, but see Jacobelli in this volume. 12. Valladares 2014, 186. 13. Varone 1993, 623, translation mine. Nearly identical paintings are known elsewhere; these compositions presumably circulated in pattern books (Varone 1993, 629; 1997). 14. Roller 2003, with references. Similar scenes of eroticized drinking are found elsewhere (Bragantini 2018; Dunbabin 2003, 53–56); these are distinct from sexually explicit Roman wall paintings. 15. Identifications vary: Varone 1993, 628; 1997, 149; Clarke 2003, 231 and 325 n. 21. 16. Clarke 2003, 233. 17. D’Arms 1991. Joshel and Petersen 2014, 27–28. 18. On the power dynamics of who reclined or stood, Roller 2003, 383–384; 2006, 19–20. 19. Roller (2003, 2006) is the exception; see below. 20. Hetairai: Varone 1993, 1997; Clarke 2003, 228; contra, Roller 2003, 2006, 61–68 and 139–142. 21. Elsewhere in this volume, Luciana Jacobelli identifies a similar painting of a drinking party in the House of the Triclinium as depicting a real Pompeian courtesan who may indeed have owned that house. On the problems of defining higher-status courtesans vs. low-status enslaved prostitutes, see now Berg and Neudecker 2018, 43–63. 22. Roller 2003 and 2006. 23. Della Corte 1912, 258; Fröhlich 1991, 338, F70, pl. 16.2; PPM X:177, 179–180. Additional façade paintings did not survive. 24. Varone 2001, 14–27. 25. I thank Dillon Gisch for a helpful discussion of this painting. Della Corte 1912, 258; Varone 1989, 232; 1993, 622 and pl. CLV.1. Another fresco on the west wall was illegible. 26. The lararium painting of the apotheosis of Hercules presents yet another contrast, but, unfortunately, the published photographs do not provide enough detail for a close analysis. Here again is a hyper-masculine figure, but he is neither alone like Mercury nor accompanied by Cupid and perhaps a second attendant, like Venus; instead, Hercules is depicted in the company of all the Olympian gods. Moreover, Hercules was not viewed by people moving through a public, liminal space, like Mercury at the street entrance, nor by people making dough, like Venus in workroom g. Hercules’s image was removed from

214  REPRESENTING WOMEN

both public space and the spaces dedicated to work; it was visible only in the internal garden, and it was seen above all during household religious rites. 27. There is little in ancient mythology about an erotic connection between Hermes/Mercury and Aphrodite/Venus, except that their union produced Hermaphrodite, a god defined by the extraordinary coexistence of masculinity and femininity in the same body. Notably, this kind of gender ambiguity and boundary crossing is not thematized in this building’s paintings, which celebrate binary gender. 28. Compare the kissing woman on the north wall, as well as some images of Venus (Roller 2003, 413 n. 80). 29. Painter’s mistake: Varone 1993, 626. 30. This does not mean that the reclining women could not be viewed as slaves, only that they were depicted with markedly higher status than the attendants. 31. Millar 1984, 143–144. 32. Met. 9.12. Hijmans et al. 1995, 118–124. Rhetorical effects: Kenney 2003, 161. Apuleius describes the pistrinum’s beasts of burden similarly, blurring the boundaries between slaves and animals (Bradley 2000). 33. Some ancient sources seem to assume a male workforce, but women are also attested in mills (Harper 2011, 138, with references). On the problem of ancient sources ignoring female slaves, see Roth 2007. 34. Monteix 2016. 35. On this kind of choreography, see Joshel and Petersen 2014, 125–142. 36. Four metae were found in the basalt-paved millroom (f ) but only one catillus was in position (Varone 1989, 233). This is a fairly typical situation at Pompeii: among 39 identified bakeries there, 91 animal-driven mills have been found but only 28 were functional in 79 CE, because of either normal wear and tear or earthquake damage (Monteix 2016, 159). 37. Two reused catilli in front of the oven probably served as rising tubs for the dough (Monteix 2016, 173). 38. Bread ovens at Pompeii were fueled primarily by olive pits; preheating could take many hours (Monteix 2016, 168–169). In this pistrinum, a pass-through allowed loaves to be moved directly from the workroom to the shelf in front of the oven. 39. The numeric graffiti found in the vestibule and on the oven remain unpublished, but they may have tallied sales of baked bread, or the supply of grain and other materials, or some other aspect of the process. On the use of numeric graffiti for tallies and accounts, see Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 40. Mouritsen 2011, 42–48, 190–192; Perry 2014, esp. 43–68. 41. On the epigraphic evidence for Caius Iulius Polybius, see Castiglione Morelli et al. 2015, 95–116. His legal status and family relationships are not known. The combination of a Latin praenomen and nomen with a Greek cognomen is typical for ex-slaves but does not necessarily mean he was one. On women working, D’Ambra and Swetnam-Burland, this volume. 42. Holleran 2013. 43. See, for example, Bragantini 2018 on paintings in the elite Villa della Farnesina at Rome. 44. Mayer 2012.

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CHAPTER 11

The House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) at Pompeii The House of a “Courtesan”? Luciana Jacobelli

House V.2.4 in Pompeii, known as the House of the Triclinium, offers an opportunity to analyze one aspect of the complex problem of female prostitution in Roman times. Recent studies have demonstrated how multifaceted and diversified this world was,1 and certainly the breadth of terms (about fifty) utilized by the Romans to define a prostitute offers insight into the intricacy of social relations.2 Among these there were also educated and sought-after women, who could be understood as similar to the Greek hetairai, literally “female companions.” However, in the corpus of Latin literature there does not seem to be any precise word to translate this term.3 Like their Greek counterparts, such women provided more than sexual services. They also accompanied clients who wanted to appear sophisticated at banquets. Such women were refined; they knew the art of seduction and possessed humor and charm.4 The elegiac poets sang their love for unprejudiced, frivolous, inconstant women, who loved presents, but these courtesans cannot be assimilated tout court to prostitutes.5 Roman literature from the end of the first century BCE and the first century CE often refers to these disinhibited women, suggesting that they were loved and courted by single or married men more than matrons. Often erotic poetry told of jealous and longing lovers, who knocked at the door of their heart’s desire and begged to come into the house or even to sleep on the threshold when she refused entry.6 In this regard, the texts seem to suggest that these women very often lived by themselves with their service staff, as women free from coercion from pimps and independent in the choice of their profession and their clients. Even though at times ancient sources draw a distinction between these 217

FIGURE 11.1.

Plan of the House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), Pompeii.

“courtesans” and common prostitutes,7 the category of courtesans is not at all well-defined from the perspective of social history.8 Rarely is an explicit reference to their condition made, as in the case of Horace, who defines them as libertae in two instances.9 Even from a legal standpoint, explicit references to this category of woman appear lacking, demonstrating de facto an assimilation to common prostitutes.10 As for the meretrices, so too for these “courtesans” is direct evidence lacking; their voice and personality are completely concealed behind the image of them provided by men. The world of ancient women in literature is a mute one; indeed, with rare exceptions, they did not leave us any written evidence. Where the male poets have told us of their love and passions, Roman women were silent.11 Nevertheless, in Pompeii it appears possible to catch glimpses of their lives and feelings, not only in the graffiti carved by them,12 but also in other traces that may be found in some houses, such as in house V.2.4. The house, excavated between 1883 and 1884, is of modest proportions (fig. 11.1).13 Deep fauces introduced an atrium (b) with an impluvium, in the center of which was a small pillar supporting a little statue of a bathing Venus.14 Around the atrium were located some small rooms (d, e) and a cellar (k). The tablinium (g) was open to the peristyle (p) and its garden (o); at the far end of the peristyle was a room surrounded by a corridor (u) and a larger room (r) that contained paintings in the early Fourth Style that are of particular interest to this essay. The three main paintings from the room labeled r on figure 11.1 are detached and displayed at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.15 The frescoes depict scenes of realistic banquets of which at least a dozen examples exist in Pompeii.16 The three scenes represent different phases of the banquet. As I will explain below, the initial phase seems to be the one depicted on the north wall. The clue of the banquet is portrayed on the west wall, while the ending appears to be on the east wall, when some guests start to leave. The initial and most interesting scene, as far as this essay is concerned, is that from the northern wall, which faced the entrance to the room (plate 12).17 Five reclining individuals are depicted on three dining couches wrapped in green covers. The banquet appears to take place outdoors, in a portico with awnings. In the middle is a round dining table (mensa),18 with instrumentum potorium (drinking vessels) and flowers. Flowers are also scattered on the floor. To the left is a reclining couple: the lower half of the woman appears to be covered by a red mantle, but the painting is too badly preserved to be able to decipher which garment, if any, she is wearing on the upper body. She is leaning on the edge of the bed with her weight resting on her right arm; the left arm is raised in the act of drinking from an elevated rhyton. Beside her, a man keeps a hand on her shoulder, while in the other hand he holds a cup (kantharos). He has a garland made with red flowers on his bare chest and is the only character facing the viewer. On the center couch is another man turned to the right with an arm bent above his head. On the third couch is another male and female THE HOUSE OF THE TRICLINIUM (V.2.4) AT POMPEII   219

couple facing each other. The man’s back is bare and his lower half is covered by a red tunic. In his left hand he holds a cup. The right arm raised, and with his index finger he points to the character to the left. In front of him is his female partner, who embraces him by holding a hand around his torso. In the foreground on the right is a servant with two oinochoai moving toward the dining table. A legend appears above their heads, in the fashion of a comic strip, drawn at the same time as the images. It has to be considered an essential component of the pictorial program.19 Contrasting views have been put forward concerning who utters the sentences,20 but recently a compelling hypothesis has been formulated, based upon the symmetry joining painting and writing.21 Based on the assumption of symmetry, the most likely interpretation is one that posits a tripartite division concerning both the painted legends (tituli picti) and the arrangement of the characters (first couple on the left; in the center, a young man alone; second couple on the right). Based on such a tripartite division, it is the woman of the first couple (on the left) who, facing the guests, wishes “Facitis vobis suaviter” (“enjoy yourself ”); the man of the second couple on the right, in a perfectly mirrored position to that of the woman, replies to her “Est ita valeas” (“That’s it, cheers”); the man in the center says “ego canto” (“I am singing”).22 The invitation “Facitis vobis suaviter” appears comparable to Petronius’s Trimalchio, who exhorts his guests to amuse themselves.23 The expression “ego canto” also has a “literary” tone, as it is directly drawn from the ninth satire of Horace.24 Likewise, during Trimalchio’s banquet, a guest is invited to sing in order to cheer the other guests.25 Thus the depiction of the banquet with famous “literary” references would seem to represent a reflection of the desire of the house owner to show an elevated social status. Scholars who have studied the fresco have derived the identification of the house owner based on the sentences uttered.26 Remarkably however, nobody has ever thought that the woman would be speaking to the guests. In fact, only Stramaglia, rightly in my opinion, suggests that it would be she who pronounced the sentence “enjoy yourself.”27 In that case, she should be considered the owner since it is she who exhorts the guests to amuse themselves, the same way Trimalchio does with his guests. Furthermore, the man of the second couple on the right who drinks to her health seems to somehow thank her by pointing to her with his finger (plate 12). Moreover, to further emphasize the leadership of the woman, she drinks from a rhyton, which is almost always utilized by men.28 The fact that she is drinking does not rule out that she may be speaking as well.29 Other paintings on medaillions d’applique (terracotta relief appliqué) made in the lower Rhone valley depict characters who “speak” while in the act of drinking from a rhyton.30 In sum, I propose that the woman in the scene is the house owner who commissioned the paintings, and further that she was a “courtesan,” an independent woman who freely possessed her house and households and who organized dinner parties in

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which, as Ovid says, “you can get something out of them besides wine. . . . And the wine gets the spirit primed and makes it ready for heat.”31 The frescoes depicted on the other two walls are less remarkable from the standpoint of the present essay, because they do not add any element to the ownership hypothesis. The painting from the west wall is badly preserved and the details are especially unclear. It seems to be set indoors (plate 13).32 Sitting in the center of the kline (couch for dining) is a crowned character; next to him is a guest who appears clearly drunken, with his head hanging and his right arm leaning toward the table standing in the center. This detail suggests that the banquet is already advanced. On the right and the left are traces of more guests. In front of the couches is a dining table (mensa) upon which is placed a rhyton, two vases, and scattered flowers. In front of the triclinium are two flute players and a nude dancer. On the bottom right is a bronze statue of a young boy holding a tray, comparable to the real bronze statues of ephebes holding lamps found in Pompeii in the houses of the Ephebe (I.7.11), of Fabius Rufus (VII.16.22), and of Julius Polybius (IX.13.3).33 In the painting from the east wall is depicted the concluding moment of the banquet, when some guests are ready to depart (plate 14).34 On the left is a man sitting upright talking with a reclining guest. The seated man appears to be about to leave the banquet since a slave is putting a shoe on his foot, while another servant offers him a cup of wine. The next figure to the right of these two is a young man who is looking back toward the door. In the center, a character wrapped in a mantle with his head veiled stands within the wide opening of a door. Further right, another guest is reclining on a kline with a cup of wine in his hand; above his head is engraved the inscription “bibo” (“I am drinking”).35 In front of this bed, a drunken guest is supported by a servant as he vomits. No women are present among the guests in this scene. The dining table is missing, perhaps already taken away for the end of the banquet. Facing triclinium r, whose paintings we have just described, is the small room u (fig. 11.1); this room appears to provide further confirmation of the hypothesis that the house was owned by a woman, as we have put forward in analyzing the first scene of the triclinium. In room u are three badly preserved paintings in late Third Style: on the north wall there is a scene with Diotima and Socrates (fig. 11.2), on the east wall one with Corinna and Pindar (similar to the scene illustrated in fig. 11.3), and on the west wall one with Sappho and a young girl (fig. 11.4). The peculiarity of this cycle consists in the fact that it is the women who teach and, in turn, demonstrate to the viewer female figures of authority. The capable and intellectual female is a trope long established in poetry. Corinna was a Greek poet contemporary of Pindar (end of sixth century BCE to first half of the fifth century BCE); according to tradition, she was his rival and (hypothetically) would have defeated him five times in poetry competitions.36

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FIGURE 11.2.

Central scene from the north wall of room u, house V.2.4. Drawing reproducing a painting fragment with Diotima and Socrates.

Diotima of Mantinea is thought to have been an exceptionally wise woman, who lived in the fifth century BCE. Plato, in the Symposium, presents her as someone who taught Socrates the philosophy of love, dissuading him from his prejudices.37 Sappho (late seventh century BCE–early sixth century BCE) is one of the most famous female poets of ancient times. Around her gathered the young women of Lesbos, practicing poetry, music, and dance. In her poems Sappho expresses feelings of love toward these young women. Extremely refined in her prose, she was held as a model by Hellenistic poets and after by Latin poets, Horace in particular.38 The proximity of the room (u) to the triclinium (r) leads us to believe that 222  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 11.3.

Central scene from room 23, House of the Citharist (I.4.5), Pompeii. Drawing reproducing a painting of a musical competition between Corinna and Pindar, identical to that of the House of Triclinium, now almost completely lost.

the former was made available to dinner guests (fig. 11.1). This juxtaposition of triclinium and small, multifunctional rooms, often referred to as cubicula, has been established as early as the Republican period.39 Ancient literary sources report bedrooms in proximity to triclinia adapted to accommodate dining guests, and an exact archaeological match is evident in Pompeii, where actual spatial and functional units, formed by one or more cubicula directly joining or next to reception halls, are found.40 The cubiculum could be used by dining guests for a variety of activities: to sleep, to break the long duration of the banquet, to recover after spending time at the baths, to engage in private speeches (perhaps political), but also, of course, to satisfy an amorous passion facilitated by the convivial atmosphere and consumption of wine. In spite of the licentious tone permeating the banquet, behavioral rules in fact existed to prevent expressions of excessive debauchery, which had to take place outside the triclinium in the confidentiality of the private room. Discretion had to be a clear rule, as demonstrated by both literary sources and archaeological evidence. In Pompeii in the outdoor triclinium of the House of the Moralist (III.4.2–3), Latin couplets are enunciated urging modesty, honest language, and avoidance of quarrels and altercations.41 The contiguity of the THE HOUSE OF THE TRICLINIUM (V.2.4) AT POMPEII   223

FIGURE 11.4.

Central scene from the west wall of room u, house V.2.4. Drawing of the painting with Sappho seated and young woman.

cubiculum–triclinium for the service of the guest is observed even in modest houses, where a great part of the space available on the ground floor is sacrificed for the ensemble of the triclinium and cubiculum, sometimes resulting in an excessive financial burden compared to the actual status of the dominus. In the case of house V.2.4, we see that the reception room is moved to the end of the house, with the triclinium and the cubiculum opening into a garden. This is an excellent example of the coexistence within a limited space of the dimensions of reception (room r) and rest (room u). However, what I would like to stress here is that, in a space likely reserved for entertaining guests, the choice of the paintings appears even more significant because it communicated an idea of feminine intellectual prowess (matching and even exceeding that of men) to a broader public audience beyond the house’s inhabi­ tants. Furthermore, Sappho and Diotima are two women inseparable from the idea of female pedagogy. These are women who have associations with the philosophical and poetical ideas of eros—fitting for both the convivial and the carnal goals of a banquet. This decorative program, unique in Pompeii, seems to be the expression of the culture and taste of the owner and perhaps also a choice explained by the identification the homeowner felt with the personal situations of the imagery depicted.42 It is unlikely that a man would have chosen to decorate the cubiculum for guests with a cycle so openly focused on female figures. Contemporary men were either largely

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intolerant or employed irony against learned women, puellae doctae, who were in opposition to the traditional ideal of a chaste matron.43 In conclusion, it seems possible to hypothesize that at one phase in its long history house V.2.4 belonged to a “courtesan,” an educated woman in possession of good culture and a good sense of irony, who in a free and autonomous manner had decided to use her house for parties and amorous meetings. That her house was attended in a very promiscuous fashion can be appreciated by reading the many graffiti left in the portico by the fuller Lucius Quintilius Crescens, who manifests his excitement greeting the cook,44 the fullones (fullers),45 the Pompeians, the Salinenses (a neighborhood in the city), the Stabiani (residents of Stabiae) and the Surrentini (residents of Surrentum),46 even declaring to have been reborn in that place.47 Such graffiti led Matteo Della Corte to hypothesize that the house was utilized in the last years of Pompeii as a tavern.48 More recently Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has definitely demonstrated that the House of the Triclinium was a private residence.49 However, it is important to point out that, from a legal standpoint, Roman legislation did not prevent women from owning properties. Therefore, also in Pompeii, there were women who were land and house owners, both high-status women like Julia Felix, owner of the entire insula II,1, and low-ranking women like Asellina, owner or renter of a tavern.50 Thus, in the composite social fabric of Pompeii in the imperial age, we can recognize the presence of female entrepreneurs who managed their businesses, friendships, and even amorous meetings by making use of their houses. Such houses were decorated with self-celebratory paintings that perhaps also provide evidence of provocative attitudes and actions that ran against the current, officially sanctioned, morality of the time.

Notes I wish to thank Mario Liotti, Ria Berg, and Erin Daly for help with the English translation, and Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland for their helpful comments on a previous version. 1. Among the vast literature on the subject, see in particular Biggi 1997; McGinn 2004; Fayer 2013 with rich bibliography; Augenti 2018; Levin-Richardson 2019; see also Levin-Richardson’s contribution in this volume. 2. Adams 1983; Fayer 2002. 3. The Latinized word hetaera appears only in non-classical sources; see Berg 2018a. 4. Hor. Carm. 1.22.23; Sall. Cat. 25.2. 5. See Veyne 1983. 6. The lament of the lover beside a door (paraclausithyron) is a literary theme typical of Greek and Roman poetry. For example, Hor. Carm. 1.25; Sat. 2.3.260–265; Tib. 1.2; Prop. 1.16; Ov. Am. 1.6; 1.9.9–12. 7. E.g., Plaut. Pseud. 172–178. In his plays Terence often depicts high-quality courtesans who

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are endowed with great moral qualities (see Totola 2004). On the term “courtesans” used in the present chapter, see Berg 2018a and McGinn 2018. 8. Prostitutes in Roman times present a broad social typology ranging from the slave, an instrument of his dominus or domina, to the liberta, to the woman engaged in activities considered by the law “potential prostitution” (hostess, waitress, actress, dancer, etc.), to the women drawn to prostitution by extreme poverty, such as widows and orphans, up to freewomen who decided to abandon the respectability of their status, enrolling in the lists kept by the aediles with the name they intended to use to exercise prostitution (Tac. Ann. 2.85). 9. In two cases Horace explicitly mentions the condition of liberta: Carm. 1.33, vv. 14–15; Epod. 14.15–16. Horace seldom uses the term meretrix or scortum to indicate his “friends.” See Oliensis 1997. 10. McGinn 2018. 11. Buonopane 2009. 12. Varone 1994; Jacobelli 2009. 13. Sogliano 1884; Mau 1885; PPM III:797–823, s.v. “V.2.4.” 14. Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples (henceforth MANN) inv. no. 114536. See Carrella et al. 2008, 75–76, B11. 15. MANN inv. no. 120029; 120030; 120031. Fröhlich 1991, 227–228; PPM III:812–818, s.v. “V.2.4”; Eschebach and Müller-Trollius 1993, 130–131; Dunbabin 2003, 58–59; Jacobelli 2018. 16. Dunbabin 2003, 58–59; Jacobelli 2018. 17. MANN inv. no. 120031 (63 × 60 cm). 18. Such tables were very common in Pompeii. See De Carolis 2007, 96–105. 19. On the importance of conveying messages based on an immediate association between text and image, see Corbier 1995, 113–157; Richardson 2000, 177; Stramaglia 2007, 596–600 with bibliography; Jacobelli 2018, 161–164. 20. According to Fröhlich (1991, 226) the young man in the middle utters the sentences, while the man to the right answers “est ita valeas.” According to Clarke (2003, 243) the first sentence is spoken by the man of the second couple, while the rest of the sentence is uttered by a guest not well identifiable. Wallace-Hadrill (2004, 114) divides the text into five parts; Ritter (2005, 313–315) believes that the man of the first couple utters the first sentence “facitis vobis suaviter,” speaking directly to the public and not to the characters of the painting. 21. The hypothesis was hinted by Dunbabin (2003, 5) and then thoroughly analyzed by Stramaglia (2007, 597). 22. CIL 4.3442a–b. 23. Petron. Sat. 75.8: Vos rogo, amici, ut vobis suaviter sit. On this comparison, see also Maiuri 1945, 229–230. For the Pompeians’ knowledge of important Latin authors, see Gigante 1979. 24. Hor. Sat. 9.25. 25. Petron. Sat. 64.2–4. See Roller 2006, 73 n. 115. 26. See note 23. 27. Stramaglia 2007, 597.

226  REPRESENTING WOMEN

28. On the rhyton, a drinking cup shaped as a horn, as a symbol of luxury and pleasure: Tamm 2001, 168–169; Jacobelli 2011, 124, fig. 13. 29. Ritter (2005, 314) believes that it cannot be the woman who talks because she is oozing wine from her mouth. 30. Varone 2000a, 87, fig. 88; Jacobelli 2011, 124. 31. Ov. Ars am. 1.229–238: est aliquid praeter vina, quod inde petas . . . Dant etiam positis aditum convivia mensis. 32. MANN inv. no. 120030 (68 × 66 cm). 33. Moormann 1988, 166. 34. MANN inv. no. 120029 (68 × 66 cm). 35. For these graffiti, see CIL 4.4123. 36. Plut. De glor. Ath. 4.347f–348a; Paus. 9.22.3; Ael. VH 13.25; Suda, s.v. “Κόριννα,” 157–158. 37. Pl. Symp. 209d–212c. See Musti 2005, 82–83; Caporossi 2007. 38. Di Benedetto 2005. 39. Berry 1997; Zaccaria-Ruggiu 2001; Nevett 2010. 40. Anguissola 2010. 41. See in particular CIL 4.7698. 42. Zanker 2002, 112–132. 43. Mart. 9.9; Sen. Helv. 17.4; Hor. Epod. 8, 12. See Hemelrijk 1999; Hänninen 2018, 119. 44. CIL 4.4100. 45. CIL 4.4118. 46. CIL 4.4102, 4103, 4109. 47. CIL 4.4107. 48. Della Corte 1965, 128–129. 49. Wallace-Hadrill 2004, 114–117. 50. CIL 4.1136; CIL 4.7863–7873. On this topic, see Savunen 1997; Ciardiello 2016; Berg 2018b.

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FIGURE 12.1.

Relief depicting a couple, marble, h. 34.0 cm, w. 35.5 cm, d.9.5 cm (at male figure’s left shoulder). Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714.

FIGURE 12.2.

Plan of tavern VII.7.18, Pompeii. Key: (a) service counter; (b) small hearth; (c) hearth; (d) latrine; (e) stair; (f ) cistern opening; and (g) location of relief in wall.

CHAPTER 12

Sex on Display in Pompeii’s Tavern VII.7.18 Jessica Powers

Among the many works from the Vesuvian region consigned because of their sexual content to the Gabinetto Segreto of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples is a small marble relief sculpture depicting a man and a woman engaging in sex on a bed (fig. 12.1).1 Discovered in 1859, it was found in a tavern in Pompeii (VII.7.18), where it was set into the painted plaster wall of the establishment’s back room (figs. 12.2 and 12.3).2 The relief is unique among finds from Pompeii for its explicit depiction of sexual activity in this medium. Because of its singularity, scholars have not given the marble relief the same degree of attention as the well-known and widely published erotic wall paintings from the city’s houses and public buildings. Previous scholarship on the tavern and the sculpture has focused on the question of whether or not prostitution occurred there, and whether the tavern should be considered a brothel. Some scholars have interpreted the relief, alone or in combination with an erotic painting that decorated the same room and two sexual graffiti from the tavern’s façade, as providing confirmation of the presence of prostitutes working on the premises.3 Recent research on Roman prostitution, however, has emphasized the variety of spaces in which the sale of sex probably occurred—taverns among them—many of which did not incorporate depictions of sexual activity.4 The relief ’s placement in the back room (4) of tavern VII.7.18, moreover, meant that it was not visible from the street and therefore could hardly be taken as a sign to passersby of the services available. Potential customers will instead have noticed the tavern’s eye-catching service

229

FIGURE 12.3.

East wall of room 4, tavern VII.7.18. The cavity for the relief is at center, just above the edge of the plaster. The arrow indicates the cavity for the relief at the center of the wall.

counter, which emphasized the sale of food and drink as the establishment’s primary business. The unusual nature of the relief deserves more nuanced consideration, and in this essay, I reexamine it in connection with this understanding of the tavern’s commercial activities. My study, grounded in a careful examination of the sculpture, begins by documenting previously unpublished evidence for its polychromy and ancient reuse. I then argue that the tavern’s owner acquired and displayed this unique work of art as part of an overall decorative program designed to welcome customers, enhance their experience in the tavern, and encourage their business.5 Finally, I consider the responses the relief ’s imagery may have inspired in its viewers, both male and female, among the tavern’s clients and workers. I propose that, for men and women in the tavern alike, looking at the marble relief offered an occasion to reflect on their own circumstances and explore fantasies about their lives and surroundings.

230  REPRESENTING WOMEN

The Relief and Its Polychromy Carved of white marble, the relief is roughly triangular and has a concave surface: the marble panel has a pronounced curvature from top to bottom (fig. 12.4). The couple, worked in high relief, are presented on a bed (its foot and legs are lost) with a thick bolster. The mattress is covered with the man’s cloak, which is also wrapped around his right leg and left forearm. The man props himself up on his left elbow; his right arm rests on his raised head, and his legs are crossed (fig. 12.5). His pose is one of relaxation, even lassitude—a position that John Clarke has eloquently described as “erotic repose.”6 His right arm is missing from the middle of the forearm; a pinhole in the surviving part of the arm suggests an ancient join or repair. The woman hovers astride the man and supports herself by resting her right hand on his legs. Her left leg is tucked under at the knee, and her right leg is thrust out assertively toward the viewer (now roughly restored in plaster, her leg, like his arm, may have been pieced or repaired with a separate piece of marble). The woman pulls her left thigh outward with her hand, as if to spread her knees as far apart as possible. To further emphasize their imminent coupling, the opening of her vagina is carved just above the man’s erect penis. Despite their physical intimacy, the two figures do not look at each other: the woman, with a blank expression, turns her head sharply away from the man, and his gaze, accompanied by a slight smile, follows hers. Their detached expressions and avoidance of each other’s eyes do not hint at any kind of emotional connection between them; perhaps they have just been interrupted—or caught?—by someone off to the left in the now-missing part of the relief. The relief ’s surfaces were richly colored. Indeed, the sculptor may have deliberately avoided carving the figures’ anatomy in great detail, leaving awkward passages like their disproportionate hands, in the knowledge that the relief ’s finished appearance would be determined by the attention lavished on its polychromy.7 Although its polychromy has not been fully studied, considerable traces of ancient pigments and gilding remain visible to the naked eye. The woman’s hair has some red pigment and is now brownish in appearance, possibly from a combination of pigments. Her facial features—eyebrows, irises, and lower eyelashes—were also painted (plate 15). Her hair preserves traces of gilding, especially on the curls behind the wide hairband; additional gilding along the hairline at her right cheek may represent a gold earring. Further evidence of gilding indicates that she wore an intricate golden necklace, armlets, and anklets, while touches of gold highlight her breasts. There is even gilding on her pubic area as well as some reddish pigment, and blue-black pigment shades the opening of her vagina (plate 16). Like the woman, the man has reddish-brown hair, and his facial features and penis also preserve traces of pigment. His mantle has red and pink pigments, and gilding remains in the folds above his left hand, over his left arm, and on his shin. The mattress behind him has red horizontal bands as well as at least one spot of surviving gilding.

SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   231

FIGURE 12.4.

Relief depicting a couple, right edge. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714.

FIGURE 12.5.

Relief depicting a couple, detail: man’s head. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714.

The outlines of both figures’ bodies are delineated with drill channels that preserve bright pink coloration behind the man’s shoulder and a considerable amount of bluegreen pigment around the woman and under her left arm. These areas may reflect the colors of the relief ’s painted background, which, according to Giuseppe Fiorelli, included a curtain.8 This cloth may have resembled the raised curtain in a painting of a couple having sex on a bed in house I.13.16, or the canopy stretched above the lovers in a painting from the House of the Beautiful Impluvium (I.9.1).9 A roughly carved indentation that runs horizontally across the relief ground above the woman’s head may have marked the curtain’s edge. Alternatively, this groove may have denoted a garland, like the colorful ones that frame the sex scenes from Pompeii’s brothel (VII.12.18–20).10 As its broken left and right edges and the loss of the lower part of the composition indicate, the relief is clearly a fragment of a larger sculpture. It probably once formed part of a large marble vessel decorated on its exterior with a frieze of figures in high relief, the krater with a Bacchic symposium in the Torlonia collection and another with sea centaurs and Nereids, both from Rome.11 Such an origin would explain not only the curvature of its front and back surfaces, but also the smooth finish preserved on the upper two-thirds of its back and the gradual tapering of the marble from bottom to top (figs. 12.4 and 12.6). Although it is similar in these respects to Roman marble vessels, both the relief ’s findspot in Pompeii and its subject matter make it (to my knowledge) unique within this sculptural genre. Such vessels are thought to have been produced beginning in the late second or early first century BCE, but only two examples survive from the Bay of Naples

FIGURE 12.6.

Relief depicting a couple, back. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 27714.

SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   233

region.12 Within this genre, the depiction of intercourse on the relief from Pompeii finds no parallel: in addition to the Torlonia vase, a krater in Rome and a vessel fragment in Berlin that depict satyrs and Pan grabbing and attempting to disrobe maenads have perhaps the most eroticized motifs among this corpus.13 Indeed, stone relief sculptures in any format with such explicit sexual imagery are highly unusual: two flat relief panels in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to which I return below, and an oscillum from a Roman house in Bolsena are rare examples.14 The decoration of a marble vessel with an erotic scene does find parallels among fine bronze vessels from Pompeii, including two wide, shallow basins with central tondi depicting the coupling of a satyr and a nymph or maenad, and a jug from house V.3.11 with a similar scene on the attachment plate for its handle.15 Such scenes occur more frequently in mass-produced relief media such as lamps and pottery.16 In stylistic terms, the relief combines archaistic elements like the man’s rather absent smile and the swallowtail-like drapery folds with the more classicizing treatment of his musculature and the woman’s hairstyle; the soft modeling of their facial features recalls late Hellenistic statuettes in the round. This blending of styles is typical of marble vessels and other furnishings with figural decoration, and, more generally, of late Hellenistic and Roman relief sculpture of the first century BCE and the first century CE.17

The Tavern’s Proprietor: Shaping the Decorative Program The rarity of the relief ’s imagery and its age may both have appealed to tavern VII.7.18’s owner as adding a unique and distinctive element to the establishment’s décor. He or she displayed this reused relief as part of a decorative ensemble intended, like the tavern’s location and layout, to attract clients and thereby increase sales. The tavern occupies the northwest corner of its insula and opens onto the Vicolo dei Soprastanti (fig. 12.2).18 Its location—just one block west of the Forum, and close to the temples of Apollo and Venus—would have made it convenient for anyone coming into this part of the city for trade or for festivals.19 The tavern’s owner arranged the service counter that partly occupies its wide doorway to capture the notice of potential customers. Painted red and enlivened with three marble reliefs of theatrical masks set into the plastered surface facing the street, the counter’s striking appearance drew attention to the food and drink sold here and to the wares displayed on shelves along the wall behind the counter.20 Opposite the service counter was a kitchen (2) with a hearth and a latrine.21 A staircase immediately behind the counter led to rooms on an upper floor, which might have provided further income for the owner as rented lodging or as additional dining or entertaining space.22 The marble relief sculptures in the service counter should probably be identified with three panels that entered the National Archaeological Museum in Naples in the 1860s or 1870s without a record of their findspots within Pompeii.23 Like other mask 234  REPRESENTING WOMEN

reliefs, these three are carved on both sides. They were immured in the counter with their front sides showing, worked in high relief; the backs, in low relief, were secured to the counter and thus could not be seen. The relief in the middle of the counter portrayed four masks: a youth and a satyr, at left, face a bearded slave, all three resting on piled rocks, with the mask of an old man between them in the foreground (fig. 12.7). The panels at either side had matching compositions, with masks of Bacchus and a maenad, likewise posed on rocky ground, facing each other across a burning altar (fig. 12.8). The latter two reliefs must have been carved by a single sculptor or workshop: in addition to the similar scenes on their fronts, their reverses form a pair with dolphins swimming over waves in opposite directions. The central relief

FIGURE 12.7.

Double-sided relief with theatrical masks (front and back), marble, h. 26 cm, w. 33 cm, d. 2 cm. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 6619.

FIGURE 12.8.

Double-sided relief with theatrical masks (front) and dolphins (back), marble, h. 25 cm, w. 32 cm. Naples, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 6638.

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sculpture, which depicted two further masks on the back, resembles the other two in the modeling of the masks and in the distinctive treatment of their rocky supports, and it was probably a product of the same workshop.24 Mask reliefs were typically displayed in house or villa gardens, in a manner that made both sides visible: either supported on freestanding pilasters, like the well-known examples from the peristyle garden of the House of the Gilded Cupids (VI.16.7), or suspended between the columns of a portico.25 The placement of the mask reliefs in the counter at VII.7.18—a display that hid their low-relief reverses, which still preserve traces of their ancient polychromy—makes it highly probable that these sculptures were reused from some other setting. Much of the marble revetment of bar counters throughout the city seems to consist of reused scrap material: their décor often incorporates pieces of opus sectile floors and, in some cases, parts of inscriptions.26 Two other taverns in Pompeii, III.8.9 and VI.16.12, had fragments of mask reliefs set into their counters.27 Another tavern (VI.1.2) had two marble heads or masks set into niches in its counter; a print of that insula by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his son, Francesco, gives an idea of how the counter at VII.7.18 may have appeared.28 Like the owners of other similar establishments, the proprietor of tavern VII.7.18 drew on locally available sources of reused, damaged, secondhand, or scrap marble to decorate and embellish the premises—and such sources probably account for both the mask reliefs in the counter and the erotic relief in room 4.29 The tavern’s owner displayed the relief with the couple embedded in room 4’s east wall (fig. 12.3). Reached through a door at the west end of its common wall with room 3, this room was the largest on the tavern’s ground floor, and it was probably a space where customers might dine.30 This room’s decoration contrasted with the more utilitarian high socle made of opus signinum (crushed tile or brick mixed with mortar) beneath white plastered walls in the other ground-floor rooms. Room 4’s ensemble of wall paintings and the reused relief seems consciously designed to create an attractive space where the tavern’s clients would want to spend time, and hence money, while eating, drinking, and relaxing. Room 4 had a low ceiling and received some natural light from a window onto the narrow Vicolo del Gallo.31 The upper stories of neighboring buildings may have blocked or limited light coming into the room, however, and the relief and paintings must instead have been seen primarily by the flickering light from lamps—placed perhaps on the handsome bronze lampstand found in room 3. The wall paintings’ white ground probably helped brighten an otherwise dim room. The paintings were structured in a manner popular in Pompeii in the decades just before the city’s destruction: tapestry borders divided the white walls into panels separated by golden candelabra framed within green borders; a horizontal red border separated the socle, also white, from the main zone of the walls.32 According to Fiorelli, the white panels were adorned with birds, fish, other animals, and a scene that he described only as osceno (obscene). Already destroyed by the time he 236  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 12.9.

South wall of room 11, House of the Ephebe (I.7.10–12), Pompeii.

published the Descrizione di Pompei in 1875, this painting was probably similar to the many other depictions of sexual activity that decorated houses and public buildings in Pompeii.33 Though Fiorelli did not specify their respective locations within the room, the painted vignettes with the animals and the erotic painting probably each occupied the center of one of the white panels. The overall composition must have been similar to that of the wall paintings in room 11 of the House of the Ephebe (I.7.10–12), where framed pictures of fish, a bird eating cherries, and a leopard among drinking vessels decorate white panels separated by candelabra (fig. 12.9).34 On this assumption, the positions of the painted scenes paralleled that of the marble relief, which was inserted in the middle of the east wall, presumably at the center of one of the white panels. The tavern’s proprietor displayed the relief in its present fragmentary state: a cavity matching its irregular shape remains where it was immured, and the iron pins that secured it to the wall are still visible at either side of the cavity. Part of another iron pin remains in the bottom edge of the relief next to the hole for the modern SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   237

mount, and the relief ’s back and edges all preserve traces of the wall plaster. Some pains were taken to tidy the relief ’s appearance in advance of its installation in the wall. Its lower back is roughly worked with a point chisel, probably to flatten it or otherwise facilitate its fit in the wall (fig. 12.6).35 Toolmarks along the bottom edge, like those on the back, probably reflect efforts to clean up its profile in preparation for reuse. Its extensive polychromy, perhaps refreshed for its installation in the tavern, probably helped the relief stand out (like the colorful painted vignettes) against the predominantly white walls. As it was displayed, the center of the relief was approximately 148 cm above the floor, placing it at or just above eye level for a standing viewer. Both figures look toward the left side of the relief, that is, toward the entrance to the room—a position perhaps deliberately chosen by the tavern’s owner to enhance the image’s impact on its viewers. The woman’s glance and her gesture, pulling her legs apart, together invited the arriving dinner customer to enjoy the unimpeded view of both her body and the sexual encounter. The tavern owner’s juxtaposition on room 4’s walls of painted and carved renderings of copulating couples perhaps attracted attention to the way the relief makes the sex act more vivid: the figures protruded into the room, and the soft contours of the woman’s body, even the opening of her vagina, as well as the man’s muscular physique offered a tactile immediacy lacking from painted erotic scenes. The pairing of the sculpture with the painting calls to mind decorative ensembles in houses where marble reliefs or other material objects complemented the painted décor. This unusual combination echoes the thoughtful incorporation of marble reliefs in the wall paintings of three large and sumptuously outfitted houses, the House of the Gilded Cupids in Pompeii and, in Herculaneum, the House of the Dionysiac Reliefs and the House of the Telephos Relief (Ins. Or. I.2).36 Two further houses displayed marble sculptures or intarsia work as thematic pendants for painted images. In house I.13.16, two marble heads inserted in the walls of the garden biclinium hung like oscilla from the painted garlands. And in the House of Volusius Faustus (I.2.10), a marble intarsia panel depicting Venus was installed opposite a now-lost painting of Bacchus in a large room that opened onto the house’s garden. The tavern’s owner seems to have anticipated that customers, like the owners and guests in these houses, would enjoy not only the thematic ensemble created in room 4 but also the sensory experience of the distinct textures and play of light across the various media. That images of sexual activity like the relief and painting combined here were considered suitable for luxurious residential spaces is demonstrated by the paired erotic paintings in a cubiculum of the House of the Centenary (IX.8.6).37 While homeowners arranged such ensembles for their own and their guests’ enjoyment, the tavern owner’s intent in decorating room 4, as with the striking décor of the street counter, was probably closely tied to a desire to boost the establishment’s sales. By creating an atmosphere of luxury and pleasure in otherwise modest surroundings, 238  REPRESENTING WOMEN

the owner perhaps expected that diners would linger over their food or drinks and increase their spending accordingly. He or she may also have hoped that customers who admired the distinctive visual experience of room 4 would spread word of this memorable space to potential clients among their friends and acquaintances.

The Relief and Its Viewers in Tavern VII.7.18 I turn now to the tavern’s clientele and workers, non-elite viewers who left no record of their responses to the establishment or its decoration.38 My reconstruction of their views, though based on the foregoing examination of the surviving evidence for the space’s appearance and a recreation of the activities that took place there, is admittedly hypothetical. Despite its inherent risks, this exercise in imagination offers a way to humanize the relief ’s ancient audience, some of whom at least must have entered room 4 repeatedly in the course of their daily routines—individuals whose voices would otherwise remain in the silence that this volume seeks to address. In exploring the responses of non-elite viewers to eroticized images in a commercial setting, my study traces similar ground to Jennifer Trimble’s essay in this volume, and further shares the use of imagination as an approach to interpretation with the contributions of Sarah Levin-Richardson and Luciana Jacobelli. I first propose a new interpretation of the relief ’s erotic scene stemming from its polychromy, discussed above, and then consider how viewers may have related to its imagery in the context of their activities in the tavern, with a focus on male clients and female workers. Viewers in the tavern were probably familiar with scenes like that in the relief from paintings in Pompeii’s public and private buildings and from everyday objects like pottery and lamps. The position of the couple and their setting on a bed with a reddish-brown striped mattress echo a composition in several surviving paintings, including one that decorated the apodyterium of the Suburban Baths,39 another from house IX.5.16,40 and three others, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, from unknown locations in Pompeii.41 The woman in the relief differs significantly in appearance, however, from the women in these and other erotic paintings from Pompeii. The painted women often wear metal armlets or anklets, and in two paintings the woman wears gold chains across her torso, but otherwise the extensive gold jewelry of the relief is largely absent.42 Instead, the women in the paintings are often shown with a reddish or blue cloth breast band (strophium). The women in the paintings have generally been identified as mortal women and, by some scholars, as prostitutes.43 Her extensive gold ornaments may instead have led viewers to identify the woman in the relief with Venus. In a well-known statuette from the eponymous House of Venus in a Bikini (I.11.6) in Pompeii, the goddess wears a similar necklace, a golden net-patterned breast band, armlets, bracelets, anklets, and gold chains across her torso. A large triangle of gilding denotes her pubic area.44 Indeed, in her images from SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   239

the city, gold jewelry is perhaps Venus’s most common attribute—when she is represented in the nude, often her only attribute—both in sculpture in the round and in painting.45 The woman’s classicizing, rather than contemporary, hairstyle also evokes styles employed for Venus’s hair in sculptures in the round: she wears a wide, flat band in her hair, which is pulled back at the sides in twisted locks that are gathered at her crown. Her softly modelled brows, wide nose, and mouth—their blurred contours partly the result of surface wear—likewise find parallels among statuettes of Venus from Pompeii.46 The man, too, is similar to the gods and heroes familiar from mythological paintings and sculptures in his youthful, smoothly muscular physique and cap of short curly hair adorned with a thin fillet. Could ancient viewers have understood the relief from Pompeii as depicting a mythological couple—as Venus with Mars or another of her lovers? If the hypothesis that the relief originated as part of a decorative basin is correct, the sculptor probably intended to create a mythological rather than a genre scene, as the latter rarely occur on marble vessels. Among the many surviving paintings of Venus with Mars or Adonis from Pompeii, the couple are often shown embracing but never actually engaging in intercourse: she is typically partly nude, he ogling or fondling her.47 A silver cup from the House of the Menander (I.10.4), one of a pair depicting scenes from Venus’s liaison with Mars, is more suggestive, as it portrays the nude goddess about to rise from a bed on which the god reclines, with his right arm crooked over his head like the male figure in the relief.48 Although no paintings of clearly identifiable mythological couples having sex survive, apart from depictions of Leda and the swan, they do occur, albeit rarely, in relief sculpture.49 Two marble reliefs with couples in similar positions, of unknown provenience and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, have explicitly mythological subjects. One depicts Omphale or a nymph astride Hercules, identified by his club and the lionskin spread beneath him, in an outdoor setting. A curtain draped from a tree screens a shrine behind them while a herm of Priapus looks on from the right.50 On the other, a winged woman, a Siren, takes advantage of an aged sleeping man, possibly a shepherd: she pours a potion on him, and again a herm observes from above.51 Variations on this scene occur on a plaster medallion, probably a model for mold-made bowls, found in a cache of imported material in Begram, Afghanistan, and on a Corinthian lamp.52 This composition’s wide dissemination opens the possibility that Roman viewers may have more readily identified depictions of figures engaging in sex with mythological characters than the limited number of surviving examples would suggest. If not as a mythological pair, viewers may have interpreted the couple in the tavern’s relief as mortals, but god-like in their appearance. For customers, whom I assume to be non-elite and perhaps predominantly male, room 4’s décor may have evoked spaces in houses of the city’s wealthy families, to which they had access only as slaves or dependents.53 The room’s elegant decorative ensemble contrasted with the utilitarian counter and kitchen at the tavern’s entrance 240  REPRESENTING WOMEN

and created an ambiance that encouraged the tavern’s clients to drink and dine at ease. The entertainment on offer here might include conversation, gaming, and the possibility of sex with one of the tavern’s workers.54 In customers’ eyes, the woman in the relief may have been rendered Venus-like for their pleasure, as well as her partner’s. The image allowed or even encouraged male viewers in the tavern to fantasize about making love to a fabulously wealthy woman, or to a prostitute dressed up as a goddess. The gilded jewelry and body of the woman in the relief may have catered to the imaginations of Roman men: Juvenal’s characterization of the empress Messalina as a woman with excessive sexual desires describes her as gilding her breasts to work as a prostitute.55 Mira Green argues that Roman men wanted to imagine prostitutes—often enslaved women—as willing and even enthusiastic sexual partners.56 Such a fantasy might certainly find confirmation here: the woman’s pose suggests that she is initiating and controlling the encounter, not being forced into it.57 Her body is emphatically displayed: the position of her right hand, resting behind her on the man’s legs, leaves her torso totally uncovered and thrusts her chest forward. Looking out to engage the viewer and with her legs spread wide, she seems to present a certain confidence and assertiveness. Such a woman may have been far removed from the reality of her viewers’ sexual experiences, but the relief may have appealed to the tavern’s clients precisely because of the alternative vision it offered. What about female viewers among the tavern’s clients and workers? Women working in the tavern may have been freeborn, freedwomen, or slaves, and they probably performed a variety of tasks: greeting customers and making sales at the counter, cooking and cleaning, serving and entertaining clients in room 4 and the upstairs rooms, keeping accounts and purchasing supplies. In addition, their sexual services may have been among the commodities on offer here.58 Some workers may have been responsible for cleaning the relief in room 4 and those in the service counter of dust and grime, and through this task would have been intimately familiar with the sculptures. Women’s perspectives on the relief ’s erotic scene doubtless varied according to the circumstances that brought them into the tavern.59 For some it may have served as a reminder that their bodies, like that of the woman in the relief, were on display for the men around them. The sex scene may have called to mind acts they were forced to perform, or unwanted advances from male clients or coworkers. Others may have related the display of sex to their own efforts to improve their lives, through attempts to gain favorable treatment or freedom by pleasing a master or client. The woman’s elaborate hairstyle and gold jewelry may have reminded female viewers of the need to beautify themselves to attract male attention, and of the gifts they might hope to receive in return.60 Like male viewers, women working in the tavern may have found that the relief ’s image engaged with or fulfilled their fantasies, too, by offering an alternative vision of costly attire and sexual pleasure that contrasted with their more constrained and humble lives. The woman’s Venus-like appearance recalls the practice of portraying imperial women, and later private women as well, as Venus SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   241

in public monuments and funerary statues, and on private commemorative objects like cameos. In these works the association with the goddess is a consistently positive one highlighting the woman’s family connections and personal virtues of beauty and fertility.61 Perhaps the relief presented its female viewers with an occasion to appreciate such values or to despair at the difficulty of attaining them. The relief sculpture depicting a couple from tavern VII.7.18, as I have argued here, began its life as part of a marble vessel, a massive and costly luxury object. Marble furnishings like this one were made for wealthy patrons and typically decorated the gardens of their large, lavishly outfitted urban houses or suburban villas. The vessel broke, in circumstances now unknown, and this fragment came to be reused in the much more modest setting of a tavern’s back room: perhaps its owner, unable to reconstruct the damaged vessel for display in his or her home, had this fragment set aside for a tavern in which he or she had a financial interest. Unusual in both its location and its imagery, the relief offers an opportunity to expand modern understandings of how Roman erotic art served non-elite viewers and commercial enterprises. Examining the sculpture and the scene it portrays in this new context reveals different meanings it may have held for the tavern’s owner, clients, and workers. Reimagining the responses of men and women who dined and drank, lived and worked alongside it brings into focus the otherwise unattested experiences of these non-elite viewers.

Notes

1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

This essay is based on research conducted in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples (henceforth MANN) and in Pompeii between 2008 and 2018, and I would like to thank the past and present directors of the museum and the site for kindly facilitating my research. I also wish to thank Brenda Longfellow for inviting me to participate in the 2018 Symposium Campanum and the other participants, as well as Bettina Bergmann and John Clarke, for their many helpful comments. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own. MANN inv. no. 27714 (Fiorelli 1866, 7 no. 46; Carrella et al. 2008, 130 no. C19). Fiorelli 1860–64, II:683; 1875, 248. I use “tavern” throughout to describe this property; on the problematic identification and nomenclature of such spaces, see Ellis 2018, 29–83, with reference to earlier discussions of this issue. See Wallace-Hadrill 1995, 53, 61 n. 72; Guzzo and Scarano Ussani 2000, 14–17; DeFelice 2001, 275 no. 113; McGinn 2002, 40 no. 24; Guzzo and Scarano Ussani 2009, 43 no. 33, 71. On CIL 4.549a–b, the reading of which is uncertain, see Varone 1994, 80 n. 127. I thank Sarah Levin-Richardson for discussing the graffiti with me. See McGinn 2013; Levin-Richardson 2019, 2–4, 143–144, and in this volume. Fiorelli (1875, 248) tentatively linked ownership of the tavern to the Lucius Numisius named in a painted graffito on the façade (CIL 4.549), but this attribution, though widely repeated in subsequent scholarship, should not be considered secure. Ellis (2018, 102–121) points to evidence that such establishments were often operated by freedmen

242  REPRESENTING WOMEN



6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

on behalf of wealthy landlords. In the absence of definitive information about this tavern’s ownership structure, I use the terms “owner” and “proprietor” to refer to the individual(s) who shaped its decorative program. Clarke 1998, 68–70; on the connotations of this pose, see also Schröder 1989, 27–34. Cf. Dierichs 1997, 102. Fiorelli 1866, 7. Clarke 1998, 148–153, 187–193. For a color image of the painting in house I.13.16, see Varone 2001, 78, fig. 81. See Levin-Richardson 2019, 64–80. Rome, Museo Torlonia, inv. 297 (Dodero 2020); Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo, inv. 113189 (Gasparri and Paris 2013, 126–127 no. 69). Alternatively, and less likely in my view, the relief may have belonged to an oscillum or tondo with a concave surface, or to a statue base with curved sides, like the so-called Grimani Altar (Venice, Museo Archeologico, inv. 263; Dräger 1994, 261–264 no. 114. For the dating of marble vessels, see Grassinger 1994. Both vessels from Campania were found in lavish coastal villas: one in Oplontis Villa A (Pompeii, Parco Archeologico, inv. 70.717, 71.406, and 72.724; Moormann 2019, 1478–1485 no. 62); the other in the Villa San Marco, Stabiae (MANN inv. no. 6779; Grassinger 1991, 178–180 no. 21; Pagano and Prisciandaro 2006, 1:239). Rome, Capitoline Museums, inv. 1202 (Grassinger 1991, 192–194 no. 34); Berlin, Antikensammlung, inv. Sk 1095 (Auinger 2013). Museo Territoriale del Lago di Bolsena, inv. 61458 (I thank Pietro Tamburini for his kind assistance with the Bolsena relief ). Balland and Goudineau (1967, followed by Brendel 1970, 59 n. 62) note the similarities between the images on the Bolsena oscillum and those on Arretine ware vessels. Bronze basins: MANN inv. no. 27671 (De Caro 2000, 58, 60) and s.n. (Aßkamp et al. 2007, no. 8.25); jug handle: MANN inv. no. 129478 (De Caro 2000, 60; Berg 2018b, 204–205). See Berg 2018b, 198–206 on the association of water basins with washing in connection with sexual activity. Lamps: e.g., MANN inv. no. 109412 (Jacobelli 1998, 88); Arretine ware, e.g., bowls: Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. 1966.250 (Brown 1968, 4–6 no. 1) and molds: Berlin, Antikensammlung, inv. 1962.35 (Greifenhagen 1963, 74–81, pls. 5–9); New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 41.162.170 and 19.192.66 (Alexander 1943, 19, pl. 27, nos. 1–2); and Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. 1966.252 (Brown 1968, 6 no. 2). See Ridgway 2002, 226–240, which surveys earlier discussions of this material. Excavated intermittently between 1859 and 1868, the tavern was damaged in the bombardment of September 14–15, 1943, and subsequently partly reconstructed. Fiorelli 1860–64, II:678, 682–684; Fiorelli 1861, 353–356; Giornale degli Scavi di Pompei, n.s. 1.3 (Naples, 1868), 74; Fiorelli 1875, 248. On the damage from the bombing, see García y García 2006, 116. See Ellis 2004, esp. 376–378. Ellis (2004, 2018) emphasizes the desire to maximize profit as a determining factor in the location and layout of bars. The counter has been extensively reconstructed (Ellis 2005, 437): no traces remain of its painted plaster, the attachment points for the marble reliefs, or the small hearth at its

SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   243

21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

south end. Beam holes to support a shelf remain in the west wall of room 1, behind the counter; for further evidence of shelves here, see Fiorelli 1875, 248. A blocked door in the kitchen’s east wall indicates that, in an earlier phase, this room communicated with the adjacent property (house VII.7.19). The finds recorded from the upper floor above rooms 3 and 4 in February and March 1859 included fittings from a cupboard or chest, several terracotta vessels (six cups or bowls, two plates, two jugs, and an amphora), one vessel each in bronze and in glass, a bone spoon, some pasta vitrea beads, a bronze inkwell, and four bronze coins (Fiorelli 1860–64, II:678, 682–684). Minervini (1859, 68) provides the only detailed description of the reliefs in the counter; cf. MANN inv. nos. 6619, 6638, and 6639 (Dwyer 1981, 287–288 nos. 157, 159, and 160, pl. 129; Cain 1988, 130, 199–201 nos. 42, 46, and 47, figs. 23–24; Carrella et al. 2008, 245–246 no. E 70). Cain 1988, 129–134, 158. Cain 1988; on the reliefs from the House of the Gilded Cupids, see Sogliano 1907, 574–588; Seiler 1992, 116–123, 127–128. MacMahon 2005, 72–75; Fant, Russell, and Barker 2013; Ellis 2018, 58–61. III.8.9: Pompeii, Parco Archeologico, inv. 55214 (Sogliano 1905, 274; Dwyer 1981, 279 no. 82; Cain 1988, 204 no. 63). VI.16.12: current location unknown (Sogliano 1908, 61; Dwyer 1981, 287 no. 156, pl. 128.3; Cain 1988, 206 no. 72). Fiorelli 1860–64, I:1.243–244; Dwyer 1981, 279 nos. 84–85; Piranesi and Piranesi 1804, pl. 8. On the sources of reused marble on bar counters, see Fant, Russell, and Barker 2013; Ellis 2018, 169–172. On the reuse of sculptures in Pompeii, see Döhl and Zanker 1984; Powers 2011; Tronchin 2011; Powers 2018; Longfellow 2018. On the use of such rooms, see Ellis 2018, 74. Apart from the marble relief, the published excavation reports from March 1859 do not mention any other finds that can securely be placed in room 4. Objects recorded in room 3 include bronze fittings from a cabinet or chest, a bronze lampstand, three glass bottles, a bronze coin, and a terracotta lamp and vessel (Fiorelli 1860–64, II:683–684). Additional objects recorded in the tavern in 1861 and 1868, but not assigned to specific rooms, include three terracotta pots and two jugs, a glass jug, a bronze needle, two stone weights, two bronze coins, and ten shells (Fiorelli 1861, 353–356; Giornale degli scavi di Pompei n.s. 1.3 [Naples, 1868], 74). Holes in room 4’s south wall for the beams that supported the upper floor are approximately 245 cm above the present floor level; those in the north wall are noticeably higher at approximately 268 cm above the floor. The windowsill is 148–154 cm above the present floor; its opening now measures 114–119 cm in height and 117 cm in width at its bottom. In its current state, the window extends above the south wall beam holes; its present dimensions may reflect modern restoration of the wall rather than its ancient size. Now damaged beyond recognition apart from a few traces of the red and green borders, the paintings are described in Fiorelli 1875, 248; PPM VII:277, 281, s.v. “VII 7, 18. Caupona di Lucius Numisius.” Fiorelli also used the word osceno to describe the marble relief from VII.7.18 (1860–64, II:683) and the paintings of couples engaging in intercourse from the brothel (1875, 286; Levin-Richardson 2019, 65).

244  REPRESENTING WOMEN

34. PPM I:651–656, s.v. “I 7, 11. Casa dell’Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages.” 35. Cf. the back of a relief found in house V.3.10 (MANN inv. no. 126174; Powers 2018, 227–228, fig. 9.2). 36. See Powers 2011 (with further discussion of the ensembles in houses I.13.16 and I.2.10); Guidobaldi 2006; Guidobaldi and Guzzo 2010; Guidobaldi 2017, 246–249; Powers 2018. 37. Clarke 1998, 161–169. 38. See Clarke 2003, esp. 1–13, on the methodological challenges of studying non-elite responses to Roman art. 39. Jacobelli 1995, 32–41; Clarke 1998, 216–218. See also Levin-Richardson 2019, 67–68 on the painting of a couple in a similar pose, but with their genitals concealed, in the brothel. 40. Clarke 1998, 184–185. 41. MANN inv. nos. 27686, 27689, and 27694 (Jacobelli 1995, 33, 39, figs. 28–30; Clarke 1998, 217, pl. 8). 42. Women wearing gold chains: Suburban Baths, apodyterium, scene 4 (Jacobelli 1995, 44–47); House of the Vettii (VI.15.1), room x’ (Clarke 1998, 173; Severy-Hoven 2012, 563–564). The absence of gold jewelry from some erotic paintings in their present state may not reflect their original appearance: Clarke (1998, 156) notes the disappearance of applied gilding for jewelry and other elements in the painting of a couple from the House of Caecilius Iucundus (V.1.26). 43. See the recent discussion of this issue in Strong 2016, 118–141 and in the essays by LevinRichardson, Trimble, and Jacobelli in this volume. 44. MANN inv. no. 152798 (Carrella et al. 2008, 52–55, no. A30). 45. Surveyed in Dierichs 1998a, 1998b; Thibaut 2008. 46. The statuettes display a range of facial types and states of preservation: cf. MANN inv. no. 114536 (Carrella et al. 2008, 75–76 no. B11; Jacobelli, in this volume) and 125173 (Carrella et al. 2008, 79 no. B14); Pompeii, Parco Archeologico, inv. 12164 (Jashemski 1979, 125, fig. 199). 47. Hodske 2007, 143–149; Dierichs 1998b; Swetnam-Burland 2018. 48. MANN inv. no. 145515 (Painter 2001, 58, no. M6, pl. 6). 49. See Brendel 1970, 13–18; Myerowitz 1992, 136–137. 50. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. RES.08.34d (Comstock and Vermeule 1976, 73–74 no. 116; Kondoleon 2011, 119–120, 202 no. 101: mid- to late first century CE). I thank Christine Kondoleon for kindly discussing the two Boston reliefs with me. 51. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. RES.08.34c (Comstock and Vermeule 1976, 72–73 no. 115; Kondoleon 2011, 126–128, 202 no. 107: second century CE). 52. Plaster medallion: Kabul, National Museum of Afghanistan, inv. 57.151 (Menninger 1996, 126–128, 180–182, no. M31: Augustan period). Lamp: Bruneau 1971, 494–501, no. 56 (second to third century CE; probably the same lamp as Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. 1991.1020; Kondoleon 2011, 202). 53. On tavern clients, see Ellis 2004; DeFelice 2007. Cf. Levin-Richardson 2019, 64–80, 99–110 on the role of erotic paintings in shaping low-status clients’ experiences in the brothel. 54. On prostitution in taverns, see DeFelice 2001; McGinn 2002; 2004, 15–20; 2013; LevinRichardson 2019, 2–4, 143–144. 55. Juv. 6.122–123. See Joshel 1997, 247–248; Strong 2016, 107–109.

SEX ON DISPLAY IN POMPEII’S TAVERN VII.7.18   245

56. Green 2015c, 155; cf. Strong (2016, 128–132) on Roman literary sources acknowledging female desire. 57. On ancient (and modern) responses to this position, see Myerowitz 1992, 153; Jacobelli 1995, 36–41; Levin-Richardson 2019, 67–68. 58. On female workers in taverns, see DeFelice 2001; Strong 2016, 111–113; Berg 2019; cf. Swetnam-Burland in this volume on the range of women’s roles in commercial activity in Pompeii. On reconstructing Roman prostitutes’ experiences, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 111–128 and in this volume. 59. Cf. Myerowitz 1992; Severy-Hoven 2012; Clarke (1998, 218) explores men’s and women’s responses to the paintings in the apodyterium of the Suburban Baths. 60. Berg (2018b, 2019) explores the association of gold jewelry with prostitutes and tavern workers. 61. See D’Ambra 1996; 2000; 2016, esp. 65–67.

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CHAPTER 13

Drawings of Women at Pompeii Margaret L. Laird

Women were everywhere in Pompeii. Elite, ordinary, and enslaved women lived, worked, and died in the colony. They were members of families and familia, and they participated in networks of friends, business associates, and fellow cult adepts. Many of the previous chapters have offered glimpses of their passing in the material record of Pompeii. We can see plaster casts of their bodies, enter spaces where they worked and lived, marvel at the mirrors and jewelry they owned, read their funerary inscriptions, or catch sight of them in graffiti written by and about them. Representations of women also were everywhere in Pompeii. Prior chapters have considered the portrait statues of elite women that stood in public buildings and decorated their tombs, and the painted likenesses that adorned walls, showing women involved in rituals, at work, or in scenes of everyday life. There were divine women, too. Statues and statuettes of goddesses populated temples, lararia, and gardens. They decorated coins, gems, lamps, and other objects; starred in mythological frescoes; and populated fantastical painted architectural surrounds. Yet, neither the archaeological record nor the representations of Pompeii’s women give us easy access to their varied lives and experiences. Moreover, scholars have tended to elide the city’s living women with the city’s many representations of women. In some cases, there is overlap, as when real women are depicted in statues, reliefs, and painted portraits.1 But this subset represents only those who were wealthy enough to commission or merit a portrait. Even though women may have influenced the appearance of some of these images, nonetheless most were highly mediated, in the sense that they were rendered by professional 247

artists who created commissioned works of art. While such representations help us understand elite, aspirational self-fashioning, they do not shed much light on how ordinary women perceived of themselves and were perceived by others. Drawings of women made by amateurs exist somewhere between the lived reality of actual women and the commissioned images of them that were produced by professional artists. These drawings were etched with a sharp object (true graffiti), were painted with brush and monochrome pigment (dipinti), or were drawn with charcoal or another marker.2 They were made deliberately by individuals of varying “level(s) of pictorial competence,” from very young children, to beginning drawers, to experienced amateurs.3 Some drawers may have been professional artists, drawing in their free time. Most of their names are unknown, but we should assume that any Pompeian—female or male, old or young, enslaved or free, humble or elite—could have made drawings.4 However, these compositions differ from most art that survives from the ancient world in that the images were not formally commissioned or created for a market.5 In this regard, ancient drawings constitute a unique source for ancient imagery and, more importantly, for the mindscape of ancient people. Prior scholars have used graffiti drawings to populate ancient spaces and determine how they were used, or to delineate control and surveillance.6 These approaches largely focus on the exterior experiences of the ancient drawer: Where was the person making marks? What was she or he seeing? Was she or he allowed to draw there, or not? I, too, will consider physical and spatial questions, but I wish to expand the inquiry to consider what drawings can reveal about the interiority of ancient people.7 Following the work of perceptual psychologist and art theorist Rudolph Arnheim, I will treat drawings as “expressions of cognitive activity, a record of visual thinking and problem solving that expresses the artist’s subjective experience of him- [or her-] self and his [or her] world.”8 Thus, we may say that drawings not only reveal where a person made marks and what she or he desired to represent, but also their efforts to make visible a facet of their reality. I will do this by focusing on drawings of human and divine women at Pompeii. I will first identify these images based on accompanying names and iconographic criteria. I then will consider the formal characteristics of these drawings, which differ substantially from the images of women that are so familiar from commissioned art. Finally, I will examine these representations in the contexts in which they were drawn, considering the surrounding texts and images and the built environments into which they were inserted. The relative rarity of these drawings may have made them noticeable, but they were made more so by a variety of ploys that included size, association with prestigious programmata, placement in prominent locations, and frontal pose.

248  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 13.1.

Drawings of mortal women surviving in situ or in apographs, with heights. Names in quotation marks (e.g., “Fortunata”) copy texts associated with the drawing.

Drawings of Women: Evidence and Patterns Martin Langner’s catalog of drawings from the ancient world includes 196 examples from Pompeii that represent humans and anthropomorphic deities.9 I exclude from this total the many genre figures from the games (gladiators, bestiarii [beast fighters], and athletes), as well as hunters and sailors, all of which can be expected to be male. Some of these drawings still survive in situ, but many have perished. Some, but not all, of them have been transcribed as line drawings (apographs) and published in various sources, including the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and Notizie degli Scavi. A comparison of these replicas to surviving originals and archival photographs suggests that their accuracy varies.10 Of the 196 drawings of humans and deities, 20 can be recognized as mortal or immortal women. The most secure identifications are based on accompanying female names whose proximity and proportions suggest that they label the people or deities depicted (e.g., figs. 13.1b, 13.2f, 13.4, 13.5, 13.6, 13.7).11 Distinctive iconography helps identify mythological figures (e.g., figs. 13.2b, c). Most uncertain are identifications based on more subjective criteria, such as hairstyle and clothing. There are ten drawings of mortal women. Six are inscribed with female names: two Fortunatas (figs. 13.1a, b); Hiria (fig. 13.1c), Nigra (fig. 13.1d), Sagania (fig. 13.1e), and Volasena (fig. 13.1f ).12 Four others have been identified as women based on features such as long hair, dress, or physiognomy. One of these survives (fig. 13.1g).13 A second is known from a sketch in the Giornali degli Scavi for April 1913 (fig. 13.1h).14 Two other drawings recognized as women have perished; their identifications are even more tenuous.15 There are ten drawings of mythological women: two Romas (figs. 13.2e, f ) and a “Gorgonus” are identified by accompanying graffiti texts.16 Iconography permits the identification of a third Roma (fig. 13.2g);17 two additional Gorgones (figs. 13.2a, b);18 and two drawings of Minerva, one a bust (fig. 13.2c),19 the other a standing figure (fig. 13.2d; fig. 13.3, left).20 My designation of this last drawing merits a brief discussion. It was rendered on a column in the Campus ad Amphitheatrum (also called the Grand Palaestra, II.7) and has been identified as an owl standing on a rock.21 A different interpretation is suggested by comparison to a drawing of a man found in the same context (fig. 13.3, right).22 His ovoid body is interrupted by vertical and horizontal lines indicating folds of a toga or palla (mantle); limbs emerge as single strokes from the body’s bottom and sides; and hands are denoted by forking lines.23 Similar figural gestures also appear in fig. 13.3, left, which resolves into a head seen in profile (the “owl”) atop a draped body. Two additional details suggest that the figure is Minerva.24 First, the figure’s eye is bounded by a rectangular box, recalling the band drawn across the eyes of helmeted goddesses such as Roma and Minerva (figs. 13.2c, e, f, and g). The helmet’s crest is suggested by parallel lines that extend behind the standing figure’s head. Second, near the top of the body the draftsperson used

250  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 13.2.

Drawings of mythological women surviving in situ or in apographs, with heights. Names in quotation marks (e.g., “Roma”) copy texts associated with the drawing. Names in brackets (e.g., {Medusa}) are identifications based on iconography.

FIGURE 13.3.

Left: Drawing of Minerva (Langner 2001, cat. no. 1732); right: drawing of a man wearing a palla (Langner 2001, cat. no. 711). Both drawn on columns of the Campus ad Amphithea­ trum (II.7), Pompeii.

horizontal lines to delineate a cape-like band that is ornamented by c-shaped strokes. This recalls, in sketchy form, the aegis worn by the goddess drawn in the House of the Centenary (IX.8.3) (fig. 13.2c).25 This “body” of twenty figures represents about 10 percent of the total number of drawings of humans and anthropomorphic deities as collected by Langner. This percentage appears comparable to those calculated by Erika Zimmermann Damer (chapter 8), who finds that attestations of women account for 14 percent of the names recorded in Pompeii’s textual graffiti. However, my analysis leaves out drawings of exclusively male genre figures (gladiators, etc.). Their addition would significantly reduce the percentage of women represented by drawings. Like graffiti naming women, the drawings were found throughout the town, on the exteriors and interiors of domestic, public, commercial, and funerary spaces.26 The vast majority are “singletons,” each rendered by a unique artist on a separate stretch of wall. Often they are the only drawn image of a woman found in their particular location. A notable exception, the Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), contained at least four drawings of Medusa.27 In contrast, several walls in Pompeii preserve multiple sketches of male heads, sometimes executed by the same hand. At least eleven profiles were scratched onto the façade of the House of the Ceii (I.16.5), for example.28 Aside from the Stabian Baths, there are no instances where a draftsperson practiced drawing female heads or where multiple drawers depicted women.29 Moreover, drawings of women are absent from places where we might expect them. Houses containing painted programs featuring mythological or real women—such as the Villa of the Mysteries—do not contain any drawings of women.30 And, in places 252  REPRESENTING WOMEN

where women recognized each other with textual graffiti, as in the tablinum of the House of the Four Styles (I.8.17, 11), they did not attempt to represent themselves pictorially.31 In fact, no drawings of women were found in this house. This leads to my first conclusion: despite the fact that women lived at Pompeii, were represented in sculptures and paintings, and were addressed in and wrote graffiti texts, they were not frequent subjects of non-professional drawers. This absence suggests that women—or their images—did not figure in the visual imagination of those Pompeians who expressed themselves though freehand, figural graffiti. This also suggests that drawings of women are unique, and will repay careful consideration. In the following sections, I will examine the subject matter and formal qualities of the drawings. The purpose is twofold: to compare the drawings to representations of women in other media, and to determine what distinguishes drawings of women from drawings of men. Following this, I will turn to three case studies that explore these drawings in their ancient contexts.

Examining the Images: Subject Matter and Formal Qualities Before examining the drawings that survive, it is instructive to consider what was not drawn. The commissioned images of women in a variety of media appear to have had a limited influence on drawers in terms of subject matter and iconography. In the mythological realm, only Roma, Minerva, and Medusa are represented. Surprisingly, there are no drawings of Venus, who was patroness of the colony and propitiated as a bringer of love. Although this goddess appears in numerous wall paintings, in mosaics, and on shop signs, and is addressed in graffiti, she cannot be found in drawings.32 To varying degrees, artists rendered established iconographies when drawing these mythological women. Minerva, in particular, is easy to recognize by her carefully articulated and decorated helmet and aegis (fig. 13.2c). This may, however, be less of a pattern than a tautology, as it is this iconography that permits us to identify the goddesses today. In fact, we should be open to the possibility that drawers may have rendered what we consider “standard” iconography incorrectly or not at all. On the human plane, the drawings do not depict mortal women at work or tools related to their labor, although one accompanying graffito text, drawn above the bust of Fortunata found in the Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix at I.8.1, suggests the woman earned money through prostitution (fig. 13.4).33 Wall paintings in lararia and elsewhere depict women sacrificing or participating in religious festivals.34 These complex, multifigure compositions were not attempted in drawings. Nor are there drawings of nude mythological or mortal female bodies, or symplegmata (erotic groupings) showing women engaged in sexual intercourse, despite the fact that both were common in other media.35 And, while phalli were ubiquitous in drawings and in a variety of other media, there are no images of vaginas or breasts.36 Nineteen out of the twenty drawings of women—the overwhelming majority—are DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   253

FIGURE 13.4.

Drawing of Fortunata and accompanying graffito text (CIL 4.8185) from the Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1), Pompeii.

heads or busts, most of which omit shoulders or the upper torso.37 Clearly, drawers were unconcerned to represent the array of sculptural body types that signaled elite feminine values through pose, body language, and drapery.38 This cannot be explained by lack of artistic skill, as Pompeii’s draftspeople lavished careful attention on gladiators’ bodies, depicting them in a variety of complex poses and detailing their costumes. In a similar vein, the busts themselves largely eschew attributes considered “typical” of sculpted and painted female portraits: idealized, regular features; elaborate or distinctive hairstyles; and jewelry and other adornment.39 Only one drawing, overlapped by a graffito hailing a certain Sagania, comes close to meeting our expectations (figs. 13.1e and 13.5).40 This is the largest drawing of a woman to survive from Pompeii, and is notable for its artistic ambition.41 The artist rendered the frontal portrait in metalpoint in the center of the arched ceiling of the aedicula of Porta Nocera tomb 12 EN. The outline is sensitively sketched. Eyes, brows, nose, mouth, chin, and an ear (or ears) are proportional and regular. Hatching creates shadows on the figure’s right side; curved contour lines suggest an upswept hairdo. Finally, the artist completed the bottom of the neck with a sharply pointed V that suggests the termination of a bust or the border of a garment. Langner proposes that the artist was inspired by or represented a sculpted funerary portrait nearby, an instance of direct rendering.42 The drawing of Sagania is unique, however. None of the other surviving images of women are comparable in size or are drawn with the same sensitivity and sense of volume. Nor do their artists rely on conventional visual markers found in other media, such as elaborate hairdos, to characterize the image 254  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 13.5.

Drawing of a woman identified by accompanying graffito text as Sagania, from the top of the arch of Porta Nocera tomb 12 EN, Pompeii.

as a woman. In fact, quite the opposite: three of the mortal women wear cropped hairstyles, and Langner notes that in many cases, only an accompanying inscription provides an identification.43 That Pompeii’s drawers ignored the elements that most exemplify female portraiture to modern art historians suggests that what we see as typical does not seem to have penetrated the popular “mind’s eye.” In other words, the abundant painted and sculpted images at Pompeii, products of elite aspiration and self-fashioning, did not constitute a set of visual criteria that informed how ordinary Pompeian drawers thought women should appear. Although the drawing of Sagania is exceptional in reproducing conventions of elite, commissioned art, the figure’s frontality associates it with other drawings of women made by non-professional artists. Eight other heads—45 percent—also face the viewer.44 Even omitting the four gorgoneia, which always were depicted frontally, one-quarter of women look directly out from the walls. Despite the small dataset, this proportion is striking. Only eight drawings of men—a mere 4 percent of the total—are rendered frontally or in three-quarters view.45 This point will reemerge DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   255

in the following case studies focusing on where these images were made and how they were viewed. I will consider first those drawings rendered on building façades, then those drawn in interior spaces. In both contexts, these images must have been eye-catching, due to their comparative rarity. But, I will argue, many of these images were made more conspicuous by their placement in particularly visible spots, by their association with prestigious images or texts, or by their frontal poses that engage the viewer.

Drawing Attention in Public Of the three heads rendered on exterior walls, two were given additional visibility by their size and the contexts in which they were inserted.46 One, drawn in charcoal onto the façade of the house at I.14.2, measured 20 cm tall and 18 cm wide.47 It occupied an area painted white to receive a painted slogan (titulus pictus), one of the attention-grabbing painted texts that crowded the façades of Pompeian houses, particularly along well-used streets. The other profile was a dipinto. A profile of Nigra (fig. 13.1d), in red paint, was appended to a large and elegant painted announcement for upcoming games (edictum munerum edendorum) sponsored by Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius to celebrate the dedication of an enigmatic public work he had financed (fig. 13.6).48 The announcement was painted high on the wall between the doors of the House of Trebius Valens (III.2.1) and Sotericus’s shop (III.2.2) on the Via dell’Abbondanza.49 The size of the head was not recorded, but the height of the surrounding letters suggests it measured ca. 8 cm tall.50 Four copies of Alleius Nigidius Maius’s announcement appear throughout Pompeii.51 The edictum on Valens’s house was painted by a certain Ocella, who signed his work in the capital “O” of the first line. Slightly below and to the right of the final line, Ocella added a brief text, “Bye, Nigra!” [Nigra va(le)], and sketched the woman’s profile. She must have been on the mind of the scriptor of a second of Alleius Nigidius Maius’s edicta (perhaps Ocella again?), as it ends with the same salutation but not, apparently, the painted likeness.52 The greeting to Nigra and her visage exemplify two embellishments that scriptores (professional painters) could add to the official message of a titulus: conversational asides and painted images. Although both elaborations are found singly, Ocella’s titulus on the House of Valens is one of only two to combine them, and the only titulus to thus address a woman. Because these pictures and phrases have not received much scholarly consideration, a brief overview is in order. Remarks and asides, like Nigra’s salutation, were appended in smaller characters to the right of or underneath the last line of the main text of the titulus.53 Most addressed individuals referenced in the announcement or involved in its creation. Some praised or saluted candidates, sponsors of games (editores munerum), or the gladiators who were to fight.54 Some

256  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 13.6.

Profile of Nigra and salutation to her, appended to an announcement for games sponsored by Cn. Alleius Nigidius Maius (CIL 4.7993). Façade west of the entry into the Shop of Sotericus (III.2.2), Pompeii.

scriptores wrote their names or commented on the circumstances in which they lettered the programmata (election slogans).55 A smaller group of what I will term “conversational” texts saluted individuals who apparently were unconnected to the official message of the titulus.56 Presumably they were friends of the scriptores. Nigra is one of only two women to be greeted by painters, and she is unique in that she is addressed in two different edicta, both promoting the same games.57 The second embellishment, the addition of a painted profile, was much less common: Ocella’s titulus is one of only eight to include a profile. The most famous of these are the profiles of the rogator (endorser) Pinarius Cerialis that accompany programmata painted onto the façade of his house (III.4.b).58 Candidates also were depicted alongside slogans, as seen on the front of the House of the Ceii (I.6.15) and the House of the Ship (VI.10, between side entrances 8 and 9).59 Or, a scriptor might take the opportunity to taunt his fellow painter. Two election slogans admonish Astylus, a known scriptor and rogator in his own right, “you are sleeping!” [Astyle dorm(ient)is].60 One of the tituli, perhaps both, included the man’s profile.61 Most scholars interpret these words literally, as rebukes to a lazy Astylus.62 But other

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   257

programmata that urge a person to “awaken” are taken metaphorically as admonitions to support the correct candidate.63 Given Astylus’s history as a rogator, it is likely that he, too, is being urged to back the better man. None of these profiles survives today, but drawings and period photographs suggest all exaggerated an individual’s features to such a degree that modern scholars consider them caricatures.64 Yet such value judgments ultimately don’t allow much progress in understanding the effect of these figures, which was to give a human face to these announcements, to link peoples’ appearances to one of most public media of civic expression. These were eye-catching messages, written in the most visible places throughout the town, promoting the colony’s most eminent men. Pompeii’s programmata painters exploited the social and political caché of the tituli to promote themselves and to convey messages to and about their own social networks. Indeed, the many tituli concerning Alleius Nigidius Maius, one of the town’s wealthiest men, seem to have been particularly attractive.65 Three of the four copies of the edicta munerum discussed above are signed by their pictores and one includes a painted commendation naming Alleius Nigidius Maius the “first man of the colony” (princeps coloniae).66 Two other edicta promoting games given by Alleius Nigidius Maius when he held the office of quinquennalis (special magistrate elected every five years) also contain acclamations of the editor and greetings to the gladiators who will fight.67 It should not be surprising, then, that Nigra’s name and her image were linked to the famous patron’s civic largesse. What we cannot recover are the motives for saluting this particular woman. Perhaps the painter(s) responded to her name, which echoes the initial syllable of Alleius Nigidius Maius’s. Perhaps something about her profile recalled Alleius Nigidius Maius’s as well. Regardless, the prestige of the patron, the location of the titulus, and the large lettering ensured that Nigra’s portrait caught the eye.

Catching the Eye in Domestic Spaces Although dramatically smaller in size, drawings of women made in interior spaces also were conspicuous. Here, draftspeople utilized location and pose to attract attention to the female image. I first consider a single drawing positioned above an eye-catching obsidian mirror, before addressing the many drawings of women that are posed to confront their viewers’ gaze. In both cases, the drawings suggest the women—or their images—possessed a certain power. A drawing of a woman named Fortunata was made in the peristyle of the House of the Orchard (I.9.5–7) (fig. 13.1b).68 The profile was centered above a polished slab of obsidian that was immured into a wall on the northeast side of the walkway that led from the atrium into the rear of the house (fig. 13.7).69 This ornamental panel, positioned between entries into a triclinium (11) and a small interior room (12), was particularly noticeable.70 It was slightly angled toward people entering the garden, 258  REPRESENTING WOMEN

FIGURE 13.7.

Drawings and graffiti texts surrounding an obsidian mirror between triclinium 11 and cubiculum 12, rear peristyle, House of the Orchard (I.9.5–7), Pompeii. Texts in dashed rectangles are rendered typographically.

and its shiny black surface contrasted with the surrounding white plaster. It would have been especially interesting to dinner guests entering the triclinium, who might have paused to contemplate their own reflections in its glossy surface. Those stopping could not have missed Fortunata’s profile, centered above the obsidian panel. Her name, in large letters, extends from the crown of her head rightwards beyond the mirror’s edge. Despite an economy of line, the woman is expressive: her eye opens wide, her hair flies back, her mouth gapes. Before her face, pointed at her mouth, the drawer added a pointed phallus. The image and text suggests a visual version of a popular textual graffito, “Fortunata sucks cock” (Fortunata fellat), found elsewhere in Pompeii.71 Four of these name Fortunata as the fellatrix (cocksucker), and scholars have suggested that all represent the same woman, a notable prostitute.72 It is equally possible, however, that these are two or more women who share a well-attested cognomen or who use it as a “stage name.”73 The prestigious wall ornament attracted other textual and figural graffiti. Some are innocuous, such as a salutation to a certain Successus and an alphabet.74 But the majority are sexual in nature. To the right, the long-nosed profile of a man named Amaranthus is accompanied by a salutation on two lines: “To Amaranthus, greetings . . . greetings!” (CIL 4.10008).75 The letters of the second “greetings,” DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   259

SAL(utem), are suggestively positioned beneath the R of the man’s name to evoke a phallus penetrating an orifice. A second, bearded male was drawn to the left.76 His profile closely matches that of Fortunata, and it is likely he was rendered by the same draftsperson. His open mouth suggests that he, too, is a fellator, although in this case the penis has been omitted.77 Equally suggestive are graffiti texts written to the left of the mirror. One describes a woman named Eupl(i)a as having a loose vagina and a large clitoris (laxa landicosa) (CIL 4.10004).78 Like Fortunata, Euplia is identified as a prostitute in graffiti scribbled elsewhere in Pompeii.79 Above this, the name Anpelus (for Ampelus) is spaced so that the final S becomes a body for Fortunata’s phallus (CIL 4.10003).80 Lower down is written “cin[a]edus i[——]” (a man who likes to be penetrated by other men, CIL 4.10006) and beneath, “of P(ublius) Petronius” and “of Saturninus” (CIL 4.10007).81 It is unclear whether any of these texts were written by the same hand.82 It is tempting, however, to see in this sequence an example of what Rebecca Benefiel terms “dialogues” of graffiti.83 The texts arranged down the wall first characterize Ampelus (or one of the other men named) as a cinaedus, then of a specific man or men.84 Thus, the mirror was a prominent spot for publicizing the sexual proclivities and characteristics of certain individuals: Fortunata, Euplia, the bearded man, and, perhaps, Ampelus. Just as these statements respond to each other, they engage in a dialogue about the creative possibilities of line, language, and image. Euplia’s graffito contains a hapex legomenon, a word otherwise unattested in literary or epigraphic texts—the adjective “landicosa,” or “large-clitorised,” describes the woman in visually vivid terms. Fortunata’s drawing does the opposite, by rendering pictographically a popular statement from the world of textual graffiti. The letters of Ampelus’s and Amaranthus’s graffiti resolve into images, demonstrating the expressive capacity of lines to represent words and pictures simultaneously. Viewers might be prompted to imagine the phallus that the bearded man gapes to accept, wonder whether Fortunata really did fellate Ampelus, or create an evolving narrative about the man’s other desires. The graffiti may also characterize several of the individuals as active practitioners of their preferred form of sexual congress. The writer of Ampelus’s name certainly makes such a statement: the text and drawing can be “read” pictographically as “Ampelus face-fucks Fortunata” (Anpelus irrumat Fortunata[m]) or as “I, Ampelus, face-fuck you, Fortunata” (ego Anpelus irrumo te, Fortunata).85 Other graffiti hinting that the man is a penetrated cinaedus may seem to contradict Ampelus’s claim to be a sexual agent. Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson have argued, however, that cinaedi are portrayed in Roman literature as vigorous actors whose appetite for penetration qualify them as active partners.86 The same authors propose elsewhere that Romans positively conceived of some women who desired sex and performed it lustily and with skill.87 Thus, a fellatrix like Fortunata is distinguished in both literature and graffiti “as an agent of fellatio,” rather than as a passive recipient. Likewise, Euplia’s epithets simultaneously described the woman’s genitals and suggested 260  REPRESENTING WOMEN

she had a voracious sexual appetite. Both interpretations are complemented by her name: Euplia literally means “well-filled.”

The Gorgon’s Gaze The drawings surveyed above were made conspicuous by their proximity to attention-grabbing features. Other drawings that were not made in such opportune locations literally managed to catch the eye. A significant number of women’s faces gaze outwards from the wall to directly confront their viewers.88 Images of the Gorgon Medusa provide an entry into a deeper discussion. Five drawings of this creature were discovered at Pompeii, making Medusa the most popular mythological woman rendered by Pompeian draftspeople.89 Four were found in the Stabian Baths; only one survives today (fig. 13.2b).90 It was scratched onto the wall of the east portico to the north (left) of the entry into the women’s baths, below and left of the central emblema of a red painted panel (fig. 13.8).91 A deer, probably sketched by the same draftsperson, leaps to the right, turning its head to look back at the Medusa.92 The second gorgoneion, now lost but identified by the text “Gorgonus,” was drawn on the column opposite.93 A quadruped, described as “crouching,” also accompanied the head.94 Two other heads were found nearby, and it is likely that they also represented Medusa. They were sketched onto the same wall as fig. 13.2b, although their precise locations were not recorded. Giulio Minervini described one as female and frontal, near a running deer.95 The other had long hair and was accompanied by a quadruped running to the left. Another animal, running right, completed the grouping.96 No texts were found to identify these last renderings, and apographs were never made of their details. But the proximity of the four drawings and the consistency of their imagery (female / long hair / front-facing; accompanied by running animals) suggest all represented the Gorgon Medusa and were created by the same draftsperson or by multiple drawers responding to one another and the particular location. Gorgones appeared in a variety of media, including architectural reliefs, coins, ceramics, frescoes, jewelry, and carved amulets. By the Roman period, the demon’s iconography was well established: a broad, frontal face with evenly distributed features; wide eyes that stare out from under emphatically raised brows; wings at the temples; and a coiffure of twisting snakes, two of which frequently are knotted beneath her chin.97 At Pompeii, isolated gorgoneia were painted onto walls as apotropaic and decorative devices. The face also adorned warriors’ shields and Minerva’s aegis in mythological frescoes.98 Any of these images might have inspired the artist(s) of the gorgones in the Stabian Baths. It is not surprising to find gorgoneia drawn in a bath complex. The fearsome visage was an apotropaic emblem that protected bodies and buildings.99 Baths were particularly dangerous places where patrons were vulnerable to physical and DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   261

FIGURE 13.8.

Plan of the Stabian Baths (VII.1.8) in Pompeii showing the findspots of the four gorgones near the entry into the women’s baths. Findspots indicated by dashed arrows are conjectural.

otherworldly evils. These included infections, accidents, and robbery, as well as exposure to invidia, demons, and the evil eye.100 Accordingly, apotropaic devices such as phalluses and ithyphallic figures appeared in mosaics laid at thresholds leading into and within baths in Pompeii and elsewhere.101 This was not the case with the Stabian Baths, and a drawer or drawers appear to have taken matters into their own hands. The staring faces would have been visible to people approaching the doorway, with those rendered on the wall and column opposite demarcating a boundary. The decision to draw at least one gorgoneion on a section of wall painted red may have aimed to enhance the power of the visage; Gorgons carved on red stones such as jasper and coral were thought to be especially effective.102 But the images were particularly relevant at this doorway, which opens onto a corridor that connects the palaestra with the changing room (apodyterium) of the women’s baths (fig. 13.8). Here, women removed their clothes before proceeding into the warm and hot rooms beyond. A protome of Medusa, who famously turned men to stone with her gaze, was an appropriate guardian of a space in which women would have been notably vulnerable.103 The fleeing animals served two related purposes. In a literal sense, their fright demonstrated the Gorgon’s power. More conceptually, they conflated the demon’s protective energy with a second myth, that of Actaeon, the hunter who happened upon Diana and her nymphs while they were bathing in 262  REPRESENTING WOMEN

a woodland grotto.104 In Ovid’s telling, the nymphs surrounded the naked, blushing goddess, whose arrows lay on the side of the pool, alongside her clothes.105 Her only recourse was to splash water onto the youth, exclaiming: “Now you are free to tell that you have seen me all unrobed—if you are able to tell.”106 Immediately, Actaeon was transformed into a deer, who fled into the forest, where he was killed by his own hunting dogs. The myth of Actaeon was a popular subject for Pompeian fresco painters, who rendered the victim in mostly human form.107 The drawers in the Stabian Bath show the animal, although the sketchy lines used to depict the legs and horns of the surviving deer may suggest that the conversion is incomplete. The visage of the Gorgon also serves as the blushing face of Diana, and the group warns any male interloper to stay away, lest Actaeon’s fate befall him.108 Given the specificity of the imagery and its aptness for this threshold, it is tempting to see women as the makers of some or all of the drawings. Regardless, the gorgoneia and animals suggest a novel, popular understanding of the two myths and of the power of mythological imagery to demarcate and safeguard a gendered space.109 Although they did not cluster in the same numbers as seen in the Stabian Baths, other drawings of the Gorgon and front-facing females were equally obvious. A Gorgon’s head drawn onto the twenty-sixth column from the east in the south portico of the Campus (II.7) was sketched onto a cannelure that is easily visible by a person traveling westward along the walkway (fig. 13.2a).110 A frontal portrait of Hiria was drawn on the inside of the corner column in the garden peristyle of the house at I.7.19 (fig. 13.9).111 It was visible to those walking along the porticus and to those descending the stairs leading into the space from the contiguous House of the Ephebe (I.7.10–12). Although a visage of Fortunata from the Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1) and a head of Roma from the Little House of Roma (VI.16.35) are no longer extant, apographs show both with regular features spread across round faces and wide, staring eyes (figs. 13.1a, 13.2f ).112 These, too, must have arrested viewers familiar with the direct gaze of the gorgoneion. The maker of Fortunata’s image in the Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1) may have even exploited the portrait’s resemblance to the Gorgon to make a visual pun. The head was accompanied by two texts. One reported a certain Mula’s (or Romula’s) attentions to Antonius. The second noted that Fortunata could be had for 2 asses (fig. 13.4).113 The lettering of this graffito, whose first and last letters frame the drawn head, suggests that the illustration depicts Fortunata. Kamen and Levin-Richardson have emphasized the agency that the first graffito gives Mula.114 The drawing extends these erotic forces to Fortunata. The woman’s round face, articulated eyes, and spikey hair recall the gorgoneion, a visage with the power to make men rock hard. Indeed, the outline of Fortunata’s head recalls an erect phallus.115 Unlike the image of Fortunata in the peristyle of the House of the Orchard, there was no mirror to protect the viewer from the Gorgon’s gaze. Yet the accompanying text assured that men who set eyes on this woman could “get lucky,” for a price. DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   263

FIGURE 13.9.

Location of the drawing of Hiria on the corner column in the peristyle of the house at I.7.19, Pompeii. The stairs seen front left lead to the House of the Ephebe (I.7.10-12).

Conclusion As unmediated representations of visual thinking, drawings can help us understand popular notions held by ancient Pompeians. The small corpus of drawings that depict women suggest that non-professional artists had little desire to render females visually. This is not so much a silence as a profound absence of women, as a group, from the popular imagination of Pompeii’s drawers. Those women who were depicted may have had remarkable qualities that demanded their likenesses be rendered in drawing. The majority of these representations, however, don’t conform to the female image portrayed in more elite (and visually impressive) media like painting and sculpture. This suggests that the markers that we consider emblematic of Roman womanhood had limited appeal to the person on the street. Because of their rarity, those drawings of women that were made may have been particularly noticeable. But draftspeople employed a variety of strategies to attract attention to their drawings, including placement, context, and frontal poses. Despite this desire to catch the eye, many drawings are ambivalent about the power of the female visage. On the one hand, drawings of the Gorgon could protect bathers and exercisers. On the other hand, several mortal women were given the power of

264  REPRESENTING WOMEN

the Gorgon’s gaze, suggesting their (sexual) agency was somehow dangerous. These drawings, made by non-professional artists, delineate new ways to understand Pompeii’s women and their role in ancient society.

Appendix. Catalogue of Drawings of Women at Pompeii DESCRIPTION

REFERENCE

LOCATION

STATUS / REMARKS

Fig. #

1

Frontal head, graffito, labeled “Fortunata”

AGPEDR128557 (R. Benefiel); Langner cat. no. 189; CIL 4.8185

Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1), interior, west wall

Lost; apographs in Della Corte 1912, 405 and CIL ad n.

13.1a; 13.4

2

Profile head, graffito, labeled “Fortunata”

Langner cat. no. 292; CIL 4.10005

House of the Orchard (I.9.5), peristyle garden, on wall of east porticus, above obsidian mirror between doors into rooms 11 and 12

Pompeii, Casa di Bacco, inv. 86689; apographs in CIL ad n. and Langner 2001, pl. 14; photograph in Varone 2012, 57

13.1b; 13.7

3

Frontal head, graffito, labeled “Hiria”

Langner cat. no. 188; CIL 4.8184

House at 1.7.19, peristyle garden, on column in north west corner

In situ; apograph in Langner 2001, pl. 10; photograph in Varone 2012, 47

13.1c; 13.9

4

Profile head, dipinto, labeled “Nigra”

Langner cat. no. 239; CIL 4.7993

Shop of Sotericus (III.2.2), façade to west of entry

Lost; apograph in CIL ad n.; photograph in Varone and Stefani 2009, 23; appended to dipinto announcing games

13.1d; 13.6

5

Frontal head, metalpoint, labeled “Sagania”

Langner cat. no. 570; CIL 4.10229a

Porta Nocera Necropolis, tomb 12 EN, ceiling of apse

In situ; apograph in Langner 2001, pl. 26

13.1e; 13.5

6

Profile head, graffito(?), labeled “Volasena”

Langner cat. no. 256; CIL 4.3102

Workshop VII.2.30, fauces

Lost; apograph in CIL ad n.

13.1f

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   265

7

Profile female(?) head, graffito

Langner cat. no. 417; Maulucci Vivolo 1993, 83

House of the Cryptoporticus (I.6.2), oecus 22, south wall

In situ; apograph in Maulucci Vivolo, ad loc.

13.1g

8

Profile female(?) head, graffito

GdSc, April 1913, 100

House of M. Fabius Ululutremulus (IX.13.5), façade

Lost; apograph in GdSc ad loc.

13.1h

9

Female(?) head

Langner cat. no. [335]; CIL 4.9914

House I.14.2, façade

Lost; described in Della Corte 1958, 96 as a “female head” (protome muliebre); CIL ad n.

10

Frontal female(?) head, graffito(?)

AGP-EDR 167453 (H. Sypniewski); Langner cat. no. [572]; CIL 4.8562

Campus ad Amphitheatrum (II.7), south colonnade, column 18, stria 5

Lost; described in Della Corte 1939, 251 as a “small bust (female?) facing front” (un bustino [muliebre?] di prospetto); CIL ad n.

11

Frontal head, graffito, iconography of Medusa

AGPEDR128583 (A. Nizolek); Langner cat. no. 334; CIL 4.8597; Della Corte 1939, 258 no. 107

Campus ad Amphitheatrum (II.7), south colonnade, column 26, stria 13

In situ; apograph in Langner 2001, pl. 17

13.2a

12

Frontal head, graffito, iconography of Medusa

Langner cat. no. [526]; Minervini 1858, 3

Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), palaestra, east wall, north of door into women’s baths

In situ; illustrated in Langner 2001, fig. 1b (photograph); pl. 17 (apograph), as cat. no. 330

13.2b; 13.8

13

Frontal head, graffito, labeled “Gorgonus”

Langner cat. no. [576]; CIL 4.2089; Minervini 1858, 4

Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), palaestra, east colonnade, second-tolast column from the north, opposite appendix, no. 12

Lost; described in Minervini, ad loc.; findspot in CIL ad n.

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14

Frontal female head, context suggests Medusa(?), graffito

Langner cat. no. 330; Minervini 1858, 3

Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), palaestra, east wall

Lost; described in Minervini, ad loc., as “frontal female head” (testa femminile di fronte)

15

Female(?) head, context suggests Medusa(?), graffito

Langner cat. no. [527]; Minervini 1858, 3

Stabian Baths (VII.1.8), palaestra, east wall

Lost; described in Minervini, ad loc., as “another head with long hair” (altra testa con capelli pendenti)

16

Profile head, graffito, iconography of Minerva

Langner cat. no. 1168; CIL 4.5215

House of the Centenary (IX.8.6.3a), east ala off the atrium, south wall

Lost; apograph in CIL ad n.

13.2c

17

Profile standing figure, iconography of Minerva

AGPEDR167499 (H. Sypniew­ ski); Langner cat. no. 1732; CIL 4.8635

Campus ad Amphitheatrum (II.7), south colonnade, column 63, stria 15

In situ; apograph in Langner 2001, pl. 111; identified in CIL ad n. as an owl standing on a rock

13.2d; 13.3

18

Profile head, graffito, labeled “Roma felix”

Langner cat. no. 413; CIL 4.8119

House of Paquius Pro­ culus (I.7.1), porticus, south colonnade, fourth column from the east

Lost; apograph in CIL ad n.

13.2e

19

Frontal head, graffito, labeled “Roma”

Langner cat. no. 206; CIL 4.6856; Sogliano 1908, 361

Little House of Roma (VI.16.35), triclinium, north wall

Lost; apograph in Sogliano, ad loc.

13.2f

20

Profile head, graffito, iconography of Roma

Langner cat. no. 332

House of Minucius Fuscus (I.10.8), south wall of room 3 (workshop?)

In situ; apograph in Langner 2001, pl. 17

13.2g

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   267

Notes

1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

Many thanks are due to Brenda Longfellow for including me in the Symposium Campanum and for her and Molly Swetnam-Burland’s thoughtful editorial comments and encouragements. Research for the project was conducted at Pompeii in the summer of 2019 and was graciously facilitated by Grete Stefani. This chapter has benefited from conversations with Sandra Joshel, Rebecca Benefiel, and Erika Zimmermann Damer. Rebecca Swerdlow provided research assistance. Marietta Horster and Andreas Faßbender at the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and Martin Langner generously provided apographs of drawings. I also wish to thank Brian Rose and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where I am a Consulting Scholar. Finally, it is a pleasure and an honor to contribute a chapter to a volume that includes work by my dissertation advisor, Barbara Kellum, to whom I dedicate this paper. See, e.g., Longfellow, Kellum, and Gazda in this volume. Throughout this paper, “drawing” will encompass this variety of media. For drawing in the ancient world, see Langner 2001, esp. 100–123 for drawing at Pompeii. Langner’s catalog of drawings is published on an accompanying CD-ROM. I will reference drawings in Langner’s catalog as “Langner cat. no.” Following Langner, catalog numbers shown in brackets (e.g., [249]) will indicate now-lost drawings that were described but not illustrated in publications such as CIL or NSc. Golomb 2002, 18. In defining the corpus of drawings of women, I omit images drawn by the youngest children. These render the human body as a circle with protruding stick arms and legs (e.g., Langner 2001, 112, 121, pl. 30, cat. nos. 633–634). Langner 2001, 120–121; Benefiel 2014, 495. Langner (2001, 122) postulates that some multifigure compositions may have been intentional features of a room’s décor. Langner’s masterful monograph (2001) is broad in its focus. Huntley (2012, 2018) examines drawings made by Pompeian children to determine where they spent time, and how they were acculturated and disciplined. Benefiel (2010, 2012) considers drawings alongside textual graffiti as part of dialogic exchanges between Pompeians. Chaniotis and De Staebler (2018) use graffiti drawings to identify areas where gladiator spectacles were staged at Aphrodisias. Notably, Huntley (2012) considers how the life experiences of children influenced what they drew. The characterization is that of Golomb (2002, 16–19), summarizing Arnheim 1966, 1969, 1974. Sixteen drawings are so ambiguous that their sex cannot be determined. Some of these may represent women, but given the ratio of men to women (8.5:1), that number should be quite small. I also exclude images drawn by the youngest children (see above, n. 3). These are so schematic that it is impossible to determine their sex. For instance, apographs made in the 1990s by Martin Langner (e.g., figs. 13.1c, 1e, 1g; 13.3) are highly faithful. A profile of Astylus, appended to the programma CIL 4.7464, represents the other end of the spectrum. CIL (ad n.) depicts an angular, upright bust with a beaky nose and a lamplight eye. An early photograph of the programma shows a more painterly image with subtler facial features; Varone and Stefani 2009, 156–157. A

268  REPRESENTING WOMEN

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

sketch of the head included in the Giornali degli Scavi for December 1915 is closer to the original, but still differs significantly. Langner (2001, 35) distinguishes texts naming the individuals depicted from artists’ signatures. Appendix, nos. 1–6. All names are written in the same medium as the drawing. For names of women in Pompeii, see Zimmermann Damer, this volume. I exclude from my corpus two drawings identified as women by associated names. Langner (2001, 37, 38, cat. no. 237) identifies a dipinto profile labeled “Astyle / Astylus, you are sleeping” (Astyle, dormis; CIL 4.7464) as female after interpreting lines at the back of the figure’s head as a veil. However, a male programma painter named Astylus is attested numerous times at Pompeii; Franklin 1980a, 64–66. The woman’s name, Astyle, only appears in CIL 12.3428 from Nemausus. Della Corte (1936, 335, no. 205) identifies as female a now-lost caricature painted in black on the façade of the tavern at III.7.2 (CIL 4.8954), based on what he saw as long hair. An accompanying charcoal graffito, in which a certain Habitus salutes a woman named Issa, would seem to confirm the identification. However, a photograph and apograph of this figure (Varone 2012, 209) suggest this is incorrect. The graffito is distanced from the head by ca. 15–20 cm (estimated by recorded letter heights). The photograph shows that the artist rendered the head with a long phallus nose, a feature found on satirical or slanderous pictures of men; Langner 2001, 40 and pl. 15. Appendix, no. 7, from the House of the Cryptoporticus (I.6.2). For other drawings from this room, see Langner 2001, 106–107, cat. nos. 1114–1117, 1421–1423, 1507, 1605–1606, 1724, 2083; Maulucci Vivolo 1993, 76–110. Langner (2001, cat. no. 417) identifies the figure as female based upon its hairstyle and, it seems, facial proportions. I cautiously accept the identification, although at least one other named male profile from Pompeii wears what appears to be a longer coiffure: Langner cat. no. 301, with accompanying graffito text “For Primus” (Primo). Appendix, no. 8, “A small bust of a woman” ([U]n bustino di donna), Giornale degli Scavi di Pompeii, April 1913, 100, graffitoed beside a programma (electoral notice) on the façade of the House of Marcus Fabius Ululutremulus (IX.13.5). This drawing was never subsequently published. Again, subjective criteria apparently suggested the identification, which I cautiously accept. Appendix, nos. 9–10. A sixth head, Langner cat. no. 461, is identified by Della Corte (1958, 150, no. 375) as a woman, although Langner (2001, ad n.) identifies it as a generic kopf, or head. For Langner’s definition of heads, see below, n. 37. I, too, consider it “undetermined.” Romas: appendix, nos. 18–19; Gorgonus: appendix, no. 13. Appendix, no. 20, recognizable by lines suggesting a band across the figure’s eyes. Appendix, nos. 11, 12. Della Corte (1939, 258) identifies the former as Medusa, tentatively accepted by AGP (ad n. 128583). Minervini (1857–58, 3) describes the latter as a “female head with hanging hair” (testa femminile con capelli pendenti). These figures will be examined in more detail below. For the iconography of the Gorgon, see LIMC 4.1:34–60, s.v. “Gorgones Romanae” (Orazio Paoletti). Appendix, no. 16. The goddess is recognizable by her carefully drawn helmet and aegis. Appendix, no. 17.

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   269

21. CIL 4.8635, followed by Langner 2001, cat. no. 1732. Two other drawings of owls from Pompeii depicted the bird frontally; Langner 2001, pl. 111, cat. nos. 1731, 1733. 22. Langner 2001, pl. 33, cat. no. 711; CIL 4.608. 23. Compare also a standing woman from Albano Laziale, Langner cat. no. 682. 24. The figure was drawn one flute away from and at the same height as CIL 4.8635, which salutes a woman named Chloe. It is unclear whether the name and the drawing are associated. Seven more graffiti texts clustered on nearby flutes. I thank Rebecca Benefiel for sharing the results of the AGP survey of the Campus ad Amphitheatrum. 25. It may be no accident that the standing figure’s head resembles an owl, which was the goddess’s bird. 26. See Zimmermann Damer in this volume for the distribution of women’s names. Langner (2001, 100–123) explores the contexts of Pompeii’s graffiti drawings. 27. Appendix, nos. 12–15. For more on these drawings, see below. 28. Langner cat. nos. 440–451; Langner 2001, 34, 80 (product of the same artist), pl. 23, cat. nos. 440–451. 29. Hutson (2011) argues that multiple versions of drawings at Tikal, Guatemala, are evidence of people practicing drawing. 30. Drawings from the Villa are Langner cat. nos. 261–262 (male profiles), 817 (gladiator), [1112] (dog and boar), [1623–1625] (quadruped animals), 1793 (dolphin), [2230] (ship’s prow). 31. Benefiel 2012, 25–29. 32. For Venus’s importance and presence in graffiti, see Varone 2002a, 23–31. For paintings and other media, see Cantarella 1998, esp. 24–25, 31, 126, 128–129. 33. The drawing of Fortunata is appendix, no. 1. Painted scenes showing women working are found, for example, in the estate of Julia Felix (II.4); the caupona of Salvius (VI.14.36); and the fullery of Lucius Veranius Hypsaeus (VI.8.20); Clarke 2003, 96–118, 161–170, and pls. 7–9. See also D’Ambra, this volume. For a female shopkeeper, see fig. 2.1 (Swetnam-Burland, this volume). See also an ivory relief plaque depicting a midwife and attendant (MANN inv. no. 109905; Cantarella 1998, 56) found in the shop at I.2.5. Davies (2008, 217–218) notes that many full-length portrait statues of women do not portray their subjects in specific roles, either. 34. See Bernstein (2008, 533–534) for painted images of women performing religious rituals; Clarke (2003, 89–94) for women participants in the painting depicting a procession to Cybele on the façade of the shop at IX.7.1. 35. One graffito drawing (Langner cat. no. 1371) has been interpreted as an erotic scene; Fiorelli 1866, 5 (no. 38), followed, e.g., by Maulucci Vivolo (1993, 160). Langner (2001, 64) identifies this as a curse scene. For paintings of erotic symplegmata, see Cantarella (1998, esp. 68–117). 36. Cantarella (1998, 66–67, 116–117) illustrates a variety of phalli. For graffiti drawings of phalli, see Langner 2001, 32–33. Images of disembodied vaginas are rare in general, perhaps because they were difficult to recognize; Langner 2001, 32 (regarding graffiti); Faraone 2018, 72–73. The mano di fica, a clenched fist recalling the pudendum, was occasionally used as an apotropaic amulet. Statuettes of Baubo, a naked woman who spreads her legs to reveal her genitals in a pose known as the anasyrma, also were known

270  REPRESENTING WOMEN

37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

in the Roman period; Faraone 2018, 72–74; Suter 2015, 24–26. Neither are drawn at Pompeii. The exception is appendix, no. 17. Langner (2001, 34) distinguishes as “busts” those drawings whose lower margins are completed by a straight or contoured line connecting the two sides of the figure. These differ from “heads,” which are left as open forms. For Langner, this formal distinction does not seem to be significant, except when a drafts­ person apparently intends to depict an actual sculpted bust (e.g., cat. no. 205). Surveyed by Alexandridis 2010; Davies 2008. For sculpted portraits of women from Pompeii see Welch 2007, 558–562, 568, 573–574; and Longfellow in this volume; Kleiner 1992, 38–40, 75–80, 139–140, 177–179 for portrait sculptures of women in the late Republican period and the first century CE; Bartman 2001 for hairstyles; Clarke 2003, 254–259, 261–268, and pl. 24 for painted portraits of women at Pompeii. Drawings of women from other sites occasionally depict period hairstyles. For example, Langner cat. no. 682 from Albano Laziale appears to wear a tall Flavian orbis comarum (circle of hair) coiffure. The drawings found at Pompeii also do not correspond to literary caricatures of women, which emphasize large breasts, overdone hair and makeup, wrinkled skin, discolored teeth, and beady eyes; Richlin 1984; Gold 1998, 372–373. Drawings of women that Langner identifies as caricatures resemble those of men, with long noses and prominent chins. Appendix, no. 5. Della Corte (1958, 150) believes the head depicts Sagania. Langner (2001, 43, cat. no. 570) does not. Langner 2001, 75 n. 468. Langner 2001, 34 and n. 181. Langner (2001, 35), speaking specifically of Fortunata (appendix, no. 1), Hiria (appendix, no. 3), and Roma (appendix, no. 19). Appendix, nos. 1, 3, 10–14, 19. Nos. 10, 13, and 14 are described as frontal. Langner cat. nos. 190, 203, [220], [573], 574, 575. The seventh may be cat. no. 571. The third head is appendix, no. 8. Its measurements were not recorded in the Giornale degli Scavi. Appendix, no. 9. Measurements in Della Corte 1958, 96 no. 90. The drawing is lost and was never photographed or copied. Appendix, no. 4. For a discussion of the Alleii, see also Kellum, this volume. The nature of the work, described as an opus tabularum (a public work probably involving painted panels), is disputed; for suggestions, see Cooley and Cooley 2014, 72; Franklin 1997, 442–444. The size of the dipinto (the letters of the first line measure 49 cm) and the lavishness of the games suggest the work was significant. A second announcement for the same games, CIL 4.1177, hails Alleius as princeps (first man) of the colony. For this man, see Franklin 1997; Moeller 1973; Van Buren 1947. The door to the west was that into the House of Trebius Valens (III.2.1). Letter heights and apograph of the drawing are given in CIL 4.7993. The other three are CIL 4.1177–1178, 3883. CIL 4.3883. It is not recorded whether Nigra’s likeness accompanied this titulus. For greetings in Pompeian graffiti, see Benefiel 2018, 108–111. For illustrations, see Varone and Stefani 2009, 156–157, 288. Painters’ signatures, like Ocella’s, occasionally were painted inside large closed letters such as “O” or “D.”

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   271

54. Editor muneris: CIL 4.1179, 1185. Praise of gladiators: CIL 4.7791, 1184, p. 204. 55. Signatures of scriptores: CIL 4.7992, 7994, 9977. Circumstances of painting: CIL 4.1190, p. 204; 9968d. 56. CIL 4.1203, 7988b–c, 9969, 9983a. 57. The second is Iole, saluted in CIL 4.9969. 58. CIL 4.7669, 7671, painted on the exterior of III.4, to the right of entry b; Langner cat. nos. 240–241. The façade is illustrated in Varone and Stefani 2009, 252, but neither profile survives. The heads are identified as Cerialis because they were rendered above his name. For the attribution of the house, see Della Corte 1924, 121–122. 59. House of the Ceii: CIL 4.7188–7189, illustrated in Varone and Stefani 2009, 64. Langner (2001, 112 fig. 116) incorrectly identifies the profiles as those of Cerialis (see above, n. 58). The profiles are painted to the left of the candidates’ names. House of the Ship: CIL 4.235; Langner cat. no. 242. 60. For Astylus as a programmata painter, see Franklin 1980a, 64–65; 1980b, 25; Chiavia 2002, 87. For Astylus as a rogator, see Chiavia 2002, 240, 255 n. 135. 61. Astylus’s profile is included in CIL 4.7464, painted on the façade of the shop at I.13.3; Langner cat. no. 237. Text appended to a second programma, CIL 4.7794, on the façade of the House of Metellicus (III.7.1) also scolds a sleeping Astylus. A photo of this dipinto illustrated in Varone and Stefani 2009, 288, may include a faint profile. 62. E.g., Franklin 1980a, 64–65. 63. Franklin 1980b, 23, referencing CIL 4.7614, 7624, and 7650. 64. Langner (2001, 36–38, esp. 37) categorizes all the painted profiles appended to tituli picti as caricatures, including cat. nos. 237, 240–242. To a certain extent, this may reflect the medium in which they were rendered—brush and paint—which may have shaped the style of representation. 65. For Alleius Nigidius Maius’s wealth, see Moeller 1973, 519–520. 66. Signatures of pictores: CIL 4.1177, 1178, 7993. Commendation of Alleius Nigidius Maius: CIL 4.1177. Salutation of Nigra: CIL 4.3883, 7993. 67. CIL 4.7991, 1179. 68. Appendix, no. 2. 69. PPM II, s.v. “I 9, 5. Casa del Frutteto (44–45),” and figs. 63–65. 70. Powers 2011, 17. 71. Langner 2001, 39. Examples of graffiti texts using the phrase with a woman’s name include CIL 4.1651, 2278, 7057. See Kamen and Levin-Richardson 2015a, 240–241. 72. E.g., McGinn 2004, 298. Graffiti naming Fortunata as a fellatrix: CIL 4.2224, 2259, 2275, 2310e; graffiti associating the name “Fortunata” with prostitution: CIL 4.111, 8034, 8185, 8984. See also Levin-Richardson, this volume; and Varone 2003, 196, 200, 206, 210. 73. For the cognomen Fortunatus/-a see Kajanto 1982, 273, and a discussion in Zimmermann Damer, this volume. For prostitutes using the name “Fortuna” or “Fortunata” as pseudonyms, see Levin-Richardson 2019, 61. 74. Successus: CIL 4.10009c; Varone 2012, 57. Successus is named elsewhere in the house (CIL 4.9992; Varone 2012, 55) and in the shop next door (I.9.11; CIL 4.10017). Alphabets: CIL 4.10250; Varone 2012, 57. 75. Amarantho sal(utem) | sal(utem); Langner cat. no. 250; Varone 2012, 58.

272  REPRESENTING WOMEN

76. Langner cat. no. 453. 77. Langner (2001, 39) identifies drawings with open mouths as fellatores, even when the phallus is not included. Compare Langner cat. nos. 293–295. 78. Adams 1982, 96–97. 79. CIL 4.2310b, 3330; Varone 2003, 210. A woman by this name also is attested in the Tabula Sulpiciana: TPSulp 60–62. 80. Varone 2012, 57. 81. Varone (2012, 56) attributes the names to two different hands. 82. CIL 4 (ad nn. 10003–10009) reproduces an apograph of 10006, but renders the other graffiti in typeface. Photographs of the texts are published in Varone 2012, 55–58. I have not been able to study these graffiti in person. 83. Benefiel 2010, 2012. 84. For men characterized as cinaedi of other men (with the penetrators’ names rendered in the genitive), compare CIL 4.1772, 1802. 85. Versions of both statements are attested in graffiti: L(ucius) Habonius sauciat / irrumat Caesum / Felice(m) (CIL 4.10232a, Pompeii); C(ai) Gavi // Ir(r)umo te Sexte // Ir(r) umo te Sex(te) (AE 1949, 3, Rome), both cited by Kamen and Levin-Richardson (2015b, 450–451), who characterize irrumati as the active partner in a sexual encounter. 86. Kamen and Levin-Richardson 2015b, 453–455. 87. Kamen and Levin-Richardson 2015a, esp. 239–242. 88. Appendix, nos. 1, 3, 5, 10–14, 19. 89. Drawings of Medusa: appendix, nos. 11–15. The next most popular mythological woman was Roma: appendix, nos. 18–20. 90. Appendix, no. 12. See Langner 2001, 166, for other extant graffiti found in these baths. 91. For the decoration of the east portico, see PPM VI, s.v. “VII 1, 8. Terme Stabiane (149–219).” Figs. 16–17 (158–159) illustrate the Fourth-Style wall painting between the doors to the men’s and women’s baths. This scheme continues to the north of the entry to the women’s baths. 92. Langner cat. no. 1519. 93. Appendix, no. 13. Langner (2001, cat. no. [576]) suggests that this figure was found on the second-to-last column from the south, in front of the entry to the men’s baths. However, a careful reading of Minervini (1857–58, 3–4) in concert with Charles Zangemeister’s autopsies, recorded in CIL 4 ad nn. 2086–2089, indicates the Gorgonus and the accompanying animal were rendered on the second-to-last column from the north, opposite the wall bearing the surviving drawing (appendix, no. 12). Zangemeister (CIL 4 ad n. 2088) locates a text graffito reading “Pansa” on the wall opposite the second-to-last column of the eastern colonnade (the eighteenth from the south). (Minervini [1857–58, 3] had read this graffito as “Larisa.”) The wall opposite the eighteenth column bears the head of Medusa and the leaping deer (appendix, no. 12). Without a doubt these are the drawings described by Minervini (1857–58, 3) with the words, “at a small distance [from CIL 4.2088], one sees graffitoed a deer running to the right; and then a female head with long hair” (A poca distanza vedesi graffito un cervo corrente a destra; e poi una testa femminile con capelli pendenti), equivalent to Langner 2001, cat. no. [526]. Zangemeister (CIL 4 ad n. 2089) locates the drawing labeled “Gorgonus” “on the second-to-last column of the right-hand [i.e., east] colonnade in the porticus” (in porticus ordinis dextri

DRAWINGS OF WOMEN AT POMPEII   273

columna paenultima). This would correspond to the eighteenth column from the south, opposite the surviving drawing of Medusa. 94. Minervini’s comments (1857–58, 4) suggest that this was a game animal. Langner (2001, cat. no. [1577]) tentatively identifies it as a dog. 95. Minervini (1857–58, 3): un cervo corrente; testa femminile di fronte; appendix, no. 14. 96. Minervini (1857–58, 3): Poi vedi altra testa con capelli pendenti, e quadrupede corrente a sinistra: finalmente altro quadrupede corrente a destra; appendix, no. 15. Minervini does not specify whether this head faced front. He omits this same detail from his description of the surviving gorgoneion (appendix, no. 12). 97. LIMC 4.1, s.v. “Gorgones Romanae” (Orazio Paoletti). Pompeian fresco artists sometimes rendered the knotted snakes as ribbons, e.g., in room 5 of the Thermopolium at I.12.15; PPM II, s.v. “I 12,15. Caupona (836).” 98. See Bodson and Orr 2002, 340–341 for a list of painted gorgoneia at Pompeii. 99. Faraone 2018, 40–41; Tsiafakis 2003, 83–90; Karoglou 2018, 12–22. 100. Dunbabin 1989, 33–37; Fagan 2002, 36–38, 185–188, 197. See also Clarke 1996, 191–195; and Alfayé 2016, 32–33. 101. Clarke 1996, 191–195 (Pompeii); Dunbabin 1989, 37–44 (elsewhere). 102. Faraone 2018, 41 and 90–91, translating the Orphic Lithica 20:12–14. It is possible that appendix, nos. 14–15 were also painted on red panels. The “Gorgonus” on the column (appendix, no. 13) was etched onto white plaster; Zangemeister, CIL 4 ad n. 2089. 103. Suter (2015, 28–33) argues that in Archaic and Classical Greece, the gorgoneion was an analog to the anasyrma (see above, n. 36), noting (24–26) that both were protective and empowering to women but debilitating to men. 104. I thank Sandra Joshel for this observation. 105. Ovid, Met. 3.154–251. 106. ll.192–193: nunc tibi me posito visam velamina nares, sit poteris narrare, licet! The translation is adapted from that of F. J. Miller (Loeb edition). 107. Leach (1981) provides an in-depth analysis of the myth in Pompeian wall painting. 108. Newby (2012, 377) suggests that landscape frescoes featuring the myth of Actaeon hint at the fate awaiting interlopers into sacred spaces, but the drawings of the Stabian Baths make the warning more specific. 109. S. Joshel, pers. comm. A dipinto reading “woman” (mulier, perhaps abbreviating mulier[ibus], “for women”) was written outside the second entrance to the women’s baths on the Vicolo del Lupanare (VII.1.48); Koloski-Ostrow 2007, 231 and n. 43. If this reading is correct, it gendered the space of the women’s baths at the other threshold. 110. Appendix, no. 11. 111. Appendix, no. 3. 112. Appendix, nos. 1 and 19. 113. CIL 4.8185. 114. Kamen and Levin-Richardson 2015a, 240–241. 115. I thank Barbara Kellum for this observation. Hiria’s portrait similarly recalls an erect penis (fig. 13.1c). See Langner 2001, 39–40 for male heads rendered as or converted into penises. Langner interprets these as double entendres, as “head” (caput) could mean both a human head and the male sexual organ. Yet some of the phalli are later additions to the drawing, suggesting slanderous intentions.

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EPILOGUE

The Complexity of Silence Allison L. C. Emmerson

The discipline of Classical Studies is in a moment of transition.1 Through scholarly books and journal articles; in the departmental meetings, course offerings, and tenure decisions of university departments; even in “think pieces” intended for the general public, the future of our field is under debate, or even, according to some, under attack. The profession’s annual conference is particularly fraught, carrying the risk that tensions might erupt between traditionalists and modernists as they rub elbows through a chain of meeting rooms and cash-bar receptions. What does it mean to study Classics? What should it mean? These are not new questions. In the fall of 1985, the American Philological Association (APA, renamed the Society for Classical Studies, or SCS, in 2013) rejected from its annual conference a panel on Ovid proposed by an associated group, the Women’s Classical Caucus (WCC). Apparently, the APA had determined that certain papers included in the WCC’s session did not meet the organization’s standards; some speculated that the subtle entendre in the title of one talk, “How to Make a Woman,” was too risqué for the program committee.2 Closed out of the official schedule, WCC members scrambled to secure a room and advertise their unofficial session through printed fliers.3 The slight might have signaled a break between the two organizations—a rupture resulting from growing instability in a discipline struggling to reconcile its traditional grounding in lexicographical and syntactical studies with the new approaches of literary criticism, and in which feminist theory had become a particular flashpoint.4 Instead, the leadership of the APA and the WCC came together to renegotiate the procedures by which the program committee reviewed panel proposals, granting far greater autonomy to affiliated groups.5 The two organizations

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mended their relationship and carried on together, into new decades and a new century of scholarship. Thirty-five years later, the struggles of 1985 manage to feel both far distant and deeply relevant, provoking a reaction already familiar to anyone who engages regularly with ancient Greece and Rome: the sense of history repeating itself. To be sure, women in antiquity (or ancient gender studies) is now an established subject. In the program for the 2020 meeting of the SCS, women’s voices were ubiquitous and forceful. Panels included “Women in Rage, Women in Protest: Feminist Approaches to Ancient Anger,” “Lesbianism before Sexuality,” and the WCC’s annual contribution—the group having returned to the official program every year from 1986 forward—“Sisters Doin’ It for Themselves: Women in Power in the Ancient World and the Ancient Imaginary.” At the same time, new topics, tied to the intersectional feminism of the modern academy and rooted in the concerns of the Trump and #metoo era, also appeared, outnumbering what are now more traditional offerings focused on the experiences of ancient women. These included paper sessions devoted to Black classicism, classical reception in contemporary Asian and Asian American culture, and the relationships between ancient tragedy and the modern experiences of refugees and immigrants, as well as workshops focused on ways to increase diversity in the field, to address social justice in the classroom, and to engage in civic activism through Classical Studies. An additional workshop, offered at three separate times throughout the first day of the conference, focused on bystander training, providing tools by which witnesses might stop harassment and assist victims. Clearly, much has changed since 1985. Nevertheless, the critiques that once flocked around studies of women have not disappeared, but simply migrated to circle new topics, in particular work on race, the role of the field in unforgiveable institutions such as slavery and colonialism, and the legacy of Western civilization as a social construct. Three decades ago, certain voices claimed that extending our inquiry to the experiences of women would bring about the end of our field. Today, we are told that these new subjects signal the discipline’s imminent collapse.6 Through it all, the study of the ancient Mediterranean goes on. In reflecting on the contents of the present volume, I found my thoughts turning back to the WCC’s underground panel of 1985, and especially to an argument from Phyllis Culham’s paper, which she elaborated in a contribution to the special issue of Helios dedicated to women in antiquity and published the following year.7 In “Decentering the Text: Praxis vs. Logos,” Culham contended that those who wish to understand women’s lives must look beyond ancient literature, and that the works of elite men can illuminate nothing but their own experiences. Rather than the traditional canon, she pointed to material culture as the way forward, identifying archaeological evidence as the key to finding “real” women in the classical past. Unsurprisingly, the argument met with robust pushback. As Amy Richlin said so well, the texts might not represent women directly, but they do show what women had to put up with.8 276  EPILOGUE

Others pointed out, correctly, that material sources are no different from texts in that both require deciphering and interpretation, and both are subject to the bias of the interpreter.9 The physicality of an ancient object, be it a sword or a spindle whorl, might give the impression of direct connection to the ancient world, but reality remains as elusive in the archaeological as in the textual record. Returning to the present, one need only review the program for the 2020 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), held jointly with that of the SCS, to see the limited impact that Culham’s call has had on the study of material culture. To be sure, women presenters abounded, and the AIA’s Women in Archaeology interest group hosted a workshop on balancing fieldwork and parenting duties, two attestations of positive development in a field that often has been hostile to female practitioners.10 Research utilizing material culture to reconstruct ancient women’s lives, however, was almost entirely absent. No panels focused on women, and only two papers dealt explicitly with feminist-inspired topics, both of which were studies of portraiture in ruling families.11 In general, archaeologists have proven far less willing to explore gender-related subjects than have our colleagues in history and philology. While occasional articles, books, and museum exhibits highlight women, the work still lacks the breadth and visibility of equivalent investigations into ancient literature, and in most cases such studies retain a focus on art historical and (especially) epigraphic evidence, rather than material culture more broadly. I suspect a number of explanations for the situation, not least the toe that archaeology keeps in the sciences, bringing a corresponding fear that pursuing ancient women might not be impartial or objective enough to warrant attention. Likewise, there is the common idea that the types of evidence we recover from the material record are not appropriate to answering questions about gender, and that with the exception of specific circumstances like the excavation of sexed skeletal material from graves, our interpretive sieve is not fine enough to isolate women’s experiences. Of course, as Lauren Hackworth Petersen points out to open this volume, arguments left ungendered have the curious tendency of reverting back to a male perspective. A generation after the explosive SCS meeting of 1985, men remain the default in archaeology; women are still a special interest group. This last point is what draws me back to Culham’s argument. The many scholars who have successfully pursued women through the texts have proven beyond a doubt that rejecting those sources would have been unwise, but even so Culham’s article retains something valuable, a core statement of potential that remains largely untapped. Culham was correct that archaeology offers the opportunity to engage directly with artifacts that were manufactured and used by women. Of course these objects require careful consideration and interpretation, but if we can find women hidden behind the verses and lines of male-authored literature, we should be capable of identifying them in items they used on a daily basis. I would argue, furthermore, that there are few better sites at which to undertake this work than the EPILOGUE  277

cities destroyed by Vesuvius, a perspective supported by past research. Indeed, the potential of the Bay of Naples to illuminate ancient women has been recognized for over half a century. Already in the 1960s, Michele D’Avino had published La donna a Pompei, an initial look at evidence for women’s lives in the city.12 In the 1980s, Frances Bernstein wrote her PhD dissertation on Pompeian women; in the 1990s, Liisa Savunen did the same.13 By the first decade of the 2000s, surveys of Pompeii meant for students and general readers included sections on women, rightly emphasizing the diversity of female experiences in the city.14 These books were a step up from others that ignored women entirely, but their organization created—certainly unintentionally—an othering of female perspectives, implying that men ruled the texts as a whole. Approaches that incorporated women throughout the discussion avoided that problem but faced a new one, since they highlighted a few individuals who were easily lost in the overall narrative.15 All of this work, moreover, tended to fall into similar patterns, covering the same material and emphasizing the same conclusions. Today, certain studies intended for specialists continue to feature women in Pompeii, but the overarching impression is that the evidence has been used up, that the city has revealed all it can of the women who once populated it. In the absence of new information, we are left reverting back to the “gender neutrality” that so effectively prioritizes men and silences women. The radical rejection of this status quo drives the current volume and comprises its chief significance. The authors of the preceding chapters are unwilling to accept that the answers they seek are unavailable in the evidence we have, and so find their own methods of telling new stories or revising old ones. This is the first edited volume devoted solely to women in Pompeii, and it brings a visibility that the subject has lacked in the past. The contributions demonstrate that fresh ideas might emerge from reexamining well-known evidence (e.g., Gazda’s study of the Villa of the Mysteries frieze, Kellum’s work on buildings in the Forum, Longfellow’s analysis of female portraiture, or D’Ambra’s investigation of the estate of Julia Felix), as well as by introducing novel comparanda to the remains (e.g., Swetnam-Burland with fasti of the familia Caesaris, Caldwell with papyri from the Fayum). Other chapters illuminate the potential of emerging bodies of data, with some of the most exciting results coming from the growing interest in Pompeii’s graffiti record. Laird’s look at the drawings of women etched onto Pompeii’s walls and Zimmermann Damer’s careful consideration of female nomenclature in informal texts suggest the considerable agency the city’s women might have exercised. All of these approaches are served by the burst of conservation funds currently flowing into Pompeii (a factor particularly relevant for Gazda’s contribution), as well as by the diffusion of digital methods (Zimmermann Damer clearly shows their possibilities). The authors bring innovative perspectives to women in the city, not only as members of families but also as workers, investors, consumers, and active directors of their own lives. Any study of the ancient world must retain a firm hold on the evidence, but these 278  EPILOGUE

chapters also yield benefits by cautious forays outside the more solid confines of the preserved materials and into the expansive world of imagination. Archaeologists usually hesitate to label our work as imaginative; few of us wish to give the impression of having invented our conclusions.16 Nevertheless, reconstructing the past requires creativity even in the best of circumstances, and imagination is doubly necessary when confronting narrative omissions. As both Petersen and Zimmermann Damer emphasize, women have been silenced at various points in the making of Pompeii’s history. The process of recovering their voices is complex and calls for an inclusive toolbox. Whether Levin-Richardson highlighting common routes prostitutes could have taken from the purpose-built brothel, Jacobelli speculating on the identity of a female proprietor, or Powers contemplating possible reactions to erotic imagery in a bar, many of these contributions use imagination as an analytic tool, envisioning how ancient women might have interacted with material culture as a means of drawing information from it. The approach risks leading down false paths, and readers might take issue with some conclusions. Nevertheless, I would emphasize that such undertakings can be valuable exercises in and of themselves; only by pushing against the boundaries of the evidence are we able to discover where the limits actually lie. Such work takes courage, and to be successful requires a well-defined methodology, a careful use of theory, and a rigorous attention to detail. In returning the wall paintings of the House of the Chaste Lovers to their context within a commercial pistrinum, for example, Trimble is able to postulate on the various women who might have encountered them and to better position the images within the decorative scheme of the building as a whole. Zimmermann Damer provides another excellent model, grounding her principle of radical inclusion in thoughtful and clearly articulated methods that center the archaeological data without obscuring its difficulties. This volume makes an additional contribution by moving its attention beyond well-known and wealthy women like Eumachia, Mamia, and Naevoleia Tyche. Almost all of the chapters deal in some fashion with individuals outside Pompeii’s socioeconomic elite, and several focus almost entirely on women who occupied lower rungs on the social ladder. Swetnam-Burland demonstrates that women of all statuses engaged in financial transactions at Pompeii, both with and without male brokers. Moreover, Caldwell shows how the legal mechanism of the peculium allowed women—elite or otherwise—to participate in business ventures, arguing that spinning and weaving could provide economic opportunities even as they symbolized female virtue. Longfellow’s careful chronological approach to women’s portrait statues reveals that freedwomen were among the first to adopt funerary portraits, while Trimble’s reading of the wall paintings at the House of the Chaste Lovers emphasizes the potentially varied reactions of the diverse group of women who might have encountered them. D’Ambra, furthermore, points out that the Forum frieze from the estate of Julia Felix made Pompeii’s lower classes fully visible, literally elevating the daily activities of both men and women into a work of art. Finally, Levin-Richardson EPILOGUE  279

uses the physical remains of the brothel to recreate the lives of the prostitutes who worked and possibly lived there, returning humanity to individuals who have been too often stripped of it both in antiquity and in modern scholarship. The collection as a whole comes together to add new voices to the chorus of Pompeian women, surpassing any prior study in the number and variety of individuals it includes. This volume also succeeds in demonstrating that mess is inherent to the study of Pompeii. To focus only on its physical remains, the city was destroyed violently, spoliated and abused for nearly seventeen hundred years, and subject to centuries of experimentation in the development of excavation and conservation methods, not to mention the negative effects of modern tourism, climate change, and the simple and inexorable downward pull of time. The archives of excavation records and recovered artifacts introduce their own types of disorder, adding to the jumble of fragmented and incomplete evidence. The city, however, was no simpler in its past life. When considering what steps might follow this contribution to further our understanding of Pompeii, Petersen’s call to embrace messiness, equivocality, and uncertainty—to recognize the full complexity of the silences in our evidence—seems timely. I hope that other scholars pick up threads introduced in these chapters, seeking new methods for accessing life in Pompeii, for all its residents. The volume will have an even greater impact, if it inspires future projects targeting other marginalized groups. Issues such as race, ethnicity, and ability remain almost completely unexplored in the Bay of Naples and are pursued only rarely for Roman Italy as a whole. The substantial body of scholarship on women in antiquity, which this book now joins, has thoroughly debunked the once-common idea that the lives of Greek and Roman women are inaccessible from the present. Surely future projects will show that the silence of other groups likewise results from the questions we ask and the narratives we uphold. An essential part of this work must be done on our campuses and in our classrooms, actively working to dismantle the white supremacist roots of the field, uplift inclusive voices, and support the rise of a new and diverse generation of scholars. Only when women entered the field in large numbers did ancient women emerge as viable subjects of scholarship. Prioritizing diverse perspectives is already revealing novel insights into the past and promises to carry our knowledge in significant new directions. Classical Studies is once more in a moment of transition. Or more correctly, the field continues to transition, in ways that make our knowledge stronger, more complete, and thoroughly better than it once was. Debates rage on, but that is nothing new, and if the recent past is any guide, the controversy should not discourage those of us who wish to pursue inclusivity as we seek to understand life in the ancient world. This book shows what can be accomplished when scholars are willing to engage with the figures who are obscured by traditional approaches to the sources. The authors have explored a variety of methods; I hope others will find more, and that future work—following the spirit of collaboration and exploration that defined 280  EPILOGUE

the conference from which these papers derived—will continue to embrace the complexity of silence.

Notes 1. Here I take an inclusive view of the field, understanding that scholars of the Greek and Roman past might be housed in departments of classics or classical studies, but also in ancient Mediterranean studies, art history, history, philosophy, religious studies, archaeology, languages, and others. I am not able to reflect here on the fruitful debate over the name “Classical Studies” that has reignited in the early months of 2021, as this book was being typeset. Although I use it throughout this epilogue, I am attached neither to the name nor to its disciplinary structures. 2. Hallett (1989), Gamel (1990), and Murnaghan (2015) provide good overviews of the event. 3. The flyer is reproduced as fig. 2 in Richlin 2014. 4. For the tensions of the period, see for example Bloom 1987, a New York Times bestseller that represents the traditionalist perspective, with particular vitriol for feminist theory; Culham and Edmunds (1989) provide a good overview of the modernist perspective. See also Adler 2014 for the debate that flared around the American Journal of Philology’s editorial statement published in the Autumn 1987 issue (108.3), another conflict that reached an amicable and productive end. 5. As described in the WCC’s newsletter in the spring of 1986 (vol. 10). 6. Recalling 1985, conflict flared again at the 2019 meeting of the SCS/AIA, this time surrounding several incidents of racism. See Padilla Peralta 2019. 7. Culham 1986. 8. Richlin 2014, 6. 9. See, e.g., Gamel 1990. 10. Additionally, the AIA co-sponsored the bystander training workshop mentioned above. 11. These were “Dynastic Women and the Family Portrait in Hellenistic Royal Art” (Patricia Eunji Kim) and “The Visual Representations of Roman Imperial Women in Hispania” (Rachel Meyers). 12. D’Avino 1964; translated into English in 1967. 13. Bernstein 1987; Savunen 1997. 14. E.g., Bernstein 2007; Berry 2007, 112–119. 15. E.g., Cooley and Cooley 2004, 2014; Beard 2008. 16. Along these lines, Macaulay 1979 remains a delightful joke at our expense.

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Bibliography Abbreviations of classical authors and texts follow those listed in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Abbreviations of secondary sources are those of the American Journal of Archaeology, with the additions noted here: AGP

R. Benefiel, The Ancient Graffiti Project. A Digital Resource for Studying the Graffiti of Herculaneum and Pompeii. http://ancientgraffiti.org​ /Graffiti/ (2020).

IGUR

L. Moretti, ed., Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae (Rome: Istituto ita­ liano per la storia antica, 1968–1990).

Inscr. Ital. A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 13: Fasti et Elogia, fasc. 2: Fasti Anni Nummani et Iuliani: Accedunt ferialia, menologia rustica, parapegmata (Rome: Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1963). PPM

G. Pugliese Caratelli, ed., Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, 10 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1990–2003).

RICIS

L. Bricault, Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 31 (Paris: de Boccard, 2005).

TPSulp

G. Camodeca, Tabulae Pompeianae Sulpiciorum: Edizione critica dell’archivio puteolano dei Sulpicii (Rome: Quasar, 1999).

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Contributors Eve D’Ambra is the Agnes Rindge Claflin Professor of Art History at Vassar College. She is the author of Private Lives, Imperial Virtues: The Frieze of the Forum Transitorium in Rome (Princeton University Press, 1993), Roman Art (Cambridge University Press, 1998; published in the UK as Art and Identity in the Roman World), and Roman Women (Cambridge University Press, 2007) as well as the co-editor of The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World (BAR International Series, 2006). Lauren Caldwell is a lecturer in the department of classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Allison L. C. Emmerson is an assistant professor of classical studies at Tulane University. She is the author of Life and Death in the Roman Suburb (Oxford University Press, 2020). Elaine K. Gazda is professor emerita of classical art and archaeology and the history of art and curator emerita of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan. She is the editor of Roman Art in the Private Sphere (University of Michigan Press, 1991, 2010), The Villa of the Mysteries: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology / University of Washington Press, 2000), and The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (University of Michigan Press, 2002), and co-editor of Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis near Pompeii (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 2016). Luciana Jacobelli is affiliated with the Italian Research National Council (Istituto per le tecnologie applicate ai Beni Culturali, CNR). She is the author of Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei (“L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1995), Gladiators at Pompeii (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), and Pompei: La costruzione di un mito (Scienze e Lettere, 2008), among other works. Barbara Kellum is a professor of art history at Smith College. She is the author of numerous articles on Pompeii and on Augustan Rome, the most recent of which is “Nocturnal Negotiations: Experiencing the Night Scenes from the Iliad at the House of Octavius Quartio, Pompeii II 2.2,” in The Values of Nighttime in Classical Antiquity (J. Ker and A. Wessels, eds., Leiden, 2020).

319

Margaret L. Laird is an adjunct associate professor of Latin and classics at the University of Delaware. She is the author of Civic Monuments and the Augustales in Roman Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Walls and Memory: The Abbey of San Sebastiano (Lazio), from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond (Brepols, 2005). Sarah Levin-Richardson is an associate professor of classics at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the author of The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Brenda Longfellow is an associate professor of art history at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning, and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and co-editor of Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Lauren Hackworth Petersen is an associate dean for the humanities and a professor of art history at the University of Delaware. She also holds a joint appointment in Women & Gender Studies. She is co-author of The Material Lives of Roman Slaves (Cambridge University Press, 2014), co-editor of Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome (University of Texas Press, 2012), and author of The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Jessica Powers is the Gilbert M. Denman, Jr., Curator of Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World at the San Antonio Museum of Art. She has curated a reinstallation of the museum’s Greek and Roman art galleries (2008) and the exhibition Antinous, the Emperor’s Beloved: Investigating a Roman Portrait (2017). Her publications include essays on sculptures from Pompeii and on Roman art in museums. Molly Swetnam-Burland is an associate professor of classical studies at William and Mary. She is the author of Egypt in Italy: Visions of Egypt in Roman Imperial Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Reuse and Renovation in Roman Imperial Culture: Functions, Aesthetics, Interpretations (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Jennifer Trimble is an associate professor of classics at Stanford University. She is the author of Women and Visual Replication in Roman Imperial Art and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and co-editor of Art and Replication: Greece, Rome, and Beyond (Art History 29.2, 2006). She co-directed the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project as well as the IRC-Oxford-Stanford excavations post

320  CONTRIBUTORS

aedem Castoris in the Roman Forum. Currently she is the editor of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. Erika Zimmermann Damer is an associate professor of classics and women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Richmond. She is the author of In the Flesh: Embodied Identities in Roman Love Elegy (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019).

CONTRIBUTORS  321

Illustration Credits Figures

12 Courtesy of the Library at the American Academy in Rome. 16 After Allison 2004a, fig. A.3. 16 Laurence 2007, fig. 9.3. 18 Drawing: Glynnis Fawkes. 20 Photo: Mira Green. 22 Photo: Rossa, D-DAI-Rom 77.2195. 22 From Dyer 1898, 447. 23 From NSc 1916, 304, fig. 15. 38 Photo: By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo— Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 66 After Yegül and Favro 2019, fig. 1.44, with permission. 68 After Yegül and Favro 2019, fig. 1.60, with permission. 69 Photo: B. Kellum. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 72 Photo: By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo— Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 72 Photo: By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo— Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 75 Photo: B. Kellum. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 76 Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License v.4 International, photo by Ian Lycett-King. 77 Photo: B. Kellum. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 79 Photo: B. Kellum. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 86 After Parslow 1995, fig. 29. 88 Photo: F. Palaia. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 91 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 94 Photo: F. Palaia, reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 96 Courtesy of the American Academy in Rome, Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room. 100 Courtesy of the American Academy in Rome, Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room. 110 Photo: C. Rossa, neg. D-DAI-ROM 77.2276. 112 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 114 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited.

322   WOMEN’S LIVES, WOMEN’S VOICES

115

Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 117 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 118 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 120 Photo: B. Longfellow. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 122 Photo: MANN neg. no. 2363, reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 123 Photo: MANN neg. no. 2358, reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 134 Photo: Michael Larvey. By permission of John R. Clarke and the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 135 Photo: E. K. Gazda. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 135 Photo: E. K. Gazda. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 137 After Maiuri, 1953, p. 54. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 137 Photo: E. K. Gazda. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 139 Drawing: L. Sterner adaptation of Herbig 1958, foldout plan at back. 141 Photo: K. McClinton. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 155 Underlying map: Poehler 2017b, with permission. 161 Dataset by E. Zimmermann Damer, mapped by E. Daly onto Dobbins and Foss 2007, map 3, used with permission of the authors. 180 Underlying map Dobbins and Foss 2007, map 3, used with permission of the authors. 181 Underlying map: Dobbins and Foss 2007, map 3, used with permission of the authors. 183 After Paone and Morichi in Rispoli, de Carolis, and Paone 2007, 143 fig. 2. 183 After Dobbins and Foss 2007, map 3. 184 By permission of the Ministro per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompeii. Reproduction prohibited. 184 By permission of the Ministro per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompeii. Reproduction prohibited. 186 By permission of the Ministro per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompeii. Reproduction prohibited. 186 © Fondazione Cives/Ercolano. 201 Adapted from Varone 1989, 230. 202 Reproduced from Varone 1993, pl. CLV.2. By permission of the publisher, “L’Erma” di Bretschneider. 204 Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen, Wikimedia Commons. 205 Reproduced from Varone 1993, pl. CLV.1. By permission of the publisher, “L’Erma” di Bretschneider.

323  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

218 After PPM III:797, s.v. “Casa del Triclinio.” 222 Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma, Archivio A-VII-32-044—by permission of the Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma. 223 Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma, Archivio A-VII-32-009—by permission of the Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma. 224 Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma, Archivio A-VII-32-042—by permission of the Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma. 228 Photo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, reproduced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 228 Image: R. Bishop and J. Powers, adapted from Guzzo and Scarano Ussani 2009, pl. 22. 230 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 232 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 232 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 233 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 235 Photos: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, reproduced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 235 Photos: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, reproduced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. 237 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 249 Apographs: a: M. L. Laird after Della Corte 1912, 405, fig. 5; b: M. L. Laird; h: after Giornale degli Scavi di Pompei April 1913, 100, by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei; c, e, g: M. Langner, by kind permission; d, f: CIL 4.7993, 3102, by kind permission of the CIL. 251 Apographs: a, b, d, g: M. Langner, by kind permission; c, e, f: CIL 4.5215, 8119, 6856, by kind permission of the CIL. 252 Apographs: M. Langner, by kind permission. 254 Apograph: M. L. Laird, after Della Corte 1912, 405, fig. 5. 255 Photo: M. L. Laird. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 257 Underlying photo: Pompeii, photo archive, C 784 (1916). By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Apograph: CIL 4.7993, by kind permission of the CIL. 259 Underlying photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. 262 Underlying map: M. L. Laird, after Dobbins and Foss 2007, map 3; apographs: M. Langner, by kind permission, and M. L. Laird. 264 Underlying photo: M. L. Laird. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Apograph: M. Langner, by kind permission.

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS   324

Plates

Plate 1 Photo: Michael Larvey. By permission of John R. Clarke. Plate 2 Photo: Franc Palaia, reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 3 Photo: Franc Palaia, reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 4 Photo: K. McClinton. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 5 Photo: M. L. Thomas. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 6 Photo: E. K. Gazda. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 7 Photo: K. McClinton. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 8 Photo: K. McClinton. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 9 Photo: Michael Larvey. By permission of John R. Clarke and the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 10 Photo: Michael Larvey. By permission of John R. Clarke and the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 11 Photo: Michael Larvey. By permission of John R. Clarke and the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 12 By permission of the Fotografica Foglia. Plate 13 By permission of the Fotografica Foglia. Plate 14 By permission of the Fotografica Foglia. Plate 15 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited. Plate 16 Photo: J. Powers. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Reproduction prohibited.

325  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Index acanthus, 75, 76, 78, 83, 164 Actaeon, 262, 263, 274 Adonis, 240 Aeneas, 70, 71, 83, 131 agnomen, 152, 153 Alexandria, 115 Alleia, daughter of Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius, 80, 81 Alleia Decimilla, daughter of Marcus, 81, 82 Alleius Libella, M., 81 Alleius Luccius Libella, M., 81 Alleius Nigidius Maius, Gn., 80, 81, 82, 256, 258, 272 Alleius Nobilis, Gn., 81 Apollo, 75, 93, 234 apotropaic, 261, 262, 270 Apuleius, 13, 19, 207, 215 Argus, 78 Ariadne, 56, 133, 145 Asellina, 225 Assella Flavia, 157, 164, 173 Athenaeus, 190 atrium, 4, 5, 7, 15, 17, 21, 49, 54, 87, 92, 93, 94, 144, 219, 258, 267 Augustales, 81, 102, 181 Augustus, 31, 46, 55, 63, 67, 69, 71, 77, 79, 114, 125, 127, 130, 132, 167, 172 Bacchus, 12, 133, 135, 140, 142, 143, 145, 149 bakery, 17, 207, 209, 210, 215 See also specific monuments in Pompeii banquets, 13, 15, 99, 202, 217, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224 See also dining/drinking baths, 85, 89, 91, 190, 223 See also specific monuments in Pompeii Begram, Afghanistan, 240 benefaction (or patronage), 3, 5, 11, 13, 24, 25, 67, 81, 149, 152 bodies, 1, 5, 11, 20, 21, 36, 46, 71, 97, 112, 113, 115, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 138, 142, 145, 153, 154, 162, 185, 191, 206, 209, 215, 219, 233, 238, 241, 247, 250, 252, 253, 254, 260, 261, 268, 278, 280 arms, 71, 74, 112, 113, 119, 121, 126, 128, 134, 136, 138, 144, 203, 206, 207, 219, 220, 221, 231, 233, 240, 268 breasts, 119, 121, 206, 231, 239, 241, 253, 271

326

closed position, 113, 126 faces, 123, 133, 136, 140, 142 feet, 56, 71, 100, 112, 113, 119, 120, 145, 221, 231 frontal pose, 248, 256, 264 hair. See hairstyles heads, 73, 74, 77, 96, 97, 104, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 136, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 203, 205, 219, 220, 221, 231, 233, 236, 238, 240, 250, 252, 254, 255, 256, 259, 261, 263, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274 knees, 113, 119, 120, 121, 231 legs, 113, 119, 120, 209, 231, 238, 241, 263, 268, 270 penises, 205, 231, 260, 274 pregnancy, 139, 140, 158, 166 skin color, 206 torsos, 121, 144, 206, 220, 239, 241, 254 vaginas, 188, 231, 238, 253, 260, 270 See also portraits Bolsena, 234, 243 brides, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 147, 148, 158, 167 businesses, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 17, 19, 30, 31, 33–36, 37, 39–41, 44, 53–54, 55–56, 58–61, 63, 65, 87, 89, 91, 93, 96, 102, 131, 153, 207–208, 210, 211, 225, 230, 246, 247, 279 buyers, 88, 96, 101, 104 Caecilius Iucundus, L., 36 Caesia Priscilla, 36 Calpurnia Ornata, 157, 173 Cato the Elder, 59 Celerina, 157, 158, 159, 164, 173 Ceres, 73, 79, 146, 164 children, 1, 5, 7, 13, 17, 21, 23, 29, 45, 51, 58, 64, 65, 80, 97, 100, 101, 126, 127, 141, 142, 172, 180, 182, 207, 248, 268 Chloe, 157, 162, 164, 165, 270 Claudia Hellas, 30, 40, 42, 44 Cleopatra VII, 80, 115 clipeus virtutis, 77 clothing, 55, 59, 62, 90, 97, 98, 104, 105, 148, 185, 207, 209, 250 angustus clavus, 98 color, 93, 97, 98, 99, 104, 105, 138, 147, 149, 206, 207, 243 dyes, 37, 98

garlands, 96, 97, 104, 219, 233 hip mantles, 80 infulae, 79 mantles, 97, 99, 113, 114, 119, 121, 129, 136, 144, 147, 219, 221, 231, 250 stolae, 119 togas, 77, 96, 98, 99, 101, 104, 105, 119, 250 tunics, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 113, 119, 121, 138, 207, 220 veils, 97, 114, 116, 119, 269 vittae, 113 wreaths, 77, 79, 203 cognomens, 67, 152, 153, 156, 157, 159, 162, 173, 174, 175, 215, 259, 272 coins, 1, 30, 33, 34, 35, 40, 47, 48, 49, 77, 93, 115, 129, 193, 205, 244, 247, 261 collegia, 31, 32, 33, 46, 58, 65, 102, 116, 129 Colossus of Memnon (Luxor), 163 columella, 21, 23 Columella, 55, 64 Concordia/Concordia Augusta, 68, 69, 73, 123, 124, 131 Corelia Celsa, 12, 21, 24, 25, 27, 132, 153 Corinna, 190, 221 corona civica, 77 costume. See clothing Cupid, 206, 214 curse tablets, 23 decurio, decurions, 25, 33, 46, 48, 70, 71, 81 Didicia, 37 dining/drinking, 6, 85, 87, 92, 93, 94, 100, 102, 187, 188, 199, 202, 203, 211, 212, 214, 219, 220, 221, 223, 227, 234, 236, 237 See also banquets Dionysus, 75, 203 See also Bacchus Diotima, 221, 222, 224 dipinti, 3, 47, 151, 248 See also inscriptions domina, 5, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 158, 159, 168, 173, 226 dominus, 15, 142, 143, 145, 224, 226 Domitia Lepida, 36 drawings, 8, 129, 154, 162, 172, 179, 191, 193, 248, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 278, 279 duumvir, 70, 73, 80, 81, 125, 130, 182, 187, 258

edicta munerum, 256 See also inscriptions emotional labor, 178, 189, 191 erotic imagery, 6, 7, 279 Eumachia, 5, 7, 15, 53, 62, 68–71, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 111, 113, 121–124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 153, 279 Euplia, 36, 164, 165, 260 Fabius Ululutremulus, M., 71, 266, 269 familia, 26, 30, 31, 45, 46, 48, 140, 142, 143, 145, 247, 278 Faustilla, 39, 49, 159, 165, 174, 178, 193 fellatio, 179, 188, 193, 260 flagellation, 142, 148 Flavia Agathea, 115, 116, 126, 127, 129, 130, 149 Flavius Philoxenus, P., 116 Fortunata, 157, 159, 166, 174, 178, 179, 193, 253, 258, 259, 260, 263, 265, 270, 271, 272 fountains, 14, 74, 123, 124, 131, 180, 181, 182, 188, 200, 233 freedmen, 13, 25, 30, 31, 32, 46, 48, 71, 81, 84, 89, 98, 103, 115, 116, 129, 132, 152, 209, 242 freedwomen, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 41, 45, 48, 52, 56, 62, 115, 116, 117, 118, 153, 156, 157, 210, 211, 241, 279 fullery/fulling, 2, 17, 19, 27, 53, 270 See also specific monuments in Pompeii garments. See clothing Gavia Severa, 37 gender, 2, 6, 15, 20, 24, 44, 52, 59, 87, 88, 101, 102, 157, 179, 200, 206, 207, 210, 212, 215, 263, 276, 277, 278 graffiti, 3, 6, 7, 27, 38, 39, 41, 47, 63, 151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 171, 172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 200, 213, 215, 219, 225, 227, 229, 242, 247, 248, 250, 252, 253, 259, 260, 268, 270, 271, 272, 273, 278 See also inscriptions grottos, 92, 263 hairstyles, 7, 29, 74, 78, 80, 81, 84, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 123, 129, 131, 234, 240, 241, 250, 254, 255, 269, 271 nodus, 114, 115, 117, 129, 149 Salus Augusta, 74 tutulus, 113, 114

INDEX  327

Herculaneum Basilica Noniana, 125, 132 House of the Dionysiac Reliefs, 238 House of the Telephos Relief (Ins. Or. 1.2), 238 Insula Orientalis (II.9), 39 Suburban Baths, 40, 162, 170, 245, 246 Tavern of Priapus (IV.17), 155 heroes, 71, 80, 95, 141, 142, 240 Hiria, 166, 250, 263, 265, 271, 274 Holconia, 125, 130, 132 Holconius Priscus, M., 81 Holconius Rufus, M., 21, 78, 82 Horace, 160, 219, 220, 222, 226 ingenuae, 156, 158 initiation, 140, 143 inscriptions, 3, 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 21, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 41, 45, 46, 47, 49, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 79, 82, 85, 87, 89, 90, 103, 116, 118, 119, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 140, 141, 142, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 163, 171, 172, 173, 174, 221, 236, 247, 255 erasure of, 46, 153 See also dipinti; edicta munerum; graffiti; programmata; writing implements: wax tablets Io, 78 Isis, 4, 11, 13, 21, 23, 24, 25, 71, 92, 126, 130, 132, 153, 177 Iulius Polybius, C., 200, 202, 209, 211, 213, 215 jewelry, 1, 7, 21, 29, 56, 97, 113, 146, 206, 239, 240, 241, 245, 246, 247, 254, 261 anklets, 231, 239 armlets, 231, 239 bracelets, 7, 17, 206 earrings, 37, 39, 114, 231 necklaces, 17, 19, 21, 205, 231, 239 rings, 21, 71, 114, 129 Julia Balbilla, 163 Julia Felix, 5, 63, 85, 87, 89, 93, 99, 101, 102, 157, 225 Julia Secunda, 30, 40 Juvenal, 241 lararium, 200, 214, 247, 253 See also shrines laurel, 73, 77, 79 Leda, 240

328  INDEX

liknon, 141, 142 lituus, 77 Livia, 31, 46, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 84, 114, 119, 121, 123, 124, 130, 131, 132, 145, 148 Livius Drusus Claudianus, M., 67 Livy, 55, 63 Lucian, 190 Lucida, 157, 160, 162, 166 Lucretia, 55, 63 Lucretius Decidianus Rufus, M., 73 maenads, 141, 142, 234, 235 magistri, 71 Mamia, 15, 68, 70, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 153, 279 Manilia Chrysa, 24, 27 Marcellus, 80, 81, 84 Mark Antony, 80, 115 markets, 53, 54, 58, 60, 62, 65, 76, 87, 88, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 104, 160, 248 marriage, 45, 46, 55, 133, 140, 143, 147 Mars, 240 masculinity, 178, 188, 189, 205, 206, 212, 215 materfamilias, 113, 114, 126, 133 Medusa, 7, 252, 253, 261, 262, 266, 267, 269, 273 Mercury, 200, 204, 206, 212, 214, 215 Messalina, 241 Mineia, 125 Minerva, 56, 250, 253, 261, 267 miniature portraits, 138, 145, 147 mosaics, 12, 19, 24, 25, 91, 92, 132, 136, 147, 253, 262 Mula, 167, 168, 179, 263 Mulvia Prisca, 80, 157, 167, 173 murex, 98 Musonius Rufus, 55, 63 myrtle, 79, 142 Naevoleia Tyche, 279 Nigra, 250, 256, 258, 265, 271, 272 nomen, 152, 153, 156, 157, 173, 215 Nonius Balbus, M., 125, 132 Norbanus Sorex, C., 71 Novellia Primigenia, 157, 159, 173 Nuceria, 127, 162, 168, 173, 187 Numistrius Fronto, M., 69, 70, 124, 125, 130 occupations artisan, 31, 33, 38, 98, 101 baker, 27, 96, 200

banker, 34, 35, 36, 45, 47, 48, 59, 65 courtesan, 6, 177, 190, 191, 192, 203, 204, 214, 217, 219, 220, 225, 226 fuller, 53, 70, 71, 73, 125, 130, 157, 225 hairdresser, 29, 31, 129, 147 medical worker, 31 mender, 31 merchant/seller, 37, 38, 48, 52, 53, 63, 87, 88, 96, 97, 99, 101, 104, 253, 263, 265 moneylender, 30, 37 perfumer, 187, 188, 189 personal attendant, 31, 33 prostitute, 6, 65, 71, 162, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 203, 204, 210, 214, 217, 219, 226, 229, 239, 241, 246, 259, 260, 272, 279, 280 reader, 31 scribe, 31 weaver, 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 192, 193, 195 Octavia, 67, 68, 80, 81, 82, 84, 114, 129, 149, 157, 167, 173 Octavius, M., 118, 149 Odysseus, 78 onomastics, 152, 171 ordo, 109, 158 Ostia, Isola Sacra necropolis, 2 Ovid, 55, 82, 83, 104, 129, 162, 221, 263, 274, 275 Paestum, 125 painting, wall, 6, 133, 199, 204, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 236, 238, 253, 270, 279 dining depicted in, 6, 99, 200, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 211, 214, 219, 221, 279 erotic, 229, 234, 236, 238, 239, 244, 245, 246, 270 First Style, 181 Fourth Style, 78, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 219, 236, 244, 273 genre, 87, 92, 95, 101, 250 lararium, 253 megalographic, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140 mythological, 3, 95, 200, 206, 212, 221, 240, 262, 263, 274 Nilotic, 93, 103 restoration of, 133, 139 still-life, 93, 103, 237 Third Style, 221 tomb, 148

See also individual houses and monuments in Herculaneum and Pompeii paterfamilias, 51, 59, 60, 61, 65, 142 patrons, female, 2, 62, 116, 177 patrons, male, 15, 177 Pax, 79 peacocks, 76 peculium, 48, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 190, 279 Penelope, 78 perfume, 189, 190, 191 Petronius, 25, 220, 260 phalluses, 169, 171, 179, 259, 260, 262, 263, 269, 273 Philematium, 23 Phrixus, 78 Pindar, 221 Plato, 222 Pliny the Elder, 73, 89, 98, 102 Pliny the Younger, 30 polychromy. See statues/sculptures Pompeia Agrippinilla, 142, 143, 148 Pompeii, 219 amphitheater, 90, 95, 157, 160, 179 bakery VII.1.36–37, 181 bakery VII.12.17, 193 bar III.7.2, 269 bar VII.11.7–8, 194 bar VII.11.12, 182 brothel (VII.12.18–20), 172, 178, 180, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 233, 279 Campus ad Amphitheatrum (Grand Palaestra), 7, 38, 49, 156, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 169, 170, 173, 174, 179, 250, 266, 267, 270 Caupona of Euxinus (I.11.11), 76 Caupona on the Street of Mercury (VI.10.19), 99 Central Baths, 91, 171, 182, 194 Estate of Julia Felix (II.4.3), 5, 40, 53, 85, 90–94, 102, 164, 167, 169, 179, 192, 270, 278, 279 advertisement of, 88 atrium, 92, 100 baths, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 100, 102 Forum frieze, 88, 92, 94, 95, 101, 279 fountain, 90, 92 lararium/shrine, 92, 103 summer triclinium, 90, 92 tavern, 90, 100 viridarium, 91, 92

INDEX  329

Eumachia’s building, 68–69, 70, 71, 75, 83, 123–124, 131 Forum, 67 Forum Baths, 91 fullery/house at VI.8.20, 17, 270 Fullery/House of M. Fabius Ululutremulus (IX.13.5), 71, 167, 168, 170, 266, 269 Fullery/House of Vesonius Primus (VI.14.21–22), 19 Fullery of Stephanus (I.6.7), 19, 27, 166 house I.7.19, 164, 166, 168, 263, 265 house I.8.13, 39, 165 house I.13.16, 233, 238, 243 house I.14.2, 266 house V.1.4, 53 house V.1.5, 53 house V.3.11, 234 house VI.14.28, 39 house VII.2.51, 181 house VII.14.5, 54 house VIII.2.3, 37 house IX.5.16, 239 House of Caecilius Iucundus, L (V.1.26), 36, 245 House of Caesius Blandus, M., (VII.1.40) baths, 181 House of Fabius Rufus (VII.16.22), 221 House of Holconius Rufus (VIII.4.4), 21 House of Julius Polybius, C. (IX.13.3), 1, 213, 221 House of Marcus Terentius Eudoxus (VI.13.6), 53, 56 House of Pinarius Cerialis (III.4.b), 257 House of Siricus (VII.1.47), 182 House of the Baker (VI.3.3), 27 House of the Bear (VII.2.45), 181. House of the Beautiful Impluvium (I.9.1), 233 House of the Bull (V.1.7), 53, 63 House of the Ceii (I.16.5), 252, 257 House of the Centenary (IX.8.6), 238, 252, 267 House of the Chaste Lovers (IX.12.6), 6, 178, 185, 187, 199, 200–202, 206, 211, 212–213, 279 bakery, 200, 205, 207 triclinium, 199, 206 House of the Ephebe (I.7.10–12), 237, 263 House of the Four Styles (I.8.17, 11), 253 House of the Gilded Cupids (VI.16.7), 236, 238, 244 House of the Menander (I.10.4), 15, 40, 240

330  INDEX

House of the Moralist (III.4.2–3), 223 House of the Orchard (I.9.5–7), 258, 263, 265 House of the Ship (VI.10.11), 257, 272 House of the Smith (I.10.7), 20 House of the Triclinium (V.2.4), 6, 99, 187, 217, 221–225 House of Trebius Valens (III.2.1), 4, 21, 256, 271 House of Venus in a Bikini (I.11.6), 239 House of Volusius Faustus (I.2.10), 238, 245 Insula Arriana Polliana (VI.6.21), 80 Little House of Roma (VI.16.35), 263, 267 Macellum, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 125, 130, 131, 132 Necropolis, Herculaneum Gate, 81, 120, 126, 130, 144 Tomb 4S (Mamia), 70, 82 Tomb 16, 21 Tomb 38N, 111, 149 Necropolis, Nucerian Gate, 70, 114, 126, 128, 145, 149, 168 Tomb 3 ES (Veia Barchilla), 149 Tomb 12 EN, 165, 166, 169, 254 Tomb 7 OS (Flavia Agathea), 114, 129 Tomb 9 OS, 114, 119, 129, 130, 149 Tomb 11 OS (Eumachia), 81, 83, 84 Tomb 13 OS (Vertia Philumena), 114, 117, 128, 129, 130 Necropolis, Stabian Gate Burial of the Epidii, 23 Tomb of Marcus Tullius, 70 Necropolis, Vesuvian Gate, 165, 167, 169, 173 Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, 80, 157, 167 Saliniensis quarter, 116 Sarno Baths, 91, 102 Shop of Sotericus (III.2.2), 256, 265 Shop of the Fruit Vendor Felix (I.8.1), 263, 265 Shop of Verecundus (IX.7.6–7), 37 Stabian Baths, 7, 82, 91, 182, 252, 261, 262, 263, 266, 267, 273, 274 Suburban Baths, 239 tavern I.8.1, 179 tavern III.8.9, 236, 244 tavern VI.1.2, 236 tavern VI.16.12, 236, 244 tavern VII.1.32, 181, 193 tavern VII.1.39, 181, 193 tavern VII.7.18, 7, 178, 179, 183, 190, 194, 229, 234, 236, 239, 242, 244

tavern VII.12.15, 181, 193 Temple of Augustan Fortune, 13, 70, 111, 121, 125, 127, 130 Temple of Isis (also Iseum and Sanctuary of Isis), 4, 11, 13, 21, 23, 24, 25, 71, 126, 130, 132, 153, 177 ekklesiasterion, 12, 27 Temple of the Genius of Augustus, 70, 75 Tetrapylon of the Holconii, 125, 130 Triangular Forum, 84 Via dell’Abbondanza, 69, 71, 73, 74, 85, 88, 89, 101, 179, 182, 200, 207, 256 Villa of the Mysteries, 5, 74, 95, 132–134, 148, 150, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 252, 278 Pomponia Decharcis, 81 Popidius Ampliatus, N., 12, 25, 132 Popidius Celsinus, N., 11, 12, 126 Poppaea Augusta, 157, 167, 173 Poppaea Triquinia, 157, 167, 173 portraits, 3, 5, 56, 58, 62, 64, 71, 73, 74, 80, 81, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 179, 195, 247, 254, 258, 263, 270, 271, 274, 279 See also miniature portraits praenomen, 67, 153, 157, 215 priestesses, 33, 130, 131, 132, 141, 153 of the imperial cult, 79 public, 7, 53, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 121, 124, 126, 130 Prima, 157, 159, 160, 161, 167, 168, 174 Primigenia, 40, 155, 157, 160, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 172, 175 princeps coloniae, 80, 81, 258 princeps munerariorum, 80 programmata, 151, 171, 248, 257, 258, 268, 269, 272 See also inscriptions Puteoli, 40, 187 Sulpicii archive, 36, 37, 49 ritual, 11, 14, 21, 23, 41, 77, 133, 134, 136, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 150, 247, 270 Roma, 171, 250, 253, 263, 267, 269, 271, 273 Rome Ara Pacis Augustae, 75, 83, 130 Curia, 77 Forum of Augustus, 70, 71, 124 Forum of Caesar, 77 Forum Romanum, 131

Forum Transitorium, 56 Gardens of Maecenas, 73 Horti Tauriani/Taurian gardens, 74 House of Augustus, 77 Macellum of Livia, 74, 80 Mausoleum of Augustus, 80 Monumentum “Liviae,” 31 Odyssey landscapes, 95 Porticus of Livia, 68, 69, 73, 124, 131 Porticus of Octavia, 80 Statue base of Pompeia Agrippinilla, 140, 141 Temple of Fortuna Muliebris, 67 Temple of Venus Genetrix, 77 Tomb of the Physician, 142 Tomb of the Statilii, 56, 64 Via Appia necropolis, 32 Villa della Farnesina, 215 Romula, 263 Romulus, 70, 71, 83, 131 Roufilla, 158, 159, 169, 172 Sagania, 169, 250, 254, 255, 265, 271 salutatio, 13, 15, 17, 89, 144 Sappho, 221, 222, 224 Sarno, 187, 200 Segathis, 57, 58 sex or sexual services, 6, 7, 29, 160, 178, 179, 183, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 204, 217, 229, 233, 238, 240, 241, 260, 268 shrines, 14, 33, 47, 68, 69, 73, 79, 124, 125, 130, 131, 132, 181, 182, 200, 201, 240 See also lararium Silenos, 141 slaves, 3, 6, 13, 14, 17, 21, 23, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 71, 74, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 105, 113, 116, 131, 140, 143, 147, 148, 149, 152, 156, 159, 173, 174, 179, 181, 182, 185, 188, 193, 194, 195, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 212, 215, 221, 226, 235, 240, 241 Socrates, 221, 222 Somene, 39, 49 statues/sculptures, 253 cultic, 123, 124, 131 equestrian, 95, 98, 99 funerary, 109, 111, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134, 144, 146, 242 gilding of, 231, 239, 241, 245

INDEX  331

hem of, 71, 90, 128, 240 honorific, 5, 53, 109, 111, 113, 115, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130 polychromy, 230, 231, 236, 238, 239 pudicitia type, 120, 128, 215, 224 relief, 7, 70, 84, 123, 124, 131, 190, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245 reuse of, 230, 238, 244 symplegmata, 253, 270 togate, 98, 99, 105, 119, 125, 128, 129, 132 Suetonius, 30, 44, 55 Taorsenouphis, 57, 58, 61, 65, 193 Tarquinia, 114, 148, 167 Tomb of the Baron, 114 taverns/bars, 48, 51, 87, 89, 178, 182, 193, 229, 230, 234, 236, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 279 See also specific monuments in Herculaneum and Pompeii thiasos, 5, 133, 134, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148 Tiberius, 46, 69, 81, 124, 130, 131 Titiana Antracis, 37 tituli picti, 220, 272 See also inscriptions tomb type aedicula, 117, 118, 119, 254 facade, 116, 129 schola, 70, 82 triclinium, 85, 87, 92, 200, 202, 204, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 221, 222, 223, 258, 267 Trimalchio, 25, 98, 220 Trosia Hilaria, 61 Tullius, M., 13, 70, 83, 111, 125 Tyche, 21, 42, 44

332  INDEX

Ulpia Epigone, 56, 58, 64 Umbricia Fortunata, 37, 40, 49 Ursa, 21, 27, 169 utensils, domestic, 20, 29, 87 Valentina, 160 Vedius Pollio, P., 73, 147 Vedius Siricus, P., 182, 194 Venus, 21, 64, 80, 88, 89, 102, 136, 138, 146, 147, 149, 157, 170, 200, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214, 215, 219, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 253, 270 Vergina Tomb of Persephone, 144, 149 Vertia Philumina, 118, 119, 129, 149 Vestorius Priscus, G., 81, 157, 167 Vettia, 39, 49 Viciria Archais, 125 victimarius, 78 Volasena, 250, 265 wax masks, 144 wax tablets. See writing implements weaving, 4, 15, 29, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 279 writing implements, 40, 93, 126 capsa, 119 inkpots, 93 ledgers, 93 papyrus rolls, 93 scrolls, 40, 83, 98, 119, 140, 149, 171 styluses, 93 wax tablets, 30, 34, 37, 39, 40, 47, 71, 93, 132 found in house VIII.2.3, 37 Iucundus archive, 36, 37 Sulpicii archive, 36, 37