On a clear day, when the haze has burned off the ridges, and the sun settles toward the
twin peaks of Capri, the Bay of Naples stands in glorious relief: ranges of hills to the
north and south, a lazy arc of coastline between, and in the center, cracking the enamel sky,
Vesuvius.
The mountain’s profile has changed over the centuries, as eruptions destroyed and
resurrected its summit.
But it probably looks much as it did that crisp October afternoon, nineteen centuries
ago, when it destroyed Pompeii.
You’ve heard the story.
How, in a single day and night, choking clouds of ash and roaring pyroclastic surges transformed
a region of prosperous towns and sprawling villas into a smoldering moonscape.
How the disaster sealed Pompeii and its neighbors beneath a thick blanket of volcanic debris.
How the remains of the buried city, recovered piecemeal over three centuries, have become
our best source for understanding daily life in ancient Rome.
Even for those of us lucky enough to have visited, it’s easy to be left cold by Pompeii.
Despite the exceptional preservation of the remains, and despite all the information recovered
from them, the people are missing.
They speak to us in snatches through inscriptions.
They gaze at us with immortal fixity from their plaster casts.
But they are gone.
With a bit of imagination, however, we can at least evoke their lives, and that’s what
I’ve attempted to do in this video, which follows three Pompeiians known to us from
inscriptions through the morning before the eruption.
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Maria’s eyes shot open.
Her cot was shaking.
Another earthquake.
Staring up at the ceiling, she started to count to ten.
If the ground had stopped trembling by the time she finished, her mother used to say,
it was just another tap of Neptune’s trident.
One, two.
Was this worse than yesterday’s?
Four, five.
The sharp smell of plaster dust filled the air.
Seven, eight – as she prepared to run for the door, the shaking stopped.
She listened for the groan of collapsing walls or cracked rafters.
Nothing.
Just a few barking dogs and the clatter of tiles falling from a distant roof.
She sat up and peered at the strip of gray beneath the curtain that served as her door.
Almost morning.
She might as well get up.
She felt her way to the hook on which her tunic hung, and pulled it over her head.
Opening the curtain, she tied her belt by the predawn light, slipped on shoes, and made
her way to the courtyard, roofed by the branches of four olive trees.
She paused to put her hair up in a bun, using the water of the ornamental pool as a mirror.
She squinted at her reflection: good enough for the bar.
Out, then, into the darkened atrium.
Years ago, when a rich family lived in this house, the patriarch would sit here, and receive
lines of clients in grand style.
There wasn’t much grandeur left now – just some pots stacked against one wall, and the
old watch dog slumbering by the other.
She scratched his gray muzzle, then opened the door in one panel of the atrium gate.
The sun was up, and people were out and about – homeowners checking for earthquake damage,
shopkeepers walking to their places of business, a few mule-drawn carts trying to skirt the
law against daytime wagons.
She crossed the street on stepping stones, and made her way to the corner bakery, following
the smell of fresh bread.
The attendant – already sooty – looked up as she approached.
“The usual, Maria?”
She smiled.
“The usual.”
He swept an armload of circular loaves into a cloth bag.
“Two sestertii.”
She laid the heavy coins on the counter, wished him a good day, and plunged back into the
coolness of the street.
A few minutes’ walk brought her to the graffiti-freckled tavern where she worked.
Mistress Asellina seldom arrived before midday.
In the meantime, it was Maria’s job to get the counter ready before the late morning
rush.
Fetching the key from a string around her neck, she unlocked the heavy door.
The chime rang as she entered.
Ignoring the stale smell – some drunk must have spilled his wine last night – she set
her bread upon the counter and opened the shutter of the service window.
Taking a jug of olive oil from the shelf over the bar, she drizzled it onto a clay plate,
tore a few segments from one of the loaves, and ate them, dipping each piece into the
oil.
There were several open amphorae of wine against the wall behind the bar.
Employees were only supposed to drink from the cheapest one, but Maria saw no harm in
pouring herself a small cup of good Falernian.
It would be a long day, after all.
The other girls would arrive soon, and the customers would follow, ordering dried fruit
and roasted chickpeas from the takeout counter.
On a cool day like this, she would keep a pot of wine simmering on the stove for chilly
patrons.
And in late afternoon, when the dinner crowd started to trickle in, she would need to give
the regulars their bread and beans and garum – garum!
She had almost forgotten.
She opened the lid of a large jar and peered inside, eyes watering from the rancid smell.
The garum was almost gone.
She’d have to send for more from one of Scaurus’ shops…
Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, the garum king of Pompeii, was in an excellent mood.
He knew good garum when he saw it, and this was very good garum.
He gave the vat tender a satisfied nod.
“Well done, sir; very well done.”
He turned to his secretary.
“Stephanus, mark it down: this will be highest grade: first best premium.”
The slave scratched something on his tablet.
Scaurus surveyed the bustling facility with the satisfaction of a self-made man.
He hadn’t needed to visit this morning.
Truth be told, he had little need to do much of anything these days, now that his garum
was being sold by his associates in every town on the Bay of Naples.
Had he wanted to, he could have left the business years ago.
But he was Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, by Hercules!
Garum was in his blood; and the day he stopped dealing garum was the day they hauled him
to the pyre!
He paced among the vats.
Garum, he reflected, was like wine.
There was a grade for every budget, a blend for every taste, variety to baffle the palate
of a connoisseur.
There were northerners, he had heard, who thought that garum was rotten fish sauce.
Barbarians!
How could anyone fail to see it?
How could anyone fail to smell it?
He inhaled deeply – yes, there it was: the smell of a summer breeze on the bay, the smell
of waves caressing a sunlit shore, the smell of pure, double-salted, unadulterated profit!
He thumped the foreman on the back, and called him a good fellow.
He cast a compliment to the cook and a coin to the porter.
And then he was back on the road to the city.
A fine day, if a bit chilly.
He looked idly at the tombs on both sides.
He always seemed to notice them now.
Fine tombs, most of them.
Not far from the city gate, he climbed the steps of an especially magnificent tomb.
Inside the enclosure, sparkling with fresh stucco, he sat on a marble bench.
The inscription was just above: Aulus Umbricius Scaurus…set up by a father in memory of
his son.”
He sat there a moment with his head bowed, the sun warming his back.
Those whom the gods love die young.
He gently tapped the side of the tomb, and rejoined his secretary on the road.
He continued into the city, his secretary a pace behind.
How many years had it been since he first brought young Aulus to see the salt pans?
No use trying to remember.
Too many years.
Perhaps he would go to the baths today – not the private suite in his mansion, but the
real baths, with their saunas and smoking pools and crowds of once and future customers.
Yes – yes, that was just what his old bones needed.
He nodded and passed the gate, still daubed with slogans from the spring elections: Helvius
Sabinus!
Sabinus for aedile!
Elect Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus, a good man, and worthy of office!
Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus had been aedile for six months now, and would be aedile for six
months more.
He had been expected to be aedile since birth.
He had wanted to be aedile since he was a boy.
What a fool he had been.
He had spent half his life preparing for a career in politics.
He had been a star in the rhetorical school.
Once, when he was very young, he had declaimed before Vespasian himself.
(The emperor had fallen asleep, but had applauded at the end.)
On returning to Pompeii, he had cultivated his father’s clients and garnered friends
of his own.
When the time was ripe, he had flung himself into the campaign.
He had spoken to every trade association.
He had hired sign writers to post his slogans on every wall.
He had distributed free bread, made a few discreet payments – and had been elected
in a landslide.
He had assumed that it would be a gentlemanly sort of office, with a few ceremonial duties
and plenty of helpful subordinates to take care of everything else.
Instead, every day brought a new headache: graffiti on the temples, contracts for dung
removal, petty disputes between merchants.
And now, a complaint about bad fish.
He glanced at the row of imposing equestrian statues along one side of the forum.
That was what he wanted.
To be honored with those men, who had held the highest offices, given magnificent monuments,
and sponsored spectacular games…
Ah, the games.
One of the very few highlights of his tenure as aedile had been the preparations for the
games he would stage at the amphitheater in December.
They would not be as grandiose as he would have liked – gladiators were becoming terribly
expensive – but he had managed to hire fifteen pairs of fighters.
To fill the rest of the three-day event, he had contracted to buy deer, bears, some promisingly
ill-tempered bulls, and a lion from Africa.
The lion had been a problem from the start, mauling a sailor, breaking a tooth on the
bars of its cage, and now – for some reason – refusing to eat.
He had instructed his agent to drop a live goat into the cage, but the beast seemed uninterested.
A shout shattered his reverie.
“The aedile is here!”
He had arrived at the macellum, the marketplace just off the forum, and the dispute that had
dragged him from his office seemed to be ongoing.
In front of the circular pavilion at the macellum’s center, with its tank of live fish, two men
were arguing.
One wore a freshly-laundered toga.
The other, obviously a fishmonger, had a rough tunic smeared with scales.
Without preamble, the man in the toga turned to Scaurus: “this merchant tried to sell
me rancid fish!”
The fishmonger spat.
“You knew what you was buying.”
As the men began shouting over one another, a dull roar filled the air – deeper and
steadier than thunder, like a gigantic stone mill grinding underground.
The earth shook.
The man in the toga looked nervous: “Another earthquake…”
Scaurus concealed his own anxiety.
“Come with me to the forum square.”
The shoppers around them had the same idea, and they had to push their way through a confused
crowd to get clear of the colonnades.
The forum was already filled with knots of people, all looking to the north, past the
Temple of Jupiter, where a great cloud was rising from Vesuvius.
He had never seen any cloud like it: ashen black and rising like smoke, but faster, far
faster, dwarfing the mountain below.
As he watched, the top of the cloud began to spread, like the crown of a summer thunderstorm.
It seemed to be moving toward Pompeii…
If you enjoyed this video, check out the rest of my Pompeii and Vesuvius series, which will
be published here over the next two weeks.
You might also enjoy my book Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
Thanks for watching.