The Tombs of Pompeii

Organization, Space, and Society

Virginia Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317611387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua romana

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the tombs of Pompeii and its immediate environs, examining the funerary culture of the population, delving into the importance of social class and self-representation, and developing a broad understanding of Pompeii's funerary epigraphy and business. The Pompeian corpus of evidence has heretofore been studied in a piecemeal fashion, not conducive to assessing trends and practices. Here, a holistic approach to the funerary monuments allows for the integration of data from five different necropoleis and analysis of greater accuracy and scope.

Author Virginia Campbell demonstrates that the funerary practices of Pompeii are, in some ways, unique in to the population, moving away from the traditional approach to burial based on generalizations and studies of typology. She shows that while some trends in Roman burial culture can be seen as universal, each population, time, and place constructs its own approach to commemoration and display. Including an extensive catalogue of tomb data and images never before assembled or published, this collective approach reveals new insights into ancient commemoration. The Tombs of Pompeii is the first English-language book on Pompeian funerary rituals. It's also the first in any language to provide a complete survey of the tombs of Pompeii and the first to situate Pompeian differences within a wider Roman burial context.

1
Introduction

Pompeii is a place that evokes strong emotions and images, not only for those who study ancient history, but also for the average person who has seen a photo, viewed a documentary on television, or perhaps been lucky enough to visit the site.¹ The interest in the city, and the people who lived and died there, is not based solely on curiosity about the past but is also deeply rooted in the tragedy that befell the area in AD 79. If Vesuvius had not wrought such destruction, burying the city and its inhabitants for posterity, the name Pompeii would mean little to anyone in or out of academia, and it would not be one of the most visited places in Italy today. What most visitors take away from a tour of Pompeii is the enormity of the destruction caused by the volcano, the depth of the debris, the completeness with which an entire city was removed from the face of the earth, and the terrible, frightening image of the plaster casts of those people unfortunate enough to have remained behind when Vesuvius erupted. Whilst much attention is given to those who died in Pompeii as a result of the cataclysm, visitors show very little consideration for those who died in the town prior to the eruption, who were buried by their loved ones, and whose graves were tended regularly in accordance with tradition.²

As with any Roman city, the tombs of Pompeii radiate out from the walls along the roads (Toynbee 1971: 48; Ling 2005: 79; Cormack 2007: 585). Most modern tourists wander through the Via dei Sepolcri at Porta di Ercolano unaware of the nature of the structures they are seeing. The funerary monuments are interspersed with shops and houses, so for the untrained eye, it could be difficult to tell one from the other. Some are hidden behind walls, and others have deteriorated so much in the two hundred years since excavation that they consist of little more than large stone blocks. When a group comes across a schola, or bench tomb, the most commonly overheard remark is ‘Oh, good. A place to sit.’ That these benches are, ironically, someone else’s final resting place never occurs to them. In fact, scholars working in Pompeii have not always known what has been unearthed: the tomb of Marcus Cerrinius Restitutus, located adjacent to the city wall and containing a bench, was thought to be some sort of gatehouse or sentry box (De Carolis and Patricelli 2003: 113; Berry 2007: 97). This is, in part, based on a story that eighteenth-century excavators found an adult male skeleton within the niche of the tomb, the result of which was a rather popular and romantic notion that a sentry steadfastly remained at his post throughout the eruption of Vesuvius.³ This idea was immortalized by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton in The Last Days of Pompeii, in which some of the characters flee the eruption, running past the sentry who ‘stood, amidst the crashing elements: he had not received the permission to desert his station and escape’(1834: Vol. III, 265–266). The story of the valiant sentry who did not abandon his post is contained not only in this nineteenth century historical novel but also in the painting Faithful unto Death by Sir Edward Poynter (1865), and was recounted by Mark Twain in his memoirs of a visit to the ruins of the city (1882: 302). This illustrates that it is understandable that the average visitor to Pompeii will fail on some level to identify the structures as funerary in nature. If someone does visit more than one area of burial whilst in Pompeii, further confusion is likely to be caused by the physical differences present in both individual tombs and in the overall appearance of the separate necropoleis. One might easily assume that these necropoleis were built by different members of the population or were in use at different times.

Approximately two hundred tombs and burial areas have been excavated and recorded over the last 250 years since the rediscovery of Pompeii. They run the gamut from the unmarked interments of the corpses of the destitute to the large, elaborate structures of the wealthy. The majority of these tombs can be classified as monumental; that is, each tomb consists of a defined, purpose-built structure specifically intended for commemoration in a way that is both physically and visually explicit. In contrast, non-monumental tombs are physically less intrusive on the landscape and not always clearly demarcated. Non-monumental tombs typical of Pompeii include undefined burial areas, sometimes containing columellae or buried amphorae (and, in some instances, both). They are important to the overall study of burial as an indication of the desire for all, even the poorest, members of society to actively engage in commemoration of the dead by whatever means available to them, but their form unfortunately renders them less visible in the archaeological record and somewhat difficult to assess.

The existing publications for Pompeian burial, specifically Kockel (1983) and D’Ambrosio and De Caro (1983), are quite detailed in their approaches to individual tombs or necropoleis, but a comprehensive study of all the known tombs associated with the city of Pompeii is lacking. No single study examines the extant structures in a comparative way. It is not possible to maximise the potential for gaining insight into the burial practices and how this reflects the social and cultural mores of a group of people without including all the data available, which, heretofore, has not been done for Pompeii.

This is what this book seeks to remedy, encompassing a new study of the tombs at Pompeii. It addresses aspects of organisation, space, and society in relation to the entire corpus of tombs found in the immediate vicinity of Pompeii. We are fortunate in the size of the corpus at Pompeii: it is a large enough sample to yield worthwhile results yet small enough to be manageable. Its aim is to generate a clearer understanding of the following issues:

• Can we develop a detailed profile of each of the separate Pompeian burial areas in order to establish patterns? If there are patterns, are they social, economic, or legal?
• The general practices of Roman burial are well established, but how specifically is burial organised by a township? What are the administrative procedures behind funerary practice?
• How do the monuments reflect individual and/or group behaviour?
• Is there an identifiable tradition of burial or commemoration that is unique to the population of Pompeii?

The study of death and burial in the Roman world encompasses a variety of elements and therefore necessitates a multidisciplinary approach. Death, grief, and mourning have a significant role in any society, as do the practical issues of dealing with human remains. Although some trace of this survives archaeologically, the majority of evidence for cultural practices, rituals, and festivals and the uses of the tombs are primarily reported in the ancient literature and, to some extent, in the epitaphs themselves. This comes in a variety of forms including legal texts and wills, as well as historical sources, verse, and studies of the natural world. The literary evidence for aspects of death and dying are addressed in Chapter 2.

After exploring the attitudes towards the deceased and the process of disposing of, and memorialising the dead, the obvious starting point for study is the funerary monuments themselves. To complete any meaningful analysis of the standing structures, it was necessary to create a uniform data set from the burial evidence. Formatted into a catalogue, found in Appendix 1, these data incorporate elements from the disciplines of archaeology, art, architecture, and epigraphy. This information is then used to expand the analysis beyond individual tombs to look for larger patterns and characteristics in the local burial record. This is found in Chapter 3, which examines the evidence in terms of the layout and development of each necropolis group, the types of tombs built, and how they were decorated. Expanding the field of study to include an entire necropolis, which can then be compared to the other tomb groups associated with the city, requires the examination of spatial use and urban design, as well as issues such as accessibility and visibility.⁴ Further analysis includes the distribution of tomb types, both chronologically and by location in conjunction with known elements of status. Socio-economic factors also play a role in tomb type and placement, not only in the size and design of the tombs built but also in terms of competition and in the assertion of status that is on display amongst the dead. This chapter concludes with two brief case studies—one on altar tombs that illustrates the continuation of one tomb type throughout the Roman period and by members of different social strata and the second on a family group, the Veii, that built a series of monument types at different places and times as an exploration of the variance in burial habit present even amongst kin.

Chapter 4 makes use of the epigraphic evidence found in funerary contexts. The texts associated with the tombs are the key to identifying the social status of the deceased. They are examined both in terms of what is actually said and of how the information is presented. Also considered is how, as a body of evidence, this correlates to what is otherwise known regarding the Roman funerary epigraphic habit. Epigraphic evidence is also a significant feature of Chapter 5, which focuses on the organisation of burial space in the extramural environment. This combines archaeological evidence in the form of boundary-marking cippi with one specific element of epitaphs: the phrase ‘ex decreto decurionum.’ This phrase has heretofore been regarded as an indication that the tomb is a gift of the ordo, but in reality, it reflects the regulation of public land for private use.

Social status and its impact on funerary practices are the focus of Chapter 6, which draws on the various elements discussed in the previous chapters to provide an in-depth examination of how elements of variety in terms of tomb type, decoration, location, and epigraphic habit were manifested by various individuals. This includes looking at tombs of specific persons and family groups including elites, freedmen, patrons, Augustales, and citizens. Finally, the conclusion, Chapter 7, contains a summation of the material presented along with further thoughts on the development of the funerary record in Pompeii.

Cicero (De Leg. 2.59), when writing about the interdiction placed on mourning and funeral expense by the Twelve Tables, the legal code of early Rome, stated that ‘[t]hese provisions are praiseworthy and applicable in general both to the rich and the common people; for it is quite in accordance with nature that differences in wealth should cease with death.’ The idea that death is the great leveller, affecting all people regardless of class, legal status or ethnic origin, though certainly a lovely sentiment of equality, could not be further from the reality that is revealed by the actual monuments dedicated to the dead. The following pages show this to be true, not just for the Roman world generally but also specifically for those dying in Pompeii.

Notes

1. The popularity of Pompeii beyond a strictly academic interest is evident in the range of books published on the subject that are not strictly scholarly and are often marketed more towards a general audience, such as Beard (2008) and Butterworth and Laurence (2005). Recent years have also seen the publication of a number of coffee table books dominated by glossy images and little more than a brief overview of the city, even if they are written by scholars working in the field. Cf. Berry (2007), Ranieri Panetta (2004), and Coarelli (2002). The huge success of the special exhibit and accompanying publication by the British Museum of Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Roberts 2013) is further evidence for the popularity of the area with the public.

2. In fact, the average modern-day tour of Pompeii, unless it includes the Villa of the Mysteries, never goes near any of the tombs.

3. Behlman (2007: 161–162) points out that Weber’s entry in the daily excavation log recording the discovery of this tomb does not mention a skeleton. He believes, like Moorman (2003: 21–25), that this was a story that was invented by early cicerones, and actually based on a number of finds scattered across the city. Documented by Gell (1819: 94) and other nineteenth-century writers, it is no surprise that this quickly came to be accepted as truth.

4. Laurence (1994) was the first to use some aspects of access analysis in studying Pompeii, though this approach has subsequently been used by Grahame (2000), and spatial analysis continues to gain fa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Death in the Roman World
• 3 The Funerary Evidence of Pompeii: An Analysis
• 4 Epigraphy in the Pompeian Funerary Context
• 5 The Regulation of Burial Space
• 6 Class, Style, and Self-Representation
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: The Tombs of Pompeii
• Appendix 2: Boundary Markers in Pompeian Necropoleis
• Appendix 3: Additional Funerary Inscriptions
• Supplemental Bibliography
• Index