Dr Eireann Marshall Guide/Lecturer (2024)

30/04/2021

Rediscovering Pompeii
24 September 2020

From a hotly-debated eruption date to the grisly fates of citizens, Pompeii is telling new tales
By Dr Eireann Marshall.

It’s hard to forget how depressing Pompeii and Herculaneum were just a short while ago. I remember taking a group around Pompeii in 2010, shortly after the Schola Armaturarum collapsed, when that part of the Via dell’Abbondanza was closed off, and noting how many guests in the group – like many others after them – were disappointed by Pompeii because most of the houses were shut, and the ones that were open looked dingy. Indeed, at that time, only around 10 sites were open to the public and UNESCO had threatened to label the site as being in peril.

Then, with the ascension of Massimo Ossana as the General Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in 2014, and with the establishment of the Great Pompeii Project, which has invested around €160m in the site, it has turned around remarkably. Now sites, which I was once shown only because I knew the local staff, have opened to the public and a large excavation project has been launched. In fact, over the last couple of years, announcements of new discoveries in Pompeii have been appearing in the news so often that it has been hard to stay abreast of the situation. Throughout this time, I have kept up to speed by speaking to archaeologists working in the field, as well as to people working on the sites, from our local guides to the very active and capable Director of Herculaneum, Francesco Sirano. With this in mind, I thought I would spell out why I think there is no better time to visit the Bay of Naples than now – even if you’ve already been.

Discoveries from the excavations on Regio V: What we have learned Pompeii has been much in the news for the excavations taking place at Regio V, a 54-acre area in the northern part of the park. These excavations, the largest in Pompeii since the 1960s, are funded by the Great Pompeii Project and are being done to both secure the excavation fronts of the unexcavated parts of the city and to ensure that this area is properly drained. The focus of recent excavations has been in the area between the House of Lucretius Fronto and the House of the Silver Wedding. A staggering amount has been found so far, considering that these excavations are being carried out for maintenance purposes. Several houses have been excavated, including the House of Jupiter, the House of Leda and the Swan, the House of the Garden, and4/5 projecting balconies – not including the thermopolium (a shop selling hot food) and a shop/tavern. This has entailed the discovery of new frescoes, mosaics and artefacts. So, what have we learned from this?

BEAUTIFUL WORKS OF ART
On the most basic level, we have acquired wonderfully preserved works of art, whose pigments are still fresh and tesserae (tiles used to create mosaics) are still undamaged. An intriguing mosaic was discovered in2018 in the House of Jupiter, which is now also known as the House of Orion. The mosaic depicts a man emerging from a giant scorpion and donning butterfly wings, which might be a way of representing the figure as being transformed – also indicated by his head being on fire. The winged figure above this man, pointing upwards, may be interpreted as showing the metamorphosis of Orion into a constellation, rising out of Scorpio. The joy of this mosaic comes from its novel choice of subjects, while the lararium(a shrine in the home for guardian deities) found in October 2018 and the fresco of Leda and the Swan are particularly attractive by their vibrant paintings. Well beyond the artistic merits of the artworks found, discoveries have both shed new light on and added to what we know about the Roman world in the 1st century AD.

GLADIATORS
A painting found beneath the stairs of a shop or tavern in October 2019 hit the headlines for its subject. There is nothing more attention grabbing than gladiators, and this painting, which depicts a fight between a murmillo and a thraex (both types of Roman gladiators), catches the eye for its overt gore. What is interesting here is not so much the fight between the two gladiators, which is a commonly found motif, but the way in which the fresco characterises one as a clear victor and the other as the loser, whose blood can be seen gushing from his arms and chest. This is something that goes right to the heart of the appeal of gladiators, in that during a struggle between two men or women hell bent on harming each other, one will always emerge victorious. This allows the audience, typically identifying with one of the two fighters, to either feel the thrill of victory or the pang of regret. Particularly intriguing is the way in which the defeated gladiator raises a finger, which brings to the fore the debate about how hand gestures were used to signal either death or mercy to gladiators. While Juvenal – a poet known for his collection Satires– describes the gesture despatching a gladiator as a downward pointing thumb, or the pollice verso (Satire 3.34-37), some scholars including Corbeill have argued that the gesture used was an upward-pointing thumb. The gladiator in this new fresco, in what must be a request for mercy, is offering an all-together different gesture, which may suggest body language wasn’t standardised, just as gladiator types and equipment weren’t always the same.

S*X & DECADENCE
A theme that has never been far from the discussion of these new discoveries is s*x. The tavern or shop in which the gladiators fresco was found has variously been described in the press as being a place in which gladiators could have trysts with barmaids based on no evidence whatsoever. Two frescoes from the House of Leda and the Swan, uncovered in November 2018, also reflect modern preoccupations with s*x. The reception of the rather graphic fresco of Leda and the Swan, and the equally colourful depiction from the same House of Priapus of the god weighing his impressive phallus, have focused on the erotic nature of the depictions, neglecting the world view of ancient Pompeiians. As myths were associated with Greek literature, the owner of the House of Leda and the Swan would have commissioned the fresco in order to impress his guests with his culture. This is emphasised by the fact that the same house has revealed another painting of a myth, a rather more beautiful megalographia (a depiction of life-sized figures) of Narcissus. So, where we see quite transgressive s*x, Pompeiians would have seen erudition. The same owner would have seen the fresco of Priapusin his fauces (a narrow corridor or entryway) as a symbol of good fortune, as the phallus – the essence of masculinity – represented power and luck more than s*x. Particularly interesting to me is the way in which the Priapus fresco is so reminiscent of the famous painting in the fauces of the House of the Vettii. It is possible that the owners of the new House of Leda and the Swan, like the Vettii, were freedmen who made their fortune in trade and wanted to show off their good luck with paintings of Priapus as well as their culture through paintings of myths.

STUDIES OF VESUVIAN VICTIMS
Perhaps the most exciting discoveries are the most gruesome. The new excavations in Pompeii have revealed more bodies than have been found in decades and have done so just when modern technologies have developed, which allows us to study the lives of individuals through their skeletal remains. What makes the Vesuvian bodies crucial is that a range of individuals who didn’t die of natural causes have been uncovered, meaning that archaeologists can study a pool of ordinary, healthy people. The incredible find in February 2019 of a seven or eight-year-old child in the Central Baths, a site that was thoroughly excavated in the 19th century, emphasises just how much archaeology has developed. Where archaeologists in the 19th century presumably left the skeleton in situ because they couldn’t make a good plaster cast of it, modern archaeologists have exhumed the skeleton because of the information it can provide. The most important cache of bodies was found in October 2018 in the House of the Garden, where 10 bodies were found strewn around the room by looters (perhaps before 1748 when the excavations of Pompeii
began) who were most likely only after expensive items. While we await the results of the osteoarchaeological studies of the skeletons, what this moving collection of bodies reveals is that people, in times of crisis, like to congregate with others close to them. The same phenomenon has been seen many times over in Pompeii, famously in the House of Julius Polybius, but also in Oplontis.

Rather more has been revealed about the bodies discovered in the ancient warehouses of Herculaneum in a study from 2018, carried out by Pierpaolo Petrone – a palaeobiologist at the Federico II University Hospital in Naples. Using ICP-MS and Raman miscrospectroscopy, Petrone identified the red and black residues found on the Herculaneum bones, skulls and artefacts as blood that had vaporised, along with other internal bodily fluids, as a result of the extreme heat from the pyroclastic flow that overwhelmed Herculaneum. Examining the cracks in the skeletons and skulls, Petrone concluded that the brains and bodily fluids of the victims had boiled, causing the skeletons to crack, the skull caps to explode and fluids to escape. This demonstrates, in graphic terms, how the citizens of Herculaneum died – of fulminant shock, rather than from asphyxiation. Small comfort can be gained from the fact that the people would have been killed faster than their reaction times would have registered consciousness – ultimately, they died before they knew it.

The cause of death in the 54 individuals found in Oplontis B, however, is far less clear and it is one of the things that a team led by Kristina Killgrove and Nic Terrenato are hoping to learn through 3D photogrammetry and osteological analysis. This building, which appears to be an emporium owned by L. Crassius Tertius on the basis of a seal ring found at the site, has revealed priceless artefacts, including transport vessels, jewellery, food stuffs, and even human remains. The Oplontis Project, led by John R. Clarke and Michael L. Thomas of the University of Texas, has revealed much about the villa and its victims. Using anthropological, isotopic and DNA studies, Killgrove and Terrenato are studying the bones of the Oplontis victims, along with some from Pompeii, in order to get a better picture of the lives of ordinary people, including their diets and pathologies. This is all the more interesting since the 54 victims, huddled in one room on the ground floor, appear to have separated themselves into two groups based on social status.

Their findings so far have suggested that many victims from Oplontis were related (on the basis of dental and skeletal similarities) and that the victims were generall well off. Interestingly, the people found at Oplontis seem to have not suffered from anaemia and appeared to have had balanced diets, although the teeth of some of the children indicate periods of hunger. Unlike the teeth of the Herculaneum skeletons, those of the Oplontis victims show a lot of dental problems. This study’s work with 3D photogrammetry has brought some of these individuals to life. One
of the most moving examples is that of a young woman, who survived a cranial blunt trauma and was 36 weeks pregnant at the time of the eruption, the tiny bones of her foetus having almost all been found entirely reconstructed.

RELIGIOUS & EVERYDAY LIFE
Although recent finds have not offered evidence that revolutionises the way we understand ancient religions, they do give glimpses into the religious or spiritual lives of Pompeiians. A couple of lararia have been found in Regio V, including a spectacular one whose paintings are remarkably well-preserved, accessed from the Vicolo of Lucretius Fronto. Found in 2018, this lararium is one of the largest found in Pompeii and it has a small garden whose plants would have resembled those painted onto the wall. In a wonderful trompe l’oeil, the peacock depicted on the fresco would have looked like it was walking in the garden itself. More poignantly, archaeologists found remnants of burned offerings in a vessel at the foot of the shrine, a tangible link to the Pompeiian family who worshipped here in the hopes of a prosperous future.

Amulets and jewellery found in the House of the Garden in 2019 offer a tantalising glimpse into the world view of Pompeiian women. The finds include two mirrors, some glass beads, a well as a number of pendants in the shape of little phalluses, closed fists, skulls and scarabs, which were originally enclosed in a wooden box that has since disintegrated. The inclusion of scarabs and Harpocrates underlines the popularity of Egyptian cults in this trading town, while the amulets, as a whole, appear to be apotropaic goo luck charms.

EVIDENCE OF A GUILD
Pompeii was a city full of guilds, such as fullers and silversmiths, which voted in blocks and even provided communal burials for some of their members. Citizens would have identified themselves through their work and their tombs were decorated with work tools. Two designs on opus signinum floors (a type of simple and roughly patterned pavement used in Roman antiquity) in the House of Orion, found in 2019, may shed light into the guild of the surveyors in Pompeii. One depiction may represent a groma, a surveying instrument comprising a vertical pole upon which four arms were fixed that had plumb lines falling from them, which was used to provide straight
lines and right angles. The depiction on the floor is one of five parallel lines next to a circle, which appears to be placed on a pole. Another opus signinum floor depicts a square within a circle dissected by two lines. I have never seen these designs on floors and I think they are meant to represent something in particular. I do think that these may well be depicting tools of the surveyors’ trade and that the owner of this house may be simply advertising his work. While I think Osanna’s suggestion – that this is a headquarters for this guild – is too speculative, I believe these designs do show how important work was to defining who Pompeiians thought they were.

THE ALL IMPORTANT & MUCH DISCUSSED, ERUPTION DATE
Perhaps the most publicised discovery from the Regio V excavations is the graffito in a sure hand, which says “XVI (ante) K(alends) Nov(embres) in[d] ulsit pro masumis esurit[ioni]” and can be translated as “17 October (16 days before the Kalends of November) he over-ate”. This was scribbled on one of the walls of the House of the Garden, in one of the rooms that was still being renovated, as is evidenced by the flooring and lack of plastering on some walls. While the graffito doesn’t include a year, the fact that it is written in charcoal – a medium that is easily removed – suggests it was written shortly before the eruption. For those of us who grew up reading Pliny, the
eruption of Vesuvius is firmly etched in our minds as 24 August – or, rather, had been etched until an increasing
amount of evidence was assessed, suggesting that the eruption actually occurred in the autumn. The evidence
in question includes a dolia full of wine (suggesting a recent wine harvest had been done), the heavier clothes
on some of the victims, jars filled with preserved summer fruits, and – perhaps most telling – a coin that celebrated the 15th acclamation of the Emperor Titus, an event that occurred in September AD79 (the coin must have been minted after this and dispersed throughout Italy afterwards). This charcoal graffito is a lovely addition to this largely settled debate. It has made me realise just how reliant we are on transmitted information. The reason why 24 August has been favoured until now is that it is included in all translations of Pliny the Younger’s famous account of the eruption – in his letter to the historian, Tacitus (6.16). This date was included in the Codex Laurentianus Mediceus, which Aldus Manutius – the influential Venetian publisher – used for his edition of Pliny’s letters. As the first complete edition of Pliny’s letters, Manutius’ publication has been the basis of later versions and, for that reason, 24 August stuck. We can tell that the 24 August date was a corruption in the manuscript because the date is given as Nonum Kal September rather than the correct a.d. IX kal.sept. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The eruption of Vesuvius is firmly etched in our minds as 24 August – or, rather, had been etched until an increasing amount of evidence was assessed.

27/04/2021

Montestaccio

Ancient Historians differ on their assessments of the Ancient Roman economy, questioning whether it was almost as sophisticated as modern economies or whether it was more primitive. While I vacillate between the two, for me one of the most compelling arguments for the economy being sophisticated lies in one of the largest, and certainly impressive, rubbish dumps of the ancient world, namely the 35 metre high Montestaccio.
Located just outside the heart of the ancient city and at the back of the Horrea Galbae, the warehouse which stored foodstuffs coming from all over the empire, the Montestaccio is a hill made up entirely of broken olive oil sherds of large amphorae known as Dressel 20s, which held around 70 litres of oil. Although it is hard to know when the Montestaccio was first constructed, most of the sherds that make up the hill date from AD140 to 250. What is astonishing is that the mound is made up of approximately 53 million amphorae which, together, would have comprised 6 billion litres of oil, all of which would have been imported from Spain in a 110 year period. What is all the more remarkable is that this oil was only a fraction of the amount imported, as it was the olive oil that was part of the annona or dole which was handed out to 200,000 male citizens every month.

https://www.google.com/search?q=monte%20testaccio&tbm=isch&tbs=il:cl&rlz=1C1AZAA_enGB749GB771&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CAAQ1vwEahcKEwig-_Wz7aDuAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw&biw=1079&bih=526 =SvF4Qwzqrq2R9M

The creation of the Montetestaccio raises a lot of questions, in particular why breaking up amphorae and throwing them away was deemed to be more practical than re using them. While used amphorae were normally ground down in order to make the kind of flooring known as cocciopesto or opus signinum, which was made up of sherds of amphorae mixed with mortar, olive oil amphorae couldn’t have been used for this purpose as oil is antithetical to water. As the amphorae couldn’t be recycled, the disposal of the pots clearly demonstrates it was cheaper to throw away the amphorae than send them back, empty, on ships to Spain.
Over and beyond the implications the Montetestaccio has for the scale of the oil importations in Rome, what is remarkable is the organisation that went into constructed this mound. The sherds weren’t just thrown on a pile but were neatly stacked, which would have required a huge personnel, presumably the same cohorts who worked on the Horrea Galbae. The logistics involved in creating this hill is matched by the logistics in recording the amphorae which all had tituli picti which indicated the weight of the amphorae, the weight of the olive oil, the provenance of the oil, the name of the olive oil merchant, as well as the name of the monitors who checked the details. The astonishing amount of bureaucracy which went into recording this information not only indicates that an army of people were involved in taking down and archiving the details of Rome’s imports but also that this was a state controlled enterprise.
The Montestaccio, whose scale indicates how interconnected the Roman empire was, also stands as a monument to the efforts which Rome underwent to feed its populace, which included both ensuring grain and olive oil from North Africa and Spain arrived, and recording in painstaking detail the extent of the imports. The annona not only helped ensure the plebs Romana were fed but also acted as an economic stimulus. There is no doubt that Rome’s demand for the grain would have stimulated the economies of the various provinces.The annona would also certainly have created a lot of jobs in Rome, though it is uncertain how much of the labour force, which created the mound and was involved in the bureaucracy, was free. Making sure that the Roman masses had bread and circuses was a political necessity to emperors and it required all of the sophistication of Roman trading networks and bureaucracy to come to fruition.

12/03/2021

Petronia Justa and Slavery in Herculaneum
In the excavation of the House of Bicentenary along the Decumanus Maximus in Herculaneum carried out in the 1930s, a collection of eighteen documents was found which gives us a rare glimpse into the lives of slaves in the Roman period. The eighteen wax tablets were part of a lawsuit and comprise the testimonies and names of people who gave witness as to whether a woman called Petronia Justa was an ingenua, a freeborn woman, or not. From two of the tablets, we can date the lawsuit to the AD 70s, though we don’t know when it began and, frustratingly, we don’t how it ended. The fragmentary evidence that we do have, however, provides us with precious insights into the lives of a group of individuals who lived just before the eruption and who may well have been lost their lives in it.
From the tablets we can piece together the lives of Petronia Vitalis, the slave of Gaius Petronius Stephanus and his aristocratic wife Calatoria Themis. The tablets indicate that Petronia Vitalis was manumitted and moved away from the Petronius household, though she left her daughter, Petronia Justa behind. It seems that Petronia Justa remained with Calatoria and Petronius for a while, until Teleforus, a freedman who had been Calatoria’s childhood tutor, negotiated Justa’s return to Vitalis. After the death of Vitalis and Petronius had died, it seems that Calatoria had brought a lawsuit against Justa, claiming that she was born before her mother, Vitalis, was freed, making her a slave. Five of the testimonia recorded on the wax tablets swore that Justa was born after her mother’s manumission, making her an ingenua, and two claimed the contrary. Having brought their testimony to a Herculaneum magistrate who deemed he didn’t have the authority to decide whether Justa were free or not, the case was sent to Rome to be heard, presumably in the Basilica Julia. As is so often the case with antiquity, our evidence is limited and we can’t know if the trial took place in Rome, as we can’t know if Justa and Calatoria survived the eruption.
The case, however, is central to understanding slavery in a small city like Herculaneum. One of the things we can gather from the case is that freedwomen could become successful. Slaves normally paid for their own manumission and, while it wouldn’t be surprising that freedmen involved in commerce made enough money to pay for their freedom, it is interesting that the same applies to women. Indeed, I would postulate that Calatoria may have brought the case not just to regain Justa as her slave but to claim the wealth which Vitalis had passed on to her daughter.
The Justa case also demonstrates that it was hard to determine a person’s status because there was clearly not an established way of declaring someone’s manumission. We know that slaves who paid for their manumission had to pay a five percent tax, which suggests that there were bureaucratic processes in place. We also know, in the republican period, that masters declared the manumission of their slaves in front of a magistrate. Clearly, with the passage of time these procedures subsided, at least in small cities, such that it required the testimony of witnesses to establish Justa’s status. This seems incredible given the importance of the difference between the freed and enslaved under law.
Another interesting insight to be gained from the case is that manumission didn’t end the relationship between slaves and their erstwhile owners. It seems extraordinary to me that Petronia Vitalis left her daughter, Justa, behind to live with Stephanus and Calatoria and that Justa was said to be loved by them like a daughter. Indeed, it took negotiations to remove Justa from the Petronius household, presumably because their affection for her. This close relationship between masters with, at least, their household slaves, is partly the reason for which we have a problem in determining the status of Justa.
Walking through the newly opened, extraordinary House of the Bicentenary, it is hard not to think of Petronia and the her fate. The scale of the house and its expensive décor emphasises the wealth of the owner, who may well have been Justa. It’s not hard to see how Calatoris, whoever much affection she had for her, would want to reclaim Justa.

12/03/2021

Palmyrene Funerary Art

Located in an oasis in the Syrian desert North East of Damascus, Palmyra remains one of the most impressive ancient sites despite the damaged caused by the Civil War in Syria. The imposing Grand Colonnade, which is more than a kilometre long, and the no less monumental Temple of Ba’al rise up improbably from the desert. At its height, it was a city of more 200,000 and powerful enough to develop a short-lived empire under the intrepid Queen Zenobia in the late 3rd century AD. Palmyra is stunning not just for its grandiose architecture but above all because of its mixture of Amorite, Aramaean, Graeco-Roman and Persian cultures, which resulted from its being an important caravan oasis along the silk route linking the Roman empire to Persia, India and China. This blend gives rise to one of the most interesting artistic traditions in the Roman empire, perhaps best exemplified by the funerary reliefs which seal the tomb enclosures found in Palmyra’s extensive necropoleis.

Palmyrene funerary relief busts are a wonderful combination of cultures. Produced from the 1st century AD to AD 273 (when the city was sacked by the Roman emperor Aurelian in response to the growth of the Palmyrene Empire), the busts are always frontal and cut off at the torso. Like Roman portraits, these are meant to encapsulate the essence and being of the deceased, through their clothing, ornamentations and gestures. Men typically wear a himation and chithon and hold a variety of objects in their hands which are meant to be representative of them. These include scrolls, indicating the skills of the deceased in rhetoric and education, as well as whips, which show off the late person’s role as a merchant. Priestly roles, in turn, are indicated by the wearing of head-dresses, which art historians call modii because of their resemblance to the Roman units of measurement. Women, in turn, are shown wearing tunics and cloaks and are often depicted with their heads covered by veils. They are individualised by their gestures, which include holding their veils or touching their cheeks, as well as by the display of their jewellery. While their male counterparts often hold objects which might be indicative of their professions, women are shown holding items which indicate their domestic virtues, such as distaffs and spindles.

Funerary busts are similar to Roman equivalents in several respects, most notably in the sense that they represent the individual deceased. This notion of the portrait standing for the dead person is something which is akin to Roman ancestral busts, which were stored in the atria of Roman houses in order to preserve the identities of the deceased members of the families. Palmyrene funerary busts also follow several Roman artistic traditions, including the drilling of pupils and hair and the inclusion of beards, all from 2nd century BC. Yet, Palmyrene portraits are fundamentally different from Roman ones in that they are idealised; there is no sense that the individual’s features are being captured and this is a very important difference, bearing in mind that Roman portraits could be so apparently faithful to the likeness of the deceased that they recorded warts and all. To this extent, Palmyrene busts are much more akin to their Greek counterparts and indeed Palmyrenes are shown wearing Greek clothes and some of the inscriptions are in Greek. Yet Palmyrene funerary art isn’t just a conflation of Greek and Roman art, as any cursory glance can testify. There is an undeniable Persian influence attested by the large eyes and the plentiful jewellery. Just to make the blend of cultures even more interesting, Palmyrenes followed Egyptian traditions in that they mummified their dead.

These busts of deceased Palmyrenes which peer out at us from their tombs are a bit like busts from several different cultures and, at the same time, like no other art. Like the city which produced them, Palmyrene busts are products of a culture which had a strong sense of itself and yet which was influenced by the many peoples with whom they traded.

12/03/2021

Seneca on Bathing in the Ancient World

Central to every city in the empire and a topic of many satirists, baths were a crucial part of every day life in the Roman world. The titanic Baths of Caracalla, which today are used as the back drops of operas, are unimaginably big and yet they are not as big as the Baths of Diocletian. These imperial thermae, and the aqueducts which fed them, were built by emperors intent on keeping the populace happy, the magnificence of these baths offering respite from the dingy insulae most people called home. Alongside these magnificent thermae were a plethora of smaller privately owned balnea which varied from luxurious to the seedy, such as the balnea of Lupus and Gryllus memorably described by Martial.
In two of his letters to Lucilius, Seneca gives us wonderful insights on bathing in the Roman World, at least from the point of view of a Stoic philosopher. In his 86th letter, Seneca tells Lucilius that he is in Liternum, resting at the house of the venerable Scipio Africa, the vanquisher of Hannibal. As is the wont of Romans, he waxes lyrical about the past and the men who shaped it, saying that he sacrificed at an altar he fancied as Scipio’s tomb not because he defeated Carthage but because of his moderation and respect for traditions. It is in this vein that he describes Scipio’s simple house and bath:
the small bath, buried in darkness according to the old style, for our ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath except in darkness. It was therefore a great pleasure to me to contrast Scipio's ways with our own. Think, in this tiny recess the "terror of Carthage… used to bathe a body wearied with work in the fields! For he was accustomed to keep himself busy and to cultivate the soil with his own hands, as the good old Romans were wont to do.
Seneca contrasts the simplicity and virtue of Scipio’s baths with those frequented by his contemporaries: Scipio’s are small and modest, the darkness of hot baths hiding the nudity of bathers. This chimes with Plutarch’s description of the very conservative Cato the Elder who wouldn’t swim n**e with his son, as Greeks do.
Moral Letters to Lucilius 86.4-5

In contrast to these simpler times, Seneca famously describes the baths which he witnesses every day from his flat. The gist of the letter is that, as a Stoic philosopher, Seneca should be content under any circumstances, even when trying to work when the baths beneath him are so noisy.
So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds, which are strong enough to make me hate my very powers of hearing! When your strenuous gentleman, for example, is exercising himself by flourishing leaden weights; when he is working hard, or else pretends to be working hard, I can hear him grunt; and whenever he releases his imprisoned breath, I can hear him panting in wheezy and high-pitched tones. Or perhaps I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rubdown, and hear the crack of the pummelling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow… Add to this the arresting of an occasional roysterer or pickpocket, the racket of the man who always likes to hear his own voice in the bathroom, or the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming-tank with unconscionable noise and splashing. Besides all those whose voices, if nothing else, are good, imagine the hair-plucker with his penetrating, shrill voice, – for purposes of advertisement, – continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell instead. Then the cake-seller with his varied cries, the sausageman, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive intonation.
Moral Letters to Lucilius 56.1-2
Baths in simpler times had far fewer amenities and were virtuous and quiet as a result. The baths which Seneca and his peers would have known would have had been filled with a cast of characters, including thieves, depilators and sausage sellers, who would have helped cement their reputations and dens of iniquity.

Dr Eireann Marshall Guide/Lecturer

30/04/2021

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