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4.2 The Early Settlement and the Forum at Pompeii
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From the lesson
Civic Life interrupted: Nightmare and Destiny on August 24, A.D. 79
Civic, commercial, and religious buildings of Pompeii buried by the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 and later rediscovered. Daily life in Pompeii is illustrated through its bakeries and fast food stands and a moving account dramatizes what happened when disaster struck.
Meet the Instructors
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
Now this tragedy that befell Pompeii in, in August of
79, was indeed a tragedy for them, for the people who lived there, obviously.
It was also a tragedy for the reigning Emperor, a man by the name of Titus.
T-I-T-U-S, who, was the honored and the famous arch of Titus in Rome.
We'll talk about him and his architecture in Rome later in the semester.
But it was a disaster for him and he had to contend
with a plague and a fire in Rome, also at the same time.
It was very difficult for him and, poor man, even though he
was quite young, died of natural causes after only three years in office.
And I think it was in part this, this
catastrophe that it happened in the Bay of Naples
area that led in part to his, to the
stress of it that led in part to his demise.
So, this was a great tragedy for him, a great tragedy for the people
of Pompeii, great tragedy for Rome but it is, it was the stroke of good
luck for archaeologists, and in the sense for us as well because, of course,
what happened to Pompeii is something very
different than what, than what happened to Rome.
What happened to Pompeii is that it was, it's life was snuffed out all at once.
It came to an end all at once.
Compare this to Rome which has been inhabited over millennia.
In Rome buildings have been redone, rethought, remade.
Over time.
That never happened in Pompeii, because Pompeii again died essentially
on in August of 79, and everything that was there
was preserved just as it was and that's how it
was discovered when it was re, when it was excavated
in the mid 18th century as it had been, exactly how, how it, how it had been.
On that day in August in 79.
This is extremely important, it's one of our only really fixed chronological
dates, and it provides us with an incredible laboratory of material
because, again, everything, nothing is changed you know from the time
that it was left there, except for what the treasure hunters removed.
But for the most part nothing has changed, and we can study it as it was.
The other thing that you must remember from the outset, that although what was
revealed by excavators in the eighteenth century,
nineteenth century and beyond even today, Was
not just the, I mean it was the Pompeii, of, of, August 79, but
the buildings that stood there were not just the buildings that had been renovated
between the earthquake of 62 and the eruption of Vesuvius of 79, But some
of the very earliest buildings, including the Samnite structures still stood.
And so when we look back, we will be able to trace in a sense the city of
Pompeii and it's architecture, from the time of the
Samnites up until the time of the emperor Titus.
I want to begin with a plan of
the city of Pompeii. And you see it here.
And the plan that I show you is a plan of the city as it was in AD 79.
We see all of the buildings at that juncture.
We see that the shape of the city is essentially an irregular rectangle.
And we also can see very well that the city
is surrounded by a wall, a protective wall as were.
So it was
walled like all the other cities that we've talked about thus far this term.
You can see some of the major buildings very clearly.
The ampitheater that we'll talk about today.
The theater and the music hall over here. You can see the streets of the city.
The cardo or north-south street and the Decumanus or east-west street of
the city as well as the fairly regular blocks where the houses and
the shops were located.
What is important to note however, is that the Samnite City was obviously much
smaller than the city of 79 and to recapture a sense of the Samnite city,
we have to look at the bottom left side of this plan where we
see the original Samnite city which seems
to have been roughly a fairly regular square.
And in that Samnite city, the Romans, and they
followed Roman surveying method, methodology here they, they looked
to what was exactly the center of the city and
they placed the cardo the north-south street, and the decumanus,
the east-west street, at that exact mid-point of the city.
And then they located, as they like to do, the forum
of the city, the great meeting and marketplace, right at the intersection
of the cardo and of the decumanus, and that is exactly where we see the forum
that was begun in the Samnite period, right
at the intersection of those two original streets.
Then, over time, obviously, as they expanded the city,
the cardo grew and the decumanus grew, and it didn't
end up exactly at the center of the larger city,
but it was at the center of the original city.
The, let's begin in fact with the forum because the
forum was begun itself during the time of the Samnites.
You'll see from your monument list, that I've given you a date of
the second half of the second century BC for the forum at Pompeii.
And, again, that indicates to us, because of the chronology of the city,
of the history of the city, that it was begun in samonite times.
You see here
on the screen a, an excellent plan of the forum as it was and as it grew over time.
As buildings were added over time.
This plan is from the text, one of your textbooks from Ward
Perkins, and I think it it, it, it deserves you know, careful study.
we're, let's describe it together today.
We see that the central part of the forum, which was again,
the, essentially the main meeting and marketplace of the forum is a, very
elongated rectangle with the temple, a
Capitolium, a Temple to Jupiter, located
on one of the short ends and you should be immediately, your minds eye
should go immediately to the sanctuary designs that we saw last time.
Think for example of the
sanctuary of Hercules Victor at Tivoli.
Where we saw that the temple was pushed up against
one of the back walls, in that case the long wall.
And dominated the space in front of it.
We see the same kind of scheme here, where we see this rectangular space
with the temple pushed up, in this case on one of the short walls.
Pushed up against the back wall and then dominating the space in front of it.
The forum itself is surrounded by columns, a colonnade, as you can see here.
And and it is open to the sky.
Open to the sky.
Then deployed around it all the other important
buildings that needed to be in a forum.
The curia or senate house over here. The basilica or law court over here.
Another temple, in this case the Temple
of Apollo.
And then the series of buildings that were added later on the right side.
A wonderful building of a woman that we're
not going to be talking about this semester called Eumachia.
Who, and it gives you some sense that women could wield power.
It wasn't easy.
They couldn't vote. They couldn't hold public office.
But they could sometimes wield power, and this particular woman did.
In Pompeii, a very large building that was for her and for her trade guild.
A lararium or a place, a shrine, a market, or marcellum.
Up there.
Some of these added later. But the ones that are particularly
critical to our understand of the Samnite city are the Capitolium and are the
basilica, which both date to the second century B.C. Here is a view of,
oh I am sorry I did want to say something about the Google Earth image on the on
the left.
This is a Google Earth, Earth image which I tried to take in such a
way that one could, can see it almost
exactly the same vantage point as the plan.
And you can see everything here that I've already pointed out.
The open rectangular space, the colonnade.
The temple pushed up against the back wall, the Temple of Jupiter.
The basilica, over here.
The Temple of Apollo, Eumachia's building here.
The senate house
over here, and so on. And, this again, underscores the value of
Google Earth as one can, can look down on these buildings and compare
what one sees to the master plan. This is a view of the colonnade.
It's a two story colonnade at the Forum of Pompeii.
And you can see the same thing that we saw
happening in the Theater of Marcellus in Rome, That the columns
they have used have looked at the Greek the Greek orders.
Doric, Ionic and Corinthian.
And they have selected here to use the Doric for
the first story and the Ionic for the second story.
This colonnade does not date to the Samnite period.
We believe that it was put up later. But it it's made out of white limestone.
And it probably again does belong to a renovation
of the forum of a somewhat later date.
Look also near the columns and you will see a series
of bases a large base over here a smaller base over here
you see a lot of these still in the forum today
and what these bases were for of course were to support statues.
Statues and then there would have been
inscription on the base identifying who that was.
Sometimes they were statues of
the reigning dynast in Rome.
Age of Augustus, it might be Augustus or
his wife Livia but they also honored the the
most important people of the city of Pompeii; magistrates,
great benefactors, some Eumachia, we know, had a portrait.
Inside her own building honoring her.
Standing next to the Empress Livia.
So that's, you have to imagine that while the forum is quite empty today
that in antiquity there would have been all of these bases.
With equestrian statues and full length
statues vying with one another for attention.
The individuals honored there sort of jostling with one another to
to underscore their, their fame at least within their own city.
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