Real Roman History24 Sep

Episode 91. Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Preserved Cities

Works Cited Primary Sources

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Volume IV. Edited by Karl Zangemeister with Richard Schoene, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1871; supplementary volumes throughout the twentieth century. The principal printed source for the Pompeian graffiti, with over eleven thousand individual inscriptions catalogued. Specific items cited in the episode include CIL IV 1645 (Successus the weaver and Iris), CIL IV 1880 (the latrine inscription), CIL IV 1928 (Marcellus and Praenestina), CIL IV 2175 (the Lupanar wall), and CIL IV 7065 (the Apelles comparison).
Fiorelli, Giuseppe. Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia. 1860–1864. The principal source for the development of the plaster cast technique introduced in 1863 and the systematic recording standards that brought Pompeii from royal treasure house to scientific site. Fiorelli's regional and insula numbering system remains the standard reference system today.
Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità. Official publication of the Italian archaeological administration. The principal continuing record of excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum from the late nineteenth century to the present. The Great Pompeii Project publications since 2013 are the current standard for new discoveries.
The Pompeii and Herculaneum archaeological record. Continuous excavation and conservation, 1748 to the present. The cities themselves are the principal primary source for this episode; the literary frame is minimal. The archaeological evidence—the houses, the workshops, the streets, the bodies, the carbonised foodstuffs, the wall decorations—is the testimony.

Archaeological Evidence

Bakery of Modestus. Region VII Insula 1, Pompeii. The carbonised loaves still in the oven, recovered in the early twentieth century. Eighty-one loaves preserved exactly in shape, now at the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
House of the Faun. Region VI Insula 12, Pompeii. Used here for the pre-Roman wealthy household's continuity into the Roman period and for the Alexander Mosaic (now at the Naples National Archaeological Museum).
House of the Vettii. Region VI Insula 15, Pompeii. Used here as the principal example of Fourth Style domestic decoration and freedman commercial success: the atrium frescoes, the dining room programme, the integration of decorative wealth with the household's freedman origins.
Lupanar. Region VII Insula 12, Pompeii. The only purpose-built brothel positively identified at the site. Used here as the principal evidence for Roman sexuality and for the integration of slave labour into urban commercial life: the frescoes, the small rooms with stone beds, and the graffiti recording prostitutes by name and price.
Thermopolium of Asellina (Region IX Insula 11) and the 2020 Region V thermopolium discovery. Used here as the principal examples of the Roman urban fast food economy, with counters, dolia, and (in the Asellina case) a box of coins still under the counter representing the day's takings.
Villa of the Mysteries. Suburban Pompeii. Used here for the fresco cycle depicting what appears to be the initiation into a Dionysiac mystery cult. The interpretation of the scenes remains debated in modern scholarship.
Villa of the Papyri. Herculaneum. Probably owned by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul of 58 BCE and father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The library of approximately 1,800 carbonised Greek philosophical scrolls, primarily Epicurean texts including works by Philodemus of Gadara. The principal site for the Vesuvius Challenge computational reading project.

Secondary Sources

Allison, Penelope. Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the Material Culture. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2004. The standard work on Pompeian domestic evidence. The reading of the houses as evidence about household organisation, rather than as architectural showcases, follows Allison's approach.
Beard, Mary. The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. Harvard University Press, 2008. The standard accessible treatment in modern scholarship. Used here for the broader context of Pompeian daily life.
Benefiel, Rebecca, and Peter Keegan, eds. Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World. Brill, 2016. For the scholarly treatment of the Pompeian graffiti as a body of evidence for vernacular Latin and ordinary social life.
Levin-Richardson, Sarah. The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex, Class, and Gender at the Margins of Roman Society. Cambridge University Press, 2019. The current standard scholarly treatment of the Lupanar. The handling of the slavery dimension in this episode follows Levin-Richardson's analysis; the work approaches the site with the clear-eyed attention that the evidence requires.
Sider, David. The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. J. Paul Getty Trust, 2005. The standard scholarly treatment of the Villa of the Papyri library through the late twentieth century, prior to the computational recoveries beginning in 2023.
Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. Herculaneum: Past and Future. Frances Lincoln, 2011. The standard treatment of Herculaneum's distinctive preservation profile, including the carbonised wood corpus and the Villa of the Papyri context.

Contemporary Developments

The Vesuvius Challenge. Founded March 2023 by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. Project website and published academic papers, ongoing. The computational reading of the Herculaneum scrolls using micro-CT scanning data from Brent Seales's team at the University of Kentucky and the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. The October 2023 first-word recovery (porphyras) by Luke Farritor, the February 2024 grand prize award to Farritor, Youssef Nader, and Julian Schilliger, and the continuing recoveries through 2024, 2025, and the June 2026 reading of the first complete scroll are documented in detail on the project's open archive.

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