Garum, and spoilers
May. 12th, 2025 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: Pompeii, by Mary Beard
Having visited Pompeii in 2022, I think I would have found this book useful; but it's also true to say that I think I got more from this book because I had visited Pompeii, because I can recall at least some of the places Beard writes about.
This is quite a comprehensive popular survey, covering a bit about the history of excavation, as well as likely looting shortly after the eruption. Beard doesn't shy away from uncertainty - so while she will offer a plausible explanation for something, she will also offer alternatives, with some honesty that we just don't have strong evidence one way or the other for many things. Nonetheless we have much more evidence than from perhaps anywhere else in the Roman world.
From recent BBC documentaries, I was already familiar with the garum manufacturer Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, one of several characters whose properties have been identified (in this case, by the presumption that no-one else would have a mosaic of garum amphora on their floor). From the Cambridge Latin Course, as well as Doctor Who, I was familiar with Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, though Beard presents him as much as an Arthur Daley figure as a banker. But here's a spoiler: his house was identified by all his financial records in the attic - which extend only as far as AD62. Is it just coincidence that this is the year of a major earthquake in Pompeii? Perhaps Caecilius died during that event. Or maybe he archived everything from the before time as a likely write-off.
And then there's the brothel(s). Beard doesn't go on about these as much as you might stereotypically expect. Further, she points out that there's no reason to take the bawdy graffiti seriously - whilst the electoral campaigning messages on the walls are probably genuine, much else could just be the fake news of casting insults. But there's more material on the theatres, the amphitheatre, the baths and the bars and fast food outlets of the time (as well as noting the current on-site cafe is built over some particularly bad bomb damage from World War 2).
Having visited Pompeii in 2022, I think I would have found this book useful; but it's also true to say that I think I got more from this book because I had visited Pompeii, because I can recall at least some of the places Beard writes about.
This is quite a comprehensive popular survey, covering a bit about the history of excavation, as well as likely looting shortly after the eruption. Beard doesn't shy away from uncertainty - so while she will offer a plausible explanation for something, she will also offer alternatives, with some honesty that we just don't have strong evidence one way or the other for many things. Nonetheless we have much more evidence than from perhaps anywhere else in the Roman world.
From recent BBC documentaries, I was already familiar with the garum manufacturer Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, one of several characters whose properties have been identified (in this case, by the presumption that no-one else would have a mosaic of garum amphora on their floor). From the Cambridge Latin Course, as well as Doctor Who, I was familiar with Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, though Beard presents him as much as an Arthur Daley figure as a banker. But here's a spoiler: his house was identified by all his financial records in the attic - which extend only as far as AD62. Is it just coincidence that this is the year of a major earthquake in Pompeii? Perhaps Caecilius died during that event. Or maybe he archived everything from the before time as a likely write-off.
And then there's the brothel(s). Beard doesn't go on about these as much as you might stereotypically expect. Further, she points out that there's no reason to take the bawdy graffiti seriously - whilst the electoral campaigning messages on the walls are probably genuine, much else could just be the fake news of casting insults. But there's more material on the theatres, the amphitheatre, the baths and the bars and fast food outlets of the time (as well as noting the current on-site cafe is built over some particularly bad bomb damage from World War 2).