Life Among the Ruins

January 27, 2017

We’ve been wandering the ruins of Pompeii for days, and there’s still more to see. 

We approached the ruins from the Marina Gate, which is close to the light rail station where we left for Herculaneum on Wednesday.

Among the first things you see after you climb the road through the gate are monumental bronzes. One is part of a huge face. The other is an incomplete figure of a youth who looks out over the new city.

To greenhorns like me they appear to be statues excavated from the ruins, but in fact they are 20th century pieces by an artist named Igor Mitoraj. They are quite beautiful, but they are fakes. 

The exhibition is temporary. It began last May and is due to end this month. 

One piece, a giant centaur, is useful, though, because it sits on a pedestal in the Forum at the top of the Via dell’ Abbondanza and helps me get my bearings from time to time. I think the pedestal is original to the Forum, although the centaur is Mitoraj.

Much of the ruins consist of small empty rooms opening onto the street. Every once in a while there is the remnant of a staircase now going nowhere. I imagine most of the upper stories were obliterated by the tons of debris that buried the city.

Throughout the city, there are sites marked “thermopolium.” They have counters with large jars built into them. They are bars and diners. According to one sign, nobody ate lunch at home, so I guess there was plenty of business.

Just uphill from the Forum there is a modern pizzeria and cafeteria sitting among the ruins. Maybe it is a fully restored thermopolium, complete with sliding glass doors.

Highlights of Thursday included the lupanare, the House of the Faun, and the House of Casca Longus. 

This is the Casca who joined Brutus and Cassius in the plot to kill Julius Caesar.

There is a three-legged table, possibly made of marble, in the atrium. It has lion heads with flat crowns where the tabletop, now missing, would have rested. Each flat surface is inscribed with the owner’s name. 

I’m not sure the carver was literate. One version is “P. (for Publius) Cass. Log.” Another, more clear, is “P. Casc. Long.”

Not too far from Casca’s house is the Vicolo del Lupanare, or Alley of the Whorehouse. I read that “lupa” (she-wolf) was a name given to prostitutes.

The place is tiny, but is subdivided into five rooms, each with a stone bed. There are paintings above the doorways showing services of the house: cowgirl, doggy style, and so forth.

According to the guidebook, the lupae were slaves who offered their services for two bronze or copper coins. The coin, known as an “as,” is spelled, appropriately enough, “asses” in the plural. 

According to one source, you could buy a glass of wine (maybe at a thermopolium) for one as.

We wandered up and down the streets, which are paved with large stones that remind Joanna of loaves of bread. They are tough on the feet. 

The House of the Faun is named for a small bronze of a dancing faun. It contains a famous mosaic depicting Alexander defeating Darius.

The house occupies an entire city block. Its doorstep is reproduced on post cards, a mosaic of the word of welcome, “HAVE.” Just like “Ave Maria,” but spelled with a silent “h.” Don’t think I’d ever seen that before. 

We left the ruins just before closing by the gate nearest the hotel. We walked to the church plaza and saw a restaurant on the corner. We were studying the menu when a man came up and asked where we were from. 

When we said the United States, he said he was frightened by Trump. So am I, I said, but I have to wait and see. Maybe it’ll all work out.

I suspected he was connected with the restaurant. So he is, but not directly. His sister and brother-in-law own it.

We shared a caprese salad, which included olives as well as the usual tomato, mozzarella, and basil. Still craving more tomato, mozzarella, and basil, I had a Margherita pizza. Joanna had spaghetti with clams.

Like everything we have eaten here, it was comfort food.

I had another bottle of Aglianico, and took half of it home.

Jan. 28

We went back to the ruins by the Marina Gate again.

Objectives this time were the House of the Tragic Poet, the House of the Vetii, and the House of the Cryptoporticus, because I wanted to find out what a cryptoporticus is.

I don’t know why they call it the House of the Tragic Poet. You cannot enter the site, but its principal feature is a mosaic that shows a crouching dog and the caption “cave canem” (beware of the dog), which is right at the street entrance. 

The House of the Vetii was owned by two brothers who were freed slaves and became rich merchants. Much of the house has been closed off, perhaps for restoration. 

There was supposed to be graffiti on the wall advertising the services of a prostitute, but I couldn’t find it.

One of the most famous features of the house of the Vetii is a painting of Priapus at the entrance. Priapus is the ancient god with the perpetual erection. His patronage brings good fortune to a house.

When we reached the third house, we had a long chat with one of the guides who work there. She remembered that we had met the day before, when we asked one of her colleagues for directions. Ah, you are the lady in the doorway.

We entered the house by way of the cryptoporticus, so we asked her about it. It consists of two narrow rooms with vaulted ceilings and wall paintings of fool-the-eye porticos. It is “crypto” because it is hidden inside the house.

It is part of a series of chambers that housed a private bath, a rare thing for those times. 

She told us that after an earthquake in the 60s A.D. the rooms were no longer used as baths but as a storehouse.

There are graffiti scratched into the paint on the walls showing a hunt, a roughly etched figure of a rider about to launch a spear at an animal. It’s original, possibly done by a slave, the guide said, but it looks like it was done yesterday.

We came back to the hotel for a rest and later managed to cross the street for dinner. The fried anchovies were good, but I’m not sure I’d order them again. The spaghetti with cauliflower was terrific.

I ordered Joanna a glass of a Sicilian wine called Malvasia Nera. I wound up having a local Aglianico and another glass of the Puglian wine, Negroamara.

I love Italian reds. But I’m not sure that I could tell one of these from the other without coaching, because they were all smooth and delicious. 

Joanna got the photo of the day again: the Ruins and the Mountain That Made Them That Way. 

Be well, all, and beware of dogs and volcanoes.

Harry