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For in-class discussion please focus on the questions marked with triple-asterisk (***) and typed in italicized bold font
BOLLI -Pompeii-questions re: reading-Week 3 (March 12, 2026)
CLASS #3: BEARD Chapters 4 ("Painting & Decorating") & 5 ("Earning a Living: Baker, Banker, and Garum Maker")
Chap. 4, "Painting & Decorating" (pp. 120-152; Kindle pp. 216-264)
1. The walls of Pompeian (and Herculaneum's) houses and other buildings present almost an encyclopedia of Greco-Roman myths (Beard p. 141). What might their purpose have been beyond mere "pretty decoration"?
*** 2. Beyond the mythology, what other themes are there in Pompeian wall painting and floor mosaic? Any actual "history"? Landscape? Portraiture? Geometric design?
3. How do various features of building decor and monument-making (including flooring, columns, statuary, as well as walls) reveal Pompeii's familiarity with a wider world than just its immediate neighborhood in the Campania region of southern Italy?
Chap. 5, "Earning a Living: Baker, Banker, and Garum Maker" (152-87; Kindle pp. 265-317)
4. Does the evidence of Pompeii you've seen to date help characterize the local economy (maybe also the Roman economy overall) as "modern" or "primitive"? (Beard 153-54) Are those even useful categories?
5. Fish Sauce! (= garum) Who made it, who consumed it, why does Beard give so many pages to it? (pp. 152-53, 185-87)
6. Local banker Caecilius Jucundus' banking business (177-85) grabs even more pages than garum production. Why so? What's so striking here about the local evidence?
7. "Country produce" (154-62) vs. "city trades" (162-69;): How do the two interact?
*** 8. "Butcher, baker, candle-stick maker": Beard may not pay much attention to the first and third, but baking catches plenty of her attention (170-77). Pasta may not yet have caught on in ancient Italy, but bread was the staff of life (along with a kind of porridge). And Beard may not highlight Roman slavery very much, but slaves do make cameo appearances (172, 179). Of what use is Apuleius' (eyewitness?) account of a grain-mill-and-baking operation (in his novel, the Golden Ass, ca. 200 C.E.) for our understanding of the role of slavery in the Roman economy? Check out: https://historicalmiscellany.hcommons.org/2021/08/04/15/
For another picture of a slave's career, here's the tale of TRIMALCHIO (living on the Bay of Naples!), fantasically wealthy freedman invented by novelist (& Emperor's courtier) Petronius during the 60's C.E. , in the reign of Nero; it's drawn from the only other surviving Roman novel, Petronius' fragmentary Satyricon, section 76:
[76] Then, as the Gods willed, I became the real master of the house, and simply had his brains in my pocket. I need only add that I was joint heir with Caesar,1 and came into an estate fit for a senator. But no one is satisfied with nothing. I conceived a passion for business. I will not keep you a moment— I built five ships, got a cargo of wine—which was worth its weight in gold at the time—and sent them to Rome. You may think it was a put-up job; every one was wrecked, truth and no fairy-tales. Neptune gulped down thirty million in one day. Do you think I lost heart? Lord! no, I no more tasted my loss than if nothing had happened. I built some more, bigger, better and more expensive, so that no one could say I was not a brave man. You know, a huge ship has a certain security about her. I got another cargo of wine, bacon, beans, perfumes, and slaves. Fortunata did a noble thing at that time; she sold all her jewellery and all her clothes, and put a hundred gold pieces into my hand. They were the leaven of my fortune. What God wishes soon happens. I made[p. 153] a clear ten million on one voyage. I at once bought up all the estates which had belonged to my patron. I built a house, and bought slaves and cattle; whatever I touched grew like a honey-comb. When I came to have more than the whole revenues of my own country, I threw up the game: I retired from active work and began to finance freedmen. I was quite unwilling to go on with my work when I was encouraged by an astrologer who happened to come to our town, a little Greek called Serapa, who knew the secrets of the Gods. He told me things that I had forgotten myself; explained everything from needle and thread upwards; knew my own inside, and only fell short of telling me what I had had for dinner the day before.”
1 It was not uncommon, and often prudent, for a rich man under the early Empire to mention the Emperor in his will.
Petronius Arbiter. Petronius. Michael Heseltine. London. William Heinemann. 1913.
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