Embedded Files
1 -- Who Ran the City?
2 -- Food, Wine, Sex, Baths
For discussion let's focus again on the week's questions marked with triple-asterisk (***) and typed in italicized bold font
Pompeii-questions re: reading-Week 4 (March 19, 2026)
CLASS #4: BEARD Chapters 6 ("Who Ran the City?") & 7 ("The Pleasures of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths")
Chap. 6, "Who Ran the City" (pp. 188-215; Kindle p. 318-357)
*** 1. Well, who did "run the city"? Just free adult males? If so, how were they chosen -- both in terms of the logistics/mechanics of how they were selected, but also in terms of influence, persuasion, etc.? From what social class(es)? Did "running the city" mean strictly political duties, or can you identify other duties, privileges, indirect effects on how municipal life was carried on? (Check out Beard's section on "Beyond the male elite," pp. 210-15)
2. What were the actual tasks of local officials -- and how "burdensome" were they?(pp. 195-203)
3. What did it mean to "be successful" in local politics? What were the visible forms of that success in the physical face of the city? (pp. 203-10)
4. Who were a few of the actual political leaders, by name, and by background? What do we mean by the "old elite" vs. the "new" in Pompeian history & society?
Chap. 7, "The Pleasures of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths" (pp. 216-50; Kindle pp. 358-410)
5. Which of Beard’s “4 pleasures” seem to have the richest archaeological evidence?
*** 6. How nutritious, how tasty were the Pompeians’ food & drink? What did it consist of? Where consumed? Where from? Class distinctions?
7. Sex: What do you find most surprising in Beard? And what is closest to, and most different from, your take on “modern sexuality”? “Power, status, and good fortune were expressed in terms of the phallus.” (Beard, p. 233) Does that formula correspond to the picture we explored of “who ran the city”?
8. Bathing: Just how clean did Pompeians wish to be? What else were the public baths about, beyond washing off the grit and sweat? How elaborate was the scheme of public bathing? (Pp. 241-50) (Note that only the wealthy could “take a bath at home” — as in the House of the Menander: p. 129)
Here again is wealthy ex-slave Trimalchio, throwing a Banquet ("orgy"?) -- in Fellini's eyes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpMakUEn4hs
And here's Trimalchio's dinner party as Petronius pictured it in his Satyricon, the novel from the age of Nero (60's C.E.) that we met earlier on:
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