March 5: Street Life, House-&-Home

For in-class discussion let's focus on the questions marked with triple-asterisk (***) and typed in italicized bold font

Pompeii-questions for Week 2 (March 5, 2026)

CLASS #2 (BEARD CHAP.'s  2 - "Street Life" - and 3 "Houses & Home")

Chap. 2, "Street Life" (pp. 53-80; Kindle loc. 90-132)

1. Beard asks the surprising question (p. 55; Kindle loc. 91), "What were streets for?"  The answer? 

2.  What were the ties among water supply (63; Kindle 105), drainage, trash disposal, filth in general?

    3. Aside from coming and going, how else did streets offer public activities?  

     *** 4. Who were "the people in the streets" (p. 72; Kindle loc. 118), why were they there?

5. What were the traffic patterns in the city? One-way (p. 65; Kindle loc. 108)? Always "through-ways"?

6. Were streets open for use 24/7? (p. 78; Kindle loc. 129)

Mark Twain and the streets of Pompeii: ruts, twisted ankles, & Street Commissioners!

“…the sun shines as brightly down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when Christ was born in Bethlehem, and its streets are cleaner a hundred times than ever Pompeiian saw them in her prime.  I know whereof I speak — for in the great, chief thoroughfares…have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred years at least the pavements were not repaired!— how ruts five and even ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones by the chariot-wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not know by these signs that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to their business, and that if they never mended the pavements they never cleaned them? And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street Commissioners to avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I knew the name of the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I could give him a blast.  I speak with feeling on this subject, because I caught my foot in one of those ruts, and the sadness that came over me when I saw the first poor skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, was tempered by the reflection that maybe that party was the Street Commissioner.”  (Innocents Abroad 1875)

Chap. 3, "House & Home" (pp. 81-119; Kindle location 134-190)

7. Which features of Pompeian houses strike you as the biggest surprises? The biggest source of admiration? Of dismay?

8. What are the most essential elements of "the" Pompeian house plan? How varied can these plans appear?

9. Why do you think Beard starts her house-&-home chapter with the "House of the Tragic Poet"?

*** 10. What  apparent social functions of Pompeian houses --  both the larger, and even the smaller ones -- express the nature of Roman society, which was very keen on displaying hierarchy? Check out the recipes for domestic building offered by the famous Roman architect Vitruvius (pp. 100-102; loc. 162-66), who's left us a full descriptive and prescriptive manual for all kinds of buildings in his Roman Architecture (which dates from the time of the first Roman emperor Augustus, from late in the last century B.C.E.).

11. Where can we find humour -- sometimes bold humour -- in Pompeian housing?

12.  What are the most modest kinds of housing we can detect? The most extravagant? (p. 105; Kindle location 167)