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ANCIENT GRAFFITI AND DOMESTIC SPACE IN
THE INSULA OF THE MENANDER AT POMPEII
AN HONORS THESIS
SUBMITTED ON THE 28th^ DAY OF APRIL, 2014 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICAL STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE HONORS PROGRAM OF NEWCOMB TULANE COLLEGE TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS WITH HONORS IN CLASSICAL STUDIES BY
Julia Judge APPROVED: _____________________ Susann Lusnia Director of Thesis
Dennis Kehoe Second Reader
Christopher Rodning Third Reader
ii Julia Judge. Ancient Graffiti and Domestic Space in the Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. (Dr. Susann Lusnia, Classical Studies; Dr. Dennis Kehoe, Classical Studies; Dr. Christopher Rodning, Anthropology.) This thesis is a case study of the ancient graffiti found in a specific city block, the Insula of the Menander (I.X), in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Contrary to the late 19 th and early 20 th century treatment of graffiti in Pompeian scholarship, which dismissed ancient graffiti as casual inscriptions with little relevance to the archaeology of Pompeii, recent scholarship approaches ancient graffiti as artifacts, studying them within their context. Using this contextual approach, my thesis examines the spatial distribution of the graffiti in the Insula of the Menander to better understand the use of public and private space. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of ancient graffiti in context, providing a brief description of the current state of scholarship and of the history of the Insula of the Menander. Chapter 2 discusses the challenges of defining ancient graffiti, and the various approaches to their interpretation. The two hypotheses are: first, that graffiti frequency and public and private space are related, and second, that graffiti type and room function are related. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology for analyzing the graffiti in context, and introduces general comparisons of frequency and spatial distribution. Chapter 4 continues this analysis, describing the graffiti in the context of each house and unit in the insula. Chapter 5 concludes that ancient graffiti, when used along with related archaeological evidence, are an informative source for studying the conceptualization and use of public and private space in antiquity, and may be used in future studies for gaining insight into the functions of space in the Roman cultural mindset.
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List of Tables
Table Number Description 1 Total graffiti in insula I.X by room type. 2 Graffiti location percentages, interior vs. exterior. 3 Exterior graffiti by door number (see fig. 4 for plan of insula with this data). 4 Interior graffiti by room type, in order from front to back of house. 5 Interior graffiti by room type, by frequency. 6 Total graffiti percentages by category. 7 Numerical Graffito I.X.9 ( CIL 4.8391) Roman numerals. 8 Numerical Graffito I.X.9 ( CIL 4.8391) Transliterated Arabic Numerals. 9 Frequency of total graffiti by sub-category, textual. 10 Frequency of total graffiti by sub-category, figural. 11 Textual graffiti by sub-category: exterior. 12 Textual graffiti by sub-category: interior. 13 (The following tables express the graffiti of each house or unit, listed by room type.) I.X. 14 I.X.2- 3 15 I.X. 4 16 I.X.5- 6 17 I.X. 18 I.X. 19 I.X.10- 11 20 I.X. 21 Exterior graffiti associated with entrances with and without benches. 22 Comparison of number of exterior graffiti and house size.
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List of Figures
Figure Number Description
1 Map of Pompeii^ (Dobbins and Foss, 2007)
2 Map of Pompeii, Regio I. (Dobbins and Foss, 2007)
3 Floor plan of the Insula of the Menander,^ I.X. (Allison, 2006)
4 Exterior graffiti frequencies in association with house placement and
benches. (Plan from Allison, 2006)
5 Figural graffito, I.X.11. (Langner, 2001. n.1828)
6 Graffito in I.X.8, rm 3.^ (Langner 2001, n. 820)
When studying Roman domestic activity, people are often struck by its similarities to our own way of life. The mosaic boasting a fearsome collared dog and the phrase cave canem (“Beware of dog”) in the vestibule of the House of the Tragic Poet is met by viewers of today with warm familiarity. What is equally striking, however, is one of the biggest differences between a Roman domus and a typical Western home of today, the distinction between public and private spaces. In the modern Western mindset, the division between public and private is sharp. We typically leave our homes to work and return home when the day is done. Although some people may work from home, it is considered typical for business to be conducted away from the home, which is a personal, not professional, space. This boundary between work and home did not exist in a Roman domus. Well-to-do Romans of the late Republic and early Empire conducted most business from their homes. This would be atypical today, with most of our business occurring in office buildings that are zoned away from residential areas. In Pompeii, however, the Roman equivalent of a banker would have met his clients in the front room of his own house. Living and working in one space would have made for a completely different conceptualization of how domestic space should be viewed and used, particularly with regards to which spaces were considered “public,” and which were “private.” Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has suggested that the Romans operated on a socially- accepted hierarchy of privacy in a residence: some areas were fully open to the public, some by invitation of the pater familias only, and others strictly for household members.^4 A Roman home would have functioned as a private residence, but with public features. (^4) Wallace-Hadrill 1994.
The concept of public and private space greatly affected the Roman way of domestic life. One of the results of this integration of public and private space is the appearance of graffiti on the walls within Roman houses. This phenomenon is essentially non-existent in the Western world today. Although the appearance of graffiti on the walls of Pompeian homes may seem bizarre to a modern observer, the content of the graffiti is often quite similar to the graffiti we see today; the same names, insults, declarations of love and even lewd drawings that we see on our streets today can be found on the walls of Pompeii^5. An individual, modern or ancient, may choose to inscribe a graffito for a number of reasons; to idly pass the time by sketching a familiar design, to convey a message to another person or a specific group of people, or perhaps to simply make his mark by signing his name. Whatever the authors’ intents may have been, the presence of graffiti indicates that people spent time in that space. Not only did people have to be present in a space to actually write the graffiti, but many of these authors were writing with an audience in mind; they must have expected others to pass through and view their inscription. In this way graffiti may act as indicators of where people spent time in Roman houses. I argue that the spatial arrangement and frequencies of graffiti may be viewed as a map of where people spent the most time, and even what sort of activities were done in those areas. In this way the study of domestic graffiti may illuminate what (^5) Compare categories and sub-categories of ancient graffiti (Langner, 2001) and modern graffiti (Cook, Dutcher, Hargrove, and Terrance 1972).
domestic architecture are Vitruvius, Varro and Pliny the Younger.^8 From these authors we can glean two important things: the general layout of an “ideal” Roman home, and the nomenclature used to describe the areas within such a home. Scholars have continually relied on these accounts for studying Roman houses; many of the houses in Pompeii, for example, were originally named and labeled based on ancient terminology. It is inaccurate, however, to use these sources exclusively to determine the name and function of every room in every excavated Roman home. The function of rooms in a house may differ depending on who is living in the house, and at what time they are occupying it. Another approach to studying Roman domestic space has involved the architectural and decorative features of Roman homes. It is important to look at domestic activity from this angle, because the layout of a house will inherently affect the way people behave in the space. Some areas may be displayed prominently, with large, open spaces designed to appear welcoming, whereas others may be removed to the background. Pathways may open up to other spaces, or close them off. These visual cues will guide people through the home in the manner that is intended by the house’s design. John Clarke and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill suggest that the rooms in a Roman residence would have been built and decorated in a way that would inform a visitor of their socially accepted functions.^9 For example, the long line of sight, lofty ceilings, and wall decoration reminiscent of public buildings give atria the appearance of a space for (^8) Allison 2001. (^9) Wallace-Hadrill 1994; Clarke 1991.
business and other public interactions. A visitor would take note of this design and understand the function of the space. One drawback of the studies that use art and architecture to define the Roman use of domestic space is their tendency to focus on the houses of the wealthy. It is tempting to use the larger, richly decorated houses as examples, not only because of their remarkably preserved beauty, but also because their designs fit so neatly with the ideal Vitruvian home. Although Vitruvius’ architectural guidelines for how rooms should be designed and used are evident in many Roman homes, they cannot be applied to every house that is excavated. Material evidence has recently been more carefully examined and appreciated for its value to inform us of the use of domestic space. Joanne Berry and Penelope Allison suggest that excavated materials are a far better source for studying domestic space than the writings of ancient authors or even architectural patterns.^10 Penelope Allison’s comprehensive studies on the material findings of Pompeian households show that not every single Roman home was used in the ideal Vitruvian way. Some of the rooms that had always been referred to as triclinia, for example, were found to have almost no signs of dining furniture or equipment. 11 This stark discrepancy between previous thought and tangible evidence shows the need for reevaluating how we approach the study of Roman homes. One explanation for the disjunction between a room’s apparent function, based on architectural patterns, and actual function, according to material evidence, may be found (^10) Allison 2004; Berry 1997. (^11) Allison 2004; Allison 2006.
or commissioned graffiti, the presence of graffiti gives a modern public space the appearance of being unkempt, or, in some perspectives, disreputable and dangerous. In Pompeii, however, graffiti appear not only on public buildings and the exterior walls of private buildings, but also on the walls within houses, even those belonging to the town’s wealthiest citizens. This phenomenon is in stark contrast with our modern idea of graffiti; we find graffiti in an almost exclusively public context and consider it vandalism. In the ancient world, however, it seems that writing graffiti was a far more acceptable practice. In order to differentiate ancient graffiti from other forms of ancient inscriptions, we may define graffiti, for the purposes of this thesis, as any kind of mark purposefully made on a wall or other surface, in Mairs’ formulation, “personally written by a private individual in a setting constrained by fewer rules of public behavior.”^12 The challenges of defining ancient graffiti are discussed in Chapter 2. Since their discovery, the inscriptions of the Roman world have been recorded and collected in a number of volumes. Ancient Latin and Greek inscriptions began to be systematically recorded in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum , a compendium of surviving inscriptions from the ancient Roman world, was formed by Theodore Mommsen and first published in 1863. Volume four of the CIL contains the inscriptions found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, including graffiti. Matteo Della Corte’s collections and analyses of Pompeian graffiti are invaluable (^12) Mairs 2011, 157.
for studying the context of the graffiti in Pompeian houses.^13 More recently Martin Langner published his book Antike Graffitizeichnungen: Motive, Gestaltung und Bedeutung , which is the most comprehensive work on the figural graffiti of the ancient world. 14 One of the biggest problems one faces when studying ancient graffiti is the amount of decay the inscriptions have undergone over the years.^15 Not only have many of the recorded graffiti vanished, but it has become increasingly difficult to locate any undiscovered graffiti. 16 Much information regarding the context of the graffiti that we do have has been lost. Therefore, we now rely on modern collections of published graffiti as our primary sources for viewing the graffiti and their locations. Because of the diverse content in Pompeian graffiti, there are numerous methods for dividing and subdividing them into different types. The broadest division that can be made is between textual, figural, and numerical graffiti. These categories were coined by Antonio Varone.^17 Rebecca Benefiel employs these categories in her analyses as well.^18 Numerical graffiti, for the most part, tend to be similar; most are simply series of numerals or rows of tally marks. Figural graffiti can be categorized by the patterns of images that occur. It appears that it was popular among Pompeian inhabitants to reproduce certain images or designs on walls throughout the city, and even to make direct copies adjacent to an original inscription. Martin Langner divides the figural graffiti by (^13) Della Corte, 1929. (^14) Langner 2001. (^15) Langner 2001. (^16) Baldwin, Moulden, and Laurence 2013. (^17) Varone 1991. (^18) Benefiel 2010.
their content, they soon were considered to be a novelty. Their usefulness for studying Ancient Rome, it was believed, had been exhausted. August Mau even dismissed the graffiti as being almost certainly authored exclusively by the lower classes, and therefore were useless for understanding the “cultivated men and women of the ancient city.” 24 Whether or not scholars from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appreciated the value of Pompeian graffiti, most of them approached these inscriptions with only their content in mind, not their context. The names, references, and actions expressed in the words of the graffiti are carefully considered, but their relationship with their surroundings is either referenced without analysis or ignored altogether. J.A. Baird and Claire Taylor note that “the perceived ephemeral, informal and unsophisticated character of graffiti has meant that they have not received sufficient attention relative to other parts of the epigraphic corpus.” 25 It is only in recent decades that this perception has been challenged. The focus has changed from the content of the graffiti to their context. Scholars have begun to use graffiti as a means of understanding how the inhabitants of Pompeii interacted with each other and their environment. Benefiel’s studies of Pompeian graffiti focus on the dialogues and social interaction that are evident in clusters of graffiti around the city. She also argues that the degree of visibility in a space would make someone more likely to inscribe a graffito there.^26 Katherine Huntley, Eamonn Baldwin, Helen Moulden and Ray Laurence focus on identifying the authors of (^24) Mau 1902. (^25) Baird and Taylor 2012. (^26) Benefiel 2010.
graffiti, and how marginal groups, such as slaves and children, participated in the act of writing in Pompeii. 27 Some scholars are now working with graffiti as a means of studying the literacy of Pompeian inhabitants. The results of these studies show that literacy in the ancient world was a spectrum rather than a hard-and-fast skill, and not isolated to the elite.^28 The trend of this new scholarship on graffiti is gravitating towards investigating the normative social interactions of the people of Pompeii. One observation that has been made in recent years about ancient graffiti is the fact that they are not only written records, but material artifacts.^29 If graffiti in Pompeii are approached as pieces of archaeological evidence, rather than historical anecdotes, they may be studied in relation to their context, just as potsherds or trash middens are most informative when compared with their archaeological surroundings. This is the approach I will take to analyzing graffiti as evidence for the Roman use of domestic space. The Insula of the Menander Pompeii is one of the most thoroughly studied archaeological sites of the ancient Roman world. The town lends itself well to the investigation of Roman epigraphy and domestic space, because a breadth of information on the art, architecture and archaeology of the city has been recorded through decades of Pompeian scholarship. In order to (^27) Huntley 2012; Baldwin, Moulden, and Laurence 2013. (^28) Garraffoni and Laurence 2013; Baird and Taylor 2012. (^29) Baird and Taylor 2012.
roofs, which were added to protect the wall paintings in the houses.^37 The insula was fortunately not damaged by the Allies’ bombing in 1943. It did not, however, escape the destruction of looting; the Casa degli Amanti was tunneled through by modern treasure hunters. Some of these holes were filled in as restoration efforts, others remain open. 38 The insula began to deteriorate in the 1970s, and a second restoration program was launched on the Casa del Menandro. The house was again restored in 1980 to repair earthquake and water damage. 39 There are a number of problems that arise when attempting to date the building phases of the Insula of the Menander. One of these is due to the raising of the walls during the restoration of the 1930s. This modern masonry was worked mostly in opus incertum , and was set apart from the ancient masonry by tile fragments. These restorative additions, however, have eroded over several decades, and are now “scarcely distinguishable” from the original walls.^40 The walls which were not restored are also difficult to date. Much of the wall fabric is covered by preserved wall paintings. In this case excavators are reluctant to damage the paintings in order to date the masonry underneath. Taking these issues into account, Roger Ling roughly divides the chronology of the construction and development of the insula structures into five architectural phases: In the first phase the buildings were initially constructed in the opera a telaio style, as (^37) Ling 1997. (^38) The date of these tunnels is unknown, and may range from antiquity to the middle ages, or possibly even later (Ling 1997 ). (^39) Ling 1997. (^40) Ling 1997.
was the fashion in the third and early second centuries B.C.E.^41 This style was worked exclusively in Sarno stone, so this period may also be referred to as the “Sarno-Stone phase.” The following four phases are based on Mau’s four styles of wall decoration, and their corresponding chronologies: The First Style spans the second and early first century B.C.E. The Second begins to appear around 80 and lasts through the end of the first century B.C.E, and the Third runs through the latter half of the first century B.C.E. through the mid-first century C.E. The Fourth Style, which occurs the most frequently of all the styles in the insula, is datable to the final three decades before the eruption. 42 Because most of the insula was re-painted in the Fourth Style, the approximate terminus post quem for the graffiti of the insula dates to about 30 years prior to the eruption. Although this date range is not absolute and cannot be applied to graffiti appearing on older walls, the terminus post quem gives a general perspective on the chronology of the majority of the graffiti in the Insula of the Menander. The structures that make up the Insula of the Menander are a near ideal sample group for examining the Romans’ use of domestic space. The insula features both large and small houses; 43 the richly decorated Casa del Menandro, Casa degli Amanti and Casa del Fabbro stand adjacent to the more modestly built I.X.8 and I.X.1. 44 The differing degrees of wealth that are evident in these houses almost certainly indicate that (^41) The majority of the insula is worked in opera a telaio and the slightly later style opus incertum (Ling 1997 ). (^42) Ling 1997. (^43) Sizes are relative to the rest of the town. (^44) Ling 2005.
