Living with the Ancient Romans: Past and Present in Eighteenth-Century Encounters with Herculaneum and Pompeii

Abstract

The eighteenth-century ‘discovery’ of the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii revolutionised the way in which individuals thought about their relationship with the ancient world. The accounts of British visitors between 1738 and the end of the century reflect a new historical sensibility, one predicated upon the extraordinary proximity between present and past that these sites seemed to ensure. Yet this communal, cultural response to the ruins of these Roman cities does not mean that the eighteenth-century influence of Herculaneum and Pompeii was purely decorative, nostalgic or sentimental. Several individuals who encountered these excavations over the course of the eighteenth century were able to shape and develop unique political and intellectual arguments influenced by these ruins, and by the feelings of particular closeness with the past that they inspired. This article examines the work of four individuals – Camillo Paderni; Johann Joachim Winckelmann; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Sir William Hamilton – all of whom used the prevailing vocabulary associated with Herculaneum and Pompeii in order to articulate individual and in several cases innovative arguments on subjects as diverse as the validity of Neapolitan Bourbon rule; the ideal of Greek art, and the history of the earth. Their ideas indicate that these excavations, in a small but significant way, helped to shape a diverse range of eighteenth-century thought.