Review: Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum

Abstract

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum British Museum, London 28 March–29 September 2013 The volcanic eruption of AD 79 destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. There were some ancient attempts at salvage, but the cities were irrecoverable. In the late eighteenth century, the kingdom of Naples began a more systematic uncovering of the Campanian towns. From that point, Pompeii became a symbol of Rome both in its decadence and destruction and in its civilization. As a consequence, each generation has made its own Pompeii. This major British Museum exhibition presented a fresh image of Pompeii and Herculaneum focusing on the everyday in the city. Visitors were pointed to the domestic and the ordinary and helped to think of a city peopled by others just like them. Yet, in that emphasis on the similar, the differences of Roman society and the Roman city were elided. We initially encountered the famous cast of a dog in its death agonies, a cast created by pouring plaster into a void. The dog-shaped space was that of a guard dog protecting a house from unwelcome strangers, and the dog appeared elsewhere: the famous “cave canem” mosaic was pictured, and another chained and snarling hound mosaic warned off visitors. Getting past the dog, we met Eumachia, a distinguished woman of the city, and then we were in the streets. We went to …