Pompeii: The old discoveries can be the best

There has been big news from Pompeii in the last week or so (plus an accompanying TV programme). It is the find, in new excavations, of a private bathhouse within a rich house: including a plunge pool, cold, warm and hot rooms, as you would expect in a standard Roman bathing establishment. Much of what has been said about the discoveries by the archaeologists at Pompeii has been full of good sense. Such lavish installations were, as the director of excavations said, part of the way rich householders in ancient towns impressed those they wanted to impress (“no need to go to the public baths; do come to mine!”). And they were the exception rather than the rule – for the super-elite, not just the reasonably well-off.

But, to return to one of my old themes, these discoveries are rarely quite as exceptional as they are written up to be, and they often make much more sense in the context of similar, older finds, rather than as amazing “one-offs”. Look at the creeping hyperbole of the recent reports: a “once in a century discovery”; “how decadent elites lived it up”; “a luxury spa complex … [which] could practically have illustrated a scene in the famed Latin novel ‘Satyricon’”; “the largest thermal bath uncovered at the sprawling Pompeii complex”. Hang on, I shriek!

This is an important discovery. But it is only one of ten or so such private baths already known at Pompeii, and it is a bit of a toss-up if it is the largest (more cautious archaeologists tend to say “probably” the largest). It is well worth visiting, but so are some of the other examples discovered many years or decades ago. And they can give a slightly different image from just a big display of wealth and patronage.

The House of the Menander, Pompeii | © WolfgangRieger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

My favourite, and even more well worth a visit, is the private bathing suite in the so-called “House of the Menander” (named after the portrait of the Greek comic playwright Menander discovered there). Sure, it is a sign of private wealth and patronage etc. But in this house it seems that the mosaics point to a more subversive strand of private humour (and for us perhaps an awkward one). You can see a hint of that in the mosaic from these baths at the top of this post, but more striking is another mosaic at the entrance to their hot room. How do we read the Black slave in this design? How far is the decorative arrangement of strigils (oil scrapers) below him meant to evoke male genitalia? And that is not all. Though they are now very faded, there is a series of paintings in the entrance to the baths, which explicitly parody the traditional gods (a rather lumpy middle-aged Venus, for example, telling Cupid where to fire his arrows). It looks as if the private baths were an opportunity for subversion as well as generosity.

So do go and see it. The House of the Menander is generally open to the public. Sometimes the old discoveries are the best.

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