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Pompeii

Pleasures of the flesh

While to all appearances, Roman society observed the same rites of passage in 1st-century Pompeii as they had for decades, beneath the surface much had changed radically. The lifestyles of pre-eruption youth would have been unrecognisable to their grandfathers.

This was a time of huge cultural anxiety for the élite, what with the rise of cults, the ambitions of freedmen and the decline in moral standards. This anxiety was focused on the young men.

Baths
Historians and archaeologists have linked Pompeii's 'urban space' to its 'urban time'. By skilful use of literary sources, they have illustrated the varying time-tables of wealthy property owners, their clients, shopkeepers, artisans, and women tied to the home. Not surprisingly, the rich and their dependants were dominant, covering most ground during the day and making the strongest visual impact on the urban scene as they moved from early-morning salutatio to forum, baths and then home to dine. This had interesting implications for a city like Pompeii in the siting of houses, the forum and the baths.

The expectation of luxury and leisure was one of the defining features of the early empire. An indication of this in Pompeii lies in the priority given to the rebuilding of the Stabian baths after the earthquake of AD 62.

The public baths were central to Roman daily life, and for young men of the upper class with time on their hands, they would have been a familiar haunt. The baths were a place of healthy recreation but were also associated with tempting decadence – for instance, effeminacy and immoderate lust – to which feverish youth was vulnerable.

Brothels and games
However, although concerned about the corruptibility of youth, society was very open about sexual matters. A number of buildings in Pompeii were, in modern times, mistakenly taken for brothels because of the erotic pictures on their walls. Brothels there were, though. While supposedly hidden from the eyes of elderly women and children, they advertised their services quite openly.

The clearest barometer of the changing times in Pompeii was in the attitude to entertainment. Now, the gladiatorial games were everything. With citizens no longer subject to military duty, what remained of the old military traditions were now merely archaic hangovers that provided the illusion of continuity.

Honouring the goddesses
It wasn't only the men who indulged in sensuality. As well as their involvement in the Dionysiac 'mysteries' (see box), women celebrated the festival known as the Veneralia every 1 April. This honoured Venus Verticordia ('changer of heart') and her companion Fortuna Virilis ('bold fortune'). In general, the wealthier women honoured Venus and the lower classes honoured Fortuna.

It is thought by some researchers that Fortuna Virilis represented not merely 'luck', but also the irresistible force that drove men and women to mate, and, as such, she could make women irresistible to men. She was the goddess of fertilisation, and so was especially worshipped by women wanting to become pregnant and by gardeners.

During the festival, both married and unmarried women went to the men's baths, where they would offer incense to Fortuna Virilis and drink a potion made of pounded poppy, milk and honey. Crowned with myrtle wreaths, they then bathed and prayed to Venus. They removed the jewellery and other ornaments from statues of the two goddesses so that they could be washed, after which they were redecorated and adorned with roses.

The festival was generally a day for women to seek divine help for their relations with men. The poet Ovid claimed that the ritual blinded men to the bodily defects of their women. Another ancient commentary states that the women went to the baths to view men's private parts.

The Villa of the Mysteries
This villa, built around a central court and surrounded by terraces, is much like other large houses in Pompeii. However, it contains one very unusual feature: a room, known as the 'initiation chamber', decorated with beautiful and strange frescos showing, among other things, a naked girl being whipped by a winged female, a satyr giving suck to a fawn, and a sprawling, drunken god.

These images seem to be part of a ritual ceremony aimed at preparing privileged, protected girls for the psychological transition to life as women. However, the secrets of these mysteries of Dionysus – the god of growth, wine and ecstasy – were fully known only to those who had been initiated into them. There is no ancient text that expounds them, and so the full significance of the frescos can only be guessed at.

A threat to morality
We do know that the rituals were already centuries old by the time the Pompeii frescos were painted. Their roots can be seen in the ancient Greek play by Euripeides, The Bacchae, dating from about 405 BC. During the Roman republic, a growing number of women were attracted to the rites, where they stepped outside male control and into a ceremonial world led by women.

In the early years of the 2nd century BC, the Roman authorities were making serious charges against the initiations. The historian Livy reported a consul saying: 'This Dionysiac mystery-cult is a growing evil; its adherents grow more numerous every day; it weakens loyalty to the state; it is a conspiracy; it is the sole cause of all the evils of recent years; and unless we are vigilant, it will take over the state, for that is their aim ... The rites themselves take place by night, and so lead to sexual abuses.'

Mass executions
Matters reached a head in 186 BC. The Roman authorities were determined to wipe out the conjurari (conspirators), rumoured to number more than 7,000. Recent initiates were imprisoned, but all the rest were condemned to death.

The state followed the old policy of allowing men to punish female relatives in the privacy of the home. Those who hesitated to put their female kin to death faced the certainty that the state would do it for them, disgracing their manhood. A bloodbath ensued, carried out in secret by the paterfamilias against sisters, daughters, wives and slaves.

As the frescos in the Villa of the Mysteries show, the initiations were not eradicated from the Roman empire, despite the executions of two centuries earlier. However, the rites were probably changed to avoid the appearance of undermining loyalty to the state. The state, in turn, appeared to be tolerating a quiet, unexuberant cult within the family.

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