endlessrarities | Bread and Circuses...

A milestone was reached at work today. The Big Mean Nasty press house, which has 77 rooms in all, and which has been haranguing me for what seems like an eternity, has finally been surveyed.

Thank God for that.

To Pompeii now. And that iconic structure, the amphitheatre.

One thing disappointed me at Pompeii. It's a marvel of structural preservation, to be sure, but since all the artefacts and much of the artwork have been moved to Naples Archaeological Museum, the town feels a bit soulless. It's had the guts carved out of it, which makes it quite hard to envisage how its inhabitants actually lived out their lives there.

Reconstruction of interiors on such a massive scale is unworkable. So I'll try and help a little by trying to knit together some of the artwork with the appropriate monuments. I find the dislocation between 'art' and architecture disturbing - seeing row upon row of disembodied frescoes, mosaics, and vases without any explanation of their context just depresses me.

I'll open with a fresco. It shows the amphitheatre at Pompeii, and it's a commemorative piece which records a riot which took place there in AD 59, between the residents of Pompeii and the denizens of nearby Nuceria. In a scene reminsicent of modern football disorder, the inhabitants of the respective areas used sporting rivalries to disguise deeper, underlying social differences. The resulting brawl was so serious that the Emperor Nero banned the games for ten years:-

The Naples Archaeological Museum Guide Catalogue helpfully tells us that this particular fresco comes from the peristyle of 'a house', which doesn't help to put it back in context, but at least there's no mistaking the building that's being illustrated here:-

It must have been a terrifying moment when the fighting spilled out from within the amphitheatre and into the city streets, but it's hard to believe that these events ever took place from the tranquil atmosphere of the area as it is today:-

It's also hard to imagine the thoughts of an unfortunate individual destined to make his way (or her way - there's increasing evidence of gladiatorial combat carried out by women) out into the arena, facing the hostility of wild beasts or their fellow gladiators, while a crowd of Roman onlookers looked on, baying for blood...