Echoes

I promised a post about Pompeii and here it is. Pompeii really is a most extraordinary place, a city of 20, 000 people that stopped in time in the year 79AD. Two weeks ago we spent several hours there- surprisingly for a Saturday in August it was fairly quiet too and there were times when we could turn a corner and be the only people in a Pompeii side street. Standing in the streets, on the pavements, in the houses, shops, baths and bakeries, is to feel some kind of connection with those people who lived there 2000 years ago. The extraordinary thing about Pompeii, apart from its size, is its ordinariness, its similarity to modern cities and to see that their lives were very similar to ours. 

There are pavements raised above the paved roads. There are grooves from the wheels of wagons that were making deliveries to shops and food outlets. There are stepping stones to cross the road safely. There are the large houses of the wealthy and the smaller houses and flats of the poor. There are streets of shops and the bakeries (25 of them) that provided the Pompeiians with their staple daily food. There are fast food units (thermopolia), their counters facing the street with sunken jars embedded into the counter to serve snacks from. The city of Pompeii feels very like a town or city that we might live in.

There are also the showpiece attractions- the theatre (the teatro grande) with its perfect acoustics, stage, backstage area and seats for 5000 people.

 

Next door to the teatro grande is the smaller odeon teatro next door, a venue for 1000 people, the equivalent of your small indie venue and the bigger medium size band venue round the corner. 

Those Pompeiians who could afford it decorated their walls with art, hand painted frescos supplied by local artists in whatever style and depicting whatever subject matter was fashionable and popular at the time. The survival of these, their colours and scenes is incredible (the frescos up the coast at Herculaneum are even more impressive). 

There are paintings that demonstrate the fun that could be had at the Lupanar brothel, for those with the  money and inclination. The women that worked there earned three times the average wage of unskilled urban labourer. 

And then there's this chap, in the House Of The Vetti, the home of two men who were freed slaves and made a fortune selling wine. The well endowed gentleman is Priapus (obvs), the God of fertility and abundance. As well as his enormous member there is a set of scales piled with money, representing the wealth the two men accumulated. 

The men who owned the house and commissioned the painting of Priapus were Aulus Vettius Restitus and Aulus Vettius Conviva. They likely had the same master and when freed went into business together.

At the centre of Pompeii is the forum, the public square (a rectangle actually) with the council offices at one end in the basilica and temples and shops round the other sides. Vesuvius looms in the background, the cause of the town's destruction and its survival. 

We wandered for hours, visiting the baths and the villas, walking up and down streets, poking our heads into people's homes and businesses, marveling at the size and scale of the place and how well preserved it is. The only place where access was limited was the amphitheatre- the floor was covered in chairs for a series of concerts being held there, titled Beats Of Pompeii, and with a line up including Jean Michel Jarre, Nick Cave with Colin Greenwood, Andrea Bocelli and Norwegian folk band Wardruna. It was disappointing not to be able to stand in the centre of the arena but in some ways it was good that the venue is being used, a stunning backdrop for any artist.

I've always been a bit averse to 70s Pink Floyd but their 1972 film Live In Pompeii has recently been re- released and it ties in nicely to this post. The band played songs over four days with no audience other than the film crew, director Adrian Maben and some local children who sneaked in. They had to pay local dignitaries off to get the use of the ampitheatre and had issues with the electricity supply. Floyd's gear took four days to arrive by truck and Maben spliced stock footage into the film alongside his own shots of Pompeii and the band. This is Echoes...