AMPHITHEATRE - POMPEII

The term amphitheatre is literally defined as the space for the spectators that runs all round the arena. The commemorative inscription attributes its construction to the highest officials in Pompeii, Caius Quintus Valgus and Marcus Portius, who also built the Odeion shortly after the town had acquired the status of Roman colony. The Pompeian Amphitheatre is classed as the oldest of all existing buildings of this kind. To allow easy access, it was built in an area on the outskirts of the town with comparatively few buildings and it was inserted into a corner formed by the town walls in order to make use of the existing embankments on two of its sides. About 20000 people could be seated in its three tiers and would attend bloody shows performed by gladiators and wild animals. No shows were held in the amphitheatre in the winter months and in the warmest period of the year. In the summer, a canopy of dark flax material was fitted above the seats to protect the audience from the burning sun and this was advertised in the notices announcing the shows. The canopy was supported on wooden poles inserted into stone rings fixed to the walls on the upper landings of the stairways. A number of external stairways led to the upper tiers (summa cavea) which formed the top part of the structure. From a passageway running parallel to the perimeter of the arena, and from here over several stairways, the spectators could reach the middle and lower tiers (ima cavea and media cavea). Carts would enter the amphitheatre through two corridors which led to the slightly flattened ends of the arena directly from outside. The wild animals used for the shows entered the arena through a narrow passage in th emiddle of the arena.

 

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Opposite the house of the Vettii, in the triangular-shapes insula on Via Vesuvio, stands the house belonging to the wealthy gens Poppaea – possibly the family of Nero’s second wife. The house obtained its name from the original decoration used for the cubiculum near the shrine of the tutelary gods, where, set into the plaster, there were several glass discs whose gold leaf back bore the engraving of the cupids. The layout of the house is quite unusual as it has an atrium and tablinum but no cubicula (bed chambers) on either side, and all of this is off-set compared to the rest of the house, which elegantly extends out towards the peristyle and garden. The latter was ... continue

(Apic. 4, 2, 35) Ingredients:

• 1 kg pears (peeled and without core)
• 6 eggs
• 4 table spoon of honey
• 100 ml Passum or wine ‘passito’
• a little bit oil
• 50ml Liquamen, or 1/4 table spoon of salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• ground pepper to taste

Instructions:
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Mix cooked and peeled pears (without core) together with pepper, cumin, honey, Passum, Liquamen and a bit of oil. Add eggs and put into a casserole. Cook approximately 30 minutes on small to moderate heat. Serve with a bit of pepper sprinkled on the soufflé.

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.