MACELLUM - POMPEII

In the north-eastern corner of the Forum stood the covered market where the townspeople could buy the food they needed. Built during the Augustan age, its main entrances in the Forum and Via degli Augustali were lined with shops. It originally had a secondary entrance on Vico del Balcone Pensile which was later closed off when the Temple of the Public Lares was built. The entrance under the colonnade in the Forum was divided into two gateways by a votive aedicule and led into the open space which was originally surrounded by a portico. A number of shops opened out onto the right-hand side of Macellum while the rear wall was divided in three areas. The central room acted as ‘sacellum’ or shrine dedicated to the imperial house hold. It comprises four niches on the side walls and a podium on the far wall. The left-hand chamber was used for sacrificial banquets while the room on the right with its long stone counter and drainage system was the fish market.

 

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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, 36) Ingredients:

• 1 kg. nettles
• 11 gr. pepper
• 8 tbsp di liquamen (or soya sauce)
• 9 tbsp olive oil
• 8 eggs

Instructions:
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Wash, drain, dry and mince the nettle. Grind the peppercorns with a pestle and add a tbsp of liquamen; then put all in a pot with oil and liquamen and boil. Make cold and add beaten eggs; mesh. Cook in a bain-marie in oven 130° for 75-80 minutes. Sprinkle with pepper and serve, hot or cold.

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.