Pompeii
The House of the Faun takes up a whole city block, around 32,000
square feet. It is the largest house in Pompeii.
The house has four dining rooms, one for spring, summer, fall and winter.
One of the mosaics discovered October 24th, 1831, shows Alexander the Great of Macedon at the Battle of Issus
with Darius of Persia. It is a copy of a famous fourth century Greek painting.
detail - There are several things amazing about this mosaic. It is made up of over one and a half million marble tesserae of only a few
colors: white, yellow, red, black, and brown. It is surprising that they were able to lift the original up and move it to the museum in
Naples, and that they were able to duplicate it here.
The Faun is really a Satyr.
Bill standing by the Arch of Tiberius to show it's scale.
The streets were also the sewers. Stone in the middle allowed people
to step across keeping their feet dry. Carts and wagons going up and
down the street were able to pass through the stones.
House of the Vettii
detail - Priapus, the fertility god, weighs his phallus with a bag
of coins as an omen against bad luck and a call for prosperity.
Vesuvius had given warnings to those who knew what to look for. For
four days springs were drying up and there were continuous
earthquakes. Pliny the younger writes in a letter to Tacitus: The
buildings around us were swaying...the carts that we had prepared
started to run in all directions, even though the ground was
perfectly flat, and we could not keep them still...towards the land
an awful black cloud was rent by an enormous explosion, which
parting the cloud, showed huge tongues of flame that flashed like
giant bolts of lightning.
The bakery - In the middle are the millstones. The grain is poured in the top of the hourglass stone and comes out the bottom
as flour. A wooden arm attached to the stone allowed it to be turned by human or donkey. On the left, a bread baking oven.
Two men buying bread and a little boy who can't wait to taste it.
The breads look a bit like Bundt cakes without the hole in the middle.
A counter with holes in it is a street-side shop. Amphoras on
shelves and in the holes could hold corn, oil, wine, or a fish sauce
called garum. Some shops served hot food, a roadside restaurant.
Mike took almost 5,500 photos on this trip.
The small theater or Odeion (auditorium) held around 1000 people and
was used for concerts, poetry recitals, and mimes. It used to have a wooden roof.
A Telamon figure carved in tufa.
The theaters had a spacious portico area where the public could meet
even if a show wasn't playing. People also could get up and stroll
during the intervals in the shows. After the earthquake of 62 AD the
complex was coverted into a barracks for gladiators.
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