Pompeii (56 page)

Sacrifice of bulls, processions, theatrical performances ... all these are rituals on a city-wide scale. What happened in more-local or more-private contexts? There is, in fact, plenty of evidence for the presence of the gods in neighbourhoods of the town and in private houses, large and small. Shrines and altars were set up at many crossroads, and one of the most distinctive and easily recognisable features of Pompeian houses is shrines that we now call by the Latin word
lararium
, shrine of the Lares or household gods (though the term was not used in Latin itself until centuries after the destruction of Pompeii). Some of these are quite elaborate affairs, set up in the atrium or peristyle of large houses. We saw in the House of the Tragic Poet, for example, how the visitor’s eye was drawn through the house directly to the shrine on the back wall of the peristyle garden. But many others are much simpler and often placed in the kitchen or service areas. In fact, in the absence of much decoration it can be hard to distinguish an ordinary shelf or niche from one of these simple ‘shrines’ – and there is a good chance that some of those features confidently labelled
lararium
on modern plans were nothing more than a shelf for normal household equipment.

One of the most impressive of these shrines is in the small atrium of the House of the Vettii (Ill. 107). The painting which covers its back wall includes many of the figures typically found on these
lararia
. To left and right are the Lares themselves, dressed in skimpy tunics and carrying drinking horns and wine buckets. These mini-gods were often associated with the protection and welfare of the house, or sometimes (when they appear as the ‘Lares of the Crossroads’) of a local neighbourhood. In one of Plautus’ plays a Lar, who appears on stage to speak the prologue, has been responsible for finding a hidden pot of gold in the house. And it was to the Lares that the two members of the household of Caius Julius Philippus made their vow for the master’s safe return. But no myths attached to them, as to most other deities, and even the Romans themselves debated their history and exactly what kind of gods they were.

107. This household shrine or
lararium
from the House of the Vettii is among the most impressive to survive. Above the writhing snake, the Lares themselves (similar to the miniature bronze versions in Ill. 98) stand on either side of a figure in a toga, who may be the head of the household or his ‘guardian spirit’.

Between the Lares, in the middle of the scene, stands a man dressed in a toga, pulled over his head, as if he were in the act of sacrifice. He is, in fact, scattering incense from a box in his left hand. One would naturally see him as the head of the household (
paterfamilias
), but archaeologists tend – for no very strong reason, so far as I can tell – to refer to him as the
genius
, or the ‘guardian spirit’ of the head of the household. The difference probably does not matter too much. For, in whichever guise, he is making an offering to the Lares. Underneath squirms a splendid snake: a symbol of prosperity, fertility and the protection of the house (or so the usual story goes).

108. A community of worshippers. It is hard to be certain what kind of religious rituals took place in a Pompeian house. This rough painting seems to suggest some form of communal worship. For next to the large figure of a Lar, we see a group of people, young and old, gathered together around an altar.

In many cases statuettes of gods and goddesses stood on the ledge or shelf of the
lararium
. Sometimes these depict the Lares themselves, but a much wider range of deities has been found – perhaps giving us a glimpse into the divine favourites of the Pompeians (or at least those rich enough to afford statuettes, mostly in bronze). After the Lares, Mercury is the most popular divine subject, closely followed by the Egyptian gods (whom we shall look at more closely at the end of this chapter), with Venus, Minerva, Jupiter and Hercules, in that order, coming next.

The big question is what ritual, if any, took place at these shrines? We know that offerings were made on the crossroads shrines for the simple reason that on at least one traces of ash and burnt remains have been discovered. These were presumably organised by the ‘presidents’ and ‘attendants’ whose names are recorded in a handful of painted lists found close by (p. 211). As for the private houses, one common idea is that the whole household – owners, slaves and other dependants – would gather at the
lararium
regularly, while the
paterfamilias
made an offering to the gods. That may seem unlikely. Not only does it sound much too like the Victorian custom of family prayers, but in some cases the shrine is in such a poky room that it would have been impossible to assemble many of the household around it. All the same, something along those lines does appear to be shown in an unusual painting found right next to the
lararium
of one small house (Ill. 108).

Between two giant Lares, a
paterfamilias
is making an offering at an altar. This is not full-blown animal sacrifice, but it does feature a pipe-player just as on the sacrificial scene from the Forum. Just behind the
paterfamilias
stands his wife, while on the right we see another thirteen people, all of whom, apart from the little boy in front stand in exactly the same position, with their right hand on their chest. Again there are dangers in reading the image too literally. Certainly this crowd could not have fitted into the cramped room where the painting was found. But it must hint at some kind of
lararium
ritual attended by the household in general – and at the formal stance they would have been expected to adopt during the proceedings, the Roman equivalent of ‘hands together’ for prayer.

As in the case of processions, the problem in reconstructing the religious life of the home is that rituals such as this very rarely leave any archaeological trace, apart from the lucky survival of a bit of ash. Only very occasionally can we detect religious action in the remains we find on the ground. At the back of one house, excavators found a pit filled with rubble and on top a tile marked
FULGUR
(i.e. ‘lightning’). Might this have been part of the process of appeasing the gods after a lightning strike? In the recent excavations of the House and Bar of Amarantus, other curious pits were found in the floor, in both the Roman and the pre-Roman phases of occupation on that particular patch of ground. The later ones contained sheep and cockerel bone, as well as charred fig and pine-nuts. The earlier ones included, for example, a newborn piglet, some cereals, whole fruits as well as fig and grape pips. The excavators saw here evidence of sacrifice (some of the piglet’s bones were burned, and knife marks suggested that some of it had been eaten), along with offerings of whole fruits and cereal, the remains of which were then ritually buried. This would be, in other words, rare evidence for some kind of religious rites in the home – unless, of course, it is one of those cases where, as the old joke has it, ‘religion’ is a convenient fall-back for explaining odd features we cannot easily make sense of.

Politics and religion: emperors, attendants and priests

Roman religion was a flexible and expandable system. New gods and goddesses were brought in from abroad. In fact there is a nice parallel to be drawn between the way Romans incorporated ex-slaves into their citizen body and the way they incorporated new gods into their pantheon. But new gods were also recruited from among mortal men: the boundary between humans and gods could occasionally be crossed. According to Roman myth both Hercules and Aesculapius had been born mortals. But it did not stop with myth. Many Roman emperors became gods.

That process was a complex one, and it took different forms in different parts of the Roman world, at different periods and on different occasions. Sometimes the Roman senate would officially declare a Roman emperor a god at his ‘death’, and would grant him a temple and priests. In some provinces religious worship of the emperor during his lifetime was the central way that loyalty to Rome was expressed. Sometimes the emperor would merely be likened to a god, given honours that were ‘equal’ to the gods, but not exactly the same. None of this is quite as crude (or silly) as it is often painted. In Rome the division between humans and gods was seen essentially in terms of power. There was almost bound to be a debate about where on that spectrum the all-powerful single ruler of the Roman world belonged. Or, to put it another way: if gods could be treated rather like overblown
duoviri
, then the infinitely more powerful emperor could, or must, be treated as a god. In a nutshell, divine or quasi-divine power was a way of understanding and representing human autocracy.

Emperors and the Roman elite could exploit this religious aspect of imperial power in all kinds of ways. As well as finding the ‘imperial cult’, as it is now often called, a useful means of channelling the loyalty of provincial communities, the first emperor, Augustus, took care to insert himself into the neighbourhood religious organisations of Rome. The traditional worship of the ‘Lares of the crossroads’ was refocused onto the ‘Lares of the emperor’, as an exercise in promoting the loyalty to the imperial regime of those slaves and ex-slaves who were the major participants in these local cults. Yet there was also a degree of quizzical and humorous reflection about the very idea of the emperor being a god. A skit about the doddery old Claudius trying to take his place in heaven (the
Apocolocyntosis
), perhaps written by the philosopher Seneca, is one of the funniest things to survive in Latin. The emperor Vespasian is reputed to have made a deathbed quip at his own expense: ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘I think I’m turning into a god.’

What impact did divine emperors have on the town of Pompeii? Just as in Rome the worship of the emperor seeped (or was pushed) into all kinds of traditional forms of religion. The conflation of Fortuna with the power of the emperor in Marcus Tullius’ temple is a typical case of that. In Pompeii we have no direct evidence that the crossroads cults took on an imperial aspect as they did at Rome. But a revealing series of inscriptions shows how other traditional deities could eventually be squeezed out by the presence of the emperor. Somewhere in the town – we do not know where – there must have been a shrine to the god Mercury and his mother Maia. What survives of their worship is a number of plaques recording, with a precise date, dedications made by the officials of the cult, who were overwhelmingly slaves and ex-slaves. In the earliest of these they record dedications to (or describe themselves as attendants of) just Mercury and Maia. Then the emperor Augustus joins them: ‘attendants of Augustus, Mercury and Maia’. After 2 BCE, Augustus completely takes over. There is no mention in any of the later dedications of the original pair of gods.

There were also entirely new imperial elements brought into local religion, including new priests. As we have already noted, the major priests of the city were drawn from the ranks of the elite, part-time officials dealing with the religious business of the state – sometimes, we may guess, conducting sacrifice, sometimes advising the council on religious decisions and actions. They might be attached to individual gods, to judge from one reference to a ‘priest of Mars’. Others, since the establishment of the colony, were members of what we might call priestly ‘committees’, modelled on the practice of the city of Rome itself. We know of
augures
who, on the Roman model, would have been concerned, amongst other things, with signs from the gods. There were also
pontifices
, who were supposed to advise on such things as religious law, the calendar and burial rules. Women, for once, had a formal role. There were public priestesses of Venus and of Ceres. Wealthy Eumachia was one such ‘public priestess’, another was Mamia. We do not know exactly what their religious duties were. There is some doubt whether Roman women were actually allowed to conduct sacrifice. But they certainly disposed of considerable cash and sponsored public works. As we have seen, to judge from a fragmentary inscription, Eumachia’s vast development in the Forum was bordered by another sponsored by Mamia.