Pompeii and me by Mary Hoffman

Bacchus with a wine cup, Naples Museum

1987 - our first trip to Pompeii. We were staying, with our three daughters in Santa Maria di Castellabate, which is about one and a half hour's journey by road from Naples. We made the mistake of hiring one of the guides who tout for business outside the walls of Pompeii. Never do this. Read a book before you go and show yourself around and you won't have to stick to what the guides want to show you. Nevertheless, we were as impressed as everyone is by the rutted roads, the many shops, the wide forum.

We also climbed Mount Vesuvius and a strong young German plucked my five-year-old out of my arms and carried her on his back to the summit. I later discovered that husband and oldest daughter had expected to see bubbling red lava!

1989 - We found out on our previous trip that most of the good stuff from Pompeii was in the Archaeological museum in Naples. So on this, our second trip to Santa Maria, this time accompanied by my sister, we got the children up at 5.30am to catch a coach from the village square. The complaints got louder when we reached Naples and found ourselves, in summer dresses and sandals, caught in an absolute downpour.

I suspect the daughters remember best the huge breakfast we had on the top floor of the Jolly Hotel, overlooking the bay of Naples, allowing ourselves to dry out and warm up! But we did make in to the museum, which indeed is full of good stuff, including the partner to the Portland Vase in the British Museum, which they already knew.

Photo by Berthold Werner, Wikimedia Commons

And the frescoes from Pompeii are there too (I hope Blogger doesn't censor this one):

Satyr and Maenad, Wikimedia Commons

not to mention many mosaics and other artifacts.

1990 - back in Santa Maria, we decided on another crack at Pompeii and this time we waved the guides away and made it to the Villa of the Mysteries, which is what we wanted to see most last time and which wasn't on any guide's itinerary.

The Initiation, Villa of the Mysteries, Wikimedia Commons

Scroll forwards an incredible nearly 30 years and 2019 takes us to the Last Supper at Pompeii exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Do go, if you are anywhere within reach. It's on till 12th January 2020. You are greeted by the statue of Bacchus at the top of this post and you will find the wine god's influence everywhere in the exhibition.

For this is not yet another the-volcano-erupted-in-AD79-and-lots-of-people-were-killed-and-preserved-in-ash fest. It celebrates the living Pompeiians, who loved wine and food and fine art and who were happily carrying on their lives in a bustling Roman town until the fateful day. Bacchus is even featured alongside Vesuvius in a fresco in the exhibition:

The people of Pompeii were very well aware of the volcano on their doorstep, much as modern Sicilians talk about Etna. So much so that it makes itself present in their art. The city was especially devoted to Venus and Hercules as well as Bacchus and it was fond of feasting and banquets.

Much of what we know of Roman daily and domestic life comes from the perfectly preserved utensils, vases, frescoes, mosaics, statues and indeed bodies of humans and animals from Pompeii. It was close to the coast and a famous mosaic celebrates the bounty of the sea that would have ended up in a typical Pompeiian kitchen.

And there is the famous Roman predilection for "garum" or fish gut sauce, also represented:

Mosaic from the house of Aulus Umbricius Scaurus

 

 

  

I think this vegetarian would have had a hard time and a Pompeiian dinner party! Of course, there was always bread, of which a carbonised loaf is displayed and other food items.

 
These simple objects speak to us over the centuries of daily life and ceremonial and religious occasions, of evenings of carousing and days of bargaining, shopping and cooking.

There is one preserved body, or cast, of a Pompeiian woman, but I chose not to look at it. As with Egyptian mummies, I try not to forget the actual humans who lived no matter how many hundreds or thousands of years ago, and accord them their due respect. But it will be fascinating to many, I'm sure.


[All photos author's own, except where otherwise indicated]

The Curious Roman By L.J. Trafford

Given that my last two History Girls posts have concerned the very bloody assassinations of Roman emperors, I thought that this month I might tackle a more cheery subject. If only for my Mum who complained that part two of The Terminators was a tad on the gruesome side. I think it was Commodus decapitating ostriches that pushed her over the edge.
So here we are! Something more cheerful: Pliny the Elder's Natural History.

The Natural History is a treasure trove of facts, strange facts and ‘are you sure that’s right, Pliny?’ facts. A book that has given me hours of gleeful delight and probably most of the material for my new book. Frankly any book that has a chapter heading entitled: “About Cabbage” is worth devoting your time to.
I thought in this month's post I would extract all my favourite bits from Pliny and share them with you.

Pliny and Roman Knowledge Gathering 

The author's rather battered copy of Pliny's Natural History

Gaius Plinius Secundas was born in 23AD in northern Italy. Of equestrian class he served in the Roman army in Germany and held the procuratorships of Gallia Narbonensis, Africa, Hispania Tarraconensis and Belgica. We know of seven works that he wrote thanks to the letters of his nephew Pliny the younger, but the only one to survive to modern times is The Natural History.
The Natural History is in essence an encyclopaedia of 1st Century Roman knowledge. A glance over subject headings gives you a clue of the breadth of what Pliny was trying to achieve:

• The Universe and the World
• Zoology 
• Botany 
• Medicine 
• Mining and Minerals 

Pliny is unequivocal in his statement that the Earth is a sphere. Of the planets he names Mars, Venus, Mercury Saturn and Jupiter. He states that Saturn is cold and frozen (which it is). That Mars only rotates every two years (which is correct, Mars has a 687 day orbit). That Saturn has a 30 year orbit (which is so nearly right as to be considered right, it has a 29 year orbit). That Jupiter has a 12 year orbit (another one we will let him have. Jupiter has an 11 year orbit). 

Elsewhere he cites Britain as being 800 miles long (sooooo close. It’s 874 miles). He also talks about the weather as being thoroughly divorced from the Gods. In fact Pliny is not at all God minded: “To believe in either an infinite number of deities corresponding to men’s virtues_ plumbs an even greater depth of foolishness”

All this makes it all the more surprising when Pliny comes out with ‘knowledge’ such as this on Indians: “it is known that many inhabitants exceed seven feet in height.”
He sees no reason to doubt the accounts of previous travellers’ tales on this sub-continent: “On many mountains there are men with Dogs’ heads who are covered with wild beast skins; they bark instead of speaking.”
In the mountains of Eastern India, Pliny tells us, there are satyrs (though my translation has a footnote that suggests these might actually be monkeys). Near the source of the Ganges were a tribe who had no mouths and who were all completely covered in hair. Apparently most Indians lived to between 130 and 200 years.

Yes, India is very far away. And no, Pliny had never been there. He’s relying on past sources which, to his credit, he quotes extensively. But it’s worth remembering that trade between India and Rome was fairly busy. Particularly since sailors had discovered how to use the monsoon winds to make sea crossings to India rather than travel the long arduous silk road.
Therefore there must have been traders knocking about the docks in Rome who were current travellers to India and who surely, at a bare minimum, could have sorted out the satyr/monkey confusion. 

Indian/Roman Trade routes

Pliny does use personal first hand information when it comes to India’s neighbour, Sri Lanka (known to the Romans as Tarpobane):

“During the principal of Claudius, however more accurate information became available to us when an embassy came from Tarpobane.”

This embassy had come about following the adventures of a certain tax collector’s freedman. Pliny declines to name the freedman, instead naming his master (who did not have the adventures and was not there) as Annius Plocamus. This unfairly anonymous freedman was sailing around the coast of Arabia when his ship was caught in a terrible storm. Hopelessly thrown off course he was shipwrecked on the island of Tarpobane.
Here he somehow managed to ingratiate himself enough with the king for the ruler to offer him hospitality. Stuck for 6 months waiting for the monsoon winds to change direction and thus get him home, this anonymous freedman shows us something of his character by learning to speak the language thoroughly. The charming tongue that had sweet talked his way into a royal residence is clearly in full flow. The Tarpobanian king is so impressed by what the freedman tells him that he is moved to: ‘adopt a friendly attitude to the Romans and sent four envoys to Rome, led by Rachias.’

Rachias is Pliny’s source for his list of facts surrounding Tarpobane. Clearly a better one than the 300 year old Greek accounts that Pliny relies on for other sections. Or is he? For Rachias tells the Romans about the Chinese, whom his father had personally met.
They: “are above average height, have golden coloured hair, blue eyes and harsh voices.” 
Hmmm.


Chapter Headings.

Aside from “On Cabbage” there are so many other great chapter headings that I defy anyone not to read further on. Such as:

The evil eye.
A short but glorious paragraph on the Illyrians amongst who can ‘kill those they stare at for a longer time, especially if it is with a look of anger.’  I’m picturing a Paddington hard stare.

Pliny describes a number of exotic trees. 
Yes, he does. I like something that delivers on what it promises. It’s satisfying.

Pliny gives a brief but entertaining description of apes.
Yes he does give a brief but entertaining description of apes. Best line: they “look like persons who understand they are being congratulated.”

The decay of morality is caused by the produce of the sea.
A political treatise that demands an instant read. It’s the sea sponges, isn’t it? I’ve always harboured suspicions about them. 

A sponge waiting silently to decay your morals. 

Famous wines of antiquity.
Which is followed by:

The physiological effects of wine - much in the manner of a disclaimer.

Mistaken ideas about olive trees.
I wasn’t aware I had any ideas floating about in my brain about olive trees. Yet I felt personally accused by this chapter heading and read on to see where I'd been mistaken in not thinking about olive trees.

Unrelated people sometimes look alike.
Yes, Pliny they do. But I suddenly have an overwhelming need to hear your take on the obvious.

The shortness of active life and the signs of impending death. 
OK. I might skip this one.

Pliny’s People

Amongst these fabulous chapter titles are some great stories relating to named people. Some are very famous, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar, Pliny tells us, "used to dictate to his secretaries four letters at once when dealing with important matters, or, if not busy with anything else, seven letters at a time."

If that makes you feel inadequate treat it as a warning against multi tasking. Had Caesar not been writing seven letters at once he might well have noticed that his best mates all loathed him and were plotting his murder. 

The assassination of Julius Caesar, painted by William Holmes Sullivan, c. 1888
{{PD-US}}

Most people in The Natural History you will have never have heard of, and never would have heard of, had Pliny not immortalised them for history. And not always for a reason they would have liked.

• First up Cornelius Gallus and Titus Hetereius, who Pliny records for all time as two men who died whilst having sexual intercourse with women. I’m presuming Pliny has in his head men who died whilst having sexual intercourse with men, else why distinguish it? Clearly he thought better of recording that, for it is never mentioned and we shall never know who they were. A thing that I never knew would annoy me. But it does.

• A Praetorian Guard named Vinnius Valens who was able to hold up a cart loaded with wine-skins until the cart was emptied. He could also stop a wagon by grabbing it one hand whilst it’s horses pulled and pulled to go forward. Which is the kind of showing off that clearly indicates he had far too much time on his hands during guard duty.

• The orator Marcus Corvinus who, in a chapter devoted to feats of memory, Pliny cruelly singles out as a man who could not remember his own name.

• Marcus Sergius who was wounded 23 times in two campaigns, including a wound that severed his right hand. No matter. He had a replacement hand fitted made of iron and in his next campaign captured twelve enemy camps in Gaul.

• Marcus Salvius Otho who taught the Emperor Nero to perfume his feet. Not to be outdone on the beauty treatment front, Nero’s wife Poppaea bathed in asses milk to aid with wrinkle reduction. “For this purpose she was always accompanied by a string of asses.” Pliny tells us, unforgivably failing to make a joke about this.

• Sergius Orata, as well as being the first to introduce oyster farming, made his financial fortune from being the inventor of the “shower-bath, and then from selling country houses fitted with showers.” 

What Pliny likes

Bees. He really like bees. He writes more on bees than any other creature in his section on the animal kingdom. 

Photo by John Severns.

“What sinews or muscles can we compare with enormous efficiency and industry shown by bees? What men in heaven’s name can we set alongside these insects which are superior to men when it comes to reasoning?” 

“Their hygiene is amazing!” he cries.
“They note the idleness of slackers, reprove them and later even punish them with death.” He repeats with admiration.
“After such considerations let us evaluate their natural intelligence.” Err alright Pliny we’ll do that, if we must.
And just when you think there is nothing further to learn about bees, here comes another chapter heading: Further Observations about bees.

Conclusion. Pliny likes bees.
We might expect a similar appreciation of ants. After all ants have a similarly industrious life and organisational structure as bees. Ants get no mention. Probably because they don’t make “the sweetest, finest, most health-promoting liquid.” Lazy ants.


What Pliny doesn’t like.
Unnecessary expenditure and luxury. It is of a recurrent annoyance to him. He is annoyed that the extravagant colour purple is now the standard covering for dining-room couches.
He’s furious that, “Men have not been ashamed to adopt silk clothing in summer because of it’s lightness.”
He’s disgusted that people are spending money on perfume: “Perfumes are the most pointless of all luxuries.” He fumes of the story of someone, “with no Imperial connections [who] gave instructions for the walls of his bathroom to be sprinkled with perfume.”
And raving mad that:  “This extravagant behaviour has found it’s way even into our military camps!”
He simply cannot contain himself on the subject of perfumes and I’m afraid begins a sentence with a rather strong expletive. “But heaven’s alive – at the present time some people add perfume to their drinks and consider the bitterness worth it so that their body can enjoy the strong scent inside and out.”

Roman perfume bottle.
The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76

Though actually I’m with Pliny on this one. You what? Drinking perfume? What is wrong with you?

He also holds strong views on drinkers. “Careful investigation reveals that no activity takes up more of a man’s life than wine-making, as if Nature had not given us a perfectly healthy liquid to drink – namely, water – of which all other animals avail themselves!”
Much like the perfume rant above, this seems just a personal dislike of other people’s pleasures. But then it has another kicker of a final line. “We compel even our beasts of burden to drink wine!”
Do we? Or rather who does? Who is inebriating their pet dog or chicken? In the context of a city of animals keeling over in the street, vomiting into shop doorways and generally being a pest, Pliny’s dislike of drinking seems justified.

“Because of wine thousands of crimes have been committed, and drinking occasions so much pleasure that a huge section of mankind knows no other reward in life.” 
There we were thinking of the Romans as industrious, conquering types. When in reality Pliny knows them to be pissed half the time and the other half getting their pets pissed.

Strange but true?
These are all bits I’d file under a miscellaneous of, are you sure that’s right Pliny?

Such as, “That women have changed into men is not a myth.”

Which might elicit an instant shake of your head but Pliny has eye witnesses. He does. And one of those eye witnesses is himself:  “In Africa, I myself saw someone who became a man on his wedding-day.".
A line that for anyone else would be the starting point of one great anecdote. The sort that gets you drinks brought in the pub. Not Pliny though. No, that’s it. No further explanation offered. YOU CAN WRITE 14 CHAPTERS ON BEES BUT.... words fail me

Onions... “When used as a suppository they disperse haemorrhoids.” There is but one question here: sliced or whole onions? This is not something you want to get wrong. 

Photo by Jon Sullivan
*Do not try this at home*

“All other animals derive satisfaction from having mated: man gets almost none.” Which does make you wonder whether Pliny is doing it right.

There’s also this, “Man is the only animal whose first experience of mating is accompanied by regret.”
Now we know that Pliny has clearly spent a lot of time happily watching bees, gathering fourteen chapters worth of material. I can only assume he has dedicated a similar amount of time observing a variety of animals at it in order to reach such a firm conclusion.

Pliny is very clear that Rome is the most perfectly situated city. Particularly because of the climate which is a perfect mix of what is needed. “In the middle earth, because of a healthy mixture of fire and water, there are tracts that are fertile for all things_they are able to comprehend the whole of Nature.” 

And they have governments. Unlike those, “white, frosty skins with flaxen-coloured hair that hangs straight.” who have never had government because ”they are detached and solitary in keeping with the savagery of Nature that oppresses them.”
Which is as good a way of describing Britain as any.


The End
No piece on Pliny the Elder is complete without some mention of how he died, because it is the most well known thing about him. He was killed during the most famous volcanic eruption of all time, that of Vesuvius in 79 AD. How he came to die is so very Pliny. Fascinated by the strange plumes of smoke he witnessed from his villa, he ordered a boat to be launched so he could get nearer and see it for himself:

"He was entirely fearless, describing each new movement and phase of the portent to be noted down exactly as he observed them." 

Pliny the Younger

Cut off in a bay and unable to escape by sea, Pliny overcome by sulphur fumes and smoke, collapsed and died.

Good old Pliny, curious to the end. Let us raise a glass (or water) to him. What a gent.


Further Reading
Read Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Do. I promise you won't regret it. Though your nearest and dearest might, as you repeat your favourite Pliny facts to them every ten minutes.


L.J. Trafford is the author of The Emperors Series of books. Available from all good book retailers and Amazon.

The Rich American, the Travelling Captain and a Phallic Quest By L.J. Trafford

It hangs in a glass case in dimmed lighting: a small phallus carved in white with wings

made from bronze.
The label informs me it comes from Pompeii and that such items were symbols of fertility and strength. I could easily churn out 2,000 words on the subject of phallic imagery and objects in ancient Rome. There’s a lot of them. But that’s not what I’m writing about this month. For my second thought after, “Wow that’s beautiful." Was “I wonder how it got here?”


I found I couldn’t shake that thought. Just how did a tiny phallic amulet from the lost city of Pompeii end up in a gallery on London’s Euston Road? I suspected there might be a story there.
I was right. It is quite a story. One involving an eccentric American millionaire, a dashing ex naval captain with a love of fast cars & hobnobbing with grandees, and a quite extraordinary collection.



The American

Henry Wellcome courtesy of  Wellcome Collection.

If there is a better example of the self made man than Henry Wellcome I've yet to find it. He began life in a wood cabin in the slowly forming United States of America, the son of a travelling preacher.
This was proper frontier country. Aged eight Henry's home town was attacked by the Sioux. The young boy assisted his uncle in caring for the wounded.

Aged 15 he created and marketed his own version of Invisible Ink. Aged 19 we find him at the Chicago School of Pharmacy. A promising and developing career as a salesman for a drug company was interrupted when his friend Silas Burroughs suggested Wellcome follow him to London. Burroughs had in mind a British pharmaceutical company, but run with American panache, drive and most importantly American style marketing.
Henry took the leap to London and in 1880 Burroughs, Wellcome and Co was founded.

To say Burroughs, Wellcome and Co was successful is a gross understatement.
Burrough’s sudden and untimely death in 1895 left Wellcome as sole proprietor and enormously wealthy. What to do with all this money piling up?

Well there was partying for a start.

Henry Wellcome in fancy dress.
Courtesy of  Wellcome Collection

 


There was travel. 

Wellcome in Sudan.
Courtesy of  Wellcome Collection

And then there was collecting.

Wellcome had a dream, a grand ambition with his collecting. It was to;

“Trace the history of the human body in sickness and in health throughout the whole broad sweep of history.”

He intended to create a museum called the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (and succeeded, the WHMM opened in 1913) and set about acquiring the objects that would articulate this aim.

Gentleman collectors in the Victorian era were ten a half penny but the way Wellcome went about collecting was something entirely different: it was industrial.
Partly this was born of his innate curiosity. Partly his American drive that had taken him from a wood cabin in frontier country to a multi-millionaire living within the fashionable London set. But mostly it was driven by the huge resources he had at his disposal.

Reading about Wellcome’s collection is jaw dropping and ultimately a little dispiriting. How was I to find a record of my little phallus in this lot? To give you some idea of just how much Wellcome collected you need only know that they measured it by the ton.

There was 3 and a half tons of swords, five tons of photograph albums, 2 and half tons of guns and cannons and shields.
There were 110 cases of Graeco-Roman objects.
In all a million plus objects made up Wellcome’s collection. Somewhere in this million was my little phallus.

Though Henry Wellcome travelled extensively seeking objects for his museum (Much to the disgust of his wife Syrie “Ever since our marriage, the greater part of our time has been spent in places I detested collecting curios” - they later divorced) he did not take sole responsibility for acquiring objects for his museum. He did have a company to run after all, but also because he recognised that his presence at auctions was likely to push the price up of his desired object. To overcome this he was known to effect disguises, as he told a friend:

 “I usually put on very plain clothes. A top hat usually excites the cupidity of the dealer and the higher the hat the higher the price."

Alongside his own undercover missions he also employed a team of agents to travel the globe to find suitable objects for his museum. A bit of internet research brought me to one Captain Johnston Saint, one of Wellcome’s agents who undertook a tour of Europe on behalf of Wellcome. I wondered if he might be the man who purchased my little white phallus. I wondered how I might find out whether he was.


The Captain

Peter Johnston Saint.
Courtesy of Wellcome Collection

Peter Johnston Saint was born in 1886. He had served in both the Royal Flying Corp and the Indian Army. Well connected, (one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters was a childhood friend), he adored socialising, travel and fast cars.
He joined the, now named, Wellcome Institute in 1921 and had soon impressed Henry Wellcome. Within a very short time he was given the title of Foreign Secretary. The sole purpose of this role was to travel and buy up objects suitable for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. It was a job Johnston Saint was well suited to involving, as it did, much hobnobbing with Ambassadors, Cardinals, Directors of key museums and other such notables.
A friendly member of staff at the Wellcome Collection (thank you Ross!) pointed me towards the papers they hold on Peter Johnston Saint. There were letters to Henry Wellcome, reports on his activities as Foreign Secretary and (joy!) his travels diaries.
Somewhere in these diaries I might find my little white phallus. Hoping he had decent handwriting I began to read about his trip to Italy.


Johnston Saint began his Italian quest on Saturday 19th January 1929:

“Arrived in Rome 8pm. Found thick snow here also, which I am told, is almost unheard of"

His diary is an interesting insight into how objects were sourced and brought for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. Some of the work involves making contact with the right people. Such as on Monday 21st January when Johnston Saint meets with Cardinale Gasquet, the Prefect of the Vatican archives. The Cardinal is presented with a gift:

“The Cardinal was very interested in the research studies and medical history which we sent them through the foreign office and he says he has placed these at the Vatican library on behalf of the Duce (Mussolini).”

Johnston Saint also meets with the Ambassador and secures a letter of introduction to the Heads of Italian Museums. But alongside hobnobbing with Directors, Ambassadors and Cardinals, Johnston Saint spends a great deal of time browsing through the small shops of Rome:

“In a shop near Forum Romano I found some very interesting objects. Several very interesting Roman large surgical instruments…. A Greek pornographic vase in terra cotta in perfect condition…. A small bronze amphora and a Roman votive foot in bronze. Also a very curious object which may be an amulet or perhaps a form of pomander.

I purchased all the objects above for £21. The pornographic vase being worth half this sum.

I then visited the shop where I saw this collection of 99 phallic objects.”

I thought for a moment that within those 99 phallic objects might be my phallus but as Johnston Saint drily records:

 “The price asked is a very high one and I do not think the collection worth it”

He did not purchase them.

But later that same day he is to be found in further small establishments:

 “At another a shop I found a fine Roman lancet, a bronze stigel with unusual form of handle – a weight decorated pornographic subject and a Roman bronze probe. Price £4.”

To put this in some context the average annual wage in 1929 was £200 per year. Johnston Saint spent £25 in a single day and this compared to some days was a low amount. Later this same week he spends £64 on a single drawing. Henry Wellcome's pocket was swimming pool sized, however, as we have seen Johnston Saint is very much using his own judgement on artefacts. Several he rejects as inadequate or over priced but not:

"A huge terracotta Priapus from Pompeii"

Which he snaps up. Priapus is the Roman God of Fertility and is usually represented with a grossly oversized erect penis.

A Priapus from Pompeii. Not
the one JS purchased.
Attributed to Aaron Wolpert

It's not all buy, buy, buy though. Johnston Saint takes the time to visit the sites. A trip to the Vatican Library on Friday 25th January impresses him much:

 “This marvellous collection particularly rich in manuscripts,.. And housed in the most luxurious surroundings. What impressed me most was the excellent state of all the books and manuscripts... although the library consists of some 300,000 books there was sufficient room for 4 times that number”

The baths of Caracalla have him recording wistfully:

 “Their magnificence, their luxury and their marvellous efficiency are only one of the many wonders of ancient Rome.”

 Writing Roman based Historical Fiction I have visited Rome numerous times for research and I found it quite fascinating to read Johnston Saint describing the exact same sites I have visited only eighty years before.

What I found really special was his description of a day trip to the nearby Lake Nemi on Sunday 27th January

“I was anxious to see the Largo di Nemi, the Lake in the Alban hills which the Italian government are draining in order to recover the two Roman galleys which were sunk there in the time of Caligula. The level of the water in the lake has already been reduced by ten feet,exposing the small Roman habour….. The bad weather and the recent heavy falls of snow have more of less held up the work for the present.

..... I think when these galleys are recovered we might be able to get hold of something. At this moment it is not possible to do anything nor there anything to be found.”

Bad weather might have prevented the work that day but work did continue and these massive ships were eventually exposed.

The now lost pleasure barge of Caligula. Look
at the man to the left to see the huge awesome scale
of this boat.

Sadly they were destroyed during the second world war. All that is left of them is a few artefacts recovered and displayed in Rome’s National Museum and photographs that show the epic scale of these ships. They were truly awe inspiring and to think that Peter Johnston Saint was so close to seeing these epic pleasure barges revealed from the water!








On Tuesday 29th January Johnston Saint reveals that he is leaving for Naples. Would he visit Pompeii? Would he stumble across a certain small white phallus, and hopefully write down that he did? Or did the phallus not come from Pompeii at all? Was it maybe discovered in one of those small shops by the Forum selling phallic objects by the hundreds?
There was only one way to find out. I kept reading.....


Those letters of introduction obtained from the Ambassador come in handy now as they gain him access to the Director of the Naples Archaeological Museum and a very famous cabinet:

“I also inspected the Pornographic Cabinets which is ordinarily closed. Here they have many friezes and stuccos found in various houses in Pompeii - a collection of lamps, phallic objects.”

The Pornographic Cabinet of Naples Museum was where some of the most extreme (to Western eyes of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries) were housed. It contained, as Johnston Saint mentions, many phallic objects and imagery. As well as a truly stupendous statue of the God Pan having it away with a goat.

From Naples Museum's famous cabinet. Photo attributed Kim Traynor.

It’s probably worth me pointing out, if you hadn’t already gathered, that Wellcome was very much interested in acquiring erotic/sexual material. The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum contained 300 sexually themed Roman objects. They were very much in keeping with his ambition of a museum dedicated to human kind and biology.

Dr Jen Grove of Exeter University has written a very thorough account of the collecting of sexually themed materials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is what she has to say about Wellcome’s collection:

“In the large, richly bound accession registers which the museum used to record acquisitions, a member of Wellcome’s staff entered the term 'PHA' next to each of these items. This stood for 'Phallic Worship' and this label would also be given, almost uniformly, to each of the hundreds of objects featuring phallic and other sexual imagery in Wellcome’s collection from across world history. This tells us that Wellcome was interested in an anthropological theory, first developed in the Enlightenment period, which looked for the origins of religion in the worship of procreation. “

He also collected images and objects outside of this sex/religion theme including materials dealing with the pleasure aspect of intercourse:

“Objects which seem to indicate an interest in sexual pleasure for its own sake include a collection of historical and cross-cultural sex aids.”

This was why Johnston Saint was dutifully examining and purchasing statues of Priapus and other phallic related materials. Although Johnston Saint cannot purchase anything from the pornographic cabinet he does buy an extensive range of photographs of the objects it contains.

One of Peter Johnston Saint's photographs from his 1929 trip to Rome. Image courtesy Wellcome Collection

The next day on Thursday 31st January Johnston Saint is given a tour of Herculaneum. His mood is greatly different from the interest and excitement at securing his photographs from Pompeii. To see the theatre at Herculaneum he had to walk down through 60 feet of lava (this is still the case today).

“One proceeds down a tunnel to the excavated portion and it is here that one can realise to some degree what a tremendous catastrophe the eruption of 79AD was.”

He is deeply moved by what he sees. One description he gives is particularly poignant and evocative:

“In one of the bedrooms on the first floor I saw a lamp, a glass bottle, and other objects including the marble table on which these things stood exactly as they were in AD 79”

That afternoon after his tour of Herculaneum he’s taken to see a local Hotel Proprietor. The hotelier's estate borders the Pompeii site and he has excavated his own grounds and found some objects he wishes to show off (and sell).   The hotelier had the permission of the Italian Government to offer these objects for sale, but with 50% of the receipts going back to the government. A fact that does not please Johnston Saint, as he notes;

 “So naturally there were no great bargains to be picked up.”

However what the hotelier shows him is so impressive that he cannot hold back the bucks:

“I brought some interesting objects. The following are the details. Excavated at Pompeii 1927. A Roman bronze lancet, a bronze probe on spatula handle decorated, a fine pair of tweezers in bronze and two surgical needles both fine in bronze. Then a terra cotta figure of a woman which is very interesting anatomically”

Also he buys a votive leg and foot. And records one final item of purchase:

”A marble phallus about 4 inches long with bronze wings, a chain and ring for suspending – perfect -used against the evil eye.”

A marble phallus you say? 4 inches long? Bronze wings? And a chain for suspending?
A bit like this one then?

Miraculously I had found it! I had found my phallus! It had been excavated in 1927 by the proprietor of a hotel that stood on the Porta Marina gate into Pompeii. He met Peter Johnston Saint on Thursday 31st January 1929 and showed him his collection of artefacts. Johston Saint purchased several of these objects on behalf of Henry Wellcome, including the phallus.
And that folks, is how my little white phallus ended up in a gallery in London’s Euston Road!



Epilogue


For some reason I feel this piece needs an epilogue. So here it is.

Henry Wellcome and Peter Johnston Saint
Courtesy of  Wellcome Collection

Henry Wellcome died in 1936. He left quite a legacy. Not just for his vast collection of curios (of which a very small slice can be viewed today in London’s Science Museum and the Wellcome Collection which stands on Euston Road) but also for science. His will set up a charity named The Wellcome Trust. He wanted the profits from his business to advance medical science.

The company Henry founded with Silas Burroughs went through several incarnations (including Glaxo Wellcome) before it was finally sold off and GlaxoSmithKline one of the largest pharma companies on the planet was formed. The money from this sale was ploughed into the charitable Wellcome Trust. Today the Wellcome Trust has assets worth £20 billion and in 2017 spent £1.1 billion advancing medical science.

And as for that small marble phallus? Well 700,000 people visit the Wellcome Collection each year and let’s assume absolutely all of them stare at that little white phallus and think firstly “Wow” and then secondly “I wonder how it got here?"


Further Reading

I'd highly recommend Frances Larson's "An Infinity of Things: How Henry Wellcome collected the World." if you are at all interested in Henry Wellcome and his mania for collecting. This book gave me much of the material for this article.
Special thanks also to Dr Jen Grove and Ross Macfarlane for their assistance.



L.J. Trafford is the author of the Four Emperors Series set in ancient Rome. She also runs the hashtag #phallusthursday on Twitter, which examines the use of  phallic imagery in ancient art and has a bit of a puerile snigger about it all. 

Frisco before the Quake

A frame of the historic footage of Market Street in 1906

by Caroline Lawrence

One thing that fascinates us about the tragedy of Pompeii is how quickly disaster struck. From archaeological evidence we know that people were cooking, shopping, buying, selling and redecorating their houses right up to the moment Vesuvius erupted.

Recently I came across a piece of San Francisco history that aroused the same poignant emotions in me. The film reminded me of how life can turn to tragedy within the space of hours.

In researching my latest P.K. Pinkerton book I discovered that for a short space of time in the 1860s a steam train disguised as an omnibus traveled up and down Market Street, San Francisco’s great thoroughfare. While searching for photos of this rare conveyance, I stumbled across footage of Market Street shot in 1906. The eleven-minute clip is an amazing glimpse into life over a century ago.

Watch it once. Then read what I’ve written below.

On first viewing you will be struck by the how lively and crowded the scene is. We see men, women and children. There are policemen, paperboys, businessmen, teamsters, even a Chinese street sweeper. Many of the people are on foot. All of them without exception wear hats. Some ride bicycle or horses. Others step up on to cable cars or glance at us from carts. Teenage boys play ‘chicken’ with the cable car on which the camera is mounted. Horse-drawn carriages, carts, drays and omnibuses pass in and out of view. There are cable cars (pulled by an invisible steel cable below the tracks) and automobiles so old they still have right-hand drive.  

You see street signs, street lights, advertisements, flags, the muddy thoroughfare and buildings, including the famous Ferry Building looming at the end of the line. Another thing that strikes you on first viewing is the wild and wacky driving. Horses and carriages come from out of nowhere, pedestrians dice with death and half the automobiles seem to veer rashly in front of the cable car.

Now watch it again, using all your powers of observation. This time you might notice it is the same three or four cars driving in front of the camera, disappearing out of right screen, cutting across from right to left, then reappearing in front of the camera once again. Were these San Franciscans trying to grab their moment of fame by circling the camera? Probably not. The American documentary 60 Minutes (below) suggests chauffeurs and car-owners were hired to drive along Market Street and make it seem busier than it really was.

Knowing this doesn’t make the crazy traffic any less amusing, especially when you see some of the bolder paperboys jumping up onto the back of a car to hitch a ride.

For many years, the library of Congress dated the film to September 1905, six months before the great earthquake. But after hours of meticulous research, movie detective David Kiehn figured out that it was actually filmed only a week before the great earthquake. Even more astonishing is the fact that the film was shipped to New York the very night before the quake. If it had stayed in the offices of the filmmakers just another day it would have been lost forever.

1906 is the infamous date known to all those who grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area. On April 18th a terrible earthquake struck. This quake and the resulting fire devastated San Francisco. Chances are that many of the people you see in this film were lost in that tragic event. The last three minutes of this film clip (above) shows the devastation. So when you watch these films just think what a privilege it is to glimpse a joyous city only days before disaster struck. It also reminds us to be grateful for every day and carpe diem! (Seize the day)

P.S. Never call it 'Frisco'. Only out-of-towners and tourists call it that. Or bloggers looking for a pithy title.

Caroline Lawrence is author of The Roman Mysteries, The Roman Mysteries Scrolls and the P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries. Find out more HERE. 

'Keeping History Fresh' by A L Berridge

It sounds horrible to ‘keep history fresh’, as if it were a loaf of stale bread. To me it's particularly repulsive since learning that ‘50 years’ is the magic age for the Historical Novel Society - which means that I too fall under the definition of ‘history’ and need to start checking myself for incipient mould.

But memories fade, all things decay, and there are times history needs a bit of help. 

Archaeologists can rescue whole towns from the past, while restorers work wonders with paintings, sculptures, or a handful of pottery shards to teach us how our ancestors lived. From this one vessel we can learn about the Greeks’ art of painting and pottery, the way they stored wine, the gods they worshipped, the clothes they wore, and the equipment they used in battle.

Yet there’s a shameful part of me that isn’t as excited about this as I should be. Perhaps it’s because I already know these things, perhaps because Ancient Greece isn’t ‘my period’, or perhaps it’s just a failure of my imagination. To me, history being ‘fresh’ isn’t so much about facts I can learn, but about what it can make me feel.

I was reminded of that this weekend as we began a grubby little archaeological dig of our own – the Herculean task of clearing out our ceiling-cracking loft. Working inward from the ladder was like progressing through layers of history preserved in glacier ice. Back in time they went – old EastEnders scripts, my first television pass, teaching notes and old ‘Comprehension Tests’, love letters, signed programmes of school plays, and finally at the bottom just this:

Our loft is dry with insulation, and my sellotaped labels curled and floated with the limpness of cellophane, but the glue that fixed these crushed tissue flowers stayed firm. The paper insert was in place and intact, and although the pencilled words had faded with age I could still make out the words ‘To Louise – From Class 5 and Mrs Terry.’

I was in hospital with TB in my first term at infant school, and would have been just four years old. Too long ago to remember, but the sight of that card brought it back in an astonishing rush. The cartoons on the walls of the Children’s Ward at Addenbrooke’s, the taste of synthetic orange juice, the wonder of the first encounter with a ‘bendy straw’. The card was dusty, but I closed my eyes and felt my nose tingle with a familiar smell of disinfectant.

An artefact can do that if it’s kept ‘fresh’. Had the glue failed and the box yielded only a green card and a scattering of faded tissue, I might still have remembered what it was, but I would never have relived the story behind it. 

But the experience was my own, and history is only ‘fresh’ when it can speak to people who weren’t there, couldn’t know, and probably weren’t even born. To find those things I had to wade further into the jetsam of time and investigate the boxes of memorabilia from my parents’ house. Here were cracked photograph albums with white writing on thick black paper, wartime culinary implements for bashing recalcitrant vegetables into submission, and a filthy assortment of ornaments clearly retained for sentimental rather than financial value. One revolting black object revealed itself to be a plain wooden tankard of my grandfather’s, and considering it unusual enough to deserve exposure I brought it down into the daylight to ‘freshen it up’.

And hesitated. A year after my father died I showed my sister how I’d polished the ashtray that always sat by his desk, and still remember her disappointment when she saw how it had changed.

 

This shiny copper object bore little resemblance to the grimy thing my mother had difficulty wresting from my father’s clutching hands even for long enough to flick it with a duster. In this case, it was the dirt that was the history, and by ‘freshening it’, I’d destroyed it.

My sister isn't alone in thinking that way. Age has its own cachet, and cabinet-makers deliberately ‘antique’ their furniture while clothes manufacturers ‘distress’ their jeans, but when it comes to history then antiquity is even more crucial. We need to know that what we’re looking at is old – which means we want it to look like it. 

Re-enactors are familiar with this dilemma. If we use a shining clean vessel visitors will mutter that it doesn’t look authentic – but if we use a dirty one we’re doing an injustice to history. Our ancestors may not have had our attitudes to personal hygiene, but they washed their clothes, they washed their pots and pans, and even the English word ‘clean’ derives from Anglo Saxon. People in previous centuries arguably took better care of their possessions than we do, because they were much less easy to replace - and we must be true to the historical mind as well as the historical props. 

Olivier Hofer of 'Hortus Bellicus' - a re-enactor who's got it RIGHT.

But my tankard isn’t going on public display, it’s probably less than a hundred years old, and I had no sentimental memory of it, so without more ado I set to work with beeswax and Brasso. And before antiquarians faint at the idea of modern and potentially damaging chemicals, I should mention that Brasso has been with us since 1905…

If I’d known I was going to blog about it I’d have taken a photo before I started, but I didn’t and I didn’t, and can only say that after an hour’s work the tankard finally looked like this:

It’s a lovely thing, but it was more than aesthetic pleasure that gave me the sudden little tingle of history. As long as I’d known it the tankard had been a dull object with a band of dark brown metal round the rim, but now I was seeing it just as my grandfather had done. Obviously he wouldn’t have deliberately purchased something ugly, but now I was seeing it through his eyes, and to do that I had in some way travelled through time. That - to me - is what freshness is all about.

Not my picture, but I think it's the same tree and tower

It can often be hard to achieve. No-one could fail to be moved by a visit to Auschwitz, for instance, and I remember the sick, clammy horror of it to this day, but it took over an hour before I was really able to ‘let it in’. We were in a first floor dormitory with a crowd of tourists and a rather ghoulish guide, and I let my gaze slide away from the bunks and out of the window. 

There was beautiful blue sky out there, leaves of trees big enough to have existed in 1945, then off to the right I saw the chilling structure of a guard tower and felt it like a jolt in the stomach. I’d seen them before, we’d already walked past two of them, but now they were terrifying and I understood why. I wasn’t looking ‘at’ Auschwitz any more, I was looking out from the inside – and seeing through the inmates’ eyes.   

But the real walls exist in our minds. There are lots of ways we can gain virtual first-hand knowledge of the past, but they won’t bring us any closer unless we can respond from inside the same age. This video, for instance, shows hair and headgear fashions of Edwardian girls, but we’re not thinking ‘How wonderful, how cutting-edge’, we’re giggling at the ridiculousness of the outmoded styles. We’re looking at, not looking with, and so remain firmly outside.

Which is (at last) where writers come in. When our imaginations take us inside our own characters, then we too are doing our bit to ‘restore’ the past – and it’s a frightening responsibility. It’s much harder to portray an accurate mindset than it is to show accurate clothes, but a writer who gets it wrong can do as spectacular damage as the well-meaning pensioner of Borja who famously turned a painting of Christ into something resembling a deformed monkey.

It’s still worth trying. I’m currently struggling with it in my latest Crimean novel, where a private soldier’s letter home leaves directions about the ‘china shepherdess from Brighton’. We all know the things, ghastly, simpering, mass-produced fairings, but this is 1855. The whole idea of owning something purely for the sake of ornament was new to the ‘working classes’ where every possession needed to have a purpose. The first cheap ornaments strived to do both – the china cow that was actually a ‘creamer’, the pig that was actually a money box, the coachman that was actually a jug – but to own something for no other reason than to stick it on a mantelpiece and admire it was to be like the gentry, the aristocracy, the Queen. To write this properly I had to see the naff shepherdess as somehow desirable and precious – as it would have been through my soldier’s eyes.

But I still have to communicate that to the reader. I can just tell him, of course, but emphasizing the differences between 1855 and 2013 doesn’t bring him closer to the age, it shoves him further away. There’s only one way to bring him ‘inside’, and it’s the simplest, most important tool in any writer’s box. I can make my characters as historically different as I like, as long as I also make them recognizable as people, and appeal to the universal humanity that binds us all.

It really is that simple, and it applies to every form of restoration in the world. The greatest impact of those reconstructions of Richard III’s face isn’t that we suddenly know what the king looked like – it’s that he has a face at all. He’s a bloke, someone we could know or speak to, someone just like ourselves.
Or again, among the many miraculous restorations at Pompeii, is there anything to touch the power of the resin casts of human remains? 

They’re people. People who lived and loved and felt pain just as we do, who lay down to hide their heads from the mass of burning lava that has given them this extraordinary immortality.

But it is immortality, and that’s at the heart of any attempt to keep history alive and fresh. We’re immortal too, part of the same human story that connects us to these long dead Pompeians, and will one day connect us to those yet to come. Tap into that stream, and we can see history as part of Wordsworth’s own ‘Intimations of Immortality’ – with all ‘the glory and the freshness of a dream.’