The 99%: Paul Roberts on Pompeii and Herculaneum

Posted: December 4, 2015 - 12:22 , by ROM
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Paul Roberts going down the drain in Herculaneum.
Paul Roberts will be giving a (sold out) lecture titled “What happens in Pompeii, stays in Pompeii: Sexuality in the Roman World” at the ROM on December 8. Here, Sascha Priewe speaks to Paul about curating the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum in 2013.  
 
Dr Paul Roberts is the newly appointed Sackler Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum. He was previously Senior Roman Curator in the Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum. He studied at Cambridge, Sheffield and Oxford and lived in Italy for several years. He has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya Turkey and in particular Italy. His research focuses on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds. He was curator of the major exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum. At the Ashmolean he is working on a new exhibition, Storms, War and Shipwrecks:  Sicily and the Sea -the history of Sicily through shipwreck finds, to open in June 2016.
 
 
Sascha Priewe, Managing Director, ROM (ROM): When did you first visit Pompeii? Could you share some impressions from your visit and return visits since? 
 
Paul Roberts (PR): I was 14 when my mother took me and my sister to Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum – no staying in Sorrento for my Mum.  We grew up in a small Herefordshire market town, but Mum was from working class origins in Plymouth – another sea-city, and wanted to be in the middle of things, the piazzas, the churches and, of course, the restaurants. We ran a restaurant in our town and food was central – so we felt at home in Italy! Vesuvius of course loomed over everything – very imposing… I remember very distinctly being struck by the differences between the two ancient cities – the scale and sweep of Pompeii, the vast public spaces and monuments. And the body casts – they really hit home, ordinary people just like me and my family, cut down on that day. I have a photo of me and my Mum looking so serious (and we were having such a good time), but we were surrounded by casts and I think we all felt it. (oh and I was 14 and I got into the brothel and Mum and my 29 year old sister didn’t – couldn’t forget that!!). Then in Herculaneum, the more intimate atmosphere, the multi-story houses the sense that the Romans might just be about to come back. And the wood – everywhere – in particular the clothes press and the House of the Wooden Partition.  
 
ROM: You are well known for your scholarship on Roman daily life. How has the existence of Pompeii and Herculaneum informed your work? 
 
PR: I think they have always served as a reminder that, although everyone – including me - is rightly fascinated by the priests, emperors, gladiators and senators it’s the 99% of people, ordinary people like you and me, that have always made up society and yet we normally only hear faint echoes of their lives. You can’t help but use Pompeii and Herculaneum as a point of reference. You find a battered fragment of something on a site and you have a perfectly preserved example in Pompeii that shows you what it was like. Or you have things that just have hardly survived anywhere else in their context of use– such as the organics – the food, the clothing, the furniture.  We mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that all Roman cities were the same, but the importance of Pompeii and Herculaneum lies in the fact that in their lives (as opposed to their death) they were not extraordinary, so they are very important comparanda.  It does make you wonder about the true extent of hypothesis over many areas of the ancient world, for which we don’t have a Pompeii and Herculaneum!
 
ROM: The British Museum's exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum was a major success in 2013. What inspired you to do this exhibition? 
 
PR: It began in 1976 with that first visit.  I was already convinced I would be an archaeologist (I’d seen the Tutankhamun exhibition and visited Athens in 1972) but returning from Naples (and then Rome) we went to see the Pompeii exhibition in the Royal Academy – the first in the UK.  I arrived at the BM in 1994 and immediately started helping on several exhibitions. From the mid-2000s I started to formulate ideas for my own. It had to be Pompeii. I toured around and got a lot of ideas on how I wanted (and didn’t want) the BM show. Finally in 2008 I submitted my own proposal for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Changes in the administrative structure of the archaeological authorities in Italy opened up new possibilities and wonderful officials in Italy made the whole thing possible through their professionalism, support and ‘simpatia’ (doesn’t really translate – but try downright niceness!). 
 
ROM: Tell us more about the way the narrative of the exhibition was organized. 
 
PR: From the beginning I wanted the exhibition to be as clear and accessible as possible.  It wasn’t intended to be aimed particularly at children or families, but it needed to be completely inclusive of all audiences. I wanted a vehicle for the show that would be immediate and welcoming. So early on I decided that the most obvious and most compelling context would be the home – something that everyone could associate with. The visitor was taken through areas representing the ‘outside world’ - elements from public buildings and streets - before finally entering the house itself. Here we didn’t slavishly reconstruct any particular house form Pompeii or Herculaneum. This would have been quite limiting – especially given we wanted objects form both Pompeii and Herculaneum. This was a very important factor: objects from both cities were essential because the full story of the events of AD 79 and the daily life preserved by it only makes sense if the evidence of the two sites is combined. 
 
So people went from the Atrium to the cubiculum, the garden (with the gorgeous Garden Room frescoes from the House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii), dining/living room, kitchen and finally the end of the life of the cities, the house and its inhabitants. Each area was, within reason, equipped with the types of objects and possessions that we believe would have been used in similar spaces in the cities. The objects then served to introduce stories and themes about the various people who lived in the home. It’s the people, after all, that we’re interested in. By the way, that’s why it was so important to get the tone of the last section right. Death came at the end and the whole atmosphere had to reflect the necessary degree of consideration and respect for the people of the cities – and our audiences. 
 
ROM: Securing which of the loan objects felt like a major coup?  
 
PR: So many – how to choose…..The stunning portrait of Terentius Neo and his wife, looking out at us, as a loving (and surprisingly equal) couple, the carbonized furniture from Herculaneum – the baby’s crib, the linen chest (which still contained carbonised clothing when it as discovered), the incomparable Garden Room frescoes with their evocation of a beautiful bird-filled paradise. There are so many…..
 
ROM: What would you change if you could go back to the drawing board for the exhibition?
 
PR: Not much – the entrance hours, perhaps, to allow more people to visit.  There were not many late evenings and this restricted numbers.
 
ROM: Thank you very much for this interview, Paul. And welcome to Toronto! 
 
 
The ROM’s exhibition Pompeii: In the Shadow of the Volcano closes on January 3. Last chance to see it…