Daily Life in Pompeii

The journey to eternity

The roads leading out of Pompeii are lined with tombs, not for any ominous reason, but because burial within the city walls was not permitted. The best-known tombs line the road to Herculaneum. Before the Roman colony was established, Pompeians buried their dead in simple stone or brick cists (caskets or containers), but after 80 BC cremation became the norm and wealthier Pompeians started to build more monumental tombs, sometimes including an upper storey that featured statues of the deceased between columns. One particularly elaborate tomb built for a woman named Naevoleia Tyche boasts relief sculptures showing the good works performed by her husband, a freedman, as well as a ship representing trade, the source of her wealth. Another tomb features a wall-painting showing the family silver. Some of the tombs rest within walled enclosures, and one unusual type of burial is marked by a tombstone with a plain circular top resembling a human head. In the early first century BC a number of commemorative curved stone benches were also built in these cemeteries, but archaeologists are not sure whether these were actual burial places or cenotaphs erected to honour dead who lie elsewhere.

Family tomb

Source: © Museum Victoria

Cult following: the importance of the gods in daily life

The Pompeians worshipped many gods, primarily Graeco-Roman deities such as Jupiter (the Greek Zeus), Juno (Hera), Minerva (Athena) and Apollo. The oldest temple in Pompeii, which dates to the sixth century BC, may have been a temple of Minerva. A temple of Apollo stands next to the Forum and a temple of Jupiter at its north end, both built in the second century BC. In about 80 BC, a temple of Venus was built on high ground in the southwest corner of the city overlooking the sea, from which mythology tells us the goddess was born.

Roman temples were designed to house cult statues of the god or goddess to which they were dedicated; unlike most churches today, they were not usually entered by the worshippers. Instead, priests venerated the gods with processions and sacrifices on the altar, which stood in front of the temple. The Romans believed it was crucial to perform these important rituals correctly, and the only way to know whether the god had been appeased was by divination, which meant examining the livers of sacrificial animals and the direction in which birds flew or how they ate in order to interpret the god’s mood and intentions.

In addition to the public temples, most houses had a small shrine or lararium, where daily ceremonials and rituals were performed to appease the lares and penates who guarded the house. The lares (household gods) are usually depicted on these shrines dressed in short tunics and carrying drinking horns and wine buckets.

As Rome’s empire spread, several new religions spread to Pompeii from overseas. The Egyptian cult of Isis was popular in Pompeii before the Roman colony was established in 80 BC, and appealed especially to the poor and oppressed, thanks to its story of death and resurrection and the promise of immortality. In the mythology, Osiris, the husband of Isis, is killed, and the tears of his grieving wife cause the Nile to flood; however, her magical skills enable her to bring Osiris back to life. When it was first discovered, the Temple of Isis at Pompeii was in exceptionally fine condition, with most of the temple vessels and fittings still in place. At the time of the eruption, the priests had tried to save the treasures of the temple, and the body of one of them was found next to a bag of gold near the Via dell’Abbondanza, (Street of Abundance).

The Bacchic cult also became highly popular in this vineyard-surrounded city, perhaps because it advocated extensive drinking of wine, which was thought to induce religious ecstasy. One famous room in the Villa of the Mysteries depicts the god Bacchus initiating members into his secret society.