Picture through Pompeii Archaeological Park
Imagine visiting the house of a prominent, rich figure, and on the night’s finish discovering yourself in a room dedicated to late-night entertaining, painted completely black apart from just a few scenes from antiquity. Perhaps this mightn’t sound completely implausible in, say, twenty-first century Silicon Valley. However such locations additionally existed in antiquity itself: or a minimum of certainly one of them did, as currently discovered in Pompeii. Preserved for close toly two millennia now by the ash of Mount Vesuvius, the ruins of that metropolis give us the clearest and most detailed archaeological insights we now have into life on the peak of the Roman Empire — however even right now, a 3rd of the location has but to be excavated.
That archaeological dig continues apace, and its latest discovery — newer than the Pompeiian “snack bar” and “pizza” previously featured right here on Open Culture — is “a spectacular banqueting room with elegant black partitions, decorated with mythological characters and subjects impressed by the Trojan Struggle,” including such mythological characters as Helen, Paris, Cassandra, and Apollo.
“It professionalvided a refined setting for entertainment during convivial moments, whether or not banquets or conversations, with the clear purpose of pursuing an elegant way of life, replicateed by the dimensions of the house, the presence of frescoes and mosaics dating to the Third Type.”
Frescoes in that Roman Third Type, explains Hyperallergic’s Rhea Nayyar, feature “small, advantageously painted figures and subjects that appear to drift within monochromatic fields,” designed “to mimic framed artworks or altars by way of illusions resembling carved beams, shaded pillars, and shining candelabras — all of which have been painted on flat partitions.”
The color of these partitions, on this case, appears to have been chosen to cover the automotivebon deposits left by oil lamps burning all night time lengthy. As reported by BBC Science Information, the commissioner of this room, and certainly of the lavish home wherein it’s located, might have been Aulus Rustius Verus, a “super-rich” native politician who — assuming decisive archaeological evidence emerges in his favor — additionally knew easy methods to party.
through Hyperallergic
Related content:
A Newly-Discovered Fresco in Pompeii Reveals a Precursor to Pizza
Take a Excessive Def, Guided Tour of Pompeii
Archaeologists Discover an Historical Roman Snack Bar within the Ruins of Pompeii
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facee-book.