Vesuvius: Texts Objects and Images

In the 250 years since their discovery between April 1754 and October 1756, five statues of women wearing Doric peploi (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 5604, 5605, 5619, 5620, 5621) have been variously identified. Produced by the indirect method of lost-wax bronze casting, each was assembled from multiple components.

Scholarship on Epicureanism has typically focused on Epicurus himself or his Roman follower, Lucretius; Epicurus’ friends, the so-called “great men,” receive much less attention. This is especially true for Epicurus’ chief disciple, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who in antiquity was an authoritative doctrinal reference point and was even deemed ‘nearly another Epicurus’ (paene alter Epicurus: Cic. Fin. 2.28 = Metrod. Fr. 33 Koerte).

This paper investigates the connection between theatrical performances and wall paintings decorating the domestic room known as the tablinum based on a study of 160 atrium houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The disastrous manhandling by the excavators of the carbonized scrolls in the Villa dei Papiri and the subsequent mistreatment that led to the destruction of many of them have long been part of their sad history, thanks in large part to the vivid reports of Antonio Piaggio and J.J. Winckelmann. Piaggio, the Jesuit priest tasked with unrolling the scrolls, had become intimately familiar with the accounts of their initial discovery and the bungled attempts to decipher and read them.

The rearrangement of verses, where the words remain the same but the word-order is different, goes back to Simonides’ time, and was enjoyed by Sotades and other Hellenistic poets.