The current events of Pompeii in a butterfly and a graffiti

EThe 10 quintals of pomegranates found in Villa B of Oplontis were found in the woven straw and dried and ripe figs were found almost everywhere, in the houses and shops of Pompeii. So numerous as to have raised some doubts about the date of the eruption of Vesuvius, which philologists had set at 24 August, lending faith to the oldest codex among those with the letters of Pliny the Younger which recall the cataclysm and the death of his uncle Pliny the old. Those figs and pomegranates, however, were a clue and the story was changed by the writing found in the Garden House, in the recent excavations of the Regio V . On the east wall of the atrium of the domus archaeologists encountered a short charcoal phrase: « 16 K Nov in the olive groves […]”, that is, “sixteen days before the calends of November they took olive oil from the pantry…”. It is not known what was taken but the sentence fixes a day, this counts: October 17th, and it was 79 AD because the house was being renovated and it was customary to take notes on the walls. Here’s the news: the eruption didn’t happen on August 24th but in autumn, on October 24th.

The ancient-contemporary relationship

The story, compelling in substance, almost as if it were a detective story, and well documented in terms, is contained in the precious volume by Massimo Osanna, Pompeii yesterday and todaywith which the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia Institute inaugurates the series Archaios, dedicated to the places, art and history of the ancient world. The general director of the Museums, already responsible for the Pompeii archaeological park, retraces the recent discoveries in the shadow of Vesuvius and frames them in a broader discussion that concerns memory and the contemporary, our being in time and today, the continuity of a site that goes beyond objects. The finds span the millennia, every fresco, every oil lamp discovered is the Esperanto of our human beings surprised by wonder and grace, so much so that museums are «the place from which to start a discussion on the theme of common roots, Italian and European, of our sense of community and belonging to a tradition that still conditions our contemporaneity”, thus allowing us to recognize our identity starting from our heritage.

Pompeii was swallowed up by fate in 79 AD and reappeared in 1748, when excavations began among the ruins, revealing a kaleidoscopic series of lives, in «an incessant fascination for infinite manifestations of art and thought, from Canova to Pink Floyd» but the new excavations, the first of the digital era which allow the entire investigation process to be documented in a technologically advanced manner, «have put us in direct contact with a new Pompeii, because for the first time it has been possible to intercept and above all document (reproposing three-dimensionally all the stratigraphy that was being removed) in a timely and rigorous manner the dynamics of destruction of the city, as well as the interventions undertaken after the eruption”. From this perspective, the pages that analyze the recent excavations, enriched by the photos of Luigi Spina (of whom we remember the sumptuous Pompeian interior5 Continents Editions), are a journey into beauty and everyday life.

The domus of Regio V

A journey into the eternal where objects take on humanity (what can we say about one of the Dolia which, when opened, intensely released the scent of wine…) and the traces bring back the voices, the lives of those who left them. Such as, for example, the decorations dating back to the Augustan age of the motifs created on the cocciopesto floor near the fauces of the House of Orion, always Regio V, on whose mosaics, including butterfly wings, a powerful hunter hero, different beasts and the theme of metamorphosis, much has been studied and understood. The cocciopesto motifs, analyzed by Osanna in collaboration with a mathematician, Giulio Magli, and an architect, Luisa Ferro, made it clear that the design on the floor refers to the knowledge of measurers, also helping in the decoding of the second decorative scheme, where a groma is represented, the instrument used to measure the land and create alignments in urban grids and in the territory. Thus – concludes Osanna – the unusual decorative program could refer to the profession of the owner of the house, a land surveyor, who renovated the residence in the Augustan age. And everything comes back to life because the past never fails.

Like the infinite writings that the walls of Pompeii return every day. There are invectives and taunts, jokers and nostalgic lovers: in the fauces of the House of Lovers an eternal and poignant graffiti. «Take the dances I have given you» (“Learn the dances I performed with you”) is an infinite dance in the passage of time.