Monday October 17, Naples, Pompeii, and Mount Vesuvius

Monika prodded me awake at 6:30, and I literally had to prop my eyelids open for a while until I came to. I did manage to get dressed and stumble down to breakfast, and after a few cups of tea I started to even be able to think straight. Our morning trip was to Pompeii, an archeological site I have always wanted to visit, and fortunately I had time to fully awaken during the bus trip from Naples out to Pompeii.

I was surprised to learn from our guide that Pompeii is only about 65% excavated, and indeed we saw where the layers of ash still cover the city area beyond the last excavated wall. However, the area that has been excavated is really quite large, and one can wander around the main streets and side streets for quite a long time. We walked into the excavated area past the ruins of some warehouses that used to be near a river leading directly to the sea. Passing through a gate we entered a large, columned courtyard where the Roman gladiators used to practice their skills. I could almost hear the clang of sword against shield that must have occurred on that very ground so many centuries ago.

From the gladiator's courtyard I could see tiers of a theater section up in the back, and that was our next stop. This was a Greek-style theater because historically the Greeks had occupied the site prior to the Romans and built their usual semi-circular theater rather than the complete circle typical of the Roman amphitheater. In fact, the theater was quite similar to the one we had seen the day before at Taormina with many tiers of seats rising a total of about 60 feet or so. In the Good Old Days, the male aristocrats and Roman citizens would occupy the lowest tiers with the best view, other males such as slaves would occupy the middle tiers, and women were exiled to the uppermost tiers. To me this was a clear depiction of the low status of women in Greek and Roman society that compared unfavorably to other cultures like the Etruscans that were far more egalitarian (see Wanderung 5). The Etruscans ultimately lost out to the Romans, of course, which put the patriarchal stamp on subsequent western civilizations.

The streets of Pompeii were paved with extremely large cobblestones, and on corners we found stepping stones that could be used to cross the street like you would cross a stream. The stepping-stones were set precisely far enough apart that the wheels of a chariot would straddle them and they were just low enough that the axle of the chariot would pass over them, and I thought that was a good design. The wheels of the chariots were consistently at the width of two horses and the effect of this traffic was to wear deep ruts in the rock at precisely the width of the chariot wheels!

Pompeii was at that time a commercial city, so a large proportion of the buildings were shops and businesses. For example, we saw a bakery with a recognizable oven for baking bread and several curious dome-shaped millstones for grinding the grain. We also saw at least two examples of what were effectively carryout restaurants. These had large bowl-shaped depressions where the different dishes being offered were kept warm, and I could easily imagine the crush of people trying to get meals during certain times of the day, just like McDonalds at lunch time back in the U.S. But how did they wait their turn to get their meal? Did they queue up in lines like modern English, push to the front like modern Germans, or mill about like modern Italians? There must have been quite a crowd because our guide said that the vast majority of the populace ate food from these restaurants. Apparently excavations have indicated that only rich folks could afford to have a house large enough to have a kitchen and thus cook their food at home.

We did see one large house or villa that had been fully excavated and it was probably large enough to have a kitchen. Unfortunately, like quite a few of the areas it was behind a locked gate and we couldn't really wander through it. I was surprised and impressed, however, by the density of the columns that apparently supported the roof of the house. They looked extraordinarily graceful, something like a forest of stone trees, and I wondered whose villa it had been and what it would be like to live in such an open, colonnaded house.

Our guide maintained that the aquifers were designed to supply running water to each house and that likewise a sewage system carried waste safely away, but I couldn't quite imagine how all that worked from peering in the front doorway. I expect the ancient Romans were quite efficient at getting it all to work right, however, and what was intriguing was how advanced the amenities necessary for daily life really were in Pompeii, at least for the Roman citizens. The slaves, I imagine, would have lived in desperate poverty and squalor for the most part as they have throughout history in all the cultures I have read about.

The details of daily life for the folks living in Pompeii were different from modern life in some ways and not that different in others. The laundry or washhouse used urine rather than soap and water, for example, and although the ammonia of the urine might have killed germs, I would expect that it stank to the high heaven. But in that very same washhouse, I found beautiful little wall decorations of a peacock and of a stylized eagle that were both instantly recognizable despite the time lapse of about 2,000 years. Similarly, the graffiti crudely carved on some walls was almost exactly like that which I have seen in many men's bathrooms. It is curious how both good art and coarse graffiti can speak to us across the millennia.

The public baths were, however, quite different from our modern idea of bathing. The actual pool of water was built on squat little columns that allowed hot air from fires to circulate underneath, but I had to wonder how hard it was to make the raised pool watertight. However, some of the pools at Bath, England, still had water in them when we visited a few years back, so clearly the Romans could do it. The anteroom for the bath was the one building in Pompeii that had an intact roof, and I was fascinated by the sculptures and frescoes on the ceiling.

As we curled around back to the entrance we passed one of the famous mosaics of Pompeii, this one apparently depicting Alexander the Great's victory over King Darius of Persia. This villa also had a beautiful bronze statue in what looked like a foyer area, and seeing these fragments it would have been great to see villa in its original condition. As we walked along the streets I occasionally glimpsed other sculptures, and they were both surprisingly well preserved and still aesthetically pleasing even after almost 2000 years.

We ended our tour of Pompeii by walking along the forum, which had the remains of a temple to Jupiter on on side, and then on to the basilica. In ancient times, however, a "basilica" implied more of an official commercial or governmental building rather than any religious function. Even though all we could see were the partial remains of the columns, that gave us at least an inkling of what the original buildings might have looked like and they would have been impressive buildings indeed. We were really reluctant to leave as we felt we had just scratched the surface of Pompeii, so to speak, but the bus was waiting so we clambered down the exit stairs to the parking area and our bus. From one of the vendors lining the road Monika bought a tiny model of an amphora that went into our collection of knickknacks back at home.

After lunch back at the ship and a brief pause while I took a really quick nap and Monika processed the pictures, we re-boarded a bus for our afternoon climb up to the crater of Vesuvius. Our bus first wound its way through Naples and we watched motorcycles and scooters going every which way in the usual Italian manner.

Watching our bus driver work the 50-person tour bus up and down a narrow, twisting mountain road with several 180-degree switchbacks was almost worth the price of admission alone. We again heard the story of how Vesuvius had erupted and wiped out Pompeii and Heraculeum in 79 AD while we were carted up the mountainside, but then the road stopped and it was our turn to climb the last 800 feet or so to the rim of the crater. Along the way we saw the lava flow from the most recent eruption in 1944. That river of lava was easy to see because it was essential still fresh and made a very noticeable scar on the otherwise verdant landscape.

The trail of the outside of the crater was a pretty steady 6-8 degree incline and our group walked steadily up. The ascent entailed 45 minutes of fairly intense exertion and I was of course curious if my newly repaired heart would hold out or not. As it turned out I ran out of breath before my heart quit, which is the normal way things should be and rather a relief. I of course overheated, but I unzipped the legs of my zip pants, put on my sweatband, and continued chugging (slowly) up the mountain.

The view of the crater was worth all the effort. Vesuvius's crater is not that large in diameter, but the relatively small size lets you get a very close look at all the steep, craggy crater walls. I even saw steam venting out of one side of the crater, confirming if I had any doubts that Vesuvius is still an active volcano and in fact overdue for its next eruption. I was amused to see three tourists shops strategically placed at three points around the rim. I cannot imagine a harder place to bring the stock to each morning! A guide helped us spot the ruins of Pompeii 5 kilometers downhill, and the ancient city looked surprisingly far away to have been so thoroughly destroyed by the eruption.

We again ran out of time and had to hurry back to the bus. Usually it is easier to go downhill, but this trail was steep and covered with little lava and pumice rocks that acted like little marbles underneath our feet. We ended up holding hands to brace each other and it was a good thing that we did so because Monika's feet slid out at least twice on our way down. Feeling good after all that exercise, we settled in for the drive back down the mountain and to our ship. After dinner Monika, Heinke, Helga and Gustl went to a German comedy show that included German Limericks (I didn't know those existed!), while Jim and I worked to back up his pictures on some CDs.

Monika recalled one of the stories from that show, but in this case the humor depends on the strong association of the color black with mourning that persists in the German culture to this day. Monika insisted that in the German context this joke was hilarious:

A long-time married woman decided to try to rekindle the romance in her marriage. She went to a French lingerie shop and bought a frilly black silk nightgown to surprise her husband with. That evening when they were ready to go to bed she slipped into the bathroom and put on the nightgown and then stepped out into their bedroom. Her husband looked up from the book he was reading, saw the black nightgown, and said in a worried voice, "Is something the matter with Grandma?"

Clearly some jokes translate better than others! Be that as it may, by the time Monika returned it was time to hit the sack, hoping of course that the sack didn't hit back!