Readers who visit the U3 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus, and choose desks next to courtyard may notice two reproductions of artworks from Pompeii framed on the wall. The originals of these artworks are now in the collection of the Naples National Archaeological Museum, Italy. The Thammasat University Library owns a number of books about the art discovered at Pompeii

As TU students of archeology know, Pompeii was an ancient Roman city near what today is called Naples, Italy. When Mount Vesuvius, a nearby volcano, erupted almost 2000 years ago, Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash, killing most of the population but prerserving some artworks.

One of these, seen on the U3 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, shows a fresco with a woman holding implements used for writing. A fresco is an old technique of painting on fresh wet plaster. The word fresco means fresh in the Italian language. When the plaster hardens, the painting becomes very durable. As a result, frescoes have survived natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions.

Some early admirers of this painting noticed that the woman being portrayed was holding a stylus, used to write on wax tablets. They assumed that she might be the ancient Greek poet Sappho. The TU Library owns translations of the poetry of Sappho, whose lyric poetry was written on the island of Lesbos, Greece.

Most of Sappho’s poetry is lost, so her surviving lines are mainly available today in the form of fragments. Even so, she is still widely admired as a writer. In the 1700s, the British author Joseph Addison, whose works are available from interlibrary loan, wrote of Sappho:

She followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit, with which many of our modem lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry: she felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. She is called by ancient authors the tenth muse…

Some examples of surviving lines by Sappho:

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A handsome man guards his image a while;

a good man will one day take on beauty.

*

To have beauty is to have only that,

but to have goodness

is to be beautiful

too.

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Although Sappho was a writer of permanent interest, it is unlikely that the image reproduced on the U3 level was meant to be a portrait of her. The fresco painting was discovered in 1760. More recent art historians and archeologists agree that it shows a high-society woman from Pompeii. They know this because her clothes are expensive-looking and she has gold in her hair. She also wears big gold earrings. The stylus that she holds to her mouth along with wax tablets suggest that she is a businesswoman.

In days before computers or adding machines, businesses used tablets of this kind to keep accounts. So instead of poetry, the woman portrayed in the image is keeping a record of money. TU students from the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy at the Thammasat Business School may be interested to know that she might be an ancient accountant.

Why was she known as Sappho? There was no logical reason for thinking that old portraits showed well-known personalities. Because Sappho was famous as an ancient poet, people in the 1700s jumped to the conclusion that if a portrait was found, it must be of her.

Another reproduction on the U3 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library is also from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. It may show Flora, the ancient Roman Goddess of flowering plants, especially those that bear fruit. It may also be a more generalized image of Springtime. It was found in Stabiae, an ancient Roman town about 4.5 kilometers southwest of Pompeii.

In Stabiae, many expensive Roman villas had been built, decorated with elaborate artworks. Since the town was 16 kilometers away from Mount Vesuvius, it was buried in ash after the volcanic eruption of 79 AD. One of the most celebrated of these private homes is the Villa Arianna, named after another one of the frescoes that was discovered in it.

Whether it was intended to show Flora or Springtime, the painting represents a barefoot woman walking, as her veil and dress float in the air. She appears to be picking a a small stem with leaves on it from a plant with white flowers. Art historians and archeologists do not agree on why she would be picking this stem. All admire the gracefulness of the image, even without knowing what it means. TU students in the Faculties of History, Sociology, and Gender Studies may find it useful to know that one art historian has written that in ancient Roman paintings,

women are depicted as independent and autonomous, engaged in the world of ritual, companionship, and creativity. Portraits of Roman women often exhibit self-assurance and equanimity. Rather than subservient and vulnerable, these women appear strong and self-directed, their voices clearly to be heard. Such images are unique to Roman art. Even though Hellenistic pottery and terra-cottas occasionally depicting standardized images of women engaged in domestic activities influenced the Roman paintings, the Roman attitude more clearly follows the indigenous women in traditions of Etruscan and fourth-century South Italian tomb paintings, which often depict women as dynamic and individualized.

The same art historian notes:

Perhaps commissioned by Roman matrons themselves, these paintings are among the few tangible documents of women’s lives in ancient Rome. It is possible that some of the paintings decorating their houses reflect the tastes and interests of the materfamilias, since the house was woman’s appointed sphere, and within its walls she had some measure of authority.

Since Roman women with high incomes were familiar with literature and sometimes wrote it themselves, there are portraits of women poets at Pompeii, whether or not the woman with a stylus shown in the reproduction on the U3 level was indeed meant to be Sappho. There are also images of women as artists. The art historian concludes that the

female reality-based genre and portrait paintings discussed above provide a unique record of the lives of Roman women, who are represented as independent and accomplished, active in public and private life as priestesses, writers, musicians, and artists. These private works are domestic visual equivalents of the state art that documented the public lives of Roman men. Thev are an affirmation of the significant role played by women in Roman culture and proof that their authentic voice was heard within the home. The fact that this voice was heard within the home, of course, lies at the heart of this discussion. Family life was central to Roman culture, and the materfamilias was central to the Roman house. Therefore, the positive light in which women were portrayed in the paintings, which I call the Roman mode, conveys the true spirit of feminine identity in the Roman world. This model can profitably be applied to all Roman art production: it represents a woman’s view, one which, until recently, has been effectively suppressed.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)