MACELLUM - POMPEII

In the north-eastern corner of the Forum stood the covered market where the townspeople could buy the food they needed. Built during the Augustan age, its main entrances in the Forum and Via degli Augustali were lined with shops. It originally had a secondary entrance on Vico del Balcone Pensile which was later closed off when the Temple of the Public Lares was built. The entrance under the colonnade in the Forum was divided into two gateways by a votive aedicule and led into the open space which was originally surrounded by a portico. A number of shops opened out onto the right-hand side of Macellum while the rear wall was divided in three areas. The central room acted as ‘sacellum’ or shrine dedicated to the imperial house hold. It comprises four niches on the side walls and a podium on the far wall. The left-hand chamber was used for sacrificial banquets while the room on the right with its long stone counter and drainage system was the fish market.

 

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The garden of this house is embellished with large fountain decorated with coloured mosaics and compositions made of glass paste tiles. Rows of shell running all round the nymphaeum form a highly original decoration which is completed by two large theatrical masks embedded in the bases of two columns. The water for the fountain flowed through a hole in the middle of the apse and fell over a flight of marble steps, creating an impressive effect, before being collected in a small pool decorated with a bronze statue of a cupid carrying a dolphin on his back. The statues on display here are copies. The garden of the adjoining house, called the House of the Small Fountai ... continue

(Apic. 8, 6, 2) Ingredients:

• 10 lamb cutlets
• 1 l white wine
• 100 ml oil
• 2 big onions, diced
• 2 tblsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• 1 tblsp privet
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 200 ml Liquamen (or 2 tsp salt)
• Starch

Instructions:
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Put cutlets into pot, together with diced onion and spices. Add Liquamen, oil and wine. Cook 45-60 minutes. Pour sauce into a pan and thicken it with starch. Serve cutlets together with the sauce.

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.