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Writing a Colony: Pompeii and its Amphitheater

The site of Pompeii, as it survives today, is known as one of the best preserved examples of a Roman city. It is this concept that allows historians and archaeologists to use Pompeii as a case study in order to know more about the Roman world as a whole in the absence, with a few exceptions, of other equally well preserved cities. However, Pompeii was not always Roman.
Oscan inscription from Pompeii. Photo by Jack Hase in the Museo Archiologioco Nazionale di Napoli.

Urban occupation of Pompeii can be dated nearly as far back as at Rome, to the 6th century BCE, and from its foundation it was dominated by various non-Roman Italian peoples, such as the Etruscans and the Oscan speaking Samnites. After Rome's war with the Samnite people in the 4th century BCE Pompeii became an ally to Rome but continued largely unchanged, still using Oscan for its public inscriptions. It was not until 80 BCE, after Pompeii and a number of Rome's other allies had attempted to rebel against Rome and failed, that Rome made Pompeii into a Roman colony. Veterans were sent to colonize, military force was present, and Latin became the language of public writing.

 Plaster replica of the Pompeii Amphetheatre inscription. The original is held in the Museo Archiologioco Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Jack Hase in Pompeii.

Above is the inscription placed in the amphitheatre that followed the arrival of the Roman colonists and which was purposed to suit their Roman cultural tastes. The inscription, with what is visible in bold, reads:
Gaius Quinctius Valgus, Son of Gaius, and Marcus Porcius, Son of Marcus, quinquennial duoviri (The Pompeiian equivalent of the two Roman consuls), for the sake of the colony's honour built the place of spectacles at their own expense and gave the place in perpetuity to the colonists. (Pompeii CIL X.852)
From this text, its place, and its context, we can start to see some ways in which writing functioned in the Roman colonial public.
1) This text contextualizes the space in a way that was 'Romanizing'; by publicly displaying the Roman originators and recipients of the space this text frames the whole amphitheatre as Roman.
2) By being an explicit statement of patronage, this text acts as a public contract between the patron aristocrats and the client colonists. The fact that this writing is displayed publicly is necessary for this function, as it creates a social paradigm of patronage in which readers could be aware of and act accordingly. This form of patronage, however, can also be seen as a form of colonialism that acted to normalize patron-client relationships for the native Pompeiians. This leads into...
Photosphere by Jack Hase in Pompeii.
3) The exportation of the Latin language is an overt part of Rome's colonialist project. This is a more obvious point, but nevertheless one worth stating as it brings up the question of power. As Rome expanded imperially, its bureaucratic burden grew similarly, which resulted in an increasing amount of faith being placed in the written word. The result of this, then, is that the ability to wield words is a form of power held by the colonizing Romans.
4) However, the Romans were not the only ones to ever benefit from the power of Latin. Quickly after the colonial settlement of Pompeii Oscan inscriptions disappeared and the inhabitants began to function in an urban centre filled with Latin. The ability to read these texts was acquired, and thus through their own active agency the Pompeiians came to wield the same power of words that was forced upon them.

This breakdown is by no means exhaustive, but serves as a solid starting point for the discussion that will run through this blog. Much can be gained by investigating the public writings of the Roman world, and much more too when these texts are considered in terms of the place in which they were situated. As for Latin in Pompeii, we shall return to this topic in our next iteration.
Valete.

Bibliography:

Bedoyere, Guy de la. Cities of Roman Italy: Pompeii, Herculanium and Ostia. London: Bristol, 2010.

Corbier, Mirelle. "Writing in Roman Public Space." In Written Space in the Latin West, 200 BC to AD 300, edited by Gareth Sears, Peter Keegan, and Ray Laurence. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.

Franklin, James L. jr. Pompeis Difficile Est: Studies in the Political Life of Imperial Pompeii. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Woolf, Greg. "Literacy or Literacies in Rome?" In Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, edited by William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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