Last Supper at Pompeii

Who could fail to enjoy this exhibition, at the Ashmolean, Oxford, about the food and dining habits of the Romans, one of my favourite themes. I couldn’t imagine anything more pleasurable than to participate in one of those Roman meals every night, served, it would seem, by naked slaves. 

Farmer going to market, to provide food for all those banquets

Yet there is something curious about the exhibition title. The term “last supper” is used by the curator, Paul Roberts, to bring together two themes of the exhibition: the Roman tradition of fine dining, and pleasure in all things culinary, with the dramatic end to so many human lives with the eruption of Vesuvius in CE 79. Something doesn’t quite add up. The phrase “Last Supper” means most often in English a very Christian event, the Last Supper of Jesus and the disciples. Clearly there is no reference to that event, or to that tradition – in CE 79 Christianity had no significance in the Roman world. So why use the term? 

On reflection, I had my doubts about this exhibition, which, in an effort to show a theme, perhaps simplified things a little, and emphasised one angle at the expense of several others. The theme was: the Romans enjoyed dining, as their predecessors the Etruscans did. In the midst of dining, they were aware of death, which turned out to be highly relevant, because they all died in the eruption of Vesuvius. Later, many would-be Romans in England followed a similar elaborate style in their eating habits (although they didn’t die suddenly). Is that a theme? Kind of. The evidence for this theme is one highly displayed mosaic: a skeleton holding wine jugs. Artistically, it is about at the level of a schoolboy drawing in a playground. From the emphasis given to this rather trivial mosaic, it is clear that this exhibition favours themes over artistic quality. 

Mosaic, death holding wine jugs

Other doubts about the exhibition soon began to follow. Firstly, what exactly was the connection between the Etruscans and the Romans? They both liked all things Greek, and they both enjoyed dining, but was it the intention of this exhibition to suggest that the Romans got their taste for dining from the Etruscans? The clue this show provides is a few examples of Etruscan cinerary urns depict the dead person as if at a banquet – as at the banquet, so in the afterlife. Still, it is a bit simplistic – after all, Roman funeral sculpture doesn’t show people in a banquet (as far as I can recall). In other words, to demonstrate such a link would need a bit more evidence.

Then there are the few objects at the end of the exhibition, mostly of lower quality, showing things English. The intention is, I assume, to show that the English had similar dreams about fine dining as the Romans did. That isn’t surprising, even if the English had less money and so tended to make objects out of pewter rather than of silver. But the English items are something of an anti-climax, because the Pompeii objects are carefully orchestrated to culminate in a life-size effigy of a woman who died in the disaster. No sudden deaths for the English Romans (unless they choked on a dormouse).

A pewter dish from the Appleford hoard, not illustrated in the exhibition catalogue (or book)

Other gripes: the catalogue of the exhibition does not illustrate all the objects shown. This is a pain when one of the loveliest objects, a near life-size bronze sculpture of a male, is not illustrated in the catalogue (which is firmly called a “book”, not a catalogue, in the acknowledgements). The index to the “book” does not list the objects in the exhibition, although it does list the illustrations. The book contains a 24-page “catalogue of objects and organic samples” and will tell you which objects are “unpublished” – helpful for some people, but not for me – but not which objects are illustrated in the book. I can’t help feeling the book is telling you the less important things while leaving out the basic things.

When I buy a catalogue, I like it to show the things I saw – at least, the big-ticket items. Thus, there is a wonderful almost life-size bronze statue of Apollo in the exhibition, but Apollo is only found under “gods” in the index. Although there are seven pages of forewords and acknowledgements, there is no list of illustrations either. If you scroll through the entire book, you will find a detail of the Apollo statue illustrated (on page 143, to save anyone else the bother), but there is no way of identifying which of the 299 objects listed in the catalogue this statue might be. Unhelpfully, the illustrations include the museum catalogue number (so the museum at least knows which object it is, even if we don’t). The illustrations in the book don’t always include the dates of the object displayed. These dates can be found in the catalogue – if you can find the object. When the catalogue doesn’t illustrate the major objects and the illustrations aren’t keyed to the catalogue, you start to wonder. It’s a hotchpotch! This is an Ashmolean publication, and they have plenty of experience of producing exhibition catalogues, and even books.  

The statue of Apollo, in case you don't find it in the catalogue

The audio guide cost £3, and contained very little that was not already stated in the captions to the objects. More useful would have been some optional background information, such as extracts from the Satyricon, which is after all a description of a banquet much like the one depicted in this exhibition. Incidentally, it costs £1 (not refundable) to leave any items in the lockers. I don’t know of any other gallery that has a similar practice.

Finally, there is the whole “Last Supper” idea. Perhaps the dining habits of the Pompeiians become all the more poignant because we knew, as they did not, that it would all end suddenly and dramatically one day. But even though we, with hindsight, are fascinated both by the sudden end and the incredible evidence it offers us, this is not something that the Pompeiians ever thought of. If they had considered it, surely they wouldn’t have died so suddenly and dramatically on that fateful day. Was Paul Roberts, the curator, suggesting that the emphasis on fine dining and “carpe diem” was because all the inhabitants of Pompeii realised that every dinner could be their last? A bit like Russian roulette?