I have to finish my tour, do you want to come with me?
We don’t normally make deliveries outside Herculaneum, but Uncle Aulus, who knows everyone, has fixed a little business for me here in Pompeii. On special days, I sell spiced breads and sweets to some houses.
They may not be luxurious villas like those you see on the coast, but they are still dream houses. They impress you right from the street, with those iron-reinforced gates and the entrance slave who stops you.
When I go into the lobby with my heavy baskets, I try not to step on the mosaics. I never know which way to turn: the walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything is coloured and full of stories about heroes and monsters and the gods!
The first few times I was shocked when I saw a guard dog growling at me from a fresco or a mosaic. How embarrassing: I even tripped over and fell into the impluvium, the rainwater tank! People passing by in the street saw me drenched and laughed. I have never been so ashamed in my life….
Since then, when the porter lets me in, I go right to the kitchens without wasting any time. But what a shame: I’d love to see the peristyle, the garden surrounded by columns. The biggest house I’ve been to even had three of them!
After statues and mosaics, the real symbols of wealth are the gardens. Who can afford to waste so much good earth to plant flowers and bushes instead of cultivating a vegetable garden? That’s what the idle aristocrats do, my father says!
Anyway back to reality, the kitchens. What a sight: tiny rooms, no air or light, with slaves rushing about cooking, coughing from the smoke and bumping into each other all the time!
If I had a big house like that, I wouldn’t waste space just to impress my guests with artwork and water features. It’s really true… money does not bring wisdom!
Though there are exceptions. I heard that Julius Polybius – a famous, powerful guy in Pompeii – turned his peristyle into an fruit orchard: fig trees, olives, apples, pear trees and cherry trees. He was very practical. As it happens, he made his fortune selling bread…