Roman Hospitality The Professional Women of Pompeii Marco Polo Monographs Shangrila Publications by John D. Felice

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MPM6: Roman Hospitality: Professional Women of Pompeii
by John DeFelice
Contents __________________________________________ [ii-iii] Color Plates [iv] Foreword [2] Abbreviations and List of Illustrations [3] Acknowledgements [4-15] 1: Introduction [16-38] 2: A General Survey of Inns and Taverns [39-76] 3: From Ius Matrimonium to Contubernium [77-128] 4: From Amicae to Puellaiias: Exploring Informal Sexual Relations in Pompeii [129-151] 5: Exploring the Moral Geography of Places and People [152-156] 6: Conclusion [157-175] Bibliography [176-306] Appendix: Master List of Hospitality Businesses in Pompeii Everything you ever wanted to know about the Roman "hospitality" business is covered in this book.	ORDER NOW Just how many prostitutes were there in Pompeii? This gives the facts about the role of women in Roman society! ISBN 0-9677201-7-6 Cloth Bound Price $39.50 US ISBN 0-9677201-6-8 Paperback Price $31.00 US Single Orders Volume Orders Excerpt Below
Dr. DeFelice presents a new provocative understanding of the women who worked in Pompeii. Were they all prostitutes? What was the status of unmarried women in Roman society? What kind of marriages existed? You'll have to read to find out! “The sixth title in the scholastically outstanding "Marco Polo Monographs" Series, Roman Hospitality: The Professional Women of Pompeii by John DeFelice, is an informed and informative historical study of the sex trade in ancient Pompeii. From excavated brothels, to the subtle nuances of marriage in the eyes of the law vs. informal marriages among slaves, Roman Hospitality studies sex and sexuality in a very evenhanded manner, thoroughly documenting its hypotheses, and offering a very thorough bibliography. An essential addition to academic reference collections and reading lists, Roman Hospitality is a seminal and extremely important contribution to the study of Roman culture and history.” - James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review “... rigorous attention given to ancient sources, heed paid to modern scholarship, strict scholarly precision ... a valuable work.” - Dr. Kelly Olson, University of Western Ontario “Roman Hospitality presents useful and sometimes provocative observations on Roman attitudes toward taverns and inns and the women who worked in them. He puts Pompeian hospitality establishments into perspective principally through his updating of Ruddell's catalogue and his selective study of the graffiti.” - Dr. John R. Clarke, University of Texas at Austin

EXCERPTS

1: Introduction

... Amemone, a bar-maid known [beyond the boundaries] of her own country, [on account of whom] many people used to frequent Tibur   (tombstone inscription).

This book exams the lives of women associated with the food service and hospitality industry in Italy during the period of the early Roman Empire. Roman law and literature gives the impression that women who worked at or visited these establishments were prostitutes. This has led to a widespread assumption that the terms barmaid, waitress or hostess are synonyms for prostitute, and that wine shops, taverns or inns doubled as brothels. There is no doubt that sexual activity for payment occurred at some of these establishments. However, I will present evidence which demonstrates that this was not universally true; though upper-class Roman society and Roman law stereotyped women working in these establishments as prostitutes. Roman law classed many retail trades, which involved sales to the public and collection of money, at least informally, as infamia, along with full-time prostitutes, actresses and procurers. In many cases, I conclude this classification was imposed and not earned. 
  In particular, I explore the lives of women who worked in the Pompeii hospitality trades.  By using the term "hospitality trades," I simplify a long list of places where women worked; inns, taverns, snack shops and related businesses. My work  focuses particularly on women who worked in these establishments in Pompeii, but because of the scarcity of evidence, material from many periods of Roman history and across the vast empire is  consulted to interpret and clarify the archaeological remains from this city.
  The problems I have encountered in  this research are legion.  First and foremost is the problem of the lack of sources and the problems that exist with the ones we do possess. Gillian Clark's commentary provides an accurate summary.

¡almost all the literature of the ancient world was written by men; all the surviving artifacts, so far as we know, were made by men; women's lives are presented, if at all, from a "man's point of view" very few individuals are known to us, and much basic information about how women lived -let alone what they thought about it - is just not available. And if that were not enough, the information we have is, like all information from the ancient world, mostly about an elite. 

  More specifically, a few narratives in Roman literature directly concern women in hospitality trades.  We know very few of their names and even their tombstones are rare. By contrast, women who worked in inns and taverns do concern a significant part of Roman law. However, connection of abstract Roman law to the reality of lower class life is often tenuous, and there are chronological and editorial problems, besides contradictions. Effects of later Christian moralizing and redaction must be considered as well. Evidence from inscriptions and graffiti is often cited, but even these rarely provide a unified corpus of evidence for this issue.
  The dilemma become apparent when viewing two of the rare tomb inscriptions that even mention barmaids or women tavern workers. Neither is from Pompeii. The first was set up by a mourning husband.

¡sweet
¡in this tomb lies Amemone, a bar-maid known
[beyond the boundaries] of her own country,
[on account of whom] many people used to
frequent Tibur. [Now the supreme] god has
taken [fragile life] from her, and a kindly
light receives her spirit [in the aether]
I, ¡nus [put up this inscription] to my
holy wife. [It is right that her name]
remain forever. 

  The second is better known. This tomb stone was set up by an innkeeper, Eroticus, for himself and his wife, Fannius Voluptuous. It probably dates from the first century and describes tavern women in quite a different way.  A relief above the Latin text shows the innkeeper settling a bill with a customer.  The customer is shown wearing his travelling cloak and hood and has prepared his donkey for travel. The innkeeper desired to be remembered in the form of a joke.

Innkeeper, let's reckon up the bill
One sextarius of wine and bread, one ass
Food, two asses.
Correct
Girl (puella), eight asses
Correct again.
Hay for mule, two asses.
That mule will be the death of me!  

  If  I were to make a generalization that all women who worked in Roman taverns were prostitutes, of one kind or another, most modern scholarship would have little criticism of my thesis. Traditionally, historians have advanced this argument using one of the very inscriptions cited above. But even to the casual reader, the picture simply is not all that clear. It has blurred margins and two opposite focal points.  The focal point of the former lies upon the principles of marriage, fidelity, good reputation and a known name. Here the woman, Amemone, is the subject. The focal point of the latter lies upon anonymous promiscuity and prostitution. A price is given instead of a name. Here, unknown women are the objects, peripheral to the discourse by which the innkeeper wished to be remembered.  They are among the objects of food and wine and hay.  No two inscriptions could be more instructive in showing the dilemma with which this book wrestles. 
  The problem is complicated by the fact that we, as viewers, are also defective. Because these images in our field of vision appear irreconcilable, we often choose to focus exclusively on one or the other. We use our natural ability to choose our depth of field to dismiss evidence we do not like and focus (or attempt to) on that which fits our theses or traditions. Thus for a long time, scholarship has assumed that women who worked in Roman inns and taverns were usually prostitutes, and any alternative view may result in a footnote or vague comment to the contrary. This assumption is often based upon evidence which is suspect for a variety of reasons that I will provide later in detail.  Sufficient for this introduction is to share the concerns that I developed early in my research.
  My first concern is that often assumptions of earlier scholarship have been passed along as fact, with little investigation as to their accuracy. There are a number of examples of this, but for now, we will note that some inns and taverns have been labeled as brothels (lupanars) because of a phallus on the door frame, an erotic picture on the wall, a graffito or two which indicated romantic or sexual activity, or even due to its location in the city.
  My next concern is related to the first.  Scholars often see their familiar present in the ruins of antiquity, and imprint their own cultural values and norms upon alien societies.  This is precisely why J. P. Toner, in his study on leisure and the ancient Romans, opened his study with the famous quote of David Hume from his An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. ¡°Would you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and Romans?  Study well the temper and actions of the French and the English.  You cannot be much mistaken in transforming to the former most of the observations which you have made in regard to the latter.¡±  This is certainly the case with many structures in Pompeii excavated in the Victorian era.  Numerous houses and shops were initially labeled as brothels because according to Victorian moral standards, structures with such artifacts and artwork demanded this identification. The classic comment is found in the classic exposition of Friedl?nder.
Propertius¡reviles the wall-pictures that shocked the eyes of women and girls, and such pictures are elsewhere mentioned¡but moral women seldom were exposed thus in Pompeii even, a carnival of license, obscene pictures are only found in brothels. 
  Unfortunately, many of these designations persist today in various guidebooks and plans of the city, despite evidence to the contrary.
  The scholarly tradition also tends to paint these women with the same brush. Sometimes, perhaps uncritically, notable scholars have caught up in a maximalist interpretation of the Roman penchant for moralizing in law and literature.  J. P. V. D. Balsdon described inns and taverns as "hardly distinguished brothels which lived in constant fear of the police."  Rome "waged constant and in effective war against such establishments."   That Balsdon seems to conflate the Roman period with one more modern is evident in his discussion on adultery. "The absence of large hotels and hotel life must have made their life harder, and this may be the reason why discovery in the act of adultery plays so prominent a part in Roman divorce law."  
  Jerome Carcopino made this assumption as well.  After discussing the tavern's late night hours and back room gambling he concludes, "With this relative impunity, the keeper was all the more tempted to equip his shop for seductive, forbidden parties, and by installing prostitutes as bar maids, to convert his gambling den into a bawdy house."  Carcopino then proceeds to provide an example of a tavern ¡°bawdy house¡± by examining the tavern of Asellina in Pompeii. This tavern in Pompeii (IX.xi.2) was partially excavated around 1911.  This business is interesting because in several election notices painted on its front wall, the women of the tavern supported several candidates.  In these notices, Asellina and three others, Maria, Smyrna and Aegle support various candidates for local office. There is no mention of any other activity, social or sexual.  Yet Jerome Carcopino proceeds to label this tavern a brothel, because these posters are "suggestive."  They are suggestive because they mention the names of "three young ladies on its staff."
  Furthermore, the name "Asellina" has itself been utilized as damning evidence, because the ass (asellae) was well known in antiquity for its "sexual appetite."   Thus Jack Lindsay continued the tradition in his imaginative, but often inaccurate popular book on Pompeian life, calling this location the "Tavern of the Little She Asses" and describing its women as being "used to ambling along with someone in the saddle." 
  E. Royston Pike made, perhaps the greatest generalization:
The close association of Bacchus and Venus goes back to the ages before history began, and it was greatly in evidence in the classical civilizations. In Rome and elsewhere it was generally understood that prostitutes were available at practically every area of refreshment, from inns of the highest class to the lowest drinking den. So generally was this understood that copa, "hostess of a wine shop" came to have the secondary meaning of a prostitute. 
Pike goes on to speculate that not only barmaids, but women who worked bakeries and butcher shops were also usually prostitutes.    Not all scholars share this final comment, but too many tend to assume that the former is quite true.  Michele D'Avino, in his discussion of prostitution noted that while most prostitutes worked in brothels or solicited on the streets, "other women carried out the practice undercover in the thermopolia (wine shops) or the caupona (inns) where their service could be bought."   Even more recently, Jane Gardner, in her landmark book on women and Roman law commented, "It was taken for granted that in many of these establishments, particularly the cauponae, which also had accommodations available, the women waitresses were also working as prostitutes."  In this brief introduction, I have certainly not exhausted the number of similar comments, but this should be sufficient to make my point.
  Thus, when scholars consider women in the hospitality trades, these stereotypes have become standard, and there is little said about alternatives to prostitution in interpreting these women's lives. This assumption is so deeply rooted in modern scholarship that to contradict it appears almost as heresy. The possibility that these women may go through several major changes of status in one lifetime, and that their families may go through further changes of status over several generations is usually not considered. More importantly, researchers usually ignore the fact that Roman literature and law tends to codify upper class biases, and delineate the limits of acceptable elite behavior patterns.  I am reminded of a similar trend in Renaissance scholarship.  When Jean Delumeau believed that prostitutes in Renaissance Rome often went under the guise of laundresses, he counted every laundress in a city census as a prostitute! The absurd result was that one out of five women in the city was a prostitute!   
  If I were to take at face value the assumption that inn and tavern women were universally prostitutes, could I produce such an absurd a ratio for Pompeii? There are difficulties to overcome and such an analysis has its share of speculation.  It is hard, for example, to estimate how many female employees were located at each business in Pompeii. We sometimes know the minimum number of such women by number of names mentioned in graffiti and/or election posters associated with certain establishments. But some establishments possess only one room while one has over fifty! Such a guess is difficult, as many businesses have no surviving graffiti with women's names preserved at all. 
Furthermore, at the present time there is no list as to which businesses in Pompeii were inns, taverns and/or snack shops that is without its controversial addresses.  Thus far in my work, I have encountered one hundred fifty-one businesses that most probably were hospitality businesses in Pompeii.  However, there are forty-two others which have very questionable identifications, and part of  the work of the vast appendix of this book is to begin to either add or eliminate these to the standard lists for more accurate statistics. To complicate matters more, the population of Pompeii has been a point of controversy for quite some time. Fiorelli initially estimated the population to be around 12,000 inhabitants.   Later Nissen increased  this figure to 20,000 when he considered the inhabitants of missing second floors.  Eschebach reduced this figure to 8,000 when he considered the large amount of the city that was under cultivation.   A popular Roman textbook by M. Cary and H. H. Scullard estimated the population to be around 30,000.  Others have guessed at the population by considering the number of people that could be seated in the Amphitheater, the number of skeletons found in a specific area, or estimated Pompeii's population by comparative studies utilizing the population density of similarly sized Medieval cities.  

Most recently, Wallace-Hadrill, basing his figures upon the occupancy of various sized houses, has come up with a figure of approximately 10,000.   Thus, I cannot hazard a similar type of calculation as Cohen with the same degree of accuracy. However, if each establishment employed a minimum of four women (as did the aforementioned Asellina's tavern at IX.xi.2), if the population was 10,000, and if we disregard the forty-two questionable locations, we have a minimum ratio of around seventeen "waitress-prostitutes" for every inhabitant of Pompeii. Assuming only forty percent of the population were post-puberty males, and that women and children did not usually require the service of prostitutes, than there was minimum of one "waitress-prostitute" for every seven men in Pompeii.  This figure is almost equally absurd.  Furthermore, for every establishment in my "questionable" list added to the established  collection of hospitality businesses, the equation is pushed further in the same irrational direction.
  This figure is even more preposterous when one considers that the immense city of Rome probably had only forty-five brothels. As recently as 1988, guides to Pompeii have claimed as many as thirty-five brothels were in the city. John R. Clark, in showing the nonsense of this number, figured there was one brothel for every seventy-one men in the city.  One bar-maid prostitute for every seven men is even more ludicrous. Both figures are obviously inflated, and the one for prostitution in inns and taverns more so.
  Pompeii is only place within the confines of the Roman world where a large number of hospitality businesses were preserved.  Many of its inns, taverns and snack shops have been uncovered with a remarkable amount of preservation.  Even graffiti scratched upon the walls has survived long burial.  In this city, there is a chance to try to connect literature and law with archaeology to attempt to gain a more comprehensive picture of the lives of women who worked in Roman hospitality trades.

This book provides a point of view which corrects this issue, and provides a greater depth to these women's lives other that a simple dismissal as "prostitute." Even sources that are used to affirm the traditional point of view are often contradictory and open to a variety of explanations. There is no way to resolve the fractured image provided by our sources.  There is no singular clear picture presented, but by carefully setting each piece of evidence in its proper life environment, we may get close enough to reality to see an image of the past. This, in optics, is called the "circle of least confusion."  The image is still not clear, but may be more understandable. In most ways, this book reflects that principle. There simply is not enough evidence in many cases to reconstruct the lives of women in the ancient world. But I believe that enough evidence can be gleaned from the historical and archaeological records to make the case that the traditional view is in need of great revision by bringing an alternative point of view from the background to the foreground. With that goal in mind, this work has progressed from a simple paper in 1993 to this present volume, and beyond, into a book on Roman inns and taverns in general which is presently also under construction.
  In this book, I conclude that while it is evident that prostitution occurred in some Pompeian inns and taverns, it was hardly universal.  There are other types of informal sexual relationships which earlier scholars painted with the broad brush of their current morality. These were certainly not prostitutes by the Roman definition of the term. These women potentially had a number of more formal relationships as well. Furthermore, a woman may be a prostitute at one stage in her life, but not in others, especially if she started out as a slave. My research will demonstrate that the lives of these women were more complex that previously believed and they could move along in any one of a number of social trajectories. 
  Chapter Two provides the reader with a general survey of inns and taverns, which serves to familiarize the reader with these important Roman businesses and their most prominent features. It surveys literature and law relevant to inns and taverns and describes several typical businesses in Pompeii.
  Chapter Three describes in detail the different types of long tern relationships that were probably legally available to women in the hospitality trades. I discuss the problems of utilizing Roman law as a source for this period, and explore important literary references which feature this subject.
  In Chapter Four I consider a number of possible short term relationships women in the hospitality trades may have experienced.  This includes prostitution, but describes a number of other relationships which have no direct correspondence to categories in current western culture. One major task I undertake is to define prostitution as a Roman would understand it as opposed to how a denizen of modern western culture perceives it.
  I then critique the identification of thirteen inns and taverns as lupanara in some of the major indices of the city by examining the nature of the graffiti of each establishment, its wall paintings, if any, and the possibility that any of its rooms were used as cellae meretriciae (prostitute's quarters). I used the large lupanar at VII.xii.18-19 as a working model to delineate what features could be expected in suspected brothels throughout the city.
  Once this task is completed, I provide the results of combing through Pompeii's one hundred fifty one hospitality businesses, searching for any evidence of sexual activity or prostitution in the graffiti, wall paintings, and architecture. My conclusion is that there is little archaeological or epigraphical evidence that proves that hospitality businesses frequently doubled as brothels, or that women associated with them were prostitutes.
  Chapter Five critiques recent theories that label areas in Pompeii "deviant zones" based upon the number of hospitality business present in a particular area. Deviance, in this case, was based upon the immorality and reputation of the women who worked in these businesses. There are several levels of criticism which I present in this chapter.
  Chapter Six is a concluding chapter that concerns the life trajectories of women who worked in the hospitality trades. I conclude that while some women who worked in the hospitality practiced prostitution, there are a number of issues to consider as well, including mistaking other informal relationships for prostitution and the fact that generations of scholars have knowingly or unknowingly impressed their moral views on Pompeian evidence.
  A major problem that I discovered at a very early phase in my research is the site of Pompeii itself. It is massive and inns and taverns are on many street corners in the city. These remains are in a very uneven state of preservation. Allied bombing raids damaged some inns and taverns. One was converted into a snack bar for modern tourists. Many remain buried under turf, shrubs, and rubble after hasty excavations decades ago. The quality of excavation and preservation techniques varied tremendously over time. there are no accessible archaeological records for many of the structures I consider in this study. Indeed, if we  follow the critical spirit of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, many of these establishments are misidentified as inns and taverns. Many are simply other kinds of shops. This type of problem can completely derail any type of statistical sampling, especially when one is searching for evidence of certain types of activity in the inns and taverns of the entire city. 
  The Appendix is a most valuable feature to this book.  It is a critical listing of hospitality businesses in Pompeii. This is the first index of its kind since Sharon Marie Ruddell's Master's Thesis of 1964 and T?nnes Kleberg's book of 1934, later published as a book in 1957 and revised in 1964. This listing features important bibliographic references for each location, which includes where site plans for each business can be found.  A listing of inscriptions from CIL IV for each business is also listed.  Identifications which have long been questionable and incorrect or inoperative addresses frequently cited in even recent publications have been corrected to the best of my ability.
  Appendix II consists of maps for every section in Pompeii and is copied directly from the map sections of L. Richardson's Pompeii, An Architectural History. These were originally copied by Richardson from Hans Eschebach's Die st?dtebauliche Entwicklung des antiken Pompeji. There are some architectural error in these maps as well as wrong address (door numbers). These variations must be noted, but for the gross location of any business, it serves its purpose well.  Addresses provided in my first appendix are in accord with the various volumes of Corpus Topographicum Pompeianum.
  In closing this introduction, it is important to know how to locate on a map of Pompeii the coordinates given for each business or building I discuss.  Since the nineteenth century, archaeologists have divided Pompeii into Regions (often one is called a Regio in literature), which contain a number of city blocks (usually called  insula). Each block has every door to every structure numbered in sequence. Thus you will find a tavern's address listed in the appendix as VI.ii.1.31.  This would read "Regio Six, Insula 2, doors 1 and 31." This can be easily located on a map of Pompeii. A copy of a commonly used one is found in Appendix II for your reference.  An exception to this rule are several city blocks at the extreme western edges of the city. This area is commonly called the "Insula Occidentalis," and most guides divide it between regions VI and VII.  Hence they appear as VI. Ins. Occ.3-4 for Regio Six, Insula Orientalis, doors 3 and 4 or 3 through 4.

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