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An intact slave's room found in Pompeii's ruins

362 points by agomez314 5y ago

silexia 5y ago
Do the descendants of these slaves get reparations?
GhettoComputers 5y ago
Slaves and slavery were extremely different in Pompeii and Herculaneum then what we usually think of as chattel slavery as the default and only slavery that ever existed. An interviewee either doesn’t understand this or made very sweeping claims. > “This is a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts,” - Many slaves were captured and famous intellectuals (Aesop is a famous example) or educated and used as tutors, they were not as modernists assume to be universally ill treated and abused. Slaves in Herculaneum were able to become free and it was a very racially diverse place where being a former slave of different racial background did not mean you were unable to have social mobility, many of the wealthy people of Herculaneum were indeed former slaves. Slavery was not a permanent state of being and the very elite the quoted author complains about often did write about slaves at least in name; the former slaves would take the last name of the old master and records were excellent.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Epictetus, freedman roman Stoic philosopher seems as a whole have an attitude of like "what of it, it's not like you're free from obligations even as senator or the caesar". As a slave, you are free from all concerns and worries beyond fulfilling your duties. Discourses 4.1 is perhaps the most direct example of this.
  - lovecg 5y ago
    Ah Stoics, they’re the best at turning being a resigned quitter into dignified philosophy.
    - twright 5y ago
      https://existentialcomics.com/comic/286 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/286
    - sbacic 5y ago
      I wouldn't be so harsh; it's better to have some way of handling things life throws at you, especially things you have little to no control over, than none at all.
    - bobthechef 5y ago
      I would rather say an ability to be "well-adjusted".
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      I think that's a mis-characterization of stoicism. That sounds more like Epicureanism (quit stressful things and live a simple life) or cynicism (quit everything and live like a stray dog so that you don't have to worry about losing anything). Stoicism because popular with Roman elites specifically because it didn't ask the adherents to quit anything, but simply to adapt themselves to whatever adversity they might face[1]. [1] https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powerful/ https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powe...
      - lovecg 5y ago
        I think there are different flavors of Stoicism chiefly differentiated by the social status of the person practicing it. The wealthy and the powerful don’t have to deal with systemic oppression, only their own emotions and consequences of playing the game of realpolitik. In that context Stoicism has a lot to offer. For everyone else though - well sometimes raw, “unmanaged” anger for example is a useful emotion. A “stoic revolutionary” is an oxymoron.
  - twright 5y ago
    After reading Discourses 4.1 I would like to summarize it as a defense of the institution of slavery that goes something like “Slavery is good because slaves themselves don’t know what it means to be free and freedom is actually a burden in the wrong mindset so it shouldn’t be for everyone.” (Ignoring that slavery, the deprivation of personhood, is an inhumane burden somehow comparable to “oh no I’m free and now I have to answer to Caesar”) Yes, it’s an odd opinion from a former slave who was maimed by a former master. Unfortunately this argument is sustained all through history and today we have people going something like “actually, working multiple minimum wage jobs and struggling to pay rent is good”.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      I'm not really passing judgement on Epictetus, merely relaying his position, as someone with a far more personal understanding of roman slavery than anyone discussing it 2000 post fact. Difficult to explain to the man how he ought to feel about events in his life we have only a sketch of an idea about. Within the framework of Stoicism, where worrying is one of the greatest evils, his argument makes every sense.
    - dlhavema 5y ago
      If thats all a person can do would you rather them sit on a couch and live off of/depend on the state? No it's not a super fun existence and that's what my life was like right after high school in the early college years. The real problem comes in when someone in that situation gives up and does nothing.
    - sbacic 5y ago
      I don't think Epictetus was actually defending the institution of slavery. Rather, stoic philosophy is full of these "hacks" for handling unpleasant things in your life. Many of them seem quite morbid and bizarre to the untrained mind (such as actively thinking about the death and absence of a loved one).
      - bobthechef 5y ago
        I don't know about "hacks", rather observations. If most people didn't have to work to survive, they wouldn't know what to do with the time. An observation about slavery is that you've traded in the burden of responsibility that liberty introduces for the comfort of not having to worry about what to do with yourself It's easier to just go do what you're told than it is to determine what must be done. Most people actually prefer that way of living. Left to themselves, they'd either become paralyzed with indecision, or they'd piss their lives away indulging their appetites and possibly commit suicide.
- ludamad 5y ago
  Isn't it a bit of a penmanship bias that the slaves you hear about in history have more dignity? All writing is propaganda to a degree, while we see here evidence of multiple people locked in a tiny room
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    You see evidence for the sleep quarters and assume they’re locked in, what evidence do you have to claim that? Where is the evidence of slave abuse you feel is true? From archeology of Herculaneum they looked at a household with a slave and noted that one of the remains was fat, well fed man and had many signs of eating a meat rich diet, and a girl found was less nourished and had signs of malnutrition. They assumed from his healthy bones he was the master and the teen girl was the slave. The well fed man was the cook, a slave and the young girl was vegetarian by choice and the daughter of the master of the household. Your assumptions of it being propaganda are not factually accurate.
    - ludamad 5y ago
      You're right, evidence of locked is not there. And I'm not fully convinced they're slaves, either, as many conditions bind people to work. There's definitely a lot of ambiguity from these time periods, but whitewashing slavery in written text is a well-known phenomenon
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      >> Isn't it a bit of a penmanship bias that the slaves you hear about in history have more dignity? All writing is propaganda to a degree, while we see here evidence of multiple people locked in a tiny room > You see evidence for the sleep quarters and assume they’re locked in, what evidence do you have to claim that? Where is the evidence of slave abuse you feel is true? People can be locked in by things other than a physical lock one the door. Didn't some slaves in classical times receive tattoos like "I belong to so and so, return me to him for a reward."? Edit: here's a citation: https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/abstracts/tattoo.html https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/abstracts/tattoo.html > A legal inscription from Ephesus indicates that during the early Roman Empire all slaves exported to Asia were tattooed with the words "tax paid." "Stop me, I'm a runaway" was another standard motto etched on the brows of Roman slaves. New research indicates that Roman authorities punished early Christians with forehead tattoos that condemned them to the mines. In A.D. 330, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, banned the practice of tattooing the faces of convicts, gladiators, and soldiers. Because the human face reflected "the image of divine beauty," he said, "it should not be defiled."
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Fate of a Roman slave was decidedly different depending on what the slave did. House and urban slaves weren't much worse off than a regular citizen, having a good chance of manumission (release), after which they became freedmen - still not full citizens, but their children would be, and some freedmen became very rich. Given that those slaves are the ones that we know the most about (from both archeology and written sources), it skews our perception of Roman slavery to being more benign than it actually was. Rural slaves which worked in agriculture were worked very hard and they were much more numerous than house slaves. Not an enviable fate, though one must admit that ancient agriculture was a backbreaking work regardless of personal status. Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. Few of them would last more than five years. Ancient Rome had very extensive mining operations and mines "ate" men by the thousands. These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no". Mining safety back then was basically zero.
  - johnny53169 5y ago
    > Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. It's less bad now, but being a miner is not much better nowadays, even more so since most of the mines are in poor countries with little care for the workers and rich countries would prefer not to think too hard where the iron for their eco-conscious steel bottle is coming from.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      I grew up in a mining city (Ostrava, black coal). Now the mines are closed, but when I was a kid, they were in full operation. Disasters happened infrequently, but when they did, they were ugly. A spark at a wrong time in a wrong place, and sixty fathers would never come back home again. Mining is freaking dangerous. The forces of nature involved are enormous, and human is but a small ant facing them.
      - sologoub 5y ago
        A bit off-topic, but how did the city cope with the mine closure and loss of so many jobs?
- neaden 5y ago
  By definition slaves are ill treated because slavery in itself is terrible. To be clear here, even if your master was individually kind you existed in a system where you had no rights, if you were a witness to a crime you would have to be tortured during your testimony to prove it's true, where you were not fully protected from the law by assaults from any free person, and where you could be sold at any point. It was considered perfectly acceptable for a "kind" master to rape and beat you at any time. Slavery is always a horrendous thing.
- jterrys 5y ago
  I have a simple question: Is it possible that they were servants and not slaves? I'm not very knowledgeable about ancient Roman history but it seems somewhat presumptuous to assume these are slave rooms. Was there no such thing as a lower economic class of free people that were working as either attendants or servants? This is after all, a villa in a resort area. Its not as if people throughout the annals of history didn't work as attendants alongside slaves. All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    No, there were no free "servants" in ancient Rome. Incidentally, even today, "servants" (domestic workers) are often enslaved or work in conditions that are only nominally not slavery. Many are children at an age that is too young to work legally. https://web.archive.org/web/20140930183517/http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/child_domestic_work.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20140930183517/http://www.antisl... >> All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline. The actual headline is not clickbait, if that's what you're suggesting, neither is it spiced up to make it more "enticing", or anything like that. Rather, the headline you propose is an anachronism because there were no free "servants" in ancient Rome. The role of "household servants" (domestic workers) was fulfilled by slaves.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > Is it possible that they were servants and not slaves? Fun Fact: This interpretive problem comes up in translations of the New Testament, where the same word is very frequently used in the context of [servant|slave] of [Christ|God]. See different translations of Romans 1:1. The Greek word, δοῦλος (doulos) literally means "slave", and is a reference to the contemporaneous Roman practice as can also be seen in other Roman works written in Greek. But this then creates all sorts of translation issues for English readers: * if you use the word "slave", then people think of slavery of Africans (people chained, working in fields, being constantly whipped, living in large group quarters). This is way too harsh. The key point of doulos is that he was forced to do something by another will. The emphasis is on the powerless and passive nature of the slave, not on harsh treatment. A slave might be treated well, but if he was, it was only because his Lord decided to treat him that way. But in practice, they were household slaves with better treatment than African slaves. * if you use the word "servant", then people perhaps think of a butler, which is way too soft. A Butler can decide to leave. He may not have the means to leave, but he has his own will. So some translations use the term "bondservant" as a compromise, given the fact that this refers to something between our modern conception of slavery and our modern conception of servanthood. Fun-Fact 2: One of the related words is diakoneo which means "to serve", so one "serves as a slave". From this we get the English word deacon, who is supposed to be a slave/servant of a local church, again with the ambiguity that this is between African slavery and being a butler. Therefore if you really wanted to remain ambiguous (and mess with your readers) you could call them deacon's quarters. From the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament entry for doulos[1]: Hence we have a service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, which he has to perform whether he likes or not, because he is subject as a slave to an alien will, to the will of his owner. → οἰκέτης is almost exactly synonymous, but in δοῦλος the stress is rather on the slave’s dependence on his lord, while οἰκέτης emphasises the position of the slave in relation to the world outside and in human society. This shows us again how strong is the passive element in δοῦλος, and in the whole word group to which it belongs. - - - source: [1] Rengstorf, K. H. (1964–). δοῦλος, σύνδουλος, δούλη, δουλέυω, δουλεία, δουλόω, καταδουλόω, δουλαγωγέω, ὀφθαλμοδουλία. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
- cletus 5y ago
  I've heard this quite a few times now and I'm not sure where the idea comes from that slavery in the Roman Republic and Empire were somehow humane but that wasn't the case at all. Roman slaves were property and could be treated as such, including sexual exploitation (eg made to be prostitutes) and being summarily executed. And yes, slaves could be freed but that was also true in the American slave era. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's accessible, particularly by the slave themselves. Also, freedmen in Rome had less rights than citizens. The history of Rome is a fascinating one but it's hard to look at through the eyes of modern morality. I think this generally applies to the Ancient World: if somehow we could be transported back to that time I'm sure we'd find it quite alien. My favourite example of this is the origin of the word "decimate" [1]. If, say, a military unit rebelled against Rome, groups of 10 would have to decide which one of the 10 would die and to kill them. Slavery has always been brutal. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment)
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    You claim most slaves in Roman times were not freed, do you know the history or are you just assuming with no evidence that's the case?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > You claim most slaves in Roman times were not freed, do you know the history or are you just assuming with no evidence that's the case? Honestly, I think you're the one who needs to be providing the evidence, especially if you're claiming anything close to the opposite of that (i.e. that most slaves in Roman times were freed).
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    > And yes, slaves could be freed but that was also true in the American slave era. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's accessible, particularly by the slave themselves. Also, freedmen in Rome had less rights than citizens. In the US slaves were used as collateral for loans. In a way slaves weren't owned by plantation owners, they were owned by the banks. That if anything explains some of the pernicious aspects of US slavery. Also likely the US banking system. And the mistreatment of blacks after the civil war.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  The philosophers Plato and Epictetus were, for a time, slaves.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    I've never read anywhere that Plato was a slave. He came from an aristocratic family and was one of the noble youths the Athenians were so concerned about the historical Socrates corrupting with his epistemic skepticism. He had family that were apart of the anti-democratic coup d'etat.
    - npongratz 5y ago
      I was also unaware of Plato's possible slavery, and found this [0], but I do not have the background knowledge judge the veracity of the information: > One source of the story of Plato being sold into slavery is Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius. An English translation is available online [1] on Project Perseus. You can find the full story in Book 3 that discusses the life of Plato. [0] https://history.stackexchange.com/a/37499 https://history.stackexchange.com/a/37499 [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
      - imbnwa 5y ago
        These sources just highlight that he was, at best, under threat of being a slave though, not that he was actually sold and performed as a slave. He's ransomed for at the last minute by someone recognizing him at the market. If Plato had actually been a slave, his lifelong commitment to anti-democratic political organization would've been a little different, though maybe not, considering even this experience didn't change his philosophy, to the point that's likely not worth mentioning as a significant experience, unlike Epictectus who was born into slavery.
        dr_dshiv 5y ago
        Sorry being up for sale in a slave market isn’t enough—I think it is fascinating and important.
- throwaway829 5y ago
  How is that different from slaves like William Ellison in the USA? Pre-Civil War he became one of the wealthiest property owners in South Carolina. Sounds like decent social mobility to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    How often did this happen vs Roman times? Before the dreadful US took over the South, slaves were much better treated and had way more upwards mobility, like in Florida when the Spanish and French were the colonizers. Places like New Orleans was much better for African descendants and many fled when they found out they’d be ruled by America. I don’t cite Thomas Jefferson and his treatment of his slaves as the normative, in Roman times it was built into the system for slaves to buy their freedom and also have upwards mobility. That is not institutionalized for slavery in the US.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Many slaves were captured and famous intellectuals (Aesop is a famous example) or educated and used as tutors, they were not as modernists assume to be universally ill treated and abused. And far, far more slaves worked the fields or lived short nasty lives in mines, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Laurion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Laurion (near Athens): > Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps. An unrecorded number were children. It was a miserable, dangerous, and brief life. > ...The Romans provided cheap slave labor and new technologies gave the Greeks new means of extracting silver in more efficient ways.
- kragen 5y ago
  Roman slaves, including in Herculaneum, were chattel; they could be bought and sold, and their children were born into slavery. Their owners could break up their marriages with impunity simply by selling them or their spouse to a different household. Aisopos was also a chattel slave, but he lived 600 years earlier, in a very different culture from that of Herculaneum; consider the difference between your own circumstances and the circumstances of domestic servants 600 years ago in Russia. Herculaneum did not have very much social mobility; it was a society with much more persistent stratification than our own. Half of Herculaneum's citizens (the most privileged 20%) were freedmen, but most of the wealthy citizens were the great-grandchildren of wealthy citizens, and the great majority of people born enslaved died in slavery. Freedmen and often even their children were ineligible for most political offices. Throughout Italy, 80% of decurions had no slave ancestry at all, any number of generations back. (I'm not sure what the number was in Herculaneum.) https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383 To liberals, enslaving someone is itself ill treatment and abuse, because we consider freedom to be the birthright of every human being, and its denial to amount to ill treatment. So we consider the idea of slavery without ill treatment and abuse to be a contradiction in terms. Even if a slave is not being beaten, raped, berated, or worked to death in a mine, they are being deprived of many of the most precious things in life by the very nature of slavery.
chmod775 5y ago
A whole room to themselves? Those are better conditions than what is typical of modern-day wage/debt slavery in places like Saudi Arabia and China.
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not post unsubstantive flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 542458 5y ago
  With all due respect, the article is pretty clear here: > …within the room, where three wooden beds have been found… But additionally, “slave” here could describe a wide range of socioeconomic statuses. It does not necessarily mean that one was the poorest of the poor, the way a modern slave or pseudo-slave would be. Assuming that this represented the poorest housing conditions available may not be accurate.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    It is theorised to have been a family which is not bad, but the room is only 16sqm for 3, and apparently doubled up as storage of sorts. They could also have had more room than average due to their job (taking care of horses and chariots) so they got to use one of the stables’s rooms. Looking at the floor plan at the end of the article, there are two other rooms of similar dimensions (b and d), and the horses (f) and chariot seem to have been granted a lot more space.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Historically the 16 sqm for 3 persons doesn't really sound too bad. Even currently in many places people live in less space. And little back it was even more common. Also, I don't think they spend too much time in the room other than sleeping.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    He’s stating the slaves had privacy and their own quarters. For comparison: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/53/3e/33/533e33c68dbf1f6889f26eb260ae7c34--hongkong-small-living.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/53/3e/33/533e33c68dbf1f6889f26eb26...
uap 5y ago
Looks like my SF market street studio. We sure have come a long way...
- ardit33 5y ago
  First thing I thought: They look like modern student dorm rooms / living arrangements, but without windows, like that new Munger hall that is being built.
  - willvarfar 5y ago
    > The room was lit by a small upper window
    - masklinn 5y ago
      On the other hand, extremely limited artificial light, so this would have been penumbral the entire day, with the possible exception of the moments where the sun really faced the window. According to the plan at the bottom, the window would have been east-north-east and thus really only useful early morning, if at all.
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        I just spent 5 years locked in a room with no window and 24x7 artificial lighting, so they have it way better than some modern folks.
        Iv 5y ago
        Let's not be ridiculous. This room has no artificial light and almost no natural light, minimal ventilation, no water, no electricity, which is the norm nowadays even for cheap apartments.
        ant6n 5y ago
        ...but not prisons
almeria 5y ago
The room was lit by a small upper window, and shows no evidence of having had any wall decorations. So even slaves at Pompeii had a window to get light from, we see.
- brazzy 5y ago
  Probably cheaper than providing them with candles or oil lamps.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Better than attending USC
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  You can just barely make it out in the corner there: CAROLVS MVNGER ARCHITECTVS
  - rexreed 5y ago
    I thought he was anti-window?
    - Kaibeezy 5y ago
      This was somewhat earlier in his career. People grow professionally. Some downward.
  - soylentbeige 5y ago
    I really don’t understand this reference
    - prawn 5y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture-experiment-architects-appalled-windowless-student-megadorm https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture...
xvector 5y ago
site is down, no one saved it on wayback machine
- throwaway-jim 5y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20211106150432/https://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-room-of-the-slaves-the-latest-discovery-at-civita-giuliana/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211106150432/https://pompeiisi...
integricho 5y ago
The slave is intact or the room?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
prox 5y ago
This is the official site of Pompeii archeological park : http://pompeiisites.org/en/ http://pompeiisites.org/en/
- karmelapple 5y ago
  If you’re near Naples, I recommend visiting the site! You can get a tour guide, but just walking around the massive grounds and exploring is fun by itself.
rightbyte 5y ago
How do they know slaves lived there? Is it just an assumption? The article does not mention any clues.
- antasvara 5y ago
  The article mentions the large amount of storage containers in the room, something (presumably) not present in other rooms in the building. There's also pieces of metal and fabric consistent with being part of a chariot. That evidence, combined with the size of the room and presence of three beds, seems to be consistent with the idea that this is a slave's room.
- robotastronaut 5y ago
  Actually, there were many clues listed, but they didn't directly connect them to "slaves" as such. The rough timber used in the bedding, the amphorae under the bed, a chamber pot, and lots of evidence suggesting the room was used for storage in addition to sleeping. These all point towards someone of much lower class (slaves of some kind) than the owner of the villa.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    I assume that in 79 A.D. the things you list, like beds no matter the timber roughness, were a luxury. Like, imagine living in a stone house? In a room with decorated walls (looks like carved out patterns on them). Surely the scrappiest room in the villa was for servants, some distant poor relative or rented out to students or what not. I just don't buy that the inhabitants for sure were slaves.
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      I assume that they have compared these accommodations to others already found and see a noticeable difference in the quality of the furnishings and other components. Slaves made up 30-40% of the population so it not unreasonable to conclude that the shabby accommodations would be intended for slaves.
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mindvirus 5y ago
"Sadly, in this room too, a part of the archaeological heritage has been lost due to tunnels dug by grave robbers who, throughout the villa, have caused a total amount of damage estimated at almost 2 million euros." I'm curious what that means. How do you "value" something like Pompeii? Are they just saying that they stole gold and silver worth that much, or that the damage to the ruins costs that much more to repair/recover?
- occamrazor 5y ago
  Might also be the value of the stolen property on the black market. There are unfortunately enough unscrupulous antiquities collectors, that one can estimate “market value” of Roman amphorae, jewelry, and other items.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- kixiQu 5y ago
  I'm imagining it's parallel to cops announcing the value of drug seizures at (variously inaccurate) estimates of "street value", but for black market antiques.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    It could also be how much it costs to repair the damage they did.
    - jameshart 5y ago
      'repair' is a bit of a fuzzy concept when you're talking about an archaeological site, though, still more when we're talking about a site that was caught up in a volcanic eruption. You can literally never repair it to the state it was in before the robbery, in the sense of restoring it to a pristine condition as it was left by the eruption.
HABytes 5y ago
“This is a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts,” - declared Director General Gabriel Zuchtriegel - “It is a case in which archaeology helps us to discover a part of the ancient world which we would otherwise know little about, but which is nonetheless extremely important. What is most striking is the cramped and precarious nature of this room, which was something between a dormitory and a storage room of just 16 sqm, which we can now reconstruct thanks to the exceptional state of preservation created by the eruption of AD 79. It is certainly one of the most exciting discoveries during my life as an archaeologist, even without the presence of great ‘treasures’ - the true treasure here is the human experience, in this case of the most vulnerable members of ancient society, to which this room is a unique testimony.”
peter303 5y ago
About as big as my college dorm room.
- TomK32 5y ago
  and rent-free.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    with a window
peter303 5y ago
Organic material didnt survive. What missing would be mattresses, blankets, cushions, rugs, clothing. These items would be be made of basic coarse material for slaves. Upper classes would have more refined and comfortable items.
walrus01 5y ago
the beds look almost identical to a 'charpoy' you would see anywhere in the modern day Punjab in south asia "The webbed bases of the beds were made of ropes, the imprints of which are partially discernible in the cinerite," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpai
- gremloni 5y ago
  Charpais are all over India to be honest, not just punjab. Also it literally translates to “four legs”.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Also known as a खाट (khāt), from which we get 'cot' in English.
trhway 5y ago
16sqm for 3 people. Reminds that in USSR the minimum was 6/person.
- bunyk 5y ago
  Minimum for slaves in USSR was way less, somewhere near a 1 sqm per person. > "First we lived in 20-metre tents on two-level continuous bunks in two rows. ... Two hundred people slept on the bunks. It worked out at 40 centimeters to a person. ..." https://gulag.online/places/barak-veznu-ketlar?locale=en https://gulag.online/places/barak-veznu-ketlar?locale=en
DevKoala 5y ago
I have seen smaller living spaces in San Francisco.
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362 points by agomez314 5y ago

Do the descendants of these slaves get reparations?

Slaves and slavery were extremely different in Pompeii and Herculaneum then what we usually think of as chattel slavery as the default and only slavery that ever existed. An interviewee either doesn’t understand this or made very sweeping claims. > “This is a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts,” - Many slaves were captured and famous intellectuals (Aesop is a famous example) or educated and used as tutors, they were not as modernists assume to be universally ill treated and abused. Slaves in Herculaneum were able to become free and it was a very racially diverse place where being a former slave of different racial background did not mean you were unable to have social mobility, many of the wealthy people of Herculaneum were indeed former slaves. Slavery was not a permanent state of being and the very elite the quoted author complains about often did write about slaves at least in name; the former slaves would take the last name of the old master and records were excellent.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Epictetus, freedman roman Stoic philosopher seems as a whole have an attitude of like "what of it, it's not like you're free from obligations even as senator or the caesar". As a slave, you are free from all concerns and worries beyond fulfilling your duties. Discourses 4.1 is perhaps the most direct example of this.
- lovecg 5y ago
  Ah Stoics, they’re the best at turning being a resigned quitter into dignified philosophy.
  - twright 5y ago
    https://existentialcomics.com/comic/286 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/286
  - sbacic 5y ago
    I wouldn't be so harsh; it's better to have some way of handling things life throws at you, especially things you have little to no control over, than none at all.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    I would rather say an ability to be "well-adjusted".
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    I think that's a mis-characterization of stoicism. That sounds more like Epicureanism (quit stressful things and live a simple life) or cynicism (quit everything and live like a stray dog so that you don't have to worry about losing anything). Stoicism because popular with Roman elites specifically because it didn't ask the adherents to quit anything, but simply to adapt themselves to whatever adversity they might face[1]. [1] https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powerful/ https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powe...
    - lovecg 5y ago
      I think there are different flavors of Stoicism chiefly differentiated by the social status of the person practicing it. The wealthy and the powerful don’t have to deal with systemic oppression, only their own emotions and consequences of playing the game of realpolitik. In that context Stoicism has a lot to offer. For everyone else though - well sometimes raw, “unmanaged” anger for example is a useful emotion. A “stoic revolutionary” is an oxymoron.
- twright 5y ago
  After reading Discourses 4.1 I would like to summarize it as a defense of the institution of slavery that goes something like “Slavery is good because slaves themselves don’t know what it means to be free and freedom is actually a burden in the wrong mindset so it shouldn’t be for everyone.” (Ignoring that slavery, the deprivation of personhood, is an inhumane burden somehow comparable to “oh no I’m free and now I have to answer to Caesar”) Yes, it’s an odd opinion from a former slave who was maimed by a former master. Unfortunately this argument is sustained all through history and today we have people going something like “actually, working multiple minimum wage jobs and struggling to pay rent is good”.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    I'm not really passing judgement on Epictetus, merely relaying his position, as someone with a far more personal understanding of roman slavery than anyone discussing it 2000 post fact. Difficult to explain to the man how he ought to feel about events in his life we have only a sketch of an idea about. Within the framework of Stoicism, where worrying is one of the greatest evils, his argument makes every sense.
  - dlhavema 5y ago
    If thats all a person can do would you rather them sit on a couch and live off of/depend on the state? No it's not a super fun existence and that's what my life was like right after high school in the early college years. The real problem comes in when someone in that situation gives up and does nothing.
  - sbacic 5y ago
    I don't think Epictetus was actually defending the institution of slavery. Rather, stoic philosophy is full of these "hacks" for handling unpleasant things in your life. Many of them seem quite morbid and bizarre to the untrained mind (such as actively thinking about the death and absence of a loved one).
    - bobthechef 5y ago
      I don't know about "hacks", rather observations. If most people didn't have to work to survive, they wouldn't know what to do with the time. An observation about slavery is that you've traded in the burden of responsibility that liberty introduces for the comfort of not having to worry about what to do with yourself It's easier to just go do what you're told than it is to determine what must be done. Most people actually prefer that way of living. Left to themselves, they'd either become paralyzed with indecision, or they'd piss their lives away indulging their appetites and possibly commit suicide.
ludamad 5y ago
Isn't it a bit of a penmanship bias that the slaves you hear about in history have more dignity? All writing is propaganda to a degree, while we see here evidence of multiple people locked in a tiny room
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You see evidence for the sleep quarters and assume they’re locked in, what evidence do you have to claim that? Where is the evidence of slave abuse you feel is true? From archeology of Herculaneum they looked at a household with a slave and noted that one of the remains was fat, well fed man and had many signs of eating a meat rich diet, and a girl found was less nourished and had signs of malnutrition. They assumed from his healthy bones he was the master and the teen girl was the slave. The well fed man was the cook, a slave and the young girl was vegetarian by choice and the daughter of the master of the household. Your assumptions of it being propaganda are not factually accurate.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    You're right, evidence of locked is not there. And I'm not fully convinced they're slaves, either, as many conditions bind people to work. There's definitely a lot of ambiguity from these time periods, but whitewashing slavery in written text is a well-known phenomenon
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >> Isn't it a bit of a penmanship bias that the slaves you hear about in history have more dignity? All writing is propaganda to a degree, while we see here evidence of multiple people locked in a tiny room > You see evidence for the sleep quarters and assume they’re locked in, what evidence do you have to claim that? Where is the evidence of slave abuse you feel is true? People can be locked in by things other than a physical lock one the door. Didn't some slaves in classical times receive tattoos like "I belong to so and so, return me to him for a reward."? Edit: here's a citation: https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/abstracts/tattoo.html https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/abstracts/tattoo.html > A legal inscription from Ephesus indicates that during the early Roman Empire all slaves exported to Asia were tattooed with the words "tax paid." "Stop me, I'm a runaway" was another standard motto etched on the brows of Roman slaves. New research indicates that Roman authorities punished early Christians with forehead tattoos that condemned them to the mines. In A.D. 330, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, banned the practice of tattooing the faces of convicts, gladiators, and soldiers. Because the human face reflected "the image of divine beauty," he said, "it should not be defiled."
inglor_cz 5y ago
Fate of a Roman slave was decidedly different depending on what the slave did. House and urban slaves weren't much worse off than a regular citizen, having a good chance of manumission (release), after which they became freedmen - still not full citizens, but their children would be, and some freedmen became very rich. Given that those slaves are the ones that we know the most about (from both archeology and written sources), it skews our perception of Roman slavery to being more benign than it actually was. Rural slaves which worked in agriculture were worked very hard and they were much more numerous than house slaves. Not an enviable fate, though one must admit that ancient agriculture was a backbreaking work regardless of personal status. Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. Few of them would last more than five years. Ancient Rome had very extensive mining operations and mines "ate" men by the thousands. These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no". Mining safety back then was basically zero.
- johnny53169 5y ago
  > Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. It's less bad now, but being a miner is not much better nowadays, even more so since most of the mines are in poor countries with little care for the workers and rich countries would prefer not to think too hard where the iron for their eco-conscious steel bottle is coming from.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    I grew up in a mining city (Ostrava, black coal). Now the mines are closed, but when I was a kid, they were in full operation. Disasters happened infrequently, but when they did, they were ugly. A spark at a wrong time in a wrong place, and sixty fathers would never come back home again. Mining is freaking dangerous. The forces of nature involved are enormous, and human is but a small ant facing them.
    - sologoub 5y ago
      A bit off-topic, but how did the city cope with the mine closure and loss of so many jobs?
neaden 5y ago
By definition slaves are ill treated because slavery in itself is terrible. To be clear here, even if your master was individually kind you existed in a system where you had no rights, if you were a witness to a crime you would have to be tortured during your testimony to prove it's true, where you were not fully protected from the law by assaults from any free person, and where you could be sold at any point. It was considered perfectly acceptable for a "kind" master to rape and beat you at any time. Slavery is always a horrendous thing.
jterrys 5y ago
I have a simple question: Is it possible that they were servants and not slaves? I'm not very knowledgeable about ancient Roman history but it seems somewhat presumptuous to assume these are slave rooms. Was there no such thing as a lower economic class of free people that were working as either attendants or servants? This is after all, a villa in a resort area. Its not as if people throughout the annals of history didn't work as attendants alongside slaves. All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  No, there were no free "servants" in ancient Rome. Incidentally, even today, "servants" (domestic workers) are often enslaved or work in conditions that are only nominally not slavery. Many are children at an age that is too young to work legally. https://web.archive.org/web/20140930183517/http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/child_domestic_work.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20140930183517/http://www.antisl... >> All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline. The actual headline is not clickbait, if that's what you're suggesting, neither is it spiced up to make it more "enticing", or anything like that. Rather, the headline you propose is an anachronism because there were no free "servants" in ancient Rome. The role of "household servants" (domestic workers) was fulfilled by slaves.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > Is it possible that they were servants and not slaves? Fun Fact: This interpretive problem comes up in translations of the New Testament, where the same word is very frequently used in the context of [servant|slave] of [Christ|God]. See different translations of Romans 1:1. The Greek word, δοῦλος (doulos) literally means "slave", and is a reference to the contemporaneous Roman practice as can also be seen in other Roman works written in Greek. But this then creates all sorts of translation issues for English readers: * if you use the word "slave", then people think of slavery of Africans (people chained, working in fields, being constantly whipped, living in large group quarters). This is way too harsh. The key point of doulos is that he was forced to do something by another will. The emphasis is on the powerless and passive nature of the slave, not on harsh treatment. A slave might be treated well, but if he was, it was only because his Lord decided to treat him that way. But in practice, they were household slaves with better treatment than African slaves. * if you use the word "servant", then people perhaps think of a butler, which is way too soft. A Butler can decide to leave. He may not have the means to leave, but he has his own will. So some translations use the term "bondservant" as a compromise, given the fact that this refers to something between our modern conception of slavery and our modern conception of servanthood. Fun-Fact 2: One of the related words is diakoneo which means "to serve", so one "serves as a slave". From this we get the English word deacon, who is supposed to be a slave/servant of a local church, again with the ambiguity that this is between African slavery and being a butler. Therefore if you really wanted to remain ambiguous (and mess with your readers) you could call them deacon's quarters. From the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament entry for doulos[1]: Hence we have a service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, which he has to perform whether he likes or not, because he is subject as a slave to an alien will, to the will of his owner. → οἰκέτης is almost exactly synonymous, but in δοῦλος the stress is rather on the slave’s dependence on his lord, while οἰκέτης emphasises the position of the slave in relation to the world outside and in human society. This shows us again how strong is the passive element in δοῦλος, and in the whole word group to which it belongs. - - - source: [1] Rengstorf, K. H. (1964–). δοῦλος, σύνδουλος, δούλη, δουλέυω, δουλεία, δουλόω, καταδουλόω, δουλαγωγέω, ὀφθαλμοδουλία. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
cletus 5y ago
I've heard this quite a few times now and I'm not sure where the idea comes from that slavery in the Roman Republic and Empire were somehow humane but that wasn't the case at all. Roman slaves were property and could be treated as such, including sexual exploitation (eg made to be prostitutes) and being summarily executed. And yes, slaves could be freed but that was also true in the American slave era. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's accessible, particularly by the slave themselves. Also, freedmen in Rome had less rights than citizens. The history of Rome is a fascinating one but it's hard to look at through the eyes of modern morality. I think this generally applies to the Ancient World: if somehow we could be transported back to that time I'm sure we'd find it quite alien. My favourite example of this is the origin of the word "decimate" [1]. If, say, a military unit rebelled against Rome, groups of 10 would have to decide which one of the 10 would die and to kill them. Slavery has always been brutal. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment)
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  You claim most slaves in Roman times were not freed, do you know the history or are you just assuming with no evidence that's the case?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > You claim most slaves in Roman times were not freed, do you know the history or are you just assuming with no evidence that's the case? Honestly, I think you're the one who needs to be providing the evidence, especially if you're claiming anything close to the opposite of that (i.e. that most slaves in Roman times were freed).
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  > And yes, slaves could be freed but that was also true in the American slave era. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's accessible, particularly by the slave themselves. Also, freedmen in Rome had less rights than citizens. In the US slaves were used as collateral for loans. In a way slaves weren't owned by plantation owners, they were owned by the banks. That if anything explains some of the pernicious aspects of US slavery. Also likely the US banking system. And the mistreatment of blacks after the civil war.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
The philosophers Plato and Epictetus were, for a time, slaves.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  I've never read anywhere that Plato was a slave. He came from an aristocratic family and was one of the noble youths the Athenians were so concerned about the historical Socrates corrupting with his epistemic skepticism. He had family that were apart of the anti-democratic coup d'etat.
  - npongratz 5y ago
    I was also unaware of Plato's possible slavery, and found this [0], but I do not have the background knowledge judge the veracity of the information: > One source of the story of Plato being sold into slavery is Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius. An English translation is available online [1] on Project Perseus. You can find the full story in Book 3 that discusses the life of Plato. [0] https://history.stackexchange.com/a/37499 https://history.stackexchange.com/a/37499 [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
    - imbnwa 5y ago
      These sources just highlight that he was, at best, under threat of being a slave though, not that he was actually sold and performed as a slave. He's ransomed for at the last minute by someone recognizing him at the market. If Plato had actually been a slave, his lifelong commitment to anti-democratic political organization would've been a little different, though maybe not, considering even this experience didn't change his philosophy, to the point that's likely not worth mentioning as a significant experience, unlike Epictectus who was born into slavery.
      - dr_dshiv 5y ago
        Sorry being up for sale in a slave market isn’t enough—I think it is fascinating and important.
throwaway829 5y ago
How is that different from slaves like William Ellison in the USA? Pre-Civil War he became one of the wealthiest property owners in South Carolina. Sounds like decent social mobility to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  How often did this happen vs Roman times? Before the dreadful US took over the South, slaves were much better treated and had way more upwards mobility, like in Florida when the Spanish and French were the colonizers. Places like New Orleans was much better for African descendants and many fled when they found out they’d be ruled by America. I don’t cite Thomas Jefferson and his treatment of his slaves as the normative, in Roman times it was built into the system for slaves to buy their freedom and also have upwards mobility. That is not institutionalized for slavery in the US.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Many slaves were captured and famous intellectuals (Aesop is a famous example) or educated and used as tutors, they were not as modernists assume to be universally ill treated and abused. And far, far more slaves worked the fields or lived short nasty lives in mines, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Laurion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Laurion (near Athens): > Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps. An unrecorded number were children. It was a miserable, dangerous, and brief life. > ...The Romans provided cheap slave labor and new technologies gave the Greeks new means of extracting silver in more efficient ways.
kragen 5y ago
Roman slaves, including in Herculaneum, were chattel; they could be bought and sold, and their children were born into slavery. Their owners could break up their marriages with impunity simply by selling them or their spouse to a different household. Aisopos was also a chattel slave, but he lived 600 years earlier, in a very different culture from that of Herculaneum; consider the difference between your own circumstances and the circumstances of domestic servants 600 years ago in Russia. Herculaneum did not have very much social mobility; it was a society with much more persistent stratification than our own. Half of Herculaneum's citizens (the most privileged 20%) were freedmen, but most of the wealthy citizens were the great-grandchildren of wealthy citizens, and the great majority of people born enslaved died in slavery. Freedmen and often even their children were ineligible for most political offices. Throughout Italy, 80% of decurions had no slave ancestry at all, any number of generations back. (I'm not sure what the number was in Herculaneum.) https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383 To liberals, enslaving someone is itself ill treatment and abuse, because we consider freedom to be the birthright of every human being, and its denial to amount to ill treatment. So we consider the idea of slavery without ill treatment and abuse to be a contradiction in terms. Even if a slave is not being beaten, raped, berated, or worked to death in a mine, they are being deprived of many of the most precious things in life by the very nature of slavery.

chmod775 5y ago

A whole room to themselves? Those are better conditions than what is typical of modern-day wage/debt slavery in places like Saudi Arabia and China.

dang 5y ago
Please do not post unsubstantive flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
542458 5y ago
With all due respect, the article is pretty clear here: > …within the room, where three wooden beds have been found… But additionally, “slave” here could describe a wide range of socioeconomic statuses. It does not necessarily mean that one was the poorest of the poor, the way a modern slave or pseudo-slave would be. Assuming that this represented the poorest housing conditions available may not be accurate.
- masklinn 5y ago
  It is theorised to have been a family which is not bad, but the room is only 16sqm for 3, and apparently doubled up as storage of sorts. They could also have had more room than average due to their job (taking care of horses and chariots) so they got to use one of the stables’s rooms. Looking at the floor plan at the end of the article, there are two other rooms of similar dimensions (b and d), and the horses (f) and chariot seem to have been granted a lot more space.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Historically the 16 sqm for 3 persons doesn't really sound too bad. Even currently in many places people live in less space. And little back it was even more common. Also, I don't think they spend too much time in the room other than sleeping.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  He’s stating the slaves had privacy and their own quarters. For comparison: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/53/3e/33/533e33c68dbf1f6889f26eb260ae7c34--hongkong-small-living.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/53/3e/33/533e33c68dbf1f6889f26eb26...

uap 5y ago

Looks like my SF market street studio. We sure have come a long way...

ardit33 5y ago
First thing I thought: They look like modern student dorm rooms / living arrangements, but without windows, like that new Munger hall that is being built.
- willvarfar 5y ago
  > The room was lit by a small upper window
  - masklinn 5y ago
    On the other hand, extremely limited artificial light, so this would have been penumbral the entire day, with the possible exception of the moments where the sun really faced the window. According to the plan at the bottom, the window would have been east-north-east and thus really only useful early morning, if at all.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      I just spent 5 years locked in a room with no window and 24x7 artificial lighting, so they have it way better than some modern folks.
      - Iv 5y ago
        Let's not be ridiculous. This room has no artificial light and almost no natural light, minimal ventilation, no water, no electricity, which is the norm nowadays even for cheap apartments.
        ant6n 5y ago
        ...but not prisons

almeria 5y ago

The room was lit by a small upper window, and shows no evidence of having had any wall decorations. So even slaves at Pompeii had a window to get light from, we see.

brazzy 5y ago
Probably cheaper than providing them with candles or oil lamps.
kingkawn 5y ago
Better than attending USC
- deleted 5y ago
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Kaibeezy 5y ago
You can just barely make it out in the corner there: CAROLVS MVNGER ARCHITECTVS
- rexreed 5y ago
  I thought he was anti-window?
  - Kaibeezy 5y ago
    This was somewhat earlier in his career. People grow professionally. Some downward.
- soylentbeige 5y ago
  I really don’t understand this reference
  - prawn 5y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture-experiment-architects-appalled-windowless-student-megadorm https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/04/torture...

xvector 5y ago

site is down, no one saved it on wayback machine

throwaway-jim 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20211106150432/https://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-room-of-the-slaves-the-latest-discovery-at-civita-giuliana/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211106150432/https://pompeiisi...

integricho 5y ago

The slave is intact or the room?

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prox 5y ago

This is the official site of Pompeii archeological park : http://pompeiisites.org/en/ http://pompeiisites.org/en/

karmelapple 5y ago
If you’re near Naples, I recommend visiting the site! You can get a tour guide, but just walking around the massive grounds and exploring is fun by itself.

rightbyte 5y ago

How do they know slaves lived there? Is it just an assumption? The article does not mention any clues.

antasvara 5y ago
The article mentions the large amount of storage containers in the room, something (presumably) not present in other rooms in the building. There's also pieces of metal and fabric consistent with being part of a chariot. That evidence, combined with the size of the room and presence of three beds, seems to be consistent with the idea that this is a slave's room.
robotastronaut 5y ago
Actually, there were many clues listed, but they didn't directly connect them to "slaves" as such. The rough timber used in the bedding, the amphorae under the bed, a chamber pot, and lots of evidence suggesting the room was used for storage in addition to sleeping. These all point towards someone of much lower class (slaves of some kind) than the owner of the villa.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  I assume that in 79 A.D. the things you list, like beds no matter the timber roughness, were a luxury. Like, imagine living in a stone house? In a room with decorated walls (looks like carved out patterns on them). Surely the scrappiest room in the villa was for servants, some distant poor relative or rented out to students or what not. I just don't buy that the inhabitants for sure were slaves.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    I assume that they have compared these accommodations to others already found and see a noticeable difference in the quality of the furnishings and other components. Slaves made up 30-40% of the population so it not unreasonable to conclude that the shabby accommodations would be intended for slaves.

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mindvirus 5y ago

"Sadly, in this room too, a part of the archaeological heritage has been lost due to tunnels dug by grave robbers who, throughout the villa, have caused a total amount of damage estimated at almost 2 million euros." I'm curious what that means. How do you "value" something like Pompeii? Are they just saying that they stole gold and silver worth that much, or that the damage to the ruins costs that much more to repair/recover?

occamrazor 5y ago
Might also be the value of the stolen property on the black market. There are unfortunately enough unscrupulous antiquities collectors, that one can estimate “market value” of Roman amphorae, jewelry, and other items.
- deleted 5y ago
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kixiQu 5y ago
I'm imagining it's parallel to cops announcing the value of drug seizures at (variously inaccurate) estimates of "street value", but for black market antiques.
- azinman2 5y ago
  It could also be how much it costs to repair the damage they did.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    'repair' is a bit of a fuzzy concept when you're talking about an archaeological site, though, still more when we're talking about a site that was caught up in a volcanic eruption. You can literally never repair it to the state it was in before the robbery, in the sense of restoring it to a pristine condition as it was left by the eruption.

HABytes 5y ago

“This is a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts,” - declared Director General Gabriel Zuchtriegel - “It is a case in which archaeology helps us to discover a part of the ancient world which we would otherwise know little about, but which is nonetheless extremely important. What is most striking is the cramped and precarious nature of this room, which was something between a dormitory and a storage room of just 16 sqm, which we can now reconstruct thanks to the exceptional state of preservation created by the eruption of AD 79. It is certainly one of the most exciting discoveries during my life as an archaeologist, even without the presence of great ‘treasures’ - the true treasure here is the human experience, in this case of the most vulnerable members of ancient society, to which this room is a unique testimony.”

peter303 5y ago

About as big as my college dorm room.

TomK32 5y ago
and rent-free.
- rexreed 5y ago
  with a window

peter303 5y ago

Organic material didnt survive. What missing would be mattresses, blankets, cushions, rugs, clothing. These items would be be made of basic coarse material for slaves. Upper classes would have more refined and comfortable items.

walrus01 5y ago

the beds look almost identical to a 'charpoy' you would see anywhere in the modern day Punjab in south asia "The webbed bases of the beds were made of ropes, the imprints of which are partially discernible in the cinerite," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charpai

gremloni 5y ago
Charpais are all over India to be honest, not just punjab. Also it literally translates to “four legs”.
OJFord 5y ago
Also known as a खाट (khāt), from which we get 'cot' in English.

trhway 5y ago

16sqm for 3 people. Reminds that in USSR the minimum was 6/person.

bunyk 5y ago
Minimum for slaves in USSR was way less, somewhere near a 1 sqm per person. > "First we lived in 20-metre tents on two-level continuous bunks in two rows. ... Two hundred people slept on the bunks. It worked out at 40 centimeters to a person. ..." https://gulag.online/places/barak-veznu-ketlar?locale=en https://gulag.online/places/barak-veznu-ketlar?locale=en

DevKoala 5y ago

I have seen smaller living spaces in San Francisco.

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