What Did They Eat at the Last Meal in Pompeii? A New Exhibition Gives Us a Glimpse of Their Strange Menu

The ancient Roman town of Pompeii sparks the imagination like
few other historical sites do. Home to about 12,000 people, the
town was destroyed in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius, at
whose feet it sat. Pompeii’s destruction has given rise to
historical novels, an Xbox 360 game, and even a 2014 3D film
adaptation starring Kit Harington, of Game of Thrones
fame.

Less flashy but just as intriguing, a new exhibition is
spotlighting the culinary customs of Pompeii residents. Comprising
some three hundred objects, “Last Supper in Pompeii: From the Table
to the Grave” was organized by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and
Archaeology, University of Oxford, where it is currently on view,
and will open at the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco, in April 2020.

“Where else can you get something both as dramatic and precise
as this, a bustling city in mid-breath at the time of the eruption,
caught like a fly in amber?” Renée Dreyfus, curator in charge of
ancient art and interpretation at the San Francisco museum, told
Artnert News. (A slightly different version of the exhibition at
the Ashmolean was curated by Paul Roberts, that museum’s head of
antiquities.)

The focus on food and drink, new to this exhibition, has led to
new questions and new places to seek answers, says Dreyfus.

“Experts have been looking into sinks and even latrines to see
the seeds of what people ate, as well as for food abandoned on
tables and in the streets as people ran,” she said, adding that
these are the kinds of artifacts that earlier explorers might have
thrown away.

“They found two containers of great interest to me,” she went
on. “One was a big terracotta jar that was used for holding snails.
The other held dormice, a kind of large rodent that they fattened
in these jars. I had never known anything about their eating these
things.”

The carbonized food of both wealthy and their slaves will be on
display, as well as the decor in well-to-do Pompeiians’ homes.
These will include silver pieces used in banquets and frescoes that
adorned the walls, as well as pots and pans and drinking vessels
from the slaves’ quarters and the kitchens.

Food and wine were essential to Bacchanalian revelries held in
the homes of the wealthy, many of whom, Dreyfuss points out, made
their fortune from grapes and wine. From a fresco showing Bacchus
transforming into grapes, she says, experts have identified the
four varietals grown in Pompeii. Some of the imagery from
celebrations may titillate viewers in a different way, says
Dreyfuss, including bronze good luck charms that show the god
Priapus, known for his dramatically enlarged penis. Dreyfuss points
out that “the Romans had a different sense of what is
pornographic.”

Most dramatic, though, may be the Lady of Oplontis, the actual
body of a Pompeian woman covered in wax and then resin, who is
making her first trip to the United States. In fact, she’s making
one of her first public appearances anywhere. Excavated between
1984 and 1991, she was found in a room with about sixty other
victims.

“She serves as a witness to what happened,” says Dreyfuss.

The timing of the show, which, Dreyfus says, “brings the Bay of
Naples to the Bay of San Francisco,” is deliberate.

“We’re opening the show on April 18, the very day of the Great
Earthquake of San Francisco in 1906,” Dreyfus points out. “Not only
do we look in horror at what happened in Pompeii—we can also
identify.”

“Last Supper in Pompeii: From the Table to the Grave” is open
through January 12, 2020, at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and
Archaeology, University of Oxford, and will be on view at the
Legion of Honor, San Francisco, April 18-August 30, 2020.

The post What Did They Eat at the Last Meal in Pompeii? A
New Exhibition Gives Us a Glimpse of Their Strange Menu
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