POMPEI I
E
GRECI
Pompeii Excavations, Large Palaestra
12th April – 27th November 2017
PRESS RELEASE
The exhibition, curated by the General Director of Soprintendenza Pompei Massimo Osanna and
Carlo Rescigno (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli), is being promoted by
Soprintendenza Pompei in collaboration with Electa.
Pompeii and the Greeks tells the stories of a meeting: starting with an Italian city, Pompeii, and
examining its frequent contact with the Greek Mediterranean. By tracing craftsmen, architects,
decorative styles and focusing on precious imported objects yet also Greek graffiti inscriptions
on the city walls, the exhibition sheds light on the many diverse souls of an ancient city, and its
temporary and unstable identity.
Over 600 finds are exhibited, including ceramics, ornaments, weapons, architectural elements,
sculptures from Pompeii, Stabiae, Ercolano, Sorrento, Cumae, Capua, Poseidonia, Metapontum,
Torre di Satriano and even inscriptions in their diverse spoken languages (Greek, Etruscan, and
Paleoitalic), silverware and Greek sculptures reproduced in the Roman age. The exhibition is borne
of both a scientific investigation and ongoing research which has for the first time shed light upon
unknown elements of Pompeii; the objects, hailing from major national and European museums, are
divided into 13 thematic sections and reinterpret places and monuments of the Vesuvian city with
their own “biographies”, at a site which has ever been under the public gaze.
In this way the pre-Pompeii Greek presence is reconstructed, along with the forms of the archaic city
and the changes imposed in the Gulf after the foundation of Neapolis - from the bottom of whose
bay fresh materials will be presented - until the Hellenistic World and the idea of “Greekness” as
conceived and received by the Roman World.
On occasion of the exhibition, documents and monuments which had emigrated, following the
antique markets abroad, return to Italy. Among others on display will be the helmets donated
to Olympia by the Syracuse Tyrant Hieron to celebrate the victory of the Cumaeans over the
Etruscans, fought in the waters of the Gulf of Naples. It will be possible to rediscover, in the
fragments of a monumental krater from Altamura, in Apulia, the story of the battle of Alexander
the Great against Darius, in the same manner and and the same design as that which would come
nearly two centuries later in the ‘Great Mosaic’ in the House of the Faun.
Starting from two drains, indeed two rubbish dumps, one found in the Athenian Agora, the great
plaza of the heart of Greekness, and one in the porticoes of the Forum of Pompeii, one observes the
many similarities between objects and tools which indicate similar ways of life in the two centres
in the late 2nd century BC.
It will also be an occasion to marvel at the passion which these people had for Greek objects from
the past. The line between original and copy will be blurred in a world which re-adopted images and
inserted them, as if they were words, into new universes.
The exhibition, which occupies the spaces of the Large Palaestra of Pompeii, was designed by the
Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and includes three immersive audiovisual installations curated by
the Canadian studio GeM (Graphic eMotion).
The studio Tassinari / Vetta signs the visual identity project of the exhibition.
Pompeii and the Greeks illustrates to the general public the charm of a non-linear and multicentral historical narrative, composed of multiple and contradictory identities, as well as of layered
languages which were consciously reused: the story of the Mediterranean. A narrative which indeed
suggests and invites a comparison with and reflection on contemporary times, with its dynamism
indicted by migrations and conflicts, meetings and clashes of culture.
The exhibition of Pompeii is the first stage of an exhibition program which is being carried out
jointly with the Archaeological Museum of Naples: here, in June, an exhibition dedicated to Greek
myths in Pompeii and in the Roman world will be inaugurated, on the theme of Metamorphoses.
Images for the press and the list of works on display can be downloaded from the following link:
www.electa.it/ufficio-stampa/pompei-e-i-greci/
Password: POMPEIGRECI
POMPEI I
E
GRECI
Pompeii Excavations, Large Palaestra
12th April – 27th November 2017
THE EXHIBITION
1. A GREEK GRAMMAR OF OBJECTS
Odysseus sailed across the Mediterranean, traveling from East to West. We have solid, silent clues to
his legendary voyage and the Greek world’s encounter with Mediterranean cultures. They are objects
that were passed from hand to hand, transported stacked in the hold of a ship, recreated by the
manual skill of craftsmen.
Survivors of the shipwreck of antiquity, for us they are the words in a story, bearing witness to the
cult of a hero, a votive ceremony, part of a series of images adorning the temple of a goddess or
appearing on a vase, the incunabula of private life.
2. POMPEII BEFORE POMPEII
At the mouth of the River Sarno and along its valley, contacts with the Greek world began long
before the founding of the city, in the villages that preceded Pompeii. In the necropolis of Striano,
in the riparian settlement of Longola, indigenous materials mingle with Greek remains, brought by
Mediterranean trade routes to the river mouth, or carried overland through the Greek and Etruscan
towns of Campania.
3. THE SPACES OF THE ARCHAIC CITY
Pompeii was founded in the late 7th century BC. The space of the city was subdivided by regular
streets, where houses and public places were laid out. A geometry of shrines, temples with their rich
polychrome decoration, marked the time of political and social life. The new city, Italic with strong,
enduring Etruscan presences, was built partly by the labor of Greek workmen, craftsmen also active
at Cumae, Poseidonia, Capua and Metapontum.
4. THE NON-CITY: AN ITALIC PALACE
Elsewhere Greek skills encountered the indigenous world in a different way. The palace of the king
of a Lucan settlement, at Torre di Satriano, was decorated like a temple by craftsmen from Tarentum
(modern Taranto). The building became a microcosm of social relationships, the control of the
territory and its resources.
Languages, styles and Greek fashions were adapted to a nonurban setting, with highly significant
results, remarkably well preserved, such as the magnificent ceiling decorated with a primitive,
menacing Sphinx and plaques depicting scenes of combat. The rediscovery of the palace of Torre di
Satriano has yielded significant new insights into indigenous culture: the space of power in which
formulas of Hellenic derivation were reinterpreted to represent the authority of the local ruler.
5. THE SACRED AND THE POLITICAL
In Campania, we have extensive evidence of this adaptation of cultural forms. The cult of Apollo and
the divine Sibyl disseminated political and social practices from Cumae.
The Campanian cavalry was a corps of young aristocrats, based on strict training and with initiatory
rites, structures and ceremonies that we again find in Greek Cumae as in Etruscan and then Italic
Capua. Contacts between the cities were regulated by treaties and alliances, ratified in the shadow
of the temples, commemorated by ceremonies and inscriptions. In Campania, Poseidonia was
founded by the powerful Achaean city of Sybaris on the Ionian coast of Calabria, which had built an
empire around itself: a bronze plaque, displayed in the sanctuary of Olympia, recorded the alliance
formed between the city and the Tyrrhenian population of Serdaioi, with the city of Poseidonia
serving as witness to it.
6. A MULTIETHNIC WORLD
Before our eyes there appears a variegated world made up of people speaking different languages,
using the same objects but personalizing them and adapting them to their needs. They engaged in
trade in small ports, where knowledge is spread together with cargoes of merchandise. In the ports
of Pompeii and Sorrento, Parthenope or Rione Terra at Pozzuoli, at that time small Cuman harbors,
we would have heard Greek, Etruscan and Italic spoken.
7. THE BATTLE OF CUMAE
Neapolis, the new city founded at the center of the Gulf of Naples by Cumae, was integrated with
Parthenope and inherited its cult of the Siren. Its establishment caused a sharp fracture, disrupting
the composite flow of ideas and goods and creating new forms of identity.
The Etruscans were confronted in a naval battle and defeated by the Cumans aided by the
Syracusans. Pompeii contracted, an old world in decline. Once again the distant sanctuary of
Olympia registered historical events in Campania: in the dedication of a tenth of the spoils of battle
by the victor Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, his victory was recorded by an inscription scored in polished
bronze, and the event was commemorated in the verses of an ode by Pindar.
8. NEAPOLIS AND ITS PORT
Of the new city, Neapolis, we have the evidence provided by the ancient port, which was effaced by
the modern city and has now been brought to light by the excavation of Piazza Municipio. Its striking
infrastructures are associated with pottery recovered from the seabed: goods that accumulated
here over the years, in which we find the echoes of a Greek city that had lived and breathed in the
Mediterranean ever since the archaic period. Through its splendid port, Neapolis kept in touch
with distant places and shared their traditions, customs and fashions, a dynamic mirror for new and
endless Greek identities.
9. A NEW WORLD
A new world opens up, East and West meet. Pompeii was reborn in the wake of major events
triggered in the Mediterranean by the epic of Alexander the Great and the Macedonian family, by the
progressive expansion of Rome. The stories of the conquest of the East arrived in images and on an
Apulian vase we discover a depiction of the battle between Alexander and Darius. We find a second
image of it, centuries later, in Pompeii, in the Great Mosaic from the House of the Faun. During
the 2nd century BC, the city was part of the Hellenistic universe, with refined public and private
architecture, colorful frescoes and terracotta friezes.
Two cargoes, one from Athens, the second from Pompeii, as well as the coeval pottery from the port
of Neapolis, testify, with some differences, to the commonality of social practices, the similarities in
the search for comfort and the ways of conceiving life and its pleasures.
10. LIVING IN THE GREEK WAY
The Greek world became part of the vocabulary of everyday life, being used, exhibited and
consumed. From the houses of Julius Polybius and Menander come rich furnishings that tell of
composite cultures, in which the Greek world found an ample space through original or imitated and
recreated objects. The silverware discovered at Moregine brought a touch of the luxury of the old
Hellenistic palaces to Campania.
11. PRESERVING GREEK OBJECTS
The passion for the Greek world finally gave rise to collections. Ancient objects were in demand,
purchased and displayed in homes. Of this passion and its distortions, we have a significant mirror in
the stories of Verres, the Roman potentate denounced by Cicero for pillaging artworks in Sicily.
12. THE GREEK LANGUAGE IN POMPEII
Greek was used alongside Latin: naturally in commercial transactions but also as the language of
feeling, sentiment and culture. The rooms in houses were given Greek names, the care of the body
and the world of love were decked out in Greek terms; children learned to use the Greek alphabet,
and we find the name of Aeschylus inscribed on a theater token.
13. ATHENS IN POMPEII
The statues common in public and private spaces, in gardens, courtyards, peristyles and reception
rooms, included wonderful Greek artworks imitated and reproduced. A piece of Athens traveled to
Pompeii, conveying the memory of Aphrodite and Kore as they appeared on the Athenian Acropolis.
POMPEI I
E
GRECI
Pompeii Excavations, Large Palaestra
12th April – 27th November 2017
DATA SHEET
TITLE
Pompeii and the Greeks
LOCATION
Pompeii, Large Palaestra, entrance from Piazza
Anfiteatro
DATES
12nd April – 27th November 2017
CURATED BY
Massimo Osanna and Carlo Rescigno
PROMOTED BY
Soprintendenza Pompei
ORGANISATION AND COMMUNICATION
Electa
OPENING TIMES
open every day
from the 12th April to the 31th October from 9.00
to 19.30 (last entrance at 18.00)
1-27 November from 9.00 to 17.00 (last entrance
at 15.30)
Saturday and Sunday open from 8.30
closed 1 May
TICKETS
From the 12th of April
Pompeii Excavations +exhibitions (Picasso e
Napoli: Parade; Pompei e i Greci)
standard: 13 euro
(11 euro Pompei entrance + 2 euro surcharge
exhibitions)
reduced: 7,50 euro
(5,50 euro Pompei entrance + 2 euro surcharge
exhibitions)
cumulative ticket: 22 euro (20 euro entrance
Pompei plus 2 others site + 2 euro surcharge
exhibitions)
INFORMATION
pompeiisites.org
mostrapompeigreci.it
PRESS OFFICE
Electa
Ilaria Maggi [email protected]
T. +39 02 71046250
communication manager
Monica Brognoli
[email protected]
T. +39 02 71046456
Superintendency of Pompeii
Marella Brunetto
Lara Anniboletti
[email protected]
T. +39 0818575327
#PompeiGreci