* It goes without saying but must be noted that this report is the joint effort of members of the Pompeii forum Project; especially important was the continued insight and ever expansive discussion with my collaborator on the urban character of Pompeii, Mark Schimmenti.
1 For the former, see notes, infra. For the latter, see Paul Zanker, Pompeji: Stadtbild und Wohngeschmuck, Mainz am Rhein (P. von Zabern: 1995).
2 The Architecture of the Roman Empire, vol. II: An Urban Appraisal, New Haven and London (Yale University Press: 1986).
3 Jongman, Willem. The Economy and Society of Pompeii, Amsterdam (Gieben: 1988), pp. 108-112.
4 I discussed the propylon in the 1996 report as an intervention promoting the public display of the expanded importance of the public life. At the time of that report it was generally thought that the Propylon and associated Doric colonnade, both built of tufa, were Samnite structures with Augustan repairs and minor modifications; See for example L. Richardson, jr. Pompeii: An Architectural History, Baltimore and London (Johns Hopkins U.P.: 1988), pp. 67-73. As I state in the report for 1996, however, that is probably wrong. Excavations Paolo Carafa conducted in the summer of 1996 point to a date between the earthquake of 62AD and the eruption of A. D. 79, although the evidence is not without its ambiguities. Most likely, the Propylon and colonnade are therefore an adroit insertion of just the sort of thing a person would expect of the Romans who used civic architecture to serve public purposes.
5 I am assuming that the general structure of walls, gates, streets, and open areas in Pompeii in 80 B. C. was the same as the one present today except for the modifications discussed either here or in other parts of the Pompeii forum Project's reports. The street names are modern.
6 The water system is Augustan with fountains within two blocks of any house supplementing the older system of cisterns and wells. It was apparently shattered by the earthquake and was under repair at the time of the eruption.
7 The best information about how it got there, based on the work of a Dutch group headed by Herman Geertman, suggests that it is left over from the original block's division into house lots and not the result of a later clearing out of buildings or enlargement of the intersection. Whatever its origin, it gave an opportunity for collecting the urban components discussed here. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these predate 80 B. C..
8 The Eschebach map shows two bases more than the two remnants now visible; these could not be located with prods extending a few inches below the present surface.
9 The lesser ones are VII-3/IX-4/VII-2 and VII-2/IX-3/IX-1. Both make a T rather than a + configuration, and neither leads anywhere of any importance. The paucity and disposition of urban components at the intersection does nothing to suggest otherwise.
10 The portico's placement, not its presence, is unique since it does call to mind the large shops opening into the piazza at the head of the via Stabia at the porta Ercolano. As John Dobbins has suggested in conversation, its projection over the sidewalk might also allude to the post-earthquake form of the Imperial Cult Building discussed elsewhere in the PFP reports.
11 Some say this street was important since it provided a way for carts to avoid the important intersection coming up next on our passage, but a lack of wheel ruts makes this interpretation problematic.
12 An alternative interpretation sees the via Stabia here as lying along or just outside an original urban nucleus and the eastward course of the via dell'Abbondanza as the product of an extensive extension of the city. See Hans Eschebach, Die Städtbauliche Entwicklung das Antiken Pompeij, Heidelberg(F.H. Kerle: 1970), pp. 58-61; and, for a broader review, Richardson, Pompeii, pp. 38-43.
13 The pavement's raising, which runs to VII-1-5/VII-4-7, was a modification that has not been firmly dated. For a useful discussion of the western stretch of the via dell'Abbondanza see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Public Honour and Private Shame: the Urban Texture of Pompeii," in T.J. Cornell and Lathryn Lomas, eds., Urban Society in Roman Italy, London (UCL Press: 1995), pp. 39-62.
14 Most visible, because it is silhouetted against the sky in the channel of the street, is the reconstructed entrance to an atrium house in the Augustan addition known as the Insula Occidentale (I.O.). The important public structures mentioned here project out from the flush frontages defining the street channel. On the site they are more conspicuous relative to that house entrance than is apparent in photographs.
15 This intersection and the via del Foro leading from it to the forum will be discussed more fully elsewhere in the PFP report.
16 The metal nameplate on the site calls it the "dogana ponderaria." Napoli e dintorni, Milan (Touring Club Italiano: 1976) p. 443, refers to it as a salt depository with an adjoining quarters for the corporation of salt workers, the statio saliniensium.
17 It may be that the section of the strada Consolare between blocks VI-3 and VI-4 was cut through to facilitate passage from that gate. For this, see the report of others in the PFP.
18 All dimensions are rough measurements taken in the field. The equivalent in metric measurement is given in parenthesis.
19 These are, running south, 10'-1" (3.1), 10'-8" (3.3), 9'-1" (2.8), etc. The next row of columns, the ones fronting the forum, lacks the mate to the pair framing the street.
20 At a point opposite the Basilica entrance the sidewalk will widen slightly to 11'-10 _" (3.7). The result is a bowed alignment that is hardly noticeable within the generous cross section in which it occurs, although it is noted on the Eschebach plan. The reason for the widening, and for the appearance here of limestone curbs in place of the lava used on the rest of this frontage, will be discussed by others in the PFP. Note that the measurements are approximate and are to the outer face of the curb stones.
21 Only stumps of these columns survive; they are tufa. The northern column sits partially atop the curbstone; the southern one sits in the street with gap of 18" (.5) between it and the curb. Others in the PFP will address the western portico and precinct walls of the forum.
22 Richardson, Pompeii,p. 278, n. 14, postulates that this pavement treatment marks this section as a processional way associated with the Temple of Venus.
23 Not visible now are alterations made to the street grade and colonnade when the level of the forum was raised, a project revealed by excavations conducted by Salvatore Nappo and generously shared with members of the PFP.
24 For two earlier entrances on the east side see John Dobbins, "Problems of Chronology, Decoration, and Urban Design in the forum at Pompeii," American Journal of Archaeology, 98 (1994), 629-694. In 1996-97 Salvatore Nappo uncovered paving stones for the street south of the Macellum within the forum colonnade where Dobbins suggested they would be. For the west side of the forum, see the report of others in the PFP. The vicolo di Champonnet on the south side of the Basilica and the narrow road remaining between the two western civil buildings at the south end of the forum may have been important in the earlier configuration of the forum but now appear not as entrances but as little more than alleyways.
25 The access it gives to the forum is along a projection of the street's axis through a linteled opening in a high boundary wall and down a set of five lava (and not marble or white limestone) steps which is then continued through the free standing arch west of the front of the Temple of Jupiter. There is a more generous arched opening in that boundary wall which aligns a person parallel to the forum's axis, but it has a mere wall of shops rather than a street in the opposite direction. All this seems makeshift and utilitarian compared to the entrance from the via del Foro on the east side of the Temple of Jupiter. Even the stepping stones, which cross the vicolo delle Terme rather than the vicolo dei Soprastanti which runs along the north edge of the forum and behind the Temple of Jupiter to connect with the via degli Augustali, tell him to go eastward to the via del Foro.
26 The former term was broadly popularized by Sir John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture, many editions, most recently 1980; for the latter term see Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, Classical Architecture: the Poetics of Order, Cambridge Mass. (MIT Press: 1986).
27 Elsewhere I have discussed this as the principle of dilution, following Leon Battista Alberti; see Robert Jan van Pelt and Carroll William Westfall, Architectural Principles in the Age of Historicism, New Haven and London (Yale University Press: 1991), pp. 264ff.
28 Although only additional archeological work beyond the scope of the Pompeii forum Project's program could confirm this, it appears that the changes almost always took the form of additions to, rather than the rebuilding of, an existing urban ensemble that had been complete without the added elements but which, with them, became a place with a very different character.
29 The term building components is discussed in Architectural Principles, pp. 297-9, and needs to be understood in relationship to the discussion of buildings in chapter 6. The material here expands that discussion.
30 Indeed, in miniature size the pediment can be deleted as well as in the example at VII-4-16.
31 It should be noted that in their origin and in the context of law, curb stones are different in kind from stepping stones. Stepping stones carry pedestrians across streets awash with waste; drains like the one at the House of the Vetii (VI-15-27) are legion. As was made clear through fruitful and informative discussions with Catherine Saliou, who generously shared her findings from her study this topic within the framework of the project directed by Herman Geertman, curb stones are property boundaries defining the legal division between private and public realms; sidewalks are within the private domain, although they can be modified to play an important urban role.
32 For this and related material in this section, including the concept of relational design discussed below, see my discussion in Architectural Principles, chapter 8.
34 For this term see Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass. (MIT Press: 1988); and Tzonis and Lefaivre, Classical Architecture.
35 The use of the term urban order here is meant to provide a parallel to the term civil order or ordo used to refer to the organization of civil offices and magistracies within a municipal constitution. The parallelism is meant to stress the reciprocity between the urban and the architectural, the complement in the material embodiment of the city to the reciprocity between the urban and the civil in the political realm.
36 It is important to recall that Roman perspective schemes, subtle and inventive as they are, vanished to an area, not a point as occurs in the perspective system invented in the early fifteenth century. For the comments I have found most useful in interpreting this spatial setting see Lise Bek, Towards Paradise on Earth (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici IX), Odense (Odense University Press: 1980), esp. part III, 1. Unfortunately we do not know what sat atop the base. The usual conjecture supplies it with an imperial equestrian statue.
37 These two streets are not in direct alignment with one another.
38 See Dobbins AJA 98 (1994) 691 where this separate area is associated with the forum's post-62 design.
39 This element is not shown in the Eschebach map which has only a single line where there should be a pair to show the two rises. It does appear on the opposite, western side, however. The stylobate level on the east side was rebuilt; see by James G. Cooper, Sarah Butler, and John J. Dobbins, "Observations on the forum Colonnades," PFP, 1995 Report.
40 The concept of private effort producing public value is discussed more fully in Tony Hiss, The Experience of Place (New York, Vintage Books: 1991), passim.