Discovery in Pompeii: tomb of a freedman found, decorated, and with the remains of the deceased

A peculiar enclosure tomb has been discovered in Pompeii that features a facade decorated with green plant motifs on a blue background and an inhumation chamber (for Pompeii Archaeological Park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel, it is “one of the best-preserved skeletons in the ancient city”). Inside the burial was also found the deceased, partly mummified. Breaking the news of the find, the result of the work of a team of archaeologists from the Pompeii Archaeological Park and the Universidad Europea de Valencia, is Ansa.

The tomb is located outside Porta Sarno, one of the important gateways to the city, dates back to the last decades of Pompeii’s life, and belongs to a certain Marcus Venerius Secundio, a freedman (i.e. an enfranchised slave) who had been first a custodian of the Temple of Venus (particularly relevant because the Romans had named the city after Venus), then a minister of the augustals and finally an augustale or member of a college of priests of the imperial cult. A personage who had achieved a status of considerable wealth, so much so that he could boast, as the inscription found on the tomb states, of having given “Greek and Latin ludi for the duration of four days,” something that could assimilate him to the city’s highest and most cultured social class.

At the time, director Zuchtriegel explains to Ansa, in the Mediterranean area “the Greek language was a bit like English is for us today,” that is, rather widespread and known to the higher social classes. The uniqueness of the burial also lies in the fact that the personage had himself interred, according to a custom proper to more ancient times, and not in first-century AD Pompeii where cremation was usually preferred. According to the director general of state museums and former director of Pompeii, Maximus Hosanna, Marcus Venerius Secundius probably felt himself an outsider to the social body of the city. For Hosanna, therefore, it could be a foreigner who had arrived in Rome “where at that time some families continued to practice inhumation, something that would become customary from the following century.”

Two urns were also found in the tomb, one of which belonged to a woman, Novia Amabilis, possibly the wife of the deceased, for whom the cremation rite was chosen instead. On why these different choices were made, says Llorenç Alapont of the University of Valencia, “We will be able to understand more from the analysis of the textiles: we know from the sources that certain fabrics such as asbestos were used for embalming. Even for someone like me who has been involved in funerary archaeology for a long time, the extraordinary wealth of data offered by this tomb, from the inscription to the burials, osteological remains and the painted facade, is exceptional, confirming the importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach, as the University of Valencia and the Pompeii Archaeological Park have done in this project.” Zuchtriegel also announces that a feasibility study is currently underway to figure out how to include the tomb in the tour route, which is not possible at the moment, however, since the land on which it is located lies beyond the Circumvesuviana railway.

“Pompeii never ceases to amaze and confirms itself as a story of redemption, an international model, a place where research and new excavations have returned,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini stressed, thanking “the many professionals of the cultural heritage who with their work do not stop giving the world extraordinary results that are a source of pride for Italy.”

In the photo: the newly found tomb

Discovery in Pompeii: tomb of a freedman found, decorated, and with the remains of the deceased

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